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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Chaldea, by Zénaïde A. Ragozin
+
+
+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
+
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+
+
+Title: Chaldea
+       From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria
+
+
+Author: Zénaïde A. Ragozin
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 20, 2008  [eBook #24654]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHALDEA***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Thierry Alberto, Brownfox, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
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+
+
+
+
+
+CHALDEA
+
+From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria
+
+(Treated As a General Introduction to the Study of Ancient History)
+
+by
+
+ZÉNAÏDE A. RAGOZIN
+
+Member of the "Société Ethnologique" of Paris; of the "American
+Oriental Society"; Corresponding Member of the "Athénée
+Oriental" of Paris; Author of "Assyria," "Media," Etc.
+
+"He (Carlyle) says it is part of his creed that history is
+poetry, could we tell it right."--EMERSON.
+
+Fourth Edition
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SHAMASH THE SUN-GOD. (From the Sun Temple at Sippar.)]
+
+
+
+London
+T. Fisher Unwin
+Paternoster Square
+
+New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons
+
+MDCCCXCIII
+
+
+
+
+                          TO THE MEMBERS OF
+
+                              THE CLASS,
+
+         IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF MANY HAPPY HOURS, THIS
+         VOLUME AND THE FOLLOWING ONES ARE AFFECTIONATELY
+                      INSCRIBED BY THEIR FRIEND.
+
+                                                     THE AUTHOR.
+
+         IDLEWILD PLANTATION,
+         SAN ANTONIO,
+
+
+
+
+                        CLASSIFIED CONTENTS.
+
+                           INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+                                I.
+                                                             PAGE
+MESOPOTAMIA.--THE MOUNDS.--THE FIRST SEARCHERS               1-18
+
+     § 1. Complete destruction of Nineveh.--§§ 2-4. Xenophon and the
+     "Retreat of the Ten Thousand." The Greeks pass the ruins of
+     Calah and Nineveh, and know them not.--§ 5. Alexander's passage
+     through Mesopotamia.--§ 6. The Arab invasion and rule.--§ 7.
+     Turkish rule and mismanagement.--§ 8. Peculiar natural
+     conditions of Mesopotamia.--§ 9. Actual desolate state of the
+     country.--§ 10. The plains studded with Mounds. Their curious
+     aspect.--§ 11. Fragments of works of art amidst the
+     rubbish.--§ 12. Indifference and superstition of the Turks and
+     Arabs.--§ 13. Exclusive absorption of European scholars in
+     Classical Antiquity.--§ 14. Forbidding aspect of the Mounds,
+     compared with other ruins.--§ 15. Rich, the first explorer.--§ 16.
+     Botta's work and want of success.--§ 17. Botta's great
+     discovery.--§ 18. Great sensation created by it.--§ 19.
+     Layard's first expedition.
+
+                               II.
+
+LAYARD AND HIS WORK                                         19-35
+
+     § 1. Layard's arrival at Nimrud. His excitement and
+     dreams.--§ 2. Beginning of difficulties. The Ogre-like Pasha of
+     Mossul.--§ 3. Opposition from the Pasha. His malice and
+     cunning.--§ 4. Discovery of the gigantic head. Fright of the Arabs,
+     who declare it to be Nimrod.--§ 5. Strange ideas of the Arabs about
+     the sculptures.--§ 6. Layard's life in the desert.--§ 7.
+     Terrible heat of summer.--§ 8. Sand-storms and hot
+     hurricanes.--§ 9. Layard's wretched dwelling.--§ 10.
+     Unsuccessful attempts at improvement.--§ 11. In what the task
+     of the explorer consists.--§ 12. Different modes of carrying on
+     the work of excavation.
+
+                               III.
+
+THE RUINS                                                   36-93
+
+     § 1. Every country's culture and art determined by its
+     geographical conditions.--§ 2. Chaldea's absolute deficiency in
+     wood and stone.--§ 3. Great abundance of mud fit for the
+     fabrication of bricks; hence the peculiar architecture of
+     Mesopotamia. Ancient ruins still used as quarries of bricks for
+     building. Trade of ancient bricks at Hillah.--§ 4. Various
+     cements used.--§ 5. Construction of artificial platforms.--§ 6.
+     Ruins of Ziggurats; peculiar shape, and uses of this sort of
+     buildings.--§ 7. Figures showing the immense amount of labor
+     used on these constructions.--§ 8. Chaldean architecture
+     adopted unchanged by the Assyrians.--§ 9. Stone used for
+     ornament and casing of walls. Water transport in old and modern
+     times.--§ 10. Imposing aspect of the palaces.--§ 11.
+     Restoration of Sennacherib's palace by Fergusson.--§ 12.
+     Pavements of palace halls.--§ 13. Gateways and sculptured slabs
+     along the walls. Friezes in painted tiles.--§ 14. Proportions
+     of palace halls and roofing.--§ 15. Lighting of halls.--§ 16.
+     Causes of the kings' passion for building.--§ 17. Drainage of
+     palaces and platforms.--§ 18. Modes of destruction.--§ 19. The
+     Mounds a protection to the ruins they contain. Refilling the
+     excavations.--§ 20. Absence of ancient tombs in Assyria.--§ 21.
+     Abundance and vastness of cemeteries in Chaldea.--§ 22. Warka
+     (Erech) the great Necropolis. Loftus' description.--§ 23.
+     "Jar-coffins."--§ 24. "Dish-cover" coffins.--§ 25. Sepulchral
+     vaults.--§ 26. "Slipper-shaped" coffins.--§ 27. Drainage of
+     sepulchral mounds.--§ 28. Decoration of walls in painted
+     clay-cones.--§ 29. De Sarzec's discoveries at Tell-Loh.
+
+                               IV.
+
+THE BOOK OF THE PAST.--THE LIBRARY OF NINEVEH              94-115
+
+     § 1. Object of making books.--§ 2. Books not always of
+     paper.--§ 3. Universal craving for an immortal name.--§ 4.
+     Insufficiency of records on various writing materials.
+     Universal longing for knowledge of the remotest past.--§ 5.
+     Monumental records.--§ 6. Ruins of palaces and temples, tombs
+     and caves--the Book of the Past.--§§ 7-8. Discovery by Layard
+     of the Royal Library at Nineveh.--§ 9. George Smith's work at
+     the British Museum.--§ 10. His expeditions to Nineveh, his
+     success and death.--§ 11. Value of the Library.--§§ 12-13.
+     Contents of the Library.--§ 14. The Tablets.--§ 15. The
+     cylinders and foundation-tablets.
+
+
+                             CHALDEA.
+
+                                I.
+
+NOMADS AND SETTLERS.--THE FOUR STAGES OF CULTURE.         116-126
+
+     § 1. Nomads.--§ 2. First migrations.--§ 3. Pastoral life--the
+     second stage.--§ 4. Agricultural life; beginnings of the
+     State.--§ 5. City-building; royalty.--§ 6. Successive
+     migrations and their causes.--§ 7. Formation of nations.
+
+                               II.
+
+THE GREAT RACES.--CHAPTER X. OF GENESIS                   127-142
+
+     § 1. Shinar.--§ 2. Berosus.--§ 3. Who were the settlers in
+     Shinar?--§ 4. The Flood probably not universal.--§§ 5-6. The
+     blessed race and the accursed, according to Genesis.--§ 7.
+     Genealogical form of Chap. X. of Genesis.--§ 8. Eponyms.--§ 9.
+     Omission of some white races from Chap. X.--§ 10. Omission of
+     the Black Race.--§ 11. Omission of the Yellow Race.
+     Characteristics of the Turanians.--§ 12. The Chinese.--§ 13.
+     Who were the Turanians? What became of the Cainites?--§ 14.
+     Possible identity of both.--§ 15. The settlers in
+     Shinar--Turanians.
+
+                               III.
+
+TURANIAN CHALDEA--SHUMIR AND ACCAD.--THE BEGINNINGS OF
+RELIGION                                                  146-181
+
+     § 1. Shumir and Accad.--§ 2. Language and name.--§ 3. Turanian
+     migrations and traditions.--§ 4. Collection of sacred
+     texts.--§ 5. "Religiosity"--a distinctively human characteristic.
+     Its first promptings and manifestations.--§ 6. The Magic Collection
+     and the work of Fr. Lenormant.--§ 7. The Shumiro-Accads' theory
+     of the world, and their elementary spirits.--§ 8. The
+     incantation of the Seven Maskim.--§ 9. The evil spirits.--§ 10.
+     The Arali.--§ 11. The sorcerers.--§ 12. Conjuring and
+     conjurers.--§ 13. The beneficent Spirits, Êa.--§ 14.
+     Meridug.--§ 15. A charm against an evil spell.--§ 16. Diseases
+     considered as evil demons.--§ 17. Talismans. _The
+     Kerubim._--§ 18. More talismans.--§ 19. The demon of the South-West
+     Wind.--§ 20. The first gods.--§ 21. _Ud_, the Sun.--§ 22.
+     _Nin dar_, the nightly Sun.--§ 23. _Gibil_, Fire.--§ 24. Dawn of
+     moral consciousness.--§ 25. Man's Conscience divinized.--§§ 26-28.
+     Penitential Psalms.--§ 29. General character of Turanian
+     religions.
+
+APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.                                  181-183
+
+     Professor L. Dyer's poetical version of the Incantation against
+     the Seven Maskim.
+
+                               IV.
+
+CUSHITES AND SEMITES--EARLY CHALDEAN HISTORY              184-228
+
+     § 1. Oannes.--§ 2. Were the second settlers Cushites or
+     Semites?--§ 3. Cushite hypothesis. Earliest migrations.--§ 4.
+     The Ethiopians and the Egyptians.--§ 5. The Canaanites.--§ 6.
+     Possible Cushite station on the islets of the Persian
+     Gulf.--§ 7. Colonization of Chaldea possibly by Cushites.--§ 8.
+     Vagueness of very ancient chronology.--§ 9. Early dates.--§ 10.
+     Exorbitant figures of Berosus.--§ 11. Early Chaldea--a nursery
+     of nations.--§ 12. Nomadic Semitic tribes.--§ 13. The tribe of
+     Arphaxad.--§ 14. Ur of the Chaldees.--§ 15. Scholars divided
+     between the Cushite and Semitic theories.--§ 16. History
+     commences with Semitic culture.--§ 17. Priestly rule. The
+     _patesis_.--§§ 18-19. Sharrukin I. (Sargon I) of Agadê.--§§
+     20-21. The second Sargon's literary labors.--§§ 22-23. Chaldean
+     folk-lore, maxims and songs.--§ 24. Discovery of the elder
+     Sargon's date--3800 B.C.--§ 25. Gudêa of Sir-gulla and Ur-êa of
+     Ur.--§ 26. Predominance of Shumir. Ur-êa and his son Dungi
+     first kings of "Shumir and Accad."--§ 27. Their inscriptions
+     and buildings. The Elamite invasion.--§ 28. Elam.--§§ 29-31.
+     Khudur-Lagamar and Abraham.--§ 32. Hardness of the Elamite
+     rule.--§ 33. Rise of Babylon.--§ 34. Hammurabi.--§ 35. Invasion
+     of the Kasshi.
+
+                                V.
+
+BABYLONIAN RELIGION                                       229-257
+
+     § 1. Babylonian calendar.--§ 2. Astronomy conducive to
+     religious feeling.--§ 3. Sabeism.--§ 4. Priestcraft and
+     astrology.--§ 5. Transformation of the old religion.--§ 6.
+     Vague dawning of the monotheistic idea. Divine emanations.--§ 7.
+     The Supreme Triad.--§ 8. The Second Triad.--§ 9. The five
+     Planetary deities.--§§ 10-11. Duality of nature. Masculine and
+     feminine principles. The goddesses.--§ 12. The twelve Great
+     Gods and their Temples.--§ 13. The temple of Shamash at Sippar
+     and Mr. Rassam's discovery.--§ 14. Survival of the old Turanian
+     superstitions.--§ 15. Divination, a branch of Chaldean
+     "Science."--§§ 16-17. Collection of one hundred tablets on
+     divination. Specimens.--§ 18. The three classes of "wise men."
+     "Chaldeans," in later times, a by-word for "magician," and
+     "astrologer."--§ 19. Our inheritance from the Chaldeans: the
+     sun-dial, the week, the calendar, the Sabbath.
+
+                               VI.
+
+LEGENDS AND STORIES                                       258-293
+
+     § 1. The Cosmogonies of different nations.--§ 2. The antiquity
+     of the Sacred Books of Babylonia.--§ 3. The legend of Oannes,
+     told by Berosus. Discovery, by Geo. Smith, of the Creation
+     Tablets and the Deluge Tablet.--§§ 4-5. Chaldean account of the
+     Creation.--§ 6. The Cylinder with the human couple, tree and
+     serpent.--§ 7. Berosus' account of the creation.--§ 8. The
+     Sacred Tree. Sacredness of the Symbol.--§ 9. Signification of
+     the Tree-Symbol. The Cosmic Tree.--§ 10. Connection of the
+     Tree-Symbol and of Ziggurats with the legend of Paradise.--§ 11.
+     The Ziggurat of Borsippa.--§ 12. It is identified with the
+     Tower of Babel.--§§ 13-14. Peculiar Orientation of the
+     Ziggurats.--§ 15. Traces of legends about a sacred grove or
+     garden.--§ 16. Mummu-Tiamat, the enemy of the gods. Battle of
+     Bel and Tiamat.--§ 17. The Rebellion of the seven evil spirits,
+     originally messengers of the gods.--§ 18. The great Tower and
+     the Confusion of Tongues.
+
+                               VII.
+
+MYTHS.--HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS                      294-330
+
+     § 1. Definition of the word Myth.--§ 2. The Heroes.--§ 3. The
+     Heroic Ages and Heroic Myths. The National Epos.--§ 4. The
+     oldest known Epic.--§ 5. Berosus' account of the Flood.--§ 6.
+     Geo. Smith's discovery of the original Chaldean narrative.--§ 7.
+     The Epic divided into books or Tablets.--§ 8. Izdubar the
+     Hero of the Epic.--§ 9. Erech's humiliation under the Elamite
+     Conquest. Izdubar's dream.--§ 10. Êabâni the Seer. Izdubar's
+     invitation and promises to him.--§ 11. Message sent to Êabâni
+     by Ishtar's handmaidens. His arrival at Erech.--§ 12. Izdubar
+     and Êabâni's victory over the tyrant Khumbaba.--§ 13. Ishtar's
+     love message. Her rejection and wrath. The two friends' victory
+     over the Bull sent by her.--§ 14. Ishtar's vengeance. Izdubar's
+     journey to the Mouth of the Rivers.--§ 15. Izdubar sails the
+     Waters of Death and is healed by his immortal ancestor
+     Hâsisadra.--§ 16. Izdubar's return to Erech and lament over
+     Êabâni. The seer is translated among the gods.--§ 17. The
+     Deluge narrative in the Eleventh Tablet of the Izdubar
+     Epic.--§§ 18-21. Mythic and solar character of the Epic
+     analyzed.--§ 22. Sun-Myth of the Beautiful Youth, his early
+     death and resurrection.--§§ 23-24. Dumuzi-Tammuz, the husband
+     of Ishtar. The festival of Dumuzi in June.--§ 25. Ishtar's
+     Descent to the Land of the Dead.--§ 26. Universality of the
+     Solar and Chthonic Myths.
+
+                              VIII.
+
+RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.--IDOLATRY AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM.--THE
+CHALDEAN LEGENDS AND THE BOOK OF GENESIS.--RETROSPECT     331-336
+
+     § 1. Definition of Mythology and Religion, as distinct from
+     each other.--§§ 2-3. Instances of pure religious feeling in the
+     poetry of Shumir and Accad.--§ 4. Religion often stifled by
+     Mythology.--§§ 5-6. The conception of the immortality of the
+     soul suggested by the sun's career.--§ 7. This expressed in the
+     Solar and Chthonic Myths.--§ 8. Idolatry.--§ 9. The Hebrews,
+     originally polytheists and idolators, reclaimed by their
+     leaders to Monotheism.--§ 10. Their intercourse with the tribes
+     of Canaan conducive to relapses.--§ 11. Intermarriage severely
+     forbidden for this reason.--§ 12. Striking similarity between
+     the Book of Genesis and the ancient Chaldean legends.--§ 13.
+     Parallel between the two accounts of the creation.--§ 14.
+     Anthropomorphism, different from polytheism and idolatry, but
+     conducive to both.--§§ 15-17. Parallel continued.--§§ 18-19.
+     Retrospect.
+
+
+
+
+PRINCIPAL WORKS READ OR CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS VOLUME.
+
+
+BAER, Wilhelm. DER VORGESCHICHTLICHE MENSCH. 1 vol., Leipzig: 1874.
+
+BAUDISSIN, W. von. STUDIEN ZUR SEMITISCHEN RELIGIONSGESCHICHTE. 2 vols.
+
+BUDGE, E. A. Wallis. BABYLONIAN LIFE AND HISTORY. ("Bypaths of Bible
+Knowledge" Series, V.) 1884. London: The Religious Tract Society. 1 vol.
+
+---- HISTORY OF ESARHADDON. 1 vol.
+
+BUNSEN, Chr. Carl Jos. GOTT IN DER GESCHICHTE, oder Der Fortschritt des
+Glaubens an eine sittliche Weltordnung. 3 vols. Leipzig: 1857.
+
+CASTREN, Alexander. KLEINERE SCHRIFTEN. St. Petersburg: 1862. 1 vol.
+
+CORY. ANCIENT FRAGMENTS. London: 1876. 1 vol.
+
+DELITZSCH, Dr. Friedrich. WO LAG DAS PARADIES? eine
+Biblisch-Assyriologische Studie. Leipzig: 1881. 1 vol.
+
+---- DIE SPRACHE DER KOSSÄER. Leipzig: 1885 (or 1884?). 1 vol.
+
+DUNCKER, Max. GESCHICHTE DES ALTERTHUMS. Leipzig: 1878. Vol. 1st.
+
+FERGUSSON, James. PALACES OF NINEVEH AND PERSEPOLIS RESTORED. 1 vol.
+
+HAPPEL, Julius. DIE ALTCHINESISCHE REICHSRELIGION, vom Standpunkte der
+Vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte. 46 pages, Leipzig: 1882.
+
+HAUPT, Paul. DER KEILINSCHRIFTLICHE SINTFLUTBERICHT, eine Episode des
+Babylonischen Nimrodepos. 36 pages. Göttingen: 1881.
+
+HOMMEL, Dr. Fritz. GESCHICHTE BABYLONIENS UND ASSYRIENS (first
+instalment, 160 pp., 1885; and second instalment, 160 pp., 1886).
+(Allgemeine Geschichte in einzelnen Darstellungen, Abtheilung 95 und
+117.)
+
+---- DIE VORSEMITISCHEN KULTUREN IN ÆGYPTEN UND BABYLONIEN. Leipzig:
+1882 and 1883.
+
+LAYARD, Austen H. DISCOVERIES AMONG THE RUINS OF NINEVEH AND BABYLON.
+(American Edition.) New York: 1853. 1 vol.
+
+---- NINEVEH AND ITS REMAINS. London: 1849. 2 vols.
+
+LENORMANT, François. LES PREMIÈRES CIVILISATIONS. Êtudes d'Histoire et
+d'Archéologie. 1874. Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie. 2 vols.
+
+---- LES ORIGINES DE L'HISTOIRE, d'après la Bible et les Traditions des
+Peuples Orientaux. Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie. 3 vol. 1er vol. 1880; 2e
+vol. 1882; 3e vol. 1884.
+
+---- LA GENÈSE. Traduction d'après l'Hébreu. Paris: 1883. 1 vol.
+
+---- DIE MAGIE UND WAHRSAGEKUNST DER CHALDÄER. Jena, 1878. 1 vol.
+
+---- IL MITO DI ADONE-TAMMUZ nei Documenti cuneiformi. 32 pages.
+Firenze: 1879.
+
+---- SUR LE NOM DE TAMMOUZ. (Extrait des Mémoires du Congrès
+international des Orientalistes.) 17 pages. Paris: 1873.
+
+---- A MANUAL OF THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST. Translated by E.
+Chevallier. American Edition. Philadelphia: 1871. 2 vols.
+
+LOFTUS. CHALDEA AND SUSIANA. 1 vol. London: 1857.
+
+LOTZ, Guilelmus. QUÆSTIONES DE HISTORIA SABBATI. Lipsiae: 1883.
+
+MAURY, Alfred L. F. LA MAGIE ET L'ASTROLOGIE dans l'antiquité et en
+Moyen Age. Paris: 1877. 1 vol. Quatrième édition.
+
+MASPERO, G. HISTOIRE ANCIENNE DES PEUPLES DE L'ORIENT. 3e édition, 1878.
+Paris: Hachette & Cie. 1 vol.
+
+MÉNANT, Joachim. LA BIBLIOTHÈQUE DU PALAIS DE NINIVE. 1 vol.
+(Bibliothèque Orientale Elzévirienne.) Paris: 1880.
+
+MEYER, Eduard. GESCHICHTE DES ALTERTHUMS. Stuttgart: 1884. Vol. 1st.
+
+MÜLLER, Max. LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 2 vols. American
+edition. New York: 1875.
+
+MÜRDTER, F. KURZGEFASSTE GESCHICHTE BABYLONIENS UND ASSYRIENS, mit
+besonderer Berücksichtigung des Alten Testaments. Mit Vorwort und
+Beigaben von Friedrich Delitzsch. Stuttgart: 1882. 1 vol.
+
+OPPERT, Jules. L'IMMORTALITÉ DE L'AME CHEZ LES CHALDÉENS. 28 pages.
+(Extrait des Annales de Philosophie Chrètienne, 1874.) Perrot et
+Chipiez.
+
+QUATREFAGES, A. de. L'ESPÈCE HUMAINE. Sixième edition. 1 vol. Paris:
+1880.
+
+RAWLINSON, George. THE FIVE GREAT MONARCHIES OF THE ANCIENT EASTERN
+WORLD. London: 1865. 1st and 2d vols.
+
+RECORDS OF THE PAST. Published under the sanction of the Society of
+Biblical Archæology. Volumes I. III. V. VII. IX. XI.
+
+SAYCE, A. H. FRESH LIGHT FROM ANCIENT MONUMENTS. ("By-Paths of Bible
+Knowledge" Series, II.) 3d edition, 1885. London: 1 vol.
+
+---- THE ANCIENT EMPIRES OF THE EAST. 1 vol. London, 1884.
+
+---- BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 1 vol. London, 1884.
+
+SCHRADER, Eberhard. KEILINSCHRIFTEN und Geschichtsforschung. Giessen:
+1878. 1 vol.
+
+---- DIE KEILINSCHRIFTEN und das Alte Testament. Giessen: 1883. 1 vol.
+
+---- ISTAR'S HÖLLENFAHRT. 1 vol. Giessen: 1874.
+
+---- ZUR FRAGE NACH DEM URSPRUNG DER ALTBABYLONISCHEN KULTUR. Berlin:
+1884.
+
+SMITH, George. ASSYRIA from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Nineveh.
+("Ancient History from the Monuments" Series.) London: 1 vol.
+
+TYLOR, Edward B. PRIMITIVE CULTURE. Second American Edition. 2 vols. New
+York: 1877.
+
+ZIMMERN, Heinrich. BABYLONISCHE BUSSPSALMEN, umschrieben, übersetzt und
+erklärt. 17 pages, 4to. Leipzig: 1885.
+
+Numerous Essays by Sir Henry Rawlinson, Friedr. Delitzsch, E. Schrader
+and others, in Mr. Geo. Rawlinson's translation of Herodotus, in the
+Calwer Bibellexikon, and in various periodicals, such as "Proceedings"
+and "Transactions" of the "Society of Biblical Archæology," "Jahrbücher
+für Protestantische Theologie," "Zeitschrift für Keilschriftforschung,"
+"Gazette Archéologique," and others.
+
+
+
+
+                       LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+SHAMASH THE SUN-GOD.
+      _From a tablet in the British Museum._            _Frontispiece._
+1. CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS                      _Ménant._              10
+2. TEMPLE OF ÊA AT ERIDHU                    _Hommel._              23
+3. VIEW OF EUPHRATES NEAR BABYLON            _Babelon._             31
+4. MOUND OF BABIL                            _Oppert._              33
+5. BRONZE DISH                               _Perrot and Chipiez._  35
+6. BRONZE DISH (RUG PATTERN)                 _Perrot and Chipiez._  37
+7. SECTION OF BRONZE DISH                    _Perrot and Chipiez._  39
+8. VIEW OF NEBBI-YUNUS                       _Babelon._             41
+9. BUILDING IN BAKED BRICK.                  _Perrot and Chipiez._  43
+10. MOUND OF NINEVEH                         _Hommel._              45
+11. MOUND OF MUGHEIR (ANCIENT UR)            _Taylor._              47
+12. TERRACE WALL AT KHORSABAD                _Perrot and Chipiez._  49
+13. RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS (ANCIENT)  _Kaulen._              51
+14. RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS (MODERN)   _Kaulen._              51
+15. EXCAVATIONS AT MUGHEIR (UR)              _Hommel._              53
+16. WARRIORS SWIMMING ON INFLATED SKINS      _Babelon._             55
+17. VIEW OF KOYUNJIK                         _Hommel._              57
+18. STONE LION AT ENTRANCE OF A TEMPLE       _Perrot and Chipiez._  59
+19. COURT OF HAREM AT KHORSABAD. RESTORED    _Perrot and Chipiez._  61
+20. CIRCULAR PILLAR BASE                     _Perrot and Chipiez._  63
+21. INTERIOR VIEW OF HAREM CHAMBER           _Perrot and Chipiez._  65
+22, 23. COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES    _Perrot and Chipiez._  67
+24. PAVEMENT SLAB                            _Perrot and Chipiez._  69
+25. SECTION OF ORNAMENTAL DOORWAY, KHORSABAD _Perrot and Chipiez._  71
+26. WINGED LION WITH HUMAN HEAD              _Perrot and Chipiez._  73
+27. WINGED BULL                              _Perrot and Chipiez._  75
+28. MAN-LION                                 _Perrot and Chipiez._  77
+29. FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK              _Perrot and Chipiez._  79
+30. RAM'S HEAD IN ALABASTER                  _British Museum._      81
+31. EBONY COMB                               _Perrot and Chipiez._  81
+32. BRONZE FORK AND SPOON                    _Perrot and Chipiez._  81
+33. ARMENIAN LOUVRE                          _Botta._               83
+34, 35. VAULTED DRAINS                       _Perrot and Chipiez._  84
+36. CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN                      _Taylor._              85
+37. "DISH-COVER" TOMB AT MUGHEIR             _Taylor._              87
+38. "DISH-COVER" TOMB                        _Taylor._              87
+39. SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR              _Taylor._              89
+40. STONE JARS FROM GRAVES                   _Hommel._              89
+41. DRAIN IN MOUND                           _Perrot and Chipiez._  90
+42. WALL WITH DESIGNS IN TERRA-COTTA         _Loftus._              91
+43. TERRA-COTTA CONE                         _Loftus._              91
+44. HEAD OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN                 _Perrot and Chipiez._ 101
+45. SAME, PROFILE VIEW                       _Perrot and Chipiez._ 101
+46. CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION                    _Perrot and Chipiez._ 107
+47. INSCRIBED CLAY TABLET                    _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 109
+48. CLAY TABLET IN ITS CASE                  _Hommel._             111
+49. ANTIQUE BRONZE SETTING OF CYLINDER       _Perrot and Chipiez._ 112
+50. CHALDEAN CYLINDER AND IMPRESSION         _Perrot and Chipiez._ 113
+51. ASSYRIAN CYLINDER                                              113
+52. PRISM OF SENNACHERIB                     _British Museum._     115
+53. INSCRIBED CYLINDER FROM BORSIP           _Ménant._             117
+54. DEMONS FIGHTING                          _British Museum._     165
+55. DEMON OF THE SOUTH-WEST WIND             _Perrot and Chipiez._ 169
+56. HEAD OF DEMON                            _British Museum._     170
+57. OANNES                                   _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 187
+58. CYLINDER OF SARGON FROM AGADÊ            _Hommel._             207
+59. STATUE OF GUDÊA                          _Hommel._             217
+60. BUST INSCRIBED WITH NAME OF NEBO         _British Museum._     243
+61. BACK OF TABLET WITH ACCOUNT OF FLOOD     _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 262
+62. BABYLONIAN CYLINDER                      _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 266
+63. FEMALE WINGED FIGURES AND SACRED TREES   _British Museum._     269
+64. WINGED SPIRITS BEFORE SACRED TREE        _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 270
+65. SARGON OF ASSYRIA BEFORE SACRED TREE     _Perrot and Chipiez._ 271
+66. EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE BEFORE SACRED TREE   _Perrot and Chipiez._ 273
+67. FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIGURE
+                        BEFORE SACRED TREE   _Perrot and Chipiez._ 275
+68. TEMPLE AND HANGING GARDENS AT KOYUNJIK   _British Museum._     277
+69. PLAN OF A ZIGGURAT                       _Perrot and Chipiez._ 278
+70. "ZIGGURAT" RESTORED                      _Perrot and Chipiez._ 279
+71. BIRS-NIMRUD                              _Perrot and Chipiez._ 281
+72, 73. BEL FIGHTS DRAGON                    _Perrot and Chipiez._ 289
+74. BATTLE BETWEEN BEL AND DRAGON            _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 291
+75. IZDUBAR AND LION                         _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 306
+76. IZDUBAR AND LION                         _British Museum._     307
+77. IZDUBAR AND ÊABÂNI                       _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 309
+78. IZDUBAR AND LION                         _Perrot and Chipiez._ 310
+79. SCORPION-MAN                             _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 311
+80. STONE OBJECT FOUND AT ABU-HABBA                                312
+
+[Illustration: THE COUNTRIES ABOUT CHALDEA.]
+
+
+
+
+                             INTRODUCTION.
+
+                                   I.
+
+            MESOPOTAMIA.--THE MOUNDS.--THE FIRST SEARCHERS.
+
+
+1. In or about the year before Christ 606, Nineveh, the great city, was
+destroyed. For many hundred years had she stood in arrogant splendor,
+her palaces towering above the Tigris and mirrored in its swift waters;
+army after army had gone forth from her gates and returned laden with
+the spoils of conquered countries; her monarchs had ridden to the high
+place of sacrifice in chariots drawn by captive kings. But her time came
+at last. The nations assembled and encompassed her around. Popular
+tradition tells how over two years lasted the siege; how the very river
+rose and battered her walls; till one day a vast flame rose up to
+heaven; how the last of a mighty line of kings, too proud to surrender,
+thus saved himself, his treasures and his capital from the shame of
+bondage. Never was city to rise again where Nineveh had been.
+
+2. Two hundred years went by. Great changes had passed over the land.
+The Persian kings now held the rule of Asia. But their greatness also
+was leaning towards its decline and family discords undermined their
+power. A young prince had rebelled against his elder brother and
+resolved to tear the crown from him by main force. To accomplish this,
+he had raised an army and called in the help of Grecian hirelings. They
+came, 13,000 in number, led by brave and renowned generals, and did
+their duty by him; but their valor could not save him from defeat and
+death. Their own leader fell into an ambush, and they commenced their
+retreat under the most disastrous circumstances and with little hope of
+escape.
+
+3. Yet they accomplished it. Surrounded by open enemies and false
+friends, tracked and pursued, through sandy wastes and pathless
+mountains, now parched with heat, now numbed with cold, they at last
+reached the sunny and friendly Hellespont. It was a long and weary march
+from Babylon on the Euphrates, near which city the great battle had been
+fought. They might not have succeeded had they not chosen a great and
+brave commander, Xenophon, a noble Athenian, whose fame as scholar and
+writer equals his renown as soldier and general. Few books are more
+interesting than the lively relation he has left of his and his
+companions' toils and sufferings in this expedition, known in history as
+"The Retreat of the Ten Thousand"--for to that number had the original
+13,000 been reduced by battles, privations and disease. So cultivated a
+man could not fail, even in the midst of danger and weighed down by
+care, to observe whatever was noteworthy in the strange lands which he
+traversed. So he tells us how one day his little army, after a forced
+march in the early morning hours and an engagement with some light
+troops of pursuers, having repelled the attack and thereby secured a
+short interval of safety, travelled on till they came to the banks of
+the Tigris. On that spot, he goes on, there was a vast desert city. Its
+wall was twenty-five feet wide, one hundred feet high and nearly seven
+miles in circuit. It was built of brick with a basement, twenty feet
+high, of stone. Close by the city there stood a stone pyramid, one
+hundred feet in width, and two hundred in height. Xenophon adds that
+this city's name was Larissa and that it had anciently been inhabited by
+Medes; that the king of Persia, when he took the sovereignty away from
+the Medes, besieged it, but could not in any way get possession of it,
+until, a cloud having obscured the sun, the inhabitants forsook the city
+and thus it was taken.
+
+4. Some eighteen miles further on (a day's march) the Greeks came to
+another great deserted city, which Xenophon calls Mespila. It had a
+similar but still higher wall. This city, he tells us, had also been
+inhabited by Medes, and taken by the king of Persia. Now these curious
+ruins were all that was left of Kalah and Nineveh, the two Assyrian
+capitals. In the short space of two hundred years, men had surely not
+yet lost the memory of Nineveh's existence and rule, yet they trod the
+very site where it had stood and knew it not, and called its ruins by a
+meaningless Greek name, handing down concerning it a tradition absurdly
+made up of true and fictitious details, jumbled into inextricable
+confusion. For Nineveh had been the capital of the Assyrian Empire,
+while the Medes were one of the nations who attacked and destroyed it.
+And though an eclipse of the sun--(the obscuring cloud could mean
+nothing else)--did occur, created great confusion and produced important
+results, it was at a later period and on an entirely different occasion.
+As to "the king of Persia," no such personage had anything whatever to
+do with the catastrophe of Nineveh, since the Persians had not yet been
+heard of at that time as a powerful people, and their country was only a
+small and insignificant principality, tributary to Media. So effectually
+had the haughty city been swept from the face of the earth!
+
+5. Another hundred years brought on other and even greater changes. The
+Persian monarchy had followed in the wake of the empires that had gone
+before it and fallen before Alexander, the youthful hero of Macedon. As
+the conqueror's fleet of light-built Grecian ships descended the
+Euphrates towards Babylon, they were often hindered in their progress by
+huge dams of stone built across the river. The Greeks, with great labor,
+removed several, to make navigation more easy. They did the same on
+several other rivers,--nor knew that they were destroying the last
+remaining vestige of a great people's civilization,--for these dams had
+been used to save the water and distribute it into the numerous canals,
+which covered the arid country with their fertilizing network. They may
+have been told what travellers are told in our own days by the
+Arabs--that these dams had been constructed once upon a time by Nimrod,
+the Hunter-King. For some of them remain even still, showing their huge,
+square stones, strongly united by iron cramps, above the water before
+the river is swollen with the winter rains.
+
+6. More than one-and-twenty centuries have rolled since then over the
+immense valley so well named Mesopotamia--"the Land between the
+Rivers,"--and each brought to it more changes, more wars, more
+disasters, with rare intervals of rest and prosperity. Its position
+between the East and the West, on the very high-road of marching armies
+and wandering tribes, has always made it one of the great battle grounds
+of the world. About one thousand years after Alexander's rapid invasion
+and short-lived conquest, the Arabs overran the country, and settled
+there, bringing with them a new civilization and the new religion given
+them by their prophet Mohammed, which they thought it their mission to
+carry, by force of word or sword, to the bounds of the earth. They even
+founded there one of the principal seats of their sovereignty, and
+Baghdad yielded not greatly in magnificence and power to Babylon of old.
+
+7. Order, laws, and learning now flourished for a few hundred years,
+when new hordes of barbarous people came pouring in from the East, and
+one of them, the Turks, at last established itself in the land and
+stayed. They rule there now. The valley of the Tigris and Euphrates is
+a province of the Ottoman or Turkish Empire, which has its capital in
+Constantinople; it is governed by pashas, officials sent by the Turkish
+government, or the "Sublime Porte," as it is usually called, and the
+ignorant, oppressive, grinding treatment to which it has now been
+subjected for several hundred years has reduced it to the lowest depth
+of desolation. Its wealth is exhausted, its industry destroyed, its
+prosperous cities have disappeared or dwindled into insignificance. Even
+Mossul, built by the Arabs on the right bank of the Tigris, opposite the
+spot where Nineveh once stood, one of their finest cities, famous for
+the manufacturing of the delicate cotton tissue to which it gave its
+name--(_muslin_, _mousseline_)--would have lost all importance, had it
+not the honor to be the chief town of a Turkish district and to harbor a
+pasha. And Baghdad, although still the capital of the whole province, is
+scarcely more than the shadow of her former glorious self; and her looms
+no longer supply the markets of the world with wonderful shawls and
+carpets, and gold and silver tissues of marvellous designs.
+
+8. Mesopotamia is a region which must suffer under neglect and
+misgovernment even more than others; for, though richly endowed by
+nature, it is of a peculiar formation, requiring constant care and
+intelligent management to yield all the return of which it is capable.
+That care must chiefly consist in distributing the waters of the two
+great rivers and their affluents over all the land by means of an
+intricate system of canals, regulated by a complete and well-kept set
+of dams and sluices, with other simpler arrangements for the remoter and
+smaller branches. The yearly inundations caused by the Tigris and
+Euphrates, which overflow their banks in spring, are not sufficient;
+only a narrow strip of land on each side is benefited by them. In the
+lowlands towards the Persian Gulf there is another inconvenience: the
+country there being perfectly flat, the waters accumulate and stagnate,
+forming vast pestilential swamps where rich pastures and wheat-fields
+should be--and have been in ancient times. In short, if left to itself,
+Upper Mesopotamia, (ancient Assyria), is unproductive from the
+barrenness of its soil, and Lower Mesopotamia, (ancient Chaldea and
+Babylonia), runs to waste, notwithstanding its extraordinary fertility,
+from want of drainage.
+
+9. Such is actually the condition of the once populous and flourishing
+valley, owing to the principles on which the Turkish rulers carry on
+their government. They look on their remoter provinces as mere sources
+of revenue for the state and its officials. But even admitting this as
+their avowed and chief object, they pursue it in an altogether
+wrong-headed and short-sighted way. The people are simply and openly
+plundered, and no portion of what is taken from them is applied to any
+uses of local public utility, as roads, irrigation, encouragement of
+commerce and industry and the like; what is not sent home to the Sultan
+goes into the private pouches of the pasha and his many subaltern
+officials. This is like taking the milk and omitting to feed the cow.
+The consequence is, the people lose their interest in work of any kind,
+leave off striving for an increase of property which they will not be
+permitted to enjoy, and resign themselves to utter destitution with a
+stolid apathy most painful to witness. The land has been brought to such
+a degree of impoverishment that it is actually no longer capable of
+producing crops sufficient for a settled population. It is cultivated
+only in patches along the rivers, where the soil is rendered so fertile
+by the yearly inundations as to yield moderate returns almost unasked,
+and that mostly by wandering tribes of Arabs or of Kurds from the
+mountains to the north, who raise their tents and leave the spot the
+moment they have gathered in their little harvest--if it has not been
+appropriated first by some of the pasha's tax-collectors or by roving
+parties of Bedouins--robber-tribes from the adjoining Syrian and Arabian
+deserts, who, mounted on their own matchless horses, are carried across
+the open border with as much facility as the drifts of desert sand so
+much dreaded by travellers. The rest of the country is left to nature's
+own devices and, wherever it is not cut up by mountains or rocky ranges,
+offers the well-known twofold character of steppe-land: luxuriant grassy
+vegetation during one-third of the year and a parched, arid waste the
+rest of the time, except during the winter rains and spring floods.
+
+10. A wild and desolate scene! Imposing too in its sorrowful grandeur,
+and well suited to a land which may be called a graveyard of empires and
+nations. The monotony of the landscape would be unbroken, but for
+certain elevations and hillocks of strange and varied shapes, which
+spring up, as it were, from the plain in every direction; some are high
+and conical or pyramidal in form, others are quite extensive and rather
+flat on the summit, others again long and low, and all curiously
+unconnected with each other or any ridge of hills or mountains. This is
+doubly striking in Lower Mesopotamia or Babylonia, proverbial for its
+excessive flatness. The few permanent villages, composed of mud-huts or
+plaited reed-cabins, are generally built on these eminences, others are
+used as burying-grounds, and a mosque, the Mohammedan house of prayer,
+sometimes rises on one or the other. They are pleasing objects in the
+beautiful spring season, when corn-fields wave on their summits, and
+their slopes, as well as all the surrounding plains, are clothed with
+the densest and greenest of herbage, enlivened with countless flowers of
+every hue, till the surface of the earth looks, from a distance or from
+a height, as gorgeous as the richest Persian carpet. But, on approaching
+nearer to these hillocks or mounds, an unprepared traveller would be
+struck by some peculiar features. Their substance being rather soft and
+yielding, and the winter rains pouring down with exceeding violence,
+their sides are furrowed in many places with ravines, dug by the rushing
+streams of rain-water. These streams of course wash down much of the
+substance itself and carry it far into the plain, where it lies
+scattered on the surface quite distinct from the soil. These washings
+are found to consist not of earth or sand, but of rubbish, something
+like that which lies in heaps wherever a house is being built or
+demolished, and to contain innumerable fragments of bricks, pottery,
+stone evidently worked by the hand and chisel; many of these fragments
+moreover bearing inscriptions in complicated characters composed of one
+curious figure shaped like the head of an arrow, and used in every
+possible position and combination,--like this:
+
+[Illustration: 1.--CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS.]
+
+11. In the crevices or ravines themselves, the waters having cleared
+away masses of this loose rubbish, have laid bare whole sides of walls
+of solid brick-work, sometimes even a piece of a human head or limb, or
+a corner of sculptured stone-slab, always of colossal size and bold,
+striking execution. All this tells its own tale and the conclusion is
+self-apparent: that these elevations are not natural hillocks or knolls,
+but artificial mounds, heaps of earth and building materials which have
+been at some time placed there by men, then, collapsing and crumbling to
+rubbish from neglect, have concealed within their ample sides all that
+remains of those ancient structures and works of art, clothed themselves
+in verdure, and deceitfully assumed all the outward signs of natural
+hills.
+
+12. The Arabs never thought of exploring these curious heaps. Mohammedan
+nations, as a rule, take little interest in relics of antiquity;
+moreover they are very superstitious, and, as their religious law
+strictly forbids them to represent the human form either in painting or
+sculpture lest such reproduction might lead ignorant and misguided
+people back to the abominations of idolatry, so they look on relics of
+ancient statuary with suspicion amounting to fear and connect them with
+magic and witchcraft. It is, therefore, with awe not devoid of horror
+that they tell travellers that the mounds contain underground passages
+which are haunted not only by wild beasts, but by evil spirits--for have
+not sometimes strange figures carved in stone been dimly perceived in
+the crevices? Better instructed foreigners have long ago assumed that
+within these mounds must be entombed whatever ruins may be preserved of
+the great cities of yore. Their number formed no objection, for it was
+well known how populous the valley had been in the days of its splendor,
+and that, besides several famous cities, it could boast no end of
+smaller ones, often separated from each other by a distance of only a
+few miles. The long low mounds were rightly supposed to represent the
+ancient walls, and the higher and vaster ones to have been the site of
+the palaces and temples. The Arabs, though utterly ignorant of history
+of any kind, have preserved in their religion some traditions from the
+Bible, and so it happens that out of these wrecks of ages some biblical
+names still survive. Almost everything of which they do not know the
+origin, they ascribe to Nimrod; and the smaller of the two mounds
+opposite Mosul, which mark the spot where Nineveh itself once stood,
+they call "Jonah's Mound," and stoutly believe the mosque which crowns
+it, surrounded by a comparatively prosperous village, to contain the
+tomb of Jonah himself, the prophet who was sent to rebuke and warn the
+wicked city. As the Mohammedans honor the Hebrew prophets, the whole
+mound is sacred in their eyes in consequence.
+
+13. If travellers had for some time been aware of these general facts
+concerning the Mounds, it was many years before their curiosity and
+interest were so far aroused as to make them go to the trouble and
+expense of digging into them, in order to find out what they really
+contained. Until within the last hundred years or so, not only the
+general public, but even highly cultivated men and distinguished
+scholars, under the words "study of antiquity," understood no more than
+the study of so-called "_Classical_ Antiquity," i.e., of the language,
+history and literature of the Greeks and Romans, together with the
+ruins, works of art, and remains of all sorts left by these two nations.
+Their knowledge of other empires and people they took from the Greek and
+Roman historians and writers, without doubting or questioning their
+statements, or--as we say now--without subjecting their statements to
+any criticism. Moreover, European students in their absorption in and
+devotion to classical studies, were too apt to follow the example of
+their favorite authors and to class the entire rest of the world, as far
+as it was known in ancient times, under the sweeping and somewhat
+contemptuous by-name of "Barbarians," thus allowing them but a secondary
+importance and an inferior claim to attention.
+
+14. Things began greatly to change towards the end of the last century.
+Yet the mounds of Assyria and Babylonia were still suffered to keep
+their secret unrevealed. This want of interest may be in part explained
+by their peculiar nature. They are so different from other ruins. A row
+of massive pillars or of stately columns cut out on the clear blue sky,
+with the desert around or the sea at their feet,--a broken arch or
+battered tombstone clothed with ivy and hanging creepers, with the blue
+and purple mountains for a background, are striking objects which first
+take the eye by their beauty, then invite inspection by the easy
+approach they offer. But these huge, shapeless heaps! What labor to
+remove even a small portion of them! And when that is done, who knows
+whether their contents will at all repay the effort and expense?
+
+15. The first European whose love of learning was strong enough to make
+him disregard all such doubts and difficulties, was Mr. Rich, an
+Englishman. He was not particularly successful, nor were his researches
+very extensive, being carried on entirely with his private means; yet
+his name will always be honorably remembered, for he was _the first_ who
+went to work with pickaxe and shovel, who hired men to dig, who measured
+and described some of the principal mounds on the Euphrates, thus laying
+down the groundwork of all later and more fruitful explorations in that
+region. It was in 1820 and Mr. Rich was then political resident or
+representative of the East India Company at Baghdad. He also tried the
+larger of the two mounds opposite Mosul, encouraged by the report that,
+a short time before he arrived there, a sculpture representing men and
+animals had been disclosed to view. Unfortunately he could not procure
+even a fragment of this treasure, for the people of Mosul, influenced by
+their _ulema_--(doctor of the law)--who had declared these sculptures to
+be "idols of the infidels," had walked across the river from the city in
+a body and piously shattered them to atoms. Mr. Rich had not the good
+luck to come across any such find himself, and after some further
+efforts, left the place rather disheartened. He carried home to England
+the few relics he had been able to obtain. In the absence of more
+important ones, they were very interesting, consisting in fragments of
+inscriptions, of pottery, in engraved stone, bricks and pieces of
+bricks. After his death all these articles were placed in the British
+Museum, where they formed the foundation of the present noble
+Chaldea-Assyrian collection of that great institution. Nothing more was
+undertaken for years, so that it could be said with literal truth that,
+up to 1842, "a case three feet square inclosed all that remained, not
+only of the great city Nineveh, but of Babylon itself!"[A]
+
+16. The next in the field was Mr. Botta, appointed French Consul at
+Mosul in 1842. He began to dig at the end of the same year, and
+naturally attached himself specially to the larger of the two mounds
+opposite Mosul, named KOYUNJIK, after a small village at its base. This
+mound is the Mespila of Xenophon. He began enthusiastically, and worked
+on for over three months, but repeated disappointments were beginning to
+produce discouragement, when one day a peasant from a distant village
+happened to be looking on at the small party of workmen. He was much
+amused on observing that every--to him utterly worthless--fragment of
+alabaster, brick or pottery, was carefully picked out of the rubbish,
+most tenderly handled and laid aside, and laughingly remarked that they
+might be better repaid for their trouble, if they would try the mound on
+which his village was built, for that lots of such rubbish had kept
+continually turning up, when they were digging the foundations of their
+houses.
+
+17. Mr. Botta had by this time fallen into a rather hopeless mood; yet
+he did not dare to neglect the hint, and sent a few men to the mound
+which had been pointed out to him, and which, as well as the village on
+the top of it, bore the name of KHORSABAD. His agent began operations
+from the top. A well was sunk into the mound, and very soon brought the
+workmen to the top of a wall, which, on further digging, was found to be
+lined along its base with sculptured slabs of some soft substance much
+like gypsum or limestone. This discovery quickly brought Mr. Botta to
+the spot, in a fever of excitement. He now took the direction of the
+works himself, had a trench dug from the outside straight into the
+mound, wide and deep, towards the place already laid open from above.
+What was his astonishment on finding that he had entered a hall entirely
+lined all round, except where interruptions indicated the place of
+doorways leading into other rooms, with sculptured slabs similar to the
+one first discovered, and representing scenes of battles, sieges and the
+like. He walked as in a dream. It was a new and wonderful world suddenly
+opened. For these sculptures evidently recorded the deeds of the
+builder, some powerful conqueror and king. And those long and close
+lines engraved in the stone, all along the slabs, in the same peculiar
+character as the short inscriptions on the bricks that lay scattered on
+the plain--they must surely contain the text to these sculptured
+illustrations. But who is to read them? They are not like any known
+writing in the world and may remain a sealed book forever. Who, then,
+was the builder? To what age belong these structures? Which of the wars
+we read about are here portrayed? None of these questions, which must
+have strangely agitated him, could Mr. Botta have answered at the time.
+But not the less to him remains the glory of having, first of living
+men, entered the palace of an Assyrian king.
+
+18. Mr. Botta henceforth devoted himself exclusively to the mound of
+Khorsabad. His discovery created an immense sensation in Europe.
+Scholarly indifference was not proof against so unlooked-for a shock;
+the revulsion was complete and the spirit of research and enterprise was
+effectually aroused, not to slumber again. The French consul was
+supplied by his government with ample means to carry on excavations on a
+large scale. If the first success may be considered as merely a great
+piece of good fortune, the following ones were certainly due to
+intelligent, untiring labor and ingenuous scholarship. We see the
+results in Botta's voluminous work "Monuments de Ninive"[B] and in the
+fine Assyrian collection of the Louvre, in the first room of which is
+placed, as is but just, the portrait of the man to whose efforts and
+devotion it is due.
+
+19. The great English investigator Layard, then a young and enthusiastic
+scholar on his Eastern travels, passing through Mosul in 1842, found Mr.
+Botta engaged on his first and unpromising attempts at Koyunjik, and
+subsequently wrote to him from Constantinople exhorting him to persist
+and not give up his hopes of success. He was one of the first to hear of
+the astounding news from Khorsabad, and immediately determined to carry
+out a long-cherished project of his own, that of exploring a large mound
+known among the Arabs under the name of NIMRUD, and situated somewhat
+lower on the Tigris, near that river's junction with one of its chief
+tributaries, the Zab. The difficulty lay in procuring the necessary
+funds. Neither the trustees of the British Museum nor the English
+Government were at first willing to incur such considerable expense on
+what was still looked upon as very uncertain chances. It was a private
+gentleman, Sir Stratford Canning, then English minister at
+Constantinople, who generously came forward, and announced himself
+willing to meet the outlay within certain limits, while authorities at
+home were to be solicited and worked upon. So Mr. Layard was enabled to
+begin operations on the mound which he had specially selected for
+himself in the autumn of 1845, the year after that in which the building
+of Khorsabad was finally laid open by Botta. The results of his
+expedition were so startlingly vast and important, and the particulars
+of his work on the Assyrian plains are so interesting and picturesque,
+that they will furnish ample materials for a separate chapter.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] Layard's "Discoveries at Nineveh," Introduction.
+
+[B] In five huge folio volumes, one of text, two of inscriptions, and
+two of illustrations. The title shows that Botta erroneously imagined
+the ruins he had discovered to be those of Nineveh itself.
+
+
+
+
+                               II.
+
+                      LAYARD AND HIS WORK.
+
+
+1. In the first part of November, 1845, we find the enthusiastic and
+enterprising young scholar on the scene of his future exertions and
+triumphs. His first night in the wilderness, in a ruinous Arab village
+amidst the smaller mounds of Nimrud, is vividly described by him:--"I
+slept little during the night. The hovel in which we had taken shelter,
+and its inmates, did not invite slumber; but such scenes and companions
+were not new to me; they could have been forgotten, had my brain been
+less excited. Hopes, long-cherished, were now to be realized, or were to
+end in disappointment. Visions of palaces underground, of gigantic
+monsters, of sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions floated before
+me. After forming plan after plan for removing the earth, and
+extricating these treasures, I fancied myself wandering in a maze of
+chambers from which I could find no outlet. Then again, all was
+reburied, and I was standing on the grass-covered mound."
+
+2. Although not doomed to disappointment in the end, these hopes were
+yet to be thwarted in many ways before the visions of that night became
+reality. For many and various were the difficulties which Layard had to
+contend with during the following months as well as during his second
+expedition in 1848. The material hardships of perpetual camping out in
+an uncongenial climate, without any of the simplest conveniences of
+life, and the fevers and sickness repeatedly brought on by exposure to
+winter rains and summer heat, should perhaps be counted among the least
+of them, for they had their compensations. Not so the ignorant and
+ill-natured opposition, open or covert, of the Turkish authorities. That
+was an evil to which no amount of philosophy could ever fully reconcile
+him. His experiences in that line form an amusing collection. Luckily,
+the first was also the worst. The pasha whom he found installed at Mosul
+was, in appearance and temper, more like an ogre than a man. He was the
+terror of the country. His cruelty and rapacity knew no bounds. When he
+sent his tax-collectors on their dreaded round, he used to dismiss them
+with this short and pithy instruction: "Go, destroy, eat!" (i.e.
+"plunder"), and for his own profit had revived several kinds of
+contributions which had been suffered to fall into disuse, especially
+one called "tooth-money,"--"a compensation in money, levied upon all
+villages in which a man of such rank is entertained, for the wear and
+tear of his teeth in masticating the food he condescends to receive from
+the inhabitants."
+
+3. The letters with which Layard was provided secured him a gracious
+reception from this amiable personage, who allowed him to begin
+operations on the great mound of Nimrud with the party of Arab workmen
+whom he had hired for the purpose. Some time after, it came to the
+Pasha's knowledge that a few fragments of gold leaf had been found in
+the rubbish and he even procured a small particle as sample. He
+immediately concluded, as the Arab chief had done, that the English
+traveller was digging for hidden treasure--an object far more
+intelligible to them than that of disinterring and carrying home a
+quantity of old broken stones. This incident, by arousing the great
+man's rapacity, might have caused him to put a stop to all further
+search, had not Layard, who well knew that treasure of this kind was not
+likely to be plentiful in the ruins, immediately proposed that his
+Excellency should keep an agent at the mound, to take charge of all the
+precious metals which might be discovered there in the course of the
+excavations. The Pasha raised no objections at the moment, but a few
+days later announced to Layard that, to his great regret, he felt it his
+duty to forbid the continuation of the work, since he had just learned
+that the diggers were disturbing a Mussulman burying-ground. As the
+tombs of true believers are held very sacred and inviolable by
+Mohammedans, this would have been a fatal obstacle, had not one of the
+Pasha's own officers confidentially disclosed to Layard that the tombs
+were _sham ones_, that he and his men had been secretly employed to
+fabricate them, and for two nights had been bringing stones for the
+purpose from the surrounding villages. "We have destroyed more tombs of
+true believers," said the Aga,--(officer)--"in making sham ones, than
+ever you could have defiled. We have killed our horses and ourselves in
+carrying those accursed stones." Fortunately the Pasha, whose misdeeds
+could not be tolerated even by a Turkish government, was recalled about
+Christmas, and succeeded by an official of an entirely different stamp,
+a man whose reputation for justice and mildness had preceded him, and
+whose arrival was accordingly greeted with public rejoicings. Operations
+at the mound now proceeded for some time rapidly and successfully. But
+this very success at one time raised new difficulties for our explorers.
+
+4. One day, as Layard was returning to the mound from an excursion, he
+was met on the way by two Arabs who had ridden out to meet him at full
+speed, and from a distance shouted to him in the wildest excitement:
+"Hasten, O Bey! hasten to the diggers! for they have found Nimrod
+himself. It is wonderful, but it is true! we have seen him with our
+eyes. There is no God but God!" Greatly puzzled, he hurried on and,
+descending into the trench, found that the workmen had uncovered a
+gigantic head, the body to which was still imbedded in earth and
+rubbish. This head, beautifully sculptured in the alabaster furnished by
+the neighboring hills, surpassed in height the tallest man present. The
+great shapely features, in their majestic repose, seemed to guard some
+mighty secret and to defy the bustling curiosity of those who gazed on
+them in wonder and fear. "One of the workmen, on catching the first
+glimpse of the monster, had thrown down his basket and run off toward
+Mossul as fast as his legs could carry him."
+
+[Illustration: 2.--TEMPLE OF ÊA AT ERIDHU (ABU-SHAHREIN). BACK-STAIRS.
+(Hommel.)]
+
+5. The Arabs came in crowds from the surrounding encampments; they could
+scarcely be persuaded that the image was of stone, and contended that it
+was not the work of men's hands, but of infidel giants of olden times.
+The commotion soon spread to Mosul, where the terrified workman,
+"entering breathless into the bazars, announced to every one he met
+that Nimrod had appeared." The authorities of the town were alarmed, put
+their heads together and decided that such idolatrous proceedings were
+an outrage to religion. The consequence was that Layard was requested by
+his friend Ismail-Pasha to suspend operations for awhile, until the
+excitement should have subsided, a request with which he thought it
+wisest to comply without remonstrance, lest the people of Mosul might
+come out in force and deal with his precious find as they had done with
+the sculptured figure at Koyunjik in Rich's time. The alarm, however,
+did not last long. Both Arabs and Turks soon became familiar with the
+strange creations which kept emerging out of the earth, and learned to
+discuss them with great calm and gravity. The colossal bulls and lions
+with wings and human heads, of which several pairs were discovered, some
+of them in a state of perfect preservation, were especially the objects
+of wonder and conjectures, which generally ended in a curse "on all
+infidels and their works," the conclusion arrived at being that "the
+idols" were to be sent to England, to form gateways to the palace of the
+Queen. And when some of these giants, now in the British Museum, were
+actually removed, with infinite pains and labor, to be dragged down to
+the Tigris, and floated down the river on rafts, there was no end to the
+astonishment of Layard's simple friends. On one such occasion an Arab
+Sheikh, or chieftain, whose tribe had engaged to assist in moving one of
+the winged bulls, opened his heart to him. "In the name of the Most
+High," said he, "tell me, O Bey, what you are going to do with these
+stones. So many thousands of purses spent on such things! Can it be, as
+you say, that your people learn wisdom from them? or is it as his
+reverence the Cadi declares, that they are to go to the palace of your
+Queen, who, with the rest of the unbelievers, worships these idols? As
+for wisdom, these figures will not teach you to make any better knives,
+or scissors, or chintzes, and it is in the making of these things that
+the English show their wisdom."
+
+6. Such was the view very generally taken of Layard's work by both Turks
+and Arabs, from the Pasha down to the humblest digger in his band of
+laborers, and he seldom felt called upon to play the missionary of
+science, knowing as he did that all such efforts would be but wasted
+breath. This want of intellectual sympathy did not prevent the best
+understanding from existing between himself and these rangers of the
+desert. The primitive life which he led amongst them for so many months,
+the kindly hospitality which he invariably experienced at their hands
+during the excursions made and the visits he paid to different Bedouin
+tribes in the intervals of recreation which he was compelled to allow
+himself from time to time--these are among the most pleasurable memories
+of those wonderful, dreamlike years. He lingers on them lovingly and
+retraces them through many a page of both his books[C]--pages which, for
+their picturesque vividness, must be perused with delight even by such
+as are but slightly interested in the discovery of buried palaces and
+winged bulls. One longs to have been with him through some of those
+peerless evenings when, after a long day's work, he sat before his cabin
+in the cool starlight, watching the dances with which those
+indefatigable Arabs, men and women, solaced themselves deep into the
+night, while the encampment was lively with the hum of voices, and the
+fires lit to prepare the simple meal. One longs to have shared in some
+of those brisk rides across plains so thickly enamelled with flowers,
+that it seemed a patchwork of many colors, and "the dogs, as they
+returned from hunting, issued from the long grass dyed red, yellow, or
+blue, according to the flowers through which they had last forced their
+way,"--the joy of the Arab's soul, which made the chief, Layard's
+friend, continually exclaim, "rioting in the luxuriant herbage and
+scented air, as his mare waded through the flowers:--'What delight has
+God given us equal to this? It is the only thing worth living for. What
+do the dwellers in cities know of true happiness? They never have seen
+grass or flowers! May God have pity on them!'" How glorious to watch the
+face of the desert changing its colors almost from day to day, white
+succeeding to pale straw color, red to white, blue to red, lilac to
+blue, and bright gold to that, according to the flowers with which it
+decked itself! Out of sight stretches the gorgeous carpet, dotted with
+the black camel's-hair tents of the Arabs, enlivened with flocks of
+sheep and camels, and whole studs of horses of noble breed which are
+brought out from Mosul and left to graze at liberty, in the days of
+healthy breezes and fragrant pastures.
+
+7. So much for spring. A beautiful, a perfect season, but unfortunately
+as brief as it is lovely, and too soon succeeded by the terrible heat
+and long drought of summer, which sometimes set in so suddenly as hardly
+to give the few villagers time to gather in their crops. Chaldea or
+Lower Mesopotamia is in this respect even worse off than the higher
+plains of Assyria. A temperature of 120° in the shade is no unusual
+occurrence in Baghdad; true, it can be reduced to 100° in the cellars of
+the houses by carefully excluding the faintest ray of light, and it is
+there that the inhabitants mostly spend their days in summer. The
+oppression is such that Europeans are entirely unmanned and unfitted for
+any kind of activity. "Camels sicken, and birds are so distressed by the
+high temperature, that they sit in the date-trees about Baghdad, with
+their mouths open, panting for fresh air."[D]
+
+8. But the most frightful feature of a Mesopotamian summer is the
+frequent and violent sand-storms, during which travellers, in addition
+to all the dangers offered by snow-storms--being buried alive and losing
+their way--are exposed to that of suffocation not only from the
+furnace-like heat of the desert-wind, but from the impalpable sand,
+which is whirled and driven before it, and fills the eyes, mouth and
+nostrils of horse and rider. The three miles' ride from Layard's
+encampment to the mound of Nimrud must have been something more than
+pleasant morning exercise in such a season, and though the deep trenches
+and wells afforded a comparatively cool and delightful retreat, he soon
+found that fever was the price to be paid for the indulgence, and was
+repeatedly laid up with it. "The verdure of the plain," he says in one
+place, "had perished almost in a day. Hot winds, coming from the desert,
+had burnt up and carried away the shrubs; flights of locusts, darkening
+the air, had destroyed the few patches of cultivation, and had completed
+the havoc commenced by the heat of the sun.... Violent whirlwinds
+occasionally swept over the face of the country. They could be seen as
+they advanced from the desert, carrying along with them clouds of dust
+and sand. Almost utter darkness prevailed during their passage, which
+lasted generally about an hour, and nothing could resist their fury. On
+returning home one afternoon after a tempest of the kind, I found no
+traces of my dwellings; they had been completely carried away. Ponderous
+wooden frame-works had been borne over the bank and hurled some hundred
+yards distant; the tents had disappeared, and my furniture was scattered
+over the plain."
+
+9. Fortunately it would not require much labor to restore the wooden
+frames to their proper place and reconstruct the reed-plaited,
+mud-plastered walls as well as the roof composed of reeds and
+boughs--such being the sumptuous residences of which Layard shared the
+largest with various domestic animals, from whose immediate
+companionship he was saved by a thin partition, the other hovels being
+devoted to the wives, children and poultry of his host, to his own
+servants and different household uses. But the time came when not even
+this accommodation, poor as it was, could be enjoyed with any degree of
+comfort. When the summer heat set in in earnest, the huts became
+uninhabitable from their closeness and the vermin with which they
+swarmed, while a canvas tent, though far preferable in the way of
+airiness and cleanliness, did not afford sufficient shelter.
+
+10. "In this dilemma," says Layard, "I ordered a recess to be cut into
+the bank of the river where it rose perpendicularly from the water's
+edge. By screening the front with reeds and boughs of trees, and
+covering the whole with similar materials, a small room was formed. I
+was much troubled, however, with scorpions and other reptiles, which
+issued from the earth forming the walls of my apartment; and later in
+the summer by the gnats and sandflies which hovered on a calm night over
+the river." It is difficult to decide between the respective merits of
+this novel summer retreat and of the winter dwelling, ambitiously
+constructed of mud bricks dried in the sun, and roofed with solid wooden
+beams. This imposing residence, in which Layard spent the last months of
+his first winter in Assyria, would have been sufficient protection
+against wind and weather, after it had been duly coated with mud.
+Unfortunately a heavy shower fell before it was quite completed, and so
+saturated the bricks that they did not dry again before the following
+spring. "The consequence was," he pleasantly remarks, "that the only
+verdure on which my eyes were permitted to feast before my return to
+Europe, was furnished by my own property--the walls in the interior of
+the rooms being continually clothed with a crop of grass."
+
+[Illustration: 3.--VIEW OF EUPHRATES NEAR THE RUINS OF BABYLON.
+(Babelon.)]
+
+11. These few indications are sufficient to give a tolerably clear idea
+of what might be called "Pleasures and hardships of an explorer's life
+in the desert." As for the work itself, it is simple enough in the
+telling, although it must have been extremely wearisome and laborious in
+the performance. The simplest way to get at the contents of a mound,
+would be to remove all the earth and rubbish by carting it away,--a
+piece of work which our searchers might no doubt have accomplished with
+great facility, had they had at their disposal a few scores of thousands
+of slaves and captives, as had the ancient kings who built the huge
+constructions the ruins of which had now to be disinterred. With a
+hundred or two of hired workmen and very limited funds, the case was
+slightly different. The task really amounted to this: to achieve the
+greatest possible results at the least possible expense of labor and
+time, and this is how such excavations are carried out on a plan
+uniformly followed everywhere as the most practical and direct:
+
+12. Trenches, more or less wide, are conducted from different sides
+towards the centre of the mound. This is obviously the surest and
+shortest way to arrive at whatever remains of walls may be imbedded in
+it. But even this preliminary operation has to be carried out with some
+judgment and discernment. It is known that the Chaldeans and Assyrians
+constructed their palaces and temples not upon the level, natural soil,
+but upon an artificial platform of brick and earth, at least thirty feet
+high. This platform was faced on all sides with a strong wall of solid
+burned brick, often moreover cased with stone. A trench dug straight
+from the plain into the lower part of the mound would consequently be
+wasted labor, since it could never bring to anything but that same blind
+wall, behind which there is only the solid mass of the platform. Digging
+therefore begins in the slope of the mound, at a height corresponding to
+the supposed height of the platform, and is carried on straight across
+its surface until a wall is reached,--a wall belonging to one of the
+palaces or temples. This wall has then to be followed, till a break in
+it is found, indicating an entrance or doorway.[E] The burrowing process
+becomes more and more complicated, and sometimes dangerous. Shafts have
+to be sunk from above at frequent intervals to introduce air and light
+into the long and narrow corridor; the sides and vault have to be
+propped by beams to prevent the soft earthy mass from falling in and
+crushing the diggers. Every shovelful of earth cleared away is removed
+in baskets which are passed from hand to hand till they are emptied
+outside the trench, or else lowered empty and sent up full, through the
+shafts by means of ropes and pulleys, to be emptied on the top. When a
+doorway is reached, it is cleared all through the thickness of the
+wall, which is very great; then a similar tunnel is conducted all along
+the inside of the wall, the greatest care being needed not to damage the
+sculptures which generally line it, and which, as it is, are more or
+less injured and cracked, their upper parts sometimes entirely destroyed
+by the action of fire. When the tunnel has been carried along the four
+sides, every doorway or portal carefully noted and cleared, it is seen
+from the measurements,--especially the width--whether the space explored
+be an inner court, a hall or a chamber. If the latter, it is sometimes
+entirely cleared from above, when the rubbish frequently yields valuable
+finds in the shape of various small articles. One such chamber,
+uncovered by Layard, at Koyunjik, proved a perfect mine of treasures.
+The most curious relics were brought to light in it: quantities of studs
+and small rosettes in mother-of-pearl, ivory and metal, (such as were
+used to ornament the harness of the war-horses), bowls, cups and dishes
+of bronze,[F] besides caldrons, shields and other items of armor, even
+glass bowls, lastly fragments of a royal throne--possibly the very
+throne on which King Sennacherib sat to give audience or pronounce
+judgments, for the palace at Koyunjik where these objects were found was
+built by that monarch so long familiar to us only from the Bible, and
+the sculptures and inscriptions which cover its walls are the annals of
+his conquests abroad and his rule at home.
+
+[Illustration: 4.--MOUND OF BABIL. (RUINS OF BABYLON.) (Oppert.)]
+
+A description of the removal of the colossal bulls and lions which were
+shipped to England and now are safely housed in the British Museum,
+ought by rights to form the close of a chapter devoted to "Layard and
+his work." But the reference must suffice; the vivid and entertaining
+narrative should be read in the original, as the passages are too long
+for transcription, and would be marred by quoting.
+
+[Illustration 5.--BRONZE DISH.]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] "Nineveh and its Remains," and "Discoveries in Nineveh and Babylon."
+
+[D] Rawlinson's "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World," Vol. I.,
+Chap. II.
+
+[E] See Figure 15, on p. 53.
+
+[F] See Figures 5, 6, and 7.
+
+
+
+
+                               III.
+
+                            THE RUINS.
+
+     "And they said to one another, Go to, let us make brick, and
+     burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and slime
+     for mortar."--_Gen._ xi. 3.
+
+
+1. It is a principle, long ago laid down and universally recognized,
+that every country _makes_ its own people. That is, the mode of life and
+the intellectual culture of a people are shaped by the characteristic
+features of the land in which it dwells; or, in other words, men can
+live only in a manner suited to the peculiarities of their native
+country. Men settled along the sea-shore will lead a different life,
+will develop different qualities of mind and body from the owners of
+vast inland pasture-grounds or the holders of rugged mountain
+fastnesses. They will all dress differently, eat different food, follow
+different pursuits. Their very dwellings and public buildings will
+present an entirely different aspect, according to the material which
+they will have at hand in the greatest abundance, be it stone, wood or
+any other substance suitable for the purpose. Thus every country will
+create its own peculiar style of art, determined chiefly by its own
+natural productions. On these, architecture, the art of the builder,
+will be even more dependent than any other.
+
+[Illustration: 6.--BRONZE DISH (RUG-PATTERN).]
+
+2. It would seem as though Chaldea or Lower Mesopotamia, regarded from
+this point of view, could never have originated any architecture at all,
+for it is, at first sight, absolutely deficient in building materials of
+any sort. The whole land is alluvial, that is, formed, gradually,
+through thousands of years, of the rich mud deposited by the two
+rivers, as they spread into vast marshy flats towards the end of their
+course. Such soil, when hardened into sufficient consistency, is the
+finest of all for cultivation, and a greater source of wealth than mines
+of the most precious ore; but it bears no trees and contains no stone.
+The people who were first tempted to settle in the lowlands towards the
+Persian Gulf by the extraordinary fertility of that region, found
+nothing at all available to construct their simple dwellings--nothing
+but reeds of enormous size, which grew there, as they do now, in the
+greatest profusion. These reeds "cover the marshes in the summer-time,
+rising often to the height of fourteen or fifteen feet. The Arabs of the
+marsh region form their houses of this material, binding the stems
+together and bending them into arches, to make the skeletons of their
+buildings; while, to form the walls, they stretch across from arch to
+arch mats made of the leaves."[G]
+
+[Illustration: 7.--SECTION OF BRONZE DISH.]
+
+3. There can be no doubt that of such habitations consisted the villages
+and towns of those first settlers. They gave quite sufficient shelter in
+the very mild winters of that region, and, when coated with a layer of
+mud which soon dried and hardened in the sun, could exclude even the
+violent rains of that season. But they were in no way fitted for more
+ambitious and dignified purposes. Neither the palaces of the kings nor
+the temples of the gods could be constructed out of bent reeds.
+Something more durable must be found, some material that would lend
+itself to constructions of any size or shape. The mud coating of the
+cabins naturally suggested such a material. Could not this same mud or
+clay, of which an inexhaustible supply was always on hand, be moulded
+into cakes of even size, and after being left to dry in the sun, be
+piled into walls of the required height and thickness? And so men began
+to make bricks. It was found that the clay gained much in consistency
+when mixed with finely chopped straw--another article of which the
+country, abounding in wheat and other grains, yielded unlimited
+quantities. But even with this improvement the sun-dried bricks could
+not withstand the continued action of many rainy seasons, or many
+torrid summers, but had a tendency to crumble away when parched too dry,
+or to soak and dissolve back into mud, when too long exposed to rain.
+All these defects were removed by the simple expedient of baking the
+bricks in kilns or ovens, a process which gives them the hardness and
+solidity of stone. But as the cost of kiln-dried bricks is naturally
+very much greater than that of the original crude article, so the latter
+continued to be used in far greater quantities; the walls were made
+entirely of them and only protected by an outward casing of the hard
+baked bricks. These being so much more expensive, and calculated to last
+forever, great care was bestowed on their preparation; the best clay was
+selected and they were stamped with the names and titles of the king by
+whose order the palace or temple was built, for which they were to be
+used. This has been of great service in identifying the various ruins
+and assigning them dates, at least approximately. As is to be expected,
+there is a notable difference in the specimens of different periods.
+While on some bricks bearing the name of a king who lived about 3000
+B.C. the inscription is uncouth and scarcely legible, and even their
+shape is rude and the material very inferior, those of the later
+Babylonian period (600 B.C.) are handsome and neatly made. As to the
+quality, all explorers agree in saying it is fully equal to that of the
+best modern English bricks. The excellence of these bricks for building
+purposes is a fact so well known that for now two thousand years--ever
+since the destruction of Babylon--its walls, temples and palaces have
+been used as quarries for the construction of cities and villages. The
+little town of HILLAH, situated nearest to the site of the ancient
+capital, is built almost entirely with bricks from one single mound,
+that of KASR--once the gorgeous and far-famed palace of Nebuchadnezzar,
+whose name and titles thus grace the walls of the most lowly Arab and
+Turkish dwellings. All the other mounds are similarly used, and so far
+is the valuable mine from being exhausted, that it furnishes forth, to
+this day, a brisk and flourishing trade. While a party of workmen is
+continually employed in digging for the available bricks, another is
+busy conveying them to Hillah; there they are shipped on the Euphrates
+and carried to any place where building materials are in demand, often
+even loaded on donkeys at this or that landing-place and sent miles away
+inland; some are taken as far as Baghdad, where they have been used for
+ages. The same thing is done wherever there are mounds and ruins. Both
+Layard and his successors had to allow their Arab workmen to build their
+own temporary houses out of ancient bricks, only watching them narrowly,
+lest they should break some valuable relic in the process or use some of
+the handsomest and best-preserved specimens.
+
+[Illustration: 8.--VIEW OF NEBBI YUNUS]
+
+4. No construction of bricks, either crude or kiln-dried, could have
+sufficient solidity without the help of some kind of cement, to make
+them adhere firmly together. This also the lowlands of Chaldea and
+Babylonia yield in sufficient quantity and of various qualities. While
+in the early structures a kind of sticky red clay or loam is used, mixed
+with chopped straw, bitumen or pitch is substituted at a later period,
+which substance, being applied hot, adheres so firmly to the bricks,
+that pieces of these are broken off when an attempt is made to procure a
+fragment of the cement. This valuable article was brought down by water
+from IS on the Euphrates (now called HIT), where abundant springs of
+bitumen are to this day in activity. Calcareous earth--i.e., earth
+strongly mixed with lime--being very plentiful to the west of the lower
+Euphrates, towards the Arabian frontier, the Babylonians of the latest
+times learned to make of it a white mortar which, for lightness and
+strength, has never been surpassed.
+
+[Illustration: 9.--BUILDING IN BAKED BRICK (MODERN). (Perrot and
+Chipiez.)]
+
+5. All the essential materials for plain but durable constructions being
+thus procurable on the spot or in the immediate neighborhood, the next
+important point was the selection of proper sites for raising these
+constructions, which were to serve purposes of defence as well as of
+worship and royal majesty. A rocky eminence, inaccessible on one or
+several sides, or at least a hill, a knoll somewhat elevated above the
+surrounding plain, have usually been chosen wherever such existed. But
+this was not the case in Chaldea. There, as far as eye can see, not the
+slightest undulation breaks the dead flatness of the land. Yet there,
+more than anywhere else, an elevated position was desirable, if only as
+a protection from the unhealthy exhalations of a vast tract of swamps,
+and from the intolerable nuisance of swarms of aggressive and venomous
+insects, which infest the entire river region during the long summer
+season. Safety from the attacks of the numerous roaming tribes which
+ranged the country in every direction before it was definitely settled
+and organized, was also not among the last considerations. So, what
+nature had refused, the cunning and labor of man had to supply.
+Artificial hills or platforms were constructed, of enormous size and
+great height--from thirty to fifty, even sixty feet, and on their flat
+summits the buildings were raised. These platforms sometimes supported
+only one palace, sometimes, as in the case of the immense mounds of
+Koyunjik and Nimrud in Assyria, their surface had room for several,
+built by successive kings. Of course such huge piles could not be
+entirely executed in solid masonry, even of crude bricks. These were
+generally mixed with earth and rubbish of all kinds, in more or less
+regular, alternate layers, the bricks being laid in clay. But the
+outward facing was in all cases of baked brick. The platform of the
+principal mound which marks the place of ancient UR, (now called
+MUGHEIR),[H] is faced with a wall ten feet thick, of red kiln-dried
+bricks, cemented with bitumen. In Assyria, where stone was not scarce,
+the sides of the platform were even more frequently "protected by
+massive stone-masonry, carried perpendicularly from the natural ground
+to a height somewhat exceeding that of the platform, and either made
+plain at the top, or else crowned into stone battlements cut into
+gradines."[I]
+
+[Illustration: 10.--MOUND OF NIMRUD. (Hommel.)]
+
+6. Some mounds are considerably higher than the others and of a peculiar
+shape, almost like a pyramid, that is, ending in a point from which it
+slopes down rapidly on all sides. Such is the pyramidal mound of Nimrud,
+which Layard describes as being so striking and picturesque an object as
+you approach the ruins from any point of the plain.[J] Such also is the
+still more picturesque mound of BORSIP (now BIRS NIMRUD) near Babylon,
+the largest of this kind.[K] These mounds are the remains of peculiar
+constructions, called ZIGGURATS, composed of several platforms piled one
+on the other, each square in shape and somewhat smaller than the
+preceding one; the topmost platform supported a temple or sanctuary,
+which by these means was raised far above the dwellings of men, a
+constant reminder not less eloquent than the exhortation in some of our
+religious services: "Lift up your hearts!" Of these heavenward pointing
+towers, which were also used as observatories by the Chaldeans, great
+lovers of the starry heavens, that of Borsip, once composed of seven
+stages, is the loftiest; it measures over 150 feet in perpendicular
+height.
+
+[Illustration: 11.--MOUND OF MUGHEIR (ANCIENT UR).]
+
+7. It is evident that these artificial hills could have been erected
+only at an incredible cost of labor. The careful measurements which have
+been taken of several of the principal mounds have enabled explorers to
+make an accurate calculation of the exact amount of labor employed on
+each. The result is startling, even though one is prepared for something
+enormous. The great mound of Koyunjik--which represents the palaces of
+Nineveh itself--covers an area of one hundred acres, and reaches an
+elevation of 95 feet at its highest point. To heap up such a pile of
+brick and earth "would require the united exertions of 10,000 men for
+twelve years, or of 20,000 men for six years."[L] Then only could the
+construction of the palaces begin. The mound of Nebbi-Yunus, which has
+not yet been excavated, covers an area of forty acres and is loftier and
+steeper than its neighbor: "its erection would have given full
+employment to 10,000 men for the space of five years and a half."
+Clearly, none but conquering monarchs, who yearly took thousands of
+prisoners in battles and drove home into captivity a part of the
+population of every country they subdued, could have employed such hosts
+of workmen on their buildings--not once, but continually, for it seems
+to have been a point of honor with the Assyrian kings that each should
+build a new palace for himself.
+
+[Illustration: 12.--TERRACE WALL AT KHORSABAD. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+8. When one considers the character of the land along the upper course
+of the Tigris, where the Assyrians dwelt, one cannot help wondering why
+they went on building mounds and using nothing but bricks in their
+constructions. There is no reason for it in the nature of the country.
+The cities of Assyria--NINEVEH (Koyunjik), KALAH (Nimrud), ARBELA,
+DUR-SHARRUKIN (Khorsabad) were built in the midst of a hilly region
+abounding in many varieties of stone, from soft limestone to hard
+basalt; some of them actually stood on rocky ground, their moats being
+in part cut through the rock. Had they wanted stone of better quality,
+they had only to get it from the Zagros range of mountains, which skirts
+all Assyria to the East, separating it from Media. Yet they never
+availed themselves of these resources, which must have led to great
+improvements in their architecture, and almost entirely reserved the use
+of stone for ornamental purposes. This would tend to show, at all
+events, that the Assyrians were not distinguished for inventive genius.
+They had wandered northward from the lowlands, where they had dwelt for
+centuries as a portion of the Chaldean nation. When they separated from
+it and went off to found cities for themselves, they took with them
+certain arts and tricks of handicraft learned in the old home, and never
+thought of making any change in them. It does not even seem to have
+occurred to them that by selecting a natural rocky elevation for their
+buildings they would avoid the necessity of an artificial platform and
+save vast amount of labor and time.
+
+[Illustration: 13.--RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS. (ANCIENT.) (Kaulen.)]
+
+[Illustration: 14.--RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS. (MODERN.) (Kaulen.)]
+
+9. That they did put stone to one practical use--the outward casing of
+their walls and platforms--we have already seen. The blocks must have
+been cut in the Zagros mountains and brought by water--rafted down the
+Zab, or some other of the rivers which, springing from those mountains,
+flow into the Tigris. The process is represented with perfect clearness
+on some of the sculptures. That reproduced in Fig. 13 is of great
+interest, as showing a peculiar mode of transport,--rafts floated on
+inflated skins--which is at the present moment in as general and
+constant use as it appears to have been in the same parts three thousand
+years ago and probably more. When Layard wished to send off the bulls
+and lions which he had moved from Nimrud and Koyunjik down the Tigris to
+Baghdad and Busrah, (or Bassorah), there to be embarked for Europe, he
+had recourse to this conveyance, as no other is known for similar
+purposes. This is how he describes the primitive, but ingenious
+contrivance: "The skins of full-grown sheep and goats, taken off with as
+few incisions as possible, are dried and prepared, one aperture being
+left, through which the air is forced by the lungs. A framework of
+poplar beams, branches of trees, and reeds, having been constructed of
+the size of the intended raft, the inflated skins are tied to it by
+osier twigs. The raft is then complete and is moved to the water and
+launched. Care is taken to place the skins with their mouths upward,
+that, in case any should burst or require refilling, they can be easily
+reached. Upon the framework are piled bales of goods, and property
+belonging to merchants and travellers.... The raftmen impel these rude
+vessels by long poles, to the ends of which are fastened a few pieces of
+split cane. (See Fig. 14.) ... During the floods in spring, or after
+heavy rains, small rafts may float from Mosul to Baghdad in about
+eighty-four hours; but the larger are generally six or seven days in
+performing the voyage. In summer, and when the river is low, they are
+frequently nearly a month in reaching their destination. When they have
+been unloaded, they are broken up, and the beams, wood and twigs, sold
+at considerable profit. The skins are washed and afterward rubbed with a
+preparation, to keep them from cracking and rotting. They are then
+brought back, either on the shoulders of the raftmen or upon donkeys, to
+Mossul and Tekrit, where the men engaged in the navigation of the Tigris
+usually reside." Numerous sculptures show us that similar skins were
+also used by swimmers, who rode upon them in the water, probably when
+they intended to swim a greater distance than they could have
+accomplished by their unassisted efforts. (See Figure 16.)
+
+[Illustration: 15.--EXCAVATIONS AT MUGHEIR (UR).]
+
+10. Our imagination longs to reconstruct those gigantic piles as they
+must have struck the beholder in their towering hugeness, approached
+from the plain probably by several stairways and by at least one ascent
+of a slope gentle enough to offer a convenient access to horses and
+chariots. What an imposing object must have been, for instance, the
+palace of Sennacherib, on the edge of its battlemented platform (mound
+of Koyunjik), rising directly above the waters of the Tigris,--named in
+the ancient language "the Arrow" from the swiftness of its current--into
+the golden and crimson glory of an Eastern sunset! Although the sameness
+and unwieldy nature of the material used must have put architectural
+beauty of outline out of the question, the general effect must have been
+one of massive grandeur and majesty, aided as it was by the elaborate
+ornamentation lavished on every portion of the building. Unfortunately
+the work of reconstruction is left almost entirely to imagination, which
+derives but little help from the shapeless heaps into which time has
+converted those ancient, mighty halls.
+
+[Illustration: 16.--WARRIORS SWIMMING ON INFLATED SKINS. (Babelon.)]
+
+11. Fergusson, an English explorer and scholar whose works on subjects
+connected with art and especially architecture hold a high place, has
+attempted to restore the palace of Sennacherib such as he imagines it to
+have been, from the hints furnished by the excavations. He has produced
+a striking and most effective picture, of which, however, an entire half
+is simply guesswork. The whole nether part--the stone-cased,
+battlemented platform wall, the broad stairs, the esplanade handsomely
+paved with patterned slabs, and the lower part of the palace with its
+casing of sculptured slabs and portals guarded by winged bulls--is
+strictly according to the positive facts supplied by the excavations.
+For the rest, there is no authority whatever. We do not even positively
+know whether there was any second story to Assyrian palaces at all. At
+all events, no traces of inside staircases have been found, and the
+upper part of the walls of even the ground-floor has regularly been
+either demolished or destroyed by fire. As to columns, it is impossible
+to ascertain how far they may have been used and in what way. Such as
+were used could have been, as a rule, only of wood--trunks of great
+trees hewn and smoothed--and consequently every vestige of them has
+disappeared, though some round column bases in stone have been found.[M]
+The same remarks apply to the restoration of an Assyrian palace court,
+also after Fergusson, while that of a palace hall, after Layard, is not
+open to the same reproach and gives simply the result of actual
+discoveries. Without, therefore, stopping long to consider conjectures
+more or less unsupported, let us rather try to reproduce in our minds a
+clear perception of what the audience hall of an Assyrian king looked
+like from what we may term positive knowledge. We shall find that our
+materials will go far towards creating for us a vivid and authentic
+picture.
+
+[Illustration: 17.--VIEW OF KOYUNJIK. (Hommel.)]
+
+12. On entering such a hall the first thing to strike us would probably
+be the pavement, either of large alabaster slabs delicately carved in
+graceful patterns, as also the arched doorways leading into the adjacent
+rooms (see Figs. 24 and 25, pp. 69 and 71), or else covered with rows of
+inscriptions, the characters being deeply engraven and afterwards filled
+with a molten metallic substance, like brass or bronze, which would give
+the entire floor the appearance of being covered with inscriptions in
+gilt characters, the strange forms of cuneiform writing making the whole
+look like an intricate and fanciful design.
+
+[Illustration: 18.--STONE LION AT THE ENTRANCE OF A TEMPLE. NIMRUD.
+(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+13. Our gaze would next be fascinated by the colossal human-headed
+winged bulls and lions keeping their silent watch in pairs at each of
+the portals, and we should notice with astonishment that the artists had
+allowed them each an extra leg, making the entire number five instead of
+four. This was not done at random, but with a very well-calculated
+artistic object--that of giving the monster the right number of legs,
+whether the spectator beheld it in front or in profile, as in both cases
+one of the three front legs is concealed by the others. The front view
+shows the animal standing, while it appears to be striding when viewed
+from the side. (See Figures 18 and 27, pp. 59 and 75.) The walls were
+worthy of these majestic door-keepers. The crude brick masonry
+disappeared up to a height of twelve to fifteen feet from the ground
+under the sculptured slabs of soft grayish alabaster which were solidly
+applied to the wall, and held together by strong iron cramps. Sometimes
+one subject or one gigantic figure of king or deity was represented on
+one slab; often the same subject occupied several slabs, and not
+unfrequently was carried on along an entire wall. In this case the lines
+begun on one slab were continued on the next with such perfect
+smoothness, so absolutely without a break, as to warrant the conclusion
+that the slabs were sculptured _after_ they had been put in their
+places, not before. Traces of paint show that color was to a certain
+extent employed to enliven these representations, probably not over
+plentifully and with some discrimination. Thus color is found in many
+places on the eyes, brows, hair, sandals, the draperies, the mitre or
+high headdress of the kings, on the harness of horses and portions of
+the chariots, on the flowers carried by attendants, and sometimes on
+trees. Where a siege is portrayed, the flames which issue out of windows
+and roofs seem always to have been painted red. There is reason to
+believe, however, that color was but sparingly bestowed on the
+sculptures, and therefore they must have presented a pleasing contrast
+with the richness of the ornamentation which ran along the walls
+immediately above, and which consisted of hard baked bricks of large
+size, painted and glazed in the fire, forming a continuous frieze from
+three to five feet wide. Sometimes the painting represented human
+figures and various scenes, sometimes also winged figures of deities or
+fantastic animals,--in which case it was usually confined above and
+below by a simple but graceful running pattern; or it would consist
+wholly of a more or less elaborate continuous pattern like Fig. 22,
+23, or 25, these last symbolical compositions with a religious
+signification. (See also Fig. 21, "Interior view," etc.) Curiously
+enough the remains--mostly very trifling fragments--which have been
+discovered in various ruins, show that these handsomely finished glazed
+tiles exhibited the very same colors which are nowadays in such high
+favor with ourselves for all sorts of decorative purposes: those used
+most frequently were a dark and a pale yellow, white and cream-color, a
+delicate pale green, occasionally orange and a pale lilac, very little
+blue and red; olive-green and brown are favorite colors for grounds.
+"Now and then an intense blue and a bright red occur, generally
+together; but these positive hues are rare, and the taste of the
+Assyrians seems to have led them to prefer, for their patterned walls,
+pale and dull hues.... The general tone of their coloring is quiet, not
+to say sombre. There is no striving after brilliant effects. The
+Assyrian artist seeks to please by the elegance of his forms and the
+harmony of his hues, not to startle by a display of bright and strongly
+contrasted colors.[N]"
+
+[Illustration: 19.--COURT OF HAREM AT KHORSABAD. (RESTORED.) (Perrot and
+Chipiez.)]
+
+[Illustration: 20.--CIRCULAR PILLAR-BASE.]
+
+14. It has been asked: how were those halls roofed and how were they
+lighted? questions which have given rise to much discussion and which
+can scarcely ever be answered in a positive way, since in no single
+instance has the upper part of the walls or any part whatever of the
+roofing been preserved. Still, the peculiar shape and dimensions of the
+principal palace halls goes far towards establishing a sort of
+circumstantial evidence in the case. They are invariably long and
+narrow, the proportions in some being so striking as to have made them
+more like corridors than apartments--a feature, by the by, which must
+have greatly impaired their architectural beauty: they were three or
+four times as long as they were wide, and even more. The great hall of
+the palace of Asshur-nazir-pal on the platform of the Nimrud mound
+(excavated by Layard, who calls it, from its position, "the North-West
+palace") is 160 feet long by not quite 40 wide. Of the five halls in the
+Khorsabad palace the largest measures 116 ft. by 33, the smallest 87 by
+25, while the most imposing in size of all yet laid open, the great hall
+of Sennacherib at Koyunjik, shows a length of fully 180 ft. with a width
+of 40. It is scarcely probable that the old builders, who in other
+points have shown so much artistic taste, should have selected this
+uniform and unsatisfactory shape for their state apartments, unless they
+were forcibly held to it by some insuperable imperfection in the means
+at their disposal. That they knew how to use proportions more pleasing
+in their general effect, we see from the inner open courts, of which
+there were several in every palace, and which, in shape and dimensions
+are very much like those in our own castles and palaces,--nearly square,
+(about 180 ft. or 120 ft. each way) or slightly oblong: 93 ft. by 84,
+124 ft. by 90, 150 ft. by 125. Only two courts have been found to lean
+towards the long-and-narrow shape, one being 250 ft. by 150, and the
+other 220 by 100. But even this is very different from those
+passage-like galleries. The only thing which entirely explains this
+awkward feature of all the royal halls, is the difficulty of providing
+them with a roof. It is impossible to make a flat roof of nothing but
+bricks, and although the Assyrians knew how to construct arches, they
+used them only for very narrow vaults or over gateways and doors, and
+could not have carried out the principle on any very extensive scale.
+The only obvious expedient consisted in simply spanning the width of the
+hall with wooden beams or rafters. Now no tree, not even the lofty cedar
+of Lebanon or the tall cypress of the East, will give a rafter, of equal
+thickness from end to end, more than 40 ft. in length, few even that.
+There was no getting over or around this necessity, and so the matter
+was settled for the artists quite aside from their own wishes. This
+also explains the great value which was attached by all the Assyrian
+conquerors to fine timber. It was often demanded as tribute, nothing
+could be more acceptable as a gift, and expeditions were frequently
+undertaken into the distant mountainous regions of the Lebanon on
+purpose to cut some. The difficulty about roofing would naturally fall
+away in the smaller rooms, used probably as sleeping and dwelling
+apartments, and accordingly they vary freely from oblong to square; the
+latter being generally about 25 ft. each way, sometimes less, but never
+more. There were a great many such chambers in a palace; as many as
+sixty-eight have been discovered in Sennacherib's palace at Koyunjik,
+and a large portion of the building, be it remembered, is not yet fully
+explored. Some were as highly decorated as the great halls, some faced
+with plain slabs or plastered, and some had no ornaments at all and
+showed the crude brick. These differences probably indicate the
+difference of rank in the royal household of the persons to whom the
+apartments were assigned.
+
+[Illustration: 21.--INTERIOR VIEW OF ONE OF THE CHAMBERS OF THE HAREM AT
+KHORSABAD. (RESTORED.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+15. The question of light has been discussed by eminent
+explorers--Layard, Botta, Fergusson--at even greater length and with a
+greater display of ingenuity than that of roofing. The results of the
+learned discussion may be shortly summed up as follows: We may take it
+for granted that the halls were sufficiently lighted, for the builders
+would not have bestowed on them such lavish artistic labor had they not
+meant their work to be seen in all its details and to the best
+advantage. This could be effected only in one of three ways, or in two
+combined: either by means of numerous small windows pierced at regular
+intervals above the frieze of enamelled bricks, between that and the
+roof,--or by means of one large opening in the roof of woodwork, as
+proposed by Layard in his own restoration, or by smaller openings placed
+at more frequent intervals. This latter contrivance is in general use
+now in Armenian houses, and Botta, who calls it a _louvre_, gives a
+drawing of it.[O] It is very ingenious, and would have the advantage of
+not admitting too great a mass of sunlight and heat, and of being easily
+covered with carpets or thick felt rugs to exclude the rain. The second
+method, though much the grandest in point of effect, would present none
+of these advantages and would be objectionable chiefly on account of the
+rain, which, pouring down in torrents--as it does, for weeks at a time,
+in those countries--must very soon damage the flooring where it is of
+brick, and eventually convert it into mud, not to speak of the
+inconvenience of making the state apartments unfit for use for an
+indefinite period. The small side windows just below the roof would
+scarcely give sufficient light by themselves. Who knows but they may
+have been combined with the _louvre_ system, and thus something very
+satisfactory finally obtained.
+
+[Illustration: 22.--COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES.]
+
+[Illustration: 23.--COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES.]
+
+16. The kings of Chaldea, Babylonia and Assyria seem to have been
+absolutely possessed with a mania for building. Scarcely one of them but
+left inscriptions telling how he raised this or that palace, this or
+that temple in one or other city, often in many cities. Few contented
+themselves with repairing the buildings left by their predecessors. This
+is easy to be ascertained, for they always mention all they did in that
+line. Vanity, which seems to have been, together with the love of booty,
+almost their ruling passion, of course accounts for this in a great
+measure. But there are also other causes, of which the principal one was
+the very perishable nature of the constructions, all their heavy
+massiveness notwithstanding. Being made of comparatively soft and
+yielding material, their very weight would cause the mounds to settle
+and bulge out at the sides in some places, producing crevices in others,
+and of course disturbing the balance of the thick but loose masonry of
+the walls constructed on top of them. These accidents could not be
+guarded against by the outer casing of stone or burnt brick, or even by
+the strong buttresses which were used from a very early period to prop
+up the unwieldy piles: the pressure from within was too great to be
+resisted.
+
+[Illustration: 24.--PAVEMENT SLAB.]
+
+17. An outer agent, too, was at work, surely and steadily destructive:
+the long, heavy winter rains. Crude brick, when exposed to moisture,
+easily dissolves into its original element--mud; even burned brick is
+not proof against very long exposure to violent wettings; and we know
+that the mounds were half composed of loose rubbish. Once thoroughly
+permeated with moisture, nothing could keep these huge masses from
+dissolution. The builders were well aware of the danger and struggled
+against it to the best of their ability by a very artfully contrived and
+admirably executed system of drainage, carried through the mounds in all
+directions and pouring the accumulated waters into the plain out of
+mouths beautifully constructed in the shape of arched vaults.[P] Under
+the flooring of most of the halls have been found drains, running along
+the centre, then bending off towards a conduit in one of the corners,
+which carried the contents down into one of the principal channels.
+
+[Illustration: 25.--SECTION OF ORNAMENTAL DOORWAY (ENAMELLED BRICK OR
+TILES). KHORSABAD. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+18. But all these precautions were, in the long run, of little avail, so
+that it was frequently a simpler and less expensive proceeding for a
+king to build a new palace, than to keep repairing and propping up an
+old one which crumbled to pieces, so to speak, under the workmen's
+hands. It is not astonishing that sometimes, when they had to give up an
+old mansion as hopeless, they proceeded to demolish it, in order to
+carry away the stone and use it in structures of their own, probably not
+so much as a matter of thrift, as with a view to quickening the work,
+stone-cutting in the quarries and transport down the river always being
+a lengthy operation. This explains why, in some later palaces, slabs
+were found with their sculptured face turned to the crude brick wall,
+and the other smoothed and prepared for the artist, or with the
+sculptures half erased, or piled up against the wall, ready to be put in
+place. The nature of the injuries which caused the ancient buildings to
+decay and lose all shape, is very faithfully described in an inscription
+of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, in which he relates how he
+constructed the Ziggurat of Borsip on the site of an ancient
+construction, which he repaired, as far as it went. This is what he
+says: "The temple of the Seven Spheres, the Tower of Borsip which a
+former king had built ... but had not finished its upper part, from
+remote days had fallen into decay. The channels for drawing off the
+water had not been properly provided; rain and tempest had washed away
+its bricks; the bricks of the roof were cracked; the bricks of the
+building were washed away into heaps of rubbish." All this sufficiently
+accounts for the peculiar aspect offered by the Mesopotamian ruins.
+Whatever process of destruction the buildings underwent, whether natural
+or violent, by conquerors' hands, whether through exposure to fire or to
+stress of weather, the upper part would be the first to suffer, but it
+would not disappear, from the nature of the material, which is not
+combustible. The crude bricks all through the enormous thickness of the
+walls, once thoroughly loosened, dislodged, dried up or soaked
+through, would lose their consistency and tumble down into the courts
+and halls, choking them up with the soft rubbish into which they
+crumbled, the surplus rolling down the sides and forming those even
+slopes which, from a distance, so deceivingly imitate natural hills.
+Time, accumulating the drift-sand from the desert and particles of
+fertile earth, does the rest, and clothes the mounds with the verdant
+and flowery garment which is the delight of the Arab's eyes.
+
+[Illustration: 26.--WINGED LION WITH HUMAN HEAD. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+19. It is to this mode of destruction the Assyrian kings allude in their
+annals by the continually recurring phrase: "I destroyed their cities, I
+overwhelmed them, I burned them in the fire, _I made heaps of them_."
+However difficult it is to get at the treasures imbedded in these
+"heaps," we ought not to repine at the labor, since they owe their
+preservation entirely to the soft masses of earth, sand and loose
+rubbish which have protected them on all sides from the contact with
+air, rain and ignorant plunderers, keeping them as safely--if not as
+transparently--housed as a walnut in its lump of candied sugar. The
+explorers know this so well, that when they leave the ruins, after
+completing their work for the time, they make it a point to fill all the
+excavated spaces with the very rubbish that has been taken out of them
+at the cost of so much labor and time. There is something impressive and
+reverent in thus re-burying the relics of those dead ages and nations,
+whom the mysterious gloom of their self-erected tombs becomes better
+than the glare of the broad, curious daylight. When Layard, before his
+departure, after once more wandering with some friends through all the
+trenches, tunnels and passages of the Nimrud mound, to gaze for the last
+time on the wonders on which no man had looked before him, found himself
+once more on the naked platform and ordered the workmen to cover them up
+again, he was strongly moved by the contrast: "We look around in vain,"
+says he, "for any traces of the wonderful remains we have just seen, and
+are half inclined to believe that we have dreamed a dream, or have been
+listening to some tale of Eastern romance. Some, who may hereafter
+tread on the spot when the grass again grows over the Assyrian palaces,
+may indeed suspect that I have been relating a vision."
+
+[Illustration: 27.--WINGED BULL. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+20. It is a curious fact that in Assyria the ruins speak to us only of
+the living, and that of the dead there are no traces whatever. One might
+think people never died there at all. Yet it is well known that all
+nations have bestowed as much care on the interment of their dead and
+the adornment of their last resting-place as on the construction of
+their dwellings--nay, some even more, for instance, the Egyptians. To
+this loving veneration for the dead history owes half its discoveries;
+indeed we should have almost no reliable information at all on the very
+oldest races, who lived before the invention of writing, were it not for
+their tombs and the things we find in them. It is very strange,
+therefore, that nothing of the kind should be found in Assyria, a
+country which stood so high in culture. For the sepulchres which are
+found in such numbers in some mounds down to a certain depth, belong, as
+is shown by their very position, to later races, mostly even to the
+modern Turks and Arabs. This peculiarity is so puzzling that scholars
+almost incline to suppose that the Assyrians either made away with their
+dead in some manner unknown to us, or else took them somewhere to bury.
+The latter conjecture, though not entirely devoid of foundation, as we
+shall see, is unsupported by any positive facts, and therefore was never
+seriously discussed. The question is simply left open, until something
+happens to shed light on it.
+
+[Illustration: 28.--MAN-LION. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+21. It is just the contrary in Babylonia. It can boast few handsome
+ruins or sculptures. The platforms and main walls of many palaces and
+temples have been known from the names stamped on the bricks and the
+cylinders found in the foundations, but they present only shapeless
+masses, from which all traces of artistic work have disappeared. In
+compensation, there is no country in the world where so many and such
+vast cemeteries have been discovered. It appears that the land of
+Chaldea,--perhaps because it was the cradle of nations which afterwards
+grew to greatness, as the Assyrians and the Hebrews--was regarded as a
+place of peculiar holiness by its own inhabitants, and probably also by
+neighboring countries, which would explain the mania that seems to have
+prevailed through so many ages, for burying the dead there in unheard of
+numbers. Strangely enough, some portions of it even now are held sacred
+in the same sense. There are shrines in Kerbela and Nedjif (somewhat to
+the west of Babylon) where every caravan of pilgrims brings from Persia
+hundreds of dead bodies in their felt-covered coffins, for burial. They
+are brought on camels and horses. On each side of the animal swings a
+coffin, unceremoniously thumped by the rider's bare heels. These coffins
+are, like merchandise, unladen for the night--and sometimes for days
+too--in the khans or caravanseries (the enclosed halting-places), where
+men and beasts take their rest together. Under that tropical clime, it
+is easy to imagine the results. It is in part to this disgusting custom
+that the great mortality in the caravans is to be attributed, one fifth
+of which leave their bones in the desert in _healthy_ seasons. However
+that may be, the gigantic proportions of the Chaldean burying-grounds
+struck even the ancient Greek travellers with astonishment, and some of
+them positively asserted that the Assyrian kings used to be buried in
+Chaldea. If the kings, why not the nobler and wealthier of their
+subjects? The transport down the rivers presented no difficulties.
+Still, as already remarked, all this is mere conjecture.
+
+[Illustration: 29.--FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+22. Among the Chaldeans cities ERECH (now WARKA) was considered from
+very old times one of the holiest. It had many extremely ancient temples
+and a college of learned priests, and around it gradually formed an
+immense "city of the dead" or Necropolis. The English explorer, Loftus,
+in 1854-5, specially turned his attention to it and his account is
+astounding. First of all, he was struck by the majestic desolation of
+the place. Warka and a few other mounds are raised on a slightly
+elevated tract of the desert, above the level of the yearly inundations,
+and accessible only from November to March, as all the rest of the time
+the surrounding plain is either a lake or a swamp. "The desolation and
+solitude of Warka," says Loftus, "are even more striking than the scene
+which is presented at Babylon itself. There is no life for miles around.
+No river glides in grandeur at the base of its mounds; no green date
+groves flourish near its ruins. The jackal and the hyæna appear to shun
+the dull aspect of its tombs. The king of birds never hovers over the
+deserted waste. A blade of grass or an insect finds no existence there.
+The shrivelled lichen alone, clinging to the weathered surface of the
+broken brick, seems to glory in its universal dominion over those barren
+walls. Of all the desolate pictures I have ever seen that of Warka
+incomparably surpasses all." Surely in this case it cannot be said that
+appearances are deceitful; for all that space, and much more, is a
+cemetery, and what a cemetery! "It is difficult," again says Loftus, "to
+convey anything like a correct idea of the piles upon piles of human
+remains which there utterly astound the beholder. Excepting only the
+triangular space between the three principal ruins, the whole remainder
+of the platform, the whole space between the walls and an unknown extent
+of desert beyond them, are everywhere filled with the bones and
+sepulchres of the dead. There is probably no other site in the world
+which can compare with Warka in this respect." It must be added that the
+coffins do not simply lie one next to the other, but in layers, down to
+a depth of 30-60 feet. Different epochs show different modes of burial,
+among which the following four are the most remarkable.
+
+[Illustration: 30.--RAM'S HEAD IN ALABASTER. (British Museum.)]
+
+[Illustration: 31.--EBONY COMB. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+[Illustration: 32.--BRONZE FORK AND SPOON. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+23. Perhaps the queerest coffin shape of all is that composed of two
+earthen jars (_a_ and _b_), which accurately fit together, or one
+slightly fits into the other, the juncture being made air-tight by a
+coating of bitumen (_d_, _d_). The body can be placed in such a coffin
+only with slightly bent knees. At one end (_c_) there is an air-hole,
+left for the escape of the gases which form during the decomposition of
+the body and which might otherwise burst the jars--a precaution probably
+suggested by experience (fig. 36). Sometimes there is only one jar of
+much larger size, but of the same shape, with a similar cover, also made
+fast with bitumen, or else the mouth is closed with bricks. This is an
+essentially national mode of burial, perhaps the most ancient of all,
+yet it remained in use to a very late period. It is to be noted that
+this is the exact shape of the water jars now carried about the streets
+of Baghdad and familiar to every traveller.
+
+[Illustration: 33.--ARMENIAN LOUVRE. (Botta.)]
+
+24. Not much less original is the so-called "dish-cover coffin," also
+very ancient and national. The illustrations sufficiently show its shape
+and arrangement.[Q] In these coffins two skeletons are sometimes found,
+showing that when a widow or widower died, it was opened, to lay the
+newly dead by the side of the one who had gone before. The cover is all
+of one piece--a very respectable achievement of the potter's art. In
+Mugheir (ancient Ur), a mound was found, entirely filled with this kind
+of coffins.
+
+[Illustration: 34.--VAULTED DRAINS. (KHORSABAD.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+[Illustration: 35.--VAULTED DRAIN. (KHORSABAD.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+25. Much more elaborate, and consequently, probably reserved for the
+noble and wealthy, is the sepulchral vault in brick, of nearly a man's
+height.[R] In these sepulchres, as in the preceding ones, the skeleton
+is always found lying in the same position, evidently dictated by some
+religious ideas. The head is pillowed on a large brick, commonly covered
+with a piece of stuff or a rug. In the tattered rags which sometimes
+still exist, costly embroideries and fringed golden tissue have more
+than once been recognized, while some female skeletons still showed
+handsome heads of hair gathered into fine nets. The body lies on a reed
+mat, on its left side, the right hand stretched out so as to reach with
+the tips of the fingers a bowl, generally of copper or bronze, and
+sometimes of fine workmanship, usually placed on the palm of the left
+hand. Around are placed various articles--dishes, in some of which
+remnants of food are found, such as date stones,--jars for water, lamps,
+etc. Some skeletons wear gold and silver bangles on their wrists and
+ankles. These vaults were evidently family sepulchres, for several
+skeletons are generally found in them; in one there were no less than
+eleven. (Fig. 39, p. 89.)
+
+[Illustration: 36.--CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN. (Taylor.)]
+
+26. All these modes of burial are very old and peculiarly Chaldean. But
+there is still another, which belongs to more recent times, even as late
+as the first centuries after Christ, and was used by a different and
+foreign race, the Parthians, one of those who came in turns and
+conquered the country, stayed there awhile, then disappeared. These
+coffins are, from their curious form, known under the name of
+"slipper-shaped." They are glazed, green on the outside and blue on the
+inside, but of very inferior make: poor clay, mixed with straw, and only
+half baked, therefore very brittle. It is thought that they were put in
+their place empty, then the body was laid in, the lid put down, and the
+care of covering them with sand left to the winds. The lid is fastened
+with the same mortar which is used in the brick masonry surrounding the
+coffin, where such a receptacle has been made for it; but they more
+usually lie pell-mell, separated only by thin layers of loose sand.
+There are mounds which are, as one may say, larded with them: wherever
+you begin to dig a trench, the narrow ends stick out from both sides. In
+these coffins also various articles were buried with the dead, sometimes
+valuable ones. The Arabs know this; they dig in the sand with their
+hands, break the coffins open with their spears, and grope in them for
+booty. The consequence is that it is extremely difficult to procure an
+entire coffin. Loftus succeeded, however, in sending some to the British
+Museum, having first pasted around them several layers of thick paper,
+without which precaution they could not have borne the transport.
+
+[Illustration: 37.--"DISH-COVER" TOMB AT MUGHEIR. (Taylor.)]
+
+[Illustration: 38.--"DISH-COVER" TOMB. (Taylor.)]
+
+27. On the whole, the ancient Chaldean sepulchres of the three first
+kinds are distinguished by greater care and tidiness. They are not only
+separated by brick partitions on the sides, and also above and below
+by a thin layer of brick masonry, but the greatest care was taken to
+protect them against dampness. The sepulchral mounds are pierced through
+and through, from top to bottom, by drainage pipes or shafts, consisting
+of a series of rings, solidly joined together with bitumen, about one
+foot in diameter. These rings are made of baked clay. The top one is
+shaped somewhat like a funnel, of which the end is inserted in
+perforated bricks, and which is provided with small holes, to receive
+any infiltration of moisture. Besides all this the shafts, which are
+sunk in pairs, are surrounded with broken pottery. How ingenious and
+practical this system was, we see from the fact that both the coffins
+and their contents are found in a state of perfect dryness and
+preservation. (Fig. 41, p. 90.)
+
+[Illustration: 39.--SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR. (Taylor.)]
+
+[Illustration: 40.--STONE JARS FROM GRAVES. (LARSAM.) (Hommel.)]
+
+28. In fact the Chaldeans, if they could not reach such perfection as
+the Assyrians in slab-sculpture, on account of not having stone either
+at home or within easy reach, seem to have derived a greater variety of
+architectural ornaments from that inexhaustible material of
+theirs--baked clay or terra-cotta. We see an instance of it in
+remnants--unfortunately very small ones, of some walls belonging to that
+same city of Erech. On one of the mounds Loftus was puzzled by the large
+quantity of small terra-cotta cones, whole and in fragments, lying about
+on the ground. The thick flat end of them was painted red, black or
+white. What was his amazement when he stumbled on a piece of wall (some
+seven feet in height and not more than thirty in length), which showed
+him what their use had been. They were grouped into a variety of
+patterns to decorate the entire wall, being stuck with their thin end
+into a layer of soft clay with which it was coated for the purpose.
+Still more original and even rather incomprehensible is a wall
+decoration consisting of several bands, composed each of three rows of
+small pots or cups--about four inches in diameter--stuck into the soft
+clay coating in the same manner, with the mouth turned outward of
+course! Loftus found such a wall, but unfortunately has given no design
+of it. (Figures 43 and 44.)
+
+[Illustration: 41.--DRAIN IN MOUND. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+29. As to the ancient Babylonian, or rather Chaldean, art in sculpture,
+the last word has by no means been said on that subject. Discoveries
+crowd in every year, constantly leading to the most unexpected
+conclusions. Thus, it was long an accepted fact that Assyria had very
+few statues and Babylonia none at all, when a few years ago (1881),
+what should a French explorer, Mr. E. De Sarzec, French consul in Basra,
+bring home but nine magnificent statues made of a dark, nearly black
+stone as hard as granite, called diorite.[S] Unfortunately they are all
+headless; but, as though to make up for this mutilation, one head was
+found separate,--a shaved and turbaned head beautifully preserved and of
+remarkable workmanship, the very pattern of the turban being plain
+enough to be reproduced by any modern loom.[T] These large prizes were
+accompanied by a quantity of small works of art representing both men
+and animals, of a highly artistic design and some of them of exquisite
+finish of execution. This astounding find, the result of several years'
+indefatigable work, now gracing the Assyrian rooms of the Louvre in
+Paris, comes from one of the Babylonian mounds which had not been opened
+before, the ruins of a mighty temple at a place now called TELL-LOH, and
+supposed to be the site of SIR-BURLA, or SIR-GULLA, one of the most
+ancient cities of Chaldea. This "Sarzec-collection," as it has come to
+be generally called, not only entirely upsets the ideas which had been
+formed on Old-Chaldean art, but is of immense historical importance from
+the inscriptions which cover the back of every statue, (not to speak of
+the cylinders and other small objects,) and which, in connection with
+the monuments of other ruins, enable scholars to fix, at least
+approximately, the date at which flourished the city and rulers who have
+left such extraordinary memorials of their artistic gifts. Some place
+them at about 4500 B.C., others about 4000. However overwhelming such a
+valuation may be at first sight, it is not an unsupported fancy, but
+proofs concur from many sides to show that the builders and sculptors of
+Sir-gulla could in no case have lived and worked much later than 4000
+B.C. It is impossible to indicate in a few lines all the points, the
+conjectures, the vexed questions, on which this discovery sheds light
+more or less directly, more or less decisively; they come up continually
+as the study of those remote ages proceeds, and it will be years before
+the materials supplied by the Sarzec-Collection are exhausted in all
+their bearings.
+
+[Illustration: 42.--WALL WITH DESIGNS IN TERRA-COTTA CONES, AT WARKA
+(ERECH). (Loftus.)]
+
+[Illustration: 43.--TERRA-COTTA CONE, NATURAL SIZE. (Loftus.)]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[G] Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 46.
+
+[H] Ur of the Chaldees, from which Abraham went forth.
+
+[I] Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 349.
+
+[J] Figure 10.
+
+[K] Figure 71, p. 281.
+
+[L] Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 317 and 318.
+
+[M] See Fig. 20, p. 63. There is but one exception, in the case of a
+recent exploration, during which one solitary broken column-shaft was
+discovered.
+
+[N] G. Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 467, 468.
+
+[O] See Fig. 33, p. 83.
+
+[P] Figures 34 and 35, p. 84.
+
+[Q] Figs. 37 and 38, p. 87.
+
+[R] Fig. 39, p. 89.
+
+[S] See Fig. 59, p. 217.
+
+[T] See Figs. 44 and 45, p. 101.
+
+
+
+
+                               IV.
+
+          THE BOOK OF THE PAST.--THE LIBRARY OF NINEVEH.
+
+
+1. When we wish to learn the great deeds of past ages, and of mighty men
+long dead, we open a book and read. When we wish to leave to the
+generations who will come long after us a record of the things that were
+done by ourselves or in our own times, we take pen, ink and paper, and
+write a book. What we have written is then printed, published in several
+hundreds--or thousands--of copies, as the case may be, and quickly finds
+its way to all the countries of the world inhabited by people who are
+trained from childhood to thought and study. So that we have the
+satisfaction of knowing that the information which we have labored to
+preserve will be obtainable any number of years or centuries after we
+shall have ceased to exist, at no greater trouble than procuring the
+book from the shelves of a bookstore, a public or a private library. It
+is all very simple. And there is not a small child who does not
+perfectly know a book by its looks, and even has not a pretty correct
+idea of how a book is made and what it is good for.
+
+2. But books are not always of the shape and material so familiar to us.
+Metal, stone, brick, walls and pillars, nay, the very rocks of nature's
+own making, can be books, conveying information as plainly as our
+volumes of paper sheets covered with written or printed lines. It only
+needs to know how to read them, and the necessary knowledge and skill
+may be acquired by processes as simple as the art of ordinary reading
+and writing, though at the cost of a somewhat greater amount of time and
+pains.
+
+3. There are two natural cravings, which assert themselves strongly in
+every mind not entirely absorbed by the daily work for bread and by the
+anxious care how to procure that work: these are the wish, on the one
+hand, to learn how the people who came before us lived and what they
+did, on the other--to transmit our own names and the memory of our deeds
+to those who will come after us. We are not content with our present
+life; we want to stretch it both backward and forward--to live both in
+the past and the future, as it were. This curiosity and this ambition
+are but parts of the longing for immortality which was never absent from
+any human soul. In our own age they are satisfied mainly by books;
+indeed they were originally the principal causes why books began to be
+made at all. And how easy to satisfy these cravings in our time, when
+writing materials have become as common as food and far cheaper, and
+reading may be had for nothing or next to nothing! For, a very few
+dollars will supply a writer with as much paper as he can possibly use
+up in a year, while the public libraries, the circulating and college
+libraries and the reading-rooms make study a matter more of love and
+perseverance than of money.
+
+4. Yet if the papermill and the printing press were the only material
+aid to our researches into the past, these researches would stop
+short very soon, seeing that printing was invented in Europe scarce
+four hundred years ago, and paper has not been manufactured for more
+than six hundred years at the outside. True, other materials have
+been used to write on before paper: bark of trees, skins of
+animals--(parchment)--cunningly worked fibres of plants--(papyrus,
+byblos)--even wooden tablets covered with a thin layer of wax, on
+which characters were engraved with a pointed instrument or
+"style,"--and these contrivances have preserved for us records which
+reach back many hundreds of years beyond the introduction of paper.
+But our curiosity, when once aroused, is insatiable, and an area of
+some twenty, or thirty, or forty centuries seems to it but a narrow
+field. Looking back as far as that--and no kind of manuscript
+information takes us much further--we behold the world wondrously
+like what it is now. With some differences in garb, in manners, and a
+much greater one in the range of knowledge, we find men living very
+nearly as we do and enacting very nearly the same scenes: nations
+live in families clustered within cities, are governed by laws, or
+ruled by monarchs, carry on commerce and wars, extend their limits by
+conquest, excel in all sorts of useful and ornamental arts. Only we
+notice that larger regions are unknown, vaster portions of the
+earth, with their populations, are unexplored, than in our days. The
+conclusion is clearly forced on us, that so complicated and perfect
+an organization of public and private life, a condition of society
+implying so many discoveries and so long a practice in thought and
+handicraft, could not have been an early stage of existence. Long
+vistas are dimly visible into a past far vaster than the span as yet
+laid open to our view, and we long to pierce the tantalizing gloom.
+There, in that gloom, lurk the beginnings of the races whose high
+achievements we admire, emulate, and in many ways surpass; there, if
+we could but send a ray of light into the darkness of ages, we must
+find the solution of numberless questions which suggest themselves as
+we go: Whence come those races? What was the earlier history of other
+races with which we find them contending, treating, trading? When did
+they learn their arts, their songs, their forms of worship? But here
+our faithful guide, manuscript literature, forsakes us; we enter on a
+period when none of the ancient substitutes for paper were yet
+invented. But then, there were the stones. _They_ did not need to be
+invented--only hewn and smoothed for the chisel.
+
+5. Fortunately for us, men, twenty-five, and forty, and fifty centuries
+ago, were actuated by the same feelings, the same aspirations as they
+are now, and of these aspirations, the passionate wish of perpetuating
+their names and the memory of their deeds has always been one of the
+most powerful. This wish they connected with and made subservient to
+the two things which were great and holy in their eyes: their religion
+and the power of their kings. So they built, in brick and stone, at an
+almost incalculable expense of time, human labor and human life, palaces
+and temples. On these huge piles they lavished treasures untold, as also
+all the resources of their invention and their skill in art and
+ornament; they looked on them with exulting pride, not only because they
+thought them, by their vastness and gorgeousness, fit places for public
+worship and dwellings worthy of their kings, but because these
+constructions, in their towering grandeur, their massive solidity, bid
+fair to defy time and outlast the nations which raised them, and which
+thus felt assured of leaving behind them traces of their existence,
+memorials of their greatness. That a few defaced, dismantled, moss-grown
+or sand-choked fragments of these mighty buildings would one day be the
+_only_ trace, the sole memorial of a rule and of nations that would then
+have past away forever, even into nothingness and oblivion, scarcely was
+anticipated by the haughty conquerors who filled those halls with their
+despotic presence, and entered those consecrated gates in the pomp of
+triumph to render thanks for bloody victories and warlike exploits which
+elated their souls in pride till they felt themselves half divine.
+Nothing doubting but that those walls, those pillars, those gateways
+would stand down to the latest ages, they confided to them that which
+was most precious to their ambition, the record of their deeds, the
+praises of their names, thus using those stony surfaces as so many
+blank pages, which they covered with row after row of wondrous
+characters, carefully engraved or chiselled, and even with painted or
+sculptured representations of their own persons and of the scenes, in
+war or peace, in which they had been leaders and actors.
+
+6. Thus it is that on all the points of the globe where sometime great
+and flourishing nations have held their place, then yielded to other
+nations or to absolute devastation--in Egypt, in India, in Persia, in
+the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the sandy, now desert plains
+of Syria, in the once more populous haunts of ancient Rome and
+Greece--the traveller meets clusters of great ruins, lofty still in
+their utter abandonment, with a strange, stern beauty hovering around
+their weather-beaten, gigantic shafts and cornices, wrapt in the
+pathetic silence of desolation, and yet not dumb--for their pictured
+faces eloquently proclaim the tale of buoyant life and action entrusted
+to them many thousands of years ago. Sometimes, it is a natural rock,
+cut and smoothed down at a height sufficient to protect it from the
+wantonly destructive hand of scoffing invaders, on which a king of a
+deeper turn of thought, more mindful than others of the law which dooms
+all the works of men to decay, has caused a relation of the principal
+events of his reign to be engraved in those curious characters which
+have for centuries been a puzzle and an enigma. Many tombs also, besides
+the remains of the renowned or wealthy dead, for whom they have been
+erected at a cost as extravagant and with art as elaborate as the
+abodes of the living, contain the full description of their inmate's
+lineage, his life, his habits and pursuits, with prayers and invocations
+to the divinities of his race and descriptions or portrayed
+representations of religious ceremonies. Or, the walls of caves, either
+natural, or cut in the rock for purposes of shelter or concealment,
+yield to the explorer some more chapters out of the old, old story, in
+which our interest never slackens. This story man has himself been
+writing, patiently, laboriously, on every surface on which he could
+trace words and lines, ever since he has been familiar with the art of
+expressing his thoughts in visible signs,--and so each such surviving
+memorial may truly be called a stray leaf, half miraculously preserved
+to us, out of the great Book of the Past, which it has been the task of
+scholars through ages, and especially during the last eighty years, to
+decipher and teach others how to read.
+
+[Illustration: 44.--HEAD OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN. FROM TELL-LOH (SIR-GULLA).
+SARZEC COLLECTION. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+[Illustration: 45.--SAME, PROFILE VIEW.]
+
+7. Of this venerable book the walls of the Assyrian palaces, with their
+endless rows of inscriptions, telling year for year through centuries
+the history of the kings who built them, are so many invaluable pages,
+while the sculptures which accompany these annals are the illustrations,
+lending life and reality to what would otherwise be a string of dry and
+unattractive records. But a greater wonder has been brought to light
+from amidst the rubbish and dust of twenty-five centuries: a collection
+of literary and scientific works, of religious treatises, of private and
+public documents, deposited in rooms constructed on purpose to contain
+them, arranged in admirable order, in short--a LIBRARY. Truly and
+literally a library, in the sense in which we use the word. Not the only
+one either, nor the first by many hundred years, although the volumes
+are of singular make and little like those we are used to.
+
+8. When Layard was at work for the second time amidst the ruins along
+the Tigris, he devoted much of his labor to the great mound of Koyunjik,
+in which the remains of two sumptuous palaces were distinctly discerned,
+one of them the royal residence of Sennacherib, the other that of his
+grandson Asshurbanipal, who lived some 650 years before Christ--two of
+the mightiest conquerors and most magnificent sovereigns of the Eastern
+world. In the latter palace he came upon two comparatively small
+chambers, the floor of which was entirely littered with fragments--some
+of considerable size, some very small--of bricks, or rather baked-clay
+tablets, covered on both sides with cuneiform writing. It was a layer
+more than a foot in height which must have been formed by the falling in
+of the upper part of the edifice. The tablets, piled in good order along
+the walls, perhaps in an upper story--if, as many think, there was
+one--must have been precipitated promiscuously into the apartment and
+shattered by the fall. Yet, incredible as it may appear, several were
+found entire. Layard filled many cases with the fragments and sent them
+off to the British Museum, fully aware of their probable historical
+value.
+
+9. There they lay for years, heaped up at random, a mine of treasures
+which made the mouths of scholars water, but appalled them by the
+amount of labor, nay, actual drudgery, needful only to sift and sort
+them, even before any study of their contents could be begun. At length
+a young and ambitious archæologist, attached to the British Museum,
+George Smith, undertook the long and wearisome task. He was not
+originally a scholar, but an engraver, and was employed to engrave on
+wood cuneiform texts for the magnificent atlas edited by the British
+Museum under the title of "Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia."
+Being endowed with a quick and enquiring mind, Smith did not content
+himself, like most of his colleagues, with a conscientious and artistic,
+but merely technical reproduction; he wished to know _what_ he was doing
+and he learned the language of the inscriptions. When he took on himself
+the sorting of the fragments, it was in the hope of distinguishing
+himself in this new field, and of rendering a substantial service to the
+science which had fascinated him. Nor was he deceived in this hope. He
+succeeded in finding and uniting a large quantity of fragments belonging
+together, and thus restoring pages of writing, with here and there a
+damaged line, a word effaced, a broken corner, often a larger portion
+missing, but still enough left to form continuous and readable texts. In
+some cases it was found that there was more than one copy of this or
+that work or document, and then sometimes the parts which were
+hopelessly injured in one copy, would be found whole or nearly so in
+another.
+
+10. The results accomplished by this patient mechanical process were
+something astonishing. And when he at length restored in this manner a
+series of twelve tablets containing an entire poem of the greatest
+antiquity and highest interest, the occasion seemed important enough to
+warrant the enterprising owners of the London _Daily Telegraph_ in
+sending the young student to resume excavations and try to complete some
+missing links. For of some of the tablets restored by him only portions
+could be found among the fragments of the British Museum. Of course he
+made his way straight to the Archive Chambers at Koyunjik, had them
+opened again and cleared them of another large instalment of their
+valuable contents, among which he had the inconceivable good fortune to
+find some of the very pieces which were missing in his collection.
+Joyfully he returned to England twice with his treasures, and hopefully
+set out on a third expedition of the same kind. He had reason to feel
+buoyant; he had already made his name famous by several works which
+greatly enriched the science he loved, and had he not half a lifetime
+before him to continue the work which few could do as well? Alas, he
+little knew that his career was to be cut short suddenly by a loathsome
+and brutal foe: he died of the plague in Syria, in 1876--just thirty-six
+years old. He was faithful to the end. His diary, in which he made some
+entries even within a very few days before his death, shows that at the
+last, when he knew his danger and was fast losing hope, his mind was
+equally divided between thoughts of his family and of his work. The
+following lines, almost the last intelligible ones he wrote, are deeply
+touching in their simple, single-minded earnestness:--"Not so well. If
+Doctor present, I should recover, but he has not come, very doubtful
+case; if fatal farewell to ... _My work has been entirely for the
+science I study...._ There is a large field of study in my collection. I
+intended to work it out, but desire now that my antiquities and notes
+may be thrown open to all students. I have done my duty thoroughly. I do
+not fear the change but desire to live for my family. Perhaps all may be
+well yet."--George Smith's death was a great loss, which his
+brother-scholars of all countries have not ceased to deplore. But the
+work now proceeds vigorously and skilfully. The precious texts are
+sorted, pieced, and classified, and a collection of them, carefully
+selected, is reproduced by the aid of the photographer and the engraver,
+so that, should the originals ever be lost or destroyed, (not a very
+probable event), the Museum indeed would lose one of its most precious
+rarities, but science would lose nothing.
+
+11. An eminent French scholar and assyriologist, Joachim Ménant, has the
+following picturesque lines in his charming little book "_La
+Bibliothèque du Palais de Ninive_": "When we reflect that these records
+have been traced on a substance which neither fire nor water could
+destroy, we can easily comprehend how those who wrote them thus thirty
+or forty centuries ago, believed the monuments of their history to be
+safe for all future times,--much safer than the frail sheets which
+printing scatters with such prodigious fertility.... Of all the nations
+who have bequeathed to us written records of their past life, we may
+assert that none has left monuments more imperishable than Assyria and
+Chaldea. Their number is already considerable; it is daily increased by
+new discoveries. It is not possible to foresee what the future has in
+store for us in this respect; but we can even now make a valuation of
+the entire material which we possess.... The number of the tablets from
+the Nineveh Library alone passes ten thousand.... If we compare these
+texts with those left us by other nations, we can easily become
+convinced that the history of the Assyro-Chaldean civilization will soon
+be one of the best known of antiquity. It has a powerful attraction for
+us, for we know that the life of the Jewish people is mixed up with the
+history of Nineveh and Babylon...."
+
+[Illustration: 46.--CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION. (ARCHAIC CHARACTERS.) (Perrot
+and Chipiez.)]
+
+12. It will be seen from this that throughout the following pages we
+shall continually have to refer to the contents of Asshurbanipal's royal
+library. We must therefore dispense in this place with any details
+concerning the books, more than a general survey of the subjects they
+treated. Of these, religion and science were the chief. Under "science"
+we must understand principally mathematics and astronomy, two branches
+in which the old Chaldeans reached great perfection and left us many of
+our own most fundamental notions and practices, as we shall see later
+on. Among the scientific works must also be counted those on astrology,
+i.e., on the influence which the heavenly bodies were supposed to
+exert on the fate of men, according to their positions and combinations,
+for astrology was considered a real science, not only by the Chaldeans,
+but by much later nations too; also hand-books of geography, really only
+lists of the seas, mountains and rivers, nations and cities then known,
+lastly lists of plants and animals with a very rude and defective
+attempt at some sort of classification. History is but scantily
+represented; it appears to have been mostly confined to the great wall
+inscriptions and some other objects, of which more hereafter. But--what
+we should least expect--grammars, dictionaries, school reading-books,
+occupy a prominent place. The reason is that, when this library was
+founded, the language in which the venerable books of ancient sages were
+written not only was not spoken any longer, but had for centuries been
+forgotten by all but the priests and those who made scholarship their
+chief pursuit, so that it had to be taught in the same way that the
+so-called "dead languages," Latin and Greek, are taught at our colleges.
+This was the more necessary as the prayers had to be recited in the old
+language called the Accadian, that being considered more holy--just as,
+in Catholic countries, the common people are even now made to learn and
+say their prayers in Latin, though they understand not a word of the
+language. The ancient Accadian texts were mostly copied with a modern
+Assyrian translation, either interlinear or facing it, which has been of
+immense service to those who now decipher the tablets.
+
+[Illustration: 47.--INSCRIBED CLAY TABLET. (Smith's "Assyria.")]
+
+13. So much for what may be called the classical and reference
+department of the library. Important as it is, it is scarcely more so
+than the documentary department or Archive proper, where documents and
+deeds of all kinds, both public and private, were deposited for safe
+keeping. Here by the side of treatises, royal decrees and despatches,
+lists of tribute, reports from generals and governors, also those daily
+sent in by the superintendents of the royal observatories,--we find
+innumerable private documents: deeds of sale duly signed, witnessed and
+sealed, for land, houses, slaves--any kind of property,--of money lent,
+of mortgages, with the rate of interest, contracts of all sorts. The
+most remarkable of private documents is one which has been called the
+"will of King Sennacherib," by which he entrusts some valuable personal
+property to the priests of the temple of Nebo, to be kept for his
+favorite son,--whether to be delivered after his (the king's) death or
+at another time is not stated.
+
+[Illustration: 48.--CLAY TABLET IN ITS CASE. (Hommel.)]
+
+14. It requires some effort to bear in mind the nature and looks of the
+things which we must represent to ourselves when we talk of Assyrian
+"_books_." The above (Fig. 47) is the portrait of a "_volume_" in
+perfect condition. But it is seldom indeed that one such is found.
+Layard, in his first description of his startling "find," says: "They
+(the tablets) were of different sizes; the largest were flat, and
+measured nine inches by six and a half; the smaller were slightly
+convex, and some were not more than an inch long, with but one or two
+lines of writing. The cuneiform characters on most of them were
+singularly sharp and well-defined, but so minute in some instances as to
+be illegible without a magnifying glass." Most curiously, glass lenses
+have been found among the ruins; which may have been used for the
+purpose. Specimens have also been found of the very instruments which
+were employed to trace the cuneiform characters, and their form
+sufficiently accounts for the peculiar shape of these characters which
+was imitated by the engravers on stone. It is a little iron rod--(or
+_style_, as the ancients used to call such implements)--not sharp, but
+_triangular_ at the end: [open triangle]. By slightly pressing this end
+on the cake of soft moist clay held in the left hand no other shape of
+sign could be obtained than a wedge, [closed triangle], the direction
+being determined by a turn of the wrist, presenting the instrument in
+different positions. When one side of the tablet was full, the other was
+to be filled. If it was small, it was sufficient to turn it over,
+continuing to hold the edges between the thumb and third finger of the
+left hand. But if the tablet was large and had to be laid on a table to
+be written on, the face that was finished would be pressed to the hard
+surface, and the clay being soft, the writing would be effaced. This was
+guarded against by a contrivance as ingenious as it was simple. Empty
+places were left here and there in the lines, in which were stuck small
+pegs, like matches. On these the tablet was supported when turned over,
+and also while baking in the oven. On many of the tablets that have
+been preserved are to be seen little holes or dints, where the pegs have
+been stuck. Still, it should be mentioned that these holes are not
+confined to the large tablets and not found on all large tablets. When
+the tablet was full, it was allowed to dry, then generally, but not
+always, baked. Within the last few years several thousands unbaked
+tablets have been found in Babylonia; they crumbled into dust under the
+finders' fingers. It was then proposed to bake such of them as could at
+all bear handling. The experiment was successful, and numbers of
+valuable documents were thus preserved and transported to the great
+repository of the British Museum. The tablets are covered with writing
+on both sides and most accurately classed and numbered, when they form
+part of a series, in which case they are all of the same shape and size.
+The poem discovered by George Smith is written out on twelve tablets,
+each of which is a separate book or chapter of the whole. There is an
+astronomical work in over seventy tablets. The first of them begins with
+the words: "_When the gods Anu and ..._" These words are taken as the
+title of the entire series. Each tablet bears the notice: First, second,
+third tablet of "_When the gods Anu and ..._" To guard against all
+chance of confusion, the last line of one tablet is repeated as the
+first line of the following one--a fashion which we still see in old
+books, where the last word or two at the bottom of a page is repeated at
+the top of the next.
+
+[Illustration: 49.--ANTIQUE BRONZE SETTING OF CYLINDER. (Perrot and
+Chipiez.)]
+
+[Illustration: 50.--CHALDEAN CYLINDER AND IMPRESSION.(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+[Illustration: 51.--ASSYRIAN CYLINDER. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+15. The clay tablets of the ancient Chaldeans are distinguished from the
+Assyrian ones by a curious peculiarity: they are sometimes enclosed in a
+case of the same material, with exactly the same inscription and seals
+as on the inner tablet, even more carefully executed.[U] It is evidently
+a sort of duplicate document, made in the prevision that the outer one
+might be injured, when the inner record would remain. Rows of figures
+across the tablet are impressed on it with seals called from their shape
+cylinders, which were rolled over the soft moist clay. These cylinders
+were generally of some valuable, hard stone--jasper, amethyst,
+cornelian, onyx, agate, etc.,--and were used as signet rings were later
+and are still. They are found in great numbers, being from their
+hardness well-nigh indestructible. They were generally bored through,
+and through the hole was passed either a string to wear them on, or a
+metal axis, to roll them more easily.[V] There is a large and most
+valuable collection of seal cylinders at the British Museum. Their size
+ranges from a quarter of an inch to two inches or a little more. But
+cylinders were also made of baked clay and larger size, and then served
+a different purpose, that of historical documents. These are found in
+the foundations of palaces and temples, mostly in the four corners, in
+small niches or chambers, generally produced by leaving out one or more
+bricks. These tiny monuments range from a couple of inches to half a
+foot in height, seldom more; they are sometimes shaped like a prism with
+several faces (mostly six), sometimes like a barrel, and covered with
+that compact and minute writing which it often requires a magnifying
+glass to make out. Owing to their sheltered position, these singular
+records are generally very well preserved. Although their original
+destination is only to tell by whom and for what purpose the building
+has been erected, they frequently proceed to give a full though
+condensed account of the respective kings' reigns, so that, should the
+upper structure with its engraved annals be destroyed by the
+vicissitudes of war or in the course of natural decay, some memorial of
+their deeds should still be preserved--a prevision which, in several
+cases, has been literally fulfilled. Sometimes the manner and material
+of these records were still more fanciful. At Khorsabad, at the very
+interior part of the construction, was found a large stone chest, which
+enclosed several inscribed plates in various materials. "... In this only
+extant specimen of an Assyrian foundation stone were found one little
+golden tablet, one of silver, others of copper, lead and tin; a sixth
+text was engraved on alabaster, and the seventh document was written on
+the chest itself."[W] Unfortunately the heavier portion of this
+remarkable find was sent with a collection which foundered on the Tigris
+and was lost. Only the small plates,--gold, silver, copper and tin
+(antimonium scholars now think it to be)--survived, and the inscriptions
+on them have been read and translated. They all commemorate, in very
+nearly the same terms, the foundation and erection of a new city and
+palace by a very famous king and conqueror, generally (though not
+correctly) called Sargon, and three of them end with a request to the
+kings his successors to keep the building in good repair, with a prayer
+for their welfare if they do and a heavy curse if they fail in this
+duty: "Whoever alters the works of my hand, destroys my constructions,
+pulls down the walls which I have raised,--may Asshur, Ninêb, Ramân and
+the great gods who dwell there, pluck his name and seed from the land
+and let him sit bound at the feet of his foe." Most inscriptions end
+with invocations of the same kind, for, in the words of Ménant: "it was
+not mere whim which impelled the kings of Assyria to build so
+assiduously. Palaces had in those times a destination which they have no
+longer in ours. Not only was the palace indeed _the dwelling of
+royalty_, as the inscriptions have it,--it was also the BOOK, which each
+sovereign began at his accession to the throne and in which he was to
+record the history of his reign."[X]
+
+[Illustration: 52.--PRISM OF SENNACHERIB. ALSO CALLED "TAYLOR
+CYLINDER."]
+
+[Illustration: 53.--INSCRIBED CYLINDER FROM BORSIP.]
+
+And each such book of brick and stone we can with perfect truth call a
+chapter--or a volume--of the great Book of the Past whose leaves are
+scattered over the face of the earth.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[U] See Fig. 48, p. 111.
+
+[V] See above, Figs. 49 and 50.
+
+[W] Dr. Julius Oppert, "Records of the Past," Vol. XI., p. 31.
+
+[X] "Les Écritures Cunéiformes," of Joachim Ménant: page 198 (2d
+edition, 1864).
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CHALDEA AND NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES]
+
+                       THE STORY OF CHALDEA.
+
+                                I.
+
+        NOMADS AND SETTLERS.--THE FOUR STAGES OF CULTURE.
+
+
+1. Men, whatever their pursuit or business, can live only in one of two
+ways: they can stay where they are, or they can go from one place to
+another. In the present state of the world, we generally do a little of
+both. There is some place--city, village, or farm--where we have our
+home and our work. But from time to time we go to other places, on
+visits or on business, or travel for a certain length of time to great
+distances and many places, for instruction and pleasure. Still, there is
+usually some place which we think of as home and to which we return.
+Wandering or roving is not our natural or permanent condition. But there
+are races for whom it is. The Bedouin Arabs are the principal and best
+known of such races. Who has not read with delight accounts of their
+wild life in the deserts of Arabia and Northern Africa, so full of
+adventure and romance,--of their wonderful, priceless horses who are to
+them as their own children,--of their noble qualities, bravery,
+hospitality, generosity, so strangely blended with love of booty and a
+passion for robbing expeditions? They are indeed a noble race, and it is
+not their choice, but their country which has made them robbers and
+rovers--Nomads, as such wandering races are called in history and
+geography. They cannot build cities on the sand of the desert, and the
+small patches of pasture and palm groves, kept fresh and green by
+solitary springs and called "oases," are too far apart, too distant from
+permanently peopled regions to admit of comfortable settlement. In the
+south of Arabia and along the sea-shore, where the land is fertile and
+inviting, they live much as other nations do, and when, a thousand years
+ago, Arabs conquered vast and wealthy countries both in Europe and Asia,
+and in Africa too, they not only became model husbandmen, but built some
+of the finest cities in the world, had wise and strictly enforced laws
+and took the lead in literature and science. Very different are the
+scattered nomadic tribes which still roam the steppes of Eastern Russia,
+of Siberia and Central Asia. They are not as gifted by far as the Arabs,
+yet would probably quickly settle down to farming, were it not that
+their wealth consists in flocks of sheep and studs of horses, which
+require the pasture yielded so abundantly by the grassy steppes, and
+with which they have to move from one place, when it is browsed bare, to
+another, and still another, carrying their felt-tents and simple
+utensils with them, living on the milk of their mares and the meat of
+their sheep. The Red Indian tribes of the far West present still another
+aspect of nomadic life--that of the hunter, fierce and entirely untamed,
+the simplest and wildest of all.
+
+2. On the whole, however, nomadic life is at the present day the
+exception. Most of the nations that are not savages live in houses, not
+in portable tents, in cities, not encampments, and form compact, solidly
+bound communities, not loose sets of tribes, now friendly, now hostile
+to one another. But it has not always been so. There have been times
+when settled life was the exception and nomadic life the rule. And the
+older the times, the fewer were the permanent communities, the more
+numerous the roving tribes. For wandering in search of better places
+must have been among the first impulses of intelligent humanity. Even
+when men had no shelter but caves, no pursuit but hunting the animals,
+whose flesh was their food and in whose skins they clothed themselves,
+they must frequently have gone forth, in families or detachments, either
+to escape from a neighborhood too much infested with the gigantic wild
+beasts which at one time peopled the earth more thickly than men, or
+simply because the numbers of the original cave-dwellers had become too
+great for the cave to hold them. The latter must have been a very usual
+occurrence: families stayed together until they had no longer room
+enough, or quarrelled, when they separated. Those who went never saw
+again the place and kindred they left, although they carried with them
+memories of both, the few simple arts they had learned there and the
+customs in which they had been trained. They would stop at some
+congenial halting-place, when, after a time, the same process would be
+repeated--and so again and again.
+
+3. How was the first horse conquered, the first wild-dog tamed and
+conciliated? How were cattle first enticed to give man their milk, to
+depend on his care and follow his movements? Who shall tell? However
+that may have happened, it is certain that the transition from a
+hunter's wild, irregular and almost necessarily lawless existence to the
+gentler pursuits of pastoral life must have been attended by a great
+change in manners and character. The feeling of ownership too, one of
+the principal promoters of a well-regulated state of society, must have
+quickly developed with the possession of rapidly increasing wealth in
+sheep and horses,--the principal property of nomadic races. But it was
+not a kind of property which encouraged to settling, or uniting in close
+communities; quite the contrary. Large flocks need vast pasture-grounds.
+Besides, it is desirable to keep them apart in order to avoid confusion
+and disputes about wells and springs, those rare treasures of the
+steppes, which are liable to exhaustion or drying up, and which,
+therefore, one flock-owner is not likely to share with another, though
+that other were of his own race and kin. The Book of Genesis, which
+gives us so faithful and lively a picture of this nomadic pastoral life
+of ancient nations, in the account of the wanderings of Abraham and the
+other Hebrew patriarchs, has preserved such an incident in the quarrel
+between the herdsmen of Abraham and his nephew Lot, which led to their
+separation. This is what Abraham said to Lot: "Is not the whole land
+before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take
+the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the
+right hand, then I will go to the left."[Y] So also it is said of Esau
+that he "went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob: for
+their riches were more than they might dwell together, and the land
+wherein they were strangers could not bear them because of their
+cattle."[Z] This was a facility offered by those immense plains,
+unclaimed as yet by any one people in particular, and which must
+oft-times have averted strife and bloodshed, but which ceased from the
+moment that some one tribe, tired of wandering or tempted by some more
+than usually engaging spot, settled down on it, marking that and the
+country around it, as far as its power reached, for its own. There is
+even now in the East something very similar to this mode of occupation.
+In the Turkish Empire, which is, in many places, thinly peopled, there
+are large tracts of waste land, sometimes very fertile, accounted as
+nobody's property, and acknowledged to belong, legally and forever, to
+the first man who takes possession of them, provided he cultivates them.
+The government asks no purchase price for the land, but demands taxes
+from it as soon as it has found an owner and begins to yield crops.
+
+4. The pastoral nomad's life is, like the hunter's, a singularly free
+one,--free both from restraint, and, comparatively, from toil. For
+watching and tending flocks is not a laborious occupation, and no
+authority can always reach or weigh very heavily on people who are here
+to-day and elsewhere to-morrow. Therefore, it is only with the third
+stage of human existence, the agricultural one, that civilization, which
+cannot subsist without permanent homes and authority, really commences.
+The farmer's homestead is the beginning of the State, as the hearth or
+fireplace was the beginning of the family. The different labors of the
+fields, the house, and the dairy require a great number of hands and a
+well-regulated distribution of the work, and so keep several generations
+of the settler's family together, on the same farm. Life in common makes
+it absolutely necessary to have a set of simple rules for home
+government, to prevent disputes, keep up order and harmony, and settle
+questions of mutual rights and duties. Who should set down and enforce
+these rules but the head of the family, the founder of the race--the
+patriarch? And when the family has become too numerous for the original
+homestead to hold it, and part of it has to leave it, to found a new
+home for itself, it does not, as in the primitive nomadic times, wander
+off at random and break all ties, but settles close by on a portion of
+the family land, or takes possession of a new piece of ground somewhat
+further off, but still within easy reach. In the first case the land
+which had been common property gets broken up into lots, which, though
+belonging more particularly to the members who separate from the old
+stock, are not for that withdrawn from the authority of the patriarch.
+There are several homesteads now, which form a village, and, later on,
+several villages; but the bond of kindred, of tradition and custom is
+religiously preserved, as well as subordination to the common head of
+the race, whose power keeps increasing as the community grows in numbers
+and extent of land, as the greater complications of relationships,
+property, inheritance, demand more laws and a stricter rule,--until he
+becomes not so much Father as King. Then naturally come collisions with
+neighboring similar settlements, friendly or hostile, which result in
+alliances or quarrels, trade or war, and herewith we have the State
+complete, with inner organization and foreign policy.
+
+5. This stage of culture, in its higher development, combines with the
+fourth and last--city-building, and city-life, when men of the same
+race, and conscious of a common origin, but practically strangers to
+each other, form settlements on a large scale, which, being enclosed in
+walls, become places of refuge and defence, centres of commerce,
+industry and government. For, when a community has become very numerous,
+with wants multiplied by continual improvements and increasing culture,
+each family can no longer make all the things it needs, and a portion of
+the population devotes itself to manufacture and arts, occupations best
+pursued in cities, while the other goes on cultivating the land and
+raising cattle, the two sets of produces--those of nature and those of
+the cunning hand and brain--being bartered one for the other, or, when
+coin is invented, exchanged through that more convenient medium. In the
+same manner, the task of government having become too manifold and
+complicated for one man, the former Patriarch, now King, is obliged to
+surround himself with assistants--either the elders of the race, or
+persons of his own choice,--and send others to different places, to rule
+in his name and under his authority. The city in which the King and his
+immediate ministers and officers reside, naturally becomes the most
+important one--the Capital of the State.
+
+6. It does not follow by any means that a people, once settled, never
+stirred from its adopted country. The migratory or wandering instinct
+never quite died out--our own love of travelling sufficiently proves
+that--and it was no unfrequent occurrence in very ancient times for
+large tribes, even portions of nations, to start off again in search of
+new homes and to found new cities, compelled thereto either by the
+gradual overcrowding of the old country, or by intestine discords, or by
+the invasion of new nomadic tribes of a different race who drove the old
+settlers before them to take possession of their settlements, massacred
+them if they resisted and reduced those who remained to an irksome
+subjection. Such invasions, of course, might also be perpetrated with
+the same results by regular armies, led by kings and generals from some
+other settled and organized country. The alternative between bondage
+and emigration must have been frequently offered, and the choice in
+favor of the latter was helped not a little by the spirit of adventure
+inborn in man, tempted by so many unexplored regions as there were in
+those remote ages.
+
+7. Such have been the beginnings of all nations. There can be no other.
+And there is one more observation which will scarcely ever prove wrong.
+It is that, however far we may go back into the past, the people whom we
+find inhabiting any country at the very dawn of tradition, can always be
+shown to have come from somewhere else, and not to have been the first
+either. Every swarm of nomads or adventurers who either pass through a
+country or stop and settle there, always find it occupied already. Now
+the older population was hardly ever entirely destroyed or dislodged by
+the newcomers. A portion at least remained, as an inferior or subject
+race, but in time came to mix with them, mostly in the way of
+intermarriage. Then again, if the newcomers were peaceable and there was
+room enough--which there generally was in very early times--they would
+frequently be suffered to form separate settlements, and dwell in the
+land; when they would either remain in a subordinate condition, or, if
+they were the finer and better gifted race, they would quickly take the
+upper hand, teach the old settlers their own arts and ideas, their
+manners and their laws. If the new settlement was effected by conquest,
+the arrangement was short and simple: the conquerors, though less
+numerous, at once established themselves as masters and formed a ruling
+nobility, an aristocracy, while the old owners of the land, those at
+least that did not choose to emigrate, became what may be called "the
+common people," bound to do service and pay tribute or taxes to their
+self-instituted masters. Every country has generally experienced, at
+various times, all these modes of invasion, so that each nation may be
+said to have been formed gradually, in successive layers, as it were,
+and often of very different elements, which either finally amalgamated
+or kept apart, according to circumstances.
+
+The early history of Chaldea is a particularly good illustration of all
+that has just been said.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Y] Genesis, xiii. 7-11.
+
+[Z] Genesis, xxxvi. 6-7.
+
+
+
+
+                               II.
+
+             THE GREAT RACES.--CHAPTER X. OF GENESIS.
+
+
+1. The Bible says (Genesis xi. 2): "And it came to pass, as they
+journeyed in the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar;
+and they dwelt there."
+
+Shinar--or, more correctly, Shineâr--is what may be called Babylonia
+proper, that part of Mesopotamia where Babylon was, and south of it,
+almost to the Gulf. "They" are descendants of Noah, long after the
+Flood. They found the plain and dwelt there, but they did not find the
+whole land desert; it had been occupied long before them. How long? For
+such remote ages an exact valuation of time in years is not to be
+thought of.
+
+2. What people were those whom the descendants of Noah found in the land
+to which they came from the East? It seems a simple question, yet no
+answer could have been given to it even as lately as fifteen or sixteen
+years ago, and when the answer was first suggested by unexpected
+discoveries made in the Royal Library at Nineveh, it startled the
+discoverers extremely. The only indication on the subject then known was
+this, from a Chaldean writer of a late period: "There was originally at
+Babylon" (i.e., in the land of Babylon, not the city alone) "a multitude
+of men of foreign race who had settled in Chaldea." This is told by
+Berosus, a learned priest of Babylon, who lived immediately after
+Alexander the Great had conquered the country, and when the Greeks ruled
+it (somewhat after 300 B.C.). He wrote a history of it from the most
+ancient times, in which he gave an account of the oldest traditions
+concerning its beginnings. As he wrote his book in Greek, it is probable
+that his object was to acquaint the new masters with the history and
+religion of the land and people whom they had come to rule.
+Unfortunately the work was lost--as so many valuable works have been, as
+long as there was no printing, and books existed only in a few
+manuscript copies--and we know of it only some short fragments, quoted
+by later writers, in whose time Berosus' history was still accessible.
+The above lines are contained in one such fragment, and naturally led to
+the question: who were these men of foreign race who came from somewhere
+else and settled in Chaldea in immemorial times?
+
+3. One thing appears clear: they belonged to none of the races classed
+in the Bible as descended from Noah, but probably to one far older,
+which had not been included in the Flood.
+
+4. For it begins to be pretty generally understood nowadays that the
+Flood may not have been absolutely universal, but have extended over the
+countries _which the Hebrews knew_, which made _their_ world, and that
+not literally all living beings except those who are reported to have
+been in the Ark may have perished in it. From a negligent habit of
+reading Chap. VI.-IX. of Genesis without reference to the texts of other
+chapters of the same Book, it has become a general habit to understand
+it in this literal manner. Yet the evidence is by no means so positive.
+The question was considered an open one by profounder students even in
+antiquity, and freely discussed both among the Jews themselves and the
+Fathers of the early Christian Church. The following are the statements
+given in the Book of Genesis; we have only to take them out of their
+several places and connect them.
+
+5. When Cain had killed his brother Abel, God banished him from the
+_earth_ which had received his brother's blood and laid a curse on him:
+"a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the _earth_"--using another
+word than the first time, one which means earth in general (_éréç_), in
+opposition to _the_ earth (_adâmâh_), or fruitful land to the east of
+Eden, in which Adam and Eve dwelt after their expulsion. Then Cain went
+forth, still further East, and dwelt in a land which was called "the
+land of Nod," _i.e._, "of wandering" or "exile." He had a son, Enoch,
+after whom he named the city which he built,--the first city,--and
+descendants. Of these the fifth, Lamech, a fierce and lawless man, had
+three sons, two of whom, Jabal and Jubal, led a pastoral and nomadic
+life; but the third, Tubalcain, invented the use of metals: he was "the
+forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron." This is what the
+Chap. IV. of Genesis tells of Cain, his crime, his exile and immediate
+posterity. After that they are heard of no more. Adam, meanwhile, has a
+third son, born after he had lost the first two and whom he calls Seth
+(more correctly _Sheth_). The descendants of this son are enumerated in
+Chap. V.; the list ends with Noah. These are the parallel races: the
+accursed and the blest, the proscribed of God and the loved of God, the
+one that "goes out of the presence of the Lord" and the one that "calls
+on the name of the Lord," and "walks with God." Of the latter race the
+last-named, Noah, is "a just man, perfect in his generation," and "finds
+grace in the eyes of the Lord."
+
+6. Then comes the narrative of the Flood (Chap. VI.-VIII.), the covenant
+of God with Noah and re-peopling of the earth by his posterity (Chap.
+IX.). Lastly Chap. X. gives us the list of the generations of Noah's
+three sons, Shem, Ham and Japhet;--"of these were the nations divided in
+the earth after the flood."
+
+7. Now this tenth chapter of Genesis is the oldest and most important
+document in existence concerning the origins of races and nations, and
+comprises all those with whom the Jews, in the course of their early
+history, have had any dealings, at least all those who belonged to the
+great white division of mankind. But in order properly to understand it
+and appreciate its value and bearing, it must not be forgotten that EACH
+NAME IN THE LIST IS THAT OF A RACE, A PEOPLE OR A TRIBE, NOT THAT OF A
+MAN. It was a common fashion among the Orientals--a fashion adopted also
+by ancient European nations--to express in this manner the kindred
+connections of nations among themselves and their differences. Both for
+brevity and clearness, such historical genealogies are very convenient.
+They must have been suggested by a proceeding most natural in ages of
+ignorance, and which consists in a tribe's explaining its own name by
+taking it for granted that it was that of its founder. Thus the name of
+the Assyrians is really Asshur. Why? Clearly, they would answer, if
+asked the question, because their kingdom was founded by one whose name
+was Asshur. Another famous nation, the Aramæans, are supposed to be so
+called because the name of their founder was Aram; the Hebrews name
+themselves from a similarly supposed ancestor, Heber. These three
+nations,--and several more, the Arabs among others--spoke languages so
+much alike that they could easily understand each other, and had
+generally many common features in looks and character. How account for
+that? By making their founders, Asshur, and Aram, and Heber, etc., sons
+or descendants of one great head or progenitor, Shem, a son of Noah. It
+is a kind of parable which is extremely clear once one has the key to
+it, when nothing is easier than to translate it into our own sober,
+positive forms of speech. The above bit of genealogy would read thus: A
+large portion of humanity is distinguished by certain features more or
+less peculiar to itself; it is one of several great races, and has been
+called for more than a hundred years the Semitic, (better Shemitic)
+race, the race of Shem. This race is composed of many different tribes
+and nations, who have gone each its own way, have each its own name and
+history, speak dialects of the same original language, and have
+preserved many common ideas, customs and traits of character,--which all
+shows that the race was once united and dwelt together, then, as it
+increased in numbers, broke up into fractions, of which some rose to be
+great and famous nations and some remained comparatively insignificant
+tribes. The same applies to the subdivisions of the great white race
+(the whitest of all) to which nearly all the European nations belong,
+and which is personified in the Bible under the name of Japhet, third
+son of Noah,--and to those of a third great race, also originally white,
+which is broken up into very many fractions, both great nations and
+scattered tribes, all exhibiting a decided likeness to each other. The
+Bible gives the names of all these most carefully, and sums up the whole
+of them under the name of the second son of Noah, Ham, whom it calls
+their common progenitor.
+
+8. That the genealogies of Chap. X. of Genesis should be understood in
+this sense, has long been admitted by scientists and churchmen. St.
+Augustine, one of the greatest among the Fathers of the early church,
+pointedly says that the names in it represent "nations, not men."[AA] On
+the other hand there is also literal truth in them, in this way, that,
+if all mankind is descended from one human couple, every fraction of it
+must necessarily have had some one particular father or ancestor, only
+in so remote a past that his individuality or actual name cannot
+possibly have been remembered, when every people, as has been remarked
+above, naturally gave him its own name. Of these names many show by
+their very nature that they could not have belonged to individuals. Some
+are plural, like MIZRAIM, "the Egyptians;" some have the article: "_the_
+AMORITE, _the_ HIVITE;" one even is the name of a city: SIDON is called
+"the first-born of Canaan;" now Sidon was long the greatest maritime
+city of the Canaanites, who held an undisputed supremacy over the rest,
+and therefore "the first-born." The name means "fisheries"--an
+appropriate one for a city on the sea, which must of course have been at
+first a settlement of fishermen. "CANAAN" really is the name of a vast
+region, inhabited by a great many nations and tribes, all differing from
+each other in many ways, yet manifestly of one race, wherefore they are
+called "the sons of Canaan," Canaan being personified in a common
+ancestor, given as one of the four sons of Ham. Modern science has, for
+convenience' sake, adopted a special word for such imaginary personages,
+invented to account for a nation's, tribe's, or city's name, while
+summing up, so to speak, its individuality: they are called EPONYMS. The
+word is Greek, and means "one from whom or for whom somebody or
+something is named," a "namesake." It is not too much to say that, while
+popular tradition always claims that the eponymous ancestor or
+city-founder gave his name to his family, race, or city, the contrary is
+in reality invariably the case, the name of the race or city being
+transferred to him. Or, in other words, the eponym is really only that
+name, transformed into a traditional person by a bold and vivid poetical
+figure of speech, which, if taken for what it is, makes the beginnings
+of political history wonderfully plain and easy to grasp and classify.
+
+9. Yet, complete and correct as is the list of Chap. X., within the
+limits which the writer has set to himself, it by no means exhausts the
+nations of the earth. The reason of the omissions, however, is easily
+seen. Among the posterity of Japhet the Greeks indeed are mentioned,
+(under the name of JAVAN, which should be pronounced _Yawan_, and some
+of his sons), but not a single one of the other ancient peoples of
+Europe,--Germans, Italians, Celts, etc.,--who also belonged to that
+race, as we, their descendants, do. But then, at the time Chap. X. was
+written, these countries, from their remoteness, were outside of the
+world in which the Hebrews moved, beyond their horizon, so to speak.
+They either did not know them at all, or, having nothing to do with
+them, did not take them into consideration. In neither case would they
+have been given a place in the great list. The same may be said of
+another large portion of the same race, which dwelt to the far East and
+South of the Hebrews--the Hindoos, (the white conquerors of India), and
+the Persians. There came a time indeed, when the latter not only came
+into contact with the Jews, but were their masters; but either that was
+after Chap. X. was written or the Persians were identified by the
+writers with a kindred nation, the Persians' near neighbor, who had
+flourished much earlier and reacted in many ways on the countries
+westward of it; this nation was the MEDES, who, under the name of MADAI,
+are mentioned as one of the sons of Japhet, with Javan the Greek.
+
+10. More noticeable and more significant than these partial omissions is
+the determination with which the authors of Chap. X. consistently ignore
+all those divisions of mankind which do not belong to one of the three
+great _white_ races. Neither the Black nor the Yellow races are
+mentioned at all; they are left without the pale of the Hebrew
+brotherhood of nations. Yet the Jews, who staid three or four hundred
+years in Egypt, surely learned there to know the real negro, for the
+Egyptians were continually fighting with pure-blood black tribes in the
+south and south-west, and bringing in thousands of black captives, who
+were made to work at their great buildings and in their stone-quarries.
+But these people were too utterly barbarous and devoid of all culture or
+political importance to be taken into account. Besides, the Jews could
+not be aware of the vast extent of the earth occupied by the black race,
+since the greater part of Africa was then unknown to the world, and so
+were the islands to the south of India, also Australia and its
+islands--all seats of different sections of that race.
+
+11. The same could not be said of the Yellow Race. True, its principal
+representatives, the nations of the far East of Asia--the Chinese, the
+Mongols and the Mandchous,--could not be known to the Hebrews at any
+time of antiquity, but there were more than enough representatives of
+it who could not be _un_known to them.[AB] For it was both a very old
+and extremely numerous race, which early spread over the greater part of
+the earth and at one time probably equalled in numbers the rest of
+mankind. It seems always to have been broken up into a great many tribes
+and peoples, whom it has been found convenient to gather under the
+general designation of TURANIANS, from a very ancient name,--TUR or
+TURA--which was given them by the white population of Persia and Central
+Asia, and which is still preserved in that of one of their principal
+surviving branches, the TURKS. All the different members of this great
+family have had very striking features in common,--the most
+extraordinary being an incapability of reaching the highest culture, of
+progressing indefinitely, improving continually. A strange law of their
+being seems to have condemned them to stop short, when they had attained
+a certain, not very advanced, stage. Thus their speech has remained
+extremely imperfect. They spoke, and such Turanian nations as now exist
+still speak, languages, which, however they may differ, all have this
+peculiarity, that they are composed either entirely of monosyllables,
+(the most rudimentary form of speech), or of monosyllables pieced into
+words in the stiffest, most unwieldy manner, stuck together, as it
+were, with nothing to join them, wherefore this kind of language has
+been called _agglutinative_. Chinese belongs to the former class of
+languages, the "monosyllabic," Turkish to the latter, the
+"agglutinative." Further, the Turanians were probably the first to
+invent writing, but never went in that art beyond having one particular
+sign for every single word--(such is Chinese writing with its forty
+thousand signs or thereabouts, as many as words in the language)--or at
+most a sign for every syllable. They had beautiful beginnings of poetry,
+but in that also never went beyond beginnings. They were also probably
+the first who built cities, but were wanting in the qualities necessary
+to organize a society, establish a state on solid and lasting
+foundations. At one time they covered the whole of Western Asia, dwelt
+there for ages before any other race occupied it,--fifteen hundred
+years, according to a very trustworthy tradition,--and were called by
+the ancients "the oldest of men;" but they vanish and are not heard of
+any more the moment that white invaders come into the land; these drive
+the Turanians before them, or bring them into complete subjection, or
+mix with them, but, by force of their own superiorly gifted nature,
+retain the dominant position, so that the others lose all separate
+existence. Thus it was everywhere. For wherever tribes of the three
+Biblical races came, they mostly found Turanian populations who had
+preceded them. There are now a great number of Turanian tribes, more or
+less numerous--Kirghizes, Bashkirs, Ostiaks, Tunguzes, etc.,
+etc.--scattered over the vast expanse of Siberia and Eastern Russia,
+where they roam at will with their flocks and herds of horses,
+occasionally settling down,--fragmentary remnants of a race which, to
+this latest time, has preserved its original peculiarities and
+imperfections, whose day is done, which has long ceased to improve,
+unless it assimilates with the higher white race and adopts their
+culture, when all that it lacked is supplied by the nobler element which
+mixes with it, as in the case of the Hungarians, one of the most
+high-spirited and talented nations of Europe, originally of Turanian
+stock. The same may be said, in a lesser degree, of the Finns--the
+native inhabitants of the Russian principality of Finland.
+
+12. All this by no means goes to show that the Yellow Race has ever been
+devoid of fine faculties and original genius. Quite the contrary; for,
+if white races everywhere stepped in, took the work of civilization out
+of their hands and carried it on to a perfection of which they were
+incapable, still they, the Turanians, had everywhere _begun_ that work,
+it was their inventions which the others took up and improved: and we
+must remember that it is very much easier to improve than to invent.
+Only there is that strange limitation to their power of progress and
+that want of natural refinement, which are as a wall that encloses them
+around. Even the Chinese, who, at first sight, are a brilliant
+exception, are not so on a closer inspection. True, they have founded
+and organized a great empire which still endures; they have a vast
+literature, they have made most important inventions--printing,
+manufacturing paper out of rags, the use of the compass,
+gunpowder--centuries before European nations made them in their turn.
+Yet the latter do all those things far better; they have improved these,
+to them, new inventions more in a couple of hundred years than the
+Chinese in a thousand. In fact it is a good many centuries since the
+Chinese have ceased to improve anything at all. Their language and
+writing are childishly imperfect, though the oldest in existence. In
+government, in the forms of social life, in their ideas generally, they
+follow rules laid down for them three thousand years ago or more and
+from which to swerve a hair's breadth were blasphemy. As they have
+always stubbornly resisted foreign influences, and gone the length of
+trying actually to erect material walls between themselves and the rest
+of the world, their empire is a perfectly fair specimen of what the
+Yellow Race can do, if left entirely to itself, and quite as much of
+what it can_not_ do, and now they have for centuries presented that
+unique phenomenon--a great nation at a standstill.
+
+13. All this obviously leads us to a very interesting and suggestive
+question: what is this great race which we find everywhere at the very
+roots of history, so that not only ancient tradition calls them "the
+oldest of men," but modern science more and more inclines to the same
+opinion? Whence came it? How is it not included in the great family of
+nations, of which Chap. X. of Genesis gives so clear and comprehensive a
+scheme? Parallel to this question arises another: what became of Cain's
+posterity? What, above all, of the descendants of those three sons of
+Lamech, whom the writer of Genesis clearly places before us as heads of
+nations and thinks of sufficient importance to specify what their
+occupations were? (See Genesis iv. 19-22.) Why do we never hear any more
+of this entire half of humanity, severed in the very beginning from the
+other half--the lineage of the accursed son from that of the blest and
+favored son? And may not the answer to this series of questions be the
+answer to the first series also?
+
+14. With regard to the second series this answer is plain and decisive.
+The descendants of Cain were necessarily out of the pale of the Hebrew
+world. The curse of God, in consequence of which their forefather is
+said to have gone "out of the presence of the Lord," at once and forever
+separated them from the posterity of the pious son, from those who
+"walked with God." The writer of Genesis tells us that they lived in the
+"Land of Exile" and multiplied, then dismisses them. For what could the
+elect, the people of God, or even those other nations who went astray,
+who were repeatedly chastised, but whose family bond with the righteous
+race was never entirely severed--what could they have in common with the
+banished, the castaway, the irretrievably accursed? These did not count,
+they were not of humanity. What more probable, therefore, than that,
+being excluded from all the other narratives, they should not be
+included in that of the Flood? And in that case, who should they be but
+that most ancient race, set apart by its color and several striking
+peculiarities, which everywhere preceded their white brethren, but were
+invariably supplanted by them and not destined to supremacy on the
+earth? This supposition has been hazarded by men of great genius, and if
+bold, still has much to support it; if confirmed it would solve many
+puzzles, throw strong and unexpected light on many obscure points. The
+very antiquity of the Yellow Race tallies admirably with the Biblical
+narrative, for of the two Biblical brothers Cain was the eldest. And the
+doom laid on the race, "a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be on the
+earth," has not been revoked through all ages. Wherever pure Turanians
+are--they are nomads. And when, fifteen hundred years ago and later,
+countless swarms of barbarous people flooded Europe, coming from the
+east, and swept all before them, the Turanian hordes could be known
+chiefly by this, that they destroyed, burned, laid waste--and passed,
+vanished: whereas the others, after treating a country quite as
+savagely, usually settled in it and founded states, most of which exist
+even now--for, French, German, English, Russian, we are all descended
+from some of those barbarous invaders. And this also would fully explain
+how it came to pass that, although the Hebrews and their
+forefathers--let us say the Semites generally--everywhere found
+Turanians on their way, nay, dwelt in the same lands with them, the
+sacred historian ignores them completely, as in Gen. xi. 2.
+
+15. For they were Turanians, arrived at a, for them, really high state
+of culture, who peopled the land of Shinar, when "_they_"--descendants
+of Noah,--journeying in the East, found that plain where they dwelt for
+many years.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AA] "_Gentes non homines._" (_De Civitate Dei_, XVII., 3.)
+
+[AB] If, as has been suggested, the "land of Sinim" in Isaiah xlix., 12,
+is meant for China, such a solitary, incidental and unspecified mention
+of a country the name of which may have been vaguely used to express the
+remotest East, cannot invalidate the scheme so evidently and
+persistently pursued in the composition of Chap. X.
+
+
+
+
+                               III.
+
+  TURANIAN CHALDEA.--SHUMIR AND ACCAD.--THE BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION.
+
+
+1. It is not Berosus alone who speaks of the "multitudes of men of
+foreign race" who colonized Chaldea "in the beginning." It was a
+universally admitted fact throughout antiquity that the population of
+the country had always been a mixed one, but a fact known vaguely,
+without particulars. On this subject, as on so many others, the
+discoveries made in the royal library of Nineveh shed an unexpected and
+most welcome light. The very first, so to speak preliminary, study of
+the tablets showed that there were amongst them documents in two
+entirely different languages, of which one evidently was that of an
+older population of Chaldea. The other and later language, usually
+called Assyrian, because it was spoken also by the Assyrians, being very
+like Hebrew, an understanding of it was arrived at with comparative
+ease. As to the older language there was absolutely no clue. The only
+conjecture which could be made with any certainty was, that it must have
+been spoken by a double people, called the people of Shumir and Accad,
+because later kings of Babylon, in their inscriptions, always gave
+themselves the title of "Kings of Shumir and Accad," a title which the
+Assyrian sovereigns, who at times conquered Chaldea, did not fail to
+take also. But who and what were these people might never have been
+cleared up, but for the most fortunate discovery of dictionaries and
+grammars, which, the texts being supplied with Assyrian translations,
+served our modern scholars, just as they did Assyrian students 3000
+years ago, to decipher and learn to understand the oldest language of
+Chaldea. Of course, it was a colossal piece of work, beset with
+difficulties which it required an almost fierce determination and
+superhuman patience to master. But every step made was so amply repaid
+by the results obtained, that the zeal of the laborers was never
+suffered to flag, and the effected reconstruction, though far from
+complete even now, already enables us to conjure a very suggestive and
+life-like picture of those first settlers of the Mesopotamian Lowlands,
+their character, religion and pursuits.
+
+2. The language thus strangely brought to light was very soon perceived
+to be distinctly of that peculiar and primitive type--partly
+monosyllables, partly words rudely pieced together,--which has been
+described in a preceding chapter as characteristic of the Turanian race,
+and which is known in science by the general name of _agglutinative_,
+i.e., "glued or stuck together," without change in the words, either by
+declension or conjugation. The people of Shumir and Accad, therefore,
+were one and the same Turanian nation, the difference in the name being
+merely a geographical one. SHUMIR is Southern or Lower Chaldea, the
+country towards and around the Persian Gulf,--that very land of Shinar
+which is mentioned in Genesis xi. 2. Indeed "Shinar" is only the way in
+which the Hebrews pronounced and spelt the ancient name of Lower
+Chaldea. ACCAD is Northern or Upper Chaldea. The most correct way, and
+the safest from all misunderstanding, is to name the people the
+Shumiro-Accads and their language, the Shumiro-Accadian; but for
+brevity's sake, the first name is frequently dropped, and many say
+simply "the Accads" and "the Accadian language." It is clear, however,
+that the royal title must needs unite both names, which together
+represented the entire country of Chaldea. Of late it has been
+discovered that the Shumiro-Accads spoke two slightly differing dialects
+of the same language, that of Shumir being most probably the older of
+the two, as culture and conquest seem to have been carried steadily
+northward from the Gulf.
+
+3. That the Accads themselves came from somewhere else, is plain from
+several circumstances, although there is not the faintest symptom or
+trace of any people whom they may have found in the country. They
+brought into it the very first and most essential rudiments of
+civilization, the art of writing, and that of working metals; it was
+probably also they who began to dig those canals without which the land,
+notwithstanding its fabulous fertility, must always be a marshy waste,
+and who began to make bricks and construct buildings out of them. There
+is ground to conclude that they came down from mountains in the fact
+that the name "Accad" means "Mountains" or "Highlands," a name which
+they could not possibly have taken in the dead flats of Lower Chaldea,
+but must have retained as a relic of an older home. It is quite possible
+that this home may have been in the neighboring wild and mountainous
+land of SHUSHAN (Susiana on the maps), whose first known population was
+also Turanian. These guesses take us into a past, where not a speck of
+positive fact can be discerned. Yet even that must have been only a
+station in this race's migration from a far more northern centre. Their
+written language, even after they had lived for centuries in an almost
+tropical country, where palms grew in vast groves, almost forests, and
+lions were common game, as plentiful as tigers in the jungles of Bengal,
+contained no sign to designate either the one or the other, while it was
+well stocked with the signs of metals,--of which there is no vestige, of
+course, in Chaldea,--and all that belongs to the working thereof. As the
+ALTAÏ range, the great Siberian chain, has always been famous for its
+rich mines of every possible metal ore, and as the valleys of the Altaï
+are known to be the nests from which innumerable Turanian tribes
+scattered to the north and south, and in which many dwell to this day
+after their own nomadic fashion, there is no extravagance in supposing
+that _there_ may have been our Accads' original point of departure.
+Indeed the Altaï is so indissolubly connected with the origin of most
+Turanian nations, that many scientists prefer to call the entire Yellow
+Race, with all its gradations of color, "the Altaïc." Their own
+traditions point the same way. Several of them have a pretty legend of a
+sort of paradise, a secluded valley somewhere in the Altaï, pleasant and
+watered by many streams, where their forefathers either dwelt in the
+first place or whither they were providentially conducted to be saved
+from a general massacre. The valley was entirely enclosed with high
+rocks, steep and pathless, so that when, after several hundred years, it
+could no longer hold the number of its inhabitants, these began to
+search for an issue and found none. Then one among them, who was a
+smith, discovered that the rocks were almost entirely of iron. By his
+advice, a huge fire was made and a great many mighty bellows were
+brought into play, by which means a path was _melted_ through the rocks.
+A tradition, by the by, which, while confirming the remark that the
+invention of metallurgy belongs originally to the Yellow Race in its
+earliest stages of development, is strangely in accordance with the name
+of the Biblical Tubalcain, "the forger of every cutting instrument of
+brass and iron." That the Accads were possessed of this distinctive
+accomplishment of their race is moreover made very probable by the
+various articles and ornaments in gold, brass and iron which are
+continually found in the very oldest tombs.
+
+4. But infinitely the most precious acquisition secured to us by the
+unexpected revelation of this stage of remotest antiquity is a
+wonderfully extensive collection of prayers, invocations and other
+sacred texts, from which we can reconstruct, with much probability, the
+most primitive religion in the world--for such undoubtedly was that of
+the Accads. As a clear and authentic insight into the first
+manifestation of the religious instinct in man was just what was wanting
+until now, in order to enable us to follow its development from the
+first, crudest attempts at expression to the highest aspirations and
+noblest forms of worship, the value of this discovery can never be
+overrated. It introduces us moreover into so strange and fantastical a
+world as not the most imaginative of fictions can surpass.
+
+5. The instinct of religion--"religiosity," as it has been called--is
+inborn to man; like the faculty of speech, it belongs to man, and to man
+only, of all living beings. So much so, that modern science is coming to
+acknowledge these two faculties as _the_ distinctive characteristics
+which mark man as a being apart from and above the rest of creation.
+Whereas the division of all that exists upon the earth has of old been
+into three great classes or realms--the "mineral realm," the "vegetable
+realm" and the "animal realm," in which latter man was included--it is
+now proposed to erect the human race with all its varieties into a
+separate "realm," for this very reason: that man has all that animals
+have, and two things more which they have not--speech and religiosity,
+which assume a faculty of abstract thinking, observing and drawing
+general conclusions, solely and distinctively human. Now the very first
+observations of man in the most primitive stage of his existence must
+necessarily have awakened in him a twofold consciousness--that of power
+and that of helplessness. He could do many things. Small in size, weak
+in strength, destitute of natural clothing and weapons, acutely
+sensitive to pain and atmospheric changes as all higher natures are, he
+could kill and tame the huge and powerful animals which had the
+advantage of him in all these things, whose numbers and fierceness
+threatened him at every turn with destruction, from which his only
+escape would seem to have been constant cowering and hiding. He could
+compel the earth to bear for him choicer food than for the other beings
+who lived on her gifts. He could command the service of fire, the dread
+visitor from heaven. Stepping victoriously from one achievement to
+another, ever widening his sphere of action, of invention, man could not
+but be filled with legitimate pride. But on the other hand, he saw
+himself surrounded with things which he could neither account for nor
+subdue, which had the greatest influence on his well-being, either
+favorable or hostile, but which were utterly beyond his comprehension or
+control. The same sun which ripened his crop sometimes scorched it; the
+rain which cooled and fertilized his field, sometimes swamped it; the
+hot winds parched him and his cattle; in the marshes lurked disease and
+death. All these and many, many more, were evidently POWERS, and could
+do him great good or work him great harm, while he was unable to do
+either to them. These things existed, he felt their action every day of
+his life, consequently they were to him living Beings, alive in the same
+way that he was, possessed of will, for good or for evil. In short, to
+primitive man everything in nature was alive with an individual life, as
+it is to the very young child, who would not beat the chair against
+which he has knocked himself, and then kiss it to make friends, did he
+not think that it is a living and feeling being like himself. The
+feeling of dependence and absolute helplessness thus created must have
+more than balanced that of pride and self-reliance. Man felt himself
+placed in a world where he was suffered to live and have his share of
+what good things he could get, but which was not ruled by him,--in a
+spirit-world. Spirits around him, above him, below him,--what could he
+do but humble himself, confess his dependence, and pray to be spared?
+For surely, if those spirits existed and took enough interest in him to
+do him good or evil, they could hear him and might be moved by
+supplication. To establish a distinction between such spirits which did
+only harm, were evil in themselves, and those whose action was generally
+beneficial and only on rare occasions destructive, was the next natural
+step, which led as naturally to a perception of divine displeasure as
+the cause of such terrible manifestations and a seeking of means to
+avert or propitiate it. While fear and loathing were the portion of the
+former spirits, the essentially evil ones, love and gratitude, were the
+predominant feelings inspired by the latter,--feelings which, together
+with the ever present consciousness of dependence, are the very essence
+of religion, just as praise and worship are the attempts to express them
+in a tangible form.
+
+6. It is this most primitive, material and unquestioning stage in the
+growth of religious feeling, which a large portion of the
+Shumiro-Accadian documents from the Royal Library at Nineveh brings
+before us with a force and completeness which, however much room there
+may still be for uncertainty in details, on the whole really amounts to
+more than conjecture. Much will, doubtless, be discovered yet, much will
+be done, but it will only serve to fill in a sketch, of which the
+outlines are already now tolerably fixed and authentic. The materials
+for this most important reconstruction are almost entirely contained in
+a vast collection of two hundred tablets, forming one consecutive work
+in three books, over fifty of which have been sifted out of the heap of
+rubbish at the British Museum and first deciphered by Sir Henry
+Rawlinson, one of the greatest, as he was the first discoverer in this
+field, and George Smith, whose achievements and too early death have
+been mentioned in a former chapter. Of the three books into which the
+collection is divided, one treats "of evil spirits," another of
+diseases, and the third contains hymns and prayers--the latter
+collection showing signs of a later and higher development. Out of these
+materials the lately deceased French scholar, Mr. François Lenormant,
+whose name has for the last fifteen years or so of his life stood in the
+very front of this branch of Oriental research, has been the first to
+reconstruct an entire picture in a book not very voluminous indeed, but
+which must always remain a corner-stone in the history of human culture.
+This book shall be our guide in the strange world we now enter.[AC]
+
+7. To the people of Shumir and Accad, then, the universe was peopled
+with Spirits, whom they distributed according to its different spheres
+and regions. For they had formed a very elaborate and clever, if
+peculiar idea of what they supposed the world to be like. According to
+the ingenious expression of a Greek writer of the 1st century A.D. they
+imagined it to have the shape of an inverted round boat or bowl, the
+thickness of which would represent the mixture of land and water
+(_kî-a_) which we call the crust of the earth, while the hollow beneath
+this inhabitable crust was fancied as a bottomless pit or abyss (_ge_),
+in which dwelt many powers. Above the convex surface of the earth
+(_kî-a_) spread the sky (_ana_), itself divided into two regions:--the
+highest heaven or firmament, which, with the fixed stars immovably
+attached to it, revolved, as round an axis or pivot, around an immensely
+high mountain, which joined it to the earth as a pillar, and was
+situated somewhere in the far North-East--some say North--and the lower
+heaven, where the planets--a sort of resplendent animals, seven in
+number, of beneficent nature--wandered forever on their appointed path.
+To these were opposed seven evil demons, sometimes called "the Seven
+Fiery Phantoms." But above all these, higher in rank and greater in
+power, is the Spirit (_Zi_) of heaven (_ana_), ZI-ANA, or, as often,
+simply ANA--"Heaven." Between the lower heaven and the surface of the
+earth is the atmospheric region, the realm of IM or MERMER, the Wind,
+where he drives the clouds, rouses the storms, and whence he pours down
+the rain, which is stored in the great reservoir of Ana, in the heavenly
+Ocean. As to the earthly Ocean, it is fancied as a broad river, or
+watery rim, flowing all round the edge of the imaginary inverted bowl;
+in its waters dwells ÊA (whose name means "the House of Waters"), the
+great Spirit of the Earth and Waters (_Zi-kî-a_), either in the form of
+a fish, whence he is frequently called "Êa the fish," or "the Exalted
+Fish," or on a magnificent ship, with which he travels round the earth,
+guarding and protecting it. The minor spirits of earth (_Anunnaki_) are
+not much spoken of except in a body, as a sort of host or legion. All
+the more terrible are the seven spirits of the abyss, the MASKIM, of
+whom it is said that, although their seat is in the depths of the earth,
+yet their voice resounds on the heights also: they reside at will in the
+immensity of space, "not enjoying a good name either in heaven or on
+earth." Their greatest delight is to subvert the orderly course of
+nature, to cause earthquakes, inundations, ravaging tempests. Although
+the Abyss is their birth-place and proper sphere, they are not
+submissive to its lord and ruler MUL-GE ("Lord of the Abyss"). In that
+they are like their brethren of the lower heaven who do not acknowledge
+Ana's supremacy, in fact are called "spirits of rebellion," because,
+being originally Ana's messengers, they once "secretly plotted a wicked
+deed," rose against the heavenly powers, obscured the Moon, and all but
+hurled him from his seat. But the Maskim are ever more feared and
+hated, as appears from the following description, which has become
+celebrated for its real poetical force:
+
+8. "They are seven! they are seven!--Seven they are in the depths of
+Ocean,--seven they are, disturbers of the face of Heaven.--They arise
+from the depths of Ocean, from hidden lurking-places.--They spread like
+snares.--Male they are not, female they are not.--Wives they have not,
+children are not born to them.--Order they know not, nor
+beneficence;--prayers and supplication they hear not.--Vermin grown in
+the bowels of the mountains--foes of Êa--they are the throne-bearers of
+the gods--they sit in the roads and make them unsafe.--The fiends! the
+fiends!--They are seven, they are seven, seven they are!
+
+"Spirit of Heaven (_Zi-ana, Ana_), be they conjured!
+
+"Spirit of Earth (_Zi-kî-a, Êa_), be they conjured!"
+
+9. Besides these regular sets of evil spirits in sevens--seven being a
+mysterious and consecrated number--there are the hosts untold of demons
+which assail man in every possible form, which are always on the watch
+to do him harm, not only bodily, but moral in the way of civil broils
+and family dissensions; confusion is their work; it is they who "steal
+the child from the father's knee," who "drive the son from his father's
+house," who withhold from the wife the blessing of children; they have
+stolen days from heaven, which they have made evil days, that bring
+nothing but ill-luck and misfortune,--and nothing can keep them out:
+"They fall as rain from the sky, they spring from the earth,--they steal
+from house to house,--doors do not stop them,--bolts do not shut them
+out,--they creep in at the doors like serpents,--they blow in at the
+roof like winds." Various are their haunts: the tops of mountains, the
+pestilential marshes by the sea, but especially the desert. Diseases are
+among the most dreaded of this terrible band, and first among these
+NAMTAR or DIBBARA, the demon of Pestilence, IDPA (Fever), and a certain
+mysterious disease of the head, which must be insanity, of which it is
+said that it oppresses the head and holds it tight like a tiara (a heavy
+headdress) or "like a dark prison," and makes it confused, that "it is
+like a violent tempest; no one knows whence it comes, nor what is its
+object."
+
+10. All these evil beings are very properly classed together under the
+general name of "creations of the Abyss," births of the nether world,
+the world of the dead. For the unseen world below the habitable earth
+was naturally conceived as the dwelling place of the departed spirits
+after death. It is very remarkable as characteristic of the low standard
+of moral conception which the Shumiro-Accads had attained at this stage
+of their development, that, although they never admitted that those who
+died ceased to exist altogether, there is very little to show that they
+imagined any happy state for them after death, not even as a reward for
+a righteous life, nor, on the other hand, looked to a future state for
+punishment of wrongs committed in this world, but promiscuously
+consigned their dead to the ARALI, a most dismal region which is called
+the "support of chaos," or, in phrase no less vague and full of
+mysterious awe, "the Great Land" (_Kî-gal_), "the Great City"
+(_Urugal_), "the spacious dwelling," "where they wander in the dark,"--a
+region ruled by a female divinity called by different names, but most
+frequently "Lady of the Great Land" (_Nin-kî-gal_), or "Lady of the
+Abyss" (_Nin-ge_), who may then rather be understood as Death
+personified, that Namtar (Pestilence) is her chief minister. The
+Shumiro-Accads seem to have dimly fancied that association with so many
+evil beings whose proper home the Arali was, must convert even the human
+spirits into beings almost as noxious, for one or two passages appear to
+imply that they were afraid of ghosts, at least on one occasion it is
+threatened to send the dead back into the upper world, as the direst
+calamity that can be inflicted.
+
+11. As if all these terrors were not sufficient to make life a burden,
+the Shumiro-Accads believed in sorcerers, wicked men who knew how to
+compel the powers of evil to do their bidding and thus could inflict
+death, sickness or disasters at their pleasure. This could be done in
+many ways--by a look, by uttering certain words, by drinks made of herbs
+prepared under certain conditions and ceremonies. Nay, the power of
+doing harm sometimes fatally belonged even to innocent persons, who
+inflicted it unintentionally by their look--for the effect of "the evil
+eye" did not always depend on a person's own will.
+
+12. Existence under such conditions must have been as unendurable as
+that of poor children who have been terrified by silly nurses into a
+belief in ogres and a fear of dark rooms, had there not existed real or
+imaginary defences against this array of horrible beings always ready to
+fall on unfortunate humanity in all sorts of inexplicable ways and for
+no other reason but their own detestable delight in doing evil. These
+defences could not consist in rational measures dictated by a knowledge
+of the laws of physical nature, since they had no notion of such laws;
+nor in prayers and propitiatory offerings, since one of the demons' most
+execrable qualities was, as we have seen, that they "knew not
+beneficence" and "heard not prayer and supplication." Then, if they
+cannot be coaxed, they must be compelled. This seems a very presumptuous
+assumption, but it is strictly in accordance with human instinct. It has
+been very truly said[AD] that "man was so conscious of being called to
+exercise empire over the powers of nature, that, the moment he entered
+into any relations with them, it was to try and subject them to his
+will. Only instead of studying the phenomena, in order to grasp their
+laws and apply them to his needs, he fancied he could, by means of
+peculiar practices and consecrated forms, compel the physical agents of
+nature to serve his wishes and purposes.... This pretension had its root
+in the notion which antiquity had formed of the natural phenomena. It
+did not see in them the consequence of unchangeable and necessary laws,
+always active and always to be calculated upon, but fancied them to
+depend on the arbitrary and varying will of the spirits and deities it
+had put in the place of physical agents." It follows that in a religion
+which peoples the universe with spirits of which the greater part are
+evil, magic--i.e., conjuring with words and rites, incantations,
+spells--must take the place of worship, and the ministers of such a
+religion are not priests, but conjurers and enchanters. This is exactly
+the state of things revealed by the great collection of texts discovered
+by Sir H. Rawlinson and G. Smith. They contain forms for conjuring all
+the different kinds of demons, even to evil dreams and nightmares, the
+object of most such invocations being to drive them away from the
+habitations of men and back to where they properly belong--the depth of
+the desert, the inaccessible mountain tops, and all remote, waste and
+uninhabited places generally, where they can range at will, and find
+nobody to harm.
+
+13. Yet there are also prayers for protection and help addressed to
+beings conceived as essentially good and beneficent--a step marking a
+great advance in the moral feeling and religious consciousness of the
+people. Such beings--gods, in fact--were, above all, Ana and Êa, whom
+we saw invoked in the incantation of the Seven Maskim as "Spirit of
+Heaven," and "Spirit of Earth." The latter especially is appealed to as
+an unfailing refuge to ill-used and terrified mortals. He is imagined as
+possessed of all knowledge and wisdom, which he uses only to befriend
+and protect. His usual residence is the deep,--(hence his name, _Ê-a_,
+"the House of Waters")--but he sometimes travels round the earth in a
+magnificent ship. His very name is a terror to the evil ones. He knows
+the words, the spells that will break their power and compel their
+obedience. To him, therefore, the people looked in their need with
+infinite trust. Unable to cope with the mysterious dangers and snares
+which, as they fancied, beset them on all sides, ignorant of the means
+of defeating the wicked beings who, they thought, pursued them with
+abominable malice and gratuitous hatred, they turned to Êa. _He_ would
+know. _He_ must be asked, and he would tell.
+
+14. But, as though bethinking themselves that Êa was a being too mighty
+and exalted to be lightly addressed and often disturbed, the
+Shumiro-Accads imagined a beneficent spirit, MERIDUG (more correctly
+MIRRI-DUGGA), called son of Êa and DAMKINA, (a name of Earth). Meridug's
+only office is to act as mediator between his father and suffering
+mankind. It is he who bears to Êa the suppliant's request, exposes his
+need sometimes in very moving words, and requests to know the remedy--if
+illness be the trouble--or the counter-spell, if the victim be held in
+the toils of witchcraft. Êa tells his son, who is then supposed to
+reveal the secret to the chosen instrument of assistance--of course the
+conjuring priest, or better, soothsayer. As most incantations are
+conceived on this principle, they are very monotonous in form, though
+frequently enlivened by the supposed dialogue between the father and
+son. Here is one of the more entertaining specimens. It occupies an
+entire tablet, but unfortunately many lines have been hopelessly
+injured, and have to be omitted. The text begins:
+
+     "The Disease of the Head has issued from the Abyss, from the
+     dwelling of the Lord of the Abyss."
+
+Then follow the symptoms and the description of the sufferer's inability
+to help himself. Then "Meridug has looked on his misery. He has entered
+the dwelling of his father Êa, and has spoken unto him:
+
+     "'My father, the Disease of the Head has issued from the
+     Abyss.'
+
+"A second time he has spoken unto him:
+
+     "'What he must do against it the man knows not. How shall he
+     find healing?'
+
+"Êa has replied to his son Meridug:
+
+     "'My son, how dost thou not know? What should I teach thee?
+     What I know, thou also knowest. But come hither, my son
+     Meridug. Take a bucket, fill it with water from the mouth of
+     the rivers; impart to this water thy exalted magic power;
+     sprinkle with it the man, son of his god, ... wrap up his head,
+     ... and on the highway pour it out. May insanity be dispelled!
+     that the disease of his head vanish like a phantom of the
+     night. May Êa's word drive it out! May Damkina heal him.'"
+
+15. Another dialogue of the same sort, in which Êa is consulted as to
+the means of breaking the power of the Maskim, ends by his revealing
+that
+
+     "The white cedar is the tree which breaks the Maskim's noxious
+     might."
+
+In fact the white cedar was considered an infallible defence against all
+spells and evil powers. Any action or ceremony described in the
+conjuration must of course be performed even as the words are spoken.
+Then there is a long one, perhaps the best preserved of all, to be
+recited by the sufferer, who is supposed to be under the effects of an
+evil spell, and from which it is evident that the words are to accompany
+actions performed by the conjurer. It is divided into parallel verses,
+of which the first runs thus:
+
+     "As this onion is being peeled of its skins, thus shall it be
+     of the spell. The burning fire shall consume it; it shall no
+     more be planted in a row, ... the ground shall not receive its
+     root, its head shall contain no seed and the sun shall not take
+     care of it;--it shall not be offered at the feast of a god or a
+     king.--The man who has cast the evil spell, his eldest son, his
+     wife,--the spell, the lamentations, the transgressions, the
+     written spells, the blasphemies, the sins,--the evil which is
+     in my body, in my flesh, in my sores,--may they all be
+     destroyed as this onion, and may the burning fire consume them
+     this day! May the evil spell go far away, and may I see the
+     light again!"
+
+Then the destruction of a date is similarly described:
+
+     "It shall not return to the bough from which it has been
+     plucked."
+
+The untying of a knot:
+
+     "Its threads shall not return to the stem which has produced
+     them."
+
+The tearing up of some wool:
+
+     "It shall not return to the back of its sheep."
+
+The tearing of some stuff, and after each act the second verse:
+
+     "The man who has cast the spell," etc.
+
+is repeated.
+
+16. It is devoutly to be hoped, for the patients' sake, that treatments
+like these took effect on the disease, for they got no other. Diseases
+being conceived as personal demons who entered a man's body of their own
+accord or under compulsion from powerful sorcerers, and illness being
+consequently considered as a kind of possession, clearly the only thing
+to do was to drive out the demon or break the spell with the aid of the
+beneficent Êa and his son. If this intervention was of no avail, nothing
+remained for the patient but to get well as he could, or to die. This is
+why there never was a science of medicine in the proper sense in
+Chaldea, even as late as three or four hundred years B.C., and the Greek
+travellers who then visited Babylon must have been not a little shocked
+at the custom they found there of bringing desperately sick persons out
+of the houses with their beds and exposing them in the streets, when any
+passer-by could approach them, inquire into the disease and suggest some
+remedy--which was sure to be tried as a last chance. This extraordinary
+experiment was of course not resorted to until all known forms of
+conjuration had been gone through and had proved inefficient.
+
+17. The belief that certain words and imprecations could break the
+power of demons or sorcerers must have naturally led to the notion that
+to wear such imprecations, written on some substance or article, always
+about one's person must be a continual defence against them; while on
+the other hand, words of invocation to the beneficent spirits and images
+representing them, worn in the same way, must draw down on the wearer
+those spirits' protection and blessing. Hence the passion for talismans.
+They were of various kinds: strips of stuff, with the magic words
+written on them, to be fastened to the body, or the clothes, or articles
+of household furniture, were much used; but small articles of clay or
+hard stone were in greater favor on account of their durability. As
+houses could be possessed by evil spirits just as well as individuals,
+talismans were placed in different parts of them for protection, and
+this belief was so enduring that small clay figures of gods were found
+in Assyrian palaces under thresholds--as in the palace of Khorsabad, by
+Botta--placed there "to keep from it fiends and enemies." It has been
+discovered in this manner that many of the sculptures which adorned the
+Assyrian palaces and temples were of talismanic nature. Thus the winged
+bulls placed at the gateways were nothing but representations of an
+Accadian class of guardian spirits,--the _Kirûbu_, Hebrew _Kerubim_, of
+which we have made _Cherub_, _Cherubim_--who were supposed to keep watch
+at entrances, even at that of the Arali, while some sculptures on which
+demons, in the shape of hideous monsters, are seen fighting each
+other, are, so to speak, imprecations in stone, which, if translated
+into words, would mean: "May the evil demons stay outside, may they
+assail and fight each other,"--as, in that case, they would clearly have
+no leisure to assail the inhabitants of the dwelling. That these
+sculptures really were regarded as talismans and expected to guard the
+inmates from harm, is abundantly shown by the manner in which they are
+mentioned in several inscriptions, down to a very late date. Thus
+Esarhaddon, one of the last kings of Assyria (about 700 B.C.), says,
+after describing a very sumptuous palace which he had built:--"I placed
+in its gates bulls and colossi, who, according to their fixed command,
+against the wicked turn themselves; they protect the footsteps, making
+peace to be upon the path of the king their creator."
+
+[Illustration: 54.--DEMONS FIGHTING. (From the British Museum.)]
+
+18. The cylinder seals with their inscriptions and engraved figures were
+mostly also talismans of like nature; which must be the reason why so
+many are found in graves, tied to the dead person's wrist by a
+string--evidently as a protection against the fiends which the departed
+spirit was expected to meet. The magic power was of course conferred on
+all talismans by the words which the conjurer spoke over them with the
+necessary ceremonies. One such long incantation is preserved entire. It
+is designed to impart to the talisman the power of keeping the demons
+from all parts of the dwelling, which are singly enumerated, with the
+consequences to the demons who would dare to trespass: those who steal
+into gutters, remove bolts or hinges, shall be broken like an earthen
+jug, crushed like clay; those who overstep the wooden frame of the house
+shall be clipped of their wings; those who stretch their neck in at the
+window, the window shall descend and cut their throat. The most original
+in this class of superstitions was that which, according to Lenormant,
+consisted in the notion that all these demons were of so unutterably
+ugly a form and countenance, that they must fly away terrified if they
+only beheld their own likeness. As an illustration of this principle he
+gives an incantation against "the wicked Namtar." It begins with a
+highly graphic description of the terrible demon, who is said to "take
+man captive like an enemy," to "burn him like a flame," to "double him
+up like a bundle," to "assail man, although having neither hand nor
+foot, like a noose." Then follows the usual dialogue between Êa and
+Meridug, (in the identical words given above), and Êa at length reveals
+the prescription: "Come hither, my son Meridug. Take mud of the Ocean
+and knead out of it a likeness of him, (the Namtar.) Lay down the man,
+after thou hast purified him; lay the image on his bare abdomen, impart
+to it my magic power and turn its face westward, that the wicked Namtar,
+who dwells in his body, may take up some other abode. Amen." The idea is
+that the Namtar, on beholding his own likeness, will flee from it in
+dismay!
+
+[Illustration: 55.--DEMON OF THE SOUTH-WEST WIND. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+19. To this same class belongs a small bronze statuette, which is to be
+seen in the Louvre. Mr. Lenormant thus describes it: "It is the image of
+a horrible demon, standing, with the body of a dog, the talons of an
+eagle, arms ending in a lion's paws, the tail of a scorpion, the head of
+a skeleton, but with eyes, and a goat's horns, and with four large wings
+at the back, unfolded. A ring placed at the back of the head served to
+hang the figure up. Along the back is an inscription in the Accadian
+language, informing us that this pretty creature is the Demon of the
+South-west Wind, and is to be placed at the door or window. For in
+Chaldea the South-west Wind comes from the deserts of Arabia, its
+burning breath consumes everything and produces the same ravages as the
+Simoon in Africa. Therefore this particular talisman is most frequently
+met with. Our museums contain many other figures of demons, used as
+talismans to frighten away the evil spirits they were supposed to
+represent. One has the head of a goat on a disproportionately long neck;
+another shows a hyena's head, with huge open mouth, on a bear's body
+with lion's paws." On the principle that possession is best guarded
+against by the presence of beneficent spirits, the exorcisms--i.e.,
+forms of conjuring designed to drive the evil demons out of a man or
+dwelling--are usually accompanied with a request to good spirits to
+enter the one or the other, instead of the wicked ones who have been
+ejected. The supreme power which breaks that of all incantations,
+talismans, conjuring rites whatever, is, it would appear, supposed to
+reside in a great, divine name,--possibly a name of Êa himself. At all
+events, it is Êa's own secret. For even in his dialogues with Meridug,
+when entreated for this supreme aid in desperate cases, he is only
+supposed to impart it to his son to use against the obdurate demons and
+thereby crush their power, but it is not given, so that the demons are
+only threatened with it, but it is not actually uttered in the course of
+the incantations.
+
+[Illustration: 56.--HEAD OF DEMON]
+
+20. Not entirely unassisted did Êa pursue his gigantic task of
+protection and healing. Along with him invocations are often addressed
+to several other spirits conceived as essentially good divine beings,
+whose beneficent influence is felt in many ways. Such was Im, the
+Storm-Wind, with its accompanying vivifying showers; such are the
+purifying and wholesome Waters, the Rivers and Springs which feed the
+earth; above all, such were the Sun and Fire, also the Moon, objects of
+double reverence and gratitude because they dispel the darkness of
+night, which the Shumiro-Accads loathed and feared excessively, as the
+time when the wicked demons are strongest and the power of bad men for
+weaving deadly spells is greatest. The third Book of the Collection of
+Magic Texts is composed almost entirely of hymns to these deities--as
+well as to Êa and Meridug--which betray a somewhat later stage in the
+nation's religious development, by the poetical beauty of some of the
+fragments, and especially by a purer feeling of adoration and a higher
+perception of moral goodness, which are absent from the oldest
+incantations.
+
+21. At noon, when the sun has reached the highest point in its heavenly
+course, the earth lies before it without a shadow; all things, good or
+bad, are manifest; its beams, after dispelling the unfriendly gloom,
+pierce into every nook and cranny, bringing into light all ugly things
+that hide and lurk; the evil-doer cowers and shuns its all-revealing
+splendor, and, to perform his accursed deeds, waits the return of his
+dark accomplice, night. What wonder then that to the Shumiro-Accads UD,
+the Sun in all its midday glory, was a very hero of protection, the
+source of truth and justice, the "supreme judge in Heaven and on earth,"
+who "knows lie from truth," who knows the truth that is in the soul of
+man. The hymns to Ud that have been deciphered are full of beautiful
+images. Take for instance the following:--
+
+     "O Sun,[AE] I have called unto thee in the bright heavens. In
+     the shadow of the cedar art thou;" (i.e., it is thou who makest
+     the cedar to cast its shadow, holy and auspicious as the tree
+     itself.) "Thy feet are on the summits.... The countries have
+     wished for thee, they have longed for thy coming, O Lord! Thy
+     radiant light illumines all countries.... Thou makest lies to
+     vanish, thou destroyest the noxious influence of portents,
+     omens, spells, dreams and evil apparitions; thou turnest wicked
+     plots to a happy issue...."
+
+This is both true and finely expressed. For what most inveterate
+believer in ghosts and apparitions ever feared them by daylight? and the
+last touch shows much moral sense and observation of the mysterious
+workings of a beneficent power which often not merely defeats evil but
+even turns it into good. There is splendid poetry in the following
+fragment describing the glory of sunrise:--
+
+     "O Sun! thou hast stepped forth from the background of heaven,
+     thou hast pushed back the bolts of the brilliant heaven,--yea,
+     the gate of heaven. O Sun! above the land thou hast raised thy
+     head! O Sun! thou hast covered the immeasurable space of heaven
+     and countries!"
+
+Another hymn describes how, at the Sun's appearance in the brilliant
+portals of the heavens, and during his progress to their highest point,
+all the great gods turn to his light, all the good spirits of heaven and
+earth gaze up to his face, surround him joyfully and reverently, and
+escort him in solemn procession. It needs only to put all these
+fragments into fine verse to make out of them a poem which will be held
+beautiful even in our day, when from our very childhood we learn to know
+the difference between good and poor poetry, growing up, as we do, on
+the best of all ages and all countries.
+
+22. When the sun disappeared in the West, sinking rapidly, and diving,
+as it were, into the very midst of darkness, the Shumiro-Accads did not
+fancy him as either asleep or inactive, but on the contrary as still
+engaged in his everlasting work. Under the name of NIN-DAR, he travels
+through the dreary regions ruled by Mul-ge and, his essence being
+_light_, he combats the powers of darkness in their own home, till He
+comes out of it, a triumphant hero, in the morning. Nin-dar is also the
+keeper of the hidden treasures of the earth--its metals and precious
+stones, because, according to Mr. Lenormant's ingenious remark, "they
+only wait, like him, the moment of emerging out of the earth, to emit a
+bright radiancy." This radiancy of precious stones, which is like a
+concentration of light in its purest form, was probably the reason why
+they were in such general use as talismans, quite as much as their
+hardness and durability.
+
+23. But while the Sun accomplishes his nightly underground journey, men
+would be left a prey to mortal terrors in the upper world, deprived of
+light, their chief defence against the evil brood of darkness, were it
+not for his substitute, Fire, who is by nature also a being of light,
+and, as such, the friend of men, from whose paths and dwellings he
+scares not only wild beasts and foes armed with open violence, but the
+far more dangerous hosts of unseen enemies, both demons and spells cast
+by wicked sorcerers. It is in this capacity of protector that the god
+GIBIL (Fire) is chiefly invoked. In one very complete hymn he is
+addressed thus:--
+
+     "Thou who drivest away the evil Maskim, who furtherest the
+     well-being of life, who strikest the breast of the wicked with
+     terror,--Fire, the destroyer of foes, dread weapon which
+     drivest away Pestilence."
+
+This last attribute would show that the Shumiro-Accads had noticed the
+hygienic properties of fire, which does indeed help to dispel miasmas
+on account of the strong ventilation which a great blaze sets going.
+Thus at a comparatively late epoch, some 400 years B.C., a terrible
+plague broke out at Athens, the Greek city, and Hippocrates, a physician
+of great genius and renown, who has been called "the Father of
+Medicine," tried to diminish the contagion by keeping huge fires
+continually blazing at different points of the city. It is the same very
+correct idea which made men invoke Gibil as he who purifies the works of
+man. He is also frequently called "the protector of the dwelling, of the
+family," and praised for "creating light in the house of darkness," and
+for bringing peace to all creation. Over and above these claims to
+gratitude, Gibil had a special importance in the life of a people given
+to the works of metallurgy, of which fire is the chief agent: "It is
+thou," says one hymn, "who mixest tin and copper, it is thou who
+purifiest silver and gold." Now the mixture of tin and copper produces
+bronze, the first metal which has been used to make weapons and tools
+of, in most cases long before iron, which is much more difficult to
+work, and as the quality of the metal depends on the proper mixture of
+the two ingredients, it is but natural that the aid of the god Fire
+should have been specially invoked for the operation. But Fire is not
+only a great power on earth, it is also, in the shape of Lightning, one
+of the dreadest and most mysterious powers of the skies, and as such
+sometimes called son of Ana (Heaven), or, in a more roundabout way, "the
+Hero, son of the Ocean"--meaning the celestial Ocean, the great
+reservoir of rains, from which the lightning seems to spring, as it
+flashes through the heavy showers of a Southern thunder storm. In
+whatever shape he appear, and whatever his functions, Gibil is hailed as
+an invariably beneficent and friendly being.
+
+24. When the feeling of helplessness forced on man by his position in
+the midst of nature takes the form of a reverence for and dependence on
+beings whom he conceives of as essentially good, a far nobler religion
+and far higher moral tone are the immediate consequence. This conception
+of absolute goodness sprang from the observation that certain beings or
+spirits--like the Sun, Fire, the Thunderstorm--though possessing the
+power of doing both good and harm, used it almost exclusively for the
+benefit of men. This position once firmly established, the conclusion
+naturally followed, that if these good beings once in awhile sent down a
+catastrophe or calamity,--if the Sun scorched the fields or the
+Thunderstorm swamped them, if the wholesome North Wind swept away the
+huts and broke down the trees--it must be in anger, as a mark of
+displeasure--in punishment. By what could man provoke the displeasure of
+kind and beneficent beings? Clearly by not being like them, by doing not
+good, but evil. And what is evil? That which is contrary to the nature
+of the good spirits: doing wrong and harm to men; committing sins and
+wicked actions. To avoid, therefore, provoking the anger of those good
+but powerful spirits, so terrible in its manifestations, it is
+necessary to try to please them, and that can be done only by being
+like them,--good, or at least striving to be so, and, when temptation,
+ignorance, passion or weakness of will have betrayed man into a
+transgression, to confess it, express regret for the offence and an
+intention not to offend again, in order to obtain forgiveness and be
+spared. A righteous life, then, prayer and repentance are the proper
+means of securing divine favor or mercy. It is evident that a religion
+from which such lessons naturally spring is a great improvement on a
+belief in beings who do good or evil indiscriminately, indeed prefer
+doing evil, a belief which cannot teach a distinction between moral
+right and wrong, or a rational distribution of rewards or punishment,
+nor consequently inculcate the feeling of duty and responsibility,
+without which goodness as a matter of principle is impossible and a
+reliable state of society unattainable.
+
+25. This higher and therefore later stage of moral and religious
+development is very perceptible in the third book of the Magic
+Collection. With the appreciation of absolute goodness, conscience has
+awakened, and speaks with such insistence and authority that the
+Shumiro-Accad, in the simplicity of his mind, has earnestly imagined it
+to be the voice of a personal and separate deity, a guardian spirit
+belonging to each man, dwelling within him and living his life. It is a
+god--sometimes even a divine couple, both "god and goddess, pure
+spirits"--who protects him from his birth, yet is not proof against the
+spells of sorcerers and the attacks of the demons, and even can be
+compelled to work evil in the person committed to its care, and
+frequently called therefore "the son of his god," as we saw above, in
+the incantation against the Disease of the Head. The conjuration or
+exorcism which drives out the demon, of course restores the guardian
+spirit to its own beneficent nature, and the patient not only to bodily
+well-being, but also to peace of mind. That is what is desired, when a
+prayer for the cure of a sick or possessed person ends with the words:
+"May he be placed again in the gracious hands of his god!" When
+therefore a man is represented as speaking to "his god" and confessing
+to him his sin and distress, it is only a way of expressing that silent
+self-communing of the soul, in which it reviews its own deficiencies,
+forms good resolutions and prays to be released from the intolerable
+burden of sin. There are some most beautiful prayers of this sort in the
+collection. They have been called "the Penitential Psalms," from their
+striking likeness to some of those psalms in which King David confesses
+his iniquities and humbles himself before the Lord. The likeness extends
+to both spirit and form, almost to words. If the older poet, in his
+spiritual groping, addresses "his god and goddess," the higher, better
+self which he feels within him and feels to be divine--his Conscience,
+instead of the One God and Lord, his feeling is not less earnest, his
+appeal not less pure and confiding. He confesses his transgression, but
+pleads ignorance and sues for mercy. Here are some of the principal
+verses, of which each is repeated twice, once addressed to "my god,"
+and the second time to "my goddess." The title of the Psalm is: "The
+complaints of the repentant heart. Sixty-five verses in all."
+
+     26. "My Lord, may the anger of his heart be allayed! May the
+     fool attain understanding! The god who knows the unknown, may
+     he be conciliated! The goddess who knows the unknown, may she
+     be conciliated!--I eat the food of wrath and drink the waters
+     of anguish.... O my god, my transgressions are very great, very
+     great my sins.... I transgress, and know it not. I sin, and
+     know it not. I feed on transgressions, and know it not. I
+     wander on wrong paths, and know it not.--The Lord, in the wrath
+     of his heart, has overwhelmed me with confusion.... I lie on
+     the ground, and none reaches a hand to me. I am silent and in
+     tears, and none takes me by the hand. I cry out, and there is
+     none that hears me. I am exhausted, oppressed, and none
+     releases me.... My god, who knowest the unknown, be
+     merciful!... My goddess, who knowest the unknown, be
+     merciful!... How long, O my god?... How long, O my goddess?...
+     Lord, thou wilt not repulse thy servant. In the midst of the
+     stormy waters, come to my assistance, take me by the hand! I
+     commit sins--turn them into blessedness! I commit
+     transgressions--let the wind sweep them away! My blasphemies
+     are very many--rend them like a garment!... God who knowest the
+     unknown,[AF] my sins are seven times seven,--forgive my
+     sins!..."
+
+27. The religious feeling once roused to this extent, it is not to be
+wondered at that in some invocations the distress or disease which had
+formerly been taken as a gratuitous visitation, begins to be considered
+in the light of a divine punishment, even though the afflicted person be
+the king himself. This is very evident from the concluding passage of a
+hymn to the Sun, in which it is the conjurer who speaks on behalf of the
+patient, while presenting an offering:--
+
+     "O Sun, leave not my uplifted hands unregarded!--Eat his food,
+     refuse not his sacrifice, bring back his god to him, to be a
+     support unto his hand!--May his sin, at thy behest, be forgiven
+     him, his misdeed be forgotten!--May his trouble leave him! May
+     he recover from his illness!--Give to the king new vital
+     strength.... Escort the king, who lies at thy feet!--Also me,
+     the conjurer, thy respectful servant!"
+
+28. There is another hymn of the same kind, not less remarkable for its
+artistic and regular construction than for its beauty of feeling and
+diction. The penitent speaks five double lines, and the priest adds two
+more, as though endorsing the prayer and supporting it with the weight
+of his own sacred character. This gives very regular strophes, of which,
+unfortunately, only two have been well preserved:--
+
+     _Penitent._--"I, thy servant, full of sighs, I call to thee.
+     Whoever is beset with sin, his ardent supplication thou
+     acceptest. If thou lookest on a man with pity, that man liveth.
+     Ruler of all, mistress of mankind! Merciful one, to whom it is
+     good to turn, who dost receive sighs!" _Priest._--"While his
+     god and his goddess are wroth with him he calls on thee. Thy
+     countenance turn on him, take hold of his hand."
+
+     _Penitent._--"Besides thee there is no deity to lead in
+     righteousness. Kindly look on me, accept my sighs. Speak: how
+     long? and let thine heart be appeased. When, O Lady, will thy
+     countenance turn on me? Even like doves I moan, I feed on
+     sighs." _Priest._--"His heart is full of woe and trouble, and
+     full of sighs. Tears he sheds and breaks out into
+     lamentation."[AG]
+
+29. Such is a not incomplete outline of this strange and primitive
+religion, the religion of a people whose existence was not suspected
+twenty-five years ago, yet which claims, with the Egyptians and the
+Chinese, the distinction of being one of the oldest on earth, and in all
+probability was older than both. This discovery is one of the most
+important conquests of modern science, not only from its being highly
+interesting in itself, but from the light it throws on innumerable
+hitherto obscure points in the history of the ancient world, nay, on
+many curious facts which reach down to our own time. Thus, the numerous
+Turanian tribes which exist in a wholly or half nomadic condition in the
+immense plains of Eastern and South-eastern Russia, in the forests and
+wastes of Siberia, on the steppes and highlands of Central Asia, have no
+other religion now than this of the old Shumiro-Accads, in its earliest
+and most material shape. Everything to them is a spirit or has a spirit
+of its own; they have no worship, no moral teaching, but only conjuring,
+sorcerers, not priests. These men are called _Shamans_ and have great
+influence among the tribes. The more advanced and cultivated Turanians,
+like the Mongols and Mandchous, accord to one great Spirit the supremacy
+over all others and call that Spirit which they conceive as absolutely
+good, merciful and just, "Heaven," just as the Shumiro-Accads invoked
+"Ana." This has been and still is the oldest national religion of the
+Chinese. They say "Heaven" wherever we would say "God," and with the
+same idea of loving adoration and reverent dread, which does not prevent
+them from invoking the spirit of every hill, river, wind or forest, and
+numbering among this host also the souls of the deceased. This clearly
+corresponds to the second and higher stage of the Accadian religion, and
+marks the utmost limit which the Yellow Race have been able to attain in
+spiritual life. True, the greater part of the Chinese now have another
+religion; they are Buddhists; while the Turks and the great majority of
+the Tatars, Mongols and Mandchous, not to speak of other less important
+divisions, are Mussulmans. But both Buddhism and Mahometanism are
+foreign religions, which they have borrowed, adopted, not worked out for
+themselves. Here then we are also met by that fatal law of limitation,
+which through all ages seems to have said to the men of yellow skin and
+high cheek-bones, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further." Thus it was
+in Chaldea. The work of civilization and spiritual development begun by
+the people of Shumir and Accad was soon taken out of their hands and
+carried on by newcomers from the east, those descendants of Noah, who
+"found a plain in the land of Shinar and dwelt there."
+
+
+                     APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.
+
+Professor Louis Dyer, of Harvard University, has attempted a rendering
+into English verse of the famous incantation of the Seven Maskim. The
+result of the experiment is a translation most faithful in the spirit
+and main features, if not always literal; and which, by his kind
+permission, we here offer to our readers.
+
+
+                             A CHARM.
+
+                                I.
+
+              Seven are they, they are seven;
+                In the caverns of ocean they dwell,
+              They are clothed in the lightnings of heaven,
+                Of their growth the deep waters can tell;
+              Seven are they, they are seven.
+
+                               II.
+
+              Broad is their way and their course is wide,
+                Where the seeds of destruction they sow,
+              O'er the tops of the hills where they stride,
+                To lay waste the smooth highways below,--
+              Broad is their way and their course is wide.
+
+                               III.
+
+              Man they are not, nor womankind,
+                For in fury they sweep from the main,
+              And have wedded no wife but the wind,
+                And no child have begotten but pain,--
+              Man they are not, nor womankind.
+
+                               IV.
+
+              Fear is not in them, not awe;
+                Supplication they heed not, nor prayer,
+              For they know no compassion nor law,
+                And are deaf to the cries of despair,--
+              Fear is not in them, not awe.
+
+                                V.
+
+              Curséd they are, they are curséd,
+                They are foes to wise Êa's great name;
+              By the whirlwind are all things disperséd
+                On the paths of the flash of their flame,--
+              Curséd they are, they are curséd.
+
+                               VI.
+
+              Spirit of Heaven, oh, help! Help, oh, Spirit of Earth!
+                They are seven, thrice said they are seven;
+                  For the gods they are Bearers of Thrones,
+              But for men they are Breeders of Dearth
+                And the authors of sorrows and moans.
+                  They are seven, thrice said they are seven.
+              Spirit of Heaven, oh, help! Help, oh, Spirit of Earth!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AC] "La Magie et la Divination chez les Chaldéens," 1874-5. German
+translation of it, 1878.
+
+[AD] Alfred Maury, "La Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquité et au
+Moyen-âge." Introduction, p. 1.
+
+[AE] "UD" not being a proper name, but the name of the sun in the
+language of Shumir and Accad, it can be rendered in translation by
+"Sun," with a capital.
+
+[AF] Another and more recent translator renders this line: "God who
+knowest I knew not." Whichever rendering is right, the thought is
+beautiful and profound.
+
+[AG] This hymn is given by H. Zimmern, as the text to a dissertation on
+the language and grammar.
+
+
+
+
+                               IV.
+
+          CUSHITES AND SEMITES.--EARLY CHALDEAN HISTORY.
+
+
+1. We have just seen that the hymns and prayers which compose the third
+part of the great Magic Collection really mark a later and higher stage
+in the religious conceptions of the Turanian settlers of Chaldea, the
+people of Shumir and Accad. This improvement was not entirely due to a
+process of natural development, but in a great measure to the influence
+of that other and nobler race, who came from the East. When the priestly
+historian of Babylon, Berosus, calls the older population "men of
+foreign race," it is because he belonged himself to that second race,
+who remained in the land, introduced their own superior culture, and
+asserted their supremacy to the end of Babylon. The national legends
+have preserved the memory of this important event, which they represent
+as a direct divine revelation. Êa, the all-wise himself, it was
+believed, had appeared to men and taught them things human and divine.
+Berosus faithfully reports the legend, but seems to have given the God's
+name "Êa-Han" ("Êa the Fish") under the corrupted Greek form of OANNES.
+This is the narrative, of which we already know the first line:
+
+"There was originally at Babylon a multitude of men of foreign race who
+had colonized Chaldea, and they lived without order, like animals. But
+in the first year" (meaning the first year of the new order of things,
+the new dispensation) "there appeared, from out of the Erythrean Sea
+(the ancient Greek name for the Persian Gulf) where it borders upon
+Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, who was called OANNES. The
+whole body of the animal was that of a fish, but under the fish's head
+he had another head, and also feet below, growing out of his fish's
+tail, similar to those of a man; also human speech, and his image is
+preserved to this day. This being used to spend the whole day amidst
+men, without taking any food, and he gave them an insight into letters,
+and sciences, and every kind of art; he taught them how to found cities,
+to construct temples, to introduce laws and to measure land; he showed
+them how to sow seeds and gather in crops; in short, he instructed them
+in everything that softens manners and makes up civilization, so that
+from that time no one has invented anything new. Then, when the sun went
+down, this monstrous Oannes used to plunge back into the sea and spend
+the night in the midst of the boundless waves, for he was amphibious."
+
+2. The question, _Who_ were the bringers of this advanced civilization?
+has caused much division among the most eminent scholars. Two solutions
+are offered. Both being based on many and serious grounds and supported
+by illustrious names, and the point being far from settled yet, it is
+but fair to state them both. The two greatest of German assyriologists,
+Professors Eberhard Schrader and Friedrich Delitzsch, and the German
+school which acknowledges them as leaders, hold that the bringers of the
+new and more perfect civilization were Semites--descendants of Shem,
+i.e., people of the same race as the Hebrews--while the late François
+Lenormant and his followers contend that they were Cushites in the first
+instance,--i.e., belonged to that important family of nations which we
+find grouped, in Chapter X. of Genesis, under the name of Cush, himself
+a son of Ham--and that the Semitic immigration came second. As the
+latter hypothesis puts forward, among other arguments, the authority of
+the Biblical historians, and moreover involves the destinies of a very
+numerous and vastly important branch of ancient humanity, we will yield
+to it the right of precedence.
+
+[Illustration: 57.--OANNES. (Smith's "Chaldean Genesis.")]
+
+3. The name "HAM" signifies "brown, dark" (not "black"). Therefore, to
+speak of certain nations as "sons of Ham," is to say that they belonged
+to "the Dark Race." Yet, originally, this great section of Noah's
+posterity was as white of color as the other two. It seems to have first
+existed as a separate race in a region not very distant from the high
+table-land of Central Asia, the probable first cradle of mankind. That
+division of this great section which again separated and became the race
+of Cush, appears to have been drawn southwards by reasons which it is,
+of course, impossible to ascertain. It is easier to guess at the route
+they must have taken along the HINDU CUSH,[AH] a range of mountains
+which must have been to it a barrier in the west, and which joins the
+western end of the Himâlaya, the mightiest mountain-chain in the world.
+The break between the Hindu-Cush and the Himâlaya forms a mountain pass,
+just at the spot where the river INDUS (most probably the PISCHON of
+Gen., Ch. II.) turns abruptly to the south, to water the rich plains of
+India. Through this pass, and following the course of the river, further
+Cushite detachments must have penetrated into that vast and attractive
+peninsula, even to the south of it, where they found a population mostly
+belonging to the Black branch of humanity, so persistently ignored by
+the writer of Chap. X. Hundreds of years spent under a tropical clime
+and intermarriage with the Negro natives altered not only the color of
+their skin, but also the shape of their features. So that when Cushite
+tribes, with the restless migratory spirit so characteristic of all
+early ages, began to work their way back again to the north, then to the
+west, along the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, they
+were both dark-skinned and thick-lipped, with a decided tendency towards
+the Negro type, lesser or greater according to the degree of mixture
+with the inferior race. That this type was foreign to them is proved by
+the facility with which their features resumed the nobler cast of the
+white races wherever they stayed long enough among these, as was the
+case in Chaldea, in Arabia, in the countries of Canaan, whither many of
+these tribes wandered at various times.
+
+4. Some Cushite detachments, who reached the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb,
+crossed over into Africa, and settling there amidst the barbarous native
+negro tribes, formed a nation which became known to its northern
+neighbors, the Egyptians, to the Hebrews, and throughout the ancient
+East under its own proper name of CUSH, and whose outward
+characteristics came, in the course of time, so near to the pure Negro
+type as to be scarcely recognizable from it. This is the same nation
+which, to us moderns, is better known under the name of ETHIOPIANS,
+given to it by the Greeks, as well as to the eastern division of the
+same race. The Egyptians themselves were another branch of the same
+great section of humanity, represented in the genealogy of Chap. X. by
+the name of MIZRAIM, second son of Ham. These must have come from the
+east along the Persian Gulf, then across Northern Arabia and the Isthmus
+of Suez. In the color and features of the Egyptians the mixture with
+black races is also noticeable, but not enough to destroy the beauty and
+expressiveness of the original type, at all events far less than in
+their southern neighbors, the Ethiopians, with whom, moreover, they were
+throughout on the worst of terms, whom they loathed and invariably
+designated under the name of "vile Cush."
+
+5. A third and very important branch of the Hamite family, the
+CANAANITES, after reaching the Persian Gulf, and probably sojourning
+there some time, spread, not to the south, but to the west, across the
+plains of Syria, across the mountain chain of LEBANON and to the very
+edge of the Mediterranean Sea, occupying all the land which later became
+Palestine, also to the north-west, as far as the mountain chain of
+TAURUS. This group was very numerous, and broken up into a great many
+peoples, as we can judge from the list of nations given in Chap. X. (v.
+15-18) as "sons of Canaan." In its migrations over this comparatively
+northern region, Canaan found and displaced not black natives, but
+Turanian nomadic tribes, who roamed at large over grassy wildernesses
+and sandy wastes and are possibly to be accounted as the representatives
+of that portion of the race which the biblical historian embodies in the
+pastoral names of Jabal and Jubal--(Gen. iv., 20-22)--"The father of
+such as dwell in tents and have cattle," and "the father of all such as
+handle the harp and pipe." In which case the Turanian settlers and
+builders of cities would answer to Tubalcain, the smith and artificer.
+The Canaanites, therefore, are those among the Hamites who, in point of
+color and features, have least differed from their kindred white races,
+though still sufficiently bronzed to be entitled to the name of "sons of
+Ham," i.e., "belonging to the dark-skinned race."
+
+6. Migrating races do not traverse continents with the same rapidity as
+marching armies. The progress is slow, the stations are many. Every
+station becomes a settlement, sometimes the beginning of a new
+nation--so many landmarks along the way. And the distance between the
+starting-point and the furthest point reached by the race is measured
+not only by thousands of miles, but also by hundreds and hundreds of
+years; only the space can be actually measured; while the time can be
+computed merely by conjecture. The route from the south of India, along
+the shore of Malabar, the Persian Gulf, across the Arabian deserts, then
+down along the Red Sea and across the straits into Africa, is of such
+tremendous length that the settlements which the Cushite race left
+scattered along it must have been more than usually numerous. According
+to the upholders of a Cushite colonization of Chaldea, one important
+detachment appears to have taken possession of the small islands along
+the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf and to have stayed there for
+several centuries, probably choosing these island homes on account of
+their seclusion and safety from invasion. There, unmolested and
+undisturbed, they could develop a certain spirit of abstract speculation
+to which their natural bent inclined them. They were great star-gazers
+and calculators--two tastes which go well together, for Astronomy cannot
+exist without Mathematics. But star-gazing is also favorable to
+dreaming, and the Cushite islanders had time for dreams. Thoughts of
+heavenly things occupied them much; they worked out a religion beautiful
+in many ways and full of deep sense; their priests dwelt in communities
+or colleges, probably one on every island, and spent their time not only
+in scientific study and religious contemplation, but also in the more
+practical art of government, for there do not appear as yet to have
+been any kings among them.
+
+7. But there came a time when the small islands were overcrowded with
+the increased population, and detachments began to cross the water and
+land at the furthest point of the Gulf, in the land of the great rivers.
+Here they found a people not unpractised in several primitive arts, and
+possessed of some important fundamental inventions--writing, irrigation
+by means of canals--but deplorably deficient in spiritual development,
+and positively barbarous in the presence of an altogether higher
+culture. The Cushites rapidly spread through the land of Shumir and
+Accad, and taught the people with whom they afterwards, as usual,
+intermarried, until both formed but one nation--with this difference,
+that towards the north of Chaldea the Cushite element became
+predominant, while in the south numbers remained on the side of the
+Turanians. Whether this result was attained altogether peacefully or was
+preceded by a period of resistance and fighting, we have no means of
+ascertaining. If there was such a period, it cannot have lasted long,
+for intellect was on the side of the newcomers, and that is a power
+which soon wins the day. At all events the final fusion must have been
+complete and friendly, since the old national legend reported by Berosus
+cleverly combines the two elements, by attributing the part of teacher
+and revealer to the Shumiro-Accad's own favorite divine being Êa, while
+it is not impossible that it alludes to the coming of the Cushites in
+making the amphibious Oannes rise out of the Persian Gulf, "where it
+borders on Chaldea." The legend goes on to say that Oannes set down his
+revelations in books which he consigned into the keeping of men, and
+that several more divine animals of the same kind continued to appear at
+long intervals. Who knows but the latter strange detail may have been
+meant to allude fantastically to the arrival of successive Cushite
+colonies? In the long run of time, of course all such meaning would be
+forgotten and the legend remain as a miraculous and inexplicable
+incident.
+
+8. It would be vain to attempt to fix any dates for events which took
+place in such remote antiquity, in the absence of any evidence or
+document that might be grasped. Yet, by close study of facts, by
+laborious and ingenious comparing of later texts, of every scrap of
+evidence furnished by monuments, of information contained in the
+fragments of Berosus and of other writers, mostly Greek, it has been
+possible, with due caution, to arrive at some approximative dates,
+which, after all, are all that is needed to classify things in an order
+intelligible and correct in the main. Even should further discoveries
+and researches arrive at more exact results, the gain will be
+comparatively small. At such a distance, differences of a couple of
+centuries do not matter much. When we look down a long line of houses or
+trees, the more distant ones appear to run together, and we do not
+always see where it ends--yet we can perfectly well pursue its
+direction. The same with the so-called double stars in astronomy: they
+are stars which, though really separated by thousands of miles, appear
+as one on account of the immense distance between them and our eye, and
+only the strongest telescope lenses show them to be separate bodies,
+though still close together. Yet this is sufficient to assign them their
+place so correctly on the map of the heavens, that they do not disturb
+the calculations in which they are included. The same kind of
+perspective applies to the history of remote antiquity. As the gloom
+which has covered it so long slowly rolls back before the light of
+scientific research, we begin to discern outlines and landmarks, at
+first so dim and wavering as rather to mislead than to instruct; but
+soon the searcher's eye, sharpened by practice, fixes them sufficiently
+to bring them into connection with the later and more fully illumined
+portions of the eternally unrolling picture. Chance, to which all
+discoverers are so much indebted, frequently supplies such a landmark,
+and now and then one so firm and distinct as to become a trustworthy
+centre for a whole group.
+
+9. The annals of the Assyrian king Asshurbanipal (the founder of the
+great Library at Nineveh) have established beyond a doubt the first
+positive date that has been secured for the History of Chaldea. That
+king was for a long time at war with the neighboring kingdom of ELAM,
+and ended by conquering and destroying its capital, SHUSHAN (Susa),
+after carrying away all the riches from the royal palace and all the
+statues from the great temple. This happened in the year 645 B.C. In the
+inscriptions in which he records this event, the king informs us that in
+that temple he found a statue of the Chaldean goddess NANA, which had
+been carried away from her own temple in the city of URUKH (Erech, now
+Warka) by a king of Elam of the name of KHUDUR-NANKHUNDI, who invaded
+the land of Accad 1635 years before, and that he, Asshurbanipal, by the
+goddess's own express command, took her from where she had dwelt in
+Elam, "a place not appointed her," and reinstated her in her own
+sanctuary "which she had delighted in." 1635 added to 645 make 2280, a
+date not to be disputed. Now if a successful Elamite invasion in 2280
+found in Chaldea famous sanctuaries to desecrate, the religion to which
+these sanctuaries belonged, that of the Cushite, or Semitic colonists,
+must have been established in the country already for several, if not
+many, centuries. Indeed, quite recent discoveries show that it had been
+so considerably over a thousand years, so that we cannot possibly accept
+a date later than 4000 B.C. for the foreign immigration. The
+Shumiro-Accadian culture was too firmly rooted then and too completely
+worked out--as far as it went--to allow less than about 1000 years for
+its establishment. This takes us as far back as 5000 B.C.--a pretty
+respectable figure, especially when we think of the vista of time which
+opens behind it, and for which calculation fairly fails us. For if the
+Turanian settlers brought the rudiments of that culture from the
+highlands of Elam, how long had they sojourned there before they
+descended into the plains? And how long had it taken them to reach that
+station on their way from the race's mountain home in the far
+Northeast, in the Altaï valleys?
+
+10. However that may be, 5000 B.C. is a moderate and probable date. But
+ancient nations were not content with such, when they tried to locate
+and classify their own beginnings. These being necessarily obscure and
+only vaguely shadowed out in traditions which gained in fancifulness and
+lost in probability with every succeeding generation that received them
+and handed them down to the next, they loved to magnify them by
+enshrouding them in the mystery of innumerable ages. The more appalling
+the figures, the greater the glory. Thus we gather from some fragments
+of Berosus that, according to the national Chaldean tradition, there was
+an interval of over 259,000 years between the first appearance of Oannes
+and the first king. Then come ten successive kings, each of whom reigns
+a no less extravagant number of years (one 36,000, another 43,000, even
+64,000; 10,800 being the most modest figure), till the aggregate of all
+these different periods makes up the pretty sum total of 691,200 years,
+supposed to have elapsed from the first appearance of Oannes to the
+Deluge. It is so impossible to imagine so prodigious a number of years
+or couple with it anything at all real, that we might just as well
+substitute for such a figure the simpler "very, very long ago," or still
+better, the approved fairy tale beginning, "There was once upon a time,
+..." It conveys quite as definite a notion, and would, in such a case,
+be the more appropriate, that all a nation's most marvellous
+traditions, most fabulous legends, are naturally placed in those
+stupendously remote ages which no record could reach, no experience
+control. Although these traditions and legends generally had a certain
+body of actual truth and dimly remembered fact in them, which might
+still be apparent to the learned and the cultivated few, the ignorant
+masses of the people swallowed the thing whole, as real history, and
+found things acknowledged as impossible easy to believe, for the simple
+reason that "it was so very long ago!" A Chaldean of Alexander's time
+certainly did not expect to meet a divine Man-Fish in his walks along
+the sea-shore, but--there was no knowing what might or might not have
+happened seven hundred thousand years ago! In the legend of the six
+successive apparitions under the first ten long-lived kings, he would
+not have descried the simple sense so lucidly set forth by Mr. Maspero,
+one of the most distinguished of French Orientalists:--"The times
+preceding the Deluge represented an experimental period, during which
+mankind, being as yet barbarous, had need of divine assistance to
+overcome the difficulties with which it was surrounded. Those times were
+filled up with six manifestations of the deity, doubtless answering to
+the number of sacred books in which the priests saw the most complete
+expression of revealed law."[AI] This presents another and more probable
+explanation of the legend than the one suggested above, (end of § 7);
+but there is no more actual _proof_ of the one than of the other being
+the correct one.
+
+11. If Chaldea was in after times a battle-ground of nations, it was in
+the beginning a very nursery and hive of peoples. The various races in
+their migrations must necessarily have been attracted and arrested by
+the exceeding fertility of its soil, which it is said, in the times of
+its highest prosperity and under proper conditions of irrigation,
+yielded two hundredfold return for the grain it received. Settlement
+must have followed settlement in rapid succession. But the nomadic
+element was for a long time still very prevalent, and side by side with
+the builders of cities and tillers of fields, shepherd tribes roamed
+peacefully over the face of the land, tolerated and unmolested by the
+permanent population, with which they mixed but warily, occasionally
+settling down temporarily, and shifting their settlements as safety or
+advantage required it,--or wandering off altogether from that common
+halting-place, to the north, and west, and south-west. This makes it
+very plain why Chaldea is given as the land where the tongues became
+confused and the second separation of races took place.
+
+12. Of those principally nomadic tribes the greatest part did not
+belong, like the Cushites or Canaanites, to the descendants of Ham, "the
+Dark," but to those of SHEM, whose name, signifying "Glory, Renown,"
+stamps him as the eponymous ancestor of that race which has always
+firmly believed itself to be the chosen one of God. They were Semites.
+When they arrived on the plains of Chaldea, they were inferior in
+civilization to the people among whom they came to dwell. They knew
+nothing of city arts and had all to learn. They did learn, for superior
+culture always asserts its power,--even to the language of the Cushite
+settlers, which the latter were rapidly substituting for the rude and
+poor Turanian idiom of Shumir and Accad. This language, or rather
+various dialects of it, were common to most Hamitic and Semitic tribes,
+among whom that from which the Hebrews sprang brought it to its greatest
+perfection. The others worked it into different kindred dialects--the
+Assyrian, the Aramaic or Syrian, the Arabic--according to their several
+peculiarities. The Phoenicians of the sea-shore, and all the Canaanite
+nations, also spoke languages belonging to the same family, and
+therefore classed among the so-called Semitic tongues. Thus it has come
+to pass that philology,--or the Science of Languages,--adopted a wrong
+name for that entire group, calling the languages belonging to it,
+"Semitic," while, in reality, they are originally "Hamitic." The reason
+is that the Hamitic origin of those important languages which have been
+called Semitic these hundred years had not been discovered until very
+lately, and to change the name now would produce considerable confusion.
+
+13. Most of the Semitic tribes who dwelt in Chaldea adopted not only the
+Cushite language, but the Cushite culture and religion. Asshur carried
+all three northward, where the Assyrian kingdom arose out of a few
+Babylonian colonies, and Aram westward to the land which was afterwards
+called Southern Syria, and where the great city of Damascus long
+flourished and still exists. But there was one tribe of higher spiritual
+gifts than the others. It was not numerous, for through many generations
+it consisted of only one great family governed by its own eldest chief
+or patriarch. It is true that such a family, with the patriarch's own
+children and children's children, its wealth of horses, camels, flocks
+of sheep, its host of servants and slaves, male and female, represented
+quite a respectable force; Abraham could muster three hundred eighteen
+armed and _trained_ servants who had been born in his own household.
+This particular tribe seems to have wandered for some time on the
+outskirts of Chaldea and in the land itself, as indicated by the name
+given to its eponym in Chap. X.: ARPHAXAD (more correctly ARPHAKSHAD),
+corrupted from AREPH-KASDÎM, which means, "bordering on the Chaldeans,"
+or perhaps "boundaries"--in the sense of "land"--of the Chaldeans.
+Generation after generation pushed further westward, traversed the land
+of Shinar, crossed the Euphrates and reached the city of Ur, in or near
+which the tribe dwelt many years.
+
+14. Ur was then the greatest city of Southern Chaldea. The earliest
+known kings of Shumir resided in it, and besides that, it was the
+principal commercial mart of the country. For, strange as it may appear
+when we look on a modern map, Ur, the ruins of which are now 150 miles
+from the sea, was then a maritime city, with harbor and ship docks. The
+waters of the Gulf reached much further inland than they do now. There
+was then a distance of many miles between the mouths of the Tigris and
+Euphrates, and Ur lay very near the mouth of the latter river. Like all
+commercial and maritime cities, it was the resort not only of all the
+different races which dwelt in the land itself, but also of foreign
+traders. The active intellectual life of a capital, too, which was at
+the same time a great religious centre and the seat of a powerful
+priesthood, must of necessity have favored interchange of ideas, and
+have exerted an influence on that Semitic tribe of whom the Bible tells
+us that it "went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of
+Canaan," led by the patriarch Terah and his son Abraham (Genesis xi.
+31). The historian of Genesis here, as throughout the narrative, does
+not mention any date whatever for the event he relates; nor does he hint
+at the cause of this removal. On the first of these points the study of
+Chaldean cuneiform monuments throws considerable light, while the latter
+does not admit of more than guesses--of which something hereafter.
+
+15. Such is a broad and cursory outline of the theory according to which
+Cushite immigrations preceded the arrival of the Semites in the land of
+Shumir and Accad. Those who uphold it give several reasons for their
+opinion, such as that the Bible several times mentions a Cush located in
+the East and evidently different from the Cush which has been identified
+as Ethiopia; that, in Chap. X. of Genesis (8-12), Nimrod, the legendary
+hero, whose empire at first was in "the land of Shinar," and who is
+said to have "gone forth out of that land into Assyria," is called a son
+of Cush; that the most ancient Greek poets knew of "Ethiopians" in the
+far East as opposed to those of the South--and several more. Those
+scholars who oppose this theory dismiss it wholesale. They will not
+admit the existence of a Cushite element or migration in the East at
+all, and put down the expressions in the Bible as simple mistakes,
+either of the writers or copyists. According to them, there was only one
+immigration in the land of Shumir and Accad, that of the Semites,
+achieved through many ages and in numerous instalments. The language
+which superseded the ancient Shumiro-Accadian idiom is to them a Semitic
+one in the directest and most exclusive sense; the culture grafted on
+that of the earlier population is by them called purely "Semitic;" while
+their opponents frequently use the compound designation of
+"Cushito-Semitic," to indicate the two distinct elements of which, to
+them, it appears composed. It must be owned that the anti-Cushite
+opinion is gaining ground. Yet the Cushite theory cannot be considered
+as disposed of, only "not proven,"--or not sufficiently so, and
+therefore in abeyance and fallen into some disfavor. With this proviso
+we shall adopt the word "Semitic," as the simpler and more generally
+used.
+
+16. It is only with the rise of Semitic culture in Southern Mesopotamia
+that we enter on a period which, however remote, misty, and full of
+blanks, may still be called, in a measure, "historical," because there
+is a certain number of facts, of which contemporary monuments give
+positive evidence. True, the connection between those facts is often not
+apparent; their causes and effects are frequently not to be made out
+save by more or less daring conjectures; still there are numerous
+landmarks of proven fact, and with these real history begins. No matter
+if broad gaps have to be left open or temporarily filled with guesses.
+New discoveries are almost daily turning up, inscriptions, texts, which
+unexpectedly here supply a missing link, there confirm or demolish a
+conjecture, establish or correct dates which had long been puzzles or
+suggested on insufficient foundations. In short, details may be supplied
+as yet brokenly and sparingly, but the general outline of the condition
+of Chaldea may be made out as far back as forty centuries before Christ.
+
+17. Of one thing there can be no doubt: that our earliest glimpse of the
+political condition of Chaldea shows us the country divided into
+numerous small states, each headed by a great city, made famous and
+powerful by the sanctuary or temple of some particular deity, and ruled
+by a _patesi_, a title which is now thought to mean _priest-king_, i.e.,
+priest and king in one. There can be little doubt that the beginning of
+the city was everywhere the temple, with its college of ministering
+priests, and that the surrounding settlement was gradually formed by
+pilgrims and worshippers. That royalty developed out of the priesthood
+is also more than probable, and consequently must have been, in its
+first stage, a form of priestly rule, and, in a great measure,
+subordinate to priestly influence. There comes a time when for the title
+of _patesi_ is substituted that of "king" simply--a change which very
+possibly indicates the assumption by the kings of a more independent
+attitude towards the class from which their power originally sprang. It
+is noticeable that the distinction between the Semitic newcomers and the
+indigenous Shumiro-Accadians continues long to be traceable in the names
+of the royal temple-builders, even after the new Semitic idiom, which we
+call the Assyrian, had entirely ousted the old language--a process which
+must have taken considerable time, for it appears, and indeed stands to
+reason, that the newcomers, in order to secure the wished for influence
+and propagate their own culture, at first not only learned to understand
+but actually used themselves the language of the people among whom they
+came, at least in their public documents. This it is that explains the
+fact that so many inscriptions and tablets, while written in the dialect
+of Shumir or Accad, are Semitic in spirit and in the grade of culture
+they betray. Furthermore, even superficial observation shows that the
+old language and the old names survive longest in Shumir,--the South.
+From this fact it is to be inferred with little chance of mistake that
+the North,--the land of Accad,--was earlier Semitized, that the Semitic
+immigrants established their first headquarters in that part of the
+country, that their power and influence thence spread to the South.
+
+18. Fully in accordance with these indications, the first grand
+historical figure that meets us at the threshold of Chaldean history,
+dim with the mists of ages and fabulous traditions, yet unmistakably
+real, is that of the Semite SHARRUKIN, king of Accad--or AGADÊ, as the
+great Northern city came to be called--more generally known in history
+under the corrupt modern reading of SARGON, and called Sargon I., "the
+First," to distinguish him from another monarch of the same name who was
+found to have reigned many centuries later. As to the city of Agadê, it
+is no other than the city of Accad mentioned in Genesis x., 10. It was
+situated close to the Euphrates on a wide canal just opposite Sippar, so
+that in time the two cities came to be considered as one double city,
+and the Hebrews always called it "the two Sippars"--SEPHARVAIM, which is
+often spoken of in the Bible. It was there that Sharrukin established
+his rule, and a statue was afterwards raised to him there, the
+inscription on which, making him speak, as usual, in the first person,
+begins with the proud declaration: "Sharrukin, the mighty king, the king
+of Agadê, am I." Yet, although his reforms and conquests were of lasting
+importance, and himself remained one of the favorite heroes of Chaldean
+tradition, he appears to have been an adventurer and usurper. Perhaps he
+was, for this very reason, all the dearer to the popular fancy, which,
+in the absence of positive facts concerning his birth and origin, wove
+around them a halo of romance, and told of him a story which must be
+nearly as old as mankind, for it has been told over and over again, in
+different countries and ages, of a great many famous kings and heroes.
+This of Sharrukin is the oldest known version of it, and the inscription
+on his statue puts it into the king's own mouth. It makes him say that
+he knew not his father, and that his mother, a princess, gave him birth
+in a hiding-place, (or "an inaccessible place"), near the Euphrates, but
+that his family were the rulers of the land. "She placed me in a basket
+of rushes," the king is further made to say; "with bitumen the door of
+my ark she closed. She launched me on the river, which drowned me not.
+The river bore me along; to Akki, the water-carrier, it brought me.
+Akki, the water-carrier, in the tenderness of his heart lifted me up.
+Akki, the water-carrier, as his own child brought me up. Akki, the
+water-carrier, made me his gardener. And in my gardenership the goddess
+Ishtar loved me...."
+
+19. Whatever his origin and however he came by the royal power, Sargon
+was a great monarch. It is said that he undertook successful expeditions
+into Syria, and a campaign into Elam; that with captives of the
+conquered races he partly peopled his new capital, Agadê, where he built
+a palace and a magnificent temple; that on one occasion he was absent
+three years, during which time he advanced to the very shores of the
+Mediterranean, which he calls "the sea of the setting sun," and where he
+left memorial records of his deeds, and returned home in triumph,
+bringing with him immense spoils. The inscription contains only the
+following very moderate mention of his military career: "For forty-five
+years the kingdom I have ruled. And the black-head race (Accadian) I
+have governed. In multitudes of bronze chariots I rode over rugged
+lands. I governed the upper countries. Three times to the coast of the
+(Persian) sea I advanced...."[AJ]
+
+[Illustration: 58.--CYLINDER OF SARGON, FROM AGADÊ. (Hommel, "Gesch.
+Babyloniens u. Assyriens.")]
+
+20. This Sharrukin must not be confounded with another king of the same
+name, who reigned also in Agadê, some 1800 years later (about 2000
+B.C.), and in whose time was completed and brought into definite shape a
+vast religious reform which had been slowly working itself out ever
+since the Semitic and Accadian elements began to mix in matters of
+spiritual speculation and worship. What was the result of the
+amalgamation will form the subject of the next chapter. Suffice it here
+to say that the religion of Chaldea in the form which it assumed under
+the second Sharrukin remained fixed forever, and when Babylonian
+religion is spoken of, it is that which is understood by that name. The
+great theological work demanded a literary undertaking no less great.
+The incantations and magic forms of the first, purely Turanian, period
+had to be collected and put in order, as well as the hymns and prayers
+of the second period, composed under the influence of a higher and more
+spiritual religious feeling. But all this literature was in the language
+of the older population, while the ruling class--the royal houses and
+the priesthood--were becoming almost exclusively Semitic. It was
+necessary, therefore, that they should study the old language and learn
+it so thoroughly as not only to understand and read it, but to be able
+to use it, in speaking and writing. For that purpose Sargon not only
+ordered the ancient texts, when collected and sorted, to be copied on
+clay tablets with the translation--either between the lines, or on
+opposite columns--into the now generally used modern Semitic language,
+which we may as well begin to call by its usual name, Assyrian, but gave
+directions for the compilation of grammars and vocabularies,--the very
+works which have enabled the scholars of the present day to arrive at
+the understanding of that prodigiously ancient tongue which, without
+such assistance, must have remained a sealed book forever.
+
+21. Such is the origin of the great collection in three books and two
+hundred tablets, the contents of which made the subject of the preceding
+chapter. To this must be added another great work, in seventy tablets,
+in Assyrian, on astrology, i.e., the supposed influence of the heavenly
+bodies, according to their positions and conjunctions, on the fate of
+nations and individuals and on the course of things on earth
+generally--an influence which was firmly believed in; and probably yet a
+third work, on omens, prodigies and divination. To carry out these
+extensive literary labors, to treasure the results worthily and safely,
+Sargon II. either founded or greatly enlarged the library of the
+priestly college at Urukh (Erech), so that this city came to be called
+"the City of Books." This repository became the most important one in
+all Chaldea, and when, fourteen centuries later, the Assyrian
+Asshurbanipal sent his scribes all over the country, to collect copies
+of the ancient, sacred and scientific texts for his own royal library at
+Nineveh, it was at Erech that they gathered their most abundant harvest,
+being specially favored there by the priests, who were on excellent
+terms with the king after he had brought back from Shushan and restored
+to them the statue of their goddess Nana. Agadê thus became the
+headquarters, as it were, of the Semitic influence and reform, which
+spread thence towards the South, forming a counter-current to the
+culture of Shumir, which had steadily progressed from the Gulf
+northward.
+
+22. It is just possible that Sargon's collection may have also comprised
+literature of a lighter nature than those ponderous works on magic and
+astrology. At least, a work on agriculture has been found, which is
+thought to have been compiled for the same king's library,[AK] and which
+contains bits of popular poetry (maxims, riddles, short peasant songs)
+of the kind that is now called "folk-lore." Of the correctness of the
+supposition there is, as yet, no absolute proof, but as some of these
+fragments, of which unfortunately but few could be recovered, are very
+interesting and pretty in their way, this is perhaps the best place to
+insert them. The following four may be called "Maxims," and the first is
+singularly pithy and powerfully expressed.
+
+    1. Like an oven that is old
+       Against thy foes be hard and strong.
+
+    2. May he suffer vengeance,
+       May it be returned to him,
+       Who gives the provocation.
+
+    3. If evil thou doest,
+       To the everlasting sea
+       Thou shalt surely go.
+
+    4. Thou wentest, thou spoiledst
+       The land of the foe,
+       For the foe came and spoiled
+       Thy land, even thine.
+
+23. It will be noticed that No. 3 alone expresses moral feeling of a
+high standard, and is distinctively Semitic in spirit, the same spirit
+which is expressed in a loftier and purely religious vein, and a more
+poetical form in one of the "Penitential Psalms," where it says:
+
+    Whoso fears not his god--will be cut off even like a reed.
+    Whoso honors not the goddess--his bodily strength shall waste away;
+    Like a star of heaven, his light shall wane; like waters of the night
+        he shall disappear.
+
+Some fragments can be well imagined as being sung by the peasant at work
+to his ploughing team, in whose person he sometimes speaks:
+
+    5. A heifer am I,--to the cow I am yoked;
+       The plough handle is strong--lift it up! lift it up!
+
+    6. My knees are marching--my feet are not resting;
+       With no wealth of thy own--grain thou makest for me.[AL]
+
+24. A great deal of additional interest in the elder Sargon of Agadê has
+lately been excited by an extraordinary discovery connected with him,
+which produced a startling revolution in the hitherto accepted Chaldean
+chronology. This question of dates is always a most intricate and
+puzzling one in dealing with ancient Oriental nations, because they did
+not date their years from some particular event, as we do, and as did
+the Mohammedans, the Greeks and the Romans. In the inscriptions things
+are said to have happened in the year so-and-so of such a king's reign.
+Where to place that king is the next question--unanswerable, unless, as
+fortunately is mostly the case, some clue is supplied, to borrow a legal
+term, by circumstantial evidence. Thus, if an eclipse is mentioned, the
+time can easily be determined by the help of astronomy, which can
+calculate backward as well as forward. Or else, an event or a person
+belonging to another country is alluded to, and if they are known to us
+from other sources, that is a great help. Such a coincidence (which is
+called a SYNCHRONISM) is most valuable, and dates established by
+synchronisms are generally reliable. Then, luckily for us, Assyrian and
+Babylonian kings of a late period, whose dates are fixed and proved
+beyond a doubt, were much in the habit, in their historical
+inscriptions, of mentioning events that had taken place before their
+time and specifying the number of years elapsed, often also the king
+under whose reign the event, whatever it was, had taken place. This is
+the most precious clue of all, as it is infallible, and besides
+ascertaining one point, gives a firm foothold, whereby to arrive at many
+others. The famous memorandum of Asshurbanipal, already so often
+referred to, about the carrying away of the goddess Nana, (i.e., her
+statue) from her temple at Erech is evidence of this kind. Any dates
+suggested without any of these clues as basis are of necessity
+untrustworthy, and no true scholar dreams of offering any such date,
+except as a temporary suggestion, awaiting confirmation or abolition
+from subsequent researches. So it was with Sargon I. of Agadê. There was
+no positive indication of the time at which he lived, except that he
+could not possibly have lived later than 2000 B.C. Scholars therefore
+agreed to assign that date to him, approximatively--a little more or
+less--thinking they could not go very far wrong in so doing. Great
+therefore was the commotion produced by the discovery of a cylinder of
+Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon (whose date is 550 B.C.), wherein he
+speaks of repairs he made in the great Sun-temple at Sippar, and
+declares having dug deep in its foundations for the cylinders of the
+founder, thus describing his success: "Shamash (the Sun-god), the great
+lord ... suffered me to behold the foundation-cylinder of NARAM-SIN, the
+son of Sharrukin, which for thrice thousand and twice hundred years none
+of the kings that lived before me had seen." The simple addition 3200 +
+550 gives 3750 B.C. as the date of Naram-Sin, and 3800 as that of his
+father Sargon, allowing for the latter's long reign! A scene-shifting of
+1800 years at one slide seemed something so startling that there was
+much hesitation in accepting the evidence, unanswerable as it seemed,
+and the possibility of an error of the engraver was seriously
+considered. Some other documents, however, were found independently of
+each other and in different places, corroborating the statement on
+Nabonidus' cylinder, and the tremendously ancient date of 3800 B.C. is
+now generally accepted the elder Sargon of Agadê--perhaps the remotest
+_authentic_ date yet arrived at in history.
+
+25. When we survey and attempt to grasp and classify the materials we
+have for an early "History of Chaldea," it appears almost presumptuous
+to grace so necessarily lame an attempt with so ambitious a name. The
+landmarks are so few and far between, so unconnected as yet, and there
+is so much uncertainty about them, especially about placing them. The
+experience with Sargon of Agadê has not been encouraging to conjectural
+chronology; yet with such we must in many cases be content until more
+lucky finds turn up to set us right. What, for instance, is the proper
+place of GUDÊA, the _patesi_ of SIR-BURLA (also read SIR-GULLA or
+SIRTILLA, and, lately, ZIRLABA), whose magnificent statues Mr. de Sarzec
+found in the principal hall of the temple of which the bricks bear his
+stamp? (See p. 217.) The title of _patesi_, (not "king"), points to
+great antiquity, and he is pretty generally understood to have lived
+somewhere between 4000 and 3000 B.C. That he was not a Semite, but an
+Accadian prince, is to be concluded not only from the language of his
+inscriptions and the writing, which is of the most archaic--i.e.,
+ancient and old-fashioned--character, but from the fact that the head,
+which was found with the statues, is strikingly Turanian in form and
+features, shaved, too, and turbaned after a fashion still used in
+Central Asia. Altogether it might easily be taken for that of a modern
+Mongolian or Tatar.[AM] The discovery of this builder and patron of art
+has greatly eclipsed the glory of a somewhat later ruler, UR-ÊA, King
+of Ur,[AN] who had long enjoyed the reputation of being the earliest
+known temple-builder. He remains at all events the first powerful
+monarch we read of in Southern Chaldea, of which Ur appears to have been
+in some measure the capital, at least in so far as to have a certain
+supremacy over the other great cities of Shumir.
+
+26. Of these Shumir had many, even more venerable for their age and
+holiness than those of Accad. For the South was the home of the old race
+and most ancient culture, and thence both had advanced northward. Hence
+it was that the old stock was hardier there and endured longer in its
+language, religion and nationality, and was slower in yielding to the
+Semitic counter-current of race and culture, which, as a natural
+consequence, obtained an earlier and stronger hold in the North, and
+from there radiated over the whole of Mesopotamia. There was ERIDHU, by
+the sea "at the mouth of the Rivers," the immemorial sanctuary of Êa;
+there was SIR-GULLA, so lately unknown, now the most promising mine for
+research; there was LARSAM, famous with the glories of its "House of the
+Sun" (_Ê-Babbara_ in the old language), the rival of Ur, the city of the
+Moon-god, whose kings UR-ÊA and his son DUNGI were, it appears, the
+first to take the ambitious title of "Kings of Shumir and Accad" and
+"Kings of the Four Regions." As for Babylon, proud Babylon, which we
+have so long been accustomed to think of as the very beginning of state
+life and political rule in Chaldea, it was perhaps not yet built at all,
+or only modestly beginning its existence under its Accadian name of
+TIN-TIR-KI ("the Place of Life"), or, somewhat later, KA-DIMIRRA ("Gate
+of God"), when already the above named cities, and several more, had
+each its famous temple with ministering college of priests, and,
+probably, library, and each its king. But political power was for a long
+time centred at Ur. The first kings of Ur authentically known to us are
+Ur-êa and his son Dungi, who have left abundant traces of their
+existence in the numerous temples they built, not in Ur alone, but in
+most other cities too. Their bricks have been identified at Larsam
+(Senkereh), and, it appears, at Sir-burla (Tel-Loh), at Nipur (Niffer)
+and at Urukh (Erech, Warka), and as the two latter cities belonged to
+Accad, they seem to have ruled at least part of that country and thus to
+have been justified in assuming their high-sounding title.
+
+[Illustration: 59.--STATUE OF GUDÊA, WITH INSCRIPTION; FROM TELL-LOH,
+(SIR-BURLA OR SIR-GULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION. (Hommel).]
+
+27. It has been noticed that the bricks bearing the name of Ur-êa "are
+found in a lower position than any others, at the very foundation of
+buildings;" that "they are of a rude and coarse make, of many sizes and
+ill-fitted together;" that baked bricks are rare among them; that they
+are held together by the oldest substitutes for mortar--mud and
+bitumen--and that the writing upon them is curiously rude and
+imperfect.[AO] But whatever King Ur-êa's architectural efforts may lack
+in perfection, they certainly make up in size and number. Those that he
+did not complete, his son Dungi continued after him. It is remarkable
+that these great builders seem to have devoted their energies
+exclusively to religious purposes; also that, while their names are
+Shumiro-Accadian, and their inscriptions are often in that language, the
+temples they constructed were dedicated to various deities of the new,
+or rather reformed religion. When we see the princes of the South,
+according to an ingenious remark of Mr. Lenormant, thus begin a sort of
+practical preaching of the Semitized religion, we may take it as a sign
+of the times, as an unmistakable proof of the influence of the North,
+political as well as religious. A very curious relic of King Ur-êa was
+found--his own signet cylinder--which was lost by an accident, then
+turned up again and is now in the British Museum. It represents the
+Moon-god seated on a throne,--as is but meet for the king of the
+Moon-god's special city--with priests presenting worshippers. No
+definite date is of course assignable to Ur-êa and the important epoch
+of Chaldean history which he represents. But a very probable
+approximative one can be arrived at, thanks to a clue supplied by the
+same Nabonidus, last King of Babylon, who settled the Sargon question
+for us so unexpectedly. That monarch was as zealous a repairer of
+temples as his predecessors had been zealous builders. He had reasons of
+his own to court popularity, and could think of nothing better than to
+restore the time-honored sanctuaries of the land. Among others he
+repaired the Sun-temple (Ê-Babbara) at Larsam, whereof we are duly
+informed by a special cylinder. In it he tells posterity that he found a
+cylinder of King Hammurabi intact in its chamber under the
+corner-stone, which cylinder states that the temple was founded 700
+years before Hammurabi's time; as Ur-êa was the founder, it only remains
+to determine the latter king's date in order to know that of the earlier
+one.[AP] Here unfortunately scholars differ, not having as yet any
+decisive authority to build upon. Some place Hammurabi _before_ 2000
+B.C., others a little later. It is perhaps safest, therefore, to assume
+that Ur-êa can scarcely have lived much earlier than 2800 or much later
+than 2500 B.C. At all events, he must necessarily have lived somewhat
+before 2300 B.C., for about this latter year took place the Elamite
+invasion recorded by Asshurbanipal, an invasion which, as this King
+expressly mentions, laid waste the land of Accad and desecrated its
+temples--evidently the same ones which Ur-êa and Dungi so piously
+constructed. Nor was this a passing inroad or raid of booty-seeking
+mountaineers. It was a real conquest. Khudur-Nankhundi and his
+successors remained in Southern Chaldea, called themselves kings of the
+country, and reigned, several of them in succession, so that this series
+of foreign rulers has become known in history as "the Elamite dynasty."
+There was no room then for a powerful and temple-building national
+dynasty like that of the kings of Ur.
+
+28. This is the first time we meet authentic monumental records of a
+country which was destined through the next sixteen centuries to be in
+continual contact, mostly hostile, with both Babylonia and her northern
+rival Assyria, until its final annihilation by the latter. Its capital
+was SHUSHAN, (afterwards pronounced by foreigners "Susa"), and its own
+original name SHUSHINAK. Its people were of Turanian stock, its language
+was nearly akin to that of Shumir and Accad. But at some time or other
+Semites came and settled in Shushinak. Though too few in number to
+change the country's language or customs, the superiority of their race
+asserted itself. They became the nobility of the land, the ruling
+aristocracy from which the kings were taken, the generals and the high
+functionaries. That the Turanian mass of the population was kept in
+subjection and looked down upon, and that the Semitic nobility avoided
+intermarrying with them is highly probable; and it would be difficult
+otherwise to explain the difference of type between the two classes, as
+shown in the representations of captives and warriors belonging to both
+on the Assyrian sculptures. The common herd of prisoners employed on
+public labor and driven by overseers brandishing sticks have an
+unmistakably Turanian type of features--high cheek-bones, broad,
+flattened face, etc., while the generals, ministers and nobles have all
+the dignity and beauty of the handsomest Jewish type. "Elam," the name
+under which the country is best known both from the Bible and later
+monuments, is a Turanian word, which means, like "Accad," "Highlands."
+It is the only name under which the historian of Chap. X. of Genesis
+admits it into his list of nations, and, consistently following out his
+system of ignoring all members of the great yellow race, he takes into
+consideration only the Semitic aristocracy, and makes of Elam a son of
+Shem, a brother of Asshur and Arphakhshad. (Gen. x. 22.)
+
+29. One of Khudur-Nankhundi's next successors, KHUDUR-LAGAMAR, was not
+content with the addition of Chaldea to his kingdom of Elam. He had the
+ambition of a born conqueror and the generalship of one. The Chap. XIV.
+of Genesis--which calls him Chedorlaomer--is the only document we have
+descriptive of this king's warlike career, and a very striking picture
+it gives of it, sufficient to show us that we have to do with a very
+remarkable character. Supported by three allied and probably tributary
+kings, that of Shumir (Shineâr), of Larsam, (Ellassar) and of the GOÏM,
+(in the unrevised translation of the Bible "king of nations") i.e., the
+nomadic tribes which roamed on the outskirts and in the yet unsettled,
+more distant portions of Chaldea, Khudur-Lagamar marched an army 1200
+miles across the desert into the fertile, wealthy and populous valleys
+of the Jordan and the lake or sea of Siddim, afterwards called the Dead
+Sea, where five great cities--Sodom, Gomorrah, and three others--were
+governed by as many kings. Not only did he subdue these kings and impose
+his rule on them, but contrived, even after he returned to the Persian
+Gulf, to keep on them so firm a hand, that for twelve years they
+"served" him, i.e., paid him tribute regularly, and only in the
+thirteenth year, encouraged by his prolonged absence, ventured to
+rebel. But they had underrated Khudur-Lagamar's vigilance and activity.
+The very next year he was among them again, together with his three
+faithful allies, encountered them in the vale of Siddim and beat them,
+so that they all fled. This was the battle of the "four kings with
+five." As to the treatment to which the victor subjected the conquered
+country it is very briefly but clearly described: "And they took all the
+goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their
+way."
+
+30. Now there dwelt in Sodom a man of foreign race and great wealth,
+Lot, the nephew of Abraham. For Abraham and his tribe no longer lived at
+Chaldean Ur. The change of masters, and very probably the harsher rule,
+if not positive oppression, consequent on the Elamite conquest, had
+driven them thence. It was then they went forth into the land of Canaan,
+led by Terah and his son Abraham, and when Terah died, Abraham became
+the patriarch and chief of the tribe, which from this time begins to be
+called in the Bible "Hebrews," from an eponymous ancestor, Heber or
+Eber, whose name alludes to the passing of the Euphrates, or, perhaps,
+in a wider sense, to the passage of the tribe through the land of
+Chaldea.[AQ] For years the tribe travelled without dividing, from
+pasture to pasture, over the vast land where dwelt the Canaanites, well
+seen and even favored of them, into Egypt and out of it again, until the
+quarrel occurred between Abraham's herdsmen and Lot's, (see Genesis,
+Chap. XIII.), and the separation, when Lot chose the plain of the Jordan
+and pitched his tent toward Sodom, while Abraham dwelt in the land of
+Canaan as heretofore, with his family, servants and cattle, in the plain
+of Mamre. It was while dwelling there, in friendship and close alliance
+with the princes of the land, that one who had escaped from the battle
+in the vale of Siddim, came to Abraham and told him how that among the
+captives whom Khudur-Lagamar had taken from Sodom, was Lot, his
+brother's son, with all his goods. Then Abraham armed his trained
+servants, born in his own household, three hundred and eighteen, took
+with him his friends, Mamre and his brothers, with their young men, and
+starting in hot pursuit of the victorious army, which was now carelessly
+marching home towards the desert with its long train of captives and
+booty, overtook it near Damascus in the night, when his own small
+numbers could not be detected, and produced such a panic by a sudden and
+vigorous onslaught that he put it to flight, and not only rescued his
+nephew Lot with his goods and women, but brought back all the captured
+goods and the people too. And the King of Sodom came out to meet him on
+his return, and thanked him, and wanted him to keep all the goods for
+himself, only restoring the persons. Abraham consented that a proper
+share of the rescued goods should be given to his friends and their
+young men, but refused all presents offered to himself, with the haughty
+words: "I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the
+possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread, even to a
+shoe-latchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou
+shouldest say, I have made Abraham rich."
+
+31. Khudur-Lagamar, of whom the spirited Biblical narrative gives us so
+life-like a sketch, lived, according to the most probable calculations,
+about 2200 B.C. Among the few vague forms whose blurred outlines loom
+out of the twilight of those dim and doubtful ages, he is the second
+with any flesh-and-blood reality about him, probably the first conqueror
+of whom the world has any authentic record. For Egypt, the only country
+which rivals in antiquity the primitive states of Mesopotamia, although
+it had at this time already reached the height of its culture and
+prosperity, was as yet confined by its rulers strictly to the valley of
+the Nile, and had not entered on that career of foreign wars and
+conquests which, some thousand years later, made it a terror from the
+Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.
+
+32. The Elamitic invasion was not a passing raid. It was a real
+conquest, and established a heavy foreign rule in a highly prosperous
+and flourishing land--a rule which endured, it would appear, about three
+hundred years. That the people chafed under it, and were either gloomily
+despondent or angrily rebellious as long as it lasted, there is plenty
+of evidence in their later literature. It is even thought, and with
+great moral probability, that the special branch of religious poetry
+which has been called "Penitential Psalms" has arisen out of the
+sufferings of this long period of national bondage and humiliation, and
+if, as seems to be proved by some lately discovered interesting
+fragments of texts, these psalms were sung centuries later in Assyrian
+temples on mournful or very solemn public occasions, they must have
+perpetuated the memory of the great national calamity that fell on the
+mother-country as indelibly as the Hebrew psalms, of which they were the
+models, have perpetuated that of King David's wanderings and Israel's
+tribulations.
+
+33. But there seems to have been one Semitic royal house which preserved
+a certain independence and quietly gathered power against better days.
+To do this they must have dissembled and done as much homage to the
+victorious barbarians as would ensure their safety and serve as a blind
+while they strengthened their home rule. This dynasty, destined to the
+glorious task of restoring the country's independence and founding a new
+national monarchy, was that of Tin-tir-ki, or Ka-dimirra--a name now
+already translated into the Semitic BAB-ILU, ("the Gate of God"); they
+reigned over the large and important district of KARDUNYASH, important
+from its central position, and from the fact that it seems to have
+belonged neither to Accad, nor to Shumir, but to have been politically
+independent, since it is always mentioned by itself. Still, to the
+Hebrews, Babylon lay in the land of Shinar, and it is strongly supposed
+that the "Amraphel king of Shinar" who marched with Khudur-Lagamar, as
+his ally, against the five kings of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, was no
+other than a king of Babylon, one of whose names has been read AMARPAL,
+while "Ariokh of Ellassar" was an Elamite, ERI-AKU, brother or cousin of
+Khudur-Lagamar, and King of Larsam, where the conquerors had established
+a powerful dynasty, closely allied by blood to the principal one, which
+had made the venerable Ur its headquarters. This Amarpal, more
+frequently mentioned under his other name of SIN-MUBALLIT, is thought to
+have been the father of HAMMURABI, the deliverer of Chaldea and the
+founder of the new empire.
+
+34. The inscriptions which Hammurabi left are numerous, and afford us
+ample means of judging of his greatness as warrior, statesman and
+administrator. In his long reign of fifty-five years he had, indeed,
+time to achieve much, but what he did achieve _was_ much even for so
+long a reign. In what manner he drove out the foreigners we are not
+told, but so much is clear that the decisive victory was that which he
+gained over the Elamite king of Larsam. It was probably by expelling the
+hated race by turns from every district they occupied, that Hammurabi
+gathered the entire land into his own hands and was enabled to keep it
+together and weld it into one united empire, including both Accad and
+Shumir, with all their time-honored cities and sanctuaries, making his
+own ancestral city, Babylon, the head and capital of them all. This king
+was in every respect a great and wise ruler, for, after freeing and
+uniting the country, he was very careful of its good and watchful of its
+agricultural interests. Like all the other kings, he restored many
+temples and built several new ones. But he also devoted much energy to
+public works of a more generally useful kind. During the first part of
+his reign inundations seem to have been frequent and disastrous,
+possibly in consequence of the canals and waterworks having been
+neglected under the oppressive foreign rule. The inscriptions speak of a
+city having been destroyed "by a great flood," and mention "a great wall
+along the Tigris"--probably an embankment, as having been built by
+Hammurabi for protection against the river. But probably finding the
+remedy inadequate, he undertook and completed one of the greatest public
+works that have ever been carried out in any country: the excavation of
+a gigantic canal, which he called by his own name, but which was
+afterwards famous under that of "Royal Canal of Babylon." From this
+canal innumerable branches carried the fertilizing waters through the
+country. It was and remained the greatest work of the kind, and was,
+fifteen centuries later, the wonder of the foreigners who visited
+Babylon. Its constructor did not overrate the benefit he had conferred
+when he wrote in an inscription which can scarcely be called boastful:
+"I have caused to be dug the Nahr-Hammurabi, a benediction for the
+people of Shumir and Accad. I have directed the waters of its branches
+over the desert plains; I have caused them to run in the dry channels
+and thus given unfailing waters to the people.... I have changed desert
+plains into well-watered lands. I have given them fertility and plenty,
+and made them the abode of happiness."
+
+35. There are inscriptions of Hammurabi's son. But after him a new
+catastrophe seems to have overtaken Chaldea. He is succeeded by a line
+of foreign kings, who must have obtained possession of the country by
+conquest. They were princes of a fierce and warlike mountain race, the
+KASSHI, who lived in the highlands that occupy the whole north-western
+portion of Elam, where they probably began to feel cramped for room.
+This same people has been called by the later Greek geographers COSSÆANS
+or CISSIANS, and is better known under either of these names. Their
+language, of which very few specimens have survived, is not yet
+understood; but so much is plain, that it is very different both from
+the Semitic language of Babylon and that of Shumir and Accad, so that
+the names of the Kasshi princes are easily distinguishable from all
+others. No dismemberment of the empire followed this conquest, however,
+if conquest there was. The kings of the new dynasty seem to have
+succeeded each other peacefully enough in Babylon. But the conquering
+days of Chaldea were over. We read no more of expeditions into the
+plains of Syria and to the "Sea of the Setting Sun." For a power was
+rising in the North-West, which quickly grew into a formidable rival:
+through many centuries Assyria kept the rulers of the Southern kingdom
+too busy guarding their frontiers and repelling inroads to allow them to
+think of foreign conquests.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AH] Names are often deceptive. That of the Hindu-Cush is now thought to
+mean "Killers of Hindus," probably in allusion to robber tribes of the
+mountains, and to have nothing to do with the Cushite race.
+
+[AI] "Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient," 1878, p. 160.
+
+[AJ] Translation of Professor A. H. Sayce.
+
+[AK] A. H. Sayce.
+
+[AL] Translated by A. H. Sayce, in his paper "Babylonian Folk-lore" in
+the "Folk-lore Journal," Vol. I., Jan., 1883.
+
+[AM] See Figs. 44 and 45, p. 101.
+
+[AN] This name was at first read Urukh, then Likbabi, then Likbagash,
+then Urbagash, then Urba'u, and now Professor Friedr. Delitzsch
+announces that the final and correct reading is in all probability
+either Ur-ea or Arad-ea.
+
+[AO] Geo. Rawlinson, "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern
+World" (1862), Vol. I., pp. 198 and ff.
+
+[AP] Geo. Smith, in "Records of the Past," Vol. V., p. 75. Fritz Hommel,
+"Die Semiten," p. 210 and note 101.
+
+[AQ] It should be mentioned, however, that scholars have of late been
+inclined to see in this name an allusion to the passage of the Jordan at
+the time of the conquest of Canaan by Israel, after the Egyptian
+bondage.
+
+
+
+
+                                V.
+
+                       BABYLONIAN RELIGION.
+
+
+1. In relating the legend of the Divine Man-Fish, who came out of the
+Gulf, and was followed, at intervals, by several more similar beings,
+Berosus assures us, that he "taught the people all the things that make
+up civilization," so that "nothing new was invented after that any
+more." But if, as is suggested, "this monstrous Oannes" is really a
+personification of the strangers who came into the land, and, being
+possessed of a higher culture, began to teach the Turanian population,
+the first part of this statement is as manifestly an exaggeration as the
+second. A people who had invented writing, who knew how to build, to
+make canals, to work metals, and who had passed out of the first and
+grossest stage of religious conceptions, might have much to learn, but
+certainly not _everything_. What the newcomers--whether Cushites or
+Semites--did teach them, was a more orderly way of organizing society
+and ruling it by means of laws and an established government, and, above
+all, astronomy and mathematics--sciences in which the Shumiro-Accads
+were little proficient, while the later and mixed nation, the Chaldeans,
+attained in them a very high perfection, so that many of their
+discoveries and the first principles laid down by them have come down to
+us as finally adopted facts, confirmed by later science. Thus, the
+division of the year into twelve months corresponding to as many
+constellations, known as "the twelve signs of the Zodiac," was familiar
+to them. They had also found out the division of the year into twelve
+months, only all their months had thirty days. So they were obliged to
+add an extra month--an intercalary month, as the scientific term
+is--every six years, to start even with the sun again, for they knew
+where the error in their reckoning lay. These things the strangers
+probably taught the Shumiro-Accads, but at the same time borrowed from
+them their way of counting. The Turanian races to this day have this
+peculiarity, that they do not care for the decimal system in arithmetic,
+but count by dozens and sixties, preferring numbers that can be divided
+by twelve and sixty. The Chinese even now do not measure time by
+centuries or periods of a hundred years, but by a cycle or period of
+sixty years. This was probably the origin of the division, adopted in
+Babylonia, of the sun's course into 360 equal parts or degrees, and of
+the day into twelve "_kasbus_" or double hours, since the kasbu answered
+to two of our hours, and was divided into sixty parts, which we might
+thus call "double minutes," while these again were composed of sixty
+"double seconds." The natural division of the year into twelve months
+made this so-called "docenal" and "sexagesimal" system of calculation
+particularly convenient, and it was applied to everything--measures of
+weight, distance, capacity and size as well as time.
+
+2. Astronomy is a strangely fascinating science, with two widely
+different and seemingly contradictory aspects, equally apt to develop
+habits of hard thinking and of dreamy speculation. For, if on one hand
+the study of mathematics, without which astronomy cannot subsist,
+disciplines the mind and trains it to exact and complicated operations,
+on the other hand, star-gazing, in the solitude and silence of a
+southern night, irresistibly draws it into a higher world, where
+poetical aspirations, guesses and dreams take the place of figures with
+their demonstrations and proofs. It is probably to these habitual
+contemplations that the later Chaldeans owed the higher tone of
+religious thought which distinguished them from their Turanian
+predecessors. They looked for the deity in heaven, not on earth. They
+did not cower and tremble before a host of wicked goblins, the creation
+of a terrified fancy. The spirits whom they worshipped inhabited and
+ruled those beautiful bright worlds, whose harmonious, concerted
+movements they watched admiringly, reverently, and could calculate
+correctly, but without understanding them. The stars generally became to
+them the visible manifestations and agents of divine power, especially
+the seven most conspicuous heavenly bodies: the Moon, whom they
+particularly honored, as the ruler of night and the measurer of time,
+the Sun and the five planets then known, those which we call Saturn,
+Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury. It is but just to the Shumiro-Accads
+to say that the perception of the divine in the beauty of the stars was
+not foreign to them. This is amply proved by the fact that in their
+oldest writing the sign of a star is used to express the idea not of any
+particular god or goddess, but of the divine principle, the deity
+generally. The name of every divinity is preceded by the star, meaning
+"the god so-and-so." When used in this manner, the sign was read in the
+old language "Dingir"--"god, deity." The Semitic language of Babylonia
+which we call "Assyrian," while adapting the ancient writing to its own
+needs, retained this use of the sign "star," and read it _îlu_, "god."
+This word--ILU or EL--we find in all Semitic languages, either ancient
+or modern, in the names they give to God, in the Arabic ALLAH as well as
+in the Hebrew ELOHIM.
+
+3. This religion, based and centred on the worship of the heavenly
+bodies, has been called _Sabeism_, and was common to most Semitic races,
+whose primitive nomadic life in the desert and wide, flat
+pasture-tracts, with the nightly watches required by the tending of vast
+flocks, inclined them to contemplation and star-gazing. It is to be
+noticed that the Semites gave the first place to the Sun, and not, like
+the Shumiro-Accads, to the Moon, possibly from a feeling akin to terror,
+experiencing as they did his destructive power, in the frequent droughts
+and consuming heat of the desert.[AR]
+
+4. A very prominent feature of the new order of things was the great
+power and importance of the priesthood. A successful pursuit of science
+requires two things: intellectual superiority and leisure to study,
+i.e., freedom from the daily care how to procure the necessaries of
+life. In very ancient times people in general were quite willing to
+acknowledge the superiority of those men who knew more than they did,
+who could teach them and help them with wise advice; they were willing
+also to support such men by voluntary contributions, in order to give
+them the necessary leisure. That a race with whom science and religion
+were one should honor the men thus set apart and learned in heavenly
+things and allow them great influence in private and public affairs,
+believing them, as they did, to stand in direct communion with the
+divine powers, was but natural; and from this to letting them take to
+themselves the entire government of the country as the established
+rulers thereof, was but one step. There was another circumstance which
+helped to bring about this result. The Chaldeans were devout believers
+in astrology, a form of superstition into which an astronomical religion
+like Sabeism is very apt to degenerate. For once it is taken for granted
+that the stars are divine beings, possessed of intelligence, and will,
+and power, what more natural than to imagine that they can rule and
+shape the destinies of men by a mysterious influence? This influence was
+supposed to depend on their movements, their position in the sky, their
+ever changing combinations and relations to each other; under this
+supposition every movement of a star--its rising, its setting, or
+crossing the path of another--every slightest change in the aspect of
+the heavens, every unusual phenomenon--an eclipse, for instance--must be
+possessed of some weighty sense, boding good or evil to men, whose
+destiny must constantly be as clearly written in the blue sky as in a
+book. If only one could learn the language, read the characters! Such
+knowledge was thought to be within the reach of men, but only to be
+acquired by the exceptionally gifted and learned few, and those whom
+they might think worthy of having it imparted to them. That these few
+must be priests was self-evident. They were themselves fervent believers
+in astrology, which they considered quite as much a real science as
+astronomy, and to which they devoted themselves as assiduously. They
+thus became the acknowledged interpreters of the divine will, partakers,
+so to speak, of the secret councils of heaven. Of course such a position
+added greatly to their power, and that they should never abuse it to
+strengthen their hold on the public mind and to favor their own
+ambitious views, was not in human nature. Moreover, being the clever and
+learned ones of the nation, they really were at the time the fittest to
+rule it--and rule it they did. When the Semitic culture spread over
+Shumir, whither it gradually extended from the North, i.e., the land
+of Accad, there arose in each great city--Ur, Eridhu, Larsam, Erech,--a
+mighty temple, with its priests, its library, its _Ziggurat_ or
+observatory. The cities and the tracts of country belonging to them
+were governed by their respective colleges. And when in progress of
+time, the power became centred in the hands of single men, they still
+were priest-kings, _patesis_, whose royalty must have been greatly
+hampered and limited by the authority of their priestly colleagues. Such
+a form of government is known under the name of _theocracy_, composed of
+two Greek words and meaning "divine government."
+
+5. This religious reform represents a complete though probably peaceable
+revolution in the condition of the "Land between the Rivers." The new
+and higher culture had thoroughly asserted itself as predominant in both
+its great provinces, and in nothing as much as in the national religion,
+which, coming in contact with the conceptions of the Semites, was
+affected by a certain nobler spiritual strain, a purer moral feeling,
+which seems to have been more peculiarly Semitic, though destined to be
+carried to its highest perfection only in the Hebrew branch of the race.
+Moral tone is a subtle influence, and will work its way into men's
+hearts and thoughts far more surely and irresistibly than any amount of
+preaching and commanding, for men are naturally drawn to what is good
+and beautiful when it is placed before them. Thus the old settlers of
+the land, the Shumiro-Accads, to whom their gross and dismal goblin
+creed could not be of much comfort, were not slow in feeling this
+ennobling and beneficent influence, and it is assuredly to that we owe
+the beautiful prayers and hymns which mark the higher stage of their
+religion. The consciousness of sin, the feeling of contrition, of
+dependence on an offended yet merciful divine power, so strikingly
+conspicuous in the so-called "Penitential Psalms" (see p. 178), the fine
+poetry in some of the later hymns, for instance those to the Sun (see p.
+171), are features so distinctively Semitic, that they startle us by
+their resemblance to certain portions of the Bible. On the other hand, a
+nation never forgets or quite gives up its own native creed and
+religious practices. The wise priestly rulers of Shumir and Accad did
+not attempt to compel the people to do so, but even while introducing
+and propagating the new religion, suffered them to go on believing in
+their hosts of evil spirits and their few beneficent ones, in their
+conjuring, soothsaying, casting and breaking of spells and charms. Nay,
+more. As time went on and the learned priests studied more closely the
+older creed and ideas, they were struck with the beauty of some few of
+their conceptions--especially that of the ever benevolent, ever watchful
+Spirit of Earth, Êa, and his son Meridug, the mediator, the friend of
+men. These conceptions, these and some other favorite national
+divinities, they thought worthy of being adopted by them and worked into
+their own religious system, which was growing more complicated, more
+elaborate every day, while the large bulk of spirits and demons they
+also allowed a place in it, in the rank of inferior "Spirits of heaven"
+and "Spirits of earth," which were lightly classed together and counted
+by hundreds. By the time a thousand years had passed, the fusion had
+become so complete that there really was both a new religion and a new
+nation, the result of a long work of amalgamation. The Shumiro-Accads of
+pure yet low race were no longer, nor did the Semites preserve a
+separate existence; they had become merged into one nation of mixed
+races, which at a later period became known under the general name of
+Chaldeans, whose religion, regarded with awe for its prodigious
+antiquity, yet was comparatively recent, being the outcome of the
+combination of two infinitely older creeds, as we have just seen. When
+Hammurabi established his residence at Babel, a city which had but
+lately risen to importance, he made it the capital of the empire first
+completely united under his rule (see p. 226), hence the name of
+Babylonia is given by ancient writers to the old land of Shumir and
+Accad, even more frequently than that of Chaldea, and the state religion
+is called indifferently the Babylonian or Chaldean, and not unfrequently
+Chaldeo-Babylonian.
+
+6. This religion, as it was definitely established and handed down
+unchanged through a succession of twenty centuries and more, had a
+twofold character, which must be well grasped in order to understand its
+general drift and sense. On the one hand, as it admitted the existence
+of many divine powers, who shared between them the government of the
+world, it was decidedly POLYTHEISTIC--"a religion of many gods." On the
+other hand, a dim perception had already been arrived at, perhaps
+through observation of the strictly regulated movements of the stars, of
+the presence of One supreme ruling and directing Power. For a class of
+men given to the study of astronomy could not but perceive that all
+those bright Beings which they thought so divine and powerful, were not
+absolutely independent; that their movements and combinations were too
+regular, too strictly timed, too identical in their ever recurring
+repetition, to be entirely voluntary; that, consequently, they
+_obeyed_--obeyed a Law, a Power above and beyond them, beyond heaven
+itself, invisible, unfathomable, unattainable by human thought or eyes.
+Such a perception was, of course, a step in the right direction, towards
+MONOTHEISM, i.e., the belief in only one God. But the perception was too
+vague and remote to be fully realized and consistently carried out. The
+priests who, from long training in abstract thought and contemplation,
+probably could look deeper and come nearer the truth than other people,
+strove to express their meaning in language and images which, in the
+end, obscured the original idea and almost hid it out of sight, instead
+of making it clearer. Besides, they did not imagine the world as
+_created_ by God, made by an act of his will, but as being a form of
+him, a manifestation, part of himself, of his own substance. Therefore,
+in the great all of the universe, and in each of its portions, in the
+mysterious forces at work in it--light and heat and life and
+growth--they admired and adored not the power of God, but his very
+presence; one of the innumerable and infinitely varied forms in which he
+makes himself known and visible to men, manifests himself to them--in
+short, _an emanation of God_. The word "emanation" has been adopted as
+the only one which to a certain extent conveys this very subtle and
+complicated idea. An emanation is not quite a thing itself, but it is a
+portion of it, which comes out of it and separates itself from it, yet
+cannot exist without it. So the fragrance of a flower is not the flower,
+nor is it a growth or development of it, yet the flower gives it forth
+and it cannot exist by itself without the flower--it is an emanation of
+the flower. The same can be said of the mist which visibly rises from
+the warm earth in low and moist places on a summer evening--it is an
+emanation of the earth.
+
+7. The Chaldeo-Babylonian priests knew of many such divine emanations,
+which, by giving them names and attributing to them definite functions,
+they made into so many separate divine persons. Of these some ranked
+higher and some lower, a relation which was sometimes expressed by the
+human one of "father and son." They were ordered in groups, very
+scientifically arranged. Above the rest were placed two TRIADS or
+"groups of three." The first triad comprised ANU, ÊA and BEL, the
+supreme gods of all--all three retained from the old Shumiro-Accadian
+list of divinities. ANU is ANA, "Heaven," and the surnames or epithets,
+which are given him in different texts, sufficiently show what
+conception had been formed of him: he is called "the Lord of the starry
+heavens," "the Lord of Darkness," "the first-born, the oldest, the
+Father of the Gods." ÊA, retaining his ancient attributions as "Lord of
+the Deep," the pre-eminently wise and beneficent spirit, represents the
+Divine Intelligence, the founder and maintainer of order and harmony,
+while the actual task of separating the elements of chaos and shaping
+them into the forms which make up the world as we know it, as well as
+that of ordering the heavenly bodies, appointing them their path and
+directing them thereon, was devolved on the third person of the triad,
+BEL, the son of ÊA. Bel is a Semitic name, which means simply "the
+lord."
+
+8. From its nature and attributions, it is clear that to this triad must
+have attached a certain vagueness and remoteness. Not so the second
+triad, in which the Deity manifested itself as standing in the nearest
+and most direct relation to man as most immediately influencing him in
+his daily life. The persons of this triad were the Moon, the Sun, and
+the Power of the Atmosphere,--SIN, SHAMASH, and RAMÂN, the Semitic names
+for the Shumiro-Accadian URU-KI or NANNAR, UD or BABBAR, and IM or
+MERMER. Very characteristically, Sin is frequently called "the god
+Thirty," in allusion to his functions as the measurer of time presiding
+over the month. Of the feelings with which the Sun was regarded and the
+beneficent and splendid qualities attributed to him, we know enough from
+the beautiful hymns quoted in Chap. III. (see p. 172). As to the god
+RAMÂN, frequently represented on tablets and cylinders by his
+characteristic sign, the double or triple-forked lightning-bolt--his
+importance as the dispenser of rain, the lord of the whirlwind and
+tempest, made him very popular, an object as much of dread as of
+gratitude; and as the crops depended on the supply of water from the
+canals, and these again could not be full without abundant rains, it is
+not astonishing that he should have been particularly entitled
+"protector or lord of canals," giver of abundance and "lord of
+fruitfulness." In his more terrible capacity, he is thus described: "His
+standard titles are the minister of heaven and earth," "the lord of the
+air," "he who makes the tempest to rage." He is regarded as the
+destroyer of crops, the rooter-up of trees, the scatterer of the
+harvest. Famine, scarcity, and even their consequence, pestilence, are
+assigned to him. He is said to have in his hand a "flaming sword" with
+which he effects his works of destruction, and this "flaming sword,
+which probably represents lightning, becomes his emblem upon the tablets
+and cylinders."[AS]
+
+9. The astronomical tendencies of the new religion fully assert
+themselves in the third group of divinities. They are simply the five
+planets then known and identified with various deities of the old creed,
+to whom they are, so to speak, assigned as their own particular
+provinces. Thus NIN-DAR (also called NINIP or NINÊB), originally another
+name or form of the Sun (see p. 172), becomes the ruler of the most
+distant planet, the one we now call Saturn; the old favorite, Meridug,
+under the Semitized name of MARDUK, rules the planet Jupiter. It is he
+whom later Hebrew writers have called MERODACH, the name we find in the
+Bible. The planet Mars belongs to NERGAL, the warrior-god, and Mercury
+to NEBO, more properly NABU, the "messenger of the gods" and the special
+patron of astronomy, while the planet Venus is under the sway of a
+feminine deity, the goddess ISHTAR, one of the most important and
+popular on the list. But of her more anon. She leads us to the
+consideration of a very essential and characteristic feature of the
+Chaldeo-Babylonian religion, common, moreover, to all Oriental heathen
+religions, especially the Semitic ones.
+
+10. There is a distinction--the distinction of sex--which runs through
+the whole of animated nature, dividing all things that have life into
+two separate halves--male and female--halves most different in their
+qualities, often opposite, almost hostile, yet eternally dependent on
+each other, neither being complete or perfect, or indeed able to exist
+without the other. Separated by contrast, yet drawn together by an
+irresistible sympathy which results in the closest union, that of love
+and affection, the two sexes still go through life together, together do
+the work of the world. What the one has not or has in an insufficient
+degree it finds in its counterpart, and it is only their union which
+makes of the world a whole thing, full, rounded, harmonious. The
+masculine nature, active, strong, and somewhat stern, even when merciful
+and bounteous, inclined to boisterousness and violence and often to
+cruelty, is well set off, or rather completed and moderated, by the
+feminine nature, not less active, but more quietly so, dispensing
+gentle influences, open to milder moods, more uniformly soft in feeling
+and manner.
+
+[Illustration: 60.--A BUST INSCRIBED WITH THE NAME OF NEBO. (British
+Museum.)]
+
+11. In no relation of life is the difference, yet harmony, of masculine
+and feminine action so plain as in that between husband and wife, father
+and mother. It requires no very great effort of imagination to carry the
+distinction beyond the bounds of animated nature, into the world at
+large. To men for whom every portion or force of the universe was
+endowed with a particle of the divine nature and power, many were the
+things which seemed to be paired in a contrasting, yet joint action
+similar to that of the sexes. If the great and distant Heaven appeared
+to them as the universal ruler and lord, the source of all things--the
+Father of the Gods, as they put it--surely the beautiful Earth, kind
+nurse, nourisher and preserver of all things that have life, could be
+called the universal Mother. If the fierce summer and noonday sun could
+be looked on as the resistless conqueror, the dread King of the world,
+holding death and disease in his hand, was not the quiet, lovely moon,
+of mild and soothing light, bringing the rest of coolness and healing
+dews, its gentle Queen? In short, there is not a power or a phenomenon
+of nature which does not present to a poetical imagination a twofold
+aspect, answering to the standard masculine and feminine qualities and
+peculiarities. The ancient thinkers--priests--who framed the vague
+guesses of the groping, dreaming mind into schemes and systems of
+profound meaning, expressed this sense of the twofold nature of things
+by worshipping a double divine being or principle, masculine and
+feminine. Thus every god was supplied with a wife, through the entire
+series of divine emanations and manifestations. And as all the gods were
+in reality only different names and forms of the Supreme and
+Unfathomable ONE, so all the goddesses represent only BELIT, the great
+feminine principle of nature--productiveness, maternity,
+tenderness--also contained, like everything else, in that ONE, and
+emanating from it in endless succession. Hence it comes that the
+goddesses of the Chaldeo-Babylonian religion, though different in name
+and apparently in attributions, become wonderfully alike when looked at
+closer. They are all more or less repetitions of BELIT, the wife of BEL.
+Her name--which is only the feminine form of the god's, meaning "the
+Lady," as Bel means "the Lord,"--sufficiently shows that the two are
+really one. Of the other goddesses the most conspicuous are ANAT or NANA
+(Earth), the wife of Anu (Heaven), ANUNIT (the Moon), wife of Shamash
+(the Sun), and lastly ISHTAR, the ruler of the planet Venus in her own
+right, and by far the most attractive and interesting of the list. She
+was a great favorite, worshipped as the Queen of Love and Beauty, and
+also as the Warrior-Queen, who rouses men to deeds of bravery, inspirits
+and protects them in battle--perhaps because men have often fought and
+made war for the love of women, and also probably because the planet
+Venus, her own star, appears not only in the evening, close after
+sunset, but also immediately before daybreak, and so seems to summon the
+human race to renewed efforts and activity. Ishtar could not be an
+exception to the general principle and remain unmated. But her husband,
+DUMUZ (a name for the Sun), stands to her in an entirely subordinate
+position, and, indeed, would be but little known were it not for a
+beautiful story that was told of them in a very old poem, and which will
+find its place among many more in one of the next chapters.
+
+12. It would be tedious and unnecessary to recite here more names of gods
+and goddesses, though there are quite a number, and more come to light
+all the time as new tablets are discovered and read. Most of them are in
+reality only different names for the same conceptions, and the
+Chaldeo-Babylonian pantheon--or assembly of divine persons--is very
+sufficiently represented by the so-called "twelve great gods," who were
+universally acknowledged to be at its head, and of whom we will here
+repeat the names: ANU, ÊA and BEL, SIN, SHAMASH and RAMÂN, NIN-DAR,
+MARUDUK, NERGAL, NEBO, BELIT and ISHTAR. Each had numerous temples all
+over the country. But every great city had its favorite whose temple was
+the oldest, largest and most sumptuous, to whose worship it was
+especially devoted from immemorial times. Êa, the most beloved god of old
+Shumir, had his chief sanctuary, which he shared with his son Meridug, at
+ERIDHU (now Abu-Shahrein), the most southern and almost the most ancient
+city of Shumir, situated near the mouth of the Euphrates, since the
+Persian Gulf reached quite as far inland in the year 4000 B.C., and this
+was assuredly an appropriate station for the great "lord of the deep,"
+the Fish-god Oannes, who emerged from the waters to instruct mankind. UR,
+as we have seen, was the time-honored seat of the Moon-god. At ERECH Anu
+and Anat or Nana--Heaven and Earth--were specially honored from the
+remotest antiquity, being jointly worshipped in the temple called "the
+House of Heaven." This may have been the reason of the particular
+sacredness attributed to the ground all around Erech, as witnessed by the
+exceeding persistency with which people strove for ages to bury their
+dead in it, as though under the immediate protection of the goddess of
+Earth[AT] (see Ch. III. of Introduction). Larsam paid especial homage to
+Shamash and was famous for its very ancient "House of the Sun." The Sun
+and Moon--Shamash and Anunit--had their rival sanctuaries at SIPPAR on
+the "Royal Canal," which ran nearly parallel to the Euphrates, and AGADÊ,
+the city of Sargon, situated just opposite on the other bank of the
+canal. The name of Agadê was lost in the lapse of time, and both cities
+became one, the two portions being distinguished only by the addition
+"Sippar of the Sun" and "Sippar of Anunit." The Hebrews called the united
+city "The two Sippars"--SEPHARVAIM, the name we find in the Bible.
+
+13. The site of this important city was long doubtful; but in 1881 one
+of the most skilful and indefatigable searchers, Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, a
+gentleman who began his career as assistant to Layard, made a discovery
+which set the question at rest. He was digging in a mound known to the
+Arabs by the name of Abu-Habba, and had made his way into the apartments
+of a vast structure which he knew to be a temple. From room to room he
+passed until he came to a smaller chamber, paved with asphalt, which he
+at once surmised to be the archive-room of the temple. "Heretofore,"
+says Mr. Rassam in his report, "all Assyrian and Babylonian structures
+were found to be paved generally either with stone or brick,
+consequently this novel discovery led me to have the asphalt broken into
+and examined. On doing so we found, buried in a corner of the chamber,
+about three feet below the surface, an inscribed earthenware coffer,
+inside which was deposited a stone tablet...." Rassam had indeed
+stumbled on the archive of the famous Sun-temple, as was proved not only
+by the tablet, but by the numerous documents which accompanied it, and
+which gave the names of the builders and restorers of the temple. As to
+the tablet, it is the finest and best preserved work of art of the kind
+which has yet been found. It was deposited about the year 880 B.C. on
+occasion of a restoration and represents the god himself, seated on a
+throne, receiving the homage of worshippers, while above him the
+sun-disc is held suspended from heaven on two strong cords, like a
+gigantic lamp, by two ministering beings, who may very probably belong
+to the host of Igigi or spirits of heaven. The inscription, in
+beautifully clear and perfectly preserved characters, informs us that
+this is "The image of Shamash, the great lord, who dwells in the 'House
+of the Sun,' (_Ê-Babbara_) which is within the city of Sippar."[AU] (See
+Frontispiece.) This was a truly magnificent find, and who knows but
+something as unexpected and as conclusive may turn up to fix for us the
+exact place of the temple of Anunit, and consequently of the venerable
+city of Agadê. As to BABYLON, it was originally placed under divine
+protection generally, as shown by its proper Semitic name, BAB-ILU,
+which means, as we have already seen, "the Gate of God," and exactly
+answers to the Shumiro-Accadian name of the city (KA-DINGIRRA, or
+KA-DIMIRRA); but later on it elected a special protector in the person
+of MARUDUK, the old favorite, Meridug. When Babylon became the capital
+of the united monarchy of Shumir and Accad, its patron divinity, under
+the name of BEL-MARUDUK, ("the Lord Maruduk") rose to a higher rank than
+he had before occupied; his temple outshone all others and became a
+wonder of the world for its wealth and splendor. He had another,
+scarcely less splendid, and founded by Hammurabi himself in Borsip. In
+this way religion was closely allied to politics. For in the days before
+the reunion of the great cities under the rule of Hammurabi, whichever
+of them was the most powerful at the time, its priests naturally claimed
+the pre-eminence for their local deity even beyond their own boundaries.
+So that the fact of the old Kings of Ur, Ur-êa and his descendants, not
+limiting themselves to the worship of their national Moon-god, but
+building temples in many places and to many gods, was perhaps a sign of
+a conciliating general policy as much as of liberal religious feeling.
+
+14. One would think that so very perfect a system of religion, based too
+on so high and noble an order of ideas, should have entirely superseded
+the coarse materialism and conjuring practices of the goblin-creed of
+the primitive Turanian settlers. Such, however, was far from being the
+case. We saw that the new religion made room, somewhat contemptuously
+perhaps, for the spirits of the old creed, carelessly massing them
+wholesale into a sort of regiment, composed of the three hundred IGIGI,
+or spirits of heaven, and the six hundred ANUNNAKI, or spirits of earth.
+The conjurers and sorcerers of old were even admitted into the
+priesthood in an inferior capacity, as a sort of lower order, probably
+more tolerated than encouraged--tolerated from necessity, because the
+people clung to their ancient beliefs and practices. But if their
+official position as a priestly class were subordinate, their real power
+was not the less great, for the public favor and credulity were on their
+side, and they were assuredly more generally popular than the learned
+and solemn priests, the counsellors and almost the equals of the kings,
+whose thoughts dwelt among the stars, who reverently searched the
+heavens for revelations of the divine will and wisdom, and who, by
+pursuing accurate observation and mathematical calculation together with
+the wildest dreams, made astronomy and astrology the inextricable tangle
+of scientific truth and fantastic speculation that we see it in the
+great work (in seventy tablets) prepared for the library of Sargon II.
+at Agadê. That the ancient system of conjuring and incantations remained
+in full force and general use, is sufficiently proved by the contents of
+the first two parts of the great collection in two hundred tablets
+compiled in the reign of the same king, and from the care with which
+the work was copied and recopied, commented on and translated in later
+ages, as we see from the copy made for the Royal Library at Nineveh, the
+one which has reached us.
+
+15. There was still a third branch of so-called "science," which greatly
+occupied the minds of the Chaldeo-Babylonians from their earliest times
+down to the latest days of their existence: it was the art of
+Divination, i.e., of divining and foretelling future events from signs
+and omens, a superstition born of the old belief in every object of
+inanimate nature being possessed or inhabited by a spirit, and the later
+belief in a higher power ruling the world and human affairs to the
+smallest detail, and constantly manifesting itself through all things in
+nature as through secondary agents, so that nothing whatever could occur
+without some deeper significance, which might be discovered and
+expounded by specially trained and favored individuals. In the case of
+atmospheric prophecies concerning weather and crops, as connected with
+the appearance of clouds, sky and moon, the force and direction of
+winds, etc., there may have been some real observation to found them on.
+But it is very clear that such a conception, if carried out consistently
+to extreme lengths and applied indiscriminately to _everything_, must
+result in arrant folly. Such was assuredly the case with the
+Chaldeo-Babylonians, who not only carefully noted and explained dreams,
+drew lots in doubtful cases by means of inscribed arrows, interpreted
+the rustle of trees, the plashing of fountains and murmur of streams,
+the direction and form of lightnings, not only fancied that they could
+see things in bowls of water and in the shifting forms assumed by the
+flame which consumed sacrifices, and the smoke which rose therefrom, and
+that they could raise and question the spirits of the dead, but drew
+presages and omens, for good or evil, from the flight of birds, the
+appearance of the liver, lungs, heart and bowels of the animals offered
+in sacrifice and opened for inspection, from the natural defects or
+monstrosities of babies or the young of animals--in short, from any and
+everything that they could possibly subject to observation.
+
+16. This idlest of all kinds of speculation was reduced to a most minute
+and apparently scientific system quite as early as astrology and
+incantation, and forms the subject of a third collection, in about one
+hundred tablets, and probably compiled by those same indefatigable
+priests of Agadê for Sargon, who was evidently of a most methodical turn
+of mind, and determined to have all the traditions and the results of
+centuries of observation and practical experiences connected with any
+branch of religious science fixed forever in the shape of thoroughly
+classified rules, for the guidance of priests for all coming ages. This
+collection has come to us in an even more incomplete and mutilated
+condition than the others; but enough has been preserved to show us that
+a right-thinking and religiously-given Chaldeo-Babylonian must have
+spent his life taking notes of the absurdest trifles, and questioning
+the diviners and priests about them, in order not to get into scrapes by
+misinterpreting the signs and taking that to be a favorable omen which
+boded dire calamity--or the other way, and thus doing things or leaving
+them undone at the wrong moment and in the wrong way. What excites,
+perhaps, even greater wonder, is the utter absurdity of some of the
+incidents gravely set down as affecting the welfare, not only of
+individuals, but of the whole country. What shall we say, for instance,
+of the importance attached to the proceedings of stray dogs? Here are
+some of the items as given by Mr. Fr. Lenormant in his most valuable and
+entertaining book on Chaldean Divination:--
+
+"If a gray dog enter the palace, the latter will be consumed by
+flames.--If a yellow dog enter the palace, the latter will perish in a
+violent catastrophe.--If a tawny dog enter the palace, peace will be
+concluded with the enemies.--If a dog enter the palace and be not
+killed, the peace of the palace will be disturbed.--If a dog enter the
+temple, the gods will have no mercy on the land.--If a white dog enter
+the temple, its foundations will subsist.--If a black dog enter the
+temple, its foundations will be shaken.--If a gray dog enter the temple,
+the latter will lose its possessions.... If dogs assemble in troops and
+enter the temple, no one will remain in authority.... If a dog vomits in
+a house, the master of that house will die."
+
+17. The chapter on monstrous births is extensive. Not only is every
+possible anomaly registered, from an extra finger or toe to an ear
+smaller than the other, with its corresponding presage of good or evil
+to the country, the king, the army, but the most impossible
+monstrosities are seriously enumerated, with the political conditions of
+which they are supposed to be the signs. For instance:--"If a woman give
+birth to a child with lion's ears, a mighty king will rule the land ...
+with a bird's beak, there will be peace in the land.... If a queen give
+birth to a child with a lion's face, the king will have no rival ... if
+to a snake, the king will be mighty.... If a mare give birth to a foal
+with a lion's mane, the lord of the land will annihilate his enemies ...
+with a dog's paws, the land will be diminished ... with a lion's paws,
+the land will be increased.... If a sheep give birth to a lion, there
+will be war, the king will have no rival.... If a mare give birth to a
+dog, there will be disaster and famine."
+
+18. The three great branches of religious science--astrology,
+incantation and divination--were represented by three corresponding
+classes of "wise men," all belonging, in different degrees, to the
+priesthood: the star-gazers or astrologers, the magicians or sorcerers,
+and the soothsayers or fortune-tellers. The latter, again, were divided
+into many smaller classes according to the particular kind of divination
+which they practised. Some specially devoted themselves to the
+interpretation of dreams, others to that of the flight of birds, or of
+the signs of the atmosphere, or of casual signs and omens generally. All
+were in continual demand, consulted alike by kings and private persons,
+and all proceeded in strict accordance with the rules and principles
+laid down in the three great works of King Sargon's time. When the
+Babylonian empire ceased to exist and the Chaldeans were no longer a
+nation, these secret arts continued to be practised by them, and the
+name "Chaldean" became a by-word, a synonym for "a wise man of the
+East,"--astrologer, magician or soothsayer. They dispersed all over the
+world, carrying their delusive science with them, practising and
+teaching it, welcomed everywhere by the credulous and superstitious,
+often highly honored and always richly paid. Thus it is from the
+Chaldeans and their predecessors the Shumiro-Accads that the belief in
+astrology, witchcraft and every kind of fortune-telling has been handed
+down to the nations of Europe, together with the practices belonging
+thereto, many of which we find lingering even to our day among the less
+educated classes. The very words "magic" and "magician" are probably an
+inheritance of that remotest of antiquities. One of the words for
+"priest" in the old Turanian tongue of Shumir was _imga_, which, in the
+later Semitic language, became _mag_. The _Rab-mag_--"great priest," or
+perhaps "chief conjurer," was a high functionary at the court of the
+Assyrian kings. Hence "magus," "magic," "magician," in all the European
+languages, from Latin downward.
+
+19. There can be no doubt that we have little reason to be grateful for
+such an heirloom as this mass of superstitions, which have produced so
+much evil in the world and still occasionally do mischief enough. But we
+must not forget to set off against it the many excellent things, most
+important discoveries in the province of astronomy and mathematics
+which have come to us from the same distant source. To the ancient
+Chaldeo-Babylonians we owe not only our division of time, but the
+invention of the sun-dial, and the week of seven days, dedicated in
+succession to the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets--an arrangement
+which is still maintained, the names of our days being merely
+translations of the Chaldean ones. And more than that; there were days
+set apart and kept holy, as days of rest, as far back as the time of
+Sargon of Agadê; it was from the Semites of Babylonia--perhaps the
+Chaldeans of Ur--that both the name and the observance passed to the
+Hebrew branch of the race, the tribe of Abraham. George Smith found an
+Assyrian calendar where the day called _Sabattu_ or _Sabattuv_ is
+explained to mean "completion of work, a day of rest for the soul." On
+this day, it appears it was not lawful to cook food, to change one's
+dress, to offer a sacrifice; the king was forbidden to speak in public,
+to ride in a chariot, to perform any kind of military or civil duty,
+even to take medicine.[AV] This, surely, is a keeping of the Sabbath as
+strict as the most orthodox Jew could well desire. There are, however,
+essential differences between the two. In the first place, the
+Babylonians kept _five_ Sabbath days every month, which made more than
+one a week; in the second place, they came round on certain dates of
+each month, independently of the day of the week: on the 7th, 14th,
+19th, 21st and 28th. The custom appears to have passed to the Assyrians,
+and there are indications which encourage the supposition that it was
+shared by other nations connected with the Jews, the Babylonians and
+Assyrians, for instance, by the Phoenicians.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AR] See A. H. Sayce, "The Ancient Empires of the East" (1883), p. 389.
+
+[AS] Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 164.
+
+[AT] It was the statue of this very goddess Nana which was carried away
+by the Elamite conqueror, Khudur-Nankhundi in 2280 B.C. and restored to
+its place by Asshurbanipal in 645 B.C.
+
+[AU] The three circles above the god represent the Moon-god, the
+Sun-god, and Ishtar. So we are informed by the two lines of writing
+which ran above the roof.
+
+[AV] Friedrich Delitzsch, "Beigaben" to the German translat. of Smith's
+"Chaldean Genesis" (1876), p. 300. A. H. Sayce, "The Ancient Empires of
+the East" (1883), p. 402. W. Lotz, "Quæstiones de Historia Sabbati."
+
+
+
+
+                               VI.
+
+                       LEGENDS AND STORIES.
+
+
+1. In every child's life there comes a moment when it ceases to take the
+world and all it holds as a matter of course, when it begins to wonder
+and to question. The first, the great question naturally is--"Who made
+it all? The sun, the stars, the sea, the rivers, the flowers, and the
+trees--whence come they? who made them?" And to this question we are
+very ready with our answer:--"God made it all. The One, the Almighty God
+created the world, and all that is in it, by His own sovereign will."
+When the child further asks: "_How_ did He do it?" we read to it the
+story of the Creation which is the beginning of the Bible, our Sacred
+Book, either without any remarks upon it, or with the warning, that, for
+a full and proper understanding of it, years are needed and knowledge of
+many kinds. Now, these same questions have been asked, by children and
+men, in all ages. Ever since man has existed upon the earth, ever since
+he began, in the intervals of rest, in the hard labor and struggle for
+life and limb, for food and warmth, to raise his head and look abroad,
+and take in the wonders that surrounded him, he has thus pondered and
+questioned. And to this questioning, each nation, after its own lights,
+has framed very much the same answer; the same in substance and spirit
+(because the only possible one), acknowledging the agency of a Divine
+Power, in filling the world with life, and ordaining the laws of
+nature,--but often very different in form, since, almost every creed
+having stopped short of the higher religious conception, that of One
+Deity, indivisible and all-powerful, the great act was attributed to
+many gods--"the gods,"--not to God. This of course opened the way to
+innumerable, more or less ingenious, fancies and vagaries as to the part
+played in it by this or that particular divinity. Thus all races,
+nations, even tribes have worked out for themselves their own COSMOGONY,
+i.e., their own ideas on the Origin of the World. The greatest number,
+not having reached a very high stage of culture or attained literary
+skill, preserved the teachings of their priests in their memory, and
+transmitted them orally from father to son; such is the case even now
+with many more peoples than we think of--with all the native tribes of
+Africa, the islanders of Australia and the Pacific, and several others.
+But the nations who advanced intellectually to the front of mankind and
+influenced the long series of coming races by their thoughts and
+teachings, recorded in books the conclusions they had arrived at on the
+great questions which have always stirred the heart and mind of man;
+these were carefully preserved and recopied from time to time, for the
+instruction of each rising generation. Thus many great nations of olden
+times have possessed Sacred Books, which, having been written in remote
+antiquity by their best and wisest men, were reverenced as something not
+only holy, but, beyond the unassisted powers of the human intellect,
+something imparted, revealed directly by the deity itself, and therefore
+to be accepted, undisputed, as absolute truth. It is clear that it was
+in the interest of the priests, the keepers and teachers of all
+religious knowledge, to encourage and maintain in the people at large
+this unquestioning belief.
+
+2. Of all such books that have become known to us, there are none of
+greater interest and importance than the sacred books of Ancient
+Babylonia. Not merely because they are the oldest known, having been
+treasured in the priestly libraries of Agadê, Sippar, Cutha, etc., at an
+incredibly early date, but principally because the ancestors of the
+Hebrews, during their long station in the land of Shinar, learned the
+legends and stories they contained, and working them over after their
+own superior religious lights, remodelled them into the narrative which
+was written down many centuries later as part of the Book of Genesis.
+
+3. The original sacred books were attributed to the god Êa himself, the
+impersonation of the Divine Intelligence, and the teacher of mankind in
+the shape of the first Man-Fish, Oannes--(the name being only a Greek
+corruption of the Accadian ÊA-HAN, "Êa the Fish")[AW] So Berosus informs
+us. After describing Oannes and his proceedings (see p. 185), he adds
+that "he wrote a Book on the Origin of things and the beginnings of
+civilization, and gave it to men." The "origin of things" is the history
+of the Creation of the world, Cosmogony. Accordingly, this is what
+Berosus proceeds to expound, quoting directly from the Book, for he
+begins:--"There was a time, _says he_, (meaning Oannes) when all was
+darkness and water." Then follows a very valuable fragment, but
+unfortunately only a fragment, one of the few preserved by later Greek
+writers who quoted the old priest of Babylon for their own purposes,
+while the work itself was, in some way, destroyed and lost. True, these
+fragments contain short sketches of several of the most important
+legends; still, precious as they are, they convey only second-hand
+information, compiled, indeed, from original sources by a learned and
+conscientious writer, but for the use of a foreign race, extremely
+compressed, and, besides, with the names all altered to suit that race's
+language. So long as the "original sources" were missing, there was a
+gap in the study both of the Bible and the religion of Babylon, which no
+ingenuity could fill. Great, therefore, were the delight and excitement,
+both of Assyriologists and Bible scholars, when George Smith, while
+sorting the thousands of tablet-fragments which for years had littered
+the floor of certain remote chambers of the British Museum, accidentally
+stumbled on some which were evidently portions of the original sacred
+legends partly rendered by Berosus. To search for all available
+fragments of the precious documents and piece them together became the
+task of Smith's life. And as nearly all that he found belonged to copies
+from the Royal Library at Nineveh, it was chiefly in order to enlarge
+the collection that he undertook his first expedition to the Assyrian
+mounds, from which he had the good fortune to bring back many missing
+fragments, belonging also to different copies, so that one frequently
+completes the other. Thus the oldest Chaldean legends were in a great
+measure restored to us, though unfortunately very few tablets are in a
+sufficiently well preserved condition to allow of making out an entirely
+intelligible and uninterrupted narrative. Not only are many parts still
+missing altogether, but of those which have been found, pieced and
+collected, there is not one of which one or more columns have not been
+injured in such a way that either the beginning or the end of all the
+lines are gone, or whole lines broken out or erased, with only a few
+words left here and there. How hopeless the task must sometimes have
+seemed to the patient workers may be judged from the foregoing specimen
+pieced together of sixteen bits, which Geo. Smith gives in his book.
+This is one of the so-called "Deluge-tablets," i.e., of those which
+contain the Chaldean version of the story of the Deluge. Luckily more
+copies have been found of this story than of any of the others, or we
+should have had to be content still with the short sketch of it given by
+Berosus.
+
+[Illustration: 61.--BACK OF TABLET WITH ACCOUNT OF FLOOD. (Smith's
+"Chaldean Genesis.")]
+
+4. If, therefore, the ancient Babylonian legends of the beginnings of
+the world will be given here in a connected form, for the sake of
+convenience and plainness, it must be clearly understood that they were
+not preserved for us in such a form, but are the result of a long and
+patient work of research and restoration, a work which still continues;
+and every year, almost every month, brings to light some new materials,
+some addition, some correction to the old ones. Yet even as the work now
+stands, it justifies us in asserting that our knowledge of this
+marvellous antiquity is fuller and more authentic than that we have of
+many a period and people not half so remote from us in point of place
+and distance.
+
+5. The cosmogonic narrative which forms the first part of what Geo.
+Smith has very aptly called "the Chaldean Genesis" is contained in a
+number of tablets. As it begins by the words "_When above_," they are
+all numbered as No. 1, or 3, or 5 "of the series WHEN ABOVE. _The
+property of Asshurbanipal, king of nations, king of Assyria._" The first
+lines are intact:--"When the heaven above and the earth below were as
+yet unnamed,"--(i.e., according to Semitic ideas, _did not exist_)--APSU
+(the "Abyss") and MUMMU-TIAMAT (the "billowy Sea") were the beginning of
+all things; their waters mingled and flowed together; that was the
+Primeval Chaos; it contained the germs of life but "the darkness was not
+lifted" from the waters, and therefore nothing sprouted or grew--(for no
+growth or life is possible without light). The gods also were not; "they
+were as yet unnamed and did not rule the destinies." Then the great gods
+came into being, and the divine hosts of heaven and earth (the Spirits
+of Heaven and Earth). "And the days stretched themselves out, and the
+god Anu (Heaven.) ..." Here the text breaks off abruptly; it is
+probable, however, that it told how, after a long lapse of time, the
+gods Anu, Êa and Bel, the first and supreme triad, came into being. The
+next fragment, which is sufficiently well preserved to allow of a
+connected translation, tells of the establishment of the heavenly
+bodies: "He" (Anu, whose particular dominion the highest heavens were,
+hence frequently called "the heaven of Anu") "he appointed the mansions
+of the great gods" (signs of the Zodiac), established the stars, ordered
+the months and the year, and limited the beginning and end thereof;
+established the planets, so that none should swerve from its allotted
+track; "he appointed the mansions of Bel and Êa with his own; he also
+opened the great gates of heaven, fastening their bolts firmly to the
+right and to the left" (east and west); he made Nannar (the Moon) to
+shine and allotted the night to him, determining the time of his
+quarters which measure the days, and saying to him "rise and set, and be
+subject to this law." Another tablet, of which only the beginning is
+intelligible, tells how the gods (in the plural this time) created the
+living beings which people the earth, the cattle of the field and the
+city, and the wild beasts of the field, and the things that creep in the
+field and in the city, in short all the living creatures.
+
+[Illustration: 62.--BABYLONIAN CYLINDER, SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THE
+TEMPTATION AND FALL.]
+
+6. There are some tablets which have been supposed to treat of the
+creation of man and perhaps to give a story of his disobedience and
+fall, answering to that in Genesis; but unfortunately they are in too
+mutilated a condition to admit of certainty, and no other copies have as
+yet come to light. However, the probability that such was really the
+case is very great, and is much enhanced by a cylinder of very ancient
+Babylonian workmanship, now in the British Museum, and too important not
+to be reproduced here. The tree in the middle, the human couple
+stretching out their hands for the fruit, the serpent standing _behind
+the woman_ in--one might almost say--a whispering attitude, all this
+tells its own tale. And the authority of this artistic presentation,
+which so strangely fits in to fill the blank in the written narrative,
+is doubled by the fact that the engravings on the cylinders are
+invariably taken from subjects connected with religion, or at least
+religious beliefs and traditions. As to the creation of man, we may
+partly eke out the missing details from the fragment of Berosus already
+quoted. He there tells us--and so well-informed a writer must have
+spoken on good authority--that Bel gave his own blood to be kneaded with
+the clay out of which men were formed, and that is why they are endowed
+with reason and have a share of the divine nature in them--certainly a
+most ingenious way of expressing the blending of the earthly and the
+divine elements which has made human nature so deep and puzzling a
+problem to the profounder thinkers of all ages.
+
+7. For the rest of the creation, Berosus' account (quoted from the book
+said to have been given men by the fabulous Oannes), agrees with what we
+find in the original texts, even imperfect as we have them. He says that
+in the midst of Chaos--at the time when all was darkness and water--the
+principle of life which it contained, restlessly working, but without
+order, took shape in numberless monstrous formations: there were beings
+like men, some winged, with two heads, some with the legs and horns of
+goats, others with the hind part of horses; also bulls with human heads,
+dogs with four bodies and a fish's tail, horses with the heads of dogs,
+in short, every hideous and fantastical combination of animal forms,
+before the Divine Will had separated them, and sorted them into harmony
+and order. All these monstrous beings perished the moment Bel separated
+the heavens from the earth creating light,--for they were births of
+darkness and lawlessness and could not stand the new reign of light and
+law and divine reason. In memory of this destruction of the old chaotic
+world and production of the new, harmonious and beautiful one, the walls
+of the famous temple of Bel-Mardouk at Babylon were covered with
+paintings representing the infinite variety of monstrous and mixed
+shapes with which an exuberant fancy had peopled the primeval chaos;
+Berosus was a priest of this temple and he speaks of those paintings as
+still existing. Though nothing has remained of them in the ruins of the
+temple, we have representations of the same kind on many of the
+cylinders which, used as seals, did duty both as personal badges--(one
+is almost tempted to say "coats of arms")--and as talismans, as proved
+by the fact of such cylinders being so frequently found on the wrists of
+the dead in the sepulchres.
+
+[Illustration: 63.--FEMALE WINGED FIGURES BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (From
+a photograph in the British Museum.)]
+
+8. The remarkable cylinder with the human couple and the serpent leads
+us to the consideration of a most important object in the ancient
+Babylonian or Chaldean religion--the Sacred Tree, the Tree of Life. That
+it was a very holy symbol is clear from its being so continually
+reproduced on cylinders and on sculptures. In this particular cylinder,
+rude as the design is, it bears an unmistakable likeness to a real
+tree--of some coniferous species, cypress or fir. But art soon took hold
+of it and began to load it with symmetrical embellishments, until it
+produced a tree of entirely conventional design, as shown by the
+following specimens, of which the first leans more to the palm, while
+the second seems rather of the coniferous type. (Figs. No. 63 and 65.)
+It is probable that such artificial trees, made up of boughs--perhaps of
+the palm and cypress--tied together and intertwined with ribbons
+(something like our Maypoles of old), were set up in the temples as
+reminders of the sacred symbol, and thus gave rise to the fixed type
+which remains invariable both in such Babylonian works of art as we
+possess and on the Assyrian sculptures, where the tree, or a portion of
+it, appears not only in the running ornaments on the walls but on seal
+cylinders and even in the embroidery on the robes of kings. In the
+latter case indeed, it is almost certain, from the belief in talismans
+which the Assyrians had inherited, along with the whole of their
+religion from the Chaldean mother country, that this ornament was
+selected not only as appropriate to the sacredness of the royal person,
+but as a consecration and protection. The holiness of the symbol is
+further evidenced by the kneeling posture of the animals which sometimes
+accompany it (see Fig. 22, page 67), and the attitude of adoration of
+the human figures, or winged spirits attending it, by the prevalence of
+the sacred number seven in its component parts, and by the fact that it
+is reproduced on a great many of those glazed earthenware coffins which
+are so plentiful at Warka (ancient Erech). This latter fact clearly
+shows that the tree-symbol not only meant life in general, life on
+earth, but a hope of life eternal, beyond the grave, or why should it
+have been given to the dead? These coffins at Warka belong, it is true,
+to a late period, some as late as a couple of hundred years after
+Christ, but the ancient traditions and their meaning had, beyond a
+doubt, been preserved. Another significant detail is that the cone is
+frequently seen in the hands of men or spirits, and always in a way
+connected with worship or auspicious protection; sometimes it is held to
+the king's nostrils by his attendant protecting spirits, (known by their
+wings); a gesture of unmistakable significancy, since in ancient
+languages "the breath of the nostrils" is synonymous with "the breath of
+life."
+
+[Illustration: 64.--WINGED SPIRITS BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Smith's
+"Chaldea.")]
+
+[Illustration: 65.--SARGON OF ASSYRIA BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Perrot
+and Chipiez.)]
+
+9. There can be no association of ideas more natural than that of
+vegetation, as represented by a tree, with life. By its perpetual growth
+and development, its wealth of branches and foliage, its blossoming and
+fruit-bearing, it is a noble and striking illustration of the world in
+the widest sense--the Universe, the Cosmos, while the sap which courses
+equally through the trunk and through the veins of the smallest leaflet,
+drawn by an incomprehensible process through invisible roots from the
+nourishing earth, still more forcibly suggests that mysterious
+principle, Life, which we _think_ we understand because we see its
+effects and feel it in ourselves, but the sources of which will never be
+reached, as the problem of it will never be solved, either by the prying
+of experimental science or the musings of contemplative speculation;
+life eternal, also,--for the workings of nature _are_ eternal,--and the
+tree that is black and lifeless to-day, we know from long experience is
+not dead, but will revive in the fulness of time, and bud, and grow and
+bear again. All these things _we_ know are the effects of laws; but the
+ancients attributed them to living Powers,--the CHTHONIC POWERS (from
+the Greek word CHTHON, "earth, soil"), which have by some later and
+dreamy thinkers been called weirdly but not unaptly, "the Mothers,"
+mysteriously at work in the depths of silence and darkness, unseen,
+unreachable, and inexhaustibly productive. Of these powers again, what
+more perfect symbol or representative than the Tree, as standing for
+vegetation, one for all, the part for the whole? It lies so near that,
+in later times, it was enlarged, so as to embrace the whole universe, in
+the majestic conception of the Cosmic Tree which has its roots on earth
+and heaven for its crown, while its fruit are the golden apples--the
+stars, and Fire,--the red lightning.
+
+[Illustration: 66.--EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Smith's
+"Chaldea.")]
+
+[Illustration: 67.--FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.
+(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+10. All these suggestive and poetical fancies would in themselves
+suffice to make the tree-symbol a favorite one among so thoughtful and
+profound a people as the old Chaldeans. But there is something more. It
+is intimately connected with another tradition, common, in some form or
+other, to all nations who have attained a sufficiently high grade of
+culture to make their mark in the world--that of an original ancestral
+abode, beautiful, happy, and remote, a Paradise. It is usually imagined
+as a great mountain, watered by springs which become great rivers,
+bearing one or more trees of wonderful properties and sacred character,
+and is considered as the principal residence of the gods. Each nation
+locates it according to its own knowledge of geography and vague,
+half-obliterated memories. Many texts, both in the old Accadian and the
+Assyrian languages, abundantly prove that the Chaldean religion
+preserved a distinct and reverent conception of such a mountain, and
+placed it in the far north or north-east, calling it the "Father of
+Countries," plainly an allusion to the original abode of man--the
+"Mountain of Countries," (i.e., "Chief Mountain of the World") and also
+ARALLU, because there, where the gods dwelt, they also imagined the
+entrance to the Arali to be the Land of the Dead. There, too, the heroes
+and great men were to dwell forever after their death. There is the land
+with a sky of silver, a soil which produces crops without being
+cultivated, where blessings are for food and rejoicing, which it is
+hoped the king will obtain as a reward for his piety after having
+enjoyed all earthly goods during his life.[AX] In an old Accadian hymn,
+the sacred mount, which is identical with that imagined as the pillar
+joining heaven and earth, the pillar around which the heavenly spheres
+revolve, (see page 153)--is called "the mountain of Bel, in the east,
+whose double head reaches unto the skies; which is like to a mighty
+buffalo at rest, whose double horn sparkles as a sunbeam, as a star." So
+vivid was the conception in the popular mind, and so great the reverence
+entertained for it, that it was attempted to reproduce the type of the
+holy mountain in the palaces of their kings and the temples of their
+gods. That is one of the reasons why they built both on artificial
+hills. There is in the British Museum a sculpture from Koyunjik,
+representing such a temple, or perhaps palace, on the summit of a mound,
+converted into a garden and watered by a stream which issues from the
+"hanging garden" on the right, the latter being laid out on a platform
+of masonry raised on arches; the water was brought up by machinery. It
+is a perfect specimen of a "Paradise," as these artificial parks were
+called by the Greeks, who took the word (meaning "park" or "garden")
+from the Persians, who, in their turn, had borrowed the thing from the
+Assyrians and Babylonians, when they conquered the latter's empire. The
+_Ziggurat_, or pyramidal construction in stages, with the temple or
+shrine on the top, also owed its peculiar shape to the same original
+conception: as the gods dwelt on the summit of the Mountain of the
+World, so their shrines should occupy a position as much like their
+residence as the feeble means of man would permit. That this is no idle
+fancy is proved by the very name of "Ziggurat," which means "_mountain
+peak_," and also by the names of some of these temples: one of the
+oldest and most famous indeed, in the city of Asshur, was named "the
+House of the Mountain of Countries." An excellent representation of a
+Ziggurat, as it must have looked with its surrounding palm grove by a
+river, is given us on a sculptured slab, also from Koyunjik. The
+original is evidently a small one, of probably five stages besides the
+platform on which it is built, with its two symmetrical paths up the
+ascent. Some, like the great temple at Ur, had only three stages, others
+again seven--always one of the three sacred numbers: three,
+corresponding to the divine Triad; five, to the five planets; seven, to
+the planets, sun and moon. The famous Temple of the Seven Spheres at
+Borsip (the Birs-Nimrud), often mentioned already, and rebuilt by
+Nebuchadnezzar about 600 B.C. from a far older structure, as he explains
+in his inscription (see p. 72), was probably the most gorgeous, as it
+was the largest; besides, it is the only one of which we have detailed
+and reliable descriptions and measurements, which may best be given in
+this place, almost entirely in the words of George Rawlinson:[AY]
+
+[Illustration: 68.--TEMPLE AND HANGING GARDENS AT KOYUNJIK. (British
+Museum.)]
+
+[Illustration: 69.--PLAN OF A ZIGGURAT. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+11. The temple is raised on a platform exceptionally low--only a few
+feet above the level of the plain; the entire height, including the
+platform, was 156 feet in a perpendicular line. The stages--of which the
+four upper were lower than the first three--receded equally on three
+sides, but doubly as much on the fourth, probably in order to present a
+more imposing front from the plain, and an easier ascent. "The
+ornamentation of the edifice was chiefly by means of color. The seven
+Stages represented the Seven Spheres, in which moved, according to
+ancient Chaldean astronomy, the seven planets. To each planet fancy,
+partly grounding itself upon fact, had from of old assigned a peculiar
+tint or hue. The Sun (Shamash) was golden; the Moon (Sin or Nannar),
+silver; the distant Saturn (Adar), almost beyond the region of light,
+was black; Jupiter (Marduk) was orange; the fiery Mars (Nergal) was red;
+Venus (Ishtar) was a pale yellow; Mercury (Nebo or Nabu, whose shrine
+stood on the top stage), a deep blue. The seven stages of the tower gave
+a visible embodiment to these fancies. The basement stage, assigned to
+Saturn, was blackened by means of a coating of bitumen spread over the
+face of the masonry; the second stage, assigned to Jupiter, obtained the
+appropriate orange color by means of a facing of burnt bricks of that
+hue; the third stage, that of Mars, was made blood-red by the use of
+half-burnt bricks formed of a bright-red clay; the fourth stage,
+assigned to the Sun, appears to have been actually covered with thin
+plates of gold; the fifth, the stage of Venus, received a pale yellow
+tint from the employment of bricks of that hue; the sixth, the sphere of
+Mercury, was given an azure tint by vitrifaction, the whole stage having
+been subjected to an intense heat after it was erected, whereby the
+bricks composing it were converted into a mass of blue slag; the seventh
+stage, that of the moon, was probably, like the fourth, coated with
+actual plates of metal. Thus the building rose up in stripes of varied
+color, arranged almost as nature's cunning hand arranges hues in the
+rainbow, tones of red coming first, succeeded by a broad stripe of
+yellow, the yellow being followed by blue. Above this the glowing
+silvery summit melted into the bright sheen of the sky.... The Tower is
+to be regarded as fronting the north-east, the coolest side, and that
+least exposed to the sun's rays from the time that they become
+oppressive in Babylonia. On this side was the ascent, which consisted
+probably of a broad staircase extending along the whole front of the
+building. The side platforms, at any rate of the first and second
+stages, probably of all, were occupied by a series of chambers.... In
+these were doubtless lodged the priests and other attendants upon the
+temple service...."
+
+[Illustration: 70.--"ZIGGURAT" RESTORED. ACCORDING TO PROBABILITIES.
+(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+12. The interest attaching to this temple, wonderful as it is in itself,
+is greatly enhanced by the circumstance that its ruins have through many
+centuries been considered as those of the identical Tower of Babel of
+the Bible. Jewish literary men who travelled over the country in the
+Middle Ages started this idea, which quickly spread to the West. It is
+conjectured that it was suggested by the vitrified fragments of the
+outer coating of the sixth, blue, stage, (that of Mercury or Nebo), the
+condition of which was attributed to lightning having struck the
+building.
+
+[Illustration: 71.--BIRS-NIMRUD. (ANCIENT BORSIP.) (Perrot and
+Chipiez.)]
+
+13. That the Ziggurats of Chaldea should have been used not only as
+pedestals to uphold shrines, but as observatories by the priestly
+astronomers and astrologers, was quite in accordance with the strong
+mixture of star-worship grafted on the older religion, and with the
+power ascribed to the heavenly bodies over the acts and destinies of
+men. These constructions, therefore, were fitted for astronomical uses
+by being very carefully placed with their corners pointing exactly to
+the four cardinal points--North, South, East and West. Only two
+exceptions have been found to this rule, one in Babylon, and the
+Assyrian Ziggurat at Kalah, (Nimrud) explored by Layard, of which the
+sides, not the corners, face the cardinal points. For the Assyrians, who
+carried their entire culture and religion northward from their ancient
+home, also retained this consecrated form of architecture, with the
+difference that with them the Ziggurats were not temple and observatory
+in one, but only observatories attached to the temples, which were built
+on more independent principles and a larger scale, often covering as
+much ground as a palace.
+
+14. The singular orientation of the Chaldean Ziggurats (subsequently
+retained by the Assyrians),--i.e., the manner in which they are placed,
+turned to the cardinal points with their angles, and not with their
+faces, as are the Egyptian pyramids, with only one exception,--has long
+been a puzzle which no astronomical considerations were sufficient to
+solve. But quite lately, in 1883, Mr. Pinches, Geo. Smith's successor in
+the British Museum, found a small tablet, giving lists of signs,
+eclipses, etc., affecting the various countries, and containing the
+following short geographical notice, in illustration of the position
+assigned to the cardinal points: "The South is Elam, the North is Accad,
+the East is Suedin and Gutium, the West is Phoenicia. On the right is
+Accad, on the left is Elam, in front is Phoenicia, behind are Suedin
+and Gutium." In order to appreciate the bearing of this bit of
+topography on the question in hand, we must examine an ancient map, when
+we shall at once perceive that the direction given by the tablet to the
+_South_ (Elam) answers to our _South-East;_ that given to the _North_
+(Accad) answers to our _North-West;_ while _West_ (Phoenicia, i.e.,
+the coast-land of the Mediterranean, down almost to Egypt) stands for
+our _South-West_, and _East_ (Gutium, the highlands where the Armenian
+mountains join the Zagros, now Kurdish Mountains,) for our _North-East_.
+If we turn the map so that the Persian Gulf shall come in a
+perpendicular line under Babylon, we shall produce the desired effect,
+and then it will strike us that the Ziggurats _did_ face the cardinal
+points, according to Chaldean geography, _with their sides_, and that
+the discovery of the small tablet, as was remarked on the production of
+it, "settles the difficult question of the difference in orientation
+between the Assyrian and Egyptian monuments." It was further suggested
+that "the two systems of cardinal points originated no doubt from two
+different races, and their determination was due probably _to the
+geographical position of the primitive home of each race._" Now the
+South-West is called "the front," "and the migrations of the people
+_therefore_ must have been from North-East to South-West."[AZ] This
+beautifully tallies with the hypothesis, or conjecture, concerning the
+direction from which the Shumiro-Accads descended into the lowlands by
+the Gulf (see pp. 146-8), and, moreover, leads us to the question
+whether the fact of the great Ziggurat of the Seven Spheres at Borsip
+facing the North-East with its front may not have some connection with
+the holiness ascribed to that region as the original home of the race
+and the seat of that sacred mountain so often mentioned as "the Great
+Mountain of Countries" (see p. 280), doubly sacred, as the meeting-place
+of the gods and the place of entrance to the "Arallu" or Lower
+World.[BA]
+
+15. It is to be noted that the conception of the divine grove or garden
+with its sacred tree of life was sometimes separated from that of the
+holy primeval mountain and transferred by tradition to a more immediate
+and accessible neighborhood. That the city and district of Babylon may
+have been the centre of such a tradition is possibly shown by the most
+ancient Accadian name of the former--TIN-TIR-KI meaning "the Place of
+Life," while the latter was called GAN-DUNYASH or KAR-DUNYASH--"the
+garden of the god Dunyash," (probably one of the names of the god
+Êa)--an appellation which this district, although situated in the land
+of Accad or Upper Chaldea, preserved to the latest times as
+distinctively its own. Another sacred grove is spoken of as situated in
+Eridhu. This city, altogether the most ancient we have any mention of,
+was situated at the then mouth of the Euphrates, in the deepest and
+flattest of lowlands, a sort of borderland between earth and sea, and
+therefore very appropriately consecrated to the great spirit of both,
+the god Êa, the amphibious Oannes. It was so much identified with him,
+that in the Shumirian hymns and conjurings his son Meridug is often
+simply invoked as "Son of Eridhu." It must have been the oldest seat of
+that spirit-worship and sorcerer-priesthood which we find crystallized
+in the earliest Shumiro-Accadian sacred books. This prodigious antiquity
+carries us to something like 5000 years B.C., which explains the fact
+that the ruins of the place, near the modern Arab village of
+Abu-Shahrein, are now so far removed from the sea, being a considerable
+distance even from the junction of the two rivers where they form the
+Shat-el-arab. The sacred grove of Eridhu is frequently referred to, and
+that it was connected with the tradition of the tree of life we see from
+a fragment of a most ancient hymn, which tells of "a black pine, growing
+at Eridhu, sprung up in a pure place, with roots of lustrous crystal
+extending downwards, even into the deep, marking the centre of the
+earth, in the dark forest into the heart whereof man hath not
+penetrated." Might not this be the reason why the wood of the pine was
+so much used in charms and conjuring, as the surest safeguard against
+evil influences, and its very shadow was held wholesome and sacred? But
+we return to the legends of the Creation and primeval world.
+
+[Illustration: 72.--BEL FIGHTS THE DRAGON--TIAMAT (ASSYRIAN CYLINDER.)
+(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+16. Mummu-Tiamat, the impersonation of chaos, the power of darkness and
+lawlessness, does not vanish from the scene when Bel puts an end to her
+reign, destroys, by the sheer force of light and order, her hideous
+progeny of monsters and frees from her confusion the germs and
+rudimental forms of life, which, under the new and divine dispensation,
+are to expand and combine into the beautifully varied, yet harmonious
+world we live in. Tiamat becomes the sworn enemy of the gods and their
+creation, the great principle of opposition and destruction. When the
+missing texts come to light,--if ever they do--it will probably be found
+that the serpent who tempts the woman in the famous cylinder, is none
+other than a form of the rebellious and vindictive Tiamat, who is called
+now a "Dragon," now "the Great Serpent." At last the hostility cannot be
+ignored, and things come to a deadly issue. It is determined in the
+council of the gods that one of them must fight the wicked dragon; a
+complete suit of armor is made and exhibited by Anu himself, of which
+the sickle-shaped sword and the beautifully bent bow are the principal
+features. It is Bel who dares the venture and goes forth on a matchless
+war chariot, armed with the sword, and the bow, and his great weapon,
+the thunderbolt, sending the lightning before him and scattering arrows
+around. Tiamat, the Dragon of the Sea, came out to meet him, stretching
+her immense body along, bearing death and destruction, and attended by
+her followers. The god rushed on the monster with such violence that he
+threw her down and was already fastening fetters on her limbs, when she
+uttered a great shout and started up and attacked the righteous leader
+of the gods, while banners were raised on both sides as at a pitched
+battle. Meridug drew his sword and wounded her; at the same time a
+violent wind struck against her face. She opened her jaws to swallow up
+Meridug, but before she could close them he bade the wind to enter into
+her body. It entered and filled her with its violence, shook her heart
+and tore her entrails and subdued her courage. Then the god bound her,
+and put an end to her works, while her followers stood amazed, then
+broke their lines and fled, full of fear, seeing that Tiamat, their
+leader, was conquered. There she lay, her weapons broken, herself like a
+sword thrown down on the ground, in the dark and bound, conscious of her
+bondage and in great grief, her might suddenly broken by fear.
+
+[Illustration: 73.--BEL FIGHTS THE DRAGON--TIAMAT (BABYLONIAN
+CYLINDER).]
+
+17. The battle of Bel-Marduk and the Dragon was a favorite incident in
+the cycle of Chaldean tradition, if we judge from the number of
+representations we have of it on Babylonian cylinders, and even on
+Assyrian wall-sculptures. The texts which relate to it are, however, in
+a frightful state of mutilation, and only the last fragment, describing
+the final combat, can be read and translated with anything like
+completeness. With it ends the series treating of the Cosmogony or
+Beginnings of the World. But it may be completed by a few more legends
+of the same primitive character and preserved on detached tablets, in
+double text, as usual--Accadian and Assyrian. To these belongs a poem
+narrating the rebellion, already alluded to, (see p. 182,) of the seven
+evil spirits, originally the messengers and throne-bearers of the gods,
+and their war against the moon, the whole being evidently a fanciful
+rendering of an eclipse. "Those wicked gods, the rebel spirits," of
+whom one is likened to a leopard, and one to a serpent, and the rest to
+other animals--suggesting the fanciful shapes of storm-clouds--while one
+is said to be the raging south wind, began the attack "with evil
+tempest, baleful wind," and "from the foundations of the heavens like
+the lightning they darted." The lower region of the sky was reduced to
+its primeval chaos, and the gods sat in anxious council. The moon-god
+(Sin), the sun-god (Shamash), and the goddess Ishtar had been appointed
+to sway in close harmony the lower sky and to command the hosts of
+heaven; but when the moon-god was attacked by the seven spirits of evil,
+his companions basely forsook him, the sun-god retreating to his place
+and Ishtar taking refuge in the highest heaven (the heaven of Anu). Nebo
+is despatched to Êa, who sends his son Meridug with this
+instruction:--"Go, my son Meridug! The light of the sky, my son, even
+the moon-god, is grievously darkened in heaven, and in eclipse from
+heaven is vanishing. Those seven wicked gods, the serpents of death who
+fear not, are waging unequal war with the laboring moon." Meridug obeys
+his father's bidding, and overthrows the seven powers of darkness.[BB]
+
+[Illustration: 74.--BATTLE BETWEEN BEL AND THE DRAGON (TIAMAT). (Smith's
+"Chaldea.")]
+
+18. There is one more detached legend known from the surviving fragments
+of Berosus, also supposed to be derived from ancient Accadian texts: it
+is that of the great tower and the confusion of tongues. One such text
+has indeed been found by the indefatigable George Smith, but there is
+just enough left of it to be very tantalizing and very unsatisfactory.
+The narrative in Berosus amounts to this: that men having grown beyond
+measure proud and arrogant, so as to deem themselves superior even to
+the gods, undertook to build an immense tower, to scale the sky; that
+the gods, offended with this presumption, sent violent winds to
+overthrow the construction when it had already reached a great height,
+and at the same time caused men to speak different languages,--probably
+to sow dissension among them, and prevent their ever again uniting in a
+common enterprise so daring and impious. The site was identified with
+that of Babylon itself, and so strong was the belief attaching to the
+legend that the Jews later on adopted it unchanged, and centuries
+afterwards, as we saw above, fixed on the ruins of the hugest of all
+Ziggurats, that of Borsip, as those of the great Tower of the Confusion
+of Tongues. Certain it is, that the tradition, under all its fanciful
+apparel, contains a very evident vein of historical fact, since it was
+indeed from the plains of Chaldea that many of the principal nations of
+the ancient East, various in race and speech, dispersed to the north,
+the west, and the south, after having dwelt there for centuries as in a
+common cradle, side by side, and indeed to a great extent as one
+people.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AW] See Fr. Lenormant, "Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldäer," p.
+377.
+
+[AX] François Lenormant, "Origines de l'Histoire," Vol. II., p. 130.
+
+[AY] "Five Monarchies," Vol. III., pp. 380-387.
+
+[AZ] See "Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology," Feb.,
+1883, pp. 74-76, and "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society," Vol. XVI.,
+1884, p. 302.
+
+[BA] The one exception to the above rule of orientation among the
+Ziggurats of Chaldea is that of the temple of Bel, in Babylon,
+(E-SAGGILA in the old language,) which is oriented in the usual way--its
+sides facing the _real_ North, South, East and West.
+
+[BB] See A. H. Sayce, "Babylonian Literature," p. 35.
+
+
+
+
+                               VII.
+
+              MYTHS.--HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS.
+
+
+1. The stories by which a nation attempts to account for the mysteries
+of creation, to explain the Origin of the World, are called, in
+scientific language, COSMOGONIC MYTHS. The word Myth is constantly used
+in conversation, but so loosely and incorrectly, that it is most
+important once for all to define its proper meaning. It means simply _a
+phenomenon of nature presented not as the result of a law but as the act
+of divine or at least superhuman persons, good or evil powers_--(for
+instance, the eclipse of the Moon described as the war against the gods
+of the seven rebellious spirits). Further reading and practice will show
+that there are many kinds of myths, of various origins; but there is
+none, which, if properly taken to pieces, thoroughly traced and
+cornered, will not be covered by this definition. A Myth has also been
+defined as a legend connected more or less closely with some religious
+belief, and, in its main outlines, handed down from prehistoric times.
+There are only two things which can prevent the contemplation of nature
+and speculation on its mysteries from running into mythology: a
+knowledge of the physical laws of nature, as supplied by modern
+experimental science, and a strict, unswerving belief in the unity of
+God, absolute and undivided, as affirmed and defined by the Hebrews in
+so many places of their sacred books: "The Lord he is God, there is none
+else beside him." "The Lord he is God, in Heaven above and upon the
+earth beneath there is none else." "I am the Lord, and there is none
+else, there is no God beside me." "I am God and there is none else." But
+experimental science is a very modern thing indeed, scarcely a few
+hundred years old, and Monotheism, until the propagation of
+Christianity, was professed by only one small nation, the Jews, though
+the chosen thinkers of other nations have risen to the same conception
+in many lands and many ages. The great mass of mankind has always
+believed in the personal individuality of all the forces of nature,
+i.e., in many gods; everything that went on in the world was to them the
+manifestation of the feelings, the will, the acts of these gods--hence
+the myths. The earlier the times, the more unquestioning the belief and,
+as a necessary consequence, the more exuberant the creation of myths.
+
+2. But gods and spirits are not the only actors in myths. Side by side
+with its sacred traditions on the Origin of things, every nation
+treasures fond but vague memories of its own beginnings--vague, both
+from their remoteness and from their not being fixed in writing, and
+being therefore liable to the alterations and enlargements which a story
+invariably undergoes when told many times to and by different people,
+i.e., when it is transmitted from generation to generation by oral
+tradition. These memories generally centre around a few great names, the
+names of the oldest national heroes, of the first rulers, lawgivers and
+conquerors of the nation, the men who by their genius _made_ it a nation
+out of a loose collection of tribes or large families, who gave it
+social order and useful arts, and safety from its neighbors, or,
+perhaps, freed it from foreign oppressors. In their grateful admiration
+for these heroes, whose doings naturally became more and more marvellous
+with each generation that told of them, men could not believe that they
+should have been mere imperfect mortals like themselves, but insisted on
+considering them as directly inspired by the deity in some one of the
+thousand shapes they invested it with, or as half-divine of their own
+nature. The consciousness of the imperfection inherent to ordinary
+humanity, and the limited powers awarded to it, has always prompted this
+explanation of the achievements of extraordinarily gifted individuals,
+in whatever line of action their exceptional gifts displayed themselves.
+Besides, if there is something repugnant to human vanity in having to
+submit to the dictates of superior reason and the rule of superior power
+as embodied in mere men of flesh and blood, there is on the contrary
+something very flattering and soothing to that same vanity in the idea
+of having been specially singled out as the object of the protection and
+solicitude of the divine powers; this idea at all events takes the
+galling sting from the constraint of obedience. Hence every nation has
+very jealously insisted on and devoutly believed in the divine origin of
+its rulers and the divine institution of its laws and customs. Once it
+was implicitly admitted that the world teemed with spirits and gods,
+who, not content with attending to their particular spheres and
+departments, came and went at their pleasure, had walked the earth and
+directly interfered with human affairs, there was no reason to
+disbelieve _any_ occurrence, however marvellous--provided it had
+happened very, very long ago. (See p. 197.)
+
+3. Thus, in the traditions of every ancient nation, there is a vast and
+misty tract of time, expressed, if at all, in figures of appalling
+magnitude--hundreds of thousands, nay, millions of years--between the
+unpierceable gloom of an eternal past and the broad daylight of
+remembered, recorded history. There, all is shadowy, gigantic,
+superhuman. There, gods move, dim yet visible, shrouded in a golden
+cloud of mystery and awe; there, by their side, loom other shapes, as
+dim but more familiar, human yet more than human--the Heroes, Fathers of
+races, founders of nations, the companions, the beloved of gods and
+goddesses, nay, their own children, mortal themselves, yet doing deeds
+of daring and might such as only the immortals could inspire and favor,
+the connecting link between these and ordinary humanity--as that
+gloaming, uncertain, shifting, but not altogether unreal streak of time
+is the borderland between Heaven and Earth, the very hot-bed of myth,
+fiction and romance. For of their favorite heroes, people began to tell
+the same stories as of their gods, in modified forms, transferred to
+their own surroundings and familiar scenes. To take one of the most
+common transformations: if the Sun-god waged war against the demons of
+darkness and destroyed them in heaven (see p. 171), the hero hunted wild
+beasts and monsters on earth, of course always victoriously. This one
+theme could be varied by the national poets in a thousand ways and woven
+into a thousand different stories, which come with full right under the
+head of "myths." Thus arose a number of so-called HEROIC MYTHS, which,
+by dint of being repeated, settled into a certain defined traditional
+shape, like the well-known fairy-tales of our nurseries, which are the
+same everywhere and told in every country with scarcely any changes. As
+soon as the art of writing came into general use, these favorite and
+time-honored stories, which the mass of the people probably still
+received as literal truth, were taken down, and, as the work naturally
+devolved on priests and clerks, i.e., men of education and more or less
+literary skill, often themselves poets, they were worked over in the
+process, connected, and remodelled into a continuous whole. The separate
+myths, or adventures of one or more particular heroes, formerly recited
+severally, somewhat after the manner of the old songs and ballads,
+frequently became so many chapters or books in a long, well-ordered
+poem, in which they were introduced and distributed, often with
+consummate art, and told with great poetical beauty. Such poems, of
+which several have come down to us, are called EPIC POEMS, or simply
+EPICS. The entire mass of fragmentary materials out of which they are
+composed in the course of time, blending almost inextricably historical
+reality with mythical fiction, is the NATIONAL EPOS of a race, its
+greatest intellectual treasure, from which all its late poetry and much
+of its political and religious feeling draws its food ever after. A race
+that has no national epos is one devoid of great memories, incapable of
+high culture and political development, and no such has taken a place
+among the leading races of the world. All those that have occupied such
+a place at any period of the world's history, have had their Mythic and
+Heroic Ages, brimful of wonders and fanciful creations.
+
+4. From these remarks it will be clear that the preceding two or three
+chapters have been treating of what may properly be called the Religious
+and Cosmogonic Myths of the Shumiro-Accads and the Babylonians. The
+present chapter will be devoted to their Heroic Myths or Mythic Epos, as
+embodied in an Epic which has been in great part preserved, and which is
+the oldest known in the world, dating certainly from 2000 years B.C.,
+and probably more.
+
+5. Of this poem the few fragments we have of Berosus contain no
+indication. They only tell of a great deluge which took place under the
+last of that fabulous line of ten kings which is said to have begun
+259,000 years after the apparition of the divine Man-Fish, Oannes, and
+to have reigned in the aggregate a period of 432,000 years. The
+description has always excited great interest from its extraordinary
+resemblance to that given by the Bible. Berosus tells how XISUTHROS, the
+last of the ten fabulous kings, had a dream in which the deity announced
+to him that on a certain day all men should perish in a deluge of
+waters, and ordered him to take all the sacred writings and bury them at
+Sippar, the City of the Sun, then to build a ship, provide it with ample
+stores of food and drink and enter it with his family and his dearest
+friends, also animals, both birds and quadrupeds of every kind.
+Xisuthros did as he had been bidden. When the flood began to abate, on
+the third day after the rain had ceased to fall, he sent out some birds,
+to see whether they would find any land, but the birds, having found
+neither food nor place to rest upon, returned to the ship. A few days
+later, Xisuthros once more sent the birds out; but they again came back
+to him, this time with muddy feet. On being sent out a third time, they
+did not return at all. Xisuthros then knew that the land was uncovered;
+made an opening in the roof of the ship and saw that it was stranded on
+the top of a mountain. He came out of the ship with his wife, daughter
+and pilot, built an altar and sacrificed to the gods, after which he
+disappeared together with these. When his companions came out to seek
+him they did not see him, but a voice from heaven informed them that he
+had been translated among the gods to live forever, as a reward for his
+piety and righteousness. The voice went on to command the survivors to
+return to Babylonia, unearth the sacred writings and make them known to
+men. They obeyed and, moreover, built many cities and restored Babylon.
+
+6. However interesting this account, it was received at second-hand and
+therefore felt to need confirmation and ampler development. Besides which,
+as it stood, it lacked all indication that could throw light on the
+important question which of the two traditions--that reproduced by Berosus
+or the Biblical one--was to be considered as the oldest. Here again it was
+George Smith who had the good fortune to discover the original narrative
+(in 1872), while engaged in sifting and sorting the tablet-fragments at
+the British Museum. This is how it happened:[BC]--"Smith found one-half of
+a whitish-yellow clay tablet, which, to all appearance, had been divided
+on each face into three columns. In the third column of the obverse or
+front side he read the words: 'On the mount Nizir the ship stood still.
+Then I took a dove and let her fly. The dove flew hither and thither, but
+finding no resting-place, returned to the ship.' Smith at once knew that
+he had discovered a fragment of the cuneiform narrative of the Deluge.
+With indefatigable perseverance he set to work to search the thousands of
+Assyrian tablet-fragments heaped up in the British Museum, for more
+pieces. His efforts were crowned with success. He did not indeed find a
+piece completing the half of the tablet first discovered, but he found
+instead fragments of two more copies of the narrative, which completed the
+text in the most felicitous manner and supplied several very important
+variations of it. One of these duplicates, which has been pieced out of
+sixteen little bits (see illustration on p. 262), bore the usual
+inscription at the bottom: 'The property of Asshurbanipal, King of hosts,
+King of the land of Asshur,' and contained the information that the
+Deluge-narrative was the eleventh tablet of a series, several fragments of
+which, Smith had already come across. With infinite pains he put all these
+fragments together and found that the story of the Deluge was only an
+incident in a great Heroic Epic, a poem written in twelve books, making in
+all about three thousand lines, which celebrated the deeds of an ancient
+king of Erech."
+
+7. Each book or chapter naturally occupied a separate tablet. All are by
+no means equally well preserved. Some parts, indeed, are missing, while
+several are so mutilated as to cause serious gaps and breaks in the
+narrative, and the first tablet has not yet been found at all. Yet, with
+all these drawbacks it is quite possible to build up a very intelligible
+outline of the whole story, while the eleventh tablet, owing to various
+fortunate additions that came to light from time to time, has been
+restored almost completely.
+
+8. The epic carries us back to the time when Erech was the capital of
+Shumir, and when the land was under the dominion of the Elamite
+conquerors, not passive or content, but striving manfully for
+deliverance. We may imagine the struggle to have been shared and headed
+by the native kings, whose memory would be gratefully treasured by later
+generations, and whose exploits would naturally become the theme of
+household tradition and poets' recitations. So much for the bare
+historical groundwork of the poem. It is easily to be distinguished from
+the rich by-play of fiction and wonderful adventure gradually woven into
+it from the ample fund of national myths and legends, which have
+gathered around the name of one hero-king, GISDHUBAR or IZDUBAR,[BD]
+said to be a native of the ancient city of MARAD and a direct descendant
+of the last antediluvian king HÂSISADRA, the same whom Berosus calls
+Xisuthros.
+
+9. It is unfortunate that the first tablet and the top part of the
+second are missing, for thus we lose the opening of the poem, which
+would probably give us valuable historical indications. What there is of
+the second tablet shows the city of Erech groaning under the tyranny of
+the Elamite conquerors. Erech had been governed by the divine Dumuzi,
+the husband of the goddess Ishtar. He had met an untimely and tragic
+death, and been succeeded by Ishtar, who had not been able, however, to
+make a stand against the foreign invaders, or, as the text picturesquely
+expresses it, "to hold up her head against the foe." Izdubar, as yet
+known to fame only as a powerful and indefatigable huntsman, then dwelt
+at Erech, where he had a singular dream. It seemed to him that the stars
+of heaven fell down and struck him on the back in their fall, while over
+him stood a terrible being, with fierce, threatening countenance and
+claws like a lion's, the sight of whom paralyzed him with fear.
+
+10. Deeply impressed with this dream, which appeared to him to portend
+strange things, Izdubar sent forth to all the most famous seers and wise
+men, promising the most princely rewards to whoever would interpret it
+for him: he should be ennobled with his family; he should take the high
+seat of honor at the royal feasts; he should be clothed in jewels and
+gold; he should have seven beautiful wives and enjoy every kind of
+distinction. But there was none found of wisdom equal to the task of
+reading the vision. At length he heard of a wonderful sage, named
+ÊABÂNI, far-famed for "his wisdom in all things and his knowledge of all
+that is either visible or concealed," but who dwelt apart from mankind,
+in a distant wilderness, in a cave, amidst the beasts of the forest.
+
+     "With the gazelles he ate his food at night, with the beasts of
+     the field he associated in the daytime, with the living things
+     of the waters his heart rejoiced."
+
+This strange being is always represented on the Babylonian cylinders as
+a Man-Bull, with horns on his head and a bull's feet and tail. He was
+not easily accessible, nor to be persuaded to come to Erech, even
+though the Sun-god, Shamash, himself "opened his lips and spoke to him
+from heaven," making great promises on Izdubar's behalf:--
+
+     "They shall clothe thee in royal robes, they shall make thee
+     great; and Izdubar shall become thy friend, and he shall place
+     thee in a luxurious seat at his left hand; the kings of the
+     earth shall kiss thy feet; he shall enrich thee and make the
+     men of Erech keep silence before thee."
+
+The hermit was proof against ambition and refused to leave his
+wilderness. Then a follower of Izdubar, ZAIDU, the huntsman, was sent to
+bring him; but he returned alone and reported that, when he had
+approached the seer's cave, he had been seized with fear and had not
+entered it, but had crawled back, climbing the steep bank on his hands
+and feet.
+
+[Illustration: 75.--IZDUBAR AND THE LION (BAS-RELIEF FROM KHORSABAD).
+(Smith's "Chaldea.")]
+
+11. At last Izdubar bethought him to send out Ishtar's handmaidens,
+SHAMHATU ("Grace") and HARIMTU ("Persuasion"), and they started for the
+wilderness under the escort of Zaidu. Shamhatu was the first to approach
+the hermit, but he heeded her little; he turned to her companion, and
+sat down at her feet; and when Harimtu ("Persuasion") spoke, bending her
+face towards him, he listened and was attentive. And she said to him:
+
+     "Famous art thou, Êabâni, even like a god; why then associate
+     with the wild things of the desert? Thy place is in the midst
+     of Erech, the great city, in the temple, the seat of Anu and
+     Ishtar, in the palace of Izdubar, the man of might, who towers
+     amidst the leaders as a bull." "She spoke to him, and before
+     her words the wisdom of his heart fled and vanished."
+
+He answered:
+
+     "I will go to Erech, to the temple, the seat of Anu and Ishtar,
+     to the palace of Izdubar, the man of might, who towers amidst
+     the leaders as a bull. I will meet him and see his might. But I
+     shall bring to Erech a lion--let Izdubar destroy him if he can.
+     He is bred in the wilderness and of great strength."
+
+[Illustration: 76.--IZDUBAR AND THE LION. (British Museum.)]
+
+So Zaidu and the two women went back to Erech, and Êabâni went with
+them, leading his lion. The chiefs of the city received him with great
+honors and gave a splendid entertainment in sign of rejoicing.
+
+12. It is evidently on this occasion that Izdubar conquers the seer's
+esteem by fighting and killing the lion, after which the hero and the
+sage enter into a solemn covenant of friendship. But the third tablet,
+which contains this part of the story, is so much mutilated as to leave
+much of the substance to conjecture, while all the details, and the
+interpretation of the dream which is probably given, are lost. The same
+is unfortunately the case with the fourth and fifth tablets, from which
+we can only gather that Izdubar and Êabâni, who have become inseparable,
+start on an expedition against the Elamite tyrant, KHUMBABA, who holds
+his court in a gloomy forest of cedars and cypresses, enter his palace,
+fall upon him unawares and kill him, leaving his body to be torn and
+devoured by the birds of prey, after which exploit Izdubar, as his
+friend had predicted to him, is proclaimed king in Erech. The sixth
+tablet is far better preserved, and gives us one of the most interesting
+incidents almost complete.
+
+13. After Izdubar's victory, his glory and power were great, and the
+goddess Ishtar looked on him with favor and wished for his love.
+
+     "Izdubar," she said, "be my husband and I will be thy wife:
+     pledge thy troth to me. Thou shalt drive a chariot of gold and
+     precious stones, thy days shall be marked with conquests;
+     kings, princes and lords shall be subject to thee and kiss thy
+     feet; they shall bring thee tribute from mountain and valley,
+     thy herds and flocks shall multiply doubly, thy mules shall be
+     fleet, and thy oxen strong under the yoke. Thou shalt have no
+     rival."
+
+But Izdubar, in his pride, rejected the love of the goddess; he insulted
+her and taunted her with having loved Dumuzi and others before him.
+Great was the wrath of Ishtar; she ascended to heaven and stood before
+her father Anu:
+
+     "My father, Izdubar has insulted me. Izdubar scorns my beauty
+     and spurns my love."
+
+[Illustration: 77.--IZDUBAR AND ÊABÂNI FIGHT THE BULL OF
+ISHTAR.--IZDUBAR FIGHTS ÊABÂNI'S LION (BABYLONIAN CYLINDER). (Smith's
+"Chaldea.")]
+
+She demanded satisfaction, and Anu, at her request, created a monstrous
+bull, which he sent against the city of Erech. But Izdubar and his
+friend went out to fight the bull, and killed him. Êabâni took hold of
+his tail and horns, and Izdubar gave him his deathblow. They drew the
+heart out of his body and offered it to Shamash. Then Ishtar ascended
+the wall of the city, and standing there cursed Izdubar. She gathered
+her handmaidens around her and they raised loud lamentations over the
+death of the divine bull. But Izdubar called together his people and
+bade them lift up the body and carry it to the altar of Shamash and lay
+it before the god. Then they washed their hands in the Euphrates and
+returned to the city, where they made a feast of rejoicing and revelled
+deep into the night, while in the streets a proclamation to the people
+of Erech was called out, which began with the triumphant words:
+
+     "Who is skilled among leaders? Who is great among men? Izdubar
+     is skilled among leaders; Izdubar is great among men."
+
+[Illustration: 78.--IZDUBAR AND ÊABÂNI (BABYLONIAN CYLINDER). (Perrot
+and Chipiez.)]
+
+14. But the vengeance of the offended goddess was not to be so easily
+defeated. It now fell on the hero in a more direct and personal way.
+Ishtar's mother, the goddess Anatu, smote Êabâni with sudden death and
+Izdubar with a dire disease, a sort of leprosy, it would appear.
+Mourning for his friend, deprived of strength and tortured with
+intolerable pains, he saw visions and dreams which oppressed and
+terrified him, and there was now no wise, familiar voice to soothe and
+counsel him. At length he decided to consult his ancestor, Hâsisadra,
+who dwelt far away, "at the mouth of the rivers," and was immortal, and
+to ask of him how he might find healing and strength. He started on his
+way alone and came to a strange country, where he met gigantic,
+monstrous beings, half men, half scorpions: their feet were below the
+earth, while their heads touched the gates of heaven; they were the
+warders of the sun and kept their watch over its rising and setting.
+They said one to another: "Who is this that comes to us with the mark of
+the divine wrath on his body?" Izdubar made his person and errand known
+to them; then they gave him directions how to reach the land of the
+blessed at the mouth of the rivers, but warned him that the way was long
+and full of hardships. He set out again and crossed a vast tract of
+country, where there was nothing but sand, not one cultivated field; and
+he walked on and on, never looking behind him, until he came to a
+beautiful grove by the seaside, where the trees bore fruits of emerald
+and other precious stones; this grove was guarded by two beautiful
+maidens, SIDURI and SABITU, but they looked with mistrust on the
+stranger with the mark of the gods on his body, and closed their
+dwelling against him.
+
+[Illustration: 79.--SCORPION-MEN. (Smith's "Chaldea.")]
+
+15. And now Izdubar stood by the shore of the Waters of Death, which are
+wide and deep, and separate the land of the living from that of the
+blessed and immortal dead. Here he encountered the ferryman URUBÊL; to
+him he opened his heart and spoke of the friend whom he had loved and
+lost, and Urubêl took him into his ship. For one month and fifteen days
+they sailed on the Waters of Death, until they reached that distant land
+by the mouth of the rivers, where Izdubar at length met his renowned
+ancestor face to face, and, even while he prayed for his advice and
+assistance, a very natural feeling of curiosity prompted him to ask "how
+he came to be translated alive into the assembly of the gods."
+Hâsisadra, with great complaisance, answered his descendant's question
+and gave him a full account of the Deluge and his own share in that
+event, after which he informed him in what way he could be freed from
+the curse laid on him by the gods. Then turning to the ferryman:
+
+     "Urubêl, the man whom thou hast brought hither, behold, disease
+     has covered his body, sickness has destroyed the strength of
+     his limbs. Take him with thee, Urubêl, and purify him in the
+     waters, that his disease may be changed into beauty, that he
+     may throw off his sickness and the waters carry it away, that
+     health may cover his skin, and the hair of his head be restored
+     and descend in flowing locks down to his garment, that he may
+     go his way and return to his own country."
+
+[Illustration: 80.--STONE OBJECT FOUND AT ABU-HABBA (SIPPAR) BY MR. H.
+RASSAM, SHOWING, AMONG OTHER MYTHICAL DESIGNS, SHAMASH AND HIS WARDER,
+THE SCORPION-MAN.]
+
+16. When all had been done according to Hâsisadra's instruction,
+Izdubar, restored to health and vigor, took leave of his ancestor, and
+entering the ship once more was carried back to the shore of the living
+by the friendly Urubêl, who accompanied him all the way to Erech. But as
+they approached the city tears flowed down the hero's face and his heart
+was heavy within him for his lost friend, and he once more raised his
+voice in lamentation for him:
+
+     "Thou takest no part in the noble feast; to the assembly they
+     call thee not; thou liftest not the bow from the ground; what
+     is hit by the bow is not for thee; thy hand grasps not the
+     club and strikes not the prey, nor stretches thy foeman dead on
+     the earth. The wife thou lovest thou kissest not; the wife thou
+     hatest thou strikest not. The child thou lovest thou kissest
+     not; the child thou hatest thou strikest not. The might of the
+     earth has swallowed thee. O Darkness, Darkness, Mother
+     Darkness! thou enfoldest him like a mantle; like a deep well
+     thou enclosest him!"
+
+Thus Izdubar mourned for his friend, and went into the temple of Bel,
+and ceased not from lamenting and crying to the gods, till Êa mercifully
+inclined to his prayer and sent his son Meridug to bring Êabâni's spirit
+out of the dark world of shades into the land of the blessed, there to
+live forever among the heroes of old, reclining on luxurious couches and
+drinking the pure water of eternal springs. The poem ends with a vivid
+description of a warrior's funeral:
+
+     "I see him who has been slain in battle. His father and mother
+     hold his head; his wife weeps over him; his friends stand
+     around; his prey lies on the ground uncovered and unheeded. The
+     vanquished captives follow; the food provided in the tents is
+     consumed."
+
+17. The incident of the Deluge, which has been merely mentioned above,
+not to interrupt the narrative by its disproportionate length, (the
+eleventh tablet being the best preserved of all), is too important not
+to be given in full.[BE]
+
+     "I will tell thee, Izdubar, how I was saved from the flood,"
+     begins Hâsisadra, in answer to his descendant's question, "also
+     will I impart to thee the decree of the great gods. Thou
+     knowest Surippak, the city that is by the Euphrates. This city
+     was already very ancient when the gods were moved in their
+     hearts to ordain a great deluge, all of them, their father
+     Anu, their councillor the warlike Bel, their throne-bearer
+     Ninîb, their leader Ennugi. The lord of inscrutable wisdom, the
+     god Êa, was with them and imparted to me their decision.
+     'Listen,' he said, 'and attend! Man of Surippak, son of
+     Ubaratutu,[BF] go out of thy house and build thee a ship. They
+     are willed to destroy the seed of life; but thou preserve it
+     and bring into the ship seed of every kind of life. The ship
+     which thou shalt build let it be ... in length, and ... in
+     width and height,[BG] and cover it also with a deck.' When I
+     heard this I spoke to Êa, my lord: 'If I construct the ship as
+     thou biddest me, O lord, the people and their elders will laugh
+     at me.' But Êa opened his lips once more and spoke to me his
+     servant: 'Men have rebelled against me, and I will do judgment
+     on them, high and low. But do thou close the door of the ship
+     when the time comes and I tell thee of it. Then enter the ship
+     and bring into it thy store of grain, all thy property, thy
+     family, thy men-servants and thy women-servants, and also thy
+     next of kin. The cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the
+     fields, I shall send to thee myself, that they may be safe
+     behind thy door.'--Then I built the ship and provided it with
+     stores of food and drink; I divided the interior into ...
+     compartments.[BG] I saw to the chinks and filled them; I poured
+     bitumen over its outer side and over its inner side. All that I
+     possessed I brought together and stowed it in the ship; all
+     that I had of gold, of silver, of the seed of life of every
+     kind; all my men-servants and my women-servants, the cattle of
+     the field, the wild beasts of the field, and also my nearest
+     friends. Then, when Shamash brought round the appointed time, a
+     voice spoke to me:--'This evening the heavens will rain
+     destruction, wherefore go thou into the ship and close thy
+     door. The appointed time has come,' spoke the voice, 'this
+     evening the heavens will rain destruction.' And greatly I
+     feared the sunset of that day, the day on which I was to begin
+     my voyage. I was sore afraid. Yet I entered into the ship and
+     closed the door behind me, to shut off the ship. And I confided
+     the great ship to the pilot, with all its freight.--Then a
+     great black cloud rises from the depths of the heavens, and
+     Ramân thunders in the midst of it, while Nebo and Nergal
+     encounter each other, and the Throne-bearers walk over
+     mountains and vales. The mighty god of Pestilence lets loose
+     the whirlwinds; Ninîb unceasingly makes the canals to
+     overflow; the Anunnaki bring up floods from the depths of the
+     earth, which quakes at their violence. Ramân's mass of waters
+     rises even to heaven; light is changed into darkness. Confusion
+     and devastation fills the earth. Brother looks not after
+     brother, men have no thought for one another. In the heavens
+     the very gods are afraid; they seek a refuge in the highest
+     heaven of Anu; as a dog in its lair, the gods crouch by the
+     railing of heaven. Ishtar cries aloud with sorrow: 'Behold, all
+     is turned into mud, as I foretold to the gods! I prophesied
+     this disaster and the extermination of my creatures--men. But I
+     do not give them birth that they may fill the sea like the
+     brood of fishes.' Then the gods wept with her and sat lamenting
+     on one spot. For six days and seven nights wind, flood and
+     storm reigned supreme; but at dawn of the seventh day the
+     tempest decreased, the waters, which had battled like a mighty
+     host, abated their violence; the sea retired, and storm and
+     flood both ceased. I steered about the sea, lamenting that the
+     homesteads of men were changed into mud. The corpses drifted
+     about like logs. I opened a port-hole, and when the light of
+     day fell on my face I shivered and sat down and wept. I steered
+     over the countries which now were a terrible sea. Then a piece
+     of land rose out of the waters. The ship steered towards the
+     land Nizir. The mountain of the land Nizir held fast the ship
+     and did not let it go. Thus it was on the first and on the
+     second day, on the third and the fourth, also on the fifth and
+     sixth days. At dawn of the seventh day I took out a dove and
+     sent it forth. The dove went forth to and fro, but found no
+     resting-place and returned. Then I took out a swallow and sent
+     it forth. The swallow went forth, to and fro, but found no
+     resting-place and returned. Then I took out a raven and sent it
+     forth. The raven went forth, and when it saw that the waters
+     had abated, it came near again, cautiously wading through the
+     water, but did not return. Then I let out all the animals, to
+     the four winds of heaven, and offered a sacrifice. I raised an
+     altar on the highest summit of the mountain, placed the sacred
+     vessels on it seven by seven, and spread reeds, cedar-wood and
+     sweet herbs under them. The gods smelled a savor; the gods
+     smelled a sweet savor; like flies they swarmed around the
+     sacrifice. And when the goddess Ishtar came, she spread out on
+     high the great bows of her father Anu:--'By the necklace of my
+     neck,' she said, 'I shall be mindful of these days, never shall
+     I lose the memory of them! May all the gods come to the altar;
+     Bel alone shall not come, for that he controlled not his wrath,
+     and brought on the deluge, and gave up my men to destruction.'
+     When after that Bel came nigh and saw the ship, he was
+     perplexed, and his heart was filled with anger against the gods
+     and against the spirits of Heaven:--'Not a soul shall escape,'
+     he cried; 'not one man shall come alive out of destruction!'
+     Then the god Ninîb opened his lips and spoke, addressing the
+     warlike Bel:--'Who but Êa can have done this? Êa knew, and
+     informed him of everything.' Then Êa opened his lips and spoke,
+     addressing the warlike Bel:--'Thou art the mighty leader of the
+     gods: but why hast thou acted thus recklessly and brought on
+     this deluge? Let the sinner suffer for his sin and the
+     evil-doer for his misdeeds; but to this man be gracious that he
+     may not be destroyed, and incline towards him favorably, that
+     he may be preserved. And instead of bringing on another deluge,
+     let lions and hyenas come and take from the number of men; send
+     a famine to unpeople the earth; let the god of Pestilence lay
+     men low. I have not imparted to Hâsisadra the decision of the
+     great gods: I only sent him a dream, and he understood the
+     warning.'--Then Bel came to his senses. He entered the ship,
+     took hold of my hand and lifted me up; he also lifted up my
+     wife and laid her hand in mine. Then he turned towards us,
+     stood between us and spoke this blessing on us:--'Until now
+     Hâsisadra was only human: but now he shall be raised to be
+     equal with the gods, together with his wife. He shall dwell in
+     the distant land, by the mouth of the rivers.' Then they took
+     me and translated me to the distant land by the mouth of the
+     rivers."
+
+18. Such is the great Chaldean Epic, the discovery of which produced so
+profound a sensation, not to say excitement, not only among special
+scholars, but in the reading world generally, while the full importance
+of it in the history of human culture cannot yet be realized at this
+early stage of our historical studies, but will appear more and more
+clearly as their course takes us to later nations and other lands. We
+will here linger over the poem only long enough to justify and explain
+the name given to it in the title of this chapter, of "Mythical Epos."
+
+19. Were the hero Izdubar a purely human person, it would be a matter of
+much wonder how the small nucleus of historical fact which the story of
+his adventures contains should have become entwined and overgrown with
+such a disproportionate quantity of the most extravagant fiction,
+oftentimes downright monstrous in its fancifulness. But the story is one
+far older than that of any mere human hero and relates to one far
+mightier: it is the story of the Sun in his progress through the year,
+retracing his career of increasing splendor as the spring advances to
+midsummer, the height of his power when he reaches the month represented
+in the Zodiac by the sign of the Lion, then the decay of his strength as
+he pales and sickens in the autumn, and at last his restoration to youth
+and vigor after he has passed the Waters of Death--Winter, the death of
+the year, the season of nature's deathlike torpor, out of which the sun
+has not strength sufficient to rouse her, until spring comes back and
+the circle begins again. An examination of the Accadian calendar,
+adopted by the more scientifically inclined Semites, shows that the
+names of most of the months and the signs by which they were represented
+on the maps of the corresponding constellations of the Zodiac, directly
+answer to various incidents of the poem, following, too, in the same
+order, which is that of the respective seasons of the year,--which, be
+it noted, began with the spring, in the middle of our month of March. If
+we compare the calendar months with the tablets of the poem we will find
+that they, in almost every case, correspond. As the first tablet is
+unfortunately still missing, we cannot judge how far it may have
+answered to the name of the first month--"the Altar of Bel." But the
+second month, called that of "the Propitious Bull," or the "Friendly
+Bull," very well corresponds to the second tablet which ends with
+Izdubar's sending for the seer Êabâni, half bull half man, while the
+name and sign of the third, "the Twins," clearly alludes to the bond of
+friendship concluded between the two heroes, who became inseparable.
+Their victory over the tyrant Khumbaba in the fifth tablet is symbolized
+by the sign representing the victory of the Lion over the Bull, often
+abbreviated into that of the Lion alone, a sign plainly enough
+interpreted by the name "Month of Fire," so appropriate to the hottest
+and driest of seasons even in moderate climes--July-August. What makes
+this interpretation absolutely conclusive is the fact that in the
+symbolical imagery of all the poetry of the East, the Lion represents
+the principle of heat, of fire. The seventh tablet, containing the
+wooing of the hero by the goddess Ishtar, is too plainly reproduced in
+the name of the corresponding month, "the Month of the Message of
+Ishtar," to need explanation. The sign, too, is that of a woman with a
+bow, the usual mode of representing the goddess. The sign of the eighth
+month, "the Scorpion," commemorates the gigantic Warders of the Sun,
+half men half scorpions, whom Izdubar encounters when he starts on his
+journey to the land of the dead. The ninth month is called "the Cloudy,"
+surely a meet name for November-December, and in no way inconsistent
+with the contents of the ninth tablet, which shows Izdubar navigating
+the "Waters of Death." In the tenth month (December-January), the sun
+reaches his very lowest point, that of the winter solstice with its
+shortest days, whence the name "Month of the Cavern of the Setting Sun,"
+and the tenth tablet tells how Izdubar reached the goal of his journey,
+the land of the illustrious dead, to which his great ancestor has been
+translated. To the eleventh month, "the Month of the Curse of Rain,"
+with the sign of the Waterman,--(January-February being in the low lands
+of the two rivers the time of the most violent and continuous
+rains)--answers the eleventh tablet with the account of the Deluge. The
+"Fishes of Êa" accompany the sun in the twelfth month, the last of the
+dark season, as he emerges, purified and invigorated, to resume his
+triumphant career with the beginning of the new year. From the context
+and sequence of the myth, it would appear that the name of the first
+month, "the Altar of Bel," must have had something to do with the
+reconciliation of the god after the Deluge, from which humanity may be
+said to take a new beginning, which would make the name a most
+auspicious one for the new year, while the sign--a Ram--might allude to
+the animal sacrificed on the altar. Each month being placed under the
+protection of some particular deity it is worthy of notice that Anu and
+Bel are the patrons of the first month, Êa of the second, (in connection
+with the wisdom of Êabâni, who is called "the creature of Êa,") while
+Ishtar presides over the sixth, ("Message of Ishtar,") and Ramân, the
+god of the atmosphere, of rain and storm and thunder, over the eleventh,
+("the Curse of Rain").
+
+20. The solar nature of the adventurous career attributed to the
+favorite national hero of Chaldea, now universally admitted, was first
+pointed out by Sir Henry Rawlinson: but it was François Lenormant who
+followed it out and established it in its details. His conclusions on
+the subject are given in such clear and forcible language, that it is a
+pleasure to reproduce them:[BH]--"1st. The Chaldeans and Babylonians
+had, concerning the twelve months of the year, myths for the most part
+belonging to the series of traditions anterior to the separation of the
+great races of mankind which descended from the highlands of Pamir,
+since we find analogous myths among the pure Semites and other nations.
+As early as the time when they dwelt on the plains of the Tigris and
+Euphrates, they connected these myths with the different epochs of the
+year, not with a view to agricultural occupations, but in connection
+with the great periodical phenomena of the atmosphere and the different
+stations in the sun's yearly course, as they occurred in that particular
+region; hence the signs characterizing the twelve solar mansions in the
+Zodiac and the symbolical names given to the months by the Accads.--2d.
+It was those myths, strung together in their successive order, which
+served as foundation to the epic story of Izdubar, the fiery and solar
+hero, and in the poem which was copied at Erech by Asshurbanipal's order
+each of them formed the subject of one of the twelve tablets, making up
+the number of twelve separate books or chapters answering the twelve
+months of the year."--Even though the evidence is apparently so complete
+as not to need further confirmation, it is curious to note that the
+signs which compose the name of Izdubar convey the meaning "mass of
+fire," while Hâsisadra's Accadian name means "the sun of life," "the
+morning sun," and his father's name, Ubaratutu, is translated "the glow
+of sunset."
+
+21. George Smith indignantly repudiated this mythic interpretation of
+the hero's exploits, and claimed for them a strictly historical
+character. But we have seen that the two are by no means incompatible,
+since history, when handed down through centuries by mere oral
+tradition, is liable to many vicissitudes in the telling and retelling,
+and people are sure to arrange their favorite and most familiar stories,
+the mythical signification of which has long been forgotten, around the
+central figure of the heroes they love best, around the most important
+but vaguely recollected events in their national life. Hence it came to
+pass that identically the same stories, with but slight local
+variations, were told of heroes in different nations and countries; for
+the stock of original, or, as one may say, primary myths is
+comparatively small and the same for all, dating back to a time when
+mankind was not yet divided. In the course of ages and migrations it
+has been altered, like a rich hereditary robe, to fit and adorn many and
+very different persons.
+
+22. One of the prettiest, oldest, and most universally favorite solar
+myths is the one which represents the Sun as a divine being, youthful
+and of surpassing beauty, beloved by or wedded to an equally powerful
+goddess, but meeting a premature death by accident and descending into
+the dark land of shades, from which, however, after a time he returns as
+glorious and beautiful as before. In this poetical fancy, the land of
+shades symbolizes the numb and lifeless period of winter as aptly as the
+Waters of Death in the Izdubar Epic, while the seeming death of the
+young god answers to the sickening of the hero at that declining season
+of the year when the sun's rays lose their vigor and are overcome by the
+powers of darkness and cold. The goddess who loves the fair young god,
+and mourns him with passionate grief, until her wailings and prayers
+recall him from his deathlike trance, is Nature herself, loving,
+bountiful, ever productive, but pale, and bare, and powerless in her
+widowhood, while the sun-god, the spring of life whence she draws her
+very being, lies captive in the bonds of their common foe, grim Winter,
+which is but a form of Death itself. Their reunion at the god's
+resurrection in spring is the great wedding-feast, the revel and
+holiday-time of the world.
+
+23. This simple and perfectly transparent myth has been worked out more
+or less elaborately in all the countries of the East, and has found its
+way in some form or other into all the nations of the three great white
+races--of Japhet, Shem, and Ham--yet here again the precedence in point
+of time seems due to the older and more primitive--the Yellow or
+Turanian race; for the most ancient, and probably original form of it is
+the one which was inherited by the Semitic settlers of Chaldea from
+their Shumiro-Accadian predecessors, as shown by the Accadian name of
+the young solar god, DUMUZI, "the unfortunate husband of the goddess
+Ishtar," as he is called in the sixth tablet of the Izdubar epic. The
+name has been translated "Divine Offspring," but in later times lost all
+signification, being corrupted into TAMMUZ. In some Accadian hymns he is
+invoked as "the Shepherd, the lord Dumuzi, the lover of Ishtar." Well
+could a nomadic and pastoral people poetically liken the sun to a
+shepherd, whose flocks were the fleecy clouds as they speed across the
+vast plains of heaven or the bright, innumerable stars. This comparison,
+as pretty as it is natural, kept its hold in all ages and nations on the
+popular fancy, which played on it an infinite variety of ingenious
+changes, but it is only cuneiform science which has proved that it could
+be traced back to the very earliest race whose culture has left its mark
+on the world.
+
+24. Of Dumuzi's tragic death no text deciphered until now unfortunately
+gives the details. Only the remarkable fragment about the black pine of
+Eridhu, "marking the centre of the earth, in the dark forest, into the
+heart whereof man hath not penetrated," (see p. 287) tantalizingly ends
+with these suggestive words: "Within it Dumuzi...." Scholars have found
+reason for conjecturing that this fragment was the beginning of a
+mythical narrative recounting Dumuzi's death, which must have been
+represented as taking place in that dark and sacred forest of
+Eridhu,--probably through the agency of a wild beast sent against him by
+a jealous and hostile power, just as the bull created by Anu was sent
+against Izdubar.[BI] One thing, however, is sure, that both in the
+earlier (Turanian) and in the later (Semitic) calendary of Chaldea,
+there was a month set apart in honor and for the festival of Dumuzi. It
+was the month of June-July, beginning at the summer solstice, when the
+days begin to shorten, and the sun to decline towards its lower winter
+point--a retrograde movement, ingeniously indicated by the Zodiacal sign
+of that month, the Cancer or Crab. The festival of Dumuzi lasted during
+the six first days of the month, with processions and ceremonies bearing
+two distinct characters. The worshippers at first assembled in the guise
+of mourners, with lamentations and loud wailings, tearing of clothes and
+of hair, as though celebrating the young god's funeral, while on the
+sixth day his resurrection and reunion to Ishtar was commemorated with
+the noisiest, most extravagant demonstrations of rejoicing. This custom
+is alluded to in Izdubar's scornful answer to Ishtar's love-message,
+when he says to her: "Thou lovedst Dumuzi, _for whom they mourn year
+after year_," and was witnessed by the Jews when they were carried
+prisoners to Babylon as late as 600 B.C., as expressly mentioned by
+Ezekiel, the prophet of the Captivity:--"Then he brought me to the door
+of the Lord's house which was towards the north; _and behold, there sat
+the women weeping for Tammuz_." (Ezekiel, iii. 14.)
+
+25. A favorite version of Dumuzi's resurrection was that which told how
+Ishtar herself followed him into the Lower World, to claim him from
+their common foe, and thus yielded herself for a time into the power of
+her rival, the dread Queen of the Dead, who held her captive, and would
+not have released her but for the direct interference of the great gods.
+This was a rich mine of epic material, from which songs and stories must
+have flowed plentifully. We are lucky enough to possess a short epic on
+the subject, in one tablet, one of the chief gems of the indefatigable
+George Smith's discoveries,--a poem of great literary beauty, and nearly
+complete to within a few lines of the end, which are badly injured and
+scarcely legible. It is known under the name of "THE DESCENT OF ISHTAR,"
+as it relates only this one incident of the myth. The opening lines are
+unsurpassed for splendid poetry and sombre grandeur in any, even the
+most advanced literature.
+
+     26. "Towards the land whence there is no return, towards the
+     house of corruption, Ishtar, the daughter of Sin, has turned
+     her mind ... towards the dwelling that has an entrance but no
+     exit, towards the road that may be travelled but not retraced,
+     towards the hall from which the light of day is shut out,
+     where hunger feeds on dust and mud, where light is never seen,
+     where the shades of the dead dwell in the dark, clothed with
+     wings like birds. On the lintel of the gate and in the lock
+     dust lies accumulated.--Ishtar, when she reached the land
+     whence there is no return, to the keeper of the gate signified
+     her command: 'Keeper, open thy gate that I may pass. If thou
+     openest not and I may not enter, I will smite the gate, and
+     break the lock, I will demolish the threshold and enter by
+     force; then will I let loose the dead to return to the earth,
+     that they may live and eat again; I will make the risen dead
+     more numerous than the living.' The gate-keeper opened his lips
+     and spoke:--'Be appeased, O Lady, and let me go and report thy
+     name to Allat the Queen.'"
+
+Here follow a few much injured lines, the sense of which could not be
+restored in its entirety. The substance is that the gate-keeper
+announces to Allat that her sister Ishtar has come for the Water of
+Life, which is kept concealed in a distant nook of her dominions, and
+Allat is greatly disturbed at the news. But Ishtar announces that she
+comes in sorrow, not enmity:--
+
+     "I wish to weep over the heroes who have left their wives. I
+     wish to weep over the wives who have been taken from their
+     husbands' arms. I wish to weep over the Only Son--(a name of
+     Dumuzi)--who has been taken away before his time."
+
+Then Allat commands the keeper to open the gates and take Ishtar through
+the sevenfold enclosure, dealing by her as by all who come to those
+gates, that is, stripping her of her garments according to ancient
+custom.
+
+     "The keeper went and opened the gate: 'Enter, O Lady, and may
+     the halls of the Land whence there is no return be gladdened by
+     thy presence.' At the first gate he bade her enter and laid his
+     hand on her; he took the high headdress from her head: 'Why, O
+     keeper, takest thou the high headdress from my head?'--'Enter,
+     O Lady; such is Allat's command.'"
+
+The same scene is repeated at each of the seven gates; the keeper at
+each strips Ishtar of some article of her attire--her earrings, her
+necklace, her jewelled girdle, the bracelets on her arms and the bangles
+at her ankles, and lastly her long flowing garment. On each occasion the
+same words are repeated by both. When Ishtar entered the presence of
+Allat, the queen looked at her and taunted her to her face: then Ishtar
+could not control her anger and cursed her. Allat turned to her chief
+minister Namtar, the god of Pestilence--meet servant of the queen of the
+dead!--who is also the god of Fate, and ordered him to lead Ishtar away
+and afflict her with sixty dire diseases,--to strike her head and her
+heart, and her eyes, her hands and her feet, and all her limbs. So the
+goddess was led away and kept in durance and in misery. Meanwhile her
+absence was attended with most disastrous consequences to the upper
+world. With her, life and love had gone out of it; there were no
+marriages any more, no births, either among men or animals; nature was
+at a standstill. Great was the commotion among the gods. They sent a
+messenger to Êa to expose the state of affairs to him, and, as usual, to
+invoke his advice and assistance. Êa, in his fathomless wisdom, revolved
+a scheme. He created a phantom, Uddusunamir.
+
+     "'Go,' he said to him; 'towards the Land whence there is no
+     return direct thy face; the seven gates of the Arallu will open
+     before thee. Allat shall see thee and rejoice at thy coming,
+     her heart shall grow calm and her wrath shall vanish. Conjure
+     her with the name of the great gods, stiffen thy neck and keep
+     thy mind on the Spring of Life. Let the Lady (Ishtar) gain
+     access to the Spring of Life and drink of its waters.'--Allat,
+     when she heard these things, beat her breast and bit her
+     fingers with rage. Consenting, sore against her will, she
+     spoke:--'Go, Uddusunamir! May the great jailer place thee in
+     durance! May the foulness of the city ditches be thy food, the
+     waters of the city sewers thy drink! A dark dungeon be thy
+     dwelling, a sharp pole thy seat!'"
+
+Then she ordered Namtar to let Ishtar drink of the Spring of Life and to
+bear her from her sight. Namtar fulfilled her command and took the
+goddess through the seven enclosures, at each gate restoring to her the
+article of her attire that had been taken at her entrance. At the last
+gate he said to her:
+
+     "Thou hast paid no ransom to Allat for thy deliverance; so now
+     return to Dumuzi, the lover of thy youth; sprinkle over him the
+     sacred waters, clothe him in splendid garments, adorn him with
+     gems."
+
+26. The last lines are so badly mutilated that no efforts have as yet
+availed to make their sense anything but obscure, and so it must remain,
+unless new copies come to light. Yet so much is, at all events, evident,
+that they bore on the reunion of Ishtar and her young lover. The poem is
+thus complete in itself; but some think that it was introduced into the
+Izdubar epic as an independent episode, after the fashion of the Deluge
+narrative, and, if so, it is supposed to have been part of the seventh
+tablet. Whether such were really the case or no, matters little in
+comparison with the great importance these two poems possess as being
+the most ancient presentations, in a finished literary form, of the two
+most significant and universal nature-myths--the Solar and the Chthonic
+(see p. 272), the poetical fancies in which primitive mankind clothed
+the wonders of the heavens and the mystery of the earth, being content
+to admire and imagine where it could not comprehend and explain. We
+shall be led back continually to these, in very truth, _primary_ myths,
+for they not only served as groundwork to much of the most beautiful
+poetry of the world but suggested some of its loftiest and most
+cherished religious conceptions.
+
+[For a metrical version by Prof. Dyer of the story of
+"Ishtar's Descent," see Appendix, p. 367.]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[BC] Paul Haupt, "Der Keilinschriftliche Sündfluthbericht," 1881.
+
+[BD] There are difficulties in the way of reading this name, and
+scholars are not sure that this is the right pronunciation of it; but
+they retain it, until some new discovery helps to settle the question.
+
+[BE] Translated from the German version of Paul Haupt, "Der
+Keilinschriftliche Sündfluthbericht."
+
+[BF] The ninth king in the fabulous list of ten.
+
+[BG] The figures unfortunately obliterated.
+
+[BH] "Les Premières Civilisations," Vol. II., pp. 78 ff.
+
+[BI] A. H. Sayce, "Babylonian Literature," p. 39; Fr. Lenormant, "Il
+Mito di Adone-Tammuz," pp. 12-13.
+
+
+
+
+                              VIII.
+
+RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.--IDOLATRY AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM.--THE CHALDEAN
+          LEGENDS AND THE BOOK OF GENESIS.--RETROSPECT.
+
+
+1. In speaking of ancient nations, the words "Religion" and "Mythology"
+are generally used indiscriminately and convertibly. Yet the conceptions
+they express are essentially and radically different. The broadest
+difference, and the one from which all others flow, is that the
+one--Religion--is a thing of the feelings, while the other--Mythology--is
+a thing of the imagination. In other words, Religion comes from
+WITHIN--from that consciousness of limited power, that inborn need of
+superior help and guidance, forbearance and forgiveness, from that
+longing for absolute goodness and perfection, which make up the
+distinctively human attribute of "religiosity," that attribute which,
+together with the faculty of articulate speech, sets Man apart from and
+above all the rest of animated creation. (See p. 149.) Mythology, on the
+other hand, comes wholly from WITHOUT. It embodies impressions received
+by the senses from the outer world and transformed by the poetical
+faculty into images and stories. (See definition of "Myth" on p. 294.)
+Professor Max Müller of Oxford has been the first, in his standard work
+"The Science of Language," clearly to define this radical difference
+between the two conceptions, which he has never since ceased to sound as
+a keynote through the long series of his works devoted to the study of
+the religions and mythologies of various nations. A few illustrations
+from the one nation with which we have as yet become familiar will help
+once for all to establish a thorough understanding on this point, most
+essential as it is to the comprehension of the workings of the human mind
+and soul throughout the long roll of struggles, errors and triumphs,
+achievements and failures which we call the history of mankind.
+
+2. There is no need to repeat here instances of the Shumiro-Accadian and
+Chaldean myths; the last three or four chapters have been filled with
+them. But the instances of religious feeling, though scattered in the
+same field, have to be carefully gleaned out and exhibited, for they
+belong to that undercurrent of the soul which pursues its way
+unobtrusively and is often apparently lost beneath the brilliant play of
+poetical fancies. But it is there nevertheless, and every now and then
+forces its way to the surface shining forth with a startling purity and
+beauty. When the Accadian poet invokes the Lord "who knows lie from
+truth," "who knows the truth that is in the soul of man," who "maketh
+lies to vanish," who "turneth wicked plots to a happy issue"--this is
+religion, not mythology, for this is not _a story_, it is the expression
+of _a feeling_. That "the Lord" whose divine omniscience and goodness
+is thus glorified is really the Sun, makes no difference; _that_ is an
+error of judgment, a want of knowledge, but the religious feeling is
+splendidly manifest in the invocation. But when, in the same hymn, the
+Sun is described as "stepping forth from the background of the skies,
+pushing back the bolts and opening the gate of the brilliant heaven, and
+raising his head above the land," etc., (see p. 172) that is only a very
+beautiful, imaginative description of a glorious natural
+phenomenon--sunrise; it is magnificent poetry, religious in so far as
+the sun is considered as a Being, a Divine Person, the object of an
+intensely devout and grateful feeling; still this is not religion, it is
+mythology, for it presents a material image to the mind, and one that
+can be easily turned into narrative, into _a story_,--which, in fact,
+_suggests_ a hero, a king, and a story. Take, again, the so-called
+"Penitential Psalms." To the specimen given on p. 178, let us add, for
+greater completeness, the following three remarkable fragments:
+
+     I. "God, my creator, take hold of my arms! Direct the breath of
+     my mouth, my hands direct, O lord of light."
+
+     II. "Lord, let not thy servant sink! Amidst the tumultuous
+     waters take hold of his hand!"
+
+     III. "He who fears not his God, will be cut off even like a
+     reed. He who honors not his goddess, his bodily strength will
+     waste away; like to a star of heaven, his splendor will pale;
+     he will vanish like to the waters of the night."
+
+3. All this is religion, of the purest, loftiest kind; fruitful, too, of
+good, the only real test of true religion. The deep humility, the
+trustful appeal, the feeling of dependence, the consciousness of
+weakness, of sin, and the longing for deliverance from them--these are
+all very different from the pompous phrases of empty praise and sterile
+admiration; they are things which flow from the heart, not the fancy,
+which lighten its weight of sorrow and self-reproach, brighten it with
+hope and good resolutions, in short, make it happier and better--what no
+mere imaginative poetry, however fine, can do.
+
+4. The radical distinction, then, between religious feeling and the
+poetical faculty of mythical creation, is easy to establish and follow
+out. On the other hand, the two are so constantly blended, so almost
+inextricably interwoven in the sacred poetry of the ancients, in their
+views of life and the world, and in their worship, that it is no wonder
+they should be so generally confused. The most correct way of putting
+the case would be, perhaps, to say that the ancient Religions--meaning
+by the word the whole body of sacred poetry and legends as well as the
+national forms of worship--were made up originally in about equal parts
+of religious feeling and of mythology. In many cases the exuberance of
+the imagination gained the upper hand, and there was such a riotous
+growth of mythical imagery and stories that the religious feeling was
+almost stifled under them. In others, again, the myths themselves
+suggested religious ideas of the deepest import and loftiest sublimity.
+Such was particularly the case with the solar and Chthonic Myths--the
+poetical presentation of the career of the Sun and the Earth--as
+connected with the doctrine of the soul's immortality.
+
+5. A curious and significant observation has been made in excavating the
+most ancient graves in the world, those of the so-called Mound-builders.
+This name is not that of any particular race or nation, but is given
+indiscriminately to all those peoples who lived, on any part of the
+globe, long before the earliest beginnings of even the remotest times
+which have been made historical by preserved monuments or inscriptions
+of any kind. All we know of those peoples is that they used to bury
+their dead--at least those of special renown or high rank--in deep and
+spacious stone-lined chambers dug in the ground, with a similar gallery
+leading to them, and covered by a mound of earth, sometimes of gigantic
+dimensions--a very hill. Hence the name. Of their life, their degree of
+civilization, what they thought and believed, we have no idea except in
+so far as the contents of the graves give us some indications. For, like
+the later, historical races, of which we find the graves in Chaldea and
+every other country of the ancient world, they used to bury along with
+the dead a multitude of things: vessels, containing food and drink;
+weapons, ornaments, household implements. The greater the power or
+renown of the dead man, the fuller and more luxurious his funeral
+outfit. It is indeed by no means rare to find the skeleton of a great
+chief surrounded by those of several women, and, at a respectful
+distance, more skeletons--evidently those of slaves--whose fractured
+skulls more than suggest the ghastly custom of killing wives and
+servants to do honor to an illustrious dead and to keep him company in
+his narrow underground mansion. Nothing but a belief in the continuation
+of existence after death could have prompted these practices. For what
+was the sense of giving him wives and slaves, and domestic articles of
+all kinds, food and weapons, unless it were for his service and use on
+his journey to the unknown land where he was to enter on a new stage of
+existence, which the survivors could not but imagine to be a
+reproduction, in its simple conditions and needs, of the one he was
+leaving? There is no race of men, however primitive, however untutored,
+in which this belief in immortality is not found deeply rooted,
+positive, unquestioning. The _belief_ is implanted in man by the _wish_;
+it answers one of the most imperative, unsilenceable longings of human
+nature. For, in proportion as life is pleasant and precious, death is
+hideous and repellent. The idea of utter destruction, of ceasing to be,
+is intolerable to the mind; indeed, the senses revolt against it, the
+mind refuses to grasp and admit it. Yet death is very real, and it is
+inevitable; and all human beings that come into the world have to learn
+to face the thought of it, and the reality too, in others, before they
+lie down and accept it for themselves. But what if death be _not_
+destruction? If it be but a passage from this into another
+world,--distant, unknown and perforce mysterious, but certain
+nevertheless, a world on the threshold of which the earthly body is
+dropped as an unnecessary garment? Then were death shorn of half its
+terrors. Indeed, the only unpleasantness about it would be, for him who
+goes, the momentary pang and the uncertainty as to what he is going to;
+and, for those who remain, the separation and the loathsome details--the
+disfigurement, the corruption. But these are soon gotten over, while the
+separation is only for a time; for all must go the same way, and the
+late-comers will find, will join their lost ones gone before. Surely it
+must be so! It were too horrible if it were not; it _must be_--it _is_!
+The process of feeling which arrived at this conclusion and hardened it
+into absolute faith, is very plain, and we can easily, each of us,
+reproduce it in our own souls, independently of the teachings we receive
+from childhood. But the mind is naturally inquiring, and involuntarily
+the question presents itself: this solution, so beautiful, so
+acceptable, so universal,--but so abstract--what suggested it? What
+analogy first led up to it from the material world of the senses? To
+this question we find no reply in so many words, for it is one of those
+that go to the very roots of our being, and such generally remain
+unanswered. But the graves dug by those old Mound-Builders present a
+singular feature, which almost seems to point to the answer. The tenant
+of the funereal chamber is most frequently found deposited in a
+crouching attitude, his back leaning against the stone-lined wall, and
+_with his face turned towards the West, in the direction of the setting
+sun_.... Here, then, is the suggestion, the analogy! The career of the
+sun is very like that of man. His rising in the east is like the birth
+of man. During the hours of his power, which we call the Day, he does
+his allotted work, of giving light and warmth to the world, now riding
+radiant and triumphant across an azure sky, now obscured by clouds,
+struggling through mists, or overwhelmed by tempests. How like the
+vicissitudes that checker the somewhat greater number of hours--or
+days--of which the sum makes up a human life! Then when his appointed
+time expires, he sinks down,--lower, lower--and disappears into
+darkness,--dies. So does man. What is this night, death? Is it
+destruction, or only a rest, or an absence? It is at all events _not_
+destruction. For as surely as we see the sun vanish in the west this
+evening, feeble and beamless, so surely shall we behold him to-morrow
+morning rise again in the east, glorious, vigorous and young. What
+happens to him in the interval? Who knows? Perhaps he sleeps, perhaps he
+travels through countries we know not of and does other work there; but
+one thing is sure: that he is not dead, for he will be up again
+to-morrow. Why should not man, whose career so much resembles the sun's
+in other respects, resemble him in this? Let the dead, then, be placed
+with their faces to the west, in token that theirs is but a setting like
+the sun's, to be followed by another rising, a renewed existence, though
+in another and unknown world.
+
+6. All this is sheer poetry and mythology. But how great its beauty, how
+obvious its hopeful suggestiveness, if it could appeal to the groping
+minds of those primitive men, the old Mound-Builders, and there lay the
+seed of a faith which has been more and more clung to, as mankind
+progressed in spiritual culture! For all the noblest races have
+cherished and worked out the myth of the setting sun in the most
+manifold ways, as the symbol of the soul's immortality. The poets of
+ancient India, some three thousand years ago, made the Sun the leader
+and king of the dead, who, as they said, followed where he had gone
+first, "showing the way to many." The Egyptians, perhaps the wisest and
+most spiritual of all ancient nations, came to make this myth the
+keystone of their entire religion, and placed all their burying-places
+in the west, amidst or beyond the Libyan ridge of hills behind which the
+sun vanished from the eyes of those who dwelt in the valley of the Nile.
+The Greeks imagined a happy residence for their bravest and wisest,
+which they called the Islands of the Blest, and placed in the furthest
+West, amidst the waters of the ocean into which the sun descends for his
+nightly rest.
+
+7. But the sun's course is twofold. If it is complete--beginning and
+ending--within the given number of hours which makes the day, it is
+repeated on a larger scale through the cycle of months which makes the
+year. The alternations of youth and age, triumph and decline, power and
+feebleness, are there represented and are regularly brought around by
+the different seasons. But the moral, the symbol, is still the same as
+regards final immortality. For if summer answers to the heyday of noon,
+autumn to the milder glow and the extinction of evening, and winter to
+the joyless dreariness of night, spring, like the morning, ever brings
+back the god, the hero, in the perfect splendor of a glorious
+resurrection. It was the solar-year myth with its magnificent
+accompaniment of astronomical pageantry, which took the greater hold on
+the fancy of the scientifically inclined Chaldeans, and which we find
+embodied with such admirable completeness in their great epic. We shall
+see, later on, more exclusively imaginative and poetical races showing a
+marked preference for the career of the sun as the hero of a day, and
+making the several incidents of the solar-day myth the subject of an
+infinite variety of stories, brilliant or pathetic, tender or heroic.
+But there is in nature another order of phenomena, intimately connected
+with and dependent on the phases of the sun, that is, the seasons, yet
+very different in their individual character, though pointing the same
+way as regards the suggestion of resurrection and immortality--the
+phenomena of the Earth and the Seed. These may in a more general way be
+described as Nature's productive power paralyzed during the numbed
+trance of winter, which is as the sleep of death, when the seed lies in
+the ground hid from sight and cold, even as a dead thing, but awaking to
+new life in the good time of spring, when the seed, in which life was
+never extinct but only dormant, bursts its bonds and breaks into verdant
+loveliness and bountiful crops. This is the essence and meaning of the
+Chthonic or Earth-myth, as universal as the Sun-myth, but of which
+different features have also been unequally developed by different
+races according to their individual tendencies. In the Chaldean version,
+the "Descent of Ishtar," the particular incident of the seed is quite
+wanting, unless the name of Dumuzi's month, "The Boon of the Seed" ("_Le
+Bienfait de la Semence._" Lenormant), may be considered as alluding to
+it. It is her fair young bridegroom, the beautiful Sun-god, whom the
+widowed goddess of Nature mourns and descends to seek among the dead.
+This aspect of the myth is almost exclusively developed in the religions
+of most Canaanitic and Semitic nations of the East, where we shall meet
+with it often and often. And here it may be remarked, without digressing
+or anticipating too far, that throughout the ancient world, the Solar
+and Chthonic cycles of myths have been the most universal and important,
+the very centre and groundwork of many of the ancient mythic religions,
+and used as vehicles for more or less sublime religious conceptions,
+according to the higher or lower spiritual level of the worshipping
+nations.
+
+8. It must be confessed that, amidst the nations of Western Asia, this
+level was, on the whole, not a very lofty one. Both the Hamitic and
+Semitic races were, as a rule, of a naturally sensuous disposition; the
+former being, moreover, distinguished by a very decidedly material turn
+of mind. The Kushites, of whom a branch perhaps formed an important
+portion of the mixed population of Lower Mesopotamia, and especially the
+Canaanites, who spread themselves over all the country between the
+great rivers and the Western Sea--the Mediterranean--were no exception
+to this rule. If their priests--their professed thinkers, the men
+trained through generations for intellectual pursuits--had groped their
+way to the perception of One Divine Power ruling the world, they kept it
+to themselves, or, at least, out of sight, behind a complicated array of
+cosmogonic myths, nature-myths, symbols and parables, resulting in
+Chaldea in the highly artificial system which has been sketched
+above--(see Chapters V. and VI.)--a system singularly beautiful and
+deeply significant, but of which the mass of the people did not care to
+unravel the subtle intricacies, being quite content to accept it entire,
+in the most literal spirit, elementary nature-gods, astronomical
+abstractions, cosmogonical fables and all--questioning nothing, at peace
+in their mind and righteously self-conscious if they sacrificed at the
+various time-honored local shrines, and conformed to the prescribed
+forms and ceremonies. To these they privately added those innumerable
+practices of conjuring and rites of witchcraft, the heirloom of the
+older lords of the soil, which we saw the colleges of learned priests
+compelled, as strangers and comparative newcomers, to tolerate and even
+sanction by giving them a place, though an inferior one, in their own
+nobler system (see p. 250). Thus it was that, if a glimmer of Truth did
+feebly illumine the sanctuary and its immediate ministers, the people at
+large dwelt in the outer darkness of hopeless polytheism and, worse
+still, of idolatry. For, in bowing before the altars of their temples
+and the images in wood, stone or metal in which art strove to express
+what the sacred writings taught, the unlearned worshippers did not stop
+to consider that these were but pieces of human workmanship, deriving
+their sacredness solely from the subjects they treated and the place
+they adorned, nor did they strive to keep their thoughts intent on the
+invisible Beings represented by the images. It was so much simpler,
+easier and more comfortable to address their adoration to what was
+visible and near, to the shapes that were so closely within reach of
+their senses, that seemed so directly to receive their offerings and
+prayers, that became so dearly familiar from long associations. The bulk
+of the Chaldean nation for a long time remained Turanian, and the
+materialistic grossness of the original Shumiro-Accadian religion
+greatly fostered its idolatrous tendencies. The old belief in the
+talismanic virtues of all images (see p. 162) continued to assert
+itself, and was easily transferred to those representing the divinities
+of the later and more elaborate worship. Some portion of the divine
+substance or spirit was supposed somehow to pass into the material
+representation and reside therein. This is very clear from the way in
+which the inscriptions speak of the statues of gods, as though they were
+persons. Thus the famous cylinder of the Assyrian conqueror
+Asshurbanipal tells how he brought back "the goddess Nana," (i.e., her
+statue) who at the time of the great Elamite invasion, "had gone and
+dwelt in Elam, a place not appointed for her," and now spoke to him the
+king, saying: "From the midst of Elam bring me out and cause me to
+enter into Bitanna"--her own old sanctuary at Erech, "which she had
+delighted in." Then again the Assyrian conquerors take especial pride in
+carrying off with them the statues of the gods of the nations they
+subdue, and never fail to record the fact in these words: "I carried
+away _their gods_," beyond a doubt with the idea that, in so doing, they
+put it out of their enemies' power to procure the assistance of their
+divine protectors.
+
+9. In the population of Chaldea the Semitic element was strongly
+represented. It is probable that tribes of Semites came into the country
+at intervals, in successive bands, and for a long time wandered
+unhindered with their flocks, then gradually amalgamated with the
+settlers they found in possession, and whose culture they adopted, or
+else formed separate settlements of their own, not even then, however,
+quite losing their pastoral habits. Thus the Hebrew tribe, when it left
+Ur under Terah and Abraham (see page 121), seems to have resumed its
+nomadic life with the greatest willingness and ease, after dwelling a
+long time in or near that popular city, the principal capital of Shumir,
+the then dominant South. Whether this tribe were driven out of Ur, as
+some will have it,[BJ] or left of their own accord, it is perhaps not
+too bold to conjecture that the causes of their departure were partly
+connected with religious motives. For, alone among the Chaldeans and all
+the surrounding nations, this handful of Semites had disentangled the
+conception of monotheism from the obscuring wealth of Chaldean
+mythology, and had grasped it firmly. At least their leaders and elders,
+the patriarchs, had arrived at the conviction that the One living God
+was He whom they called "the Lord," and they strove to inspire their
+people with the same faith, and to detach them from the mythical
+beliefs, the idolatrous practices which they had adopted from those
+among whom they lived, and to which they clung with the tenacity of
+spiritual blindness and long habit. The later Hebrews themselves kept a
+clear remembrance of their ancestors having been heathen polytheists,
+and their own historians, writing more than a thousand years after
+Abraham's times, distinctly state the fact. In a long exhortation to the
+assembled tribes of Israel, which they put in the mouth of Joshua, the
+successor of Moses, they make him say:--"Your fathers dwelt on the other
+side of the flood" (i.e., the Euphrates, or perhaps the Jordan) "in old
+time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nachor, _and
+they served other gods_." And further on: "... Put away _the gods which
+your fathers served on the other side of the flood_ and in Egypt, and
+serve ye the Lord.... Choose you this day whom you will serve, whether
+the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the
+flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; as for me
+and my house, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua, xxiv. 2, 14, 15.) What
+more probable than that the patriarchs, Terah and Abraham, should have
+led their people out of the midst of the Chaldeans, away from their
+great capital Ur, which held some of the oldest and most renowned
+Chaldean sanctuaries, and forth into the wilderness, partly with the
+object of removing them from corrupting associations. At all events that
+branch of the Hebrew tribe which remained in Mesopotamia with Nahor,
+Abraham's brother (see Gen. xxiv. xxix. and ff.), continued heathen and
+idolatrous, as we see from the detailed narrative in Genesis xxxi., of
+how Rachel "had stolen _the images that were her father's_" (xxxi. 19),
+when Jacob fled from Laban's house with his family, his cattle and all
+his goods. No doubt as to the value and meaning attached to these
+"images" is left when we see Laban, after having overtaken the
+fugitives, reprove Jacob in these words:--"And now, though thou wouldst
+needs be gone, because thou sore longedst for thy father's house, yet
+wherefore hast thou stolen _my gods_?" (xxxi. 30), to which Jacob, who
+knows nothing of Rachel's theft, replies:--"With whomsoever _thou
+findest thy gods_, let him not live" (xxxi. 32). But "Rachel had taken
+the images and put them in the camel's furniture, and sat upon them. And
+Laban searched all the tent, but found them not" (xxxi. 34). Now what
+could have induced Rachel to commit so dishonorable and, moreover,
+dangerous an action, but the idea that, in carrying away these images,
+her family's household "gods," she would insure a blessing and
+prosperity to herself and her house? That by so doing, she would,
+according to the heathens' notion, rob her father and old home of what
+she wished to secure herself (see page 344), does not seem to have
+disturbed her. It is clear from this that, even after she was wedded to
+Jacob the monotheist, she remained a heathen and idolater, though she
+concealed the fact from him.
+
+10. On the other hand, wholesale emigration was not sufficient to remove
+the evil. Had it indeed been a wilderness, unsettled in all its extent,
+into which the patriarchs led forth their people, they might have
+succeeded in weaning them completely from the old influences. But,
+scattered over it and already in possession, were numerous Canaanite
+tribes, wealthy and powerful under their chiefs--Amorites, and Hivites,
+and Hittites, and many more. In the pithy and picturesque Biblical
+language, "the Canaanite was in the land" (Genesis, xii. 6), and the
+Hebrews constantly came into contact with them, indeed were dependent on
+their tolerance and large hospitality for the freedom with which they
+were suffered to enjoy the pastures of "the land wherein they were
+strangers," as the vast region over which they ranged is frequently and
+pointedly called. Being but a handful of men, they had to be cautious in
+their dealings and to keep on good terms with the people among whom they
+were brought. "I am a stranger and a sojourner with you," admits
+Abraham, "bowing himself down before the people of the land," (a tribe
+of Hittites near Hebron, west of the Dead Sea), when he offers to buy of
+them a field, there to institute a family burying-place for himself and
+his race; for he had no legal right to any of the land, not so much as
+would yield a sepulchre to his dead, even though the "children of Heth"
+treat him with high honor, and, in speaking to him, say, "My lord," and
+"thou art a mighty prince among us" (Genesis, xxiii.). This transaction,
+conducted on both sides in a spirit of great courtesy and liberality, is
+not the only instance of the friendliness with which the Canaanite
+owners of the soil regarded the strangers, both in Abraham's lifetime
+and long after his death. His grandson, the patriarch Jacob, and his
+sons find the same tolerance among the Hivites of Shalem, who thus
+commune among themselves concerning them:--"These men are peaceable with
+us; therefore let them dwell in the land and trade therein; for the
+land, behold it is large enough for them; let us take their daughters
+for wives, and let us give them our daughters." And the Hivite prince
+speaks in this sense to the Hebrew chief:--"The soul of my son longeth
+for your daughter: I pray you, give her him to wife. And make ye
+marriages with us, and give your daughters unto us and take our
+daughters unto you. And ye shall dwell with us, and the land shall be
+before you; dwell and trade ye therein, and get you possessions
+therein."
+
+11. But this question of intermarriage was always a most grievous one;
+the question of all others at which the Hebrew leaders strictly drew the
+line of intercourse and good-fellowship; the more stubbornly that their
+people were naturally much inclined to such unions, since they came and
+went freely among their hosts, and their daughters went out, unhindered,
+"to see the daughters of the land." Now all the race of Canaan followed
+religions very similar to that of Chaldea, only grosser still in their
+details and forms of worship. Therefore, that the old idolatrous habits
+might not return strongly upon them under the influence of a heathen
+household, the patriarchs forbade marriage with the women of the
+countries through which they passed and repassed with their tents and
+flocks, and themselves abstained from it. Thus we see Abraham sending
+his steward all the way back to Mesopotamia to seek a wife for his son
+Isaac from among his own kinsfolk who had stayed there with his brother
+Nahor, and makes the old servant solemnly swear "by the Lord, the God of
+heaven and the God of earth": "Thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of
+the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell." And when Esau,
+Isaac's son, took two wives from among the Hittite women, it is
+expressly said that they were "a grief of mind unto Isaac and Rebekah;"
+and Isaac's most solemn charge to his other son, Jacob, as he sends him
+from him with his blessing, is: "Thou shalt not take a wife of the
+daughters of Canaan." Whithersoever the Hebrews came in the course of
+their long wanderings, which lasted many centuries, the same twofold
+prohibition was laid on them: of marrying with native women--"for
+surely," they are told, "they will turn away your heart after their
+gods," and of following idolatrous religions, a prohibition enforced by
+the severest penalties, even to that of death. But nothing could keep
+them long from breaking the law in both respects. The very frequency
+and emphasis with which the command is repeated, the violence of the
+denunciations against offenders, the terrible punishments threatened and
+often actually inflicted, sufficiently show how imperfectly and
+unwillingly it was obeyed. Indeed the entire Old Testament is one
+continuous illustration of the unslackening zeal with which the wise and
+enlightened men of Israel--its lawgivers, leaders, priests and
+prophets--pursued their arduous and often almost hopeless task, of
+keeping their people pure from worships and practices which to them, who
+had realized the fallacy of a belief in many gods, were the most
+pernicious abominations. In this spirit and to this end they preached,
+they fought, they promised, threatened, punished, and in this spirit, in
+later ages, they wrote.
+
+12. It is not until a nation is well established and enjoys a certain
+measure of prosperity, security and the leisure which accompanies them,
+that it begins to collect its own traditions and memories and set them
+down in order, into a continuous narrative. So it was with the Hebrews.
+The small tribe became a nation, which ceased from its wanderings and
+conquered for itself a permanent place on the face of the earth. But to
+do this took many hundred years, years of memorable adventures and
+vicissitudes, so that the materials which accumulated for the future
+historians, in stories, traditions, songs, were ample and varied. Much,
+too, must have been written down at a comparatively early period. _How_
+early must remain uncertain, since there is unfortunately nothing to
+show at what time the Hebrews learned the art of writing and their
+characters thought, like other alphabets, to be borrowed from those of
+the Phoenicians. However that may be, one thing is sure: that the
+different books which compose the body of the Hebrew Sacred Scriptures,
+which we call "the Old Testament," were collected from several and
+different sources, and put into the shape in which they have descended
+to us at a very late period, some almost as late as the birth of Christ.
+The first book of all, that of Genesis, describing the beginnings of the
+Jewish people,--("_Genesis_" is a Greek word, which means
+"Origin")--belongs at all events to a somewhat earlier date. It is put
+together mainly of two narratives, distinct and often different in point
+of spirit and even fact. The later compiler who had both sources before
+him to work into a final form, looked on both with too much respect to
+alter either, and generally contented himself with giving them side by
+side, (as in the story of Hagar, which is told twice and differently, in
+Chap. XVI. and Chap. XXI.), or intermixing them throughout, so that it
+takes much attention and pains to separate them, (as in the story of the
+Flood, Chap. VI.-VIII.). This latter story is almost identical with the
+Chaldean Deluge-legend included in the great Izdubar epic, of which it
+forms the eleventh tablet. (See Chap. VII.) Indeed, every child can see,
+by comparing the Chaldean cosmogonic and mythical legends with the first
+chapters of the Book of Genesis, those which relate to the beginnings
+not so much of the Hebrew people as of the human race and the world in
+general, that both must originally have flowed from one and the same
+spring of tradition and priestly lore. The resemblances are too staring,
+close, continuous, not to exclude all rational surmises as to casual
+coincidences. The differences are such as most strikingly illustrate the
+transformation which the same material can undergo when treated by two
+races of different moral standards and spiritual tendencies. Let us
+briefly examine both, side by side.
+
+13. To begin with the Creation. The description of the primeval chaos--a
+waste of waters, from which "the darkness was not lifted," (see p.
+261)--answers very well to that in Genesis, i. 2: "And the earth was
+without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The
+establishment of the heavenly bodies and the creation of the animals
+also correspond remarkably in both accounts, and even come in the same
+order (see p. 264, and Genesis, i. 14-22). The famous cylinder of the
+British Museum (see No. 62, p. 266) is strong presumption in favor of
+the identity of the Chaldean version of the first couple's disobedience
+with the Biblical one. We have seen the important position occupied in
+the Chaldean religion by the symbol of the Sacred Tree, which surely
+corresponds to the Tree of Life in Eden (see p. 268), and probably also
+to that of Knowledge, and the different passages and names ingeniously
+collected and confronted by scholars leave no doubt as to the Chaldeans
+having had the legend of an Eden, a garden of God (see p. 274). A better
+preserved copy of the Creation tablets with the now missing passages may
+be recovered any day, and there is no reason to doubt that they will be
+found as closely parallel to the Biblical narrative as those that have
+been recovered until now. But even as we have them at present it is very
+evident that the groundwork, the material, is the same in both. It is
+the manner, the spirit, which differs. In the Chaldean account,
+polytheism runs riot. Every element, every power of nature--Heaven,
+Earth, the Abyss, Atmosphere, etc.--has been personified into an
+individual divine being actively and severely engaged in the great work.
+The Hebrew narrative is severely monotheistic. In it GOD does all that
+"the gods" between them do in the other. Every poetical or allegorical
+turn of phrase is carefully avoided, lest it lead into the evil errors
+of the sister-nation. The symbolical myths--such as that of Bel's mixing
+his own blood with the clay out of which he fashions man,(see p.
+266)--are sternly discarded, for the same reason. One only is retained:
+the temptation by the Serpent. But the Serpent being manifestly the
+personification of the Evil Principle which is forever busy in the soul
+of man, there was no danger of its being deified and worshipped; and as,
+moreover, the tale told in this manner very picturesquely and strikingly
+points a great moral lesson, the Oriental love of parable and allegory
+could in this instance be allowed free scope. Besides, the Hebrew
+writers of the sacred books were not beyond or above the superstitions
+of their country and age; indeed they retained all of these that did not
+appear to them incompatible with monotheism. Thus throughout the Books
+of the Old Testament the Chaldean belief in witchcraft, divination from
+dreams and other signs is retained and openly professed, and astrology
+itself is not condemned, since among the destinations of the stars is
+mentioned that of serving to men "for signs": "And God said, let there
+be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the
+night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and
+years" (Genesis, i. 14). Even more explicit is the passage in the
+triumphal song of Deborah the prophetess, where celebrating the victory
+of Israel over Sisera, she says: "They fought from heaven: the stars in
+their courses fought against Sisera" (Judges, v. 20). But a belief in
+astrology by no means implies the admission of several gods. In one or
+two passages, indeed, we do find an expression which seems to have
+slipped in unawares, as an involuntary reminiscence of an original
+polytheism; it is where God, communing with himself on Adam's trespass,
+says: "Behold, the man is become _as one of us_, to know good and evil"
+(Gen. iii. 22). An even clearer trace confronts us in one of the two
+names that are given to God. These names are "Jehovah," (more correctly
+"Yahveh") and "Elohim." Now the latter name is the plural of _El_,
+"god," and so really means "the gods." If the sacred writers retained
+it, it was certainly not from carelessness or inadvertence. As they use
+it, it becomes in itself almost a profession of faith. It seems to
+proclaim the God of their religion as "the One God who is all the
+gods," in whom all the forces of the universe are contained and merged.
+
+14. There is one feature in the Biblical narrative, which, at first
+sight, wears the appearance of mythical treatment: it is the familiar
+way in which God is represented as coming and going, speaking and
+acting, after the manner of men, especially in such passages as these:
+"And they heard the voice of the Lord God _walking in the garden in the
+cool of the day_" (Gen. iii. 8); or, "Unto Adam also and to his wife did
+the Lord God _make coats of skins and he clothed them_" (Gen. iii. 21).
+But such a judgment would be a serious error. There is nothing mythical
+in this; only the tendency, common to all mankind, of endowing the Deity
+with human attributes of form, speech and action, whenever the attempt
+was made to bring it very closely within the reach of their imagination.
+This tendency is so universal, that it has been classed, under a special
+name, among the distinctive features of the human mind. It has been
+called ANTHROPOMORPHISM, (from two Greek words _Anthropos_, "man," and
+_morphê_, "form,") and can never be got rid of, because it is part and
+parcel of our very nature. Man's spiritual longings are infinite, his
+perceptive faculties are limited. His spirit has wings of flame that
+would lift him up and bear him even beyond the endlessness of space into
+pure abstraction; his senses have soles of lead that ever weigh him
+down, back to the earth, of which he is and to which he must needs
+cling, to exist at all. He can _conceive_, by a great effort, an
+abstract idea, eluding the grasp of senses, unclothed in matter; but he
+can _realize_, _imagine_, only by using such appliances as the senses
+supply him with. Therefore, the more fervently he grasps an idea, the
+more closely he assimilates it, the more it becomes materialized in his
+grasp, and when he attempts to reproduce it out of himself--behold! it
+has assumed the likeness of himself or something he has seen, heard,
+touched--the spirituality of it has become weighted with flesh, even as
+it is in himself. It is as it were a reproduction, in the intellectual
+world, of the eternal strife, in physical nature, between the two
+opposed forces of attraction and repulsion, the centrifugal and
+centripetal, of which the final result is to keep each body in its
+place, with a well-defined and limited range of motion allotted to it.
+Thus, however pure and spiritual the conception of the Deity may be,
+man, in making it real to himself, in bringing it down within his reach
+and ken, within the shrine of his heart, _will_, and _must_ perforce
+make of it a Being, human not only in shape, but also in thought and
+feeling. How otherwise could he grasp it at all? And the accessories
+with which he will surround it will necessarily be suggested by his own
+experience, copied from those among which he moves habitually himself.
+"Walking in the garden in the cool of the day" is an essentially
+Oriental and Southern recreation, and came quite naturally to the mind
+of a writer living in a land steeped in sunshine and sultriness. Had the
+writer been a Northerner, a denizen of snow-clad plains and ice-bound
+rivers, the Lord might probably have been represented as coming in a
+swift, fur-lined sleigh. Anthropomorphism, then, is in itself neither
+mythology nor idolatry; but it is very clear that it can with the utmost
+ease glide into either or both, with just a little help from poetry and,
+especially, from art, in its innocent endeavor to fix in tangible form
+the vague imaginings and gropings, of which words often are but a
+fleeting and feeble rendering. Hence the banishment of all material
+symbols, the absolute prohibition of any images whatever as an accessory
+of religious worship, which, next to the recognition of One only God, is
+the keystone of the Hebrew law:--"Thou shalt have no other gods before
+me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of
+anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or
+that is in the water under the earth.--Thou shalt not bow down thyself
+to them, nor serve them" (Exodus, xx. 3-5).
+
+But, to continue our parallel.
+
+15. The ten antediluvian kings of Berosus, who succeed the apparition of
+the divine Man-Fish, Êa-Oannes (see p. 196), have their exact
+counterpart in the ten antediluvian patriarchs of Genesis, v. Like the
+Chaldean kings, the patriarchs live an unnatural number of years. Only
+the extravagant figures of the Chaldean tradition are considerably
+reduced in the Hebrew version. While the former allots to its kings
+reigns of tens of thousands of years (see p. 196); the latter cuts them
+down to hundreds, and the utmost that it allows to any of its
+patriarchs is nine hundred and sixty-nine years of life (Methuselah).
+
+16. The resemblances between the two Deluge narratives are so obvious
+and continuous, that it is not these, but the differences that need
+pointing out. Here again the sober, severely monotheistic character of
+the Hebrew narrative contrasts most strikingly with the exuberant
+polytheism of the Chaldean one, in which Heaven, Sun, Storm, Sea, even
+Rain are personified, deified, and consistently act their several
+appropriate and most dramatic parts in the great cataclysm, while Nature
+herself, as the Great Mother of beings and fosterer of life, is
+represented, in the person of Ishtar, lamenting the slaughter of men
+(see p. 327). Apart from this fundamental difference in spirit, the
+identity in all the essential points of fact is amazing, and variations
+occur only in lesser details. The most characteristic one is that, while
+the Chaldean version describes the building and furnishing of a _ship_,
+with all the accuracy of much seafaring knowledge, and does not forget
+even to name the pilot, the Hebrew writer, with the clumsiness and
+ignorance of nautical matters natural to an inland people unfamiliar
+with the sea or the appearance of ships, speaks only of an _ark_ or
+_chest_. The greatest discrepancy is in the duration of the flood, which
+is much shorter in the Chaldean text than in the Hebrew. On the seventh
+day already, Hâsisadra sends out the dove (see p. 316). But then in the
+Biblical narrative itself, made up, as was remarked above, of two
+parallel texts joined together, this same point is given differently in
+different places. According to Genesis, vii. 12, "the rain was upon the
+earth forty days and forty nights," while verse 24 of the same chapter
+tells us that "the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty
+days." Again, the number of the saved is far larger in the Chaldean
+account: Hâsisadra takes with him into the ship all his men-servants,
+his women-servants, and even his "nearest friends," while Noah is
+allowed to save only his own immediate family, "his sons, and his wife,
+and his sons' wives" (Genesis, vi. 18). Then, the incident of the birds
+is differently told: Hâsisadra sends out three birds, the dove, the
+swallow, and the raven; Noah only two--first the raven, then three times
+in succession the dove. But it is startling to find both narratives more
+than once using the same words. Thus the Hebrew writer tells how Noah
+"sent forth a raven, which went to and fro," and how "the dove found no
+rest for the sole of her foot and returned." Hâsisadra relates: "I took
+out a dove and sent it forth. The dove went forth, to and fro, but found
+no resting-place and returned." And further, when Hâsisadra describes
+the sacrifice he offered on the top of Mount Nizir, after he came forth
+from the ship, he says: "The gods smelled a savor; the gods smelled a
+sweet savor." "And the Lord smelled a sweet savor," says Genesis,--viii.
+21--of Noah's burnt-offering. These few hints must suffice to show how
+instructive and entertaining is a parallel study of the two narratives;
+it can be best done by attentively reading both alternately, and
+comparing them together, paragraph by paragraph.
+
+17. The legend of the Tower of Languages (see above, p. 293, and
+Genesis, xi. 3-9), is the last in the series of parallel Chaldean and
+Hebrew traditions. In the Bible it is immediately followed by the
+detailed genealogy of the Hebrews from Shem to Abraham. Therewith
+evidently ends the connection between the two people, who are severed
+for all time from the moment that Abraham goes forth with his tribe from
+Ur of the Chaldees, probably in the reign of Amarpal (father of
+Hammurabi), whom the Bible calls Amraphel, king of Shineâr. The reign of
+Hammurabi was, as we have already seen (see p. 219), a prosperous and
+brilliant one. He was originally king of Tintir (the oldest name of
+Babylon), and when he united all the cities and local rulers of Chaldea
+under his supremacy, he assorted the pre-eminence among them for his own
+city, which he began to call by its new name, KA-DIMIRRA (Accadian for
+"Gate of God," which was translated into the Semitic BAB-IL). This king
+in every respect opens a new chapter in the history of Chaldea.
+Moreover, a great movement was taking place in all the region between
+the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf; nations were forming and
+growing, and Chaldea's most formidable rival and future conqueror,
+Assyria, was gradually gathering strength in the north, a fierce young
+lion-cub. By this newcomer among nations our attention will henceforth
+mainly be claimed. Let us, therefore, pause on the high place to which
+we have now arrived, and, casting a glance backward, take a rapid survey
+of the ground we have covered.
+
+18. Looking with strained eyes into a past dim and gray with the
+scarce-lifting mists of unnumbered ages, we behold our starting-point,
+the low land by the Gulf, Shumir, taking shape and color under the rule
+of Turanian settlers, the oldest known nation in the world. They drain
+and till the land, they make bricks and build cities, and prosper
+materially. But the spirit in them is dark and lives in cowering terror
+of self-created demons and evil things, which they yet believe they can
+control and compel. So their religion is one, not of worship and
+thanksgiving, but of dire conjuring and incantation, inconceivable
+superstition and witchcraft, an unutterable dreariness hardly lightened
+by the glimmering of a nobler faith, in the conception of the wise and
+beneficent Êa and his ever benevolently busy son, Meridug. But gradually
+there comes a change. Shumir lifts its gaze upward, and as it takes in
+more the beauty and the goodness of the world--in Sun and Moon and
+Stars, in the wholesome Waters and the purifying serviceable Fire, the
+good and divine Powers--the Gods multiply and the host of elementary
+spirits, mostly evil, becomes secondary. This change is greatly helped
+by the arrival of the meditative, star-gazing strangers, who take hold
+of the nature-worship and the nature-myths they find among the people to
+which they have come--a higher and more advanced race--and weave these,
+with their own star-worship and astrological lore, into a new faith, a
+religious system most ingeniously combined, elaborately harmonized, and
+full of profoundest meaning. The new religion is preached not only in
+words, but in brick and stone: temples arise all over the land, erected
+by the _patesis_--the priest-kings of the different cities--and
+libraries in which the priestly colleges reverently treasure both their
+own works and the older religious lore of the country. The ancient
+Turanian names of the gods are gradually translated into the new
+Cushito-Semitic language; yet the prayers and hymns, as well as the
+incantations, are still preserved in the original tongue, for the people
+of Turanian Shumir are the more numerous, and must be ruled and
+conciliated, not alienated. The more northern region, Accad, is, indeed,
+more thinly peopled; there the tribes of Semites, who now arrive in
+frequent instalments, spread rapidly and unhindered. The cities of Accad
+with their temples soon rival those of Shumir and strive to eclipse
+them, and their _patesis_ labor to predominate politically over those of
+the South. And it is with the North that the victory at first remains;
+its pre-eminence is asserted in the time of Sharrukin of Agadê, about
+3800 B.C., but is resumed by the South some thousand years later, when a
+powerful dynasty (that to which belong Ur-êa and his son Dungi)
+establishes itself in Ur, while Tintir, the future head and centre of
+the united land of Chaldea, the great Babylon, if existing at all, is
+not yet heard of. It is these kings of Ur who first take the
+significant title "kings of Shumir and Accad." Meanwhile new and higher
+moral influences have been at work; the Semitic immigration has
+quickened the half mythical, half astronomical religion with a more
+spiritual element--of fervent adoration, of prayerful trust, of
+passionate contrition and self-humiliation in the bitter consciousness
+of sin, hitherto foreign to it, and has produced a new and beautiful
+religious literature, which marks its third and last stage. To this
+stage belong the often mentioned "Penitential Psalms," Semitic, nay,
+rather Hebrew in spirit, although still written in the old Turanian
+language (but in the northern dialect of Accad, a fact that in itself
+bears witness to their comparative lateness and the locality in which
+they sprang up), and too strikingly identical with similar songs of the
+golden age of Hebrew poetry in substance and form, not to have been the
+models from which the latter, by a sort of unconscious heredity, drew
+its inspirations. Then comes the great Elamitic invasion, with its
+plundering of cities, desecration of temples and sanctuaries, followed
+probably by several more through a period of at least three hundred
+years. The last, that of Khudur Lagamar, since it brings prominently
+forward the founder of the Hebrew nation, deserves to be particularly
+mentioned by that nation's historians, and, inasmuch as it coincides
+with the reign of Amarpal, king of Tintir and father of Hammurabi,
+serves to establish an important landmark in the history both of the
+Jews and of Chaldea. When we reach this comparatively recent date the
+mists have in great part rolled aside, and as we turn from the ages we
+have just surveyed to those that still lie before us, history guides us
+with a bolder step and shows us the landscape in a twilight which,
+though still dim and sometimes misleading, is yet that of breaking day,
+not of descending night.
+
+19. When we attempt to realize the prodigious vastness and remoteness of
+the horizon thus opened before us, a feeling akin to awe overcomes us.
+Until within a very few years, Egypt gloried in the undisputed boast of
+being the oldest country in the world, i.e., of reaching back, by its
+annals and monuments, to an earlier date than any other. But the
+discoveries that are continually being made in the valley of the two
+great rivers have forever silenced that boast. Chaldea points to a
+monumentally recorded date nearly 4000 B.C. This is more than Egypt can
+do. Her oldest authentic monuments,--her great Pyramids, are
+considerably later. Mr. F. Hommel, one of the leaders of Assyriology,
+forcibly expresses this feeling of wonder in a recent publication:[BK]
+"If," he says, "the Semites were already settled in Northern Babylonia
+(Accad) in the beginning of the fourth thousand B.C., in possession of
+the fully developed Shumiro-Accadian culture adopted by them,--a
+culture, moreover, which appears to have sprouted in Accad as a cutting
+from Shumir--then the latter must naturally be far, far older still,
+and have existed in its completed form IN THE FIFTH THOUSAND B.C.--an
+age to which I now unhesitatingly ascribe the South-Babylonian
+incantations." This would give our mental vision a sweep of full six
+thousand years, a pretty respectable figure! But when we remember that
+these first known settlers of Shumir came from somewhere else, and that
+they brought with them more than the rudiments of civilization, we are
+at once thrown back at least a couple of thousands of years more. For it
+must have taken all of that and more for men to pass from a life spent
+in caves and hunting the wild beasts to a stage of culture comprising
+the invention of a complete system of writing, the knowledge and working
+of metals, even to the mixing of copper and tin into bronze, and an
+expertness in agriculture equal not only to tilling, but to draining
+land. If we further pursue humanity--losing at last all count of time in
+years or even centuries--back to its original separation, to its first
+appearance on the earth,--if we go further still and try to think of the
+ages upon ages during which man existed not at all, yet the earth did,
+and was beautiful to look upon--(_had_ there been any to look on it),
+and good for the creatures who had it all to themselves--a dizziness
+comes over our senses, before the infinity of time, and we draw back,
+faint and awed, as we do when astronomy launches us, on a slender thread
+of figures, into the infinity of space. The six ages of a thousand years
+each which are all that our mind can firmly grasp then come to seem to
+us a very poor and puny fraction of eternity, to which we are tempted
+to apply almost scornfully the words spoken by the poet of as many
+years: "Six ages! six little ages! six drops of time!"[BL]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[BJ] Maspero, "Histoire Ancienne," p. 173.
+
+[BK] Ztschr. für Keilschriftforschung, "Zur altbabylonischen
+Chronologie," Heft I.
+
+[BL] Matthew Arnold, in "Mycerinus":
+
+        "Six years! six little years! six drops of time!"
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Professor Louis Dyer has devoted some time to preparing a free metrical
+translation of "Ishtar's Descent." Unfortunately, owing to his many
+occupations, only the first part of the poem is as yet finished. This he
+most kindly has placed at our disposal, authorizing us to present it to
+our readers.
+
+ISHTAR IN URUGAL.
+
+    Along the gloomy avenue of death
+    To seek the dread abysm of Urugal,
+    In everlasting Dark whence none returns,
+    Ishtar, the Moon-god's daughter, made resolve,
+    And that way, sick with sorrow, turned her face.
+      A road leads downward, but no road leads back
+    From Darkness' realm. There is Irkalla queen,
+    Named also Ninkigal, mother of pains.
+    Her portals close forever on her guests
+    And exit there is none, but all who enter,
+    To daylight strangers, and of joy unknown,
+    Within her sunless gates restrained must stay.
+    And there the only food vouchsafed is dust,
+    For slime they live on, who on earth have died.
+    Day's golden beam greets none and darkness reigns
+    Where hurtling bat-like forms of feathered men
+    Or human-fashioned birds imprisoned flit.
+    Close and with dust o'erstrewn, the dungeon doors
+    Are held by bolts with gathering mould o'ersealed.
+      By love distracted, though the queen of love,
+    Pale Ishtar downward flashed toward death's domain,
+    And swift approached these gates of Urugal,
+    Then paused impatient at its portals grim;
+    For love, whose strength no earthly bars restrain,
+    Gives not the key to open Darkness' Doors.
+    By service from all living men made proud,
+    Ishtar brooked not resistance from the dead.
+    She called the jailer, then to anger changed
+    The love that sped her on her breathless way,
+    And from her parted lips incontinent
+    Swept speech that made the unyielding warder quail.
+      "Quick, turnkey of the pit! swing wide these doors,
+    And fling them swiftly open. Tarry not!
+    For I will pass, even I will enter in.
+    Dare no denial, thou, bar not my way,
+    Else will I burst thy bolts and rend thy gates,
+    This lintel shatter else and wreck these doors.
+    The pent-up dead I else will loose, and lead
+    Back the departed to the lands they left,
+    Else bid the famished dwellers in the pit
+    Rise up to live and eat their fill once more.
+    Dead myriads then shall burden groaning earth,
+    Sore tasked without them by her living throngs."
+      Love's mistress, mastered by strong hate,
+    The warder heard, and wondered first, then feared
+    The angered goddess Ishtar what she spake,
+    Then answering said to Ishtar's wrathful might:
+    "O princess, stay thy hand; rend not the door,
+    But tarry here, while unto Ninkigal
+    I go, and tell thy glorious name to her."
+
+
+ISHTAR'S LAMENT.
+
+    "All love from earthly life with me departed,
+      With me to tarry in the gates of death;
+    In heaven's sun no warmth is longer hearted,
+      And chilled shall cheerless men now draw slow breath.
+
+    "I left in sadness life which I had given,
+      I turned from gladness and I walked with woe,
+    Toward living death by grief untimely driven,
+      I search for Thammuz whom harsh fate laid low
+
+    "The darkling pathway o'er the restless waters
+      Of seven seas that circle Death's domain
+    I trod, and followed after earth's sad daughters
+      Torn from their loved ones and ne'er seen again.
+
+    "Here must I enter in, here make my dwelling
+      With Thammuz in the mansion of the dead,
+    Driven to Famine's house by love compelling
+      And hunger for the sight of that dear head.
+
+    "O'er husbands will I weep, whom death has taken,
+      Whom fate in manhood's strength from life has swept,
+    Leaving on earth their living wives forsaken,--
+      O'er them with groans shall bitter tears be wept.
+
+    "And I will weep o'er wives, whose short day ended
+      Ere in glad offspring joyed their husbands' eyes;
+    Snatched from loved arms they left their lords untended,--
+      O'er them shall tearful lamentations rise.
+
+    "And I will weep o'er babes who left no brothers,
+      Young lives to the ills of age by hope opposed,
+    The sons of saddened sires and tearful mothers,
+      One moment's life by death eternal closed."
+
+
+NINKIGAL'S COMMAND TO THE WARDER.
+
+    "Leave thou this presence, slave, open the gate;
+    Since power is hers to force an entrance here,
+    Let her come in as come from life the dead,
+    Submissive to the laws of Death's domain.
+    Do unto her what unto all thou doest."
+
+Want of space bids us limit ourselves to these few fragments--surely
+sufficient to make our readers wish that Professor Dyer might spare some
+time to the completion of his task.
+
+
+
+
+                              INDEX.
+
+
+                   A.
+
+    Abel, killed by Cain, 129.
+
+    Abraham, wealthy and powerful chief, 200;
+      goes forth from Ur, 201;
+      his victory over Khudur-Lagamar, 222-224.
+
+    Abu-Habba, see Sippar.
+
+    Abu-Shahrein, see Eridhu.
+
+    Accad, Northern or Upper Chaldea, 145;
+      meaning of the word, ib.;
+      headquarters of Semitism, 204-205.
+
+    Accads, see Shumiro-Accads.
+
+    Accadian language, see Shumiro-Accadian.
+
+    Agadê, capital of Accad, 205.
+
+    Agglutinative languages, meaning of the word, 136-137;
+      characteristic of Turanian nations, ib.;
+      spoken by the people of Shumir and Accad, 144.
+
+    Agricultural life, third stage of culture, first beginning of real
+          civilization, 122.
+
+    Akki, the water-carrier, see Sharrukin of Agadê.
+
+    Alexander of Macedon conquers Babylon, 4;
+      his soldiers destroy the dams of the Euphrates, 5.
+
+    Allah, Arabic for "God," see Ilu.
+
+    Allat, queen of the Dead, 327-329.
+
+    Altaï, the great Siberian mountain chain, 146;
+      probable cradle of the Turanian race, 147.
+
+    Altaïc, another name for the Turanian or Yellow Race, 147.
+
+    Amarpal, also Sin-Muballit, king of Babylon, perhaps Amraphel, King of
+          Shinar, 226.
+
+    Amorite, the, a tribe of Canaan, 133.
+
+    Amraphel, see Amarpal.
+
+    Ana, or Zi-ana--"Heaven," or "Spirit of Heaven," p. 154.
+
+    Anatu, goddess, mother of Ishtar, smites Êabâni with death and Izdubar
+          with leprosy, 310.
+
+    Anthropomorphism, meaning of the word, 355;
+      definition and causes of, 355-357.
+
+    Anu, first god of the first Babylonian Triad, same as Ana, 240;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Anunnaki, minor spirits of earth, 154, 250.
+
+    Anunit (the Moon), wife of Shamash, 245.
+
+    Apsu (the Abyss), 264.
+
+    Arali, or Arallu, the Land of the Dead, 157;
+      its connection with the Sacred Mountain, 276.
+
+    Arallu, see Arali.
+
+    Aram, a son of Shem, eponymous ancestor of the Aramæans in Gen.
+          x., 131.
+
+    Arabs, their conquest and prosperous rule in Mesopotamia, 5;
+      Baghdad, their capital, 5;
+      nomads in Mesopotamia, 8;
+      their superstitious horror of the ruins and sculptures, 11;
+      they take the gigantic head for Nimrod, 22-24;
+      their strange ideas about the colossal winged bulls and lions and
+            their destination, 24-25;
+      their habit of plundering ancient tombs at Warka, 86;
+      their conquests and high culture in Asia and Africa, 118.
+
+    Arbela, city of Assyria, built in hilly region, 50.
+
+    Architecture, Chaldean, created by local conditions, 37-39;
+      Assyrian, borrowed from Chaldea, 50.
+
+    Areph-Kasdîm, see Arphaxad, meaning of the word, 200.
+
+    Arphaxad, eldest son of Shem, 200.
+
+    Arphakshad, see Arphaxad.
+
+    Asshur, a son of Shem, eponymous ancestor of the Assyrians in Genesis
+          x., 131.
+
+    Asshurbanipal, King of Assyria, his Library, 100-112;
+      conquers Elam, destroys Shushan, and restores the statue of the
+            goddess Nana to Erech, 194-195.
+
+    Asshur-nazir-pal, King of Assyria, size of hall in his palace at Calah
+          (Nimrud), 63.
+
+    Assyria, the same as Upper Mesopotamia, 7;
+      rise of, 228.
+
+    Astrology, meaning of the word, 106;
+      a corruption of astronomy, 234;
+      the special study of priests, ib.
+
+    Astronomy, the ancient Chaldeans' proficiency in, 230;
+      fascination of, 231;
+      conducive to religious speculation, 232;
+      degenerates into astrology, 234;
+      the god Nebo, the patron of, 242.
+
+
+                   B.
+
+    Babbar, see Ud.
+
+    Babel, same as Babylon, 237.
+
+    Bab-el-Mandeb, Straits of, 189.
+
+    Bab-ilu, Semitic name of Babylon; meaning of the name, 225, 249.
+
+    Babylonia, a part of Lower Mesopotamia, 7;
+      excessive flatness of, 9;
+      later name for "Shumir and Accad" and for "Chaldea," 237.
+
+    Baghdad, capital of the Arabs' empire in Mesopotamia, 5;
+      its decay, 6.
+
+    Bassorah, see Busrah.
+
+    Bedouins, robber tribes of, 8;
+      distinctively a nomadic people, 116-118.
+
+    Bel, third god of the first Babylonian Triad, 239;
+      meaning of the name, 240;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246;
+      his battle with Tiamat, 288-290.
+
+    Belit, the wife of Bel, the feminine principle of nature, 244-245;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Bel-Maruduk, see Marduk.
+
+    Berosus, Babylonian priest; his History of Chaldea, 128;
+      his version of the legend of Oannes, 184-185;
+      his account of the Chaldean Cosmogony, 260-261, 267;
+      his account of the great tower and the confusion of tongues, 292-293;
+      his account of the Deluge, 299-301.
+
+    Birs-Nimrud or Birs-i-Nimrud, see Borsippa.
+
+    Books, not always of paper, 93;
+      stones and bricks used as books, 97;
+      walls and rocks, ib., 97-99.
+
+    Borsippa (Mound of Birs-Nimrud), its peculiar shape, 47;
+      Nebuchadnezzar's inscription found at, 72;
+      identified with the Tower of Babel, 293.
+
+    Botta begins excavations at Koyunjik, 14;
+      his disappointment, 15;
+      his great discovery at Khorsabad, 15-16.
+
+    Bricks, how men came to make, 39;
+      sun-dried or raw, and kiln-dried or baked, 40;
+      ancient bricks from the ruins used for modern constructions; trade
+            with ancient bricks at Hillah, 42.
+
+    British Museum, Rich's collection presented to, 14.
+
+    Busrah, or Bassorah, bulls and lions shipped to, down the Tigris, 52.
+
+    Byblos, ancient writing material, 94.
+
+
+                   C.
+
+    Ca-Dimirra (or Ka-Dimirra), second name of Babylon; meaning of the
+          name, 216, 249.
+
+    Cain, his crime, banishment, and posterity, 129.
+
+    Calah, or Kalah, one of the Assyrian capitals, the Larissa of
+          Xenophon, 3.
+
+    Calendar, Chaldean, 230, 318-321, 325.
+
+    Canaan, son of Ham, eponymous ancestor of many nations, 134.
+
+    Canaanites, migrations of, 190.
+
+    Cement, various qualities of, 44.
+
+    Chaldea, the same as Lower Mesopotamia, 7;
+      alluvial formation of, 37-38;
+      its extraordinary abundance in cemeteries, 78;
+      a nursery of nations, 198;
+      more often called by the ancients "Babylonia," 237.
+
+    Chaldeans, in the sense of "wise men of the East," astrologer,
+          magician, soothsayer,--a separate class of the priesthood,
+          254-255.
+
+    Charm against evil spells, 162.
+
+    Cherub, Cherubim, see Kirûbu.
+
+    China, possibly mentioned in Isaiah, 136, note.
+
+    Chinese speak a monosyllabic language, 137;
+      their genius and its limitations, 138, 139;
+      oldest national religion of, 180, 181;
+      their "docenal" and "sexagesimal" system of counting, 230-231.
+
+    Chronology, vagueness of ancient, 193-194;
+      extravagant figures of, 196-197;
+      difficulty of establishing, 211-212.
+
+    Chthon, meaning of the word, 272.
+
+    Chthonic Powers, 272, 273.
+
+    Chthonic Myths, see Myths.
+
+    Cissians, see Kasshi.
+
+    Cities, building of, fourth stage of culture, 123, 124.
+
+    Classical Antiquity, meaning of the term; too exclusive study of, 12.
+
+    Coffins, ancient Chaldean, found at Warka: "jar-coffins," 82;
+      "dish-cover" coffins, 84;
+      "slipper-shaped" coffin (comparatively modern), 84-86.
+
+    Conjuring, against demons and sorcerers, 158-159;
+      admitted into the later reformed religion, 236.
+
+    Conjurors, admitted into the Babylonian priesthood, 250.
+
+    Cossæans, see Kasshi.
+
+    Cosmogonic Myths, see Myths.
+
+    Cosmogony, meaning of the word, 259;
+      Chaldean, imparted by Berosus, 260-261;
+      original tablets discovered by Geo. Smith, 261-263;
+      their contents, 264 and ff.;
+      Berosus again, 267.
+
+    Cosmos, meaning of the word, 272.
+
+    Cuneiform writing, shape and specimen of, 10;
+      introduced into Chaldea by the Shumiro-Accads, 145.
+
+    Cush, or Kush, eldest son of Ham, 186;
+      probable early migrations of, 188;
+      ancient name of Ethiopia, 189.
+
+    Cushites, colonization of Turanian Chaldea by, 192.
+
+    Cylinders: seal cylinders in hard stones, 113-114;
+      foundation-cylinders, 114;
+      seal-cylinders worn as talismans, 166;
+      Babylonian cylinder, supposed to represent the Temptation and
+            Fall, 266.
+
+
+                   D.
+
+    Damkina, goddess, wife of Êa, mother of Meridug, 160.
+
+    Decoration: of palaces, 58-62;
+      of walls at Warka, 87-88.
+
+    Delitzsch, Friedrich, eminent Assyriologist, favors the Semitic
+          theory, 186.
+
+    Deluge, Berosus' account of, 299-301;
+      cuneiform account, in the 11th tablet of the Izdubar Epic, 314-317.
+
+    Demon of the South-West Wind, 168.
+
+    Diseases conceived as demons, 163.
+
+    Divination, a branch of Chaldean "science," in what it
+            consists, 251-252;
+      collection of texts on, in one hundred tablets, 252-253;
+      specimens of, 253-254.
+
+    Draining of palace mounds, 70;
+      of sepulchral mounds at Warka, 86-87.
+
+    Dumuzi, the husband of the goddess Ishtar, 303;
+      the hero of a solar Myth, 323-326.
+
+    Dur-Sharrukin, (see Khorsabad),
+      built in hilly region, 50.
+
+
+                   E.
+
+    Êa, sometimes Zi-kî-a, the Spirit of the Earth and Waters, 154;
+      protector against evil spirits and men, 160;
+      his chief sanctuary at Eridhu, 215;
+      second god of the first Babylonian Triad, 239;
+      his attributions, 240;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Êabâni, the seer, 304;
+      invited by Izdubar, 304-305;
+      becomes Izdubar's friend, 307;
+      vanquishes with him the Elamite tyrant Khumbaba, 308;
+      smitten by Ishtar and Anatu, 310;
+      restored to life by the gods, 314.
+
+    Ê-Babbara, "House of the Sun," 215, 248.
+
+    Eber, see Heber.
+
+    El, see Ilu.
+
+    Elam, kingdom of, conquered by Asshurbanipal, 194;
+      meaning of the name, 220.
+
+    Elamite conquest of Chaldea, 219-221, 224-225.
+
+    Elohim, one of the Hebrew names for God, a plural of El, 354.
+      See Ilu.
+
+    Emanations, theory of divine, 238-239;
+      meaning of the word, 239.
+
+    Enoch, son of Cain, 129.
+
+    Enoch, the first city, built by Cain, 129.
+
+    Epic Poems, or Epics, 298-299.
+
+    Epic-Chaldæan, oldest known in the world, 299;
+      its division into tablets, 302.
+
+    Eponym, meaning of the word, 133.
+
+    Eponymous genealogies in Genesis X., 132-134.
+
+    Epos, national, meaning of the word, 299.
+
+    Erech (now Mound of Warka), oldest name Urukh, immense burying-grounds
+            around, 80-82;
+      plundered by Khudur-Nankhundi, king of Elam, 195;
+      library of, 209.
+
+    Eri-Aku (Ariokh of Ellassar), Elamite king of Larsam, 226.
+
+    Eridhu (modern Abu-Shahrein), the most ancient city of Shumir, 215;
+      specially sacred to Êa, 215, 246, 287.
+
+    Ethiopians, see Cush.
+
+    Excavations, how carried on, 30-34.
+
+
+                   F.
+
+    Fergusson, Jas., English explorer and writer on art subjects, 56.
+
+    Finns, a nation of Turanian stock, 138.
+
+    Flood, or Deluge, possibly not universal, 128-129.
+
+
+                   G.
+
+    Gan-Dunyash, or Kar-Dunyash, most ancient name of Babylonia
+          proper, 225, 286.
+
+    Genesis, first book of the Pentateuch, 127-129;
+      Chapter X. of, 130-142;
+      meaning of the word, 353.
+
+    Gibil, Fire, 173;
+      hymn to, 16;
+      his friendliness, 174;
+      invoked to prosper the fabrication of bronze, 16.
+
+    Gisdhubar, see Izdubar.
+
+    Gudêa, _patesi_ of Sir-burla, 214.
+
+
+                   H.
+
+    Ham, second son of Noah, 130;
+      meaning of the name, 186.
+
+    Hammurabi, king of Babylon and all Chaldea, 226;
+      his long and glorious reign, ib.;
+      his public works and the "Royal Canal," 227.
+
+    Harimtu ("Persuasion"), one of the handmaidens of Ishtar, 305.
+
+    Hâsisadra, same as Xisuthros, 303;
+      gives Izdubar an account of the great Flood, 314-317.
+
+    Heber, a descendant of Shem, eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews in
+          Genesis X., 131, 222.
+
+    Heroes, 296-298.
+
+    Heroic Ages, 299.
+
+    Heroic Myths, see Myths.
+
+    Hillah, built of bricks from the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, carries on
+          trade with ancient bricks, 42.
+
+    Himâlaya Mountains, 188.
+
+    Hindu-Cush (or Kush) Mountains, 188.
+
+    Hit, ancient Is, on the Euphrates, springs of bitumen at, 44.
+
+    Hivite, the, a tribe of Canaan, 133.
+
+    Hungarians, a nation of Turanian stock, 138.
+
+
+                   I.
+
+    Idpa, the Demon of Fever, 156.
+
+    Igigi, three hundred, spirits of heaven, 250.
+
+    Ilu, or El, Semitic name for "god," 232.
+
+    Im, or Mermer, "Wind," 154.
+
+    India, 188.
+
+    Indus, the great river of India, 188.
+
+    Intercalary months, introduced by the Chaldeans to correct the
+          reckoning of their year, 230.
+
+    Is, see Hit.
+
+    Ishtar, the goddess of the planet Venus, 242;
+      the Warrior-Queen and Queen of Love, 245;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246;
+      offers her love to Izdubar, 308;
+      is rejected and sends a monstrous bull against him, 309;
+      causes Êabâni's death and Izdubar's illness, 310;
+      descent of, into the land of shades, 326-330.
+
+    Izdubar, the hero of the great Chaldean Epic, 303;
+      his dream at Erech, 304;
+      invites Êabâni, 304-305;
+      vanquishes with his help Khumbaba, the Elamite tyrant of Erech, 308;
+      offends Ishtar, 308;
+      vanquishes the divine Bull, with Êabâni's help, 309;
+      is smitten with leprosy, 310;
+      travels to "the mouth of the great rivers" to consult his immortal
+            ancestor Hâsisadra, 310-313;
+      is purified and healed, 313;
+      returns to Erech; his lament over Êabâni's death, 313-314;
+      solar character of the Epic, 318-322.
+
+
+                   J.
+
+    Jabal and Jubal, sons of Lamech, descendants of Cain, 129.
+
+    Japhet, third son of Noah, 130.
+
+    Javan, a son of Japhet, eponymous ancestor of the Ionian Greeks, 134.
+
+    "Jonah's Mound," see Nebbi-Yunus.
+
+    Jubal, see Jabal and Jubal.
+
+
+                   K.
+
+    Ka-Dingirra, see Ca-Dimirra.
+
+    Kar-Dunyash, see Gan-Dunyash.
+
+    Kasbu, the Chaldean double hour, 230.
+
+    Kasr, Mound of, ruins of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, 42.
+
+    Kasshi (Cossæans or Cissians), conquer Chaldea, 228.
+
+    Kerbela and Nedjif, goal of pilgrim-caravans from Persia, 78.
+
+    Kerubim, see Kirûbu.
+
+    Khorsabad, Mound of, Botta's excavations and brilliant discovery
+          at, 15-16.
+
+    Khudur-Lagamar (Chedorlaomer), king of Elam and Chaldea, his
+            conquests, 221;
+      plunders Sodom and Gomorrah with his allies, 222;
+      is overtaken by Abraham and routed, 223;
+      his probable date, 224.
+
+    Khudur-Nankhundi, king of Elam, invades Chaldea and carries the statue
+          of the goddess Nana away from Erech, 195.
+
+    Khumbaba, the Elamite tyrant of Erech vanquished by Izdubar and
+          Êabâni, 308.
+
+    Kirûbu, name of the Winged Bulls, 164.
+
+    Koyunjik, Mound of Xenophon's Mespila, 14;
+      Botta's unsuccessful exploration of, 15;
+      valuable find of small articles in a chamber at, in the palace of
+            Sennacherib, 34.
+
+    Kurds, nomadic tribes of, 8.
+
+
+                   L.
+
+    Lamech, fifth descendant of Cain, 129.
+
+    Larissa, ruins of ancient Calah, seen by Xenophon, 3.
+
+    Larsam (now Senkereh), city of Shumir, 215.
+
+    Layard meets Botta at Mossul in 1842, 17;
+      undertakes the exploration of Nimrud, 17-18;
+      his work and life in the East, 19-32;
+      discovers the Royal Library at Nineveh (Koyunjik), 100.
+
+    Lebanon Mountains, 190.
+
+    Lenormant, François, eminent French Orientalist; his work on the
+            religion of the Shumiro-Accads, 152-3;
+      favors the Cushite theory, 186.
+
+    Library of Asshurbanipal in his palace at Nineveh (Koyunjik);
+            discovered by Layard, 100;
+      re-opened by George Smith, 103;
+      contents and importance of, for modern scholarship, 106-109;
+      of Erech, 209.
+
+    Loftus, English explorer; his visit to Warka in 1854-5, 80-82;
+      procures slipper-shaped coffins for the British Museum, 36.
+
+    Louvre, Assyrian Collection at the, 17;
+      "Sarzec collection" added, 89.
+
+    Louvre, Armenian contrivance for lighting houses, 68.
+
+
+                   M.
+
+    Madai, a son of Japhet, eponymous ancestor of the Medes, 135.
+
+    Magician, derivation of the word, 255.
+
+    Marad, ancient city of Chaldea, 303.
+
+    Marduk, or Maruduk (Hebrew Merodach), god of the planet Jupiter, 241;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246;
+      special patron of Babylon, 249.
+
+    Maskim, the seven, evil spirits, 154;
+      incantation against the, 155;
+      the same, poetical version, 182.
+
+    Maspero, G., eminent French Orientalist, 197.
+
+    Medes, Xenophon's erroneous account of, 3-4;
+      mentioned under the name of Madai in Genesis X., 135.
+
+    Media, divided from Assyria by the Zagros chain, 50.
+
+    Ménant, Joachim, French Assyriologist; his little book on the Royal
+          Library at Nineveh, 105.
+
+    Meridug, son of Êa, the Mediator, 160;
+      his dialogues with Êa, 161-162.
+
+    Mermer, see Im.
+
+    Merodach, see Marduk.
+
+    Mesopotamia, meaning of the name, 5;
+      peculiar formation of, 6;
+      division of, into Upper and Lower, 7.
+
+    Mespila, ruins of Nineveh; seen by Xenophon, 3;
+      now Mound of Koyunjik, 14.
+
+    Migrations of tribes, nations, races; probable first causes of
+            prehistoric migrations, 119;
+      caused by invasions and conquests, 125;
+      of the Turanian races, 146-147;
+      of the Cushites, 188;
+      of the Canaanites, 190.
+
+    Mizraim ("the Egyptians"), a son of Ham, eponymous ancestor of the
+            Egyptians, 133;
+      opposed to Cush, 189.
+
+    Monosyllabic languages--Chinese, 136-137.
+
+    Monotheism, meaning of the word, 238;
+      as conceived by the Hebrews, 344-345.
+
+    Mosul, the residence of a Turkish Pasha; origin of the name, 6;
+      the wicked Pasha of, 20-23.
+
+    Mound-Builders, their tombs, 335-338.
+
+    Mounds, their appearance, 9-10;
+      their contents, 11;
+      formation of, 72;
+      their usefulness in protecting the ruins and works of art, 74;
+      sepulchral mounds at Warka, 79-87.
+
+    Mugheir, see Ur.
+
+    Mul-ge, "Lord of the Abyss," 154.
+
+    Mummu-Tiamat (the "Billowy Sea"), 264;
+      her hostility to the gods, 288;
+      her fight with Bel, 288-290.
+
+    Mythology, definition of, 331;
+      distinction from Religion, 331-334.
+
+    Myths, meaning of the word, 294;
+      Cosmogonic, 294;
+      Heroic, 297-298;
+      Solar, 322, 339-340;
+      Chthonic, 330, 340-341.
+
+
+                   N.
+
+    Nabonidus, last king of Babylon, discovers Naram-sin's cylinder, 213;
+      discovers Hammurabi's cylinder at Larsam, 218-219.
+
+    Namtar, the Demon of Pestilence, 156, 157;
+      incantation against, 167;
+      Minister of Allat, Queen of the Dead, 328, 329.
+
+    Nana, Chaldean goddess, her statue restored by Asshurbanipal,
+            195, 343-344;
+      wife of Anu, 245.
+
+    Nannar, see Uru-Ki.
+
+    Naram-Sin, son of Sargon I. of Agadê;
+      his cylinder discovered by Nabonidus, 213.
+
+    Nations, gradual formation of, 125-126.
+
+    Nebbi-Yunus, Mound of, its sacredness, 11;
+      its size, 49.
+
+    Nebo, or Nabu, the god of the planet Mercury, 242;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon;
+      his palace, now Mound of Kasr, 42;
+      his inscription of Borsippa, 72.
+
+    Nedjif, see Kerbela.
+
+    Nergal, the god of the planet Mars, and of War, 242;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Niffer, see Nippur.
+
+    Nimrod, dams on the Euphrates attributed to, by the Arabs, 5;
+      his name preserved, and many ruins called by it, 11;
+      gigantic head declared by the Arabs to be the head of, 22-24.
+
+    Nimrud, Mound of, Layard undertakes the exploration of, 17.
+
+    Nin-dar, the nightly sun, 175.
+
+    Nineveh, greatness and utter destruction of, 1;
+      ruins of, seen by Xenophon, called by him Mespila, 3;
+      site of, opposite Mossul, 11.
+
+    Nin-ge, see Nin-kî-gal.
+
+    Ninîb, or Ninêb, the god of the planet Saturn, 241;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Nin-kî-gal, or Nin-ge, "the Lady of the Abyss," 157.
+
+    Nippur (now Niffer), city of Accad, 216.
+
+    Nizir, Mount, the mountain on which Hâsisadra's ship stood still, 301;
+      land and Mount, 316
+
+    Noah and his three sons, 130.
+
+    Nod, land of ("Land of Exile," or "of Wanderings"), 129.
+
+    Nomads, meaning of the word, and causes of nomadic life in modern
+          times, 118.
+
+
+                   O.
+
+    Oannes, legend of, told by Berosus, 185.
+
+    Oasis, meaning of the word, 118.
+
+
+                   P.
+
+    Palaces, their imposing aspect, 54;
+      palace of Sennacherib restored by Fergusson, 56;
+      ornamentation of palaces, 58;
+      winged Bulls and Lions at gateways of, 58;
+      sculptured slabs along the walls of, 58-60;
+      painted tiles used for the friezes of, 60-62;
+      proportions of halls, 63;
+      roofing of, 62-66;
+      lighting of, 66-68.
+
+    Papyrus, ancient writing material, 94.
+
+    Paradise, Chaldean legend of, see Sacred Tree and Ziggurat.
+      Meaning of the word, 277.
+
+    Parallel between the Book of Genesis and the Chaldean legends, 350-360.
+
+    Pastoral life, second stage of culture, 120;
+      necessarily nomadic, 121.
+
+    Patesis, meaning of the word, 203;
+      first form of royalty in Chaldean cities, ib., 235.
+
+    Patriarchal authority, first form of government, 123;
+      the tribe, or enlarged family, first form of the State, 123.
+
+    Penitential Psalms, Chaldean, 177-179.
+
+    Persian Gulf, flatness and marshiness of the region around, 7;
+      reached further inland than now, 201.
+
+    Persians, rule in Asia, 2;
+      the war between two royal brothers, 2;
+      Persian monarchy conquered by Alexander, 4;
+      not named in Genesis X., 134.
+
+    Platforms, artificial, 46-49.
+
+    Polytheism, meaning of the word, 237;
+      tendency to, of the Hebrews, combated by their leaders, 345-350.
+
+    Priesthood, Chaldean, causes of its power and influence, 233-234.
+
+
+                   R.
+
+    Races, Nations, and Tribes represented in antiquity under the name of a
+            man, an ancestor, 130-134;
+      black race and yellow race omitted from the list in Genesis X.,
+            134-142;
+      probable reasons for the omission, 135, 140.
+
+    Ramân, third god of the second Babylonian Triad, his attributions,
+            240-241;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Rassam, Hormuzd, explorer, 247, 248.
+
+    Rawlinson, Sir Henry, his work at the British Museum, 152.
+
+    Religion of the Shumiro-Accads the most primitive in the world, 148;
+      characteristics of Turanian religions, 180, 181;
+      definition of, as distinguished from Mythology, 331-334.
+
+    Religiosity, distinctively human characteristic, 148;
+      its awakening and development, 149-152.
+
+    Rich, the first explorer, 13;
+      his disappointment at Mossul, 14.
+
+
+                   S.
+
+    Sabattuv, the Babylonian and Assyrian "Sabbath," 256.
+
+    Sabeism, the worship of the heavenly bodies,
+      a Semitic form of religion, 232;
+      fostered by a pastoral and nomadic life, ib.
+
+    Sabitu, one of the maidens in the magic grove, 311.
+
+    Sacred Tree, sacredness of the Symbol, 268;
+      its conventional appearance on sculptures and cylinders, 268-270;
+      its signification, 272-274;
+      its connection with the legend of Paradise, 274-276.
+
+    Sargon of Agadê, see Sharrukin.
+
+    Sarzec, E. de, French explorer;
+      his great find at Tell-Loh, 88-90;
+      statues found by him, 214.
+
+    Scorpion-men, the Warders of the Sun, 311.
+
+    Schrader, Eberhard, eminent Assyriologist,
+      favors the Semitic theory, 186.
+
+    Semites (more correctly Shemites),
+      one of the three great races given in Genesis X.;
+      named from its eponymous ancestor, Shem, 131.
+
+    Semitic language, 199;
+      culture, the beginning of historical times in Chaldea, 202, 203.
+
+    Sennacherib, king of Assyria, his palace at Koyunjik, 34;
+      Fergusson's restoration of his palace, 56;
+      his "Will" in the library of Nineveh, 109.
+
+    Senkereh, see Larsam.
+
+    Sepharvaim, see Sippar.
+
+    Seth (more correctly Sheth), third son of Adam, 131.
+
+    Shamash, the Sun-god,
+      second god of the Second Babylonian Triad, 240;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246;
+      his temple at Sippar discovered by H. Rassam, 247, 248.
+
+    Shamhatu ("Grace"), one of the handmaidens of Ishtar, 305.
+
+    Sharrukin I. of Agadê (Sargon I.), 205;
+      legend about his birth, 206;
+      his glorious reign, 206;
+      Sharrukin II. of Agadê (Sargon II.), 205;
+      his religious reform and literary labors, 207, 208;
+      probable founder of the library at Erech, 209;
+      date of, lately discovered, 213.
+
+    Shem, eldest son of Noah, 130;
+      meaning of the name, 198.
+
+    Shinar, or Shineâr, geographical position of, 127.
+
+    Shumir, Southern or Lower Chaldea, 145.
+
+    Shumir and Accad, oldest name for Chaldea, 143, 144.
+
+    Shumiro-Accadian, oldest language of Chaldea, 108;
+      Agglutinative, 145.
+
+    Shumiro-Accads, oldest population of Chaldea,
+      of Turanian race, 144;
+      their language agglutinative, 145;
+      introduce into Chaldea cuneiform writing, metallurgy and
+            irrigation, ib.;
+      their probable migration, 146;
+      their theory of the world, 153.
+
+    Shushan (Susa), capital of Elam, destroyed by Asshurbanipal, 194.
+
+    Siddim, battle in the veil of, 221, 222.
+
+    Sidon, a Phoenician city, meaning of the name, 133;
+      the "first-born" son of Canaan, eponymous ancestor of the city in
+            Genesis X., ib.
+
+    Siduri, one of the maidens in the magic grove, 311.
+
+    Sin, the Moon-god, first god of the Second Babylonian Triad, 240;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246;
+      attacked by the seven rebellious spirits, 291.
+
+    Sin-Muballit, see Amarpal.
+
+    Sippar, sister city of Agadê, 205;
+      Temple of Shamash at, excavated by H. Rassam, 247, 248.
+
+    Sir-burla (also Sir-gulla, or Sir-tella, or Zirbab), ancient city of
+          Chaldea, now Mound of Tell-Loh; discoveries at, by Sarzec, 88-90.
+
+    Sir-gulla, see Sir-burla.
+
+    Smith, George, English explorer;
+      his work at the British Museum, 102;
+      his expeditions to Nineveh, 103;
+      his success, and his death, 104;
+      his discovery of the Deluge Tablets, 301.
+
+    Sorcerers believed in, 157.
+
+    Spirits, belief in good and evil, the first beginning of religion, 150;
+      elementary, in the primitive Shumiro-Accadian religion, 153-155;
+      evil, 155-157;
+      allowed an inferior place in the later reformed religion, 236, 250;
+      rebellion of the seven evil, their attack against the Moon-god,
+            290, 291.
+
+    Statues found at Tell-Loh, 88, 214.
+
+    Style, ancient writing instrument, 94, 109.
+
+    Synchronism, meaning of the word, 212.
+
+
+                   T.
+
+    Tablets, in baked or unbaked clay, used as books, 109;
+      their shapes and sizes, 109;
+      mode of writing on, 109-110;
+      baking of, 110;
+      great numbers of, deposited in the British Museum, 110-112;
+      Chaldean tablets in clay cases, 112;
+      tablets found under the foundation stone at Khorsabad, 113, 114;
+      "Shamash tablet," 248.
+
+    Talismans, worn on the person or placed in buildings, 164.
+
+    Tammuz, see Dumuzi.
+
+    Taurus Mountains, 190.
+
+    Tell-Loh (also Tello), see Sir-burla.
+
+    Temples of Êa and Meridug at Eridhu, 246;
+      of the Moon-god at Ur, ib.;
+      of Anu and Nana at Erech, ib.;
+      of Shamash and Anunit at Sippar and Agadê, 247;
+      of Bel Maruduk at Babylon and Borsippa, 249.
+
+    Theocracy, meaning of the word, 235.
+
+    Tiamat, see Mummu-Tiamat.
+
+    Tin-tir-ki, oldest name of Babylon, meaning of the name, 216.
+
+    Triads in Babylonian religion, and meaning of the word, 239-240.
+
+    Tubalcain, son of Lamech, descendant of Cain, the inventor of
+          metallurgy, 129.
+
+    Turanians, collective name for the whole Yellow Race, 136;
+      origin of the name, ib.;
+      the limitations of their genius, 136-139;
+      their imperfect forms of speech, monosyllabic and agglutinative,
+            136, 137;
+      "the oldest of men," 137;
+      everywhere precede the white races, 138;
+      omitted in Genesis X., 135, 139;
+      possibly represent the discarded Cainites or posterity of Cain,
+            140-142;
+      their tradition of a Paradise in the Altaï, 147;
+      characteristics of Turanian religions, 180-181.
+
+    Turks, their misrule in Mesopotamia, 5-6;
+      greed and oppressiveness of their officials, 7-8;
+      one of the principal modern representatives of the Turanian
+            race, 136.
+
+
+                   U.
+
+    Ubaratutu, father of Hâsisadra, 322.
+
+    Ud, or Babbar, the midday Sun, 171;
+      hymns to, 171, 172;
+      temple of, at Sippar, 247-248.
+
+    Uddusunamir, phantom created by Êa, and sent to Allat, to rescue
+          Ishtar, 328, 329.
+
+    Ur (Mound of Mugheir),
+      construction of its platform, 46;
+      earliest known capital of Shumir, maritime and commercial, 200;
+      Terah and Abraham go forth from, 201.
+
+    Ur-êa, king of Ur, 215;
+      his buildings, 216-218;
+      his signet cylinder, 218.
+
+    Urubêl, the ferryman on the Waters of Death, 311;
+      purifies Izdubar and returns with him to Erech, 313.
+
+    Urukh, see Erech.
+
+    Uru-ki, or Nannar, the Shumiro-Accadian Moon-god, 240.
+
+
+                   V.
+
+    Vaults, of drains, 70;
+      sepulchral, at Warka, 83, 85.
+
+
+                   W.
+
+    Warka, see Erech.
+
+
+                   X.
+
+    Xenophon leads the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, 2;
+      passes by the runs of Calah and Nineveh, which he calls Larissa and
+            Mespila, 3.
+
+    Xisuthros, the king of, Berosus' Deluge-narrative, 300.
+      See Hâsisadra.
+
+
+                   Y.
+
+    Yahveh, the correct form of "Jehovah," one of the Hebrew names for
+          God, 354.
+
+
+                   Z.
+
+    Zab, river, tributary of the Tigris, 17.
+
+    Zagros, mountain range of, divides Assyria from Media, 50;
+      stone quarried in, and transported down the Zab, 50, 51.
+
+    Zaidu, the huntsman, sent to Êabâni, 305.
+
+    Zi-ana, see Ana.
+
+    Ziggurats, their peculiar shape and uses, 48;
+      used as observatories attached to temples, 234;
+      meaning of the word, 278;
+      their connection with the legend of Paradise, 278-280;
+      their singular orientation and its causes, 284-286;
+      Ziggurat of Birs-Nimrud (Borsippa), 280-283;
+      identified with the Tower of Babel, 293.
+
+    Zi-kî-a, see Êa.
+
+    Zirlab, see Sir-burla.
+
+    Zodiac, twelve signs of, familiar to the Chaldeans, 230;
+      signs of, established by Anu, 265;
+      represented in the twelve books of the Izdubar Epic, 318-321.
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES
+
+Page vii Introduction Chapter 4: Corrected to start at page 94
+
+Pages ix, 92, 93, 214, 215, Illustrations 44, 59:
+    Sirgulla standardised to Sir-gulla
+
+Page xi: Contents Chapter VIII: Added § marker for section 12
+
+Page xiii: Full-stop (period) added after sittliche Weltordnung
+
+Pages xiii-xv Principal works: Normalised small caps in author names
+
+Page xiv: Menant standardised to Ménant
+
+Page 36: Throughly corrected to thoroughly
+
+Illustration 9: Chippiez standardised to Chipiez
+
+Page 60: head-dress standardised to headdress
+
+Page 64: gate-ways standardised to gateways
+
+Page 68: Sufficent corrected to sufficient
+
+Illustration 33: Full stop (period) added to caption after louvre
+
+Page 104: life-time standardised to lifetime
+
+Page 105: Bibliothéque standardised to Bibliothèque
+
+Page 116: Double-quote added before ... In this
+
+Page 126: new-comers standardised to newcomers
+
+Pages 131, 375: Japheth standardised to Japhet
+
+Pages 147, 196, 371: Altai standardised as Altaï
+
+Pages 154, 397, 404: Zi-ki-a standardised as Zi-kî-a
+
+Page 154: Anunna-ki standardised to Anunnaki
+
+Page 157: Uru-gal standardised as Urugal
+
+Page 157: 'who may the rather' rendered as 'who may then rather'
+
+Page 160: Meri-dug standardised to Meridug
+
+Page 163: Apostrophe added to patients
+
+Page 172: Mulge standardised to Mul-ge
+
+Page 210: Hyphen added to countercurrent
+
+Pages 214, 215, 375 Illustration 59: Sirburla standardised as Sir-burla
+
+Page 218: Dovoted corrected to devoted
+
+Pages 221, 360, 379: Shinear standardised to Shineâr
+
+Page 225: Kadimirra standardised to Ka-dimirra
+
+Page 228: Cossaeans standardised to Cossæans
+
+Footnote AN: Ur-ea as in original (not standardised to Ur-êa)
+
+Page 234: Full-stop (period) removed after "from the North"
+
+Page 234: Italics removed from i.e. to conform with other usages
+
+Pages 241, 246: Nindar standardised to Nin-dar
+
+Page 249: Babilu standardised to Bab-ilu
+
+Page 254: Double quote added after For instance:--
+
+Footnote AT: Asshurbanipal standardised to Assurbanipal
+
+Illustration 70: Illustration number added to illustration.
+
+Page 297: border-land standardised to borderland
+
+Page 302: Double quote added at the end of paragraph 6
+
+Illustration 77: EABANI'S replaced with ÊABÂNI'S.
+
+Page 323: death-like standardised to deathlike
+
+Footnote BE: Sündflutbericht standardised to Sündfluthbericht. Note that
+    the correct modern form is Der keilinschriftliche Sintfluthbericht
+
+Page 372: Asshurnazirpal standardised to Asshur-nazir-pal
+
+Page 372: Bab-el-Mander standardised to Bab-el-Mandeb
+
+Page 374: Arioch standardised to Ariokh
+
+Page 374: Abu-Shahreiin standardised to Abu-Shahrein
+
+Page 375: Himalaya standardised to Himâlaya
+
+Page 376: Page number 42 added for index entry Kasr
+
+Page 379: Page number 131 added for index entry Seth
+
+General: Inconsistent spelling of Mosul/Mossul retained
+
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, Chaldea, by Zénaïde A. Ragozin</h1>
+<pre>
+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 <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Chaldea</p>
+<p>       From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria</p>
+<p>Author: Zénaïde A. Ragozin</p>
+<p>Release Date: February 20, 2008  [eBook #24654]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHALDEA***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Thierry Alberto, Brownfox,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[Pg i]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 374px;">
+<a id='illus_front' name='illus_front'><img src="images/frontispiece.jpg" width="374" height="599" alt="SHAMASH THE SUN-GOD. (From the Sun Temple at Sippar.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">SHAMASH THE SUN-GOD. (From the Sun Temple at Sippar.)</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</a></span></p>
+<h1>CHALDEA</h1>
+
+<h2 class="centersp">FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE RISE OF ASSYRIA</h2>
+
+<h3 class="centersp">(TREATED AS A GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY
+OF ANCIENT HISTORY)</h3>
+
+
+<h3 class="centersp">BY</h3>
+
+<h2>Z&Eacute;NA&Iuml;DE A. RAGOZIN</h2>
+
+<p class="center">MEMBER OF THE "SOCI&Eacute;T&Eacute; ETHNOLOGIQUE" OF PARIS; OF THE "AMERICAN
+ORIENTAL SOCIETY"; CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE "ATH&Eacute;N&Eacute;E
+ORIENTAL" OF PARIS; AUTHOR OF "ASSYRIA," "MEDIA," ETC.</p>
+
+<p class="centersp">"He (Carlyle) says it is part of his creed that history is
+poetry, could we tell it right."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Emerson.</span></p>
+
+<p class="centersp"><i>FOURTH EDITION</i></p>
+
+<p class="centersp"><em>London</em></p>
+
+<h3>T. FISHER UNWIN</h3>
+
+<p class="center">PATERNOSTER SQUARE</p>
+
+<h3>NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS</h3>
+
+<p class="center">MDCCCXCIII</p>
+
+<p class="centersp"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">TO THE MEMBERS OF</p>
+
+<p class="dedication">THE CLASS,</p>
+
+<p class="center" style="margin-top: 2em">IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF MANY HAPPY HOURS, THIS VOLUME AND THE FOLLOWING
+ONES ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY THEIR FRIEND.</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right;">
+<span style="margin-right: 2em; font-size: larger;"><span class="smcap">The Author.</span></span></p>
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;" class="smcap">Idlewild Plantation,</span></p>
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;" class="smcap">San Antonio.</span></p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 376px;">
+<img src="images/deco004.png" width="376" height="81" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2 class="centersp"><a name="CLASSIFIED_CONTENTS" id="CLASSIFIED_CONTENTS"></a>CLASSIFIED CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<h3>INTRODUCTION.</h3>
+
+<table style="width: 100%" summary="Table of Contents - Introduction">
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center">I.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td style="text-align: center; font-size: smaller; padding: 0;">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">Mesopotamia.&mdash;The Mounds.&mdash;The First Searchers</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_1">1-18</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">&sect; 1. Complete destruction of Nineveh.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 2-4. Xenophon and the
+"Retreat of the Ten Thousand." The Greeks pass the ruins of
+Calah and Nineveh, and know them not.&mdash;&sect; 5. Alexander's passage
+through Mesopotamia.&mdash;&sect; 6. The Arab invasion and rule.&mdash;&sect; 7.
+Turkish rule and mismanagement.&mdash;&sect; 8. Peculiar natural
+conditions of Mesopotamia.&mdash;&sect; 9. Actual desolate state of the
+country.&mdash;&sect; 10. The plains studded with Mounds. Their curious
+aspect.&mdash;&sect; 11. Fragments of works of art amidst the rubbish.&mdash;&sect;
+12. Indifference and superstition of the Turks and Arabs.&mdash;&sect;
+13. Exclusive absorption of European scholars in Classical
+Antiquity.&mdash;&sect; 14. Forbidding aspect of the Mounds, compared
+with other ruins.&mdash;&sect; 15. Rich, the first explorer.&mdash;&sect; 16.
+Botta's work and want of success.&mdash;&sect; 17. Botta's great
+discovery.&mdash;&sect; 18. Great sensation created by it.&mdash;&sect; 19.
+Layard's first expedition.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center" style="padding-top: 2em;">II.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">Layard and his Work</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_19">19-35</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">&sect; 1. Layard's arrival at Nimrud. His excitement and dreams.&mdash;&sect;
+2. Beginning of difficulties. The Ogre-like Pasha of Mossul.&mdash;&sect;
+3. Opposition from the Pasha. His malice and cunning.&mdash;&sect; 4.
+Discovery of the gigantic head.<span class='pagenum' style='font-size:100%;'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span> Fright of the Arabs, who
+declare it to be Nimrod.&mdash;&sect; 5. Strange ideas of the Arabs about
+the sculptures.&mdash;&sect; 6. Layard's life in the desert.&mdash;&sect; 7.
+Terrible heat of summer.&mdash;&sect; 8. Sand-storms and hot
+hurricanes.&mdash;&sect; 9. Layard's wretched dwelling.&mdash;&sect; 10.
+Unsuccessful attempts at improvement.&mdash;&sect; 11. In what the task
+of the explorer consists.&mdash;&sect; 12. Different modes of carrying on
+the work of excavation.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center" style="padding-top: 2em;">III.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">The Ruins</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_36">36-93</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">&sect; 1. Every country's culture and art determined by its
+geographical conditions.&mdash;&sect; 2. Chaldea's absolute deficiency in
+wood and stone.&mdash;&sect; 3. Great abundance of mud fit for the
+fabrication of bricks; hence the peculiar architecture of
+Mesopotamia. Ancient ruins still used as quarries of bricks for
+building. Trade of ancient bricks at Hillah.&mdash;&sect; 4. Various
+cements used.&mdash;&sect; 5. Construction of artificial platforms.&mdash;&sect; 6.
+Ruins of Ziggurats; peculiar shape, and uses of this sort of
+buildings.&mdash;&sect; 7. Figures showing the immense amount of labor
+used on these constructions.&mdash;&sect; 8. Chaldean architecture
+adopted unchanged by the Assyrians.&mdash;&sect; 9. Stone used for
+ornament and casing of walls. Water transport in old and modern
+times.&mdash;&sect; 10. Imposing aspect of the palaces.&mdash;&sect; 11.
+Restoration of Sennacherib's palace by Fergusson.&mdash;&sect; 12.
+Pavements of palace halls.&mdash;&sect; 13. Gateways and sculptured slabs
+along the walls. Friezes in painted tiles.&mdash;&sect; 14. Proportions
+of palace halls and roofing.&mdash;&sect; 15. Lighting of halls.&mdash;&sect; 16.
+Causes of the kings' passion for building.&mdash;&sect; 17. Drainage of
+palaces and platforms.&mdash;&sect; 18. Modes of destruction.&mdash;&sect; 19. The
+Mounds a protection to the ruins they contain. Refilling the
+excavations.&mdash;&sect; 20. Absence of ancient tombs in Assyria.&mdash;&sect; 21.
+Abundance and vastness of cemeteries in Chaldea.&mdash;&sect; 22. Warka
+(Erech) the great Necropolis. Loftus' description.&mdash;&sect; 23.
+"Jar-coffins."&mdash;&sect; 24. "Dish-cover" coffins.&mdash;&sect;25. Sepulchral
+vaults.&mdash;&sect; 26. "Slipper-shaped" coffins.&mdash;&sect; 27. Drainage of
+sepulchral mounds.&mdash;&sect; 28. Decoration of walls in painted
+clay-cones.&mdash;&sect; 29. De Sarzec's discoveries at Tell-Loh.<p><span class='pagenum' style='font-size:100%'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center" style="padding-top: 2em;">IV.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">The Book of the Past.&mdash;The library of Nineveh</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_94">94-115</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">&sect; 1. Object of making books.&mdash;&sect; 2. Books not always of
+paper.&mdash;&sect; 3. Universal craving for an immortal name.&mdash;&sect; 4.
+Insufficiency of records on various writing materials.
+Universal longing for knowledge of the remotest past.&mdash;&sect; 5.
+Monumental records.&mdash;&sect; 6. Ruins of palaces and temples, tombs
+and caves&mdash;the Book of the Past.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 7-8. Discovery by Layard
+of the Royal Library at Nineveh.&mdash;&sect; 9. George Smith's work at
+the British Museum.&mdash;&sect; 10. His expeditions to Nineveh, his
+success and death.&mdash;&sect; 11. Value of the Library.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 12-13.
+Contents of the Library.&mdash;&sect; 14. The Tablets.&mdash;&sect; 15. The
+cylinders and foundation-tablets.</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 140px;">
+<img src="images/deco010.png" width="140" height="60" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>CHALDEA.</h2>
+
+<table style="width: 100%" summary="Table of Contents - Main">
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center">I.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">Nomads and Settlers.&mdash;the Four Stages Of Culture.</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_116">116-126</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">&sect; 1. Nomads.&mdash;&sect; 2. First migrations.&mdash;&sect; 3. Pastoral life&mdash;the
+second stage.&mdash;&sect; 4. Agricultural life; beginnings of the
+State.&mdash;&sect; 5. City-building; royalty.&mdash;&sect; 6. Successive
+migrations and their causes.&mdash;&sect; 7. Formation of nations.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center" style="padding-top: 2em;">II.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">The Great Races.&mdash;chapter X. of Genesis</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_127">127-142</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">&sect; 1. Shinar.&mdash;&sect; 2. Berosus.&mdash;&sect; 3. Who were the settlers in
+Shinar?&mdash;&sect; 4. The Flood probably not universal.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 5-6. The
+blessed race and the accursed, according to Genesis.&mdash;&sect; 7.
+Genealogical form of Chap. X. of Genesis.&mdash;&sect; 8. Eponyms.&mdash;&sect; 9.
+Omission of some white races from Chap. X.&mdash;&sect; 10. Omission of
+the Black Race.&mdash;&sect; 11. Omission of the Yellow Race.
+Characteristics of the Turanians.&mdash;&sect; 12.<span class='pagenum' style='font-size:100%'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span> The Chinese.&mdash;&sect; 13.
+Who were the Turanians? What became of the Cainites?&mdash;&sect; 14.
+Possible identity of both.&mdash;&sect; 15. The settlers in
+Shinar&mdash;Turanians.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center" style="padding-top: 2em;">III.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">Turanian Chaldea&mdash;Shumir and Accad.&mdash;The Beginnings of Religion</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_146">146-181</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">&sect; 1. Shumir and Accad.&mdash;&sect; 2. Language and name.&mdash;&sect; 3. Turanian
+migrations and traditions.&mdash;&sect; 4. Collection of sacred texts.&mdash;&sect;
+5. "Religiosity"&mdash;a distinctively human characteristic. Its
+first promptings and manifestations.&mdash;&sect; 6. The Magic Collection
+and the work of Fr. Lenormant.&mdash;&sect; 7. The Shumiro-Accads' theory
+of the world, and their elementary spirits.&mdash;&sect; 8. The
+incantation of the Seven Maskim.&mdash;&sect; 9. The evil spirits.&mdash;&sect; 10.
+The Arali.&mdash;&sect; 11. The sorcerers.&mdash;&sect; 12. Conjuring and
+conjurers.&mdash;&sect; 13. The beneficent Spirits, &Ecirc;a.&mdash;&sect; 14.
+Meridug.&mdash;&sect; 15. A charm against an evil spell.&mdash;&sect; 16. Diseases
+considered as evil demons.&mdash;&sect; 17. Talismans. <i>The Kerubim.</i>&mdash;&sect;
+18. More talismans.&mdash;&sect; 19. The demon of the South-West Wind.&mdash;&sect;
+20. The first gods.&mdash;&sect; 21. <i>Ud</i>, the Sun.&mdash;&sect; 22. <i>Nin dar</i>, the
+nightly Sun.&mdash;&sect; 23. <i>Gibil</i>, Fire.&mdash;&sect; 24. Dawn of moral
+consciousness.&mdash;&sect; 25. Man's Conscience divinized.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 26-28.
+Penitential Psalms.&mdash;&sect; 29. General character of Turanian
+religions.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">Appendix to Chapter III.</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_181">181-183</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">Professor L. Dyer's poetical version of the Incantation against
+the Seven Maskim.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center" style="padding-top: 2em;">IV.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">Cushites and Semites&mdash;Early Chaldean History</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_184">184-228</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">&sect; 1. Oannes.&mdash;&sect; 2. Were the second settlers Cushites or
+Semites?&mdash;&sect; 3. Cushite hypothesis. Earliest migrations.&mdash;&sect; 4.
+The Ethiopians and the Egyptians.&mdash;&sect; 5. The Canaanites.&mdash;&sect; 6.
+Possible Cushite station on the islets of the Persian Gulf.&mdash;&sect;
+7. Colonization of Chaldea possibly by Cushites.&mdash;&sect; 8.
+Vagueness of very ancient chronology.&mdash;&sect; 9. Early dates.&mdash;&sect; 10.
+Exorbitant figures of Berosus.&mdash;&sect; 11. Early<span class='pagenum' style='font-size:100%'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span> Chaldea&mdash;a nursery
+of nations.&mdash;&sect; 12. Nomadic Semitic tribes.&mdash;&sect; 13. The tribe of
+Arphaxad.&mdash;&sect; 14. Ur of the Chaldees.&mdash;&sect; 15. Scholars divided
+between the Cushite and Semitic theories.&mdash;&sect; 16. History
+commences with Semitic culture.&mdash;&sect; 17. Priestly rule. The
+<i>patesis</i>.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 18-19. Sharrukin I. (Sargon I) of Agad&ecirc;.&mdash;&sect;&sect;
+20-21. The second Sargon's literary labors.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 22-23. Chaldean
+folk-lore, maxims and songs.&mdash;&sect; 24. Discovery of the elder
+Sargon's date&mdash;3800 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>&mdash;&sect; 25. Gud&ecirc;a of Sir-gulla and Ur-&ecirc;a of
+Ur.&mdash;&sect; 26. Predominance of Shumir. Ur-&ecirc;a and his son Dungi
+first kings of "Shumir and Accad."&mdash;&sect; 27. Their inscriptions
+and buildings. The Elamite invasion.&mdash;&sect; 28. Elam.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 29-31.
+Khudur-Lagamar and Abraham.&mdash;&sect; 32. Hardness of the Elamite
+rule.&mdash;&sect; 33. Rise of Babylon.&mdash;&sect; 34. Hammurabi.&mdash;&sect; 35. Invasion
+of the Kasshi.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center" style="padding-top: 2em;">V.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">Babylonian Religion</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_229">229-257</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">&sect; 1. Babylonian calendar.&mdash;&sect; 2. Astronomy conducive to
+religious feeling.&mdash;&sect; 3. Sabeism.&mdash;&sect; 4. Priestcraft and
+astrology.&mdash;&sect; 5. Transformation of the old religion.&mdash;&sect; 6.
+Vague dawning of the monotheistic idea. Divine emanations.&mdash;&sect;
+7. The Supreme Triad.&mdash;&sect; 8. The Second Triad.&mdash;&sect; 9. The five
+Planetary deities.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 10-11. Duality of nature. Masculine and
+feminine principles. The goddesses.&mdash;&sect; 12. The twelve Great
+Gods and their Temples.&mdash;&sect; 13. The temple of Shamash at Sippar
+and Mr. Rassam's discovery.&mdash;&sect; 14. Survival of the old Turanian
+superstitions.&mdash;&sect; 15. Divination, a branch of Chaldean
+"Science."&mdash;&sect;&sect; 16-17. Collection of one hundred tablets on
+divination. Specimens.&mdash;&sect; 18. The three classes of "wise men."
+"Chaldeans," in later times, a by-word for "magician," and
+"astrologer."&mdash;&sect; 19. Our inheritance from the Chaldeans: the
+sun-dial, the week, the calendar, the Sabbath.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center" style="padding-top: 2em;">VI.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">Legends and Stories</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_258">258-293</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">&sect; 1. The Cosmogonies of different nations.&mdash;&sect; 2. The antiquity
+of the Sacred Books of Babylonia.&mdash;&sect; 3. The legend of Oannes,
+told by Berosus. Discovery, by Geo. Smith, of the<span class='pagenum' style='font-size:100%'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span> Creation
+Tablets and the Deluge Tablet.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 4-5. Chaldean account of the
+Creation.&mdash;&sect; 6. The Cylinder with the human couple, tree and
+serpent.&mdash;&sect; 7. Berosus' account of the creation.&mdash;&sect; 8. The
+Sacred Tree. Sacredness of the Symbol.&mdash;&sect; 9. Signification of
+the Tree-Symbol. The Cosmic Tree.&mdash;&sect; 10. Connection of the
+Tree-Symbol and of Ziggurats with the legend of Paradise.&mdash;&sect;
+11. The Ziggurat of Borsippa.&mdash;&sect; 12. It is identified with the
+Tower of Babel.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 13-14. Peculiar Orientation of the
+Ziggurats.&mdash;&sect; 15. Traces of legends about a sacred grove or
+garden.&mdash;&sect; 16. Mummu-Tiamat, the enemy of the gods. Battle of
+Bel and Tiamat.&mdash;&sect; 17. The Rebellion of the seven evil spirits,
+originally messengers of the gods.&mdash;&sect; 18. The great Tower and
+the Confusion of Tongues.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center" style="padding-top: 2em;">VII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">Myths.&mdash;Heroes and the Mythical Epos</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_294">294-330</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">&sect; 1. Definition of the word Myth.&mdash;&sect; 2. The Heroes.&mdash;&sect; 3. The
+Heroic Ages and Heroic Myths. The National Epos.&mdash;&sect; 4. The
+oldest known Epic.&mdash;&sect; 5. Berosus' account of the Flood.&mdash;&sect; 6.
+Geo. Smith's discovery of the original Chaldean narrative.&mdash;&sect;
+7. The Epic divided into books or Tablets.&mdash;&sect; 8. Izdubar the
+Hero of the Epic.&mdash;&sect; 9. Erech's humiliation under the Elamite
+Conquest. Izdubar's dream.&mdash;&sect; 10. &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni the Seer. Izdubar's
+invitation and promises to him.&mdash;&sect; 11. Message sent to &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni
+by Ishtar's handmaidens. His arrival at Erech.&mdash;&sect; 12. Izdubar
+and &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni's victory over the tyrant Khumbaba.&mdash;&sect; 13. Ishtar's
+love message. Her rejection and wrath. The two friends' victory
+over the Bull sent by her.&mdash;&sect; 14. Ishtar's vengeance. Izdubar's
+journey to the Mouth of the Rivers.&mdash;&sect; 15. Izdubar sails the
+Waters of Death and is healed by his immortal ancestor
+H&acirc;sisadra.&mdash;&sect; 16. Izdubar's return to Erech and lament over
+&Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni. The seer is translated among the gods.&mdash;&sect; 17. The
+Deluge narrative in the Eleventh Tablet of the Izdubar
+Epic.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 18-21. Mythic and solar character of the Epic
+analyzed.&mdash;&sect; 22. Sun-Myth of the Beautiful Youth, his early
+death and resurrection.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 23-24. Dumuzi-Tammuz, the husband
+of Ishtar. The festival of Dumuzi in June.&mdash;&sect; 25.<span class='pagenum' style='font-size:100%'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span> Ishtar's
+Descent to the Land of the Dead.&mdash;&sect; 26. Universality of the
+Solar and Chthonic Myths.</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="center" style="padding-top: 2em;">VIII.</td></tr>
+<tr><td><p class="content"><span class="smcap">Religion and Mythology.&mdash;Idolatry and Anthropomorphism.&mdash;The Chaldean Legends and the Book of Genesis.&mdash;Retrospect</span></p></td><td class="center"><a href="#Page_331">331-336</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2" class="contdtl">&sect; 1. Definition of Mythology and Religion, as distinct from
+each other.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 2-3. Instances of pure religious feeling in the
+poetry of Shumir and Accad.&mdash;&sect; 4. Religion often stifled by
+Mythology.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 5-6. The conception of the immortality of the
+soul suggested by the sun's career.&mdash;&sect; 7. This expressed in the
+Solar and Chthonic Myths.&mdash;&sect; 8. Idolatry.&mdash;- &sect; 9. The Hebrews,
+originally polytheists and idolators, reclaimed by their
+leaders to Monotheism.&mdash;&sect; 10. Their intercourse with the tribes
+of Canaan conducive to relapses.&mdash;&sect; 11. Intermarriage severely
+forbidden for this reason.&mdash;&sect; 12. Striking similarity between
+the Book of Genesis and the ancient Chaldean legends.&mdash;&sect; 13.
+Parallel between the two accounts of the creation.&mdash;&sect; 14.
+Anthropomorphism, different from polytheism and idolatry, but
+conducive to both.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 15-17. Parallel continued.&mdash;&sect;&sect; 18-19.
+Retrospect.<span class='pagenum' style='font-size:100%'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 372px;">
+<img src="images/deco012.png" width="372" height="87" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="PRINCIPAL_WORKS_READ_OR_CONSULTED_IN_THE_PREPARATION_OF_THIS_VOLUME" id="PRINCIPAL_WORKS_READ_OR_CONSULTED_IN_THE_PREPARATION_OF_THIS_VOLUME"></a>PRINCIPAL WORKS READ OR CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS VOLUME.</h2>
+
+<div class="works">
+<p><span class="smcap">Baer</span>, Wilhelm. <span class="smcap">Der Vorgeschichtliche Mensch.</span> 1 vol., Leipzig: 1874.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Baudissin</span>, W. von. <span class="smcap">Studien zur Semitischen Religionsgeschichte.</span> 2 vols.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Budge</span>, E. A. Wallis. <span class="smcap">Babylonian Life and History.</span> ("Bypaths of Bible
+Knowledge" Series, V.) 1884. London: The Religious Tract Society. 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">History of Esarhaddon.</span> 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Bunsen</span>, Chr. Carl Jos. <span class="smcap">Gott in der Geschichte</span>, oder Der Fortschritt des
+Glaubens an eine sittliche Weltordnung. 3 vols. Leipzig: 1857.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Castren</span>, Alexander. <span class="smcap">Kleinere Schriften.</span> St. Petersburg: 1862. 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Cory.</span> <span class="smcap">Ancient Fragments.</span> London: 1876. 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Delitzsch</span>, Dr. Friedrich. <span class="smcap">Wo lag das Paradies?</span> eine
+Biblisch-Assyriologische Studie. Leipzig: 1881. 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">Die Sprache der Koss&auml;er.</span> Leipzig: 1885 (or 1884?). 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Duncker</span>, Max. <span class="smcap">Geschichte des Alterthums.</span> Leipzig: 1878. Vol. 1st.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Fergusson</span>, James. <span class="smcap">Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored.</span> 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Happel</span>, Julius. <span class="smcap">Die Altchinesische Reichsreligion</span>, vom Standpunkte der
+Vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte. 46 pages, Leipzig: 1882.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Haupt</span>, Paul. <span class="smcap">Der Keilinschriftliche Sintflutbericht</span>, eine Episode des
+Babylonischen Nimrodepos. 36 pages. G&ouml;ttingen: 1881.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Hommel</span>, Dr. Fritz. <span class="smcap">Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens</span> (first
+instalment, 160 pp., 1885; and second instalment, 160 pp., 1886).
+(Allgemeine Geschichte in einzelnen Darstellungen, Abtheilung 95 und
+117.)</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">Die Vorsemitischen Kulturen in &AElig;gypten und Babylonien.</span> Leipzig:
+1882 and 1883.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Layard</span>, Austen H. <span class="smcap">Discoveries among the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon.</span>
+(American Edition.) New York: 1853. 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">Nineveh and its Remains.</span> London: 1849. 2 vols.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lenormant</span>, Fran&ccedil;ois. <span class="smcap">Les Premi&egrave;res Civilisations.</span> &Ecirc;tudes d'Histoire et
+d'Arch&eacute;ologie. 1874. Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie. 2 vols.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">Les Origines de l'Histoire</span>, d'apr&egrave;s la Bible et les Traditions des
+Peuples Orientaux. Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie. 3 vol. 1er vol. 1880; 2e
+vol. 1882; 3e vol. 1884.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">La Gen&egrave;se.</span> Traduction d'apr&egrave;s l'H&eacute;breu. Paris: 1883. 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chald&auml;er.</span> Jena, 1878. 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">Il Mito di Adone-Tammuz</span> nei Documenti cuneiformi. 32 pages.
+Firenze: 1879.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">Sur le nom de Tammouz.</span> (Extrait des M&eacute;moires du Congr&egrave;s
+international des Orientalistes.) 17 pages. Paris: 1873.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">A Manual of the Ancient History of the East.</span> Translated by E.
+Chevallier. American Edition. Philadelphia: 1871. 2 vols.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Loftus.</span> <span class="smcap">Chaldea and Susiana.</span> 1 vol. London: 1857.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Lotz</span>, Guilelmus. <span class="smcap">Qu&aelig;stiones de Historia Sabbati.</span> Lipsiae: 1883.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maury</span>, Alfred L. F. <span class="smcap">La Magie et l'Astrologie</span> dans l'antiquit&eacute; et en
+Moyen Age. Paris: 1877. 1 vol. Quatri&egrave;me &eacute;dition.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Maspero</span>, G. <span class="smcap">Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient.</span> 3e &eacute;dition, 1878.
+Paris: Hachette &amp; Cie. 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">M&eacute;nant</span>, Joachim. <span class="smcap">La Biblioth&egrave;que du Palais de Ninive.</span> 1 vol.
+(Biblioth&egrave;que Orientale Elz&eacute;virienne.) Paris: 1880.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Meyer</span>, Eduard. <span class="smcap">Geschichte des Alterthums.</span> Stuttgart: 1884. Vol. 1st.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">M&uuml;ller</span>, Max. <span class="smcap">Lectures on the Science of Language.</span> 2 vols. American
+edition. New York: 1875.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">M&uuml;rdter</span>, F. <span class="smcap">Kurzgefasste Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens</span>, mit
+besonderer Ber&uuml;cksichtigung des Alten Testaments. Mit Vorwort und
+Beigaben von Friedrich Delitzsch. Stuttgart: 1882. 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Oppert</span>, Jules. <span class="smcap">L'Immortalit&eacute; de l'Ame chez les Chald&eacute;ens.</span> 28 pages.
+(Extrait des Annales de Philosophie Chr&egrave;tienne, 1874.) Perrot et
+Chipiez.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Quatrefages</span>, A. de. <span class="smcap">L'Esp&egrave;ce Humaine.</span> Sixi&egrave;me edition. 1 vol. Paris:
+1880.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Rawlinson</span>, George. <span class="smcap">The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern
+World.</span> London: 1865. 1st and 2d vols.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Records of the Past.</span> Published under the sanction of the Society of
+Biblical Arch&aelig;ology. Volumes I. III. V. VII. IX. XI.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sayce</span>, A. H. <span class="smcap">Fresh Light from Ancient Monuments.</span> ("By-Paths of Bible
+Knowledge" Series, II.) 3d edition, 1885. London: 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">The Ancient Empires of the East.</span> 1 vol. London, 1884.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">Babylonian Literature.</span> 1 vol. London, 1884.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Schrader</span>, Eberhard. <span class="smcap">Keilinschriften</span> und Geschichtsforschung. Giessen:
+1878. 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">Die Keilinschriften</span> und das Alte Testament. Giessen: 1883. 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">Istar's H&ouml;llenfahrt.</span> 1 vol. Giessen: 1874.</p>
+
+<p>---- <span class="smcap">Zur Frage nach dem Ursprung der Altbabylonischen Kultur.</span> Berlin:
+1884.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Smith</span>, George. <span class="smcap">Assyria</span> from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Nineveh.
+("Ancient History from the Monuments" Series.) London: 1 vol.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Tylor</span>, Edward B. <span class="smcap">Primitive Culture.</span> Second American Edition. 2 vols. New
+York: 1877.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Zimmern</span>, Heinrich. <span class="smcap">Babylonische Busspsalmen</span>, umschrieben, &uuml;bersetzt und
+erkl&auml;rt. 17 pages, 4to. Leipzig: 1885.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Numerous Essays by Sir Henry Rawlinson, Friedr. Delitzsch, E. Schrader
+and others, in Mr. Geo. Rawlinson's translation of Herodotus, in the
+Calwer Bibellexikon, and in various periodicals, such as "Proceedings"
+and "Transactions" of the "Society of Biblical Arch&aelig;ology," "Jahrb&uuml;cher
+f&uuml;r Protestantische Theologie," "Zeitschrift f&uuml;r Keilschriftforschung,"
+"Gazette Arch&eacute;ologique," and others.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 376px;">
+<img src="images/deco016.png" width="376" height="99" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.</h2>
+
+<table style="font-size:smaller" summary="List of Illustrations">
+<tr><td style='width:10%;'>&nbsp;</td><td style='width:60%;'>&nbsp;</td><td style='width:20%'>&nbsp;</td><td style='width:10%' class='center'>PAGE</td></tr>
+
+<tr><td class='center'>&nbsp;</td><td colspan='2'>SHAMASH THE SUN-GOD. <i>From a tablet in the British Museum.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_front'><i>Frontispiece.</i></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>1.</td><td>CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS</td><td><i>M&eacute;nant.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_1'>10</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>2.</td><td>TEMPLE OF &Ecirc;A AT ERIDHU</td><td><i>Hommel.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_2'>23</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>3.</td><td>VIEW OF EUPHRATES NEAR BABYLON</td><td><i>Babelon.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_3'>31</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>4.</td><td>MOUND OF BABIL</td><td><i>Oppert.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_4'>33</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>5.</td><td>BRONZE DISH</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_5'>35</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>6.</td><td>BRONZE DISH (RUG PATTERN)</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_6'>37</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>7.</td><td>SECTION OF BRONZE DISH</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_7'>39</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>8.</td><td>VIEW OF NEBBI-YUNUS</td><td><i>Babelon.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_8'>41</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>9.</td><td>BUILDING IN BAKED BRICK.</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_9'>43</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>10.</td><td>MOUND OF NINEVEH</td><td><i>Hommel.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_10'>45</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>11.</td><td>MOUND OF MUGHEIR (ANCIENT UR)</td><td><i>Taylor.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_11'>47</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>12.</td><td>TERRACE WALL AT KHORSABAD</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_12'>49</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>13.</td><td>RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS (ANCIENT)</td><td><i>Kaulen.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_13'>51</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>14.</td><td>RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS (MODERN)</td><td><i>Kaulen.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_14'>51</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>15.</td><td>EXCAVATIONS AT MUGHEIR (UR)</td><td><i>Hommel.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_15'>53</a><p><span class='pagenum' style='font-size:100%'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span></p></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>16.</td><td>WARRIORS SWIMMING ON INFLATED SKINS</td><td><i>Babelon.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_16'>55</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>17.</td><td>VIEW OF KOYUNJIK</td><td><i>Hommel.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_17'>57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>18.</td><td>STONE LION AT ENTRANCE OF A TEMPLE</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_18'>59</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>19.</td><td>COURT OF HAREM AT KHORSABAD. RESTORED</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_19'>61</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>20.</td><td>CIRCULAR PILLAR BASE</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_20'>63</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>21.</td><td>INTERIOR VIEW OF HAREM CHAMBER</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_21'>65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>22, 23.</td><td>COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_22'>67</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>24.</td><td>PAVEMENT SLAB</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_24'>69</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>25.</td><td>SECTION OF ORNAMENTAL DOORWAY, KHORSABAD</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_25'>71</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>26.</td><td>WINGED LION WITH HUMAN HEAD</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_26'>73</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>27.</td><td>WINGED BULL</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_27'>75</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>28.</td><td>MAN-LION</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_28'>77</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>29.</td><td>FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_29'>79</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>30.</td><td>RAM'S HEAD IN ALABASTER</td><td><i>British Museum.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_30'>81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>31.</td><td>EBONY COMB</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_31'>81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>32.</td><td>BRONZE FORK AND SPOON</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_32'>81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>33.</td><td>ARMENIAN LOUVRE</td><td><i>Botta.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_33'>83</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>34, 35.</td><td>VAULTED DRAINS</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_34'>84</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>36.</td><td>CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN</td><td><i>Taylor.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_36'>85</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>37.</td><td>"DISH-COVER" TOMB AT MUGHEIR</td><td><i>Taylor.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_37'>87</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>38.</td><td>"DISH-COVER" TOMB</td><td><i>Taylor.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_38'>87</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>39.</td><td>SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR</td><td><i>Taylor.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_39'>89</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>40.</td><td>STONE JARS FROM GRAVES</td><td><i>Hommel.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_40'>89</a><p><span class='pagenum' style='font-size:100%'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span></p></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>41.</td><td>DRAIN IN MOUND</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_41'>90</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>42.</td><td>WALL WITH DESIGNS IN TERRA-COTTA</td><td><i>Loftus.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_42'>91</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>43.</td><td>TERRA-COTTA CONE</td><td><i>Loftus.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_43'>91</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>44.</td><td>HEAD OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_44'>101</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>45.</td><td>SAME, PROFILE VIEW</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_45'>101</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>46.</td><td>CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_46'>107</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>47.</td><td>INSCRIBED CLAY TABLET</td><td><i>Smith's Chald. Gen.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_47'>109</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>48.</td><td>CLAY TABLET IN ITS CASE</td><td><i>Hommel.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_48'>111</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>49.</td><td>ANTIQUE BRONZE SETTING OF CYLINDER</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_49'>112</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>50.</td><td>CHALDEAN CYLINDER AND IMPRESSION</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_50'>113</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>51.</td><td>ASSYRIAN CYLINDER</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_51'>113</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>52.</td><td>PRISM OF SENNACHERIB</td><td><i>British Museum.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_52'>115</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>53.</td><td>INSCRIBED CYLINDER FROM BORSIP</td><td><i>M&eacute;nant.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_53'>117</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>54.</td><td>DEMONS FIGHTING</td><td><i>British Museum.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_54'>165</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>55.</td><td>DEMON OF THE SOUTH-WEST WIND</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_55'>169</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>56.</td><td>HEAD OF DEMON</td><td><i>British Museum.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_56'>170</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>57.</td><td>OANNES</td><td><i>Smith's Chald. Gen.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_57'>187</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>58.</td><td>CYLINDER OF SARGON FROM AGAD&Ecirc;</td><td><i>Hommel.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_58'>207</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>59.</td><td>STATUE OF GUD&Ecirc;A</td><td><i>Hommel.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_59'>217</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>60.</td><td>BUST INSCRIBED WITH NAME OF NEBO</td><td><i>British Museum.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_60'>243</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>61.</td><td>BACK OF TABLET WITH ACCOUNT OF FLOOD</td><td><i>Smith's Chald. Gen.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_61'>262</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>62.</td><td>BABYLONIAN CYLINDER</td><td><i>Smith's Chald. Gen.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_62'>266</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>63.</td><td>FEMALE WINGED FIGURES AND SACRED TREES</td><td><i>British Museum.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_63'>269</a><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span></p></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>64.</td><td>WINGED SPIRITS BEFORE SACRED TREE</td><td><i>Smith's Chald. Gen.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_64'>270</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>65.</td><td>SARGON OF ASSYRIA BEFORE SACRED TREE</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_65'>271</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>66.</td><td>EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE BEFORE SACRED TREE</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_66'>273</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>67.</td><td>FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIGURE BEFORE SACRED TREE</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_67'>275</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>68.</td><td>TEMPLE AND HANGING GARDENS AT KOYUNJIK</td><td><i>British Museum.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_68'>277</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>69.</td><td>PLAN OF A ZIGGURAT</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_69'>278</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>70.</td><td>"ZIGGURAT" RESTORED</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_70'>279</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>71.</td><td>BIRS-NIMRUD</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_71'>281</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>72, 73.</td><td>BEL FIGHTS DRAGON</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_72'>289</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>74.</td><td>BATTLE BETWEEN BEL AND DRAGON</td><td><i>Smith's Chald. Gen.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_74'>291</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>75.</td><td>IZDUBAR AND LION</td><td><i>Smith's Chald. Gen.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_75'>306</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>76.</td><td>IZDUBAR AND LION</td><td><i>British Museum.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_76'>307</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>77.</td><td>IZDUBAR AND &Ecirc;AB&Acirc;NI</td><td><i>Smith's Chald. Gen.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_77'>309</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>78.</td><td>IZDUBAR AND LION</td><td><i>Perrot and Chipiez.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_78'>310</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>79.</td><td>SCORPION-MAN</td><td><i>Smith's Chald. Gen.</i></td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_79'>311</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td class='center'>80.</td><td>STONE OBJECT FOUND AT ABU-HABBA</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td class='center'><a href='#illus_80'>312</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 305px;">
+<img src="images/deco019.png" width="305" height="69" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[Pg xxi]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 632px;">
+<img src="images/map1.png" width="632" height="458" alt="THE COUNTRIES ABOUT CHALDEA." title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE COUNTRIES ABOUT CHALDEA.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[Pg xxii]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 341px;">
+<img src="images/deco022.png" width="341" height="74" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'>I.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>MESOPOTAMIA.&mdash;THE MOUNDS.&mdash;THE FIRST SEARCHERS.</p>
+
+
+<p>1. In or about the year before Christ 606, Nineveh, the great city, was
+destroyed. For many hundred years had she stood in arrogant splendor,
+her palaces towering above the Tigris and mirrored in its swift waters;
+army after army had gone forth from her gates and returned laden with
+the spoils of conquered countries; her monarchs had ridden to the high
+place of sacrifice in chariots drawn by captive kings. But her time came
+at last. The nations assembled and encompassed her around. Popular
+tradition tells how over two years lasted the siege; how the very river
+rose and battered her walls; till one day a vast flame rose up to
+heaven; how the last of a mighty line of kings, too proud to surrender,
+thus saved himself, his treasures and his capital from the shame of
+bondage. Never was city to rise again where Nineveh had been.</p>
+
+<p>2. Two hundred years went by. Great changes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> had passed over the land.
+The Persian kings now held the rule of Asia. But their greatness also
+was leaning towards its decline and family discords undermined their
+power. A young prince had rebelled against his elder brother and
+resolved to tear the crown from him by main force. To accomplish this,
+he had raised an army and called in the help of Grecian hirelings. They
+came, 13,000 in number, led by brave and renowned generals, and did
+their duty by him; but their valor could not save him from defeat and
+death. Their own leader fell into an ambush, and they commenced their
+retreat under the most disastrous circumstances and with little hope of
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>3. Yet they accomplished it. Surrounded by open enemies and false
+friends, tracked and pursued, through sandy wastes and pathless
+mountains, now parched with heat, now numbed with cold, they at last
+reached the sunny and friendly Hellespont. It was a long and weary march
+from Babylon on the Euphrates, near which city the great battle had been
+fought. They might not have succeeded had they not chosen a great and
+brave commander, Xenophon, a noble Athenian, whose fame as scholar and
+writer equals his renown as soldier and general. Few books are more
+interesting than the lively relation he has left of his and his
+companions' toils and sufferings in this expedition, known in history as
+"The Retreat of the Ten Thousand"&mdash;for to that number had the original
+13,000 been reduced by battles, privations and disease. So cultivated a
+man could not fail, even in the midst of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> danger and weighed down by
+care, to observe whatever was noteworthy in the strange lands which he
+traversed. So he tells us how one day his little army, after a forced
+march in the early morning hours and an engagement with some light
+troops of pursuers, having repelled the attack and thereby secured a
+short interval of safety, travelled on till they came to the banks of
+the Tigris. On that spot, he goes on, there was a vast desert city. Its
+wall was twenty-five feet wide, one hundred feet high and nearly seven
+miles in circuit. It was built of brick with a basement, twenty feet
+high, of stone. Close by the city there stood a stone pyramid, one
+hundred feet in width, and two hundred in height. Xenophon adds that
+this city's name was Larissa and that it had anciently been inhabited by
+Medes; that the king of Persia, when he took the sovereignty away from
+the Medes, besieged it, but could not in any way get possession of it,
+until, a cloud having obscured the sun, the inhabitants forsook the city
+and thus it was taken.</p>
+
+<p>4. Some eighteen miles further on (a day's march) the Greeks came to
+another great deserted city, which Xenophon calls Mespila. It had a
+similar but still higher wall. This city, he tells us, had also been
+inhabited by Medes, and taken by the king of Persia. Now these curious
+ruins were all that was left of Kalah and Nineveh, the two Assyrian
+capitals. In the short space of two hundred years, men had surely not
+yet lost the memory of Nineveh's existence and rule, yet they trod the
+very site where it had stood and knew it not, and called its ruins by a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+meaningless Greek name, handing down concerning it a tradition absurdly
+made up of true and fictitious details, jumbled into inextricable
+confusion. For Nineveh had been the capital of the Assyrian Empire,
+while the Medes were one of the nations who attacked and destroyed it.
+And though an eclipse of the sun&mdash;(the obscuring cloud could mean
+nothing else)&mdash;did occur, created great confusion and produced important
+results, it was at a later period and on an entirely different occasion.
+As to "the king of Persia," no such personage had anything whatever to
+do with the catastrophe of Nineveh, since the Persians had not yet been
+heard of at that time as a powerful people, and their country was only a
+small and insignificant principality, tributary to Media. So effectually
+had the haughty city been swept from the face of the earth!</p>
+
+<p>5. Another hundred years brought on other and even greater changes. The
+Persian monarchy had followed in the wake of the empires that had gone
+before it and fallen before Alexander, the youthful hero of Macedon. As
+the conqueror's fleet of light-built Grecian ships descended the
+Euphrates towards Babylon, they were often hindered in their progress by
+huge dams of stone built across the river. The Greeks, with great labor,
+removed several, to make navigation more easy. They did the same on
+several other rivers,&mdash;nor knew that they were destroying the last
+remaining vestige of a great people's civilization,&mdash;for these dams had
+been used to save the water and distribute it into the numerous canals,
+which covered the arid coun<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>try with their fertilizing network. They may
+have been told what travellers are told in our own days by the
+Arabs&mdash;that these dams had been constructed once upon a time by Nimrod,
+the Hunter-King. For some of them remain even still, showing their huge,
+square stones, strongly united by iron cramps, above the water before
+the river is swollen with the winter rains.</p>
+
+<p>6. More than one-and-twenty centuries have rolled since then over the
+immense valley so well named Mesopotamia&mdash;"the Land between the
+Rivers,"&mdash;and each brought to it more changes, more wars, more
+disasters, with rare intervals of rest and prosperity. Its position
+between the East and the West, on the very high-road of marching armies
+and wandering tribes, has always made it one of the great battle grounds
+of the world. About one thousand years after Alexander's rapid invasion
+and short-lived conquest, the Arabs overran the country, and settled
+there, bringing with them a new civilization and the new religion given
+them by their prophet Mohammed, which they thought it their mission to
+carry, by force of word or sword, to the bounds of the earth. They even
+founded there one of the principal seats of their sovereignty, and
+Baghdad yielded not greatly in magnificence and power to Babylon of old.</p>
+
+<p>7. Order, laws, and learning now flourished for a few hundred years,
+when new hordes of barbarous people came pouring in from the East, and
+one of them, the Turks, at last established itself in the land and
+stayed. They rule there now. The valley of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> the Tigris and Euphrates is
+a province of the Ottoman or Turkish Empire, which has its capital in
+Constantinople; it is governed by pashas, officials sent by the Turkish
+government, or the "Sublime Porte," as it is usually called, and the
+ignorant, oppressive, grinding treatment to which it has now been
+subjected for several hundred years has reduced it to the lowest depth
+of desolation. Its wealth is exhausted, its industry destroyed, its
+prosperous cities have disappeared or dwindled into insignificance. Even
+Mossul, built by the Arabs on the right bank of the Tigris, opposite the
+spot where Nineveh once stood, one of their finest cities, famous for
+the manufacturing of the delicate cotton tissue to which it gave its
+name&mdash;(<i>muslin</i>, <i>mousseline</i>)&mdash;would have lost all importance, had it
+not the honor to be the chief town of a Turkish district and to harbor a
+pasha. And Baghdad, although still the capital of the whole province, is
+scarcely more than the shadow of her former glorious self; and her looms
+no longer supply the markets of the world with wonderful shawls and
+carpets, and gold and silver tissues of marvellous designs.</p>
+
+<p>8. Mesopotamia is a region which must suffer under neglect and
+misgovernment even more than others; for, though richly endowed by
+nature, it is of a peculiar formation, requiring constant care and
+intelligent management to yield all the return of which it is capable.
+That care must chiefly consist in distributing the waters of the two
+great rivers and their affluents over all the land by means of an
+intricate system of canals, regulated by a complete and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> well-kept set
+of dams and sluices, with other simpler arrangements for the remoter and
+smaller branches. The yearly inundations caused by the Tigris and
+Euphrates, which overflow their banks in spring, are not sufficient;
+only a narrow strip of land on each side is benefited by them. In the
+lowlands towards the Persian Gulf there is another inconvenience: the
+country there being perfectly flat, the waters accumulate and stagnate,
+forming vast pestilential swamps where rich pastures and wheat-fields
+should be&mdash;and have been in ancient times. In short, if left to itself,
+Upper Mesopotamia, (ancient Assyria), is unproductive from the
+barrenness of its soil, and Lower Mesopotamia, (ancient Chaldea and
+Babylonia), runs to waste, notwithstanding its extraordinary fertility,
+from want of drainage.</p>
+
+<p>9. Such is actually the condition of the once populous and flourishing
+valley, owing to the principles on which the Turkish rulers carry on
+their government. They look on their remoter provinces as mere sources
+of revenue for the state and its officials. But even admitting this as
+their avowed and chief object, they pursue it in an altogether
+wrong-headed and short-sighted way. The people are simply and openly
+plundered, and no portion of what is taken from them is applied to any
+uses of local public utility, as roads, irrigation, encouragement of
+commerce and industry and the like; what is not sent home to the Sultan
+goes into the private pouches of the pasha and his many subaltern
+officials. This is like taking the milk and omitting to feed the cow.
+The consequence is, the people lose their interest in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> work of any kind,
+leave off striving for an increase of property which they will not be
+permitted to enjoy, and resign themselves to utter destitution with a
+stolid apathy most painful to witness. The land has been brought to such
+a degree of impoverishment that it is actually no longer capable of
+producing crops sufficient for a settled population. It is cultivated
+only in patches along the rivers, where the soil is rendered so fertile
+by the yearly inundations as to yield moderate returns almost unasked,
+and that mostly by wandering tribes of Arabs or of Kurds from the
+mountains to the north, who raise their tents and leave the spot the
+moment they have gathered in their little harvest&mdash;if it has not been
+appropriated first by some of the pasha's tax-collectors or by roving
+parties of Bedouins&mdash;robber-tribes from the adjoining Syrian and Arabian
+deserts, who, mounted on their own matchless horses, are carried across
+the open border with as much facility as the drifts of desert sand so
+much dreaded by travellers. The rest of the country is left to nature's
+own devices and, wherever it is not cut up by mountains or rocky ranges,
+offers the well-known twofold character of steppe-land: luxuriant grassy
+vegetation during one-third of the year and a parched, arid waste the
+rest of the time, except during the winter rains and spring floods.</p>
+
+<p>10. A wild and desolate scene! Imposing too in its sorrowful grandeur,
+and well suited to a land which may be called a graveyard of empires and
+nations. The monotony of the landscape would be unbroken, but for
+certain elevations and hillocks of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> strange and varied shapes, which
+spring up, as it were, from the plain in every direction; some are high
+and conical or pyramidal in form, others are quite extensive and rather
+flat on the summit, others again long and low, and all curiously
+unconnected with each other or any ridge of hills or mountains. This is
+doubly striking in Lower Mesopotamia or Babylonia, proverbial for its
+excessive flatness. The few permanent villages, composed of mud-huts or
+plaited reed-cabins, are generally built on these eminences, others are
+used as burying-grounds, and a mosque, the Mohammedan house of prayer,
+sometimes rises on one or the other. They are pleasing objects in the
+beautiful spring season, when corn-fields wave on their summits, and
+their slopes, as well as all the surrounding plains, are clothed with
+the densest and greenest of herbage, enlivened with countless flowers of
+every hue, till the surface of the earth looks, from a distance or from
+a height, as gorgeous as the richest Persian carpet. But, on approaching
+nearer to these hillocks or mounds, an unprepared traveller would be
+struck by some peculiar features. Their substance being rather soft and
+yielding, and the winter rains pouring down with exceeding violence,
+their sides are furrowed in many places with ravines, dug by the rushing
+streams of rain-water. These streams of course wash down much of the
+substance itself and carry it far into the plain, where it lies
+scattered on the surface quite distinct from the soil. These washings
+are found to consist not of earth or sand, but of rubbish, something
+like that which lies in heaps wherever a house is being built or
+demol<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>ished, and to contain innumerable fragments of bricks, pottery,
+stone evidently worked by the hand and chisel; many of these fragments
+moreover bearing inscriptions in complicated characters composed of one
+curious figure shaped like the head of an arrow, and used in every
+possible position and combination,&mdash;like this:</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 603px;">
+<a name='illus_1' id='illus_1'><img src="images/illus_1.png" width="603" height="99" alt="1.&mdash;CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">1.&mdash;CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>11. In the crevices or ravines themselves, the waters having cleared
+away masses of this loose rubbish, have laid bare whole sides of walls
+of solid brick-work, sometimes even a piece of a human head or limb, or
+a corner of sculptured stone-slab, always of colossal size and bold,
+striking execution. All this tells its own tale and the conclusion is
+self-apparent: that these elevations are not natural hillocks or knolls,
+but artificial mounds, heaps of earth and building materials which have
+been at some time placed there by men, then, collapsing and crumbling to
+rubbish from neglect, have concealed within their ample sides all that
+remains of those ancient structures and works of art, clothed themselves
+in verdure, and deceitfully assumed all the outward signs of natural
+hills.</p>
+
+<p>12. The Arabs never thought of exploring these curious heaps. Mohammedan
+nations, as a rule, take little interest in relics of antiquity;
+moreover they are very superstitious, and, as their religious law
+strictly forbids them to represent the human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> form either in painting or
+sculpture lest such reproduction might lead ignorant and misguided
+people back to the abominations of idolatry, so they look on relics of
+ancient statuary with suspicion amounting to fear and connect them with
+magic and witchcraft. It is, therefore, with awe not devoid of horror
+that they tell travellers that the mounds contain underground passages
+which are haunted not only by wild beasts, but by evil spirits&mdash;for have
+not sometimes strange figures carved in stone been dimly perceived in
+the crevices? Better instructed foreigners have long ago assumed that
+within these mounds must be entombed whatever ruins may be preserved of
+the great cities of yore. Their number formed no objection, for it was
+well known how populous the valley had been in the days of its splendor,
+and that, besides several famous cities, it could boast no end of
+smaller ones, often separated from each other by a distance of only a
+few miles. The long low mounds were rightly supposed to represent the
+ancient walls, and the higher and vaster ones to have been the site of
+the palaces and temples. The Arabs, though utterly ignorant of history
+of any kind, have preserved in their religion some traditions from the
+Bible, and so it happens that out of these wrecks of ages some biblical
+names still survive. Almost everything of which they do not know the
+origin, they ascribe to Nimrod; and the smaller of the two mounds
+opposite Mosul, which mark the spot where Nineveh itself once stood,
+they call "Jonah's Mound," and stoutly believe the mosque which crowns
+it, surrounded by a comparatively<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> prosperous village, to contain the
+tomb of Jonah himself, the prophet who was sent to rebuke and warn the
+wicked city. As the Mohammedans honor the Hebrew prophets, the whole
+mound is sacred in their eyes in consequence.</p>
+
+<p>13. If travellers had for some time been aware of these general facts
+concerning the Mounds, it was many years before their curiosity and
+interest were so far aroused as to make them go to the trouble and
+expense of digging into them, in order to find out what they really
+contained. Until within the last hundred years or so, not only the
+general public, but even highly cultivated men and distinguished
+scholars, under the words "study of antiquity," understood no more than
+the study of so-called "<i>Classical</i> Antiquity," i.e., of the language,
+history and literature of the Greeks and Romans, together with the
+ruins, works of art, and remains of all sorts left by these two nations.
+Their knowledge of other empires and people they took from the Greek and
+Roman historians and writers, without doubting or questioning their
+statements, or&mdash;as we say now&mdash;without subjecting their statements to
+any criticism. Moreover, European students in their absorption in and
+devotion to classical studies, were too apt to follow the example of
+their favorite authors and to class the entire rest of the world, as far
+as it was known in ancient times, under the sweeping and somewhat
+contemptuous by-name of "Barbarians," thus allowing them but a secondary
+importance and an inferior claim to attention.</p>
+
+<p>14. Things began greatly to change towards the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> end of the last century.
+Yet the mounds of Assyria and Babylonia were still suffered to keep
+their secret unrevealed. This want of interest may be in part explained
+by their peculiar nature. They are so different from other ruins. A row
+of massive pillars or of stately columns cut out on the clear blue sky,
+with the desert around or the sea at their feet,&mdash;a broken arch or
+battered tombstone clothed with ivy and hanging creepers, with the blue
+and purple mountains for a background, are striking objects which first
+take the eye by their beauty, then invite inspection by the easy
+approach they offer. But these huge, shapeless heaps! What labor to
+remove even a small portion of them! And when that is done, who knows
+whether their contents will at all repay the effort and expense?</p>
+
+<p>15. The first European whose love of learning was strong enough to make
+him disregard all such doubts and difficulties, was Mr. Rich, an
+Englishman. He was not particularly successful, nor were his researches
+very extensive, being carried on entirely with his private means; yet
+his name will always be honorably remembered, for he was <i>the first</i> who
+went to work with pickaxe and shovel, who hired men to dig, who measured
+and described some of the principal mounds on the Euphrates, thus laying
+down the groundwork of all later and more fruitful explorations in that
+region. It was in 1820 and Mr. Rich was then political resident or
+representative of the East India Company at Baghdad. He also tried the
+larger of the two mounds opposite Mosul, encouraged by the report that,
+a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> short time before he arrived there, a sculpture representing men and
+animals had been disclosed to view. Unfortunately he could not procure
+even a fragment of this treasure, for the people of Mosul, influenced by
+their <i>ulema</i>&mdash;(doctor of the law)&mdash;who had declared these sculptures to
+be "idols of the infidels," had walked across the river from the city in
+a body and piously shattered them to atoms. Mr. Rich had not the good
+luck to come across any such find himself, and after some further
+efforts, left the place rather disheartened. He carried home to England
+the few relics he had been able to obtain. In the absence of more
+important ones, they were very interesting, consisting in fragments of
+inscriptions, of pottery, in engraved stone, bricks and pieces of
+bricks. After his death all these articles were placed in the British
+Museum, where they formed the foundation of the present noble
+Chaldea-Assyrian collection of that great institution. Nothing more was
+undertaken for years, so that it could be said with literal truth that,
+up to 1842, "a case three feet square inclosed all that remained, not
+only of the great city Nineveh, but of Babylon itself!"<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p>
+
+<p>16. The next in the field was Mr. Botta, appointed French Consul at
+Mosul in 1842. He began to dig at the end of the same year, and
+naturally attached himself specially to the larger of the two mounds
+opposite Mosul, named <span class="smcap">Koyunjik</span>, after a small village at its base. This
+mound is the Mespila of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> Xenophon. He began enthusiastically, and worked
+on for over three months, but repeated disappointments were beginning to
+produce discouragement, when one day a peasant from a distant village
+happened to be looking on at the small party of workmen. He was much
+amused on observing that every&mdash;to him utterly worthless&mdash;fragment of
+alabaster, brick or pottery, was carefully picked out of the rubbish,
+most tenderly handled and laid aside, and laughingly remarked that they
+might be better repaid for their trouble, if they would try the mound on
+which his village was built, for that lots of such rubbish had kept
+continually turning up, when they were digging the foundations of their
+houses.</p>
+
+<p>17. Mr. Botta had by this time fallen into a rather hopeless mood; yet
+he did not dare to neglect the hint, and sent a few men to the mound
+which had been pointed out to him, and which, as well as the village on
+the top of it, bore the name of <span class="smcap">Khorsabad</span>. His agent began operations
+from the top. A well was sunk into the mound, and very soon brought the
+workmen to the top of a wall, which, on further digging, was found to be
+lined along its base with sculptured slabs of some soft substance much
+like gypsum or limestone. This discovery quickly brought Mr. Botta to
+the spot, in a fever of excitement. He now took the direction of the
+works himself, had a trench dug from the outside straight into the
+mound, wide and deep, towards the place already laid open from above.
+What was his astonishment on finding that he had entered a hall entirely
+lined all round, except where interruptions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> indicated the place of
+doorways leading into other rooms, with sculptured slabs similar to the
+one first discovered, and representing scenes of battles, sieges and the
+like. He walked as in a dream. It was a new and wonderful world suddenly
+opened. For these sculptures evidently recorded the deeds of the
+builder, some powerful conqueror and king. And those long and close
+lines engraved in the stone, all along the slabs, in the same peculiar
+character as the short inscriptions on the bricks that lay scattered on
+the plain&mdash;they must surely contain the text to these sculptured
+illustrations. But who is to read them? They are not like any known
+writing in the world and may remain a sealed book forever. Who, then,
+was the builder? To what age belong these structures? Which of the wars
+we read about are here portrayed? None of these questions, which must
+have strangely agitated him, could Mr. Botta have answered at the time.
+But not the less to him remains the glory of having, first of living
+men, entered the palace of an Assyrian king.</p>
+
+<p>18. Mr. Botta henceforth devoted himself exclusively to the mound of
+Khorsabad. His discovery created an immense sensation in Europe.
+Scholarly indifference was not proof against so unlooked-for a shock;
+the revulsion was complete and the spirit of research and enterprise was
+effectually aroused, not to slumber again. The French consul was
+supplied by his government with ample means to carry on excavations on a
+large scale. If the first success may be considered as merely a great
+piece of good fortune, the following ones were certainly due to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+intelligent, untiring labor and ingenuous scholarship. We see the
+results in Botta's voluminous work "Monuments de Ninive"<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> and in the
+fine Assyrian collection of the Louvre, in the first room of which is
+placed, as is but just, the portrait of the man to whose efforts and
+devotion it is due.</p>
+
+<p>19. The great English investigator Layard, then a young and enthusiastic
+scholar on his Eastern travels, passing through Mosul in 1842, found Mr.
+Botta engaged on his first and unpromising attempts at Koyunjik, and
+subsequently wrote to him from Constantinople exhorting him to persist
+and not give up his hopes of success. He was one of the first to hear of
+the astounding news from Khorsabad, and immediately determined to carry
+out a long-cherished project of his own, that of exploring a large mound
+known among the Arabs under the name of <span class="smcap">Nimrud</span>, and situated somewhat
+lower on the Tigris, near that river's junction with one of its chief
+tributaries, the Zab. The difficulty lay in procuring the necessary
+funds. Neither the trustees of the British Museum nor the English
+Government were at first willing to incur such considerable expense on
+what was still looked upon as very uncertain chances. It was a private
+gentleman, Sir Stratford Canning, then English minister at
+Constantinople, who generously came forward, and announced himself
+willing to meet the outlay within certain limits, while authorities at
+home were to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> be solicited and worked upon. So Mr. Layard was enabled to
+begin operations on the mound which he had specially selected for
+himself in the autumn of 1845, the year after that in which the building
+of Khorsabad was finally laid open by Botta. The results of his
+expedition were so startlingly vast and important, and the particulars
+of his work on the Assyrian plains are so interesting and picturesque,
+that they will furnish ample materials for a separate chapter.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 165px;">
+<img src="images/deco039.png" width="165" height="64" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Layard's "Discoveries at Nineveh," Introduction.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> In five huge folio volumes, one of text, two of
+inscriptions, and two of illustrations. The title shows that Botta
+erroneously imagined the ruins he had discovered to be those of Nineveh
+itself.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 365px;">
+<img src="images/deco040.png" width="365" height="80" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class='center'><a name="Intro_II" id="Intro_II"></a>II.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>LAYARD AND HIS WORK.</p>
+
+
+<p>1. In the first part of November, 1845, we find the enthusiastic and
+enterprising young scholar on the scene of his future exertions and
+triumphs. His first night in the wilderness, in a ruinous Arab village
+amidst the smaller mounds of Nimrud, is vividly described by him:&mdash;"I
+slept little during the night. The hovel in which we had taken shelter,
+and its inmates, did not invite slumber; but such scenes and companions
+were not new to me; they could have been forgotten, had my brain been
+less excited. Hopes, long-cherished, were now to be realized, or were to
+end in disappointment. Visions of palaces underground, of gigantic
+monsters, of sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions floated before
+me. After forming plan after plan for removing the earth, and
+extricating these treasures, I fancied myself wandering in a maze of
+chambers from which I could find no outlet. Then again, all was
+reburied, and I was standing on the grass-covered mound."</p>
+
+<p>2. Although not doomed to disappointment in the end, these hopes were
+yet to be thwarted in many ways before the visions of that night became<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
+reality. For many and various were the difficulties which Layard had to
+contend with during the following months as well as during his second
+expedition in 1848. The material hardships of perpetual camping out in
+an uncongenial climate, without any of the simplest conveniences of
+life, and the fevers and sickness repeatedly brought on by exposure to
+winter rains and summer heat, should perhaps be counted among the least
+of them, for they had their compensations. Not so the ignorant and
+ill-natured opposition, open or covert, of the Turkish authorities. That
+was an evil to which no amount of philosophy could ever fully reconcile
+him. His experiences in that line form an amusing collection. Luckily,
+the first was also the worst. The pasha whom he found installed at Mosul
+was, in appearance and temper, more like an ogre than a man. He was the
+terror of the country. His cruelty and rapacity knew no bounds. When he
+sent his tax-collectors on their dreaded round, he used to dismiss them
+with this short and pithy instruction: "Go, destroy, eat!" (i.e.
+"plunder"), and for his own profit had revived several kinds of
+contributions which had been suffered to fall into disuse, especially
+one called "tooth-money,"&mdash;"a compensation in money, levied upon all
+villages in which a man of such rank is entertained, for the wear and
+tear of his teeth in masticating the food he condescends to receive from
+the inhabitants."</p>
+
+<p>3. The letters with which Layard was provided secured him a gracious
+reception from this amiable personage, who allowed him to begin
+operations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> on the great mound of Nimrud with the party of Arab workmen
+whom he had hired for the purpose. Some time after, it came to the
+Pasha's knowledge that a few fragments of gold leaf had been found in
+the rubbish and he even procured a small particle as sample. He
+immediately concluded, as the Arab chief had done, that the English
+traveller was digging for hidden treasure&mdash;an object far more
+intelligible to them than that of disinterring and carrying home a
+quantity of old broken stones. This incident, by arousing the great
+man's rapacity, might have caused him to put a stop to all further
+search, had not Layard, who well knew that treasure of this kind was not
+likely to be plentiful in the ruins, immediately proposed that his
+Excellency should keep an agent at the mound, to take charge of all the
+precious metals which might be discovered there in the course of the
+excavations. The Pasha raised no objections at the moment, but a few
+days later announced to Layard that, to his great regret, he felt it his
+duty to forbid the continuation of the work, since he had just learned
+that the diggers were disturbing a Mussulman burying-ground. As the
+tombs of true believers are held very sacred and inviolable by
+Mohammedans, this would have been a fatal obstacle, had not one of the
+Pasha's own officers confidentially disclosed to Layard that the tombs
+were <i>sham ones</i>, that he and his men had been secretly employed to
+fabricate them, and for two nights had been bringing stones for the
+purpose from the surrounding villages. "We have destroyed more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> tombs of
+true believers," said the Aga,&mdash;(officer)&mdash;"in making sham ones, than
+ever you could have defiled. We have killed our horses and ourselves in
+carrying those accursed stones." Fortunately the Pasha, whose misdeeds
+could not be tolerated even by a Turkish government, was recalled about
+Christmas, and succeeded by an official of an entirely different stamp,
+a man whose reputation for justice and mildness had preceded him, and
+whose arrival was accordingly greeted with public rejoicings. Operations
+at the mound now proceeded for some time rapidly and successfully. But
+this very success at one time raised new difficulties for our explorers.</p>
+
+<p>4. One day, as Layard was returning to the mound from an excursion, he
+was met on the way by two Arabs who had ridden out to meet him at full
+speed, and from a distance shouted to him in the wildest excitement:
+"Hasten, O Bey! hasten to the diggers! for they have found Nimrod
+himself. It is wonderful, but it is true! we have seen him with our
+eyes. There is no God but God!" Greatly puzzled, he hurried on and,
+descending into the trench, found that the workmen had uncovered a
+gigantic head, the body to which was still imbedded in earth and
+rubbish. This head, beautifully sculptured in the alabaster furnished by
+the neighboring hills, surpassed in height the tallest man present. The
+great shapely features, in their majestic repose, seemed to guard some
+mighty secret and to defy the bustling curiosity of those who gazed on
+them in wonder and fear. "One of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> the workmen, on catching the first
+glimpse of the monster, had thrown down his basket and run off toward
+Mossul as fast as his legs could carry him."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 606px;">
+<a id='illus_2' name='illus_2'><img src="images/illus_2.png" width="606" height="460" alt="2.&mdash;TEMPLE OF &Ecirc;A AT ERIDHU (ABU-SHAHREIN). BACK-STAIRS.
+(Hommel.)" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">2.&mdash;TEMPLE OF &Ecirc;A AT ERIDHU (ABU-SHAHREIN). BACK-STAIRS.</span>
+<p class='center'>(Hommel.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>5. The Arabs came in crowds from the surrounding encampments; they could
+scarcely be persuaded that the image was of stone, and contended that it
+was not the work of men's hands, but of infidel giants of olden times.
+The commotion soon spread to Mosul, where the terrified workman,
+"entering breathless into the bazars,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> announced to every one he met
+that Nimrod had appeared." The authorities of the town were alarmed, put
+their heads together and decided that such idolatrous proceedings were
+an outrage to religion. The consequence was that Layard was requested by
+his friend Ismail-Pasha to suspend operations for awhile, until the
+excitement should have subsided, a request with which he thought it
+wisest to comply without remonstrance, lest the people of Mosul might
+come out in force and deal with his precious find as they had done with
+the sculptured figure at Koyunjik in Rich's time. The alarm, however,
+did not last long. Both Arabs and Turks soon became familiar with the
+strange creations which kept emerging out of the earth, and learned to
+discuss them with great calm and gravity. The colossal bulls and lions
+with wings and human heads, of which several pairs were discovered, some
+of them in a state of perfect preservation, were especially the objects
+of wonder and conjectures, which generally ended in a curse "on all
+infidels and their works," the conclusion arrived at being that "the
+idols" were to be sent to England, to form gateways to the palace of the
+Queen. And when some of these giants, now in the British Museum, were
+actually removed, with infinite pains and labor, to be dragged down to
+the Tigris, and floated down the river on rafts, there was no end to the
+astonishment of Layard's simple friends. On one such occasion an Arab
+Sheikh, or chieftain, whose tribe had engaged to assist in moving one of
+the winged bulls, opened his heart to him. "In the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> name of the Most
+High," said he, "tell me, O Bey, what you are going to do with these
+stones. So many thousands of purses spent on such things! Can it be, as
+you say, that your people learn wisdom from them? or is it as his
+reverence the Cadi declares, that they are to go to the palace of your
+Queen, who, with the rest of the unbelievers, worships these idols? As
+for wisdom, these figures will not teach you to make any better knives,
+or scissors, or chintzes, and it is in the making of these things that
+the English show their wisdom."</p>
+
+<p>6. Such was the view very generally taken of Layard's work by both Turks
+and Arabs, from the Pasha down to the humblest digger in his band of
+laborers, and he seldom felt called upon to play the missionary of
+science, knowing as he did that all such efforts would be but wasted
+breath. This want of intellectual sympathy did not prevent the best
+understanding from existing between himself and these rangers of the
+desert. The primitive life which he led amongst them for so many months,
+the kindly hospitality which he invariably experienced at their hands
+during the excursions made and the visits he paid to different Bedouin
+tribes in the intervals of recreation which he was compelled to allow
+himself from time to time&mdash;these are among the most pleasurable memories
+of those wonderful, dreamlike years. He lingers on them lovingly and
+retraces them through many a page of both his books<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a>&mdash;pages which, for
+their picturesque vivid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>ness, must be perused with delight even by such
+as are but slightly interested in the discovery of buried palaces and
+winged bulls. One longs to have been with him through some of those
+peerless evenings when, after a long day's work, he sat before his cabin
+in the cool starlight, watching the dances with which those
+indefatigable Arabs, men and women, solaced themselves deep into the
+night, while the encampment was lively with the hum of voices, and the
+fires lit to prepare the simple meal. One longs to have shared in some
+of those brisk rides across plains so thickly enamelled with flowers,
+that it seemed a patchwork of many colors, and "the dogs, as they
+returned from hunting, issued from the long grass dyed red, yellow, or
+blue, according to the flowers through which they had last forced their
+way,"&mdash;the joy of the Arab's soul, which made the chief, Layard's
+friend, continually exclaim, "rioting in the luxuriant herbage and
+scented air, as his mare waded through the flowers:&mdash;'What delight has
+God given us equal to this? It is the only thing worth living for. What
+do the dwellers in cities know of true happiness? They never have seen
+grass or flowers! May God have pity on them!'" How glorious to watch the
+face of the desert changing its colors almost from day to day, white
+succeeding to pale straw color, red to white, blue to red, lilac to
+blue, and bright gold to that, according to the flowers with which it
+decked itself! Out of sight stretches the gorgeous carpet, dotted with
+the black camel's-hair tents of the Arabs, enlivened with flocks of
+sheep and camels,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> and whole studs of horses of noble breed which are
+brought out from Mosul and left to graze at liberty, in the days of
+healthy breezes and fragrant pastures.</p>
+
+<p>7. So much for spring. A beautiful, a perfect season, but unfortunately
+as brief as it is lovely, and too soon succeeded by the terrible heat
+and long drought of summer, which sometimes set in so suddenly as hardly
+to give the few villagers time to gather in their crops. Chaldea or
+Lower Mesopotamia is in this respect even worse off than the higher
+plains of Assyria. A temperature of 120&deg; in the shade is no unusual
+occurrence in Baghdad; true, it can be reduced to 100&deg; in the cellars of
+the houses by carefully excluding the faintest ray of light, and it is
+there that the inhabitants mostly spend their days in summer. The
+oppression is such that Europeans are entirely unmanned and unfitted for
+any kind of activity. "Camels sicken, and birds are so distressed by the
+high temperature, that they sit in the date-trees about Baghdad, with
+their mouths open, panting for fresh air."<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a></p>
+
+<p>8. But the most frightful feature of a Mesopotamian summer is the
+frequent and violent sand-storms, during which travellers, in addition
+to all the dangers offered by snow-storms&mdash;being buried alive and losing
+their way&mdash;are exposed to that of suffocation not only from the
+furnace-like heat of the desert-wind, but from the impalpable sand,
+which is whirled and driven before it, and fills the eyes, mouth<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> and
+nostrils of horse and rider. The three miles' ride from Layard's
+encampment to the mound of Nimrud must have been something more than
+pleasant morning exercise in such a season, and though the deep trenches
+and wells afforded a comparatively cool and delightful retreat, he soon
+found that fever was the price to be paid for the indulgence, and was
+repeatedly laid up with it. "The verdure of the plain," he says in one
+place, "had perished almost in a day. Hot winds, coming from the desert,
+had burnt up and carried away the shrubs; flights of locusts, darkening
+the air, had destroyed the few patches of cultivation, and had completed
+the havoc commenced by the heat of the sun.... Violent whirlwinds
+occasionally swept over the face of the country. They could be seen as
+they advanced from the desert, carrying along with them clouds of dust
+and sand. Almost utter darkness prevailed during their passage, which
+lasted generally about an hour, and nothing could resist their fury. On
+returning home one afternoon after a tempest of the kind, I found no
+traces of my dwellings; they had been completely carried away. Ponderous
+wooden frame-works had been borne over the bank and hurled some hundred
+yards distant; the tents had disappeared, and my furniture was scattered
+over the plain."</p>
+
+<p>9. Fortunately it would not require much labor to restore the wooden
+frames to their proper place and reconstruct the reed-plaited,
+mud-plastered walls as well as the roof composed of reeds and
+boughs&mdash;such being the sumptuous residences of which Lay<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>ard shared the
+largest with various domestic animals, from whose immediate
+companionship he was saved by a thin partition, the other hovels being
+devoted to the wives, children and poultry of his host, to his own
+servants and different household uses. But the time came when not even
+this accommodation, poor as it was, could be enjoyed with any degree of
+comfort. When the summer heat set in in earnest, the huts became
+uninhabitable from their closeness and the vermin with which they
+swarmed, while a canvas tent, though far preferable in the way of
+airiness and cleanliness, did not afford sufficient shelter.</p>
+
+<p>10. "In this dilemma," says Layard, "I ordered a recess to be cut into
+the bank of the river where it rose perpendicularly from the water's
+edge. By screening the front with reeds and boughs of trees, and
+covering the whole with similar materials, a small room was formed. I
+was much troubled, however, with scorpions and other reptiles, which
+issued from the earth forming the walls of my apartment; and later in
+the summer by the gnats and sandflies which hovered on a calm night over
+the river." It is difficult to decide between the respective merits of
+this novel summer retreat and of the winter dwelling, ambitiously
+constructed of mud bricks dried in the sun, and roofed with solid wooden
+beams. This imposing residence, in which Layard spent the last months of
+his first winter in Assyria, would have been sufficient protection
+against wind and weather, after it had been duly coated with mud.
+Unfortunately a heavy shower fell before it was quite completed, and so
+saturated the bricks<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> that they did not dry again before the following
+spring. "The consequence was," he pleasantly remarks, "that the only
+verdure on which my eyes were permitted to feast before my return to
+Europe, was furnished by my own property&mdash;the walls in the interior of
+the rooms being continually clothed with a crop of grass."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 659px;">
+<a id='illus_3' name='illus_3'><img src="images/illus_3.png" width="659" height="376" alt="3.&mdash;VIEW OF EUPHRATES NEAR THE RUINS OF BABYLON.
+(Babelon.)" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">3.&mdash;VIEW OF EUPHRATES NEAR THE RUINS OF BABYLON.</span>
+<p class='center'>(Babelon.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>11. These few indications are sufficient to give a tolerably clear idea
+of what might be called "Pleasures and hardships of an explorer's life
+in the desert." As for the work itself, it is simple enough in the
+telling, although it must have been extremely wearisome and laborious in
+the performance. The simplest way to get at the contents of a mound,
+would be to remove all the earth and rubbish by carting it away,&mdash;a
+piece of work which our searchers might no doubt have accomplished with
+great facility, had they had at their disposal a few scores of thousands
+of slaves and captives, as had the ancient kings who built the huge
+constructions the ruins of which had now to be disinterred. With a
+hundred or two of hired workmen and very limited funds, the case was
+slightly different. The task really amounted to this: to achieve the
+greatest possible results at the least possible expense of labor and
+time, and this is how such excavations are carried out on a plan
+uniformly followed everywhere as the most practical and direct:</p>
+
+<p>12. Trenches, more or less wide, are conducted from different sides
+towards the centre of the mound. This is obviously the surest and
+shortest way to arrive at whatever remains of walls may be im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>bedded in
+it. But even this preliminary operation has to be carried out with some
+judgment and discernment. It is known that the Chaldeans and Assyrians
+constructed their palaces and temples not upon the level, natural soil,
+but upon an artificial platform of brick and earth, at least thirty feet
+high. This platform was faced on all sides with a strong wall of solid
+burned brick, often moreover cased with stone. A trench dug straight
+from the plain into the lower part of the mound would consequently be
+wasted labor, since it could never bring to anything but that same blind
+wall, behind which there is only the solid mass of the platform. Digging
+therefore begins in the slope of the mound, at a height corresponding to
+the supposed height of the platform, and is carried on straight across
+its surface until a wall is reached,&mdash;a wall belonging to one of the
+palaces or temples. This wall has then to be followed, till a break in
+it is found, indicating an entrance or doorway.<a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a> The burrowing process
+becomes more and more complicated, and sometimes dangerous. Shafts have
+to be sunk from above at frequent intervals to introduce air and light
+into the long and narrow corridor; the sides and vault have to be
+propped by beams to prevent the soft earthy mass from falling in and
+crushing the diggers. Every shovelful of earth cleared away is removed
+in baskets which are passed from hand to hand till they are emptied
+outside the trench, or else lowered empty and sent up full, through the
+shafts by means of ropes and pulleys, to be emptied on the top. When a
+doorway is reached, it is cleared all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> through the thickness of the
+wall, which is very great; then a similar tunnel is conducted all along
+the inside of the wall, the greatest care being needed not to damage the
+sculptures which generally line it, and which, as it is, are more or
+less injured and cracked, their upper parts sometimes entirely destroyed
+by the action of fire. When the tunnel has been carried along the four
+sides, every doorway or portal carefully noted and cleared, it is seen
+from the measurements,&mdash;especially the width&mdash;whether the space explored
+be an inner court, a hall or a chamber. If the latter, it is sometimes
+entirely cleared from above, when the rubbish frequently yields valuable
+finds in the shape of various small articles. One such chamber,
+uncovered by Layard, at Koyunjik, proved a perfect mine of treasures.
+The most curious relics were brought to light in it: quantities of studs
+and small rosettes in mother-of-pearl, ivory and metal, (such as were
+used to ornament the harness of the war-horses), bowls, cups and dishes
+of bronze,<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a> besides caldrons, shields and other items of armor, even
+glass bowls, lastly fragments of a royal throne&mdash;possibly the very
+throne on which King Sennacherib sat to give audience or pronounce
+judgments, for the palace at Koyunjik where these objects were found was
+built by that monarch so long familiar to us only from the Bible, and
+the sculptures and inscriptions which cover its walls are the annals of
+his conquests abroad and his rule at home.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 659px;">
+<a id='illus_4' name='illus_4'><img src="images/illus_4.png" width="659" height="439" alt="4.&mdash;MOUND OF BABIL. (RUINS OF BABYLON.) (Oppert.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">4.&mdash;MOUND OF BABIL. (RUINS OF BABYLON.)</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Oppert.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A description of the removal of the colossal bulls and lions which were
+shipped to England and now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> are safely housed in the British Museum,
+ought by rights to form the close of a chapter devoted to "Layard and
+his work." But the reference must suffice; the vivid and entertaining
+narrative should be read in the original, as the passages are too long
+for transcription, and would be marred by quoting.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 437px;">
+<a id='illus_5' name='illus_5'><img src="images/illus_5.png" width="437" height="514" alt="5.&mdash;BRONZE DISH." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">5.&mdash;BRONZE DISH.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> "Nineveh and its Remains," and "Discoveries in Nineveh and
+Babylon."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Rawlinson's "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World,"
+Vol. I., Chap. II.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> See Figure <a href="#illus_15">15</a>, on p. 53.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> See Figures <a href="#illus_5">5</a>, <a href="#illus_6">6</a>, and <a href="#illus_7">7</a>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/deco057.png" width="370" height="85" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class='center'><a name="Intro_III" id="Intro_III"></a>III.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>THE RUINS.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"And they said to one another, Go to, let us make brick, and
+burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and slime
+for mortar."&mdash;<i>Gen.</i> xi. 3. </p></div>
+
+
+<p>1. It is a principle, long ago laid down and universally recognized,
+that every country <i>makes</i> its own people. That is, the mode of life and
+the intellectual culture of a people are shaped by the characteristic
+features of the land in which it dwells; or, in other words, men can
+live only in a manner suited to the peculiarities of their native
+country. Men settled along the sea-shore will lead a different life,
+will develop different qualities of mind and body from the owners of
+vast inland pasture-grounds or the holders of rugged mountain
+fastnesses. They will all dress differently, eat different food, follow
+different pursuits. Their very dwellings and public buildings will
+present an entirely different aspect, according to the material which
+they will have at hand in the greatest abundance, be it stone, wood or
+any other substance suitable for the purpose. Thus every country will
+create its own peculiar style of art, determined chiefly by its own
+natural productions. On these, architecture, the art of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> builder,
+will be even more dependent than any other.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 461px;">
+<a id='illus_6' name='illus_6'><img src="images/illus_6.png" width="461" height="518" alt="6.&mdash;BRONZE DISH (RUG-PATTERN)." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">6.&mdash;BRONZE DISH (RUG-PATTERN).</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>2. It would seem as though Chaldea or Lower Mesopotamia, regarded from
+this point of view, could never have originated any architecture at all,
+for it is, at first sight, absolutely deficient in building materials of
+any sort. The whole land is alluvial, that is, formed, gradually,
+through thousands of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> years, of the rich mud deposited by the two
+rivers, as they spread into vast marshy flats towards the end of their
+course. Such soil, when hardened into sufficient consistency, is the
+finest of all for cultivation, and a greater source of wealth than mines
+of the most precious ore; but it bears no trees and contains no stone.
+The people who were first tempted to settle in the lowlands towards the
+Persian Gulf by the extraordinary fertility of that region, found
+nothing at all available to construct their simple dwellings&mdash;nothing
+but reeds of enormous size, which grew there, as they do now, in the
+greatest profusion. These reeds "cover the marshes in the summer-time,
+rising often to the height of fourteen or fifteen feet. The Arabs of the
+marsh region form their houses of this material, binding the stems
+together and bending them into arches, to make the skeletons of their
+buildings; while, to form the walls, they stretch across from arch to
+arch mats made of the leaves."<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 608px;">
+<a id='illus_7' name='illus_7'><img src="images/illus_7.png" width="608" height="382" alt="7.&mdash;SECTION OF BRONZE DISH." title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">7.&mdash;SECTION OF BRONZE DISH.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>3. There can be no doubt that of such habitations consisted the villages
+and towns of those first settlers. They gave quite sufficient shelter in
+the very mild winters of that region, and, when coated with a layer of
+mud which soon dried and hardened in the sun, could exclude even the
+violent rains of that season. But they were in no way fitted for more
+ambitious and dignified purposes. Neither the palaces of the kings nor
+the temples of the gods could be constructed out of bent reeds.
+Something more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> durable must be found, some material that would lend
+itself to constructions of any size or shape. The mud coating of the
+cabins naturally suggested such a material. Could not this same mud or
+clay, of which an inexhaustible supply was always on hand, be moulded
+into cakes of even size, and after being left to dry in the sun, be
+piled into walls of the required height and thickness? And so men began
+to make bricks. It was found that the clay gained much in consistency
+when mixed with finely chopped straw&mdash;another article of which the
+country, abounding in wheat and other grains, yielded unlimited
+quantities. But even with this improvement the sun-dried bricks could
+not withstand the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> continued action of many rainy seasons, or many
+torrid summers, but had a tendency to crumble away when parched too dry,
+or to soak and dissolve back into mud, when too long exposed to rain.
+All these defects were removed by the simple expedient of baking the
+bricks in kilns or ovens, a process which gives them the hardness and
+solidity of stone. But as the cost of kiln-dried bricks is naturally
+very much greater than that of the original crude article, so the latter
+continued to be used in far greater quantities; the walls were made
+entirely of them and only protected by an outward casing of the hard
+baked bricks. These being so much more expensive, and calculated to last
+forever, great care was bestowed on their preparation; the best clay was
+selected and they were stamped with the names and titles of the king by
+whose order the palace or temple was built, for which they were to be
+used. This has been of great service in identifying the various ruins
+and assigning them dates, at least approximately. As is to be expected,
+there is a notable difference in the specimens of different periods.
+While on some bricks bearing the name of a king who lived about 3000
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span> the inscription is uncouth and scarcely legible, and even their
+shape is rude and the material very inferior, those of the later
+Babylonian period (600 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>) are handsome and neatly made. As to the
+quality, all explorers agree in saying it is fully equal to that of the
+best modern English bricks. The excellence of these bricks for building
+purposes is a fact so well known that for now two thousand years&mdash;ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+since the destruction of Babylon&mdash;its walls, temples and palaces have
+been used as quarries for the construction of cities and villages. The
+little town of <span class="smcap">Hillah</span>, situated nearest to the site of the ancient
+capital, is built almost entirely with bricks from one single mound,
+that of <span class="smcap">Kasr</span>&mdash;once the gorgeous and far-famed palace of Nebuchadnezzar,
+whose name and titles thus grace the walls of the most lowly Arab and
+Turkish dwellings. All the other mounds are similarly used, and so far
+is the valuable mine from being exhausted, that it furnishes forth, to
+this day, a brisk and flourishing trade. While a party of workmen is
+continually employed in digging for the available bricks, another is
+busy conveying them to Hillah; there they are shipped on the Euphrates
+and carried to any place where building materials are in demand, often
+even loaded on donkeys at this or that landing-place and sent miles away
+inland; some are taken as far as Baghdad, where they have been used for
+ages. The same thing is done wherever there are mounds and ruins. Both
+Layard and his successors had to allow their Arab workmen to build their
+own temporary houses out of ancient bricks, only watching them narrowly,
+lest they should break some valuable relic in the process or use some of
+the handsomest and best-preserved specimens.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 667px;">
+<a id='illus_8' name='illus_8'><img src="images/illus_8.png" width="667" height="399" alt="8.&mdash;VIEW OF NEBBI YUNUS" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">8.&mdash;VIEW OF NEBBI YUNUS</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>4. No construction of bricks, either crude or kiln-dried, could have
+sufficient solidity without the help of some kind of cement, to make
+them adhere firmly together. This also the lowlands of Chaldea and
+Babylonia yield in sufficient quantity and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> various qualities. While
+in the early structures a kind of sticky red clay or loam is used, mixed
+with chopped straw, bitumen or pitch is substituted at a later period,
+which substance, being applied hot, adheres so firmly to the bricks,
+that pieces of these are broken off when an attempt is made to procure a
+fragment of the cement. This valuable article was brought down by water
+from <span class="smcap">Is</span> on the Euphrates (now called <span class="smcap">Hit</span>), where abundant springs of
+bitumen are to this day in activity. Calcareous earth&mdash;i.e., earth
+strongly mixed with lime&mdash;being very plentiful to the west of the lower
+Euphrates, towards the Arabian frontier, the Babylonians of the latest
+times learned to make of it a white mortar which, for lightness and
+strength, has never been surpassed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 440px;">
+<a id='illus_9' name='illus_9'><img src="images/illus_9.png" width="440" height="669" alt="9.&mdash;BUILDING IN BAKED BRICK (MODERN). (Perrot and
+Chipiez.)" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">9.&mdash;BUILDING IN BAKED BRICK (MODERN).</span>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>5. All the essential materials for plain but durable constructions being
+thus procurable on the spot or in the immediate neighborhood, the next
+important point was the selection of proper sites for raising these
+constructions, which were to serve purposes of defence as well as of
+worship and royal majesty. A rocky eminence, inaccessible on one or
+several sides, or at least a hill, a knoll somewhat elevated above the
+surrounding plain, have usually been chosen wherever such existed. But
+this was not the case in Chaldea. There, as far as eye can see, not the
+slightest undulation breaks the dead flatness of the land. Yet there,
+more than anywhere else, an elevated position was desirable, if only as
+a protection from the unhealthy exhalations of a vast tract of swamps,
+and from the intolerable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> nuisance of swarms of aggressive and venomous
+insects, which infest the entire river region during the long summer
+season. Safety from the attacks of the numerous roaming tribes which
+ranged the country in every direction before it was definitely settled
+and organized, was also not among the last considerations. So, what
+nature had refused, the cunning and labor of man had to supply.
+Artificial hills or platforms were constructed, of enormous size and
+great height&mdash;from thirty to fifty, even sixty feet, and on their flat
+summits the buildings were raised. These platforms sometimes supported
+only one palace, sometimes, as in the case of the immense mounds of
+Koyunjik and Nimrud in Assyria, their surface had room for several,
+built by successive kings. Of course such huge piles could not be
+entirely executed in solid masonry, even of crude bricks. These were
+generally mixed with earth and rubbish of all kinds, in more or less
+regular, alternate layers, the bricks being laid in clay. But the
+outward facing was in all cases of baked brick. The platform of the
+principal mound which marks the place of ancient <span class="smcap">Ur</span>, (now called
+<span class="smcap">Mugheir</span>),<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a> is faced with a wall ten feet thick, of red kiln-dried
+bricks, cemented with bitumen. In Assyria, where stone was not scarce,
+the sides of the platform were even more frequently "protected by
+massive stone-masonry, carried perpendicularly from the natural ground
+to a height somewhat exceeding that of the platform, and either made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+plain at the top, or else crowned into stone battlements cut into
+gradines."<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 657px;">
+<a id='illus_10' name='illus_10'><img src="images/illus_10.png" width="657" height="410" alt="10.&mdash;MOUND OF NIMRUD. (Hommel.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">10.&mdash;MOUND OF NIMRUD.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Hommel.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>6. Some mounds are considerably higher than the others and of a peculiar
+shape, almost like a pyramid, that is, ending in a point from which it
+slopes down rapidly on all sides. Such is the pyramidal mound of Nimrud,
+which Layard describes as being so striking and picturesque an object as
+you approach the ruins from any point of the plain.<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a> Such also is the
+still more picturesque mound of <span class="smcap">Borsip</span> (now <span class="smcap">Birs Nimrud</span>) near Babylon,
+the larg<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>est of this kind.<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a> These mounds are the remains of peculiar
+constructions, called <span class="smcap">Ziggurats</span>, composed of several platforms piled one
+on the other, each square in shape and somewhat smaller than the
+preceding one; the topmost platform supported a temple or sanctuary,
+which by these means was raised far above the dwellings of men, a
+constant reminder not less eloquent than the exhortation in some of our
+religious services: "Lift up your hearts!" Of these heavenward pointing
+towers, which were also used as observatories by the Chaldeans, great
+lovers of the starry heavens, that of Borsip, once composed of seven
+stages, is the loftiest; it measures over 150 feet in perpendicular
+height.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 499px;">
+<a id='illus_11' name='illus_11'><img src="images/illus_11.png" width="499" height="443" alt="11.&mdash;MOUND OF MUGHEIR (ANCIENT UR)." title="" />
+<span class="caption">11.&mdash;MOUND OF MUGHEIR (ANCIENT UR).</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>7. It is evident that these artificial hills could have been erected
+only at an incredible cost of labor. The careful measurements which have
+been taken of several of the principal mounds have enabled explorers to
+make an accurate calculation of the exact amount of labor employed on
+each. The result is startling, even though one is prepared for something
+enormous. The great mound of Koyunjik&mdash;which represents the palaces of
+Nineveh itself&mdash;covers an area of one hundred acres, and reaches an
+elevation of 95 feet at its highest point. To heap up such a pile of
+brick and earth "would require the united exertions of 10,000 men for
+twelve years, or of 20,000 men for six years."<a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a> Then only could the
+construction of the palaces begin. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> mound of Nebbi-Yunus, which has
+not yet been excavated, covers an area of forty acres and is loftier and
+steeper than its neighbor: "its erection would have given full
+employment to 10,000 men for the space of five years and a half."
+Clearly, none but conquering monarchs, who yearly took thousands of
+prisoners in battles and drove home into captivity a part of the
+population of every country they subdued, could have employed such hosts
+of workmen on their buildings&mdash;not once, but continually, for it seems
+to have been a point of honor with the Assyrian kings that each should
+build a new palace for himself.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 399px;">
+<a id='illus_12' name='illus_12'><img src="images/illus_12.png" width="399" height="358" alt="12.&mdash;TERRACE WALL AT KHORSABAD. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" /></a>
+<span class="caption">12.&mdash;TERRACE WALL AT KHORSABAD.</span>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>8. When one considers the character of the land along the upper course
+of the Tigris, where the Assyrians dwelt, one cannot help wondering why
+they went on building mounds and using nothing but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> bricks in their
+constructions. There is no reason for it in the nature of the country.
+The cities of Assyria&mdash;<span class="smcap">Nineveh</span> (Koyunjik), <span class="smcap">Kalah</span> (Nimrud), <span class="smcap">Arbela</span>,
+<span class="smcap">Dur-Sharrukin</span> (Khorsabad) were built in the midst of a hilly region
+abounding in many varieties of stone, from soft limestone to hard
+basalt; some of them actually stood on rocky ground, their moats being
+in part cut through the rock. Had they wanted stone of better quality,
+they had only to get it from the Zagros range of mountains, which skirts
+all Assyria to the East, separating it from Media. Yet they never
+availed themselves of these resources, which must have led to great
+improvements in their architecture, and almost entirely reserved the use
+of stone for ornamental purposes. This would tend to show, at all
+events, that the Assyrians were not distinguished for inventive genius.
+They had wandered northward from the lowlands, where they had dwelt for
+centuries as a portion of the Chaldean nation. When they separated from
+it and went off to found cities for themselves, they took with them
+certain arts and tricks of handicraft learned in the old home, and never
+thought of making any change in them. It does not even seem to have
+occurred to them that by selecting a natural rocky elevation for their
+buildings they would avoid the necessity of an artificial platform and
+save vast amount of labor and time.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 632px;">
+<a id='illus_13' name='illus_13'><img src="images/illus_13.png" width="632" height="385" alt="13.&mdash;RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS. (ANCIENT.) (Kaulen.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">13.&mdash;RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS. (ANCIENT.)</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Kaulen.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 620px;">
+<a id='illus_14' name='illus_14'><img src="images/illus_14.png" width="620" height="368" alt="14.&mdash;RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS. (MODERN.) (Kaulen.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">14.&mdash;RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS. (MODERN.)</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Kaulen.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>9. That they did put stone to one practical use&mdash;the outward casing of
+their walls and platforms&mdash;we have already seen. The blocks must have
+been cut in the Zagros mountains and brought by water<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>&mdash;rafted down the
+Zab, or some other of the rivers which, springing from those mountains,
+flow into the Tigris. The process is represented with perfect clearness
+on some of the sculptures. That reproduced in Fig. <a href="#illus_13">13</a> is of great
+interest, as showing a peculiar mode of transport,&mdash;rafts floated on
+inflated skins&mdash;which is at the present moment in as general and
+constant use as it appears to have been in the same parts three thousand
+years ago and probably more. When Layard wished to send off the bulls
+and lions which he had moved from Nimrud and Koyunjik down the Tigris to
+Baghdad and Busrah, (or Bassorah), there to be embarked for Europe, he
+had recourse to this conveyance, as no other is known for similar
+purposes. This is how he describes the primitive, but ingenious
+contrivance: "The skins of full-grown sheep and goats, taken off with as
+few incisions as possible, are dried and prepared, one aperture being
+left, through which the air is forced by the lungs. A framework of
+poplar beams, branches of trees, and reeds, having been constructed of
+the size of the intended raft, the inflated skins are tied to it by
+osier twigs. The raft is then complete and is moved to the water and
+launched. Care is taken to place the skins with their mouths upward,
+that, in case any should burst or require refilling, they can be easily
+reached. Upon the framework are piled bales of goods, and property
+belonging to merchants and travellers.... The raftmen impel these rude
+vessels by long poles, to the ends of which are fastened a few pieces of
+split cane. (See Fig. <a href="#illus_14">14</a>.) ... During the floods in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> spring, or after
+heavy rains, small rafts may float from Mosul to Baghdad in about
+eighty-four hours; but the larger are generally six or seven days in
+performing the voyage. In summer, and when the river is low, they are
+frequently nearly a month in reaching their destination. When they have
+been unloaded, they are broken up, and the beams, wood and twigs, sold
+at considerable profit. The skins are washed and afterward rubbed with a
+preparation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> to keep them from cracking and rotting. They are then
+brought back, either on the shoulders of the raftmen or upon donkeys, to
+Mossul and Tekrit, where the men engaged in the navigation of the Tigris
+usually reside." Numerous sculptures show us that similar skins were
+also used by swimmers, who rode upon them in the water, probably when
+they intended to swim a greater distance than they could have
+accomplished by their unassisted efforts. (See Figure <a href="#illus_16">16</a>.)</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 605px;">
+<a id='illus_15' name='illus_15'><img src="images/illus_15.png" width="605" height="356" alt="15.&mdash;EXCAVATIONS AT MUGHEIR (UR)." title="" />
+<span class="caption">15.&mdash;EXCAVATIONS AT MUGHEIR (UR).</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>10. Our imagination longs to reconstruct those gigantic piles as they
+must have struck the beholder in their towering hugeness, approached
+from the plain probably by several stairways and by at least one ascent
+of a slope gentle enough to offer a convenient access to horses and
+chariots. What an imposing object must have been, for instance, the
+palace of Sennacherib, on the edge of its battlemented platform (mound
+of Koyunjik), rising directly above the waters of the Tigris,&mdash;named in
+the ancient language "the Arrow" from the swiftness of its current&mdash;into
+the golden and crimson glory of an Eastern sunset! Although the sameness
+and unwieldy nature of the material used must have put architectural
+beauty of outline out of the question, the general effect must have been
+one of massive grandeur and majesty, aided as it was by the elaborate
+ornamentation lavished on every portion of the building. Unfortunately
+the work of reconstruction is left almost entirely to imagination, which
+derives but little help from the shapeless heaps into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> which time has
+converted those ancient, mighty halls.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 662px;">
+<a id='illus_16' name='illus_16'><img src="images/illus_16.png" width="662" height="385" alt="16.&mdash;WARRIORS SWIMMING ON INFLATED SKINS. (Babelon.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">16.&mdash;WARRIORS SWIMMING ON INFLATED SKINS.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Babelon.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>11. Fergusson, an English explorer and scholar whose works on subjects
+connected with art and especially architecture hold a high place, has
+attempted to restore the palace of Sennacherib such as he imagines it to
+have been, from the hints furnished by the excavations. He has produced
+a striking and most effective picture, of which, however, an entire half
+is simply guesswork. The whole nether part&mdash;the stone-cased,
+battlemented platform wall, the broad stairs, the esplanade handsomely
+paved with patterned slabs, and the lower part of the palace with its
+casing of sculptured slabs and portals guarded by winged bulls&mdash;is
+strictly according to the positive facts supplied by the excavations.
+For the rest, there is no authority whatever. We do not even positively
+know whether there was any second story to Assyrian palaces at all. At
+all events, no traces of inside staircases have been found, and the
+upper part of the walls of even the ground-floor has regularly been
+either demolished or destroyed by fire. As to columns, it is impossible
+to ascertain how far they may have been used and in what way. Such as
+were used could have been, as a rule, only of wood&mdash;trunks of great
+trees hewn and smoothed&mdash;and consequently every vestige of them has
+disappeared, though some round column bases in stone have been found.<a name="FNanchor_M_13" id="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13" class="fnanchor">[M]</a>
+The same remarks apply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> to the restoration of an Assyrian palace court,
+also after Fergusson, while that of a palace hall, after Layard, is not
+open to the same reproach and gives simply the result of actual
+discoveries. Without, therefore, stopping long to consider conjectures
+more or less unsupported, let us rather try to reproduce in our minds a
+clear perception of what the audience hall of an Assyrian king looked
+like from what we may term positive knowledge. We shall find that our
+materials will go far towards creating for us a vivid and authentic
+picture.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 506px;">
+<a id='illus_17' name='illus_17'><img src="images/illus_17.png" width="506" height="367" alt="17.&mdash;VIEW OF KOYUNJIK. (Hommel.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">17.&mdash;VIEW OF KOYUNJIK.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Hommel.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>12. On entering such a hall the first thing to strike us would probably
+be the pavement, either of large alabaster slabs delicately carved in
+graceful patterns, as also the arched doorways leading into the adjacent
+rooms (see Figs. <a href="#illus_24">24</a> and <a href="#illus_25">25</a>, pp. 69 and 71), or else covered with rows of
+inscriptions, the characters being deeply engraven and afterwards filled
+with a molten metallic substance, like brass or bronze, which would give
+the entire floor the appearance of being covered with inscriptions in
+gilt characters, the strange forms of cuneiform writing making the whole
+look like an intricate and fanciful design.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 572px;">
+<a id='illus_18' name='illus_18'><img src="images/illus_18.png" width="572" height="492" alt="18.&mdash;STONE LION AT THE ENTRANCE OF A TEMPLE. NIMRUD.
+(Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">18.&mdash;STONE LION AT THE ENTRANCE OF A TEMPLE. NIMRUD.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>13. Our gaze would next be fascinated by the colossal human-headed
+winged bulls and lions keeping their silent watch in pairs at each of
+the portals, and we should notice with astonishment that the artists had
+allowed them each an extra leg, making the entire number five instead of
+four. This was not done at random, but with a very well-calculated
+artistic object&mdash;that of giving the monster the right number of legs,
+whether the spectator beheld it in front or in profile, as in both cases
+one of the three front legs is concealed by the others. The front view
+shows the animal standing, while it appears to be striding when viewed
+from the side. (See Figures <a href="#illus_18">18</a> and <a href="#illus_27">27</a>, pp. 59 and 75.) The walls were
+worthy of these majestic door-keepers. The crude brick masonry
+disappeared up to a height of twelve to fifteen feet from the ground
+under the sculptured slabs of soft grayish alabaster which were solidly
+applied to the wall, and held together by strong iron cramps. Sometimes
+one subject or one gigan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>tic figure of king or deity was represented on
+one slab; often the same subject occupied several slabs, and not
+unfrequently was carried on along an entire wall. In this case the lines
+begun on one slab were continued on the next with such perfect
+smoothness, so absolutely without a break, as to warrant the conclusion
+that the slabs were sculptured <i>after</i> they had been put in their
+places, not before. Traces of paint show that color was to a certain
+extent employed to enliven these representations, probably not over
+plentifully and with some discrimination. Thus color is found in many
+places on the eyes, brows, hair, sandals, the draperies, the mitre or
+high headdress of the kings, on the harness of horses and portions of
+the chariots, on the flowers carried by attendants, and sometimes on
+trees. Where a siege is portrayed, the flames which issue out of windows
+and roofs seem always to have been painted red. There is reason to
+believe, however, that color was but sparingly bestowed on the
+sculptures, and therefore they must have presented a pleasing contrast
+with the richness of the ornamentation which ran along the walls
+immediately above, and which consisted of hard baked bricks of large
+size, painted and glazed in the fire, forming a continuous frieze from
+three to five feet wide. Sometimes the painting represented human
+figures and various scenes, sometimes also winged figures of deities or
+fantastic animals,&mdash;in which case it was usually confined above and
+below by a simple but graceful running pattern; or it would consist
+wholly of a more or less elaborate continuous pat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>tern like Fig. <a href="#illus_22">22</a>,
+23, or 25, these last symbolical compositions with a religious
+signification. (See also Fig. <a href="#illus_21">21</a>, "Interior view," etc.) Curiously
+enough the remains&mdash;mostly very trifling fragments&mdash;which have been
+discovered in various ruins, show that these handsomely finished glazed
+tiles exhibited the very same colors which are nowadays in such high
+favor with ourselves for all sorts of decorative purposes: those used
+most frequently were a dark and a pale yellow, white and cream-color, a
+delicate pale green, occasionally orange and a pale lilac, very little
+blue and red; olive-green and brown are favorite colors for grounds.
+"Now and then an intense blue and a bright red occur, generally
+together; but these positive hues are rare, and the taste of the
+Assyrians seems to have led them to prefer, for their patterned walls,
+pale and dull hues.... The general tone of their coloring is quiet, not
+to say sombre. There is no striving after brilliant effects. The
+Assyrian artist seeks to please by the elegance of his forms and the
+harmony of his hues, not to startle by a display of bright and strongly
+contrasted colors.<a name="FNanchor_N_14" id="FNanchor_N_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_N_14" class="fnanchor">[N]</a>"</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 676px;">
+<a id='illus_19' name='illus_19'><img src="images/illus_19.png" width="676" height="416" alt="19.&mdash;COURT OF HAREM AT KHORSABAD. (RESTORED.) (Perrot and
+Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">19.&mdash;COURT OF HAREM AT KHORSABAD. (RESTORED.)</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 465px;">
+<a id='illus_20' name='illus_20'><img src="images/illus_20.png" width="465" height="449" alt="20.&mdash;CIRCULAR PILLAR-BASE." title="" />
+<span class="caption">20.&mdash;CIRCULAR PILLAR-BASE.</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>14. It has been asked: how were those halls roofed and how were they
+lighted? questions which have given rise to much discussion and which
+can scarcely ever be answered in a positive way, since in no single
+instance has the upper part of the walls or any part whatever of the
+roofing been preserved. Still, the peculiar shape and dimensions of the
+princi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>pal palace halls goes far towards establishing a sort of
+circumstantial evidence in the case. They are invariably long and
+narrow, the proportions in some being so striking as to have made them
+more like corridors than apartments&mdash;a feature, by the by, which must
+have greatly impaired their architectural beauty: they were three or
+four times as long as they were wide, and even more. The great hall of
+the palace of Asshur-nazir-pal on the platform of the Nimrud mound
+(excavated by Layard, who calls it, from its position, "the North-West
+palace") is 160 feet long by not quite 40 wide. Of the five halls in the
+Khorsabad palace the largest measures 116 ft. by 33, the smallest 87 by
+25, while the most imposing in size of all yet laid open, the great hall
+of Sennacherib at Koyunjik, shows a length of fully 180 ft. with a width
+of 40. It is scarcely probable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> that the old builders, who in other
+points have shown so much artistic taste, should have selected this
+uniform and unsatisfactory shape for their state apartments, unless they
+were forcibly held to it by some insuperable imperfection in the means
+at their disposal. That they knew how to use proportions more pleasing
+in their general effect, we see from the inner open courts, of which
+there were several in every palace, and which, in shape and dimensions
+are very much like those in our own castles and palaces,&mdash;nearly square,
+(about 180 ft. or 120 ft. each way) or slightly oblong: 93 ft. by 84,
+124 ft. by 90, 150 ft. by 125. Only two courts have been found to lean
+towards the long-and-narrow shape, one being 250 ft. by 150, and the
+other 220 by 100. But even this is very different from those
+passage-like galleries. The only thing which entirely explains this
+awkward feature of all the royal halls, is the difficulty of providing
+them with a roof. It is impossible to make a flat roof of nothing but
+bricks, and although the Assyrians knew how to construct arches, they
+used them only for very narrow vaults or over gateways and doors, and
+could not have carried out the principle on any very extensive scale.
+The only obvious expedient consisted in simply spanning the width of the
+hall with wooden beams or rafters. Now no tree, not even the lofty cedar
+of Lebanon or the tall cypress of the East, will give a rafter, of equal
+thickness from end to end, more than 40 ft. in length, few even that.
+There was no getting over or around this necessity, and so the matter
+was set<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>tled for the artists quite aside from their own wishes. This
+also explains the great value which was attached by all the Assyrian
+conquerors to fine timber. It was often demanded as tribute, nothing
+could be more acceptable as a gift, and expeditions were frequently
+undertaken into the distant mountainous regions of the Lebanon on
+purpose to cut some. The difficulty about roofing would naturally fall
+away in the smaller rooms, used probably as sleeping and dwelling
+apartments, and accordingly they vary freely from oblong to square; the
+latter being generally about 25 ft. each way, sometimes less, but never
+more. There were a great many such chambers in a palace; as many as
+sixty-eight have been discovered in Sennacherib's palace at Koyunjik,
+and a large portion of the building, be it remembered, is not yet fully
+explored. Some were as highly decorated as the great halls, some faced
+with plain slabs or plastered, and some had no ornaments at all and
+showed the crude brick. These differences probably indicate the
+difference of rank in the royal household of the persons to whom the
+apartments were assigned.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 414px;">
+<a id='illus_21' name='illus_21'><img src="images/illus_21.png" width="414" height="671" alt="21.&mdash;INTERIOR VIEW OF ONE OF THE CHAMBERS OF THE HAREM AT
+KHORSABAD. (RESTORED.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">21.&mdash;INTERIOR VIEW OF ONE OF THE CHAMBERS OF THE HAREM AT KHORSABAD. (RESTORED.)</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>15. The question of light has been discussed by eminent
+explorers&mdash;Layard, Botta, Fergusson&mdash;at even greater length and with a
+greater display of ingenuity than that of roofing. The results of the
+learned discussion may be shortly summed up as follows: We may take it
+for granted that the halls were sufficiently lighted, for the builders
+would not have bestowed on them such lavish artistic labor had they not
+meant their work to be seen in all its details<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> and to the best
+advantage. This could be effected only in one of three ways, or in two
+combined: either by means of numerous small windows pierced at regular
+intervals above the frieze of enamelled bricks, between that and the
+roof,&mdash;or by means of one large opening in the roof of woodwork, as
+proposed by Layard in his own restoration, or by smaller openings placed
+at more frequent intervals. This latter contrivance is in general use
+now in Armenian houses, and Botta, who calls it a <i>louvre</i>, gives a
+drawing of it.<a name="FNanchor_O_15" id="FNanchor_O_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_O_15" class="fnanchor">[O]</a> It is very ingenious, and would have the advantage of
+not admitting too great a mass of sunlight and heat, and of being easily
+covered with carpets or thick felt rugs to exclude the rain. The second
+method, though much the grandest in point of effect, would present none
+of these advantages and would be objectionable chiefly on account of the
+rain, which, pouring down in torrents&mdash;as it does, for weeks at a time,
+in those countries&mdash;must very soon damage the flooring where it is of
+brick, and eventually convert it into mud, not to speak of the
+inconvenience of making the state apartments unfit for use for an
+indefinite period. The small side windows just below the roof would
+scarcely give sufficient light by themselves. Who knows but they may
+have been combined with the <i>louvre</i> system, and thus something very
+satisfactory finally obtained.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 629px;">
+<a id='illus_22' name='illus_22'><img src="images/illus_22.png" width="629" height="380" alt="22.&mdash;COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES." title="" />
+<span class="caption">22.&mdash;COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES.</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 620px;">
+<a id='illus_23' name='illus_23'><img src="images/illus_23.png" width="620" height="362" alt="23.&mdash;COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES." title="" />
+<span class="caption">23.&mdash;COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES.</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>16. The kings of Chaldea, Babylonia and Assyria seem to have been
+absolutely possessed with a mania for building. Scarcely one of them but
+left inscriptions telling how he raised this or that palace,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> this or
+that temple in one or other city, often in many cities. Few contented
+themselves with repairing the buildings left by their predecessors. This
+is easy to be ascertained, for they always mention all they did in that
+line. Vanity, which seems to have been, together with the love of booty,
+almost their ruling passion, of course accounts for this in a great
+measure. But there are also other causes, of which the principal one was
+the very perishable nature of the constructions, all their heavy
+massiveness notwithstanding. Being made of compara<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>tively soft and
+yielding material, their very weight would cause the mounds to settle
+and bulge out at the sides in some places, producing crevices in others,
+and of course disturbing the balance of the thick but loose masonry of
+the walls constructed on top of them. These accidents could not be
+guarded against by the outer casing of stone or burnt brick, or even by
+the strong buttresses which were used from a very early period to prop
+up the unwieldy piles: the pressure from within was too great to be
+resisted.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;">
+<a id='illus_24' name='illus_24'><img src="images/illus_24.png" width="500" height="505" alt="24.&mdash;PAVEMENT SLAB." title="" />
+<span class="caption">24.&mdash;PAVEMENT SLAB.</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>17. An outer agent, too, was at work, surely and steadily destructive:
+the long, heavy winter rains. Crude brick, when exposed to moisture,
+easily dissolves into its original element&mdash;mud; even burned brick is
+not proof against very long exposure to violent wettings; and we know
+that the mounds were half composed of loose rubbish. Once thoroughly
+permeated with moisture, nothing could keep these huge masses from
+dissolution. The builders were well aware of the danger and struggled
+against it to the best of their ability by a very artfully contrived and
+admirably executed system of drainage, carried through the mounds in all
+directions and pouring the accumulated waters into the plain out of
+mouths beautifully constructed in the shape of arched vaults.<a name="FNanchor_P_16" id="FNanchor_P_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_P_16" class="fnanchor">[P]</a> Under
+the flooring of most of the halls have been found drains, running along
+the centre, then bending off towards a conduit in one of the corners,
+which carried the contents down into one of the principal channels.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 524px;">
+<a id='illus_25' name='illus_25'><img src="images/illus_25.png" width="524" height="373" alt="25.&mdash;SECTION OF ORNAMENTAL DOORWAY (ENAMELLED BRICK OR
+TILES). KHORSABAD. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">25.&mdash;SECTION OF ORNAMENTAL DOORWAY (ENAMELLED BRICK OR TILES). KHORSABAD.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>18. But all these precautions were, in the long run, of little avail, so
+that it was frequently a simpler and less expensive proceeding for a
+king to build a new palace, than to keep repairing and propping up an
+old one which crumbled to pieces, so to speak, under the workmen's
+hands. It is not astonishing that sometimes, when they had to give up an
+old mansion as hopeless, they proceeded to demolish it, in order to
+carry away the stone and use it in structures of their own, probably not
+so much as a matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> of thrift, as with a view to quickening the work,
+stone-cutting in the quarries and transport down the river always being
+a lengthy operation. This explains why, in some later palaces, slabs
+were found with their sculptured face turned to the crude brick wall,
+and the other smoothed and prepared for the artist, or with the
+sculptures half erased, or piled up against the wall, ready to be put in
+place. The nature of the injuries which caused the ancient buildings to
+decay and lose all shape, is very faithfully described in an inscription
+of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, in which he relates how he
+constructed the Ziggurat of Borsip on the site of an ancient
+construction, which he repaired, as far as it went. This is what he
+says: "The temple of the Seven Spheres, the Tower of Borsip which a
+former king had built ... but had not finished its upper part, from
+remote days had fallen into decay. The channels for drawing off the
+water had not been properly provided; rain and tempest had washed away
+its bricks; the bricks of the roof were cracked; the bricks of the
+building were washed away into heaps of rubbish." All this sufficiently
+accounts for the peculiar aspect offered by the Mesopotamian ruins.
+Whatever process of destruction the buildings underwent, whether natural
+or violent, by conquerors' hands, whether through exposure to fire or to
+stress of weather, the upper part would be the first to suffer, but it
+would not disappear, from the nature of the material, which is not
+combustible. The crude bricks all through the enormous thickness of the
+walls, once thoroughly loosened, dislodged,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> dried up or soaked
+through, would lose their consistency and tumble down into the courts
+and halls, choking them up with the soft rubbish into which they
+crumbled, the surplus rolling down the sides and forming those even
+slopes which, from a distance, so deceivingly imitate natural hills.
+Time, accumulating the drift-sand from the desert and particles of
+fertile earth, does the rest, and clothes the mounds with the verdant
+and flowery garment which is the delight of the Arab's eyes.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 366px;">
+<a id='illus_26' name='illus_26'><img src="images/illus_26.png" width="366" height="706" alt="26.&mdash;WINGED LION WITH HUMAN HEAD. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">26.&mdash;WINGED LION WITH HUMAN HEAD.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>19. It is to this mode of destruction the Assyrian kings allude in their
+annals by the continually recurring phrase: "I destroyed their cities, I
+overwhelmed them, I burned them in the fire, <i>I made heaps of them</i>."
+However difficult it is to get at the treasures imbedded in these
+"heaps," we ought not to repine at the labor, since they owe their
+preservation entirely to the soft masses of earth, sand and loose
+rubbish which have protected them on all sides from the contact with
+air, rain and ignorant plunderers, keeping them as safely&mdash;if not as
+transparently&mdash;housed as a walnut in its lump of candied sugar. The
+explorers know this so well, that when they leave the ruins, after
+completing their work for the time, they make it a point to fill all the
+excavated spaces with the very rubbish that has been taken out of them
+at the cost of so much labor and time. There is something impressive and
+reverent in thus re-burying the relics of those dead ages and nations,
+whom the mysterious gloom of their self-erected tombs becomes better
+than the glare of the broad, curious daylight. When Layard, before his
+departure, after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> once more wandering with some friends through all the
+trenches, tunnels and passages of the Nimrud mound, to gaze for the last
+time on the wonders on which no man had looked before him, found himself
+once more on the naked platform and ordered the workmen to cover them up
+again, he was strongly moved by the contrast: "We look around in vain,"
+says he, "for any traces of the wonderful remains we have just seen, and
+are half inclined to believe that we have dreamed a dream, or have been
+listen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span>ing to some tale of Eastern romance. Some, who may hereafter
+tread on the spot when the grass again grows over the Assyrian palaces,
+may indeed suspect that I have been relating a vision."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 497px;">
+<a id='illus_27' name='illus_27'><img src="images/illus_27.png" width="497" height="498" alt="27.&mdash;WINGED BULL. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">27.&mdash;WINGED BULL.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>20. It is a curious fact that in Assyria the ruins speak to us only of
+the living, and that of the dead there are no traces whatever. One might
+think people never died there at all. Yet it is well known that all
+nations have bestowed as much care on the interment of their dead and
+the adornment of their last resting-place as on the construction of
+their dwellings&mdash;nay, some even more, for instance, the Egyptians. To
+this loving veneration for the dead history owes half its discoveries;
+indeed we should have almost no reliable information at all on the very
+oldest races, who lived before the invention of writing, were it not for
+their tombs and the things we find in them. It is very strange,
+therefore, that nothing of the kind should be found in Assyria, a
+country which stood so high in culture. For the sepulchres which are
+found in such numbers in some mounds down to a certain depth, belong, as
+is shown by their very position, to later races, mostly even to the
+modern Turks and Arabs. This peculiarity is so puzzling that scholars
+almost incline to suppose that the Assyrians either made away with their
+dead in some manner unknown to us, or else took them somewhere to bury.
+The latter conjecture, though not entirely devoid of foundation, as we
+shall see, is unsupported by any positive facts, and therefore was never
+seriously discussed. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> question is simply left open, until something
+happens to shed light on it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 633px;">
+<a id='illus_28' name='illus_28'><img src="images/illus_28.png" width="633" height="384" alt="28.&mdash;MAN-LION. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">28.&mdash;MAN-LION.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>21. It is just the contrary in Babylonia. It can boast few handsome
+ruins or sculptures. The platforms and main walls of many palaces and
+temples have been known from the names stamped on the bricks and the
+cylinders found in the foundations, but they present only shapeless
+masses, from which all traces of artistic work have disappeared. In
+compensation, there is no country in the world where so many and such
+vast cemeteries have been discovered. It appears that the land of
+Chaldea,&mdash;perhaps because it was the cradle of nations which afterwards
+grew to greatness, as the Assyrians and the Hebrews&mdash;was regarded as a
+place of peculiar holiness by its own inhabitants, and probably also by
+neighboring countries, which would explain the mania that seems to have
+prevailed through so many ages, for burying the dead there in unheard of
+numbers. Strangely enough, some portions of it even now are held sacred
+in the same sense. There are shrines in Kerbela and Nedjif (somewhat to
+the west of Babylon) where every caravan of pilgrims brings from Persia
+hundreds of dead bodies in their felt-covered coffins, for burial. They
+are brought on camels and horses. On each side of the animal swings a
+coffin, unceremoniously thumped by the rider's bare heels. These coffins
+are, like merchandise, unladen for the night&mdash;and sometimes for days
+too&mdash;in the khans or caravanseries (the enclosed halting-places), where
+men and beasts take their rest together. Under that tropical clime, it
+is easy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> to imagine the results. It is in part to this disgusting custom
+that the great mortality in the caravans is to be attributed, one fifth
+of which leave their bones in the desert in <i>healthy</i> seasons. However
+that may be, the gigantic proportions of the Chaldean burying-grounds
+struck even the ancient Greek travellers with astonishment, and some of
+them positively asserted that the Assyrian kings used to be buried in
+Chaldea. If the kings, why not the nobler and wealthier of their
+subjects? The transport down the rivers presented no difficulties.
+Still, as already remarked, all this is mere conjecture.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 561px;">
+<a id='illus_29' name='illus_29'><img src="images/illus_29.png" width="561" height="332" alt="29.&mdash;FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK.(Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">29.&mdash;FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>22. Among the Chaldeans cities <span class="smcap">Erech</span> (now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> <span class="smcap">Warka</span>) was considered from
+very old times one of the holiest. It had many extremely ancient temples
+and a college of learned priests, and around it gradually formed an
+immense "city of the dead" or Necropolis. The English explorer, Loftus,
+in 1854-5, specially turned his attention to it and his account is
+astounding. First of all, he was struck by the majestic desolation of
+the place. Warka and a few other mounds are raised on a slightly
+elevated tract of the desert, above the level of the yearly inundations,
+and accessible only from November to March, as all the rest of the time
+the surrounding plain is either a lake or a swamp. "The desolation and
+solitude of Warka," says Loftus, "are even more striking than the scene
+which is presented at Babylon itself. There is no life for miles around.
+No river glides in grandeur at the base of its mounds; no green date
+groves flourish near its ruins. The jackal and the hy&aelig;na appear to shun
+the dull aspect of its tombs. The king of birds never hovers over the
+deserted waste. A blade of grass or an insect finds no existence there.
+The shrivelled lichen alone, clinging to the weathered surface of the
+broken brick, seems to glory in its universal dominion over those barren
+walls. Of all the desolate pictures I have ever seen that of Warka
+incomparably surpasses all." Surely in this case it cannot be said that
+appearances are deceitful; for all that space, and much more, is a
+cemetery, and what a cemetery! "It is difficult," again says Loftus, "to
+convey anything like a correct idea of the piles upon piles of human
+remains which there utterly astound the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> beholder. Excepting only the
+triangular space between the three principal ruins, the whole remainder
+of the platform, the whole space between the walls and an unknown extent
+of desert beyond them, are everywhere filled with the bones and
+sepulchres of the dead. There is probably no other site in the world
+which can compare with Warka in this respect." It must be added that the
+coffins do not simply lie one next to the other, but in layers, down to
+a depth of 30-60 feet. Different epochs show different modes of burial,
+among which the following four are the most remarkable.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 287px;">
+<a id='illus_30' name='illus_30'><img src="images/illus_30.png" width="287" height="444" alt="30.&mdash;RAM&#39;S HEAD IN ALABASTER. (British Museum.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">30.&mdash;RAM&#39;S HEAD IN ALABASTER.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(British Museum.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 260px;">
+<a id='illus_31' name='illus_31'><img src="images/illus_31.png" width="260" height="365" alt="31.&mdash;EBONY COMB. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">31.&mdash;EBONY COMB.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 189px; clear:both;">
+<a id='illus_32' name='illus_32'><img src="images/illus_32.png" width="189" height="432" alt="32.&mdash;BRONZE FORK AND SPOON. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">32.&mdash;BRONZE FORK AND SPOON.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>23. Perhaps the queerest coffin shape of all is that composed of two
+earthen jars (<i>a</i> and <i>b</i>), which accurately fit together, or one
+slightly fits into the other, the juncture being made air-tight by a
+coating of bitumen (<i>d</i>, <i>d</i>). The body can be placed in such a coffin
+only with slightly bent knees. At one end (<i>c</i>) there is an air-hole,
+left for the escape of the gases which form during the decomposition of
+the body and which might otherwise burst the jars&mdash;a precaution probably
+suggested by experience (fig. 36). Sometimes there is only one jar of
+much larger size, but of the same shape, with a similar cover, also made
+fast with bitumen, or else the mouth is closed with bricks. This is an
+essentially national mode of burial, perhaps the most ancient of all,
+yet it remained in use to a very late period. It is to be noted that
+this is the exact shape of the water jars now carried about the streets
+of Baghdad and familiar to every traveller.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 431px;">
+<a id='illus_33' name='illus_33'><img src="images/illus_33.png" width="431" height="416" alt="33.&mdash;ARMENIAN LOUVRE. (Botta.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">33.&mdash;ARMENIAN LOUVRE.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Botta.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>24. Not much less original is the so-called "dish-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>cover coffin," also
+very ancient and national. The illustrations sufficiently show its shape
+and arrangement.<a name="FNanchor_Q_17" id="FNanchor_Q_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_Q_17" class="fnanchor">[Q]</a> In these coffins two skeletons are sometimes found,
+showing that when a widow or widower died, it was opened, to lay the
+newly dead by the side of the one who had gone before. The cover is all
+of one piece&mdash;a very respectable achievement of the potter's art. In
+Mugheir (ancient Ur), a mound was found, entirely filled with this kind
+of coffins.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 353px;">
+<a id='illus_34' name='illus_34'><img src="images/illus_34.png" width="353" height="404" alt="34.&mdash;VAULTED DRAINS. (KHORSABAD.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">34.&mdash;VAULTED DRAINS. (KHORSABAD.)</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 376px;">
+<a id='illus_35' name='illus_35'><img src="images/illus_35.png" width="376" height="372" alt="35.&mdash;VAULTED DRAIN. (KHORSABAD.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">35.&mdash;VAULTED DRAIN. (KHORSABAD.)</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p style='clear:both'>25. Much more elaborate, and consequently, probably reserved for the
+noble and wealthy, is the sepulchral vault in brick, of nearly a man's
+height.<a name="FNanchor_R_18" id="FNanchor_R_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_R_18" class="fnanchor">[R]</a> In these sepulchres, as in the preceding ones, the skele<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>ton
+is always found lying in the same position, evidently dictated by some
+religious ideas. The head is pillowed on a large brick, commonly covered
+with a piece of stuff or a rug. In the tattered rags which sometimes
+still exist, costly embroideries and fringed golden tissue have more
+than once been recognized, while some female skeletons still showed
+handsome heads of hair gathered into fine nets. The body lies on a reed
+mat, on its left side, the right hand stretched out so as to reach with
+the tips of the fingers a bowl, generally of copper or bronze, and
+sometimes of fine workmanship, usually placed on the palm of the left
+hand. Around are placed various articles&mdash;dishes, in some of which
+remnants of food are found, such as date stones,&mdash;jars for water, lamps,
+etc. Some skeletons wear gold and silver bangles on their wrists and
+ankles. These vaults were evidently family sepulchres, for several
+skeletons are generally found in them; in one there were no less than
+eleven. (Fig. <a href="#illus_39">39</a>, p. 89.)</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 458px;">
+<a id='illus_36' name='illus_36'><img src="images/illus_36.png" width="458" height="189" alt="36.&mdash;CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN. (Taylor.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">36.&mdash;CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Taylor.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>26. All these modes of burial are very old and peculiarly Chaldean. But
+there is still another, which belongs to more recent times, even as late
+as the first centuries after Christ, and was used by a differ<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>ent and
+foreign race, the Parthians, one of those who came in turns and
+conquered the country, stayed there awhile, then disappeared. These
+coffins are, from their curious form, known under the name of
+"slipper-shaped." They are glazed, green on the outside and blue on the
+inside, but of very inferior make: poor clay, mixed with straw, and only
+half baked, therefore very brittle. It is thought that they were put in
+their place empty, then the body was laid in, the lid put down, and the
+care of covering them with sand left to the winds. The lid is fastened
+with the same mortar which is used in the brick masonry surrounding the
+coffin, where such a receptacle has been made for it; but they more
+usually lie pell-mell, separated only by thin layers of loose sand.
+There are mounds which are, as one may say, larded with them: wherever
+you begin to dig a trench, the narrow ends stick out from both sides. In
+these coffins also various articles were buried with the dead, sometimes
+valuable ones. The Arabs know this; they dig in the sand with their
+hands, break the coffins open with their spears, and grope in them for
+booty. The consequence is that it is extremely difficult to procure an
+entire coffin. Loftus succeeded, however, in sending some to the British
+Museum, having first pasted around them several layers of thick paper,
+without which precaution they could not have borne the transport.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 532px;">
+<a id='illus_37' name='illus_37'><img src="images/illus_37.png" width="532" height="408" alt="37.&mdash;&quot;DISH-COVER&quot; TOMB AT MUGHEIR. (Taylor.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">37.&mdash;&quot;DISH-COVER&quot; TOMB AT MUGHEIR.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Taylor.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 608px;">
+<a id='illus_38' name='illus_38'><img src="images/illus_38.png" width="608" height="380" alt="38.&mdash;&quot;DISH-COVER&quot; TOMB. (Taylor.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">38.&mdash;&quot;DISH-COVER&quot; TOMB.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Taylor.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>27. On the whole, the ancient Chaldean sepulchres of the three first
+kinds are distinguished by greater care and tidiness. They are not only
+sepa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>rated by brick partitions on the sides, and also above and below
+by a thin layer of brick masonry, but the greatest care was taken to
+protect them against dampness. The sepulchral mounds are pierced through
+and through, from top to bottom, by drainage pipes or shafts, consisting
+of a series of rings, solidly joined together with bitumen, about one
+foot in diameter. These rings are made of baked clay. The top one is
+shaped somewhat like a funnel, of which the end is inserted in
+perforated bricks, and which is provided with small holes, to receive
+any infiltration of moisture. Besides all this the shafts, which are
+sunk in pairs, are surrounded with broken pottery. How ingenious and
+practical this system was, we see from the fact that both the coffins
+and their contents are found in a state of perfect dryness and
+preservation. (Fig. <a href="#illus_41">41</a>, p. 90.)</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 419px;">
+<a id='illus_39' name='illus_39'><img src="images/illus_39.png" width="419" height="521" alt="39.&mdash;SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR. (Taylor.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">39.&mdash;SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Taylor.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 611px;">
+<a id='illus_40' name='illus_40'><img src="images/illus_40.png" width="611" height="169" alt="40.&mdash;STONE JARS FROM GRAVES. (LARSAM.) (Hommel.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">40.&mdash;STONE JARS FROM GRAVES. (LARSAM.)</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Hommel.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>28. In fact the Chaldeans, if they could not reach such perfection as
+the Assyrians in slab-sculpture, on account of not having stone either
+at home or within easy reach, seem to have derived a greater variety of
+architectural ornaments from that inexhaustible material of
+theirs&mdash;baked clay or terra-cotta. We see an instance of it in
+remnants&mdash;unfortunately very small ones, of some walls belonging to that
+same city of Erech. On one of the mounds Loftus was puzzled by the large
+quantity of small terra-cotta cones, whole and in fragments, lying about
+on the ground. The thick flat end of them was painted red, black or
+white. What was his amazement when he stumbled on a piece of wall (some
+seven feet in height and not more than thirty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> in length), which showed
+him what their use had been. They were grouped into a variety of
+patterns to decorate the entire wall, being stuck with their thin end
+into a layer of soft clay with which it was coated for the purpose.
+Still more original and even rather incomprehensible is a wall
+decoration consisting of several bands, composed each of three rows of
+small pots or cups&mdash;about four inches in diameter&mdash;stuck into the soft
+clay coating in the same manner, with the mouth turned outward of
+course! Loftus found such a wall, but unfortunately has given no design
+of it. (Figures <a href="#illus_43">43</a> and <a href="#illus_44">44</a>.)</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 310px;">
+<a id='illus_41' name='illus_41'><img src="images/illus_41.png" width="310" height="344" alt="41.&mdash;DRAIN IN MOUND. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">41.&mdash;DRAIN IN MOUND.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>29. As to the ancient Babylonian, or rather Chaldean, art in sculpture,
+the last word has by no means been said on that subject. Discoveries
+crowd in every year, constantly leading to the most unexpected
+conclusions. Thus, it was long an accepted fact that Assyria had very
+few statues and Babylonia none at all, when a few years ago (1881),<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+what should a French explorer, Mr. E. De Sarzec, French consul in Basra,
+bring home but nine magnificent statues made of a dark, nearly black
+stone as hard as granite, called diorite.<a name="FNanchor_S_19" id="FNanchor_S_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_S_19" class="fnanchor">[S]</a> Unfortunately they are all
+headless; but, as though to make up for this mutilation, one head was
+found separate,&mdash;a shaved and turbaned head beautifully preserved and of
+remarkable workmanship, the very pattern of the turban being plain
+enough to be reproduced by any modern loom.<a name="FNanchor_T_20" id="FNanchor_T_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_T_20" class="fnanchor">[T]</a> These large prizes were
+accompanied by a quantity of small works of art representing both men
+and animals, of a highly artistic design and some of them of exquisite
+finish of execution. This astounding find, the result of several years'
+indefatigable work, now gracing the Assyrian rooms of the Louvre in
+Paris, comes from one of the Babylonian mounds which had not been opened
+before, the ruins of a mighty temple at a place now called <span class="smcap">Tell-Loh</span>, and
+supposed to be the site of <span class="smcap">Sir-burla</span>, or <span class="smcap">Sir-gulla</span>, one of the most
+ancient cities of Chaldea. This "Sarzec-collection," as it has come to
+be generally called, not only entirely upsets the ideas which had been
+formed on Old-Chaldean art, but is of immense historical importance from
+the inscriptions which cover the back of every statue, (not to speak of
+the cylinders and other small objects,) and which, in connection with
+the monuments of other ruins, enable scholars to fix, at least
+approximately, the date at which flourished the city and rulers who have
+left such extraordinary memorials of their artistic gifts. Some place
+them at about 4500 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, others about 4000.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> However overwhelming such a
+valuation may be at first sight, it is not an unsupported fancy, but
+proofs concur from many sides to show that the builders and sculptors of
+Sir-gulla could in no case have lived and worked much later than 4000
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span> It is impossible to indicate in a few lines all the points, the
+conjectures, the vexed questions, on which this discovery sheds light
+more or less directly, more or less decisively; they come up continually
+as the study of those remote ages proceeds, and it will be years before
+the materials supplied by the Sarzec-Collection are exhausted in all
+their bearings.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 190px;">
+<a id='illus_42' name='illus_42'><img src="images/illus_42.png" width="190" height="882" alt="42.&mdash;WALL WITH DESIGNS IN TERRA-COTTA CONES, AT WARKA
+(ERECH). (Loftus.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">42.&mdash;WALL WITH DESIGNS IN TERRA-COTTA CONES, AT WARKA (ERECH).</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Loftus.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 265px;">
+<a id='illus_43' name='illus_43'><img src="images/illus_43.png" width="265" height="772" alt="43.&mdash;TERRA-COTTA CONE, NATURAL SIZE. (Loftus.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">43.&mdash;TERRA-COTTA CONE, NATURAL SIZE.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Loftus.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 158px; clear:both;">
+<img src="images/deco114.png" width="158" height="49" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 46.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> Ur of the Chaldees, from which Abraham went forth.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 349.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> Figure <a href="#illus_10">10</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11"><span class="label">[K]</span></a> Figure <a href="#illus_74">71</a>, p. 281.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12"><span class="label">[L]</span></a> Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 317 and 318.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_M_13" id="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13"><span class="label">[M]</span></a> See Fig. <a href="#illus_20">20</a>, p. 63. There is but one exception, in the case
+of a recent exploration, during which one solitary broken column-shaft
+was discovered.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_N_14" id="Footnote_N_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_N_14"><span class="label">[N]</span></a> G. Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 467, 468.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_O_15" id="Footnote_O_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_O_15"><span class="label">[O]</span></a> See Fig. <a href="#illus_33">33</a>, p. 83.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_P_16" id="Footnote_P_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_P_16"><span class="label">[P]</span></a> Figures <a href="#illus_34">34</a> and <a href="#illus_35">35</a>, p. 84.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_Q_17" id="Footnote_Q_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_Q_17"><span class="label">[Q]</span></a> Figs. <a href="#illus_37">37</a> and <a href="#illus_38">38</a>, p. 87.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_R_18" id="Footnote_R_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_R_18"><span class="label">[R]</span></a> Fig. <a href="#illus_39">39</a>, p. 89.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_S_19" id="Footnote_S_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_S_19"><span class="label">[S]</span></a> See Fig. <a href="#illus_59">59</a>, p. 217.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_T_20" id="Footnote_T_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_T_20"><span class="label">[T]</span></a> See Figs. <a href="#illus_44">44</a> and <a href="#illus_45">45</a>, p. 101.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/deco115.png" width="370" height="85" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class='center'><a name="Intro_IV" id="Intro_IV"></a>IV.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>THE BOOK OF THE PAST.&mdash;THE LIBRARY OF NINEVEH.</p>
+
+
+<p>1. When we wish to learn the great deeds of past ages, and of mighty men
+long dead, we open a book and read. When we wish to leave to the
+generations who will come long after us a record of the things that were
+done by ourselves or in our own times, we take pen, ink and paper, and
+write a book. What we have written is then printed, published in several
+hundreds&mdash;or thousands&mdash;of copies, as the case may be, and quickly finds
+its way to all the countries of the world inhabited by people who are
+trained from childhood to thought and study. So that we have the
+satisfaction of knowing that the information which we have labored to
+preserve will be obtainable any number of years or centuries after we
+shall have ceased to exist, at no greater trouble than procuring the
+book from the shelves of a bookstore, a public or a private library. It
+is all very simple. And there is not a small child who does not
+perfectly know a book by its looks, and even has not a pretty correct
+idea of how a book is made and what it is good for.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>2. But books are not always of the shape and material so familiar to us.
+Metal, stone, brick, walls and pillars, nay, the very rocks of nature's
+own making, can be books, conveying information as plainly as our
+volumes of paper sheets covered with written or printed lines. It only
+needs to know how to read them, and the necessary knowledge and skill
+may be acquired by processes as simple as the art of ordinary reading
+and writing, though at the cost of a somewhat greater amount of time and
+pains.</p>
+
+<p>3. There are two natural cravings, which assert themselves strongly in
+every mind not entirely absorbed by the daily work for bread and by the
+anxious care how to procure that work: these are the wish, on the one
+hand, to learn how the people who came before us lived and what they
+did, on the other&mdash;to transmit our own names and the memory of our deeds
+to those who will come after us. We are not content with our present
+life; we want to stretch it both backward and forward&mdash;to live both in
+the past and the future, as it were. This curiosity and this ambition
+are but parts of the longing for immortality which was never absent from
+any human soul. In our own age they are satisfied mainly by books;
+indeed they were originally the principal causes why books began to be
+made at all. And how easy to satisfy these cravings in our time, when
+writing materials have become as common as food and far cheaper, and
+reading may be had for nothing or next to nothing! For, a very few
+dollars will supply a writer with as much paper as he can possibly use
+up in a year, while the public libra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>ries, the circulating and college
+libraries and the reading-rooms make study a matter more of love and
+perseverance than of money.</p>
+
+<p>4. Yet if the papermill and the printing press were the only material
+aid to our researches into the past, these researches would stop short
+very soon, seeing that printing was invented in Europe scarce four
+hundred years ago, and paper has not been manufactured for more than six
+hundred years at the outside. True, other materials have been used to
+write on before paper: bark of trees, skins of
+animals&mdash;(parchment)&mdash;cunningly worked fibres of plants&mdash;(papyrus,
+byblos)&mdash;even wooden tablets covered with a thin layer of wax, on which
+characters were engraved with a pointed instrument or "style,"&mdash;and
+these contrivances have preserved for us records which reach back many
+hundreds of years beyond the introduction of paper. But our curiosity,
+when once aroused, is insatiable, and an area of some twenty, or thirty,
+or forty centuries seems to it but a narrow field. Looking back as far
+as that&mdash;and no kind of manuscript information takes us much further&mdash;we
+behold the world wondrously like what it is now. With some differences
+in garb, in manners, and a much greater one in the range of knowledge,
+we find men living very nearly as we do and enacting very nearly the
+same scenes: nations live in families clustered within cities, are
+governed by laws, or ruled by monarchs, carry on commerce and wars,
+extend their limits by conquest, excel in all sorts of useful and
+ornamental arts. Only we notice that larger regions are unknown, vaster
+portions of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> the earth, with their populations, are unexplored, than in
+our days. The conclusion is clearly forced on us, that so complicated
+and perfect an organization of public and private life, a condition of
+society implying so many discoveries and so long a practice in thought
+and handicraft, could not have been an early stage of existence. Long
+vistas are dimly visible into a past far vaster than the span as yet
+laid open to our view, and we long to pierce the tantalizing gloom.
+There, in that gloom, lurk the beginnings of the races whose high
+achievements we admire, emulate, and in many ways surpass; there, if we
+could but send a ray of light into the darkness of ages, we must find
+the solution of numberless questions which suggest themselves as we go:
+Whence come those races? What was the earlier history of other races
+with which we find them contending, treating, trading? When did they
+learn their arts, their songs, their forms of worship? But here our
+faithful guide, manuscript literature, forsakes us; we enter on a period
+when none of the ancient substitutes for paper were yet invented. But
+then, there were the stones. <i>They</i> did not need to be invented&mdash;only
+hewn and smoothed for the chisel.</p>
+
+<p>5. Fortunately for us, men, twenty-five, and forty, and fifty centuries
+ago, were actuated by the same feelings, the same aspirations as they
+are now, and of these aspirations, the passionate wish of perpetuating
+their names and the memory of their deeds has always been one of the
+most powerful. This wish they connected with and made subservient to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+the two things which were great and holy in their eyes: their religion
+and the power of their kings. So they built, in brick and stone, at an
+almost incalculable expense of time, human labor and human life, palaces
+and temples. On these huge piles they lavished treasures untold, as also
+all the resources of their invention and their skill in art and
+ornament; they looked on them with exulting pride, not only because they
+thought them, by their vastness and gorgeousness, fit places for public
+worship and dwellings worthy of their kings, but because these
+constructions, in their towering grandeur, their massive solidity, bid
+fair to defy time and outlast the nations which raised them, and which
+thus felt assured of leaving behind them traces of their existence,
+memorials of their greatness. That a few defaced, dismantled, moss-grown
+or sand-choked fragments of these mighty buildings would one day be the
+<i>only</i> trace, the sole memorial of a rule and of nations that would then
+have past away forever, even into nothingness and oblivion, scarcely was
+anticipated by the haughty conquerors who filled those halls with their
+despotic presence, and entered those consecrated gates in the pomp of
+triumph to render thanks for bloody victories and warlike exploits which
+elated their souls in pride till they felt themselves half divine.
+Nothing doubting but that those walls, those pillars, those gateways
+would stand down to the latest ages, they confided to them that which
+was most precious to their ambition, the record of their deeds, the
+praises of their names, thus using those stony surfaces as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> so many
+blank pages, which they covered with row after row of wondrous
+characters, carefully engraved or chiselled, and even with painted or
+sculptured representations of their own persons and of the scenes, in
+war or peace, in which they had been leaders and actors.</p>
+
+<p>6. Thus it is that on all the points of the globe where sometime great
+and flourishing nations have held their place, then yielded to other
+nations or to absolute devastation&mdash;in Egypt, in India, in Persia, in
+the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the sandy, now desert plains
+of Syria, in the once more populous haunts of ancient Rome and
+Greece&mdash;the traveller meets clusters of great ruins, lofty still in
+their utter abandonment, with a strange, stern beauty hovering around
+their weather-beaten, gigantic shafts and cornices, wrapt in the
+pathetic silence of desolation, and yet not dumb&mdash;for their pictured
+faces eloquently proclaim the tale of buoyant life and action entrusted
+to them many thousands of years ago. Sometimes, it is a natural rock,
+cut and smoothed down at a height sufficient to protect it from the
+wantonly destructive hand of scoffing invaders, on which a king of a
+deeper turn of thought, more mindful than others of the law which dooms
+all the works of men to decay, has caused a relation of the principal
+events of his reign to be engraved in those curious characters which
+have for centuries been a puzzle and an enigma. Many tombs also, besides
+the remains of the renowned or wealthy dead, for whom they have been
+erected at a cost as extravagant and with art as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> elaborate as the
+abodes of the living, contain the full description of their inmate's
+lineage, his life, his habits and pursuits, with prayers and invocations
+to the divinities of his race and descriptions or portrayed
+representations of religious ceremonies. Or, the walls of caves, either
+natural, or cut in the rock for purposes of shelter or concealment,
+yield to the explorer some more chapters out of the old, old story, in
+which our interest never slackens. This story man has himself been
+writing, patiently, laboriously, on every surface on which he could
+trace words and lines, ever since he has been familiar with the art of
+expressing his thoughts in visible signs,&mdash;and so each such surviving
+memorial may truly be called a stray leaf, half miraculously preserved
+to us, out of the great Book of the Past, which it has been the task of
+scholars through ages, and especially during the last eighty years, to
+decipher and teach others how to read.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 317px;">
+<a id='illus_44' name='illus_44'><img src="images/illus_44.png" width="317" height="326" alt="44.&mdash;HEAD OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN. FROM TELL-LOH (SIR-GULLA).
+SARZEC COLLECTION. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">44.&mdash;HEAD OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN. FROM TELL-LOH (SIR-GULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 369px;">
+<a id='illus_45' name='illus_45'><img src="images/illus_45.png" width="369" height="347" alt="45.&mdash;SAME, PROFILE VIEW." title="" />
+<span class="caption">45.&mdash;SAME, PROFILE VIEW.</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<p style='clear:both'>7. Of this venerable book the walls of the Assyrian palaces, with their
+endless rows of inscriptions, telling year for year through centuries
+the history of the kings who built them, are so many invaluable pages,
+while the sculptures which accompany these annals are the illustrations,
+lending life and reality to what would otherwise be a string of dry and
+unattractive records. But a greater wonder has been brought to light
+from amidst the rubbish and dust of twenty-five centuries: a collection
+of literary and scientific works, of religious treatises, of private and
+public documents, deposited in rooms constructed on purpose to contain
+them, arranged<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> in admirable order, in short&mdash;a <span class="smcap">Library</span>. Truly and
+literally a library, in the sense in which we use the word. Not the only
+one either, nor the first by many hundred years, although the volumes
+are of singular make and little like those we are used to.</p>
+
+<p>8. When Layard was at work for the second time amidst the ruins along
+the Tigris, he devoted much of his labor to the great mound of Koyunjik,
+in which the remains of two sumptuous palaces were distinctly discerned,
+one of them the royal residence of Sennacherib, the other that of his
+grandson Asshurbanipal, who lived some 650 years before Christ&mdash;two of
+the mightiest conquerors and most magnificent sovereigns of the Eastern
+world. In the latter palace he came upon two comparatively small
+chambers, the floor of which was entirely littered with fragments&mdash;some
+of considerable size, some very small&mdash;of bricks, or rather baked-clay
+tablets, covered on both sides with cuneiform writing. It was a layer
+more than a foot in height which must have been formed by the falling in
+of the upper part of the edifice. The tablets, piled in good order along
+the walls, perhaps in an upper story&mdash;if, as many think, there was
+one&mdash;must have been precipitated promiscuously into the apartment and
+shattered by the fall. Yet, incredible as it may appear, several were
+found entire. Layard filled many cases with the fragments and sent them
+off to the British Museum, fully aware of their probable historical
+value.</p>
+
+<p>9. There they lay for years, heaped up at random, a mine of treasures
+which made the mouths of schol<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>ars water, but appalled them by the
+amount of labor, nay, actual drudgery, needful only to sift and sort
+them, even before any study of their contents could be begun. At length
+a young and ambitious arch&aelig;ologist, attached to the British Museum,
+George Smith, undertook the long and wearisome task. He was not
+originally a scholar, but an engraver, and was employed to engrave on
+wood cuneiform texts for the magnificent atlas edited by the British
+Museum under the title of "Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia."
+Being endowed with a quick and enquiring mind, Smith did not content
+himself, like most of his colleagues, with a conscientious and artistic,
+but merely technical reproduction; he wished to know <i>what</i> he was doing
+and he learned the language of the inscriptions. When he took on himself
+the sorting of the fragments, it was in the hope of distinguishing
+himself in this new field, and of rendering a substantial service to the
+science which had fascinated him. Nor was he deceived in this hope. He
+succeeded in finding and uniting a large quantity of fragments belonging
+together, and thus restoring pages of writing, with here and there a
+damaged line, a word effaced, a broken corner, often a larger portion
+missing, but still enough left to form continuous and readable texts. In
+some cases it was found that there was more than one copy of this or
+that work or document, and then sometimes the parts which were
+hopelessly injured in one copy, would be found whole or nearly so in
+another.</p>
+
+<p>10. The results accomplished by this patient me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>chanical process were
+something astonishing. And when he at length restored in this manner a
+series of twelve tablets containing an entire poem of the greatest
+antiquity and highest interest, the occasion seemed important enough to
+warrant the enterprising owners of the London <i>Daily Telegraph</i> in
+sending the young student to resume excavations and try to complete some
+missing links. For of some of the tablets restored by him only portions
+could be found among the fragments of the British Museum. Of course he
+made his way straight to the Archive Chambers at Koyunjik, had them
+opened again and cleared them of another large instalment of their
+valuable contents, among which he had the inconceivable good fortune to
+find some of the very pieces which were missing in his collection.
+Joyfully he returned to England twice with his treasures, and hopefully
+set out on a third expedition of the same kind. He had reason to feel
+buoyant; he had already made his name famous by several works which
+greatly enriched the science he loved, and had he not half a lifetime
+before him to continue the work which few could do as well? Alas, he
+little knew that his career was to be cut short suddenly by a loathsome
+and brutal foe: he died of the plague in Syria, in 1876&mdash;just thirty-six
+years old. He was faithful to the end. His diary, in which he made some
+entries even within a very few days before his death, shows that at the
+last, when he knew his danger and was fast losing hope, his mind was
+equally divided between thoughts of his family and of his work. The
+following lines,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> almost the last intelligible ones he wrote, are deeply
+touching in their simple, single-minded earnestness:&mdash;"Not so well. If
+Doctor present, I should recover, but he has not come, very doubtful
+case; if fatal farewell to ... <i>My work has been entirely for the
+science I study....</i> There is a large field of study in my collection. I
+intended to work it out, but desire now that my antiquities and notes
+may be thrown open to all students. I have done my duty thoroughly. I do
+not fear the change but desire to live for my family. Perhaps all may be
+well yet."&mdash;George Smith's death was a great loss, which his
+brother-scholars of all countries have not ceased to deplore. But the
+work now proceeds vigorously and skilfully. The precious texts are
+sorted, pieced, and classified, and a collection of them, carefully
+selected, is reproduced by the aid of the photographer and the engraver,
+so that, should the originals ever be lost or destroyed, (not a very
+probable event), the Museum indeed would lose one of its most precious
+rarities, but science would lose nothing.</p>
+
+<p>11. An eminent French scholar and assyriologist, Joachim M&eacute;nant, has the
+following picturesque lines in his charming little book "<i>La
+Biblioth&egrave;que du Palais de Ninive</i>": "When we reflect that these records
+have been traced on a substance which neither fire nor water could
+destroy, we can easily comprehend how those who wrote them thus thirty
+or forty centuries ago, believed the monuments of their history to be
+safe for all future times,&mdash;much safer than the frail sheets which
+printing scatters<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> with such prodigious fertility.... Of all the nations
+who have bequeathed to us written records of their past life, we may
+assert that none has left monuments more imperishable than Assyria and
+Chaldea. Their number is already considerable; it is daily increased by
+new discoveries. It is not possible to foresee what the future has in
+store for us in this respect; but we can even now make a valuation of
+the entire material which we possess.... The number of the tablets from
+the Nineveh Library alone passes ten thousand.... If we compare these
+texts with those left us by other nations, we can easily become
+convinced that the history of the Assyro-Chaldean civilization will soon
+be one of the best known of antiquity. It has a powerful attraction for
+us, for we know that the life of the Jewish people is mixed up with the
+history of Nineveh and Babylon...."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 851px;">
+<a id='illus_46' name='illus_46'><img src="images/illus_46.png" width="851" height="264" alt="46.&mdash;CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION. (ARCHAIC CHARACTERS.) (Perrot
+and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">46.&mdash;CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION. (ARCHAIC CHARACTERS.)</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>12. It will be seen from this that throughout the following pages we
+shall continually have to refer to the contents of Asshurbanipal's royal
+library. We must therefore dispense in this place with any details
+concerning the books, more than a general survey of the subjects they
+treated. Of these, religion and science were the chief. Under "science"
+we must understand principally mathematics and astronomy, two branches
+in which the old Chaldeans reached great perfection and left us many of
+our own most fundamental notions and practices, as we shall see later
+on. Among the scientific works must also be counted those on astrology,
+i.e., on the influence which the heavenly bodies were supposed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+exert on the fate of men, according to their positions and combinations,
+for astrology was considered a real science, not only by the Chaldeans,
+but by much later nations too; also hand-books of geography, really only
+lists of the seas, mountains and rivers, nations and cities then known,
+lastly lists of plants and animals with a very rude and defective
+attempt at some sort of classification. History is but scantily
+represented; it appears to have been mostly confined to the great wall
+inscriptions and some other objects, of which more hereafter. But&mdash;what
+we should least expect&mdash;grammars, dictionaries, school reading-books,
+occupy a prominent place. The reason is that, when this library was
+founded, the language in which the venerable books of ancient sages were
+written not only was not spoken any longer, but had for centuries been
+forgotten by all but the priests and those who made scholarship their
+chief pursuit, so that it had to be taught in the same way that the
+so-called "dead languages," Latin and Greek, are taught at our colleges.
+This was the more necessary as the prayers had to be recited in the old
+language called the Accadian, that being considered more holy&mdash;just as,
+in Catholic countries, the common people are even now made to learn and
+say their prayers in Latin, though they understand not a word of the
+language. The ancient Accadian texts were mostly copied with a modern
+Assyrian translation, either interlinear or facing it, which has been of
+immense service to those who now decipher the tablets.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 364px;">
+<a id='illus_47' name='illus_47'><img src="images/illus_47.png" width="364" height="142" alt="47.&mdash;INSCRIBED CLAY TABLET. (Smith&#39;s &quot;Assyria.&quot;)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">47.&mdash;INSCRIBED CLAY TABLET.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Smith&#39;s &quot;Assyria.&quot;)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>13. So much for what may be called the classical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> and reference
+department of the library. Important as it is, it is scarcely more so
+than the documentary department or Archive proper, where documents and
+deeds of all kinds, both public and private, were deposited for safe
+keeping. Here by the side of treatises, royal decrees and despatches,
+lists of tribute, reports from generals and governors, also those daily
+sent in by the superintendents of the royal observatories,&mdash;we find
+innumerable private documents: deeds of sale duly signed, witnessed and
+sealed, for land, houses, slaves&mdash;any kind of property,&mdash;of money lent,
+of mortgages, with the rate of interest, contracts of all sorts. The
+most remarkable of private documents is one which has been called the
+"will of King Sennacherib," by which he entrusts some valuable personal
+property to the priests of the temple of Nebo, to be kept for his
+favorite son,&mdash;whether to be delivered after his (the king's) death or
+at another time is not stated.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 525px;">
+<a id='illus_48' name='illus_48'><img src="images/illus_48.png" width="525" height="392" alt="48.&mdash;CLAY TABLET IN ITS CASE. (Hommel.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">48.&mdash;CLAY TABLET IN ITS CASE.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Hommel.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>14. It requires some effort to bear in mind the nature and looks of the
+things which we must represent to ourselves when we talk of Assyrian
+"<i>books</i>." The above (Fig. <a href="#illus_47">47</a>) is the portrait of a "<i>volume</i>" in
+perfect condition. But it is seldom indeed that one such is found.
+Layard, in his first description of his startling "find," says: "They
+(the tablets) were of different sizes; the largest were flat, and
+measured nine inches by six and a half; the smaller were slightly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span>
+convex, and some were not more than an inch long, with but one or two
+lines of writing. The cuneiform characters on most of them were
+singularly sharp and well-defined, but so minute in some instances as to
+be illegible without a magnifying glass." Most curiously, glass lenses
+have been found among the ruins; which may have been used for the
+purpose. Specimens have also been found of the very instruments which
+were employed to trace the cuneiform characters, and their form
+sufficiently accounts for the peculiar shape of these characters which
+was imitated by the engravers on stone. It is a little iron rod&mdash;(or
+<i>style</i>, as the ancients used to call such implements)&mdash;not sharp, but
+<i>triangular</i> at the end: <img src="images/symbol1.png" width="13" height="12" alt="open triangle" title="" />. By slightly pressing this end
+on the cake of soft moist clay held in the left hand no other shape of
+sign could be obtained than a wedge,<img src="images/symbol2.png" width="10" height="14" alt="closed triangle" title="" />, the direction
+being determined by a turn of the wrist, presenting the instrument in
+different positions. When one side of the tablet was full, the other was
+to be filled. If it was small, it was sufficient to turn it over,
+continuing to hold the edges between the thumb and third finger of the
+left hand. But if the tablet was large and had to be laid on a table to
+be written on, the face that was finished would be pressed to the hard
+surface, and the clay being soft, the writing would be effaced. This was
+guarded against by a contrivance as ingenious as it was simple. Empty
+places were left here and there in the lines, in which were stuck small
+pegs, like matches. On these the tablet was supported when turned over,
+and also while baking in the oven.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> On many of the tablets that have
+been preserved are to be seen little holes or dints, where the pegs have
+been stuck. Still, it should be mentioned that these holes are not
+confined to the large tablets and not found on all large tablets. When
+the tablet was full, it was allowed to dry, then generally, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> not
+always, baked. Within the last few years several thousands unbaked
+tablets have been found in Babylonia; they crumbled into dust under the
+finders' fingers. It was then proposed to bake such of them as could at
+all bear handling. The experiment was successful, and numbers of
+valuable documents were thus preserved and transported to the great
+repository of the British Museum. The tablets are covered with writing
+on both sides and most accurately classed and numbered, when they form
+part of a series, in which case they are all of the same shape and size.
+The poem discovered by George Smith is written out on twelve tablets,
+each of which is a separate book or chapter of the whole. There is an
+astronomical work in over seventy tablets. The first of them begins with
+the words: "<i>When the gods Anu and ...</i>" These words are taken as the
+title of the entire series. Each tablet bears the notice: First, second,
+third tablet of "<i>When the gods Anu and ...</i>" To guard against all
+chance of confusion, the last line of one tablet is repeated as the
+first line of the following one&mdash;a fashion which we still see in old
+books, where the last word or two at the bottom of a page is repeated at
+the top of the next.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 360px;">
+<a id='illus_49' name='illus_49'><img src="images/illus_49.png" width="360" height="94" alt="49.&mdash;ANTIQUE BRONZE SETTING OF CYLINDER. (Perrot and
+Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">49.&mdash;ANTIQUE BRONZE SETTING OF CYLINDER.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 699px;">
+<a id='illus_50' name='illus_50'><img src="images/illus_50.png" width="699" height="290" alt="50.&mdash;CHALDEAN CYLINDER AND IMPRESSION. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">50.&mdash;CHALDEAN CYLINDER AND IMPRESSION.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 578px;">
+<a id='illus_51' name='illus_51'><img src="images/illus_51.png" width="578" height="336" alt="51.&mdash;ASSYRIAN CYLINDER. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">51.&mdash;ASSYRIAN CYLINDER.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>15. The clay tablets of the ancient Chaldeans are distinguished from the
+Assyrian ones by a curious peculiarity: they are sometimes enclosed in a
+case<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> of the same material, with exactly the same inscription and seals
+as on the inner tablet, even more carefully executed.<a name="FNanchor_U_21" id="FNanchor_U_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_U_21" class="fnanchor">[U]</a> It is evidently
+a sort of duplicate document, made in the prevision that the outer one
+might be injured, when the inner record would remain. Rows of figures
+across the tablet are impressed on it with seals called from their shape
+cylinders, which were rolled over the soft moist clay. These cylinders
+were generally of some valuable,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> hard stone&mdash;jasper, amethyst,
+cornelian, onyx, agate, etc.,&mdash;and were used as signet rings were later
+and are still. They are found in great numbers, being from their
+hardness well-nigh indestructible. They were generally bored through,
+and through the hole was passed either a string to wear them on, or a
+metal axis, to roll them more easily.<a name="FNanchor_V_22" id="FNanchor_V_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_V_22" class="fnanchor">[V]</a> There is a large and most
+valuable collection of seal cylinders at the British Museum. Their size
+ranges from a quarter of an inch to two inches or a little more. But
+cylinders were also made of baked clay and larger size, and then served
+a different purpose, that of historical documents. These are found in
+the foundations of palaces and temples, mostly in the four corners, in
+small niches or chambers, generally produced by leaving out one or more
+bricks. These tiny monuments range from a couple of inches to half a
+foot in height, seldom more; they are sometimes shaped like a prism with
+several faces (mostly six), sometimes like a barrel, and covered with
+that compact and minute writing which it often requires a magnifying
+glass to make out. Owing to their sheltered position, these singular
+records are generally very well preserved. Although their original
+destination is only to tell by whom and for what purpose the building
+has been erected, they frequently proceed to give a full though
+condensed account of the respective kings' reigns, so that, should the
+upper structure with its engraved annals be destroyed by the
+vicissitudes of war or in the course of natural decay, some memorial of
+their deeds should still be preserved&mdash;a prevision which, in several
+cases, has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> been literally fulfilled. Sometimes the manner and material
+of these records were still more fanciful. At Khorsabad, at the very
+interior part of the construction, was found a large stone chest, which
+enclosed several inscribed plates in various materials. "... In this only
+extant specimen of an Assyrian foundation stone were found one little
+golden tablet, one of silver, others of copper, lead and tin; a sixth
+text was engraved on alabaster, and the seventh document was written on
+the chest itself."<a name="FNanchor_W_23" id="FNanchor_W_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_W_23" class="fnanchor">[W]</a> Unfortunately the heavier portion of this
+remarkable find was sent with a collection which foundered on the Tigris
+and was lost. Only the small plates,&mdash;gold, silver, copper and tin
+(antimonium scholars now think it to be)&mdash;survived, and the inscriptions
+on them have been read and translated. They all commemorate, in very
+nearly the same terms, the foundation and erection of a new city and
+palace by a very famous king and conqueror, generally (though not
+correctly) called Sargon, and three of them end with a request to the
+kings his successors to keep the building in good repair, with a prayer
+for their welfare if they do and a heavy curse if they fail in this
+duty: "Whoever alters the works of my hand, destroys my constructions,
+pulls down the walls which I have raised,&mdash;may Asshur, Nin&ecirc;b, Ram&acirc;n and
+the great gods who dwell there, pluck his name and seed from the land
+and let him sit bound at the feet of his foe." Most inscriptions end
+with invocations of the same kind, for, in the words of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> M&eacute;nant: "it was
+not mere whim which impelled the kings of Assyria to build so
+assiduously. Palaces had in those times a destination which they have no
+longer in ours. Not only was the palace indeed <i>the dwelling of
+royalty</i>, as the inscriptions have it,&mdash;it was also the <span class="smcap">Book</span>, which each
+sovereign began at his accession to the throne and in which he was to
+record the history of his reign."<a name="FNanchor_X_24" id="FNanchor_X_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_X_24" class="fnanchor">[X]</a></p>
+
+<p>And each such book of brick and stone we can with perfect truth call a
+chapter&mdash;or a volume&mdash;of the great Book of the Past whose leaves are
+scattered over the face of the earth.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 394px;">
+<a id='illus_52' name='illus_52'><img src="images/illus_52.png" width="394" height="730" alt="52.&mdash;PRISM OF SENNACHERIB. ALSO CALLED &quot;TAYLOR
+CYLINDER.&quot;" title="" />
+<span class="caption">52.&mdash;PRISM OF SENNACHERIB. ALSO CALLED &quot;TAYLOR CYLINDER.&quot;</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 402px;">
+<a id='illus_53' name='illus_53'><img src="images/illus_53.png" width="402" height="227" alt="53.&mdash;INSCRIBED CYLINDER FROM BORSIP." title="" />
+<span class="caption">53.&mdash;INSCRIBED CYLINDER FROM BORSIP.</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 163px;">
+<img src="images/deco138.png" width="163" height="50" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_U_21" id="Footnote_U_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_U_21"><span class="label">[U]</span></a> See Fig. <a href="#illus_48">48</a>, p. 111.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_V_22" id="Footnote_V_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_V_22"><span class="label">[V]</span></a> See above, Figs. <a href="#illus_49">49</a> and <a href="#illus_50">50</a>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_W_23" id="Footnote_W_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_W_23"><span class="label">[W]</span></a> Dr. Julius Oppert, "Records of the Past," Vol. XI., p. 31.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_X_24" id="Footnote_X_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_X_24"><span class="label">[X]</span></a> "Les &Eacute;critures Cun&eacute;iformes," of Joachim M&eacute;nant: page 198
+(2d edition, 1864).</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
+<img src="images/map2.png" width="640" height="839" alt="CHALDEA AND NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES" title="" />
+<span class="caption">CHALDEA AND NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 369px;">
+<img src="images/deco141.png" width="369" height="87" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="THE_STORY_OF_CHALDEA" id="THE_STORY_OF_CHALDEA"></a>THE STORY OF CHALDEA.</h2>
+
+<p class='center'>I.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>NOMADS AND SETTLERS.&mdash;THE FOUR STAGES OF CULTURE.</p>
+
+
+<p>1. Men, whatever their pursuit or business, can live only in one of two
+ways: they can stay where they are, or they can go from one place to
+another. In the present state of the world, we generally do a little of
+both. There is some place&mdash;city, village, or farm&mdash;where we have our
+home and our work. But from time to time we go to other places, on
+visits or on business, or travel for a certain length of time to great
+distances and many places, for instruction and pleasure. Still, there is
+usually some place which we think of as home and to which we return.
+Wandering or roving is not our natural or permanent condition. But there
+are races for whom it is. The Bedouin Arabs are the principal and best
+known of such races. Who has not read with delight accounts of their
+wild life in the deserts of Arabia and Northern Africa, so full of
+adventure and romance,&mdash;of their wonderful, priceless horses<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> who are to
+them as their own children,&mdash;of their noble qualities, bravery,
+hospitality, generosity, so strangely blended with love of booty and a
+passion for robbing expeditions? They are indeed a noble race, and it is
+not their choice, but their country which has made them robbers and
+rovers&mdash;Nomads, as such wandering races are called in history and
+geography. They cannot build cities on the sand of the desert, and the
+small patches of pasture and palm groves, kept fresh and green by
+solitary springs and called "oases," are too far apart, too distant from
+permanently peopled regions to admit of comfortable settlement. In the
+south of Arabia and along the sea-shore, where the land is fertile and
+inviting, they live much as other nations do, and when, a thousand years
+ago, Arabs conquered vast and wealthy countries both in Europe and Asia,
+and in Africa too, they not only became model husbandmen, but built some
+of the finest cities in the world, had wise and strictly enforced laws
+and took the lead in literature and science. Very different are the
+scattered nomadic tribes which still roam the steppes of Eastern Russia,
+of Siberia and Central Asia. They are not as gifted by far as the Arabs,
+yet would probably quickly settle down to farming, were it not that
+their wealth consists in flocks of sheep and studs of horses, which
+require the pasture yielded so abundantly by the grassy steppes, and
+with which they have to move from one place, when it is browsed bare, to
+another, and still another, carrying their felt-tents and simple
+utensils with them, living on the milk of their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> mares and the meat of
+their sheep. The Red Indian tribes of the far West present still another
+aspect of nomadic life&mdash;that of the hunter, fierce and entirely untamed,
+the simplest and wildest of all.</p>
+
+<p>2. On the whole, however, nomadic life is at the present day the
+exception. Most of the nations that are not savages live in houses, not
+in portable tents, in cities, not encampments, and form compact, solidly
+bound communities, not loose sets of tribes, now friendly, now hostile
+to one another. But it has not always been so. There have been times
+when settled life was the exception and nomadic life the rule. And the
+older the times, the fewer were the permanent communities, the more
+numerous the roving tribes. For wandering in search of better places
+must have been among the first impulses of intelligent humanity. Even
+when men had no shelter but caves, no pursuit but hunting the animals,
+whose flesh was their food and in whose skins they clothed themselves,
+they must frequently have gone forth, in families or detachments, either
+to escape from a neighborhood too much infested with the gigantic wild
+beasts which at one time peopled the earth more thickly than men, or
+simply because the numbers of the original cave-dwellers had become too
+great for the cave to hold them. The latter must have been a very usual
+occurrence: families stayed together until they had no longer room
+enough, or quarrelled, when they separated. Those who went never saw
+again the place and kindred they left, although they carried with them
+memories of both, the few simple arts<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> they had learned there and the
+customs in which they had been trained. They would stop at some
+congenial halting-place, when, after a time, the same process would be
+repeated&mdash;and so again and again.</p>
+
+<p>3. How was the first horse conquered, the first wild-dog tamed and
+conciliated? How were cattle first enticed to give man their milk, to
+depend on his care and follow his movements? Who shall tell? However
+that may have happened, it is certain that the transition from a
+hunter's wild, irregular and almost necessarily lawless existence to the
+gentler pursuits of pastoral life must have been attended by a great
+change in manners and character. The feeling of ownership too, one of
+the principal promoters of a well-regulated state of society, must have
+quickly developed with the possession of rapidly increasing wealth in
+sheep and horses,&mdash;the principal property of nomadic races. But it was
+not a kind of property which encouraged to settling, or uniting in close
+communities; quite the contrary. Large flocks need vast pasture-grounds.
+Besides, it is desirable to keep them apart in order to avoid confusion
+and disputes about wells and springs, those rare treasures of the
+steppes, which are liable to exhaustion or drying up, and which,
+therefore, one flock-owner is not likely to share with another, though
+that other were of his own race and kin. The Book of Genesis, which
+gives us so faithful and lively a picture of this nomadic pastoral life
+of ancient nations, in the account of the wanderings of Abraham and the
+other Hebrew patriarchs, has pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>served such an incident in the quarrel
+between the herdsmen of Abraham and his nephew Lot, which led to their
+separation. This is what Abraham said to Lot: "Is not the whole land
+before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take
+the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the
+right hand, then I will go to the left."<a name="FNanchor_Y_25" id="FNanchor_Y_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_Y_25" class="fnanchor">[Y]</a> So also it is said of Esau
+that he "went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob: for
+their riches were more than they might dwell together, and the land
+wherein they were strangers could not bear them because of their
+cattle."<a name="FNanchor_Z_26" id="FNanchor_Z_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_Z_26" class="fnanchor">[Z]</a> This was a facility offered by those immense plains,
+unclaimed as yet by any one people in particular, and which must
+oft-times have averted strife and bloodshed, but which ceased from the
+moment that some one tribe, tired of wandering or tempted by some more
+than usually engaging spot, settled down on it, marking that and the
+country around it, as far as its power reached, for its own. There is
+even now in the East something very similar to this mode of occupation.
+In the Turkish Empire, which is, in many places, thinly peopled, there
+are large tracts of waste land, sometimes very fertile, accounted as
+nobody's property, and acknowledged to belong, legally and forever, to
+the first man who takes possession of them, provided he cultivates them.
+The government asks no purchase price for the land, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> demands taxes
+from it as soon as it has found an owner and begins to yield crops.</p>
+
+<p>4. The pastoral nomad's life is, like the hunter's, a singularly free
+one,&mdash;free both from restraint, and, comparatively, from toil. For
+watching and tending flocks is not a laborious occupation, and no
+authority can always reach or weigh very heavily on people who are here
+to-day and elsewhere to-morrow. Therefore, it is only with the third
+stage of human existence, the agricultural one, that civilization, which
+cannot subsist without permanent homes and authority, really commences.
+The farmer's homestead is the beginning of the State, as the hearth or
+fireplace was the beginning of the family. The different labors of the
+fields, the house, and the dairy require a great number of hands and a
+well-regulated distribution of the work, and so keep several generations
+of the settler's family together, on the same farm. Life in common makes
+it absolutely necessary to have a set of simple rules for home
+government, to prevent disputes, keep up order and harmony, and settle
+questions of mutual rights and duties. Who should set down and enforce
+these rules but the head of the family, the founder of the race&mdash;the
+patriarch? And when the family has become too numerous for the original
+homestead to hold it, and part of it has to leave it, to found a new
+home for itself, it does not, as in the primitive nomadic times, wander
+off at random and break all ties, but settles close by on a portion of
+the family land, or takes possession of a new piece of ground somewhat
+further off, but still within easy reach. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> the first case the land
+which had been common property gets broken up into lots, which, though
+belonging more particularly to the members who separate from the old
+stock, are not for that withdrawn from the authority of the patriarch.
+There are several homesteads now, which form a village, and, later on,
+several villages; but the bond of kindred, of tradition and custom is
+religiously preserved, as well as subordination to the common head of
+the race, whose power keeps increasing as the community grows in numbers
+and extent of land, as the greater complications of relationships,
+property, inheritance, demand more laws and a stricter rule,&mdash;until he
+becomes not so much Father as King. Then naturally come collisions with
+neighboring similar settlements, friendly or hostile, which result in
+alliances or quarrels, trade or war, and herewith we have the State
+complete, with inner organization and foreign policy.</p>
+
+<p>5. This stage of culture, in its higher development, combines with the
+fourth and last&mdash;city-building, and city-life, when men of the same
+race, and conscious of a common origin, but practically strangers to
+each other, form settlements on a large scale, which, being enclosed in
+walls, become places of refuge and defence, centres of commerce,
+industry and government. For, when a community has become very numerous,
+with wants multiplied by continual improvements and increasing culture,
+each family can no longer make all the things it needs, and a portion of
+the population devotes itself to manufacture and arts, occupations best
+pursued in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> cities, while the other goes on cultivating the land and
+raising cattle, the two sets of produces&mdash;those of nature and those of
+the cunning hand and brain&mdash;being bartered one for the other, or, when
+coin is invented, exchanged through that more convenient medium. In the
+same manner, the task of government having become too manifold and
+complicated for one man, the former Patriarch, now King, is obliged to
+surround himself with assistants&mdash;either the elders of the race, or
+persons of his own choice,&mdash;and send others to different places, to rule
+in his name and under his authority. The city in which the King and his
+immediate ministers and officers reside, naturally becomes the most
+important one&mdash;the Capital of the State.</p>
+
+<p>6. It does not follow by any means that a people, once settled, never
+stirred from its adopted country. The migratory or wandering instinct
+never quite died out&mdash;our own love of travelling sufficiently proves
+that&mdash;and it was no unfrequent occurrence in very ancient times for
+large tribes, even portions of nations, to start off again in search of
+new homes and to found new cities, compelled thereto either by the
+gradual overcrowding of the old country, or by intestine discords, or by
+the invasion of new nomadic tribes of a different race who drove the old
+settlers before them to take possession of their settlements, massacred
+them if they resisted and reduced those who remained to an irksome
+subjection. Such invasions, of course, might also be perpetrated with
+the same results by regular armies, led by kings and generals from some
+other settled and organized<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> country. The alternative between bondage
+and emigration must have been frequently offered, and the choice in
+favor of the latter was helped not a little by the spirit of adventure
+inborn in man, tempted by so many unexplored regions as there were in
+those remote ages.</p>
+
+<p>7. Such have been the beginnings of all nations. There can be no other.
+And there is one more observation which will scarcely ever prove wrong.
+It is that, however far we may go back into the past, the people whom we
+find inhabiting any country at the very dawn of tradition, can always be
+shown to have come from somewhere else, and not to have been the first
+either. Every swarm of nomads or adventurers who either pass through a
+country or stop and settle there, always find it occupied already. Now
+the older population was hardly ever entirely destroyed or dislodged by
+the newcomers. A portion at least remained, as an inferior or subject
+race, but in time came to mix with them, mostly in the way of
+intermarriage. Then again, if the newcomers were peaceable and there was
+room enough&mdash;which there generally was in very early times&mdash;they would
+frequently be suffered to form separate settlements, and dwell in the
+land; when they would either remain in a subordinate condition, or, if
+they were the finer and better gifted race, they would quickly take the
+upper hand, teach the old settlers their own arts and ideas, their
+manners and their laws. If the new settlement was effected by conquest,
+the arrangement was short and simple: the conquerors, though less
+numerous, at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> once established themselves as masters and formed a ruling
+nobility, an aristocracy, while the old owners of the land, those at
+least that did not choose to emigrate, became what may be called "the
+common people," bound to do service and pay tribute or taxes to their
+self-instituted masters. Every country has generally experienced, at
+various times, all these modes of invasion, so that each nation may be
+said to have been formed gradually, in successive layers, as it were,
+and often of very different elements, which either finally amalgamated
+or kept apart, according to circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>The early history of Chaldea is a particularly good illustration of all
+that has just been said.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 135px;">
+<img src="images/deco150.png" width="135" height="64" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_Y_25" id="Footnote_Y_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_Y_25"><span class="label">[Y]</span></a> Genesis, xiii. 7-11.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_Z_26" id="Footnote_Z_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_Z_26"><span class="label">[Z]</span></a> Genesis, xxxvi. 6-7.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 375px;">
+<img src="images/deco151.png" width="375" height="87" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class= 'center'><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</p>
+
+<p class= 'center'>THE GREAT RACES.&mdash;CHAPTER X. OF GENESIS.</p>
+
+
+<p>1. The Bible says (Genesis xi. 2): "And it came to pass, as they
+journeyed in the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar;
+and they dwelt there."</p>
+
+<p>Shinar&mdash;or, more correctly, Shine&acirc;r&mdash;is what may be called Babylonia
+proper, that part of Mesopotamia where Babylon was, and south of it,
+almost to the Gulf. "They" are descendants of Noah, long after the
+Flood. They found the plain and dwelt there, but they did not find the
+whole land desert; it had been occupied long before them. How long? For
+such remote ages an exact valuation of time in years is not to be
+thought of.</p>
+
+<p>2. What people were those whom the descendants of Noah found in the land
+to which they came from the East? It seems a simple question, yet no
+answer could have been given to it even as lately as fifteen or sixteen
+years ago, and when the answer was first suggested by unexpected
+discoveries made in the Royal Library at Nineveh, it startled the
+discoverers extremely. The only indication on the subject then known was
+this, from a Chaldean writer of a late period: "There was originally at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+Babylon" (i.e., in the land of Babylon, not the city alone) "a multitude
+of men of foreign race who had settled in Chaldea." This is told by
+Berosus, a learned priest of Babylon, who lived immediately after
+Alexander the Great had conquered the country, and when the Greeks ruled
+it (somewhat after 300 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>). He wrote a history of it from the most
+ancient times, in which he gave an account of the oldest traditions
+concerning its beginnings. As he wrote his book in Greek, it is probable
+that his object was to acquaint the new masters with the history and
+religion of the land and people whom they had come to rule.
+Unfortunately the work was lost&mdash;as so many valuable works have been, as
+long as there was no printing, and books existed only in a few
+manuscript copies&mdash;and we know of it only some short fragments, quoted
+by later writers, in whose time Berosus' history was still accessible.
+The above lines are contained in one such fragment, and naturally led to
+the question: who were these men of foreign race who came from somewhere
+else and settled in Chaldea in immemorial times?</p>
+
+<p>3. One thing appears clear: they belonged to none of the races classed
+in the Bible as descended from Noah, but probably to one far older,
+which had not been included in the Flood.</p>
+
+<p>4. For it begins to be pretty generally understood nowadays that the
+Flood may not have been absolutely universal, but have extended over the
+countries <i>which the Hebrews knew</i>, which made <i>their</i> world, and that
+not literally all living beings except those who are reported to have
+been in the Ark may<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> have perished in it. From a negligent habit of
+reading Chap. VI.-IX. of Genesis without reference to the texts of other
+chapters of the same Book, it has become a general habit to understand
+it in this literal manner. Yet the evidence is by no means so positive.
+The question was considered an open one by profounder students even in
+antiquity, and freely discussed both among the Jews themselves and the
+Fathers of the early Christian Church. The following are the statements
+given in the Book of Genesis; we have only to take them out of their
+several places and connect them.</p>
+
+<p>5. When Cain had killed his brother Abel, God banished him from the
+<i>earth</i> which had received his brother's blood and laid a curse on him:
+"a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the <i>earth</i>"&mdash;using another
+word than the first time, one which means earth in general (<i>&eacute;r&eacute;&ccedil;</i>), in
+opposition to <i>the</i> earth (<i>ad&acirc;m&acirc;h</i>), or fruitful land to the east of
+Eden, in which Adam and Eve dwelt after their expulsion. Then Cain went
+forth, still further East, and dwelt in a land which was called "the
+land of Nod," <i>i.e.</i>, "of wandering" or "exile." He had a son, Enoch,
+after whom he named the city which he built,&mdash;the first city,&mdash;and
+descendants. Of these the fifth, Lamech, a fierce and lawless man, had
+three sons, two of whom, Jabal and Jubal, led a pastoral and nomadic
+life; but the third, Tubalcain, invented the use of metals: he was "the
+forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron." This is what the
+Chap. IV. of Genesis tells of Cain, his crime, his exile and immediate
+posterity. After that they are heard of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> no more. Adam, meanwhile, has a
+third son, born after he had lost the first two and whom he calls Seth
+(more correctly <i>Sheth</i>). The descendants of this son are enumerated in
+Chap. V.; the list ends with Noah. These are the parallel races: the
+accursed and the blest, the proscribed of God and the loved of God, the
+one that "goes out of the presence of the Lord" and the one that "calls
+on the name of the Lord," and "walks with God." Of the latter race the
+last-named, Noah, is "a just man, perfect in his generation," and "finds
+grace in the eyes of the Lord."</p>
+
+<p>6. Then comes the narrative of the Flood (Chap. VI.-VIII.), the covenant
+of God with Noah and re-peopling of the earth by his posterity (Chap.
+IX.). Lastly Chap. X. gives us the list of the generations of Noah's
+three sons, Shem, Ham and Japhet;&mdash;"of these were the nations divided in
+the earth after the flood.</p>
+
+<p>7. Now this tenth chapter of Genesis is the oldest and most important
+document in existence concerning the origins of races and nations, and
+comprises all those with whom the Jews, in the course of their early
+history, have had any dealings, at least all those who belonged to the
+great white division of mankind. But in order properly to understand it
+and appreciate its value and bearing, it must not be forgotten that <span class="smcap">each
+name in the list is that of a race, a people or a tribe, not that of a
+man</span>. It was a common fashion among the Orientals&mdash;a fashion adopted also
+by ancient European nations&mdash;to express in this manner the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> kindred
+connections of nations among themselves and their differences. Both for
+brevity and clearness, such historical genealogies are very convenient.
+They must have been suggested by a proceeding most natural in ages of
+ignorance, and which consists in a tribe's explaining its own name by
+taking it for granted that it was that of its founder. Thus the name of
+the Assyrians is really Asshur. Why? Clearly, they would answer, if
+asked the question, because their kingdom was founded by one whose name
+was Asshur. Another famous nation, the Aram&aelig;ans, are supposed to be so
+called because the name of their founder was Aram; the Hebrews name
+themselves from a similarly supposed ancestor, Heber. These three
+nations,&mdash;and several more, the Arabs among others&mdash;spoke languages so
+much alike that they could easily understand each other, and had
+generally many common features in looks and character. How account for
+that? By making their founders, Asshur, and Aram, and Heber, etc., sons
+or descendants of one great head or progenitor, Shem, a son of Noah. It
+is a kind of parable which is extremely clear once one has the key to
+it, when nothing is easier than to translate it into our own sober,
+positive forms of speech. The above bit of genealogy would read thus: A
+large portion of humanity is distinguished by certain features more or
+less peculiar to itself; it is one of several great races, and has been
+called for more than a hundred years the Semitic, (better Shemitic)
+race, the race of Shem. This race is composed of many different tribes
+and nations, who have gone each its own way,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> have each its own name and
+history, speak dialects of the same original language, and have
+preserved many common ideas, customs and traits of character,&mdash;which all
+shows that the race was once united and dwelt together, then, as it
+increased in numbers, broke up into fractions, of which some rose to be
+great and famous nations and some remained comparatively insignificant
+tribes. The same applies to the subdivisions of the great white race
+(the whitest of all) to which nearly all the European nations belong,
+and which is personified in the Bible under the name of Japhet, third
+son of Noah,&mdash;and to those of a third great race, also originally white,
+which is broken up into very many fractions, both great nations and
+scattered tribes, all exhibiting a decided likeness to each other. The
+Bible gives the names of all these most carefully, and sums up the whole
+of them under the name of the second son of Noah, Ham, whom it calls
+their common progenitor.</p>
+
+<p>8. That the genealogies of Chap. X. of Genesis should be understood in
+this sense, has long been admitted by scientists and churchmen. St.
+Augustine, one of the greatest among the Fathers of the early church,
+pointedly says that the names in it represent "nations, not men."<a name="FNanchor_AA_27" id="FNanchor_AA_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_AA_27" class="fnanchor">[AA]</a> On
+the other hand there is also literal truth in them, in this way, that,
+if all mankind is descended from one human couple, every fraction of it
+must necessarily have had some one particular father or ancestor, only
+in so remote a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> past that his individuality or actual name cannot
+possibly have been remembered, when every people, as has been remarked
+above, naturally gave him its own name. Of these names many show by
+their very nature that they could not have belonged to individuals. Some
+are plural, like <span class="smcap">Mizraim</span>, "the Egyptians;" some have the article: "<i>the</i>
+<span class="smcap">Amorite</span>, <i>the</i> <span class="smcap">Hivite</span>;" one even is the name of a city: <span class="smcap">Sidon</span> is called
+"the first-born of Canaan;" now Sidon was long the greatest maritime
+city of the Canaanites, who held an undisputed supremacy over the rest,
+and therefore "the first-born." The name means "fisheries"&mdash;an
+appropriate one for a city on the sea, which must of course have been at
+first a settlement of fishermen. "<span class="smcap">Canaan</span>" really is the name of a vast
+region, inhabited by a great many nations and tribes, all differing from
+each other in many ways, yet manifestly of one race, wherefore they are
+called "the sons of Canaan," Canaan being personified in a common
+ancestor, given as one of the four sons of Ham. Modern science has, for
+convenience' sake, adopted a special word for such imaginary personages,
+invented to account for a nation's, tribe's, or city's name, while
+summing up, so to speak, its individuality: they are called <span class="smcap">Eponyms</span>. The
+word is Greek, and means "one from whom or for whom somebody or
+something is named," a "namesake." It is not too much to say that, while
+popular tradition always claims that the eponymous ancestor or
+city-founder gave his name to his family, race, or city, the contrary is
+in reality invariably the case, the name of the race or city<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> being
+transferred to him. Or, in other words, the eponym is really only that
+name, transformed into a traditional person by a bold and vivid poetical
+figure of speech, which, if taken for what it is, makes the beginnings
+of political history wonderfully plain and easy to grasp and classify.</p>
+
+<p>9. Yet, complete and correct as is the list of Chap. X., within the
+limits which the writer has set to himself, it by no means exhausts the
+nations of the earth. The reason of the omissions, however, is easily
+seen. Among the posterity of Japhet the Greeks indeed are mentioned,
+(under the name of <span class="smcap">Javan</span>, which should be pronounced <i>Yawan</i>, and some
+of his sons), but not a single one of the other ancient peoples of
+Europe,&mdash;Germans, Italians, Celts, etc.,&mdash;who also belonged to that
+race, as we, their descendants, do. But then, at the time Chap. X. was
+written, these countries, from their remoteness, were outside of the
+world in which the Hebrews moved, beyond their horizon, so to speak.
+They either did not know them at all, or, having nothing to do with
+them, did not take them into consideration. In neither case would they
+have been given a place in the great list. The same may be said of
+another large portion of the same race, which dwelt to the far East and
+South of the Hebrews&mdash;the Hindoos, (the white conquerors of India), and
+the Persians. There came a time indeed, when the latter not only came
+into contact with the Jews, but were their masters; but either that was
+after Chap. X. was written or the Persians were identified by the
+writers with a kindred nation, the Per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>sians' near neighbor, who had
+flourished much earlier and reacted in many ways on the countries
+westward of it; this nation was the <span class="smcap">Medes</span>, who, under the name of <span class="smcap">Madai</span>,
+are mentioned as one of the sons of Japhet, with Javan the Greek.</p>
+
+<p>10. More noticeable and more significant than these partial omissions is
+the determination with which the authors of Chap. X. consistently ignore
+all those divisions of mankind which do not belong to one of the three
+great <i>white</i> races. Neither the Black nor the Yellow races are
+mentioned at all; they are left without the pale of the Hebrew
+brotherhood of nations. Yet the Jews, who staid three or four hundred
+years in Egypt, surely learned there to know the real negro, for the
+Egyptians were continually fighting with pure-blood black tribes in the
+south and south-west, and bringing in thousands of black captives, who
+were made to work at their great buildings and in their stone-quarries.
+But these people were too utterly barbarous and devoid of all culture or
+political importance to be taken into account. Besides, the Jews could
+not be aware of the vast extent of the earth occupied by the black race,
+since the greater part of Africa was then unknown to the world, and so
+were the islands to the south of India, also Australia and its
+islands&mdash;all seats of different sections of that race.</p>
+
+<p>11. The same could not be said of the Yellow Race. True, its principal
+representatives, the nations of the far East of Asia&mdash;the Chinese, the
+Mongols and the Mandchous,&mdash;could not be known to the Hebrews at any
+time of antiquity, but there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> were more than enough representatives of
+it who could not be <i>un</i>known to them.<a name="FNanchor_AB_28" id="FNanchor_AB_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_AB_28" class="fnanchor">[AB]</a> For it was both a very old
+and extremely numerous race, which early spread over the greater part of
+the earth and at one time probably equalled in numbers the rest of
+mankind. It seems always to have been broken up into a great many tribes
+and peoples, whom it has been found convenient to gather under the
+general designation of <span class="smcap">Turanians</span>, from a very ancient name,&mdash;<span class="smcap">Tur</span> or
+<span class="smcap">Tura</span>&mdash;which was given them by the white population of Persia and Central
+Asia, and which is still preserved in that of one of their principal
+surviving branches, the <span class="smcap">Turks</span>. All the different members of this great
+family have had very striking features in common,&mdash;the most
+extraordinary being an incapability of reaching the highest culture, of
+progressing indefinitely, improving continually. A strange law of their
+being seems to have condemned them to stop short, when they had attained
+a certain, not very advanced, stage. Thus their speech has remained
+extremely imperfect. They spoke, and such Turanian nations as now exist
+still speak, languages, which, however they may differ, all have this
+peculiarity, that they are composed either entirely of monosyllables,
+(the most rudimentary form of speech), or of monosyllables pieced into
+words in the stiffest, most unwieldy manner, stuck<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> together, as it
+were, with nothing to join them, wherefore this kind of language has
+been called <i>agglutinative</i>. Chinese belongs to the former class of
+languages, the "monosyllabic," Turkish to the latter, the
+"agglutinative." Further, the Turanians were probably the first to
+invent writing, but never went in that art beyond having one particular
+sign for every single word&mdash;(such is Chinese writing with its forty
+thousand signs or thereabouts, as many as words in the language)&mdash;or at
+most a sign for every syllable. They had beautiful beginnings of poetry,
+but in that also never went beyond beginnings. They were also probably
+the first who built cities, but were wanting in the qualities necessary
+to organize a society, establish a state on solid and lasting
+foundations. At one time they covered the whole of Western Asia, dwelt
+there for ages before any other race occupied it,&mdash;fifteen hundred
+years, according to a very trustworthy tradition,&mdash;and were called by
+the ancients "the oldest of men;" but they vanish and are not heard of
+any more the moment that white invaders come into the land; these drive
+the Turanians before them, or bring them into complete subjection, or
+mix with them, but, by force of their own superiorly gifted nature,
+retain the dominant position, so that the others lose all separate
+existence. Thus it was everywhere. For wherever tribes of the three
+Biblical races came, they mostly found Turanian populations who had
+preceded them. There are now a great number of Turanian tribes, more or
+less numerous&mdash;Kirghizes, Bashkirs, Os<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>tiaks, Tunguzes, etc.,
+etc.&mdash;scattered over the vast expanse of Siberia and Eastern Russia,
+where they roam at will with their flocks and herds of horses,
+occasionally settling down,&mdash;fragmentary remnants of a race which, to
+this latest time, has preserved its original peculiarities and
+imperfections, whose day is done, which has long ceased to improve,
+unless it assimilates with the higher white race and adopts their
+culture, when all that it lacked is supplied by the nobler element which
+mixes with it, as in the case of the Hungarians, one of the most
+high-spirited and talented nations of Europe, originally of Turanian
+stock. The same may be said, in a lesser degree, of the Finns&mdash;the
+native inhabitants of the Russian principality of Finland.</p>
+
+<p>12. All this by no means goes to show that the Yellow Race has ever been
+devoid of fine faculties and original genius. Quite the contrary; for,
+if white races everywhere stepped in, took the work of civilization out
+of their hands and carried it on to a perfection of which they were
+incapable, still they, the Turanians, had everywhere <i>begun</i> that work,
+it was their inventions which the others took up and improved: and we
+must remember that it is very much easier to improve than to invent.
+Only there is that strange limitation to their power of progress and
+that want of natural refinement, which are as a wall that encloses them
+around. Even the Chinese, who, at first sight, are a brilliant
+exception, are not so on a closer inspection. True, they have founded
+and organized a great empire which still endures; they have a vast
+literature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> they have made most important inventions&mdash;printing,
+manufacturing paper out of rags, the use of the compass,
+gunpowder&mdash;centuries before European nations made them in their turn.
+Yet the latter do all those things far better; they have improved these,
+to them, new inventions more in a couple of hundred years than the
+Chinese in a thousand. In fact it is a good many centuries since the
+Chinese have ceased to improve anything at all. Their language and
+writing are childishly imperfect, though the oldest in existence. In
+government, in the forms of social life, in their ideas generally, they
+follow rules laid down for them three thousand years ago or more and
+from which to swerve a hair's breadth were blasphemy. As they have
+always stubbornly resisted foreign influences, and gone the length of
+trying actually to erect material walls between themselves and the rest
+of the world, their empire is a perfectly fair specimen of what the
+Yellow Race can do, if left entirely to itself, and quite as much of
+what it can<i>not</i> do, and now they have for centuries presented that
+unique phenomenon&mdash;a great nation at a standstill.</p>
+
+<p>13. All this obviously leads us to a very interesting and suggestive
+question: what is this great race which we find everywhere at the very
+roots of history, so that not only ancient tradition calls them "the
+oldest of men," but modern science more and more inclines to the same
+opinion? Whence came it? How is it not included in the great family of
+nations, of which Chap. X. of Genesis gives so clear and comprehensive a
+scheme? Parallel to this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> question arises another: what became of Cain's
+posterity? What, above all, of the descendants of those three sons of
+Lamech, whom the writer of Genesis clearly places before us as heads of
+nations and thinks of sufficient importance to specify what their
+occupations were? (See Genesis iv. 19-22.) Why do we never hear any more
+of this entire half of humanity, severed in the very beginning from the
+other half&mdash;the lineage of the accursed son from that of the blest and
+favored son? And may not the answer to this series of questions be the
+answer to the first series also?</p>
+
+<p>14. With regard to the second series this answer is plain and decisive.
+The descendants of Cain were necessarily out of the pale of the Hebrew
+world. The curse of God, in consequence of which their forefather is
+said to have gone "out of the presence of the Lord," at once and forever
+separated them from the posterity of the pious son, from those who
+"walked with God." The writer of Genesis tells us that they lived in the
+"Land of Exile" and multiplied, then dismisses them. For what could the
+elect, the people of God, or even those other nations who went astray,
+who were repeatedly chastised, but whose family bond with the righteous
+race was never entirely severed&mdash;what could they have in common with the
+banished, the castaway, the irretrievably accursed? These did not count,
+they were not of humanity. What more probable, therefore, than that,
+being excluded from all the other narratives, they should not be
+included in that of the Flood? And in that case, who should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> they be but
+that most ancient race, set apart by its color and several striking
+peculiarities, which everywhere preceded their white brethren, but were
+invariably supplanted by them and not destined to supremacy on the
+earth? This supposition has been hazarded by men of great genius, and if
+bold, still has much to support it; if confirmed it would solve many
+puzzles, throw strong and unexpected light on many obscure points. The
+very antiquity of the Yellow Race tallies admirably with the Biblical
+narrative, for of the two Biblical brothers Cain was the eldest. And the
+doom laid on the race, "a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be on the
+earth," has not been revoked through all ages. Wherever pure Turanians
+are&mdash;they are nomads. And when, fifteen hundred years ago and later,
+countless swarms of barbarous people flooded Europe, coming from the
+east, and swept all before them, the Turanian hordes could be known
+chiefly by this, that they destroyed, burned, laid waste&mdash;and passed,
+vanished: whereas the others, after treating a country quite as
+savagely, usually settled in it and founded states, most of which exist
+even now&mdash;for, French, German, English, Russian, we are all descended
+from some of those barbarous invaders. And this also would fully explain
+how it came to pass that, although the Hebrews and their
+forefathers&mdash;let us say the Semites generally&mdash;everywhere found
+Turanians on their way, nay, dwelt in the same lands with them, the
+sacred historian ignores them completely, as in Gen. xi. 2.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>15. For they were Turanians, arrived at a, for them, really high state
+of culture, who peopled the land of Shinar, when "<i>they</i>"&mdash;descendants
+of Noah,&mdash;journeying in the East, found that plain where they dwelt for
+many years.</p>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 135px;">
+<img src="images/deco166.png" width="135" height="57" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AA_27" id="Footnote_AA_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AA_27"><span class="label">[AA]</span></a> "<i>Gentes non homines.</i>" (<i>De Civitate Dei</i>, XVII., 3.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AB_28" id="Footnote_AB_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AB_28"><span class="label">[AB]</span></a> If, as has been suggested, the "land of Sinim" in Isaiah
+xlix., 12, is meant for China, such a solitary, incidental and
+unspecified mention of a country the name of which may have been vaguely
+used to express the remotest East, cannot invalidate the scheme so
+evidently and persistently pursued in the composition of Chap. X.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 374px;">
+<img src="images/deco167.png" width="374" height="87" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class='center'><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>TURANIAN CHALDEA.&mdash;SHUMIR AND ACCAD.&mdash;THE BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION.</p>
+
+
+<p>1. It is not Berosus alone who speaks of the "multitudes of men of
+foreign race" who colonized Chaldea "in the beginning." It was a
+universally admitted fact throughout antiquity that the population of
+the country had always been a mixed one, but a fact known vaguely,
+without particulars. On this subject, as on so many others, the
+discoveries made in the royal library of Nineveh shed an unexpected and
+most welcome light. The very first, so to speak preliminary, study of
+the tablets showed that there were amongst them documents in two
+entirely different languages, of which one evidently was that of an
+older population of Chaldea. The other and later language, usually
+called Assyrian, because it was spoken also by the Assyrians, being very
+like Hebrew, an understanding of it was arrived at with comparative
+ease. As to the older language there was absolutely no clue. The only
+conjecture which could be made with any certainty was, that it must have
+been spoken by a double people, called the people of Shumir and Accad,
+because later kings of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> Babylon, in their inscriptions, always gave
+themselves the title of "Kings of Shumir and Accad," a title which the
+Assyrian sovereigns, who at times conquered Chaldea, did not fail to
+take also. But who and what were these people might never have been
+cleared up, but for the most fortunate discovery of dictionaries and
+grammars, which, the texts being supplied with Assyrian translations,
+served our modern scholars, just as they did Assyrian students 3000
+years ago, to decipher and learn to understand the oldest language of
+Chaldea. Of course, it was a colossal piece of work, beset with
+difficulties which it required an almost fierce determination and
+superhuman patience to master. But every step made was so amply repaid
+by the results obtained, that the zeal of the laborers was never
+suffered to flag, and the effected reconstruction, though far from
+complete even now, already enables us to conjure a very suggestive and
+life-like picture of those first settlers of the Mesopotamian Lowlands,
+their character, religion and pursuits.</p>
+
+<p>2. The language thus strangely brought to light was very soon perceived
+to be distinctly of that peculiar and primitive type&mdash;partly
+monosyllables, partly words rudely pieced together,&mdash;which has been
+described in a preceding chapter as characteristic of the Turanian race,
+and which is known in science by the general name of <i>agglutinative</i>,
+i.e., "glued or stuck together," without change in the words, either by
+declension or conjugation. The people of Shumir and Accad, therefore,
+were one and the same Turanian nation, the difference in the name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> being
+merely a geographical one. <span class="smcap">Shumir</span> is Southern or Lower Chaldea, the
+country towards and around the Persian Gulf,&mdash;that very land of Shinar
+which is mentioned in Genesis xi. 2. Indeed "Shinar" is only the way in
+which the Hebrews pronounced and spelt the ancient name of Lower
+Chaldea. <span class="smcap">Accad</span> is Northern or Upper Chaldea. The most correct way, and
+the safest from all misunderstanding, is to name the people the
+Shumiro-Accads and their language, the Shumiro-Accadian; but for
+brevity's sake, the first name is frequently dropped, and many say
+simply "the Accads" and "the Accadian language." It is clear, however,
+that the royal title must needs unite both names, which together
+represented the entire country of Chaldea. Of late it has been
+discovered that the Shumiro-Accads spoke two slightly differing dialects
+of the same language, that of Shumir being most probably the older of
+the two, as culture and conquest seem to have been carried steadily
+northward from the Gulf.</p>
+
+<p>3. That the Accads themselves came from somewhere else, is plain from
+several circumstances, although there is not the faintest symptom or
+trace of any people whom they may have found in the country. They
+brought into it the very first and most essential rudiments of
+civilization, the art of writing, and that of working metals; it was
+probably also they who began to dig those canals without which the land,
+notwithstanding its fabulous fertility, must always be a marshy waste,
+and who began to make bricks and construct buildings out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> them. There
+is ground to conclude that they came down from mountains in the fact
+that the name "Accad" means "Mountains" or "Highlands," a name which
+they could not possibly have taken in the dead flats of Lower Chaldea,
+but must have retained as a relic of an older home. It is quite possible
+that this home may have been in the neighboring wild and mountainous
+land of <span class="smcap">Shushan</span> (Susiana on the maps), whose first known population was
+also Turanian. These guesses take us into a past, where not a speck of
+positive fact can be discerned. Yet even that must have been only a
+station in this race's migration from a far more northern centre. Their
+written language, even after they had lived for centuries in an almost
+tropical country, where palms grew in vast groves, almost forests, and
+lions were common game, as plentiful as tigers in the jungles of Bengal,
+contained no sign to designate either the one or the other, while it was
+well stocked with the signs of metals,&mdash;of which there is no vestige, of
+course, in Chaldea,&mdash;and all that belongs to the working thereof. As the
+<span class="smcap">Alta&iuml;</span> range, the great Siberian chain, has always been famous for its
+rich mines of every possible metal ore, and as the valleys of the Alta&iuml;
+are known to be the nests from which innumerable Turanian tribes
+scattered to the north and south, and in which many dwell to this day
+after their own nomadic fashion, there is no extravagance in supposing
+that <i>there</i> may have been our Accads' original point of departure.
+Indeed the Alta&iuml; is so indissolubly connected with the origin of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> most
+Turanian nations, that many scientists prefer to call the entire Yellow
+Race, with all its gradations of color, "the Alta&iuml;c." Their own
+traditions point the same way. Several of them have a pretty legend of a
+sort of paradise, a secluded valley somewhere in the Alta&iuml;, pleasant and
+watered by many streams, where their forefathers either dwelt in the
+first place or whither they were providentially conducted to be saved
+from a general massacre. The valley was entirely enclosed with high
+rocks, steep and pathless, so that when, after several hundred years, it
+could no longer hold the number of its inhabitants, these began to
+search for an issue and found none. Then one among them, who was a
+smith, discovered that the rocks were almost entirely of iron. By his
+advice, a huge fire was made and a great many mighty bellows were
+brought into play, by which means a path was <i>melted</i> through the rocks.
+A tradition, by the by, which, while confirming the remark that the
+invention of metallurgy belongs originally to the Yellow Race in its
+earliest stages of development, is strangely in accordance with the name
+of the Biblical Tubalcain, "the forger of every cutting instrument of
+brass and iron." That the Accads were possessed of this distinctive
+accomplishment of their race is moreover made very probable by the
+various articles and ornaments in gold, brass and iron which are
+continually found in the very oldest tombs.</p>
+
+<p>4. But infinitely the most precious acquisition secured to us by the
+unexpected revelation of this stage of remotest antiquity is a
+wonderfully exten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>sive collection of prayers, invocations and other
+sacred texts, from which we can reconstruct, with much probability, the
+most primitive religion in the world&mdash;for such undoubtedly was that of
+the Accads. As a clear and authentic insight into the first
+manifestation of the religious instinct in man was just what was wanting
+until now, in order to enable us to follow its development from the
+first, crudest attempts at expression to the highest aspirations and
+noblest forms of worship, the value of this discovery can never be
+overrated. It introduces us moreover into so strange and fantastical a
+world as not the most imaginative of fictions can surpass.</p>
+
+<p>5. The instinct of religion&mdash;"religiosity," as it has been called&mdash;is
+inborn to man; like the faculty of speech, it belongs to man, and to man
+only, of all living beings. So much so, that modern science is coming to
+acknowledge these two faculties as <i>the</i> distinctive characteristics
+which mark man as a being apart from and above the rest of creation.
+Whereas the division of all that exists upon the earth has of old been
+into three great classes or realms&mdash;the "mineral realm," the "vegetable
+realm" and the "animal realm," in which latter man was included&mdash;it is
+now proposed to erect the human race with all its varieties into a
+separate "realm," for this very reason: that man has all that animals
+have, and two things more which they have not&mdash;speech and religiosity,
+which assume a faculty of abstract thinking, observing and drawing
+general conclusions, solely and distinctively human. Now<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> the very first
+observations of man in the most primitive stage of his existence must
+necessarily have awakened in him a twofold consciousness&mdash;that of power
+and that of helplessness. He could do many things. Small in size, weak
+in strength, destitute of natural clothing and weapons, acutely
+sensitive to pain and atmospheric changes as all higher natures are, he
+could kill and tame the huge and powerful animals which had the
+advantage of him in all these things, whose numbers and fierceness
+threatened him at every turn with destruction, from which his only
+escape would seem to have been constant cowering and hiding. He could
+compel the earth to bear for him choicer food than for the other beings
+who lived on her gifts. He could command the service of fire, the dread
+visitor from heaven. Stepping victoriously from one achievement to
+another, ever widening his sphere of action, of invention, man could not
+but be filled with legitimate pride. But on the other hand, he saw
+himself surrounded with things which he could neither account for nor
+subdue, which had the greatest influence on his well-being, either
+favorable or hostile, but which were utterly beyond his comprehension or
+control. The same sun which ripened his crop sometimes scorched it; the
+rain which cooled and fertilized his field, sometimes swamped it; the
+hot winds parched him and his cattle; in the marshes lurked disease and
+death. All these and many, many more, were evidently <span class="smcap">Powers</span>, and could
+do him great good or work him great harm, while he was unable to do
+either to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> them. These things existed, he felt their action every day of
+his life, consequently they were to him living Beings, alive in the same
+way that he was, possessed of will, for good or for evil. In short, to
+primitive man everything in nature was alive with an individual life, as
+it is to the very young child, who would not beat the chair against
+which he has knocked himself, and then kiss it to make friends, did he
+not think that it is a living and feeling being like himself. The
+feeling of dependence and absolute helplessness thus created must have
+more than balanced that of pride and self-reliance. Man felt himself
+placed in a world where he was suffered to live and have his share of
+what good things he could get, but which was not ruled by him,&mdash;in a
+spirit-world. Spirits around him, above him, below him,&mdash;what could he
+do but humble himself, confess his dependence, and pray to be spared?
+For surely, if those spirits existed and took enough interest in him to
+do him good or evil, they could hear him and might be moved by
+supplication. To establish a distinction between such spirits which did
+only harm, were evil in themselves, and those whose action was generally
+beneficial and only on rare occasions destructive, was the next natural
+step, which led as naturally to a perception of divine displeasure as
+the cause of such terrible manifestations and a seeking of means to
+avert or propitiate it. While fear and loathing were the portion of the
+former spirits, the essentially evil ones, love and gratitude, were the
+predominant feelings inspired by the latter,&mdash;feelings which, together
+with the ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> present consciousness of dependence, are the very essence
+of religion, just as praise and worship are the attempts to express them
+in a tangible form.</p>
+
+<p>6. It is this most primitive, material and unquestioning stage in the
+growth of religious feeling, which a large portion of the
+Shumiro-Accadian documents from the Royal Library at Nineveh brings
+before us with a force and completeness which, however much room there
+may still be for uncertainty in details, on the whole really amounts to
+more than conjecture. Much will, doubtless, be discovered yet, much will
+be done, but it will only serve to fill in a sketch, of which the
+outlines are already now tolerably fixed and authentic. The materials
+for this most important reconstruction are almost entirely contained in
+a vast collection of two hundred tablets, forming one consecutive work
+in three books, over fifty of which have been sifted out of the heap of
+rubbish at the British Museum and first deciphered by Sir Henry
+Rawlinson, one of the greatest, as he was the first discoverer in this
+field, and George Smith, whose achievements and too early death have
+been mentioned in a former chapter. Of the three books into which the
+collection is divided, one treats "of evil spirits," another of
+diseases, and the third contains hymns and prayers&mdash;the latter
+collection showing signs of a later and higher development. Out of these
+materials the lately deceased French scholar, Mr. Fran&ccedil;ois Lenormant,
+whose name has for the last fifteen years or so of his life stood in the
+very front of this branch of Oriental research, has been the first to
+reconstruct<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> an entire picture in a book not very voluminous indeed, but
+which must always remain a corner-stone in the history of human culture.
+This book shall be our guide in the strange world we now enter.<a name="FNanchor_AC_29" id="FNanchor_AC_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_AC_29" class="fnanchor">[AC]</a></p>
+
+<p>7. To the people of Shumir and Accad, then, the universe was peopled
+with Spirits, whom they distributed according to its different spheres
+and regions. For they had formed a very elaborate and clever, if
+peculiar idea of what they supposed the world to be like. According to
+the ingenious expression of a Greek writer of the 1st century <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> they
+imagined it to have the shape of an inverted round boat or bowl, the
+thickness of which would represent the mixture of land and water
+(<i>k&icirc;-a</i>) which we call the crust of the earth, while the hollow beneath
+this inhabitable crust was fancied as a bottomless pit or abyss (<i>ge</i>),
+in which dwelt many powers. Above the convex surface of the earth
+(<i>k&icirc;-a</i>) spread the sky (<i>ana</i>), itself divided into two regions:&mdash;the
+highest heaven or firmament, which, with the fixed stars immovably
+attached to it, revolved, as round an axis or pivot, around an immensely
+high mountain, which joined it to the earth as a pillar, and was
+situated somewhere in the far North-East&mdash;some say North&mdash;and the lower
+heaven, where the planets&mdash;a sort of resplendent animals, seven in
+number, of beneficent nature&mdash;wandered forever on their appointed path.
+To these were opposed seven evil demons, sometimes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> called "the Seven
+Fiery Phantoms." But above all these, higher in rank and greater in
+power, is the Spirit (<i>Zi</i>) of heaven (<i>ana</i>), <span class="smcap">Zi-ana</span>, or, as often,
+simply <span class="smcap">Ana</span>&mdash;"Heaven." Between the lower heaven and the surface of the
+earth is the atmospheric region, the realm of <span class="smcap">Im</span> or <span class="smcap">Mermer</span>, the Wind,
+where he drives the clouds, rouses the storms, and whence he pours down
+the rain, which is stored in the great reservoir of Ana, in the heavenly
+Ocean. As to the earthly Ocean, it is fancied as a broad river, or
+watery rim, flowing all round the edge of the imaginary inverted bowl;
+in its waters dwells <span class="smcap">&Ecirc;a</span> (whose name means "the House of Waters"), the
+great Spirit of the Earth and Waters (<i>Zi-k&icirc;-a</i>), either in the form of
+a fish, whence he is frequently called "&Ecirc;a the fish," or "the Exalted
+Fish," or on a magnificent ship, with which he travels round the earth,
+guarding and protecting it. The minor spirits of earth (<i>Anunnaki</i>) are
+not much spoken of except in a body, as a sort of host or legion. All
+the more terrible are the seven spirits of the abyss, the <span class="smcap">Maskim</span>, of
+whom it is said that, although their seat is in the depths of the earth,
+yet their voice resounds on the heights also: they reside at will in the
+immensity of space, "not enjoying a good name either in heaven or on
+earth." Their greatest delight is to subvert the orderly course of
+nature, to cause earthquakes, inundations, ravaging tempests. Although
+the Abyss is their birth-place and proper sphere, they are not
+submissive to its lord and ruler <span class="smcap">Mul-ge</span> ("Lord of the Abyss"). In that
+they are like their brethren of the lower heaven who do not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> acknowledge
+Ana's supremacy, in fact are called "spirits of rebellion," because,
+being originally Ana's messengers, they once "secretly plotted a wicked
+deed," rose against the heavenly powers, obscured the Moon, and all but
+hurled him from his seat. But the Maskim are ever more feared and
+hated, as appears from the following description, which has become
+celebrated for its real poetical force:</p>
+
+<p>8. "They are seven! they are seven!&mdash;Seven they are in the depths of
+Ocean,&mdash;seven they are, disturbers of the face of Heaven.&mdash;They arise
+from the depths of Ocean, from hidden lurking-places.&mdash;They spread like
+snares.&mdash;Male they are not, female they are not.&mdash;Wives they have not,
+children are not born to them.&mdash;Order they know not, nor
+beneficence;&mdash;prayers and supplication they hear not.&mdash;Vermin grown in
+the bowels of the mountains&mdash;foes of &Ecirc;a&mdash;they are the throne-bearers of
+the gods&mdash;they sit in the roads and make them unsafe.&mdash;The fiends! the
+fiends!&mdash;They are seven, they are seven, seven they are!</p>
+
+<p>"Spirit of Heaven (<i>Zi-ana, Ana</i>), be they conjured!</p>
+
+<p>"Spirit of Earth (<i>Zi-k&icirc;-a, &Ecirc;a</i>), be they conjured!"</p>
+
+<p>9. Besides these regular sets of evil spirits in sevens&mdash;seven being a
+mysterious and consecrated number&mdash;there are the hosts untold of demons
+which assail man in every possible form, which are always on the watch
+to do him harm, not only bodily, but moral in the way of civil broils
+and family dissensions; confusion is their work; it is they who "steal
+the child from the father's knee," who "drive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> the son from his father's
+house," who withhold from the wife the blessing of children; they have
+stolen days from heaven, which they have made evil days, that bring
+nothing but ill-luck and misfortune,&mdash;and nothing can keep them out:
+"They fall as rain from the sky, they spring from the earth,&mdash;they steal
+from house to house,&mdash;doors do not stop them,&mdash;bolts do not shut them
+out,&mdash;they creep in at the doors like serpents,&mdash;they blow in at the
+roof like winds." Various are their haunts: the tops of mountains, the
+pestilential marshes by the sea, but especially the desert. Diseases are
+among the most dreaded of this terrible band, and first among these
+<span class="smcap">Namtar</span> or <span class="smcap">Dibbara</span>, the demon of Pestilence, <span class="smcap">Idpa</span> (Fever), and a certain
+mysterious disease of the head, which must be insanity, of which it is
+said that it oppresses the head and holds it tight like a tiara (a heavy
+headdress) or "like a dark prison," and makes it confused, that "it is
+like a violent tempest; no one knows whence it comes, nor what is its
+object."</p>
+
+<p>10. All these evil beings are very properly classed together under the
+general name of "creations of the Abyss," births of the nether world,
+the world of the dead. For the unseen world below the habitable earth
+was naturally conceived as the dwelling place of the departed spirits
+after death. It is very remarkable as characteristic of the low standard
+of moral conception which the Shumiro-Accads had attained at this stage
+of their development, that, although they never admitted that those who
+died ceased to exist altogether, there is very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> little to show that they
+imagined any happy state for them after death, not even as a reward for
+a righteous life, nor, on the other hand, looked to a future state for
+punishment of wrongs committed in this world, but promiscuously
+consigned their dead to the <span class="smcap">Arali</span>, a most dismal region which is called
+the "support of chaos," or, in phrase no less vague and full of
+mysterious awe, "the Great Land" (<i>K&icirc;-gal</i>), "the Great City"
+(<i>Urugal</i>), "the spacious dwelling," "where they wander in the dark,"&mdash;a
+region ruled by a female divinity called by different names, but most
+frequently "Lady of the Great Land" (<i>Nin-k&icirc;-gal</i>), or "Lady of the
+Abyss" (<i>Nin-ge</i>), who may then rather be understood as Death
+personified, that Namtar (Pestilence) is her chief minister. The
+Shumiro-Accads seem to have dimly fancied that association with so many
+evil beings whose proper home the Arali was, must convert even the human
+spirits into beings almost as noxious, for one or two passages appear to
+imply that they were afraid of ghosts, at least on one occasion it is
+threatened to send the dead back into the upper world, as the direst
+calamity that can be inflicted.</p>
+
+<p>11. As if all these terrors were not sufficient to make life a burden,
+the Shumiro-Accads believed in sorcerers, wicked men who knew how to
+compel the powers of evil to do their bidding and thus could inflict
+death, sickness or disasters at their pleasure. This could be done in
+many ways&mdash;by a look, by uttering certain words, by drinks made of herbs
+prepared under certain conditions and ceremonies.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> Nay, the power of
+doing harm sometimes fatally belonged even to innocent persons, who
+inflicted it unintentionally by their look&mdash;for the effect of "the evil
+eye" did not always depend on a person's own will.</p>
+
+<p>12. Existence under such conditions must have been as unendurable as
+that of poor children who have been terrified by silly nurses into a
+belief in ogres and a fear of dark rooms, had there not existed real or
+imaginary defences against this array of horrible beings always ready to
+fall on unfortunate humanity in all sorts of inexplicable ways and for
+no other reason but their own detestable delight in doing evil. These
+defences could not consist in rational measures dictated by a knowledge
+of the laws of physical nature, since they had no notion of such laws;
+nor in prayers and propitiatory offerings, since one of the demons' most
+execrable qualities was, as we have seen, that they "knew not
+beneficence" and "heard not prayer and supplication." Then, if they
+cannot be coaxed, they must be compelled. This seems a very presumptuous
+assumption, but it is strictly in accordance with human instinct. It has
+been very truly said<a name="FNanchor_AD_30" id="FNanchor_AD_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_AD_30" class="fnanchor">[AD]</a> that "man was so conscious of being called to
+exercise empire over the powers of nature, that, the moment he entered
+into any relations with them, it was to try and subject them to his
+will. Only instead of studying the phenomena, in order to grasp their
+laws and apply<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> them to his needs, he fancied he could, by means of
+peculiar practices and consecrated forms, compel the physical agents of
+nature to serve his wishes and purposes.... This pretension had its root
+in the notion which antiquity had formed of the natural phenomena. It
+did not see in them the consequence of unchangeable and necessary laws,
+always active and always to be calculated upon, but fancied them to
+depend on the arbitrary and varying will of the spirits and deities it
+had put in the place of physical agents." It follows that in a religion
+which peoples the universe with spirits of which the greater part are
+evil, magic&mdash;i.e., conjuring with words and rites, incantations,
+spells&mdash;must take the place of worship, and the ministers of such a
+religion are not priests, but conjurers and enchanters. This is exactly
+the state of things revealed by the great collection of texts discovered
+by Sir H. Rawlinson and G. Smith. They contain forms for conjuring all
+the different kinds of demons, even to evil dreams and nightmares, the
+object of most such invocations being to drive them away from the
+habitations of men and back to where they properly belong&mdash;the depth of
+the desert, the inaccessible mountain tops, and all remote, waste and
+uninhabited places generally, where they can range at will, and find
+nobody to harm.</p>
+
+<p>13. Yet there are also prayers for protection and help addressed to
+beings conceived as essentially good and beneficent&mdash;a step marking a
+great advance in the moral feeling and religious consciousness of the
+people. Such beings&mdash;gods, in fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>&mdash;were, above all, Ana and &Ecirc;a, whom
+we saw invoked in the incantation of the Seven Maskim as "Spirit of
+Heaven," and "Spirit of Earth." The latter especially is appealed to as
+an unfailing refuge to ill-used and terrified mortals. He is imagined as
+possessed of all knowledge and wisdom, which he uses only to befriend
+and protect. His usual residence is the deep,&mdash;(hence his name, <i>&Ecirc;-a</i>,
+"the House of Waters")&mdash;but he sometimes travels round the earth in a
+magnificent ship. His very name is a terror to the evil ones. He knows
+the words, the spells that will break their power and compel their
+obedience. To him, therefore, the people looked in their need with
+infinite trust. Unable to cope with the mysterious dangers and snares
+which, as they fancied, beset them on all sides, ignorant of the means
+of defeating the wicked beings who, they thought, pursued them with
+abominable malice and gratuitous hatred, they turned to &Ecirc;a. <i>He</i> would
+know. <i>He</i> must be asked, and he would tell.</p>
+
+<p>14. But, as though bethinking themselves that &Ecirc;a was a being too mighty
+and exalted to be lightly addressed and often disturbed, the
+Shumiro-Accads imagined a beneficent spirit, <span class="smcap">Meridug</span> (more correctly
+<span class="smcap">Mirri-Dugga</span>), called son of &Ecirc;a and <span class="smcap">Damkina</span>, (a name of Earth). Meridug's
+only office is to act as mediator between his father and suffering
+mankind. It is he who bears to &Ecirc;a the suppliant's request, exposes his
+need sometimes in very moving words, and requests to know the remedy&mdash;if
+illness be the trouble&mdash;or the counter-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>spell, if the victim be held in
+the toils of witchcraft. &Ecirc;a tells his son, who is then supposed to
+reveal the secret to the chosen instrument of assistance&mdash;of course the
+conjuring priest, or better, soothsayer. As most incantations are
+conceived on this principle, they are very monotonous in form, though
+frequently enlivened by the supposed dialogue between the father and
+son. Here is one of the more entertaining specimens. It occupies an
+entire tablet, but unfortunately many lines have been hopelessly
+injured, and have to be omitted. The text begins:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Disease of the Head has issued from the Abyss, from the
+dwelling of the Lord of the Abyss." </p></div>
+
+<p>Then follow the symptoms and the description of the sufferer's inability
+to help himself. Then "Meridug has looked on his misery. He has entered
+the dwelling of his father &Ecirc;a, and has spoken unto him:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'My father, the Disease of the Head has issued from the
+Abyss.' </p></div>
+
+<p>"A second time he has spoken unto him:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'What he must do against it the man knows not. How shall he
+find healing?' </p></div>
+
+<p>"&Ecirc;a has replied to his son Meridug:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'My son, how dost thou not know? What should I teach thee?
+What I know, thou also knowest. But come hither, my son
+Meridug. Take a bucket, fill it with water from the mouth of
+the rivers; impart to this water thy exalted magic power;
+sprinkle with it the man, son of his god, ... wrap up his head,
+... and on the highway pour it out. May insanity be dispelled!
+that the disease of his head vanish like a phantom of the
+night. May &Ecirc;a's word drive it out! May Damkina heal him.'" </p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>15. Another dialogue of the same sort, in which &Ecirc;a is consulted as to
+the means of breaking the power of the Maskim, ends by his revealing
+that</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The white cedar is the tree which breaks the Maskim's noxious
+might." </p></div>
+
+<p>In fact the white cedar was considered an infallible defence against all
+spells and evil powers. Any action or ceremony described in the
+conjuration must of course be performed even as the words are spoken.
+Then there is a long one, perhaps the best preserved of all, to be
+recited by the sufferer, who is supposed to be under the effects of an
+evil spell, and from which it is evident that the words are to accompany
+actions performed by the conjurer. It is divided into parallel verses,
+of which the first runs thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"As this onion is being peeled of its skins, thus shall it be
+of the spell. The burning fire shall consume it; it shall no
+more be planted in a row, ... the ground shall not receive its
+root, its head shall contain no seed and the sun shall not take
+care of it;&mdash;it shall not be offered at the feast of a god or a
+king.&mdash;The man who has cast the evil spell, his eldest son, his
+wife,&mdash;the spell, the lamentations, the transgressions, the
+written spells, the blasphemies, the sins,&mdash;the evil which is
+in my body, in my flesh, in my sores,&mdash;may they all be
+destroyed as this onion, and may the burning fire consume them
+this day! May the evil spell go far away, and may I see the
+light again!" </p></div>
+
+<p>Then the destruction of a date is similarly described:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It shall not return to the bough from which it has been
+plucked." </p></div>
+
+<p>The untying of a knot:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Its threads shall not return to the stem which has produced
+them." </p></div>
+
+<p>The tearing up of some wool:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It shall not return to the back of its sheep." </p></div>
+
+<p>The tearing of some stuff, and after each act the second verse:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The man who has cast the spell," etc. </p></div>
+
+<p>is repeated.</p>
+
+<p>16. It is devoutly to be hoped, for the patients' sake, that treatments
+like these took effect on the disease, for they got no other. Diseases
+being conceived as personal demons who entered a man's body of their own
+accord or under compulsion from powerful sorcerers, and illness being
+consequently considered as a kind of possession, clearly the only thing
+to do was to drive out the demon or break the spell with the aid of the
+beneficent &Ecirc;a and his son. If this intervention was of no avail, nothing
+remained for the patient but to get well as he could, or to die. This is
+why there never was a science of medicine in the proper sense in
+Chaldea, even as late as three or four hundred years <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, and the Greek
+travellers who then visited Babylon must have been not a little shocked
+at the custom they found there of bringing desperately sick persons out
+of the houses with their beds and exposing them in the streets, when any
+passer-by could approach them, inquire into the disease and suggest some
+remedy&mdash;which was sure to be tried as a last chance. This extraordinary
+experiment was of course not resorted to until all known forms of
+conjuration had been gone through and had proved inefficient.</p>
+
+<p>17. The belief that certain words and impreca<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>tions could break the
+power of demons or sorcerers must have naturally led to the notion that
+to wear such imprecations, written on some substance or article, always
+about one's person must be a continual defence against them; while on
+the other hand, words of invocation to the beneficent spirits and images
+representing them, worn in the same way, must draw down on the wearer
+those spirits' protection and blessing. Hence the passion for talismans.
+They were of various kinds: strips of stuff, with the magic words
+written on them, to be fastened to the body, or the clothes, or articles
+of household furniture, were much used; but small articles of clay or
+hard stone were in greater favor on account of their durability. As
+houses could be possessed by evil spirits just as well as individuals,
+talismans were placed in different parts of them for protection, and
+this belief was so enduring that small clay figures of gods were found
+in Assyrian palaces under thresholds&mdash;as in the palace of Khorsabad, by
+Botta&mdash;placed there "to keep from it fiends and enemies." It has been
+discovered in this manner that many of the sculptures which adorned the
+Assyrian palaces and temples were of talismanic nature. Thus the winged
+bulls placed at the gateways were nothing but representations of an
+Accadian class of guardian spirits,&mdash;the <i>Kir&ucirc;bu</i>, Hebrew <i>Kerubim</i>, of
+which we have made <i>Cherub</i>, <i>Cherubim</i>&mdash;who were supposed to keep watch
+at entrances, even at that of the Arali, while some sculptures on which
+demons, in the shape of hideous monsters, are seen fighting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> each
+other, are, so to speak, imprecations in stone, which, if translated
+into words, would mean: "May the evil demons stay outside, may they
+assail and fight each other,"&mdash;as, in that case, they would clearly have
+no leisure to assail the inhabitants of the dwelling. That these
+sculptures really were regarded as talismans and expected to guard the
+inmates from harm, is abundantly shown by the manner in which they are
+mentioned in several inscriptions, down to a very late date. Thus
+Esarhaddon, one of the last kings of Assyria (about 700 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>), says,
+after describing a very sumptuous palace which he had built:&mdash;"I placed
+in its gates bulls and colossi, who, according to their fixed command,
+against the wicked turn themselves; they protect the footsteps, making
+peace to be upon the path of the king their creator."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 419px;">
+<a id='illus_54' name='illus_54'><img src="images/illus_54.png" width="398" height="626" alt="54.&mdash;DEMONS FIGHTING. (From the British Museum.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">54.&mdash;DEMONS FIGHTING.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(From the British Museum.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>18. The cylinder seals with their inscriptions and engraved figures were
+mostly also talismans of like nature; which must be the reason why so
+many are found in graves, tied to the dead person's wrist by a
+string&mdash;evidently as a protection against the fiends which the departed
+spirit was expected to meet. The magic power was of course conferred on
+all talismans by the words which the conjurer spoke over them with the
+necessary ceremonies. One such long incantation is preserved entire. It
+is designed to impart to the talisman the power of keeping the demons
+from all parts of the dwelling, which are singly enumerated, with the
+consequences to the demons who would dare to trespass: those who steal
+into gutters, remove bolts or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> hinges, shall be broken like an earthen
+jug, crushed like clay; those who overstep the wooden frame of the house
+shall be clipped of their wings; those who stretch their neck in at the
+window, the window shall descend and cut their throat. The most original
+in this class of superstitions was that which, according to Lenormant,
+consisted in the notion that all these demons were of so unutterably
+ugly a form and countenance, that they must fly away terrified if they
+only beheld their own likeness. As an illustration of this principle he
+gives an incantation against "the wicked Namtar." It begins with a
+highly graphic description of the terrible demon, who is said to "take
+man captive like an enemy," to "burn him like a flame," to "double him
+up like a bundle," to "assail man, although having neither hand nor
+foot, like a noose." Then follows the usual dialogue between &Ecirc;a and
+Meridug, (in the identical words given above), and &Ecirc;a at length reveals
+the prescription: "Come hither, my son Meridug. Take mud of the Ocean
+and knead out of it a likeness of him, (the Namtar.) Lay down the man,
+after thou hast purified him; lay the image on his bare abdomen, impart
+to it my magic power and turn its face westward, that the wicked Namtar,
+who dwells in his body, may take up some other abode. Amen." The idea is
+that the Namtar, on beholding his own likeness, will flee from it in
+dismay!</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 416px;">
+<a id='illus_55' name='illus_55'><img src="images/illus_55.png" width="416" height="708" alt="55.&mdash;DEMON OF THE SOUTH-WEST WIND. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">55.&mdash;DEMON OF THE SOUTH-WEST WIND.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>19. To this same class belongs a small bronze statuette, which is to be
+seen in the Louvre. Mr. Lenormant thus describes it: "It is the image of
+a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> horrible demon, standing, with the body of a dog, the talons of an
+eagle, arms ending in a lion's paws, the tail of a scorpion, the head of
+a skeleton, but with eyes, and a goat's horns, and with four large wings
+at the back, unfolded. A ring placed at the back of the head served to
+hang the figure up. Along the back is an inscription in the Accadian
+language, informing us that this pretty creature is the Demon of the
+South-west Wind, and is to be placed at the door or window. For in
+Chaldea the South-west Wind comes from the deserts of Arabia, its
+burning breath consumes everything and produces the same ravages as the
+Simoon in Africa. Therefore this particular talisman is most frequently
+met with. Our museums contain many other figures of demons, used as
+talismans to frighten away the evil spirits they were supposed to
+represent. One has the head of a goat on a disproportionately long neck;
+another shows a hyena's head, with huge open mouth, on a bear's body
+with lion's paws." On the principle that possession is best guarded
+against by the presence of beneficent spirits, the exorcisms&mdash;i.e.,
+forms of conjuring designed to drive the evil demons out of a man or
+dwelling&mdash;are usually accompanied with a request to good spirits to
+enter the one or the other, instead of the wicked ones who have been
+ejected. The supreme power which breaks that of all incantations,
+talismans, conjuring rites whatever, is, it would appear, supposed to
+reside in a great, divine name,&mdash;possibly a name of &Ecirc;a himself. At all
+events, it is &Ecirc;a's own secret. For even in his dialogues with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> Meridug,
+when entreated for this supreme aid in desperate cases, he is only
+supposed to impart it to his son to use against the obdurate demons and
+thereby crush their power, but it is not given, so that the demons are
+only threatened with it, but it is not actually uttered in the course of
+the incantations.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 195px;">
+<a id='illus_56' name='illus_56'><img src="images/illus_56.png" width="195" height="359" alt="56.&mdash;HEAD OF DEMON" title="" />
+<span class="caption">56.&mdash;HEAD OF DEMON</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>20. Not entirely unassisted did &Ecirc;a pursue his gigantic task of
+protection and healing. Along with him invocations are often addressed
+to several other spirits conceived as essentially good divine beings,
+whose beneficent influence is felt in many ways. Such was Im, the
+Storm-Wind, with its accompanying vivifying showers; such are the
+purifying and wholesome Waters, the Rivers and Springs which feed the
+earth; above all, such were the Sun and Fire, also the Moon, objects of
+double reverence and gratitude because they dispel the darkness of
+night, which the Shumiro-Accads loathed and feared excessively, as the
+time when the wicked demons are strongest and the power of bad men for
+weaving deadly spells is greatest. The third Book of the Collection of
+Magic Texts is composed almost entirely of hymns to these deities&mdash;as
+well as to &Ecirc;a and Meridug&mdash;which betray a somewhat later stage in the
+nation's religious development, by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> poetical beauty of some of the
+fragments, and especially by a purer feeling of adoration and a higher
+perception of moral goodness, which are absent from the oldest
+incantations.</p>
+
+<p>21. At noon, when the sun has reached the highest point in its heavenly
+course, the earth lies before it without a shadow; all things, good or
+bad, are manifest; its beams, after dispelling the unfriendly gloom,
+pierce into every nook and cranny, bringing into light all ugly things
+that hide and lurk; the evil-doer cowers and shuns its all-revealing
+splendor, and, to perform his accursed deeds, waits the return of his
+dark accomplice, night. What wonder then that to the Shumiro-Accads <span class="smcap">Ud</span>,
+the Sun in all its midday glory, was a very hero of protection, the
+source of truth and justice, the "supreme judge in Heaven and on earth,"
+who "knows lie from truth," who knows the truth that is in the soul of
+man. The hymns to Ud that have been deciphered are full of beautiful
+images. Take for instance the following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"O Sun,<a name="FNanchor_AE_31" id="FNanchor_AE_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_AE_31" class="fnanchor">[AE]</a> I have called unto thee in the bright heavens. In
+the shadow of the cedar art thou;" (i.e., it is thou who makest
+the cedar to cast its shadow, holy and auspicious as the tree
+itself.) "Thy feet are on the summits.... The countries have
+wished for thee, they have longed for thy coming, O Lord! Thy
+radiant light illumines all countries.... Thou makest lies to
+vanish, thou destroyest the noxious influence of portents,
+omens, spells, dreams and evil apparitions; thou turnest wicked
+plots to a happy issue...." </p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This is both true and finely expressed. For what most inveterate
+believer in ghosts and apparitions ever feared them by daylight? and the
+last touch shows much moral sense and observation of the mysterious
+workings of a beneficent power which often not merely defeats evil but
+even turns it into good. There is splendid poetry in the following
+fragment describing the glory of sunrise:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"O Sun! thou hast stepped forth from the background of heaven,
+thou hast pushed back the bolts of the brilliant heaven,&mdash;yea,
+the gate of heaven. O Sun! above the land thou hast raised thy
+head! O Sun! thou hast covered the immeasurable space of heaven
+and countries!" </p></div>
+
+<p>Another hymn describes how, at the Sun's appearance in the brilliant
+portals of the heavens, and during his progress to their highest point,
+all the great gods turn to his light, all the good spirits of heaven and
+earth gaze up to his face, surround him joyfully and reverently, and
+escort him in solemn procession. It needs only to put all these
+fragments into fine verse to make out of them a poem which will be held
+beautiful even in our day, when from our very childhood we learn to know
+the difference between good and poor poetry, growing up, as we do, on
+the best of all ages and all countries.</p>
+
+<p>22. When the sun disappeared in the West, sinking rapidly, and diving,
+as it were, into the very midst of darkness, the Shumiro-Accads did not
+fancy him as either asleep or inactive, but on the contrary as still
+engaged in his everlasting work. Under the name of <span class="smcap">Nin-dar</span>, he travels
+through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> the dreary regions ruled by Mul-ge and, his essence being
+<i>light</i>, he combats the powers of darkness in their own home, till He
+comes out of it, a triumphant hero, in the morning. Nin-dar is also the
+keeper of the hidden treasures of the earth&mdash;its metals and precious
+stones, because, according to Mr. Lenormant's ingenious remark, "they
+only wait, like him, the moment of emerging out of the earth, to emit a
+bright radiancy." This radiancy of precious stones, which is like a
+concentration of light in its purest form, was probably the reason why
+they were in such general use as talismans, quite as much as their
+hardness and durability.</p>
+
+<p>23. But while the Sun accomplishes his nightly underground journey, men
+would be left a prey to mortal terrors in the upper world, deprived of
+light, their chief defence against the evil brood of darkness, were it
+not for his substitute, Fire, who is by nature also a being of light,
+and, as such, the friend of men, from whose paths and dwellings he
+scares not only wild beasts and foes armed with open violence, but the
+far more dangerous hosts of unseen enemies, both demons and spells cast
+by wicked sorcerers. It is in this capacity of protector that the god
+<span class="smcap">Gibil</span> (Fire) is chiefly invoked. In one very complete hymn he is
+addressed thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Thou who drivest away the evil Maskim, who furtherest the
+well-being of life, who strikest the breast of the wicked with
+terror,&mdash;Fire, the destroyer of foes, dread weapon which
+drivest away Pestilence." </p></div>
+
+<p>This last attribute would show that the Shumiro-Accads had noticed the
+hygienic properties of fire,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> which does indeed help to dispel miasmas
+on account of the strong ventilation which a great blaze sets going.
+Thus at a comparatively late epoch, some 400 years <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, a terrible
+plague broke out at Athens, the Greek city, and Hippocrates, a physician
+of great genius and renown, who has been called "the Father of
+Medicine," tried to diminish the contagion by keeping huge fires
+continually blazing at different points of the city. It is the same very
+correct idea which made men invoke Gibil as he who purifies the works of
+man. He is also frequently called "the protector of the dwelling, of the
+family," and praised for "creating light in the house of darkness," and
+for bringing peace to all creation. Over and above these claims to
+gratitude, Gibil had a special importance in the life of a people given
+to the works of metallurgy, of which fire is the chief agent: "It is
+thou," says one hymn, "who mixest tin and copper, it is thou who
+purifiest silver and gold." Now the mixture of tin and copper produces
+bronze, the first metal which has been used to make weapons and tools
+of, in most cases long before iron, which is much more difficult to
+work, and as the quality of the metal depends on the proper mixture of
+the two ingredients, it is but natural that the aid of the god Fire
+should have been specially invoked for the operation. But Fire is not
+only a great power on earth, it is also, in the shape of Lightning, one
+of the dreadest and most mysterious powers of the skies, and as such
+sometimes called son of Ana (Heaven), or, in a more roundabout way, "the
+Hero, son of the Ocean"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>&mdash;meaning the celestial Ocean, the great
+reservoir of rains, from which the lightning seems to spring, as it
+flashes through the heavy showers of a Southern thunder storm. In
+whatever shape he appear, and whatever his functions, Gibil is hailed as
+an invariably beneficent and friendly being.</p>
+
+<p>24. When the feeling of helplessness forced on man by his position in
+the midst of nature takes the form of a reverence for and dependence on
+beings whom he conceives of as essentially good, a far nobler religion
+and far higher moral tone are the immediate consequence. This conception
+of absolute goodness sprang from the observation that certain beings or
+spirits&mdash;like the Sun, Fire, the Thunderstorm&mdash;though possessing the
+power of doing both good and harm, used it almost exclusively for the
+benefit of men. This position once firmly established, the conclusion
+naturally followed, that if these good beings once in awhile sent down a
+catastrophe or calamity,&mdash;if the Sun scorched the fields or the
+Thunderstorm swamped them, if the wholesome North Wind swept away the
+huts and broke down the trees&mdash;it must be in anger, as a mark of
+displeasure&mdash;in punishment. By what could man provoke the displeasure of
+kind and beneficent beings? Clearly by not being like them, by doing not
+good, but evil. And what is evil? That which is contrary to the nature
+of the good spirits: doing wrong and harm to men; committing sins and
+wicked actions. To avoid, therefore, provoking the anger of those good
+but powerful spirits, so terrible in its manifestations, it is
+neces<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>sary to try to please them, and that can be done only by being
+like them,&mdash;good, or at least striving to be so, and, when temptation,
+ignorance, passion or weakness of will have betrayed man into a
+transgression, to confess it, express regret for the offence and an
+intention not to offend again, in order to obtain forgiveness and be
+spared. A righteous life, then, prayer and repentance are the proper
+means of securing divine favor or mercy. It is evident that a religion
+from which such lessons naturally spring is a great improvement on a
+belief in beings who do good or evil indiscriminately, indeed prefer
+doing evil, a belief which cannot teach a distinction between moral
+right and wrong, or a rational distribution of rewards or punishment,
+nor consequently inculcate the feeling of duty and responsibility,
+without which goodness as a matter of principle is impossible and a
+reliable state of society unattainable.</p>
+
+<p>25. This higher and therefore later stage of moral and religious
+development is very perceptible in the third book of the Magic
+Collection. With the appreciation of absolute goodness, conscience has
+awakened, and speaks with such insistence and authority that the
+Shumiro-Accad, in the simplicity of his mind, has earnestly imagined it
+to be the voice of a personal and separate deity, a guardian spirit
+belonging to each man, dwelling within him and living his life. It is a
+god&mdash;sometimes even a divine couple, both "god and goddess, pure
+spirits"&mdash;who protects him from his birth, yet is not proof against the
+spells of sorcerers and the attacks of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> demons, and even can be
+compelled to work evil in the person committed to its care, and
+frequently called therefore "the son of his god," as we saw above, in
+the incantation against the Disease of the Head. The conjuration or
+exorcism which drives out the demon, of course restores the guardian
+spirit to its own beneficent nature, and the patient not only to bodily
+well-being, but also to peace of mind. That is what is desired, when a
+prayer for the cure of a sick or possessed person ends with the words:
+"May he be placed again in the gracious hands of his god!" When
+therefore a man is represented as speaking to "his god" and confessing
+to him his sin and distress, it is only a way of expressing that silent
+self-communing of the soul, in which it reviews its own deficiencies,
+forms good resolutions and prays to be released from the intolerable
+burden of sin. There are some most beautiful prayers of this sort in the
+collection. They have been called "the Penitential Psalms," from their
+striking likeness to some of those psalms in which King David confesses
+his iniquities and humbles himself before the Lord. The likeness extends
+to both spirit and form, almost to words. If the older poet, in his
+spiritual groping, addresses "his god and goddess," the higher, better
+self which he feels within him and feels to be divine&mdash;his Conscience,
+instead of the One God and Lord, his feeling is not less earnest, his
+appeal not less pure and confiding. He confesses his transgression, but
+pleads ignorance and sues for mercy. Here are some of the principal
+verses, of which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> each is repeated twice, once addressed to "my god,"
+and the second time to "my goddess." The title of the Psalm is: "The
+complaints of the repentant heart. Sixty-five verses in all."</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>26. "My Lord, may the anger of his heart be allayed! May the
+fool attain understanding! The god who knows the unknown, may
+he be conciliated! The goddess who knows the unknown, may she
+be conciliated!&mdash;I eat the food of wrath and drink the waters
+of anguish.... O my god, my transgressions are very great, very
+great my sins.... I transgress, and know it not. I sin, and
+know it not. I feed on transgressions, and know it not. I
+wander on wrong paths, and know it not.&mdash;The Lord, in the wrath
+of his heart, has overwhelmed me with confusion.... I lie on
+the ground, and none reaches a hand to me. I am silent and in
+tears, and none takes me by the hand. I cry out, and there is
+none that hears me. I am exhausted, oppressed, and none
+releases me.... My god, who knowest the unknown, be
+merciful!... My goddess, who knowest the unknown, be
+merciful!... How long, O my god?... How long, O my goddess?...
+Lord, thou wilt not repulse thy servant. In the midst of the
+stormy waters, come to my assistance, take me by the hand! I
+commit sins&mdash;turn them into blessedness! I commit
+transgressions&mdash;let the wind sweep them away! My blasphemies
+are very many&mdash;rend them like a garment!... God who knowest the
+unknown,<a name="FNanchor_AF_32" id="FNanchor_AF_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_AF_32" class="fnanchor">[AF]</a> my sins are seven times seven,&mdash;forgive my
+sins!..." </p></div>
+
+<p>27. The religious feeling once roused to this extent, it is not to be
+wondered at that in some invocations the distress or disease which had
+formerly been taken as a gratuitous visitation, begins to be considered
+in the light of a divine punishment, even though the afflicted person be
+the king himself. This is very evident from the concluding passage of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> a
+hymn to the Sun, in which it is the conjurer who speaks on behalf of the
+patient, while presenting an offering:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"O Sun, leave not my uplifted hands unregarded!&mdash;Eat his food,
+refuse not his sacrifice, bring back his god to him, to be a
+support unto his hand!&mdash;May his sin, at thy behest, be forgiven
+him, his misdeed be forgotten!&mdash;May his trouble leave him! May
+he recover from his illness!&mdash;Give to the king new vital
+strength.... Escort the king, who lies at thy feet!&mdash;Also me,
+the conjurer, thy respectful servant!" </p></div>
+
+<p>28. There is another hymn of the same kind, not less remarkable for its
+artistic and regular construction than for its beauty of feeling and
+diction. The penitent speaks five double lines, and the priest adds two
+more, as though endorsing the prayer and supporting it with the weight
+of his own sacred character. This gives very regular strophes, of which,
+unfortunately, only two have been well preserved:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Penitent.</i>&mdash;"I, thy servant, full of sighs, I call to thee.
+Whoever is beset with sin, his ardent supplication thou
+acceptest. If thou lookest on a man with pity, that man liveth.
+Ruler of all, mistress of mankind! Merciful one, to whom it is
+good to turn, who dost receive sighs!" <i>Priest.</i>&mdash;"While his
+god and his goddess are wroth with him he calls on thee. Thy
+countenance turn on him, take hold of his hand."</p>
+
+<p><i>Penitent.</i>&mdash;"Besides thee there is no deity to lead in
+righteousness. Kindly look on me, accept my sighs. Speak: how
+long? and let thine heart be appeased. When, O Lady, will thy
+countenance turn on me? Even like doves I moan, I feed on
+sighs." <i>Priest.</i>&mdash;"His heart is full of woe and trouble, and
+full of sighs. Tears he sheds and breaks out into
+lamentation."<a name="FNanchor_AG_33" id="FNanchor_AG_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_AG_33" class="fnanchor">[AG]</a> </p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>29. Such is a not incomplete outline of this strange and primitive
+religion, the religion of a people whose existence was not suspected
+twenty-five years ago, yet which claims, with the Egyptians and the
+Chinese, the distinction of being one of the oldest on earth, and in all
+probability was older than both. This discovery is one of the most
+important conquests of modern science, not only from its being highly
+interesting in itself, but from the light it throws on innumerable
+hitherto obscure points in the history of the ancient world, nay, on
+many curious facts which reach down to our own time. Thus, the numerous
+Turanian tribes which exist in a wholly or half nomadic condition in the
+immense plains of Eastern and South-eastern Russia, in the forests and
+wastes of Siberia, on the steppes and highlands of Central Asia, have no
+other religion now than this of the old Shumiro-Accads, in its earliest
+and most material shape. Everything to them is a spirit or has a spirit
+of its own; they have no worship, no moral teaching, but only conjuring,
+sorcerers, not priests. These men are called <i>Shamans</i> and have great
+influence among the tribes. The more advanced and cultivated Turanians,
+like the Mongols and Mandchous, accord to one great Spirit the supremacy
+over all others and call that Spirit which they conceive as absolutely
+good, merciful and just, "Heaven," just as the Shumiro-Accads invoked
+"Ana." This has been and still is the oldest national religion of the
+Chinese. They say "Heaven" wherever we would say "God," and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> with the
+same idea of loving adoration and reverent dread, which does not prevent
+them from invoking the spirit of every hill, river, wind or forest, and
+numbering among this host also the souls of the deceased. This clearly
+corresponds to the second and higher stage of the Accadian religion, and
+marks the utmost limit which the Yellow Race have been able to attain in
+spiritual life. True, the greater part of the Chinese now have another
+religion; they are Buddhists; while the Turks and the great majority of
+the Tatars, Mongols and Mandchous, not to speak of other less important
+divisions, are Mussulmans. But both Buddhism and Mahometanism are
+foreign religions, which they have borrowed, adopted, not worked out for
+themselves. Here then we are also met by that fatal law of limitation,
+which through all ages seems to have said to the men of yellow skin and
+high cheek-bones, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further." Thus it was
+in Chaldea. The work of civilization and spiritual development begun by
+the people of Shumir and Accad was soon taken out of their hands and
+carried on by newcomers from the east, those descendants of Noah, who
+"found a plain in the land of Shinar and dwelt there."</p>
+
+
+<p class='center' style='margin-top:3em;'>APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.</p>
+
+<p>Professor Louis Dyer, of Harvard University, has attempted a rendering
+into English verse of the famous incantation of the Seven Maskim. The
+result of the experiment is a translation most faith<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>ful in the spirit
+and main features, if not always literal; and which, by his kind
+permission, we here offer to our readers.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center" style='margin-top:1.5em;'>A CHARM.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="center">I.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Seven are they, they are seven;</span>
+<span class="i2">In the caverns of ocean they dwell,</span>
+<span class="i0">They are clothed in the lightnings of heaven,</span>
+<span class="i2">Of their growth the deep waters can tell;</span>
+<span class="i0">Seven are they, they are seven.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="center">II.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Broad is their way and their course is wide,</span>
+<span class="i2">Where the seeds of destruction they sow,</span>
+<span class="i0">O'er the tops of the hills where they stride,</span>
+<span class="i2">To lay waste the smooth highways below,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Broad is their way and their course is wide.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="center">III.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Man they are not, nor womankind,</span>
+<span class="i2">For in fury they sweep from the main,</span>
+<span class="i0">And have wedded no wife but the wind,</span>
+<span class="i2">And no child have begotten but pain,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Man they are not, nor womankind.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="center">IV.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Fear is not in them, not awe;</span>
+<span class="i2">Supplication they heed not, nor prayer,</span>
+<span class="i0">For they know no compassion nor law,</span>
+<span class="i2">And are deaf to the cries of despair,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Fear is not in them, not awe.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="center">V.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Curs&eacute;d they are, they are curs&eacute;d,</span>
+<span class="i2">They are foes to wise &Ecirc;a's great name;</span>
+<span class="i0">By the whirlwind are all things dispers&eacute;d</span>
+<span class="i2">On the paths of the flash of their flame,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Curs&eacute;d they are, they are curs&eacute;d.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="center">VI.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Spirit of Heaven, oh, help! Help, oh, Spirit of Earth!</span>
+<span class="i2">They are seven, thrice said they are seven;</span>
+<span class="i4">For the gods they are Bearers of Thrones,</span>
+<span class="i0">But for men they are Breeders of Dearth</span>
+<span class="i2">And the authors of sorrows and moans.</span>
+<span class="i4">They are seven, thrice said they are seven.</span>
+<span class="i0">Spirit of Heaven, oh, help! Help, oh, Spirit of Earth!</span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 168px;">
+<img src="images/deco206.png" width="168" height="53" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AC_29" id="Footnote_AC_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AC_29"><span class="label">[AC]</span></a> "La Magie et la Divination chez les Chald&eacute;ens," 1874-5.
+German translation of it, 1878.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AD_30" id="Footnote_AD_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AD_30"><span class="label">[AD]</span></a> Alfred Maury, "La Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquit&eacute;
+et au Moyen-&acirc;ge." Introduction, p. 1.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AE_31" id="Footnote_AE_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AE_31"><span class="label">[AE]</span></a> "<span class="smcap">Ud</span>" not being a proper name, but the name of the sun in
+the language of Shumir and Accad, it can be rendered in translation by
+"Sun," with a capital.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AF_32" id="Footnote_AF_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AF_32"><span class="label">[AF]</span></a> Another and more recent translator renders this line: "God
+who knowest I knew not." Whichever rendering is right, the thought is
+beautiful and profound.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AG_33" id="Footnote_AG_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AG_33"><span class="label">[AG]</span></a> This hymn is given by H. Zimmern, as the text to a
+dissertation on the language and grammar.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 368px;">
+<img src="images/deco207.png" width="368" height="86" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class='center'><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>CUSHITES AND SEMITES.&mdash;EARLY CHALDEAN HISTORY.</p>
+
+
+<p>1. We have just seen that the hymns and prayers which compose the third
+part of the great Magic Collection really mark a later and higher stage
+in the religious conceptions of the Turanian settlers of Chaldea, the
+people of Shumir and Accad. This improvement was not entirely due to a
+process of natural development, but in a great measure to the influence
+of that other and nobler race, who came from the East. When the priestly
+historian of Babylon, Berosus, calls the older population "men of
+foreign race," it is because he belonged himself to that second race,
+who remained in the land, introduced their own superior culture, and
+asserted their supremacy to the end of Babylon. The national legends
+have preserved the memory of this important event, which they represent
+as a direct divine revelation. &Ecirc;a, the all-wise himself, it was
+believed, had appeared to men and taught them things human and divine.
+Berosus faithfully reports the legend, but seems to have given the God's
+name "&Ecirc;a-Han" ("&Ecirc;a the Fish") under the corrupted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> Greek form of <span class="smcap">Oannes</span>.
+This is the narrative, of which we already know the first line:</p>
+
+<p>"There was originally at Babylon a multitude of men of foreign race who
+had colonized Chaldea, and they lived without order, like animals. But
+in the first year" (meaning the first year of the new order of things,
+the new dispensation) "there appeared, from out of the Erythrean Sea
+(the ancient Greek name for the Persian Gulf) where it borders upon
+Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, who was called <span class="smcap">Oannes</span>. The
+whole body of the animal was that of a fish, but under the fish's head
+he had another head, and also feet below, growing out of his fish's
+tail, similar to those of a man; also human speech, and his image is
+preserved to this day. This being used to spend the whole day amidst
+men, without taking any food, and he gave them an insight into letters,
+and sciences, and every kind of art; he taught them how to found cities,
+to construct temples, to introduce laws and to measure land; he showed
+them how to sow seeds and gather in crops; in short, he instructed them
+in everything that softens manners and makes up civilization, so that
+from that time no one has invented anything new. Then, when the sun went
+down, this monstrous Oannes used to plunge back into the sea and spend
+the night in the midst of the boundless waves, for he was amphibious."</p>
+
+<p>2. The question, <i>Who</i> were the bringers of this advanced civilization?
+has caused much division among the most eminent scholars. Two solutions
+are offered. Both being based on many and serious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> grounds and supported
+by illustrious names, and the point being far from settled yet, it is
+but fair to state them both. The two greatest of German assyriologists,
+Professors Eberhard Schrader and Friedrich Delitzsch, and the German
+school which acknowledges them as leaders, hold that the bringers of the
+new and more perfect civilization were Semites&mdash;descendants of Shem,
+i.e., people of the same race as the Hebrews&mdash;while the late Fran&ccedil;ois
+Lenormant and his followers contend that they were Cushites in the first
+instance,&mdash;i.e., belonged to that important family of nations which we
+find grouped, in Chapter X. of Genesis, under the name of Cush, himself
+a son of Ham&mdash;and that the Semitic immigration came second. As the
+latter hypothesis puts forward, among other arguments, the authority of
+the Biblical historians, and moreover involves the destinies of a very
+numerous and vastly important branch of ancient humanity, we will yield
+to it the right of precedence.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 360px;">
+<a id='illus_57' name='illus_57'><img src="images/illus_57.png" width="360" height="841" alt="57.&mdash;OANNES. (Smith&#39;s &quot;Chaldean Genesis.&quot;)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">57.&mdash;OANNES. (Smith&#39;s &quot;Chaldean Genesis.&quot;)</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>3. The name "<span class="smcap">Ham</span>" signifies "brown, dark" (not "black"). Therefore, to
+speak of certain nations as "sons of Ham," is to say that they belonged
+to "the Dark Race." Yet, originally, this great section of Noah's
+posterity was as white of color as the other two. It seems to have first
+existed as a separate race in a region not very distant from the high
+table-land of Central Asia, the probable first cradle of mankind. That
+division of this great section which again separated and became the race
+of Cush, appears to have been drawn southwards by reasons which it is,
+of course, impossible to ascertain. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> is easier to guess at the route
+they must have taken along the <span class="smcap">Hindu Cush</span>,<a name="FNanchor_AH_34" id="FNanchor_AH_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_AH_34" class="fnanchor">[AH]</a> a range of mountains
+which must have been to it a barrier in the west, and which joins the
+western end of the Him&acirc;laya, the mightiest mountain-chain in the world.
+The break between the Hindu-Cush and the Him&acirc;laya forms a mountain pass,
+just at the spot where the river <span class="smcap">Indus</span> (most probably the <span class="smcap">Pischon</span> of
+Gen., Ch. II.) turns abruptly to the south, to water the rich plains of
+India. Through this pass, and following the course of the river, further
+Cushite detachments must have penetrated into that vast and attractive
+peninsula, even to the south of it, where they found a population mostly
+belonging to the Black branch of humanity, so persistently ignored by
+the writer of Chap. X. Hundreds of years spent under a tropical clime
+and intermarriage with the Negro natives altered not only the color of
+their skin, but also the shape of their features. So that when Cushite
+tribes, with the restless migratory spirit so characteristic of all
+early ages, began to work their way back again to the north, then to the
+west, along the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, they
+were both dark-skinned and thick-lipped, with a decided tendency towards
+the Negro type, lesser or greater according to the degree of mixture
+with the inferior race. That this type was foreign to them is proved by
+the facility with which their features resumed the nobler cast of the
+white races wherever they stayed long enough among these, as was the
+case in Chaldea, in Arabia, in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> countries of Canaan, whither many of
+these tribes wandered at various times.</p>
+
+<p>4. Some Cushite detachments, who reached the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb,
+crossed over into Africa, and settling there amidst the barbarous native
+negro tribes, formed a nation which became known to its northern
+neighbors, the Egyptians, to the Hebrews, and throughout the ancient
+East under its own proper name of <span class="smcap">Cush</span>, and whose outward
+characteristics came, in the course of time, so near to the pure Negro
+type as to be scarcely recognizable from it. This is the same nation
+which, to us moderns, is better known under the name of <span class="smcap">Ethiopians</span>,
+given to it by the Greeks, as well as to the eastern division of the
+same race. The Egyptians themselves were another branch of the same
+great section of humanity, represented in the genealogy of Chap. X. by
+the name of <span class="smcap">Mizraim</span>, second son of Ham. These must have come from the
+east along the Persian Gulf, then across Northern Arabia and the Isthmus
+of Suez. In the color and features of the Egyptians the mixture with
+black races is also noticeable, but not enough to destroy the beauty and
+expressiveness of the original type, at all events far less than in
+their southern neighbors, the Ethiopians, with whom, moreover, they were
+throughout on the worst of terms, whom they loathed and invariably
+designated under the name of "vile Cush."</p>
+
+<p>5. A third and very important branch of the Hamite family, the
+<span class="smcap">Canaanites</span>, after reaching the Persian Gulf, and probably sojourning
+there some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> time, spread, not to the south, but to the west, across the
+plains of Syria, across the mountain chain of <span class="smcap">Lebanon</span> and to the very
+edge of the Mediterranean Sea, occupying all the land which later became
+Palestine, also to the north-west, as far as the mountain chain of
+<span class="smcap">Taurus</span>. This group was very numerous, and broken up into a great many
+peoples, as we can judge from the list of nations given in Chap. X. (v.
+15-18) as "sons of Canaan." In its migrations over this comparatively
+northern region, Canaan found and displaced not black natives, but
+Turanian nomadic tribes, who roamed at large over grassy wildernesses
+and sandy wastes and are possibly to be accounted as the representatives
+of that portion of the race which the biblical historian embodies in the
+pastoral names of Jabal and Jubal&mdash;(Gen. iv., 20-22)&mdash;"The father of
+such as dwell in tents and have cattle," and "the father of all such as
+handle the harp and pipe." In which case the Turanian settlers and
+builders of cities would answer to Tubalcain, the smith and artificer.
+The Canaanites, therefore, are those among the Hamites who, in point of
+color and features, have least differed from their kindred white races,
+though still sufficiently bronzed to be entitled to the name of "sons of
+Ham," i.e., "belonging to the dark-skinned race."</p>
+
+<p>6. Migrating races do not traverse continents with the same rapidity as
+marching armies. The progress is slow, the stations are many. Every
+station becomes a settlement, sometimes the beginning of a new
+nation&mdash;so many landmarks along the way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> And the distance between the
+starting-point and the furthest point reached by the race is measured
+not only by thousands of miles, but also by hundreds and hundreds of
+years; only the space can be actually measured; while the time can be
+computed merely by conjecture. The route from the south of India, along
+the shore of Malabar, the Persian Gulf, across the Arabian deserts, then
+down along the Red Sea and across the straits into Africa, is of such
+tremendous length that the settlements which the Cushite race left
+scattered along it must have been more than usually numerous. According
+to the upholders of a Cushite colonization of Chaldea, one important
+detachment appears to have taken possession of the small islands along
+the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf and to have stayed there for
+several centuries, probably choosing these island homes on account of
+their seclusion and safety from invasion. There, unmolested and
+undisturbed, they could develop a certain spirit of abstract speculation
+to which their natural bent inclined them. They were great star-gazers
+and calculators&mdash;two tastes which go well together, for Astronomy cannot
+exist without Mathematics. But star-gazing is also favorable to
+dreaming, and the Cushite islanders had time for dreams. Thoughts of
+heavenly things occupied them much; they worked out a religion beautiful
+in many ways and full of deep sense; their priests dwelt in communities
+or colleges, probably one on every island, and spent their time not only
+in scientific study and religious contemplation, but also in the more
+practical art of government, for there do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> not appear as yet to have
+been any kings among them.</p>
+
+<p>7. But there came a time when the small islands were overcrowded with
+the increased population, and detachments began to cross the water and
+land at the furthest point of the Gulf, in the land of the great rivers.
+Here they found a people not unpractised in several primitive arts, and
+possessed of some important fundamental inventions&mdash;writing, irrigation
+by means of canals&mdash;but deplorably deficient in spiritual development,
+and positively barbarous in the presence of an altogether higher
+culture. The Cushites rapidly spread through the land of Shumir and
+Accad, and taught the people with whom they afterwards, as usual,
+intermarried, until both formed but one nation&mdash;with this difference,
+that towards the north of Chaldea the Cushite element became
+predominant, while in the south numbers remained on the side of the
+Turanians. Whether this result was attained altogether peacefully or was
+preceded by a period of resistance and fighting, we have no means of
+ascertaining. If there was such a period, it cannot have lasted long,
+for intellect was on the side of the newcomers, and that is a power
+which soon wins the day. At all events the final fusion must have been
+complete and friendly, since the old national legend reported by Berosus
+cleverly combines the two elements, by attributing the part of teacher
+and revealer to the Shumiro-Accad's own favorite divine being &Ecirc;a, while
+it is not impossible that it alludes to the coming of the Cushites in
+making the amphibious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> Oannes rise out of the Persian Gulf, "where it
+borders on Chaldea." The legend goes on to say that Oannes set down his
+revelations in books which he consigned into the keeping of men, and
+that several more divine animals of the same kind continued to appear at
+long intervals. Who knows but the latter strange detail may have been
+meant to allude fantastically to the arrival of successive Cushite
+colonies? In the long run of time, of course all such meaning would be
+forgotten and the legend remain as a miraculous and inexplicable
+incident.</p>
+
+<p>8. It would be vain to attempt to fix any dates for events which took
+place in such remote antiquity, in the absence of any evidence or
+document that might be grasped. Yet, by close study of facts, by
+laborious and ingenious comparing of later texts, of every scrap of
+evidence furnished by monuments, of information contained in the
+fragments of Berosus and of other writers, mostly Greek, it has been
+possible, with due caution, to arrive at some approximative dates,
+which, after all, are all that is needed to classify things in an order
+intelligible and correct in the main. Even should further discoveries
+and researches arrive at more exact results, the gain will be
+comparatively small. At such a distance, differences of a couple of
+centuries do not matter much. When we look down a long line of houses or
+trees, the more distant ones appear to run together, and we do not
+always see where it ends&mdash;yet we can perfectly well pursue its
+direction. The same with the so-called double stars in astronomy: they
+are stars which, though really separated by thousands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> of miles, appear
+as one on account of the immense distance between them and our eye, and
+only the strongest telescope lenses show them to be separate bodies,
+though still close together. Yet this is sufficient to assign them their
+place so correctly on the map of the heavens, that they do not disturb
+the calculations in which they are included. The same kind of
+perspective applies to the history of remote antiquity. As the gloom
+which has covered it so long slowly rolls back before the light of
+scientific research, we begin to discern outlines and landmarks, at
+first so dim and wavering as rather to mislead than to instruct; but
+soon the searcher's eye, sharpened by practice, fixes them sufficiently
+to bring them into connection with the later and more fully illumined
+portions of the eternally unrolling picture. Chance, to which all
+discoverers are so much indebted, frequently supplies such a landmark,
+and now and then one so firm and distinct as to become a trustworthy
+centre for a whole group.</p>
+
+<p>9. The annals of the Assyrian king Asshurbanipal (the founder of the
+great Library at Nineveh) have established beyond a doubt the first
+positive date that has been secured for the History of Chaldea. That
+king was for a long time at war with the neighboring kingdom of <span class="smcap">Elam</span>,
+and ended by conquering and destroying its capital, <span class="smcap">Shushan</span> (Susa),
+after carrying away all the riches from the royal palace and all the
+statues from the great temple. This happened in the year 645 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> In the
+inscriptions in which he records this event, the king informs us that in
+that temple he found a statue of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> the Chaldean goddess <span class="smcap">Nana</span>, which had
+been carried away from her own temple in the city of <span class="smcap">Urukh</span> (Erech, now
+Warka) by a king of Elam of the name of <span class="smcap">Khudur-Nankhundi</span>, who invaded
+the land of Accad 1635 years before, and that he, Asshurbanipal, by the
+goddess's own express command, took her from where she had dwelt in
+Elam, "a place not appointed her," and reinstated her in her own
+sanctuary "which she had delighted in." 1635 added to 645 make 2280, a
+date not to be disputed. Now if a successful Elamite invasion in 2280
+found in Chaldea famous sanctuaries to desecrate, the religion to which
+these sanctuaries belonged, that of the Cushite, or Semitic colonists,
+must have been established in the country already for several, if not
+many, centuries. Indeed, quite recent discoveries show that it had been
+so considerably over a thousand years, so that we cannot possibly accept
+a date later than 4000 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> for the foreign immigration. The
+Shumiro-Accadian culture was too firmly rooted then and too completely
+worked out&mdash;as far as it went&mdash;to allow less than about 1000 years for
+its establishment. This takes us as far back as 5000 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>&mdash;a pretty
+respectable figure, especially when we think of the vista of time which
+opens behind it, and for which calculation fairly fails us. For if the
+Turanian settlers brought the rudiments of that culture from the
+highlands of Elam, how long had they sojourned there before they
+descended into the plains? And how long had it taken them to reach that
+station on their way<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> from the race's mountain home in the far
+Northeast, in the Alta&iuml; valleys?</p>
+
+<p>10. However that may be, 5000 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> is a moderate and probable date. But
+ancient nations were not content with such, when they tried to locate
+and classify their own beginnings. These being necessarily obscure and
+only vaguely shadowed out in traditions which gained in fancifulness and
+lost in probability with every succeeding generation that received them
+and handed them down to the next, they loved to magnify them by
+enshrouding them in the mystery of innumerable ages. The more appalling
+the figures, the greater the glory. Thus we gather from some fragments
+of Berosus that, according to the national Chaldean tradition, there was
+an interval of over 259,000 years between the first appearance of Oannes
+and the first king. Then come ten successive kings, each of whom reigns
+a no less extravagant number of years (one 36,000, another 43,000, even
+64,000; 10,800 being the most modest figure), till the aggregate of all
+these different periods makes up the pretty sum total of 691,200 years,
+supposed to have elapsed from the first appearance of Oannes to the
+Deluge. It is so impossible to imagine so prodigious a number of years
+or couple with it anything at all real, that we might just as well
+substitute for such a figure the simpler "very, very long ago," or still
+better, the approved fairy tale beginning, "There was once upon a time,
+..." It conveys quite as definite a notion, and would, in such a case,
+be the more appropriate,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> that all a nation's most marvellous
+traditions, most fabulous legends, are naturally placed in those
+stupendously remote ages which no record could reach, no experience
+control. Although these traditions and legends generally had a certain
+body of actual truth and dimly remembered fact in them, which might
+still be apparent to the learned and the cultivated few, the ignorant
+masses of the people swallowed the thing whole, as real history, and
+found things acknowledged as impossible easy to believe, for the simple
+reason that "it was so very long ago!" A Chaldean of Alexander's time
+certainly did not expect to meet a divine Man-Fish in his walks along
+the sea-shore, but&mdash;there was no knowing what might or might not have
+happened seven hundred thousand years ago! In the legend of the six
+successive apparitions under the first ten long-lived kings, he would
+not have descried the simple sense so lucidly set forth by Mr. Maspero,
+one of the most distinguished of French Orientalists:&mdash;"The times
+preceding the Deluge represented an experimental period, during which
+mankind, being as yet barbarous, had need of divine assistance to
+overcome the difficulties with which it was surrounded. Those times were
+filled up with six manifestations of the deity, doubtless answering to
+the number of sacred books in which the priests saw the most complete
+expression of revealed law."<a name="FNanchor_AI_35" id="FNanchor_AI_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_AI_35" class="fnanchor">[AI]</a> This presents another and more probable
+explanation of the legend than the one suggested above,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> (end of &sect; 7);
+but there is no more actual <i>proof</i> of the one than of the other being
+the correct one.</p>
+
+<p>11. If Chaldea was in after times a battle-ground of nations, it was in
+the beginning a very nursery and hive of peoples. The various races in
+their migrations must necessarily have been attracted and arrested by
+the exceeding fertility of its soil, which it is said, in the times of
+its highest prosperity and under proper conditions of irrigation,
+yielded two hundredfold return for the grain it received. Settlement
+must have followed settlement in rapid succession. But the nomadic
+element was for a long time still very prevalent, and side by side with
+the builders of cities and tillers of fields, shepherd tribes roamed
+peacefully over the face of the land, tolerated and unmolested by the
+permanent population, with which they mixed but warily, occasionally
+settling down temporarily, and shifting their settlements as safety or
+advantage required it,&mdash;or wandering off altogether from that common
+halting-place, to the north, and west, and south-west. This makes it
+very plain why Chaldea is given as the land where the tongues became
+confused and the second separation of races took place.</p>
+
+<p>12. Of those principally nomadic tribes the greatest part did not
+belong, like the Cushites or Canaanites, to the descendants of Ham, "the
+Dark," but to those of <span class="smcap">Shem</span>, whose name, signifying "Glory, Renown,"
+stamps him as the eponymous ancestor of that race which has always
+firmly believed itself to be the chosen one of God. They were Semites.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+When they arrived on the plains of Chaldea, they were inferior in
+civilization to the people among whom they came to dwell. They knew
+nothing of city arts and had all to learn. They did learn, for superior
+culture always asserts its power,&mdash;even to the language of the Cushite
+settlers, which the latter were rapidly substituting for the rude and
+poor Turanian idiom of Shumir and Accad. This language, or rather
+various dialects of it, were common to most Hamitic and Semitic tribes,
+among whom that from which the Hebrews sprang brought it to its greatest
+perfection. The others worked it into different kindred dialects&mdash;the
+Assyrian, the Aramaic or Syrian, the Arabic&mdash;according to their several
+peculiarities. The Ph&oelig;nicians of the sea-shore, and all the Canaanite
+nations, also spoke languages belonging to the same family, and
+therefore classed among the so-called Semitic tongues. Thus it has come
+to pass that philology,&mdash;or the Science of Languages,&mdash;adopted a wrong
+name for that entire group, calling the languages belonging to it,
+"Semitic," while, in reality, they are originally "Hamitic." The reason
+is that the Hamitic origin of those important languages which have been
+called Semitic these hundred years had not been discovered until very
+lately, and to change the name now would produce considerable confusion.</p>
+
+<p>13. Most of the Semitic tribes who dwelt in Chaldea adopted not only the
+Cushite language, but the Cushite culture and religion. Asshur carried
+all three northward, where the Assyrian kingdom arose out of a few
+Babylonian colonies,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> and Aram westward to the land which was afterwards
+called Southern Syria, and where the great city of Damascus long
+flourished and still exists. But there was one tribe of higher spiritual
+gifts than the others. It was not numerous, for through many generations
+it consisted of only one great family governed by its own eldest chief
+or patriarch. It is true that such a family, with the patriarch's own
+children and children's children, its wealth of horses, camels, flocks
+of sheep, its host of servants and slaves, male and female, represented
+quite a respectable force; Abraham could muster three hundred eighteen
+armed and <i>trained</i> servants who had been born in his own household.
+This particular tribe seems to have wandered for some time on the
+outskirts of Chaldea and in the land itself, as indicated by the name
+given to its eponym in Chap. X.: <span class="smcap">Arphaxad</span> (more correctly <span class="smcap">Arphakshad</span>),
+corrupted from <span class="smcap">Areph-Kasd&icirc;m</span>, which means, "bordering on the Chaldeans,"
+or perhaps "boundaries"&mdash;in the sense of "land"&mdash;of the Chaldeans.
+Generation after generation pushed further westward, traversed the land
+of Shinar, crossed the Euphrates and reached the city of Ur, in or near
+which the tribe dwelt many years.</p>
+
+<p>14. Ur was then the greatest city of Southern Chaldea. The earliest
+known kings of Shumir resided in it, and besides that, it was the
+principal commercial mart of the country. For, strange as it may appear
+when we look on a modern map, Ur, the ruins of which are now 150 miles
+from the sea, was then a maritime city, with harbor and ship<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> docks. The
+waters of the Gulf reached much further inland than they do now. There
+was then a distance of many miles between the mouths of the Tigris and
+Euphrates, and Ur lay very near the mouth of the latter river. Like all
+commercial and maritime cities, it was the resort not only of all the
+different races which dwelt in the land itself, but also of foreign
+traders. The active intellectual life of a capital, too, which was at
+the same time a great religious centre and the seat of a powerful
+priesthood, must of necessity have favored interchange of ideas, and
+have exerted an influence on that Semitic tribe of whom the Bible tells
+us that it "went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of
+Canaan," led by the patriarch Terah and his son Abraham (Genesis xi.
+31). The historian of Genesis here, as throughout the narrative, does
+not mention any date whatever for the event he relates; nor does he hint
+at the cause of this removal. On the first of these points the study of
+Chaldean cuneiform monuments throws considerable light, while the latter
+does not admit of more than guesses&mdash;of which something hereafter.</p>
+
+<p>15. Such is a broad and cursory outline of the theory according to which
+Cushite immigrations preceded the arrival of the Semites in the land of
+Shumir and Accad. Those who uphold it give several reasons for their
+opinion, such as that the Bible several times mentions a Cush located in
+the East and evidently different from the Cush which has been identified
+as Ethiopia; that, in Chap. X. of Genesis (8-12), Nimrod, the legendary
+hero,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> whose empire at first was in "the land of Shinar," and who is
+said to have "gone forth out of that land into Assyria," is called a son
+of Cush; that the most ancient Greek poets knew of "Ethiopians" in the
+far East as opposed to those of the South&mdash;and several more. Those
+scholars who oppose this theory dismiss it wholesale. They will not
+admit the existence of a Cushite element or migration in the East at
+all, and put down the expressions in the Bible as simple mistakes,
+either of the writers or copyists. According to them, there was only one
+immigration in the land of Shumir and Accad, that of the Semites,
+achieved through many ages and in numerous instalments. The language
+which superseded the ancient Shumiro-Accadian idiom is to them a Semitic
+one in the directest and most exclusive sense; the culture grafted on
+that of the earlier population is by them called purely "Semitic;" while
+their opponents frequently use the compound designation of
+"Cushito-Semitic," to indicate the two distinct elements of which, to
+them, it appears composed. It must be owned that the anti-Cushite
+opinion is gaining ground. Yet the Cushite theory cannot be considered
+as disposed of, only "not proven,"&mdash;or not sufficiently so, and
+therefore in abeyance and fallen into some disfavor. With this proviso
+we shall adopt the word "Semitic," as the simpler and more generally
+used.</p>
+
+<p>16. It is only with the rise of Semitic culture in Southern Mesopotamia
+that we enter on a period which, however remote, misty, and full of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+blanks, may still be called, in a measure, "historical," because there
+is a certain number of facts, of which contemporary monuments give
+positive evidence. True, the connection between those facts is often not
+apparent; their causes and effects are frequently not to be made out
+save by more or less daring conjectures; still there are numerous
+landmarks of proven fact, and with these real history begins. No matter
+if broad gaps have to be left open or temporarily filled with guesses.
+New discoveries are almost daily turning up, inscriptions, texts, which
+unexpectedly here supply a missing link, there confirm or demolish a
+conjecture, establish or correct dates which had long been puzzles or
+suggested on insufficient foundations. In short, details may be supplied
+as yet brokenly and sparingly, but the general outline of the condition
+of Chaldea may be made out as far back as forty centuries before Christ.</p>
+
+<p>17. Of one thing there can be no doubt: that our earliest glimpse of the
+political condition of Chaldea shows us the country divided into
+numerous small states, each headed by a great city, made famous and
+powerful by the sanctuary or temple of some particular deity, and ruled
+by a <i>patesi</i>, a title which is now thought to mean <i>priest-king</i>, i.e.,
+priest and king in one. There can be little doubt that the beginning of
+the city was everywhere the temple, with its college of ministering
+priests, and that the surrounding settlement was gradually formed by
+pilgrims and worshippers. That royalty developed out of the priesthood
+is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> also more than probable, and consequently must have been, in its
+first stage, a form of priestly rule, and, in a great measure,
+subordinate to priestly influence. There comes a time when for the title
+of <i>patesi</i> is substituted that of "king" simply&mdash;a change which very
+possibly indicates the assumption by the kings of a more independent
+attitude towards the class from which their power originally sprang. It
+is noticeable that the distinction between the Semitic newcomers and the
+indigenous Shumiro-Accadians continues long to be traceable in the names
+of the royal temple-builders, even after the new Semitic idiom, which we
+call the Assyrian, had entirely ousted the old language&mdash;a process which
+must have taken considerable time, for it appears, and indeed stands to
+reason, that the newcomers, in order to secure the wished for influence
+and propagate their own culture, at first not only learned to understand
+but actually used themselves the language of the people among whom they
+came, at least in their public documents. This it is that explains the
+fact that so many inscriptions and tablets, while written in the dialect
+of Shumir or Accad, are Semitic in spirit and in the grade of culture
+they betray. Furthermore, even superficial observation shows that the
+old language and the old names survive longest in Shumir,&mdash;the South.
+From this fact it is to be inferred with little chance of mistake that
+the North,&mdash;the land of Accad,&mdash;was earlier Semitized, that the Semitic
+immigrants established their first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> headquarters in that part of the
+country, that their power and influence thence spread to the South.</p>
+
+<p>18. Fully in accordance with these indications, the first grand
+historical figure that meets us at the threshold of Chaldean history,
+dim with the mists of ages and fabulous traditions, yet unmistakably
+real, is that of the Semite <span class="smcap">Sharrukin</span>, king of Accad&mdash;or <span class="smcap">Agad&ecirc;</span>, as the
+great Northern city came to be called&mdash;more generally known in history
+under the corrupt modern reading of <span class="smcap">Sargon</span>, and called Sargon I., "the
+First," to distinguish him from another monarch of the same name who was
+found to have reigned many centuries later. As to the city of Agad&ecirc;, it
+is no other than the city of Accad mentioned in Genesis x., 10. It was
+situated close to the Euphrates on a wide canal just opposite Sippar, so
+that in time the two cities came to be considered as one double city,
+and the Hebrews always called it "the two Sippars"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Sepharvaim</span>, which is
+often spoken of in the Bible. It was there that Sharrukin established
+his rule, and a statue was afterwards raised to him there, the
+inscription on which, making him speak, as usual, in the first person,
+begins with the proud declaration: "Sharrukin, the mighty king, the king
+of Agad&ecirc;, am I." Yet, although his reforms and conquests were of lasting
+importance, and himself remained one of the favorite heroes of Chaldean
+tradition, he appears to have been an adventurer and usurper. Perhaps he
+was, for this very reason, all the dearer to the popular fancy, which,
+in the absence of positive facts concerning his birth and origin, wove
+around them a halo of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> romance, and told of him a story which must be
+nearly as old as mankind, for it has been told over and over again, in
+different countries and ages, of a great many famous kings and heroes.
+This of Sharrukin is the oldest known version of it, and the inscription
+on his statue puts it into the king's own mouth. It makes him say that
+he knew not his father, and that his mother, a princess, gave him birth
+in a hiding-place, (or "an inaccessible place"), near the Euphrates, but
+that his family were the rulers of the land. "She placed me in a basket
+of rushes," the king is further made to say; "with bitumen the door of
+my ark she closed. She launched me on the river, which drowned me not.
+The river bore me along; to Akki, the water-carrier, it brought me.
+Akki, the water-carrier, in the tenderness of his heart lifted me up.
+Akki, the water-carrier, as his own child brought me up. Akki, the
+water-carrier, made me his gardener. And in my gardenership the goddess
+Ishtar loved me...."</p>
+
+<p>19. Whatever his origin and however he came by the royal power, Sargon
+was a great monarch. It is said that he undertook successful expeditions
+into Syria, and a campaign into Elam; that with captives of the
+conquered races he partly peopled his new capital, Agad&ecirc;, where he built
+a palace and a magnificent temple; that on one occasion he was absent
+three years, during which time he advanced to the very shores of the
+Mediterranean, which he calls "the sea of the setting sun," and where he
+left memorial records of his deeds, and returned home in triumph,
+bringing with him immense spoils. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> inscription contains only the
+following very moderate mention of his military career: "For forty-five
+years the kingdom I have ruled. And the black-head race (Accadian) I
+have governed. In multitudes of bronze chariots I rode over rugged
+lands. I governed the upper countries. Three times to the coast of the
+(Persian) sea I advanced...."<a name="FNanchor_AJ_36" id="FNanchor_AJ_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_AJ_36" class="fnanchor">[AJ]</a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 680px;">
+<a id='illus_58' name='illus_58'><img src="images/illus_58.png" width="680" height="310" alt="58.&mdash;CYLINDER OF SARGON, FROM AGAD&Ecirc;. (Hommel, &quot;Gesch.
+Babyloniens u. Assyriens.&quot;)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">58.&mdash;CYLINDER OF SARGON, FROM AGAD&Ecirc;.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Hommel, &quot;Gesch. Babyloniens u. Assyriens.&quot;)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>20. This Sharrukin must not be confounded with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> another king of the same
+name, who reigned also in Agad&ecirc;, some 1800 years later (about 2000
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span>), and in whose time was completed and brought into definite shape a
+vast religious reform which had been slowly working itself out ever
+since the Semitic and Accadian elements began to mix in matters of
+spiritual speculation and worship. What was the result of the
+amalgamation will form the subject of the next chapter. Suffice it here
+to say that the religion of Chaldea in the form which it assumed under
+the second Sharrukin remained fixed forever, and when Babylonian
+religion is spoken of, it is that which is understood by that name. The
+great theological work demanded a literary undertaking no less great.
+The incantations and magic forms of the first, purely Turanian, period
+had to be collected and put in order, as well as the hymns and prayers
+of the second period, composed under the influence of a higher and more
+spiritual religious feeling. But all this literature was in the language
+of the older population, while the ruling class&mdash;the royal houses and
+the priesthood&mdash;were becoming almost exclusively Semitic. It was
+necessary, therefore, that they should study the old language and learn
+it so thoroughly as not only to understand and read it, but to be able
+to use it, in speaking and writing. For that purpose Sargon not only
+ordered the ancient texts, when collected and sorted, to be copied on
+clay tablets with the translation&mdash;either between the lines, or on
+opposite columns&mdash;into the now generally used modern Sem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>itic language,
+which we may as well begin to call by its usual name, Assyrian, but gave
+directions for the compilation of grammars and vocabularies,&mdash;the very
+works which have enabled the scholars of the present day to arrive at
+the understanding of that prodigiously ancient tongue which, without
+such assistance, must have remained a sealed book forever.</p>
+
+<p>21. Such is the origin of the great collection in three books and two
+hundred tablets, the contents of which made the subject of the preceding
+chapter. To this must be added another great work, in seventy tablets,
+in Assyrian, on astrology, i.e., the supposed influence of the heavenly
+bodies, according to their positions and conjunctions, on the fate of
+nations and individuals and on the course of things on earth
+generally&mdash;an influence which was firmly believed in; and probably yet a
+third work, on omens, prodigies and divination. To carry out these
+extensive literary labors, to treasure the results worthily and safely,
+Sargon II. either founded or greatly enlarged the library of the
+priestly college at Urukh (Erech), so that this city came to be called
+"the City of Books." This repository became the most important one in
+all Chaldea, and when, fourteen centuries later, the Assyrian
+Asshurbanipal sent his scribes all over the country, to collect copies
+of the ancient, sacred and scientific texts for his own royal library at
+Nineveh, it was at Erech that they gathered their most abundant harvest,
+being specially favored there by the priests, who were on excellent
+terms with the king after he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> brought back from Shushan and restored
+to them the statue of their goddess Nana. Agad&ecirc; thus became the
+headquarters, as it were, of the Semitic influence and reform, which
+spread thence towards the South, forming a counter-current to the
+culture of Shumir, which had steadily progressed from the Gulf
+northward.</p>
+
+<p>22. It is just possible that Sargon's collection may have also comprised
+literature of a lighter nature than those ponderous works on magic and
+astrology. At least, a work on agriculture has been found, which is
+thought to have been compiled for the same king's library,<a name="FNanchor_AK_37" id="FNanchor_AK_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_AK_37" class="fnanchor">[AK]</a> and which
+contains bits of popular poetry (maxims, riddles, short peasant songs)
+of the kind that is now called "folk-lore." Of the correctness of the
+supposition there is, as yet, no absolute proof, but as some of these
+fragments, of which unfortunately but few could be recovered, are very
+interesting and pretty in their way, this is perhaps the best place to
+insert them. The following four may be called "Maxims," and the first is
+singularly pithy and powerfully expressed.</p>
+
+<ol>
+<li><p>Like an oven that is old</p>
+<p>Against thy foes be hard and strong.</p></li>
+<li><p>May he suffer vengeance,</p>
+<p>May it be returned to him,</p>
+<p>Who gives the provocation.</p></li>
+<li><p>If evil thou doest,</p>
+<p>To the everlasting sea</p>
+<span class='pagenum' style='font-size:100%'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+<p>Thou shalt surely go.</p></li>
+<li><p>Thou wentest, thou spoiledst</p>
+<p>The land of the foe,</p>
+<p>For the foe came and spoiled</p>
+<p>Thy land, even thine.</p></li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>23. It will be noticed that No. 3 alone expresses moral feeling of a
+high standard, and is distinctively Semitic in spirit, the same spirit
+which is expressed in a loftier and purely religious vein, and a more
+poetical form in one of the "Penitential Psalms," where it says:</p>
+
+<ol>
+<li class='lsoff'>Whoso fears not his god&mdash;will be cut off even like a reed.</li>
+<li class='lsoff'>Whoso honors not the goddess&mdash;his bodily strength shall waste away;</li>
+<li class='lsoff'>Like a star of heaven, his light shall wane; like waters of the night he shall disappear.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>Some fragments can be well imagined as being sung by the peasant at work
+to his ploughing team, in whose person he sometimes speaks:</p>
+
+<ol>
+<li class='lsoff' style='margin-left: -1.6em'><p>5.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A heifer am I,&mdash;to the cow I am yoked;</p>
+<p style='margin-left: 1.6em'>The plough handle is strong&mdash;lift it up! lift it up!</p></li>
+<li class='lsoff' style='margin-left: -1.6em'><p>6.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;My knees are marching&mdash;my feet are not resting;</p>
+<p style='margin-left: 1.6em'>With no wealth of thy own&mdash;grain thou makest for me.<a name="FNanchor_AL_38" id="FNanchor_AL_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_AL_38" class="fnanchor">[AL]</a></p></li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>24. A great deal of additional interest in the elder Sargon of Agad&ecirc; has
+lately been excited by an extraordinary discovery connected with him,
+which produced a startling revolution in the hitherto accepted Chaldean
+chronology. This question of dates is always a most intricate and
+puzzling one in dealing with ancient Oriental nations, because they did
+not date their years from some particular event,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> as we do, and as did
+the Mohammedans, the Greeks and the Romans. In the inscriptions things
+are said to have happened in the year so-and-so of such a king's reign.
+Where to place that king is the next question&mdash;unanswerable, unless, as
+fortunately is mostly the case, some clue is supplied, to borrow a legal
+term, by circumstantial evidence. Thus, if an eclipse is mentioned, the
+time can easily be determined by the help of astronomy, which can
+calculate backward as well as forward. Or else, an event or a person
+belonging to another country is alluded to, and if they are known to us
+from other sources, that is a great help. Such a coincidence (which is
+called a <span class="smcap">Synchronism</span>) is most valuable, and dates established by
+synchronisms are generally reliable. Then, luckily for us, Assyrian and
+Babylonian kings of a late period, whose dates are fixed and proved
+beyond a doubt, were much in the habit, in their historical
+inscriptions, of mentioning events that had taken place before their
+time and specifying the number of years elapsed, often also the king
+under whose reign the event, whatever it was, had taken place. This is
+the most precious clue of all, as it is infallible, and besides
+ascertaining one point, gives a firm foothold, whereby to arrive at many
+others. The famous memorandum of Asshurbanipal, already so often
+referred to, about the carrying away of the goddess Nana, (i.e., her
+statue) from her temple at Erech is evidence of this kind. Any dates
+suggested without any of these clues as basis are of necessity
+untrustworthy, and no true scholar dreams of offering any such date,
+except as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> temporary suggestion, awaiting confirmation or abolition
+from subsequent researches. So it was with Sargon I. of Agad&ecirc;. There was
+no positive indication of the time at which he lived, except that he
+could not possibly have lived later than 2000 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> Scholars therefore
+agreed to assign that date to him, approximatively&mdash;a little more or
+less&mdash;thinking they could not go very far wrong in so doing. Great
+therefore was the commotion produced by the discovery of a cylinder of
+Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon (whose date is 550 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>), wherein he
+speaks of repairs he made in the great Sun-temple at Sippar, and
+declares having dug deep in its foundations for the cylinders of the
+founder, thus describing his success: "Shamash (the Sun-god), the great
+lord ... suffered me to behold the foundation-cylinder of <span class="smcap">Naram-sin</span>, the
+son of Sharrukin, which for thrice thousand and twice hundred years none
+of the kings that lived before me had seen." The simple addition 3200 +
+550 gives 3750 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> as the date of Naram-Sin, and 3800 as that of his
+father Sargon, allowing for the latter's long reign! A scene-shifting of
+1800 years at one slide seemed something so startling that there was
+much hesitation in accepting the evidence, unanswerable as it seemed,
+and the possibility of an error of the engraver was seriously
+considered. Some other documents, however, were found independently of
+each other and in different places, corroborating the statement on
+Nabonidus' cylinder, and the tremendously ancient date of 3800 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> is
+now generally ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>cepted the elder Sargon of Agad&ecirc;&mdash;perhaps the remotest
+<i>authentic</i> date yet arrived at in history.</p>
+
+<p>25. When we survey and attempt to grasp and classify the materials we
+have for an early "History of Chaldea," it appears almost presumptuous
+to grace so necessarily lame an attempt with so ambitious a name. The
+landmarks are so few and far between, so unconnected as yet, and there
+is so much uncertainty about them, especially about placing them. The
+experience with Sargon of Agad&ecirc; has not been encouraging to conjectural
+chronology; yet with such we must in many cases be content until more
+lucky finds turn up to set us right. What, for instance, is the proper
+place of <span class="smcap">Gud&ecirc;a</span>, the <i>patesi</i> of <span class="smcap">Sir-burla</span> (also read <span class="smcap">Sir-gulla</span> or
+<span class="smcap">Sirtilla</span>, and, lately, <span class="smcap">Zirlaba</span>), whose magnificent statues Mr. de Sarzec
+found in the principal hall of the temple of which the bricks bear his
+stamp? (See p. <a href="#Page_217">217</a>.) The title of <i>patesi</i>, (not "king"), points to
+great antiquity, and he is pretty generally understood to have lived
+somewhere between 4000 and 3000 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> That he was not a Semite, but an
+Accadian prince, is to be concluded not only from the language of his
+inscriptions and the writing, which is of the most archaic&mdash;i.e.,
+ancient and old-fashioned&mdash;character, but from the fact that the head,
+which was found with the statues, is strikingly Turanian in form and
+features, shaved, too, and turbaned after a fashion still used in
+Central Asia. Altogether it might easily be taken for that of a modern
+Mongolian or Tatar.<a name="FNanchor_AM_39" id="FNanchor_AM_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_AM_39" class="fnanchor">[AM]</a> The discovery of this builder and patron of art
+has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> greatly eclipsed the glory of a somewhat later ruler, <span class="smcap">Ur-&ecirc;a</span>, King
+of Ur,<a name="FNanchor_AN_40" id="FNanchor_AN_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_AN_40" class="fnanchor">[AN]</a> who had long enjoyed the reputation of being the earliest
+known temple-builder. He remains at all events the first powerful
+monarch we read of in Southern Chaldea, of which Ur appears to have been
+in some measure the capital, at least in so far as to have a certain
+supremacy over the other great cities of Shumir.</p>
+
+<p>26. Of these Shumir had many, even more venerable for their age and
+holiness than those of Accad. For the South was the home of the old race
+and most ancient culture, and thence both had advanced northward. Hence
+it was that the old stock was hardier there and endured longer in its
+language, religion and nationality, and was slower in yielding to the
+Semitic counter-current of race and culture, which, as a natural
+consequence, obtained an earlier and stronger hold in the North, and
+from there radiated over the whole of Mesopotamia. There was <span class="smcap">Eridhu</span>, by
+the sea "at the mouth of the Rivers," the immemorial sanctuary of &Ecirc;a;
+there was <span class="smcap">Sir-gulla</span>, so lately unknown, now the most promising mine for
+research; there was <span class="smcap">Larsam</span>, famous with the glories of its "House of the
+Sun" (<i>&Ecirc;-Babbara</i> in the old language), the rival of Ur, the city of the
+Moon-god, whose kings <span class="smcap">Ur-&ecirc;a</span> and his son <span class="smcap">Dungi</span> were, it appears, the
+first to take<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> the ambitious title of "Kings of Shumir and Accad" and
+"Kings of the Four Regions." As for Babylon, proud Babylon, which we
+have so long been accustomed to think of as the very beginning of state
+life and political rule in Chaldea, it was perhaps not yet built at all,
+or only modestly beginning its existence under its Accadian name of
+<span class="smcap">Tin-tir-ki</span> ("the Place of Life"), or, somewhat later, <span class="smcap">Ka-Dimirra</span> ("Gate
+of God"), when already the above named cities, and several more, had
+each its famous temple with ministering college of priests, and,
+probably, library, and each its king. But political power was for a long
+time centred at Ur. The first kings of Ur authentically known to us are
+Ur-&ecirc;a and his son Dungi, who have left abundant traces of their
+existence in the numerous temples they built, not in Ur alone, but in
+most other cities too. Their bricks have been identified at Larsam
+(Senkereh), and, it appears, at Sir-burla (Tel-Loh), at Nipur (Niffer)
+and at Urukh (Erech, Warka), and as the two latter cities belonged to
+Accad, they seem to have ruled at least part of that country and thus to
+have been justified in assuming their high-sounding title.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 368px;">
+<a id='illus_59' name='illus_59'><img src="images/illus_59.png" width="368" height="671" alt="59.&mdash;STATUE OF GUD&Ecirc;A, WITH INSCRIPTION; FROM TELL-LOH,
+(SIR-BURLA OR SIR-GULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION. (Hommel)." title="" />
+<span class="caption">59.&mdash;STATUE OF GUD&Ecirc;A, WITH INSCRIPTION; FROM TELL-LOH,
+(SIR-BURLA OR SIR-GULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Hommel).</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>27. It has been noticed that the bricks bearing the name of Ur-&ecirc;a "are
+found in a lower position than any others, at the very foundation of
+buildings;" that "they are of a rude and coarse make, of many sizes and
+ill-fitted together;" that baked bricks are rare among them; that they
+are held together by the oldest substitutes for mortar&mdash;mud and
+bitumen&mdash;and that the writing upon them is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> curiously rude and
+imperfect.<a name="FNanchor_AO_41" id="FNanchor_AO_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_AO_41" class="fnanchor">[AO]</a> But whatever King Ur-&ecirc;a's architectural efforts may lack
+in perfection, they certainly make up in size and number. Those that he
+did not complete, his son Dungi continued after him. It is remarkable
+that these great build<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>ers seem to have devoted their energies
+exclusively to religious purposes; also that, while their names are
+Shumiro-Accadian, and their inscriptions are often in that language, the
+temples they constructed were dedicated to various deities of the new,
+or rather reformed religion. When we see the princes of the South,
+according to an ingenious remark of Mr. Lenormant, thus begin a sort of
+practical preaching of the Semitized religion, we may take it as a sign
+of the times, as an unmistakable proof of the influence of the North,
+political as well as religious. A very curious relic of King Ur-&ecirc;a was
+found&mdash;his own signet cylinder&mdash;which was lost by an accident, then
+turned up again and is now in the British Museum. It represents the
+Moon-god seated on a throne,&mdash;as is but meet for the king of the
+Moon-god's special city&mdash;with priests presenting worshippers. No
+definite date is of course assignable to Ur-&ecirc;a and the important epoch
+of Chaldean history which he represents. But a very probable
+approximative one can be arrived at, thanks to a clue supplied by the
+same Nabonidus, last King of Babylon, who settled the Sargon question
+for us so unexpectedly. That monarch was as zealous a repairer of
+temples as his predecessors had been zealous builders. He had reasons of
+his own to court popularity, and could think of nothing better than to
+restore the time-honored sanctuaries of the land. Among others he
+repaired the Sun-temple (&Ecirc;-Babbara) at Larsam, whereof we are duly
+informed by a special cylinder. In it he tells posterity that he found a
+cylinder of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> King Hammurabi intact in its chamber under the
+corner-stone, which cylinder states that the temple was founded 700
+years before Hammurabi's time; as Ur-&ecirc;a was the founder, it only remains
+to determine the latter king's date in order to know that of the earlier
+one.<a name="FNanchor_AP_42" id="FNanchor_AP_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_AP_42" class="fnanchor">[AP]</a> Here unfortunately scholars differ, not having as yet any
+decisive authority to build upon. Some place Hammurabi <i>before</i> 2000
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, others a little later. It is perhaps safest, therefore, to assume
+that Ur-&ecirc;a can scarcely have lived much earlier than 2800 or much later
+than 2500 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> At all events, he must necessarily have lived somewhat
+before 2300 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, for about this latter year took place the Elamite
+invasion recorded by Asshurbanipal, an invasion which, as this King
+expressly mentions, laid waste the land of Accad and desecrated its
+temples&mdash;evidently the same ones which Ur-&ecirc;a and Dungi so piously
+constructed. Nor was this a passing inroad or raid of booty-seeking
+mountaineers. It was a real conquest. Khudur-Nankhundi and his
+successors remained in Southern Chaldea, called themselves kings of the
+country, and reigned, several of them in succession, so that this series
+of foreign rulers has become known in history as "the Elamite dynasty."
+There was no room then for a powerful and temple-building national
+dynasty like that of the kings of Ur.</p>
+
+<p>28. This is the first time we meet authentic monumental records of a
+country which was destined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> through the next sixteen centuries to be in
+continual contact, mostly hostile, with both Babylonia and her northern
+rival Assyria, until its final annihilation by the latter. Its capital
+was <span class="smcap">Shushan</span>, (afterwards pronounced by foreigners "Susa"), and its own
+original name <span class="smcap">Shushinak</span>. Its people were of Turanian stock, its language
+was nearly akin to that of Shumir and Accad. But at some time or other
+Semites came and settled in Shushinak. Though too few in number to
+change the country's language or customs, the superiority of their race
+asserted itself. They became the nobility of the land, the ruling
+aristocracy from which the kings were taken, the generals and the high
+functionaries. That the Turanian mass of the population was kept in
+subjection and looked down upon, and that the Semitic nobility avoided
+intermarrying with them is highly probable; and it would be difficult
+otherwise to explain the difference of type between the two classes, as
+shown in the representations of captives and warriors belonging to both
+on the Assyrian sculptures. The common herd of prisoners employed on
+public labor and driven by overseers brandishing sticks have an
+unmistakably Turanian type of features&mdash;high cheek-bones, broad,
+flattened face, etc., while the generals, ministers and nobles have all
+the dignity and beauty of the handsomest Jewish type. "Elam," the name
+under which the country is best known both from the Bible and later
+monuments, is a Turanian word, which means, like "Accad," "Highlands."
+It is the only name under which the historian of Chap. X. of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> Genesis
+admits it into his list of nations, and, consistently following out his
+system of ignoring all members of the great yellow race, he takes into
+consideration only the Semitic aristocracy, and makes of Elam a son of
+Shem, a brother of Asshur and Arphakhshad. (Gen. x. 22.)</p>
+
+<p>29. One of Khudur-Nankhundi's next successors, <span class="smcap">Khudur-Lagamar</span>, was not
+content with the addition of Chaldea to his kingdom of Elam. He had the
+ambition of a born conqueror and the generalship of one. The Chap. XIV.
+of Genesis&mdash;which calls him Chedorlaomer&mdash;is the only document we have
+descriptive of this king's warlike career, and a very striking picture
+it gives of it, sufficient to show us that we have to do with a very
+remarkable character. Supported by three allied and probably tributary
+kings, that of Shumir (Shine&acirc;r), of Larsam, (Ellassar) and of the <span class="smcap">Go&iuml;m</span>,
+(in the unrevised translation of the Bible "king of nations") i.e., the
+nomadic tribes which roamed on the outskirts and in the yet unsettled,
+more distant portions of Chaldea, Khudur-Lagamar marched an army 1200
+miles across the desert into the fertile, wealthy and populous valleys
+of the Jordan and the lake or sea of Siddim, afterwards called the Dead
+Sea, where five great cities&mdash;Sodom, Gomorrah, and three others&mdash;were
+governed by as many kings. Not only did he subdue these kings and impose
+his rule on them, but contrived, even after he returned to the Persian
+Gulf, to keep on them so firm a hand, that for twelve years they
+"served" him, i.e., paid him tribute regularly, and only in the
+thirteenth year, en<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>couraged by his prolonged absence, ventured to
+rebel. But they had underrated Khudur-Lagamar's vigilance and activity.
+The very next year he was among them again, together with his three
+faithful allies, encountered them in the vale of Siddim and beat them,
+so that they all fled. This was the battle of the "four kings with
+five." As to the treatment to which the victor subjected the conquered
+country it is very briefly but clearly described: "And they took all the
+goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their
+way."</p>
+
+<p>30. Now there dwelt in Sodom a man of foreign race and great wealth,
+Lot, the nephew of Abraham. For Abraham and his tribe no longer lived at
+Chaldean Ur. The change of masters, and very probably the harsher rule,
+if not positive oppression, consequent on the Elamite conquest, had
+driven them thence. It was then they went forth into the land of Canaan,
+led by Terah and his son Abraham, and when Terah died, Abraham became
+the patriarch and chief of the tribe, which from this time begins to be
+called in the Bible "Hebrews," from an eponymous ancestor, Heber or
+Eber, whose name alludes to the passing of the Euphrates, or, perhaps,
+in a wider sense, to the passage of the tribe through the land of
+Chaldea.<a name="FNanchor_AQ_43" id="FNanchor_AQ_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_AQ_43" class="fnanchor">[AQ]</a> For years the tribe travelled without dividing, from
+pasture to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> pasture, over the vast land where dwelt the Canaanites, well
+seen and even favored of them, into Egypt and out of it again, until the
+quarrel occurred between Abraham's herdsmen and Lot's, (see Genesis,
+Chap. XIII.), and the separation, when Lot chose the plain of the Jordan
+and pitched his tent toward Sodom, while Abraham dwelt in the land of
+Canaan as heretofore, with his family, servants and cattle, in the plain
+of Mamre. It was while dwelling there, in friendship and close alliance
+with the princes of the land, that one who had escaped from the battle
+in the vale of Siddim, came to Abraham and told him how that among the
+captives whom Khudur-Lagamar had taken from Sodom, was Lot, his
+brother's son, with all his goods. Then Abraham armed his trained
+servants, born in his own household, three hundred and eighteen, took
+with him his friends, Mamre and his brothers, with their young men, and
+starting in hot pursuit of the victorious army, which was now carelessly
+marching home towards the desert with its long train of captives and
+booty, overtook it near Damascus in the night, when his own small
+numbers could not be detected, and produced such a panic by a sudden and
+vigorous onslaught that he put it to flight, and not only rescued his
+nephew Lot with his goods and women, but brought back all the captured
+goods and the people too. And the King of Sodom came out to meet him on
+his return, and thanked him, and wanted him to keep all the goods for
+himself, only restoring the persons. Abraham consented that a proper
+share of the rescued goods should be given to his friends<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> and their
+young men, but refused all presents offered to himself, with the haughty
+words: "I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the
+possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread, even to a
+shoe-latchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou
+shouldest say, I have made Abraham rich."</p>
+
+<p>31. Khudur-Lagamar, of whom the spirited Biblical narrative gives us so
+life-like a sketch, lived, according to the most probable calculations,
+about 2200 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> Among the few vague forms whose blurred outlines loom
+out of the twilight of those dim and doubtful ages, he is the second
+with any flesh-and-blood reality about him, probably the first conqueror
+of whom the world has any authentic record. For Egypt, the only country
+which rivals in antiquity the primitive states of Mesopotamia, although
+it had at this time already reached the height of its culture and
+prosperity, was as yet confined by its rulers strictly to the valley of
+the Nile, and had not entered on that career of foreign wars and
+conquests which, some thousand years later, made it a terror from the
+Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.</p>
+
+<p>32. The Elamitic invasion was not a passing raid. It was a real
+conquest, and established a heavy foreign rule in a highly prosperous
+and flourishing land&mdash;a rule which endured, it would appear, about three
+hundred years. That the people chafed under it, and were either gloomily
+despondent or angrily rebellious as long as it lasted, there is plenty
+of evidence in their later literature. It is even thought, and with
+great moral probability, that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> special branch of religious poetry
+which has been called "Penitential Psalms" has arisen out of the
+sufferings of this long period of national bondage and humiliation, and
+if, as seems to be proved by some lately discovered interesting
+fragments of texts, these psalms were sung centuries later in Assyrian
+temples on mournful or very solemn public occasions, they must have
+perpetuated the memory of the great national calamity that fell on the
+mother-country as indelibly as the Hebrew psalms, of which they were the
+models, have perpetuated that of King David's wanderings and Israel's
+tribulations.</p>
+
+<p>33. But there seems to have been one Semitic royal house which preserved
+a certain independence and quietly gathered power against better days.
+To do this they must have dissembled and done as much homage to the
+victorious barbarians as would ensure their safety and serve as a blind
+while they strengthened their home rule. This dynasty, destined to the
+glorious task of restoring the country's independence and founding a new
+national monarchy, was that of Tin-tir-ki, or Ka-dimirra&mdash;a name now
+already translated into the Semitic <span class="smcap">Bab-ilu</span>, ("the Gate of God"); they
+reigned over the large and important district of <span class="smcap">Kardunyash</span>, important
+from its central position, and from the fact that it seems to have
+belonged neither to Accad, nor to Shumir, but to have been politically
+independent, since it is always mentioned by itself. Still, to the
+Hebrews, Babylon lay in the land of Shinar, and it is strongly supposed
+that the "Am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>raphel king of Shinar" who marched with Khudur-Lagamar, as
+his ally, against the five kings of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, was no
+other than a king of Babylon, one of whose names has been read <span class="smcap">Amarpal</span>,
+while "Ariokh of Ellassar" was an Elamite, <span class="smcap">Eri-aku</span>, brother or cousin of
+Khudur-Lagamar, and King of Larsam, where the conquerors had established
+a powerful dynasty, closely allied by blood to the principal one, which
+had made the venerable Ur its headquarters. This Amarpal, more
+frequently mentioned under his other name of <span class="smcap">Sin-Muballit</span>, is thought to
+have been the father of <span class="smcap">Hammurabi</span>, the deliverer of Chaldea and the
+founder of the new empire.</p>
+
+<p>34. The inscriptions which Hammurabi left are numerous, and afford us
+ample means of judging of his greatness as warrior, statesman and
+administrator. In his long reign of fifty-five years he had, indeed,
+time to achieve much, but what he did achieve <i>was</i> much even for so
+long a reign. In what manner he drove out the foreigners we are not
+told, but so much is clear that the decisive victory was that which he
+gained over the Elamite king of Larsam. It was probably by expelling the
+hated race by turns from every district they occupied, that Hammurabi
+gathered the entire land into his own hands and was enabled to keep it
+together and weld it into one united empire, including both Accad and
+Shumir, with all their time-honored cities and sanctuaries, making his
+own ancestral city, Babylon, the head and capital of them all. This king
+was in every respect a great and wise ruler,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> for, after freeing and
+uniting the country, he was very careful of its good and watchful of its
+agricultural interests. Like all the other kings, he restored many
+temples and built several new ones. But he also devoted much energy to
+public works of a more generally useful kind. During the first part of
+his reign inundations seem to have been frequent and disastrous,
+possibly in consequence of the canals and waterworks having been
+neglected under the oppressive foreign rule. The inscriptions speak of a
+city having been destroyed "by a great flood," and mention "a great wall
+along the Tigris"&mdash;probably an embankment, as having been built by
+Hammurabi for protection against the river. But probably finding the
+remedy inadequate, he undertook and completed one of the greatest public
+works that have ever been carried out in any country: the excavation of
+a gigantic canal, which he called by his own name, but which was
+afterwards famous under that of "Royal Canal of Babylon." From this
+canal innumerable branches carried the fertilizing waters through the
+country. It was and remained the greatest work of the kind, and was,
+fifteen centuries later, the wonder of the foreigners who visited
+Babylon. Its constructor did not overrate the benefit he had conferred
+when he wrote in an inscription which can scarcely be called boastful:
+"I have caused to be dug the Nahr-Hammurabi, a benediction for the
+people of Shumir and Accad. I have directed the waters of its branches
+over the desert plains; I have caused them to run in the dry channels
+and thus given unfailing waters to the peo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>ple.... I have changed desert
+plains into well-watered lands. I have given them fertility and plenty,
+and made them the abode of happiness."</p>
+
+<p>35. There are inscriptions of Hammurabi's son. But after him a new
+catastrophe seems to have overtaken Chaldea. He is succeeded by a line
+of foreign kings, who must have obtained possession of the country by
+conquest. They were princes of a fierce and warlike mountain race, the
+<span class="smcap">Kasshi</span>, who lived in the highlands that occupy the whole north-western
+portion of Elam, where they probably began to feel cramped for room.
+This same people has been called by the later Greek geographers <span class="smcap">Coss&aelig;ans</span>
+or <span class="smcap">Cissians</span>, and is better known under either of these names. Their
+language, of which very few specimens have survived, is not yet
+understood; but so much is plain, that it is very different both from
+the Semitic language of Babylon and that of Shumir and Accad, so that
+the names of the Kasshi princes are easily distinguishable from all
+others. No dismemberment of the empire followed this conquest, however,
+if conquest there was. The kings of the new dynasty seem to have
+succeeded each other peacefully enough in Babylon. But the conquering
+days of Chaldea were over. We read no more of expeditions into the
+plains of Syria and to the "Sea of the Setting Sun." For a power was
+rising in the North-West, which quickly grew into a formidable rival:
+through many centuries Assyria kept the rulers of the Southern kingdom
+too busy guarding their frontiers and repelling inroads to allow them to
+think of foreign conquests.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 168px;">
+<img src="images/deco206.png" width="168" height="53" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AH_34" id="Footnote_AH_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AH_34"><span class="label">[AH]</span></a> Names are often deceptive. That of the Hindu-Cush is now
+thought to mean "Killers of Hindus," probably in allusion to robber
+tribes of the mountains, and to have nothing to do with the Cushite
+race.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AI_35" id="Footnote_AI_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AI_35"><span class="label">[AI]</span></a> "Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient," 1878, p.
+160.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AJ_36" id="Footnote_AJ_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AJ_36"><span class="label">[AJ]</span></a> Translation of Professor A. H. Sayce.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AK_37" id="Footnote_AK_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AK_37"><span class="label">[AK]</span></a> A. H. Sayce.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AL_38" id="Footnote_AL_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AL_38"><span class="label">[AL]</span></a> Translated by A. H. Sayce, in his paper "Babylonian
+Folk-lore" in the "Folk-lore Journal," Vol. I., Jan., 1883.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AM_39" id="Footnote_AM_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AM_39"><span class="label">[AM]</span></a> See Figs. <a href="#illus_44">44</a> and <a href="#illus_45">45</a>, p. 101.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AN_40" id="Footnote_AN_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AN_40"><span class="label">[AN]</span></a> This name was at first read Urukh, then Likbabi, then
+Likbagash, then Urbagash, then Urba'u, and now Professor Friedr.
+Delitzsch announces that the final and correct reading is in all
+probability either Ur-ea or Arad-ea.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AO_41" id="Footnote_AO_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AO_41"><span class="label">[AO]</span></a> Geo. Rawlinson, "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient
+Eastern World" (1862), Vol. I., pp. 198 and ff.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AP_42" id="Footnote_AP_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AP_42"><span class="label">[AP]</span></a> Geo. Smith, in "Records of the Past," Vol. V., p. 75.
+Fritz Hommel, "Die Semiten," p. 210 and note 101.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AQ_43" id="Footnote_AQ_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AQ_43"><span class="label">[AQ]</span></a> It should be mentioned, however, that scholars have of
+late been inclined to see in this name an allusion to the passage of the
+Jordan at the time of the conquest of Canaan by Israel, after the
+Egyptian bondage.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 372px;">
+<img src="images/deco252.png" width="372" height="83" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class='center'><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>BABYLONIAN RELIGION.</p>
+
+
+<p>1. In relating the legend of the Divine Man-Fish, who came out of the
+Gulf, and was followed, at intervals, by several more similar beings,
+Berosus assures us, that he "taught the people all the things that make
+up civilization," so that "nothing new was invented after that any
+more." But if, as is suggested, "this monstrous Oannes" is really a
+personification of the strangers who came into the land, and, being
+possessed of a higher culture, began to teach the Turanian population,
+the first part of this statement is as manifestly an exaggeration as the
+second. A people who had invented writing, who knew how to build, to
+make canals, to work metals, and who had passed out of the first and
+grossest stage of religious conceptions, might have much to learn, but
+certainly not <i>everything</i>. What the newcomers&mdash;whether Cushites or
+Semites&mdash;did teach them, was a more orderly way of organizing society
+and ruling it by means of laws and an established government, and, above
+all, astronomy and mathematics&mdash;sciences in which the Shumiro-Accads
+were little proficient, while the later and mixed nation, the Chaldeans,
+attained in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> them a very high perfection, so that many of their
+discoveries and the first principles laid down by them have come down to
+us as finally adopted facts, confirmed by later science. Thus, the
+division of the year into twelve months corresponding to as many
+constellations, known as "the twelve signs of the Zodiac," was familiar
+to them. They had also found out the division of the year into twelve
+months, only all their months had thirty days. So they were obliged to
+add an extra month&mdash;an intercalary month, as the scientific term
+is&mdash;every six years, to start even with the sun again, for they knew
+where the error in their reckoning lay. These things the strangers
+probably taught the Shumiro-Accads, but at the same time borrowed from
+them their way of counting. The Turanian races to this day have this
+peculiarity, that they do not care for the decimal system in arithmetic,
+but count by dozens and sixties, preferring numbers that can be divided
+by twelve and sixty. The Chinese even now do not measure time by
+centuries or periods of a hundred years, but by a cycle or period of
+sixty years. This was probably the origin of the division, adopted in
+Babylonia, of the sun's course into 360 equal parts or degrees, and of
+the day into twelve "<i>kasbus</i>" or double hours, since the kasbu answered
+to two of our hours, and was divided into sixty parts, which we might
+thus call "double minutes," while these again were composed of sixty
+"double seconds." The natural division of the year into twelve months
+made this so-called "docenal" and "sexagesimal" system of calculation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+particularly convenient, and it was applied to everything&mdash;measures of
+weight, distance, capacity and size as well as time.</p>
+
+<p>2. Astronomy is a strangely fascinating science, with two widely
+different and seemingly contradictory aspects, equally apt to develop
+habits of hard thinking and of dreamy speculation. For, if on one hand
+the study of mathematics, without which astronomy cannot subsist,
+disciplines the mind and trains it to exact and complicated operations,
+on the other hand, star-gazing, in the solitude and silence of a
+southern night, irresistibly draws it into a higher world, where
+poetical aspirations, guesses and dreams take the place of figures with
+their demonstrations and proofs. It is probably to these habitual
+contemplations that the later Chaldeans owed the higher tone of
+religious thought which distinguished them from their Turanian
+predecessors. They looked for the deity in heaven, not on earth. They
+did not cower and tremble before a host of wicked goblins, the creation
+of a terrified fancy. The spirits whom they worshipped inhabited and
+ruled those beautiful bright worlds, whose harmonious, concerted
+movements they watched admiringly, reverently, and could calculate
+correctly, but without understanding them. The stars generally became to
+them the visible manifestations and agents of divine power, especially
+the seven most conspicuous heavenly bodies: the Moon, whom they
+particularly honored, as the ruler of night and the measurer of time,
+the Sun and the five planets then known, those which we call Saturn,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury. It is but just to the Shumiro-Accads
+to say that the perception of the divine in the beauty of the stars was
+not foreign to them. This is amply proved by the fact that in their
+oldest writing the sign of a star is used to express the idea not of any
+particular god or goddess, but of the divine principle, the deity
+generally. The name of every divinity is preceded by the star, meaning
+"the god so-and-so." When used in this manner, the sign was read in the
+old language "Dingir"&mdash;"god, deity." The Semitic language of Babylonia
+which we call "Assyrian," while adapting the ancient writing to its own
+needs, retained this use of the sign "star," and read it <i>&icirc;lu</i>, "god."
+This word&mdash;<span class="smcap">Ilu</span> or <span class="smcap">El</span>&mdash;we find in all Semitic languages, either ancient
+or modern, in the names they give to God, in the Arabic <span class="smcap">Allah</span> as well as
+in the Hebrew <span class="smcap">Elohim</span>.</p>
+
+<p>3. This religion, based and centred on the worship of the heavenly
+bodies, has been called <i>Sabeism</i>, and was common to most Semitic races,
+whose primitive nomadic life in the desert and wide, flat
+pasture-tracts, with the nightly watches required by the tending of vast
+flocks, inclined them to contemplation and star-gazing. It is to be
+noticed that the Semites gave the first place to the Sun, and not, like
+the Shumiro-Accads, to the Moon, possibly from a feeling akin to terror,
+experiencing as they did his destructive power, in the frequent droughts
+and consuming heat of the desert.<a name="FNanchor_AR_44" id="FNanchor_AR_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_AR_44" class="fnanchor">[AR]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>4. A very prominent feature of the new order of things was the great
+power and importance of the priesthood. A successful pursuit of science
+requires two things: intellectual superiority and leisure to study,
+i.e., freedom from the daily care how to procure the necessaries of
+life. In very ancient times people in general were quite willing to
+acknowledge the superiority of those men who knew more than they did,
+who could teach them and help them with wise advice; they were willing
+also to support such men by voluntary contributions, in order to give
+them the necessary leisure. That a race with whom science and religion
+were one should honor the men thus set apart and learned in heavenly
+things and allow them great influence in private and public affairs,
+believing them, as they did, to stand in direct communion with the
+divine powers, was but natural; and from this to letting them take to
+themselves the entire government of the country as the established
+rulers thereof, was but one step. There was another circumstance which
+helped to bring about this result. The Chaldeans were devout believers
+in astrology, a form of superstition into which an astronomical religion
+like Sabeism is very apt to degenerate. For once it is taken for granted
+that the stars are divine beings, possessed of intelligence, and will,
+and power, what more natural than to imagine that they can rule and
+shape the destinies of men by a mysterious influence? This influence was
+supposed to depend on their movements, their position in the sky, their
+ever changing combinations and rela<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>tions to each other; under this
+supposition every movement of a star&mdash;its rising, its setting, or
+crossing the path of another&mdash;every slightest change in the aspect of
+the heavens, every unusual phenomenon&mdash;an eclipse, for instance&mdash;must be
+possessed of some weighty sense, boding good or evil to men, whose
+destiny must constantly be as clearly written in the blue sky as in a
+book. If only one could learn the language, read the characters! Such
+knowledge was thought to be within the reach of men, but only to be
+acquired by the exceptionally gifted and learned few, and those whom
+they might think worthy of having it imparted to them. That these few
+must be priests was self-evident. They were themselves fervent believers
+in astrology, which they considered quite as much a real science as
+astronomy, and to which they devoted themselves as assiduously. They
+thus became the acknowledged interpreters of the divine will, partakers,
+so to speak, of the secret councils of heaven. Of course such a position
+added greatly to their power, and that they should never abuse it to
+strengthen their hold on the public mind and to favor their own
+ambitious views, was not in human nature. Moreover, being the clever and
+learned ones of the nation, they really were at the time the fittest to
+rule it&mdash;and rule it they did. When the Semitic culture spread over
+Shumir, whither it gradually extended from the North, i.e., the land
+of Accad, there arose in each great city&mdash;Ur, Eridhu, Larsam, Erech,&mdash;a
+mighty temple, with its priests, its library, its <i>Ziggurat</i> or
+observatory. The cities and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> tracts of country belonging to them
+were governed by their respective colleges. And when in progress of
+time, the power became centred in the hands of single men, they still
+were priest-kings, <i>patesis</i>, whose royalty must have been greatly
+hampered and limited by the authority of their priestly colleagues. Such
+a form of government is known under the name of <i>theocracy</i>, composed of
+two Greek words and meaning "divine government."</p>
+
+<p>5. This religious reform represents a complete though probably peaceable
+revolution in the condition of the "Land between the Rivers." The new
+and higher culture had thoroughly asserted itself as predominant in both
+its great provinces, and in nothing as much as in the national religion,
+which, coming in contact with the conceptions of the Semites, was
+affected by a certain nobler spiritual strain, a purer moral feeling,
+which seems to have been more peculiarly Semitic, though destined to be
+carried to its highest perfection only in the Hebrew branch of the race.
+Moral tone is a subtle influence, and will work its way into men's
+hearts and thoughts far more surely and irresistibly than any amount of
+preaching and commanding, for men are naturally drawn to what is good
+and beautiful when it is placed before them. Thus the old settlers of
+the land, the Shumiro-Accads, to whom their gross and dismal goblin
+creed could not be of much comfort, were not slow in feeling this
+ennobling and beneficent influence, and it is assuredly to that we owe
+the beautiful prayers and hymns which mark the higher stage of their
+religion. The con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span>sciousness of sin, the feeling of contrition, of
+dependence on an offended yet merciful divine power, so strikingly
+conspicuous in the so-called "Penitential Psalms" (see p. <a href="#Page_178">178</a>), the fine
+poetry in some of the later hymns, for instance those to the Sun (see p.
+171), are features so distinctively Semitic, that they startle us by
+their resemblance to certain portions of the Bible. On the other hand, a
+nation never forgets or quite gives up its own native creed and
+religious practices. The wise priestly rulers of Shumir and Accad did
+not attempt to compel the people to do so, but even while introducing
+and propagating the new religion, suffered them to go on believing in
+their hosts of evil spirits and their few beneficent ones, in their
+conjuring, soothsaying, casting and breaking of spells and charms. Nay,
+more. As time went on and the learned priests studied more closely the
+older creed and ideas, they were struck with the beauty of some few of
+their conceptions&mdash;especially that of the ever benevolent, ever watchful
+Spirit of Earth, &Ecirc;a, and his son Meridug, the mediator, the friend of
+men. These conceptions, these and some other favorite national
+divinities, they thought worthy of being adopted by them and worked into
+their own religious system, which was growing more complicated, more
+elaborate every day, while the large bulk of spirits and demons they
+also allowed a place in it, in the rank of inferior "Spirits of heaven"
+and "Spirits of earth," which were lightly classed together and counted
+by hundreds. By the time a thousand years had passed, the fusion had
+become so complete that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> there really was both a new religion and a new
+nation, the result of a long work of amalgamation. The Shumiro-Accads of
+pure yet low race were no longer, nor did the Semites preserve a
+separate existence; they had become merged into one nation of mixed
+races, which at a later period became known under the general name of
+Chaldeans, whose religion, regarded with awe for its prodigious
+antiquity, yet was comparatively recent, being the outcome of the
+combination of two infinitely older creeds, as we have just seen. When
+Hammurabi established his residence at Babel, a city which had but
+lately risen to importance, he made it the capital of the empire first
+completely united under his rule (see p. <a href="#Page_226">226</a>), hence the name of
+Babylonia is given by ancient writers to the old land of Shumir and
+Accad, even more frequently than that of Chaldea, and the state religion
+is called indifferently the Babylonian or Chaldean, and not unfrequently
+Chaldeo-Babylonian.</p>
+
+<p>6. This religion, as it was definitely established and handed down
+unchanged through a succession of twenty centuries and more, had a
+twofold character, which must be well grasped in order to understand its
+general drift and sense. On the one hand, as it admitted the existence
+of many divine powers, who shared between them the government of the
+world, it was decidedly <span class="smcap">Polytheistic</span>&mdash;"a religion of many gods." On the
+other hand, a dim perception had already been arrived at, perhaps
+through observation of the strictly regulated movements of the stars, of
+the presence of One supreme ruling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> and directing Power. For a class of
+men given to the study of astronomy could not but perceive that all
+those bright Beings which they thought so divine and powerful, were not
+absolutely independent; that their movements and combinations were too
+regular, too strictly timed, too identical in their ever recurring
+repetition, to be entirely voluntary; that, consequently, they
+<i>obeyed</i>&mdash;obeyed a Law, a Power above and beyond them, beyond heaven
+itself, invisible, unfathomable, unattainable by human thought or eyes.
+Such a perception was, of course, a step in the right direction, towards
+<span class="smcap">Monotheism</span>, i.e., the belief in only one God. But the perception was too
+vague and remote to be fully realized and consistently carried out. The
+priests who, from long training in abstract thought and contemplation,
+probably could look deeper and come nearer the truth than other people,
+strove to express their meaning in language and images which, in the
+end, obscured the original idea and almost hid it out of sight, instead
+of making it clearer. Besides, they did not imagine the world as
+<i>created</i> by God, made by an act of his will, but as being a form of
+him, a manifestation, part of himself, of his own substance. Therefore,
+in the great all of the universe, and in each of its portions, in the
+mysterious forces at work in it&mdash;light and heat and life and
+growth&mdash;they admired and adored not the power of God, but his very
+presence; one of the innumerable and infinitely varied forms in which he
+makes himself known and visible to men, manifests himself to them&mdash;in
+short, <i>an emanation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> of God</i>. The word "emanation" has been adopted as
+the only one which to a certain extent conveys this very subtle and
+complicated idea. An emanation is not quite a thing itself, but it is a
+portion of it, which comes out of it and separates itself from it, yet
+cannot exist without it. So the fragrance of a flower is not the flower,
+nor is it a growth or development of it, yet the flower gives it forth
+and it cannot exist by itself without the flower&mdash;it is an emanation of
+the flower. The same can be said of the mist which visibly rises from
+the warm earth in low and moist places on a summer evening&mdash;it is an
+emanation of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>7. The Chaldeo-Babylonian priests knew of many such divine emanations,
+which, by giving them names and attributing to them definite functions,
+they made into so many separate divine persons. Of these some ranked
+higher and some lower, a relation which was sometimes expressed by the
+human one of "father and son." They were ordered in groups, very
+scientifically arranged. Above the rest were placed two <span class="smcap">Triads</span> or
+"groups of three." The first triad comprised <span class="smcap">Anu</span>, <span class="smcap">&Ecirc;a</span> and <span class="smcap">Bel</span>, the
+supreme gods of all&mdash;all three retained from the old Shumiro-Accadian
+list of divinities. <span class="smcap">Anu</span> is <span class="smcap">Ana</span>, "Heaven," and the surnames or epithets,
+which are given him in different texts, sufficiently show what
+conception had been formed of him: he is called "the Lord of the starry
+heavens," "the Lord of Darkness," "the first-born, the oldest, the
+Father of the Gods." <span class="smcap">&Ecirc;a</span>, retaining his ancient attributions as "Lord of
+the Deep," the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> pre-eminently wise and beneficent spirit, represents the
+Divine Intelligence, the founder and maintainer of order and harmony,
+while the actual task of separating the elements of chaos and shaping
+them into the forms which make up the world as we know it, as well as
+that of ordering the heavenly bodies, appointing them their path and
+directing them thereon, was devolved on the third person of the triad,
+<span class="smcap">Bel</span>, the son of <span class="smcap">&Ecirc;a</span>. Bel is a Semitic name, which means simply "the
+lord."</p>
+
+<p>8. From its nature and attributions, it is clear that to this triad must
+have attached a certain vagueness and remoteness. Not so the second
+triad, in which the Deity manifested itself as standing in the nearest
+and most direct relation to man as most immediately influencing him in
+his daily life. The persons of this triad were the Moon, the Sun, and
+the Power of the Atmosphere,&mdash;<span class="smcap">Sin</span>, <span class="smcap">Shamash</span>, and <span class="smcap">Ram&acirc;n</span>, the Semitic names
+for the Shumiro-Accadian <span class="smcap">Uru-Ki</span> or <span class="smcap">Nannar</span>, <span class="smcap">Ud</span> or <span class="smcap">Babbar</span>, and <span class="smcap">Im</span> or
+<span class="smcap">Mermer</span>. Very characteristically, Sin is frequently called "the god
+Thirty," in allusion to his functions as the measurer of time presiding
+over the month. Of the feelings with which the Sun was regarded and the
+beneficent and splendid qualities attributed to him, we know enough from
+the beautiful hymns quoted in Chap. III. (see p. <a href="#Page_172">172</a>). As to the god
+<span class="smcap">Ram&acirc;n</span>, frequently represented on tablets and cylinders by his
+characteristic sign, the double or triple-forked lightning-bolt&mdash;his
+importance as the dispenser of rain, the lord of the whirlwind and
+tempest, made him very popular, an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> object as much of dread as of
+gratitude; and as the crops depended on the supply of water from the
+canals, and these again could not be full without abundant rains, it is
+not astonishing that he should have been particularly entitled
+"protector or lord of canals," giver of abundance and "lord of
+fruitfulness." In his more terrible capacity, he is thus described: "His
+standard titles are the minister of heaven and earth," "the lord of the
+air," "he who makes the tempest to rage." He is regarded as the
+destroyer of crops, the rooter-up of trees, the scatterer of the
+harvest. Famine, scarcity, and even their consequence, pestilence, are
+assigned to him. He is said to have in his hand a "flaming sword" with
+which he effects his works of destruction, and this "flaming sword,
+which probably represents lightning, becomes his emblem upon the tablets
+and cylinders."<a name="FNanchor_AS_45" id="FNanchor_AS_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_AS_45" class="fnanchor">[AS]</a></p>
+
+<p>9. The astronomical tendencies of the new religion fully assert
+themselves in the third group of divinities. They are simply the five
+planets then known and identified with various deities of the old creed,
+to whom they are, so to speak, assigned as their own particular
+provinces. Thus <span class="smcap">Nin-dar</span> (also called <span class="smcap">Ninip</span> or <span class="smcap">Nin&ecirc;b</span>), originally another
+name or form of the Sun (see p. <a href="#Page_172">172</a>), becomes the ruler of the most
+distant planet, the one we now call Saturn; the old favorite, Meridug,
+under the Semitized name of <span class="smcap">Marduk</span>, rules the planet Jupiter. It is he
+whom later Hebrew writers have called <span class="smcap">Merodach</span>,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> the name we find in the
+Bible. The planet Mars belongs to <span class="smcap">Nergal</span>, the warrior-god, and Mercury
+to <span class="smcap">Nebo</span>, more properly <span class="smcap">Nabu</span>, the "messenger of the gods" and the special
+patron of astronomy, while the planet Venus is under the sway of a
+feminine deity, the goddess <span class="smcap">Ishtar</span>, one of the most important and
+popular on the list. But of her more anon. She leads us to the
+consideration of a very essential and characteristic feature of the
+Chaldeo-Babylonian religion, common, moreover, to all Oriental heathen
+religions, especially the Semitic ones.</p>
+
+<p>10. There is a distinction&mdash;the distinction of sex&mdash;which runs through
+the whole of animated nature, dividing all things that have life into
+two separate halves&mdash;male and female&mdash;halves most different in their
+qualities, often opposite, almost hostile, yet eternally dependent on
+each other, neither being complete or perfect, or indeed able to exist
+without the other. Separated by contrast, yet drawn together by an
+irresistible sympathy which results in the closest union, that of love
+and affection, the two sexes still go through life together, together do
+the work of the world. What the one has not or has in an insufficient
+degree it finds in its counterpart, and it is only their union which
+makes of the world a whole thing, full, rounded, harmonious. The
+masculine nature, active, strong, and somewhat stern, even when merciful
+and bounteous, inclined to boisterousness and violence and often to
+cruelty, is well set off, or rather completed and moderated, by the
+feminine nature, not less active, but more quietly so, dispens<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>ing
+gentle influences, open to milder moods, more uniformly soft in feeling
+and manner.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 429px;">
+<a id='illus_60' name='illus_60'><img src="images/illus_60.png" width="429" height="593" alt="60.&mdash;A BUST INSCRIBED WITH THE NAME OF NEBO. (British Museum.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">60.&mdash;A BUST INSCRIBED WITH THE NAME OF NEBO.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(British Museum.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>11. In no relation of life is the difference, yet harmony, of masculine
+and feminine action so plain as in that between husband and wife, father
+and mother. It requires no very great effort of imagination to carry the
+distinction beyond the bounds of animated nature, into the world at
+large. To men for whom every portion or force of the universe was
+endowed with a particle of the divine nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> and power, many were the
+things which seemed to be paired in a contrasting, yet joint action
+similar to that of the sexes. If the great and distant Heaven appeared
+to them as the universal ruler and lord, the source of all things&mdash;the
+Father of the Gods, as they put it&mdash;surely the beautiful Earth, kind
+nurse, nourisher and preserver of all things that have life, could be
+called the universal Mother. If the fierce summer and noonday sun could
+be looked on as the resistless conqueror, the dread King of the world,
+holding death and disease in his hand, was not the quiet, lovely moon,
+of mild and soothing light, bringing the rest of coolness and healing
+dews, its gentle Queen? In short, there is not a power or a phenomenon
+of nature which does not present to a poetical imagination a twofold
+aspect, answering to the standard masculine and feminine qualities and
+peculiarities. The ancient thinkers&mdash;priests&mdash;who framed the vague
+guesses of the groping, dreaming mind into schemes and systems of
+profound meaning, expressed this sense of the twofold nature of things
+by worshipping a double divine being or principle, masculine and
+feminine. Thus every god was supplied with a wife, through the entire
+series of divine emanations and manifestations. And as all the gods were
+in reality only different names and forms of the Supreme and
+Unfathomable <span class="smcap">One</span>, so all the goddesses represent only <span class="smcap">Belit</span>, the great
+feminine principle of nature&mdash;productiveness, maternity,
+tenderness&mdash;also contained, like everything else, in that <span class="smcap">One</span>, and
+emanating from it in endless succession. Hence it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> comes that the
+goddesses of the Chaldeo-Babylonian religion, though different in name
+and apparently in attributions, become wonderfully alike when looked at
+closer. They are all more or less repetitions of <span class="smcap">Belit</span>, the wife of <span class="smcap">Bel</span>.
+Her name&mdash;which is only the feminine form of the god's, meaning "the
+Lady," as Bel means "the Lord,"&mdash;sufficiently shows that the two are
+really one. Of the other goddesses the most conspicuous are <span class="smcap">Anat</span> or <span class="smcap">Nana</span>
+(Earth), the wife of Anu (Heaven), <span class="smcap">Anunit</span> (the Moon), wife of Shamash
+(the Sun), and lastly <span class="smcap">Ishtar</span>, the ruler of the planet Venus in her own
+right, and by far the most attractive and interesting of the list. She
+was a great favorite, worshipped as the Queen of Love and Beauty, and
+also as the Warrior-Queen, who rouses men to deeds of bravery, inspirits
+and protects them in battle&mdash;perhaps because men have often fought and
+made war for the love of women, and also probably because the planet
+Venus, her own star, appears not only in the evening, close after
+sunset, but also immediately before daybreak, and so seems to summon the
+human race to renewed efforts and activity. Ishtar could not be an
+exception to the general principle and remain unmated. But her husband,
+<span class="smcap">Dumuz</span> (a name for the Sun), stands to her in an entirely subordinate
+position, and, indeed, would be but little known were it not for a
+beautiful story that was told of them in a very old poem, and which will
+find its place among many more in one of the next chapters.</p>
+
+<p>12. It would be tedious and unnecessary to recite here more names of
+gods and goddesses, though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> there are quite a number, and more come to
+light all the time as new tablets are discovered and read. Most of them
+are in reality only different names for the same conceptions, and the
+Chaldeo-Babylonian pantheon&mdash;or assembly of divine persons&mdash;is very
+sufficiently represented by the so-called "twelve great gods," who were
+universally acknowledged to be at its head, and of whom we will here
+repeat the names: <span class="smcap">Anu</span>, <span class="smcap">&Ecirc;a</span> and <span class="smcap">Bel</span>, <span class="smcap">Sin</span>, <span class="smcap">Shamash</span> and <span class="smcap">Ram&acirc;n</span>, <span class="smcap">Nin-dar</span>,
+<span class="smcap">Maruduk</span>, <span class="smcap">Nergal</span>, <span class="smcap">Nebo</span>, <span class="smcap">Belit</span> and <span class="smcap">Ishtar</span>. Each had numerous temples all
+over the country. But every great city had its favorite whose temple was
+the oldest, largest and most sumptuous, to whose worship it was
+especially devoted from immemorial times. &Ecirc;a, the most beloved god of
+old Shumir, had his chief sanctuary, which he shared with his son
+Meridug, at <span class="smcap">Eridhu</span> (now Abu-Shahrein), the most southern and almost the
+most ancient city of Shumir, situated near the mouth of the Euphrates,
+since the Persian Gulf reached quite as far inland in the year 4000
+<span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, and this was assuredly an appropriate station for the great "lord
+of the deep," the Fish-god Oannes, who emerged from the waters to
+instruct mankind. <span class="smcap">Ur</span>, as we have seen, was the time-honored seat of the
+Moon-god. At <span class="smcap">Erech</span> Anu and Anat or Nana&mdash;Heaven and Earth&mdash;were
+specially honored from the remotest antiquity, being jointly worshipped
+in the temple called "the House of Heaven." This may have been the
+reason of the particular sacredness attributed to the ground all around
+Erech, as witnessed by the exceeding per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>sistency with which people
+strove for ages to bury their dead in it, as though under the immediate
+protection of the goddess of Earth<a name="FNanchor_AT_46" id="FNanchor_AT_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_AT_46" class="fnanchor">[AT]</a> (see Ch. III. of Introduction).
+Larsam paid especial homage to Shamash and was famous for its very
+ancient "House of the Sun." The Sun and Moon&mdash;Shamash and Anunit&mdash;had
+their rival sanctuaries at <span class="smcap">Sippar</span> on the "Royal Canal," which ran nearly
+parallel to the Euphrates, and <span class="smcap">Agad&ecirc;</span>, the city of Sargon, situated just
+opposite on the other bank of the canal. The name of Agad&ecirc; was lost in
+the lapse of time, and both cities became one, the two portions being
+distinguished only by the addition "Sippar of the Sun" and "Sippar of
+Anunit." The Hebrews called the united city "The two
+Sippars"&mdash;<span class="smcap">Sepharvaim</span>, the name we find in the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>13. The site of this important city was long doubtful; but in 1881 one
+of the most skilful and indefatigable searchers, Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, a
+gentleman who began his career as assistant to Layard, made a discovery
+which set the question at rest. He was digging in a mound known to the
+Arabs by the name of Abu-Habba, and had made his way into the apartments
+of a vast structure which he knew to be a temple. From room to room he
+passed until he came to a smaller chamber, paved with asphalt, which he
+at once surmised to be the archive-room of the temple. "Heretofore,"
+says Mr. Rassam in his report, "all Assy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>rian and Babylonian structures
+were found to be paved generally either with stone or brick,
+consequently this novel discovery led me to have the asphalt broken into
+and examined. On doing so we found, buried in a corner of the chamber,
+about three feet below the surface, an inscribed earthenware coffer,
+inside which was deposited a stone tablet...." Rassam had indeed
+stumbled on the archive of the famous Sun-temple, as was proved not only
+by the tablet, but by the numerous documents which accompanied it, and
+which gave the names of the builders and restorers of the temple. As to
+the tablet, it is the finest and best preserved work of art of the kind
+which has yet been found. It was deposited about the year 880 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> on
+occasion of a restoration and represents the god himself, seated on a
+throne, receiving the homage of worshippers, while above him the
+sun-disc is held suspended from heaven on two strong cords, like a
+gigantic lamp, by two ministering beings, who may very probably belong
+to the host of Igigi or spirits of heaven. The inscription, in
+beautifully clear and perfectly preserved characters, informs us that
+this is "The image of Shamash, the great lord, who dwells in the 'House
+of the Sun,' (<i>&Ecirc;-Babbara</i>) which is within the city of Sippar."<a name="FNanchor_AU_47" id="FNanchor_AU_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_AU_47" class="fnanchor">[AU]</a> (See
+<a href="#illus_front">Frontispiece</a>.) This was a truly magnificent find, and who knows but
+something as unexpected and as conclusive may turn up to fix for us the
+exact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> place of the temple of Anunit, and consequently of the venerable
+city of Agad&ecirc;. As to <span class="smcap">Babylon</span>, it was originally placed under divine
+protection generally, as shown by its proper Semitic name, <span class="smcap">Bab-ilu</span>,
+which means, as we have already seen, "the Gate of God," and exactly
+answers to the Shumiro-Accadian name of the city (<span class="smcap">Ka-Dingirra</span>, or
+<span class="smcap">Ka-Dimirra</span>); but later on it elected a special protector in the person
+of <span class="smcap">Maruduk</span>, the old favorite, Meridug. When Babylon became the capital
+of the united monarchy of Shumir and Accad, its patron divinity, under
+the name of <span class="smcap">Bel-Maruduk</span>, ("the Lord Maruduk") rose to a higher rank than
+he had before occupied; his temple outshone all others and became a
+wonder of the world for its wealth and splendor. He had another,
+scarcely less splendid, and founded by Hammurabi himself in Borsip. In
+this way religion was closely allied to politics. For in the days before
+the reunion of the great cities under the rule of Hammurabi, whichever
+of them was the most powerful at the time, its priests naturally claimed
+the pre-eminence for their local deity even beyond their own boundaries.
+So that the fact of the old Kings of Ur, Ur-&ecirc;a and his descendants, not
+limiting themselves to the worship of their national Moon-god, but
+building temples in many places and to many gods, was perhaps a sign of
+a conciliating general policy as much as of liberal religious feeling.</p>
+
+<p>14. One would think that so very perfect a system of religion, based too
+on so high and noble an order of ideas, should have entirely superseded
+the coarse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> materialism and conjuring practices of the goblin-creed of
+the primitive Turanian settlers. Such, however, was far from being the
+case. We saw that the new religion made room, somewhat contemptuously
+perhaps, for the spirits of the old creed, carelessly massing them
+wholesale into a sort of regiment, composed of the three hundred <span class="smcap">Igigi</span>,
+or spirits of heaven, and the six hundred <span class="smcap">Anunnaki</span>, or spirits of earth.
+The conjurers and sorcerers of old were even admitted into the
+priesthood in an inferior capacity, as a sort of lower order, probably
+more tolerated than encouraged&mdash;tolerated from necessity, because the
+people clung to their ancient beliefs and practices. But if their
+official position as a priestly class were subordinate, their real power
+was not the less great, for the public favor and credulity were on their
+side, and they were assuredly more generally popular than the learned
+and solemn priests, the counsellors and almost the equals of the kings,
+whose thoughts dwelt among the stars, who reverently searched the
+heavens for revelations of the divine will and wisdom, and who, by
+pursuing accurate observation and mathematical calculation together with
+the wildest dreams, made astronomy and astrology the inextricable tangle
+of scientific truth and fantastic speculation that we see it in the
+great work (in seventy tablets) prepared for the library of Sargon II.
+at Agad&ecirc;. That the ancient system of conjuring and incantations remained
+in full force and general use, is sufficiently proved by the contents of
+the first two parts of the great collection in two hundred tablets
+compiled in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> the reign of the same king, and from the care with which
+the work was copied and recopied, commented on and translated in later
+ages, as we see from the copy made for the Royal Library at Nineveh, the
+one which has reached us.</p>
+
+<p>15. There was still a third branch of so-called "science," which greatly
+occupied the minds of the Chaldeo-Babylonians from their earliest times
+down to the latest days of their existence: it was the art of
+Divination, i.e., of divining and foretelling future events from signs
+and omens, a superstition born of the old belief in every object of
+inanimate nature being possessed or inhabited by a spirit, and the later
+belief in a higher power ruling the world and human affairs to the
+smallest detail, and constantly manifesting itself through all things in
+nature as through secondary agents, so that nothing whatever could occur
+without some deeper significance, which might be discovered and
+expounded by specially trained and favored individuals. In the case of
+atmospheric prophecies concerning weather and crops, as connected with
+the appearance of clouds, sky and moon, the force and direction of
+winds, etc., there may have been some real observation to found them on.
+But it is very clear that such a conception, if carried out consistently
+to extreme lengths and applied indiscriminately to <i>everything</i>, must
+result in arrant folly. Such was assuredly the case with the
+Chaldeo-Babylonians, who not only carefully noted and explained dreams,
+drew lots in doubtful cases by means of inscribed arrows, interpreted
+the rustle of trees, the plashing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> of fountains and murmur of streams,
+the direction and form of lightnings, not only fancied that they could
+see things in bowls of water and in the shifting forms assumed by the
+flame which consumed sacrifices, and the smoke which rose therefrom, and
+that they could raise and question the spirits of the dead, but drew
+presages and omens, for good or evil, from the flight of birds, the
+appearance of the liver, lungs, heart and bowels of the animals offered
+in sacrifice and opened for inspection, from the natural defects or
+monstrosities of babies or the young of animals&mdash;in short, from any and
+everything that they could possibly subject to observation.</p>
+
+<p>16. This idlest of all kinds of speculation was reduced to a most minute
+and apparently scientific system quite as early as astrology and
+incantation, and forms the subject of a third collection, in about one
+hundred tablets, and probably compiled by those same indefatigable
+priests of Agad&ecirc; for Sargon, who was evidently of a most methodical turn
+of mind, and determined to have all the traditions and the results of
+centuries of observation and practical experiences connected with any
+branch of religious science fixed forever in the shape of thoroughly
+classified rules, for the guidance of priests for all coming ages. This
+collection has come to us in an even more incomplete and mutilated
+condition than the others; but enough has been preserved to show us that
+a right-thinking and religiously-given Chaldeo-Babylonian must have
+spent his life taking notes of the absurdest trifles, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> questioning
+the diviners and priests about them, in order not to get into scrapes by
+misinterpreting the signs and taking that to be a favorable omen which
+boded dire calamity&mdash;or the other way, and thus doing things or leaving
+them undone at the wrong moment and in the wrong way. What excites,
+perhaps, even greater wonder, is the utter absurdity of some of the
+incidents gravely set down as affecting the welfare, not only of
+individuals, but of the whole country. What shall we say, for instance,
+of the importance attached to the proceedings of stray dogs? Here are
+some of the items as given by Mr. Fr. Lenormant in his most valuable and
+entertaining book on Chaldean Divination:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If a gray dog enter the palace, the latter will be consumed by
+flames.&mdash;If a yellow dog enter the palace, the latter will perish in a
+violent catastrophe.&mdash;If a tawny dog enter the palace, peace will be
+concluded with the enemies.&mdash;If a dog enter the palace and be not
+killed, the peace of the palace will be disturbed.&mdash;If a dog enter the
+temple, the gods will have no mercy on the land.&mdash;If a white dog enter
+the temple, its foundations will subsist.&mdash;If a black dog enter the
+temple, its foundations will be shaken.&mdash;If a gray dog enter the temple,
+the latter will lose its possessions.... If dogs assemble in troops and
+enter the temple, no one will remain in authority.... If a dog vomits in
+a house, the master of that house will die."</p>
+
+<p>17. The chapter on monstrous births is extensive. Not only is every
+possible anomaly registered, from an extra finger or toe to an ear
+smaller than the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> other, with its corresponding presage of good or evil
+to the country, the king, the army, but the most impossible
+monstrosities are seriously enumerated, with the political conditions of
+which they are supposed to be the signs. For instance:&mdash;"If a woman give
+birth to a child with lion's ears, a mighty king will rule the land ...
+with a bird's beak, there will be peace in the land.... If a queen give
+birth to a child with a lion's face, the king will have no rival ... if
+to a snake, the king will be mighty.... If a mare give birth to a foal
+with a lion's mane, the lord of the land will annihilate his enemies ...
+with a dog's paws, the land will be diminished ... with a lion's paws,
+the land will be increased.... If a sheep give birth to a lion, there
+will be war, the king will have no rival.... If a mare give birth to a
+dog, there will be disaster and famine."</p>
+
+<p>18. The three great branches of religious science&mdash;astrology,
+incantation and divination&mdash;were represented by three corresponding
+classes of "wise men," all belonging, in different degrees, to the
+priesthood: the star-gazers or astrologers, the magicians or sorcerers,
+and the soothsayers or fortune-tellers. The latter, again, were divided
+into many smaller classes according to the particular kind of divination
+which they practised. Some specially devoted themselves to the
+interpretation of dreams, others to that of the flight of birds, or of
+the signs of the atmosphere, or of casual signs and omens generally. All
+were in continual demand, consulted alike by kings and private persons,
+and all proceeded in strict accordance with the rules and principles<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+laid down in the three great works of King Sargon's time. When the
+Babylonian empire ceased to exist and the Chaldeans were no longer a
+nation, these secret arts continued to be practised by them, and the
+name "Chaldean" became a by-word, a synonym for "a wise man of the
+East,"&mdash;astrologer, magician or soothsayer. They dispersed all over the
+world, carrying their delusive science with them, practising and
+teaching it, welcomed everywhere by the credulous and superstitious,
+often highly honored and always richly paid. Thus it is from the
+Chaldeans and their predecessors the Shumiro-Accads that the belief in
+astrology, witchcraft and every kind of fortune-telling has been handed
+down to the nations of Europe, together with the practices belonging
+thereto, many of which we find lingering even to our day among the less
+educated classes. The very words "magic" and "magician" are probably an
+inheritance of that remotest of antiquities. One of the words for
+"priest" in the old Turanian tongue of Shumir was <i>imga</i>, which, in the
+later Semitic language, became <i>mag</i>. The <i>Rab-mag</i>&mdash;"great priest," or
+perhaps "chief conjurer," was a high functionary at the court of the
+Assyrian kings. Hence "magus," "magic," "magician," in all the European
+languages, from Latin downward.</p>
+
+<p>19. There can be no doubt that we have little reason to be grateful for
+such an heirloom as this mass of superstitions, which have produced so
+much evil in the world and still occasionally do mischief enough. But we
+must not forget to set off against it the many excellent things, most
+important dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>coveries in the province of astronomy and mathematics
+which have come to us from the same distant source. To the ancient
+Chaldeo-Babylonians we owe not only our division of time, but the
+invention of the sun-dial, and the week of seven days, dedicated in
+succession to the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets&mdash;an arrangement
+which is still maintained, the names of our days being merely
+translations of the Chaldean ones. And more than that; there were days
+set apart and kept holy, as days of rest, as far back as the time of
+Sargon of Agad&ecirc;; it was from the Semites of Babylonia&mdash;perhaps the
+Chaldeans of Ur&mdash;that both the name and the observance passed to the
+Hebrew branch of the race, the tribe of Abraham. George Smith found an
+Assyrian calendar where the day called <i>Sabattu</i> or <i>Sabattuv</i> is
+explained to mean "completion of work, a day of rest for the soul." On
+this day, it appears it was not lawful to cook food, to change one's
+dress, to offer a sacrifice; the king was forbidden to speak in public,
+to ride in a chariot, to perform any kind of military or civil duty,
+even to take medicine.<a name="FNanchor_AV_48" id="FNanchor_AV_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_AV_48" class="fnanchor">[AV]</a> This, surely, is a keeping of the Sabbath as
+strict as the most orthodox Jew could well desire. There are, however,
+essential differences between the two. In the first place, the
+Babylonians kept <i>five</i> Sabbath days every month, which made more than
+one a week; in the second place,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> they came round on certain dates of
+each month, independently of the day of the week: on the 7th, 14th,
+19th, 21st and 28th. The custom appears to have passed to the Assyrians,
+and there are indications which encourage the supposition that it was
+shared by other nations connected with the Jews, the Babylonians and
+Assyrians, for instance, by the Ph&oelig;nicians.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 135px;">
+<img src="images/deco280.png" width="135" height="55" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AR_44" id="Footnote_AR_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AR_44"><span class="label">[AR]</span></a> See A. H. Sayce, "The Ancient Empires of the East" (1883),
+p. 389.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AS_45" id="Footnote_AS_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AS_45"><span class="label">[AS]</span></a> Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 164.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AT_46" id="Footnote_AT_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AT_46"><span class="label">[AT]</span></a> It was the statue of this very goddess Nana which was
+carried away by the Elamite conqueror, Khudur-Nankhundi in 2280 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> and
+restored to its place by Assurbanipal in 645 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AU_47" id="Footnote_AU_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AU_47"><span class="label">[AU]</span></a> The three circles above the god represent the Moon-god,
+the Sun-god, and Ishtar. So we are informed by the two lines of writing
+which ran above the roof.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AV_48" id="Footnote_AV_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AV_48"><span class="label">[AV]</span></a> Friedrich Delitzsch, "Beigaben" to the German translat. of
+Smith's "Chaldean Genesis" (1876), p. 300. A. H. Sayce, "The Ancient
+Empires of the East" (1883), p. 402. W. Lotz, "Qu&aelig;stiones de Historia
+Sabbati."</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/deco281.png" width="370" height="84" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class='center'><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>LEGENDS AND STORIES.</p>
+
+
+<p>1. In every child's life there comes a moment when it ceases to take the
+world and all it holds as a matter of course, when it begins to wonder
+and to question. The first, the great question naturally is&mdash;"Who made
+it all? The sun, the stars, the sea, the rivers, the flowers, and the
+trees&mdash;whence come they? who made them?" And to this question we are
+very ready with our answer:&mdash;"God made it all. The One, the Almighty God
+created the world, and all that is in it, by His own sovereign will."
+When the child further asks: "<i>How</i> did He do it?" we read to it the
+story of the Creation which is the beginning of the Bible, our Sacred
+Book, either without any remarks upon it, or with the warning, that, for
+a full and proper understanding of it, years are needed and knowledge of
+many kinds. Now, these same questions have been asked, by children and
+men, in all ages. Ever since man has existed upon the earth, ever since
+he began, in the intervals of rest, in the hard labor and struggle for
+life and limb, for food and warmth, to raise his head and look abroad,
+and take in the wonders that surrounded him, he has thus pondered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> and
+questioned. And to this questioning, each nation, after its own lights,
+has framed very much the same answer; the same in substance and spirit
+(because the only possible one), acknowledging the agency of a Divine
+Power, in filling the world with life, and ordaining the laws of
+nature,&mdash;but often very different in form, since, almost every creed
+having stopped short of the higher religious conception, that of One
+Deity, indivisible and all-powerful, the great act was attributed to
+many gods&mdash;"the gods,"&mdash;not to God. This of course opened the way to
+innumerable, more or less ingenious, fancies and vagaries as to the part
+played in it by this or that particular divinity. Thus all races,
+nations, even tribes have worked out for themselves their own <span class="smcap">Cosmogony</span>,
+i.e., their own ideas on the Origin of the World. The greatest number,
+not having reached a very high stage of culture or attained literary
+skill, preserved the teachings of their priests in their memory, and
+transmitted them orally from father to son; such is the case even now
+with many more peoples than we think of&mdash;with all the native tribes of
+Africa, the islanders of Australia and the Pacific, and several others.
+But the nations who advanced intellectually to the front of mankind and
+influenced the long series of coming races by their thoughts and
+teachings, recorded in books the conclusions they had arrived at on the
+great questions which have always stirred the heart and mind of man;
+these were carefully preserved and recopied from time to time, for the
+instruction of each rising generation. Thus many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> great nations of olden
+times have possessed Sacred Books, which, having been written in remote
+antiquity by their best and wisest men, were reverenced as something not
+only holy, but, beyond the unassisted powers of the human intellect,
+something imparted, revealed directly by the deity itself, and therefore
+to be accepted, undisputed, as absolute truth. It is clear that it was
+in the interest of the priests, the keepers and teachers of all
+religious knowledge, to encourage and maintain in the people at large
+this unquestioning belief.</p>
+
+<p>2. Of all such books that have become known to us, there are none of
+greater interest and importance than the sacred books of Ancient
+Babylonia. Not merely because they are the oldest known, having been
+treasured in the priestly libraries of Agad&ecirc;, Sippar, Cutha, etc., at an
+incredibly early date, but principally because the ancestors of the
+Hebrews, during their long station in the land of Shinar, learned the
+legends and stories they contained, and working them over after their
+own superior religious lights, remodelled them into the narrative which
+was written down many centuries later as part of the Book of Genesis.</p>
+
+<p>3. The original sacred books were attributed to the god &Ecirc;a himself, the
+impersonation of the Divine Intelligence, and the teacher of mankind in
+the shape of the first Man-Fish, Oannes&mdash;(the name being only a Greek
+corruption of the Accadian <span class="smcap">&Ecirc;a-han</span>, "&Ecirc;a the Fish")<a name="FNanchor_AW_49" id="FNanchor_AW_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_AW_49" class="fnanchor">[AW]</a> So Berosus informs
+us.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> After describing Oannes and his proceedings (see p. <a href="#Page_185">185</a>), he adds
+that "he wrote a Book on the Origin of things and the beginnings of
+civilization, and gave it to men." The "origin of things" is the history
+of the Creation of the world, Cosmogony. Accordingly, this is what
+Berosus proceeds to expound, quoting directly from the Book, for he
+begins:&mdash;"There was a time, <i>says he</i>, (meaning Oannes) when all was
+darkness and water." Then follows a very valuable fragment, but
+unfortunately only a fragment, one of the few preserved by later Greek
+writers who quoted the old priest of Babylon for their own purposes,
+while the work itself was, in some way, destroyed and lost. True, these
+fragments contain short sketches of several of the most important
+legends; still, precious as they are, they convey only second-hand
+information, compiled, indeed, from original sources by a learned and
+conscientious writer, but for the use of a foreign race, extremely
+compressed, and, besides, with the names all altered to suit that race's
+language. So long as the "original sources" were missing, there was a
+gap in the study both of the Bible and the religion of Babylon, which no
+ingenuity could fill. Great, therefore, were the delight and excitement,
+both of Assyriologists and Bible scholars, when George Smith, while
+sorting the thousands of tablet-fragments which for years had littered
+the floor of certain remote chambers of the British Museum, accidentally
+stumbled on some which were evidently portions of the original sacred
+legends partly rendered by Berosus. To search for all available
+frag<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>ments of the precious documents and piece them together became the
+task of Smith's life. And as nearly all that he found belonged to copies
+from the Royal Library at Nineveh, it was chiefly in order to enlarge
+the collection that he undertook his first expedition to the Assyrian
+mounds, from which he had the good fortune to bring back many missing
+fragments, belonging also to different copies, so that one frequently
+completes the other.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> Thus the oldest Chaldean legends were in a great
+measure restored to us, though unfortunately very few tablets are in a
+sufficiently well preserved condition to allow of making out an entirely
+intelligible and uninterrupted narrative. Not only are many parts still
+missing altogether, but of those which have been found, pieced and
+collected, there is not one of which one or more columns have not been
+injured in such a way that either the beginning or the end of all the
+lines are gone, or whole lines broken out or erased, with only a few
+words left here and there. How hopeless the task must sometimes have
+seemed to the patient workers may be judged from the foregoing specimen
+pieced together of sixteen bits, which Geo. Smith gives in his book.
+This is one of the so-called "Deluge-tablets," i.e., of those which
+contain the Chaldean version of the story of the Deluge. Luckily more
+copies have been found of this story than of any of the others, or we
+should have had to be content still with the short sketch of it given by
+Berosus.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 632px;">
+<a id='illus_61' name='illus_61'><img src="images/illus_61.png" width="632" height="430" alt="61.&mdash;BACK OF TABLET WITH ACCOUNT OF FLOOD. (Smith&#39;s
+&quot;Chaldean Genesis.&quot;)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">61.&mdash;BACK OF TABLET WITH ACCOUNT OF FLOOD.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Smith&#39;s &quot;Chaldean Genesis.&quot;)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>4. If, therefore, the ancient Babylonian legends of the beginnings of
+the world will be given here in a connected form, for the sake of
+convenience and plainness, it must be clearly understood that they were
+not preserved for us in such a form, but are the result of a long and
+patient work of research and restoration, a work which still continues;
+and every year, almost every month, brings to light some new materials,
+some addition, some correction to the old ones. Yet even as the work now
+stands, it justifies us in asserting that our knowledge of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+marvellous antiquity is fuller and more authentic than that we have of
+many a period and people not half so remote from us in point of place
+and distance.</p>
+
+<p>5. The cosmogonic narrative which forms the first part of what Geo.
+Smith has very aptly called "the Chaldean Genesis" is contained in a
+number of tablets. As it begins by the words "<i>When above</i>," they are
+all numbered as No. 1, or 3, or 5 "of the series <span class="smcap">When above</span>. <i>The
+property of Asshurbanipal, king of nations, king of Assyria.</i>" The first
+lines are intact:&mdash;"When the heaven above and the earth below were as
+yet unnamed,"&mdash;(i.e., according to Semitic ideas, <i>did not exist</i>)&mdash;<span class="smcap">Apsu</span>
+(the "Abyss") and <span class="smcap">Mummu-Tiamat</span> (the "billowy Sea") were the beginning of
+all things; their waters mingled and flowed together; that was the
+Primeval Chaos; it contained the germs of life but "the darkness was not
+lifted" from the waters, and therefore nothing sprouted or grew&mdash;(for no
+growth or life is possible without light). The gods also were not; "they
+were as yet unnamed and did not rule the destinies." Then the great gods
+came into being, and the divine hosts of heaven and earth (the Spirits
+of Heaven and Earth). "And the days stretched themselves out, and the
+god Anu (Heaven.) ..." Here the text breaks off abruptly; it is
+probable, however, that it told how, after a long lapse of time, the
+gods Anu, &Ecirc;a and Bel, the first and supreme triad, came into being. The
+next fragment, which is sufficiently well preserved to allow of a
+connected translation, tells of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> establishment of the heavenly
+bodies: "He" (Anu, whose particular dominion the highest heavens were,
+hence frequently called "the heaven of Anu") "he appointed the mansions
+of the great gods" (signs of the Zodiac), established the stars, ordered
+the months and the year, and limited the beginning and end thereof;
+established the planets, so that none should swerve from its allotted
+track; "he appointed the mansions of Bel and &Ecirc;a with his own; he also
+opened the great gates of heaven, fastening their bolts firmly to the
+right and to the left" (east and west); he made Nannar (the Moon) to
+shine and allotted the night to him, determining the time of his
+quarters which measure the days, and saying to him "rise and set, and be
+subject to this law." Another tablet, of which only the beginning is
+intelligible, tells how the gods (in the plural this time) created the
+living beings which people the earth, the cattle of the field and the
+city, and the wild beasts of the field, and the things that creep in the
+field and in the city, in short all the living creatures.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 404px;">
+<a id='illus_62' name='illus_62'><img src="images/illus_62.png" width="404" height="218" alt="62.&mdash;BABYLONIAN CYLINDER, SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THE
+TEMPTATION AND FALL." title="" />
+<span class="caption">62.&mdash;BABYLONIAN CYLINDER, SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THE
+TEMPTATION AND FALL.</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>6. There are some tablets which have been supposed to treat of the
+creation of man and perhaps to give a story of his disobedience and
+fall, answering to that in Genesis; but unfortunately they are in too
+mutilated a condition to admit of certainty, and no other copies have as
+yet come to light. However, the probability that such was really the
+case is very great, and is much enhanced by a cylinder of very ancient
+Babylonian workmanship, now in the British Museum, and too important not
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> be reproduced here. The tree in the middle, the human couple
+stretching out their hands for the fruit, the serpent standing <i>behind
+the woman</i> in&mdash;one might almost say&mdash;a whispering attitude, all this
+tells its own tale. And the authority of this artistic presentation,
+which so strangely fits in to fill the blank in the written narrative,
+is doubled by the fact that the engravings on the cylinders are
+invariably taken from subjects connected with religion, or at least
+religious beliefs and traditions. As to the creation of man, we may
+partly eke out the missing details from the fragment of Berosus already
+quoted. He there tells us&mdash;and so well-informed a writer must have
+spoken on good authority&mdash;that Bel gave his own blood to be kneaded with
+the clay out of which men were formed, and that is why they are endowed
+with reason and have a share of the divine nature in them&mdash;certainly a
+most ingenious way of expressing the blending of the earthly and the
+divine elements which has<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> made human nature so deep and puzzling a
+problem to the profounder thinkers of all ages.</p>
+
+<p>7. For the rest of the creation, Berosus' account (quoted from the book
+said to have been given men by the fabulous Oannes), agrees with what we
+find in the original texts, even imperfect as we have them. He says that
+in the midst of Chaos&mdash;at the time when all was darkness and water&mdash;the
+principle of life which it contained, restlessly working, but without
+order, took shape in numberless monstrous formations: there were beings
+like men, some winged, with two heads, some with the legs and horns of
+goats, others with the hind part of horses; also bulls with human heads,
+dogs with four bodies and a fish's tail, horses with the heads of dogs,
+in short, every hideous and fantastical combination of animal forms,
+before the Divine Will had separated them, and sorted them into harmony
+and order. All these monstrous beings perished the moment Bel separated
+the heavens from the earth creating light,&mdash;for they were births of
+darkness and lawlessness and could not stand the new reign of light and
+law and divine reason. In memory of this destruction of the old chaotic
+world and production of the new, harmonious and beautiful one, the walls
+of the famous temple of Bel-Mardouk at Babylon were covered with
+paintings representing the infinite variety of monstrous and mixed
+shapes with which an exuberant fancy had peopled the primeval chaos;
+Berosus was a priest of this temple and he speaks of those paintings as
+still existing. Though nothing has remained of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> them in the ruins of the
+temple, we have representations of the same kind on many of the
+cylinders which, used as seals, did duty both as personal badges&mdash;(one
+is almost tempted to say "coats of arms")&mdash;and as talismans, as proved
+by the fact of such cylinders being so frequently found on the wrists of
+the dead in the sepulchres.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 595px;">
+<a id='illus_63' name='illus_63'><img src="images/illus_63.png" width="595" height="397" alt="63.&mdash;FEMALE WINGED FIGURES BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (From
+a photograph in the British Museum.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">63.&mdash;FEMALE WINGED FIGURES BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(From a photograph in the British Museum.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>8. The remarkable cylinder with the human couple and the serpent leads
+us to the consideration of a most important object in the ancient
+Babylonian or Chaldean religion&mdash;the Sacred Tree, the Tree of Life. That
+it was a very holy symbol is clear from its being so continually
+reproduced on cylinders and on sculptures. In this particular cylinder,
+rude as the design is, it bears an unmistakable likeness to a real
+tree&mdash;of some coniferous species, cypress or fir. But art soon took hold
+of it and began to load it with symmetrical embellishments, until it
+produced a tree of entirely conventional design, as shown by the
+following specimens, of which the first leans more to the palm, while
+the second seems rather of the coniferous type. (Figs. No. <a href="#illus_63">63</a> and <a href="#illus_65">65</a>.)
+It is probable that such artificial trees, made up of boughs&mdash;perhaps of
+the palm and cypress&mdash;tied together and intertwined with ribbons
+(something like our Maypoles of old), were set up in the temples as
+reminders of the sacred symbol, and thus gave rise to the fixed type
+which remains invariable both in such Babylonian works of art as we
+possess and on the Assyrian sculptures, where the tree, or a portion of
+it, appears not only in the running ornaments on the walls but on seal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+cylinders and even in the embroidery on the robes of kings. In the
+latter case indeed, it is almost certain, from the belief in talismans
+which the Assyrians had inherited, along with the whole of their
+religion from the Chaldean mother country, that this ornament was
+selected not only as appropriate to the sacredness of the royal person,
+but as a consecration and protection. The holiness of the symbol is
+further evidenced by the kneeling posture of the animals which sometimes
+accompany it (see Fig. <a href="#illus_22">22</a>, page 67), and the attitude of adoration of
+the human figures, or winged spirits attending it, by the prevalence of
+the sacred number seven in its component parts, and by the fact that it
+is reproduced on a great many of those glazed earthenware coffins which
+are so plentiful at Warka (ancient Erech). This latter fact clearly
+shows that the tree-symbol not only meant life in general, life on
+earth, but a hope of life eternal, beyond the grave, or why should it
+have been given to the dead? These coffins at Warka belong, it is true,
+to a late period, some as late as a couple of hundred years after
+Christ, but the ancient traditions and their meaning had, beyond a
+doubt, been preserved. Another significant detail is that the cone is
+frequently seen in the hands of men or spirits, and al<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>ways in a way
+connected with worship or auspicious protection; sometimes it is held to
+the king's nostrils by his attendant protecting spirits, (known by their
+wings); a gesture of unmistakable significancy, since in ancient
+languages "the breath of the nostrils" is synonymous with "the breath of
+life."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 663px;">
+<a id='illus_64' name='illus_64'><img src="images/illus_64.png" width="663" height="385" alt="64.&mdash;WINGED SPIRITS BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Smith&#39;s
+&quot;Chaldea.&quot;)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">64.&mdash;WINGED SPIRITS BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Smith&#39;s &quot;Chaldea.&quot;)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 369px;">
+<a id='illus_65' name='illus_65'><img src="images/illus_65.png" width="369" height="548" alt="65.&mdash;SARGON OF ASSYRIA BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Perrot
+and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">65.&mdash;SARGON OF ASSYRIA BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>9. There can be no association of ideas more natural than that of
+vegetation, as represented by a tree, with life. By its perpetual growth
+and development, its wealth of branches and foliage, its blossoming and
+fruit-bearing, it is a noble and striking illustration of the world in
+the widest sense&mdash;the Universe, the Cosmos, while the sap which courses
+equally through the trunk and through the veins of the smallest leaflet,
+drawn by an incomprehensible process through invisible roots from the
+nourishing earth, still more forcibly suggests that mysterious
+principle, Life, which we <i>think</i> we understand because we see its
+effects and feel it in ourselves, but the sources of which will never be
+reached, as the problem of it will never be solved, either by the prying
+of experimental science or the musings of contemplative speculation;
+life eternal, also,&mdash;for the workings of nature <i>are</i> eternal,&mdash;and the
+tree that is black and lifeless to-day, we know from long experience is
+not dead, but will revive in the fulness of time, and bud, and grow and
+bear again. All these things <i>we</i> know are the effects of laws; but the
+ancients attributed them to living Powers,&mdash;the <span class="smcap">Chthonic Powers</span> (from
+the Greek word <span class="smcap">Chthon</span>, "earth, soil"), which have by some later and
+dreamy thinkers been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> called weirdly but not unaptly, "the Mothers,"
+mysteriously at work in the depths of silence and darkness, unseen,
+unreachable, and inexhaustibly productive. Of these powers again, what
+more perfect symbol or representative than the Tree, as standing for
+vegetation, one for all, the part for the whole? It lies so near that,
+in later times, it was enlarged, so as to embrace the whole universe, in
+the majestic conception of the Cosmic Tree which has its roots on earth
+and heaven for its crown, while its fruit are the golden apples&mdash;the
+stars, and Fire,&mdash;the red lightning.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 429px;">
+<a id='illus_66' name='illus_66'><img src="images/illus_66.png" width="429" height="634" alt="66.&mdash;EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Smith&#39;s
+&quot;Chaldea.&quot;)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">66.&mdash;EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Smith&#39;s &quot;Chaldea.&quot;)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 351px;">
+<a id='illus_67' name='illus_67'><img src="images/illus_67.png" width="351" height="546" alt="67.&mdash;FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.
+(Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">67.&mdash;FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>10. All these suggestive and poetical fancies would in themselves
+suffice to make the tree-symbol a favorite one among so thoughtful and
+profound a people as the old Chaldeans. But there is something more. It
+is intimately connected with another tradition, common, in some form or
+other, to all nations who have attained a sufficiently high grade of
+culture to make their mark in the world&mdash;that of an original ancestral
+abode, beautiful, happy, and remote, a Paradise. It is usually imagined
+as a great mountain, watered by springs which become great rivers,
+bearing one or more trees of wonderful properties and sacred character,
+and is considered as the principal residence of the gods. Each nation
+locates it according to its own knowledge of geography and vague,
+half-obliterated memories. Many texts, both in the old Accadian and the
+Assyrian languages, abundantly prove that the Chaldean religion
+preserved a distinct and reverent conception of such a mountain, and
+placed it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> in the far north or north-east, calling it the "Father of
+Countries," plainly an allusion to the original abode of man&mdash;the
+"Mountain of Countries," (i.e., "Chief Mountain of the World") and also
+<span class="smcap">Arallu</span>, because there, where the gods dwelt, they also imagined the
+entrance to the Arali to be the Land of the Dead. There, too, the heroes
+and great men were to dwell forever after their death. There is the land
+with a sky of silver, a soil which produces crops without being
+cultivated, where blessings are for food and rejoicing, which it is
+hoped the king will obtain as a reward for his piety after having
+enjoyed all earthly goods during his life.<a name="FNanchor_AX_50" id="FNanchor_AX_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_AX_50" class="fnanchor">[AX]</a> In an old Accadian hymn,
+the sacred mount, which is identical with that imagined as the pillar
+joining heaven and earth, the pillar around which the heavenly spheres
+revolve, (see page 153)&mdash;is called "the mountain of Bel, in the east,
+whose double head reaches unto the skies; which is like to a mighty
+buffalo at rest, whose double horn sparkles as a sunbeam, as a star." So
+vivid was the conception in the popular mind, and so great the reverence
+entertained for it, that it was attempted to reproduce the type of the
+holy mountain in the palaces of their kings and the temples of their
+gods. That is one of the reasons why they built both on artificial
+hills. There is in the British Museum a sculpture from Koyunjik,
+representing such a temple, or perhaps palace, on the summit of a mound,
+converted into a garden and watered by a stream<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> which issues from the
+"hanging garden" on the right, the latter being laid out on a platform
+of masonry raised on arches; the water was brought up by machinery. It
+is a perfect specimen of a "Paradise," as these artificial parks were
+called by the Greeks, who took the word (meaning "park" or "garden")
+from the Persians, who, in their turn, had borrowed the thing from the
+Assyrians and Babylonians, when they conquered the latter's em<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>pire. The
+<i>Ziggurat</i>, or pyramidal construction in stages, with the temple or
+shrine on the top, also owed its peculiar shape to the same original
+conception: as the gods dwelt on the summit of the Mountain of the
+World, so their shrines should occupy a position as much like their
+residence as the feeble means of man would permit. That this is no idle
+fancy is proved by the very name of "Ziggurat," which means "<i>mountain
+peak</i>," and also by the names of some of these temples: one of the
+old<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span>est and most famous indeed, in the city of Asshur, was named "the
+House of the Mountain of Countries." An excellent representation of a
+Ziggurat, as it must have looked with its surrounding palm grove by a
+river, is given us on a sculptured slab, also from Koyunjik. The
+original is evidently a small one, of probably five stages besides the
+platform on which it is built, with its two symmetrical paths up the
+ascent. Some, like the great temple at Ur, had only three stages, others
+again seven&mdash;always one of the three sacred numbers: three,
+corresponding to the divine Triad; five, to the five planets; seven, to
+the planets, sun and moon. The famous Temple of the Seven Spheres at
+Borsip (the Birs-Nimrud), often mentioned already, and rebuilt by
+Nebuchadnezzar about 600 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> from a far older structure, as he explains
+in his inscription (see p. <a href="#Page_72">72</a>), was probably the most gorgeous, as it
+was the largest; besides, it is the only one of which we have detailed
+and reliable descriptions and measurements, which may best be given in
+this place, almost entirely in the words of George Rawlinson:<a name="FNanchor_AY_51" id="FNanchor_AY_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_AY_51" class="fnanchor">[AY]</a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 579px;">
+<a id='illus_68' name='illus_68'><img src="images/illus_68.png" width="579" height="354" alt="68.&mdash;TEMPLE AND HANGING GARDENS AT KOYUNJIK. (British
+Museum.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">68.&mdash;TEMPLE AND HANGING GARDENS AT KOYUNJIK.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(British Museum.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 485px;">
+<a id='illus_69' name='illus_69'><img src="images/illus_69.png" width="485" height="463" alt="69.&mdash;PLAN OF A ZIGGURAT. (Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">69.&mdash;PLAN OF A ZIGGURAT.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>11. The temple is raised on a platform exceptionally low&mdash;only a few
+feet above the level of the plain; the entire height, including the
+platform, was 156 feet in a perpendicular line. The stages&mdash;of which the
+four upper were lower than the first three&mdash;receded equally on three
+sides, but doubly as much on the fourth, probably in order to present a
+more imposing front from the plain, and an easier ascent.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> "The
+ornamentation of the edifice was chiefly by means of color. The seven
+Stages represented the Seven Spheres, in which moved, according to
+ancient Chaldean astronomy, the seven planets. To each planet fancy,
+partly grounding itself upon fact, had from of old assigned a peculiar
+tint or hue. The Sun (Shamash) was golden; the Moon (Sin or Nannar),
+silver; the distant Saturn (Adar), almost beyond the region of light,
+was black; Jupiter (Marduk) was orange; the fiery Mars (Nergal) was red;
+Venus (Ishtar) was a pale yellow; Mercury (Nebo or Nabu, whose shrine
+stood on the top stage), a deep blue. The seven stages of the tower gave
+a visible embodiment to these fancies. The basement stage, assigned to
+Saturn, was blackened by means of a coating of bitumen spread over the
+face of the masonry; the second stage, assigned to Jupiter, obtained the
+appropriate orange color by means of a facing of burnt bricks of that
+hue; the third stage, that of Mars, was made blood-red by the use of
+half-burnt bricks formed of a bright-red clay; the fourth stage,
+assigned to the Sun, appears to have been actually covered with thin
+plates of gold; the fifth, the stage of Venus, received a pale yellow
+tint from the employment of bricks of that hue; the sixth, the sphere of
+Mercury, was given an azure tint by vitrifaction, the whole stage having
+been subjected to an intense heat after it was erected, whereby the
+bricks composing it were converted into a mass of blue slag; the seventh
+stage, that of the moon, was probably, like the fourth, coated with
+actual plates of metal. Thus the build<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>ing rose up in stripes of varied
+color, arranged almost as nature's cunning hand arranges hues in the
+rainbow, tones of red coming first, succeeded by a broad stripe of
+yellow, the yellow being followed by blue. Above this the glowing
+silvery summit melted into the bright sheen of the sky.... The Tower is
+to be regarded as fronting the north-east, the coolest side, and that
+least exposed to the sun's rays from the time that they become
+oppressive in Babylonia. On this side was the ascent, which consisted
+probably of a broad staircase extending along the whole front of the
+building. The side platforms, at any rate of the first and second
+stages, probably of all, were occupied by a series of chambers.... In
+these were doubtless lodged the priests and other attendants upon the
+temple service...."</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 461px;">
+<a id='illus_70' name='illus_70'><img src="images/illus_70.png" width="461" height="668" alt="70.&mdash;&quot;ZIGGURAT&quot; RESTORED. ACCORDING TO PROBABILITIES.
+(Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">70.&mdash;&quot;ZIGGURAT&quot; RESTORED. ACCORDING TO PROBABILITIES.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>12. The interest attaching to this temple, wonderful as it is in itself,
+is greatly enhanced by the circumstance that its ruins have through many
+centuries been considered as those of the identical Tower of Babel of
+the Bible. Jewish literary men who travelled over the country in the
+Middle Ages started this idea, which quickly spread to the West. It is
+conjectured that it was suggested by the vitrified fragments of the
+outer coating of the sixth, blue, stage, (that of Mercury or Nebo), the
+condition of which was attributed to lightning having struck the
+building.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 765px;">
+<a id='illus_71' name='illus_71'><img src="images/illus_71.png" width="765" height="451" alt="71.&mdash;BIRS-NIMRUD. (ANCIENT BORSIP.) (Perrot and
+Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">71.&mdash;BIRS-NIMRUD. (ANCIENT BORSIP.)</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>13. That the Ziggurats of Chaldea should have been used not only as
+pedestals to uphold shrines, but as observatories by the priestly
+astronomers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span> and astrologers, was quite in accordance with the strong
+mixture of star-worship grafted on the older religion, and with the
+power ascribed to the heavenly bodies over the acts and destinies of
+men. These constructions, therefore, were fitted for astronomical uses
+by being very carefully placed with their corners pointing exactly to
+the four cardinal points&mdash;North, South, East and West. Only two
+exceptions have been found to this rule, one in Babylon, and the
+Assyrian Ziggurat at Kalah, (Nimrud) explored by Layard, of which the
+sides, not the corners, face the cardinal points. For the Assyrians, who
+carried their entire culture and religion northward from their ancient
+home, also retained this consecrated form of architecture, with the
+difference that with them the Ziggurats were not temple and observatory
+in one, but only observatories attached to the temples, which were built
+on more independent principles and a larger scale, often covering as
+much ground as a palace.</p>
+
+<p>14. The singular orientation of the Chaldean Ziggurats (subsequently
+retained by the Assyrians),&mdash;i.e., the manner in which they are placed,
+turned to the cardinal points with their angles, and not with their
+faces, as are the Egyptian pyramids, with only one exception,&mdash;has long
+been a puzzle which no astronomical considerations were sufficient to
+solve. But quite lately, in 1883, Mr. Pinches, Geo. Smith's successor in
+the British Museum, found a small tablet, giving lists of signs,
+eclipses, etc., affecting the various countries, and containing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> the
+following short geographical notice, in illustration of the position
+assigned to the cardinal points: "The South is Elam, the North is Accad,
+the East is Suedin and Gutium, the West is Ph&oelig;nicia. On the right is
+Accad, on the left is Elam, in front is Ph&oelig;nicia, behind are Suedin
+and Gutium." In order to appreciate the bearing of this bit of
+topography on the question in hand, we must examine an ancient map, when
+we shall at once perceive that the direction given by the tablet to the
+<i>South</i> (Elam) answers to our <i>South-East;</i> that given to the <i>North</i>
+(Accad) answers to our <i>North-West;</i> while <i>West</i> (Ph&oelig;nicia, i.e.,
+the coast-land of the Mediterranean, down almost to Egypt) stands for
+our <i>South-West</i>, and <i>East</i> (Gutium, the highlands where the Armenian
+mountains join the Zagros, now Kurdish Mountains,) for our <i>North-East</i>.
+If we turn the map so that the Persian Gulf shall come in a
+perpendicular line under Babylon, we shall produce the desired effect,
+and then it will strike us that the Ziggurats <i>did</i> face the cardinal
+points, according to Chaldean geography, <i>with their sides</i>, and that
+the discovery of the small tablet, as was remarked on the production of
+it, "settles the difficult question of the difference in orientation
+between the Assyrian and Egyptian monuments." It was further suggested
+that "the two systems of cardinal points originated no doubt from two
+different races, and their determination was due probably <i>to the
+geographical position of the primitive home of each race.</i>" Now the
+South-West is called "the front," "and the migrations of the people
+<i>therefore</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> must have been from North-East to South-West."<a name="FNanchor_AZ_52" id="FNanchor_AZ_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_AZ_52" class="fnanchor">[AZ]</a> This
+beautifully tallies with the hypothesis, or conjecture, concerning the
+direction from which the Shumiro-Accads descended into the lowlands by
+the Gulf (see pp. <a href="#Page_146">146-8</a>), and, moreover, leads us to the question
+whether the fact of the great Ziggurat of the Seven Spheres at Borsip
+facing the North-East with its front may not have some connection with
+the holiness ascribed to that region as the original home of the race
+and the seat of that sacred mountain so often mentioned as "the Great
+Mountain of Countries" (see p. <a href="#Page_280">280</a>), doubly sacred, as the meeting-place
+of the gods and the place of entrance to the "Arallu" or Lower
+World.<a name="FNanchor_BA_53" id="FNanchor_BA_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_BA_53" class="fnanchor">[BA]</a></p>
+
+<p>15. It is to be noted that the conception of the divine grove or garden
+with its sacred tree of life was sometimes separated from that of the
+holy primeval mountain and transferred by tradition to a more immediate
+and accessible neighborhood. That the city and district of Babylon may
+have been the centre of such a tradition is possibly shown by the most
+ancient Accadian name of the former&mdash;<span class="smcap">Tin-tir-ki</span> meaning "the Place of
+Life," while the latter was called <span class="smcap">Gan-Dunyash</span> or <span class="smcap">Kar-Dunyash</span>&mdash;"the
+garden of the god Dunyash,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> (probably one of the names of the god
+&Ecirc;a)&mdash;an appellation which this district, although situated in the land
+of Accad or Upper Chaldea, preserved to the latest times as
+distinctively its own. Another sacred grove is spoken of as situated in
+Eridhu. This city, altogether the most ancient we have any mention of,
+was situated at the then mouth of the Euphrates, in the deepest and
+flattest of lowlands, a sort of borderland between earth and sea, and
+therefore very appropriately consecrated to the great spirit of both,
+the god &Ecirc;a, the amphibious Oannes. It was so much identified with him,
+that in the Shumirian hymns and conjurings his son Meridug is often
+simply invoked as "Son of Eridhu." It must have been the oldest seat of
+that spirit-worship and sorcerer-priesthood which we find crystallized
+in the earliest Shumiro-Accadian sacred books. This prodigious antiquity
+carries us to something like 5000 years <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, which explains the fact
+that the ruins of the place, near the modern Arab village of
+Abu-Shahrein, are now so far removed from the sea, being a considerable
+distance even from the junction of the two rivers where they form the
+Shat-el-arab. The sacred grove of Eridhu is frequently referred to, and
+that it was connected with the tradition of the tree of life we see from
+a fragment of a most ancient hymn, which tells of "a black pine, growing
+at Eridhu, sprung up in a pure place, with roots of lustrous crystal
+extending downwards, even into the deep, marking the centre of the
+earth, in the dark forest into the heart whereof man hath not
+penetrated." Might<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> not this be the reason why the wood of the pine was
+so much used in charms and conjuring, as the surest safeguard against
+evil influences, and its very shadow was held wholesome and sacred? But
+we return to the legends of the Creation and primeval world.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 696px;">
+<a id='illus_72' name='illus_72'><img src="images/illus_72.png" width="696" height="378" alt="72.&mdash;BEL FIGHTS THE DRAGON&mdash;TIAMAT (ASSYRIAN CYLINDER.)
+(Perrot and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">72.&mdash;BEL FIGHTS THE DRAGON&mdash;TIAMAT (ASSYRIAN CYLINDER.)</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>16. Mummu-Tiamat, the impersonation of chaos, the power of darkness and
+lawlessness, does not vanish from the scene when Bel puts an end to her
+reign, destroys, by the sheer force of light and order, her hideous
+progeny of monsters and frees from her confusion the germs and
+rudimental forms of life, which, under the new and divine dispensation,
+are to expand and combine into the beautifully varied, yet harmonious
+world we live in. Tiamat becomes the sworn enemy of the gods and their
+creation, the great principle of opposition and destruction. When the
+missing texts come to light,&mdash;if ever they do&mdash;it will probably be found
+that the serpent who tempts the woman in the famous cylinder, is none
+other than a form of the rebellious and vindictive Tiamat, who is called
+now a "Dragon," now "the Great Serpent." At last the hostility cannot be
+ignored, and things come to a deadly issue. It is determined in the
+council of the gods that one of them must fight the wicked dragon; a
+complete suit of armor is made and exhibited by Anu himself, of which
+the sickle-shaped sword and the beautifully bent bow are the principal
+features. It is Bel who dares the venture and goes forth on a matchless
+war chariot, armed with the sword, and the bow, and his great weapon,
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> thunderbolt, sending the lightning before him and scattering arrows
+around. Tiamat, the Dragon of the Sea, came out to meet him, stretching
+her immense body along, bearing death and destruction, and attended by
+her followers. The god rushed on the monster with such violence that he
+threw her down and was already fastening fetters on her limbs, when she
+uttered a great shout and started up and attacked the righteous leader
+of the gods, while banners were raised on both sides as at a pitched
+battle. Meridug drew his sword and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span> wounded her; at the same time a
+violent wind struck against her face. She opened her jaws to swallow up
+Meridug, but before she could close them he bade the wind to enter into
+her body. It entered and filled her with its violence, shook her heart
+and tore her entrails and subdued her courage. Then the god bound her,
+and put an end to her works, while her followers stood amazed, then
+broke their lines and fled, full of fear, seeing that Tiamat, their
+leader, was conquered. There she lay, her weapons broken, herself like a
+sword thrown down on the ground, in the dark and bound, conscious of her
+bondage and in great grief, her might suddenly broken by fear.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 555px;">
+<a id='illus_73' name='illus_73'><img src="images/illus_73.png" width="555" height="358" alt="73.&mdash;BEL FIGHTS THE DRAGON&mdash;TIAMAT (BABYLONIAN
+CYLINDER)." title="" />
+<span class="caption">73.&mdash;BEL FIGHTS THE DRAGON&mdash;TIAMAT (BABYLONIAN CYLINDER).</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>17. The battle of Bel-Marduk and the Dragon was a favorite incident in
+the cycle of Chaldean tradition, if we judge from the number of
+representations we have of it on Babylonian cylinders, and even on
+Assyrian wall-sculptures. The texts which relate to it are, however, in
+a frightful state of mutilation, and only the last fragment, describing
+the final combat, can be read and translated with anything like
+completeness. With it ends the series treating of the Cosmogony or
+Beginnings of the World. But it may be completed by a few more legends
+of the same primitive character and preserved on detached tablets, in
+double text, as usual&mdash;Accadian and Assyrian. To these belongs a poem
+narrating the rebellion, already alluded to, (see p. <a href="#Page_182">182</a>,) of the seven
+evil spirits, originally the messengers and throne-bearers of the gods,
+and their war against the moon, the whole being evidently a fanciful
+ren<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>dering of an eclipse. "Those wicked gods, the rebel spirits," of
+whom one is likened to a leopard, and one to a serpent, and the rest to
+other animals&mdash;suggesting the fanciful shapes of storm-clouds&mdash;while one
+is said to be the raging south wind, began the attack "with evil
+tempest, baleful wind," and "from the foundations of the heavens like
+the lightning they darted." The lower region of the sky was reduced to
+its primeval chaos, and the gods sat in anxious council. The moon-god
+(Sin), the sun-god (Shamash), and the goddess Ishtar had been appointed
+to sway in close harmony the lower sky and to command the hosts of
+heaven; but when the moon-god was attacked by the seven spirits of evil,
+his companions basely forsook him, the sun-god retreating to his place
+and Ishtar taking refuge in the highest heaven (the heaven of Anu). Nebo
+is despatched to &Ecirc;a, who sends his son Meridug with this
+instruction:&mdash;"Go, my son Meridug! The light of the sky, my son, even
+the moon-god, is grievously darkened in heaven, and in eclipse from
+heaven is vanishing. Those seven wicked gods, the serpents of death who
+fear not, are waging unequal war with the laboring moon." Meridug obeys
+his father's bidding, and overthrows the seven powers of darkness.<a name="FNanchor_BB_54" id="FNanchor_BB_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_BB_54" class="fnanchor">[BB]</a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 692px;">
+<a id='illus_74' name='illus_74'><img src="images/illus_74.png" width="692" height="458" alt="74.&mdash;BATTLE BETWEEN BEL AND THE DRAGON (TIAMAT). (Smith&#39;s
+&quot;Chaldea.&quot;)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">74.&mdash;BATTLE BETWEEN BEL AND THE DRAGON (TIAMAT).</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Smith&#39;s &quot;Chaldea.&quot;)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>18. There is one more detached legend known from the surviving fragments
+of Berosus, also supposed to be derived from ancient Accadian texts: it
+is that of the great tower and the confusion of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> tongues. One such text
+has indeed been found by the indefatigable George Smith, but there is
+just enough left of it to be very tantalizing and very unsatisfactory.
+The narrative in Berosus amounts to this: that men having grown beyond
+measure proud and arrogant, so as to deem themselves superior even to
+the gods, undertook to build an immense tower, to scale the sky; that
+the gods, offended with this presumption, sent violent winds to
+overthrow the construction when it had already reached a great height,
+and at the same time caused men to speak different languages,&mdash;probably
+to sow dissension among them, and prevent their ever again uniting in a
+common enterprise so daring and impious. The site was identified with
+that of Babylon itself, and so strong was the belief attaching to the
+legend that the Jews later on adopted it unchanged, and centuries
+afterwards, as we saw above, fixed on the ruins of the hugest of all
+Ziggurats, that of Borsip, as those of the great Tower of the Confusion
+of Tongues. Certain it is, that the tradition, under all its fanciful
+apparel, contains a very evident vein of historical fact, since it was
+indeed from the plains of Chaldea that many of the principal nations of
+the ancient East, various in race and speech, dispersed to the north,
+the west, and the south, after having dwelt there for centuries as in a
+common cradle, side by side, and indeed to a great extent as one
+people.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 135px;">
+<img src="images/deco280.png" width="135" height="55" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AW_49" id="Footnote_AW_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AW_49"><span class="label">[AW]</span></a> See Fr. Lenormant, "Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der
+Chald&auml;er," p. 377.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AX_50" id="Footnote_AX_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AX_50"><span class="label">[AX]</span></a> Fran&ccedil;ois Lenormant, "Origines de l'Histoire," Vol. II., p.
+130.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AY_51" id="Footnote_AY_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AY_51"><span class="label">[AY]</span></a> "Five Monarchies," Vol. III., pp. 380-387.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_AZ_52" id="Footnote_AZ_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_AZ_52"><span class="label">[AZ]</span></a> See "Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Arch&aelig;ology,"
+Feb., 1883, pp. 74-76, and "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society," Vol.
+XVI., 1884, p. 302.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BA_53" id="Footnote_BA_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BA_53"><span class="label">[BA]</span></a> The one exception to the above rule of orientation among
+the Ziggurats of Chaldea is that of the temple of Bel, in Babylon,
+(<span class="smcap">E-Saggila</span> in the old language,) which is oriented in the usual way&mdash;its
+sides facing the <i>real</i> North, South, East and West.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BB_54" id="Footnote_BB_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BB_54"><span class="label">[BB]</span></a> See A. H. Sayce, "Babylonian Literature," p. 35.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 374px;">
+<img src="images/deco317.png" width="374" height="84" alt="Description" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class='center'><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>MYTHS.&mdash;HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS.</p>
+
+
+<p>1. The stories by which a nation attempts to account for the mysteries
+of creation, to explain the Origin of the World, are called, in
+scientific language, <span class="smcap">Cosmogonic Myths</span>. The word Myth is constantly used
+in conversation, but so loosely and incorrectly, that it is most
+important once for all to define its proper meaning. It means simply <i>a
+phenomenon of nature presented not as the result of a law but as the act
+of divine or at least superhuman persons, good or evil powers</i>&mdash;(for
+instance, the eclipse of the Moon described as the war against the gods
+of the seven rebellious spirits). Further reading and practice will show
+that there are many kinds of myths, of various origins; but there is
+none, which, if properly taken to pieces, thoroughly traced and
+cornered, will not be covered by this definition. A Myth has also been
+defined as a legend connected more or less closely with some religious
+belief, and, in its main outlines, handed down from prehistoric times.
+There are only two things which can prevent the contemplation of nature
+and speculation on its mysteries from running into mythology: a
+knowledge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> of the physical laws of nature, as supplied by modern
+experimental science, and a strict, unswerving belief in the unity of
+God, absolute and undivided, as affirmed and defined by the Hebrews in
+so many places of their sacred books: "The Lord he is God, there is none
+else beside him." "The Lord he is God, in Heaven above and upon the
+earth beneath there is none else." "I am the Lord, and there is none
+else, there is no God beside me." "I am God and there is none else." But
+experimental science is a very modern thing indeed, scarcely a few
+hundred years old, and Monotheism, until the propagation of
+Christianity, was professed by only one small nation, the Jews, though
+the chosen thinkers of other nations have risen to the same conception
+in many lands and many ages. The great mass of mankind has always
+believed in the personal individuality of all the forces of nature,
+i.e., in many gods; everything that went on in the world was to them the
+manifestation of the feelings, the will, the acts of these gods&mdash;hence
+the myths. The earlier the times, the more unquestioning the belief and,
+as a necessary consequence, the more exuberant the creation of myths.</p>
+
+<p>2. But gods and spirits are not the only actors in myths. Side by side
+with its sacred traditions on the Origin of things, every nation
+treasures fond but vague memories of its own beginnings&mdash;vague, both
+from their remoteness and from their not being fixed in writing, and
+being therefore liable to the alterations and enlargements which a story
+invariably undergoes when told many times to and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> by different people,
+i.e., when it is transmitted from generation to generation by oral
+tradition. These memories generally centre around a few great names, the
+names of the oldest national heroes, of the first rulers, lawgivers and
+conquerors of the nation, the men who by their genius <i>made</i> it a nation
+out of a loose collection of tribes or large families, who gave it
+social order and useful arts, and safety from its neighbors, or,
+perhaps, freed it from foreign oppressors. In their grateful admiration
+for these heroes, whose doings naturally became more and more marvellous
+with each generation that told of them, men could not believe that they
+should have been mere imperfect mortals like themselves, but insisted on
+considering them as directly inspired by the deity in some one of the
+thousand shapes they invested it with, or as half-divine of their own
+nature. The consciousness of the imperfection inherent to ordinary
+humanity, and the limited powers awarded to it, has always prompted this
+explanation of the achievements of extraordinarily gifted individuals,
+in whatever line of action their exceptional gifts displayed themselves.
+Besides, if there is something repugnant to human vanity in having to
+submit to the dictates of superior reason and the rule of superior power
+as embodied in mere men of flesh and blood, there is on the contrary
+something very flattering and soothing to that same vanity in the idea
+of having been specially singled out as the object of the protection and
+solicitude of the divine powers; this idea at all events takes the
+galling sting from the constraint of obedience. Hence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> every nation has
+very jealously insisted on and devoutly believed in the divine origin of
+its rulers and the divine institution of its laws and customs. Once it
+was implicitly admitted that the world teemed with spirits and gods,
+who, not content with attending to their particular spheres and
+departments, came and went at their pleasure, had walked the earth and
+directly interfered with human affairs, there was no reason to
+disbelieve <i>any</i> occurrence, however marvellous&mdash;provided it had
+happened very, very long ago. (See p. <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.)</p>
+
+<p>3. Thus, in the traditions of every ancient nation, there is a vast and
+misty tract of time, expressed, if at all, in figures of appalling
+magnitude&mdash;hundreds of thousands, nay, millions of years&mdash;between the
+unpierceable gloom of an eternal past and the broad daylight of
+remembered, recorded history. There, all is shadowy, gigantic,
+superhuman. There, gods move, dim yet visible, shrouded in a golden
+cloud of mystery and awe; there, by their side, loom other shapes, as
+dim but more familiar, human yet more than human&mdash;the Heroes, Fathers of
+races, founders of nations, the companions, the beloved of gods and
+goddesses, nay, their own children, mortal themselves, yet doing deeds
+of daring and might such as only the immortals could inspire and favor,
+the connecting link between these and ordinary humanity&mdash;as that
+gloaming, uncertain, shifting, but not altogether unreal streak of time
+is the borderland between Heaven and Earth, the very hot-bed of myth,
+fiction and romance. For of their favorite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> heroes, people began to tell
+the same stories as of their gods, in modified forms, transferred to
+their own surroundings and familiar scenes. To take one of the most
+common transformations: if the Sun-god waged war against the demons of
+darkness and destroyed them in heaven (see p. <a href="#Page_171">171</a>), the hero hunted wild
+beasts and monsters on earth, of course always victoriously. This one
+theme could be varied by the national poets in a thousand ways and woven
+into a thousand different stories, which come with full right under the
+head of "myths." Thus arose a number of so-called <span class="smcap">Heroic Myths</span>, which,
+by dint of being repeated, settled into a certain defined traditional
+shape, like the well-known fairy-tales of our nurseries, which are the
+same everywhere and told in every country with scarcely any changes. As
+soon as the art of writing came into general use, these favorite and
+time-honored stories, which the mass of the people probably still
+received as literal truth, were taken down, and, as the work naturally
+devolved on priests and clerks, i.e., men of education and more or less
+literary skill, often themselves poets, they were worked over in the
+process, connected, and remodelled into a continuous whole. The separate
+myths, or adventures of one or more particular heroes, formerly recited
+severally, somewhat after the manner of the old songs and ballads,
+frequently became so many chapters or books in a long, well-ordered
+poem, in which they were introduced and distributed, often with
+consummate art, and told<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> with great poetical beauty. Such poems, of
+which several have come down to us, are called <span class="smcap">Epic Poems</span>, or simply
+<span class="smcap">Epics</span>. The entire mass of fragmentary materials out of which they are
+composed in the course of time, blending almost inextricably historical
+reality with mythical fiction, is the <span class="smcap">National Epos</span> of a race, its
+greatest intellectual treasure, from which all its late poetry and much
+of its political and religious feeling draws its food ever after. A race
+that has no national epos is one devoid of great memories, incapable of
+high culture and political development, and no such has taken a place
+among the leading races of the world. All those that have occupied such
+a place at any period of the world's history, have had their Mythic and
+Heroic Ages, brimful of wonders and fanciful creations.</p>
+
+<p>4. From these remarks it will be clear that the preceding two or three
+chapters have been treating of what may properly be called the Religious
+and Cosmogonic Myths of the Shumiro-Accads and the Babylonians. The
+present chapter will be devoted to their Heroic Myths or Mythic Epos, as
+embodied in an Epic which has been in great part preserved, and which is
+the oldest known in the world, dating certainly from 2000 years <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>,
+and probably more.</p>
+
+<p>5. Of this poem the few fragments we have of Berosus contain no
+indication. They only tell of a great deluge which took place under the
+last of that fabulous line of ten kings which is said to have begun
+259,000 years after the apparition of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> divine Man-Fish, Oannes, and
+to have reigned in the aggregate a period of 432,000 years. The
+description has always excited great interest from its extraordinary
+resemblance to that given by the Bible. Berosus tells how <span class="smcap">Xisuthros</span>, the
+last of the ten fabulous kings, had a dream in which the deity announced
+to him that on a certain day all men should perish in a deluge of
+waters, and ordered him to take all the sacred writings and bury them at
+Sippar, the City of the Sun, then to build a ship, provide it with ample
+stores of food and drink and enter it with his family and his dearest
+friends, also animals, both birds and quadrupeds of every kind.
+Xisuthros did as he had been bidden. When the flood began to abate, on
+the third day after the rain had ceased to fall, he sent out some birds,
+to see whether they would find any land, but the birds, having found
+neither food nor place to rest upon, returned to the ship. A few days
+later, Xisuthros once more sent the birds out; but they again came back
+to him, this time with muddy feet. On being sent out a third time, they
+did not return at all. Xisuthros then knew that the land was uncovered;
+made an opening in the roof of the ship and saw that it was stranded on
+the top of a mountain. He came out of the ship with his wife, daughter
+and pilot, built an altar and sacrificed to the gods, after which he
+disappeared together with these. When his companions came out to seek
+him they did not see him, but a voice from heaven informed them that he
+had been translated among the gods to live<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> forever, as a reward for his
+piety and righteousness. The voice went on to command the survivors to
+return to Babylonia, unearth the sacred writings and make them known to
+men. They obeyed and, moreover, built many cities and restored Babylon.</p>
+
+<p>6. However interesting this account, it was received at second-hand and
+therefore felt to need confirmation and ampler development. Besides
+which, as it stood, it lacked all indication that could throw light on
+the important question which of the two traditions&mdash;that reproduced by
+Berosus or the Biblical one&mdash;was to be considered as the oldest. Here
+again it was George Smith who had the good fortune to discover the
+original narrative (in 1872), while engaged in sifting and sorting the
+tablet-fragments at the British Museum. This is how it
+happened:<a name="FNanchor_BC_55" id="FNanchor_BC_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_BC_55" class="fnanchor">[BC]</a>&mdash;"Smith found one-half of a whitish-yellow clay tablet,
+which, to all appearance, had been divided on each face into three
+columns. In the third column of the obverse or front side he read the
+words: 'On the mount Nizir the ship stood still. Then I took a dove and
+let her fly. The dove flew hither and thither, but finding no
+resting-place, returned to the ship.' Smith at once knew that he had
+discovered a fragment of the cuneiform narrative of the Deluge. With
+indefatigable perseverance he set to work to search the thousands of
+Assyrian tablet-fragments heaped up in the British Museum, for more
+pieces. His efforts were crowned with success. He did not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> indeed find a
+piece completing the half of the tablet first discovered, but he found
+instead fragments of two more copies of the narrative, which completed
+the text in the most felicitous manner and supplied several very
+important variations of it. One of these duplicates, which has been
+pieced out of sixteen little bits (see illustration on p. <a href="#Page_262">262</a>), bore the
+usual inscription at the bottom: 'The property of Asshurbanipal, King of
+hosts, King of the land of Asshur,' and contained the information that
+the Deluge-narrative was the eleventh tablet of a series, several
+fragments of which, Smith had already come across. With infinite pains
+he put all these fragments together and found that the story of the
+Deluge was only an incident in a great Heroic Epic, a poem written in
+twelve books, making in all about three thousand lines, which celebrated
+the deeds of an ancient king of Erech."</p>
+
+<p>7. Each book or chapter naturally occupied a separate tablet. All are by
+no means equally well preserved. Some parts, indeed, are missing, while
+several are so mutilated as to cause serious gaps and breaks in the
+narrative, and the first tablet has not yet been found at all. Yet, with
+all these drawbacks it is quite possible to build up a very intelligible
+outline of the whole story, while the eleventh tablet, owing to various
+fortunate additions that came to light from time to time, has been
+restored almost completely.</p>
+
+<p>8. The epic carries us back to the time when Erech was the capital of
+Shumir, and when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> land was under the dominion of the Elamite
+conquerors, not passive or content, but striving manfully for
+deliverance. We may imagine the struggle to have been shared and headed
+by the native kings, whose memory would be gratefully treasured by later
+generations, and whose exploits would naturally become the theme of
+household tradition and poets' recitations. So much for the bare
+historical groundwork of the poem. It is easily to be distinguished from
+the rich by-play of fiction and wonderful adventure gradually woven into
+it from the ample fund of national myths and legends, which have
+gathered around the name of one hero-king, <span class="smcap">Gisdhubar</span> or <span class="smcap">Izdubar</span>,<a name="FNanchor_BD_56" id="FNanchor_BD_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_BD_56" class="fnanchor">[BD]</a>
+said to be a native of the ancient city of <span class="smcap">Marad</span> and a direct descendant
+of the last antediluvian king <span class="smcap">H&acirc;sisadra</span>, the same whom Berosus calls
+Xisuthros.</p>
+
+<p>9. It is unfortunate that the first tablet and the top part of the
+second are missing, for thus we lose the opening of the poem, which
+would probably give us valuable historical indications. What there is of
+the second tablet shows the city of Erech groaning under the tyranny of
+the Elamite conquerors. Erech had been governed by the divine Dumuzi,
+the husband of the goddess Ishtar. He had met an untimely and tragic
+death, and been succeeded by Ishtar, who had not been able, however, to
+make a stand against the foreign invaders, or, as the text picturesquely
+expresses it,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> "to hold up her head against the foe." Izdubar, as yet
+known to fame only as a powerful and indefatigable huntsman, then dwelt
+at Erech, where he had a singular dream. It seemed to him that the stars
+of heaven fell down and struck him on the back in their fall, while over
+him stood a terrible being, with fierce, threatening countenance and
+claws like a lion's, the sight of whom paralyzed him with fear.</p>
+
+<p>10. Deeply impressed with this dream, which appeared to him to portend
+strange things, Izdubar sent forth to all the most famous seers and wise
+men, promising the most princely rewards to whoever would interpret it
+for him: he should be ennobled with his family; he should take the high
+seat of honor at the royal feasts; he should be clothed in jewels and
+gold; he should have seven beautiful wives and enjoy every kind of
+distinction. But there was none found of wisdom equal to the task of
+reading the vision. At length he heard of a wonderful sage, named
+<span class="smcap">&Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni</span>, far-famed for "his wisdom in all things and his knowledge of all
+that is either visible or concealed," but who dwelt apart from mankind,
+in a distant wilderness, in a cave, amidst the beasts of the forest.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"With the gazelles he ate his food at night, with the beasts of
+the field he associated in the daytime, with the living things
+of the waters his heart rejoiced." </p></div>
+
+<p>This strange being is always represented on the Babylonian cylinders as
+a Man-Bull, with horns on his head and a bull's feet and tail. He was
+not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> easily accessible, nor to be persuaded to come to Erech, even
+though the Sun-god, Shamash, himself "opened his lips and spoke to him
+from heaven," making great promises on Izdubar's behalf:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"They shall clothe thee in royal robes, they shall make thee
+great; and Izdubar shall become thy friend, and he shall place
+thee in a luxurious seat at his left hand; the kings of the
+earth shall kiss thy feet; he shall enrich thee and make the
+men of Erech keep silence before thee." </p></div>
+
+<p>The hermit was proof against ambition and refused to leave his
+wilderness. Then a follower of Izdubar, <span class="smcap">Zaidu</span>, the huntsman, was sent to
+bring him; but he returned alone and reported that, when he had
+approached the seer's cave, he had been seized with fear and had not
+entered it, but had crawled back, climbing the steep bank on his hands
+and feet.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 396px;">
+<a id='illus_75' name='illus_75'><img src="images/illus_75.png" width="396" height="774" alt="75.&mdash;IZDUBAR AND THE LION (BAS-RELIEF FROM KHORSABAD).
+(Smith&#39;s &quot;Chaldea.&quot;)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">75.&mdash;IZDUBAR AND THE LION (BAS-RELIEF FROM KHORSABAD).</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Smith&#39;s &quot;Chaldea.&quot;)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>11. At last Izdubar bethought him to send out Ishtar's handmaidens,
+<span class="smcap">Shamhatu</span> ("Grace") and <span class="smcap">Harimtu</span> ("Persuasion"), and they started for the
+wilderness under the escort of Zaidu. Shamhatu was the first to approach
+the hermit, but he heeded her little; he turned to her companion, and
+sat down at her feet; and when Harimtu ("Persuasion") spoke, bending her
+face towards him, he listened and was attentive. And she said to him:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Famous art thou, &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni, even like a god; why then associate
+with the wild things of the desert? Thy place is in the midst
+of Erech, the great city, in the temple, the seat of Anu and
+Ishtar, in the palace of Izdubar, the man of might, who towers
+amidst the leaders as a bull." "She spoke to him, and before
+her words the wisdom of his heart fled and vanished."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p></div>
+
+<p>He answered:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I will go to Erech, to the temple, the seat of Anu and Ishtar,
+to the palace of Izdubar, the man of might, who towers amidst
+the leaders as a bull. I will meet him and see his might. But I
+shall bring to Erech a lion&mdash;let Izdubar destroy him if he can.
+He is bred in the wilderness and of great strength." </p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;">
+<a id='illus_76' name='illus_76'><img src="images/illus_76.png" width="550" height="554" alt="76.&mdash;IZDUBAR AND THE LION. (British Museum.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">76.&mdash;IZDUBAR AND THE LION.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(British Museum.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>So Zaidu and the two women went back to Erech, and &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni went with
+them, leading his lion. The chiefs of the city received him with great
+honors and gave a splendid entertainment in sign of rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>12. It is evidently on this occasion that Izdubar conquers the seer's
+esteem by fighting and kill<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>ing the lion, after which the hero and the
+sage enter into a solemn covenant of friendship. But the third tablet,
+which contains this part of the story, is so much mutilated as to leave
+much of the substance to conjecture, while all the details, and the
+interpretation of the dream which is probably given, are lost. The same
+is unfortunately the case with the fourth and fifth tablets, from which
+we can only gather that Izdubar and &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni, who have become inseparable,
+start on an expedition against the Elamite tyrant, <span class="smcap">Khumbaba</span>, who holds
+his court in a gloomy forest of cedars and cypresses, enter his palace,
+fall upon him unawares and kill him, leaving his body to be torn and
+devoured by the birds of prey, after which exploit Izdubar, as his
+friend had predicted to him, is proclaimed king in Erech. The sixth
+tablet is far better preserved, and gives us one of the most interesting
+incidents almost complete.</p>
+
+<p>13. After Izdubar's victory, his glory and power were great, and the
+goddess Ishtar looked on him with favor and wished for his love.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Izdubar," she said, "be my husband and I will be thy wife:
+pledge thy troth to me. Thou shalt drive a chariot of gold and
+precious stones, thy days shall be marked with conquests;
+kings, princes and lords shall be subject to thee and kiss thy
+feet; they shall bring thee tribute from mountain and valley,
+thy herds and flocks shall multiply doubly, thy mules shall be
+fleet, and thy oxen strong under the yoke. Thou shalt have no
+rival." </p></div>
+
+<p>But Izdubar, in his pride, rejected the love of the goddess; he insulted
+her and taunted her with having loved Dumuzi and others before him.
+Great<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> was the wrath of Ishtar; she ascended to heaven and stood before
+her father Anu:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"My father, Izdubar has insulted me. Izdubar scorns my beauty
+and spurns my love." </p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 602px;">
+<a id='illus_77' name='illus_77'><img src="images/illus_77.png" width="602" height="290" alt="77.&mdash;IZDUBAR AND &Ecirc;AB&Acirc;NI FIGHT THE BULL OF
+ISHTAR.&mdash;IZDUBAR FIGHTS &Ecirc;AB&Acirc;NI&#39;S LION (BABYLONIAN CYLINDER). (Smith&#39;s
+&quot;Chaldea.&quot;)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">77.&mdash;IZDUBAR AND &Ecirc;AB&Acirc;NI FIGHT THE BULL OF
+ISHTAR.&mdash;IZDUBAR FIGHTS &Ecirc;AB&Acirc;NI&#39;S LION (BABYLONIAN CYLINDER).</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Smith&#39;s &quot;Chaldea.&quot;)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>She demanded satisfaction, and Anu, at her request, created a monstrous
+bull, which he sent against the city of Erech. But Izdubar and his
+friend went out to fight the bull, and killed him. &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni took hold of
+his tail and horns, and Izdubar gave him his deathblow. They drew the
+heart out of his body and offered it to Shamash. Then Ishtar ascended
+the wall of the city, and standing there cursed Izdubar. She gathered
+her handmaidens around her and they raised loud lamentations over the
+death of the divine bull. But Izdubar called together his people and
+bade them lift up the body and carry it to the altar of Shamash and lay
+it before the god. Then they washed their hands in the Euphrates and
+returned to the city,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> where they made a feast of rejoicing and revelled
+deep into the night, while in the streets a proclamation to the people
+of Erech was called out, which began with the triumphant words:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Who is skilled among leaders? Who is great among men? Izdubar
+is skilled among leaders; Izdubar is great among men." </p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 606px;">
+<a id='illus_78' name='illus_78'><img src="images/illus_78.png" width="606" height="287" alt="78.&mdash;IZDUBAR AND &Ecirc;AB&Acirc;NI (BABYLONIAN CYLINDER). (Perrot
+and Chipiez.)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">78.&mdash;IZDUBAR AND &Ecirc;AB&Acirc;NI (BABYLONIAN CYLINDER).</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Perrot and Chipiez.)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>14. But the vengeance of the offended goddess was not to be so easily
+defeated. It now fell on the hero in a more direct and personal way.
+Ishtar's mother, the goddess Anatu, smote &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni with sudden death and
+Izdubar with a dire disease, a sort of leprosy, it would appear.
+Mourning for his friend, deprived of strength and tortured with
+intolerable pains, he saw visions and dreams which oppressed and
+terrified him, and there was now no wise, familiar voice to soothe and
+counsel him. At length he decided to consult his ancestor, H&acirc;sisadra,
+who dwelt far away, "at the mouth of the rivers," and was immortal, and
+to ask of him how he might find healing and strength. He started on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> his
+way alone and came to a strange country, where he met gigantic,
+monstrous beings, half men, half scorpions: their feet were below the
+earth, while their heads touched the gates of heaven; they were the
+warders of the sun and kept their watch over its rising and setting.
+They said one to another: "Who is this that comes to us with the mark of
+the divine wrath on his body?" Izdubar made his person and errand known
+to them; then they gave him directions how to reach the land of the
+blessed at the mouth of the rivers, but warned him that the way was long
+and full of hardships. He set out again and crossed a vast tract of
+country, where there was nothing but sand, not one cultivated field; and
+he walked on and on, never looking behind him, until he came to a
+beautiful grove by the seaside, where the trees bore fruits of emerald
+and other precious stones; this grove was guarded by two beautiful
+maidens, <span class="smcap">Siduri</span> and <span class="smcap">Sabitu</span>, but they looked with mistrust on the
+stranger with the mark of the gods on his body, and closed their
+dwelling against him.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 353px;">
+<a id='illus_79' name='illus_79'><img src="images/illus_79.png" width="353" height="249" alt="79.&mdash;SCORPION-MEN. (Smith&#39;s &quot;Chaldea.&quot;)" title="" />
+<span class="caption">79.&mdash;SCORPION-MEN.</span></a>
+<p class='center'>(Smith&#39;s &quot;Chaldea.&quot;)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>15. And now Izdubar stood by the shore of the Waters of Death, which are
+wide and deep, and separate the land of the living from that of the
+blessed and immortal dead. Here he encountered the ferryman <span class="smcap">Urub&ecirc;l</span>; to
+him he opened his heart and spoke of the friend whom he had loved and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>
+lost, and Urub&ecirc;l took him into his ship. For one month and fifteen days
+they sailed on the Waters of Death, until they reached that distant land
+by the mouth of the rivers, where Izdubar at length met his renowned
+ancestor face to face, and, even while he prayed for his advice and
+assistance, a very natural feeling of curiosity prompted him to ask "how
+he came to be translated alive into the assembly of the gods."
+H&acirc;sisadra, with great complaisance, answered his descendant's question
+and gave him a full account of the Deluge and his own share in that
+event, after which he informed him in what way he could be freed from
+the curse laid on him by the gods. Then turning to the ferryman:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Urub&ecirc;l, the man whom thou hast brought hither, behold, disease
+has covered his body, sickness has destroyed the strength of
+his limbs. Take him with thee, Urub&ecirc;l, and purify him in the
+waters, that his disease may be changed into beauty, that he
+may throw off his sickness and the waters carry it away, that
+health may cover his skin, and the hair of his head be restored
+and descend in flowing locks down to his garment, that he may
+go his way and return to his own country." </p></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 846px;">
+<a id='illus_80' name='illus_80'><img src="images/illus_80.png" width="846" height="297" alt="80.&mdash;STONE OBJECT FOUND AT ABU-HABBA (SIPPAR) BY MR. H.
+RASSAM, SHOWING, AMONG OTHER MYTHICAL DESIGNS, SHAMASH AND HIS WARDER,
+THE SCORPION-MAN." title="" />
+<span class="caption">80.&mdash;STONE OBJECT FOUND AT ABU-HABBA (SIPPAR) BY MR. H.
+RASSAM, SHOWING, AMONG OTHER MYTHICAL DESIGNS, SHAMASH AND HIS WARDER,
+THE SCORPION-MAN.</span></a>
+</div>
+
+<p>16. When all had been done according to H&acirc;sisadra's instruction,
+Izdubar, restored to health and vigor, took leave of his ancestor, and
+entering the ship once more was carried back to the shore of the living
+by the friendly Urub&ecirc;l, who accompanied him all the way to Erech. But as
+they approached the city tears flowed down the hero's face and his heart
+was heavy within him for his lost friend, and he once more raised his
+voice in lamentation for him:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Thou takest no part in the noble feast; to the assembly they
+call thee not; thou liftest not the bow from the ground; what
+is hit by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span> the bow is not for thee; thy hand grasps not the
+club and strikes not the prey, nor stretches thy foeman dead on
+the earth. The wife thou lovest thou kissest not; the wife thou
+hatest thou strikest not. The child thou lovest thou kissest
+not; the child thou hatest thou strikest not. The might of the
+earth has swallowed thee. O Darkness, Darkness, Mother
+Darkness! thou enfoldest him like a mantle; like a deep well
+thou enclosest him!" </p></div>
+
+<p>Thus Izdubar mourned for his friend, and went into the temple of Bel,
+and ceased not from lamenting and crying to the gods, till &Ecirc;a mercifully
+inclined to his prayer and sent his son Meridug to bring &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni's spirit
+out of the dark world of shades into the land of the blessed, there to
+live forever among the heroes of old, reclining on luxurious couches and
+drinking the pure water of eternal springs. The poem ends with a vivid
+description of a warrior's funeral:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I see him who has been slain in battle. His father and mother
+hold his head; his wife weeps over him; his friends stand
+around; his prey lies on the ground uncovered and unheeded. The
+vanquished captives follow; the food provided in the tents is
+consumed." </p></div>
+
+<p>17. The incident of the Deluge, which has been merely mentioned above,
+not to interrupt the narrative by its disproportionate length, (the
+eleventh tablet being the best preserved of all), is too important not
+to be given in full.<a name="FNanchor_BE_57" id="FNanchor_BE_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_BE_57" class="fnanchor">[BE]</a></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I will tell thee, Izdubar, how I was saved from the flood,"
+begins H&acirc;sisadra, in answer to his descendant's question, "also
+will I impart to thee the decree of the great gods. Thou
+knowest Surippak, the city that is by the Euphrates. This city
+was already very ancient when the gods were moved in their
+hearts to ordain a great deluge,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> all of them, their father
+Anu, their councillor the warlike Bel, their throne-bearer
+Nin&icirc;b, their leader Ennugi. The lord of inscrutable wisdom, the
+god &Ecirc;a, was with them and imparted to me their decision.
+'Listen,' he said, 'and attend! Man of Surippak, son of
+Ubaratutu,<a name="FNanchor_BF_58" id="FNanchor_BF_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_BF_58" class="fnanchor">[BF]</a> go out of thy house and build thee a ship. They
+are willed to destroy the seed of life; but thou preserve it
+and bring into the ship seed of every kind of life. The ship
+which thou shalt build let it be ... in length, and ... in
+width and height,[B] and cover it also with a deck.' When I
+heard this I spoke to &Ecirc;a, my lord: 'If I construct the ship as
+thou biddest me, O lord, the people and their elders will laugh
+at me.' But &Ecirc;a opened his lips once more and spoke to me his
+servant: 'Men have rebelled against me, and I will do judgment
+on them, high and low. But do thou close the door of the ship
+when the time comes and I tell thee of it. Then enter the ship
+and bring into it thy store of grain, all thy property, thy
+family, thy men-servants and thy women-servants, and also thy
+next of kin. The cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the
+fields, I shall send to thee myself, that they may be safe
+behind thy door.'&mdash;Then I built the ship and provided it with
+stores of food and drink; I divided the interior into ...
+compartments.<a name="FNanchor_BG_59" id="FNanchor_BG_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_BG_59" class="fnanchor">[BG]</a> I saw to the chinks and filled them; I poured
+bitumen over its outer side and over its inner side. All that I
+possessed I brought together and stowed it in the ship; all
+that I had of gold, of silver, of the seed of life of every
+kind; all my men-servants and my women-servants, the cattle of
+the field, the wild beasts of the field, and also my nearest
+friends. Then, when Shamash brought round the appointed time, a
+voice spoke to me:&mdash;'This evening the heavens will rain
+destruction, wherefore go thou into the ship and close thy
+door. The appointed time has come,' spoke the voice, 'this
+evening the heavens will rain destruction.' And greatly I
+feared the sunset of that day, the day on which I was to begin
+my voyage. I was sore afraid. Yet I entered into the ship and
+closed the door behind me, to shut off the ship. And I confided
+the great ship to the pilot, with all its freight.&mdash;Then a
+great black cloud rises from the depths of the heavens, and
+Ram&acirc;n thunders in the midst of it, while Nebo and Nergal
+encounter each other, and the Throne-bearers walk over
+mountains and vales. The mighty god of Pestilence lets loose
+the whirlwinds; Nin&icirc;b unceasingly makes the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> canals to
+overflow; the Anunnaki bring up floods from the depths of the
+earth, which quakes at their violence. Ram&acirc;n's mass of waters
+rises even to heaven; light is changed into darkness. Confusion
+and devastation fills the earth. Brother looks not after
+brother, men have no thought for one another. In the heavens
+the very gods are afraid; they seek a refuge in the highest
+heaven of Anu; as a dog in its lair, the gods crouch by the
+railing of heaven. Ishtar cries aloud with sorrow: 'Behold, all
+is turned into mud, as I foretold to the gods! I prophesied
+this disaster and the extermination of my creatures&mdash;men. But I
+do not give them birth that they may fill the sea like the
+brood of fishes.' Then the gods wept with her and sat lamenting
+on one spot. For six days and seven nights wind, flood and
+storm reigned supreme; but at dawn of the seventh day the
+tempest decreased, the waters, which had battled like a mighty
+host, abated their violence; the sea retired, and storm and
+flood both ceased. I steered about the sea, lamenting that the
+homesteads of men were changed into mud. The corpses drifted
+about like logs. I opened a port-hole, and when the light of
+day fell on my face I shivered and sat down and wept. I steered
+over the countries which now were a terrible sea. Then a piece
+of land rose out of the waters. The ship steered towards the
+land Nizir. The mountain of the land Nizir held fast the ship
+and did not let it go. Thus it was on the first and on the
+second day, on the third and the fourth, also on the fifth and
+sixth days. At dawn of the seventh day I took out a dove and
+sent it forth. The dove went forth to and fro, but found no
+resting-place and returned. Then I took out a swallow and sent
+it forth. The swallow went forth, to and fro, but found no
+resting-place and returned. Then I took out a raven and sent it
+forth. The raven went forth, and when it saw that the waters
+had abated, it came near again, cautiously wading through the
+water, but did not return. Then I let out all the animals, to
+the four winds of heaven, and offered a sacrifice. I raised an
+altar on the highest summit of the mountain, placed the sacred
+vessels on it seven by seven, and spread reeds, cedar-wood and
+sweet herbs under them. The gods smelled a savor; the gods
+smelled a sweet savor; like flies they swarmed around the
+sacrifice. And when the goddess Ishtar came, she spread out on
+high the great bows of her father Anu:&mdash;'By the necklace of my
+neck,' she said, 'I shall be mindful of these days, never shall
+I lose the memory of them! May all the gods come to the altar;
+Bel alone shall not come, for that he controlled not his wrath,
+and brought on the deluge, and gave up my men to destruc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>tion.'
+When after that Bel came nigh and saw the ship, he was
+perplexed, and his heart was filled with anger against the gods
+and against the spirits of Heaven:&mdash;'Not a soul shall escape,'
+he cried; 'not one man shall come alive out of destruction!'
+Then the god Nin&icirc;b opened his lips and spoke, addressing the
+warlike Bel:&mdash;'Who but &Ecirc;a can have done this? &Ecirc;a knew, and
+informed him of everything.' Then &Ecirc;a opened his lips and spoke,
+addressing the warlike Bel:&mdash;'Thou art the mighty leader of the
+gods: but why hast thou acted thus recklessly and brought on
+this deluge? Let the sinner suffer for his sin and the
+evil-doer for his misdeeds; but to this man be gracious that he
+may not be destroyed, and incline towards him favorably, that
+he may be preserved. And instead of bringing on another deluge,
+let lions and hyenas come and take from the number of men; send
+a famine to unpeople the earth; let the god of Pestilence lay
+men low. I have not imparted to H&acirc;sisadra the decision of the
+great gods: I only sent him a dream, and he understood the
+warning.'&mdash;Then Bel came to his senses. He entered the ship,
+took hold of my hand and lifted me up; he also lifted up my
+wife and laid her hand in mine. Then he turned towards us,
+stood between us and spoke this blessing on us:&mdash;'Until now
+H&acirc;sisadra was only human: but now he shall be raised to be
+equal with the gods, together with his wife. He shall dwell in
+the distant land, by the mouth of the rivers.' Then they took
+me and translated me to the distant land by the mouth of the
+rivers." </p></div>
+
+<p>18. Such is the great Chaldean Epic, the discovery of which produced so
+profound a sensation, not to say excitement, not only among special
+scholars, but in the reading world generally, while the full importance
+of it in the history of human culture cannot yet be realized at this
+early stage of our historical studies, but will appear more and more
+clearly as their course takes us to later nations and other lands. We
+will here linger over the poem only long enough to justify and explain
+the name given to it in the title of this chapter, of "Mythical Epos."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>19. Were the hero Izdubar a purely human person, it would be a matter of
+much wonder how the small nucleus of historical fact which the story of
+his adventures contains should have become entwined and overgrown with
+such a disproportionate quantity of the most extravagant fiction,
+oftentimes downright monstrous in its fancifulness. But the story is one
+far older than that of any mere human hero and relates to one far
+mightier: it is the story of the Sun in his progress through the year,
+retracing his career of increasing splendor as the spring advances to
+midsummer, the height of his power when he reaches the month represented
+in the Zodiac by the sign of the Lion, then the decay of his strength as
+he pales and sickens in the autumn, and at last his restoration to youth
+and vigor after he has passed the Waters of Death&mdash;Winter, the death of
+the year, the season of nature's deathlike torpor, out of which the sun
+has not strength sufficient to rouse her, until spring comes back and
+the circle begins again. An examination of the Accadian calendar,
+adopted by the more scientifically inclined Semites, shows that the
+names of most of the months and the signs by which they were represented
+on the maps of the corresponding constellations of the Zodiac, directly
+answer to various incidents of the poem, following, too, in the same
+order, which is that of the respective seasons of the year,&mdash;which, be
+it noted, began with the spring, in the middle of our month of March. If
+we compare the calendar months with the tablets of the poem we will find
+that they, in almost every case, corre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>spond. As the first tablet is
+unfortunately still missing, we cannot judge how far it may have
+answered to the name of the first month&mdash;"the Altar of Bel." But the
+second month, called that of "the Propitious Bull," or the "Friendly
+Bull," very well corresponds to the second tablet which ends with
+Izdubar's sending for the seer &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni, half bull half man, while the
+name and sign of the third, "the Twins," clearly alludes to the bond of
+friendship concluded between the two heroes, who became inseparable.
+Their victory over the tyrant Khumbaba in the fifth tablet is symbolized
+by the sign representing the victory of the Lion over the Bull, often
+abbreviated into that of the Lion alone, a sign plainly enough
+interpreted by the name "Month of Fire," so appropriate to the hottest
+and driest of seasons even in moderate climes&mdash;July-August. What makes
+this interpretation absolutely conclusive is the fact that in the
+symbolical imagery of all the poetry of the East, the Lion represents
+the principle of heat, of fire. The seventh tablet, containing the
+wooing of the hero by the goddess Ishtar, is too plainly reproduced in
+the name of the corresponding month, "the Month of the Message of
+Ishtar," to need explanation. The sign, too, is that of a woman with a
+bow, the usual mode of representing the goddess. The sign of the eighth
+month, "the Scorpion," commemorates the gigantic Warders of the Sun,
+half men half scorpions, whom Izdubar encounters when he starts on his
+journey to the land of the dead. The ninth month is called "the Cloudy,"
+surely a meet name for November-De<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>cember, and in no way inconsistent
+with the contents of the ninth tablet, which shows Izdubar navigating
+the "Waters of Death." In the tenth month (December-January), the sun
+reaches his very lowest point, that of the winter solstice with its
+shortest days, whence the name "Month of the Cavern of the Setting Sun,"
+and the tenth tablet tells how Izdubar reached the goal of his journey,
+the land of the illustrious dead, to which his great ancestor has been
+translated. To the eleventh month, "the Month of the Curse of Rain,"
+with the sign of the Waterman,&mdash;(January-February being in the low lands
+of the two rivers the time of the most violent and continuous
+rains)&mdash;answers the eleventh tablet with the account of the Deluge. The
+"Fishes of &Ecirc;a" accompany the sun in the twelfth month, the last of the
+dark season, as he emerges, purified and invigorated, to resume his
+triumphant career with the beginning of the new year. From the context
+and sequence of the myth, it would appear that the name of the first
+month, "the Altar of Bel," must have had something to do with the
+reconciliation of the god after the Deluge, from which humanity may be
+said to take a new beginning, which would make the name a most
+auspicious one for the new year, while the sign&mdash;a Ram&mdash;might allude to
+the animal sacrificed on the altar. Each month being placed under the
+protection of some particular deity it is worthy of notice that Anu and
+Bel are the patrons of the first month, &Ecirc;a of the second, (in connection
+with the wisdom of &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni, who is called "the creature of &Ecirc;a,") while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>
+Ishtar presides over the sixth, ("Message of Ishtar,") and Ram&acirc;n, the
+god of the atmosphere, of rain and storm and thunder, over the eleventh,
+("the Curse of Rain").</p>
+
+<p>20. The solar nature of the adventurous career attributed to the
+favorite national hero of Chaldea, now universally admitted, was first
+pointed out by Sir Henry Rawlinson: but it was Fran&ccedil;ois Lenormant who
+followed it out and established it in its details. His conclusions on
+the subject are given in such clear and forcible language, that it is a
+pleasure to reproduce them:<a name="FNanchor_BH_60" id="FNanchor_BH_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_BH_60" class="fnanchor">[BH]</a>&mdash;"1st. The Chaldeans and Babylonians
+had, concerning the twelve months of the year, myths for the most part
+belonging to the series of traditions anterior to the separation of the
+great races of mankind which descended from the highlands of Pamir,
+since we find analogous myths among the pure Semites and other nations.
+As early as the time when they dwelt on the plains of the Tigris and
+Euphrates, they connected these myths with the different epochs of the
+year, not with a view to agricultural occupations, but in connection
+with the great periodical phenomena of the atmosphere and the different
+stations in the sun's yearly course, as they occurred in that particular
+region; hence the signs characterizing the twelve solar mansions in the
+Zodiac and the symbolical names given to the months by the Accads.&mdash;2d.
+It was those myths, strung together in their successive order, which
+served as foundation to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> epic story of Izdubar, the fiery and solar
+hero, and in the poem which was copied at Erech by Asshurbanipal's order
+each of them formed the subject of one of the twelve tablets, making up
+the number of twelve separate books or chapters answering the twelve
+months of the year."&mdash;Even though the evidence is apparently so complete
+as not to need further confirmation, it is curious to note that the
+signs which compose the name of Izdubar convey the meaning "mass of
+fire," while H&acirc;sisadra's Accadian name means "the sun of life," "the
+morning sun," and his father's name, Ubaratutu, is translated "the glow
+of sunset."</p>
+
+<p>21. George Smith indignantly repudiated this mythic interpretation of
+the hero's exploits, and claimed for them a strictly historical
+character. But we have seen that the two are by no means incompatible,
+since history, when handed down through centuries by mere oral
+tradition, is liable to many vicissitudes in the telling and retelling,
+and people are sure to arrange their favorite and most familiar stories,
+the mythical signification of which has long been forgotten, around the
+central figure of the heroes they love best, around the most important
+but vaguely recollected events in their national life. Hence it came to
+pass that identically the same stories, with but slight local
+variations, were told of heroes in different nations and countries; for
+the stock of original, or, as one may say, primary myths is
+comparatively small and the same for all, dating back to a time when
+mankind was not yet divided. In the course of ages and mi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>grations it
+has been altered, like a rich hereditary robe, to fit and adorn many and
+very different persons.</p>
+
+<p>22. One of the prettiest, oldest, and most universally favorite solar
+myths is the one which represents the Sun as a divine being, youthful
+and of surpassing beauty, beloved by or wedded to an equally powerful
+goddess, but meeting a premature death by accident and descending into
+the dark land of shades, from which, however, after a time he returns as
+glorious and beautiful as before. In this poetical fancy, the land of
+shades symbolizes the numb and lifeless period of winter as aptly as the
+Waters of Death in the Izdubar Epic, while the seeming death of the
+young god answers to the sickening of the hero at that declining season
+of the year when the sun's rays lose their vigor and are overcome by the
+powers of darkness and cold. The goddess who loves the fair young god,
+and mourns him with passionate grief, until her wailings and prayers
+recall him from his deathlike trance, is Nature herself, loving,
+bountiful, ever productive, but pale, and bare, and powerless in her
+widowhood, while the sun-god, the spring of life whence she draws her
+very being, lies captive in the bonds of their common foe, grim Winter,
+which is but a form of Death itself. Their reunion at the god's
+resurrection in spring is the great wedding-feast, the revel and
+holiday-time of the world.</p>
+
+<p>23. This simple and perfectly transparent myth has been worked out more
+or less elaborately in all the countries of the East, and has found its
+way in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> some form or other into all the nations of the three great white
+races&mdash;of Japhet, Shem, and Ham&mdash;yet here again the precedence in point
+of time seems due to the older and more primitive&mdash;the Yellow or
+Turanian race; for the most ancient, and probably original form of it is
+the one which was inherited by the Semitic settlers of Chaldea from
+their Shumiro-Accadian predecessors, as shown by the Accadian name of
+the young solar god, <span class="smcap">Dumuzi</span>, "the unfortunate husband of the goddess
+Ishtar," as he is called in the sixth tablet of the Izdubar epic. The
+name has been translated "Divine Offspring," but in later times lost all
+signification, being corrupted into <span class="smcap">Tammuz</span>. In some Accadian hymns he is
+invoked as "the Shepherd, the lord Dumuzi, the lover of Ishtar." Well
+could a nomadic and pastoral people poetically liken the sun to a
+shepherd, whose flocks were the fleecy clouds as they speed across the
+vast plains of heaven or the bright, innumerable stars. This comparison,
+as pretty as it is natural, kept its hold in all ages and nations on the
+popular fancy, which played on it an infinite variety of ingenious
+changes, but it is only cuneiform science which has proved that it could
+be traced back to the very earliest race whose culture has left its mark
+on the world.</p>
+
+<p>24. Of Dumuzi's tragic death no text deciphered until now unfortunately
+gives the details. Only the remarkable fragment about the black pine of
+Eridhu, "marking the centre of the earth, in the dark forest, into the
+heart whereof man hath not penetrated," (see p. <a href="#Page_287">287</a>) tantalizingly ends
+with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span> these suggestive words: "Within it Dumuzi...." Scholars have found
+reason for conjecturing that this fragment was the beginning of a
+mythical narrative recounting Dumuzi's death, which must have been
+represented as taking place in that dark and sacred forest of
+Eridhu,&mdash;probably through the agency of a wild beast sent against him by
+a jealous and hostile power, just as the bull created by Anu was sent
+against Izdubar.<a name="FNanchor_BI_61" id="FNanchor_BI_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_BI_61" class="fnanchor">[BI]</a> One thing, however, is sure, that both in the
+earlier (Turanian) and in the later (Semitic) calendary of Chaldea,
+there was a month set apart in honor and for the festival of Dumuzi. It
+was the month of June-July, beginning at the summer solstice, when the
+days begin to shorten, and the sun to decline towards its lower winter
+point&mdash;a retrograde movement, ingeniously indicated by the Zodiacal sign
+of that month, the Cancer or Crab. The festival of Dumuzi lasted during
+the six first days of the month, with processions and ceremonies bearing
+two distinct characters. The worshippers at first assembled in the guise
+of mourners, with lamentations and loud wailings, tearing of clothes and
+of hair, as though celebrating the young god's funeral, while on the
+sixth day his resurrection and reunion to Ishtar was commemorated with
+the noisiest, most extravagant demonstrations of rejoicing. This custom
+is alluded to in Izdubar's scornful answer to Ishtar's love-message,
+when he says to her: "Thou lovedst Du<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>muzi, <i>for whom they mourn year
+after year</i>," and was witnessed by the Jews when they were carried
+prisoners to Babylon as late as 600 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, as expressly mentioned by
+Ezekiel, the prophet of the Captivity:&mdash;"Then he brought me to the door
+of the Lord's house which was towards the north; <i>and behold, there sat
+the women weeping for Tammuz</i>." (Ezekiel, iii. 14.)</p>
+
+<p>25. A favorite version of Dumuzi's resurrection was that which told how
+Ishtar herself followed him into the Lower World, to claim him from
+their common foe, and thus yielded herself for a time into the power of
+her rival, the dread Queen of the Dead, who held her captive, and would
+not have released her but for the direct interference of the great gods.
+This was a rich mine of epic material, from which songs and stories must
+have flowed plentifully. We are lucky enough to possess a short epic on
+the subject, in one tablet, one of the chief gems of the indefatigable
+George Smith's discoveries,&mdash;a poem of great literary beauty, and nearly
+complete to within a few lines of the end, which are badly injured and
+scarcely legible. It is known under the name of "<span class="smcap">The Descent of Ishtar</span>,"
+as it relates only this one incident of the myth. The opening lines are
+unsurpassed for splendid poetry and sombre grandeur in any, even the
+most advanced literature.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>26. "Towards the land whence there is no return, towards the
+house of corruption, Ishtar, the daughter of Sin, has turned
+her mind ... towards the dwelling that has an entrance but no
+exit, towards the road that may be travelled but not retraced,
+tow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>ards the hall from which the light of day is shut out,
+where hunger feeds on dust and mud, where light is never seen,
+where the shades of the dead dwell in the dark, clothed with
+wings like birds. On the lintel of the gate and in the lock
+dust lies accumulated.&mdash;Ishtar, when she reached the land
+whence there is no return, to the keeper of the gate signified
+her command: 'Keeper, open thy gate that I may pass. If thou
+openest not and I may not enter, I will smite the gate, and
+break the lock, I will demolish the threshold and enter by
+force; then will I let loose the dead to return to the earth,
+that they may live and eat again; I will make the risen dead
+more numerous than the living.' The gate-keeper opened his lips
+and spoke:&mdash;'Be appeased, O Lady, and let me go and report thy
+name to Allat the Queen.'" </p></div>
+
+<p>Here follow a few much injured lines, the sense of which could not be
+restored in its entirety. The substance is that the gate-keeper
+announces to Allat that her sister Ishtar has come for the Water of
+Life, which is kept concealed in a distant nook of her dominions, and
+Allat is greatly disturbed at the news. But Ishtar announces that she
+comes in sorrow, not enmity:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I wish to weep over the heroes who have left their wives. I
+wish to weep over the wives who have been taken from their
+husbands' arms. I wish to weep over the Only Son&mdash;(a name of
+Dumuzi)&mdash;who has been taken away before his time." </p></div>
+
+<p>Then Allat commands the keeper to open the gates and take Ishtar through
+the sevenfold enclosure, dealing by her as by all who come to those
+gates, that is, stripping her of her garments according to ancient
+custom.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The keeper went and opened the gate: 'Enter, O Lady, and may
+the halls of the Land whence there is no return be gladdened by
+thy presence.' At the first gate he bade her enter and laid his
+hand on her; he took the high headdress from her head: 'Why, O
+keeper, takest thou the high headdress from my head?'&mdash;'Enter,
+O Lady; such is Allat's command.'" </p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The same scene is repeated at each of the seven gates; the keeper at
+each strips Ishtar of some article of her attire&mdash;her earrings, her
+necklace, her jewelled girdle, the bracelets on her arms and the bangles
+at her ankles, and lastly her long flowing garment. On each occasion the
+same words are repeated by both. When Ishtar entered the presence of
+Allat, the queen looked at her and taunted her to her face: then Ishtar
+could not control her anger and cursed her. Allat turned to her chief
+minister Namtar, the god of Pestilence&mdash;meet servant of the queen of the
+dead!&mdash;who is also the god of Fate, and ordered him to lead Ishtar away
+and afflict her with sixty dire diseases,&mdash;to strike her head and her
+heart, and her eyes, her hands and her feet, and all her limbs. So the
+goddess was led away and kept in durance and in misery. Meanwhile her
+absence was attended with most disastrous consequences to the upper
+world. With her, life and love had gone out of it; there were no
+marriages any more, no births, either among men or animals; nature was
+at a standstill. Great was the commotion among the gods. They sent a
+messenger to &Ecirc;a to expose the state of affairs to him, and, as usual, to
+invoke his advice and assistance. &Ecirc;a, in his fathomless wisdom, revolved
+a scheme. He created a phantom, Uddusunamir.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"'Go,' he said to him; 'towards the Land whence there is no
+return direct thy face; the seven gates of the Arallu will open
+before thee. Allat shall see thee and rejoice at thy coming,
+her heart shall grow calm and her wrath shall vanish. Conjure
+her with the name of the great gods, stiffen thy neck and keep
+thy mind on the Spring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span> of Life. Let the Lady (Ishtar) gain
+access to the Spring of Life and drink of its waters.'&mdash;Allat,
+when she heard these things, beat her breast and bit her
+fingers with rage. Consenting, sore against her will, she
+spoke:&mdash;'Go, Uddusunamir! May the great jailer place thee in
+durance! May the foulness of the city ditches be thy food, the
+waters of the city sewers thy drink! A dark dungeon be thy
+dwelling, a sharp pole thy seat!'" </p></div>
+
+<p>Then she ordered Namtar to let Ishtar drink of the Spring of Life and to
+bear her from her sight. Namtar fulfilled her command and took the
+goddess through the seven enclosures, at each gate restoring to her the
+article of her attire that had been taken at her entrance. At the last
+gate he said to her:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Thou hast paid no ransom to Allat for thy deliverance; so now
+return to Dumuzi, the lover of thy youth; sprinkle over him the
+sacred waters, clothe him in splendid garments, adorn him with
+gems." </p></div>
+
+<p>26. The last lines are so badly mutilated that no efforts have as yet
+availed to make their sense anything but obscure, and so it must remain,
+unless new copies come to light. Yet so much is, at all events, evident,
+that they bore on the reunion of Ishtar and her young lover. The poem is
+thus complete in itself; but some think that it was introduced into the
+Izdubar epic as an independent episode, after the fashion of the Deluge
+narrative, and, if so, it is supposed to have been part of the seventh
+tablet. Whether such were really the case or no, matters little in
+comparison with the great importance these two poems possess as being
+the most ancient presentations, in a finished literary form, of the two
+most significant and universal nature-myths&mdash;the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> Solar and the Chthonic
+(see p. <a href="#Page_272">272</a>), the poetical fancies in which primitive mankind clothed
+the wonders of the heavens and the mystery of the earth, being content
+to admire and imagine where it could not comprehend and explain. We
+shall be led back continually to these, in very truth, <i>primary</i> myths,
+for they not only served as groundwork to much of the most beautiful
+poetry of the world but suggested some of its loftiest and most
+cherished religious conceptions.</p>
+
+<p>[* For a metrical version by Prof. Dyer of the story of
+"Ishtar's Descent," see Appendix, p. <a href="#Page_367">367</a>.]</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 132px;">
+<img src="images/deco353.png" width="132" height="54" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BC_55" id="Footnote_BC_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BC_55"><span class="label">[BC]</span></a> Paul Haupt, "Der Keilinschriftliche S&uuml;ndfluthbericht,"
+1881.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BD_56" id="Footnote_BD_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BD_56"><span class="label">[BD]</span></a> There are difficulties in the way of reading this name,
+and scholars are not sure that this is the right pronunciation of it;
+but they retain it, until some new discovery helps to settle the
+question.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BE_57" id="Footnote_BE_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BE_57"><span class="label">[BE]</span></a> Translated from the German version of Paul Haupt, "Der
+Keilinschriftliche S&uuml;ndfluthbericht."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BF_58" id="Footnote_BF_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BF_58"><span class="label">[BF]</span></a> The ninth king in the fabulous list of ten.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BG_59" id="Footnote_BG_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BG_59"><span class="label">[BG]</span></a> The figures unfortunately obliterated.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BH_60" id="Footnote_BH_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BH_60"><span class="label">[BH]</span></a> "Les Premi&egrave;res Civilisations," Vol. II., pp. 78 ff.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BI_61" id="Footnote_BI_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BI_61"><span class="label">[BI]</span></a> A. H. Sayce, "Babylonian Literature," p. 39; Fr.
+Lenormant, "Il Mito di Adone-Tammuz," pp. 12-13.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 370px;">
+<img src="images/deco354.png" width="370" height="85" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class='center'><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</p>
+
+<p class='center'>RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.&mdash;IDOLATRY AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM.&mdash;THE CHALDEAN
+LEGENDS AND THE BOOK OF GENESIS.&mdash;RETROSPECT.</p>
+
+
+<p>1. In speaking of ancient nations, the words "Religion" and "Mythology"
+are generally used indiscriminately and convertibly. Yet the conceptions
+they express are essentially and radically different. The broadest
+difference, and the one from which all others flow, is that the
+one&mdash;Religion&mdash;is a thing of the feelings, while the
+other&mdash;Mythology&mdash;is a thing of the imagination. In other words,
+Religion comes from <span class="smcap">within</span>&mdash;from that consciousness of limited power,
+that inborn need of superior help and guidance, forbearance and
+forgiveness, from that longing for absolute goodness and perfection,
+which make up the distinctively human attribute of "religiosity," that
+attribute which, together with the faculty of articulate speech, sets
+Man apart from and above all the rest of animated creation. (See p.
+149.) Mythology, on the other hand, comes wholly from <span class="smcap">without</span>. It
+embodies impressions received by the senses from the outer world and
+transformed by the poetical faculty into images and stories.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span> (See
+definition of "Myth" on p. <a href="#Page_294">294</a>.) Professor Max M&uuml;ller of Oxford has been
+the first, in his standard work "The Science of Language," clearly to
+define this radical difference between the two conceptions, which he has
+never since ceased to sound as a keynote through the long series of his
+works devoted to the study of the religions and mythologies of various
+nations. A few illustrations from the one nation with which we have as
+yet become familiar will help once for all to establish a thorough
+understanding on this point, most essential as it is to the
+comprehension of the workings of the human mind and soul throughout the
+long roll of struggles, errors and triumphs, achievements and failures
+which we call the history of mankind.</p>
+
+<p>2. There is no need to repeat here instances of the Shumiro-Accadian and
+Chaldean myths; the last three or four chapters have been filled with
+them. But the instances of religious feeling, though scattered in the
+same field, have to be carefully gleaned out and exhibited, for they
+belong to that undercurrent of the soul which pursues its way
+unobtrusively and is often apparently lost beneath the brilliant play of
+poetical fancies. But it is there nevertheless, and every now and then
+forces its way to the surface shining forth with a startling purity and
+beauty. When the Accadian poet invokes the Lord "who knows lie from
+truth," "who knows the truth that is in the soul of man," who "maketh
+lies to vanish," who "turneth wicked plots to a happy issue"&mdash;this is
+religion, not mythology, for this is not <i>a story</i>, it is the expression
+of <i>a feeling</i>. That "the Lord"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span> whose divine omniscience and goodness
+is thus glorified is really the Sun, makes no difference; <i>that</i> is an
+error of judgment, a want of knowledge, but the religious feeling is
+splendidly manifest in the invocation. But when, in the same hymn, the
+Sun is described as "stepping forth from the background of the skies,
+pushing back the bolts and opening the gate of the brilliant heaven, and
+raising his head above the land," etc., (see p. <a href="#Page_172">172</a>) that is only a very
+beautiful, imaginative description of a glorious natural
+phenomenon&mdash;sunrise; it is magnificent poetry, religious in so far as
+the sun is considered as a Being, a Divine Person, the object of an
+intensely devout and grateful feeling; still this is not religion, it is
+mythology, for it presents a material image to the mind, and one that
+can be easily turned into narrative, into <i>a story</i>,&mdash;which, in fact,
+<i>suggests</i> a hero, a king, and a story. Take, again, the so-called
+"Penitential Psalms." To the specimen given on p. <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, let us add, for
+greater completeness, the following three remarkable fragments:</p>
+
+<ol style='list-style-type: upper-roman;'><li>"God, my creator, take hold of my arms! Direct the breath of
+my mouth, my hands direct, O lord of light."</li>
+
+<li>"Lord, let not thy servant sink! Amidst the tumultuous
+waters take hold of his hand!"</li>
+
+<li>"He who fears not his God, will be cut off even like a
+reed. He who honors not his goddess, his bodily strength will
+waste away; like to a star of heaven, his splendor will pale;
+he will vanish like to the waters of the night." </li></ol>
+
+<p>3. All this is religion, of the purest, loftiest kind; fruitful, too, of
+good, the only real test of true religion. The deep humility, the
+trustful ap<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>peal, the feeling of dependence, the consciousness of
+weakness, of sin, and the longing for deliverance from them&mdash;these are
+all very different from the pompous phrases of empty praise and sterile
+admiration; they are things which flow from the heart, not the fancy,
+which lighten its weight of sorrow and self-reproach, brighten it with
+hope and good resolutions, in short, make it happier and better&mdash;what no
+mere imaginative poetry, however fine, can do.</p>
+
+<p>4. The radical distinction, then, between religious feeling and the
+poetical faculty of mythical creation, is easy to establish and follow
+out. On the other hand, the two are so constantly blended, so almost
+inextricably interwoven in the sacred poetry of the ancients, in their
+views of life and the world, and in their worship, that it is no wonder
+they should be so generally confused. The most correct way of putting
+the case would be, perhaps, to say that the ancient Religions&mdash;meaning
+by the word the whole body of sacred poetry and legends as well as the
+national forms of worship&mdash;were made up originally in about equal parts
+of religious feeling and of mythology. In many cases the exuberance of
+the imagination gained the upper hand, and there was such a riotous
+growth of mythical imagery and stories that the religious feeling was
+almost stifled under them. In others, again, the myths themselves
+suggested religious ideas of the deepest import and loftiest sublimity.
+Such was particularly the case with the solar and Chthonic Myths&mdash;the
+poetical presentation of the career of the Sun and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span> the Earth&mdash;as
+connected with the doctrine of the soul's immortality.</p>
+
+<p>5. A curious and significant observation has been made in excavating the
+most ancient graves in the world, those of the so-called Mound-builders.
+This name is not that of any particular race or nation, but is given
+indiscriminately to all those peoples who lived, on any part of the
+globe, long before the earliest beginnings of even the remotest times
+which have been made historical by preserved monuments or inscriptions
+of any kind. All we know of those peoples is that they used to bury
+their dead&mdash;at least those of special renown or high rank&mdash;in deep and
+spacious stone-lined chambers dug in the ground, with a similar gallery
+leading to them, and covered by a mound of earth, sometimes of gigantic
+dimensions&mdash;a very hill. Hence the name. Of their life, their degree of
+civilization, what they thought and believed, we have no idea except in
+so far as the contents of the graves give us some indications. For, like
+the later, historical races, of which we find the graves in Chaldea and
+every other country of the ancient world, they used to bury along with
+the dead a multitude of things: vessels, containing food and drink;
+weapons, ornaments, household implements. The greater the power or
+renown of the dead man, the fuller and more luxurious his funeral
+outfit. It is indeed by no means rare to find the skeleton of a great
+chief surrounded by those of several women, and, at a respectful
+distance, more skeletons&mdash;evidently those of slaves&mdash;whose fractured
+skulls more than suggest the ghastly custom<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> of killing wives and
+servants to do honor to an illustrious dead and to keep him company in
+his narrow underground mansion. Nothing but a belief in the continuation
+of existence after death could have prompted these practices. For what
+was the sense of giving him wives and slaves, and domestic articles of
+all kinds, food and weapons, unless it were for his service and use on
+his journey to the unknown land where he was to enter on a new stage of
+existence, which the survivors could not but imagine to be a
+reproduction, in its simple conditions and needs, of the one he was
+leaving? There is no race of men, however primitive, however untutored,
+in which this belief in immortality is not found deeply rooted,
+positive, unquestioning. The <i>belief</i> is implanted in man by the <i>wish</i>;
+it answers one of the most imperative, unsilenceable longings of human
+nature. For, in proportion as life is pleasant and precious, death is
+hideous and repellent. The idea of utter destruction, of ceasing to be,
+is intolerable to the mind; indeed, the senses revolt against it, the
+mind refuses to grasp and admit it. Yet death is very real, and it is
+inevitable; and all human beings that come into the world have to learn
+to face the thought of it, and the reality too, in others, before they
+lie down and accept it for themselves. But what if death be <i>not</i>
+destruction? If it be but a passage from this into another
+world,&mdash;distant, unknown and perforce mysterious, but certain
+nevertheless, a world on the threshold of which the earthly body is
+dropped as an unnecessary garment? Then were death shorn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> of half its
+terrors. Indeed, the only unpleasantness about it would be, for him who
+goes, the momentary pang and the uncertainty as to what he is going to;
+and, for those who remain, the separation and the loathsome details&mdash;the
+disfigurement, the corruption. But these are soon gotten over, while the
+separation is only for a time; for all must go the same way, and the
+late-comers will find, will join their lost ones gone before. Surely it
+must be so! It were too horrible if it were not; it <i>must be</i>&mdash;it <i>is</i>!
+The process of feeling which arrived at this conclusion and hardened it
+into absolute faith, is very plain, and we can easily, each of us,
+reproduce it in our own souls, independently of the teachings we receive
+from childhood. But the mind is naturally inquiring, and involuntarily
+the question presents itself: this solution, so beautiful, so
+acceptable, so universal,&mdash;but so abstract&mdash;what suggested it? What
+analogy first led up to it from the material world of the senses? To
+this question we find no reply in so many words, for it is one of those
+that go to the very roots of our being, and such generally remain
+unanswered. But the graves dug by those old Mound-Builders present a
+singular feature, which almost seems to point to the answer. The tenant
+of the funereal chamber is most frequently found deposited in a
+crouching attitude, his back leaning against the stone-lined wall, and
+<i>with his face turned towards the West, in the direction of the setting
+sun</i>.... Here, then, is the suggestion, the analogy! The career of the
+sun is very like that of man. His rising in the east is like the birth
+of man.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> During the hours of his power, which we call the Day, he does
+his allotted work, of giving light and warmth to the world, now riding
+radiant and triumphant across an azure sky, now obscured by clouds,
+struggling through mists, or overwhelmed by tempests. How like the
+vicissitudes that checker the somewhat greater number of hours&mdash;or
+days&mdash;of which the sum makes up a human life! Then when his appointed
+time expires, he sinks down,&mdash;lower, lower&mdash;and disappears into
+darkness,&mdash;dies. So does man. What is this night, death? Is it
+destruction, or only a rest, or an absence? It is at all events <i>not</i>
+destruction. For as surely as we see the sun vanish in the west this
+evening, feeble and beamless, so surely shall we behold him to-morrow
+morning rise again in the east, glorious, vigorous and young. What
+happens to him in the interval? Who knows? Perhaps he sleeps, perhaps he
+travels through countries we know not of and does other work there; but
+one thing is sure: that he is not dead, for he will be up again
+to-morrow. Why should not man, whose career so much resembles the sun's
+in other respects, resemble him in this? Let the dead, then, be placed
+with their faces to the west, in token that theirs is but a setting like
+the sun's, to be followed by another rising, a renewed existence, though
+in another and unknown world.</p>
+
+<p>6. All this is sheer poetry and mythology. But how great its beauty, how
+obvious its hopeful suggestiveness, if it could appeal to the groping
+minds of those primitive men, the old Mound-Builders,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> and there lay the
+seed of a faith which has been more and more clung to, as mankind
+progressed in spiritual culture! For all the noblest races have
+cherished and worked out the myth of the setting sun in the most
+manifold ways, as the symbol of the soul's immortality. The poets of
+ancient India, some three thousand years ago, made the Sun the leader
+and king of the dead, who, as they said, followed where he had gone
+first, "showing the way to many." The Egyptians, perhaps the wisest and
+most spiritual of all ancient nations, came to make this myth the
+keystone of their entire religion, and placed all their burying-places
+in the west, amidst or beyond the Libyan ridge of hills behind which the
+sun vanished from the eyes of those who dwelt in the valley of the Nile.
+The Greeks imagined a happy residence for their bravest and wisest,
+which they called the Islands of the Blest, and placed in the furthest
+West, amidst the waters of the ocean into which the sun descends for his
+nightly rest.</p>
+
+<p>7. But the sun's course is twofold. If it is complete&mdash;beginning and
+ending&mdash;within the given number of hours which makes the day, it is
+repeated on a larger scale through the cycle of months which makes the
+year. The alternations of youth and age, triumph and decline, power and
+feebleness, are there represented and are regularly brought around by
+the different seasons. But the moral, the symbol, is still the same as
+regards final immortality. For if summer answers to the heyday of noon,
+autumn to the milder glow and the extinc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>tion of evening, and winter to
+the joyless dreariness of night, spring, like the morning, ever brings
+back the god, the hero, in the perfect splendor of a glorious
+resurrection. It was the solar-year myth with its magnificent
+accompaniment of astronomical pageantry, which took the greater hold on
+the fancy of the scientifically inclined Chaldeans, and which we find
+embodied with such admirable completeness in their great epic. We shall
+see, later on, more exclusively imaginative and poetical races showing a
+marked preference for the career of the sun as the hero of a day, and
+making the several incidents of the solar-day myth the subject of an
+infinite variety of stories, brilliant or pathetic, tender or heroic.
+But there is in nature another order of phenomena, intimately connected
+with and dependent on the phases of the sun, that is, the seasons, yet
+very different in their individual character, though pointing the same
+way as regards the suggestion of resurrection and immortality&mdash;the
+phenomena of the Earth and the Seed. These may in a more general way be
+described as Nature's productive power paralyzed during the numbed
+trance of winter, which is as the sleep of death, when the seed lies in
+the ground hid from sight and cold, even as a dead thing, but awaking to
+new life in the good time of spring, when the seed, in which life was
+never extinct but only dormant, bursts its bonds and breaks into verdant
+loveliness and bountiful crops. This is the essence and meaning of the
+Chthonic or Earth-myth, as universal as the Sun-myth, but of which
+different features have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> also been unequally developed by different
+races according to their individual tendencies. In the Chaldean version,
+the "Descent of Ishtar," the particular incident of the seed is quite
+wanting, unless the name of Dumuzi's month, "The Boon of the Seed" ("<i>Le
+Bienfait de la Semence.</i>" Lenormant), may be considered as alluding to
+it. It is her fair young bridegroom, the beautiful Sun-god, whom the
+widowed goddess of Nature mourns and descends to seek among the dead.
+This aspect of the myth is almost exclusively developed in the religions
+of most Canaanitic and Semitic nations of the East, where we shall meet
+with it often and often. And here it may be remarked, without digressing
+or anticipating too far, that throughout the ancient world, the Solar
+and Chthonic cycles of myths have been the most universal and important,
+the very centre and groundwork of many of the ancient mythic religions,
+and used as vehicles for more or less sublime religious conceptions,
+according to the higher or lower spiritual level of the worshipping
+nations.</p>
+
+<p>8. It must be confessed that, amidst the nations of Western Asia, this
+level was, on the whole, not a very lofty one. Both the Hamitic and
+Semitic races were, as a rule, of a naturally sensuous disposition; the
+former being, moreover, distinguished by a very decidedly material turn
+of mind. The Kushites, of whom a branch perhaps formed an important
+portion of the mixed population of Lower Mesopotamia, and especially the
+Canaanites, who spread themselves over all the country between the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>
+great rivers and the Western Sea&mdash;the Mediterranean&mdash;were no exception
+to this rule. If their priests&mdash;their professed thinkers, the men
+trained through generations for intellectual pursuits&mdash;had groped their
+way to the perception of One Divine Power ruling the world, they kept it
+to themselves, or, at least, out of sight, behind a complicated array of
+cosmogonic myths, nature-myths, symbols and parables, resulting in
+Chaldea in the highly artificial system which has been sketched
+above&mdash;(see Chapters <a href="#V">V</a>. and <a href="#VI">VI</a>.)&mdash;a system singularly beautiful and
+deeply significant, but of which the mass of the people did not care to
+unravel the subtle intricacies, being quite content to accept it entire,
+in the most literal spirit, elementary nature-gods, astronomical
+abstractions, cosmogonical fables and all&mdash;questioning nothing, at peace
+in their mind and righteously self-conscious if they sacrificed at the
+various time-honored local shrines, and conformed to the prescribed
+forms and ceremonies. To these they privately added those innumerable
+practices of conjuring and rites of witchcraft, the heirloom of the
+older lords of the soil, which we saw the colleges of learned priests
+compelled, as strangers and comparative newcomers, to tolerate and even
+sanction by giving them a place, though an inferior one, in their own
+nobler system (see p. <a href="#Page_250">250</a>). Thus it was that, if a glimmer of Truth did
+feebly illumine the sanctuary and its immediate ministers, the people at
+large dwelt in the outer darkness of hopeless polytheism and, worse
+still, of idolatry. For, in bowing before the altars of their temples
+and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> images in wood, stone or metal in which art strove to express
+what the sacred writings taught, the unlearned worshippers did not stop
+to consider that these were but pieces of human workmanship, deriving
+their sacredness solely from the subjects they treated and the place
+they adorned, nor did they strive to keep their thoughts intent on the
+invisible Beings represented by the images. It was so much simpler,
+easier and more comfortable to address their adoration to what was
+visible and near, to the shapes that were so closely within reach of
+their senses, that seemed so directly to receive their offerings and
+prayers, that became so dearly familiar from long associations. The bulk
+of the Chaldean nation for a long time remained Turanian, and the
+materialistic grossness of the original Shumiro-Accadian religion
+greatly fostered its idolatrous tendencies. The old belief in the
+talismanic virtues of all images (see p. <a href="#Page_162">162</a>) continued to assert
+itself, and was easily transferred to those representing the divinities
+of the later and more elaborate worship. Some portion of the divine
+substance or spirit was supposed somehow to pass into the material
+representation and reside therein. This is very clear from the way in
+which the inscriptions speak of the statues of gods, as though they were
+persons. Thus the famous cylinder of the Assyrian conqueror
+Asshurbanipal tells how he brought back "the goddess Nana," (i.e., her
+statue) who at the time of the great Elamite invasion, "had gone and
+dwelt in Elam, a place not appointed for her," and now spoke to him the
+king, saying: "From the midst<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> of Elam bring me out and cause me to
+enter into Bitanna"&mdash;her own old sanctuary at Erech, "which she had
+delighted in." Then again the Assyrian conquerors take especial pride in
+carrying off with them the statues of the gods of the nations they
+subdue, and never fail to record the fact in these words: "I carried
+away <i>their gods</i>," beyond a doubt with the idea that, in so doing, they
+put it out of their enemies' power to procure the assistance of their
+divine protectors.</p>
+
+<p>9. In the population of Chaldea the Semitic element was strongly
+represented. It is probable that tribes of Semites came into the country
+at intervals, in successive bands, and for a long time wandered
+unhindered with their flocks, then gradually amalgamated with the
+settlers they found in possession, and whose culture they adopted, or
+else formed separate settlements of their own, not even then, however,
+quite losing their pastoral habits. Thus the Hebrew tribe, when it left
+Ur under Terah and Abraham (see page 121), seems to have resumed its
+nomadic life with the greatest willingness and ease, after dwelling a
+long time in or near that popular city, the principal capital of Shumir,
+the then dominant South. Whether this tribe were driven out of Ur, as
+some will have it,<a name="FNanchor_BJ_62" id="FNanchor_BJ_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_BJ_62" class="fnanchor">[BJ]</a> or left of their own accord, it is perhaps not
+too bold to conjecture that the causes of their departure were partly
+connected with religious motives. For, alone among the Chaldeans and all
+the surrounding nations, this handful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> of Semites had disentangled the
+conception of monotheism from the obscuring wealth of Chaldean
+mythology, and had grasped it firmly. At least their leaders and elders,
+the patriarchs, had arrived at the conviction that the One living God
+was He whom they called "the Lord," and they strove to inspire their
+people with the same faith, and to detach them from the mythical
+beliefs, the idolatrous practices which they had adopted from those
+among whom they lived, and to which they clung with the tenacity of
+spiritual blindness and long habit. The later Hebrews themselves kept a
+clear remembrance of their ancestors having been heathen polytheists,
+and their own historians, writing more than a thousand years after
+Abraham's times, distinctly state the fact. In a long exhortation to the
+assembled tribes of Israel, which they put in the mouth of Joshua, the
+successor of Moses, they make him say:&mdash;"Your fathers dwelt on the other
+side of the flood" (i.e., the Euphrates, or perhaps the Jordan) "in old
+time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nachor, <i>and
+they served other gods</i>." And further on: " ... Put away <i>the gods which
+your fathers served on the other side of the flood</i> and in Egypt, and
+serve ye the Lord.... Choose you this day whom you will serve, whether
+the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the
+flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; as for me
+and my house, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua, xxiv. 2, 14, 15.) What
+more probable than that the patriarchs, Terah and Abraham, should have
+led their people out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> the midst of the Chaldeans, away from their
+great capital Ur, which held some of the oldest and most renowned
+Chaldean sanctuaries, and forth into the wilderness, partly with the
+object of removing them from corrupting associations. At all events that
+branch of the Hebrew tribe which remained in Mesopotamia with Nahor,
+Abraham's brother (see Gen. xxiv. xxix. and ff.), continued heathen and
+idolatrous, as we see from the detailed narrative in Genesis xxxi., of
+how Rachel "had stolen <i>the images that were her father's</i>" (xxxi. 19),
+when Jacob fled from Laban's house with his family, his cattle and all
+his goods. No doubt as to the value and meaning attached to these
+"images" is left when we see Laban, after having overtaken the
+fugitives, reprove Jacob in these words:&mdash;"And now, though thou wouldst
+needs be gone, because thou sore longedst for thy father's house, yet
+wherefore hast thou stolen <i>my gods</i>?" (xxxi. 30), to which Jacob, who
+knows nothing of Rachel's theft, replies:&mdash;"With whomsoever <i>thou
+findest thy gods</i>, let him not live" (xxxi. 32). But "Rachel had taken
+the images and put them in the camel's furniture, and sat upon them. And
+Laban searched all the tent, but found them not" (xxxi. 34). Now what
+could have induced Rachel to commit so dishonorable and, moreover,
+dangerous an action, but the idea that, in carrying away these images,
+her family's household "gods," she would insure a blessing and
+prosperity to herself and her house? That by so doing, she would,
+according to the heathens' notion, rob her father and old home of what
+she wished to se<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>cure herself (see page 344), does not seem to have
+disturbed her. It is clear from this that, even after she was wedded to
+Jacob the monotheist, she remained a heathen and idolater, though she
+concealed the fact from him.</p>
+
+<p>10. On the other hand, wholesale emigration was not sufficient to remove
+the evil. Had it indeed been a wilderness, unsettled in all its extent,
+into which the patriarchs led forth their people, they might have
+succeeded in weaning them completely from the old influences. But,
+scattered over it and already in possession, were numerous Canaanite
+tribes, wealthy and powerful under their chiefs&mdash;Amorites, and Hivites,
+and Hittites, and many more. In the pithy and picturesque Biblical
+language, "the Canaanite was in the land" (Genesis, xii. 6), and the
+Hebrews constantly came into contact with them, indeed were dependent on
+their tolerance and large hospitality for the freedom with which they
+were suffered to enjoy the pastures of "the land wherein they were
+strangers," as the vast region over which they ranged is frequently and
+pointedly called. Being but a handful of men, they had to be cautious in
+their dealings and to keep on good terms with the people among whom they
+were brought. "I am a stranger and a sojourner with you," admits
+Abraham, "bowing himself down before the people of the land," (a tribe
+of Hittites near Hebron, west of the Dead Sea), when he offers to buy of
+them a field, there to institute a family burying-place for himself and
+his race; for he had no legal right to any of the land, not so much as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>
+would yield a sepulchre to his dead, even though the "children of Heth"
+treat him with high honor, and, in speaking to him, say, "My lord," and
+"thou art a mighty prince among us" (Genesis, xxiii.). This transaction,
+conducted on both sides in a spirit of great courtesy and liberality, is
+not the only instance of the friendliness with which the Canaanite
+owners of the soil regarded the strangers, both in Abraham's lifetime
+and long after his death. His grandson, the patriarch Jacob, and his
+sons find the same tolerance among the Hivites of Shalem, who thus
+commune among themselves concerning them:&mdash;"These men are peaceable with
+us; therefore let them dwell in the land and trade therein; for the
+land, behold it is large enough for them; let us take their daughters
+for wives, and let us give them our daughters." And the Hivite prince
+speaks in this sense to the Hebrew chief:&mdash;"The soul of my son longeth
+for your daughter: I pray you, give her him to wife. And make ye
+marriages with us, and give your daughters unto us and take our
+daughters unto you. And ye shall dwell with us, and the land shall be
+before you; dwell and trade ye therein, and get you possessions
+therein."</p>
+
+<p>11. But this question of intermarriage was always a most grievous one;
+the question of all others at which the Hebrew leaders strictly drew the
+line of intercourse and good-fellowship; the more stubbornly that their
+people were naturally much inclined to such unions, since they came and
+went freely among their hosts, and their daughters went out, unhindered,
+"to see the daughters of the land."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span> Now all the race of Canaan followed
+religions very similar to that of Chaldea, only grosser still in their
+details and forms of worship. Therefore, that the old idolatrous habits
+might not return strongly upon them under the influence of a heathen
+household, the patriarchs forbade marriage with the women of the
+countries through which they passed and repassed with their tents and
+flocks, and themselves abstained from it. Thus we see Abraham sending
+his steward all the way back to Mesopotamia to seek a wife for his son
+Isaac from among his own kinsfolk who had stayed there with his brother
+Nahor, and makes the old servant solemnly swear "by the Lord, the God of
+heaven and the God of earth": "Thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of
+the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell." And when Esau,
+Isaac's son, took two wives from among the Hittite women, it is
+expressly said that they were "a grief of mind unto Isaac and Rebekah;"
+and Isaac's most solemn charge to his other son, Jacob, as he sends him
+from him with his blessing, is: "Thou shalt not take a wife of the
+daughters of Canaan." Whithersoever the Hebrews came in the course of
+their long wanderings, which lasted many centuries, the same twofold
+prohibition was laid on them: of marrying with native women&mdash;"for
+surely," they are told, "they will turn away your heart after their
+gods," and of following idolatrous religions, a prohibition enforced by
+the severest penalties, even to that of death. But nothing could keep
+them long from breaking the law in both respects. The very frequency
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> emphasis with which the command is repeated, the violence of the
+denunciations against offenders, the terrible punishments threatened and
+often actually inflicted, sufficiently show how imperfectly and
+unwillingly it was obeyed. Indeed the entire Old Testament is one
+continuous illustration of the unslackening zeal with which the wise and
+enlightened men of Israel&mdash;its lawgivers, leaders, priests and
+prophets&mdash;pursued their arduous and often almost hopeless task, of
+keeping their people pure from worships and practices which to them, who
+had realized the fallacy of a belief in many gods, were the most
+pernicious abominations. In this spirit and to this end they preached,
+they fought, they promised, threatened, punished, and in this spirit, in
+later ages, they wrote.</p>
+
+<p>12. It is not until a nation is well established and enjoys a certain
+measure of prosperity, security and the leisure which accompanies them,
+that it begins to collect its own traditions and memories and set them
+down in order, into a continuous narrative. So it was with the Hebrews.
+The small tribe became a nation, which ceased from its wanderings and
+conquered for itself a permanent place on the face of the earth. But to
+do this took many hundred years, years of memorable adventures and
+vicissitudes, so that the materials which accumulated for the future
+historians, in stories, traditions, songs, were ample and varied. Much,
+too, must have been written down at a comparatively early period. <i>How</i>
+early must remain uncertain, since there is unfortunately nothing to
+show at what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> time the Hebrews learned the art of writing and their
+characters thought, like other alphabets, to be borrowed from those of
+the Ph&oelig;nicians. However that may be, one thing is sure: that the
+different books which compose the body of the Hebrew Sacred Scriptures,
+which we call "the Old Testament," were collected from several and
+different sources, and put into the shape in which they have descended
+to us at a very late period, some almost as late as the birth of Christ.
+The first book of all, that of Genesis, describing the beginnings of the
+Jewish people,&mdash;("<i>Genesis</i>" is a Greek word, which means
+"Origin")&mdash;belongs at all events to a somewhat earlier date. It is put
+together mainly of two narratives, distinct and often different in point
+of spirit and even fact. The later compiler who had both sources before
+him to work into a final form, looked on both with too much respect to
+alter either, and generally contented himself with giving them side by
+side, (as in the story of Hagar, which is told twice and differently, in
+Chap. XVI. and Chap. XXI.), or intermixing them throughout, so that it
+takes much attention and pains to separate them, (as in the story of the
+Flood, Chap. VI.-VIII.). This latter story is almost identical with the
+Chaldean Deluge-legend included in the great Izdubar epic, of which it
+forms the eleventh tablet. (See Chap. VII.) Indeed, every child can see,
+by comparing the Chaldean cosmogonic and mythical legends with the first
+chapters of the Book of Genesis, those which relate to the beginnings
+not so much of the Hebrew people as of the human race and the world in
+gen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>eral, that both must originally have flowed from one and the same
+spring of tradition and priestly lore. The resemblances are too staring,
+close, continuous, not to exclude all rational surmises as to casual
+coincidences. The differences are such as most strikingly illustrate the
+transformation which the same material can undergo when treated by two
+races of different moral standards and spiritual tendencies. Let us
+briefly examine both, side by side.</p>
+
+<p>13. To begin with the Creation. The description of the primeval chaos&mdash;a
+waste of waters, from which "the darkness was not lifted," (see p.
+261)&mdash;answers very well to that in Genesis, i. 2: "And the earth was
+without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The
+establishment of the heavenly bodies and the creation of the animals
+also correspond remarkably in both accounts, and even come in the same
+order (see p. <a href="#Page_264">264</a>, and Genesis, i. 14-22). The famous cylinder of the
+British Museum (see No. <a href="#illus_62">62</a>, p. 266) is strong presumption in favor of
+the identity of the Chaldean version of the first couple's disobedience
+with the Biblical one. We have seen the important position occupied in
+the Chaldean religion by the symbol of the Sacred Tree, which surely
+corresponds to the Tree of Life in Eden (see p. <a href="#Page_268">268</a>), and probably also
+to that of Knowledge, and the different passages and names ingeniously
+collected and confronted by scholars leave no doubt as to the Chaldeans
+having had the legend of an Eden, a garden of God (see p. <a href="#Page_274">274</a>). A better
+preserved copy of the Creation tablets with the now missing passages may
+be recovered any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> day, and there is no reason to doubt that they will be
+found as closely parallel to the Biblical narrative as those that have
+been recovered until now. But even as we have them at present it is very
+evident that the groundwork, the material, is the same in both. It is
+the manner, the spirit, which differs. In the Chaldean account,
+polytheism runs riot. Every element, every power of nature&mdash;Heaven,
+Earth, the Abyss, Atmosphere, etc.&mdash;has been personified into an
+individual divine being actively and severely engaged in the great work.
+The Hebrew narrative is severely monotheistic. In it <span class="smcap">God</span> does all that
+"the gods" between them do in the other. Every poetical or allegorical
+turn of phrase is carefully avoided, lest it lead into the evil errors
+of the sister-nation. The symbolical myths&mdash;such as that of Bel's mixing
+his own blood with the clay out of which he fashions man,(see p.
+266)&mdash;are sternly discarded, for the same reason. One only is retained:
+the temptation by the Serpent. But the Serpent being manifestly the
+personification of the Evil Principle which is forever busy in the soul
+of man, there was no danger of its being deified and worshipped; and as,
+moreover, the tale told in this manner very picturesquely and strikingly
+points a great moral lesson, the Oriental love of parable and allegory
+could in this instance be allowed free scope. Besides, the Hebrew
+writers of the sacred books were not beyond or above the superstitions
+of their country and age; indeed they retained all of these that did not
+appear to them incompatible with monotheism. Thus throughout the Books
+of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span> Old Testament the Chaldean belief in witchcraft, divination from
+dreams and other signs is retained and openly professed, and astrology
+itself is not condemned, since among the destinations of the stars is
+mentioned that of serving to men "for signs": "And God said, let there
+be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the
+night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and
+years" (Genesis, i. 14). Even more explicit is the passage in the
+triumphal song of Deborah the prophetess, where celebrating the victory
+of Israel over Sisera, she says: "They fought from heaven: the stars in
+their courses fought against Sisera" (Judges, v. 20). But a belief in
+astrology by no means implies the admission of several gods. In one or
+two passages, indeed, we do find an expression which seems to have
+slipped in unawares, as an involuntary reminiscence of an original
+polytheism; it is where God, communing with himself on Adam's trespass,
+says: "Behold, the man is become <i>as one of us</i>, to know good and evil"
+(Gen. iii. 22). An even clearer trace confronts us in one of the two
+names that are given to God. These names are "Jehovah," (more correctly
+"Yahveh") and "Elohim." Now the latter name is the plural of <i>El</i>,
+"god," and so really means "the gods." If the sacred writers retained
+it, it was certainly not from carelessness or inadvertence. As they use
+it, it becomes in itself almost a profession of faith. It seems to
+proclaim the God of their religion as "the One God who is all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span>
+gods," in whom all the forces of the universe are contained and merged.</p>
+
+<p>14. There is one feature in the Biblical narrative, which, at first
+sight, wears the appearance of mythical treatment: it is the familiar
+way in which God is represented as coming and going, speaking and
+acting, after the manner of men, especially in such passages as these:
+"And they heard the voice of the Lord God <i>walking in the garden in the
+cool of the day</i>" (Gen. iii. 8); or, "Unto Adam also and to his wife did
+the Lord God <i>make coats of skins and he clothed them</i>" (Gen. iii. 21).
+But such a judgment would be a serious error. There is nothing mythical
+in this; only the tendency, common to all mankind, of endowing the Deity
+with human attributes of form, speech and action, whenever the attempt
+was made to bring it very closely within the reach of their imagination.
+This tendency is so universal, that it has been classed, under a special
+name, among the distinctive features of the human mind. It has been
+called <span class="smcap">Anthropomorphism</span>, (from two Greek words <i>Anthropos</i>, "man," and
+<i>morph&ecirc;</i>, "form,") and can never be got rid of, because it is part and
+parcel of our very nature. Man's spiritual longings are infinite, his
+perceptive faculties are limited. His spirit has wings of flame that
+would lift him up and bear him even beyond the endlessness of space into
+pure abstraction; his senses have soles of lead that ever weigh him
+down, back to the earth, of which he is and to which he must needs
+cling, to exist at all. He can <i>conceive</i>, by a great effort, an
+abstract idea, eluding the grasp<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span> of senses, unclothed in matter; but he
+can <i>realize</i>, <i>imagine</i>, only by using such appliances as the senses
+supply him with. Therefore, the more fervently he grasps an idea, the
+more closely he assimilates it, the more it becomes materialized in his
+grasp, and when he attempts to reproduce it out of himself&mdash;behold! it
+has assumed the likeness of himself or something he has seen, heard,
+touched&mdash;the spirituality of it has become weighted with flesh, even as
+it is in himself. It is as it were a reproduction, in the intellectual
+world, of the eternal strife, in physical nature, between the two
+opposed forces of attraction and repulsion, the centrifugal and
+centripetal, of which the final result is to keep each body in its
+place, with a well-defined and limited range of motion allotted to it.
+Thus, however pure and spiritual the conception of the Deity may be,
+man, in making it real to himself, in bringing it down within his reach
+and ken, within the shrine of his heart, <i>will</i>, and <i>must</i> perforce
+make of it a Being, human not only in shape, but also in thought and
+feeling. How otherwise could he grasp it at all? And the accessories
+with which he will surround it will necessarily be suggested by his own
+experience, copied from those among which he moves habitually himself.
+"Walking in the garden in the cool of the day" is an essentially
+Oriental and Southern recreation, and came quite naturally to the mind
+of a writer living in a land steeped in sunshine and sultriness. Had the
+writer been a Northerner, a denizen of snow-clad plains and ice-bound
+rivers, the Lord might probably have been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> represented as coming in a
+swift, fur-lined sleigh. Anthropomorphism, then, is in itself neither
+mythology nor idolatry; but it is very clear that it can with the utmost
+ease glide into either or both, with just a little help from poetry and,
+especially, from art, in its innocent endeavor to fix in tangible form
+the vague imaginings and gropings, of which words often are but a
+fleeting and feeble rendering. Hence the banishment of all material
+symbols, the absolute prohibition of any images whatever as an accessory
+of religious worship, which, next to the recognition of One only God, is
+the keystone of the Hebrew law:&mdash;"Thou shalt have no other gods before
+me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of
+anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or
+that is in the water under the earth.&mdash;Thou shalt not bow down thyself
+to them, nor serve them" (Exodus, xx. 3-5).</p>
+
+<p>But, to continue our parallel.</p>
+
+<p>15. The ten antediluvian kings of Berosus, who succeed the apparition of
+the divine Man-Fish, &Ecirc;a-Oannes (see p. <a href="#Page_196">196</a>), have their exact
+counterpart in the ten antediluvian patriarchs of Genesis, v. Like the
+Chaldean kings, the patriarchs live an unnatural number of years. Only
+the extravagant figures of the Chaldean tradition are considerably
+reduced in the Hebrew version. While the former allots to its kings
+reigns of tens of thousands of years (see p. <a href="#Page_196">196</a>); the latter cuts them
+down to hundreds, and the utmost that it allows to any of its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>
+patriarchs is nine hundred and sixty-nine years of life (Methuselah).</p>
+
+<p>16. The resemblances between the two Deluge narratives are so obvious
+and continuous, that it is not these, but the differences that need
+pointing out. Here again the sober, severely monotheistic character of
+the Hebrew narrative contrasts most strikingly with the exuberant
+polytheism of the Chaldean one, in which Heaven, Sun, Storm, Sea, even
+Rain are personified, deified, and consistently act their several
+appropriate and most dramatic parts in the great cataclysm, while Nature
+herself, as the Great Mother of beings and fosterer of life, is
+represented, in the person of Ishtar, lamenting the slaughter of men
+(see p. <a href="#Page_327">327</a>). Apart from this fundamental difference in spirit, the
+identity in all the essential points of fact is amazing, and variations
+occur only in lesser details. The most characteristic one is that, while
+the Chaldean version describes the building and furnishing of a <i>ship</i>,
+with all the accuracy of much seafaring knowledge, and does not forget
+even to name the pilot, the Hebrew writer, with the clumsiness and
+ignorance of nautical matters natural to an inland people unfamiliar
+with the sea or the appearance of ships, speaks only of an <i>ark</i> or
+<i>chest</i>. The greatest discrepancy is in the duration of the flood, which
+is much shorter in the Chaldean text than in the Hebrew. On the seventh
+day already, H&acirc;sisadra sends out the dove (see p. <a href="#Page_316">316</a>). But then in the
+Biblical narrative itself, made up, as was remarked above, of two
+parallel texts joined together, this same point is given dif<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>ferently in
+different places. According to Genesis, vii. 12, "the rain was upon the
+earth forty days and forty nights," while verse 24 of the same chapter
+tells us that "the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty
+days." Again, the number of the saved is far larger in the Chaldean
+account: H&acirc;sisadra takes with him into the ship all his men-servants,
+his women-servants, and even his "nearest friends," while Noah is
+allowed to save only his own immediate family, "his sons, and his wife,
+and his sons' wives" (Genesis, vi. 18). Then, the incident of the birds
+is differently told: H&acirc;sisadra sends out three birds, the dove, the
+swallow, and the raven; Noah only two&mdash;first the raven, then three times
+in succession the dove. But it is startling to find both narratives more
+than once using the same words. Thus the Hebrew writer tells how Noah
+"sent forth a raven, which went to and fro," and how "the dove found no
+rest for the sole of her foot and returned." H&acirc;sisadra relates: "I took
+out a dove and sent it forth. The dove went forth, to and fro, but found
+no resting-place and returned." And further, when H&acirc;sisadra describes
+the sacrifice he offered on the top of Mount Nizir, after he came forth
+from the ship, he says: "The gods smelled a savor; the gods smelled a
+sweet savor." "And the Lord smelled a sweet savor," says Genesis,&mdash;viii.
+21&mdash;of Noah's burnt-offering. These few hints must suffice to show how
+instructive and entertaining is a parallel study of the two narratives;
+it can be best done by attentively reading both al<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>ternately, and
+comparing them together, paragraph by paragraph.</p>
+
+<p>17. The legend of the Tower of Languages (see above, p. <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, and
+Genesis, xi. 3-9), is the last in the series of parallel Chaldean and
+Hebrew traditions. In the Bible it is immediately followed by the
+detailed genealogy of the Hebrews from Shem to Abraham. Therewith
+evidently ends the connection between the two people, who are severed
+for all time from the moment that Abraham goes forth with his tribe from
+Ur of the Chaldees, probably in the reign of Amarpal (father of
+Hammurabi), whom the Bible calls Amraphel, king of Shine&acirc;r. The reign of
+Hammurabi was, as we have already seen (see p. <a href="#Page_219">219</a>), a prosperous and
+brilliant one. He was originally king of Tintir (the oldest name of
+Babylon), and when he united all the cities and local rulers of Chaldea
+under his supremacy, he assorted the pre-eminence among them for his own
+city, which he began to call by its new name, <span class="smcap">Ka-dimirra</span> (Accadian for
+"Gate of God," which was translated into the Semitic <span class="smcap">Bab-Il</span>). This king
+in every respect opens a new chapter in the history of Chaldea.
+Moreover, a great movement was taking place in all the region between
+the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf; nations were forming and
+growing, and Chaldea's most formidable rival and future conqueror,
+Assyria, was gradually gathering strength in the north, a fierce young
+lion-cub. By this newcomer among nations our attention will henceforth
+mainly be claimed. Let us, therefore, pause on the high<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span> place to which
+we have now arrived, and, casting a glance backward, take a rapid survey
+of the ground we have covered.</p>
+
+<p>18. Looking with strained eyes into a past dim and gray with the
+scarce-lifting mists of unnumbered ages, we behold our starting-point,
+the low land by the Gulf, Shumir, taking shape and color under the rule
+of Turanian settlers, the oldest known nation in the world. They drain
+and till the land, they make bricks and build cities, and prosper
+materially. But the spirit in them is dark and lives in cowering terror
+of self-created demons and evil things, which they yet believe they can
+control and compel. So their religion is one, not of worship and
+thanksgiving, but of dire conjuring and incantation, inconceivable
+superstition and witchcraft, an unutterable dreariness hardly lightened
+by the glimmering of a nobler faith, in the conception of the wise and
+beneficent &Ecirc;a and his ever benevolently busy son, Meridug. But gradually
+there comes a change. Shumir lifts its gaze upward, and as it takes in
+more the beauty and the goodness of the world&mdash;in Sun and Moon and
+Stars, in the wholesome Waters and the purifying serviceable Fire, the
+good and divine Powers&mdash;the Gods multiply and the host of elementary
+spirits, mostly evil, becomes secondary. This change is greatly helped
+by the arrival of the meditative, star-gazing strangers, who take hold
+of the nature-worship and the nature-myths they find among the people to
+which they have come&mdash;a higher and more advanced race&mdash;and weave these,
+with their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> own star-worship and astrological lore, into a new faith, a
+religious system most ingeniously combined, elaborately harmonized, and
+full of profoundest meaning. The new religion is preached not only in
+words, but in brick and stone: temples arise all over the land, erected
+by the <i>patesis</i>&mdash;the priest-kings of the different cities&mdash;and
+libraries in which the priestly colleges reverently treasure both their
+own works and the older religious lore of the country. The ancient
+Turanian names of the gods are gradually translated into the new
+Cushito-Semitic language; yet the prayers and hymns, as well as the
+incantations, are still preserved in the original tongue, for the people
+of Turanian Shumir are the more numerous, and must be ruled and
+conciliated, not alienated. The more northern region, Accad, is, indeed,
+more thinly peopled; there the tribes of Semites, who now arrive in
+frequent instalments, spread rapidly and unhindered. The cities of Accad
+with their temples soon rival those of Shumir and strive to eclipse
+them, and their <i>patesis</i> labor to predominate politically over those of
+the South. And it is with the North that the victory at first remains;
+its pre-eminence is asserted in the time of Sharrukin of Agad&ecirc;, about
+3800 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, but is resumed by the South some thousand years later, when a
+powerful dynasty (that to which belong Ur-&ecirc;a and his son Dungi)
+establishes itself in Ur, while Tintir, the future head and centre of
+the united land of Chaldea, the great Babylon, if existing at all, is
+not yet heard of. It is these kings of Ur who first take the
+significant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span> title "kings of Shumir and Accad." Meanwhile new and higher
+moral influences have been at work; the Semitic immigration has
+quickened the half mythical, half astronomical religion with a more
+spiritual element&mdash;of fervent adoration, of prayerful trust, of
+passionate contrition and self-humiliation in the bitter consciousness
+of sin, hitherto foreign to it, and has produced a new and beautiful
+religious literature, which marks its third and last stage. To this
+stage belong the often mentioned "Penitential Psalms," Semitic, nay,
+rather Hebrew in spirit, although still written in the old Turanian
+language (but in the northern dialect of Accad, a fact that in itself
+bears witness to their comparative lateness and the locality in which
+they sprang up), and too strikingly identical with similar songs of the
+golden age of Hebrew poetry in substance and form, not to have been the
+models from which the latter, by a sort of unconscious heredity, drew
+its inspirations. Then comes the great Elamitic invasion, with its
+plundering of cities, desecration of temples and sanctuaries, followed
+probably by several more through a period of at least three hundred
+years. The last, that of Khudur Lagamar, since it brings prominently
+forward the founder of the Hebrew nation, deserves to be particularly
+mentioned by that nation's historians, and, inasmuch as it coincides
+with the reign of Amarpal, king of Tintir and father of Hammurabi,
+serves to establish an important landmark in the history both of the
+Jews and of Chaldea. When we reach this comparatively re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>cent date the
+mists have in great part rolled aside, and as we turn from the ages we
+have just surveyed to those that still lie before us, history guides us
+with a bolder step and shows us the landscape in a twilight which,
+though still dim and sometimes misleading, is yet that of breaking day,
+not of descending night.</p>
+
+<p>19. When we attempt to realize the prodigious vastness and remoteness of
+the horizon thus opened before us, a feeling akin to awe overcomes us.
+Until within a very few years, Egypt gloried in the undisputed boast of
+being the oldest country in the world, i.e., of reaching back, by its
+annals and monuments, to an earlier date than any other. But the
+discoveries that are continually being made in the valley of the two
+great rivers have forever silenced that boast. Chaldea points to a
+monumentally recorded date nearly 4000 <span class="smcap">b.c.</span> This is more than Egypt can
+do. Her oldest authentic monuments,&mdash;her great Pyramids, are
+considerably later. Mr. F. Hommel, one of the leaders of Assyriology,
+forcibly expresses this feeling of wonder in a recent publication:<a name="FNanchor_BK_63" id="FNanchor_BK_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_BK_63" class="fnanchor">[BK]</a>
+"If," he says, "the Semites were already settled in Northern Babylonia
+(Accad) in the beginning of the fourth thousand <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, in possession of
+the fully developed Shumiro-Accadian culture adopted by them,&mdash;a
+culture, moreover, which appears to have sprouted in Accad as a cutting
+from Shumir&mdash;then the latter must naturally be far, far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> older still,
+and have existed in its completed form <span class="smcap">in the fifth thousand b.c.</span>&mdash;an
+age to which I now unhesitatingly ascribe the South-Babylonian
+incantations." This would give our mental vision a sweep of full six
+thousand years, a pretty respectable figure! But when we remember that
+these first known settlers of Shumir came from somewhere else, and that
+they brought with them more than the rudiments of civilization, we are
+at once thrown back at least a couple of thousands of years more. For it
+must have taken all of that and more for men to pass from a life spent
+in caves and hunting the wild beasts to a stage of culture comprising
+the invention of a complete system of writing, the knowledge and working
+of metals, even to the mixing of copper and tin into bronze, and an
+expertness in agriculture equal not only to tilling, but to draining
+land. If we further pursue humanity&mdash;losing at last all count of time in
+years or even centuries&mdash;back to its original separation, to its first
+appearance on the earth,&mdash;if we go further still and try to think of the
+ages upon ages during which man existed not at all, yet the earth did,
+and was beautiful to look upon&mdash;(<i>had</i> there been any to look on it),
+and good for the creatures who had it all to themselves&mdash;a dizziness
+comes over our senses, before the infinity of time, and we draw back,
+faint and awed, as we do when astronomy launches us, on a slender thread
+of figures, into the infinity of space. The six ages of a thousand years
+each which are all that our mind can firmly grasp then come to seem to
+us a very poor and puny fraction of eter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>nity, to which we are tempted
+to apply almost scornfully the words spoken by the poet of as many
+years: "Six ages! six little ages! six drops of time!"<a name="FNanchor_BL_64" id="FNanchor_BL_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_BL_64" class="fnanchor"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 215px;">
+<img src="images/deco389.png" width="215" height="48" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BJ_62" id="Footnote_BJ_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BJ_62"><span class="label">[BJ]</span></a> Maspero, "Histoire Ancienne," p. 173.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BK_63" id="Footnote_BK_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BK_63"><span class="label">[BK]</span></a> Ztschr. f&uuml;r Keilschriftforschung, "Zur altbabylonischen
+Chronologie," Heft I.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_BL_64" id="Footnote_BL_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_BL_64"><span class="label">[BL]</span></a> Matthew Arnold, in "Mycerinus":
+</p>
+<div class="blockquot">"Six years! six little years! six drops of time!"<br /></div></div></div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 374px;">
+<img src="images/deco390.png" width="374" height="84" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class='center'><a name="APPENDIX_TO_CHAPTER_VII" id="APPENDIX_TO_CHAPTER_VII"></a>APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII.</p>
+
+
+<p>Professor Louis Dyer has devoted some time to preparing a free metrical
+translation of "Ishtar's Descent." Unfortunately, owing to his many
+occupations, only the first part of the poem is as yet finished. This he
+most kindly has placed at our disposal, authorizing us to present it to
+our readers.</p>
+
+<p class='center' style='margin-top: 2em;'>ISHTAR IN URUGAL.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0a">Along the gloomy avenue of death</span>
+<span class="i0a">To seek the dread abysm of Urugal,</span>
+<span class="i0a">In everlasting Dark whence none returns,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Ishtar, the Moon-god's daughter, made resolve,</span>
+<span class="i0a">And that way, sick with sorrow, turned her face.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2a">A road leads downward, but no road leads back</span>
+<span class="i0a">From Darkness' realm. There is Irkalla queen,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Named also Ninkigal, mother of pains.</span>
+<span class="i0a">Her portals close forever on her guests</span>
+<span class="i0a">And exit there is none, but all who enter,</span>
+<span class="i0a">To daylight strangers, and of joy unknown,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Within her sunless gates restrained must stay.</span>
+<span class="i0a">And there the only food vouchsafed is dust,</span>
+<span class="i0a">For slime they live on, who on earth have died.</span>
+<span class="i0a">Day's golden beam greets none and darkness reigns</span>
+<span class="i0a">Where hurtling bat-like forms of feathered men</span>
+<span class="i0a">Or human-fashioned birds imprisoned flit.</span>
+<span class="i0a">Close and with dust o'erstrewn, the dungeon doors</span>
+<span class="i0a">Are held by bolts with gathering mould o'ersealed.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2a">By love distracted, though the queen of love,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Pale Ishtar downward flashed toward death's domain,</span>
+<span class="i0a">And swift approached these gates of Urugal,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Then paused impatient at its portals grim;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span></span>
+<span class="i0a">For love, whose strength no earthly bars restrain,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Gives not the key to open Darkness' Doors.</span>
+<span class="i0a">By service from all living men made proud,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Ishtar brooked not resistance from the dead.</span>
+<span class="i0a">She called the jailer, then to anger changed</span>
+<span class="i0a">The love that sped her on her breathless way,</span>
+<span class="i0a">And from her parted lips incontinent</span>
+<span class="i0a">Swept speech that made the unyielding warder quail.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2a">"Quick, turnkey of the pit! swing wide these doors,</span>
+<span class="i0a">And fling them swiftly open. Tarry not!</span>
+<span class="i0a">For I will pass, even I will enter in.</span>
+<span class="i0a">Dare no denial, thou, bar not my way,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Else will I burst thy bolts and rend thy gates,</span>
+<span class="i0a">This lintel shatter else and wreck these doors.</span>
+<span class="i0a">The pent-up dead I else will loose, and lead</span>
+<span class="i0a">Back the departed to the lands they left,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Else bid the famished dwellers in the pit</span>
+<span class="i0a">Rise up to live and eat their fill once more.</span>
+<span class="i0a">Dead myriads then shall burden groaning earth,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Sore tasked without them by her living throngs."</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2a">Love's mistress, mastered by strong hate,</span>
+<span class="i0a">The warder heard, and wondered first, then feared</span>
+<span class="i0a">The angered goddess Ishtar what she spake,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Then answering said to Ishtar's wrathful might:</span>
+<span class="i0a">"O princess, stay thy hand; rend not the door,</span>
+<span class="i0a">But tarry here, while unto Ninkigal</span>
+<span class="i0a">I go, and tell thy glorious name to her."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p class='center' style='margin-top: 2em;'>ISHTAR'S LAMENT.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0a">"All love from earthly life with me departed,</span>
+<span class="i2a">With me to tarry in the gates of death;</span>
+<span class="i0a">In heaven's sun no warmth is longer hearted,</span>
+<span class="i2a">And chilled shall cheerless men now draw slow breath.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0a">"I left in sadness life which I had given,</span>
+<span class="i2a">I turned from gladness and I walked with woe,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Toward living death by grief untimely driven,</span>
+<span class="i2a">I search for Thammuz whom harsh fate laid low<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0a">"The darkling pathway o'er the restless waters</span>
+<span class="i2a">Of seven seas that circle Death's domain</span>
+<span class="i0a">I trod, and followed after earth's sad daughters</span>
+<span class="i2a">Torn from their loved ones and ne'er seen again.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0a">"Here must I enter in, here make my dwelling</span>
+<span class="i2a">With Thammuz in the mansion of the dead,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Driven to Famine's house by love compelling</span>
+<span class="i2a">And hunger for the sight of that dear head.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0a">"O'er husbands will I weep, whom death has taken,</span>
+<span class="i2a">Whom fate in manhood's strength from life has swept,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Leaving on earth their living wives forsaken,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2a">O'er them with groans shall bitter tears be wept.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0a">"And I will weep o'er wives, whose short day ended</span>
+<span class="i2a">Ere in glad offspring joyed their husbands' eyes;</span>
+<span class="i0a">Snatched from loved arms they left their lords untended,&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i2a">O'er them shall tearful lamentations rise.</span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0a">"And I will weep o'er babes who left no brothers,</span>
+<span class="i2a">Young lives to the ills of age by hope opposed,</span>
+<span class="i0a">The sons of saddened sires and tearful mothers,</span>
+<span class="i2a">One moment's life by death eternal closed."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+
+<p class='center' style='margin-top: 2em;'>NINKIGAL'S COMMAND TO THE WARDER.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0a">"Leave thou this presence, slave, open the gate;</span>
+<span class="i0a">Since power is hers to force an entrance here,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Let her come in as come from life the dead,</span>
+<span class="i0a">Submissive to the laws of Death's domain.</span>
+<span class="i0a">Do unto her what unto all thou doest."</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Want of space bids us limit ourselves to these few fragments&mdash;surely
+sufficient to make our readers wish that Professor Dyer might spare some
+time to the completion of his task.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 372px;">
+<img src="images/deco394.png" width="372" height="81" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class='center'><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX.</p>
+
+<p class='indletter'>A.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Abel, killed by Cain, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Abraham, wealthy and powerful chief, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>goes forth from Ur, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his victory over Khudur-Lagamar, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>-<a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Abu-Habba, see <a href="#indsippar">Sippar.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Abu-Shahrein, see <a href="#inderidhu">Eridhu.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Accad, Northern or Upper Chaldea, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>meaning of the word, ib.;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>headquarters of Semitism, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>-<a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Accads, see <a href="#indshumiroaccads">Shumiro-Accads.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Accadian language, see <a href="#indshumiroaccadian">Shumiro-Accadian.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Agad&ecirc;, capital of Accad, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Agglutinative languages, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>-<a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>characteristic of Turanian nations, ib.;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>spoken by the people of Shumir and Accad, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Agricultural life, third stage of culture, first beginning of real civilization, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Akki, the water-carrier, see <a href="#indsharrukin">Sharrukin of Agad&ecirc;.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Alexander of Macedon conquers Babylon, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his soldiers destroy the dams of the Euphrates, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Allah, Arabic for "God," see <a href="#indilu">Ilu.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Allat, queen of the Dead, <a href="#Page_327">327</a>-<a href="#Page_329">329</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Alta&iuml;, the great Siberian mountain chain, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>probable cradle of the Turanian race, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Alta&iuml;c, another name for the Turanian or Yellow Race, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indamarpal" id="indamarpal">Amarpal</a>, also Sin-Muballit, king of Babylon, perhaps Amraphel, King of Shinar, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Amorite, the, a tribe of Canaan, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Amraphel, see <a href="#indamarpal">Amarpal.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indana" id="indana">Ana</a>, or Zi-ana&mdash;"Heaven," or "Spirit of Heaven," p. <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Anatu, goddess, mother of Ishtar, smites &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni with death and Izdubar with leprosy, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Anthropomorphism, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>definition and causes of, <a href="#Page_355">355</a>-<a href="#Page_357">357</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Anu, first god of the first Babylonian Triad, same as Ana, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the "twelve great gods," <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Anunnaki, minor spirits of earth, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Anunit (the Moon), wife of Shamash, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Apsu (the Abyss), <a href="#Page_264">264</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indarali" id="indarali">Arali</a>, or Arallu, the Land of the Dead, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>its connection with the Sacred Mountain, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Arallu, see <a href="#indarali">Arali.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Aram, a son of Shem, eponymous ancestor of the Aram&aelig;ans in Gen. x., <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Arabs, their conquest and prosperous rule in Mesopotamia, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Baghdad, their capital, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>nomads in Mesopotamia, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their superstitious horror of the ruins and sculptures, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>they take the gigantic head for Nimrod, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>-<a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>their strange ideas about the colossal winged bulls and lions and their destination, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>-<a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their habit of plundering ancient tombs at Warka, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their conquests and high culture in Asia and Africa, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Arbela, city of Assyria, built in hilly region, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Architecture, Chaldean, created by local conditions, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>-<a href="#Page_39">39</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Assyrian, borrowed from Chaldea, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Areph-Kasd&icirc;m, see Arphaxad, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indarphaxad" id="indarphaxad">Arphaxad</a>, eldest son of Shem, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Arphakshad, see <a href="#indarphaxad">Arphaxad.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Asshur, a son of Shem, eponymous ancestor of the Assyrians in Genesis X., <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Asshurbanipal, King of Assyria, his Library, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>-<a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>conquers Elam, destroys Shushan, and restores the statue of the goddess Nana to Erech, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>-<a href="#Page_195">195</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Asshur-nazir-pal, King of Assyria, size of hall in his palace at Calah (Nimrud), <a href="#Page_63">63</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Assyria, the same as Upper Mesopotamia, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>rise of, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Astrology, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>a corruption of astronomy, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>the special study of priests, ib.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Astronomy, the ancient Chaldeans' proficiency in, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>fascination of, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>conducive to religious speculation, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>degenerates into astrology, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>the god Nebo, the patron of, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>B.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Babbar, see <a href="#indud">Ud.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Babel, same as Babylon, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Bab-el-Mandeb, Straits of, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Bab-ilu, Semitic name of Babylon; meaning of the name, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Babylonia, a part of Lower Mesopotamia, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>excessive flatness of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>later name for "Shumir and Accad" and for "Chaldea," <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Baghdad, capital of the Arabs' empire in Mesopotamia, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>its decay, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Bassorah, see <a href="#indbusrah">Busrah.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Bedouins, robber tribes of, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>distinctively a nomadic people, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>-<a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Bel, third god of the first Babylonian Triad, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>meaning of the name, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the "twelve great gods," <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his battle with Tiamat, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>-<a href="#Page_290">290</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Belit, the wife of Bel, the feminine principle of nature, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>-<a href="#Page_245">245</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the "twelve great gods," <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Bel-Maruduk, see <a href="#indmarduk">Marduk.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Berosus, Babylonian priest; his History of Chaldea, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his version of the legend of Oannes, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>-<a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his account of the Chaldean Cosmogony, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>-<a href="#Page_261">261</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his account of the great tower and the confusion of tongues, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>-<a href="#Page_293">293</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his account of the Deluge, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>-<a href="#Page_301">301</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Birs-Nimrud or Birs-i-Nimrud, see <a href="#indborsippa">Borsippa.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Books, not always of paper, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>stones and bricks used as books, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>walls and rocks, ib., <a href="#Page_97">97</a>-<a href="#Page_99">99</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indborsippa" id="indborsippa">Borsippa</a> (Mound of Birs-Nimrud), its peculiar shape, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Nebuchadnezzar's inscription found at, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>identified with the Tower of Babel, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Botta begins excavations at Koyunjik, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his disappointment, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his great discovery at Khorsabad, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>-<a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Bricks, how men came to make, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>sun-dried or raw, and kiln-dried or baked, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span>ancient bricks from the ruins used for modern constructions; trade with ancient bricks at Hillah, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>British Museum, Rich's collection presented to, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indbusrah" id="indbusrah">Busrah</a>, or Bassorah, bulls and lions shipped to, down the Tigris, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Byblos, ancient writing material, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>C.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indcadimirra" id="indcadimirra">Ca-Dimirra</a> (or Ka-Dimirra), second name of Babylon; meaning of the name, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Cain, his crime, banishment, and posterity, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Calah, or Kalah, one of the Assyrian capitals, the Larissa of Xenophon, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Calendar, Chaldean, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>-<a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Canaan, son of Ham, eponymous ancestor of many nations, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Canaanites, migrations of, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Cement, various qualities of, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Chaldea, the same as Lower Mesopotamia, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>alluvial formation of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>-<a href="#Page_38">38</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>its extraordinary abundance in cemeteries, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>a nursery of nations, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>more often called by the ancients "Babylonia," <a href="#Page_237">237</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Chaldeans, in the sense of "wise men of the East," astrologer, magician, soothsayer,&mdash;a separate class of the priesthood, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>-<a href="#Page_255">255</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Charm against evil spells, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Cherub, Cherubim, see <a href="#indkirubu">Kir&ucirc;bu.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>China, possibly mentioned in Isaiah, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, note.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Chinese speak a monosyllabic language, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their genius and its limitations, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>oldest national religion of, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their "docenal" and "sexagesimal" system of counting, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>-<a href="#Page_231">231</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Chronology, vagueness of ancient, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>-<a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>extravagant figures of, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>-<a href="#Page_197">197</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>difficulty of establishing, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>-<a href="#Page_212">212</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Chthon, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Chthonic Powers, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_274">273</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Chthonic Myths, see <a href="#indmyths">Myths.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Cissians, see <a href="#indkasshi">Kasshi.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Cities, building of, fourth stage of culture, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Classical Antiquity, meaning of the term; too exclusive study of, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Coffins, ancient Chaldean, found at Warka: "jar-coffins," <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>"dish-cover" coffins, <a href="#Page_85">84</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>"slipper-shaped" coffin (comparatively modern), <a href="#Page_85">84</a>-<a href="#Page_86">86</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Conjuring, against demons and sorcerers, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>-<a href="#Page_159">159</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>admitted into the later reformed religion, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Conjurors, admitted into the Babylonian priesthood, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Coss&aelig;ans, see <a href="#indkasshi">Kasshi.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Cosmogonic Myths, see <a href="#indmyths">Myths.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Cosmogony, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Chaldean, imparted by Berosus, <a href="#Page_260">260</a>-<a href="#Page_261">261</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>original tablets discovered by Geo. Smith, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>-<a href="#Page_263">263</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their contents, <a href="#Page_264">264</a> and ff.;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Berosus again, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Cosmos, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Cuneiform writing, shape and specimen of, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>introduced into Chaldea by the Shumiro-Accads, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indcush" id="indcush">Cush</a>, or Kush, eldest son of Ham, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>probable early migrations of, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>ancient name of Ethiopia, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Cushites, colonization of Turanian Chaldea by, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Cylinders: seal cylinders in hard stones, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>-<a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>foundation-cylinders, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>seal-cylinders worn as talismans, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Babylonian cylinder, supposed to represent the Temptation and Fall, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>D.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Damkina, goddess, wife of &Ecirc;a, mother of Meridug, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Decoration: of palaces, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>-<a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>of walls at Warka, <a href="#Page_88">87</a>-<a href="#Page_88">88</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Delitzsch, Friedrich, eminent Assyriologist, favors the Semitic theory, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Deluge, Berosus' account of, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>-<a href="#Page_301">301</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>cuneiform account, in the 11th tablet of the Izdubar Epic, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>-<a href="#Page_317">317</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Demon of the South-West Wind, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Diseases conceived as demons, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Divination, a branch of Chaldean "science," in what it consists, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>-<a href="#Page_252">252</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>collection of texts on, in one hundred tablets, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>-<a href="#Page_253">253</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>specimens of, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>-<a href="#Page_254">254</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Draining of palace mounds, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>of sepulchral mounds at Warka, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>-<a href="#Page_88">87</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="inddumuzi" id="inddumuzi">Dumuzi</a>, the husband of the goddess Ishtar, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>the hero of a solar Myth, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>-<a href="#Page_326">326</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Dur-Sharrukin, <a href="#indkhorsabad">(see Khorsabad),</a></p>
+<p class='inddetail'>built in hilly region, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>E.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indea" id="indea">&Ecirc;a</a>, sometimes Zi-k&icirc;-a, the Spirit of the Earth and Waters, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>protector against evil spirits and men, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his chief sanctuary at Eridhu, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>second god of the first Babylonian Triad, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his attributions, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the "twelve great gods," <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>&Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni, the seer, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>invited by Izdubar, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>-<a href="#Page_305">305</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>becomes Izdubar's friend, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>vanquishes with him the Elamite tyrant Khumbaba, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>smitten by Ishtar and Anatu, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>restored to life by the gods, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>&Ecirc;-Babbara, "House of the Sun," <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Eber, see <a href="#indheber">Heber.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>El, see <a href="#indilu">Ilu.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Elam, kingdom of, conquered by Asshurbanipal, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>meaning of the name, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Elamite conquest of Chaldea, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>-<a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>-<a href="#Page_225">225</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Elohim, one of the Hebrew names for God, a plural of El, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>.</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>See <a href="#indilu">Ilu.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Emanations, theory of divine, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>-<a href="#Page_239">239</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Enoch, son of Cain, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Enoch, the first city, built by Cain, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Epic Poems, or Epics, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>-<a href="#Page_299">299</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Epic-Chald&aelig;an, oldest known in the world, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>its division into tablets, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Eponym, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Eponymous genealogies in Genesis X., <a href="#Page_132">132</a>-<a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Epos, national, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="inderech" id="inderech">Erech</a> (now Mound of Warka), oldest name Urukh, immense burying-grounds around, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>-<a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>plundered by Khudur-Nankhundi, king of Elam, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>library of, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Eri-Aku (Ariokh of Ellassar), Elamite king of Larsam, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="inderidhu" id="inderidhu">Eridhu</a> (modern Abu-Shahrein), the most ancient city of Shumir, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>specially sacred to &Ecirc;a, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Ethiopians, see <a href="#indcush">Cush.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Excavations, how carried on, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>-<a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>F.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Fergusson, Jas., English explorer and writer on art subjects, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Finns, a nation of Turanian stock, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Flood, or Deluge, possibly not universal, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>-<a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>G.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indgandunyash" id="indgandunyash">Gan-Dunyash</a>, or Kar-Dunyash, most ancient name of Babylonia proper, <a href="#Page_225">225</a>, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Genesis, first book of the Pentateuch, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>-<a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>Chapter X. of, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>-<a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_353">353</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Gibil, Fire, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>hymn to, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his friendliness, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>invoked to prosper the fabrication of bronze, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Gisdhubar, see <a href="#indizdubar">Izdubar.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Gud&ecirc;a, <i>patesi</i> of Sir-burla, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>H.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Ham, second son of Noah, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>meaning of the name, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Hammurabi, king of Babylon and all Chaldea, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his long and glorious reign, ib.;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his public works and the "Royal Canal," <a href="#Page_227">227</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Harimtu ("Persuasion"), one of the handmaidens of Ishtar, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indhasisadra" id="indhasisadra">H&acirc;sisadra</a>, same as Xisuthros, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>gives Izdubar an account of the great Flood, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>-<a href="#Page_317">317</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indheber" id="indheber">Heber</a>, a descendant of Shem, eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews in Genesis X., <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Heroes, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>-<a href="#Page_298">298</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Heroic Ages, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Heroic Myths, see <a href="#indmyths">Myths.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Hillah, built of bricks from the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, carries on trade with ancient bricks, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Him&acirc;laya Mountains, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Hindu-Cush (or Kush) Mountains, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indhit" id="indhit">Hit</a>, ancient Is, on the Euphrates, springs of bitumen at, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Hivite, the, a tribe of Canaan, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Hungarians, a nation of Turanian stock, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>I.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Idpa, the Demon of Fever, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Igigi, three hundred, spirits of heaven, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indilu" id="indilu">Ilu</a>, or El, Semitic name for "god," <a href="#Page_232">232</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indim" id="indim">Im</a>, or Mermer, "Wind," <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>India, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Indus, the great river of India, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Intercalary months, introduced by the Chaldeans to correct the reckoning of their year, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Is, see <a href="#indhit">Hit.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Ishtar, the goddess of the planet Venus, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>the Warrior-Queen and Queen of Love, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the "twelve great gods," <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>offers her love to Izdubar, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>is rejected and sends a monstrous bull against him, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>causes &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni's death and Izdubar's illness, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>descent of, into the land of shades, <a href="#Page_326">326</a>-<a href="#Page_330">330</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indizdubar" id="indizdubar">Izdubar</a>, the hero of the great Chaldean Epic, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his dream at Erech, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>invites &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni, <a href="#Page_304">304</a>-<a href="#Page_305">305</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>vanquishes with his help Khumbaba, the Elamite tyrant of Erech, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>offends Ishtar, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>vanquishes the divine Bull, with &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni's help, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>is smitten with leprosy, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>travels to "the mouth of the great rivers" to consult his immortal ancestor H&acirc;sisadra, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>-<a href="#Page_313">313</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>is purified and healed, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>returns to Erech; his lament over &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni's death, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>-<a href="#Page_314">314</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>solar character of the Epic, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>-<a href="#Page_322">322</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>J.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indjabal" id="indjabal">Jabal</a> and Jubal, sons of Lamech, descendants of Cain, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Japhet, third son of Noah, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Javan, a son of Japhet, eponymous ancestor of the Ionian Greeks, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>"Jonah's Mound," see <a href="#indnebbiyunus">Nebbi-Yunus.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Jubal, see <a href="#indjabal">Jabal and Jubal.</a></p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>K.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Ka-Dingirra, see <a href="#indcadimirra">Ca-Dimirra.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span>Kar-Dunyash, see <a href="#indgandunyash">Gan-Dunyash.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Kasbu, the Chaldean double hour, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Kasr, Mound of, ruins of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indkasshi" id="indkasshi">Kasshi</a> (Coss&aelig;ans or Cissians), conquer Chaldea, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indkerbela" id="indkerbela">Kerbela</a> and Nedjif, goal of pilgrim-caravans from Persia, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Kerubim, see <a href="#indkirubu">Kir&ucirc;bu.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indkhorsabad" id="indkhorsabad">Khorsabad</a>, Mound of, Botta's excavations and brilliant discovery at, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>-<a href="#Page_16">16</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Khudur-Lagamar (Chedorlaomer), king of Elam and Chaldea, his conquests, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>plunders Sodom and Gomorrah with his allies, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>is overtaken by Abraham and routed, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his probable date, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Khudur-Nankhundi, king of Elam, invades Chaldea and carries the statue of the goddess Nana away from Erech, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Khumbaba, the Elamite tyrant of Erech vanquished by Izdubar and &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indkirubu" id="indkirubu">Kir&ucirc;bu</a>, name of the Winged Bulls, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Koyunjik, Mound of Xenophon's Mespila, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Botta's unsuccessful exploration of, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>valuable find of small articles in a chamber at, in the palace of Sennacherib, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Kurds, nomadic tribes of, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>L.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Lamech, fifth descendant of Cain, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Larissa, ruins of ancient Calah, seen by Xenophon, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indlarsam" id="indlarsam">Larsam</a> (now Senkereh), city of Shumir, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Layard meets Botta at Mossul in 1842, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>undertakes the exploration of Nimrud, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>-<a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his work and life in the East, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>-<a href="#Page_32">32</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>discovers the Royal Library at Nineveh (Koyunjik), <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Lebanon Mountains, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Lenormant, Fran&ccedil;ois, eminent French Orientalist; his work on the religion of the Shumiro-Accads, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>-<a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>favors the Cushite theory, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Library of Asshurbanipal in his palace at Nineveh (Koyunjik); discovered by Layard, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>re-opened by George Smith, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>contents and importance of, for modern scholarship, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>-<a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>of Erech, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Loftus, English explorer; his visit to Warka in 1854-5, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>-<a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>procures slipper-shaped coffins for the British Museum, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Louvre, Assyrian Collection at the, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>"Sarzec collection" added, <a href="#Page_90">89</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Louvre, Armenian contrivance for lighting houses, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>M.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Madai, a son of Japhet, eponymous ancestor of the Medes, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Magician, derivation of the word, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Marad, ancient city of Chaldea, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indmarduk" id="indmarduk">Marduk</a>, or Maruduk (Hebrew Merodach), god of the planet Jupiter, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the "twelve great gods," <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>special patron of Babylon, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Maskim, the seven, evil spirits, <a href="#Page_154">154</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>incantation against the, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>the same, poetical version, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Maspero, G., eminent French Orientalist, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Medes, Xenophon's erroneous account of, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>-<a href="#Page_4">4</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>mentioned under the name of Madai in Genesis X., <a href="#Page_135">135</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Media, divided from Assyria by the Zagros chain, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span>M&eacute;nant, Joachim, French Assyriologist; his little book on the Royal Library at Nineveh, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Meridug, son of &Ecirc;a, the Mediator, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his dialogues with &Ecirc;a, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>-<a href="#Page_162">162</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Mermer, see <a href="#indim">Im.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Merodach, see <a href="#indmarduk">Marduk.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Mesopotamia, meaning of the name, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>peculiar formation of, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>division of, into Upper and Lower, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Mespila, ruins of Nineveh; seen by Xenophon, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>now Mound of Koyunjik, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Migrations of tribes, nations, races;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>probable first causes of prehistoric migrations, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>caused by invasions and conquests, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>of the Turanian races, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>-<a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>of the Cushites, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>of the Canaanites, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Mizraim ("the Egyptians"), a son of Ham, eponymous ancestor of the Egyptians, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>opposed to Cush, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Monosyllabic languages&mdash;Chinese, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>-<a href="#Page_137">137</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Monotheism, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_238">238</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>as conceived by the Hebrews, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>-<a href="#Page_345">345</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Mosul, the residence of a Turkish Pasha; origin of the name, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>the wicked Pasha of, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>-<a href="#Page_23">23</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Mound-Builders, their tombs, <a href="#Page_335">335</a>-<a href="#Page_338">338</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Mounds, their appearance, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>-<a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their contents, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>formation of, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their usefulness in protecting the ruins and works of art, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>sepulchral mounds at Warka, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>-<a href="#Page_88">87</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Mugheir, see <a href="#indur">Ur.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Mul-ge, "Lord of the Abyss," <a href="#Page_154">154</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indmummutiamat" id="indmummutiamat">Mummu-Tiamat</a> (the "Billowy Sea"), <a href="#Page_264">264</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>her hostility to the gods, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>her fight with Bel, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>-<a href="#Page_290">290</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Mythology, definition of, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>distinction from Religion, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>-<a href="#Page_334">334</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indmyths" id="indmyths">Myths</a>, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Cosmogonic, <a href="#Page_294">294</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Heroic, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>-<a href="#Page_298">298</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Solar, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>-<a href="#Page_340">340</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Chthonic, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>-<a href="#Page_341">341</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>N.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nabonidus, last king of Babylon, discovers Naram-sin's cylinder, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>discovers Hammurabi's cylinder at Larsam, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>-<a href="#Page_219">219</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Namtar, the Demon of Pestilence, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>incantation against, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Minister of Allat, Queen of the Dead, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nana, Chaldean goddess, her statue restored by Asshurbanipal, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>-<a href="#Page_344">344</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>wife of Anu, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nannar, see <a href="#induruki">Uru-Ki.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Naram-Sin, son of Sargon I. of Agad&ecirc;;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his cylinder discovered by Nabonidus, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nations, gradual formation of, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>-<a href="#Page_126">126</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indnebbiyunus" id="indnebbiyunus">Nebbi-Yunus</a>, Mound of, its sacredness, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>its size, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nebo, or Nabu, the god of the planet Mercury, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the "twelve great gods," <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his palace, now Mound of Kasr, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his inscription of Borsippa, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nedjif, see <a href="#indkerbela">Kerbela.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nergal, the god of the planet Mars, and of War, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the "twelve great gods," <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Niffer, see <a href="#indnippur">Nippur.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nimrod, dams on the Euphrates attributed to, by the Arabs, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his name preserved, and many ruins called by it, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>gigantic head declared by the Arabs to be the head of, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>-<a href="#Page_24">24</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nimrud, Mound of, Layard undertakes the exploration of, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nin-dar, the nightly sun, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nineveh, greatness and utter destruction of, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span>ruins of, seen by Xenophon, called by him Mespila, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>site of, opposite Mossul, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nin-ge, see <a href="#indninkigal">Nin-k&icirc;-gal.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nin&icirc;b, or Nin&ecirc;b, the god of the planet Saturn, <a href="#Page_241">241</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the "twelve great gods," <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indninkigal" id="indninkigal">Nin-k&icirc;-gal</a>, or Nin-ge, "the Lady of the Abyss," <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indnippur" id="indnippur">Nippur</a> (now Niffer), city of Accad, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nizir, Mount, the mountain on which H&acirc;sisadra's ship stood still, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>land and Mount, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Noah and his three sons, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nod, land of ("Land of Exile," or "of Wanderings"), <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Nomads, meaning of the word, and causes of nomadic life in modern times, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>O.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Oannes, legend of, told by Berosus, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Oasis, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>P.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Palaces, their imposing aspect, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>palace of Sennacherib restored by Fergusson, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>ornamentation of palaces, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>winged Bulls and Lions at gateways of, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>sculptured slabs along the walls of, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>-<a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>painted tiles used for the friezes of, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>-<a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>proportions of halls, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>roofing of, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>-<a href="#Page_66">66</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>lighting of, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>-<a href="#Page_68">68</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Papyrus, ancient writing material, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Paradise, Chaldean legend of, see , <a href="#indsacredtree">Sacred Tree</a> and <a href="#indziggurat">Ziggurat.</a></p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Parallel between the Book of Genesis and the Chaldean legends, <a href="#Page_350">350</a>-<a href="#Page_360">360</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Pastoral life, second stage of culture, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>necessarily nomadic, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Patesis, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>first form of royalty in Chaldean cities, ib., <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Patriarchal authority, first form of government, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>the tribe, or enlarged family, first form of the State, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Penitential Psalms, Chaldean, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>-<a href="#Page_179">179</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Persian Gulf, flatness and marshiness of the region around, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>reached further inland than now, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Persians, rule in Asia, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>the war between two royal brothers, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Persian monarchy conquered by Alexander, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>not named in Genesis X., <a href="#Page_134">134</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Platforms, artificial, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>-<a href="#Page_49">49</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Polytheism, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>tendency to, of the Hebrews, combated by their leaders, <a href="#Page_345">345</a>-<a href="#Page_350">350</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Priesthood, Chaldean, causes of its power and influence, <a href="#Page_233">233</a>-<a href="#Page_234">234</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>R.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Races, Nations, and Tribes represented in antiquity under the name of a man, an ancestor, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>-<a href="#Page_134">134</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>black race and yellow race omitted from the list in Genesis X., <a href="#Page_134">134</a>-<a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>probable reasons for the omission, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Ram&acirc;n, third god of the second Babylonian Triad, his attributions, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>-<a href="#Page_241">241</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the "twelve great gods," <a href="#Page_246">246</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Rassam, Hormuzd, explorer, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Rawlinson, Sir Henry, his work at the British Museum, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Religion of the Shumiro-Accads the most primitive in the world, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>characteristics of Turanian religions, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>definition of, as distinguished from Mythology, <a href="#Page_331">331</a>-<a href="#Page_334">334</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span>Religiosity, distinctively human characteristic, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>its awakening and development, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>-<a href="#Page_152">152</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Rich, the first explorer, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his disappointment at Mossul, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>S.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Sabattuv, the Babylonian and Assyrian "Sabbath," <a href="#Page_256">256</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Sabeism, the worship of the heavenly bodies,</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>a Semitic form of religion, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>fostered by a pastoral and nomadic life, ib.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Sabitu, one of the maidens in the magic grove, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indsacredtree" id="indsacredtree">Sacred Tree</a>, sacredness of the Symbol, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>its conventional appearance on sculptures and cylinders, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>-<a href="#Page_270">270</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>its signification, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>-<a href="#Page_274">274</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>its connection with the legend of Paradise, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>-<a href="#Page_276">276</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Sargon of Agad&ecirc;, see <a href="#indsharrukin">Sharrukin.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Sarzec, E. de, French explorer;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his great find at Tell-Loh, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>statues found by him, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Scorpion-men, the Warders of the Sun, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Schrader, Eberhard, eminent Assyriologist, favors the Semitic theory, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Semites (more correctly Shemites),</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the three great races given in Genesis X.;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>named from its eponymous ancestor, Shem, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Semitic language, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>culture, the beginning of historical times in Chaldea, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Sennacherib, king of Assyria, his palace at Koyunjik, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Fergusson's restoration of his palace, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his "Will" in the library of Nineveh, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Senkereh, see <a href="#indlarsam">Larsam.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Sepharvaim, see <a href="#indsippar">Sippar.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Seth (more correctly Sheth), third son of Adam, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Shamash, the Sun-god, second god of the Second Babylonian Triad, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the "twelve great gods," <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his temple at Sippar discovered by H. Rassam, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Shamhatu ("Grace"), one of the handmaidens of Ishtar, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indsharrukin" id="indsharrukin">Sharrukin</a> I. of Agad&ecirc; (Sargon I.), <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>legend about his birth, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his glorious reign, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Sharrukin II. of Agad&ecirc; (Sargon II.), <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his religious reform and literary labors, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>, <a href="#Page_208">208</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>probable founder of the library at Erech, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>date of, lately discovered, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Shem, eldest son of Noah, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>meaning of the name, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Shinar, or Shine&acirc;r, geographical position of, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Shumir, Southern or Lower Chaldea, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Shumir and Accad, oldest name for Chaldea, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indshumiroaccadian" id="indshumiroaccadian">Shumiro-Accadian</a>, oldest language of Chaldea, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Agglutinative, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indshumiroaccads" id="indshumiroaccads">Shumiro-Accads</a>, oldest population of Chaldea, of Turanian race, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their language agglutinative, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>introduce into Chaldea cuneiform writing, metallurgy and irrigation, ib.;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their probable migration, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their theory of the world, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Shushan (Susa), capital of Elam, destroyed by Asshurbanipal, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Siddim, battle in the veil of, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Sidon, a Ph&oelig;nician city, meaning of the name, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>the "first-born" son of Canaan, eponymous ancestor of the city in Genesis X., ib.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Siduri, one of the maidens in the magic grove, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Sin, the Moon-god, first god of the Second Babylonian Triad, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the "twelve great gods," <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>attacked by the seven rebellious spirits, <a href="#Page_292">291</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>Sin-Muballit, see <a href='#indamarpal'>Amarpal.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indsippar" id="indsippar">Sippar</a>, sister city of Agad&ecirc;, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Temple of Shamash at, excavated by H. Rassam, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indsirburla" id="indsirburla">Sir-burla</a> (also Sir-gulla, or Sir-tella, or Zirbab), ancient city of Chaldea, now Mound of Tell-Loh; discoveries at, by Sarzec, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>-<a href="#Page_90">90</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Sir-gulla, see <a href="#indsirburla">Sir-burla.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Smith, George, English explorer; his work at the British Museum, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his expeditions to Nineveh, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his success, and his death, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his discovery of the Deluge Tablets, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Sorcerers believed in, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Spirits, belief in good and evil, the first beginning of religion, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>elementary, in the primitive Shumiro-Accadian religion, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>-<a href="#Page_155">155</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>evil, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>-<a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>allowed an inferior place in the later reformed religion, <a href="#Page_236">236</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>rebellion of the seven evil, their attack against the Moon-god, <a href="#Page_290">290</a>, <a href="#Page_292">291</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Statues found at Tell-Loh, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Style, ancient writing instrument, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Synchronism, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>T.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Tablets, in baked or unbaked clay, used as books, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their shapes and sizes, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>mode of writing on, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>-<a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>baking of, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>great numbers of, deposited in the British Museum, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>-<a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Chaldean tablets in clay cases, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>tablets found under the foundation stone at Khorsabad, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>"Shamash tablet," <a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Talismans, worn on the person or placed in buildings, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Tammuz, see <a href="#inddumuzi">Dumuzi.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Taurus Mountains, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Tell-Loh (also Tello), see <a href="#indsirburla">Sir-burla.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Temples of &Ecirc;a and Meridug at Eridhu, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>of the Moon-god at Ur, ib.;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>of Anu and Nana at Erech, ib.;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>of Shamash and Anunit at Sippar and Agad&ecirc;, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>of Bel Maruduk at Babylon and Borsippa, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Theocracy, meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Tiamat, see <a href="#indmummutiamat">Mummu-Tiamat.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Tin-tir-ki, oldest name of Babylon, meaning of the name, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Triads in Babylonian religion, and meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>-<a href="#Page_240">240</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Tubalcain, son of Lamech, descendant of Cain, the inventor of metallurgy, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Turanians, collective name for the whole Yellow Race, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>origin of the name, ib.;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>the limitations of their genius, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>-<a href="#Page_139">139</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their imperfect forms of speech, monosyllabic and agglutinative, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>"the oldest of men," <a href="#Page_137">137</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>everywhere precede the white races, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>omitted in Genesis X., <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>possibly represent the discarded Cainites or posterity of Cain, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>-<a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their tradition of a Paradise in the Alta&iuml;, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>characteristics of Turanian religions, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>-<a href="#Page_181">181</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Turks, their misrule in Mesopotamia, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>-<a href="#Page_6">6</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>greed and oppressiveness of their officials, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>-<a href="#Page_8">8</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>one of the principal modern representatives of the Turanian race, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>U.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Ubaratutu, father of H&acirc;sisadra, <a href="#Page_322">322</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indud" id="indud">Ud</a>, or Babbar, the midday Sun, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>hymns to, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>temple of, at Sippar, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>-<a href="#Page_248">248</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Uddusunamir, phantom created by &Ecirc;a, and sent to Allat, to rescue Ishtar, <a href="#Page_328">328</a>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indur" id="indur">Ur</a> (Mound of Mugheir), construction of its platform, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>earliest known capital of Shumir, maritime and commercial, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Terah and Abraham go forth from, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Ur-&ecirc;a, king of Ur, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his buildings, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>-<a href="#Page_218">218</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>his signet cylinder, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Urub&ecirc;l, the ferryman on the Waters of Death, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>purifies Izdubar and returns with him to Erech, <a href="#Page_313">313</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Urukh, see <a href="#inderech">Erech.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="induruki" id="induruki">Uru-ki</a>, or Nannar, the Shumiro-Accadian Moon-god, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>V.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Vaults, of drains, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>sepulchral, at Warka, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>W.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Warka, see <a href="#inderech">Erech.</a></p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>X.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Xenophon leads the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>passes by the runs of Calah and Nineveh, which he calls Larissa and Mespila, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Xisuthros, the king of, Berosus' Deluge-narrative, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>.</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>See <a href="#indhasisadra">H&acirc;sisadra.</a></p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>Y.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Yahveh, the correct form of "Jehovah," one of the Hebrew names for God, <a href="#Page_354">354</a>.</p>
+
+
+<p class='indletter'>Z.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Zab, river, tributary of the Tigris, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Zagros, mountain range of, divides Assyria from Media, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>stone quarried in, and transported down the Zab, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_50">51</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Zaidu, the huntsman, sent to &Ecirc;ab&acirc;ni, <a href="#Page_305">305</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Zi-ana, see <a href="#indana">Ana.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'><a name="indziggurat" id="indziggurat">Ziggurats</a>, their peculiar shape and uses, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>used as observatories attached to temples, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>meaning of the word, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their connection with the legend of Paradise, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>-<a href="#Page_280">280</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>their singular orientation and its causes, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>-<a href="#Page_286">286</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>Ziggurat of Birs-Nimrud (Borsippa), <a href="#Page_280">280</a>-<a href="#Page_283">283</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>identified with the Tower of Babel, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>.</p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Zi-k&icirc;-a, see <a href="#indea">&Ecirc;a.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Zirlab, see <a href="#indsirburla">Sir-burla.</a></p>
+
+<p class='indhead'>Zodiac, twelve signs of, familiar to the Chaldeans, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>signs of, established by Anu, <a href="#Page_265">265</a>;</p>
+<p class='inddetail'>represented in the twelve books of the Izdubar Epic, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>-<a href="#Page_321">321</a>.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 162px;">
+<img src="images/deco404.png" width="162" height="34" alt="Decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h3>TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES</h3>
+
+<p>Page vii Introduction Chapter 4: Corrected to start at page 94</p>
+
+<p>Pages ix, 92, 93, 214, 215, Illustrations 44, 59: Sirgulla standardised to Sir-gulla</p>
+
+<p>Page xi: Contents Chapter VIII: Added § marker for section 12</p>
+
+<p>Page xiii: Full-stop (period) added after sittliche Weltordnung</p>
+
+<p>Pages xiii-xv Principal works: Normalised small caps in author names</p>
+
+<p>Page xiv: Menant standardised to Ménant</p>
+
+<p>Page 36: Throughly corrected to thoroughly</p>
+
+<p>Illustration 9: Chippiez standardised to Chipiez</p>
+
+<p>Page 60: head-dress standardised to headdress</p>
+
+<p>Page 64: gate-ways standardised to gateways</p>
+
+<p>Page 68: Sufficent corrected to sufficient</p>
+
+<p>Illustration 33: Full stop (period) added to caption after louvre</p>
+
+<p>Page 104: life-time standardised to lifetime</p>
+
+<p>Page 105: Bibliothéque standardised to Bibliothèque</p>
+
+<p>Page 116: Double-quote added before ... In this</p>
+
+<p>Page 126: new-comers standardised to newcomers</p>
+
+<p>Pages 131, 375: Japheth standardised to Japhet</p>
+
+<p>Pages 147, 196, 371: Altai standardised as Altaï</p>
+
+<p>Pages 154, 397, 404: Zi-ki-a standardised as Zi-kî-a</p>
+
+<p>Page 154: Anunna-ki standardised to Anunnaki</p>
+
+<p>Page 157: Uru-gal standardised as Urugal</p>
+
+<p>Page 157: 'who may the rather' rendered as 'who may then rather'</p>
+
+<p>Page 160: Meri-dug standardised to Meridug</p>
+
+<p>Page 163: Apostrophe added to patients</p>
+
+<p>Page 172: Mulge standardised to Mul-ge</p>
+
+<p>Page 210: Hyphen added to countercurrent</p>
+
+<p>Pages 214, 215, 375 Illustration 59: Sirburla standardised as Sir-burla</p>
+
+<p>Page 218: Dovoted corrected to devoted</p>
+
+<p>Pages 221, 360, 379: Shinear standardised to Shineâr</p>
+
+<p>Page 225: Kadimirra standardised to Ka-dimirra</p>
+
+<p>Page 228: Cossaeans standardised to Cossæans</p>
+
+<p>Footnote AN: Ur-ea as in original (not standardised to Ur-êa)</p>
+
+<p>Page 234: Full-stop (period) removed after "from the North"</p>
+
+<p>Page 234: Italics removed from i.e. to conform with other usages</p>
+
+<p>Pages 241, 246: Nindar standardised to Nin-dar</p>
+
+<p>Page 249: Babilu standardised to Bab-ilu</p>
+
+<p>Page 254: Double quote added after For instance:--</p>
+
+<p>Footnote AT: Asshurbanipal standardised to Assurbanipal</p>
+
+<p>Illustration 70: Illustration number added to illustration</p>
+
+<p>Page 297: border-land standardised to borderland</p>
+
+<p>Page 302: Double quote added at the end of paragraph 6</p>
+
+<p>Illustration 77: EABANI'S replaced with ÊABÂNI'S</p>
+
+<p>Page 323: death-like standardised to deathlike</p>
+
+<p>Footnote BE: Sündflutbericht standardised to Sündfluthbericht.
+Note that the correct modern form is Der keilinschriftliche Sintfluthbericht</p>
+
+<p>Page 372: Asshurnazirpal standardised to Asshur-nazir-pal</p>
+
+<p>Page 372: Bab-el-Mander standardised to Bab-el-Mandeb</p>
+
+<p>Page 374: Arioch standardised to Ariokh</p>
+
+<p>Page 374: Abu-Shahreiin standardised to Abu-Shahrein</p>
+
+<p>Page 375: Himalaya standardised to Himâlaya</p>
+
+<p>Page 376: Page number 42 added for index entry Kasr</p>
+
+<p>Page 379: Page number 131 added for index entry Seth</p>
+
+<p>General: Inconsistent spelling of Mosul/Mossul retained</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Chaldea, by Zénaïde A. Ragozin
+
+
+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: Chaldea
+       From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria
+
+
+Author: Zénaïde A. Ragozin
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 20, 2008  [eBook #24654]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHALDEA***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Thierry Alberto, Brownfox, and the Project Gutenberg
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Sec.Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+      See 24654-h.htm or 24654-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/5/24654/24654-h/24654-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/6/5/24654/24654-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+CHALDEA
+
+From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria
+
+(Treated As a General Introduction to the Study of Ancient History)
+
+by
+
+ZENAIDE A. RAGOZIN
+
+Member of the "Societe Ethnologique" of Paris; of the "American
+Oriental Society"; Corresponding Member of the "Athenee
+Oriental" of Paris; Author of "Assyria," "Media," Etc.
+
+"He (Carlyle) says it is part of his creed that history is
+poetry, could we tell it right."--EMERSON.
+
+Fourth Edition
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: SHAMASH THE SUN-GOD. (From the Sun Temple at Sippar.)]
+
+
+
+London
+T. Fisher Unwin
+Paternoster Square
+
+New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons
+
+MDCCCXCIII
+
+
+
+
+                          TO THE MEMBERS OF
+
+                              THE CLASS,
+
+         IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF MANY HAPPY HOURS, THIS
+         VOLUME AND THE FOLLOWING ONES ARE AFFECTIONATELY
+                      INSCRIBED BY THEIR FRIEND.
+
+                                                     THE AUTHOR.
+
+         IDLEWILD PLANTATION,
+         SAN ANTONIO,
+
+
+
+
+                        CLASSIFIED CONTENTS.
+
+                           INTRODUCTION.
+
+
+                                I.
+                                                             PAGE
+MESOPOTAMIA.--THE MOUNDS.--THE FIRST SEARCHERS               1-18
+
+     Sec. 1. Complete destruction of Nineveh.--Secs. 2-4. Xenophon and
+     the "Retreat of the Ten Thousand." The Greeks pass the ruins of
+     Calah and Nineveh, and know them not.--Sec. 5. Alexander's passage
+     through Mesopotamia.--Sec. 6. The Arab invasion and rule.--Sec. 7.
+     Turkish rule and mismanagement.--Sec. 8. Peculiar natural
+     conditions of Mesopotamia.--Sec. 9. Actual desolate state of the
+     country.--Sec. 10. The plains studded with Mounds. Their curious
+     aspect.--Sec. 11. Fragments of works of art amidst the
+     rubbish.--Sec. 12. Indifference and superstition of the Turks and
+     Arabs.--Sec. 13. Exclusive absorption of European scholars in
+     Classical Antiquity.--Sec. 14. Forbidding aspect of the Mounds,
+     compared with other ruins.--Sec. 15. Rich, the first explorer.--Sec.
+     16. Botta's work and want of success.--Sec. 17. Botta's great
+     discovery.--Sec. 18. Great sensation created by it.--Sec. 19.
+     Layard's first expedition.
+
+                               II.
+
+LAYARD AND HIS WORK                                         19-35
+
+     Sec. 1. Layard's arrival at Nimrud. His excitement and
+     dreams.--Sec. 2. Beginning of difficulties. The Ogre-like Pasha of
+     Mossul.--Sec. 3. Opposition from the Pasha. His malice and
+     cunning.--Sec. 4. Discovery of the gigantic head. Fright of the
+     Arabs, who declare it to be Nimrod.--Sec. 5. Strange ideas of the
+     Arabs about the sculptures.--Sec. 6. Layard's life in the
+     desert.--Sec. 7. Terrible heat of summer.--Sec. 8. Sand-storms and
+     hot hurricanes.--Sec. 9. Layard's wretched dwelling.--Sec. 10.
+     Unsuccessful attempts at improvement.--Sec. 11. In what the task
+     of the explorer consists.--Sec. 12. Different modes of carrying on
+     the work of excavation.
+
+                               III.
+
+THE RUINS                                                   36-93
+
+     Sec. 1. Every country's culture and art determined by its
+     geographical conditions.--Sec. 2. Chaldea's absolute deficiency in
+     wood and stone.--Sec. 3. Great abundance of mud fit for the
+     fabrication of bricks; hence the peculiar architecture of
+     Mesopotamia. Ancient ruins still used as quarries of bricks for
+     building. Trade of ancient bricks at Hillah.--Sec. 4. Various
+     cements used.--Sec. 5. Construction of artificial platforms.--Sec. 6.
+     Ruins of Ziggurats; peculiar shape, and uses of this sort of
+     buildings.--Sec. 7. Figures showing the immense amount of labor
+     used on these constructions.--Sec. 8. Chaldean architecture
+     adopted unchanged by the Assyrians.--Sec. 9. Stone used for
+     ornament and casing of walls. Water transport in old and modern
+     times.--Sec. 10. Imposing aspect of the palaces.--Sec. 11.
+     Restoration of Sennacherib's palace by Fergusson.--Sec. 12.
+     Pavements of palace halls.--Sec. 13. Gateways and sculptured slabs
+     along the walls. Friezes in painted tiles.--Sec. 14. Proportions
+     of palace halls and roofing.--Sec. 15. Lighting of halls.--Sec. 16.
+     Causes of the kings' passion for building.--Sec. 17. Drainage of
+     palaces and platforms.--Sec. 18. Modes of destruction.--Sec. 19. The
+     Mounds a protection to the ruins they contain. Refilling the
+     excavations.--Sec. 20. Absence of ancient tombs in Assyria.--Sec. 21.
+     Abundance and vastness of cemeteries in Chaldea.--Sec. 22. Warka
+     (Erech) the great Necropolis. Loftus' description.--Sec. 23.
+     "Jar-coffins."--Sec. 24. "Dish-cover" coffins.--Sec. 25. Sepulchral
+     vaults.--Sec. 26. "Slipper-shaped" coffins.--Sec. 27. Drainage of
+     sepulchral mounds.--Sec. 28. Decoration of walls in painted
+     clay-cones.--Sec. 29. De Sarzec's discoveries at Tell-Loh.
+
+                               IV.
+
+THE BOOK OF THE PAST.--THE LIBRARY OF NINEVEH              94-115
+
+     Sec. 1. Object of making books.--Sec. 2. Books not always of
+     paper.--Sec. 3. Universal craving for an immortal name.--Sec. 4.
+     Insufficiency of records on various writing materials.
+     Universal longing for knowledge of the remotest past.--Sec. 5.
+     Monumental records.--Sec. 6. Ruins of palaces and temples, tombs
+     and caves--the Book of the Past.--Secs. 7-8. Discovery by Layard
+     of the Royal Library at Nineveh.--Sec. 9. George Smith's work at
+     the British Museum.--Sec. 10. His expeditions to Nineveh, his
+     success and death.--Sec. 11. Value of the Library.--Secs. 12-13.
+     Contents of the Library.--Sec. 14. The Tablets.--Sec. 15. The
+     cylinders and foundation-tablets.
+
+
+                             CHALDEA.
+
+                                I.
+
+NOMADS AND SETTLERS.--THE FOUR STAGES OF CULTURE.         116-126
+
+     Sec. 1. Nomads.--Sec. 2. First migrations.--Sec. 3. Pastoral life--the
+     second stage.--Sec. 4. Agricultural life; beginnings of the
+     State.--Sec. 5. City-building; royalty.--Sec. 6. Successive
+     migrations and their causes.--Sec. 7. Formation of nations.
+
+                               II.
+
+THE GREAT RACES.--CHAPTER X. OF GENESIS                   127-142
+
+     Sec. 1. Shinar.--Sec. 2. Berosus.--Sec. 3. Who were the settlers in
+     Shinar?--Sec. 4. The Flood probably not universal.--Secs. 5-6. The
+     blessed race and the accursed, according to Genesis.--Sec. 7.
+     Genealogical form of Chap. X. of Genesis.--Sec. 8. Eponyms.--Sec. 9.
+     Omission of some white races from Chap. X.--Sec. 10. Omission of
+     the Black Race.--Sec. 11. Omission of the Yellow Race.
+     Characteristics of the Turanians.--Sec. 12. The Chinese.--Sec. 13.
+     Who were the Turanians? What became of the Cainites?--Sec. 14.
+     Possible identity of both.--Sec. 15. The settlers in
+     Shinar--Turanians.
+
+                               III.
+
+TURANIAN CHALDEA--SHUMIR AND ACCAD.--THE BEGINNINGS OF
+RELIGION                                                  146-181
+
+     Sec. 1. Shumir and Accad.--Sec. 2. Language and name.--Sec. 3.
+     Turanian migrations and traditions.--Sec. 4. Collection of sacred
+     texts.--Sec. 5. "Religiosity"--a distinctively human characteristic.
+     Its first promptings and manifestations.--Sec. 6. The Magic Collection
+     and the work of Fr. Lenormant.--Sec. 7. The Shumiro-Accads' theory
+     of the world, and their elementary spirits.--Sec. 8. The
+     incantation of the Seven Maskim.--Sec. 9. The evil spirits.--Sec. 10.
+     The Arali.--Sec. 11. The sorcerers.--Sec. 12. Conjuring and
+     conjurers.--Sec. 13. The beneficent Spirits, Ea.--Sec. 14.
+     Meridug.--Sec. 15. A charm against an evil spell.--Sec. 16. Diseases
+     considered as evil demons.--Sec. 17. Talismans. _The
+     Kerubim._--Sec. 18. More talismans.--Sec. 19. The demon of the
+     South-West Wind.--Sec. 20. The first gods.--Sec. 21. _Ud_, the
+     Sun.--Sec. 22. _Nin dar_, the nightly Sun.--Sec. 23. _Gibil_,
+     Fire.--Sec. 24. Dawn of moral consciousness.--Sec. 25. Man's
+     Conscience divinized.--Secs. 26-28. Penitential Psalms.--Sec. 29.
+     General character of Turanian religions.
+
+APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.                                  181-183
+
+     Professor L. Dyer's poetical version of the Incantation against
+     the Seven Maskim.
+
+                               IV.
+
+CUSHITES AND SEMITES--EARLY CHALDEAN HISTORY              184-228
+
+     Sec. 1. Oannes.--Sec. 2. Were the second settlers Cushites or
+     Semites?--Sec. 3. Cushite hypothesis. Earliest migrations.--Sec. 4.
+     The Ethiopians and the Egyptians.--Sec. 5. The Canaanites.--Sec. 6.
+     Possible Cushite station on the islets of the Persian
+     Gulf.--Sec. 7. Colonization of Chaldea possibly by Cushites.--Sec. 8.
+     Vagueness of very ancient chronology.--Sec. 9. Early dates.--Sec. 10.
+     Exorbitant figures of Berosus.--Sec. 11. Early Chaldea--a nursery
+     of nations.--Sec. 12. Nomadic Semitic tribes.--Sec. 13. The tribe of
+     Arphaxad.--Sec. 14. Ur of the Chaldees.--Sec. 15. Scholars divided
+     between the Cushite and Semitic theories.--Sec. 16. History
+     commences with Semitic culture.--Sec. 17. Priestly rule. The
+     _patesis_.--Secs. 18-19. Sharrukin I. (Sargon I) of Agade.--Secs.
+     20-21. The second Sargon's literary labors.--Secs. 22-23. Chaldean
+     folk-lore, maxims and songs.--Sec. 24. Discovery of the elder
+     Sargon's date--3800 B.C.--Sec. 25. Gudea of Sir-gulla and Ur-ea of
+     Ur.--Sec. 26. Predominance of Shumir. Ur-ea and his son Dungi
+     first kings of "Shumir and Accad."--Sec. 27. Their inscriptions
+     and buildings. The Elamite invasion.--Sec. 28. Elam.--Secs. 29-31.
+     Khudur-Lagamar and Abraham.--Sec. 32. Hardness of the Elamite
+     rule.--Sec. 33. Rise of Babylon.--Sec. 34. Hammurabi.--Sec. 35.
+     Invasion of the Kasshi.
+
+                                V.
+
+BABYLONIAN RELIGION                                       229-257
+
+     Sec. 1. Babylonian calendar.--Sec. 2. Astronomy conducive to
+     religious feeling.--Sec. 3. Sabeism.--Sec. 4. Priestcraft and
+     astrology.--Sec. 5. Transformation of the old religion.--Sec. 6.
+     Vague dawning of the monotheistic idea. Divine emanations.--Sec. 7.
+     The Supreme Triad.--Sec. 8. The Second Triad.--Sec. 9. The five
+     Planetary deities.--Secs. 10-11. Duality of nature. Masculine and
+     feminine principles. The goddesses.--Sec. 12. The twelve Great
+     Gods and their Temples.--Sec. 13. The temple of Shamash at Sippar
+     and Mr. Rassam's discovery.--Sec. 14. Survival of the old Turanian
+     superstitions.--Sec. 15. Divination, a branch of Chaldean
+     "Science."--Secs. 16-17. Collection of one hundred tablets on
+     divination. Specimens.--Sec. 18. The three classes of "wise men."
+     "Chaldeans," in later times, a by-word for "magician," and
+     "astrologer."--Sec. 19. Our inheritance from the Chaldeans: the
+     sun-dial, the week, the calendar, the Sabbath.
+
+                               VI.
+
+LEGENDS AND STORIES                                       258-293
+
+     Sec. 1. The Cosmogonies of different nations.--Sec. 2. The antiquity
+     of the Sacred Books of Babylonia.--Sec. 3. The legend of Oannes,
+     told by Berosus. Discovery, by Geo. Smith, of the Creation
+     Tablets and the Deluge Tablet.--Secs. 4-5. Chaldean account of the
+     Creation.--Sec. 6. The Cylinder with the human couple, tree and
+     serpent.--Sec. 7. Berosus' account of the creation.--Sec. 8. The
+     Sacred Tree. Sacredness of the Symbol.--Sec. 9. Signification of
+     the Tree-Symbol. The Cosmic Tree.--Sec. 10. Connection of the
+     Tree-Symbol and of Ziggurats with the legend of Paradise.--Sec. 11.
+     The Ziggurat of Borsippa.--Sec. 12. It is identified with the
+     Tower of Babel.--Secs. 13-14. Peculiar Orientation of the
+     Ziggurats.--Sec. 15. Traces of legends about a sacred grove or
+     garden.--Sec. 16. Mummu-Tiamat, the enemy of the gods. Battle of
+     Bel and Tiamat.--Sec. 17. The Rebellion of the seven evil spirits,
+     originally messengers of the gods.--Sec. 18. The great Tower and
+     the Confusion of Tongues.
+
+                               VII.
+
+MYTHS.--HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS                      294-330
+
+     Sec. 1. Definition of the word Myth.--Sec. 2. The Heroes.--Sec. 3. The
+     Heroic Ages and Heroic Myths. The National Epos.--Sec. 4. The
+     oldest known Epic.--Sec. 5. Berosus' account of the Flood.--Sec. 6.
+     Geo. Smith's discovery of the original Chaldean narrative.--Sec. 7.
+     The Epic divided into books or Tablets.--Sec. 8. Izdubar the
+     Hero of the Epic.--Sec. 9. Erech's humiliation under the Elamite
+     Conquest. Izdubar's dream.--Sec. 10. Eabani the Seer. Izdubar's
+     invitation and promises to him.--Sec. 11. Message sent to Eabani
+     by Ishtar's handmaidens. His arrival at Erech.--Sec. 12. Izdubar
+     and Eabani's victory over the tyrant Khumbaba.--Sec. 13. Ishtar's
+     love message. Her rejection and wrath. The two friends' victory
+     over the Bull sent by her.--Sec. 14. Ishtar's vengeance. Izdubar's
+     journey to the Mouth of the Rivers.--Sec. 15. Izdubar sails the
+     Waters of Death and is healed by his immortal ancestor
+     Hasisadra.--Sec. 16. Izdubar's return to Erech and lament over
+     Eabani. The seer is translated among the gods.--Sec. 17. The
+     Deluge narrative in the Eleventh Tablet of the Izdubar
+     Epic.--Secs. 18-21. Mythic and solar character of the Epic
+     analyzed.--Sec. 22. Sun-Myth of the Beautiful Youth, his early
+     death and resurrection.--Secs. 23-24. Dumuzi-Tammuz, the husband
+     of Ishtar. The festival of Dumuzi in June.--Sec. 25. Ishtar's
+     Descent to the Land of the Dead.--Sec. 26. Universality of the
+     Solar and Chthonic Myths.
+
+                              VIII.
+
+RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.--IDOLATRY AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM.--THE
+CHALDEAN LEGENDS AND THE BOOK OF GENESIS.--RETROSPECT     331-336
+
+     Sec. 1. Definition of Mythology and Religion, as distinct from
+     each other.--Secs. 2-3. Instances of pure religious feeling in the
+     poetry of Shumir and Accad.--Sec. 4. Religion often stifled by
+     Mythology.--Secs. 5-6. The conception of the immortality of the
+     soul suggested by the sun's career.--Sec. 7. This expressed in the
+     Solar and Chthonic Myths.--Sec. 8. Idolatry.--Sec. 9. The Hebrews,
+     originally polytheists and idolators, reclaimed by their
+     leaders to Monotheism.--Sec. 10. Their intercourse with the tribes
+     of Canaan conducive to relapses.--Sec. 11. Intermarriage severely
+     forbidden for this reason.--Sec. 12. Striking similarity between
+     the Book of Genesis and the ancient Chaldean legends.--Sec. 13.
+     Parallel between the two accounts of the creation.--Sec. 14.
+     Anthropomorphism, different from polytheism and idolatry, but
+     conducive to both.--Secs. 15-17. Parallel continued.--Secs. 18-19.
+     Retrospect.
+
+
+
+
+PRINCIPAL WORKS READ OR CONSULTED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS VOLUME.
+
+
+BAER, Wilhelm. DER VORGESCHICHTLICHE MENSCH. 1 vol., Leipzig: 1874.
+
+BAUDISSIN, W. von. STUDIEN ZUR SEMITISCHEN RELIGIONSGESCHICHTE. 2 vols.
+
+BUDGE, E. A. Wallis. BABYLONIAN LIFE AND HISTORY. ("Bypaths of Bible
+Knowledge" Series, V.) 1884. London: The Religious Tract Society. 1 vol.
+
+---- HISTORY OF ESARHADDON. 1 vol.
+
+BUNSEN, Chr. Carl Jos. GOTT IN DER GESCHICHTE, oder Der Fortschritt des
+Glaubens an eine sittliche Weltordnung. 3 vols. Leipzig: 1857.
+
+CASTREN, Alexander. KLEINERE SCHRIFTEN. St. Petersburg: 1862. 1 vol.
+
+CORY. ANCIENT FRAGMENTS. London: 1876. 1 vol.
+
+DELITZSCH, Dr. Friedrich. WO LAG DAS PARADIES? eine
+Biblisch-Assyriologische Studie. Leipzig: 1881. 1 vol.
+
+---- DIE SPRACHE DER KOSSAEER. Leipzig: 1885 (or 1884?). 1 vol.
+
+DUNCKER, Max. GESCHICHTE DES ALTERTHUMS. Leipzig: 1878. Vol. 1st.
+
+FERGUSSON, James. PALACES OF NINEVEH AND PERSEPOLIS RESTORED. 1 vol.
+
+HAPPEL, Julius. DIE ALTCHINESISCHE REICHSRELIGION, vom Standpunkte der
+Vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte. 46 pages, Leipzig: 1882.
+
+HAUPT, Paul. DER KEILINSCHRIFTLICHE SINTFLUTBERICHT, eine Episode des
+Babylonischen Nimrodepos. 36 pages. Goettingen: 1881.
+
+HOMMEL, Dr. Fritz. GESCHICHTE BABYLONIENS UND ASSYRIENS (first
+instalment, 160 pp., 1885; and second instalment, 160 pp., 1886).
+(Allgemeine Geschichte in einzelnen Darstellungen, Abtheilung 95 und
+117.)
+
+---- DIE VORSEMITISCHEN KULTUREN IN AEGYPTEN UND BABYLONIEN. Leipzig:
+1882 and 1883.
+
+LAYARD, Austen H. DISCOVERIES AMONG THE RUINS OF NINEVEH AND BABYLON.
+(American Edition.) New York: 1853. 1 vol.
+
+---- NINEVEH AND ITS REMAINS. London: 1849. 2 vols.
+
+LENORMANT, Francois. LES PREMIERES CIVILISATIONS. Etudes d'Histoire et
+d'Archeologie. 1874. Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie. 2 vols.
+
+---- LES ORIGINES DE L'HISTOIRE, d'apres la Bible et les Traditions des
+Peuples Orientaux. Paris: Maisonneuve et Cie. 3 vol. 1er vol. 1880; 2e
+vol. 1882; 3e vol. 1884.
+
+---- LA GENESE. Traduction d'apres l'Hebreu. Paris: 1883. 1 vol.
+
+---- DIE MAGIE UND WAHRSAGEKUNST DER CHALDAEER. Jena, 1878. 1 vol.
+
+---- IL MITO DI ADONE-TAMMUZ nei Documenti cuneiformi. 32 pages.
+Firenze: 1879.
+
+---- SUR LE NOM DE TAMMOUZ. (Extrait des Memoires du Congres
+international des Orientalistes.) 17 pages. Paris: 1873.
+
+---- A MANUAL OF THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST. Translated by E.
+Chevallier. American Edition. Philadelphia: 1871. 2 vols.
+
+LOFTUS. CHALDEA AND SUSIANA. 1 vol. London: 1857.
+
+LOTZ, Guilelmus. QUAESTIONES DE HISTORIA SABBATI. Lipsiae: 1883.
+
+MAURY, Alfred L. F. LA MAGIE ET L'ASTROLOGIE dans l'antiquite et en
+Moyen Age. Paris: 1877. 1 vol. Quatrieme edition.
+
+MASPERO, G. HISTOIRE ANCIENNE DES PEUPLES DE L'ORIENT. 3e edition, 1878.
+Paris: Hachette & Cie. 1 vol.
+
+MENANT, Joachim. LA BIBLIOTHEQUE DU PALAIS DE NINIVE. 1 vol.
+(Bibliotheque Orientale Elzevirienne.) Paris: 1880.
+
+MEYER, Eduard. GESCHICHTE DES ALTERTHUMS. Stuttgart: 1884. Vol. 1st.
+
+MUeLLER, Max. LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 2 vols. American
+edition. New York: 1875.
+
+MUeRDTER, F. KURZGEFASSTE GESCHICHTE BABYLONIENS UND ASSYRIENS, mit
+besonderer Beruecksichtigung des Alten Testaments. Mit Vorwort und
+Beigaben von Friedrich Delitzsch. Stuttgart: 1882. 1 vol.
+
+OPPERT, Jules. L'IMMORTALITE DE L'AME CHEZ LES CHALDEENS. 28 pages.
+(Extrait des Annales de Philosophie Chretienne, 1874.) Perrot et
+Chipiez.
+
+QUATREFAGES, A. de. L'ESPECE HUMAINE. Sixieme edition. 1 vol. Paris:
+1880.
+
+RAWLINSON, George. THE FIVE GREAT MONARCHIES OF THE ANCIENT EASTERN
+WORLD. London: 1865. 1st and 2d vols.
+
+RECORDS OF THE PAST. Published under the sanction of the Society of
+Biblical Archaeology. Volumes I. III. V. VII. IX. XI.
+
+SAYCE, A. H. FRESH LIGHT FROM ANCIENT MONUMENTS. ("By-Paths of Bible
+Knowledge" Series, II.) 3d edition, 1885. London: 1 vol.
+
+---- THE ANCIENT EMPIRES OF THE EAST. 1 vol. London, 1884.
+
+---- BABYLONIAN LITERATURE. 1 vol. London, 1884.
+
+SCHRADER, Eberhard. KEILINSCHRIFTEN und Geschichtsforschung. Giessen:
+1878. 1 vol.
+
+---- DIE KEILINSCHRIFTEN und das Alte Testament. Giessen: 1883. 1 vol.
+
+---- ISTAR'S HOELLENFAHRT. 1 vol. Giessen: 1874.
+
+---- ZUR FRAGE NACH DEM URSPRUNG DER ALTBABYLONISCHEN KULTUR. Berlin:
+1884.
+
+SMITH, George. ASSYRIA from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Nineveh.
+("Ancient History from the Monuments" Series.) London: 1 vol.
+
+TYLOR, Edward B. PRIMITIVE CULTURE. Second American Edition. 2 vols. New
+York: 1877.
+
+ZIMMERN, Heinrich. BABYLONISCHE BUSSPSALMEN, umschrieben, uebersetzt und
+erklaert. 17 pages, 4to. Leipzig: 1885.
+
+Numerous Essays by Sir Henry Rawlinson, Friedr. Delitzsch, E. Schrader
+and others, in Mr. Geo. Rawlinson's translation of Herodotus, in the
+Calwer Bibellexikon, and in various periodicals, such as "Proceedings"
+and "Transactions" of the "Society of Biblical Archaeology," "Jahrbuecher
+fuer Protestantische Theologie," "Zeitschrift fuer Keilschriftforschung,"
+"Gazette Archeologique," and others.
+
+
+
+
+                       LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+SHAMASH THE SUN-GOD.
+      _From a tablet in the British Museum._            _Frontispiece._
+1. CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS                      _Menant._              10
+2. TEMPLE OF EA AT ERIDHU                    _Hommel._              23
+3. VIEW OF EUPHRATES NEAR BABYLON            _Babelon._             31
+4. MOUND OF BABIL                            _Oppert._              33
+5. BRONZE DISH                               _Perrot and Chipiez._  35
+6. BRONZE DISH (RUG PATTERN)                 _Perrot and Chipiez._  37
+7. SECTION OF BRONZE DISH                    _Perrot and Chipiez._  39
+8. VIEW OF NEBBI-YUNUS                       _Babelon._             41
+9. BUILDING IN BAKED BRICK.                  _Perrot and Chipiez._  43
+10. MOUND OF NINEVEH                         _Hommel._              45
+11. MOUND OF MUGHEIR (ANCIENT UR)            _Taylor._              47
+12. TERRACE WALL AT KHORSABAD                _Perrot and Chipiez._  49
+13. RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS (ANCIENT)  _Kaulen._              51
+14. RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS (MODERN)   _Kaulen._              51
+15. EXCAVATIONS AT MUGHEIR (UR)              _Hommel._              53
+16. WARRIORS SWIMMING ON INFLATED SKINS      _Babelon._             55
+17. VIEW OF KOYUNJIK                         _Hommel._              57
+18. STONE LION AT ENTRANCE OF A TEMPLE       _Perrot and Chipiez._  59
+19. COURT OF HAREM AT KHORSABAD. RESTORED    _Perrot and Chipiez._  61
+20. CIRCULAR PILLAR BASE                     _Perrot and Chipiez._  63
+21. INTERIOR VIEW OF HAREM CHAMBER           _Perrot and Chipiez._  65
+22, 23. COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES    _Perrot and Chipiez._  67
+24. PAVEMENT SLAB                            _Perrot and Chipiez._  69
+25. SECTION OF ORNAMENTAL DOORWAY, KHORSABAD _Perrot and Chipiez._  71
+26. WINGED LION WITH HUMAN HEAD              _Perrot and Chipiez._  73
+27. WINGED BULL                              _Perrot and Chipiez._  75
+28. MAN-LION                                 _Perrot and Chipiez._  77
+29. FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK              _Perrot and Chipiez._  79
+30. RAM'S HEAD IN ALABASTER                  _British Museum._      81
+31. EBONY COMB                               _Perrot and Chipiez._  81
+32. BRONZE FORK AND SPOON                    _Perrot and Chipiez._  81
+33. ARMENIAN LOUVRE                          _Botta._               83
+34, 35. VAULTED DRAINS                       _Perrot and Chipiez._  84
+36. CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN                      _Taylor._              85
+37. "DISH-COVER" TOMB AT MUGHEIR             _Taylor._              87
+38. "DISH-COVER" TOMB                        _Taylor._              87
+39. SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR              _Taylor._              89
+40. STONE JARS FROM GRAVES                   _Hommel._              89
+41. DRAIN IN MOUND                           _Perrot and Chipiez._  90
+42. WALL WITH DESIGNS IN TERRA-COTTA         _Loftus._              91
+43. TERRA-COTTA CONE                         _Loftus._              91
+44. HEAD OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN                 _Perrot and Chipiez._ 101
+45. SAME, PROFILE VIEW                       _Perrot and Chipiez._ 101
+46. CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION                    _Perrot and Chipiez._ 107
+47. INSCRIBED CLAY TABLET                    _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 109
+48. CLAY TABLET IN ITS CASE                  _Hommel._             111
+49. ANTIQUE BRONZE SETTING OF CYLINDER       _Perrot and Chipiez._ 112
+50. CHALDEAN CYLINDER AND IMPRESSION         _Perrot and Chipiez._ 113
+51. ASSYRIAN CYLINDER                                              113
+52. PRISM OF SENNACHERIB                     _British Museum._     115
+53. INSCRIBED CYLINDER FROM BORSIP           _Menant._             117
+54. DEMONS FIGHTING                          _British Museum._     165
+55. DEMON OF THE SOUTH-WEST WIND             _Perrot and Chipiez._ 169
+56. HEAD OF DEMON                            _British Museum._     170
+57. OANNES                                   _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 187
+58. CYLINDER OF SARGON FROM AGADE            _Hommel._             207
+59. STATUE OF GUDEA                          _Hommel._             217
+60. BUST INSCRIBED WITH NAME OF NEBO         _British Museum._     243
+61. BACK OF TABLET WITH ACCOUNT OF FLOOD     _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 262
+62. BABYLONIAN CYLINDER                      _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 266
+63. FEMALE WINGED FIGURES AND SACRED TREES   _British Museum._     269
+64. WINGED SPIRITS BEFORE SACRED TREE        _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 270
+65. SARGON OF ASSYRIA BEFORE SACRED TREE     _Perrot and Chipiez._ 271
+66. EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE BEFORE SACRED TREE   _Perrot and Chipiez._ 273
+67. FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIGURE
+                        BEFORE SACRED TREE   _Perrot and Chipiez._ 275
+68. TEMPLE AND HANGING GARDENS AT KOYUNJIK   _British Museum._     277
+69. PLAN OF A ZIGGURAT                       _Perrot and Chipiez._ 278
+70. "ZIGGURAT" RESTORED                      _Perrot and Chipiez._ 279
+71. BIRS-NIMRUD                              _Perrot and Chipiez._ 281
+72, 73. BEL FIGHTS DRAGON                    _Perrot and Chipiez._ 289
+74. BATTLE BETWEEN BEL AND DRAGON            _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 291
+75. IZDUBAR AND LION                         _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 306
+76. IZDUBAR AND LION                         _British Museum._     307
+77. IZDUBAR AND EABANI                       _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 309
+78. IZDUBAR AND LION                         _Perrot and Chipiez._ 310
+79. SCORPION-MAN                             _Smith's Chald. Gen._ 311
+80. STONE OBJECT FOUND AT ABU-HABBA                                312
+
+[Illustration: THE COUNTRIES ABOUT CHALDEA.]
+
+
+
+
+                             INTRODUCTION.
+
+                                   I.
+
+            MESOPOTAMIA.--THE MOUNDS.--THE FIRST SEARCHERS.
+
+
+1. In or about the year before Christ 606, Nineveh, the great city, was
+destroyed. For many hundred years had she stood in arrogant splendor,
+her palaces towering above the Tigris and mirrored in its swift waters;
+army after army had gone forth from her gates and returned laden with
+the spoils of conquered countries; her monarchs had ridden to the high
+place of sacrifice in chariots drawn by captive kings. But her time came
+at last. The nations assembled and encompassed her around. Popular
+tradition tells how over two years lasted the siege; how the very river
+rose and battered her walls; till one day a vast flame rose up to
+heaven; how the last of a mighty line of kings, too proud to surrender,
+thus saved himself, his treasures and his capital from the shame of
+bondage. Never was city to rise again where Nineveh had been.
+
+2. Two hundred years went by. Great changes had passed over the land.
+The Persian kings now held the rule of Asia. But their greatness also
+was leaning towards its decline and family discords undermined their
+power. A young prince had rebelled against his elder brother and
+resolved to tear the crown from him by main force. To accomplish this,
+he had raised an army and called in the help of Grecian hirelings. They
+came, 13,000 in number, led by brave and renowned generals, and did
+their duty by him; but their valor could not save him from defeat and
+death. Their own leader fell into an ambush, and they commenced their
+retreat under the most disastrous circumstances and with little hope of
+escape.
+
+3. Yet they accomplished it. Surrounded by open enemies and false
+friends, tracked and pursued, through sandy wastes and pathless
+mountains, now parched with heat, now numbed with cold, they at last
+reached the sunny and friendly Hellespont. It was a long and weary march
+from Babylon on the Euphrates, near which city the great battle had been
+fought. They might not have succeeded had they not chosen a great and
+brave commander, Xenophon, a noble Athenian, whose fame as scholar and
+writer equals his renown as soldier and general. Few books are more
+interesting than the lively relation he has left of his and his
+companions' toils and sufferings in this expedition, known in history as
+"The Retreat of the Ten Thousand"--for to that number had the original
+13,000 been reduced by battles, privations and disease. So cultivated a
+man could not fail, even in the midst of danger and weighed down by
+care, to observe whatever was noteworthy in the strange lands which he
+traversed. So he tells us how one day his little army, after a forced
+march in the early morning hours and an engagement with some light
+troops of pursuers, having repelled the attack and thereby secured a
+short interval of safety, travelled on till they came to the banks of
+the Tigris. On that spot, he goes on, there was a vast desert city. Its
+wall was twenty-five feet wide, one hundred feet high and nearly seven
+miles in circuit. It was built of brick with a basement, twenty feet
+high, of stone. Close by the city there stood a stone pyramid, one
+hundred feet in width, and two hundred in height. Xenophon adds that
+this city's name was Larissa and that it had anciently been inhabited by
+Medes; that the king of Persia, when he took the sovereignty away from
+the Medes, besieged it, but could not in any way get possession of it,
+until, a cloud having obscured the sun, the inhabitants forsook the city
+and thus it was taken.
+
+4. Some eighteen miles further on (a day's march) the Greeks came to
+another great deserted city, which Xenophon calls Mespila. It had a
+similar but still higher wall. This city, he tells us, had also been
+inhabited by Medes, and taken by the king of Persia. Now these curious
+ruins were all that was left of Kalah and Nineveh, the two Assyrian
+capitals. In the short space of two hundred years, men had surely not
+yet lost the memory of Nineveh's existence and rule, yet they trod the
+very site where it had stood and knew it not, and called its ruins by a
+meaningless Greek name, handing down concerning it a tradition absurdly
+made up of true and fictitious details, jumbled into inextricable
+confusion. For Nineveh had been the capital of the Assyrian Empire,
+while the Medes were one of the nations who attacked and destroyed it.
+And though an eclipse of the sun--(the obscuring cloud could mean
+nothing else)--did occur, created great confusion and produced important
+results, it was at a later period and on an entirely different occasion.
+As to "the king of Persia," no such personage had anything whatever to
+do with the catastrophe of Nineveh, since the Persians had not yet been
+heard of at that time as a powerful people, and their country was only a
+small and insignificant principality, tributary to Media. So effectually
+had the haughty city been swept from the face of the earth!
+
+5. Another hundred years brought on other and even greater changes. The
+Persian monarchy had followed in the wake of the empires that had gone
+before it and fallen before Alexander, the youthful hero of Macedon. As
+the conqueror's fleet of light-built Grecian ships descended the
+Euphrates towards Babylon, they were often hindered in their progress by
+huge dams of stone built across the river. The Greeks, with great labor,
+removed several, to make navigation more easy. They did the same on
+several other rivers,--nor knew that they were destroying the last
+remaining vestige of a great people's civilization,--for these dams had
+been used to save the water and distribute it into the numerous canals,
+which covered the arid country with their fertilizing network. They may
+have been told what travellers are told in our own days by the
+Arabs--that these dams had been constructed once upon a time by Nimrod,
+the Hunter-King. For some of them remain even still, showing their huge,
+square stones, strongly united by iron cramps, above the water before
+the river is swollen with the winter rains.
+
+6. More than one-and-twenty centuries have rolled since then over the
+immense valley so well named Mesopotamia--"the Land between the
+Rivers,"--and each brought to it more changes, more wars, more
+disasters, with rare intervals of rest and prosperity. Its position
+between the East and the West, on the very high-road of marching armies
+and wandering tribes, has always made it one of the great battle grounds
+of the world. About one thousand years after Alexander's rapid invasion
+and short-lived conquest, the Arabs overran the country, and settled
+there, bringing with them a new civilization and the new religion given
+them by their prophet Mohammed, which they thought it their mission to
+carry, by force of word or sword, to the bounds of the earth. They even
+founded there one of the principal seats of their sovereignty, and
+Baghdad yielded not greatly in magnificence and power to Babylon of old.
+
+7. Order, laws, and learning now flourished for a few hundred years,
+when new hordes of barbarous people came pouring in from the East, and
+one of them, the Turks, at last established itself in the land and
+stayed. They rule there now. The valley of the Tigris and Euphrates is
+a province of the Ottoman or Turkish Empire, which has its capital in
+Constantinople; it is governed by pashas, officials sent by the Turkish
+government, or the "Sublime Porte," as it is usually called, and the
+ignorant, oppressive, grinding treatment to which it has now been
+subjected for several hundred years has reduced it to the lowest depth
+of desolation. Its wealth is exhausted, its industry destroyed, its
+prosperous cities have disappeared or dwindled into insignificance. Even
+Mossul, built by the Arabs on the right bank of the Tigris, opposite the
+spot where Nineveh once stood, one of their finest cities, famous for
+the manufacturing of the delicate cotton tissue to which it gave its
+name--(_muslin_, _mousseline_)--would have lost all importance, had it
+not the honor to be the chief town of a Turkish district and to harbor a
+pasha. And Baghdad, although still the capital of the whole province, is
+scarcely more than the shadow of her former glorious self; and her looms
+no longer supply the markets of the world with wonderful shawls and
+carpets, and gold and silver tissues of marvellous designs.
+
+8. Mesopotamia is a region which must suffer under neglect and
+misgovernment even more than others; for, though richly endowed by
+nature, it is of a peculiar formation, requiring constant care and
+intelligent management to yield all the return of which it is capable.
+That care must chiefly consist in distributing the waters of the two
+great rivers and their affluents over all the land by means of an
+intricate system of canals, regulated by a complete and well-kept set
+of dams and sluices, with other simpler arrangements for the remoter and
+smaller branches. The yearly inundations caused by the Tigris and
+Euphrates, which overflow their banks in spring, are not sufficient;
+only a narrow strip of land on each side is benefited by them. In the
+lowlands towards the Persian Gulf there is another inconvenience: the
+country there being perfectly flat, the waters accumulate and stagnate,
+forming vast pestilential swamps where rich pastures and wheat-fields
+should be--and have been in ancient times. In short, if left to itself,
+Upper Mesopotamia, (ancient Assyria), is unproductive from the
+barrenness of its soil, and Lower Mesopotamia, (ancient Chaldea and
+Babylonia), runs to waste, notwithstanding its extraordinary fertility,
+from want of drainage.
+
+9. Such is actually the condition of the once populous and flourishing
+valley, owing to the principles on which the Turkish rulers carry on
+their government. They look on their remoter provinces as mere sources
+of revenue for the state and its officials. But even admitting this as
+their avowed and chief object, they pursue it in an altogether
+wrong-headed and short-sighted way. The people are simply and openly
+plundered, and no portion of what is taken from them is applied to any
+uses of local public utility, as roads, irrigation, encouragement of
+commerce and industry and the like; what is not sent home to the Sultan
+goes into the private pouches of the pasha and his many subaltern
+officials. This is like taking the milk and omitting to feed the cow.
+The consequence is, the people lose their interest in work of any kind,
+leave off striving for an increase of property which they will not be
+permitted to enjoy, and resign themselves to utter destitution with a
+stolid apathy most painful to witness. The land has been brought to such
+a degree of impoverishment that it is actually no longer capable of
+producing crops sufficient for a settled population. It is cultivated
+only in patches along the rivers, where the soil is rendered so fertile
+by the yearly inundations as to yield moderate returns almost unasked,
+and that mostly by wandering tribes of Arabs or of Kurds from the
+mountains to the north, who raise their tents and leave the spot the
+moment they have gathered in their little harvest--if it has not been
+appropriated first by some of the pasha's tax-collectors or by roving
+parties of Bedouins--robber-tribes from the adjoining Syrian and Arabian
+deserts, who, mounted on their own matchless horses, are carried across
+the open border with as much facility as the drifts of desert sand so
+much dreaded by travellers. The rest of the country is left to nature's
+own devices and, wherever it is not cut up by mountains or rocky ranges,
+offers the well-known twofold character of steppe-land: luxuriant grassy
+vegetation during one-third of the year and a parched, arid waste the
+rest of the time, except during the winter rains and spring floods.
+
+10. A wild and desolate scene! Imposing too in its sorrowful grandeur,
+and well suited to a land which may be called a graveyard of empires and
+nations. The monotony of the landscape would be unbroken, but for
+certain elevations and hillocks of strange and varied shapes, which
+spring up, as it were, from the plain in every direction; some are high
+and conical or pyramidal in form, others are quite extensive and rather
+flat on the summit, others again long and low, and all curiously
+unconnected with each other or any ridge of hills or mountains. This is
+doubly striking in Lower Mesopotamia or Babylonia, proverbial for its
+excessive flatness. The few permanent villages, composed of mud-huts or
+plaited reed-cabins, are generally built on these eminences, others are
+used as burying-grounds, and a mosque, the Mohammedan house of prayer,
+sometimes rises on one or the other. They are pleasing objects in the
+beautiful spring season, when corn-fields wave on their summits, and
+their slopes, as well as all the surrounding plains, are clothed with
+the densest and greenest of herbage, enlivened with countless flowers of
+every hue, till the surface of the earth looks, from a distance or from
+a height, as gorgeous as the richest Persian carpet. But, on approaching
+nearer to these hillocks or mounds, an unprepared traveller would be
+struck by some peculiar features. Their substance being rather soft and
+yielding, and the winter rains pouring down with exceeding violence,
+their sides are furrowed in many places with ravines, dug by the rushing
+streams of rain-water. These streams of course wash down much of the
+substance itself and carry it far into the plain, where it lies
+scattered on the surface quite distinct from the soil. These washings
+are found to consist not of earth or sand, but of rubbish, something
+like that which lies in heaps wherever a house is being built or
+demolished, and to contain innumerable fragments of bricks, pottery,
+stone evidently worked by the hand and chisel; many of these fragments
+moreover bearing inscriptions in complicated characters composed of one
+curious figure shaped like the head of an arrow, and used in every
+possible position and combination,--like this:
+
+[Illustration: 1.--CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS.]
+
+11. In the crevices or ravines themselves, the waters having cleared
+away masses of this loose rubbish, have laid bare whole sides of walls
+of solid brick-work, sometimes even a piece of a human head or limb, or
+a corner of sculptured stone-slab, always of colossal size and bold,
+striking execution. All this tells its own tale and the conclusion is
+self-apparent: that these elevations are not natural hillocks or knolls,
+but artificial mounds, heaps of earth and building materials which have
+been at some time placed there by men, then, collapsing and crumbling to
+rubbish from neglect, have concealed within their ample sides all that
+remains of those ancient structures and works of art, clothed themselves
+in verdure, and deceitfully assumed all the outward signs of natural
+hills.
+
+12. The Arabs never thought of exploring these curious heaps. Mohammedan
+nations, as a rule, take little interest in relics of antiquity;
+moreover they are very superstitious, and, as their religious law
+strictly forbids them to represent the human form either in painting or
+sculpture lest such reproduction might lead ignorant and misguided
+people back to the abominations of idolatry, so they look on relics of
+ancient statuary with suspicion amounting to fear and connect them with
+magic and witchcraft. It is, therefore, with awe not devoid of horror
+that they tell travellers that the mounds contain underground passages
+which are haunted not only by wild beasts, but by evil spirits--for have
+not sometimes strange figures carved in stone been dimly perceived in
+the crevices? Better instructed foreigners have long ago assumed that
+within these mounds must be entombed whatever ruins may be preserved of
+the great cities of yore. Their number formed no objection, for it was
+well known how populous the valley had been in the days of its splendor,
+and that, besides several famous cities, it could boast no end of
+smaller ones, often separated from each other by a distance of only a
+few miles. The long low mounds were rightly supposed to represent the
+ancient walls, and the higher and vaster ones to have been the site of
+the palaces and temples. The Arabs, though utterly ignorant of history
+of any kind, have preserved in their religion some traditions from the
+Bible, and so it happens that out of these wrecks of ages some biblical
+names still survive. Almost everything of which they do not know the
+origin, they ascribe to Nimrod; and the smaller of the two mounds
+opposite Mosul, which mark the spot where Nineveh itself once stood,
+they call "Jonah's Mound," and stoutly believe the mosque which crowns
+it, surrounded by a comparatively prosperous village, to contain the
+tomb of Jonah himself, the prophet who was sent to rebuke and warn the
+wicked city. As the Mohammedans honor the Hebrew prophets, the whole
+mound is sacred in their eyes in consequence.
+
+13. If travellers had for some time been aware of these general facts
+concerning the Mounds, it was many years before their curiosity and
+interest were so far aroused as to make them go to the trouble and
+expense of digging into them, in order to find out what they really
+contained. Until within the last hundred years or so, not only the
+general public, but even highly cultivated men and distinguished
+scholars, under the words "study of antiquity," understood no more than
+the study of so-called "_Classical_ Antiquity," i.e., of the language,
+history and literature of the Greeks and Romans, together with the
+ruins, works of art, and remains of all sorts left by these two nations.
+Their knowledge of other empires and people they took from the Greek and
+Roman historians and writers, without doubting or questioning their
+statements, or--as we say now--without subjecting their statements to
+any criticism. Moreover, European students in their absorption in and
+devotion to classical studies, were too apt to follow the example of
+their favorite authors and to class the entire rest of the world, as far
+as it was known in ancient times, under the sweeping and somewhat
+contemptuous by-name of "Barbarians," thus allowing them but a secondary
+importance and an inferior claim to attention.
+
+14. Things began greatly to change towards the end of the last century.
+Yet the mounds of Assyria and Babylonia were still suffered to keep
+their secret unrevealed. This want of interest may be in part explained
+by their peculiar nature. They are so different from other ruins. A row
+of massive pillars or of stately columns cut out on the clear blue sky,
+with the desert around or the sea at their feet,--a broken arch or
+battered tombstone clothed with ivy and hanging creepers, with the blue
+and purple mountains for a background, are striking objects which first
+take the eye by their beauty, then invite inspection by the easy
+approach they offer. But these huge, shapeless heaps! What labor to
+remove even a small portion of them! And when that is done, who knows
+whether their contents will at all repay the effort and expense?
+
+15. The first European whose love of learning was strong enough to make
+him disregard all such doubts and difficulties, was Mr. Rich, an
+Englishman. He was not particularly successful, nor were his researches
+very extensive, being carried on entirely with his private means; yet
+his name will always be honorably remembered, for he was _the first_ who
+went to work with pickaxe and shovel, who hired men to dig, who measured
+and described some of the principal mounds on the Euphrates, thus laying
+down the groundwork of all later and more fruitful explorations in that
+region. It was in 1820 and Mr. Rich was then political resident or
+representative of the East India Company at Baghdad. He also tried the
+larger of the two mounds opposite Mosul, encouraged by the report that,
+a short time before he arrived there, a sculpture representing men and
+animals had been disclosed to view. Unfortunately he could not procure
+even a fragment of this treasure, for the people of Mosul, influenced by
+their _ulema_--(doctor of the law)--who had declared these sculptures to
+be "idols of the infidels," had walked across the river from the city in
+a body and piously shattered them to atoms. Mr. Rich had not the good
+luck to come across any such find himself, and after some further
+efforts, left the place rather disheartened. He carried home to England
+the few relics he had been able to obtain. In the absence of more
+important ones, they were very interesting, consisting in fragments of
+inscriptions, of pottery, in engraved stone, bricks and pieces of
+bricks. After his death all these articles were placed in the British
+Museum, where they formed the foundation of the present noble
+Chaldea-Assyrian collection of that great institution. Nothing more was
+undertaken for years, so that it could be said with literal truth that,
+up to 1842, "a case three feet square inclosed all that remained, not
+only of the great city Nineveh, but of Babylon itself!"[A]
+
+16. The next in the field was Mr. Botta, appointed French Consul at
+Mosul in 1842. He began to dig at the end of the same year, and
+naturally attached himself specially to the larger of the two mounds
+opposite Mosul, named KOYUNJIK, after a small village at its base. This
+mound is the Mespila of Xenophon. He began enthusiastically, and worked
+on for over three months, but repeated disappointments were beginning to
+produce discouragement, when one day a peasant from a distant village
+happened to be looking on at the small party of workmen. He was much
+amused on observing that every--to him utterly worthless--fragment of
+alabaster, brick or pottery, was carefully picked out of the rubbish,
+most tenderly handled and laid aside, and laughingly remarked that they
+might be better repaid for their trouble, if they would try the mound on
+which his village was built, for that lots of such rubbish had kept
+continually turning up, when they were digging the foundations of their
+houses.
+
+17. Mr. Botta had by this time fallen into a rather hopeless mood; yet
+he did not dare to neglect the hint, and sent a few men to the mound
+which had been pointed out to him, and which, as well as the village on
+the top of it, bore the name of KHORSABAD. His agent began operations
+from the top. A well was sunk into the mound, and very soon brought the
+workmen to the top of a wall, which, on further digging, was found to be
+lined along its base with sculptured slabs of some soft substance much
+like gypsum or limestone. This discovery quickly brought Mr. Botta to
+the spot, in a fever of excitement. He now took the direction of the
+works himself, had a trench dug from the outside straight into the
+mound, wide and deep, towards the place already laid open from above.
+What was his astonishment on finding that he had entered a hall entirely
+lined all round, except where interruptions indicated the place of
+doorways leading into other rooms, with sculptured slabs similar to the
+one first discovered, and representing scenes of battles, sieges and the
+like. He walked as in a dream. It was a new and wonderful world suddenly
+opened. For these sculptures evidently recorded the deeds of the
+builder, some powerful conqueror and king. And those long and close
+lines engraved in the stone, all along the slabs, in the same peculiar
+character as the short inscriptions on the bricks that lay scattered on
+the plain--they must surely contain the text to these sculptured
+illustrations. But who is to read them? They are not like any known
+writing in the world and may remain a sealed book forever. Who, then,
+was the builder? To what age belong these structures? Which of the wars
+we read about are here portrayed? None of these questions, which must
+have strangely agitated him, could Mr. Botta have answered at the time.
+But not the less to him remains the glory of having, first of living
+men, entered the palace of an Assyrian king.
+
+18. Mr. Botta henceforth devoted himself exclusively to the mound of
+Khorsabad. His discovery created an immense sensation in Europe.
+Scholarly indifference was not proof against so unlooked-for a shock;
+the revulsion was complete and the spirit of research and enterprise was
+effectually aroused, not to slumber again. The French consul was
+supplied by his government with ample means to carry on excavations on a
+large scale. If the first success may be considered as merely a great
+piece of good fortune, the following ones were certainly due to
+intelligent, untiring labor and ingenuous scholarship. We see the
+results in Botta's voluminous work "Monuments de Ninive"[B] and in the
+fine Assyrian collection of the Louvre, in the first room of which is
+placed, as is but just, the portrait of the man to whose efforts and
+devotion it is due.
+
+19. The great English investigator Layard, then a young and enthusiastic
+scholar on his Eastern travels, passing through Mosul in 1842, found Mr.
+Botta engaged on his first and unpromising attempts at Koyunjik, and
+subsequently wrote to him from Constantinople exhorting him to persist
+and not give up his hopes of success. He was one of the first to hear of
+the astounding news from Khorsabad, and immediately determined to carry
+out a long-cherished project of his own, that of exploring a large mound
+known among the Arabs under the name of NIMRUD, and situated somewhat
+lower on the Tigris, near that river's junction with one of its chief
+tributaries, the Zab. The difficulty lay in procuring the necessary
+funds. Neither the trustees of the British Museum nor the English
+Government were at first willing to incur such considerable expense on
+what was still looked upon as very uncertain chances. It was a private
+gentleman, Sir Stratford Canning, then English minister at
+Constantinople, who generously came forward, and announced himself
+willing to meet the outlay within certain limits, while authorities at
+home were to be solicited and worked upon. So Mr. Layard was enabled to
+begin operations on the mound which he had specially selected for
+himself in the autumn of 1845, the year after that in which the building
+of Khorsabad was finally laid open by Botta. The results of his
+expedition were so startlingly vast and important, and the particulars
+of his work on the Assyrian plains are so interesting and picturesque,
+that they will furnish ample materials for a separate chapter.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[A] Layard's "Discoveries at Nineveh," Introduction.
+
+[B] In five huge folio volumes, one of text, two of inscriptions, and
+two of illustrations. The title shows that Botta erroneously imagined
+the ruins he had discovered to be those of Nineveh itself.
+
+
+
+
+                               II.
+
+                      LAYARD AND HIS WORK.
+
+
+1. In the first part of November, 1845, we find the enthusiastic and
+enterprising young scholar on the scene of his future exertions and
+triumphs. His first night in the wilderness, in a ruinous Arab village
+amidst the smaller mounds of Nimrud, is vividly described by him:--"I
+slept little during the night. The hovel in which we had taken shelter,
+and its inmates, did not invite slumber; but such scenes and companions
+were not new to me; they could have been forgotten, had my brain been
+less excited. Hopes, long-cherished, were now to be realized, or were to
+end in disappointment. Visions of palaces underground, of gigantic
+monsters, of sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions floated before
+me. After forming plan after plan for removing the earth, and
+extricating these treasures, I fancied myself wandering in a maze of
+chambers from which I could find no outlet. Then again, all was
+reburied, and I was standing on the grass-covered mound."
+
+2. Although not doomed to disappointment in the end, these hopes were
+yet to be thwarted in many ways before the visions of that night became
+reality. For many and various were the difficulties which Layard had to
+contend with during the following months as well as during his second
+expedition in 1848. The material hardships of perpetual camping out in
+an uncongenial climate, without any of the simplest conveniences of
+life, and the fevers and sickness repeatedly brought on by exposure to
+winter rains and summer heat, should perhaps be counted among the least
+of them, for they had their compensations. Not so the ignorant and
+ill-natured opposition, open or covert, of the Turkish authorities. That
+was an evil to which no amount of philosophy could ever fully reconcile
+him. His experiences in that line form an amusing collection. Luckily,
+the first was also the worst. The pasha whom he found installed at Mosul
+was, in appearance and temper, more like an ogre than a man. He was the
+terror of the country. His cruelty and rapacity knew no bounds. When he
+sent his tax-collectors on their dreaded round, he used to dismiss them
+with this short and pithy instruction: "Go, destroy, eat!" (i.e.
+"plunder"), and for his own profit had revived several kinds of
+contributions which had been suffered to fall into disuse, especially
+one called "tooth-money,"--"a compensation in money, levied upon all
+villages in which a man of such rank is entertained, for the wear and
+tear of his teeth in masticating the food he condescends to receive from
+the inhabitants."
+
+3. The letters with which Layard was provided secured him a gracious
+reception from this amiable personage, who allowed him to begin
+operations on the great mound of Nimrud with the party of Arab workmen
+whom he had hired for the purpose. Some time after, it came to the
+Pasha's knowledge that a few fragments of gold leaf had been found in
+the rubbish and he even procured a small particle as sample. He
+immediately concluded, as the Arab chief had done, that the English
+traveller was digging for hidden treasure--an object far more
+intelligible to them than that of disinterring and carrying home a
+quantity of old broken stones. This incident, by arousing the great
+man's rapacity, might have caused him to put a stop to all further
+search, had not Layard, who well knew that treasure of this kind was not
+likely to be plentiful in the ruins, immediately proposed that his
+Excellency should keep an agent at the mound, to take charge of all the
+precious metals which might be discovered there in the course of the
+excavations. The Pasha raised no objections at the moment, but a few
+days later announced to Layard that, to his great regret, he felt it his
+duty to forbid the continuation of the work, since he had just learned
+that the diggers were disturbing a Mussulman burying-ground. As the
+tombs of true believers are held very sacred and inviolable by
+Mohammedans, this would have been a fatal obstacle, had not one of the
+Pasha's own officers confidentially disclosed to Layard that the tombs
+were _sham ones_, that he and his men had been secretly employed to
+fabricate them, and for two nights had been bringing stones for the
+purpose from the surrounding villages. "We have destroyed more tombs of
+true believers," said the Aga,--(officer)--"in making sham ones, than
+ever you could have defiled. We have killed our horses and ourselves in
+carrying those accursed stones." Fortunately the Pasha, whose misdeeds
+could not be tolerated even by a Turkish government, was recalled about
+Christmas, and succeeded by an official of an entirely different stamp,
+a man whose reputation for justice and mildness had preceded him, and
+whose arrival was accordingly greeted with public rejoicings. Operations
+at the mound now proceeded for some time rapidly and successfully. But
+this very success at one time raised new difficulties for our explorers.
+
+4. One day, as Layard was returning to the mound from an excursion, he
+was met on the way by two Arabs who had ridden out to meet him at full
+speed, and from a distance shouted to him in the wildest excitement:
+"Hasten, O Bey! hasten to the diggers! for they have found Nimrod
+himself. It is wonderful, but it is true! we have seen him with our
+eyes. There is no God but God!" Greatly puzzled, he hurried on and,
+descending into the trench, found that the workmen had uncovered a
+gigantic head, the body to which was still imbedded in earth and
+rubbish. This head, beautifully sculptured in the alabaster furnished by
+the neighboring hills, surpassed in height the tallest man present. The
+great shapely features, in their majestic repose, seemed to guard some
+mighty secret and to defy the bustling curiosity of those who gazed on
+them in wonder and fear. "One of the workmen, on catching the first
+glimpse of the monster, had thrown down his basket and run off toward
+Mossul as fast as his legs could carry him."
+
+[Illustration: 2.--TEMPLE OF EA AT ERIDHU (ABU-SHAHREIN). BACK-STAIRS.
+(Hommel.)]
+
+5. The Arabs came in crowds from the surrounding encampments; they could
+scarcely be persuaded that the image was of stone, and contended that it
+was not the work of men's hands, but of infidel giants of olden times.
+The commotion soon spread to Mosul, where the terrified workman,
+"entering breathless into the bazars, announced to every one he met
+that Nimrod had appeared." The authorities of the town were alarmed, put
+their heads together and decided that such idolatrous proceedings were
+an outrage to religion. The consequence was that Layard was requested by
+his friend Ismail-Pasha to suspend operations for awhile, until the
+excitement should have subsided, a request with which he thought it
+wisest to comply without remonstrance, lest the people of Mosul might
+come out in force and deal with his precious find as they had done with
+the sculptured figure at Koyunjik in Rich's time. The alarm, however,
+did not last long. Both Arabs and Turks soon became familiar with the
+strange creations which kept emerging out of the earth, and learned to
+discuss them with great calm and gravity. The colossal bulls and lions
+with wings and human heads, of which several pairs were discovered, some
+of them in a state of perfect preservation, were especially the objects
+of wonder and conjectures, which generally ended in a curse "on all
+infidels and their works," the conclusion arrived at being that "the
+idols" were to be sent to England, to form gateways to the palace of the
+Queen. And when some of these giants, now in the British Museum, were
+actually removed, with infinite pains and labor, to be dragged down to
+the Tigris, and floated down the river on rafts, there was no end to the
+astonishment of Layard's simple friends. On one such occasion an Arab
+Sheikh, or chieftain, whose tribe had engaged to assist in moving one of
+the winged bulls, opened his heart to him. "In the name of the Most
+High," said he, "tell me, O Bey, what you are going to do with these
+stones. So many thousands of purses spent on such things! Can it be, as
+you say, that your people learn wisdom from them? or is it as his
+reverence the Cadi declares, that they are to go to the palace of your
+Queen, who, with the rest of the unbelievers, worships these idols? As
+for wisdom, these figures will not teach you to make any better knives,
+or scissors, or chintzes, and it is in the making of these things that
+the English show their wisdom."
+
+6. Such was the view very generally taken of Layard's work by both Turks
+and Arabs, from the Pasha down to the humblest digger in his band of
+laborers, and he seldom felt called upon to play the missionary of
+science, knowing as he did that all such efforts would be but wasted
+breath. This want of intellectual sympathy did not prevent the best
+understanding from existing between himself and these rangers of the
+desert. The primitive life which he led amongst them for so many months,
+the kindly hospitality which he invariably experienced at their hands
+during the excursions made and the visits he paid to different Bedouin
+tribes in the intervals of recreation which he was compelled to allow
+himself from time to time--these are among the most pleasurable memories
+of those wonderful, dreamlike years. He lingers on them lovingly and
+retraces them through many a page of both his books[C]--pages which, for
+their picturesque vividness, must be perused with delight even by such
+as are but slightly interested in the discovery of buried palaces and
+winged bulls. One longs to have been with him through some of those
+peerless evenings when, after a long day's work, he sat before his cabin
+in the cool starlight, watching the dances with which those
+indefatigable Arabs, men and women, solaced themselves deep into the
+night, while the encampment was lively with the hum of voices, and the
+fires lit to prepare the simple meal. One longs to have shared in some
+of those brisk rides across plains so thickly enamelled with flowers,
+that it seemed a patchwork of many colors, and "the dogs, as they
+returned from hunting, issued from the long grass dyed red, yellow, or
+blue, according to the flowers through which they had last forced their
+way,"--the joy of the Arab's soul, which made the chief, Layard's
+friend, continually exclaim, "rioting in the luxuriant herbage and
+scented air, as his mare waded through the flowers:--'What delight has
+God given us equal to this? It is the only thing worth living for. What
+do the dwellers in cities know of true happiness? They never have seen
+grass or flowers! May God have pity on them!'" How glorious to watch the
+face of the desert changing its colors almost from day to day, white
+succeeding to pale straw color, red to white, blue to red, lilac to
+blue, and bright gold to that, according to the flowers with which it
+decked itself! Out of sight stretches the gorgeous carpet, dotted with
+the black camel's-hair tents of the Arabs, enlivened with flocks of
+sheep and camels, and whole studs of horses of noble breed which are
+brought out from Mosul and left to graze at liberty, in the days of
+healthy breezes and fragrant pastures.
+
+7. So much for spring. A beautiful, a perfect season, but unfortunately
+as brief as it is lovely, and too soon succeeded by the terrible heat
+and long drought of summer, which sometimes set in so suddenly as hardly
+to give the few villagers time to gather in their crops. Chaldea or
+Lower Mesopotamia is in this respect even worse off than the higher
+plains of Assyria. A temperature of 120 deg. in the shade is no unusual
+occurrence in Baghdad; true, it can be reduced to 100 deg. in the cellars
+of the houses by carefully excluding the faintest ray of light, and it is
+there that the inhabitants mostly spend their days in summer. The
+oppression is such that Europeans are entirely unmanned and unfitted for
+any kind of activity. "Camels sicken, and birds are so distressed by the
+high temperature, that they sit in the date-trees about Baghdad, with
+their mouths open, panting for fresh air."[D]
+
+8. But the most frightful feature of a Mesopotamian summer is the
+frequent and violent sand-storms, during which travellers, in addition
+to all the dangers offered by snow-storms--being buried alive and losing
+their way--are exposed to that of suffocation not only from the
+furnace-like heat of the desert-wind, but from the impalpable sand,
+which is whirled and driven before it, and fills the eyes, mouth and
+nostrils of horse and rider. The three miles' ride from Layard's
+encampment to the mound of Nimrud must have been something more than
+pleasant morning exercise in such a season, and though the deep trenches
+and wells afforded a comparatively cool and delightful retreat, he soon
+found that fever was the price to be paid for the indulgence, and was
+repeatedly laid up with it. "The verdure of the plain," he says in one
+place, "had perished almost in a day. Hot winds, coming from the desert,
+had burnt up and carried away the shrubs; flights of locusts, darkening
+the air, had destroyed the few patches of cultivation, and had completed
+the havoc commenced by the heat of the sun.... Violent whirlwinds
+occasionally swept over the face of the country. They could be seen as
+they advanced from the desert, carrying along with them clouds of dust
+and sand. Almost utter darkness prevailed during their passage, which
+lasted generally about an hour, and nothing could resist their fury. On
+returning home one afternoon after a tempest of the kind, I found no
+traces of my dwellings; they had been completely carried away. Ponderous
+wooden frame-works had been borne over the bank and hurled some hundred
+yards distant; the tents had disappeared, and my furniture was scattered
+over the plain."
+
+9. Fortunately it would not require much labor to restore the wooden
+frames to their proper place and reconstruct the reed-plaited,
+mud-plastered walls as well as the roof composed of reeds and
+boughs--such being the sumptuous residences of which Layard shared the
+largest with various domestic animals, from whose immediate
+companionship he was saved by a thin partition, the other hovels being
+devoted to the wives, children and poultry of his host, to his own
+servants and different household uses. But the time came when not even
+this accommodation, poor as it was, could be enjoyed with any degree of
+comfort. When the summer heat set in in earnest, the huts became
+uninhabitable from their closeness and the vermin with which they
+swarmed, while a canvas tent, though far preferable in the way of
+airiness and cleanliness, did not afford sufficient shelter.
+
+10. "In this dilemma," says Layard, "I ordered a recess to be cut into
+the bank of the river where it rose perpendicularly from the water's
+edge. By screening the front with reeds and boughs of trees, and
+covering the whole with similar materials, a small room was formed. I
+was much troubled, however, with scorpions and other reptiles, which
+issued from the earth forming the walls of my apartment; and later in
+the summer by the gnats and sandflies which hovered on a calm night over
+the river." It is difficult to decide between the respective merits of
+this novel summer retreat and of the winter dwelling, ambitiously
+constructed of mud bricks dried in the sun, and roofed with solid wooden
+beams. This imposing residence, in which Layard spent the last months of
+his first winter in Assyria, would have been sufficient protection
+against wind and weather, after it had been duly coated with mud.
+Unfortunately a heavy shower fell before it was quite completed, and so
+saturated the bricks that they did not dry again before the following
+spring. "The consequence was," he pleasantly remarks, "that the only
+verdure on which my eyes were permitted to feast before my return to
+Europe, was furnished by my own property--the walls in the interior of
+the rooms being continually clothed with a crop of grass."
+
+[Illustration: 3.--VIEW OF EUPHRATES NEAR THE RUINS OF BABYLON.
+(Babelon.)]
+
+11. These few indications are sufficient to give a tolerably clear idea
+of what might be called "Pleasures and hardships of an explorer's life
+in the desert." As for the work itself, it is simple enough in the
+telling, although it must have been extremely wearisome and laborious in
+the performance. The simplest way to get at the contents of a mound,
+would be to remove all the earth and rubbish by carting it away,--a
+piece of work which our searchers might no doubt have accomplished with
+great facility, had they had at their disposal a few scores of thousands
+of slaves and captives, as had the ancient kings who built the huge
+constructions the ruins of which had now to be disinterred. With a
+hundred or two of hired workmen and very limited funds, the case was
+slightly different. The task really amounted to this: to achieve the
+greatest possible results at the least possible expense of labor and
+time, and this is how such excavations are carried out on a plan
+uniformly followed everywhere as the most practical and direct:
+
+12. Trenches, more or less wide, are conducted from different sides
+towards the centre of the mound. This is obviously the surest and
+shortest way to arrive at whatever remains of walls may be imbedded in
+it. But even this preliminary operation has to be carried out with some
+judgment and discernment. It is known that the Chaldeans and Assyrians
+constructed their palaces and temples not upon the level, natural soil,
+but upon an artificial platform of brick and earth, at least thirty feet
+high. This platform was faced on all sides with a strong wall of solid
+burned brick, often moreover cased with stone. A trench dug straight
+from the plain into the lower part of the mound would consequently be
+wasted labor, since it could never bring to anything but that same blind
+wall, behind which there is only the solid mass of the platform. Digging
+therefore begins in the slope of the mound, at a height corresponding to
+the supposed height of the platform, and is carried on straight across
+its surface until a wall is reached,--a wall belonging to one of the
+palaces or temples. This wall has then to be followed, till a break in
+it is found, indicating an entrance or doorway.[E] The burrowing process
+becomes more and more complicated, and sometimes dangerous. Shafts have
+to be sunk from above at frequent intervals to introduce air and light
+into the long and narrow corridor; the sides and vault have to be
+propped by beams to prevent the soft earthy mass from falling in and
+crushing the diggers. Every shovelful of earth cleared away is removed
+in baskets which are passed from hand to hand till they are emptied
+outside the trench, or else lowered empty and sent up full, through the
+shafts by means of ropes and pulleys, to be emptied on the top. When a
+doorway is reached, it is cleared all through the thickness of the
+wall, which is very great; then a similar tunnel is conducted all along
+the inside of the wall, the greatest care being needed not to damage the
+sculptures which generally line it, and which, as it is, are more or
+less injured and cracked, their upper parts sometimes entirely destroyed
+by the action of fire. When the tunnel has been carried along the four
+sides, every doorway or portal carefully noted and cleared, it is seen
+from the measurements,--especially the width--whether the space explored
+be an inner court, a hall or a chamber. If the latter, it is sometimes
+entirely cleared from above, when the rubbish frequently yields valuable
+finds in the shape of various small articles. One such chamber,
+uncovered by Layard, at Koyunjik, proved a perfect mine of treasures.
+The most curious relics were brought to light in it: quantities of studs
+and small rosettes in mother-of-pearl, ivory and metal, (such as were
+used to ornament the harness of the war-horses), bowls, cups and dishes
+of bronze,[F] besides caldrons, shields and other items of armor, even
+glass bowls, lastly fragments of a royal throne--possibly the very
+throne on which King Sennacherib sat to give audience or pronounce
+judgments, for the palace at Koyunjik where these objects were found was
+built by that monarch so long familiar to us only from the Bible, and
+the sculptures and inscriptions which cover its walls are the annals of
+his conquests abroad and his rule at home.
+
+[Illustration: 4.--MOUND OF BABIL. (RUINS OF BABYLON.) (Oppert.)]
+
+A description of the removal of the colossal bulls and lions which were
+shipped to England and now are safely housed in the British Museum,
+ought by rights to form the close of a chapter devoted to "Layard and
+his work." But the reference must suffice; the vivid and entertaining
+narrative should be read in the original, as the passages are too long
+for transcription, and would be marred by quoting.
+
+[Illustration 5.--BRONZE DISH.]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[C] "Nineveh and its Remains," and "Discoveries in Nineveh and Babylon."
+
+[D] Rawlinson's "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World," Vol. I.,
+Chap. II.
+
+[E] See Figure 15, on p. 53.
+
+[F] See Figures 5, 6, and 7.
+
+
+
+
+                               III.
+
+                            THE RUINS.
+
+     "And they said to one another, Go to, let us make brick, and
+     burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and slime
+     for mortar."--_Gen._ xi. 3.
+
+
+1. It is a principle, long ago laid down and universally recognized,
+that every country _makes_ its own people. That is, the mode of life and
+the intellectual culture of a people are shaped by the characteristic
+features of the land in which it dwells; or, in other words, men can
+live only in a manner suited to the peculiarities of their native
+country. Men settled along the sea-shore will lead a different life,
+will develop different qualities of mind and body from the owners of
+vast inland pasture-grounds or the holders of rugged mountain
+fastnesses. They will all dress differently, eat different food, follow
+different pursuits. Their very dwellings and public buildings will
+present an entirely different aspect, according to the material which
+they will have at hand in the greatest abundance, be it stone, wood or
+any other substance suitable for the purpose. Thus every country will
+create its own peculiar style of art, determined chiefly by its own
+natural productions. On these, architecture, the art of the builder,
+will be even more dependent than any other.
+
+[Illustration: 6.--BRONZE DISH (RUG-PATTERN).]
+
+2. It would seem as though Chaldea or Lower Mesopotamia, regarded from
+this point of view, could never have originated any architecture at all,
+for it is, at first sight, absolutely deficient in building materials of
+any sort. The whole land is alluvial, that is, formed, gradually,
+through thousands of years, of the rich mud deposited by the two
+rivers, as they spread into vast marshy flats towards the end of their
+course. Such soil, when hardened into sufficient consistency, is the
+finest of all for cultivation, and a greater source of wealth than mines
+of the most precious ore; but it bears no trees and contains no stone.
+The people who were first tempted to settle in the lowlands towards the
+Persian Gulf by the extraordinary fertility of that region, found
+nothing at all available to construct their simple dwellings--nothing
+but reeds of enormous size, which grew there, as they do now, in the
+greatest profusion. These reeds "cover the marshes in the summer-time,
+rising often to the height of fourteen or fifteen feet. The Arabs of the
+marsh region form their houses of this material, binding the stems
+together and bending them into arches, to make the skeletons of their
+buildings; while, to form the walls, they stretch across from arch to
+arch mats made of the leaves."[G]
+
+[Illustration: 7.--SECTION OF BRONZE DISH.]
+
+3. There can be no doubt that of such habitations consisted the villages
+and towns of those first settlers. They gave quite sufficient shelter in
+the very mild winters of that region, and, when coated with a layer of
+mud which soon dried and hardened in the sun, could exclude even the
+violent rains of that season. But they were in no way fitted for more
+ambitious and dignified purposes. Neither the palaces of the kings nor
+the temples of the gods could be constructed out of bent reeds.
+Something more durable must be found, some material that would lend
+itself to constructions of any size or shape. The mud coating of the
+cabins naturally suggested such a material. Could not this same mud or
+clay, of which an inexhaustible supply was always on hand, be moulded
+into cakes of even size, and after being left to dry in the sun, be
+piled into walls of the required height and thickness? And so men began
+to make bricks. It was found that the clay gained much in consistency
+when mixed with finely chopped straw--another article of which the
+country, abounding in wheat and other grains, yielded unlimited
+quantities. But even with this improvement the sun-dried bricks could
+not withstand the continued action of many rainy seasons, or many
+torrid summers, but had a tendency to crumble away when parched too dry,
+or to soak and dissolve back into mud, when too long exposed to rain.
+All these defects were removed by the simple expedient of baking the
+bricks in kilns or ovens, a process which gives them the hardness and
+solidity of stone. But as the cost of kiln-dried bricks is naturally
+very much greater than that of the original crude article, so the latter
+continued to be used in far greater quantities; the walls were made
+entirely of them and only protected by an outward casing of the hard
+baked bricks. These being so much more expensive, and calculated to last
+forever, great care was bestowed on their preparation; the best clay was
+selected and they were stamped with the names and titles of the king by
+whose order the palace or temple was built, for which they were to be
+used. This has been of great service in identifying the various ruins
+and assigning them dates, at least approximately. As is to be expected,
+there is a notable difference in the specimens of different periods.
+While on some bricks bearing the name of a king who lived about 3000
+B.C. the inscription is uncouth and scarcely legible, and even their
+shape is rude and the material very inferior, those of the later
+Babylonian period (600 B.C.) are handsome and neatly made. As to the
+quality, all explorers agree in saying it is fully equal to that of the
+best modern English bricks. The excellence of these bricks for building
+purposes is a fact so well known that for now two thousand years--ever
+since the destruction of Babylon--its walls, temples and palaces have
+been used as quarries for the construction of cities and villages. The
+little town of HILLAH, situated nearest to the site of the ancient
+capital, is built almost entirely with bricks from one single mound,
+that of KASR--once the gorgeous and far-famed palace of Nebuchadnezzar,
+whose name and titles thus grace the walls of the most lowly Arab and
+Turkish dwellings. All the other mounds are similarly used, and so far
+is the valuable mine from being exhausted, that it furnishes forth, to
+this day, a brisk and flourishing trade. While a party of workmen is
+continually employed in digging for the available bricks, another is
+busy conveying them to Hillah; there they are shipped on the Euphrates
+and carried to any place where building materials are in demand, often
+even loaded on donkeys at this or that landing-place and sent miles away
+inland; some are taken as far as Baghdad, where they have been used for
+ages. The same thing is done wherever there are mounds and ruins. Both
+Layard and his successors had to allow their Arab workmen to build their
+own temporary houses out of ancient bricks, only watching them narrowly,
+lest they should break some valuable relic in the process or use some of
+the handsomest and best-preserved specimens.
+
+[Illustration: 8.--VIEW OF NEBBI YUNUS]
+
+4. No construction of bricks, either crude or kiln-dried, could have
+sufficient solidity without the help of some kind of cement, to make
+them adhere firmly together. This also the lowlands of Chaldea and
+Babylonia yield in sufficient quantity and of various qualities. While
+in the early structures a kind of sticky red clay or loam is used, mixed
+with chopped straw, bitumen or pitch is substituted at a later period,
+which substance, being applied hot, adheres so firmly to the bricks,
+that pieces of these are broken off when an attempt is made to procure a
+fragment of the cement. This valuable article was brought down by water
+from IS on the Euphrates (now called HIT), where abundant springs of
+bitumen are to this day in activity. Calcareous earth--i.e., earth
+strongly mixed with lime--being very plentiful to the west of the lower
+Euphrates, towards the Arabian frontier, the Babylonians of the latest
+times learned to make of it a white mortar which, for lightness and
+strength, has never been surpassed.
+
+[Illustration: 9.--BUILDING IN BAKED BRICK (MODERN). (Perrot and
+Chipiez.)]
+
+5. All the essential materials for plain but durable constructions being
+thus procurable on the spot or in the immediate neighborhood, the next
+important point was the selection of proper sites for raising these
+constructions, which were to serve purposes of defence as well as of
+worship and royal majesty. A rocky eminence, inaccessible on one or
+several sides, or at least a hill, a knoll somewhat elevated above the
+surrounding plain, have usually been chosen wherever such existed. But
+this was not the case in Chaldea. There, as far as eye can see, not the
+slightest undulation breaks the dead flatness of the land. Yet there,
+more than anywhere else, an elevated position was desirable, if only as
+a protection from the unhealthy exhalations of a vast tract of swamps,
+and from the intolerable nuisance of swarms of aggressive and venomous
+insects, which infest the entire river region during the long summer
+season. Safety from the attacks of the numerous roaming tribes which
+ranged the country in every direction before it was definitely settled
+and organized, was also not among the last considerations. So, what
+nature had refused, the cunning and labor of man had to supply.
+Artificial hills or platforms were constructed, of enormous size and
+great height--from thirty to fifty, even sixty feet, and on their flat
+summits the buildings were raised. These platforms sometimes supported
+only one palace, sometimes, as in the case of the immense mounds of
+Koyunjik and Nimrud in Assyria, their surface had room for several,
+built by successive kings. Of course such huge piles could not be
+entirely executed in solid masonry, even of crude bricks. These were
+generally mixed with earth and rubbish of all kinds, in more or less
+regular, alternate layers, the bricks being laid in clay. But the
+outward facing was in all cases of baked brick. The platform of the
+principal mound which marks the place of ancient UR, (now called
+MUGHEIR),[H] is faced with a wall ten feet thick, of red kiln-dried
+bricks, cemented with bitumen. In Assyria, where stone was not scarce,
+the sides of the platform were even more frequently "protected by
+massive stone-masonry, carried perpendicularly from the natural ground
+to a height somewhat exceeding that of the platform, and either made
+plain at the top, or else crowned into stone battlements cut into
+gradines."[I]
+
+[Illustration: 10.--MOUND OF NIMRUD. (Hommel.)]
+
+6. Some mounds are considerably higher than the others and of a peculiar
+shape, almost like a pyramid, that is, ending in a point from which it
+slopes down rapidly on all sides. Such is the pyramidal mound of Nimrud,
+which Layard describes as being so striking and picturesque an object as
+you approach the ruins from any point of the plain.[J] Such also is the
+still more picturesque mound of BORSIP (now BIRS NIMRUD) near Babylon,
+the largest of this kind.[K] These mounds are the remains of peculiar
+constructions, called ZIGGURATS, composed of several platforms piled one
+on the other, each square in shape and somewhat smaller than the
+preceding one; the topmost platform supported a temple or sanctuary,
+which by these means was raised far above the dwellings of men, a
+constant reminder not less eloquent than the exhortation in some of our
+religious services: "Lift up your hearts!" Of these heavenward pointing
+towers, which were also used as observatories by the Chaldeans, great
+lovers of the starry heavens, that of Borsip, once composed of seven
+stages, is the loftiest; it measures over 150 feet in perpendicular
+height.
+
+[Illustration: 11.--MOUND OF MUGHEIR (ANCIENT UR).]
+
+7. It is evident that these artificial hills could have been erected
+only at an incredible cost of labor. The careful measurements which have
+been taken of several of the principal mounds have enabled explorers to
+make an accurate calculation of the exact amount of labor employed on
+each. The result is startling, even though one is prepared for something
+enormous. The great mound of Koyunjik--which represents the palaces of
+Nineveh itself--covers an area of one hundred acres, and reaches an
+elevation of 95 feet at its highest point. To heap up such a pile of
+brick and earth "would require the united exertions of 10,000 men for
+twelve years, or of 20,000 men for six years."[L] Then only could the
+construction of the palaces begin. The mound of Nebbi-Yunus, which has
+not yet been excavated, covers an area of forty acres and is loftier and
+steeper than its neighbor: "its erection would have given full
+employment to 10,000 men for the space of five years and a half."
+Clearly, none but conquering monarchs, who yearly took thousands of
+prisoners in battles and drove home into captivity a part of the
+population of every country they subdued, could have employed such hosts
+of workmen on their buildings--not once, but continually, for it seems
+to have been a point of honor with the Assyrian kings that each should
+build a new palace for himself.
+
+[Illustration: 12.--TERRACE WALL AT KHORSABAD. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+8. When one considers the character of the land along the upper course
+of the Tigris, where the Assyrians dwelt, one cannot help wondering why
+they went on building mounds and using nothing but bricks in their
+constructions. There is no reason for it in the nature of the country.
+The cities of Assyria--NINEVEH (Koyunjik), KALAH (Nimrud), ARBELA,
+DUR-SHARRUKIN (Khorsabad) were built in the midst of a hilly region
+abounding in many varieties of stone, from soft limestone to hard
+basalt; some of them actually stood on rocky ground, their moats being
+in part cut through the rock. Had they wanted stone of better quality,
+they had only to get it from the Zagros range of mountains, which skirts
+all Assyria to the East, separating it from Media. Yet they never
+availed themselves of these resources, which must have led to great
+improvements in their architecture, and almost entirely reserved the use
+of stone for ornamental purposes. This would tend to show, at all
+events, that the Assyrians were not distinguished for inventive genius.
+They had wandered northward from the lowlands, where they had dwelt for
+centuries as a portion of the Chaldean nation. When they separated from
+it and went off to found cities for themselves, they took with them
+certain arts and tricks of handicraft learned in the old home, and never
+thought of making any change in them. It does not even seem to have
+occurred to them that by selecting a natural rocky elevation for their
+buildings they would avoid the necessity of an artificial platform and
+save vast amount of labor and time.
+
+[Illustration: 13.--RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS. (ANCIENT.) (Kaulen.)]
+
+[Illustration: 14.--RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS. (MODERN.) (Kaulen.)]
+
+9. That they did put stone to one practical use--the outward casing of
+their walls and platforms--we have already seen. The blocks must have
+been cut in the Zagros mountains and brought by water--rafted down the
+Zab, or some other of the rivers which, springing from those mountains,
+flow into the Tigris. The process is represented with perfect clearness
+on some of the sculptures. That reproduced in Fig. 13 is of great
+interest, as showing a peculiar mode of transport,--rafts floated on
+inflated skins--which is at the present moment in as general and
+constant use as it appears to have been in the same parts three thousand
+years ago and probably more. When Layard wished to send off the bulls
+and lions which he had moved from Nimrud and Koyunjik down the Tigris to
+Baghdad and Busrah, (or Bassorah), there to be embarked for Europe, he
+had recourse to this conveyance, as no other is known for similar
+purposes. This is how he describes the primitive, but ingenious
+contrivance: "The skins of full-grown sheep and goats, taken off with as
+few incisions as possible, are dried and prepared, one aperture being
+left, through which the air is forced by the lungs. A framework of
+poplar beams, branches of trees, and reeds, having been constructed of
+the size of the intended raft, the inflated skins are tied to it by
+osier twigs. The raft is then complete and is moved to the water and
+launched. Care is taken to place the skins with their mouths upward,
+that, in case any should burst or require refilling, they can be easily
+reached. Upon the framework are piled bales of goods, and property
+belonging to merchants and travellers.... The raftmen impel these rude
+vessels by long poles, to the ends of which are fastened a few pieces of
+split cane. (See Fig. 14.) ... During the floods in spring, or after
+heavy rains, small rafts may float from Mosul to Baghdad in about
+eighty-four hours; but the larger are generally six or seven days in
+performing the voyage. In summer, and when the river is low, they are
+frequently nearly a month in reaching their destination. When they have
+been unloaded, they are broken up, and the beams, wood and twigs, sold
+at considerable profit. The skins are washed and afterward rubbed with a
+preparation, to keep them from cracking and rotting. They are then
+brought back, either on the shoulders of the raftmen or upon donkeys, to
+Mossul and Tekrit, where the men engaged in the navigation of the Tigris
+usually reside." Numerous sculptures show us that similar skins were
+also used by swimmers, who rode upon them in the water, probably when
+they intended to swim a greater distance than they could have
+accomplished by their unassisted efforts. (See Figure 16.)
+
+[Illustration: 15.--EXCAVATIONS AT MUGHEIR (UR).]
+
+10. Our imagination longs to reconstruct those gigantic piles as they
+must have struck the beholder in their towering hugeness, approached
+from the plain probably by several stairways and by at least one ascent
+of a slope gentle enough to offer a convenient access to horses and
+chariots. What an imposing object must have been, for instance, the
+palace of Sennacherib, on the edge of its battlemented platform (mound
+of Koyunjik), rising directly above the waters of the Tigris,--named in
+the ancient language "the Arrow" from the swiftness of its current--into
+the golden and crimson glory of an Eastern sunset! Although the sameness
+and unwieldy nature of the material used must have put architectural
+beauty of outline out of the question, the general effect must have been
+one of massive grandeur and majesty, aided as it was by the elaborate
+ornamentation lavished on every portion of the building. Unfortunately
+the work of reconstruction is left almost entirely to imagination, which
+derives but little help from the shapeless heaps into which time has
+converted those ancient, mighty halls.
+
+[Illustration: 16.--WARRIORS SWIMMING ON INFLATED SKINS. (Babelon.)]
+
+11. Fergusson, an English explorer and scholar whose works on subjects
+connected with art and especially architecture hold a high place, has
+attempted to restore the palace of Sennacherib such as he imagines it to
+have been, from the hints furnished by the excavations. He has produced
+a striking and most effective picture, of which, however, an entire half
+is simply guesswork. The whole nether part--the stone-cased,
+battlemented platform wall, the broad stairs, the esplanade handsomely
+paved with patterned slabs, and the lower part of the palace with its
+casing of sculptured slabs and portals guarded by winged bulls--is
+strictly according to the positive facts supplied by the excavations.
+For the rest, there is no authority whatever. We do not even positively
+know whether there was any second story to Assyrian palaces at all. At
+all events, no traces of inside staircases have been found, and the
+upper part of the walls of even the ground-floor has regularly been
+either demolished or destroyed by fire. As to columns, it is impossible
+to ascertain how far they may have been used and in what way. Such as
+were used could have been, as a rule, only of wood--trunks of great
+trees hewn and smoothed--and consequently every vestige of them has
+disappeared, though some round column bases in stone have been found.[M]
+The same remarks apply to the restoration of an Assyrian palace court,
+also after Fergusson, while that of a palace hall, after Layard, is not
+open to the same reproach and gives simply the result of actual
+discoveries. Without, therefore, stopping long to consider conjectures
+more or less unsupported, let us rather try to reproduce in our minds a
+clear perception of what the audience hall of an Assyrian king looked
+like from what we may term positive knowledge. We shall find that our
+materials will go far towards creating for us a vivid and authentic
+picture.
+
+[Illustration: 17.--VIEW OF KOYUNJIK. (Hommel.)]
+
+12. On entering such a hall the first thing to strike us would probably
+be the pavement, either of large alabaster slabs delicately carved in
+graceful patterns, as also the arched doorways leading into the adjacent
+rooms (see Figs. 24 and 25, pp. 69 and 71), or else covered with rows of
+inscriptions, the characters being deeply engraven and afterwards filled
+with a molten metallic substance, like brass or bronze, which would give
+the entire floor the appearance of being covered with inscriptions in
+gilt characters, the strange forms of cuneiform writing making the whole
+look like an intricate and fanciful design.
+
+[Illustration: 18.--STONE LION AT THE ENTRANCE OF A TEMPLE. NIMRUD.
+(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+13. Our gaze would next be fascinated by the colossal human-headed
+winged bulls and lions keeping their silent watch in pairs at each of
+the portals, and we should notice with astonishment that the artists had
+allowed them each an extra leg, making the entire number five instead of
+four. This was not done at random, but with a very well-calculated
+artistic object--that of giving the monster the right number of legs,
+whether the spectator beheld it in front or in profile, as in both cases
+one of the three front legs is concealed by the others. The front view
+shows the animal standing, while it appears to be striding when viewed
+from the side. (See Figures 18 and 27, pp. 59 and 75.) The walls were
+worthy of these majestic door-keepers. The crude brick masonry
+disappeared up to a height of twelve to fifteen feet from the ground
+under the sculptured slabs of soft grayish alabaster which were solidly
+applied to the wall, and held together by strong iron cramps. Sometimes
+one subject or one gigantic figure of king or deity was represented on
+one slab; often the same subject occupied several slabs, and not
+unfrequently was carried on along an entire wall. In this case the lines
+begun on one slab were continued on the next with such perfect
+smoothness, so absolutely without a break, as to warrant the conclusion
+that the slabs were sculptured _after_ they had been put in their
+places, not before. Traces of paint show that color was to a certain
+extent employed to enliven these representations, probably not over
+plentifully and with some discrimination. Thus color is found in many
+places on the eyes, brows, hair, sandals, the draperies, the mitre or
+high headdress of the kings, on the harness of horses and portions of
+the chariots, on the flowers carried by attendants, and sometimes on
+trees. Where a siege is portrayed, the flames which issue out of windows
+and roofs seem always to have been painted red. There is reason to
+believe, however, that color was but sparingly bestowed on the
+sculptures, and therefore they must have presented a pleasing contrast
+with the richness of the ornamentation which ran along the walls
+immediately above, and which consisted of hard baked bricks of large
+size, painted and glazed in the fire, forming a continuous frieze from
+three to five feet wide. Sometimes the painting represented human
+figures and various scenes, sometimes also winged figures of deities or
+fantastic animals,--in which case it was usually confined above and
+below by a simple but graceful running pattern; or it would consist
+wholly of a more or less elaborate continuous pattern like Fig. 22,
+23, or 25, these last symbolical compositions with a religious
+signification. (See also Fig. 21, "Interior view," etc.) Curiously
+enough the remains--mostly very trifling fragments--which have been
+discovered in various ruins, show that these handsomely finished glazed
+tiles exhibited the very same colors which are nowadays in such high
+favor with ourselves for all sorts of decorative purposes: those used
+most frequently were a dark and a pale yellow, white and cream-color, a
+delicate pale green, occasionally orange and a pale lilac, very little
+blue and red; olive-green and brown are favorite colors for grounds.
+"Now and then an intense blue and a bright red occur, generally
+together; but these positive hues are rare, and the taste of the
+Assyrians seems to have led them to prefer, for their patterned walls,
+pale and dull hues.... The general tone of their coloring is quiet, not
+to say sombre. There is no striving after brilliant effects. The
+Assyrian artist seeks to please by the elegance of his forms and the
+harmony of his hues, not to startle by a display of bright and strongly
+contrasted colors.[N]"
+
+[Illustration: 19.--COURT OF HAREM AT KHORSABAD. (RESTORED.) (Perrot and
+Chipiez.)]
+
+[Illustration: 20.--CIRCULAR PILLAR-BASE.]
+
+14. It has been asked: how were those halls roofed and how were they
+lighted? questions which have given rise to much discussion and which
+can scarcely ever be answered in a positive way, since in no single
+instance has the upper part of the walls or any part whatever of the
+roofing been preserved. Still, the peculiar shape and dimensions of the
+principal palace halls goes far towards establishing a sort of
+circumstantial evidence in the case. They are invariably long and
+narrow, the proportions in some being so striking as to have made them
+more like corridors than apartments--a feature, by the by, which must
+have greatly impaired their architectural beauty: they were three or
+four times as long as they were wide, and even more. The great hall of
+the palace of Asshur-nazir-pal on the platform of the Nimrud mound
+(excavated by Layard, who calls it, from its position, "the North-West
+palace") is 160 feet long by not quite 40 wide. Of the five halls in the
+Khorsabad palace the largest measures 116 ft. by 33, the smallest 87 by
+25, while the most imposing in size of all yet laid open, the great hall
+of Sennacherib at Koyunjik, shows a length of fully 180 ft. with a width
+of 40. It is scarcely probable that the old builders, who in other
+points have shown so much artistic taste, should have selected this
+uniform and unsatisfactory shape for their state apartments, unless they
+were forcibly held to it by some insuperable imperfection in the means
+at their disposal. That they knew how to use proportions more pleasing
+in their general effect, we see from the inner open courts, of which
+there were several in every palace, and which, in shape and dimensions
+are very much like those in our own castles and palaces,--nearly square,
+(about 180 ft. or 120 ft. each way) or slightly oblong: 93 ft. by 84,
+124 ft. by 90, 150 ft. by 125. Only two courts have been found to lean
+towards the long-and-narrow shape, one being 250 ft. by 150, and the
+other 220 by 100. But even this is very different from those
+passage-like galleries. The only thing which entirely explains this
+awkward feature of all the royal halls, is the difficulty of providing
+them with a roof. It is impossible to make a flat roof of nothing but
+bricks, and although the Assyrians knew how to construct arches, they
+used them only for very narrow vaults or over gateways and doors, and
+could not have carried out the principle on any very extensive scale.
+The only obvious expedient consisted in simply spanning the width of the
+hall with wooden beams or rafters. Now no tree, not even the lofty cedar
+of Lebanon or the tall cypress of the East, will give a rafter, of equal
+thickness from end to end, more than 40 ft. in length, few even that.
+There was no getting over or around this necessity, and so the matter
+was settled for the artists quite aside from their own wishes. This
+also explains the great value which was attached by all the Assyrian
+conquerors to fine timber. It was often demanded as tribute, nothing
+could be more acceptable as a gift, and expeditions were frequently
+undertaken into the distant mountainous regions of the Lebanon on
+purpose to cut some. The difficulty about roofing would naturally fall
+away in the smaller rooms, used probably as sleeping and dwelling
+apartments, and accordingly they vary freely from oblong to square; the
+latter being generally about 25 ft. each way, sometimes less, but never
+more. There were a great many such chambers in a palace; as many as
+sixty-eight have been discovered in Sennacherib's palace at Koyunjik,
+and a large portion of the building, be it remembered, is not yet fully
+explored. Some were as highly decorated as the great halls, some faced
+with plain slabs or plastered, and some had no ornaments at all and
+showed the crude brick. These differences probably indicate the
+difference of rank in the royal household of the persons to whom the
+apartments were assigned.
+
+[Illustration: 21.--INTERIOR VIEW OF ONE OF THE CHAMBERS OF THE HAREM AT
+KHORSABAD. (RESTORED.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+15. The question of light has been discussed by eminent
+explorers--Layard, Botta, Fergusson--at even greater length and with a
+greater display of ingenuity than that of roofing. The results of the
+learned discussion may be shortly summed up as follows: We may take it
+for granted that the halls were sufficiently lighted, for the builders
+would not have bestowed on them such lavish artistic labor had they not
+meant their work to be seen in all its details and to the best
+advantage. This could be effected only in one of three ways, or in two
+combined: either by means of numerous small windows pierced at regular
+intervals above the frieze of enamelled bricks, between that and the
+roof,--or by means of one large opening in the roof of woodwork, as
+proposed by Layard in his own restoration, or by smaller openings placed
+at more frequent intervals. This latter contrivance is in general use
+now in Armenian houses, and Botta, who calls it a _louvre_, gives a
+drawing of it.[O] It is very ingenious, and would have the advantage of
+not admitting too great a mass of sunlight and heat, and of being easily
+covered with carpets or thick felt rugs to exclude the rain. The second
+method, though much the grandest in point of effect, would present none
+of these advantages and would be objectionable chiefly on account of the
+rain, which, pouring down in torrents--as it does, for weeks at a time,
+in those countries--must very soon damage the flooring where it is of
+brick, and eventually convert it into mud, not to speak of the
+inconvenience of making the state apartments unfit for use for an
+indefinite period. The small side windows just below the roof would
+scarcely give sufficient light by themselves. Who knows but they may
+have been combined with the _louvre_ system, and thus something very
+satisfactory finally obtained.
+
+[Illustration: 22.--COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES.]
+
+[Illustration: 23.--COLORED FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES.]
+
+16. The kings of Chaldea, Babylonia and Assyria seem to have been
+absolutely possessed with a mania for building. Scarcely one of them but
+left inscriptions telling how he raised this or that palace, this or
+that temple in one or other city, often in many cities. Few contented
+themselves with repairing the buildings left by their predecessors. This
+is easy to be ascertained, for they always mention all they did in that
+line. Vanity, which seems to have been, together with the love of booty,
+almost their ruling passion, of course accounts for this in a great
+measure. But there are also other causes, of which the principal one was
+the very perishable nature of the constructions, all their heavy
+massiveness notwithstanding. Being made of comparatively soft and
+yielding material, their very weight would cause the mounds to settle
+and bulge out at the sides in some places, producing crevices in others,
+and of course disturbing the balance of the thick but loose masonry of
+the walls constructed on top of them. These accidents could not be
+guarded against by the outer casing of stone or burnt brick, or even by
+the strong buttresses which were used from a very early period to prop
+up the unwieldy piles: the pressure from within was too great to be
+resisted.
+
+[Illustration: 24.--PAVEMENT SLAB.]
+
+17. An outer agent, too, was at work, surely and steadily destructive:
+the long, heavy winter rains. Crude brick, when exposed to moisture,
+easily dissolves into its original element--mud; even burned brick is
+not proof against very long exposure to violent wettings; and we know
+that the mounds were half composed of loose rubbish. Once thoroughly
+permeated with moisture, nothing could keep these huge masses from
+dissolution. The builders were well aware of the danger and struggled
+against it to the best of their ability by a very artfully contrived and
+admirably executed system of drainage, carried through the mounds in all
+directions and pouring the accumulated waters into the plain out of
+mouths beautifully constructed in the shape of arched vaults.[P] Under
+the flooring of most of the halls have been found drains, running along
+the centre, then bending off towards a conduit in one of the corners,
+which carried the contents down into one of the principal channels.
+
+[Illustration: 25.--SECTION OF ORNAMENTAL DOORWAY (ENAMELLED BRICK OR
+TILES). KHORSABAD. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+18. But all these precautions were, in the long run, of little avail, so
+that it was frequently a simpler and less expensive proceeding for a
+king to build a new palace, than to keep repairing and propping up an
+old one which crumbled to pieces, so to speak, under the workmen's
+hands. It is not astonishing that sometimes, when they had to give up an
+old mansion as hopeless, they proceeded to demolish it, in order to
+carry away the stone and use it in structures of their own, probably not
+so much as a matter of thrift, as with a view to quickening the work,
+stone-cutting in the quarries and transport down the river always being
+a lengthy operation. This explains why, in some later palaces, slabs
+were found with their sculptured face turned to the crude brick wall,
+and the other smoothed and prepared for the artist, or with the
+sculptures half erased, or piled up against the wall, ready to be put in
+place. The nature of the injuries which caused the ancient buildings to
+decay and lose all shape, is very faithfully described in an inscription
+of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, in which he relates how he
+constructed the Ziggurat of Borsip on the site of an ancient
+construction, which he repaired, as far as it went. This is what he
+says: "The temple of the Seven Spheres, the Tower of Borsip which a
+former king had built ... but had not finished its upper part, from
+remote days had fallen into decay. The channels for drawing off the
+water had not been properly provided; rain and tempest had washed away
+its bricks; the bricks of the roof were cracked; the bricks of the
+building were washed away into heaps of rubbish." All this sufficiently
+accounts for the peculiar aspect offered by the Mesopotamian ruins.
+Whatever process of destruction the buildings underwent, whether natural
+or violent, by conquerors' hands, whether through exposure to fire or to
+stress of weather, the upper part would be the first to suffer, but it
+would not disappear, from the nature of the material, which is not
+combustible. The crude bricks all through the enormous thickness of the
+walls, once thoroughly loosened, dislodged, dried up or soaked
+through, would lose their consistency and tumble down into the courts
+and halls, choking them up with the soft rubbish into which they
+crumbled, the surplus rolling down the sides and forming those even
+slopes which, from a distance, so deceivingly imitate natural hills.
+Time, accumulating the drift-sand from the desert and particles of
+fertile earth, does the rest, and clothes the mounds with the verdant
+and flowery garment which is the delight of the Arab's eyes.
+
+[Illustration: 26.--WINGED LION WITH HUMAN HEAD. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+19. It is to this mode of destruction the Assyrian kings allude in their
+annals by the continually recurring phrase: "I destroyed their cities, I
+overwhelmed them, I burned them in the fire, _I made heaps of them_."
+However difficult it is to get at the treasures imbedded in these
+"heaps," we ought not to repine at the labor, since they owe their
+preservation entirely to the soft masses of earth, sand and loose
+rubbish which have protected them on all sides from the contact with
+air, rain and ignorant plunderers, keeping them as safely--if not as
+transparently--housed as a walnut in its lump of candied sugar. The
+explorers know this so well, that when they leave the ruins, after
+completing their work for the time, they make it a point to fill all the
+excavated spaces with the very rubbish that has been taken out of them
+at the cost of so much labor and time. There is something impressive and
+reverent in thus re-burying the relics of those dead ages and nations,
+whom the mysterious gloom of their self-erected tombs becomes better
+than the glare of the broad, curious daylight. When Layard, before his
+departure, after once more wandering with some friends through all the
+trenches, tunnels and passages of the Nimrud mound, to gaze for the last
+time on the wonders on which no man had looked before him, found himself
+once more on the naked platform and ordered the workmen to cover them up
+again, he was strongly moved by the contrast: "We look around in vain,"
+says he, "for any traces of the wonderful remains we have just seen, and
+are half inclined to believe that we have dreamed a dream, or have been
+listening to some tale of Eastern romance. Some, who may hereafter
+tread on the spot when the grass again grows over the Assyrian palaces,
+may indeed suspect that I have been relating a vision."
+
+[Illustration: 27.--WINGED BULL. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+20. It is a curious fact that in Assyria the ruins speak to us only of
+the living, and that of the dead there are no traces whatever. One might
+think people never died there at all. Yet it is well known that all
+nations have bestowed as much care on the interment of their dead and
+the adornment of their last resting-place as on the construction of
+their dwellings--nay, some even more, for instance, the Egyptians. To
+this loving veneration for the dead history owes half its discoveries;
+indeed we should have almost no reliable information at all on the very
+oldest races, who lived before the invention of writing, were it not for
+their tombs and the things we find in them. It is very strange,
+therefore, that nothing of the kind should be found in Assyria, a
+country which stood so high in culture. For the sepulchres which are
+found in such numbers in some mounds down to a certain depth, belong, as
+is shown by their very position, to later races, mostly even to the
+modern Turks and Arabs. This peculiarity is so puzzling that scholars
+almost incline to suppose that the Assyrians either made away with their
+dead in some manner unknown to us, or else took them somewhere to bury.
+The latter conjecture, though not entirely devoid of foundation, as we
+shall see, is unsupported by any positive facts, and therefore was never
+seriously discussed. The question is simply left open, until something
+happens to shed light on it.
+
+[Illustration: 28.--MAN-LION. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+21. It is just the contrary in Babylonia. It can boast few handsome
+ruins or sculptures. The platforms and main walls of many palaces and
+temples have been known from the names stamped on the bricks and the
+cylinders found in the foundations, but they present only shapeless
+masses, from which all traces of artistic work have disappeared. In
+compensation, there is no country in the world where so many and such
+vast cemeteries have been discovered. It appears that the land of
+Chaldea,--perhaps because it was the cradle of nations which afterwards
+grew to greatness, as the Assyrians and the Hebrews--was regarded as a
+place of peculiar holiness by its own inhabitants, and probably also by
+neighboring countries, which would explain the mania that seems to have
+prevailed through so many ages, for burying the dead there in unheard of
+numbers. Strangely enough, some portions of it even now are held sacred
+in the same sense. There are shrines in Kerbela and Nedjif (somewhat to
+the west of Babylon) where every caravan of pilgrims brings from Persia
+hundreds of dead bodies in their felt-covered coffins, for burial. They
+are brought on camels and horses. On each side of the animal swings a
+coffin, unceremoniously thumped by the rider's bare heels. These coffins
+are, like merchandise, unladen for the night--and sometimes for days
+too--in the khans or caravanseries (the enclosed halting-places), where
+men and beasts take their rest together. Under that tropical clime, it
+is easy to imagine the results. It is in part to this disgusting custom
+that the great mortality in the caravans is to be attributed, one fifth
+of which leave their bones in the desert in _healthy_ seasons. However
+that may be, the gigantic proportions of the Chaldean burying-grounds
+struck even the ancient Greek travellers with astonishment, and some of
+them positively asserted that the Assyrian kings used to be buried in
+Chaldea. If the kings, why not the nobler and wealthier of their
+subjects? The transport down the rivers presented no difficulties.
+Still, as already remarked, all this is mere conjecture.
+
+[Illustration: 29.--FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+22. Among the Chaldeans cities ERECH (now WARKA) was considered from
+very old times one of the holiest. It had many extremely ancient temples
+and a college of learned priests, and around it gradually formed an
+immense "city of the dead" or Necropolis. The English explorer, Loftus,
+in 1854-5, specially turned his attention to it and his account is
+astounding. First of all, he was struck by the majestic desolation of
+the place. Warka and a few other mounds are raised on a slightly
+elevated tract of the desert, above the level of the yearly inundations,
+and accessible only from November to March, as all the rest of the time
+the surrounding plain is either a lake or a swamp. "The desolation and
+solitude of Warka," says Loftus, "are even more striking than the scene
+which is presented at Babylon itself. There is no life for miles around.
+No river glides in grandeur at the base of its mounds; no green date
+groves flourish near its ruins. The jackal and the hyaena appear to shun
+the dull aspect of its tombs. The king of birds never hovers over the
+deserted waste. A blade of grass or an insect finds no existence there.
+The shrivelled lichen alone, clinging to the weathered surface of the
+broken brick, seems to glory in its universal dominion over those barren
+walls. Of all the desolate pictures I have ever seen that of Warka
+incomparably surpasses all." Surely in this case it cannot be said that
+appearances are deceitful; for all that space, and much more, is a
+cemetery, and what a cemetery! "It is difficult," again says Loftus, "to
+convey anything like a correct idea of the piles upon piles of human
+remains which there utterly astound the beholder. Excepting only the
+triangular space between the three principal ruins, the whole remainder
+of the platform, the whole space between the walls and an unknown extent
+of desert beyond them, are everywhere filled with the bones and
+sepulchres of the dead. There is probably no other site in the world
+which can compare with Warka in this respect." It must be added that the
+coffins do not simply lie one next to the other, but in layers, down to
+a depth of 30-60 feet. Different epochs show different modes of burial,
+among which the following four are the most remarkable.
+
+[Illustration: 30.--RAM'S HEAD IN ALABASTER. (British Museum.)]
+
+[Illustration: 31.--EBONY COMB. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+[Illustration: 32.--BRONZE FORK AND SPOON. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+23. Perhaps the queerest coffin shape of all is that composed of two
+earthen jars (_a_ and _b_), which accurately fit together, or one
+slightly fits into the other, the juncture being made air-tight by a
+coating of bitumen (_d_, _d_). The body can be placed in such a coffin
+only with slightly bent knees. At one end (_c_) there is an air-hole,
+left for the escape of the gases which form during the decomposition of
+the body and which might otherwise burst the jars--a precaution probably
+suggested by experience (fig. 36). Sometimes there is only one jar of
+much larger size, but of the same shape, with a similar cover, also made
+fast with bitumen, or else the mouth is closed with bricks. This is an
+essentially national mode of burial, perhaps the most ancient of all,
+yet it remained in use to a very late period. It is to be noted that
+this is the exact shape of the water jars now carried about the streets
+of Baghdad and familiar to every traveller.
+
+[Illustration: 33.--ARMENIAN LOUVRE. (Botta.)]
+
+24. Not much less original is the so-called "dish-cover coffin," also
+very ancient and national. The illustrations sufficiently show its shape
+and arrangement.[Q] In these coffins two skeletons are sometimes found,
+showing that when a widow or widower died, it was opened, to lay the
+newly dead by the side of the one who had gone before. The cover is all
+of one piece--a very respectable achievement of the potter's art. In
+Mugheir (ancient Ur), a mound was found, entirely filled with this kind
+of coffins.
+
+[Illustration: 34.--VAULTED DRAINS. (KHORSABAD.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+[Illustration: 35.--VAULTED DRAIN. (KHORSABAD.) (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+25. Much more elaborate, and consequently, probably reserved for the
+noble and wealthy, is the sepulchral vault in brick, of nearly a man's
+height.[R] In these sepulchres, as in the preceding ones, the skeleton
+is always found lying in the same position, evidently dictated by some
+religious ideas. The head is pillowed on a large brick, commonly covered
+with a piece of stuff or a rug. In the tattered rags which sometimes
+still exist, costly embroideries and fringed golden tissue have more
+than once been recognized, while some female skeletons still showed
+handsome heads of hair gathered into fine nets. The body lies on a reed
+mat, on its left side, the right hand stretched out so as to reach with
+the tips of the fingers a bowl, generally of copper or bronze, and
+sometimes of fine workmanship, usually placed on the palm of the left
+hand. Around are placed various articles--dishes, in some of which
+remnants of food are found, such as date stones,--jars for water, lamps,
+etc. Some skeletons wear gold and silver bangles on their wrists and
+ankles. These vaults were evidently family sepulchres, for several
+skeletons are generally found in them; in one there were no less than
+eleven. (Fig. 39, p. 89.)
+
+[Illustration: 36.--CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN. (Taylor.)]
+
+26. All these modes of burial are very old and peculiarly Chaldean. But
+there is still another, which belongs to more recent times, even as late
+as the first centuries after Christ, and was used by a different and
+foreign race, the Parthians, one of those who came in turns and
+conquered the country, stayed there awhile, then disappeared. These
+coffins are, from their curious form, known under the name of
+"slipper-shaped." They are glazed, green on the outside and blue on the
+inside, but of very inferior make: poor clay, mixed with straw, and only
+half baked, therefore very brittle. It is thought that they were put in
+their place empty, then the body was laid in, the lid put down, and the
+care of covering them with sand left to the winds. The lid is fastened
+with the same mortar which is used in the brick masonry surrounding the
+coffin, where such a receptacle has been made for it; but they more
+usually lie pell-mell, separated only by thin layers of loose sand.
+There are mounds which are, as one may say, larded with them: wherever
+you begin to dig a trench, the narrow ends stick out from both sides. In
+these coffins also various articles were buried with the dead, sometimes
+valuable ones. The Arabs know this; they dig in the sand with their
+hands, break the coffins open with their spears, and grope in them for
+booty. The consequence is that it is extremely difficult to procure an
+entire coffin. Loftus succeeded, however, in sending some to the British
+Museum, having first pasted around them several layers of thick paper,
+without which precaution they could not have borne the transport.
+
+[Illustration: 37.--"DISH-COVER" TOMB AT MUGHEIR. (Taylor.)]
+
+[Illustration: 38.--"DISH-COVER" TOMB. (Taylor.)]
+
+27. On the whole, the ancient Chaldean sepulchres of the three first
+kinds are distinguished by greater care and tidiness. They are not only
+separated by brick partitions on the sides, and also above and below
+by a thin layer of brick masonry, but the greatest care was taken to
+protect them against dampness. The sepulchral mounds are pierced through
+and through, from top to bottom, by drainage pipes or shafts, consisting
+of a series of rings, solidly joined together with bitumen, about one
+foot in diameter. These rings are made of baked clay. The top one is
+shaped somewhat like a funnel, of which the end is inserted in
+perforated bricks, and which is provided with small holes, to receive
+any infiltration of moisture. Besides all this the shafts, which are
+sunk in pairs, are surrounded with broken pottery. How ingenious and
+practical this system was, we see from the fact that both the coffins
+and their contents are found in a state of perfect dryness and
+preservation. (Fig. 41, p. 90.)
+
+[Illustration: 39.--SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR. (Taylor.)]
+
+[Illustration: 40.--STONE JARS FROM GRAVES. (LARSAM.) (Hommel.)]
+
+28. In fact the Chaldeans, if they could not reach such perfection as
+the Assyrians in slab-sculpture, on account of not having stone either
+at home or within easy reach, seem to have derived a greater variety of
+architectural ornaments from that inexhaustible material of
+theirs--baked clay or terra-cotta. We see an instance of it in
+remnants--unfortunately very small ones, of some walls belonging to that
+same city of Erech. On one of the mounds Loftus was puzzled by the large
+quantity of small terra-cotta cones, whole and in fragments, lying about
+on the ground. The thick flat end of them was painted red, black or
+white. What was his amazement when he stumbled on a piece of wall (some
+seven feet in height and not more than thirty in length), which showed
+him what their use had been. They were grouped into a variety of
+patterns to decorate the entire wall, being stuck with their thin end
+into a layer of soft clay with which it was coated for the purpose.
+Still more original and even rather incomprehensible is a wall
+decoration consisting of several bands, composed each of three rows of
+small pots or cups--about four inches in diameter--stuck into the soft
+clay coating in the same manner, with the mouth turned outward of
+course! Loftus found such a wall, but unfortunately has given no design
+of it. (Figures 43 and 44.)
+
+[Illustration: 41.--DRAIN IN MOUND. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+29. As to the ancient Babylonian, or rather Chaldean, art in sculpture,
+the last word has by no means been said on that subject. Discoveries
+crowd in every year, constantly leading to the most unexpected
+conclusions. Thus, it was long an accepted fact that Assyria had very
+few statues and Babylonia none at all, when a few years ago (1881),
+what should a French explorer, Mr. E. De Sarzec, French consul in Basra,
+bring home but nine magnificent statues made of a dark, nearly black
+stone as hard as granite, called diorite.[S] Unfortunately they are all
+headless; but, as though to make up for this mutilation, one head was
+found separate,--a shaved and turbaned head beautifully preserved and of
+remarkable workmanship, the very pattern of the turban being plain
+enough to be reproduced by any modern loom.[T] These large prizes were
+accompanied by a quantity of small works of art representing both men
+and animals, of a highly artistic design and some of them of exquisite
+finish of execution. This astounding find, the result of several years'
+indefatigable work, now gracing the Assyrian rooms of the Louvre in
+Paris, comes from one of the Babylonian mounds which had not been opened
+before, the ruins of a mighty temple at a place now called TELL-LOH, and
+supposed to be the site of SIR-BURLA, or SIR-GULLA, one of the most
+ancient cities of Chaldea. This "Sarzec-collection," as it has come to
+be generally called, not only entirely upsets the ideas which had been
+formed on Old-Chaldean art, but is of immense historical importance from
+the inscriptions which cover the back of every statue, (not to speak of
+the cylinders and other small objects,) and which, in connection with
+the monuments of other ruins, enable scholars to fix, at least
+approximately, the date at which flourished the city and rulers who have
+left such extraordinary memorials of their artistic gifts. Some place
+them at about 4500 B.C., others about 4000. However overwhelming such a
+valuation may be at first sight, it is not an unsupported fancy, but
+proofs concur from many sides to show that the builders and sculptors of
+Sir-gulla could in no case have lived and worked much later than 4000
+B.C. It is impossible to indicate in a few lines all the points, the
+conjectures, the vexed questions, on which this discovery sheds light
+more or less directly, more or less decisively; they come up continually
+as the study of those remote ages proceeds, and it will be years before
+the materials supplied by the Sarzec-Collection are exhausted in all
+their bearings.
+
+[Illustration: 42.--WALL WITH DESIGNS IN TERRA-COTTA CONES, AT WARKA
+(ERECH). (Loftus.)]
+
+[Illustration: 43.--TERRA-COTTA CONE, NATURAL SIZE. (Loftus.)]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[G] Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 46.
+
+[H] Ur of the Chaldees, from which Abraham went forth.
+
+[I] Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 349.
+
+[J] Figure 10.
+
+[K] Figure 71, p. 281.
+
+[L] Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 317 and 318.
+
+[M] See Fig. 20, p. 63. There is but one exception, in the case of a
+recent exploration, during which one solitary broken column-shaft was
+discovered.
+
+[N] G. Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 467, 468.
+
+[O] See Fig. 33, p. 83.
+
+[P] Figures 34 and 35, p. 84.
+
+[Q] Figs. 37 and 38, p. 87.
+
+[R] Fig. 39, p. 89.
+
+[S] See Fig. 59, p. 217.
+
+[T] See Figs. 44 and 45, p. 101.
+
+
+
+
+                               IV.
+
+          THE BOOK OF THE PAST.--THE LIBRARY OF NINEVEH.
+
+
+1. When we wish to learn the great deeds of past ages, and of mighty men
+long dead, we open a book and read. When we wish to leave to the
+generations who will come long after us a record of the things that were
+done by ourselves or in our own times, we take pen, ink and paper, and
+write a book. What we have written is then printed, published in several
+hundreds--or thousands--of copies, as the case may be, and quickly finds
+its way to all the countries of the world inhabited by people who are
+trained from childhood to thought and study. So that we have the
+satisfaction of knowing that the information which we have labored to
+preserve will be obtainable any number of years or centuries after we
+shall have ceased to exist, at no greater trouble than procuring the
+book from the shelves of a bookstore, a public or a private library. It
+is all very simple. And there is not a small child who does not
+perfectly know a book by its looks, and even has not a pretty correct
+idea of how a book is made and what it is good for.
+
+2. But books are not always of the shape and material so familiar to us.
+Metal, stone, brick, walls and pillars, nay, the very rocks of nature's
+own making, can be books, conveying information as plainly as our
+volumes of paper sheets covered with written or printed lines. It only
+needs to know how to read them, and the necessary knowledge and skill
+may be acquired by processes as simple as the art of ordinary reading
+and writing, though at the cost of a somewhat greater amount of time and
+pains.
+
+3. There are two natural cravings, which assert themselves strongly in
+every mind not entirely absorbed by the daily work for bread and by the
+anxious care how to procure that work: these are the wish, on the one
+hand, to learn how the people who came before us lived and what they
+did, on the other--to transmit our own names and the memory of our deeds
+to those who will come after us. We are not content with our present
+life; we want to stretch it both backward and forward--to live both in
+the past and the future, as it were. This curiosity and this ambition
+are but parts of the longing for immortality which was never absent from
+any human soul. In our own age they are satisfied mainly by books;
+indeed they were originally the principal causes why books began to be
+made at all. And how easy to satisfy these cravings in our time, when
+writing materials have become as common as food and far cheaper, and
+reading may be had for nothing or next to nothing! For, a very few
+dollars will supply a writer with as much paper as he can possibly use
+up in a year, while the public libraries, the circulating and college
+libraries and the reading-rooms make study a matter more of love and
+perseverance than of money.
+
+4. Yet if the papermill and the printing press were the only material
+aid to our researches into the past, these researches would stop
+short very soon, seeing that printing was invented in Europe scarce
+four hundred years ago, and paper has not been manufactured for more
+than six hundred years at the outside. True, other materials have
+been used to write on before paper: bark of trees, skins of
+animals--(parchment)--cunningly worked fibres of plants--(papyrus,
+byblos)--even wooden tablets covered with a thin layer of wax, on
+which characters were engraved with a pointed instrument or
+"style,"--and these contrivances have preserved for us records which
+reach back many hundreds of years beyond the introduction of paper.
+But our curiosity, when once aroused, is insatiable, and an area of
+some twenty, or thirty, or forty centuries seems to it but a narrow
+field. Looking back as far as that--and no kind of manuscript
+information takes us much further--we behold the world wondrously
+like what it is now. With some differences in garb, in manners, and a
+much greater one in the range of knowledge, we find men living very
+nearly as we do and enacting very nearly the same scenes: nations
+live in families clustered within cities, are governed by laws, or
+ruled by monarchs, carry on commerce and wars, extend their limits by
+conquest, excel in all sorts of useful and ornamental arts. Only we
+notice that larger regions are unknown, vaster portions of the
+earth, with their populations, are unexplored, than in our days. The
+conclusion is clearly forced on us, that so complicated and perfect
+an organization of public and private life, a condition of society
+implying so many discoveries and so long a practice in thought and
+handicraft, could not have been an early stage of existence. Long
+vistas are dimly visible into a past far vaster than the span as yet
+laid open to our view, and we long to pierce the tantalizing gloom.
+There, in that gloom, lurk the beginnings of the races whose high
+achievements we admire, emulate, and in many ways surpass; there, if
+we could but send a ray of light into the darkness of ages, we must
+find the solution of numberless questions which suggest themselves as
+we go: Whence come those races? What was the earlier history of other
+races with which we find them contending, treating, trading? When did
+they learn their arts, their songs, their forms of worship? But here
+our faithful guide, manuscript literature, forsakes us; we enter on a
+period when none of the ancient substitutes for paper were yet
+invented. But then, there were the stones. _They_ did not need to be
+invented--only hewn and smoothed for the chisel.
+
+5. Fortunately for us, men, twenty-five, and forty, and fifty centuries
+ago, were actuated by the same feelings, the same aspirations as they
+are now, and of these aspirations, the passionate wish of perpetuating
+their names and the memory of their deeds has always been one of the
+most powerful. This wish they connected with and made subservient to
+the two things which were great and holy in their eyes: their religion
+and the power of their kings. So they built, in brick and stone, at an
+almost incalculable expense of time, human labor and human life, palaces
+and temples. On these huge piles they lavished treasures untold, as also
+all the resources of their invention and their skill in art and
+ornament; they looked on them with exulting pride, not only because they
+thought them, by their vastness and gorgeousness, fit places for public
+worship and dwellings worthy of their kings, but because these
+constructions, in their towering grandeur, their massive solidity, bid
+fair to defy time and outlast the nations which raised them, and which
+thus felt assured of leaving behind them traces of their existence,
+memorials of their greatness. That a few defaced, dismantled, moss-grown
+or sand-choked fragments of these mighty buildings would one day be the
+_only_ trace, the sole memorial of a rule and of nations that would then
+have past away forever, even into nothingness and oblivion, scarcely was
+anticipated by the haughty conquerors who filled those halls with their
+despotic presence, and entered those consecrated gates in the pomp of
+triumph to render thanks for bloody victories and warlike exploits which
+elated their souls in pride till they felt themselves half divine.
+Nothing doubting but that those walls, those pillars, those gateways
+would stand down to the latest ages, they confided to them that which
+was most precious to their ambition, the record of their deeds, the
+praises of their names, thus using those stony surfaces as so many
+blank pages, which they covered with row after row of wondrous
+characters, carefully engraved or chiselled, and even with painted or
+sculptured representations of their own persons and of the scenes, in
+war or peace, in which they had been leaders and actors.
+
+6. Thus it is that on all the points of the globe where sometime great
+and flourishing nations have held their place, then yielded to other
+nations or to absolute devastation--in Egypt, in India, in Persia, in
+the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the sandy, now desert plains
+of Syria, in the once more populous haunts of ancient Rome and
+Greece--the traveller meets clusters of great ruins, lofty still in
+their utter abandonment, with a strange, stern beauty hovering around
+their weather-beaten, gigantic shafts and cornices, wrapt in the
+pathetic silence of desolation, and yet not dumb--for their pictured
+faces eloquently proclaim the tale of buoyant life and action entrusted
+to them many thousands of years ago. Sometimes, it is a natural rock,
+cut and smoothed down at a height sufficient to protect it from the
+wantonly destructive hand of scoffing invaders, on which a king of a
+deeper turn of thought, more mindful than others of the law which dooms
+all the works of men to decay, has caused a relation of the principal
+events of his reign to be engraved in those curious characters which
+have for centuries been a puzzle and an enigma. Many tombs also, besides
+the remains of the renowned or wealthy dead, for whom they have been
+erected at a cost as extravagant and with art as elaborate as the
+abodes of the living, contain the full description of their inmate's
+lineage, his life, his habits and pursuits, with prayers and invocations
+to the divinities of his race and descriptions or portrayed
+representations of religious ceremonies. Or, the walls of caves, either
+natural, or cut in the rock for purposes of shelter or concealment,
+yield to the explorer some more chapters out of the old, old story, in
+which our interest never slackens. This story man has himself been
+writing, patiently, laboriously, on every surface on which he could
+trace words and lines, ever since he has been familiar with the art of
+expressing his thoughts in visible signs,--and so each such surviving
+memorial may truly be called a stray leaf, half miraculously preserved
+to us, out of the great Book of the Past, which it has been the task of
+scholars through ages, and especially during the last eighty years, to
+decipher and teach others how to read.
+
+[Illustration: 44.--HEAD OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN. FROM TELL-LOH (SIR-GULLA).
+SARZEC COLLECTION. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+[Illustration: 45.--SAME, PROFILE VIEW.]
+
+7. Of this venerable book the walls of the Assyrian palaces, with their
+endless rows of inscriptions, telling year for year through centuries
+the history of the kings who built them, are so many invaluable pages,
+while the sculptures which accompany these annals are the illustrations,
+lending life and reality to what would otherwise be a string of dry and
+unattractive records. But a greater wonder has been brought to light
+from amidst the rubbish and dust of twenty-five centuries: a collection
+of literary and scientific works, of religious treatises, of private and
+public documents, deposited in rooms constructed on purpose to contain
+them, arranged in admirable order, in short--a LIBRARY. Truly and
+literally a library, in the sense in which we use the word. Not the only
+one either, nor the first by many hundred years, although the volumes
+are of singular make and little like those we are used to.
+
+8. When Layard was at work for the second time amidst the ruins along
+the Tigris, he devoted much of his labor to the great mound of Koyunjik,
+in which the remains of two sumptuous palaces were distinctly discerned,
+one of them the royal residence of Sennacherib, the other that of his
+grandson Asshurbanipal, who lived some 650 years before Christ--two of
+the mightiest conquerors and most magnificent sovereigns of the Eastern
+world. In the latter palace he came upon two comparatively small
+chambers, the floor of which was entirely littered with fragments--some
+of considerable size, some very small--of bricks, or rather baked-clay
+tablets, covered on both sides with cuneiform writing. It was a layer
+more than a foot in height which must have been formed by the falling in
+of the upper part of the edifice. The tablets, piled in good order along
+the walls, perhaps in an upper story--if, as many think, there was
+one--must have been precipitated promiscuously into the apartment and
+shattered by the fall. Yet, incredible as it may appear, several were
+found entire. Layard filled many cases with the fragments and sent them
+off to the British Museum, fully aware of their probable historical
+value.
+
+9. There they lay for years, heaped up at random, a mine of treasures
+which made the mouths of scholars water, but appalled them by the
+amount of labor, nay, actual drudgery, needful only to sift and sort
+them, even before any study of their contents could be begun. At length
+a young and ambitious archaeologist, attached to the British Museum,
+George Smith, undertook the long and wearisome task. He was not
+originally a scholar, but an engraver, and was employed to engrave on
+wood cuneiform texts for the magnificent atlas edited by the British
+Museum under the title of "Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia."
+Being endowed with a quick and enquiring mind, Smith did not content
+himself, like most of his colleagues, with a conscientious and artistic,
+but merely technical reproduction; he wished to know _what_ he was doing
+and he learned the language of the inscriptions. When he took on himself
+the sorting of the fragments, it was in the hope of distinguishing
+himself in this new field, and of rendering a substantial service to the
+science which had fascinated him. Nor was he deceived in this hope. He
+succeeded in finding and uniting a large quantity of fragments belonging
+together, and thus restoring pages of writing, with here and there a
+damaged line, a word effaced, a broken corner, often a larger portion
+missing, but still enough left to form continuous and readable texts. In
+some cases it was found that there was more than one copy of this or
+that work or document, and then sometimes the parts which were
+hopelessly injured in one copy, would be found whole or nearly so in
+another.
+
+10. The results accomplished by this patient mechanical process were
+something astonishing. And when he at length restored in this manner a
+series of twelve tablets containing an entire poem of the greatest
+antiquity and highest interest, the occasion seemed important enough to
+warrant the enterprising owners of the London _Daily Telegraph_ in
+sending the young student to resume excavations and try to complete some
+missing links. For of some of the tablets restored by him only portions
+could be found among the fragments of the British Museum. Of course he
+made his way straight to the Archive Chambers at Koyunjik, had them
+opened again and cleared them of another large instalment of their
+valuable contents, among which he had the inconceivable good fortune to
+find some of the very pieces which were missing in his collection.
+Joyfully he returned to England twice with his treasures, and hopefully
+set out on a third expedition of the same kind. He had reason to feel
+buoyant; he had already made his name famous by several works which
+greatly enriched the science he loved, and had he not half a lifetime
+before him to continue the work which few could do as well? Alas, he
+little knew that his career was to be cut short suddenly by a loathsome
+and brutal foe: he died of the plague in Syria, in 1876--just thirty-six
+years old. He was faithful to the end. His diary, in which he made some
+entries even within a very few days before his death, shows that at the
+last, when he knew his danger and was fast losing hope, his mind was
+equally divided between thoughts of his family and of his work. The
+following lines, almost the last intelligible ones he wrote, are deeply
+touching in their simple, single-minded earnestness:--"Not so well. If
+Doctor present, I should recover, but he has not come, very doubtful
+case; if fatal farewell to ... _My work has been entirely for the
+science I study...._ There is a large field of study in my collection. I
+intended to work it out, but desire now that my antiquities and notes
+may be thrown open to all students. I have done my duty thoroughly. I do
+not fear the change but desire to live for my family. Perhaps all may be
+well yet."--George Smith's death was a great loss, which his
+brother-scholars of all countries have not ceased to deplore. But the
+work now proceeds vigorously and skilfully. The precious texts are
+sorted, pieced, and classified, and a collection of them, carefully
+selected, is reproduced by the aid of the photographer and the engraver,
+so that, should the originals ever be lost or destroyed, (not a very
+probable event), the Museum indeed would lose one of its most precious
+rarities, but science would lose nothing.
+
+11. An eminent French scholar and assyriologist, Joachim Menant, has the
+following picturesque lines in his charming little book "_La
+Bibliotheque du Palais de Ninive_": "When we reflect that these records
+have been traced on a substance which neither fire nor water could
+destroy, we can easily comprehend how those who wrote them thus thirty
+or forty centuries ago, believed the monuments of their history to be
+safe for all future times,--much safer than the frail sheets which
+printing scatters with such prodigious fertility.... Of all the nations
+who have bequeathed to us written records of their past life, we may
+assert that none has left monuments more imperishable than Assyria and
+Chaldea. Their number is already considerable; it is daily increased by
+new discoveries. It is not possible to foresee what the future has in
+store for us in this respect; but we can even now make a valuation of
+the entire material which we possess.... The number of the tablets from
+the Nineveh Library alone passes ten thousand.... If we compare these
+texts with those left us by other nations, we can easily become
+convinced that the history of the Assyro-Chaldean civilization will soon
+be one of the best known of antiquity. It has a powerful attraction for
+us, for we know that the life of the Jewish people is mixed up with the
+history of Nineveh and Babylon...."
+
+[Illustration: 46.--CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION. (ARCHAIC CHARACTERS.) (Perrot
+and Chipiez.)]
+
+12. It will be seen from this that throughout the following pages we
+shall continually have to refer to the contents of Asshurbanipal's royal
+library. We must therefore dispense in this place with any details
+concerning the books, more than a general survey of the subjects they
+treated. Of these, religion and science were the chief. Under "science"
+we must understand principally mathematics and astronomy, two branches
+in which the old Chaldeans reached great perfection and left us many of
+our own most fundamental notions and practices, as we shall see later
+on. Among the scientific works must also be counted those on astrology,
+i.e., on the influence which the heavenly bodies were supposed to
+exert on the fate of men, according to their positions and combinations,
+for astrology was considered a real science, not only by the Chaldeans,
+but by much later nations too; also hand-books of geography, really only
+lists of the seas, mountains and rivers, nations and cities then known,
+lastly lists of plants and animals with a very rude and defective
+attempt at some sort of classification. History is but scantily
+represented; it appears to have been mostly confined to the great wall
+inscriptions and some other objects, of which more hereafter. But--what
+we should least expect--grammars, dictionaries, school reading-books,
+occupy a prominent place. The reason is that, when this library was
+founded, the language in which the venerable books of ancient sages were
+written not only was not spoken any longer, but had for centuries been
+forgotten by all but the priests and those who made scholarship their
+chief pursuit, so that it had to be taught in the same way that the
+so-called "dead languages," Latin and Greek, are taught at our colleges.
+This was the more necessary as the prayers had to be recited in the old
+language called the Accadian, that being considered more holy--just as,
+in Catholic countries, the common people are even now made to learn and
+say their prayers in Latin, though they understand not a word of the
+language. The ancient Accadian texts were mostly copied with a modern
+Assyrian translation, either interlinear or facing it, which has been of
+immense service to those who now decipher the tablets.
+
+[Illustration: 47.--INSCRIBED CLAY TABLET. (Smith's "Assyria.")]
+
+13. So much for what may be called the classical and reference
+department of the library. Important as it is, it is scarcely more so
+than the documentary department or Archive proper, where documents and
+deeds of all kinds, both public and private, were deposited for safe
+keeping. Here by the side of treatises, royal decrees and despatches,
+lists of tribute, reports from generals and governors, also those daily
+sent in by the superintendents of the royal observatories,--we find
+innumerable private documents: deeds of sale duly signed, witnessed and
+sealed, for land, houses, slaves--any kind of property,--of money lent,
+of mortgages, with the rate of interest, contracts of all sorts. The
+most remarkable of private documents is one which has been called the
+"will of King Sennacherib," by which he entrusts some valuable personal
+property to the priests of the temple of Nebo, to be kept for his
+favorite son,--whether to be delivered after his (the king's) death or
+at another time is not stated.
+
+[Illustration: 48.--CLAY TABLET IN ITS CASE. (Hommel.)]
+
+14. It requires some effort to bear in mind the nature and looks of the
+things which we must represent to ourselves when we talk of Assyrian
+"_books_." The above (Fig. 47) is the portrait of a "_volume_" in
+perfect condition. But it is seldom indeed that one such is found.
+Layard, in his first description of his startling "find," says: "They
+(the tablets) were of different sizes; the largest were flat, and
+measured nine inches by six and a half; the smaller were slightly
+convex, and some were not more than an inch long, with but one or two
+lines of writing. The cuneiform characters on most of them were
+singularly sharp and well-defined, but so minute in some instances as to
+be illegible without a magnifying glass." Most curiously, glass lenses
+have been found among the ruins; which may have been used for the
+purpose. Specimens have also been found of the very instruments which
+were employed to trace the cuneiform characters, and their form
+sufficiently accounts for the peculiar shape of these characters which
+was imitated by the engravers on stone. It is a little iron rod--(or
+_style_, as the ancients used to call such implements)--not sharp, but
+_triangular_ at the end: [open triangle]. By slightly pressing this end
+on the cake of soft moist clay held in the left hand no other shape of
+sign could be obtained than a wedge, [closed triangle], the direction
+being determined by a turn of the wrist, presenting the instrument in
+different positions. When one side of the tablet was full, the other was
+to be filled. If it was small, it was sufficient to turn it over,
+continuing to hold the edges between the thumb and third finger of the
+left hand. But if the tablet was large and had to be laid on a table to
+be written on, the face that was finished would be pressed to the hard
+surface, and the clay being soft, the writing would be effaced. This was
+guarded against by a contrivance as ingenious as it was simple. Empty
+places were left here and there in the lines, in which were stuck small
+pegs, like matches. On these the tablet was supported when turned over,
+and also while baking in the oven. On many of the tablets that have
+been preserved are to be seen little holes or dints, where the pegs have
+been stuck. Still, it should be mentioned that these holes are not
+confined to the large tablets and not found on all large tablets. When
+the tablet was full, it was allowed to dry, then generally, but not
+always, baked. Within the last few years several thousands unbaked
+tablets have been found in Babylonia; they crumbled into dust under the
+finders' fingers. It was then proposed to bake such of them as could at
+all bear handling. The experiment was successful, and numbers of
+valuable documents were thus preserved and transported to the great
+repository of the British Museum. The tablets are covered with writing
+on both sides and most accurately classed and numbered, when they form
+part of a series, in which case they are all of the same shape and size.
+The poem discovered by George Smith is written out on twelve tablets,
+each of which is a separate book or chapter of the whole. There is an
+astronomical work in over seventy tablets. The first of them begins with
+the words: "_When the gods Anu and ..._" These words are taken as the
+title of the entire series. Each tablet bears the notice: First, second,
+third tablet of "_When the gods Anu and ..._" To guard against all
+chance of confusion, the last line of one tablet is repeated as the
+first line of the following one--a fashion which we still see in old
+books, where the last word or two at the bottom of a page is repeated at
+the top of the next.
+
+[Illustration: 49.--ANTIQUE BRONZE SETTING OF CYLINDER. (Perrot and
+Chipiez.)]
+
+[Illustration: 50.--CHALDEAN CYLINDER AND IMPRESSION.(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+[Illustration: 51.--ASSYRIAN CYLINDER. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+15. The clay tablets of the ancient Chaldeans are distinguished from the
+Assyrian ones by a curious peculiarity: they are sometimes enclosed in a
+case of the same material, with exactly the same inscription and seals
+as on the inner tablet, even more carefully executed.[U] It is evidently
+a sort of duplicate document, made in the prevision that the outer one
+might be injured, when the inner record would remain. Rows of figures
+across the tablet are impressed on it with seals called from their shape
+cylinders, which were rolled over the soft moist clay. These cylinders
+were generally of some valuable, hard stone--jasper, amethyst,
+cornelian, onyx, agate, etc.,--and were used as signet rings were later
+and are still. They are found in great numbers, being from their
+hardness well-nigh indestructible. They were generally bored through,
+and through the hole was passed either a string to wear them on, or a
+metal axis, to roll them more easily.[V] There is a large and most
+valuable collection of seal cylinders at the British Museum. Their size
+ranges from a quarter of an inch to two inches or a little more. But
+cylinders were also made of baked clay and larger size, and then served
+a different purpose, that of historical documents. These are found in
+the foundations of palaces and temples, mostly in the four corners, in
+small niches or chambers, generally produced by leaving out one or more
+bricks. These tiny monuments range from a couple of inches to half a
+foot in height, seldom more; they are sometimes shaped like a prism with
+several faces (mostly six), sometimes like a barrel, and covered with
+that compact and minute writing which it often requires a magnifying
+glass to make out. Owing to their sheltered position, these singular
+records are generally very well preserved. Although their original
+destination is only to tell by whom and for what purpose the building
+has been erected, they frequently proceed to give a full though
+condensed account of the respective kings' reigns, so that, should the
+upper structure with its engraved annals be destroyed by the
+vicissitudes of war or in the course of natural decay, some memorial of
+their deeds should still be preserved--a prevision which, in several
+cases, has been literally fulfilled. Sometimes the manner and material
+of these records were still more fanciful. At Khorsabad, at the very
+interior part of the construction, was found a large stone chest, which
+enclosed several inscribed plates in various materials. "... In this only
+extant specimen of an Assyrian foundation stone were found one little
+golden tablet, one of silver, others of copper, lead and tin; a sixth
+text was engraved on alabaster, and the seventh document was written on
+the chest itself."[W] Unfortunately the heavier portion of this
+remarkable find was sent with a collection which foundered on the Tigris
+and was lost. Only the small plates,--gold, silver, copper and tin
+(antimonium scholars now think it to be)--survived, and the inscriptions
+on them have been read and translated. They all commemorate, in very
+nearly the same terms, the foundation and erection of a new city and
+palace by a very famous king and conqueror, generally (though not
+correctly) called Sargon, and three of them end with a request to the
+kings his successors to keep the building in good repair, with a prayer
+for their welfare if they do and a heavy curse if they fail in this
+duty: "Whoever alters the works of my hand, destroys my constructions,
+pulls down the walls which I have raised,--may Asshur, Nineb, Raman and
+the great gods who dwell there, pluck his name and seed from the land
+and let him sit bound at the feet of his foe." Most inscriptions end
+with invocations of the same kind, for, in the words of Menant: "it was
+not mere whim which impelled the kings of Assyria to build so
+assiduously. Palaces had in those times a destination which they have no
+longer in ours. Not only was the palace indeed _the dwelling of
+royalty_, as the inscriptions have it,--it was also the BOOK, which each
+sovereign began at his accession to the throne and in which he was to
+record the history of his reign."[X]
+
+[Illustration: 52.--PRISM OF SENNACHERIB. ALSO CALLED "TAYLOR
+CYLINDER."]
+
+[Illustration: 53.--INSCRIBED CYLINDER FROM BORSIP.]
+
+And each such book of brick and stone we can with perfect truth call a
+chapter--or a volume--of the great Book of the Past whose leaves are
+scattered over the face of the earth.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[U] See Fig. 48, p. 111.
+
+[V] See above, Figs. 49 and 50.
+
+[W] Dr. Julius Oppert, "Records of the Past," Vol. XI., p. 31.
+
+[X] "Les Ecritures Cuneiformes," of Joachim Menant: page 198 (2d
+edition, 1864).
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CHALDEA AND NEIGHBORING COUNTRIES]
+
+                       THE STORY OF CHALDEA.
+
+                                I.
+
+        NOMADS AND SETTLERS.--THE FOUR STAGES OF CULTURE.
+
+
+1. Men, whatever their pursuit or business, can live only in one of two
+ways: they can stay where they are, or they can go from one place to
+another. In the present state of the world, we generally do a little of
+both. There is some place--city, village, or farm--where we have our
+home and our work. But from time to time we go to other places, on
+visits or on business, or travel for a certain length of time to great
+distances and many places, for instruction and pleasure. Still, there is
+usually some place which we think of as home and to which we return.
+Wandering or roving is not our natural or permanent condition. But there
+are races for whom it is. The Bedouin Arabs are the principal and best
+known of such races. Who has not read with delight accounts of their
+wild life in the deserts of Arabia and Northern Africa, so full of
+adventure and romance,--of their wonderful, priceless horses who are to
+them as their own children,--of their noble qualities, bravery,
+hospitality, generosity, so strangely blended with love of booty and a
+passion for robbing expeditions? They are indeed a noble race, and it is
+not their choice, but their country which has made them robbers and
+rovers--Nomads, as such wandering races are called in history and
+geography. They cannot build cities on the sand of the desert, and the
+small patches of pasture and palm groves, kept fresh and green by
+solitary springs and called "oases," are too far apart, too distant from
+permanently peopled regions to admit of comfortable settlement. In the
+south of Arabia and along the sea-shore, where the land is fertile and
+inviting, they live much as other nations do, and when, a thousand years
+ago, Arabs conquered vast and wealthy countries both in Europe and Asia,
+and in Africa too, they not only became model husbandmen, but built some
+of the finest cities in the world, had wise and strictly enforced laws
+and took the lead in literature and science. Very different are the
+scattered nomadic tribes which still roam the steppes of Eastern Russia,
+of Siberia and Central Asia. They are not as gifted by far as the Arabs,
+yet would probably quickly settle down to farming, were it not that
+their wealth consists in flocks of sheep and studs of horses, which
+require the pasture yielded so abundantly by the grassy steppes, and
+with which they have to move from one place, when it is browsed bare, to
+another, and still another, carrying their felt-tents and simple
+utensils with them, living on the milk of their mares and the meat of
+their sheep. The Red Indian tribes of the far West present still another
+aspect of nomadic life--that of the hunter, fierce and entirely untamed,
+the simplest and wildest of all.
+
+2. On the whole, however, nomadic life is at the present day the
+exception. Most of the nations that are not savages live in houses, not
+in portable tents, in cities, not encampments, and form compact, solidly
+bound communities, not loose sets of tribes, now friendly, now hostile
+to one another. But it has not always been so. There have been times
+when settled life was the exception and nomadic life the rule. And the
+older the times, the fewer were the permanent communities, the more
+numerous the roving tribes. For wandering in search of better places
+must have been among the first impulses of intelligent humanity. Even
+when men had no shelter but caves, no pursuit but hunting the animals,
+whose flesh was their food and in whose skins they clothed themselves,
+they must frequently have gone forth, in families or detachments, either
+to escape from a neighborhood too much infested with the gigantic wild
+beasts which at one time peopled the earth more thickly than men, or
+simply because the numbers of the original cave-dwellers had become too
+great for the cave to hold them. The latter must have been a very usual
+occurrence: families stayed together until they had no longer room
+enough, or quarrelled, when they separated. Those who went never saw
+again the place and kindred they left, although they carried with them
+memories of both, the few simple arts they had learned there and the
+customs in which they had been trained. They would stop at some
+congenial halting-place, when, after a time, the same process would be
+repeated--and so again and again.
+
+3. How was the first horse conquered, the first wild-dog tamed and
+conciliated? How were cattle first enticed to give man their milk, to
+depend on his care and follow his movements? Who shall tell? However
+that may have happened, it is certain that the transition from a
+hunter's wild, irregular and almost necessarily lawless existence to the
+gentler pursuits of pastoral life must have been attended by a great
+change in manners and character. The feeling of ownership too, one of
+the principal promoters of a well-regulated state of society, must have
+quickly developed with the possession of rapidly increasing wealth in
+sheep and horses,--the principal property of nomadic races. But it was
+not a kind of property which encouraged to settling, or uniting in close
+communities; quite the contrary. Large flocks need vast pasture-grounds.
+Besides, it is desirable to keep them apart in order to avoid confusion
+and disputes about wells and springs, those rare treasures of the
+steppes, which are liable to exhaustion or drying up, and which,
+therefore, one flock-owner is not likely to share with another, though
+that other were of his own race and kin. The Book of Genesis, which
+gives us so faithful and lively a picture of this nomadic pastoral life
+of ancient nations, in the account of the wanderings of Abraham and the
+other Hebrew patriarchs, has preserved such an incident in the quarrel
+between the herdsmen of Abraham and his nephew Lot, which led to their
+separation. This is what Abraham said to Lot: "Is not the whole land
+before thee? Separate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if thou wilt take
+the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if thou depart to the
+right hand, then I will go to the left."[Y] So also it is said of Esau
+that he "went into the country from the face of his brother Jacob: for
+their riches were more than they might dwell together, and the land
+wherein they were strangers could not bear them because of their
+cattle."[Z] This was a facility offered by those immense plains,
+unclaimed as yet by any one people in particular, and which must
+oft-times have averted strife and bloodshed, but which ceased from the
+moment that some one tribe, tired of wandering or tempted by some more
+than usually engaging spot, settled down on it, marking that and the
+country around it, as far as its power reached, for its own. There is
+even now in the East something very similar to this mode of occupation.
+In the Turkish Empire, which is, in many places, thinly peopled, there
+are large tracts of waste land, sometimes very fertile, accounted as
+nobody's property, and acknowledged to belong, legally and forever, to
+the first man who takes possession of them, provided he cultivates them.
+The government asks no purchase price for the land, but demands taxes
+from it as soon as it has found an owner and begins to yield crops.
+
+4. The pastoral nomad's life is, like the hunter's, a singularly free
+one,--free both from restraint, and, comparatively, from toil. For
+watching and tending flocks is not a laborious occupation, and no
+authority can always reach or weigh very heavily on people who are here
+to-day and elsewhere to-morrow. Therefore, it is only with the third
+stage of human existence, the agricultural one, that civilization, which
+cannot subsist without permanent homes and authority, really commences.
+The farmer's homestead is the beginning of the State, as the hearth or
+fireplace was the beginning of the family. The different labors of the
+fields, the house, and the dairy require a great number of hands and a
+well-regulated distribution of the work, and so keep several generations
+of the settler's family together, on the same farm. Life in common makes
+it absolutely necessary to have a set of simple rules for home
+government, to prevent disputes, keep up order and harmony, and settle
+questions of mutual rights and duties. Who should set down and enforce
+these rules but the head of the family, the founder of the race--the
+patriarch? And when the family has become too numerous for the original
+homestead to hold it, and part of it has to leave it, to found a new
+home for itself, it does not, as in the primitive nomadic times, wander
+off at random and break all ties, but settles close by on a portion of
+the family land, or takes possession of a new piece of ground somewhat
+further off, but still within easy reach. In the first case the land
+which had been common property gets broken up into lots, which, though
+belonging more particularly to the members who separate from the old
+stock, are not for that withdrawn from the authority of the patriarch.
+There are several homesteads now, which form a village, and, later on,
+several villages; but the bond of kindred, of tradition and custom is
+religiously preserved, as well as subordination to the common head of
+the race, whose power keeps increasing as the community grows in numbers
+and extent of land, as the greater complications of relationships,
+property, inheritance, demand more laws and a stricter rule,--until he
+becomes not so much Father as King. Then naturally come collisions with
+neighboring similar settlements, friendly or hostile, which result in
+alliances or quarrels, trade or war, and herewith we have the State
+complete, with inner organization and foreign policy.
+
+5. This stage of culture, in its higher development, combines with the
+fourth and last--city-building, and city-life, when men of the same
+race, and conscious of a common origin, but practically strangers to
+each other, form settlements on a large scale, which, being enclosed in
+walls, become places of refuge and defence, centres of commerce,
+industry and government. For, when a community has become very numerous,
+with wants multiplied by continual improvements and increasing culture,
+each family can no longer make all the things it needs, and a portion of
+the population devotes itself to manufacture and arts, occupations best
+pursued in cities, while the other goes on cultivating the land and
+raising cattle, the two sets of produces--those of nature and those of
+the cunning hand and brain--being bartered one for the other, or, when
+coin is invented, exchanged through that more convenient medium. In the
+same manner, the task of government having become too manifold and
+complicated for one man, the former Patriarch, now King, is obliged to
+surround himself with assistants--either the elders of the race, or
+persons of his own choice,--and send others to different places, to rule
+in his name and under his authority. The city in which the King and his
+immediate ministers and officers reside, naturally becomes the most
+important one--the Capital of the State.
+
+6. It does not follow by any means that a people, once settled, never
+stirred from its adopted country. The migratory or wandering instinct
+never quite died out--our own love of travelling sufficiently proves
+that--and it was no unfrequent occurrence in very ancient times for
+large tribes, even portions of nations, to start off again in search of
+new homes and to found new cities, compelled thereto either by the
+gradual overcrowding of the old country, or by intestine discords, or by
+the invasion of new nomadic tribes of a different race who drove the old
+settlers before them to take possession of their settlements, massacred
+them if they resisted and reduced those who remained to an irksome
+subjection. Such invasions, of course, might also be perpetrated with
+the same results by regular armies, led by kings and generals from some
+other settled and organized country. The alternative between bondage
+and emigration must have been frequently offered, and the choice in
+favor of the latter was helped not a little by the spirit of adventure
+inborn in man, tempted by so many unexplored regions as there were in
+those remote ages.
+
+7. Such have been the beginnings of all nations. There can be no other.
+And there is one more observation which will scarcely ever prove wrong.
+It is that, however far we may go back into the past, the people whom we
+find inhabiting any country at the very dawn of tradition, can always be
+shown to have come from somewhere else, and not to have been the first
+either. Every swarm of nomads or adventurers who either pass through a
+country or stop and settle there, always find it occupied already. Now
+the older population was hardly ever entirely destroyed or dislodged by
+the newcomers. A portion at least remained, as an inferior or subject
+race, but in time came to mix with them, mostly in the way of
+intermarriage. Then again, if the newcomers were peaceable and there was
+room enough--which there generally was in very early times--they would
+frequently be suffered to form separate settlements, and dwell in the
+land; when they would either remain in a subordinate condition, or, if
+they were the finer and better gifted race, they would quickly take the
+upper hand, teach the old settlers their own arts and ideas, their
+manners and their laws. If the new settlement was effected by conquest,
+the arrangement was short and simple: the conquerors, though less
+numerous, at once established themselves as masters and formed a ruling
+nobility, an aristocracy, while the old owners of the land, those at
+least that did not choose to emigrate, became what may be called "the
+common people," bound to do service and pay tribute or taxes to their
+self-instituted masters. Every country has generally experienced, at
+various times, all these modes of invasion, so that each nation may be
+said to have been formed gradually, in successive layers, as it were,
+and often of very different elements, which either finally amalgamated
+or kept apart, according to circumstances.
+
+The early history of Chaldea is a particularly good illustration of all
+that has just been said.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Y] Genesis, xiii. 7-11.
+
+[Z] Genesis, xxxvi. 6-7.
+
+
+
+
+                               II.
+
+             THE GREAT RACES.--CHAPTER X. OF GENESIS.
+
+
+1. The Bible says (Genesis xi. 2): "And it came to pass, as they
+journeyed in the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar;
+and they dwelt there."
+
+Shinar--or, more correctly, Shinear--is what may be called Babylonia
+proper, that part of Mesopotamia where Babylon was, and south of it,
+almost to the Gulf. "They" are descendants of Noah, long after the
+Flood. They found the plain and dwelt there, but they did not find the
+whole land desert; it had been occupied long before them. How long? For
+such remote ages an exact valuation of time in years is not to be
+thought of.
+
+2. What people were those whom the descendants of Noah found in the land
+to which they came from the East? It seems a simple question, yet no
+answer could have been given to it even as lately as fifteen or sixteen
+years ago, and when the answer was first suggested by unexpected
+discoveries made in the Royal Library at Nineveh, it startled the
+discoverers extremely. The only indication on the subject then known was
+this, from a Chaldean writer of a late period: "There was originally at
+Babylon" (i.e., in the land of Babylon, not the city alone) "a multitude
+of men of foreign race who had settled in Chaldea." This is told by
+Berosus, a learned priest of Babylon, who lived immediately after
+Alexander the Great had conquered the country, and when the Greeks ruled
+it (somewhat after 300 B.C.). He wrote a history of it from the most
+ancient times, in which he gave an account of the oldest traditions
+concerning its beginnings. As he wrote his book in Greek, it is probable
+that his object was to acquaint the new masters with the history and
+religion of the land and people whom they had come to rule.
+Unfortunately the work was lost--as so many valuable works have been, as
+long as there was no printing, and books existed only in a few
+manuscript copies--and we know of it only some short fragments, quoted
+by later writers, in whose time Berosus' history was still accessible.
+The above lines are contained in one such fragment, and naturally led to
+the question: who were these men of foreign race who came from somewhere
+else and settled in Chaldea in immemorial times?
+
+3. One thing appears clear: they belonged to none of the races classed
+in the Bible as descended from Noah, but probably to one far older,
+which had not been included in the Flood.
+
+4. For it begins to be pretty generally understood nowadays that the
+Flood may not have been absolutely universal, but have extended over the
+countries _which the Hebrews knew_, which made _their_ world, and that
+not literally all living beings except those who are reported to have
+been in the Ark may have perished in it. From a negligent habit of
+reading Chap. VI.-IX. of Genesis without reference to the texts of other
+chapters of the same Book, it has become a general habit to understand
+it in this literal manner. Yet the evidence is by no means so positive.
+The question was considered an open one by profounder students even in
+antiquity, and freely discussed both among the Jews themselves and the
+Fathers of the early Christian Church. The following are the statements
+given in the Book of Genesis; we have only to take them out of their
+several places and connect them.
+
+5. When Cain had killed his brother Abel, God banished him from the
+_earth_ which had received his brother's blood and laid a curse on him:
+"a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the _earth_"--using another
+word than the first time, one which means earth in general (_erec_), in
+opposition to _the_ earth (_adamah_), or fruitful land to the east of
+Eden, in which Adam and Eve dwelt after their expulsion. Then Cain went
+forth, still further East, and dwelt in a land which was called "the
+land of Nod," _i.e._, "of wandering" or "exile." He had a son, Enoch,
+after whom he named the city which he built,--the first city,--and
+descendants. Of these the fifth, Lamech, a fierce and lawless man, had
+three sons, two of whom, Jabal and Jubal, led a pastoral and nomadic
+life; but the third, Tubalcain, invented the use of metals: he was "the
+forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron." This is what the
+Chap. IV. of Genesis tells of Cain, his crime, his exile and immediate
+posterity. After that they are heard of no more. Adam, meanwhile, has a
+third son, born after he had lost the first two and whom he calls Seth
+(more correctly _Sheth_). The descendants of this son are enumerated in
+Chap. V.; the list ends with Noah. These are the parallel races: the
+accursed and the blest, the proscribed of God and the loved of God, the
+one that "goes out of the presence of the Lord" and the one that "calls
+on the name of the Lord," and "walks with God." Of the latter race the
+last-named, Noah, is "a just man, perfect in his generation," and "finds
+grace in the eyes of the Lord."
+
+6. Then comes the narrative of the Flood (Chap. VI.-VIII.), the covenant
+of God with Noah and re-peopling of the earth by his posterity (Chap.
+IX.). Lastly Chap. X. gives us the list of the generations of Noah's
+three sons, Shem, Ham and Japhet;--"of these were the nations divided in
+the earth after the flood."
+
+7. Now this tenth chapter of Genesis is the oldest and most important
+document in existence concerning the origins of races and nations, and
+comprises all those with whom the Jews, in the course of their early
+history, have had any dealings, at least all those who belonged to the
+great white division of mankind. But in order properly to understand it
+and appreciate its value and bearing, it must not be forgotten that EACH
+NAME IN THE LIST IS THAT OF A RACE, A PEOPLE OR A TRIBE, NOT THAT OF A
+MAN. It was a common fashion among the Orientals--a fashion adopted also
+by ancient European nations--to express in this manner the kindred
+connections of nations among themselves and their differences. Both for
+brevity and clearness, such historical genealogies are very convenient.
+They must have been suggested by a proceeding most natural in ages of
+ignorance, and which consists in a tribe's explaining its own name by
+taking it for granted that it was that of its founder. Thus the name of
+the Assyrians is really Asshur. Why? Clearly, they would answer, if
+asked the question, because their kingdom was founded by one whose name
+was Asshur. Another famous nation, the Aramaeans, are supposed to be so
+called because the name of their founder was Aram; the Hebrews name
+themselves from a similarly supposed ancestor, Heber. These three
+nations,--and several more, the Arabs among others--spoke languages so
+much alike that they could easily understand each other, and had
+generally many common features in looks and character. How account for
+that? By making their founders, Asshur, and Aram, and Heber, etc., sons
+or descendants of one great head or progenitor, Shem, a son of Noah. It
+is a kind of parable which is extremely clear once one has the key to
+it, when nothing is easier than to translate it into our own sober,
+positive forms of speech. The above bit of genealogy would read thus: A
+large portion of humanity is distinguished by certain features more or
+less peculiar to itself; it is one of several great races, and has been
+called for more than a hundred years the Semitic, (better Shemitic)
+race, the race of Shem. This race is composed of many different tribes
+and nations, who have gone each its own way, have each its own name and
+history, speak dialects of the same original language, and have
+preserved many common ideas, customs and traits of character,--which all
+shows that the race was once united and dwelt together, then, as it
+increased in numbers, broke up into fractions, of which some rose to be
+great and famous nations and some remained comparatively insignificant
+tribes. The same applies to the subdivisions of the great white race
+(the whitest of all) to which nearly all the European nations belong,
+and which is personified in the Bible under the name of Japhet, third
+son of Noah,--and to those of a third great race, also originally white,
+which is broken up into very many fractions, both great nations and
+scattered tribes, all exhibiting a decided likeness to each other. The
+Bible gives the names of all these most carefully, and sums up the whole
+of them under the name of the second son of Noah, Ham, whom it calls
+their common progenitor.
+
+8. That the genealogies of Chap. X. of Genesis should be understood in
+this sense, has long been admitted by scientists and churchmen. St.
+Augustine, one of the greatest among the Fathers of the early church,
+pointedly says that the names in it represent "nations, not men."[AA] On
+the other hand there is also literal truth in them, in this way, that,
+if all mankind is descended from one human couple, every fraction of it
+must necessarily have had some one particular father or ancestor, only
+in so remote a past that his individuality or actual name cannot
+possibly have been remembered, when every people, as has been remarked
+above, naturally gave him its own name. Of these names many show by
+their very nature that they could not have belonged to individuals. Some
+are plural, like MIZRAIM, "the Egyptians;" some have the article: "_the_
+AMORITE, _the_ HIVITE;" one even is the name of a city: SIDON is called
+"the first-born of Canaan;" now Sidon was long the greatest maritime
+city of the Canaanites, who held an undisputed supremacy over the rest,
+and therefore "the first-born." The name means "fisheries"--an
+appropriate one for a city on the sea, which must of course have been at
+first a settlement of fishermen. "CANAAN" really is the name of a vast
+region, inhabited by a great many nations and tribes, all differing from
+each other in many ways, yet manifestly of one race, wherefore they are
+called "the sons of Canaan," Canaan being personified in a common
+ancestor, given as one of the four sons of Ham. Modern science has, for
+convenience' sake, adopted a special word for such imaginary personages,
+invented to account for a nation's, tribe's, or city's name, while
+summing up, so to speak, its individuality: they are called EPONYMS. The
+word is Greek, and means "one from whom or for whom somebody or
+something is named," a "namesake." It is not too much to say that, while
+popular tradition always claims that the eponymous ancestor or
+city-founder gave his name to his family, race, or city, the contrary is
+in reality invariably the case, the name of the race or city being
+transferred to him. Or, in other words, the eponym is really only that
+name, transformed into a traditional person by a bold and vivid poetical
+figure of speech, which, if taken for what it is, makes the beginnings
+of political history wonderfully plain and easy to grasp and classify.
+
+9. Yet, complete and correct as is the list of Chap. X., within the
+limits which the writer has set to himself, it by no means exhausts the
+nations of the earth. The reason of the omissions, however, is easily
+seen. Among the posterity of Japhet the Greeks indeed are mentioned,
+(under the name of JAVAN, which should be pronounced _Yawan_, and some
+of his sons), but not a single one of the other ancient peoples of
+Europe,--Germans, Italians, Celts, etc.,--who also belonged to that
+race, as we, their descendants, do. But then, at the time Chap. X. was
+written, these countries, from their remoteness, were outside of the
+world in which the Hebrews moved, beyond their horizon, so to speak.
+They either did not know them at all, or, having nothing to do with
+them, did not take them into consideration. In neither case would they
+have been given a place in the great list. The same may be said of
+another large portion of the same race, which dwelt to the far East and
+South of the Hebrews--the Hindoos, (the white conquerors of India), and
+the Persians. There came a time indeed, when the latter not only came
+into contact with the Jews, but were their masters; but either that was
+after Chap. X. was written or the Persians were identified by the
+writers with a kindred nation, the Persians' near neighbor, who had
+flourished much earlier and reacted in many ways on the countries
+westward of it; this nation was the MEDES, who, under the name of MADAI,
+are mentioned as one of the sons of Japhet, with Javan the Greek.
+
+10. More noticeable and more significant than these partial omissions is
+the determination with which the authors of Chap. X. consistently ignore
+all those divisions of mankind which do not belong to one of the three
+great _white_ races. Neither the Black nor the Yellow races are
+mentioned at all; they are left without the pale of the Hebrew
+brotherhood of nations. Yet the Jews, who staid three or four hundred
+years in Egypt, surely learned there to know the real negro, for the
+Egyptians were continually fighting with pure-blood black tribes in the
+south and south-west, and bringing in thousands of black captives, who
+were made to work at their great buildings and in their stone-quarries.
+But these people were too utterly barbarous and devoid of all culture or
+political importance to be taken into account. Besides, the Jews could
+not be aware of the vast extent of the earth occupied by the black race,
+since the greater part of Africa was then unknown to the world, and so
+were the islands to the south of India, also Australia and its
+islands--all seats of different sections of that race.
+
+11. The same could not be said of the Yellow Race. True, its principal
+representatives, the nations of the far East of Asia--the Chinese, the
+Mongols and the Mandchous,--could not be known to the Hebrews at any
+time of antiquity, but there were more than enough representatives of
+it who could not be _un_known to them.[AB] For it was both a very old
+and extremely numerous race, which early spread over the greater part of
+the earth and at one time probably equalled in numbers the rest of
+mankind. It seems always to have been broken up into a great many tribes
+and peoples, whom it has been found convenient to gather under the
+general designation of TURANIANS, from a very ancient name,--TUR or
+TURA--which was given them by the white population of Persia and Central
+Asia, and which is still preserved in that of one of their principal
+surviving branches, the TURKS. All the different members of this great
+family have had very striking features in common,--the most
+extraordinary being an incapability of reaching the highest culture, of
+progressing indefinitely, improving continually. A strange law of their
+being seems to have condemned them to stop short, when they had attained
+a certain, not very advanced, stage. Thus their speech has remained
+extremely imperfect. They spoke, and such Turanian nations as now exist
+still speak, languages, which, however they may differ, all have this
+peculiarity, that they are composed either entirely of monosyllables,
+(the most rudimentary form of speech), or of monosyllables pieced into
+words in the stiffest, most unwieldy manner, stuck together, as it
+were, with nothing to join them, wherefore this kind of language has
+been called _agglutinative_. Chinese belongs to the former class of
+languages, the "monosyllabic," Turkish to the latter, the
+"agglutinative." Further, the Turanians were probably the first to
+invent writing, but never went in that art beyond having one particular
+sign for every single word--(such is Chinese writing with its forty
+thousand signs or thereabouts, as many as words in the language)--or at
+most a sign for every syllable. They had beautiful beginnings of poetry,
+but in that also never went beyond beginnings. They were also probably
+the first who built cities, but were wanting in the qualities necessary
+to organize a society, establish a state on solid and lasting
+foundations. At one time they covered the whole of Western Asia, dwelt
+there for ages before any other race occupied it,--fifteen hundred
+years, according to a very trustworthy tradition,--and were called by
+the ancients "the oldest of men;" but they vanish and are not heard of
+any more the moment that white invaders come into the land; these drive
+the Turanians before them, or bring them into complete subjection, or
+mix with them, but, by force of their own superiorly gifted nature,
+retain the dominant position, so that the others lose all separate
+existence. Thus it was everywhere. For wherever tribes of the three
+Biblical races came, they mostly found Turanian populations who had
+preceded them. There are now a great number of Turanian tribes, more or
+less numerous--Kirghizes, Bashkirs, Ostiaks, Tunguzes, etc.,
+etc.--scattered over the vast expanse of Siberia and Eastern Russia,
+where they roam at will with their flocks and herds of horses,
+occasionally settling down,--fragmentary remnants of a race which, to
+this latest time, has preserved its original peculiarities and
+imperfections, whose day is done, which has long ceased to improve,
+unless it assimilates with the higher white race and adopts their
+culture, when all that it lacked is supplied by the nobler element which
+mixes with it, as in the case of the Hungarians, one of the most
+high-spirited and talented nations of Europe, originally of Turanian
+stock. The same may be said, in a lesser degree, of the Finns--the
+native inhabitants of the Russian principality of Finland.
+
+12. All this by no means goes to show that the Yellow Race has ever been
+devoid of fine faculties and original genius. Quite the contrary; for,
+if white races everywhere stepped in, took the work of civilization out
+of their hands and carried it on to a perfection of which they were
+incapable, still they, the Turanians, had everywhere _begun_ that work,
+it was their inventions which the others took up and improved: and we
+must remember that it is very much easier to improve than to invent.
+Only there is that strange limitation to their power of progress and
+that want of natural refinement, which are as a wall that encloses them
+around. Even the Chinese, who, at first sight, are a brilliant
+exception, are not so on a closer inspection. True, they have founded
+and organized a great empire which still endures; they have a vast
+literature, they have made most important inventions--printing,
+manufacturing paper out of rags, the use of the compass,
+gunpowder--centuries before European nations made them in their turn.
+Yet the latter do all those things far better; they have improved these,
+to them, new inventions more in a couple of hundred years than the
+Chinese in a thousand. In fact it is a good many centuries since the
+Chinese have ceased to improve anything at all. Their language and
+writing are childishly imperfect, though the oldest in existence. In
+government, in the forms of social life, in their ideas generally, they
+follow rules laid down for them three thousand years ago or more and
+from which to swerve a hair's breadth were blasphemy. As they have
+always stubbornly resisted foreign influences, and gone the length of
+trying actually to erect material walls between themselves and the rest
+of the world, their empire is a perfectly fair specimen of what the
+Yellow Race can do, if left entirely to itself, and quite as much of
+what it can_not_ do, and now they have for centuries presented that
+unique phenomenon--a great nation at a standstill.
+
+13. All this obviously leads us to a very interesting and suggestive
+question: what is this great race which we find everywhere at the very
+roots of history, so that not only ancient tradition calls them "the
+oldest of men," but modern science more and more inclines to the same
+opinion? Whence came it? How is it not included in the great family of
+nations, of which Chap. X. of Genesis gives so clear and comprehensive a
+scheme? Parallel to this question arises another: what became of Cain's
+posterity? What, above all, of the descendants of those three sons of
+Lamech, whom the writer of Genesis clearly places before us as heads of
+nations and thinks of sufficient importance to specify what their
+occupations were? (See Genesis iv. 19-22.) Why do we never hear any more
+of this entire half of humanity, severed in the very beginning from the
+other half--the lineage of the accursed son from that of the blest and
+favored son? And may not the answer to this series of questions be the
+answer to the first series also?
+
+14. With regard to the second series this answer is plain and decisive.
+The descendants of Cain were necessarily out of the pale of the Hebrew
+world. The curse of God, in consequence of which their forefather is
+said to have gone "out of the presence of the Lord," at once and forever
+separated them from the posterity of the pious son, from those who
+"walked with God." The writer of Genesis tells us that they lived in the
+"Land of Exile" and multiplied, then dismisses them. For what could the
+elect, the people of God, or even those other nations who went astray,
+who were repeatedly chastised, but whose family bond with the righteous
+race was never entirely severed--what could they have in common with the
+banished, the castaway, the irretrievably accursed? These did not count,
+they were not of humanity. What more probable, therefore, than that,
+being excluded from all the other narratives, they should not be
+included in that of the Flood? And in that case, who should they be but
+that most ancient race, set apart by its color and several striking
+peculiarities, which everywhere preceded their white brethren, but were
+invariably supplanted by them and not destined to supremacy on the
+earth? This supposition has been hazarded by men of great genius, and if
+bold, still has much to support it; if confirmed it would solve many
+puzzles, throw strong and unexpected light on many obscure points. The
+very antiquity of the Yellow Race tallies admirably with the Biblical
+narrative, for of the two Biblical brothers Cain was the eldest. And the
+doom laid on the race, "a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be on the
+earth," has not been revoked through all ages. Wherever pure Turanians
+are--they are nomads. And when, fifteen hundred years ago and later,
+countless swarms of barbarous people flooded Europe, coming from the
+east, and swept all before them, the Turanian hordes could be known
+chiefly by this, that they destroyed, burned, laid waste--and passed,
+vanished: whereas the others, after treating a country quite as
+savagely, usually settled in it and founded states, most of which exist
+even now--for, French, German, English, Russian, we are all descended
+from some of those barbarous invaders. And this also would fully explain
+how it came to pass that, although the Hebrews and their
+forefathers--let us say the Semites generally--everywhere found
+Turanians on their way, nay, dwelt in the same lands with them, the
+sacred historian ignores them completely, as in Gen. xi. 2.
+
+15. For they were Turanians, arrived at a, for them, really high state
+of culture, who peopled the land of Shinar, when "_they_"--descendants
+of Noah,--journeying in the East, found that plain where they dwelt for
+many years.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AA] "_Gentes non homines._" (_De Civitate Dei_, XVII., 3.)
+
+[AB] If, as has been suggested, the "land of Sinim" in Isaiah xlix., 12,
+is meant for China, such a solitary, incidental and unspecified mention
+of a country the name of which may have been vaguely used to express the
+remotest East, cannot invalidate the scheme so evidently and
+persistently pursued in the composition of Chap. X.
+
+
+
+
+                               III.
+
+  TURANIAN CHALDEA.--SHUMIR AND ACCAD.--THE BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION.
+
+
+1. It is not Berosus alone who speaks of the "multitudes of men of
+foreign race" who colonized Chaldea "in the beginning." It was a
+universally admitted fact throughout antiquity that the population of
+the country had always been a mixed one, but a fact known vaguely,
+without particulars. On this subject, as on so many others, the
+discoveries made in the royal library of Nineveh shed an unexpected and
+most welcome light. The very first, so to speak preliminary, study of
+the tablets showed that there were amongst them documents in two
+entirely different languages, of which one evidently was that of an
+older population of Chaldea. The other and later language, usually
+called Assyrian, because it was spoken also by the Assyrians, being very
+like Hebrew, an understanding of it was arrived at with comparative
+ease. As to the older language there was absolutely no clue. The only
+conjecture which could be made with any certainty was, that it must have
+been spoken by a double people, called the people of Shumir and Accad,
+because later kings of Babylon, in their inscriptions, always gave
+themselves the title of "Kings of Shumir and Accad," a title which the
+Assyrian sovereigns, who at times conquered Chaldea, did not fail to
+take also. But who and what were these people might never have been
+cleared up, but for the most fortunate discovery of dictionaries and
+grammars, which, the texts being supplied with Assyrian translations,
+served our modern scholars, just as they did Assyrian students 3000
+years ago, to decipher and learn to understand the oldest language of
+Chaldea. Of course, it was a colossal piece of work, beset with
+difficulties which it required an almost fierce determination and
+superhuman patience to master. But every step made was so amply repaid
+by the results obtained, that the zeal of the laborers was never
+suffered to flag, and the effected reconstruction, though far from
+complete even now, already enables us to conjure a very suggestive and
+life-like picture of those first settlers of the Mesopotamian Lowlands,
+their character, religion and pursuits.
+
+2. The language thus strangely brought to light was very soon perceived
+to be distinctly of that peculiar and primitive type--partly
+monosyllables, partly words rudely pieced together,--which has been
+described in a preceding chapter as characteristic of the Turanian race,
+and which is known in science by the general name of _agglutinative_,
+i.e., "glued or stuck together," without change in the words, either by
+declension or conjugation. The people of Shumir and Accad, therefore,
+were one and the same Turanian nation, the difference in the name being
+merely a geographical one. SHUMIR is Southern or Lower Chaldea, the
+country towards and around the Persian Gulf,--that very land of Shinar
+which is mentioned in Genesis xi. 2. Indeed "Shinar" is only the way in
+which the Hebrews pronounced and spelt the ancient name of Lower
+Chaldea. ACCAD is Northern or Upper Chaldea. The most correct way, and
+the safest from all misunderstanding, is to name the people the
+Shumiro-Accads and their language, the Shumiro-Accadian; but for
+brevity's sake, the first name is frequently dropped, and many say
+simply "the Accads" and "the Accadian language." It is clear, however,
+that the royal title must needs unite both names, which together
+represented the entire country of Chaldea. Of late it has been
+discovered that the Shumiro-Accads spoke two slightly differing dialects
+of the same language, that of Shumir being most probably the older of
+the two, as culture and conquest seem to have been carried steadily
+northward from the Gulf.
+
+3. That the Accads themselves came from somewhere else, is plain from
+several circumstances, although there is not the faintest symptom or
+trace of any people whom they may have found in the country. They
+brought into it the very first and most essential rudiments of
+civilization, the art of writing, and that of working metals; it was
+probably also they who began to dig those canals without which the land,
+notwithstanding its fabulous fertility, must always be a marshy waste,
+and who began to make bricks and construct buildings out of them. There
+is ground to conclude that they came down from mountains in the fact
+that the name "Accad" means "Mountains" or "Highlands," a name which
+they could not possibly have taken in the dead flats of Lower Chaldea,
+but must have retained as a relic of an older home. It is quite possible
+that this home may have been in the neighboring wild and mountainous
+land of SHUSHAN (Susiana on the maps), whose first known population was
+also Turanian. These guesses take us into a past, where not a speck of
+positive fact can be discerned. Yet even that must have been only a
+station in this race's migration from a far more northern centre. Their
+written language, even after they had lived for centuries in an almost
+tropical country, where palms grew in vast groves, almost forests, and
+lions were common game, as plentiful as tigers in the jungles of Bengal,
+contained no sign to designate either the one or the other, while it was
+well stocked with the signs of metals,--of which there is no vestige, of
+course, in Chaldea,--and all that belongs to the working thereof. As the
+ALTAI range, the great Siberian chain, has always been famous for its
+rich mines of every possible metal ore, and as the valleys of the Altai
+are known to be the nests from which innumerable Turanian tribes
+scattered to the north and south, and in which many dwell to this day
+after their own nomadic fashion, there is no extravagance in supposing
+that _there_ may have been our Accads' original point of departure.
+Indeed the Altai is so indissolubly connected with the origin of most
+Turanian nations, that many scientists prefer to call the entire Yellow
+Race, with all its gradations of color, "the Altaic." Their own
+traditions point the same way. Several of them have a pretty legend of a
+sort of paradise, a secluded valley somewhere in the Altai, pleasant and
+watered by many streams, where their forefathers either dwelt in the
+first place or whither they were providentially conducted to be saved
+from a general massacre. The valley was entirely enclosed with high
+rocks, steep and pathless, so that when, after several hundred years, it
+could no longer hold the number of its inhabitants, these began to
+search for an issue and found none. Then one among them, who was a
+smith, discovered that the rocks were almost entirely of iron. By his
+advice, a huge fire was made and a great many mighty bellows were
+brought into play, by which means a path was _melted_ through the rocks.
+A tradition, by the by, which, while confirming the remark that the
+invention of metallurgy belongs originally to the Yellow Race in its
+earliest stages of development, is strangely in accordance with the name
+of the Biblical Tubalcain, "the forger of every cutting instrument of
+brass and iron." That the Accads were possessed of this distinctive
+accomplishment of their race is moreover made very probable by the
+various articles and ornaments in gold, brass and iron which are
+continually found in the very oldest tombs.
+
+4. But infinitely the most precious acquisition secured to us by the
+unexpected revelation of this stage of remotest antiquity is a
+wonderfully extensive collection of prayers, invocations and other
+sacred texts, from which we can reconstruct, with much probability, the
+most primitive religion in the world--for such undoubtedly was that of
+the Accads. As a clear and authentic insight into the first
+manifestation of the religious instinct in man was just what was wanting
+until now, in order to enable us to follow its development from the
+first, crudest attempts at expression to the highest aspirations and
+noblest forms of worship, the value of this discovery can never be
+overrated. It introduces us moreover into so strange and fantastical a
+world as not the most imaginative of fictions can surpass.
+
+5. The instinct of religion--"religiosity," as it has been called--is
+inborn to man; like the faculty of speech, it belongs to man, and to man
+only, of all living beings. So much so, that modern science is coming to
+acknowledge these two faculties as _the_ distinctive characteristics
+which mark man as a being apart from and above the rest of creation.
+Whereas the division of all that exists upon the earth has of old been
+into three great classes or realms--the "mineral realm," the "vegetable
+realm" and the "animal realm," in which latter man was included--it is
+now proposed to erect the human race with all its varieties into a
+separate "realm," for this very reason: that man has all that animals
+have, and two things more which they have not--speech and religiosity,
+which assume a faculty of abstract thinking, observing and drawing
+general conclusions, solely and distinctively human. Now the very first
+observations of man in the most primitive stage of his existence must
+necessarily have awakened in him a twofold consciousness--that of power
+and that of helplessness. He could do many things. Small in size, weak
+in strength, destitute of natural clothing and weapons, acutely
+sensitive to pain and atmospheric changes as all higher natures are, he
+could kill and tame the huge and powerful animals which had the
+advantage of him in all these things, whose numbers and fierceness
+threatened him at every turn with destruction, from which his only
+escape would seem to have been constant cowering and hiding. He could
+compel the earth to bear for him choicer food than for the other beings
+who lived on her gifts. He could command the service of fire, the dread
+visitor from heaven. Stepping victoriously from one achievement to
+another, ever widening his sphere of action, of invention, man could not
+but be filled with legitimate pride. But on the other hand, he saw
+himself surrounded with things which he could neither account for nor
+subdue, which had the greatest influence on his well-being, either
+favorable or hostile, but which were utterly beyond his comprehension or
+control. The same sun which ripened his crop sometimes scorched it; the
+rain which cooled and fertilized his field, sometimes swamped it; the
+hot winds parched him and his cattle; in the marshes lurked disease and
+death. All these and many, many more, were evidently POWERS, and could
+do him great good or work him great harm, while he was unable to do
+either to them. These things existed, he felt their action every day of
+his life, consequently they were to him living Beings, alive in the same
+way that he was, possessed of will, for good or for evil. In short, to
+primitive man everything in nature was alive with an individual life, as
+it is to the very young child, who would not beat the chair against
+which he has knocked himself, and then kiss it to make friends, did he
+not think that it is a living and feeling being like himself. The
+feeling of dependence and absolute helplessness thus created must have
+more than balanced that of pride and self-reliance. Man felt himself
+placed in a world where he was suffered to live and have his share of
+what good things he could get, but which was not ruled by him,--in a
+spirit-world. Spirits around him, above him, below him,--what could he
+do but humble himself, confess his dependence, and pray to be spared?
+For surely, if those spirits existed and took enough interest in him to
+do him good or evil, they could hear him and might be moved by
+supplication. To establish a distinction between such spirits which did
+only harm, were evil in themselves, and those whose action was generally
+beneficial and only on rare occasions destructive, was the next natural
+step, which led as naturally to a perception of divine displeasure as
+the cause of such terrible manifestations and a seeking of means to
+avert or propitiate it. While fear and loathing were the portion of the
+former spirits, the essentially evil ones, love and gratitude, were the
+predominant feelings inspired by the latter,--feelings which, together
+with the ever present consciousness of dependence, are the very essence
+of religion, just as praise and worship are the attempts to express them
+in a tangible form.
+
+6. It is this most primitive, material and unquestioning stage in the
+growth of religious feeling, which a large portion of the
+Shumiro-Accadian documents from the Royal Library at Nineveh brings
+before us with a force and completeness which, however much room there
+may still be for uncertainty in details, on the whole really amounts to
+more than conjecture. Much will, doubtless, be discovered yet, much will
+be done, but it will only serve to fill in a sketch, of which the
+outlines are already now tolerably fixed and authentic. The materials
+for this most important reconstruction are almost entirely contained in
+a vast collection of two hundred tablets, forming one consecutive work
+in three books, over fifty of which have been sifted out of the heap of
+rubbish at the British Museum and first deciphered by Sir Henry
+Rawlinson, one of the greatest, as he was the first discoverer in this
+field, and George Smith, whose achievements and too early death have
+been mentioned in a former chapter. Of the three books into which the
+collection is divided, one treats "of evil spirits," another of
+diseases, and the third contains hymns and prayers--the latter
+collection showing signs of a later and higher development. Out of these
+materials the lately deceased French scholar, Mr. Francois Lenormant,
+whose name has for the last fifteen years or so of his life stood in the
+very front of this branch of Oriental research, has been the first to
+reconstruct an entire picture in a book not very voluminous indeed, but
+which must always remain a corner-stone in the history of human culture.
+This book shall be our guide in the strange world we now enter.[AC]
+
+7. To the people of Shumir and Accad, then, the universe was peopled
+with Spirits, whom they distributed according to its different spheres
+and regions. For they had formed a very elaborate and clever, if
+peculiar idea of what they supposed the world to be like. According to
+the ingenious expression of a Greek writer of the 1st century A.D. they
+imagined it to have the shape of an inverted round boat or bowl, the
+thickness of which would represent the mixture of land and water
+(_ki-a_) which we call the crust of the earth, while the hollow beneath
+this inhabitable crust was fancied as a bottomless pit or abyss (_ge_),
+in which dwelt many powers. Above the convex surface of the earth
+(_ki-a_) spread the sky (_ana_), itself divided into two regions:--the
+highest heaven or firmament, which, with the fixed stars immovably
+attached to it, revolved, as round an axis or pivot, around an immensely
+high mountain, which joined it to the earth as a pillar, and was
+situated somewhere in the far North-East--some say North--and the lower
+heaven, where the planets--a sort of resplendent animals, seven in
+number, of beneficent nature--wandered forever on their appointed path.
+To these were opposed seven evil demons, sometimes called "the Seven
+Fiery Phantoms." But above all these, higher in rank and greater in
+power, is the Spirit (_Zi_) of heaven (_ana_), ZI-ANA, or, as often,
+simply ANA--"Heaven." Between the lower heaven and the surface of the
+earth is the atmospheric region, the realm of IM or MERMER, the Wind,
+where he drives the clouds, rouses the storms, and whence he pours down
+the rain, which is stored in the great reservoir of Ana, in the heavenly
+Ocean. As to the earthly Ocean, it is fancied as a broad river, or
+watery rim, flowing all round the edge of the imaginary inverted bowl;
+in its waters dwells EA (whose name means "the House of Waters"), the
+great Spirit of the Earth and Waters (_Zi-ki-a_), either in the form of
+a fish, whence he is frequently called "Ea the fish," or "the Exalted
+Fish," or on a magnificent ship, with which he travels round the earth,
+guarding and protecting it. The minor spirits of earth (_Anunnaki_) are
+not much spoken of except in a body, as a sort of host or legion. All
+the more terrible are the seven spirits of the abyss, the MASKIM, of
+whom it is said that, although their seat is in the depths of the earth,
+yet their voice resounds on the heights also: they reside at will in the
+immensity of space, "not enjoying a good name either in heaven or on
+earth." Their greatest delight is to subvert the orderly course of
+nature, to cause earthquakes, inundations, ravaging tempests. Although
+the Abyss is their birth-place and proper sphere, they are not
+submissive to its lord and ruler MUL-GE ("Lord of the Abyss"). In that
+they are like their brethren of the lower heaven who do not acknowledge
+Ana's supremacy, in fact are called "spirits of rebellion," because,
+being originally Ana's messengers, they once "secretly plotted a wicked
+deed," rose against the heavenly powers, obscured the Moon, and all but
+hurled him from his seat. But the Maskim are ever more feared and
+hated, as appears from the following description, which has become
+celebrated for its real poetical force:
+
+8. "They are seven! they are seven!--Seven they are in the depths of
+Ocean,--seven they are, disturbers of the face of Heaven.--They arise
+from the depths of Ocean, from hidden lurking-places.--They spread like
+snares.--Male they are not, female they are not.--Wives they have not,
+children are not born to them.--Order they know not, nor
+beneficence;--prayers and supplication they hear not.--Vermin grown in
+the bowels of the mountains--foes of Ea--they are the throne-bearers of
+the gods--they sit in the roads and make them unsafe.--The fiends! the
+fiends!--They are seven, they are seven, seven they are!
+
+"Spirit of Heaven (_Zi-ana, Ana_), be they conjured!
+
+"Spirit of Earth (_Zi-ki-a, Ea_), be they conjured!"
+
+9. Besides these regular sets of evil spirits in sevens--seven being a
+mysterious and consecrated number--there are the hosts untold of demons
+which assail man in every possible form, which are always on the watch
+to do him harm, not only bodily, but moral in the way of civil broils
+and family dissensions; confusion is their work; it is they who "steal
+the child from the father's knee," who "drive the son from his father's
+house," who withhold from the wife the blessing of children; they have
+stolen days from heaven, which they have made evil days, that bring
+nothing but ill-luck and misfortune,--and nothing can keep them out:
+"They fall as rain from the sky, they spring from the earth,--they steal
+from house to house,--doors do not stop them,--bolts do not shut them
+out,--they creep in at the doors like serpents,--they blow in at the
+roof like winds." Various are their haunts: the tops of mountains, the
+pestilential marshes by the sea, but especially the desert. Diseases are
+among the most dreaded of this terrible band, and first among these
+NAMTAR or DIBBARA, the demon of Pestilence, IDPA (Fever), and a certain
+mysterious disease of the head, which must be insanity, of which it is
+said that it oppresses the head and holds it tight like a tiara (a heavy
+headdress) or "like a dark prison," and makes it confused, that "it is
+like a violent tempest; no one knows whence it comes, nor what is its
+object."
+
+10. All these evil beings are very properly classed together under the
+general name of "creations of the Abyss," births of the nether world,
+the world of the dead. For the unseen world below the habitable earth
+was naturally conceived as the dwelling place of the departed spirits
+after death. It is very remarkable as characteristic of the low standard
+of moral conception which the Shumiro-Accads had attained at this stage
+of their development, that, although they never admitted that those who
+died ceased to exist altogether, there is very little to show that they
+imagined any happy state for them after death, not even as a reward for
+a righteous life, nor, on the other hand, looked to a future state for
+punishment of wrongs committed in this world, but promiscuously
+consigned their dead to the ARALI, a most dismal region which is called
+the "support of chaos," or, in phrase no less vague and full of
+mysterious awe, "the Great Land" (_Ki-gal_), "the Great City"
+(_Urugal_), "the spacious dwelling," "where they wander in the dark,"--a
+region ruled by a female divinity called by different names, but most
+frequently "Lady of the Great Land" (_Nin-ki-gal_), or "Lady of the
+Abyss" (_Nin-ge_), who may then rather be understood as Death
+personified, that Namtar (Pestilence) is her chief minister. The
+Shumiro-Accads seem to have dimly fancied that association with so many
+evil beings whose proper home the Arali was, must convert even the human
+spirits into beings almost as noxious, for one or two passages appear to
+imply that they were afraid of ghosts, at least on one occasion it is
+threatened to send the dead back into the upper world, as the direst
+calamity that can be inflicted.
+
+11. As if all these terrors were not sufficient to make life a burden,
+the Shumiro-Accads believed in sorcerers, wicked men who knew how to
+compel the powers of evil to do their bidding and thus could inflict
+death, sickness or disasters at their pleasure. This could be done in
+many ways--by a look, by uttering certain words, by drinks made of herbs
+prepared under certain conditions and ceremonies. Nay, the power of
+doing harm sometimes fatally belonged even to innocent persons, who
+inflicted it unintentionally by their look--for the effect of "the evil
+eye" did not always depend on a person's own will.
+
+12. Existence under such conditions must have been as unendurable as
+that of poor children who have been terrified by silly nurses into a
+belief in ogres and a fear of dark rooms, had there not existed real or
+imaginary defences against this array of horrible beings always ready to
+fall on unfortunate humanity in all sorts of inexplicable ways and for
+no other reason but their own detestable delight in doing evil. These
+defences could not consist in rational measures dictated by a knowledge
+of the laws of physical nature, since they had no notion of such laws;
+nor in prayers and propitiatory offerings, since one of the demons' most
+execrable qualities was, as we have seen, that they "knew not
+beneficence" and "heard not prayer and supplication." Then, if they
+cannot be coaxed, they must be compelled. This seems a very presumptuous
+assumption, but it is strictly in accordance with human instinct. It has
+been very truly said[AD] that "man was so conscious of being called to
+exercise empire over the powers of nature, that, the moment he entered
+into any relations with them, it was to try and subject them to his
+will. Only instead of studying the phenomena, in order to grasp their
+laws and apply them to his needs, he fancied he could, by means of
+peculiar practices and consecrated forms, compel the physical agents of
+nature to serve his wishes and purposes.... This pretension had its root
+in the notion which antiquity had formed of the natural phenomena. It
+did not see in them the consequence of unchangeable and necessary laws,
+always active and always to be calculated upon, but fancied them to
+depend on the arbitrary and varying will of the spirits and deities it
+had put in the place of physical agents." It follows that in a religion
+which peoples the universe with spirits of which the greater part are
+evil, magic--i.e., conjuring with words and rites, incantations,
+spells--must take the place of worship, and the ministers of such a
+religion are not priests, but conjurers and enchanters. This is exactly
+the state of things revealed by the great collection of texts discovered
+by Sir H. Rawlinson and G. Smith. They contain forms for conjuring all
+the different kinds of demons, even to evil dreams and nightmares, the
+object of most such invocations being to drive them away from the
+habitations of men and back to where they properly belong--the depth of
+the desert, the inaccessible mountain tops, and all remote, waste and
+uninhabited places generally, where they can range at will, and find
+nobody to harm.
+
+13. Yet there are also prayers for protection and help addressed to
+beings conceived as essentially good and beneficent--a step marking a
+great advance in the moral feeling and religious consciousness of the
+people. Such beings--gods, in fact--were, above all, Ana and Ea, whom
+we saw invoked in the incantation of the Seven Maskim as "Spirit of
+Heaven," and "Spirit of Earth." The latter especially is appealed to as
+an unfailing refuge to ill-used and terrified mortals. He is imagined as
+possessed of all knowledge and wisdom, which he uses only to befriend
+and protect. His usual residence is the deep,--(hence his name, _E-a_,
+"the House of Waters")--but he sometimes travels round the earth in a
+magnificent ship. His very name is a terror to the evil ones. He knows
+the words, the spells that will break their power and compel their
+obedience. To him, therefore, the people looked in their need with
+infinite trust. Unable to cope with the mysterious dangers and snares
+which, as they fancied, beset them on all sides, ignorant of the means
+of defeating the wicked beings who, they thought, pursued them with
+abominable malice and gratuitous hatred, they turned to Ea. _He_ would
+know. _He_ must be asked, and he would tell.
+
+14. But, as though bethinking themselves that Ea was a being too mighty
+and exalted to be lightly addressed and often disturbed, the
+Shumiro-Accads imagined a beneficent spirit, MERIDUG (more correctly
+MIRRI-DUGGA), called son of Ea and DAMKINA, (a name of Earth). Meridug's
+only office is to act as mediator between his father and suffering
+mankind. It is he who bears to Ea the suppliant's request, exposes his
+need sometimes in very moving words, and requests to know the remedy--if
+illness be the trouble--or the counter-spell, if the victim be held in
+the toils of witchcraft. Ea tells his son, who is then supposed to
+reveal the secret to the chosen instrument of assistance--of course the
+conjuring priest, or better, soothsayer. As most incantations are
+conceived on this principle, they are very monotonous in form, though
+frequently enlivened by the supposed dialogue between the father and
+son. Here is one of the more entertaining specimens. It occupies an
+entire tablet, but unfortunately many lines have been hopelessly
+injured, and have to be omitted. The text begins:
+
+     "The Disease of the Head has issued from the Abyss, from the
+     dwelling of the Lord of the Abyss."
+
+Then follow the symptoms and the description of the sufferer's inability
+to help himself. Then "Meridug has looked on his misery. He has entered
+the dwelling of his father Ea, and has spoken unto him:
+
+     "'My father, the Disease of the Head has issued from the
+     Abyss.'
+
+"A second time he has spoken unto him:
+
+     "'What he must do against it the man knows not. How shall he
+     find healing?'
+
+"Ea has replied to his son Meridug:
+
+     "'My son, how dost thou not know? What should I teach thee?
+     What I know, thou also knowest. But come hither, my son
+     Meridug. Take a bucket, fill it with water from the mouth of
+     the rivers; impart to this water thy exalted magic power;
+     sprinkle with it the man, son of his god, ... wrap up his head,
+     ... and on the highway pour it out. May insanity be dispelled!
+     that the disease of his head vanish like a phantom of the
+     night. May Ea's word drive it out! May Damkina heal him.'"
+
+15. Another dialogue of the same sort, in which Ea is consulted as to
+the means of breaking the power of the Maskim, ends by his revealing
+that
+
+     "The white cedar is the tree which breaks the Maskim's noxious
+     might."
+
+In fact the white cedar was considered an infallible defence against all
+spells and evil powers. Any action or ceremony described in the
+conjuration must of course be performed even as the words are spoken.
+Then there is a long one, perhaps the best preserved of all, to be
+recited by the sufferer, who is supposed to be under the effects of an
+evil spell, and from which it is evident that the words are to accompany
+actions performed by the conjurer. It is divided into parallel verses,
+of which the first runs thus:
+
+     "As this onion is being peeled of its skins, thus shall it be
+     of the spell. The burning fire shall consume it; it shall no
+     more be planted in a row, ... the ground shall not receive its
+     root, its head shall contain no seed and the sun shall not take
+     care of it;--it shall not be offered at the feast of a god or a
+     king.--The man who has cast the evil spell, his eldest son, his
+     wife,--the spell, the lamentations, the transgressions, the
+     written spells, the blasphemies, the sins,--the evil which is
+     in my body, in my flesh, in my sores,--may they all be
+     destroyed as this onion, and may the burning fire consume them
+     this day! May the evil spell go far away, and may I see the
+     light again!"
+
+Then the destruction of a date is similarly described:
+
+     "It shall not return to the bough from which it has been
+     plucked."
+
+The untying of a knot:
+
+     "Its threads shall not return to the stem which has produced
+     them."
+
+The tearing up of some wool:
+
+     "It shall not return to the back of its sheep."
+
+The tearing of some stuff, and after each act the second verse:
+
+     "The man who has cast the spell," etc.
+
+is repeated.
+
+16. It is devoutly to be hoped, for the patients' sake, that treatments
+like these took effect on the disease, for they got no other. Diseases
+being conceived as personal demons who entered a man's body of their own
+accord or under compulsion from powerful sorcerers, and illness being
+consequently considered as a kind of possession, clearly the only thing
+to do was to drive out the demon or break the spell with the aid of the
+beneficent Ea and his son. If this intervention was of no avail, nothing
+remained for the patient but to get well as he could, or to die. This is
+why there never was a science of medicine in the proper sense in
+Chaldea, even as late as three or four hundred years B.C., and the Greek
+travellers who then visited Babylon must have been not a little shocked
+at the custom they found there of bringing desperately sick persons out
+of the houses with their beds and exposing them in the streets, when any
+passer-by could approach them, inquire into the disease and suggest some
+remedy--which was sure to be tried as a last chance. This extraordinary
+experiment was of course not resorted to until all known forms of
+conjuration had been gone through and had proved inefficient.
+
+17. The belief that certain words and imprecations could break the
+power of demons or sorcerers must have naturally led to the notion that
+to wear such imprecations, written on some substance or article, always
+about one's person must be a continual defence against them; while on
+the other hand, words of invocation to the beneficent spirits and images
+representing them, worn in the same way, must draw down on the wearer
+those spirits' protection and blessing. Hence the passion for talismans.
+They were of various kinds: strips of stuff, with the magic words
+written on them, to be fastened to the body, or the clothes, or articles
+of household furniture, were much used; but small articles of clay or
+hard stone were in greater favor on account of their durability. As
+houses could be possessed by evil spirits just as well as individuals,
+talismans were placed in different parts of them for protection, and
+this belief was so enduring that small clay figures of gods were found
+in Assyrian palaces under thresholds--as in the palace of Khorsabad, by
+Botta--placed there "to keep from it fiends and enemies." It has been
+discovered in this manner that many of the sculptures which adorned the
+Assyrian palaces and temples were of talismanic nature. Thus the winged
+bulls placed at the gateways were nothing but representations of an
+Accadian class of guardian spirits,--the _Kirubu_, Hebrew _Kerubim_, of
+which we have made _Cherub_, _Cherubim_--who were supposed to keep watch
+at entrances, even at that of the Arali, while some sculptures on which
+demons, in the shape of hideous monsters, are seen fighting each
+other, are, so to speak, imprecations in stone, which, if translated
+into words, would mean: "May the evil demons stay outside, may they
+assail and fight each other,"--as, in that case, they would clearly have
+no leisure to assail the inhabitants of the dwelling. That these
+sculptures really were regarded as talismans and expected to guard the
+inmates from harm, is abundantly shown by the manner in which they are
+mentioned in several inscriptions, down to a very late date. Thus
+Esarhaddon, one of the last kings of Assyria (about 700 B.C.), says,
+after describing a very sumptuous palace which he had built:--"I placed
+in its gates bulls and colossi, who, according to their fixed command,
+against the wicked turn themselves; they protect the footsteps, making
+peace to be upon the path of the king their creator."
+
+[Illustration: 54.--DEMONS FIGHTING. (From the British Museum.)]
+
+18. The cylinder seals with their inscriptions and engraved figures were
+mostly also talismans of like nature; which must be the reason why so
+many are found in graves, tied to the dead person's wrist by a
+string--evidently as a protection against the fiends which the departed
+spirit was expected to meet. The magic power was of course conferred on
+all talismans by the words which the conjurer spoke over them with the
+necessary ceremonies. One such long incantation is preserved entire. It
+is designed to impart to the talisman the power of keeping the demons
+from all parts of the dwelling, which are singly enumerated, with the
+consequences to the demons who would dare to trespass: those who steal
+into gutters, remove bolts or hinges, shall be broken like an earthen
+jug, crushed like clay; those who overstep the wooden frame of the house
+shall be clipped of their wings; those who stretch their neck in at the
+window, the window shall descend and cut their throat. The most original
+in this class of superstitions was that which, according to Lenormant,
+consisted in the notion that all these demons were of so unutterably
+ugly a form and countenance, that they must fly away terrified if they
+only beheld their own likeness. As an illustration of this principle he
+gives an incantation against "the wicked Namtar." It begins with a
+highly graphic description of the terrible demon, who is said to "take
+man captive like an enemy," to "burn him like a flame," to "double him
+up like a bundle," to "assail man, although having neither hand nor
+foot, like a noose." Then follows the usual dialogue between Ea and
+Meridug, (in the identical words given above), and Ea at length reveals
+the prescription: "Come hither, my son Meridug. Take mud of the Ocean
+and knead out of it a likeness of him, (the Namtar.) Lay down the man,
+after thou hast purified him; lay the image on his bare abdomen, impart
+to it my magic power and turn its face westward, that the wicked Namtar,
+who dwells in his body, may take up some other abode. Amen." The idea is
+that the Namtar, on beholding his own likeness, will flee from it in
+dismay!
+
+[Illustration: 55.--DEMON OF THE SOUTH-WEST WIND. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+19. To this same class belongs a small bronze statuette, which is to be
+seen in the Louvre. Mr. Lenormant thus describes it: "It is the image of
+a horrible demon, standing, with the body of a dog, the talons of an
+eagle, arms ending in a lion's paws, the tail of a scorpion, the head of
+a skeleton, but with eyes, and a goat's horns, and with four large wings
+at the back, unfolded. A ring placed at the back of the head served to
+hang the figure up. Along the back is an inscription in the Accadian
+language, informing us that this pretty creature is the Demon of the
+South-west Wind, and is to be placed at the door or window. For in
+Chaldea the South-west Wind comes from the deserts of Arabia, its
+burning breath consumes everything and produces the same ravages as the
+Simoon in Africa. Therefore this particular talisman is most frequently
+met with. Our museums contain many other figures of demons, used as
+talismans to frighten away the evil spirits they were supposed to
+represent. One has the head of a goat on a disproportionately long neck;
+another shows a hyena's head, with huge open mouth, on a bear's body
+with lion's paws." On the principle that possession is best guarded
+against by the presence of beneficent spirits, the exorcisms--i.e.,
+forms of conjuring designed to drive the evil demons out of a man or
+dwelling--are usually accompanied with a request to good spirits to
+enter the one or the other, instead of the wicked ones who have been
+ejected. The supreme power which breaks that of all incantations,
+talismans, conjuring rites whatever, is, it would appear, supposed to
+reside in a great, divine name,--possibly a name of Ea himself. At all
+events, it is Ea's own secret. For even in his dialogues with Meridug,
+when entreated for this supreme aid in desperate cases, he is only
+supposed to impart it to his son to use against the obdurate demons and
+thereby crush their power, but it is not given, so that the demons are
+only threatened with it, but it is not actually uttered in the course of
+the incantations.
+
+[Illustration: 56.--HEAD OF DEMON]
+
+20. Not entirely unassisted did Ea pursue his gigantic task of
+protection and healing. Along with him invocations are often addressed
+to several other spirits conceived as essentially good divine beings,
+whose beneficent influence is felt in many ways. Such was Im, the
+Storm-Wind, with its accompanying vivifying showers; such are the
+purifying and wholesome Waters, the Rivers and Springs which feed the
+earth; above all, such were the Sun and Fire, also the Moon, objects of
+double reverence and gratitude because they dispel the darkness of
+night, which the Shumiro-Accads loathed and feared excessively, as the
+time when the wicked demons are strongest and the power of bad men for
+weaving deadly spells is greatest. The third Book of the Collection of
+Magic Texts is composed almost entirely of hymns to these deities--as
+well as to Ea and Meridug--which betray a somewhat later stage in the
+nation's religious development, by the poetical beauty of some of the
+fragments, and especially by a purer feeling of adoration and a higher
+perception of moral goodness, which are absent from the oldest
+incantations.
+
+21. At noon, when the sun has reached the highest point in its heavenly
+course, the earth lies before it without a shadow; all things, good or
+bad, are manifest; its beams, after dispelling the unfriendly gloom,
+pierce into every nook and cranny, bringing into light all ugly things
+that hide and lurk; the evil-doer cowers and shuns its all-revealing
+splendor, and, to perform his accursed deeds, waits the return of his
+dark accomplice, night. What wonder then that to the Shumiro-Accads UD,
+the Sun in all its midday glory, was a very hero of protection, the
+source of truth and justice, the "supreme judge in Heaven and on earth,"
+who "knows lie from truth," who knows the truth that is in the soul of
+man. The hymns to Ud that have been deciphered are full of beautiful
+images. Take for instance the following:--
+
+     "O Sun,[AE] I have called unto thee in the bright heavens. In
+     the shadow of the cedar art thou;" (i.e., it is thou who makest
+     the cedar to cast its shadow, holy and auspicious as the tree
+     itself.) "Thy feet are on the summits.... The countries have
+     wished for thee, they have longed for thy coming, O Lord! Thy
+     radiant light illumines all countries.... Thou makest lies to
+     vanish, thou destroyest the noxious influence of portents,
+     omens, spells, dreams and evil apparitions; thou turnest wicked
+     plots to a happy issue...."
+
+This is both true and finely expressed. For what most inveterate
+believer in ghosts and apparitions ever feared them by daylight? and the
+last touch shows much moral sense and observation of the mysterious
+workings of a beneficent power which often not merely defeats evil but
+even turns it into good. There is splendid poetry in the following
+fragment describing the glory of sunrise:--
+
+     "O Sun! thou hast stepped forth from the background of heaven,
+     thou hast pushed back the bolts of the brilliant heaven,--yea,
+     the gate of heaven. O Sun! above the land thou hast raised thy
+     head! O Sun! thou hast covered the immeasurable space of heaven
+     and countries!"
+
+Another hymn describes how, at the Sun's appearance in the brilliant
+portals of the heavens, and during his progress to their highest point,
+all the great gods turn to his light, all the good spirits of heaven and
+earth gaze up to his face, surround him joyfully and reverently, and
+escort him in solemn procession. It needs only to put all these
+fragments into fine verse to make out of them a poem which will be held
+beautiful even in our day, when from our very childhood we learn to know
+the difference between good and poor poetry, growing up, as we do, on
+the best of all ages and all countries.
+
+22. When the sun disappeared in the West, sinking rapidly, and diving,
+as it were, into the very midst of darkness, the Shumiro-Accads did not
+fancy him as either asleep or inactive, but on the contrary as still
+engaged in his everlasting work. Under the name of NIN-DAR, he travels
+through the dreary regions ruled by Mul-ge and, his essence being
+_light_, he combats the powers of darkness in their own home, till He
+comes out of it, a triumphant hero, in the morning. Nin-dar is also the
+keeper of the hidden treasures of the earth--its metals and precious
+stones, because, according to Mr. Lenormant's ingenious remark, "they
+only wait, like him, the moment of emerging out of the earth, to emit a
+bright radiancy." This radiancy of precious stones, which is like a
+concentration of light in its purest form, was probably the reason why
+they were in such general use as talismans, quite as much as their
+hardness and durability.
+
+23. But while the Sun accomplishes his nightly underground journey, men
+would be left a prey to mortal terrors in the upper world, deprived of
+light, their chief defence against the evil brood of darkness, were it
+not for his substitute, Fire, who is by nature also a being of light,
+and, as such, the friend of men, from whose paths and dwellings he
+scares not only wild beasts and foes armed with open violence, but the
+far more dangerous hosts of unseen enemies, both demons and spells cast
+by wicked sorcerers. It is in this capacity of protector that the god
+GIBIL (Fire) is chiefly invoked. In one very complete hymn he is
+addressed thus:--
+
+     "Thou who drivest away the evil Maskim, who furtherest the
+     well-being of life, who strikest the breast of the wicked with
+     terror,--Fire, the destroyer of foes, dread weapon which
+     drivest away Pestilence."
+
+This last attribute would show that the Shumiro-Accads had noticed the
+hygienic properties of fire, which does indeed help to dispel miasmas
+on account of the strong ventilation which a great blaze sets going.
+Thus at a comparatively late epoch, some 400 years B.C., a terrible
+plague broke out at Athens, the Greek city, and Hippocrates, a physician
+of great genius and renown, who has been called "the Father of
+Medicine," tried to diminish the contagion by keeping huge fires
+continually blazing at different points of the city. It is the same very
+correct idea which made men invoke Gibil as he who purifies the works of
+man. He is also frequently called "the protector of the dwelling, of the
+family," and praised for "creating light in the house of darkness," and
+for bringing peace to all creation. Over and above these claims to
+gratitude, Gibil had a special importance in the life of a people given
+to the works of metallurgy, of which fire is the chief agent: "It is
+thou," says one hymn, "who mixest tin and copper, it is thou who
+purifiest silver and gold." Now the mixture of tin and copper produces
+bronze, the first metal which has been used to make weapons and tools
+of, in most cases long before iron, which is much more difficult to
+work, and as the quality of the metal depends on the proper mixture of
+the two ingredients, it is but natural that the aid of the god Fire
+should have been specially invoked for the operation. But Fire is not
+only a great power on earth, it is also, in the shape of Lightning, one
+of the dreadest and most mysterious powers of the skies, and as such
+sometimes called son of Ana (Heaven), or, in a more roundabout way, "the
+Hero, son of the Ocean"--meaning the celestial Ocean, the great
+reservoir of rains, from which the lightning seems to spring, as it
+flashes through the heavy showers of a Southern thunder storm. In
+whatever shape he appear, and whatever his functions, Gibil is hailed as
+an invariably beneficent and friendly being.
+
+24. When the feeling of helplessness forced on man by his position in
+the midst of nature takes the form of a reverence for and dependence on
+beings whom he conceives of as essentially good, a far nobler religion
+and far higher moral tone are the immediate consequence. This conception
+of absolute goodness sprang from the observation that certain beings or
+spirits--like the Sun, Fire, the Thunderstorm--though possessing the
+power of doing both good and harm, used it almost exclusively for the
+benefit of men. This position once firmly established, the conclusion
+naturally followed, that if these good beings once in awhile sent down a
+catastrophe or calamity,--if the Sun scorched the fields or the
+Thunderstorm swamped them, if the wholesome North Wind swept away the
+huts and broke down the trees--it must be in anger, as a mark of
+displeasure--in punishment. By what could man provoke the displeasure of
+kind and beneficent beings? Clearly by not being like them, by doing not
+good, but evil. And what is evil? That which is contrary to the nature
+of the good spirits: doing wrong and harm to men; committing sins and
+wicked actions. To avoid, therefore, provoking the anger of those good
+but powerful spirits, so terrible in its manifestations, it is
+necessary to try to please them, and that can be done only by being
+like them,--good, or at least striving to be so, and, when temptation,
+ignorance, passion or weakness of will have betrayed man into a
+transgression, to confess it, express regret for the offence and an
+intention not to offend again, in order to obtain forgiveness and be
+spared. A righteous life, then, prayer and repentance are the proper
+means of securing divine favor or mercy. It is evident that a religion
+from which such lessons naturally spring is a great improvement on a
+belief in beings who do good or evil indiscriminately, indeed prefer
+doing evil, a belief which cannot teach a distinction between moral
+right and wrong, or a rational distribution of rewards or punishment,
+nor consequently inculcate the feeling of duty and responsibility,
+without which goodness as a matter of principle is impossible and a
+reliable state of society unattainable.
+
+25. This higher and therefore later stage of moral and religious
+development is very perceptible in the third book of the Magic
+Collection. With the appreciation of absolute goodness, conscience has
+awakened, and speaks with such insistence and authority that the
+Shumiro-Accad, in the simplicity of his mind, has earnestly imagined it
+to be the voice of a personal and separate deity, a guardian spirit
+belonging to each man, dwelling within him and living his life. It is a
+god--sometimes even a divine couple, both "god and goddess, pure
+spirits"--who protects him from his birth, yet is not proof against the
+spells of sorcerers and the attacks of the demons, and even can be
+compelled to work evil in the person committed to its care, and
+frequently called therefore "the son of his god," as we saw above, in
+the incantation against the Disease of the Head. The conjuration or
+exorcism which drives out the demon, of course restores the guardian
+spirit to its own beneficent nature, and the patient not only to bodily
+well-being, but also to peace of mind. That is what is desired, when a
+prayer for the cure of a sick or possessed person ends with the words:
+"May he be placed again in the gracious hands of his god!" When
+therefore a man is represented as speaking to "his god" and confessing
+to him his sin and distress, it is only a way of expressing that silent
+self-communing of the soul, in which it reviews its own deficiencies,
+forms good resolutions and prays to be released from the intolerable
+burden of sin. There are some most beautiful prayers of this sort in the
+collection. They have been called "the Penitential Psalms," from their
+striking likeness to some of those psalms in which King David confesses
+his iniquities and humbles himself before the Lord. The likeness extends
+to both spirit and form, almost to words. If the older poet, in his
+spiritual groping, addresses "his god and goddess," the higher, better
+self which he feels within him and feels to be divine--his Conscience,
+instead of the One God and Lord, his feeling is not less earnest, his
+appeal not less pure and confiding. He confesses his transgression, but
+pleads ignorance and sues for mercy. Here are some of the principal
+verses, of which each is repeated twice, once addressed to "my god,"
+and the second time to "my goddess." The title of the Psalm is: "The
+complaints of the repentant heart. Sixty-five verses in all."
+
+     26. "My Lord, may the anger of his heart be allayed! May the
+     fool attain understanding! The god who knows the unknown, may
+     he be conciliated! The goddess who knows the unknown, may she
+     be conciliated!--I eat the food of wrath and drink the waters
+     of anguish.... O my god, my transgressions are very great, very
+     great my sins.... I transgress, and know it not. I sin, and
+     know it not. I feed on transgressions, and know it not. I
+     wander on wrong paths, and know it not.--The Lord, in the wrath
+     of his heart, has overwhelmed me with confusion.... I lie on
+     the ground, and none reaches a hand to me. I am silent and in
+     tears, and none takes me by the hand. I cry out, and there is
+     none that hears me. I am exhausted, oppressed, and none
+     releases me.... My god, who knowest the unknown, be
+     merciful!... My goddess, who knowest the unknown, be
+     merciful!... How long, O my god?... How long, O my goddess?...
+     Lord, thou wilt not repulse thy servant. In the midst of the
+     stormy waters, come to my assistance, take me by the hand! I
+     commit sins--turn them into blessedness! I commit
+     transgressions--let the wind sweep them away! My blasphemies
+     are very many--rend them like a garment!... God who knowest the
+     unknown,[AF] my sins are seven times seven,--forgive my
+     sins!..."
+
+27. The religious feeling once roused to this extent, it is not to be
+wondered at that in some invocations the distress or disease which had
+formerly been taken as a gratuitous visitation, begins to be considered
+in the light of a divine punishment, even though the afflicted person be
+the king himself. This is very evident from the concluding passage of a
+hymn to the Sun, in which it is the conjurer who speaks on behalf of the
+patient, while presenting an offering:--
+
+     "O Sun, leave not my uplifted hands unregarded!--Eat his food,
+     refuse not his sacrifice, bring back his god to him, to be a
+     support unto his hand!--May his sin, at thy behest, be forgiven
+     him, his misdeed be forgotten!--May his trouble leave him! May
+     he recover from his illness!--Give to the king new vital
+     strength.... Escort the king, who lies at thy feet!--Also me,
+     the conjurer, thy respectful servant!"
+
+28. There is another hymn of the same kind, not less remarkable for its
+artistic and regular construction than for its beauty of feeling and
+diction. The penitent speaks five double lines, and the priest adds two
+more, as though endorsing the prayer and supporting it with the weight
+of his own sacred character. This gives very regular strophes, of which,
+unfortunately, only two have been well preserved:--
+
+     _Penitent._--"I, thy servant, full of sighs, I call to thee.
+     Whoever is beset with sin, his ardent supplication thou
+     acceptest. If thou lookest on a man with pity, that man liveth.
+     Ruler of all, mistress of mankind! Merciful one, to whom it is
+     good to turn, who dost receive sighs!" _Priest._--"While his
+     god and his goddess are wroth with him he calls on thee. Thy
+     countenance turn on him, take hold of his hand."
+
+     _Penitent._--"Besides thee there is no deity to lead in
+     righteousness. Kindly look on me, accept my sighs. Speak: how
+     long? and let thine heart be appeased. When, O Lady, will thy
+     countenance turn on me? Even like doves I moan, I feed on
+     sighs." _Priest._--"His heart is full of woe and trouble, and
+     full of sighs. Tears he sheds and breaks out into
+     lamentation."[AG]
+
+29. Such is a not incomplete outline of this strange and primitive
+religion, the religion of a people whose existence was not suspected
+twenty-five years ago, yet which claims, with the Egyptians and the
+Chinese, the distinction of being one of the oldest on earth, and in all
+probability was older than both. This discovery is one of the most
+important conquests of modern science, not only from its being highly
+interesting in itself, but from the light it throws on innumerable
+hitherto obscure points in the history of the ancient world, nay, on
+many curious facts which reach down to our own time. Thus, the numerous
+Turanian tribes which exist in a wholly or half nomadic condition in the
+immense plains of Eastern and South-eastern Russia, in the forests and
+wastes of Siberia, on the steppes and highlands of Central Asia, have no
+other religion now than this of the old Shumiro-Accads, in its earliest
+and most material shape. Everything to them is a spirit or has a spirit
+of its own; they have no worship, no moral teaching, but only conjuring,
+sorcerers, not priests. These men are called _Shamans_ and have great
+influence among the tribes. The more advanced and cultivated Turanians,
+like the Mongols and Mandchous, accord to one great Spirit the supremacy
+over all others and call that Spirit which they conceive as absolutely
+good, merciful and just, "Heaven," just as the Shumiro-Accads invoked
+"Ana." This has been and still is the oldest national religion of the
+Chinese. They say "Heaven" wherever we would say "God," and with the
+same idea of loving adoration and reverent dread, which does not prevent
+them from invoking the spirit of every hill, river, wind or forest, and
+numbering among this host also the souls of the deceased. This clearly
+corresponds to the second and higher stage of the Accadian religion, and
+marks the utmost limit which the Yellow Race have been able to attain in
+spiritual life. True, the greater part of the Chinese now have another
+religion; they are Buddhists; while the Turks and the great majority of
+the Tatars, Mongols and Mandchous, not to speak of other less important
+divisions, are Mussulmans. But both Buddhism and Mahometanism are
+foreign religions, which they have borrowed, adopted, not worked out for
+themselves. Here then we are also met by that fatal law of limitation,
+which through all ages seems to have said to the men of yellow skin and
+high cheek-bones, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further." Thus it was
+in Chaldea. The work of civilization and spiritual development begun by
+the people of Shumir and Accad was soon taken out of their hands and
+carried on by newcomers from the east, those descendants of Noah, who
+"found a plain in the land of Shinar and dwelt there."
+
+
+                     APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.
+
+Professor Louis Dyer, of Harvard University, has attempted a rendering
+into English verse of the famous incantation of the Seven Maskim. The
+result of the experiment is a translation most faithful in the spirit
+and main features, if not always literal; and which, by his kind
+permission, we here offer to our readers.
+
+
+                             A CHARM.
+
+                                I.
+
+              Seven are they, they are seven;
+                In the caverns of ocean they dwell,
+              They are clothed in the lightnings of heaven,
+                Of their growth the deep waters can tell;
+              Seven are they, they are seven.
+
+                               II.
+
+              Broad is their way and their course is wide,
+                Where the seeds of destruction they sow,
+              O'er the tops of the hills where they stride,
+                To lay waste the smooth highways below,--
+              Broad is their way and their course is wide.
+
+                               III.
+
+              Man they are not, nor womankind,
+                For in fury they sweep from the main,
+              And have wedded no wife but the wind,
+                And no child have begotten but pain,--
+              Man they are not, nor womankind.
+
+                               IV.
+
+              Fear is not in them, not awe;
+                Supplication they heed not, nor prayer,
+              For they know no compassion nor law,
+                And are deaf to the cries of despair,--
+              Fear is not in them, not awe.
+
+                                V.
+
+              Cursed they are, they are cursed,
+                They are foes to wise Ea's great name;
+              By the whirlwind are all things dispersed
+                On the paths of the flash of their flame,--
+              Cursed they are, they are cursed.
+
+                               VI.
+
+              Spirit of Heaven, oh, help! Help, oh, Spirit of Earth!
+                They are seven, thrice said they are seven;
+                  For the gods they are Bearers of Thrones,
+              But for men they are Breeders of Dearth
+                And the authors of sorrows and moans.
+                  They are seven, thrice said they are seven.
+              Spirit of Heaven, oh, help! Help, oh, Spirit of Earth!
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AC] "La Magie et la Divination chez les Chaldeens," 1874-5. German
+translation of it, 1878.
+
+[AD] Alfred Maury, "La Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquite et au
+Moyen-age." Introduction, p. 1.
+
+[AE] "UD" not being a proper name, but the name of the sun in the
+language of Shumir and Accad, it can be rendered in translation by
+"Sun," with a capital.
+
+[AF] Another and more recent translator renders this line: "God who
+knowest I knew not." Whichever rendering is right, the thought is
+beautiful and profound.
+
+[AG] This hymn is given by H. Zimmern, as the text to a dissertation on
+the language and grammar.
+
+
+
+
+                               IV.
+
+          CUSHITES AND SEMITES.--EARLY CHALDEAN HISTORY.
+
+
+1. We have just seen that the hymns and prayers which compose the third
+part of the great Magic Collection really mark a later and higher stage
+in the religious conceptions of the Turanian settlers of Chaldea, the
+people of Shumir and Accad. This improvement was not entirely due to a
+process of natural development, but in a great measure to the influence
+of that other and nobler race, who came from the East. When the priestly
+historian of Babylon, Berosus, calls the older population "men of
+foreign race," it is because he belonged himself to that second race,
+who remained in the land, introduced their own superior culture, and
+asserted their supremacy to the end of Babylon. The national legends
+have preserved the memory of this important event, which they represent
+as a direct divine revelation. Ea, the all-wise himself, it was
+believed, had appeared to men and taught them things human and divine.
+Berosus faithfully reports the legend, but seems to have given the God's
+name "Ea-Han" ("Ea the Fish") under the corrupted Greek form of OANNES.
+This is the narrative, of which we already know the first line:
+
+"There was originally at Babylon a multitude of men of foreign race who
+had colonized Chaldea, and they lived without order, like animals. But
+in the first year" (meaning the first year of the new order of things,
+the new dispensation) "there appeared, from out of the Erythrean Sea
+(the ancient Greek name for the Persian Gulf) where it borders upon
+Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, who was called OANNES. The
+whole body of the animal was that of a fish, but under the fish's head
+he had another head, and also feet below, growing out of his fish's
+tail, similar to those of a man; also human speech, and his image is
+preserved to this day. This being used to spend the whole day amidst
+men, without taking any food, and he gave them an insight into letters,
+and sciences, and every kind of art; he taught them how to found cities,
+to construct temples, to introduce laws and to measure land; he showed
+them how to sow seeds and gather in crops; in short, he instructed them
+in everything that softens manners and makes up civilization, so that
+from that time no one has invented anything new. Then, when the sun went
+down, this monstrous Oannes used to plunge back into the sea and spend
+the night in the midst of the boundless waves, for he was amphibious."
+
+2. The question, _Who_ were the bringers of this advanced civilization?
+has caused much division among the most eminent scholars. Two solutions
+are offered. Both being based on many and serious grounds and supported
+by illustrious names, and the point being far from settled yet, it is
+but fair to state them both. The two greatest of German assyriologists,
+Professors Eberhard Schrader and Friedrich Delitzsch, and the German
+school which acknowledges them as leaders, hold that the bringers of the
+new and more perfect civilization were Semites--descendants of Shem,
+i.e., people of the same race as the Hebrews--while the late Francois
+Lenormant and his followers contend that they were Cushites in the first
+instance,--i.e., belonged to that important family of nations which we
+find grouped, in Chapter X. of Genesis, under the name of Cush, himself
+a son of Ham--and that the Semitic immigration came second. As the
+latter hypothesis puts forward, among other arguments, the authority of
+the Biblical historians, and moreover involves the destinies of a very
+numerous and vastly important branch of ancient humanity, we will yield
+to it the right of precedence.
+
+[Illustration: 57.--OANNES. (Smith's "Chaldean Genesis.")]
+
+3. The name "HAM" signifies "brown, dark" (not "black"). Therefore, to
+speak of certain nations as "sons of Ham," is to say that they belonged
+to "the Dark Race." Yet, originally, this great section of Noah's
+posterity was as white of color as the other two. It seems to have first
+existed as a separate race in a region not very distant from the high
+table-land of Central Asia, the probable first cradle of mankind. That
+division of this great section which again separated and became the race
+of Cush, appears to have been drawn southwards by reasons which it is,
+of course, impossible to ascertain. It is easier to guess at the route
+they must have taken along the HINDU CUSH,[AH] a range of mountains
+which must have been to it a barrier in the west, and which joins the
+western end of the Himalaya, the mightiest mountain-chain in the world.
+The break between the Hindu-Cush and the Himalaya forms a mountain pass,
+just at the spot where the river INDUS (most probably the PISCHON of
+Gen., Ch. II.) turns abruptly to the south, to water the rich plains of
+India. Through this pass, and following the course of the river, further
+Cushite detachments must have penetrated into that vast and attractive
+peninsula, even to the south of it, where they found a population mostly
+belonging to the Black branch of humanity, so persistently ignored by
+the writer of Chap. X. Hundreds of years spent under a tropical clime
+and intermarriage with the Negro natives altered not only the color of
+their skin, but also the shape of their features. So that when Cushite
+tribes, with the restless migratory spirit so characteristic of all
+early ages, began to work their way back again to the north, then to the
+west, along the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, they
+were both dark-skinned and thick-lipped, with a decided tendency towards
+the Negro type, lesser or greater according to the degree of mixture
+with the inferior race. That this type was foreign to them is proved by
+the facility with which their features resumed the nobler cast of the
+white races wherever they stayed long enough among these, as was the
+case in Chaldea, in Arabia, in the countries of Canaan, whither many of
+these tribes wandered at various times.
+
+4. Some Cushite detachments, who reached the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb,
+crossed over into Africa, and settling there amidst the barbarous native
+negro tribes, formed a nation which became known to its northern
+neighbors, the Egyptians, to the Hebrews, and throughout the ancient
+East under its own proper name of CUSH, and whose outward
+characteristics came, in the course of time, so near to the pure Negro
+type as to be scarcely recognizable from it. This is the same nation
+which, to us moderns, is better known under the name of ETHIOPIANS,
+given to it by the Greeks, as well as to the eastern division of the
+same race. The Egyptians themselves were another branch of the same
+great section of humanity, represented in the genealogy of Chap. X. by
+the name of MIZRAIM, second son of Ham. These must have come from the
+east along the Persian Gulf, then across Northern Arabia and the Isthmus
+of Suez. In the color and features of the Egyptians the mixture with
+black races is also noticeable, but not enough to destroy the beauty and
+expressiveness of the original type, at all events far less than in
+their southern neighbors, the Ethiopians, with whom, moreover, they were
+throughout on the worst of terms, whom they loathed and invariably
+designated under the name of "vile Cush."
+
+5. A third and very important branch of the Hamite family, the
+CANAANITES, after reaching the Persian Gulf, and probably sojourning
+there some time, spread, not to the south, but to the west, across the
+plains of Syria, across the mountain chain of LEBANON and to the very
+edge of the Mediterranean Sea, occupying all the land which later became
+Palestine, also to the north-west, as far as the mountain chain of
+TAURUS. This group was very numerous, and broken up into a great many
+peoples, as we can judge from the list of nations given in Chap. X. (v.
+15-18) as "sons of Canaan." In its migrations over this comparatively
+northern region, Canaan found and displaced not black natives, but
+Turanian nomadic tribes, who roamed at large over grassy wildernesses
+and sandy wastes and are possibly to be accounted as the representatives
+of that portion of the race which the biblical historian embodies in the
+pastoral names of Jabal and Jubal--(Gen. iv., 20-22)--"The father of
+such as dwell in tents and have cattle," and "the father of all such as
+handle the harp and pipe." In which case the Turanian settlers and
+builders of cities would answer to Tubalcain, the smith and artificer.
+The Canaanites, therefore, are those among the Hamites who, in point of
+color and features, have least differed from their kindred white races,
+though still sufficiently bronzed to be entitled to the name of "sons of
+Ham," i.e., "belonging to the dark-skinned race."
+
+6. Migrating races do not traverse continents with the same rapidity as
+marching armies. The progress is slow, the stations are many. Every
+station becomes a settlement, sometimes the beginning of a new
+nation--so many landmarks along the way. And the distance between the
+starting-point and the furthest point reached by the race is measured
+not only by thousands of miles, but also by hundreds and hundreds of
+years; only the space can be actually measured; while the time can be
+computed merely by conjecture. The route from the south of India, along
+the shore of Malabar, the Persian Gulf, across the Arabian deserts, then
+down along the Red Sea and across the straits into Africa, is of such
+tremendous length that the settlements which the Cushite race left
+scattered along it must have been more than usually numerous. According
+to the upholders of a Cushite colonization of Chaldea, one important
+detachment appears to have taken possession of the small islands along
+the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf and to have stayed there for
+several centuries, probably choosing these island homes on account of
+their seclusion and safety from invasion. There, unmolested and
+undisturbed, they could develop a certain spirit of abstract speculation
+to which their natural bent inclined them. They were great star-gazers
+and calculators--two tastes which go well together, for Astronomy cannot
+exist without Mathematics. But star-gazing is also favorable to
+dreaming, and the Cushite islanders had time for dreams. Thoughts of
+heavenly things occupied them much; they worked out a religion beautiful
+in many ways and full of deep sense; their priests dwelt in communities
+or colleges, probably one on every island, and spent their time not only
+in scientific study and religious contemplation, but also in the more
+practical art of government, for there do not appear as yet to have
+been any kings among them.
+
+7. But there came a time when the small islands were overcrowded with
+the increased population, and detachments began to cross the water and
+land at the furthest point of the Gulf, in the land of the great rivers.
+Here they found a people not unpractised in several primitive arts, and
+possessed of some important fundamental inventions--writing, irrigation
+by means of canals--but deplorably deficient in spiritual development,
+and positively barbarous in the presence of an altogether higher
+culture. The Cushites rapidly spread through the land of Shumir and
+Accad, and taught the people with whom they afterwards, as usual,
+intermarried, until both formed but one nation--with this difference,
+that towards the north of Chaldea the Cushite element became
+predominant, while in the south numbers remained on the side of the
+Turanians. Whether this result was attained altogether peacefully or was
+preceded by a period of resistance and fighting, we have no means of
+ascertaining. If there was such a period, it cannot have lasted long,
+for intellect was on the side of the newcomers, and that is a power
+which soon wins the day. At all events the final fusion must have been
+complete and friendly, since the old national legend reported by Berosus
+cleverly combines the two elements, by attributing the part of teacher
+and revealer to the Shumiro-Accad's own favorite divine being Ea, while
+it is not impossible that it alludes to the coming of the Cushites in
+making the amphibious Oannes rise out of the Persian Gulf, "where it
+borders on Chaldea." The legend goes on to say that Oannes set down his
+revelations in books which he consigned into the keeping of men, and
+that several more divine animals of the same kind continued to appear at
+long intervals. Who knows but the latter strange detail may have been
+meant to allude fantastically to the arrival of successive Cushite
+colonies? In the long run of time, of course all such meaning would be
+forgotten and the legend remain as a miraculous and inexplicable
+incident.
+
+8. It would be vain to attempt to fix any dates for events which took
+place in such remote antiquity, in the absence of any evidence or
+document that might be grasped. Yet, by close study of facts, by
+laborious and ingenious comparing of later texts, of every scrap of
+evidence furnished by monuments, of information contained in the
+fragments of Berosus and of other writers, mostly Greek, it has been
+possible, with due caution, to arrive at some approximative dates,
+which, after all, are all that is needed to classify things in an order
+intelligible and correct in the main. Even should further discoveries
+and researches arrive at more exact results, the gain will be
+comparatively small. At such a distance, differences of a couple of
+centuries do not matter much. When we look down a long line of houses or
+trees, the more distant ones appear to run together, and we do not
+always see where it ends--yet we can perfectly well pursue its
+direction. The same with the so-called double stars in astronomy: they
+are stars which, though really separated by thousands of miles, appear
+as one on account of the immense distance between them and our eye, and
+only the strongest telescope lenses show them to be separate bodies,
+though still close together. Yet this is sufficient to assign them their
+place so correctly on the map of the heavens, that they do not disturb
+the calculations in which they are included. The same kind of
+perspective applies to the history of remote antiquity. As the gloom
+which has covered it so long slowly rolls back before the light of
+scientific research, we begin to discern outlines and landmarks, at
+first so dim and wavering as rather to mislead than to instruct; but
+soon the searcher's eye, sharpened by practice, fixes them sufficiently
+to bring them into connection with the later and more fully illumined
+portions of the eternally unrolling picture. Chance, to which all
+discoverers are so much indebted, frequently supplies such a landmark,
+and now and then one so firm and distinct as to become a trustworthy
+centre for a whole group.
+
+9. The annals of the Assyrian king Asshurbanipal (the founder of the
+great Library at Nineveh) have established beyond a doubt the first
+positive date that has been secured for the History of Chaldea. That
+king was for a long time at war with the neighboring kingdom of ELAM,
+and ended by conquering and destroying its capital, SHUSHAN (Susa),
+after carrying away all the riches from the royal palace and all the
+statues from the great temple. This happened in the year 645 B.C. In the
+inscriptions in which he records this event, the king informs us that in
+that temple he found a statue of the Chaldean goddess NANA, which had
+been carried away from her own temple in the city of URUKH (Erech, now
+Warka) by a king of Elam of the name of KHUDUR-NANKHUNDI, who invaded
+the land of Accad 1635 years before, and that he, Asshurbanipal, by the
+goddess's own express command, took her from where she had dwelt in
+Elam, "a place not appointed her," and reinstated her in her own
+sanctuary "which she had delighted in." 1635 added to 645 make 2280, a
+date not to be disputed. Now if a successful Elamite invasion in 2280
+found in Chaldea famous sanctuaries to desecrate, the religion to which
+these sanctuaries belonged, that of the Cushite, or Semitic colonists,
+must have been established in the country already for several, if not
+many, centuries. Indeed, quite recent discoveries show that it had been
+so considerably over a thousand years, so that we cannot possibly accept
+a date later than 4000 B.C. for the foreign immigration. The
+Shumiro-Accadian culture was too firmly rooted then and too completely
+worked out--as far as it went--to allow less than about 1000 years for
+its establishment. This takes us as far back as 5000 B.C.--a pretty
+respectable figure, especially when we think of the vista of time which
+opens behind it, and for which calculation fairly fails us. For if the
+Turanian settlers brought the rudiments of that culture from the
+highlands of Elam, how long had they sojourned there before they
+descended into the plains? And how long had it taken them to reach that
+station on their way from the race's mountain home in the far
+Northeast, in the Altai valleys?
+
+10. However that may be, 5000 B.C. is a moderate and probable date. But
+ancient nations were not content with such, when they tried to locate
+and classify their own beginnings. These being necessarily obscure and
+only vaguely shadowed out in traditions which gained in fancifulness and
+lost in probability with every succeeding generation that received them
+and handed them down to the next, they loved to magnify them by
+enshrouding them in the mystery of innumerable ages. The more appalling
+the figures, the greater the glory. Thus we gather from some fragments
+of Berosus that, according to the national Chaldean tradition, there was
+an interval of over 259,000 years between the first appearance of Oannes
+and the first king. Then come ten successive kings, each of whom reigns
+a no less extravagant number of years (one 36,000, another 43,000, even
+64,000; 10,800 being the most modest figure), till the aggregate of all
+these different periods makes up the pretty sum total of 691,200 years,
+supposed to have elapsed from the first appearance of Oannes to the
+Deluge. It is so impossible to imagine so prodigious a number of years
+or couple with it anything at all real, that we might just as well
+substitute for such a figure the simpler "very, very long ago," or still
+better, the approved fairy tale beginning, "There was once upon a time,
+..." It conveys quite as definite a notion, and would, in such a case,
+be the more appropriate, that all a nation's most marvellous
+traditions, most fabulous legends, are naturally placed in those
+stupendously remote ages which no record could reach, no experience
+control. Although these traditions and legends generally had a certain
+body of actual truth and dimly remembered fact in them, which might
+still be apparent to the learned and the cultivated few, the ignorant
+masses of the people swallowed the thing whole, as real history, and
+found things acknowledged as impossible easy to believe, for the simple
+reason that "it was so very long ago!" A Chaldean of Alexander's time
+certainly did not expect to meet a divine Man-Fish in his walks along
+the sea-shore, but--there was no knowing what might or might not have
+happened seven hundred thousand years ago! In the legend of the six
+successive apparitions under the first ten long-lived kings, he would
+not have descried the simple sense so lucidly set forth by Mr. Maspero,
+one of the most distinguished of French Orientalists:--"The times
+preceding the Deluge represented an experimental period, during which
+mankind, being as yet barbarous, had need of divine assistance to
+overcome the difficulties with which it was surrounded. Those times were
+filled up with six manifestations of the deity, doubtless answering to
+the number of sacred books in which the priests saw the most complete
+expression of revealed law."[AI] This presents another and more probable
+explanation of the legend than the one suggested above, (end of Sec. 7);
+but there is no more actual _proof_ of the one than of the other being
+the correct one.
+
+11. If Chaldea was in after times a battle-ground of nations, it was in
+the beginning a very nursery and hive of peoples. The various races in
+their migrations must necessarily have been attracted and arrested by
+the exceeding fertility of its soil, which it is said, in the times of
+its highest prosperity and under proper conditions of irrigation,
+yielded two hundredfold return for the grain it received. Settlement
+must have followed settlement in rapid succession. But the nomadic
+element was for a long time still very prevalent, and side by side with
+the builders of cities and tillers of fields, shepherd tribes roamed
+peacefully over the face of the land, tolerated and unmolested by the
+permanent population, with which they mixed but warily, occasionally
+settling down temporarily, and shifting their settlements as safety or
+advantage required it,--or wandering off altogether from that common
+halting-place, to the north, and west, and south-west. This makes it
+very plain why Chaldea is given as the land where the tongues became
+confused and the second separation of races took place.
+
+12. Of those principally nomadic tribes the greatest part did not
+belong, like the Cushites or Canaanites, to the descendants of Ham, "the
+Dark," but to those of SHEM, whose name, signifying "Glory, Renown,"
+stamps him as the eponymous ancestor of that race which has always
+firmly believed itself to be the chosen one of God. They were Semites.
+When they arrived on the plains of Chaldea, they were inferior in
+civilization to the people among whom they came to dwell. They knew
+nothing of city arts and had all to learn. They did learn, for superior
+culture always asserts its power,--even to the language of the Cushite
+settlers, which the latter were rapidly substituting for the rude and
+poor Turanian idiom of Shumir and Accad. This language, or rather
+various dialects of it, were common to most Hamitic and Semitic tribes,
+among whom that from which the Hebrews sprang brought it to its greatest
+perfection. The others worked it into different kindred dialects--the
+Assyrian, the Aramaic or Syrian, the Arabic--according to their several
+peculiarities. The Phoenicians of the sea-shore, and all the Canaanite
+nations, also spoke languages belonging to the same family, and
+therefore classed among the so-called Semitic tongues. Thus it has come
+to pass that philology,--or the Science of Languages,--adopted a wrong
+name for that entire group, calling the languages belonging to it,
+"Semitic," while, in reality, they are originally "Hamitic." The reason
+is that the Hamitic origin of those important languages which have been
+called Semitic these hundred years had not been discovered until very
+lately, and to change the name now would produce considerable confusion.
+
+13. Most of the Semitic tribes who dwelt in Chaldea adopted not only the
+Cushite language, but the Cushite culture and religion. Asshur carried
+all three northward, where the Assyrian kingdom arose out of a few
+Babylonian colonies, and Aram westward to the land which was afterwards
+called Southern Syria, and where the great city of Damascus long
+flourished and still exists. But there was one tribe of higher spiritual
+gifts than the others. It was not numerous, for through many generations
+it consisted of only one great family governed by its own eldest chief
+or patriarch. It is true that such a family, with the patriarch's own
+children and children's children, its wealth of horses, camels, flocks
+of sheep, its host of servants and slaves, male and female, represented
+quite a respectable force; Abraham could muster three hundred eighteen
+armed and _trained_ servants who had been born in his own household.
+This particular tribe seems to have wandered for some time on the
+outskirts of Chaldea and in the land itself, as indicated by the name
+given to its eponym in Chap. X.: ARPHAXAD (more correctly ARPHAKSHAD),
+corrupted from AREPH-KASDIM, which means, "bordering on the Chaldeans,"
+or perhaps "boundaries"--in the sense of "land"--of the Chaldeans.
+Generation after generation pushed further westward, traversed the land
+of Shinar, crossed the Euphrates and reached the city of Ur, in or near
+which the tribe dwelt many years.
+
+14. Ur was then the greatest city of Southern Chaldea. The earliest
+known kings of Shumir resided in it, and besides that, it was the
+principal commercial mart of the country. For, strange as it may appear
+when we look on a modern map, Ur, the ruins of which are now 150 miles
+from the sea, was then a maritime city, with harbor and ship docks. The
+waters of the Gulf reached much further inland than they do now. There
+was then a distance of many miles between the mouths of the Tigris and
+Euphrates, and Ur lay very near the mouth of the latter river. Like all
+commercial and maritime cities, it was the resort not only of all the
+different races which dwelt in the land itself, but also of foreign
+traders. The active intellectual life of a capital, too, which was at
+the same time a great religious centre and the seat of a powerful
+priesthood, must of necessity have favored interchange of ideas, and
+have exerted an influence on that Semitic tribe of whom the Bible tells
+us that it "went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of
+Canaan," led by the patriarch Terah and his son Abraham (Genesis xi.
+31). The historian of Genesis here, as throughout the narrative, does
+not mention any date whatever for the event he relates; nor does he hint
+at the cause of this removal. On the first of these points the study of
+Chaldean cuneiform monuments throws considerable light, while the latter
+does not admit of more than guesses--of which something hereafter.
+
+15. Such is a broad and cursory outline of the theory according to which
+Cushite immigrations preceded the arrival of the Semites in the land of
+Shumir and Accad. Those who uphold it give several reasons for their
+opinion, such as that the Bible several times mentions a Cush located in
+the East and evidently different from the Cush which has been identified
+as Ethiopia; that, in Chap. X. of Genesis (8-12), Nimrod, the legendary
+hero, whose empire at first was in "the land of Shinar," and who is
+said to have "gone forth out of that land into Assyria," is called a son
+of Cush; that the most ancient Greek poets knew of "Ethiopians" in the
+far East as opposed to those of the South--and several more. Those
+scholars who oppose this theory dismiss it wholesale. They will not
+admit the existence of a Cushite element or migration in the East at
+all, and put down the expressions in the Bible as simple mistakes,
+either of the writers or copyists. According to them, there was only one
+immigration in the land of Shumir and Accad, that of the Semites,
+achieved through many ages and in numerous instalments. The language
+which superseded the ancient Shumiro-Accadian idiom is to them a Semitic
+one in the directest and most exclusive sense; the culture grafted on
+that of the earlier population is by them called purely "Semitic;" while
+their opponents frequently use the compound designation of
+"Cushito-Semitic," to indicate the two distinct elements of which, to
+them, it appears composed. It must be owned that the anti-Cushite
+opinion is gaining ground. Yet the Cushite theory cannot be considered
+as disposed of, only "not proven,"--or not sufficiently so, and
+therefore in abeyance and fallen into some disfavor. With this proviso
+we shall adopt the word "Semitic," as the simpler and more generally
+used.
+
+16. It is only with the rise of Semitic culture in Southern Mesopotamia
+that we enter on a period which, however remote, misty, and full of
+blanks, may still be called, in a measure, "historical," because there
+is a certain number of facts, of which contemporary monuments give
+positive evidence. True, the connection between those facts is often not
+apparent; their causes and effects are frequently not to be made out
+save by more or less daring conjectures; still there are numerous
+landmarks of proven fact, and with these real history begins. No matter
+if broad gaps have to be left open or temporarily filled with guesses.
+New discoveries are almost daily turning up, inscriptions, texts, which
+unexpectedly here supply a missing link, there confirm or demolish a
+conjecture, establish or correct dates which had long been puzzles or
+suggested on insufficient foundations. In short, details may be supplied
+as yet brokenly and sparingly, but the general outline of the condition
+of Chaldea may be made out as far back as forty centuries before Christ.
+
+17. Of one thing there can be no doubt: that our earliest glimpse of the
+political condition of Chaldea shows us the country divided into
+numerous small states, each headed by a great city, made famous and
+powerful by the sanctuary or temple of some particular deity, and ruled
+by a _patesi_, a title which is now thought to mean _priest-king_, i.e.,
+priest and king in one. There can be little doubt that the beginning of
+the city was everywhere the temple, with its college of ministering
+priests, and that the surrounding settlement was gradually formed by
+pilgrims and worshippers. That royalty developed out of the priesthood
+is also more than probable, and consequently must have been, in its
+first stage, a form of priestly rule, and, in a great measure,
+subordinate to priestly influence. There comes a time when for the title
+of _patesi_ is substituted that of "king" simply--a change which very
+possibly indicates the assumption by the kings of a more independent
+attitude towards the class from which their power originally sprang. It
+is noticeable that the distinction between the Semitic newcomers and the
+indigenous Shumiro-Accadians continues long to be traceable in the names
+of the royal temple-builders, even after the new Semitic idiom, which we
+call the Assyrian, had entirely ousted the old language--a process which
+must have taken considerable time, for it appears, and indeed stands to
+reason, that the newcomers, in order to secure the wished for influence
+and propagate their own culture, at first not only learned to understand
+but actually used themselves the language of the people among whom they
+came, at least in their public documents. This it is that explains the
+fact that so many inscriptions and tablets, while written in the dialect
+of Shumir or Accad, are Semitic in spirit and in the grade of culture
+they betray. Furthermore, even superficial observation shows that the
+old language and the old names survive longest in Shumir,--the South.
+From this fact it is to be inferred with little chance of mistake that
+the North,--the land of Accad,--was earlier Semitized, that the Semitic
+immigrants established their first headquarters in that part of the
+country, that their power and influence thence spread to the South.
+
+18. Fully in accordance with these indications, the first grand
+historical figure that meets us at the threshold of Chaldean history,
+dim with the mists of ages and fabulous traditions, yet unmistakably
+real, is that of the Semite SHARRUKIN, king of Accad--or AGADE, as the
+great Northern city came to be called--more generally known in history
+under the corrupt modern reading of SARGON, and called Sargon I., "the
+First," to distinguish him from another monarch of the same name who was
+found to have reigned many centuries later. As to the city of Agade, it
+is no other than the city of Accad mentioned in Genesis x., 10. It was
+situated close to the Euphrates on a wide canal just opposite Sippar, so
+that in time the two cities came to be considered as one double city,
+and the Hebrews always called it "the two Sippars"--SEPHARVAIM, which is
+often spoken of in the Bible. It was there that Sharrukin established
+his rule, and a statue was afterwards raised to him there, the
+inscription on which, making him speak, as usual, in the first person,
+begins with the proud declaration: "Sharrukin, the mighty king, the king
+of Agade, am I." Yet, although his reforms and conquests were of lasting
+importance, and himself remained one of the favorite heroes of Chaldean
+tradition, he appears to have been an adventurer and usurper. Perhaps he
+was, for this very reason, all the dearer to the popular fancy, which,
+in the absence of positive facts concerning his birth and origin, wove
+around them a halo of romance, and told of him a story which must be
+nearly as old as mankind, for it has been told over and over again, in
+different countries and ages, of a great many famous kings and heroes.
+This of Sharrukin is the oldest known version of it, and the inscription
+on his statue puts it into the king's own mouth. It makes him say that
+he knew not his father, and that his mother, a princess, gave him birth
+in a hiding-place, (or "an inaccessible place"), near the Euphrates, but
+that his family were the rulers of the land. "She placed me in a basket
+of rushes," the king is further made to say; "with bitumen the door of
+my ark she closed. She launched me on the river, which drowned me not.
+The river bore me along; to Akki, the water-carrier, it brought me.
+Akki, the water-carrier, in the tenderness of his heart lifted me up.
+Akki, the water-carrier, as his own child brought me up. Akki, the
+water-carrier, made me his gardener. And in my gardenership the goddess
+Ishtar loved me...."
+
+19. Whatever his origin and however he came by the royal power, Sargon
+was a great monarch. It is said that he undertook successful expeditions
+into Syria, and a campaign into Elam; that with captives of the
+conquered races he partly peopled his new capital, Agade, where he built
+a palace and a magnificent temple; that on one occasion he was absent
+three years, during which time he advanced to the very shores of the
+Mediterranean, which he calls "the sea of the setting sun," and where he
+left memorial records of his deeds, and returned home in triumph,
+bringing with him immense spoils. The inscription contains only the
+following very moderate mention of his military career: "For forty-five
+years the kingdom I have ruled. And the black-head race (Accadian) I
+have governed. In multitudes of bronze chariots I rode over rugged
+lands. I governed the upper countries. Three times to the coast of the
+(Persian) sea I advanced...."[AJ]
+
+[Illustration: 58.--CYLINDER OF SARGON, FROM AGADE. (Hommel, "Gesch.
+Babyloniens u. Assyriens.")]
+
+20. This Sharrukin must not be confounded with another king of the same
+name, who reigned also in Agade, some 1800 years later (about 2000
+B.C.), and in whose time was completed and brought into definite shape a
+vast religious reform which had been slowly working itself out ever
+since the Semitic and Accadian elements began to mix in matters of
+spiritual speculation and worship. What was the result of the
+amalgamation will form the subject of the next chapter. Suffice it here
+to say that the religion of Chaldea in the form which it assumed under
+the second Sharrukin remained fixed forever, and when Babylonian
+religion is spoken of, it is that which is understood by that name. The
+great theological work demanded a literary undertaking no less great.
+The incantations and magic forms of the first, purely Turanian, period
+had to be collected and put in order, as well as the hymns and prayers
+of the second period, composed under the influence of a higher and more
+spiritual religious feeling. But all this literature was in the language
+of the older population, while the ruling class--the royal houses and
+the priesthood--were becoming almost exclusively Semitic. It was
+necessary, therefore, that they should study the old language and learn
+it so thoroughly as not only to understand and read it, but to be able
+to use it, in speaking and writing. For that purpose Sargon not only
+ordered the ancient texts, when collected and sorted, to be copied on
+clay tablets with the translation--either between the lines, or on
+opposite columns--into the now generally used modern Semitic language,
+which we may as well begin to call by its usual name, Assyrian, but gave
+directions for the compilation of grammars and vocabularies,--the very
+works which have enabled the scholars of the present day to arrive at
+the understanding of that prodigiously ancient tongue which, without
+such assistance, must have remained a sealed book forever.
+
+21. Such is the origin of the great collection in three books and two
+hundred tablets, the contents of which made the subject of the preceding
+chapter. To this must be added another great work, in seventy tablets,
+in Assyrian, on astrology, i.e., the supposed influence of the heavenly
+bodies, according to their positions and conjunctions, on the fate of
+nations and individuals and on the course of things on earth
+generally--an influence which was firmly believed in; and probably yet a
+third work, on omens, prodigies and divination. To carry out these
+extensive literary labors, to treasure the results worthily and safely,
+Sargon II. either founded or greatly enlarged the library of the
+priestly college at Urukh (Erech), so that this city came to be called
+"the City of Books." This repository became the most important one in
+all Chaldea, and when, fourteen centuries later, the Assyrian
+Asshurbanipal sent his scribes all over the country, to collect copies
+of the ancient, sacred and scientific texts for his own royal library at
+Nineveh, it was at Erech that they gathered their most abundant harvest,
+being specially favored there by the priests, who were on excellent
+terms with the king after he had brought back from Shushan and restored
+to them the statue of their goddess Nana. Agade thus became the
+headquarters, as it were, of the Semitic influence and reform, which
+spread thence towards the South, forming a counter-current to the
+culture of Shumir, which had steadily progressed from the Gulf
+northward.
+
+22. It is just possible that Sargon's collection may have also comprised
+literature of a lighter nature than those ponderous works on magic and
+astrology. At least, a work on agriculture has been found, which is
+thought to have been compiled for the same king's library,[AK] and which
+contains bits of popular poetry (maxims, riddles, short peasant songs)
+of the kind that is now called "folk-lore." Of the correctness of the
+supposition there is, as yet, no absolute proof, but as some of these
+fragments, of which unfortunately but few could be recovered, are very
+interesting and pretty in their way, this is perhaps the best place to
+insert them. The following four may be called "Maxims," and the first is
+singularly pithy and powerfully expressed.
+
+    1. Like an oven that is old
+       Against thy foes be hard and strong.
+
+    2. May he suffer vengeance,
+       May it be returned to him,
+       Who gives the provocation.
+
+    3. If evil thou doest,
+       To the everlasting sea
+       Thou shalt surely go.
+
+    4. Thou wentest, thou spoiledst
+       The land of the foe,
+       For the foe came and spoiled
+       Thy land, even thine.
+
+23. It will be noticed that No. 3 alone expresses moral feeling of a
+high standard, and is distinctively Semitic in spirit, the same spirit
+which is expressed in a loftier and purely religious vein, and a more
+poetical form in one of the "Penitential Psalms," where it says:
+
+    Whoso fears not his god--will be cut off even like a reed.
+    Whoso honors not the goddess--his bodily strength shall waste away;
+    Like a star of heaven, his light shall wane; like waters of the night
+        he shall disappear.
+
+Some fragments can be well imagined as being sung by the peasant at work
+to his ploughing team, in whose person he sometimes speaks:
+
+    5. A heifer am I,--to the cow I am yoked;
+       The plough handle is strong--lift it up! lift it up!
+
+    6. My knees are marching--my feet are not resting;
+       With no wealth of thy own--grain thou makest for me.[AL]
+
+24. A great deal of additional interest in the elder Sargon of Agade has
+lately been excited by an extraordinary discovery connected with him,
+which produced a startling revolution in the hitherto accepted Chaldean
+chronology. This question of dates is always a most intricate and
+puzzling one in dealing with ancient Oriental nations, because they did
+not date their years from some particular event, as we do, and as did
+the Mohammedans, the Greeks and the Romans. In the inscriptions things
+are said to have happened in the year so-and-so of such a king's reign.
+Where to place that king is the next question--unanswerable, unless, as
+fortunately is mostly the case, some clue is supplied, to borrow a legal
+term, by circumstantial evidence. Thus, if an eclipse is mentioned, the
+time can easily be determined by the help of astronomy, which can
+calculate backward as well as forward. Or else, an event or a person
+belonging to another country is alluded to, and if they are known to us
+from other sources, that is a great help. Such a coincidence (which is
+called a SYNCHRONISM) is most valuable, and dates established by
+synchronisms are generally reliable. Then, luckily for us, Assyrian and
+Babylonian kings of a late period, whose dates are fixed and proved
+beyond a doubt, were much in the habit, in their historical
+inscriptions, of mentioning events that had taken place before their
+time and specifying the number of years elapsed, often also the king
+under whose reign the event, whatever it was, had taken place. This is
+the most precious clue of all, as it is infallible, and besides
+ascertaining one point, gives a firm foothold, whereby to arrive at many
+others. The famous memorandum of Asshurbanipal, already so often
+referred to, about the carrying away of the goddess Nana, (i.e., her
+statue) from her temple at Erech is evidence of this kind. Any dates
+suggested without any of these clues as basis are of necessity
+untrustworthy, and no true scholar dreams of offering any such date,
+except as a temporary suggestion, awaiting confirmation or abolition
+from subsequent researches. So it was with Sargon I. of Agade. There was
+no positive indication of the time at which he lived, except that he
+could not possibly have lived later than 2000 B.C. Scholars therefore
+agreed to assign that date to him, approximatively--a little more or
+less--thinking they could not go very far wrong in so doing. Great
+therefore was the commotion produced by the discovery of a cylinder of
+Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon (whose date is 550 B.C.), wherein he
+speaks of repairs he made in the great Sun-temple at Sippar, and
+declares having dug deep in its foundations for the cylinders of the
+founder, thus describing his success: "Shamash (the Sun-god), the great
+lord ... suffered me to behold the foundation-cylinder of NARAM-SIN, the
+son of Sharrukin, which for thrice thousand and twice hundred years none
+of the kings that lived before me had seen." The simple addition 3200 +
+550 gives 3750 B.C. as the date of Naram-Sin, and 3800 as that of his
+father Sargon, allowing for the latter's long reign! A scene-shifting of
+1800 years at one slide seemed something so startling that there was
+much hesitation in accepting the evidence, unanswerable as it seemed,
+and the possibility of an error of the engraver was seriously
+considered. Some other documents, however, were found independently of
+each other and in different places, corroborating the statement on
+Nabonidus' cylinder, and the tremendously ancient date of 3800 B.C. is
+now generally accepted the elder Sargon of Agade--perhaps the remotest
+_authentic_ date yet arrived at in history.
+
+25. When we survey and attempt to grasp and classify the materials we
+have for an early "History of Chaldea," it appears almost presumptuous
+to grace so necessarily lame an attempt with so ambitious a name. The
+landmarks are so few and far between, so unconnected as yet, and there
+is so much uncertainty about them, especially about placing them. The
+experience with Sargon of Agade has not been encouraging to conjectural
+chronology; yet with such we must in many cases be content until more
+lucky finds turn up to set us right. What, for instance, is the proper
+place of GUDEA, the _patesi_ of SIR-BURLA (also read SIR-GULLA or
+SIRTILLA, and, lately, ZIRLABA), whose magnificent statues Mr. de Sarzec
+found in the principal hall of the temple of which the bricks bear his
+stamp? (See p. 217.) The title of _patesi_, (not "king"), points to
+great antiquity, and he is pretty generally understood to have lived
+somewhere between 4000 and 3000 B.C. That he was not a Semite, but an
+Accadian prince, is to be concluded not only from the language of his
+inscriptions and the writing, which is of the most archaic--i.e.,
+ancient and old-fashioned--character, but from the fact that the head,
+which was found with the statues, is strikingly Turanian in form and
+features, shaved, too, and turbaned after a fashion still used in
+Central Asia. Altogether it might easily be taken for that of a modern
+Mongolian or Tatar.[AM] The discovery of this builder and patron of art
+has greatly eclipsed the glory of a somewhat later ruler, UR-EA, King
+of Ur,[AN] who had long enjoyed the reputation of being the earliest
+known temple-builder. He remains at all events the first powerful
+monarch we read of in Southern Chaldea, of which Ur appears to have been
+in some measure the capital, at least in so far as to have a certain
+supremacy over the other great cities of Shumir.
+
+26. Of these Shumir had many, even more venerable for their age and
+holiness than those of Accad. For the South was the home of the old race
+and most ancient culture, and thence both had advanced northward. Hence
+it was that the old stock was hardier there and endured longer in its
+language, religion and nationality, and was slower in yielding to the
+Semitic counter-current of race and culture, which, as a natural
+consequence, obtained an earlier and stronger hold in the North, and
+from there radiated over the whole of Mesopotamia. There was ERIDHU, by
+the sea "at the mouth of the Rivers," the immemorial sanctuary of Ea;
+there was SIR-GULLA, so lately unknown, now the most promising mine for
+research; there was LARSAM, famous with the glories of its "House of the
+Sun" (_E-Babbara_ in the old language), the rival of Ur, the city of the
+Moon-god, whose kings UR-EA and his son DUNGI were, it appears, the
+first to take the ambitious title of "Kings of Shumir and Accad" and
+"Kings of the Four Regions." As for Babylon, proud Babylon, which we
+have so long been accustomed to think of as the very beginning of state
+life and political rule in Chaldea, it was perhaps not yet built at all,
+or only modestly beginning its existence under its Accadian name of
+TIN-TIR-KI ("the Place of Life"), or, somewhat later, KA-DIMIRRA ("Gate
+of God"), when already the above named cities, and several more, had
+each its famous temple with ministering college of priests, and,
+probably, library, and each its king. But political power was for a long
+time centred at Ur. The first kings of Ur authentically known to us are
+Ur-ea and his son Dungi, who have left abundant traces of their
+existence in the numerous temples they built, not in Ur alone, but in
+most other cities too. Their bricks have been identified at Larsam
+(Senkereh), and, it appears, at Sir-burla (Tel-Loh), at Nipur (Niffer)
+and at Urukh (Erech, Warka), and as the two latter cities belonged to
+Accad, they seem to have ruled at least part of that country and thus to
+have been justified in assuming their high-sounding title.
+
+[Illustration: 59.--STATUE OF GUDEA, WITH INSCRIPTION; FROM TELL-LOH,
+(SIR-BURLA OR SIR-GULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION. (Hommel).]
+
+27. It has been noticed that the bricks bearing the name of Ur-ea "are
+found in a lower position than any others, at the very foundation of
+buildings;" that "they are of a rude and coarse make, of many sizes and
+ill-fitted together;" that baked bricks are rare among them; that they
+are held together by the oldest substitutes for mortar--mud and
+bitumen--and that the writing upon them is curiously rude and
+imperfect.[AO] But whatever King Ur-ea's architectural efforts may lack
+in perfection, they certainly make up in size and number. Those that he
+did not complete, his son Dungi continued after him. It is remarkable
+that these great builders seem to have devoted their energies
+exclusively to religious purposes; also that, while their names are
+Shumiro-Accadian, and their inscriptions are often in that language, the
+temples they constructed were dedicated to various deities of the new,
+or rather reformed religion. When we see the princes of the South,
+according to an ingenious remark of Mr. Lenormant, thus begin a sort of
+practical preaching of the Semitized religion, we may take it as a sign
+of the times, as an unmistakable proof of the influence of the North,
+political as well as religious. A very curious relic of King Ur-ea was
+found--his own signet cylinder--which was lost by an accident, then
+turned up again and is now in the British Museum. It represents the
+Moon-god seated on a throne,--as is but meet for the king of the
+Moon-god's special city--with priests presenting worshippers. No
+definite date is of course assignable to Ur-ea and the important epoch
+of Chaldean history which he represents. But a very probable
+approximative one can be arrived at, thanks to a clue supplied by the
+same Nabonidus, last King of Babylon, who settled the Sargon question
+for us so unexpectedly. That monarch was as zealous a repairer of
+temples as his predecessors had been zealous builders. He had reasons of
+his own to court popularity, and could think of nothing better than to
+restore the time-honored sanctuaries of the land. Among others he
+repaired the Sun-temple (E-Babbara) at Larsam, whereof we are duly
+informed by a special cylinder. In it he tells posterity that he found a
+cylinder of King Hammurabi intact in its chamber under the
+corner-stone, which cylinder states that the temple was founded 700
+years before Hammurabi's time; as Ur-ea was the founder, it only remains
+to determine the latter king's date in order to know that of the earlier
+one.[AP] Here unfortunately scholars differ, not having as yet any
+decisive authority to build upon. Some place Hammurabi _before_ 2000
+B.C., others a little later. It is perhaps safest, therefore, to assume
+that Ur-ea can scarcely have lived much earlier than 2800 or much later
+than 2500 B.C. At all events, he must necessarily have lived somewhat
+before 2300 B.C., for about this latter year took place the Elamite
+invasion recorded by Asshurbanipal, an invasion which, as this King
+expressly mentions, laid waste the land of Accad and desecrated its
+temples--evidently the same ones which Ur-ea and Dungi so piously
+constructed. Nor was this a passing inroad or raid of booty-seeking
+mountaineers. It was a real conquest. Khudur-Nankhundi and his
+successors remained in Southern Chaldea, called themselves kings of the
+country, and reigned, several of them in succession, so that this series
+of foreign rulers has become known in history as "the Elamite dynasty."
+There was no room then for a powerful and temple-building national
+dynasty like that of the kings of Ur.
+
+28. This is the first time we meet authentic monumental records of a
+country which was destined through the next sixteen centuries to be in
+continual contact, mostly hostile, with both Babylonia and her northern
+rival Assyria, until its final annihilation by the latter. Its capital
+was SHUSHAN, (afterwards pronounced by foreigners "Susa"), and its own
+original name SHUSHINAK. Its people were of Turanian stock, its language
+was nearly akin to that of Shumir and Accad. But at some time or other
+Semites came and settled in Shushinak. Though too few in number to
+change the country's language or customs, the superiority of their race
+asserted itself. They became the nobility of the land, the ruling
+aristocracy from which the kings were taken, the generals and the high
+functionaries. That the Turanian mass of the population was kept in
+subjection and looked down upon, and that the Semitic nobility avoided
+intermarrying with them is highly probable; and it would be difficult
+otherwise to explain the difference of type between the two classes, as
+shown in the representations of captives and warriors belonging to both
+on the Assyrian sculptures. The common herd of prisoners employed on
+public labor and driven by overseers brandishing sticks have an
+unmistakably Turanian type of features--high cheek-bones, broad,
+flattened face, etc., while the generals, ministers and nobles have all
+the dignity and beauty of the handsomest Jewish type. "Elam," the name
+under which the country is best known both from the Bible and later
+monuments, is a Turanian word, which means, like "Accad," "Highlands."
+It is the only name under which the historian of Chap. X. of Genesis
+admits it into his list of nations, and, consistently following out his
+system of ignoring all members of the great yellow race, he takes into
+consideration only the Semitic aristocracy, and makes of Elam a son of
+Shem, a brother of Asshur and Arphakhshad. (Gen. x. 22.)
+
+29. One of Khudur-Nankhundi's next successors, KHUDUR-LAGAMAR, was not
+content with the addition of Chaldea to his kingdom of Elam. He had the
+ambition of a born conqueror and the generalship of one. The Chap. XIV.
+of Genesis--which calls him Chedorlaomer--is the only document we have
+descriptive of this king's warlike career, and a very striking picture
+it gives of it, sufficient to show us that we have to do with a very
+remarkable character. Supported by three allied and probably tributary
+kings, that of Shumir (Shinear), of Larsam, (Ellassar) and of the GOIM,
+(in the unrevised translation of the Bible "king of nations") i.e., the
+nomadic tribes which roamed on the outskirts and in the yet unsettled,
+more distant portions of Chaldea, Khudur-Lagamar marched an army 1200
+miles across the desert into the fertile, wealthy and populous valleys
+of the Jordan and the lake or sea of Siddim, afterwards called the Dead
+Sea, where five great cities--Sodom, Gomorrah, and three others--were
+governed by as many kings. Not only did he subdue these kings and impose
+his rule on them, but contrived, even after he returned to the Persian
+Gulf, to keep on them so firm a hand, that for twelve years they
+"served" him, i.e., paid him tribute regularly, and only in the
+thirteenth year, encouraged by his prolonged absence, ventured to
+rebel. But they had underrated Khudur-Lagamar's vigilance and activity.
+The very next year he was among them again, together with his three
+faithful allies, encountered them in the vale of Siddim and beat them,
+so that they all fled. This was the battle of the "four kings with
+five." As to the treatment to which the victor subjected the conquered
+country it is very briefly but clearly described: "And they took all the
+goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their
+way."
+
+30. Now there dwelt in Sodom a man of foreign race and great wealth,
+Lot, the nephew of Abraham. For Abraham and his tribe no longer lived at
+Chaldean Ur. The change of masters, and very probably the harsher rule,
+if not positive oppression, consequent on the Elamite conquest, had
+driven them thence. It was then they went forth into the land of Canaan,
+led by Terah and his son Abraham, and when Terah died, Abraham became
+the patriarch and chief of the tribe, which from this time begins to be
+called in the Bible "Hebrews," from an eponymous ancestor, Heber or
+Eber, whose name alludes to the passing of the Euphrates, or, perhaps,
+in a wider sense, to the passage of the tribe through the land of
+Chaldea.[AQ] For years the tribe travelled without dividing, from
+pasture to pasture, over the vast land where dwelt the Canaanites, well
+seen and even favored of them, into Egypt and out of it again, until the
+quarrel occurred between Abraham's herdsmen and Lot's, (see Genesis,
+Chap. XIII.), and the separation, when Lot chose the plain of the Jordan
+and pitched his tent toward Sodom, while Abraham dwelt in the land of
+Canaan as heretofore, with his family, servants and cattle, in the plain
+of Mamre. It was while dwelling there, in friendship and close alliance
+with the princes of the land, that one who had escaped from the battle
+in the vale of Siddim, came to Abraham and told him how that among the
+captives whom Khudur-Lagamar had taken from Sodom, was Lot, his
+brother's son, with all his goods. Then Abraham armed his trained
+servants, born in his own household, three hundred and eighteen, took
+with him his friends, Mamre and his brothers, with their young men, and
+starting in hot pursuit of the victorious army, which was now carelessly
+marching home towards the desert with its long train of captives and
+booty, overtook it near Damascus in the night, when his own small
+numbers could not be detected, and produced such a panic by a sudden and
+vigorous onslaught that he put it to flight, and not only rescued his
+nephew Lot with his goods and women, but brought back all the captured
+goods and the people too. And the King of Sodom came out to meet him on
+his return, and thanked him, and wanted him to keep all the goods for
+himself, only restoring the persons. Abraham consented that a proper
+share of the rescued goods should be given to his friends and their
+young men, but refused all presents offered to himself, with the haughty
+words: "I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the
+possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a thread, even to a
+shoe-latchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou
+shouldest say, I have made Abraham rich."
+
+31. Khudur-Lagamar, of whom the spirited Biblical narrative gives us so
+life-like a sketch, lived, according to the most probable calculations,
+about 2200 B.C. Among the few vague forms whose blurred outlines loom
+out of the twilight of those dim and doubtful ages, he is the second
+with any flesh-and-blood reality about him, probably the first conqueror
+of whom the world has any authentic record. For Egypt, the only country
+which rivals in antiquity the primitive states of Mesopotamia, although
+it had at this time already reached the height of its culture and
+prosperity, was as yet confined by its rulers strictly to the valley of
+the Nile, and had not entered on that career of foreign wars and
+conquests which, some thousand years later, made it a terror from the
+Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf.
+
+32. The Elamitic invasion was not a passing raid. It was a real
+conquest, and established a heavy foreign rule in a highly prosperous
+and flourishing land--a rule which endured, it would appear, about three
+hundred years. That the people chafed under it, and were either gloomily
+despondent or angrily rebellious as long as it lasted, there is plenty
+of evidence in their later literature. It is even thought, and with
+great moral probability, that the special branch of religious poetry
+which has been called "Penitential Psalms" has arisen out of the
+sufferings of this long period of national bondage and humiliation, and
+if, as seems to be proved by some lately discovered interesting
+fragments of texts, these psalms were sung centuries later in Assyrian
+temples on mournful or very solemn public occasions, they must have
+perpetuated the memory of the great national calamity that fell on the
+mother-country as indelibly as the Hebrew psalms, of which they were the
+models, have perpetuated that of King David's wanderings and Israel's
+tribulations.
+
+33. But there seems to have been one Semitic royal house which preserved
+a certain independence and quietly gathered power against better days.
+To do this they must have dissembled and done as much homage to the
+victorious barbarians as would ensure their safety and serve as a blind
+while they strengthened their home rule. This dynasty, destined to the
+glorious task of restoring the country's independence and founding a new
+national monarchy, was that of Tin-tir-ki, or Ka-dimirra--a name now
+already translated into the Semitic BAB-ILU, ("the Gate of God"); they
+reigned over the large and important district of KARDUNYASH, important
+from its central position, and from the fact that it seems to have
+belonged neither to Accad, nor to Shumir, but to have been politically
+independent, since it is always mentioned by itself. Still, to the
+Hebrews, Babylon lay in the land of Shinar, and it is strongly supposed
+that the "Amraphel king of Shinar" who marched with Khudur-Lagamar, as
+his ally, against the five kings of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, was no
+other than a king of Babylon, one of whose names has been read AMARPAL,
+while "Ariokh of Ellassar" was an Elamite, ERI-AKU, brother or cousin of
+Khudur-Lagamar, and King of Larsam, where the conquerors had established
+a powerful dynasty, closely allied by blood to the principal one, which
+had made the venerable Ur its headquarters. This Amarpal, more
+frequently mentioned under his other name of SIN-MUBALLIT, is thought to
+have been the father of HAMMURABI, the deliverer of Chaldea and the
+founder of the new empire.
+
+34. The inscriptions which Hammurabi left are numerous, and afford us
+ample means of judging of his greatness as warrior, statesman and
+administrator. In his long reign of fifty-five years he had, indeed,
+time to achieve much, but what he did achieve _was_ much even for so
+long a reign. In what manner he drove out the foreigners we are not
+told, but so much is clear that the decisive victory was that which he
+gained over the Elamite king of Larsam. It was probably by expelling the
+hated race by turns from every district they occupied, that Hammurabi
+gathered the entire land into his own hands and was enabled to keep it
+together and weld it into one united empire, including both Accad and
+Shumir, with all their time-honored cities and sanctuaries, making his
+own ancestral city, Babylon, the head and capital of them all. This king
+was in every respect a great and wise ruler, for, after freeing and
+uniting the country, he was very careful of its good and watchful of its
+agricultural interests. Like all the other kings, he restored many
+temples and built several new ones. But he also devoted much energy to
+public works of a more generally useful kind. During the first part of
+his reign inundations seem to have been frequent and disastrous,
+possibly in consequence of the canals and waterworks having been
+neglected under the oppressive foreign rule. The inscriptions speak of a
+city having been destroyed "by a great flood," and mention "a great wall
+along the Tigris"--probably an embankment, as having been built by
+Hammurabi for protection against the river. But probably finding the
+remedy inadequate, he undertook and completed one of the greatest public
+works that have ever been carried out in any country: the excavation of
+a gigantic canal, which he called by his own name, but which was
+afterwards famous under that of "Royal Canal of Babylon." From this
+canal innumerable branches carried the fertilizing waters through the
+country. It was and remained the greatest work of the kind, and was,
+fifteen centuries later, the wonder of the foreigners who visited
+Babylon. Its constructor did not overrate the benefit he had conferred
+when he wrote in an inscription which can scarcely be called boastful:
+"I have caused to be dug the Nahr-Hammurabi, a benediction for the
+people of Shumir and Accad. I have directed the waters of its branches
+over the desert plains; I have caused them to run in the dry channels
+and thus given unfailing waters to the people.... I have changed desert
+plains into well-watered lands. I have given them fertility and plenty,
+and made them the abode of happiness."
+
+35. There are inscriptions of Hammurabi's son. But after him a new
+catastrophe seems to have overtaken Chaldea. He is succeeded by a line
+of foreign kings, who must have obtained possession of the country by
+conquest. They were princes of a fierce and warlike mountain race, the
+KASSHI, who lived in the highlands that occupy the whole north-western
+portion of Elam, where they probably began to feel cramped for room.
+This same people has been called by the later Greek geographers COSSAEANS
+or CISSIANS, and is better known under either of these names. Their
+language, of which very few specimens have survived, is not yet
+understood; but so much is plain, that it is very different both from
+the Semitic language of Babylon and that of Shumir and Accad, so that
+the names of the Kasshi princes are easily distinguishable from all
+others. No dismemberment of the empire followed this conquest, however,
+if conquest there was. The kings of the new dynasty seem to have
+succeeded each other peacefully enough in Babylon. But the conquering
+days of Chaldea were over. We read no more of expeditions into the
+plains of Syria and to the "Sea of the Setting Sun." For a power was
+rising in the North-West, which quickly grew into a formidable rival:
+through many centuries Assyria kept the rulers of the Southern kingdom
+too busy guarding their frontiers and repelling inroads to allow them to
+think of foreign conquests.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AH] Names are often deceptive. That of the Hindu-Cush is now thought to
+mean "Killers of Hindus," probably in allusion to robber tribes of the
+mountains, and to have nothing to do with the Cushite race.
+
+[AI] "Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient," 1878, p. 160.
+
+[AJ] Translation of Professor A. H. Sayce.
+
+[AK] A. H. Sayce.
+
+[AL] Translated by A. H. Sayce, in his paper "Babylonian Folk-lore" in
+the "Folk-lore Journal," Vol. I., Jan., 1883.
+
+[AM] See Figs. 44 and 45, p. 101.
+
+[AN] This name was at first read Urukh, then Likbabi, then Likbagash,
+then Urbagash, then Urba'u, and now Professor Friedr. Delitzsch
+announces that the final and correct reading is in all probability
+either Ur-ea or Arad-ea.
+
+[AO] Geo. Rawlinson, "Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern
+World" (1862), Vol. I., pp. 198 and ff.
+
+[AP] Geo. Smith, in "Records of the Past," Vol. V., p. 75. Fritz Hommel,
+"Die Semiten," p. 210 and note 101.
+
+[AQ] It should be mentioned, however, that scholars have of late been
+inclined to see in this name an allusion to the passage of the Jordan at
+the time of the conquest of Canaan by Israel, after the Egyptian
+bondage.
+
+
+
+
+                                V.
+
+                       BABYLONIAN RELIGION.
+
+
+1. In relating the legend of the Divine Man-Fish, who came out of the
+Gulf, and was followed, at intervals, by several more similar beings,
+Berosus assures us, that he "taught the people all the things that make
+up civilization," so that "nothing new was invented after that any
+more." But if, as is suggested, "this monstrous Oannes" is really a
+personification of the strangers who came into the land, and, being
+possessed of a higher culture, began to teach the Turanian population,
+the first part of this statement is as manifestly an exaggeration as the
+second. A people who had invented writing, who knew how to build, to
+make canals, to work metals, and who had passed out of the first and
+grossest stage of religious conceptions, might have much to learn, but
+certainly not _everything_. What the newcomers--whether Cushites or
+Semites--did teach them, was a more orderly way of organizing society
+and ruling it by means of laws and an established government, and, above
+all, astronomy and mathematics--sciences in which the Shumiro-Accads
+were little proficient, while the later and mixed nation, the Chaldeans,
+attained in them a very high perfection, so that many of their
+discoveries and the first principles laid down by them have come down to
+us as finally adopted facts, confirmed by later science. Thus, the
+division of the year into twelve months corresponding to as many
+constellations, known as "the twelve signs of the Zodiac," was familiar
+to them. They had also found out the division of the year into twelve
+months, only all their months had thirty days. So they were obliged to
+add an extra month--an intercalary month, as the scientific term
+is--every six years, to start even with the sun again, for they knew
+where the error in their reckoning lay. These things the strangers
+probably taught the Shumiro-Accads, but at the same time borrowed from
+them their way of counting. The Turanian races to this day have this
+peculiarity, that they do not care for the decimal system in arithmetic,
+but count by dozens and sixties, preferring numbers that can be divided
+by twelve and sixty. The Chinese even now do not measure time by
+centuries or periods of a hundred years, but by a cycle or period of
+sixty years. This was probably the origin of the division, adopted in
+Babylonia, of the sun's course into 360 equal parts or degrees, and of
+the day into twelve "_kasbus_" or double hours, since the kasbu answered
+to two of our hours, and was divided into sixty parts, which we might
+thus call "double minutes," while these again were composed of sixty
+"double seconds." The natural division of the year into twelve months
+made this so-called "docenal" and "sexagesimal" system of calculation
+particularly convenient, and it was applied to everything--measures of
+weight, distance, capacity and size as well as time.
+
+2. Astronomy is a strangely fascinating science, with two widely
+different and seemingly contradictory aspects, equally apt to develop
+habits of hard thinking and of dreamy speculation. For, if on one hand
+the study of mathematics, without which astronomy cannot subsist,
+disciplines the mind and trains it to exact and complicated operations,
+on the other hand, star-gazing, in the solitude and silence of a
+southern night, irresistibly draws it into a higher world, where
+poetical aspirations, guesses and dreams take the place of figures with
+their demonstrations and proofs. It is probably to these habitual
+contemplations that the later Chaldeans owed the higher tone of
+religious thought which distinguished them from their Turanian
+predecessors. They looked for the deity in heaven, not on earth. They
+did not cower and tremble before a host of wicked goblins, the creation
+of a terrified fancy. The spirits whom they worshipped inhabited and
+ruled those beautiful bright worlds, whose harmonious, concerted
+movements they watched admiringly, reverently, and could calculate
+correctly, but without understanding them. The stars generally became to
+them the visible manifestations and agents of divine power, especially
+the seven most conspicuous heavenly bodies: the Moon, whom they
+particularly honored, as the ruler of night and the measurer of time,
+the Sun and the five planets then known, those which we call Saturn,
+Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury. It is but just to the Shumiro-Accads
+to say that the perception of the divine in the beauty of the stars was
+not foreign to them. This is amply proved by the fact that in their
+oldest writing the sign of a star is used to express the idea not of any
+particular god or goddess, but of the divine principle, the deity
+generally. The name of every divinity is preceded by the star, meaning
+"the god so-and-so." When used in this manner, the sign was read in the
+old language "Dingir"--"god, deity." The Semitic language of Babylonia
+which we call "Assyrian," while adapting the ancient writing to its own
+needs, retained this use of the sign "star," and read it _ilu_, "god."
+This word--ILU or EL--we find in all Semitic languages, either ancient
+or modern, in the names they give to God, in the Arabic ALLAH as well as
+in the Hebrew ELOHIM.
+
+3. This religion, based and centred on the worship of the heavenly
+bodies, has been called _Sabeism_, and was common to most Semitic races,
+whose primitive nomadic life in the desert and wide, flat
+pasture-tracts, with the nightly watches required by the tending of vast
+flocks, inclined them to contemplation and star-gazing. It is to be
+noticed that the Semites gave the first place to the Sun, and not, like
+the Shumiro-Accads, to the Moon, possibly from a feeling akin to terror,
+experiencing as they did his destructive power, in the frequent droughts
+and consuming heat of the desert.[AR]
+
+4. A very prominent feature of the new order of things was the great
+power and importance of the priesthood. A successful pursuit of science
+requires two things: intellectual superiority and leisure to study,
+i.e., freedom from the daily care how to procure the necessaries of
+life. In very ancient times people in general were quite willing to
+acknowledge the superiority of those men who knew more than they did,
+who could teach them and help them with wise advice; they were willing
+also to support such men by voluntary contributions, in order to give
+them the necessary leisure. That a race with whom science and religion
+were one should honor the men thus set apart and learned in heavenly
+things and allow them great influence in private and public affairs,
+believing them, as they did, to stand in direct communion with the
+divine powers, was but natural; and from this to letting them take to
+themselves the entire government of the country as the established
+rulers thereof, was but one step. There was another circumstance which
+helped to bring about this result. The Chaldeans were devout believers
+in astrology, a form of superstition into which an astronomical religion
+like Sabeism is very apt to degenerate. For once it is taken for granted
+that the stars are divine beings, possessed of intelligence, and will,
+and power, what more natural than to imagine that they can rule and
+shape the destinies of men by a mysterious influence? This influence was
+supposed to depend on their movements, their position in the sky, their
+ever changing combinations and relations to each other; under this
+supposition every movement of a star--its rising, its setting, or
+crossing the path of another--every slightest change in the aspect of
+the heavens, every unusual phenomenon--an eclipse, for instance--must be
+possessed of some weighty sense, boding good or evil to men, whose
+destiny must constantly be as clearly written in the blue sky as in a
+book. If only one could learn the language, read the characters! Such
+knowledge was thought to be within the reach of men, but only to be
+acquired by the exceptionally gifted and learned few, and those whom
+they might think worthy of having it imparted to them. That these few
+must be priests was self-evident. They were themselves fervent believers
+in astrology, which they considered quite as much a real science as
+astronomy, and to which they devoted themselves as assiduously. They
+thus became the acknowledged interpreters of the divine will, partakers,
+so to speak, of the secret councils of heaven. Of course such a position
+added greatly to their power, and that they should never abuse it to
+strengthen their hold on the public mind and to favor their own
+ambitious views, was not in human nature. Moreover, being the clever and
+learned ones of the nation, they really were at the time the fittest to
+rule it--and rule it they did. When the Semitic culture spread over
+Shumir, whither it gradually extended from the North, i.e., the land
+of Accad, there arose in each great city--Ur, Eridhu, Larsam, Erech,--a
+mighty temple, with its priests, its library, its _Ziggurat_ or
+observatory. The cities and the tracts of country belonging to them
+were governed by their respective colleges. And when in progress of
+time, the power became centred in the hands of single men, they still
+were priest-kings, _patesis_, whose royalty must have been greatly
+hampered and limited by the authority of their priestly colleagues. Such
+a form of government is known under the name of _theocracy_, composed of
+two Greek words and meaning "divine government."
+
+5. This religious reform represents a complete though probably peaceable
+revolution in the condition of the "Land between the Rivers." The new
+and higher culture had thoroughly asserted itself as predominant in both
+its great provinces, and in nothing as much as in the national religion,
+which, coming in contact with the conceptions of the Semites, was
+affected by a certain nobler spiritual strain, a purer moral feeling,
+which seems to have been more peculiarly Semitic, though destined to be
+carried to its highest perfection only in the Hebrew branch of the race.
+Moral tone is a subtle influence, and will work its way into men's
+hearts and thoughts far more surely and irresistibly than any amount of
+preaching and commanding, for men are naturally drawn to what is good
+and beautiful when it is placed before them. Thus the old settlers of
+the land, the Shumiro-Accads, to whom their gross and dismal goblin
+creed could not be of much comfort, were not slow in feeling this
+ennobling and beneficent influence, and it is assuredly to that we owe
+the beautiful prayers and hymns which mark the higher stage of their
+religion. The consciousness of sin, the feeling of contrition, of
+dependence on an offended yet merciful divine power, so strikingly
+conspicuous in the so-called "Penitential Psalms" (see p. 178), the fine
+poetry in some of the later hymns, for instance those to the Sun (see p.
+171), are features so distinctively Semitic, that they startle us by
+their resemblance to certain portions of the Bible. On the other hand, a
+nation never forgets or quite gives up its own native creed and
+religious practices. The wise priestly rulers of Shumir and Accad did
+not attempt to compel the people to do so, but even while introducing
+and propagating the new religion, suffered them to go on believing in
+their hosts of evil spirits and their few beneficent ones, in their
+conjuring, soothsaying, casting and breaking of spells and charms. Nay,
+more. As time went on and the learned priests studied more closely the
+older creed and ideas, they were struck with the beauty of some few of
+their conceptions--especially that of the ever benevolent, ever watchful
+Spirit of Earth, Ea, and his son Meridug, the mediator, the friend of
+men. These conceptions, these and some other favorite national
+divinities, they thought worthy of being adopted by them and worked into
+their own religious system, which was growing more complicated, more
+elaborate every day, while the large bulk of spirits and demons they
+also allowed a place in it, in the rank of inferior "Spirits of heaven"
+and "Spirits of earth," which were lightly classed together and counted
+by hundreds. By the time a thousand years had passed, the fusion had
+become so complete that there really was both a new religion and a new
+nation, the result of a long work of amalgamation. The Shumiro-Accads of
+pure yet low race were no longer, nor did the Semites preserve a
+separate existence; they had become merged into one nation of mixed
+races, which at a later period became known under the general name of
+Chaldeans, whose religion, regarded with awe for its prodigious
+antiquity, yet was comparatively recent, being the outcome of the
+combination of two infinitely older creeds, as we have just seen. When
+Hammurabi established his residence at Babel, a city which had but
+lately risen to importance, he made it the capital of the empire first
+completely united under his rule (see p. 226), hence the name of
+Babylonia is given by ancient writers to the old land of Shumir and
+Accad, even more frequently than that of Chaldea, and the state religion
+is called indifferently the Babylonian or Chaldean, and not unfrequently
+Chaldeo-Babylonian.
+
+6. This religion, as it was definitely established and handed down
+unchanged through a succession of twenty centuries and more, had a
+twofold character, which must be well grasped in order to understand its
+general drift and sense. On the one hand, as it admitted the existence
+of many divine powers, who shared between them the government of the
+world, it was decidedly POLYTHEISTIC--"a religion of many gods." On the
+other hand, a dim perception had already been arrived at, perhaps
+through observation of the strictly regulated movements of the stars, of
+the presence of One supreme ruling and directing Power. For a class of
+men given to the study of astronomy could not but perceive that all
+those bright Beings which they thought so divine and powerful, were not
+absolutely independent; that their movements and combinations were too
+regular, too strictly timed, too identical in their ever recurring
+repetition, to be entirely voluntary; that, consequently, they
+_obeyed_--obeyed a Law, a Power above and beyond them, beyond heaven
+itself, invisible, unfathomable, unattainable by human thought or eyes.
+Such a perception was, of course, a step in the right direction, towards
+MONOTHEISM, i.e., the belief in only one God. But the perception was too
+vague and remote to be fully realized and consistently carried out. The
+priests who, from long training in abstract thought and contemplation,
+probably could look deeper and come nearer the truth than other people,
+strove to express their meaning in language and images which, in the
+end, obscured the original idea and almost hid it out of sight, instead
+of making it clearer. Besides, they did not imagine the world as
+_created_ by God, made by an act of his will, but as being a form of
+him, a manifestation, part of himself, of his own substance. Therefore,
+in the great all of the universe, and in each of its portions, in the
+mysterious forces at work in it--light and heat and life and
+growth--they admired and adored not the power of God, but his very
+presence; one of the innumerable and infinitely varied forms in which he
+makes himself known and visible to men, manifests himself to them--in
+short, _an emanation of God_. The word "emanation" has been adopted as
+the only one which to a certain extent conveys this very subtle and
+complicated idea. An emanation is not quite a thing itself, but it is a
+portion of it, which comes out of it and separates itself from it, yet
+cannot exist without it. So the fragrance of a flower is not the flower,
+nor is it a growth or development of it, yet the flower gives it forth
+and it cannot exist by itself without the flower--it is an emanation of
+the flower. The same can be said of the mist which visibly rises from
+the warm earth in low and moist places on a summer evening--it is an
+emanation of the earth.
+
+7. The Chaldeo-Babylonian priests knew of many such divine emanations,
+which, by giving them names and attributing to them definite functions,
+they made into so many separate divine persons. Of these some ranked
+higher and some lower, a relation which was sometimes expressed by the
+human one of "father and son." They were ordered in groups, very
+scientifically arranged. Above the rest were placed two TRIADS or
+"groups of three." The first triad comprised ANU, EA and BEL, the
+supreme gods of all--all three retained from the old Shumiro-Accadian
+list of divinities. ANU is ANA, "Heaven," and the surnames or epithets,
+which are given him in different texts, sufficiently show what
+conception had been formed of him: he is called "the Lord of the starry
+heavens," "the Lord of Darkness," "the first-born, the oldest, the
+Father of the Gods." EA, retaining his ancient attributions as "Lord of
+the Deep," the pre-eminently wise and beneficent spirit, represents the
+Divine Intelligence, the founder and maintainer of order and harmony,
+while the actual task of separating the elements of chaos and shaping
+them into the forms which make up the world as we know it, as well as
+that of ordering the heavenly bodies, appointing them their path and
+directing them thereon, was devolved on the third person of the triad,
+BEL, the son of EA. Bel is a Semitic name, which means simply "the
+lord."
+
+8. From its nature and attributions, it is clear that to this triad must
+have attached a certain vagueness and remoteness. Not so the second
+triad, in which the Deity manifested itself as standing in the nearest
+and most direct relation to man as most immediately influencing him in
+his daily life. The persons of this triad were the Moon, the Sun, and
+the Power of the Atmosphere,--SIN, SHAMASH, and RAMAN, the Semitic names
+for the Shumiro-Accadian URU-KI or NANNAR, UD or BABBAR, and IM or
+MERMER. Very characteristically, Sin is frequently called "the god
+Thirty," in allusion to his functions as the measurer of time presiding
+over the month. Of the feelings with which the Sun was regarded and the
+beneficent and splendid qualities attributed to him, we know enough from
+the beautiful hymns quoted in Chap. III. (see p. 172). As to the god
+RAMAN, frequently represented on tablets and cylinders by his
+characteristic sign, the double or triple-forked lightning-bolt--his
+importance as the dispenser of rain, the lord of the whirlwind and
+tempest, made him very popular, an object as much of dread as of
+gratitude; and as the crops depended on the supply of water from the
+canals, and these again could not be full without abundant rains, it is
+not astonishing that he should have been particularly entitled
+"protector or lord of canals," giver of abundance and "lord of
+fruitfulness." In his more terrible capacity, he is thus described: "His
+standard titles are the minister of heaven and earth," "the lord of the
+air," "he who makes the tempest to rage." He is regarded as the
+destroyer of crops, the rooter-up of trees, the scatterer of the
+harvest. Famine, scarcity, and even their consequence, pestilence, are
+assigned to him. He is said to have in his hand a "flaming sword" with
+which he effects his works of destruction, and this "flaming sword,
+which probably represents lightning, becomes his emblem upon the tablets
+and cylinders."[AS]
+
+9. The astronomical tendencies of the new religion fully assert
+themselves in the third group of divinities. They are simply the five
+planets then known and identified with various deities of the old creed,
+to whom they are, so to speak, assigned as their own particular
+provinces. Thus NIN-DAR (also called NINIP or NINEB), originally another
+name or form of the Sun (see p. 172), becomes the ruler of the most
+distant planet, the one we now call Saturn; the old favorite, Meridug,
+under the Semitized name of MARDUK, rules the planet Jupiter. It is he
+whom later Hebrew writers have called MERODACH, the name we find in the
+Bible. The planet Mars belongs to NERGAL, the warrior-god, and Mercury
+to NEBO, more properly NABU, the "messenger of the gods" and the special
+patron of astronomy, while the planet Venus is under the sway of a
+feminine deity, the goddess ISHTAR, one of the most important and
+popular on the list. But of her more anon. She leads us to the
+consideration of a very essential and characteristic feature of the
+Chaldeo-Babylonian religion, common, moreover, to all Oriental heathen
+religions, especially the Semitic ones.
+
+10. There is a distinction--the distinction of sex--which runs through
+the whole of animated nature, dividing all things that have life into
+two separate halves--male and female--halves most different in their
+qualities, often opposite, almost hostile, yet eternally dependent on
+each other, neither being complete or perfect, or indeed able to exist
+without the other. Separated by contrast, yet drawn together by an
+irresistible sympathy which results in the closest union, that of love
+and affection, the two sexes still go through life together, together do
+the work of the world. What the one has not or has in an insufficient
+degree it finds in its counterpart, and it is only their union which
+makes of the world a whole thing, full, rounded, harmonious. The
+masculine nature, active, strong, and somewhat stern, even when merciful
+and bounteous, inclined to boisterousness and violence and often to
+cruelty, is well set off, or rather completed and moderated, by the
+feminine nature, not less active, but more quietly so, dispensing
+gentle influences, open to milder moods, more uniformly soft in feeling
+and manner.
+
+[Illustration: 60.--A BUST INSCRIBED WITH THE NAME OF NEBO. (British
+Museum.)]
+
+11. In no relation of life is the difference, yet harmony, of masculine
+and feminine action so plain as in that between husband and wife, father
+and mother. It requires no very great effort of imagination to carry the
+distinction beyond the bounds of animated nature, into the world at
+large. To men for whom every portion or force of the universe was
+endowed with a particle of the divine nature and power, many were the
+things which seemed to be paired in a contrasting, yet joint action
+similar to that of the sexes. If the great and distant Heaven appeared
+to them as the universal ruler and lord, the source of all things--the
+Father of the Gods, as they put it--surely the beautiful Earth, kind
+nurse, nourisher and preserver of all things that have life, could be
+called the universal Mother. If the fierce summer and noonday sun could
+be looked on as the resistless conqueror, the dread King of the world,
+holding death and disease in his hand, was not the quiet, lovely moon,
+of mild and soothing light, bringing the rest of coolness and healing
+dews, its gentle Queen? In short, there is not a power or a phenomenon
+of nature which does not present to a poetical imagination a twofold
+aspect, answering to the standard masculine and feminine qualities and
+peculiarities. The ancient thinkers--priests--who framed the vague
+guesses of the groping, dreaming mind into schemes and systems of
+profound meaning, expressed this sense of the twofold nature of things
+by worshipping a double divine being or principle, masculine and
+feminine. Thus every god was supplied with a wife, through the entire
+series of divine emanations and manifestations. And as all the gods were
+in reality only different names and forms of the Supreme and
+Unfathomable ONE, so all the goddesses represent only BELIT, the great
+feminine principle of nature--productiveness, maternity,
+tenderness--also contained, like everything else, in that ONE, and
+emanating from it in endless succession. Hence it comes that the
+goddesses of the Chaldeo-Babylonian religion, though different in name
+and apparently in attributions, become wonderfully alike when looked at
+closer. They are all more or less repetitions of BELIT, the wife of BEL.
+Her name--which is only the feminine form of the god's, meaning "the
+Lady," as Bel means "the Lord,"--sufficiently shows that the two are
+really one. Of the other goddesses the most conspicuous are ANAT or NANA
+(Earth), the wife of Anu (Heaven), ANUNIT (the Moon), wife of Shamash
+(the Sun), and lastly ISHTAR, the ruler of the planet Venus in her own
+right, and by far the most attractive and interesting of the list. She
+was a great favorite, worshipped as the Queen of Love and Beauty, and
+also as the Warrior-Queen, who rouses men to deeds of bravery, inspirits
+and protects them in battle--perhaps because men have often fought and
+made war for the love of women, and also probably because the planet
+Venus, her own star, appears not only in the evening, close after
+sunset, but also immediately before daybreak, and so seems to summon the
+human race to renewed efforts and activity. Ishtar could not be an
+exception to the general principle and remain unmated. But her husband,
+DUMUZ (a name for the Sun), stands to her in an entirely subordinate
+position, and, indeed, would be but little known were it not for a
+beautiful story that was told of them in a very old poem, and which will
+find its place among many more in one of the next chapters.
+
+12. It would be tedious and unnecessary to recite here more names of gods
+and goddesses, though there are quite a number, and more come to light
+all the time as new tablets are discovered and read. Most of them are in
+reality only different names for the same conceptions, and the
+Chaldeo-Babylonian pantheon--or assembly of divine persons--is very
+sufficiently represented by the so-called "twelve great gods," who were
+universally acknowledged to be at its head, and of whom we will here
+repeat the names: ANU, EA and BEL, SIN, SHAMASH and RAMAN, NIN-DAR,
+MARUDUK, NERGAL, NEBO, BELIT and ISHTAR. Each had numerous temples all
+over the country. But every great city had its favorite whose temple was
+the oldest, largest and most sumptuous, to whose worship it was
+especially devoted from immemorial times. Ea, the most beloved god of old
+Shumir, had his chief sanctuary, which he shared with his son Meridug, at
+ERIDHU (now Abu-Shahrein), the most southern and almost the most ancient
+city of Shumir, situated near the mouth of the Euphrates, since the
+Persian Gulf reached quite as far inland in the year 4000 B.C., and this
+was assuredly an appropriate station for the great "lord of the deep,"
+the Fish-god Oannes, who emerged from the waters to instruct mankind. UR,
+as we have seen, was the time-honored seat of the Moon-god. At ERECH Anu
+and Anat or Nana--Heaven and Earth--were specially honored from the
+remotest antiquity, being jointly worshipped in the temple called "the
+House of Heaven." This may have been the reason of the particular
+sacredness attributed to the ground all around Erech, as witnessed by the
+exceeding persistency with which people strove for ages to bury their
+dead in it, as though under the immediate protection of the goddess of
+Earth[AT] (see Ch. III. of Introduction). Larsam paid especial homage to
+Shamash and was famous for its very ancient "House of the Sun." The Sun
+and Moon--Shamash and Anunit--had their rival sanctuaries at SIPPAR on
+the "Royal Canal," which ran nearly parallel to the Euphrates, and AGADE,
+the city of Sargon, situated just opposite on the other bank of the
+canal. The name of Agade was lost in the lapse of time, and both cities
+became one, the two portions being distinguished only by the addition
+"Sippar of the Sun" and "Sippar of Anunit." The Hebrews called the united
+city "The two Sippars"--SEPHARVAIM, the name we find in the Bible.
+
+13. The site of this important city was long doubtful; but in 1881 one
+of the most skilful and indefatigable searchers, Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, a
+gentleman who began his career as assistant to Layard, made a discovery
+which set the question at rest. He was digging in a mound known to the
+Arabs by the name of Abu-Habba, and had made his way into the apartments
+of a vast structure which he knew to be a temple. From room to room he
+passed until he came to a smaller chamber, paved with asphalt, which he
+at once surmised to be the archive-room of the temple. "Heretofore,"
+says Mr. Rassam in his report, "all Assyrian and Babylonian structures
+were found to be paved generally either with stone or brick,
+consequently this novel discovery led me to have the asphalt broken into
+and examined. On doing so we found, buried in a corner of the chamber,
+about three feet below the surface, an inscribed earthenware coffer,
+inside which was deposited a stone tablet...." Rassam had indeed
+stumbled on the archive of the famous Sun-temple, as was proved not only
+by the tablet, but by the numerous documents which accompanied it, and
+which gave the names of the builders and restorers of the temple. As to
+the tablet, it is the finest and best preserved work of art of the kind
+which has yet been found. It was deposited about the year 880 B.C. on
+occasion of a restoration and represents the god himself, seated on a
+throne, receiving the homage of worshippers, while above him the
+sun-disc is held suspended from heaven on two strong cords, like a
+gigantic lamp, by two ministering beings, who may very probably belong
+to the host of Igigi or spirits of heaven. The inscription, in
+beautifully clear and perfectly preserved characters, informs us that
+this is "The image of Shamash, the great lord, who dwells in the 'House
+of the Sun,' (_E-Babbara_) which is within the city of Sippar."[AU] (See
+Frontispiece.) This was a truly magnificent find, and who knows but
+something as unexpected and as conclusive may turn up to fix for us the
+exact place of the temple of Anunit, and consequently of the venerable
+city of Agade. As to BABYLON, it was originally placed under divine
+protection generally, as shown by its proper Semitic name, BAB-ILU,
+which means, as we have already seen, "the Gate of God," and exactly
+answers to the Shumiro-Accadian name of the city (KA-DINGIRRA, or
+KA-DIMIRRA); but later on it elected a special protector in the person
+of MARUDUK, the old favorite, Meridug. When Babylon became the capital
+of the united monarchy of Shumir and Accad, its patron divinity, under
+the name of BEL-MARUDUK, ("the Lord Maruduk") rose to a higher rank than
+he had before occupied; his temple outshone all others and became a
+wonder of the world for its wealth and splendor. He had another,
+scarcely less splendid, and founded by Hammurabi himself in Borsip. In
+this way religion was closely allied to politics. For in the days before
+the reunion of the great cities under the rule of Hammurabi, whichever
+of them was the most powerful at the time, its priests naturally claimed
+the pre-eminence for their local deity even beyond their own boundaries.
+So that the fact of the old Kings of Ur, Ur-ea and his descendants, not
+limiting themselves to the worship of their national Moon-god, but
+building temples in many places and to many gods, was perhaps a sign of
+a conciliating general policy as much as of liberal religious feeling.
+
+14. One would think that so very perfect a system of religion, based too
+on so high and noble an order of ideas, should have entirely superseded
+the coarse materialism and conjuring practices of the goblin-creed of
+the primitive Turanian settlers. Such, however, was far from being the
+case. We saw that the new religion made room, somewhat contemptuously
+perhaps, for the spirits of the old creed, carelessly massing them
+wholesale into a sort of regiment, composed of the three hundred IGIGI,
+or spirits of heaven, and the six hundred ANUNNAKI, or spirits of earth.
+The conjurers and sorcerers of old were even admitted into the
+priesthood in an inferior capacity, as a sort of lower order, probably
+more tolerated than encouraged--tolerated from necessity, because the
+people clung to their ancient beliefs and practices. But if their
+official position as a priestly class were subordinate, their real power
+was not the less great, for the public favor and credulity were on their
+side, and they were assuredly more generally popular than the learned
+and solemn priests, the counsellors and almost the equals of the kings,
+whose thoughts dwelt among the stars, who reverently searched the
+heavens for revelations of the divine will and wisdom, and who, by
+pursuing accurate observation and mathematical calculation together with
+the wildest dreams, made astronomy and astrology the inextricable tangle
+of scientific truth and fantastic speculation that we see it in the
+great work (in seventy tablets) prepared for the library of Sargon II.
+at Agade. That the ancient system of conjuring and incantations remained
+in full force and general use, is sufficiently proved by the contents of
+the first two parts of the great collection in two hundred tablets
+compiled in the reign of the same king, and from the care with which
+the work was copied and recopied, commented on and translated in later
+ages, as we see from the copy made for the Royal Library at Nineveh, the
+one which has reached us.
+
+15. There was still a third branch of so-called "science," which greatly
+occupied the minds of the Chaldeo-Babylonians from their earliest times
+down to the latest days of their existence: it was the art of
+Divination, i.e., of divining and foretelling future events from signs
+and omens, a superstition born of the old belief in every object of
+inanimate nature being possessed or inhabited by a spirit, and the later
+belief in a higher power ruling the world and human affairs to the
+smallest detail, and constantly manifesting itself through all things in
+nature as through secondary agents, so that nothing whatever could occur
+without some deeper significance, which might be discovered and
+expounded by specially trained and favored individuals. In the case of
+atmospheric prophecies concerning weather and crops, as connected with
+the appearance of clouds, sky and moon, the force and direction of
+winds, etc., there may have been some real observation to found them on.
+But it is very clear that such a conception, if carried out consistently
+to extreme lengths and applied indiscriminately to _everything_, must
+result in arrant folly. Such was assuredly the case with the
+Chaldeo-Babylonians, who not only carefully noted and explained dreams,
+drew lots in doubtful cases by means of inscribed arrows, interpreted
+the rustle of trees, the plashing of fountains and murmur of streams,
+the direction and form of lightnings, not only fancied that they could
+see things in bowls of water and in the shifting forms assumed by the
+flame which consumed sacrifices, and the smoke which rose therefrom, and
+that they could raise and question the spirits of the dead, but drew
+presages and omens, for good or evil, from the flight of birds, the
+appearance of the liver, lungs, heart and bowels of the animals offered
+in sacrifice and opened for inspection, from the natural defects or
+monstrosities of babies or the young of animals--in short, from any and
+everything that they could possibly subject to observation.
+
+16. This idlest of all kinds of speculation was reduced to a most minute
+and apparently scientific system quite as early as astrology and
+incantation, and forms the subject of a third collection, in about one
+hundred tablets, and probably compiled by those same indefatigable
+priests of Agade for Sargon, who was evidently of a most methodical turn
+of mind, and determined to have all the traditions and the results of
+centuries of observation and practical experiences connected with any
+branch of religious science fixed forever in the shape of thoroughly
+classified rules, for the guidance of priests for all coming ages. This
+collection has come to us in an even more incomplete and mutilated
+condition than the others; but enough has been preserved to show us that
+a right-thinking and religiously-given Chaldeo-Babylonian must have
+spent his life taking notes of the absurdest trifles, and questioning
+the diviners and priests about them, in order not to get into scrapes by
+misinterpreting the signs and taking that to be a favorable omen which
+boded dire calamity--or the other way, and thus doing things or leaving
+them undone at the wrong moment and in the wrong way. What excites,
+perhaps, even greater wonder, is the utter absurdity of some of the
+incidents gravely set down as affecting the welfare, not only of
+individuals, but of the whole country. What shall we say, for instance,
+of the importance attached to the proceedings of stray dogs? Here are
+some of the items as given by Mr. Fr. Lenormant in his most valuable and
+entertaining book on Chaldean Divination:--
+
+"If a gray dog enter the palace, the latter will be consumed by
+flames.--If a yellow dog enter the palace, the latter will perish in a
+violent catastrophe.--If a tawny dog enter the palace, peace will be
+concluded with the enemies.--If a dog enter the palace and be not
+killed, the peace of the palace will be disturbed.--If a dog enter the
+temple, the gods will have no mercy on the land.--If a white dog enter
+the temple, its foundations will subsist.--If a black dog enter the
+temple, its foundations will be shaken.--If a gray dog enter the temple,
+the latter will lose its possessions.... If dogs assemble in troops and
+enter the temple, no one will remain in authority.... If a dog vomits in
+a house, the master of that house will die."
+
+17. The chapter on monstrous births is extensive. Not only is every
+possible anomaly registered, from an extra finger or toe to an ear
+smaller than the other, with its corresponding presage of good or evil
+to the country, the king, the army, but the most impossible
+monstrosities are seriously enumerated, with the political conditions of
+which they are supposed to be the signs. For instance:--"If a woman give
+birth to a child with lion's ears, a mighty king will rule the land ...
+with a bird's beak, there will be peace in the land.... If a queen give
+birth to a child with a lion's face, the king will have no rival ... if
+to a snake, the king will be mighty.... If a mare give birth to a foal
+with a lion's mane, the lord of the land will annihilate his enemies ...
+with a dog's paws, the land will be diminished ... with a lion's paws,
+the land will be increased.... If a sheep give birth to a lion, there
+will be war, the king will have no rival.... If a mare give birth to a
+dog, there will be disaster and famine."
+
+18. The three great branches of religious science--astrology,
+incantation and divination--were represented by three corresponding
+classes of "wise men," all belonging, in different degrees, to the
+priesthood: the star-gazers or astrologers, the magicians or sorcerers,
+and the soothsayers or fortune-tellers. The latter, again, were divided
+into many smaller classes according to the particular kind of divination
+which they practised. Some specially devoted themselves to the
+interpretation of dreams, others to that of the flight of birds, or of
+the signs of the atmosphere, or of casual signs and omens generally. All
+were in continual demand, consulted alike by kings and private persons,
+and all proceeded in strict accordance with the rules and principles
+laid down in the three great works of King Sargon's time. When the
+Babylonian empire ceased to exist and the Chaldeans were no longer a
+nation, these secret arts continued to be practised by them, and the
+name "Chaldean" became a by-word, a synonym for "a wise man of the
+East,"--astrologer, magician or soothsayer. They dispersed all over the
+world, carrying their delusive science with them, practising and
+teaching it, welcomed everywhere by the credulous and superstitious,
+often highly honored and always richly paid. Thus it is from the
+Chaldeans and their predecessors the Shumiro-Accads that the belief in
+astrology, witchcraft and every kind of fortune-telling has been handed
+down to the nations of Europe, together with the practices belonging
+thereto, many of which we find lingering even to our day among the less
+educated classes. The very words "magic" and "magician" are probably an
+inheritance of that remotest of antiquities. One of the words for
+"priest" in the old Turanian tongue of Shumir was _imga_, which, in the
+later Semitic language, became _mag_. The _Rab-mag_--"great priest," or
+perhaps "chief conjurer," was a high functionary at the court of the
+Assyrian kings. Hence "magus," "magic," "magician," in all the European
+languages, from Latin downward.
+
+19. There can be no doubt that we have little reason to be grateful for
+such an heirloom as this mass of superstitions, which have produced so
+much evil in the world and still occasionally do mischief enough. But we
+must not forget to set off against it the many excellent things, most
+important discoveries in the province of astronomy and mathematics
+which have come to us from the same distant source. To the ancient
+Chaldeo-Babylonians we owe not only our division of time, but the
+invention of the sun-dial, and the week of seven days, dedicated in
+succession to the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets--an arrangement
+which is still maintained, the names of our days being merely
+translations of the Chaldean ones. And more than that; there were days
+set apart and kept holy, as days of rest, as far back as the time of
+Sargon of Agade; it was from the Semites of Babylonia--perhaps the
+Chaldeans of Ur--that both the name and the observance passed to the
+Hebrew branch of the race, the tribe of Abraham. George Smith found an
+Assyrian calendar where the day called _Sabattu_ or _Sabattuv_ is
+explained to mean "completion of work, a day of rest for the soul." On
+this day, it appears it was not lawful to cook food, to change one's
+dress, to offer a sacrifice; the king was forbidden to speak in public,
+to ride in a chariot, to perform any kind of military or civil duty,
+even to take medicine.[AV] This, surely, is a keeping of the Sabbath as
+strict as the most orthodox Jew could well desire. There are, however,
+essential differences between the two. In the first place, the
+Babylonians kept _five_ Sabbath days every month, which made more than
+one a week; in the second place, they came round on certain dates of
+each month, independently of the day of the week: on the 7th, 14th,
+19th, 21st and 28th. The custom appears to have passed to the Assyrians,
+and there are indications which encourage the supposition that it was
+shared by other nations connected with the Jews, the Babylonians and
+Assyrians, for instance, by the Phoenicians.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AR] See A. H. Sayce, "The Ancient Empires of the East" (1883), p. 389.
+
+[AS] Rawlinson's "Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 164.
+
+[AT] It was the statue of this very goddess Nana which was carried away
+by the Elamite conqueror, Khudur-Nankhundi in 2280 B.C. and restored to
+its place by Asshurbanipal in 645 B.C.
+
+[AU] The three circles above the god represent the Moon-god, the
+Sun-god, and Ishtar. So we are informed by the two lines of writing
+which ran above the roof.
+
+[AV] Friedrich Delitzsch, "Beigaben" to the German translat. of Smith's
+"Chaldean Genesis" (1876), p. 300. A. H. Sayce, "The Ancient Empires of
+the East" (1883), p. 402. W. Lotz, "Quaestiones de Historia Sabbati."
+
+
+
+
+                               VI.
+
+                       LEGENDS AND STORIES.
+
+
+1. In every child's life there comes a moment when it ceases to take the
+world and all it holds as a matter of course, when it begins to wonder
+and to question. The first, the great question naturally is--"Who made
+it all? The sun, the stars, the sea, the rivers, the flowers, and the
+trees--whence come they? who made them?" And to this question we are
+very ready with our answer:--"God made it all. The One, the Almighty God
+created the world, and all that is in it, by His own sovereign will."
+When the child further asks: "_How_ did He do it?" we read to it the
+story of the Creation which is the beginning of the Bible, our Sacred
+Book, either without any remarks upon it, or with the warning, that, for
+a full and proper understanding of it, years are needed and knowledge of
+many kinds. Now, these same questions have been asked, by children and
+men, in all ages. Ever since man has existed upon the earth, ever since
+he began, in the intervals of rest, in the hard labor and struggle for
+life and limb, for food and warmth, to raise his head and look abroad,
+and take in the wonders that surrounded him, he has thus pondered and
+questioned. And to this questioning, each nation, after its own lights,
+has framed very much the same answer; the same in substance and spirit
+(because the only possible one), acknowledging the agency of a Divine
+Power, in filling the world with life, and ordaining the laws of
+nature,--but often very different in form, since, almost every creed
+having stopped short of the higher religious conception, that of One
+Deity, indivisible and all-powerful, the great act was attributed to
+many gods--"the gods,"--not to God. This of course opened the way to
+innumerable, more or less ingenious, fancies and vagaries as to the part
+played in it by this or that particular divinity. Thus all races,
+nations, even tribes have worked out for themselves their own COSMOGONY,
+i.e., their own ideas on the Origin of the World. The greatest number,
+not having reached a very high stage of culture or attained literary
+skill, preserved the teachings of their priests in their memory, and
+transmitted them orally from father to son; such is the case even now
+with many more peoples than we think of--with all the native tribes of
+Africa, the islanders of Australia and the Pacific, and several others.
+But the nations who advanced intellectually to the front of mankind and
+influenced the long series of coming races by their thoughts and
+teachings, recorded in books the conclusions they had arrived at on the
+great questions which have always stirred the heart and mind of man;
+these were carefully preserved and recopied from time to time, for the
+instruction of each rising generation. Thus many great nations of olden
+times have possessed Sacred Books, which, having been written in remote
+antiquity by their best and wisest men, were reverenced as something not
+only holy, but, beyond the unassisted powers of the human intellect,
+something imparted, revealed directly by the deity itself, and therefore
+to be accepted, undisputed, as absolute truth. It is clear that it was
+in the interest of the priests, the keepers and teachers of all
+religious knowledge, to encourage and maintain in the people at large
+this unquestioning belief.
+
+2. Of all such books that have become known to us, there are none of
+greater interest and importance than the sacred books of Ancient
+Babylonia. Not merely because they are the oldest known, having been
+treasured in the priestly libraries of Agade, Sippar, Cutha, etc., at an
+incredibly early date, but principally because the ancestors of the
+Hebrews, during their long station in the land of Shinar, learned the
+legends and stories they contained, and working them over after their
+own superior religious lights, remodelled them into the narrative which
+was written down many centuries later as part of the Book of Genesis.
+
+3. The original sacred books were attributed to the god Ea himself, the
+impersonation of the Divine Intelligence, and the teacher of mankind in
+the shape of the first Man-Fish, Oannes--(the name being only a Greek
+corruption of the Accadian EA-HAN, "Ea the Fish")[AW] So Berosus informs
+us. After describing Oannes and his proceedings (see p. 185), he adds
+that "he wrote a Book on the Origin of things and the beginnings of
+civilization, and gave it to men." The "origin of things" is the history
+of the Creation of the world, Cosmogony. Accordingly, this is what
+Berosus proceeds to expound, quoting directly from the Book, for he
+begins:--"There was a time, _says he_, (meaning Oannes) when all was
+darkness and water." Then follows a very valuable fragment, but
+unfortunately only a fragment, one of the few preserved by later Greek
+writers who quoted the old priest of Babylon for their own purposes,
+while the work itself was, in some way, destroyed and lost. True, these
+fragments contain short sketches of several of the most important
+legends; still, precious as they are, they convey only second-hand
+information, compiled, indeed, from original sources by a learned and
+conscientious writer, but for the use of a foreign race, extremely
+compressed, and, besides, with the names all altered to suit that race's
+language. So long as the "original sources" were missing, there was a
+gap in the study both of the Bible and the religion of Babylon, which no
+ingenuity could fill. Great, therefore, were the delight and excitement,
+both of Assyriologists and Bible scholars, when George Smith, while
+sorting the thousands of tablet-fragments which for years had littered
+the floor of certain remote chambers of the British Museum, accidentally
+stumbled on some which were evidently portions of the original sacred
+legends partly rendered by Berosus. To search for all available
+fragments of the precious documents and piece them together became the
+task of Smith's life. And as nearly all that he found belonged to copies
+from the Royal Library at Nineveh, it was chiefly in order to enlarge
+the collection that he undertook his first expedition to the Assyrian
+mounds, from which he had the good fortune to bring back many missing
+fragments, belonging also to different copies, so that one frequently
+completes the other. Thus the oldest Chaldean legends were in a great
+measure restored to us, though unfortunately very few tablets are in a
+sufficiently well preserved condition to allow of making out an entirely
+intelligible and uninterrupted narrative. Not only are many parts still
+missing altogether, but of those which have been found, pieced and
+collected, there is not one of which one or more columns have not been
+injured in such a way that either the beginning or the end of all the
+lines are gone, or whole lines broken out or erased, with only a few
+words left here and there. How hopeless the task must sometimes have
+seemed to the patient workers may be judged from the foregoing specimen
+pieced together of sixteen bits, which Geo. Smith gives in his book.
+This is one of the so-called "Deluge-tablets," i.e., of those which
+contain the Chaldean version of the story of the Deluge. Luckily more
+copies have been found of this story than of any of the others, or we
+should have had to be content still with the short sketch of it given by
+Berosus.
+
+[Illustration: 61.--BACK OF TABLET WITH ACCOUNT OF FLOOD. (Smith's
+"Chaldean Genesis.")]
+
+4. If, therefore, the ancient Babylonian legends of the beginnings of
+the world will be given here in a connected form, for the sake of
+convenience and plainness, it must be clearly understood that they were
+not preserved for us in such a form, but are the result of a long and
+patient work of research and restoration, a work which still continues;
+and every year, almost every month, brings to light some new materials,
+some addition, some correction to the old ones. Yet even as the work now
+stands, it justifies us in asserting that our knowledge of this
+marvellous antiquity is fuller and more authentic than that we have of
+many a period and people not half so remote from us in point of place
+and distance.
+
+5. The cosmogonic narrative which forms the first part of what Geo.
+Smith has very aptly called "the Chaldean Genesis" is contained in a
+number of tablets. As it begins by the words "_When above_," they are
+all numbered as No. 1, or 3, or 5 "of the series WHEN ABOVE. _The
+property of Asshurbanipal, king of nations, king of Assyria._" The first
+lines are intact:--"When the heaven above and the earth below were as
+yet unnamed,"--(i.e., according to Semitic ideas, _did not exist_)--APSU
+(the "Abyss") and MUMMU-TIAMAT (the "billowy Sea") were the beginning of
+all things; their waters mingled and flowed together; that was the
+Primeval Chaos; it contained the germs of life but "the darkness was not
+lifted" from the waters, and therefore nothing sprouted or grew--(for no
+growth or life is possible without light). The gods also were not; "they
+were as yet unnamed and did not rule the destinies." Then the great gods
+came into being, and the divine hosts of heaven and earth (the Spirits
+of Heaven and Earth). "And the days stretched themselves out, and the
+god Anu (Heaven.) ..." Here the text breaks off abruptly; it is
+probable, however, that it told how, after a long lapse of time, the
+gods Anu, Ea and Bel, the first and supreme triad, came into being. The
+next fragment, which is sufficiently well preserved to allow of a
+connected translation, tells of the establishment of the heavenly
+bodies: "He" (Anu, whose particular dominion the highest heavens were,
+hence frequently called "the heaven of Anu") "he appointed the mansions
+of the great gods" (signs of the Zodiac), established the stars, ordered
+the months and the year, and limited the beginning and end thereof;
+established the planets, so that none should swerve from its allotted
+track; "he appointed the mansions of Bel and Ea with his own; he also
+opened the great gates of heaven, fastening their bolts firmly to the
+right and to the left" (east and west); he made Nannar (the Moon) to
+shine and allotted the night to him, determining the time of his
+quarters which measure the days, and saying to him "rise and set, and be
+subject to this law." Another tablet, of which only the beginning is
+intelligible, tells how the gods (in the plural this time) created the
+living beings which people the earth, the cattle of the field and the
+city, and the wild beasts of the field, and the things that creep in the
+field and in the city, in short all the living creatures.
+
+[Illustration: 62.--BABYLONIAN CYLINDER, SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT THE
+TEMPTATION AND FALL.]
+
+6. There are some tablets which have been supposed to treat of the
+creation of man and perhaps to give a story of his disobedience and
+fall, answering to that in Genesis; but unfortunately they are in too
+mutilated a condition to admit of certainty, and no other copies have as
+yet come to light. However, the probability that such was really the
+case is very great, and is much enhanced by a cylinder of very ancient
+Babylonian workmanship, now in the British Museum, and too important not
+to be reproduced here. The tree in the middle, the human couple
+stretching out their hands for the fruit, the serpent standing _behind
+the woman_ in--one might almost say--a whispering attitude, all this
+tells its own tale. And the authority of this artistic presentation,
+which so strangely fits in to fill the blank in the written narrative,
+is doubled by the fact that the engravings on the cylinders are
+invariably taken from subjects connected with religion, or at least
+religious beliefs and traditions. As to the creation of man, we may
+partly eke out the missing details from the fragment of Berosus already
+quoted. He there tells us--and so well-informed a writer must have
+spoken on good authority--that Bel gave his own blood to be kneaded with
+the clay out of which men were formed, and that is why they are endowed
+with reason and have a share of the divine nature in them--certainly a
+most ingenious way of expressing the blending of the earthly and the
+divine elements which has made human nature so deep and puzzling a
+problem to the profounder thinkers of all ages.
+
+7. For the rest of the creation, Berosus' account (quoted from the book
+said to have been given men by the fabulous Oannes), agrees with what we
+find in the original texts, even imperfect as we have them. He says that
+in the midst of Chaos--at the time when all was darkness and water--the
+principle of life which it contained, restlessly working, but without
+order, took shape in numberless monstrous formations: there were beings
+like men, some winged, with two heads, some with the legs and horns of
+goats, others with the hind part of horses; also bulls with human heads,
+dogs with four bodies and a fish's tail, horses with the heads of dogs,
+in short, every hideous and fantastical combination of animal forms,
+before the Divine Will had separated them, and sorted them into harmony
+and order. All these monstrous beings perished the moment Bel separated
+the heavens from the earth creating light,--for they were births of
+darkness and lawlessness and could not stand the new reign of light and
+law and divine reason. In memory of this destruction of the old chaotic
+world and production of the new, harmonious and beautiful one, the walls
+of the famous temple of Bel-Mardouk at Babylon were covered with
+paintings representing the infinite variety of monstrous and mixed
+shapes with which an exuberant fancy had peopled the primeval chaos;
+Berosus was a priest of this temple and he speaks of those paintings as
+still existing. Though nothing has remained of them in the ruins of the
+temple, we have representations of the same kind on many of the
+cylinders which, used as seals, did duty both as personal badges--(one
+is almost tempted to say "coats of arms")--and as talismans, as proved
+by the fact of such cylinders being so frequently found on the wrists of
+the dead in the sepulchres.
+
+[Illustration: 63.--FEMALE WINGED FIGURES BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (From
+a photograph in the British Museum.)]
+
+8. The remarkable cylinder with the human couple and the serpent leads
+us to the consideration of a most important object in the ancient
+Babylonian or Chaldean religion--the Sacred Tree, the Tree of Life. That
+it was a very holy symbol is clear from its being so continually
+reproduced on cylinders and on sculptures. In this particular cylinder,
+rude as the design is, it bears an unmistakable likeness to a real
+tree--of some coniferous species, cypress or fir. But art soon took hold
+of it and began to load it with symmetrical embellishments, until it
+produced a tree of entirely conventional design, as shown by the
+following specimens, of which the first leans more to the palm, while
+the second seems rather of the coniferous type. (Figs. No. 63 and 65.)
+It is probable that such artificial trees, made up of boughs--perhaps of
+the palm and cypress--tied together and intertwined with ribbons
+(something like our Maypoles of old), were set up in the temples as
+reminders of the sacred symbol, and thus gave rise to the fixed type
+which remains invariable both in such Babylonian works of art as we
+possess and on the Assyrian sculptures, where the tree, or a portion of
+it, appears not only in the running ornaments on the walls but on seal
+cylinders and even in the embroidery on the robes of kings. In the
+latter case indeed, it is almost certain, from the belief in talismans
+which the Assyrians had inherited, along with the whole of their
+religion from the Chaldean mother country, that this ornament was
+selected not only as appropriate to the sacredness of the royal person,
+but as a consecration and protection. The holiness of the symbol is
+further evidenced by the kneeling posture of the animals which sometimes
+accompany it (see Fig. 22, page 67), and the attitude of adoration of
+the human figures, or winged spirits attending it, by the prevalence of
+the sacred number seven in its component parts, and by the fact that it
+is reproduced on a great many of those glazed earthenware coffins which
+are so plentiful at Warka (ancient Erech). This latter fact clearly
+shows that the tree-symbol not only meant life in general, life on
+earth, but a hope of life eternal, beyond the grave, or why should it
+have been given to the dead? These coffins at Warka belong, it is true,
+to a late period, some as late as a couple of hundred years after
+Christ, but the ancient traditions and their meaning had, beyond a
+doubt, been preserved. Another significant detail is that the cone is
+frequently seen in the hands of men or spirits, and always in a way
+connected with worship or auspicious protection; sometimes it is held to
+the king's nostrils by his attendant protecting spirits, (known by their
+wings); a gesture of unmistakable significancy, since in ancient
+languages "the breath of the nostrils" is synonymous with "the breath of
+life."
+
+[Illustration: 64.--WINGED SPIRITS BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Smith's
+"Chaldea.")]
+
+[Illustration: 65.--SARGON OF ASSYRIA BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Perrot
+and Chipiez.)]
+
+9. There can be no association of ideas more natural than that of
+vegetation, as represented by a tree, with life. By its perpetual growth
+and development, its wealth of branches and foliage, its blossoming and
+fruit-bearing, it is a noble and striking illustration of the world in
+the widest sense--the Universe, the Cosmos, while the sap which courses
+equally through the trunk and through the veins of the smallest leaflet,
+drawn by an incomprehensible process through invisible roots from the
+nourishing earth, still more forcibly suggests that mysterious
+principle, Life, which we _think_ we understand because we see its
+effects and feel it in ourselves, but the sources of which will never be
+reached, as the problem of it will never be solved, either by the prying
+of experimental science or the musings of contemplative speculation;
+life eternal, also,--for the workings of nature _are_ eternal,--and the
+tree that is black and lifeless to-day, we know from long experience is
+not dead, but will revive in the fulness of time, and bud, and grow and
+bear again. All these things _we_ know are the effects of laws; but the
+ancients attributed them to living Powers,--the CHTHONIC POWERS (from
+the Greek word CHTHON, "earth, soil"), which have by some later and
+dreamy thinkers been called weirdly but not unaptly, "the Mothers,"
+mysteriously at work in the depths of silence and darkness, unseen,
+unreachable, and inexhaustibly productive. Of these powers again, what
+more perfect symbol or representative than the Tree, as standing for
+vegetation, one for all, the part for the whole? It lies so near that,
+in later times, it was enlarged, so as to embrace the whole universe, in
+the majestic conception of the Cosmic Tree which has its roots on earth
+and heaven for its crown, while its fruit are the golden apples--the
+stars, and Fire,--the red lightning.
+
+[Illustration: 66.--EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE. (Smith's
+"Chaldea.")]
+
+[Illustration: 67.--FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIGURE BEFORE THE SACRED TREE.
+(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+10. All these suggestive and poetical fancies would in themselves
+suffice to make the tree-symbol a favorite one among so thoughtful and
+profound a people as the old Chaldeans. But there is something more. It
+is intimately connected with another tradition, common, in some form or
+other, to all nations who have attained a sufficiently high grade of
+culture to make their mark in the world--that of an original ancestral
+abode, beautiful, happy, and remote, a Paradise. It is usually imagined
+as a great mountain, watered by springs which become great rivers,
+bearing one or more trees of wonderful properties and sacred character,
+and is considered as the principal residence of the gods. Each nation
+locates it according to its own knowledge of geography and vague,
+half-obliterated memories. Many texts, both in the old Accadian and the
+Assyrian languages, abundantly prove that the Chaldean religion
+preserved a distinct and reverent conception of such a mountain, and
+placed it in the far north or north-east, calling it the "Father of
+Countries," plainly an allusion to the original abode of man--the
+"Mountain of Countries," (i.e., "Chief Mountain of the World") and also
+ARALLU, because there, where the gods dwelt, they also imagined the
+entrance to the Arali to be the Land of the Dead. There, too, the heroes
+and great men were to dwell forever after their death. There is the land
+with a sky of silver, a soil which produces crops without being
+cultivated, where blessings are for food and rejoicing, which it is
+hoped the king will obtain as a reward for his piety after having
+enjoyed all earthly goods during his life.[AX] In an old Accadian hymn,
+the sacred mount, which is identical with that imagined as the pillar
+joining heaven and earth, the pillar around which the heavenly spheres
+revolve, (see page 153)--is called "the mountain of Bel, in the east,
+whose double head reaches unto the skies; which is like to a mighty
+buffalo at rest, whose double horn sparkles as a sunbeam, as a star." So
+vivid was the conception in the popular mind, and so great the reverence
+entertained for it, that it was attempted to reproduce the type of the
+holy mountain in the palaces of their kings and the temples of their
+gods. That is one of the reasons why they built both on artificial
+hills. There is in the British Museum a sculpture from Koyunjik,
+representing such a temple, or perhaps palace, on the summit of a mound,
+converted into a garden and watered by a stream which issues from the
+"hanging garden" on the right, the latter being laid out on a platform
+of masonry raised on arches; the water was brought up by machinery. It
+is a perfect specimen of a "Paradise," as these artificial parks were
+called by the Greeks, who took the word (meaning "park" or "garden")
+from the Persians, who, in their turn, had borrowed the thing from the
+Assyrians and Babylonians, when they conquered the latter's empire. The
+_Ziggurat_, or pyramidal construction in stages, with the temple or
+shrine on the top, also owed its peculiar shape to the same original
+conception: as the gods dwelt on the summit of the Mountain of the
+World, so their shrines should occupy a position as much like their
+residence as the feeble means of man would permit. That this is no idle
+fancy is proved by the very name of "Ziggurat," which means "_mountain
+peak_," and also by the names of some of these temples: one of the
+oldest and most famous indeed, in the city of Asshur, was named "the
+House of the Mountain of Countries." An excellent representation of a
+Ziggurat, as it must have looked with its surrounding palm grove by a
+river, is given us on a sculptured slab, also from Koyunjik. The
+original is evidently a small one, of probably five stages besides the
+platform on which it is built, with its two symmetrical paths up the
+ascent. Some, like the great temple at Ur, had only three stages, others
+again seven--always one of the three sacred numbers: three,
+corresponding to the divine Triad; five, to the five planets; seven, to
+the planets, sun and moon. The famous Temple of the Seven Spheres at
+Borsip (the Birs-Nimrud), often mentioned already, and rebuilt by
+Nebuchadnezzar about 600 B.C. from a far older structure, as he explains
+in his inscription (see p. 72), was probably the most gorgeous, as it
+was the largest; besides, it is the only one of which we have detailed
+and reliable descriptions and measurements, which may best be given in
+this place, almost entirely in the words of George Rawlinson:[AY]
+
+[Illustration: 68.--TEMPLE AND HANGING GARDENS AT KOYUNJIK. (British
+Museum.)]
+
+[Illustration: 69.--PLAN OF A ZIGGURAT. (Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+11. The temple is raised on a platform exceptionally low--only a few
+feet above the level of the plain; the entire height, including the
+platform, was 156 feet in a perpendicular line. The stages--of which the
+four upper were lower than the first three--receded equally on three
+sides, but doubly as much on the fourth, probably in order to present a
+more imposing front from the plain, and an easier ascent. "The
+ornamentation of the edifice was chiefly by means of color. The seven
+Stages represented the Seven Spheres, in which moved, according to
+ancient Chaldean astronomy, the seven planets. To each planet fancy,
+partly grounding itself upon fact, had from of old assigned a peculiar
+tint or hue. The Sun (Shamash) was golden; the Moon (Sin or Nannar),
+silver; the distant Saturn (Adar), almost beyond the region of light,
+was black; Jupiter (Marduk) was orange; the fiery Mars (Nergal) was red;
+Venus (Ishtar) was a pale yellow; Mercury (Nebo or Nabu, whose shrine
+stood on the top stage), a deep blue. The seven stages of the tower gave
+a visible embodiment to these fancies. The basement stage, assigned to
+Saturn, was blackened by means of a coating of bitumen spread over the
+face of the masonry; the second stage, assigned to Jupiter, obtained the
+appropriate orange color by means of a facing of burnt bricks of that
+hue; the third stage, that of Mars, was made blood-red by the use of
+half-burnt bricks formed of a bright-red clay; the fourth stage,
+assigned to the Sun, appears to have been actually covered with thin
+plates of gold; the fifth, the stage of Venus, received a pale yellow
+tint from the employment of bricks of that hue; the sixth, the sphere of
+Mercury, was given an azure tint by vitrifaction, the whole stage having
+been subjected to an intense heat after it was erected, whereby the
+bricks composing it were converted into a mass of blue slag; the seventh
+stage, that of the moon, was probably, like the fourth, coated with
+actual plates of metal. Thus the building rose up in stripes of varied
+color, arranged almost as nature's cunning hand arranges hues in the
+rainbow, tones of red coming first, succeeded by a broad stripe of
+yellow, the yellow being followed by blue. Above this the glowing
+silvery summit melted into the bright sheen of the sky.... The Tower is
+to be regarded as fronting the north-east, the coolest side, and that
+least exposed to the sun's rays from the time that they become
+oppressive in Babylonia. On this side was the ascent, which consisted
+probably of a broad staircase extending along the whole front of the
+building. The side platforms, at any rate of the first and second
+stages, probably of all, were occupied by a series of chambers.... In
+these were doubtless lodged the priests and other attendants upon the
+temple service...."
+
+[Illustration: 70.--"ZIGGURAT" RESTORED. ACCORDING TO PROBABILITIES.
+(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+12. The interest attaching to this temple, wonderful as it is in itself,
+is greatly enhanced by the circumstance that its ruins have through many
+centuries been considered as those of the identical Tower of Babel of
+the Bible. Jewish literary men who travelled over the country in the
+Middle Ages started this idea, which quickly spread to the West. It is
+conjectured that it was suggested by the vitrified fragments of the
+outer coating of the sixth, blue, stage, (that of Mercury or Nebo), the
+condition of which was attributed to lightning having struck the
+building.
+
+[Illustration: 71.--BIRS-NIMRUD. (ANCIENT BORSIP.) (Perrot and
+Chipiez.)]
+
+13. That the Ziggurats of Chaldea should have been used not only as
+pedestals to uphold shrines, but as observatories by the priestly
+astronomers and astrologers, was quite in accordance with the strong
+mixture of star-worship grafted on the older religion, and with the
+power ascribed to the heavenly bodies over the acts and destinies of
+men. These constructions, therefore, were fitted for astronomical uses
+by being very carefully placed with their corners pointing exactly to
+the four cardinal points--North, South, East and West. Only two
+exceptions have been found to this rule, one in Babylon, and the
+Assyrian Ziggurat at Kalah, (Nimrud) explored by Layard, of which the
+sides, not the corners, face the cardinal points. For the Assyrians, who
+carried their entire culture and religion northward from their ancient
+home, also retained this consecrated form of architecture, with the
+difference that with them the Ziggurats were not temple and observatory
+in one, but only observatories attached to the temples, which were built
+on more independent principles and a larger scale, often covering as
+much ground as a palace.
+
+14. The singular orientation of the Chaldean Ziggurats (subsequently
+retained by the Assyrians),--i.e., the manner in which they are placed,
+turned to the cardinal points with their angles, and not with their
+faces, as are the Egyptian pyramids, with only one exception,--has long
+been a puzzle which no astronomical considerations were sufficient to
+solve. But quite lately, in 1883, Mr. Pinches, Geo. Smith's successor in
+the British Museum, found a small tablet, giving lists of signs,
+eclipses, etc., affecting the various countries, and containing the
+following short geographical notice, in illustration of the position
+assigned to the cardinal points: "The South is Elam, the North is Accad,
+the East is Suedin and Gutium, the West is Phoenicia. On the right is
+Accad, on the left is Elam, in front is Phoenicia, behind are Suedin
+and Gutium." In order to appreciate the bearing of this bit of
+topography on the question in hand, we must examine an ancient map, when
+we shall at once perceive that the direction given by the tablet to the
+_South_ (Elam) answers to our _South-East;_ that given to the _North_
+(Accad) answers to our _North-West;_ while _West_ (Phoenicia, i.e.,
+the coast-land of the Mediterranean, down almost to Egypt) stands for
+our _South-West_, and _East_ (Gutium, the highlands where the Armenian
+mountains join the Zagros, now Kurdish Mountains,) for our _North-East_.
+If we turn the map so that the Persian Gulf shall come in a
+perpendicular line under Babylon, we shall produce the desired effect,
+and then it will strike us that the Ziggurats _did_ face the cardinal
+points, according to Chaldean geography, _with their sides_, and that
+the discovery of the small tablet, as was remarked on the production of
+it, "settles the difficult question of the difference in orientation
+between the Assyrian and Egyptian monuments." It was further suggested
+that "the two systems of cardinal points originated no doubt from two
+different races, and their determination was due probably _to the
+geographical position of the primitive home of each race._" Now the
+South-West is called "the front," "and the migrations of the people
+_therefore_ must have been from North-East to South-West."[AZ] This
+beautifully tallies with the hypothesis, or conjecture, concerning the
+direction from which the Shumiro-Accads descended into the lowlands by
+the Gulf (see pp. 146-8), and, moreover, leads us to the question
+whether the fact of the great Ziggurat of the Seven Spheres at Borsip
+facing the North-East with its front may not have some connection with
+the holiness ascribed to that region as the original home of the race
+and the seat of that sacred mountain so often mentioned as "the Great
+Mountain of Countries" (see p. 280), doubly sacred, as the meeting-place
+of the gods and the place of entrance to the "Arallu" or Lower
+World.[BA]
+
+15. It is to be noted that the conception of the divine grove or garden
+with its sacred tree of life was sometimes separated from that of the
+holy primeval mountain and transferred by tradition to a more immediate
+and accessible neighborhood. That the city and district of Babylon may
+have been the centre of such a tradition is possibly shown by the most
+ancient Accadian name of the former--TIN-TIR-KI meaning "the Place of
+Life," while the latter was called GAN-DUNYASH or KAR-DUNYASH--"the
+garden of the god Dunyash," (probably one of the names of the god
+Ea)--an appellation which this district, although situated in the land
+of Accad or Upper Chaldea, preserved to the latest times as
+distinctively its own. Another sacred grove is spoken of as situated in
+Eridhu. This city, altogether the most ancient we have any mention of,
+was situated at the then mouth of the Euphrates, in the deepest and
+flattest of lowlands, a sort of borderland between earth and sea, and
+therefore very appropriately consecrated to the great spirit of both,
+the god Ea, the amphibious Oannes. It was so much identified with him,
+that in the Shumirian hymns and conjurings his son Meridug is often
+simply invoked as "Son of Eridhu." It must have been the oldest seat of
+that spirit-worship and sorcerer-priesthood which we find crystallized
+in the earliest Shumiro-Accadian sacred books. This prodigious antiquity
+carries us to something like 5000 years B.C., which explains the fact
+that the ruins of the place, near the modern Arab village of
+Abu-Shahrein, are now so far removed from the sea, being a considerable
+distance even from the junction of the two rivers where they form the
+Shat-el-arab. The sacred grove of Eridhu is frequently referred to, and
+that it was connected with the tradition of the tree of life we see from
+a fragment of a most ancient hymn, which tells of "a black pine, growing
+at Eridhu, sprung up in a pure place, with roots of lustrous crystal
+extending downwards, even into the deep, marking the centre of the
+earth, in the dark forest into the heart whereof man hath not
+penetrated." Might not this be the reason why the wood of the pine was
+so much used in charms and conjuring, as the surest safeguard against
+evil influences, and its very shadow was held wholesome and sacred? But
+we return to the legends of the Creation and primeval world.
+
+[Illustration: 72.--BEL FIGHTS THE DRAGON--TIAMAT (ASSYRIAN CYLINDER.)
+(Perrot and Chipiez.)]
+
+16. Mummu-Tiamat, the impersonation of chaos, the power of darkness and
+lawlessness, does not vanish from the scene when Bel puts an end to her
+reign, destroys, by the sheer force of light and order, her hideous
+progeny of monsters and frees from her confusion the germs and
+rudimental forms of life, which, under the new and divine dispensation,
+are to expand and combine into the beautifully varied, yet harmonious
+world we live in. Tiamat becomes the sworn enemy of the gods and their
+creation, the great principle of opposition and destruction. When the
+missing texts come to light,--if ever they do--it will probably be found
+that the serpent who tempts the woman in the famous cylinder, is none
+other than a form of the rebellious and vindictive Tiamat, who is called
+now a "Dragon," now "the Great Serpent." At last the hostility cannot be
+ignored, and things come to a deadly issue. It is determined in the
+council of the gods that one of them must fight the wicked dragon; a
+complete suit of armor is made and exhibited by Anu himself, of which
+the sickle-shaped sword and the beautifully bent bow are the principal
+features. It is Bel who dares the venture and goes forth on a matchless
+war chariot, armed with the sword, and the bow, and his great weapon,
+the thunderbolt, sending the lightning before him and scattering arrows
+around. Tiamat, the Dragon of the Sea, came out to meet him, stretching
+her immense body along, bearing death and destruction, and attended by
+her followers. The god rushed on the monster with such violence that he
+threw her down and was already fastening fetters on her limbs, when she
+uttered a great shout and started up and attacked the righteous leader
+of the gods, while banners were raised on both sides as at a pitched
+battle. Meridug drew his sword and wounded her; at the same time a
+violent wind struck against her face. She opened her jaws to swallow up
+Meridug, but before she could close them he bade the wind to enter into
+her body. It entered and filled her with its violence, shook her heart
+and tore her entrails and subdued her courage. Then the god bound her,
+and put an end to her works, while her followers stood amazed, then
+broke their lines and fled, full of fear, seeing that Tiamat, their
+leader, was conquered. There she lay, her weapons broken, herself like a
+sword thrown down on the ground, in the dark and bound, conscious of her
+bondage and in great grief, her might suddenly broken by fear.
+
+[Illustration: 73.--BEL FIGHTS THE DRAGON--TIAMAT (BABYLONIAN
+CYLINDER).]
+
+17. The battle of Bel-Marduk and the Dragon was a favorite incident in
+the cycle of Chaldean tradition, if we judge from the number of
+representations we have of it on Babylonian cylinders, and even on
+Assyrian wall-sculptures. The texts which relate to it are, however, in
+a frightful state of mutilation, and only the last fragment, describing
+the final combat, can be read and translated with anything like
+completeness. With it ends the series treating of the Cosmogony or
+Beginnings of the World. But it may be completed by a few more legends
+of the same primitive character and preserved on detached tablets, in
+double text, as usual--Accadian and Assyrian. To these belongs a poem
+narrating the rebellion, already alluded to, (see p. 182,) of the seven
+evil spirits, originally the messengers and throne-bearers of the gods,
+and their war against the moon, the whole being evidently a fanciful
+rendering of an eclipse. "Those wicked gods, the rebel spirits," of
+whom one is likened to a leopard, and one to a serpent, and the rest to
+other animals--suggesting the fanciful shapes of storm-clouds--while one
+is said to be the raging south wind, began the attack "with evil
+tempest, baleful wind," and "from the foundations of the heavens like
+the lightning they darted." The lower region of the sky was reduced to
+its primeval chaos, and the gods sat in anxious council. The moon-god
+(Sin), the sun-god (Shamash), and the goddess Ishtar had been appointed
+to sway in close harmony the lower sky and to command the hosts of
+heaven; but when the moon-god was attacked by the seven spirits of evil,
+his companions basely forsook him, the sun-god retreating to his place
+and Ishtar taking refuge in the highest heaven (the heaven of Anu). Nebo
+is despatched to Ea, who sends his son Meridug with this
+instruction:--"Go, my son Meridug! The light of the sky, my son, even
+the moon-god, is grievously darkened in heaven, and in eclipse from
+heaven is vanishing. Those seven wicked gods, the serpents of death who
+fear not, are waging unequal war with the laboring moon." Meridug obeys
+his father's bidding, and overthrows the seven powers of darkness.[BB]
+
+[Illustration: 74.--BATTLE BETWEEN BEL AND THE DRAGON (TIAMAT). (Smith's
+"Chaldea.")]
+
+18. There is one more detached legend known from the surviving fragments
+of Berosus, also supposed to be derived from ancient Accadian texts: it
+is that of the great tower and the confusion of tongues. One such text
+has indeed been found by the indefatigable George Smith, but there is
+just enough left of it to be very tantalizing and very unsatisfactory.
+The narrative in Berosus amounts to this: that men having grown beyond
+measure proud and arrogant, so as to deem themselves superior even to
+the gods, undertook to build an immense tower, to scale the sky; that
+the gods, offended with this presumption, sent violent winds to
+overthrow the construction when it had already reached a great height,
+and at the same time caused men to speak different languages,--probably
+to sow dissension among them, and prevent their ever again uniting in a
+common enterprise so daring and impious. The site was identified with
+that of Babylon itself, and so strong was the belief attaching to the
+legend that the Jews later on adopted it unchanged, and centuries
+afterwards, as we saw above, fixed on the ruins of the hugest of all
+Ziggurats, that of Borsip, as those of the great Tower of the Confusion
+of Tongues. Certain it is, that the tradition, under all its fanciful
+apparel, contains a very evident vein of historical fact, since it was
+indeed from the plains of Chaldea that many of the principal nations of
+the ancient East, various in race and speech, dispersed to the north,
+the west, and the south, after having dwelt there for centuries as in a
+common cradle, side by side, and indeed to a great extent as one
+people.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[AW] See Fr. Lenormant, "Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chaldaeer," p.
+377.
+
+[AX] Francois Lenormant, "Origines de l'Histoire," Vol. II., p. 130.
+
+[AY] "Five Monarchies," Vol. III., pp. 380-387.
+
+[AZ] See "Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology," Feb.,
+1883, pp. 74-76, and "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society," Vol. XVI.,
+1884, p. 302.
+
+[BA] The one exception to the above rule of orientation among the
+Ziggurats of Chaldea is that of the temple of Bel, in Babylon,
+(E-SAGGILA in the old language,) which is oriented in the usual way--its
+sides facing the _real_ North, South, East and West.
+
+[BB] See A. H. Sayce, "Babylonian Literature," p. 35.
+
+
+
+
+                               VII.
+
+              MYTHS.--HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS.
+
+
+1. The stories by which a nation attempts to account for the mysteries
+of creation, to explain the Origin of the World, are called, in
+scientific language, COSMOGONIC MYTHS. The word Myth is constantly used
+in conversation, but so loosely and incorrectly, that it is most
+important once for all to define its proper meaning. It means simply _a
+phenomenon of nature presented not as the result of a law but as the act
+of divine or at least superhuman persons, good or evil powers_--(for
+instance, the eclipse of the Moon described as the war against the gods
+of the seven rebellious spirits). Further reading and practice will show
+that there are many kinds of myths, of various origins; but there is
+none, which, if properly taken to pieces, thoroughly traced and
+cornered, will not be covered by this definition. A Myth has also been
+defined as a legend connected more or less closely with some religious
+belief, and, in its main outlines, handed down from prehistoric times.
+There are only two things which can prevent the contemplation of nature
+and speculation on its mysteries from running into mythology: a
+knowledge of the physical laws of nature, as supplied by modern
+experimental science, and a strict, unswerving belief in the unity of
+God, absolute and undivided, as affirmed and defined by the Hebrews in
+so many places of their sacred books: "The Lord he is God, there is none
+else beside him." "The Lord he is God, in Heaven above and upon the
+earth beneath there is none else." "I am the Lord, and there is none
+else, there is no God beside me." "I am God and there is none else." But
+experimental science is a very modern thing indeed, scarcely a few
+hundred years old, and Monotheism, until the propagation of
+Christianity, was professed by only one small nation, the Jews, though
+the chosen thinkers of other nations have risen to the same conception
+in many lands and many ages. The great mass of mankind has always
+believed in the personal individuality of all the forces of nature,
+i.e., in many gods; everything that went on in the world was to them the
+manifestation of the feelings, the will, the acts of these gods--hence
+the myths. The earlier the times, the more unquestioning the belief and,
+as a necessary consequence, the more exuberant the creation of myths.
+
+2. But gods and spirits are not the only actors in myths. Side by side
+with its sacred traditions on the Origin of things, every nation
+treasures fond but vague memories of its own beginnings--vague, both
+from their remoteness and from their not being fixed in writing, and
+being therefore liable to the alterations and enlargements which a story
+invariably undergoes when told many times to and by different people,
+i.e., when it is transmitted from generation to generation by oral
+tradition. These memories generally centre around a few great names, the
+names of the oldest national heroes, of the first rulers, lawgivers and
+conquerors of the nation, the men who by their genius _made_ it a nation
+out of a loose collection of tribes or large families, who gave it
+social order and useful arts, and safety from its neighbors, or,
+perhaps, freed it from foreign oppressors. In their grateful admiration
+for these heroes, whose doings naturally became more and more marvellous
+with each generation that told of them, men could not believe that they
+should have been mere imperfect mortals like themselves, but insisted on
+considering them as directly inspired by the deity in some one of the
+thousand shapes they invested it with, or as half-divine of their own
+nature. The consciousness of the imperfection inherent to ordinary
+humanity, and the limited powers awarded to it, has always prompted this
+explanation of the achievements of extraordinarily gifted individuals,
+in whatever line of action their exceptional gifts displayed themselves.
+Besides, if there is something repugnant to human vanity in having to
+submit to the dictates of superior reason and the rule of superior power
+as embodied in mere men of flesh and blood, there is on the contrary
+something very flattering and soothing to that same vanity in the idea
+of having been specially singled out as the object of the protection and
+solicitude of the divine powers; this idea at all events takes the
+galling sting from the constraint of obedience. Hence every nation has
+very jealously insisted on and devoutly believed in the divine origin of
+its rulers and the divine institution of its laws and customs. Once it
+was implicitly admitted that the world teemed with spirits and gods,
+who, not content with attending to their particular spheres and
+departments, came and went at their pleasure, had walked the earth and
+directly interfered with human affairs, there was no reason to
+disbelieve _any_ occurrence, however marvellous--provided it had
+happened very, very long ago. (See p. 197.)
+
+3. Thus, in the traditions of every ancient nation, there is a vast and
+misty tract of time, expressed, if at all, in figures of appalling
+magnitude--hundreds of thousands, nay, millions of years--between the
+unpierceable gloom of an eternal past and the broad daylight of
+remembered, recorded history. There, all is shadowy, gigantic,
+superhuman. There, gods move, dim yet visible, shrouded in a golden
+cloud of mystery and awe; there, by their side, loom other shapes, as
+dim but more familiar, human yet more than human--the Heroes, Fathers of
+races, founders of nations, the companions, the beloved of gods and
+goddesses, nay, their own children, mortal themselves, yet doing deeds
+of daring and might such as only the immortals could inspire and favor,
+the connecting link between these and ordinary humanity--as that
+gloaming, uncertain, shifting, but not altogether unreal streak of time
+is the borderland between Heaven and Earth, the very hot-bed of myth,
+fiction and romance. For of their favorite heroes, people began to tell
+the same stories as of their gods, in modified forms, transferred to
+their own surroundings and familiar scenes. To take one of the most
+common transformations: if the Sun-god waged war against the demons of
+darkness and destroyed them in heaven (see p. 171), the hero hunted wild
+beasts and monsters on earth, of course always victoriously. This one
+theme could be varied by the national poets in a thousand ways and woven
+into a thousand different stories, which come with full right under the
+head of "myths." Thus arose a number of so-called HEROIC MYTHS, which,
+by dint of being repeated, settled into a certain defined traditional
+shape, like the well-known fairy-tales of our nurseries, which are the
+same everywhere and told in every country with scarcely any changes. As
+soon as the art of writing came into general use, these favorite and
+time-honored stories, which the mass of the people probably still
+received as literal truth, were taken down, and, as the work naturally
+devolved on priests and clerks, i.e., men of education and more or less
+literary skill, often themselves poets, they were worked over in the
+process, connected, and remodelled into a continuous whole. The separate
+myths, or adventures of one or more particular heroes, formerly recited
+severally, somewhat after the manner of the old songs and ballads,
+frequently became so many chapters or books in a long, well-ordered
+poem, in which they were introduced and distributed, often with
+consummate art, and told with great poetical beauty. Such poems, of
+which several have come down to us, are called EPIC POEMS, or simply
+EPICS. The entire mass of fragmentary materials out of which they are
+composed in the course of time, blending almost inextricably historical
+reality with mythical fiction, is the NATIONAL EPOS of a race, its
+greatest intellectual treasure, from which all its late poetry and much
+of its political and religious feeling draws its food ever after. A race
+that has no national epos is one devoid of great memories, incapable of
+high culture and political development, and no such has taken a place
+among the leading races of the world. All those that have occupied such
+a place at any period of the world's history, have had their Mythic and
+Heroic Ages, brimful of wonders and fanciful creations.
+
+4. From these remarks it will be clear that the preceding two or three
+chapters have been treating of what may properly be called the Religious
+and Cosmogonic Myths of the Shumiro-Accads and the Babylonians. The
+present chapter will be devoted to their Heroic Myths or Mythic Epos, as
+embodied in an Epic which has been in great part preserved, and which is
+the oldest known in the world, dating certainly from 2000 years B.C.,
+and probably more.
+
+5. Of this poem the few fragments we have of Berosus contain no
+indication. They only tell of a great deluge which took place under the
+last of that fabulous line of ten kings which is said to have begun
+259,000 years after the apparition of the divine Man-Fish, Oannes, and
+to have reigned in the aggregate a period of 432,000 years. The
+description has always excited great interest from its extraordinary
+resemblance to that given by the Bible. Berosus tells how XISUTHROS, the
+last of the ten fabulous kings, had a dream in which the deity announced
+to him that on a certain day all men should perish in a deluge of
+waters, and ordered him to take all the sacred writings and bury them at
+Sippar, the City of the Sun, then to build a ship, provide it with ample
+stores of food and drink and enter it with his family and his dearest
+friends, also animals, both birds and quadrupeds of every kind.
+Xisuthros did as he had been bidden. When the flood began to abate, on
+the third day after the rain had ceased to fall, he sent out some birds,
+to see whether they would find any land, but the birds, having found
+neither food nor place to rest upon, returned to the ship. A few days
+later, Xisuthros once more sent the birds out; but they again came back
+to him, this time with muddy feet. On being sent out a third time, they
+did not return at all. Xisuthros then knew that the land was uncovered;
+made an opening in the roof of the ship and saw that it was stranded on
+the top of a mountain. He came out of the ship with his wife, daughter
+and pilot, built an altar and sacrificed to the gods, after which he
+disappeared together with these. When his companions came out to seek
+him they did not see him, but a voice from heaven informed them that he
+had been translated among the gods to live forever, as a reward for his
+piety and righteousness. The voice went on to command the survivors to
+return to Babylonia, unearth the sacred writings and make them known to
+men. They obeyed and, moreover, built many cities and restored Babylon.
+
+6. However interesting this account, it was received at second-hand and
+therefore felt to need confirmation and ampler development. Besides which,
+as it stood, it lacked all indication that could throw light on the
+important question which of the two traditions--that reproduced by Berosus
+or the Biblical one--was to be considered as the oldest. Here again it was
+George Smith who had the good fortune to discover the original narrative
+(in 1872), while engaged in sifting and sorting the tablet-fragments at
+the British Museum. This is how it happened:[BC]--"Smith found one-half of
+a whitish-yellow clay tablet, which, to all appearance, had been divided
+on each face into three columns. In the third column of the obverse or
+front side he read the words: 'On the mount Nizir the ship stood still.
+Then I took a dove and let her fly. The dove flew hither and thither, but
+finding no resting-place, returned to the ship.' Smith at once knew that
+he had discovered a fragment of the cuneiform narrative of the Deluge.
+With indefatigable perseverance he set to work to search the thousands of
+Assyrian tablet-fragments heaped up in the British Museum, for more
+pieces. His efforts were crowned with success. He did not indeed find a
+piece completing the half of the tablet first discovered, but he found
+instead fragments of two more copies of the narrative, which completed the
+text in the most felicitous manner and supplied several very important
+variations of it. One of these duplicates, which has been pieced out of
+sixteen little bits (see illustration on p. 262), bore the usual
+inscription at the bottom: 'The property of Asshurbanipal, King of hosts,
+King of the land of Asshur,' and contained the information that the
+Deluge-narrative was the eleventh tablet of a series, several fragments of
+which, Smith had already come across. With infinite pains he put all these
+fragments together and found that the story of the Deluge was only an
+incident in a great Heroic Epic, a poem written in twelve books, making in
+all about three thousand lines, which celebrated the deeds of an ancient
+king of Erech."
+
+7. Each book or chapter naturally occupied a separate tablet. All are by
+no means equally well preserved. Some parts, indeed, are missing, while
+several are so mutilated as to cause serious gaps and breaks in the
+narrative, and the first tablet has not yet been found at all. Yet, with
+all these drawbacks it is quite possible to build up a very intelligible
+outline of the whole story, while the eleventh tablet, owing to various
+fortunate additions that came to light from time to time, has been
+restored almost completely.
+
+8. The epic carries us back to the time when Erech was the capital of
+Shumir, and when the land was under the dominion of the Elamite
+conquerors, not passive or content, but striving manfully for
+deliverance. We may imagine the struggle to have been shared and headed
+by the native kings, whose memory would be gratefully treasured by later
+generations, and whose exploits would naturally become the theme of
+household tradition and poets' recitations. So much for the bare
+historical groundwork of the poem. It is easily to be distinguished from
+the rich by-play of fiction and wonderful adventure gradually woven into
+it from the ample fund of national myths and legends, which have
+gathered around the name of one hero-king, GISDHUBAR or IZDUBAR,[BD]
+said to be a native of the ancient city of MARAD and a direct descendant
+of the last antediluvian king HASISADRA, the same whom Berosus calls
+Xisuthros.
+
+9. It is unfortunate that the first tablet and the top part of the
+second are missing, for thus we lose the opening of the poem, which
+would probably give us valuable historical indications. What there is of
+the second tablet shows the city of Erech groaning under the tyranny of
+the Elamite conquerors. Erech had been governed by the divine Dumuzi,
+the husband of the goddess Ishtar. He had met an untimely and tragic
+death, and been succeeded by Ishtar, who had not been able, however, to
+make a stand against the foreign invaders, or, as the text picturesquely
+expresses it, "to hold up her head against the foe." Izdubar, as yet
+known to fame only as a powerful and indefatigable huntsman, then dwelt
+at Erech, where he had a singular dream. It seemed to him that the stars
+of heaven fell down and struck him on the back in their fall, while over
+him stood a terrible being, with fierce, threatening countenance and
+claws like a lion's, the sight of whom paralyzed him with fear.
+
+10. Deeply impressed with this dream, which appeared to him to portend
+strange things, Izdubar sent forth to all the most famous seers and wise
+men, promising the most princely rewards to whoever would interpret it
+for him: he should be ennobled with his family; he should take the high
+seat of honor at the royal feasts; he should be clothed in jewels and
+gold; he should have seven beautiful wives and enjoy every kind of
+distinction. But there was none found of wisdom equal to the task of
+reading the vision. At length he heard of a wonderful sage, named
+EABANI, far-famed for "his wisdom in all things and his knowledge of all
+that is either visible or concealed," but who dwelt apart from mankind,
+in a distant wilderness, in a cave, amidst the beasts of the forest.
+
+     "With the gazelles he ate his food at night, with the beasts of
+     the field he associated in the daytime, with the living things
+     of the waters his heart rejoiced."
+
+This strange being is always represented on the Babylonian cylinders as
+a Man-Bull, with horns on his head and a bull's feet and tail. He was
+not easily accessible, nor to be persuaded to come to Erech, even
+though the Sun-god, Shamash, himself "opened his lips and spoke to him
+from heaven," making great promises on Izdubar's behalf:--
+
+     "They shall clothe thee in royal robes, they shall make thee
+     great; and Izdubar shall become thy friend, and he shall place
+     thee in a luxurious seat at his left hand; the kings of the
+     earth shall kiss thy feet; he shall enrich thee and make the
+     men of Erech keep silence before thee."
+
+The hermit was proof against ambition and refused to leave his
+wilderness. Then a follower of Izdubar, ZAIDU, the huntsman, was sent to
+bring him; but he returned alone and reported that, when he had
+approached the seer's cave, he had been seized with fear and had not
+entered it, but had crawled back, climbing the steep bank on his hands
+and feet.
+
+[Illustration: 75.--IZDUBAR AND THE LION (BAS-RELIEF FROM KHORSABAD).
+(Smith's "Chaldea.")]
+
+11. At last Izdubar bethought him to send out Ishtar's handmaidens,
+SHAMHATU ("Grace") and HARIMTU ("Persuasion"), and they started for the
+wilderness under the escort of Zaidu. Shamhatu was the first to approach
+the hermit, but he heeded her little; he turned to her companion, and
+sat down at her feet; and when Harimtu ("Persuasion") spoke, bending her
+face towards him, he listened and was attentive. And she said to him:
+
+     "Famous art thou, Eabani, even like a god; why then associate
+     with the wild things of the desert? Thy place is in the midst
+     of Erech, the great city, in the temple, the seat of Anu and
+     Ishtar, in the palace of Izdubar, the man of might, who towers
+     amidst the leaders as a bull." "She spoke to him, and before
+     her words the wisdom of his heart fled and vanished."
+
+He answered:
+
+     "I will go to Erech, to the temple, the seat of Anu and Ishtar,
+     to the palace of Izdubar, the man of might, who towers amidst
+     the leaders as a bull. I will meet him and see his might. But I
+     shall bring to Erech a lion--let Izdubar destroy him if he can.
+     He is bred in the wilderness and of great strength."
+
+[Illustration: 76.--IZDUBAR AND THE LION. (British Museum.)]
+
+So Zaidu and the two women went back to Erech, and Eabani went with
+them, leading his lion. The chiefs of the city received him with great
+honors and gave a splendid entertainment in sign of rejoicing.
+
+12. It is evidently on this occasion that Izdubar conquers the seer's
+esteem by fighting and killing the lion, after which the hero and the
+sage enter into a solemn covenant of friendship. But the third tablet,
+which contains this part of the story, is so much mutilated as to leave
+much of the substance to conjecture, while all the details, and the
+interpretation of the dream which is probably given, are lost. The same
+is unfortunately the case with the fourth and fifth tablets, from which
+we can only gather that Izdubar and Eabani, who have become inseparable,
+start on an expedition against the Elamite tyrant, KHUMBABA, who holds
+his court in a gloomy forest of cedars and cypresses, enter his palace,
+fall upon him unawares and kill him, leaving his body to be torn and
+devoured by the birds of prey, after which exploit Izdubar, as his
+friend had predicted to him, is proclaimed king in Erech. The sixth
+tablet is far better preserved, and gives us one of the most interesting
+incidents almost complete.
+
+13. After Izdubar's victory, his glory and power were great, and the
+goddess Ishtar looked on him with favor and wished for his love.
+
+     "Izdubar," she said, "be my husband and I will be thy wife:
+     pledge thy troth to me. Thou shalt drive a chariot of gold and
+     precious stones, thy days shall be marked with conquests;
+     kings, princes and lords shall be subject to thee and kiss thy
+     feet; they shall bring thee tribute from mountain and valley,
+     thy herds and flocks shall multiply doubly, thy mules shall be
+     fleet, and thy oxen strong under the yoke. Thou shalt have no
+     rival."
+
+But Izdubar, in his pride, rejected the love of the goddess; he insulted
+her and taunted her with having loved Dumuzi and others before him.
+Great was the wrath of Ishtar; she ascended to heaven and stood before
+her father Anu:
+
+     "My father, Izdubar has insulted me. Izdubar scorns my beauty
+     and spurns my love."
+
+[Illustration: 77.--IZDUBAR AND EABANI FIGHT THE BULL OF
+ISHTAR.--IZDUBAR FIGHTS EABANI'S LION (BABYLONIAN CYLINDER). (Smith's
+"Chaldea.")]
+
+She demanded satisfaction, and Anu, at her request, created a monstrous
+bull, which he sent against the city of Erech. But Izdubar and his
+friend went out to fight the bull, and killed him. Eabani took hold of
+his tail and horns, and Izdubar gave him his deathblow. They drew the
+heart out of his body and offered it to Shamash. Then Ishtar ascended
+the wall of the city, and standing there cursed Izdubar. She gathered
+her handmaidens around her and they raised loud lamentations over the
+death of the divine bull. But Izdubar called together his people and
+bade them lift up the body and carry it to the altar of Shamash and lay
+it before the god. Then they washed their hands in the Euphrates and
+returned to the city, where they made a feast of rejoicing and revelled
+deep into the night, while in the streets a proclamation to the people
+of Erech was called out, which began with the triumphant words:
+
+     "Who is skilled among leaders? Who is great among men? Izdubar
+     is skilled among leaders; Izdubar is great among men."
+
+[Illustration: 78.--IZDUBAR AND EABANI (BABYLONIAN CYLINDER). (Perrot
+and Chipiez.)]
+
+14. But the vengeance of the offended goddess was not to be so easily
+defeated. It now fell on the hero in a more direct and personal way.
+Ishtar's mother, the goddess Anatu, smote Eabani with sudden death and
+Izdubar with a dire disease, a sort of leprosy, it would appear.
+Mourning for his friend, deprived of strength and tortured with
+intolerable pains, he saw visions and dreams which oppressed and
+terrified him, and there was now no wise, familiar voice to soothe and
+counsel him. At length he decided to consult his ancestor, Hasisadra,
+who dwelt far away, "at the mouth of the rivers," and was immortal, and
+to ask of him how he might find healing and strength. He started on his
+way alone and came to a strange country, where he met gigantic,
+monstrous beings, half men, half scorpions: their feet were below the
+earth, while their heads touched the gates of heaven; they were the
+warders of the sun and kept their watch over its rising and setting.
+They said one to another: "Who is this that comes to us with the mark of
+the divine wrath on his body?" Izdubar made his person and errand known
+to them; then they gave him directions how to reach the land of the
+blessed at the mouth of the rivers, but warned him that the way was long
+and full of hardships. He set out again and crossed a vast tract of
+country, where there was nothing but sand, not one cultivated field; and
+he walked on and on, never looking behind him, until he came to a
+beautiful grove by the seaside, where the trees bore fruits of emerald
+and other precious stones; this grove was guarded by two beautiful
+maidens, SIDURI and SABITU, but they looked with mistrust on the
+stranger with the mark of the gods on his body, and closed their
+dwelling against him.
+
+[Illustration: 79.--SCORPION-MEN. (Smith's "Chaldea.")]
+
+15. And now Izdubar stood by the shore of the Waters of Death, which are
+wide and deep, and separate the land of the living from that of the
+blessed and immortal dead. Here he encountered the ferryman URUBEL; to
+him he opened his heart and spoke of the friend whom he had loved and
+lost, and Urubel took him into his ship. For one month and fifteen days
+they sailed on the Waters of Death, until they reached that distant land
+by the mouth of the rivers, where Izdubar at length met his renowned
+ancestor face to face, and, even while he prayed for his advice and
+assistance, a very natural feeling of curiosity prompted him to ask "how
+he came to be translated alive into the assembly of the gods."
+Hasisadra, with great complaisance, answered his descendant's question
+and gave him a full account of the Deluge and his own share in that
+event, after which he informed him in what way he could be freed from
+the curse laid on him by the gods. Then turning to the ferryman:
+
+     "Urubel, the man whom thou hast brought hither, behold, disease
+     has covered his body, sickness has destroyed the strength of
+     his limbs. Take him with thee, Urubel, and purify him in the
+     waters, that his disease may be changed into beauty, that he
+     may throw off his sickness and the waters carry it away, that
+     health may cover his skin, and the hair of his head be restored
+     and descend in flowing locks down to his garment, that he may
+     go his way and return to his own country."
+
+[Illustration: 80.--STONE OBJECT FOUND AT ABU-HABBA (SIPPAR) BY MR. H.
+RASSAM, SHOWING, AMONG OTHER MYTHICAL DESIGNS, SHAMASH AND HIS WARDER,
+THE SCORPION-MAN.]
+
+16. When all had been done according to Hasisadra's instruction,
+Izdubar, restored to health and vigor, took leave of his ancestor, and
+entering the ship once more was carried back to the shore of the living
+by the friendly Urubel, who accompanied him all the way to Erech. But as
+they approached the city tears flowed down the hero's face and his heart
+was heavy within him for his lost friend, and he once more raised his
+voice in lamentation for him:
+
+     "Thou takest no part in the noble feast; to the assembly they
+     call thee not; thou liftest not the bow from the ground; what
+     is hit by the bow is not for thee; thy hand grasps not the
+     club and strikes not the prey, nor stretches thy foeman dead on
+     the earth. The wife thou lovest thou kissest not; the wife thou
+     hatest thou strikest not. The child thou lovest thou kissest
+     not; the child thou hatest thou strikest not. The might of the
+     earth has swallowed thee. O Darkness, Darkness, Mother
+     Darkness! thou enfoldest him like a mantle; like a deep well
+     thou enclosest him!"
+
+Thus Izdubar mourned for his friend, and went into the temple of Bel,
+and ceased not from lamenting and crying to the gods, till Ea mercifully
+inclined to his prayer and sent his son Meridug to bring Eabani's spirit
+out of the dark world of shades into the land of the blessed, there to
+live forever among the heroes of old, reclining on luxurious couches and
+drinking the pure water of eternal springs. The poem ends with a vivid
+description of a warrior's funeral:
+
+     "I see him who has been slain in battle. His father and mother
+     hold his head; his wife weeps over him; his friends stand
+     around; his prey lies on the ground uncovered and unheeded. The
+     vanquished captives follow; the food provided in the tents is
+     consumed."
+
+17. The incident of the Deluge, which has been merely mentioned above,
+not to interrupt the narrative by its disproportionate length, (the
+eleventh tablet being the best preserved of all), is too important not
+to be given in full.[BE]
+
+     "I will tell thee, Izdubar, how I was saved from the flood,"
+     begins Hasisadra, in answer to his descendant's question, "also
+     will I impart to thee the decree of the great gods. Thou
+     knowest Surippak, the city that is by the Euphrates. This city
+     was already very ancient when the gods were moved in their
+     hearts to ordain a great deluge, all of them, their father
+     Anu, their councillor the warlike Bel, their throne-bearer
+     Ninib, their leader Ennugi. The lord of inscrutable wisdom, the
+     god Ea, was with them and imparted to me their decision.
+     'Listen,' he said, 'and attend! Man of Surippak, son of
+     Ubaratutu,[BF] go out of thy house and build thee a ship. They
+     are willed to destroy the seed of life; but thou preserve it
+     and bring into the ship seed of every kind of life. The ship
+     which thou shalt build let it be ... in length, and ... in
+     width and height,[BG] and cover it also with a deck.' When I
+     heard this I spoke to Ea, my lord: 'If I construct the ship as
+     thou biddest me, O lord, the people and their elders will laugh
+     at me.' But Ea opened his lips once more and spoke to me his
+     servant: 'Men have rebelled against me, and I will do judgment
+     on them, high and low. But do thou close the door of the ship
+     when the time comes and I tell thee of it. Then enter the ship
+     and bring into it thy store of grain, all thy property, thy
+     family, thy men-servants and thy women-servants, and also thy
+     next of kin. The cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the
+     fields, I shall send to thee myself, that they may be safe
+     behind thy door.'--Then I built the ship and provided it with
+     stores of food and drink; I divided the interior into ...
+     compartments.[BG] I saw to the chinks and filled them; I poured
+     bitumen over its outer side and over its inner side. All that I
+     possessed I brought together and stowed it in the ship; all
+     that I had of gold, of silver, of the seed of life of every
+     kind; all my men-servants and my women-servants, the cattle of
+     the field, the wild beasts of the field, and also my nearest
+     friends. Then, when Shamash brought round the appointed time, a
+     voice spoke to me:--'This evening the heavens will rain
+     destruction, wherefore go thou into the ship and close thy
+     door. The appointed time has come,' spoke the voice, 'this
+     evening the heavens will rain destruction.' And greatly I
+     feared the sunset of that day, the day on which I was to begin
+     my voyage. I was sore afraid. Yet I entered into the ship and
+     closed the door behind me, to shut off the ship. And I confided
+     the great ship to the pilot, with all its freight.--Then a
+     great black cloud rises from the depths of the heavens, and
+     Raman thunders in the midst of it, while Nebo and Nergal
+     encounter each other, and the Throne-bearers walk over
+     mountains and vales. The mighty god of Pestilence lets loose
+     the whirlwinds; Ninib unceasingly makes the canals to
+     overflow; the Anunnaki bring up floods from the depths of the
+     earth, which quakes at their violence. Raman's mass of waters
+     rises even to heaven; light is changed into darkness. Confusion
+     and devastation fills the earth. Brother looks not after
+     brother, men have no thought for one another. In the heavens
+     the very gods are afraid; they seek a refuge in the highest
+     heaven of Anu; as a dog in its lair, the gods crouch by the
+     railing of heaven. Ishtar cries aloud with sorrow: 'Behold, all
+     is turned into mud, as I foretold to the gods! I prophesied
+     this disaster and the extermination of my creatures--men. But I
+     do not give them birth that they may fill the sea like the
+     brood of fishes.' Then the gods wept with her and sat lamenting
+     on one spot. For six days and seven nights wind, flood and
+     storm reigned supreme; but at dawn of the seventh day the
+     tempest decreased, the waters, which had battled like a mighty
+     host, abated their violence; the sea retired, and storm and
+     flood both ceased. I steered about the sea, lamenting that the
+     homesteads of men were changed into mud. The corpses drifted
+     about like logs. I opened a port-hole, and when the light of
+     day fell on my face I shivered and sat down and wept. I steered
+     over the countries which now were a terrible sea. Then a piece
+     of land rose out of the waters. The ship steered towards the
+     land Nizir. The mountain of the land Nizir held fast the ship
+     and did not let it go. Thus it was on the first and on the
+     second day, on the third and the fourth, also on the fifth and
+     sixth days. At dawn of the seventh day I took out a dove and
+     sent it forth. The dove went forth to and fro, but found no
+     resting-place and returned. Then I took out a swallow and sent
+     it forth. The swallow went forth, to and fro, but found no
+     resting-place and returned. Then I took out a raven and sent it
+     forth. The raven went forth, and when it saw that the waters
+     had abated, it came near again, cautiously wading through the
+     water, but did not return. Then I let out all the animals, to
+     the four winds of heaven, and offered a sacrifice. I raised an
+     altar on the highest summit of the mountain, placed the sacred
+     vessels on it seven by seven, and spread reeds, cedar-wood and
+     sweet herbs under them. The gods smelled a savor; the gods
+     smelled a sweet savor; like flies they swarmed around the
+     sacrifice. And when the goddess Ishtar came, she spread out on
+     high the great bows of her father Anu:--'By the necklace of my
+     neck,' she said, 'I shall be mindful of these days, never shall
+     I lose the memory of them! May all the gods come to the altar;
+     Bel alone shall not come, for that he controlled not his wrath,
+     and brought on the deluge, and gave up my men to destruction.'
+     When after that Bel came nigh and saw the ship, he was
+     perplexed, and his heart was filled with anger against the gods
+     and against the spirits of Heaven:--'Not a soul shall escape,'
+     he cried; 'not one man shall come alive out of destruction!'
+     Then the god Ninib opened his lips and spoke, addressing the
+     warlike Bel:--'Who but Ea can have done this? Ea knew, and
+     informed him of everything.' Then Ea opened his lips and spoke,
+     addressing the warlike Bel:--'Thou art the mighty leader of the
+     gods: but why hast thou acted thus recklessly and brought on
+     this deluge? Let the sinner suffer for his sin and the
+     evil-doer for his misdeeds; but to this man be gracious that he
+     may not be destroyed, and incline towards him favorably, that
+     he may be preserved. And instead of bringing on another deluge,
+     let lions and hyenas come and take from the number of men; send
+     a famine to unpeople the earth; let the god of Pestilence lay
+     men low. I have not imparted to Hasisadra the decision of the
+     great gods: I only sent him a dream, and he understood the
+     warning.'--Then Bel came to his senses. He entered the ship,
+     took hold of my hand and lifted me up; he also lifted up my
+     wife and laid her hand in mine. Then he turned towards us,
+     stood between us and spoke this blessing on us:--'Until now
+     Hasisadra was only human: but now he shall be raised to be
+     equal with the gods, together with his wife. He shall dwell in
+     the distant land, by the mouth of the rivers.' Then they took
+     me and translated me to the distant land by the mouth of the
+     rivers."
+
+18. Such is the great Chaldean Epic, the discovery of which produced so
+profound a sensation, not to say excitement, not only among special
+scholars, but in the reading world generally, while the full importance
+of it in the history of human culture cannot yet be realized at this
+early stage of our historical studies, but will appear more and more
+clearly as their course takes us to later nations and other lands. We
+will here linger over the poem only long enough to justify and explain
+the name given to it in the title of this chapter, of "Mythical Epos."
+
+19. Were the hero Izdubar a purely human person, it would be a matter of
+much wonder how the small nucleus of historical fact which the story of
+his adventures contains should have become entwined and overgrown with
+such a disproportionate quantity of the most extravagant fiction,
+oftentimes downright monstrous in its fancifulness. But the story is one
+far older than that of any mere human hero and relates to one far
+mightier: it is the story of the Sun in his progress through the year,
+retracing his career of increasing splendor as the spring advances to
+midsummer, the height of his power when he reaches the month represented
+in the Zodiac by the sign of the Lion, then the decay of his strength as
+he pales and sickens in the autumn, and at last his restoration to youth
+and vigor after he has passed the Waters of Death--Winter, the death of
+the year, the season of nature's deathlike torpor, out of which the sun
+has not strength sufficient to rouse her, until spring comes back and
+the circle begins again. An examination of the Accadian calendar,
+adopted by the more scientifically inclined Semites, shows that the
+names of most of the months and the signs by which they were represented
+on the maps of the corresponding constellations of the Zodiac, directly
+answer to various incidents of the poem, following, too, in the same
+order, which is that of the respective seasons of the year,--which, be
+it noted, began with the spring, in the middle of our month of March. If
+we compare the calendar months with the tablets of the poem we will find
+that they, in almost every case, correspond. As the first tablet is
+unfortunately still missing, we cannot judge how far it may have
+answered to the name of the first month--"the Altar of Bel." But the
+second month, called that of "the Propitious Bull," or the "Friendly
+Bull," very well corresponds to the second tablet which ends with
+Izdubar's sending for the seer Eabani, half bull half man, while the
+name and sign of the third, "the Twins," clearly alludes to the bond of
+friendship concluded between the two heroes, who became inseparable.
+Their victory over the tyrant Khumbaba in the fifth tablet is symbolized
+by the sign representing the victory of the Lion over the Bull, often
+abbreviated into that of the Lion alone, a sign plainly enough
+interpreted by the name "Month of Fire," so appropriate to the hottest
+and driest of seasons even in moderate climes--July-August. What makes
+this interpretation absolutely conclusive is the fact that in the
+symbolical imagery of all the poetry of the East, the Lion represents
+the principle of heat, of fire. The seventh tablet, containing the
+wooing of the hero by the goddess Ishtar, is too plainly reproduced in
+the name of the corresponding month, "the Month of the Message of
+Ishtar," to need explanation. The sign, too, is that of a woman with a
+bow, the usual mode of representing the goddess. The sign of the eighth
+month, "the Scorpion," commemorates the gigantic Warders of the Sun,
+half men half scorpions, whom Izdubar encounters when he starts on his
+journey to the land of the dead. The ninth month is called "the Cloudy,"
+surely a meet name for November-December, and in no way inconsistent
+with the contents of the ninth tablet, which shows Izdubar navigating
+the "Waters of Death." In the tenth month (December-January), the sun
+reaches his very lowest point, that of the winter solstice with its
+shortest days, whence the name "Month of the Cavern of the Setting Sun,"
+and the tenth tablet tells how Izdubar reached the goal of his journey,
+the land of the illustrious dead, to which his great ancestor has been
+translated. To the eleventh month, "the Month of the Curse of Rain,"
+with the sign of the Waterman,--(January-February being in the low lands
+of the two rivers the time of the most violent and continuous
+rains)--answers the eleventh tablet with the account of the Deluge. The
+"Fishes of Ea" accompany the sun in the twelfth month, the last of the
+dark season, as he emerges, purified and invigorated, to resume his
+triumphant career with the beginning of the new year. From the context
+and sequence of the myth, it would appear that the name of the first
+month, "the Altar of Bel," must have had something to do with the
+reconciliation of the god after the Deluge, from which humanity may be
+said to take a new beginning, which would make the name a most
+auspicious one for the new year, while the sign--a Ram--might allude to
+the animal sacrificed on the altar. Each month being placed under the
+protection of some particular deity it is worthy of notice that Anu and
+Bel are the patrons of the first month, Ea of the second, (in connection
+with the wisdom of Eabani, who is called "the creature of Ea,") while
+Ishtar presides over the sixth, ("Message of Ishtar,") and Raman, the
+god of the atmosphere, of rain and storm and thunder, over the eleventh,
+("the Curse of Rain").
+
+20. The solar nature of the adventurous career attributed to the
+favorite national hero of Chaldea, now universally admitted, was first
+pointed out by Sir Henry Rawlinson: but it was Francois Lenormant who
+followed it out and established it in its details. His conclusions on
+the subject are given in such clear and forcible language, that it is a
+pleasure to reproduce them:[BH]--"1st. The Chaldeans and Babylonians
+had, concerning the twelve months of the year, myths for the most part
+belonging to the series of traditions anterior to the separation of the
+great races of mankind which descended from the highlands of Pamir,
+since we find analogous myths among the pure Semites and other nations.
+As early as the time when they dwelt on the plains of the Tigris and
+Euphrates, they connected these myths with the different epochs of the
+year, not with a view to agricultural occupations, but in connection
+with the great periodical phenomena of the atmosphere and the different
+stations in the sun's yearly course, as they occurred in that particular
+region; hence the signs characterizing the twelve solar mansions in the
+Zodiac and the symbolical names given to the months by the Accads.--2d.
+It was those myths, strung together in their successive order, which
+served as foundation to the epic story of Izdubar, the fiery and solar
+hero, and in the poem which was copied at Erech by Asshurbanipal's order
+each of them formed the subject of one of the twelve tablets, making up
+the number of twelve separate books or chapters answering the twelve
+months of the year."--Even though the evidence is apparently so complete
+as not to need further confirmation, it is curious to note that the
+signs which compose the name of Izdubar convey the meaning "mass of
+fire," while Hasisadra's Accadian name means "the sun of life," "the
+morning sun," and his father's name, Ubaratutu, is translated "the glow
+of sunset."
+
+21. George Smith indignantly repudiated this mythic interpretation of
+the hero's exploits, and claimed for them a strictly historical
+character. But we have seen that the two are by no means incompatible,
+since history, when handed down through centuries by mere oral
+tradition, is liable to many vicissitudes in the telling and retelling,
+and people are sure to arrange their favorite and most familiar stories,
+the mythical signification of which has long been forgotten, around the
+central figure of the heroes they love best, around the most important
+but vaguely recollected events in their national life. Hence it came to
+pass that identically the same stories, with but slight local
+variations, were told of heroes in different nations and countries; for
+the stock of original, or, as one may say, primary myths is
+comparatively small and the same for all, dating back to a time when
+mankind was not yet divided. In the course of ages and migrations it
+has been altered, like a rich hereditary robe, to fit and adorn many and
+very different persons.
+
+22. One of the prettiest, oldest, and most universally favorite solar
+myths is the one which represents the Sun as a divine being, youthful
+and of surpassing beauty, beloved by or wedded to an equally powerful
+goddess, but meeting a premature death by accident and descending into
+the dark land of shades, from which, however, after a time he returns as
+glorious and beautiful as before. In this poetical fancy, the land of
+shades symbolizes the numb and lifeless period of winter as aptly as the
+Waters of Death in the Izdubar Epic, while the seeming death of the
+young god answers to the sickening of the hero at that declining season
+of the year when the sun's rays lose their vigor and are overcome by the
+powers of darkness and cold. The goddess who loves the fair young god,
+and mourns him with passionate grief, until her wailings and prayers
+recall him from his deathlike trance, is Nature herself, loving,
+bountiful, ever productive, but pale, and bare, and powerless in her
+widowhood, while the sun-god, the spring of life whence she draws her
+very being, lies captive in the bonds of their common foe, grim Winter,
+which is but a form of Death itself. Their reunion at the god's
+resurrection in spring is the great wedding-feast, the revel and
+holiday-time of the world.
+
+23. This simple and perfectly transparent myth has been worked out more
+or less elaborately in all the countries of the East, and has found its
+way in some form or other into all the nations of the three great white
+races--of Japhet, Shem, and Ham--yet here again the precedence in point
+of time seems due to the older and more primitive--the Yellow or
+Turanian race; for the most ancient, and probably original form of it is
+the one which was inherited by the Semitic settlers of Chaldea from
+their Shumiro-Accadian predecessors, as shown by the Accadian name of
+the young solar god, DUMUZI, "the unfortunate husband of the goddess
+Ishtar," as he is called in the sixth tablet of the Izdubar epic. The
+name has been translated "Divine Offspring," but in later times lost all
+signification, being corrupted into TAMMUZ. In some Accadian hymns he is
+invoked as "the Shepherd, the lord Dumuzi, the lover of Ishtar." Well
+could a nomadic and pastoral people poetically liken the sun to a
+shepherd, whose flocks were the fleecy clouds as they speed across the
+vast plains of heaven or the bright, innumerable stars. This comparison,
+as pretty as it is natural, kept its hold in all ages and nations on the
+popular fancy, which played on it an infinite variety of ingenious
+changes, but it is only cuneiform science which has proved that it could
+be traced back to the very earliest race whose culture has left its mark
+on the world.
+
+24. Of Dumuzi's tragic death no text deciphered until now unfortunately
+gives the details. Only the remarkable fragment about the black pine of
+Eridhu, "marking the centre of the earth, in the dark forest, into the
+heart whereof man hath not penetrated," (see p. 287) tantalizingly ends
+with these suggestive words: "Within it Dumuzi...." Scholars have found
+reason for conjecturing that this fragment was the beginning of a
+mythical narrative recounting Dumuzi's death, which must have been
+represented as taking place in that dark and sacred forest of
+Eridhu,--probably through the agency of a wild beast sent against him by
+a jealous and hostile power, just as the bull created by Anu was sent
+against Izdubar.[BI] One thing, however, is sure, that both in the
+earlier (Turanian) and in the later (Semitic) calendary of Chaldea,
+there was a month set apart in honor and for the festival of Dumuzi. It
+was the month of June-July, beginning at the summer solstice, when the
+days begin to shorten, and the sun to decline towards its lower winter
+point--a retrograde movement, ingeniously indicated by the Zodiacal sign
+of that month, the Cancer or Crab. The festival of Dumuzi lasted during
+the six first days of the month, with processions and ceremonies bearing
+two distinct characters. The worshippers at first assembled in the guise
+of mourners, with lamentations and loud wailings, tearing of clothes and
+of hair, as though celebrating the young god's funeral, while on the
+sixth day his resurrection and reunion to Ishtar was commemorated with
+the noisiest, most extravagant demonstrations of rejoicing. This custom
+is alluded to in Izdubar's scornful answer to Ishtar's love-message,
+when he says to her: "Thou lovedst Dumuzi, _for whom they mourn year
+after year_," and was witnessed by the Jews when they were carried
+prisoners to Babylon as late as 600 B.C., as expressly mentioned by
+Ezekiel, the prophet of the Captivity:--"Then he brought me to the door
+of the Lord's house which was towards the north; _and behold, there sat
+the women weeping for Tammuz_." (Ezekiel, iii. 14.)
+
+25. A favorite version of Dumuzi's resurrection was that which told how
+Ishtar herself followed him into the Lower World, to claim him from
+their common foe, and thus yielded herself for a time into the power of
+her rival, the dread Queen of the Dead, who held her captive, and would
+not have released her but for the direct interference of the great gods.
+This was a rich mine of epic material, from which songs and stories must
+have flowed plentifully. We are lucky enough to possess a short epic on
+the subject, in one tablet, one of the chief gems of the indefatigable
+George Smith's discoveries,--a poem of great literary beauty, and nearly
+complete to within a few lines of the end, which are badly injured and
+scarcely legible. It is known under the name of "THE DESCENT OF ISHTAR,"
+as it relates only this one incident of the myth. The opening lines are
+unsurpassed for splendid poetry and sombre grandeur in any, even the
+most advanced literature.
+
+     26. "Towards the land whence there is no return, towards the
+     house of corruption, Ishtar, the daughter of Sin, has turned
+     her mind ... towards the dwelling that has an entrance but no
+     exit, towards the road that may be travelled but not retraced,
+     towards the hall from which the light of day is shut out,
+     where hunger feeds on dust and mud, where light is never seen,
+     where the shades of the dead dwell in the dark, clothed with
+     wings like birds. On the lintel of the gate and in the lock
+     dust lies accumulated.--Ishtar, when she reached the land
+     whence there is no return, to the keeper of the gate signified
+     her command: 'Keeper, open thy gate that I may pass. If thou
+     openest not and I may not enter, I will smite the gate, and
+     break the lock, I will demolish the threshold and enter by
+     force; then will I let loose the dead to return to the earth,
+     that they may live and eat again; I will make the risen dead
+     more numerous than the living.' The gate-keeper opened his lips
+     and spoke:--'Be appeased, O Lady, and let me go and report thy
+     name to Allat the Queen.'"
+
+Here follow a few much injured lines, the sense of which could not be
+restored in its entirety. The substance is that the gate-keeper
+announces to Allat that her sister Ishtar has come for the Water of
+Life, which is kept concealed in a distant nook of her dominions, and
+Allat is greatly disturbed at the news. But Ishtar announces that she
+comes in sorrow, not enmity:--
+
+     "I wish to weep over the heroes who have left their wives. I
+     wish to weep over the wives who have been taken from their
+     husbands' arms. I wish to weep over the Only Son--(a name of
+     Dumuzi)--who has been taken away before his time."
+
+Then Allat commands the keeper to open the gates and take Ishtar through
+the sevenfold enclosure, dealing by her as by all who come to those
+gates, that is, stripping her of her garments according to ancient
+custom.
+
+     "The keeper went and opened the gate: 'Enter, O Lady, and may
+     the halls of the Land whence there is no return be gladdened by
+     thy presence.' At the first gate he bade her enter and laid his
+     hand on her; he took the high headdress from her head: 'Why, O
+     keeper, takest thou the high headdress from my head?'--'Enter,
+     O Lady; such is Allat's command.'"
+
+The same scene is repeated at each of the seven gates; the keeper at
+each strips Ishtar of some article of her attire--her earrings, her
+necklace, her jewelled girdle, the bracelets on her arms and the bangles
+at her ankles, and lastly her long flowing garment. On each occasion the
+same words are repeated by both. When Ishtar entered the presence of
+Allat, the queen looked at her and taunted her to her face: then Ishtar
+could not control her anger and cursed her. Allat turned to her chief
+minister Namtar, the god of Pestilence--meet servant of the queen of the
+dead!--who is also the god of Fate, and ordered him to lead Ishtar away
+and afflict her with sixty dire diseases,--to strike her head and her
+heart, and her eyes, her hands and her feet, and all her limbs. So the
+goddess was led away and kept in durance and in misery. Meanwhile her
+absence was attended with most disastrous consequences to the upper
+world. With her, life and love had gone out of it; there were no
+marriages any more, no births, either among men or animals; nature was
+at a standstill. Great was the commotion among the gods. They sent a
+messenger to Ea to expose the state of affairs to him, and, as usual, to
+invoke his advice and assistance. Ea, in his fathomless wisdom, revolved
+a scheme. He created a phantom, Uddusunamir.
+
+     "'Go,' he said to him; 'towards the Land whence there is no
+     return direct thy face; the seven gates of the Arallu will open
+     before thee. Allat shall see thee and rejoice at thy coming,
+     her heart shall grow calm and her wrath shall vanish. Conjure
+     her with the name of the great gods, stiffen thy neck and keep
+     thy mind on the Spring of Life. Let the Lady (Ishtar) gain
+     access to the Spring of Life and drink of its waters.'--Allat,
+     when she heard these things, beat her breast and bit her
+     fingers with rage. Consenting, sore against her will, she
+     spoke:--'Go, Uddusunamir! May the great jailer place thee in
+     durance! May the foulness of the city ditches be thy food, the
+     waters of the city sewers thy drink! A dark dungeon be thy
+     dwelling, a sharp pole thy seat!'"
+
+Then she ordered Namtar to let Ishtar drink of the Spring of Life and to
+bear her from her sight. Namtar fulfilled her command and took the
+goddess through the seven enclosures, at each gate restoring to her the
+article of her attire that had been taken at her entrance. At the last
+gate he said to her:
+
+     "Thou hast paid no ransom to Allat for thy deliverance; so now
+     return to Dumuzi, the lover of thy youth; sprinkle over him the
+     sacred waters, clothe him in splendid garments, adorn him with
+     gems."
+
+26. The last lines are so badly mutilated that no efforts have as yet
+availed to make their sense anything but obscure, and so it must remain,
+unless new copies come to light. Yet so much is, at all events, evident,
+that they bore on the reunion of Ishtar and her young lover. The poem is
+thus complete in itself; but some think that it was introduced into the
+Izdubar epic as an independent episode, after the fashion of the Deluge
+narrative, and, if so, it is supposed to have been part of the seventh
+tablet. Whether such were really the case or no, matters little in
+comparison with the great importance these two poems possess as being
+the most ancient presentations, in a finished literary form, of the two
+most significant and universal nature-myths--the Solar and the Chthonic
+(see p. 272), the poetical fancies in which primitive mankind clothed
+the wonders of the heavens and the mystery of the earth, being content
+to admire and imagine where it could not comprehend and explain. We
+shall be led back continually to these, in very truth, _primary_ myths,
+for they not only served as groundwork to much of the most beautiful
+poetry of the world but suggested some of its loftiest and most
+cherished religious conceptions.
+
+[For a metrical version by Prof. Dyer of the story of
+"Ishtar's Descent," see Appendix, p. 367.]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[BC] Paul Haupt, "Der Keilinschriftliche Suendfluthbericht," 1881.
+
+[BD] There are difficulties in the way of reading this name, and
+scholars are not sure that this is the right pronunciation of it; but
+they retain it, until some new discovery helps to settle the question.
+
+[BE] Translated from the German version of Paul Haupt, "Der
+Keilinschriftliche Suendfluthbericht."
+
+[BF] The ninth king in the fabulous list of ten.
+
+[BG] The figures unfortunately obliterated.
+
+[BH] "Les Premieres Civilisations," Vol. II., pp. 78 ff.
+
+[BI] A. H. Sayce, "Babylonian Literature," p. 39; Fr. Lenormant, "Il
+Mito di Adone-Tammuz," pp. 12-13.
+
+
+
+
+                              VIII.
+
+RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY.--IDOLATRY AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM.--THE CHALDEAN
+          LEGENDS AND THE BOOK OF GENESIS.--RETROSPECT.
+
+
+1. In speaking of ancient nations, the words "Religion" and "Mythology"
+are generally used indiscriminately and convertibly. Yet the conceptions
+they express are essentially and radically different. The broadest
+difference, and the one from which all others flow, is that the
+one--Religion--is a thing of the feelings, while the other--Mythology--is
+a thing of the imagination. In other words, Religion comes from
+WITHIN--from that consciousness of limited power, that inborn need of
+superior help and guidance, forbearance and forgiveness, from that
+longing for absolute goodness and perfection, which make up the
+distinctively human attribute of "religiosity," that attribute which,
+together with the faculty of articulate speech, sets Man apart from and
+above all the rest of animated creation. (See p. 149.) Mythology, on the
+other hand, comes wholly from WITHOUT. It embodies impressions received
+by the senses from the outer world and transformed by the poetical
+faculty into images and stories. (See definition of "Myth" on p. 294.)
+Professor Max Mueller of Oxford has been the first, in his standard work
+"The Science of Language," clearly to define this radical difference
+between the two conceptions, which he has never since ceased to sound as
+a keynote through the long series of his works devoted to the study of
+the religions and mythologies of various nations. A few illustrations
+from the one nation with which we have as yet become familiar will help
+once for all to establish a thorough understanding on this point, most
+essential as it is to the comprehension of the workings of the human mind
+and soul throughout the long roll of struggles, errors and triumphs,
+achievements and failures which we call the history of mankind.
+
+2. There is no need to repeat here instances of the Shumiro-Accadian and
+Chaldean myths; the last three or four chapters have been filled with
+them. But the instances of religious feeling, though scattered in the
+same field, have to be carefully gleaned out and exhibited, for they
+belong to that undercurrent of the soul which pursues its way
+unobtrusively and is often apparently lost beneath the brilliant play of
+poetical fancies. But it is there nevertheless, and every now and then
+forces its way to the surface shining forth with a startling purity and
+beauty. When the Accadian poet invokes the Lord "who knows lie from
+truth," "who knows the truth that is in the soul of man," who "maketh
+lies to vanish," who "turneth wicked plots to a happy issue"--this is
+religion, not mythology, for this is not _a story_, it is the expression
+of _a feeling_. That "the Lord" whose divine omniscience and goodness
+is thus glorified is really the Sun, makes no difference; _that_ is an
+error of judgment, a want of knowledge, but the religious feeling is
+splendidly manifest in the invocation. But when, in the same hymn, the
+Sun is described as "stepping forth from the background of the skies,
+pushing back the bolts and opening the gate of the brilliant heaven, and
+raising his head above the land," etc., (see p. 172) that is only a very
+beautiful, imaginative description of a glorious natural
+phenomenon--sunrise; it is magnificent poetry, religious in so far as
+the sun is considered as a Being, a Divine Person, the object of an
+intensely devout and grateful feeling; still this is not religion, it is
+mythology, for it presents a material image to the mind, and one that
+can be easily turned into narrative, into _a story_,--which, in fact,
+_suggests_ a hero, a king, and a story. Take, again, the so-called
+"Penitential Psalms." To the specimen given on p. 178, let us add, for
+greater completeness, the following three remarkable fragments:
+
+     I. "God, my creator, take hold of my arms! Direct the breath of
+     my mouth, my hands direct, O lord of light."
+
+     II. "Lord, let not thy servant sink! Amidst the tumultuous
+     waters take hold of his hand!"
+
+     III. "He who fears not his God, will be cut off even like a
+     reed. He who honors not his goddess, his bodily strength will
+     waste away; like to a star of heaven, his splendor will pale;
+     he will vanish like to the waters of the night."
+
+3. All this is religion, of the purest, loftiest kind; fruitful, too, of
+good, the only real test of true religion. The deep humility, the
+trustful appeal, the feeling of dependence, the consciousness of
+weakness, of sin, and the longing for deliverance from them--these are
+all very different from the pompous phrases of empty praise and sterile
+admiration; they are things which flow from the heart, not the fancy,
+which lighten its weight of sorrow and self-reproach, brighten it with
+hope and good resolutions, in short, make it happier and better--what no
+mere imaginative poetry, however fine, can do.
+
+4. The radical distinction, then, between religious feeling and the
+poetical faculty of mythical creation, is easy to establish and follow
+out. On the other hand, the two are so constantly blended, so almost
+inextricably interwoven in the sacred poetry of the ancients, in their
+views of life and the world, and in their worship, that it is no wonder
+they should be so generally confused. The most correct way of putting
+the case would be, perhaps, to say that the ancient Religions--meaning
+by the word the whole body of sacred poetry and legends as well as the
+national forms of worship--were made up originally in about equal parts
+of religious feeling and of mythology. In many cases the exuberance of
+the imagination gained the upper hand, and there was such a riotous
+growth of mythical imagery and stories that the religious feeling was
+almost stifled under them. In others, again, the myths themselves
+suggested religious ideas of the deepest import and loftiest sublimity.
+Such was particularly the case with the solar and Chthonic Myths--the
+poetical presentation of the career of the Sun and the Earth--as
+connected with the doctrine of the soul's immortality.
+
+5. A curious and significant observation has been made in excavating the
+most ancient graves in the world, those of the so-called Mound-builders.
+This name is not that of any particular race or nation, but is given
+indiscriminately to all those peoples who lived, on any part of the
+globe, long before the earliest beginnings of even the remotest times
+which have been made historical by preserved monuments or inscriptions
+of any kind. All we know of those peoples is that they used to bury
+their dead--at least those of special renown or high rank--in deep and
+spacious stone-lined chambers dug in the ground, with a similar gallery
+leading to them, and covered by a mound of earth, sometimes of gigantic
+dimensions--a very hill. Hence the name. Of their life, their degree of
+civilization, what they thought and believed, we have no idea except in
+so far as the contents of the graves give us some indications. For, like
+the later, historical races, of which we find the graves in Chaldea and
+every other country of the ancient world, they used to bury along with
+the dead a multitude of things: vessels, containing food and drink;
+weapons, ornaments, household implements. The greater the power or
+renown of the dead man, the fuller and more luxurious his funeral
+outfit. It is indeed by no means rare to find the skeleton of a great
+chief surrounded by those of several women, and, at a respectful
+distance, more skeletons--evidently those of slaves--whose fractured
+skulls more than suggest the ghastly custom of killing wives and
+servants to do honor to an illustrious dead and to keep him company in
+his narrow underground mansion. Nothing but a belief in the continuation
+of existence after death could have prompted these practices. For what
+was the sense of giving him wives and slaves, and domestic articles of
+all kinds, food and weapons, unless it were for his service and use on
+his journey to the unknown land where he was to enter on a new stage of
+existence, which the survivors could not but imagine to be a
+reproduction, in its simple conditions and needs, of the one he was
+leaving? There is no race of men, however primitive, however untutored,
+in which this belief in immortality is not found deeply rooted,
+positive, unquestioning. The _belief_ is implanted in man by the _wish_;
+it answers one of the most imperative, unsilenceable longings of human
+nature. For, in proportion as life is pleasant and precious, death is
+hideous and repellent. The idea of utter destruction, of ceasing to be,
+is intolerable to the mind; indeed, the senses revolt against it, the
+mind refuses to grasp and admit it. Yet death is very real, and it is
+inevitable; and all human beings that come into the world have to learn
+to face the thought of it, and the reality too, in others, before they
+lie down and accept it for themselves. But what if death be _not_
+destruction? If it be but a passage from this into another
+world,--distant, unknown and perforce mysterious, but certain
+nevertheless, a world on the threshold of which the earthly body is
+dropped as an unnecessary garment? Then were death shorn of half its
+terrors. Indeed, the only unpleasantness about it would be, for him who
+goes, the momentary pang and the uncertainty as to what he is going to;
+and, for those who remain, the separation and the loathsome details--the
+disfigurement, the corruption. But these are soon gotten over, while the
+separation is only for a time; for all must go the same way, and the
+late-comers will find, will join their lost ones gone before. Surely it
+must be so! It were too horrible if it were not; it _must be_--it _is_!
+The process of feeling which arrived at this conclusion and hardened it
+into absolute faith, is very plain, and we can easily, each of us,
+reproduce it in our own souls, independently of the teachings we receive
+from childhood. But the mind is naturally inquiring, and involuntarily
+the question presents itself: this solution, so beautiful, so
+acceptable, so universal,--but so abstract--what suggested it? What
+analogy first led up to it from the material world of the senses? To
+this question we find no reply in so many words, for it is one of those
+that go to the very roots of our being, and such generally remain
+unanswered. But the graves dug by those old Mound-Builders present a
+singular feature, which almost seems to point to the answer. The tenant
+of the funereal chamber is most frequently found deposited in a
+crouching attitude, his back leaning against the stone-lined wall, and
+_with his face turned towards the West, in the direction of the setting
+sun_.... Here, then, is the suggestion, the analogy! The career of the
+sun is very like that of man. His rising in the east is like the birth
+of man. During the hours of his power, which we call the Day, he does
+his allotted work, of giving light and warmth to the world, now riding
+radiant and triumphant across an azure sky, now obscured by clouds,
+struggling through mists, or overwhelmed by tempests. How like the
+vicissitudes that checker the somewhat greater number of hours--or
+days--of which the sum makes up a human life! Then when his appointed
+time expires, he sinks down,--lower, lower--and disappears into
+darkness,--dies. So does man. What is this night, death? Is it
+destruction, or only a rest, or an absence? It is at all events _not_
+destruction. For as surely as we see the sun vanish in the west this
+evening, feeble and beamless, so surely shall we behold him to-morrow
+morning rise again in the east, glorious, vigorous and young. What
+happens to him in the interval? Who knows? Perhaps he sleeps, perhaps he
+travels through countries we know not of and does other work there; but
+one thing is sure: that he is not dead, for he will be up again
+to-morrow. Why should not man, whose career so much resembles the sun's
+in other respects, resemble him in this? Let the dead, then, be placed
+with their faces to the west, in token that theirs is but a setting like
+the sun's, to be followed by another rising, a renewed existence, though
+in another and unknown world.
+
+6. All this is sheer poetry and mythology. But how great its beauty, how
+obvious its hopeful suggestiveness, if it could appeal to the groping
+minds of those primitive men, the old Mound-Builders, and there lay the
+seed of a faith which has been more and more clung to, as mankind
+progressed in spiritual culture! For all the noblest races have
+cherished and worked out the myth of the setting sun in the most
+manifold ways, as the symbol of the soul's immortality. The poets of
+ancient India, some three thousand years ago, made the Sun the leader
+and king of the dead, who, as they said, followed where he had gone
+first, "showing the way to many." The Egyptians, perhaps the wisest and
+most spiritual of all ancient nations, came to make this myth the
+keystone of their entire religion, and placed all their burying-places
+in the west, amidst or beyond the Libyan ridge of hills behind which the
+sun vanished from the eyes of those who dwelt in the valley of the Nile.
+The Greeks imagined a happy residence for their bravest and wisest,
+which they called the Islands of the Blest, and placed in the furthest
+West, amidst the waters of the ocean into which the sun descends for his
+nightly rest.
+
+7. But the sun's course is twofold. If it is complete--beginning and
+ending--within the given number of hours which makes the day, it is
+repeated on a larger scale through the cycle of months which makes the
+year. The alternations of youth and age, triumph and decline, power and
+feebleness, are there represented and are regularly brought around by
+the different seasons. But the moral, the symbol, is still the same as
+regards final immortality. For if summer answers to the heyday of noon,
+autumn to the milder glow and the extinction of evening, and winter to
+the joyless dreariness of night, spring, like the morning, ever brings
+back the god, the hero, in the perfect splendor of a glorious
+resurrection. It was the solar-year myth with its magnificent
+accompaniment of astronomical pageantry, which took the greater hold on
+the fancy of the scientifically inclined Chaldeans, and which we find
+embodied with such admirable completeness in their great epic. We shall
+see, later on, more exclusively imaginative and poetical races showing a
+marked preference for the career of the sun as the hero of a day, and
+making the several incidents of the solar-day myth the subject of an
+infinite variety of stories, brilliant or pathetic, tender or heroic.
+But there is in nature another order of phenomena, intimately connected
+with and dependent on the phases of the sun, that is, the seasons, yet
+very different in their individual character, though pointing the same
+way as regards the suggestion of resurrection and immortality--the
+phenomena of the Earth and the Seed. These may in a more general way be
+described as Nature's productive power paralyzed during the numbed
+trance of winter, which is as the sleep of death, when the seed lies in
+the ground hid from sight and cold, even as a dead thing, but awaking to
+new life in the good time of spring, when the seed, in which life was
+never extinct but only dormant, bursts its bonds and breaks into verdant
+loveliness and bountiful crops. This is the essence and meaning of the
+Chthonic or Earth-myth, as universal as the Sun-myth, but of which
+different features have also been unequally developed by different
+races according to their individual tendencies. In the Chaldean version,
+the "Descent of Ishtar," the particular incident of the seed is quite
+wanting, unless the name of Dumuzi's month, "The Boon of the Seed" ("_Le
+Bienfait de la Semence._" Lenormant), may be considered as alluding to
+it. It is her fair young bridegroom, the beautiful Sun-god, whom the
+widowed goddess of Nature mourns and descends to seek among the dead.
+This aspect of the myth is almost exclusively developed in the religions
+of most Canaanitic and Semitic nations of the East, where we shall meet
+with it often and often. And here it may be remarked, without digressing
+or anticipating too far, that throughout the ancient world, the Solar
+and Chthonic cycles of myths have been the most universal and important,
+the very centre and groundwork of many of the ancient mythic religions,
+and used as vehicles for more or less sublime religious conceptions,
+according to the higher or lower spiritual level of the worshipping
+nations.
+
+8. It must be confessed that, amidst the nations of Western Asia, this
+level was, on the whole, not a very lofty one. Both the Hamitic and
+Semitic races were, as a rule, of a naturally sensuous disposition; the
+former being, moreover, distinguished by a very decidedly material turn
+of mind. The Kushites, of whom a branch perhaps formed an important
+portion of the mixed population of Lower Mesopotamia, and especially the
+Canaanites, who spread themselves over all the country between the
+great rivers and the Western Sea--the Mediterranean--were no exception
+to this rule. If their priests--their professed thinkers, the men
+trained through generations for intellectual pursuits--had groped their
+way to the perception of One Divine Power ruling the world, they kept it
+to themselves, or, at least, out of sight, behind a complicated array of
+cosmogonic myths, nature-myths, symbols and parables, resulting in
+Chaldea in the highly artificial system which has been sketched
+above--(see Chapters V. and VI.)--a system singularly beautiful and
+deeply significant, but of which the mass of the people did not care to
+unravel the subtle intricacies, being quite content to accept it entire,
+in the most literal spirit, elementary nature-gods, astronomical
+abstractions, cosmogonical fables and all--questioning nothing, at peace
+in their mind and righteously self-conscious if they sacrificed at the
+various time-honored local shrines, and conformed to the prescribed
+forms and ceremonies. To these they privately added those innumerable
+practices of conjuring and rites of witchcraft, the heirloom of the
+older lords of the soil, which we saw the colleges of learned priests
+compelled, as strangers and comparative newcomers, to tolerate and even
+sanction by giving them a place, though an inferior one, in their own
+nobler system (see p. 250). Thus it was that, if a glimmer of Truth did
+feebly illumine the sanctuary and its immediate ministers, the people at
+large dwelt in the outer darkness of hopeless polytheism and, worse
+still, of idolatry. For, in bowing before the altars of their temples
+and the images in wood, stone or metal in which art strove to express
+what the sacred writings taught, the unlearned worshippers did not stop
+to consider that these were but pieces of human workmanship, deriving
+their sacredness solely from the subjects they treated and the place
+they adorned, nor did they strive to keep their thoughts intent on the
+invisible Beings represented by the images. It was so much simpler,
+easier and more comfortable to address their adoration to what was
+visible and near, to the shapes that were so closely within reach of
+their senses, that seemed so directly to receive their offerings and
+prayers, that became so dearly familiar from long associations. The bulk
+of the Chaldean nation for a long time remained Turanian, and the
+materialistic grossness of the original Shumiro-Accadian religion
+greatly fostered its idolatrous tendencies. The old belief in the
+talismanic virtues of all images (see p. 162) continued to assert
+itself, and was easily transferred to those representing the divinities
+of the later and more elaborate worship. Some portion of the divine
+substance or spirit was supposed somehow to pass into the material
+representation and reside therein. This is very clear from the way in
+which the inscriptions speak of the statues of gods, as though they were
+persons. Thus the famous cylinder of the Assyrian conqueror
+Asshurbanipal tells how he brought back "the goddess Nana," (i.e., her
+statue) who at the time of the great Elamite invasion, "had gone and
+dwelt in Elam, a place not appointed for her," and now spoke to him the
+king, saying: "From the midst of Elam bring me out and cause me to
+enter into Bitanna"--her own old sanctuary at Erech, "which she had
+delighted in." Then again the Assyrian conquerors take especial pride in
+carrying off with them the statues of the gods of the nations they
+subdue, and never fail to record the fact in these words: "I carried
+away _their gods_," beyond a doubt with the idea that, in so doing, they
+put it out of their enemies' power to procure the assistance of their
+divine protectors.
+
+9. In the population of Chaldea the Semitic element was strongly
+represented. It is probable that tribes of Semites came into the country
+at intervals, in successive bands, and for a long time wandered
+unhindered with their flocks, then gradually amalgamated with the
+settlers they found in possession, and whose culture they adopted, or
+else formed separate settlements of their own, not even then, however,
+quite losing their pastoral habits. Thus the Hebrew tribe, when it left
+Ur under Terah and Abraham (see page 121), seems to have resumed its
+nomadic life with the greatest willingness and ease, after dwelling a
+long time in or near that popular city, the principal capital of Shumir,
+the then dominant South. Whether this tribe were driven out of Ur, as
+some will have it,[BJ] or left of their own accord, it is perhaps not
+too bold to conjecture that the causes of their departure were partly
+connected with religious motives. For, alone among the Chaldeans and all
+the surrounding nations, this handful of Semites had disentangled the
+conception of monotheism from the obscuring wealth of Chaldean
+mythology, and had grasped it firmly. At least their leaders and elders,
+the patriarchs, had arrived at the conviction that the One living God
+was He whom they called "the Lord," and they strove to inspire their
+people with the same faith, and to detach them from the mythical
+beliefs, the idolatrous practices which they had adopted from those
+among whom they lived, and to which they clung with the tenacity of
+spiritual blindness and long habit. The later Hebrews themselves kept a
+clear remembrance of their ancestors having been heathen polytheists,
+and their own historians, writing more than a thousand years after
+Abraham's times, distinctly state the fact. In a long exhortation to the
+assembled tribes of Israel, which they put in the mouth of Joshua, the
+successor of Moses, they make him say:--"Your fathers dwelt on the other
+side of the flood" (i.e., the Euphrates, or perhaps the Jordan) "in old
+time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the father of Nachor, _and
+they served other gods_." And further on: "... Put away _the gods which
+your fathers served on the other side of the flood_ and in Egypt, and
+serve ye the Lord.... Choose you this day whom you will serve, whether
+the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the
+flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell; as for me
+and my house, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua, xxiv. 2, 14, 15.) What
+more probable than that the patriarchs, Terah and Abraham, should have
+led their people out of the midst of the Chaldeans, away from their
+great capital Ur, which held some of the oldest and most renowned
+Chaldean sanctuaries, and forth into the wilderness, partly with the
+object of removing them from corrupting associations. At all events that
+branch of the Hebrew tribe which remained in Mesopotamia with Nahor,
+Abraham's brother (see Gen. xxiv. xxix. and ff.), continued heathen and
+idolatrous, as we see from the detailed narrative in Genesis xxxi., of
+how Rachel "had stolen _the images that were her father's_" (xxxi. 19),
+when Jacob fled from Laban's house with his family, his cattle and all
+his goods. No doubt as to the value and meaning attached to these
+"images" is left when we see Laban, after having overtaken the
+fugitives, reprove Jacob in these words:--"And now, though thou wouldst
+needs be gone, because thou sore longedst for thy father's house, yet
+wherefore hast thou stolen _my gods_?" (xxxi. 30), to which Jacob, who
+knows nothing of Rachel's theft, replies:--"With whomsoever _thou
+findest thy gods_, let him not live" (xxxi. 32). But "Rachel had taken
+the images and put them in the camel's furniture, and sat upon them. And
+Laban searched all the tent, but found them not" (xxxi. 34). Now what
+could have induced Rachel to commit so dishonorable and, moreover,
+dangerous an action, but the idea that, in carrying away these images,
+her family's household "gods," she would insure a blessing and
+prosperity to herself and her house? That by so doing, she would,
+according to the heathens' notion, rob her father and old home of what
+she wished to secure herself (see page 344), does not seem to have
+disturbed her. It is clear from this that, even after she was wedded to
+Jacob the monotheist, she remained a heathen and idolater, though she
+concealed the fact from him.
+
+10. On the other hand, wholesale emigration was not sufficient to remove
+the evil. Had it indeed been a wilderness, unsettled in all its extent,
+into which the patriarchs led forth their people, they might have
+succeeded in weaning them completely from the old influences. But,
+scattered over it and already in possession, were numerous Canaanite
+tribes, wealthy and powerful under their chiefs--Amorites, and Hivites,
+and Hittites, and many more. In the pithy and picturesque Biblical
+language, "the Canaanite was in the land" (Genesis, xii. 6), and the
+Hebrews constantly came into contact with them, indeed were dependent on
+their tolerance and large hospitality for the freedom with which they
+were suffered to enjoy the pastures of "the land wherein they were
+strangers," as the vast region over which they ranged is frequently and
+pointedly called. Being but a handful of men, they had to be cautious in
+their dealings and to keep on good terms with the people among whom they
+were brought. "I am a stranger and a sojourner with you," admits
+Abraham, "bowing himself down before the people of the land," (a tribe
+of Hittites near Hebron, west of the Dead Sea), when he offers to buy of
+them a field, there to institute a family burying-place for himself and
+his race; for he had no legal right to any of the land, not so much as
+would yield a sepulchre to his dead, even though the "children of Heth"
+treat him with high honor, and, in speaking to him, say, "My lord," and
+"thou art a mighty prince among us" (Genesis, xxiii.). This transaction,
+conducted on both sides in a spirit of great courtesy and liberality, is
+not the only instance of the friendliness with which the Canaanite
+owners of the soil regarded the strangers, both in Abraham's lifetime
+and long after his death. His grandson, the patriarch Jacob, and his
+sons find the same tolerance among the Hivites of Shalem, who thus
+commune among themselves concerning them:--"These men are peaceable with
+us; therefore let them dwell in the land and trade therein; for the
+land, behold it is large enough for them; let us take their daughters
+for wives, and let us give them our daughters." And the Hivite prince
+speaks in this sense to the Hebrew chief:--"The soul of my son longeth
+for your daughter: I pray you, give her him to wife. And make ye
+marriages with us, and give your daughters unto us and take our
+daughters unto you. And ye shall dwell with us, and the land shall be
+before you; dwell and trade ye therein, and get you possessions
+therein."
+
+11. But this question of intermarriage was always a most grievous one;
+the question of all others at which the Hebrew leaders strictly drew the
+line of intercourse and good-fellowship; the more stubbornly that their
+people were naturally much inclined to such unions, since they came and
+went freely among their hosts, and their daughters went out, unhindered,
+"to see the daughters of the land." Now all the race of Canaan followed
+religions very similar to that of Chaldea, only grosser still in their
+details and forms of worship. Therefore, that the old idolatrous habits
+might not return strongly upon them under the influence of a heathen
+household, the patriarchs forbade marriage with the women of the
+countries through which they passed and repassed with their tents and
+flocks, and themselves abstained from it. Thus we see Abraham sending
+his steward all the way back to Mesopotamia to seek a wife for his son
+Isaac from among his own kinsfolk who had stayed there with his brother
+Nahor, and makes the old servant solemnly swear "by the Lord, the God of
+heaven and the God of earth": "Thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of
+the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell." And when Esau,
+Isaac's son, took two wives from among the Hittite women, it is
+expressly said that they were "a grief of mind unto Isaac and Rebekah;"
+and Isaac's most solemn charge to his other son, Jacob, as he sends him
+from him with his blessing, is: "Thou shalt not take a wife of the
+daughters of Canaan." Whithersoever the Hebrews came in the course of
+their long wanderings, which lasted many centuries, the same twofold
+prohibition was laid on them: of marrying with native women--"for
+surely," they are told, "they will turn away your heart after their
+gods," and of following idolatrous religions, a prohibition enforced by
+the severest penalties, even to that of death. But nothing could keep
+them long from breaking the law in both respects. The very frequency
+and emphasis with which the command is repeated, the violence of the
+denunciations against offenders, the terrible punishments threatened and
+often actually inflicted, sufficiently show how imperfectly and
+unwillingly it was obeyed. Indeed the entire Old Testament is one
+continuous illustration of the unslackening zeal with which the wise and
+enlightened men of Israel--its lawgivers, leaders, priests and
+prophets--pursued their arduous and often almost hopeless task, of
+keeping their people pure from worships and practices which to them, who
+had realized the fallacy of a belief in many gods, were the most
+pernicious abominations. In this spirit and to this end they preached,
+they fought, they promised, threatened, punished, and in this spirit, in
+later ages, they wrote.
+
+12. It is not until a nation is well established and enjoys a certain
+measure of prosperity, security and the leisure which accompanies them,
+that it begins to collect its own traditions and memories and set them
+down in order, into a continuous narrative. So it was with the Hebrews.
+The small tribe became a nation, which ceased from its wanderings and
+conquered for itself a permanent place on the face of the earth. But to
+do this took many hundred years, years of memorable adventures and
+vicissitudes, so that the materials which accumulated for the future
+historians, in stories, traditions, songs, were ample and varied. Much,
+too, must have been written down at a comparatively early period. _How_
+early must remain uncertain, since there is unfortunately nothing to
+show at what time the Hebrews learned the art of writing and their
+characters thought, like other alphabets, to be borrowed from those of
+the Phoenicians. However that may be, one thing is sure: that the
+different books which compose the body of the Hebrew Sacred Scriptures,
+which we call "the Old Testament," were collected from several and
+different sources, and put into the shape in which they have descended
+to us at a very late period, some almost as late as the birth of Christ.
+The first book of all, that of Genesis, describing the beginnings of the
+Jewish people,--("_Genesis_" is a Greek word, which means
+"Origin")--belongs at all events to a somewhat earlier date. It is put
+together mainly of two narratives, distinct and often different in point
+of spirit and even fact. The later compiler who had both sources before
+him to work into a final form, looked on both with too much respect to
+alter either, and generally contented himself with giving them side by
+side, (as in the story of Hagar, which is told twice and differently, in
+Chap. XVI. and Chap. XXI.), or intermixing them throughout, so that it
+takes much attention and pains to separate them, (as in the story of the
+Flood, Chap. VI.-VIII.). This latter story is almost identical with the
+Chaldean Deluge-legend included in the great Izdubar epic, of which it
+forms the eleventh tablet. (See Chap. VII.) Indeed, every child can see,
+by comparing the Chaldean cosmogonic and mythical legends with the first
+chapters of the Book of Genesis, those which relate to the beginnings
+not so much of the Hebrew people as of the human race and the world in
+general, that both must originally have flowed from one and the same
+spring of tradition and priestly lore. The resemblances are too staring,
+close, continuous, not to exclude all rational surmises as to casual
+coincidences. The differences are such as most strikingly illustrate the
+transformation which the same material can undergo when treated by two
+races of different moral standards and spiritual tendencies. Let us
+briefly examine both, side by side.
+
+13. To begin with the Creation. The description of the primeval chaos--a
+waste of waters, from which "the darkness was not lifted," (see p.
+261)--answers very well to that in Genesis, i. 2: "And the earth was
+without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The
+establishment of the heavenly bodies and the creation of the animals
+also correspond remarkably in both accounts, and even come in the same
+order (see p. 264, and Genesis, i. 14-22). The famous cylinder of the
+British Museum (see No. 62, p. 266) is strong presumption in favor of
+the identity of the Chaldean version of the first couple's disobedience
+with the Biblical one. We have seen the important position occupied in
+the Chaldean religion by the symbol of the Sacred Tree, which surely
+corresponds to the Tree of Life in Eden (see p. 268), and probably also
+to that of Knowledge, and the different passages and names ingeniously
+collected and confronted by scholars leave no doubt as to the Chaldeans
+having had the legend of an Eden, a garden of God (see p. 274). A better
+preserved copy of the Creation tablets with the now missing passages may
+be recovered any day, and there is no reason to doubt that they will be
+found as closely parallel to the Biblical narrative as those that have
+been recovered until now. But even as we have them at present it is very
+evident that the groundwork, the material, is the same in both. It is
+the manner, the spirit, which differs. In the Chaldean account,
+polytheism runs riot. Every element, every power of nature--Heaven,
+Earth, the Abyss, Atmosphere, etc.--has been personified into an
+individual divine being actively and severely engaged in the great work.
+The Hebrew narrative is severely monotheistic. In it GOD does all that
+"the gods" between them do in the other. Every poetical or allegorical
+turn of phrase is carefully avoided, lest it lead into the evil errors
+of the sister-nation. The symbolical myths--such as that of Bel's mixing
+his own blood with the clay out of which he fashions man,(see p.
+266)--are sternly discarded, for the same reason. One only is retained:
+the temptation by the Serpent. But the Serpent being manifestly the
+personification of the Evil Principle which is forever busy in the soul
+of man, there was no danger of its being deified and worshipped; and as,
+moreover, the tale told in this manner very picturesquely and strikingly
+points a great moral lesson, the Oriental love of parable and allegory
+could in this instance be allowed free scope. Besides, the Hebrew
+writers of the sacred books were not beyond or above the superstitions
+of their country and age; indeed they retained all of these that did not
+appear to them incompatible with monotheism. Thus throughout the Books
+of the Old Testament the Chaldean belief in witchcraft, divination from
+dreams and other signs is retained and openly professed, and astrology
+itself is not condemned, since among the destinations of the stars is
+mentioned that of serving to men "for signs": "And God said, let there
+be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the
+night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and
+years" (Genesis, i. 14). Even more explicit is the passage in the
+triumphal song of Deborah the prophetess, where celebrating the victory
+of Israel over Sisera, she says: "They fought from heaven: the stars in
+their courses fought against Sisera" (Judges, v. 20). But a belief in
+astrology by no means implies the admission of several gods. In one or
+two passages, indeed, we do find an expression which seems to have
+slipped in unawares, as an involuntary reminiscence of an original
+polytheism; it is where God, communing with himself on Adam's trespass,
+says: "Behold, the man is become _as one of us_, to know good and evil"
+(Gen. iii. 22). An even clearer trace confronts us in one of the two
+names that are given to God. These names are "Jehovah," (more correctly
+"Yahveh") and "Elohim." Now the latter name is the plural of _El_,
+"god," and so really means "the gods." If the sacred writers retained
+it, it was certainly not from carelessness or inadvertence. As they use
+it, it becomes in itself almost a profession of faith. It seems to
+proclaim the God of their religion as "the One God who is all the
+gods," in whom all the forces of the universe are contained and merged.
+
+14. There is one feature in the Biblical narrative, which, at first
+sight, wears the appearance of mythical treatment: it is the familiar
+way in which God is represented as coming and going, speaking and
+acting, after the manner of men, especially in such passages as these:
+"And they heard the voice of the Lord God _walking in the garden in the
+cool of the day_" (Gen. iii. 8); or, "Unto Adam also and to his wife did
+the Lord God _make coats of skins and he clothed them_" (Gen. iii. 21).
+But such a judgment would be a serious error. There is nothing mythical
+in this; only the tendency, common to all mankind, of endowing the Deity
+with human attributes of form, speech and action, whenever the attempt
+was made to bring it very closely within the reach of their imagination.
+This tendency is so universal, that it has been classed, under a special
+name, among the distinctive features of the human mind. It has been
+called ANTHROPOMORPHISM, (from two Greek words _Anthropos_, "man," and
+_morphe_, "form,") and can never be got rid of, because it is part and
+parcel of our very nature. Man's spiritual longings are infinite, his
+perceptive faculties are limited. His spirit has wings of flame that
+would lift him up and bear him even beyond the endlessness of space into
+pure abstraction; his senses have soles of lead that ever weigh him
+down, back to the earth, of which he is and to which he must needs
+cling, to exist at all. He can _conceive_, by a great effort, an
+abstract idea, eluding the grasp of senses, unclothed in matter; but he
+can _realize_, _imagine_, only by using such appliances as the senses
+supply him with. Therefore, the more fervently he grasps an idea, the
+more closely he assimilates it, the more it becomes materialized in his
+grasp, and when he attempts to reproduce it out of himself--behold! it
+has assumed the likeness of himself or something he has seen, heard,
+touched--the spirituality of it has become weighted with flesh, even as
+it is in himself. It is as it were a reproduction, in the intellectual
+world, of the eternal strife, in physical nature, between the two
+opposed forces of attraction and repulsion, the centrifugal and
+centripetal, of which the final result is to keep each body in its
+place, with a well-defined and limited range of motion allotted to it.
+Thus, however pure and spiritual the conception of the Deity may be,
+man, in making it real to himself, in bringing it down within his reach
+and ken, within the shrine of his heart, _will_, and _must_ perforce
+make of it a Being, human not only in shape, but also in thought and
+feeling. How otherwise could he grasp it at all? And the accessories
+with which he will surround it will necessarily be suggested by his own
+experience, copied from those among which he moves habitually himself.
+"Walking in the garden in the cool of the day" is an essentially
+Oriental and Southern recreation, and came quite naturally to the mind
+of a writer living in a land steeped in sunshine and sultriness. Had the
+writer been a Northerner, a denizen of snow-clad plains and ice-bound
+rivers, the Lord might probably have been represented as coming in a
+swift, fur-lined sleigh. Anthropomorphism, then, is in itself neither
+mythology nor idolatry; but it is very clear that it can with the utmost
+ease glide into either or both, with just a little help from poetry and,
+especially, from art, in its innocent endeavor to fix in tangible form
+the vague imaginings and gropings, of which words often are but a
+fleeting and feeble rendering. Hence the banishment of all material
+symbols, the absolute prohibition of any images whatever as an accessory
+of religious worship, which, next to the recognition of One only God, is
+the keystone of the Hebrew law:--"Thou shalt have no other gods before
+me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of
+anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or
+that is in the water under the earth.--Thou shalt not bow down thyself
+to them, nor serve them" (Exodus, xx. 3-5).
+
+But, to continue our parallel.
+
+15. The ten antediluvian kings of Berosus, who succeed the apparition of
+the divine Man-Fish, Ea-Oannes (see p. 196), have their exact
+counterpart in the ten antediluvian patriarchs of Genesis, v. Like the
+Chaldean kings, the patriarchs live an unnatural number of years. Only
+the extravagant figures of the Chaldean tradition are considerably
+reduced in the Hebrew version. While the former allots to its kings
+reigns of tens of thousands of years (see p. 196); the latter cuts them
+down to hundreds, and the utmost that it allows to any of its
+patriarchs is nine hundred and sixty-nine years of life (Methuselah).
+
+16. The resemblances between the two Deluge narratives are so obvious
+and continuous, that it is not these, but the differences that need
+pointing out. Here again the sober, severely monotheistic character of
+the Hebrew narrative contrasts most strikingly with the exuberant
+polytheism of the Chaldean one, in which Heaven, Sun, Storm, Sea, even
+Rain are personified, deified, and consistently act their several
+appropriate and most dramatic parts in the great cataclysm, while Nature
+herself, as the Great Mother of beings and fosterer of life, is
+represented, in the person of Ishtar, lamenting the slaughter of men
+(see p. 327). Apart from this fundamental difference in spirit, the
+identity in all the essential points of fact is amazing, and variations
+occur only in lesser details. The most characteristic one is that, while
+the Chaldean version describes the building and furnishing of a _ship_,
+with all the accuracy of much seafaring knowledge, and does not forget
+even to name the pilot, the Hebrew writer, with the clumsiness and
+ignorance of nautical matters natural to an inland people unfamiliar
+with the sea or the appearance of ships, speaks only of an _ark_ or
+_chest_. The greatest discrepancy is in the duration of the flood, which
+is much shorter in the Chaldean text than in the Hebrew. On the seventh
+day already, Hasisadra sends out the dove (see p. 316). But then in the
+Biblical narrative itself, made up, as was remarked above, of two
+parallel texts joined together, this same point is given differently in
+different places. According to Genesis, vii. 12, "the rain was upon the
+earth forty days and forty nights," while verse 24 of the same chapter
+tells us that "the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty
+days." Again, the number of the saved is far larger in the Chaldean
+account: Hasisadra takes with him into the ship all his men-servants,
+his women-servants, and even his "nearest friends," while Noah is
+allowed to save only his own immediate family, "his sons, and his wife,
+and his sons' wives" (Genesis, vi. 18). Then, the incident of the birds
+is differently told: Hasisadra sends out three birds, the dove, the
+swallow, and the raven; Noah only two--first the raven, then three times
+in succession the dove. But it is startling to find both narratives more
+than once using the same words. Thus the Hebrew writer tells how Noah
+"sent forth a raven, which went to and fro," and how "the dove found no
+rest for the sole of her foot and returned." Hasisadra relates: "I took
+out a dove and sent it forth. The dove went forth, to and fro, but found
+no resting-place and returned." And further, when Hasisadra describes
+the sacrifice he offered on the top of Mount Nizir, after he came forth
+from the ship, he says: "The gods smelled a savor; the gods smelled a
+sweet savor." "And the Lord smelled a sweet savor," says Genesis,--viii.
+21--of Noah's burnt-offering. These few hints must suffice to show how
+instructive and entertaining is a parallel study of the two narratives;
+it can be best done by attentively reading both alternately, and
+comparing them together, paragraph by paragraph.
+
+17. The legend of the Tower of Languages (see above, p. 293, and
+Genesis, xi. 3-9), is the last in the series of parallel Chaldean and
+Hebrew traditions. In the Bible it is immediately followed by the
+detailed genealogy of the Hebrews from Shem to Abraham. Therewith
+evidently ends the connection between the two people, who are severed
+for all time from the moment that Abraham goes forth with his tribe from
+Ur of the Chaldees, probably in the reign of Amarpal (father of
+Hammurabi), whom the Bible calls Amraphel, king of Shinear. The reign of
+Hammurabi was, as we have already seen (see p. 219), a prosperous and
+brilliant one. He was originally king of Tintir (the oldest name of
+Babylon), and when he united all the cities and local rulers of Chaldea
+under his supremacy, he assorted the pre-eminence among them for his own
+city, which he began to call by its new name, KA-DIMIRRA (Accadian for
+"Gate of God," which was translated into the Semitic BAB-IL). This king
+in every respect opens a new chapter in the history of Chaldea.
+Moreover, a great movement was taking place in all the region between
+the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf; nations were forming and
+growing, and Chaldea's most formidable rival and future conqueror,
+Assyria, was gradually gathering strength in the north, a fierce young
+lion-cub. By this newcomer among nations our attention will henceforth
+mainly be claimed. Let us, therefore, pause on the high place to which
+we have now arrived, and, casting a glance backward, take a rapid survey
+of the ground we have covered.
+
+18. Looking with strained eyes into a past dim and gray with the
+scarce-lifting mists of unnumbered ages, we behold our starting-point,
+the low land by the Gulf, Shumir, taking shape and color under the rule
+of Turanian settlers, the oldest known nation in the world. They drain
+and till the land, they make bricks and build cities, and prosper
+materially. But the spirit in them is dark and lives in cowering terror
+of self-created demons and evil things, which they yet believe they can
+control and compel. So their religion is one, not of worship and
+thanksgiving, but of dire conjuring and incantation, inconceivable
+superstition and witchcraft, an unutterable dreariness hardly lightened
+by the glimmering of a nobler faith, in the conception of the wise and
+beneficent Ea and his ever benevolently busy son, Meridug. But gradually
+there comes a change. Shumir lifts its gaze upward, and as it takes in
+more the beauty and the goodness of the world--in Sun and Moon and
+Stars, in the wholesome Waters and the purifying serviceable Fire, the
+good and divine Powers--the Gods multiply and the host of elementary
+spirits, mostly evil, becomes secondary. This change is greatly helped
+by the arrival of the meditative, star-gazing strangers, who take hold
+of the nature-worship and the nature-myths they find among the people to
+which they have come--a higher and more advanced race--and weave these,
+with their own star-worship and astrological lore, into a new faith, a
+religious system most ingeniously combined, elaborately harmonized, and
+full of profoundest meaning. The new religion is preached not only in
+words, but in brick and stone: temples arise all over the land, erected
+by the _patesis_--the priest-kings of the different cities--and
+libraries in which the priestly colleges reverently treasure both their
+own works and the older religious lore of the country. The ancient
+Turanian names of the gods are gradually translated into the new
+Cushito-Semitic language; yet the prayers and hymns, as well as the
+incantations, are still preserved in the original tongue, for the people
+of Turanian Shumir are the more numerous, and must be ruled and
+conciliated, not alienated. The more northern region, Accad, is, indeed,
+more thinly peopled; there the tribes of Semites, who now arrive in
+frequent instalments, spread rapidly and unhindered. The cities of Accad
+with their temples soon rival those of Shumir and strive to eclipse
+them, and their _patesis_ labor to predominate politically over those of
+the South. And it is with the North that the victory at first remains;
+its pre-eminence is asserted in the time of Sharrukin of Agade, about
+3800 B.C., but is resumed by the South some thousand years later, when a
+powerful dynasty (that to which belong Ur-ea and his son Dungi)
+establishes itself in Ur, while Tintir, the future head and centre of
+the united land of Chaldea, the great Babylon, if existing at all, is
+not yet heard of. It is these kings of Ur who first take the
+significant title "kings of Shumir and Accad." Meanwhile new and higher
+moral influences have been at work; the Semitic immigration has
+quickened the half mythical, half astronomical religion with a more
+spiritual element--of fervent adoration, of prayerful trust, of
+passionate contrition and self-humiliation in the bitter consciousness
+of sin, hitherto foreign to it, and has produced a new and beautiful
+religious literature, which marks its third and last stage. To this
+stage belong the often mentioned "Penitential Psalms," Semitic, nay,
+rather Hebrew in spirit, although still written in the old Turanian
+language (but in the northern dialect of Accad, a fact that in itself
+bears witness to their comparative lateness and the locality in which
+they sprang up), and too strikingly identical with similar songs of the
+golden age of Hebrew poetry in substance and form, not to have been the
+models from which the latter, by a sort of unconscious heredity, drew
+its inspirations. Then comes the great Elamitic invasion, with its
+plundering of cities, desecration of temples and sanctuaries, followed
+probably by several more through a period of at least three hundred
+years. The last, that of Khudur Lagamar, since it brings prominently
+forward the founder of the Hebrew nation, deserves to be particularly
+mentioned by that nation's historians, and, inasmuch as it coincides
+with the reign of Amarpal, king of Tintir and father of Hammurabi,
+serves to establish an important landmark in the history both of the
+Jews and of Chaldea. When we reach this comparatively recent date the
+mists have in great part rolled aside, and as we turn from the ages we
+have just surveyed to those that still lie before us, history guides us
+with a bolder step and shows us the landscape in a twilight which,
+though still dim and sometimes misleading, is yet that of breaking day,
+not of descending night.
+
+19. When we attempt to realize the prodigious vastness and remoteness of
+the horizon thus opened before us, a feeling akin to awe overcomes us.
+Until within a very few years, Egypt gloried in the undisputed boast of
+being the oldest country in the world, i.e., of reaching back, by its
+annals and monuments, to an earlier date than any other. But the
+discoveries that are continually being made in the valley of the two
+great rivers have forever silenced that boast. Chaldea points to a
+monumentally recorded date nearly 4000 B.C. This is more than Egypt can
+do. Her oldest authentic monuments,--her great Pyramids, are
+considerably later. Mr. F. Hommel, one of the leaders of Assyriology,
+forcibly expresses this feeling of wonder in a recent publication:[BK]
+"If," he says, "the Semites were already settled in Northern Babylonia
+(Accad) in the beginning of the fourth thousand B.C., in possession of
+the fully developed Shumiro-Accadian culture adopted by them,--a
+culture, moreover, which appears to have sprouted in Accad as a cutting
+from Shumir--then the latter must naturally be far, far older still,
+and have existed in its completed form IN THE FIFTH THOUSAND B.C.--an
+age to which I now unhesitatingly ascribe the South-Babylonian
+incantations." This would give our mental vision a sweep of full six
+thousand years, a pretty respectable figure! But when we remember that
+these first known settlers of Shumir came from somewhere else, and that
+they brought with them more than the rudiments of civilization, we are
+at once thrown back at least a couple of thousands of years more. For it
+must have taken all of that and more for men to pass from a life spent
+in caves and hunting the wild beasts to a stage of culture comprising
+the invention of a complete system of writing, the knowledge and working
+of metals, even to the mixing of copper and tin into bronze, and an
+expertness in agriculture equal not only to tilling, but to draining
+land. If we further pursue humanity--losing at last all count of time in
+years or even centuries--back to its original separation, to its first
+appearance on the earth,--if we go further still and try to think of the
+ages upon ages during which man existed not at all, yet the earth did,
+and was beautiful to look upon--(_had_ there been any to look on it),
+and good for the creatures who had it all to themselves--a dizziness
+comes over our senses, before the infinity of time, and we draw back,
+faint and awed, as we do when astronomy launches us, on a slender thread
+of figures, into the infinity of space. The six ages of a thousand years
+each which are all that our mind can firmly grasp then come to seem to
+us a very poor and puny fraction of eternity, to which we are tempted
+to apply almost scornfully the words spoken by the poet of as many
+years: "Six ages! six little ages! six drops of time!"[BL]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[BJ] Maspero, "Histoire Ancienne," p. 173.
+
+[BK] Ztschr. fuer Keilschriftforschung, "Zur altbabylonischen
+Chronologie," Heft I.
+
+[BL] Matthew Arnold, in "Mycerinus":
+
+        "Six years! six little years! six drops of time!"
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Professor Louis Dyer has devoted some time to preparing a free metrical
+translation of "Ishtar's Descent." Unfortunately, owing to his many
+occupations, only the first part of the poem is as yet finished. This he
+most kindly has placed at our disposal, authorizing us to present it to
+our readers.
+
+ISHTAR IN URUGAL.
+
+    Along the gloomy avenue of death
+    To seek the dread abysm of Urugal,
+    In everlasting Dark whence none returns,
+    Ishtar, the Moon-god's daughter, made resolve,
+    And that way, sick with sorrow, turned her face.
+      A road leads downward, but no road leads back
+    From Darkness' realm. There is Irkalla queen,
+    Named also Ninkigal, mother of pains.
+    Her portals close forever on her guests
+    And exit there is none, but all who enter,
+    To daylight strangers, and of joy unknown,
+    Within her sunless gates restrained must stay.
+    And there the only food vouchsafed is dust,
+    For slime they live on, who on earth have died.
+    Day's golden beam greets none and darkness reigns
+    Where hurtling bat-like forms of feathered men
+    Or human-fashioned birds imprisoned flit.
+    Close and with dust o'erstrewn, the dungeon doors
+    Are held by bolts with gathering mould o'ersealed.
+      By love distracted, though the queen of love,
+    Pale Ishtar downward flashed toward death's domain,
+    And swift approached these gates of Urugal,
+    Then paused impatient at its portals grim;
+    For love, whose strength no earthly bars restrain,
+    Gives not the key to open Darkness' Doors.
+    By service from all living men made proud,
+    Ishtar brooked not resistance from the dead.
+    She called the jailer, then to anger changed
+    The love that sped her on her breathless way,
+    And from her parted lips incontinent
+    Swept speech that made the unyielding warder quail.
+      "Quick, turnkey of the pit! swing wide these doors,
+    And fling them swiftly open. Tarry not!
+    For I will pass, even I will enter in.
+    Dare no denial, thou, bar not my way,
+    Else will I burst thy bolts and rend thy gates,
+    This lintel shatter else and wreck these doors.
+    The pent-up dead I else will loose, and lead
+    Back the departed to the lands they left,
+    Else bid the famished dwellers in the pit
+    Rise up to live and eat their fill once more.
+    Dead myriads then shall burden groaning earth,
+    Sore tasked without them by her living throngs."
+      Love's mistress, mastered by strong hate,
+    The warder heard, and wondered first, then feared
+    The angered goddess Ishtar what she spake,
+    Then answering said to Ishtar's wrathful might:
+    "O princess, stay thy hand; rend not the door,
+    But tarry here, while unto Ninkigal
+    I go, and tell thy glorious name to her."
+
+
+ISHTAR'S LAMENT.
+
+    "All love from earthly life with me departed,
+      With me to tarry in the gates of death;
+    In heaven's sun no warmth is longer hearted,
+      And chilled shall cheerless men now draw slow breath.
+
+    "I left in sadness life which I had given,
+      I turned from gladness and I walked with woe,
+    Toward living death by grief untimely driven,
+      I search for Thammuz whom harsh fate laid low
+
+    "The darkling pathway o'er the restless waters
+      Of seven seas that circle Death's domain
+    I trod, and followed after earth's sad daughters
+      Torn from their loved ones and ne'er seen again.
+
+    "Here must I enter in, here make my dwelling
+      With Thammuz in the mansion of the dead,
+    Driven to Famine's house by love compelling
+      And hunger for the sight of that dear head.
+
+    "O'er husbands will I weep, whom death has taken,
+      Whom fate in manhood's strength from life has swept,
+    Leaving on earth their living wives forsaken,--
+      O'er them with groans shall bitter tears be wept.
+
+    "And I will weep o'er wives, whose short day ended
+      Ere in glad offspring joyed their husbands' eyes;
+    Snatched from loved arms they left their lords untended,--
+      O'er them shall tearful lamentations rise.
+
+    "And I will weep o'er babes who left no brothers,
+      Young lives to the ills of age by hope opposed,
+    The sons of saddened sires and tearful mothers,
+      One moment's life by death eternal closed."
+
+
+NINKIGAL'S COMMAND TO THE WARDER.
+
+    "Leave thou this presence, slave, open the gate;
+    Since power is hers to force an entrance here,
+    Let her come in as come from life the dead,
+    Submissive to the laws of Death's domain.
+    Do unto her what unto all thou doest."
+
+Want of space bids us limit ourselves to these few fragments--surely
+sufficient to make our readers wish that Professor Dyer might spare some
+time to the completion of his task.
+
+
+
+
+                              INDEX.
+
+
+                   A.
+
+    Abel, killed by Cain, 129.
+
+    Abraham, wealthy and powerful chief, 200;
+      goes forth from Ur, 201;
+      his victory over Khudur-Lagamar, 222-224.
+
+    Abu-Habba, see Sippar.
+
+    Abu-Shahrein, see Eridhu.
+
+    Accad, Northern or Upper Chaldea, 145;
+      meaning of the word, ib.;
+      headquarters of Semitism, 204-205.
+
+    Accads, see Shumiro-Accads.
+
+    Accadian language, see Shumiro-Accadian.
+
+    Agade, capital of Accad, 205.
+
+    Agglutinative languages, meaning of the word, 136-137;
+      characteristic of Turanian nations, ib.;
+      spoken by the people of Shumir and Accad, 144.
+
+    Agricultural life, third stage of culture, first beginning of real
+          civilization, 122.
+
+    Akki, the water-carrier, see Sharrukin of Agade.
+
+    Alexander of Macedon conquers Babylon, 4;
+      his soldiers destroy the dams of the Euphrates, 5.
+
+    Allah, Arabic for "God," see Ilu.
+
+    Allat, queen of the Dead, 327-329.
+
+    Altai, the great Siberian mountain chain, 146;
+      probable cradle of the Turanian race, 147.
+
+    Altaic, another name for the Turanian or Yellow Race, 147.
+
+    Amarpal, also Sin-Muballit, king of Babylon, perhaps Amraphel, King of
+          Shinar, 226.
+
+    Amorite, the, a tribe of Canaan, 133.
+
+    Amraphel, see Amarpal.
+
+    Ana, or Zi-ana--"Heaven," or "Spirit of Heaven," p. 154.
+
+    Anatu, goddess, mother of Ishtar, smites Eabani with death and Izdubar
+          with leprosy, 310.
+
+    Anthropomorphism, meaning of the word, 355;
+      definition and causes of, 355-357.
+
+    Anu, first god of the first Babylonian Triad, same as Ana, 240;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Anunnaki, minor spirits of earth, 154, 250.
+
+    Anunit (the Moon), wife of Shamash, 245.
+
+    Apsu (the Abyss), 264.
+
+    Arali, or Arallu, the Land of the Dead, 157;
+      its connection with the Sacred Mountain, 276.
+
+    Arallu, see Arali.
+
+    Aram, a son of Shem, eponymous ancestor of the Aramaeans in Gen.
+          x., 131.
+
+    Arabs, their conquest and prosperous rule in Mesopotamia, 5;
+      Baghdad, their capital, 5;
+      nomads in Mesopotamia, 8;
+      their superstitious horror of the ruins and sculptures, 11;
+      they take the gigantic head for Nimrod, 22-24;
+      their strange ideas about the colossal winged bulls and lions and
+            their destination, 24-25;
+      their habit of plundering ancient tombs at Warka, 86;
+      their conquests and high culture in Asia and Africa, 118.
+
+    Arbela, city of Assyria, built in hilly region, 50.
+
+    Architecture, Chaldean, created by local conditions, 37-39;
+      Assyrian, borrowed from Chaldea, 50.
+
+    Areph-Kasdim, see Arphaxad, meaning of the word, 200.
+
+    Arphaxad, eldest son of Shem, 200.
+
+    Arphakshad, see Arphaxad.
+
+    Asshur, a son of Shem, eponymous ancestor of the Assyrians in Genesis
+          x., 131.
+
+    Asshurbanipal, King of Assyria, his Library, 100-112;
+      conquers Elam, destroys Shushan, and restores the statue of the
+            goddess Nana to Erech, 194-195.
+
+    Asshur-nazir-pal, King of Assyria, size of hall in his palace at Calah
+          (Nimrud), 63.
+
+    Assyria, the same as Upper Mesopotamia, 7;
+      rise of, 228.
+
+    Astrology, meaning of the word, 106;
+      a corruption of astronomy, 234;
+      the special study of priests, ib.
+
+    Astronomy, the ancient Chaldeans' proficiency in, 230;
+      fascination of, 231;
+      conducive to religious speculation, 232;
+      degenerates into astrology, 234;
+      the god Nebo, the patron of, 242.
+
+
+                   B.
+
+    Babbar, see Ud.
+
+    Babel, same as Babylon, 237.
+
+    Bab-el-Mandeb, Straits of, 189.
+
+    Bab-ilu, Semitic name of Babylon; meaning of the name, 225, 249.
+
+    Babylonia, a part of Lower Mesopotamia, 7;
+      excessive flatness of, 9;
+      later name for "Shumir and Accad" and for "Chaldea," 237.
+
+    Baghdad, capital of the Arabs' empire in Mesopotamia, 5;
+      its decay, 6.
+
+    Bassorah, see Busrah.
+
+    Bedouins, robber tribes of, 8;
+      distinctively a nomadic people, 116-118.
+
+    Bel, third god of the first Babylonian Triad, 239;
+      meaning of the name, 240;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246;
+      his battle with Tiamat, 288-290.
+
+    Belit, the wife of Bel, the feminine principle of nature, 244-245;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Bel-Maruduk, see Marduk.
+
+    Berosus, Babylonian priest; his History of Chaldea, 128;
+      his version of the legend of Oannes, 184-185;
+      his account of the Chaldean Cosmogony, 260-261, 267;
+      his account of the great tower and the confusion of tongues, 292-293;
+      his account of the Deluge, 299-301.
+
+    Birs-Nimrud or Birs-i-Nimrud, see Borsippa.
+
+    Books, not always of paper, 93;
+      stones and bricks used as books, 97;
+      walls and rocks, ib., 97-99.
+
+    Borsippa (Mound of Birs-Nimrud), its peculiar shape, 47;
+      Nebuchadnezzar's inscription found at, 72;
+      identified with the Tower of Babel, 293.
+
+    Botta begins excavations at Koyunjik, 14;
+      his disappointment, 15;
+      his great discovery at Khorsabad, 15-16.
+
+    Bricks, how men came to make, 39;
+      sun-dried or raw, and kiln-dried or baked, 40;
+      ancient bricks from the ruins used for modern constructions; trade
+            with ancient bricks at Hillah, 42.
+
+    British Museum, Rich's collection presented to, 14.
+
+    Busrah, or Bassorah, bulls and lions shipped to, down the Tigris, 52.
+
+    Byblos, ancient writing material, 94.
+
+
+                   C.
+
+    Ca-Dimirra (or Ka-Dimirra), second name of Babylon; meaning of the
+          name, 216, 249.
+
+    Cain, his crime, banishment, and posterity, 129.
+
+    Calah, or Kalah, one of the Assyrian capitals, the Larissa of
+          Xenophon, 3.
+
+    Calendar, Chaldean, 230, 318-321, 325.
+
+    Canaan, son of Ham, eponymous ancestor of many nations, 134.
+
+    Canaanites, migrations of, 190.
+
+    Cement, various qualities of, 44.
+
+    Chaldea, the same as Lower Mesopotamia, 7;
+      alluvial formation of, 37-38;
+      its extraordinary abundance in cemeteries, 78;
+      a nursery of nations, 198;
+      more often called by the ancients "Babylonia," 237.
+
+    Chaldeans, in the sense of "wise men of the East," astrologer,
+          magician, soothsayer,--a separate class of the priesthood,
+          254-255.
+
+    Charm against evil spells, 162.
+
+    Cherub, Cherubim, see Kirubu.
+
+    China, possibly mentioned in Isaiah, 136, note.
+
+    Chinese speak a monosyllabic language, 137;
+      their genius and its limitations, 138, 139;
+      oldest national religion of, 180, 181;
+      their "docenal" and "sexagesimal" system of counting, 230-231.
+
+    Chronology, vagueness of ancient, 193-194;
+      extravagant figures of, 196-197;
+      difficulty of establishing, 211-212.
+
+    Chthon, meaning of the word, 272.
+
+    Chthonic Powers, 272, 273.
+
+    Chthonic Myths, see Myths.
+
+    Cissians, see Kasshi.
+
+    Cities, building of, fourth stage of culture, 123, 124.
+
+    Classical Antiquity, meaning of the term; too exclusive study of, 12.
+
+    Coffins, ancient Chaldean, found at Warka: "jar-coffins," 82;
+      "dish-cover" coffins, 84;
+      "slipper-shaped" coffin (comparatively modern), 84-86.
+
+    Conjuring, against demons and sorcerers, 158-159;
+      admitted into the later reformed religion, 236.
+
+    Conjurors, admitted into the Babylonian priesthood, 250.
+
+    Cossaeans, see Kasshi.
+
+    Cosmogonic Myths, see Myths.
+
+    Cosmogony, meaning of the word, 259;
+      Chaldean, imparted by Berosus, 260-261;
+      original tablets discovered by Geo. Smith, 261-263;
+      their contents, 264 and ff.;
+      Berosus again, 267.
+
+    Cosmos, meaning of the word, 272.
+
+    Cuneiform writing, shape and specimen of, 10;
+      introduced into Chaldea by the Shumiro-Accads, 145.
+
+    Cush, or Kush, eldest son of Ham, 186;
+      probable early migrations of, 188;
+      ancient name of Ethiopia, 189.
+
+    Cushites, colonization of Turanian Chaldea by, 192.
+
+    Cylinders: seal cylinders in hard stones, 113-114;
+      foundation-cylinders, 114;
+      seal-cylinders worn as talismans, 166;
+      Babylonian cylinder, supposed to represent the Temptation and
+            Fall, 266.
+
+
+                   D.
+
+    Damkina, goddess, wife of Ea, mother of Meridug, 160.
+
+    Decoration: of palaces, 58-62;
+      of walls at Warka, 87-88.
+
+    Delitzsch, Friedrich, eminent Assyriologist, favors the Semitic
+          theory, 186.
+
+    Deluge, Berosus' account of, 299-301;
+      cuneiform account, in the 11th tablet of the Izdubar Epic, 314-317.
+
+    Demon of the South-West Wind, 168.
+
+    Diseases conceived as demons, 163.
+
+    Divination, a branch of Chaldean "science," in what it
+            consists, 251-252;
+      collection of texts on, in one hundred tablets, 252-253;
+      specimens of, 253-254.
+
+    Draining of palace mounds, 70;
+      of sepulchral mounds at Warka, 86-87.
+
+    Dumuzi, the husband of the goddess Ishtar, 303;
+      the hero of a solar Myth, 323-326.
+
+    Dur-Sharrukin, (see Khorsabad),
+      built in hilly region, 50.
+
+
+                   E.
+
+    Ea, sometimes Zi-ki-a, the Spirit of the Earth and Waters, 154;
+      protector against evil spirits and men, 160;
+      his chief sanctuary at Eridhu, 215;
+      second god of the first Babylonian Triad, 239;
+      his attributions, 240;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Eabani, the seer, 304;
+      invited by Izdubar, 304-305;
+      becomes Izdubar's friend, 307;
+      vanquishes with him the Elamite tyrant Khumbaba, 308;
+      smitten by Ishtar and Anatu, 310;
+      restored to life by the gods, 314.
+
+    E-Babbara, "House of the Sun," 215, 248.
+
+    Eber, see Heber.
+
+    El, see Ilu.
+
+    Elam, kingdom of, conquered by Asshurbanipal, 194;
+      meaning of the name, 220.
+
+    Elamite conquest of Chaldea, 219-221, 224-225.
+
+    Elohim, one of the Hebrew names for God, a plural of El, 354.
+      See Ilu.
+
+    Emanations, theory of divine, 238-239;
+      meaning of the word, 239.
+
+    Enoch, son of Cain, 129.
+
+    Enoch, the first city, built by Cain, 129.
+
+    Epic Poems, or Epics, 298-299.
+
+    Epic-Chaldaean, oldest known in the world, 299;
+      its division into tablets, 302.
+
+    Eponym, meaning of the word, 133.
+
+    Eponymous genealogies in Genesis X., 132-134.
+
+    Epos, national, meaning of the word, 299.
+
+    Erech (now Mound of Warka), oldest name Urukh, immense burying-grounds
+            around, 80-82;
+      plundered by Khudur-Nankhundi, king of Elam, 195;
+      library of, 209.
+
+    Eri-Aku (Ariokh of Ellassar), Elamite king of Larsam, 226.
+
+    Eridhu (modern Abu-Shahrein), the most ancient city of Shumir, 215;
+      specially sacred to Ea, 215, 246, 287.
+
+    Ethiopians, see Cush.
+
+    Excavations, how carried on, 30-34.
+
+
+                   F.
+
+    Fergusson, Jas., English explorer and writer on art subjects, 56.
+
+    Finns, a nation of Turanian stock, 138.
+
+    Flood, or Deluge, possibly not universal, 128-129.
+
+
+                   G.
+
+    Gan-Dunyash, or Kar-Dunyash, most ancient name of Babylonia
+          proper, 225, 286.
+
+    Genesis, first book of the Pentateuch, 127-129;
+      Chapter X. of, 130-142;
+      meaning of the word, 353.
+
+    Gibil, Fire, 173;
+      hymn to, 16;
+      his friendliness, 174;
+      invoked to prosper the fabrication of bronze, 16.
+
+    Gisdhubar, see Izdubar.
+
+    Gudea, _patesi_ of Sir-burla, 214.
+
+
+                   H.
+
+    Ham, second son of Noah, 130;
+      meaning of the name, 186.
+
+    Hammurabi, king of Babylon and all Chaldea, 226;
+      his long and glorious reign, ib.;
+      his public works and the "Royal Canal," 227.
+
+    Harimtu ("Persuasion"), one of the handmaidens of Ishtar, 305.
+
+    Hasisadra, same as Xisuthros, 303;
+      gives Izdubar an account of the great Flood, 314-317.
+
+    Heber, a descendant of Shem, eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews in
+          Genesis X., 131, 222.
+
+    Heroes, 296-298.
+
+    Heroic Ages, 299.
+
+    Heroic Myths, see Myths.
+
+    Hillah, built of bricks from the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, carries on
+          trade with ancient bricks, 42.
+
+    Himalaya Mountains, 188.
+
+    Hindu-Cush (or Kush) Mountains, 188.
+
+    Hit, ancient Is, on the Euphrates, springs of bitumen at, 44.
+
+    Hivite, the, a tribe of Canaan, 133.
+
+    Hungarians, a nation of Turanian stock, 138.
+
+
+                   I.
+
+    Idpa, the Demon of Fever, 156.
+
+    Igigi, three hundred, spirits of heaven, 250.
+
+    Ilu, or El, Semitic name for "god," 232.
+
+    Im, or Mermer, "Wind," 154.
+
+    India, 188.
+
+    Indus, the great river of India, 188.
+
+    Intercalary months, introduced by the Chaldeans to correct the
+          reckoning of their year, 230.
+
+    Is, see Hit.
+
+    Ishtar, the goddess of the planet Venus, 242;
+      the Warrior-Queen and Queen of Love, 245;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246;
+      offers her love to Izdubar, 308;
+      is rejected and sends a monstrous bull against him, 309;
+      causes Eabani's death and Izdubar's illness, 310;
+      descent of, into the land of shades, 326-330.
+
+    Izdubar, the hero of the great Chaldean Epic, 303;
+      his dream at Erech, 304;
+      invites Eabani, 304-305;
+      vanquishes with his help Khumbaba, the Elamite tyrant of Erech, 308;
+      offends Ishtar, 308;
+      vanquishes the divine Bull, with Eabani's help, 309;
+      is smitten with leprosy, 310;
+      travels to "the mouth of the great rivers" to consult his immortal
+            ancestor Hasisadra, 310-313;
+      is purified and healed, 313;
+      returns to Erech; his lament over Eabani's death, 313-314;
+      solar character of the Epic, 318-322.
+
+
+                   J.
+
+    Jabal and Jubal, sons of Lamech, descendants of Cain, 129.
+
+    Japhet, third son of Noah, 130.
+
+    Javan, a son of Japhet, eponymous ancestor of the Ionian Greeks, 134.
+
+    "Jonah's Mound," see Nebbi-Yunus.
+
+    Jubal, see Jabal and Jubal.
+
+
+                   K.
+
+    Ka-Dingirra, see Ca-Dimirra.
+
+    Kar-Dunyash, see Gan-Dunyash.
+
+    Kasbu, the Chaldean double hour, 230.
+
+    Kasr, Mound of, ruins of the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, 42.
+
+    Kasshi (Cossaeans or Cissians), conquer Chaldea, 228.
+
+    Kerbela and Nedjif, goal of pilgrim-caravans from Persia, 78.
+
+    Kerubim, see Kirubu.
+
+    Khorsabad, Mound of, Botta's excavations and brilliant discovery
+          at, 15-16.
+
+    Khudur-Lagamar (Chedorlaomer), king of Elam and Chaldea, his
+            conquests, 221;
+      plunders Sodom and Gomorrah with his allies, 222;
+      is overtaken by Abraham and routed, 223;
+      his probable date, 224.
+
+    Khudur-Nankhundi, king of Elam, invades Chaldea and carries the statue
+          of the goddess Nana away from Erech, 195.
+
+    Khumbaba, the Elamite tyrant of Erech vanquished by Izdubar and
+          Eabani, 308.
+
+    Kirubu, name of the Winged Bulls, 164.
+
+    Koyunjik, Mound of Xenophon's Mespila, 14;
+      Botta's unsuccessful exploration of, 15;
+      valuable find of small articles in a chamber at, in the palace of
+            Sennacherib, 34.
+
+    Kurds, nomadic tribes of, 8.
+
+
+                   L.
+
+    Lamech, fifth descendant of Cain, 129.
+
+    Larissa, ruins of ancient Calah, seen by Xenophon, 3.
+
+    Larsam (now Senkereh), city of Shumir, 215.
+
+    Layard meets Botta at Mossul in 1842, 17;
+      undertakes the exploration of Nimrud, 17-18;
+      his work and life in the East, 19-32;
+      discovers the Royal Library at Nineveh (Koyunjik), 100.
+
+    Lebanon Mountains, 190.
+
+    Lenormant, Francois, eminent French Orientalist; his work on the
+            religion of the Shumiro-Accads, 152-3;
+      favors the Cushite theory, 186.
+
+    Library of Asshurbanipal in his palace at Nineveh (Koyunjik);
+            discovered by Layard, 100;
+      re-opened by George Smith, 103;
+      contents and importance of, for modern scholarship, 106-109;
+      of Erech, 209.
+
+    Loftus, English explorer; his visit to Warka in 1854-5, 80-82;
+      procures slipper-shaped coffins for the British Museum, 36.
+
+    Louvre, Assyrian Collection at the, 17;
+      "Sarzec collection" added, 89.
+
+    Louvre, Armenian contrivance for lighting houses, 68.
+
+
+                   M.
+
+    Madai, a son of Japhet, eponymous ancestor of the Medes, 135.
+
+    Magician, derivation of the word, 255.
+
+    Marad, ancient city of Chaldea, 303.
+
+    Marduk, or Maruduk (Hebrew Merodach), god of the planet Jupiter, 241;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246;
+      special patron of Babylon, 249.
+
+    Maskim, the seven, evil spirits, 154;
+      incantation against the, 155;
+      the same, poetical version, 182.
+
+    Maspero, G., eminent French Orientalist, 197.
+
+    Medes, Xenophon's erroneous account of, 3-4;
+      mentioned under the name of Madai in Genesis X., 135.
+
+    Media, divided from Assyria by the Zagros chain, 50.
+
+    Menant, Joachim, French Assyriologist; his little book on the Royal
+          Library at Nineveh, 105.
+
+    Meridug, son of Ea, the Mediator, 160;
+      his dialogues with Ea, 161-162.
+
+    Mermer, see Im.
+
+    Merodach, see Marduk.
+
+    Mesopotamia, meaning of the name, 5;
+      peculiar formation of, 6;
+      division of, into Upper and Lower, 7.
+
+    Mespila, ruins of Nineveh; seen by Xenophon, 3;
+      now Mound of Koyunjik, 14.
+
+    Migrations of tribes, nations, races; probable first causes of
+            prehistoric migrations, 119;
+      caused by invasions and conquests, 125;
+      of the Turanian races, 146-147;
+      of the Cushites, 188;
+      of the Canaanites, 190.
+
+    Mizraim ("the Egyptians"), a son of Ham, eponymous ancestor of the
+            Egyptians, 133;
+      opposed to Cush, 189.
+
+    Monosyllabic languages--Chinese, 136-137.
+
+    Monotheism, meaning of the word, 238;
+      as conceived by the Hebrews, 344-345.
+
+    Mosul, the residence of a Turkish Pasha; origin of the name, 6;
+      the wicked Pasha of, 20-23.
+
+    Mound-Builders, their tombs, 335-338.
+
+    Mounds, their appearance, 9-10;
+      their contents, 11;
+      formation of, 72;
+      their usefulness in protecting the ruins and works of art, 74;
+      sepulchral mounds at Warka, 79-87.
+
+    Mugheir, see Ur.
+
+    Mul-ge, "Lord of the Abyss," 154.
+
+    Mummu-Tiamat (the "Billowy Sea"), 264;
+      her hostility to the gods, 288;
+      her fight with Bel, 288-290.
+
+    Mythology, definition of, 331;
+      distinction from Religion, 331-334.
+
+    Myths, meaning of the word, 294;
+      Cosmogonic, 294;
+      Heroic, 297-298;
+      Solar, 322, 339-340;
+      Chthonic, 330, 340-341.
+
+
+                   N.
+
+    Nabonidus, last king of Babylon, discovers Naram-sin's cylinder, 213;
+      discovers Hammurabi's cylinder at Larsam, 218-219.
+
+    Namtar, the Demon of Pestilence, 156, 157;
+      incantation against, 167;
+      Minister of Allat, Queen of the Dead, 328, 329.
+
+    Nana, Chaldean goddess, her statue restored by Asshurbanipal,
+            195, 343-344;
+      wife of Anu, 245.
+
+    Nannar, see Uru-Ki.
+
+    Naram-Sin, son of Sargon I. of Agade;
+      his cylinder discovered by Nabonidus, 213.
+
+    Nations, gradual formation of, 125-126.
+
+    Nebbi-Yunus, Mound of, its sacredness, 11;
+      its size, 49.
+
+    Nebo, or Nabu, the god of the planet Mercury, 242;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon;
+      his palace, now Mound of Kasr, 42;
+      his inscription of Borsippa, 72.
+
+    Nedjif, see Kerbela.
+
+    Nergal, the god of the planet Mars, and of War, 242;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Niffer, see Nippur.
+
+    Nimrod, dams on the Euphrates attributed to, by the Arabs, 5;
+      his name preserved, and many ruins called by it, 11;
+      gigantic head declared by the Arabs to be the head of, 22-24.
+
+    Nimrud, Mound of, Layard undertakes the exploration of, 17.
+
+    Nin-dar, the nightly sun, 175.
+
+    Nineveh, greatness and utter destruction of, 1;
+      ruins of, seen by Xenophon, called by him Mespila, 3;
+      site of, opposite Mossul, 11.
+
+    Nin-ge, see Nin-ki-gal.
+
+    Ninib, or Nineb, the god of the planet Saturn, 241;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Nin-ki-gal, or Nin-ge, "the Lady of the Abyss," 157.
+
+    Nippur (now Niffer), city of Accad, 216.
+
+    Nizir, Mount, the mountain on which Hasisadra's ship stood still, 301;
+      land and Mount, 316
+
+    Noah and his three sons, 130.
+
+    Nod, land of ("Land of Exile," or "of Wanderings"), 129.
+
+    Nomads, meaning of the word, and causes of nomadic life in modern
+          times, 118.
+
+
+                   O.
+
+    Oannes, legend of, told by Berosus, 185.
+
+    Oasis, meaning of the word, 118.
+
+
+                   P.
+
+    Palaces, their imposing aspect, 54;
+      palace of Sennacherib restored by Fergusson, 56;
+      ornamentation of palaces, 58;
+      winged Bulls and Lions at gateways of, 58;
+      sculptured slabs along the walls of, 58-60;
+      painted tiles used for the friezes of, 60-62;
+      proportions of halls, 63;
+      roofing of, 62-66;
+      lighting of, 66-68.
+
+    Papyrus, ancient writing material, 94.
+
+    Paradise, Chaldean legend of, see Sacred Tree and Ziggurat.
+      Meaning of the word, 277.
+
+    Parallel between the Book of Genesis and the Chaldean legends, 350-360.
+
+    Pastoral life, second stage of culture, 120;
+      necessarily nomadic, 121.
+
+    Patesis, meaning of the word, 203;
+      first form of royalty in Chaldean cities, ib., 235.
+
+    Patriarchal authority, first form of government, 123;
+      the tribe, or enlarged family, first form of the State, 123.
+
+    Penitential Psalms, Chaldean, 177-179.
+
+    Persian Gulf, flatness and marshiness of the region around, 7;
+      reached further inland than now, 201.
+
+    Persians, rule in Asia, 2;
+      the war between two royal brothers, 2;
+      Persian monarchy conquered by Alexander, 4;
+      not named in Genesis X., 134.
+
+    Platforms, artificial, 46-49.
+
+    Polytheism, meaning of the word, 237;
+      tendency to, of the Hebrews, combated by their leaders, 345-350.
+
+    Priesthood, Chaldean, causes of its power and influence, 233-234.
+
+
+                   R.
+
+    Races, Nations, and Tribes represented in antiquity under the name of a
+            man, an ancestor, 130-134;
+      black race and yellow race omitted from the list in Genesis X.,
+            134-142;
+      probable reasons for the omission, 135, 140.
+
+    Raman, third god of the second Babylonian Triad, his attributions,
+            240-241;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246.
+
+    Rassam, Hormuzd, explorer, 247, 248.
+
+    Rawlinson, Sir Henry, his work at the British Museum, 152.
+
+    Religion of the Shumiro-Accads the most primitive in the world, 148;
+      characteristics of Turanian religions, 180, 181;
+      definition of, as distinguished from Mythology, 331-334.
+
+    Religiosity, distinctively human characteristic, 148;
+      its awakening and development, 149-152.
+
+    Rich, the first explorer, 13;
+      his disappointment at Mossul, 14.
+
+
+                   S.
+
+    Sabattuv, the Babylonian and Assyrian "Sabbath," 256.
+
+    Sabeism, the worship of the heavenly bodies,
+      a Semitic form of religion, 232;
+      fostered by a pastoral and nomadic life, ib.
+
+    Sabitu, one of the maidens in the magic grove, 311.
+
+    Sacred Tree, sacredness of the Symbol, 268;
+      its conventional appearance on sculptures and cylinders, 268-270;
+      its signification, 272-274;
+      its connection with the legend of Paradise, 274-276.
+
+    Sargon of Agade, see Sharrukin.
+
+    Sarzec, E. de, French explorer;
+      his great find at Tell-Loh, 88-90;
+      statues found by him, 214.
+
+    Scorpion-men, the Warders of the Sun, 311.
+
+    Schrader, Eberhard, eminent Assyriologist,
+      favors the Semitic theory, 186.
+
+    Semites (more correctly Shemites),
+      one of the three great races given in Genesis X.;
+      named from its eponymous ancestor, Shem, 131.
+
+    Semitic language, 199;
+      culture, the beginning of historical times in Chaldea, 202, 203.
+
+    Sennacherib, king of Assyria, his palace at Koyunjik, 34;
+      Fergusson's restoration of his palace, 56;
+      his "Will" in the library of Nineveh, 109.
+
+    Senkereh, see Larsam.
+
+    Sepharvaim, see Sippar.
+
+    Seth (more correctly Sheth), third son of Adam, 131.
+
+    Shamash, the Sun-god,
+      second god of the Second Babylonian Triad, 240;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246;
+      his temple at Sippar discovered by H. Rassam, 247, 248.
+
+    Shamhatu ("Grace"), one of the handmaidens of Ishtar, 305.
+
+    Sharrukin I. of Agade (Sargon I.), 205;
+      legend about his birth, 206;
+      his glorious reign, 206;
+      Sharrukin II. of Agade (Sargon II.), 205;
+      his religious reform and literary labors, 207, 208;
+      probable founder of the library at Erech, 209;
+      date of, lately discovered, 213.
+
+    Shem, eldest son of Noah, 130;
+      meaning of the name, 198.
+
+    Shinar, or Shinear, geographical position of, 127.
+
+    Shumir, Southern or Lower Chaldea, 145.
+
+    Shumir and Accad, oldest name for Chaldea, 143, 144.
+
+    Shumiro-Accadian, oldest language of Chaldea, 108;
+      Agglutinative, 145.
+
+    Shumiro-Accads, oldest population of Chaldea,
+      of Turanian race, 144;
+      their language agglutinative, 145;
+      introduce into Chaldea cuneiform writing, metallurgy and
+            irrigation, ib.;
+      their probable migration, 146;
+      their theory of the world, 153.
+
+    Shushan (Susa), capital of Elam, destroyed by Asshurbanipal, 194.
+
+    Siddim, battle in the veil of, 221, 222.
+
+    Sidon, a Phoenician city, meaning of the name, 133;
+      the "first-born" son of Canaan, eponymous ancestor of the city in
+            Genesis X., ib.
+
+    Siduri, one of the maidens in the magic grove, 311.
+
+    Sin, the Moon-god, first god of the Second Babylonian Triad, 240;
+      one of the "twelve great gods," 246;
+      attacked by the seven rebellious spirits, 291.
+
+    Sin-Muballit, see Amarpal.
+
+    Sippar, sister city of Agade, 205;
+      Temple of Shamash at, excavated by H. Rassam, 247, 248.
+
+    Sir-burla (also Sir-gulla, or Sir-tella, or Zirbab), ancient city of
+          Chaldea, now Mound of Tell-Loh; discoveries at, by Sarzec, 88-90.
+
+    Sir-gulla, see Sir-burla.
+
+    Smith, George, English explorer;
+      his work at the British Museum, 102;
+      his expeditions to Nineveh, 103;
+      his success, and his death, 104;
+      his discovery of the Deluge Tablets, 301.
+
+    Sorcerers believed in, 157.
+
+    Spirits, belief in good and evil, the first beginning of religion, 150;
+      elementary, in the primitive Shumiro-Accadian religion, 153-155;
+      evil, 155-157;
+      allowed an inferior place in the later reformed religion, 236, 250;
+      rebellion of the seven evil, their attack against the Moon-god,
+            290, 291.
+
+    Statues found at Tell-Loh, 88, 214.
+
+    Style, ancient writing instrument, 94, 109.
+
+    Synchronism, meaning of the word, 212.
+
+
+                   T.
+
+    Tablets, in baked or unbaked clay, used as books, 109;
+      their shapes and sizes, 109;
+      mode of writing on, 109-110;
+      baking of, 110;
+      great numbers of, deposited in the British Museum, 110-112;
+      Chaldean tablets in clay cases, 112;
+      tablets found under the foundation stone at Khorsabad, 113, 114;
+      "Shamash tablet," 248.
+
+    Talismans, worn on the person or placed in buildings, 164.
+
+    Tammuz, see Dumuzi.
+
+    Taurus Mountains, 190.
+
+    Tell-Loh (also Tello), see Sir-burla.
+
+    Temples of Ea and Meridug at Eridhu, 246;
+      of the Moon-god at Ur, ib.;
+      of Anu and Nana at Erech, ib.;
+      of Shamash and Anunit at Sippar and Agade, 247;
+      of Bel Maruduk at Babylon and Borsippa, 249.
+
+    Theocracy, meaning of the word, 235.
+
+    Tiamat, see Mummu-Tiamat.
+
+    Tin-tir-ki, oldest name of Babylon, meaning of the name, 216.
+
+    Triads in Babylonian religion, and meaning of the word, 239-240.
+
+    Tubalcain, son of Lamech, descendant of Cain, the inventor of
+          metallurgy, 129.
+
+    Turanians, collective name for the whole Yellow Race, 136;
+      origin of the name, ib.;
+      the limitations of their genius, 136-139;
+      their imperfect forms of speech, monosyllabic and agglutinative,
+            136, 137;
+      "the oldest of men," 137;
+      everywhere precede the white races, 138;
+      omitted in Genesis X., 135, 139;
+      possibly represent the discarded Cainites or posterity of Cain,
+            140-142;
+      their tradition of a Paradise in the Altai, 147;
+      characteristics of Turanian religions, 180-181.
+
+    Turks, their misrule in Mesopotamia, 5-6;
+      greed and oppressiveness of their officials, 7-8;
+      one of the principal modern representatives of the Turanian
+            race, 136.
+
+
+                   U.
+
+    Ubaratutu, father of Hasisadra, 322.
+
+    Ud, or Babbar, the midday Sun, 171;
+      hymns to, 171, 172;
+      temple of, at Sippar, 247-248.
+
+    Uddusunamir, phantom created by Ea, and sent to Allat, to rescue
+          Ishtar, 328, 329.
+
+    Ur (Mound of Mugheir),
+      construction of its platform, 46;
+      earliest known capital of Shumir, maritime and commercial, 200;
+      Terah and Abraham go forth from, 201.
+
+    Ur-ea, king of Ur, 215;
+      his buildings, 216-218;
+      his signet cylinder, 218.
+
+    Urubel, the ferryman on the Waters of Death, 311;
+      purifies Izdubar and returns with him to Erech, 313.
+
+    Urukh, see Erech.
+
+    Uru-ki, or Nannar, the Shumiro-Accadian Moon-god, 240.
+
+
+                   V.
+
+    Vaults, of drains, 70;
+      sepulchral, at Warka, 83, 85.
+
+
+                   W.
+
+    Warka, see Erech.
+
+
+                   X.
+
+    Xenophon leads the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, 2;
+      passes by the runs of Calah and Nineveh, which he calls Larissa and
+            Mespila, 3.
+
+    Xisuthros, the king of, Berosus' Deluge-narrative, 300.
+      See Hasisadra.
+
+
+                   Y.
+
+    Yahveh, the correct form of "Jehovah," one of the Hebrew names for
+          God, 354.
+
+
+                   Z.
+
+    Zab, river, tributary of the Tigris, 17.
+
+    Zagros, mountain range of, divides Assyria from Media, 50;
+      stone quarried in, and transported down the Zab, 50, 51.
+
+    Zaidu, the huntsman, sent to Eabani, 305.
+
+    Zi-ana, see Ana.
+
+    Ziggurats, their peculiar shape and uses, 48;
+      used as observatories attached to temples, 234;
+      meaning of the word, 278;
+      their connection with the legend of Paradise, 278-280;
+      their singular orientation and its causes, 284-286;
+      Ziggurat of Birs-Nimrud (Borsippa), 280-283;
+      identified with the Tower of Babel, 293.
+
+    Zi-ki-a, see Ea.
+
+    Zirlab, see Sir-burla.
+
+    Zodiac, twelve signs of, familiar to the Chaldeans, 230;
+      signs of, established by Anu, 265;
+      represented in the twelve books of the Izdubar Epic, 318-321.
+
+
+
+
+      *      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES
+
+Page vii Introduction Chapter 4: Corrected to start at page 94
+
+Pages ix, 92, 93, 214, 215, Illustrations 44, 59:
+    Sirgulla standardised to Sir-gulla
+
+Page xi: Contents Chapter VIII: Added Sec. marker for section 12
+
+Page xiii: Full-stop (period) added after sittliche Weltordnung
+
+Pages xiii-xv Principal works: Normalised small caps in author names
+
+Page xiv: Menant standardised to Menant
+
+Page 36: Throughly corrected to thoroughly
+
+Illustration 9: Chippiez standardised to Chipiez
+
+Page 60: head-dress standardised to headdress
+
+Page 64: gate-ways standardised to gateways
+
+Page 68: Sufficent corrected to sufficient
+
+Illustration 33: Full stop (period) added to caption after louvre
+
+Page 104: life-time standardised to lifetime
+
+Page 105: Bibliotheque standardised to Bibliotheque
+
+Page 116: Double-quote added before ... In this
+
+Page 126: new-comers standardised to newcomers
+
+Pages 131, 375: Japheth standardised to Japhet
+
+Pages 147, 196, 371: Altai standardised as Altai
+
+Pages 154, 397, 404: Zi-ki-a standardised as Zi-ki-a
+
+Page 154: Anunna-ki standardised to Anunnaki
+
+Page 157: Uru-gal standardised as Urugal
+
+Page 157: 'who may the rather' rendered as 'who may then rather'
+
+Page 160: Meri-dug standardised to Meridug
+
+Page 163: Apostrophe added to patients
+
+Page 172: Mulge standardised to Mul-ge
+
+Page 210: Hyphen added to countercurrent
+
+Pages 214, 215, 375 Illustration 59: Sirburla standardised as Sir-burla
+
+Page 218: Dovoted corrected to devoted
+
+Pages 221, 360, 379: Shinear standardised to Shinear
+
+Page 225: Kadimirra standardised to Ka-dimirra
+
+Page 228: Cossaeans standardised to Cossaeans
+
+Footnote AN: Ur-ea as in original (not standardised to Ur-ea)
+
+Page 234: Full-stop (period) removed after "from the North"
+
+Page 234: Italics removed from i.e. to conform with other usages
+
+Pages 241, 246: Nindar standardised to Nin-dar
+
+Page 249: Babilu standardised to Bab-ilu
+
+Page 254: Double quote added after For instance:--
+
+Footnote AT: Asshurbanipal standardised to Assurbanipal
+
+Illustration 70: Illustration number added to illustration.
+
+Page 297: border-land standardised to borderland
+
+Page 302: Double quote added at the end of paragraph 6
+
+Illustration 77: EABANI'S replaced with EABANI'S.
+
+Page 323: death-like standardised to deathlike
+
+Footnote BE: Suendflutbericht standardised to Suendfluthbericht. Note that
+    the correct modern form is Der keilinschriftliche Sintfluthbericht
+
+Page 372: Asshurnazirpal standardised to Asshur-nazir-pal
+
+Page 372: Bab-el-Mander standardised to Bab-el-Mandeb
+
+Page 374: Arioch standardised to Ariokh
+
+Page 374: Abu-Shahreiin standardised to Abu-Shahrein
+
+Page 375: Himalaya standardised to Himalaya
+
+Page 376: Page number 42 added for index entry Kasr
+
+Page 379: Page number 131 added for index entry Seth
+
+General: Inconsistent spelling of Mosul/Mossul retained
+
+
+
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