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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #67742 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67742)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of The archæology of the cuneiform
-inscriptions, by Archibald Henry Sayce
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: The archæology of the cuneiform inscriptions
-
-Author: Archibald Henry Sayce
-
-Release Date: March 31, 2022 [eBook #67742]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: Wouter Franssen, Karin Spence and the Online Distributed
- Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
- produced from images generously made available by The
- Internet Archive)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE
-CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS ***
-
-
- [Illustration: REVERSE OF A TABLET IN THE HITTITE LANGUAGE FROM
- BOGHAZ KEUI.
-
- _Frontispiece._ [_See Preface, p._ vi.]
-
-
-
-
- The Archæology of the
- Cuneiform Inscriptions
-
-
- BY THE
-
- REV. A. H. SAYCE
-
- PROFESSOR OF ASSYRIOLOGY, OXFORD
-
-
- PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE GENERAL
- LITERATURE COMMITTEE
-
-
- _SECOND EDITION--REVISED_
-
-
- LONDON
- SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE
- NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.; 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.
- BRIGHTON: 129, NORTH STREET
- NEW YORK: E. S. GORHAM
-
- 1908
-
-
-
-
- RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
- BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
- BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
-
-
-
-
- CONTENTS
-
-
- CHAP. PAGE
-
- PREFACE v
-
- I. THE DECIPHERMENT OF THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS 7
-
- II. THE ARCHÆOLOGICAL MATERIALS; THE EXCAVATIONS AT SUSA
- AND THE ORIGIN OF BRONZE 36
-
- III. THE SUMERIANS 67
-
- IV. THE RELATION OF BABYLONIAN TO EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION 101
-
- V. BABYLONIA AND PALESTINE 135
-
- VI. ASIA MINOR 160
-
- VII. CANAAN IN THE CENTURY BEFORE THE EXODUS 187
-
- INDEX 215
-
-
-
-
- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-
- _Facing page_
-
- REVERSE OF A TABLET IN THE HITTITE LANGUAGE FROM
- BOGHAZ KEUI (_Frontispiece_)
-
- MAP--THE EASTERN WORLD IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY B.C. 7
-
- THE TOMB OF DARIUS 16
-
- BLACK OBELISK OF SHAL-MANESER II 21
-
- CHALDÆAN HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS IN TERRA-COTTA 21
-
- THE TELL OF JERABIS (PROBABLY THE ANCIENT CARCHEMISH) 40
-
- THE TUMULUS OF SUSA, AS IT APPEARED TOWARDS THE MIDDLE OF
- LAST CENTURY 46
-
- HEAD OF ONE OF THE STATUES FROM TELLO 58
-
- VASE OF SILVER, DEDICATED TO NINGIRSU BY ENTENA PATESI OF
- LAGAS 58
-
- THE TELL OF BORSIPPA, THE PRESENT BIRS-NIMRUD 78
-
- THE SEAL OF SHARGANI-SHAR-ALI (SARGON OF AKKAD): GILGAMES
- WATERS THE CELESTIAL OX 88
-
- BAS-RELIEF OF NARAM-SIN 88
-
- SITTING STATUE OF GUDEA 122
-
- MAP--THE FIRST ASSYRIAN EMPIRE 135
-
- VIEW OF THE TEMPLE OF UR IN ITS PRESENT STATE, ACCORDING
- TO LOFTUS 141
-
- THE GARDENS AND HILL OF DHUSPAS OR VAN 163
-
- THE RUINS OF A PALACE OF URARTU AT TOPRAK-KALEH 166
-
- THE RUINS AT BOGHAZ KEUI 174
-
- ONE OF THE PROCESSIONS IN THE RAVINE OF BOGHAZ 176
-
-
-
-
- PREFACE
-
-
-The first six chapters which follow, embody the Rhind Lectures in
-Archæology which I delivered at Edinburgh in October 1906. The seventh
-chapter appeared as an article in the _Contemporary Review_ for
-August 1905, and is here reprinted by the courtesy of the Editor to
-whom I render my thanks. The book is the first attempt to deal with
-what I would call the archæology of cuneiform decipherment, and like
-all pioneering work consequently claims the indulgence of the reader.
-For the sake of clearness I have been forced to repeat myself in a
-few instances, more especially in the sixth chapter, but what has
-thereby been lost in literary finish will, I hope, be compensated by an
-increase of clearness in the argument.
-
-If what I have written serves no other purpose, I shall be content
-if it draws attention to the miserably defective state of our
-archæological knowledge of Babylonia and Assyria, and to the necessity
-of scientific excavations being carried on there similar to those
-inaugurated by Mr. Rhind in Egypt. We have abundance of epigraphic
-material; it is the more purely archæological material that is still
-wanting.
-
-The need of it is every year becoming more urgent with the ever-growing
-revelation of the important and far-reaching part played by Babylonian
-culture in the ancient East. Excavation is just commencing in Asia
-Minor, and there are many indications that it has startling discoveries
-and surprises in store for us. Even while my manuscript was in the
-printer’s hands, Professor Winckler has been examining the cuneiform
-tablets found by him last spring at Boghaz Keui, on the site of the
-old Hittite capital in Cappadocia, and reading in them the records of
-the Hittite kings, Khattu-sil, Sapaluliuma, Mur-sila and Muttallu.
-Most of the tablets, though written in cuneiform characters, are in
-the native language of the country, but among them is a version in
-the Babylonian language of the treaty between the “great king of the
-Hittites” and Riya-masesa Mai or Ramses II., the Egyptian copy of which
-has long been known to us. The two Arzawan letters in the Tel el-Amarna
-collection no longer stand alone; the Boghaz Keui tablets show that
-an active correspondence was carried on between Egypt and Cappadocia.
-We must revise our old ideas about an absence of intercourse between
-different parts of the ancient Oriental world: there was quite as much
-intercommunication as there is to-day. Elam and Babylonia, Assyria
-and Asia Minor, Palestine and Egypt, all were linked together by the
-ties of a common culture; there were no exclusive religions to raise
-barriers between nation and nation, and the pottery of the Hittites
-was not only carried to the south of Canaan, but the civilization of
-Babylonia made its way through Hittite lands to the shores and islands
-of Greece. On the south, the Ægean became a highway from Asia Minor to
-Europe, while northward the Troad formed a bridge which carried the
-culture of Cappadocia to the Balkans and the Danube.
-
- A. H. SAYCE.
- _November_ 1906.
-
- [Illustration: THE EASTERN WORLD IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY B.C.]
-
-
-
-
- THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- THE DECIPHERMENT OF THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS
-
-
-The decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions was the archæological
-romance of the nineteenth century. There was no Rosetta stone to
-offer a clue to their meaning; the very names of the Assyrian kings
-and of the gods they worshipped had been lost and forgotten; and the
-characters themselves were but conventional groups of wedges, not
-pictures of objects and ideas like the hieroglyphs of Egypt. The
-decipherment started with the guess of a classical scholar who knew no
-Oriental languages and had never travelled in the East. And yet it is
-upon this guess that the vast superstructure of cuneiform decipherment
-has been slowly reared, with its ever-increasing mass of literature
-in numerous languages, the very existence of some of which had been
-previously unknown, and with its revelation of a civilized world that
-had faded out of sight before Greek history began. The ancient East
-has risen, as it were, from the dead, with its politics and its wars,
-its law and its trade, its art, its industries and its science. And
-this revelation of a new world, this resurrection of a dead past,
-has started from a successful guess. But the guess had been made in
-accordance with scientific method and had scientific reasons behind it,
-and it has proved to be the fruitful seed of an overspreading tree.
-
-Seventy years ago a single small case was sufficient to hold all the
-Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities possessed by the British Museum.
-They had been collected by Rich, to whom we owe the first accurate
-plans of the sites of Babylon and Nineveh. But the cuneiform characters
-found on the seals and clay cylinders of Babylonia were not the only
-characters of the kind that were known. Similar characters had been
-noticed by travellers on the walls of the ruined palaces of Persepolis
-in Persia. As far back as 1621 the Italian traveller Pietro della
-Valle had copied two or three of these, which he reproduced in the
-account of his travels some thirty years later. One of the first acts
-of the newly-founded Royal Society of Great Britain was to ask in their
-_Philosophical Transactions_ (p. 420) whether some draughtsman
-could not be found to copy the bas-reliefs and inscriptions which
-had thus been observed at Persepolis, though the only result of the
-inquiry was that a few years afterwards (in June 1693) two lines of
-cuneiform were published in the _Transactions_ from the papers of
-a Mr. Samuel Flower, who had been the agent of the East India Company
-in Persia. The editor of the _Transactions_ correctly concluded
-that the inscriptions were to be read from left to right. The cuneiform
-characters which were printed in the _Transactions_ were, however,
-not the first specimens of cuneiform script that had been published in
-England. Thomas Herbert, in the fourth edition of his Travels, which
-appeared in 1677, had already given three lines of characters taken
-indifferently from the three classes of inscriptions engraved on the
-Persian monuments; these were afterwards annexed by an Italian named
-Careri, who published them as his own. But the earliest inscription to
-be reproduced in full was a short one inscribed by Darius I. over the
-windows of his palace, which had been copied by Sir John Chardin during
-one of his two visits to Persepolis (in 1665 and 1673). Chardin was
-the son of a Huguenot jeweller in Paris, and after returning from his
-travels settled in London, where he became a great favourite of Charles
-II., and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. The inscription he had
-copied, however, was not printed in the earlier edition of his Travels,
-and had to wait until 1735 before it saw the light.[1]
-
-The existence of the cuneiform script thus became known in Europe,
-and that was all. It was not until Carsten Niebuhr, the father of the
-better-known historian, had been sent by the Danish Government on
-an exploring mission to the East that fairly complete and accurate
-copies of the inscriptions of Persepolis were at last put into the
-hands of European scholars. Niebuhr, who sacrificed his sight to the
-work, returned to Denmark in 1767, and seven years later the first
-of the three volumes in which the scientific results of his travels
-were embodied was published at Copenhagen. With the publication of the
-second volume, which contained his description of the Persepolitan
-monuments, the attempt to decipher the cuneiform characters began. He
-himself had noticed that in the first of the three classes or systems
-of cuneiform writing of which every inscription consisted, only
-forty-two characters were employed, and he therefore concluded that the
-system was alphabetic. Another Dane, Bishop Münter, discovered that the
-words in it were divided from one another by an oblique wedge,[2] and
-further showed that the monuments must belong to the age of Cyrus and
-his successors.[3] One word, which occurs without any variation towards
-the beginning of each inscription, he correctly inferred to signify
-“king”; but beyond this he was unable to advance.
-
-Meanwhile, Anquetil-Duperron, with self-sacrificing enthusiasm, had
-rediscovered the Zend of the later Zoroastrian faith, and de Sacy, with
-the help of it, had deciphered the Pehlevi inscriptions of the Sassanid
-kings. It was only the older Persian of the Achæmenian cuneiform
-inscriptions that still awaited interpretation; and a bridge had been
-built between it and modern Persian by means of the Zendic texts. In
-1802 the guess was made which opened the way to the decipherment of the
-mysterious wedge-shaped signs. The inspired genius was Grotefend, an
-accomplished Latinist and a school-master at Frankfort-on-the-Main.
-He knew no Oriental languages, but his mother-wit and common-sense
-more than made up for the deficiency. It was clear to him that the
-three systems of cuneiform represented three different languages,
-the Persian kings being like a Turkish pasha of to-day, who, when he
-wishes an edict to be understood, writes it in Turkish and Arabic. It
-was also clear to him that the first system must be the script of the
-Persian kings themselves, of which the other two were translations. The
-preparatory work for reading this had already been done by Münter; what
-Grotefend now had to do was to identify and read the names to which the
-word for “king” was attached.
-
-On comparing the inscriptions together he found that while the word
-for “king” remained unchanged, the word which accompanied it at the
-beginning of an inscription varied on different monuments. There were,
-in fact, two wholly different words, one of which was peculiar to one
-set of monuments, the other to another set. But he also found that the
-first of these words followed the other on the second set of monuments,
-though with a different termination from that which belonged to it when
-it took the place of the first word. Hence he conjectured that the two
-words represented the names of two Persian kings, one of whom was the
-son of the other, the termination of the second name when it followed
-the first being that of the genitive. It was now necessary to discover
-who the kings were whose names had thus been found. Fortunately the
-Achæmenian dynasty was not a long one, and the number of royal names
-in it was not large. And of these names, Cyrus was too short and
-Artaxerxes too long for either of the two names which Grotefend had
-detected. There only remained Darius and Xerxes, and as Xerxes was the
-son of Darius, the name which characterized the first set of monuments
-must be Darius.
-
-Grotefend’s next task was to ascertain the old Persian pronunciation of
-the name of Darius. This had been given by Strabo, while the Persian
-pronunciation of Xerxes was indicated in the Old Testament. With this
-assistance Grotefend was able to assign alphabetic values to the
-cuneiform characters which composed the two names, and a corner of the
-veil which had so long covered the cuneiform records was lifted at
-last. A comparison of the names which he had thus read gave the needful
-verification of the correctness of his method. In the names of Darius
-and Xerxes the same letters occur, but in different places; _a_ and _r_
-in _Darius_ occupy the second and third places, in _Xerxes_ the fourth
-and fifth, while _sh_, which is the last letter in _Darius_, would
-be the second and sixth in _Xerxes_. And such was actually the case.
-Grotefend was therefore justified in concluding that his guesses were
-correct, and that the right values had been assigned to the cuneiform
-characters. A beginning had been made in cuneiform decipherment, and in
-this instance the beginning was half the whole.
-
-Grotefend’s Memoir was presented to the Göttingen Academy on September
-4, 1802. By a curious accident it was at the same meeting that Heyne
-described the first attempts that had been made towards deciphering
-the Egyptian hieroglyphs. But the learned world looked askance at the
-discoveries of the young Latinist. The science of archæology was still
-unborn, and Oriental philologists were unable even to understand the
-inductive method of the decipherer. The Academy of Göttingen refused to
-print his communications, and it was not until 1815 that they appeared
-in the first volume of the History of his friend Heeren, who, being
-untrammelled by the prejudices of Oriental learning, had been one of
-the earliest to accept his conclusions.[4] For a whole generation the
-work of decipherment was allowed to sleep.
-
-It is unfortunately true that after his initial success Grotefend’s
-ignorance of Oriental languages really did stand in his way. He
-assumed that the language of the inscriptions and that of the
-_Zend-Avesta_ were one and the same, and accordingly went to the
-newly-found Zend dictionary for the readings of the cuneiform names
-and words. Vishtaspa, the name of the father of Darius, was thus
-read Goshtasp, the word for “king” became _khsheh_ instead of
-_khshayathiya_, and that which Grotefend had correctly divined
-to signify “great,” _eghre_ instead of _vazraka_. It is not
-wonderful, therefore, that he was never able to follow up the beginning
-he had made.
-
-To do this was reserved for the Zendic scholars of a later generation.
-Rask the Dane in 1826 determined the true form of the genitive plural,
-and thereby identified the character for _m_ which gave him the
-names of the supreme god Auramazda and of Achæmenes the forefather of
-Cyrus.[5] But the great step forward was made by the eminent French
-scholar, Emile Burnouf, in 1836.[6] The first of the inscriptions
-published by Niebuhr he discovered to contain a list of the satrapies
-of Darius. With this clue in his hand the reading of the names and the
-subsequent identification of the letters which composed them could
-be a question only of patience and time. For this Burnouf was well
-equipped by his philological knowledge and training, and the result
-was an alphabet of thirty letters, the greater part of which had been
-correctly deciphered.
-
-Burnouf’s Memoir on the subject was published in June 1836. In the
-preceding month his friend and pupil, Professor Lassen of Bonn, had
-also published a work on “The Old Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions of
-Persepolis.”[7] He and Burnouf had been in frequent correspondence, and
-his claim to have independently detected the names of the satrapies,
-and thereby to have fixed the values of the Persian characters, was
-in consequence fiercely attacked. To the attacks made upon him,
-however, Lassen never vouchsafed a reply. Whatever his obligations to
-Burnouf may have been, his own contributions to the decipherment of
-the inscriptions were numerous and important. He succeeded in fixing
-the true values of nearly all the letters in the Persian alphabet, in
-translating the texts, and in proving that the language of them was not
-Zend, but stood to both Zend and Sanskrit in the relation of a sister.
-
-Meanwhile another scholar, armed with fresh and important material,
-had entered the field. A young English officer in the East India
-Company’s service, Major Rawlinson by name, was attached to the
-British Mission in Persia. A happy inspiration led him to attempt the
-decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions. It was in 1835, when he
-was twenty-five years old, that he first began his work. All that he
-knew was that Grotefend had discovered in the texts of Persepolis the
-names of Darius, of Xerxes and of Hystaspes, but cut off as he was in
-his official position at Kirmanshah on the western frontier of Persia
-from European libraries, he was unable to procure either the Memoir of
-the German scholar or the articles to which it had given rise. Like
-Burnouf, he set himself to decipher the two inscriptions of Hamadan,
-which he had himself copied with great care. He soon recognized in them
-the names that had been read by Grotefend, and thus obtained a working
-alphabet. But his position in Persia soon gave him an advantage which
-was denied to his fellow-workers in Europe. It was not long before he
-found an opportunity of copying the great inscription on the sacred
-rock of Behistun, which had never been copied before. It was by far
-the longest cuneiform inscription yet discovered, and was filled with
-proper names, including those of the Persian satrapies. The copying of
-it, however, cost much time and labour, and was accomplished at actual
-risk of life, as Major Rawlinson, better known by his later title of
-Sir Henry Rawlinson, had to be lowered in a basket from the top of the
-cliff in order to ascertain the exact forms of certain characters.
-
- [Illustration: THE TOMB OF DARIUS.]
-
-In the following year (1836) Rawlinson moved to Teheran, and there
-received from Edwin Norris, the Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society,
-the Memoirs of Grotefend and Saint-Martin. In 1837 he finished his copy
-of the Behistun inscription, and sent a translation of its opening
-paragraphs to the Royal Asiatic Society. Before, however, his Paper
-could be published, the works of Lassen and Burnouf reached him,
-necessitating a revision of his Paper and the postponement of its
-publication. Then came other causes of delay. He was called away to
-Afghanistan to perform the onerous and responsible duties of British
-Agent at Kandahar, and it was not until 1843 that he was once more
-free to resume his cuneiform studies. A year later he was visited by
-the Danish Professor, Westergaard, who placed at his disposal the
-copies he had just made of the inscription on the tomb of Darius at
-Naksh-i-Rustam and of some shorter inscriptions from Persepolis,
-and Rawlinson’s Memoir was accordingly finished at last and sent
-to England. Here Norris subjected it to a careful revision, and at
-his suggestion Rawlinson once more visited Behistun, where he took
-squeezes and re-examined doubtful characters. In 1847 the first part
-of the Memoir was published, though the second part, containing the
-analysis and commentary on the text, did not appear till 1849.[8]
-The work, however, was well worthy of the time and care that had been
-bestowed upon it. The task of deciphering the Persian cuneiform texts
-was virtually accomplished, and the guesses of Grotefend had developed
-into the discovery of a new alphabet and a new language. The capstone
-was put to the work by the discovery of Hincks, an Irish clergyman,
-that the alphabet was not a true one in the modern sense of the word, a
-vowel-sound being attached in pronunciation to each of the consonants
-represented in it.
-
-The mystery of the Persian cuneiform texts was thus solved after nearly
-fifty years of endeavour. A harder task still remained. The Persian
-texts were accompanied by two other cuneiform transcripts, which, as
-Grotefend had perceived, must have represented the other two principal
-languages that were spoken in the Persian Empire. That the third
-transcript was Babylonian seemed evident from the resemblance of the
-characters contained in it to those on the bricks and seal-cylinders of
-Babylonia. Grotefend had already written upon the subject, and had even
-divined the name of Nebuchadrezzar on certain Babylonian bricks.
-
-But this third species of writing, which we must henceforth term
-Babylonian or Assyrian, presented extraordinary difficulties. Instead
-of an alphabet of forty-two letters, the decipherer was confronted by
-an enormous number of different characters, while no indication was
-given of the separation of one word from another. Moreover the forms
-of the characters as found on the Persepolitan monuments differed
-considerably from those found on the Babylonian monuments, which
-again differed greatly from each other. On the seal-cylinders, more
-especially, they assumed the most complicated shapes, between which and
-the Persepolitan forms it was often impossible to trace any likeness
-whatever.
-
-Suddenly a discovery was made which furnished an abundance of new
-material and incited the decipherer to fresh efforts. In 1842 Botta
-was sent to Mossul as French Consul, and at Mohl’s instigation began
-to excavate on the site of Nineveh. His first essays there not proving
-very successful, he transferred his workmen further north, to the mound
-of Khorsabad, and there laid bare the ruins of a large and splendid
-palace which subsequently turned out to be that of Sargon. In the
-autumn of 1845 the excavations of Botta were succeeded by those of
-Layard, first at Nimrûd (the ancient Calah), and then at Kûyunjik or
-Nineveh, the result being to fill the British Museum with bas-reliefs
-covered with cuneiform writing and with other relics of Assyrian
-civilization.
-
-The inscriptions brought to light by Botta were copied and published by
-him in 1846–50.[9] The sumptuous work which was dedicated to them was
-followed by a smaller and cheaper edition, and the author gave further
-help to the student by classifying the characters, which amounted to
-as many as 642.[10] His work proved conclusively the identity of the
-script used at Nineveh with that of the third transcripts on the
-Persian monuments, as well as the substantial agreement of the groups
-of characters occurring in each.
-
-The Irish scholar Dr. Hincks--one of the most remarkable and acute
-decipherers that have ever lived--was already at work on the
-newly-found texts. In 1847 he published a long article on “The Three
-Kinds of Persepolitan Writing,”[11] and, two years later, another “On
-the Khorsabad Inscriptions.”[12] In 1850 he read a Paper before the
-British Association,[13] summing up his conclusions and announcing the
-important discovery that the Assyrian characters were syllabic and not
-alphabetic, as had hitherto been supposed. With this discovery the
-scientific decipherment of the Assyrian inscriptions actually begins.
-
-The proper names contained in the Persian texts furnished the clue to
-the reading of the Babylonian transcripts. The values thus obtained
-for the Babylonian characters made it possible to read many of the
-words, the meaning of which was fixed by a comparison with the Persian
-original. It then became clear that Assyrian was a Semitic language,
-standing in much the same relation to Hebrew that the Old Persian stood
-to Zend.
-
-Its Semitic origin was proved to demonstration by the French scholar
-de Saulcy in 1849. Another French scholar, de Longpérier, had already
-discovered the name of Sargon in the Khorsabad inscriptions[14]--the
-first royal Assyrian name that had yet been read. De Saulcy himself
-subjected the Babylonian transcript of the trilingual inscription of
-Elwend to a minute analysis, and so carefully was the work performed,
-and so secure were the foundations upon which it rested, that the
-translation needs but little revision even to-day.[15] The old belief
-in the alphabetic nature of the characters, however, still possessed
-the mind of the decipherer, although in one passage he goes so far as
-to say, “I am tempted to believe” that the signs are syllabic. But he
-did not go beyond the temptation to believe, and the discovery was
-reserved for Hincks.
-
-Rawlinson was now at Bagdad. De Saulcy sent him his Memoirs, and the
-British scholar had the immense advantage of having in his hands the
-Babylonian version of the great Behistun inscription, of knowing the
-country in which the monuments were found, and of possessing copies of
-inscriptions which had not yet made their way to Europe.
-
-Nevertheless, it is amazing with what rapidity and perspicacity he
-forced his way through the thick jungle of cuneiform script. In his
-Memoir on the Persian texts, published in 1847, he already maps out
-with marvellous fulness and exactitude the different varieties of
-cuneiform writing. It is his second Memoir, however, which excites in
-the Assyriologist of to-day the profoundest feelings of surprise and
-admiration. This consists of notes on the inscriptions of Assyria and
-Babylonia, and was communicated to the Royal Asiatic Society at the
-beginning of the year 1850.[16]
-
- [Illustration: BLACK OBELISK OF SHAL-MANESER II.
-
- [_See p. 21._]
-
- [Illustration: CHALDÆAN HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS IN TERRA-COTTA.
-
- [_See p. 52._]
-
-One of the inscriptions he has translated in full--the annals of
-Shalmaneser II., on an obelisk of black marble discovered at Nimrûd
-and now in the British Museum. The text is a long one, and for the
-first time the European reader had placed before him a contemporaneous
-account of the campaigns of an Assyrian monarch in the ninth century
-before our era. The translation is substantially correct; it is only
-in the proper names that Rawlinson has gone much astray. The values
-of many of the characters were still uncertain or unknown, and he was
-under the domination of the belief that they represented alphabetic
-letters.
-
-He was, moreover, mistaken as to the age of the monument itself, which
-he assigned to too early an epoch. It was Dr. Hincks who again settled
-the question, by reading upon it the names of Hazael of Damascus and
-Jehu of Israel.[17] This was one of the first-fruits of his discovery
-of the syllabic character of the Assyrian signs. Another was the
-discovery of the name of Sennacherib,[18] as well as those of Hezekiah
-and Jerusalem.[19]
-
-Shortly before this Hincks had made another discovery of importance. He
-had deciphered the names of Nebuchadrezzar and his father on the bricks
-of Babylon,[20] and had further shown that a cylinder of Nebuchadrezzar
-brought from Babylon by Sir Robert Ker-Porter, and written in the
-cuneiform characters met with on the Persian monuments, contained
-the same text as another cylinder obtained by Sir Harford Jones, and
-inscribed with characters of the most complex kind. A comparison of the
-two texts gave him the values of the latter characters, which we now
-know to represent the archaic Babylonian forms of the cuneiform signs.
-
-But the decipherment of the Assyro-Babylonian script was not yet
-complete. In 1851 Rawlinson’s long-promised Memoir on the Babylonian
-version of the inscription of Behistun was given to the world,[21]
-and consisted of the cuneiform text, with translation, grammar and
-commentary, besides a list of 242 characters. It announced, moreover,
-two facts about these characters, one of which had already been
-recognized, while the second was received by the Orientalists with
-shouts of incredulity. The first fact was that the characters, besides
-having phonetic values, could also be used ideographically to denote
-objects and ideas. The second fact was that they were polyphonous, each
-character possessing more than one phonetic value.
-
-For once the sceptics seemed to have common-sense upon their side.
-How, it was asked, could a system of writing be read the symbols of
-which might be pronounced sometimes in one way, sometimes in another?
-Anything could be made out of anything upon such principles, and a
-method of interpretation which ended in such a result was pronounced
-to be self-condemned. Hincks, however, once more entered the field and
-demonstrated that Rawlinson was right.[22] Hincks was an Egyptologist,
-and consequently the polyphony of the cuneiform characters was not
-to him a new and startling phenomenon. It merely showed that they
-must once have been pictorial--as, indeed, their ideographic use also
-indicated--and in a picture-writing each picture could necessarily
-be represented by more than one word, and therefore by more than one
-phonetic value, when the pronunciation of the word came to be employed
-phonetically. The picture of a foot, for instance, would denote not
-only a “foot,” but also such ideas as “go,” “run,” “walk,” each of
-which would become one of its phonetic values with the development of
-the picture into a conventional syllabic sign.
-
-Excavation was still proceeding on the site of Nineveh. Mr. Hormuzd
-Rassam, himself a native of Mossul and the active assistant of Layard,
-was sent in 1852 by the British Museum to complete the work from
-which Layard had now been called away by diplomatic duties.[23] In
-1853 he made a discovery which proved to be of momentous importance
-for Assyrian decipherment, and without which, in fact, it could never
-have advanced very far. He discovered the library of Nineveh with its
-multitudes of closely-written clay tablets, many of them containing
-long lists of characters, dictionaries and grammars, which have served
-at once to verify and to extend the knowledge of the script and
-language that the early decipherers had obtained. Meanwhile a careful
-survey of the whole country was made at the expense of the East India
-Company,[24] and the French Government sent out an exploring and
-excavating expedition to Babylonia under a young and brilliant scholar,
-Jules Oppert. The results of the mission, which lasted from 1851 to
-1854, were embodied in two learned volumes, the first of which appeared
-in 1863.[25] In these Oppert showed, what Hincks and Rawlinson had
-already pointed out, that the peculiarities of the Assyrian syllabary
-were due not only to its pictorial origin but also to the fact that it
-had been invented by a non-Semitic people. This primitive population of
-Babylonia, called Akkadian by Hincks, Sumerian by Oppert, had spoken
-an agglutinative language similar to that of the Turks or Finns, and
-had been the founders of Babylonian civilization. For these views
-Oppert found support in the tablets of the library of Nineveh, a large
-part of which consists of translations from the older language into
-Semitic Assyrian, as well as of comparative grammars, vocabularies and
-reading-books in the two languages.
-
-Once more the Semitic scholars protested. There was no end to the
-extravagant fantasies of the Assyriologists! The learned world was
-comfortably convinced that none but a Semitic or Aryan people could
-have been the originators of civilization, and to assert that the
-Semites had borrowed their culture from a race which seemed to have
-affinities with Mongols or Tatars was an outrage upon established
-prejudices. The Semitic philologist was more certain than ever that
-Assyrian decipherment was the folly of a few “untrained” amateurs, and
-could safely be disregarded.
-
-But the little band of Assyriologists pursued their labours
-undisturbed. In 1855–6 Hincks published a most remarkable series of
-articles in the _Journal of Sacred Literature_, in which the
-various forms of the Assyrian verb were analyzed and given once for
-all. The work has never had to be repeated, and the foundations of
-Assyrian grammar were solidly laid. A few years later (in 1860) a
-complete grammar of the language was published by Oppert. The initial
-stage of Assyrian decipherment was thus at an end.
-
-We must now turn back to the second transcript of the Persian
-inscriptions, which, thanks to its greater simplicity, had been
-deciphered before the Assyro-Babylonian. The way was opened in 1844 by
-the Danish scholar Westergaard.[26] With the help of the proper names
-he fixed the values of many of the characters and made a tentative
-endeavour to read the texts. But the language he brought to light was
-of so strange a nature as to throw doubt on the correctness of his
-method. Turkish, Arabic, Indian and even Keltic elements seemed alike
-to be mingled in it. It was not, therefore, till his readings had been
-subjected to revision by Hincks in 1846[27] and de Saulcy in 1850[28]
-that any confidence was reposed in it, and the results made available
-for the decipherment of the Babylonian transcripts, the characters of
-which frequently had the same forms. It must be remembered, however,
-that Westergaard worked from defective materials. Rawlinson had not yet
-published his copy of the Behistun inscription, which he eventually
-placed in the hands of Edwin Norris, who, in 1853, edited the text
-along with a syllabary, grammar and vocabulary, as well as translations
-and commentary.[29] This edition was a splendid piece of work, and
-with it the decipherment of the second transcript of the Persian
-inscriptions may be said to have been accomplished. Oppert’s _Peuple
-et Langage des Médes_, which appeared in 1870, did but revise,
-supplement and systematize the work of Norris.
-
-The new language which had thus been brought to light was
-agglutinative. Westergaard had seen in it the language of the Medes,
-and, like Rawlinson, had connected it with a hypothetical “Scythian”
-family of speech. The term “Scythian” was retained by Norris, who,
-however, attempted to show that it was really related to the Finnish
-dialects. But the excavations made at Susa by Loftus in 1851 put
-another face on the matter. In 1874, and again more fully in 1883,[30]
-I pointed out that the inscriptions found at Susa and other ancient
-Elamite sites were in an older form of the same language as that
-of the second Achæmenian transcripts, and furthermore that certain
-inscriptions discovered by Layard in the plain of Mal-Amîr eastward
-of Susa were in practically the same script and dialect. At the same
-time I fixed the values of the characters in the Mal-Amîr texts
-and gave provisional translations of them, with a vocabulary and
-commentary. Oppert and myself had already been working at the reading
-of the older Susian inscriptions, a task in which we were followed by
-Weissbach with a greater measure of success. But the same cause which
-had retarded the decipherment of the second transcript of the Persian
-inscriptions--a want of materials--militated against any great advance
-being made in the decipherment of the older Susian, and it is only
-since 1897, when the excavations of M. de Morgan at Susa were begun,
-that the student has been at last provided with the necessary means.
-Thanks to the brilliant penetration of the French Assyriologist, Dr.
-Scheil, the outlines of the language of the ancient kingdom of Elam can
-now be sketched with a fair amount of completeness and accuracy.[31]
-The name of Neo-Susian has by common consent been conferred upon the
-language of the second Achæmenian transcripts; perhaps Neo-Elamite
-would be better. At all events it represents the language of the second
-capital of the Persian Empire as it was spoken in the age of Darius and
-his successors, and is a lineal descendant of the old agglutinative
-language of Elam.
-
-The three systems of cuneiform script, which a hundred years ago seemed
-so impenetrable in their mystery, have thus, one by one, been forced
-to yield their secrets. But as each in turn has been deciphered,
-fresh forms of cuneiform writing and new languages expressed in
-cuneiform characters have come to light. The first to emerge was that
-agglutinative language of primitive Chaldæa which so scandalized
-the philological world and excited such strong distrust of the
-Assyriologists. The question of the name by which it should be called
-has been set at rest by the discovery of tablets in which its native
-designation is made known to us. Some years ago Bezold published a
-bilingual text in which it is termed “the language of Sumer,”[32] and
-more recently Messerschmidt has edited a bilingual inscription of the
-Babylonian king Samsu-ditana in which the Semitic “translation” is
-described as “Akkadian.”[33] Oppert is thus shown to have been right in
-the name which he proposed to give to the language of the inventors of
-the cuneiform script.
-
-The first analysis of Sumerian grammar was made by myself in 1870, when
-the general outlines of the language were fixed and the verbal forms
-read and explained.[34] Three years later Lenormant threw the materials
-I had collected into a connected and systematic form, one result of
-which was a controversy started by the Orientalist, Joseph Halévy, who
-maintained that Sumerian was not a language at all, but a cryptograph
-or secret writing. The answers made by the Assyriologists to this
-curious theory obliged its author constantly to shift his ground,
-but at the same time it also obliged them to examine their materials
-more carefully and to revise conclusions which had been arrived at on
-insufficient evidence. An important discovery was now made by Haupt,
-who had already given the first scientific translation of a Sumerian
-text;[35] he demonstrated the existence of two dialects, one of
-which is marked by all the phenomena of phonetic decay.[36] This was
-naturally supposed to indicate a difference of age in the two dialects,
-the one being the older and the other the later form of the language.
-Subsequent research, however, has gone to show that the two dialects
-were really used contemporaneously, the decayed state of that which was
-called “the woman’s language” by the Babylonians being due to the fact
-that it was spoken in Akkad or Northern Babylonia, where the Semitic
-element became predominant at a much earlier period than in Sumer or
-Southern Babylonia.
-
-Up to this time the study of Sumerian had been almost entirely confined
-to the bilingual texts, of which a very large number existed in the
-library of Nineveh, and in which a Semitic translation was attached to
-the Sumerian original. Now, however, the French excavations at Tello in
-Southern Babylonia began to furnish European scholars with monuments
-of the pre-Semitic period, and to these the decipherers, among whom
-Amiaud and Thureau Dangin hold the first place, accordingly turned
-their attention. Texts composed in days when Sumerian princes still
-governed the country, and written by scribes who were unacquainted with
-a Semitic language, were successfully attacked with the assistance of
-the bilingual tablets of Nineveh. But it was soon found that between
-these genuine examples of Sumerian composition and the Sumerian which
-was written and explained by Semitic scribes there was a good deal of
-difference. The Semites had derived their culture from their Sumerian
-predecessors, and a considerable part of the religious and legal
-literature that had been handed on to them was in the older language.
-This older language long continued to be that of both religion and
-law, the two conservative forces in society, Sumerian becoming to the
-Semitic Babylonians what Latin was to mediæval Europe. The inevitable
-result followed: Semitic idioms and modes of thought were clothed
-in a Sumerian dress, and the ignorance of the scribe produced not
-infrequently the equivalent of the dog-Latin of a modern school-boy.
-The gradual changes that took place in the cuneiform system of writing,
-and the adaptation of it to the requirements of Semitic speech,
-contributed to the creation of an artificial and quite unclassical
-Sumerian, and the lexical tablets became filled with uses and
-combinations of characters which were professedly Sumerian but really
-Semitic in origin. All this renders the decipherment of a Sumerian text
-even now a difficult affair, and many years must elapse before we can
-say that the stage of decipherment is definitely passed and that the
-scholar may content himself with a purely philological treatment of the
-language.
-
-But Sumerian was not the only new language outside the circle
-recognized by the Persian monarchs which the decipherment of the
-cuneiform characters has revealed to us. Even before the discovery
-of Sumerian, cuneiform inscriptions had been copied on the rocks and
-quarried stones of Armenia, which, when the characters composing
-them came to be read, proved to belong to a language as novel and as
-apparently unrelated to any other as Sumerian itself. As far back
-as 1826 a young scholar of the name of Schulz had been sent by the
-French Government to Van in Armenia, where, according to Armenian
-writers, Semiramis, the fabled queen of Assyria, had once left her
-monuments. Here Schulz actually found that the cliff on which the
-ancient fortress of the city stood was covered with lines of cuneiform
-characters, and similar inscriptions soon came to light in other parts
-of the country. Before Schulz, however, could return to Europe he was
-murdered (in 1829) by a Kurdish chief, whose guest he had been. But his
-papers were recovered, and the copies of the inscriptions he had made
-were published in 1840 in the _Journal Asiatique_. The first to
-attempt to read them was Dr. Hincks, whom no problem in decipherment
-ever seemed to baffle.[37] The characters, he showed, were practically
-identical with those found in the Assyrian texts, the values of many of
-which had now been ascertained; but Hincks, with his usual acuteness,
-went on to use the Armenian or Vannic inscriptions for settling
-the values of other Assyrian characters which had not as yet been
-determined. In 1848 he was already able to read the names of the Vannic
-kings and fix their succession, to make out the sense of several
-passages in the texts, and to indicate the nominative and accusative
-suffixes of the noun.
-
-Here Vannic decipherment rested for many years. There was no difficulty
-in reading the inscriptions phonetically, for they were written in a
-very simplified form of the Assyrian syllabary; but the language which
-was thus revealed stood isolated and alone, without linguistic kindred
-either ancient or modern. The various attempts made to decipher it were
-all failures.
-
-So things remained until 1882–3, when I published my Memoir on “The
-Decipherment of the Vannic Inscriptions” in the _Journal of the Royal
-Asiatic Society_. Here for the first time translations were given of
-the inscriptions, together with a commentary, grammar and vocabulary.
-At the same time I settled the chronological place of the Vannic kings,
-which had hitherto been uncertain, as well as the geography of the
-country over which they ruled, and analyzed the ancient religion of
-the people as made known to us by the decipherment of the texts. In
-revising and supplementing Schulz’s copies of the inscriptions I had
-obtained the help of squeezes taken by Layard and Rassam. The task
-of decipherment was, after all, not so hard a matter as the absence
-of a bilingual text might make it appear. The want of a bilingual
-was compensated by the numerous ideographs and “determinatives”
-scattered through the inscriptions, which indicated their general
-meaning, pointed out to the decipherer the names of countries,
-cities, individuals and the like, and gave him the signification of
-the phonetically-written words which in parallel passages often
-replaced them. Moreover, the French Assyriologist, Stanislas Guyard,
-and myself had independently made the discovery that a clause which
-frequently comes at the end of a Vannic inscription corresponds with
-the imprecatory formula of the Assyrians, while the decipherment of
-the inscriptions led to the further discovery that not only had the
-characters employed in them been borrowed from the Assyrians in the
-time of the Assyrian conqueror, Assur-natsir-pal, but that many of the
-phrases used in Assur-natsir-pal’s texts had been borrowed at the same
-time.
-
-Other scholars soon appeared to pursue and extend my work, more
-especially Drs. Belck and Lehmann, whose expedition to Armenia in 1898
-has placed at our disposal a large store of fresh material. Amongst
-this fresh material are two long bilingual inscriptions, in Vannic and
-Assyrian, one of which had been discovered by de Morgan in 1890. These
-have verified my system of decipherment, have increased our knowledge
-of the Vannic vocabulary, have corrected a few errors, and, I am bound
-to add, have in one or two cases justified renderings of mine to which
-exception had been taken. A historical Vannic text can now be read with
-almost as much certainty as an Assyrian one.
-
-With the discovery of the language spoken in Armenia before the arrival
-of the modern Armenians the list of lost languages and dialects
-brought to light by the decipherment of the cuneiform script is by no
-means exhausted. Among the tablets found in 1887 at Tel el-Amarna in
-Upper Egypt was a long letter from the king of Mitanni or Northern
-Mesopotamia in the native language of his country, which has been
-partially deciphered by Messerschmidt, Jensen and myself.[38] The
-language turns out to be distantly related to the Vannic, but is of
-a much more complicated description. Two of the other letters in the
-same collection were in yet another previously unknown language, which
-the contents of one of them showed to be that of a kingdom in Asia
-Minor called Arzawa. Since then tablets have been found at Boghaz Keui
-in Cappadocia, on the site of the ancient capital of the Hittites,
-which are in the same dialect and form of cuneiform writing, and prove
-that in them we have discovered at last actual relics of the Hittite
-tongue. Thanks to the light thrown upon them by a tablet from the same
-locality, which I obtained last year, it is now possible to raise the
-veil which has hitherto concealed the Hittite language, and in a Paper
-which will shortly be printed I have succeeded in partially translating
-the texts and sketching the outlines of their grammar. But any detailed
-account of these discoveries must be reserved for a future chapter; at
-present I can do no more than refer briefly to these latest problems in
-cuneiform decipherment.
-
-That other problems still await us cannot be doubted. The number of
-different languages which the decipherment of the cuneiform script
-has thus far revealed to us is an assurance that, as excavation and
-research proceed, fresh languages will come to light which have
-employed the cuneiform syllabary as a means of expression. Indeed, we
-already know that it was used by the Kossæans, wild mountaineers who
-skirted the eastern frontiers of Babylonia, and a list of whose words
-has been preserved in a cuneiform tablet,[39] and also that there was
-a time, before the introduction of the Phœnician alphabet, when “the
-language of Canaan”--better known as Hebrew--was written in cuneiform
-characters. Canaanite glosses are found in the Tel el-Amarna tablets,
-and two Sidonian seals exist in which the cuneiform syllabary is
-employed to represent the sounds of Canaanitish speech.[40]
-
-And the key to all this varied literature, this medley of languages,
-the very names of which had perished, was a simple guess! But it was a
-scientific guess, made in accordance with scientific method, and based
-upon sound scientific reasoning. It is true that it needed the slow
-and patient work of generations of scholars before the guess could
-ripen into maturity; the discovery of the value of a single letter
-in the Old Persian alphabet was sometimes the labour of a lifetime;
-but, like the seed of the mustard tree, the guess contained within
-itself all the promise of its future growth. On the day when Grotefend
-identified the names of Darius and Xerxes, the decipherment of the
-cuneiform inscriptions, and therewith of the history, the theology
-and the civilization of the ancient Oriental world, was potentially
-accomplished.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- THE ARCHÆOLOGICAL MATERIALS; THE EXCAVATIONS
- AT SUSA AND THE ORIGIN OF BRONZE
-
-
-The modern science of archæology has been derisively called “the study
-of pots.” As a matter of fact, the study of ancient pottery occupies a
-prominent place in it, and we cannot turn over the pages of a standard
-archæological work without constantly coming across photographs and
-illustrations of the ceramic art or reading descriptions of vases
-and bowls, of coloured ware and fragmentary sherds. Questions of
-date and origin are made to turn on the presence or absence of some
-particular form of pottery on a given site, and fierce controversies
-have arisen over a single fragment of a vessel of clay. A knowledge of
-ancient pottery is a primary requisite in the scientific excavator and
-archæologist of to-day.
-
-The reason of this is obvious. Archæology is an inductive science;
-its conclusions, therefore, are drawn from the comparison and
-co-ordination of objects which can be seen and handled, as well as
-tested by all competent observers. It is built upon what our German
-friends would call objective facts, and the method it employs is that
-carefully-disciplined and experimentally-guarded application of the
-ordinary logic of life which can alone give us scientific results.
-The method is one which the purely literary mind seems often curiously
-incapable of comprehending; the literary student is accustomed to deal
-so exclusively with matters of merely individual taste and theory
-that he is as little able to understand what is meant by scientific
-evidence and probability as the scholar who is not a mathematician is
-able to follow the reasoning of Lord Kelvin. This is a fact which has
-to be borne in mind more especially in archæological science, for the
-questions with which archæology is concerned so frequently invade the
-domain of literature or appear so closely connected with questions that
-are more or less literary, that the purely literary scholar is apt to
-think himself just as well qualified to discuss them as “the man in the
-street” is apt to think himself qualified to discuss the etymology of a
-word. To all such the archæologist would say, “Go and study your pots.”
-
-For pottery is practically indestructible. Like the fossils on which
-the geologist has built up the past history of life upon the earth, it
-is an enduring evidence, when rightly interpreted, of the past history
-of man. Like the fossils, moreover, it exhibits a multitudinous variety
-of types and forms. But in all these types and forms there is an
-underlying unity. The primitive needs of man are everywhere the same,
-and the powers of mind called in to supply them are the same also.
-The dish and bowl, the vase and its handles, meet us again and again
-wherever we go; and the same materials for making them meet us also.
-The hands of man, guided by the brain of man, found clay wherewith to
-manufacture the vessels that he needed, and to harden it afterwards in
-the sun or fire. Where or how the first pottery was made we do not
-know, we probably shall never know. When palæolithic man first makes
-his appearance in Europe he seems not yet to have been acquainted with
-it; but it is difficult to prove a negative in archæology as in other
-sciences, and the absence of palæolithic pottery may be due only to
-the imperfection of the record. At any rate, as we descend the ladder
-of chronology the existence of man is marked more and more by the
-fragments of pottery he has left behind him; at Rome a whole mountain
-of it grew up in the space of a few centuries, and the huge mounds that
-encircled Cairo a hundred years ago were mainly formed of mediæval
-sherds. When excavating on an Egyptian site I have sometimes been
-tempted to think that the people who once lived there must have spent
-their whole time in breaking their household ware.
-
-Now not only are the primitive needs of man much the same throughout
-the world and at all periods of time, the nature of man is much
-the same also; and a distinguishing feature in his nature is love
-of variety. The same variety which we see in the forms of life and
-in the outward appearance and mental aptitudes of man himself is
-reflected in the products of his skill. Yet along with this love of
-variety goes a strong conservative or imitative instinct--an instinct
-which finds, too, its counterpart in nature, “so careful of the
-type.” On the one hand, fashions change; on the other, a fashion once
-introduced spreads rapidly and maintains itself to the exclusion of
-all others for a determinate period of time throughout a determinate
-area. And to nothing does this apply with more truth than to pottery.
-Observation has shown that not only are different tribes or countries
-distinguished by a difference in their pottery, but that in each tribe
-or country similar differences distinguish successive periods of time.
-When to this is added the practical indestructibility of the potsherd,
-it will easily be seen what a criterion is afforded by it for fixing
-the age and character of ancient remains, and their relation to other
-monuments of the past. It is not surprising that a study of pottery
-has become the sheet-anchor of archæological chronology, and that the
-first object of the scientific excavator is to determine the relative
-succession of the ceramic remains he discovers and their connection
-with similar remains found elsewhere. Scientific excavation means,
-before all things else, careful observation and record of every piece
-of pottery, however apparently worthless, which the excavator disinters.
-
-But now, unfortunately, I have to make an admission. We have, as yet,
-no ceramic record in either Babylonia or Assyria. Until very recently
-there has been no attempt in either country at scientific excavation.
-The pioneers, Layard and Botta and Loftus, lived and worked before it
-was known or thought of, and we cannot, therefore, be too thankful to
-Layard for having nevertheless given us so full and accurate an account
-of what he found, and the conditions under which he found it. The
-excavations controlled by the British Museum have, I am sorry to say,
-been for the most part destructive rather than scientific; such objects
-as were wanted by the Museum were alone sought after; little or no
-record has been kept of their discovery, and they have been mixed with
-objects bought from natives, of whose origin nothing was known. At one
-spot, Carchemish, the old Hittite capital, which, though not strictly
-in Assyria, formed part of the Assyrian Empire, and was the seat of an
-Assyrian governor, the so-called excavations conducted by the Museum in
-1880 were simply a scandal, which Dr. Hayes Ward, who visited the spot
-shortly afterwards, has characterized as “wicked.” The archæological
-evidence there, which would have thrown so much light on the Hittite
-problem, has been irretrievably lost.
-
-Matters are better now, and if I may judge from the work done by Mr.
-H. R. Hall at Dêr el-Bâharî in Egypt for the Egypt Exploration Fund,
-his colleague, Mr. L. W. King, who has recently been excavating for
-the British Museum in Assyria, will have done something to retrieve
-the archæological good name of our British excavators in the East.
-M. de Sarzec’s excavations at Tello in Southern Babylonia were also
-conducted with some consideration for archæological method, at all
-events on the architectural side, and in the capable hands of M.
-Heuzey the works of art found there have been made to yield valuable
-results. Moreover, the history of Tello may be said to be comprised
-in a single epoch of archaic Babylonia, and all objects discovered
-on the site may consequently be regarded as belonging to one age
-and phase of Babylonian civilization. Of the American excavations
-at Niffer it is difficult to speak at present. The work there has
-been careful and patient, and has extended over a long series of
-years. The architectural facts have been accurately recorded, at
-all events in the case of the great temple of Bel, and about the
-sequence of the inscribed monuments there is little room for
-doubt. But accusations of carelessness have lately been brought by
-the excavators one against the other, and when we find the sharpest
-critic among them unable to substantiate his own account of the
-discovery of a library and implicitly endorsing the assignment of a
-Parthian palace to the “Mykenæan” age, it is impossible to put much
-faith in their descriptions of archæological details. Some years ago
-the Germans explored a cemetery at El-Hibba with considerable care
-and thoroughness, and thus revealed to us pretty much all we know at
-present about Babylonian funereal customs; yet here again too little
-attention was paid to the pottery, and the actual date of the cemetery
-is still uncertain. It may belong to the Babylonian period, but it may
-also not be older than the Persian or even Parthian age.
-
- [Illustration:
-
- THE TELL OF JERABIS (PROBABLY THE ANCIENT CARCHEMISH).]
-
-The Germans are once more working in the lands of the Euphrates and
-Tigris, but in Babylonia their labours have been mainly confined
-to the Babylon of Nebuchadrezzar, where comparatively little has
-been discovered. Since 1904, however, the chief strength of the
-expedition has been directed upon Qal’at Shirqât, where Assur, the
-primitive capital of Assyria, formerly stood, and here we may expect
-that archæological results of first-class importance will at last be
-obtained. But the work there has not yet advanced far enough for more
-to be done than the mapping out of the old city, the ascertainment of
-certain architectural facts, and the recovery of inscriptions of great
-historical value.
-
-It will be seen, therefore, that the reproach brought against
-excavations in Egypt by Mr. Rhind in 1862 still holds good of
-excavations in Babylonia and Assyria. The first stage in their
-history is only just passing away. The idea that excavation is a trade
-which any one can take up without previous training, and that all the
-excavator need think about is the discovery of objects for a museum,
-is only beginning to disappear. In 1862 Rhind could write of Egyptian
-tombs: “I am not aware that there can be found the contents of a
-single sepulchre duly authenticated with satisfactory precision as to
-what objects were present, and as to the relative positions all these
-occupied when deposited by contemporary hands. Indeed, for many of the
-Egyptian sepulchral antiquities scattered over Europe there exists
-no record to determine even the part of the country where they were
-exhumed.... There have thus been swept away unrecorded into the past
-illustrative facts of very great interest, which cannot now, according
-to any reasonable probability, be replaced, at all events in the degree
-which there are grounds to believe were then possible.”[41] Happily,
-Mr. Rhind’s words are no longer true of Egypt, where he himself set the
-first example of showing how scientific exploration ought to be carried
-on, and the result is that the ancient civilization and culture of
-Egypt are now known to us even better than those of classical Greece or
-Rome.
-
-But what was true in 1862 of Egypt is still very largely true of
-Assyria and Babylonia. We are beginning to know something about the
-history of Assyro-Babylonian architecture; we know a little about the
-early work of the Babylonians in metal and stone; but the history of
-Assyro-Babylonian pottery is still, speaking broadly, a blank. For
-most of his knowledge of the ancient Euphratean civilizations the
-archæologist has to turn to the inscriptions and written literature of
-which such vast quantities have survived, and hence, besides being an
-archæologist in the strict sense, he must be also a decipherer and a
-philologist. He is still precluded from appealing to the evidence which
-can be handled and felt.
-
-From the point of view of the archæologist written evidence is usually
-unsatisfactory because it admits of more than one interpretation. A
-translation which seems certain to one scholar may be questioned by
-another; an inference drawn from the words of a text by one student
-may be denied by another. The statements in the texts themselves may
-be contradictory, or their imperfection may lead to wrong conclusions.
-Above all, the evidence may come to the archæologist from a philologist
-whose bent of mind is literary rather than scientific, and who will
-therefore be unable either to appreciate or to understand scientific
-testimony. Nothing is more common than to come across literary critics
-who cannot be made to understand the nature of inductive proof.
-
-On the other hand, the decipherer of a lost language must necessarily
-be an archæologist as well. The clues he follows will be largely
-archæological, and he has to appeal to archæology at every step.
-The method he must pursue is the method of archæology and of other
-inductive sciences, and the materials he uses are in part the materials
-of archæology also. The philologist who knows nothing of history and
-geography, who is unable to follow a scientific argument and appreciate
-scientific reasoning, can never decipher; he may take the materials
-given him by the decipherer and work them into philological shape,
-but that is all. We must listen to him on questions of grammar and
-vocabulary; on questions of archæology his opinions are worth no more
-than those of the ordinary man.
-
-I have insisted on this point because it is a very important one in
-a study like Assyriology. The public naturally thinks that in all
-Assyriological matters the opinion of one Assyriologist is as good as
-that of another. We might just as well suppose that in all matters
-which come under the head of astronomy the opinions of every class
-of astronomer are equally authoritative. But in astronomy there are
-questions which are purely mathematical, and there are other questions
-which are more or less chemical, and the astronomer who has devoted
-his attention to the spectrum analysis is contented to leave to his
-mathematical colleague abstruse calculations in advanced mathematics.
-The Assyriologist who is a grammarian pure and simple is just as little
-an authority on the archæological side of his study as any one else who
-is ignorant of archæology, and the materials he provides must be dealt
-with by the archæologist like the literary materials provided for him
-by the classical philologist; the materials in both cases stand on the
-same footing.
-
-At the same time, there is a difference between them. In the first
-place, the literary materials with which the Assyriologist deals are
-in a very large number of instances autographs. They are the actual
-documents of the writers whose names they bear or to whose age they
-belong. And there is all the difference in the world between the
-letters of a Plato or a Cicero which have come down to us through
-numerous copyists and the letters of Khammu-rabi of Babylon, the
-originals of which are now in our hands. The inscriptions in which
-Nebuchadrezzar describes his building operations or the contemporaneous
-annals of the Assyrian kings are, from the historical point of view,
-of far more value than the books written about them at a later date,
-however admirable the latter may be as works of literature; in other
-words, they are first-hand sources, and, as such, objective facts of
-much the same character as ancient pottery or stone implements. Then,
-in the second place, the documents have to be deciphered before they
-can be treated philologically; and, as I have already said, the task
-of decipherment is in itself an archæological pursuit. If carried
-out on correct lines it is itself an instance of the application of
-the inductive method, and it is, moreover, constantly compelled to
-call archæology or history to its aid. Assyriology is thus primarily
-an archæological study, using the methods of archæological science
-and demanding the help of the archæologist, even though there are
-Assyriologists who are not archæologists themselves.
-
-But for the present our archæological facts have to be taken
-mainly from the results of the decipherment of the inscriptions.
-They are for the most part epigraphical; the excavator has not yet
-supplemented them, as in Egypt or prehistoric Greece, on what I would
-term the ceramic side. This, at least, is the case in Babylonia and
-Assyria. It is no longer the case, however, throughout the ancient
-Assyro-Babylonian world. There is one exception to the charge brought
-by modern archæology against the excavators in the lands of the Tigris
-and Euphrates. M. de Morgan has been working for the last ten years
-on the site of Susa, the capital of Elam, and he has brought to his
-labours the knowledge and experience of an excavator who has been
-trained in modern methods and is fully awake to the requirements of
-modern science. At last, at Susa, we have an archæological record of
-the history of culture, based not only on written monuments, but also
-on the more tangible evidence of scientifically-observed strata of
-human remains. It is true that Elam is not Babylonia; but one of the
-surprises of M. de Morgan’s discoveries is that in the early days of
-Babylonian history Elam was a Babylonian province, and Susa the seat of
-a Babylonian governor. The same culture extended from Sippara on the
-Euphrates to Susa in Elam, and this culture was Babylonian. Hence, in
-default of materials from Babylonia itself, we may see in the history
-of cultural development at Susa a counterpart of that in Babylonia, at
-any rate during the period when Elam and Babylonia were alike under
-Semitic rule.[42]
-
- [Illustration: THE TUMULUS OF SUSA, AS IT APPEARED TOWARDS THE MIDDLE
- OF LAST CENTURY.]
-
-At Susa the line of division between the prehistoric or neolithic
-age and the historical epoch is very clearly marked. The prehistoric
-stratum lies twenty-five metres below the surface of the mounds, and
-is divided by M. de Morgan and his fellow-workers into two periods.
-The first is distinguished by a fine thin pottery, with yellow paste,
-which is already made upon a wheel. It does not exceed from two to
-seven millimetres in thickness; it is polished, and decorated with
-black bands and various patterns in a brown colour produced by oxide
-of iron. The designs are not only geometric, but also represent animal
-and vegetable forms. Among them are rows of ostriches identical with
-those found on the painted prehistoric pottery of Egypt. Indeed, the
-explorers were especially struck by the resemblance of the pottery as a
-whole to that of Egypt in the prehistoric age, though it is difficult
-to see what connection there can have been between the two countries at
-so remote a date, and the curious similarity between the rows of birds
-depicted on the vases must remain for the present an archæological
-puzzle. There is also a certain amount of resemblance between the
-geometric pottery and that disinterred by M. Chantre at the early
-Assyrian colony at Kara Eyuk in Cappadocia, which will be discussed
-more fully in a later chapter.[43] Among the geometrical patterns of
-the Susian ware spherical forms are common; the herring-bone pattern is
-also met with, as well as a pattern like the Greek _sigma_. The
-under-part of the vases is often decorated, so also is the inside. A
-form of vase frequently found is the water-jar with a rounded foot; the
-goblet is another common shape. Sometimes the vases are supplied with
-four handles for suspension.
-
-This fine yellow pottery occurs not only at Susa, but also throughout
-Elam, but practically none of it has hitherto been discovered in
-Babylonia.[44] One cause of this is doubtless that in the alluvial
-plain of Babylonia a purely neolithic stratum, if it existed at all,
-would lie below the water-level. Maritime shells are met with as far
-north as the site of Babylon, showing that the Persian Gulf once
-extended thus far, and the water of the Euphrates still infiltrates
-through the soil.
-
-The period of the fine thin pottery in Elam comes suddenly to an
-end, and the people of the second prehistoric period seem to have
-been intruders who were less civilized than their predecessors and
-unacquainted with the art of making the older ware. Their pottery is
-coarse and porous, and the geometric designs upon it are traced with
-the pen, not freely painted as in the case of the earlier ceramic. The
-animal and vegetable designs of the older ware have disappeared, and
-the zones, triangles and other geometric figures which take their place
-are traced in black or maroon-red upon a yellow clay. The resemblance
-between this pottery and that of Kara Eyuk is even greater than in the
-case of the pottery of the first period. Thick cylindrical vases are
-common, as well as bowls with a flat bottom and broad sides. Some of
-the vases resemble the bulbous vases of the Egyptian Twelfth dynasty;
-there are others with flat bottoms and angular sides which are also
-like Egyptian water-jars of the same Twelfth-dynasty period. Along with
-these more characteristic forms of pottery many small, unpainted cups
-have been found, as well as a few finer wheel-made vases of ovoid shape
-and yellow or reddish colour. It should be added that coarse, red,
-hand-made pottery abounds in both the prehistoric periods, as indeed it
-does also in the later historic epoch.
-
-As the second prehistoric epoch drew to a close at Susa, many
-indications of an advance in culture began to show themselves. Vases
-and flat-bottomed cups of soft stone were introduced, among them
-being a few of alabaster; the bricks began to be burnt in a kiln, and
-even seals with a species of writing upon them made their appearance.
-Nevertheless, the neolithic age does not pass into the age of metal
-through any transitional stages.
-
-The earliest stratum which marks the historic age yields for the first
-time clay tablets with inscriptions, the characters of which are
-already developing out of pictures into the cursive cuneiform. The
-inscribed cylinder-seals of Babylonia naturally appear along with them;
-alabaster vases, cups and bowls become common, and some of them are cut
-into the forms of animals. Comparatively little pottery has been found
-in this stratum; but this is probably an accident.
-
-The next stratum brings us to the period of Babylonian supremacy,
-when the viceroys of the Babylonian king ruled at Susa, and Semitic
-influence was already predominant in the Babylonian plain. It is
-the age of Sargon of Akkad, and its commencement may approximately
-be placed about B.C. 4000. The pottery still consists of
-a yellow paste, though there are also many specimens of a coarse
-black clay decorated with incrustations in white. The yellow ware is
-occasionally ornamented with mouldings of trees and other natural
-objects. A typical vase of the period is one of globular shape and
-small rim, and with a moulded or incised rope-pattern running round
-the centre and lower part of the rim. Another type is one which looks
-like an inverted vase, with a series of rope-patterns encircling it,
-while another seems to have been copied from the pile of cylindrical
-vases into which, as into a drain, the body of the dead Babylonian
-was inserted. These types of vase appear to have lasted, with
-little variation, down to the end of the Persian period, though,
-unfortunately, the disturbance of the ground and the consequent mixture
-of objects under the temple of In-Susinak, where the excavations
-were carried on, makes certainty on the point unattainable. Immense
-quantities of bronze votive offerings, of all kinds and sorts,
-were, however, found here, along with fragments of glass, and, as
-inscriptions show that they must all have been buried on the spot
-before the tenth century B.C., we have a time-limit for dating
-the forms of the bronze weapons and tools.
-
-The archæological evidence obtained at Susa has been supplemented by
-excavations made some ninety miles to the west of it, at a place called
-Mussian, on the eastern bank of the river Tib. Here there are graves,
-as well as the remains of a temple and houses with vaults, columns and
-walls of burnt brick. Where the strata have allowed a section to be
-cut down to the virgin soil the results are found to agree with those
-revealed by the excavations at Susa. The earliest layer belongs to the
-neolithic age, flint and obsidian, as at Susa, being the materials
-employed for tools and weapons. The pottery is thick and hand-made,
-the paste being either yellow or red in colour, and the surface is
-often polished, while many of the vases are furnished with holes for
-suspension. This layer seems older than anything discovered at Susa. It
-is followed by a second layer, in which the pottery is wheel-made, and
-is decorated with animal and vegetable figures in black or red, like
-the first prehistoric ware of the Susa mounds. Among the animal figures
-are those of men, and one fragment of yellow ware is ornamented with
-the so-called swastika. In the upper part of the layer a few fragments
-of copper have been met with, indicating that the neolithic age was
-beginning to pass into that of copper.
-
-Above this layer is a third, characterized by a fine ware, usually
-yellow but sometimes greenish in colour, and decorated with designs
-in lustrous black. In the fine specimens the decoration has been laid
-on before firing, in other cases after firing. The pottery as a whole
-has a general resemblance to that of prehistoric Egypt. The culture
-represented by this layer was still neolithic, but objects of copper
-were making their appearance, and the flint instruments of the past
-were beginning to be superseded by metal, a knowledge of which appears
-to have come from abroad. With the introduction of copper the Elamite
-or historical epoch may be said to have begun. It was now that the
-temple was first built of crude bricks, reeds taking the place of
-wood, and so pointing to the influence of Babylonia, where reeds were
-plentiful and wood was scarce.
-
-Another proof of Babylonian influence must be seen not only in ware
-of Babylonian origin, but also in the figures of a nude goddess with
-the hands placed upon the breasts, which originally represented the
-divinity called Istar by the Semitic Babylonians. Indeed, from the
-fact that the goddess was represented in human form we may infer
-that the figures, though first met with in the Sumerian age, were
-of Semitic derivation, and show that Sumerian culture was already
-being affected by the influence of Semitic religious ideas.[45] The
-pottery found along with the figures is of a very varied description,
-including coarse red and fine yellow ware. Among the fine yellow ware
-are goblets with a tall cup supported on a foot. A typical form of
-the yellow ware is the vase with angular sides; this, together with
-vases of more bulbous shape and terra-cotta stands, is remarkably like
-some of the Egyptian Twelfth-dynasty pottery in form. The stands, more
-especially, remind us of Twelfth-dynasty Egypt. There is also a black
-ware decorated with incised lines which are filled in with white.
-This black ware is also found in Egypt, where Professor Petrie is now
-inclined to associate it with the Hyksos. At all events it is absent
-there during the interval that elapsed between the prehistoric period
-and the epoch of the Twelfth dynasty, and it characterizes the Hyksos
-sites of the Delta, while its foreign and non-Egyptian character has
-been recognized from the first. A few fragments of the same class of
-pottery have been brought to light at Tello in Babylonia, where they
-would appear to belong to the age of Gudea (B.C. 2700). One of
-these formed part of a cylindrical vase or pyxis, identical in shape
-with the black incised pyxides found at Susa at a depth of from five to
-ten metres below the surface. On another fragment are spirited drawings
-of a water-bird, a fish seized by a gull, a four-footed animal, and
-a boat with reeds growing behind it, each in a separate panel.[46]
-Similar ware has been discovered in Southern Palestine, on the eastern
-coast of Cyprus, in Spain and in the Greek islands. At Syros, for
-instance, where it goes back to the neolithic age, it is associated
-with alabaster vases, just as it is at Mussian. Here the bowls and
-vases of alabaster are strikingly Egyptian in form.
-
-The clay figures of the Babylonian goddess testify to the same
-extension of culture in the copper age of Western Asia as do the black
-incised vases with their white fillings. M. Chantre has found them
-at Kara Eyuk in Cappadocia, on the borders of the Hittite region,
-though in these the arms are no longer folded across the breast.
-Further west I have lately shown[47] that the so-called figure of
-Niobê on Mount Sipylus in Lydia is a Hittite modification of them,
-and Dr. Schliemann discovered one of them, of lead, in the ruins of
-the Second (prehistoric) city at Troy.[48] At Troy, however, the type
-was more usually modified in the Hittite direction, as it was also
-in the islands of the Ægean, where marble figures of the goddess are
-plentiful.[49] In Egypt clay figures closely resembling those of
-Babylonia and Elam, but with the arms outstretched, have been met with
-from time to time at Karnak, and supposed to be dolls of the Roman
-period; but since the discovery by M. Legrain of remains which prove
-that the history of Karnak reaches back to the prehistoric or early
-dynastic period, there is no longer any reason for not connecting them
-with their analogues elsewhere. And the discoveries recently made by
-Professor Pumpelly in the tumuli near Askabad, west of Khiva and Herat,
-go far towards supporting the identification. Here the explorers have
-brought to light two periods of neolithic culture, in the earlier of
-which no animals were as yet domesticated, and the pottery was of the
-rudest description. During the second period the domesticated animals
-were introduced, including the horse and camel. Then came an age of
-copper, accompanied by figurines representing the Babylonian goddess,
-sometimes with the arms outstretched, sometimes with them lying against
-the sides, as in Cappadocia. The figurines are evidence that the art
-of working copper was derived from Babylonia, a conclusion which is
-confirmed by M. Henri de Morgan’s excavations in the tumuli of Talîsh
-in Gîlân, on the south-western shore of the Caspian.[50]
-
-As far back as our knowledge of Babylonian history extends the
-inhabitants of the country were acquainted with copper, and its use
-lasted century after century into quite recent times. Of a stone age,
-as I have already said, there is no clear trace. It is true that
-Captain Cros has sunk shafts at Tello, and reached the virgin soil at
-a depth of seventeen metres, finding there mace-heads of alabaster and
-hard stone similar to those of primitive Egypt, as well as other stone
-objects; but no flint flakes were met with, and the pottery was similar
-to that of the higher strata.[51] On the other hand, objects of copper,
-great and small, including helmets and a colossal spear dedicated by a
-king of Kis, have been disinterred, though nothing of bronze has been
-discovered among the earlier remains, It was the same at Muqayyar, the
-ancient Ur, as well as on the site of Eridu, where Taylor found only
-copper bowls and the like in the graves, even in those of so late a
-date as to contain objects of iron and an Egyptian scarab.[52] At
-Niffer, moreover, the ancient Nippur, American excavation has the
-same tale to tell. According to Dr. Peters,[53] though iron knives,
-hatchets, spear-heads and arrow-heads have been exhumed, the date of
-which is said to be between 2000 and 1000 B.C., there is no
-trace of bronze, the multitudinous objects, which further west would
-have been of bronze, being here of copper. As at Ur, the copper age
-lasts down to the very end of the Babylonian kingdom. Hilprecht, on the
-authority of Haynes, does indeed say[54] that in the very lowest strata
-of the temple mound, far below the pavements of Sargon and Naram-Sin
-(B.C. 3750), “fragments of copper, bronze and terra-cotta
-vessels” were disinterred. But no attempt seems to have been made to
-analyze the so-called “bronze,” which may have been a natural alloy
-of copper with a small percentage of lead or antimony, and the age
-ascribed to the fragments is rendered doubtful by the accompanying
-statement, that “fragments of red and black lacquered pottery” were
-discovered in the same place which were indistinguishable from the red
-and black pottery of classical Greece. As yet, therefore, excavation in
-Babylonian lands has failed to tell us when the art of mixing tin with
-the copper was discovered and copper was superseded by bronze.
-
-This, however, had taken place before the commencement of the Assyrian
-age. The bronze scimitar of Hadad-nirari I. (B.C. 1330)[55]
-finds an exact copy in a scimitar discovered by Mr. Macalister at Gezer
-in Palestine,[56] and the tools and weapons exhumed at Nineveh are of
-bronze and not copper. Analysis shows that the bronze usually consisted
-of about one part of tin to ten of copper, though for special objects
-like bells the amount of tin was considerably increased.[57] When was
-it that the tin was first imported and intentionally mixed with the
-copper in order to harden the metal?
-
-In default of archæological evidence, the only possibility there is
-of discovering an answer to this question lies in an examination
-of the primitive pictures out of which the cuneiform characters
-eventually developed. Here we are at once struck by a curious fact. The
-“determinative” attached to ideographs signifying “knife,” “weapon”
-and the like is not an ideograph which expresses the name of a metal;
-nor is it an ideograph denoting “stone,” but one which means “wood.”
-That is to say, the material of which cutting instruments were made at
-the time when the picture-writing of Babylonia came into existence was
-neither metal nor stone, but wood. That it should not have been stone
-is explained by the geology of the Babylonian plain, which consists of
-alluvial soil devoid of stones. That it should not have been of metal
-can only mean that the inventors of the pictorial script were not yet
-acquainted with the use of copper, bronze or iron. In default of metal
-and stone they had to content themselves with hard wood.
-
-On the other hand, copper, as well as gold and silver, had become
-known to them when the primitive pictographs were still in process of
-formation, and long before they had passed into cursive cuneiform.
-Copper was represented by the picture of an ingot or square plate of
-the metal with a handle attached to it, showing that it was already
-in a fused and worked state when it was imported into Babylonia. Gold
-seems to have originally been denoted by the picture of a collar or
-necklace, which signified “shining,” and was afterwards employed
-before the names of the precious metals. I have, however, never found
-this collar actually used to signify “gold”; in the earliest texts
-yet discovered the phonetic syllable _gi_ is attached to it when
-“gold” is denoted, the Sumerian word for “gold” being _azag-gi_.
-“Silver” was “the white precious metal,” the symbol for “white” being
-attached to the picture of the collar, and so forming a compound
-ideograph. This implies that silver became known to the inventors
-of the hieroglyphs at a later period than gold, though still before
-what I will call the cuneiform age. Even iron was known to them at
-the same early epoch, and was expressed by ideographs which literally
-mean “stone of heaven,”[58] an indication that meteoric iron must be
-referred to.
-
- [Illustration: HEAD OF ONE OF THE STATUES FROM TELLO.
-
- [_See p. 73._]
-
- [Illustration:
-
- VASE OF SILVER, DEDICATED TO NINGIRSU, BY ENTENA PATESI OF LAGAS.
-
- [_See p. 58._]
-
-But now comes a fact which is difficult to explain, so contrary is
-it to the archæological evidence. As we have seen, no traces of
-bronze have been found in the Assyro-Babylonian region before the
-beginning of the Assyrian age--let us say about B.C. 2000.
-Nevertheless, by the side of the simple ideograph which denotes the
-Sumerian _urudu_, “copper”--_erû_ in Semitic Babylonian--we
-find a compound ideograph signifying “bronze,” called _zabar_ in
-Sumerian, from which the Semites borrowed their _’siparru_. It is
-true that it is a compound ideograph, but it occurs in the cuneiform
-texts, not only in the era of Gudea (B.C. 2700), but even
-before the age of Sargon of Akkad (B.C. 3800). And an analysis
-of its earliest form seems to indicate that it really must have meant
-bronze from the first, and that consequently there was no transference
-of signification in later days. Literally it means “white copper,” the
-word for “copper” being phonetically-written _ka-mas_, with which
-the Semitic Babylonian _kemassu_ is closely connected. Lead cannot
-be intended, as that was denoted by a different word and different
-ideographs, and I do not see what else “white copper” can be in
-contradistinction to red copper except bronze. Polished copper could
-be termed “bright,” but hardly “white.”[59]
-
-The possibility remains that tin might have been the metal originally
-denoted by the compound ideograph. If so, both the ideograph and
-the words expressed by it had lost all reference to tin before the
-beginning of the Assyrian period, and neither the Assyrian word for
-“tin” nor the Sumerian word, if any existed, is now known. Tin,
-moreover, was archæologically late in making its appearance. The
-earliest examples of pure tin of which I know are of the time of the
-Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. On the other hand, bronze first appears in
-Egypt in the age of the Twelfth dynasty,[60] though it does not become
-common until the Hyksos predecessors of the Eighteenth dynasty had made
-themselves masters of the valley of the Nile. From about B.C.
-1600 onwards, enormous quantities of it were employed in the eastern
-basin of the Mediterranean and the adjoining lands, necessitating an
-equally large supply of tin. What the source of this tin may have been
-it is not my present purpose to inquire. But the persistence of the
-copper age in Babylonia, as well as in the tumuli of Askabad, east
-of the Caspian, indicates that the manufacture of bronze must have
-migrated from the north-west to the Babylonian plain. We find it first
-in Assyria, not in Babylonia, and it may well be that the Assyrians
-derived it from Armenia and the population of Cappadocia, where, as I
-shall show in a subsequent chapter, they had established colonies at an
-early period. At all events, the earliest examples of bronze yet met
-with were discovered by Dr. Schliemann in the Second prehistoric city
-at Troy.
-
-It was to this region that classical tradition referred the origin of
-working in iron. An analysis of the gold of the first six Egyptian
-dynasties submitted to Dr. Gladstone by Professor Petrie proved that
-it was mixed with silver, and hence must have been derived from Asia
-Minor.[61] Egyptian legend made “the followers of Horus,” who founded
-dynastic Egypt, metallurgists and smiths whose metal weapons enabled
-them to subdue the older neolithic population. The story as it has come
-down to us declares the smiths to have been workers in iron; iron,
-however, must be the substitute of the later version of the story for
-some other metal, since, though Vyse claims to have discovered an iron
-clamp in the great pyramid of Giza,[62] and Petrie has found a mass of
-iron in a Sixth-dynasty deposit in the temple of Osiris at Abydos,[63]
-ironsmiths can hardly have existed in the pre-dynastic age. It is
-probable, therefore, that copper was the metal which the dynastic
-Egyptians introduced into their new home, and which was already in use
-in Babylonia. But the intercourse with Asia Minor, which the gold of
-the First dynasty indicates must even then have been going on, makes it
-possible that it was from this quarter of the world that the earliest
-knowledge of the manufacture of bronze was brought to the valley of
-the Nile. Even in the time of the Twelfth dynasty, however, the tools
-found by Professor Petrie in the workmen’s huts at Kahûn are of copper
-rather than of bronze.[64] The colossal statue of King Pepi of the
-Sixth dynasty, discovered at Hierakonpolis, is of hammered copper, and
-we have to wait for the advent of the Eighteenth dynasty before bronze
-becomes the predominant metal.
-
-That such was the case points to the Hyksos period as that in which
-bronze succeeded in superseding the older copper. It may be that the
-Hyksos brought the extended use of it with them from Syria. In Southern
-Palestine, Mr. Macalister’s excavations at Gezer have shown that bronze
-rather than copper was largely employed throughout the so-called
-Amorite period, which went back to an earlier age than that of the
-Twelfth dynasty, and it is just here that in the time of the Eighteenth
-dynasty bronze itself began to make way for iron. Mr. J. L. Myres
-has recently traced the polychrome pottery of Southern Canaan to the
-Hittite lands of Cappadocia,[65] where the red ochre was found by which
-it was characterized, and a knowledge of bronze may have travelled
-along the same road.
-
-But these are speculations which may or may not be verified by future
-research. For the present we must be content with the fact that, in
-spite of the philological evidence to the contrary, copper, and not
-bronze, was the metal which preceded the use of iron in Babylonia,
-whereas in the northern kingdom of Assyria bronze was already known at
-a comparatively early date. So far as the existing evidence can carry
-us, it seems to indicate that Babylonia was the primitive home of the
-copper industry, while bronze, on the other hand, made its way eastward
-from Asia Minor and the north of Syria. Where bronze was first invented
-is still unknown to us; all that seems certain is that it must have
-been in a land where copper and tin are found together.
-
-
- NOTE
-
-According to the mineralogists, in the western part of the northern
-hemisphere tin is found only in Britain, Spain and the neighbourhood
-of Askabad, the scanty surface-tin of Saxony, France and Tuscany being
-too poor and insignificant to have attracted attention in antiquity
-(see de Morgan, _Mission Scientifique au Caucase_, ii. pp. 16–28).
-The American excavations at Askabad under Professor Pumpelly appear to
-have made it clear that bronze was not invented in that part of the
-world, or indeed used in early days, and we are thus thrown back on
-Britain and Spain. It is quite certain, however, that bronze made its
-way to the west of Europe from the east, and the Hon. John Abercromby
-has proved (_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxii. pp.
-375–94, and _Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland_,
-1903–4, pp. 323–410) that the bronze culture came to this country from
-the valley of the central Rhine where it cuts the river at Mayence. On
-the other hand, the bronze-age civilization of the Danube valley, the
-Balkan peninsula and Italy forms a whole with that of the south-eastern
-basin of the Mediterranean, which again is closely connected with
-the bronze-age culture of the Ægean, Asia Minor and Egypt, while the
-civilization of the Danube valley leads on to that of Central Europe
-and, to a less extent, of Scandinavia and Northern Germany. Montelius
-(_Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1900, pp. 89
-_sqq._) has pointed out that the early bronze culture of Northern
-Italy was carried to Scandinavia along the route of the amber trade as
-far back as the close of the neolithic age in Sweden, and the numerous
-objects of Irish gold found in Scandinavia--though, it is true, of
-somewhat later date--show that commercial relations must have existed
-between the British Islands and the Scandinavian peninsula. Tin might
-have followed the gold route until it met the amber route, by which it
-would have been carried southward to Central Europe and the Adriatic.
-
-In Western Europe the sword, like the socketed celt, is first met
-with in the third and last period into which the bronze age has been
-divided. The earliest examples of the sword, in fact, are those
-discovered at Mykenæ, which belong to the age of the Eighteenth
-Egyptian dynasty. Schliemann found only the dirk at Troy, and, so far
-as our present evidence goes, the dirk alone was used by the Hittites
-and Proto-Armenians down to the seventh century B.C. The
-scimitar, however, was known in Assyria and at Gezer at least as early
-as the fourteenth century B.C. (see p. 57 above), and in
-Cyprus the sword makes its appearance along with the knife and fibula
-in the later bronze age after the close of the age of copper. Similarly
-in Krete it was only in tombs of the Late Mykenæan (or Late Minoan)
-period that the cemetery of Knossos yielded swords of bronze (_Annual
-of the British School at Athens_, x. p. 4). The dirk of the copper
-age was stanged as at Troy and in the Danube valley, the Cyprian and
-Hungarian forms being practically identical. From the Danube valley the
-stanged spear-head passed to Western Europe during the second period
-of the bronze age. The fibula is not found at Troy, where the early
-bronze age will have corresponded with the copper age of Cyprus.
-
-All this goes to show (1) that the scimitar--the _harpê_ of
-the Perseus myth--was a Semitic invention, while the long sword was
-of European origin; (2) that at Troy, and possibly also in Southern
-Palestine, to which Hittite polychrome pottery was carried at an early
-date, bronze was known at a time when only copper was used in Cyprus
-and Egypt; and (3) that the characteristic weapon of this primitive
-bronze age was the dirk, which continued to characterize Asia Minor
-long after the sword and scimitar had been invented elsewhere. Taken
-in connection with the fact that the pottery and decorative designs
-of Asia Minor can be linked with those of the Balkan peninsula and
-the valley of the Danube, we may provisionally conclude that Northern
-Asia Minor was the home of the invention of bronze. Against this is
-the fact that no tin has hitherto been found there, and we should
-accordingly have to explain the origin of bronze by the theory that
-after the discovery of various processes for hardening copper, further
-experiments were made with imported tin. Unfortunately, neither the
-south of Cornwall nor Asia Minor, with the exception of the Troad, has
-as yet been scientifically explored from an archæological point of
-view. But it deserves mention that the curious needles with a double
-head of twisted wire, which are met with among the remains of the
-bronze age in Britain, are characteristic of the copper age in Cyprus
-and of the early bronze age at Troy.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER III
-
- THE SUMERIANS
-
-
-Among the first results of the decipherment of the Assyrian cuneiform
-inscriptions was one which was so unexpected and revolutionary, that
-it was received with incredulity and employed to pour discredit on
-the fact of the decipherment itself. European scholars had long been
-nursing the comfortable belief that the white race primarily, and
-the natives of Europe secondarily, were _ipso facto_ superior
-to the rest of mankind, and that to them belonged of right the
-origin and development of civilization. The discovery of the common
-parentage of the Indo-European languages had come to strengthen the
-belief; the notion grew up that in Sanskrit we had found, if not the
-primeval language, at all events a language that was very near to it,
-and idyllic pictures were painted of the primitive Aryan community
-living in its Asiatic home and already possessed of the elements of
-its later culture. Outside and beyond it were the barbarians, races
-yellow and brown and black, with oblique eyes and narrow foreheads,
-whose intelligence was not much above that of the brute beasts. Such
-culture as some of them may have had was derived from the white race,
-and perhaps spoilt in the borrowing. The idea of the rise of a
-civilization outside the limits of the white race was regarded as a
-paradox.
-
-It was just this paradox to which the first decipherers of Assyrian
-cuneiform found themselves forced. And another paradox was added to it.
-Not only had the civilization of the Euphrates and Tigris originated
-amongst a race that spoke an agglutinative language, and therefore was
-neither Aryan nor Semitic, the civilization of the Semitic Babylonians
-and Assyrians was borrowed from this older civilization along with the
-cuneiform system of writing. It seemed impossible that so revolutionary
-a doctrine could be true, and Semitic philologists naturally denounced
-it. For centuries Hebrew had been supposed to have been the language
-of Paradise, and the old belief which made the Semitic Adam the first
-civilized man still unconsciously affected the Semitic scholars of the
-nineteenth century. It was hard to part with the prejudices of early
-education, especially when they were called upon to do so by a small
-group of men whose method of decipherment was an enigma to the ordinary
-grammarian, and who were introducing new and dangerous principles into
-the study of the extinct Semitic tongues.
-
-The method of decipherment was nevertheless a sound one, and the
-result, which seemed so incredible and impossible when first announced,
-is now one of the assured facts of science. The first civilized
-occupants of the alluvial plain of Babylonia were neither Semites nor
-Aryans, but the speakers of an agglutinative language, and to them
-were due all the elements of the Babylonian culture of later days. It
-was they who first drained the marshes, and regulated the course of
-the rivers by canals, thereby transforming what had been a pestiferous
-swamp into the most fertile of lands; it was they who founded the
-great cities of the country, and invented the pictorial characters,
-the cursive forms of which became what we term cuneiform. The theology
-and law of later Babylonia went back to them, and long after Semitic
-Babylonian had become the language of the country, legal judgments were
-still written in the old language and the theological literature was
-still studied in it. The Church and the Law were as loth to give up the
-dead language of Sumer as they were in modern Europe to give up the use
-of Latin.
-
-This dead agglutinative language has been called sometimes Akkadian,
-sometimes Sumerian, but Sumerian is the name which has been finally
-selected. In fact, this was the name applied to it by the Semitic
-Babylonians themselves, who included in the term the two dialects--or
-rather the two forms of the language at different periods of its
-development--which have been preserved to us in the cuneiform tablets.
-Strictly speaking, the dialect which had been most affected by contact
-with the Semites, and had in consequence suffered most from phonetic
-decay, was known as the language of Akkad, but this was because Akkad
-represented Northern Babylonia, which had become Semitic at an earlier
-date than the south and had been the seat of the first great Semitic
-Empire.[66] Both names, Akkadian and Sumerian, are correct as applied
-to the primitive language of Chaldæa, but of the two Sumerian is
-preferable, not only because it was used by the Babylonian scribes
-themselves, but also because it denoted the oldest and purest form of
-the language before it had passed under foreign influence.
-
-This, then, was the great archæological fact which resulted from the
-decipherment of the Assyro-Babylonian texts. The earliest civilized
-inhabitants of Babylonia did not speak a Semitic language, and
-therefore presumably they were not Semites. It is perfectly true that
-language and race are not synonymous terms, and that we are seldom
-justified in arguing from the one to the other. But the Sumerian
-language is one of the exceptions which proves the rule. Those who
-spoke it were the first civilizers of Western Asia, the inventors and
-perfecters of a system of writing which was destined to be one of
-the chief humanizing agents of the ancient world, the authors of the
-irrigation engineering of the Babylonian plain, and the builders of
-its many cities. The language they spoke, accordingly, could not have
-been forced upon them by conquerors who have otherwise left no trace
-behind them, and they certainly would not have exchanged it of their
-own accord for their native tongue. The Semitic languages have always
-been conspicuous for the tenacity with which they have held their own,
-and the conservatism with which they have resisted change. We may still
-hear in the Egyptian Arabic of to-day the very words which were written
-by Semitic Babylonian scribes upon their tablets some four or five
-thousand years ago. A Semitic people would have been the last to borrow
-the language of its less-civilized neighbours without any assignable
-reason. The fact, consequently, that the pioneers of Babylonian culture
-spoke an agglutinative language fully justifies us in concluding that
-they belonged to a race that was not Semitic.
-
-Sumerian, however, was not the only language in the neighbourhood of
-the Babylonian plain which was agglutinative. Further to the east,
-in the highlands of Elam, other agglutinative languages were spoken,
-monuments of one or more of which have been preserved to us. Whether or
-not the agglutinative languages of Elam were related to the Sumerian
-of Babylonia, I cannot tell; so far as our materials go at present
-they do not warrant us in saying more than that, like Sumerian, they
-were of the agglutinative type. It is only rarely that the scientific
-philologist is able to separate some of the multitudinous languages of
-the globe into genealogically related groups; for the most part they
-stand isolated and apart from one another, and, however much we may
-wish to group them together, it is seldom that we find such proofs of
-a common descent as will satisfy the requirements of science. Families
-of speech--or at all events such as can be scientifically proved to be
-so--are the exception and not the rule.
-
-Eastward of Sumer the type of language was thus agglutinative, as it
-was in Sumer itself. And in the days when civilization first grew up
-there, there is no sign or trace of the languages we call inflectional.
-The speakers of Aryan dialects, whom we find in classical times in
-Media or Persia or North-Western India, belong to a later epoch; the
-old belief in the Asiatic cradle of the Aryan tongues has long since
-been given up by the anthropologist and comparative philologist,[67]
-and it is recognized that if we are to look for it anywhere it must
-be in Eastern Europe. The Semitic languages are equally absent; the
-tide of Semitic speech which eventually overflowed Babylonia, surged
-northward and eastward into Assyria and Elam, but never succeeded in
-passing Susiana, and was finally driven again from the ground it had
-once gained there. The home of the Semite lay to the west and not to
-the east of the Babylonian plain. Babylonian culture owed its origin to
-a race whose type of language was that of the Finn, of the Magyar or
-the Japanese.
-
-The physical characteristics of this race cannot as yet be fully
-determined. The oldest sculptures yielded by Babylonian excavation
-belong to a time when the Semite was already in the land. It might
-be supposed that the early monuments of Tello, which were erected by
-Sumerian princes and go back to Sumerian times, would give us the
-necessary materials; but not only are they too rude and infantile
-to be of scientific use, they also indicate the existence of two
-ethnological types, one heavily bearded, the other beardless, with
-oblique eyes and negrito-like face. It is not until we come to the
-age of Semitic domination that sculpture is sufficiently realistic
-for exact anthropological purposes. At the same time, there was to
-the last a marked contrast of both form and feature in the artistic
-representation of the Babylonian and his more purely Semitic Assyrian
-neighbour. The squat, thick figure, the full, well-shaven cheeks, the
-large, almond-shaped eyes and round head of King Merodach-nadin-akhi in
-the twelfth century B.C. still reproduce the characteristic
-form and features of the statues found in the palace of Gudea, the
-Sumerian high-priest of Lagas, who lived more than a thousand years
-before. The aquiline or hooked nose, the thick lips and muscular limbs
-which distinguished the Assyrian are generally wanting in Babylonia.
-And, on the other hand, there is a likeness between the Babylonian
-as he is portrayed on the monuments and the Elamite adversaries of
-Assur-bani-pal, some of whom, it is noticeable, are depicted with
-beards, though the excavations of Dieulafoy and de Morgan at Susa
-have shown (according to Quatrefages and Hamy) that a beardless and
-short-nosed negrito type with round heads was aboriginal in Elam. The
-same type is reproduced in one of the heads found at Tello, and M.
-de Morgan has pointed out that similar brachycephalic and beardless
-negritos are represented on the monuments of Naram-Sin as serving in
-the army of Akkad.[68] We may conclude, therefore, that they still
-formed a part of the population of Northern Babylonia even in the age
-when it had passed completely under Semitic rule. Indeed, Dr. Pinches
-has shown that the pure Semitic type is not depicted in Babylonian art,
-outside the kingdom of Akkad, “before the time of the First dynasty of
-Babylon, which began to reign about B.C. 2300.”
-
-It has often been maintained that the Sumerians themselves were an
-immigrant people, who had descended from the mountains of Elam. There
-is nothing unreasonable in the supposition; it was always difficult
-to prevent the mountaineers of Elam from making raids in Babylonia,
-and one of their tribes succeeded in settling in the country and
-establishing at Babylon one of the longest-lived of its dynasties. But
-the supposition mainly rests upon two facts. The pictorial hieroglyphs
-out of which the cuneiform characters have developed had no special
-sign for “river,” while the same character represented both “mountain”
-and “country.” It would seem, therefore, that the land in which the
-cuneiform system of writing was first invented was just the converse of
-the Babylonian plain, being at once mountainous and riverless. That the
-same character means both “mountain” and “country” is no doubt a strong
-argument in favour of the Elamite origin of Babylonian civilization.
-That the use of the primitive hieroglyphs should have survived in Elam
-while it was lost in Babylonia, as M. de Morgan’s discoveries have
-shown to be the case, is also another fact which may perhaps be claimed
-on the same side; at any rate it indicates that they were known to the
-Elamites before the cursive cuneiform had developed out of them. But
-the want of a special character for “river” is not so decisive as it
-appears at first sight to be. The word “river” is represented by two
-ideographic signs which literally signify “the watery deep,” and so
-point to the fact that those who originally invented them lived not in
-the highlands of the East, but on the shores of that Persian Gulf which
-the Babylonians of the historic period still called “the deep.” As it
-was also known as “the salt river,” it is not difficult to understand
-how, to those whose experience of navigable water had been confined
-to the Persian Gulf, the Tigris and Euphrates would have seemed but
-repetitions of the Gulf on a smaller scale.[69]
-
-The rise of Sumerian culture on the shores of the Persian Gulf is in
-accordance with Babylonian tradition. Babylonian myths told how Oannes
-or Ea, the god of culture, had risen each morning out of his palace
-in “the deep,” bringing with him the elements of civilization which
-he communicated to mankind. Letters, science and art had all been
-his gifts. He had instructed the wild tribes of the coast to build
-houses and erect temples; he had compiled for them the first law-book,
-and had instructed them in the mysteries of agriculture. Babylonian
-civilization was sea-born. The system of cosmology which finally won
-its way to acceptance with the priesthood and philosophers of Babylonia
-was one which had been first conceived at Eridu, the site of which is
-now more than a hundred miles distant from the sea, but in the early
-days of Babylonian history, before the silting up of the shore, had
-been its seaport. Here the first man Adam[70] was supposed to have
-lived, and to have spent his time fishing in the waters of the Gulf.
-The whole earth was believed to have grown out of a primeval deep like
-the mud-flats which the inhabitants of Eridu saw slowly emerging from
-the retreating sea. Philosophy and cosmology, with the theology with
-which they were associated, looked back upon Eridu and the Babylonian
-coast as their primeval home.[71]
-
-In fact the physical conditions of the Babylonian plain rendered it
-impossible for the first culture of the country to have sprung up in
-it. Before it was reclaimed by engineering skill and labour the larger
-part of it had been a pestiferous marsh. The science needed for making
-it habitable, at least by civilized man, must have arisen outside its
-boundaries. Only when he was already armed with a civilization which
-enabled him to dig canals, to mould bricks, and pile his houses and
-temples on artificial foundations could the Sumerian have settled in
-the Babylonian plain and there developed it still further. The cities
-of the plain grew up each round its sanctuary, which became a centre of
-civilization and progress, of agriculture and trade. But the builders
-of the sanctuaries must have brought their culture with them from
-elsewhere.
-
-Of these sanctuaries the most venerable was that of Bel the Elder at
-Nippur. It has been systematically excavated by the Americans down to
-its foundations, and the successive strata of its history laid bare.
-Inscribed objects have been found in all the strata, carrying the
-history of the cuneiform system of writing back to the days when the
-temple was originally built. But it is still the cuneiform system of
-writing as far back as we can go, that is to say the characters are the
-cursive forms of earlier hieroglyphic pictures, the features of which
-are in most cases scarcely traceable. Here and there, it is true, the
-primitive pictorial form has been preserved, but this is the exception
-and not the rule. As a rule the earliest writing found at Nippur, and
-coeval with the foundation of its temple, is already the degenerated
-and cursive hand which we call cuneiform.
-
-The fact is very noteworthy. The cuneiform characters have assumed the
-shapes which give them their name owing to their having been inscribed
-on clay by a stylus of wood or metal, which obliged the writer to
-substitute a series of wedge-like indentations for curves and straight
-lines. As time went on, the number of the wedges was reduced, the forms
-of the characters were simplified, and the resemblance to the pictures
-they were once intended to represent became more and more indistinct.
-The cuneiform script is, in short, a running hand, like the hieratic
-of Egypt. But whereas in Egypt the hieratic running hand does not
-come into common use until long after the beginning of the monumental
-period, while the pictorial hieroglyphs continued to be employed to
-the last, in Babylonia the cuneiform running hand has superseded the
-primeval pictures as far back as our records carry us. When the temple
-of Nippur was built--and it was probably one of the first, if not the
-first, to be built in the Babylonian plain--the clay tablet was already
-in use for writing purposes, and the cursive cuneiform had taken the
-place of the older hieroglyphs.
-
-The Babylonian plain was called by its Sumerian inhabitants the Edin,
-or “Plain,” a name which was borrowed by the Semites and has been made
-familiar to us by the book of Genesis. Originally it had meant all
-the uncultivated flats on either side of the Euphrates, but it soon
-acquired the sense of the country as opposed to the city, and so of the
-cultivated plain itself. Most of the important Babylonian cities were
-built in it between the Euphrates on the west and the Tigris on the
-east. A few only lay beyond it on the western bank of the Euphrates.
-One of these was Eridu, another was Ur, a third was Borsippa.
-
- [Illustration:
-
- THE TELL OF BORSIPPA, THE PRESENT BIRS-NIMRUD.]
-
-Of Eridu I have already spoken. Some six or eight thousand years
-ago it was the seaport of primitive Babylonia.[72] Ur, which stood
-close to it, seems to have been a colony of Nippur, and therefore of
-comparatively late origin.[73] Borsippa was a small and unimportant
-town, which eventually became a suburb of Babylon, and Babylon, on
-the eastern bank of the Euphrates, was itself a colony of Eridu.[74]
-Hence of the cities which stood outside the Edin of Babylonia, and may
-therefore belong to an age when Babylonian civilization was still in
-its infancy, Eridu alone is of account. And the priority even of Eridu
-was contested. Traditionally Sippara, which is expressly stated to have
-been in “the Edin,” claimed to be the oldest of Babylonian cities; one
-quarter of it bore the name of “Sippara that is from everlasting,” and
-like Eridu, it believed itself to have been the abode of the first
-man.[75] Thus far, however, the monuments have given us nothing to
-substantiate the claim; the culture-god of Babylonia was Ea of Eridu,
-not the Sun-god of Sippara, and for the present, therefore, we must
-look to the shore of the Persian Gulf, rather than to the “land of
-Eden” for the cradle of Babylonian civilization.
-
-At any rate, both Sippara and Eridu were of Sumerian foundation, as
-indeed were nearly all the great cities of Babylonia. Eridu was a later
-form of the older Eri-dugga, “the good city,” a name which seems to
-have been the starting-point of more than one legend. The growth of the
-coast to the south of it gives us some idea as to the age to which its
-foundation must reach back.
-
-It was, as I have said, the primitive seaport of Babylonia, and its
-legend of the first man Adamu made him a fisherman in the Persian Gulf.
-Its site is now rather more than a hundred miles distant from the
-present line of coast. The progress of alluvial deposit brought down by
-the Euphrates and Tigris can be estimated by the fact that forty-seven
-miles of it have been formed since Spasinus Charax, the modern
-Mohammerah, was built in the age of Alexander the Great, and was for a
-time the port of Chaldæa. During the last 2000 years, accordingly, the
-rate of deposit would seem to have been about 115 feet a year. This,
-however, does not agree with the observations of Loftus, who made the
-rate not more than a mile in every seventy years,[76] while on the
-other hand Sir Henry Rawlinson adduced reasons for believing it to have
-been more rapid in the past than it is to-day, and that consequently
-the rate must once have been as much as a mile in thirty years.[77] It
-is desirable that some competent geologist should study the question
-on the spot. Taking, however, as a basis of calculation, the one known
-fact of the rate of growth since the foundation of Spasinus Charax, and
-bearing in mind that before the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates
-the rate of advance must have been comparatively slow, we should have
-to go back to about B.C. 5000 as the latest date at which
-Eridu could still have been the seaport of the country.
-
-Was it here that the system of writing which was so closely entwined
-with the origin of Babylonian civilization was first invented?
-Babylonian tradition in later days certainly believed that such was the
-case, and the fact that Ea of Eridu was the culture-god of Babylonia
-is strongly in its favour. But there are difficulties in the way.
-Eridu was the home of the “white witchcraft” of early Chaldæa; it was
-here that the charms and incantations were composed which gave the
-priesthood of Eridu its influence, and made the god they worshipped
-the impersonation of wisdom. The belief that he was the originator of
-Babylonian culture may have had its source in the system of magic which
-was associated with his name. Eridu was built on the Semitic side of
-the Euphrates, and the Semitic tribes who received their letters and
-their civilization from the Sumerians of Eridu would naturally have
-looked upon the city of their teachers as the primeval home of Sumerian
-culture. The traditions that made Eridu the starting-point of Sumerian
-civilization could thus be explained away, and we should be left free
-to settle the question of its origin upon purely archæological evidence.
-
-Unfortunately the site of Eridu has not yet been systematically
-excavated. Once again the archæological materials for settling an
-archæological question are not at hand, and we are thrown back upon an
-examination of the picture-writing from which the cuneiform characters
-are derived. Here the evidence on the whole may be said to be in
-favour of tradition. It is true that there is no special ideograph for
-“river,” but there is one for “the deep,” and “the spirit of the deep”
-must have been a chief object of worship at the time when the primitive
-hieroglyphs were first formed. The “ship,” too, played a prominent
-part in the life of their inventors, and the picture of it represented
-it as moved not by oars but by a sail.[78] The flowering reed was
-equally prominent, and was even used to symbolize what stood firm and
-established.[79] Houses, fortresses, temples, and cities were built of
-brick, and vases were moulded out of clay.[80] The tablet, rectangular
-or square, was already employed for the purpose of writing, but as it
-was provided with a handle or a couple of rings at the top, I think
-it was more probably of wood than of clay. The sheep, goat and ox were
-domesticated,[81] and so also probably was the ass,[82] and corn was
-cultivated in the fields. The symbol of the “earth” appears to have
-been the picture of an island of circular or elliptical form. Among
-trees the cedar was well known.
-
-All this points to the sea-coast of Babylonia as the district in which
-its civilization first arose. But on the other hand, there is the fact
-that “country” and “mountain” are alike represented by the picture of
-a mountainous land. There is also the fact that the land in which the
-inventors of the hieroglyphs lived was one in which copper, gold and
-silver were procurable--perhaps also meteoric iron; and the further
-fact that hard wood was sufficiently plentiful for tools or weapons to
-have been made of it before the employment of metal. That they should
-have been made of wood, however, and not of stone, is a strong argument
-in favour of the Babylonian coast.
-
-It is on wood, moreover, that the first hieroglyphs must have been
-painted or cut. Many of them represented round objects or were
-formed of curved lines, which were transformed into a series of
-wedge-like indentations when imprinted by a stylus upon clay. We
-know, therefore, that clay was not the original writing material;
-its use as such, in fact, is coeval with the rise of that cursive
-script which, in the case of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, is called
-hieratic, but in Assyro-Babylonian is known as cuneiform. It was the
-attempt to reproduce the old pictures upon clay that created the
-cuneiform characters. As metal is not likely to have been employed
-by the primitive scribes of Chaldæa, and there is no trace of stone
-having been used--even the stone cylinder of later days being called
-a _dup-sar_ or “written tablet”--we are left to choose between
-wood and papyrus. In favour of papyrus is the fact that the circular
-forms of so many of the pictures suggest that they were originally
-painted rather than engraved; on the other hand, it is doubtful whether
-the papyrus grows in the Babylonian rivers, or at any rate did so
-in the prehistoric age. And the pictograph of a “written document”
-is not a strip or roll of papyrus, as in Egypt, but a tablet with a
-handle or loop. It is true that the primeval picture which denoted
-“copper” has much the same form, but as even cutting instruments had
-the determinative of “wood” attached to them in the early picture
-writing, it is clear that the original tablet could not have been of
-metal, whatever might have been the case with its later successors.
-The picture, moreover, of the “tablet” is distinguished from that of
-a “plate of bronze” by the addition of a string which is tied to the
-handle.
-
-On the whole, therefore, the only archæological evidence available at
-present is on the side of the tradition which made Babylonian culture
-move northward from the coast. The only fact against it of which I know
-is that, as I have already stated, the word for land was symbolized by
-the picture of a triple mountain. But this fact is not insuperable.
-Before the silting up of the shore, the old coast-line of Babylonia
-would have stretched away north-eastward of Eridu towards the mountains
-of Elam. Whether the mountains that fringed what would then have been
-the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf are visible from the site of
-Eridu, I do not know; if the clear light of Upper Egypt exists there
-they would be so. Nor do I know whether on the western side there
-are mountain ranges visible in Arabia; these are points which can be
-cleared up only when the country has been thoroughly explored.
-
-Eridu lay five miles southward of Ur,[83] that “Ur of the Chaldees”
-from which Hebrew history affirmed the ancestor of the nation had
-come. Ur was never a maritime port like Eridu; it stood on the Arabian
-plateau and looked towards the west. Its face was turned to the Semitic
-rather than to the Sumerian world. From the first, therefore, it must
-have been in touch with Semitic tribes. And a curious reminiscence
-of the fact survived in the western Semitic languages, Ur or Uru
-signifies “the city”; it was a Sumerian word, another form of which was
-_eri_. The word was borrowed by the Semites, and in the Hebrew
-of the Old Testament, accordingly, the idea of “city” is expressed by
-_’îr_. The Assyrians of the north, whose vocabulary was otherwise
-so full of Sumerian loan-words, preferred the native _âlu_, “a
-tent,” to which the meaning of “city” was assigned when Sumerian
-culture had been passed on to the Semitic race and the tent had been
-exchanged for the city. The history of the word is a history of early
-culture as well.
-
-But I am far from saying that it was through Ur that the civilization
-of Sumer came to be handed on to its Semitic neighbours. On the
-contrary, such facts as there are point in a different direction.
-Western Semites, whom linguistically we may call Arabs or Aramæans, or
-Canaanites or Hebrews, doubtless mingled with the Sumerian population
-of Ur, and adopted more or less of its manners and civilization, but it
-was further north, in the Babylonian Eden itself, that the Semite first
-came under the influence of the higher culture, and soon outstripped
-his masters in the arts of life.
-
-The entrance of the Semitic element into Babylonia is at present one of
-the most obscure of problems. All we can be sure of are certain main
-facts. First of all, as we have seen, the early culture of Babylonia,
-including so integral a part of it as the script, was of Sumerian
-origin. So, too, were the great cities and sanctuaries of the country,
-as well as the system of irrigation engineering which first made it
-habitable. Sumerian long continued to be the language of theology and
-law; indeed a large part of the Babylonian pantheon of later days
-was frankly non-Semitic. As was inevitable under such conditions,
-the Assyrian language contained an immense number of words--many of
-them compound--which were borrowed from the older language, and its
-idioms and grammar equally showed signs of Sumerian influence. I have
-sometimes been tempted, from a scientific point of view, to speak of
-Semitic Babylonian as a mixed language.
-
-On the other hand, if the elements of Babylonian civilization were
-Sumerian, the superstructure was Semitic. When the Semites entered into
-the heritage of Sumerian culture, the cuneiform script must have still
-been in a very inchoate and immature state. Its pictorial ancestry must
-still have been clear, and no scruples were felt about altering or
-adding to the characters. The phonetic application of the characters,
-which was still in its initial stage in the Sumerian period, was
-developed and carried to perfection by the Semitic scribes, and a very
-considerable proportion of their values and ideographic meanings is of
-Semitic derivation. The theological system was transformed, and a new
-literature and a new art came into existence. As Sumerian words had
-been borrowed by the Semites, so, too, Semitic words were borrowed by
-the Sumerians, and it is possible that examples of them may occur in
-some of the oldest Sumerian texts known to us.[84] The Babylonians of
-history, in short, were a mixed people; and their culture and language
-were mixed like our own.
-
-This, then, is one main fact. A second is that the Semitic element
-first comes to the front in the northern part of Babylonia. It is in
-Akkad, and not in Sumer, that the first Semitic Empire--that of Sargon
-the Elder, B.C. 3800--had its seat, and old as that empire
-is, it presupposes a long preceding period of Semitic settlement and
-advance in power and civilization. The cuneiform system of writing
-is already complete and has ceased to be Sumerian, archive-chambers
-of Semitic literature are founded, and Semitic authority is firmly
-established from Susa in the east to the Mediterranean in the west.
-Art is no longer Sumerian, and in the hands of the Semitic subjects of
-Sargon and his son Naram-Sin has reached a perfection which in certain
-directions was never afterwards surpassed. The engraved seal-cylinders
-of the period are the finest that we possess. Naturally the Semitic
-language has superseded the Sumerian in official documents, and the
-physical type as represented on the monuments is also distinctly
-Semitic. At the beginning of the fourth millennium before our era, the
-civilization and culture of Northern Babylonia have thus ceased to be
-Sumerian, and the sceptre has fallen into the hands of a Semitic race.
-
-But there is a third fact. The displacement of the Sumerian by the
-Semite was the case only in Northern Babylonia. In the south, in the
-land of Sumer, the older population continued to be dominant. Sumerian
-dynasties continued to rule there from time to time, and the old
-agglutinative language continued to be spoken. When a West-Semitic
-dynasty governed the country about B.C. 2200, state proclamations
-and similar official documents had still to be drawn up in the two
-languages, Semitic Babylonian and Sumerian. Sumerian did not become
-extinct till a later day. Indeed, after the fall of the empire of
-Sargon of Akkad there seems to have been a Sumerian reaction. While
-Susa was lost to the Semites and became the capital of a non-Semitic
-people who spoke an agglutinative language, the power of the Sumerian
-princes in Southern Babylonia appears to have revived. At all events
-even the dynasty which followed that of the West-Semites bore
-Sumerian names.[85] It was only under the foreign domination of the
-Kassites, apparently, who governed Babylonia for nearly 600 years,
-that the Sumerian element finally became merged in the Semitic and the
-Babylonian of later history was born.
-
- [Illustration: THE SEAL OF SHARGANI-SHAR-ALI (SARGON OF AKKAD):
- GILGAMES WATERS THE CELESTIAL OX.]
-
- [Illustration: BAS-RELIEF OF NARAM-SIN.]
-
-The last fact is that while what we call Assyrian is Semitic Babylonian
-with a few dialectal variations, it stands apart from the other Semitic
-languages. A scientific comparison of its grammar with those of the
-sister-tongues leads us to believe that it represents one of the two
-primeval dialects of the Semitic family of speech, the other dialect
-being that which subsequently split up into the varying dialects of
-Canaanite or Hebrew, Arabic, South-Arabic and Aramæan--or, adopting
-the genealogical form of linguistic relationship, Assyro-Babylonian
-would have been one daughter of the primitive parent-speech, while the
-other daughter comprised the remaining Semitic languages.[86] There
-are two conclusions to be drawn from this; one is that the Babylonian
-Semites must have separated from their kinsfolk and come under Sumerian
-influence at a very early period, the other that they moved northward,
-along the banks of the Tigris into Assyria.
-
-With these two inferences we have to be content. Upon the first home
-of the Semitic race or its affinities with other branches of the white
-race, Babylonia can naturally throw no light. The earliest glimpses
-we catch of the Semites of Babylonia are those of a people who have
-already come under the influences of Sumerian civilization, who are
-mingling with their teachers and helping with them to build up the
-stately edifice of historical Babylonia. There were ruder Semitic
-tribes, it is true, who continued to live their own nomad life on the
-western bank of the Euphrates or in the marshes that bordered the
-Persian Gulf. But like the Bedâwîn of to-day on the outskirts of Egypt
-they were little, if at all, affected by the civilization at their
-sides. They remained the same wild savages of the desert as their
-descendants who encamp in the swamps of modern Babylonia; they neither
-traded nor tilled the ground, and the language they spoke was not the
-same as that of their Babylonian kindred. They served, however, as the
-herdsmen and shepherds of their Babylonian neighbours, and the vast
-flocks whose wool was so important an article of Babylonian trade, were
-entrusted to their care. But Bedâwîn they were born, and Bedâwîn they
-continued to be.
-
-Even the Aramæan tribes of the coast-land kept apart from the
-Babylonians, whether Sumerian or Semitic, until the day when one of
-their tribes, the Kaldâ or Chaldæans, made themselves masters of
-Babylon under their prince Merodach-baladan, and from henceforward
-became an integral factor in the Babylonian population. They must
-have settled on the borders of Babylonia at a comparatively late
-date, when Semitic Babylonian had definitely marked itself off from
-its sister-tongues and the Babylonian Semite had acquired distinctive
-characteristics of his own. The West-Semitic elements in the
-population of Babylonia could have entered the country only long after
-the mixture of Sumerian and Semite had produced the Babylonian of
-history.
-
-The Babylonian of history came to forget that he had ever had another
-fatherland than the Babylonian plain, the Eden of the Old Testament,
-the land whose southern border was formed by “the salt river” or
-Persian Gulf of early Sumerian geography, with its four branches
-which were themselves “heads.” Here the first man Adamu[87] had been
-created in Eridu, “the good city,” and here therefore the Babylonian
-Semite placed the home of the first ancestor of his race. But it was a
-borrowed belief, borrowed along with the other elements of Babylonian
-culture, and no argument can be drawn from it as to the actual cradle
-of the Semitic race. Like the story of the deluge, it was part of the
-Sumerian heritage into which the Semite had entered.
-
-The Semitic tradition which made the first man a tiller of the ground
-may also have been borrowed from the earlier inhabitants of Babylonia.
-At all events it is significant that the garden in which he was
-placed was in the land of Eden, and that the picture of a garden or
-plantation is one of the primitive hieroglyphs of Sumer. The beginnings
-of Babylonian civilization were bound up with the cultivation of the
-Babylonian soil; the reclamation of the great alluvial plain was at
-once the effect and the cause of Sumerian culture. Sumerian culture, in
-fact, was at the outset essentially that of an agricultural people.
-
-Trade would have come later, when Eridu had become a seaport, and
-ships ventured on the waters of the Persian Gulf. It grew up under the
-shelter of the great sanctuaries. Supported at first by the labour
-of their serfs, the priests in time came to exchange their surplus
-revenues--the wool of their sheep, the wheat and sesame of their
-fields, or the wine yielded by their palms--for other commodities, and
-the temples themselves formed safe and capacious store-houses in which
-such goods could be kept. In the historical period Babylonia is already
-a great trading community, and as the centuries passed trade absorbed
-more and more the energies of its population, agriculture fell into the
-background, and the Babylonia conquered by Cyrus could be described
-with truth as “a nation of shopkeepers.” Even the crown prince was a
-merchant who dealt in wool.[88]
-
-The increasing preponderance of trade goes along with the increasing
-preponderance of the Semitic element in the country, and it is
-tempting to suppose that there was a connection between the two. At
-present, however, there is no positive evidence that such was the case.
-Nor is there any positive evidence that the Semites who settled in
-Babylonia were not already agriculturists. The circumstances in which
-a people lives are mainly responsible for its being agricultural or
-pastoral, and the fact that the Bedâwîn neighbours of the Babylonians
-on the western side of the Euphrates remained a pastoral race does
-not exclude the possibility that there were other branches of the
-Semitic family who had already passed out of the pastoral into the
-agricultural stage before coming into contact with the Sumerians. On
-the other hand, it is at least noticeable that in Semitic Babylonian
-the usual word for “city” continued to be one which properly meant a
-“tent”--the home of the pastoral nomad--and that no Semitic traditions
-have come down to us of the beginnings of agricultural life outside the
-limits of the Babylonian “Plain.” The title of “Shepherd,” moreover,
-was at times given to the Babylonian kings in days subsequent to the
-Semitic Empire of Sargon of Akkad. So far as our materials allow us to
-judge, city-life was the gift of the Sumerian to the primitive Semitic
-nomad.[89]
-
-To the Semite, however, I believe I have shown in my Lectures on
-Babylonian religion,[90] we must ascribe an important theological
-conception. In historical Babylonia the gods were conceived of in
-the form of man. Man was created in the image of God because the gods
-themselves were men. But the conception cannot be traced back further
-than the age when the Sumerians and Semites came into contact with one
-another. In pre-Semitic Sumer there are no anthropomorphic gods. We
-hear, instead, of the _zi_ or “spirit,” a word properly signifying
-“life” which manifested itself in the power of motion. All things
-that moved were possessed of life, and there was accordingly a “life”
-or “spirit” of the water as well as of man or beast. In place of the
-divine “lord of heaven” whom the Semites adored there was “a spirit of
-heaven”; in place of Ea, the later Babylonian god of the deep, there
-was “a spirit of the abyss.” Sumerian theology, in fact, was still on
-the level of animism, and the inventors of the script represented the
-idea of “god” by the picture of a star. Vestiges of the old animism can
-still be detected even in the later cult: by the side of the human gods
-an Assyrian prayer invokes the mountains, the rivers and the winds,
-and from time to time we come across a worship of deified towns. It
-was the town itself that was divine, not the deity to whom its chief
-temple was dedicated. So, again, the god or goddess continued to be
-symbolized by some sacred animal or object whose figure appears upon
-seals and boundary-stones, and in some cases we learn that the Sumerian
-prototypes of the later Babylonian divinities bore such names as “the
-gazelle,” “the antelope” or “the bull.”
-
-With the advent of the Semite all is changed. The gods have become men
-and women with intensified powers and the gift of immortality, but in
-all other respects they live and act like the men and women of this
-nether world. Like them, too, they are born and married, and the court
-of the early prince finds its counterpart in the divine court of the
-supreme Bel, or “Lord.” The Semitic god of Babylon was “lord of gods”
-and men, of heaven and earth; Assur of Assyria was “king of the gods”
-and lord of “the heavenly hosts.”
-
-It was natural that, corresponding with this lord of the heavenly
-hosts, there should be a lord of the hosts of earth, and that as the
-divine king was clothed in the attributes of man, the human king should
-take upon him the divine nature. Like the Pharaohs of Egypt or the
-emperors of Rome, the early kings of Semitic Babylonia were deified.
-And the deification took place during their lifetime,--in fact, so far
-as we can judge, upon their accession to the throne. In the eyes of
-their subjects they were incarnate deities, and in their inscriptions
-they give themselves the title of god. One of them is even called “the
-god” of Akkad, his capital.[91]
-
-Here, then, in the conception of the divine, we have a clear dividing
-line between the Semite and his non-Semitic predecessor. So far back as
-the cuneiform monuments allow us to carry his history, the Semite is
-anthropomorphic. As a consequence, the gods he worships conform to the
-social conditions under which he lives. In the desert the sacred stone
-becomes “the temple of the god”; in the organized monarchy of Babylonia
-each deity takes his appointed place in an imperial court. Under the
-one supreme ruler there are princes and sub-princes, vice-regents and
-generals, while angel-messengers carry the commands of Bel to his
-subjects on earth, like the messengers who carried the letters of the
-Babylonian king along the high-roads of the empire. On the other hand,
-the earthly king receives his power and attributes from the god whose
-adopted son and representative he claims to be. Nowhere has “the divine
-right of kings” been more fully insisted on than in ancient Babylonia.
-The laws of the monarch had to be obeyed, foreign nations had to become
-his vassals, because he was a god on earth as the supreme Bel was god
-in heaven.
-
-But the reflection of the divine upon the human brought with it not
-only the exaltation of sovereignty, but also the rise of a priesthood.
-There were priests of a sort in Sumer of whom many different classes
-are enumerated. But when we examine the signification of the names
-attached to them we find that they were not priests in the true sense
-of the word. They were rather magicians, sorcerers, wizards, masters
-of charms. They do not develop into priests until after the Semite has
-entered upon the scene. The god and the priest make their appearance
-together.
-
-I do not think, however, that we are justified in concluding that the
-elaborate hierarchy of Babylonia was of purely Semitic origin. On the
-contrary, like the theological system with which it was associated,
-it was a composite product. Behind the gods and goddesses of Semitic
-Babylonia lay the primitive “spirits” and fetishes of Sumer; its
-mythology and cosmological theories rested on Sumerian foundations;
-and in the same way the priestly hierarchy was the result of a racial
-amalgamation in which the Semitic element had adopted and adapted the
-ideas and institutions of the older people. We do not find the theology
-and priesthood of Babylonia among other Semitic populations, except
-where they had been borrowed from the Babylonians (as in Assyria); in
-the form in which we know them they were peculiarly and distinctively
-Babylonian. Like the language of Semitic Babylonia, which is permeated
-with Sumerian elements, or the script, which is a Semitic adaptation of
-the Sumerian system of writing, they presuppose a mixture of race.
-
-The priesthood eventually proved irreconcilable with “the divine
-right” of the monarch, though both alike had the same origin. The
-priests prevailed over the king, and as in England the doctrine of
-divine right was unable to survive the accession of a German line
-of princes, so in Babylonia the accession of a foreign, non-Semitic
-dynasty (that of the Kassites) dealt a death-blow to the belief in a
-deified king. The king became merely the representative and deputy
-of the divine “Lord” of heaven, deriving his right to rule from his
-adoption by the god as a son; Bel-Merodach came to be regarded as the
-true ruler of Babylonia, lord of the earth as well as of the heavens,
-and a theocratic state affords but little room for a secular king.
-The priests of Bel decided whom their god should recognize or not,
-and little by little the controlling power of the state passed into
-their hands It was in a sense a triumph for the non-Semitic element
-in the population. While the deification of the sovereign may be said
-to have been purely Semitic in its origin, the necessary corollary of
-an anthropomorphic conception of the deity, the supernatural powers
-supposed to be inherent in the priesthood went back to Sumerian times.
-It was because he had once been a master of spells that the priest of
-the anthropomorphic god could influence the spiritual world. The final
-triumph of the theocratic principle in Babylonia, where the Semite
-had been so long dominant, showed that the old racial element was
-still strong, and ready to reassert itself when the favourable moment
-arrived. Such, indeed, is generally the history of a mixed people: the
-conquering or immigrant race may seem to have suppressed or absorbed
-the earlier population of the country, but as generations pass the
-foreign element becomes weaker, and the nation in greater or less
-degree reverts to the older type.
-
-
- NOTE
-
-So far as the primitive culture of Sumer may be recovered from such
-of the primitive pictographs as can be at present identified, it may
-be described as follows. The inventors of them lived on the sea-coast
-within sight of mountains, but in a marshy district where reeds
-abounded. Trees also grew there, and the cedar was known. Stone was
-scarce, but was already cut into blocks and seals. Tablets were used
-for writing purposes, and copper, gold and silver were worked by the
-smith. Daggers with metal blades and wooden handles were worn, and
-copper was hammered into plates, while necklaces or collars were made
-of gold. Brick was the ordinary building material, and with it cities,
-forts, temples and houses were constructed. The city was provided with
-towers and stood on an artificial platform; the house also had a
-tower-like appearance. It was provided with a door which turned on a
-hinge, and could be opened with a sort of key; the city gate was on a
-larger scale, and seems to have been double. By the side of the house
-was an enclosed garden planted with trees and other plants; wheat and
-probably other cereals were sown in the fields, and the shaddûf was
-already employed for the purpose of irrigation. Plants were also grown
-in pots or vases. That floods took place is evident from the existence
-of a pictograph denoting “inundation,” and representing a fish left
-stranded above the foliage of a tree. Canals or aqueducts had already
-been dug. The sheep, goat, ox and probably ass had been domesticated,
-the ox being used for draught, and woollen clothing as well as
-rugs were made from the wool or hair of the two first. A feathered
-head-dress was worn on the head. Beds, stools and chairs were used,
-with carved legs resembling those of an ox. There were fire-places and
-fire-altars, and apparently chimneys also. Pottery was very plentiful,
-and the forms of the vases, bowls and dishes were manifold; there were
-special jars for honey, butter, oil and wine, which was probably made
-from dates, and one form of vase had a spout protruding from its side.
-Some of the vases had pointed feet, and stood on stands with crossed
-legs; others were flat-bottomed, and were set on square or rectangular
-frames of wood. The oil-jars--and probably others also--were sealed
-with clay, precisely as in early Egypt. Vases and dishes of stone were
-made in imitation of those of clay, and baskets were woven of reeds or
-formed of leather. Knives, drills, wedges and an instrument which looks
-like a saw were all known, while bows, arrows and daggers (but not
-swords nor, probably, spears) were employed in war. Time was reckoned
-in lunar months. Sacred cakes were offered to the gods, whose images
-were symbolized sometimes by a bearded human head with a feather crown,
-sometimes by a two-legged table of offerings on which stand two vases
-(of incense?). Demons were feared who had wings like a bird, and the
-foundation stones--or rather bricks--of a house were consecrated by
-certain objects that were deposited under them. A “year” was denoted by
-the branch of a tree, as in Egypt, and a “name” by a bird placed over
-the sacred table of offerings. The country was full of snakes and other
-creeping things, and wild beasts lurked in the jungle. The pictographs
-were read from left to right, and various expedients were devised for
-making them express ideas. Thus _mud_, “to beget,” was denoted by the
-picture of a bird dropping an egg. At other times the pictograph was
-used to express an idea, the pronunciation of which was the same as
-that of the object which it represented. The bent knee, for example,
-was used to express _dug_ or _tuk_, “to have,” since it represented a
-“knee,” which was called _dug_ in Sumerian.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER IV
-
- THE RELATION OF BABYLONIAN TO EGYPTIAN
- CIVILIZATION
-
-
-In dealing with the question of origins, science is constantly
-confronted with the problem of unity or polygeneity. Has language one
-origin or many; are the various races of mankind traceable to one
-ancestor or to several? Do the older civilizations presuppose the same
-primeval starting-point, or were there independent centres of culture
-which grew up unknown to one another in different parts of the world?
-Under the influences of theology the belief long prevailed that they
-were all sprung from the same source; of late the tendency has been in
-an opposite direction. While the biologist has inclined to a belief in
-the unity of species, the anthropologist has seen reason to maintain
-the diversity of origin in culture.
-
-The two earliest civilizations with which we are acquainted were those
-of Babylonia and Egypt. To a certain extent the conditions under
-which they both arose were similar. They grew up alike on the banks
-of great rivers and in a warm, though not tropical, climate. They
-rested, moreover, on organized systems of agriculture, which again had
-been made possible by irrigation engineering. In Babylonia the first
-settlers had found a plain which was little more than a swamp, over
-which the swollen streams of the Euphrates and Tigris wandered at will
-during the annual period of inundation, and which needed engineering
-works on a large scale before it could be made habitable. The rivers
-had to be confined within their channels by means of embankments, and
-canals had to be cut in order to draw off the surplus supply of water
-and regulate its distribution to the land. While the swamp was thus
-being made possible for habitation, the population must have lived
-on the edge of the desert plateau which bordered it, and have there
-developed a civilization which not only produced the engineers and
-their science, but also the concentrated authority which enabled the
-science to be utilized.
-
-In Egypt it was the banks and delta of the Nile which took the place
-of the Babylonian plain. Recent discoveries have shown that in the
-prehistoric age, when the natives still lived in the desert and led a
-pastoral life, all this was a morass, the haunt of beasts of prey and
-venomous reptiles. But here again the swamp was rendered habitable by
-engineering works similar to those of primeval Babylonia. The swamp
-was transformed into fertile fields, the annual flood of the river was
-regulated, and an elaborate network of canals and embankments spread
-over the country. The pastoral nomads of the neolithic age became
-agriculturists, or were employed in constructing and repairing the
-works of irrigation, or in erecting monumental buildings for their
-rulers. There is evidence of the same centralized government, the
-same directing brain and organizing force that there is in primitive
-Babylonia.
-
-Is it possible that two systems of engineering science, so similar
-in their objects, their methods and their results, should have been
-invented independently in two different countries? There are scholars
-who answer in the negative. But the possibility cannot be denied,
-since an even more elaborate system of irrigation was invented in
-China without any suggestion, as far as we know, from outside. The
-geographical conditions of Babylonia and Egypt, moreover, resemble
-one another, and the question of draining the swamps and regulating
-the overflow of the rivers once raised, the answer to it seems fairly
-obvious. By itself, therefore, the fact that the cultures of ancient
-Babylonia and Egypt alike rested on a similar system of irrigation
-engineering would be no proof of their common origin.
-
-In some respects the problem which the Babylonian engineers were
-called upon to solve was more difficult than that which faced the
-Egyptians. The Nile is fed by the rains and melting snows of Abyssinia
-and Central Africa, and its annual inundation takes place in the later
-summer months. The Euphrates and Tigris flow from the north, from
-the highlands of Armenia, and are at their fullest in the spring.
-Their overflow accordingly comes just before the summer heats, when
-agriculture is difficult or impossible, whereas in Egypt the period
-of inundation ushers in the most favourable time of the year for the
-growth of the crops. What the Babylonian engineers had to do was not
-only to drain off the overflow, but also to store it for use at least
-six months later. With them it was a question of storage as well as of
-regulation.
-
-Those then, who believe that the engineering sciences of the
-Babylonians and Egyptians were no independent inventions are bound to
-see in Babylonia their original home. It would have been here that the
-great problems were solved, the practical application of which to the
-needs of Egypt would have been a comparatively simple matter. On the
-chronological side there would be no difficulties in such a view. Old
-as was the civilization of Egypt, the excavations in Babylonia have
-made it clear that the civilization of Babylonia was at least equally
-old. At Nippur the American excavators claim to have found inscribed
-remains which reach back for nearly ten thousand years, and though
-the data upon which this calculation is based may be disputable, it
-is certain that the earliest monuments met with are of immense age.
-And it must be remembered that they belong to a time when the early
-pictorial writing had already passed into a cursive script, and the
-plain of Babylonia had been a land of cultivated fields for unnumbered
-generations.
-
-But by itself, I repeat, the practical identity of engineering science
-in primeval Babylonia and Egypt is no proof that it had been learnt by
-the one from the other. If we are to fall back on the old belief which
-brought the civilized population of Egypt from the plain of Shinar,
-it must be for reasons which are supported by archæological facts. If
-such archæological facts exist, the parallel systems of irrigation
-engineering will be additional evidence; alone, they prove nothing.
-
-At the outset we are met by a fact which personally I find it hard to
-explain away. The hieroglyphic script of Egypt has little in common
-with the primitive pictorial characters of Babylonia. Objects and
-ideas like “the sun,” “man,” “number one,” will be represented by the
-same pictures or symbols all the world over, and consequently the fact
-that in both Babylonian and Egyptian writing the sun is denoted by a
-circle and the moon by a crescent is of no significance whatsoever.
-But when we turn to less obvious symbols there is comparatively little
-similarity between the two forms of script. The ideograph of “god,” for
-example, is a star in Babylonia, a stone axe and its shaft in Egypt;
-“life” is represented by a flowering reed in the one case, by a knotted
-girdle in the other. It is true that Professor Hommel and others have
-pointed to a few coincidences like those between the Egyptian symbol
-for “foreign land” and the Babylonian ideograph of “country,” or
-between the Egyptian and Babylonian signs for “city,” “place,” but
-such coincidences are rare.[92] As a rule, as soon as we leave the
-more obvious conventions of pictorial writing little or no connection
-can be traced between the pictorial characters of Egypt and those of
-Babylonia. As a whole the two graphic systems stand apart.
-
-Nevertheless I am bound to add that it is only as a whole that they
-do so. With all the general unlikeness there is a curious similarity
-in a few--a very few--instances which it is difficult to interpret as
-merely the result of accident. The round circle with lines inside it
-which denotes “a city” in Egyptian might be explained from the circular
-villages which still characterize Central Africa; but then how is it
-that the ideograph for “place” in the pictorial script of Babylonia had
-precisely the same form? That the word for “country” should be denoted
-in the Babylonian script by the picture of three mountain peaks may
-be due to the fact that to the Babylonian “country” and “mountain”
-were the same; but such an explanation fails us in the case of the
-Egyptian hieroglyph of “foreign land,” where the three peaks appear
-again, since the hieroglyph for “mountain” in Egyptian has but two.
-The picture of a seat, and a seat, too, of peculiar shape, represents
-“place” in Egyptian; in Babylonian the same picture represents “city,”
-thus inverting the ideographic signification of the picture which in
-Egyptian and Babylonian has respectively the meanings of “city” and
-“place.” Between the primitive Babylonian picture of a “ship” and
-the boats depicted in the prehistoric pottery of Egypt, again, the
-resemblance is very exact, and Professor Hommel has pointed out to me a
-curious likeness between the original form of the Babylonian ideograph
-for “a personal name” and the _ka_-sign with the Horus-hawk above
-it within which the names of the earliest Pharaohs are inscribed.[93]
-Indeed the learned and ingenious Munich Professor has made out a list
-of even more striking coincidences, where the characters agree not only
-in sense but also in the phonetic values attached to them.[94]
-
-Here, however, we trench on another question, the philological position
-of the Egyptian language. Egyptian scholars to-day are practically
-unanimous in believing it to belong, more or less remotely, to the
-Semitic family of speech. The Berlin school of Egyptologists, who under
-the guidance of Professor Erman have made Egyptian grammar a special
-subject of investigation, are largely responsible for the dominance
-of this belief. I ought to be the last person in the world to protest
-against it, seeing that I maintained it years ago when the patronage
-of the Berlin Egyptologists had not yet made it fashionable. At the
-same time I confess that I cannot follow the Berlin philologists to
-the extent to which they would have us go. For them the old Egyptian
-language is not related to the Semitic family of speech “more or less
-remotely,” but very closely indeed. Indeed in their hands it becomes
-itself a Semitic language, and as a logical consequence the Egyptian
-script is metamorphosed into one of purely Semitic invention. But
-while admitting that Egyptian grammar is Semitic in the sense in which
-English grammar is Teutonic, the comparative philologist is bound
-to add that it contains much which cannot be reduced to a Semitic
-pattern. The structure, moreover, is not on the whole Semitic, neither
-is a large part of its vocabulary. And among the words in the lexicon
-which have Semitic affinities there are a good many which are better
-explained as the result of borrowing than as belonging to the original
-stratum of the language. In some cases they are demonstrably words
-which have been introduced into the Egyptian language at a late date;
-in other cases it seems possible to regard them as loan-words from
-Semitic Babylonian which entered the language at a “pre-dynastic”
-epoch. Thus, _qemḳu_, “the wheaten loaf” which was used for
-offerings, is the Hebrew _qemakh_, the Babylonian _qêmu_,
-and may have been brought into Egypt along with the wheat which was
-first cultivated in Babylonia and still grows wild on the banks of the
-Euphrates. To what an early period the importation of the cereal must
-be referred is shown by its occurrence in the prehistoric graves of
-Upper Egypt.[95]
-
-When all allowances are made, however, the fact remains that the
-Egyptian language as we know it was related to the Semitic family of
-speech. It stood to the latter as an elder sister, or rather as the
-sister of the parent-language which the existing Semitic dialects
-presuppose. It was not like the so-called Hamitic dialects of Eastern
-Africa, which are African languages Semitized, but it was itself
-of the same stock as Hebrew or Semitic Babylonian. It represents,
-however, a form of language at an earlier stage of development than
-are any of those which we call Semitic, and it has, moreover, been
-largely influenced and modified by foreign languages, which we may
-term African. So extensive has this influence been that the Semitic
-element has been even more disguised in it than the Teutonic element is
-disguised in modern English. In leaving the soil of Asia the language
-of Egypt took upon it an African dress.
-
-Now though language can prove but little as regards race, it can
-prove a great deal as regards history. A mixed language means a mixed
-history, and indicates an intimate contact between the populations who
-spoke the languages which are represented in it. Egyptian grammar would
-not have been Semitic if those who imposed it upon the natives of the
-Nile had not been of Semitic descent, or at all events had not come
-from a region where the language was Semitic. Nor would this grammar
-have been modified by foreign admixture if a part of those who learned
-to use it had not previously been accustomed to some other form of
-speech. And since we know of no Semitic languages in Africa which were
-not brought from Asia, we are justified in concluding that the Semitic
-element in the Egyptian language was of Asiatic origin.
-
-But we can go yet a step further. Where two languages are brought
-into close contact, the general rule is that that of the stronger
-race prevails. The conqueror is less likely to learn the language
-of the conquered than the conquered are to learn the language of
-their masters. On the other hand, the negro slave in America became
-English-speaking, whereas the English emigrant wherever he goes
-preserves the language of his fathers. It is only where a conquering
-caste brings no women with it that it is likely to lose its language.
-
-When, therefore, we find that Old Egyptian is an Africanized Semitic
-language, we have every right to infer that it is because invaders
-brought it with them from Asia who were Semites either by race or by
-language. In other words, Egypt must have been occupied in prehistoric
-days by a people who came from the Semitic area in Asia.
-
-The days were prehistoric, but of the invasion itself history preserved
-a tradition. On the walls of the temple of Edfu it is recounted how
-the followers of Horus, the totem guide and patron deity of the first
-kings of Upper Egypt, made their way across the eastern desert to the
-banks of the Nile, and there, with the help of their weapons of metal,
-subjugated the older inhabitants of the valley. Battle after battle
-was fought as the invaders slowly pushed their way down the Nile to
-the Delta, establishing a forge and a sanctuary of Horus on every
-spot where a victory had been gained.[96] The story has come down
-to us under a disguise of euhemeristic mythology, but the tradition
-it embodies has been strikingly confirmed by modern discovery. The
-“dynastic” Egyptians, the Egyptians, that is to say, who founded the
-Egyptian monarchy and to whom we owe the great monuments of Egypt, were
-immigrants from the east.
-
-The culture of these “dynastic” Egyptians was built up on two solid
-foundations, the engineering skill which made Egypt a land of
-agriculture, and a system of writing which made the organization of
-the government possible. The culture was at once agricultural and
-literary, and this alone marked it off from the culture of neolithic
-(or “prehistoric”) Egypt, which belonged to the desert rather than to
-the banks and delta of the river, and which knew nothing of writing.
-Now we have seen that there was one other country in the world in which
-a similar form of culture had come into existence. In Babylonia too
-we have a civilization which has as its basis the training of rivers
-for the purpose of irrigation and the use of a pictorial script. The
-civilization of Babylonia was, it is true, Sumerian at its outset, but
-in time it became Semitic, and expressed itself in a Semitic tongue.
-It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Semitic-speaking
-people who brought the science of irrigation and the art of writing to
-the banks of the Nile came, like the wheat they cultivated, from the
-Babylonian plain.
-
-There are two archæological facts connected with the early culture of
-“dynastic” Egypt which seem to me to prove at any rate some kind of
-intercourse with Babylonia. No building-stone exists in the Babylonian
-plain; it was therefore the natural home of the art of building in
-brick, and since every pebble was of value it was also the natural
-birthplace of the gem-cutter. Nowhere else could the use of clay as a
-writing material have suggested itself, or that of the inscribed stone
-cylinder which left its impression behind it when rolled over the clay.
-Wherever we have the clay tablet and the seal-cylinder we have evidence
-of Babylonian influence.
-
-Now recent discoveries have shown that the culture of the early
-dynastic period of Egypt is distinguished from that of later times by
-the employment of clay and the stone seal-cylinder. Neither the one nor
-the other could have originated in the country itself, for Upper Egypt
-(where all authenticated discoveries of early seal-cylinders have been
-made) is a land of stone, and the river-silt, which is mixed with sand,
-is altogether unsuited for the purpose of writing. When the Egyptians
-of the Eighteenth dynasty corresponded in Babylonian cuneiform with
-their subjects and allies in Asia, the clay upon which they wrote was
-brought from a distance. Moreover, the stone seal-cylinder of the
-early dynasties is an exact reproduction of the early seal-cylinder
-of Babylonia. Substitute cuneiform characters for the hieroglyphs and
-there is practically no difference between them in many cases. It is
-difficult to believe that such an identity of form is the result of
-accident, more especially when we find that, as Egyptian civilization
-advanced, the seal-cylinder became less and less like its Babylonian
-original, and finally disappeared from use altogether. That is to
-say, as the culture of the people was further removed from its first
-starting-point, and therefore more national, an object which never
-had any natural basis in the physical conditions of the country grew
-more and more of an anomaly, and was eventually superseded, first by
-the “button-seal” and then by the scarab. I see no other explanation
-of this than that it was originally introduced from Babylonia, and
-maintained itself so long in an alien atmosphere only because it was
-bound up with a culture which had come from the same region of the
-world. The seal-cylinder of the early Egyptian dynasties seems to me,
-apart from everything else, to prove the existence of some kind of
-“prehistoric” intercourse between the civilizations of the Euphrates
-and the Nile. And in this intercourse the influences came from
-Babylonia to Egypt, not from Egypt to Babylonia.
-
-The use of brick in early Egypt points in the same direction. While
-Babylonia was a land of clay, Upper Egypt was a land of stone, and
-it was as unnatural to invent the art of brick-making in the latter
-country as it was natural to do so in the former. To this day the
-Nubians build their cottages of stone; so too do the Bedâwîn squatters
-on the east bank of the Nile; it is only where the population is
-Egyptian and the influence of the old Egyptian civilization is still
-dominant that brick is employed. Under the Old Empire the Egyptian
-Pharaohs built even the temples of the gods of brick; it was but
-gradually that the brick was superseded by stone. It was the same also
-in Assyria; here too, in a land of stone, brick was at first the sole
-building material, and even the great brick platforms which the marshy
-soil of Babylonia had necessitated continued to be laid. But Assyrian
-culture was confessedly Babylonian in origin, and the brick edifice
-was therefore a characteristic of it. It was only by degrees that
-Assyrian architecture emancipated itself from its early traditions,
-and at first timidly, then more boldly, superseded the brick by stone.
-The example of Assyria throws light on that of Egypt, and as the
-Assyrian employment of brick was due to the Babylonian origin of its
-civilization, it is permissible to infer that the Egyptian employment
-of brick was also due to the same cause. Once more we may repeat that
-there was early intercourse between Egypt and Babylonia--the land of
-the brick-maker--and that in this intercourse the prevailing influences
-came from the east.
-
-Such, then, is the conclusion to which the most recent research leads
-us. The “dynastic” Egyptians, the Egyptians of history, spoke a
-language which is related to those of the Semitic family; their first
-kingdoms, so far as we know, were in Upper Egypt, and tradition brought
-them across the eastern desert to the banks of the Nile. The culture
-which they possessed was characterized by Babylonian features, and was
-therefore due either wholly or in part to intercourse with Babylonia.
-The fact that the use of the seal-cylinder--which, by the way, bore the
-Semitic name of _khetem_--should have lingered in the valley of
-the Nile to the very beginnings of the Middle Empire, is an indication
-that the period of its introduction could not have been very remote.
-The earliest historical monuments which have been revealed to us by
-modern excavation may not, after all, be many centuries later than the
-time when the culture of Babylonia found its way to the Nile.
-
-Indeed, there is a fact which indicates that this is the case, and that
-the literary culture of Babylonia had been imported into the valley of
-the Nile at a time when Egypt was divided into independent kingdoms.
-At an early epoch an ingenious system of official chronology had been
-invented in Babylonia. The years were named there after the chief
-events that had occurred in each of them, among these the accession
-or death of a king being naturally prominent. At the death of a king
-a list was drawn up of his regnal years, with their characteristic
-events, and such lists were from time to time combined into longer
-chronicles. The Babylonians were preeminently a commercial people, and
-for purposes of trade it was necessary that contracts and other legal
-documents should be dated accurately, and that in case of a dispute the
-date should be easily ascertained. Now an exactly similar system of
-dating had been adopted in Egypt before the age of the First historical
-dynasty. A pre-Menic monument dated in this way has been discovered at
-Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt, and the same method of reckoning time
-is found on ivory tablets that have been disinterred at Abydos. The
-method lasted down to the age of the Fifth dynasty, since the Museum
-of Palermo contains the fragment of a stone from Heliopolis, on which
-the chronology of the Egyptian kings is given from Menes onward, each
-year being named after the event or events from which it had received
-its official title. The successive reigns are divided from one another
-as in the Babylonian lists, and the height of the Nile in each year
-is further added--a note which naturally is of Egyptian origin. It
-is, therefore, interesting to observe that it is added as a note,
-independent of the event which gave its name to the year. Nothing
-could prove more clearly the foreign origin of the whole system of
-chronology, since, had it been of native invention, the height of the
-Nile, on which the prosperity of the country depended, would have been
-the first event to be recorded. After the fall of the Old Empire this
-ancient Babylonian method of dating seems to have passed out of use
-like the Babylonian seal-cylinder; at all events we find no further
-traces of it. It was, in short, an exotic which never took kindly to
-Egyptian soil.
-
-Did the “dynastic” Egyptians bring this method of dating with them,
-or did they borrow it after their settlement in Egypt? The second
-supposition is very difficult to entertain, for intimate trade
-relations between Babylonia and Upper (or Lower)[97] Egypt in the
-pre-Menic age appear to be out of the question, and are unsupported by
-any known facts. And literary correspondence, such as was carried on in
-the time of the Eighteenth dynasty, seems equally out of the question.
-How, then, did the Egyptians come to learn the peculiar Babylonian
-system of chronology unless the founders of the culture of which it
-formed a portion had originally brought it with them from the east?
-
-The same question is raised by the existence in early Egypt of an
-artistic _motif_ which had its origin in Babylonia. This is what
-is usually known as the heraldic position of the figures of men and
-animals. An example of it is found on the famous “palette” of Nar-Buzau
-discovered by Mr. Quibell at Hierakonpolis,[98] where the hybrid
-monsters whose necks form the centre of the slate are heraldically
-arranged. In this case the design is known to be Babylonian, since
-M. Heuzey has pointed out a Babylonian seal-cylinder on which the
-two monsters recur. Nar-Buzau is made the immediate predecessor of
-Menes by Professor Petrie on grounds to which every archæologist must
-assent; but an even better example of the heraldic design is met with
-on a great isolated rock of sandstone near El-Kab which was quarried
-in the time of the Old Empire. Here the ownership and opening of the
-quarry are denoted by an elaborate sculpture of the Pharaoh, who is
-duplicated, his two forms being figured as seated back to back, with
-a column between them, while the winged solar disk of Edfu, with the
-royal uræi on either side of the orb, spreads its wings above them.
-Each of the royal forms holds a sceptre, but that on the left has
-no head-dress, whereas that on the right wears a skull-cap, above
-which is the solar orb with the uræus serpent issuing from it.[99]
-In front of the latter is an altar consisting of a bowl on a stand,
-loaves of bread and a cup and jar of wine (with the customary handles
-for suspension) being engraved above the bowl along with a series
-of perpendicular lines which in this instance cannot (as has been
-suggested) represent the fringes of a mat. In front of the figure on
-the left is another altar, of different shape, the place of the bowl
-being taken by a flat top, above which are six upright lines and a
-flat cake. Precisely the same altar with the same objects above it are
-engraved on a broken seal-cylinder of ivory found by Dr. Reisner at
-Naga’ ed-Dêr, which I understand from the discoverer to be of the age
-of the First dynasty. When, therefore, was it that the heraldic design
-in art was introduced into Egypt from its Babylonian birthplace? In any
-case it would seem to have been before the foundation of the united
-monarchy.
-
-In Babylonia itself, as we have seen, tradition looked seaward, towards
-the Persian Gulf, for the elements of its civilization. At any rate
-the seaport of Eridu was the gateway through which the culture of
-Babylonia was believed to have passed. Here on the shores of the sea
-the culture-god of Sumer had his home; here trade sprang up, and the
-sailors and merchants of Eridu came into contact with men of other
-lands and other habits. Is it possible to discover a connection between
-Eridu and primeval Egypt?
-
-I believe that it is, though in making the attempt we are of
-course treading upon precarious ground. There are certain curious
-coincidences, one of which, since it goes to the heart of Sumerian and
-Egyptian religion, is necessarily of considerable weight. But they are
-all, it must be remembered, more in the nature of indications and
-possibilities than of ascertained facts.
-
-Eridu meant in Sumerian “the good city.” Memphis (Men-nofer), “the good
-place,” the name of the first capital of united Egypt, had the same
-signification. In the case of Eridu the name had something to do with
-the fact that the city was the seat of Ea, the god of beneficent spells
-and incantations, who had given the arts and sciences to man, and was
-ever ready to heal those that were sick. The son and vice-gerent of
-Ea, who carried his commands to earth and spent his time in curing
-diseases and raising “the dead to life,” was Asari, “the prince,” who
-was usually entitled Mulu-dugga, “the good” or “beneficent one.” The
-character and attributes of Asari are thus the same as those of the
-Egyptian Osiris, who was also known as Ati, “the prince,” and was
-commonly addressed as Un-nofer, “the good being.” Unlike most of the
-Egyptian deities, Osiris had the same human form as Asari of Eridu,
-and the resemblance between the names of Asari and Osiris--Asar in
-Egyptian--is rendered more striking by the remarkable fact that they
-are both represented by two ideographs or hieroglyphs of precisely
-the same shape and signification.[100] It does not appear possible to
-ascribe such a threefold identity to mere coincidence. And the theory
-of coincidence becomes still more improbable when we remember that
-while the story of Osiris centres in his death and resurrection, one
-of the chief offices of the Sumerian Asari was to “raise the dead
-to life.” Nowhere else in Babylonian literature, whether Sumerian
-or Semitic, do we find any reference to a resurrection; the Semitic
-Babylonians, indeed, did not look forward to a future life at all, or
-if they did, it was to a shadowy existence in a subterranean land of
-darkness “where all things are forgotten.” It is only in connection
-with Asari that we hear of a possibility that the dead may live again.
-
-Other resemblances between the theologies of Eridu and primitive Egypt
-have been pointed out. Professor Hommel believes that in the Egyptian
-deity Nun, the heavenly ocean, we must see a Sumerian god Nun, who also
-represented the celestial abyss. However this may be, an old formula,
-torn from its context, which has been introduced into the Pyramid texts
-of the Pharaoh Pepi I., takes us back not only to the cosmology of
-Eridu but to the literary form in which it had been expressed. Pepi, it
-is said, “was born of his father Tum. At that time the heaven was not,
-the earth was not, men did not exist, the gods were not born, there was
-no death.” The words are almost a repetition of those with which the
-Babylonian epic of the creation begins: “At that time the heaven above
-was not known by name, the earth beneath was not named ... at that
-time the gods had not appeared, any one of them”; and they are also a
-distant echo of the commencement of the cosmological legend of Sumerian
-Eridu: “At that time no holy house, no house of the gods in a holy
-place had been built, no reed had grown, no tree had been planted.”[101]
-
-The testimony of philological archæology, if I may use such a term, is
-supplemented by that of archæological discovery. Sumerian Babylonia and
-early dynastic Egypt are alike characterized by vases of hard stone,
-many of which have the same forms. Examples of some of them will be
-found in de Morgan’s _Recherches sur les Origines de l’Égypte_,
-ii. p. 257, where Jéquier observes that analogues to the Egyptian vases
-have been disinterred by de Sarzec at Tello in Southern Babylonia,
-“the shape and execution of which are exactly like” those discovered
-in Egypt, “the only difference being that the one are ornamented with
-hieroglyphics, and the others with a cuneiform inscription; apart
-from this they are identical in make.” The most remarkable instance
-of identity, however, is the design on the palette of the pre-Menic
-Pharaoh Nar-Buzau to which attention was first called by Professor
-Heuzey.[102] On this we have a representation of two lions set face
-to face in the Babylonian fashion, and with long serpentine necks
-which are interlaced so as to enclose a circle. Precisely the same
-representation is met with on an early Babylonian seal-cylinder from
-Tello.
-
-Years ago I noticed the general likeness presented by the seated
-statues of Tello to those of the Third Egyptian dynasty,[103] and
-suggested that both belonged to the same school of sculpture. A little
-earlier Professor Flinders Petrie had demonstrated that the standard
-of measurement marked upon the plan of the city which one of the Tello
-figures holds in his lap is the same as the standard of measurement of
-the Egyptian pyramid-builders, the cubit, namely, of 20·63, which is
-quite different from the later Assyro-Babylonian cubit of 21·6.[104]
-Still more convincing, perhaps, is the Babylonian division of the year
-into twelve months of thirty days each, which was already known in
-Egypt in the age of the early dynasties. The Babylonian week of five
-and ten days reappears in the Egyptian week of ten days, while the
-division of the day into twelve “double hours,” six belonging to the
-day and six to the night, has its counterpart in the Egyptian day of
-twenty-four hours, twelve of which were reckoned to the day and the
-other twelve to the night. Since a list of the thirty-six decans or
-zodiacal stars has recently been found on a coffin of the time of the
-Twelfth Dynasty[105] it is possible that this distinctively Babylonian
-invention may also go back to the age of the first Egyptian dynasties.
-At all events one of the chief stars in the Pyramid texts is “the Bull
-of heaven,” a translation of the Sumerian Gudi-bir, or “Bull of Light,”
-the name given to the planet Jupiter in its relation to the ecliptic.
-In primitive Babylonian astronomy the zodiacal sign of the Bull ushered
-in the year.
-
- [Illustration: SITTING STATUE OF GUDEA.]
-
-It may be that some of these evidences of Babylonian influence are
-referable to contact between Babylonia and Egypt in the age that
-immediately preceded the foundation of the united Egyptian monarchy
-rather than to that still earlier age when the “dynastic” settlers
-first settled in the valley of the Nile. But at present we do not
-know how such a contact could have taken place. Upper Egypt and not
-the Delta was the seat of the first Pharaohs with their Horus-hawk
-totem, and at the remote period when the future civilization of the
-country was being developed under their fostering care it is difficult
-to believe that Babylonian soldiers or traders had made their way
-to the shores of the Mediterranean, much less to the deserts of the
-Sayyîd. For the present, at all events, where we have clear proof of
-the dependence of early Egyptian culture upon that of the Babylonians
-we have no alternative but to ascribe it to the Semitic emigrants or
-invaders to whom the historical civilization of Egypt was primarily
-due.[106]
-
-This civilization, like that of Babylonia, implied a knowledge of
-metal. It was a civilization of the copper age, and thus stood in sharp
-contrast to the neolithic culture, such as it was, of “prehistoric”
-Egypt. Egyptian tradition, it is true, believed that the metal weapons
-with which the followers of Horus had overcome the stone-defended
-natives of the country were of iron, but this was because the compilers
-of the story in its existing form projected the knowledge and usages
-of their own time back into the past. There is incontrovertible proof
-that in Egypt, as in Europe, the ages of copper and bronze preceded
-that of iron. But the tradition was doubtless right in laying stress
-upon the fact that the invaders were forgers and blacksmiths. It
-would have been by reason of the superiority of their arms that
-they succeeded in subduing the valley of the Nile and reducing its
-inhabitants to serfdom. They were, too, “the followers of Horus,”
-under the leadership of a single prince who was himself a Horus, that
-is to say, an incarnate god. Here, again, we find ourselves in the
-presence of a conception and doctrine of Semitic Babylonia. There, too,
-as we have seen, the kings were incarnate gods, not only the sons of
-a divinity, but themselves divine. In Egypt, apart from the Osirian
-circle, the gods were not men, but animals, and so deeply rooted was
-this beast-worship in the hearts of the indigenous population that
-even the “dynastic” civilization, with all its unifying and absorbing
-power, never succeeded in doing more than in uniting the head of the
-beast with the body of the man. Even the human Pharaoh was forced to
-picture himself as a hawk. In Semitic Babylonia on the other hand, as
-we have seen, the deification of the king flowed naturally from the
-anthropomorphic conception of the deity; where man was made in the
-image of God, it was easy to see in him a god on earth. Like the use
-of copper, therefore, the deification of the king which characterized
-dynastic Egypt points back to Babylonia.
-
-It must not be supposed, however, that because certain elements and
-leading characteristics in the civilization of historical Egypt
-indicate that the Semitic-speaking race to whom it was mainly due
-came originally from Babylonia, there are no elements in it which can
-be derived from elsewhere. On the contrary, there is much that is
-native to Egypt itself. Even the script shows but comparatively few
-traces of a Babylonian origin. If the “dynastic” Egyptians came from
-Babylonia, they must have very considerably modified and developed
-the seeds of culture which they brought with them. And in Egypt they
-found a neolithic culture which had already made considerable progress.
-The indigenous population possessed the same artistic sense as the
-palæolithic European of the Solutrian and Magdalenian epochs, with whom
-perhaps it was contemporaneous, and under the direction of its dynastic
-conquerors this sense was trained and educated until the Egyptians of
-history became one of the most artistic peoples of the old world.
-
-But it is noticeable that throughout the historical period whenever the
-civilizations of Egypt and Babylonia came into contact, it was Egypt
-that was influenced rather than Asia. The tradition of the earliest
-ages was thus carried on; the stream of influence flowed from the east,
-and Herodotus was justified in assigning Egypt to Asia rather than
-to Africa. It was, in fact, Asia with an African colouring. In the
-days of the Eighteenth dynasty, when Egypt for the first and last time
-possessed an Asiatic empire, the eastern influence is very marked. The
-script itself became Babylonian, the correspondence of the Government
-with its own officials in Canaan was conducted in the Babylonian
-language and the Babylonian syllabary, and there are indications that
-even the official memoranda of the campaigns of Thothmes III. were
-drawn up in cuneiform characters. The clay tablets of Babylonia were
-imitated in Upper Egypt, where hieroglyphic and hieratic characters
-were somewhat awkwardly impressed upon them, and the language was
-filled with Semitic loan-words. The fashionable author of the age of
-the Nineteenth dynasty interlarded his style not only with Semitic
-words, but even with Semitic phrases. It is true that the Semitic words
-and phrases are Canaanite; but Canaan had long been a province of
-Babylonia, and it was because it was permeated with Babylonian culture
-and used the Babylonian script, that the foreign words and phrases were
-introduced into the literary language of Egypt.
-
-On the other hand, so far as, we can judge, there was no reflex action
-of Egypt upon Babylonia. The seal-cylinder was never superseded there
-by the scarab; indeed the only scarabs yet found in the Mesopotamian
-region are memorials of the Egyptian conquests of the Eighteenth
-dynasty. Neither the hieroglyphs nor the hieratic of Egypt made their
-way eastward into Asia, a fact which is somewhat remarkable when we
-remember over how wide an area the more complicated cuneiform spread.
-It was Europe that was affected by Egypt rather than Asia. Before
-Egypt laid claim to Palestine, Babylonian culture had already taken
-too firm a hold of Western Asia to be dislodged, and in Babylonia
-itself Egyptian influences are hard to find. In the age of Khammu-rabi,
-we meet with a few proper names which may contain the name of the
-Sun-god Ra, as well as with the name of Anupum or Anubis on a stone
-cylinder, and the hieroglyphic character _nefer_, “good,” is
-affixed to a legal document.[107] But this merely proves that in a
-period when the Babylonian Empire reached to the confines of Egypt,
-there were Egyptians settled in Babylon for the purpose of trade. A
-more curious example of possible Egyptian influence is one to which
-I have drawn attention in my lectures on the _Religions of Ancient
-Egypt and Babylonia_.[108] Thoth, the Egyptian god of literature,
-was accompanied by four apes, who sang hymns to the rising and setting
-sun. Travellers have described the dancing and screaming of troops of
-apes at daybreak when the sun first lights up the earth, and the origin
-of these companions of Thoth has been cleared up by an inscription in
-a tomb at Assuan. Here we learn that in the age of the Old Empire,
-expeditions were sent by the Pharaohs into the Sudan--the home of the
-apes of Thoth--in order to bring back from “the land of the gods”
-Danga dwarfs who could “dance the dances of the gods.” In the eyes of
-the Egyptians, it would seem, there was little difference between the
-ape and the Danga dwarf; the one was a dwarf-like ape, the other an
-ape-like man. But they alone could perform correctly the dances that
-were held in honour of certain gods, and which are already depicted
-on the prehistoric vases of Egypt.[109] Closely allied to the Danga
-dwarfs and the apes of Thoth are the Khnumu or Patæki of Memphis, the
-followers of Ptah, who were also dwarfs with bowed legs. Now dwarfs of
-precisely the same form are found on early Babylonian seal-cylinders
-where they are associated sometimes with the goddess Istar, sometimes
-with an ape and the god Sin.[110] The Babylonian name of the dwarf was
-the Sumerian Nu-gidda, an indication that his association with the
-deity went back to Sumerian times. We may conclude that, like the Danga
-dwarf of Egypt, he, too, performed dances in honour of the gods.
-
-The extraordinary resemblance of form between the Egyptian and
-Babylonian sacred dwarfs, as represented in art, raises the question
-whether the Babylonian dwarf was not an importation from Egypt, since
-the ape with which he was confounded was a native of the Sudan. This
-was the view to which I was long inclined, but there are certain
-considerations which make it difficult to be accepted. The Khnumu of
-Memphis were not the only dwarfs who were represented by the Egyptian
-artists. Still better known was Bes, who became a special favourite
-in the Roman period, when he was made a sort of patron of childbirth.
-But Bes, it was remembered, had come to Egypt from the southern lands
-of Somali and Arabia, like the goddess Hathor or the god Horus. Hathor
-is, I believe, the Babylonian Istar, who has passed to Egypt through
-her South Arabian name of Athtar; however this may be, Ptah of Memphis,
-whose followers were the Khnumu dwarfs, bears a Semitic name, and must
-therefore be of Semitic derivation. He belongs, that is to say, to the
-Egyptians of the dynastic stock, and is accordingly one of the few
-Egyptian divinities who is depicted in human form. On the other hand,
-the Sumerian dwarf Nu-gidda is the companion of Istar.
-
-On the Egyptian side, therefore, the dwarfs of Ptah are associated
-with a god who has come from Asia, while the dwarf Bes was confessedly
-of foreign extraction. On the Babylonian side the dwarf Nu-gidda was
-the associate of Istar, the counterpart of Hathor, and of Sin, the
-Moon-god, who was adopted by the people of Southern Arabia, and whose
-name was carried as far as Mount Sinai on the borders of Egypt. All
-this suggests that the sacred dwarf came to the valley of the Nile from
-Babylonia and Arabia like the name of Ptah, the creator of the world.
-In this case it would have come with the dynastic Egyptians before the
-age of history begins.
-
-But, on the other hand, there is the ape, and the ape is figured
-along with the dwarf on the Babylonian seals, It is true that the ape
-is equally foreign to Egypt and Babylonia, but the Sudan is nearer
-Egypt than Southern Arabia is to Babylonia. The actual date and path
-of migration, therefore, of the sacred dwarf must be left undecided.
-Whether he was brought to Egypt at the dawn of history, or whether he
-travelled to Babylonia in the historical age remains doubtful. All we
-can be sure of is that the sacred dwarfs of Babylonia and Egypt were
-originally one and the same, and that they testify to an intercourse
-between the two countries of which all literary record has been
-lost.[111]
-
-The same verdict must be given in the case of another point, not only
-of resemblance, but of identity, between ancient Egypt and Babylonia.
-This is the shadûf or contrivance for drawing water from a falling
-river for the sake of irrigation. The shadûf, which is still used
-in Upper Egypt, can be traced back pictorially to the time of the
-Eighteenth dynasty, but the basin system of irrigation with which it
-was connected was already of immemorial antiquity. It is a simple yet
-most effective invention, and on that account perhaps the less likely
-to have been independently invented, for it is always the obvious
-which remains longest unnoticed. In the modern shadûf a long pole is
-laid across a beam which is supported at either end upon other poles
-or on pillars of brick or mud; it is kept in place by thongs and is
-heavily weighted at one end, while at the other end a bucket or skin
-is attached to it by means of a rope. The shadûf of the Eighteenth
-dynasty was supported sometimes, as to-day, on a cross-beam, sometimes
-on a column of mud, and the bucket was of triangular form with two
-handles to which the rope was tied. Representations of it from Theban
-tombs will be found in Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, p. 764,
-and Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s _Ancient Egyptians_, plates 38 and
-356. Precisely the same machine is represented on a bas-relief found by
-Layard in the palace of Kûyunjik at Nineveh,[112] the only difference
-being that the shadûf-worker stands upon a platform of brick instead
-of on the bank itself, and that the pillar upon which the pole is
-supported seems to be built of bricks rather than of mud. The machine,
-however, is identical in both its Egyptian and its Assyrian form. That
-the bas-relief should have been found in Assyria and not in Babylonia
-is a mere accident. Like almost everything else in Assyrian culture,
-the invention was of Babylonian origin, and, in fact, formed part of
-the system of irrigation which made the plain of Babylonia habitable.
-Herodotus, who calls the machine a κηλωνεῖον, describes it as being
-used as in Egypt, and for the same reason, since the river did not
-rise to the actual level of the cultivated ground, which, like that of
-Egypt, was divided into a number of basins.[113]
-
-The palace of Kûyunjik belongs to the last age of Assyrian history.
-But the shadûf in Babylonia went back to the Sumerian period, as we
-know from the references to it in the lexical tablets. It was called
-_dulâtum_ in Semitic Babylonian, the pole or poles being _kakritum_,
-and the bucket _zirqu_ or _zirqatum_ (Sumerian _sû_),[114] and
-an old Sumerian collection of agricultural precepts describes how
-the irrigator “fixes up the shadûf, hangs up the bucket and draws
-water.”[115] The “irrigator” was naturally an important personage in
-early Babylonia, and legend averred that the famous Sargon of Akkad,
-the founder of the first Semitic Empire, had been rescued as a child
-from a watery grave, and brought up by one. In both Babylonia and Egypt
-the shadûf was closely associated with a system of irrigation which
-went back to the dawn of their several histories.
-
-What explanation must we give of its identity in the two countries?
-There are three possibilities. In the first place, it may have been
-invented independently on the banks of both the Euphrates and the
-Nile. Similar conditions tend to produce similar results. But against
-this is the fact that the shadûf was not the only kind of irrigating
-machine that was suggested by the nature of the two rivers and
-the lands through which they flowed. In modern Egypt, besides the
-shadûf there are the _saqia_, or water-wheel, and an irrigating
-contrivance which is in use in the Delta. The water-wheel, we know, was
-a Babylonian invention which was imported into Egypt in comparatively
-recent times; the irrigating contrivance of the Delta, which consists
-of a bucket suspended on a rope swung by two men who stand facing
-each other, is a primitive instrument which might have been invented
-anywhere. Its survival is due to the fact that in the flat marshes of
-the Delta, the shadûf, though saving labour, is not necessary, and it
-therefore continued to be employed there after the shadûf was known.
-But this implies that the shadûf was not the oldest instrument for
-raising the water of the Nile.
-
-Then there is the second possibility that the shadûf was borrowed by
-Egypt from Babylonia or by Babylonia from Egypt in historical times.
-In Babylonia, however, we can trace its history back to the Sumerian
-epoch, and in both countries it was intimately connected with a system
-of irrigation the origin of which must be sought in the prehistoric
-age, and which was probably carried from the valley of the Euphrates to
-that of the Nile. There remains the third possibility that it came to
-Egypt along with the system of irrigation itself.
-
-It is always easier to ask questions than to answer them, in archæology
-as in other things. There are many details connected with the early
-relationship between the civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt which
-must be left to future research to discover. But of that relationship
-there can now be little question in the minds of those who are
-accustomed to deal with inductive evidence. There was intercourse in
-the prehistoric age between the two countries, and the civilizing
-influences, like the wheat and the language, came from the lands which
-bordered on the Euphrates. Civilized man made his way from the east,
-and dwelt in primeval days “in the land of Shinar.”[116]
-
- [Illustration: THE 1^{ST}. ASSYRIAN EMPIRE]
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER V
-
- BABYLONIA AND PALESTINE
-
-
-A very few years ago Palestine was still archæologically an unknown
-land. Its history subsequent to the Israelitish conquest could be
-gathered from the Old Testament, and Egyptian papyri of the age of
-the Nineteenth dynasty had told us something about its condition
-immediately prior to that event. Thanks to the Palestine Exploration
-Fund, the country had been carefully surveyed, and the monuments
-still existing on its surface had been noted and registered. But the
-earlier history of the people, their races and origin, their social
-and religious life, and their relation to the rest of the world, were
-still a blank. Of the Canaan invaded by the children of Israel we knew
-nothing from an archæological point of view, and very little even of
-the Palestine that was governed by Israelitish judges and Jewish kings.
-
-The veil has at last been lifted which so long lay over the face of
-Palestine. Cuneiform texts have come to clear up its civil history,
-while the spade of the excavator has supplemented their evidence on
-the more purely archæological side. The history of Palestine can
-now be followed back not only into the neolithic, but even into
-the palæolithic age, and the source and character of Canaanite
-civilization have been in large measure revealed to us.
-
-First and foremost among the materials which have made this possible
-are the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna in Upper Egypt, which
-were discovered in 1887. Tel el-Amarna, about midway between Minia
-and Assiut, is the site of a city which sprang, like a meteor, into
-a brief but glorious existence under the so-called “heretic king”
-Amon-hotep IV. about B.C. 1400. Amon-hotep, under the guidance
-of his mother, had endeavoured to suppress the old state religion of
-Egypt, and to substitute for it a pantheistic monotheism. In spite
-of persecution, however, the adherents of the old faith proved too
-strong for the king; he was forced to leave Thebes, the capital of his
-fathers, and to build a new capital further north, where he changed
-his name to that of Khu-n-Aten, and called artists from the islands
-of the Mediterranean to adorn his palace. When moving from Thebes he
-naturally transferred to the new seat of government both the Foreign
-Office and its records in so far as they covered the reign of his
-father Amon-hotep III. and his own. For reasons unknown to us they do
-not extend further back.
-
-They were all in the cuneiform script, and for the most part in the
-Babylonian language. The fact came upon the historian with a shock
-of surprise, and had far-reaching consequences, historical as well
-as archæological. In the first place, they proved what had already
-been suspected, that under the Eighteenth dynasty Egypt possessed an
-Asiatic empire which stretched to the banks of the Euphrates. Then,
-secondly, they showed that Western Asia was at the time intersected by
-high-roads along which merchants and couriers were constantly passing,
-and an active literary correspondence was carried on. Thirdly--and
-this was the greatest surprise of all--they made it clear that this
-correspondence was in the script and language of Babylonia, and that it
-was shared in by writers of various nationalities and languages, of all
-classes of society and of both sexes. The Hittite and Cappadocian kings
-wrote to the Pharaoh in cuneiform characters, just as did the kings
-of Babylonia and Assyria. Arab shêkhs and Hittite condottieri joined
-in the correspondence, and politically-minded ladies did the same.
-Even the Egyptian Government was compelled to suppress all feelings of
-national vanity, and to conduct the whole of its correspondence with
-its own governors and vassals in Palestine or Syria in the foreign
-language and syllabary. There is no trace anywhere of the use of either
-the Egyptian language or the Egyptian mode of writing.
-
-From these facts other facts follow. The age of the Eighteenth Egyptian
-dynasty must have been quite as literary as the age of our own
-eighteenth century, and international correspondence must have been
-quite as easy, if not easier. Education, moreover, must have been very
-widely spread; all the civilized world was writing and reading; and the
-system of writing was a most complicated one, demanding years of study
-and memory. In spite of this it was known not only to a professional
-class of scribes and the officials of the Government, but also to the
-shêkhs of petty Canaanitish towns and even to Bedâwîn chiefs. And along
-with the system of writing went a knowledge of the foreign language
-of Babylonia--the French of Western Asia--including some slight
-acquaintance with the extinct language of the Sumerians. All this
-presupposes libraries and archive-chambers where books and dispatches
-could be stored, as well as schools where the Babylonian script and
-language could be taught and learned.
-
-Such libraries and schools had existed in Babylonia from a very
-early age. Every great city had its library, every great temple
-its muniment-room. Here the clay books were numbered and arranged
-on shelves, catalogues being provided which gave their titles. The
-system under which the longer literary or semi-scientific works were
-arranged and catalogued was at once ingenious and complete. By the
-side of the library was naturally the school. Here every effort was
-made to facilitate the progress of the scholars, more especially in
-the study of the Sumerian language and texts. The characters of the
-syllabary were classified and named; comparative grammars, dictionaries
-and reading-books of Sumerian and Semitic Babylonian were compiled,
-lists of Semitic synonyms were drawn up, explanatory commentaries were
-written on older works, and interlinear translations provided for the
-Sumerian texts. But with all this the cuneiform system of writing
-must have been hard even for the native Babylonian to learn, and in
-the case of the foreigner its difficulties were multiplied. It may be
-doubted whether the average boy of to-day, who finds the spelling of
-his own English almost too much for him, would have had the memory and
-patience to learn the cuneiform characters. Even in Sumerian times the
-difficulty of the task was realized, for there is a Sumerian proverb
-that “he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with
-the dawn.”[117] It says much for the educational zeal of the Oriental
-world in the century before the Exodus that it was just this difficult
-and complicated script which it chose as its medium for correspondence.
-
-The fact, however, points unmistakably to its cause. The reason why the
-Babylonian language and syllabary were thus in use throughout Western
-Asia, and why even the Egyptian Government was obliged to employ them
-in its communications with its Asiatic subjects, can only have been
-because Babylonian culture was too deeply rooted there to be superseded
-by any other. Before Egypt appeared upon the scene under the conquerors
-of the Eighteenth dynasty, Western Asia, as far as the Mediterranean,
-must have been for centuries under the direct influence and domination
-of Babylonia. I say domination as well as influence, for in the ancient
-East military conquest was needed to enforce an alien language and
-literature, theology and system of law upon another people. And even
-military conquest was not always sufficient, as witness the Assyrian
-and Persian conquests of Egypt, or the Roman conquest of Syria.
-
-We now have monumental testimony that such domination there actually
-was. As far back as B.C. 3800, Sargon of Akkad had founded a
-Semitic empire which had its centre in Babylon, and which stretched
-across Asia to the shores of the Mediterranean. We learn from his
-annals that three campaigns were needed to subdue “the land of the
-Amorites,” as Syria and Palestine were called, and that at last, after
-three years of warfare, all the coast-lands of “the sea of the setting
-sun” acknowledged his sway. He set up an image of himself on the Syrian
-coast in commemoration of his victories, and moulded his conquests
-“into one” great empire. His son and successor, Naram-Sin, extended his
-conquests into the Sinaitic peninsula, and a seal-cylinder, on which he
-is adored as a god, has been found in Cyprus. But Sargon was a patron
-of literature as well as a conqueror; his court was filled with learned
-men, and one of the standard works of Babylonian literature is said
-to have been compiled during his reign. The extension of Babylonian
-rule, therefore, to Western Asia meant the extension of Babylonian
-civilization, an integral part of which was its script.
-
- [Illustration: VIEW OF THE TEMPLE OF UR IN ITS PRESENT STATE,
- ACCORDING TO LOFTUS.]
-
-Here, then, is an explanation of the archæological fact that the graves
-of the copper and early bronze age in Cyprus, which mark the beginning
-of civilization in the country, contain numerous seal-cylinders made in
-imitation of those of Babylonia.[118] Examples of the seal-cylinders
-from which they were copied have also been discovered there. Among
-them is the cylinder on which Naram-Sin is adored as a god, another is
-an extremely fine specimen of the style that was current in the age
-of Sargon of Akkad.[119] Along with the seal-cylinder it is probable
-that the clay tablet was also introduced to the people of the
-West. Though the clay tablets found by Dr. Evans and others in Krete
-may not go back to so remote a date, the linear Kretan characters
-belong to the same system of writing as the Cypriote syllabary, and an
-inscription in the letters of this syllabary on a seal-cylinder from
-the early copper-age cemetery of Paraskevi near Nikosia has recently
-been published by myself.[120] We may infer that the prototypes of the
-tablets of Knossos or Phæstos once existed in Cyprus and Syria, though
-in the damp climate of the Mediterranean the unbaked clay of which they
-were made has long since returned to its original dust.
-
-A few centuries after the age of Sargon of Akkad we find Gudea, a
-Sumerian prince in Southern Babylonia, bringing limestone from “the
-land of the Amorites,” blocks of alabaster from the Lebanon, and beams
-of cedar from Mount Amanus, for his buildings in the city of Lagas.
-Gold-dust and acacia wood were at the same time imported from the
-“salt” desert which lay between Palestine and Egypt, and stones from
-the mountains of the Taurus, to the north-east of the Gulf of Antioch,
-were floated down the Euphrates on rafts.[121] At a later date we hear
-of the kings of the Babylonian dynasty which had its capital at Ur,
-conducting military expeditions to the district of the Lebanon.
-
-About B.C. 2100 Northern Babylonia was occupied by a dynasty
-of kings, whose names show that they belonged to the Western division
-of the Semitic family. The language of Canaan--better known to us as
-Hebrew--and that of Southern and North-eastern Arabia, were at the time
-substantially one and the same, and as the same deities were worshipped
-and the same ancestors were claimed throughout this portion of the
-Semitic world, Assyriologists are not agreed as to whether the dynasty
-in question should be regarded as coming from Canaan or from Southern
-Arabia. The Babylonians themselves called the names Amorite, so it is
-possible that they would have pronounced the kings to have been Amorite
-also. The point, however, is of little moment; the fact remains that
-Northern Babylonia passed under the rule of sovereigns who belonged to
-the Western and not to the Babylonian branch of the Semitic race, and
-who made Babylon their capital. The contract tablets and other legal
-documents of this period show that Babylonia was at the time full of
-Amorite, that is Canaanite, settlers, most of whom had come there for
-the sake of trade. At Sippara there was a district called “the field
-of the Amorites,” over which, therefore, they must have had full legal
-rights. Indeed, it would seem that in the eyes of the law the Amorite
-settlers were on a complete footing of equality with the natives of the
-country.
-
-This fact, so little in harmony with our ordinary idea of the
-exclusiveness of the ancient East, is largely explained by the further
-fact that Canaan and Syria were now acknowledged portions of the
-Babylonian Empire. When Babylonia was conquered by the Elamites,
-and the West Semitic king of Babylon allowed to retain his crown as
-an Elamite vassal, his claim to rule over “the land of the Amorites”
-passed naturally to his suzerain. Accordingly we find Chedor-laomer
-of Elam in the Book of Genesis marching to Canaan to put down a local
-rebellion there, while Eri-Aku, or Arioch, of Larsa, at the same date
-describes an Elamite prince as “governor of the land of the Amorites.”
-When Khammu-rabi, or Amraphel, the king of Babylon, at last succeeded
-in shaking off the Elamite yoke and making himself monarch of a
-free and united Babylonia, “the land of the Amorites” followed the
-fortunes of Babylonia as a matter of course. On a monument discovered
-at Diarbekir, in Northern Mesopotamia, the only title taken by the
-Babylonian sovereign is that of “king of the land of the Amorites.”
-And the same title is borne by one at least of his successors in the
-dynasty.
-
-For more than two thousand years, therefore, Western Asia was more or
-less closely attached to Babylonia. At times it was as much a part
-of the dominions of the Babylonian king as the cities of Babylonia
-itself, and it is consequently not surprising that it should have
-become thoroughly interpenetrated with Babylonian culture. There was
-an excellent postal service connecting Canaan with Babylonia which
-went back to the days of Naram-Sin, and some of the clay _bullæ_
-which served as stamps for the official correspondence at that period
-are now in the Museum of the Louvre.[122] On the other hand, a clay
-docket has been found in the Lebanon, dated in the reign of the son of
-Khammu-rabi, which contains one of the notices sent by the Babylonian
-Government to its officials at the beginning of each year, in order
-that they might know what was its official title and date.[123]
-
-When this close connection between Babylonia and its Syrian provinces
-was broken off we do not as yet know. Perhaps it did not take
-place until the conquest of Babylonia by a horde of half-civilized
-mountaineers from Elam about B.C. 1800. At any rate, from this
-time forward, though the influence of Babylonian culture continued,
-Babylonian rule in the West was at an end. From the Tel el-Amarna
-correspondence we learn that the Babylonian Government was still
-inclined to intrigue in Palestine; the memories of its ancient empire
-were not altogether obliterated, and just as the English sovereigns
-called themselves kings of France long after they had ceased to possess
-an inch of French ground, so the Babylonian kings doubtless persuaded
-themselves that they were still by right the rulers of Canaan.
-
-The wild mountaineers from the Kossæan highlands who had conquered
-Babylon soon passed under the spell of Babylonian culture, and became
-themselves Babylonian in habits, if not in name. They founded a dynasty
-which lasted for five hundred and seventy-six years and nine months. It
-is a curious coincidence that Egypt also was governed about the same
-time by foreign conquerors, whose primitive wildness had been tamed
-by the influences of Egyptian civilization, which they had adopted as
-the Kossæan mountaineers adopted that of Babylonia, and whose rule
-also lasted for more than five hundred years. The Hyksos who conquered
-Egypt have been convincingly shown by recent discoveries to have been
-Semites, speaking a language of the West Semitic type.[124] They came
-from Canaan, and their conquest of Egypt made of it a dependency
-of Canaan. Hence they fixed their head-quarters in the northern
-part of their Egyptian territories, where they could easily keep up
-communication with Asia.
-
-The excavations undertaken by the Palestine Exploration Fund at
-Lachish, Gezer and other sites in Southern Canaan have made it clear
-that throughout the Hyksos period Egypt and that part of Palestine
-were closely connected with one another. How much further eastward
-the government or influence of the Hyksos may have extended we do not
-know; the figure of a lion inscribed with the name of a Hyksos Pharaoh
-has been discovered in Babylonia, but this may have been brought from
-elsewhere. At any rate, so far as Palestine is concerned, we may say
-that the Hyksos period in Egypt coincides with the disappearance of
-Babylonian rule in Canaan. From that time onward Canaan looks towards
-Egypt, and not towards Babylonia.
-
-But even before the beginning of the Hyksos period Canaan--or at all
-events Southern Canaan--is Egyptian rather than Babylonian. That has
-been abundantly proved by Mr. Macalister’s excavations at Gezer.
-Objects of the age of the Twelfth dynasty have been disinterred there,
-and of such a character as to make it evident that the country was
-already subject to Egyptian influence long before the appearance of the
-Hyksos. An Egyptian of that age was buried within the precincts of the
-consecrated “high place,” and a stela commemorating him erected on the
-spot.
-
-Both at Gezer and at Lachish it has been possible to trace the
-archæological chronology of the sites by the successive cities which
-arose upon them. Gezer was the older settlement of the two; its history
-goes back to the neolithic age, when it was inhabited by a race of
-short stature who lived in caves and burned their dead, and whose
-pottery was of the roughest description. Some of it was ornamented with
-streaks of red or black on a yellow or red wash, like coarse pottery of
-the age of the Third Egyptian dynasty which I have found in so-called
-“prehistoric” graves at El-Kab. Two settlements of the neolithic
-population can be made out, one resting upon the other; in the second
-there was a distinct advance in civilization, and the place became a
-town surrounded by a wall. The neolithic race was succeeded by a taller
-race with Semitic characteristics, to whom the name of Amorite has
-been given; they buried the dead in a contracted position, and were
-acquainted with the use of copper and later of bronze. The city was
-now defended by a solid wall of stone, intersected with brick towers;
-as Mr. Macalister observes, in a country where stone is the natural
-building material the employment of brick must be due to foreign
-influence. He thinks the influence was Egyptian; this is very possible;
-but considering that building with brick was a salient feature in
-Babylonian civilization, the influence may have come rather from the
-side of Babylonia.
-
-The first “Amorite” city at Gezer was coeval with the earliest city
-at Lachish--the modern Tel el-Hesy, where the Amorite settlers had no
-neolithic predecessors. At Gezer their sanctuary has been discovered.
-It was a “high place” formed of nine great monoliths running from north
-to south, and surrounded by a platform of large stones. The second
-monolith, polished with the kisses of the worshippers, was possibly the
-central object of veneration, the _bœtylos_ or _beth-el_,
-as it was termed.[125] This _beth-el_, or “house of God,” takes
-us back to Semitic Babylonia. The veneration of isolated stones was
-common to all branches of the Semitic race; it may have come down
-to them from the days when their ancestors wandered over the desert
-plains of Arabia, where the solitary rocks assumed fantastic shapes
-that appealed to their imagination and excited feelings of awe, while
-their shadows offered a welcome retreat in the heat of noon-day. In the
-historical age, however, it was not the rock itself that was adored,
-but the divinity whose home it had become by consecration with oil.
-The brick-built temple was called by the Babylonians a _bit-ili_,
-_beth-el_, or “house of God,” and the name was easily transferred
-to the consecrated stones, the worship of which was coeval with the
-beginnings of Semitic history. But though the worship of stones
-was primitive, the belief that the stone was not a fetish, but the
-shrine of divinity, belonged to an age of reflection and points to a
-Babylonian source.
-
-The first Amorite city at Gezer was succeeded by a second, in which the
-high place underwent enlargement and was provided with a temenos. Under
-its pavement have been found memorials of the grim rites performed
-in honour of its Baal--the bones of children and even adults who
-had been sacrificed and sometimes burnt and then deposited in jars.
-Similar sacrifices, it would seem, were offered when a new building was
-erected, since children’s bones have been disinterred from under the
-foundations of houses, both at Gezer and at Taanach and Megiddo. The
-bones were placed in jars along with lamps and bowls, which, it has
-been suggested, were intended to receive the blood of the victim. The
-old sacred cave of the neolithic race was now brought into connection
-with the high place of the “Amorite” settlers, and the skeleton of a
-child has been found in it resting on a flat stone.
-
-This fourth city at Gezer--the second since the Semites first settled
-there--has yielded objects which enable us to assign to it an
-approximate date. These objects are Egyptian, and belong to the age
-of the Twelfth dynasty. Many of them are scarabs, but there is also
-the tombstone of the Egyptian who was buried under the shadow of the
-Amorite sanctuary. Fragments of diorite and alabaster vases also occur,
-telling of trade with Egypt, and in the upper and later part of the
-stratum painted pottery makes its appearance similar to that met with
-in the corresponding stratum at Lachish. I shall have more to say about
-this painted pottery in the next chapter; here it is sufficient to
-state that it is related to the early painted pottery of the Ægean,
-but is itself of Hittite origin, and can be traced back to the Hittite
-centre in Cappadocia.
-
-The fourth city had a long existence. It lasted from the period of the
-Twelfth Egyptian dynasty to the middle of the Eighteenth. Then it was
-ruined by an enemy and its old wall partially destroyed--doubtless by
-Thothmes III. when he conquered Palestine (about B.C. 1480).
-Upon its ruins rose another Amorite town. A new city wall was built of
-larger circumference and greater strength; it measured fourteen feet in
-thickness, and the stones of which it was composed were large and well
-shaped. The houses erected on the _débris_ of the brick towers
-belonging to the old wall were filled with scarabs, beads, fragments
-of pottery and other objects contemporary with the reign of Amon-hotep
-III. (B.C. 1400). At Lachish the ruins of the third city
-were full of similar objects, and among them was a cuneiform tablet
-in which reference is made to the governor of Lachish mentioned in
-the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. At Taanach the Austrian excavators
-discovered an archive-chamber, the contents of which were of the same
-age. Taanach was merely a third-rate or fourth-rate town, but its
-shêkh possessed a fortified residence, in a subterranean chamber of
-which his official records and private correspondence were kept in a
-coffer of terra-cotta. They were all in the Babylonian language and
-script. Among them is a list of the number of men each landowner (?)
-was required to furnish for the local militia, and there are also the
-letters which passed between the shêkh and his friends about their
-private affairs. How little of an official character is to be found in
-these letters may be gathered from the following translation of one of
-them: “To Istar-yisur (writes) Guli-Hadad.--Live happily! May the gods
-grant health to yourself, your house and your sons! You have written
-to me about the money ... and behold I will give fifty pieces of
-silver, since this has not (yet) been done.--Again: Why have you sent
-your salutation here afresh? All you have heard there I have (already)
-learned through Bel-ram.--Again: If the finger of the goddess Asherat
-appears, let them announce (the omen) and observe (it), and you shall
-describe to me both the sign and the fact. As to your daughter, we know
-the one, Salmisa, who is in the city of Rabbah, and if she grows up,
-you must give her to the prince; she is in truth fit for a lord.”[126]
-
-These Taanach letters are a final proof, if any were needed, of the
-completely Babylonian nature of Canaanitish civilization in the
-century before the Exodus. When we find the petty shêkhs of obscure
-Canaanite towns corresponding with one another on the trivial matters
-of every-day life in the foreign language and syllabary of Babylonia,
-it is evident that Babylonian influence was still as strong in
-Palestine as it had been in the days when “the land of the Amorites”
-was a Babylonian province. It is also evident that there must have been
-plenty of schools in which the foreign language and syllabary could be
-taught and studied, and that the clay literature of Babylonia had been
-carried to the West. Indeed the Tel el-Amarna collection contains proof
-of this latter fact. Along with the letters are fragments of Babylonian
-literary works, one of which has been interpunctuated in order to
-facilitate its reading by the Egyptian scholar.
-
-On the other hand, apart from the cuneiform tablets the more strictly
-archæological evidence of Babylonian influence upon Canaan is
-extraordinarily scanty. Naturally we should discover no traces of
-“the goodly Babylonish garments” which, as we learn from the Book of
-Joshua, were imported into the country, the climate of Palestine not
-being favourable to their preservation; but it is certainly strange
-that so few seal-cylinders or similar objects have been disinterred,
-either at Gezer and Lachish in the south, or at Taanach and Megiddo
-in the north. What makes it the stranger is that Mr. Macalister has
-opened a long series of graves, beginning with the neolithic race and
-coming down to Græco-Roman times, and that while the influence of Egypt
-is sufficiently visible in them, that of Babylonia is almost entirely
-absent. It is true that a few seal-cylinders have been met with in
-the excavations on the city sites, but with the exception of one found
-at Taanach[127] I do not know of any that can be said to be of purely
-Babylonian manufacture; most of them are of Syrian make, and represent
-a Syrian modification of the Babylonian type. And yet there are
-seal-cylinders from the Lebanon, now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford,
-which are purely Babylonian in origin, and belong to the period of
-Khammu-rabi.[128]--There are also two seal-cylinders of later pattern
-in M. de Clercq’s collection, on which are representations of the
-Egyptian gods Set and Horus--similar to those found on scarabs from the
-Delta of the time of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties--as well
-as of the Canaanite god Reshef, accompanied by cuneiform inscriptions
-which on palæographic grounds must be assigned to the age of the Tel
-el-Amarna tablets. As the inscriptions record the names of Hadad-sum
-and his son Anniy, “citizens of Sidon, the crown of the gods,” we
-know that they have come from the Phœnician coast.[129] Like the
-cuneiform tablets, they bear witness to the long-continued influence of
-Babylonian culture in Canaan on its literary side.
-
-When we turn to theology and law, the same influence is recognizable.
-The deities of Canaan were to a large extent Babylonian, with
-Babylonian names. The Babylonian gods Ana, Nebo, Rimmon (Rammân), Hadad
-and Dagon meet us in the names of places and persons, and Ashtoreth,
-who shared with Baal the devotion of the inhabitants of Palestine,
-is the Babylonian Istar with the suffix of the feminine attached to
-her name. Even Asherah, in whom Semitic scholars were long inclined
-to see a genuinely Canaanitish goddess, turns out to have been of
-Babylonian origin, and to be the feminine counterpart of Asir, or
-Asur, the national god of Assyria. The recently-discovered legal code
-of Khammu-rabi has shown that such glimpses as we have in the Book of
-Genesis of the laws and legal customs of Canaan in the patriarchal age
-all presuppose Babylonian law. From time to time usages are referred
-to and laws implied which have no parallel in the Mosaic code, and are
-therefore presumably pre-Israelite. But though they have no parallel
-in the Mosaic code, we have now learnt that they were all provided for
-in the code of Khammu-rabi. Thus Abram’s adoption of his slave and
-house-steward Eliezer is in strict accordance with the provisions of
-the old Babylonian law. Adoption, indeed, which was practically unknown
-among the Israelites, was a leading feature in Babylonian life, and
-the childless man was empowered to adopt an heir, even from among his
-slaves, to whom he left his name and his property. So, again, Sarai’s
-conduct in regard to Hagar, or Rachel’s conduct in regard to Bilhah, is
-explained by the Babylonian enactment which allowed the wife to present
-her husband with a concubine; while we can now understand why Hagar was
-not sold after her quarrel with Sarai, for the Babylonian law laid down
-that “if a man has married a wife, and she has given a concubine to her
-husband by whom he has had a child, should the concubine afterwards
-have a dispute with her mistress because she has borne children, her
-mistress cannot sell her; she can only lay a task upon her and make her
-live with the other slaves.”
-
-In the account of Isaac’s marriage with Rebekah it is again a provision
-of the old Babylonian code with which we meet. There we hear of the
-bride receiving a dowry from the father of the bridegroom, and of other
-presents being made to her mother in conformity with Babylonian usage.
-So, too, the infliction of death by burning with which Judah threatened
-his daughter-in-law Tamar, on the supposition that she was a widow,
-has its explanation in the legislation of Khammu-rabi, where the same
-punishment is enacted against a nun who has been unfaithful to her
-vows of virginity or widowhood. The story of the purchase of the cave
-of Machpelah, moreover, has long been recognized by Assyriologists as
-pre-supposing an acquaintance with the legal forms of a Babylonian sale
-of land in the Khammu-rabi age.
-
-With all this heritage of Babylonian culture, therefore, it is curious
-that the excavators in Palestine have come across so few material
-evidences of intercourse with Babylonia. Mr. Macalister is inclined
-to believe that it must belong to a period anterior to the Twelfth
-Egyptian dynasty. But this raises a chronological question of some
-difficulty. We have seen that the earlier and inner city wall of
-Gezer served as the defence of three successive settlements, and
-that it was partially destroyed along with the city it protected
-about B.C. 1480. Now the outer and more massive wall which
-superseded it also served to protect three cities, the latest of which
-was deserted during the Maccabean period, about B.C. 100.
-Hence, Mr. Macalister argues, “if we may assume the rate of growth to
-have been fairly uniform, we are led back to B.C. 2900 as the
-(latest) date” for the foundation of the first wall. During this long
-period of time twenty-eight feet of _débris_ accumulated; below
-this are as much as twelve feet of neolithic accumulation.[130]
-
-The conquests of Sargon of Akkad would accordingly have fallen within
-the neolithic epoch. But in this case it is strange that the use
-of copper, with which Babylonia had long been acquainted, was not
-communicated to its Western province, and that it should have needed a
-new race and the lapse of nearly a thousand years for its introduction.
-Moreover, specific evidences of Babylonian civilization are quite as
-much wanting in the remains of the first Amorite city as they are
-in those of the second. And unless we adopt a date for the Twelfth
-Egyptian dynasty, which on other grounds seems out of the question, it
-is hard to see how the Khammu-rabi dynasty can be placed before it.
-What little evidence we possess at present goes to indicate that the
-Khammu-rabi dynasty was contemporaneous with the earlier Hyksos kings
-or their immediate predecessors. And yet not only do we know that
-the Khammu-rabi dynasty ruled in Palestine, but the adoption of the
-cuneiform script, which was at least as old as the age of that dynasty,
-as well as the testimony of theology and law, proves that its rule
-must have exercised a profound and permanent influence upon the people
-of Canaan. How is it, then, that while the excavations have brought to
-light so many evidences of Egyptian domination, there is so little in
-the way of material objects to show that Palestine was once and for
-several centuries a Babylonian province?[131]
-
-Perhaps the excavations which are still proceeding at Megiddo may
-throw some light upon the problem. Meanwhile, we may remember that
-thus far the greater part of the objects that have been found belong
-to the less wealthy and educated part of the population. The annals
-of Thothmes III. prove that, so far as the upper classes were
-concerned, the picture of Canaanitish luxury presented in the Old
-Testament had a foundation of fact. Among the spoils taken from the
-princes of Canaan we hear of tables, chairs and staves of cedar and
-ebony inlaid or gilded with gold, of a golden plough and sceptre, of
-richly-embroidered stuffs similar to those depicted on the walls of the
-Egyptian monuments, of chariots chased with silver, of iron tent-poles
-studded with precious stones, and of “bowls with goats’ heads on them,
-and one with a lion’s head, the workmanship of the land of the Zahi,”
-that is to say, of the Canaanitish coast. These latter were doubtless
-imitations of the gold and silver cups with double handles and animals’
-heads imported from Krete, which were also received as tribute from
-the Canaanitish princes by the Egyptian king. Other gifts comprised
-chariots plated with gold, iron armour with gold inlay, a helmet of
-gold inlaid with lapis-lazuli, the tusks of elephants, rings of gold
-and silver that were used as money, copper and lead, as well as jars
-of wine, oil and balsam. Of all these articles, the copper and lead
-excepted, it is needless to say next to nothing has been discovered by
-the excavators. The most valuable work of art yet met with is a bronze
-sword of precisely the same shape as one found in Assyria, which bears
-upon it the name of Hadad-nirari I. (B.C. 1330).[132]
-
-On the palæographical side the forms of the cuneiform characters used
-in Canaan go back to the script of the age of Khammu-rabi and his
-predecessors. From a purely Assyriological point of view, no regard
-being had to other considerations, I should date their introduction
-into Palestine about B.C. 2300. The chronology that would
-best harmonize the historical facts would thus be one which made the
-dominance of Egypt in Palestine under the Twelfth dynasty precede the
-Babylonian rule of the Khammu-rabi period. Against it is the negative
-evidence of archæological discovery, so few traces of this rule having
-been discovered in the course of the excavations. But neither in
-archæology nor in anything else is negative evidence of much value.
-
-At any rate, thanks to the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions,
-the main facts are clear. Canaan was once a province of the Babylonian
-Empire, and during the long period of time that this was the case
-it became permeated with the literary culture of Babylonia. The
-civilization which was partially destroyed by the Israelitish invasion
-had its roots in the valley of the Euphrates.
-
-Gezer, it is true, was one of the cities in which no visible break with
-the past was made by the irruption of the desert tribes. It escaped
-capture by the invaders, and it was only in the reign of Solomon,
-when the Israelites had already entered into the heritage of the old
-Canaanitish culture, that it was handed over by the king of Egypt to
-his Jewish son-in-law. But at Lachish the marks of the destruction of
-the town by Joshua are still visible. Above the ruins of the Amorite
-cities is a bed of ashes left by the charcoal-burners who squatted
-on the site before it was again rebuilt. Above the stratum of ashes
-all must be Israelitish, and the objects found in the remains of the
-cities that stand upon it testify accordingly to a complete change.
-No more cuneiform tablets are met with, and but few Egyptian scarabs;
-the pottery is different, and the “high place” has disappeared.
-The bowl and lamp, indeed, are still buried under the walls of the
-newly-built house, but the bones of sacrificed children which they once
-contained are replaced by sand. As the Israelitish power increased
-the old Babylonian influence necessarily lessened. When the cuneiform
-syllabary finally made way for the so-called Phœnician alphabet is
-still uncertain, but it was at all events before the days of Solomon.
-Already in the Amorite period the characters of the Kretan linear
-script discovered by Dr. Evans are found scratched on fragments of
-pottery, indicating that besides the cuneiform another form of writing
-was known; it may be that the Israelitish conquest, by destroying the
-centres of Canaanitish civilization and the schools of the scribes,
-gave a first blow to the tradition of Babylonian learning, and that the
-work of destruction was subsequently completed by the Philistine wars.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER VI
-
- ASIA MINOR
-
-
-If it has been a surprise to learn that Palestine was once within
-the circle of Babylonian culture, it has been equally a surprise to
-learn that Asia Minor was so too. It is true that Herodotus traced the
-Herakleid dynasty of Lydian kings to the gods of Nineveh and Babylon,
-that Strabo knew of a “mound of Semiramis” in Cappadocia, and that in
-the Book of Genesis Lud is called the son of Shem. But historians had
-long agreed that all such beliefs were creations of a later day, and
-rested on no substratum of fact. The northern limits of Babylonian
-or Assyrian influence, it was held, were fixed by the Taurus and the
-mountains of Kurdistan.
-
-The discovery of cuneiform inscriptions on the stones and rocks of
-Armenia made the first breach in this conclusion. Their existence was
-known even before Botta and Layard had opened up Nineveh. In 1826
-Schulz had been sent by the French Government at the instance of M.
-Mohl to copy the mysterious characters which had already excited the
-attention of Oriental writers. Schulz was unexpectedly successful in
-his quest. The number of inscriptions he discovered was far larger
-than had been imagined, and his copies of them, as we now know, were
-remarkably accurate. But the explorer himself never lived to return
-to Europe. He was murdered by a Kurdish chief, Nurallah Bey, in 1829,
-while engaged in the work of exploration; his papers, however, were
-eventually recovered, and the inscriptions he had copied were published
-in 1840 in the Journal of the Société Asiatique. One of them was a
-trilingual inscription of Xerxes, the Persian transcript of which was
-just beginning to be deciphered; the rest were still a closed book.
-
-Then came the discovery of Nineveh and the first essays at the
-interpretation of the Assyro-Babylonian texts. Layard himself made
-an expedition to Armenia, and besides recopying Schulz’s texts and
-correcting certain inaccuracies in them, added considerably to the
-collection. Dr. Hincks, with his usual genius for decipherment,
-perceived that the syllabary in which they were written was the same as
-that used at Nineveh, and utilized them for determining the values of
-some of the Assyrian characters. He succeeded in reading most of the
-proper names, in assigning the inscriptions to a group of kings whose
-order he was able to fix, and in pointing out that many of them contain
-an account of military campaigns and of the amount of booty which had
-been carried off. But it was also clear that the inscriptions were not
-in a Semitic language, and as the nominative and accusative of the noun
-seemed to terminate in _-s_ and _-n_, while the patronymic
-was expressed by the suffix _-khinis_, the decipherer assumed
-that the language was Indo-European. The most important texts had been
-found in or near Van, which had apparently been the capital of the
-kings by whose orders they had been engraved, and the name of Vannic,
-accordingly, was given to both texts and language.
-
-It was soon recognized that Dr. Hincks had been in error in suggesting
-that the Vannic language was Indo-European. It was, it is true,
-inflectional, but with this any resemblance to the languages of the
-Indo-European family ceased. Nor was there any other language or group
-of languages to which it appeared to be related, and all attempts
-failed to advance the decipherment much beyond the point at which
-it had been left by Hincks. Thanks to the “determinatives,” which
-indicate proper names and the like, and the ideographs, which are
-fairly plentiful, the general sense of many of the inscriptions could
-be made out; but beyond that it seemed impossible to go. Lenormant,
-indeed, following Hincks, showed that the suffix _-bi_ denoted the
-first person singular of the verb, and indicated Georgian as possibly a
-related language; but in the hands of other would-be decipherers, like
-Robert and Mordtmann, there was retrogression instead of advance.
-
- [Illustration:
-
- THE GARDENS AND HILL OF DHUSPAS OR VAN.]
-
-So matters remained until 1882, when Stanislas Guyard pointed out the
-parallelism between a formula which occurs at the end of many Vannic
-inscriptions and the imprecatory formula of the Assyrian texts. I had
-already been struck by the same fact, and was at the time preparing a
-Memoir on the decipherment and translation of the inscriptions, which
-shortly afterwards appeared in the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic
-Society_. In this I had made use of Layard’s copies, which had never
-been published; other copies also, including photographs, squeezes
-and casts, had been placed at my disposal, and in 1882 I was able to
-lay before cuneiform scholars a grammar and vocabulary of the Vannic
-language, together with translations and analyses of all the known
-texts.[133] These have been subsequently corrected and extended by
-other Assyriologists--Guyard, D. H. Müller, Nikolsky, Scheil, Belck
-and Lehmann, as well as by myself. An ordinary Vannic text can now
-be translated with nearly as much completeness and certainty as an
-Assyrian text, and the number of them known to us has been greatly
-enlarged by the archæological explorations of Belck and Lehmann.
-
-In the decipherment of the Vannic inscriptions the ideographs and
-determinatives which are scattered through them took the place for me
-of a bilingual text. The determinatives told me what was the nature of
-the words which followed or preceded them, and so explained the general
-sense of the passages in which they occurred, while from time to time a
-phonetically-written word would be replaced in a parallel passage by an
-ideograph the signification of which was known. I soon found, moreover,
-that the cuneiform syllabary must have been brought from Nineveh to Van
-in the age of Assur-natsir-pal II. (B.C. 884–859), and that
-the actual phrases met with in the inscriptions of that monarch are
-sometimes reproduced in a Vannic dress. The Vannic language, however,
-still remains isolated, though the majority of those who have studied
-it incline to Lenormant’s view that its nearest living representative
-is Georgian. Not being a Georgian scholar myself, this is a point upon
-which I can express no opinion.
-
-Instead of “Vannic,” it has been proposed to call the language
-“Khaldian.” The chief god of the people who spoke the language was
-Khaldis, and in the inscriptions we find the people themselves
-described as “the children of Khaldis.” Derivatives from the name are
-found employed in a geographical sense northward of the region to which
-the inscriptions belong. Thus the Khaldi “in the neighbourhood of
-Colchis” are said to have been also called Khaldæi;[134] “Khaldees” are
-frequently referred to by Armenian writers as living between Trapezont
-and Batûm, and a Turkish inscription at Sumela shows that as late as
-the beginning of the fifteenth century Lazistân was still known as
-Khaldia. That the name was ever applied, however, to the kingdom which
-had its chief seat at Van is not proved, and it is therefore best to
-adhere to the term “Vannic,” which commits those who use it to no
-theory.[135]
-
-The decipherment of the Vannic texts has not only led to the discovery
-of a new language, it has also thrown a flood of light on the early
-history, geography and religion of the Armenian plateau. The military
-campaigns of the Assyrian kings had brought it into contact with
-Assyrian civilization, and in the ninth century before our era a
-dynasty arose which adopted the literary culture and art of Assyria,
-and founded a powerful kingdom which extended its sway from Urumia on
-the east to Malatia on the west, and from the slopes of Ararat and the
-shores of Lake Erivan to the northern frontiers of Assyria.
-
-The main fact which has thus been disclosed is that the Armenians of
-history--the Aryan tribes, that is to say, who spoke an Indo-European
-language--did not enter the country and establish themselves in the
-place of its older rulers before the end of the seventh century before
-our era. The fall of the Vannic monarchy seems to have coincided with
-the fall of the Assyrian Empire, with which it had once contended on
-almost equal terms, and in each case the invasion of the so-called
-Scythian hordes from the plains of Eastern Europe had much to do with
-the result. The founders of Armenian civilization and of the cities of
-the Armenian plateau had no connection with the Indo-European family.
-Their type of language corresponded with that which distinguishes most
-of the actual languages of the Caucasus, though no genetic relationship
-is traceable between them. The break with the past, however, occasioned
-by the irruption of the Indo-European invaders, was so great that not
-only did the older language become extinct and forgotten, but even the
-tradition of the older civilization was also lost. Like the recovery of
-the Sumerian language and the culture it represented, the recovery of
-the Vannic language and culture is the revelation of a new world.
-
-At the head of the pantheon was a trinity consisting of Khaldis, the
-supreme god of the race; Teisbas, the god of the air; and the Sun-god
-Ardinis. Temples were erected in their honour, and shields and spears
-dedicated to their service. The vine, which grows wild in Armenia,
-was the sacred tree of the people, and there are inscriptions which
-commemorate its planting and consecration, and describe the endowments
-that were set apart for its maintenance. Wine was naturally offered
-to the gods along with the domestic animals and prisoners of war. Dr.
-Belck has discovered burial-places which go back to the neolithic age,
-but the majority of the monuments scattered over the Vannic area belong
-to the bronze age, and testify to a native adaptation of Assyrian art
-and culture. Iron also makes its appearance, but scantily. The pottery
-of the age of the inscriptions is related on the one side to the
-Assyrian pottery of the same period, and on the other to the pottery
-of Asia Minor. The polished red ware more especially points to the
-west.[136]
-
- [Illustration:
-
- THE RUINS OF A PALACE OF URARTU AT TOPRAK-KALEH.]
-
-The existence of a language of the Caucasian type in Armenia, and its
-association with a powerful kingdom and an advanced culture, is not
-the only revelation of the kind that we owe to cuneiform decipherment.
-We have learned that at a much earlier epoch Northern Mesopotamia was
-occupied by a people who spoke a language of similar type but of far
-more complicated form; and that here, too, the language in question was
-accompanied by a high civilization, a powerful monarchy, and the
-use of the cuneiform syllabary. The monarchy was that of Mitanni, and
-its culture and script had been borrowed from Babylonia in the age of
-Khammu-rabi, instead of from Assyria in the age of Assur-natsir-pal.
-But it is interesting to observe that in borrowing the script the
-people of Mitanni had adapted and simplified it in precisely the same
-way as did the people of Van in after days. Superfluous characters were
-discarded, a single phonetic value only assigned to each character,
-and large use made of those which expressed vowels. In fact, in
-both Mitannian and Vannic the system of writing begins to approach
-the alphabetic. Whether this similarity in adaptation was due to a
-similarity of phonetic structure in the two languages or to conscious
-imitation on the part of the Vannic scribes it is difficult to say; it
-is a point, however, which cannot be passed over.
-
-The name of Mitanni meets us on the Egyptian monuments of the
-Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties. The kingdom played a considerable
-part at that period of time in the politics of Western Asia, and the
-daughters of its kings were married to the Egyptian Pharaohs. The
-boundaries of the Egyptian Empire were coterminous with those of
-Mitanni, and we gather from the Tel el-Amarna correspondence that the
-Mitannian forces had more than once made their way into Palestine,
-perhaps as far south as Jerusalem, and that Mitannian intrigue
-was active in that portion of the Pharaoh’s dominions. Among the
-Canaanitish governors are some who bear Mitannian names, and testify to
-the continuance of a Mitannian element in that common meeting-place of
-nationalities.
-
-Several letters from the Mitannian king have been found among the
-Tel el-Amarna tablets. Most of them are written in the Babylonian
-language, but one--and fortunately an exceptionally long one--though
-in cuneiform characters, is in the native language of the country.
-A comparison of it with its companion letters, assisted by the
-determinatives and ideographs which are employed in it from time to
-time, has enabled Jensen, Leopold Messerschmidt and myself to decipher
-a very considerable part of the letter, and so to compile a grammar and
-vocabulary of the Mitannian language. That it is distantly related to
-Vannic seems to admit of little doubt, but it comes before us in a much
-more developed form; indeed, its system of suffixes is so elaborate and
-ponderous as to remind us of the polysynthetic languages of America.
-
-A legal document found in Babylonia and dated in the epoch of
-Khammu-rabi contains a number of proper names which are of Mitannian
-or allied origin, and show that persons of that race were already
-settled in Babylonia.[137] As the Mitannian form of cuneiform script
-must have been borrowed about the same time, we may infer that the
-advanced guard of the northern race had already made its way as far
-south as Mesopotamia, and there established its power in the midst of
-a Semitic population. From that time forward a constant struggle went
-on between the two races, the Semitic race striving to push back the
-northern intruders and planting its own colonies in the very heart of
-the northern area, while the northerners pressed ever more and more to
-the southward, and at one time even seemed likely to possess themselves
-of the heritage of the Babylonian Empire in Western Asia. Like Armenia,
-Northern Mesopotamia was occupied by a people of Caucasian and Asianic
-affinities, whose armies had crossed the Euphrates and won territory in
-Syria and Palestine.
-
-On the west, however, the Mitannians found themselves confronted by
-another northern population, the Hittites, whose first home was in
-Cappadocia. The Hittites also had passed under the spell of Babylonian
-culture, and the cuneiform script had been carried to them at an early
-date. Thanks to recent discoveries, we can now trace in some measure
-the earlier fortunes of a race who made a profound impression, not only
-on the future history of Asia Minor and its relations with Greece, but
-also on the history of Palestine.
-
-As far back as about B.C. 2000, Babylonian or Assyrian troops
-had already made their way along the northern banks of the Tigris
-and Euphrates to the borders of Cappadocia and the neighbourhood
-of the Halys. I say Babylonian or Assyrian, for Assyria was at the
-time a province of Babylonia, though as the colonies which settled
-in the track of the invaders were distinctively Assyrian in their
-municipal customs and the names of their inhabitants, the troops were
-probably drafted from Assyria.[138] The mineral wealth of Cappadocia
-was doubtless the attraction which led them to such distant and
-semibarbarous lands; Dr. Gladstone’s analysis of the gold of the Sixth
-Egyptian dynasty, with its admixture of silver, has shown that it was
-imported from the north of Asia Minor,[139] and the silver itself was
-probably already worked. Further south, in the Taurus, were mines of
-copper.
-
-However this may be, the remains of one of these early
-Assyro-Babylonian colonies has been partially excavated a few miles
-(twenty-three kilometres) to the north-east of Kaisariyeh.[140] The
-site is now known as Kara Eyuk, “the Black Mound,” and numerous
-cuneiform tablets have come from it. It has obtained its present name
-from the marks of fire which are everywhere visible upon it, and bear
-eloquent testimony to its final fate. Established as an outpost of
-the Assyrian Empire in the distant west, a time came when, deserted
-by the Government at home, its strong walls were battered down by the
-besieging foe and the Assyrian settlers massacred among the ruins
-of their burning town. According to M. Chantre, its excavator (who,
-however, believes that it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption), the
-whole mound is a mass of charred and burnt remains.
-
-The construction of the walls, as well as the pottery found within
-them, marks it off with great distinctness from the ruins of the
-Hittite or native Cappadocian cities in its neighbourhood. While in
-their case the city wall is made of unmortared blocks of stone, the
-walls of Kara Eyuk are built of brick, and where stones are used
-they are of small size and cemented with mortar. The pottery differs
-considerably from that of the Hittite capital at Boghaz Keui. Some
-of it is of black ware, especially characterized by the vases with
-long spouts, which are also found in Phrygia and the Troad. Some of
-it, again, is of the dark-red lustrous ware which has been met with
-at Toprak Kaleh, near Van, and Boz Eyuk in Phrygia, while the yellow
-ware with geometrical patterns in black and maroon-red which has been
-discovered in Phrygia occurs in large quantities. This latter ware is
-of the class known as “Mykenæan.”[141]
-
-The cuneiform tablets which have come from the site are known as
-“Cappadocian,” and were first noticed by Dr. Pinches. The forms of the
-characters resemble those of the early Babylonian script, which was
-still used in Assyria in the age of Khammu-rabi. Many of the proper
-names, moreover, seem to be distinctive of that period. On the other
-hand, a large proportion of them contain the name of Asur--often in its
-primitive form of Asir--or are otherwise characteristic of Assyria.
-The tablets are further dated by the archons who gave their names to
-the years, a system of chronology which was peculiar to Assyria and
-unknown in Babylonia, while the month was divided into “weeks” of five
-days each. The language of the tablets also, which is full of dialectic
-mispronunciations and strange words, points to Assyria rather than to
-the southern kingdom, and we may therefore conclude that the colonists
-were Assyrians, even though the colony may have been founded when
-Assyria was still a Babylonian province.
-
-There are indications in the Assyrian inscriptions themselves that
-the road to Cappadocia was known to the Assyrian princes at an early
-epoch. The earliest Assyrian kings whose annals have come down to us
-are Hadad-nirari I. and his son Shalmaneser I. (B.C. 1300).
-Hadad-nirari tells us that his greatgrandfather, Assur-yuballidh, whose
-letters form part of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, had subdued
-“the wide-spread” province of Subari, which lay near the sources of
-the Euphrates, and in which Kara Eyuk was perhaps included, while he
-himself restored the cities of the same province which had fallen into
-ruin. Later, Shalmaneser I. conducted campaign after campaign towards
-the same region. In his second year he overthrew the king of Malatia,
-and the combined forces of the other “Hittite” states, who had come to
-his assistance: “all were conquered,” from the borders of Cappadocia
-to the Hittite stronghold of Carchemish. A military colony was settled
-at the head waters of the Tigris which secured the high-road to Asia
-Minor.
-
-Two centuries later we learn from Tiglath-pileser I. that Moschians and
-Hittites had overrun part of this Assyrian territory, and occupied some
-of the Assyrian settlements. Once more, therefore, the Assyrian troops
-marched to the north-west; the provinces which lay in the valley of the
-Murad-chai were recovered, and the old province of Subari cleared of
-intruders. Soon afterwards Tiglath-pileser forced his way into Southern
-Cappadocia and the valley of the Sarus, making Comana tributary, razing
-to the ground the fortresses that had resisted him, and erecting
-on their site chambers of brick, with bronze tablets on which his
-conquests were recorded. Eastern Cilicia was known at the time to the
-Assyrians as Muzri, or “the Marchland,” a clear proof that it had long
-formed a borderland and debatable territory between the Assyrian Empire
-and the nations of Asia Minor.
-
-It is thus evident that even before the rise of the Assyrian monarchy,
-the road that led to the mining districts of Cappadocia, along the
-valleys of the Upper Tigris, Euphrates and Tokhma Su, was not only
-known to the Assyro-Babylonians, but had actually constituted Assyrian
-territory, which was colonized by Assyrian garrisons and paid tribute
-to Nineveh whenever Assyria was strong enough to enforce its authority.
-At the eastern extremity of the road stood the city of unknown name,
-now represented by “the Burnt Mound” of Kara Eyuk, whose existence as
-an Assyro-Babylonian city probably dates back to the age of Khammu-rabi.
-
-It was the outpost of Babylonian culture in Asia Minor. Babylonian
-art, and, above all, the Babylonian system of writing, were brought by
-it into the heart of the Hittite region, and the archæological objects
-found there consequently become important for chronological dating. Not
-far off, on the other side of the Halys, rose the Hittite capital, now
-known as Boghaz Keui, the centre from which, as Professor Ramsay has
-shown,[142] the early roads of Asia Minor radiated in all directions.
-
-Boghaz Keui is being excavated at the present moment. Hundreds of
-clay tablets have already been found there, inscribed with cuneiform
-characters, the majority of which are in the native Hittite language,
-though many are in Semitic Babylonian, including a copy of the famous
-treaty between Ramses II. and the Hittite king. So far as the tablets
-have been examined, they show that the Hittite empire extended from the
-west of Asia Minor to the Egyptian frontier, and that the cuneiform
-characters were used in ordinary life.
-
- [Illustration:
-
- THE RUINS AT BOGHAZ KEUI.]
-
-By one of those coincidences which sometimes happen in archæological
-research, the discovery fits with another fact which had long been
-in the possession of the Assyriologist, though the full meaning of
-it was unknown to him. Among the Tel el-Amarna letters are two in a
-language unlike any with which we are acquainted. One of them is from a
-Hittite leader of condottieri,[143] who has left us two other letters
-which are in the Assyrian language, and who came from a town in the
-neighbourhood of Cilicia. The second letter was written to the king of
-Arzawa by one of the foreign secretaries of the Egyptian Government.
-But the situation of Arzawa was wholly uncertain; as the king bore the
-Hittite name of Tarkhundaraba, I suggested that it lay in the Hittite
-territory, and that consequently in the language of the letter we had
-a fragment of the Hittite language. For many years, however, this
-remained a mere conjecture, without any definite proofs.
-
-When the fragmentary tablets from Boghaz Keui came to be copied, it
-was at once perceived that they were in a language which resembled
-that of the Arzawa letters, but it was not until the new tablet
-from Constantinople had been cleaned and copied by Dr. Pinches and
-myself that the actual facts became clear. The Arzawa and Boghaz Keui
-texts agree in the forms given to the characters, in grammar and in
-vocabulary. Arzawa, therefore, must have been the Hittite kingdom which
-had its centre at Boghaz Keui, and already in the age of the Eighteenth
-Egyptian dynasty it was employing a form of the cuneiform script which
-implied a long preceding period of use and adaptation. A new realm has
-thus to be added to the domain of the cuneiform system of writing; in
-Syria the Hittite king of Kadesh wrote to the Pharaoh in Babylonian,
-but in his old home in the north, though the Babylonian syllabary
-had been adopted, the language it served to express was that of the
-Hittites themselves.
-
-A certain amount of this Hittite language of Arzawa can be deciphered,
-thanks to those same determinatives and ideographs which have assisted
-so materially towards the decipherment of the Vannic texts, and more
-especially to the recurrence in the two Tel el-Amarna letters of
-phrases that are common to the whole correspondence. The new tablet,
-however, is more than usually helpful, since it contains Assyrian words
-and grammatical forms which in parallel passages of the same text are
-replaced by native equivalents. In this way a sketch of Arzawan grammar
-can now be made, as well as a list of Arzawan words. The language which
-is thus disclosed is of an Asianic type, with features that remind us
-of Lycian on the one side, and of Mitannian and Vannic on the other.
-But in what may be termed the fundamentals of grammar it agrees with
-Mitannian and Vannic.
-
-At the same time, certain of these same fundamentals have a curious but
-superficial resemblance to what we have hitherto been accustomed to
-regard as characteristics of Indo-European grammar. The nominative and
-accusative of the noun, for example, are distinguished by the suffixes
-_-s_ and _-n_, the plural nominative and accusative often terminate
-in _-s_, and the possessive pronouns of Arzawan are _mi-s_, “mine”;
-_ti-s_, “thine”; and _sa(s)_, “his”; while _si_ is “(to) her.” The
-third person of the present tense ends in _-t_; _es-tu_, is “may it
-be”; _es-mi_, “may I be.” Yet with all these remarkable coincidences, I
-can assure the comparative philologist that Arzawan is certainly not an
-Indo-European language, and I must leave him to explain them as best
-he may.
-
- [Illustration: ONE OF THE PROCESSIONS IN THE RAVINE OF BOGHAZ.
-
- (_See p. 174._)]
-
-We have, however, learnt a good deal more about the Hittite populations
-of Asia Minor from the Tel el-Amarna tablets than the nature of the
-language which they spoke. In the closing days of the Eighteenth
-Egyptian dynasty we find them on the southern side of the Taurus,
-sending forth bands of adventurers, who hired their services to the
-king of Egypt and to the rival governors and princes of Palestine,
-and from time to time carved out principalities of their own with the
-sword. We are even able to follow the fortunes of some of the leaders
-of the condottieri, who had no scruple in transferring their allegiance
-from one vassal prince to another when tempted by the prospect of
-better pay, or in murdering their employer when the opportunity
-arose, and plundering or occupying his city. They had, it is true, a
-wholesome awe of Egyptian power and of the Egyptian army, and some of
-the letters they wrote to the Egyptian court are amusing examples of
-the excuses they offered for their misdeeds. But they never hesitated
-about seizing the Pharaoh’s property when they thought they could do
-so with impunity, while they were all the time professing to be his
-devoted slaves. A considerable number of the vassal princes of Canaan
-kept these mercenaries in their pay, and in many cases the Egyptian
-Foreign Office thought it wisest to confirm one of their leaders in the
-government of a district, however doubtful might have been the means by
-which it had come into his hands. So long as the tribute was paid, and
-the imperial authority acknowledged, no further questions were asked.
-The mercenaries were useful at times to the imperial forces, and the
-mutual jealousies and quarrels of the local governors were perhaps not
-altogether displeasing to the home Government.[144]
-
-In this way bands of Hittite mercenaries came to be settled in
-various parts of Palestine, even in the extreme south. The sons of
-Arzawaya, “the Arzawan,” established themselves in the neighbourhood
-of Jerusalem, whose king, by the way, seems to bear a Mitannian name.
-The statement in the Book of Genesis that Heth was the son of Canaan
-receives a new signification from the Tel el-Amarna tablets.
-
-But Hittite influence in Southern Palestine goes back to an earlier
-epoch than the age of the tablets. The painted pottery found in the
-“Amorite” strata of Lachish and Gezer shows remarkable affinities
-to the pottery discovered by Chantre at Boghaz Keui, and Mr. J. L.
-Myres has succeeded in tracing it in a fairly continuous line to the
-region north of the Halys.[145] Here was found the red ochre--or
-_sandarakê_, as it was called--which was used in the decoration
-of the pottery, and after the introduction of two other colours still
-remained the principal feature in the system of ornamentation. This
-Hittite or Cappadocian pottery was carried westward along the road
-which led from Boghaz Keui towards the Troad, and south-eastwards
-across the Taurus into Syria. It was probably the ultimate origin of
-the painted Minoan or “Kamâres” pottery of Krete.
-
-The introduction of Hittite pottery into Canaan where it tended to
-supersede the native ware, was doubtless the result of trade. But in
-ancient Asia the trader and the soldier were very apt to march side by
-side. The soldier opened the way for the trader and kept it for him,
-quite as much as the trader opened it for the soldier. Hence it is
-not surprising that the Assyrian monuments should furnish incidental
-evidence of the Hittite occupation of Palestine at an early date. In
-the inscriptions of Babylonia, as we have seen, Palestine and Syria
-are “the land of the Amorites”; the name went back to an immemorial
-antiquity, and indicates that at the time it was first given the
-Amorites were the ruling population in the West. But in the Assyrian
-inscriptions the place of the Amorites is taken by the Hittites. For
-the Assyrians, Syria is “the land of the Hittites,” and in the later
-historical texts even the Israelites and Philistines are classed as
-“Hittite.”[146]
-
-Canaan, however, was already well known to the Assyrians in the age of
-the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, when the ambassadors of the Assyrian
-king carried letters and presents through it to the Pharaoh. It must,
-therefore, have been at a still earlier period that they first became
-acquainted with it, and at this period Hittite influence must have
-been so predominant as to cause them to discard the name of Amorite,
-consecrated though it was by the long-continued usage of Babylonian
-literature, and to employ instead of it the name of Hittite.
-
-But it was in the direction of the Greek seas that Hittite influence
-was most powerful. Through Asia Minor Babylonian culture penetrated to
-the West. A native imitation of the Babylonian seal-cylinder was found
-by Dr. Schliemann in the ruins of Hissarlik,[147] and the so-called
-“heraldic” position of the lions at Mykenæ can be traced back through
-Asia Minor to the designs of the Babylonian gem-cutters. The winged
-horse, Pegasus, is found on Hittite seals, and, like the double-headed
-eagle of Eyuk and other composite figures, is derived from Babylonian
-prototypes.[148] They represented the first attempts of the creative
-power, as conceived of by Babylonian cosmology, and an old Babylonian
-legend of the creation accordingly describes the monsters suckled
-by Tiamât as “warriors with the bodies of birds, men with the faces
-of ravens.”[149] The fantastic monsters of “Minoan” art, which have
-been brought to light by the excavations in Krete, claim an intimate
-connection with the similar composite beings which are a characteristic
-of Hittite art.[150]
-
-The early Hittite art of Asia Minor, as I pointed out many years ago,
-is dependent on that of Babylonia, and has little in common with the
-art of Assyria.[151] It is not until we come to the later Hittite
-monuments of Cilicia and Syria that the influence of Assyrian art makes
-itself visible. Hence was derived the partiality of the Hittite artist
-for the composite animals that adorn the seal-cylinders of Babylonia,
-and which consequently became known wherever the seal-cylinder and
-the literary culture it accompanied had made their way. As I have
-already stated, though Subari was an Assyrian province and Kara Eyuk
-an Assyrian colony, the form of the cuneiform script that was used in
-Cappadocia was of Babylonian origin.
-
-The writing material of “Minoan” Krete, we now know, consisted of clay
-tablets. The fact is a proof that the influence of Babylonian culture
-had extended thus far. But it was an indirect influence only. Though
-the clay tablet was employed, the characters impressed upon it were
-the native Kretan. This in itself, however, demonstrates how strong
-the influence must have been, for the Kretan characters, whether
-hieroglyphic or linear, were less easy to inscribe on clay than the
-cuneiform. Krete, moreover, is a land of rock and stone rather than of
-clay. We may infer, therefore, from the use of the Babylonian material
-that the first impulse to write was inspired by the civilization of
-Babylonia.
-
-How it was brought to Krete we do not know. It may have passed over
-from the shores of Canaan; it may have come from Cyprus or Asia Minor.
-A seal-cylinder, which I have lately published, and which was found in
-the early copper-age cemetery of Agia Paraskevi in Cyprus, shows that
-the so-called Cypriote syllabary was already in use in the island at
-a remote date,[152] and this syllabary is closely connected with the
-linear characters of Krete. Inscriptions in the same form of script
-have been found on the site of Troy, and the pre-Israelitish pottery of
-Southern Palestine is marked with signs which seem to be derived from
-it. So, too, is certain Egyptian pottery of the age of the Eighteenth
-dynasty, and even of the age of the Twelfth.[153]
-
-It is possible that Krete was the birthplace of the picture writing
-which developed into the linear script of Knossos and the Cypriote
-syllabary; it is possible that it was rather Cyprus. I do not think,
-as I once did, that it comes from Asia Minor, for Asia Minor had its
-own pictographic system, which we see represented in the Hittite
-inscriptions, and an increased knowledge of this system tends to
-dissociate it from the pictographs and syllabaries of Krete and Cyprus.
-
-Wherever it arose, however, it was associated with the Babylonian
-writing material and the Babylonian seal-cylinder. So far as our
-present knowledge goes, Cyprus is more likely than any other part of
-the world to have been the meeting-point of Babylonian culture and the
-nascent civilization of the West. The numerous seal-cylinders which
-characterize the early copper age of the island are native imitations
-of Babylonian seal-cylinders of the epoch of Sargon of Akkad, when the
-boundaries of the Babylonian Empire were pushed to the coasts of the
-Mediterranean, if not into Cyprus itself, and the great eastern plain
-of Cyprus was better fitted to provide clay for the tablet than any
-other Mediterranean district with which I am acquainted.
-
-That no written tablets have been found by the excavators in Cyprus
-is not surprising. In an island climate where heavy rains occur the
-unbaked tablet soon becomes hardly distinguishable from the earth in
-which it is embedded. It was almost by accident that even the practised
-eye of Dr. A. J. Evans was first led to notice the clay tablets of
-Knossos.
-
-The Greek term δέλτος, which was borrowed from the language of Canaan,
-is evidence that the tablet was once known to the Greeks. For the
-letters of the Phœnician and Greek alphabet rolls of papyrus or
-leather were needed; the fact that the writing material was a tablet
-and not a roll refers us back to Babylonia. With the introduction
-of the Phœnician letters the word δέλτος necessarily changed its
-meaning, and became synonymous with a wooden board. But it is possible
-that a reminiscence of its original signification is preserved in a
-famous passage of the _Iliad_ (vi. 169), where the later “board”
-has been substituted for the earlier “tablet.” Here we are told how
-Bellerophon carried with him to Lycia “baleful signs”--which may have
-been the pictographs of Krete or the Hittites, or even cuneiform
-characters--written upon “a folded board.” The expression would have
-most naturally originated in the folded clay tablet of early Babylonia,
-the inner tablet being enclosed in an envelope on which the address or
-a description of the contents of the document is written.
-
-On the literary side, however, this is the utmost contribution that
-we can claim for Babylonia to have made to historical Greece. In the
-sphere of religion it is possible that the anthropomorphism of Greece
-was influenced by the anthropomorphism of Babylonia through Asia
-Minor, where the rock sculptures of Boghaz Keui show how the primitive
-Hittite fetishes had become human deities like those of Chaldæa; in
-the sphere of philosophy Thales and Anaximander clothed in a Greek
-dress the cosmological theories of the Babylonians; and in the domain
-of art the heraldry and composite monsters of Babylonia made their
-way to Europe, while the Ionic artists of Ephesus carved ivories into
-forms so Oriental in character that similar figures found in the palace
-of Sargon have been pronounced to be the work of Phœnicians. But the
-literary culture of historical Greece did not begin until the tide of
-Babylonian influence had already rolled back from Western Asia, when
-the Phœnician alphabet had taken the place of the cuneiform syllabary
-in Syria, and the Hittite populations of Asia Minor had returned to
-their clumsy hieroglyphs.
-
-It is, however, remarkable how very nearly the cuneiform script became
-what the Phœnician alphabet has been called, “the mother of the
-alphabets of the world.” At one time it covered nearly the whole area
-of the civilized globe. A seal-cylinder with a cuneiform inscription in
-an unknown language has been discovered on the hills near Herat;[154]
-in the west its use extended as far as Cappadocia, perhaps further.
-Northward it made its home in Armenia; southward it obliged even the
-Egyptian Foreign Office to employ it for correspondence, while military
-scribes wrote in it their memoranda of the Pharaoh’s campaigns. In
-both Mitanni and Van the syllabary was on the high-road to becoming an
-alphabet; in Persia it actually became one.
-
-But this final evolution came too late. A simpler script had already
-entered the field, and won its way in lands where clay was scarce
-and other writing materials more easily procurable. Indeed, it is
-probable that the presence or absence of clay suitable for writing
-purposes had quite as much to do with the spread of the cuneiform
-script as the political events which transformed the map of Western
-Asia. Canaan still continued to write in cuneiform characters after the
-empire of Babylonia had been exchanged for that of Egypt, while the
-use of the script never penetrated far into the limestone regions of
-the Mediterranean. It was probably the geological formation of Europe
-more than anything else which saved us to-day from having to learn the
-latest modification of the cursive writing of the Babylonian plain.
-
-But it had been a potent instrument of civilization in its day, perhaps
-more potent even than the Phœnician alphabet, for its sway lasted
-for thousands of years. It was at once the symbol and the inspiring
-spirit of a culture whose roots go back to the very beginnings of
-human civilization, and to which we still owe part of our own heritage
-of civilized life. Babylonia was the mother-land of astronomy and
-irrigation; from thence a knowledge of copper seems to have spread
-through Western Asia; it was there that the laws and regulations of
-trade were first formulated, and the earliest legal code, so far as
-we know, was compiled. Babylonian theology and cosmology left their
-impress upon beliefs and views of the world which have passed through
-Judæa to Europe, and the astrology and magic which played so active
-a part in the mental history of the Middle Ages were Babylonian
-creations. It is not a little remarkable that an Etruscan model of the
-liver in bronze (discovered at Piacenza), divided and inscribed for
-the purposes of haruspicy, finds its counterpart and probably also its
-prototype in the clay copy of a liver, similarly divided and inscribed,
-which was found in Babylonia.[155] We are children of our fathers, and
-amongst our spiritual fathers must be reckoned the Babylonians.
-
-
-
-
- CHAPTER VII
-
- CANAAN IN THE CENTURY BEFORE THE EXODUS
-
-
-It is now nearly twenty years ago since the archæological world was
-startled, not to say revolutionized, by the discovery of the cuneiform
-tablets of Tel el-Amarna in Upper Egypt. Nor was it the archæological
-world only which the discovery affected. The historian and the
-theologian have equally had to modify and forsake their old ideas
-and assumptions, and the criticism of the Old Testament writings has
-entered upon a new and altogether unexpected stage. The archæologist,
-the historian and the Biblical critic alike can never again return to
-the point of view which was dominant before 1887, or regard the ancient
-world of the East with the unbelieving eyes of a Grote or a Cornewall
-Lewis. A single archæological discovery has upset mountains of learned
-discussion, of ingenious theory and sceptical demonstration.
-
-At the risk of repeating a well-worn tale, I will describe briefly
-the nature of the discovery. In the ruins of a city and palace which,
-like the palace of Aladdin, rose out of the desert sands into gorgeous
-magnificence for a short thirty years and then perished utterly, some
-300 clay tablets were found, inscribed, not with the hieroglyphics
-of Egypt, but with the cuneiform characters of Babylonia. They were,
-in fact, the contents of the Foreign Office of Amon-hotep IV., the
-“Heretic King” of Egyptian history, who endeavoured to reform the old
-religion of Egypt and to substitute for it a pantheistic monotheism.
-This was about 1400 years before the birth of Christ, and a full
-century before the Israelitish Exodus. The attempt failed in spite of
-the fanatical efforts of its royal patron to force it upon his people,
-and of his introduction of religious persecution for the first time
-into the world. The Eighteenth dynasty, to which he belonged, and which
-had conquered Western Asia, went down in civil and religious war; the
-Asiatic Empire of Egypt was lost, and a new dynasty sat on the throne
-of Thebes.
-
-The archives in the Foreign Office included not only the foreign
-correspondence of Amon-hotep’s own reign, but the foreign
-correspondence also of his father, which he had carried with him from
-Thebes when he founded his new capital at Tel el-Amarna. And the scope
-and character of it are astounding. There are letters from the kings
-of Babylonia and Assyria, of Mesopotamia and the Hittites, of Cilicia
-and Cappadocia, besides letters and communications of all sorts from
-the Egyptian governors and vassal princes in Canaan and Syria. Most of
-the correspondence is in the language of Babylonia; it is only in a few
-rare instances that the cuneiform characters embody the actual language
-of the people from whom the letters were sent. It is difficult to
-imagine anything more subversive of the ideas about the ancient history
-of the East, which were current twenty years ago, than the conclusions
-to be drawn from this correspondence. It proved that, so far as
-literary culture is concerned, the civilized Oriental world in the
-Mosaic age was quite as civilized as our own. There were schools and
-libraries all over it, in which a foreign language and a complicated
-foreign system of writing formed an essential part of education. It
-proved that this education was widely spread: there are letters from
-Bedâwîn shêkhs as well as from a lady who was much interested in
-politics. It showed that this correspondence was active and regular,
-that those who took part in it wrote to each other on the trivial
-topics of the day, and that the high-roads and postal service were
-alike well organized. We learned that the nations of the Orient were no
-isolated units cut off from one another except when one of them made
-war with the other, but that, on the contrary, their mutual relations
-were as close and intimate as those of modern Europe. The Babylonian
-king in his distant capital on the Euphrates sent to condole with the
-Egyptian Pharaoh on his father’s death like a modern potentate, and was
-every whit as anxious to protect and encourage the trade of his country
-as Mr. Chamberlain. Indeed, the privileges of the merchant and the
-sacredness of his person had long been a matter of international law.
-
-In one respect the advocates of international harmony and arbitration
-were better off in the Mosaic age than they are in the Europe of
-to-day. There was no difficulty about diversities of language and the
-danger of being misunderstood. The language of diplomacy, of education
-and trade was everywhere the same, and was understood, read and written
-by all educated persons. Even the Egyptian lord of Western Asia had to
-swallow his pride and write in the language and script of Babylonia
-when he corresponded with his own subjects in Canaan. Indeed, like
-English officials in Egypt, who are supposed to write to one another on
-official business in French, his own Egyptian envoys and commissioners
-sent their official communications in the foreign tongue. The Oriental
-world in the century before the Exodus thus anticipated the Roman
-Empire.
-
-Canaan was the centre and focus of the correspondence. It was the
-battle-ground and meeting-place of the great powers of the Eastern
-world. It had long been a province of Babylonia, and, like the rest
-of the Babylonian Empire, subject to Babylonian law and permeated
-by Babylonian literary culture. It was during these centuries of
-Babylonian government that it had come to adopt as its own the script
-and language of its rulers; the deities of Babylonia were worshipped
-on the high places of Palestine, and Babylonian legends and traditions
-were taught in its schools.
-
-Out of Canaan had marched the Hyksos who conquered Egypt. The names
-of their kings found on the monuments that have survived to us are
-distinctively Canaanite of the patriarchal period; among them is
-Jacob-el, or Jacob, whom the Alexandrine Jews seem to have identified
-with their own ancestor. While the Hyksos Pharaohs reigned, Egypt
-was but a dependency of Canaan; the source of Hyksos power lay in
-Canaan, and their Egyptian capital was accordingly placed close to the
-Canaanitish frontier.
-
-When, after five generations of warfare, the native princes of Thebes
-succeeded at last in expelling the Hyksos conquerors from the valley
-of the Nile and in founding the Eighteenth dynasty, they perceived
-that their best hope of preventing a second Asiatic conquest lay in
-possessing themselves of the land which was, as it were, the key to
-their own. The Hyksos conquest, in fact, had shown that Canaan was at
-once a link between Asia and Africa, and the open gate which let the
-invader into the fertile fields of Egypt. The war, therefore, that had
-ended by driving the Asiatic out of Egypt was now carried into his own
-home. Campaign after campaign finally crushed Canaanitish resistance,
-and the Egyptian standards were planted on the banks of the Euphrates.
-Palestine and Syria were transformed into Egyptian provinces; in the
-language of the tenth chapter of Genesis, they became the brothers of
-Mizraim.
-
-The Tel el-Amarna letters tell us how the new provinces were organized.
-The most important cities were placed under Egyptian governors, many
-of whom, however, were natives. But they were carefully watched by
-Egyptian commissioners, to whom the control of the military forces was
-entrusted, as well as by special high-commissioners sent from time
-to time by the imperial Government. Local jealousies and rivalries,
-moreover, among the governors prevented union among them against the
-central power, and up to a certain point were not discouraged by the
-Egyptian Foreign Office. The Tel el-Amarna letters offer us a curious
-picture of the extent to which their mutual animosities were carried in
-the days when the Egyptian Empire was growing feeble. All the governors
-protest their devotion to the court, and all like are accused by their
-rivals of intriguing and even fighting against it.
-
-Besides the states which were thus directly under Egyptian rule, there
-were also protected states. Here the representative of the old line
-of kings was allowed to retain a titular authority, though in reality
-his power was not greater than that of the governors in other states.
-But, whether governor or protected prince his duty to the imperial
-Government was clearly marked out for him. He had to levy the taxes and
-send a fixed amount of tribute to the Egyptian Treasury, to provide a
-certain number of militia, and to send official reports to the king. He
-had further to see that the troops of the army of occupation were duly
-provided with pay and maintenance.
-
-The army of occupation in the reign of Amon-hotep IV. does not seem to
-have been large. The imperial forces were needed at home to enforce
-the new faith upon the Egyptian people, and to put down the discontent
-that was growing there. We hear, however, of “the household troops,”
-who belonged to the standing army of Egypt and formed the nucleus of
-the permanent garrison. How many of them were native Egyptians it is
-impossible to say; as we hear of Kushites or Ethiopians among them,
-it is probable that the Sudanese were at least as largely employed on
-foreign service as the Egyptians themselves. The Egyptian has never
-been fond of military service, whereas, we all now know, the Sudanese
-is essentially a fighting animal.
-
-Both sides of the Jordan were included in the Egyptian administration.
-One of the Tel el-Amarna letters, for example, is from a governor of
-“the field of Bashan.” It is characteristic of the whole series, and
-shows what the relations were between the army of occupation and the
-native levies. I cannot do better than quote it in full: “To the king,
-my lord, thus says Artamanya, the governor of the Field of Bashan, thy
-servant: at the feet of the king, my lord, seven times seven do I fall.
-Behold, thou hast written to me to join the household troops, and how
-could I be a dog (of the king) and not go? Behold, I and my soldiers
-and my chariots will join the household troops in whatever place the
-king my lord orders.”
-
-The name of Artamanya is not Semitic; neither is it Egyptian. The fact
-brings us to one of the most interesting and unexpected results of the
-decipherment of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. And this is that the
-ruling caste in the Palestine of the Mosaic age was largely of Hittite
-origin, or had come from those countries of the north whose population
-was related in blood and language to the Hittites of Asia Minor.
-
-In Northern Mesopotamia was a kingdom which ranked with those of Egypt
-and Babylonia as regarded power and influence. Its native name was
-Mitanni; the Hebrews, like the Egyptians, called it the kingdom of
-Aram Naharaim. It stretched from Assyria to the Orontes, and contended
-with the Hittites of Carchemish for the possession of the fords of
-the Euphrates. Its rulers had descended upon it from the highlands of
-Armenia and the Caucasus, and had reduced the native Aramæan population
-to servitude. There are frequent references in the Tel el-Amarna
-tablets to Mitannian intrigues in Canaan. Mitannian armies had from
-time to time marched against the Canaanitish cities, and although there
-was now a nominal alliance between Mitanni and Egypt, and the royal
-families of the two countries were united by marriage, the Mitannian
-court never lost an opportunity of sending secret support to the
-disaffected princes of Canaan or of encouraging them in their revolts
-from the Egyptian Government. In many parts of the country the ruling
-family continued to be Mitannian, and accordingly we find more than one
-governor who bears a Mitannian name. Thus one of them, as we see, was
-governor of Bashan, and there was another who had his seat near the Sea
-of Galilee.
-
-Mitannian influence, however, was chiefly confined to the northern part
-of Palestine. It was otherwise with the Hittites, whose marauding bands
-penetrated as far south as the frontiers of Egypt. The important part
-they played in the early history of Canaan and the substantial element
-they must have contributed to the future population of the country has
-but lately been disclosed to us by the advance that has been made in
-the interpretation of the Tel el-Amarna texts. We have at last obtained
-an explanation of the fact that whereas in the older Babylonian period
-Canaan was known as “the land of the Amorites,” it was called by the
-Assyrians “the land of the Hittites.” The Assyrian kings even speak
-of Judah and Moab as “Hittite,” and the town of Ashdod is described
-by Sargon as a “Hittite” state. What this must mean has indeed long
-been recognized by the Assyriologists. When the Assyrians first became
-acquainted with Palestine the Hittites must have been there the
-dominant power. But how and when this came about we have but just begun
-to learn, and it is the story of the Hittite occupation of Canaan, as a
-better knowledge of the Tel el-Amarna tablets is making possible, that
-I now propose to describe.
-
-The Hittite race was of Cappadocian origin. Professor Ramsay has
-pointed out that the hieroglyphic characters which they used in
-their inscriptions must have been invented on the treeless plateau
-of Central Asia Minor, and that their capital, whose ruins now strew
-the ground at Boghaz Keui, north of the Halys, was the centre towards
-which all the early high-roads of Asia Minor converge. But they
-extended on both sides of the Taurus Mountains, and at an early date
-had planted themselves in Northern Syria. I have lately succeeded in
-deciphering their inscriptions, which have so long baffled our attempts
-to read them, and one result of my decipherment is the discovery of
-an unexpected fact. I find that the name of Hittite was confined to
-that portion of the race which lived eastward and southward of the
-Taurus. In Asia Minor itself, their first cradle and home, they called
-themselves Kas or Kasians; it was the kingdom of Kas over which the
-Hittite lords of Boghaz Keui claimed to rule, and it is still as kings
-of Kas that they are entitled on the monuments of Carchemish, though
-here they also acknowledge the name of Hittite.
-
-The name of Kas is met with in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, where it has
-hitherto been misunderstood. The kings of the Hittites, of Mitanni
-and of Kas are associated together as supporting the enemies of the
-Egyptian Pharaoh or attacking his cities in Syria, Hitherto we have
-supposed that Kas signified Babylonia, though the supposition had but
-little in its favour, and a different name is given to Babylonia in
-passages where there is no doubt as to what country is meant. Now,
-however, all becomes clear: in the age of the tablets there were still
-four Hittite kingdoms in the north: Kas in Asia Minor, the Hittites
-proper, east and south of the Taurus, Mitanni in Mesopotamia, and
-Naharaim on the Orontes. Shortly afterwards they were all swallowed
-up in the empire of the “great king” of the Hittites, whose southern
-capital was at Kadesh. Some Kasians had found their way to Jerusalem,
-where the king Ebed-Kheba--whose name is compounded with that of a
-Mitannian deity--writes to the Egyptian Government to excuse his
-conduct in regard to them. They had been accused of plundering the
-Pharaoh’s territory and murdering his servants; he assures the court
-that nothing of the sort is true. They are still in his house, where
-it would seem they formed his bodyguard. But, on the other hand,
-there were other Hittites in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem who were
-really enemies to the king and threatened Jerusalem itself. These he
-calls Khabiri, or “Confederates,” a name in which, despite history and
-probability, certain writers have insisted upon seeing the Hebrews
-of the Old Testament. But Dr. Knudtzon’s fresh collation of the
-Tel el-Amarna texts has at last dispelled the mystery. The Khabiri
-turn out to have been bands of Hittite condottieri, who sold their
-military services to the highest bidder and carved out principalities
-for themselves in the south of Canaan. The Egyptian Government found
-them useful in escorting and protecting the trading caravans to Asia
-Minor and the Taurus region, and as long as their leaders professed
-themselves the devoted servants of the Pharaoh it was quite willing
-to overlook such little accidents as their capture and sack of a
-Canaanitish town or the murder of a Canaanitish prince.
-
-One of these Hittite leaders, Aita-gama by name, had possessed himself
-of the city of Kadesh on the Orontes, which in the following century
-was to become the capital of a Hittite empire. In a letter to the
-Egyptian court he has the audacity to assert that he was merely
-claiming his patrimony, the whole district having belonged to his
-father. If there is any truth in this it can only mean that his father
-had already led a troop of Hittite raiders into this portion of the
-Egyptian territory.
-
-Along with Aita-gama two other Hittite chieftains had marched,
-Teuwatti, whose name appears in the native texts under the form of
-Tuates, and Arzawaya. Arzawaya means “a man of Arzawa,” the country
-whose language has been revealed to us in one of the Tel el-Amarna
-letters, and which proves to be the same as the Hittite dialect
-found in the cuneiform tablets of Boghaz Keui. We are told that he
-came from a city which was in the neighbourhood of the Karmalas, in
-Southern Cappadocia. Arzawaya helped Teuwatti to conquer Damascus and
-then led his followers further south. Here he acted as a free-lance,
-hiring himself and his mercenaries to the rival Canaanitish princes
-and professing himself to be all the while a faithful servant of the
-Egyptian king. It is amusing to read one of his letters to the Egyptian
-court: “To my lord the king thus writes Arzawaya, of Rukhiza. At the
-feet of my lord I prostrate myself. My lord the king wrote that I
-should join the household troops of the king my lord and his numerous
-officers.” Here follow four words of Hittite which are accompanied by
-the translation: “I am a servant of the king my lord.” Then the letter
-proceeds: “I will join the household troops of the king my lord and
-his officers; and I will send everything after them and march wherever
-there is rebellion against the king my lord. And we will deliver
-his enemies into the hand of the king our lord.” Doubtless Arzawaya
-expected to be well paid for his help.
-
-There is another letter from Arzawaya to the Pharaoh in which he calls
-himself “the dust of his feet and the ground on which he treads.” But
-in this letter he has to explain away the share he took in entering
-the town of Gezer along with Labbawa,[156] another Hittite leader,
-and there infringing the royal prerogative by summoning a levy of
-the militia. In the eyes of the home Government this was a much
-more serious matter than merely plundering or killing a few of its
-Canaanitish subjects, as it was equivalent to usurping the functions of
-the imperial power.
-
-Labbawa also had to write and ask for forgiveness, and assure the
-Pharaoh that he is his “devoted slave,” who does “not withhold his
-tribute” or disobey the “requests” of the Egyptian commissioners. In
-fact, he concludes his letter with declaring that “if the king should
-write to me: Run a sword of bronze into your heart and die, I would
-not fail to execute the king’s command.” All the same, however, he had
-established himself securely on Mount Shechem, from whence, like Joshua
-in after days, he was able to make raids on the surrounding Canaanitish
-towns. In the north we hear of him at Shunem and Gath-Rimmon, where
-he first appeared upon the scene in the train of the Egyptian army at
-a time when Amon-hotep III. was suppressing an insurrection in that
-part of Palestine. It is probable that he had just arrived with his
-band of condottieri, attracted by the pay and the chance of plunder
-that the Egyptian Pharaoh offered the free-lance. By a curious fatality
-it was also in this same locality that he afterwards met his death at
-the hands of the people of Gina--the Cana of Galilee, probably, of St.
-John’s Gospel.
-
-Labbawa cast envious eyes on the important city of Megiddo, and its
-governor--who, by the way, is mentioned in one of the cuneiform
-tablets found three years ago by the Austrian excavators on the
-site of Taanach--sent piteous appeals for assistance against him to
-the Egyptian Government. The beleaguered governor declared that so
-closely invested was he by the Hittite free-lances that he could not
-venture outside the gates of his town. The peasantry were afraid even
-to bring vegetables into it, and unless help were forthcoming from
-Egypt, Megiddo was doomed. After all, however, Labbawa was not only
-unable to possess himself of the Canaanitish stronghold, but was taken
-prisoner and confined in the very place he had hoped to capture. But
-fortune befriended him. He managed to bribe the governor of Acre, and
-the latter, on the pretext that he was going to send Labbawa by sea to
-Egypt, took him out of prison and set him free.
-
-Labbawa now turned his attention to the south of Palestine--the future
-territory of Judah. Here he entered into alliance with the king of
-Jerusalem, or, to speak more precisely, was taken into his pay, and
-the two together waged war on the neighbouring states. One of the
-Egyptian governors complains that they had robbed him of Keilah, and he
-had to wait for Labbawa’s death before he could recover his city.
-
-One of the two letters in the Tel el-Amarna collection which are in
-the Arzawan or Hittite language was written by Labbawa, as we have
-lately learned from Dr. Knudtzon’s revised copy of it. In this he calls
-himself a native of the Hittite district of Uan, near Aleppo, and
-refers to “the Hittite king,” though our knowledge of the language is
-too imperfect to allow us to understand the meaning of the reference.
-The letter is addressed simply “to my lord,” and we do not know,
-therefore, whether it was intended for Hittite or Egyptian eyes. After
-his settlement in Palestine, however, Labbawa adopted the official
-language of the country; his letters to the Pharaoh are in Babylonian,
-and his son bore the characteristically Semitic name of Mut-Baal. The
-fact is an interesting example of the rapid way in which the Hittite
-settlers in Palestine were Semitized. They brought no women with them,
-and their wives accordingly were natives of Canaan.
-
-Labbawa left two sons behind him, who, in spite of their Semitic
-education, followed in their father’s footsteps and continued to
-lead his company of Hittite mercenaries. Mut-Baal, moreover, made
-himself useful to the Government by escorting the trading caravans to
-Cappadocia, a fact which proves that he still maintained relations
-with the country of his origin. The alliance between Ebed-Kheba of
-Jerusalem and his father, however, had come to an end; Ebed-Kheba now
-had the Hittites of Kas in his pay, and no longer needed the services
-of the sons of Labbawa. They therefore transferred themselves to
-his rivals, together with the sons of Arzawaya, who, like Labbawa,
-was now dead, and Ebed-Kheba soon found himself in difficulties.
-The result was letter after letter from him to the Egyptian court,
-begging for help against his enemies, and declaring that if no help
-came the king’s territory would be lost. These appeals seem to have
-met with no response; the Egyptian Government was by no means assured
-of Ebed-Kheba’s loyalty, and knew that if the territory of Jerusalem
-were to pass into the hands of the Hittite chieftain it would make but
-little difference to the imperial power. The tribute would still be
-paid, the Egyptian commissioner would still be respected, and the new
-rulers of the district would profess themselves the faithful subjects
-of the Pharaoh. There would merely be a change of governors, and
-nothing more. The Hittite mercenaries were formidable only in the petty
-struggles which took place between the rival Canaanitish governors;
-when it came to dealing with the regular army of Egypt they were
-numerically too few to be of account.
-
-Ebed-Kheba calls the followers of Labbawa and Arzawaya “Khabiri.”
-I have long ago pointed out that the word is found elsewhere in
-the Assyrian texts in the sense of “Confederates,” and that its
-identification with the Hebrews of the Old Testament, though
-phonetically possible, is historically impossible. Now that we know the
-nationality of Labbawa and Arzawaya the question is finally settled,
-and we can explain a hitherto puzzling passage in one of Ebed-Kheba’s
-letters, in which he says that “when ships were on the sea the arm
-of the mighty king seized Naharaim and Kas, but now the Khabiri have
-seized the cities of the king.” Naharaim lay southward of the gulf of
-Antioch, while Kas extended to the Cilician coast, and they were thus,
-both of them, within reach of a maritime Power; they were, moreover,
-both of them Hittite regions, Naharaim being the district afterwards
-called Khattinâ, “the Hittite land,” by the Assyrians, while Kas was
-the Hittite kingdom of Cappadocia. Ebed-Kheba, therefore, is drawing
-a comparison between the power of “the mighty king” in the days when
-an Egyptian fleet controlled the sea and the present time when Hittite
-marauders are seizing without let or hindrance the king’s cities on the
-very borders of Egypt. Even Lachish and Ashkelon had joined the enemy.
-
-Perhaps the most important of the King of Jerusalem’s letters is one
-which has hitherto been misunderstood, partly owing to its being broken
-in half and the relation of the two halves to one another not being
-recognized, partly to the imperfections of the published copy. Now
-that a complete and accurate text of it lies before us, its meaning
-has ceased to be a riddle, and I will therefore give here the first
-translation that has been made of the completed text--
-
-“To the king my lord thus says Ebed-Kheba thy servant: at the feet
-of my lord the king seven times seven I prostrate myself. Behold,
-Malchiel has not separated himself from the sons of Labbawa and the
-sons of Arzawaya so as to claim the king’s land for them. A governor
-who commits such an act, why has not the king questioned him (about
-it)? Behold, Malchiel and Tagi have committed such an act by seizing
-the city of Rabbah. And now as to Jerusalem, if this land belongs to
-the king, why is it that Gaza has been appointed for the (residence of
-the) king (’s commissioner)? Behold the land of Gath-Carmel is in the
-power of Tagi, and the men of Gath are (his) bodyguard. He is (now) in
-Beth-Sannah. But (nevertheless) we will act. Malchiel wrote to Tagi
-that they should give Labbawa and Mount Shechem to the district of
-the Khabiri, and he took some boys as slaves. They granted all their
-demands to the people of Keilah. But we will rescue Jerusalem. The
-garrison which you sent by Khaya the son of Meri-Ra has been taken
-by Hadad-mikhir and stationed in his house at Gaza. [I have sent
-messengers] to Egypt, [and may] the king [listen to me].... There is
-no garrison of the king [here]. Verily by the life of the king Pa-ur
-has gone down to Egypt; he has left me and is in Gaza. But let the king
-entrust to him a garrison for the defence of the land. All the land of
-the king has revolted. Send Yenkhamu and let him take charge of the
-king’s land.
-
-“(Postscript): To the secretary of the king says Ebed-Kheba your
-servant: [bring] what I say clearly before the king. Kindest regards to
-you! I am your servant.”
-
-The references in this letter are explained in other letters from the
-same correspondent. Malchiel was the native governor of the Hebron
-district, and had married the daughter of Tagi, whose name does not
-sound Semitic. The Hittite mercenaries of Labbawa from Shechem and
-of Arzawaya, who does not seem to have established himself in any
-special district of the country, were now in the pay of Malchiel,
-while Ebed-Kheba, as we have seen, had secured the services of another
-body of Hittites from Kas. He had been accused at the Egyptian court
-of seeking by their means to make himself independent, and more than
-one of his letters is occupied with defending himself and bringing a
-counter-charge against Malchiel. Malchiel, however, secured the support
-of the royal commissioner, Yenkhamu, who agreed to his employment
-of the Hittite condottieri. With their assistance Keilah had been
-recovered from the hands of Ebed-Kheba, who, at an earlier date,
-had got Labbawa to seize it for him, but after Labbawa’s death the
-tables were turned, and his sons had offered their services to the
-rival party, doubtless for the sake of better pay. It was now that
-Malchiel summoned the militia of Gezer, Gath-Carmel and Keilah, and
-made himself master of Rabbah, a small place north-west of Keilah and
-Hebron, which Ebed-Kheba asserted belonged to _his_ territory.
-The tide was beginning to turn against the King of Jerusalem: his
-enemies were in greater favour at court than he was himself, and they
-had the support of the Hittite bands. It was in vain that he appealed
-to the Egyptian Government for aid and declared that not only had his
-rivals given Mount Shechem to the Hittite free-lances, but that by
-their action against himself they were delivering the whole of Southern
-Palestine into Hittite hands. “The king,” he writes, “no longer has
-any territory, the Khabiri have wasted all the lands of the king. If
-the royal troops come this year, the country will remain my lord the
-king’s, but if no troops come, the territory of the king my lord is
-lost.”
-
-At this point the story breaks off abruptly. The Tel el-Amarna
-correspondence comes to an end and the fate of Jerusalem and the
-surrounding districts is unknown to us. Soon afterwards religious
-troubles at home forced the Egyptian Government to withdraw its troops
-from Canaan altogether, and for awhile the Egyptian empire in Asia
-ceased to exist. It was restored, however, by Seti I. and his son,
-Ramses II, at the beginning of the Nineteenth dynasty, and among the
-cities whose conquest is celebrated by Ramses on the walls of the
-Ramesseum at Thebes is Shalem or Jerusalem. But this second Egyptian
-empire in Asia did not last long, and when the Israelitish Exodus
-took place it was already passing away. When some years later the
-Israelitish invaders planted themselves in Labbawa’s old stronghold
-on Mount Shechem, the Egyptian occupation of Canaan belonged to the
-history of the past.
-
-Like the Saxons in England, however, the Hittite chieftains must have
-founded principalities for themselves in the south of Canaan, as we
-know from the evidence of the Tel el-Amarna tablets and the Egyptian
-monuments that they did in the north. Ezekiel, in fact, tells us that
-the mother of Jerusalem was a Hittite, and the Jebusites, from whom
-Jerusalem took its name in the age of the Israelitish conquest, were
-probably the descendants of the followers of the Hittite Arzawaya.
-They had, moreover, found a Hittite population already settled in
-the country, descendants of older bands who had made their way from
-the highlands of Asia Minor to the frontiers of Egypt in days when
-as yet Abraham was unborn. At the very commencement of the Egyptian
-twelfth dynasty we hear of the Pharaohs destroying “the palaces of the
-Hittites” in Southern Palestine,[157] and archæology has recently shown
-that the painted pottery discovered in the earlier strata of Lachish
-and Gezer by English excavators had its original home in Northern
-Cappadocia and is an enduring evidence of Hittite culture and trade.
-
-The Hittites had been preceded in their occupation of Canaan by the
-Amorites, as we have learnt from the Babylonian inscriptions. But in
-the Tel el-Amarna age the specifically Amoritish territory was in the
-north, eastward of Tyre and Gebal. Here Ebed-Asherah and his son Aziru
-had their seat and from hence they led their forces northwards towards
-Aleppo to resist “the king of the Hittites” on behalf of the Egyptian
-Government, or attacked the Phœnician cities on their own account.
-In the north, in fact, they played much the same part as the Hittite
-mercenaries did in the south, with the additional advantage of being
-able to secure secret assistance when it was needed from Mitanni.
-Between Amorites and Hittites the Canaanites must have had a somewhat
-unhappy time, like the Britons after the departure of the Roman
-legions, who found themselves the alternate prey of Saxons and Scots.
-But we can now understand and appreciate the ethnological notice in the
-Book of Numbers (xiii. 29), which tells us that “the Hittites and the
-Jebusites and the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites
-dwell by the sea and by the coast of Jordan.”
-
-The Amorite princes, however, were more formidable to the Egyptian
-Government than the Hittite chieftains, or else must have played their
-cards a little too openly, for we find Aziru receiving a scolding such
-as the Egyptian court seldom had the courage or energy to give. The
-letter from the Egyptian Foreign Office, which is a long one, is worth
-translating in full--
-
-“To the governor of the land of the Amorites [thus] says the king your
-lord. The governor of Gebal, thy brother, whom his brother has driven
-from the gate (of the city) has said: ‘Take me and bring me back into
-my city, [and] I will then give you money, [for] I have nothing [of
-value] with me now.’ So he spoke to you.
-
-“Behold, you write to the king your lord saying: I am your servant like
-all the loyal governors who are each in his city. Yet you have acted
-wrongly in taking a governor whom his brother had driven from the gate
-of his city, and being in Sidon you handed him over to the governors
-(there) at your own discretion, as if you did not know that they were
-rebellious.
-
-“If you are really a servant of the king why have you not seen that he
-should go up to the presence of the king your lord instead of thinking,
-‘This governor wrote to me saying, “Take me to thyself and restore me
-to my city”’?
-
-“But if you have acted loyally and nothing that I write is correct, the
-king has devised a lie in saying that nothing which you declare is true.
-
-“But it happens that one has heard that you have made a treaty with the
-(Hittite) prince of Kadesh to deliver food and drink to one another,
-and it is true. Why have you acted thus? Why have you made a treaty
-with a governor with whom another governor is at enmity? For if you act
-with loyalty to him and observe your and his engagements you cannot
-look after (our) interests as you have undertaken to do long ago.
-Whatever be your conduct in the matter you are not on the side of the
-king your lord.
-
-“Now as for these men to whom you want to turn, they are seeking to
-get you into the fire and to burn (you) and all you most love. Whereas
-if you submit yourself to the king your lord, what is there which the
-king cannot do for you? If in anything you love to act wickedly and if
-you lay up wickedness, even thoughts of rebellion, in your heart, then
-you will die by the axe of the king along with all your family. Submit
-therefore to the king your lord, and you shall live, for you know that
-the king has no wish to be angry with all the land of Canaan.
-
-“And since you write: ‘Let the king excuse me this year and I will go
-next year to the court of the king my lord, my son not being with me,’
-the king your lord accordingly will excuse you this year as you have
-asked. Go yourself instead of sending your son, and you shall see the
-king in the sight of whom all the world lives, and do not say: let me
-be excused this year also from going to the court of the king your
-lord; and do not send your son to the king your lord; he must not go in
-your place.
-
-“And now the king your lord has heard that you wrote to the king
-saying, ‘Let the king my lord permit Khanni the messenger of the king
-to come to me for the second time, and I will deliver the enemies of
-the king into his hand.’ Now he will go to you as you have asked; do
-you therefore deliver them (to him) and do not let a single one of
-them escape. Now the king your lord sends you the names of the king’s
-enemies in this letter by the hand of Khanni the king’s messenger; so
-deliver them to the king your lord and let not a single one of them
-escape, but put fetters of bronze upon their feet. Behold, the men you
-are to send to the king your lord are Sarru with all his sons, Tuia,
-Liya with all his sons, Yisyari with all his sons, (and) the son-in-law
-of Manya with his sons and wives. The treasurer of Khanni is the
-official who will read the dispatch. Dâsirtî, Pâlûwa and Nimmakhî have
-gone [to collect taxes?] into the country of the Amorites.
-
-“And know that the king, the Sun-god in heaven, is well; his soldiers
-and chariots are many; from the upper country to the lower country,
-from the rising of the sun [to] the setting of the sun all is peace.”
-
-We hear again of one of the rebels mentioned in this letter in the
-tablet discovered at Lachish in Palestine by Mr. Bliss. Yisyari is
-there described as inciting the governor of Lachish to revolt and
-promising assistance if he would call out the militia of his city
-against the king. That an Amorite of the north should thus have been
-able to interfere in the politics of a city in the south of Palestine
-is an interesting illustration of what I may call the solidarity of
-Syria and Canaan in the pre-Mosaic period. They had not yet been broken
-up into a series of isolated States; like the Hittites, the Amorites
-still claimed to be a power in the future territory of Judah as well as
-in the neighbourhood of Sidon or Hamath.
-
-It is possible that a well-known but somewhat mysterious personage
-of the Old Testament was one of the Hittite leaders who succeeded
-in carving out a principality for himself: I mean Balaam the son of
-Beor. He is said to have come from the Hittite town of Pethor near
-Carchemish, and besides being a seer and a prophet he was also a
-soldier who fell in the ranks of the Midianites in a war against
-Israel. But Balaam the son of Beor was not only a native of Pethor;
-we hear of him again in the Book of Genesis, and here he appears as
-the first king of Edom, his name heading the list of Edomite kings
-extracted from the state annals of Edom and probably brought to
-Jerusalem when David conquered the country. In the light of what
-we have learnt from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna it is perhaps not
-going too far to suppose that in Balaam we have one of those Hittite
-chieftains who, after playing the part of prophet, made himself leader
-of a band of Hittite free-lances and established a kingdom for himself
-in Edom, finally falling in battle by the side of his Midianite allies.
-
-However this may be, the important place occupied by the Hittites in
-creating the Canaan which the Israelites invaded is now clear. While
-the larger bands of Hittite raiders settled in the north, where they
-prepared the way for the Hittite king himself with his regular army,
-and where Hittite power became so firmly established that even the
-great Ramses could not dislodge it, smaller companies of condottieri
-made their way to the extreme south of Palestine, hiring their services
-to the rival governors and princes and seizing a town or district
-for themselves when the opportunity offered. So long as the tribute
-was paid, and its subjects were not too troublesome, the Egyptian
-Government looked on with equanimity while the states of Canaan were
-practically ruled by the leaders of foreign mercenaries who transferred
-their services from one paymaster to another with the most perfect
-impartiality.
-
-What is most curious is that the Imperial Government recognized the
-legal position not only of the Hittite or Amorite mercenaries, but
-even of organized bands of Bedâwîn and outlaws. As for the Bedâwîn,
-it had companies of them in its own pay, like the Egyptian Government
-in more recent times, and the governor of Gebal complains that the
-Egyptian commissioner Pa-Hor had sent some of the latter to murder his
-garrison of Serdani or Sardinians, who were themselves mercenaries in
-the Egyptian army. That bodies of outlaws should have been subsidized
-by the native princes with the permission, or at least the connivance,
-of the Egyptian court may seem surprising. But after all it is only
-what we find happening in later times when the king of Gath similarly
-enrolled David and his band of outlaws into his bodyguard without any
-remonstrance on the part of the other Philistine “lords.” Still it is
-startling to find one of the Pharaoh’s governors coolly announcing that
-he and his soldiers and chariots, together with his brothers, his
-“cut-throats” and his Bedâwîn, are ready to join the royal troops, at
-the very time when another governor is piteously begging the great king
-to “save” him “out of the hands of the cut-throats and Bedâwîn.” Here
-is a strange picture of Canaanitish life in the days when as yet the
-Israelite was not in the land.
-
-The fact is, the Canaanites were an unwarlike people. Inland, they
-were agriculturists; on the sea-coast they were traders. And, like
-other trading communities, they were disinclined to fight, preferring
-to entrust the protection of themselves and their property to a
-paid soldiery, while at the same time their wealth made them a
-tempting prize to the assailant. It is true that they maintained a
-native militia, as we have learned from one of the cuneiform tablets
-discovered at Taanach, but it was upon a small scale, and apparently
-so long as the person on the roll could produce the one or two men for
-whom he was responsible he was not himself obliged to serve. It was
-again a case of paying others to fight instead of themselves.
-
-The fighting population of Canaan, in short, were the foreigners, and
-these it was who gradually made themselves its practical masters. The
-leaders of the mercenaries became the rulers of the Canaanite states,
-which thus passed into the hands of a dominant military caste. When
-the Israelites entered the country it was with this military upper
-class that they had principally to deal; where the Canaanite had not
-its protection he trusted for his defence to his iron chariots and the
-strong and lofty walls of his towns. It is instructive to read the
-long list of unconquered cities and districts given by the Hebrew
-historian in the first chapter of the Book of Judges; among them are
-the Jebusites of Jerusalem, while we are told that “the Amorites forced
-the children of Dan into the mountain, for they would not suffer them
-to come down to the valley.”
-
-Canaan, it will probably be thought, was a somewhat insecure country
-in which to live in the days of the Egyptian Empire. There seem to
-have been constant turmoil and confusion, governor attacking governor
-and bribing bands of foreign mercenaries to help him. But the turmoil
-and confusion were mainly on the surface. When a town is taken from
-one governor by another we do not hear of its population or their
-possessions suffering materially; they soon appear upon the scene again
-as prosperous as before. It is merely the governor and his immediate
-surroundings who suffer; the capture of the town was probably an affair
-amicably arranged between the condottieri who were attacking it and
-the condottieri who were its defenders. The Egyptian commissioners go
-up and down the country, hearing complaints and settling disputes,
-and no one ventures even to protest against their decisions, while a
-few Egyptian troops are stationed in places where the Government was
-not quite sure of the fidelity of its subjects. Caravans of merchants
-passed through Canaan going from Egypt to the north, and the traders
-of Babylonia and Asia Minor travelled along its high-roads under the
-escort of Hittite and other chieftains who were subsidized for the
-purpose by the Egyptian court. Even in the days when the Egyptian
-Government was breaking up, the constant fighting among the foreign
-mercenaries and their employers seems to have affected the mass of the
-population little, if at all.
-
-What happened when the strong hand and controlling power of the
-Egyptian Pharaoh were removed we do not yet know. We must look for
-information to the systematic excavations that are at last being made
-on the sites of the old Canaanitish towns. Already cuneiform tablets
-have been found on them, and though these belong to the Egyptian period
-we may hope that before long others may be discovered of later date.
-We have still to bridge over the age which elapsed between the final
-withdrawal of Egyptian domination and the conquest of the country
-by Philistines and Israelites. When that age begins the script and
-official language of Canaan are still Babylonian; when it closes
-the cuneiform characters have been superseded by the letters of the
-Phœnician alphabet, and the language of the inscriptions engraved in
-them is the language no longer of Babylonia or of Hittite lands, but of
-Canaan itself.
-
-
-
-
-INDEX
-
-
- Abercromby, the Hon. J., 64
-
- Abram, 153
-
- Abû Shahrein. _See_ Eridu
-
- Achæmenian dynasty, 11;
- inscriptions, 10;
- transcripts (second), 26, 27
-
- Acre, 199
-
- Adamu, Adam, 68, 76, 78, 80, 91
-
- Aita-gama, 197
-
- Akkad, 69, 73, 79, 87, 95
-
- Akkadian, 24, 28–30, 69
-
- Amiaud, 29
-
- Amon-hotep III., 149, 199
-
- Amon-hotep IV., 136, 188, 192
-
- Amorites, 139, 141, 142, 147, 179, 206, 207;
- land of, 139, 141, 143, 179, 194
-
- Amraphel (Khammu-rabi), 143
-
- Animals, domesticated, 83, 99
-
- Anquetil-Duperron, 10
-
- Anupum (Anubis), 127
-
- Ape in Babylonia, 129
-
- Apes of Thoth, 127
-
- Arabia, Southern, 123
-
- Archæological _versus_ literary evidence, 43
-
- Archæology, science of, 36, etc.
-
- Arioch (Eri-Aku), 143
-
- Armenia, 31, 160, etc.
-
- Armenian and Sumerian, 59
-
- Armenians, modern, 165
-
- Aryan language, the, 72
-
- Arzawa, 34, 175;
- language of, 176, 200
-
- Arzawan letters, vi., 175, 200
-
- Arzawaya, 178, 197, 198, 202, 203, 205
-
- Asari of Eridu, 119
-
- Asherah, 150, 153
-
- Ashtoreth (Istar), 153
-
- Asia Minor, 61, 62, 160 _et seq._, 173, 174;
- gold of, 62;
- bronze in, 66
-
- Askabad, excavations at, 54, 61, 83
-
- Ass, domesticated, 83
-
- Assur (Qal’at Shirqât), 41
-
- Assur, the god, 95
-
- Assur-bani-pal, 73
-
- Assur-natsir-pal, 33, 163
-
- Assur-yuballidh, 172
-
- Assyria, the sword in, 65
-
- Assyrian culture, 113;
- grammar, 25;
- kings, 172;
- Semitic, 19;
- syllabary, 19;
- types, 73
-
- Asur, 172
-
-
- Babylonia (and Egypt), 101, etc.;
- Canaanite dynasty in, 142;
- copper age in, 55;
- no neolithic age in, 45, 157;
- picture-writing of, 57, 75
-
- Babylonian anthropomorphism, 94, 125;
- chronology, 114;
- civilization, 75, 83;
- irrigation, 101;
- priesthood, 96;
- script, 17, 83;
- seal-cylinder, 111;
- trade, 92
-
- Babylonians a mixed people, 87
-
- Balaam, 210
-
- Barley, origin of, 108
-
- Bashan, 192, 193
-
- Behistun, 15, 16, 20, 22, 26
-
- Bel, 95, 97
-
- Belck, 33, 163, 166, 171, 174
-
- Bellerophon, 183
-
- Bes, 129
-
- Beth-el, 147
-
- Bezold, 28
-
- Black Obelisk, the, 20, 21, 179
-
- Bliss, Mr., 209
-
- Boghaz Keui, vi., 34, 171, 174, 175, 178, 184, 195, 197
-
- Borsippa, 78
-
- Botta, 18
-
- Boz Eyuk, pottery of, 171
-
- Brick, use of, 113
-
- British Museum, how it excavates, 39, 40
-
- Bronze, 56, 59, 66;
- scimitars, 57, 65;
- earliest use in Egypt, 60;
- in Krete, 60;
- in the Caucasus, 60;
- origin of, in Britain, 64
-
- Bronze age in Europe, 64
-
- Burnouf, 13, 14
-
-
- Calah, 18. _See_ Nimrûd
-
- Canaan, 126, 137, 190, 213 (_see_ Palestine);
- and Egypt, 177;
- before the Exodus, 187 _et seq._;
- Hittite pottery in, 179;
- neolithic age in, 146
-
- Canaanite civilization, 150 _et seq._;
- dynasty in Babylonia, 142;
- deities, 152;
- language, 35, 89, 142;
- luxury, 156;
- postal service, 143, 189;
- pottery, 63;
- sacrifice of children, 148
-
- Cappadocia, Assyrians in, 169
-
- Cappadocian tablets, 171
-
- Carchemish, 40, 172, 195
-
- Careri, 9
-
- Chaldæa, port of, 80
-
- Chaldæans, 90
-
- Chantre, 47, 53, 170, 171, 174, 178
-
- Chardin, Sir J., 9
-
- Chedor-laomer, 143
-
- Cilicia, 173, 175
-
- Clay as writing material, 111
-
- Comana, 173
-
- Cones, terra-cotta, 134
-
- Copper, use of, 51, 54, 55, 58, 59, 62;
- mines, 170
-
- Copper in Sumerian, 58, 59
-
- Cossæeans. _See_ Kossæans
-
- Crete. _See_ Krete
-
- Cros, Captain, 48, 55
-
- Cubit, Babylonian, 122
-
- Cuneiform a cursive script, 77, 84, 184;
- used by Egypt, 126, 190
-
- Cypriotic syllabary, 182
-
- Cyprus, 65, 140, 182;
- seal-cylinders in, 140
-
-
- Damascus, 197
-
- Darius I., 9, 12, 16, 35
-
- Darius, how pronounced, 12
-
- Deecke, 186
-
- Deification of king, 95
-
- Delitzsch, F., 35
-
- Determinatives, 57, 84
-
- Dieulafoy, 73
-
- Dirk, 65;
- in Danube valley, 65;
- characterizes bronze age, 66
-
- Domestication of animals, 83
-
- Dwarfs, sacred, 127, 128
-
-
- Ea or Oannes, 75, 79, 81, 119
-
- Ebed-Kheba, King of Jerusalem, 196, 200, 201, 202, 204
-
- Eden, 78, 79
-
- Edin, the “Plain,” 78, 79, 93
-
- Egypt, 47, 54, 102;
- Asiatic influence on, 125;
- excavations in, 42;
- and Babylonia, 101, 107, 110, 133
-
- Egyptian irrigation, 102;
- chronology, 115;
- hieroglyphs, 104;
- language Semitic, 107, 110;
- letter of an, 207;
- neolithic culture, 125;
- rule in Canaan, 213;
- seal-cylinders, 112, 114
-
- Egyptians, dynastic, 110, 114
-
- Elam, 26, 46, 71, 73, 144;
- copper age in, 51
-
- Elamite pottery, 47, 48;
- dialects, 71;
- race, 73
-
- El-Hibba, 41
-
- El-Kab, sculpture at, 117
-
- Elwend, inscription of, 20
-
- Erech, 93
-
- Eri-aku (Arioch), 143
-
- Eridu, 76, 78, 79, 81, 82, 85, 92, 118, 120;
- excavations at, 55
-
- Erman, 107
-
- Etruscan model of liver, 186
-
- Euphrates, 81, 102, 103
-
- Evans, A. J., 141, 159, 183
-
-
- Fibula, introduction of, 65, 66
-
- Figurines in Elam, 52, 54;
- at Kara Eyuk, 171
-
- Flower, Samuel, 8
-
-
- Garstang, 62
-
- Gezer, 57, 60, 63, 65, 145, etc., 154, 158, 198, 204, 206;
- graves at, 151
-
- Gladstone, Dr., analysis of metals, 60, 61, 170
-
- Gold, word for, 58
-
- Gordium, pottery of, 171
-
- Grotefend, 10–13, 17, 35
-
- Gudea, 53, 59, 73, 141
-
- Guyard, Stanislas, 33, 162
-
-
- Hadad-nirari I., 57, 157, 172
-
- Halévy, 28
-
- Hall, H. R., 40
-
- Hamadan, inscription of, 15
-
- Hathor identified with Istar, 129
-
- Haupt, 29
-
- Haynes, 56
-
- Hazael, 21
-
- Hebrew, 142
-
- Hebron, 203
-
- Heeren, 13
-
- Heraldic position in art, 117, 180
-
- Herat, seal-cylinder from, 184
-
- Herbert, Thomas, 9
-
- Herodotus, 131
-
- Heuzey, 40, 53, 117, 121, 133
-
- Hezekiah, 21
-
- Hierakonpolis, 62, 115, 117
-
- Hilprecht, 56
-
- Hincks, 17, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 31, 161, 162
-
- Hittite, 34;
- art, 180 _et seq._;
- chiefs, 197;
- dirk, 65;
- inscriptions, 195;
- kings, vi., 175;
- language, 34, 174, 176, 200;
- mercenaries, 177, 193, 196, etc.;
- pottery, vi., 63, 149, 178, 179, 206
-
- Hittites, 169, 170, 173, 174, 179, 194, etc., 206
-
- Hommel, 105, 106, 116, 120
-
- Horus, followers of, 61, 110, 123, 124
-
- Hut-urns, 171
-
- Hyksos, 52, 145, 156, 190;
- introduce bronze, 63;
- axe-heads, 171
-
-
- In-Susinak, 50
-
- Iron, name of, 58;
- in Armenia, 166;
- in Egypt, 62
-
- Isaac, 154
-
- Israelites, their advent in Canaan, 212
-
- Istar, 52, 128, 129, 153
-
- Ivories of Ephesus, 184
-
-
- Jacob-el (_see_ Ya’qub-el), 145, 190
-
- Jebusites, 205, 213
-
- Jehu, 21
-
- Jensen, 34, 168
-
- Jéquier, 121
-
- Jerusalem, 21, 178, 201, 205, 210, 213;
- king of, 196, 199, etc., 202, 204
-
- Jones, F., 24
-
-
- Kadish, 197, 208
-
- Kara Eyuk, 47, 48, 53, 166, 169, 170, 171, 173, 181
-
- Karnak, 54
-
- Kas, 195, 201, 202
-
- Kassites, 89;
- dynasty of, 97
-
- Khabiri, 196, 201, 202
-
- Khaldis, Khaldian, 164, 165
-
- Khammu-rabi (_see_ Amraphel), 81, 127, 143, 152, 157;
- code of laws of, 153;
- dynasty of, 155, 156, 167;
- letters of, 45
-
- Khattinâ (Hittites), 202
-
- Khorsabad, 18, 19
-
- King, L. W., 40
-
- Knossus, clay tablets at, 183
-
- Knudtzon, 174, 196, 200
-
- Kossæeans (Kassites), 35, 144
-
- Kretan script, 141, 159, 181;
- pottery, 178;
- monsters in art, 180
-
- Krete, 141, 182
-
- Kûyunjik, 18, 131. _See_ Nineveh.
-
-
- Labbawa, Labbaya, 174, 198, 199, 201, 202, 204
-
- Lachish, 146, 202, 209;
- excavations at, 145, 149, 158, 206
-
- Lagas, 73, 141
-
- Language and race, 109
-
- Lassen, 14
-
- Layard, 18, 23, 32, 39, 131, 161
-
- Lebanon, 152
-
- Legrain, 54
-
- Lehmann, 33, 163
-
- Lenormant, Fr., 28, 162, 163
-
- Libraries, Babylonian, 138
-
- Lichtenberg, von, 53
-
- Liver, bronze, 186
-
- Loftus, 26, 80
-
- Longpérier, de, 19
-
-
- Macalister, 57, 63, 146, 147, 151, 154, 155
-
- Mace-heads, 133
-
- Magan, 134
-
- Mal-Amîr, 27
-
- Map of world, Babylonian, 80
-
- Maspero, 131
-
- Megiddo, 148, 156, 199
-
- Merodach-baladan, 90
-
- Merodach-nadin-akhi, 73
-
- Messerschmidt, 28, 34, 168
-
- Mitanni, 33, 34, 167, 193, 196;
- language of, 168
-
- Montellius, 64
-
- Morgan, H. de, 55
-
- Morgan, J. de, 27, 33, 46, 73, 74, 80, 82, 121
-
- Moschians, 173
-
- Münter, Bishop, 10
-
- Muqayyar (_see_ Ur), 55
-
- Mussian, excavations at, 50, 53
-
- Mykenæ, 65
-
- Mykenæan pottery, 171
-
- Myres, J. L., 63, 178
-
-
- Naharaim (Mitanni), 196, 202
-
- Naram-Sin, 56, 73, 88, 140, 143
-
- Nar-Buzau, palette of, 117, 121, 123
-
- Nar-Mer, 117
-
- Nebuchadrezzar, 17, 21, 45
-
- Neolithic age not in Babylonia, 48, 57
-
- Neo-Susian, 27
-
- Niebuhr, Carsten, 9
-
- Niffer (Nippur), excavations at, 40, 56, 76, 77, 78
-
- Nimrûd, 18, 21
-
- Nineveh, excavations at, 18, 57;
- library of, 23, 24, 161
-
- Niobê of Mount Sipylus, 54
-
- Norris, Edwin, 16, 26
-
- Nu-gidda, 128, 129
-
-
- Oannes, 75
-
- Obelisk, the Black, 20, 21, 179
-
- Obsidian, 51, 171
-
- Oppert, Jules, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28
-
- Osiris, 119, 123
-
-
- Palestine and Babylonia, 135 _et seq._;
- Exploration Fund, 135, 145;
- Hittites in, 193, 194
-
- Palette of Nar-Buzau, 121, 123
-
- Papyrus, 84
-
- Pegasus, 180
-
- Pehlevi inscriptions, 10
-
- Pepi, statue of, 62;
- Pyramid texts of, 120
-
- Persian Gulf, 75;
- land increases at head of, 80
-
- Peters, Dr., 56
-
- Petrie, Flinders, 52, 60, 61, 62, 117, 121, 156, 182
-
- Philology, value of, 43, 44
-
- Phœnician alphabet, 159, 183, 185
-
- Picture-writing, Babylonian, 75, 82, 105;
- analysed, 98–100
-
- Pietro della Valle, 8
-
- Pinches, Dr., 73, 74, 144, 171
-
- Polyphony, 22
-
- Postal service in Babylonia, 143;
- in Canaan, 143, 189
-
- Pottery, importance of, 36 _et seq._;
- Babylonian, 39, 42;
- Elamite, 47, 48, 54;
- Hittite, 63, 149, 179;
- Kretan, 178;
- Mykenæan, 171;
- South Canaanite, 63, 149, 178, 206;
- Susian, 47, 51, 53;
- Vannic, 166;
- black with incised lines, 52, 53, 171
-
- Ptah, Semitic origin of, 129
-
- Pumpelly, Professor, 54, 64
-
- Pyramid texts, 122
-
-
- Qal’at Shirqât (Assur), 41
-
-
- Ramsay, Sir W. M., 174, 195
-
- Ramses II., treaty of, vi.
-
- Rask, 13, 14
-
- Rassam, Hormuzd, 23, 32
-
- Rawlinson, Sir H. C., 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 24, 26, 80
-
- Razor, use of, 134
-
- Reisner, 118
-
- Resurrection, the Babylonian, 120
-
- Rhind, 41, 42
-
- Rich, 8
-
- Royal Society, 8
-
-
- Sacred trees of Egypt, 123
-
- Sacy, de, 10
-
- Saint-Martin, 13
-
- Samsu-ditana, 28
-
- Saqia, the, 132
-
- Sardinians, 211
-
- Sargon of Akkad, 19, 49, 56, 59, 87, 88, 132, 139, 140, 155, 182
-
- Sarzec, M. de, 40, 121
-
- Saulcy, de, 19, 20, 25
-
- Scheil, 27
-
- Schliemann, 54, 60, 61, 65, 166, 180
-
- Schools, Babylonian, 138
-
- Schulz, 31, 32, 160, 161
-
- Schweinfurth, 108, 123
-
- Scimitar, Semitic invention, 65, 66;
- of Hadad-nirari, 157
-
- Seal-cylinder, 111, 112, 114, 117, 118, 140, 152, 180, 181, 184;
- dwarfs on, 128;
- from Herat, 184;
- in Cyprus, 140;
- in Troy, 180
-
- Sellin, 157
-
- Semite culture, origin of, 30;
- influence, 49, 52, 86, 90;
- religion, 93 _et seq._;
- kings deified, 95
-
- Semites in Babylonia, 86
-
- Semitic Empire, 69, 87
-
- Semitic family of speech, 89;
- languages, 70, 72;
- types, 73, 74
-
- Sennacherib, 21
-
- Shadûf, 99, 130, 131 _et seq._
-
- Shalmaneser I., 172
-
- Shalmaneser II., 179;
- annals of, 21
-
- Shechem, 198, 204
-
- “Shepherd” kings, 93
-
- Sidonian seals, 35, 152
-
- Silver, name of, 58
-
- Sin (Sinai), 128, 129
-
- Sippara, 46, 79, 142
-
- Spouted vases, 134
-
- Subari, 172, 181
-
- Sumer, language of, 28, 29, 68 _et seq._, 86
-
- Sumerian, 24, 28–30, 69;
- animism, 94;
- civilization, 98–100;
- culture, 98;
- -- in Canaan, 138;
- dialects, 29, 69;
- origin of, 74;
- origin of culture, 75;
- physical type, 72;
- priest, 96;
- study of, 29, 30;
- survival in Southern Babylonia, 88
-
- Sumerians, the, 67 _et seq._
-
- Susa, 26;
- excavations at, 27, 46, 73;
- pottery of, 47, 53;
- metal age of, 49
-
- Swords, earliest, 65;
- in Cyprus, 65;
- in Krete, 65
-
- Syros, 53
-
-
- Taanach, excavations at, 148 _et seq._, 152, 157, 199, 212
-
- Tablets, writing-, 82, 84
-
- Talîsh, excavations at, 55
-
- Tarkhundaraba, 175
-
- Taylor, 55, 78
-
- Tel el-Amarna, 136, 188;
- tablets, 33, 35, 136, 144, 167, 168, 172, 174, 177, 178, 187,
- 191, 193, 195, 196, 197, 200, 205
-
- Tel el-Hesy, 147. _See_ Lachish
-
- Tello, 29, 40, 53, 55, 72, 73, 91, 121, 122;
- pottery of, 48
-
- Thothmes III., annals of, 156
-
- Thureau Dangin, 29, 87, 91, 141
-
- Tiglath-pileser I., 173
-
- Tigris, 80, 102, 103
-
- Tin, 60, 64
-
- Toprak Kaleh, 166, 171
-
- Trees, sacred, in Egypt, 123
-
- Troy, 54, 60, 61, 65, 166, 171, 182
-
- Tychsen, 10
-
-
- Uan, 175, 200
-
- Ur, 78, 85, 141;
- excavations at, 55
-
-
- Valle, Pietro della, 8
-
- Van (Biainas), 31, 161, 164
-
- Vannic, 31, 162;
- deciphered, 32, 162, 163, 164;
- deities, 165;
- kings, 31, 32
-
- Vases, Egyptian, 121, 128
-
- Vases of hard stone, 82, 121, 133
-
- Vine, home of, 59, 165
-
- Vishtaspa, 13
-
- Vyse, 62
-
-
- Ward, Hayes, 40, 79
-
- Week, Babylonian, 122;
- Cappadocian, 172
-
- Weissbach, 27
-
- Westergaard, 16, 25
-
- Wheat, 132;
- in prehistoric graves, 108
-
- Wood, use of, 83, 84
-
- Writing material, primitive, 83
-
-
- Xerxes, 12, 35, 161;
- Persian form of, 12;
- name of, on vase, 13
-
-
- Ya’qub-el (_see_ Jacob-el), 145
-
- Year, division of, 122
-
- Yortan, pottery of, 171
-
-
- Zend, 10
-
-
- _Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._
-
-
- FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] In this year an elaborate edition of his work was brought out under
-the title of _Voyages du Chevalier Chardin en Perse, et autres Lieux
-de l’Orient, Enrichis de Figures en Tailledouce, qui représentent
-les Antiquités et les Choses remarquables du Païs_ (Amsterdam),
-two pages (167–8) in vol. ii. being devoted to the inscriptions, the
-cuneiform being printed on plate lxix.
-
-[2] The discovery has sometimes been claimed for Tychsen (_De cuneatis
-Inscriptionibus Persepolitanis Lucubratio_, 1798, p. 24), but Tychsen
-supposed that the wedge was used to divide sentences, not words.
-
-[3] _Undersögelser om de Persepolitanske Inscriptioner_ (1800),
-translated into German in 1802.
-
-[4] _Ideen über die Politik, den Verkehr und den Handel der vornehmsten
-Völker der alten Welt_, vol. i. pp. 563 _sqq._; translated into
-English in 1833. The revival of interest in Grotefend’s work was due
-to the fact that Champollion, after the decipherment of the Egyptian
-hieroglyphs, found the name of Xerxes on an alabaster vase at Paris on
-which, according to Grotefend’s system, the same name was written in
-Persian cuneiform. This led the Abbé Saint-Martin, who was a recognized
-Orientalist, to adopt and follow up Grotefend’s discovery in a Memoir
-which he read before the French Academy in 1822, and Saint-Martin’s
-work attracted the attention of Rask and Burnouf.
-
-[5] “Om Zendsprogets,” in the _Skandinaviske Literaturselskabs
-Skrifter_, xxi., translated into German in 1826.
-
-[6] _Mémoire sur deux Inscriptions cunéiformes trouvées près d’Hamadan_
-(Paris, 1836).
-
-[7] _Die Altpersischen Keil-Inschriften von Persepolis_ (Bonn, 1836).
-
-[8] _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, x.
-
-[9] _Monument de Ninive_, with plates drawn by Flandin.
-
-[10] See his Memoir, “Sur l’écriture assyrienne,” in the _Journal
-asiatique_, 1847–8, ix.-xi.
-
-[11] _Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, xxi. pp. 240 _sqq._ See
-also pp. 114 _sqq._
-
-[12] _Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, xxii. pp. 3 _sqq._
-
-[13] Edinburgh Meeting, p. 140.
-
-[14] _Revue archéologique_, 1847, pp. 501 _sqq._
-
-[15] _Recherches sur l’écriture cunéiforme assyrienne_ (1849).
-
-[16] _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, xii. pp. 401 _sqq._ The
-translation of the Black Obelisk inscription is given on pp. 431–48.
-
-[17] _Athenæum_, December 27, 1851.
-
-[18] In the Paper read by Hincks before the Royal Irish Academy in June
-1849, and published the following year.
-
-[19] For Hincks’s translation of the annals of Sennacherib, see
-Layard’s _Nineveh and Babylon_, pp. 139 _sqq._
-
-[20] _Literary Gazette_, July 5, 1846.
-
-[21] _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, xiv.
-
-[22] _A List of Assyro-Babylonian Characters_ (1852); also the
-_Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, xxii. (1855), and more
-especially _The Polyphony of the Assyro-Babylonian Cuneiform Writing_
-(1863).
-
-[23] See his _Asshur and the Land of Nimrod_ (1898).
-
-[24] F. Jones, _Vestiges of Assyria_ (1855); _Journal of the Royal
-Asiatic Society_, xv. pp. 297 _sqq._; and more especially _Memoirs_,
-edited by R. H. Thomas, 1857.
-
-[25] _Expédition scientifique en Mésopotamie._
-
-[26] In the _Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes_, vi. pp. 337
-_sqq._
-
-[27] _Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, xxi. pp. 114 _sqq._ and
-233 _sqq._
-
-[28] _Journal asiatique_, xiv. pp. 93 _sqq._; xv. pp. 398 _sqq._
-
-[29] _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, xv.
-
-[30] _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, iii.
-pp. 465 _sqq._; _Actes du VIième Congrès International des
-Orientalistes en 1883_, ii. pp. 637 _sqq._ (1885).
-
-[31] _Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_; the volumes by Dr. Scheil on
-the inscriptions that have thus far appeared are ii., iii., iv., v. and
-vi.
-
-[32] _Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, 1889, p. 434.
-
-[33] _Ak-ka-du; Orientalische Literatur-Zeitung_, 1905, p. 268.
-
-[34] _Journal of Philology_, iii. pp. 1 _sqq._ I endeavoured
-to settle the nature of Sumerian phonology in a Memoir on “Accadian
-Phonology,” published by the Philological Society, 1877–8.
-
-[35] _Die Sumerischen Familiengesetze_ (1879).
-
-[36] Göttingen _Nachrichten_, 17 (1880); _Die Akkadische Sprache_
-(1883).
-
-[37] _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, 1848, ix. pp. 387
-_sqq._
-
-[38] See my article, “On the Language of Mitanni,” in the
-_Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1900, pp.
-171 _sqq._; and Leopold Messerschmidt in the _Mitteilungen der
-Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft_, 1899, part iv. pp. 175 _sqq._
-
-[39] Fr. Delitzsch, _Die Sprache der Kossäer_ (1884).
-
-[40] They are now in the possession of M. de Clercq. For a translation
-of the inscriptions upon them, see my _Patriarchal Palestine_, p. 250.
-
-[41] _Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants_, pp. 62, 66.
-
-[42] For the archæological results of M. de Morgan’s work, see his
-_Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_, vols. i. and vii. The eighth
-volume, which will also be devoted to archæology, is in preparation.
-
-[43] Chantre, _Mission en Cappadoce_, plates x.-xii.
-
-[44] The yellow and red wheel-made ware, some of it inscribed with
-characters of the age of Gudea, which has been disinterred at Tello,
-is quite different. This class of pottery, by the way, seems to have
-been preceded by a grey coarse ware, made with the hand. One fragment
-of fine polished yellow ware with traces of black ornamentation
-has recently been reported from Tello by Captain Cros (_Revue
-d’Assyriologie_, 1905, p. 59), but the isolated character of the
-discovery makes it probable that it was an importation from Elam.
-
-[45] Copper figurines of the goddess, with hands pressed under the
-breasts, found in one of the earliest substructures of Tello (_circa_
-B.C. 4000), are published by M. Heuzey in the _Revue d’Assyriologie_,
-1899, p. 44.
-
-[46] Heuzey, in the _Revue d’Assyriologie_, 1905, pp. 59 _sqq._ and
-plate iii. Von Lichtenberg (_Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen
-Gesellschaft_, 1906, 2) has lately pointed out that the black incised
-pottery with white fillings is identical in Cyprus, Troy, the Laibach
-bog and the Mondsee, and that the ornamentation which characterizes
-it is found in the valley of the Danube and the pile-dwellings of
-Switzerland. His attempt to derive it from Cyprus, however, cannot be
-sustained in view of its occurrence in Elam.
-
-[47] _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1905, p. 28.
-
-[48] _Ilios_, p. 337. Schliemann called it the Third city. Dörpfeld’s
-subsequent excavations, however, have shown that it really was the
-Second city, whose history fell into three periods.
-
-[49] Some of these represent the goddess with the arms folded, and not
-pressed against the breasts. See, for example, the photograph of one
-found at Naxos in the _Comptes rendus du Congrès international d’
-Archéologie_, 1905, p. 221. For Trojan examples, see _Ilios_,
-pp. 331–6.
-
-[50] See _Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_, viii. pp. 336–7. A
-report of some of the results of the Pumpelly expedition is given by
-Dr. Hubert Schmidt in the _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 1906_, Pt.
-iii, p. 385.
-
-[51] Flint implements, however, were discovered by Taylor in his
-excavations at Abu Shahrein, the site of Eridu (_Journal of the Royal
-Asiatic Society_, xv. p. 410 and plate ii.).
-
-[52] See Taylor’s “Notes on the Ruins of Muqeyer,” in the _Journal of
-the Royal Asiatic Society_, xv. pp. 271–3 and 415.
-
-[53] _Nippur_, vol. ii. pp. 381–6.
-
-[54] _The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania_, i.
-2, pp. 26–7.
-
-[55] _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1876,
-pp. 347–8.
-
-[56] Figured in the _Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration
-Fund_, October 1904, p. 335.
-
-[57] Layard, _Nineveh and Babylon_, pp. 571–3.
-
-[58] ANA-BAR. _Bar_ is given as the Sumerian pronunciation of the
-word for “stone” (_Syllabary_ 5, iv. 11, in Delitzsch’s _Assyrische
-Lesestücke_, 3rd edition). In Old Egyptian “iron” was similarly
-_ba-n-pet_, “stone of heaven,” while “silver” was “white gold,” “gold”
-being symbolized by a collar. We may compare the Indo-European “white”
-metal as a name of “silver.” The Sumerian _azag-gi_, “gold,” was a form
-of _azagga_, “precious,” more especially “precious metal”; the more
-specific word for “gold” was _guskin_, with which the Armenian _oski_
-must be connected. “Silver” was _bábara_, the “bright” metal, _nagga_
-being “lead,” the Armenian _anag_. The identity of the Armenian and
-Sumerian words for “gold” and “lead,” coupled with the Armenian origin
-of the vine, and the fact that the mountain on which the ark of the
-Babylonian Noah rested was Jebel Judi, south of Lake Van, raises an
-interesting question as to the origin of Sumerian civilization.
-
-[59] It must be remembered, however, that, according to Aristotle, the
-copper of the Mossynœci in Northern Asia Minor was brilliant and white,
-owing to its mixture with a species of earth, the exact nature of which
-was kept a secret. The Babylonian ideograph for “bronze,” therefore,
-may have been a similar kind of hardened copper, which was transferred
-to denote “bronze” when the alloy of copper and tin became known.
-
-[60] See Garstang, _El-Arâbah_, p. 10. Dr. Gladstone, however, after
-giving the results of his analysis of the Sixth-dynasty copper
-discovered by Professor Petrie at Dendera, suggests that the small
-amount of tin observable in it (about one per cent.) may have been
-added to it artificially (_Dendereh_, p. 61). Bronze was “the normal
-metal” of the Amorite period at Gezer (Macalister, _Quarterly Statement
-of the Palestine Exploration Fund_, April 1904, p. 119), and the
-three cities which represent this period go back beyond the age of
-the Twelfth Egyptian dynasty, to at least B.C. 2900 (see _Quarterly
-Statement_, January 1905, pp. 28–9). At Troy also Schliemann found
-numerous bronze weapons in the Second (prehistoric) city (_Ilios_, pp.
-475–9). In Krete bronze daggers of the Early Minoan period (coeval
-with the Middle Empire of Egypt) have been found at Patema and Agia
-Triada (_Annual of the British School at Athens_, x. p. 198), and the
-pottery of the Middle Minoan period (B.C. 2000–1500) was associated
-at Palaikastro with a bronze button, two miniature bronze sickles,
-and a pair of bronze tweezers (_ibid._ p. 202). As for the Caucasus,
-bronze was not known there till a late date. Wilke (_Zeitschrift für
-Ethnologie_, 1904, pp. 39–104) has shown that the bronze culture of
-the Caucasus was derived from the valley of the Danube, and made its
-way eastward along the northern coast of Pontus; see also Rössler,
-_Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1905, p. 118.
-
-[61] _Dendereh_ (Egypt Exploration Fund), p. 62, for the gold of
-the Sixth dynasty; _The Royal Tombs of the Earliest Dynasties_,
-pp. 39–40, for that of the First dynasty.
-
-[62] Vyse, _Pyramids of Gizeh_, i. p. 276. The clamp was actually
-found by his assistant Hill, after blasting away the two outer stones
-behind which it had been placed.
-
-[63] _Abydos_, part ii. p. 33. An iron pin of the age of the
-Eighteenth dynasty was found by Garstang at Abydos (_El-Arâbah_,
-p. 30).
-
-[64] _Illahun, Kahun and Gurob_, p. 12. Dr. Gladstone’s analyses
-give only about 2 parts of tin to 96·35 of copper. The bronze of the
-Eighteenth dynasty found at Gurob yielded a less proportion of tin
-(about 7 parts to 90 of copper) than the bronze of the Second Assyrian
-Empire. A ring of pure tin, however, was also discovered at Gurob.
-
-[65] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, xxxiii. pp. 367
-_sqq._
-
-[66] The two dialects were called _eme_-KU (i.e. _eme-lakhkha_, W.A.I.
-iii. 4, 31, 32), “the language of the enchanter,” and _eme_-SAL, “the
-woman’s language,” which are rendered in Semitic Babylonian, _lisan
-Sumeri_ and (_lisan_) _Akkadi_, “the language of Sumer” and “the
-language of Akkad.” In a tablet (81, 7–27, 130, 6, 7) they are said
-to be “like” one another. Other dialects were termed “the language of
-the sacrificer” and “the language of the anointer,” as being used by
-these two classes of priests. They differed, perhaps, from the standard
-dialects in intonation or the use of technical words. We hear also of
-“a carter’s language” in which _anbarri_--which, it is noticeable, is a
-Sumerian word--meant “yoke and reins,” _i.e._ “harness” (_Zeitschrift
-für Assyriologie_, ix. p. 164).
-
-[67] Fick, however, is an exception (_Beiträge zur Kunde der
-indogermanischen Sprachen_, xxix. pp. 229–247.)
-
-[68] _Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_, i. pp. 152–3. Photographs of
-the two types--Sumerian and Semitic--represented on the early monuments
-of Babylonia are given by Dr. Pinches in an interesting Paper in the
-_Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, January 1900, pp. 87–93.
-
-[69] It is noticeable that the script of the other people whose
-civilization grew up on the banks of a river, the Egyptians namely,
-contains no special ideograph for “river.” The word is expressed by the
-phonetically-written _atur_, with the determinative of “water” or
-“irrigation basin.” As in the primitive hieroglyphs of Babylonia, “the
-sea” was a “circle.”
-
-[70] For proof of this reading see _Expository Times_, xvii. p. 416 and
-note _infra_, p. 91.
-
-[71] See my _Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, pp. 373–84.
-
-[72] Taylor found quantities of sea-shells in its ruins (_Journal
-of the Royal Asiatic Society_, xv. p. 412). At the time of its
-foundation an arm of the sea probably ran up to it from the south-east,
-though the myth of Adamu describes him as fishing each day in the
-waters of the actual Gulf, rather than in an arm of it.
-
-[73] The Moon-god of Ur was a “son” of El-lil, the god of Nippur.
-
-[74] For proof of this see my _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, p.
-105.
-
-[75] A tablet obtained by Dr. Hayes Ward divides Sippara into four
-quarters, “Sippara of Eden,” “Sippara that is from everlasting,”
-“Sippara of the Sun-god,” and “Sippara,” which may be the “Sippara
-of Anunit” or “Sippara of Aruru,” the creatress of man, of other
-inscriptions. Amelon or Amelu, “man,” who corresponds with the Enos of
-Scripture, is said in the fragments of Berossus to have belonged to
-Pantibibla, or “Book-town,” and since Euedoranchus of Pantibibla, the
-counterpart of the Biblical Enoch, is the monumental Enme-dhur-anki
-of Sippara, it is clear that Pantibibla is a play on the supposed
-signification of Sippara (from _sipru_, “a writing” or “book”). The
-claim to immemorial antiquity made on behalf of Sippara may be due to
-the fact that Akkad, the seat of the first Semitic empire, was either
-in the immediate neighbourhood of Sippara or another name of one of the
-four quarters of Sippara itself.
-
-[76] _Chaldæa and Susiana_, p. 282.
-
-[77] _Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_, xxvii. p. 186.
-Rawlinson calculated the rate of advance from that made by the
-Babylonian Delta between 1793 and 1833. In the age of Strabo and
-Arrian the Tigris and Euphrates were not yet united, while in the
-time of Nearchus (B.C. 335) the mouth of the Euphrates was 345 miles
-from Babylon. De Morgan calculates that between the age of Nearchus
-and that of Sennacherib, when the Euphrates had not yet joined the
-more rapid Tigris, the rate of increase must have been much slower
-than it is to-day and have not exceeded eighty metres a year. In the
-age of Sennacherib Eridu was already seventy miles distant from the
-coast (de Morgan, _Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse_, i. pp. 5–23).
-The distance from the Shatt el-Arab (the united stream of the Tigris
-and Euphrates) to the end of the alluvium in the Persian Gulf is 277
-kilometres, or 172 miles. Some idea of the appearance of the coast in
-the Abrahamic age may be gained from the map of the world drawn by a
-Babylonian tourist in the time of Khammu-rabi which I have published in
-the _Expository Times_, November 1906.
-
-[78] There is a striking resemblance between the primitive Babylonian
-picture of a boat and the sailing boat depicted on the prehistoric
-pottery of Egypt, for which last see Capart, _Les Débuts de l’Art en
-Egypte_, p. 116.
-
-[79] Perhaps, however, this was really due to the accidental similarity
-of sound between _gi_, “a reed,” and _gin_, “to be firm.”
-
-[80] The various forms of vases represented in the early pictography
-are given by de Morgan in a very instructive article, “Sur les procédés
-techniques en usage chez les scribes babyloniens,” in the _Recueil
-des Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et
-assyriennes_, xxvii. 3, 4 (1905). Among special vases were those
-for oil, wine and honey. The butter or oil jar was closed with a clay
-sealing exactly like those of early Egypt. Vases with spouts were also
-used.
-
-[81] The American excavations at Askabad have shown that the
-domestication of animals, including the camel, took place during the
-neolithic age, the goat being one of the last to be tamed.
-
-[82] This, however, is not absolutely certain, since the ideograph
-which, denotes an “ass” originally signified merely “a yoked beast.”
-
-[83] Peters, _Nippur_, ii. p. 299.
-
-[84] Thus in the great historical inscription of Entemena, King of
-Lagas (B.C. 4000), M. Thureau Dangin is probably right in seeing in
-_dam-kha-ra_ (col. i. 26) a Semitic word. In fact where a word is
-written syllabically, that is to say phonetically, in a Sumerian text
-there is an _a priori_ probability that it is a loan-word.
-
-[85] This may of course have been only a literary archaism. But if the
-kings were really of Semitic origin, it is difficult to understand why
-they should have been ashamed of being called by their native Semitic
-names.
-
-[86] See Hommel, _Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte des Alten
-Orients_, i. pp. 79–82.
-
-[87] Hitherto read A-da-pa. But the character =PA= had the value
-of _mu_ when it signified “man,” according to a tablet quoted by
-Fossey, _Contribution au Dictionnaire Sumérien-assyrienne_, No.
-2666, and in writing early Babylonian names or words the characters
-with the requisite phonetic values were selected which harmonized
-ideographically with the sense of the words. Thus out of the various
-characters which had the phonetic value of _mu_ that was chosen
-which denoted “man” when the name of the first man was needed to be
-written. The Semitic Adamu, which M. Thureau Dangin has found used as
-a proper name in tablets from Tello of the age of Sargon of Akkad,
-was borrowed from the Sumerian _adam_, which signified “animal,”
-and then, more specifically “man.” Thus in the bilingual story of the
-creation we have (l. 9) _uru nu-dim adam nu-mun-ya_, “a city was
-not built, a man was not made to stand upright,” and a list of slaves
-published by Dr. Scheil (_Recueil de Travaux_, etc., xx. p. 65) is
-dated in “the year when Rim-Anum the king (conquered) the land of ...
-bi and its inhabitants” (_adam-bi_). See above, p. 76.
-
-[88] _Records of the Past_, New Series, iii. pp. 124–7.
-
-[89] Erech was one of the earliest of the Semitic settlements in the
-Babylonian plain, and Erech was known later as _’supuru_, “the
-sheepfold,” as is shown by its ideographic equivalent.
-
-[90] _The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, pp. 276–80.
-
-[91] See my _Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, pp. 276–89,
-348–61.
-
-[92] If, however, the Sumerian pictograph for “city” represents a
-tower on a mound, as seems to be the case, the identity in form of the
-Egyptian hieroglyph cannot be an accident, since both the tower and
-the artificial platform were essentially Babylonian. In the cursive
-cuneiform two separate pictographs have coalesced, one representing a
-seat, the other what appears to be a tower on a mound.
-
-[93] In Egyptian, however, the bird stands over a door, while in
-Babylonian it is over the two-legged stool on which two vases of
-offerings are set when it is used to denote the image of a god.
-The Sumerian pictograph for “(divine) lord” or “lady” (NIN) is the
-representation of a similar vase on a mat, and thus has the same form
-as the Egyptian _hotep_. The Egyptian _nefer_, “good,” finds its exact
-counterpart in the Babylonian pictograph of “ornament” (ME-TE). The
-Babylonian “house,” too, is given the same tower-like shape as the
-Egyptian (_āhā_).
-
-[94] In a short Paper entitled _Lexicalische Belege zu meinen Vortrag
-über die sprachliche Stellung des Altægyptischen_ (1895), in which
-he has attempted to draw up a list of phonetic equivalences between
-Egyptian and Sumerian. In this, however, I am unable to follow him, as
-his comparisons of Egyptian and Sumerian words are not convincing.
-
-[95] See de Morgan, _Recherches sur les Origines de l’Egypte_, pp.
-94, 95. According to Schweinfurth, barley, which is also found in the
-prehistoric graves of Egypt, must originally have come from Babylonia
-like the wheat. _Qemḥu_ is found in the Pyramid texts (Maspero,
-_Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie
-égyptiennes et assyriennes_, v. p. 10). _Boti_, whence the Coptic
-_bôti_ and the _battawa_ or “durra cake” of modern Egyptian Arabic, was
-“durra,” not “wheat.”
-
-[96] See Maspero, _Études de Mythologie_, ii. pp. 313 _sqq._
-
-[97] I have put “Lower” between parentheses since it is very
-questionable whether this particular system of registering time was
-known in the Delta until it was introduced from Upper Egypt. On the
-Palermo stone a list of the early kings of Lower Egypt is given, but
-without any dates, which make their appearance along with the kings of
-the First dynasty, who belonged to Upper Egypt. It is interesting to
-observe that the ideograph for “year” is denoted in exactly the same
-way in both the Babylonian and the Egyptian hieroglyphs by the branch
-of a (palm) tree. Such a curious symbol for the idea can hardly have
-been invented independently. Professor Hommel further draws attention
-to the fact that while the literal translation of a common ideographic
-mode of representing “year” in Babylonian is “name of heaven,” that of
-the two syllables of the Egyptian word _renpet_, “year,” would
-also be “name of heaven.”
-
-[98] _Hierakonpolis_, part i. plate xxix. The name of the king is
-usually (but erroneously) written Nar-Mer.
-
-[99] As the royal figures wear no crowns, they can hardly depict the
-king in his double office of king of Upper and Lower Egypt, and the
-duplication of the Pharaoh must consequently have a purely artistic
-origin. That this artistic origin is closely connected with the origin
-of the seal-cylinders is shown by the fact that the figures correspond
-with one of the most common designs on the latter, in which the _ka_ of
-the person to whom the cylinder belonged is seated on a chair similar
-to that of the El-Kab king, an altar with offerings of bread being set
-before him.
-
-[100] The eye and the ideograph of city or place. Since the eye here
-has the phonetic value of _eri_ or _ari_, the ideograph of “city,”
-which is _eri_ in Sumerian, must have the Egyptian value of _as_.
-
-[101] See my _Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, p. 238.
-
-[102] _Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles
-Lettres_, 4 Sér., 1899, xxvii. pp. 60–67; see _Hierakonpolis_, part ii.
-plate xxviii. In the _Revue d’Assyriologie_, v. pp. 29–32, Heuzey has
-lately drawn attention to the resemblance between the early Egyptian
-and Babylonian bowls of calcite or Egyptian alabaster.
-
-[103] _Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, 1887,
-p. 33.
-
-[104] _Nature_, August 9, 1883, p. 341.
-
-[105] Daressy, “Le Cercueil d’Emsaht,” in the _Annales du Service des
-Antiquités de l’Égypte_, 1899, i. pp. 79–90.
-
-[106] I have called Upper Egypt the seat of the first Pharaohs, not
-only because the earliest dynastic monuments we possess come from
-thence, but also because it was of Upper Egypt and its ruling caste
-that the hawk-god Horus was the guardian deity. From Upper Egypt he
-was carried to Lower Egypt and its nomes, presumably through conquest,
-as is monumentally attested by the “palette” of Nar-Buzau discovered
-at Hierakonpolis (Capart, _Débuts de l’Art en Égypte_, p. 236).
-So, too, the anthropomorphic Osiris--the duplicate of Anhur--made his
-way from the south to the north. That Southern Arabia should have been
-the connecting-link between Babylonia and Egypt was the result of its
-being the source of the incense which was imported for religious use
-into both countries alike at the very beginning of their histories.
-That this foreign product should have been considered an indispensable
-adjunct of the religions of the two civilizations is one of the best
-proofs we have of their connection with one another. Dr. Schweinfurth
-has shown that the sacred trees of Egypt--the sycamore and the
-persea--which needed artificial cultivation for their preservation
-there, came from Southern Arabia, where he found them growing wild
-under the names of _Khanes, Burra and Lebakh_ (_Verhandlungen
-der Gesellschaft für Erdkünde zu Berlin_, July 1889, No. 7).
-
-[107] In the possession of Lord Amherst of Hackney. On an early
-Babylonian seal-cylinder, bought by Dr. Scheil at Mossul and figured in
-the _Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie
-égyptiennes et assyriennes_, xix. 1, 2, No. 7 of the plate, we have:
-“Ili-su-bani son of Aminanum, servant of the gods Bel and Anupum.”
-Aminanum may be a Semitized form of the Egyptian Ameni.
-
-[108] Pp. 133, 139, 485.
-
-[109] De Morgan, _Recherches sur les Origines de l’Égypte_, p. 65.
-
-[110] Scheil, _Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à
-l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes_, xix. pp. 50, 54; Sayce,
-_Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, p. 485. The dwarf
-is represented as dancing before the god Sin on an early Babylonian
-seal-cylinder published by Scheil in the _Recueil_, xix. 1, 2, No.
-16 of the plate.
-
-[111] It is worth notice that the dwarf-god Bes, who is called “God of
-Punt” in inscriptions of the Ptolemaic age, appears on Arab coins of
-the Roman period (Schweinfurth, _Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für
-Erdkunde 1889_, No. 7).
-
-[112] Layard, _Monuments of Nineveh_, Second Series, pl. 15.
-
-[113] Herodotus, i. 193.
-
-[114] The rope appears to have been _makutum_; see _W. A. I._ v. 26, 61.
-
-[115] K. 56, ii. 14.
-
-[116] For other evidences of contact between primitive Babylonia and
-early Egypt, see Heuzey in the _Revue d’Assyriologie_, 1899, v.
-2, pp. 53–6. He there enumerates (1) the resemblance between the stone
-mace-heads of the two countries in “prehistoric times,” as well as
-between the flat dishes of veined and ribboned onyx marble, hollowed
-and rounded by the hand; (2) between the lion-heads of stone, the onyx
-stone of one of which is stated in an inscription to have come from
-Magan; (3) the extraordinary likeness in the delineation of animal
-forms, which extends to conventional details “like the two concentric
-curves artificially arranged so as to allow the two corners of the
-profile to be visible at the same time”; (4) the use of a razor and
-the custom of completely shaving the face, and even the skull; and (5)
-the ceremonial form of libation by means of a vase of peculiar shape,
-with a long curved spout and without a handle. This libation vase was
-practically the same in both countries, in spite of its peculiar and
-somewhat complicated form. Of later introduction into Egypt was the
-inscribed cone of terra-cotta, which was of early Babylonian origin,
-but is not met with in Egypt before the age of the Twelfth dynasty.
-At any rate, the first specimens of it hitherto found there were
-discovered by myself at Ed-Dêr, opposite Esna, in 1905 (_Annales du
-Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte_, 1905, pp. 164–5).
-
-[117] _Recueil de Travaux_, etc., xvi. p. 190.
-
-[118] In the later bronze or “Mykenæan” age the seal-cylinders are of a
-different type, and are engraved on a black artificial paste resembling
-hæmatite (Myres and Ohnefalsch-Richter, _Catalogue of the Cyprus
-Museum_, p. 32).
-
-[119] Sayce, _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_,
-1877, v. part ii.; Bezold, _Zeitschrift für Keilinschrift_, 1885,
-pp. 191–3.
-
-[120] _Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, November
-1905, plate No. 11
-
-[121] A cadastral survey, which was drawn up at this period under
-Uru-malik, or Urimelech, “the governor of the land of the Amorites,”
-would, if perfect, have given us an interesting description of Syria
-and Palestine in the third millennium before our era; see Thureau
-Dangin in the _Revue Sémitigue_, Avril 1897.
-
-[122] See Heuzey, in the _Revue d’Assyriologie_, 1897, pp. 1–12.
-
-[123] This was “the year when Samsu-iluna the king gave Merodach a
-shining mace of gold and silver, the glory of the temple; it made
-E-Saggil (the temple of Bel-Merodach at Babylon) shine like the stars
-of heaven.” The title of the year was derived from the chief event, or
-events, that characterized it. See Dr. Pinches, in the _Quarterly
-Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund_, April and July 1900,
-pp. 269–73.
-
-[124] See my analysis of some of the Hyksos names in the _Proceedings
-of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1901, pp. 95–8. Since the
-publication of the Paper other names of the same type, like Rabu and
-Sakti, have come to light. The characteristic names of the Hyksos
-princes recur among the “Amorite” names found in the contract tablets
-of the Khammu-rabi period, but not later. The abbreviated forms of the
-names met with on the Egyptian scarabs are also found in the tablets.
-Indeed, the contracted form of Ya’qub-el, that is to say, Yakubu,
-with _k_ instead of _q_, must have been transcribed from a cuneiform
-original.
-
-[125] Macalister, _Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration
-Fund_, January 1903, p. 28. It is the seventh stone, however,
-which alone has been brought from a distance--the neighbourhood of
-Jerusalem--all the others being of local origin (_Quarterly Statement_,
-July 1904, pp. 194–5).
-
-[126] See Sellin, _Tell Ta’annek_ (1904) and _Eine Nachlese auf dem
-Tell Ta’annek in Palästina_ (1905).
-
-[127] _Tell Ta’annek_, pp. 27–8. The cylinder is earlier than B.C. 2000.
-
-[128] See my _Patriarchal Palestine_, pp. 60, 61.
-
-[129] _Collection De Clercq, Catalogue méthodique et raisonné_, i.
-p. 217.
-
-[130] _Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund_, January
-1905, pp. 28, 29.
-
-[131] The chronological difficulty, however, would be partially solved
-if the date recently proposed by Professor Petrie (_Researches in
-Sinai_, ch. xii.) for the Twelfth dynasty--B.C. 3459–3250--be adopted.
-The Twelfth dynasty would in this case have reigned a thousand years
-before the dynasty of Khammu-rabi, whose domination in Palestine would
-have been an interlude in the history of the Hyksos period, while the
-conquest of Canaan by Sargon and Naram-Sin would have coincided with
-the supersession of the neolithic population by the “Amorites,” who
-brought with them the copper and the culture of Babylonia.
-
-[132] Unless we except the gold and silver ornaments found on the body
-of a woman in a deserted house at Taanach, which, as Dr. Sellin says,
-are by themselves sufficient to remove “all grounds for doubting such
-accounts as those in Joshua vii. 21, and Judges viii. 26” (_Eine
-Nachlese auf dem Tell Ta’annek_, p. 32).
-
-[133] _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, New Series, xiv. 3,
-4, pp. 377–732.
-
-[134] Eustathius on Dion. Perieget. 767. See Lehmann in the
-_Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, 1894, pp. 90 and 358–60.
-
-[135] The Vannic kings always call themselves kings, not of the
-Khaldians, but of Biainas or Bianas, the Byana of Ptolemy, the Van of
-to-day.
-
-[136] See more especially Belck’s comparison of the Vannic pottery
-with that of the Assyrian colony of Kara Eyuk, near Kaisariyeh, in
-the _Verhandlungen der Berliner anthropologischen Gesellschaft_,
-December 1901, p. 493. Besides the highly-polished lustrous red ware,
-he found at Kara Eyuk fragments of the same wheel-made wine-jars, “of
-gigantic size,” which characterized Toprak Kaleh, near Van. Similar
-jars, as well as lustrous red pottery, were discovered by Schliemann
-in the “prehistoric” strata at Troy. The animals’ heads in terra-cotta
-found at Kara Eyuk are stated by Dr. Belck to be similar to those of
-the Digalla Tepé, near Urumiya. For further details see _infra._
-
-[137] See Pinches in the _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_,
-1897, pp. 589–613; and myself in the _Proceedings of the Society of
-Biblical Archæology_, 1897, p. 286.
-
-[138] Thus we find from the Cappadocian cuneiform tablets discovered
-at Kara Eyuk, north-east of Kaisariyeh, that time was reckoned by the
-annual succession of officers called _limmi_ as in Assyria.
-
-[139] _Dendereh_, p. 62.
-
-[140] Chantre, _Mission en Cappadoce_, pp. 71–91.
-
-[141] See Belck, _Verhandlungen der Berliner anthropologischen
-Gesellschaft_, December 1901, p. 493; and the admirable plates, iii.,
-vii.–xiv., in Chantre, _Mission en Cappadoce_. As has been already
-mentioned (_supra_, p. 166), Dr. Belck noticed at Kara Eyuk coarse
-sherds of great thickness coming from wine-jars similar to those of
-Toprak Kaleh. The black vases with long spouts have been found at
-Yortan and Boz Eyuk in Phrygia; long-spouted vases of yellow ware with
-geometrical patterns in maroon-red on the site of Gordium.
-
-Chantre discovered numerous spindle-whorls in the ruins similar to
-those discovered at Troy. He also found terra-cotta figurines, among
-which the ram is the most plentiful, as well as covers and handles of
-vases in the shape of animals’ heads, and some curious hut-urns not
-unlike those of Latium. Few bronze objects were met with, but among
-them were five flanged axe-heads of the incurved Egyptian Hyksos type,
-totally unlike the straight bronze axe-heads from Troy and Angora
-(of Egyptian I-XII dynasty form), with which M. Chantre compares
-them. The obsidian implements and stone celts were of the ordinary
-Asianic pattern. M. Chantre notes that whereas at Troy the terra-cotta
-figurines represented the heads of oxen or cows, at Kara Eyuk they were
-the heads of sheep, horses, and perhaps dogs.
-
-[142] _Historical Geography of Asia Minor_, ch. i., ii.; _Cities and
-Bishoprics of Phrygia_, i. p. xiv.
-
-[143] Labawa, or Labbaya, for whom see the next chapter. A revised
-transcript of his letter in Arzawan (Hittite) is given by Knudtzon,
-_Die zwei Arzawa-Briefe_, pp. 38–40. The introductory paragraph
-should read: _Ata-mu kît Labbaya ... memis-ta Uan-wa-nnas
-iskhani-tta-ra atari-ya ueni_.--“To my lord says Labbaya ... thy
-servant of Uan (a district west of Aleppo); seven times I prostrate
-myself.” In other letters Labbaya is called prince of Rukhizzi, the
-Rokhe’s-na of the treaty between Ramses II. and the Hittites.
-
-[144] The facts were first stated in my article in the _Contemporary
-Review_, August 1905, pp. 264–77, which is reprinted as chapter vii.
-of the present book.
-
-[145] _Journal of the Anthropological Institute_, 1903, xxxiii. pp.
-367–400.
-
-[146] By Shalmaneser II. (_Black Obelisk_, 61) and Sargon. Sennacherib
-describes his famous campaign against Phœnicia and Judah as made “to
-the land of the Hittites.”
-
-[147] _Ilios_, p. 693. What seem to be similar characters on a
-seal-cylinder found in the copper-age cemetery of Agia Paraskevi in
-Cyprus have recently been published by me in the _Proceedings of the
-Society of Biblical Archæology_, June 1906, plate ii. No. xi. See
-above, p. 141.
-
-[148] One of these seals, with the name of Tua-is, “the Charioteer,” in
-Hittite hieroglyphs, is in the possession of M. de Clercq. Another is
-figured by Layard, _Culte de Mithra_, xliv. 3.
-
-[149] See Sayce, _Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia_, pp. 377–9
-
-[150] See Hogarth, “The Zakro Sealings,” in the _Journal of Hellenic
-Studies_, xxii. pp. 76–93, and plates vi.-x.
-
-[151] _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, 1881, vii.
-2, p. 27.
-
-[152] See above, p. 141.
-
-[153] Professor Petrie finds similar marks on Egyptian pottery of the
-prehistoric and early dynastic age; see his table of signs in _The
-Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty_ (Egypt Exploration Fund), i. p. 32.
-
-[154] _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, xi. pp. 316 _sqq._
-The cylinder was bought by Major Pottinger, but afterwards lost.
-The inscription seems to read: _AN Nin(?)-zi-in Su-lukh(?)-me-am-el
-Khi-ti-sa ARAD-na_--“To the god Nin(?)-zin, Sulukh-ammel (?) son of
-Khiti, his servant.”
-
-[155] The Etruscan monument is described by Deecke, _Das Templum von
-Piacenza_ (_Etruskische Forschungen_, iv. 1880) and _Etruskische
-Forschungen und Studien_, part ii. (1882). For the Babylonian
-prototype, see Boissier, _Note sur un Monument babylonien se rapportant
-â l’extispicine_ (1899).
-
-[156] Labbawa, or Labawa, is written Labbaya in the letter which is in
-the Arzawan language.
-
-[157] A copy of the text (Louvre, C 1) is given by Professor Breasted
-in the _American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature_,
-xxi. 3 (1905). The determinative attached to the name is not that of
-“country” but of “going,” showing that the scribe supposed the name to
-be connected with some otherwise unknown word that signified “to go,”
-just as in Gen. xxiii. “The sons of Heth” are supposed by the Hebrew
-writer to derive their name from the Hebrew _khath_, “terror.”
-
-
-Transcriber’s Notes:
-
-1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
-corrected silently.
-
-2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the
-original.
-
-3. Superscripts are represented using the caret character, e.g. D^r. or
-X^{xx}. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
-
-4. Italics are shown as _xxx_.
-
-5. Bold text is shown as =xxx=.
-
-
-
-
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- The Archæology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, by Rev. A. H. Sayce&mdash;A Project Gutenberg eBook
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-<body>
-<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The archæology of the cuneiform inscriptions, by Archibald Henry Sayce</p>
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world 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="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
-country where you are located before using this eBook.
-</div>
-
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The archæology of the cuneiform inscriptions</p>
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Archibald Henry Sayce</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 31, 2022 [eBook #67742]</p>
-<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
- <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Wouter Franssen, Karin Spence and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</p>
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS ***</div>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_f000" style="width: 547px">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_f000.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">REVERSE OF A TABLET IN THE HITTITE LANGUAGE FROM BOGHAZ KEUI.</p>
- <p class="left p-min sm"><i>Frontispiece.</i></p>
- <p class="right p-min sm">[<i>See Preface, p.</i> vi.</p>
- </div>
-
-
-<h1>The Archæology of the<br />
-Cuneiform Inscriptions</h1>
-
-
-<p class="center p4 xs">BY THE</p>
-
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Rev.</span> A. H. SAYCE</p>
-
-<p class="center xs">PROFESSOR OF ASSYRIOLOGY, OXFORD</p>
-
-
-<p class="center sm p4">PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE GENERAL<br />
-LITERATURE COMMITTEE</p>
-
-
-<p class="center p4 sm"><i>SECOND EDITION&mdash;REVISED</i></p>
-
-
-<p class="center sm p4">LONDON<br />
-SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE<br />
-<span class="xs">NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C.; 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.<br />
-<span class="smcap">Brighton: 129, North Street</span><br />
-<span class="smcap">New York</span>: E. S. GORHAM</span></p>
-
-<p class="center sm">1908</p>
-
-
-<p class="center xs p6"><span class="smcap">Richard Clay &amp; Sons, Limited</span>,<br />
-BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND<br />
-BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.</p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<table summary="contents" class="sm">
- <tr>
- <th class="chap">CHAP.</th>
- <th></th>
- <th class="pag">PAGE</th>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="chn"></td>
- <td class="cht">PREFACE</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_v">v</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="chn">I.</td>
- <td class="cht">THE DECIPHERMENT OF THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="chn">II.</td>
- <td class="cht">THE ARCHÆOLOGICAL MATERIALS; THE EXCAVATIONS
-AT SUSA AND THE ORIGIN OF BRONZE</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_36">36</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="chn">III.</td>
- <td class="cht">THE SUMERIANS</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="chn">IV.</td>
- <td class="cht">THE RELATION OF BABYLONIAN TO EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="chn">V.</td>
- <td class="cht">BABYLONIA AND PALESTINE</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="chn">VI.</td>
- <td class="cht">ASIA MINOR</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_160">160</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="chn">VII.</td>
- <td class="cht">CANAAN IN THE CENTURY BEFORE THE EXODUS</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="chn"></td>
- <td class="cht">INDEX</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td>
- </tr>
-</table>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span></p>
-
-<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<table summary="pictures" class="sm">
- <tr>
- <th></th>
- <th class="pag"><i>Facing page</i></th>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">REVERSE OF A TABLET IN THE HITTITE LANGUAGE FROM BOGHAZ KEUI (<i>Frontispiece</i>)</td>
- <td class="pag"></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">MAP&mdash;THE EASTERN WORLD IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY B.C.</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p006">7</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">THE TOMB OF DARIUS</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p016_1">16</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">BLACK OBELISK OF SHAL-MANESER II</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p020_3a">21</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">CHALDÆAN HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS IN TERRA-COTTA</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p020_3b">21</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">THE TELL OF JERABIS (PROBABLY THE ANCIENT CARCHEMISH)</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p040_2">40</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">THE TUMULUS OF SUSA, AS IT APPEARED TOWARDS THE MIDDLE OF LAST CENTURY</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p046_2">46</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">HEAD OF ONE OF THE STATUES FROM TELLO</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p058_2a">58</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">VASE OF SILVER, DEDICATED TO NINGIRSU BY ENTENA PATESI OF LAGAS</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p058b_2">58</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">THE TELL OF BORSIPPA, THE PRESENT BIRS-NIMRUD</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p078_2">78</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">THE SEAL OF SHARGANI-SHAR-ALI (SARGON OF AKKAD):
-GILGAMES WATERS THE CELESTIAL OX</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p088_2a">88</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">BAS-RELIEF OF NARAM-SIN</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p088_2b">88</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">SITTING STATUE OF GUDEA</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p122_2">122</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">MAP&mdash;THE FIRST ASSYRIAN EMPIRE</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p134_3">135</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">VIEW OF THE TEMPLE OF UR IN ITS PRESENT STATE, ACCORDING TO LOFTUS</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p140_3">141</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">THE GARDENS AND HILL OF DHUSPAS OR VAN</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p162_3">163</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">THE RUINS OF A PALACE OF URARTU AT TOPRAK-KALEH</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p166_2">166</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">THE RUINS AT BOGHAZ KEUI</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p174_2">174</a></td>
- </tr>
-
- <tr>
- <td class="cht">ONE OF THE PROCESSIONS IN THE RAVINE OF BOGHAZ</td>
- <td class="pag"><a href="#i_p176_2">176</a></td>
- </tr>
-</table>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[v]</span></p>
-
-<h2>PREFACE</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>The first six chapters which follow, embody the Rhind Lectures in
-Archæology which I delivered at Edinburgh in October 1906. The seventh
-chapter appeared as an article in the <i>Contemporary Review</i> for
-August 1905, and is here reprinted by the courtesy of the Editor to
-whom I render my thanks. The book is the first attempt to deal with
-what I would call the archæology of cuneiform decipherment, and like
-all pioneering work consequently claims the indulgence of the reader.
-For the sake of clearness I have been forced to repeat myself in a
-few instances, more especially in the sixth chapter, but what has
-thereby been lost in literary finish will, I hope, be compensated by an
-increase of clearness in the argument.</p>
-
-<p>If what I have written serves no other purpose, I shall be content
-if it draws attention to the miserably defective state of our
-archæological knowledge of Babylonia and Assyria, and to the necessity
-of scientific excavations being carried on there similar to those
-inaugurated by Mr. Rhind in Egypt. We have abundance of epigraphic
-material; it is the more purely archæological material that is still
-wanting.</p>
-
-<p>The need of it is every year becoming more urgent with the ever-growing
-revelation of the important and far-reaching part played by Babylonian
-culture in the ancient East. Excavation is just commencing in Asia
-Minor, and there are many indications that it has startling discoveries
-and surprises in store for us. Even while my manuscript was in the
-printer’s hands, Professor Winckler has been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[vi]</span> examining the cuneiform
-tablets found by him last spring at Boghaz Keui, on the site of the
-old Hittite capital in Cappadocia, and reading in them the records of
-the Hittite kings, Khattu-sil, Sapaluliuma, Mur-sila and Muttallu.
-Most of the tablets, though written in cuneiform characters, are in
-the native language of the country, but among them is a version in
-the Babylonian language of the treaty between the “great king of the
-Hittites” and Riya-masesa Mai or Ramses II., the Egyptian copy of which
-has long been known to us. The two Arzawan letters in the Tel el-Amarna
-collection no longer stand alone; the Boghaz Keui tablets show that
-an active correspondence was carried on between Egypt and Cappadocia.
-We must revise our old ideas about an absence of intercourse between
-different parts of the ancient Oriental world: there was quite as much
-intercommunication as there is to-day. Elam and Babylonia, Assyria
-and Asia Minor, Palestine and Egypt, all were linked together by the
-ties of a common culture; there were no exclusive religions to raise
-barriers between nation and nation, and the pottery of the Hittites
-was not only carried to the south of Canaan, but the civilization of
-Babylonia made its way through Hittite lands to the shores and islands
-of Greece. On the south, the Ægean became a highway from Asia Minor to
-Europe, while northward the Troad formed a bridge which carried the
-culture of Cappadocia to the Balkans and the Danube.</p>
-
-<p class="smcap r2">A. H. Sayce.</p>
-
-<p class="p-min"><i>November</i> 1906.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p006">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p006.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">THE EASTERN WORLD IN THE SEVENTH CENTURY B.C.</p>
- </div>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span></p>
-
-<p class="center xl">THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS</p>
-</div>
-
-<h2>CHAPTER I<br />
-<span class="subhed">THE DECIPHERMENT OF THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS</span></h2>
-
-<p>The decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions was the archæological
-romance of the nineteenth century. There was no Rosetta stone to
-offer a clue to their meaning; the very names of the Assyrian kings
-and of the gods they worshipped had been lost and forgotten; and the
-characters themselves were but conventional groups of wedges, not
-pictures of objects and ideas like the hieroglyphs of Egypt. The
-decipherment started with the guess of a classical scholar who knew no
-Oriental languages and had never travelled in the East. And yet it is
-upon this guess that the vast superstructure of cuneiform decipherment
-has been slowly reared, with its ever-increasing mass of literature
-in numerous languages, the very existence of some of which had been
-previously unknown, and with its revelation of a civilized world that
-had faded out of sight before Greek history began. The ancient East
-has risen, as it were, from the dead, with its politics and its wars,
-its law and its trade, its art, its industries and its science. And
-this revelation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span> of a new world, this resurrection of a dead past,
-has started from a successful guess. But the guess had been made in
-accordance with scientific method and had scientific reasons behind it,
-and it has proved to be the fruitful seed of an overspreading tree.</p>
-
-<p>Seventy years ago a single small case was sufficient to hold all the
-Assyrian and Babylonian antiquities possessed by the British Museum.
-They had been collected by Rich, to whom we owe the first accurate
-plans of the sites of Babylon and Nineveh. But the cuneiform characters
-found on the seals and clay cylinders of Babylonia were not the only
-characters of the kind that were known. Similar characters had been
-noticed by travellers on the walls of the ruined palaces of Persepolis
-in Persia. As far back as 1621 the Italian traveller Pietro della
-Valle had copied two or three of these, which he reproduced in the
-account of his travels some thirty years later. One of the first acts
-of the newly-founded Royal Society of Great Britain was to ask in their
-<i>Philosophical Transactions</i> (p. 420) whether some draughtsman
-could not be found to copy the bas-reliefs and inscriptions which
-had thus been observed at Persepolis, though the only result of the
-inquiry was that a few years afterwards (in June 1693) two lines of
-cuneiform were published in the <i>Transactions</i> from the papers of
-a Mr. Samuel Flower, who had been the agent of the East India Company
-in Persia. The editor of the <i>Transactions</i> correctly concluded
-that the inscriptions were to be read from left to right. The cuneiform
-characters which were printed in the <i>Transactions</i> were, however,
-not the first specimens of cuneiform script that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span> had been published in
-England. Thomas Herbert, in the fourth edition of his Travels, which
-appeared in 1677, had already given three lines of characters taken
-indifferently from the three classes of inscriptions engraved on the
-Persian monuments; these were afterwards annexed by an Italian named
-Careri, who published them as his own. But the earliest inscription to
-be reproduced in full was a short one inscribed by Darius I. over the
-windows of his palace, which had been copied by Sir John Chardin during
-one of his two visits to Persepolis (in 1665 and 1673). Chardin was
-the son of a Huguenot jeweller in Paris, and after returning from his
-travels settled in London, where he became a great favourite of Charles
-II., and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. The inscription he had
-copied, however, was not printed in the earlier edition of his Travels,
-and had to wait until 1735 before it saw the light.<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p>
-
-<p>The existence of the cuneiform script thus became known in Europe,
-and that was all. It was not until Carsten Niebuhr, the father of the
-better-known historian, had been sent by the Danish Government on
-an exploring mission to the East that fairly complete and accurate
-copies of the inscriptions of Persepolis were at last put into the
-hands of European scholars. Niebuhr, who sacrificed his sight to the
-work, returned to Denmark in 1767, and seven years later the first
-of the three volumes in which the scientific results of his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span> travels
-were embodied was published at Copenhagen. With the publication of the
-second volume, which contained his description of the Persepolitan
-monuments, the attempt to decipher the cuneiform characters began. He
-himself had noticed that in the first of the three classes or systems
-of cuneiform writing of which every inscription consisted, only
-forty-two characters were employed, and he therefore concluded that the
-system was alphabetic. Another Dane, Bishop Münter, discovered that the
-words in it were divided from one another by an oblique wedge,<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> and
-further showed that the monuments must belong to the age of Cyrus and
-his successors.<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> One word, which occurs without any variation towards
-the beginning of each inscription, he correctly inferred to signify
-“king”; but beyond this he was unable to advance.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile, Anquetil-Duperron, with self-sacrificing enthusiasm, had
-rediscovered the Zend of the later Zoroastrian faith, and de Sacy, with
-the help of it, had deciphered the Pehlevi inscriptions of the Sassanid
-kings. It was only the older Persian of the Achæmenian cuneiform
-inscriptions that still awaited interpretation; and a bridge had been
-built between it and modern Persian by means of the Zendic texts. In
-1802 the guess was made which opened the way to the decipherment of the
-mysterious wedge-shaped signs. The inspired genius was Grotefend, an
-accomplished<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span> Latinist and a school-master at Frankfort-on-the-Main.
-He knew no Oriental languages, but his mother-wit and common-sense
-more than made up for the deficiency. It was clear to him that the
-three systems of cuneiform represented three different languages,
-the Persian kings being like a Turkish pasha of to-day, who, when he
-wishes an edict to be understood, writes it in Turkish and Arabic. It
-was also clear to him that the first system must be the script of the
-Persian kings themselves, of which the other two were translations. The
-preparatory work for reading this had already been done by Münter; what
-Grotefend now had to do was to identify and read the names to which the
-word for “king” was attached.</p>
-
-<p>On comparing the inscriptions together he found that while the word
-for “king” remained unchanged, the word which accompanied it at the
-beginning of an inscription varied on different monuments. There were,
-in fact, two wholly different words, one of which was peculiar to one
-set of monuments, the other to another set. But he also found that the
-first of these words followed the other on the second set of monuments,
-though with a different termination from that which belonged to it when
-it took the place of the first word. Hence he conjectured that the two
-words represented the names of two Persian kings, one of whom was the
-son of the other, the termination of the second name when it followed
-the first being that of the genitive. It was now necessary to discover
-who the kings were whose names had thus been found. Fortunately the
-Achæmenian dynasty was not a long one, and the number of royal names
-in it was not large. And of these names, Cyrus was too short and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>
-Artaxerxes too long for either of the two names which Grotefend had
-detected. There only remained Darius and Xerxes, and as Xerxes was the
-son of Darius, the name which characterized the first set of monuments
-must be Darius.</p>
-
-<p>Grotefend’s next task was to ascertain the old Persian pronunciation of
-the name of Darius. This had been given by Strabo, while the Persian
-pronunciation of Xerxes was indicated in the Old Testament. With this
-assistance Grotefend was able to assign alphabetic values to the
-cuneiform characters which composed the two names, and a corner of
-the veil which had so long covered the cuneiform records was lifted
-at last. A comparison of the names which he had thus read gave the
-needful verification of the correctness of his method. In the names
-of Darius and Xerxes the same letters occur, but in different places;
-<i>a</i> and <i>r</i> in <i>Darius</i> occupy the second and third
-places, in <i>Xerxes</i> the fourth and fifth, while <i>sh</i>, which
-is the last letter in <i>Darius</i>, would be the second and sixth in
-<i>Xerxes</i>. And such was actually the case. Grotefend was therefore
-justified in concluding that his guesses were correct, and that the
-right values had been assigned to the cuneiform characters. A beginning
-had been made in cuneiform decipherment, and in this instance the
-beginning was half the whole.</p>
-
-<p>Grotefend’s Memoir was presented to the Göttingen Academy on September
-4, 1802. By a curious accident it was at the same meeting that Heyne
-described the first attempts that had been made towards deciphering
-the Egyptian hieroglyphs. But the learned world looked askance at the
-discoveries of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span> the young Latinist. The science of archæology was still
-unborn, and Oriental philologists were unable even to understand the
-inductive method of the decipherer. The Academy of Göttingen refused to
-print his communications, and it was not until 1815 that they appeared
-in the first volume of the History of his friend Heeren, who, being
-untrammelled by the prejudices of Oriental learning, had been one of
-the earliest to accept his conclusions.<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> For a whole generation the
-work of decipherment was allowed to sleep.</p>
-
-<p>It is unfortunately true that after his initial success Grotefend’s
-ignorance of Oriental languages really did stand in his way. He
-assumed that the language of the inscriptions and that of the
-<i>Zend-Avesta</i> were one and the same, and accordingly went to the
-newly-found Zend dictionary for the readings of the cuneiform names
-and words. Vishtaspa, the name of the father of Darius, was thus
-read Goshtasp, the word for “king” became <i>khsheh</i> instead of
-<i>khshayathiya</i>, and that which Grotefend had correctly divined
-to signify “great,” <i>eghre</i> instead of <i>vazraka</i>. It is not
-wonderful, therefore, that he was never able to follow up the beginning
-he had made.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span></p>
-
-<p>To do this was reserved for the Zendic scholars of a later generation.
-Rask the Dane in 1826 determined the true form of the genitive plural,
-and thereby identified the character for <i>m</i> which gave him the
-names of the supreme god Auramazda and of Achæmenes the forefather of
-Cyrus.<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> But the great step forward was made by the eminent French
-scholar, Emile Burnouf, in 1836.<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> The first of the inscriptions
-published by Niebuhr he discovered to contain a list of the satrapies
-of Darius. With this clue in his hand the reading of the names and the
-subsequent identification of the letters which composed them could
-be a question only of patience and time. For this Burnouf was well
-equipped by his philological knowledge and training, and the result
-was an alphabet of thirty letters, the greater part of which had been
-correctly deciphered.</p>
-
-<p>Burnouf’s Memoir on the subject was published in June 1836. In the
-preceding month his friend and pupil, Professor Lassen of Bonn, had
-also published a work on “The Old Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions of
-Persepolis.”<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> He and Burnouf had been in frequent correspondence, and
-his claim to have independently detected the names of the satrapies,
-and thereby to have fixed the values of the Persian characters, was
-in consequence fiercely attacked. To the attacks made upon him,
-however, Lassen never vouchsafed a reply. Whatever his obligations to
-Burnouf may have been,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span> his own contributions to the decipherment of
-the inscriptions were numerous and important. He succeeded in fixing
-the true values of nearly all the letters in the Persian alphabet, in
-translating the texts, and in proving that the language of them was not
-Zend, but stood to both Zend and Sanskrit in the relation of a sister.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile another scholar, armed with fresh and important material,
-had entered the field. A young English officer in the East India
-Company’s service, Major Rawlinson by name, was attached to the
-British Mission in Persia. A happy inspiration led him to attempt the
-decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions. It was in 1835, when he
-was twenty-five years old, that he first began his work. All that he
-knew was that Grotefend had discovered in the texts of Persepolis the
-names of Darius, of Xerxes and of Hystaspes, but cut off as he was in
-his official position at Kirmanshah on the western frontier of Persia
-from European libraries, he was unable to procure either the Memoir of
-the German scholar or the articles to which it had given rise. Like
-Burnouf, he set himself to decipher the two inscriptions of Hamadan,
-which he had himself copied with great care. He soon recognized in them
-the names that had been read by Grotefend, and thus obtained a working
-alphabet. But his position in Persia soon gave him an advantage which
-was denied to his fellow-workers in Europe. It was not long before he
-found an opportunity of copying the great inscription on the sacred
-rock of Behistun, which had never been copied before. It was by far
-the longest cuneiform inscription yet discovered, and was filled with
-proper names, including<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span> those of the Persian satrapies. The copying of
-it, however, cost much time and labour, and was accomplished at actual
-risk of life, as Major Rawlinson, better known by his later title of
-Sir Henry Rawlinson, had to be lowered in a basket from the top of the
-cliff in order to ascertain the exact forms of certain characters.</p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p016_1">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p016_1.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">THE TOMB OF DARIUS.</p>
- </div>
-
-<p>In the following year (1836) Rawlinson moved to Teheran, and there
-received from Edwin Norris, the Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society,
-the Memoirs of Grotefend and Saint-Martin. In 1837 he finished his copy
-of the Behistun inscription, and sent a translation of its opening
-paragraphs to the Royal Asiatic Society. Before, however, his Paper
-could be published, the works of Lassen and Burnouf reached him,
-necessitating a revision of his Paper and the postponement of its
-publication. Then came other causes of delay. He was called away to
-Afghanistan to perform the onerous and responsible duties of British
-Agent at Kandahar, and it was not until 1843 that he was once more
-free to resume his cuneiform studies. A year later he was visited by
-the Danish Professor, Westergaard, who placed at his disposal the
-copies he had just made of the inscription on the tomb of Darius at
-Naksh-i-Rustam and of some shorter inscriptions from Persepolis,
-and Rawlinson’s Memoir was accordingly finished at last and sent
-to England. Here Norris subjected it to a careful revision, and at
-his suggestion Rawlinson once more visited Behistun, where he took
-squeezes and re-examined doubtful characters. In 1847 the first part
-of the Memoir was published, though the second part, containing the
-analysis and commentary on the text, did not appear <span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>till 1849.<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a>
-The work, however, was well worthy of the time and care that had been
-bestowed upon it. The task of deciphering the Persian cuneiform texts
-was virtually accomplished, and the guesses of Grotefend had developed
-into the discovery of a new alphabet and a new language. The capstone
-was put to the work by the discovery of Hincks, an Irish clergyman,
-that the alphabet was not a true one in the modern sense of the word, a
-vowel-sound being attached in pronunciation to each of the consonants
-represented in it.</p>
-
-<p>The mystery of the Persian cuneiform texts was thus solved after nearly
-fifty years of endeavour. A harder task still remained. The Persian
-texts were accompanied by two other cuneiform transcripts, which, as
-Grotefend had perceived, must have represented the other two principal
-languages that were spoken in the Persian Empire. That the third
-transcript was Babylonian seemed evident from the resemblance of the
-characters contained in it to those on the bricks and seal-cylinders of
-Babylonia. Grotefend had already written upon the subject, and had even
-divined the name of Nebuchadrezzar on certain Babylonian bricks.</p>
-
-<p>But this third species of writing, which we must henceforth term
-Babylonian or Assyrian, presented extraordinary difficulties. Instead
-of an alphabet of forty-two letters, the decipherer was confronted by
-an enormous number of different characters, while no indication was
-given of the separation of one word from another. Moreover the forms
-of the characters as found on the Persepolitan monuments differed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>
-considerably from those found on the Babylonian monuments, which
-again differed greatly from each other. On the seal-cylinders, more
-especially, they assumed the most complicated shapes, between which and
-the Persepolitan forms it was often impossible to trace any likeness
-whatever.</p>
-
-<p>Suddenly a discovery was made which furnished an abundance of new
-material and incited the decipherer to fresh efforts. In 1842 Botta
-was sent to Mossul as French Consul, and at Mohl’s instigation began
-to excavate on the site of Nineveh. His first essays there not proving
-very successful, he transferred his workmen further north, to the mound
-of Khorsabad, and there laid bare the ruins of a large and splendid
-palace which subsequently turned out to be that of Sargon. In the
-autumn of 1845 the excavations of Botta were succeeded by those of
-Layard, first at Nimrûd (the ancient Calah), and then at Kûyunjik or
-Nineveh, the result being to fill the British Museum with bas-reliefs
-covered with cuneiform writing and with other relics of Assyrian
-civilization.</p>
-
-<p>The inscriptions brought to light by Botta were copied and published by
-him in 1846–50.<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> The sumptuous work which was dedicated to them was
-followed by a smaller and cheaper edition, and the author gave further
-help to the student by classifying the characters, which amounted to
-as many as 642.<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> His work proved conclusively the identity of the
-script used at Nineveh with that of the third transcripts<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span> on the
-Persian monuments, as well as the substantial agreement of the groups
-of characters occurring in each.</p>
-
-<p>The Irish scholar Dr. Hincks&mdash;one of the most remarkable and acute
-decipherers that have ever lived&mdash;was already at work on the
-newly-found texts. In 1847 he published a long article on “The Three
-Kinds of Persepolitan Writing,”<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> and, two years later, another “On
-the Khorsabad Inscriptions.”<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> In 1850 he read a Paper before the
-British Association,<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> summing up his conclusions and announcing the
-important discovery that the Assyrian characters were syllabic and not
-alphabetic, as had hitherto been supposed. With this discovery the
-scientific decipherment of the Assyrian inscriptions actually begins.</p>
-
-<p>The proper names contained in the Persian texts furnished the clue to
-the reading of the Babylonian transcripts. The values thus obtained
-for the Babylonian characters made it possible to read many of the
-words, the meaning of which was fixed by a comparison with the Persian
-original. It then became clear that Assyrian was a Semitic language,
-standing in much the same relation to Hebrew that the Old Persian stood
-to Zend.</p>
-
-<p>Its Semitic origin was proved to demonstration by the French scholar
-de Saulcy in 1849. Another French scholar, de Longpérier, had already
-discovered the name of Sargon in the Khorsabad inscriptions<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a>&mdash;the
-first royal Assyrian name that had yet been read.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span> De Saulcy himself
-subjected the Babylonian transcript of the trilingual inscription of
-Elwend to a minute analysis, and so carefully was the work performed,
-and so secure were the foundations upon which it rested, that the
-translation needs but little revision even to-day.<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> The old belief
-in the alphabetic nature of the characters, however, still possessed
-the mind of the decipherer, although in one passage he goes so far as
-to say, “I am tempted to believe” that the signs are syllabic. But he
-did not go beyond the temptation to believe, and the discovery was
-reserved for Hincks.</p>
-
-<p>Rawlinson was now at Bagdad. De Saulcy sent him his Memoirs, and the
-British scholar had the immense advantage of having in his hands the
-Babylonian version of the great Behistun inscription, of knowing the
-country in which the monuments were found, and of possessing copies of
-inscriptions which had not yet made their way to Europe.</p>
-
-
-
-<p>Nevertheless, it is amazing with what rapidity and perspicacity he
-forced his way through the thick jungle of cuneiform script. In his
-Memoir on the Persian texts, published in 1847, he already maps out
-with marvellous fulness and exactitude the different varieties of
-cuneiform writing. It is his second Memoir, however, which excites in
-the Assyriologist of to-day the profoundest feelings of surprise and
-admiration. This consists of notes on the inscriptions of Assyria and
-Babylonia, and was communicated to the Royal Asiatic Society at the
-beginning of the year 1850.<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p020_3a" style="width: 196px">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p020_3a.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">BLACK OBELISK OF SHAL-MANESER II.</p>
- <p class="right p-min sm">[<i>See p. <a href="#Page_21">21</a>.</i></p>
- </div>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p020_3b" style="width: 592px">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p020_3b.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">CHALDÆAN HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS IN TERRA-COTTA.</p>
- <p class="right p-min sm">[<i>See p. <a href="#Page_52">52</a>.</i></p>
- </div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span></p>
-
-<p>One of the inscriptions he has translated in full&mdash;the annals of
-Shalmaneser II., on an obelisk of black marble discovered at Nimrûd
-and now in the British Museum. The text is a long one, and for the
-first time the European reader had placed before him a contemporaneous
-account of the campaigns of an Assyrian monarch in the ninth century
-before our era. The translation is substantially correct; it is only
-in the proper names that Rawlinson has gone much astray. The values
-of many of the characters were still uncertain or unknown, and he was
-under the domination of the belief that they represented alphabetic
-letters.</p>
-
-<p>He was, moreover, mistaken as to the age of the monument itself, which
-he assigned to too early an epoch. It was Dr. Hincks who again settled
-the question, by reading upon it the names of Hazael of Damascus and
-Jehu of Israel.<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> This was one of the first-fruits of his discovery
-of the syllabic character of the Assyrian signs. Another was the
-discovery of the name of Sennacherib,<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> as well as those of Hezekiah
-and Jerusalem.<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
-
-<p>Shortly before this Hincks had made another discovery of importance. He
-had deciphered the names of Nebuchadrezzar and his father on the bricks
-of Babylon,<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> and had further shown that a cylinder of Nebuchadrezzar
-brought from Babylon by Sir Robert Ker-Porter, and written in the
-cuneiform characters met with on the Persian monuments, contained
-the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span> same text as another cylinder obtained by Sir Harford Jones, and
-inscribed with characters of the most complex kind. A comparison of the
-two texts gave him the values of the latter characters, which we now
-know to represent the archaic Babylonian forms of the cuneiform signs.</p>
-
-<p>But the decipherment of the Assyro-Babylonian script was not yet
-complete. In 1851 Rawlinson’s long-promised Memoir on the Babylonian
-version of the inscription of Behistun was given to the world,<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a>
-and consisted of the cuneiform text, with translation, grammar and
-commentary, besides a list of 242 characters. It announced, moreover,
-two facts about these characters, one of which had already been
-recognized, while the second was received by the Orientalists with
-shouts of incredulity. The first fact was that the characters, besides
-having phonetic values, could also be used ideographically to denote
-objects and ideas. The second fact was that they were polyphonous, each
-character possessing more than one phonetic value.</p>
-
-<p>For once the sceptics seemed to have common-sense upon their side.
-How, it was asked, could a system of writing be read the symbols of
-which might be pronounced sometimes in one way, sometimes in another?
-Anything could be made out of anything upon such principles, and a
-method of interpretation which ended in such a result was pronounced
-to be self-condemned. Hincks, however, once more entered the field and
-demonstrated that Rawlinson was right.<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span> Hincks was an Egyptologist,
-and consequently the polyphony of the cuneiform characters was not
-to him a new and startling phenomenon. It merely showed that they
-must once have been pictorial&mdash;as, indeed, their ideographic use also
-indicated&mdash;and in a picture-writing each picture could necessarily
-be represented by more than one word, and therefore by more than one
-phonetic value, when the pronunciation of the word came to be employed
-phonetically. The picture of a foot, for instance, would denote not
-only a “foot,” but also such ideas as “go,” “run,” “walk,” each of
-which would become one of its phonetic values with the development of
-the picture into a conventional syllabic sign.</p>
-
-<p>Excavation was still proceeding on the site of Nineveh. Mr. Hormuzd
-Rassam, himself a native of Mossul and the active assistant of Layard,
-was sent in 1852 by the British Museum to complete the work from
-which Layard had now been called away by diplomatic duties.<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> In
-1853 he made a discovery which proved to be of momentous importance
-for Assyrian decipherment, and without which, in fact, it could never
-have advanced very far. He discovered the library of Nineveh with its
-multitudes of closely-written clay tablets, many of them containing
-long lists of characters, dictionaries and grammars, which have served
-at once to verify and to extend the knowledge of the script and
-language that the early decipherers had obtained. Meanwhile a careful
-survey of the whole country was made at the expense of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span> East India
-Company,<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a> and the French Government sent out an exploring and
-excavating expedition to Babylonia under a young and brilliant scholar,
-Jules Oppert. The results of the mission, which lasted from 1851 to
-1854, were embodied in two learned volumes, the first of which appeared
-in 1863.<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> In these Oppert showed, what Hincks and Rawlinson had
-already pointed out, that the peculiarities of the Assyrian syllabary
-were due not only to its pictorial origin but also to the fact that it
-had been invented by a non-Semitic people. This primitive population of
-Babylonia, called Akkadian by Hincks, Sumerian by Oppert, had spoken
-an agglutinative language similar to that of the Turks or Finns, and
-had been the founders of Babylonian civilization. For these views
-Oppert found support in the tablets of the library of Nineveh, a large
-part of which consists of translations from the older language into
-Semitic Assyrian, as well as of comparative grammars, vocabularies and
-reading-books in the two languages.</p>
-
-<p>Once more the Semitic scholars protested. There was no end to the
-extravagant fantasies of the Assyriologists! The learned world was
-comfortably convinced that none but a Semitic or Aryan people could
-have been the originators of civilization, and to assert that the
-Semites had borrowed their culture from a race which seemed to have
-affinities with Mongols or Tatars was an outrage upon established
-prejudices. The Semitic philologist was more certain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span> than ever that
-Assyrian decipherment was the folly of a few “untrained” amateurs, and
-could safely be disregarded.</p>
-
-<p>But the little band of Assyriologists pursued their labours
-undisturbed. In 1855–6 Hincks published a most remarkable series of
-articles in the <i>Journal of Sacred Literature</i>, in which the
-various forms of the Assyrian verb were analyzed and given once for
-all. The work has never had to be repeated, and the foundations of
-Assyrian grammar were solidly laid. A few years later (in 1860) a
-complete grammar of the language was published by Oppert. The initial
-stage of Assyrian decipherment was thus at an end.</p>
-
-<p>We must now turn back to the second transcript of the Persian
-inscriptions, which, thanks to its greater simplicity, had been
-deciphered before the Assyro-Babylonian. The way was opened in 1844 by
-the Danish scholar Westergaard.<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> With the help of the proper names
-he fixed the values of many of the characters and made a tentative
-endeavour to read the texts. But the language he brought to light was
-of so strange a nature as to throw doubt on the correctness of his
-method. Turkish, Arabic, Indian and even Keltic elements seemed alike
-to be mingled in it. It was not, therefore, till his readings had been
-subjected to revision by Hincks in 1846<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> and de Saulcy in 1850<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a>
-that any confidence was reposed in it, and the results made available
-for the decipherment of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span> the Babylonian transcripts, the characters of
-which frequently had the same forms. It must be remembered, however,
-that Westergaard worked from defective materials. Rawlinson had not yet
-published his copy of the Behistun inscription, which he eventually
-placed in the hands of Edwin Norris, who, in 1853, edited the text
-along with a syllabary, grammar and vocabulary, as well as translations
-and commentary.<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> This edition was a splendid piece of work, and
-with it the decipherment of the second transcript of the Persian
-inscriptions may be said to have been accomplished. Oppert’s <i>Peuple
-et Langage des Médes</i>, which appeared in 1870, did but revise,
-supplement and systematize the work of Norris.</p>
-
-<p>The new language which had thus been brought to light was
-agglutinative. Westergaard had seen in it the language of the Medes,
-and, like Rawlinson, had connected it with a hypothetical “Scythian”
-family of speech. The term “Scythian” was retained by Norris, who,
-however, attempted to show that it was really related to the Finnish
-dialects. But the excavations made at Susa by Loftus in 1851 put
-another face on the matter. In 1874, and again more fully in 1883,<a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a>
-I pointed out that the inscriptions found at Susa and other ancient
-Elamite sites were in an older form of the same language as that
-of the second Achæmenian transcripts, and furthermore that certain
-inscriptions discovered by Layard in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span> plain of Mal-Amîr eastward
-of Susa were in practically the same script and dialect. At the same
-time I fixed the values of the characters in the Mal-Amîr texts
-and gave provisional translations of them, with a vocabulary and
-commentary. Oppert and myself had already been working at the reading
-of the older Susian inscriptions, a task in which we were followed by
-Weissbach with a greater measure of success. But the same cause which
-had retarded the decipherment of the second transcript of the Persian
-inscriptions&mdash;a want of materials&mdash;militated against any great advance
-being made in the decipherment of the older Susian, and it is only
-since 1897, when the excavations of M. de Morgan at Susa were begun,
-that the student has been at last provided with the necessary means.
-Thanks to the brilliant penetration of the French Assyriologist, Dr.
-Scheil, the outlines of the language of the ancient kingdom of Elam can
-now be sketched with a fair amount of completeness and accuracy.<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a>
-The name of Neo-Susian has by common consent been conferred upon the
-language of the second Achæmenian transcripts; perhaps Neo-Elamite
-would be better. At all events it represents the language of the second
-capital of the Persian Empire as it was spoken in the age of Darius and
-his successors, and is a lineal descendant of the old agglutinative
-language of Elam.</p>
-
-<p>The three systems of cuneiform script, which a hundred years ago seemed
-so impenetrable in their mystery, have thus, one by one, been forced
-to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span> yield their secrets. But as each in turn has been deciphered,
-fresh forms of cuneiform writing and new languages expressed in
-cuneiform characters have come to light. The first to emerge was that
-agglutinative language of primitive Chaldæa which so scandalized
-the philological world and excited such strong distrust of the
-Assyriologists. The question of the name by which it should be called
-has been set at rest by the discovery of tablets in which its native
-designation is made known to us. Some years ago Bezold published a
-bilingual text in which it is termed “the language of Sumer,”<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> and
-more recently Messerschmidt has edited a bilingual inscription of the
-Babylonian king Samsu-ditana in which the Semitic “translation” is
-described as “Akkadian.”<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> Oppert is thus shown to have been right in
-the name which he proposed to give to the language of the inventors of
-the cuneiform script.</p>
-
-<p>The first analysis of Sumerian grammar was made by myself in 1870, when
-the general outlines of the language were fixed and the verbal forms
-read and explained.<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> Three years later Lenormant threw the materials
-I had collected into a connected and systematic form, one result of
-which was a controversy started by the Orientalist, Joseph Halévy, who
-maintained that Sumerian was not a language at all, but a cryptograph
-or secret writing. The answers made by the Assyriologists to this
-curious theory obliged its author constantly to shift his ground,
-but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span> at the same time it also obliged them to examine their materials
-more carefully and to revise conclusions which had been arrived at on
-insufficient evidence. An important discovery was now made by Haupt,
-who had already given the first scientific translation of a Sumerian
-text;<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> he demonstrated the existence of two dialects, one of
-which is marked by all the phenomena of phonetic decay.<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> This was
-naturally supposed to indicate a difference of age in the two dialects,
-the one being the older and the other the later form of the language.
-Subsequent research, however, has gone to show that the two dialects
-were really used contemporaneously, the decayed state of that which was
-called “the woman’s language” by the Babylonians being due to the fact
-that it was spoken in Akkad or Northern Babylonia, where the Semitic
-element became predominant at a much earlier period than in Sumer or
-Southern Babylonia.</p>
-
-<p>Up to this time the study of Sumerian had been almost entirely confined
-to the bilingual texts, of which a very large number existed in the
-library of Nineveh, and in which a Semitic translation was attached to
-the Sumerian original. Now, however, the French excavations at Tello in
-Southern Babylonia began to furnish European scholars with monuments
-of the pre-Semitic period, and to these the decipherers, among whom
-Amiaud and Thureau Dangin hold the first place, accordingly turned
-their attention. Texts composed in days when Sumerian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span> princes still
-governed the country, and written by scribes who were unacquainted with
-a Semitic language, were successfully attacked with the assistance of
-the bilingual tablets of Nineveh. But it was soon found that between
-these genuine examples of Sumerian composition and the Sumerian which
-was written and explained by Semitic scribes there was a good deal of
-difference. The Semites had derived their culture from their Sumerian
-predecessors, and a considerable part of the religious and legal
-literature that had been handed on to them was in the older language.
-This older language long continued to be that of both religion and
-law, the two conservative forces in society, Sumerian becoming to the
-Semitic Babylonians what Latin was to mediæval Europe. The inevitable
-result followed: Semitic idioms and modes of thought were clothed
-in a Sumerian dress, and the ignorance of the scribe produced not
-infrequently the equivalent of the dog-Latin of a modern school-boy.
-The gradual changes that took place in the cuneiform system of writing,
-and the adaptation of it to the requirements of Semitic speech,
-contributed to the creation of an artificial and quite unclassical
-Sumerian, and the lexical tablets became filled with uses and
-combinations of characters which were professedly Sumerian but really
-Semitic in origin. All this renders the decipherment of a Sumerian text
-even now a difficult affair, and many years must elapse before we can
-say that the stage of decipherment is definitely passed and that the
-scholar may content himself with a purely philological treatment of the
-language.</p>
-
-<p>But Sumerian was not the only new language<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span> outside the circle
-recognized by the Persian monarchs which the decipherment of the
-cuneiform characters has revealed to us. Even before the discovery
-of Sumerian, cuneiform inscriptions had been copied on the rocks and
-quarried stones of Armenia, which, when the characters composing
-them came to be read, proved to belong to a language as novel and as
-apparently unrelated to any other as Sumerian itself. As far back
-as 1826 a young scholar of the name of Schulz had been sent by the
-French Government to Van in Armenia, where, according to Armenian
-writers, Semiramis, the fabled queen of Assyria, had once left her
-monuments. Here Schulz actually found that the cliff on which the
-ancient fortress of the city stood was covered with lines of cuneiform
-characters, and similar inscriptions soon came to light in other parts
-of the country. Before Schulz, however, could return to Europe he was
-murdered (in 1829) by a Kurdish chief, whose guest he had been. But his
-papers were recovered, and the copies of the inscriptions he had made
-were published in 1840 in the <i>Journal Asiatique</i>. The first to
-attempt to read them was Dr. Hincks, whom no problem in decipherment
-ever seemed to baffle.<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> The characters, he showed, were practically
-identical with those found in the Assyrian texts, the values of many of
-which had now been ascertained; but Hincks, with his usual acuteness,
-went on to use the Armenian or Vannic inscriptions for settling
-the values of other Assyrian characters which had not as yet been
-determined. In 1848 he was already able to read the names of the Vannic
-kings and fix<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span> their succession, to make out the sense of several
-passages in the texts, and to indicate the nominative and accusative
-suffixes of the noun.</p>
-
-<p>Here Vannic decipherment rested for many years. There was no difficulty
-in reading the inscriptions phonetically, for they were written in a
-very simplified form of the Assyrian syllabary; but the language which
-was thus revealed stood isolated and alone, without linguistic kindred
-either ancient or modern. The various attempts made to decipher it were
-all failures.</p>
-
-<p>So things remained until 1882–3, when I published my Memoir on “The
-Decipherment of the Vannic Inscriptions” in the <i>Journal of the Royal
-Asiatic Society</i>. Here for the first time translations were given of
-the inscriptions, together with a commentary, grammar and vocabulary.
-At the same time I settled the chronological place of the Vannic kings,
-which had hitherto been uncertain, as well as the geography of the
-country over which they ruled, and analyzed the ancient religion of
-the people as made known to us by the decipherment of the texts. In
-revising and supplementing Schulz’s copies of the inscriptions I had
-obtained the help of squeezes taken by Layard and Rassam. The task
-of decipherment was, after all, not so hard a matter as the absence
-of a bilingual text might make it appear. The want of a bilingual
-was compensated by the numerous ideographs and “determinatives”
-scattered through the inscriptions, which indicated their general
-meaning, pointed out to the decipherer the names of countries,
-cities, individuals and the like, and gave him the signification of
-the phonetically-written words which in parallel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span> passages often
-replaced them. Moreover, the French Assyriologist, Stanislas Guyard,
-and myself had independently made the discovery that a clause which
-frequently comes at the end of a Vannic inscription corresponds with
-the imprecatory formula of the Assyrians, while the decipherment of
-the inscriptions led to the further discovery that not only had the
-characters employed in them been borrowed from the Assyrians in the
-time of the Assyrian conqueror, Assur-natsir-pal, but that many of the
-phrases used in Assur-natsir-pal’s texts had been borrowed at the same
-time.</p>
-
-<p>Other scholars soon appeared to pursue and extend my work, more
-especially Drs. Belck and Lehmann, whose expedition to Armenia in 1898
-has placed at our disposal a large store of fresh material. Amongst
-this fresh material are two long bilingual inscriptions, in Vannic and
-Assyrian, one of which had been discovered by de Morgan in 1890. These
-have verified my system of decipherment, have increased our knowledge
-of the Vannic vocabulary, have corrected a few errors, and, I am bound
-to add, have in one or two cases justified renderings of mine to which
-exception had been taken. A historical Vannic text can now be read with
-almost as much certainty as an Assyrian one.</p>
-
-<p>With the discovery of the language spoken in Armenia before the arrival
-of the modern Armenians the list of lost languages and dialects
-brought to light by the decipherment of the cuneiform script is by no
-means exhausted. Among the tablets found in 1887 at Tel el-Amarna in
-Upper Egypt was a long letter from the king of Mitanni or Northern
-Mesopotamia in the native language of his country,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span> which has been
-partially deciphered by Messerschmidt, Jensen and myself.<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a> The
-language turns out to be distantly related to the Vannic, but is of
-a much more complicated description. Two of the other letters in the
-same collection were in yet another previously unknown language, which
-the contents of one of them showed to be that of a kingdom in Asia
-Minor called Arzawa. Since then tablets have been found at Boghaz Keui
-in Cappadocia, on the site of the ancient capital of the Hittites,
-which are in the same dialect and form of cuneiform writing, and prove
-that in them we have discovered at last actual relics of the Hittite
-tongue. Thanks to the light thrown upon them by a tablet from the same
-locality, which I obtained last year, it is now possible to raise the
-veil which has hitherto concealed the Hittite language, and in a Paper
-which will shortly be printed I have succeeded in partially translating
-the texts and sketching the outlines of their grammar. But any detailed
-account of these discoveries must be reserved for a future chapter; at
-present I can do no more than refer briefly to these latest problems in
-cuneiform decipherment.</p>
-
-<p>That other problems still await us cannot be doubted. The number of
-different languages which the decipherment of the cuneiform script
-has thus far revealed to us is an assurance that, as excavation and
-research proceed, fresh languages will come to light which have
-employed the cuneiform syllabary as a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span> means of expression. Indeed, we
-already know that it was used by the Kossæans, wild mountaineers who
-skirted the eastern frontiers of Babylonia, and a list of whose words
-has been preserved in a cuneiform tablet,<a id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> and also that there was
-a time, before the introduction of the Phœnician alphabet, when “the
-language of Canaan”&mdash;better known as Hebrew&mdash;was written in cuneiform
-characters. Canaanite glosses are found in the Tel el-Amarna tablets,
-and two Sidonian seals exist in which the cuneiform syllabary is
-employed to represent the sounds of Canaanitish speech.<a id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
-
-<p>And the key to all this varied literature, this medley of languages,
-the very names of which had perished, was a simple guess! But it was a
-scientific guess, made in accordance with scientific method, and based
-upon sound scientific reasoning. It is true that it needed the slow
-and patient work of generations of scholars before the guess could
-ripen into maturity; the discovery of the value of a single letter
-in the Old Persian alphabet was sometimes the labour of a lifetime;
-but, like the seed of the mustard tree, the guess contained within
-itself all the promise of its future growth. On the day when Grotefend
-identified the names of Darius and Xerxes, the decipherment of the
-cuneiform inscriptions, and therewith of the history, the theology
-and the civilization of the ancient Oriental world, was potentially
-accomplished.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span></p>
-
-<h2>CHAPTER II<br />
-<span class="subhed">THE ARCHÆOLOGICAL MATERIALS; THE EXCAVATIONS AT SUSA AND THE ORIGIN OF BRONZE</span></h2></div>
-
-<p>The modern science of archæology has been derisively called “the study
-of pots.” As a matter of fact, the study of ancient pottery occupies a
-prominent place in it, and we cannot turn over the pages of a standard
-archæological work without constantly coming across photographs and
-illustrations of the ceramic art or reading descriptions of vases
-and bowls, of coloured ware and fragmentary sherds. Questions of
-date and origin are made to turn on the presence or absence of some
-particular form of pottery on a given site, and fierce controversies
-have arisen over a single fragment of a vessel of clay. A knowledge of
-ancient pottery is a primary requisite in the scientific excavator and
-archæologist of to-day.</p>
-
-<p>The reason of this is obvious. Archæology is an inductive science;
-its conclusions, therefore, are drawn from the comparison and
-co-ordination of objects which can be seen and handled, as well as
-tested by all competent observers. It is built upon what our German
-friends would call objective facts, and the method it employs is that
-carefully-disciplined and experimentally-guarded application of the
-ordinary logic of life which can alone give us scientific results.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>
-The method is one which the purely literary mind seems often curiously
-incapable of comprehending; the literary student is accustomed to deal
-so exclusively with matters of merely individual taste and theory
-that he is as little able to understand what is meant by scientific
-evidence and probability as the scholar who is not a mathematician is
-able to follow the reasoning of Lord Kelvin. This is a fact which has
-to be borne in mind more especially in archæological science, for the
-questions with which archæology is concerned so frequently invade the
-domain of literature or appear so closely connected with questions that
-are more or less literary, that the purely literary scholar is apt to
-think himself just as well qualified to discuss them as “the man in the
-street” is apt to think himself qualified to discuss the etymology of a
-word. To all such the archæologist would say, “Go and study your pots.”</p>
-
-<p>For pottery is practically indestructible. Like the fossils on which
-the geologist has built up the past history of life upon the earth, it
-is an enduring evidence, when rightly interpreted, of the past history
-of man. Like the fossils, moreover, it exhibits a multitudinous variety
-of types and forms. But in all these types and forms there is an
-underlying unity. The primitive needs of man are everywhere the same,
-and the powers of mind called in to supply them are the same also.
-The dish and bowl, the vase and its handles, meet us again and again
-wherever we go; and the same materials for making them meet us also.
-The hands of man, guided by the brain of man, found clay wherewith to
-manufacture the vessels that he needed, and to harden it afterwards in
-the sun or fire.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span> Where or how the first pottery was made we do not
-know, we probably shall never know. When palæolithic man first makes
-his appearance in Europe he seems not yet to have been acquainted with
-it; but it is difficult to prove a negative in archæology as in other
-sciences, and the absence of palæolithic pottery may be due only to
-the imperfection of the record. At any rate, as we descend the ladder
-of chronology the existence of man is marked more and more by the
-fragments of pottery he has left behind him; at Rome a whole mountain
-of it grew up in the space of a few centuries, and the huge mounds that
-encircled Cairo a hundred years ago were mainly formed of mediæval
-sherds. When excavating on an Egyptian site I have sometimes been
-tempted to think that the people who once lived there must have spent
-their whole time in breaking their household ware.</p>
-
-<p>Now not only are the primitive needs of man much the same throughout
-the world and at all periods of time, the nature of man is much
-the same also; and a distinguishing feature in his nature is love
-of variety. The same variety which we see in the forms of life and
-in the outward appearance and mental aptitudes of man himself is
-reflected in the products of his skill. Yet along with this love of
-variety goes a strong conservative or imitative instinct&mdash;an instinct
-which finds, too, its counterpart in nature, “so careful of the
-type.” On the one hand, fashions change; on the other, a fashion once
-introduced spreads rapidly and maintains itself to the exclusion of
-all others for a determinate period of time throughout a determinate
-area. And to nothing does this apply with more truth than to pottery.
-Observation has shown that not only are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span> different tribes or countries
-distinguished by a difference in their pottery, but that in each tribe
-or country similar differences distinguish successive periods of time.
-When to this is added the practical indestructibility of the potsherd,
-it will easily be seen what a criterion is afforded by it for fixing
-the age and character of ancient remains, and their relation to other
-monuments of the past. It is not surprising that a study of pottery
-has become the sheet-anchor of archæological chronology, and that the
-first object of the scientific excavator is to determine the relative
-succession of the ceramic remains he discovers and their connection
-with similar remains found elsewhere. Scientific excavation means,
-before all things else, careful observation and record of every piece
-of pottery, however apparently worthless, which the excavator disinters.</p>
-
-<p>But now, unfortunately, I have to make an admission. We have, as yet,
-no ceramic record in either Babylonia or Assyria. Until very recently
-there has been no attempt in either country at scientific excavation.
-The pioneers, Layard and Botta and Loftus, lived and worked before it
-was known or thought of, and we cannot, therefore, be too thankful to
-Layard for having nevertheless given us so full and accurate an account
-of what he found, and the conditions under which he found it. The
-excavations controlled by the British Museum have, I am sorry to say,
-been for the most part destructive rather than scientific; such objects
-as were wanted by the Museum were alone sought after; little or no
-record has been kept of their discovery, and they have been mixed with
-objects bought from natives, of whose origin nothing was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span> known. At one
-spot, Carchemish, the old Hittite capital, which, though not strictly
-in Assyria, formed part of the Assyrian Empire, and was the seat of an
-Assyrian governor, the so-called excavations conducted by the Museum in
-1880 were simply a scandal, which Dr. Hayes Ward, who visited the spot
-shortly afterwards, has characterized as “wicked.” The archæological
-evidence there, which would have thrown so much light on the Hittite
-problem, has been irretrievably lost.</p>
-
-<p>Matters are better now, and if I may judge from the work done by Mr.
-H. R. Hall at Dêr el-Bâharî in Egypt for the Egypt Exploration Fund,
-his colleague, Mr. L. W. King, who has recently been excavating for
-the British Museum in Assyria, will have done something to retrieve
-the archæological good name of our British excavators in the East.
-M. de Sarzec’s excavations at Tello in Southern Babylonia were also
-conducted with some consideration for archæological method, at all
-events on the architectural side, and in the capable hands of M.
-Heuzey the works of art found there have been made to yield valuable
-results. Moreover, the history of Tello may be said to be comprised
-in a single epoch of archaic Babylonia, and all objects discovered
-on the site may consequently be regarded as belonging to one age
-and phase of Babylonian civilization. Of the American excavations
-at Niffer it is difficult to speak at present. The work there has
-been careful and patient, and has extended over a long series of
-years. The architectural facts have been accurately recorded, at
-all events in the case of the great temple of Bel, and about the
-sequence of the inscribed monuments there is little room for
-<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>doubt. But accusations of carelessness have lately been brought by
-the excavators one against the other, and when we find the sharpest
-critic among them unable to substantiate his own account of the
-discovery of a library and implicitly endorsing the assignment of a
-Parthian palace to the “Mykenæan” age, it is impossible to put much
-faith in their descriptions of archæological details. Some years ago
-the Germans explored a cemetery at El-Hibba with considerable care
-and thoroughness, and thus revealed to us pretty much all we know at
-present about Babylonian funereal customs; yet here again too little
-attention was paid to the pottery, and the actual date of the cemetery
-is still uncertain. It may belong to the Babylonian period, but it may
-also not be older than the Persian or even Parthian age.</p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p040_2">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p040_2.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">THE TELL OF JERABIS (PROBABLY THE ANCIENT CARCHEMISH).</p>
- </div>
-
-<p>The Germans are once more working in the lands of the Euphrates and
-Tigris, but in Babylonia their labours have been mainly confined
-to the Babylon of Nebuchadrezzar, where comparatively little has
-been discovered. Since 1904, however, the chief strength of the
-expedition has been directed upon Qal’at Shirqât, where Assur, the
-primitive capital of Assyria, formerly stood, and here we may expect
-that archæological results of first-class importance will at last be
-obtained. But the work there has not yet advanced far enough for more
-to be done than the mapping out of the old city, the ascertainment of
-certain architectural facts, and the recovery of inscriptions of great
-historical value.</p>
-
-<p>It will be seen, therefore, that the reproach brought against
-excavations in Egypt by Mr. Rhind in 1862 still holds good of
-excavations in Babylonia and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span> Assyria. The first stage in their
-history is only just passing away. The idea that excavation is a trade
-which any one can take up without previous training, and that all the
-excavator need think about is the discovery of objects for a museum,
-is only beginning to disappear. In 1862 Rhind could write of Egyptian
-tombs: “I am not aware that there can be found the contents of a
-single sepulchre duly authenticated with satisfactory precision as to
-what objects were present, and as to the relative positions all these
-occupied when deposited by contemporary hands. Indeed, for many of the
-Egyptian sepulchral antiquities scattered over Europe there exists
-no record to determine even the part of the country where they were
-exhumed.... There have thus been swept away unrecorded into the past
-illustrative facts of very great interest, which cannot now, according
-to any reasonable probability, be replaced, at all events in the degree
-which there are grounds to believe were then possible.”<a id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> Happily,
-Mr. Rhind’s words are no longer true of Egypt, where he himself set the
-first example of showing how scientific exploration ought to be carried
-on, and the result is that the ancient civilization and culture of
-Egypt are now known to us even better than those of classical Greece or
-Rome.</p>
-
-<p>But what was true in 1862 of Egypt is still very largely true of
-Assyria and Babylonia. We are beginning to know something about the
-history of Assyro-Babylonian architecture; we know a little about the
-early work of the Babylonians in metal and stone; but the history of
-Assyro-Babylonian pottery is still, speaking broadly, a blank. For
-most of his knowledge<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span> of the ancient Euphratean civilizations the
-archæologist has to turn to the inscriptions and written literature of
-which such vast quantities have survived, and hence, besides being an
-archæologist in the strict sense, he must be also a decipherer and a
-philologist. He is still precluded from appealing to the evidence which
-can be handled and felt.</p>
-
-<p>From the point of view of the archæologist written evidence is usually
-unsatisfactory because it admits of more than one interpretation. A
-translation which seems certain to one scholar may be questioned by
-another; an inference drawn from the words of a text by one student
-may be denied by another. The statements in the texts themselves may
-be contradictory, or their imperfection may lead to wrong conclusions.
-Above all, the evidence may come to the archæologist from a philologist
-whose bent of mind is literary rather than scientific, and who will
-therefore be unable either to appreciate or to understand scientific
-testimony. Nothing is more common than to come across literary critics
-who cannot be made to understand the nature of inductive proof.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, the decipherer of a lost language must necessarily
-be an archæologist as well. The clues he follows will be largely
-archæological, and he has to appeal to archæology at every step.
-The method he must pursue is the method of archæology and of other
-inductive sciences, and the materials he uses are in part the materials
-of archæology also. The philologist who knows nothing of history and
-geography, who is unable to follow a scientific argument and appreciate
-scientific reasoning, can never<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span> decipher; he may take the materials
-given him by the decipherer and work them into philological shape,
-but that is all. We must listen to him on questions of grammar and
-vocabulary; on questions of archæology his opinions are worth no more
-than those of the ordinary man.</p>
-
-<p>I have insisted on this point because it is a very important one in
-a study like Assyriology. The public naturally thinks that in all
-Assyriological matters the opinion of one Assyriologist is as good as
-that of another. We might just as well suppose that in all matters
-which come under the head of astronomy the opinions of every class
-of astronomer are equally authoritative. But in astronomy there are
-questions which are purely mathematical, and there are other questions
-which are more or less chemical, and the astronomer who has devoted
-his attention to the spectrum analysis is contented to leave to his
-mathematical colleague abstruse calculations in advanced mathematics.
-The Assyriologist who is a grammarian pure and simple is just as little
-an authority on the archæological side of his study as any one else who
-is ignorant of archæology, and the materials he provides must be dealt
-with by the archæologist like the literary materials provided for him
-by the classical philologist; the materials in both cases stand on the
-same footing.</p>
-
-<p>At the same time, there is a difference between them. In the first
-place, the literary materials with which the Assyriologist deals are
-in a very large number of instances autographs. They are the actual
-documents of the writers whose names they bear or to whose age they
-belong. And there is all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span> the difference in the world between the
-letters of a Plato or a Cicero which have come down to us through
-numerous copyists and the letters of Khammu-rabi of Babylon, the
-originals of which are now in our hands. The inscriptions in which
-Nebuchadrezzar describes his building operations or the contemporaneous
-annals of the Assyrian kings are, from the historical point of view,
-of far more value than the books written about them at a later date,
-however admirable the latter may be as works of literature; in other
-words, they are first-hand sources, and, as such, objective facts of
-much the same character as ancient pottery or stone implements. Then,
-in the second place, the documents have to be deciphered before they
-can be treated philologically; and, as I have already said, the task
-of decipherment is in itself an archæological pursuit. If carried
-out on correct lines it is itself an instance of the application of
-the inductive method, and it is, moreover, constantly compelled to
-call archæology or history to its aid. Assyriology is thus primarily
-an archæological study, using the methods of archæological science
-and demanding the help of the archæologist, even though there are
-Assyriologists who are not archæologists themselves.</p>
-
-<p>But for the present our archæological facts have to be taken
-mainly from the results of the decipherment of the inscriptions.
-They are for the most part epigraphical; the excavator has not yet
-supplemented them, as in Egypt or prehistoric Greece, on what I would
-term the ceramic side. This, at least, is the case in Babylonia and
-Assyria. It is no longer the case, however, throughout the ancient<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>
-Assyro-Babylonian world. There is one exception to the charge brought
-by modern archæology against the excavators in the lands of the Tigris
-and Euphrates. M. de Morgan has been working for the last ten years
-on the site of Susa, the capital of Elam, and he has brought to his
-labours the knowledge and experience of an excavator who has been
-trained in modern methods and is fully awake to the requirements of
-modern science. At last, at Susa, we have an archæological record of
-the history of culture, based not only on written monuments, but also
-on the more tangible evidence of scientifically-observed strata of
-human remains. It is true that Elam is not Babylonia; but one of the
-surprises of M. de Morgan’s discoveries is that in the early days of
-Babylonian history Elam was a Babylonian province, and Susa the seat of
-a Babylonian governor. The same culture extended from Sippara on the
-Euphrates to Susa in Elam, and this culture was Babylonian. Hence, in
-default of materials from Babylonia itself, we may see in the history
-of cultural development at Susa a counterpart of that in Babylonia, at
-any rate during the period when Elam and Babylonia were alike under
-Semitic rule.<a id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p046_2">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p046_2.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">THE TUMULUS OF SUSA, AS IT APPEARED TOWARDS THE MIDDLE OF LAST CENTURY.</p>
- </div>
-
-<p>At Susa the line of division between the prehistoric or neolithic
-age and the historical epoch is very clearly marked. The prehistoric
-stratum lies twenty-five metres below the surface of the mounds, and
-is divided by M. de Morgan and his fellow-workers into <span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>two periods.
-The first is distinguished by a fine thin pottery, with yellow paste,
-which is already made upon a wheel. It does not exceed from two to
-seven millimetres in thickness; it is polished, and decorated with
-black bands and various patterns in a brown colour produced by oxide
-of iron. The designs are not only geometric, but also represent animal
-and vegetable forms. Among them are rows of ostriches identical with
-those found on the painted prehistoric pottery of Egypt. Indeed, the
-explorers were especially struck by the resemblance of the pottery as a
-whole to that of Egypt in the prehistoric age, though it is difficult
-to see what connection there can have been between the two countries at
-so remote a date, and the curious similarity between the rows of birds
-depicted on the vases must remain for the present an archæological
-puzzle. There is also a certain amount of resemblance between the
-geometric pottery and that disinterred by M. Chantre at the early
-Assyrian colony at Kara Eyuk in Cappadocia, which will be discussed
-more fully in a later chapter.<a id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> Among the geometrical patterns of
-the Susian ware spherical forms are common; the herring-bone pattern is
-also met with, as well as a pattern like the Greek <i>sigma</i>. The
-under-part of the vases is often decorated, so also is the inside. A
-form of vase frequently found is the water-jar with a rounded foot; the
-goblet is another common shape. Sometimes the vases are supplied with
-four handles for suspension.</p>
-
-<p>This fine yellow pottery occurs not only at Susa, but also throughout
-Elam, but practically none of it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span> has hitherto been discovered in
-Babylonia.<a id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a> One cause of this is doubtless that in the alluvial
-plain of Babylonia a purely neolithic stratum, if it existed at all,
-would lie below the water-level. Maritime shells are met with as far
-north as the site of Babylon, showing that the Persian Gulf once
-extended thus far, and the water of the Euphrates still infiltrates
-through the soil.</p>
-
-<p>The period of the fine thin pottery in Elam comes suddenly to an
-end, and the people of the second prehistoric period seem to have
-been intruders who were less civilized than their predecessors and
-unacquainted with the art of making the older ware. Their pottery is
-coarse and porous, and the geometric designs upon it are traced with
-the pen, not freely painted as in the case of the earlier ceramic. The
-animal and vegetable designs of the older ware have disappeared, and
-the zones, triangles and other geometric figures which take their place
-are traced in black or maroon-red upon a yellow clay. The resemblance
-between this pottery and that of Kara Eyuk is even greater than in the
-case of the pottery of the first period. Thick cylindrical vases are
-common, as well as bowls with a flat bottom and broad sides. Some of
-the vases resemble the bulbous vases of the Egyptian Twelfth dynasty;
-there are others<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span> with flat bottoms and angular sides which are also
-like Egyptian water-jars of the same Twelfth-dynasty period. Along with
-these more characteristic forms of pottery many small, unpainted cups
-have been found, as well as a few finer wheel-made vases of ovoid shape
-and yellow or reddish colour. It should be added that coarse, red,
-hand-made pottery abounds in both the prehistoric periods, as indeed it
-does also in the later historic epoch.</p>
-
-<p>As the second prehistoric epoch drew to a close at Susa, many
-indications of an advance in culture began to show themselves. Vases
-and flat-bottomed cups of soft stone were introduced, among them
-being a few of alabaster; the bricks began to be burnt in a kiln, and
-even seals with a species of writing upon them made their appearance.
-Nevertheless, the neolithic age does not pass into the age of metal
-through any transitional stages.</p>
-
-<p>The earliest stratum which marks the historic age yields for the first
-time clay tablets with inscriptions, the characters of which are
-already developing out of pictures into the cursive cuneiform. The
-inscribed cylinder-seals of Babylonia naturally appear along with them;
-alabaster vases, cups and bowls become common, and some of them are cut
-into the forms of animals. Comparatively little pottery has been found
-in this stratum; but this is probably an accident.</p>
-
-<p>The next stratum brings us to the period of Babylonian supremacy,
-when the viceroys of the Babylonian king ruled at Susa, and Semitic
-influence was already predominant in the Babylonian plain. It is
-the age of Sargon of Akkad, and its commencement may approximately
-be placed about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 4000.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span> The pottery still consists of
-a yellow paste, though there are also many specimens of a coarse
-black clay decorated with incrustations in white. The yellow ware is
-occasionally ornamented with mouldings of trees and other natural
-objects. A typical vase of the period is one of globular shape and
-small rim, and with a moulded or incised rope-pattern running round
-the centre and lower part of the rim. Another type is one which looks
-like an inverted vase, with a series of rope-patterns encircling it,
-while another seems to have been copied from the pile of cylindrical
-vases into which, as into a drain, the body of the dead Babylonian
-was inserted. These types of vase appear to have lasted, with
-little variation, down to the end of the Persian period, though,
-unfortunately, the disturbance of the ground and the consequent mixture
-of objects under the temple of In-Susinak, where the excavations
-were carried on, makes certainty on the point unattainable. Immense
-quantities of bronze votive offerings, of all kinds and sorts,
-were, however, found here, along with fragments of glass, and, as
-inscriptions show that they must all have been buried on the spot
-before the tenth century <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, we have a time-limit for dating
-the forms of the bronze weapons and tools.</p>
-
-<p>The archæological evidence obtained at Susa has been supplemented by
-excavations made some ninety miles to the west of it, at a place called
-Mussian, on the eastern bank of the river Tib. Here there are graves,
-as well as the remains of a temple and houses with vaults, columns and
-walls of burnt brick. Where the strata have allowed a section to be
-cut down to the virgin soil the results are found to agree with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span> those
-revealed by the excavations at Susa. The earliest layer belongs to the
-neolithic age, flint and obsidian, as at Susa, being the materials
-employed for tools and weapons. The pottery is thick and hand-made,
-the paste being either yellow or red in colour, and the surface is
-often polished, while many of the vases are furnished with holes for
-suspension. This layer seems older than anything discovered at Susa. It
-is followed by a second layer, in which the pottery is wheel-made, and
-is decorated with animal and vegetable figures in black or red, like
-the first prehistoric ware of the Susa mounds. Among the animal figures
-are those of men, and one fragment of yellow ware is ornamented with
-the so-called swastika. In the upper part of the layer a few fragments
-of copper have been met with, indicating that the neolithic age was
-beginning to pass into that of copper.</p>
-
-<p>Above this layer is a third, characterized by a fine ware, usually
-yellow but sometimes greenish in colour, and decorated with designs
-in lustrous black. In the fine specimens the decoration has been laid
-on before firing, in other cases after firing. The pottery as a whole
-has a general resemblance to that of prehistoric Egypt. The culture
-represented by this layer was still neolithic, but objects of copper
-were making their appearance, and the flint instruments of the past
-were beginning to be superseded by metal, a knowledge of which appears
-to have come from abroad. With the introduction of copper the Elamite
-or historical epoch may be said to have begun. It was now that the
-temple was first built of crude bricks, reeds taking the place of
-wood, and so pointing to the influence of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span> Babylonia, where reeds were
-plentiful and wood was scarce.</p>
-
-<p>Another proof of Babylonian influence must be seen not only in ware
-of Babylonian origin, but also in the figures of a nude goddess with
-the hands placed upon the breasts, which originally represented the
-divinity called Istar by the Semitic Babylonians. Indeed, from the
-fact that the goddess was represented in human form we may infer
-that the figures, though first met with in the Sumerian age, were
-of Semitic derivation, and show that Sumerian culture was already
-being affected by the influence of Semitic religious ideas.<a id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> The
-pottery found along with the figures is of a very varied description,
-including coarse red and fine yellow ware. Among the fine yellow ware
-are goblets with a tall cup supported on a foot. A typical form of
-the yellow ware is the vase with angular sides; this, together with
-vases of more bulbous shape and terra-cotta stands, is remarkably like
-some of the Egyptian Twelfth-dynasty pottery in form. The stands, more
-especially, remind us of Twelfth-dynasty Egypt. There is also a black
-ware decorated with incised lines which are filled in with white.
-This black ware is also found in Egypt, where Professor Petrie is now
-inclined to associate it with the Hyksos. At all events it is absent
-there during the interval that elapsed between the prehistoric period
-and the epoch of the Twelfth dynasty, and it characterizes the Hyksos
-sites of the Delta, while its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span> foreign and non-Egyptian character has
-been recognized from the first. A few fragments of the same class of
-pottery have been brought to light at Tello in Babylonia, where they
-would appear to belong to the age of Gudea (<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 2700). One of
-these formed part of a cylindrical vase or pyxis, identical in shape
-with the black incised pyxides found at Susa at a depth of from five to
-ten metres below the surface. On another fragment are spirited drawings
-of a water-bird, a fish seized by a gull, a four-footed animal, and
-a boat with reeds growing behind it, each in a separate panel.<a id="FNanchor_46" href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a>
-Similar ware has been discovered in Southern Palestine, on the eastern
-coast of Cyprus, in Spain and in the Greek islands. At Syros, for
-instance, where it goes back to the neolithic age, it is associated
-with alabaster vases, just as it is at Mussian. Here the bowls and
-vases of alabaster are strikingly Egyptian in form.</p>
-
-<p>The clay figures of the Babylonian goddess testify to the same
-extension of culture in the copper age of Western Asia as do the black
-incised vases with their white fillings. M. Chantre has found them
-at Kara Eyuk in Cappadocia, on the borders of the Hittite region,
-though in these the arms are no longer folded across the breast.
-Further west I have lately shown<a id="FNanchor_47" href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span> that the so-called figure of
-Niobê on Mount Sipylus in Lydia is a Hittite modification of them,
-and Dr. Schliemann discovered one of them, of lead, in the ruins of
-the Second (prehistoric) city at Troy.<a id="FNanchor_48" href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> At Troy, however, the type
-was more usually modified in the Hittite direction, as it was also
-in the islands of the Ægean, where marble figures of the goddess are
-plentiful.<a id="FNanchor_49" href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> In Egypt clay figures closely resembling those of
-Babylonia and Elam, but with the arms outstretched, have been met with
-from time to time at Karnak, and supposed to be dolls of the Roman
-period; but since the discovery by M. Legrain of remains which prove
-that the history of Karnak reaches back to the prehistoric or early
-dynastic period, there is no longer any reason for not connecting them
-with their analogues elsewhere. And the discoveries recently made by
-Professor Pumpelly in the tumuli near Askabad, west of Khiva and Herat,
-go far towards supporting the identification. Here the explorers have
-brought to light two periods of neolithic culture, in the earlier of
-which no animals were as yet domesticated, and the pottery was of the
-rudest description. During the second period the domesticated animals
-were introduced, including the horse and camel. Then came an age of
-copper, accompanied by figurines representing the Babylonian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span> goddess,
-sometimes with the arms outstretched, sometimes with them lying against
-the sides, as in Cappadocia. The figurines are evidence that the art
-of working copper was derived from Babylonia, a conclusion which is
-confirmed by M. Henri de Morgan’s excavations in the tumuli of Talîsh
-in Gîlân, on the south-western shore of the Caspian.<a id="FNanchor_50" href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a></p>
-
-<p>As far back as our knowledge of Babylonian history extends the
-inhabitants of the country were acquainted with copper, and its use
-lasted century after century into quite recent times. Of a stone age,
-as I have already said, there is no clear trace. It is true that
-Captain Cros has sunk shafts at Tello, and reached the virgin soil at
-a depth of seventeen metres, finding there mace-heads of alabaster and
-hard stone similar to those of primitive Egypt, as well as other stone
-objects; but no flint flakes were met with, and the pottery was similar
-to that of the higher strata.<a id="FNanchor_51" href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> On the other hand, objects of copper,
-great and small, including helmets and a colossal spear dedicated by a
-king of Kis, have been disinterred, though nothing of bronze has been
-discovered among the earlier remains, It was the same at Muqayyar, the
-ancient Ur, as well as on the site of Eridu, where Taylor found only
-copper bowls and the like in the graves, even in those of so late a
-date as to contain objects<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span> of iron and an Egyptian scarab.<a id="FNanchor_52" href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> At
-Niffer, moreover, the ancient Nippur, American excavation has the
-same tale to tell. According to Dr. Peters,<a id="FNanchor_53" href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> though iron knives,
-hatchets, spear-heads and arrow-heads have been exhumed, the date of
-which is said to be between 2000 and 1000 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, there is no
-trace of bronze, the multitudinous objects, which further west would
-have been of bronze, being here of copper. As at Ur, the copper age
-lasts down to the very end of the Babylonian kingdom. Hilprecht, on the
-authority of Haynes, does indeed say<a id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a> that in the very lowest strata
-of the temple mound, far below the pavements of Sargon and Naram-Sin
-(<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 3750), “fragments of copper, bronze and terra-cotta
-vessels” were disinterred. But no attempt seems to have been made to
-analyze the so-called “bronze,” which may have been a natural alloy
-of copper with a small percentage of lead or antimony, and the age
-ascribed to the fragments is rendered doubtful by the accompanying
-statement, that “fragments of red and black lacquered pottery” were
-discovered in the same place which were indistinguishable from the red
-and black pottery of classical Greece. As yet, therefore, excavation in
-Babylonian lands has failed to tell us when the art of mixing tin with
-the copper was discovered and copper was superseded by bronze.</p>
-
-<p>This, however, had taken place before the commencement<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span> of the Assyrian
-age. The bronze scimitar of Hadad-nirari I. (<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 1330)<a id="FNanchor_55" href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a>
-finds an exact copy in a scimitar discovered by Mr. Macalister at Gezer
-in Palestine,<a id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a> and the tools and weapons exhumed at Nineveh are of
-bronze and not copper. Analysis shows that the bronze usually consisted
-of about one part of tin to ten of copper, though for special objects
-like bells the amount of tin was considerably increased.<a id="FNanchor_57" href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> When was
-it that the tin was first imported and intentionally mixed with the
-copper in order to harden the metal?</p>
-
-<p>In default of archæological evidence, the only possibility there is
-of discovering an answer to this question lies in an examination
-of the primitive pictures out of which the cuneiform characters
-eventually developed. Here we are at once struck by a curious fact. The
-“determinative” attached to ideographs signifying “knife,” “weapon”
-and the like is not an ideograph which expresses the name of a metal;
-nor is it an ideograph denoting “stone,” but one which means “wood.”
-That is to say, the material of which cutting instruments were made at
-the time when the picture-writing of Babylonia came into existence was
-neither metal nor stone, but wood. That it should not have been stone
-is explained by the geology of the Babylonian plain, which consists of
-alluvial soil devoid of stones. That it should not have been of metal
-can only mean that the inventors of the pictorial script were not yet
-acquainted with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span> the use of copper, bronze or iron. In default of metal
-and stone they had to content themselves with hard wood.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, copper, as well as gold and silver, had become
-known to them when the primitive pictographs were still in process of
-formation, and long before they had passed into cursive cuneiform.
-Copper was represented by the picture of an ingot or square plate of
-the metal with a handle attached to it, showing that it was already
-in a fused and worked state when it was imported into Babylonia. Gold
-seems to have originally been denoted by the picture of a collar or
-necklace, which signified “shining,” and was afterwards employed
-before the names of the precious metals. I have, however, never found
-this collar actually used to signify “gold”; in the earliest texts
-yet discovered the phonetic syllable <i>gi</i> is attached to it when
-“gold” is denoted, the Sumerian word for “gold” being <i>azag-gi</i>.
-“Silver” was “the white precious metal,” the symbol for “white” being
-attached to the picture of the collar, and so forming a compound
-ideograph. This implies that silver became known to the inventors
-of the hieroglyphs at a later period than gold, though still before
-what I will call the cuneiform age. Even iron was known to them at
-the same early epoch, and was expressed by ideographs which literally
-mean “stone of heaven,”<a id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> an indication that meteoric iron must be
-referred to.</p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p058_2a" style="width: 448px">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p058_2a.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">HEAD OF ONE OF THE STATUES FROM TELLO.</p>
- <p class="right p-min sm">[<i>See p. <a href="#Page_73">73</a>.</i></p>
- </div>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p058b_2" style="width: 265px">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p058b_2.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">VASE OF SILVER, DEDICATED TO NINGIRSU, BY ENTENA PATESI OF LAGAS.</p>
- <p class="right p-min sm">[<i>See p. <a href="#Page_58">58</a>.</i></p>
- </div>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span></p>
-
-<p>But now comes a fact which is difficult to explain, so contrary is
-it to the archæological evidence. As we have seen, no traces of
-bronze have been found in the Assyro-Babylonian region before the
-beginning of the Assyrian age&mdash;let us say about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 2000.
-Nevertheless, by the side of the simple ideograph which denotes the
-Sumerian <i>urudu</i>, “copper”&mdash;<i>erû</i> in Semitic Babylonian&mdash;we
-find a compound ideograph signifying “bronze,” called <i>zabar</i> in
-Sumerian, from which the Semites borrowed their <i>’siparru</i>. It is
-true that it is a compound ideograph, but it occurs in the cuneiform
-texts, not only in the era of Gudea (<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 2700), but even
-before the age of Sargon of Akkad (<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 3800). And an analysis
-of its earliest form seems to indicate that it really must have meant
-bronze from the first, and that consequently there was no transference
-of signification in later days. Literally it means “white copper,” the
-word for “copper” being phonetically-written <i>ka-mas</i>, with which
-the Semitic Babylonian <i>kemassu</i> is closely connected. Lead cannot
-be intended, as that was denoted by a different word and different
-ideographs, and I do not see what else “white copper” can be in
-contradistinction to red copper except bronze. Polished<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span> copper could
-be termed “bright,” but hardly “white.”<a id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
-
-<p>The possibility remains that tin might have been the metal originally
-denoted by the compound ideograph. If so, both the ideograph and
-the words expressed by it had lost all reference to tin before the
-beginning of the Assyrian period, and neither the Assyrian word for
-“tin” nor the Sumerian word, if any existed, is now known. Tin,
-moreover, was archæologically late in making its appearance. The
-earliest examples of pure tin of which I know are of the time of the
-Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty. On the other hand, bronze first appears in
-Egypt in the age of the Twelfth dynasty,<a id="FNanchor_60" href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> though it does not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span> become
-common until the Hyksos predecessors of the Eighteenth dynasty had made
-themselves masters of the valley of the Nile. From about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>
-1600 onwards, enormous quantities of it were employed in the eastern
-basin of the Mediterranean and the adjoining lands, necessitating an
-equally large supply of tin. What the source of this tin may have been
-it is not my present purpose to inquire. But the persistence of the
-copper age in Babylonia, as well as in the tumuli of Askabad, east
-of the Caspian, indicates that the manufacture of bronze must have
-migrated from the north-west to the Babylonian plain. We find it first
-in Assyria, not in Babylonia, and it may well be that the Assyrians
-derived it from Armenia and the population of Cappadocia, where, as I
-shall show in a subsequent chapter, they had established colonies at an
-early period. At all events, the earliest examples of bronze yet met
-with were discovered by Dr. Schliemann in the Second prehistoric city
-at Troy.</p>
-
-<p>It was to this region that classical tradition referred the origin of
-working in iron. An analysis of the gold of the first six Egyptian
-dynasties submitted to Dr. Gladstone by Professor Petrie proved that
-it was mixed with silver, and hence must have been derived from Asia
-Minor.<a id="FNanchor_61" href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a> Egyptian legend made “the followers of Horus,” who founded
-dynastic Egypt,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span> metallurgists and smiths whose metal weapons enabled
-them to subdue the older neolithic population. The story as it has come
-down to us declares the smiths to have been workers in iron; iron,
-however, must be the substitute of the later version of the story for
-some other metal, since, though Vyse claims to have discovered an iron
-clamp in the great pyramid of Giza,<a id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> and Petrie has found a mass of
-iron in a Sixth-dynasty deposit in the temple of Osiris at Abydos,<a id="FNanchor_63" href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a>
-ironsmiths can hardly have existed in the pre-dynastic age. It is
-probable, therefore, that copper was the metal which the dynastic
-Egyptians introduced into their new home, and which was already in use
-in Babylonia. But the intercourse with Asia Minor, which the gold of
-the First dynasty indicates must even then have been going on, makes it
-possible that it was from this quarter of the world that the earliest
-knowledge of the manufacture of bronze was brought to the valley of
-the Nile. Even in the time of the Twelfth dynasty, however, the tools
-found by Professor Petrie in the workmen’s huts at Kahûn are of copper
-rather than of bronze.<a id="FNanchor_64" href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> The colossal statue of King Pepi of the
-Sixth dynasty, discovered at Hierakonpolis, is of hammered copper,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span> and
-we have to wait for the advent of the Eighteenth dynasty before bronze
-becomes the predominant metal.</p>
-
-<p>That such was the case points to the Hyksos period as that in which
-bronze succeeded in superseding the older copper. It may be that the
-Hyksos brought the extended use of it with them from Syria. In Southern
-Palestine, Mr. Macalister’s excavations at Gezer have shown that bronze
-rather than copper was largely employed throughout the so-called
-Amorite period, which went back to an earlier age than that of the
-Twelfth dynasty, and it is just here that in the time of the Eighteenth
-dynasty bronze itself began to make way for iron. Mr. J. L. Myres
-has recently traced the polychrome pottery of Southern Canaan to the
-Hittite lands of Cappadocia,<a id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> where the red ochre was found by which
-it was characterized, and a knowledge of bronze may have travelled
-along the same road.</p>
-
-<p>But these are speculations which may or may not be verified by future
-research. For the present we must be content with the fact that, in
-spite of the philological evidence to the contrary, copper, and not
-bronze, was the metal which preceded the use of iron in Babylonia,
-whereas in the northern kingdom of Assyria bronze was already known at
-a comparatively early date. So far as the existing evidence can carry
-us, it seems to indicate that Babylonia was the primitive home of the
-copper industry, while bronze, on the other hand, made its way eastward
-from Asia Minor and the north of Syria. Where bronze was first invented
-is still unknown<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span> to us; all that seems certain is that it must have
-been in a land where copper and tin are found together.</p>
-
-
-<p class="center p2">NOTE</p>
-
-<p>According to the mineralogists, in the western part of the northern
-hemisphere tin is found only in Britain, Spain and the neighbourhood
-of Askabad, the scanty surface-tin of Saxony, France and Tuscany being
-too poor and insignificant to have attracted attention in antiquity
-(see de Morgan, <i>Mission Scientifique au Caucase</i>, ii. pp. 16–28).
-The American excavations at Askabad under Professor Pumpelly appear to
-have made it clear that bronze was not invented in that part of the
-world, or indeed used in early days, and we are thus thrown back on
-Britain and Spain. It is quite certain, however, that bronze made its
-way to the west of Europe from the east, and the Hon. John Abercromby
-has proved (<i>Journal of the Anthropological Institute</i>, xxxii. pp.
-375–94, and <i>Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland</i>,
-1903–4, pp. 323–410) that the bronze culture came to this country from
-the valley of the central Rhine where it cuts the river at Mayence. On
-the other hand, the bronze-age civilization of the Danube valley, the
-Balkan peninsula and Italy forms a whole with that of the south-eastern
-basin of the Mediterranean, which again is closely connected with
-the bronze-age culture of the Ægean, Asia Minor and Egypt, while the
-civilization of the Danube valley leads on to that of Central Europe
-and, to a less extent, of Scandinavia and Northern Germany. Montelius
-(<i>Journal of the Anthropological<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span> Institute</i>, 1900, pp. 89
-<i>sqq.</i>) has pointed out that the early bronze culture of Northern
-Italy was carried to Scandinavia along the route of the amber trade as
-far back as the close of the neolithic age in Sweden, and the numerous
-objects of Irish gold found in Scandinavia&mdash;though, it is true, of
-somewhat later date&mdash;show that commercial relations must have existed
-between the British Islands and the Scandinavian peninsula. Tin might
-have followed the gold route until it met the amber route, by which it
-would have been carried southward to Central Europe and the Adriatic.</p>
-
-<p>In Western Europe the sword, like the socketed celt, is first met
-with in the third and last period into which the bronze age has been
-divided. The earliest examples of the sword, in fact, are those
-discovered at Mykenæ, which belong to the age of the Eighteenth
-Egyptian dynasty. Schliemann found only the dirk at Troy, and, so far
-as our present evidence goes, the dirk alone was used by the Hittites
-and Proto-Armenians down to the seventh century <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> The
-scimitar, however, was known in Assyria and at Gezer at least as early
-as the fourteenth century <span class="allsmcap">B.C</span>. (see p. 57 above), and in
-Cyprus the sword makes its appearance along with the knife and fibula
-in the later bronze age after the close of the age of copper. Similarly
-in Krete it was only in tombs of the Late Mykenæan (or Late Minoan)
-period that the cemetery of Knossos yielded swords of bronze (<i>Annual
-of the British School at Athens</i>, x. p. 4). The dirk of the copper
-age was stanged as at Troy and in the Danube valley, the Cyprian and
-Hungarian forms being practically identical. From the Danube valley the
-stanged<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span> spear-head passed to Western Europe during the second period
-of the bronze age. The fibula is not found at Troy, where the early
-bronze age will have corresponded with the copper age of Cyprus.</p>
-
-<p>All this goes to show (1) that the scimitar&mdash;the <i>harpê</i> of
-the Perseus myth&mdash;was a Semitic invention, while the long sword was
-of European origin; (2) that at Troy, and possibly also in Southern
-Palestine, to which Hittite polychrome pottery was carried at an early
-date, bronze was known at a time when only copper was used in Cyprus
-and Egypt; and (3) that the characteristic weapon of this primitive
-bronze age was the dirk, which continued to characterize Asia Minor
-long after the sword and scimitar had been invented elsewhere. Taken
-in connection with the fact that the pottery and decorative designs
-of Asia Minor can be linked with those of the Balkan peninsula and
-the valley of the Danube, we may provisionally conclude that Northern
-Asia Minor was the home of the invention of bronze. Against this is
-the fact that no tin has hitherto been found there, and we should
-accordingly have to explain the origin of bronze by the theory that
-after the discovery of various processes for hardening copper, further
-experiments were made with imported tin. Unfortunately, neither the
-south of Cornwall nor Asia Minor, with the exception of the Troad, has
-as yet been scientifically explored from an archæological point of
-view. But it deserves mention that the curious needles with a double
-head of twisted wire, which are met with among the remains of the
-bronze age in Britain, are characteristic of the copper age in Cyprus
-and of the early bronze age at Troy.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span></p>
-
-<h2>CHAPTER III<br />
-<span class="subhed">THE SUMERIANS</span></h2></div>
-
-<p>Among the first results of the decipherment of the Assyrian cuneiform
-inscriptions was one which was so unexpected and revolutionary, that
-it was received with incredulity and employed to pour discredit on
-the fact of the decipherment itself. European scholars had long been
-nursing the comfortable belief that the white race primarily, and
-the natives of Europe secondarily, were <i>ipso facto</i> superior
-to the rest of mankind, and that to them belonged of right the
-origin and development of civilization. The discovery of the common
-parentage of the Indo-European languages had come to strengthen the
-belief; the notion grew up that in Sanskrit we had found, if not the
-primeval language, at all events a language that was very near to it,
-and idyllic pictures were painted of the primitive Aryan community
-living in its Asiatic home and already possessed of the elements of
-its later culture. Outside and beyond it were the barbarians, races
-yellow and brown and black, with oblique eyes and narrow foreheads,
-whose intelligence was not much above that of the brute beasts. Such
-culture as some of them may have had was derived from the white race,
-and perhaps spoilt in the borrowing. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span> idea of the rise of a
-civilization outside the limits of the white race was regarded as a
-paradox.</p>
-
-<p>It was just this paradox to which the first decipherers of Assyrian
-cuneiform found themselves forced. And another paradox was added to it.
-Not only had the civilization of the Euphrates and Tigris originated
-amongst a race that spoke an agglutinative language, and therefore was
-neither Aryan nor Semitic, the civilization of the Semitic Babylonians
-and Assyrians was borrowed from this older civilization along with the
-cuneiform system of writing. It seemed impossible that so revolutionary
-a doctrine could be true, and Semitic philologists naturally denounced
-it. For centuries Hebrew had been supposed to have been the language
-of Paradise, and the old belief which made the Semitic Adam the first
-civilized man still unconsciously affected the Semitic scholars of the
-nineteenth century. It was hard to part with the prejudices of early
-education, especially when they were called upon to do so by a small
-group of men whose method of decipherment was an enigma to the ordinary
-grammarian, and who were introducing new and dangerous principles into
-the study of the extinct Semitic tongues.</p>
-
-<p>The method of decipherment was nevertheless a sound one, and the
-result, which seemed so incredible and impossible when first announced,
-is now one of the assured facts of science. The first civilized
-occupants of the alluvial plain of Babylonia were neither Semites nor
-Aryans, but the speakers of an agglutinative language, and to them
-were due all the elements of the Babylonian culture of later days. It
-was they who first drained the marshes, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span> regulated the course of
-the rivers by canals, thereby transforming what had been a pestiferous
-swamp into the most fertile of lands; it was they who founded the
-great cities of the country, and invented the pictorial characters,
-the cursive forms of which became what we term cuneiform. The theology
-and law of later Babylonia went back to them, and long after Semitic
-Babylonian had become the language of the country, legal judgments were
-still written in the old language and the theological literature was
-still studied in it. The Church and the Law were as loth to give up the
-dead language of Sumer as they were in modern Europe to give up the use
-of Latin.</p>
-
-<p>This dead agglutinative language has been called sometimes Akkadian,
-sometimes Sumerian, but Sumerian is the name which has been finally
-selected. In fact, this was the name applied to it by the Semitic
-Babylonians themselves, who included in the term the two dialects&mdash;or
-rather the two forms of the language at different periods of its
-development&mdash;which have been preserved to us in the cuneiform tablets.
-Strictly speaking, the dialect which had been most affected by contact
-with the Semites, and had in consequence suffered most from phonetic
-decay, was known as the language of Akkad, but this was because Akkad
-represented Northern Babylonia, which had become Semitic at an earlier
-date than the south and had been the seat of the first great Semitic
-Empire.<a id="FNanchor_66" href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a> Both<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span> names, Akkadian and Sumerian, are correct as applied
-to the primitive language of Chaldæa, but of the two Sumerian is
-preferable, not only because it was used by the Babylonian scribes
-themselves, but also because it denoted the oldest and purest form of
-the language before it had passed under foreign influence.</p>
-
-<p>This, then, was the great archæological fact which resulted from the
-decipherment of the Assyro-Babylonian texts. The earliest civilized
-inhabitants of Babylonia did not speak a Semitic language, and
-therefore presumably they were not Semites. It is perfectly true that
-language and race are not synonymous terms, and that we are seldom
-justified in arguing from the one to the other. But the Sumerian
-language is one of the exceptions which proves the rule. Those who
-spoke it were the first civilizers of Western Asia, the inventors and
-perfecters of a system of writing which was destined to be one of
-the chief humanizing agents of the ancient world, the authors of the
-irrigation engineering of the Babylonian plain, and the builders of
-its many cities. The language they spoke, accordingly, could not have
-been forced upon them by conquerors who have otherwise left no trace
-behind them, and they certainly would not have exchanged it of their
-own accord for their native tongue. The Semitic languages have always
-been conspicuous for the tenacity with which they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span> have held their own,
-and the conservatism with which they have resisted change. We may still
-hear in the Egyptian Arabic of to-day the very words which were written
-by Semitic Babylonian scribes upon their tablets some four or five
-thousand years ago. A Semitic people would have been the last to borrow
-the language of its less-civilized neighbours without any assignable
-reason. The fact, consequently, that the pioneers of Babylonian culture
-spoke an agglutinative language fully justifies us in concluding that
-they belonged to a race that was not Semitic.</p>
-
-<p>Sumerian, however, was not the only language in the neighbourhood of
-the Babylonian plain which was agglutinative. Further to the east,
-in the highlands of Elam, other agglutinative languages were spoken,
-monuments of one or more of which have been preserved to us. Whether or
-not the agglutinative languages of Elam were related to the Sumerian
-of Babylonia, I cannot tell; so far as our materials go at present
-they do not warrant us in saying more than that, like Sumerian, they
-were of the agglutinative type. It is only rarely that the scientific
-philologist is able to separate some of the multitudinous languages of
-the globe into genealogically related groups; for the most part they
-stand isolated and apart from one another, and, however much we may
-wish to group them together, it is seldom that we find such proofs of
-a common descent as will satisfy the requirements of science. Families
-of speech&mdash;or at all events such as can be scientifically proved to be
-so&mdash;are the exception and not the rule.</p>
-
-<p>Eastward of Sumer the type of language was thus agglutinative, as it
-was in Sumer itself. And in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span> days when civilization first grew up
-there, there is no sign or trace of the languages we call inflectional.
-The speakers of Aryan dialects, whom we find in classical times in
-Media or Persia or North-Western India, belong to a later epoch; the
-old belief in the Asiatic cradle of the Aryan tongues has long since
-been given up by the anthropologist and comparative philologist,<a id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a>
-and it is recognized that if we are to look for it anywhere it must
-be in Eastern Europe. The Semitic languages are equally absent; the
-tide of Semitic speech which eventually overflowed Babylonia, surged
-northward and eastward into Assyria and Elam, but never succeeded in
-passing Susiana, and was finally driven again from the ground it had
-once gained there. The home of the Semite lay to the west and not to
-the east of the Babylonian plain. Babylonian culture owed its origin to
-a race whose type of language was that of the Finn, of the Magyar or
-the Japanese.</p>
-
-<p>The physical characteristics of this race cannot as yet be fully
-determined. The oldest sculptures yielded by Babylonian excavation
-belong to a time when the Semite was already in the land. It might
-be supposed that the early monuments of Tello, which were erected by
-Sumerian princes and go back to Sumerian times, would give us the
-necessary materials; but not only are they too rude and infantile
-to be of scientific use, they also indicate the existence of two
-ethnological types, one heavily bearded, the other beardless, with
-oblique eyes and negrito-like face. It is not until we come to the
-age of Semitic domination<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span> that sculpture is sufficiently realistic
-for exact anthropological purposes. At the same time, there was to
-the last a marked contrast of both form and feature in the artistic
-representation of the Babylonian and his more purely Semitic Assyrian
-neighbour. The squat, thick figure, the full, well-shaven cheeks, the
-large, almond-shaped eyes and round head of King Merodach-nadin-akhi in
-the twelfth century <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> still reproduce the characteristic
-form and features of the statues found in the palace of Gudea, the
-Sumerian high-priest of Lagas, who lived more than a thousand years
-before. The aquiline or hooked nose, the thick lips and muscular limbs
-which distinguished the Assyrian are generally wanting in Babylonia.
-And, on the other hand, there is a likeness between the Babylonian
-as he is portrayed on the monuments and the Elamite adversaries of
-Assur-bani-pal, some of whom, it is noticeable, are depicted with
-beards, though the excavations of Dieulafoy and de Morgan at Susa
-have shown (according to Quatrefages and Hamy) that a beardless and
-short-nosed negrito type with round heads was aboriginal in Elam. The
-same type is reproduced in one of the heads found at Tello, and M.
-de Morgan has pointed out that similar brachycephalic and beardless
-negritos are represented on the monuments of Naram-Sin as serving in
-the army of Akkad.<a id="FNanchor_68" href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> We may conclude, therefore, that they still
-formed a part of the population of Northern Babylonia even in the age
-when it had passed completely<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span> under Semitic rule. Indeed, Dr. Pinches
-has shown that the pure Semitic type is not depicted in Babylonian art,
-outside the kingdom of Akkad, “before the time of the First dynasty of
-Babylon, which began to reign about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 2300.”</p>
-
-<p>It has often been maintained that the Sumerians themselves were an
-immigrant people, who had descended from the mountains of Elam. There
-is nothing unreasonable in the supposition; it was always difficult
-to prevent the mountaineers of Elam from making raids in Babylonia,
-and one of their tribes succeeded in settling in the country and
-establishing at Babylon one of the longest-lived of its dynasties. But
-the supposition mainly rests upon two facts. The pictorial hieroglyphs
-out of which the cuneiform characters have developed had no special
-sign for “river,” while the same character represented both “mountain”
-and “country.” It would seem, therefore, that the land in which the
-cuneiform system of writing was first invented was just the converse of
-the Babylonian plain, being at once mountainous and riverless. That the
-same character means both “mountain” and “country” is no doubt a strong
-argument in favour of the Elamite origin of Babylonian civilization.
-That the use of the primitive hieroglyphs should have survived in Elam
-while it was lost in Babylonia, as M. de Morgan’s discoveries have
-shown to be the case, is also another fact which may perhaps be claimed
-on the same side; at any rate it indicates that they were known to the
-Elamites before the cursive cuneiform had developed out of them. But
-the want of a special character for “river” is not so decisive as it
-appears at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span> first sight to be. The word “river” is represented by two
-ideographic signs which literally signify “the watery deep,” and so
-point to the fact that those who originally invented them lived not in
-the highlands of the East, but on the shores of that Persian Gulf which
-the Babylonians of the historic period still called “the deep.” As it
-was also known as “the salt river,” it is not difficult to understand
-how, to those whose experience of navigable water had been confined
-to the Persian Gulf, the Tigris and Euphrates would have seemed but
-repetitions of the Gulf on a smaller scale.<a id="FNanchor_69" href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p>
-
-<p>The rise of Sumerian culture on the shores of the Persian Gulf is in
-accordance with Babylonian tradition. Babylonian myths told how Oannes
-or Ea, the god of culture, had risen each morning out of his palace
-in “the deep,” bringing with him the elements of civilization which
-he communicated to mankind. Letters, science and art had all been
-his gifts. He had instructed the wild tribes of the coast to build
-houses and erect temples; he had compiled for them the first law-book,
-and had instructed them in the mysteries of agriculture. Babylonian
-civilization was sea-born. The system of cosmology which finally won
-its way to acceptance with the priesthood and philosophers of Babylonia
-was one which had been first conceived at Eridu, the site of which is
-now more than a hundred miles distant from the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span> sea, but in the early
-days of Babylonian history, before the silting up of the shore, had
-been its seaport. Here the first man Adam<a id="FNanchor_70" href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> was supposed to have
-lived, and to have spent his time fishing in the waters of the Gulf.
-The whole earth was believed to have grown out of a primeval deep like
-the mud-flats which the inhabitants of Eridu saw slowly emerging from
-the retreating sea. Philosophy and cosmology, with the theology with
-which they were associated, looked back upon Eridu and the Babylonian
-coast as their primeval home.<a id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p>
-
-<p>In fact the physical conditions of the Babylonian plain rendered it
-impossible for the first culture of the country to have sprung up in
-it. Before it was reclaimed by engineering skill and labour the larger
-part of it had been a pestiferous marsh. The science needed for making
-it habitable, at least by civilized man, must have arisen outside its
-boundaries. Only when he was already armed with a civilization which
-enabled him to dig canals, to mould bricks, and pile his houses and
-temples on artificial foundations could the Sumerian have settled in
-the Babylonian plain and there developed it still further. The cities
-of the plain grew up each round its sanctuary, which became a centre of
-civilization and progress, of agriculture and trade. But the builders
-of the sanctuaries must have brought their culture with them from
-elsewhere.</p>
-
-<p>Of these sanctuaries the most venerable was that of Bel the Elder at
-Nippur. It has been systematically excavated by the Americans down to
-its foundations,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span> and the successive strata of its history laid bare.
-Inscribed objects have been found in all the strata, carrying the
-history of the cuneiform system of writing back to the days when the
-temple was originally built. But it is still the cuneiform system of
-writing as far back as we can go, that is to say the characters are the
-cursive forms of earlier hieroglyphic pictures, the features of which
-are in most cases scarcely traceable. Here and there, it is true, the
-primitive pictorial form has been preserved, but this is the exception
-and not the rule. As a rule the earliest writing found at Nippur, and
-coeval with the foundation of its temple, is already the degenerated
-and cursive hand which we call cuneiform.</p>
-
-<p>The fact is very noteworthy. The cuneiform characters have assumed the
-shapes which give them their name owing to their having been inscribed
-on clay by a stylus of wood or metal, which obliged the writer to
-substitute a series of wedge-like indentations for curves and straight
-lines. As time went on, the number of the wedges was reduced, the forms
-of the characters were simplified, and the resemblance to the pictures
-they were once intended to represent became more and more indistinct.
-The cuneiform script is, in short, a running hand, like the hieratic
-of Egypt. But whereas in Egypt the hieratic running hand does not
-come into common use until long after the beginning of the monumental
-period, while the pictorial hieroglyphs continued to be employed to
-the last, in Babylonia the cuneiform running hand has superseded the
-primeval pictures as far back as our records carry us. When the temple
-of Nippur was built&mdash;and it was probably one of the first, if not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span> the
-first, to be built in the Babylonian plain&mdash;the clay tablet was already
-in use for writing purposes, and the cursive cuneiform had taken the
-place of the older hieroglyphs.</p>
-
-<p>The Babylonian plain was called by its Sumerian inhabitants the Edin,
-or “Plain,” a name which was borrowed by the Semites and has been made
-familiar to us by the book of Genesis. Originally it had meant all
-the uncultivated flats on either side of the Euphrates, but it soon
-acquired the sense of the country as opposed to the city, and so of the
-cultivated plain itself. Most of the important Babylonian cities were
-built in it between the Euphrates on the west and the Tigris on the
-east. A few only lay beyond it on the western bank of the Euphrates.
-One of these was Eridu, another was Ur, a third was Borsippa.</p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p078_2">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p078_2.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">THE TELL OF BORSIPPA, THE PRESENT BIRS-NIMRUD.</p>
- </div>
-
-<p>Of Eridu I have already spoken. Some six or eight thousand years
-ago it was the seaport of primitive Babylonia.<a id="FNanchor_72" href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a> Ur, which stood
-close to it, seems to have been a colony of Nippur, and therefore of
-comparatively late origin.<a id="FNanchor_73" href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> Borsippa was a small and unimportant
-town, which eventually became a suburb of Babylon, and Babylon, on
-the eastern bank of the Euphrates, was itself a colony of Eridu.<a id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a>
-Hence of the cities which stood outside the Edin of Babylonia, and may
-therefore belong to an age when <span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>Babylonian civilization was still in
-its infancy, Eridu alone is of account. And the priority even of Eridu
-was contested. Traditionally Sippara, which is expressly stated to have
-been in “the Edin,” claimed to be the oldest of Babylonian cities; one
-quarter of it bore the name of “Sippara that is from everlasting,” and
-like Eridu, it believed itself to have been the abode of the first
-man.<a id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> Thus far, however, the monuments have given us nothing to
-substantiate the claim; the culture-god of Babylonia was Ea of Eridu,
-not the Sun-god of Sippara, and for the present, therefore, we must
-look to the shore of the Persian Gulf, rather than to the “land of
-Eden” for the cradle of Babylonian civilization.</p>
-
-<p>At any rate, both Sippara and Eridu were of Sumerian foundation, as
-indeed were nearly all the great cities of Babylonia. Eridu was a later
-form of the older Eri-dugga, “the good city,” a name which seems to
-have been the starting-point of more than one legend. The growth of the
-coast to the south of it gives us some idea as to the age to which its
-foundation must reach back.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span></p>
-
-<p>It was, as I have said, the primitive seaport of Babylonia, and its
-legend of the first man Adamu made him a fisherman in the Persian Gulf.
-Its site is now rather more than a hundred miles distant from the
-present line of coast. The progress of alluvial deposit brought down by
-the Euphrates and Tigris can be estimated by the fact that forty-seven
-miles of it have been formed since Spasinus Charax, the modern
-Mohammerah, was built in the age of Alexander the Great, and was for a
-time the port of Chaldæa. During the last 2000 years, accordingly, the
-rate of deposit would seem to have been about 115 feet a year. This,
-however, does not agree with the observations of Loftus, who made the
-rate not more than a mile in every seventy years,<a id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> while on the
-other hand Sir Henry Rawlinson adduced reasons for believing it to have
-been more rapid in the past than it is to-day, and that consequently
-the rate must once have been as much as a mile in thirty years.<a id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> It
-is desirable<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span> that some competent geologist should study the question
-on the spot. Taking, however, as a basis of calculation, the one known
-fact of the rate of growth since the foundation of Spasinus Charax, and
-bearing in mind that before the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates
-the rate of advance must have been comparatively slow, we should have
-to go back to about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 5000 as the latest date at which
-Eridu could still have been the seaport of the country.</p>
-
-<p>Was it here that the system of writing which was so closely entwined
-with the origin of Babylonian civilization was first invented?
-Babylonian tradition in later days certainly believed that such was the
-case, and the fact that Ea of Eridu was the culture-god of Babylonia
-is strongly in its favour. But there are difficulties in the way.
-Eridu was the home of the “white witchcraft” of early Chaldæa; it was
-here that the charms and incantations were composed which gave the
-priesthood of Eridu its influence, and made the god they worshipped
-the impersonation of wisdom. The belief that he was the originator of
-Babylonian culture may have had its source in the system of magic which
-was associated with his name. Eridu was built on the Semitic side of
-the Euphrates, and the Semitic tribes who received their letters and
-their civilization from the Sumerians of Eridu would naturally have
-looked upon the city of their teachers as the primeval home of Sumerian
-culture. The traditions that made Eridu the starting-point of Sumerian
-civilization could thus be explained away,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span> and we should be left free
-to settle the question of its origin upon purely archæological evidence.</p>
-
-<p>Unfortunately the site of Eridu has not yet been systematically
-excavated. Once again the archæological materials for settling an
-archæological question are not at hand, and we are thrown back upon an
-examination of the picture-writing from which the cuneiform characters
-are derived. Here the evidence on the whole may be said to be in
-favour of tradition. It is true that there is no special ideograph for
-“river,” but there is one for “the deep,” and “the spirit of the deep”
-must have been a chief object of worship at the time when the primitive
-hieroglyphs were first formed. The “ship,” too, played a prominent
-part in the life of their inventors, and the picture of it represented
-it as moved not by oars but by a sail.<a id="FNanchor_78" href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> The flowering reed was
-equally prominent, and was even used to symbolize what stood firm and
-established.<a id="FNanchor_79" href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> Houses, fortresses, temples, and cities were built of
-brick, and vases were moulded out of clay.<a id="FNanchor_80" href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a> The tablet, rectangular
-or square, was already employed for the purpose of writing, but as it
-was provided with a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span> handle or a couple of rings at the top, I think
-it was more probably of wood than of clay. The sheep, goat and ox were
-domesticated,<a id="FNanchor_81" href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> and so also probably was the ass,<a id="FNanchor_82" href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> and corn was
-cultivated in the fields. The symbol of the “earth” appears to have
-been the picture of an island of circular or elliptical form. Among
-trees the cedar was well known.</p>
-
-<p>All this points to the sea-coast of Babylonia as the district in which
-its civilization first arose. But on the other hand, there is the fact
-that “country” and “mountain” are alike represented by the picture of
-a mountainous land. There is also the fact that the land in which the
-inventors of the hieroglyphs lived was one in which copper, gold and
-silver were procurable&mdash;perhaps also meteoric iron; and the further
-fact that hard wood was sufficiently plentiful for tools or weapons to
-have been made of it before the employment of metal. That they should
-have been made of wood, however, and not of stone, is a strong argument
-in favour of the Babylonian coast.</p>
-
-<p>It is on wood, moreover, that the first hieroglyphs must have been
-painted or cut. Many of them represented round objects or were
-formed of curved lines, which were transformed into a series of
-wedge-like indentations when imprinted by a stylus upon clay. We
-know, therefore, that clay was not the original writing material;
-its use as such, in fact, is coeval with the rise of that cursive
-script which, in the case<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span> of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, is called
-hieratic, but in Assyro-Babylonian is known as cuneiform. It was the
-attempt to reproduce the old pictures upon clay that created the
-cuneiform characters. As metal is not likely to have been employed
-by the primitive scribes of Chaldæa, and there is no trace of stone
-having been used&mdash;even the stone cylinder of later days being called
-a <i>dup-sar</i> or “written tablet”&mdash;we are left to choose between
-wood and papyrus. In favour of papyrus is the fact that the circular
-forms of so many of the pictures suggest that they were originally
-painted rather than engraved; on the other hand, it is doubtful whether
-the papyrus grows in the Babylonian rivers, or at any rate did so
-in the prehistoric age. And the pictograph of a “written document”
-is not a strip or roll of papyrus, as in Egypt, but a tablet with a
-handle or loop. It is true that the primeval picture which denoted
-“copper” has much the same form, but as even cutting instruments had
-the determinative of “wood” attached to them in the early picture
-writing, it is clear that the original tablet could not have been of
-metal, whatever might have been the case with its later successors.
-The picture, moreover, of the “tablet” is distinguished from that of
-a “plate of bronze” by the addition of a string which is tied to the
-handle.</p>
-
-<p>On the whole, therefore, the only archæological evidence available at
-present is on the side of the tradition which made Babylonian culture
-move northward from the coast. The only fact against it of which I know
-is that, as I have already stated, the word for land was symbolized by
-the picture of a triple mountain. But this fact is not insuperable.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>
-Before the silting up of the shore, the old coast-line of Babylonia
-would have stretched away north-eastward of Eridu towards the mountains
-of Elam. Whether the mountains that fringed what would then have been
-the eastern coast of the Persian Gulf are visible from the site of
-Eridu, I do not know; if the clear light of Upper Egypt exists there
-they would be so. Nor do I know whether on the western side there
-are mountain ranges visible in Arabia; these are points which can be
-cleared up only when the country has been thoroughly explored.</p>
-
-<p>Eridu lay five miles southward of Ur,<a id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> that “Ur of the Chaldees”
-from which Hebrew history affirmed the ancestor of the nation had
-come. Ur was never a maritime port like Eridu; it stood on the Arabian
-plateau and looked towards the west. Its face was turned to the Semitic
-rather than to the Sumerian world. From the first, therefore, it must
-have been in touch with Semitic tribes. And a curious reminiscence
-of the fact survived in the western Semitic languages, Ur or Uru
-signifies “the city”; it was a Sumerian word, another form of which was
-<i>eri</i>. The word was borrowed by the Semites, and in the Hebrew
-of the Old Testament, accordingly, the idea of “city” is expressed by
-<i>’îr</i>. The Assyrians of the north, whose vocabulary was otherwise
-so full of Sumerian loan-words, preferred the native <i>âlu</i>, “a
-tent,” to which the meaning of “city” was assigned when Sumerian
-culture had been passed on to the Semitic race and the tent had been
-exchanged for the city. The history of the word is a history of early
-culture as well.</p>
-
-<p>But I am far from saying that it was through Ur that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span> the civilization
-of Sumer came to be handed on to its Semitic neighbours. On the
-contrary, such facts as there are point in a different direction.
-Western Semites, whom linguistically we may call Arabs or Aramæans, or
-Canaanites or Hebrews, doubtless mingled with the Sumerian population
-of Ur, and adopted more or less of its manners and civilization, but it
-was further north, in the Babylonian Eden itself, that the Semite first
-came under the influence of the higher culture, and soon outstripped
-his masters in the arts of life.</p>
-
-<p>The entrance of the Semitic element into Babylonia is at present one of
-the most obscure of problems. All we can be sure of are certain main
-facts. First of all, as we have seen, the early culture of Babylonia,
-including so integral a part of it as the script, was of Sumerian
-origin. So, too, were the great cities and sanctuaries of the country,
-as well as the system of irrigation engineering which first made it
-habitable. Sumerian long continued to be the language of theology and
-law; indeed a large part of the Babylonian pantheon of later days
-was frankly non-Semitic. As was inevitable under such conditions,
-the Assyrian language contained an immense number of words&mdash;many of
-them compound&mdash;which were borrowed from the older language, and its
-idioms and grammar equally showed signs of Sumerian influence. I have
-sometimes been tempted, from a scientific point of view, to speak of
-Semitic Babylonian as a mixed language.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, if the elements of Babylonian civilization were
-Sumerian, the superstructure was Semitic. When the Semites entered into
-the heritage<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span> of Sumerian culture, the cuneiform script must have still
-been in a very inchoate and immature state. Its pictorial ancestry must
-still have been clear, and no scruples were felt about altering or
-adding to the characters. The phonetic application of the characters,
-which was still in its initial stage in the Sumerian period, was
-developed and carried to perfection by the Semitic scribes, and a very
-considerable proportion of their values and ideographic meanings is of
-Semitic derivation. The theological system was transformed, and a new
-literature and a new art came into existence. As Sumerian words had
-been borrowed by the Semites, so, too, Semitic words were borrowed by
-the Sumerians, and it is possible that examples of them may occur in
-some of the oldest Sumerian texts known to us.<a id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> The Babylonians of
-history, in short, were a mixed people; and their culture and language
-were mixed like our own.</p>
-
-<p>This, then, is one main fact. A second is that the Semitic element
-first comes to the front in the northern part of Babylonia. It is in
-Akkad, and not in Sumer, that the first Semitic Empire&mdash;that of Sargon
-the Elder, <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 3800&mdash;had its seat, and old as that empire
-is, it presupposes a long preceding period of Semitic settlement and
-advance in power and civilization. The cuneiform system of writing
-is already complete and has ceased to be Sumerian,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span> archive-chambers
-of Semitic literature are founded, and Semitic authority is firmly
-established from Susa in the east to the Mediterranean in the west.
-Art is no longer Sumerian, and in the hands of the Semitic subjects of
-Sargon and his son Naram-Sin has reached a perfection which in certain
-directions was never afterwards surpassed. The engraved seal-cylinders
-of the period are the finest that we possess. Naturally the Semitic
-language has superseded the Sumerian in official documents, and the
-physical type as represented on the monuments is also distinctly
-Semitic. At the beginning of the fourth millennium before our era, the
-civilization and culture of Northern Babylonia have thus ceased to be
-Sumerian, and the sceptre has fallen into the hands of a Semitic race.</p>
-
-<p>But there is a third fact. The displacement of the Sumerian by the
-Semite was the case only in Northern Babylonia. In the south, in the
-land of Sumer, the older population continued to be dominant. Sumerian
-dynasties continued to rule there from time to time, and the old
-agglutinative language continued to be spoken. When a West-Semitic
-dynasty governed the country about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 2200, state
-proclamations and similar official documents had still to be drawn up
-in the two languages, Semitic Babylonian and Sumerian. Sumerian did not
-become extinct till a later day. Indeed, after the fall of the empire
-of Sargon of Akkad there seems to have been a Sumerian reaction. While
-Susa was lost to the Semites and became the capital of a non-Semitic
-people who spoke an agglutinative language, the power of the Sumerian
-princes in Southern Babylonia appears to have revived. At all events
-even the dynasty which followed that of the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>West-Semites bore
-Sumerian names.<a id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a> It was only under the foreign domination of the
-Kassites, apparently, who governed Babylonia for nearly 600 years,
-that the Sumerian element finally became merged in the Semitic and the
-Babylonian of later history was born.</p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p088_2a">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p088_2a.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">THE SEAL OF SHARGANI-SHAR-ALI (SARGON OF AKKAD):
-GILGAMES WATERS THE CELESTIAL OX.</p>
- </div>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p088_2b">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p088_2b.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">BAS-RELIEF OF NARAM-SIN.</p>
- </div>
-
-<p>The last fact is that while what we call Assyrian is Semitic Babylonian
-with a few dialectal variations, it stands apart from the other Semitic
-languages. A scientific comparison of its grammar with those of the
-sister-tongues leads us to believe that it represents one of the two
-primeval dialects of the Semitic family of speech, the other dialect
-being that which subsequently split up into the varying dialects of
-Canaanite or Hebrew, Arabic, South-Arabic and Aramæan&mdash;or, adopting
-the genealogical form of linguistic relationship, Assyro-Babylonian
-would have been one daughter of the primitive parent-speech, while the
-other daughter comprised the remaining Semitic languages.<a id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a> There
-are two conclusions to be drawn from this; one is that the Babylonian
-Semites must have separated from their kinsfolk and come under Sumerian
-influence at a very early period, the other that they moved northward,
-along the banks of the Tigris into Assyria.</p>
-
-<p>With these two inferences we have to be content. Upon the first home
-of the Semitic race or its affinities with other branches of the white
-race,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span> Babylonia can naturally throw no light. The earliest glimpses
-we catch of the Semites of Babylonia are those of a people who have
-already come under the influences of Sumerian civilization, who are
-mingling with their teachers and helping with them to build up the
-stately edifice of historical Babylonia. There were ruder Semitic
-tribes, it is true, who continued to live their own nomad life on the
-western bank of the Euphrates or in the marshes that bordered the
-Persian Gulf. But like the Bedâwîn of to-day on the outskirts of Egypt
-they were little, if at all, affected by the civilization at their
-sides. They remained the same wild savages of the desert as their
-descendants who encamp in the swamps of modern Babylonia; they neither
-traded nor tilled the ground, and the language they spoke was not the
-same as that of their Babylonian kindred. They served, however, as the
-herdsmen and shepherds of their Babylonian neighbours, and the vast
-flocks whose wool was so important an article of Babylonian trade, were
-entrusted to their care. But Bedâwîn they were born, and Bedâwîn they
-continued to be.</p>
-
-<p>Even the Aramæan tribes of the coast-land kept apart from the
-Babylonians, whether Sumerian or Semitic, until the day when one of
-their tribes, the Kaldâ or Chaldæans, made themselves masters of
-Babylon under their prince Merodach-baladan, and from henceforward
-became an integral factor in the Babylonian population. They must
-have settled on the borders of Babylonia at a comparatively late
-date, when Semitic Babylonian had definitely marked itself off from
-its sister-tongues and the Babylonian Semite had acquired distinctive
-characteristics of his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span> own. The West-Semitic elements in the
-population of Babylonia could have entered the country only long after
-the mixture of Sumerian and Semite had produced the Babylonian of
-history.</p>
-
-<p>The Babylonian of history came to forget that he had ever had another
-fatherland than the Babylonian plain, the Eden of the Old Testament,
-the land whose southern border was formed by “the salt river” or
-Persian Gulf of early Sumerian geography, with its four branches
-which were themselves “heads.” Here the first man Adamu<a id="FNanchor_87" href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> had been
-created in Eridu, “the good city,” and here therefore the Babylonian
-Semite placed the home of the first ancestor of his race. But it was a
-borrowed belief, borrowed along with the other elements of Babylonian
-culture, and no argument can be drawn from it as to the actual cradle
-of the Semitic race. Like the story of the deluge, it was part of the
-Sumerian heritage into which the Semite had entered.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span></p>
-
-<p>The Semitic tradition which made the first man a tiller of the ground
-may also have been borrowed from the earlier inhabitants of Babylonia.
-At all events it is significant that the garden in which he was
-placed was in the land of Eden, and that the picture of a garden or
-plantation is one of the primitive hieroglyphs of Sumer. The beginnings
-of Babylonian civilization were bound up with the cultivation of the
-Babylonian soil; the reclamation of the great alluvial plain was at
-once the effect and the cause of Sumerian culture. Sumerian culture, in
-fact, was at the outset essentially that of an agricultural people.</p>
-
-<p>Trade would have come later, when Eridu had become a seaport, and
-ships ventured on the waters of the Persian Gulf. It grew up under the
-shelter of the great sanctuaries. Supported at first by the labour
-of their serfs, the priests in time came to exchange their surplus
-revenues&mdash;the wool of their sheep, the wheat and sesame of their
-fields, or the wine yielded by their palms&mdash;for other commodities, and
-the temples themselves formed safe and capacious store-houses in which
-such goods could be kept. In the historical period Babylonia is already
-a great trading community, and as the centuries passed trade absorbed
-more and more the energies of its population, agriculture fell into the
-background, and the Babylonia conquered by Cyrus could be described
-with truth as “a nation of shopkeepers.” Even the crown prince was a
-merchant who dealt in wool.<a id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a></p>
-
-<p>The increasing preponderance of trade goes along with the increasing
-preponderance of the Semitic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span> element in the country, and it is
-tempting to suppose that there was a connection between the two. At
-present, however, there is no positive evidence that such was the case.
-Nor is there any positive evidence that the Semites who settled in
-Babylonia were not already agriculturists. The circumstances in which
-a people lives are mainly responsible for its being agricultural or
-pastoral, and the fact that the Bedâwîn neighbours of the Babylonians
-on the western side of the Euphrates remained a pastoral race does
-not exclude the possibility that there were other branches of the
-Semitic family who had already passed out of the pastoral into the
-agricultural stage before coming into contact with the Sumerians. On
-the other hand, it is at least noticeable that in Semitic Babylonian
-the usual word for “city” continued to be one which properly meant a
-“tent”&mdash;the home of the pastoral nomad&mdash;and that no Semitic traditions
-have come down to us of the beginnings of agricultural life outside the
-limits of the Babylonian “Plain.” The title of “Shepherd,” moreover,
-was at times given to the Babylonian kings in days subsequent to the
-Semitic Empire of Sargon of Akkad. So far as our materials allow us to
-judge, city-life was the gift of the Sumerian to the primitive Semitic
-nomad.<a id="FNanchor_89" href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a></p>
-
-<p>To the Semite, however, I believe I have shown in my Lectures on
-Babylonian religion,<a id="FNanchor_90" href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> we must ascribe an important theological
-conception. In<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span> historical Babylonia the gods were conceived of in
-the form of man. Man was created in the image of God because the gods
-themselves were men. But the conception cannot be traced back further
-than the age when the Sumerians and Semites came into contact with one
-another. In pre-Semitic Sumer there are no anthropomorphic gods. We
-hear, instead, of the <i>zi</i> or “spirit,” a word properly signifying
-“life” which manifested itself in the power of motion. All things
-that moved were possessed of life, and there was accordingly a “life”
-or “spirit” of the water as well as of man or beast. In place of the
-divine “lord of heaven” whom the Semites adored there was “a spirit of
-heaven”; in place of Ea, the later Babylonian god of the deep, there
-was “a spirit of the abyss.” Sumerian theology, in fact, was still on
-the level of animism, and the inventors of the script represented the
-idea of “god” by the picture of a star. Vestiges of the old animism can
-still be detected even in the later cult: by the side of the human gods
-an Assyrian prayer invokes the mountains, the rivers and the winds,
-and from time to time we come across a worship of deified towns. It
-was the town itself that was divine, not the deity to whom its chief
-temple was dedicated. So, again, the god or goddess continued to be
-symbolized by some sacred animal or object whose figure appears upon
-seals and boundary-stones, and in some cases we learn that the Sumerian
-prototypes of the later Babylonian divinities bore such names as “the
-gazelle,” “the antelope” or “the bull.”</p>
-
-<p>With the advent of the Semite all is changed. The gods have become men
-and women with intensified<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span> powers and the gift of immortality, but in
-all other respects they live and act like the men and women of this
-nether world. Like them, too, they are born and married, and the court
-of the early prince finds its counterpart in the divine court of the
-supreme Bel, or “Lord.” The Semitic god of Babylon was “lord of gods”
-and men, of heaven and earth; Assur of Assyria was “king of the gods”
-and lord of “the heavenly hosts.”</p>
-
-<p>It was natural that, corresponding with this lord of the heavenly
-hosts, there should be a lord of the hosts of earth, and that as the
-divine king was clothed in the attributes of man, the human king should
-take upon him the divine nature. Like the Pharaohs of Egypt or the
-emperors of Rome, the early kings of Semitic Babylonia were deified.
-And the deification took place during their lifetime,&mdash;in fact, so far
-as we can judge, upon their accession to the throne. In the eyes of
-their subjects they were incarnate deities, and in their inscriptions
-they give themselves the title of god. One of them is even called “the
-god” of Akkad, his capital.<a id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a></p>
-
-<p>Here, then, in the conception of the divine, we have a clear dividing
-line between the Semite and his non-Semitic predecessor. So far back as
-the cuneiform monuments allow us to carry his history, the Semite is
-anthropomorphic. As a consequence, the gods he worships conform to the
-social conditions under which he lives. In the desert the sacred stone
-becomes “the temple of the god”; in the organized monarchy of Babylonia
-each deity takes his appointed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span> place in an imperial court. Under the
-one supreme ruler there are princes and sub-princes, vice-regents and
-generals, while angel-messengers carry the commands of Bel to his
-subjects on earth, like the messengers who carried the letters of the
-Babylonian king along the high-roads of the empire. On the other hand,
-the earthly king receives his power and attributes from the god whose
-adopted son and representative he claims to be. Nowhere has “the divine
-right of kings” been more fully insisted on than in ancient Babylonia.
-The laws of the monarch had to be obeyed, foreign nations had to become
-his vassals, because he was a god on earth as the supreme Bel was god
-in heaven.</p>
-
-<p>But the reflection of the divine upon the human brought with it not
-only the exaltation of sovereignty, but also the rise of a priesthood.
-There were priests of a sort in Sumer of whom many different classes
-are enumerated. But when we examine the signification of the names
-attached to them we find that they were not priests in the true sense
-of the word. They were rather magicians, sorcerers, wizards, masters
-of charms. They do not develop into priests until after the Semite has
-entered upon the scene. The god and the priest make their appearance
-together.</p>
-
-<p>I do not think, however, that we are justified in concluding that the
-elaborate hierarchy of Babylonia was of purely Semitic origin. On the
-contrary, like the theological system with which it was associated,
-it was a composite product. Behind the gods and goddesses of Semitic
-Babylonia lay the primitive “spirits” and fetishes of Sumer; its
-mythology and cosmological theories rested on Sumerian foundations;
-and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span> in the same way the priestly hierarchy was the result of a racial
-amalgamation in which the Semitic element had adopted and adapted the
-ideas and institutions of the older people. We do not find the theology
-and priesthood of Babylonia among other Semitic populations, except
-where they had been borrowed from the Babylonians (as in Assyria); in
-the form in which we know them they were peculiarly and distinctively
-Babylonian. Like the language of Semitic Babylonia, which is permeated
-with Sumerian elements, or the script, which is a Semitic adaptation of
-the Sumerian system of writing, they presuppose a mixture of race.</p>
-
-<p>The priesthood eventually proved irreconcilable with “the divine
-right” of the monarch, though both alike had the same origin. The
-priests prevailed over the king, and as in England the doctrine of
-divine right was unable to survive the accession of a German line
-of princes, so in Babylonia the accession of a foreign, non-Semitic
-dynasty (that of the Kassites) dealt a death-blow to the belief in a
-deified king. The king became merely the representative and deputy
-of the divine “Lord” of heaven, deriving his right to rule from his
-adoption by the god as a son; Bel-Merodach came to be regarded as the
-true ruler of Babylonia, lord of the earth as well as of the heavens,
-and a theocratic state affords but little room for a secular king.
-The priests of Bel decided whom their god should recognize or not,
-and little by little the controlling power of the state passed into
-their hands It was in a sense a triumph for the non-Semitic element
-in the population. While the deification of the sovereign may be said
-to have been purely Semitic in its origin, the necessary corollary of
-an anthropomorphic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span> conception of the deity, the supernatural powers
-supposed to be inherent in the priesthood went back to Sumerian times.
-It was because he had once been a master of spells that the priest of
-the anthropomorphic god could influence the spiritual world. The final
-triumph of the theocratic principle in Babylonia, where the Semite
-had been so long dominant, showed that the old racial element was
-still strong, and ready to reassert itself when the favourable moment
-arrived. Such, indeed, is generally the history of a mixed people: the
-conquering or immigrant race may seem to have suppressed or absorbed
-the earlier population of the country, but as generations pass the
-foreign element becomes weaker, and the nation in greater or less
-degree reverts to the older type.</p>
-
-
-<p class="center p2">NOTE</p>
-
-<p>So far as the primitive culture of Sumer may be recovered from such
-of the primitive pictographs as can be at present identified, it may
-be described as follows. The inventors of them lived on the sea-coast
-within sight of mountains, but in a marshy district where reeds
-abounded. Trees also grew there, and the cedar was known. Stone was
-scarce, but was already cut into blocks and seals. Tablets were used
-for writing purposes, and copper, gold and silver were worked by the
-smith. Daggers with metal blades and wooden handles were worn, and
-copper was hammered into plates, while necklaces or collars were made
-of gold. Brick was the ordinary building material, and with it cities,
-forts, temples and houses were constructed. The city was provided with
-towers and stood on an artificial platform;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span> the house also had a
-tower-like appearance. It was provided with a door which turned on a
-hinge, and could be opened with a sort of key; the city gate was on a
-larger scale, and seems to have been double. By the side of the house
-was an enclosed garden planted with trees and other plants; wheat and
-probably other cereals were sown in the fields, and the shaddûf was
-already employed for the purpose of irrigation. Plants were also grown
-in pots or vases. That floods took place is evident from the existence
-of a pictograph denoting “inundation,” and representing a fish left
-stranded above the foliage of a tree. Canals or aqueducts had already
-been dug. The sheep, goat, ox and probably ass had been domesticated,
-the ox being used for draught, and woollen clothing as well as
-rugs were made from the wool or hair of the two first. A feathered
-head-dress was worn on the head. Beds, stools and chairs were used,
-with carved legs resembling those of an ox. There were fire-places and
-fire-altars, and apparently chimneys also. Pottery was very plentiful,
-and the forms of the vases, bowls and dishes were manifold; there were
-special jars for honey, butter, oil and wine, which was probably made
-from dates, and one form of vase had a spout protruding from its side.
-Some of the vases had pointed feet, and stood on stands with crossed
-legs; others were flat-bottomed, and were set on square or rectangular
-frames of wood. The oil-jars&mdash;and probably others also&mdash;were sealed
-with clay, precisely as in early Egypt. Vases and dishes of stone were
-made in imitation of those of clay, and baskets were woven of reeds or
-formed of leather. Knives, drills, wedges and an instrument which looks
-like a saw were all known,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span> while bows, arrows and daggers (but not
-swords nor, probably, spears) were employed in war. Time was reckoned
-in lunar months. Sacred cakes were offered to the gods, whose images
-were symbolized sometimes by a bearded human head with a feather crown,
-sometimes by a two-legged table of offerings on which stand two vases
-(of incense?). Demons were feared who had wings like a bird, and the
-foundation stones&mdash;or rather bricks&mdash;of a house were consecrated by
-certain objects that were deposited under them. A “year” was denoted by
-the branch of a tree, as in Egypt, and a “name” by a bird placed over
-the sacred table of offerings. The country was full of snakes and other
-creeping things, and wild beasts lurked in the jungle. The pictographs
-were read from left to right, and various expedients were devised for
-making them express ideas. Thus <i>mud</i>, “to beget,” was denoted by
-the picture of a bird dropping an egg. At other times the pictograph
-was used to express an idea, the pronunciation of which was the same as
-that of the object which it represented. The bent knee, for example,
-was used to express <i>dug</i> or <i>tuk</i>, “to have,” since it
-represented a “knee,” which was called <i>dug</i> in Sumerian.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span></p>
-
-<h2>CHAPTER IV<br />
-<span class="subhed">THE RELATION OF BABYLONIAN TO EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION</span></h2></div>
-
-<p>In dealing with the question of origins, science is constantly
-confronted with the problem of unity or polygeneity. Has language one
-origin or many; are the various races of mankind traceable to one
-ancestor or to several? Do the older civilizations presuppose the same
-primeval starting-point, or were there independent centres of culture
-which grew up unknown to one another in different parts of the world?
-Under the influences of theology the belief long prevailed that they
-were all sprung from the same source; of late the tendency has been in
-an opposite direction. While the biologist has inclined to a belief in
-the unity of species, the anthropologist has seen reason to maintain
-the diversity of origin in culture.</p>
-
-<p>The two earliest civilizations with which we are acquainted were those
-of Babylonia and Egypt. To a certain extent the conditions under
-which they both arose were similar. They grew up alike on the banks
-of great rivers and in a warm, though not tropical, climate. They
-rested, moreover, on organized systems of agriculture, which again had
-been made possible by irrigation engineering. In Babylonia the first
-settlers had found a plain which was little more than a swamp,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span> over
-which the swollen streams of the Euphrates and Tigris wandered at will
-during the annual period of inundation, and which needed engineering
-works on a large scale before it could be made habitable. The rivers
-had to be confined within their channels by means of embankments, and
-canals had to be cut in order to draw off the surplus supply of water
-and regulate its distribution to the land. While the swamp was thus
-being made possible for habitation, the population must have lived
-on the edge of the desert plateau which bordered it, and have there
-developed a civilization which not only produced the engineers and
-their science, but also the concentrated authority which enabled the
-science to be utilized.</p>
-
-<p>In Egypt it was the banks and delta of the Nile which took the place
-of the Babylonian plain. Recent discoveries have shown that in the
-prehistoric age, when the natives still lived in the desert and led a
-pastoral life, all this was a morass, the haunt of beasts of prey and
-venomous reptiles. But here again the swamp was rendered habitable by
-engineering works similar to those of primeval Babylonia. The swamp
-was transformed into fertile fields, the annual flood of the river was
-regulated, and an elaborate network of canals and embankments spread
-over the country. The pastoral nomads of the neolithic age became
-agriculturists, or were employed in constructing and repairing the
-works of irrigation, or in erecting monumental buildings for their
-rulers. There is evidence of the same centralized government, the
-same directing brain and organizing force that there is in primitive
-Babylonia.</p>
-
-<p>Is it possible that two systems of engineering science,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span> so similar
-in their objects, their methods and their results, should have been
-invented independently in two different countries? There are scholars
-who answer in the negative. But the possibility cannot be denied,
-since an even more elaborate system of irrigation was invented in
-China without any suggestion, as far as we know, from outside. The
-geographical conditions of Babylonia and Egypt, moreover, resemble
-one another, and the question of draining the swamps and regulating
-the overflow of the rivers once raised, the answer to it seems fairly
-obvious. By itself, therefore, the fact that the cultures of ancient
-Babylonia and Egypt alike rested on a similar system of irrigation
-engineering would be no proof of their common origin.</p>
-
-<p>In some respects the problem which the Babylonian engineers were
-called upon to solve was more difficult than that which faced the
-Egyptians. The Nile is fed by the rains and melting snows of Abyssinia
-and Central Africa, and its annual inundation takes place in the later
-summer months. The Euphrates and Tigris flow from the north, from
-the highlands of Armenia, and are at their fullest in the spring.
-Their overflow accordingly comes just before the summer heats, when
-agriculture is difficult or impossible, whereas in Egypt the period
-of inundation ushers in the most favourable time of the year for the
-growth of the crops. What the Babylonian engineers had to do was not
-only to drain off the overflow, but also to store it for use at least
-six months later. With them it was a question of storage as well as of
-regulation.</p>
-
-<p>Those then, who believe that the engineering sciences of the
-Babylonians and Egyptians were no independent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span> inventions are bound to
-see in Babylonia their original home. It would have been here that the
-great problems were solved, the practical application of which to the
-needs of Egypt would have been a comparatively simple matter. On the
-chronological side there would be no difficulties in such a view. Old
-as was the civilization of Egypt, the excavations in Babylonia have
-made it clear that the civilization of Babylonia was at least equally
-old. At Nippur the American excavators claim to have found inscribed
-remains which reach back for nearly ten thousand years, and though
-the data upon which this calculation is based may be disputable, it
-is certain that the earliest monuments met with are of immense age.
-And it must be remembered that they belong to a time when the early
-pictorial writing had already passed into a cursive script, and the
-plain of Babylonia had been a land of cultivated fields for unnumbered
-generations.</p>
-
-<p>But by itself, I repeat, the practical identity of engineering science
-in primeval Babylonia and Egypt is no proof that it had been learnt by
-the one from the other. If we are to fall back on the old belief which
-brought the civilized population of Egypt from the plain of Shinar,
-it must be for reasons which are supported by archæological facts. If
-such archæological facts exist, the parallel systems of irrigation
-engineering will be additional evidence; alone, they prove nothing.</p>
-
-<p>At the outset we are met by a fact which personally I find it hard to
-explain away. The hieroglyphic script of Egypt has little in common
-with the primitive pictorial characters of Babylonia. Objects<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span> and
-ideas like “the sun,” “man,” “number one,” will be represented by the
-same pictures or symbols all the world over, and consequently the fact
-that in both Babylonian and Egyptian writing the sun is denoted by a
-circle and the moon by a crescent is of no significance whatsoever.
-But when we turn to less obvious symbols there is comparatively little
-similarity between the two forms of script. The ideograph of “god,” for
-example, is a star in Babylonia, a stone axe and its shaft in Egypt;
-“life” is represented by a flowering reed in the one case, by a knotted
-girdle in the other. It is true that Professor Hommel and others have
-pointed to a few coincidences like those between the Egyptian symbol
-for “foreign land” and the Babylonian ideograph of “country,” or
-between the Egyptian and Babylonian signs for “city,” “place,” but
-such coincidences are rare.<a id="FNanchor_92" href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> As a rule, as soon as we leave the
-more obvious conventions of pictorial writing little or no connection
-can be traced between the pictorial characters of Egypt and those of
-Babylonia. As a whole the two graphic systems stand apart.</p>
-
-<p>Nevertheless I am bound to add that it is only as a whole that they
-do so. With all the general unlikeness there is a curious similarity
-in a few&mdash;a very few&mdash;instances which it is difficult to interpret as
-merely the result of accident. The round circle with lines<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span> inside it
-which denotes “a city” in Egyptian might be explained from the circular
-villages which still characterize Central Africa; but then how is it
-that the ideograph for “place” in the pictorial script of Babylonia had
-precisely the same form? That the word for “country” should be denoted
-in the Babylonian script by the picture of three mountain peaks may
-be due to the fact that to the Babylonian “country” and “mountain”
-were the same; but such an explanation fails us in the case of the
-Egyptian hieroglyph of “foreign land,” where the three peaks appear
-again, since the hieroglyph for “mountain” in Egyptian has but two.
-The picture of a seat, and a seat, too, of peculiar shape, represents
-“place” in Egyptian; in Babylonian the same picture represents “city,”
-thus inverting the ideographic signification of the picture which in
-Egyptian and Babylonian has respectively the meanings of “city” and
-“place.” Between the primitive Babylonian picture of a “ship” and
-the boats depicted in the prehistoric pottery of Egypt, again, the
-resemblance is very exact, and Professor Hommel has pointed out to me a
-curious likeness between the original form of the Babylonian ideograph
-for “a personal name” and the <i>ka</i>-sign with the Horus-hawk above
-it within which the names of the earliest Pharaohs are inscribed.<a id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a>
-Indeed the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span> learned and ingenious Munich Professor has made out a list
-of even more striking coincidences, where the characters agree not only
-in sense but also in the phonetic values attached to them.<a id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a></p>
-
-<p>Here, however, we trench on another question, the philological position
-of the Egyptian language. Egyptian scholars to-day are practically
-unanimous in believing it to belong, more or less remotely, to the
-Semitic family of speech. The Berlin school of Egyptologists, who under
-the guidance of Professor Erman have made Egyptian grammar a special
-subject of investigation, are largely responsible for the dominance
-of this belief. I ought to be the last person in the world to protest
-against it, seeing that I maintained it years ago when the patronage
-of the Berlin Egyptologists had not yet made it fashionable. At the
-same time I confess that I cannot follow the Berlin philologists to
-the extent to which they would have us go. For them the old Egyptian
-language is not related to the Semitic family of speech “more or less
-remotely,” but very closely indeed. Indeed in their hands it becomes
-itself a Semitic language, and as a logical consequence the Egyptian
-script is metamorphosed into one of purely Semitic invention. But
-while admitting that Egyptian grammar is Semitic in the sense in which
-English grammar is Teutonic, the comparative philologist is bound
-to add that it contains much which cannot be reduced to a Semitic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>
-pattern. The structure, moreover, is not on the whole Semitic, neither
-is a large part of its vocabulary. And among the words in the lexicon
-which have Semitic affinities there are a good many which are better
-explained as the result of borrowing than as belonging to the original
-stratum of the language. In some cases they are demonstrably words
-which have been introduced into the Egyptian language at a late date;
-in other cases it seems possible to regard them as loan-words from
-Semitic Babylonian which entered the language at a “pre-dynastic”
-epoch. Thus, <i>qemḳu</i>, “the wheaten loaf” which was used for
-offerings, is the Hebrew <i>qemakh</i>, the Babylonian <i>qêmu</i>,
-and may have been brought into Egypt along with the wheat which was
-first cultivated in Babylonia and still grows wild on the banks of the
-Euphrates. To what an early period the importation of the cereal must
-be referred is shown by its occurrence in the prehistoric graves of
-Upper Egypt.<a id="FNanchor_95" href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a></p>
-
-<p>When all allowances are made, however, the fact remains that the
-Egyptian language as we know it was related to the Semitic family of
-speech. It stood to the latter as an elder sister, or rather as the
-sister of the parent-language which the existing Semitic dialects
-presuppose. It was not like the so-called Hamitic dialects of Eastern
-Africa, which are African languages Semitized, but it was itself
-of the same<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span> stock as Hebrew or Semitic Babylonian. It represents,
-however, a form of language at an earlier stage of development than
-are any of those which we call Semitic, and it has, moreover, been
-largely influenced and modified by foreign languages, which we may
-term African. So extensive has this influence been that the Semitic
-element has been even more disguised in it than the Teutonic element is
-disguised in modern English. In leaving the soil of Asia the language
-of Egypt took upon it an African dress.</p>
-
-<p>Now though language can prove but little as regards race, it can
-prove a great deal as regards history. A mixed language means a mixed
-history, and indicates an intimate contact between the populations who
-spoke the languages which are represented in it. Egyptian grammar would
-not have been Semitic if those who imposed it upon the natives of the
-Nile had not been of Semitic descent, or at all events had not come
-from a region where the language was Semitic. Nor would this grammar
-have been modified by foreign admixture if a part of those who learned
-to use it had not previously been accustomed to some other form of
-speech. And since we know of no Semitic languages in Africa which were
-not brought from Asia, we are justified in concluding that the Semitic
-element in the Egyptian language was of Asiatic origin.</p>
-
-<p>But we can go yet a step further. Where two languages are brought
-into close contact, the general rule is that that of the stronger
-race prevails. The conqueror is less likely to learn the language
-of the conquered than the conquered are to learn the language of
-their masters. On the other hand, the negro slave<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span> in America became
-English-speaking, whereas the English emigrant wherever he goes
-preserves the language of his fathers. It is only where a conquering
-caste brings no women with it that it is likely to lose its language.</p>
-
-<p>When, therefore, we find that Old Egyptian is an Africanized Semitic
-language, we have every right to infer that it is because invaders
-brought it with them from Asia who were Semites either by race or by
-language. In other words, Egypt must have been occupied in prehistoric
-days by a people who came from the Semitic area in Asia.</p>
-
-<p>The days were prehistoric, but of the invasion itself history preserved
-a tradition. On the walls of the temple of Edfu it is recounted how
-the followers of Horus, the totem guide and patron deity of the first
-kings of Upper Egypt, made their way across the eastern desert to the
-banks of the Nile, and there, with the help of their weapons of metal,
-subjugated the older inhabitants of the valley. Battle after battle
-was fought as the invaders slowly pushed their way down the Nile to
-the Delta, establishing a forge and a sanctuary of Horus on every
-spot where a victory had been gained.<a id="FNanchor_96" href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a> The story has come down
-to us under a disguise of euhemeristic mythology, but the tradition
-it embodies has been strikingly confirmed by modern discovery. The
-“dynastic” Egyptians, the Egyptians, that is to say, who founded the
-Egyptian monarchy and to whom we owe the great monuments of Egypt, were
-immigrants from the east.</p>
-
-<p>The culture of these “dynastic” Egyptians was built up on two solid
-foundations, the engineering<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span> skill which made Egypt a land of
-agriculture, and a system of writing which made the organization of
-the government possible. The culture was at once agricultural and
-literary, and this alone marked it off from the culture of neolithic
-(or “prehistoric”) Egypt, which belonged to the desert rather than to
-the banks and delta of the river, and which knew nothing of writing.
-Now we have seen that there was one other country in the world in which
-a similar form of culture had come into existence. In Babylonia too
-we have a civilization which has as its basis the training of rivers
-for the purpose of irrigation and the use of a pictorial script. The
-civilization of Babylonia was, it is true, Sumerian at its outset, but
-in time it became Semitic, and expressed itself in a Semitic tongue.
-It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Semitic-speaking
-people who brought the science of irrigation and the art of writing to
-the banks of the Nile came, like the wheat they cultivated, from the
-Babylonian plain.</p>
-
-<p>There are two archæological facts connected with the early culture of
-“dynastic” Egypt which seem to me to prove at any rate some kind of
-intercourse with Babylonia. No building-stone exists in the Babylonian
-plain; it was therefore the natural home of the art of building in
-brick, and since every pebble was of value it was also the natural
-birthplace of the gem-cutter. Nowhere else could the use of clay as a
-writing material have suggested itself, or that of the inscribed stone
-cylinder which left its impression behind it when rolled over the clay.
-Wherever we have the clay tablet and the seal-cylinder we have evidence
-of Babylonian influence.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span></p>
-
-<p>Now recent discoveries have shown that the culture of the early
-dynastic period of Egypt is distinguished from that of later times by
-the employment of clay and the stone seal-cylinder. Neither the one nor
-the other could have originated in the country itself, for Upper Egypt
-(where all authenticated discoveries of early seal-cylinders have been
-made) is a land of stone, and the river-silt, which is mixed with sand,
-is altogether unsuited for the purpose of writing. When the Egyptians
-of the Eighteenth dynasty corresponded in Babylonian cuneiform with
-their subjects and allies in Asia, the clay upon which they wrote was
-brought from a distance. Moreover, the stone seal-cylinder of the
-early dynasties is an exact reproduction of the early seal-cylinder
-of Babylonia. Substitute cuneiform characters for the hieroglyphs and
-there is practically no difference between them in many cases. It is
-difficult to believe that such an identity of form is the result of
-accident, more especially when we find that, as Egyptian civilization
-advanced, the seal-cylinder became less and less like its Babylonian
-original, and finally disappeared from use altogether. That is to
-say, as the culture of the people was further removed from its first
-starting-point, and therefore more national, an object which never
-had any natural basis in the physical conditions of the country grew
-more and more of an anomaly, and was eventually superseded, first by
-the “button-seal” and then by the scarab. I see no other explanation
-of this than that it was originally introduced from Babylonia, and
-maintained itself so long in an alien atmosphere only because it was
-bound up with a culture which had come from the same region of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>
-world. The seal-cylinder of the early Egyptian dynasties seems to me,
-apart from everything else, to prove the existence of some kind of
-“prehistoric” intercourse between the civilizations of the Euphrates
-and the Nile. And in this intercourse the influences came from
-Babylonia to Egypt, not from Egypt to Babylonia.</p>
-
-<p>The use of brick in early Egypt points in the same direction. While
-Babylonia was a land of clay, Upper Egypt was a land of stone, and
-it was as unnatural to invent the art of brick-making in the latter
-country as it was natural to do so in the former. To this day the
-Nubians build their cottages of stone; so too do the Bedâwîn squatters
-on the east bank of the Nile; it is only where the population is
-Egyptian and the influence of the old Egyptian civilization is still
-dominant that brick is employed. Under the Old Empire the Egyptian
-Pharaohs built even the temples of the gods of brick; it was but
-gradually that the brick was superseded by stone. It was the same also
-in Assyria; here too, in a land of stone, brick was at first the sole
-building material, and even the great brick platforms which the marshy
-soil of Babylonia had necessitated continued to be laid. But Assyrian
-culture was confessedly Babylonian in origin, and the brick edifice
-was therefore a characteristic of it. It was only by degrees that
-Assyrian architecture emancipated itself from its early traditions,
-and at first timidly, then more boldly, superseded the brick by stone.
-The example of Assyria throws light on that of Egypt, and as the
-Assyrian employment of brick was due to the Babylonian origin of its
-civilization, it is permissible<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span> to infer that the Egyptian employment
-of brick was also due to the same cause. Once more we may repeat that
-there was early intercourse between Egypt and Babylonia&mdash;the land of
-the brick-maker&mdash;and that in this intercourse the prevailing influences
-came from the east.</p>
-
-<p>Such, then, is the conclusion to which the most recent research leads
-us. The “dynastic” Egyptians, the Egyptians of history, spoke a
-language which is related to those of the Semitic family; their first
-kingdoms, so far as we know, were in Upper Egypt, and tradition brought
-them across the eastern desert to the banks of the Nile. The culture
-which they possessed was characterized by Babylonian features, and was
-therefore due either wholly or in part to intercourse with Babylonia.
-The fact that the use of the seal-cylinder&mdash;which, by the way, bore the
-Semitic name of <i>khetem</i>&mdash;should have lingered in the valley of
-the Nile to the very beginnings of the Middle Empire, is an indication
-that the period of its introduction could not have been very remote.
-The earliest historical monuments which have been revealed to us by
-modern excavation may not, after all, be many centuries later than the
-time when the culture of Babylonia found its way to the Nile.</p>
-
-<p>Indeed, there is a fact which indicates that this is the case, and that
-the literary culture of Babylonia had been imported into the valley of
-the Nile at a time when Egypt was divided into independent kingdoms.
-At an early epoch an ingenious system of official chronology had been
-invented in Babylonia. The years were named there after the chief
-events that had occurred in each of them, among<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span> these the accession
-or death of a king being naturally prominent. At the death of a king
-a list was drawn up of his regnal years, with their characteristic
-events, and such lists were from time to time combined into longer
-chronicles. The Babylonians were preeminently a commercial people, and
-for purposes of trade it was necessary that contracts and other legal
-documents should be dated accurately, and that in case of a dispute the
-date should be easily ascertained. Now an exactly similar system of
-dating had been adopted in Egypt before the age of the First historical
-dynasty. A pre-Menic monument dated in this way has been discovered at
-Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt, and the same method of reckoning time
-is found on ivory tablets that have been disinterred at Abydos. The
-method lasted down to the age of the Fifth dynasty, since the Museum
-of Palermo contains the fragment of a stone from Heliopolis, on which
-the chronology of the Egyptian kings is given from Menes onward, each
-year being named after the event or events from which it had received
-its official title. The successive reigns are divided from one another
-as in the Babylonian lists, and the height of the Nile in each year
-is further added&mdash;a note which naturally is of Egyptian origin. It
-is, therefore, interesting to observe that it is added as a note,
-independent of the event which gave its name to the year. Nothing
-could prove more clearly the foreign origin of the whole system of
-chronology, since, had it been of native invention, the height of the
-Nile, on which the prosperity of the country depended, would have been
-the first event to be recorded. After the fall of the Old Empire this
-ancient Babylonian method<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span> of dating seems to have passed out of use
-like the Babylonian seal-cylinder; at all events we find no further
-traces of it. It was, in short, an exotic which never took kindly to
-Egyptian soil.</p>
-
-<p>Did the “dynastic” Egyptians bring this method of dating with them,
-or did they borrow it after their settlement in Egypt? The second
-supposition is very difficult to entertain, for intimate trade
-relations between Babylonia and Upper (or Lower)<a id="FNanchor_97" href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> Egypt in the
-pre-Menic age appear to be out of the question, and are unsupported by
-any known facts. And literary correspondence, such as was carried on in
-the time of the Eighteenth dynasty, seems equally out of the question.
-How, then, did the Egyptians come to learn the peculiar Babylonian
-system of chronology unless the founders of the culture of which it
-formed a portion had originally brought it with them from the east?</p>
-
-<p>The same question is raised by the existence in early Egypt of an
-artistic <i>motif</i> which had its origin in Babylonia. This is what
-is usually known as the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span> heraldic position of the figures of men and
-animals. An example of it is found on the famous “palette” of Nar-Buzau
-discovered by Mr. Quibell at Hierakonpolis,<a id="FNanchor_98" href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> where the hybrid
-monsters whose necks form the centre of the slate are heraldically
-arranged. In this case the design is known to be Babylonian, since
-M. Heuzey has pointed out a Babylonian seal-cylinder on which the
-two monsters recur. Nar-Buzau is made the immediate predecessor of
-Menes by Professor Petrie on grounds to which every archæologist must
-assent; but an even better example of the heraldic design is met with
-on a great isolated rock of sandstone near El-Kab which was quarried
-in the time of the Old Empire. Here the ownership and opening of the
-quarry are denoted by an elaborate sculpture of the Pharaoh, who is
-duplicated, his two forms being figured as seated back to back, with
-a column between them, while the winged solar disk of Edfu, with the
-royal uræi on either side of the orb, spreads its wings above them.
-Each of the royal forms holds a sceptre, but that on the left has
-no head-dress, whereas that on the right wears a skull-cap, above
-which is the solar orb with the uræus serpent issuing from it.<a id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a>
-In front of the latter is an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span> altar consisting of a bowl on a stand,
-loaves of bread and a cup and jar of wine (with the customary handles
-for suspension) being engraved above the bowl along with a series
-of perpendicular lines which in this instance cannot (as has been
-suggested) represent the fringes of a mat. In front of the figure on
-the left is another altar, of different shape, the place of the bowl
-being taken by a flat top, above which are six upright lines and a
-flat cake. Precisely the same altar with the same objects above it are
-engraved on a broken seal-cylinder of ivory found by Dr. Reisner at
-Naga’ ed-Dêr, which I understand from the discoverer to be of the age
-of the First dynasty. When, therefore, was it that the heraldic design
-in art was introduced into Egypt from its Babylonian birthplace? In any
-case it would seem to have been before the foundation of the united
-monarchy.</p>
-
-<p>In Babylonia itself, as we have seen, tradition looked seaward, towards
-the Persian Gulf, for the elements of its civilization. At any rate
-the seaport of Eridu was the gateway through which the culture of
-Babylonia was believed to have passed. Here on the shores of the sea
-the culture-god of Sumer had his home; here trade sprang up, and the
-sailors and merchants of Eridu came into contact with men of other
-lands and other habits. Is it possible to discover a connection between
-Eridu and primeval Egypt?</p>
-
-<p>I believe that it is, though in making the attempt we are of
-course treading upon precarious ground. There are certain curious
-coincidences, one of which, since it goes to the heart of Sumerian and
-Egyptian religion, is necessarily of considerable weight. But they are
-all, it must be remembered, more in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span> nature of indications and
-possibilities than of ascertained facts.</p>
-
-<p>Eridu meant in Sumerian “the good city.” Memphis (Men-nofer), “the good
-place,” the name of the first capital of united Egypt, had the same
-signification. In the case of Eridu the name had something to do with
-the fact that the city was the seat of Ea, the god of beneficent spells
-and incantations, who had given the arts and sciences to man, and was
-ever ready to heal those that were sick. The son and vice-gerent of
-Ea, who carried his commands to earth and spent his time in curing
-diseases and raising “the dead to life,” was Asari, “the prince,” who
-was usually entitled Mulu-dugga, “the good” or “beneficent one.” The
-character and attributes of Asari are thus the same as those of the
-Egyptian Osiris, who was also known as Ati, “the prince,” and was
-commonly addressed as Un-nofer, “the good being.” Unlike most of the
-Egyptian deities, Osiris had the same human form as Asari of Eridu,
-and the resemblance between the names of Asari and Osiris&mdash;Asar in
-Egyptian&mdash;is rendered more striking by the remarkable fact that they
-are both represented by two ideographs or hieroglyphs of precisely
-the same shape and signification.<a id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> It does not appear possible to
-ascribe such a threefold identity to mere coincidence. And the theory
-of coincidence becomes still more improbable when we remember that
-while the story of Osiris centres in his death and resurrection, one
-of the chief offices of the Sumerian Asari was to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span> “raise the dead
-to life.” Nowhere else in Babylonian literature, whether Sumerian
-or Semitic, do we find any reference to a resurrection; the Semitic
-Babylonians, indeed, did not look forward to a future life at all, or
-if they did, it was to a shadowy existence in a subterranean land of
-darkness “where all things are forgotten.” It is only in connection
-with Asari that we hear of a possibility that the dead may live again.</p>
-
-<p>Other resemblances between the theologies of Eridu and primitive Egypt
-have been pointed out. Professor Hommel believes that in the Egyptian
-deity Nun, the heavenly ocean, we must see a Sumerian god Nun, who also
-represented the celestial abyss. However this may be, an old formula,
-torn from its context, which has been introduced into the Pyramid texts
-of the Pharaoh Pepi I., takes us back not only to the cosmology of
-Eridu but to the literary form in which it had been expressed. Pepi, it
-is said, “was born of his father Tum. At that time the heaven was not,
-the earth was not, men did not exist, the gods were not born, there was
-no death.” The words are almost a repetition of those with which the
-Babylonian epic of the creation begins: “At that time the heaven above
-was not known by name, the earth beneath was not named ... at that
-time the gods had not appeared, any one of them”; and they are also a
-distant echo of the commencement of the cosmological legend of Sumerian
-Eridu: “At that time no holy house, no house of the gods in a holy
-place had been built, no reed had grown, no tree had been planted.”<a id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a></p>
-
-<p>The testimony of philological archæology, if I may<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span> use such a term, is
-supplemented by that of archæological discovery. Sumerian Babylonia and
-early dynastic Egypt are alike characterized by vases of hard stone,
-many of which have the same forms. Examples of some of them will be
-found in de Morgan’s <i>Recherches sur les Origines de l’Égypte</i>,
-ii. p. 257, where Jéquier observes that analogues to the Egyptian vases
-have been disinterred by de Sarzec at Tello in Southern Babylonia,
-“the shape and execution of which are exactly like” those discovered
-in Egypt, “the only difference being that the one are ornamented with
-hieroglyphics, and the others with a cuneiform inscription; apart
-from this they are identical in make.” The most remarkable instance
-of identity, however, is the design on the palette of the pre-Menic
-Pharaoh Nar-Buzau to which attention was first called by Professor
-Heuzey.<a id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a> On this we have a representation of two lions set face
-to face in the Babylonian fashion, and with long serpentine necks
-which are interlaced so as to enclose a circle. Precisely the same
-representation is met with on an early Babylonian seal-cylinder from
-Tello.</p>
-
-<p>Years ago I noticed the general likeness presented by the seated
-statues of Tello to those of the Third Egyptian dynasty,<a id="FNanchor_103" href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> and
-suggested that both belonged to the same school of sculpture. A little
-earlier Professor Flinders Petrie had demonstrated that the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span> standard
-of measurement marked upon the plan of the city which one of the Tello
-figures holds in his lap is the same as the standard of measurement of
-the Egyptian pyramid-builders, the cubit, namely, of 20·63, which is
-quite different from the later Assyro-Babylonian cubit of 21·6.<a id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a>
-Still more convincing, perhaps, is the Babylonian division of the year
-into twelve months of thirty days each, which was already known in
-Egypt in the age of the early dynasties. The Babylonian week of five
-and ten days reappears in the Egyptian week of ten days, while the
-division of the day into twelve “double hours,” six belonging to the
-day and six to the night, has its counterpart in the Egyptian day of
-twenty-four hours, twelve of which were reckoned to the day and the
-other twelve to the night. Since a list of the thirty-six decans or
-zodiacal stars has recently been found on a coffin of the time of the
-Twelfth Dynasty<a id="FNanchor_105" href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> it is possible that this distinctively Babylonian
-invention may also go back to the age of the first Egyptian dynasties.
-At all events one of the chief stars in the Pyramid texts is “the Bull
-of heaven,” a translation of the Sumerian Gudi-bir, or “Bull of Light,”
-the name given to the planet Jupiter in its relation to the ecliptic.
-In primitive Babylonian astronomy the zodiacal sign of the Bull ushered
-in the year.</p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p122_2">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p122_2.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">SITTING STATUE OF GUDEA.</p>
- </div>
-
-<p>It may be that some of these evidences of Babylonian influence are
-referable to contact between Babylonia and Egypt in the age that
-immediately preceded the foundation of the united Egyptian <span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>monarchy
-rather than to that still earlier age when the “dynastic” settlers
-first settled in the valley of the Nile. But at present we do not
-know how such a contact could have taken place. Upper Egypt and not
-the Delta was the seat of the first Pharaohs with their Horus-hawk
-totem, and at the remote period when the future civilization of the
-country was being developed under their fostering care it is difficult
-to believe that Babylonian soldiers or traders had made their way
-to the shores of the Mediterranean, much less to the deserts of the
-Sayyîd. For the present, at all events, where we have clear proof of
-the dependence of early Egyptian culture upon that of the Babylonians
-we have no alternative but to ascribe it to the Semitic emigrants or
-invaders to whom the historical civilization of Egypt was primarily
-due.<a id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a></p>
-
-<p>This civilization, like that of Babylonia, implied a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span> knowledge of
-metal. It was a civilization of the copper age, and thus stood in sharp
-contrast to the neolithic culture, such as it was, of “prehistoric”
-Egypt. Egyptian tradition, it is true, believed that the metal weapons
-with which the followers of Horus had overcome the stone-defended
-natives of the country were of iron, but this was because the compilers
-of the story in its existing form projected the knowledge and usages
-of their own time back into the past. There is incontrovertible proof
-that in Egypt, as in Europe, the ages of copper and bronze preceded
-that of iron. But the tradition was doubtless right in laying stress
-upon the fact that the invaders were forgers and blacksmiths. It
-would have been by reason of the superiority of their arms that
-they succeeded in subduing the valley of the Nile and reducing its
-inhabitants to serfdom. They were, too, “the followers of Horus,”
-under the leadership of a single prince who was himself a Horus, that
-is to say, an incarnate god. Here, again, we find ourselves in the
-presence of a conception and doctrine of Semitic Babylonia. There, too,
-as we have seen, the kings were incarnate gods, not only the sons of
-a divinity, but themselves divine. In Egypt, apart from the Osirian
-circle, the gods were not men, but animals, and so deeply rooted was
-this beast-worship in the hearts of the indigenous population that
-even the “dynastic” civilization, with all its unifying and absorbing
-power, never succeeded in doing more than in uniting the head of the
-beast with the body of the man. Even the human Pharaoh was forced to
-picture himself as a hawk. In Semitic Babylonia on the other hand, as
-we have seen, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span> deification of the king flowed naturally from the
-anthropomorphic conception of the deity; where man was made in the
-image of God, it was easy to see in him a god on earth. Like the use
-of copper, therefore, the deification of the king which characterized
-dynastic Egypt points back to Babylonia.</p>
-
-<p>It must not be supposed, however, that because certain elements and
-leading characteristics in the civilization of historical Egypt
-indicate that the Semitic-speaking race to whom it was mainly due
-came originally from Babylonia, there are no elements in it which can
-be derived from elsewhere. On the contrary, there is much that is
-native to Egypt itself. Even the script shows but comparatively few
-traces of a Babylonian origin. If the “dynastic” Egyptians came from
-Babylonia, they must have very considerably modified and developed
-the seeds of culture which they brought with them. And in Egypt they
-found a neolithic culture which had already made considerable progress.
-The indigenous population possessed the same artistic sense as the
-palæolithic European of the Solutrian and Magdalenian epochs, with whom
-perhaps it was contemporaneous, and under the direction of its dynastic
-conquerors this sense was trained and educated until the Egyptians of
-history became one of the most artistic peoples of the old world.</p>
-
-<p>But it is noticeable that throughout the historical period whenever the
-civilizations of Egypt and Babylonia came into contact, it was Egypt
-that was influenced rather than Asia. The tradition of the earliest
-ages was thus carried on; the stream of influence flowed from the east,
-and Herodotus was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span> justified in assigning Egypt to Asia rather than
-to Africa. It was, in fact, Asia with an African colouring. In the
-days of the Eighteenth dynasty, when Egypt for the first and last time
-possessed an Asiatic empire, the eastern influence is very marked. The
-script itself became Babylonian, the correspondence of the Government
-with its own officials in Canaan was conducted in the Babylonian
-language and the Babylonian syllabary, and there are indications that
-even the official memoranda of the campaigns of Thothmes III. were
-drawn up in cuneiform characters. The clay tablets of Babylonia were
-imitated in Upper Egypt, where hieroglyphic and hieratic characters
-were somewhat awkwardly impressed upon them, and the language was
-filled with Semitic loan-words. The fashionable author of the age of
-the Nineteenth dynasty interlarded his style not only with Semitic
-words, but even with Semitic phrases. It is true that the Semitic words
-and phrases are Canaanite; but Canaan had long been a province of
-Babylonia, and it was because it was permeated with Babylonian culture
-and used the Babylonian script, that the foreign words and phrases were
-introduced into the literary language of Egypt.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, so far as, we can judge, there was no reflex action
-of Egypt upon Babylonia. The seal-cylinder was never superseded there
-by the scarab; indeed the only scarabs yet found in the Mesopotamian
-region are memorials of the Egyptian conquests of the Eighteenth
-dynasty. Neither the hieroglyphs nor the hieratic of Egypt made their
-way eastward into Asia, a fact which is somewhat remarkable when we
-remember over how wide an area<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span> the more complicated cuneiform spread.
-It was Europe that was affected by Egypt rather than Asia. Before
-Egypt laid claim to Palestine, Babylonian culture had already taken
-too firm a hold of Western Asia to be dislodged, and in Babylonia
-itself Egyptian influences are hard to find. In the age of Khammu-rabi,
-we meet with a few proper names which may contain the name of the
-Sun-god Ra, as well as with the name of Anupum or Anubis on a stone
-cylinder, and the hieroglyphic character <i>nefer</i>, “good,” is
-affixed to a legal document.<a id="FNanchor_107" href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> But this merely proves that in a
-period when the Babylonian Empire reached to the confines of Egypt,
-there were Egyptians settled in Babylon for the purpose of trade. A
-more curious example of possible Egyptian influence is one to which
-I have drawn attention in my lectures on the <i>Religions of Ancient
-Egypt and Babylonia</i>.<a id="FNanchor_108" href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> Thoth, the Egyptian god of literature,
-was accompanied by four apes, who sang hymns to the rising and setting
-sun. Travellers have described the dancing and screaming of troops of
-apes at daybreak when the sun first lights up the earth, and the origin
-of these companions of Thoth has been cleared up by an inscription in
-a tomb at Assuan. Here we learn that in the age of the Old Empire,
-expeditions were sent by the Pharaohs into the Sudan&mdash;the home of the
-apes of Thoth&mdash;in order to bring back from “the land of the gods”
-Danga<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span> dwarfs who could “dance the dances of the gods.” In the eyes of
-the Egyptians, it would seem, there was little difference between the
-ape and the Danga dwarf; the one was a dwarf-like ape, the other an
-ape-like man. But they alone could perform correctly the dances that
-were held in honour of certain gods, and which are already depicted
-on the prehistoric vases of Egypt.<a id="FNanchor_109" href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> Closely allied to the Danga
-dwarfs and the apes of Thoth are the Khnumu or Patæki of Memphis, the
-followers of Ptah, who were also dwarfs with bowed legs. Now dwarfs of
-precisely the same form are found on early Babylonian seal-cylinders
-where they are associated sometimes with the goddess Istar, sometimes
-with an ape and the god Sin.<a id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> The Babylonian name of the dwarf was
-the Sumerian Nu-gidda, an indication that his association with the
-deity went back to Sumerian times. We may conclude that, like the Danga
-dwarf of Egypt, he, too, performed dances in honour of the gods.</p>
-
-<p>The extraordinary resemblance of form between the Egyptian and
-Babylonian sacred dwarfs, as represented in art, raises the question
-whether the Babylonian dwarf was not an importation from Egypt, since
-the ape with which he was confounded was a native of the Sudan. This
-was the view to which I was long inclined, but there are certain
-considerations which make it difficult to be accepted.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span> The Khnumu of
-Memphis were not the only dwarfs who were represented by the Egyptian
-artists. Still better known was Bes, who became a special favourite
-in the Roman period, when he was made a sort of patron of childbirth.
-But Bes, it was remembered, had come to Egypt from the southern lands
-of Somali and Arabia, like the goddess Hathor or the god Horus. Hathor
-is, I believe, the Babylonian Istar, who has passed to Egypt through
-her South Arabian name of Athtar; however this may be, Ptah of Memphis,
-whose followers were the Khnumu dwarfs, bears a Semitic name, and must
-therefore be of Semitic derivation. He belongs, that is to say, to the
-Egyptians of the dynastic stock, and is accordingly one of the few
-Egyptian divinities who is depicted in human form. On the other hand,
-the Sumerian dwarf Nu-gidda is the companion of Istar.</p>
-
-<p>On the Egyptian side, therefore, the dwarfs of Ptah are associated
-with a god who has come from Asia, while the dwarf Bes was confessedly
-of foreign extraction. On the Babylonian side the dwarf Nu-gidda was
-the associate of Istar, the counterpart of Hathor, and of Sin, the
-Moon-god, who was adopted by the people of Southern Arabia, and whose
-name was carried as far as Mount Sinai on the borders of Egypt. All
-this suggests that the sacred dwarf came to the valley of the Nile from
-Babylonia and Arabia like the name of Ptah, the creator of the world.
-In this case it would have come with the dynastic Egyptians before the
-age of history begins.</p>
-
-<p>But, on the other hand, there is the ape, and the ape is figured
-along with the dwarf on the Babylonian seals, It is true that the ape
-is equally foreign to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span> Egypt and Babylonia, but the Sudan is nearer
-Egypt than Southern Arabia is to Babylonia. The actual date and path
-of migration, therefore, of the sacred dwarf must be left undecided.
-Whether he was brought to Egypt at the dawn of history, or whether he
-travelled to Babylonia in the historical age remains doubtful. All we
-can be sure of is that the sacred dwarfs of Babylonia and Egypt were
-originally one and the same, and that they testify to an intercourse
-between the two countries of which all literary record has been
-lost.<a id="FNanchor_111" href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a></p>
-
-<p>The same verdict must be given in the case of another point, not only
-of resemblance, but of identity, between ancient Egypt and Babylonia.
-This is the shadûf or contrivance for drawing water from a falling
-river for the sake of irrigation. The shadûf, which is still used
-in Upper Egypt, can be traced back pictorially to the time of the
-Eighteenth dynasty, but the basin system of irrigation with which it
-was connected was already of immemorial antiquity. It is a simple yet
-most effective invention, and on that account perhaps the less likely
-to have been independently invented, for it is always the obvious
-which remains longest unnoticed. In the modern shadûf a long pole is
-laid across a beam which is supported at either end upon other poles
-or on pillars of brick or mud; it is kept in place by thongs and is
-heavily weighted at one end, while at the other end a bucket or skin
-is attached to it by means of a rope. The shadûf of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span> Eighteenth
-dynasty was supported sometimes, as to-day, on a cross-beam, sometimes
-on a column of mud, and the bucket was of triangular form with two
-handles to which the rope was tied. Representations of it from Theban
-tombs will be found in Maspero’s <i>Dawn of Civilization</i>, p. 764,
-and Sir Gardner Wilkinson’s <i>Ancient Egyptians</i>, plates 38 and
-356. Precisely the same machine is represented on a bas-relief found by
-Layard in the palace of Kûyunjik at Nineveh,<a id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a> the only difference
-being that the shadûf-worker stands upon a platform of brick instead
-of on the bank itself, and that the pillar upon which the pole is
-supported seems to be built of bricks rather than of mud. The machine,
-however, is identical in both its Egyptian and its Assyrian form. That
-the bas-relief should have been found in Assyria and not in Babylonia
-is a mere accident. Like almost everything else in Assyrian culture,
-the invention was of Babylonian origin, and, in fact, formed part of
-the system of irrigation which made the plain of Babylonia habitable.
-Herodotus, who calls the machine a κηλωνεῖον, describes it as being
-used as in Egypt, and for the same reason, since the river did not
-rise to the actual level of the cultivated ground, which, like that of
-Egypt, was divided into a number of basins.<a id="FNanchor_113" href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a></p>
-
-<p>The palace of Kûyunjik belongs to the last age of Assyrian history.
-But the shadûf in Babylonia went back to the Sumerian period, as
-we know from the references to it in the lexical tablets. It was
-called <i>dulâtum</i> in Semitic Babylonian, the pole or poles being
-<i>kakritum</i>, and the bucket <i>zirqu</i> or <i>zirqatum</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>
-(Sumerian <i>sû</i>),<a id="FNanchor_114" href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> and an old Sumerian collection of
-agricultural precepts describes how the irrigator “fixes up the
-shadûf, hangs up the bucket and draws water.”<a id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a> The “irrigator” was
-naturally an important personage in early Babylonia, and legend averred
-that the famous Sargon of Akkad, the founder of the first Semitic
-Empire, had been rescued as a child from a watery grave, and brought up
-by one. In both Babylonia and Egypt the shadûf was closely associated
-with a system of irrigation which went back to the dawn of their
-several histories.</p>
-
-<p>What explanation must we give of its identity in the two countries?
-There are three possibilities. In the first place, it may have been
-invented independently on the banks of both the Euphrates and the
-Nile. Similar conditions tend to produce similar results. But against
-this is the fact that the shadûf was not the only kind of irrigating
-machine that was suggested by the nature of the two rivers and
-the lands through which they flowed. In modern Egypt, besides the
-shadûf there are the <i>saqia</i>, or water-wheel, and an irrigating
-contrivance which is in use in the Delta. The water-wheel, we know, was
-a Babylonian invention which was imported into Egypt in comparatively
-recent times; the irrigating contrivance of the Delta, which consists
-of a bucket suspended on a rope swung by two men who stand facing
-each other, is a primitive instrument which might have been invented
-anywhere. Its survival is due to the fact that in the flat marshes of
-the Delta, the shadûf, though saving labour, is not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span> necessary, and it
-therefore continued to be employed there after the shadûf was known.
-But this implies that the shadûf was not the oldest instrument for
-raising the water of the Nile.</p>
-
-<p>Then there is the second possibility that the shadûf was borrowed by
-Egypt from Babylonia or by Babylonia from Egypt in historical times.
-In Babylonia, however, we can trace its history back to the Sumerian
-epoch, and in both countries it was intimately connected with a system
-of irrigation the origin of which must be sought in the prehistoric
-age, and which was probably carried from the valley of the Euphrates to
-that of the Nile. There remains the third possibility that it came to
-Egypt along with the system of irrigation itself.</p>
-
-<p>It is always easier to ask questions than to answer them, in archæology
-as in other things. There are many details connected with the early
-relationship between the civilizations of Babylonia and Egypt which
-must be left to future research to discover. But of that relationship
-there can now be little question in the minds of those who are
-accustomed to deal with inductive evidence. There was intercourse in
-the prehistoric age between the two countries, and the civilizing
-influences, like the wheat and the language, came from the lands which
-bordered on the Euphrates. Civilized man made his way from the east,
-and dwelt in primeval days “in the land of Shinar.”<a id="FNanchor_116" href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span></p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p134_3">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p134_3.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">THE 1<sup>ST</sup>. ASSYRIAN EMPIRE</p>
- </div>
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span></p>
-
-<h2>CHAPTER V<br />
-<span class="subhed">BABYLONIA AND PALESTINE</span></h2></div>
-
-<p>A very few years ago Palestine was still archæologically an unknown
-land. Its history subsequent to the Israelitish conquest could be
-gathered from the Old Testament, and Egyptian papyri of the age of
-the Nineteenth dynasty had told us something about its condition
-immediately prior to that event. Thanks to the Palestine Exploration
-Fund, the country had been carefully surveyed, and the monuments
-still existing on its surface had been noted and registered. But the
-earlier history of the people, their races and origin, their social
-and religious life, and their relation to the rest of the world, were
-still a blank. Of the Canaan invaded by the children of Israel we knew
-nothing from an archæological point of view, and very little even of
-the Palestine that was governed by Israelitish judges and Jewish kings.</p>
-
-<p>The veil has at last been lifted which so long lay over the face of
-Palestine. Cuneiform texts have come to clear up its civil history,
-while the spade of the excavator has supplemented their evidence on
-the more purely archæological side. The history of Palestine can
-now be followed back not only into the neolithic, but even into
-the palæolithic age, and the source and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span> character of Canaanite
-civilization have been in large measure revealed to us.</p>
-
-<p>First and foremost among the materials which have made this possible
-are the cuneiform tablets of Tel el-Amarna in Upper Egypt, which
-were discovered in 1887. Tel el-Amarna, about midway between Minia
-and Assiut, is the site of a city which sprang, like a meteor, into
-a brief but glorious existence under the so-called “heretic king”
-Amon-hotep IV. about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 1400. Amon-hotep, under the guidance
-of his mother, had endeavoured to suppress the old state religion of
-Egypt, and to substitute for it a pantheistic monotheism. In spite
-of persecution, however, the adherents of the old faith proved too
-strong for the king; he was forced to leave Thebes, the capital of his
-fathers, and to build a new capital further north, where he changed
-his name to that of Khu-n-Aten, and called artists from the islands
-of the Mediterranean to adorn his palace. When moving from Thebes he
-naturally transferred to the new seat of government both the Foreign
-Office and its records in so far as they covered the reign of his
-father Amon-hotep III. and his own. For reasons unknown to us they do
-not extend further back.</p>
-
-<p>They were all in the cuneiform script, and for the most part in the
-Babylonian language. The fact came upon the historian with a shock
-of surprise, and had far-reaching consequences, historical as well
-as archæological. In the first place, they proved what had already
-been suspected, that under the Eighteenth dynasty Egypt possessed an
-Asiatic empire which stretched to the banks of the Euphrates. Then,
-secondly, they showed that Western Asia was at the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span> time intersected by
-high-roads along which merchants and couriers were constantly passing,
-and an active literary correspondence was carried on. Thirdly&mdash;and
-this was the greatest surprise of all&mdash;they made it clear that this
-correspondence was in the script and language of Babylonia, and that it
-was shared in by writers of various nationalities and languages, of all
-classes of society and of both sexes. The Hittite and Cappadocian kings
-wrote to the Pharaoh in cuneiform characters, just as did the kings
-of Babylonia and Assyria. Arab shêkhs and Hittite condottieri joined
-in the correspondence, and politically-minded ladies did the same.
-Even the Egyptian Government was compelled to suppress all feelings of
-national vanity, and to conduct the whole of its correspondence with
-its own governors and vassals in Palestine or Syria in the foreign
-language and syllabary. There is no trace anywhere of the use of either
-the Egyptian language or the Egyptian mode of writing.</p>
-
-<p>From these facts other facts follow. The age of the Eighteenth Egyptian
-dynasty must have been quite as literary as the age of our own
-eighteenth century, and international correspondence must have been
-quite as easy, if not easier. Education, moreover, must have been very
-widely spread; all the civilized world was writing and reading; and the
-system of writing was a most complicated one, demanding years of study
-and memory. In spite of this it was known not only to a professional
-class of scribes and the officials of the Government, but also to the
-shêkhs of petty Canaanitish towns and even to Bedâwîn chiefs. And along
-with the system of writing went a knowledge of the foreign language
-of Babylonia&mdash;the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span> French of Western Asia&mdash;including some slight
-acquaintance with the extinct language of the Sumerians. All this
-presupposes libraries and archive-chambers where books and dispatches
-could be stored, as well as schools where the Babylonian script and
-language could be taught and learned.</p>
-
-<p>Such libraries and schools had existed in Babylonia from a very
-early age. Every great city had its library, every great temple
-its muniment-room. Here the clay books were numbered and arranged
-on shelves, catalogues being provided which gave their titles. The
-system under which the longer literary or semi-scientific works were
-arranged and catalogued was at once ingenious and complete. By the
-side of the library was naturally the school. Here every effort was
-made to facilitate the progress of the scholars, more especially in
-the study of the Sumerian language and texts. The characters of the
-syllabary were classified and named; comparative grammars, dictionaries
-and reading-books of Sumerian and Semitic Babylonian were compiled,
-lists of Semitic synonyms were drawn up, explanatory commentaries were
-written on older works, and interlinear translations provided for the
-Sumerian texts. But with all this the cuneiform system of writing
-must have been hard even for the native Babylonian to learn, and in
-the case of the foreigner its difficulties were multiplied. It may be
-doubted whether the average boy of to-day, who finds the spelling of
-his own English almost too much for him, would have had the memory and
-patience to learn the cuneiform characters. Even in Sumerian times the
-difficulty of the task was realized, for there is a Sumerian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span> proverb
-that “he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with
-the dawn.”<a id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> It says much for the educational zeal of the Oriental
-world in the century before the Exodus that it was just this difficult
-and complicated script which it chose as its medium for correspondence.</p>
-
-<p>The fact, however, points unmistakably to its cause. The reason why the
-Babylonian language and syllabary were thus in use throughout Western
-Asia, and why even the Egyptian Government was obliged to employ them
-in its communications with its Asiatic subjects, can only have been
-because Babylonian culture was too deeply rooted there to be superseded
-by any other. Before Egypt appeared upon the scene under the conquerors
-of the Eighteenth dynasty, Western Asia, as far as the Mediterranean,
-must have been for centuries under the direct influence and domination
-of Babylonia. I say domination as well as influence, for in the ancient
-East military conquest was needed to enforce an alien language and
-literature, theology and system of law upon another people. And even
-military conquest was not always sufficient, as witness the Assyrian
-and Persian conquests of Egypt, or the Roman conquest of Syria.</p>
-
-<p>We now have monumental testimony that such domination there actually
-was. As far back as <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 3800, Sargon of Akkad had founded a
-Semitic empire which had its centre in Babylon, and which stretched
-across Asia to the shores of the Mediterranean. We learn from his
-annals that three campaigns were needed to subdue “the land of the
-Amorites,” as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span> Syria and Palestine were called, and that at last, after
-three years of warfare, all the coast-lands of “the sea of the setting
-sun” acknowledged his sway. He set up an image of himself on the Syrian
-coast in commemoration of his victories, and moulded his conquests
-“into one” great empire. His son and successor, Naram-Sin, extended his
-conquests into the Sinaitic peninsula, and a seal-cylinder, on which he
-is adored as a god, has been found in Cyprus. But Sargon was a patron
-of literature as well as a conqueror; his court was filled with learned
-men, and one of the standard works of Babylonian literature is said
-to have been compiled during his reign. The extension of Babylonian
-rule, therefore, to Western Asia meant the extension of Babylonian
-civilization, an integral part of which was its script.</p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p140_3">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p140_3.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">VIEW OF THE TEMPLE OF UR IN ITS PRESENT STATE, ACCORDING TO LOFTUS.</p>
- </div>
-
-<p>Here, then, is an explanation of the archæological fact that the graves
-of the copper and early bronze age in Cyprus, which mark the beginning
-of civilization in the country, contain numerous seal-cylinders made in
-imitation of those of Babylonia.<a id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> Examples of the seal-cylinders
-from which they were copied have also been discovered there. Among
-them is the cylinder on which Naram-Sin is adored as a god, another is
-an extremely fine specimen of the style that was current in the age
-of Sargon of Akkad.<a id="FNanchor_119" href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a> Along with the seal-cylinder it is probable
-that the <span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>clay tablet was also introduced to the people of the
-West. Though the clay tablets found by Dr. Evans and others in Krete
-may not go back to so remote a date, the linear Kretan characters
-belong to the same system of writing as the Cypriote syllabary, and an
-inscription in the letters of this syllabary on a seal-cylinder from
-the early copper-age cemetery of Paraskevi near Nikosia has recently
-been published by myself.<a id="FNanchor_120" href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> We may infer that the prototypes of the
-tablets of Knossos or Phæstos once existed in Cyprus and Syria, though
-in the damp climate of the Mediterranean the unbaked clay of which they
-were made has long since returned to its original dust.</p>
-
-<p>A few centuries after the age of Sargon of Akkad we find Gudea, a
-Sumerian prince in Southern Babylonia, bringing limestone from “the
-land of the Amorites,” blocks of alabaster from the Lebanon, and beams
-of cedar from Mount Amanus, for his buildings in the city of Lagas.
-Gold-dust and acacia wood were at the same time imported from the
-“salt” desert which lay between Palestine and Egypt, and stones from
-the mountains of the Taurus, to the north-east of the Gulf of Antioch,
-were floated down the Euphrates on rafts.<a id="FNanchor_121" href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a> At a later date we hear
-of the kings of the Babylonian dynasty which had its capital at Ur,
-conducting military expeditions to the district of the Lebanon.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span></p>
-
-<p>About <span class="allsmcap">B.C</span>. 2100 Northern Babylonia was occupied by a dynasty
-of kings, whose names show that they belonged to the Western division
-of the Semitic family. The language of Canaan&mdash;better known to us as
-Hebrew&mdash;and that of Southern and North-eastern Arabia, were at the time
-substantially one and the same, and as the same deities were worshipped
-and the same ancestors were claimed throughout this portion of the
-Semitic world, Assyriologists are not agreed as to whether the dynasty
-in question should be regarded as coming from Canaan or from Southern
-Arabia. The Babylonians themselves called the names Amorite, so it is
-possible that they would have pronounced the kings to have been Amorite
-also. The point, however, is of little moment; the fact remains that
-Northern Babylonia passed under the rule of sovereigns who belonged to
-the Western and not to the Babylonian branch of the Semitic race, and
-who made Babylon their capital. The contract tablets and other legal
-documents of this period show that Babylonia was at the time full of
-Amorite, that is Canaanite, settlers, most of whom had come there for
-the sake of trade. At Sippara there was a district called “the field
-of the Amorites,” over which, therefore, they must have had full legal
-rights. Indeed, it would seem that in the eyes of the law the Amorite
-settlers were on a complete footing of equality with the natives of the
-country.</p>
-
-<p>This fact, so little in harmony with our ordinary idea of the
-exclusiveness of the ancient East, is largely explained by the further
-fact that Canaan and Syria were now acknowledged portions of the
-Babylonian Empire. When Babylonia was conquered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span> by the Elamites,
-and the West Semitic king of Babylon allowed to retain his crown as
-an Elamite vassal, his claim to rule over “the land of the Amorites”
-passed naturally to his suzerain. Accordingly we find Chedor-laomer
-of Elam in the Book of Genesis marching to Canaan to put down a local
-rebellion there, while Eri-Aku, or Arioch, of Larsa, at the same date
-describes an Elamite prince as “governor of the land of the Amorites.”
-When Khammu-rabi, or Amraphel, the king of Babylon, at last succeeded
-in shaking off the Elamite yoke and making himself monarch of a
-free and united Babylonia, “the land of the Amorites” followed the
-fortunes of Babylonia as a matter of course. On a monument discovered
-at Diarbekir, in Northern Mesopotamia, the only title taken by the
-Babylonian sovereign is that of “king of the land of the Amorites.”
-And the same title is borne by one at least of his successors in the
-dynasty.</p>
-
-<p>For more than two thousand years, therefore, Western Asia was more or
-less closely attached to Babylonia. At times it was as much a part
-of the dominions of the Babylonian king as the cities of Babylonia
-itself, and it is consequently not surprising that it should have
-become thoroughly interpenetrated with Babylonian culture. There was
-an excellent postal service connecting Canaan with Babylonia which
-went back to the days of Naram-Sin, and some of the clay <i>bullæ</i>
-which served as stamps for the official correspondence at that period
-are now in the Museum of the Louvre.<a id="FNanchor_122" href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> On the other hand, a clay
-docket has been found in the Lebanon, dated in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span> reign of the son of
-Khammu-rabi, which contains one of the notices sent by the Babylonian
-Government to its officials at the beginning of each year, in order
-that they might know what was its official title and date.<a id="FNanchor_123" href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a></p>
-
-<p>When this close connection between Babylonia and its Syrian provinces
-was broken off we do not as yet know. Perhaps it did not take
-place until the conquest of Babylonia by a horde of half-civilized
-mountaineers from Elam about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 1800. At any rate, from this
-time forward, though the influence of Babylonian culture continued,
-Babylonian rule in the West was at an end. From the Tel el-Amarna
-correspondence we learn that the Babylonian Government was still
-inclined to intrigue in Palestine; the memories of its ancient empire
-were not altogether obliterated, and just as the English sovereigns
-called themselves kings of France long after they had ceased to possess
-an inch of French ground, so the Babylonian kings doubtless persuaded
-themselves that they were still by right the rulers of Canaan.</p>
-
-<p>The wild mountaineers from the Kossæan highlands who had conquered
-Babylon soon passed under the spell of Babylonian culture, and became
-themselves Babylonian in habits, if not in name. They founded a dynasty
-which lasted for five hundred and seventy-six years and nine months. It
-is a curious<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span> coincidence that Egypt also was governed about the same
-time by foreign conquerors, whose primitive wildness had been tamed
-by the influences of Egyptian civilization, which they had adopted as
-the Kossæan mountaineers adopted that of Babylonia, and whose rule
-also lasted for more than five hundred years. The Hyksos who conquered
-Egypt have been convincingly shown by recent discoveries to have been
-Semites, speaking a language of the West Semitic type.<a id="FNanchor_124" href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> They came
-from Canaan, and their conquest of Egypt made of it a dependency
-of Canaan. Hence they fixed their head-quarters in the northern
-part of their Egyptian territories, where they could easily keep up
-communication with Asia.</p>
-
-<p>The excavations undertaken by the Palestine Exploration Fund at
-Lachish, Gezer and other sites in Southern Canaan have made it clear
-that throughout the Hyksos period Egypt and that part of Palestine
-were closely connected with one another. How much further eastward
-the government or influence of the Hyksos may have extended we do not
-know; the figure of a lion inscribed with the name of a Hyksos Pharaoh
-has been discovered in Babylonia, but this may have been brought from
-elsewhere. At any rate, so far as Palestine is concerned, we may say<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>
-that the Hyksos period in Egypt coincides with the disappearance of
-Babylonian rule in Canaan. From that time onward Canaan looks towards
-Egypt, and not towards Babylonia.</p>
-
-<p>But even before the beginning of the Hyksos period Canaan&mdash;or at all
-events Southern Canaan&mdash;is Egyptian rather than Babylonian. That has
-been abundantly proved by Mr. Macalister’s excavations at Gezer.
-Objects of the age of the Twelfth dynasty have been disinterred there,
-and of such a character as to make it evident that the country was
-already subject to Egyptian influence long before the appearance of the
-Hyksos. An Egyptian of that age was buried within the precincts of the
-consecrated “high place,” and a stela commemorating him erected on the
-spot.</p>
-
-<p>Both at Gezer and at Lachish it has been possible to trace the
-archæological chronology of the sites by the successive cities which
-arose upon them. Gezer was the older settlement of the two; its history
-goes back to the neolithic age, when it was inhabited by a race of
-short stature who lived in caves and burned their dead, and whose
-pottery was of the roughest description. Some of it was ornamented with
-streaks of red or black on a yellow or red wash, like coarse pottery of
-the age of the Third Egyptian dynasty which I have found in so-called
-“prehistoric” graves at El-Kab. Two settlements of the neolithic
-population can be made out, one resting upon the other; in the second
-there was a distinct advance in civilization, and the place became a
-town surrounded by a wall. The neolithic race was succeeded by a taller
-race with Semitic characteristics, to whom the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span> name of Amorite has
-been given; they buried the dead in a contracted position, and were
-acquainted with the use of copper and later of bronze. The city was
-now defended by a solid wall of stone, intersected with brick towers;
-as Mr. Macalister observes, in a country where stone is the natural
-building material the employment of brick must be due to foreign
-influence. He thinks the influence was Egyptian; this is very possible;
-but considering that building with brick was a salient feature in
-Babylonian civilization, the influence may have come rather from the
-side of Babylonia.</p>
-
-<p>The first “Amorite” city at Gezer was coeval with the earliest city
-at Lachish&mdash;the modern Tel el-Hesy, where the Amorite settlers had no
-neolithic predecessors. At Gezer their sanctuary has been discovered.
-It was a “high place” formed of nine great monoliths running from north
-to south, and surrounded by a platform of large stones. The second
-monolith, polished with the kisses of the worshippers, was possibly the
-central object of veneration, the <i>bœtylos</i> or <i>beth-el</i>,
-as it was termed.<a id="FNanchor_125" href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> This <i>beth-el</i>, or “house of God,” takes
-us back to Semitic Babylonia. The veneration of isolated stones was
-common to all branches of the Semitic race; it may have come down
-to them from the days when their ancestors wandered over the desert
-plains of Arabia, where the solitary rocks assumed fantastic shapes
-that appealed to their imagination and excited<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span> feelings of awe, while
-their shadows offered a welcome retreat in the heat of noon-day. In the
-historical age, however, it was not the rock itself that was adored,
-but the divinity whose home it had become by consecration with oil.
-The brick-built temple was called by the Babylonians a <i>bit-ili</i>,
-<i>beth-el</i>, or “house of God,” and the name was easily transferred
-to the consecrated stones, the worship of which was coeval with the
-beginnings of Semitic history. But though the worship of stones
-was primitive, the belief that the stone was not a fetish, but the
-shrine of divinity, belonged to an age of reflection and points to a
-Babylonian source.</p>
-
-<p>The first Amorite city at Gezer was succeeded by a second, in which the
-high place underwent enlargement and was provided with a temenos. Under
-its pavement have been found memorials of the grim rites performed
-in honour of its Baal&mdash;the bones of children and even adults who
-had been sacrificed and sometimes burnt and then deposited in jars.
-Similar sacrifices, it would seem, were offered when a new building was
-erected, since children’s bones have been disinterred from under the
-foundations of houses, both at Gezer and at Taanach and Megiddo. The
-bones were placed in jars along with lamps and bowls, which, it has
-been suggested, were intended to receive the blood of the victim. The
-old sacred cave of the neolithic race was now brought into connection
-with the high place of the “Amorite” settlers, and the skeleton of a
-child has been found in it resting on a flat stone.</p>
-
-<p>This fourth city at Gezer&mdash;the second since the Semites first settled
-there&mdash;has yielded objects which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span> enable us to assign to it an
-approximate date. These objects are Egyptian, and belong to the age
-of the Twelfth dynasty. Many of them are scarabs, but there is also
-the tombstone of the Egyptian who was buried under the shadow of the
-Amorite sanctuary. Fragments of diorite and alabaster vases also occur,
-telling of trade with Egypt, and in the upper and later part of the
-stratum painted pottery makes its appearance similar to that met with
-in the corresponding stratum at Lachish. I shall have more to say about
-this painted pottery in the next chapter; here it is sufficient to
-state that it is related to the early painted pottery of the Ægean,
-but is itself of Hittite origin, and can be traced back to the Hittite
-centre in Cappadocia.</p>
-
-<p>The fourth city had a long existence. It lasted from the period of the
-Twelfth Egyptian dynasty to the middle of the Eighteenth. Then it was
-ruined by an enemy and its old wall partially destroyed&mdash;doubtless by
-Thothmes III. when he conquered Palestine (about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 1480).
-Upon its ruins rose another Amorite town. A new city wall was built of
-larger circumference and greater strength; it measured fourteen feet in
-thickness, and the stones of which it was composed were large and well
-shaped. The houses erected on the <i>débris</i> of the brick towers
-belonging to the old wall were filled with scarabs, beads, fragments
-of pottery and other objects contemporary with the reign of Amon-hotep
-III. (<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 1400). At Lachish the ruins of the third city
-were full of similar objects, and among them was a cuneiform tablet
-in which reference is made to the governor of Lachish mentioned in
-the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. At Taanach the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span> Austrian excavators
-discovered an archive-chamber, the contents of which were of the same
-age. Taanach was merely a third-rate or fourth-rate town, but its
-shêkh possessed a fortified residence, in a subterranean chamber of
-which his official records and private correspondence were kept in a
-coffer of terra-cotta. They were all in the Babylonian language and
-script. Among them is a list of the number of men each landowner (?)
-was required to furnish for the local militia, and there are also the
-letters which passed between the shêkh and his friends about their
-private affairs. How little of an official character is to be found in
-these letters may be gathered from the following translation of one of
-them: “To Istar-yisur (writes) Guli-Hadad.&mdash;Live happily! May the gods
-grant health to yourself, your house and your sons! You have written
-to me about the money ... and behold I will give fifty pieces of
-silver, since this has not (yet) been done.&mdash;Again: Why have you sent
-your salutation here afresh? All you have heard there I have (already)
-learned through Bel-ram.&mdash;Again: If the finger of the goddess Asherat
-appears, let them announce (the omen) and observe (it), and you shall
-describe to me both the sign and the fact. As to your daughter, we know
-the one, Salmisa, who is in the city of Rabbah, and if she grows up,
-you must give her to the prince; she is in truth fit for a lord.”<a id="FNanchor_126" href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a></p>
-
-<p>These Taanach letters are a final proof, if any were needed, of the
-completely Babylonian nature of Canaanitish civilization in the
-century before the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span> Exodus. When we find the petty shêkhs of obscure
-Canaanite towns corresponding with one another on the trivial matters
-of every-day life in the foreign language and syllabary of Babylonia,
-it is evident that Babylonian influence was still as strong in
-Palestine as it had been in the days when “the land of the Amorites”
-was a Babylonian province. It is also evident that there must have been
-plenty of schools in which the foreign language and syllabary could be
-taught and studied, and that the clay literature of Babylonia had been
-carried to the West. Indeed the Tel el-Amarna collection contains proof
-of this latter fact. Along with the letters are fragments of Babylonian
-literary works, one of which has been interpunctuated in order to
-facilitate its reading by the Egyptian scholar.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, apart from the cuneiform tablets the more strictly
-archæological evidence of Babylonian influence upon Canaan is
-extraordinarily scanty. Naturally we should discover no traces of
-“the goodly Babylonish garments” which, as we learn from the Book of
-Joshua, were imported into the country, the climate of Palestine not
-being favourable to their preservation; but it is certainly strange
-that so few seal-cylinders or similar objects have been disinterred,
-either at Gezer and Lachish in the south, or at Taanach and Megiddo
-in the north. What makes it the stranger is that Mr. Macalister has
-opened a long series of graves, beginning with the neolithic race and
-coming down to Græco-Roman times, and that while the influence of Egypt
-is sufficiently visible in them, that of Babylonia is almost entirely
-absent. It is true that a few seal-cylinders<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span> have been met with in
-the excavations on the city sites, but with the exception of one found
-at Taanach<a id="FNanchor_127" href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> I do not know of any that can be said to be of purely
-Babylonian manufacture; most of them are of Syrian make, and represent
-a Syrian modification of the Babylonian type. And yet there are
-seal-cylinders from the Lebanon, now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford,
-which are purely Babylonian in origin, and belong to the period of
-Khammu-rabi.<a id="FNanchor_128" href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a>&mdash;There are also two seal-cylinders of later pattern
-in M. de Clercq’s collection, on which are representations of the
-Egyptian gods Set and Horus&mdash;similar to those found on scarabs from the
-Delta of the time of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties&mdash;as well
-as of the Canaanite god Reshef, accompanied by cuneiform inscriptions
-which on palæographic grounds must be assigned to the age of the Tel
-el-Amarna tablets. As the inscriptions record the names of Hadad-sum
-and his son Anniy, “citizens of Sidon, the crown of the gods,” we
-know that they have come from the Phœnician coast.<a id="FNanchor_129" href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> Like the
-cuneiform tablets, they bear witness to the long-continued influence of
-Babylonian culture in Canaan on its literary side.</p>
-
-<p>When we turn to theology and law, the same influence is recognizable.
-The deities of Canaan were to a large extent Babylonian, with
-Babylonian names. The Babylonian gods Ana, Nebo, Rimmon (Rammân), Hadad
-and Dagon meet us in the names<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span> of places and persons, and Ashtoreth,
-who shared with Baal the devotion of the inhabitants of Palestine,
-is the Babylonian Istar with the suffix of the feminine attached to
-her name. Even Asherah, in whom Semitic scholars were long inclined
-to see a genuinely Canaanitish goddess, turns out to have been of
-Babylonian origin, and to be the feminine counterpart of Asir, or
-Asur, the national god of Assyria. The recently-discovered legal code
-of Khammu-rabi has shown that such glimpses as we have in the Book of
-Genesis of the laws and legal customs of Canaan in the patriarchal age
-all presuppose Babylonian law. From time to time usages are referred
-to and laws implied which have no parallel in the Mosaic code, and are
-therefore presumably pre-Israelite. But though they have no parallel
-in the Mosaic code, we have now learnt that they were all provided for
-in the code of Khammu-rabi. Thus Abram’s adoption of his slave and
-house-steward Eliezer is in strict accordance with the provisions of
-the old Babylonian law. Adoption, indeed, which was practically unknown
-among the Israelites, was a leading feature in Babylonian life, and
-the childless man was empowered to adopt an heir, even from among his
-slaves, to whom he left his name and his property. So, again, Sarai’s
-conduct in regard to Hagar, or Rachel’s conduct in regard to Bilhah, is
-explained by the Babylonian enactment which allowed the wife to present
-her husband with a concubine; while we can now understand why Hagar was
-not sold after her quarrel with Sarai, for the Babylonian law laid down
-that “if a man has married a wife, and she has given a concubine to her
-husband by whom he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span> has had a child, should the concubine afterwards
-have a dispute with her mistress because she has borne children, her
-mistress cannot sell her; she can only lay a task upon her and make her
-live with the other slaves.”</p>
-
-<p>In the account of Isaac’s marriage with Rebekah it is again a provision
-of the old Babylonian code with which we meet. There we hear of the
-bride receiving a dowry from the father of the bridegroom, and of other
-presents being made to her mother in conformity with Babylonian usage.
-So, too, the infliction of death by burning with which Judah threatened
-his daughter-in-law Tamar, on the supposition that she was a widow,
-has its explanation in the legislation of Khammu-rabi, where the same
-punishment is enacted against a nun who has been unfaithful to her
-vows of virginity or widowhood. The story of the purchase of the cave
-of Machpelah, moreover, has long been recognized by Assyriologists as
-pre-supposing an acquaintance with the legal forms of a Babylonian sale
-of land in the Khammu-rabi age.</p>
-
-<p>With all this heritage of Babylonian culture, therefore, it is curious
-that the excavators in Palestine have come across so few material
-evidences of intercourse with Babylonia. Mr. Macalister is inclined
-to believe that it must belong to a period anterior to the Twelfth
-Egyptian dynasty. But this raises a chronological question of some
-difficulty. We have seen that the earlier and inner city wall of
-Gezer served as the defence of three successive settlements, and
-that it was partially destroyed along with the city it protected
-about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 1480. Now the outer and more massive wall which
-superseded it also served<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span> to protect three cities, the latest of which
-was deserted during the Maccabean period, about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 100.
-Hence, Mr. Macalister argues, “if we may assume the rate of growth to
-have been fairly uniform, we are led back to <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 2900 as the
-(latest) date” for the foundation of the first wall. During this long
-period of time twenty-eight feet of <i>débris</i> accumulated; below
-this are as much as twelve feet of neolithic accumulation.<a id="FNanchor_130" href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a></p>
-
-<p>The conquests of Sargon of Akkad would accordingly have fallen within
-the neolithic epoch. But in this case it is strange that the use
-of copper, with which Babylonia had long been acquainted, was not
-communicated to its Western province, and that it should have needed a
-new race and the lapse of nearly a thousand years for its introduction.
-Moreover, specific evidences of Babylonian civilization are quite as
-much wanting in the remains of the first Amorite city as they are
-in those of the second. And unless we adopt a date for the Twelfth
-Egyptian dynasty, which on other grounds seems out of the question, it
-is hard to see how the Khammu-rabi dynasty can be placed before it.
-What little evidence we possess at present goes to indicate that the
-Khammu-rabi dynasty was contemporaneous with the earlier Hyksos kings
-or their immediate predecessors. And yet not only do we know that
-the Khammu-rabi dynasty ruled in Palestine, but the adoption of the
-cuneiform script, which was at least as old as the age of that dynasty,
-as well as the testimony of theology and law, proves that its rule<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>
-must have exercised a profound and permanent influence upon the people
-of Canaan. How is it, then, that while the excavations have brought to
-light so many evidences of Egyptian domination, there is so little in
-the way of material objects to show that Palestine was once and for
-several centuries a Babylonian province?<a id="FNanchor_131" href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a></p>
-
-<p>Perhaps the excavations which are still proceeding at Megiddo may
-throw some light upon the problem. Meanwhile, we may remember that
-thus far the greater part of the objects that have been found belong
-to the less wealthy and educated part of the population. The annals
-of Thothmes III. prove that, so far as the upper classes were
-concerned, the picture of Canaanitish luxury presented in the Old
-Testament had a foundation of fact. Among the spoils taken from the
-princes of Canaan we hear of tables, chairs and staves of cedar and
-ebony inlaid or gilded with gold, of a golden plough and sceptre, of
-richly-embroidered stuffs similar to those depicted on the walls of the
-Egyptian monuments, of chariots chased with silver, of iron tent-poles
-studded with precious stones, and of “bowls with goats’ heads on them,
-and one with a lion’s head, the workmanship of the land<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span> of the Zahi,”
-that is to say, of the Canaanitish coast. These latter were doubtless
-imitations of the gold and silver cups with double handles and animals’
-heads imported from Krete, which were also received as tribute from
-the Canaanitish princes by the Egyptian king. Other gifts comprised
-chariots plated with gold, iron armour with gold inlay, a helmet of
-gold inlaid with lapis-lazuli, the tusks of elephants, rings of gold
-and silver that were used as money, copper and lead, as well as jars
-of wine, oil and balsam. Of all these articles, the copper and lead
-excepted, it is needless to say next to nothing has been discovered by
-the excavators. The most valuable work of art yet met with is a bronze
-sword of precisely the same shape as one found in Assyria, which bears
-upon it the name of Hadad-nirari I. (<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 1330).<a id="FNanchor_132" href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a></p>
-
-<p>On the palæographical side the forms of the cuneiform characters used
-in Canaan go back to the script of the age of Khammu-rabi and his
-predecessors. From a purely Assyriological point of view, no regard
-being had to other considerations, I should date their introduction
-into Palestine about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 2300. The chronology that would
-best harmonize the historical facts would thus be one which made the
-dominance of Egypt in Palestine under the Twelfth dynasty precede the
-Babylonian rule of the Khammu-rabi period. Against it is the negative<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>
-evidence of archæological discovery, so few traces of this rule having
-been discovered in the course of the excavations. But neither in
-archæology nor in anything else is negative evidence of much value.</p>
-
-<p>At any rate, thanks to the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions,
-the main facts are clear. Canaan was once a province of the Babylonian
-Empire, and during the long period of time that this was the case
-it became permeated with the literary culture of Babylonia. The
-civilization which was partially destroyed by the Israelitish invasion
-had its roots in the valley of the Euphrates.</p>
-
-<p>Gezer, it is true, was one of the cities in which no visible break with
-the past was made by the irruption of the desert tribes. It escaped
-capture by the invaders, and it was only in the reign of Solomon,
-when the Israelites had already entered into the heritage of the old
-Canaanitish culture, that it was handed over by the king of Egypt to
-his Jewish son-in-law. But at Lachish the marks of the destruction of
-the town by Joshua are still visible. Above the ruins of the Amorite
-cities is a bed of ashes left by the charcoal-burners who squatted
-on the site before it was again rebuilt. Above the stratum of ashes
-all must be Israelitish, and the objects found in the remains of the
-cities that stand upon it testify accordingly to a complete change.
-No more cuneiform tablets are met with, and but few Egyptian scarabs;
-the pottery is different, and the “high place” has disappeared.
-The bowl and lamp, indeed, are still buried under the walls of the
-newly-built house, but the bones of sacrificed children which they once
-contained are replaced by sand. As the Israelitish<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span> power increased
-the old Babylonian influence necessarily lessened. When the cuneiform
-syllabary finally made way for the so-called Phœnician alphabet is
-still uncertain, but it was at all events before the days of Solomon.
-Already in the Amorite period the characters of the Kretan linear
-script discovered by Dr. Evans are found scratched on fragments of
-pottery, indicating that besides the cuneiform another form of writing
-was known; it may be that the Israelitish conquest, by destroying the
-centres of Canaanitish civilization and the schools of the scribes,
-gave a first blow to the tradition of Babylonian learning, and that the
-work of destruction was subsequently completed by the Philistine wars.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span></p>
-
-<h2>CHAPTER VI<br />
-<span class="subhed">ASIA MINOR</span></h2></div>
-
-<p>If it has been a surprise to learn that Palestine was once within
-the circle of Babylonian culture, it has been equally a surprise to
-learn that Asia Minor was so too. It is true that Herodotus traced the
-Herakleid dynasty of Lydian kings to the gods of Nineveh and Babylon,
-that Strabo knew of a “mound of Semiramis” in Cappadocia, and that in
-the Book of Genesis Lud is called the son of Shem. But historians had
-long agreed that all such beliefs were creations of a later day, and
-rested on no substratum of fact. The northern limits of Babylonian
-or Assyrian influence, it was held, were fixed by the Taurus and the
-mountains of Kurdistan.</p>
-
-<p>The discovery of cuneiform inscriptions on the stones and rocks of
-Armenia made the first breach in this conclusion. Their existence was
-known even before Botta and Layard had opened up Nineveh. In 1826
-Schulz had been sent by the French Government at the instance of M.
-Mohl to copy the mysterious characters which had already excited the
-attention of Oriental writers. Schulz was unexpectedly successful in
-his quest. The number of inscriptions he discovered was far larger
-than had been imagined, and his copies<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span> of them, as we now know, were
-remarkably accurate. But the explorer himself never lived to return
-to Europe. He was murdered by a Kurdish chief, Nurallah Bey, in 1829,
-while engaged in the work of exploration; his papers, however, were
-eventually recovered, and the inscriptions he had copied were published
-in 1840 in the Journal of the Société Asiatique. One of them was a
-trilingual inscription of Xerxes, the Persian transcript of which was
-just beginning to be deciphered; the rest were still a closed book.</p>
-
-<p>Then came the discovery of Nineveh and the first essays at the
-interpretation of the Assyro-Babylonian texts. Layard himself made
-an expedition to Armenia, and besides recopying Schulz’s texts and
-correcting certain inaccuracies in them, added considerably to the
-collection. Dr. Hincks, with his usual genius for decipherment,
-perceived that the syllabary in which they were written was the same as
-that used at Nineveh, and utilized them for determining the values of
-some of the Assyrian characters. He succeeded in reading most of the
-proper names, in assigning the inscriptions to a group of kings whose
-order he was able to fix, and in pointing out that many of them contain
-an account of military campaigns and of the amount of booty which had
-been carried off. But it was also clear that the inscriptions were not
-in a Semitic language, and as the nominative and accusative of the noun
-seemed to terminate in <i>-s</i> and <i>-n</i>, while the patronymic
-was expressed by the suffix <i>-khinis</i>, the decipherer assumed
-that the language was Indo-European. The most important texts had been
-found in or near Van, which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span> had apparently been the capital of the
-kings by whose orders they had been engraved, and the name of Vannic,
-accordingly, was given to both texts and language.</p>
-
-<p>It was soon recognized that Dr. Hincks had been in error in suggesting
-that the Vannic language was Indo-European. It was, it is true,
-inflectional, but with this any resemblance to the languages of the
-Indo-European family ceased. Nor was there any other language or group
-of languages to which it appeared to be related, and all attempts
-failed to advance the decipherment much beyond the point at which
-it had been left by Hincks. Thanks to the “determinatives,” which
-indicate proper names and the like, and the ideographs, which are
-fairly plentiful, the general sense of many of the inscriptions could
-be made out; but beyond that it seemed impossible to go. Lenormant,
-indeed, following Hincks, showed that the suffix <i>-bi</i> denoted the
-first person singular of the verb, and indicated Georgian as possibly a
-related language; but in the hands of other would-be decipherers, like
-Robert and Mordtmann, there was retrogression instead of advance.</p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p162_3">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p162_3.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">THE GARDENS AND HILL OF DHUSPAS OR VAN.</p>
- </div>
-
-<p>So matters remained until 1882, when Stanislas Guyard pointed out the
-parallelism between a formula which occurs at the end of many Vannic
-inscriptions and the imprecatory formula of the Assyrian texts. I had
-already been struck by the same fact, and was at the time preparing a
-Memoir on the decipherment and translation of the inscriptions, which
-shortly afterwards appeared in the <i>Journal of the Royal Asiatic
-Society</i>. In this I had made use of Layard’s copies, which had never
-been published; other copies also, <span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>including photographs, squeezes
-and casts, had been placed at my disposal, and in 1882 I was able to
-lay before cuneiform scholars a grammar and vocabulary of the Vannic
-language, together with translations and analyses of all the known
-texts.<a id="FNanchor_133" href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a> These have been subsequently corrected and extended by
-other Assyriologists&mdash;Guyard, D. H. Müller, Nikolsky, Scheil, Belck
-and Lehmann, as well as by myself. An ordinary Vannic text can now
-be translated with nearly as much completeness and certainty as an
-Assyrian text, and the number of them known to us has been greatly
-enlarged by the archæological explorations of Belck and Lehmann.</p>
-
-<p>In the decipherment of the Vannic inscriptions the ideographs and
-determinatives which are scattered through them took the place for me
-of a bilingual text. The determinatives told me what was the nature of
-the words which followed or preceded them, and so explained the general
-sense of the passages in which they occurred, while from time to time a
-phonetically-written word would be replaced in a parallel passage by an
-ideograph the signification of which was known. I soon found, moreover,
-that the cuneiform syllabary must have been brought from Nineveh to Van
-in the age of Assur-natsir-pal II. (<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 884–859), and that
-the actual phrases met with in the inscriptions of that monarch are
-sometimes reproduced in a Vannic dress. The Vannic language, however,
-still remains isolated, though the majority of those who have studied
-it incline to Lenormant’s view that its nearest living representative
-is Georgian. Not being a Georgian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span> scholar myself, this is a point upon
-which I can express no opinion.</p>
-
-<p>Instead of “Vannic,” it has been proposed to call the language
-“Khaldian.” The chief god of the people who spoke the language was
-Khaldis, and in the inscriptions we find the people themselves
-described as “the children of Khaldis.” Derivatives from the name are
-found employed in a geographical sense northward of the region to which
-the inscriptions belong. Thus the Khaldi “in the neighbourhood of
-Colchis” are said to have been also called Khaldæi;<a id="FNanchor_134" href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> “Khaldees” are
-frequently referred to by Armenian writers as living between Trapezont
-and Batûm, and a Turkish inscription at Sumela shows that as late as
-the beginning of the fifteenth century Lazistân was still known as
-Khaldia. That the name was ever applied, however, to the kingdom which
-had its chief seat at Van is not proved, and it is therefore best to
-adhere to the term “Vannic,” which commits those who use it to no
-theory.<a id="FNanchor_135" href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a></p>
-
-<p>The decipherment of the Vannic texts has not only led to the discovery
-of a new language, it has also thrown a flood of light on the early
-history, geography and religion of the Armenian plateau. The military
-campaigns of the Assyrian kings had brought it into contact with
-Assyrian civilization, and in the ninth century before our era a
-dynasty arose which adopted the literary culture and art of Assyria,
-and founded a powerful kingdom which extended its sway from Urumia on
-the east to Malatia on the west, and from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span> the slopes of Ararat and the
-shores of Lake Erivan to the northern frontiers of Assyria.</p>
-
-<p>The main fact which has thus been disclosed is that the Armenians of
-history&mdash;the Aryan tribes, that is to say, who spoke an Indo-European
-language&mdash;did not enter the country and establish themselves in the
-place of its older rulers before the end of the seventh century before
-our era. The fall of the Vannic monarchy seems to have coincided with
-the fall of the Assyrian Empire, with which it had once contended on
-almost equal terms, and in each case the invasion of the so-called
-Scythian hordes from the plains of Eastern Europe had much to do with
-the result. The founders of Armenian civilization and of the cities of
-the Armenian plateau had no connection with the Indo-European family.
-Their type of language corresponded with that which distinguishes most
-of the actual languages of the Caucasus, though no genetic relationship
-is traceable between them. The break with the past, however, occasioned
-by the irruption of the Indo-European invaders, was so great that not
-only did the older language become extinct and forgotten, but even the
-tradition of the older civilization was also lost. Like the recovery of
-the Sumerian language and the culture it represented, the recovery of
-the Vannic language and culture is the revelation of a new world.</p>
-
-<p>At the head of the pantheon was a trinity consisting of Khaldis, the
-supreme god of the race; Teisbas, the god of the air; and the Sun-god
-Ardinis. Temples were erected in their honour, and shields and spears
-dedicated to their service. The vine, which grows wild in Armenia,
-was the sacred tree of the people,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span> and there are inscriptions which
-commemorate its planting and consecration, and describe the endowments
-that were set apart for its maintenance. Wine was naturally offered
-to the gods along with the domestic animals and prisoners of war. Dr.
-Belck has discovered burial-places which go back to the neolithic age,
-but the majority of the monuments scattered over the Vannic area belong
-to the bronze age, and testify to a native adaptation of Assyrian art
-and culture. Iron also makes its appearance, but scantily. The pottery
-of the age of the inscriptions is related on the one side to the
-Assyrian pottery of the same period, and on the other to the pottery
-of Asia Minor. The polished red ware more especially points to the
-west.<a id="FNanchor_136" href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a></p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p166_2">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p166_2.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">THE RUINS OF A PALACE OF URARTU AT TOPRAK-KALEH.</p>
- </div>
-
-<p>The existence of a language of the Caucasian type in Armenia, and its
-association with a powerful kingdom and an advanced culture, is not
-the only revelation of the kind that we owe to cuneiform decipherment.
-We have learned that at a much earlier epoch Northern Mesopotamia was
-occupied by a people who spoke a language of similar type but of far
-more complicated form; and that here, too, the language in question was
-accompanied by a high civilization, a <span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>powerful monarchy, and the
-use of the cuneiform syllabary. The monarchy was that of Mitanni, and
-its culture and script had been borrowed from Babylonia in the age of
-Khammu-rabi, instead of from Assyria in the age of Assur-natsir-pal.
-But it is interesting to observe that in borrowing the script the
-people of Mitanni had adapted and simplified it in precisely the same
-way as did the people of Van in after days. Superfluous characters were
-discarded, a single phonetic value only assigned to each character,
-and large use made of those which expressed vowels. In fact, in
-both Mitannian and Vannic the system of writing begins to approach
-the alphabetic. Whether this similarity in adaptation was due to a
-similarity of phonetic structure in the two languages or to conscious
-imitation on the part of the Vannic scribes it is difficult to say; it
-is a point, however, which cannot be passed over.</p>
-
-<p>The name of Mitanni meets us on the Egyptian monuments of the
-Eighteenth and Nineteenth dynasties. The kingdom played a considerable
-part at that period of time in the politics of Western Asia, and the
-daughters of its kings were married to the Egyptian Pharaohs. The
-boundaries of the Egyptian Empire were coterminous with those of
-Mitanni, and we gather from the Tel el-Amarna correspondence that the
-Mitannian forces had more than once made their way into Palestine,
-perhaps as far south as Jerusalem, and that Mitannian intrigue
-was active in that portion of the Pharaoh’s dominions. Among the
-Canaanitish governors are some who bear Mitannian names, and testify to
-the continuance of a Mitannian element in that common meeting-place of
-nationalities.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span></p>
-
-<p>Several letters from the Mitannian king have been found among the
-Tel el-Amarna tablets. Most of them are written in the Babylonian
-language, but one&mdash;and fortunately an exceptionally long one&mdash;though
-in cuneiform characters, is in the native language of the country.
-A comparison of it with its companion letters, assisted by the
-determinatives and ideographs which are employed in it from time to
-time, has enabled Jensen, Leopold Messerschmidt and myself to decipher
-a very considerable part of the letter, and so to compile a grammar and
-vocabulary of the Mitannian language. That it is distantly related to
-Vannic seems to admit of little doubt, but it comes before us in a much
-more developed form; indeed, its system of suffixes is so elaborate and
-ponderous as to remind us of the polysynthetic languages of America.</p>
-
-<p>A legal document found in Babylonia and dated in the epoch of
-Khammu-rabi contains a number of proper names which are of Mitannian
-or allied origin, and show that persons of that race were already
-settled in Babylonia.<a id="FNanchor_137" href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a> As the Mitannian form of cuneiform script
-must have been borrowed about the same time, we may infer that the
-advanced guard of the northern race had already made its way as far
-south as Mesopotamia, and there established its power in the midst of
-a Semitic population. From that time forward a constant struggle went
-on between the two races, the Semitic race striving to push back the
-northern intruders and planting its own colonies in the very heart of
-the northern area,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span> while the northerners pressed ever more and more to
-the southward, and at one time even seemed likely to possess themselves
-of the heritage of the Babylonian Empire in Western Asia. Like Armenia,
-Northern Mesopotamia was occupied by a people of Caucasian and Asianic
-affinities, whose armies had crossed the Euphrates and won territory in
-Syria and Palestine.</p>
-
-<p>On the west, however, the Mitannians found themselves confronted by
-another northern population, the Hittites, whose first home was in
-Cappadocia. The Hittites also had passed under the spell of Babylonian
-culture, and the cuneiform script had been carried to them at an early
-date. Thanks to recent discoveries, we can now trace in some measure
-the earlier fortunes of a race who made a profound impression, not only
-on the future history of Asia Minor and its relations with Greece, but
-also on the history of Palestine.</p>
-
-<p>As far back as about <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 2000, Babylonian or Assyrian troops
-had already made their way along the northern banks of the Tigris
-and Euphrates to the borders of Cappadocia and the neighbourhood
-of the Halys. I say Babylonian or Assyrian, for Assyria was at the
-time a province of Babylonia, though as the colonies which settled
-in the track of the invaders were distinctively Assyrian in their
-municipal customs and the names of their inhabitants, the troops were
-probably drafted from Assyria.<a id="FNanchor_138" href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> The mineral wealth of Cappadocia
-was doubtless the attraction which led them to such distant and
-semibarbarous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span> lands; Dr. Gladstone’s analysis of the gold of the Sixth
-Egyptian dynasty, with its admixture of silver, has shown that it was
-imported from the north of Asia Minor,<a id="FNanchor_139" href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> and the silver itself was
-probably already worked. Further south, in the Taurus, were mines of
-copper.</p>
-
-<p>However this may be, the remains of one of these early
-Assyro-Babylonian colonies has been partially excavated a few miles
-(twenty-three kilometres) to the north-east of Kaisariyeh.<a id="FNanchor_140" href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> The
-site is now known as Kara Eyuk, “the Black Mound,” and numerous
-cuneiform tablets have come from it. It has obtained its present name
-from the marks of fire which are everywhere visible upon it, and bear
-eloquent testimony to its final fate. Established as an outpost of
-the Assyrian Empire in the distant west, a time came when, deserted
-by the Government at home, its strong walls were battered down by the
-besieging foe and the Assyrian settlers massacred among the ruins
-of their burning town. According to M. Chantre, its excavator (who,
-however, believes that it was destroyed by a volcanic eruption), the
-whole mound is a mass of charred and burnt remains.</p>
-
-<p>The construction of the walls, as well as the pottery found within
-them, marks it off with great distinctness from the ruins of the
-Hittite or native Cappadocian cities in its neighbourhood. While in
-their case the city wall is made of unmortared blocks of stone, the
-walls of Kara Eyuk are built of brick, and where stones are used
-they are of small size and cemented with mortar. The pottery differs
-considerably from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span> that of the Hittite capital at Boghaz Keui. Some
-of it is of black ware, especially characterized by the vases with
-long spouts, which are also found in Phrygia and the Troad. Some of
-it, again, is of the dark-red lustrous ware which has been met with
-at Toprak Kaleh, near Van, and Boz Eyuk in Phrygia, while the yellow
-ware with geometrical patterns in black and maroon-red which has been
-discovered in Phrygia occurs in large quantities. This latter ware is
-of the class known as “Mykenæan.”<a id="FNanchor_141" href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a></p>
-
-<p>The cuneiform tablets which have come from the site are known as
-“Cappadocian,” and were first noticed by Dr. Pinches. The forms of the
-characters resemble those of the early Babylonian script, which was
-still used in Assyria in the age of Khammu-rabi. Many of the proper
-names, moreover, seem to be distinctive<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span> of that period. On the other
-hand, a large proportion of them contain the name of Asur&mdash;often in its
-primitive form of Asir&mdash;or are otherwise characteristic of Assyria.
-The tablets are further dated by the archons who gave their names to
-the years, a system of chronology which was peculiar to Assyria and
-unknown in Babylonia, while the month was divided into “weeks” of five
-days each. The language of the tablets also, which is full of dialectic
-mispronunciations and strange words, points to Assyria rather than to
-the southern kingdom, and we may therefore conclude that the colonists
-were Assyrians, even though the colony may have been founded when
-Assyria was still a Babylonian province.</p>
-
-<p>There are indications in the Assyrian inscriptions themselves that
-the road to Cappadocia was known to the Assyrian princes at an early
-epoch. The earliest Assyrian kings whose annals have come down to us
-are Hadad-nirari I. and his son Shalmaneser I. (<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 1300).
-Hadad-nirari tells us that his greatgrandfather, Assur-yuballidh, whose
-letters form part of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, had subdued
-“the wide-spread” province of Subari, which lay near the sources of
-the Euphrates, and in which Kara Eyuk was perhaps included, while he
-himself restored the cities of the same province which had fallen into
-ruin. Later, Shalmaneser I. conducted campaign after campaign towards
-the same region. In his second year he overthrew the king of Malatia,
-and the combined forces of the other “Hittite” states, who had come to
-his assistance: “all were conquered,” from the borders of Cappadocia
-to the Hittite stronghold of Carchemish. A military colony was settled
-at the head waters of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span> the Tigris which secured the high-road to Asia
-Minor.</p>
-
-<p>Two centuries later we learn from Tiglath-pileser I. that Moschians and
-Hittites had overrun part of this Assyrian territory, and occupied some
-of the Assyrian settlements. Once more, therefore, the Assyrian troops
-marched to the north-west; the provinces which lay in the valley of the
-Murad-chai were recovered, and the old province of Subari cleared of
-intruders. Soon afterwards Tiglath-pileser forced his way into Southern
-Cappadocia and the valley of the Sarus, making Comana tributary, razing
-to the ground the fortresses that had resisted him, and erecting
-on their site chambers of brick, with bronze tablets on which his
-conquests were recorded. Eastern Cilicia was known at the time to the
-Assyrians as Muzri, or “the Marchland,” a clear proof that it had long
-formed a borderland and debatable territory between the Assyrian Empire
-and the nations of Asia Minor.</p>
-
-<p>It is thus evident that even before the rise of the Assyrian monarchy,
-the road that led to the mining districts of Cappadocia, along the
-valleys of the Upper Tigris, Euphrates and Tokhma Su, was not only
-known to the Assyro-Babylonians, but had actually constituted Assyrian
-territory, which was colonized by Assyrian garrisons and paid tribute
-to Nineveh whenever Assyria was strong enough to enforce its authority.
-At the eastern extremity of the road stood the city of unknown name,
-now represented by “the Burnt Mound” of Kara Eyuk, whose existence as
-an Assyro-Babylonian city probably dates back to the age of Khammu-rabi.</p>
-
-<p>It was the outpost of Babylonian culture in Asia<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span> Minor. Babylonian
-art, and, above all, the Babylonian system of writing, were brought by
-it into the heart of the Hittite region, and the archæological objects
-found there consequently become important for chronological dating. Not
-far off, on the other side of the Halys, rose the Hittite capital, now
-known as Boghaz Keui, the centre from which, as Professor Ramsay has
-shown,<a id="FNanchor_142" href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a> the early roads of Asia Minor radiated in all directions.</p>
-
-<p>Boghaz Keui is being excavated at the present moment. Hundreds of
-clay tablets have already been found there, inscribed with cuneiform
-characters, the majority of which are in the native Hittite language,
-though many are in Semitic Babylonian, including a copy of the famous
-treaty between Ramses II. and the Hittite king. So far as the tablets
-have been examined, they show that the Hittite empire extended from the
-west of Asia Minor to the Egyptian frontier, and that the cuneiform
-characters were used in ordinary life.</p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p174_2">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p174_2.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">THE RUINS AT BOGHAZ KEUI.</p>
- </div>
-
-<p>By one of those coincidences which sometimes happen in archæological
-research, the discovery fits with another fact which had long been
-in the possession of the Assyriologist, though the full meaning of
-it was unknown to him. Among the Tel el-Amarna letters are two in a
-language unlike any with which we are acquainted. One of them is from a
-Hittite leader of condottieri,<a id="FNanchor_143" href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> who has left us two other letters
-which <span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>are in the Assyrian language, and who came from a town in the
-neighbourhood of Cilicia. The second letter was written to the king of
-Arzawa by one of the foreign secretaries of the Egyptian Government.
-But the situation of Arzawa was wholly uncertain; as the king bore the
-Hittite name of Tarkhundaraba, I suggested that it lay in the Hittite
-territory, and that consequently in the language of the letter we had
-a fragment of the Hittite language. For many years, however, this
-remained a mere conjecture, without any definite proofs.</p>
-
-<p>When the fragmentary tablets from Boghaz Keui came to be copied, it
-was at once perceived that they were in a language which resembled
-that of the Arzawa letters, but it was not until the new tablet
-from Constantinople had been cleaned and copied by Dr. Pinches and
-myself that the actual facts became clear. The Arzawa and Boghaz Keui
-texts agree in the forms given to the characters, in grammar and in
-vocabulary. Arzawa, therefore, must have been the Hittite kingdom which
-had its centre at Boghaz Keui, and already in the age of the Eighteenth
-Egyptian dynasty it was employing a form of the cuneiform script which
-implied a long preceding period of use and adaptation. A new realm has
-thus to be added to the domain of the cuneiform system of writing; in
-Syria the Hittite king of Kadesh wrote to the Pharaoh in Babylonian,
-but in his old home in the north, though the Babylonian<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span> syllabary
-had been adopted, the language it served to express was that of the
-Hittites themselves.</p>
-
-<p>A certain amount of this Hittite language of Arzawa can be deciphered,
-thanks to those same determinatives and ideographs which have assisted
-so materially towards the decipherment of the Vannic texts, and more
-especially to the recurrence in the two Tel el-Amarna letters of
-phrases that are common to the whole correspondence. The new tablet,
-however, is more than usually helpful, since it contains Assyrian words
-and grammatical forms which in parallel passages of the same text are
-replaced by native equivalents. In this way a sketch of Arzawan grammar
-can now be made, as well as a list of Arzawan words. The language which
-is thus disclosed is of an Asianic type, with features that remind us
-of Lycian on the one side, and of Mitannian and Vannic on the other.
-But in what may be termed the fundamentals of grammar it agrees with
-Mitannian and Vannic.</p>
-
-<p>At the same time, certain of these same fundamentals have a curious
-but superficial resemblance to what we have hitherto been accustomed
-to regard as characteristics of Indo-European grammar. The nominative
-and accusative of the noun, for example, are distinguished by the
-suffixes <i>-s</i> and <i>-n</i>, the plural nominative and accusative
-often terminate in <i>-s</i>, and the possessive pronouns of Arzawan
-are <i>mi-s</i>, “mine”; <i>ti-s</i>, “thine”; and <i>sa(s)</i>,
-“his”; while <i>si</i> is “(to) her.” The third person of the present
-tense ends in <i>-t</i>; <i>es-tu</i>, is “may it be”; <i>es-mi</i>,
-“may I be.” Yet with all these remarkable coincidences, I can
-assure the comparative philologist that Arzawan is certainly not an
-Indo-European<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span> language, and I must leave him to explain them as best
-he may.</p>
-
- <div class="figcenter" id="i_p176_2" style="width: 650px">
- <img
- class="p2"
- src="images/i_p176_2.jpg"
- alt="" />
- <p class="center p0 sm">ONE OF THE PROCESSIONS IN THE RAVINE OF BOGHAZ.</p>
- <p class="right p-min sm">(<i>See p. <a href="#Page_174">174</a>.</i>)</p>
- </div>
-
-<p>We have, however, learnt a good deal more about the Hittite populations
-of Asia Minor from the Tel el-Amarna tablets than the nature of the
-language which they spoke. In the closing days of the Eighteenth
-Egyptian dynasty we find them on the southern side of the Taurus,
-sending forth bands of adventurers, who hired their services to the
-king of Egypt and to the rival governors and princes of Palestine,
-and from time to time carved out principalities of their own with the
-sword. We are even able to follow the fortunes of some of the leaders
-of the condottieri, who had no scruple in transferring their allegiance
-from one vassal prince to another when tempted by the prospect of
-better pay, or in murdering their employer when the opportunity
-arose, and plundering or occupying his city. They had, it is true, a
-wholesome awe of Egyptian power and of the Egyptian army, and some of
-the letters they wrote to the Egyptian court are amusing examples of
-the excuses they offered for their misdeeds. But they never hesitated
-about seizing the Pharaoh’s property when they thought they could do
-so with impunity, while they were all the time professing to be his
-devoted slaves. A considerable number of the vassal princes of Canaan
-kept these mercenaries in their pay, and in many cases the Egyptian
-Foreign Office thought it wisest to confirm one of their leaders in the
-government of a district, however doubtful might have been the means by
-which it had come into his hands. So long as the tribute was paid, and
-the imperial authority acknowledged, no further questions<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span> were asked.
-The mercenaries were useful at times to the imperial forces, and the
-mutual jealousies and quarrels of the local governors were perhaps not
-altogether displeasing to the home Government.<a id="FNanchor_144" href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a></p>
-
-<p>In this way bands of Hittite mercenaries came to be settled in
-various parts of Palestine, even in the extreme south. The sons of
-Arzawaya, “the Arzawan,” established themselves in the neighbourhood
-of Jerusalem, whose king, by the way, seems to bear a Mitannian name.
-The statement in the Book of Genesis that Heth was the son of Canaan
-receives a new signification from the Tel el-Amarna tablets.</p>
-
-<p>But Hittite influence in Southern Palestine goes back to an earlier
-epoch than the age of the tablets. The painted pottery found in the
-“Amorite” strata of Lachish and Gezer shows remarkable affinities
-to the pottery discovered by Chantre at Boghaz Keui, and Mr. J. L.
-Myres has succeeded in tracing it in a fairly continuous line to the
-region north of the Halys.<a id="FNanchor_145" href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a> Here was found the red ochre&mdash;or
-<i>sandarakê</i>, as it was called&mdash;which was used in the decoration
-of the pottery, and after the introduction of two other colours still
-remained the principal feature in the system of ornamentation. This
-Hittite or Cappadocian pottery was carried westward along the road
-which led from Boghaz Keui towards the Troad, and south-eastwards
-across the Taurus into Syria. It was probably the ultimate origin of
-the painted Minoan or “Kamâres” pottery of Krete.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span></p>
-
-<p>The introduction of Hittite pottery into Canaan where it tended to
-supersede the native ware, was doubtless the result of trade. But in
-ancient Asia the trader and the soldier were very apt to march side by
-side. The soldier opened the way for the trader and kept it for him,
-quite as much as the trader opened it for the soldier. Hence it is
-not surprising that the Assyrian monuments should furnish incidental
-evidence of the Hittite occupation of Palestine at an early date. In
-the inscriptions of Babylonia, as we have seen, Palestine and Syria
-are “the land of the Amorites”; the name went back to an immemorial
-antiquity, and indicates that at the time it was first given the
-Amorites were the ruling population in the West. But in the Assyrian
-inscriptions the place of the Amorites is taken by the Hittites. For
-the Assyrians, Syria is “the land of the Hittites,” and in the later
-historical texts even the Israelites and Philistines are classed as
-“Hittite.”<a id="FNanchor_146" href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a></p>
-
-<p>Canaan, however, was already well known to the Assyrians in the age of
-the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, when the ambassadors of the Assyrian
-king carried letters and presents through it to the Pharaoh. It must,
-therefore, have been at a still earlier period that they first became
-acquainted with it, and at this period Hittite influence must have
-been so predominant as to cause them to discard the name of Amorite,
-consecrated though it was by the long-continued usage of Babylonian
-literature, and to employ instead of it the name of Hittite.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span></p>
-
-<p>But it was in the direction of the Greek seas that Hittite influence
-was most powerful. Through Asia Minor Babylonian culture penetrated to
-the West. A native imitation of the Babylonian seal-cylinder was found
-by Dr. Schliemann in the ruins of Hissarlik,<a id="FNanchor_147" href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> and the so-called
-“heraldic” position of the lions at Mykenæ can be traced back through
-Asia Minor to the designs of the Babylonian gem-cutters. The winged
-horse, Pegasus, is found on Hittite seals, and, like the double-headed
-eagle of Eyuk and other composite figures, is derived from Babylonian
-prototypes.<a id="FNanchor_148" href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a> They represented the first attempts of the creative
-power, as conceived of by Babylonian cosmology, and an old Babylonian
-legend of the creation accordingly describes the monsters suckled
-by Tiamât as “warriors with the bodies of birds, men with the faces
-of ravens.”<a id="FNanchor_149" href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> The fantastic monsters of “Minoan” art, which have
-been brought to light by the excavations in Krete, claim an intimate
-connection with the similar composite beings which are a characteristic
-of Hittite art.<a id="FNanchor_150" href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a></p>
-
-<p>The early Hittite art of Asia Minor, as I pointed out many years ago,
-is dependent on that of Babylonia,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span> and has little in common with the
-art of Assyria.<a id="FNanchor_151" href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a> It is not until we come to the later Hittite
-monuments of Cilicia and Syria that the influence of Assyrian art makes
-itself visible. Hence was derived the partiality of the Hittite artist
-for the composite animals that adorn the seal-cylinders of Babylonia,
-and which consequently became known wherever the seal-cylinder and
-the literary culture it accompanied had made their way. As I have
-already stated, though Subari was an Assyrian province and Kara Eyuk
-an Assyrian colony, the form of the cuneiform script that was used in
-Cappadocia was of Babylonian origin.</p>
-
-<p>The writing material of “Minoan” Krete, we now know, consisted of clay
-tablets. The fact is a proof that the influence of Babylonian culture
-had extended thus far. But it was an indirect influence only. Though
-the clay tablet was employed, the characters impressed upon it were
-the native Kretan. This in itself, however, demonstrates how strong
-the influence must have been, for the Kretan characters, whether
-hieroglyphic or linear, were less easy to inscribe on clay than the
-cuneiform. Krete, moreover, is a land of rock and stone rather than of
-clay. We may infer, therefore, from the use of the Babylonian material
-that the first impulse to write was inspired by the civilization of
-Babylonia.</p>
-
-<p>How it was brought to Krete we do not know. It may have passed over
-from the shores of Canaan; it may have come from Cyprus or Asia Minor.
-A seal-cylinder, which I have lately published, and which was found in
-the early copper-age cemetery of Agia<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span> Paraskevi in Cyprus, shows that
-the so-called Cypriote syllabary was already in use in the island at
-a remote date,<a id="FNanchor_152" href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> and this syllabary is closely connected with the
-linear characters of Krete. Inscriptions in the same form of script
-have been found on the site of Troy, and the pre-Israelitish pottery of
-Southern Palestine is marked with signs which seem to be derived from
-it. So, too, is certain Egyptian pottery of the age of the Eighteenth
-dynasty, and even of the age of the Twelfth.<a id="FNanchor_153" href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a></p>
-
-<p>It is possible that Krete was the birthplace of the picture writing
-which developed into the linear script of Knossos and the Cypriote
-syllabary; it is possible that it was rather Cyprus. I do not think,
-as I once did, that it comes from Asia Minor, for Asia Minor had its
-own pictographic system, which we see represented in the Hittite
-inscriptions, and an increased knowledge of this system tends to
-dissociate it from the pictographs and syllabaries of Krete and Cyprus.</p>
-
-<p>Wherever it arose, however, it was associated with the Babylonian
-writing material and the Babylonian seal-cylinder. So far as our
-present knowledge goes, Cyprus is more likely than any other part of
-the world to have been the meeting-point of Babylonian culture and the
-nascent civilization of the West. The numerous seal-cylinders which
-characterize the early copper age of the island are native imitations
-of Babylonian seal-cylinders of the epoch of Sargon of Akkad, when the
-boundaries of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span> Babylonian Empire were pushed to the coasts of the
-Mediterranean, if not into Cyprus itself, and the great eastern plain
-of Cyprus was better fitted to provide clay for the tablet than any
-other Mediterranean district with which I am acquainted.</p>
-
-<p>That no written tablets have been found by the excavators in Cyprus
-is not surprising. In an island climate where heavy rains occur the
-unbaked tablet soon becomes hardly distinguishable from the earth in
-which it is embedded. It was almost by accident that even the practised
-eye of Dr. A. J. Evans was first led to notice the clay tablets of
-Knossos.</p>
-
-<p>The Greek term δέλτος, which was borrowed from the language of Canaan,
-is evidence that the tablet was once known to the Greeks. For the
-letters of the Phœnician and Greek alphabet rolls of papyrus or
-leather were needed; the fact that the writing material was a tablet
-and not a roll refers us back to Babylonia. With the introduction
-of the Phœnician letters the word δέλτος necessarily changed its
-meaning, and became synonymous with a wooden board. But it is possible
-that a reminiscence of its original signification is preserved in a
-famous passage of the <i>Iliad</i> (vi. 169), where the later “board”
-has been substituted for the earlier “tablet.” Here we are told how
-Bellerophon carried with him to Lycia “baleful signs”&mdash;which may have
-been the pictographs of Krete or the Hittites, or even cuneiform
-characters&mdash;written upon “a folded board.” The expression would have
-most naturally originated in the folded clay tablet of early Babylonia,
-the inner tablet being enclosed in an envelope on which the address or
-a description of the contents of the document is written.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span></p>
-
-<p>On the literary side, however, this is the utmost contribution that
-we can claim for Babylonia to have made to historical Greece. In the
-sphere of religion it is possible that the anthropomorphism of Greece
-was influenced by the anthropomorphism of Babylonia through Asia
-Minor, where the rock sculptures of Boghaz Keui show how the primitive
-Hittite fetishes had become human deities like those of Chaldæa; in
-the sphere of philosophy Thales and Anaximander clothed in a Greek
-dress the cosmological theories of the Babylonians; and in the domain
-of art the heraldry and composite monsters of Babylonia made their
-way to Europe, while the Ionic artists of Ephesus carved ivories into
-forms so Oriental in character that similar figures found in the palace
-of Sargon have been pronounced to be the work of Phœnicians. But the
-literary culture of historical Greece did not begin until the tide of
-Babylonian influence had already rolled back from Western Asia, when
-the Phœnician alphabet had taken the place of the cuneiform syllabary
-in Syria, and the Hittite populations of Asia Minor had returned to
-their clumsy hieroglyphs.</p>
-
-<p>It is, however, remarkable how very nearly the cuneiform script became
-what the Phœnician alphabet has been called, “the mother of the
-alphabets of the world.” At one time it covered nearly the whole area
-of the civilized globe. A seal-cylinder with a cuneiform inscription in
-an unknown language has been discovered on the hills near Herat;<a id="FNanchor_154" href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a>
-in the west its<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span> use extended as far as Cappadocia, perhaps further.
-Northward it made its home in Armenia; southward it obliged even the
-Egyptian Foreign Office to employ it for correspondence, while military
-scribes wrote in it their memoranda of the Pharaoh’s campaigns. In
-both Mitanni and Van the syllabary was on the high-road to becoming an
-alphabet; in Persia it actually became one.</p>
-
-<p>But this final evolution came too late. A simpler script had already
-entered the field, and won its way in lands where clay was scarce
-and other writing materials more easily procurable. Indeed, it is
-probable that the presence or absence of clay suitable for writing
-purposes had quite as much to do with the spread of the cuneiform
-script as the political events which transformed the map of Western
-Asia. Canaan still continued to write in cuneiform characters after the
-empire of Babylonia had been exchanged for that of Egypt, while the
-use of the script never penetrated far into the limestone regions of
-the Mediterranean. It was probably the geological formation of Europe
-more than anything else which saved us to-day from having to learn the
-latest modification of the cursive writing of the Babylonian plain.</p>
-
-<p>But it had been a potent instrument of civilization in its day, perhaps
-more potent even than the Phœnician alphabet, for its sway lasted
-for thousands of years. It was at once the symbol and the inspiring
-spirit of a culture whose roots go back to the very<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span> beginnings of
-human civilization, and to which we still owe part of our own heritage
-of civilized life. Babylonia was the mother-land of astronomy and
-irrigation; from thence a knowledge of copper seems to have spread
-through Western Asia; it was there that the laws and regulations of
-trade were first formulated, and the earliest legal code, so far as
-we know, was compiled. Babylonian theology and cosmology left their
-impress upon beliefs and views of the world which have passed through
-Judæa to Europe, and the astrology and magic which played so active
-a part in the mental history of the Middle Ages were Babylonian
-creations. It is not a little remarkable that an Etruscan model of the
-liver in bronze (discovered at Piacenza), divided and inscribed for
-the purposes of haruspicy, finds its counterpart and probably also its
-prototype in the clay copy of a liver, similarly divided and inscribed,
-which was found in Babylonia.<a id="FNanchor_155" href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> We are children of our fathers, and
-amongst our spiritual fathers must be reckoned the Babylonians.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span></p>
-
-<h2>CHAPTER VII<br />
-<span class="subhed">CANAAN IN THE CENTURY BEFORE THE EXODUS</span></h2></div>
-
-<p>It is now nearly twenty years ago since the archæological world was
-startled, not to say revolutionized, by the discovery of the cuneiform
-tablets of Tel el-Amarna in Upper Egypt. Nor was it the archæological
-world only which the discovery affected. The historian and the
-theologian have equally had to modify and forsake their old ideas
-and assumptions, and the criticism of the Old Testament writings has
-entered upon a new and altogether unexpected stage. The archæologist,
-the historian and the Biblical critic alike can never again return to
-the point of view which was dominant before 1887, or regard the ancient
-world of the East with the unbelieving eyes of a Grote or a Cornewall
-Lewis. A single archæological discovery has upset mountains of learned
-discussion, of ingenious theory and sceptical demonstration.</p>
-
-<p>At the risk of repeating a well-worn tale, I will describe briefly
-the nature of the discovery. In the ruins of a city and palace which,
-like the palace of Aladdin, rose out of the desert sands into gorgeous
-magnificence for a short thirty years and then perished utterly, some
-300 clay tablets were found, inscribed, not with the hieroglyphics
-of Egypt, but with the cuneiform characters of Babylonia. They were,
-in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span> fact, the contents of the Foreign Office of Amon-hotep IV., the
-“Heretic King” of Egyptian history, who endeavoured to reform the old
-religion of Egypt and to substitute for it a pantheistic monotheism.
-This was about 1400 years before the birth of Christ, and a full
-century before the Israelitish Exodus. The attempt failed in spite of
-the fanatical efforts of its royal patron to force it upon his people,
-and of his introduction of religious persecution for the first time
-into the world. The Eighteenth dynasty, to which he belonged, and which
-had conquered Western Asia, went down in civil and religious war; the
-Asiatic Empire of Egypt was lost, and a new dynasty sat on the throne
-of Thebes.</p>
-
-<p>The archives in the Foreign Office included not only the foreign
-correspondence of Amon-hotep’s own reign, but the foreign
-correspondence also of his father, which he had carried with him from
-Thebes when he founded his new capital at Tel el-Amarna. And the scope
-and character of it are astounding. There are letters from the kings
-of Babylonia and Assyria, of Mesopotamia and the Hittites, of Cilicia
-and Cappadocia, besides letters and communications of all sorts from
-the Egyptian governors and vassal princes in Canaan and Syria. Most of
-the correspondence is in the language of Babylonia; it is only in a few
-rare instances that the cuneiform characters embody the actual language
-of the people from whom the letters were sent. It is difficult to
-imagine anything more subversive of the ideas about the ancient history
-of the East, which were current twenty years ago, than the conclusions
-to be drawn from this correspondence. It proved that, so far as
-literary culture<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span> is concerned, the civilized Oriental world in the
-Mosaic age was quite as civilized as our own. There were schools and
-libraries all over it, in which a foreign language and a complicated
-foreign system of writing formed an essential part of education. It
-proved that this education was widely spread: there are letters from
-Bedâwîn shêkhs as well as from a lady who was much interested in
-politics. It showed that this correspondence was active and regular,
-that those who took part in it wrote to each other on the trivial
-topics of the day, and that the high-roads and postal service were
-alike well organized. We learned that the nations of the Orient were no
-isolated units cut off from one another except when one of them made
-war with the other, but that, on the contrary, their mutual relations
-were as close and intimate as those of modern Europe. The Babylonian
-king in his distant capital on the Euphrates sent to condole with the
-Egyptian Pharaoh on his father’s death like a modern potentate, and was
-every whit as anxious to protect and encourage the trade of his country
-as Mr. Chamberlain. Indeed, the privileges of the merchant and the
-sacredness of his person had long been a matter of international law.</p>
-
-<p>In one respect the advocates of international harmony and arbitration
-were better off in the Mosaic age than they are in the Europe of
-to-day. There was no difficulty about diversities of language and the
-danger of being misunderstood. The language of diplomacy, of education
-and trade was everywhere the same, and was understood, read and written
-by all educated persons. Even the Egyptian lord of Western Asia had to
-swallow his pride and write in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span> the language and script of Babylonia
-when he corresponded with his own subjects in Canaan. Indeed, like
-English officials in Egypt, who are supposed to write to one another on
-official business in French, his own Egyptian envoys and commissioners
-sent their official communications in the foreign tongue. The Oriental
-world in the century before the Exodus thus anticipated the Roman
-Empire.</p>
-
-<p>Canaan was the centre and focus of the correspondence. It was the
-battle-ground and meeting-place of the great powers of the Eastern
-world. It had long been a province of Babylonia, and, like the rest
-of the Babylonian Empire, subject to Babylonian law and permeated
-by Babylonian literary culture. It was during these centuries of
-Babylonian government that it had come to adopt as its own the script
-and language of its rulers; the deities of Babylonia were worshipped
-on the high places of Palestine, and Babylonian legends and traditions
-were taught in its schools.</p>
-
-<p>Out of Canaan had marched the Hyksos who conquered Egypt. The names
-of their kings found on the monuments that have survived to us are
-distinctively Canaanite of the patriarchal period; among them is
-Jacob-el, or Jacob, whom the Alexandrine Jews seem to have identified
-with their own ancestor. While the Hyksos Pharaohs reigned, Egypt
-was but a dependency of Canaan; the source of Hyksos power lay in
-Canaan, and their Egyptian capital was accordingly placed close to the
-Canaanitish frontier.</p>
-
-<p>When, after five generations of warfare, the native princes of Thebes
-succeeded at last in expelling the Hyksos conquerors from the valley
-of the Nile and in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span> founding the Eighteenth dynasty, they perceived
-that their best hope of preventing a second Asiatic conquest lay in
-possessing themselves of the land which was, as it were, the key to
-their own. The Hyksos conquest, in fact, had shown that Canaan was at
-once a link between Asia and Africa, and the open gate which let the
-invader into the fertile fields of Egypt. The war, therefore, that had
-ended by driving the Asiatic out of Egypt was now carried into his own
-home. Campaign after campaign finally crushed Canaanitish resistance,
-and the Egyptian standards were planted on the banks of the Euphrates.
-Palestine and Syria were transformed into Egyptian provinces; in the
-language of the tenth chapter of Genesis, they became the brothers of
-Mizraim.</p>
-
-<p>The Tel el-Amarna letters tell us how the new provinces were organized.
-The most important cities were placed under Egyptian governors, many
-of whom, however, were natives. But they were carefully watched by
-Egyptian commissioners, to whom the control of the military forces was
-entrusted, as well as by special high-commissioners sent from time
-to time by the imperial Government. Local jealousies and rivalries,
-moreover, among the governors prevented union among them against the
-central power, and up to a certain point were not discouraged by the
-Egyptian Foreign Office. The Tel el-Amarna letters offer us a curious
-picture of the extent to which their mutual animosities were carried in
-the days when the Egyptian Empire was growing feeble. All the governors
-protest their devotion to the court, and all like are accused by their
-rivals of intriguing and even fighting against it.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span></p>
-
-<p>Besides the states which were thus directly under Egyptian rule, there
-were also protected states. Here the representative of the old line
-of kings was allowed to retain a titular authority, though in reality
-his power was not greater than that of the governors in other states.
-But, whether governor or protected prince his duty to the imperial
-Government was clearly marked out for him. He had to levy the taxes and
-send a fixed amount of tribute to the Egyptian Treasury, to provide a
-certain number of militia, and to send official reports to the king. He
-had further to see that the troops of the army of occupation were duly
-provided with pay and maintenance.</p>
-
-<p>The army of occupation in the reign of Amon-hotep IV. does not seem to
-have been large. The imperial forces were needed at home to enforce
-the new faith upon the Egyptian people, and to put down the discontent
-that was growing there. We hear, however, of “the household troops,”
-who belonged to the standing army of Egypt and formed the nucleus of
-the permanent garrison. How many of them were native Egyptians it is
-impossible to say; as we hear of Kushites or Ethiopians among them,
-it is probable that the Sudanese were at least as largely employed on
-foreign service as the Egyptians themselves. The Egyptian has never
-been fond of military service, whereas, we all now know, the Sudanese
-is essentially a fighting animal.</p>
-
-<p>Both sides of the Jordan were included in the Egyptian administration.
-One of the Tel el-Amarna letters, for example, is from a governor of
-“the field of Bashan.” It is characteristic of the whole series, and
-shows what the relations were between the army<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span> of occupation and the
-native levies. I cannot do better than quote it in full: “To the king,
-my lord, thus says Artamanya, the governor of the Field of Bashan, thy
-servant: at the feet of the king, my lord, seven times seven do I fall.
-Behold, thou hast written to me to join the household troops, and how
-could I be a dog (of the king) and not go? Behold, I and my soldiers
-and my chariots will join the household troops in whatever place the
-king my lord orders.”</p>
-
-<p>The name of Artamanya is not Semitic; neither is it Egyptian. The fact
-brings us to one of the most interesting and unexpected results of the
-decipherment of the Tel el-Amarna correspondence. And this is that the
-ruling caste in the Palestine of the Mosaic age was largely of Hittite
-origin, or had come from those countries of the north whose population
-was related in blood and language to the Hittites of Asia Minor.</p>
-
-<p>In Northern Mesopotamia was a kingdom which ranked with those of Egypt
-and Babylonia as regarded power and influence. Its native name was
-Mitanni; the Hebrews, like the Egyptians, called it the kingdom of
-Aram Naharaim. It stretched from Assyria to the Orontes, and contended
-with the Hittites of Carchemish for the possession of the fords of
-the Euphrates. Its rulers had descended upon it from the highlands of
-Armenia and the Caucasus, and had reduced the native Aramæan population
-to servitude. There are frequent references in the Tel el-Amarna
-tablets to Mitannian intrigues in Canaan. Mitannian armies had from
-time to time marched against the Canaanitish cities, and although there
-was now a nominal alliance between<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span> Mitanni and Egypt, and the royal
-families of the two countries were united by marriage, the Mitannian
-court never lost an opportunity of sending secret support to the
-disaffected princes of Canaan or of encouraging them in their revolts
-from the Egyptian Government. In many parts of the country the ruling
-family continued to be Mitannian, and accordingly we find more than one
-governor who bears a Mitannian name. Thus one of them, as we see, was
-governor of Bashan, and there was another who had his seat near the Sea
-of Galilee.</p>
-
-<p>Mitannian influence, however, was chiefly confined to the northern part
-of Palestine. It was otherwise with the Hittites, whose marauding bands
-penetrated as far south as the frontiers of Egypt. The important part
-they played in the early history of Canaan and the substantial element
-they must have contributed to the future population of the country has
-but lately been disclosed to us by the advance that has been made in
-the interpretation of the Tel el-Amarna texts. We have at last obtained
-an explanation of the fact that whereas in the older Babylonian period
-Canaan was known as “the land of the Amorites,” it was called by the
-Assyrians “the land of the Hittites.” The Assyrian kings even speak
-of Judah and Moab as “Hittite,” and the town of Ashdod is described
-by Sargon as a “Hittite” state. What this must mean has indeed long
-been recognized by the Assyriologists. When the Assyrians first became
-acquainted with Palestine the Hittites must have been there the
-dominant power. But how and when this came about we have but just begun
-to learn, and it is the story of the Hittite occupation of Canaan, as a
-better knowledge<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span> of the Tel el-Amarna tablets is making possible, that
-I now propose to describe.</p>
-
-<p>The Hittite race was of Cappadocian origin. Professor Ramsay has
-pointed out that the hieroglyphic characters which they used in
-their inscriptions must have been invented on the treeless plateau
-of Central Asia Minor, and that their capital, whose ruins now strew
-the ground at Boghaz Keui, north of the Halys, was the centre towards
-which all the early high-roads of Asia Minor converge. But they
-extended on both sides of the Taurus Mountains, and at an early date
-had planted themselves in Northern Syria. I have lately succeeded in
-deciphering their inscriptions, which have so long baffled our attempts
-to read them, and one result of my decipherment is the discovery of
-an unexpected fact. I find that the name of Hittite was confined to
-that portion of the race which lived eastward and southward of the
-Taurus. In Asia Minor itself, their first cradle and home, they called
-themselves Kas or Kasians; it was the kingdom of Kas over which the
-Hittite lords of Boghaz Keui claimed to rule, and it is still as kings
-of Kas that they are entitled on the monuments of Carchemish, though
-here they also acknowledge the name of Hittite.</p>
-
-<p>The name of Kas is met with in the Tel el-Amarna tablets, where it has
-hitherto been misunderstood. The kings of the Hittites, of Mitanni
-and of Kas are associated together as supporting the enemies of the
-Egyptian Pharaoh or attacking his cities in Syria, Hitherto we have
-supposed that Kas signified Babylonia, though the supposition had but
-little in its favour, and a different name is given to Babylonia in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>
-passages where there is no doubt as to what country is meant. Now,
-however, all becomes clear: in the age of the tablets there were still
-four Hittite kingdoms in the north: Kas in Asia Minor, the Hittites
-proper, east and south of the Taurus, Mitanni in Mesopotamia, and
-Naharaim on the Orontes. Shortly afterwards they were all swallowed
-up in the empire of the “great king” of the Hittites, whose southern
-capital was at Kadesh. Some Kasians had found their way to Jerusalem,
-where the king Ebed-Kheba&mdash;whose name is compounded with that of a
-Mitannian deity&mdash;writes to the Egyptian Government to excuse his
-conduct in regard to them. They had been accused of plundering the
-Pharaoh’s territory and murdering his servants; he assures the court
-that nothing of the sort is true. They are still in his house, where
-it would seem they formed his bodyguard. But, on the other hand,
-there were other Hittites in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem who were
-really enemies to the king and threatened Jerusalem itself. These he
-calls Khabiri, or “Confederates,” a name in which, despite history and
-probability, certain writers have insisted upon seeing the Hebrews
-of the Old Testament. But Dr. Knudtzon’s fresh collation of the
-Tel el-Amarna texts has at last dispelled the mystery. The Khabiri
-turn out to have been bands of Hittite condottieri, who sold their
-military services to the highest bidder and carved out principalities
-for themselves in the south of Canaan. The Egyptian Government found
-them useful in escorting and protecting the trading caravans to Asia
-Minor and the Taurus region, and as long as their leaders professed
-themselves the devoted servants of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span> Pharaoh it was quite willing
-to overlook such little accidents as their capture and sack of a
-Canaanitish town or the murder of a Canaanitish prince.</p>
-
-<p>One of these Hittite leaders, Aita-gama by name, had possessed himself
-of the city of Kadesh on the Orontes, which in the following century
-was to become the capital of a Hittite empire. In a letter to the
-Egyptian court he has the audacity to assert that he was merely
-claiming his patrimony, the whole district having belonged to his
-father. If there is any truth in this it can only mean that his father
-had already led a troop of Hittite raiders into this portion of the
-Egyptian territory.</p>
-
-<p>Along with Aita-gama two other Hittite chieftains had marched,
-Teuwatti, whose name appears in the native texts under the form of
-Tuates, and Arzawaya. Arzawaya means “a man of Arzawa,” the country
-whose language has been revealed to us in one of the Tel el-Amarna
-letters, and which proves to be the same as the Hittite dialect
-found in the cuneiform tablets of Boghaz Keui. We are told that he
-came from a city which was in the neighbourhood of the Karmalas, in
-Southern Cappadocia. Arzawaya helped Teuwatti to conquer Damascus and
-then led his followers further south. Here he acted as a free-lance,
-hiring himself and his mercenaries to the rival Canaanitish princes
-and professing himself to be all the while a faithful servant of the
-Egyptian king. It is amusing to read one of his letters to the Egyptian
-court: “To my lord the king thus writes Arzawaya, of Rukhiza. At the
-feet of my lord I prostrate myself. My lord the king wrote that I
-should join the household troops of the king my lord and his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span> numerous
-officers.” Here follow four words of Hittite which are accompanied by
-the translation: “I am a servant of the king my lord.” Then the letter
-proceeds: “I will join the household troops of the king my lord and
-his officers; and I will send everything after them and march wherever
-there is rebellion against the king my lord. And we will deliver
-his enemies into the hand of the king our lord.” Doubtless Arzawaya
-expected to be well paid for his help.</p>
-
-<p>There is another letter from Arzawaya to the Pharaoh in which he calls
-himself “the dust of his feet and the ground on which he treads.” But
-in this letter he has to explain away the share he took in entering
-the town of Gezer along with Labbawa,<a id="FNanchor_156" href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a> another Hittite leader,
-and there infringing the royal prerogative by summoning a levy of
-the militia. In the eyes of the home Government this was a much
-more serious matter than merely plundering or killing a few of its
-Canaanitish subjects, as it was equivalent to usurping the functions of
-the imperial power.</p>
-
-<p>Labbawa also had to write and ask for forgiveness, and assure the
-Pharaoh that he is his “devoted slave,” who does “not withhold his
-tribute” or disobey the “requests” of the Egyptian commissioners. In
-fact, he concludes his letter with declaring that “if the king should
-write to me: Run a sword of bronze into your heart and die, I would
-not fail to execute the king’s command.” All the same, however, he had
-established himself securely on Mount Shechem, from whence, like Joshua
-in after days, he was able to make raids on the surrounding Canaanitish
-towns.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span> In the north we hear of him at Shunem and Gath-Rimmon, where
-he first appeared upon the scene in the train of the Egyptian army at
-a time when Amon-hotep III. was suppressing an insurrection in that
-part of Palestine. It is probable that he had just arrived with his
-band of condottieri, attracted by the pay and the chance of plunder
-that the Egyptian Pharaoh offered the free-lance. By a curious fatality
-it was also in this same locality that he afterwards met his death at
-the hands of the people of Gina&mdash;the Cana of Galilee, probably, of St.
-John’s Gospel.</p>
-
-<p>Labbawa cast envious eyes on the important city of Megiddo, and its
-governor&mdash;who, by the way, is mentioned in one of the cuneiform
-tablets found three years ago by the Austrian excavators on the
-site of Taanach&mdash;sent piteous appeals for assistance against him to
-the Egyptian Government. The beleaguered governor declared that so
-closely invested was he by the Hittite free-lances that he could not
-venture outside the gates of his town. The peasantry were afraid even
-to bring vegetables into it, and unless help were forthcoming from
-Egypt, Megiddo was doomed. After all, however, Labbawa was not only
-unable to possess himself of the Canaanitish stronghold, but was taken
-prisoner and confined in the very place he had hoped to capture. But
-fortune befriended him. He managed to bribe the governor of Acre, and
-the latter, on the pretext that he was going to send Labbawa by sea to
-Egypt, took him out of prison and set him free.</p>
-
-<p>Labbawa now turned his attention to the south of Palestine&mdash;the future
-territory of Judah. Here he entered into alliance with the king of
-Jerusalem, or, to speak more precisely, was taken into his pay, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>
-the two together waged war on the neighbouring states. One of the
-Egyptian governors complains that they had robbed him of Keilah, and he
-had to wait for Labbawa’s death before he could recover his city.</p>
-
-<p>One of the two letters in the Tel el-Amarna collection which are in
-the Arzawan or Hittite language was written by Labbawa, as we have
-lately learned from Dr. Knudtzon’s revised copy of it. In this he calls
-himself a native of the Hittite district of Uan, near Aleppo, and
-refers to “the Hittite king,” though our knowledge of the language is
-too imperfect to allow us to understand the meaning of the reference.
-The letter is addressed simply “to my lord,” and we do not know,
-therefore, whether it was intended for Hittite or Egyptian eyes. After
-his settlement in Palestine, however, Labbawa adopted the official
-language of the country; his letters to the Pharaoh are in Babylonian,
-and his son bore the characteristically Semitic name of Mut-Baal. The
-fact is an interesting example of the rapid way in which the Hittite
-settlers in Palestine were Semitized. They brought no women with them,
-and their wives accordingly were natives of Canaan.</p>
-
-<p>Labbawa left two sons behind him, who, in spite of their Semitic
-education, followed in their father’s footsteps and continued to
-lead his company of Hittite mercenaries. Mut-Baal, moreover, made
-himself useful to the Government by escorting the trading caravans to
-Cappadocia, a fact which proves that he still maintained relations
-with the country of his origin. The alliance between Ebed-Kheba of
-Jerusalem and his father, however, had come to an end; Ebed-Kheba<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span> now
-had the Hittites of Kas in his pay, and no longer needed the services
-of the sons of Labbawa. They therefore transferred themselves to
-his rivals, together with the sons of Arzawaya, who, like Labbawa,
-was now dead, and Ebed-Kheba soon found himself in difficulties.
-The result was letter after letter from him to the Egyptian court,
-begging for help against his enemies, and declaring that if no help
-came the king’s territory would be lost. These appeals seem to have
-met with no response; the Egyptian Government was by no means assured
-of Ebed-Kheba’s loyalty, and knew that if the territory of Jerusalem
-were to pass into the hands of the Hittite chieftain it would make but
-little difference to the imperial power. The tribute would still be
-paid, the Egyptian commissioner would still be respected, and the new
-rulers of the district would profess themselves the faithful subjects
-of the Pharaoh. There would merely be a change of governors, and
-nothing more. The Hittite mercenaries were formidable only in the petty
-struggles which took place between the rival Canaanitish governors;
-when it came to dealing with the regular army of Egypt they were
-numerically too few to be of account.</p>
-
-<p>Ebed-Kheba calls the followers of Labbawa and Arzawaya “Khabiri.”
-I have long ago pointed out that the word is found elsewhere in
-the Assyrian texts in the sense of “Confederates,” and that its
-identification with the Hebrews of the Old Testament, though
-phonetically possible, is historically impossible. Now that we know the
-nationality of Labbawa and Arzawaya the question is finally settled,
-and we can explain a hitherto puzzling passage in one of Ebed-Kheba’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span>
-letters, in which he says that “when ships were on the sea the arm
-of the mighty king seized Naharaim and Kas, but now the Khabiri have
-seized the cities of the king.” Naharaim lay southward of the gulf of
-Antioch, while Kas extended to the Cilician coast, and they were thus,
-both of them, within reach of a maritime Power; they were, moreover,
-both of them Hittite regions, Naharaim being the district afterwards
-called Khattinâ, “the Hittite land,” by the Assyrians, while Kas was
-the Hittite kingdom of Cappadocia. Ebed-Kheba, therefore, is drawing
-a comparison between the power of “the mighty king” in the days when
-an Egyptian fleet controlled the sea and the present time when Hittite
-marauders are seizing without let or hindrance the king’s cities on the
-very borders of Egypt. Even Lachish and Ashkelon had joined the enemy.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps the most important of the King of Jerusalem’s letters is one
-which has hitherto been misunderstood, partly owing to its being broken
-in half and the relation of the two halves to one another not being
-recognized, partly to the imperfections of the published copy. Now
-that a complete and accurate text of it lies before us, its meaning
-has ceased to be a riddle, and I will therefore give here the first
-translation that has been made of the completed text&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“To the king my lord thus says Ebed-Kheba thy servant: at the feet
-of my lord the king seven times seven I prostrate myself. Behold,
-Malchiel has not separated himself from the sons of Labbawa and the
-sons of Arzawaya so as to claim the king’s land for them. A governor
-who commits such an act, why<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span> has not the king questioned him (about
-it)? Behold, Malchiel and Tagi have committed such an act by seizing
-the city of Rabbah. And now as to Jerusalem, if this land belongs to
-the king, why is it that Gaza has been appointed for the (residence of
-the) king (’s commissioner)? Behold the land of Gath-Carmel is in the
-power of Tagi, and the men of Gath are (his) bodyguard. He is (now) in
-Beth-Sannah. But (nevertheless) we will act. Malchiel wrote to Tagi
-that they should give Labbawa and Mount Shechem to the district of
-the Khabiri, and he took some boys as slaves. They granted all their
-demands to the people of Keilah. But we will rescue Jerusalem. The
-garrison which you sent by Khaya the son of Meri-Ra has been taken
-by Hadad-mikhir and stationed in his house at Gaza. [I have sent
-messengers] to Egypt, [and may] the king [listen to me].... There is
-no garrison of the king [here]. Verily by the life of the king Pa-ur
-has gone down to Egypt; he has left me and is in Gaza. But let the king
-entrust to him a garrison for the defence of the land. All the land of
-the king has revolted. Send Yenkhamu and let him take charge of the
-king’s land.</p>
-
-<p>“(Postscript): To the secretary of the king says Ebed-Kheba your
-servant: [bring] what I say clearly before the king. Kindest regards to
-you! I am your servant.”</p>
-
-<p>The references in this letter are explained in other letters from the
-same correspondent. Malchiel was the native governor of the Hebron
-district, and had married the daughter of Tagi, whose name does not
-sound Semitic. The Hittite mercenaries of Labbawa from Shechem and
-of Arzawaya, who does not seem<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span> to have established himself in any
-special district of the country, were now in the pay of Malchiel,
-while Ebed-Kheba, as we have seen, had secured the services of another
-body of Hittites from Kas. He had been accused at the Egyptian court
-of seeking by their means to make himself independent, and more than
-one of his letters is occupied with defending himself and bringing a
-counter-charge against Malchiel. Malchiel, however, secured the support
-of the royal commissioner, Yenkhamu, who agreed to his employment
-of the Hittite condottieri. With their assistance Keilah had been
-recovered from the hands of Ebed-Kheba, who, at an earlier date,
-had got Labbawa to seize it for him, but after Labbawa’s death the
-tables were turned, and his sons had offered their services to the
-rival party, doubtless for the sake of better pay. It was now that
-Malchiel summoned the militia of Gezer, Gath-Carmel and Keilah, and
-made himself master of Rabbah, a small place north-west of Keilah and
-Hebron, which Ebed-Kheba asserted belonged to <i>his</i> territory.
-The tide was beginning to turn against the King of Jerusalem: his
-enemies were in greater favour at court than he was himself, and they
-had the support of the Hittite bands. It was in vain that he appealed
-to the Egyptian Government for aid and declared that not only had his
-rivals given Mount Shechem to the Hittite free-lances, but that by
-their action against himself they were delivering the whole of Southern
-Palestine into Hittite hands. “The king,” he writes, “no longer has
-any territory, the Khabiri have wasted all the lands of the king. If
-the royal troops come this year, the country will remain my lord the
-king’s, but if no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span> troops come, the territory of the king my lord is
-lost.”</p>
-
-<p>At this point the story breaks off abruptly. The Tel el-Amarna
-correspondence comes to an end and the fate of Jerusalem and the
-surrounding districts is unknown to us. Soon afterwards religious
-troubles at home forced the Egyptian Government to withdraw its troops
-from Canaan altogether, and for awhile the Egyptian empire in Asia
-ceased to exist. It was restored, however, by Seti I. and his son,
-Ramses II, at the beginning of the Nineteenth dynasty, and among the
-cities whose conquest is celebrated by Ramses on the walls of the
-Ramesseum at Thebes is Shalem or Jerusalem. But this second Egyptian
-empire in Asia did not last long, and when the Israelitish Exodus
-took place it was already passing away. When some years later the
-Israelitish invaders planted themselves in Labbawa’s old stronghold
-on Mount Shechem, the Egyptian occupation of Canaan belonged to the
-history of the past.</p>
-
-<p>Like the Saxons in England, however, the Hittite chieftains must have
-founded principalities for themselves in the south of Canaan, as we
-know from the evidence of the Tel el-Amarna tablets and the Egyptian
-monuments that they did in the north. Ezekiel, in fact, tells us that
-the mother of Jerusalem was a Hittite, and the Jebusites, from whom
-Jerusalem took its name in the age of the Israelitish conquest, were
-probably the descendants of the followers of the Hittite Arzawaya.
-They had, moreover, found a Hittite population already settled in
-the country, descendants of older bands who had made their way from
-the highlands of Asia Minor to the frontiers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span> of Egypt in days when
-as yet Abraham was unborn. At the very commencement of the Egyptian
-twelfth dynasty we hear of the Pharaohs destroying “the palaces of the
-Hittites” in Southern Palestine,<a id="FNanchor_157" href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> and archæology has recently shown
-that the painted pottery discovered in the earlier strata of Lachish
-and Gezer by English excavators had its original home in Northern
-Cappadocia and is an enduring evidence of Hittite culture and trade.</p>
-
-<p>The Hittites had been preceded in their occupation of Canaan by the
-Amorites, as we have learnt from the Babylonian inscriptions. But in
-the Tel el-Amarna age the specifically Amoritish territory was in the
-north, eastward of Tyre and Gebal. Here Ebed-Asherah and his son Aziru
-had their seat and from hence they led their forces northwards towards
-Aleppo to resist “the king of the Hittites” on behalf of the Egyptian
-Government, or attacked the Phœnician cities on their own account.
-In the north, in fact, they played much the same part as the Hittite
-mercenaries did in the south, with the additional advantage of being
-able to secure secret assistance when it was needed from Mitanni.
-Between Amorites and Hittites the Canaanites must have had a somewhat
-unhappy time, like the Britons after the departure of the Roman
-legions, who found themselves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span> the alternate prey of Saxons and Scots.
-But we can now understand and appreciate the ethnological notice in the
-Book of Numbers (xiii. 29), which tells us that “the Hittites and the
-Jebusites and the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites
-dwell by the sea and by the coast of Jordan.”</p>
-
-<p>The Amorite princes, however, were more formidable to the Egyptian
-Government than the Hittite chieftains, or else must have played their
-cards a little too openly, for we find Aziru receiving a scolding such
-as the Egyptian court seldom had the courage or energy to give. The
-letter from the Egyptian Foreign Office, which is a long one, is worth
-translating in full&mdash;</p>
-
-<p>“To the governor of the land of the Amorites [thus] says the king your
-lord. The governor of Gebal, thy brother, whom his brother has driven
-from the gate (of the city) has said: ‘Take me and bring me back into
-my city, [and] I will then give you money, [for] I have nothing [of
-value] with me now.’ So he spoke to you.</p>
-
-<p>“Behold, you write to the king your lord saying: I am your servant like
-all the loyal governors who are each in his city. Yet you have acted
-wrongly in taking a governor whom his brother had driven from the gate
-of his city, and being in Sidon you handed him over to the governors
-(there) at your own discretion, as if you did not know that they were
-rebellious.</p>
-
-<p>“If you are really a servant of the king why have you not seen that he
-should go up to the presence of the king your lord instead of thinking,
-‘This governor wrote to me saying, “Take me to thyself and restore me
-to my city”’?</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span></p>
-
-<p>“But if you have acted loyally and nothing that I write is correct, the
-king has devised a lie in saying that nothing which you declare is true.</p>
-
-<p>“But it happens that one has heard that you have made a treaty with the
-(Hittite) prince of Kadesh to deliver food and drink to one another,
-and it is true. Why have you acted thus? Why have you made a treaty
-with a governor with whom another governor is at enmity? For if you act
-with loyalty to him and observe your and his engagements you cannot
-look after (our) interests as you have undertaken to do long ago.
-Whatever be your conduct in the matter you are not on the side of the
-king your lord.</p>
-
-<p>“Now as for these men to whom you want to turn, they are seeking to
-get you into the fire and to burn (you) and all you most love. Whereas
-if you submit yourself to the king your lord, what is there which the
-king cannot do for you? If in anything you love to act wickedly and if
-you lay up wickedness, even thoughts of rebellion, in your heart, then
-you will die by the axe of the king along with all your family. Submit
-therefore to the king your lord, and you shall live, for you know that
-the king has no wish to be angry with all the land of Canaan.</p>
-
-<p>“And since you write: ‘Let the king excuse me this year and I will go
-next year to the court of the king my lord, my son not being with me,’
-the king your lord accordingly will excuse you this year as you have
-asked. Go yourself instead of sending your son, and you shall see the
-king in the sight of whom all the world lives, and do not say: let me
-be excused this year also from going to the court of the king<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span> your
-lord; and do not send your son to the king your lord; he must not go in
-your place.</p>
-
-<p>“And now the king your lord has heard that you wrote to the king
-saying, ‘Let the king my lord permit Khanni the messenger of the king
-to come to me for the second time, and I will deliver the enemies of
-the king into his hand.’ Now he will go to you as you have asked; do
-you therefore deliver them (to him) and do not let a single one of
-them escape. Now the king your lord sends you the names of the king’s
-enemies in this letter by the hand of Khanni the king’s messenger; so
-deliver them to the king your lord and let not a single one of them
-escape, but put fetters of bronze upon their feet. Behold, the men you
-are to send to the king your lord are Sarru with all his sons, Tuia,
-Liya with all his sons, Yisyari with all his sons, (and) the son-in-law
-of Manya with his sons and wives. The treasurer of Khanni is the
-official who will read the dispatch. Dâsirtî, Pâlûwa and Nimmakhî have
-gone [to collect taxes?] into the country of the Amorites.</p>
-
-<p>“And know that the king, the Sun-god in heaven, is well; his soldiers
-and chariots are many; from the upper country to the lower country,
-from the rising of the sun [to] the setting of the sun all is peace.”</p>
-
-<p>We hear again of one of the rebels mentioned in this letter in the
-tablet discovered at Lachish in Palestine by Mr. Bliss. Yisyari is
-there described as inciting the governor of Lachish to revolt and
-promising assistance if he would call out the militia of his city
-against the king. That an Amorite of the north should thus have been
-able to interfere in the politics of a city in the south of Palestine
-is an interesting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span> illustration of what I may call the solidarity of
-Syria and Canaan in the pre-Mosaic period. They had not yet been broken
-up into a series of isolated States; like the Hittites, the Amorites
-still claimed to be a power in the future territory of Judah as well as
-in the neighbourhood of Sidon or Hamath.</p>
-
-<p>It is possible that a well-known but somewhat mysterious personage
-of the Old Testament was one of the Hittite leaders who succeeded
-in carving out a principality for himself: I mean Balaam the son of
-Beor. He is said to have come from the Hittite town of Pethor near
-Carchemish, and besides being a seer and a prophet he was also a
-soldier who fell in the ranks of the Midianites in a war against
-Israel. But Balaam the son of Beor was not only a native of Pethor;
-we hear of him again in the Book of Genesis, and here he appears as
-the first king of Edom, his name heading the list of Edomite kings
-extracted from the state annals of Edom and probably brought to
-Jerusalem when David conquered the country. In the light of what
-we have learnt from the tablets of Tel el-Amarna it is perhaps not
-going too far to suppose that in Balaam we have one of those Hittite
-chieftains who, after playing the part of prophet, made himself leader
-of a band of Hittite free-lances and established a kingdom for himself
-in Edom, finally falling in battle by the side of his Midianite allies.</p>
-
-<p>However this may be, the important place occupied by the Hittites in
-creating the Canaan which the Israelites invaded is now clear. While
-the larger bands of Hittite raiders settled in the north, where they
-prepared the way for the Hittite king himself<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span> with his regular army,
-and where Hittite power became so firmly established that even the
-great Ramses could not dislodge it, smaller companies of condottieri
-made their way to the extreme south of Palestine, hiring their services
-to the rival governors and princes and seizing a town or district
-for themselves when the opportunity offered. So long as the tribute
-was paid, and its subjects were not too troublesome, the Egyptian
-Government looked on with equanimity while the states of Canaan were
-practically ruled by the leaders of foreign mercenaries who transferred
-their services from one paymaster to another with the most perfect
-impartiality.</p>
-
-<p>What is most curious is that the Imperial Government recognized the
-legal position not only of the Hittite or Amorite mercenaries, but
-even of organized bands of Bedâwîn and outlaws. As for the Bedâwîn,
-it had companies of them in its own pay, like the Egyptian Government
-in more recent times, and the governor of Gebal complains that the
-Egyptian commissioner Pa-Hor had sent some of the latter to murder his
-garrison of Serdani or Sardinians, who were themselves mercenaries in
-the Egyptian army. That bodies of outlaws should have been subsidized
-by the native princes with the permission, or at least the connivance,
-of the Egyptian court may seem surprising. But after all it is only
-what we find happening in later times when the king of Gath similarly
-enrolled David and his band of outlaws into his bodyguard without any
-remonstrance on the part of the other Philistine “lords.” Still it is
-startling to find one of the Pharaoh’s governors coolly announcing that
-he and his soldiers and chariots, together with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span> his brothers, his
-“cut-throats” and his Bedâwîn, are ready to join the royal troops, at
-the very time when another governor is piteously begging the great king
-to “save” him “out of the hands of the cut-throats and Bedâwîn.” Here
-is a strange picture of Canaanitish life in the days when as yet the
-Israelite was not in the land.</p>
-
-<p>The fact is, the Canaanites were an unwarlike people. Inland, they
-were agriculturists; on the sea-coast they were traders. And, like
-other trading communities, they were disinclined to fight, preferring
-to entrust the protection of themselves and their property to a
-paid soldiery, while at the same time their wealth made them a
-tempting prize to the assailant. It is true that they maintained a
-native militia, as we have learned from one of the cuneiform tablets
-discovered at Taanach, but it was upon a small scale, and apparently
-so long as the person on the roll could produce the one or two men for
-whom he was responsible he was not himself obliged to serve. It was
-again a case of paying others to fight instead of themselves.</p>
-
-<p>The fighting population of Canaan, in short, were the foreigners, and
-these it was who gradually made themselves its practical masters. The
-leaders of the mercenaries became the rulers of the Canaanite states,
-which thus passed into the hands of a dominant military caste. When
-the Israelites entered the country it was with this military upper
-class that they had principally to deal; where the Canaanite had not
-its protection he trusted for his defence to his iron chariots and the
-strong and lofty walls of his towns. It is instructive to read the
-long list of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span> unconquered cities and districts given by the Hebrew
-historian in the first chapter of the Book of Judges; among them are
-the Jebusites of Jerusalem, while we are told that “the Amorites forced
-the children of Dan into the mountain, for they would not suffer them
-to come down to the valley.”</p>
-
-<p>Canaan, it will probably be thought, was a somewhat insecure country
-in which to live in the days of the Egyptian Empire. There seem to
-have been constant turmoil and confusion, governor attacking governor
-and bribing bands of foreign mercenaries to help him. But the turmoil
-and confusion were mainly on the surface. When a town is taken from
-one governor by another we do not hear of its population or their
-possessions suffering materially; they soon appear upon the scene again
-as prosperous as before. It is merely the governor and his immediate
-surroundings who suffer; the capture of the town was probably an affair
-amicably arranged between the condottieri who were attacking it and
-the condottieri who were its defenders. The Egyptian commissioners go
-up and down the country, hearing complaints and settling disputes,
-and no one ventures even to protest against their decisions, while a
-few Egyptian troops are stationed in places where the Government was
-not quite sure of the fidelity of its subjects. Caravans of merchants
-passed through Canaan going from Egypt to the north, and the traders
-of Babylonia and Asia Minor travelled along its high-roads under the
-escort of Hittite and other chieftains who were subsidized for the
-purpose by the Egyptian court. Even in the days when the Egyptian
-Government was breaking up, the constant fighting among the foreign<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span>
-mercenaries and their employers seems to have affected the mass of the
-population little, if at all.</p>
-
-<p>What happened when the strong hand and controlling power of the
-Egyptian Pharaoh were removed we do not yet know. We must look for
-information to the systematic excavations that are at last being made
-on the sites of the old Canaanitish towns. Already cuneiform tablets
-have been found on them, and though these belong to the Egyptian period
-we may hope that before long others may be discovered of later date.
-We have still to bridge over the age which elapsed between the final
-withdrawal of Egyptian domination and the conquest of the country
-by Philistines and Israelites. When that age begins the script and
-official language of Canaan are still Babylonian; when it closes
-the cuneiform characters have been superseded by the letters of the
-Phœnician alphabet, and the language of the inscriptions engraved in
-them is the language no longer of Babylonia or of Hittite lands, but of
-Canaan itself.</p>
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span></p>
-
-<h2>INDEX</h2>
-</div>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Abercromby, the Hon. J.,
- <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
- <li>Abram,
- <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
- <li>Abû Shahrein. <i>See</i> <a href="#Eridu">Eridu</a></li>
- <li>Achæmenian dynasty,
- <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">inscriptions,
- <a href="#Page_10">10</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">transcripts (second),
- <a href="#Page_26">26</a>,
- <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
- <li>Acre,
- <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
- <li>Adamu, Adam,
- <a href="#Page_68">68</a>,
- <a href="#Page_76">76</a>,
- <a href="#Page_78">78</a>,
- <a href="#Page_80">80</a>,
- <a href="#Page_91">91</a></li>
- <li>Aita-gama,
- <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
- <li>Akkad,
- <a href="#Page_69">69</a>,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a>,
- <a href="#Page_79">79</a>,
- <a href="#Page_87">87</a>,
- <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
- <li>Akkadian,
- <a href="#Page_24">24</a>,
- <a href="#Page_28">28–30</a>,
- <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
- <li>Amiaud,
- <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
- <li>Amon-hotep III.,
- <a href="#Page_149">149</a>,
- <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
- <li>Amon-hotep IV.,
- <a href="#Page_136">136</a>,
- <a href="#Page_188">188</a>,
- <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
- <li>Amorites,
- <a href="#Page_139">139</a>,
- <a href="#Page_141">141</a>,
- <a href="#Page_142">142</a>,
- <a href="#Page_147">147</a>,
- <a href="#Page_179">179</a>,
- <a href="#Page_206">206</a>,
- <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">land of,
- <a href="#Page_139">139</a>,
- <a href="#Page_141">141</a>,
- <a href="#Page_143">143</a>,
- <a href="#Page_179">179</a>,
- <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
- <li id="Amraphel">Amraphel (Khammu-rabi),
- <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
- <li>Animals, domesticated,
- <a href="#Page_83">83</a>,
- <a href="#Page_99">99</a></li>
- <li>Anquetil-Duperron,
- <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
- <li>Anupum (Anubis),
- <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
- <li>Ape in Babylonia,
- <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
- <li>Apes of Thoth,
- <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
- <li>Arabia, Southern,
- <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
- <li>Archæological <i>versus</i> literary evidence,
- <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
- <li>Archæology, science of,
- <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, etc.</li>
- <li>Arioch (Eri-Aku),
- <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
- <li>Armenia,
- <a href="#Page_31">31</a>,
- <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, etc.</li>
- <li>Armenian and Sumerian,
- <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
- <li>Armenians, modern,
- <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
- <li>Aryan language, the,
- <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
- <li>Arzawa,
- <a href="#Page_34">34</a>,
- <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">language of,
- <a href="#Page_176">176</a>,
- <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
- <li>Arzawan letters,
- <a href="#Page_vi">vi.</a>,
- <a href="#Page_175">175</a>,
- <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
- <li>Arzawaya,
- <a href="#Page_178">178</a>,
- <a href="#Page_197">197</a>,
- <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
- <a href="#Page_202">202</a>,
- <a href="#Page_203">203</a>,
- <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
- <li>Asari of Eridu,
- <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
- <li>Asherah,
- <a href="#Page_150">150</a>,
- <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
- <li>Ashtoreth (Istar),
- <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
- <li>Asia Minor,
- <a href="#Page_61">61</a>,
- <a href="#Page_62">62</a>,
- <a href="#Page_160">160</a> <i>et seq.</i>,
- <a href="#Page_173">173</a>,
- <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">gold of,
- <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">bronze in,
- <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
- <li>Askabad, excavations at,
- <a href="#Page_54">54</a>,
- <a href="#Page_61">61</a>,
- <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
- <li>Ass, domesticated,
- <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
- <li>Assur (Qal’at Shirqât),
- <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
- <li>Assur, the god,
- <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
- <li>Assur-bani-pal,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
- <li>Assur-natsir-pal,
- <a href="#Page_33">33</a>,
- <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
- <li>Assur-yuballidh,
- <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
- <li>Assyria, the sword in,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
- <li>Assyrian culture,
- <a href="#Page_113">113</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">grammar,
- <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">kings,
- <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Semitic,
- <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">syllabary,
- <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">types,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
- <li>Asur,
- <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Babylonia (and Egypt),
- <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, etc.;</li>
- <li class="i1">Canaanite dynasty in,
- <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">copper age in,
- <a href="#Page_55">55</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">no neolithic age in,
- <a href="#Page_45">45</a>,
- <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">picture-writing of,
- <a href="#Page_57">57</a>,
- <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
- <li>Babylonian anthropomorphism,
- <a href="#Page_94">94</a>,
- <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">chronology,
- <a href="#Page_114">114</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">civilization,
- <a href="#Page_75">75</a>,
- <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">irrigation,
- <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">priesthood,
- <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">script,
- <a href="#Page_17">17</a>,
- <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">seal-cylinder,
- <a href="#Page_111">111</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">trade,
- <a href="#Page_92">92</a></li>
- <li>Babylonians a mixed people,
- <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
- <li>Balaam,
- <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
- <li>Barley, origin of,
- <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
- <li>Bashan,
- <a href="#Page_192">192</a>,
- <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
- <li>Behistun,
- <a href="#Page_15">15</a>,
- <a href="#Page_16">16</a>,
- <a href="#Page_20">20</a>,
- <a href="#Page_22">22</a>,
- <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
- <li>Bel,
- <a href="#Page_95">95</a>,
- <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
- <li>Belck,
- <a href="#Page_33">33</a>,
- <a href="#Page_163">163</a>,
- <a href="#Page_166">166</a>,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a>,
- <a href="#Page_174">174</a></li>
- <li>Bellerophon,
- <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
- <li>Bes,
- <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
- <li>Beth-el,
- <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
- <li>Bezold,
- <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
- <li>Black Obelisk, the,
- <a href="#Page_20">20</a>,
- <a href="#Page_21">21</a>,
- <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
- <li>Bliss, Mr.,
- <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
- <li class="hangingindent">Boghaz Keui,
- <a href="#Page_vi">vi.</a>,
- <a href="#Page_34">34</a>,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a>,
- <a href="#Page_174">174</a>,
- <a href="#Page_175">175</a>,
- <a href="#Page_178">178</a>,
- <a href="#Page_184">184</a>,
- <a href="#Page_195">195</a>,
- <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
- <li>Borsippa,
- <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
- <li>Botta,
- <a href="#Page_18">18</a></li>
- <li>Boz Eyuk, pottery of,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
- <li>Brick, use of,
- <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
- <li>British Museum, how it excavates,
- <a href="#Page_39">39</a>,
- <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
- <li>Bronze,
- <a href="#Page_56">56</a>,
- <a href="#Page_59">59</a>,
- <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">scimitars,
- <a href="#Page_57">57</a>,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">earliest use in Egypt,
- <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">in Krete,
- <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">in the Caucasus,
- <a href="#Page_60">60</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">origin of, in Britain,
- <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
- <li>Bronze age in Europe,
- <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
- <li>Burnouf,
- <a href="#Page_13">13</a>,
- <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Calah,
- <a href="#Page_18">18</a>. <i>See</i> <a href="#Nimrud">Nimrûd</a></li>
- <li>Canaan,
- <a href="#Page_126">126</a>,
- <a href="#Page_137">137</a>,
- <a href="#Page_190">190</a>,
- <a href="#Page_213">213</a> (<i>see</i> <a href="#Palestine">Palestine</a>);</li>
- <li class="i1">and Egypt,
- <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">before the Exodus,
- <a href="#Page_187">187</a> <i>et seq.</i>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Hittite pottery in,
- <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">neolithic age in,
- <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
- <li>Canaanite civilization,
- <a href="#Page_150">150</a> <i>et seq.</i>;</li>
- <li class="i1">dynasty in Babylonia,
- <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">deities,
- <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">language,
- <a href="#Page_35">35</a>,
- <a href="#Page_89">89</a>,
- <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">luxury,
- <a href="#Page_156">156</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">postal service,
- <a href="#Page_143">143</a>,
- <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">pottery,
- <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">sacrifice of children,
- <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
- <li>Cappadocia, Assyrians in,
- <a href="#Page_169">169</a></li>
- <li>Cappadocian tablets,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
- <li>Carchemish,
- <a href="#Page_40">40</a>,
- <a href="#Page_172">172</a>,
- <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
- <li>Careri,
- <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
- <li>Chaldæa, port of,
- <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
- <li>Chaldæans,
- <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
- <li>Chantre,
- <a href="#Page_47">47</a>,
- <a href="#Page_53">53</a>,
- <a href="#Page_170">170</a>,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a>,
- <a href="#Page_174">174</a>,
- <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
- <li>Chardin, Sir J.,
- <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
- <li>Chedor-laomer,
- <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
- <li>Cilicia,
- <a href="#Page_173">173</a>,
- <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
- <li>Clay as writing material,
- <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
- <li>Comana,
- <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
- <li>Cones, terra-cotta,
- <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
- <li>Copper, use of,
- <a href="#Page_51">51</a>,
- <a href="#Page_54">54</a>,
- <a href="#Page_55">55</a>,
- <a href="#Page_58">58</a>,
- <a href="#Page_59">59</a>,
- <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">mines,
- <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
- <li>Copper in Sumerian,
- <a href="#Page_58">58</a>,
- <a href="#Page_59">59</a></li>
- <li>Cossæeans. <i>See</i> <a href="#Kossaeans">Kossæans</a></li>
- <li>Crete. <i>See</i> <a href="#Krete">Krete</a></li>
- <li>Cros, Captain,
- <a href="#Page_48">48</a>,
- <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
- <li>Cubit, Babylonian,
- <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
- <li>Cuneiform a cursive script,
- <a href="#Page_77">77</a>,
- <a href="#Page_84">84</a>,
- <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">used by Egypt,
- <a href="#Page_126">126</a>,
- <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
- <li>Cypriotic syllabary,
- <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
- <li>Cyprus,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a>,
- <a href="#Page_140">140</a>,
- <a href="#Page_182">182</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">seal-cylinders in,
- <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Damascus,
- <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
- <li>Darius I.,
- <a href="#Page_9">9</a>,
- <a href="#Page_12">12</a>,
- <a href="#Page_16">16</a>,
- <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
- <li>Darius, how pronounced,
- <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
- <li>Deecke,
- <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
- <li>Deification of king,
- <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
- <li>Delitzsch, F.,
- <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
- <li>Determinatives,
- <a href="#Page_57">57</a>,
- <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
- <li>Dieulafoy,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
- <li>Dirk,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">in Danube valley,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">characterizes bronze age,
- <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
- <li>Domestication of animals,
- <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
- <li>Dwarfs, sacred,
- <a href="#Page_127">127</a>,
- <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Ea or Oannes,
- <a href="#Page_75">75</a>,
- <a href="#Page_79">79</a>,
- <a href="#Page_81">81</a>,
- <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
- <li class="hangingindent">Ebed-Kheba, King of Jerusalem,
- <a href="#Page_196">196</a>,
- <a href="#Page_200">200</a>,
- <a href="#Page_201">201</a>,
- <a href="#Page_202">202</a>,
- <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
- <li>Eden,
- <a href="#Page_78">78</a>,
- <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
- <li>Edin, the “Plain,”
- <a href="#Page_78">78</a>,
- <a href="#Page_79">79</a>,
- <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
- <li>Egypt,
- <a href="#Page_47">47</a>,
- <a href="#Page_54">54</a>,
- <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Asiatic influence on,
- <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">excavations in,
- <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">and Babylonia,
- <a href="#Page_101">101</a>,
- <a href="#Page_107">107</a>,
- <a href="#Page_110">110</a>,
- <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
- <li>Egyptian irrigation,
- <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">chronology,
- <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">hieroglyphs,
- <a href="#Page_104">104</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">language Semitic,
- <a href="#Page_107">107</a>,
- <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">letter of an,
- <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">neolithic culture,
- <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">rule in Canaan,
- <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">seal-cylinders,
- <a href="#Page_112">112</a>,
- <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
- <li>Egyptians, dynastic,
- <a href="#Page_110">110</a>,
- <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
- <li>Elam,
- <a href="#Page_26">26</a>,
- <a href="#Page_46">46</a>,
- <a href="#Page_71">71</a>,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a>,
- <a href="#Page_144">144</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">copper age in,
- <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
- <li>Elamite pottery,
- <a href="#Page_47">47</a>,
- <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">dialects,
- <a href="#Page_71">71</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">race,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
- <li>El-Hibba,
- <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
- <li>El-Kab, sculpture at,
- <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
- <li>Elwend, inscription of,
- <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
- <li>Erech,
- <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
- <li>Eri-aku (Arioch),
- <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
- <li id="Eridu">Eridu,
- <a href="#Page_76">76</a>,
- <a href="#Page_78">78</a>,
- <a href="#Page_79">79</a>,
- <a href="#Page_81">81</a>,
- <a href="#Page_82">82</a>,
- <a href="#Page_85">85</a>,
- <a href="#Page_92">92</a>,
- <a href="#Page_118">118</a>,
- <a href="#Page_120">120</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">excavations at,
- <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
- <li>Erman,
- <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
- <li>Etruscan model of liver,
- <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
- <li>Euphrates,
- <a href="#Page_81">81</a>,
- <a href="#Page_102">102</a>,
- <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
- <li>Evans, A. J.,
- <a href="#Page_141">141</a>,
- <a href="#Page_159">159</a>,
- <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Fibula, introduction of,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a>,
- <a href="#Page_66">66</a></li>
- <li>Figurines in Elam,
- <a href="#Page_52">52</a>,
- <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">at Kara Eyuk,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
- <li>Flower, Samuel,
- <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Garstang,
- <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
- <li class="hangingindent">Gezer,
- <a href="#Page_57">57</a>,
- <a href="#Page_60">60</a>,
- <a href="#Page_63">63</a>,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a>,
- <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, etc.,
- <a href="#Page_154">154</a>,
- <a href="#Page_158">158</a>,
- <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
- <a href="#Page_204">204</a>,
- <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">graves at,
- <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
- <li>Gladstone, Dr., analysis of metals,
- <a href="#Page_60">60</a>,
- <a href="#Page_61">61</a>,
- <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
- <li>Gold, word for,
- <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
- <li>Gordium, pottery of,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
- <li>Grotefend,
- <a href="#Page_10">10–13</a>,
- <a href="#Page_17">17</a>,
- <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
- <li>Gudea,
- <a href="#Page_53">53</a>,
- <a href="#Page_59">59</a>,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a>,
- <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
- <li>Guyard, Stanislas,
- <a href="#Page_33">33</a>,
- <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Hadad-nirari I.,
- <a href="#Page_57">57</a>,
- <a href="#Page_157">157</a>,
- <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
- <li>Halévy,
- <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
- <li>Hall, H. R.,
- <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
- <li>Hamadan, inscription of,
- <a href="#Page_15">15</a></li>
- <li>Hathor identified with Istar,
- <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
- <li>Haupt,
- <a href="#Page_29">29</a></li>
- <li>Haynes,
- <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
- <li>Hazael,
- <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
- <li>Hebrew,
- <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
- <li>Hebron,
- <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
- <li>Heeren,
- <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
- <li>Heraldic position in art,
- <a href="#Page_117">117</a>,
- <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
- <li>Herat, seal-cylinder from,
- <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
- <li>Herbert, Thomas,
- <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
- <li>Herodotus,
- <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
- <li>Heuzey,
- <a href="#Page_40">40</a>,
- <a href="#Page_53">53</a>,
- <a href="#Page_117">117</a>,
- <a href="#Page_121">121</a>,
- <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
- <li>Hezekiah,
- <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
- <li>Hierakonpolis,
- <a href="#Page_62">62</a>,
- <a href="#Page_115">115</a>,
- <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
- <li>Hilprecht,
- <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
- <li>Hincks,
- <a href="#Page_17">17</a>,
- <a href="#Page_19">19</a>,
- <a href="#Page_21">21</a>,
- <a href="#Page_22">22</a>,
- <a href="#Page_23">23</a>,
- <a href="#Page_25">25</a>,
- <a href="#Page_31">31</a>,
- <a href="#Page_161">161</a>,
- <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
- <li>Hittite,
- <a href="#Page_34">34</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">art,
- <a href="#Page_180">180</a> <i>et seq.</i>;</li>
- <li class="i1">chiefs,
- <a href="#Page_197">197</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">dirk,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">inscriptions,
- <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">kings,
- <a href="#Page_vi">vi.</a>,
- <a href="#Page_175">175</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">language,
- <a href="#Page_34">34</a>,
- <a href="#Page_174">174</a>,
- <a href="#Page_176">176</a>,
- <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">mercenaries,
- <a href="#Page_177">177</a>,
- <a href="#Page_193">193</a>,
- <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, etc.;</li>
- <li class="i1">pottery,
- <a href="#Page_vi">vi.</a>,
- <a href="#Page_63">63</a>,
- <a href="#Page_149">149</a>,
- <a href="#Page_178">178</a>,
- <a href="#Page_179">179</a>,
- <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
- <li>Hittites,
- <a href="#Page_169">169</a>,
- <a href="#Page_170">170</a>,
- <a href="#Page_173">173</a>,
- <a href="#Page_174">174</a>,
- <a href="#Page_179">179</a>,
- <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, etc.,
- <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
- <li>Hommel,
- <a href="#Page_105">105</a>,
- <a href="#Page_106">106</a>,
- <a href="#Page_116">116</a>,
- <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
- <li>Horus, followers of,
- <a href="#Page_61">61</a>,
- <a href="#Page_110">110</a>,
- <a href="#Page_123">123</a>,
- <a href="#Page_124">124</a></li>
- <li>Hut-urns,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
- <li>Hyksos,
- <a href="#Page_52">52</a>,
- <a href="#Page_145">145</a>,
- <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
- <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">introduce bronze,
- <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">axe-heads,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>In-Susinak,
- <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
- <li>Iron, name of,
- <a href="#Page_58">58</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">in Armenia,
- <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">in Egypt,
- <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
- <li>Isaac,
- <a href="#Page_154">154</a></li>
- <li>Israelites, their advent in Canaan,
- <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
- <li>Istar,
- <a href="#Page_52">52</a>,
- <a href="#Page_128">128</a>,
- <a href="#Page_129">129</a>,
- <a href="#Page_153">153</a></li>
- <li>Ivories of Ephesus,
- <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li id="Jacob-el">Jacob-el (<i>see</i> <a href="#Ya_qub-el">Ya’qub-el</a>),
- <a href="#Page_145">145</a>,
- <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
- <li>Jebusites,
- <a href="#Page_205">205</a>,
- <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
- <li>Jehu,
- <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
- <li>Jensen,
- <a href="#Page_34">34</a>,
- <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
- <li>Jéquier,
- <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
- <li>Jerusalem,
- <a href="#Page_21">21</a>,
- <a href="#Page_178">178</a>,
- <a href="#Page_201">201</a>,
- <a href="#Page_205">205</a>,
- <a href="#Page_210">210</a>,
- <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">king of,
- <a href="#Page_196">196</a>,
- <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, etc.,
- <a href="#Page_202">202</a>,
- <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
- <li>Jones, F.,
- <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Kadish,
- <a href="#Page_197">197</a>,
- <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
- <li>Kara Eyuk,
- <a href="#Page_47">47</a>,
- <a href="#Page_48">48</a>,
- <a href="#Page_53">53</a>,
- <a href="#Page_166">166</a>,
- <a href="#Page_169">169</a>,
- <a href="#Page_170">170</a>,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a>,
- <a href="#Page_173">173</a>,
- <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
- <li>Karnak,
- <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
- <li>Kas,
- <a href="#Page_195">195</a>,
- <a href="#Page_201">201</a>,
- <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
- <li>Kassites,
- <a href="#Page_89">89</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">dynasty of,
- <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
- <li>Khabiri,
- <a href="#Page_196">196</a>,
- <a href="#Page_201">201</a>,
- <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
- <li>Khaldis, Khaldian,
- <a href="#Page_164">164</a>,
- <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
- <li class="hangingindent">Khammu-rabi (<i>see</i> <a href="#Amraphel">Amraphel</a>),
- <a href="#Page_81">81</a>,
- <a href="#Page_127">127</a>,
- <a href="#Page_143">143</a>,
- <a href="#Page_152">152</a>,
- <a href="#Page_157">157</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">code of laws of,
- <a href="#Page_153">153</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">dynasty of,
- <a href="#Page_155">155</a>,
- <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
- <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">letters of,
- <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
- <li>Khattinâ (Hittites),
- <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
- <li>Khorsabad,
- <a href="#Page_18">18</a>,
- <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
- <li>King, L. W.,
- <a href="#Page_40">40</a></li>
- <li>Knossus, clay tablets at,
- <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
- <li>Knudtzon,
- <a href="#Page_174">174</a>,
- <a href="#Page_196">196</a>,
- <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
- <li id="Kossaeans">Kossæeans (Kassites),
- <a href="#Page_35">35</a>,
- <a href="#Page_144">144</a></li>
- <li>Kretan script,
- <a href="#Page_141">141</a>,
- <a href="#Page_159">159</a>,
- <a href="#Page_181">181</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">pottery,
- <a href="#Page_178">178</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">monsters in art,
- <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
- <li id="Krete">Krete,
- <a href="#Page_141">141</a>,
- <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
- <li>Kûyunjik,
- <a href="#Page_18">18</a>,
- <a href="#Page_131">131</a>. <i>See</i> <a href="#Nineveh">Nineveh</a>.</li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Labbawa, Labbaya,
- <a href="#Page_174">174</a>,
- <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
- <a href="#Page_199">199</a>,
- <a href="#Page_201">201</a>,
- <a href="#Page_202">202</a>,
- <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
- <li id="Lachish">Lachish,
- <a href="#Page_146">146</a>,
- <a href="#Page_202">202</a>,
- <a href="#Page_209">209</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">excavations at,
- <a href="#Page_145">145</a>,
- <a href="#Page_149">149</a>,
- <a href="#Page_158">158</a>,
- <a href="#Page_206">206</a></li>
- <li>Lagas,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a>,
- <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
- <li>Language and race,
- <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
- <li>Lassen,
- <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
- <li>Layard,
- <a href="#Page_18">18</a>,
- <a href="#Page_23">23</a>,
- <a href="#Page_32">32</a>,
- <a href="#Page_39">39</a>,
- <a href="#Page_131">131</a>,
- <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
- <li>Lebanon,
- <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
- <li>Legrain,
- <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
- <li>Lehmann,
- <a href="#Page_33">33</a>,
- <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
- <li>Lenormant, Fr.,
- <a href="#Page_28">28</a>,
- <a href="#Page_162">162</a>,
- <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
- <li>Libraries, Babylonian,
- <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
- <li>Lichtenberg, von,
- <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
- <li>Liver, bronze,
- <a href="#Page_186">186</a></li>
- <li>Loftus,
- <a href="#Page_26">26</a>,
- <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
- <li>Longpérier, de,
- <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Macalister,
- <a href="#Page_57">57</a>,
- <a href="#Page_63">63</a>,
- <a href="#Page_146">146</a>,
- <a href="#Page_147">147</a>,
- <a href="#Page_151">151</a>,
- <a href="#Page_154">154</a>,
- <a href="#Page_155">155</a></li>
- <li>Mace-heads,
- <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
- <li>Magan,
- <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
- <li>Mal-Amîr,
- <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
- <li>Map of world, Babylonian,
- <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
- <li>Maspero,
- <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
- <li>Megiddo,
- <a href="#Page_148">148</a>,
- <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
- <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
- <li>Merodach-baladan,
- <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
- <li>Merodach-nadin-akhi,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
- <li>Messerschmidt,
- <a href="#Page_28">28</a>,
- <a href="#Page_34">34</a>,
- <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
- <li>Mitanni,
- <a href="#Page_33">33</a>,
- <a href="#Page_34">34</a>,
- <a href="#Page_167">167</a>,
- <a href="#Page_193">193</a>,
- <a href="#Page_196">196</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">language of,
- <a href="#Page_168">168</a></li>
- <li>Montellius,
- <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
- <li>Morgan, H. de,
- <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
- <li>Morgan, J. de,
- <a href="#Page_27">27</a>,
- <a href="#Page_33">33</a>,
- <a href="#Page_46">46</a>,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a>,
- <a href="#Page_74">74</a>,
- <a href="#Page_80">80</a>,
- <a href="#Page_82">82</a>,
- <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
- <li>Moschians,
- <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
- <li>Münter, Bishop,
- <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
- <li>Muqayyar (<i>see</i> <a href="#Ur">Ur</a>),
- <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
- <li>Mussian, excavations at,
- <a href="#Page_50">50</a>,
- <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
- <li>Mykenæ,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
- <li>Mykenæan pottery,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
- <li>Myres, J. L.,
- <a href="#Page_63">63</a>,
- <a href="#Page_178">178</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Naharaim (Mitanni),
- <a href="#Page_196">196</a>,
- <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
- <li>Naram-Sin,
- <a href="#Page_56">56</a>,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a>,
- <a href="#Page_88">88</a>,
- <a href="#Page_140">140</a>,
- <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
- <li>Nar-Buzau, palette of,
- <a href="#Page_117">117</a>,
- <a href="#Page_121">121</a>,
- <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
- <li>Nar-Mer,
- <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
- <li>Nebuchadrezzar,
- <a href="#Page_17">17</a>,
- <a href="#Page_21">21</a>,
- <a href="#Page_45">45</a></li>
- <li>Neolithic age not in Babylonia,
- <a href="#Page_48">48</a>,
- <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
- <li>Neo-Susian,
- <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
- <li>Niebuhr, Carsten,
- <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
- <li>Niffer (Nippur), excavations at,
- <a href="#Page_40">40</a>,
- <a href="#Page_56">56</a>,
- <a href="#Page_76">76</a>,
- <a href="#Page_77">77</a>,
- <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
- <li id="Nimrud">Nimrûd,
- <a href="#Page_18">18</a>,
- <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
- <li id="Nineveh">Nineveh, excavations at,
- <a href="#Page_18">18</a>,
- <a href="#Page_57">57</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">library of,
- <a href="#Page_23">23</a>,
- <a href="#Page_24">24</a>,
- <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
- <li>Niobê of Mount Sipylus,
- <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
- <li>Norris, Edwin,
- <a href="#Page_16">16</a>,
- <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
- <li>Nu-gidda,
- <a href="#Page_128">128</a>,
- <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Oannes,
- <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
- <li>Obelisk, the Black,
- <a href="#Page_20">20</a>,
- <a href="#Page_21">21</a>,
- <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
- <li>Obsidian,
- <a href="#Page_51">51</a>,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
- <li>Oppert, Jules,
- <a href="#Page_24">24</a>,
- <a href="#Page_25">25</a>,
- <a href="#Page_26">26</a>,
- <a href="#Page_27">27</a>,
- <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
- <li>Osiris,
- <a href="#Page_119">119</a>,
- <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li id="Palestine">Palestine and Babylonia,
- <a href="#Page_135">135</a> <i>et seq.</i>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Exploration Fund,
- <a href="#Page_135">135</a>,
- <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Hittites in,
- <a href="#Page_193">193</a>,
- <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
- <li>Palette of Nar-Buzau,
- <a href="#Page_121">121</a>,
- <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
- <li>Papyrus,
- <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
- <li>Pegasus,
- <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
- <li>Pehlevi inscriptions,
- <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
- <li>Pepi, statue of,
- <a href="#Page_62">62</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Pyramid texts of,
- <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
- <li>Persian Gulf,
- <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">land increases at head of,
- <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
- <li>Peters, Dr.,
- <a href="#Page_56">56</a></li>
- <li class="hangingindent">Petrie, Flinders,
- <a href="#Page_52">52</a>,
- <a href="#Page_60">60</a>,
- <a href="#Page_61">61</a>,
- <a href="#Page_62">62</a>,
- <a href="#Page_117">117</a>,
- <a href="#Page_121">121</a>,
- <a href="#Page_156">156</a>,
- <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
- <li>Philology, value of,
- <a href="#Page_43">43</a>,
- <a href="#Page_44">44</a></li>
- <li>Phœnician alphabet,
- <a href="#Page_159">159</a>,
- <a href="#Page_183">183</a>,
- <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
- <li>Picture-writing, Babylonian,
- <a href="#Page_75">75</a>,
- <a href="#Page_82">82</a>,
- <a href="#Page_105">105</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">analysed,
- <a href="#Page_98">98–100</a></li>
- <li>Pietro della Valle,
- <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
- <li>Pinches, Dr.,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a>,
- <a href="#Page_74">74</a>,
- <a href="#Page_144">144</a>,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
- <li>Polyphony,
- <a href="#Page_22">22</a></li>
- <li>Postal service in Babylonia,
- <a href="#Page_143">143</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">in Canaan,
- <a href="#Page_143">143</a>,
- <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
- <li>Pottery, importance of,
- <a href="#Page_36">36</a> <i>et seq.</i>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Babylonian,
- <a href="#Page_39">39</a>,
- <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Elamite,
- <a href="#Page_47">47</a>,
- <a href="#Page_48">48</a>,
- <a href="#Page_54">54</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Hittite,
- <a href="#Page_63">63</a>,
- <a href="#Page_149">149</a>,
- <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Kretan,
- <a href="#Page_178">178</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Mykenæan,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">South Canaanite,
- <a href="#Page_63">63</a>,
- <a href="#Page_149">149</a>,
- <a href="#Page_178">178</a>,
- <a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Susian,
- <a href="#Page_47">47</a>,
- <a href="#Page_51">51</a>,
- <a href="#Page_53">53</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Vannic,
- <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">black with incised lines,
- <a href="#Page_52">52</a>,
- <a href="#Page_53">53</a>,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
- <li>Ptah, Semitic origin of,
- <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
- <li>Pumpelly, Professor,
- <a href="#Page_54">54</a>,
- <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
- <li>Pyramid texts,
- <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Qal’at Shirqât (Assur),
- <a href="#Page_41">41</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Ramsay, Sir W. M.,
- <a href="#Page_174">174</a>,
- <a href="#Page_195">195</a></li>
- <li>Ramses II., treaty of,
- <a href="#Page_vi">vi.</a></li>
- <li>Rask,
- <a href="#Page_13">13</a>,
- <a href="#Page_14">14</a></li>
- <li>Rassam, Hormuzd,
- <a href="#Page_23">23</a>,
- <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
- <li>Rawlinson, Sir H. C.,
- <a href="#Page_15">15</a>,
- <a href="#Page_16">16</a>,
- <a href="#Page_20">20</a>,
- <a href="#Page_21">21</a>,
- <a href="#Page_22">22</a>,
- <a href="#Page_24">24</a>,
- <a href="#Page_26">26</a>,
- <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
- <li>Razor, use of,
- <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
- <li>Reisner,
- <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
- <li>Resurrection, the Babylonian,
- <a href="#Page_120">120</a></li>
- <li>Rhind,
- <a href="#Page_41">41</a>,
- <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
- <li>Rich,
- <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
- <li>Royal Society,
- <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Sacred trees of Egypt,
- <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
- <li>Sacy, de,
- <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
- <li>Saint-Martin,
- <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
- <li>Samsu-ditana,
- <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
- <li>Saqia, the,
- <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
- <li>Sardinians,
- <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
- <li class="hangingindent">Sargon of Akkad,
- <a href="#Page_19">19</a>,
- <a href="#Page_49">49</a>,
- <a href="#Page_56">56</a>,
- <a href="#Page_59">59</a>,
- <a href="#Page_87">87</a>,
- <a href="#Page_88">88</a>,
- <a href="#Page_132">132</a>,
- <a href="#Page_139">139</a>,
- <a href="#Page_140">140</a>,
- <a href="#Page_155">155</a>,
- <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
- <li>Sarzec, M. de,
- <a href="#Page_40">40</a>,
- <a href="#Page_121">121</a></li>
- <li>Saulcy, de,
- <a href="#Page_19">19</a>,
- <a href="#Page_20">20</a>,
- <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
- <li>Scheil,
- <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
- <li>Schliemann,
- <a href="#Page_54">54</a>,
- <a href="#Page_60">60</a>,
- <a href="#Page_61">61</a>,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a>,
- <a href="#Page_166">166</a>,
- <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
- <li>Schools, Babylonian,
- <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
- <li>Schulz,
- <a href="#Page_31">31</a>,
- <a href="#Page_32">32</a>,
- <a href="#Page_160">160</a>,
- <a href="#Page_161">161</a></li>
- <li>Schweinfurth,
- <a href="#Page_108">108</a>,
- <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
- <li>Scimitar, Semitic invention,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a>,
- <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">of Hadad-nirari,
- <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
- <li class="hangingindent">Seal-cylinder,
- <a href="#Page_111">111</a>,
- <a href="#Page_112">112</a>,
- <a href="#Page_114">114</a>,
- <a href="#Page_117">117</a>,
- <a href="#Page_118">118</a>,
- <a href="#Page_140">140</a>,
- <a href="#Page_152">152</a>,
- <a href="#Page_180">180</a>,
- <a href="#Page_181">181</a>,
- <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">dwarfs on,
- <a href="#Page_128">128</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">from Herat,
- <a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">in Cyprus,
- <a href="#Page_140">140</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">in Troy,
- <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
- <li>Sellin,
- <a href="#Page_157">157</a></li>
- <li>Semite culture, origin of,
- <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">influence,
- <a href="#Page_49">49</a>,
- <a href="#Page_52">52</a>,
- <a href="#Page_86">86</a>,
- <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">religion,
- <a href="#Page_93">93</a> <i>et seq.</i>;</li>
- <li class="i1">kings deified,
- <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
- <li>Semites in Babylonia,
- <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
- <li>Semitic Empire,
- <a href="#Page_69">69</a>,
- <a href="#Page_87">87</a></li>
- <li>Semitic family of speech,
- <a href="#Page_89">89</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">languages,
- <a href="#Page_70">70</a>,
- <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">types,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a>,
- <a href="#Page_74">74</a></li>
- <li>Sennacherib,
- <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
- <li>Shadûf,
- <a href="#Page_99">99</a>,
- <a href="#Page_130">130</a>,
- <a href="#Page_131">131</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
- <li>Shalmaneser I.,
- <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
- <li>Shalmaneser II.,
- <a href="#Page_179">179</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">annals of,
- <a href="#Page_21">21</a></li>
- <li>Shechem,
- <a href="#Page_198">198</a>,
- <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
- <li>“Shepherd” kings,
- <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
- <li>Sidonian seals,
- <a href="#Page_35">35</a>,
- <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
- <li>Silver, name of,
- <a href="#Page_58">58</a></li>
- <li>Sin (Sinai),
- <a href="#Page_128">128</a>,
- <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
- <li>Sippara,
- <a href="#Page_46">46</a>,
- <a href="#Page_79">79</a>,
- <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
- <li>Spouted vases,
- <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
- <li>Subari,
- <a href="#Page_172">172</a>,
- <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
- <li>Sumer, language of,
- <a href="#Page_28">28</a>,
- <a href="#Page_29">29</a>,
- <a href="#Page_68">68</a> <i>et seq.</i>,
- <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
- <li>Sumerian,
- <a href="#Page_24">24</a>,
- <a href="#Page_28">28–30</a>,
- <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">animism,
- <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">civilization,
- <a href="#Page_98">98–100</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">culture,
- <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">&mdash; in Canaan,
- <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">dialects,
- <a href="#Page_29">29</a>,
- <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">origin of,
- <a href="#Page_74">74</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">origin of culture,
- <a href="#Page_75">75</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">physical type,
- <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">priest,
- <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">study of,
- <a href="#Page_29">29</a>,
- <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">survival in Southern Babylonia,
- <a href="#Page_88">88</a></li>
- <li>Sumerians, the,
- <a href="#Page_67">67</a> <i>et seq.</i></li>
- <li>Susa,
- <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">excavations at,
- <a href="#Page_27">27</a>,
- <a href="#Page_46">46</a>,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">pottery of,
- <a href="#Page_47">47</a>,
- <a href="#Page_53">53</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">metal age of,
- <a href="#Page_49">49</a></li>
- <li>Swords, earliest,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">in Cyprus,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">in Krete,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
- <li>Syros,
- <a href="#Page_53">53</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li class="hangingindent">Taanach, excavations at,
- <a href="#Page_148">148</a> <i>et seq.</i>,
- <a href="#Page_152">152</a>,
- <a href="#Page_157">157</a>,
- <a href="#Page_199">199</a>,
- <a href="#Page_212">212</a></li>
- <li>Tablets, writing-,
- <a href="#Page_82">82</a>,
- <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
- <li>Talîsh, excavations at,
- <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
- <li>Tarkhundaraba,
- <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
- <li>Taylor,
- <a href="#Page_55">55</a>,
- <a href="#Page_78">78</a></li>
- <li>Tel el-Amarna,
- <a href="#Page_136">136</a>,
- <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</li>
- <li class="hangingindent1">tablets,
- <a href="#Page_33">33</a>,
- <a href="#Page_35">35</a>,
- <a href="#Page_136">136</a>,
- <a href="#Page_144">144</a>,
- <a href="#Page_167">167</a>,
- <a href="#Page_168">168</a>,
- <a href="#Page_172">172</a>,
- <a href="#Page_174">174</a>,
- <a href="#Page_177">177</a>,
- <a href="#Page_178">178</a>,
- <a href="#Page_187">187</a>,
- <a href="#Page_191">191</a>,
- <a href="#Page_193">193</a>,
- <a href="#Page_195">195</a>,
- <a href="#Page_196">196</a>,
- <a href="#Page_197">197</a>,
- <a href="#Page_200">200</a>,
- <a href="#Page_205">205</a></li>
- <li>Tel el-Hesy,
- <a href="#Page_147">147</a>. <i>See</i> <a href="#Lachish">Lachish</a></li>
- <li>Tello,
- <a href="#Page_29">29</a>,
- <a href="#Page_40">40</a>,
- <a href="#Page_53">53</a>,
- <a href="#Page_55">55</a>,
- <a href="#Page_72">72</a>,
- <a href="#Page_73">73</a>,
- <a href="#Page_91">91</a>,
- <a href="#Page_121">121</a>,
- <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">pottery of,
- <a href="#Page_48">48</a></li>
- <li>Thothmes III., annals of,
- <a href="#Page_156">156</a></li>
- <li>Thureau Dangin,
- <a href="#Page_29">29</a>,
- <a href="#Page_87">87</a>,
- <a href="#Page_91">91</a>,
- <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
- <li>Tiglath-pileser I.,
- <a href="#Page_173">173</a></li>
- <li>Tigris,
- <a href="#Page_80">80</a>,
- <a href="#Page_102">102</a>,
- <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
- <li>Tin,
- <a href="#Page_60">60</a>,
- <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
- <li>Toprak Kaleh,
- <a href="#Page_166">166</a>,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
- <li>Trees, sacred, in Egypt,
- <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
- <li>Troy,
- <a href="#Page_54">54</a>,
- <a href="#Page_60">60</a>,
- <a href="#Page_61">61</a>,
- <a href="#Page_65">65</a>,
- <a href="#Page_166">166</a>,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a>,
- <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
- <li>Tychsen,
- <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Uan,
- <a href="#Page_175">175</a>,
- <a href="#Page_200">200</a></li>
- <li id="Ur">Ur,
- <a href="#Page_78">78</a>,
- <a href="#Page_85">85</a>,
- <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">excavations at,
- <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Valle, Pietro della,
- <a href="#Page_8">8</a></li>
- <li>Van (Biainas),
- <a href="#Page_31">31</a>,
- <a href="#Page_161">161</a>,
- <a href="#Page_164">164</a></li>
- <li>Vannic,
- <a href="#Page_31">31</a>,
- <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">deciphered,
- <a href="#Page_32">32</a>,
- <a href="#Page_162">162</a>,
- <a href="#Page_163">163</a>,
- <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">deities,
- <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">kings,
- <a href="#Page_31">31</a>,
- <a href="#Page_32">32</a></li>
- <li>Vases, Egyptian,
- <a href="#Page_121">121</a>,
- <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
- <li>Vases of hard stone,
- <a href="#Page_82">82</a>,
- <a href="#Page_121">121</a>,
- <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
- <li>Vine, home of,
- <a href="#Page_59">59</a>,
- <a href="#Page_165">165</a></li>
- <li>Vishtaspa,
- <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
- <li>Vyse,
- <a href="#Page_62">62</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Ward, Hayes,
- <a href="#Page_40">40</a>,
- <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
- <li>Week, Babylonian,
- <a href="#Page_122">122</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Cappadocian,
- <a href="#Page_172">172</a></li>
- <li>Weissbach,
- <a href="#Page_27">27</a></li>
- <li>Westergaard,
- <a href="#Page_16">16</a>,
- <a href="#Page_25">25</a></li>
- <li>Wheat,
- <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">in prehistoric graves,
- <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
- <li>Wood, use of,
- <a href="#Page_83">83</a>,
- <a href="#Page_84">84</a></li>
- <li>Writing material, primitive,
- <a href="#Page_83">83</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Xerxes,
- <a href="#Page_12">12</a>,
- <a href="#Page_35">35</a>,
- <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">Persian form of,
- <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</li>
- <li class="i1">name of, on vase,
- <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li id="Ya_qub-el">Ya’qub-el (<i>see</i> <a href="#Jacob-el">Jacob-el</a>),
- <a href="#Page_145">145</a></li>
- <li>Year, division of,
- <a href="#Page_122">122</a></li>
- <li>Yortan, pottery of,
- <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Zend,
- <a href="#Page_10">10</a></li>
-</ul>
-
-<p class="center xs"><i>Richard Clay &amp; Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.</i></p>
-
-
-<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> In this year an elaborate edition of his work was brought
-out under the title of <i>Voyages du Chevalier Chardin en Perse, et
-autres Lieux de l’Orient, Enrichis de Figures en Tailledouce, qui
-représentent les Antiquités et les Choses remarquables du Païs</i>
-(Amsterdam), two pages (167–8) in vol. ii. being devoted to the
-inscriptions, the cuneiform being printed on plate lxix.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> The discovery has sometimes been claimed for Tychsen
-(<i>De cuneatis Inscriptionibus Persepolitanis Lucubratio</i>, 1798, p.
-24), but Tychsen supposed that the wedge was used to divide sentences,
-not words.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> <i>Undersögelser om de Persepolitanske Inscriptioner</i>
-(1800), translated into German in 1802.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> <i>Ideen über die Politik, den Verkehr und den Handel der
-vornehmsten Völker der alten Welt</i>, vol. i. pp. 563 <i>sqq.</i>;
-translated into English in 1833. The revival of interest in Grotefend’s
-work was due to the fact that Champollion, after the decipherment of
-the Egyptian hieroglyphs, found the name of Xerxes on an alabaster vase
-at Paris on which, according to Grotefend’s system, the same name was
-written in Persian cuneiform. This led the Abbé Saint-Martin, who was
-a recognized Orientalist, to adopt and follow up Grotefend’s discovery
-in a Memoir which he read before the French Academy in 1822, and
-Saint-Martin’s work attracted the attention of Rask and Burnouf.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> “Om Zendsprogets,” in the <i>Skandinaviske
-Literaturselskabs Skrifter</i>, xxi., translated into German in 1826.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> <i>Mémoire sur deux Inscriptions cunéiformes trouvées près
-d’Hamadan</i> (Paris, 1836).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> <i>Die Altpersischen Keil-Inschriften von Persepolis</i>
-(Bonn, 1836).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> <i>Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society</i>, x.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> <i>Monument de Ninive</i>, with plates drawn by Flandin.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> See his Memoir, “Sur l’écriture assyrienne,” in the
-<i>Journal asiatique</i>, 1847–8, ix.-xi.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> <i>Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy</i>, xxi. pp.
-240 <i>sqq.</i> See also pp. 114 <i>sqq.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> <i>Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy</i>, xxii. pp.
-3 <i>sqq.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> Edinburgh Meeting, p. 140.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> <i>Revue archéologique</i>, 1847, pp. 501 <i>sqq.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> <i>Recherches sur l’écriture cunéiforme assyrienne</i>
-(1849).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> <i>Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society</i>, xii. pp. 401
-<i>sqq.</i> The translation of the Black Obelisk inscription is given
-on pp. 431–48.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> <i>Athenæum</i>, December 27, 1851.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> In the Paper read by Hincks before the Royal Irish
-Academy in June 1849, and published the following year.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> For Hincks’s translation of the annals of Sennacherib,
-see Layard’s <i>Nineveh and Babylon</i>, pp. 139 <i>sqq.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> <i>Literary Gazette</i>, July 5, 1846.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> <i>Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society</i>, xiv.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a> <i>A List of Assyro-Babylonian Characters</i> (1852);
-also the <i>Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy</i>, xxii. (1855),
-and more especially <i>The Polyphony of the Assyro-Babylonian Cuneiform
-Writing</i> (1863).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a> See his <i>Asshur and the Land of Nimrod</i> (1898).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a> F. Jones, <i>Vestiges of Assyria</i> (1855); <i>Journal
-of the Royal Asiatic Society</i>, xv. pp. 297 <i>sqq.</i>; and more
-especially <i>Memoirs</i>, edited by R. H. Thomas, 1857.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">[25]</a> <i>Expédition scientifique en Mésopotamie.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="label">[26]</a> In the <i>Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes</i>,
-vi. pp. 337 <i>sqq.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="label">[27]</a> <i>Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy</i>, xxi. pp.
-114 <i>sqq.</i> and 233 <i>sqq.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="label">[28]</a> <i>Journal asiatique</i>, xiv. pp. 93 <i>sqq.</i>; xv.
-pp. 398 <i>sqq.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="label">[29]</a> <i>Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society</i>, xv.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="label">[30]</a> <i>Transactions of the Society of Biblical
-Archæology</i>, iii. pp. 465 <i>sqq.</i>; <i>Actes du VIième Congrès
-International des Orientalistes en 1883</i>, ii. pp. 637 <i>sqq.</i>
-(1885).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="label">[31]</a> <i>Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse</i>; the volumes
-by Dr. Scheil on the inscriptions that have thus far appeared are ii.,
-iii., iv., v. and vi.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="label">[32]</a> <i>Zeitschrift für Assyriologie</i>, 1889, p. 434.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="label">[33]</a> <i>Ak-ka-du; Orientalische Literatur-Zeitung</i>, 1905,
-p. 268.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="label">[34]</a> <i>Journal of Philology</i>, iii. pp. 1 <i>sqq.</i> I
-endeavoured to settle the nature of Sumerian phonology in a Memoir on
-“Accadian Phonology,” published by the Philological Society, 1877–8.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="label">[35]</a> <i>Die Sumerischen Familiengesetze</i> (1879).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="label">[36]</a> Göttingen <i>Nachrichten</i>, 17 (1880); <i>Die
-Akkadische Sprache</i> (1883).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="label">[37]</a> <i>Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society</i>, 1848, ix.
-pp. 387 <i>sqq.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="label">[38]</a> See my article, “On the Language of Mitanni,” in the
-<i>Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology</i>, 1900, pp.
-171 <i>sqq.</i>; and Leopold Messerschmidt in the <i>Mitteilungen der
-Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft</i>, 1899, part iv. pp. 175 <i>sqq.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39" class="label">[39]</a> Fr. Delitzsch, <i>Die Sprache der Kossäer</i> (1884).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40" class="label">[40]</a> They are now in the possession of M. de Clercq. For
-a translation of the inscriptions upon them, see my <i>Patriarchal
-Palestine</i>, p. 250.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_41" href="#FNanchor_41" class="label">[41]</a> <i>Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants</i>, pp. 62, 66.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_42" href="#FNanchor_42" class="label">[42]</a> For the archæological results of M. de Morgan’s work,
-see his <i>Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse</i>, vols. i. and vii.
-The eighth volume, which will also be devoted to archæology, is in
-preparation.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_43" href="#FNanchor_43" class="label">[43]</a> Chantre, <i>Mission en Cappadoce</i>, plates x.-xii.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_44" href="#FNanchor_44" class="label">[44]</a> The yellow and red wheel-made ware, some of it inscribed
-with characters of the age of Gudea, which has been disinterred at
-Tello, is quite different. This class of pottery, by the way, seems
-to have been preceded by a grey coarse ware, made with the hand.
-One fragment of fine polished yellow ware with traces of black
-ornamentation has recently been reported from Tello by Captain Cros
-(<i>Revue d’Assyriologie</i>, 1905, p. 59), but the isolated character
-of the discovery makes it probable that it was an importation from
-Elam.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_45" href="#FNanchor_45" class="label">[45]</a> Copper figurines of the goddess, with hands pressed
-under the breasts, found in one of the earliest substructures of Tello
-(<i>circa</i> <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 4000), are published by M. Heuzey in the
-<i>Revue d’Assyriologie</i>, 1899, p. 44.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_46" href="#FNanchor_46" class="label">[46]</a> Heuzey, in the <i>Revue d’Assyriologie</i>, 1905, pp.
-59 <i>sqq.</i> and plate iii. Von Lichtenberg (<i>Mitteilungen der
-Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft</i>, 1906, 2) has lately pointed out
-that the black incised pottery with white fillings is identical
-in Cyprus, Troy, the Laibach bog and the Mondsee, and that the
-ornamentation which characterizes it is found in the valley of the
-Danube and the pile-dwellings of Switzerland. His attempt to derive it
-from Cyprus, however, cannot be sustained in view of its occurrence in
-Elam.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_47" href="#FNanchor_47" class="label">[47]</a> <i>Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology</i>,
-1905, p. 28.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_48" href="#FNanchor_48" class="label">[48]</a> <i>Ilios</i>, p. 337. Schliemann called it the Third
-city. Dörpfeld’s subsequent excavations, however, have shown that it
-really was the Second city, whose history fell into three periods.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_49" href="#FNanchor_49" class="label">[49]</a> Some of these represent the goddess with the arms
-folded, and not pressed against the breasts. See, for example, the
-photograph of one found at Naxos in the <i>Comptes rendus du Congrès
-international d’ Archéologie</i>, 1905, p. 221. For Trojan examples,
-see <i>Ilios</i>, pp. 331–6.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_50" href="#FNanchor_50" class="label">[50]</a> See <i>Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse</i>, viii.
-pp. 336–7. A report of some of the results of the Pumpelly expedition
-is given by Dr. Hubert Schmidt in the <i>Zeitschrift für Ethnologie
-1906</i>, Pt. iii, p. 385.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_51" href="#FNanchor_51" class="label">[51]</a> Flint implements, however, were discovered by Taylor in
-his excavations at Abu Shahrein, the site of Eridu (<i>Journal of the
-Royal Asiatic Society</i>, xv. p. 410 and plate ii.).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_52" href="#FNanchor_52" class="label">[52]</a> See Taylor’s “Notes on the Ruins of Muqeyer,” in the
-<i>Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society</i>, xv. pp. 271–3 and 415.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_53" href="#FNanchor_53" class="label">[53]</a> <i>Nippur</i>, vol. ii. pp. 381–6.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_54" href="#FNanchor_54" class="label">[54]</a> <i>The Babylonian Expedition of the University of
-Pennsylvania</i>, i. 2, pp. 26–7.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_55" href="#FNanchor_55" class="label">[55]</a> <i>Transactions of the Society of Biblical
-Archæology</i>, 1876, pp. 347–8.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_56" href="#FNanchor_56" class="label">[56]</a> Figured in the <i>Quarterly Statement of the Palestine
-Exploration Fund</i>, October 1904, p. 335.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_57" href="#FNanchor_57" class="label">[57]</a> Layard, <i>Nineveh and Babylon</i>, pp. 571–3.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_58" href="#FNanchor_58" class="label">[58]</a> ANA-BAR. <i>Bar</i> is given as the Sumerian
-pronunciation of the word for “stone” (<i>Syllabary</i> 5, iv. 11, in
-Delitzsch’s <i>Assyrische Lesestücke</i>, 3rd edition). In Old Egyptian
-“iron” was similarly <i>ba-n-pet</i>, “stone of heaven,” while “silver”
-was “white gold,” “gold” being symbolized by a collar. We may compare
-the Indo-European “white” metal as a name of “silver.” The Sumerian
-<i>azag-gi</i>, “gold,” was a form of <i>azagga</i>, “precious,” more
-especially “precious metal”; the more specific word for “gold” was
-<i>guskin</i>, with which the Armenian <i>oski</i> must be connected.
-“Silver” was <i>bábara</i>, the “bright” metal, <i>nagga</i> being
-“lead,” the Armenian <i>anag</i>. The identity of the Armenian and
-Sumerian words for “gold” and “lead,” coupled with the Armenian origin
-of the vine, and the fact that the mountain on which the ark of the
-Babylonian Noah rested was Jebel Judi, south of Lake Van, raises an
-interesting question as to the origin of Sumerian civilization.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_59" href="#FNanchor_59" class="label">[59]</a> It must be remembered, however, that, according to
-Aristotle, the copper of the Mossynœci in Northern Asia Minor was
-brilliant and white, owing to its mixture with a species of earth, the
-exact nature of which was kept a secret. The Babylonian ideograph for
-“bronze,” therefore, may have been a similar kind of hardened copper,
-which was transferred to denote “bronze” when the alloy of copper and
-tin became known.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_60" href="#FNanchor_60" class="label">[60]</a> See Garstang, <i>El-Arâbah</i>, p. 10. Dr. Gladstone,
-however, after giving the results of his analysis of the Sixth-dynasty
-copper discovered by Professor Petrie at Dendera, suggests that the
-small amount of tin observable in it (about one per cent.) may have
-been added to it artificially (<i>Dendereh</i>, p. 61). Bronze was “the
-normal metal” of the Amorite period at Gezer (Macalister, <i>Quarterly
-Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund</i>, April 1904, p. 119),
-and the three cities which represent this period go back beyond the
-age of the Twelfth Egyptian dynasty, to at least <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 2900
-(see <i>Quarterly Statement</i>, January 1905, pp. 28–9). At Troy also
-Schliemann found numerous bronze weapons in the Second (prehistoric)
-city (<i>Ilios</i>, pp. 475–9). In Krete bronze daggers of the Early
-Minoan period (coeval with the Middle Empire of Egypt) have been
-found at Patema and Agia Triada (<i>Annual of the British School at
-Athens</i>, x. p. 198), and the pottery of the Middle Minoan period
-(<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 2000–1500) was associated at Palaikastro with a bronze
-button, two miniature bronze sickles, and a pair of bronze tweezers
-(<i>ibid.</i> p. 202). As for the Caucasus, bronze was not known there
-till a late date. Wilke (<i>Zeitschrift für Ethnologie</i>, 1904,
-pp. 39–104) has shown that the bronze culture of the Caucasus was
-derived from the valley of the Danube, and made its way eastward along
-the northern coast of Pontus; see also Rössler, <i>Zeitschrift für
-Ethnologie</i>, 1905, p. 118.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_61" href="#FNanchor_61" class="label">[61]</a> <i>Dendereh</i> (Egypt Exploration Fund), p. 62, for
-the gold of the Sixth dynasty; <i>The Royal Tombs of the Earliest
-Dynasties</i>, pp. 39–40, for that of the First dynasty.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_62" href="#FNanchor_62" class="label">[62]</a> Vyse, <i>Pyramids of Gizeh</i>, i. p. 276. The clamp was
-actually found by his assistant Hill, after blasting away the two outer
-stones behind which it had been placed.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_63" href="#FNanchor_63" class="label">[63]</a> <i>Abydos</i>, part ii. p. 33. An iron pin of the
-age of the Eighteenth dynasty was found by Garstang at Abydos
-(<i>El-Arâbah</i>, p. 30).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_64" href="#FNanchor_64" class="label">[64]</a> <i>Illahun, Kahun and Gurob</i>, p. 12. Dr. Gladstone’s
-analyses give only about 2 parts of tin to 96·35 of copper. The bronze
-of the Eighteenth dynasty found at Gurob yielded a less proportion
-of tin (about 7 parts to 90 of copper) than the bronze of the Second
-Assyrian Empire. A ring of pure tin, however, was also discovered at
-Gurob.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_65" href="#FNanchor_65" class="label">[65]</a> <i>Journal of the Anthropological Institute</i>, xxxiii.
-pp. 367 <i>sqq.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_66" href="#FNanchor_66" class="label">[66]</a> The two dialects were called <i>eme</i>-<span class="allsmcap">KU</span>
-(i.e. <i>eme-lakhkha</i>, W.A.I. iii. 4, 31, 32), “the language of
-the enchanter,” and <i>eme</i>-<span class="allsmcap">SAL</span>, “the woman’s language,”
-which are rendered in Semitic Babylonian, <i>lisan Sumeri</i> and
-(<i>lisan</i>) <i>Akkadi</i>, “the language of Sumer” and “the language
-of Akkad.” In a tablet (81, 7–27, 130, 6, 7) they are said to be
-“like” one another. Other dialects were termed “the language of the
-sacrificer” and “the language of the anointer,” as being used by these
-two classes of priests. They differed, perhaps, from the standard
-dialects in intonation or the use of technical words. We hear also of
-“a carter’s language” in which <i>anbarri</i>&mdash;which, it is noticeable,
-is a Sumerian word&mdash;meant “yoke and reins,” <i>i.e.</i> “harness”
-(<i>Zeitschrift für Assyriologie</i>, ix. p. 164).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_67" href="#FNanchor_67" class="label">[67]</a> Fick, however, is an exception (<i>Beiträge zur Kunde der
-indogermanischen Sprachen</i>, xxix. pp. 229–247.)</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_68" href="#FNanchor_68" class="label">[68]</a> <i>Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse</i>, i. pp. 152–3.
-Photographs of the two types&mdash;Sumerian and Semitic&mdash;represented on the
-early monuments of Babylonia are given by Dr. Pinches in an interesting
-Paper in the <i>Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society</i>, January 1900,
-pp. 87–93.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_69" href="#FNanchor_69" class="label">[69]</a> It is noticeable that the script of the other people
-whose civilization grew up on the banks of a river, the Egyptians
-namely, contains no special ideograph for “river.” The word is
-expressed by the phonetically-written <i>atur</i>, with the
-determinative of “water” or “irrigation basin.” As in the primitive
-hieroglyphs of Babylonia, “the sea” was a “circle.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_70" href="#FNanchor_70" class="label">[70]</a> For proof of this reading see <i>Expository Times</i>,
-xvii. p. 416 and note <i>infra</i>, p. 91.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_71" href="#FNanchor_71" class="label">[71]</a> See my <i>Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia</i>,
-pp. 373–84.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_72" href="#FNanchor_72" class="label">[72]</a> Taylor found quantities of sea-shells in its ruins
-(<i>Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society</i>, xv. p. 412). At the time
-of its foundation an arm of the sea probably ran up to it from the
-south-east, though the myth of Adamu describes him as fishing each day
-in the waters of the actual Gulf, rather than in an arm of it.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_73" href="#FNanchor_73" class="label">[73]</a> The Moon-god of Ur was a “son” of El-lil, the god of
-Nippur.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_74" href="#FNanchor_74" class="label">[74]</a> For proof of this see my <i>Religion of the Ancient
-Babylonians</i>, p. 105.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_75" href="#FNanchor_75" class="label">[75]</a> A tablet obtained by Dr. Hayes Ward divides Sippara into
-four quarters, “Sippara of Eden,” “Sippara that is from everlasting,”
-“Sippara of the Sun-god,” and “Sippara,” which may be the “Sippara
-of Anunit” or “Sippara of Aruru,” the creatress of man, of other
-inscriptions. Amelon or Amelu, “man,” who corresponds with the Enos of
-Scripture, is said in the fragments of Berossus to have belonged to
-Pantibibla, or “Book-town,” and since Euedoranchus of Pantibibla, the
-counterpart of the Biblical Enoch, is the monumental Enme-dhur-anki
-of Sippara, it is clear that Pantibibla is a play on the supposed
-signification of Sippara (from <i>sipru</i>, “a writing” or “book”).
-The claim to immemorial antiquity made on behalf of Sippara may be
-due to the fact that Akkad, the seat of the first Semitic empire, was
-either in the immediate neighbourhood of Sippara or another name of one
-of the four quarters of Sippara itself.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_76" href="#FNanchor_76" class="label">[76]</a> <i>Chaldæa and Susiana</i>, p. 282.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_77" href="#FNanchor_77" class="label">[77]</a> <i>Journal of the Royal Geographical Society</i>, xxvii.
-p. 186. Rawlinson calculated the rate of advance from that made by the
-Babylonian Delta between 1793 and 1833. In the age of Strabo and Arrian
-the Tigris and Euphrates were not yet united, while in the time of
-Nearchus (<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 335) the mouth of the Euphrates was 345 miles
-from Babylon. De Morgan calculates that between the age of Nearchus and
-that of Sennacherib, when the Euphrates had not yet joined the more
-rapid Tigris, the rate of increase must have been much slower than it
-is to-day and have not exceeded eighty metres a year. In the age of
-Sennacherib Eridu was already seventy miles distant from the coast
-(de Morgan, <i>Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse</i>, i. pp. 5–23).
-The distance from the Shatt el-Arab (the united stream of the Tigris
-and Euphrates) to the end of the alluvium in the Persian Gulf is 277
-kilometres, or 172 miles. Some idea of the appearance of the coast in
-the Abrahamic age may be gained from the map of the world drawn by a
-Babylonian tourist in the time of Khammu-rabi which I have published in
-the <i>Expository Times</i>, November 1906.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_78" href="#FNanchor_78" class="label">[78]</a> There is a striking resemblance between the primitive
-Babylonian picture of a boat and the sailing boat depicted on the
-prehistoric pottery of Egypt, for which last see Capart, <i>Les Débuts
-de l’Art en Egypte</i>, p. 116.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_79" href="#FNanchor_79" class="label">[79]</a> Perhaps, however, this was really due to the accidental
-similarity of sound between <i>gi</i>, “a reed,” and <i>gin</i>, “to be
-firm.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_80" href="#FNanchor_80" class="label">[80]</a> The various forms of vases represented in the early
-pictography are given by de Morgan in a very instructive article, “Sur
-les procédés techniques en usage chez les scribes babyloniens,” in the
-<i>Recueil des Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à l’Archéologie
-égyptiennes et assyriennes</i>, xxvii. 3, 4 (1905). Among special vases
-were those for oil, wine and honey. The butter or oil jar was closed
-with a clay sealing exactly like those of early Egypt. Vases with
-spouts were also used.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_81" href="#FNanchor_81" class="label">[81]</a> The American excavations at Askabad have shown that the
-domestication of animals, including the camel, took place during the
-neolithic age, the goat being one of the last to be tamed.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_82" href="#FNanchor_82" class="label">[82]</a> This, however, is not absolutely certain, since the
-ideograph which, denotes an “ass” originally signified merely “a yoked
-beast.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_83" href="#FNanchor_83" class="label">[83]</a> Peters, <i>Nippur</i>, ii. p. 299.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_84" href="#FNanchor_84" class="label">[84]</a> Thus in the great historical inscription of Entemena,
-King of Lagas (<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 4000), M. Thureau Dangin is probably right
-in seeing in <i>dam-kha-ra</i> (col. i. 26) a Semitic word. In fact
-where a word is written syllabically, that is to say phonetically, in
-a Sumerian text there is an <i>a priori</i> probability that it is a
-loan-word.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_85" href="#FNanchor_85" class="label">[85]</a> This may of course have been only a literary archaism.
-But if the kings were really of Semitic origin, it is difficult to
-understand why they should have been ashamed of being called by their
-native Semitic names.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_86" href="#FNanchor_86" class="label">[86]</a> See Hommel, <i>Grundriss der Geographie und Geschichte
-des Alten Orients</i>, i. pp. 79–82.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_87" href="#FNanchor_87" class="label">[87]</a> Hitherto read A-da-pa. But the character <b>PA</b>
-had the value of <i>mu</i> when it signified “man,” according
-to a tablet quoted by Fossey, <i>Contribution au Dictionnaire
-Sumérien-assyrienne</i>, No. 2666, and in writing early Babylonian
-names or words the characters with the requisite phonetic values
-were selected which harmonized ideographically with the sense of the
-words. Thus out of the various characters which had the phonetic
-value of <i>mu</i> that was chosen which denoted “man” when the name
-of the first man was needed to be written. The Semitic Adamu, which
-M. Thureau Dangin has found used as a proper name in tablets from
-Tello of the age of Sargon of Akkad, was borrowed from the Sumerian
-<i>adam</i>, which signified “animal,” and then, more specifically
-“man.” Thus in the bilingual story of the creation we have (l. 9)
-<i>uru nu-dim adam nu-mun-ya</i>, “a city was not built, a man was not
-made to stand upright,” and a list of slaves published by Dr. Scheil
-(<i>Recueil de Travaux</i>, etc., xx. p. 65) is dated in “the year when
-Rim-Anum the king (conquered) the land of ... bi and its inhabitants”
-(<i>adam-bi</i>). See above, p. 76.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_88" href="#FNanchor_88" class="label">[88]</a> <i>Records of the Past</i>, New Series, iii. pp. 124–7.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_89" href="#FNanchor_89" class="label">[89]</a> Erech was one of the earliest of the Semitic settlements
-in the Babylonian plain, and Erech was known later as <i>’supuru</i>,
-“the sheepfold,” as is shown by its ideographic equivalent.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_90" href="#FNanchor_90" class="label">[90]</a> <i>The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia</i>, pp.
-276–80.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_91" href="#FNanchor_91" class="label">[91]</a> See my <i>Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia</i>,
-pp. 276–89, 348–61.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_92" href="#FNanchor_92" class="label">[92]</a> If, however, the Sumerian pictograph for “city”
-represents a tower on a mound, as seems to be the case, the identity
-in form of the Egyptian hieroglyph cannot be an accident, since both
-the tower and the artificial platform were essentially Babylonian. In
-the cursive cuneiform two separate pictographs have coalesced, one
-representing a seat, the other what appears to be a tower on a mound.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_93" href="#FNanchor_93" class="label">[93]</a> In Egyptian, however, the bird stands over a door, while
-in Babylonian it is over the two-legged stool on which two vases of
-offerings are set when it is used to denote the image of a god. The
-Sumerian pictograph for “(divine) lord” or “lady” (<span class="allsmcap">NIN</span>) is
-the representation of a similar vase on a mat, and thus has the same
-form as the Egyptian <i>hotep</i>. The Egyptian <i>nefer</i>, “good,”
-finds its exact counterpart in the Babylonian pictograph of “ornament”
-(<span class="allsmcap">ME-TE</span>). The Babylonian “house,” too, is given the same
-tower-like shape as the Egyptian (<i>āhā</i>).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_94" href="#FNanchor_94" class="label">[94]</a> In a short Paper entitled <i>Lexicalische Belege zu
-meinen Vortrag über die sprachliche Stellung des Altægyptischen</i>
-(1895), in which he has attempted to draw up a list of phonetic
-equivalences between Egyptian and Sumerian. In this, however, I am
-unable to follow him, as his comparisons of Egyptian and Sumerian words
-are not convincing.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_95" href="#FNanchor_95" class="label">[95]</a> See de Morgan, <i>Recherches sur les Origines de
-l’Egypte</i>, pp. 94, 95. According to Schweinfurth, barley, which
-is also found in the prehistoric graves of Egypt, must originally
-have come from Babylonia like the wheat. <i>Qemḥu</i> is found in the
-Pyramid texts (Maspero, <i>Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie
-et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes</i>, v. p. 10).
-<i>Boti</i>, whence the Coptic <i>bôti</i> and the <i>battawa</i> or
-“durra cake” of modern Egyptian Arabic, was “durra,” not “wheat.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_96" href="#FNanchor_96" class="label">[96]</a> See Maspero, <i>Études de Mythologie</i>, ii. pp. 313
-<i>sqq.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_97" href="#FNanchor_97" class="label">[97]</a> I have put “Lower” between parentheses since it is very
-questionable whether this particular system of registering time was
-known in the Delta until it was introduced from Upper Egypt. On the
-Palermo stone a list of the early kings of Lower Egypt is given, but
-without any dates, which make their appearance along with the kings of
-the First dynasty, who belonged to Upper Egypt. It is interesting to
-observe that the ideograph for “year” is denoted in exactly the same
-way in both the Babylonian and the Egyptian hieroglyphs by the branch
-of a (palm) tree. Such a curious symbol for the idea can hardly have
-been invented independently. Professor Hommel further draws attention
-to the fact that while the literal translation of a common ideographic
-mode of representing “year” in Babylonian is “name of heaven,” that of
-the two syllables of the Egyptian word <i>renpet</i>, “year,” would
-also be “name of heaven.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_98" href="#FNanchor_98" class="label">[98]</a> <i>Hierakonpolis</i>, part i. plate xxix. The name of the
-king is usually (but erroneously) written Nar-Mer.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_99" href="#FNanchor_99" class="label">[99]</a> As the royal figures wear no crowns, they can hardly
-depict the king in his double office of king of Upper and Lower Egypt,
-and the duplication of the Pharaoh must consequently have a purely
-artistic origin. That this artistic origin is closely connected with
-the origin of the seal-cylinders is shown by the fact that the figures
-correspond with one of the most common designs on the latter, in which
-the <i>ka</i> of the person to whom the cylinder belonged is seated on
-a chair similar to that of the El-Kab king, an altar with offerings of
-bread being set before him.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_100" href="#FNanchor_100" class="label">[100]</a> The eye and the ideograph of city or place. Since the
-eye here has the phonetic value of <i>eri</i> or <i>ari</i>, the
-ideograph of “city,” which is <i>eri</i> in Sumerian, must have the
-Egyptian value of <i>as</i>.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_101" href="#FNanchor_101" class="label">[101]</a> See my <i>Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia</i>,
-p. 238.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_102" href="#FNanchor_102" class="label">[102]</a> <i>Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions
-et Belles Lettres</i>, 4 Sér., 1899, xxvii. pp. 60–67; see
-<i>Hierakonpolis</i>, part ii. plate xxviii. In the <i>Revue
-d’Assyriologie</i>, v. pp. 29–32, Heuzey has lately drawn attention
-to the resemblance between the early Egyptian and Babylonian bowls of
-calcite or Egyptian alabaster.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_103" href="#FNanchor_103" class="label">[103]</a> <i>Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient
-Babylonians</i>, 1887, p. 33.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_104" href="#FNanchor_104" class="label">[104]</a> <i>Nature</i>, August 9, 1883, p. 341.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_105" href="#FNanchor_105" class="label">[105]</a> Daressy, “Le Cercueil d’Emsaht,” in the <i>Annales du
-Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte</i>, 1899, i. pp. 79–90.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_106" href="#FNanchor_106" class="label">[106]</a> I have called Upper Egypt the seat of the first
-Pharaohs, not only because the earliest dynastic monuments we possess
-come from thence, but also because it was of Upper Egypt and its
-ruling caste that the hawk-god Horus was the guardian deity. From
-Upper Egypt he was carried to Lower Egypt and its nomes, presumably
-through conquest, as is monumentally attested by the “palette” of
-Nar-Buzau discovered at Hierakonpolis (Capart, <i>Débuts de l’Art
-en Égypte</i>, p. 236). So, too, the anthropomorphic Osiris&mdash;the
-duplicate of Anhur&mdash;made his way from the south to the north. That
-Southern Arabia should have been the connecting-link between Babylonia
-and Egypt was the result of its being the source of the incense which
-was imported for religious use into both countries alike at the very
-beginning of their histories. That this foreign product should have
-been considered an indispensable adjunct of the religions of the two
-civilizations is one of the best proofs we have of their connection
-with one another. Dr. Schweinfurth has shown that the sacred trees of
-Egypt&mdash;the sycamore and the persea&mdash;which needed artificial cultivation
-for their preservation there, came from Southern Arabia, where he found
-them growing wild under the names of <i>Khanes, Burra and Lebakh</i>
-(<i>Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkünde zu Berlin</i>, July
-1889, No. 7).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_107" href="#FNanchor_107" class="label">[107]</a> In the possession of Lord Amherst of Hackney. On an
-early Babylonian seal-cylinder, bought by Dr. Scheil at Mossul and
-figured in the <i>Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie et à
-l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes</i>, xix. 1, 2, No. 7 of the
-plate, we have: “Ili-su-bani son of Aminanum, servant of the gods Bel
-and Anupum.” Aminanum may be a Semitized form of the Egyptian Ameni.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_108" href="#FNanchor_108" class="label">[108]</a> Pp. 133, 139, 485.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_109" href="#FNanchor_109" class="label">[109]</a> De Morgan, <i>Recherches sur les Origines de
-l’Égypte</i>, p. 65.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_110" href="#FNanchor_110" class="label">[110]</a> Scheil, <i>Recueil de Travaux relatifs à la Philologie
-et à l’Archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes</i>, xix. pp. 50, 54;
-Sayce, <i>Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia</i>, p. 485.
-The dwarf is represented as dancing before the god Sin on an early
-Babylonian seal-cylinder published by Scheil in the <i>Recueil</i>,
-xix. 1, 2, No. 16 of the plate.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_111" href="#FNanchor_111" class="label">[111]</a> It is worth notice that the dwarf-god Bes, who is
-called “God of Punt” in inscriptions of the Ptolemaic age, appears on
-Arab coins of the Roman period (Schweinfurth, <i>Verhandlungen der
-Gesellschaft für Erdkunde 1889</i>, No. 7).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_112" href="#FNanchor_112" class="label">[112]</a> Layard, <i>Monuments of Nineveh</i>, Second Series, pl.
-15.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_113" href="#FNanchor_113" class="label">[113]</a> Herodotus, i. 193.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_114" href="#FNanchor_114" class="label">[114]</a> The rope appears to have been <i>makutum</i>; see <i>W.
-A. I.</i> v. 26, 61.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_115" href="#FNanchor_115" class="label">[115]</a> K. 56, ii. 14.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_116" href="#FNanchor_116" class="label">[116]</a> For other evidences of contact between primitive
-Babylonia and early Egypt, see Heuzey in the <i>Revue
-d’Assyriologie</i>, 1899, v. 2, pp. 53–6. He there enumerates (1)
-the resemblance between the stone mace-heads of the two countries in
-“prehistoric times,” as well as between the flat dishes of veined and
-ribboned onyx marble, hollowed and rounded by the hand; (2) between the
-lion-heads of stone, the onyx stone of one of which is stated in an
-inscription to have come from Magan; (3) the extraordinary likeness in
-the delineation of animal forms, which extends to conventional details
-“like the two concentric curves artificially arranged so as to allow
-the two corners of the profile to be visible at the same time”; (4)
-the use of a razor and the custom of completely shaving the face, and
-even the skull; and (5) the ceremonial form of libation by means of a
-vase of peculiar shape, with a long curved spout and without a handle.
-This libation vase was practically the same in both countries, in spite
-of its peculiar and somewhat complicated form. Of later introduction
-into Egypt was the inscribed cone of terra-cotta, which was of early
-Babylonian origin, but is not met with in Egypt before the age of
-the Twelfth dynasty. At any rate, the first specimens of it hitherto
-found there were discovered by myself at Ed-Dêr, opposite Esna, in
-1905 (<i>Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte</i>, 1905, pp.
-164–5).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_117" href="#FNanchor_117" class="label">[117]</a> <i>Recueil de Travaux</i>, etc., xvi. p. 190.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_118" href="#FNanchor_118" class="label">[118]</a> In the later bronze or “Mykenæan” age the seal-cylinders
-are of a different type, and are engraved on a black artificial paste
-resembling hæmatite (Myres and Ohnefalsch-Richter, <i>Catalogue of the
-Cyprus Museum</i>, p. 32).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_119" href="#FNanchor_119" class="label">[119]</a> Sayce, <i>Transactions of the Society of Biblical
-Archæology</i>, 1877, v. part ii.; Bezold, <i>Zeitschrift für
-Keilinschrift</i>, 1885, pp. 191–3.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_120" href="#FNanchor_120" class="label">[120]</a> <i>Proceedings of the Society of Biblical
-Archæology</i>, November 1905, plate No. 11</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_121" href="#FNanchor_121" class="label">[121]</a> A cadastral survey, which was drawn up at this period
-under Uru-malik, or Urimelech, “the governor of the land of the
-Amorites,” would, if perfect, have given us an interesting description
-of Syria and Palestine in the third millennium before our era; see
-Thureau Dangin in the <i>Revue Sémitigue</i>, Avril 1897.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_122" href="#FNanchor_122" class="label">[122]</a> See Heuzey, in the <i>Revue d’Assyriologie</i>, 1897,
-pp. 1–12.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_123" href="#FNanchor_123" class="label">[123]</a> This was “the year when Samsu-iluna the king gave
-Merodach a shining mace of gold and silver, the glory of the temple;
-it made E-Saggil (the temple of Bel-Merodach at Babylon) shine like
-the stars of heaven.” The title of the year was derived from the chief
-event, or events, that characterized it. See Dr. Pinches, in the
-<i>Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund</i>, April and
-July 1900, pp. 269–73.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_124" href="#FNanchor_124" class="label">[124]</a> See my analysis of some of the Hyksos names in the
-<i>Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology</i>, 1901, pp.
-95–8. Since the publication of the Paper other names of the same
-type, like Rabu and Sakti, have come to light. The characteristic
-names of the Hyksos princes recur among the “Amorite” names found in
-the contract tablets of the Khammu-rabi period, but not later. The
-abbreviated forms of the names met with on the Egyptian scarabs are
-also found in the tablets. Indeed, the contracted form of Ya’qub-el,
-that is to say, Yakubu, with <i>k</i> instead of <i>q</i>, must have
-been transcribed from a cuneiform original.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_125" href="#FNanchor_125" class="label">[125]</a> Macalister, <i>Quarterly Statement of the Palestine
-Exploration Fund</i>, January 1903, p. 28. It is the seventh
-stone, however, which alone has been brought from a distance&mdash;the
-neighbourhood of Jerusalem&mdash;all the others being of local origin
-(<i>Quarterly Statement</i>, July 1904, pp. 194–5).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_126" href="#FNanchor_126" class="label">[126]</a> See Sellin, <i>Tell Ta’annek</i> (1904) and <i>Eine
-Nachlese auf dem Tell Ta’annek in Palästina</i> (1905).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_127" href="#FNanchor_127" class="label">[127]</a> <i>Tell Ta’annek</i>, pp. 27–8. The cylinder is earlier
-than <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 2000.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_128" href="#FNanchor_128" class="label">[128]</a> See my <i>Patriarchal Palestine</i>, pp. 60, 61.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_129" href="#FNanchor_129" class="label">[129]</a> <i>Collection De Clercq, Catalogue méthodique et
-raisonné</i>, i. p. 217.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_130" href="#FNanchor_130" class="label">[130]</a> <i>Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration
-Fund</i>, January 1905, pp. 28, 29.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_131" href="#FNanchor_131" class="label">[131]</a> The chronological difficulty, however, would be
-partially solved if the date recently proposed by Professor
-Petrie (<i>Researches in Sinai</i>, ch. xii.) for the Twelfth
-dynasty&mdash;<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> 3459–3250&mdash;be adopted. The Twelfth dynasty
-would in this case have reigned a thousand years before the dynasty of
-Khammu-rabi, whose domination in Palestine would have been an interlude
-in the history of the Hyksos period, while the conquest of Canaan by
-Sargon and Naram-Sin would have coincided with the supersession of
-the neolithic population by the “Amorites,” who brought with them the
-copper and the culture of Babylonia.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_132" href="#FNanchor_132" class="label">[132]</a> Unless we except the gold and silver ornaments found
-on the body of a woman in a deserted house at Taanach, which, as Dr.
-Sellin says, are by themselves sufficient to remove “all grounds for
-doubting such accounts as those in Joshua vii. 21, and Judges viii. 26”
-(<i>Eine Nachlese auf dem Tell Ta’annek</i>, p. 32).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_133" href="#FNanchor_133" class="label">[133]</a> <i>Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society</i>, New Series,
-xiv. 3, 4, pp. 377–732.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_134" href="#FNanchor_134" class="label">[134]</a> Eustathius on Dion. Perieget. 767. See Lehmann in the
-<i>Zeitschrift für Assyriologie</i>, 1894, pp. 90 and 358–60.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_135" href="#FNanchor_135" class="label">[135]</a> The Vannic kings always call themselves kings, not of
-the Khaldians, but of Biainas or Bianas, the Byana of Ptolemy, the Van
-of to-day.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_136" href="#FNanchor_136" class="label">[136]</a> See more especially Belck’s comparison of the
-Vannic pottery with that of the Assyrian colony of Kara Eyuk, near
-Kaisariyeh, in the <i>Verhandlungen der Berliner anthropologischen
-Gesellschaft</i>, December 1901, p. 493. Besides the highly-polished
-lustrous red ware, he found at Kara Eyuk fragments of the same
-wheel-made wine-jars, “of gigantic size,” which characterized Toprak
-Kaleh, near Van. Similar jars, as well as lustrous red pottery, were
-discovered by Schliemann in the “prehistoric” strata at Troy. The
-animals’ heads in terra-cotta found at Kara Eyuk are stated by Dr.
-Belck to be similar to those of the Digalla Tepé, near Urumiya. For
-further details see <i>infra.</i></p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_137" href="#FNanchor_137" class="label">[137]</a> See Pinches in the <i>Journal of the Royal Asiatic
-Society</i>, 1897, pp. 589–613; and myself in the <i>Proceedings of the
-Society of Biblical Archæology</i>, 1897, p. 286.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_138" href="#FNanchor_138" class="label">[138]</a> Thus we find from the Cappadocian cuneiform tablets
-discovered at Kara Eyuk, north-east of Kaisariyeh, that time was
-reckoned by the annual succession of officers called <i>limmi</i> as in
-Assyria.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_139" href="#FNanchor_139" class="label">[139]</a> <i>Dendereh</i>, p. 62.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_140" href="#FNanchor_140" class="label">[140]</a> Chantre, <i>Mission en Cappadoce</i>, pp. 71–91.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_141" href="#FNanchor_141" class="label">[141]</a> See Belck, <i>Verhandlungen der Berliner
-anthropologischen Gesellschaft</i>, December 1901, p. 493; and
-the admirable plates, iii., vii.–xiv., in Chantre, <i>Mission en
-Cappadoce</i>. As has been already mentioned (<i>supra</i>, p. 166),
-Dr. Belck noticed at Kara Eyuk coarse sherds of great thickness coming
-from wine-jars similar to those of Toprak Kaleh. The black vases
-with long spouts have been found at Yortan and Boz Eyuk in Phrygia;
-long-spouted vases of yellow ware with geometrical patterns in
-maroon-red on the site of Gordium.</p>
-
-<p>Chantre discovered numerous spindle-whorls in the ruins similar to
-those discovered at Troy. He also found terra-cotta figurines, among
-which the ram is the most plentiful, as well as covers and handles of
-vases in the shape of animals’ heads, and some curious hut-urns not
-unlike those of Latium. Few bronze objects were met with, but among
-them were five flanged axe-heads of the incurved Egyptian Hyksos type,
-totally unlike the straight bronze axe-heads from Troy and Angora
-(of Egyptian I-XII dynasty form), with which M. Chantre compares
-them. The obsidian implements and stone celts were of the ordinary
-Asianic pattern. M. Chantre notes that whereas at Troy the terra-cotta
-figurines represented the heads of oxen or cows, at Kara Eyuk they were
-the heads of sheep, horses, and perhaps dogs.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_142" href="#FNanchor_142" class="label">[142]</a> <i>Historical Geography of Asia Minor</i>, ch. i., ii.;
-<i>Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia</i>, i. p. xiv.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_143" href="#FNanchor_143" class="label">[143]</a> Labawa, or Labbaya, for whom see the next chapter. A
-revised transcript of his letter in Arzawan (Hittite) is given by
-Knudtzon, <i>Die zwei Arzawa-Briefe</i>, pp. 38–40. The introductory
-paragraph should read: <i>Ata-mu kît Labbaya ... memis-ta Uan-wa-nnas
-iskhani-tta-ra atari-ya ueni</i>.&mdash;“To my lord says Labbaya ... thy
-servant of Uan (a district west of Aleppo); seven times I prostrate
-myself.” In other letters Labbaya is called prince of Rukhizzi, the
-Rokhe’s-na of the treaty between Ramses II. and the Hittites.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_144" href="#FNanchor_144" class="label">[144]</a> The facts were first stated in my article in the
-<i>Contemporary Review</i>, August 1905, pp. 264–77, which is reprinted
-as chapter vii. of the present book.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_145" href="#FNanchor_145" class="label">[145]</a> <i>Journal of the Anthropological Institute</i>, 1903,
-xxxiii. pp. 367–400.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_146" href="#FNanchor_146" class="label">[146]</a> By Shalmaneser II. (<i>Black Obelisk</i>, 61) and
-Sargon. Sennacherib describes his famous campaign against Phœnicia and
-Judah as made “to the land of the Hittites.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_147" href="#FNanchor_147" class="label">[147]</a> <i>Ilios</i>, p. 693. What seem to be similar characters
-on a seal-cylinder found in the copper-age cemetery of Agia Paraskevi
-in Cyprus have recently been published by me in the <i>Proceedings of
-the Society of Biblical Archæology</i>, June 1906, plate ii. No. xi.
-See above, p. 141.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_148" href="#FNanchor_148" class="label">[148]</a> One of these seals, with the name of Tua-is, “the
-Charioteer,” in Hittite hieroglyphs, is in the possession of M. de
-Clercq. Another is figured by Layard, <i>Culte de Mithra</i>, xliv. 3.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_149" href="#FNanchor_149" class="label">[149]</a> See Sayce, <i>Religions of Ancient Egypt and
-Babylonia</i>, pp. 377–9</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_150" href="#FNanchor_150" class="label">[150]</a> See Hogarth, “The Zakro Sealings,” in the <i>Journal of
-Hellenic Studies</i>, xxii. pp. 76–93, and plates vi.-x.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_151" href="#FNanchor_151" class="label">[151]</a> <i>Transactions of the Society of Biblical
-Archæology</i>, 1881, vii. 2, p. 27.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_152" href="#FNanchor_152" class="label">[152]</a> See above, p. 141.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_153" href="#FNanchor_153" class="label">[153]</a> Professor Petrie finds similar marks on Egyptian pottery
-of the prehistoric and early dynastic age; see his table of signs in
-<i>The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty</i> (Egypt Exploration Fund),
-i. p. 32.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_154" href="#FNanchor_154" class="label">[154]</a> <i>Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal</i>, xi.
-pp. 316 <i>sqq.</i> The cylinder was bought by Major Pottinger, but
-afterwards lost. The inscription seems to read: <i>AN Nin(?)-zi-in
-Su-lukh(?)-me-am-el Khi-ti-sa ARAD-na</i>&mdash;“To the god Nin(?)-zin,
-Sulukh-ammel (?) son of Khiti, his servant.”</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_155" href="#FNanchor_155" class="label">[155]</a> The Etruscan monument is described by Deecke, <i>Das
-Templum von Piacenza</i> (<i>Etruskische Forschungen</i>, iv. 1880) and
-<i>Etruskische Forschungen und Studien</i>, part ii. (1882). For the
-Babylonian prototype, see Boissier, <i>Note sur un Monument babylonien
-se rapportant â l’extispicine</i> (1899).</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_156" href="#FNanchor_156" class="label">[156]</a> Labbawa, or Labawa, is written Labbaya in the letter
-which is in the Arzawan language.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_157" href="#FNanchor_157" class="label">[157]</a> A copy of the text (Louvre, C 1) is given by Professor
-Breasted in the <i>American Journal of Semitic Languages and
-Literature</i>, xxi. 3 (1905). The determinative attached to the name
-is not that of “country” but of “going,” showing that the scribe
-supposed the name to be connected with some otherwise unknown word
-that signified “to go,” just as in Gen. xxiii. “The sons of Heth” are
-supposed by the Hebrew writer to derive their name from the Hebrew
-<i>khath</i>, “terror.”</p>
-
-</div>
-</div>
-
-
-<p class="transnote">Transcriber’s Notes:<br />
-
-1. Obvious printers’, punctuation and spelling errors have been
-corrected silently.<br />
-
-2. Where hyphenation is in doubt, it has been retained as in the
-original.<br />
-
-3. Superscripts are represented using the caret character, e.g. D<sup>r</sup>. or
-X<sup>xx</sup>. Italics are shown as _xxx_.</p>
-
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