The Historians' History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 1

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Title: The Historians' History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 1 - Prolegomena; Egypt, Mesopotamia
Author: Various
Language: English
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THE HISTORIANS’ HISTORY OF THE WORLD

[Illustration: RAWLINSON]

THE HISTORIANS’
HISTORY
OF THE WORLD

A comprehensive narrative of the rise and development of nations
as recorded by over two thousand of the great writers of all ages:
edited, with the assistance of a distinguished board of advisers
and contributors, by

HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, LL.D.

[Illustration]

IN TWENTY-FIVE VOLUMES

VOLUME I--PROLEGOMENA; EGYPT, MESOPOTAMIA

The Outlook Company
New York

The History Association
London

1905

_All rights reserved._

Press of J. J. Little & Co.
New York, U. S. A.

Contributors, and Editorial Revisers.

Prof. Adolf Erman, University of Berlin.
Prof. Joseph Halévy, College of France.
Prof. Thomas K. Cheyne, Oxford University.
Prof. Andrew C. McLaughlin, University of Michigan.
Prof. David H. Müller, University of Vienna.
Prof. Alfred Rambaud, University of Paris.
Capt. F. Brinkley, Tokio.
Prof. Eduard Meyer, University of Berlin.
Dr. James T. Shotwell, Columbia University.
Prof. Theodor Nöldeke, University of Strasburg.
Prof. Albert B. Hart, Harvard University.
Dr. Paul Brönnle, Royal Asiatic Society.
Dr. James Gairdner, C.B., London.
Prof. Ulrich von Wilamowitz Möllendorff, University of Berlin.
Prof. H. Marczali, University of Budapest.
Dr. G. W. Botsford, Columbia University.
Prof. Julius Wellhausen, University of Göttingen.
Prof. Franz R. von Krones, University of Graz.
Prof. Wilhelm Soltau, Zabern University.
Prof. R. W. Rogers, Drew Theological Seminary.
Prof. A. Vambéry, University of Budapest.
Prof. Otto Hirschfeld, University of Berlin.
Dr. Frederick Robertson Jones, Bryn Mawr College.
Baron Bernardo di San Severino Quaranta, London.
Dr. John P. Peters, New York.
Prof. Adolph Harnack, University of Berlin.
Dr. S. Rappoport, School of Oriental Languages, Paris.
Prof. Hermann Diels, University of Berlin.
Prof. C. W. C. Oman, Oxford University.
Prof. W. L. Fleming, University of West Virginia.
Prof. I. Goldziher, University of Vienna.
Prof. R. Koser, University of Berlin.

KEY TO THE AUTHORITIES.

The Historians’ History of the World is in one sense of the word a
compilation, but it is a compilation of unique character. The main
bulk of the work is made up of direct quotations from authorities,
cited with scrupulous exactness; but so novel is our method of handling
this material that the casual reader might scan chapter after chapter
without suspecting that the whole is not the work of a single writer.
Yet every quotation, whatever its length, is explicitly credited to
its source, and the reader who wishes to know the names of the authors
and works quoted may constantly satisfy his curiosity without the
slightest difficulty. The key to identification of authorities is found
in the unobtrusive reference letters (called by the printer “superior
letters”), such as [b], [c], [d], which are scattered through the text.
These reference letters refer in each case to a “Brief Reference-List”
at the end of the book, where, chapter by chapter, author and work are
named. Should any work be quoted more than once in a chapter, the same
reference letter is used to identify that work in each case.

The reference letters are used in two ways: they are either (1) placed
at the end of a sentence, in which case they designate an actual
quotation, or (2) they are placed against the name of an author, in
which case they designate an authority cited but not necessarily
quoted. Each reference letter at the end of a sentence refers to all
the matter that precedes it back to the last similarly placed reference
letter. The quotation thus designated may be of any length,--a few
sentences or many pages. This quotation may contain reference letters
of the second type just explained, but, if so, these may be altogether
disregarded in determining the limits of the quotation; the context
will make it clear that there is no change of authorship. On the other
hand, however continuous the narrative may seem, a reference letter at
the end of a sentence must always be understood to divide one quotation
from another.

All this may seem a trifle complex as told here, but it will be found
admirably simple and effective in practice. The reader has but to
make the experiment, to find that he can trace the authorship of
every line of the work without the slightest difficulty. It may be
well to add, however, that the reference letter [a] is reserved for
editorial matter, and that, very exceptionally, this letter is used in
combination with another letter, as [ab], [ac], [ad], to give credit
for matter that has been editorially adapted, but not quoted verbatim.
It is perhaps hardly necessary to explain that direct quotations,
such as go to make up the bulk of our work, are often given in an
abbreviated form through the omission of matter that is redundant or,
for any reason, inadmissible. The necessity for such change is obvious,
since otherwise the varied materials could not possibly be made to
harmonise or to meet the needs of our space. But, beyond this, no
liberty whatever is taken with matter presented as a direct quotation.
Where editorial modification is thought necessary, the use of reference
letters makes such modification feasible without introducing the
slightest ambiguity. We repeat that every line of the work is ascribed
to its proper source with the utmost fidelity. Any matter not otherwise
accredited--as, for example, various introductions, chronologies,
bibliographies, and the like--will be understood to be editorial.
Brackets also indicate editorial matter.

CONTENTS

VOLUME I

PART I. PROLEGOMENA

BOOK I. HISTORY, HISTORIANS, AND THE WRITING OF HISTORIES

PAGE

CHAPTER I

SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 1

The oriental period, 2. The classical historians, 3. The
mediæval and modern histories, 4.

CHAPTER II

MATERIALS FOR THE WRITING OF HISTORY 5

CHAPTER III

THE METHODS OF THE HISTORIANS 9

CHAPTER IV

WORLD HISTORIES 13

CHAPTER V

THE PRESENT HISTORY 22

BOOK II. A GLIMPSE INTO THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY 32

CHAPTER II

COSMOGONY--ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS AS TO THE ORIGIN
OF THE WORLD 33

CHAPTER III

COSMOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY--ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS 38

CHAPTER IV

THE ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH AND OF MAN 40

CHAPTER V

THE RACES OF MAN AND THE ARYAN QUESTION 43

CHAPTER VI

ON PREHISTORIC CULTURE 45

Language, 44. Clothing and housing of prehistoric man, 46.
The use of fire, 46. Implements of peace and war, 47. The
domestication of animals, 47. Agriculture, 48. Government, 49.
The arts of painting, sculpture, and decorative architecture,
50. The art of writing, 50.

PART II. EGYPT

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. EGYPT AS A WORLD INFLUENCE.
By Dr. Adolf Erman 57

EGYPTIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE (4400-332 B.C.) 65

CHAPTER I

THE EGYPTIAN RACE AND ITS ORIGIN 77

The country and its inhabitants, 81. Prehistoric Egypt, 88.

CHAPTER II

THE OLD MEMPHIS KINGDOM (_ca._ 4400-2700 B.C.) 90

The first dynasty, 90. The second dynasty, 92. The third
dynasty, 92. The pyramid dynasty, 93. A modern account of the
pyramids, 95. The builders of the pyramids, 98. The beautiful
Nitocris, 104.

CHAPTER III

THE OLD THEBAN KINGDOM (_ca._ 2700-1635 B.C.) 106

The eleventh dynasty, 106. The voyage to Punt, 108. The
twelfth dynasty, 110. Monuments of the twelfth dynasty; a
classical view, 113. The ruins of Karnak, 115. The fall of the
Theban kingdom, 117. The foreign rule, 118. The Hyksos rule;
the seventeenth dynasty, 121.

CHAPTER IV

THE RESTORATION (_ca._ 1635-1365 B.C.) 126

Eighteenth dynasty, 126. The Hyksos expulsion: Aahmes and his
successors, 127. Tehutimes II; Queen Hatshepsu, 133. Triumphs
of Tehutimes III; his successors, 136.

CHAPTER V

THE NINETEENTH DYNASTY (_ca._ 1365-1285 B.C.) 141

King Seti, 142. Ramses (II) the Great, 144. The war-poem of
Pentaur, 148. The kingdom of the Kheta and the nineteenth
dynasty, 150. Death of Ramses II, 153.

CHAPTER VI

THE FINDING OF THE ROYAL MUMMIES 155

How came these monarchs here? 157.

CHAPTER VII

THE PERIOD OF DECAY (NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH DYNASTIES:
_ca._ 1285-655 B.C.) 162

Meneptah, 162. From Setnekht to Ramses VIII and Meri-Amen
Meri-Tmu, 166. The sorrows of a soldier, 170. Egypt under the
dominion of mercenaries, 171. The Ethiopian conquest, 174.
Table of contemporaneous dynasties, 179.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CLOSING SCENES (TWENTY-SIXTH TO THIRTY-FIRST DYNASTIES:
655-322 B.C.) 180

Psamthek, 180. The good king Sabach (Shabak) and Psammetichus,
184. The restoration in Egypt, 185. The Persian conquest and
the end of Egyptian autonomy, 188. The atrocities of Cambyses,
191.

CHAPTER IX

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE EGYPTIANS 196

The position of the king, 198. Weapons of war, 202. Battle
methods, 205. Social customs, 208. The Egyptians as seen by
Herodotus, 212. Homes of the people, 216.

CHAPTER X

THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION 219

Religious festivals and offerings, 222. Gifts and riches of
temples, 225. Diodorus on animal worship, 228. A modern account
of the worship of Apis, the sacred bull, 232. The methods of
embalming the dead, 236.

CHAPTER XI

EGYPTIAN CULTURE 240

The hieroglyphics, 249. “By what characters, pictures, and
images the learned Egyptians expressed the mysteries of their
mindes,” 250. The riddle of the sphinx, 251. Literature, 257.
The Castaway: a tale of the twelfth dynasty, 260.

CHAPTER XII

CONCLUDING SUMMARY OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY 263

APPENDIX A

CLASSICAL TRADITIONS 267

Another ancient account of the Nile, 273. A Greek view of the
origins of Egyptian history, 278.

APPENDIX B

THE PROBLEM OF EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY 287

Manetho’s table of the Egyptian dynasties, 291.

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 293

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY 295

PART III. MESOPOTAMIA

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. THE RELATIONS OF BABYLONIA WITH OTHER
SEMITIC COUNTRIES. By Joseph Halévy 309

MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE (6000-538 B.C.) 318

CHAPTER I

LAND AND PEOPLE 337

The land, 338. Original peoples of Babylon: the Sumerians,
342. The Semitic Babylonians, 344. The original home of the
Babylonian Semite, 347.

CHAPTER II

OLD BABYLONIAN HISTORY (_ca._ 4500-745 B.C.) 349

The beginnings of history, 351. The rulers of Shirpurla,
351. Kings of Kish and Gishban, 356. The first dynasty of Ur,
359. Kings of Agade, 360. The kings of Ur, 363. Accession of a
south Arabian dynasty, 363. The Kassite dynasty, 364. Assyrian
conquest of Babylon, 364.

CHAPTER III

THE RISE OF ASSYRIA (_ca._ 3000-726 B.C.) 366

Land and people, 369. Assyrian capitals: Asshur and Nineveh,
371. The rise of Assyria, 372. The first great Assyrian
conqueror, 377. The reign and cruelty of Asshurnazirpal, 380.
Shalmaneser II and his successors, 387. Tiglathpileser III,
391. Shalmaneser IV, 395.

CHAPTER IV

FOUR GENERATIONS OF ASSYRIAN GREATNESS (722-626 B.C.) 397

Sennacherib, 403. Esarhaddon and Asshurbanapal, 416.
Esarhaddon’s reign, 419. Asshurbanapal’s early years, 425. The
Brothers’ War, 431. The last wars of Asshurbanapal, 434.

CHAPTER V

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA (626-606 B.C.) 438

Last years and fall of the Assyrian Empire, 440.

CHAPTER VI

RENASCENCE AND FALL OF BABYLON (555-538 B.C.) 446

Contemporary chronology, 448. Nabopolassar and Nebuchadrezzar,
449. The followers of Nebuchadrezzar, 453. The reign of
Nabonidus, 455.

CHAPTER VII

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF BABYLONIA-ASSYRIA 460

War methods, 460. Our sources, 461. Assyrian war costumes and
war methods, 468. The arts of peace in Babylonia-Assyria,
472. Babylon and its customs described by an eye-witness,
473. A later classical account of Babylon, 479. The commerce
of the Babylonians, 484. Ships among the Assyrians, 491.
Laws of the Babylonians and Assyrians, 494. Sale of a slave,
496. Sale of a house, 497. The code of Khammurabi, 498. The
discovery of the code, 498. Miscellaneous regulations, 501.
Regulations concerning slaves, 502. Provisions concerning
robbery, 502. Concerning leases and tillage, 503. Concerning
canals, 504. Commerce, debt, 504. Domestic legislation,
divorce, inheritance, 505. Laws concerning adoption, 509. Laws
of recompense, 509. Regulations concerning physicians and
veterinary surgeons, 510. Illegal branding of slaves, 510.
Regulations concerning builders, 511. Regulations concerning
shipping, 511. Regulations concerning the hiring of animals,
farming, wages, etc., 511. Regulations concerning the buying of
slaves, 513.

CHAPTER VIII

THE RELIGION OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS 515

The Assyrian story of the creation, 520. The Babylonian
religion, 521. The epic of Gilgamish, 525. Ishtar’s descent
into Hades, 530.

CHAPTER IX

BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN CULTURE 534

Literature and science, 536. Epistolary literature, 539. Art,
543. Assyrian art, 552. Assyrian sculpture and the evolution
of art, 558. A classical estimate of Chaldean philosophy and
astrology, 563. The Babylonian year, 565. The Babylonian day
and its division into hours, 566. Assyrian science, 567.

APPENDIX A

CLASSICAL TRADITIONS 571

The Creation and the Flood, described by Polyhistor, 573.
Other classical fragments: of the Chaldean kings, 575. Of the
Chaldean kings and the deluge, 576. Of the tower of Babel, 577.
Of Abraham, 577. Of Nabonassar, 577. Of the destruction of the
Jewish Temple, 577. Of Nebuchadrezzar, 577. Of the Chaldean
kings after Nebuchadrezzar, 578. Of the feast of Sacea, 579.
A fragment of Megasthenes concerning Nebuchadrezzar, 579.
Ninus and Semiramis, 580. Semiramis builds a great city, 584.
Semiramis begins a career of conquest, 588. Semiramis invades
India, 589. Another view of Semiramis, 593. Reign of Ninyas to
Sardanapalus, 594. The destruction of Nineveh, 598.

APPENDIX B

EXCAVATIONS IN MESOPOTAMIA AND THEIR RESULTS 600

The ruins of Nineveh and M. Botta’s first discovery, 600.
Layard’s discoveries at Nineveh, 604. Later discoveries in
Babylonia and Assyria, 610. The results of the excavations,
612. Treasures from Nineveh, 613. The library of a king of
Nineveh, 618. How the Assyrian books were read, 623.

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 627

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY 629

PART I. PROLEGOMENA

BOOK I. HISTORY, HISTORIANS, AND THE WRITING OF HISTORIES

CHAPTER I

SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Broadly speaking, the historians of all recorded ages seem to have had
the same general aims. They appear always to seek either to glorify
something or somebody, or to entertain and instruct their readers. The
observed variety in historical compositions arises not from difference
in general motive, but from varying interpretations of the relative
status of these objects, and from differing judgments as to the manner
of thing likely to produce these ends, combined, of course, with
varying skill in literary composition, and varying degrees of freedom
of action.

As to freedom of selective judgment, the earliest historians whose
records are known to us exercised practically none at all. Their task
was to glorify the particular monarch who commanded them to write.
The records of a Ramses, a Sennacherib, or a Darius tell only of the
successful campaigns, in which the opponent is so much as mentioned
only in contrast with the prowess of the victor.

With these earliest historians, therefore, the ends of historical
composition were met in the simplest way, by reciting the deeds,
real or alleged, of a king, as Ramses, Sennacherib, or David; or of
the gods, as Osiris, or Ishtar, or Yahveh. As to entertainment and
instruction, the reader was expected to be overawed by the recital of
mighty deeds, and to draw the conclusion that it would be well for him
to do homage to the glorified monarch, human or divine.

A little later, in what may be termed the classical period, the
historians had attained to a somewhat freer position and wider vision,
and they sought to glorify heroes who were neither gods nor kings,
but the representatives of the people in a more popular sense. Thus
the _Iliad_ dwells upon the achievements of Achilles and Ajax and
Hector rather than upon the deeds of Menelaus and Priam, the opposing
kings. Hitherto the deeds of all these heroes would simply have
been transferred to the credit of the king. Now the individual of
lesser rank is to have a hearing. Moreover, the state itself is now
considered apart from its particular ruler. The histories of Herodotus,
of Xenophon, of Thucydides, of Polybius, in effect make for the
glorification, not of individuals, but of peoples.

This shift from the purely egoistic to the altruistic standpoint
marks a long step. The writer now has much more clearly in view the
idea of entertaining, without frightening, his reader; and he thinks
to instruct in matters pertaining to good citizenship and communal
morality rather than in deference to kings and gods. In so doing the
historian marks the progress of civilisation of the Greek and early
Roman periods.

In the mediæval time there is a strong reaction. To frighten becomes
again a method of attacking the consciousness; to glorify the gods and
heroes a chief aim. As was the case in the Egyptian and Persian and
Indian periods of degeneration, the early monotheism has given way to
polytheism. Hagiology largely takes the place of secular history. A
constantly growing company of saints demands attention and veneration.
To glorify these, to show the futility of all human action that does
not make for such glorification, became again an aim of the historian.
But this influence is by no means altogether dominant; and, though
there is no such list of historians worthy to be remembered as existed
in the classical period, yet such names appear as those of Einhard,
the biographer of Charlemagne; De Joinville, the panegyrist of Saint
Louis; Villani, Froissart, and Monstrelet, the chroniclers; and Comines,
Machiavelli, and Guicciardini.

In the modern period the gods have been more or less disbanded, the
heroes modified, even the kings subordinated. We hear much talk of the
“philosophy” of history, even of the “science” of history. Common sense
and the critical spirit are supposed to hold sway everywhere. Yet,
after all, it would be too much to suppose that any historian even of
the most modern school has written entirely without prejudice of race,
of station, or of religion. And in any event the same ideals, generally
stated, are before the historian of to-day that have actuated his
predecessors--to glorify something or somebody, though it be, perhaps,
a principle and not a person; and to entertain and instruct his readers.

_The Oriental Period_

The earliest historians whose writings have come down to us are the
authors of the records on the monuments of Egypt and of Mesopotamia. We
shall see later on that these records, made in languages a knowledge
of which has only been recovered in the past century, are full of
historical interest because of the facts they narrate, and the insight
they give us into the life of their times. For the moment, however,
we are only concerned with the method of their construction. They are
parts of records dating from many centuries before the beginning of the
Christian era. Their authors are utterly unknown by name. The narrative
is, indeed, in some cases, couched in the first person, but it is not
to be supposed from this that the alleged writer--who, of course, is
the king whose deeds are glorified--is the actual composer of the
narrative. The actual scribes, mere adjuncts of the royal _ménage_,
never dreamed of putting their own names on record beside those of
their royal masters. Yet their work has preserved to future generations
the names of kings that otherwise would have been absolutely forgotten.
For example, Tehutimes III of Egypt and Asshurbanapal of Assyria, two
of the most powerful monarchs of antiquity, had ceased to be remembered
even by name several centuries before the dawn of our era, and for two
thousand years no human being knew that such persons had ever existed.
Yet now, thanks to the monuments, their deeds are almost as fully known
to us as the deeds of an Alexander or a Cæsar.

There is, indeed, one regard in which these most ancient historical
records have an advantage over more recent works. They were for the
most part graven in stone or stamped in clay that was burned to
stonelike hardness, and they have come down to us with the assurances
of authenticity which must always be lacking in many compositions of
more recent periods. The Babylonian and Assyrian records lay buried
with the ruins of cities whose very location had been forgotten for
ages. The most recent of these records had been seen by no human eye
for more than two thousand years. Their unnamed authors seem thus to
speak to us directly across the centuries. However these earliest of
historians may have dreamed of immortality for their work, they can
hardly have hoped to speak to eager audiences in regions far beyond the
limits of their world, twenty-five centuries after the very nation to
which they belonged had vanished from the earth, and the language in
which they wrote had ceased to be known to men. Yet that unique glory
was reserved for them.

_The Classical Historians_

It requires but a glance at the historians of the classical period to
see how altered is the point of view from which they write. Here we
have no longer men commanded by a monarch, or impelled by religious
fervour to glorify a single person or epoch or country to the utter
exclusion of everything else. We have bounded from insularity of view
to universality. Even the Homeric legends deal with the events of two
continents and of several countries. Herodotus and Diodorus make the
writing of their histories a life-work. They travel from one country
to another, and familiarise themselves with their subject as much as
possible at first hand. They mingle with the scholars of many lands,
and listen to their recitals of the annals of their respective peoples.
They weigh and consider, though in a quite different mental balance
from that which an historian uses in our day. They spend thirty, forty,
years in composing their books. From them, then, we have, not simple
chronicles of a single event, but universal histories. These are in
many ways different from the universal histories of our own time; but
in their frank, human way of looking out upon the world, they have
a charm that is quite their own. In their interest for the general
reader, they have perhaps never been excelled. And in their citation
of fact and fable they become a storehouse upon which succeeding
generations of historians have drawn to this day.

There are other historians of the period no less remarkable, some of
them even superior, from some points of view, to these masters. The
names of Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius among the Greeks, of Tacitus,
Livy, Cæsar among the Romans, to go no farther, are as familiar to
every cultivated mind of our own day as the names of Gibbon, Macaulay,
or Bancroft. Several of these were men who participated in the events
they described, and, confining themselves to limited periods, treated
these periods in such masterly fashion, with such breadth of view and
discriminating judgment, that their verdicts have weight with all
succeeding generations of historians. Thucydides, writing in the fifth
century B.C., is regarded, even in our critical age, as a matchless
writer of history. An oft-repeated tale relates that Macaulay despaired
of ever equalling him, though feeling that he might hope to duplicate
the work of any other historian. Polybius and Tacitus are mentioned
with respect by the most exacting investigators. Clearly, then, this
was a culminating epoch in the writing of histories.

_The Mediæval and Modern Histories_

We have seen that in the classical period the brief space of half a
dozen generations saw a cluster of great histories written. No such
intellectual activity in this direction marked the mediæval period. Now
for the space of more than a thousand years there was no work produced
that could bear a moment’s comparison with the great productions of
the earlier periods. One theme was now dominant in the Western world,
and the intellects that might have produced histories of broad scope
under other circumstances contented themselves with harping on the one
string. So we have ecclesiastical records in place of histories.

In due time the reaction came, but it was long before the influence
of the dominant spirit was made subordinate to a saner view. Indeed,
scarcely before our own generation, since the classical period, have
historians been able to cast a clear and unbiased glance across the
entire field of history.

Toward the middle of the eighteenth century a school of secular
historians with broad views and high aims again arose. Now once more
men sought to write world histories not dominated by a single idea. The
first great exponents of the movement were Gibbon and Hume in England,
Schlozzer and Müller in Germany. They have had a host of followers, of
whom the greater number have been Germans.

The attitude of these modern writers is philosophical; they are
disposed to recognise in the bald facts of human existence an
importance commensurate solely with the lessons they can teach for
the betterment of humanity. In this modern view, each fact must be
correlated with a multitude of other facts before its true significance
can be perceived. Events are, in this view, meaningless unless we know
something of the human motives that led to their enactment. The task
of the historian is to search for causes, to endeavour to build up
from the lessons of history a true philosophy of living. It is really
no different a task, as already pointed out, from that which such
ancient writers as Polybius had very prominently in view; but there is
an emphasis upon this phase of the subject in our time that it did not
generally receive in the earlier age. In other words, the philosophy
of history of our time is a more conscious philosophy. For a century
past the phrase, “philosophy of history,” has been current, and it has
been the custom for men who were not primarily historians to discourse
on the subject. Latterly, following again the current of the times, we
have come to speak even of the “science” of history; indeed, in Germany
in particular, history to-day claims unchallenged position as a true
science. The word “science” is a very flexible term, yet there are
those who deny that it may be properly applied, as yet at any rate, to
our aggregation of knowledge of historical facts. The question resolves
itself into a matter of definition, the solution of which is not
particularly important.

The essential thing is that the modern historical investigator is
fully actuated by the spirit of scientific accuracy and impartiality.
And since impartiality depends very largely upon breadth of view,
it results rather curiously that the minute investigations of the
specialist make indirectly for the comprehensive view of the World
Historian. Professor Freeman well expressed the idea when he said:

“My position is that in all our studies of history and language--and
the study of language, besides all that it is in other ways, is one
most important branch of the study of history--we must cast away all
distinctions of ‘ancient’ and ‘modern,’ of ‘dead’ and ‘living,’ and
must boldly grapple with the great fact of the unity of history. As
man is the same in all ages, the history of man is one in all ages.
No language, no period of history, can be understood in its fullness;
none can be clothed with its highest interest and its highest profit,
if it be looked at wholly in itself, without reference to its bearing
on those other languages, those other periods of history, which join
with it to make up the great whole of human, or at least of Aryan and
European, being.”

Such a position as this, assumed by one of the most minute searchers
among modern historians, is highly interesting as illustrative of a
reactionary tendency which will probably characterise the historical
work of the near future. Hair-splitting analysis having been carried
to its limits of refinement, there will probably come a reaction in
the direction of a more comprehensive study of historical events
in their wider relations. The work of the specialist, after all,
is really important only when it furnishes material for wider
generalisations. All minute workers in the fields of biology, geology,
and the allied sciences, in the first half of the nineteenth century
were unconsciously gathering material which, interesting in itself,
became of real importance chiefly in so far as it ultimately aided in
elucidating the great generalisation of Darwin. Perhaps the minute
historians of to-day are in similar position.

The special worker, imbued with enthusiasm for his subject, is apt
to forget the real insignificance of his labours. Entire epochs are
dominated by the idea of microscopic research, and the workers even
come to suppose that microscopic analysis is in itself an end; whereas,
rightly considered, it is only the means to an end. We are just passing
through such an epoch as regards historical investigation. But, as just
suggested, it seems probable that we are approaching a new epoch when
the work of the specialist will be subordinated to its true purpose,
while at the same time proving its real value as a means to the proper
end of historical studies--the comprehension of the world-historical
relations of events.

CHAPTER II

MATERIALS FOR THE WRITING OF HISTORY

It is obvious that the materials for the writing of history consist
for the most part of written records. It is true that all manner of
monuments, including the ruins of buried cities, remains of ancient
walls and highways, and all other traces of a former civilisation,
must be allotted their share as records to guide the investigator in
his attempt to reconstruct past conditions. But for anything like a
definite presentation of the events of by-gone days, it is absolutely
essential, as Sir George Cornewall Lewis pointed out in great detail,
to have access to contemporary written records, either at first hand,
or through the medium of copyists, in case the original records
themselves have been destroyed. Lewis reached the conclusion, as the
result of his exhaustive examination of the credibility of early Roman
history, that a tradition of a past event is hardly transmitted orally
from generation to generation with anything like accuracy of detail for
more than a century.

Theoretically, then, no accurate history could ever be constructed of
events covering a longer period than about four generations before
the introduction of writing. In actual practice the scope of the
strictly historic view of man’s progress is confined to very much
narrower limits than this, for the simple reason that the earliest
written records that might otherwise serve to give us glimpses of
remote history have very rarely been preserved. The destruction of
ancient inscriptions with the lapse of centuries has led to a great
deal of difference of opinion as to the time when the art of writing
was introduced among various nations. In reference to the Greeks
in particular, the dispute has been ardently waged, many scholars
contending that the art of writing was little practised in Greece until
the sixth century B.C.

Later discoveries, in particular a knowledge of the inscription on the
statue of Ramses at Abu Simbel, have made it clear that the earlier
estimates were much too conservative, and it now seems probable that
the Greeks had been acquainted with the art of writing for several, or
perhaps many, centuries before the one previously fixed upon. It is
not to be supposed, however, that the practice of the art of writing
was universal in that early day. On the other hand, it was doubtless
very exceptional indeed for the average individual to be able to write,
and such difficulties as the lack of writing material stood in the way
of composition until a relatively late period. But whether the art
of writing was much or little practised in the early days does not
greatly matter so far as the present-day historian is concerned, since
practically all specimens of early writing in Greece disappeared in the
course of succeeding ages. No fragment of any book proper, no scrap of
parchment or papyrus, no single waxen tablet, from the soil of classic
Greece has been preserved to us.

The Greek authors are known to us only through the efforts of
successive generations of copyists; and, with the exception of a
comparatively small number of Egyptian papyri, there is almost nothing
in existence representing the literature of classical Greece that is
older than the middle ages. There are, to be sure, considerable numbers
of monumental inscriptions dating from classical times. These have the
highest interest for the archæologist, but in the aggregate they give
but meagre glimpses into the history of antiquity. If we were dependent
upon these records for all that we know of Greek history, the entire
story of that people might be told, as far as we could ever hope to
learn it, in a few pages.

The case is somewhat different with Egypt and with Mesopotamia,
since the climate of the former and the resistant character of the
writing materials employed by the latter have permitted the modern
world to receive direct messages that, under other circumstances,
must inevitably have been lost. But even here the historical records
are neither so abundant nor so comprehensive in their scope as might
have been hoped. History-writing, in anything like a comprehensive
meaning of the words, is a relatively modern art. The nearest approach
to it among the nations of remote antiquity got no farther than the
recording of the personal deeds of individual kings. Such records,
indeed, are excellent materials for history, but they hardly constitute
history by themselves. The entire lists of Egyptian inscriptions, so
far as known, suffice merely to give glimpses of Egyptian history;
and if the Mesopotamian records are, in this regard, somewhat more
satisfactory, it is only in reference to a comparatively brief
period of later Assyrian history that they can be said to have
anything like comprehensiveness. As to the other nations of Oriental
antiquity,--Indians, Persians, Syrians, the inhabitants of Asia
Minor,--the entire sum of the monumental records that have been
transmitted to us amounts to nothing more than a scattered series of
vague suggestions.

In the classical world Rome is but little better off than Greece in
this regard. As to both these countries, we depend for our knowledge
almost exclusively upon the works of historians of a relatively late
period. Before Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century B.C., there
is almost no consecutive history proper of Greece; and despite all the
efforts of archæologists, records of Roman progress scarcely suffice to
push back the prehistoric veil beyond the time of the banishment of the
kings. Indeed, even for a century or two after this event transpired,
the would-be historian finds himself still on very treacherous ground.
The reason for this is that there were no contemporary historians in
Rome in this early period; and until such contemporary chroniclers
appear, no secure record of history is possible.

Once it became the fashion to write chronicles of events, the custom
rapidly spread and took a fixed hold upon the people. From the day of
Herodotus there was no dearth of Greek historians, and after Polybius
there is an unbroken series of Roman chroniclers.

Had all the writings of these various workers been preserved to us, we
should have abundant material for reconstructing the history of the
entire later classical epoch in much detail; but, unfortunately, the
historian worked with perishable materials. An individual papyrus or
parchment roll could hardly be expected on the average to be preserved
for more than a few generations, and unless copies had been made of it
in the meantime, the record that it contained must inevitably be lost.
Such has been the fate of the great mass of historical writings, no
less than of productions in other fields of literature.

Many of the fragments of ancient writers have come down to us through
rather curious channels. In the later age of Rome it became the
fashion to make anthologies and compilations, and it is through such
collections that the majority of classical authors are known. One of
the most curious of these anthologies is that made by Athenæus about
the beginning of the third century A.D. This author called his work
_Deipnosophistæ_, or the _Feast of the Learned_. He attempted to give
it a somewhat artistic form, making it ostensibly a dialogue in which
the sayings of a company of diners were related to a friend who was not
present at the banquet. The diners were supposed to have introduced
quotations from the classical writers, so that the book is chiefly
made up of such quotations. The work has not come down to us quite in
its entirety, but, even so, no fewer than eight hundred authors and
twenty-five hundred different works are represented in the anthology.
Of these authors about seven hundred are known exclusively through the
excerpts of Athenæus.

Two or three centuries later another Greek named Stobæus compiled a set
of extracts from the Greek writers of all accessible periods prior to
his own. The number of authors quoted in this anthology is more than
five hundred, and here again the major part of them are quite unknown
to us except through this single source. Yet another collection of
excerpts was made in the latter part of the ninth century by Photius,
patriarch of Constantinople, who made excerpts from about 280 authors
with whose works he had familiarised himself through miscellaneous
reading. In addition to these works of individual compilers there
were two or three anthologies compiled in the Byzantine period,
including an important collection of fragments of the Greek poets which
is still extant under the title of _The Greek Anthology_, and the
elaborate set of encyclopædias made under the direction of Constantine
Porphyrogenitus. But for such collections as these, supplemented by
the biographical notices of such workers as Suidas, and by fragments
that have come to us through a few other channels, it would scarcely
have been conceived that so many authors had written in the entire
period of Grecian activity, since only a fraction of this number are
represented by complete works that have come down to us. Such facts as
these give an inkling as to the mental activity of the old-time author,
while pointing a useful lesson as to the perishability of human works.
In this age of easy multiplying of books through printing, one is prone
to forget how precarious must have been the existence of a manuscript
of the elder day. It was a long, laborious task to produce an edition
of a single copy of any extended work, and each successive duplication
was precisely as slow and as difficult as the first. Under these
circumstances no doubt a very considerable proportion of books were
never duplicated at all, and the circulation of a very large additional
number most likely was limited to two or three copies. It was only
works which were early recognised as having an unusual intrinsic
interest or value that stood any reasonable chance of being copied
often enough to insure preservation through many succeeding generations.

As one considers the field of extant manuscripts, one is led naturally
to reflect on the quality of work that was likely thus to insure
perpetuity, and the more we consider the subject, limiting the view
for our present purpose to historical compositions, the more clear
it becomes that the one prime quality that gave a lease of life to
the composition of an author was the quality of human interest. In
other words, such historical compositions as were works of art,
rather than such as depended upon other merits, were the ones which
successive generations of copyists reproduced, and which ultimately
were enabled to pass the final ordeal imposed by the monks of the
middle ages, who made palimpsests of many an author deserving a better
fate. The upshot of this process of the survival of the fittest was
that all Greek would-be historians prior to Herodotus were allowed
to sink into oblivion, causing Herodotus himself to stand out as
apparently the absolute creator of a new art. In point of fact, could
we know the whole truth, it would doubtless appear that there was no
real revolution of method effected by the writings of Herodotus. He
surpassed all of his predecessors in such a measure that the future
copyist saw no necessity for preserving any work but the one, since
this one practically covered the field of all the rest. It is, perhaps,
an ill method of phrasing, to say that these copyists saw no reason
for preserving those earlier manuscripts. There was no thought in
their minds of the preservation of one book and the destruction of
another; they merely copied the work which interested them, or which
they believed would interest the book-buying public. The disappearance
of the works not copied was a mere negative result, about which no one
directly concerned himself.

The proof of the value of the work of Herodotus is found in the fact
that it has come down to us entire in numerous copies, something
that can be said of only three or four other considerable historical
compositions of the entire classical period; two others of this select
company being Thucydides and Xenophon, both of whom were contemporaries
of Herodotus, though considerably younger, and therefore, properly
enough, counted as belonging to the next generation. Of the other Greek
historians, the biographical works of Plutarch, the works of Strabo
and Pausanius, which are geographical rather than strictly historical,
and the _Life of Alexander the Great_ by Arrian, are the sole ones of
the large number undoubtedly written that have come down to us intact.
A survey of the Roman historians furnishes an even more striking
illustration, for here no one of the great historical works has been
preserved in its entirety. Livy’s monumental work is entire as to the
earlier books, which treat of the mythical and half-mythical period of
Roman development; but the parts of it that treated of later Roman
history, concerning which the author could have spoken, and probably
did speak, with first-hand knowledge, are almost entirely lost. In
other words, the copyists of the middle ages preserved the least
valuable portion of Livy, doubtless because they found the hero tales
of mythical Rome more interesting than the matter-of-fact recitals of
the events of the later republic and the early empire. We can hardly
suppose that Livy detailed the events of the later period with less
art than characterised his earlier work, but different conditions were
imposed upon him. He had now to deal with much fuller records than
hitherto, and no doubt he treated many subjects that seemed important
to him, simply because they were near at hand, but which another
generation found tiresome and not worth the trouble of copying. Thus
we see emphasised again the salient point that the interesting story
rather than the important historical narrative proved itself most fit
for preservation in the estimate of posterity.

Of the other great historians of Rome, Tacitus, Dionysius, Dion
Cassius, Polybius, have all fared rather worse than Livy, although
a few briefer masterpieces, like the two histories of Sallust and
the _Gallic Wars_ of Cæsar, and such biographies as the “Lives” of
Suetonius and Cornelius Nepos, were able to fight their way through the
middle ages and gain the safe shelter of the printing-press without
material loss.

But perhaps the most suggestive example of all is furnished by the
brief world history of Justin, which, if not quite entire, has been
preserved as to its main structure in various manuscripts. This work is
an artistic epitome of a large, and in its day authoritative, history
of the world, written by Trogus Pompeius. Justin, when a student in
Rome in the day of the early Cæsars, was led to make an epitome of
this work, seemingly as proof to his friends in the provinces that
he was not wasting his time. He did his task so well that future
generations saw no reason to trouble themselves with the prolixities of
the original work, but were content to copy and re-copy the epitome,
pointing the moral that brevity, next to artistic excellence, is the
surest road to permanent remembrance for the historian,--a lesson which
many modern writers have overlooked to their disadvantage.

CHAPTER III

THE METHODS OF THE HISTORIANS

It is a curious fact, a seeming paradox, that the first two great
histories ever written--the histories, namely, of Herodotus and
Thucydides--should stand out pre-eminently as types of two utterly
different methods of historical writing. Herodotus, “the Father of
History,” wrote with the obvious intention to entertain. There is no
great logicality of sequence in his use of materials; he simply rambles
on from one subject to another with little regard for chronology, but
with the obvious intention everywhere to tell all the good stories
that he has learned in the course of his journeyings. It would be
going much too far to say that there is no method in his collocation
of materials, but what method he has is quite generally overshadowed
and obscured in the course of presentation. Thus, for example, he is
writing the history of the Persian wars, and he has reached that time
in the history of Persia when Cambyses comes to the throne and prepares
to invade Egypt. The mention of Egypt gives him, as it were, the cue
for an utterly new discourse, which he elaborates to the extent of an
entire book, detailing all that he has learned of Egypt itself, its
history, its people, and their manners and customs, without, for the
most part, referring in any way whatever to Cambyses. He returns to the
Persian king ultimately, to be sure, and takes up his story regardless
of the digression, and seemingly quite oblivious of any incongruity
in the fact of having introduced very much more extraneous matter
in reference to Egypt than the entire subject matter proper of the
Persian Empire. The method of Herodotus was justified by the results.
There is every reason to believe that he was enormously popular in his
own time,--as popularity went in those days,--and he has held that
popularity throughout all succeeding generations. But it has been said
of him often enough that this work is hardly a history in the narrower
sense of the word; it is a pleasing collection of tales, in which no
very close attempt is made to discriminate between fact and fiction,
the prime motive being to entertain the reader. As such, the work of
Herodotus stands at the head of a class which has been represented by
here and there a striking example throughout all succeeding times.

Xenophon’s _Anabasis_, detailing the story of Cyrus the Younger and his
ten thousand Greek allies, is essentially a history of the same type.
It differs radically, to be sure, from Herodotus, in that it holds with
the closest consistency to a single narrative, scarcely giving the
barest glimpses into any other field than that directly connected with
the story of the ten thousand. But it is like Herodotus in the prime
essential that its motive is to entertain the reader by the citation of
the incidents of a venturesome enterprise. Xenophon does indeed pause
at the beginning of the second book long enough to pronounce a eulogy
upon the character of Cyrus,--a eulogy that is distinctly the biased
estimate of a friend, rather than the calm judgment of a critical
historian. But this aside, Xenophon, philosopher though he is, concerns
himself not at all with the philosophy of the subject in hand. He quite
ignores the immoral features of the rebellion of Cyrus against his
brother. Indeed, it seems never to occur to him that this fratricidal
enterprise has any reprehensible features, or could be considered in
any light other than that of a commendable proceeding of which a throne
was the legitimate goal. Doubtless the very fact of this banishment
of the philosophical from the work of Xenophon has been one source
of its great popularity, for, as every one knows, Xenophon shares
with Herodotus the credit of being the most widely read of classical
authors. It would be quite aside from the present purpose to emphasise
the opinion that the intrinsic merit of Xenophon’s work does not fully
justify this popularity. It suffices here to note the fact that this
famous work of the successor of Herodotus belongs essentially to the
same class with the work of the master himself.

Of the Roman historians doubtless the one most similar to Herodotus in
general aim was Livy. The author of the most famous history of Rome
does not indeed make any such excursions into the history of outlying
nations, as did Herodotus, but he details the history of his own
people with an eye always to the literary, rather than to the strictly
historical, side; transmitting to us in their best form that series
of beautiful legends with which all succeeding generations have been
obliged to content themselves in lieu of history proper. There is
little of philosophical thought, little of search for motives, in such
history-writing as this. It is essentially the art of the story-teller
applied to the facts and fables of history.

Returning now to Thucydides, we have illustrated, as has been said,
an utterly different plan and motive. Thucydides does indeed tell
the story of the Peloponnesian War; tells it, moreover, with such
wealth of detail as no other historian of antiquity exceeded, and few
approached. But in addition to narrating the plain facts, Thucydides
searches always for the motives. He gives us an insight into the causes
of events as he conceives them. He is obviously thinking more of this
phase of the subject than of the mere recital of the facts themselves.
It is the philosophy of history, rather than the story of history, that
appeals to him, and that he wishes to make patent to the reader.

Only two or three other writers of the entire classical period whose
works have come down to us followed Thucydides with any considerable
measure of success in this attempt to write history philosophically;
the two most prominent exponents of this method being the Greek
Polybius, who told the story of Rome’s rise to world power, and
Tacitus, the famous author of the _Roman Annals_ and of the earliest
history of the German people. These three examples--Thucydides,
Polybius, and Tacitus--stand out at once in refutation of a claim
which might otherwise be made that philosophical, or, if one prefers,
didactic, historical composition is essentially a modern product.
But for these exceptions one might be disposed to make a sweeping
generalisation to the effect that the old-time history was a collection
of tales intended to entertain the reader, and that the strictly modern
historical method aims at instruction rather than at entertainment.
Such generalisations, however, assuming, as they do, that the entire
trend of human thought has fundamentally changed within historical
times, are sure to be faulty. Quite possibly it may be true to say
that the earliest historians tended as a class to write entertaining
narratives rather than philosophical histories; and to say, on the
other hand, that nineteenth century historians as a class have reversed
the order of motives: but it must not be forgotten that our judgment
here is based upon a mere fragment of the entire output of ancient
historians. We have already noticed, in another connection, that
the names of some hundreds of Greek writers have been preserved to
us solely through a single anthological collection or two; and now,
speaking of the historical works, it must be remembered that a vast
number of these have perished altogether. Whole companies of historians
are known to us only by name, and there is every reason to suppose
that considerable other companies that once existed and wrote works
of greater or less importance have not left us even this memento. The
scattered fragments of Greek historical works that have come down to
us, dissociated from any considerable part of their original context,
fill three large volumes of the famous Didot collection of Greek
classics, as edited by K. O. Müller; some hundreds of authors being
represented.

We have noted that all the predecessors of Herodotus were blotted out,
chiefly, perhaps, by the excellence of the work of Herodotus himself.
Similarly the entire histories of Alexander the Great, written by
his associates and contemporaries and his successors of the ensuing
century, have without exception perished utterly.

Doubtless the excellence of the work of Arrian, which summarised and
attempted to harmonise the contents of the more important preceding
histories of Alexander, was responsible for the final elimination of
the latter. One can hardly refer too often to that intellectual gantlet
of the middle ages, which all classical literature was called upon to
pass, and from which only here and there a work emerged. It is almost
pathetic to consider the number of works that made their way heroically
almost through this gantlet, only to succumb just before achieving the
goal. One knows, for example, that there was a work of Theopompus on
later Grecian affairs, in fifty odd books, which was extant in the
ninth century, as proved by the summary of its contents made then by
a monk, but of which no single line is in existence to-day. Even the
works that have come down to us in a less fragmentary condition have
not usually been preserved entire in any single manuscript, but, as
presented to us now, are patched together from various fragments,
preserved often in widely separated collections. The explanation
is that the copying of a manuscript of great length was a somewhat
heroic task, and that hence the copyist would often content himself
with excerpting a single book from a work which he would gladly have
reproduced entire but for the labour involved.

The point of all this in our present connection is that we know the
historians of antiquity very imperfectly, and that hence we are almost
sure to misjudge them as a class when we attempt generalisations
concerning them. In the very nature of the case, the historian who
told a good story in a pleasing style stood a far better chance of
being perpetuated through the efforts of copyists, than did the
philosophical historian, however profound, who put forward his theories
at the expense of the narrative proper. Making all due allowance for
this, however, it can hardly be in doubt that the last century and a
half has seen a remarkable development of the scientific spirit in
its application to the work of the historian, and that the average
historical work of the nineteenth century is philosophically on a far
higher plane than the average historical work of antiquity. If we
were to attempt to characterise the most recent phases of historical
composition, we should, perhaps, not go far afield in saying that in
regard to history-writing, as in regard to many other subjects, this
is pre-eminently the age of specialists. In recent years no historical
work could hope for any large measure of recognition among historians,
unless it were based upon personal investigation of the most remote
sources bearing upon the period that could be made accessible. The
recent period has been pre-eminently a time of the searching out
of obscure or forgotten records; the unburying of old letters and
state papers; the delving into hitherto neglected archives; and the
critical analysis of the conflicting statements of alleged authorities
previously accessible.

The work began prominently--if any intellectual movement may properly
be said to have an explicit beginning--with Gibbon and Niebuhr; it was
continued by Grote and Mommsen and George Cornewall Lewis and Clinton,
and the host of more recent workers, whose specific labours will claim
our attention as we proceed. Naturally enough, since each generation
of specialists builds upon the labours of all preceding generations,
the work has become more and more minute and hair-splitting with each
succeeding decade. Gibbon, specialist though he was, covered a period
of a thousand years of European history, and left scarcely anything
untouched that falls properly within that period. Niebuhr specialised
on the few centuries of early Roman history, but his comprehensive view
reached out also to Greece and to the Orient, and he was accounted
a master over the whole range of ancient history. Mommsen’s efforts
have followed the Roman Republic and Empire throughout the length
and breadth of its wide domains, and over the whole period of its
existence, as well as into all the ramifications of its political,
commercial, and social life.

But there has been a tendency among most recent workers to confine
their attention to a narrower field. Macaulay’s _History of England_
attempts the really detailed history of only about seventeen years.
Carlyle devotes six large volumes to the _History of Frederick the
Great_, and such authorities as Freeman and Stubbs and Gardiner
and Gairdner gave years of patient research to the investigation of
single periods of English history. The obvious result of all this
minute and laborious effort is the piling up of a mass of more or less
incoördinate details as to the crude facts of history, which only
the specialist in each particular field can hope to master, and the
remoter bearings of which in their relations to world history are not
always clearly appreciable. It is rarely given to the same mind to have
a taste or a capacity at once for minute research and for broad and
accurate generalisation. Therefore much of the work of the specialist,
admirable in its kind, must still be regarded rather as crude material
than as a finished product. It is the work of the world historian to
attempt to mass this crude material, to visualise it in its relations
to other similar masses, and to build with it a unified structure of
history, in which each portion shall appear in its proper relations to
all the rest.

Let us turn for a moment to the work of the world historians of the
past, and glance at the results of their various efforts to weld the
individual history of men and of nations into a comprehensive history
of mankind.

CHAPTER IV

WORLD HISTORIES

No historian worthy of the name can narrate the events even of a
limited period without at least an inferential reference to the
world-historic import of these events. Just in proportion as one fails
to take a sweeping general view, the force of his facts is weakened;
any narrow period of history, on which the attention is fixed, assumes,
for the time being, a disproportionate interest, and is necessarily
seen quite out of perspective. It is only when the limited period
is considered in reference to other periods that it can be made to
assume anything like its proper status. Something of this has been
understood by all writers from the earliest times, and accordingly
we find that very few of the ancient authors failed to take at least
a sweeping view of contemporaneous events, even when detailing
specifically the incidents of a restricted period; and often, as in
the case of Herodotus, the space devoted to the history of events
not strictly cognate to the main story is quite out of proportion to
that reserved for the main story itself. Thus in a certain sense the
history of Herodotus is a world history, inasmuch as it deals more or
less comprehensively with practically all nations known to the Greeks
of that time. Thucydides, as we have seen, confines himself much more
closely to a precise text; yet even he devotes an introductory book to
a summary of the past history of the Greeks as a preparation for the
full understanding of the Peloponnesian War.

But, after all, a somewhat sharp distinction should be drawn between
histories such as these, which ostensibly describe the incidents of
a particular period, and more comprehensive treatises, which set the
explicit task of dealing with the history of all nations in all times.

Of the works of this latter class,--World Histories proper,--the oldest
one that has come down to us is at the same time probably the most
comprehensive in scope, and the most extensive in point of matter, of
any that was written in ancient times. This is the so-called Historical
Library of Diodorus the Sicilian. Diodorus was a Greek, a native of
Sicily, who lived during the time of Julius Cæsar and of Augustus. He
set himself the explicit task of writing a comprehensive history of
the world, and he devoted thirty years to the accomplishment of this
task. This history, as originally written, comprised forty books, which
treated of the entire history of mankind from the earliest times to the
age of Augustus. Diodorus recognised the vagueness of early chronology,
and he made no attempt to estimate the exact age of the world, but he
computes the time covered by what he considers the historic period
proper, in the following terms:

“According to Apollodorus, we have accounted fourscore years from
the Trojan War to the return of Heraclides: from thence to the first
olympiad, three hundred and twenty-eight years, computing the times
from the Lacedæmonian kings: from the first olympiad to the beginning
of the Gallic War (where our history ends) are seven hundred and thirty
years: so that our whole work (comprehended in forty books) is an
history which takes in the affairs of eleven hundred and thirty-eight
years, besides those times that preceded the Trojan War.”

In his preface Diodorus further explains the exact scope of his work
and the precise division in the books in the following words:

“Our first six books comprehend the affairs and mythologies of the ages
before the Trojan War, of which the three first contain the barbarian,
and the next following almost all the Grecian antiquities. In the
eleven next after these, we have given an account of what has been
done in every place from the time of the Trojan War till the death of
Alexander. In the three and twenty books following, we have set forth
all other things and affairs, till the beginning of the war the Romans
made upon the Gauls; at which time Julius Cæsar, the emperor (who upon
the account of his great achievements was surnamed Divus), having
subdued the warlike nations of the Gauls, enlarged the Roman Empire, as
far as to the British Isles; whose first acts fall in with the first
year of the hundred and eightieth olympiad, when Herodes was chief
magistrate at Athens. But as to the limitations of times contained
in the work, we have not bound those things that happened before the
Trojan War within any certain limits, because we could not find any
foundation whereon to rely with any certainty.”

Of these forty books only fifteen have come down to us intact, namely,
the first five, which carry down the history only to the Trojan wars,
and books eleven to twenty, which cover the period from the invasion
of Greece by Xerxes to the subjugation of Greece by the Romans. The
remaining books are represented by considerable fragments, which,
however, even in the aggregate, are insignificant in bulk as compared
with the fifteen books that are preserved entire.

Considering the time when it was written, this work of Diodorus was
really an extraordinary production, though there has been a tendency on
the part of the modern critic to dwell rather upon its defects than its
merits. It has indeed become quite the fashion to speak of Diodorus as
a weak-minded, prejudiced person, who gathered together materials for
history from all sources indiscriminately, and gave them to the world,
true and false together, quite unsifted by criticism. Such an estimate,
however, does Diodorus a very great injustice, as the briefest perusal
of his work must suffice to demonstrate. Indeed, it is perhaps not
saying too much to assert that one would be nearer the truth were he to
accept an estimate by Pliny, who affirms that Diodorus was the first
of the Greeks who wrote seriously and avoided trifles. That Diodorus
did write seriously, his work clearly testifies; that he largely
avoided trifles, is shown by the mass of matter which he crowded into
a comparatively small space; and that he was far from using his
materials without exercising selective judgment, should be evident to
any one who scans these materials themselves. It is quite true that he
made many mistakes. He sometimes accepted as fact what was only fable,
his chronologies are not always secure, his narratives of events not
always photographically accurate. But consider the task he had set
himself. He was endeavouring to write a history of the entire world so
far as known in his day and generation, including within the scope of
his narrative all the leading events of all the nations of the globe as
known in that day. No man can perform such a task, even in this day of
multiplied records and edited authorities, without making mistakes.

Whoever attempts to write history philosophically is brought, sooner or
later, face to face with the fact that all historical records are woven
through and through with fiction. To separate the threads of truth
from the threads of fable is the task of critical judgment. It will be
perfectly clear to any one who considers the case, that in making such
selection the historian of any generation must be biased and influenced
by the prejudices and preconceptions of his time. From such prejudices
and preconceptions Diodorus was, of course, not free. He looked out
upon the world with eyes of the first century B.C., not with eyes of
the twentieth century A.D. That century, no less than this,--perhaps
not more than this,--was an age of faith and superstition; but the
faith of that time was not the faith of this time; the superstitions of
the Greek and Roman were not our superstitions. They were a credulous
people; we are a credulous people: but the exact type of their
credulity differed in many ways from the type of our credulity.

In judging Diodorus, then, one must judge him as a Roman of the first
century B.C., not as a European of the twentieth century A.D. And if
we bear this in mind, we shall find, after scanning his pages, that
Diodorus was by no means marked among his fellows by simple credulity
of the unquestioning type which accepts whatever is told it without
subjecting it to criticism. Diodorus, to be sure, tells us fabulous
tales as to the origin of the world and the creation of its various
peoples; but he explicitly forewarns us that he tells these tales, not
as matters of his own belief, but in order to make an historical record
of the opinions current among the different nations themselves as to
their own origin.

These tales seem to us fabulous, grotesque, absurd; but we have no
reason to doubt that many of them seemed equally mythical to Diodorus
himself; and modern criticism should not forget that there is one other
myth tale of the creation of the world and the origin of a particular
race, which, had Diodorus known it, he would doubtless have narrated
with the rest, and viewed with the same scepticism which he shows
towards the others, as being fabulous, grotesque, and absurd, but which
would have been accepted by the critics of all Christendom, in every
age prior to our own, as the authentic historical record of the actual
creation of the earth, and as the true account of its chosen people.

In a word, modern criticism should bear in mind, when reproaching
Diodorus and others like him for their credulity, that the accepted
faith of nineteenth-century Europe would have seemed to Diodorus as
absurd and fabulous and mythical as any tale which he has to tell us
can seem to the twentieth-century critic.

And as to the mistakes of Diodorus in the more strictly historical
portions of his narrative, these also must be viewed with a certain
toleration by every candid critic when he reflects upon the vast
preponderance of those cases in which the records of Diodorus are
worthy of the fullest credence. In considering these matters, it is
very easy, indeed, to generate myths that befog our view of the true
status of an ancient author. Thus, for example, it was once traditional
to regard Thucydides as the most candid, just, and impartial historian
who has ever lived; but it can hardly be in doubt that the real reason
why this estimate has grown up about the name of Thucydides is the fact
that, as Professor Mahaffy points out, Thucydides is the sole authority
for the history of most of the period of which he treats. It has even
been admitted by Müller that in the early portion of the first chapter
of Thucydides, where he treats on Grecian history in general, and up
to the Peloponnesian War, he does not manifest the same impartiality
which distinguishes him in the later portions of his narrative. But
it is precisely in this earlier chapter that Thucydides deals with
events that are recorded by other historians. It is here, and for the
most part here alone, that his story can be checked by data from other
authors. Could we similarly check the story of the Peloponnesian War
in general, it can hardly be in doubt that we should come across at
least some discrepancies which would have tended materially to modify
the almost idolatrous estimate of Thucydides that came to be, and long
continued to be, unquestionably associated with his name.

Making the application of this thought to Diodorus, it is evident at
once that the historian of a limited period of antiquity lays himself
open to no such range of comparison as he who undertakes to write the
history of the entire world. In the very nature of the case, such a
writer pits himself against the whole company of specialists; and,
after all, it is hardly surprising, should it be susceptible of proof,
that in several, or all, fields there are specialists whose accuracy
excels the accuracy of Diodorus in each particular field. Surely the
comprehensiveness of his task must count for something in the estimate,
and, when all this is taken into consideration, it may fairly be
repeated that the general estimate of modern criticism has done but
scant justice to the author of the first attempt ever made to write a
complete and comprehensive history of the world.

Moreover, it must not be forgotten that in his use of authorities
Diodorus sometimes showed a selective judgment that is entitled to the
fullest praise. A notable instance is found in his treatment of that
period of Grecian history following the Peloponnesian War, when the
Spartans and the Thebans were contending for supremacy. It was treated
by Xenophon in his _Hellenica_, and as Xenophon was actual witness of
many of the events which he describes, the presumption would be that
his authority for the period might be considered incontestable. But
in point of fact, Xenophon, philosopher though he was and pupil of
Socrates, was not above the influence of personal prejudice. He was a
friend of Agesilaus, and his admiration for that hero, as well as his
fondness for the Spartans in general, prejudiced his narrative to such
an extent that he did very scant justice to the merits of the great
Epaminondas. Indeed, were we to trust to Xenophon alone, the world
never would have had in later times anything like a just appreciation
of the merits of the great Theban, and since Xenophon’s account of this
period is the only contemporary one that has been preserved, it was a
rare chance, indeed, that preserved to posterity a just appreciation of
the greatest of the Thebans, whom some critics are wont to consider the
greatest of all the Greeks; and it is Diodorus whom we must thank for
doing this historic justice to a great man whose merits might otherwise
have been obscured by the personal prejudice of a contemporary
historian.

Diodorus, in treating this period, chose as his authority, not
Xenophon, but Aphorus. Just how he came to this decision is not known;
it suffices that the decision was a good one. None but a prejudiced
critic can doubt that in many other cases his judgment was equally
perspicuous in selecting among divergent accounts the one of greatest
verisimilitude.

A part of the relative neglect which has fallen to the lot of Diodorus
may be ascribed to the manner of his handling. He threw his work into
the form of annals, in which a chronological idea was predominant.
He gives the history of a nation in a given year, and then turns
aside to other nations, to follow the fortunes of each in turn over
the same period. Necessarily, under such a treatment, the whole plan
lacks continuity. One must break from one subject to another, must
turn from Assyria to Egypt, from Greece to Rome, in order to follow
the story through constantly broken chapters. Naturally, under such
treatment, the reader’s interest flags. From a popular standpoint, such
a treatment is clearly a mistake.

The plan of Herodotus, which took up the story of each nation, and
carried it through a long period uninterruptedly, has many advantages;
is infinitely more artistic. It is chiefly due to this treatment,
rather than the actual phrasing of his story, that Herodotus has gained
so much more universal fame than Diodorus; for in those parts of his
history in which he does attempt a continuous narrative, Diodorus shows
much skill as a story-teller. In the earlier portion of his work, that
portion which, fortunately, has in the main been preserved to us, when
dealing with what he regards as the fabulous history of the nations
prior to the establishment of a fixed chronology, his narrative runs on
continuously, suggesting in many ways that of the Father of History.
It was so with his treatment of early Egypt, and with his even more
interesting history of ancient Assyria. These parts alone of his work
serve to make him one of the most important authors of antiquity whose
writings have been preserved to us, and we shall have occasion to draw
largely upon him for the history of this period.

What has just been said about the attitude of modern critics toward
Diodorus must not be taken to imply that this earliest of great world
historians has, on the whole, failed of an appreciative audience. The
facts of the case amply refute such a supposition as this. An author
writes to be read, and in the last resort the only valid criterion as
to the value of his work is found in the preservation or neglect of
that work by successive generations of readers.

Tested by this standard, very few of the ancient writers have obtained
such a measure of appreciation as has been accorded to Diodorus.
Something like three-fourths of what he wrote has been lost, it is
true; but in fairly estimating the import of this, one must consider
the bulk of what remains. The briefest comparison supplies us with
some very interesting data. It appears that, of the entire series of
the predecessors of Diodorus, no single historian has left us anything
like a comparable bulk of extant matter. Only one predecessor in any
field of literature, namely, Aristotle, greatly exceeds him in this
regard, and a single other writer, Plato, about equals him. Turning to
the contemporaries of Diodorus and to his successors in the use of the
Greek language, a similar result is shown. A single writer exceeds him
in output. This is Plutarch, the biographer and philosopher rather than
historian proper. No other Greek writer in any field equals Diodorus,
though two historians, Dion Cassius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, are
within hailing distance. When one reflects on the actual labour implied
by the preservation of any manuscript throughout the long generations
of the middle ages, these data speak volumes for the aggregate judgment
passed upon the work of Diodorus by posterity. Of the long list of
Greek historians,--a list mounting far into the hundreds, as proved
by fragmentary remains,--only three as ancient as Diodorus have fared
better than he, these three being Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon.
But the entire bulk of the works of these three writers does not so
very greatly exceed the bulk of the extant writings of Diodorus. The
works of Herodotus and Thucydides together do not comprise more matter
than is contained in books eleven to twenty of Diodorus, which are
preserved _en bloc_.

It would, of course, be absurd to imply that the mere bulk of the
manuscripts preserved before the age of printing is a test of the
value of an ancient author’s work; but, on the other hand, bearing in
mind always the labour employed in the production of a single copy
of a large work, it would be equally absurd to deny that the bulk of
manuscripts has a certain bearing upon the value of the matter which
they preserve. No doubt many a scribe would be deterred from starting
out to copy manuscript by the great bulk of the work, and where he
had no great preference, would be influenced by this alone to choose
a smaller book. Again, doubtless many a scribe wearied of his task in
the case of the more ponderous works, and gave it up after copying a
few books. This common-sense explanation no doubt accounts for the
fact that quite generally the earlier books rather than the later ones
of works that have come down to us in a fragmentary condition are
the ones preserved. Had Herodotus and Thucydides written forty books
instead of eight or nine, it is very unlikely that even their genius
would have sufficed to preserve the entire number. The case of Livy,
whose work, despite the beauty of its style, has come down to us so
sadly mutilated, sufficiently sustains this supposition. It is nothing
against the merit of Diodorus, then, to reflect that half his work is
lost; the wonder is rather that so much of it has been preserved.

We have dwelt thus at length upon the work of Diodorus because it
is a work that may be taken as in many ways representative of world
histories in general. Certainly it was by far the greatest world
history produced in antiquity, of the exact merits of which we have
any present means of judging. Indeed, there is only one other world
history that has come down to us, and this, the work of Justin, is in
itself only an abridgment of the writing of another author, Trogus
Pompeius. Considering when it was written, this work of Trogus, if we
may judge from the abridgment, was an admirable production, and the
abridgment itself is of great value in throwing light on some periods
that otherwise are not well covered by extant documents. As a whole,
however, it is a compendium of history rather than a comprehensive
work like that of Diodorus. Of the works of the other world historians
of antiquity it is impossible to speak with any measure of certainty.
Polybius accredited Aphorus with being the only man who had written
a world history before his day. It is known that Aphorus lived in
the fifth century B.C., and that he was a fellow-pupil of another
historian, Theopompus, in the famous school of Isocrates at Athens;
but his work is only known to us through inadequate fragments and the
indirect quotations of other authors. The same is true of the works of
Theopompus just referred to, and of Timæus, another Greek whose writing
had something of world historic comprehensiveness. But, even had these
works been preserved, it may well be doubted whether any one of them
would compare favourably with the great history of Diodorus, which must
stand out for all time as the greatest illustration of the writing of
world history in antiquity.

Diodorus, as we have seen, brought his work down to the time of the
Gallic wars of Cæsar. There are references in his writing which imply
that he lived well into the time of Augustus. He probably died not long
before the beginning of the Christian era.

No Greek of later time and no Roman of any period produced a work
that supplanted the history of Diodorus, though most of the Byzantine
historians produced chronicles, many of which had more or less aspect
of world history in epitome. Several of these have been preserved, but
no one thinks of comparing them with the work of the older writer. The
chronological work of Eusebius, however, deserves a word of special
mention. It was a mere epitome of world history, but a relatively
comprehensive one, and one which, through the loss of more pretentious
works, has come to be of great value to the modern historian. It was
written originally in Greek, but the most important copy of it that
has come down to us is, curiously enough, an Armenian translation.
It is the Latin translation of this Armenian manuscript that is the
work usually referred to by modern historians in speaking of Eusebius.
The encyclopædia of history compiled for Constantine Porphyrogenitus,
to which reference has already been made, must also be mentioned as
a world history of real importance. It was based almost exclusively
upon Greek authors, who were quoted at length, with such abbreviations
or modifications as were made necessary in adjusting the various
texts to one another. As a means of preserving the work of numerous
important Greek historians this collection had the utmost value, but,
unfortunately, it has come down to us in a much mutilated condition.
During the Byzantine period the minds of would-be historians of the
Western world were so occupied with ecclesiastical quarrels and the
chronicles of local princes, that no one thought of world histories in
the broader sense. We should be thankful that here and there a monk
had interest and energy enough to copy the ancient authors, and thus
in part to preserve them. Considering the intellectual atmosphere of
the time, the wonder is, not that so many of the pagan authors were
lost, but rather that any of them were preserved. Yet there were
occasional gleams of light, even in the so-called dark age. Such a one
of peculiar interest to the English reader is found in the fact that
King Alfred translated into Anglo-Saxon the compendious world history
of Orosius, a work that otherwise would be but little known to fame,
but which, thanks to its brevity of treatment, and to this very unusual
distinction of translation into a “barbaric tongue,” no doubt served
a most excellent purpose in giving to the Anglo-Saxons of the ninth
century a glimpse of the events of ancient times.

The best guide to the historic point of view of the generations that
ushered in what we are accustomed to think of as the modern period
is furnished by the _History of the World_ which Sir Walter Raleigh
wrote toward the close of his life, late in the sixteenth century.
Raleigh was not an historian from choice, but was led to his task as a
diversion during the time of his imprisonment. The work as far as he
completed it is in five books, the titles of which are instructive.
First book, “In treating of the First Ages of the World, from the
Creation to Abraham.” Second book, “Of the Times from the Birth of
Abraham to the Destruction of the Temple of Solomon.” Third book, “From
the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Time of Philip of Macedon.” Fourth
book, “From the Reign of Philip of Macedon to the Establishing of that
Kingdom in the Race of Antigonus.” Fifth book, “From the Settled Rule
of Alexander’s Successors in the East, until the Romans (prevailing
over all) made Conquest of Asia and Macedon.”

It will appear that Raleigh did not carry his history beyond the
early Roman period, yet, even so, it is a very bulky book, comprising
more than eight hundred enormous quarto pages, an actual bulk far
exceeding the extant portions of Diodorus. Raleigh very generally names
his authorities in the margin, but even had he failed to do so, it
would be easy to understand the sources on which he must have drawn.
Obviously he depended largely upon the Bible for the early history of
mankind, and for the rest he had access, no doubt, to the dozen or
so of classical authors whose names we have had occasion to mention
again and again. Naturally enough, the pages of Raleigh seem archaic
to the modern reader, yet passages are not wanting which show the
shrewd practical insight of the courtier and statesman. As a whole, the
work had sufficient interest to be reprinted in 1687, a century after
the author’s death. Indeed, until this time there was practically no
world history in the field in competition with Raleigh’s that had been
written since classical times. It is a curious commentary on the life
of the post-classical times and of the middle ages that between the
work of Diodorus, written just before the beginning of the Christian
era, and the work altogether similar in scope of Sir Walter Raleigh,
written sixteen hundred years later, there was no world history
produced that is strictly comparable to either. Nor did the seventeenth
century produce any marked change in the situation as regards the
literature of world history.

The true renaissance of history writing came with the eighteenth
century. About 1730 an English publisher was led to notice the paucity
of recent literature in this field, and to project a universal history
of the widest scope. Such men as Archibald Bower, John Campbell,
William Guthrie, George Sale, George Psalmanazar, and John Swinton
were associated in the undertaking, and in the course of the following
twenty years a long series of volumes dealing with all phases of
universal history, except, curiously enough, the history of Great
Britain, was brought to a close. A subsequent edition, modified and
improved as regards the earlier volumes, and supplemented with an
account of English history, was published toward the close of the
eighteenth century, the editor being the famous Dr. Tobias Smollett.
This work, the first important history of the world produced in modern
times, excited great interest. It is odd to reflect in the light of
more recent events that the work was translated into various European
languages, including German. The production of this work was a notable
achievement, but the various parts of the work had widely different
degrees of merit. A competent German critic, writing about the middle
of the nineteenth century, conceded that the parts of the universal
history referring to antiquity were fairly well done, but noted that
the treatment of the middle ages was superficial, and the treatment of
modern history even worse.

Inasmuch as the history of antiquity has been very largely
reconstructed within the past fifty years, it will be obvious that the
universal history in question cannot now be regarded with other than an
antiquarian interest. Nevertheless, it contains numberless descriptive
passages, which are as historically accurate and as interesting to-day
as they were when written.

The impulse to historical composition, of which this universal history
is a monumental proof, found expression a little later in the great
histories of Hume and Robertson and Gibbon. Thanks to these writers,
England was easily in advance of all other countries at the close of
the eighteenth century in the matter of historical composition. Indeed,
as to world histories she was first, without a second. Early in the
nineteenth century, however, a great world history was produced in
Germany. This was the work of Schlosser. In its earliest form this
work was completed in 1824; it was a strictly technical production.
But about twenty years later a pupil of Schlosser, under the direction
of the author himself, elaborated a popular edition of the world
history, which soon had an enormous circulation in Germany, and which
in recurring editions still finds a multitude of readers. This work
of Schlosser’s would probably have been translated into English were
it not that the field had been preoccupied by another great universal
history. This was the work which Dr. Lardner edited, and which began
to appear in 1830, about a century after the inauguration of that
first universal history in English to which we have just referred. Dr.
Lardner’s work, like its English predecessor, was produced by a company
of specialists; but it differed from the other in that each volume
or set of volumes dealing with a period or country was written by a
specialist whose authorship was acknowledged on the title-page, whereas
the previous work had been altogether anonymous. In other words, it
was essentially a collection of monographs, each by a more or less
distinguished authority, which, in the aggregate, constituted a history
of the world. The work as a whole comprised a large number of volumes.
Needless to say the component parts were of varying merit; but as a
whole the work was an excellent one, and many of the volumes still have
value, though necessarily much of their contents is antiquated.

The production of the popular edition of Schlosser’s world history
in Germany marked an epoch in this class of literature. Almost
contemporaneously with this production several other world histories
saw the light in Germany, and from that day to this world histories
have come from the German press in unbroken succession. These are
varied in scope, from the marvellously compressed and beautifully
philosophical work of Rottock in four small volumes, published about
1830, to the gigantic Oncken series, which is just completed. In this
list of German world histories the works of Bekker, of Leo, and of
Weiss hold conspicuous places, in addition to those just named. But
perhaps the most notable of all is the world history of Dr. George
Weber. This work of Dr. Weber occupied the author during the best years
of his life. It is in eighteen volumes, and occupied about twenty years
in passing through the press. We shall have occasion to refer more at
length to Dr. Weber’s work in another place, as well as to quote from
it frequently. Suffice it here that Dr. Weber may justly be called the
Diodorus of modern times, his work being certainly the most complete
and comprehensive exposition of world history that has ever issued from
a single pen.

One other world history of German origin must be mentioned as holding
a place beside that of Weber. This is the work of Ranke. It is very
different in plan from Weber’s, in some ways more philosophical, and
often less detailed in its narrative of events. The author, recognised
as almost the greatest of German historians, began the work late in
life, and brought to bear upon it perhaps as full an equipment of
historical knowledge in divers fields as any single man has ever
attained. Unfortunately, he did not live to complete his work, which,
as it stands, comes only to the close of the middle ages, and which,
therefore, cannot be compared in its entirety with the completed work
of Weber.

The most recent of all the great German world histories, the Oncken
series, just referred to, is a work built essentially upon the plan of
Dr. Lardner’s series of the early part of the century. Each volume of
the Oncken series is written virtually as an independent work by an
authority, and there is no close bond between the various component
parts of the structure, though doubtless an attempt was made on the
part of the editor to have the various authors conform somewhat to the
same scheme of treatment. The work comprises about fifty very large
octavo volumes, being therefore the bulkiest, as it is the most recent,
of world histories.

CHAPTER V

THE PRESENT HISTORY

It is a singular fact that since the publication of Dr. Lardner’s
series in the first half of the nineteenth century, no satisfactory
attempt has been made to bring the entire story of the world’s history
to the attention of the English reader in a single work. While the
presses of Germany have sent out their never ending stream of world
histories, the English-speaking world has remained utterly inactive,
so that until now there has been no work in English less than half a
century old that could pretend to compete with any one of the numerous
German productions. Buckle’s work would, to some extent, have supplied
the deficit had he lived to complete it, yet even his effort was aimed
rather at philosophical generalisations regarding human evolution, than
at a narrative of historical events.

If we attempt to explain this paucity of literature in so fascinating
a field as that of world history, the solution is not far to seek:
it is found in the very magnitude of the task. This is the age of
specialists, and just in proportion as one appreciates the full meaning
of special knowledge of any subject in its modern interpretation,
must he feel the hopelessness of attempting to gain more than a
general knowledge in a variety of fields. Yet something approaching
the knowledge of the specialist should be brought to bear upon each
period of history by any one who attempts to write a comprehensive
history of the world. It is an appreciation of this fact that has
led to the production of such a symposium as the Oncken series, just
referred to, and contrariwise, it is the appreciation of the same
fact that has led to the relative neglect of so admirable a work as
that of Weber. The modern critic is disposed to feel that the writing
of a really comprehensive world history in this age is a task beyond
the capacity of any single man. When one considers the vast amount
of research work in hitherto unexplored fields that is being carried
on in every department of history, it becomes patent that no single
mind can hope to cope at first hand with the ever increasing flood
of special literature. In almost every department of history special
bibliographies have been published of late years which are utterly
bewildering, even to the specialist, in the wealth of material which
they reveal.

To cite but a single instance, the bibliography of early English
history, down to about the year 1485, as recently collated by Professor
Gross, comprises a large volume of small type. It would be the work
of a lifetime for any specialist to deal, even in a cursory way, with
each and every one of the works cited in this list; yet this is only
one little corner of the field which the world historian must cover.
Obviously, then, the world historian, if he attempt personally to
construct a narrative of the entire subject, must content himself with
a more or less superficial glance at each field; his reading may indeed
be wide, but it cannot by any possibility be exhaustive. Moreover, in
the nature of the case, he must often read merely to gather material
for the day’s task of writing, and no matter what his memory, he
will inevitably forget the greater part of the multitudinous details
that he has dealt with. In the case of a man of such wide scholarship
and such tenacity of purpose as Dr. Weber, it must be freely admitted
that a view of the entire range of world history may be attained,
which it would be rank injustice to pronounce really superficial.
Yet even such a worker as Weber must have depended very largely upon
second-hand epitomes for his facts. He cannot have read at first hand
more than a fraction of the authors upon whom he is obliged explicitly
or inferentially to pass judgment. In a word, great as is the value
of works of the class of which Weber’s is the finest example, such
works must, in the very nature of the case, be content to be ranked
as more or less successful compilations, lacking the authority which
the modern critic is unwilling to vouchsafe to anything but strictly
original work,--original work, that is, in the sense of work based upon
a first-hand examination of the most remote authorities, the only sense
in which the word “original” can properly be applied to any form of
historical composition.

If we turn from world histories of the one-man type to those produced
by a symposium of specialists, we are met with a quite different, but
none the less insistent, series of inherent defects.

In the first place, the intrinsic defect of the one-man treatment is
not altogether overcome, since specialism has nowadays been carried
to such a stage that few men feel altogether at home outside a
comparatively limited period, even of the history of a single nation.
If, then, one man is asked to write the entire history of, let us say,
the Greeks, he necessarily passes over ground that his special studies
have not covered uniformly, and in certain periods he must feel himself
more or less in the position of the general historian. It would, of
course, be possible to meet this objection by having a sufficient
number of writers, so that each limited period should be covered by a
true specialist; but the great difficulty in such a scheme as this is
the entire lack of harmony of view that must pertain to such a work.

A glance at the Oncken series will convince any one how very difficult
it is to attain even approximately to a true perspective of world
history under the symposial plan. Thus one finds in this series, to
cite but a single illustration of disproportionate treatment, that
various relatively insignificant periods of modern German history are
allowed to fill bulky volumes where a true perspective would have
relegated them to mere chapters. It is only from a very prejudiced
modern standpoint that the history of Frederick II can be thought
worth greater space than the entire history of the Greek world. Where
such inconsistencies are permitted there is a danger that the alleged
world history will become rather the history of a single nation in
its relations to other nations, past and present, than an impartial
presentation of the history of nations as a whole.

In the present work an attempt has been made to avoid the pitfalls
of one-man treatment on the one hand, and of ill-adjusted specialist
treatment on the other. We have made sure of presenting special
knowledge by drawing upon the specialists of every field, and letting
them present their information in their own words; but, at the same
time, we have attempted to avoid the prejudiced view from which the
specialist is least of all men free, by presenting the counter views
of various students wherever there is failure of agreement among those
best competent to judge.

The authorities on whom historial compositions are necessarily based,
and who in other works are merely cited by name, or at most by volume
and page reference, are here quoted in detail in their own words
wherever practicable, always with full credit to the author, and with
exact reference to the work from which the excerpt is taken. Such
authorities are quoted, not merely from histories in English, but from
the entire range of historical writings of all ages. It is hoped that
few important names are overlooked. The aggregate number of different
works thus quoted (not merely cited) will be about one thousand. These
quotations vary in length from illuminative paragraphs to excerpts
of many pages, averaging perhaps about two thousand words each. Some
fifteen hundred of such extensive quotations are made from foreign
languages, and by far the greater number of these have been translated
from the originals expressly for the present work, thus representing
matter never before accessible to the reader of English. The languages
represented in this list of important historical works of foreign
origin include practically all the tongues of civilised nations,
ancient and modern,--Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Arabic, Syriac,
Persian, Chinese, Japanese, and the entire range of European languages
from Greek, Latin, and Russian to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French,
Dutch, German, and Scandinavian. From all of these the original words
of the various authors have been translated into the most literal
English consistent with our idiom. It is speaking well within bounds to
assert that seldom before has so varied an exposition of cosmopolitan
thought been collected in a single work.

But these excerpts are not given as random references crowded
into footnotes or appendices; they are woven into the text of the
consecutive story of world history so that they themselves constitute
the bulk of that story. Thus the history of Germany is mainly told in
the words of German writers, that of France in the words of French
historians. To avoid the prejudiced national view of history, however,
the story of a nation thus told by the native historian is always
subject to the corrective views of foreigners. Thus we gain both the
sympathetic and the critical points of view. When the authorities are
not agreed as to any important fact of history, or where there are
important differences of opinion in estimating the influence of a great
event or the real status of a famous character, reliance is not placed
upon the estimate of a single historian, but counterviews are quoted,
even though they may be directly contradictory, each, of course, being
ascribed to its proper source.

To give unity to these various views and to weld the entire mass of
matter into a consistent and comprehensive history of the world,
original editorial passages are everywhere freely introduced as a
part of the main narrative, forming indeed the warp of the whole, and
serving to elucidate and harmonise the views of the authorities quoted.
A feature of the original editorial matter is that it comprises, first
and last, critical estimates of the work of important historians
of every age, informing the reader as to the status--even to the
particular prejudice and bias--of the authority he is asked to consult.
Thus the novice is everywhere placed somewhat on a par with the special
student in his estimate of the authorities. Where conflicting views
are quoted of nominally equal authority, the reader is given data on
which to base an intelligent personal opinion as to the probabilities.
Moreover, elaborate additional bibliographies of works that may
advantageously be consulted are everywhere given, and these in the
aggregate constitute such a critical bibliography of the entire range
of historical compositions as cannot fail to interest even the general
reader.

Our method of introducing critical bibliography, and the critical
selection of the excerpts themselves, make it feasible to introduce
quotations, not only from the latest authority in any field, but
also from the great historians of the past. Thus in the case of
ancient history, the classical authorities themselves are drawn upon
wherever available,--Herodotus for the Persian wars, Thucydides for
the Peloponnesian wars, Xenophon for later Greek history, Sallust,
Cæsar, Livy, Dionysius, Dion Cassius, Tacitus, Ammianus, and the
rest for Roman history; and so on indefinitely. Herodotus describes
the battle of Thermopylæ; Arrian tells of the glories of Alexander;
Dionysius relates the story of Virginia; Polybius shows us Hannibal
crossing the Alps; Appian pictures the fall of Carthage; Josephus the
fall of Jerusalem; Zosimus the fall of Palmyra. In this way a mass
of first-hand matter, much of it hitherto absolutely inaccessible to
the reader of English, and much more only to be found in rare and
costly editions, is put within the reach of the least scholarly.
But--what is most essential--such matter as this is not merely given by
itself unsupported. It is supplemented by the verdicts of the latest
investigators in the various fields covered. Thus, to cite but a
single instance, in the history of early Greece, not merely Herodotus,
Thucydides, Diodorus, Pausanias, and other ancient authorities are
quoted, but the long range of modern students as well, from Mitford,
Thirlwall, and Grote to Curtius, Bezold, Busolt, Geddes, Schliemann,
Mahaffy, Bury, and in general the latest investigators in the field of
classical archæology.

Thanks to this system of checking ancient accounts with editorial
criticism and other recent expert evidence, it is even practicable to
avail ourselves sometimes of the writings of men who are not primarily
historians, but who wrote, as so many other great authors have done,
most important incidental essays on historical subjects; thus matter in
the highest degree picturesque and interesting is often presented in
a manner which the technical historian, however great his scientific
authority, is seldom able to imitate.

Another peculiar merit of this system is that it enables us to preserve
specimens of the work of a large coterie of historians, whose influence
was great and whose writings were formerly standard, but whose books,
as a whole, have been superseded by more recent works. Some of the
classical authors are cases in point. A few of these are indeed read
by students in colleges everywhere, but the great bulk of them are as
utterly unknown to the average reader as if they had never existed. Who
reads Pausanias, or Diodorus, or Polybius, or Appian, or Dion Cassius,
or Dionysius, or Ælianus, or Arrian, or Quintus Curtius, or Zosimus?
Yet these men are the only original authorities left us in many fields
of ancient history. Their works are the sources which moderns can do
little more than paraphrase in writing of those times. Surely, then,
it is worth while to go to these authors themselves and hear their
story at first hand, applying to it the corrective judgment of later
criticism, rather than to depend upon the mere paraphrase of some
modern compiler.

Much the same argument applies to parts of the work of once famous
historians of more recent times: such historians as Hume, Mitford,
Thirlwall, and a host of others. Their work, as a whole, can no longer
be commended to the student who is to confine himself to a single
authority, for in many parts their writings have been superseded; yet
there are other parts of their work that are to-day as valuable as when
they were written, and it seems regrettable that a great name should
drop from public recognition merely because the sweep of progress has
dethroned it from supremacy. It is inevitable that the present should
always loom large before mankind, and that egotism should stamp with
peculiar force the importance of the Recent. “Each generation abandons
the ideas of its predecessors like stranded ships,” says Emerson. Yet
it must not be forgotten that posterity often plays strange tricks with
reputations. Herodotus was held up to ridicule some centuries after
his death by a “False Plutarch,” who is only known now because of his
attack upon the master historian, while the work criticised, though for
some generations looked on with suspicion, is as fully appreciated,
after more than two thousand years, as it can have been in the day when
it was written.

Similarly, the judgments of our own age of specialism may be reversed
by posterity; and in any event it would be regrettable if a once
important historical work should be quite forgotten. Yet such a fate
threatens work of every grade. Müller’s collection of the fragments of
Greek historians gives mere bits from the writings of more than five
hundred authors about whom nothing is known--not even the exact age in
which they lived--beyond the fact that they wrote works of which these
fragments are the only mementoes. Could any page of manuscript of any
one of these authors be recovered, it would to-day be considered worth
many times its weight in gold.

Precisely the same process of decay is gradually removing the evidences
of the historical labours of the writers of recent generations even
now. The multiplication of books by the printing-press makes the
process a trifle slower, perhaps; but it is no less sure. A goodly
number of works that were famous half a century ago are now absolutely
inaccessible to the would-be purchaser: the great book markets of
Paris, Berlin, and London cannot secure or supply them. A few copies
of these works are still extant in private collections and public
libraries, but the fate of these is assured. Libraries are constructed
to be burned. Some day a lick of flame will wipe out the last copy
of any work issued only in a single edition, and the author will
become thenceforth merely a name and a memory; or if, perchance, some
latter-day Suidas or Stobæus has quoted a sentence from him, such
sentence will be treasured in catalogues of fragments of eighteenth and
nineteenth century historians. For many such an author, the present
work may perform the function of Suidas or Stobæus, for a long list of
these obsolescent writers will be found represented in our pages,--not
always preserved for their antiquarian interest indeed, but quoted in
regard to events concerning which their authority is still standard,
and because it is believed that, in the cases selected, their treatment
has not been excelled by any more recent performance; sometimes, on
the other hand,--but more rarely,--quoted because of the quaintness of
their diction, because of the archaic cast of thought through which
they reflect the spirit of their times, or because of their sheer
whimsicality.

But while emphasising the catholicity of taste that judges matter on
its own merits, excluding nothing simply because it is old, it must be
emphasised also that in the main such selection leads to the inclusion
of a preponderance of recent matter. Each generation builds upon the
shoulders of the last, and the work, as a whole, is progressive. So we
go not merely to the latest books, but also to the recent numbers of
periodicals, the publications of learned societies and the like. And
to put the cap-sheaf to modernity, the greatest living experts in each
field have contributed original essays and characterisations expounding
the latest developments. These contributions, in which master workers
summarise the results of years of investigation, will be found not the
least valuable part of our work.

Most that has been said thus far has tended to emphasise the variorum
or anthological features of our work. But it must be evident that
there is another and quite different point of view from which our
historical structure may be considered. This point of view regards
our history not as a compilation--an anthology--but as an altogether
new and original work. A moment’s consideration will show how fully
justified we are in referring to this aspect of the subject. For it
is obvious to the least attentive consideration that the intrinsic
materials which make up the story of history might be never so
abundant, never so valuable, without in the least presupposing that
the history composed of them will be an artistic or valuable work; any
more than an abundant supply of bricks, marble, and mortar necessarily
determines the building of a beautiful edifice. The materials are,
indeed, prerequisites; but an intelligent manipulation of the materials
is at least equally essential. There must be an architect to plan the
structure as a whole, and artists and artisans to select and manipulate
the materials in accordance with the plan, or the result will be, not
an edifice, but a brick-heap.

Since, then, we have dwelt at some length upon the fundamental
materials of our historical structure, it is necessary that we should
be equally explicit regarding the shaping of the architectural
design--to hold to our figure--in accordance with which the materials
have been first selected, and secondly amalgamated with other
materials;--each stone not only selected of proper quality and size,
but chiselled and polished to fit its proper niche.

The simile of an architect constructing a building, cheap and trite
as it is, cannot well be dispensed with if we are to give the reader
a vivid picture of our method of construction. It must be understood
that whether our result be good or bad, there is nothing fortuitous,
nothing haphazard about it. We did not start groping blindly for
material, hoping to see an artistic structure form itself out of
chaos. Our entire plan was as fully preconceived as the plan of any
other architect. First, the kind of structure was determined on: in
other words the scope of our subject,--world history; the entire sweep
of important human events from the earliest times to the present
day. Secondly, the approximate size of the projected structure was
determined--its ground surface, its height, its total mass; or,
speaking in the terminology of our specific structure, the number of
volumes, the size of each volume, the total mass or number of pages
involved.

Next the proportions of the structure, the number of floors and of
rooms to each floor; the relative size and dimensions of the various
departments; or, in book terms, the proportionate number of volumes
or pages to be given to each important department of history: so many
volumes to the Old Orient; so many to the Classical World; so many to
the Middle Ages; so many to the important divisions of modern history.

All this, let it be repeated, was accurately predetermined before a
single block of material was explicitly selected for the building.
It does not follow that absolutely no changes have ever been made
in the original plan--no architect perhaps ever made a building of
which this was quite true; but it is true that the original plan was
so carefully thought out, so well considered, that the changes are
utterly insignificant in comparison with the unmodified portions of the
structure. This point should be emphasised and clearly borne in mind,
because upon it depends a large measure of our confidence that we have
produced a structure not without artistic and correct proportions.
It was the predetermination of the proportions, and this alone, that
could control the enthusiasm of unrestrained specialism, and keep to
anything like a true historical perspective. Over and over again it has
been proved that the special worker, when he came to focus upon a given
period, was in the position of a microscopist, viewing his wonderfully
interesting microcosm. All the rest of the world shut out for the
moment, the little circle of the microscopic field, which may be in
reality one hundredth of an inch in diameter, looms before the view at
an angle which literally makes it seem to eclipse the world itself.

And so the historical delver, when he finds himself in the midst
of the literature on any period whatever--be it a mere historical
mole-hill--finds himself surrounded by a heap of literary bricks
which shuts out the very mountain ranges of history from his vision.
At once he demands--feels that he must have--space for his magnified
mole-hill; and it is only the predetermined editorial restrictions that
keep him from filling entire volumes with fascinating stories about
some petty kingdom which, from the world-historical standpoint, is
entitled to pages only. It is a conservative estimate of the facts to
assert that there is no period of our history for which ten times the
amount of material has not been garnered than could possibly be used
in _extenso_. The chart of the architect has lain always open upon the
editorial desk, and rule and compass have been ever ready to restrain
and check the over-enthusiasm of the worker whose zeal would otherwise
lead him to present megaliths where the specification called for, and
the plan permitted, only tiny bricks.

As to whether the plans of the architect were intrinsically good;
whether the specification called for bricks where bricks were logically
needed, and for megaliths in their proper place--these are questions
that will not be entered on here. But a word may be permitted as to
the ruling motives which have dominated the conception, and which, it
is hoped, have never been lost sight of. These ruling motives are two:
first, the hope of attaining a high standard of historical accuracy
in the most critical acceptance of the term; secondly, the desire to
retain as much as possible of human interest in the broadest and best
sense of the words. To attain the first of these ends it is necessary
to be free from prejudice, to have unflagging zeal in collecting
testimony, to have scientific and critical acumen in weighing evidence;
to attain the second end it is essential that kindred faculties
should be applied not to the facts of history but to the literary
presentations of these facts, that the good and true story may not be
spoiled in the telling.

The desire to be free from all prejudice in the judgment of historical
facts is, then, the key-note of all our philosophy of historical
criticism; and the desire to retain interest--human interest--is the
key-note of our philosophy of historical composition.

To attain either end, what perhaps is most required is catholicity of
sympathies. There must be no race prejudice, no national prejudice.
There must be no attempt to blacken or whiten historical characters,
in correspondence with the personal bias. There must be no special
pleading for or against any form of government, any racial propensity,
or any individual deed. In a word, there must be freedom from prejudice
in every field,--except indeed that prejudice in favour of the broad
principles of right, regarding which all civilised nations of every
age have been in virtual agreement. But the deeds, the motives, the
superstitions of all times and of all races must be viewed, so far
as such a thing is possible, through the same clear atmosphere of
impartiality. As between Egyptian, Assyrian, Hebrew, Hindoo, Persian,
Mongul--he who would produce a world history of truly catholic scope
should have no inherent prejudice or preconception.

Equally must there be freedom from prejudice regarding various classes
of ideas. “Whatever concerns mankind is of interest to me,” must be the
editorial motto. Some persons are interested only in military events,
in battles, treaties, and the like; others care only for constitutional
and governmental affairs; yet others think most of literature and of
art, or of science. But the editorial spirit of a world history should
show a catholicity of taste that is receptive of each and all of these.
Xerxes at Thermopylæ, and Æschylus writing his tragedy “The Persians”;
Alexander mourning for Hephæstion, and Phidias building the Parthenon;
Augustus Cæsar disputing the mastery of the world with Antony, and
Dionysius telling of the myths of early Rome; Richard of the lion heart
prosecuting a crusade, and Dante vitalising the Italian language; each
and all of these and kindred topics up and down the scroll of history
should equally, each in proportion to its relative influence, excite
the sympathetic attention of the historian. With the same zeal he
should tell of the alleged iniquities of a Messalina or a Catherine
de’ Medici and of the noble self-abnegation of a Cornelia; of the
self-seeking of a Cæsar and of the self-abnegation of a Cincinnatus or
a St. Louis. With sound common-sense for a guide, he should strive to
avoid on the one hand the over-credulity of the untrained mind, and on
the other the dogmatic scepticism that so often perverts the judgment
of the specialist.

But what then, it may be asked, of the moral of our story--of our
drama? Shall we be content to present the bare facts, and leave their
philosophical interpretation to chance? To this it may be replied,
that in the minds of most of us a profound philosophical idea is one
that accords with our own preconception;--other views are superficial,
perverse, or obviously mistaken. Hence a wise interpreter of history
will be extremely chary of putting forward his own more or less
dogmatic interpretations of the events he relates. It does not follow
that no opinion can ever be expressed; indeed, a tacit expression
of opinion is implied in the selection of almost every excerpt. But
witnesses from all sides must be given an impartial hearing in any case
where a clear balance of evidence is not attainable; and where the
evidence is demonstrative it must be presented with all fairness, and
without reservation or innuendo, regardless of its apparent bearing.

Fortunately the study of world history in itself tends to make for
precisely such impartiality. He who has attentively followed the story
of the rise and fall of nations will have learned that human nature is
everywhere at its foundation much the same; that no race, no nation,
no individual even is ideally good or totally bad; that the Past has
always been a Golden Age for the pessimist, the Future always utopian
for the dreamer, and that a broad optimism regarding the Present--a
belief that on the whole the conditions of any given time are about
as good as the character of the time permits--is, perhaps, the safest
philosophy of living.

In the main, then, we may rest content with the conviction that,
however unobtrusive our philosophy, the great lessons of history
will not fail to make themselves felt by any attentive reader of
these pages. We greatly mistake the purport of the story if it does
not on the whole make for broader views, for truer humanitarianism,
for higher morals, personal and communal;--in a word, for better
citizenship in the fullest and broadest meaning of the term. Indeed,
to attain the plane of the best citizenship, historical studies are
absolutely essential. No one can have a competent judgment regarding
the affairs of his own country without such studies; no one is a fair
judge of the political principles of the party he supports or of the
one that he opposes, who has not prepared himself by a study of the
political systems of the past. “Had I begun earlier and spent thirty
years in reading history,” said Schiller, “I should be far different
and a far better man than I am.” Echoing these words, we may say that
the outlook for every constitutional government would be brighter if
every youth and every man who exercises or is about to exercise the
responsibilities of a voter, and every woman whose advice aids or
stimulates a father, brother, husband, or son towards the performance
of his civic duties, could spend not thirty years, let us say, but
as many weeks in studying the history of nations. Little fear that
the student who has got such a start as this would willingly stop
there. He would have gained enough of insight to be keenly interested,
and it would require no urging to send him on; for the panorama of
history, once we gain a little insight into it as it unfolds before
us its never ending variety of scenes, can hardly be viewed otherwise
than with unflagging interest; unless indeed the view is befogged
by the atmosphere through which it is presented. To prevent such
befogging,--to present the story through a clear medium,--requires only
that the narrative shall be true to the facts in its presentation of
topics of real importance. This is what we had in mind when we said
that interest--human interest--is the key-note of our philosophy of
historical composition. It is the editorial conviction that attention,
based upon interest, is the foundation of mental development. A
literary work that lacks interest, might, indeed, subserve a useful
purpose, but the scope of its influence is curtailed from the outset
if the reader must go to it as a task and not as to a recreation.
Interest breaks down the barriers between work and play. Interest fixes
attention, and fixed attention is the basis of memorising.

Let it freely be asserted, then, that in the selection of material
for our work the principle acted on has been that, other things being
equal, the best account of any historical event is the most picturesque
and entertaining account,--for what, after all, does picturesqueness
imply, except an approach to the vivid reproduction of the actualities?
Written words are intended to be read, and any writer who, like
Polybius, despises the literary graces must expect to be despised in
turn, or, at least, neglected. Properly presented, the narrative of
history should have all the breathless interest of a novel,--for what
is so fascinating as a true story from human life? In the present work
an attempt is made to raise history towards the level of fiction in
point of interest, without sacrificing anything of scientific accuracy.
No account is given here merely because it is picturesque, to the
exclusion of a truer narrative; but the preference is always given
to the graphic story as against the dull, where the two have equal
authority as to matters of fact. Further to enhance the vividness of
presentation, pictures are everywhere introduced. There are thousands
of these pictures in the aggregate, drawn from the most varied sources,
and constituting, it is believed, one of the most remarkable series of
historical illustrations ever collected.

All in all, then, one might describe our intention as the desire to
dramatise the story of history,--for, again, what is dramatisation but
the mimicry of life? Our various books and sections are the settings
for the acts and scenes of the play, and it is hoped that, with the
aid of the introductions by way of proem, and the pictures to aid the
eye, the characters are made to move across the stage before the reader
with something like the vividness of living actors. One cannot quite
dare promise that there shall be no dull scenes, but it is hoped that,
in the main, the play will be found to move lightly on, as with words
spoken “trippingly upon the tongue.”

In particular, it is hoped that our dramatisation of history will
present the events of the long play in something like a true
perspective, the large events looming large in our story, the lesser
ones forced into the background. As an aid to this treatment, tables of
chronology are everywhere introduced before the curtain rises, if it
be permissible to hold to our metaphor. These are virtually the lists
of dramatis personæ. Even the minor characters will be named here,
though they act only as chorus, or prate a few lines in the play where
the chief personages will dominate the situation as they dominated
it in real life, and as they dominate it in the memory of posterity.
Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon--such figures will loom large
in our drama of history; yet it will never be forgotten that the play
is not a monologue. The minor actors will be given a fair hearing from
first to last.

It follows from this that the main story of our history has to do with
the deeds of men of action. But here at the very outset an important
question may be raised: do the deeds of men of action then, after all,
constitute the great events of history? An affirmative answer may be
given with much confidence. Great men of action carve out the contour
of history. High culture can only rise from soil fertilised by material
prosperity. The swords of Leonidas, Themistocles, and Pausanias must
prune the tree of civilisation before the flower of Periclesian culture
can bloom at Athens. There are no names like Livy, Horace, Ovid, and
Virgil in the annals of Rome before the conquests and the carnage of
Marius, Sulla, and Cæsar. But let us hasten to add that the deeds
of men of action can never be rightly understood unless they are
considered in relation to the intellectual and social surroundings in
which these men of action moved. In other words, the civilisation and
culture of each succeeding period cannot be ignored. It will be found
to be as fully treated here in all its phases as the limitations of
space permit. It furnishes the atmosphere everywhere for our picture,
or, if you prefer, the setting for our stage.

In a word, then, our work becomes, if its intent has been realised in
actuality, a Comprehensive History of Human Progress in all departments
of action and of thought, told dramatically and picturesquely, yet
authoritatively, in the words of the great historical writers of every
age. Recurring to our metaphor, it is the book of a veritable Drama of
History; our unity of action being Historic Truth; our unity of time,
the Age of Man; our stage, the World.

BOOK II. A GLIMPSE INTO THE PREHISTORIC PERIOD

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

A complete world history should, properly speaking, begin with the
creation of the world as man’s habitat, and should trace every step
of human progress from the time when man first appeared on the globe.
Unfortunately, the knowledge of to-day does not permit us to follow
this theoretical obligation. We now know that the gaps in the history
of human evolution as accessible to us to-day, vastly exceed the
recorded chapters; that, in short, the period with which history proper
has, at present, to content itself, is a mere moment in comparison
with the vast reaches of time which, in recognition of our ignorance,
we term “prehistoric.” But this recognition of limitations of our
knowledge is a quite recent growth--no older, indeed, than a half
century. Prior to 1859 the people of Christendom rested secure in the
supposition that the chronology of man’s history was fully known,
from the very year of his creation. One has but to turn to the first
chapter of Genesis to find in the margin the date 4004 B.C., recorded
with all confidence as the year of man’s first appearance on the globe.
One finds there, too, a brief but comprehensive account of the manner
of his appearance, as well as of the creation of the earth itself,
his abiding-place. Until about half a century ago, as has just been
said, the peoples of our portion of the globe rested secure in the
supposition that this record and this date were a part of our definite
knowledge of man’s history. Therefore, one finds the writers of general
histories of the earlier days of the nineteenth century beginning their
accounts with the creation of man, B.C. 4004, and coming on down to
date with a full and seemingly secure chronology.

Our knowledge of the world and of man’s history has come on by leaps
and bounds since then, with the curious result that to-day no one
thinks of making any reference to the exact date of the beginnings
of human history,--unless, indeed, it be to remark that it probably
reaches back some hundreds of thousands of years. The historian can
speak of dates anterior to 4004 B.C., to be sure. The Egyptologist is
disposed to date the building of the Pyramids a full thousand years
earlier than that. And the Assyriologist is learning to speak of the
state of civilisation in Chaldea some 6000 or 7000 years B.C. with a
certain measure of confidence. But he no longer thinks of these dates
as standing anywhere near the beginning of history. He knows that man
in that age, in the centres of progress, had attained a high stage
of civilisation, and he feels sure that there were some thousands of
centuries of earlier time, during which man was slowly climbing through
savagery and barbarism, of which we have only the most fragmentary
record. He does not pretend to know anything, except by inference,
of the “dawnings of civilisation.” Whichever way he turns in the
centres of progress, such as China, Egypt, Chaldea, India, he finds the
earliest accessible records, covering at best a period of only eight
or ten thousand years, giving evidence of a civilisation already far
advanced. Of the exact origin of any one of the civilisations with
which he deals he knows absolutely nothing. “The Creation of Man,” with
its fixed chronology, is a chapter that has vanished from our modern
histories.

Nevertheless, it is important to a correct understanding of the
development of human thought, as well as of personal interest, to bear
in mind the attitude of our predecessors in the field of historical
writing, regarding this ever interesting problem of cosmogony. It was
not alone the ancient Hebrews who thought that they had solved the
problem. Indeed, as we shall see, the Hebrews were rather the purveyors
than the originators of the story of cosmogony which they made current;
and every other nation, when it had reached a certain stage of mental
evolution, appears to have originated or borrowed a set of chronicles
which, as adapted to the use of each nation, explained the creation of
the earth and its human inhabitants in a way very flattering to the
self-love of the nation giving the recital. No one to-day takes any
of these recitals seriously, as a matter of course; but, on the other
hand, they possess an abiding interest as historical documents. If for
nothing else, they have interest as illustrating the advance of human
knowledge during the comparatively brief period since these strange
recitals found currency.

CHAPTER II

COSMOGONY--ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS AS TO THE ORIGIN OF THE WORLD

No thinking man in any age can have failed to wonder about the origin
of the world. The answers that the ancients gave to this ever present
question were various, but they all had one quality in common, namely,
extreme vagueness. Even after men had attained a relatively high stage
of civilisation, their ideas of the natural phenomena about them were
so endued with superstition, and so hedged about with ignorance as to
the real causes, that their explanations of cause and effect in the
natural world belong to the domain of poetry rather than to that of
science. If this applies to such phenomena as wind and clouds and rain
and lightning, the manifestations of which are constantly observed,
it naturally applies with ten-fold force to the great mystery of the
origin of things. Yet the human mind, childlike in the simplicity of
its questionings, demands always an answer, and accepts the answer, if
pronounced with a certain authority, in a spirit of childlike faith.
The great poets and prophets of every nation of antiquity had supplied,
each in his kind, the answers to the riddle of cosmogony, and many of
these alleged solutions have come down to us to give us an insight into
the mentality of their time. It is worth while to quote two or three
of these in brief epitome, if for nothing else, to show their similar
trend, and to emphasise their universal trait of vagueness.

Here is the cosmogonic scheme of the Phoenicians as transmitted to us
by Sanchoniathon:

“At the beginning of all things was a dark and windy air, or a breeze
of thick air and a turbid Chaos resembling Erebus; and that these were
unbounded, and for a long series of ages had no limit. But when this
wind became enamoured of its own first principles (the Chaos), and an
intimate union took place, that connection was called Pothos; and this
was the beginning of the creation of all things. But it (the Chaos)
knew not its own production; and from its embrace with the wind was
generated Mot; which some call mud, but others the putrefaction of a
watery mixture. And from this sprung all the seed of the creation, and
the generation of the universe.

“And there were certain animals without sensation, from which
intelligent animals were produced, and these were called Zophasemin,
that is, beholders of the heavens; and they were formed in the shape
of an egg: and from Mot shone forth the sun, and the moon, and the
less and the greater stars. And when the air began to send forth life,
by its fiery influence on the sea and earth, winds were produced and
clouds, and very great defluxions and torrents of the heavenly waters.
And when they were thus separated, and carried out of their proper
places by the heat of the sun, and all met again in the air, and were
dashed against each other, thunder and lightnings were the result: and
at the sound of the thunder, the before-mentioned intelligent animals
were aroused, and startled by the noise, and moved upon the earth and
in the sea, male and female.”

This creation scheme of the Phœnicians has a peculiar interest for the
Western world, because of the intimate relations that existed between
the Phœnicians and the Jews. For a similar reason the ideas of the
Babylonians and the Assyrians, as recorded on the so-called creation
tablets exhumed at Nineveh, have fascinated the Bible scholars.

Trending still further to the East, one finds with the Hindus a
slightly different cast of thought couched in a no less poetic diction.
Thus in one of the sacred books, Brahma, the Eternal Worker, is
represented as creating the earth while seeing his own reflection in
the ocean of sweat that had fallen from his brow (Réclus).

The Chinese scheme of cosmogony is presented in the form of alleged
answers to questions, by Confucius. Here is a characteristic excerpt as
translated by M’Clatchie:

“At the beginning of Heaven and Earth, before chaos was divided, I
think there were only two things, Fire and Water; and the sediment of
the water formed the Earth. When we ascend a height and look down, the
host of hills resemble the waves of the sea in appearance; the Water
just flowed like this: I know not at what period it coagulated. At
first it was very soft, but afterward it coagulated and became hard.
One asked whether it resembled sand thrown up by the tide? He replied,
Just so: the coarsest sediment of the Water became the Earth, and the
most pure portion of the Fire became Wind, Thunder, Lightning, Sun, and
Stars.

“Being asked: From the commencement of Heaven and Earth to the present
time is not 10,000 years; I know not how it was before that time? He
replied, Before that there was another clear opening (_i.e._ another
Heaven and Earth) like the present one. Being further asked whether
Heaven and Earth can perish altogether, he replied, They cannot: but,
when mankind totally degenerate, then the whole shall return to Chaos,
and Men and things shall all cease to exist; and then the World shall
begin again. Some one asked how the first Man was generated; and he
replied by the transmutation of the Air; the subtle portions of the
Light and Darkness and the Five Elements united and produced his form.
The Buddhists call this transmuting and generating. At present things
are transmuted and generated in abundance like lice.

“Before Chaos was divided the Light-Dark Air was mixed up and dark,
and when it divided, the centre formed an enormous and most brilliant
opening, and the two E were established. Shaou Kang-tsee considers
129,600 years to be a Yuen (Kalpa); then, before this period of 129,600
years there was another opening and spreading out of the World; and
before that again, there was another like the present; so that, Motion
and Rest, Light and Darkness, have no beginning. As little things
shadow forth great things, this may be illustrated by the revolutions
of Day and Night. What Woo-Fung says about the Great Cessation of
the entire Air, the vast and boundless agitation of all things, the
whole expanse of waters changing position, the mountains bursting
asunder, the channels being obliterated, Men and things all coming to
an end, and the ancient vestiges all destroyed--all this refers to the
utter destruction of the world by Deluge. We frequently see, on lofty
mountains, the shells of the sea-snail and pearl-oyster, as it were
generated in the middle of stones; these stones were (part of) the
soil of the former world. The sea-snail and pearl-oyster belong to the
water; so that that which was below changed and became high; that which
was soft changed and became hard. This is a deep subject, and should be
investigated.

“Being asked whether the multitude of things existed before Heaven and
Earth divided, he replied: There was merely the idea of each thing.
Heaven and Earth generate all things, and throughout all time, ancient
and modern, cannot be separated from all things.”

It should be remarked as illustrating the difficulties of translating
the thought of one language into the words of another, that Mr. F. H.
Balfour questions certain of Canon M’Clatchie’s renderings. Thus a
sentence which M’Clatchie interprets, “In the entire universe where
there is no fate there is no air, and where there is no air there is no
fate,” Mr. Balfour would read instead of “fate” “mind,” and instead of
“air” “matter,” the sentence becoming, “In the entire universe where
there is no mind there is no matter, and where there is no matter there
is no mind.” Such divergent renderings as this are to be expected in
the case of any Oriental language. It will not be forgotten how George
Smith, one of the first great interpreters of the Assyrian tablets,
read the Hebrew story of the Garden of Eden in the vague phrasing of
the cuneiform document, where, as Menant quickly demonstrated, the
writer of the document had composed a quite different story. This
“reading into Homer that which Homer never knew” is much too familiar a
subject to require further elucidation; but it is peculiarly desirable
to bear it in mind in dealing with the philosophical and religious
notions of any alien people.

Turning from the Orient, it is of interest to interrogate the Greek
writers as to the creation schemes that were current in classical
times. In the histories of Greece and Rome, we shall have occasion
to examine these somewhat more in detail. For the present purpose,
perhaps, an excerpt from Diodorus, who wrote with a full knowledge both
of Greek and Roman ideas at about the beginning of our era, will be
sufficiently illuminative.

Diodorus begins his history of the World with a brief account of the
current notions as to the creation. He says: “Of the origin, therefore,
of men there are two opinions amongst the most famous and authentic
naturalists and historians. Some of these are of opinion that the
world had neither beginning nor ever shall have end, and likewise say
that mankind was from eternity and there never was a time when he
first began to be. Others, on the contrary, conceive both the world
to be made, and to be corruptible, and that there was a certain time
when men had first a being; for, whereas all things at the first were
jumbled together, heaven and earth were in one mass and had one and
the same form. But afterward they say when corporeal beings appeared
one after another, the world at length presented itself in the order
we now see, and that the air was in continual agitation, whose fiery
parts ascended together to the highest place, its nature ‘by reason of
its levity’ trending always upward, for which reason both the sun and
that vast number of stars are contained within that orb; that the gross
and earthy matter clotted together by moisture, by reason of its weight
sunk down below into which place by continually whirling about. The sea
was made of the humid, and the muddy earth of the more solid, as yet
very soft, which by degrees at first was made crusty by the heat of
the sun, and then, after the face of the earth was parched, and, as it
were, fermented, the moisture afterward in many places bubbled up, as
may be seen in standing ponds and marshy places, when, after the earth
has been pierced with cold, the air grows hot on a sudden without a
gradual alteration, and whereas moisture generates creatures from heat,
things so generated by being enrapt in the dewy mists of the night grew
and increased, and in the day solidified and were made hard by the heat
of the sun, and thus the forms of all sorts of living creatures were
brought forth into the light, and those that had most heat mounted
aloft, and were fowls and birds of the air, but those that had more of
earth were numbered in the order of creeping things and other creatures
altogether suited to the earth. Then those beasts that were naturally
watery and moist, called fishes, presently hastened to the place
natural to them; and when the earth afterward became more dry and solid
by the heat of the sun and the drying winds, it had not power at length
to produce any more of the greater living creatures. And Euripides, the
pupil of Anaxagoras, seems to be of the same opinion concerning the
first generation of all things, for in his _Menilippe_ he has these
verses:

“‘A mass confused
Heaven and Earth once were
Of one form; but after separation
Then men, trees, beasts of the earth with fowls of the air
First sprang up in a generation.’

“But if this power of the earth to produce living creatures at the
first origin of all things seem incredible to any, the Egyptians
bring testimonies of this energy of the earth by the same things done
there at this day; for they say that about Thebes in Egypt, after the
overflowing of the river Nile, the earth thereby being covered by mud
and slime, many places putrefy by the heat of the sun, and thence are
bred multitudes of mice. It is certain, therefore, that out of the
earth when it is hardened, and the air changed from its dew and natural
temperament, animals are generated, by which means it came to pass that
in the first beginning of all things various living creatures proceeded
from the earth. And these are the opinions touching the original of all
things.”

It would be difficult to say to what extent this Greek conception of
creation had its origin in, or was influenced by, Oriental conception.
Certainly the resemblance between this description and the Mosaic
accounts, as contained in the first two chapters of Genesis, is
noteworthy. Quite probably the ideas of both Hebrews and Greeks had
been moulded to some extent in the pattern of Egyptian thought. Be
that as it may, it was the scheme of cosmogony expressed in the Hebrew
legends that was to become dominant in post-classical times, and to
rule unchallenged in the Western world for more than a thousand years.
Indeed, this estimate of the time of real supremacy of the Hebrew
thought is much too low; for that thought, though challenged as to
some of its features by the science of the Renaissance which ushered
in the period of modern history, was none the less to retain its hold
upon the thoughts of men, but little abated in force, for another half
millennium.

Not till well toward the close of the eighteenth century was an attempt
made to substitute a scientific guess at the riddle of creation for
the old poetic ones, and yet another century elapsed before the new
explanations availed fully to supplant the old ones. It was Laplace,
the great French mathematician, who elaborated toward the close of the
eighteenth century a so-called nebular hypothesis, which may fairly
be considered the first measurably scientific attempt ever made to
explain the origin of the world. The hypothesis conceives that, at
a time indefinitely remote, the entire solar system and space far
beyond it was filled with a “fire mist,” consisting of the material
in a gaseous state which now forms the sun and planets. This gaseous
body, contracting through loss of heat, and rotating on its axis, left
behind from time to time, successive rings of its own substance, that,
consolidating, became the planets; the remaining core of substance
contracting finally to constitute the body that we call the sun.

Nineteenth century science elaborated, without essentially modifying,
this nebular hypothesis. Elaborate attempts have been made by Dr. Croll
and by Sir Norman Lockyer to explain the origin of the “fire mist”
itself, from which per hypothesis our solar system and an infinity of
like stellar systems were formed. The meteoritic hypothesis of Lockyer
supposes that the primeval fire mist was due to the collision of swarms
of meteors; Croll’s theory postulates the smashing together of dark
stars: but the two theories are essentially identical in their main
thought, which is, that previously solidified bodies of the universe
are made gaseous through mutual impact, thus affording material for
the operation of those changes outlined in the nebular hypothesis of
Laplace. True or false, this hypothesis stands to-day as the expression
of the profoundest cosmogonic scientific guess that modern thought has
been able to substitute for the poetic guesses of antiquity.

As to the creation of the living things on the globe, including man,
the Oriental idea, which amounted to no explanation at all, but was
rather the hiding of utter ignorance behind a screen of positive
assertion, has been supplanted in the latter part of the nineteenth
century by the scientific explanations of the evolutionists. The theory
of evolution, as first formulated in anything like scientific terms,
about the close of the eighteenth century, by the elder Darwin, the
poet Goethe, and the French philosophical zoölogist Lamarck, and as
given such amazing fertility by Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection
in 1859, has taken full possession of the field as an explanation of
the development of man through a series of lower organisms. But it
must not be forgotten that this theory, with all of its revolutionary
implications, does not as yet explain in clear scientific terms the
origin of that lowliest organism which is the first in its series
of living beings. It is for the science of the future to take this
remaining step. Meantime, the developmental theory of to-day suffices
to substitute in precise terms a scientific explanation of the origin
of man for the vagaries of the old-time dreamers; and the more daring
thinkers feel that the gap between the inorganic world and the lowest
of man’s ancestors is not an impassable barrier to the application of a
theory of universal evolution.

CHAPTER III

COSMOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY--ANCIENT AND MODERN IDEAS

The vague notions of the ancients as to the origin of the world were
inseparably linked with their restricted notions as to the present
status of the world itself.

It is curious to reflect how small a portion of the habitable globe
was the theatre of all those human activities, the record of which
constitutes ancient history. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Greece, and
Italy taken as a whole constitute but a small patch of territory
encircling the Mediterranean Sea. Persia and India, stretching away
to the East, lay vaguely at the confines of the world as conceived
even in relatively late classical times. From a very early day,
doubtless, there had been intercommunication between India and the
West. Nevertheless, the conquest of Alexander was regarded as extending
into regions hitherto utterly unknown, and as opening up a new world
to Greek thought. Similarly two centuries later, Cæsar’s invasion of
Britain brought regions to the attention of the geographer concerning
which only the vaguest notions had been current.

Spain had long been known through the explorations and commercial
enterprises of the Phœnicians and Greeks, and when it became a part
of Roman territory, it was as familiarly known as Gaul or Britain.
But these bounds, India on the east, Britain at the north, Spain in
the west, and Upper Egypt toward the equator were the limits of the
known world as understood by the classical mind. The vague traditions
probably based on fact, as recorded by Herodotus, that a company of
Phœnicians had sailed out of the Red Sea and gone by water about all
the southern continent, to reappear from the west by way of the pillars
of Hercules--or present Gibraltar,--served to give support to the
theory that all the continental mass was encompassed in a universal
sea, rather than to extend geographical knowledge in any precise sense.

Considering, then, the limitations of ancient geographical knowledge,
it is wonderful how clear, precise, and correct an idea as to the
shape, and even in a general way, as to the size, of the earth were
attained by the classical geographers. To be sure, the Oriental
thinkers applied the same poetical conceptions to cosmology that
dominated them in other fields. The Hindu conceived the world as
resting on the back of a mammoth elephant, which stood in turn on the
back of a tortoise, and was transported thus across a boundless sea
of milk. Greek mythology gives us the familiar picture of a human
giant, Atlas, supporting the world. But such poetic conceptions as
these, whatever their force may once have been with the Greeks, had
been supplanted before the close of the classical epoch by ideas of a
strictly scientific nature.

Not long after the beginning of the Christian era there lived a
Greek named Strabo, whose status as a truly scientific geographer is
gladly acknowledged to-day. Strabo’s remarks on cosmology may well be
quoted here as showing the heights to which the science of geography
had attained among the Greeks. Making due allowance for the changed
phraseology of another age, these are such things as might be said by a
geographer of to-day, yet they were written over two thousand years ago:

“We have treated these subjects at length in the first Book of the
Geography. At present we shall make a few remarks on the operations
of nature and of Providence conjointly. On the operations of nature,
that all things converge to a point, namely, the centre of the whole,
and assume a spherical shape around it. The earth is the densest body
and nearer the centre than all others: the less dense and next to it
is water: but both land and water are spheres, the first solid, the
second hollow, containing this earth within it. On the operations of
Providence, that it has exercised a will, is disposed to variety, and
is the artificer of innumerable works. In the first rank, as greatly
surpassing all the rest is the generation of animals, of which the most
excellent are gods and man, for whose sake the rest were formed. To
the gods Providence assigned heaven; and the earth to men: the extreme
parts of the world; for the extreme parts of the sphere are the centre
and the circumference. But since water encompasses the earth, and man
is not an aquatic, but a land animal, living in the air, and requiring
much light, Providence formed many eminences and cavities in the earth,
so that these cavities should receive the whole or a great part of
the water which covers the land beneath it; and that the eminences
should rise and conceal the water beneath them, except as much as was
necessary for the use of the human race and the animals and plants
about it.

“But as all things are in constant motion, and undergo great changes
(for it is not possible that such things of such a nature, so numerous
and vast, could be otherwise regulated in the world), we must not
suppose the earth or the water always to continue in this state, so as
to retain perpetually the same bulk, without increase or diminution,
or that each preserves the same fixed place, particularly as the
reciprocal change of one into the other is most consonant to nature
from their proximity; but that much of the land is changed into water,
and a great portion of water becomes land, just as we observe great
differences in the earth itself. For one kind of earth crumbles easily,
another is solid and rocky, and contains iron; and so of others. There
is also a variety in the quality of water; for some waters are saline,
others sweet and potable, others medicinal, and either salutary or
noxious; others cold or hot. Is it therefore surprising that some parts
of the earth which are now inhabited should formerly have been occupied
by sea, and that what are now seas should formerly have been inhabited
land? So also fountains once existing have failed and others have burst
forth; and similarly in the case of rivers and lakes; again, mountains
and plains have been converted reciprocally one into the other. On this
subject I have spoken before at length, and now let this be said:

“Geometry and astronomy, as we before remarked, seem absolutely
indispensable in this science. This in fact is evident, that without
some such assistance, it would be impossible to be accurately
acquainted with the configuration of the earth; its climate,
dimensions, and the like information.

“As the size of the earth has been demonstrated by other writers,
we shall here take for granted and receive as accurate what they
have advanced. We shall also assume that the earth is spheroidal,
that its surface is likewise spheroidal, and above all, that bodies
have a tendency toward its centre, which later point is clear to the
perception of the most average understanding. However, we may show
summarily that the earth is spheroidal, from the consideration that
all things however distant tend to its centre, and that everybody is
attracted toward its centre of gravity; this is more distinctly proved
from observations of the sea and sky, for here the evidence of the
senses, and common observation is alone requisite. The convexity of
the sea is a further proof of this to those who have sailed; for they
cannot perceive lights at a distance when placed at the same level as
their eyes, but if raised on high, they at once become perceptible to
vision, though at the same time farther removed. So, when the eye is
raised, it sees what before was utterly imperceptible. Homer speaks of
this when he says:

“‘Lifted up on the vast wave he quickly beheld afar.’ Sailors, as
they approach their destination, behold the shore continually raising
itself to their view; and objects which had at first seemed low, begin
to elevate themselves. Our gnomons, also, are, among other things,
evidence of the revolution of the heavenly bodies; and common sense at
once shows us, that if the depth of the earth were infinite, such a
revolution could not take place.”

It is astounding in the light of present-day knowledge to reflect
that such correct and scientific views as to the form of the earth
were subordinated, and, at last, almost entirely supplanted, by the
curiously faulty conceptions of the Oriental dreamers. A chance phrase
of the Hebrew writings refers to the corners of the earth, and this
sufficed to promulgate a false conception of cosmology, which dominated
the world for a millennium. The old Greek conception never quite died
out, as the faith of Columbus showed, but it was so crushed beneath
the weight of ecclesiastical authority, that it maintained existence
only with here and there a nonconformist to the ideas of his time; and
when Columbus and Magellan had demonstrated the falsity of the Oriental
conception, and Copernicus and Galileo had further revolutionised the
Hebrew conception, the advocates of the false view fought tooth and
nail for a conception which had come to be intimately associated with
those religious tenets which, to them, were more sacred than life
itself.

Truth prevailed in the end, of course; but it was not till well into
the nineteenth century that the chief supporters of the old Hebrew
cosmology officially abandoned their position, and admitted that the
world is round, and is not the centre of the universe.

CHAPTER IV

THE ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH AND OF MAN

Generally speaking, the old-time nations rejoiced in their alleged
antiquity. Notions as to exact chronology for long periods of time
were practically non-existent. A full sense of the value of chronology
as the foundation stone of history was only acquired in relatively
modern times. The figures that the ancients used in referring to their
national existence were very sweeping, and suffered from the same
defects of vagueness that characterise their other thoughts.

Herodotus, basing his belief on what he learned in Egypt, ascribed to
the Egyptians a national existence of thirteen thousand years. Diodorus
extends this period to twenty-three thousand, and some other reports
current in classical times increase the figures by yet another ten
thousand. Even this is a meagre period compared with the claims made by
the Babylonians, who number the years of their own nation in hundreds
of thousands; and it is said that the Chinese, in computing their own
history, do not stop short of millions of years.

The Babylonians were the astronomers of antiquity, and doubtless
the less scientific Greeks regarded their knowledge of the stars
as something quite occult, and were ready to believe almost any
chronological statement that the Babylonians put forward. The Romans,
indeed, practical people that they always were in the day of their
prime, were disposed to look with more of scepticism upon such
claims. Cicero announces himself as distinctly sceptical regarding
the allegation that the Babylonian records extend over a period of
two hundred and seventy thousand years. His scepticism, however, was
probably based rather upon a shrewd common-sense estimate of human
affairs than upon any preconception as to the antiquity of man. In a
word, the ancients as a class had no fear of time, and most of them
had no religious or other preconception that limited their estimate
as to the age of a nation or the exact age of the world itself. The
latter-day Hebrew was an exception to this rule. He came at last to
look upon the vague historical records of his people as sacred books,
inspired in their every word, and detailing among other things the
exact genealogy of the leaders of his race from the creation to his
own time. It is not, indeed, probable that the ancient Hebrew made
any great point of the exact period of time compassed by his records,
since, as has been said, questions of exact chronology entered but
little into the thoughts of man in that day; but in a more recent time
students of Hebrew records have attempted to ascertain the exact age
of the earth and the exact period of human existence by aggregating
the various disconnected records of the Hebrew scriptures, long after
the modern historical method had been applied acutely to all other
accessible writings of antiquity.

These writings of the Hebrews were held to constitute a class apart,
and were looked to as having an authenticity not to be claimed by any
other ancient documents; and while no two scholars of authority, making
independent computations, were ever able to agree as to the exact facts
connoted by the Hebrew chronology, yet none the less, each prominent
investigator clung with full faith to his own estimate, and several of
them found schools of followers who battled as eagerly as the masters
themselves for the exact dates they believed to be represented by the
vague Hebrew estimates. Generally speaking, these estimates ascribe the
creation of the world and of man to a period about four thousand years
before the Christian era; the year of the Deluge, which was supposed to
have engulfed all the inhabitants of the earth except a single family,
being variously estimated between the years 3200 and 2300 B.C. That
some such figures as these represented the truth regarding a period
of man’s residence here on the earth came to be accepted throughout
Christendom as an article of faith, to question which was a rank heresy.

The larger figures which the Greeks, Egyptians, Mesopotamians and other
nations had employed came to be regarded as absurd guesses, which it
were a sacrilege to countenance now that the truth was known; and yet,
as every one nowadays knows, these larger figures, vague guesses though
they were, approach much nearer to the actual truth than the restricted
numbers that supplanted them.

The changed point of view with which the modern historian regards the
ancient chronology has been attained through a process of scientific
development extending over about a century. A truer knowledge of the
cosmic scheme did not bring with it as a necessary counterpart the
correct conception as to the length of time that this scheme had been
in operation.

Laplace, in formulating his nebular hypothesis, had nothing definite to
say as to the length of time required for its development, and there
was nothing in his computation to throw any light whatever upon the
antiquity of the earth as a habitable sphere.

Cuvier, the great contemporary of Laplace, no doubt accepted the
nebular hypothesis as a valid explanation of the origin of the world,
but he held to the conception of about six thousand years for the
age of man as rigidly as did any Middle Age monk. Cuvier was the
first to demonstrate that certain fossil skeletons belonged to no
existing species of animal. In other words, he believed that races of
great beasts had once inhabited the earth, but no longer have living
representatives. This, however, did not suggest to him that the earth
had long been peopled, but only went to show, as he believed, that
a great catastrophe, as the universal flood was supposed to have
been, had actually taken place. It remained for Charles Lyell, the
famous English geologist, working along the lines first suggested by
another great Englishman, James Hutton, to prove that the successive
populations of the earth, whose remains are found in fossil beds, had
lived for enormous periods of time, and had supplanted one another on
the earth, not through any sudden catastrophe, but by slow processes of
the natural development and decay of different kinds of beings.

Following the demonstrations of Lyell there came about a sudden change
of belief among geologists as to the age of the earth, until, in our
day, the period during which the earth has been inhabited by one kind
of creature and another is computed, not by specific thousands, but by
vague hundreds of thousands or even millions of years.

The last refuge for champions of the old chronology was found in the
claim that man himself had been but about six thousand years upon the
earth, whatever might be true of his non-human forerunners. But even
this claim had presently to be abandoned when the researches of the
palæontologists had been directed to the subject of fossil man.

The researches of Schmerling, of Boucher de Perth, of Lyell himself,
and of a host of later workers demonstrated that fossil remains of man
were found commingled in embedded strata and in cave bottoms under
conditions that demonstrated their extreme antiquity; and in the course
of the quarter century after 1865, in which year Lyell had published
his epoch-marking work on the antiquity of man, the new idea had made
a complete conquest, until now no one any more thinks of disputing
the extreme antiquity of man than he thinks of questioning the great
age of the earth itself. To be sure, no one pretends any longer to
put a precise date upon man’s first appearance. The new figures take
on something of the vagueness that characterise the estimates of the
Babylonians; but it is accepted as clearly proven that the racial
age of man is at least to be numbered in tens of thousands of years.
The only clues at present accessible that tend to give anything like
definiteness to the computations are the researches of Egyptologists
and Assyriologists.

In Egypt remains are found, as we shall see, which carry the history
of civilisation back to something like 5000 B.C., and in Mesopotamia
the latest finds are believed to extend the record by yet another two
thousand years. Man then existed in a state of high civilisation at a
period antedating the Christian era by about twice the length of time
formerly admitted for the age of earth itself.

How much more ancient the remains of barbaric man, as preserved in
the oldest caves, may be, it would be but vague guess work and serve
no useful purpose, to attempt to estimate. History proper, as usually
conceived, is concerned only with the doings of civilised man; and,
indeed, in one sense, such a restricted view is absolutely forced
upon the historian, for it is only civilised man who is able to
produce records that are preserved through the ages in such manner as
to tell a connected story to after generations. The arrow-heads and
charred sticks of the stone age of man are indeed proofs that this
man existed, and that he led his certain manner of life, some clear
intimations as to which are given by these mementoes; but they point
to no path by which we may hope to follow the precise history of those
succeeding generations by which the man of the stone age was connected
with, for example, the builder of the Egyptian Pyramids. We can,
indeed, trace in general terms the course of human progress. We know
that from using rough stone implements chipped into shape, man came
finally to acquire the art of polishing stones by friction, thus making
more finished implements. We know that later on he learned to smelt
metals, marvellous achievement that it was; and when this had been
accomplished, we may suppose that he pretty rapidly developed cognate
arts that led to higher civilisation.

Reasoning from this knowledge, we speak of the palæolithic or rough
stone age, of the neolithic or polished stone age, of the age of
bronze, and finally of the age of iron, as representing great epochs
in human progress. But it is only in the vaguest terms that we can
connect one of these ages with another, and any attempt at a definite
chronology in relation to them utterly fails us. This would not so
much matter if we were sure in any given case that we were tracing the
history of the same individual race through the successive periods;
but, in point of fact, no such unity of race can be predicated. There
is every reason to believe that each and every race that ever attained
to higher civilisation passed through these various stages, but the
familiar examples of the American Indians, who were in the rough
stone age when their continent was discovered by Columbus, and of the
African and Australian races, who, even now, have advanced no farther,
illustrate the fact that different races have passed through these
various stages of development in widely separated periods of time, and
take away all certainty from any attempts to compute exact chronologies.

CHAPTER V

THE RACES OF MAN AND THE ARYAN QUESTION

The question of races of mankind is one that has given rise to great
diversity of opinion among scientists and students of ethnology, and it
may as well be admitted at the outset that no very definite conclusions
have as yet been arrived at. One set of ethnologists have been disposed
to look to physical characters as the basis of a classification; others
have been guided more by language. In the earlier stages of the inquiry
the Biblical traditions have entered into the case with prejudicial
effect, and with the advances of science this subject as a whole has
seemed to grow more confused rather than clearer. For a time there
was a certain unanimity in regarding the Egyptians and their allies
as Hamites, the Babylonians, Hebrews, Phœnicians, and their allies as
Semites, and in bringing all other non-Aryan races into a conglomerate
class under the title of Turanians. Latterly, however, the artificial
character of such a classification as this has been more and more
apparent, and a growing belief tends to consider all the peoples
grouped about the Mediterranean as forming a single race, including
within that race, as is apparent, members of the old races of Hamites,
Semites, and Aryans. Yet another classification would group the peoples
of the earth according to their several stages of civilisation. But,
without attempting a complete enumeration of all the various systems
that have been suggested, one may summarise them all by repeating that
there is no complete uniformity of classification accepted by all
authoritative students of the subject.

Here as elsewhere, however, there is a tendency for old systems and old
names to maintain their hold, and notwithstanding the disavowals of
the most recent schools of ethnology, the classification into Hamites,
Semites, Aryans, and Turanians is doubtless the one that has still
the widest vogue. In particular the Aryan race, to which all modern
European races belong, has seemed more and more to make good its claims
to recognition. Thanks to the relatively new science of comparative
philology, it has been shown, and has now come to be familiarly
understood, that the languages of the Hindu and the Persian in the
far East are based upon the same principles of phonation as the Greek
and Latin and their daughter languages, and the language of the great
Teutonic race.

It is this affinity of languages that is the one defining feature of
the Aryan race. Since historical studies have made it more and more
plain that a nation in its wanderings, whether as a conquering or a
conquered people, may adopt the language of another nation, it has
become clear that a classification of mankind based on ethnic features
would have no necessary correspondence with a classification based upon
language. The philologists, therefore, who cling to the word “Aryan,”
or to the idea which it connotes, have latterly been disposed to urge,
as for example Professor Max Müller does in the most strenuous terms,
that in contending for an Aryan race they refer solely to a set of
people speaking the Aryan language, quite regardless of the physical
affinities of these people. And it is in this sense of the word, and
this alone, that the dark-skinned race of India is to be considered
brother to the fair-skinned Scandinavian; that, in short, all the
nations of modern Europe and the classical nations of antiquity are to
be jumbled together in an arbitrary union with the people of far-off
Persia and India.

While this classification establishing an Aryan race on the basis
of language has the support of all philologists, and, indeed, is
susceptible of the readiest verification, there is a growing tendency
to frown upon the use of the word “Aryan” itself. The word came into
vogue at a time when it was supposed on all hands that the original
home of the people to whom it was applied was Central Asia; that this
was the cradle of the Aryan race was long accepted quite as a matter of
course--hence the general acceptance of the name. But, in the course of
the last century, the supposed fact of the Asiatic origin of the Aryans
has been placed in dispute, and there is a seemingly growing school of
students, who, basing their claims on the evidence of philology, are
disposed to believe that the cradle of this race--if race it be--was
not Central Asia, but perhaps Western or Northwestern Europe. We must
not pause to discuss the evidence for this new view here; suffice it
that the evidence seems highly suggestive, if not conclusive.

To many philologists, including some who still hold that the
probabilities favour an Asiatic origin of the race, it now seems
advisable to adopt a name of less doubtful import, and of late it has
become quite usual to substitute for the word “Aryan” the compound
word “Indo-European,” or, what is perhaps better, “Indo-Germanic.”
Such a word, it is clear, summarises the fact that the Indians in the
far East and the Germanic race in the far West have a language that
is fundamentally the same, without connoting any theory whatever as
to the origin or other relations of these widely scattered peoples.
The name thus has an undoubted scientific status that makes it
attractive, but nevertheless it is too cumbersome to be accepted at
once as a substitute for the word “Aryan” in ordinary usage. Nor,
indeed does there seem to be any good reason why such substitution
should be made. Words very generally come in the course of time to
have an application which their original derivation would not at all
justify, and there is no more reason for ruling out the word “Aryan,”
even should it be proven absolutely that Asia was not the original
cradle of the Indo-Germanic race, than there would be for discarding
a very large number of words of Greek and Latin derivation that are
familiarly employed in the various modern European languages. Indeed,
it may be taken for granted that the generality of people to whom the
word “Aryan” is familiar have no such preconception aroused in their
minds by the word as it conveys to the mind of special scholars, and
in any event where a distinct disavowal is made of any ethnological
preconceptions in connection with the word, one is surely justified for
convenience sake in continuing to use the word “Aryan” as a synonym for
the more complicated term “Indo-Germanic.”

CHAPTER VI

ON PREHISTORIC CULTURE

It has been said that history proper is usually regarded as having
to do solely with the deeds of civilised man, but in point of fact
the scope of history as written at the present day necessarily falls
far short of comprehending the entire history of civilisation. Before
the dawn of recorded history man had evolved to a stage in which
the greater number of the greatest arts had been attained. That is
to say, he was possessed of articulate language. He had learned
to clothe and to house himself. He knew the use of fire. He could
manufacture implements of war and of peace. He had surrounded himself
with domesticated animals. He added to his food supply by practising
agriculture. He had established systems of government. He knew how
to embellish his surroundings by the practice of painting and of
decorative architecture, and last, and perhaps greatest, he had
invented the art of writing, and carried it far toward perfection.

With the development of these arts history proper is not concerned, but
this is not because the development of these arts would not constitute
true history if its course were known, but simply because of our entire
ignorance of all details of the subject.

In order to gain a clearer idea, however, of the status of human
culture at the dawn of history proper, it may be worth while to
glance in the most cursory way at each of the great inventions and
developments upon which the entire structure of civilisation depends.

_First. Language._

Perhaps the greatest single step ever made in the history of man’s
upward progress was taken when the practice of articulate speech
began. It would be contrary to all that we know of human evolution to
suppose that this development was a sudden one, or that it transformed
a non-human into a human species at a sudden vault. It is well known
that many of the lower animals are able to communicate with one another
in a way that implies at least a vague form of speech, and it has
been questioned whether the higher species of apes do not actually
articulate in a way strictly comparable to the vocalisation of man. Be
that as it may, the clear fact remains that one species of animal did
at a very remote time in the past develop the power of vocalisation in
the direction of articulate speech to a degree that in course of time
broadened the gap between that species and all others, till it became
an impassable chasm.

Without language of an explicit kind not even the rudiments of
civilisation would be possible. No one perhaps ever epitomised the
value of articulate speech in a single phrase more tellingly than
does Herder when he says: “The lyre of Amphion has not built cities.
No magic wand has transformed deserts into gardens. Language has done
it,--that great source of sociality.”

Obviously, then, could we know the history of the evolution of
articulate speech it would be one of the very greatest chapters in
all human records; but it is equally obvious that we can never hope
to know that history except inferentially. When the dawn of history
proper came, man had so long practised speaking that he had developed
countless languages so widely divergent from one another that they are
easily classified into several great types. From the study of these
languages the philologist draws more or less valid inferences as to
the later stages of linguistic growth and development. But he gains
no inklings whatever as to any of those earlier developments which
constituted the origin or the creation of language.

_Second. Clothing and Housing of Prehistoric Man._

Nothing is more surprising to the student of antiquity than to find
at what seems the very beginning of civilisation such monuments as
the Pyramids and the great sculptures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. But a
moment’s reflection makes it clear that man must have learned to house
himself, as well as to clothe himself, before he can have started on
that tour of conquest of the world which was so far advanced before
the dawn of history. Doubtless the original home of man must have been
in a tropical or subtropical climate, and he cannot well have left
these pampering regions until he had made a considerable development,
almost the first step of which required that he should gain the means
of protecting himself from the cold. The idea of such protection once
acquired, its elaboration was but a question of time. It is amazing
to observe how closely, both as regards attire and building, man had
approximated to the modern standards at the time when he first produced
monumental or other records that have come down to us.

_Third. The Use of Fire._

Quite as fundamental as the matter of housing and clothing, and even
more marvellous, considered as an invention, was the recognition of
the uses of fire, and the development of the methods of producing fire
at will. It is conceivable that some individual man at a relatively
early stage of human progress developed and elaborated this idea,
becoming the actual inventor of fire as applied to human uses. If such
was really the case, no greater inventor ever lived. But the wildest
flight of speculative imagination does not suffice to suggest where or
when this man may have lived. It cannot well be doubted, however, that
the use of fire must have been well known to the earliest generations
of men that attempted to wander far from the tropics. Clothed, housed,
and provided with fire, man was able to undertake the conquest of all
regions, but without fire he dare not have braved the winters even of
the middle latitudes, to say nothing of Arctic regions.

No doubt the earliest method of producing fire practically employed was
by friction of dry sticks, much after the manner still in use among
certain savage tribes. Obviously the flint and steel, which for so many
thousands of years was to be the sole practical means of producing fire
among the civilised races, could not have come into vogue until the
age of iron. The lucifer match, which was finally to banish flint and
steel, was an invention of the nineteenth century.

_Fourth. Implements of Peace and War._

A gigantic bound was made when man first learned to use a club
habitually, and doubtless the transition from a club to a mechanically
pointed spear constituted a journey as long and as hard as the
evolution from the spear to the modern repeating rifle. But before the
dawn of history there had been evolved from the club the battle-axe of
metal, and from the crude spear the metal-pointed javelin, the arrow,
the sword, and the dagger; the bow, too, of which the arrow was the
complement, had long been perfected, and from it had evolved various
other implements of warfare, culminating in the gigantic battering-ram.

Of implements of a more pacific character, boats of various types
furnished means of transportation on the water, and wagons with wheel
and axle, acting on precisely the same principle which is still
employed, had been perfected, both of these being used in certain
of their types for purposes of war as well as in the arts of peace.
Manufacture included necessarily the making of materials for clothing
from an early stage, and this had advanced from the crude art of
dressing skins to the weaving of woollen fabrics and fine linens that
would bear comparison with the products of the modern loom. Stones
were shaped and bricks made as materials for building. The principle
of the pulley was well understood as an aid to human strength; and the
potter’s wheel, with which various household utensils were shaped,
was absurdly like the ones that are still used for a like purpose. In
all of these arts of manufacture, indeed, a degree of perfection had
been attained upon which there was to be singularly little advance for
some thousands of years. It was not until well toward the close of the
eighteenth century that the series of great mechanical advances began
with the application of steam to the propulsion of machinery, which has
revolutionised manufacture and for the first time made a radical change
from the systems of transportation that were in vogue before the dawn
of history; and it was only a few centuries earlier that the invention
of gunpowder metamorphosed the methods of warfare that had been in
vogue for a like period.

_Fifth. The Domestication of Animals._

It is not difficult, if one considers the matter attentively,
to imagine how revolutionary must have been the effect of the
domestication of animals. Primitive man can at first have had no idea
of the possible utility of the animals about him, except as objects of
pursuit; but doubtless at a very early stage it became customary for
children to tame, or attempt to tame, such animals as wolves, foxes,
and cats of various tribes when taken young, much as children of
to-day enjoy doing the same thing. This more readily led to the early
domestication or half-domestication of such animals as that species of
wolf from which the various races of dogs sprang. It is held that the
dog was the first animal to become truly domesticated. Obviously this
animal could be of advantage to man in the chase, even in very early
stages of human evolution; and it is quite possible that a long series
of generations may have elapsed before any animal was added to the list
of man’s companions. But the great step was taken when herbivorous
animals, useful not for the chase, but as supplying milk and flesh for
food, were made tributary to the use of man. From that day man was
no longer a mere hunter and fisher; he became a herdsman, and in the
fact of entering upon a pastoral life, he had placed his foot firmly
on the first rung of the ladder of civilisation. An obvious change
became necessary in the life of pastoral people. They could still
remain nomads, to be sure, but their wanderings were restricted by a
new factor. They must go where food could be found for their herds.
Moreover, economic features of vast importance were introduced in the
fact that the herds of a people became a natural prey of less civilised
peoples of the same region. It became necessary, therefore, to make
provision for the protection of the herds, and in so doing an increased
feeling of communal unity was necessarily engendered. Hitherto we may
suppose that a single family might live by itself without greatly
encountering interference from other families. So long as game was
abundant, and equally open to the pursuit of all, there would seem
to be no reason why one family should systematically interfere with
another, except in individual instances where quarrels of a strictly
personal nature had arisen. But the pastoral life introduced an
element of contention that must necessarily have led to the perpetual
danger of warfare, and concomitantly to the growing necessity for such
aggregate action on the part of numerous families as constituted the
essentials of a primitive government. It is curious to reflect on these
two opposite results that must have grown almost directly from the
introduction of the custom of domesticating food animals. On the one
hand, the growth of the spirit of war between tribes; on the other, the
development of the spirit of tribal unity, the germs of nationality.

Much thought has been given by naturalists to the exact origin of the
various races of domesticated animals. Speaking in general terms,
it may be said that Asia is the great original home of domesticated
animals as a class. Possibly the dog may be the descendant of some
European wolf, and he had perhaps become the companion of man before
that great hypothetical eastward migration of the Aryans took place,
which the modern ethnologist believes to have preceded the Asiatic
settlement of that race. The cat also may not unlikely be a descendant
of the European wild cat, but the sheep, the cow, the donkey, and
the horse, as well as the barnyard fowl, are almost unquestionably
of Asiatic origin. Of these the horse was probably the last to be
domesticated, since we find that the Egyptians did not employ this
animal until a relatively late stage of the historic period, namely,
about the twentieth century B.C. This does not mean that the horse was
unknown to the Asiatic nations until so late a period, but it suggests
a relatively recent use of this animal as compared, for example, with
the use of cattle, which had been introduced into Egypt before the
beginning of the historic period. No animal of importance and only one
bird--the turkey--has been added to the list of domesticated creatures
since the dawn of history.

_Sixth. Agriculture._

The studies of the philologists make it certain that long periods
of time elapsed after man had entered on a pastoral life before he
became an agriculturist. The proof of this is found, for example, in
the fact that the Greeks and Romans use words obviously of the same
derivation for the names of various domesticated animals, while a
similar uniformity does not pertain to their names for cultivated
cereals or for implements of agriculture. Theoretical considerations of
the probable state of pastoral man would lead to the same conclusion,
for the gap between the wandering habits of the owners of flocks, whose
chief care was to find pasture, and the fixed abode of an agricultural
people, is indeed a wide one. To be sure, the earliest agriculturist
may not have been a strictly permanent resident of any particular
district; he might migrate like the bird with the seasons, and change
the region of his abode utterly from year to year, but he must in
the nature of the case have remained in one place for several months
together, that is to say, from sowing to harvest time; and to people
of nomadic instincts this interference with their desires might be
extremely irksome, to say nothing of the work involved in cultivating
the soil. But once the advantages of producing a vegetable food supply,
according to a preconceived plan, instead of depending upon the
precarious supply of nature, were fully understood and appreciated,
another great forward movement had been made in the direction of
ultimate civilisation. Incidentally it may be added that another
incentive had been given one tribe to prey upon another, and conversely
another motive for strengthening the bonds of tribal unity.

Agricultural plants, like domesticated animals, are practically all of
Asiatic origin. There are, however, three important exceptions, namely,
maize among cereals and the two varieties of potato, all of which
are indigenous to the Western hemisphere, and hence were necessarily
unknown to the civilised nations of antiquity. With these exceptions
all the important agricultural plants had been known and cultivated for
numberless generations before the opening of the historic period.

_Seventh. Government._

We have just seen how the introduction of domesticated animals
and agricultural plants must have influenced the communal habits
of primitive man in the direction of the establishment of local
government. There are reasons to believe that, prior to taking these
steps, the most advanced form of human settlement was the tribe or
clan consisting of the members of a single family. The unit of this
settlement was the single family itself with a man at its head, who
was at once provider, protector, and master. As the various members of
a family held together in obedience to the gregarious instinct, which
man shares with the greater number of animals, it was natural that some
one member of the clan should be looked to as the leader of the whole.
In the ordinary course of events, such leader would be the oldest
man, the founder of the original family; but there must have been a
constant tendency for younger men of pronounced ability to aspire to
the leadership, and to wrest from the patriarch his right of mastery.

Such mastery, however, whether held by right of age, or of superior
capacity, must have been in the early day very restricted in scope,
for of necessity primitive man depended largely on his own individual
efforts both for securing food, and for protection of himself and his
immediate family against enemies, and under such circumstances an
independence of character must have been developed that implies an
unwillingness to submit to the autocratic authority of another. Only
when the pastoral and agricultural phases of civilisation had become
fully established, would communities assume such numerical proportions
as to bring the question of leadership of the clan into perpetual
prominence; and no doubt a very long series of internal strifes and
revolutionary dissensions must have preceded the final recognition of
the fact that no large community of people can aspire to anything like
integrity without the clear recognition of some centralised authority.
Under the conditions incident to the early stages of civilisation,
where man was subject to the marauding raids of enemies, it was but
natural that this centralised authority should be conceded to some
man whose recognised prowess in warfare had aroused the respect
and admiration of his fellows. Thus arose the system of monarchial
government, which we find fully established everywhere among the
nations of antiquity when they first emerge out of the obscuration
of the prehistoric period. The slow steps of progress by which the
rights of the individual came to strike an evener balance, as against
the all-absorbing usurpations of the monarch and a small coterie of
his adherents, constitute one of the chief elements of the story of
history that is to be unfolded in our pages. But when the story opens,
there is no intimation of this reaction. The monarch is all dominant;
his individual subjects seem the mere puppets of his will.

_Eighth. The Arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Architecture._

The graven fragments of ivory and of reindeer horn, found in the cave
deposits of the stone age, give ample proof that man early developed
the desire and the capacity for drawing. Doubtless there was a more
or less steady advance upon this art of the cave-dweller throughout
succeeding generations, though the records of such progress are for the
most part lost. The monuments of Egypt and of Mesopotamia, however,
have been preserved to us in sufficient completeness to prove that the
graphic arts had reached a really high stage of development before the
close of the prehistoric period. It is but fair to add, however, that
in this direction the changes of the earlier centuries of the historic
period were far greater than were the changes in the practical arts.

As early as the ninth century B.C. the Assyrians had developed the
art of sculpture in bas-relief in a way that constituted a marvellous
advance upon anything that may reasonably be believed to have been
performed by prehistoric man, and only three centuries later came the
culminating period of Greek art, which marked the stage of almost
revolutionary progress.

_Ninth. The Art of Writing._

One other art remains to be mentioned even in the most cursory survey.
This is the latest, and in some respects the greatest of them all--the
art of writing. In one sense this art is only a development of the
art of drawing, but it is a development that has such momentous
consequences that it may well be considered as distinct. Moreover, it
led to results so important for the historian, and so directly in line
of all our future studies, that we shall do well to examine it somewhat
more in detail.

All the various phases of prehistoric culture at which we have just
glanced have left reminiscences, more or less vague in character,
for the guidance of students of later ages; but the materials for
history proper only began to be accumulated after man had learned to
give tangible expression to his thoughts in written words. No doubt
the first steps toward this accomplishment were taken at a very early
day. We have seen that the cave-dweller even made graphic though
crude pictures, including hunting scenes, that are in effect the same
in intent, and up to a certain point the same in result, as if the
features of the event were described in words. Doubtless there was no
generation after the stone age in which men did not resort, more or
less, to the graphic delineation of ideas.

The familiar story that Herodotus tells of the message sent by the
Scythians to Darius is significant. It will be recalled that the
Scythian messenger brought the body of a bird, a mouse, and a frog,
together with a bundle of five arrows. Interrogated as to the meaning
of this strange gift, the messenger replied that his instructions
were to present the objects and retire. Darius and his officers were
much puzzled to interpret the message, Darius himself being disposed
to regard it as an admission on the part of the Scythians that they
conceded him lord of their territory, the land, water, and air; but
one of the officers of the great king gave a different interpretation,
which was presently accepted as the correct one. As he read the message
it implied that unless the Persians could learn to fly through the air
like birds, or to burrow through the earth like a mouse, or to dive
through the water like a frog, they should not be able to escape the
arrows of the Scythians. Miss Amelia B. Edwards, in her delightful
book on Egypt, has hazarded some conjectures as to the exact way in
which the bird and mouse and frog and arrows were presented to Darius.
She believes that they were fastened to a piece of bark, or perhaps to
a fragment of hide, in fixed position, so that they became virtually
hieroglyphics. The question is interesting, but of no vital importance,
since the exact manner of presentation would not in any way alter the
intent, but would only bear upon the readiness of its interpretation.
The real point of interest lies in the fact of this transmission of
ideas by symbols, which constitutes the essence of the art of writing.

It may be presumed that crude methods of sending messages, not unlike
this of the Scythians, were practised more or less independently,
and with greater or less degrees of elaboration, by barbaric and
half-civilised tribes everywhere. The familiar case of the American
Indians, who were wont to send a belt of wampum and an arrow as a
declaration of war, is an illustration in point. The gap between such
a presentation of tangible objects and the use of crude pictures
to replace the objects themselves would not seem, from a civilised
standpoint, to be a very wide one. Yet no doubt it was an enormously
difficult gap to cross. Granted the idea, any one could string together
the frog, the bird, the mouse, and the arrows, but only here and
there a man would possess the artistic skill requisite to make fairly
recognisable pictures of these objects. It is true that the cave man of
a vastly earlier period had developed a capacity to draw the outlines
of such animals as the reindeer and the mammoth with astonishing
verisimilitude. Professor Sayce has drawn the conclusion from this
that the average man dwelling in the caves of France at that remote
epoch could draw as well as the average Frenchman of to-day; but a
moment’s consideration will make it clear that the facts in hand by
no means warrant so sweeping a conclusion. There is nothing to show,
nor is there any reason to believe, that the cave-dweller pictures
that have come down to us are the work of average men of that period.
On the contrary, it is much more likely that they were the work, not
of average men, but of the artistic geniuses of their day,--of the
Michelangelos, Raphaels, or if you prefer, the Landseers, the Bonheurs,
and Corots of their time.

There is no more reason to suppose that the average cave dweller could
have drawn the reindeer hunting scene or the famous picture of the
mammoth, than that the average Frenchman of to-day could have painted
the _Horse Fair_. There is no reason then to suppose that the average
Scythian could have made himself equally intelligible to Darius by
drawing pictures instead of sending actual objects, though quite
possibly there were some men among the Scythian hordes who could have
done so. The idea of such pictorial ideographs had seemingly not yet
come to the Scythians, but that idea had been attained many centuries
before by other people of a higher plane of civilisation. At least four
thousand years before the age of Darius, the Babylonians, over whose
descendants the Persian king was to rule, had invented or developed
a picture-writing and elaborated it until it was able to convey,
not merely vague generalities, but exquisite shades of meaning. The
Egyptians, too, at a period probably at least as remote, had developed
what seems an independent system of picture-writing, and brought it to
an astonishing degree of perfection.

At least three other systems of picture-writing in elaborated forms are
recognised, namely, that used by the Hittites in Western Asia, that of
the Chinese, and that of the Mexican Indians in America. No dates can
be fixed as to when these were introduced, neither is it possible to
demonstrate the entire independence of the various systems; but all
of them were developed in prehistoric periods. There seems no reason
to doubt that in each case the picture-writing consisted originally
of the mere graphic presentation of an object as representing an idea
connected with that object itself, precisely as if the Scythians
had drawn pictures of the mouse, the bird, the frog, and the arrows
in order to convey the message to Darius. Doubtless periods of
incalculable length elapsed after the use of such ideograms as this had
come into vogue before the next great step was taken, which consisted
in using a picture, not merely to represent some idea associated with
the object depicted, but to represent a sound. Probably the first steps
of this development came about through the attempt to depict the names
of men. Since the name of a man is often a combination of syllables,
having no independent significance, it was obviously difficult to
represent that name in a picture record, and yet, in the nature of the
case, the name of the man might often constitute the most important
part of the record. Sooner or later the difficulty was met, as the
Egyptian hieroglyphics prove to us, by adopting a system of phonetics,
in which a certain picture stands for the sound of each syllable of the
name. The pictures selected for such syllabic use were usually chosen
because the name of the object presented by the picture began with the
sound in question. Such a syllabary having been introduced, its obvious
utility led presently to its application, not merely to the spelling of
proper names, but to general purposes of writing.

One other step remained, namely, to make that final analysis of
sounds which reduces the multitude of syllables to about twenty-five
elementary sounds, and to recognise that, by supplying a symbol for
each one of these sounds, the entire cumbersome structure of ideographs
and syllables might be dispensed with. The Egyptians made this analysis
before the dawn of history, and had provided themselves with an
alphabet; but strangely enough they had not given up, nor did they ever
relinquish in subsequent times, the system of ideographs and syllabics
that mark the stages of evolution of the alphabet. The Babylonians at
the beginning of their historic period had developed a most elaborate
system of syllables, but their writing had not reached the alphabet
stage.

The introduction of the alphabet to the exclusion of the cruder methods
was a feat accomplished within the historic period by the Phœnicians,
some details of which we shall have occasion to examine later on. This
feat is justly regarded as one of the greatest accomplishments of the
entire historic period. But that estimate must not blind us to the fact
that the Egyptians and Babylonians, and probably also the Chinese, were
in possession of their fully elaborated systems of writing long before
the very beginnings of that historic period of which we are all along
speaking. Indeed, as has been said, true history could not begin until
individual human deeds began to be recorded in written words.

PART II

THE HISTORY OF EGYPT

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

H. C. BRUGSCH, E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, C. K. J. BUNSEN, J. F. CHABAS,
ADOLF ERMAN, K. R. LEPSIUS, A. E. MARIETTE, G. C. C. MASPERO,
EDUARD MEYER, W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, J. GARDNER WILKINSON

TOGETHER WITH A CHARACTERISATION OF

EGYPT AS A WORLD INFLUENCE

ADOLF ERMAN

WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

CLAUDIUS ÆLIANUS, WM. BELOE, THE HOLY BIBLE, J. B. BIOT, SAMUEL
BIRCH, J. F. CHAMPOLLION, DIODORUS SICULUS, GEORG EBERS, AMELIA
B. EDWARDS, ROBERT HARTMANN, A. H. L. HEEREN, HERODOTUS, FLAVIUS
JOSEPHUS, H. LARCHER, J. P. MAHAFFY, MANETHO, AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS,
JOHN MAUNDEVILLE, MELA POMPONIUS, L. MÉNARD, PAUSANIAS, PETRONIUS,
PLINY, PLUTARCH, R. POCOCKE, PETER LE PAGE RENOUF, I. ROSELLINI, E.
DE ROUGÉ, C. SAVARY, F. VON SCHLEGEL, G. SERGI, SOLINUS, STRABO,
ISAAC TAYLOR, THE TURIN PAPYRUS AND THE DYNASTIC LISTS OF KARNAK,
ABYDOS, AND SAQQARAH, A. WIEDEMANN, HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, AND
THOMAS YOUNG

BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

_All rights reserved._

EGYPT

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. EGYPT AS A WORLD INFLUENCE.
BY DR. ADOLF ERMAN 57

EGYPTIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE 65

CHAPTER I. THE EGYPTIAN RACE AND ITS ORIGIN 77

CHAPTER II. THE OLD MEMPHIS KINGDOM 90

CHAPTER III. THE OLD THEBAN KINGDOM 106

CHAPTER IV. THE RESTORATION 126

CHAPTER V. THE XIXTH DYNASTY 141

CHAPTER VI. THE FINDING OF THE ROYAL MUMMIES 155

CHAPTER VII. THE PERIOD OF DECAY 162

CHAPTER VIII. THE CLOSING SCENES 180

CHAPTER IX. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE EGYPTIANS 196

CHAPTER X. THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION 219

CHAPTER XI. EGYPTIAN CULTURE 240

CHAPTER XII. CONCLUDING SUMMARY OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY 263

APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS 267

APPENDIX B. THE PROBLEM OF EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY 287

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 293

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY 295

[Illustration: ANCIENT AND MODERN EGYPT]

EGYPT AS A WORLD INFLUENCE

A CHARACTERISATION OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY

WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THE PRESENT WORK

BY DR. ADOLF ERMAN

Professor of Egyptology in the University of Berlin; Director of
the Berlin Egyptian Museum; Member of the Royal Prussian Academy of
Sciences, Berlin, etc.

The countries that laid the foundation of our civilisation are not
of those through which traffic passes on its way from land to land.
Neither Babylon nor Egypt lies on one of the natural highways of the
world; they lie hidden, encircled by mountains or deserts, and the seas
that wash their shores are such as the ordinary seafarer avoids rather
than frequents.

But this very seclusion, which to us, with our modern ideas, seems
a thing prejudicial to culture, did its part toward furthering the
development of mankind in these ancient lands; it assured to their
inhabitants a less troublous life than otherwise falls to the lot of
nations under primitive conditions. Egypt, more particularly, had no
determined adversary, nor any that could meet her on equal terms close
at hand. To west of her stretched a desert, leading by interminable
wanderings to sparsely populated lands. On the east the desert was less
wide indeed, but beyond it lay the Red Sea, and he who crossed it did
but reach another desert, the Arabian waste. Southward for hundreds of
miles stretched the barren land of Nubia, where even the waterway of
the Nile withholds its wonted service, so that the races of the Sudan
are likewise shut off from Egypt. And even the route from Palestine to
the Nile, which we are apt to think of as so short and easy, involved a
march of several days through waterless desert and marshy ground. These
neighbour countries, barren as they are, were certainly inhabited, but
the dwellers there were poor nomads; they might conquer Egypt now and
again, but they could not permanently injure her civilisation.

Thus the people which dwelt in Egypt could enjoy undisturbed all the
good things their country had to bestow. For in this singular river
valley it was easier for men to live and thrive than in most other
countries of the world. Not that the life was such as is led in those
tropic lands where the fruits of earth simply drop into the mouth, and
the human race grows enervated in a pleasant indolence; the dweller
in Egypt had to cultivate his fields, to tend his cattle, but if he
did so he was bounteously repaid for his labour. Every year the river
fertilised his fields that they might bring forth barley and spelt
and fodder for his oxen. He became a settled husbandman, a grave
and diligent man, who was spared the disquiet and hardships endured
by the nomadic tribes. Hence in this place there early developed a
civilisation which far surpassed that of other nations, and with
which only that of far-off Babylonia, where somewhat similar local
conditions obtained, could in any degree vie. And this civilisation,
and the national characteristics of the Egyptian nation which went
hand in hand with it, were so strong that they could weather even a
grievous storm. For long ago, in the remote antiquity which lies far
beyond all tradition, Egypt was once overtaken by the same calamity
which was destined to befall her twice within historic times--she was
conquered by Arab Bedouins, who lorded it over the country so long
that the Egyptians adopted their language, though they altered and
adapted it curiously in the process. This transplantation of an Asiatic
language to African soil is the lasting, but likewise the only, trace
left by this primeval invasion; in all other respects the conquerors
were merged into the Egyptian people, to whom they, as barbarians, had
nothing to offer. There is nothing in the ideas and reminiscences of
later Egyptians to indicate that a Bedouin element had been absorbed
into the race; in spite of their language the aspect they present
to us is that of the true children of their singular country, a
people to whom the desert and its inhabitants are something alien and
incomprehensible. It is the same scene, _mutatis mutandis_, that was
enacted in the full light of history at the rise of Islam; then, too,
the unwarlike land was subdued by the swift onset of the Bedouins, who
also imposed their language on it in the days of their rule; and yet
the Egyptian people remains ever the same, and the people who speak
Arabic to-day in the valley of the Nile have little in common with the
Arabs of the desert.

Long before the period at which our historical knowledge begins, these
Egyptian husbandmen had laid the foundations of their civilisation.
They still went unclad and delighted to paint their bodies with green
pigment; their ruler still wore a lion’s tail at his girdle and a
strange savage-looking top-knot on his head; his sceptre was still
a staff such as may be cut from the tree; but these staves already
ruled a wide domain full of townships large and small. And in each
of these there were already nobles, responsible to the king for the
government thereof, looking with reverence toward his “great house,”
and paying him tribute of their corn and cattle. And in the midst of
the clay huts in every place stood a large hut, with wattled walls,
the entrance adorned with poles; no other than the sanctuary of their
god. Already they carved his image in wood and carried it round the
town at festivals. Manifold are the accomplishments which the Egyptians
have acquired by this time. They fashion the flint of the desert into
knives and weapons of the utmost perfection of workmanship, they make
cords, mats, and skiffs out of the rushes from the marsh-land, they
are acquainted with the art of manufacturing tiles and earthen vessels
from the clay of the soil. They carve in wood and ivory, and their
carvings have already a peculiar character wholly their own. Moreover,
they have prepared the way for the greatest of their achievements and
have learned to record their ideas by drawing small pictures; the
character is still for the most part pictographic, but even now certain
particular pictures are used to denote sounds.

On this primitive period of the Egyptian nation we can only gaze
from afar; we do not meet it face to face until the time when the
two kingdoms, into which the country had hitherto been divided, were
united for the first time by King Menes; this may have taken place
after the middle of the fourth millennium. The union must have given
a strong impulse to the life of the nation, and but a few generations
after the days of King Menes the monuments that have come down to us
exhibit most of the features characteristic of Egyptian civilisation in
the later centuries. The might of Egypt waxes apace; a few centuries
more--at the period we are in the habit of speaking of as the Old
Kingdom--and its development has progressed so far that nothing now
seems beyond its strength. The gigantic buildings of the IVth Dynasty,
whose great pyramids defy the tooth of time, bear witness to this. How
proudly self-conscious must the race have been which strove thus to
set up for itself a perpetual memorial! And if this passion for the
huge is relinquished in succeeding centuries, it is merely a token of
the further development of the nation; it has wearied of the colossal
scale, and turns its attention to a greater refinement of life, the
grace of which still looks forth upon us from the monuments of the Vth
Dynasty.

Thus, even under the Old Kingdom, Egypt is a country in a high state
of civilisation; a centralised government, a high level of technical
skill, a religion in exuberant development, an art that has reached
its zenith, a literature that strives upward to its culminating
point,--this it is that we see displayed in its monuments. It is an
early blossom, put forth by the human race at a time when other nations
were yet wrapped in their winter sleep. In ancient Babylonia alone,
where conditions equally favourable prevailed, the nation of the
Sumerians reached a similar height. Any one who will compare these two
ancient civilisations of Babylonia and Egypt cannot fail to see that
they present many similarities of custom; thus in both the seal is
rolled upon the clay, and both date their years according to certain
events. The idea that some connection subsisted between them, and that
then, as in later times, the products of both countries were dispersed
by commerce through the world about them, is one that suggests itself
spontaneously. But substantial evidence in support of this conjecture
is still lacking and will probably ever remain so.

The great age of the Old Kingdom ends in a collapse, the body politic
breaks up into its component parts, and the level of civilisation in
the provinces sinks rapidly. But it rises again no less rapidly, when,
at the close of the third millennium B.C., Egypt is once more united
under a single sovereign.

The Middle Kingdom, as we customarily call this epoch, is a second
season of efflorescence; indeed, it is the time upon which the
Egyptians of succeeding generations looked back as the classic period
of their literature; and many centuries later, boys at school were
still patiently copying out the wise lessons which the first king of
the period imparted to his son, or the adventures of his contemporary,
Sinuhe, and thereby learning the elegance of style in which the
Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom were such adepts. This, moreover, is
the epoch in which, so far as we know, the Egyptian arms were first
carried to remoter lands; at this time Nubia became an Egyptian
province, and the gold of its desert thenceforth belonged to the
Pharaohs. The memory of this extension of the sway of Egypt survived
among the Egyptians of later days, embodied in the semi-mythical figure
of the great King Sesostris. When legend reports that this monarch
likewise subjugated distant lands to the north, we have now no means
of judging how much truth there may be in the tale. But this we can
see, that at that time Egypt maintained commercial relations with the
countries of the Mediterranean; for their dainty vases are found in
Egyptian rubbish heaps of the period, and may have been imported into
the Nile valley then, as later, as vessels for containing delicate
foreign oils.

These palmy days of the second period of Egyptian history lasted for
barely two hundred years, and then a time of political decadence
again set in, and Egypt for some centuries passes almost out of
sight. One thing only do we know of its fortunes during this interval,
namely, that it once more fell a prey to barbarian conquerors. The
Hyksos--presumably a Bedouin tribe from the Syrio-Arabian desert--long
reigned in Egypt as its lords. But the sway of these barbarians was
naturally lax, and while the foreign great king abode in his camp on
the Delta, Egyptian princes ruled as his vassals in the great cities of
Egypt. And when, as was inevitable, the might of the barbarians waned,
the might of these dynasts increased, till one of them, who ruled in
the little city of Thebes in distant Upper Egypt, rose to such a height
of power as to gain the mastery, not only over the other princes, but
ultimately over the Hyksos themselves. About the year 1600 B.C. we find
Egypt free once more, and under the sceptre of this same upper Egyptian
line which has rendered the names of Thebes, its city, and Amen, its
god, forever famous. The New Kingdom, the greatest age that the Nile
Valley ever saw, has dawned.

The power of the kingdom waxed apace beyond its borders. Tehutimes I
and his son, the indefatigable warrior, Tehutimes III, subdued a region
that extended northward to northern Syria and southward to the Sudan;
Egypt became the neighbour of the kingdom of Mitani [or Mitanni] on
the Euphrates, of the rising power of Assyria, of ancient Babylonia.
The two ancient civilisations which had been developing for thousands
of years in Mesopotamia and the valley of the Nile were thus brought
into direct contact, and we shall hardly be wrong in saying that during
these centuries a great part of the civilised world whose heirs we are,
met together in a common life. A brisk trade must have developed as a
result of this new relation of country to country. The countries of
the Mediterranean, where the so-called Mycenæan civilisation was then
in its prime, had their part in it, as is proved by the discovery of
numerous Mycenæan vessels in the tombs and ruins of the New Kingdom,
and no less by the productions of Egyptian technical art which have
been brought to light from the seats of Mycenæan civilisation.

The effect of these altered relations upon Egypt is easy to see. Vast
wealth pours into the country and enables the Pharaohs to erect the
gigantic fabric of the Theban temples. But at the very time when the
spirit of ancient Egypt finds its most splendid transfiguration in
these buildings, it begins to suffer loss and change. The old simple
garb no longer beseems the lords of so great an empire; it must give
place to a costlier. The antiquated literary language handed down
from days of old is gradually superseded by the vulgar tongue. And if
the Egyptians had up to this time looked proudly down upon all other
nations as wretched barbarians, they must have found this narrow-minded
view untenable when once they had met face to face the equally ancient
civilisation of Babylonia and the vigorous growth of Syrian and
Mediterranean cultures. The sons of Egypt’s Asiatic vassals attend her
king, their daughters sit in his harem; Syrian mercenaries form one
regiment of his bodyguard, foreign captives work on the edifices he
builds. His officers, military and civil, have all made some stay on
Asiatic soil, and his “letter-scribe” can read and write the cuneiform
characters of Babylonia. The commerce which led foreign merchants to
Egypt must have acted no less powerfully; they brought in silverware,
wood of various kinds, horses and oxen, wine, beer, oil, and unguents,
and carried away in return the manifold products of Egyptian industry
and Egyptian crafts. In the long result not only does their traditional
fear of foreigners pass away, but Asiatic fashions actually come into
vogue among cultured Egyptians. They coquet with foreign Canaanitish
phrases, and think it permissible to offer up prayer to Baal [Bel]
Astarte, and other gods of alien peoples. Asiatic singing-girls set
the lyre of their native land in place of the old Egyptian harp, and
many an intellectual possession may have migrated into Egypt with their
songs.

It is far harder to gauge in detail the effect of Egyptian supremacy
on Asia and Europe. We can see from the discoveries made in these
countries what a quantity of small Egyptian wares in glass and
faience, silver and bronze, was exported during this period, and we
may further conclude that this was the time when the industrial art
of Syrio-Phœnicia acquired its Egyptianised style. Similarly we may
conjecture that it was then that our civilisation adopted all those
things which were undoubtedly invented or perfected on Egyptian soil,
and which we meet with even in the very oldest Greek and Etruscan
times--the forms of household furniture, of columns, statues, weapons,
seals, and many other things which still play their part in our daily
life, though we are all unconscious of their Egyptian origin. At that
period, when Egypt held the first place in Asia and Europe, a stream of
Egyptian influence must have flowed out upon the whole world--a stream
of which we still can guess the force only from these traces it has
left.

As for the most precious lore that other nations might have learned
from the Egyptians, we have no information concerning it whatever;
though it is certain that their intellectual riches, their religion
and poetry, their medical and arithmetical skill, can have been no
less widely spread abroad than these productions of their technical
dexterity. If, for example, our religion tells us of an immortality of
the soul more excellent than the melancholy existence of the shades,
the conception is one first met with in ancient Egypt; and Egyptian,
likewise, is the idea that the fate of the dead is determined by
the life led upon earth. These conceptions come to us by way of the
Jewish religion. But may not the Jews have obtained them from Egypt,
the land that bore its dead so heedfully in mind? The silent paths
by which such thoughts pass from nation to nation are, it is true,
beyond all showing. Or, if much in the gnomic poetry of the Hebrews
reminds us strikingly of the abundant proverbial literature of Egypt,
the idea of seeking its origin in the Nile Valley is one that occurs
almost spontaneously. Here, too, of course, we have no proof to offer;
connections of the kind can be no more than guessed at.

Thus the first part of the New Kingdom, or what we are in the habit
of calling the XVIIIth Dynasty, is one of those periods which are
pre-eminent as having advanced the progress of the world. To Egypt
herself this co-operation with other nations might have brought a new
and loftier development, had she been able really to assimilate the
influx of new ideas. But of this the old nation was no longer capable;
it had not vigour enough to shake off the ballast wherewith its
thousands of years of existence had laden it.

About 1400 B.C. one of the Pharaohs--it was Amenhotep IV--did indeed
make a serious attempt to break with custom and tradition and adapt
the faith and thought of his people to the new conditions. He tried to
create a new religion, in which only one god should be worshipped--the
Sun, a divinity which could be equally adored by all peoples within his
kingdom. And it sounds strangely un-Egyptian when the hymns to this new
god insist that all men, Syrians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians, are alike
dear to him; he has made them to differ in colour and speech, and has
placed them in different lands, but he takes thought for all alike.

But this attempt of the fourth Amenhotep came to naught, and the spirit
of ancient Egypt triumphed over the abominable heretic. And with this
triumph the fate of Egypt was sealed. True, in the next century, under
the Sethos and the Ramses she enjoyed a period of external splendour,
to which the great temples of Karnak, Luxor, and Medinet Habu still
testify. But it was an illusory glory. Egypt was outworn and exhausted;
she could no longer maintain her political ascendency, her might falls
to pitiable ruin while younger and more vigorous nations in anterior
Asia take the place that once was hers. And therewith begins the long
and mournful death struggle of the Egyptian nation. The chief authority
passes from the hands of the kings to those of the priests, from them
to the commanders of the Syrian mercenaries; and then Egypt falls a
prey to the Ethiopian barbarians, with whom the Assyrians next dispute
it. For five long centuries the wretched nation is whelmed beneath
these miseries, and yet, so far as we can see, they work no change in
it; it is, in truth, exhausted utterly.

Once more, after the fall of the Assyrian empire, the political
situation changes in Egypt’s favour, and Psamthek I and his successors
won back wealth and power for her. But the aged nation had no longer
the skill to take wise advantage of propitious fortune; it had no
thoughts of its own, nor could it find fitting form for its new
splendour. The Egyptians rested content with imitating in whimsical
fashion, in all things, the Old Kingdom, the earliest period of their
national glory, and the contemporaries of Neku and Apries [Uah-ab-Ra]
took pleasure in feigning themselves the subjects of Cheops, in bearing
the titles of his court, and writing in a language and orthography
which had been in use two thousand years before. Learned antiquarianism
is the distinguishing feature of this latest Egyptian development.

The end of the sixth century brought fresh calamities upon the land.
Cambyses conquered it, and it became a Persian province. And although,
after many a vain attempt at revolt, it shook off the foreign yoke for
awhile, about 400 B.C., yet in a few decades it again fell into the
hands of the Persians. Since those days Egypt has never had a ruler of
her own blood; she has been the hapless spoil of any who chose to take
her.

Alexander the Great was the first to whom the country fell, and at his
death it became the heritage of his general, Ptolemy. In his family it
was handed down, to become at length a province of the Roman Empire
in the year 30 B.C. Throughout its length and breadth there is but
one spot that thrives during this period, the new port of Alexandria,
founded by the great king in the barren west of the Delta; this becomes
a metropolis of the Greek world, and its merchants and manufacturers
extend their trade by land and sea to every quarter. But this same
Alexandria was ever something of an alien in Egypt, and the rest of
the country took no part in the busy life that ran its round there;
it grew corn and flax and wine and supplied them to the Roman world,
it throve, but less for its own profit than that of the empire. Greek
culture made its way but slowly there, and even in the great cities
of the interior the Greek language and the Greek religion were never
strong enough to displace the native idiom and the old faith. They
influenced it by degrees, much as the European culture of to-day
influences the ancient civilisation of the far East, but even as the
Chinese remain Chinese in spite of railroads and the telegraph, so the
Egyptians of the Græco-Roman period clung tenaciously to their own
ways. They held fast all points of the national customs they only half
understood; above all, they held to their ancient faith. And yet by
that time the religion of Egypt was as degenerate and debased as it
could possibly be. As is apt to be the case with antiquated beliefs,
its mere singularities had flourished at the expense of its wholesome
side; cats, snakes, and crocodiles had now become the most sacred
of beings in the eyes of the vulgar, and every kind of superstition
was rampant. The depositaries of this religion were the members of a
stereotyped hierarchy that had long lost touch with the outer world;
they worshipped their gods according to the old tradition, used the
ample wealth of the temples to build them new shrines in the old style,
and enjoyed their fat benefices under the benevolent protection of the
foreign government.

Thus the Egypt of this later day had long been empty of all vital
force; it continued to exist, but only because the aged nation had lost
the power of adapting itself to the new world. And yet this decrepit
Egyptian character, with its dead religion, cast a singular spell over
the sated spirit of the Roman world. The worship of Isis and Serapis
spread far and wide; everywhere Egyptian sorcerers found a willing
public for their superstitions. Roman tourists visited the ancient
land, gazed in amazement at its wonders, while at home the nobles built
themselves villas in the Egyptian style and adorned them with statues
from Memphis. Even the most highly educated looked upon Egypt as a holy
land, where everything was full of mystery and marvel, and piety and
the true worship of the gods had their dwelling place from of old. And
even after the fashionable predilection for things Egyptian had passed
away, this notion of the mysterious and sacred land of Egypt remained
fixed in men’s minds, and was handed on from generation to generation.
Whenever ancient Egypt is mentioned in later days it suggests ideas
of mystery, symbolism, and esoteric wisdom. And so anything to which
it is desired to lend an air of mystery claims derivation preferably
from Egypt, the secret lodges of the eighteenth century no less
than the spiritualists and quacks of our own day. Ancient Egypt has
acquired this reputation, and though, now that we know it better, we
perceive that it is but little in accordance with her true character,
all our researches will not be able to dispel the illusion of two
thousand years. In the future, as in the past, the feeling with which
the multitude regards the remains of Egyptian antiquity will be one
of awestruck reverence. Nevertheless, another feeling would be more
appropriate, a feeling of grateful acknowledgment and veneration,
such as one of a later generation might feel for the ancestor who had
founded his family and endowed it with a large part of its wealth. For
though we are seldom able to say with certainty of any one thing in our
possession that it is a legacy we have inherited from the Egyptians,
yet no one who seriously turns his attention to such subjects can now
doubt that a great part of our heritage comes from them. In all the
implements which are about us nowadays, in every art and craft which we
practise now, a large and important element has descended to us from
the Egyptians. And it is no less certain that we owe to them many ideas
and opinions of which we can no longer trace the origin, and which have
long come to seem to us the natural property of our own minds.

This legacy of ideas, no less than of technical dexterity and artistic
form, which the Egyptians have bequeathed to us, constitutes the
service they have done to the human race. They cannot vie with the
Greeks in intellectual gifts, and they never possessed the force that
determines the course of history; but they were able to develop their
capabilities earlier than other nations, and thus secured for the world
the substantial groundwork of civilisation.

Thirty centuries have passed since ancient Egypt accomplished this, her
real mission for the world; since then she has hardly done more than
till her soil in its service. Silently her existence has flowed on,
and all the catastrophes which have befallen her since Roman times have
not been able to stir her to fresh vigour. Christianity spread in Egypt
early, but the philosophic labours accomplished there in connection
with it are the work of the educated Hellenistic classes, not of the
Egyptians proper. What these last added to Christianity, the anchoretic
and monastic life, cannot be counted among its advantages. And when, in
the fifth century, the Egyptians broke away from the Catholic Church,
the barbarian element to which the nation succumbed thenceforward
finally triumphed. The tie that had bound the Egyptians to European
civilisation was severed, and the Arab conquest had only to set the
seal to this divorce.

This same Arab conquest, which, in the course of centuries, went so
far as to rob the ancient nation of its ancient language, and imposed
a new faith upon the great majority of its inhabitants, was powerless
to inspire it with new life. Outwardly Egypt has become Arab, but the
Egyptians had but a very small share in the intellectual life of the
Arab Middle Ages, a share probably not much larger than that which they
had taken in Alexandrian culture.

Once again, in our own days, the opportunity of rousing itself afresh
is offered to the Egyptian nation. It is once more linked with Europe,
and its prosperity has advanced with astounding rapidity. From all
sides new influences stream in upon the ancient people, and we would
fain indulge in the hope that now at length it might awake to new
life. But, unhappily, this hope has but little prospect of fulfilment,
and all things will but run again the course they ran long ago in
Græco-Roman days. The foreigner will prosper in Egypt and invest it
with a tinge of his own civilisation, the work of European civilisation
will inspire an Egyptian here and there with a profound sympathy. But
the nation itself will remain untouched, it will rise up no more, it
has lived itself out and its intellectual capabilities are exhausted.
In time to come, the Egyptian nation will probably do no more for the
human race than diligently provide it with cotton and onions, as it
does to-day.

EGYPTIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SOURCES OF
EGYPTIAN HISTORY, THE SWEEP OF EVENTS, AND A TABLE OF CHRONOLOGY

Until somewhat recently it has been customary to think of Egyptian
history as constituting a single uniform period. Before our generation
it was quite impossible for any one to realise the extreme length of
time which this history involves; or if a certain few did realise it,
a consensus of opinion among the many forbade the acceptance of their
estimate. Now, however, limitations of time are no longer a bugbear to
the historian, and we are coming to realise the full import of the fact
that when one speaks of historic Egypt he is referring to an epoch at
least four thousand years in extent. Prior to the nineteenth century
discoveries, the historian had only the most meagre supply of material
dealing with any epoch prior to that age of the Trojan War which
marked the extreme limits of the historic view in Greece; but now we
understand that the men who built the Pyramids in Egypt were at least
as far removed from Homer as Homer is removed from us: and it is but
the expression of an historical platitude to say that a vast stretch of
Egyptian history must lie back of the Pyramids; for no one any longer
supposes that a people recently emerged from barbarism could have
created such structures.

Throughout classical times very little was known of the history of
Egypt, except what was contained in the fragmentary remains of Manetho
and the more lengthy descriptions of Herodotus and Diodorus. There were
other references, of course, but for anything like a comprehensive
knowledge of the history of the country it would have been necessary to
understand the Egyptian language and decipher the hieroglyphics; and no
person throughout classical times had such understanding.

There were practically no additions to the world’s knowledge of ancient
Egyptian history from classical times till about the beginning of
the nineteenth century. The stimulus to the new knowledge that was
then acquired came about chiefly through the Egyptian expedition of
Napoleon. The French expedition included various scientists who made a
concerted effort to study the antiquities, and to transport as many of
them as might be to Paris. In the latter regard the expedition failed,
as in some more important particulars, through the interference of the
British, with the result that some of the most important antiquities,
including the since famous Rosetta stone, found their way to the
British Museum. A large amount of material, however, was transported
to Paris, and gave occupation to the savants of France for about a
generation before the final publication of results in a monumental work.

But before this publication, thanks to the efforts of Thomas Young
in England, and Champollion in France, the hieroglyphics had been
deciphered, and at last the almost inexhaustible word treasures of
Egypt were made available as witnesses for history. Very naturally, a
large number of explorers entered the field, and from that day till
this there has been no dearth of Egyptologists either in the field of
exploration or of interpretation. Prominent among these in the first
half of the century were the pupils of Champollion, the Italians,
Rossellini and Salvolini. But the most important work, perhaps, was
done by the German, Lepsius, who came to be recognised as the foremost
Egyptologist of his time, and whose _Denkmäler aus Aegypten und
Aethiopien_ is still one of the most monumental works on the subject.
In England, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson took up the study of Egyptian life
in particular, and deduced from the inscriptions of the monuments and
from the pictures a comprehensive understanding of Egyptian manners
and customs. The various workers at the British Museum, beginning
with Birch and continuing with Renouf and with E. A. Wallis Budge,
have added an ever increasing complement to our knowledge of Egyptian
archæology.

The country of Champollion has been ably represented in more recent
time by Mariette and Maspero; while in Germany, Dümichen, Meyer, and
Wiedemann have worked and written exhaustively, the former with special
reference to archæology, the two latter with reference to history. But
no one else perhaps has given quite such attention to the language of
old Egypt as Professor Adolf Erman. The field that Wilkinson occupied
earlier in the century has also been entered by Professor Erman,
and the most recent and authoritative studies of Egyptian manners
and customs are those that he has deduced from the papyri and the
monumental inscriptions. Wilkinson depended largely upon pictorial
representations for his information, but Erman has been able to go
beyond these to the subtler and sometimes more illuminative written
records.

As to the early history of Egypt, no one else has made such exhaustive
studies as Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, whose publications cover
a wide range, from the most technical to the relatively popular. For
a strictly popular presentation of the subject, however, the works
of George Ebers, of Baron Bunsen, and of Amelia B. Edwards should be
consulted, together with the books of Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson and the
works of Professor Adolf Erman.

A more comprehensive account of these writers and their labours,
together with reasonably complete bibliographies of the entire subject,
will be found at the close of the history of Egypt. The character of
the materials with which the Egyptologists have worked in creating a
new history of one of the oldest civilisations, will be revealed as we
proceed.

The Egyptians of history are probably a fusion of an indigenous
white race of northeastern Africa and an intruding people of Asiatic
origin. In the Archaic period independent kings ruled in the Delta
region (Kings of the Red Crown) and in Upper Egypt (Kings of the White
Crown). Under King Menes the two crowns were probably first united,
and the Dynastic period begins. According to Egyptian traditions the
pre-dynastic ages were filled with dynasties of gods and demigods,
who were perhaps primeval chiefs or tribal leaders. Monuments of the
pre-dynastic period are earthenware vases, jars, sculptured ivory
objects, and flint implements.

The dynasties which formed the foundation of all classifications of
Egyptian history are based upon the lists of the Egyptian priest
Manetho, who wrote a history of Egypt in the time of the Ptolemies.
The original work of Manetho has not come down to us, and it is quite
impossible to restore it _in extenso_ from the fragmentary excerpts
that are preserved. The writings of Josephus and of Eusebius are our
chief sources for Manetho’s lists, but Josephus copied the lists only
in part, and Eusebius seemingly knew them only at second or third
hand, when, it is suspected, they had been somewhat perverted in the
interests of Hebrew chronology. Nevertheless, the dynasties of Manetho
as we now know them probably do not very radically differ from the
original lists. Beyond question these are based upon authentic Egyptian
documents, but there is a good deal of confusion and much difference
of opinion among Egyptologists, as to whether some of the dynasties
were not contemporaneous; and for many periods the lists are only
provisional.

It is notable, however, that the somewhat recent discoveries of
original Egyptian lists, such as the so-called Turin Papyrus and the
dynastic lists of Karnak and Abydos, tend to corroborate the lists of
Manetho, and show that he was an historian of very great merit. It is
convenient also to regard the grand divisions of Egyptian history noted
by Manetho, namely, the Old Memphis Kingdom, comprising the first ten
dynasties; the Middle Kingdom or Old Theban Kingdom, comprising the
XIth to the XVIIth Dynasties; and the New Theban Kingdom, comprising
the remaining dynasties.[1]

As to the dates employed in the following chronology, a word of
explanation is necessary. Neither Manetho’s lists nor any other
available sources enable us at present to supply exact dates for the
earlier periods of Egyptian history with any precision. Authorities
differ as to the early period to the extent of more than three thousand
years. Thus Champollion gives the date 5867 B.C. for the beginning of
the Ist Dynasty, while Wilkinson supplies for the same event the date
2320 B.C. Later authorities are pretty fully agreed that such a date
as that of Wilkinson is much too recent. Meyer fixes upon 3180 B.C. as
the minimum date, and no doubt he would very willingly admit that the
probable date is much more remote. For our present purpose it has been
thought well to adopt an intermediate date, as in some sense striking
an average among divergent opinions. The dates of Brugsch, which agree
rather closely with those of Mariette and Petrie, have in the main been
followed here, with certain modifications made necessary by recent
discoveries, chiefly with reference to synchronism with known dates
of the Assyrian empire and other countries. It will be understood,
therefore, that all the earlier dates of this chronology are accepted
as merely approximative, the approximation becoming closer and closer
as we come down the centuries. At the middle of the XVIIIth Dynasty
the dates cannot be more than twenty years out of the way, while from
the XXIInd onward the probable error is very small indeed, vanishing
entirely with the accession of Psamthek I of the XXVIth Dynasty.

[Illustration: THE TEMPLE AT KARNAK]

For present purposes it is undesirable to give a complete list of the
names of Egyptian kings. Fuller details as to monarchs and events will
be given elsewhere in our text. But the purposes of our preliminary
view are better subserved by confining attention to the more important
Pharaohs, and to the principal events that give picturesqueness and
interest to Egyptian history.

We take up now the synoptical view of the successive dynasties. Such
a survey will, it is believed, furnish the reader with the best
possible preparation for the full comprehension of the more detailed
presentation that is to follow.

THE OLD MEMPHIS KINGDOM

IST DYNASTY, 4400-4133 B.C.

4400 B.C. Accession of =Menes=. Ist Dynasty founded. Tradition ascribes
to him the foundation of Memphis, the capital of the Old Memphite
Kingdom, whither it was moved from This or Thinis; and states that
he was killed by a hippopotamus in a campaign against the Libyans.

_Monument._--A tomb discovered by De Morgan (1897) is believed to
be that of King Menes, or of his wife Nit-hotep.

4366 =Teta.=--Second king, said to have written a work on anatomy.

_Monument._--A papyrus bought in Thebes by Ebers refers to a
pomatum made for Teta’s mother, Shesh.

4266 =Hesepti= (=Semti=).--Fifth king. Several passages in the Book
of the Dead refer to him. King Senta of the IInd Dynasty owned a
medical work which once belonged to Semti.

_Monument._--His tomb has been discovered by Amélineau at Abydos.
It contained among other things an ebony tablet representing the
king dancing before Osiris. (Now in the British Museum.)

4233 =Merbapen.=--Sixth king.

_Monument._--Tomb at Abydos, discovered by Amélineau.

4200 =Semen-Ptah= (=Semsu=).--Seventh king. Manetho says: “In his
reign a terrible pestilence afflicted Egypt.”

IIND DYNASTY, 4133-3900 B.C.

4133 =Neter-b’au.=--First king. Manetho says: “During his reign a
chasm opened near Bubastis and many persons perished.”

_Monument._--Tomb discovered by Amélineau in 1897 at Abydos.

4100 =Ka-ka-u.=--Second (?) king; establishes or expands the
worship of Apis; also of Mnevis and the Mendesian goat.

4066 =Ba-en-neter.=--Third (?) king; establishes the right of
female succession.

IIIRD DYNASTY, 3900-3766 B.C.

3900 =Neb-ka.=--First or third king. According to Manetho a revolt
of the Libyans in which they submitted “on account of an unexpected
increase in the moon,” took place in this reign.

3866 =Zeser= (=T´er-sa=).--Second or fourth king. Builder of the
Step Pyramid of Saqqarah. Dr. Budge says of this: “It is certainly
the oldest of all the large buildings which have successfully
resisted the action of wind and weather, and destruction by the
hand of man.”

_Monuments._--The Step Pyramid; the Great Sphinx of Gizeh.

Rapid development of civilisation during the first three dynasties.

IVTH DYNASTY, 3766-3566 B.C.

3766 =Sneferu.=--First king. He wars against the robber-like tribes
of the desert. He is said, on a monument of the XIIth Dynasty, to
have founded Egyptian dominion in the peninsula of Sinai, which
he conquered for its mineral wealth.

_Monuments._--A number of carved stones, a bas-relief at Wady
Magharah showing him smiting an enemy.

3733 =Khufu= or =Cheops=.--Builder of the Great Pyramid, Khut--“The
Horizon.”

3666 =Khaf-Ra.=--Builder of the pyramid Ur,--“The Great.”

3633 =Men-kau-Ra.=--Builder of the pyramid Her,--“The Supreme.” He
enlarges it after it is built. He afterward builds another pyramid
at Abu Roash, and was probably buried there.

A peaceful dynasty. Brilliant age of art and literature.

VTH DYNASTY, 3566-3300 B.C.

3566 A new house from Elephantine “of priestly character” founded
by =Us-kaf=.

3533 =Sahu-Ra.=--One of the most renowned rulers of the Old Memphis
Kingdom. Wars in Sinai.

_Monument._--Pyramid Khaba, at Abusir.

3433 =Usen-en-Ra.=--First Pharaoh to adopt a second cartouche with
his private name, An. He holds the rule over the peninsula of Sinai.

_Monuments._--The pyramid Menasu; a victory tablet at Wady
Magharah; two statues, etc.

3366 =Tat-ka-Ra= (=Assa=).--He continues to wage war with even
greater activity in the peninsula of Sinai.

_Monuments._--The oldest papyri of authentic date belong to this
reign. They are: “The Papyrus of Accounts” found at Saqqarah and
the “Proverbs of Ptah-hotep.”

Ptah-hotep was probably the uncle and tutor of the king, under
whose patronage the work was given to the world.

3333 Close of dynasty and first period of Egyptian history with
King =Unas=.

_Monument._--Pyramid Nefer-asu, at Saqqarah.

No great monuments in this dynasty. An age of decline. The art of
building shows a great falling off from that of the IVth Dynasty.
Methods are careless; decoration becomes formal, coarse, and flat.

_Monument of Vth Dynasty._--The Palermo stele, containing, among
others, names of some of the pre-dynastic kings of Lower Egypt.

VITH DYNASTY, 3300-3000 B.C.

3300 A new line of vigorous Memphite kings founded by =Teta=.

_Monument._--Pyramid Tat-asu at Saqqarah, one of the first and
worst despoiled by plunderers.

3233 =Pepi Ist.=--Most important ruler of this dynasty. He has
left more monuments than any other ruler before the XIIth
Dynasty. Great and successful wars against the Aamu and Herusha,
inhabiting the desert east of the Delta. War against the people
of Terebah, a country of doubtful location, probably in western
Asia.

_Monuments._--The long inscription on the tomb of Una, Pepi’s
general, is our source of the history of this reign. Pyramid
Men-nefer, at Saqqarah; the red granite sphinx of Tanis;
statuettes, etc.

3066 Queen =Men-ka-Ra=.--The Nitocris of Herodotus. The early
part of this dynasty is characterised by foreign conquest and
exploration, but toward the end internal troubles have brought
the kingdom to a state of disorganisation. Architecture rapidly
declines.

VIITH, VIIITH, IXTH, AND XTH DYNASTIES, 3000-2700 B.C.

3000-2700 A long era of confusion. Rapid decay of the Memphite
power in the VIIth and VIIIth Dynasties, while that of Thebes
is rising. The Delta invaded and occupied by Syrian tribes,
which drive the capital from Memphis south to Heracleopolis.
A great wall is built across the Isthmus of Suez to keep the
invaders out. Dynasties IX and X at Heracleopolis in constant
conflict with the Theban princes, in which the latter gradually
attain their independence and establish the XIth (First Theban)
Dynasty. For about a century the Xth and XIth Dynasties probably
reign contemporaneously.

_Monuments._--Mainly scarabs.

THE OLD THEBAN (MIDDLE) KINGDOM

XITH DYNASTY, 2700-2466 B.C.

2700 Beginning of the Old Theban (Middle) Kingdom. =Antef I= (?),
first of nine (?) kings. They are all buried at the foot of the
Western Mountain of the Theban Necropolis.

_Monument._--The coarsely carved coffin of Antef I, rudely
painted in red, blue, and yellow. (Now in the Louvre.)

2600 =Mentuhotep II= (=Neb-taui-Ra=).

_Monuments._--A tablet at Konosso relating his conquest of
thirteen tribes; inscriptions in the quarries of Hammamat.

2550 =Metuhotep III.=--The greatest king of the dynasty, judging
from the number of his monuments. A patron of art. His worship
continues till a late day.

_Monuments._--Pyramid Khut-asu, at Thebes; sandstone tablet at
Silsilis; tablets at Assuan; a temple at Thebes.

2500 =Sankh-ka-Ra.=--Last king of dynasty. The first voyage to Punt
and Ophir under the leadership of Hannu takes place in his reign.

_Monuments._--Inscriptions at Hammamat recording the voyage to
Punt; a statue found at Saqqarah.

XIITH DYNASTY, 2466-2250 B.C.

2466 The power of Thebes is now firmly established, and the country
enters upon a period of greatness with =Amenemhat I=, the first
king, who shows remarkable vigour. Expedition against the
Libyans, Herusha, Mazau, and Sati (Asiatics).

_Monuments._--The great temple of Amen at Thebes; statues;
inscriptions; the papyrus containing the famous “Instructions to
his Son”; and the memoirs of Sineh (Sinehat or Sinhue).

2446 =Usertsen I.=--Took charge of foreign campaigns in his
father’s reign. Asserts his power in the Sinaitic peninsula.
Warlike expedition to Nubia as related on the Tomb of Ameni.
Enlarges temple at Karnak. Order re-established in the land.

_Monuments._--Obelisk of Heliopolis; a portrait bust and
statues; the tomb of Ameni.

2400 =Amenemhat II.=--Works the mines of Sarbut-el-Khadem. Manetho
says he was slain by his chamberlains.

2370 =Usertsen II.=

_Monuments._--A curious and unusual temple at Illahun; a bust of
Queen Nefert; the tomb of Khnum-hotep with historical records.

2340 =Usertsen III.=--A famous name. The conqueror of Ethiopia
after many campaigns. He makes the conquest secure by fixing
the frontier of Egypt above the Second Cataract and building
the fortresses of Semneh and Kummeh. Afterward revered as the
founder of Ethiopia.

_Monuments._--A papyrus containing a long hymn to the king;
statues; pyramid at Dahshur; tomb of Princess Set-hathor, which
contained some remarkable jewellery.

2305 =Amenemhat III.=--Constructs Lake Mœris as a storage reservoir
for the Nile overflow. Also the Labyrinth palace. These are his
_monuments_.

2265 =Amenemhat IV.=--The dynasty begins to decline.

2255 Queen =Sebek-neferu-Ra=, sister of Amenemhat IV.

The XIIth Dynasty a great age for art and literature. Immense
activity in building. The literary style is the model for future
ages. Valuable historic records on the tombs.

THE XIIITH, XIVTH, XVTH, XVITH, AND XVIITH DYNASTIES, 2250-1635 B.C.

2250-1635 A period the length of which is unknown, and which has
been variously estimated at from four hundred to nearly a
thousand years. (See Chapter III, pages 120, 121.) The XIIIth
Dynasty reigns at Thebes, and =Sebekhotep I= is its first king.
Before its close the Hyksos invaders have gained rapidly in
power, and the new dynasty (XIVth) is driven to Xoïs in the
western Delta. The Hyksos establish their rule, and the later
kings of the XIVth are probably provincial governors with a
short tenure of office, retained by the Hyksos for purposes
of internal government. The XVth Dynasty is that of the great
Hyksos kings, =Salatis=, =Bnon=, =Apachnan=, =Aphobis=, =Annas=,
=Asseth=, and marks the climax of their power. Their principal
towns are Ha-Uar (Avaris), Pelusium, and Tanis. They adopt the
customs, language, and writings of the Egyptians. Their chief
god is Sutekh, “the Great Set,” to whom they build a great
temple at Tanis. The XVth Dynasty is in part contemporaneous
with the XIVth and XVIth Egyptian; in the latter the provincial
governors gradually have their tenure of power lengthened. The
XVIIth is of both Hyksos and Egyptians, in which the former
begin to lose their power.

_Monuments._--Many statues, inscriptions, implements of war, etc.

1800 A new house from the south gradually regains Egypt from the
Hyksos. Its principal kings are named =Seqenen Ra=. =Seqenen Ra
III= marries Aah-hotep, a princess of pure Egyptian blood. By
the time her son by a former marriage, Aahmes I, comes to the
throne, the Hyksos have been driven and confined to the district
around Avaris, where they prepare to make a final stand.

1730 Descent of the Hebrews into Egypt.

THE NEW THEBAN KINGDOM

XVIIITH DYNASTY, 1635-1365 B.C.

1635 =Aahmes I.=--Founds the New Theban Kingdom. Defeats and drives
the Hyksos from Avaris; pursues them into Asia. Campaign
against Nubia, whose people again need repelling. Rebuilds
temples in the principal cities. Thebes embellished. Marries
Nefert-ari.

_Monuments._--Coffins and mummies of the king and queen;
statues; jewellery from coffin of Aah-hotep.

1610 =Amenhotep I.=--Campaign against Cush and Libya. Historical
records on the tomb of Admiral Aahmes.

_Monuments._--His coffin and mummy; temple at Thebes; statues.

1590 =Tehutimes I.=--Penetrates into Asia as far as the Euphrates.
Campaign in Libya.

_Monuments._--Coffin and mummy; obelisks, pylons, and pillars at
Karnak; many statues, etc.; tomb of Admiral Aahmes.

1565 =Tehutimes II.=

_Monuments._--Coffin and mummy; part of temples of
Deir-el-Bahari and Medinet Habu; statues.

1552 Queen =Hatshepsu=, a reign of peaceful enterprise. Mining
industries developed, also potteries and glass works. Sends
expedition of discovery to Punt.

_Monuments._--The Great Temple of Deir-el-Bahari; statues;
a sculptured account of the voyage to Punt; furniture; a
draughtboard and draughtmen, etc.

1530 =Tehutimes III.=--Begins his independent reign. The Great
Conqueror of Egyptian history. Southern Syria had rebelled some
time before and, 1529, he begins operations at Zaru. Second year
of independent reign, battle of Megiddo in campaign against the
Ruthennu. In the following years campaigns in Syria, fifteen in
all; cities reduced and the Kharu, Zahi, Ruthennu, Kheta and
Naharaina made tributary. Great activity in temple building.
The influence of Syrian culture now begins to be felt in Egypt.
Art and manners lose their distinctive characteristics, and a
decline sets in.

_Monuments._--Coffin and mummy; obelisks; part of temple at
Karnak, etc.; numerous statues and relics of all kinds, and very
full annals.

1500 =Amenhotep II.=--Campaign in Asia to check revolt among his
vassals.

_Monuments._--Portrait statues; obelisks and columns at Karnak.

1470 =Tehutimes IV.=--Continues work of keeping together the empire
of Tehutimes III. Marries a Mitannian princess.

_Monuments._--Statues, scarabs, fine private tombs.

1455 =Amenhotep III.=--With the exception of one campaign in
fifth year in Egypt, rests secure in his supremacy abroad.
Trade and art are developed at home. Close relations between
Egypt and Syria. Marries Thi, perhaps of Syrian origin (mother
of Amenhotep IV), also Gilukhipa (or Kirgipa), daughter of the
king of Mitanni (Naharain). He becomes the ally of the king of
Mitanni. He also seems to have married a daughter of the king of
Kardunyash (Babylon).

_Monuments._--Very numerous. The Avenue of Sphinxes between
Karnak and Luxor; temple of Mentu at Karnak; great temple of
Luxor; the famous colossi of the Nile; tomb of Amenhotep the
architect and administrator, etc.

1420 =Amenhotep IV= (=Khun-aten=).--Early in this reign the king
and court renounce the national religion, and substitute a
strictly monotheistic worship of Aten, the sun’s disk,--a
conception that tallies marvellously with modern knowledge of
the sun as a source of power and energy. The whole movement
shows an intellectual stride of tremendous proportions. In the
hymns of the new sun-god we seem to have the first trace of
the idea of the brotherhood of man. War is no longer glorified.
The king changes his name to Khun-aten (“Splendour of the Sun’s
disk”), and builds a new capital.

_Monuments._--Palace and tomb at Tel-el-Amarna; temple of Aten;
statues, including one perfect statuette now in the Louvre; the
great hymn to Aten. To this and the former reign belongs the
correspondence in the Babylonian language and the cuneiform
character. These tablets were discovered at Tel-el-Amarna,
whither Amenhotep IV carried them from Thebes. They deal
principally with the relations of the kings of Egypt with
those of Babylonia and Assyria, concerning the marriages of
Mesopotamian princesses, etc.; troubles and loss of power in
northern Syria and Palestine.

1400 =Saa-nekht.=

1390 =Tut-ankh-Amen.=

1380 =Ai.=

1368 =Hor-em-heb.=--Suppresses the solar religion; reconquers
Ethiopia.

_Monuments._--His private tomb; numerous steles, etc.

The XVIIIth Dynasty is a period in which the progress of the
world pre-eminently advanced.

XIXTH DYNASTY, 1365-1235 B.C.

1365 =Ramses I.=--The power of the Kheta begins to make itself felt.

1355 =Seti I.=--Wars with the Shasu, Kharu, and Kheta. Capture of
Kadesh and defeat of the Kheta. Wars with the Libyans. Patron of
art.

_Monuments._--Hall of Columns at Karnak; temple of Osiris at
Abydos; the Memnonum at Gurnah; the Tablet of Abydos.

1345 =Ramses II=, the Great.--The Pharaoh of the Oppression. A
noted builder. Fierce war with the Kheta and their allies
breaks out (year V). Battle of Kadesh. Continual warfare and
victories in the land of Canaan. Treaty of peace with the Kheta.
Subjugates small tribes of Ethiopia and Libya. Semitic influence
is felt in the customs and language.

_Monuments._--Northern court of temple of Ptah at Memphis.
New temples at Abydos and Memphis. Temples and statues at
Abu Simbel--on the knee of one of the statues, some Greek
mercenaries of Psamthek I cut an inscription in archaic Greek.
It is the most ancient piece of non-Semitic alphabetical writing
extant. The Ramesseum; the poem of Pentaur; treaty with the
Kheta, etc.; the Tablet of Saqqarah.

1285 =Meneptah.=--The Libyans and their allies invade Egypt and are
repulsed. Battle of Proposis (year V). The Pharaoh of the Exodus
(_circa_ 1270). To this king belonged the papyrus containing the
“Tale of the Two Brothers.”

1250 =Seti II.=--A troubled reign at Pa-Ramessu, worried by a
claimant to the throne, =Amenmes=, who reigned as rival king,
probably at Thebes.

_Monuments._--Fine sepulchre and a small temple.

XXTH DYNASTY, 1235-1075 B.C.

1235 =Set-nekht.=--Succeeds his father Seti II. Siptah-Meneptah
succeeds his father Amenmes, as rival king. The kingdom is now
practically in a state of anarchy. The power rests chiefly with
the nomarchs, and one of them, Arisu, a Phœnician, becomes
their leader and seizes the throne. Set-nekht drives him out and
restores the monarchy.

1225 =Ramses III= (sometimes reckoned as the founder of the XXth
Dynasty).--Succeeds to a united Egypt but a disorganised empire.
The provinces have ceased to pay tribute. The king begins a
reconquest of foreign territory. Defeats Libyans in the west
(year V) and the great confederation of tribes in the east (year
VIII). A land and sea war. Great naval battle near Pelusium.
Second campaign against Libyans (year XI). Eastern provinces and
tributary states recovered. The harem conspiracy. Later years
peaceful. Mining and trade encouraged. The last of the great
kings of Egypt.

_Monuments._--The Turin and Harris papyri; effigies of conquered
kings; temples, etc.; the account of the harem conspiracy.

1195-1075 The successors of Ramses III have short reigns. There
were some military expeditions but no great wars. The kingdom
is maintained, but the power of the high priests comes more
and more into prominence, until in the reign of =Ramses IX= it
begins to exceed that of the Pharaohs. The structure of the
kingdom begins rapidly to decay. =Ramses XIII=, last king of
dynasty.

XXIST DYNASTY, 1075-945 B.C.

1075 =Her-Hor.=--High priest of Amen of Thebes, attains to royal
power. The Ramessides are banished.

A new house arises at Tanis. Its chief, Se-Amen, soon overthrows
the dominion of the high priests, and Her-Hor’s son (=Piankhi=)
and grandson (=Painet´em I=) have uncontrolled power as high
priests only in the neighbourhood of Thebes. The land is
governed simultaneously by the Tanites and the high priests.
The Ramessides attempt to regain the throne in the Thebaid.
The Tanites crush this rebellion, and Men-kheper-Ra, one of
the family, is made high priest at Thebes. Solomon marries the
daughter of the Tanite king, probably =Pasebkhanu II=. The
army has since the time of Seti I been composed chiefly of
Libyan mercenaries, out of which a separate class has now been
developed. The chief authority gradually passes from the Tanites
and high priests to the commanders of these mercenaries, and one
of them, Shashanq of Bubastis, by some means gains the crown of
Egypt. The high priests and their adherents retire to Ethiopia
and found a new kingdom whose capital is at Napata.

XXIIND DYNASTY, 945-750 B.C.

945 =Shashanq I.=--Rules at Bubastis. The high-priesthood of Amen
is given to princes of the reigning family.

_Monuments._--The hall of the Bubastites at Karnak; inscriptions,
etc.

925 Shashanq invades Judah, captures and sacks Jerusalem.

920-750 Under Shashanq’s successors, the high places in the
government and army are filled with members of the royal family,
who found princedoms for themselves, and the Pharaoh becomes
a nominal ruler. Egypt is a land of petty kings, into which
condition of affairs the kings of Ethiopia (Napata) now intrude.

XXIIIRD AND XXIVTH DYNASTIES, 750-728 B.C.

800 In the reign of =Shashanq III=, Thebes falls into the hands
of the Ethiopians. Their conquests gradually extend to Hermopolis
under their king, =Piankhi=. At the same time Tefnekht, Prince
of Saïs, subjects the western Delta and Memphis, comes in contact
with Piankhi, but ends by giving the Ethiopian his allegiance.
Piankhi’s power over Egypt not complete, for the XXIIIrd Dynasty
of three kings (=Uasarken III= among them) seems to have ruled
in the Delta, probably at Bubastis, and is succeeded by the
XXIVth Dynasty, composed of Tefnekht’s son, =Bakenranf=, who is
conquered by Piankhi’s grandson, Shabak.

_Monuments._--The memorial stele of Piankhi, with account of his
reign.

XXVTH DYNASTY, 728-655 B.C.

728 =Shabak.=--Ethiopian rule over Egypt complete. He puts his
sister Ameniritis and her husband to rule over Egypt. A uniform
and strict dominion is not practised; the local princes still
retain their power. Shabak advises Hoshea of Israel to withhold
tribute from Shalmaneser IV. First connection of Egypt with the
Sargonides.

717 =Shabatak.=

704 =Tirhaqa.=--Joins Syrian coalition against the Assyrians.

701 The Assyrian king, Sennacherib, invades Palestine. Tirhaqa
hastens to Hezekiah’s assistance. Sennacherib compelled by
pestilence to retire. 673, The Assyrian monarch, Esarhaddon,
marches as far as the Egyptian frontier, but withdraws. 670,
Esarhaddon appears again, and captures and destroys Memphis.
Tirhaqa flees to Nubia. The whole country surrenders to
Esarhaddon, who reorganises the government with a native prince
over each nome. Neku of Saïs is the chief one. 668, Esarhaddon
abdicates. Tirhaqa attempts to win back the country; retakes
Memphis. 667, Asshurbanapal sends an army and defeats Egyptians.
Conspiracy of several Egyptian princes to restore Tirhaqa. They
are taken and punished. 664, Tirhaqa dies; =Tanut-Amen=, his
stepson (son of Shabak), succeeds. Is beaten by Assyrians at
Kipkip. Thebes is sacked. End of Ethiopian rule.

664-655 The country is ruled by petty princes. In the Delta there
are twelve of these who form the Dodecarchy. Psamthek of Saïs
becomes the leader. He throws off the Assyrian yoke with the help
of Carian and Ionian mercenaries, and declares himself Pharaoh.

XXVITH DYNASTY, 655-527 B.C.

655 (Sometimes dated from 666-4)--=Psamthek I= makes his rule
legitimate by marrying an Ethiopian princess, Shepenapet.
Invasion of Syria. Capture of Ashdod after a long siege.
Commercial treaties with the Greeks. Two hundred thousand of his
Egyptian and Libyan soldiers desert to Ethiopia through jealousy
of the mercenaries. He restores Thebes.

610 =Neku II.=--Endeavours to reconstruct the canal between Nile
and Red Sea, attempted by Seti I. and Ramses II. By his orders
Phœnician navigators circumnavigate Africa. Attempts to recover
Egypt’s rule in the east, and marches into Syria. 608, Encounters
Josiah at Megiddo. The king of Israel is slain in the battle.
Neku marches toward the Euphrates. 605, Defeat of Neku by
Nebuchadrezzar at Carchemish. End of Egyptian rule in Egypt.

594 =Psamthek II.=--Makes an expedition against the king of
Ethiopia.

589 =Uah-ab-Ra.=--Allies himself with Zedekiah and king of Phœnicia
against Nebuchadrezzar, who afterward invades Egypt. The
coalition is unsuccessful, but his fleet helps Tyre to hold out
for thirteen years. Goes to war with the Greeks of Cyrene, and
is defeated. His troops fear he will destroy and replace them by
mercenaries; they revolt and choose Aahmes, an officer, to be
king.

570 =Aahmes II.=--Defeats Uah-ab-Ra and strangles him; marries
the daughter of Psamthek II, to legitimise his pretensions. He
encourages commercial relations with Greeks. Allies himself with
Crœsus against Cyrus of Persia. Cambyses attacks Egypt on death
of Cyrus.

526 =Psamthek III.=--In his second year he was defeated by Cambyses
at Pelusium and Memphis. Egypt a Persian province, 525-405 B.C.

XXVIITH DYNASTY, 525-405 B.C.

525 The Persian Cambyses tolerates the religion, maintains temples,
and does all he can to conciliate the people. Leaves Egypt in
charge of the first satrap Aryandes. Cambyses, in his rage, after
an unsuccessful expedition against Napata, orders destruction of
temples, etc.

521 Darius I.--Works hard to conciliate the people.

488 Egyptians revolt and expel Persians. Set up a native ruler,
=Khabbosh=, who holds out for three years.

485 The Persian Xerxes I.--Reconquers Egypt and appoints Achæmenes,
his brother, governor.

464 Artaxerxes I.

460 Inarus, King of Libya, aids Egyptians to rise against Persia.
Battle of Papramis. Memphis captured, but Persians regain
supremacy.

424 Xerxes II. Darius II. Continued endeavours of Egyptians to
throw off Persian yoke.

XXVIIITH DYNASTY, 405-399 B.C.

405 =Amen-Rut.=--A native prince in revolt against Persia, on death
of Darius II becomes practically independent. At his death the
government passes to the prince of Mendes.

XXIXTH DYNASTY, 399-378 B.C.

399 =Nia-faa-urut I.= 393 =Haker.= 380 =Psa-mut.=--Ally themselves
with enemies of Persia.

379 =Nia-faa-urut II.=

XXXTH DYNASTY, 378-340 B.C.

378 =Nectanebo I.=--Defeats Persians and Greeks at Mendes. This
victory secures peace for some years. Revival of art.

364 =Tachus.=--Wars with Persia.

361 =Nectanebo II.=--The Persians again invade Egypt, at first
unsuccessfully.

XXXIST DYNASTY, 340-332 B.C.

340 Ochus (Artaxerxes III).--Defeats Nectanebo at Pelusium.
Nectanebo flees to Napata. Ochus proves a cruel governor.

332 Alexander the Great appears at Pelusium. The Persians surrender
without a struggle. Beginning of Greek dominion.

FOOTNOTES

[1] [For a full discussion of Egyptian chronology, see Appendix B.]

CHAPTER I. THE EGYPTIAN RACE AND ITS ORIGIN

Egypt is a long Contree; but it is streyt, that is to seye narrow;
for thei may not enlargen it toward the Desert, for defaute of
Watre. And the Contree is sett along upon the Ryvere of Nyle; be
als much as that Ryvere may serve be Flodes or otherwise that
whanne it flowethe it may spreden abrood thorghe the Contree; so is
the Contree large of Lengthe. For there it reyneth not but litylle
in the Contree; and for that Cause, they have no Watre, but zif
it be of that Flood of that Ryvere. And for als moche as it ne
reyeneth not in that Contree, but the Eyr is alwey pure and clear,
therefor in that Contree ben the gode Astronomyeres; for thei fynde
there no Cloudes to letten hem.--_The voyage and travile of Sir
John Maundeville, Kt._

Two theories as to the origin of the Egyptians have been prominent,
the one supposing that they came originally from Asia, the other that
their racial cradle lay in the upper regions of the Nile, particularly
in Ethiopia. Even to-day there is no agreement among Egyptologists as
to which of these theories is correct. Among the earlier students of
the subject, Heeren was prominent in pointing out an alleged analogy
between the form of skull of the Egyptian and that of the Indian races.
He believed in the Indian origin of the Egyptians.

One of the most recent authorities, Professor Flinders Petrie, inclines
to the opinion that the Egyptians were of common origin with the
Phœnicians, and that they came into the Nile region from the land
of Punt, across the Red Sea. Professor Maspero, on the other hand,
inclines to the belief in the African origin of the race; and the
latest important anthropological theory, as propounded by Professor
Sergi, contends for the Ethiopic origin of the entire Mediterranean
race, of which the Egyptians are a part. According to this theory, a
race whose primitive seat of residence was in the upper regions of the
Nile spread gradually to the north, finally invading Asia by way of
the Isthmus of Suez, and crossing to the peninsulas of southern Europe
by way of Crete and Cyprus and Sicily, and perhaps also, after a long
journey to the west along the Mediterranean coast of Africa, by way of
the Straits of Gibraltar.

The true scientific status of the matter amounts merely to a confession
of almost entire ignorance. The theory of Sergi, just referred to,
finds a certain support in the data of cranial measurements, but it
would be going much beyond warrantable conclusions to affirm anything
like certainty for the inferences drawn from all the observations
as yet available. The historian is obliged, therefore, to fall back
upon the simple fact that for a good many thousands of years before
the Christian era, a race of people of unknown origin inhabited the
Nile Valley, and had attained a very high state of civilisation.
Whatever the origin of this people, and however diversified the racial
elements of which it was composed, the climatic conditions of Egypt
had long since imposed upon the entire population an influence that
welded all the diverse elements into a single racial mould, so that,
as Professor Maspero points out, at the very dawn of Egyptian history
the inhabitants of the entire land of Egypt constituted a single race,
speaking one language and showing very little diversity of culture.

[Illustration: MUMMY OF THE PRE-DYNASTIC PERIOD DISCOVERED RECENTLY IN
EGYPT

(Now in the British Museum)]

It is one of the standing surprises for the student of antiquity that
the most massive structures ever built by man should be found in Egypt,
dating from a period so remote as to be almost prehistoric. One finds
it hard to avoid the feeling that there was a race sprung suddenly to a
very high plane of civilisation, as if by a sheer leap from barbarism;
but, of course, no modern student of the subject considers the matter
in this light. It is uniformly accepted that a vast period of time lies
back of the Pyramids, in which the Egyptians were slowly working their
way upward. Professor Maspero estimates that for at least eight or ten
thousand years the people had inhabited this land, all along developing
their peculiar civilisation. Of course such an estimate makes no claim
to historical accuracy; it is only a general conclusion based upon what
seems a reasonable rate of progress.

The recent explorations in Egypt have endeavoured to penetrate the
mysteries of what has hitherto been the prehistoric period, and these
efforts have met with a certain measure of success. In the Fayum,
Professor Petrie has made excavations that revealed the remains of
a much earlier period than that of the first dynasties hitherto
recognised. Among other interesting relics, sarcophagi were found
containing mummified bodies in a marvellous state of preservation. One
of these now exhibited at the British Museum in London shows the body
of a man of full proportions lying on his side with knees folded up
against his body. Unlike the mummies of the later Egyptian period, this
ancient effigy has no wrappings of any kind, but so remarkable are the
results of the processes of embalming to which it has been subjected,
that the form of the various members, and the features even, have been
preserved with marvellously little shrinkage or distortion. The skin is
indeed dry and dark, yet its resemblance to the skin of a living person
of a dark-hued race is so striking that one can hardly realise, in
looking at it, that the corpse before him is the body of a person who
lived perhaps eight or ten thousand years ago.

As to other remains found by the later explorations, among the most
interesting and suggestive are flint implements chipped in the manner
characteristic of the Palæolithic or rough stone age. We are guarded,
however, against drawing too sweeping inferences from these antiquities
by Professor Petrie’s assurance that the Egyptians continued to use
such chipped flint implements throughout the period from the IVth
to the Xth Dynasty. It has been doubted whether any of these stone
implements can be regarded as of strictly prehistoric origin, or
whether, indeed, any of the antiquities discovered in Egypt evidence an
uncivilised stage of racial history. The latest opinion, however, is
that the makers of the pottery and flint implements were the aborigines
of the country, who were displaced by the invasion of the Egyptians of
history.

The most important excavations of the last eight or ten years, carried
on by Amélineau, Petrie, and De Morgan have had for their object the
collection of remains of this pre-dynastic era.

We are not likely to hear more of the contention that the archaic
objects found at Naqada and other places were the work of a “New Race”
of invaders that had intruded somewhere in those dark ages between the
VIth and XIth Dynasties, for this long and bitter controversy is now
replaced by a state of complete agreement among the authorities that
the people who could lay claim to the pottery and flint objects were
the aborigines, living in Egypt when the Egyptians of history invaded
the country.

In their possession of the country these aborigines were ousted by the
race which gradually loomed upon the historic horizon and to whom it
has long been the custom to assign Menes as the first king, treating
the preceding periods as the time of the gods and demigods, to whose
rule tradition assigns an epoch which varies from 1000 to nearly 40,000
years. But the indications are that within a few years there will be
much light thrown on the period preceding King Menes. Just why this
king should have been placed at the head of the Ist Dynasty now seems
quite clear. He was the first “Lord of the Two Lands”--the united Upper
and Lower Egypt.

It must be recognised by any one who would gain a clear idea of
national existence, that the character of a race is enormously
influenced by the physical and climatic features of its environment.
There have been differences of opinion among students of the subject as
to the amount of change that may be effected by altered surroundings.
But whoever considers the matter in the light of modern ideas, can
hardly be much in doubt as to the answer to any question thus raised.

If it be admitted that all the races of mankind sprang originally
from a single source,--an hypothesis upon which students of the most
diverse habits of thought are agreed,--then in the last analysis it
would appear that we must look to such environing conditions as soil
and climate for the causes of all the differences that are observed
among the different races of the earth to-day. The man inhabiting
equatorial regions has a dark skin and certain well-marked traits of
character, simply because his ancestors for almost endless generations
have been subjected to the influences of a tropical climate; and the
light-skinned inhabitant of northern Europe owes his antagonistic
characteristics to the widely different climatic conditions of high
latitudes. And what is true of these extreme instances, is no less true
of all intermediate races.

In a word, then, the Egyptian would not have been the individual that
we know, had he not lived in the valley of the Nile. The Mesopotamian
required the environment of the Tigris and Euphrates to develop his
typical characteristics, and similarly with the Greek and Roman, and
with the members of every other race.

But, in accepting this view, one must not be blinded to the fact
that the changes wrought by environment in the character of a race,
are of necessity extremely slow. The peculiar traits that give
racial distinction to any company of people have not been attained
except through many generations of slow alteration; and such is the
conservative power of heredity that the characteristics thus slowly
stamped upon a race are well-nigh indelible. How pertinacious is their
hold is best illustrated in the case of the modern Jews, who retain
their racial identity though scattered in all regions of the globe.
With this illustration in mind, it cannot be matter for surprise that
any race that remains in the same environment, and as a rule does
not mingle with other races, shall have retained the same essential
characteristics throughout the historic period. That such is really the
historic fact regarding any particular race of antiquity, might not at
first sight be obvious. It might seem, for example, that the modern
Egyptian, who plays so insignificant a part in the world-history of
the nineteenth century, must be a very different person indeed from
his ancient progenitor, who maintained for many centuries the dominant
civilisation of the world.

But it must not be forgotten that national standards are relative; in
other words, that the status of a people depends, not alone upon the
plane of civilisation of that people itself, but quite as much upon the
relative plane of civilisation of its neighbours. When the Egyptians
sank from power, it was not so much that they lost their inherent
capacity for progress, as that other nations outstripped them in the
race, and came presently to dominate and subjugate them, and thus to
stamp out their ambition. In support of this view, note the fact that
the Egyptians again and again, at intervals of many centuries, were
able to rouse themselves from a lethargy imposed by their conquerors,
and to regain for a time their old position of supremacy. But the
best tangible illustration of the fixity of the character of a race
is furnished by the modern historians, who have at the same time most
profoundly studied the ancient conditions as recorded on the monuments,
and, while doing so, have been brought in contact with the present
inhabitants of the Nile Valley.

No other scholars of the present generation have made more profound
investigations than Professor Petrie and Professor Erman, both of whom
have been led to comment on the extraordinary similarity of manner and
custom and inherent characteristics between the ancient and the modern
Egyptians. Here is Professor Erman’s[g] verdict:

“The people who inhabited ancient Egypt still survive in their
descendants, the modern Egyptians. The vicissitudes of history have
changed both language and religion, but invasions and conquests have
not been able to alter the features of this ancient people. The
hundreds and thousands of Greeks and Arabs who have settled in the
country seem to have been absorbed into it; they have modified the
race in the great towns, where their numbers were considerable, but in
the open country they scarcely produced any effect. The modern fellah
resembles his forefather of four thousand years ago, except that
he speaks Arabic, and has become a Mohammedan. In a modern Egyptian
village, figures meet one that might have walked out of the pictures
in an ancient Egyptian tomb. We must not deny that this resemblance is
partly due to another reason besides the continuance of the old race.
Each country and condition of life stamps the inhabitants with certain
characteristics. The nomad of the desert has the same features, whether
he wanders through the Sahara or the interior of Arabia; and the Copt,
who has maintained his religion through centuries of oppression,
might be mistaken at first sight for a Polish Jew, who has suffered
in the same way. The Egyptian soil, therefore, with its ever constant
conditions of life, has always stamped the population of the Nile
Valley with the same seal.

“As a nation the Egyptians appear to have been intelligent, practical,
and very energetic, but lacking poetical imagination; this is exactly
what we should expect from peasants living in this country of toilsome
agriculture. ‘In his youth the Egyptian peasant is wonderfully docile,
sensible, and active; in his riper years, owing to want and care, and
the continual work of drawing water, he loses the cheerfulness and
elasticity of mind which made him appear so amiable and promising.’
This picture of a race, cheerful by nature, but losing the happy
temperament and becoming selfish and hardened, represents also the
ancient people.”

But, however freely it may be admitted that soil and climate put their
seal upon a race, opinions will always differ as to just how the racial
characteristics are to be interpreted. In the case of all Oriental
nations the European mind has found such interpretation peculiarly
difficult. The Egyptians are no exception to this rule, as we shall
see.[a]

THE COUNTRY AND ITS INHABITANTS

The whole of North Africa is covered by a great desert, bordered only
on the northwest by a considerable arable district, which at present
forms the states of Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis. Except for this, if
we set aside a single strip of coast land in the country between the
two Syrtes (Tripolis, Leptis) and in Cyrenaica (Bengari), this whole
territory is totally destitute of all higher civilisation. It forms
the natural frontier of the Mediterranean world, beyond which not
even ancient civilisation ever penetrated. The interior of Africa was
practically unknown to the Greek and Roman world.

The formidable desert land, embracing more than three million square
miles, contains a series of depressed levels in which springs are
harboured, and vegetation, especially the date-palm, thrives. These
are the oases. Here, and here only, are permanent human settlements
possible. At the same time the oases form stations in the wearisome
and difficult way through the desert, where the trader who wants to
acquire goods in the countries on the other side is exposed not only
to the dangers that threaten him from want of water, loss of his way,
and sand-storms, but also to the attacks of vagrant robber hordes that
traverse the desert in nomadic confusion.

East of the great desert, at a distance of a few days’ journey from the
Arabian Gulf, lies a straggling fruitful valley, which in some sense
may be regarded as an oasis of colossal dimensions. This is Egypt, the
valley of the Lower Nile. On both sides it is bounded by desert land.
On the west rises the plateau of the Libyan Desert, flat, absolutely
barren, covered with impenetrable sand-banks. On the east a rocky
highland of solid quartz and chalk rises in a gradual slope, at the
back of which the crystalline masses of the so-called Arabian Mountains
ascend to a height of about six thousand feet. In geological structure
the two territorial districts are entirely different, but, although
it is true that nomadic hordes can, at a pinch, keep body and soul
together in the eastern desert, and that they are not entirely cut off
from vegetation, from springs and cisterns in which the rainwater is
gathered up from storm and tempest, civilisation is as much sealed to
them as it is to the Libyan waste, through which it is impossible to
penetrate, and which is habitable only in the oases.

Between the two deserts, occupying a breadth of from fifteen to
thirty-three miles, lies the depression forming the valley of Egypt.
It forms the bed which the river has dug for itself in the soft
chalky soil with untiring activity. Formerly, thousands of years
ago,--thousands indeterminate,--it poured through the country in
riotous cascades, the traces of which are still clearly recognisable
in many spots. Gradually the river cleaned out the whole bed and
established a regular surface level. When the historical period begins,
the creative career of the river has already long been completed;
from this time forward, the Nile flows in manifold curves and with
numerous tributaries through the wrinkled valley, which it floods
to a considerable degree only in midsummer, when the Ethiopian snow
melts and seeks an outlet. The fertile land extends precisely as far
as the waters of the Nile penetrate, or are guided by the hand of man
in the flood season; a sharp line of demarcation separates the black
fertile land formed of the muddy deposit left by the river, from
the gray-yellow of the bordering desert. The breadth of the fertile
territory is variable; on an average it covers eight, rarely more than
ten, miles. Only at the mouth of the Nile it expands to the wide marsh
lands of the Delta, intersected by numerous swamps and lakes.

[Illustration: STATUE OF THE GODDESS SEKHET

(Now in the British Museum)]

Also on the south the border-land of Egypt has a sharp natural line
of demarcation. A little above the 24th degree of latitude, at Gebel
Silsilis, the sandstone plateau joins right on the river, higher up
covering the whole of Nubia. The narrow neck of river at Gebel Silsilis
is the southern boundary of fertile Egypt. A significant saga rising
from the Arabian name of the mountain range (Silsilis means “the
chain”) tells how once upon a time the stream was cut off by a chain
that connected the opposite mountains. About eight miles higher up,
at Assuan (Syene) a mountain range of granite and syenite opposes the
course of the river like a cross-rail. True, the river has broken
through the hard stone, but it has not had the power to rub it away,
as it has done with the chalk-stone of Egypt; in numerous rapids it
forces a passage between neighbouring rocks and innumerable islands
raised from its bed. Without doubt, however, the torrent has continued
to make its bed deeper here also. We know from old Egyptian accounts of
the Nile levels that about four thousand years ago, at the time of the
XIIth Dynasty, the Nile at the fortresses of Semneh and Kumneh, above
the second cataract, must have been at least eight metres higher than
it is at the present day. This can be explained only by supposing that,
since then, the river must have burrowed an equivalent depth in the
rocks of the cataract district.

This “First Cataract,” which makes real navigation very nearly an
impossibility,--a vessel can be steered through the rapids only with
considerable difficulty and danger,--has always formed the southern
boundary of Egypt. Above it, the Nile flows in a great curve through
the Nubian sandstone plateau. At numerous places its way is blocked
by hard stone material, through which it digs a bed in cataracts. The
river valley has throughout no more than a breadth of from five to nine
miles. The fertile land, which at the time of the old empire was pretty
thickly wooded, confines itself, where it does not cease altogether,
to a narrow seam on the banks, so that the inhabitants, in order to
leave as little as possible of it unutilised, formed their villages
on the barren, unfruitful heights above it. The whole stretch of 1000
miles from Khartum to the first cataract contains at the present day
only 1125 square miles of laid-out land. South of the Tropic only, the
country on the Red Sea is gradually becoming capable of fertilisation;
for the most part, here it bears the character of the Steppes. Also
in the Nile, therefore, Egypt is almost totally shut off from Africa.
The campaign of the English against the Mahdi has again given us a
vigorous picture of how wearisome and difficult is the connection here;
of the dangers that a tropical sun, a deficiency of habitations, and
the difficulties of communication offer to a small army that tries to
advance here.

[Illustration: STATUE OF MENEPTAH II, XIXTH DYNASTY

(Now in the British Museum)]

Egypt is the narrowest country in the world; embracing an expanse of
570 miles in length, it does not contain more than 12,000 square miles
of fertile land, that is to say, it is not larger than the kingdom of
Belgium. It is necessary to keep this fact clearly in view, especially
as the maps accessible may only too easily convey quite a false
impression, because they include the desert land within the boundary
line of Egypt, and as a rule do not distinguish it by any sign from
the fertile land. The ancient indigenous conception is in complete
accordance with the geographical character of the land. Egypt, or
Kamit, as the country is termed in the indigenous language (the name
certainly signifies “the dark country”), is only the fertile valley of
the Nile. Here only do the Egyptians dwell. The oases in the west and
the “red country” (Tasherit) in the east, _i.e._ the naked, reddish,
glimmering plateaus of the Arabian Desert, are reckoned as foreign
with consistent regularity, and they are not inhabited by Egyptians.
The true state of affairs is quite accurately portrayed in the oracle
which decreed, “Egypt is all the country watered by the Nile, and
Egyptians are all those who dwell below the town Elephantine and drink
Nile water.”

Herodotus defines Egypt accurately as a “bequest of the river”; to
the river alone it owes its fertility and its well-being. But for the
flowing river, the sand of the Libyan Desert would cover that whole
wrinkled valley, which, with the aid of the river, has become one of
the most fertile and most thickly populated countries on the earth.

At the time in which our historical information begins, we find the
Lower Nile Valley inhabited by a race which, after the precedent of the
Greeks, we call Egyptians. Whence the word comes, we know not; we can
only say that Aigyptos in the first instance denotes the river--almost
without exception in the _Odyssey_ it is thus. The word was then
transferred to the country and its inhabitants, and the river received
the name of Neilos (Nile), the origin of which is equally obscure. An
indigenous name of the population did not exist; the Egyptians denoted
themselves, in distinction from foreigners, simply as “men” (rometu).
Their country, as we have already mentioned, they called Kamit, “Black
Country”; the river was named Ha-pi. Semitic people called Egypt, we
know not why, Mior or Musr (Hebrew Mizraim, the termination being a
very common one with the names of localities). In its Arabian form,
Masr, this word, at the present day, has become the indigenous name
of the country and of its capital, which we call Cairo. From the name
Egyptians, on the contrary, was developed the modern denotation of the
Christian successors of the old indigenous population, the Copts.

Controversy has been abundant and vigorous with regard to the
ethnographical place of the Egyptians. While philologists and
historians assume a relation with the neighbouring Asiatic races,
separating the Egyptians by a sharp line of distinction from the negro
race, ethnologists and biologists, Robert Hartmann pre-eminent amongst
them, have defined them as genuine children of Africa who stood in
indisputable physical relation with the races of the interior of the
continent. And certainly in the type of the modern Egyptian there are
points of contact with the typical negro, and we shall not here dispute
the validity of the possible contention that a gradual transition from
the Egyptians to the negroes of the Sudan can be demonstrated, and that
in the Nile Valley we never are confronted with an acute ethnological
contrast.

We should note, however, that an acute contradiction in races is
nowhere on earth perceptible. Everywhere may be found members to bridge
over the gap, and the classification which we so much need does not
ever start with the intermediate stages, but with the extremes in which
the racial type finds its purest illustration.

Moreover, the type of the modern Egyptian cannot straightway determine
the question as to the origin of the ancient Egyptian population,
even if we do not take into account the difficult problem of how far
climate and soil exercise a moderating influence upon a race. The
inhabitants of the Lower Nile Valley at the time of the New Kingdom,
and from that time forward in the whole course of history, have mingled
so extensively with pure African blood, that it would have been a
miracle if no assimilation had taken place. It is an undoubted fact
that the Turks belong to the peoples resembling the Mongolians; but
who will put the modern Osman in the same line with the Chinaman, or
fail to recognise the assimilation to the Armenian, Persian, Semitic,
Greek type? The same is true, for example, of the Magyars. A strictly
analogous state of things is found in Egypt. It has been proved that,
in the skull-formation of the modern Egyptian, the influence of the
African element is more clearly discernible than in the days of the
ancients. Moreover, a careful comparison leads to the conclusion that
in ancient, as in modern Egypt, there are two coexistent types: one
resembling the Nubian more closely, who is naturally more strongly
represented in Upper Egypt than in Memphis and Cairo; and one sharply
distinguished from him whom we may define as the pure Egyptian. Midway
between these two stands a hybrid form, represented in numerous
examples and sufficiently accounted for by the intermixture of the two
races.

While the Nubian type is closer akin to the pure negro type and is
indigenous in Africa, we must regard the purely Egyptian type as
foreign to this continent; this directs us toward the assumption that
the most ancient home of the Egyptian is to be sought in Asia. The
Egyptians have depicted themselves, times out of number, on monuments,
and enable us clearly enough to recognise their type.

For the most part, they are powerful, close-knit figures, frequently
with vigorous features. Not infrequently, as Erman has sagaciously
suggested, the heads have a “clever, witty expression just like what
we are accustomed to meet with in cunning old peasants.” We have a
recurrence of the same trait in several early Roman portraits. Side
by side with this we have finely cut features: for instance, we are
reminded of the almost effeminate expression in the head of Ramses II.
The Egyptian type is altogether different from the negro type; the
structure of the nose, for instance, is delicate for the most part, and
there is no trace of prognathismus, or the protrusion of the lower part
of the face.

On the monuments the colour of the skin in male Egyptians, who in
ancient days went totally naked but for a loin cloth, is a red-brown.
On the other hand, the women, who were clad in a long robe and were not
equally exposed to the effects of air and sun, are painted in a lighter
brown or yellow. In quite similar fashion the Greeks of old represented
men on their vases as red and women as white. We should not forget that
the art of depicting the finer shades of colours in paint had not yet
been learnt.

Just as the Egyptians are distinguished from the population of
the interior of Africa, so they have their nearest kinsmen in the
inhabitants of the northern zone of the continent. West of them, on
the coast lands on the Mediterranean as well as in the oases of the
desert, dwell races which are comprehended by Egyptians under the term
Thuhen. Following the precedent of the Greeks, we have transferred to
all of them the name of the Libyans, that race which was settled in the
territory of Cyrene, where the Greeks first learned of their existence.
In Egyptian memorials we find them again under the name of Rebu (we
should observe here, once for all, that neither Egyptian speech nor
Egyptian writing has an L, and so in foreign words every R may be
read as an L). The name Rebu, as the Greek form of the name tells us,
was pronounced Lebu [Libu]. To the east of these Libyans proper, in
the desert plateau of the country of Marmarica, dwell the Tuhennu,
who spread as far as the borders of Egypt, and even also settled in
the western portion of the Delta. Further westward, presumably in
the neighbourhood of the Syrtes, we find the Mashauasha. The Greeks,
especially Herodotus, have preserved for us a great number of other
names. All these tribes, to which the dwellers in the oases also
belong, are most closely related to one another, and form, together
with the inhabitants of western North Africa, the Numidians and the
Moors, a great group of nations, which we denote by the term Libyan
or Moorish, or in modern terminology the group of Berber nations.
The Libyans are light in colour; on the Egyptian monuments they are
represented by a white-gray skin tint.

In the Moors the old type is to some extent still preserved. They
are warlike, brave tribes, not without talent. But none of them,
it is true, developed a high civilisation, although they adopted
certain elements of civilisation from the Egyptians, and later on, in
Mauretania, from the Carthaginians. According to the representations
on the monuments, the custom of tattooing their arms and legs ruled
amongst them; among the engraved signs we also meet with the symbol of
Nit, the patron goddess of Saïs, whose population would appear to have
consisted chiefly of Libyans.

As in the west, Libyans and Moors, to judge from their language, are
connected with the Egyptians, so this is true in the south of a great
number of tribes east of the Nile Valley. These are the ancestors
of the modern Bedia tribes (_i.e._ of the Ababde, the Bischarin,
and others, dwelling in the deserts and steppes east of the Upper
Nile Valley), and of their relations the Falaschas, the Gallas, the
Somali. Among them the country and people of Cush attained particular
pre-eminence in antiquity; they were the southeastern neighbours of the
Egyptians, who had their original settlements in the wastes and steppes
of the mountain country east of the Nile. In the course of history they
press forward against the negroes of the Nile Valley, the ancestors of
the modern Nubians, and finally establish here a powerful empire.

The Hebrews and the Assyrians are accustomed to call this country Cush,
and we too are in the habit of using this name Cushite instead of
Egyptian. The Greeks call them Ethiopians. In the Christian era this
name was adopted by a people living much farther south, the Semitic
inhabitants of the great highlands of Habesh (Abyssinia), and this
people and its language (Ge-ez) are therefore to-day called Ethiopian.
But care must be taken not to transfer this term of modern usage in its
modern significance to the circumstances of antiquity. The Ethiopia of
antiquity is geographically about coterminous with modern Nubia.

A still more bewildering confusion has been engendered by the term
Cushites. In the Old Testament, in the review of the races taking
their departure from Noah, the name Cush has been transferred to
Babylonia (Gen. x. 8; possibly also in the story of the Fall, ii. 13).
This is to be explained by the fact that the robber mountain horde of
the Kossæans, or, as they called themselves, the Kasshu, maintained
supremacy for centuries in Babylonia; this name was identified by the
Hebrew narrator with that denoting the African tribe. Recent experts
have derived the most illusory consequences from this misunderstanding.
In consequence of it the Cushites have become for them an
Asiatic-African aboriginal people of wide extent, appearing everywhere
and never at home; and wherever we encounter riddles in the matter
handed down to us, or a bold combination has to be made possible, these
Cushites are trotted out, only to sink again into nothingness as soon
as they have done their work. Conceptions of this character have found
their way into ethnographical, philological, and historical works of
high merit.

From the abortion that has grown out of the amalgamation of the
Babylonian robber and warrior hordes with an African tribe, originally
of quite a low grade of cultivation and the scantiest mental
endowment, has been manufactured a people to whom the beginning of
all civilisation has been referred, to whose inspiration the great
monuments of Egypt, as of Babylonia, are supposed to owe their origin,
but whose personality ceases to be tangible anywhere from the moment
that positive historical evidence begins.

In the face of this we must again dwell on the fact that the Kossæans
and the Cushites have not the slenderest historical connection with
each other. The latter is a very real people that gradually absorbed a
certain degree of external civilisation from the Egyptians.

With these East African nationalities on the one side, and the Libyans
and Moors on the other, the Egyptians form a great group of nations
whose languages are closely related to one another, and whom one may
designate as North Africans. The North African languages again, in
their grammatical structure as well as in their vocabulary, reveal a
kindred spirit, however distant, with that in the language of their
eastern Asiatic neighbours, the Semites, _i.e._ the inhabitants of
Arabia, Syria, Assyria, and Babylonia. Especially in the most ancient
form of Egyptian handed down to us, in the language of the time of
the Pyramids, are we everywhere confronted with this kindred spirit.
It is impossible to resist the conclusion that there was a time when
the forefathers of the Egyptians and of the rest of the North Africans
enjoyed a community of speech with the Semites.

Such being the case, we are inclined to conclude that the North
Africans belong to the so-called Caucasian race of men, and that
they reached their later domicile in prehistoric times, after their
detachment from the Semites.

If this assumption can claim for itself a high degree of probability,
we have not advanced a very great deal toward the understanding of the
historical development of Egypt. For these wanderings and migrations
belong in any case to times remote--ay, very remote--from all
historical evidence, and they provide us with no new disclosures from
any direction as to the character and the development of the Egyptians.
A further inference has been expressed that the immigrants into Egypt
found it occupied by an indigenous population, which they subdued, and
that from this population came the bondmen whom we find in ancient
Egypt, while the immigrants went to make the lords and the aristocracy.

Possibly this assumption is just; in support of it we may cite the
agreement subsisting between the nature of the Egyptian animal worship
and the religious conceptions of several of the African peoples. But we
must never lose sight of the fact that the Egyptians themselves have no
knowledge of any such theory.

If an immigration and an amalgamation of peoples took place, at the
time of the Pyramids it had already long been buried in oblivion; the
Egyptians regard themselves as autocthonous, and--with the exception
of a part of the population in the lower lands of Nubia, Libya, and
Asia--as a single nation, within which there can be no question of a
clash of mental conceptions, and within which the proud and the humble,
the lord and the bondman, have nothing to distinguish them externally.

Historical presentation demands that we should treat the Egyptians
throughout as one people, whatever may be the number of different
tribes that settled in the Nile Valley in prehistoric time.[b]

The earliest stage of man that is known in Egypt is the Palæolithic;
this was contemporary with a rainy climate, which enabled at least
some vegetation to grow on the high desert, for the great bulk of the
worked flints are found five to fifteen hundred feet above the Nile, on
a tableland which is now entirely barren desert. Water-worn palæoliths
are found in the beds of the stream courses, now entirely dried up, and
flaked flints of a rather later style occur in the deep beds of Nile
gravels, which are twenty or thirty feet above the highest level of the
present river. This type of work, however, lasted on to the age of the
existing conditions, for perfectly sharp and fresh palæoliths are found
on the desert as low down as the present high Nile.

PREHISTORIC EGYPT

The date of the change of climate is roughly shown by the depth of
the Nile deposits. It is well known by a scale extending over about
three thousand years, that in different parts of Egypt the rise of
the Nile bed has been on an average about four inches per century,
owing to the annual deposits of mud during the inundation. And in
various borings that have been made, the depth of the Nile mud is only
about twenty-five or thirty feet. Hence an age of about eight or nine
thousand years for the cultivable land may be taken as a minimum,
probably to be somewhat extended by slighter deposit in the earlier
time.

The continuous history extends to about 5000 B.C., and the prehistoric
age of continuous culture known to us covers probably two thousand
years more; hence our continuous knowledge probably extends back to
about 7000 B.C., or to about the time when the change of climate
took place. At that time we find a race of European type starting
on a continuous career, but with remains of a steatopygous race, of
“Bushman” (Koranna) type known and represented in modelled figures. We
can hardly avoid the conclusion that this steatopygous race was that
of Palæolithic man in Egypt, especially as that equivalence is also
known in the French cave remains. It is noticeable that all the figures
known of this race--in France, Malta, and Egypt--are women, suggesting
that the men were exterminated by the newer people, but the women were
kept as slaves, and hence were familiar to the pioneers of the European
race. These Palæolithic women were broadly built, with deep lumbar
curve, great masses of fat on the hips and thighs, with hair along the
lower jaw and over most of the body.

The fresh race which entered Egypt was of European type--slender,
fair-skinned, with long, wavy brown hair. The skull was closely like
that of the ancient and modern Algerians of the interior; and as one
of the earliest classes of their pottery is similar in material and
decoration to the present Kabyle pottery, we may consider them a branch
of Algerians. They seem to have entered the country as soon as the Nile
deposits rendered it habitable by an agricultural people. They already
made well-formed pottery by hand, knew copper as a rarity, and were
clad in goatskins. Entering a fertile country, and mixing probably
with the earlier race, they made rapid advance in all their products,
and in a few generations they had an able civilisation. Their work in
flint was fine and bold, with more delicate handiwork than that of any
other people except their descendants; their stone vases were cut in
the hardest materials with exquisite regularity; their carving of ivory
and slate was better than anything which followed for over a thousand
years; and they had a large number of signs in use, which were probably
the first stages of our alphabet.

After some centuries of this culture a change appears, at the same
point of time in every kind of work. A difference of people seems
probable, but no great change of race, as the type is unaltered. The
later people show some Eastern affinities; and it seems as if a part
of the earlier Libyan people had entered Syria or North Arabia and had
afterward flowed back through Egypt, modified by their Semitic contact.
It is perhaps to this influx that the Semitic element in the Egyptian
language is due.

This later prehistoric people brought in new kinds of pottery and more
commerce, which provided gold, silver, and various foreign stones;
they also elaborated the art of flint-working to its highest pitch of
regularity and beauty, and they generally extended the use of copper,
and developed the principal tools to full size. But they show even
less artistic feeling than the earlier branch, for all figure-carving
quickly decayed, both in ivory and in stone. The use of amulets was
brought in, and also forehead pendants of shell. And the signs which
were already in use almost entirely disappeared.

This prehistoric civilisation was much decayed when it was overcome
by a new influx of people, who founded the dynastic rule. These came
apparently from the Red Sea, as they entered Egypt in the reign of
Coptos, and not either from the north or from the Upper Nile. They
were a highly artistic people, as the earliest works attributable to
them--the Min sculptures at Coptos--show better drawing than any work
by the older inhabitants; and they rapidly advanced in art to the
noble works of the Ist Dynasty. They also brought in the hieroglyphic
system, which was developed along with their art. It seems probable
that they came up from the Land of Punt, at the south of the Red Sea,
and they may have been a branch of the Punic race in its migration
from the Persian Gulf round by sea to the Mediterranean. They rapidly
subdued the various tribes which were in Egypt, and at least five
different types of man are shown on the monuments of their earliest
kings.[d] Of these there were two distinct lines, the kings of Upper
and the kings of Lower Egypt. The Palermo stone gives us the names of
seven independent kings of Lower Egypt who ruled before the time of
Menes--Seker, Tesau, Tau, Thesh, Neheb, Uat´-nar, and Mekha, while
within the past few years the names of three pre-dynastic kings of
Upper Egypt have been revealed--Te, Re, and Ka. To discover when and
where these early monarchs reigned is probably the most interesting and
important problem engaging the Egyptologist to-day.[a]

CHAPTER II. THE OLD MEMPHIS KINGDOM

THE FIRST DYNASTY

_Thinites_

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 4400-4133 B.C.]]

The first human king who, according to Greek authors as well as
according to the Egyptian lists of kings, ruled over the Nile Valley
was Menes, called Mena in Egyptian. His family came from Teni, a
spot in Middle Egypt, the Greek This [or Thinis] in Abydos, a place
which formed a certain religious centre of the kingdom down to a late
period. Menes himself, it is true, soon quitted the place and built his
residence on another more favourably situated spot, the place where the
fruitful plains of the Delta began. This new capital is Memphis, the
city that flourished down to the latest periods of Egyptian history as
a royal residence and a commercial centre. The foundation of the place
is to-day exposed to the flooding of the Nile; this was already the
case in ancient days, and the king was forced to protect the ground
from this danger by a powerful dam. The dike which he constructed is in
the neighbourhood of the place called Cocheiche. And this dike to this
day secures the whole province of Gizeh from the floods.

This danger of flooding is less to be apprehended from the Nile itself
than from the natural canal, called Bahr Yusuf [“River of Joseph”],
which skirts the Libyan Desert. Thus the topographical conditions of
this place have hardly varied at all from the time of Menes. The ruined
site of ancient Memphis is now traced by only a few monuments, and the
excavations here have been very unproductive, while even in the days
of the Arabs the remnants of the town aroused the highest admiration
in Arabian authors. At all events the name has remained, and to this
day the great mound at Mitraheni is called Tel-el-Monf, the mound of
Monf. The ancient Egyptian name was Men-nefer, “the good place,” the
sacred name Ha-kha-Ptah, “the house of the divine person of Ptah,” just
as Ptah has remained for all time the chief god of the city. From this
name, with but little right, it has been sought to derive the Greek
name of the country of Egypt.

The acts, which for the rest are ascribed to Menes, are just those with
which the first prince of a country is usually accredited. According
to the Greeks he founded in Memphis the great temple of Ptah, the very
first temple in Egypt; he regulated the service in the temple and the
honouring of the god; he further was responsible for the introduction
of the cult of Apis. Finally, he even discovered the alphabet,
according to Anticlides, fifteen years (it would probably be more
reasonable to read it 15,000) before Phoroneus, the architect of Argos.

Diodorus obliges us with the additional information that King Menes
once was pursued by his own dogs, that he fled into Lake Mœris and was
carried to the opposite shore on the back of a crocodile. In gratitude
for, and in memory of, his marvellous deliverance he founded, so goes
the tale, the town of Crocodilopolis, and introduced the veneration of
crocodiles, to whom he surrendered the use of the lake. For himself he
raised here a memorial pyramid and founded the famous Labyrinth. As
for his character, according to the legend, he was a luxurious prince,
who discovered the art of dressing a meal, and taught his subjects to
eat in a reclining posture. In conflict with this is the account of
Manetho, which depicts him as the first warrior-prince, and makes him
fight the Libyans. According to Manetho he met his death through being
swallowed by a hippopotamus. According to a widely spread but quite
unauthentic story, he had in earlier life lost his only son Maneros,
and the nation had composed a dirge on the subject entitled “Maneros,”
of which text and melody are supposed to have survived for long.

Down to a late period Menes was honoured as a god in Egypt. In this
capacity he appears on the Tablet of Abydos as the first of the kings;
his statue is carried round in a procession in the Ramesseum, and even
in the time of the Ptolemies, a priest of the statues of Nectanebo
I, by the name of Un-nefer, was entrusted with his worship. His name
lasted in Egypt even longer than his worship; it was borne by one of
the most important Coptic saints, who lived at the beginning of the
fourth century and to whom a church in old Cairo is yet dedicated.

Teta: Styled Athothis I by Eratosthenes, he is supposed to have ruled
for fifty-nine years. According to Manetho, he constructed the royal
castle of Memphis and wrote a work on anatomy, being particularly
occupied with medicine. The latter supposition is rendered more
complete to a certain extent by the account, due to the Ebers papyrus,
that a method for making the hair grow described accurately therein,
was supposed to have been discovered by our king’s mother, Shesh. For
the rest we have no information of his period, except that in the reign
of the son of Menes a double-headed crane revealed itself; this was
supposed to be a sign of long prosperity for Egypt. We may possibly
explain this legend from the circumstance that the names of the two
successors of Menes are formed with the names of the crane-headed or
ibis-headed god, Tehuti.

Ata: A great plague broke out in his reign.

Hesep-ti: [Within the past few years the correct reading of this name
has been shown to be Sem-ti. His Horus name is Ten.]

Sem-en-ptah: [This name is also read Semsu.] According to Manetho there
was a great pestilence in this reign.

THE SECOND DYNASTY

_Thinites_

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 4135-3766 B.C.]]

[There is a king whose Horus name is read Hotep-Sekhemui, and who is
placed by some authorities early in the IInd Dynasty, but as yet we do
not even know his name as king of United Egypt.] Ka-ka-u. [Under this
king the worship of the Apis bulls was instituted.] Baneter-en. This is
the Biophis of Eusebius. Of high importance for the whole of Egyptian
history is the observation of Manetho that this king declared female
succession to be legitimate. In the course of the history of Egypt
we shall indeed frequently have occasion to note what immense weight
this people attached to female succession, and how it is this which in
innumerable instances gives the colour of legitimacy to the assumption
of the throne by a sovereign or a dynasty. John of Antioch makes the
Nile flow with honey for eleven days in the reign of Binothris, while
Manetho postpones this miracle until the reign of Nefercheres.[d]

THE THIRD DYNASTY

_Memphites_

Unfortunately we cannot as yet positively identify Necherophes on the
tablets and monuments. A new arrangement, and one that has much in
its favour, is to connect him with Neb-ka or Neb-ka-Ra (No. 4, in
Wiedemann’s table). This would join Seker-nefer-ka with Sesochris (No.
8, IInd Dynasty) with the additional support that “ochris” is plainly
the Greek equivalent of “Seker”; and T´efa with Cheneres, although
the latter assumption is admittedly the merest guesswork. This brings
T´er-sa (or Zeser, as it is more often spelled) opposite Tosorthros.
We know that Zeser built the step-pyramid of Saqqarah and Manetho
says that Tosorthros “built a house of hewn stones.” He is the most
important sovereign of the dynasty. Manetho further credits him with
bringing the art of writing to perfection; he is also supposed to have
been a physician, and for this reason the divine Æsculapius of the
Greeks. From Tosertasis to the end of the dynasty there are differences
of opinion in regard to order or identification, and consequently we
are still at sea with regard to Tyreïs, Mesochris, and Soüphis.

THE PYRAMID DYNASTY

[Illustration]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3766 B.C.]]

The IVth Dynasty has a peculiar and unique interest for the casual
observer of Egyptian history, because it was the time when the
world-famous pyramids were erected, the pyramids which were accounted
among the wonders of the world in classical antiquity, and the name
of which has stood almost as a synonym of Egypt for all succeeding
generations. If one were to list the wonders of the world in our day,
the legitimate number would swell far beyond the classical estimate
of seven; but it may be doubted if among them all there would be any
more justly accounted wonderful than these same pyramids. Even if
constructed to-day, they would be accounted marvellous structures; and,
dating as they do from remotest antiquity, when the devices of the
modern mechanic were yet undreamed of, they seem almost miraculous.
Nothing that any other land can show at all rivals or duplicates them;
they are unique, like Egypt herself.

What adds to the unique interest of the pyramids is the fact that we
know almost nothing of their builders, except what these structures
themselves relate. The pyramids epitomise the history of an epoch.
They are the standing witness that Egypt in that epoch was inhabited
by a highly civilised people. But practically all that we know of this
people is that they were the builders of the pyramids. Even that is
much, however, and we shall advantageously dwell at length upon these
monuments, viewing them from as many standpoints as possible--through
the eyes of Diodorus on the one hand, and of the most recent European
explorers on the other.[a]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3733-3633 B.C.]]

Diodorus, voicing the traditions of his time, gives the following
entertaining account of these marvels:[2]

“Chemmis [Khufu or Cheops], the Eighth King from Remphis, was of
Memphis, and reign’d Fifty Years. He built the greatest of the Three
Pyramids, which were accounted amongst the Seven Wonders of the
World. They stand towards Lybia a Hundred and Twenty Furlongs from
Memphis, and Five and Forty from Nile. The Greatness of these Works,
and the excessive Labour of the Workmen seen in them, do even strike
the Beholders with Admiration and Astonishment. The greatest being
Four-square, took up on every Square Seven Hundred Foot of Ground in
the Basis, and above Six Hundred Foot in height, spiring up narrower
by little and little, till it come up to the Point, the Top of which
was Six Cubits Square. It’s built of solid Marble throughout, of rough
Work, but of perpetual Duration: For though it be now a Thousand Years
since it was built (some say above Three Thousand and Four Hundred) yet
the Stones are as firmly joynted, and the whole Building as intire and
without the least decay, as they were at the first laying and Erection.
The Stone, they say, was brought a long way off, out of Arabia, and
that the Work was rais’d by making Mounts of Earth; Cranes and other
Engines being not known at that time. And that which is most to be
admir’d at, is to see such a Foundation so imprudently laid, as it
seems to be, in a Sandy Place, where there’s not the least Sign of any
Earth cast up, nor Marks where any Stone was cut and polish’d; so that
the whole Pile seems to be rear’d all at once, and fixt in the midst
of Heaps of Sand by some God, and not built by degrees by the Hands of
Men. Some of the Egyptians tell wonderful things, and invent strange
Fables concerning these Works, affirming that the Mounts were made of
Salt and Salt-Peter, and that they were melted by the Inundation of
the River, and being so dissolv’d, everything was washt away but the
Building itself. But this is not the Truth of the thing; but the great
Multitude of Hands that rais’d the Mounts, the same carry’d back the
Earth to the Place whence they dug it, for they say there were Three
Hundred and Sixty Thousand Men imploy’d in this Work, and the Whole was
scarce compleated in Twenty Years time.

“When this King was dead, his Brother Cephres [Khaf-Ra] succeeded him,
and reign’d Six and Fifty Years: Some say it was not his Brother, but
his Son Chabryis that came to the Crown: But all agree in this, that
the Successor, in imitation of his Predecessor, erected another Pyramid
like to the former, both in Structure and Artificial Workmanship, but
not near so large, every square of the Basis being only a Furlong in
Breadth.

“Upon the greater Pyramid was inscrib’d the value of the Herbs and
Onions that were spent upon the Labourers during the Works, which
amounted to above Sixteen Hundred Talents.

“There’s nothing writ upon the lesser: The Entrance and Ascent is only
on one side, cut by steps into the main Stone. Although the Kings
design’d these Two for their Sepulchers, yet it hapen’d that neither
of them were there buri’d. For the People, being incens’d at them by
reason of the Toyl and Labour they were put to, and the cruelty and
oppression of their Kings, threatened to drag their Carkasses out of
their Graves, and pull them by piece-meal, and cast them to the Dogs;
and therefore both of them upon their Beds commanded their Servants to
bury them in some obscure place.

“After him reign’d Mycerinus [Mencheres] (otherwise call’d Cherinus)
the Son of him who built the first Pyramid. This Prince began a Third,
but died before it was finish’d; every square of the Basis was Three
Hundred Foot. The Walls for fifteen Stories high were Black Marble
like that of Thebes, the rest was of the same Stone with the other
Pyramids. Though the other Pyramids went beyond this in greatness,
yet this far excell’d the rest in the Curiosity of the Structure and
the largeness of the Stones. On that side of the Pyramid towards the
North, was inscrib’d the Name of the Founder Mecerinus. This King, they
say, detesting the severity of the former Kings, carried himself all
his Days gently and graciously towards all his Subjects, and did all
that possibly he could to gain their Love and Good Will towards him;
besides other things, he expended vast Sums of Money upon the Oracles
and Worship of the Gods; and bestowing large Gifts upon honest Men whom
he judg’d to be injur’d, and to be hardly dealt with in the Courts of
Justice.

“There are other Pyramids, every Square of which are Two Hundred Foot
in the Basis; and in all things like unto the other, except in bigness.
It’s said that these Three last Kings built them for their Wives.

“It is not in the least doubted, but that these Pyramids far excel all
the other Works throughout all Egypt, not only in the Greatness and
Costs of the Building, but in the Excellency of the Workmanship: For
the Architects (they say) are much more to be admir’d than the Kings
themselves that were at the Cost. For those perform’d all by their own
Ingenuity, but these did nothing but by the Wealth handed to them by
descent from their Predecessors, and by the Toyl and Labour of other
Men.”[e]

A MODERN ACCOUNT OF THE PYRAMIDS

The Egyptians of the Theban period were compelled to form their
opinions of the Pharaohs of the Memphite dynasties in the same way
as we do, less by the positive evidence of their acts than by the
size and number of their monuments: they measured the magnificence of
Cheops [Khufu] by the dimensions of his pyramid, and all nations having
followed this example, Cheops has continued to be one of the three or
four names of former times which sound familiar to our ears. The hills
of Gizeh in his time terminated in a bare, wind-swept tableland. A few
solitary mastabas were scattered here and there on its surface, similar
to those whose ruins still crown the hill of Dahshur.

The Sphinx, buried even in ancient times to its shoulders, raised its
head halfway down the eastern slope, at its southern angle; beside him
the temple of Osiris, lord of the Necropolis, was fast disappearing
under the sand; and still farther back, old abandoned tombs honeycombed
the rock.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3733 B.C.]]

Cheops [Khufu] chose a site for his pyramid on the northern edge of the
plateau, whence a view of the city of the White Wall, at the same time
of the holy city of Heliopolis, could be obtained. A small mound which
commanded this prospect was roughly squared, and incorporated into the
masonry; the rest of the site was levelled to receive the first course
of stones.

The pyramid when completed had a height of 476 feet on a base 764 feet
square; but the decaying influence of time has reduced these dimensions
to 450 and 730 feet respectively. It possessed, up to the Arab
conquest, its polished facing, coloured by age, and so subtly jointed
that one would have said that it was a single slab from top to bottom.
The work of facing the pyramid began at the top; that of the point was
first placed in position, then the courses were successively covered
until the bottom was reached.

In the interior every device had been employed to conceal the exact
position of the sarcophagus, and to discourage the excavators whom
chance or persistent search might have put upon the right track. Their
first difficulty would be to discover the entrance under the limestone
casing. It lay hidden almost in the middle of the northern face, on
the level of the eighteenth course, at about forty-five feet above the
ground. A movable flagstone, working on a stone pivot, disguised it so
effectively that no one except the priests and custodians could have
distinguished this stone from its neighbours. When it was tilted up,
a yawning passage was revealed, three and a half feet in height, with
a breadth of four feet. The passage is an inclined plane, extending
partly through the masonry and partly through the solid rock for a
distance of 318 feet; it passes through an unfinished chamber and ends
in cul-de-sac 59 feet farther on.

The Great Pyramid was called Khut, “the Horizon,” in which Khufu had
to be swallowed up, as his father, the Sun, was engulfed every evening
in the horizon of the west. It contained only the chambers of the
deceased, without a word of inscription, and we should not know to whom
it belonged, if the masons, during its construction, had not daubed
here and there in red paint among their private marks the name of the
king and the date of his reign. Worship was rendered to this Pharaoh
in a temple constructed a little in front of the eastern side of the
pyramid, but of which nothing remains but a mass of ruins.

Pharaoh had no need to wait until he was mummified before he became a
god; religious rites in his honour were established on his ascension;
and many of the individuals who made up his court attached themselves
to his double long before his double had become disembodied. They
served him faithfully during their life, to repose finally in his
shadow in the little pyramids and mastabas which clustered around him.
Of Dadef-Ra (or Tatf-Ra), his immediate successor, we can probably say
that he reigned eight years.

[This is according to the Abydos and Saqqarah lists, but his
chronological position is still uncertain. The inscription of
Mertitefs, one of Sneferu’s queens, mentions that she was later a
favourite of Khufu, and even in her old age, of Khaf-Ra. This, if
true, would leave no space for Dadef-Ra between these reigns, so he
was either a co-regent or successor. In the XXVIth Dynasty his priests
give, in several instances, the succession as Khufu, Khaf-Ra, Dadef-Ra.
Professor Petrie identifies him with the Rhatoises of Manetho, and so
makes him the third successor of Khufu, but Professor Maspero, in his
reading “Dadef-Ra,” distinctly dissents from any such recognition. It
is possible that this king is the same person as the Prince Hortotef,
son of Khufu, who, as the hero of a famous tale, is one of the
best-known characters of early Egyptian literature.]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3666-3600 B.C.]]

But Khaf-Ra (or Khephren), the next son, who succeeded to the throne,
erected temples and a gigantic pyramid, like his father. He placed it
some 394 feet to the southwest of that of Cheops (Khufu); and called
it Ur, “the Great.” It is, however, smaller than its neighbour, and
attains a height of only 443 feet, but at a distance the difference in
height disappears, and many travellers have thus been led to attribute
the same elevation to the two.

The internal arrangements of the pyramid are of the simplest character;
they consist of a granite-built passage carefully concealed in the
north face, running at first at an angle of 25°, and then horizontally,
until stopped by a granite barrier at a point which indicates a change
of direction; a second passage, which begins on the outside, at a
distance of some yards in advance of the base of the pyramid, and
proceeds, after passing through an unfinished chamber, to rejoin the
first; finally, a chamber hollowed in the rock, but surmounted by a
pointed roof of fine limestone slabs. The sarcophagus was of granite,
and, like that of Khufu, bore neither the name of a king nor the
representation of a god.

Of Khaf-Ra’s sons, Men-kau-Ra (the Mycerinus of the Greeks), who
was his successor, could scarcely dream of excelling his father and
grandfather; his pyramid, “the Supreme” (Her), barely attained an
elevation of 216 feet, and was exceeded in height by those which were
built at a later date. Up to one-fourth of its height it was faced with
syenite, and the remainder, up to the summit, with limestone. For lack
of time, doubtless, the dressing of the granite was not completed,
but the limestone received all the polish it was capable of taking.
The enclosing wall was extended to the north so as to meet, and be of
one width with, that of the Second Pyramid. The temple was connected
with the plain by a long and almost straight causeway, which ran for
the greater part of its course upon an embankment raised above the
neighbouring ground.

The arrangement of the interior of the pyramid is somewhat complicated,
and bears witness to changes brought about unexpectedly in the course
of construction. The original central mass probably did not exceed 180
feet in breadth at the base, with a vertical height of 154 feet. It
contained a sloping passage cut into the hill itself, and an oblong
low-roofed cell devoid of ornament. The main bulk of the work had been
already completed, and the casing not yet begun, when it was decided to
modify the proportions of the whole. Men-kau-Ra was not, it appears,
the eldest son and appointed heir of Khaf-Ra; while still a mere prince
he was preparing for himself a pyramid similar to those which lie near
“the Horizon,” when the deaths of his father and brother called him to
the throne.

What was sufficient for him as a child, was no longer suitable for him
as a Pharaoh; the mass of the structure was increased to its present
dimensions, and a new inclined passage was effected in it, at the
end of which a hall panelled with granite gave access to a kind of
antechamber. The latter communicated by a horizontal corridor with the
first vault, which was deepened for the occasion; the old entrance, now
no longer of use, was roughly filled up.

Men-kau-Ra did not find his last resting-place in this upper level
of the interior of the pyramid: a narrow passage, hidden behind the
slabbing of the second chamber, descended into a secret crypt, lined
with granite and covered with a barrel-vaulted roof. The sarcophagus
was a single block of blue-black basalt, polished, and carved into the
form of a house, with a façade having three doors and three openings
in the form of windows, the whole framed in a rounded moulding and
surmounted by a projecting cornice such as we are accustomed to see on
the temples. The mummy-case of cedar-wood had a man’s head, and was
shaped to the form of the human body; it was neither painted nor gilt,
but an inscription in two columns, cut on its front, contained the name
of the Pharaoh, and a prayer on his behalf.

The example given by Khufu, Khaf-Ra, and Men-kau-Ra was by no means
lost in later times. From the beginning of the IVth to the end of
the XIVth Dynasty--during more than fifteen hundred years--the
construction of pyramids was a common state affair, provided for by the
administration.

Not only did the Pharaohs build them for themselves, but the princes
and princesses belonging to the family of the Pharaohs constructed
theirs, each one according to his resources; three of these secondary
mausoleums are ranged opposite the eastern side of “the Horizon,” three
opposite the southern face of “the Supreme,” and everywhere else--near
Abusir, at Saqqarah, at Dahshur, or in the Fayum--the majority of the
royal pyramids attracted around them a more or less numerous cortège of
pyramids of princely foundation often debased in shape and faulty in
proportion.[f]

THE BUILDERS OF THE PYRAMIDS

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3766-3566 B.C.]]

Sneferu is the first ruler of Egypt of whose deeds we know something. A
relief with an inscription in Wady Magharah on the peninsula of Sinai
represents him as slaying the robber-like tribes of the desert, the
Mentu, with a club. According to the inscriptions of the XIIth Dynasty
in Sarbut-el-Hadim, it appears that he was considered as founder of the
Egyptian dominion in the peninsula of Sinai. His memory was honoured
for many years; his worship was often mentioned, and in literary
works his bountiful reign was also called to mind. He was probably
buried in the Great Pyramid, which has the appearance of terraces, at
Medum, the opening of which was begun a short while ago. In one of the
neighbouring tombs a statue was found of its architect, Henka, and
probably the remaining tombs at Medum belong to this epoch.

Sneferu’s successor Khufu, the Cheops of Herodotus, was the builder of
the largest pyramid. The construction of temples was also attributed
to him (the temple of the “Lady of the Pyramids,” Isis, in Gizeh, and
the planning of the temple of Denderah), and the town of Menat Khufu
bears his name. He also fought in the peninsula of Sinai. In front of
the immense sepulchre of the king, his wives or other relatives are
buried in three small pyramids, and around them in mastabas the nobles
of his court. What the Greeks relate concerning the oppression of
Egypt by Khufu and Khaf-Ra and of their ungodliness, whilst Men-kau-Ra
as the builder of the small Pyramid is looked on as a righteous and
just ruler, are their own words which they place in the mouth of the
Egyptians; such a conception is remote from the truth, and the picture
which we gain from the tombs of the period is throughout bright and
cheerful. Certainly every contemporary was proud of having taken part
in this giant construction.

After the short reign of Tatf-Ra followed Khaf-Ra, the builder of
the second pyramid of Gizeh, to which time probably dates back the
enigmatically immense construction of granite and alabaster to the
south of the Great Sphinx; the fragments of nine statues of the king
were found in it. His next followers were Men-kau-Ra, the Mycerinus of
Herodotus, the builder of the third pyramid at Gizeh, and Shepses-ka-f,
of whom we learn something definite through the biography of
Ptah-Shepses, buried in Saqqarah. He had formerly been brought up at
the court of Men-kau-Ra with the children of the king; he grew up under
Shepses-ka-f, who gave him his eldest daughter to wife, loaded him with
honours, and appointed him as secretary to all constructions which he
planned to build.

The circumstance, that there is no mention of warlike expeditions
either in this biography or in other monuments of this epoch, but that
peaceful undertakings, journeys, and festivals, and above all, the
constructions of the king, are continually quoted, is an important sign
of the character of the times.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3566-3300 B.C.]]

Manetho now makes three kings follow for thirty-eight years, who are
nowhere mentioned in the inscriptions, and then begins a new dynasty
(the Vth), with Usercheres, which sprang from Elephantine. But in the
monuments it is stated that Shepses-ka-f was immediately followed by
Uskaf (or User-ka-f) [Usercheres]. At the most, only short interregnums
can have intervened, and Prince Sechem-ka-Ra lived under five kings,
Khaf-Ra, Men-kau-Ra, Shepses-ka-f, Uskaf, and Sahu-Ra, whose reigns
occupied about a century. It is very probable that a new family came to
the throne either in a peaceful or violent manner; in the Turin papyrus
the portion which probably contained Uskaf’s reign has completely
fallen out.

We learn very little of Uskaf or Usercheres. His successor Sahu-Ra, on
the contrary, is one of the most renowned rulers of the time. He also
fought in Wady Magharah. The next kings cannot be placed in their order
with certainty. The Turin papyrus allows eight reigns, mostly short,
to follow, and at the fifth introduces a gap; the lists of Abydos
and Saqqarah have only given us three names. Only Nefer-ar-ka-Ra and
especially An, the first king who gave himself a title (User-en-Ra),
were at all important. Then followed Men-kau-hor (reign of eight
years), Assa, with the name of Tat-ka-Ra (twenty-eight years), and Unas
(thirty years), of whom the first and second, like An, left monuments
commemorative of their victories on the peninsula of Sinai.

[Illustration: DRAWINGS OF EGYPTIAN BIRDS

(From the monuments)]

The first epoch of Egyptian history closes with the reign of Unas.
Almost three hundred years had passed since Sneferu had built up his
pyramid and celebrated his victory in Wady Magharah. Throughout the
whole period Memphis was the central point of the kingdom, and its
necropolis almost the only source of our instruction. After the death
of Unas--it is not known whether he died in peace or was overthrown by
a revolution--a new race ascended the throne and the centre of Egyptian
life begins gradually to shift itself. The Turin papyrus rightly makes
the first principal division here, and gives the sum of all the reigns
from Menes to Unas; but the figures are unfortunately lost to us.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3866-3300 B.C.]]

Here follows a table of kings in which the lists of Manetho for the
IIIrd, IVth, and Vth Dynasties are compared with the lists of the Turin
papyrus, the Abydos tablet, the Saqqarah tablet, and the wall list
of Karnak.[b] It will be recalled that these lists, taken together,
furnish us with the chief information at present accessible as to
the true sequence of the early Egyptian rulers. Notwithstanding its
somewhat forbidding appearance at first glance, this tablet will repay
careful study. It illustrates the way in which the different lists
must be pieced together in an attempt to form a complete record. It
shows, also, how widely the Hellenised names of Manetho’s list differ
from the Egyptian originals; suggesting the extent to which surmise
must sometimes enter into identification. Indeed, it would be hard to
tell which were the greater misfortune: the disappearance of Manetho’s
history, or the accident by which the Turin papyrus was broken into
scores of little pieces only to be restored in an unscientific and
almost worthless condition by Seyffarth.[a]

========================================+================================
Turin Papyrus [P.], Abydos Tablet [A.], | Manetho
Saqqarah Tablet [S.] Karnak [K.] |
----------------------------------------+--------------------------------
1. Zeser, P. A. S. |Dyn. III--2 Tosorthros 29 years
Gap in dynasty 19 years | 6 Tosertasis 19 years
2. Zeser Teta, P. A. S. 6 years |
3. Set´es, A.; Neb-ka-Ra, S. 6 years |
4. Nefer-ka-Ra, A.; Huni, S. 24 years |
5. Sneferu, A. S. K. 24 years |Dyn. IV--1 Soris 29 years
6. Khufu, A. S. 23 years | 2 Suphis 63 years
7. Tatf-Ra, A. S. 8 years |
8. Khaf-Ra, A. S. ? years | 3 Suphis 66 years
9. Men-kau-Ra, A. S. ? years | 4 Mencheres 63 years
10. Shepses-ka-f, A. S. ? years | 5 Rhatoises 25 years
| 6 Bicheris 22 years
| 7 Sebercheres 7 years
| 8 Tamphthis 9 years
11. [Us-ka-f, A. S.] [missing] | Dyn. V--1 Usercheres 28 years
12. [A. S. K.] Sahu-Ra 18-38 years | 2 Sephres 13 years
Here belong: |
13.{Kakaa, A.; and Monum. 4 years |
14.{Nefer-Ra, A. 2 years |
15.{Nefer-ar-ka-Ra, S.; and |
{ Monum. 7 years | 3 Nephercheres 20 years
16.{Shepses-ka-Ra, S. 12 years | 4 Sisires 7 years
17.{Nefer-kha-Ra, S. ? years}| 5 Cheres 20 years
{ Gap in Dynasty}|
18.{Akau-hor, Monum. 7 years}|
19.{and perhaps Ahtes ? years}|
20. [User-en-Ra, An. A. K.] 10-30 years}| 6 Rhathures 44 years
21. Men-kau-hor, P. A. S. 8 years | 7 Mencheres 9 years
22. Tat-ka-Ra, Assa., |
P. A. S. K. 28 years| 8 Tancheres 44 years
23. Unas, P. A. S. 30 years| 9 Onnos 33 years
|
------------ |
Total of seventeen reigns, 236-276 years|
----------------------------------------+--------------------------------
To these must be added six reigns; the |Totals give 277 years for
duration of which is unknown. | Dyn. IV, 248 for Dyn. V,
| differing from the sums of
| the single reigns.
========================================+================================

If we allow fifteen years for each of the six missing reigns, we
get for the period from Zeser to Unas about 350 years. For the
something like nineteen kings of the Turin Papyrus from Menes to Zeser
(exclusive) there falls, then, about 350 years, from Menes to Sneferu
(exclusive) therefore, about 350, from Sneferu to Unas about 300, which
agrees very well with the indications on the monuments. (According to
the most reliable of the reported figures of Manetho the first three
dynasties lasted 769 years, the IVth and Vth 525 years.)[b]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3566-3300 B.C.]]

Very recent discoveries have thrown a certain amount of light on the
obscurities of the Vth Dynasty, particularly with reference to the
kings Nos. 13-19 bracketed in the above table. The latest research has
developed:

(1) That Kakaa (No. 13) must be only another, and probably personal,
name of either Nefer-ar-ka-Ra or Shepses-ka-Ra, probably of the
former.

(2) That the Akau-hor of a few monuments is probably the personal name
of Nefer-kha-Ra (Saqqarah tablet); now read Nefer-f-Ra.

We may also now reject the Nefer-Ra (No. 14) and the Ahtes (No. 19) and
consider the Vth Dynasty, beginning with Uskaf and ending with Unas to
consist of nine kings, and to have lasted about two hundred and twenty
years.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE AT ABU-SIMBEL]

Various monuments have come down to us from the Vth Dynasty, including
inscriptions on steles and tablets, an alabaster vase, a polished ink
slab and scarabs. Among the most interesting remains of the period is
a papyrus roll found in 1893 at Saqqarah near the Step Pyramid. This
papyrus contains an account of the reign of King Tat-ka-Ra or Assa, and
it is believed to be the oldest fragment of manuscript in existence. A
much more famous papyrus roll, the so-called Prisse Papyrus--sometimes
called the oldest book in the world--now in the Bibliothèque Nationale
in Paris, is believed to be a copy of an original written in the time
of Assa. The Prisse Papyrus itself dates from the XIIth Dynasty. It was
written by one Ptah-hotep, spoken of in the book itself as “Son of the
King, of his body,” which phrase may mean that the author was actually
the son of the king (Brugsch) or, that he was really a relative of the
monarch, perhaps his uncle (Petrie). The document itself has a peculiar
interest aside from its age. It is the philosophical moralising of an
old man who, plaintively lamenting the infirmities of age, casts a
regretful glance on by-gone times; yet whose view on the whole is wise
and optimistic. “It does the heart good and rejoices the mind,” says
Brugsch, “to follow that old harangue which preserves the intimate
thought of the age of the prince, embracing the whole course of human
existence in simple, childish words. Here is a noble lesson on the true
greatness of man, for throughout he breathes a spirit of human purity
which finds the only true greatness in a modest mind.”

Professor Mahaffy, speaking in a somewhat similar vein, calls attention
to the fact that the morals, the aspirations, and the unsolved social
problems of the remote time in which Ptah-hotep wrote bear a singular
resemblance to those of to-day, pointing the moral that humanity has
not greatly changed in essentials during the intervening five or six
thousand years.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3300-3166 B.C.]]

After the Vth Dynasty, which was regarded by the author of the Turin
Papyrus as closing an epoch, there is a period of five hundred years
or more during which relatively little is known of Egyptian history.
According to the lists of Manetho, this period saw the rise and fall of
various dynasties which, vaguely as they are known, have passed into
traditional history as Dynasties VI to X. The Turin Papyrus and the
lists of Abydos, Saqqarah, and Karnak supply us with various names,
mostly unsuggestive of the names of Manetho. There are, however, two
or three exceptions to this, notably the king named third in Manetho’s
VIth Dynasty, Philos, who is believed to represent the monarch named
on all the other lists as Meri-Ra, or, as he is more generally known,
Pepi, the latter being his family name. This monarch, who probably
lived about 3200 B.C., was the Ramses II of his epoch. He has left
us more monuments than any other ruler before the XIIth Dynasty.
These include a pyramid at Saqqarah, rock inscriptions in steles
at Elephantine and elsewhere, statuettes, canopic jars, cylinders,
and scarabs. The most notable of all the monuments ascribed to him
is the Red Sphinx of Tanis, now in the Louvre in Paris, which, if
really his,--the matter is still not quite decided among the best
authorities,--is the oldest sphinx known. If authentic, the face of
this sphinx probably furnishes a representation of Pepi which is
doubtless the most ancient portrait in existence.

A great builder and monument-maker, he was a great conqueror as well,
waging successful wars against the Aamu and Herusha, who inhabited the
desert east of the Delta. He even extended his conquests against “the
land of the Terehbah,” which, it has been surmised, may be Syria; or
which may possibly have been even farther to the north: the similarity
of names suggests that the people referred to may have been the
Tibareni, one of the smaller peoples of Asia Minor. In any event, the
warlike expedition against this unknown people was made in ships.

The most interesting thing about King Pepi remains to be told. This
is the manner in which records of his deeds have come down to us. The
various monuments left by the king himself contain scant reference to
his accomplishments. The inscription that enables us to gain glimpses
of the life of the greatest monarch of his epoch is not the inscription
of the monarch himself, but of one of his servants. This officer of
the king bore the name of Una. He was of unknown origin, and there
is no reason to suppose that he was of royal blood; but he attained
to the highest distinction. He had come to be, according to the
inscription over his tomb, “Crown bearer of the Majesty (of the King),
Superintendent of the storehouse, and Registrar (Sacred Scribe) of the
docks” for King Teta, the predecessor of King Pepi.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3166-3033 B.C.]]

On the death of his master, Una appears to have passed into the service
of the next incumbent, Pepi, as “Chief of the coffer of the Majesty
(of the King) with the rank of Companion, Scribe, Priest of the place
of his pyramid.” “His Majesty was satisfied with me (beyond all) his
servants,” declares Una. “(He gave me also) to hear all things. I was
alone with the Royal Scribe, and officer of all the secrets. The King
was satisfied with me more than any of his chiefs, of his family, of
his servants.”

The inscription then goes on to detail the services rendered by Una
to Pepi, and his son Mer-en-Ra as well. He fully earned all of his
titles and honours. He would seem to have been in charge, not merely
of household affairs, building operations, the moving of monuments
and the like, but to have been commander-in-chief of the armies, and
the efficient agent of Pepi in his conquests at home and abroad, as
he says: “ He sent me five times, to subdue the land of Herusha to
subdue their revolt by this force. His Majesty was pleased at it beyond
everything Saying, have revolted the Negroes of this tribe of the land
of Khetam, safely to Takhisa; I sailed again in boats with this force.
I subdued this country from the extreme frontier on the North of the
land of Herusha. Then was ordered this army on the road. They subdued
them also smiting all opponents there. The place was thrown under my
sandals. The King of Upper and Lower Egypt Mer-en-Ra the Divine Lord
the ever living gave me to be a Duke, Governor of the South ascending
from Abu to the North of the nome Letopolis. I very much pleased His
Majesty, I greatly pleased His Majesty to the Satisfaction of His
Majesty.”

One of the most interesting passages in the inscription of Una is
that in which he gives details of the transportation of the pyramid
Kha-nefer of Mer-en-Ra, making for it “a boat of burthen in the little
dock 60 cubits in length and thirty in its breadth, put together in 17
days in the month of Epiphi.” There was not water enough in the river
to tow the pyramid safely, but the inscription continues: “It was done
by me forthwith before the god (King). His Majesty the Divine Lord
ordered and sent me to excavate four docks in the South for three boats
of burthen, four transports in the small basin of the land of Uauat.
Then the rulers of the countries of Araret, Aam, and Ma, supplied
the wood for them. It was made in about a year at the time of the
inundation loaded with very much granite for the Kha-nefer pyramid of
Mer-en-Ra.” (Birch’s[g] translation.)

Aside from its intrinsic interest, this inscription of Una has a
peculiar historical importance as illustrating a phase of life in Egypt
that we shall not see duplicated among the Semitic nations of Asia; the
fact, namely, that a mere subject of the king could leave a permanent
record of his deeds. In Babylonia and Assyria it is the monarch always
who speaks from the inscriptions; the name of a subject is never
mentioned. It is not so very often, even in Egypt, that the name of
a subject is heard, but the fact that this sometimes occurs marks a
distinct difference between the character of the Egyptian and Asiatic
civilisations.

[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN HIGH PRIEST

(Based on the monuments)]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3066-3033 B.C.]]

One other monarch of the VIth Dynasty has gained traditional fame;
this time through the pages of Herodotus. This is the Queen Nitocris.
Herodotus, to be sure, gives us no clew as to the age when this female
monarch ruled, but the name appears in the lists of Manetho. Herodotus
was attracted by the picturesque story told him in reference to
Nitocris by the Egyptian priests. He asserts that of the names of three
hundred and thirty sovereigns, successors of Menes, recited to him from
a book by the Egyptian priests, only one was a female native of the
country. He continues: “The female was called Nitocris, which was also
the name of the Babylonian princess. They affirm that the Egyptians
having slain her brother, who was their sovereign, she was appointed
his successor; and that afterwards, to avenge his death, she destroyed
by artifice a great number of Egyptians. By her orders a large
subterraneous apartment was constructed professedly for festivals, but
in reality for a different purpose. She invited to this place a great
number of those Egyptians whom she knew to be the principal instruments
of her brother’s death, and then by a private canal introduced the
river amongst them. They added, that to avoid the indignation of the
people, she suffocated herself in an apartment filled with ashes.”
(Herodotus, II, 99.)

The Turin papyrus gives the name of Nit-aqert as one of the Pharaohs
of the VIth Dynasty, so it would appear that Herodotus was writing of
an actual personage, whether or not the story that he tells was well
founded. Manetho says of Nitocris that she governed twelve years, “the
noblest and most beautiful woman of that period, fair, and at the same
time the builder of the Third Pyramid.” Brugsch, commenting upon this,
says: “It is difficult to discover the historical foundation for the
tale of Herodotus, and we would only say that it must indicate that
about the time of Queen Nitocris, internecine murders and dissensions
began in the kingdom, awakened by the poisonous envy of the pretenders
to the throne.” As to Manetho’s assertion that Nitocris built the
Third Pyramid, it has been explained by Perring that the Third Pyramid
was transformed and enlarged at a later date. It is suggested that
“Queen Nitocris took possession of Men-kau-Ra’s tomb, left the king’s
sarcophagus in a lower vault, and placed her own in the chamber in
front. If we are to be guided by the ruined fragments of bluish basalt
which lie on the spot, she had the surface of the monument faced with
that costly decoration of highly polished granite, which afterward
served inventive Greek story-tellers with a foundation for the tale
of Rhodopis, the hetaira, who reduced her friends to beggary that she
might obtain vast sums of money for the building of the pyramid.”

THE BEAUTIFUL NITOCRIS

Various romances have become associated with traditions in reference
to Nitocris. She was credited with supernatural witchery, and it was
said that after her death her naked spirit haunted the pyramid she was
alleged to have built, and that by the magic of her mere smile she
drove her lovers mad. The story of her revenge upon the men who, in a
riot, had killed her brother the king, is given by Herodotus as above.
The brother she avenged was Menthesouphis, whom Meyer places at some
distance from her in the line. Round this same Nitocris gathered other
legends, among them the original of our Cinderella story. According
to this version, Nitocris was originally a courtesan named Rhodopis
(“Rosy-cheeked”--a translation into Greek of the name Nitocris). Once
when she was bathing in the river, an eagle stole one of her little
gilded sandals, and flying away let it fall into the lap of the king,
who was holding a court of justice in the open air. He was so taken
with the beauty of the tiny shoe that he had a search made for the
woman whom it fitted, and made her his queen.

Beyond the historical narratives of Una, and the traditions about
Nitocris, only shreds of knowledge are forthcoming regarding the
monarchs of the long epoch with which we are dealing. The epoch as a
whole is well characterised in the words of Brugsch:[a]

A profound darkness falls over Egyptian history after the time of
Ne-fer-ka-Ra, shrouding even the faintest traces of the existence
of kings whose empty names the tablets of Abydos and Saqqarah have
preserved to us, names without deeds, sounds without meaning, like
the inscriptions on the tombs of unknown, obscure men. Unless we are
deceived, we may here picture a state split up into petty kingdoms and
scourged by civil war and regicide, from whose _haq_ or princes no
saviour arose to strike down the refractory with the strong arm, grasp
with a firm hand the loosened rein, and once more establish a central
government.[h]

In a few words may be added certain more or less inchoate details as to
the few monarchs of the VIth to Xth Dynasties upon whose history the
most recent research has thrown some rays of light.

As for the VIth Dynasty, the most modern attempts at disentanglement
place a Mer-en-Ra II and a Neter-ka-Ra after Nefer-ka-Ra; Mer-en-Ra II
to correspond with the Menthesuphis of Manetho as distinct from the
Methusuphis [Mer-en-Ra I] of the same historian. The Neter-ka-Ra occurs
only on the Abydos Tablet, and is followed by Men-ka-Ra, which is also
found nowhere else. But there is some reason to believe that the bearer
of this name is identical with the Nit-aqert of the Turin papyrus and
the Nitocris of Manetho, and in this connection the confusion between
Men-kau-Ra and Nitocris is susceptible of another and perhaps better
explanation than that offered by Perring; for although the Third
Pyramid has been enlarged, the manner of its enlargement shows that
it was done in the age of the Pyramid builders and not so late as the
end of the VIth Dynasty. Therefore it is better to accept M. Maspero’s
theory of the alterations as given in a preceding page; while the
similarity of the names Men-kau-Ra and Men-ka-Ra will show how Manetho
was led into the error of assigning the building of the Third Gizeh
Pyramid to Queen Nitocris.

[Illustration: A SOLDIER OF ANCIENT EGYPT]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3033-2700 B.C.]]

The VIIth and VIIIth Dynasties fell through causes of disintegration
and decay. The capital was transferred to Heracleopolis, presumably
because of the intrusion of an outside people into the Delta.

Some authorities assign the dislodgment of the native dynasty to
a perplexing line of foreign kings whose position still defies
definition; but Professor Petrie writing in 1901 says: “The group of
foreign kings, mainly known by scarabs and cylinders, Khyan, Samqan,
Anthar, Yaqebar, Shesha, and Uazed, are probably of the XVth-XVIth
Dynasties, though some connections place them shortly before the XIIth
Dynasty.” All we yet know of the intrusion is concisely stated by
Eduard Meyer: “We may with some certainty assume that strange Syrian
races attacked Egypt and probably ruled the land or part of it for a
while.”

Two legitimate kings of the IXth or Xth Dynasty now stand out
prominently; Ab-meri-Ra (Kheti) who may be the Achthoes of Manetho,
the first of his recorded IXth Dynasty, and Ka-meri-Ra. But the most
interesting historical information of this period is from three tombs
of the princes of Assiut; Kheti I, Tefa-ba, and Kheti II.

The Thebans had now practically obtained their independence, and
certain circumstances indicate that the beginning of the XIth Dynasty
was contemporary with the Xth. Such a state of affairs will explain the
singular fact that Manetho assigns only forty-three years to the XIth
Dynasty. For it is held that he ignored contemporaneous dynasties, and
therefore may have rejected about one hundred and twenty years, during
which period he does not recognise the XIth Dynasty as legitimate.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[2] [Here and in subsequent excerpts from Diodorus we use a
seventeenth-century translation.]

CHAPTER III. THE OLD THEBAN KINGDOM

Egypt is the monumental land of the earth, as the Egyptians are the
monumental people of history.--BARON BUNSEN.

The history of civilisation is very largely the history of a few great
cities.

There has been no great people without its great metropolis. The
overthrow of such a city, as in the case of Nineveh, or Babylon, or
Tyre, or Sardis, often meant the subjugation or destruction of a
nation. And the mere transfer of supremacy from one city to another
within the same country meant the beginning of a new era. It was so in
Egypt when the centre of authority shifted from Memphis to Thebes. By
common consent, historians mark the period in which Thebes became the
home of the ruling monarch, and hence the capital of Egypt, as a new
era in Egyptian history. This new era is commonly designated the Old
Theban Kingdom, or the Middle Kingdom.

This era of the Theban supremacy was by no means a homogeneous epoch.
It saw many dynasties established and overthrown; it even witnessed
the conquest of the country by a strange horde from the east, a horde
spoken of as the Shepherd invaders, whose leaders, seated upon the
throne of Egypt for some generations, have passed into history as the
Hyksos or Shepherd kings. These outsiders held the power so long,
indeed, that they may very well have felt entitled to call themselves
Egyptians. The later generations had as good claim to that name as,
for example, any Caucasian has to call himself an American. Yet when
the Hyksos kings were finally overthrown, the feat seems to have been
regarded as the expulsion of intruders, and the verdict of posterity is
that the governmental power passed back to its rightful possessors. It
would be difficult, however, to say how much the ethnic status of the
race may have been modified by the influence of these many generations
of outsiders. Be that as it may, the Egyptians who expelled the
Hyksos kings and established anew the “native” dynasties were in some
respects a very different people from the Egyptians whom the Hyksos
had overthrown. But before expanding this point we had best follow the
fortunes of the Old Theban Kingdom itself.

THE ELEVENTH DYNASTY

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2700-2500 B.C.]]

For the XIth Dynasty we have as yet no good list; the total number
of kings even is unknown, but the best authorities agree that there
were probably about nine. But since this dynasty undoubtedly ruled at
Thebes simultaneously with the Xth at Heracleopolis, whence it had
been driven from Memphis, the question as to just which Theban prince
so far overcame the legitimate government in the struggle that had been
long going on, as to be acknowledged the ruler of Egypt, will probably
never reach solution. Professor Petrie begins with Antef I and follows
him with Mentuhotep I, Antef II, Antef III, Mentuhotep II, Antef IV,
and then Nub-kheper-Ra (or Antef V). Concerning the latter and his
two successors, there is no question; we emerge once more into the
daylight. After Nub-kheper-Ra comes Neb-kher-Ra whose other name was
Mentuhotep, and we designate him as the third of his name. He stands
fifty-seventh on the Abydos list.[a]

The princely line from which the commanding figure of King Mentuhotep
III stood forth to the healing of the reunited kingdom was of Theban
origin. The feeble ancestors of his race bore alternately the names
of Antef and Mentuhotep. They had set up their regal dwelling in that
city of Thebes which afterward became of such world-wide importance,
and their tombs (simple, homely tiled pyramids) lay at the foot of
the “Western Mountain” of the Theban necropolis. Here a few ruins of
ancient date indicate the names of the rulers. It was here too that,
more than twenty years ago, two quite modest sarcophagi belonging to
these Pharaohs were brought to light by some Arabs in search of gold,
and unconscious of what a treasure they had found.

In that part of the city of the dead which nowadays goes among the
inhabitants by the name of Assassif, those sarcophagi were found, only
lightly covered with sand and rubble and one of them containing the
embalmed body of a king, his head adorned with a royal circlet. The
cover of the casket was richly gilded, and the sacred symbols which
decked the central strip soon revealed the name of Pharaoh Antef in the
royal cartouche.

In the year 1854, when Brugsch for the first time stayed on the banks
of the Nile, he had the unhoped-for good fortune to stumble, in a
lumber room in the house of the Greek consul, across the coffin of a
second Antef, which was notably distinguished from the first by his
cognomen of “the Great.” The coffin is now preserved in the Louvre, a
precious and valuable relic of the ancient kingdom of the Pharaohs.

The black rocks of the island of Konosso, near Osiris’s favoured
island of Philæ above the First Cataract, preserve the memory of the
Mentuhotep (II) who bore the royal name of Neb-taui-Ra, “Sun of the
Lord of the Country.” A sculpture chiselled in the hard stone shows the
Pharaoh as the conqueror of thirteen peoples, and as the devout servant
of his original progenitor Khem or Amsu, the famous god of Coptos. The
place of this name (Qobt it was actually called among the Egyptians)
had at that time a great reputation.

This Mentuhotep also appears perpetuated on the wall in the rocky
valley, together with his mother, Ama. He had, so his inscription
distinctly says, caused a deep well, ten cubits in diameter, to be sunk
in the waterless, desolate waste, in order to provide reviving draughts
of fresh water for all pilgrims with their beasts of burden and all men
whom the king had commissioned to quarry stone in the hot valley.

Another inscription, dated the 15th of Paophi in the second year of the
reign of our Mentuhotep, next commemorates the god Khem, “the Lord of
the Peoples of this Wilderness,” then renders homage to other heavenly
beings, and informs us how it was marvellously contrived to convey the
gigantic blocks of stone Nileward to serve for the future housing of
the royal corpse. A high dignitary, Amenemhat by name, and appointed
to superintend all works of the kind for Pharaoh, received an express
order to forward the heavy load of the sarcophagus and its cover from
the mountains to the ruler’s eternal resting-place.

Long was the way and hard the labour of the task, for the mighty mass
of hewn stone measured eight cubits in length, whilst the proportion of
this to the breadth and height was as four to two. When rich offerings
had been made to the gods, three thousand strong men succeeded in
moving the gigantic weight of stone from its place, and in rolling it
down the valley to the river.

We have less information respecting the other Mentuhotep, whose pyramid
bears the name of Khu-asu, “the most shining place.” A tombstone found
in the carefully explored valley of Abydos commemorates the priest who
presented the offerings of the dead to the departed king at the pyramid.

The list of kings closes with Sankh-ka-Ra, the fifty-eighth of the
long series of Abydos. The rock valley of Hammamat commemorates him in
an inscription of the highest value. From Coptos the way led through
waterless deserts toward the coast of the Red Sea, and was much
frequented by merchants, who, for the sake of profit, ventured life and
limb, and after painful wanderings on desert paths trusted themselves
in the harbour to frail vessels, that they might steer for the southern
regions of the farther coasts and bring valuable goods, principally
costly spices full of sweet savours, back from the land of Punt to
their native country and the temples of the gods.

THE VOYAGE TO PUNT

Under the name of Punt, the ancient inhabitants of Kamit understood a
distant country, washed by the great sea, full of valleys and hills,
rich in ebony and other valuable woods, in incense, balsam, precious
metals and stones; rich also in animals, for there are camelopards,
cheetahs, panthers, dog-headed apes, and long-tailed monkeys. Winged
creatures with strange feathers flew up to the boughs of wonderful
trees, especially of the incense tree and the cocoanut palm. Such was
the conception of the Egyptian Ophir, doubtless the coast of the modern
Somaliland, which lies in view of Arabia, though divided from it by the
sea.

According to the old dim legend, the land of Punt was the primeval
dwelling of the gods. From Punt the heavenly beings had, headed by
Amen, Horus, and Hathor, passed into the Nile Valley. The passage of
the gods had consecrated the coast lands, which the waters of the Red
Sea washed as far as Punt and whose very name “God’s land” (Ta-neter)
recalls the legend. Amen is called Haq, that is, “King of Punt,” Hathor
similarly, “Lady and Ruler of Punt,” while Hor was spoken of as “the
holy morning star which rises westward from the land of Punt.” To this
same country belongs that idol of Bes, the ancient figure of the deity
in the land of Punt, who in frequent wanderings obtained a footing, not
only in Egypt, but in Arabia and other countries of Asia, as far as the
Greek islands. The deformed figure of Bes, with its grinning visage, is
none other than the benevolent Dionysus [Bacchus], who, pilgrimaging
through the world, dispenses gentle manners, peace, and cheerfulness to
the nations with a lavish hand.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2500 B.C.]]

It was under Sankh-ka-Ra that the first Ophir-voyage to Punt and Ophir
was accomplished. According to the words of the inscription, everything
which might be serviceable to the expedition was wisely arranged
before-hand, and Pharaoh selected as its leader and guide the noble
Hannu, who gives the following account of it:

“I was despatched to conduct the ships toward the land of Punt, to
fetch Pharaoh sweet-smelling spices, which the princes of the red
country collect with the fear and anxiety which he inspires in all
peoples. And I started from the city of Coptos.”--“And his majesty gave
the order that the armed men who were to accompany me should come from
the southern land of the Thebaïd.”

After a defaced portion in the inscription, which was fairly long, and
of which enough had been preserved to show that in the course of the
story there was some account of how the armed force was provided for
offence and defence against the enemy, and how the king’s officers,
with stone-cutters and other work-people, accompanied the train, Hannu
continues:

“And I journeyed thence with a host of three thousand men, and came
through the place of the red hamlet, and through a cultivated land. I
had skins prepared and barrows to convey the water-jars to the number
of twenty. And every one of my people carried a burden daily … and
another adjusted the load. And I had a reservoir dug twelve rods in
length in a wood, and two basins at a place called Atahet, one of them
a rod and twenty cubits, and the other a rod and thirty cubits. And I
made another in Ateb, ten cubits by ten each way, that it might hold
water a cubit deep. Thereafter I came to the harbour town of Seba (?),
and I had cargo vessels built to bring commodities of every kind. And
I made a great sacrifice of oxen, cows, and goats. And when I returned
from Seba (?) I had fulfilled the king’s command, for I brought him all
kinds of commodities, which I had found in the harbours of the sacred
country. And I descended into the street of Uak and Rohan, and took
with me valuable stones for the statues of the houses of God. The like
has never been since there were kings, and such things were never done
by any blood relations of the king who were sent to those places since
the time (the rule) of the sun-god Ra. And I did thus for the king on
account of the great favour he cherished for me.”

M. Chabas, who first rendered this important inscription and its
contents intelligible, has joined to his translation some valuable
remarks concerning the direction of the desert road from Coptos to
the Red Sea. By this means we may satisfy ourselves that already in
those remote times, the ancient Egyptians had opened a road by which
to establish communication with the land of Punt, and to transport its
products--rare and costly commodities--to the valley of the Nile.

In his description of the journey, Hannu speaks of five principal
camps, at which the wanderers rested, and men and animals (then only
donkeys, the only beast of burden referred to, at least at this period)
fortified themselves for the toilsome journey in the enjoyment of the
fresh drinking-water. It is, moreover, this same road which, even in
the time of the Ptolemies and Romans, led from Coptos in the direction
of the sunrise, to the harbour of Leukos Limen (now Kosseir), on the
Red Sea, the great highway and commercial route of the merchants of all
countries, who carried on a trade in the wondrous products of Arabia
and India, the bridge of nations which once connected Asia and Europe.

Although, in view of the most recent discoveries, we must no longer
regard Punt and the oft referred to “sacred country” as the exclusive
designation of the southern and western coasts of Arabia itself, still
nothing is more probable than that, already in the reign of King
Sankh-ka-Ra, five and twenty centuries before the beginning of our era,
the Egyptians had some knowledge of the coasts of Yemen and of the
Hadramaut on the opposite side of the sea, which lay in sight of the
incense-bearing mountains of Punt and of the sacred country. Here,
in these regions, should, as it seems to us, that mysterious place be
sought which, in remotely prehistoric times, sent forth the restless
Cushite nations oversea from Arabia, like swarms of locusts, to plant
themselves on the highly favoured coasts of Punt and the “sacred
country,” and to extend their wanderings further inland in a westerly
and northerly direction.[b]

THE TWELFTH DYNASTY

It is hard to keep in mind the long sweep of these meagre Egyptian
chronicles, but it must not be forgotten that we are handling dynasties
of long duration and not single reigns.

[Illustration]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2466 B.C.]]

It was not without a struggle that the XIIth Dynasty was established,
and the first years of the reign of the Theban king Amenemhat were
harassed by the conspiracies and plots of those who contested his claim
to the throne.

In the _Instructions_ to his son, Usertsen I, the king says: “When
night came I took an hour of ease. I stretched myself on the soft
couch in my palace and sought repose, my spirit had nearly succumbed
to sleep, when lo! they gathered themselves together in arms against
me, and I became as weak as a serpent of the field. Then I arose to
fight with my own hands, and I found I had but to strike to conquer.
If I attacked an armed foe, he fled before me, and I had no reverse of
fortune.” And it was to this force of character that the king owed his
success. “Never in my life have I given way,” he continues, “either in
a grasshopper plague or in conspiracies set afoot in the palace, or
when, taking advantage of my youth, they banded together against me.”

The south of Memphis was the final scene of struggle against the new
dynasty, but after the surrender of the fortified town of Titui, the
whole of Egypt surrendered to the sway of Amenemhat, who now devoted
himself to the reparation of the evils of war and to expeditions
against the Libyans, Nubians, and Asiatics, whose invasions were so
ruinous to the country. “I caused the mourner,” says the king in the
same _Instructions_, “to mourn no longer, and his lamentation was no
longer heard. Perpetual fighting was no more seen, whereas, before my
coming, they fought together as bulls who think not of the past, whilst
the welfare of the wise and unwise was equally ignored. I have had the
land tilled as far as Abu [Elephantine]. I have spread joy as far as
Adhu [the Delta]. I am the creator of the three kinds of grain, I am
the friend of Nopu [the god of grain]. In answer to my prayer the Nile
has inundated the fields; nobody hungers or thirsts under my sway,
for my orders have been obeyed. All that I said was a fresh source
of love; I have overthrown the lion and killed the crocodile. I have
conquered the Uauat, I have taken the Mazau captive, and I have forced
the Sati [Asiatics] to follow me like harriers.”

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2466-2370 B.C.]]

In Nubia the king had the gold mines reopened which had been abandoned
since the time of Pepi.

As Amenemhat was not young when he ascended the throne, he began to
feel the effects of age after reigning nineteen years, and this led to
his making his son, Usertsen I, co-regent with himself with all the
titles and prerogatives of royalty. “I raised thee from a subject,”
he writes in the _Instructions_, “I granted thee the free use of thy
arms that thou mightest be feared on that account. As for me, I arrayed
myself in the fine stuffs of my palace so as to look like one of the
flowers of my garden. I perfumed myself as freely as if the essences
were drawn like water from the cisterns.”

At the end of some years the king took so little active part in the
government, that his name was often omitted in the monuments beside
that of his son; but he still gave wise counsels from the palace
where he lived in retirement. To the wisdom of his advice much of the
prosperity of Egypt was due, and such a reputation for ruling did the
old king acquire, that in a treatise, composed by a contemporary, on
the art of governing, the writer represents him rising like a god and
addressing his son: “Thou reignest over two worlds, thou dost govern
three regions. Act better than thy predecessors, maintain harmony
between thy subjects and thyself lest they succumb to fear; sit not
by thyself in their midst, do not take to thy heart and treat as thy
brother only him that is rich and of high degree, neither accord thy
friendship to newcomers whose devotion is not proved.”

[Illustration: AMENEMHAT WORSHIPPED AS A GOD BY A SUBJUGATED PRINCE]

In support of his _Instructions_ the old king gives a résumé of his
life, of which some extracts have been already given. Although only
three pages long, this little work became quite a classic, and kept
its place a thousand years, for at the time of the XIXth Dynasty, it
was still copied in the schools and studied as an exercise of style by
young scribes.

Nothing is more illustrative of the state of Egypt and the neighbouring
countries at this period than certain passages from the memoirs of
an adventurer named Sineh. Arrived at the court of a little Asiatic
chief, who asks for an account of the power of the Egyptian sovereign,
and who was surprised at hearing that a death had taken place in
the palace of Amenemhat without his knowledge, the traveller gives a
poetical panegyric of the king and his son: “My exile into that country
was arranged by God, for Egypt is under the control of a master, who
is called ‘the benevolent god’; and the terror of him extends to all
the surrounding nations, as the power of the goddess Sekhet extends
over the earth in the season of sickness. I told him my thoughts and
he replied, ‘We grant thee immunity.’ His son, Usertsen, entered the
palace, for he manages his father’s business; he is an incomparable
god, he has never had his equal, he is a counsellor wise in his
designs, benevolent in his decrees, who goes and comes at his will. He
conquers foreign states and reports his conquests to his father, who
remains in the palace. He is a brave man, who rules by the sword, his
courage is unequalled; when he sees barbarians, he rushes forward and
scatters the predatory hordes. He is the hurler of javelins who makes
the hand of the enemy feeble, those whom he strikes never more lift
the lance. He is formidable in shattering skulls, and has never been
overcome. He is a swift runner who kills the fugitive, and no one can
overtake him. He is alert and ready. He is a lion who strikes with his
claws, nor ever lets go from his grip; he is a heart girded in armour
at the sight of the hosts, and leaves nothing standing behind him; he
is a valiant man rushing forward at the sight of battle. He seizes his
buckler, he bounds forward and kills without a second blow. Nobody can
withstand his arrow; before he bends his bow, the barbarians flee in
front of him like hares, for the great goddess has commanded him to
slay those who ignore her name, and when he attacks, he spares not.
All are laid low. He is a wonderful friend, who knows how to win love;
his country loves him more than herself, and rejoices in him more than
in a god; and both men and women are prompt to render him homage.
He is king; he has commanded ever since he was born; the nation has
multiplied under him, the unique being of a divine essence by whom this
land rejoices to be governed. He has enlarged the frontiers of the
South, whilst not coveting the region of the North. He has subjugated
the Asiatics and conquered the Nemashatu.”

[Illustration: USERTSEN I

(From a statue)]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2370-2250 B.C.]]

The co-regency of Usertsen I with Amenemhat I, instituted ten years
before the king’s death, led to Usertsen’s being accepted as successor
to his father without any opposition. And following his parent’s
example, this king (after forty-two years) appointed his son, Amenemhat
II, to be co-regent with himself; and he, thirty-two years later, did
the same with Usertsen II; Amenemhat III and Amenemhat IV also reigned
a long time together. The only reigns in which there is no proof of
co-regency are those of Usertsen III and Queen Sebek-neferu-Ra (the
Schemiophris of Manetho), who was the last of the dynasty, which had
lasted 213 years, 1 month, and 27 days.

The history of the XIIth Egyptian dynasty is certainly given with
greater accuracy and completeness than that of any of the others. In
spite of the deficiencies in the biographies of the eight monarchs,
and the accounts of their wars, we have an uninterrupted survey of the
development of their policy, and even after the lapse of four thousand
years and more, we can form a fair idea of the Egypt of the period. As
engineers, soldiers, friends of art, and patrons of agriculture, they
were indefatigable in their work of aggrandising the country. With the
enlargement of the boundaries of the kingdom, the hordes of barbarians
on the frontiers were dispersed, Nubia was conquered; the valley of the
Middle Nile, from the First Cataract to the Fourth, was colonised; the
supply of water was more equalised by the creation of Lake Mœris and
a system of canals; and towns like Heliopolis, Thebes, Tanis, and a
hundred others of less repute, were adorned with fine buildings. Egypt,
in fact, at this time, was in a most prosperous state, and if later
she obtained more renown by her Asiatic wars and distant conquests,
the period of this dynasty, when each generation of Pharaohs followed
in the other’s steps of good administration, was the most happy and
peaceful of all.

The two scenes of warfare of the Pharaohs at this period were Syria
on the east of the Delta, and Nubia, properly so called, on the south
of Elephantine. One would have thought that the large tracts of sand,
separating the Syrians from Egypt, would have prevented any incursions
from that quarter. But the nomadic tribes made such inroads on that
district that a series of fortresses had to be built from the Red
Sea to the Nile, to protect the entrance of the Wady Tumilat from
the hordes; and this wall, begun by Amenemhat and continued by his
successors, marked the extreme limit, at that time, of the empire of
the Pharaohs in this direction. Beyond stretched the desert, a world
almost unknown to the Egyptians at that time.

Of the people of Syria and Palestine they had only vague ideas brought
thither by the caravans or brought to the ports in the Mediterranean
by sailors who had been there. Sometimes, however, a party of
emigrants, or even whole tribes, driven from their country by misery or
revolutions, would arrive and settle in Egypt. One of the bas-reliefs
of the tomb of Khnumhotep depicts the arrival of such a party. It
represents thirty-seven men, women, and children, brought before the
governor of the nome of Mah, to whom they present a sort of greenish
paint, called moszmit, and two boxes. They are armed like Egyptians
with bows, javelins, axes, and clubs; one of them plays, as he walks,
on an instrument resembling an old Greek lyre in shape. The cut of
their dress, the brilliancy and good taste of the fringed and patterned
materials, the elegance of most of the things they have with them,
testify to an advanced stage of civilisation, albeit inferior to that
of Egypt. Asia already supplied Egypt with slaves, perfumes, cedar
wood, and cedar essences, enamelled precious stones, lapis-lazuli, and
the embroidered and dyed stuffs of which Chaldea retained the monopoly
until the time of the Romans.[c]

The monuments of this great period provoked wonder among the ancients,
and the old traveller and historian Herodotus thus describes the
marvels of Egypt:[a]

MONUMENTS OF THE TWELFTH DYNASTY: A CLASSICAL VIEW

It was the resolution of all the princes to leave behind them a common
monument of their fame:--With this view, beyond the Lake Mœris, near
the City of Crocodiles, they constructed a labyrinth, which exceeds,
I can truly say, all that has been said of it; whoever will take
the trouble to compare them, will find all the works of Greece much
inferior to this, both in regard to the workmanship and expense. The
temples of Ephesus and Samos may justly claim admiration, and the
Pyramids may individually be compared to many of the magnificent
structures of Greece, but even these are inferior to the Labyrinth. It
is composed of twelve courts, all of which are covered; their entrances
are opposite to each other, six to the north and six to the south; one
wall encloses the whole; the apartments are of two kinds, there are
fifteen hundred above the surface of the ground, and as many beneath,
in all three thousand. Of the former I speak from my own knowledge and
observation; of the latter, from the information I received.

The Egyptians who had the care of the subterraneous apartments would
not suffer me to see them, and the reason they alleged was, that in
these were preserved the sacred crocodiles, and the bodies of the kings
who constructed the labyrinth: of these therefore I presume not to
speak; but the upper apartments I myself examined, and I pronounce them
among the greatest efforts of human industry and art.

The almost infinite number of winding passages through the different
courts, excited my warmest admiration: from spacious halls I passed
through smaller apartments, and from them again to large and
magnificent courts, almost without end. The ceilings and walls are all
of marble, the latter richly adorned with the finest sculpture; around
each court are pillars of the whitest and most polished marble: at the
point where the labyrinth terminates, stands a pyramid one hundred and
sixty cubits high, having large figures of animals engraved on its
outside, and the entrance to it is by a subterraneous path.

Wonderful as this labyrinth is, the Lake Mœris, near which it stands,
is still more extraordinary: the circumference of this is three
thousand six hundred stadia, or sixty schæni, which is the length of
Egypt about the coast. This lake stretches itself from north to south,
and in its deepest parts is two hundred cubits; it is entirely the
produce of human industry, which indeed the work itself testifies, for
in its centre may be seen two pyramids, each of which is two hundred
cubits above and as many beneath the water: upon the summit of each
is a colossal statue of marble, in a sitting attitude. The precise
altitude of these pyramids is consequently four hundred cubits; these
four hundred cubits, or one hundred orgyiæ, are adapted to a stadium of
six hundred feet; an orgyia is six feet, or four cubits, for a foot is
four palms, and a cubit six.

The waters of the lake are not supplied by springs; the ground which it
occupies is of itself remarkably dry, but it communicates by a secret
channel with the Nile; for six months the lake empties itself into the
Nile, and the remaining six the Nile supplies the lake. During the six
months in which the waters of the lake ebb, the fishery which is here
carried on furnishes the royal treasury with a talent of silver every
day; but as soon as the Nile begins to pour its waters into the lake,
it produces no more than twenty minæ.

[The silver which the fishery of this lake produced was, says Larcher,
appropriated to find the queen with clothes and perfume.]

The inhabitants affirm of this lake, that it has a subterraneous
passage inclining inland towards the west, to the mountains above
Memphis, where it discharges itself into the Libyan sands. I was
anxious to know what became of the earth, which must somewhere have
necessarily been heaped up in digging this lake; as my search after it
was fruitless, I made inquiries concerning it of those who lived nearer
the lake. I was the more willing to believe them, when they told me
where it was carried, as I had before heard of a similar expedient used
at Nineveh, an Assyrian city. Some robbers, who were solicitous to get
possession of the immense treasures of Sardanapalus, King of Nineveh,
which were deposited in subterraneous apartments, began from the place
where they lived to dig under ground, in a direction towards them.
Having taken the most accurate measurement, they continued their mine
to the palace of the king; as night approached they regularly emptied
the earth into the Tigris, which flows near Nineveh, and at length
accomplished their purpose. A plan entirely similar was executed in
Egypt, except that the work was here carried on not by night but by
day; the Egyptians threw the earth into the Nile, as they dug it from
the trench; thus it was regularly dispersed, and this, as they told me,
was the process of the lake’s formation.[d]

Thus Herodotus explains what he but faintly understood; his translator
William Beloe has added the following commentary:[a]

Herodotus, Diodorus, and Pomponius Mela differ but little in opinion
concerning its extent. The design of it was probably to hinder the Nile
from overflowing the country too much, which was effected by drawing
off such a quantity of water, when it was apprehended that there might
be an inundation sufficient to hurt the land. [The regulation of the
Nile floods has been accomplished in the latter part of the nineteenth
century, by dams elsewhere described.] The water, Pococke observes, is
of a disagreeable muddy taste, and almost as salt as the sea, which
quality it probably contracts from the nitre that is in the earth, and
the salt which is every year left in the mud. The circumference of the
lake at present is no more than fifty leagues. Larcher says we must
distinguish betwixt the lake itself, and the canal of communication
from the Nile; that the former was the work of nature, the latter of
art. This canal, a most stupendous effort of art, is still entire; it
is called Bahr Yusuf, the canal of Joseph. According to Savary it is
forty leagues in length.

There were two other canals with sluices at their mouths, from the lake
to the river, which were alternately shut and opened when the Nile
increased or decreased. This work united every advantage, and supplied
the deficiencies of a low inundation, by retaining water which would
uselessly have been expended in the sea. It was still more beneficial
when the increase of the Nile was too great, by receiving that
superfluity which would have prevented seed-time. Were the canal of
Joseph cleansed, the ancient mounds repaired, and the sluices restored,
this lake might again serve the same purposes. The pyramids described
by Herodotus no longer exist, neither are they mentioned by Strabo.

When it is considered that this was the work of an individual, and that
its object was the advantage and comfort of a numerous people, it must
be agreed, with M. Savary, that the king who constructed it performed a
far more glorious work than either the Pyramids or the Labyrinth.[e]

The Sphinx itself is hardly more distinctly Egyptian than the ruins
of Karnak, a solemn memorial of Old Thebes. The famed Egyptologist,
Lepsius, visited the region and described the impression the ruins made
on him as follows:[a]

THE RUINS OF KARNAK

The river here divides the broad valley into two unequal parts. On the
west side it approaches close to the precipitous Libyan range, which
there projects; on the eastern side it bounds a wide fruitful plain,
extending as far as Medamut, a spot situated on the border of the
Arabian Desert, several hours distant. On this side stood the actual
town of Thebes, which seems to have been chiefly grouped round the two
great temples of Karnak and Luxor, situated above half an hour apart.
Karnak lies more to the north, and farther removed from the Nile; Luxor
is now actually washed by the waves of the river, and may even formerly
have been the harbour of the city. The west side of the river contained
the necropolis of Thebes, and all the temples which stood here referred
more or less to the worship of the dead; indeed, all the inhabitants of
this part, which was afterwards comprehended by the Greeks under the
name of Memnonia, seem to have been principally occupied with the care
of the dead and their tombs. The former extent of the Memnonia may be
now distinguished by Gurnah and Medinet Habu, places situated at the
northern and southern extremities.

A survey of the Theban monuments naturally begins with the ruins of
Karnak. Here stood the great royal temple of the hundred-gated Thebes,
which was dedicated to Amen-Ra, the King of the Gods, and to the
peculiar local god of the city of Amen, so called after him (No-Amen,
Diospolis). Ap, along with the feminine article Tap, from which the
Greeks made Thebe, was the name of one particular sanctuary of Amen.
It is also often employed in hieroglyphics in the singular, or still
more frequently in plural (Napu), as the name of the town; for which
reason the Greeks naturally, without changing the article along with
it, generally used the plural θῆβαι. The whole history of the Egyptian
monarchy, after the city of Amen was raised to be one of the two royal
residences in the land, is connected with this temple. All dynasties
emulated in the glory of having contributed their share to the
enlargement, embellishment, or restoration of this national sanctuary.

It was founded by their first king, the mighty Usertsen I, under the
Old Theban Royal Dynasty (XIIth of Manetho), between 2400 and 2300
B.C., and even now exhibits some ruins in the centre of the building
from that period bearing the name of this king. During the dynasties
immediately succeeding, which for several centuries groaned under the
yoke of the victorious hereditary enemy, this sanctuary no doubt was
also deserted, and nothing has been preserved which belonged to that
period. But after the first king of the XVIIIth Dynasty, Aahmes, in the
seventeenth century B.C., had succeeded in his first war against the
Hyksos, his two successors, Amenhotep I and Tehutimes I, built round
the remains of the most ancient sanctuary a magnificent temple, with a
great many chambers round the cella, and with a broad court, and pylons
appertaining to it, in front of which Tehutimes I erected two obelisks.
Two other pylons, with contiguous court walls, were built by the same
king, at a right angle with the temple in the direction of Luxor.

Tehutimes III and his sister enlarged this temple to the back by a
hall resting on fifty-six columns, besides many other chambers, which
surrounded it on three sides, and were encircled by one common outer
wall. The succeeding kings partly closed the temple more perfectly in
front, partly built new independent temples near it, and also placed
two more large pylons towards the southwest, in front of those erected
by Tehutimes I, so that now four lofty pylons formed the magnificent
entrance to the principal temple on this side.

But a far more splendid enlargement of the temple was executed in
the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. by the great Pharaohs
of the XIXth Dynasty; for Seti I, the father of Ramses Meri-Amen,
added in the original axis of the temple the most magnificent hall
of pillars that was ever seen in Egypt or elsewhere. The stone roof,
supported by 134 columns, covers a space of 164 feet in depth, and
320 feet in breadth. Each of the twelve central columns is 36 feet
in circumference, and 66 feet high beneath the architrave; the other
columns, 40 feet high, are 27 feet in circumference.

It is impossible to describe the overwhelming impression which is
experienced upon entering for the first time into this forest of
columns, and wandering from one range into the other, between the lofty
figures of gods and kings on every side represented on them, projecting
sometimes entirely, sometimes only in part. Every surface is covered
with various sculptures, now in relief, now sunk, which were, however,
only completed under the successors of the builder; most of them,
indeed, by his son Ramses Meri-Amen. In front of this hypostyle hall
was placed, at a later period, a great hypæthral court, 270 by 320 feet
in extent, decorated on the sides only with colonnades, and entered by
a magnificent pylon.

The principal part of the temple terminated here, comprising a length
of 1170 feet, not including the row of sphinxes in front of its
external pylon, nor the peculiar sanctuary which was placed by Ramses
Meri-Amen directly beside the wall farthest back in the temple, and
with the same axis, but turned in such a manner that its entrance was
on the opposite side. Including these enlargements, the entire length
must have amounted to nearly 2000 feet, reckoning to the most southern
gate of the external wall, which surrounded the whole space, which
was of nearly equal breadth. The later dynasties, who now found the
principal temples completed on all sides, but who also were desirous
of contributing their share to the embellishment of this centre of
the Theban worship, began partly to erect separate small temples on
the large level space which was surrounded by the above-mentioned
enclosure-wall, partly to extend these temples also externally.[f]

In almost unfailing sequence decline follows glory; and now, having
seen the ruined monuments of the Theban Kingdom, we may turn to
consider the ruin of her power.[a]

THE FALL OF THE THEBAN KINGDOM

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2250-1635 B.C.]]

The new family (XIIIth Dynasty) which ascended the throne with
Sebekhotep I, seems, from numerous similarities of name, to have been
connected with the previous dynasty; for instance, two of its rulers
took the prename of Amenemhat I, and their surname, generally supposed
to have been derived from the god’s name Sebek, is linked to the name
of the last queen, Sebek-neferu-Ra.

Sebekhotep I appears only once in the monuments, in a measurement
of the height of the Nile at Kummeh in the first year of his reign;
besides him only the sixth of his successors, with the remarkable name
of Amenie-Antef-Amenemhat are on the two altar tablets of the Theban
Amen.

Evidently none of these reigns was of long duration; usurpations and
probably also revolts of the nomarchs shook the kingdom, as at the end
of the VIth dynasty.

The Turin papyrus has an incision at Ranseneb, the eleventh or twelfth
successor of Sebekhotep I. Most of the rulers of the next family (about
fifteen in number) are known to us only by single monuments, and we see
that they still rule the united kingdoms of Usertsen III, from Tanis
to Semneh, albeit in a stormy fashion. Certainly one must not estimate
the accounts of their power and brilliancy too highly, as has been the
case lately. They have left us only short inscriptions and statues,
some of which are masterpieces of work, and albeit the former are of
short reigns and very circumscribed, they are full of significance. The
fact that the sixth king bore the name of Mermesha (_i.e._ General)
shows that he was an usurper. We have two colossal statues of this
ruler, found in Tanis. The tenth king, Neferhotep, was the son of a
private person, brought perhaps by marriage near to the throne, and
we find the name of this ruler here and there on temple buildings at
Karnak and Abydos; and finally the five reigns, of which we know the
duration are only very short; all these are points which cast a clear
light on the condition of Egypt at the time.

The above-named Neferhotep, who reigned eleven years, seems to have
been the most powerful ruler of the period; this great ruler appears
with his family in inscriptions in the district of the First Cataract
(Assuan, Konosso, Sehel) and in the temple of Karnak, also in a
large and very interesting inscription at Abydos, and the museum of
Bologna has a statue of him, as well as of his second son, Sebekhotep
V (Kha-nefer-Ra). The elder, Sehathor, died after a reign of a few
months. There was a colossal granite statue of Sebekhotep V found
at Tanis, another far in the Nubian country on the island of Arqo,
far above the Second Cataract, and the Louvre has two more. There is
frequent mention of him at Karnak. The three last rulers of this house
are of no great importance. Far less is known of the next rulers than
of the above. Their names, probably about a hundred, are divided into
dynasties and fill nearly five divisions of the Turin papyrus. Where
we have dates, there are, on the whole, about twenty-two, more or less
recognisable; they show that the reigns were of short duration, a few
months, one or two years, and, far more rarely, three or four years.
There is only one case of a longer reign, and that was in the case of
the first ruler of the new house, Mer-nefer-Ra Ai, who reigned thirteen
years, eight months, and eighteen days.

It follows that only a very few of these kings are known to us through
the monuments, and the majority only by insignificant memorials. Their
names appear only occasionally in the stone quarries at Hammamat, or
in Karnak and Abydos, or they have statues, which are far inferior to
those of the preceding epoch.

And yet we have from this, as well as from the preceding epoch, a line
of graves and tomb steles in Abydos, as well as numerous rock tombs in
El-Kab (Eleithyia), and probably also the great rock graves of Assiut
(Lycopolis), which attest the position and power of the high priests
of Anubis and the governors of the nome. They are as important for
this period as the graves of Beni-Hasan are for the XIIth Dynasty, but
unfortunately they are in a much worse condition, and much poorer in
historical information.

THE FOREIGN RULE

The facts above mentioned clearly show that the Egypt of this period
was governed under conditions similar to those existing in the Roman
Empire in the third century after Christ.

In fact, as a fuller light is thrown upon Egyptian history, there seems
to have been a whole line of dynasties, evidently local, coexistent
with the chief king at Thebes. If Neferhotep and Sebekhotep V still
reigned over Egypt from Nubia to Tanis, the Delta was lost under their
successors. It is not an improbable theory of Stern’s that Manetho’s
XIVth Dynasty of seventy-six kings from Xoïs (Sakha), in the western
Delta, included Libyan foreign rulers who occupied the Delta.

But the chief invaders of this time were an Asiatic race who made a
violent attack on the power of the Pharaohs at Thebes. They were the
Mentu, or, as they are now called, the Mentu of Satet, that is “the
barbarous Asiatic country.” They were called the Shepherds or Hyksos by
their contemporaries and by Manetho.

Of what race the Hyksos were, is not known. Some points in the account
show that we have here to do with an invasion of Bedouin races, one of
those frequent raids upon cultivated land by nomads of the desert.

Among the latest opinions on the subject is one that ascribes to the
Hyksos a partly Semitic and partly Turanian origin, and accounts for
their settling in Egypt by their being crowded out of western Asia in
the numerous race conflicts of which that part of the world was the
arena. The expelled people could find no resting-place among the wild
hordes of Syria, and moved on to the peaceful and fertile valley of the
Nile.

It is certain that Semitic and Canaanitish, not Arabic, elements
penetrated to Egypt under the Hyksos. The Egyptian language was
subsequently sprinkled with Canaanitish words; the specifically
Canaanitish divinities Baal Astarte (in the feminine form), Anit,
Reshpu, etc., were afterwards extensively worshipped in the eastern
Delta, and in the whole of Egypt. In the next centuries we find
Canaanitish proper names everywhere.

More accurate information on the invasion of the Hyksos is wanting. It
is certain that they settled in Lower Egypt, where they founded a state
which they ruled according to the Egyptian fashion. Their chief seats
were Avaris (Ha-Uar), the border fortress built or enlarged by them,
which is Pelusium, or a place a little to the south; and Tanis, the
powerful capital of the eastern Delta, ornamented by numerous buildings
of the XIIth Dynasty and the real residence of the Hyksos kings.

It seems, moreover, certain that Memphis, and even the Fayum,
remained in their hands; but Upper Egypt was at most conquered only
temporarily. Here ruled, during this epoch, the kings mentioned in the
five divisions of the Turin papyrus, and their successors, perhaps as
tributary vassals, since they occasionally bear the title of Haq, that
is, Prince.

King Meneptah, the son of the great Ramses, speaks of this time as “the
epoch of the kings of Lower Egypt, since this land Qem was in their
(power), and the accursed foe (Aad, the Plague) ruled at the time when
the kings of Upper Egypt (were powerless).”

It is very possible that the Hyksos pillaged Egypt in their conquests,
but Manetho’s assertion that they systematically destroyed the temples
and monuments is contradicted by the following facts. The chief god
they worshipped was Sutekh, or Set with the surname of “the Golden,”
by which the Sun-Baal is understood. They built him a great temple
in Tanis, and his cult was followed in the eastern Delta until later
times. He was also called “Lord of Avaris” at this time.

The Egyptian gods were, however, retained; the kings called themselves
“sons of Ra” and, like the Egyptian rulers, they chiefly begin their
throne names with “Ra.” Egyptian culture was generally adopted by the
foreigners.

The fact that we have a mathematical handbook under the rule of a
Hyksos king, written “according to old copies,” and that we have a
scribe’s palette, presented by the same king to the scribe Atu, shows
that writing was in vogue under their rule. The monuments ascribed to
them, particularly the sphinxes with kings’ heads, found at Tanis, a
group of two men before an altar with fish, the piece of a statue
from Mit-Fares in the Fayum, differ widely from the Egyptian type
in features and apparel, but the work is evidently that of Egyptian
artists, and most carefully executed.

The length of the rule of the Hyksos is as unknown to us as the number
of their kings. Manetho makes two dynasties (Dynasties XV and XVI)
rule, which, according to Josephus, reigned 511 years altogether over
the whole of Egypt, whilst the tables of Africanus give 284 to the XVth
(an evident misquotation of Josephus 260) and 518 to the XVIth. For
the XVIIth Dynasty, according to Africanus, 43 Shepherds and 43 Theban
kings ruled for 151 years; and this is the era of the struggle for
freedom, which ended with the expulsion of the Hyksos. It is impossible
for these figures to be correct, but there is no means of getting at
the historical truth, even approximately. It can be said, however,
that according to the monuments there is no gap of five hundred or
more years between the end of the XIIIth Dynasty and the beginning of
the New Kingdom. The pedigrees of the nomarchs and nobles of El-Kab
(Eileithyia) give names after a few generations, which are undoubtedly
contemporaneous with the XIIIth and XIVth Dynasties.

The monuments of the first rulers of the New Kingdom in Thebes show
the closest connection with the more ancient Theban, and strikingly so
with those of the XIth Dynasty. There is, certainly between the time of
Amenemhat and Sebekhotep and the New Kingdom, no distinctive break in
culture and art similar to that between the Old Kingdom of Memphis and
the XIIth Dynasty.

Manetho’s figures have evidently to be very considerably reduced. Some
of the short-lived rulers of the Egyptian dynasties must be regarded
as contemporaneous with the Hyksos kings and connected directly with
the first rulers of the New Kingdom who undertook the struggle for
emancipation.

If we allow 150 years for the first kings of the XIII Dynasty,--and
dates are inevitable,--about four hundred years would be reckoned from
the end of the XIIth Dynasty to the expulsion of the Hyksos under
Aahmes. Moreover, we also know that a Hyksos king, Nub, reigned four
hundred years before Ramses II.[g]

It will be clear to the reader, from the account just given, that the
period of the XIIIth-XVIIth Dynasties is one of which we have very
little knowledge. Not only is the Turin papyrus here much broken, but
the intrusion of the Hyksos has greatly confused the knowledge we
have indirectly from Manetho through Josephus, Africanus, Eusebius,
and others. Petrie has made a careful study of the subject, and his
conclusions are, in brief, as follows:

1. The Hyksos were not contemporaneous with the 453 years of the
XIIIth Dynasty.

2. There is a period of about 100 years during the XIVth Egyptian
Dynasty during which the Hyksos gradually came into power, and

3. The XVth Dynasty mentioned by Africanus and Eusebius represents
the 260 years of the great Hyksos kings, while Africanus has included
this period again in his XVIth Dynasty of 518 years. On the other hand,
the XVIth Dynasty mentioned by Eusebius is the Egyptian XVIth of 190
years, in which the native rulers persisted, but were ruled and almost
eclipsed by the invaders.

4. The XVIIth Dynasty of both Africanus and Eusebius (it will be
remembered that Josephus dealt only with the Hyksos and neglected the
contemporary Egyptian sovereigns) is a joint dynasty of Hyksos and
Egyptians. The number of its kings is quite unknown, and its period
witnessed the struggle of the two races which culminated in the triumph
of Aahmes I (XVIIIth Dynasty) and the restoration of the old race.

The following table, compiled from Petrie,[h] and keeping his dates,
will show the situation as viewed by this eminent authority:

=========================================================================
Date| | |Date| |
B.C.|Egyptian Dynasty| Years |B.C.| Hyksos Dynasty |Years
----+----------------+---------+----+------------------------------+-----
2565|XIII, (60 kings)| | | |
2112| | 453 |2112|14 years before Hyksos came to|
| | | | power. |
| | |2098| |
| | | | |
|XIV, (76 kings) | 184} | |Unknown period of 100 years} |
| | } | | during which Hyksos } |
| | } | | harried Egyptians. } |
| | } |1998| } |
1928| | }525 | |XV, (6 great Hyksos) 260 } |511
|XVI, (8 kings) | 190} | | years. } |
1738| | } |1738| } |
|XVII, (? kings) | 151} | |XVII, (? kings) 151 years. } |
1587| | } |1587| } |
=========================================================================

THE HYKSOS RULE; THE SEVENTEENTH DYNASTY

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2000-1635 B.C.]]

It has been most fortunate for our study of antiquity that Josephus’[i]
account of the early history of his people was received by the Greeks
with doubt and denial. In an impassioned answer to his critics the
great Jewish historian has preserved the only account we possess of the
appearance and fortunes of the Hyksos in Egypt, although of course he
is wrong in his theory that these people were Hebrews.

He quotes from Manetho[j]: “There was a king of ours whose name
was Timæus.” (The identity of this king has never been determined
with certainty. It may have been Amenemhat IV (XIIth Dynasty) or Ra
Amenemhat, the third king of the XIIIth.) “Under him it came to pass,
I know not how, that God was averse to us, and there came, after a
surprising manner, men of ignoble birth out of the eastern parts, and
had boldness enough to make an expedition into our country, and with
ease subdued it by force, yet without our hazarding a battle with them.”

It is possible that this campaign of unresisted conquest was
accomplished with the aid of factors hitherto unknown on the African
continent: the war chariot and the horse.[a]

“So when they had gotten those that governed us under their power,
they afterwards burnt down our cities and demolished the temples of
the gods, and used all the inhabitants after a most barbarous manner.
At length they made one of themselves king, whose name was Salatis; he
lived also at Memphis and made both the upper and lower regions pay
tribute, and left garrisons in places that were the most proper for
them. He chiefly aimed to secure the eastern parts, as foreseeing that
the Assyrians, who had then the greatest power, would be desirous of
that kingdom and invade them; and as he found in the Saïte [Sethroite]
nome, a city very proper for his purpose, and which lay upon the
Bubastic channel, called Avaris; this he rebuilt and made very strong
by walls, and by a most numerous garrison of two hundred and forty
thousand armed men to keep it. Thither Salatis came in summer-time,
partly to gather his corn, and pay his soldiers their wages, and
partly to exercise his armed men and thereby to terrify foreigners.
When this man had reigned thirteen years, after him reigned another,
whose name was Beon [or Bnon], for forty-four years, and after him
reigned another, called Apachnas, thirty-six years and seven months;
after him Apophis reigned sixty-one years, and then Ianias fifty years
and one month, after all these reigned Assis forty-nine years and two
months. And these six were the first rulers among them, who were all
along making war with the Egyptians, and were very desirous gradually
to destroy them to the very roots. This whole nation was called
Hyksos, _i.e._ Shepherd kings. These people and their descendants kept
possession of Egypt 511 years.

“And after this the kings of the Thebaïd and of the other parts of
Egypt made an insurrection against the Shepherds, and a terrible and
long war was made between them.

“Under a king whose name was Alisphragmuthosis, the Shepherds were
subdued, and were indeed driven out of other parts of Egypt, but were
shut up in a place that contained ten thousand acres; this place was
named Avaris.

“The Shepherds built a wall around all this place, which was a large
and strong wall, and this in order to keep all their possessions and
their prey within a place of strength, but that Thummosis, the son of
Alisphragmuthosis made an attempt to take them by force and by siege,
with four hundred and eighty thousand men to lie round about them;
but that upon his despair of taking the place by that siege, they
came to an agreement with them, that they should leave Egypt and go
without any harm to be done them, whithersoever they would; and after
this agreement was made, they went away with their whole families and
effects, not fewer in number than two hundred and forty thousand, and
took their journey from Egypt, through the wilderness, for Syria; but
as they were in fear of the Assyrians, who had then the dominion over
Asia, they built a city in that country which is now called Judah, and
that large enough to contain this great number of men, and called it
Hierosolyma (Jerusalem).”[i]

[Illustration: CAPTIVES BEFORE THE PHARAOH]

The modern historian is brought face to face with the fact that for
the period of the XIIIth to the XVIIIth Dynasties there is even less
material and information than for that other “dark age” extending from
the VIIth to the XIth. The main facts of our knowledge concerning the
XIIIth Dynasty have been given in the preceding chapter. The Hyksos
were settled in the land but had not yet come to power. The Pharaohs
were still in full possession of Upper and Lower Egypt.

This cannot have been the case with the XIVth, which Manetho tells
us had its capital at Xoïs (Sakha, a town on the western side of the
central Delta), from which it would seem probable that the invaders
drove the ruling house to the west instead of southward, up the Nile,
perhaps because the broad river and its wide marsh-land were found
to be the best means of defence against a people acquainted hitherto
with only small and insignificant streams. The Turin papyrus gives
eighty-five names for this dynasty; Manetho’s figure is seventy-six,
and of only two of them are there even the slightest remains. For the
184 years this dynasty is said to have ruled, the average length of
reign is therefore only 2½ years. How may we explain this? There seems
to be little doubt that the untrammelled rule of this dynasty lasted
but a few years, perhaps less than twenty. By degrees the Hyksos chiefs
attained influence and power, until, as Professor Petrie says, the
native kings “were merely the puppets of the Hyksos power, the heads
of the native administration which was maintained for taxing purposes;
like the last emperors of Rome, whose reigns also average two years and
a half, or like the Coptic administration of Egypt, maintained during
the supremacy of Islam in Egypt as being the only practical way of
working the country. Later on, when the Hyksos had established a firm
hold on all the land and had a strong rule of their own, these native
viceroys were permitted a longer tenure of power, and formed the XVIth
Dynasty contemporary with the great Hyksos kings.”

[Illustration: COSTUME OF A SOLDIER OF PHARAOH]

The first Hyksos kings seem, from the very beginning, to have
appreciated fully that it was better to exploit the country than to
devastate it, and to this end they retained the temple scribes and
other officials of the native rulers. The influence of the organised
government soon bore effect.

All the pomp and circumstance of Pharaoh’s court were revived; the new
sovereigns had become civilised, and they managed, by adopting the
titles of the Amenemhats and Usertsens, to legitimise themselves as
descendants of Horus and “sons of Ra.” The local religions were not
interfered with, but the chief object of their worship was Baal, “the
lord of all, a cruel and savage warrior,” and from his great similarity
to Set, “the brother and enemy of Osiris,” Baal and Set soon became
identified, and Set was now called Sutekh, “the Great Set.”

The six great Hyksos kings--those mentioned in the Josephus-Manetho
account--may be considered as composing the XVth Dynasty. Their rule
of nearly 260 years marked the zenith of Hyksos power. There was as yet
no sign of rebellion amongst the conquered people.

But when we come to the so-called XVIIth Dynasty the years are no
longer tranquil and authority undisputed. As stated in the preceding
chapter, it is the better plan to regard this dynasty as a joint one
of Shepherds and Egyptians, for its rise is wholly lost to sight under
the Hyksos power. We know that the Hyksos Apophis (Apepa I) ruled the
whole land, for his name is found far in the south; but in the days of
his namesake Apophis (Apepa II), some three hundred years later, Thebes
was practically independent. The compilers of the lists make mention of
unsuccessful attempts at rebellion on the part of the Theban vassals,
for some time before Apepa II, but this ruler had to meet a decisive
revolt under Seqenen-Ra-Taa I, who was _haq_ (prince or regent) over
the South. There is no information as to the cause of the outbreak or
its consequences, but the tale of “Apepa and Seqenen-Ra,” so popular
with readers five hundred years later, asserts that the cause of the
quarrel was a religious one, since Thebes refused to worship no other
gods but Sutekh. Seqenen-Ra would seem to have been the descendant
of a branch of the royal Egyptian line, settled in the far south to
escape the Hyksos oppression, and which, intermarrying with Ethiopian
blood, had become possessed of the characteristics of the dark Berber
race. With the decay of the Hyksos power, these people gradually worked
their way northward from Nubia, and began the re-winning of the land
for the ancient line of Pharaohs. For eighty years after the death of
Assis we have no names of these Berbers, but finally Seqenen-Ra I, in
the days of Apepa II, declared himself “Son of the Sun and King of
the Two Egypts,” and the princes of the Saïd made common cause with
him. Now the native rulers of the XVIIth Dynasty free themselves from
any confusion with the Hyksos, and the strife has become a serious
one. A second Seqenen-Ra, bearing the same family name Taa, followed
the first, and then a third, whose wife Aah-hotep is one of the great
queens of Egyptian history, further celebrated as the mother of the
honoured Nefert-ari. Aah-hotep in all probability was married before,
to an Egyptian and not a Berber husband, and by him was the mother of
an elder Aahmes, who died prematurely, and his three brothers, Kames,
Sekhent-neb-Ra, and a second Aahmes, the Amasis of the Greeks, who
founded the XVIIIth Dynasty.

[Illustration: EGYPTIAN GYMNASTS

(From the monuments)]

Professor Maspero, one of the greatest authorities for this period of
Egyptian history, holds to the belief that Seqenen-Ra-Taa III was the
sole husband of Aah-hotep, and consequently the father of Aahmes, his
brothers, and Nefert-ari. Dr. Petrie, however, one of the most recent
of investigators, says: “Aahmes is always (except once) shown of the
same colour as other Egyptians, while Nefert-ari is almost always
coloured black. And any symbolic reason invented to account for such
colouring applies equally to her brother, who is nevertheless not
black. As Nefert-ari was especially venerated as the ancestress of the
dynasty, we must suppose that she was in the unbroken female line of
descent, in which the royal succession appears to have been reckoned,
and hence her black colour is more likely to have come through her
father. The only conclusion, if these points should be established, is
that the Queen Aah-hotep had two husbands; the one black (the father
of Nefert-ari), the celebrated Seqenen-Ra, who was of Berber type; the
other an Egyptian, the father of Aahmes and his elder brothers.”

There is little known of Aah-hotep’s origin beyond that she was of
pure royal descent, but there are documents which attest to her very
long and eventful life. In the tenth year of Amenhotep I she was still
active and must have been nearly ninety years old; and if a stele found
at Iufi is to be credited, she was alive, and about a hundred, under
her great-grandson Tehutimes I.

Aah-hotep would have had every right to rule as sovereign, but she
willingly gave over the power to her sons. When she died her body was
embalmed with special care, and a beautifully gilded mummy-case was
made for her. Within this coffin was placed the jewelry, presents from
husband and sons, which until recently has been the most famous find
of its kind. Most of the trinkets are for feminine use: bracelets,
solid and hollow gold ankle rings, others of gold beads, lapis lazuli,
cornelian, and green feldspar, a fan with a gold inlaid handle, a
mirror of gilt bronze with handle of ebony, etc.

This wonderful woman in the course of her long life must have witnessed
the whole drama of the restoration. Born when the heel of the Hyksos
was still felt in the land, she closed her eyes, not only with her
country free and her family firmly seated on the throne, but with the
Syrian fatherland of the hated usurpers under heavy tribute, the fruits
of the conquests of her own descendants to the third generation.

Kames and Sekhnet-neb-Ra quickly succeeded Seqenen-Ra III. The struggle
against the Shepherd kings was kept up, and when Aahmes found himself
Pharaoh, nearly the whole of the country was free, and only the
provinces about Ha-Uar (Avaris) remained to the Hyksos; but here they
were prepared to make a desperate stand.[a]

CHAPTER IV. THE RESTORATION

[XVIIITH DYNASTY: _ca._ 1635-1365 B.C.]

Walled towns, stored arsenals and armories, goodly races of horse,
chariots of war, elephants, ordnance, artillery, and the like--all
this is but a sheep in a lion’s skin, except the breed and
disposition of the people be stout and warlike.--BACON.

It has just been shown that the leading dynasties of the Theban
kingdom, before the invasion of the Hyksos, had essentially a pacific
character. Their epoch was a period of social, literary and artistic
activity, such as usually comes to a nation only at the apex of its
career, or as it is passing into its decline. It was so here. Egypt
as a nation was soon overthrown; an outside people invaded the sacred
precincts, so jealously guarded hitherto from even peaceful intrusion,
usurped the power, and for some centuries dominated the original
inhabitants. These invaders, as we have seen, were of a more primitive
type of civilisation than the Egyptians. Their reign was a time of
apparently retrograde evolution, marked to after generations by no
lasting monuments such as made earlier generations famous.

Yet it may be questioned whether, on the whole, the influence of these
semi-barbarians upon the cultured but somewhat degenerate stock of
the ancient civilisation, may not have been in the highest degree
beneficial.

Everywhere in history we shall see that the virile stock is the stock
which is not weakened by too many generations of that luxury which
seems to be the necessary associate of higher culture. We shall see
also that a mixed race is always at a premium. A nation which shuts
itself off from contact with other nations is in the condition of a
finely inbred race of domesticated animals. The racial peculiarities
may be greatly developed, certain finer traits of mind and body may be
highly intensified. But in the full rounding out of aggregate powers of
mind and body, there is a deviation that amounts to degeneration. And
when this weakened stock comes into competition with some cruder but
sturdier race, the issue is not in doubt; the fate awaits it that befel
the Egyptians at the hands of the “barbaric” Hyksos invaders.

But a degenerate or perverted stock often shows marvellous powers of
recuperation under influence of changed conditions, and an infusion
of fresh blood grafted on such a stock can work wonders. It is said
that the highly developed greyhound was useless as a hunting dog till
crossed with a strain of bulldog--an infusion of blood which, while
not marring the distinctive physical peculiarities of the hound, yet
quite sufficed to supply the lacking stamina and courage. It may be
questioned whether precisely such a vitalising influence as this may
not have come to the Egyptians through the Hyksos invasion. It is
hardly to be supposed that the invaders remained for centuries in Egypt
in sufficient numbers to maintain absolute political control without
having some ethnic influence; and if this be admitted, it is hardly in
doubt, physiologically speaking, that such influence, in this closely
inbred race, would be beneficial. It might graft the bulldog spirit of
the Hyksos upon the greyhound-spirited Egyptian nation. But whether
or not this be the explanation of the change that now came over the
national spirit, it was surely a bulldog nation that now emerged from
the Hyksos thraldom and started out upon a world-conquest. In tracing
the course of events in this new epoch we see Egypt approaching the
apex of its power.

THE HYKSOS EXPULSION: AAHMES AND HIS SUCCESSORS

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1635-1610 B.C.]]

Aahmes must have been between twenty-five and thirty years of age
when, as survivor of his elder brothers, he came to the throne. He had
married Nefert-ari, his sister or half-sister, as the case may be, who
may previously have been an inmate of his brothers’ harems as well; and
her own royal rights, joined to his own, established a legal claim for
Aahmes to the kingdom such as few Pharaohs have possessed.

His mummy shows him to have been of medium height, with well-developed
neck and chest. The head is small, the forehead low and narrow, the
cheek bones project, and the hair is thick and wavy. He was undoubtedly
a strong, active, warlike man, which qualities won him success in his
wars.

From what we know now of the condition of the struggle against the
Hyksos, at the time of the accession of Aahmes,--that their rule had
been limited to the district around Avaris,--no doubt the credit due
to this king for finally expelling them has been greatly exaggerated.
Yet, concentrated and strongly intrenched as they were in the fortress
of Ha-Uar, they were by no means insignificant adversaries. From their
position, made the more inaccessible by the marsh-lands and rivers of
the Delta, and by the neighbouring desert, there was always danger of
an attempt upon Memphis, and Aahmes is the one who removed this last
menace to the re-established kingdom, and made his dominion over the
whole country secure. Therefore the official chroniclers had every
reason to begin a new dynasty with the accession of this great king.

For the actual expulsion of the Hyksos we have two accounts: that of
Manetho transcribed by Josephus and quoted in the preceding chapter,
and that of the doughty namesake of the king, Aahmes-si-Abana (son of
Abana), as recorded on his tomb at El-Kab.

The Manetho version runs that Aahmes (Alisphragmuthosis) shut the
Shepherds up in Avaris, whence they were finally ejected and driven
into Syria by his grandson, Tehutimes I. This, however, is a mistake,
and the Egyptian historian has undoubtedly confused the taking of
Avaris with the Syrian wars of Tehutimes. Aahmes-si-Abana makes no
mention of Tehutimes taking Avaris.[a]

His account, therefore, is the more accurate and complete. This is the
tale on his tomb:

“The dead Admiral Aahmes, son of Abana. He speaks thus: ‘I say to you,
all men; and I make known to you the rewards and honours that have
fallen to my lot. I was presented with golden gifts eight times before
the whole land, and with many slaves, male and female; likewise I was
given much land. The title of “the Brave” which I gained shall never
perish in this land.’

“He speaks further: ‘I saw the light in the city of Nekheb [El-Kab].
My father was a captain of King Seqenen-Ra; Baba son of Roant was his
name. Then I took his place on the ship called _The Calf_, in the days
of King Neb-pehthet-Ra [Aahmes]. I was young and had no wife and I wore
the _semt_ cloth and the _shennu_ [garments of youth]. But as soon as I
had taken a house, I was placed on the ship _The North_ because of my
valour, and I had to attend the sovereign--life, health, strength be
his--on foot when he rode forth in his chariot.

“‘The town of Ha-Uar [Avaris] was besieged, and I showed my
worth in the presence of his Majesty. I was promoted to the ship
_Kha-em-men-nefer_ [Accession in Memphis]. They fought in the Pazekthu
canal, near Avaris. I fought hand to hand, and I carried off a hand.
The king’s herald saw this, and the golden collar of bravery was given
me. They fought a second time at this place and again I captured a
hand; a second golden gift was given me.

“‘They fought at Ta-kemt, south of the city. There I took a living
prisoner. I plunged into the water--I led him through the water so as
to keep away from the road to the town. This was made known to the
herald of the king; I received the golden gift once more.

“‘They took Ha-Uar; I carried away from thence one man and three women;
his Majesty gave them to me as slaves.’”[b]

[Illustration: EGYPTIAN INFANTRY]

In the time of the Ptolemies, tradition had it that King Aahmes
appeared before Avaris with an army of four hundred and eighty thousand
men, that there was a long siege, which was finally ended by the king
treating with the besieged and permitting them to depart peacefully,
with their wives, children, and possessions, into Syria. But the truth
is, that Aahmes had a well organised and equipped army of fifteen to
twenty thousand men, and that the town was taken on the second attack.
The enemy left their last strongholds in haste and retreated into the
bordering provinces of Syria. For some reason--they may have threatened
him from some new vantage point, or he may have wished to deal a final
crushing blow--Aahmes determined to cross the frontier, which he did in
the fifth year of his reign. It was the first time in centuries that
the king of Egypt had set foot in Asia, and even now he barely crossed
the threshold.[a]

Admiral Aahmes continues his narrative:

“They besieged the town of Sharhana [Sherohan], in the year V, and his
Majesty took it. I carried off from thence two women and one hand, and
the golden collar of valour was given me. And my captives were given me
for slaves.”

After the capture of Sherohan, Aahmes went on to the border provinces
of Zahi (Phœnicia) and then turned back. The fall of the Palestine town
crushed the Hyksos’ last hope of recovering their Egyptian domain. The
majority of their race had not fled with the army, but had remained
with other tribes that had followed them into Egypt--the Israelites
among them--to accept whatever lot was meted out by the new conquerors.
The yoke was not imposed equally throughout the land. Those living in
the Delta regions were reduced to slavery, and all that part of the
country was well fortified to resist the Bedouin.

Aahmes returned to Africa only to find his presence needed in the
South. The land of Nubia, tributary to the lords of Thebes, had been
somewhat neglected during the long struggle which the Pharaoh had just
successfully terminated. The southern races had failed to assimilate
the gift of culture and civilisation thrust upon them by the rulers of
the XIIth and XIIIth Dynasties, and kept to their own customs while the
temples erected by Usertsen and Amenemhat crumbled and vanished. From
out this disordered state developed a serious invasion from the Sudan.
Hostile tribes--which ones, we know not--descended the Nile, outraging
the people and desecrating the sanctuaries. Aahmes hastened to meet
them.

“His Majesty went south,” runs the record of Aahmes the admiral, “to
Khent-en-nefer to destroy the Anu Khenti, and his Majesty made great
havoc among them. I captured two live men and three hands; once more
I was given the gold of valour, and my two captives were given to me
for slaves. Then his Majesty came down the river; his heart swelled
with his brave and victorious deeds; he had conquered the people of the
South and of the North.”

The triumph of the return was dimmed by disquieting news from the
North. The remains of the Hyksos race had taken advantage of Aahmes’
absence in the South to break out in rebellion. There seem to have been
two outbursts. One by the Aata, probably a branch of the Hyksos, which
marched southward and was destroyed by Aahmes at Tentoa, the other by a
powerful faction under a certain Teta-an. Aahmes-si-Abana tells of his
fate:

“Then came that enemy named Teta-an; he had brought wicked rebels
together. But his Majesty slaughtered him and his slaves even to
extinction.”[b]

Thus was stamped out the last spark of Asiatic resistance. There are
no more records of expeditions undertaken in this Pharaoh’s reign--at
least none in which he took part.

From the crushing of Teta-an, about the sixth year, to the
twenty-second, the monuments are silent; and when again they speak
we find a peaceful and not a warlike monarch. It is a law of human
progress that an age of military success is followed by a revival of
art and building activity. At the end of Aahmes’ reign--he ruled about
twenty-five years--this condition prevailed throughout the kingdom.
The principal temples of the land were restored or rebuilt. The reward
of the gods for their divine aid in the deliverance of Egypt was thus
bestowed. A tenth of all the booty of victory was devoted to the needs
of the religious cult. Sculptors and painters, for whom there had been
centuries of little or no employment, recovered their skill in the
revived demand for their services, and, indeed, a new school, with
new ideas and methods, came into existence under the great impetus to
culture. In the twenty-second year the quarries of Turah were reopened
that building stone might be obtained for the temples of Ptah at
Memphis and Amen at Thebes, although nothing was done to the latter
until a later reign.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1610-1590 B.C.]]

Aahmes died when he was between fifty and sixty. They buried the great
Pharaoh in a modest place he had prepared for himself in the necropolis
of Drah-abu’l-Neggah. His worship continued for nearly a thousand
years, and of him--and still more of Queen Nefert-ari--there exist more
instances of adoration than of any other ruler.

Aahmes left a numerous progeny, and six or seven of his children had
Nefert-ari for mother. The eldest seems to have been named Sapair, but
he died when young, and it is probable that a Se-Amen was the second
son and that he too never reached maturity. But whether Amenhotep I
was the second or third of Aahmes’ male issue, the kingship devolved
upon him. As he was still in his minority, the queen mother assumed
the reins of government. Nefert-ari had been no idle inmate of her
husband’s harem, and she now asserted her many titles to authority,
some of which had precedence over those of her husband and son.
There is nothing known of her joint rule with Amenhotep, but it was
undoubtedly a prosperous one. She was worshipped after death as a
divinity, on a plane, indeed, with the great Theban triad, Amen,
Khonsu, and Mut, for all the rights of the royal line descended
through her. Her sons, Sapair and Amenhotep, her daughters, Set-amen,
Set-kames, and Merit-amen, also shared in the worship.

[Illustration: WAR CHARIOT OF THE PHARAOH]

Amenhotep does not seem to have been ambitious for foreign conquest.
His campaigns were confined to Africa. The chief chronicle of his reign
is again that tomb at El-Kab whereon Aahmes, son of Abana, recorded his
exploits. The brave admiral was now nearly fifty years of age.

“It fell to me,” he relates, “to carry King Zeser-ka-Ra [Amenhotep I]
on his voyage to Cush, where he went to extend the frontiers of Egypt.
His majesty smote these Anu Khenti [Nubians] from the midst of his
troops.

“Behold, I led our soldiers and I fought with all my strength. The
king saw my bravery, as I captured two hands and brought them to his
Majesty. In two days I bore his Majesty back to Egypt from the upper
land. And I was given the golden gift and two female slaves, and I was
raised to the dignity of ‘Warrior of the King.’”

The Nubian campaign was a short and unimportant one. A more important
one was directed against the Amukehaka, who apparently were a portion
of the Libyan race of the Tuhennu. These people had for centuries been
restless and given trouble to the Pharaohs, but the strength of the New
Kingdom was now entirely able to cope with them. Notwithstanding these
few campaigns, the reign of Amenhotep I is to be characterised as one
of peace and internal prosperity. He merely attained in the South and
West that security his father had brought about in the North. Commerce,
agriculture, and town life flourished, and indeed he well deserved the
veneration which for centuries was accorded him in the Theban capital
and where he is represented as Osiris. The coffin and mummy of this
king were among Professor Maspero’s wonderful find at Deir-el-Bahari.
He thus tells of it: “Long garlands of faded flowers deck the mummy
from head to foot. A wasp attracted by their scent must have settled
upon them at the moment of burial, and become imprisoned by the lid;
the insect has been completely preserved from corruption by the balsams
of the embalmer, and its gauzy wings have passed uncrumpled through the
long centuries.”

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1590-1565 B.C.]]

Amenhotep married his own sister, Aah-hotep II, and among their
children was a princess, Aahmes. The Pharaoh had also, by a concubine,
Sensenb, a son, Tehutimes, who was married to his half-sister Aahmes.
Tehutimes was probably a little younger than his wife. Aahmes, from her
pure royal descent, had far more claim to the throne than her husband
and brother, but for some reason she yielded her rights, and Tehutimes
was crowned at Thebes the 21st of Phamenoth, the third month. If he
had been co-regent with his father, it must have been for a short
time only. The new king was a tall, broad-shouldered, well-knit man,
possessed of great powers of endurance. His full round face is marked
with a long nose and square chin, and his thick lips wear a smiling but
firm expression.

The beginnings of a new spirit, which was destined to break up the
isolation of the kingdoms of antiquity, were stirring in this monarch’s
soul. With his own country in practical subjection, there came that
inevitable desire to intrude into other lands. We have seen how the
Pharaohs had always shown a certain timidity about passing the Isthmus
of Suez, and how Aahmes, well equipped for foreign conquest as he was,
had hastened home after he had once driven the fleeing Hyksos across
the border. His was no spirit of world conquest; but with Tehutimes
the case was different, although certain domestic troubles kept him
for the time at home. The neighbouring land of Syria, with its large
and wealthy towns, growing richer every day through a well-organised
commerce on land and sea, had previously been invaded by the Chaldeans
and was now under their undisputed sway; and when this same spirit was
once aroused in the fresh and vigorous kingdom of the restoration,
what was more natural than that its cupidity should turn in this same
direction? But some difficulties at home for the time being prevented,
Tehutimes I had to repress outbreaks in the vicinity of the Second and
Third Cataracts.

The story of Aahmes, now nearly seventy years of age, relates:

“It fell to me to carry the king Aa-kheper-ka-Ra [Tehutimes I] on his
voyage to Khent-en-nefer for the purpose of punishing the rebels among
the tribes and of quelling the marauders from the hills. On his ships
I showed valour, and I was raised to be an admiral of the marines.
Their people were carried off alive and captives. His Majesty returned
down the river; all the lands were now under his rule. That vile king
of the Anu of Khenti was held head down when the king landed at Thebes.”

It would be valuable and interesting to know what impression the
strange land of Syria, with its wide, irregular plains, its high,
snow-topped mountains, its walled towns perched in difficult positions
in inaccessible places, its people different in customs and with a
civilisation not below their own, made upon the Theban legions when at
last they found themselves in Palestine. But of what they thought and
felt, they have left no word. The lines with which Aahmes of El-Kab
closes the record of this long life--he must have been over ninety when
he died--goes no more into detail than the rest of his account.

“After this, his Majesty--life, health, and strength be his--went to
Ruthen to take satisfaction upon the countries. His Majesty arrived at
Naharain [Upper Mesopotamia]; he found the enemy that conspired against
him. His Majesty made great destruction among them; an immense number
of live captives was carried off from the victories.

“Behold, I was at the head of our soldiers. His Majesty saw my bravery
as I captured a chariot, its horses and those who were in it. I took
them to his Majesty and was once more given the collar of gold for
valour. I have grown up and reached old age; my honours are many. I
shall rest in my tomb which I myself have made.”

Tehutimes in his first campaign went far beyond his grandfather, and
his route--Gaza to Megiddo, to Kadesh, to Carchemish--became in later
times that followed by the Egyptians whenever they descended upon the
Euphrates. Of the fortunes of his progress we have not the slightest
information, except as Aahmes tells us, he met the enemy in Naharain.
The opposing army was under the command of the king of Mitanni, or
perhaps one of the captains of the Kossæan king of Babylon, and all
the petty princes of the northern provinces served in it with their
troops to repel the new invader. But the victory was Tehutimes’. No
doubt his army was superior to that of his opponents. Its organisation
and training had steadily improved since the days of Aahmes, for it
was constantly called into service against the tribes of Ethiopia and
Libya. The Syrians were wanting neither in efficiency nor bravery, but
their country was much disorganised and their number of fighting men by
no means so great as their enemy’s. Therefore they could not command
such a force as the Egyptians mustered against them.

Tehutimes erected a stele on the Euphrates to mark the limits of his
dominion, and then turned back, richly laden, to Thebes. The later
Pharaohs, whenever they invaded Asia, pursued similar methods--a
sudden advance diagonally to the northeast, routing and dispersing
any opposing force, spreading destruction on every hand, then a quick
return to the fatherland, before the approaching winter would put an
end to all action.

But Tehutimes’ success in his first expedition was so decisive, so
overwhelming, that he never found it necessary again to cross the
Isthmus. Southern Syria made no murmur against the burden laid upon
it, although the North, it is true, soon slipped from the Pharaoh’s
grasp, if indeed he ever had his grip upon it. A strong garrison was
left at Gaza, and the king returned to his still rebellious subjects
in Ethiopia and Nubia. Two or three rebellions were easily silenced.
On these expeditions Tehutimes passed through the old canal built by
Usertsen III, and on the rocks that border it have been found many
interesting inscriptions relating to the trip. One at Assuan reads,
“Year III, Pakhons 20, his Majesty passed this canal in force and
power in his campaign to crush Ethiopia, the vile”; on another there
is cut, “His Majesty came to Cush to crush the vile”; and on a third,
“His Majesty commanded to clear this canal, after he found it filled
with stones so that no boat could pass up it. He passed up it, his
heart filled with joy.” The king now placed the affairs of his southern
lands in the hands of a viceroy, who is called “Royal Son of Cush,”
and must, therefore, have had the blood of Ra in his veins. Likewise
the king made extensive provisions for fortifications. He restored the
fortresses of Semneh and Kummeh to the efficiency they possessed in
the great days of the XIIth Dynasty, and he built a brickwork citadel
to command the Nile on the island of Tombos, near the Third Cataract.
All these precautions enabled Tehutimes I to live out the remainder
of a reign of about twenty-five years in complete peace. The strange
circumstance of his later years and the problems of his successor are
well recounted in Maspero’s monumental work on “The Struggle of the
Nations” and his history of the ancient oriental peoples.[a]

The position of Tehutimes I was, indeed, a curious one; although _de
facto_ absolute in power, his children by Queen Aahmes took precedence
of him, for by her mother’s descent she had a better right to the crown
than her husband, and legally the king should have retired in favour
of his sons as soon as they were old enough to reign. [According to
Petrie, these two were children of Amenhotep I by Queen Aah-hotep and
consequently brothers of Queen Aahmes.] The eldest of them, Uazmes,
died early. The second, Amenmes, lived at least to attain adolescence:
he was allowed to share the crown with his father from the fourth year
of the latter’s reign, and he also held a military command in the
Delta, but before long he also died, and Tehutimes I was left with
only one son--a Tehutimes like himself--to succeed him. The mother of
this prince was a certain Mut-nefert, half-sister to the king on his
father’s side, who enjoyed such a high rank in the royal family that
her husband allowed her to be portrayed in royal dress; her pedigree on
the mother’s side, however, was not so distinguished, and precluded her
son from being recognised as heir-apparent; hence the occupation of the
“seat of Horus” reverted once more to a woman, Hatshepsitu, the eldest
daughter of Aahmes.

TEHUTIMES II; QUEEN HATSHEPSU

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1565-1530 B.C.]]

Hatshepsitu herself was not, however, of purely divine descent. Her
paternal ancestor, Sensenb, had not been a scion of the royal house,
and this flaw in her pedigree threatened to mar, in her case, the
sanctity of the solar blood. According to Egyptian belief, this defect
of birth could be remedied only by a miracle, and the ancestral god,
becoming incarnate in the earthly father at the moment of conception
had to condescend to infuse fresh virtue into his race in this manner.
The inscriptions with which Hatshepsitu decorated her chapel relate
how, on that fateful night, Amen descended upon Aahmes in a flood of
perfume and light. The queen received him favourably, and the divine
spouse on leaving her announced to her the approaching birth of a
daughter, in whom his valour and strength should be manifested once
more here below.

The sequel of the story is displayed in a series of pictures. The
protecting divinities who preside over the birth of children conduct
the queen to her couch, and the sorrowful resignation depicted on her
face, together with the languid grace of her whole figure, display in
this portrait of her a finished work of art. The child enters the world
amid shouts of joy, and the propitious genii who nourish both her and
her double, constitute themselves her nurses. At the appointed time,
her earthly father summons the great nobles to a solemn festival, and
presents to them his daughter, who is to reign with him over Egypt and
the world.

From henceforth Hatshepsitu adopts every possible device to conceal
her sex. She changes the termination of her name, and calls herself
Hatshepsu, the “Chief of the Nobles,” in lieu of Hatshepsitu, the
“Chief of the Favourites.” She becomes the King Maat-ka-Ra, and on the
occasion of all public ceremonies she appears in male costume.

[Illustration: HEAD-DRESS OF AN EGYPTIAN QUEEN]

We see her represented on Theban monuments with uncovered shoulders,
devoid of breasts, wearing the short loin-cloth and the keffieh, while
the diadem rests on her closely cut hair, and the false beard depends
from her chin. She retained, however, the feminine pronoun in speaking
of herself, and also an epithet, inserted in her cartouche, which
declared her to be the betrothed of Amen--_Khnem Amen_. Her father
united her while still young to her brother Tehutimes, who appears
to have been her junior, and this fact doubtless explains the very
subordinate part which he plays beside the queen. When Tehutimes I
died, Egyptian etiquette demanded that a man should be at the head of
affairs, and this youth succeeded his father in office: but Hatshepsu,
while relinquishing the semblance of power and the externals of pomp
to her husband, kept the direction of the state entirely in her own
hands. The portraits of her which have been preserved represent her as
having refined features, with a proud and energetic expression. The
oval of the face is elongated, the cheeks a little hollow, and the
eyes deep set under the arch of the brow, while the lips are thin and
tightly closed. She governed with so firm a hand that neither Egypt
nor its foreign vassals dared to make any serious attempt to withdraw
themselves from her authority. One raid, in which several prisoners
were taken, punished a rising of the Shasu in central Syria, while
the usual expeditions maintained order among the peoples of Ethiopia,
and quenched any attempt which they might make to revolt. When in the
second year of his reign the news was brought to Tehutimes II that the
inhabitants of the Upper Nile had ceased to observe the conditions
which his father had imposed upon them, he “became furious as a
panther,” and assembling his troops, set out for war without further
delay. The presence of the king with the army filled the rebels with
dismay, and a campaign of a few weeks put an end to their attempt at
rebelling. Tehutimes II carried on the works begun by his father, but
did not long survive him. The mask on his coffin represents him with
a smiling and amiable countenance, and with the fine pathetic eyes
which show his descent from the Pharaohs of the XIIth Dynasty. By his
marriage with Hatshepsu, Tehutimes left daughters only, but he had
one son, also a Tehutimes,[3] by a woman of low birth, perhaps merely
a slave, whose name was Aset. Hatshepsu proclaimed this child her
successor, for his youth and humble parentage could not excite her
jealousy. She betrothed him to her one surviving daughter, Hatshepsitu
II, and having thus settled the succession in the main line, she
continued to rule alone in the name of her nephew who was still a
minor, as she had done formerly in the case of her half-brother.

Her reign was a prosperous one, but whether the flourishing condition
of things was owing to the ability of her political administration
or to her fortunate choice of ministers, we are unable to tell. She
pressed forward the work of building with great activity, under the
direction of her architect Senmut, not only at Deir-el-Bahari, but at
Karnak, and indeed everywhere in Thebes. The plans of the building had
been arranged under Tehutimes I, and their execution had been carried
out so quickly that in many cases the queen had merely to see to the
sculptural ornamentation on the all-but-completed walls. This work,
however, afforded her sufficient excuse, according to Egyptian custom,
to attribute the whole structure to herself, and the opinion she had
of her own powers is exhibited with great naïveté in her inscriptions.
[A famous incident of her reign was the sending out of an expedition
across the Red Sea in quest of incense.]

[Illustration: TEHUTIMES II]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1530-1520 B.C.]]

When Tehutimes III approached manhood, his aunt, the queen, instead of
abdicating in his favour, associated him with herself more frequently
in the external acts of government. She was forced to yield him
precedence in those religious ceremonies which could be performed by
a man only, such as the dedication of one of the city gates of Ombos,
and the foundation and marking out of a temple at Medinet Habu; but
for the most part she obliged him to remain in the background and take
a secondary place beside her. We are unable to determine the precise
moment when this dual sovereignty came to an end. It was still existent
in the XVIth year of the reign, but it had ceased before the XXIInd
year. Death alone could take the sceptre from the hands that held it,
and Tehutimes had to curb his impatience for many a long day before
becoming the real master of Egypt. He was about twenty-five years of
age[4] when this event took place, and he immediately revenged himself
for the long repression he had undergone, by endeavouring to destroy
the very remembrance of her whom he regarded as a usurper. Every
portrait of her that he could deface without exposing himself to being
accused of sacrilege, was cut away, and he substituted for her name
either that of Tehutimes I or of Tehutimes II. A complete political
change was effected both at home and abroad from the first day of his
accession to power. Hatshepsu had been averse to war. During the whole
of her reign there had not been a single campaign undertaken beyond the
Isthmus of Suez, and by the end of her life she had lost nearly all
that her father had gained in Syria; the people of Kharu [Phœnicia] had
shaken off the yoke, probably at the instigation of the king of the
Amorites, and nothing remained to Egypt of the Asiatic province but
Gaza, Sharhana, and the neighbouring villages.[c]

One of the first acts of Tehutimes III as sole king, was to lead an
expedition against Syria, where the constant revolts had weakened the
power of Egypt. He arrived at Gaza on the 3rd (or 4th) of the month of
Pakhons. There he celebrated the anniversary of his coronation, and the
twenty-third year of his reign. He then proceeded by gentle marches
to Ihem, twenty miles to the north of Gaza, where he learned from his
envoys, that the king of Kadesh had intrenched himself at Megiddo, with
a contingent of the rebels.

TRIUMPHS OF TEHUTIMES III; HIS SUCCESSORS

Fear of the danger of the mountain defiles near Aluna made some of the
officers wish to turn back and go by the Ziftha road. But Tehutimes
indignantly rejected their counsel, saying:

“By my life, by the love that Ra has for me, by the favour bestowed on
me by my father Amen, my Majesty will take this road of Aluna, whether
it please you to take any of the other routes suggested, or whether it
please you to follow me. For would not these vile enemies, detested by
Ra, say: ‘If Pharaoh is going by another route, he is going for fear of
us’?”

Then the Pharaoh’s generals replied: “Thy father Amen protects thee; we
will follow whithersoever thou leadest, as servants follow their lord.”

Three days’ rapid march brought the army, without any mishap, to the
town of Aluna, close to a torrent called the Qina, a little to the
south of Megiddo, and there it encamped for the night in the face of
the enemy with the watchwords:

“Keep a good heart: courage! watch well! Be alert in the camp!”

Dawn found the Egyptian army ranged for battle; the right wing was
directed towards the River Qina, while the left extended into the plain
towards the northwest of Megiddo. After a sharp encounter, the Syrians
were seized by a panic, and abandoning their horses and chariots on the
battle-field, they fled back to Megiddo; but fear of the enemy kept the
gates closed, and among those drawn up to the ramparts, by ropes let
down by the townspeople, was the lord of Kadesh himself.

“If it had pleased God not to let the soldiers of his Majesty be
employed in carrying off the spoils of his vile enemies, they could
then have taken Megiddo,”--it says in the account of the campaign. The
cupidity of the conquerors saved the lives of the vanquished, for,
although they took possession on the field of battle of 2132 horses,
994 chariots, and all the booty left behind by the Asiatics, they took
only 140 prisoners and killed only 83.

In the evening, when the victorious army marched by Tehutimes III with
the spoils, the king exclaimed:

“Had you taken Megiddo, it would have been a very great favour granted
me by my father this day; for as all the chiefs of the country are
within the walls, it would be like taking a thousand cities to take
Megiddo.”

However, the place, being soon besieged, capitulated in a few days.
With its fall, the campaign ended; and the chiefs of Syria and
Mesopotamia hastened to take the oath of allegiance and to pay tribute
to Egypt.

Three successive campaigns, from the year XXIV to the year XXVIII of
this reign, completed the subjugation of Syria and southern Phœnicia.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1520-1503 B.C.]]

In the year XXIX, Tehutimes proceeded to Naharain, the territory
between the rivers Orontes and Euphrates, and the districts on the west
of Khilibu were sacked to the glory of the god of Thebes, whose coffers
were soon filled with the gold, silver, and treasures of the Hittite
princes.

As the king was returning to Egypt with “a joyful heart,” he suddenly
bethought him that the Zahi, rich in wine, oil and corn, and beyond
the line of military routes, would be a wealthy and easy prey. So he
turned to the east, and made a raid on the district of Aradus, which
the Egyptians robbed of cattle and produce.

The following year the Thebans returned again, and the towns of Kadesh,
Semyra, Aradus, and Arathu, on the shores of Lake Nisrana, fell one
after the other. The sons of their chiefs were kept as hostages. The
campaign lasted till XXXI; and the king celebrated his victory by
putting up two steles near Carchemish, one on the east of the river,
and the other near the stele erected by his father, or grandfather,
Tehutimes I, nearly half a century before.

Then he conquered Ni[5] and received tribute from its prince. The
sojourn of Tehutimes III in this town was signalised by the performance
of the royal duty of killing wild beasts; and the king is reported to
have hunted and killed more than one hundred and twenty elephants.

All the tribes of Syria had to submit to the powerful yoke of the
Egyptians, and the chiefs of the Libanu, the Kheta [Hittites] and the
king of Singara took the oath of allegiance.

Nevertheless there was a revolt under the king of Naharain in XXXVII,
which was quelled by a great battle not far from Aluna. In XLI the
seat of war was in Cœle-Syria; and the king of Kadesh refusing to do
homage to Pharaoh, a deadly struggle took place under the ramparts of
the city. The besieged tried the ruse of letting a mare loose among the
chariots of Tehutimes; but Amenemheb, an officer of the guard, leaped
to the ground, disembowelled the animal with a thrust of his sword,
and cutting off its tail, presented it to the king; and the same brave
officer, at the head of a picked body of men, succeeded in making a
breach and forcing an entrance into the town.

Hardly a year passed without a skirmish with the Uauatu in Ethiopia.
But the tribes, having trembled so long before the Pharaohs, fled at
the first sign of attack. The Egyptians had only to take possession of
the flocks and herds, or any booty left in the deserted villages, and
the campaign of the commander was a series of easy victories, which
were celebrated with triumph on their return home.

The success of Tehutimes III in his campaigns increased the size and
wealth of the kingdom and gave ground for his being accorded the name
of “the Great”; and it is not surprising to see that his deeds formed
the subject of poetic panegyrics of the period, inscribed on the Temple
of Karnak:

“I am come,” said the god Amen to him, “to permit thee to crush the
princes of Zahi; I cast them at thy feet in their districts; I make
them see thy Majesty as a lord of light, when thou shinest before them
in my likeness.

“I am come to let thee crush the barbarians of Asia, to take captive
the chiefs of Ruthen. I will make them see thy Majesty decked with
warlike apparel, when thou wieldest thy arms upon the chariot.

“I am come to let thee crush the land of the East; Kefa (Phœnicia) and
Asebi (Cyprus) are in fear of thee; I make them see thy Majesty like a
young bull, firm of heart and irresistible with thy horns.

“I am come to let thee crush the people who reside in their ports. And
the regions of Mathen tremble before thee. I make them see thy Majesty
like the hippopotamus, lord of terror and unapproachable upon the
waters.

“I am come to let thee crush the people who reside in their islands.
Those who live on the bosom of the sea are within reach of thy roaring.
I make them see thy Majesty as an avenger on the back of his victim.

“I am come to let thee crush the Tuhennu. The isles of the Uthent are
at thy disposal. I make them see thy Majesty like that of a furious
lion, that strews the valley with corpses.

“I am come to let thee crush the maritime countries, so that the girdle
of the oceans is in thy hand. I make them see that thy Majesty, as the
king of birds, sees everything with one glance.

“I am come to let thee crush the lords of the sands who live in the
lagunes; to let thee lead the dwellers upon the sand into captivity.
I make them see thy Majesty like a jackal of the South, a king of
runners, a scourer of the two regions.

“I am come to let thee crush the barbarians of Nubia. As far as the
land of Shat, all is in thy hand. I make them see thy Majesty like unto
thy two brothers, Hor and Set, whose arms I have united to secure thy
power.”

So much success appealed to the imagination of the people, and
Tehutimes III was soon regarded as a hero of romance, as were Khufu and
Usertsen I. Only one of the legends circulated for centuries after his
death is still extant.

The prince of Joppa revolted and took the field against the Egyptians.
The Pharaoh, unable at that time to leave his country, sent Thutii, one
of his bravest generals, to quell the insurrection. The town was soon
taken.

Tehutimes died on the last day of Phamenoth in the year LIV of his
reign, and was buried at Thebes.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1503-1455 B.C.]]

Amenhotep II succeeded his father Tehutimes III.

The Syrians thought that the coming of a new king of Egypt meant a
time for casting off the yoke of the Pharaohs. But they soon saw their
mistake. Amenhotep laid waste the districts of the upper Jordan, and
“like a terrible lion which puts a country to flight,” on Tybi 26th
he crossed the Arseth to reconnoitre the passes of Anato. When “some
Asiatics appeared on horseback to bar his approach, he seized their
weapons of war, and his prowess equalled the mysterious power of Set,
for the barbarians fled the glance.”

On the 10th Epiphi he took Ni without striking a blow. The inhabitants,
men and women, were on the walls to do honour to his Majesty. Other
places, like Akerith, underwent long siege, before surrendering. But
the insurrection was entirely quelled by the year III, and in the
course of the campaign the Pharaoh captured seven chiefs of the country
of Thakhis. Six of them were solemnly sacrificed to Amen, their hands
and heads being exposed on the walls of the temple of Karnak. The
seventh was treated in the same way at Napata, as an example to the
Ethiopian princes and to make them respect the authority of Pharaoh.

An insurrection of the tribes in the desert, and the oases on the
east of Egypt, was quelled by Amenemheb, who had the same post under
Amenhotep as he had under Tehutimes III.

Tehutimes IV, son of Amenhotep, was the next king of Egypt, and his
successful campaigns confirmed his power in Syria and Ethiopia.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1455-1400 B.C.]]

Under Amenhotep III, who succeeded Tehutimes IV, the boundaries of
Egyptian domination were fixed at the Euphrates on the north, and on
the south by the land of the Gallas.

The Syrians were now completely under the Egyptian yoke, and willingly
sent their daughters to the royal harem; the old-time wars had
developed into occasional raids for the acquisition of slaves or
workmen for the building operations in the valley of the Nile.

The last kings of the XVIIIth Dynasty were distinguished by the name of
“heretic kings,” for as they resented the increasing sacerdotal power
of the cult of Amen they established opposition cults. Tehutimes IV
discarded the Great Sphinx and restored the old cult of Horemkhu (“The
Sun in the Two Horizons”). Amenhotep III brought to Thebes the religion
of Aten, the solar disk, and in the year X of his reign inaugurated a
festival at Karnak in honour of the new religion. And Amenhotep IV, to
free himself from the power of the high priest at Thebes, determined to
have a new capital for his kingdom, in which Aten should be the supreme
god. The religion of Aten was probably the most ancient form of the
religions of Ra. The disk, before which protestations were made, was
not only the shining and visible form of the divinity, it was the god
himself.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1420-1365 B.C.]]

Amenhotep III married a wife of foreign origin and religion, Thi. He
had by her a son who succeeded him under the name of Amenhotep IV.
The figure of Amenhotep IV, as made known to us by the monuments,
exhibits those peculiar and strange characteristics which mutilation
impresses upon the face, chest, and abdomen of eunuchs. On the other
hand, we know that at an early age he married Queen Nefert-Thi and had
by her seven daughters. It is therefore probable that if he really
did experience the misfortune of which his features seem to bear the
evidence, it happened during the wars of Amenhotep III and among the
black people of the South. The custom of mutilating prisoners and
wounded is, among these people, as old as the world. Amenhotep IV
doubtless imbibed religious ideas from his mother, for he manifested
a great horror of the cult of Amen and gave his homage to the solar
divinities, chiefly to the disk itself.

But the fear of arousing his subjects to revolt restrained him at
first from too openly avowing his heresy. He contented himself with
changing his name, which contained that of Amen, for that of Khun-aten,
“Splendour of the Sun’s disk,” and continued to worship his father
Amenhotep and the god Amen himself. Later, his religious fanaticism
got the better of his prudence. The cult of Amen was forbidden and his
name erased wherever it could be reached. The pure-blooded Egyptians
came under suspicion on account of their religion and disappeared from
the king’s entourage, giving place to Asiatic personages who resembled
Pharaoh and were deprived like him of their virility.

Thebes, so full of monuments consecrated to the fallen god, lost its
rank of capital.

Khun-aten built a new capital at a place in Middle Egypt which to-day
bears the name of Tel-el-Amarna, and which he called Khut-aten, where
there was nothing to recall the old religion.

The sun was the principal god of the old religion; all the ancient
solar divinities, Ra-Horemkhu, Hor, were recognised and respected.
Monuments show us the god in the form of a disk whose rays descend
toward the earth, each ray terminating in a hand holding the ansated
cross--the emblem of life. The disk is called Aten. Wherever the king
goes, the solar disk accompanies him and sheds its benediction upon him.

But with all the attention he paid to religion, Khun-aten was, like his
ancestors, a great builder and conqueror. Ethiopia, Thebes, and Memphis
were fields of his activity, and he continued to exercise sovereign
authority in Syria as well as in Africa.

At his death the crown passed to Prince Ai, his foster-brother, and
husband of his eldest daughter Tai. The new king, without renouncing
the religion of sun-worship, suspended the persecutions which had
the cult of Amen for their object and restored the religion of the
ancient national divinities. For successors he had his brothers-in-law
Tut-ankh-Amen, and later Saa-nekht, whose reign, although short, seems
to have been prosperous. Tut-ankh-Amen, at least, is represented as an
all-powerful Pharaoh, to whom foreign peoples give trembling homage.
[According to Brugsch and Wiedemann and Petrie the order of these kings
is Saa-nekht, Tut-ankh-Amen, and Ai--the reverse of the order here
given.]

But after them civil and religious wars desolated Egypt; the throne was
occupied by ephemeral kings whose names even are unknown to us. [The
kings formerly reputed to belong to the end of this dynasty are now,
as Professor Petrie remarks, “not of historical substance, but only
linguistic questions.” It has been well established that the names in
question are either errors or “Ptolemaic bungles,” and they are now
assigned to monarchs of this and other dynasties.]

King Hor-em-heb re-established peace, suppressed the solar religion,
destroyed Khun-aten’s monuments, and everywhere restored the ancient
cult. Outside the country he reconquered Ethiopia, which for the
time being had been lost, and made the land of Punt tributary, but
risked no expeditions into Syria. The conquests of the Tehutimes and
the Amenhoteps, so dearly obtained in this direction, had been lost
during the religious wars. The petty local princes had ceased to pay
tribute: and to reduce them anew, a whole generation of conquerors was
necessary.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[3] [Whether Tehutimes I or Tehutimes II was the father of Tehutimes
III is still in doubt, but Maspero and Petrie incline to the belief
that it was Tehutimes II.]

[4] [Petrie says he was about thirty-one years old.]

[5] [A town in the land of Naharain that sometimes has been confounded
with Nineveh.]

CHAPTER V. THE XIXTH DYNASTY

[_ca._ 1365-1225 B.C.]

Ye men of Egypt, ye have heard your king!
I go, and I return not. But the will
Of the great Gods is plain: and ye must bring
Ill deeds, ill passions, zealous to fulfil
Their pleasure, to their feet; and reap their praise,
The praise of Gods, rich boon! and length of days.--MATTHEW ARNOLD.

We come now to the period when Egypt reached the apex of its power;
when a series of great conquering monarchs made the name of Egypt
known and feared far beyond the confines of the Nile. Of these great
monarchs the name of one in particular was stamped upon the traditions
of Asiatic peoples and has passed into popular knowledge. This was
Ramses II, known to the Hebrews, and through them to the western world,
as the Pharaoh of the Oppression. Great as this monarch was, little was
known of him beyond the prejudiced recitals of the Hebrews, until our
own time, when the decipherment of the monuments has brought to light
the record of many of his warlike deeds. These records, like all such
narratives, are highly coloured and told from the standpoint of the
conqueror himself; but, with due allowance for exaggeration, they may
no doubt be accepted as accounts of actual events.

A peculiar interest attaches to the name of Ramses II in addition
to the never failing fascination of the great conqueror. We shall
therefore have occasion to review his deeds in detail as told by
the poet laureate of the day, and to consider various authoritative
estimates, both ancient and modern, that have been passed upon this
greatest hero of Egyptian history.[a] First Maspero:

Hor-em-heb, whose origin is unknown [there seems no reason to deny
that he was the famous general whose tomb has been discovered at
Saqqarah], nullified the efforts of Amenhotep and the other heretic
kings to lessen the power of Thebes and its god, for he re-established
the cult of Amen in all its splendour, had the temple of Aten pulled
down, and the materials used to erect one of the triumphal entries,
leading into the sanctuary of Karnak; the names of the heretic kings
were effaced, and their monuments utterly destroyed. The new king had
much to do to repair the disasters of the preceding years; at home all
the governmental machinery was out of order, and abroad, the countries
under the Egyptian yoke had ceased to pay tribute. Hor-em-heb put
down brigandage, he punished untrustworthy employers by death, and he
restored to the temples the properties which had been taken from them.
He imposed a tribute on the distant country of Punt, he made raids on
the tribes of the Upper Nile, and boasted of having subjugated the same
countries as Tehutimes III. We have no exact account of his conquests
except from his monuments, but they were numerous, and his reign seems
to have been glorious, prosperous, and long.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1365-1355 B.C.]]

It is not known when the sceptre passed into the hand of Ramses I
nor how he was related to his predecessor. [Whether he were the son,
son-in-law, or brother of Hor-em-heb, has never been determined.] He
had, however, been in the service of Ai, one of the last of the heretic
kings, and also of Hor-em-heb, so it was at a somewhat advanced age
that he ascended the throne of the Pharaohs. An expedition in the year
II against Ethiopia, a short campaign against the Kheta [Hittites],
were the chief events of his reign. He died six or seven years after
his accession and left his son Seti (the Sethosis of Greek tradition),
as his successor.

KING SETI

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1355-1345 B.C.]]

Seti at once announced himself abroad as a conqueror in the following
words:

“His Majesty has just heard that the vile tribes of Shasu have
rebelled. The chiefs of their tribes, assembled at one spot, have been
filled with blindness of heart and violence so that each one destroys
his neighbour.”

Seti pushed right away toward the East across the desert, watered here
and there with ponds or springs, each protected by a fortress or at
least a tower--“The fortress of the Lion,” “The tower of Seti I,” “The
well of Seti I,” etc. Wherever the enemy appeared he was easily routed,
his trees destroyed; his harvests pitilessly cut. Going on from station
to station, the Egyptians arrived at the two forts of Ribatha [the
Rehoboth of the Bible] and Canaan. The latter, favourably situated by
a little lake upon one of the last of the Amorite hills, commanded the
entrance of one of the richest ports of southern Syria. It submitted at
the first onslaught, so the whole of the rich valley was pillaged by
the Egyptians.

This first success entailed greater ones; and Seti, going northward,
arrived at the port of Lebanon, where he obliged the people to cut
down their trees and send them to Egypt for the buildings he had
commenced in honour of Amen. From thence he repaired to the valley of
the Orontes, there to attack the Kheta [Hittites]; and a victory gained
over these traditional enemies of Egypt, formed a happy conclusion to
the campaign.[6]

The Pharaoh’s return was one perpetual triumph from the time he
appeared on the frontier, where he was welcomed by the priests, until
he arrived at Thebes and offered his prisoners to Amen. And Egypt
thought that the great days of Tehutimes and Amenhotep had returned.

Unfortunately, however, these triumphs were not so real as they
appeared. Southern Syria, crushed by the passage of armies, had
abandoned all ideas of any native resistance and surrendered almost
without a blow. The Phœnicians considered that a voluntary tribute was
less expensive than a war against the Pharaohs, and they amply consoled
themselves for the diminution of their liberty by getting hold of the
maritime commerce of the Delta.

But on the north the Kheta [Hittites] were more formidable than ever.
Free, during the time of the heretic kings, from the perpetual fear
of an Egyptian invasion, they not only extended their supremacy over
the whole of Naharain, from Carchemish to Kadesh, but they crossed
the Taurus, and penetrated into Asia Minor. It is not known how far
they carried their dominion, but it seems it did not extend beyond the
plain of Cilicia and Catania. Anyhow they entered into direct relations
with the people of the southern and eastern parts of the peninsula,
the Lycians, the Masu, the Dardanians, and the dwellers of Ilion and
Pidasa. Supported by such allies, and sometimes aided by companies
of their soldiers, the Kheta were a military power, quite equal to
withstanding the Egyptians and waging war against them. Seti saw the
position of affairs as soon as he attacked them, and although doubtless
he took Kadesh, and the greater number of the Amorite towns on the
Orontes without much trouble, the tenacity of the Kheta, always ready
to fly to arms in spite of defeats, finally exhausted his patience.

Tired of war, he concluded an alliance with King Maro-sar, son of
Shapalul, which lasted until his death. The dominion of the Pharaohs
did not extend beyond the Orontes. So, being limited to southern Syria
and Phœnicia, it gained in solidarity what it lost in extent. It seems
that Seti I instead of simply exacting a tribute, imposed Egyptian
governors on some of the conquered peoples, and in some places, like
Gaza and Megiddo, stationed permanent garrisons.

The reign of Seti I undeniably marked a brilliant epoch in the history
of Egypt. The treasure looted in Syria contributed to some of the
most perfect Egyptian monuments, such as the mausoleum at Abydos and
the hypostyle hall at Karnak, the tomb of the king. Seti was assisted
in these works by his son Ramses. During his father’s lifetime Seti
had married the princess Tui of the old royal family, probably the
daughter of Hor-em-heb, and granddaughter of Amenhotep III, so that
his son Ramses was, from the hour of his birth, considered by the
loyalist Egyptians as the only legitimate king. His father, therefore,
to prevent a rebellion, was obliged to make him co-regent when he
was quite a little boy, although he was not at first taken much into
account by either Seti or his ministers.

At ten years of age Ramses is said to have made war in Syria, and,
according to Greek tradition, in Arabia. And it was on his return from
these campaigns, that, ripened by age and experience, he began to take
an active part in the internal government of the kingdom and to claim
his royal prerogative. And henceforth we see his increasing personal
valour transform him from an obscure prince into a king, a “master of
the two worlds.”

Seti, now old, and worn out with the exploits of his youth, gradually
conceded all power to his son, and lived in retirement in his palace
for the rest of his days, the object of divine honours.

Certain pictures of the temple of Abydos show him seated on a throne
amid the gods. He holds the club in one hand and in the other a complex
sceptre, combining the different symbols of life and death. Isis is at
his side, and the lesser gods sit behind the all-powerful couple, to
whom Ramses addresses his prayer. It is a premature apotheosis of which
the conception does honour to the regent, but it leaves no doubt of the
real state of the kings in their old age. They were worshipped as gods,
but they did not reign. Seti was no exception to this common rule; he
was worshipped, but he did not reign.

Peace was threatened by an unforeseen danger. The people of Asia Minor
had hitherto been beyond the sphere of action of Egypt; but now several
races, such as the Shardana and Tyrseni, whose names were new to the
ears of the Egyptians, landed on the coast of Africa, and joined with
the Libyans. Ramses II defeated them, and the prisoners that he took
were incorporated in the Royal Guard; and the others returned to Asia
Minor, with such a recollection of their defeat, that Egypt was secure
from their invasion for nearly a century. Peace assured in the North,
Ramses repaired to Ethiopia, where he spent the last years of his
father’s reign in making raids on the nomadic tribes on the banks of
the Upper Nile.

On the news of the death of his father, Ramses left Ethiopia and
entered on his duties as sole king at Thebes. He was then at the height
of his fortune, and had several sons old enough to fight under his
banner. The first years of his reign were not disturbed by any war
of importance: in the year II there was a short expedition against
the Amorites, and in the year IV there was one to the banks of the
Nahr-el-Kelb near Beyrut. The Kheta [Hittites], faithful to the
alliance made with Seti, did not try to excite a rebellion; and the
people of Canaan, kept in check by the Egyptian garrisons, remained
quiet.

RAMSES II, THE GREAT

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1340 B.C.]]

So all went well till the year IV, when a terrible rebellion broke out.
The king of the Kheta (Mau-than-ar, son of Maro-sar) was assassinated
and succeeded by his brother, Kheta-sar, who convoked his vassals and
allies, and broke with Egypt. Naharain, and its capital Carchemish,
Arathu and southern Phœnicia, Kadesh and the country of Amaour, Kati
and the Lycians, joined the coalition, and the hope of pillaging the
Egyptian provinces of Syria, if not Egypt herself, made Ilion, Pidasa,
Kerkesh, the Masu, and Dardanians also join the Kheta against Sesostris
[Ramses].

[Illustration: BUST OF RAMSES II

(Now in the British Museum)]

Trojan bands crossed the whole length of the peninsula and encamped in
the valley of the Orontes, three hundred miles from their country. The
army brought into the field by Ramses shows how easily nations were
displaced at that time, for it was composed of Libyans, Mashauasha of
Libya, Masu and Shardana, the fruit of the victorious repulsion of the
invasion a few years before.

The Pharaoh established the basis of his operations on the frontier of
Egypt and the Arabian Desert in the town he had recently founded under
the name of Pa-Ramessu-Anekhtu (“the city of Ramses, the Conqueror”).
He traversed Canaan, still under his sway, and quickly bore down upon
the southern countries, only stopping at Shabatun, a Syrian village,
rather to the southwest of Kadesh, and in view of the town. During a
halt of some days he surveyed the district, and tried to discover the
position of the enemy, having only vague ideas on the subject. But the
allies, on the contrary, fully informed by their scouts, who mostly
belonged to the nomadic tribes of Shasu, were conversant with all
their movements; and the king of the Kheta, their chief, conceived and
carried out a clever manœuvre, which would have completely destroyed
the Egyptian army, had it not been for the personal bravery of the
Pharaoh.

One day when Ramses had advanced a little to the south of Shabatun, two
Bedouins came and said to him:

“Our brothers who are the chiefs of the tribes, allied with the vile
chief of the Kheta, send us to tell your Majesty that we wish to serve
your Majesty; we are leaving the vile chief of the Kheta, and know that
he is in the district of Khilibu at the north of the town of Tunep,
where he has retreated from fear of the Pharaoh.”

The king was deceived by this report, which bore the trace of truth,
and feeling safe from a surprise by the supposed distance of the enemy
(Khilibu being forty miles to the north of Kadesh), he advanced without
misgiving, at the head of his household chariotry, whilst the bulk of
the army, including the legions of Amen, Ra, Ptah, and Sutekh, followed
him from a distance.

Whilst he was thus dividing his forces, the allies, represented by
the traitors as far off, were secretly assembling on the northeast of
Kadesh and preparing to attack the flank of the Egyptian army on its
march to Khilibu. Their number was considerable to judge from the fact
that, on the day of the battle, the king of Khilibu alone commanded
eighteen thousand picked men; and, besides a well-trained infantry,
they had two thousand five hundred chariots, each carrying three men.

During these operations the scouts brought into the general’s camp
two other spies they had taken; and the king seems then to have had
his suspicions aroused, for he ordered them to be well beaten, so as
to make them confess. They then confessed that they had been sent to
watch the manœuvres of the Egyptian army, and stated that the allies,
assembled at Kadesh, were only waiting for a favourable opportunity
to appear. Ramses then called a council of war, and explained their
critical position. The officers excused themselves on the plea of the
imprudence of the governors of the provinces, who had neglected to
reconnoitre every day the position of the enemy, and they despatched an
express messenger to bring up the body of the army to the aid of its
chief.

Whilst the council was still sitting, the enemy approached, and when
the king of the Kheta brought his forces to the south of Kadesh, he
attacked the Ra legion, and so cut the Egyptian army in two.

The Pharaoh then in person charged at the head of his household
chariotry, and eight times he broke the ranks of the encircling army,
rallied his troops, and sustained the shock the rest of the day.
Toward evening the Kheta, losing the advantage they had gained in the
morning, beat a retreat before the Egyptian army, now in line; and at
the approach of night the battle was suspended until the following day,
when the allies were completely routed.

The equerry of the Kheta prince, Garbatusa, the general of his
infantry and chariots, the chief of the eunuchs, and Khalupsaru, the
writer of the annals of the sovereign for posterity, perished on the
battle-field. Many corps of the Syrian army cast themselves into the
Orontes to try to swim across it. Mazraima, the brother of the (Khetan)
king, succeeded in reaching the other bank, but the lord of the country
of Nison was drowned. The king of Khilibu was dragged half dead from
the water; and pictures of the battle represent him being held head
downward to disgorge the water he had swallowed. The conquered army
would no doubt have been utterly destroyed, had not a sortie of the
garrison of Kadesh arrested the progress of the Egyptians and allowed
the fugitives to return to the town. The following day the Khetan king
asked for and obtained peace.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1340-1324 B.C.]]

But all hopes that this brilliant victory would terminate the war were
disappointed. For the country of Canaan and the neighbouring provinces
attacked the rear-guard of the victorious army, and the king of the
Kheta, profiting by this diversion, broke the peace. The whole of
Syria, from the banks of the Euphrates to the Nile, rose in arms. And
although there were no more great battles, the next fifteen years were
filled with a series of sieges and attacks; and hostilities broke out
in one place as fast as peace was concluded in another.

The year VIII saw the Egyptian army in Galilee, under the walls
of Merom. In the year XI Askalon was taken in spite of the heroic
resistance of the Canaanites. In another campaign the king penetrated
as far north as the environs of Tunep, and took two towns of the Kheta.
So the war went on from year to year, until the enemies of Ramses were
quite exhausted with their useless efforts, and the king of the Kheta
once more prayed for peace from the Egyptian sovereign, and it was
granted and sealed in the year XXI.

The treaty was originally drawn up in the language of the Kheta, and
it was engraved on a sheet of silver which was solemnly offered to the
Pharaoh in his city. The articles of the treaty were essentially the
same as those drawn up between the kings of Kheta and Ramses I and Seti
I. It was stipulated that the peace between the two countries was to be
eternal:

“If an enemy march into the countries under the sway of the great king
of Egypt and if he send to the king of the Kheta, saying: ‘Come, take
arms against them,’ the great king of Kheta will do as he is asked
by the great king of Egypt: the great king of Kheta will destroy his
enemies. And if the great king of Kheta does not wish to come himself,
he will send the archers and chariots of the country of Kheta to the
great king of Egypt to destroy his enemies.”

And an analogous clause also assures the king of Kheta of the support
of the Egyptian arms. Then come special articles to protect the
commerce and industry of the united nations and to render surer the
course of justice. Every criminal trying to evade these laws by taking
refuge in the neighbouring country will be handed over to the officers
of his nation: every fugitive not a criminal, every subject taken away
by force, every workman who removes from one territory to another to
there take up his abode, will be sent back to his country, without his
expatriation being regarded as a crime. He who is thus expelled is not
to be punished by the destruction of his house, wife, or children, he
is not to be struck in the eyes or on the mouth, or on the feet, as
there is no criminal accusation against him.

Equality and perfect reciprocity between the two countries, extradition
of criminals and refugees, are the principal conditions of this treaty,
which can be considered the most ancient monument of diplomatic science.

The wars of Ramses II terminate with this alliance, but Greek
historians have made the Pharaoh, under the name of Sesostris,
penetrate and subdue the countries of Media, Persia, Bactriana, and
India, as far as the ocean, and even say he penetrated Europe as far as
Thrace, where his course was only checked by want of supplies.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1307-1285 B.C.]]

From the year XXI to that of Ramses’ death the peace of the country was
not disturbed. The conditions were loyally observed, and the alliance
between the two sovereigns was soon cemented by a family bond, as
Ramses married the eldest daughter of the king of Kheta, and a few
years later invited his father-in-law to visit the valley of the Nile.
The lord of Kheta acquaints the king of Kati with this approaching
journey in these words:

“Be prepared for we are going to Egypt, the word of the king has been
spoken; let us obey Sesostris [Ramses]. He gives the breath of life to
those he loves, so all the world loves him, and Kheta is in future one
with him.”

In the year XXXIII the Syrian prince visited the city of Ramses,
probably Thebes; and he is represented on a stele, engraven for the
occasion, with his daughter and son-in-law.

So Egypt at last found her most bitter enemies transformed into
faithful allies, and “the people of Kamit were henceforth one in heart
with those of Kheta, which had not been the case since the time of the
god Ra.”

As this alliance was concluded, the king could now devote himself to
building monuments. According to the Greek historians, “he had a temple
built in each town to the principal god of the place.”

Ramses was indeed a king of builders. During his long sixty-seven
years’ reign, he had time to complete the work of several generations,
and one can safely say that there is not a ruin in Egypt or Nubia
which does not bear his name. The great “speos” [cave-temple] of
Isambul perpetuated the memory of his campaigns against the negroes and
Syrians, and four colossal monoliths, twenty metres high, adorn the
entrance. At Thebes there was added to the temple of Amenhotep (Luxor)
a court with two pylons and two obelisks of granite, the finest of
which is on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. The temple of Gurnah,
founded by Seti in honour of Ramses I, was finished and consecrated.
The Ramesseum, known to the ancients by the name of Tomb of Osymandias,
gives a sculptured account of the campaign of the year V; and the hand
of Ramses II is seen in the necropolis of Abydos, as well as at Memphis
and Bubastis and in the quarries of Silsilis, as well as in the mines
of Sinai.

The temple of Tanis, neglected by the sovereigns of the XVIIIth
Dynasty, was restored and enlarged; and the town which was in ruins,
was rebuilt. In many places the architects effaced on the statues
and temples the names of their royal builders, and substituted the
cartouches of Ramses II. The decoration of the hypostyle hall of Karnak
is certainly due to this king: Ramses I conceived the plan, Seti
commenced it, and Ramses II decorated it entirely. From the year III,
Ramses was also greatly interested in the working of the gold mines in
Nubia, and established a line of stations with cisterns and wells along
the road leading from the Nile to Gebel Ollaqi. Then he had the network
of canals, which water Lower Egypt, cleared, including the one between
the Nile and the Red Sea on the borders of the desert. He repaired the
walls and fortifications which protected Egypt from the Bedouins; and
as political necessity led him to reside on the west of the Delta, he
founded several towns on the frontier, the most important of which was
Ramses Anekhtu.

The poets of the period have left us pompous descriptions of this city:
“It is situated,” they say, “between Syria and Egypt; it is full of
delicious provisions; it is like unto Hermonthis. Its length is that of
Memphis, the sun rises and sets there. All men leave their towns and
settle on its territory; the rivers of the sea pay homage in eels and
fish, and bring the fruit of their tides. The dwellers in the town are
in holiday attire every day; perfumed oil anoints their heads on new
wigs. They stand at their doors, their hands filled with bouquets, with
green boughs from the town of Pa-Hathor, with garlands from Pahir, at
the entrance gate of Pharaoh. Joy increases and dwells there without
end.”

Poetry, we see, flourished at the time of Ramses, and the manuscripts
of the works have been preserved, but the names of the authors were not
added.

THE WAR-POEM OF PENTAUR

[Illustration: STATUE OF RAMSES II

(British Museum)]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1340 B.C.]]

The most often quoted and the best-inspired poem is the Poem of
Pentaur, which describes the exploits of Ramses in the year V at the
battle of Kadesh. [Pentaur, or rather Pentauirit, is not the author,
but merely the transcriber of the copy now in the British Museum.
The author is not known.] We know the subject of the poem: the king,
surprised by the prince of the Kheta, is obliged to lead the charge at
the head of his household troops:

“His Majesty now rises like his father Mentu. He seizes his arms, and
buckles on his cuirass like Baal in his time. Great horses bear on his
Majesty--‘Victory to Thebes’ was their name as they left the stables
of King Ramses, beloved of Amen. The king, having started, broke the
ranks of the vile Kheta. He was alone, nobody with him. Having advanced
in sight of those behind him, he was surrounded by two thousand five
hundred chariots; cut off from retreat by all the warriors of the
vile Kheta and by the numerous people with him from Arathu, Masa, and
Pidasa. Each of their chariots carried three men, and they were all
massed together. “‘No prince with me, no general, no officer of the
archers, no archers, or chariots. My soldiers have forsaken me, my
horsemen have fled, and not one remains to fight with me.’ Then his
Majesty said:

“‘Where art thou, my father Amen? Does a father forget his son? Have
I done anything without thee? Have I not marched and halted according
to thy word? I have in no way disobeyed thy orders. He is very great,
the lord of Egypt who overthrows the barbarians on his way! What
are these Asiatics to thee? Amen enervates the impious. Have I not
presented thee with numberless gifts? I have filled thy sacred dwelling
with prisoners; I have built thee a temple which will last a million
years; I have given all my goods for thy stores; I have offered thee
the entire world to enrich thy domains. Truly a miserable fate is
reserved to those who oppose thy designs, and happiness to him who
knows thee, for thy acts come from a heart full of love. I invoke thee,
my father Amen! Here I am in the midst of a great and strange company,
all the nations are leagued against me, and I am alone, with no other
but thee. My numerous soldiers have abandoned me, none of my horsemen
regarded me when I called to them, they did not hearken to my voice.
But I believe that Amen is more to me than a million horsemen, than a
myriad brothers, or young sons all assembled together. The work of men
is naught. Amen will overrule them. I have accomplished these things
by the counsel of thy mouth, O Amen! and I have not transgressed thy
counsels: here I have given glory to thee to the ends of the earth.’”

[Illustration: STATUES OF RAMSES II AT ABU-SIMBEL]

The king is here represented alone, surrounded by the enemy and in
great danger, but his first impulse is to God; and before rushing into
the mêlée, he makes this long address to Amen, and help came to him:

“The voice resounded to Hermonthis. Amen answers my cry; he gives me
his hand, I utter a cry of joy, he speaks behind me:

“‘I hasten to thee, to thee Ramses Meri-Amen, I am with thee. It is I,
thy father; my hand is with thee and I am of more avail than hundreds
of thousands. I am the lord of strength, a lover of courage, I have
recognised a courageous heart and am satisfied my will will be done.’

“Like Mentu, I then cast my arrows to the right, I overthrew my
enemies. I am like Baal before them. The two thousand five hundred
chariots which surround me are dashed to pieces by my horsemen. Not
one of them has a hand to fight with, their hearts fail them, and fear
enfeebles their members. They cannot draw their arrows, nor have they
strength to wield their lances. I precipitate them into the water as
you would a crocodile, they are cast down on the top of each other.
I do not wish one to look behind nor to turn back. He who falls will
never regain his feet.”

The effect produced by this outburst about God was very great,
especially on the Kheta, who seemed arrested by an invisible power when
on the point of victory, and hesitated in terror. Then they commanded
the chiefs in their cars, and the men versed in war to advance, so
that the company of the kings of Arathu, of Ilion, of Lycia, Dardania,
Carchemish, Kerkesh, Khilibu, numbering three thousand chariots,
proceed forward.

“But all their efforts are useless. I dashed on them like Mentu, my
hands destroyed them in the space of an instant, I cut and I killed
amongst them, so that they said one to another:

“‘This is not a man amongst us, it is Sutekh, the great warrior. It
is Baal in person. These are not the actions of a man that he does.
Alone, all alone, he repulses hundreds of thousands without chiefs,
and without soldiers. Let us hasten to fly before him, let us save our
lives, let us breathe again.’

“All who came to fight found their hands weakened, they could no longer
hold bows, or lance. Seeing that he had arrived at cross-roads the king
pursued them like a griffin.”

It was only when the enemy is in retreat that he summons his soldiers,
not so much for their aid as to let them witness his valour:

“Be firm, keep up your heart, O my soldiers! You see my victory and I
was alone. It is Amen who gave me strength; his hand is with me.”

He encourages his shield-bearer Menna who is full of fear at the number
of the enemy, and rushes into the mêlée.

“Six times I charged the enemy!”

At last his army arrives toward evening and helps him. He assembles his
generals and overwhelms them with reproaches.

“What will the whole world say, when it learns that you left me quite
alone? That not a charioteer nor any archers joined with me? I have
fought, I have repulsed millions of people alone. ‘Victory of Thebes,’
and ‘Mut is satisfied’ were my glorious horses. It was with them that
I was alone amid terrifying enemies. I will see them fed myself every
day, when I am in my palace, for I had them when I was in the midst
of my enemies with the chief Menna, my shield bearer, and with the
officers of my horse who accompanied me, and are witnesses of the
battle; they were with me. I have returned after a victorious battle
and I have struck the assembled multitudes with my blade.”

The skirmish of the first day was only the preliminary to a more
important engagement, and with what success to the Egyptians, and what
loss to the Asiatics, has already been told. The poet does not give
any details of this second affair. He describes it in a few lines
dedicated entirely to praise of the king. The subject, in fact, is not
the victory at Kadesh and the defeat of the Syrian armies, important
as these may be to the historian; but the poet sings the indomitable
courage of Ramses, his faith in the aid of the gods, the irresistible
strength of his arm. He wished to portray him surprised, abandoned, and
compensating for the faults of the generals by his bravery. All the
facts which could lessen the general impression or diminish the glory
of the royal bravery are put in the background. The household troops
are mentioned only once; of the second day of the battle there is but
an insufficient description. The king of the Kheta implores peace,
Ramses grants it, and returns in triumph to Thebes.

“Come, our beloved son, O Ramses Meri-Amen! The gods have given him
infinite periods of eternity upon the double throne of his father Tmu,
and all the nations are put under his feet.”[b]

THE KINGDOM OF THE KHETA AND THE NINETEENTH DYNASTY

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1345-1285 B.C.]]

After the preceding eulogy by Maspero, it is well to read Eduard
Meyer’s more cynical account of the reign of the great Ramses. It will
enable us the better to preserve a mental balance. It should not,
however, lead us to forget that we are in the presence of one of the
great epochs of civilisation; for all such great epochs have had their
iconoclasts as well as their adulators.[a]

Ramses II exaggerated his own praises in inscriptions, saying that,
already in the womb, he had been acknowledged king and that his father
had handed him over the government when he was yet a child. This is
correct in so far as he was solemnly proclaimed successor to the throne
in his early youth, and probably raised to be co-regent by Seti toward
the end of his reign; as crown-prince he accompanied his father in the
wars against the Libyans.

In the fifth year the king directed his second campaign against the
Kheta. The king of Kheta had summoned all his allies and tribes
dependent on him, and a formidable army was gathered together in the
neighbourhood of Kadesh. He almost succeeded in destroying, in an
ambush, the advance-guard, in which Ramses was present. The mass of
the army which had been called together in haste did not reach the
battle-field in time, and it was only the personal courage of the king,
who boasts of having fought against thousands alone when all deserted
him, that gained the victory for the Egyptians. The enemy were driven
into the Orontes, and suffered heavy losses; the king of Khilibu was
almost drowned. Ramses II boasts again and again of this victory; he
had the fight represented and poetically extolled in Luxor, in Karnak,
in the Ramesseum built in the west town for the worship of the dead,
and in Nubia in the temple of Abu Simbel. Nevertheless, it was only a
brave personal feat and no great military success.

We hear nothing of the conquest of Kadesh, and when Ramses asserts
“that the king of Kheta turned his hands to worship him,” this refers
to passing negotiations or to an armistice, for we see that the war
continued uninterruptedly.

We have only very incomplete information concerning the continuance of
the war. Only once more do we find the king penetrating far toward the
north: in the province of Tunep in the land of Naharain he personally
fought against the Kheta. How he arrived so far north, we do not know.

It is clear that the Egyptians were being more and more driven back,
and finally completely lamed. Doubtless the king of Kheta could boast
of numerous victories. On the other hand, it was only boasting when
Ramses gave long lists of conquered people and towns in his temple
inscriptions, in which, so as to equal Tehutimes III, he had to
include the names of Asshur and Sangara, Mannus and Karak (Cilicia),
with which the king scarcely came into contact. It can at once be seen
that it is no historical document.

When and on what conditions peace was concluded is not known, and
tradition does not relate what part of Syria the Egyptians maintained.
At any rate Palestine remained essentially Egyptian. It would appear
that it was agreed that South Syria should be relinquished to Egypt,
and that the Kheta should retain a free hand in the North.

[Illustration: BRINGING TRIBUTE TO RAMSES II]

By this agreement, there was maintained between the two states
a lasting peace which soon ripened into a close union. In the
twenty-first year of Ramses II King Kheta-sar proposed one of those
everlasting treaties to the Pharaoh, in which both states guaranteed
their own integrity, formed an alliance for protection against every
outside enemy, and mutually bound themselves to watch over all exiles
who might seek refuge with them, and to surrender all deserters and
emigrants. The treaty held good for a long time; thirteen years later
Kheta-sar visited the ruler of Egypt and gave him his daughter to wife.
Then took place what, as the god Ptah says to Ramses, “was unheard of
even from the days of Ra until thine own.” It is evident that under
such circumstances the relations of culture between Egypt and Syria
must have been active and manifold.

The powerful influence which Egypt had exercised over the East has
already been depicted in connection with this; and, for example, when
we find that the characteristics of an Egyptian legend recorded under
the successor of Ramses are taken up by the Hebrews and transferred to
the hero of their race, Joseph, this is only one feature more added to
the many we know.

But in Egypt we also find the worship of Syrian divinities spreading
more and more--at the same time Set-Sutekh, the powerful patron god of
the stranger who gave the enemy victory, was greatly respected.

Syrian names are considerably met with, and, above all, the language
is most strikingly influenced by the Canaanite. In many documents
Semitic words were almost used to the same extent as French in German
literature of the eighteenth century.

After having concluded the treaty with Kheta-sar, Ramses II ruled over
Egypt for forty-six years more in peace.

This epoch, the time of Seti I and Ramses II, has rightly been called
the prime of the New Theban Kingdom. The martial successes in its first
half, the peaceful and well-ordered relations of the ensuing time,
made the universal development of the land’s resources feasible to the
government, and assured the subjects a comfortable enjoyment of life,
such as the Egyptians of old loved.

Of no other period of Egypt do we possess so many monuments--temples,
tombs, dedications, and inscriptions concerning victories--and so many
literary remains. But nowhere does the typical character which adheres
to the new Egyptian appear more prominently than here.

The type is supreme over all, and there is no question of individuality
anywhere. It is in vain that we seek for a new thought or an original
turn in the temple inscriptions, in the hymns on the king written
on the face of the rocks or on papyrus, and in the appeals to the
divinities. Frequently all tangible import is wanting. Everything is
a copy and is carefully worked out from a fixed model; it has often
been remarked how greatly the historical value of the reports has
suffered through this. In value they are far below those of the time of
Tehutimes III.

The administration of the land in the new kingdom does not differ much
from that of the former one. The king appears to us surrounded by the
entire fulness of divine glory; in the official reports his counsellors
are only assembled so as to marvel at his superhuman wisdom, or else to
be reproached for their want of foresight.

The further we advance into the history of Egypt, the more does the
self-conceit and absurdity of the glorification of the king increase;
under the reign of Ramses II one often gets the impression that he
considered himself a superhuman being standing in direct communication
with the gods. Like Amenhotep III, we often find him in the Nubian
temples too, worshipping his own person, which is seated between Amen
and Mut, or Khnem and Anuqat. The intention may have been to raise the
reigning king--as formerly Usertsen III--to be territorial god of the
subjected Cushites.

The residence of Ramses II was generally at Tanis, which he had newly
constructed and adorned with numerous monuments, and which now received
the name of “the town of Ramses.” The writers of the time are never
tired of praising the glories of this city, which was a seaport as well
as an important emporium. On account of its numerous relations with
Syria, it is only natural that the centre of gravity of the kingdom
should have been transferred here, and that many new foundations should
have originated on the eastern frontier of Egypt. The frontier defences
of Egypt proper against the tribes of the desert, were always kept up
and sharply watched. As formerly, Thebes remained the real capital
of the land; next to it, Memphis asserted its long-inherited right
as the oldest residence and as dwelling-place of Ptah, the Father of
the Divinities. The numerous private monuments bear witness to the
well-being of the land more than the buildings, as also, to a certain
degree, do the rhetorical descriptions of the writers.

Numerous admirable experiments in sculpture have come down to us,
above all the likeness of Ramses II preserved in Turin. The marvellous
and careful work of the relief in the temple of Seti I at Abydos has
already been mentioned; a certain grandeur must not be denied to the
composition of the great war picture which represents the events of the
Kheta war in the year V of Ramses II,--the mustering of the troops, the
life in camp, the advance of the enemy, and the battle of Kadesh. The
king had the picture carried out in coloured relief three times, in
the Ramesseum, in Luxor, and in Abu Simbel. Besides these, there are
also numerous examples of every kind of art-work, even to the simplest
steles, often very roughly worked.

Some things have come to us of the literature of the times; chiefly
the poem which Ramses II had composed and written on the walls of the
temples to commemorate his battle with the Kheta. It is a work which,
in spite of its official character, is not wanting in life and poetry.

There are also many narratives, such as the celebrated tale of the two
brothers, written under Meneptah. Above all, there are the numerous
epistles, rhetorical studies, descriptions of the power of the king
and his works, the praise of learning, hymns, moral exhortations, also
unmeaning letters which evidently served as models for real letters
and reports. Besides these collections, we have also many authentic
letters, reports, acts, etc., which give us much information concerning
the life and doings of the Egyptians in the thirteenth century B.C.

If we cast an eye on the religious life, we clearly recognise that
we are here dealing with an epoch in which heretic endeavours are
completely suppressed, and orthodoxy asserts its unconditional sway.
The religious literature of the time became characterised fairly early.
At every turn we meet with the formulas of the victorious esoteric
doctrine. The numerous temples show the increase of the power of the
priests. All natural relations were restrained and stifled by religion.
War was carried on by order, and in the name of, Amen, so as to
increase his subjects and to bring him in rich booty. The inscriptions
relate very little concerning the actions of the kings, but a great
deal concerning the conversations which they had with the deities, and
how they “cast all lands at their feet.” The eldest son of Ramses II,
Khamuas, became high priest of Ptah in Memphis, and carefully looked
after the worship of the sacred Apis: he caused the celebrated tombs of
Apis, the Serapeum of Memphis, to be built. By those who came after, he
was looked on as a great philosopher and magician.

It is known to us that, as a long established custom, the officials
as a rule held one or more priesthoods besides their state office;
naturally, higher education and, above all, instruction in writing and
learning, were entirely in the hands of the priests. We meet with the
enervating effects of these conditions throughout the whole course of
Egyptian history.

When the intellectual life becomes torpid, physical strength also
disappears. Since everything that constitutes nationality is converted
into outer forms, a nation loses even the vitality and power necessary
to maintain an independent existence.[c]

DEATH OF RAMSES II

Thus, somewhat frigidly, Eduard Meyer has summed up the achievements of
the great Ramses. The words of Brugsch make a good epilogue.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1285 B.C.]]

Ramses II enjoyed a long reign. The monuments expressly testify to
a reign of sixty-seven years’ duration, of which, apparently, more
than half should be reckoned to his rule conjointly with his father.
The jubilee celebration of his thirtieth year as (sole?) Pharaoh gave
occasion for great festivities throughout the country, of which the
inscriptions in Silsilis, El-Kab, Biggeh, Sehel, and even on several
scarabs, make frequent mention. The prince and high priest of Memphis,
Khamuas, journeyed through the chief cities of the country in this
connection, that he might have the great and joyful festival in honour
of his father prepared in a worthy fashion by the different governors.
The anniversary of the festival was calculated according to a fixed
cycle, and apparently fell when the lunar and solar years coincided at
short intervals of three or four years. It was observed as a solemn
feast.

Great in the field, active in works of peace, Ramses appears to
have also tasted heaven’s richest blessings in his family life. The
outer surface of the front of the temple of Abydos reveals to us the
portraits and the names, now only partially preserved, of 119 children
(59 sons and 60 daughters), which besides the lawful consorts known
to us, the favourite wife Isinefer, mother of Khamaus, the queens
Nefert-ari, Meri-mut, and the daughter of the king of Kheta, implies a
large number of inferior wives.

It is scarcely probable that the great Ramses departed this life
leaving his earthly kingdom in a peaceful condition. Already in his old
age a numerous progeny of sons and grandsons were disputing over their
father’s inheritance. The seed of periods of storm and unrest was laid.
According to historical tradition these bearings were confirmed in the
most striking manner by subsequent events.

The body of Pharaoh was consigned to its death chamber in the rocky
valley of Biban-el-Moluk. In spite of the large number of his children,
Seti’s grateful son had left no offspring behind him who would have
prepared a tomb for his father worthy of his deeds and of his name; a
tomb which might if only in some degree have approached the dignity of
Seti’s noble funeral vaults. The tomb of Ramses is an insignificant,
rather tasteless erection, seldom visited by travellers to the Nile
Valley, who probably scarcely suspect that the great Sesostris of Greek
story has found his last resting-place in this modest place. This
Pharaoh might have repeated of himself at his death, as formerly in his
struggle against the Kheta he said, “I stood alone; none other was with
me.”[d]

FOOTNOTES

[6] [The Hittites, now identified with the Kheta, are treated more
fully in a special chapter in Vol. II.]

CHAPTER VI. THE FINDING OF THE ROYAL MUMMIES

Nothing in modern discovery has more vividly and suddenly brought the
ancient world home to the world of to-day than the finding of the
actual bodies, the very flesh and blood of the Pharaohs marvellously
preserved to us by the embalmer’s venerable art. The discovery has
bridged the chasm between the Ancient and the New as a midnight flash
of lightning from the clouds to the earth.

As so often happens, what had foiled the eager search of the patient
scholar, had not eluded the cupidity of the thief. The appearance of
royal mummies and priceless manuscripts on the open market filled the
explorers with both chagrin and zeal. M. Maspero tells of the various
wiles by which influential politicians of the Orient concealed their
rich treasure-sources, and of the almost endless difficulties overcome
by the European explorers before the thieves could be first deprived of
their influence with the authorities, and then of their discoveries.
These latter the scholars wished to examine and study where found, and
then distribute them among museums for the benefit of other scholars
and for public enlightenment. The real discoverers, the Arabs, were
after loot alone, and mingled ruthlessness, lies, misrepresentations,
and all manner of duplicity with their thrift. It is not here fitting
to tell the story of the fight between scholarship and commerce; but
the account of the revelation of the treasure-chamber itself is as
appropriate as it is thrilling.[a]

[Illustration: MUMMY AND INNER CASE]

On Wednesday, the 6th of July, 1879, Messrs. Emil Brugsch and Ahmad
Effendi Kamal were conducted by Muhammed Ahmed Abd-er-Rassul to the
entrance of the funeral vault itself.

The Egyptian engineer who long ago hollowed out the secret chamber had
made his arrangements in the most ingenious fashion. Never was secret
chamber better disguised. The chain of hills which at the spot divides
the Biban-el-Moluk from the Theban plain, forms, between the Assassif
and the Valley of the Queens, a series of natural amphitheatres, of
which the best known was, up to the present, that on which stands
the monument of Deir-el-Bahari. In the wall of rocks which separates
Deir-el-Bahari from the succeeding amphitheatres, just behind the knoll
of Sheikh Abd-el-Gurnah, about two hundred feet above the level of the
cultivated lands, a pit was dug forty feet in depth by six in breadth.
At the bottom of the pit, in the western side, was cut the entrance
of a corridor four and a half feet wide by nearly three in height.
After running a length of about twenty-five feet, it turns abruptly to
the north, and extends to a distance of two hundred feet, not always
keeping to the same dimensions; in certain parts it is about six and a
half feet wide, in others little more than four. Near the centre five
or six roughly hewn steps indicate a sensible change in the level,
and on the right hand a sort of unfinished niche shows that there had
been an idea of once more changing the direction of the gallery. The
latter at last emerges into a kind of irregular, oblong chamber, about
twenty-five feet in length.

The first object which struck the eye of Herr Brugsch, when he reached
the bottom of the pit, was a white and yellow coffin, with the name of
Nesi-Khonsu. It was in the corridor, about two feet from the entrance;
a little further was a coffin whose form recalled the style of the
XVIIth Dynasty; then Queen TiuHathor Hont-tui, then Seti I. Alongside
the coffins and strewing the ground, were boxes of funeral statuettes,
canopic vases,[7] bronze libation vases, and right at the back, in the
angle formed by the corridor as it turns north, the funeral canopy of
Queen Isiem-kheb, folded and crumpled like a worthless object which
some priest in a hurry to get away had thrown carelessly in a corner.
All along the great corridor was the same confusion and disorder; it
was necessary to crawl along without knowing where hands and knees were
being placed.

[Illustration: MUMMY IN ITS WRAPPINGS]

The coffins and mummies, hastily scanned by the light of a candle,
bore historic names--Amenhotep I, Tehutimes II, in the niche near
the staircase, Aahmes I, and his son Se-Amen, Seqenen-Ra, Queens
Aah-hotep, Aahmes, Nefert-ari, and others. In the chamber at the end,
the confusion was at its height, but the predominance of the style
proper to the XXth Dynasty was recognised at a glance. The report of
Muhammed Ahmad Abd-er-Rassul, which had at first appeared exaggerated,
was scarcely more than the attenuated expression of the truth: where I
had expected to come on one or two obscure, petty kings, the Arabs had
unearthed a whole hypogee of Pharaohs.

And what Pharaohs! perhaps the most illustrious in the history of
Egypt--Tehutimes III and Seti I, Aahmes the liberator and Ramses II the
conqueror!

Two hours sufficed for this first examination, and then the work of
removal began. Three hundred Arabs were speedily collected by the
efforts of the mudir’s people, and set about the work. The museum’s
boat, hastily summoned, had not yet arrived; but reis Muhammed, one
of the pilots on whom reliance could be placed, was on the spot.
He descended to the bottom of the pit and undertook to extract its
contents. Messrs. Brugsch and Ahmad Effendi Kamal received the objects
as they were brought above ground, carried them to the foot of the
hill, and ranged them side by side without relaxing their vigilance
for a moment. Forty-eight hours of energetic labour sufficed to exhume
everything; but the task was only half finished.

The convoy had to be conducted across the plain of Thebes and beyond
the river as far as Luxor; several of the coffins, raised with great
difficulty by twelve or sixteen men, took seven or eight hours to go
from the mountain to the bank, and it will be easily imagined what this
journey must have been like in the dust and heat of July.

At last, on the evening of the 11th, mummies and coffins were all
at Luxor, duly enveloped in mats and canvases. Three days after,
the museum’s steamer arrived; it only remained to load it, and it
immediately started again for Bulaq with its freight of kings.

Then a singular thing happened, for from Luxor to Kuft, along either
bank of the Nile, the fellah women followed the boat with dishevelled
hair and uttering loud cries, and the men fired rifle-shots as they do
at funerals.

HOW CAME THESE MONARCHS HERE?

And now a question arises. The greater number of the kings and princes
of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, had each his tomb, which exists
to-day or whose site we learn from ancient documents; Amenhotep I at
Drah-abu’l-Neggah, Seti I and Ramses II at the Biban-el-Moluk, and
others elsewhere. How is it that their corpses were hidden away between
Deir-el-Bahari and Sheikh Abd-el-Gurnah, huddled together with the
corpses of the high priests of Amen? The Egyptians themselves have
taken pains to furnish us with the materials for the answer. Several
of the mummies or coffins which we possess, bear, written in ink by
the hand of contemporary scribes, the date, the circumstances, and
sometimes the reason of the transfer. These are veritable official
reports, whose testimony on the subject is unimpeachable.

The three mummies of the XIXth Dynasty had a common fate. The coffins
of Seti I and Ramses II bear three inscriptions, which are identical,
or nearly so, and which date from three different periods: what is left
of the coffin of Ramses II bears the remains of a hieratic text[8]
analogous to the second inscription of the text of Seti I.

The two most ancient of these inscriptions mention Her-Hor. The first
is conceived in these terms: “The year VI, of the 2nd month of Shaït
the VII, the day of the expedition made by Her-Hor the … of the first
Prophet of Amen Ra, king of the gods, to restore the funeral pomp of
King Men-maat-Ra L. H. S. [life, health, strength] Son of the Sun, Seti
Meneptah, through the inspector,” a name which is not very legible, as
is also the case with those of his companions. The inscription which
had been placed on the coffin of Ramses II has been rubbed out, and
then written over. As it now reads, it suffices to show that it, like
the preceding, was of the year VI and of the 2nd month of the season
of Shaït, the VII; that the expedition had been undertaken by order of
Her-Hor, and that its object was to ascertain the condition of the body
of Ramses II. This interpretation of the date does not fail, however,
to involve some difficulties. The name of Her-Hor is not surrounded
with the cartouche; and we may, if we choose, conclude from this fact
that the mention of the year VI refers to the reign of the Ramesside
whom Her-Hor succeeded on the throne. On the other hand, the comparison
of this inscription with the following ones appears to me to prove
that the date, year VI, should probably be placed to the count of the
priest-king.

Indeed, no hesitation is possible in regard to the second inscription.
It presents itself under two forms, of which one is found only on the
coffin of Seti I, whilst the other is afforded us by the two coffins of
Ramses I and Ramses II. The inscription of Seti I is conceived in these
terms: “In the year XVI, of the 4th month of the season Pirt, the VII,
under King Se-Amen, the day of the exhuming of the King Men-maat-Ra
Seti Meri-en-Ptah L. H. S., from his tomb to bring him into the tomb of
the lady An … of the great dwelling, by the prophet of Amen-Ra, king
of the gods, the third prophet of Khonsumois Neferhotep, chief scribe
of the monument of the temple of Amen-Ra, king of the gods, servant of
the temple of Ramses II in the temple of Amen, Nesipkhashuti, son of
Beken-Khonsu. The superior of the funeral hall had said in the presence
(of the king) what was the condition (of the mummies) and that they had
suffered no damage in being taken from the tomb where they were, and
transported to the tomb of the lady An … of the great dwelling where
King Amenhotep rests in peace.”

The inscription of Ramses II differs from the preceding only in the
opening words: “In the year XVI, of the 4th month of Pirt, the VII, the
day of the exhuming of King User-maat-Ra-sotep-en-Ra, the great god
of the tomb of King Men-maat-Ra, Seti Miptah.” The rest is similar in
every point to the text of Seti I.

The inscription of Ramses I is much mutilated; but what has been
preserved permits us to restore a formula at the commencement, which is
intermediary between the formula of Seti I and that of Ramses II. “(The
year XVI, of the 4th month of Pirt, the VII, under) King Se-Amen, (day
of) the exhuming of (the King Men-pehtet-Ra L. H. S.) from the (tomb of
King Men-maat-Ra) Seti Miptah (to bring it into this tomb) of the lady
An … of the (great) dwelling (where the King Amen) hotep (rests) in
peace, etc.”

The three bodies, carried at different periods to Seti’s hypogee, were
taken thence all three in one day. This identity in time explains why,
in the second part of each inscription, the scribe has always made use
of the plural number to express the condition of the mummy: he placed
on each of the coffins the formula which applied to all three.

The other coffins of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties bear no
inscriptions, but I have no doubt that at about the same time they were
the object of frequent visits. One certain fact seems to me to result
from the reports: by the close of the XXth Dynasty the bodies of Seti
I, Ramses I, Ramses II, and Tehutimes I were no longer in their own
tombs, and not yet in the hidden chamber where they were discovered:
they were carried from place to place and their funerary appointments
restored at fairly short intervals. What was the motive for so often
taking the trouble to verify this condition?

The documents which have come down to us from the last kings of the
XXth Dynasty give us some idea of an epoch of decadence. Egypt,
exhausted by six centuries of conquest, no longer possessed the
strength necessary to retain her dominion over the provinces in Syria,
and was losing with them the best part of her revenue. The great towns
of the Delta--Memphis, Tanis, Saïs--standing on the natural highway
of Asiatic commerce, did not suffer greatly from this political
diminution of the country; but Thebes, which was situated in the
interior, at a distance from the great commercial routes, and had owed
the prosperity she enjoyed to conquest alone, grew poorer and rapidly
declined. Constructive works were for the most part suspended for want
of supplies; and the labouring population, ill-paid from the royal
treasure, began to feel the pangs of hunger. Hence proceeded strikes
and daily disorders, which the overseers of the workshops recorded in
their note-books; and then pillage and theft.

[Illustration: QUEEN NUBKHAS]

Bands were organised, in which civil employees, officers, workmen, even
women, figure indiscriminately, and these set to work to exploit the
necropolis. They forced the doors of the tombs, that they might carry
off the objects of value, the jewels, furniture, and gorgeous arms
which the piety of relatives had deposited with the corpses.

Soon, not content with attacking private individuals, they ventured
to lay their hands upon the kings. The government of Ramses made vain
attempts to stop their depredations. An inquiry, opened in the XVIth
year of Ramses IX, informs us that the king’s commissioners found one
royal tomb violated for every ten that they were authorised to visit.
It is curious that one of the hypogees examined belonged to a prince
whose mummy we found in the secret chamber of Deir-el-Bahari, namely
Amenhotep I; it was still intact.

The report of the opening of the tomb of Sebekhotep [VI] tells us in
what the booty of the thieves consisted: “We opened the coffins of the
king and his wife, Queen Nubkhas, as well as the funeral caskets in
which they lay. We found the august mummy of the king, and beside it
his sword, as well as a considerable number of talismans, and ornaments
of gold about his neck. The head was covered with gold, and gold was
scattered all over the mummy: the coffins were plated with gold and
silver within and without, and incrusted with all kinds of stones. We
took the gold which we found on the mummy, as well as the talisman and
the ornaments of the neck and the gold of the coffins. We likewise took
all we could find on the royal spouse, then we burned their funeral
caskets and we robbed them of their furniture, which consisted of vases
of gold or silver and of bronze, and we divided them among us in eight
portions.” One might fancy he was reading the description of that mummy
of Queen Aah-hop, whose jewels now form an ornament of the museum at
Bulaq.

Let us now examine the condition of the coffins and mummies found at
Deir-el-Bahari. Seqenen-Ra, Aahmes and his son Se-Amen, Nefert-ari,
and Aah-hotep are certainly in their original coffins, as is proved by
the style and the absence of inscriptions indicating a restoration.
Amenhotep I and Tehutimes II appear to have retained only the covers
of their original coffins; the case is of wood, very roughly shaped,
and in order to introduce the mummy of Tehutimes II, it has been
found necessary to reduce the thickness of the sides at the level of
the shoulders. The inscriptions assert that the wrappings have been
renewed: this may have been as much because they were worn out in the
natural course of things as because of the violence of human hands, and
the restoration does not in itself prove that the mummy has suffered by
thieves. But do not the two false mummies of Princess Meshent-themhu
and the Princess Set-Amen furnish us with proof of a violation
analogous to that to which King Sebekhotep and his wife Nubkhas were
subjected?

The robbers, after breaking open Sebekhotep’s coffin, had dispersed
the bones of the king, and the tomb was empty. Something similar must
certainly have occurred in the case of the Princess Meshent-themhu.
The coffin was broken open, and the inscription which it bore, inlaid
with blue enamel, partly disappeared; for it was necessary, as I have
shown above, to restore it roughly in ink. As for the bones, they had
disappeared: probably the thieves, fearing they might be disturbed in
their sacrilegious work, made haste to carry off the mummy with them;
then abandoned it, once it had been despoiled, in some place where no
one thought of looking for it. On the other hand, religion did not
allow that the disembodied soul could enjoy a full existence in the
other world if the body it had owned during its earthly life should
completely disappear.

In default of the real body, the commissioners charged to inspect and
restore the tombs adopted the plan of manufacturing the semblances
of bodies for Seti and Meshent-themhu. A fragment of broken coffin
simulated the bust of Meshent-themhu, a bundle of rags the head,
another bundle of rags the feet, and the whole, duly encased in
wrappings, was deposited in the coffin, which was more or less
carefully restored. Was the soul satisfied at recognising the
counterfeit body?

For my part I am very glad to have discovered, thanks to that pious
fraud, the principal, if not the only, reason for the collection of so
many royal mummies in one place.

It was to save the dead Pharaohs from thieves that it was decided to
hide them away. It was hoped that a pit, thirty-eight yards deep,
followed by a narrow corridor of two hundred and fifty feet, would
protect them from profanation; and experience has proved that the
reckoning was not so far out, since centuries rolled away from the
day that they were deposited there, before that on which the Arabs of
Sheikh Abd-el-Gurnah discovered the hiding-place.

Some Egyptologists will, at first sight, be amazed at the rude
character of this supposed tomb, and will object that it is a far
cry from a chamber without ornament and roughly hollowed out of the
rock, to the magnificent hypogees of Biban-el-Moluk. I answer that the
difference between the tombs is not greater than the difference between
the kings. Amenhotep III, Ramses II, even Ramses V and Her-Hor, reigned
over all Egypt, over Ethiopia, over at least a part of Syria, and had
command of the men and money needful to hew out and decorate immense
syringes.[9]

Painet´-em II and the people of his family possessed only the poorest
region of Egypt and Nubia: it was as much as they could do to secure
their mummies the same burial as that of the wealthier men of their
time. No more special monuments for each of the dead, but one common
vault for all; no more immense sarcophagi in hard stone, but mere
coffins in polished wood, sometimes stolen from earlier kings or
private persons. There is nothing which more clearly marks the
decadence of Thebes than this increasing poverty of the last Theban
kings.[b]

[Illustration: FEMALE HEAD-DRESS, ANCIENT EGYPT]

FOOTNOTES

[7] [Vases with tops of human forms or divinities, used to hold the
entrails of embalmed bodies.]

[8] [Hieratic writing is a modified form of hieroglyphics.]

[9] [Syringes (plural of syrinx) are narrow and deep rock
tunnel-tombs.]

CHAPTER VII. THE PERIOD OF DECAY

[XIXTH-XXVTH DYNASTIES: _ca._ 1285-655 B.C.]

And the Lord shall smite Egypt; he shall smite and heal it: and
they shall return even to the Lord, and he shall be intreated of
them, and shall heal them.

In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and
the Assyrian shall come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria,
and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.--_Isaiah_ xix.
22, 23.

* * * * *

So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and
the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even
with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.--_Isaiah_ xx.
4.

After the summit, the inevitable decline. The first of world powers
under the Ramessides, Egypt again becomes degenerate, and, after
some five hundred years of reanimation, passes into the power of the
priests, who in turn are supplanted by invading hosts, this time
from Ethiopia. Then the Assyrian conquerors, taking their turn at
world-domination, invade Egypt along the route which Tehutimes and
Ramses had followed of old in invading Assyria. Dismembered Egypt
falls an easy prey to Esarhaddon. It revolts under Asshurbanapal again
and again, and is as often reconquered. But a mixed population of
Ethiopians and Assyrians again gives a certain measure of new vitality
to the old body, and, the destruction of the Assyrian empire having rid
the Egyptians of one of their enemies, they were presently able, under
Psamthek I (Psammetichus), to overthrow the Ethiopian “usurpers,” and
establish once more a “native” dynasty.

For about three-quarters of a century Egypt retained autonomy, and
even struggled back to a shadow of its old-time power, illustrating
once again the vitality that resides in an old stock. Then the final
_coup_ was given by Cambyses the Persian; and the last contest was
over. Taken by themselves, these long-drawn-out struggles of a dying
nation--extending over half a thousand years--are full of interest; but
in the comparative scale they are unimportant. We have seen the great
nation at its flood-tide of power, and we need not dwell at very great
length upon the time of its ebbing fortunes; for other nations, off to
the east, have now taken the place of Egypt as the world-centres, and
are beckoning attention.[a]

MENEPTAH

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1285-1250 B.C.]]

The disappearance of the old hero, Ramses II, did not produce many
changes in the condition of affairs in Egypt. Meneptah from this
time forth possessed as Pharaoh the power which he had previously
wielded as regent. He was now no longer young. Born somewhere about
the beginning of the reign of Ramses II, he was now sixty, possibly
seventy, years old; thus an old man succeeded another old man at
a moment when Egypt must have needed more than ever an active and
vigorous ruler. The danger to the country did not on this occasion rise
from the side of Asia, for the relations of the Pharaoh with his Kharu
[Phœnician] subjects continued friendly, and, during a famine which
desolated Syria, he sent wheat to his Hittite allies.

The nations, however, to the north and east, in Libya and in the
Mediterranean islands, had for some time past been in a restless
condition, which boded little good to the empires of the Old World. The
Tamahu, some of them tributaries from the XIIth, and others from the
first years of the XVIIIth Dynasty, had always been troublesome, but
never really dangerous neighbours. From time to time it was necessary
to send light troops against them, who, sailing along the coast or
following the caravan routes, would enter their territory, force them
from their retreats, destroy their palm groves, carry off their cattle,
and place garrisons in the principal oases--even in Siwa itself. For
more than a century, however, it would seem that more active and
numerically stronger populations had entered upon the stage. A current
of invasion, having its origin in the region of the Atlas, or possibly
even in Europe, was setting toward the Nile, forcing before it the
scattered tribes of the Sudan.

[Illustration: TEMPLE ON THE ISLAND OF PHILÆ]

Who were these invaders? Were they connected with the race which had
planted its dolmens over the plains of the Maghreb? Whatever the answer
to this question may be, we know that a certain number of Berber
tribes--the Libu and Mashauasha--who had occupied a middle position
between Egypt and the people behind them, and who had only irregular
communications with the Nile Valley, were now pushed to the front and
forced to descend upon it.

The Libu might very well have gained the mastery over the other
inhabitants of the desert at this period, who had become enfeebled
by the frequent defeats which they had sustained at the hands of the
Egyptians. At the moment when Meneptah ascended the throne, their king,
Marajui, son of Did, ruled over immense territory.

A great kingdom had risen capable of disturbing Egyptian control. The
danger was serious. The Hittites, separated from the Nile by the broad
breadth of Phœnicia, could not directly threaten any of the Egyptian
cities: but the Libyans, lords of the desert, were in contact with
the Delta, and could in a few days fall upon any point in the valley
they chose. Meneptah, therefore, hastened to resist the assault of the
Westerners, as his father had formerly done that of the Easterners;
and, strange as it may seem, he found among the troops of his new
enemies some of the adversaries with whom the Egyptians had fought
under the walls of Kadesh sixty years before. The Shardana, Lycians,
and others, having left the coasts of the Delta and the Phœnician
seaports, owing to the vigilant watch kept by the Egyptians over their
waters, had betaken themselves to the Libyan littoral, where they
met with a favourable reception. Whether they had settled in some
places, and formed there those colonies of which a Greek tradition of
a more recent age speaks, we cannot say. They certainly followed the
occupation of mercenary soldiers, and many of them hired out their
services to the native princes, while others were enrolled among the
troops of the king of Kheta or of the Pharaoh himself. Marajui brought
with him Achæans, [Aqauasha], Shardana, Turisha, Shakalisha, and
Lycians in considerable numbers when he resolved to begin the strife.

This was not one of those conventional little wars which aimed at
nothing further than the imposition of the payment of a tribute upon
the conquered, or the conquest of one of their provinces. Marajui
had nothing less in view than the transport of his whole people into
the Nile Valley, to settle permanently there as the Hyksos had done
before him. He set out on his march toward the end of the fourth year
of the Pharaoh’s reign, or the beginning of his fifth, surrounded by
the élite of his troops, “the first choice from among all the soldiers
and all the heroes in each land.” The announcement of their approach
spread terror among the Egyptians. The peace which they enjoyed for
fifty years had cooled their warlike ardour, and the machinery of their
military organisation had become somewhat rusty. The standing army had
almost melted away; the regiments of archers and charioteers were no
longer effective, and the neglected fortresses were not strong enough
to protect the frontier.

As a consequence, the oases of Farafrah and of the Natron lakes fell
into the hands of the enemy at the first attack, and the western
provinces of the Delta became the possession of the invader before any
steps could be taken for their defence. Memphis, which realised the
imminent danger, broke out into open murmurs against the negligent
rulers who had given no heed to the country’s ramparts, and had
allowed the garrisons of its fortresses to dwindle away. Fortunately
Syria remained quiet. The Kheta, in return for the aid afforded them
by Meneptah during the famine, observed a friendly attitude, and the
Pharaoh was thus enabled to withdraw the troops from his Asiatic
provinces. He could with perfect security take the necessary measures
for insuring “Heliopolis, the city of Tmu,” against surprise, “for
arming Memphis, the citadel of Ptah-Tanen, and for restoring all things
which were in disorder; he fortified Pa-Bailos (Bilbeis), in the
neighbourhood of the Shakana canal, on a branch of that of Heliopolis;”
and he rapidly concentrated his forces behind these quickly organised
lines. Marajui, however, continued to advance; in the early months of
the summer he had crossed the Canopic branch of the Nile, and was now
about to encamp not far from the town of Pa-Arshop (Proposis).

The Pharaoh did not stir from his position. Marajui had, in the
meantime, arranged his attack for the 1st of Epiphi, at the rising of
the sun: it did not take place however until the 3rd. “The archers of
his Majesty made havoc of the barbarians for six hours; they were cut
off by the edge of the sword.”

When Marajui saw the carnage, “his heart failed him; he betook
himself to flight as fast as his feet could bear him to save his
life, so successfully that his bow and arrows remained behind him in
his precipitation, as well as everything else he had upon him.” His
treasure, his arms, his wife, together with the cattle which he had
brought with him for his use, became the prey of the conqueror; “he
tore out the feathers from his head-dress, and took flight with such of
those wretched Libyans as escaped the massacre, but the officers who
had the care of his Majesty’s team of horses followed in their steps”
and put most of them to the sword. Marajui succeeded, however, in
escaping in the darkness, and regained his own country without water or
provisions, and almost without escort. The conquering troops returned
to the camp laden with booty, and driving before them asses carrying,
as bloody tokens of victory, quantities of hands and phalli cut from
the dead bodies of the slain. The bodies of six generals and of 6359
Libyan soldiers were found upon the field of battle, together with 222
Shakalisha, 724 Turisha, and some hundreds of Shardana and Aqauasha
[Achæans]; several thousands of prisoners passed in procession before
the Pharaoh, and were distributed among such of his soldiers as had
distinguished themselves.

[Illustration: EGYPTIAN SOLDIER WITH CAPTURED HAND]

Meneptah lived for some time after this memorable year V, and the
number of monuments which belong to this period shows that he reigned
in peace. We can see that he carried out works in the same places as
his father before him--at Tanis as well as Thebes, in Nubia as well
as in the Delta. He worked the sandstone quarries for his building
materials, and continued the custom of celebrating the feasts of the
Inundation, at Silsilis. One at least of the steles which he set up on
the occasion of these feasts is really a chapel, with its architraves
and columns, and still excites the admiration of the traveller on
account both of its form and of its picturesque appearance. The last
years of his life were troubled by the intrigues of princes who aspired
to the throne, and by the ambition of the ministers to whom he was
obliged to delegate his authority. One of the latter, a man of Semite
origin, named Ben-Azana, of Zor-bisana, who had assumed the appellation
of his first patron Ramses-uparna-Ra, appears to have acted for him as
regent. [Chronological reasons demand that we place the Exodus of the
Hebrews from Egypt in the reign of this Pharaoh.]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1250-1235 B.C.]]

Meneptah was succeeded, apparently, by one of his sons, called Seti,
after his great-grandfather. Seti II had doubtless reached middle
age at the time of his accession, but his portraits represent him,
nevertheless, with the face and figure of a young man. The expression
in these is gentle, refined, haughty, and somewhat melancholy. It
is the type of Seti I and Ramses II, but enfeebled and, as it were,
saddened. An inscription of his second year attributes to him victories
in Asia, but others of the same period indicate the existence of
disturbances similar to those which had troubled the last years of his
father. Seti died, it would seem, without having time to finish his
tomb. We do not know whether he left any legitimate children, but two
sovereigns succeeded him who were not directly connected with him, but
were probably the grandsons of the Amenmes and the Siptah, whom we meet
with among the children of Ramses.

The first of these was also called Amenmes, and he held sway
for several years over the whole of Egypt, and over its foreign
possessions. The second, who was named Siptah-Meneptah, ascended “the
throne of his father,” thanks to the devotion of his minister, Bi, but
in a greater degree to his marriage with a certain princess called
Ta-user. He maintained himself in this position for at least six years,
during which he made an expedition into Ethiopia, and received in
audience at Thebes messengers from all foreign nations. He kept up so
zealously the appearance of universal dominion that to judge from his
inscriptions he must have been the equal of the most powerful of his
predecessors at Thebes. Egypt, nevertheless, was proceeding at a quick
pace toward its downfall. No sooner had this monarch disappeared than
it began to break up.

As in the case of the Egyptians of the Greek period, we can see only
through a fog what took place after the deaths of Meneptah and Seti II.
We know only for certain that the chiefs of the nomes were in perpetual
strife with each other, and that a foreign power was dominant in the
country as in the time of Apophis. The days of the kingdom would have
been numbered if a deliverer had not promptly made his appearance.
The direct line of Ramses II was extinct, but his innumerable sons by
innumerable concubines had left a posterity out of which some at least
might have the requisite ability and zeal, if not to save the empire,
at least to lengthen its duration, and once more give to Thebes days of
glorious prosperity.

Egypt had set out some five centuries before this for the conquest
of the world, and fortune had at first smiled upon her enterprise.
Tehutimes I, Tehutimes III, and the several Pharaohs bearing the name
of Amenhotep, had marched with their armies from the upper waters of
the Nile to the banks of the Euphrates, and no power had been able to
withstand them. New nations, however, soon rose up to oppose her, and
the Hittites in Asia and the Libyans of the Sudan together curbed her
ambition. Neither the triumphs of Ramses II nor the victory of Meneptah
had been able to restore her prestige, or the lands of which her rivals
had robbed her beyond her ancient frontier. Now her own territory
itself was threatened, and her own well-being was in question; she was
compelled to consider, not how to rule other tribes, great or small,
but how to keep her own possessions intact and independent; in short,
her very existence was at stake.[b]

FROM SETNEKHT TO RAMSES VIII AND MERI-AMEN MERI-TMU

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1230-1220 B.C.]]

In the midst of the unsettled state of affairs a new dynasty arose
under the leadership of Setnekht, a descendant of Ramses II and
governor of Thebes, who with some difficulty succeeded in quelling
the rebels and subjugating the Syrian Arisu. “He was like the gods
Kheper and Sutekh in his energy, repairing the state of disorder of
the whole country, killing the barbarians who were in the Delta, and
purifying the great realm of Egypt. He was regent of the two countries
on the throne of Tmu (the chief god of Heliopolis) devoting himself
so well to the reorganisation of what had been upset, that each one
found a brother in every one of those from whom they had been so long
separated; and re-establishing the temples and sacrifices so well that
the traditional homage was rendered to the divine cycles.”

His son, Ramses III, who had been his co-regent, was the last of the
great sovereigns of Egypt. His ambition during the thirty-two years
of his reign was to follow in the steps of his namesake, Ramses the
Great, in re-establishing the integrity of the empire abroad, and
the prosperity of the country at home. But in spite of his father’s
successful warfare, the Syrian provinces were lost, and the frontiers
encroached upon. On the east, the Bedouins attacked the fortified
ports of the Delta, and the mining colonies of Sinai; on the west,
the nations of Libya had invaded the Nile. Led by their chiefs Did
(probably the son of Marajui, the contemporary of Meneptah), Mashaknu,
Zamar, and Zautmar, the Tuhennu, the Tamahu, the Kahaka, and their
neighbours, left the sandy plains of the desert and conquered the
Mareotic nome or district of the Saïd, at the mouth of the Nile, as far
as the great arm of the river, in short all the western part of the
Delta from the town of Karbria on the west to the outskirts of Memphis
on the south.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1220-1195 B.C.]]

After repulsing the Bedouins, Ramses III turned his arms against
the Libyans in the year V and completely conquered them. “They were
as terrified as goats attacked by a bull, that tramples with his
foot, strikes with his horns, and makes the mountains tremble in his
rush upon those that approach him.” The raids of the barbarians had
exasperated the Egyptians, they gave no quarter; the Libyans fled in
disorder, and some of their tribes, lingering in the Delta, were taken
off and incorporated in the auxiliary army.

[Illustration: MUMMY OF RAMSES III]

Scarcely was this trouble over when Ramses attacked Syria. Whilst Egypt
was being ruined with civil wars, her old enemy, the Kheta, made her
lose the rest of her empire. The nations of Asia Minor, continually
pushed forward by the arrival of new races, had left their homes and
penetrated into the distant regions of Syria and Egypt, attracted by
reports of the riches of those countries; the Danau, the Tyrians,
the Shakalisha, the Teucrians, who had succeeded the Dardani in the
hegemony of the Trojan nations, and the Lycians and the Philistines
joined the confederation. Those on the ships attacked the coasts,
and the others crossed Syria and laid siege to the fortresses of the
isthmus. With forces increased by the people they subjugated on the
way, they penetrated Cilicia, forced the Kati and Kheta [Hittites]
to follow them, picked up the contingent of Carchemish, Arathu, and
Kadesh, and after staying some time in the environs of this town in the
country of the Amorites, pushed straight on to Egypt.

But prompt as this action had been, Ramses was quite prepared to meet
it. After having armed the mouth of the Nile and the places of the
Delta, he started to oppose the enemy. The encounter of the two armies
and the two fleets took place in the year VIII between Raphia and
Pelusium under the walls of the castle, called the Tower of Ramses III.

“The mouth of the river was like a mighty wall of ships and vessels of
every kind, filled from prow to poop with brave armed men. The infantry
soldiers, the picked men of the army of Egypt, were there like roaring
lions on the mountains; the charioteers, chosen from the swiftest of
heroes, were led by every kind of experienced officers; the horses
trembled in every limb and longed to trample nations under foot.

“As for me,” says Ramses, “I was like Mentu, the warlike. I rose
before them and they saw the work of my hands. I, the King Ramses, I
have acted like a hero, who knows his valour and who stretches his arm
over his people in the day of the struggle. Those who have violated
frontiers will no longer cultivate the land, the time for their souls
to pass into eternity is fixed. Those who were upon the shore were
prostrated on the banks of the water, massacred as in a charnel house.
I destroyed their vessels, and their goods were swallowed up by the
waters.”

Prompt as this victory was, it did not conclude the wars of Ramses III.
The Libyans, the old allies of the maritime races, would gladly have
joined against Egypt in the year VIII; and if they did not do so, it
was doubtless because they had not had time to repair their losses.
As soon as they were ready, they reappeared upon the scene, and in
the year XI the chief Kapur and his son Mashashal led the Mashauasha
[Maxyes], the Sabita, the Kaikasha and other less important tribes,
aided by the people of Tyre and Lycia, to the invasion of the Delta.

“For the second time their hearts told them that they would pass their
lives in the nomes of Egypt, and that they would till the valleys and
plains like their own land.”

But the attempt did not meet with success. “Death came upon them in
Egypt for they had run with their own feet to the furnace, which
consumes corruption, to the fire of the bravery of the king which
descends like Baal from the heights of the skies! All his members
are imbued with victorious strength. With his right hand he seizes
multitudes; his left extends like arrows over those before him to
destroy them; his sword-blade is as sharp as that of his father, Mentu.
Kapur, who had come to demand homage, blinded by fear, cast his arms
from him and his troops did likewise: he raised a supplicating cry to
Heaven and his son supported his arms. But lo, there stood by him the
god, who knew his most secret thoughts.

“His Majesty fell upon their heads like a mountain of granite, he
crushed them and watered the earth with their blood, their army and
their soldiers were massacred … they were taken, they were struck,
their arms were tied, and like birds, imprisoned in the hold of a ship,
they were in the power of his Majesty. The king was like Mentu, his
victorious feet trampled on the heads of the enemy; the chiefs who
opposed him were struck and held by the wrists.”

So the Libyans were careful henceforth not to disturb the peace of
Egypt.

The victories of these twelve years healed the wounds of the preceding
period. A voyage of the fleet along the coasts made the ancient Syrian
provinces return to their allegiance and the allied nations of the
Kheta [Hittites], of Carchemish and of the Kati, seeing the subjugation
of the maritime people, soon followed suit. A second maritime
expedition was directed against Arabia.

“I equipped vessels and galleys, armed with numerous sailors and
workmen. The captains of the maritime auxiliary forces were there
with overseers and managers to provision the ships with the countless
products of Egypt. There were tens of thousands of every kind passing
through the great sea of Kati. They arrived at the country of the Punt
without any misadventure, and prepared to load the galleys and vessels
with the products of Tonutir, with all the mysterious wonders of the
country, and with considerable quantities of the perfumes of Punt.
Their sons, the chiefs of the Tonutir came themselves to Egypt bringing
tribute; they came safe and sound to the country of Coptos and landed
in the country with their riches. They brought them in caravans of
asses and men, and embarked them on the river at the port of Coptos.”

Other expeditions to the peninsula of Sinai restored the mining
districts to the possession of Pharaoh. So the Egyptian empire was
reconstituted as it was in the preceding century in the time of Ramses
II. The Shardana, Tyrians, Lycians, and Trojans no longer landed _en
masse_ on the coasts of Africa.

The tide of Asiatic emigration now turned from the valley of the
Nile, which had been its direction for the last one hundred and fifty
years, towards the west, and inundated Italy, at the same time that
the Phœnician colonists arrived there. The Tyrians took the land at
the north of the mouth of the Tiber, the Shardana occupied the large
island, which later was called Sardinia, and soon nothing remained of
them in Egypt but the recollection of their raids and the legendary
recital of their migrations from the shores of the Archipelago to the
coasts of the western Mediterranean.

The Philistines were the only people of the confederation allowed to
settle in Syria, and they took root along the southern coast between
Joppa and the river of Egypt, in the districts hitherto peopled by the
Canaanites, and there they primarily lived under the yoke of Pharaoh.
On the other frontier of the Delta, a Libyan tribe, called Mashauasha,
likewise obtained a concession of territory, and the Mashauasha
soldiers raised in Libya, from that portion of the tribe encamped on
the bank of the Nile, formed a picked corps, the Ma, the leaders of
which played a great part in the internal history of Egypt.

Herodotus relates that on the return of Sesostris (the name given by
that historian to Ramses II) he was nearly killed by treachery. His
brother, to whom he had intrusted the government during his absence,
invited him and his children to a great feast; then he surrounded the
house with wood and gave orders for it to be set alight. The king,
learning this, immediately consulted with his wife, who was with him,
and she advised him to take two of their six children and lay them on
the burning wood, so that they could use their bodies as a bridge by
which to pass over. Sesostris did this, and thus burned two of his
children, and the others were saved with the parents.

The monuments have proved that the Sesostris of this legend of
Herodotus is not Ramses II but his namesake, Ramses III. One of
the brothers of the king mentioned in official documents under the
pseudonym of Pen-ta-ur conspired against him with a large number of
courtiers and ladies of the harem, with the object of killing Pharaoh
and putting his brother in his place. The plot was discovered, the
conspirators cited before the tribunals and condemned, some to death
and others to perpetual imprisonment.

The last years of the reign of Ramses III were passed in peace. He
built at Thebes, in memory of his wars, the great palace of Medinet
Habu; he enlarged Karnak and restored Luxor. The details of these pious
works in the Delta have been preserved in a manuscript at the library
of Heliopolis, the great Harris papyrus.

One sees by this document that Egypt not only regained her foreign
empire, but her commercial and industrial activity. The prosperous days
of Tehutimes III and Ramses II seemed to have returned.

Nevertheless, the decadence was at hand. Egypt, exhausted by four
centuries of perpetual warfare, became more and more incapable of
serious effort. The population decimated by recruiting, inefficiently
replaced by the incessant introduction of foreign elements, had
lost the patience and enthusiasm of early times. The upper classes,
accustomed to comfort and riches, now only cared for the civil
professions, and thought lightly of what was military.

THE SORROWS OF A SOLDIER

“Why do you say that an infantry officer is happier than a scribe?”
asked a scribe of his pupil. “Let me describe to you the lot of an
infantry officer, and the extent of his miseries. He is taken when
quite a child and shut up in a barrack; a cutting sore forms on his
stomach; a wearing pain is in his eye; an open wound is on his two
eyebrows; his head is split and covered with matter. In short, he is
beaten like a roll of papyrus, he is bruised by the pressure of arms.
Come and let me tell you of his marches towards Syria and his campaigns
in distant countries. His bread and his water are on his shoulder like
an ass’s burden, and make the nape of his neck like that of an ass. The
joints of his spine are broken; he drinks putrid water, then returns
to his watch. If he reaches the enemy, he trembles like a goose, for
he has no valour. If he end by returning to Egypt, he is like a tick
consumed by the worm. If he be ill, what alleviation does he have? He
is taken away on an ass; his clothes are carried off by robbers; his
domestics flee from him. That is the foot-soldier, and the cavalry one
is not much better treated. The scribe Amenonopit says to the scribe
Penbisit: ‘When this written communication reaches thee, apply yourself
to becoming a scribe, and you will rise in the world. Come, let me tell
you of the fatiguing duties of a chariot officer:

“‘When he is placed at school by his father and mother, he has to give
away two of his slaves. After he dons his uniform, he goes to choose
his horses in the stable. In the presence of his Majesty, he takes the
good steeds and with shouts of joy wishes to bring them to the town at
a gallop. But the horses will not go without a stick. Then, as he does
not know what fate awaits him, he bequeaths all his goods to his father
and mother. He goes off then with a chariot, but its pole weighs more
than twice the weight of the chariot. So when he wishes to gallop with
this chariot, he is forced to get down and pull it. He does so, falls
on to a reptile, slips into the brushwood, his legs are bitten by the
reptile, his heel is pierced by the bite, his misery is extreme. He
lies on the ground and receives a hundred blows.’”

And these lines were written in the reign of Ramses II to the sound
of songs of triumph, when the populace were full of enthusiasm
for victory, and followed the triumphal chariot of Pharaoh with
acclamations of delight. The first intoxication over, the lower
classes, exhausted by centuries of incessant warfare, crushed under
the weight of tributes and taxes, lapsed into their normal depression,
the literature turned the sufferings of the soldiers into ridicule.
This weariness of success, this disgust for the bloody, dearly bought
victories, explains some obscure points in the history of Egypt, and
casts great light on the rapid fall of the edifice so laboriously
raised by the princes of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties. The Egypt of
Tehutimes III wished for war; the Egypt of Ramses III wished for peace
at any price.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1195-945 B.C.]]

This was especially seen to be the case in the course of the XXth
Dynasty. In the year XXXII, Ramses, tired of government, called his
son Ramses IV to share it. He died two years later, and Ramses IV,
after a reign of not more than three or four years, was followed by a
distant relation who was Ramses V. Then came the four sons of Ramses
III: Ramses VI, Ramses VII, Ramses VIII, and Meri-Amen Meri-Tmu, who
succeeded each other rapidly on the throne. These Ramses made some
expeditions here and there, but never great wars. They passed their
days in peace abroad, and peace at home, and if it be true that people
are happy who have no history, Egypt was very happy under their rule.

No more constant struggles, no more distant marches to the mountains
of Cilicia and to the plains of the Upper Nile. Syria continued to pay
tribute for some time; for if Egypt, exhausted by victory, had scarcely
the strength to enforce obedience, Syria was exhausted with defeat, and
had no more strength to revolt. But there was this difference between
the two countries, the one bordered on old age and never revived, while
the other soon rallied from its reverses. The kingdom of Egypt died of
exhaustion in full prosperity.[c]

EGYPT UNDER THE DOMINION OF MERCENARIES

The first sign of weakness in an empire seems to be scented. Egypt,
decaying within, attracted speedy attention from the ambitious, who
turned greedy eyes towards her hoarded wealth.

After the death of Ramses III, Egypt had ceased to exercise any
influence upon Syria. A time of increasing inaction and stagnation
had set in for Egypt, which at last led to Her-Hor, the Theban high
priest, being placed upon the throne. How long Her-Hor ruled over
Egypt, we know not, but we see that his son Piankhi and his grandson
Painet´em I did not have royal power but only succeeded their father as
high priests, and, as such, had uncontrolled power in Thebes and its
environs.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1000 B.C.]]

Another ruling house of foreign (Libyan) origin arose at this time in
Tanis. King Se-Amen (according to Manetho, Smendes) was its chief. His
name is seen on the walls of a temple at Tanis, and upon an obelisk of
Heliopolis. He also reigned over Thebes. In the sixteenth year of his
reign he had the mummies of Ramses I, Seti I, and Ramses II examined
and put in another tomb. He evidently overthrew the dominion of the
Theban high priests and forced them to recognise his power.

Thereupon Painet´em I added the title of provost (of Thebes) and
commander-in-chief of the South and North, to his dignity of high
priest, evidently taking, with the Tanitic kings, a position similar
to that of Her-Hor with Ramses XII. Se-Amen’s son, Pasebkhanu (Greek,
Psousennes), seems to have gone a step farther; he overcame the party
of the Theban priests, and gave the office of chief priest to one of
his sons, who, like the grandson of Her-Hor, had, or took, the name
of Painet´em II. A few short reigns, among which were those of the
Amenemapt, also recognised in Thebes, seem to have followed that of
Pasebkhanu I; and then Painet´em ascended the throne.

As “high priest of Amen” at Thebes, and commander-in-chief, he invested
his sons Masaherta and Men-kheper-Ra and then Painet´em (III), the
son of the latter, with power; and Hor-Pasebkhanu II seems to have
succeeded him in Tanis. The rule of the Tanites seems to have lasted
about 120 years (from about 1060 to 943 B.C.).

The kingdom, or at all events the part of the country governed by the
priests of Amen, was certainly not well organised, for we have several
accounts of embezzlements of the properties of the temple of Amen by
the stewards and scribes, of the robbing of graves, etc. The constant
necessity of removing the mummies of the early kings in the west part
of Thebes from their magnificent tombs into secret caves, shows the
weakness of the government.

Moreover, the great state trials were conducted on a very simple
system. The question Guilty or Not Guilty was put to the statue of
Amen, which gave its verdict by the mouth of an oracle.

One sees how perfectly realised is the idea of God’s rule in practice.
Doubtless the theory was at this time evolved in Thebes, later in
Ethiopia, that the king was not only obliged to consult the oracle in
all his acts, but also that he was appointed and could be deposed by
the oracle.

[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN PRIEST

(From a statue in the Louvre)]

The title of commander-in-chief borne by the Theban priests, seems to
distinguish them as commanders of the soldiers taken from the Egyptian
peasants in contradistinction to the mercenaries which, since Seti I,
composed the chief part of the army. This force was partially furnished
by those domiciled in the country, and partially by fresh supplies from
Libya.

There was thus formed in the country an exclusive set similar to the
Mamelukes, which held the fate of the country in its hand, and which
bequeathed the martial profession from father to son.

These mercenaries were classed together under the name of Ma, derived
from the contraction of the Libyan name Mashauasha. We soon see from
the surnames of the warriors that the Libyans attained ascendance over
them; and although the repeated attacks of the Libyans on Egypt were
successfully repulsed, they were now in fact rulers of the country.

It is noteworthy that the corps of the Shardana, so often mentioned in
more ancient times, is no more spoken of; it must have been absorbed
in the mass of the other soldiers. But the name of Mashau has been
retained, and in Coptic _matoei_ is still a common name for soldier.
One can easily understand that they had frequent opportunities of
gaining wealth and land; and the kings granted them exemption from the
land tax. At their head stood the “dukes of the Ma,” the grand-duke
of the Ma having the chief command. But many of such generalissimi may
have had equal rank.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 945-800 B.C.]]

Buiu-uaua, a Libyan, came to Egypt about Her-Hor’s time. His family
attained great importance; his fifth descendant, Naromath [Nimrod]
was made “grand-duke of the Ma and Generalissimo” sometime under King
Painet´em. After his death his son Shashanq succeeded him as commander
of the army. An inscription at Abydos shows in what honour he was held,
how the king looked after his father’s grave, questioned the oracle at
Thebes on his behalf, and prayed God for the victory of the general.
It is conceivable that Shashanq ended by trying to gain the crown for
himself, 943 (?) B.C.

By peaceable or violent means he was the successor of Hor-Pasebkhanu
II, the last Tanite, whose daughter Ka-Ra-maat he married to his son
Uasarken, to give support to his dynasty. According to the ruling
custom of the Tanites he made Auputh, another of his sons, high priest
of Amen and commander-in-chief of all the military forces. By the
inscriptions he seems to have been co-regent with his father.

Under the subsequent rulers it remained a custom for one of the king’s
sons to be endowed with the highest priestly power in Thebes, and also
the priesthood of Ptah at Memphis was given to a branch of the royal
family, and the other princes were priests as well as generals.

Moreover, Shashanq seems to have brought forward the descendants of
the Ramses, for we find a Ramses prince occupying a high military post
under him.

The history of the Hebrews shows that the Pharaohs of the XXIst Dynasty
were not in a condition to take part in Asiatic affairs. It was early
in Solomon’s reign that the king of the period, probably Pasebkhanu
II, entered into relations with the Israelitish state, took Gaza for
Solomon and gave it to his daughter as a dowry, and also gave refuge to
political fugitives like Jeroboam and Hadad of Edom to leave a loophole
for intervention.

The separation of Judah from Israel and the subsequent long civil war
offered an opportunity to renew the expeditions into Syria. So Shashanq
repaired to Syria in the fifth year of the reign of Rehoboam. The
scanty remains of the annals of the Hebrew kings only report that he
carried off the treasures of the temple and palace at Jerusalem; that
is, the golden shields which Solomon had hung up there. The long list
of the conquered places upon a wall of the temple of Karnak shows that
Israelitish strongholds were likewise conquered and plundered.

The Pharaoh hardly met with any great resistance anywhere. The
inscription of his victory contains, according to the fashion of the
time, only religious phrases instead of an account of the war. The
expedition was nothing more than a predatory raid for booty; it had
no political consequences, and it is quite a mistake to think it was
undertaken in the interest of Jeroboam against the king of Judah.

The increase of the Egyptian power, consequent on the accession to the
throne of the new dynasty, was of short duration. The successors of
Shashanq I--Uasarken I, Takeleth I, Uasarken II, Shashanq II, Takeleth
II--are only mentioned by name on the monuments. In Thebes they
enlarged the entrance hall of the temple of Amen, begun by Shashanq I.
We find further traces of them at Bubastis, the cradle of the dynasty,
at Memphis, and elsewhere.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 800-735 B.C.]]

The state gradually fell into complete decay under them. The chief
generals of the Ma, perhaps partially belonging to the branch lines of
the house, founded their own princedoms and shook off the Bubastites.
Shashanq III, the successor of Takeleth II, is the last whose name we
find in Thebes, where a long and very mutilated inscription of the
twenty-ninth year of his reign speaks of gifts which he brought to
Amen. Then it seems as if the southern portion of the country was taken
by the Ethiopians.

Shashanq III reigned fifty-two years altogether. Then came his son
Pamai, who reigned at least two years, and his grandson Shashanq IV,
who reigned at least thirty-seven years, until about 735 B.C. We
only know of these kings by their being mentioned on several of the
monuments to the honour of the Apis bulls which died in their reigns.
So their supremacy must at least have been recognised for a time in
Memphis. But their dominion must have been limited to the province of
Busiris. King Piankhi of Ethiopia mentions in his great inscription a
grand-duke of the Ma, Shashanq of Busiris, and his successor Pamai,
who, presumably, were identical with Shashanq III and Pamai. At the
time of this conqueror, about 775 B.C., we find near them a king
Nimrod of Hermopolis, a ruler Peftotbast of Heracleopolis Magna, who
bore the king’s ring, a king Auputh of the Delta cities Tentremu and
Ta-an, and a king Uasarken (III) of Bubastis. The latter probably
belongs to the Manethan XXIIIrd Dynasty which came from Tanis, and,
according to Africanus, ascended the throne about 823 B.C. Manetho
mentions Petasebast as its founder, and he was succeeded by Uasarken,
who is presumably the aforementioned Uasarken III. Manetho evidently
did not regard the last rulers of the XXIInd Dynasty as legitimate, so,
although they are mentioned, they are not included in the chronology.

By the side of these “kings” there are, moreover, numerous princes
(_Ur_) of the Ma, designated in other cases as lords (_rpa_) or
nomarchs (_ha_). Independent rulers in the few provinces of the Delta,
in Athribis, Mendes, Sebennytus, Saïs, etc., and the provost of
Letopolis bore the title of high priest.

These leading men came mostly from the leaders of the mercenaries, and
their possessions and power constantly tottered. It is very possible
that the single states formed a slack political confederation, and
it is probable that the descendants of the old ruling house were
recognised as the chief feudal lords, while those rulers who usurped
the title of king laid claim to complete independence.

THE ETHIOPIAN CONQUEST

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1000-775 B.C.]]

At the time when a great conquering kingdom was forming itself on the
upper Tigris and began to lay hold on all sides around it, the power of
the Pharaohs in the Nile Valley completely went down. The kingdom of
Tehutimes III had been divided into a succession of small independent
principalities and was ruled by dynasties which had arisen from the
leaders of the mercenaries. On the other hand, in the upper valley of
the Nile, in the lands first joined to Egypt in the time of Usertsen
III and afterwards for five centuries by Tehutimes I, there arose the
powerful kingdom of Cush (Greek Æthiopia, now Nubia). Its capital
was Napata in the Gebel Barhal, “the sacred mountain,” at the foot
of which Amenhotep III had already founded a great sanctuary to the
Theban Amen. By its long connection with Egypt, Egyptian culture was
completely naturalised in Ethiopia. Egyptian was the official language,
the writing was in hieroglyphics, the styling of the kings was after
that of the Pharaohs. Above all, the Egyptian, and especially the
Theban, religion of Amen gained complete dominion in Cush. In the name
of Amen the kings went to battle; they were fully dependent on his
instructions and oracles; they carefully observed the laws on outer
cleanliness and on the food forbidden by religion. What had remained
theory in Egypt, became practice in Ethiopia; a long inscription
describes to us how the god himself immediately elects the king through
his oracle, and strikingly confirms the accounts of the Greeks. Whence
it followed that the priests could command the king in the name of the
god to put an end to his life, a prerogative which Ergamenes abolished
in the third century B.C. By these circumstances it can be seen why the
Egyptian priests described Ethiopia to the Greeks as the Promised Land.
From these circumstances it can also be supposed that the rise of the
kingdom of Napata was connected with the usurpation of the priests of
the Theban Amen at the time of the XXIst Dynasty, an assumption which
is confirmed by many of the kings having borne the name of Piankhi,
prominent in the family of Her-Hor. After that time there was no
question of the rule of the Pharaohs over Cush; so perhaps relatives of
the priests of Amen may have founded the Ethiopian town _circa_ 1000
B.C.

[Illustration: HEAD OF UASARKEN III

(Now in the British Museum)]

When the power of the XXIInd Dynasty became lamed, the kings of Napata
could extend their dominion to Upper Egypt. Probably about the end
of the reign of Shashanq III, 800 B.C., Thebes may have fallen into
their hands; in the first half of the eighth century the valley of the
Nile to the vicinity of Hermopolis was under the rule of the Ethiopian
king Piankhi. In his time the Prince Tefnekht of Saïs succeeded in
subjecting the west part of the Delta in Lower Egypt, in winning
Memphis, and in making all the numerous princes, kings, and small lords
of the middle and east Delta, “all princes of Lower Egypt who wear
the feather” (the sign of the warrior casts of the Ma), acknowledge
his supremacy. He did not adopt the title of king, probably because
he wished to violate as little as possible the relations of rank
which existed amongst the mercenary princes. From Memphis he went
south, subjected Crocodilopolis, Oxyrhynchus and others, besieged
Heracleopolis, the royal residence of Peftotbast, and compelled King
Nimrod of Hermopolis to submit. Then Piankhi stepped forward, called to
help by the adversaries of Tefnekht. His army conquered a hostile fleet
on the Nile, drove Tefnekht back at Heracleopolis, besieged Nimrod in
Hermopolis, and seized a number of small places. Then the king himself
appeared at the seat of war; he compelled Nimrod to capitulate, and
received rich presents from him. After the fall of Hermopolis, all
the small places subjected themselves, only Memphis had to be taken
by storm, after a plan of Tefnekht to relieve it had failed. Then
Piankhi advanced to the Delta; small princes hastened together before
him to swear allegiance and bring him rich gifts. Thus Tefnekht was no
longer strong enough to assert his position; Piankhi may also have had
misgivings as to waging a dangerous war in the west Delta. He contented
himself with Tefnekht’s taking the oath of allegiance in the presence
of the ambassador of the Ethiopian king and sending him presents after
being promised safety.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 775-704 B.C.]]

The campaigns of Piankhi, which fell in the year XXI of his reign
(_circa_ 775 B.C.), do not seem to have resulted in a lasting
subjection of Egypt. If the vassal king Uasarken (III) of Bubastis
was the second ruler of the XXIIIrd Dynasty, the Ethiopians must by
that time have been expelled from Upper Egypt; for we meet with the
third ruler of this house, Psamus, in two small inscriptions in the
temple of Karnak. In the monuments Manetho lets him be succeeded by
an unauthenticated king, Zet. Then follows the XXIVth Dynasty, which,
according to him, only consists of the Saïte Bakenranf (probably
733-729 B.C.), who, according to the reliable Greek reports, was a son
of Tnephachthus, that is to say, of Tefnekht, Piankhi’s adversary. In
tradition he is praised as a wise prince and great legislator; from
the monuments we only know that in his sixth year, an Apis was placed
in the same sepulchral chamber with one that died under Shashanq IV;
according to this he probably succeeded the last title-bearing king
of the XXIInd Dynasty, but must already have reigned for some time
previously in Saïs.

In Ethiopia, Piankhi (it is not known whether after one or more
interregnums) was followed by Kashta, who was married to Shepenapet,
a daughter of King Uasarken, probably Uasarken III of Bubastis.
His son Shabak repeated the expedition to Egypt, conquered
Bakenranf,--according to Manetho he burnt him alive,--and compelled the
local dynasties to acknowledge his supremacy (728 B.C.). He took the
title of a king of Egypt, but as real rulers of the land he established
his sister Ameniritis and her husband, Piankhi (II?). We often meet
with Shabak and his sister in the temples of Thebes, likewise in
Hammamat and elsewhere; an exquisite alabaster statue of the queen has
been found in Karnak. Greek tradition asserts that the Ethiopian king
reigned very mildly over Egypt, executions never took place, criminals
were made to build canals and dams. But a fixed and uniform dominion
was never practised by the Ethiopians over Egypt. As in the time of
Piankhi, the local dynasties remained in possession of their dominions,
and amongst them in all probability also the successors of Tefnekht and
Bakenranf in Saïs, the ancestors of the XXVIth Dynasty.

Although in the year 725 (II Kings xvii. 4) and in 720 (Annals of
Sargon), Shabak is called “King of Egypt,” yet in 715 Sargon speaks of
the tribute of “Pharaoh, King of Egypt”; in 711 he mentions the same
together with the King of Melukhkha (i.e. Cush), and in Sennacherib’s
time the “Kings of Egypt” appear together with “the troops of the King
of Melukhkha.”

Numerous battles for the possession of the Lower Nile occupied the
reigns of Shabak and his successors; it made it impossible for them to
take part in the affairs of Asia, no matter how much they desired done.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 704-672 B.C.]]

Shabak of Cush and Egypt was succeeded in the year 716 (?) by Shabatakh
who, according to Manetho, was his son, and of whom only scattered
monuments have been preserved in Karnak and Memphis. But in the year
704 he was succeeded by a younger, more vigorous prince, Tirhaqa. The
latter appears not to have belonged to the royal family, but to have
acquired the throne by marriage with the wife of Shabak and to have
seized the government in the name of the latter’s son, Tanut-Amen; in
Karnak the two conjointly raised a temple to Osiris Ptah, and are here
both called kings in exactly the same terms. Tirhaqa was twenty years
old when he obtained the double crown. The numerous princes of the
Egyptian cities acknowledged his supremacy, and he was able to turn
his attention to renewing Shabak’s interference in Syria. A number
of Syrian princes were ready to join the liberator from the Assyrian
yoke, especially Elulæus of Tyre, Hezekiah of Judah, who, in the year
714, had succeeded Ahaz, and Zidqa of Askalon. King Padi of Ekron
remained faithful to the Assyrians, but his magnates revolted against
him and delivered him up to Hezekiah. It might have been hoped that
Sennacherib would be detained for a long time in Babylonia. We learn
that Merodach-baladan had opened negotiations with Hezekiah, so that a
great coalition against Assyria seems to have been planned.

Yet this time also the Assyrians were able to forestall their
adversaries. Before their preparations were completed, in the beginning
of 701, Sennacherib appeared in Syria and turned first against Elulæus.
Sidon, Sarepta, Akko, and the other towns subject to him submitted,
and he himself fled to Cyprus. From Phœnicia, Sennacherib marched to
Philistia, having received in every way the homage of those vassals who
had remained loyal. Zidqa of Askalon was captured, his towns reduced,
and a new king set up. Then, the Great King further informs us, he
marched against Ekron, when the army of the King of Cush (Assyrian,
Melukhkha) and the princes of Egypt came to its assistance. At Altaku
he defeated this force, took that city and Timnath, reduced Ekron where
he punished the instigator of the rebellion, and restored King Padi,
who had been taken as a prisoner to Jerusalem.

Trusting in Pharaoh and in Jehovah, Hezekiah persisted in resisting.
Meantime the army of Tirhaqa, King of Cush, marched up. Sennacherib
advanced against him and again demanded the surrender of Jerusalem. But
Hezekiah, trusting in Jehovah’s word as announced to him by the prophet
Isaiah, once more refused. In the night the Mal’ak-Yahveh (the angel
of the Lord) smites the Assyrian army, so that 185,000 men die, and
Sennacherib had to return to Nineveh.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 672-663 B.C.]]

The Egyptians gave Herodotus a similar account: after the Ethiopian
Sabaco [Shabak], a former priest of Ptah, Sethos, who had been at
enmity with the warrior caste, ruled over Egypt. Now when Sennacherib,
“King of the Arabians and Assyrians,” made an expedition against Egypt,
the warriors refused to fight, and Sethos was in great distress. But
the gods sent field-mice against the hostile army which was encamped at
Pelusium, and the mice gnawed the bows and all the leather trappings of
the enemy, so that on the following day they could easily be defeated
by the Egyptian artisans and merchants that had been impressed into
service.

We can never be completely clear as to what did happen, especially
so long as the position of the places mentioned is not positively
ascertained. This much is established, that although Sennacherib may
have exaggerated the importance of the victory at Altaku, he did not
suffer defeat at the hands of the Egyptians. For in that case Tirhaqa
would have followed up his victory--while, as a matter of fact, he
did not again interfere in Syria for the space of thirty years--and
the Egyptians would have spoken of a victory and not of a miracle. It
is much more likely that it was some natural visitation, presumably
a pestilence, which compelled Sennacherib to give up the invasion
of Egypt and raise the siege of Jerusalem. There was, however, no
further hope of aid from Egypt, so Hezekiah made his peace with the
Great King and sent to his capital the heavy contribution which could,
only with great difficulty, be raised by the little city. In spite of
the half compulsory retreat, the supremacy over Syria was secured;
during the next decades none of the petty states ventured to dream of
a revolt from the Assyrian. It was not till towards the end of his
reign, after 672 B.C., that Esarhaddon undertook a great campaign.
Again had rebellion broken out in Syria in reliance on Ethiopian
support: King Baal of Tyre had renounced his allegiance. Esarhaddon
determined to find some means of putting an end to the ever-recurring
danger. Tyre was blockaded anew, but the main army marched straight
on Egypt. The prince of the desert Arabs furnished camels, and the
toilsome march from Raphia to Pelusium was successfully accomplished.
We do not know whether Tirhaqa was in a position to offer resistance;
at all events Memphis was taken, and the Assyrian army penetrated as
far as Thebes. Tirhaqa had to retreat to Ethiopia, and the numerous
provincial princes of Egypt submitted, and were confirmed in possession
as tributary vassals. No less than twenty of them are mentioned as
being summoned to Thebes from the Delta and the towns of Upper Egypt.
The most powerful amongst them was Neku, the lord of Saïs and Memphis
(according to Manetho 671-664 B.C.), whose forefathers, Stephinates
and Nechepsos, had already risen in power in Saïs, and were probably
the direct successors of Tefnekht and Bocchoris (Bakenranf). At the
bidding of the Assyrian king, Neku had to change the name of Saïs into
Karbilmatati, “garden of the lord of the countries”; in the same way
his son Psamthek received the Assyrian name of Nabu-shezib-anni. From
this time Esarhaddon styles himself “King of the Kings of Misir (Lower
Egypt), Patoris (Upper Egypt), and Cush.” On the 12th of Airu (April),
668 B.C., Esarhaddon laid down the government. He set his illegitimate
son Shamash-shum-ukin over the Babylonian provinces as vice-king, while
Asshurbanapal inherited the crown of the Assyrian empire. The change of
rulers encouraged Tirhaqa to attempt to win back Egypt. Mentu-em-ha,
the governor of Thebes, hailed him as a deliverer. Memphis was also
won, and in Thebes restoration works were even taken in hand. But the
success was not a lasting one; an army despatched by Asshurbanapal beat
the Ethiopian troops, and Tirhaqa had to fly to Thebes but did not
manage to hold it (about 667 B.C.). It is true that several Egyptian
princes, Neku, Pakruru of Pisept, and Sharludari of Tanis (Pelusium),
now attempted to overthrow the rule of the foreigner and bring
back Tirhaqa: but the Assyrian generals anticipated them; Neku and
Sharludari were taken and the rebel towns severely punished. In Neku,
Asshurbanapal hoped to be able to win a firm support for his rule,
and presumably on information of warlike preparations in Ethiopia, he
released him from his captivity with rich presents and reinstated him
in his principality.

[Sidenote: [663-655 B.C.]]

In the year 664-663 Tirhaqa died; he was succeeded by his stepson
Tanut-Amen, who was already advanced in years. A dream which promised
him the double crown, induced him, so he states in an inscription,
to lead his army from Napata against Egypt in the very beginning of
his reign. At Thebes he encountered no resistance; before Memphis
the enemy’s troops were beaten and the town taken. In one of these
engagements Neku, the most powerful of the Assyrian vassals, probably
met his death: Herodotus relates that he was slain by the Ethiopian
king, and according to Manetho he died 663 B.C. On the other hand, the
attempt to conquer the towns of the Delta was unsuccessful: but some
of the vassals, including Pakruru of Pisept, presented themselves at
the court at Memphis. Tanut-Amen’s inscription tells only of the long
theological discourses which the king held before them, and how, after
having been well entertained, each returned to his own town. Silence
is preserved as to the sequel; from Asshurbanapal’s annals we learn
that the feeble prince, who was completely under the dominion of
theological fancies, evacuated the country before the Assyrian army,
without striking a blow, and returned to his own land. This terminated
the Ethiopian rule for all time (about 662 B.C.): Thebes fell again
into the hands of the Assyrians and rich booty was carried to Nineveh.
The memory of the retreat of the Ethiopians was preserved down to a
late period; the priests told Herodotus that Shabak, the representative
of the Ethiopian rule, had voluntarily evacuated Egypt after a reign of
fifty years, in consequence of a dream. It is true that they omitted to
mention that as a result of this the country fell into the hands of the
Assyrians.

The following table will assist the reader in straightening out the
dynasties of this much confused period.

TABLE OF CONTEMPORANEOUS DYNASTIES

The numbers 1, 2, etc., show the direct succession of the recognised
legitimate Pharaohs.[d]

CHAPTER VIII. THE CLOSING SCENES

[DYNASTIES XXVI-XXXI: 655-332 B.C.]

And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great pain shall be in
Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they shall take
away her multitude, and her foundations shall be broken down. They
also that uphold Egypt shall fall; and the pride of her power shall
come down: from the tower of Syene shall they fall in it by the
sword, saith the Lord God. And they shall be desolate in the midst
of the countries that are desolate, and her cities shall be in the
midst of the cities that are wasted.--_Ezekiel_ XXX. 4, 6, 7.

A great nation in its time of decline does not sink into utter
insignificance without making spasmodic efforts at recuperation. Such
efforts were made by Egypt in the XXVIth Dynasty, when there sat upon
the throne of Egypt several monarchs who recalled something of the
days of yore. Notable among these were Psamthek I (Psammetichus) and
Aahmes II, under whose beneficent rule Egypt was voluntarily opened
up to commerce with the outside world. These rulers built no lasting
monuments comparable to the Pyramids or the Labyrinth, and attempted
no conquests like those of Tehutimes and Ramses. But their reigns were
marked by a period of national prosperity such as had not been known in
Egypt for several centuries; and they were also notable because at this
time the first recorded observations that have come down to us were
made by foreigners regarding Egyptian history and the Egyptian people.
We shall, therefore, consider some details of this dynasty before
passing on to a brief consideration of the reign of the Persians in
Egypt and an even briefer analysis of the remaining dynasties. In this
sweeping view more than three hundred years are covered. During this
period the centres of world-historic influence are shifted from Assyria
to Babylonia; from Babylonia to Persia; and thence to Greece; but never
again does Egypt occupy her old position. Her reminiscent glory only
serves to make her the more coveted as a conqueror’s prize. But first
there is the bright spot of Psamthek’s reign.[a]

PSAMTHEK

[Sidenote: [655-612 B.C.]]

It was no longer the time of Tehutimes and Ramses. It was the turn of
Egypt to be enslaved, now by the “vile race of the Cushites,” now by
the “vile race of the Kheta.” The Egyptian monuments, which register
only victories, would not have sufficed to make known to us the history
of this troubled epoch; it is only since the Assyrian inscriptions have
been deciphered that we have been able to learn of the double conquest
of Egypt by Kings Esarhaddon and Asshurbanapal.

The princes of the Delta received investiture from these Asiatic
conquerors, for whom they had perhaps less aversion than for the
Ethiopian kings. Twice, however, was Egypt reconquered by Tirhaqa and
by his successor, Tanut-Amen. But all these successive invasions had
broken the bond which attached the nomes to the national unity; all
that remained was an Egypt parcelled out like feudal Europe after the
invasion of the Northmen.

The princes of the South continued to recognise the authority of the
Ethiopian Dynasty; those of the Delta, to the number of twelve, formed
a sort of federation which the Greek authors call the Dodecarchy. But
at the end of fifteen years, the prince of Saïs, Psamthek, became an
object of suspicion to his colleagues. Herodotus tells us the occasion.

“At the very commencement of their reign, an oracle had foretold to
them that he amongst them who should make libations in the temple
of Hephaistos (Ptah) with a brazen cup, would have the empire of
all Egypt. Some time later, as they were on the point of making
libations, after having offered sacrifices in the temple, the high
priest presented them with cups of gold; but he made a mistake in the
number, and instead of twelve cups, he only brought eleven for the
twelve kings. Then Psammetichus [Psamthek], who happened to be in the
first rank, took his helmet, which was of bronze, and used it for the
libations. The other kings, reflecting on his action and on the oracle,
and recognising that he had not acted from premeditated design, thought
that it would be unjust to put him to death; but they despoiled him
of the greater part of his power, and relegated him to the marshes,
forbidding him to leave them or to keep up any correspondence with the
rest of Egypt.

“Smarting under this outrage, and resolved to avenge himself on the
authors of his exile, he sent to Buto to consult the oracle of Leto,
the most veracious of the Egyptian oracles. Answer was returned that
he would be avenged by men of bronze, coming from the sea. At first
he could not persuade himself that men of bronze could come to his
aid; but a short time after, some Ionian and Carian pirates, being
obliged to put into Egypt, came on shore clothed in bronze armour. An
Egyptian ran to carry the news to Psammetichus, and as this Egyptian
had never seen men armed in such a manner, he told them that men of
bronze, coming from the sea, were pillaging the countryside. The king,
perceiving that the oracle was accomplished, made alliance with the
Ionians and Carians, and engaged them by large promises to take his
part. With these auxiliary troops and the Egyptians who had remained
faithful to him, he dethroned the eleven kings.”

Upper Egypt submitted without resistance, and the names of the
Ethiopian kings were struck off the Theban monuments. They seem,
however, to have retained some partisans, for Psamthek espoused a wife
of their race, the means employed by each dynasty to legitimatise its
usurpation. He recompensed his auxiliaries by giving them territories
near the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile, and made them his guard of honour.
This was not an innovation; for a long time the kings of Egypt had been
wont to take foreigners into their pay, and there is no doubt that
there were in the native army many soldiers of Libyan or Ethiopian
race; but they were annoyed at the favour shown the newcomers, and
emigrated into Ethiopia to the number of two hundred thousand men.
Psamthek tried to detain them by appealing to their patriotism, but
they struck their lances on their shields and answered that so long as
they had arms they would find their own country wherever they chose to
establish themselves.

This wholesale desertion was a benefit to Egypt, which it thus relieved
from military rule. Conquests lead to inevitable reprisals. Armies,
like all privileged classes, end by becoming corrupted, and then,
useless in the face of the enemy, they become a heavy burden and
an instrument of civil war. Psamthek had no reason to regret these
soldiers, who had been unable to repel foreign invasion.

The labours of peace repaired the recent disasters; the temples were
rebuilt; the arts shone with a new brilliancy; the whole activity
of the nation was turned towards commerce and industry. Psamthek
inaugurated a new policy by opening the country to foreigners.

“He received those who visited Egypt with hospitality,” says Diodorus;
“he was the first of the Egyptian kings to open markets to other
nations, and to give great security to navigators.”

The Greeks, who had helped to conquer the throne, were particularly
favoured. Encouraged by the example of the Ionian and Carian
adventurers whose services he had paid so well, some Milesian colonists
anchored thirty ships at the entrance of the Bolbitinic mouth of
the Nile, and there founded a fortified trading establishment. To
facilitate commercial relations for the future, Psamthek confided
some Egyptian children to the Greeks established in Egypt, that they
might learn Greek, and thus arose those interpreters who formed a
distinct class in the towns of the Delta. It even appears, according
to Diodorus, that Psamthek had his own children taught Greek. The
intercourse of the Greeks with the Egyptians became from that time so
constant that from the reign of Psammetichus, says Herodotus, we know
with certainty all that passed in that country.

The accession of Psamthek and the XXVIth Dynasty is fixed at the year
655 before the Christian era, and it is only from this period that we
have certain dates for the history of Egypt. The complete chronology
of the XXVIth Dynasty has been recovered in the monuments of the tomb
of Apis, discovered by Mariette Bey, in the excavation of the Serapeum
of Memphis, and now in the Louvre. This chronology differs somewhat
sensibly from that which it had been possible to draw up from Manetho’s
lists, so that we are, says De Rougé, obliged to distrust figures
preserved in those lists, which a few years ago were regarded as an
infallible criterion. An attempt has been made to restore to them the
credit they had lost as an instrument of chronology, by attaching to
them an undisputed synchronism. According to the calculation of M.
Biot, a rising of the star Sothis (Sirius), indicated at Thebes under
Ramses III, towards the commencement of the XXth Dynasty, would fall at
the beginning of the thirteenth century B.C.

Psamthek had his reign dated from the death of Tirhaqa (664), without
taking the Dodecarchy into account, and this is doubtless the reason
why Herodotus gives him fifty-four years’ reign, although in reality
he reigned only forty-four. He had built the southern pylon of the
temple of Ptah at Memphis, and a peristyle court where the Apis bull
was fed. The walls were covered with bas-reliefs, and colossi, twelve
ells high, took the place of columns; these were probably caryatides
like those which are seen at Thebes and Abu Simbel. These structures
have disappeared, like all the other buildings of Memphis. The only
monuments of the reign of Psamthek which still exist are the twelve
columns, twenty-one metres (about sixty-nine feet) high, whose ruins
are seen in the first court of the temple of Karnak, where they formed
a double rank. One only of these columns is still upright. It is not
known whether they were raised to form the centre avenue of a hypostyle
hall like that of Seti, or whether they were intended to bear symbolic
images which served the Egyptians as military ensigns, such as the ram,
the ibis, the sparrow-hawk, the jackal, etc.

Psamthek and his successors, though not residing at Thebes, restored
its monuments and repaired the disasters of the Assyrian invasion. In
the Louvre and the British Museum there are numerous sculptures of the
Saïtic epoch, which is one of the grand epochs of Egyptian art.

In the reign of Psamthek, the Scythians, driving the Cimmerians before
them, had invaded Asia and were threatening Egypt. Psamthek preferred
to buy their retreat by a money payment, rather than expose the country
to the danger of invasion, and the barbarians retraced their steps
northward. But in order to protect Egypt on the northeast, it was
necessary to have a foothold in Palestine, and Psamthek therefore laid
siege to the town of Ashdod.

[Illustration: EGYPTIAN BIRDS

(From the monuments)]

[Sidenote: [612-594 B.C.]]

This siege, says Herodotus, lasted twenty-nine years, but perhaps,
as M. Maspero thinks, Herodotus’ interpreters meant to say that the
taking of Ashdod took place in the twenty-ninth year of Psamthek’s
reign. His son, Neku II, who succeeded him in 612, desiring to profit
by the changes which had supervened in Asia, and to re-establish the
dominion of Egypt, gave battle to the Jews and Syrians near Megiddo.
Josiah, king of Judah, was killed, his son Jehoahaz, whom the Jews had
proclaimed king, was dethroned by Neku, who put in his place Eliakim,
another son of Josiah, and remained master of all Syria. But he soon
found a redoubtable adversary in front of him, for the kingdom of
Babylon had succeeded to that of Nineveh. Beaten by Nebuchadrezzar at
Carchemish on the banks of the Euphrates, Neku lost all his conquests
and returned precipitately to Egypt.

His name remains connected with an enterprise more important than his
military expeditions. Two kings of the XIXth Dynasty, Seti I and Ramses
II, had had a canal of communication dug between the eastern branch of
the Nile and the Red Sea. But whether it was that this canal had not
been finished, or that it was blocked up by the sands, Neku desired
to restore it. The canal began a little above Bubastis. According to
Herodotus, a hundred and twenty thousand workmen perished in digging
it, and Neku had it discontinued in consequence of an oracle, which
warned him that he was labouring for the barbarians; an oracle which
was accomplished, for the canal was finished by the Persians. In our
own day, when it was desired to open direct communication between the
Red Sea and the Mediterranean, the operations were begun with the
restoration of Neku’s canal, to supply fresh water for the workmen who
were digging the maritime canal.

After abandoning his project, Neku conceived another which might have
had still more important consequences. He sent some Phœnician sailors
to make a voyage of circumnavigation round Africa.[b]

“The Phœnicians,” says Herodotus,[e] “having embarked on the Erythræan
Sea, sailed into the Southern Sea. As the autumn was come they landed
on that part of Libya at which they found themselves, and sowed corn.
They then awaited the time of the harvest, and having gathered it again
took to the sea. Having voyaged thus for two years, in the third year
they doubled the pillars of Heracles and, returning to Egypt, related
what I do not believe, but which others may perhaps credit; that whilst
sailing round Libya they had the sun on their right.”

Psamthek was well known to classic writers under the name Psammetichus.
The old historian Diodorus picturesquely tells of his accession. We
prefer to quote the old translation of Booth, 1700.

THE GOOD KING SABACH [SHABAK] AND PSAMMETICHUS

[Sidenote: [728-612 B.C.]]

“After a long time, one Sabach an Ethiopian came to the Throne, going
beyond all his Predecessors in his Worship of the Gods, and kindness
to his Subjects. Any Man may judge and have a clear Evidence of his
gentle Disposition in this, that when the Laws pronounced the severest
Judgment (I mean Sentence of Death) he chang’d the Punishment, and
made an Edict that the Condemn’d Persons should be kept to work in
the Towns in Chains, by whose Labour he rais’d many Mounts, and made
many Commodious Canals; conceiving by this means he should not only
moderate the severity of the Punishment, but instead of that which was
unprofitable, advance the publick Good, by the Service and Labours of
the Condemn’d.

“A Man may likewise judge of his extraordinary Piety from his Dream,
and his Abdication of the Government; for the Tutelar God of Thebes,
seem’d to speak to him in his Sleep, and told him that he could not
long reign happily and prosperously in Egypt, except he cut all the
Priests in Pieces, when he pass’d through the midst of them with his
Guards and Servants; which Advice being often repeated, he at length
sent for the Priests from all parts, and told them that if he staid in
Egypt any longer, he found that he should displease God, who never at
any time before by Dreams or Visions commanded any such thing. And that
he would rather be gone and lose his Life, being pure and innocent,
than displease God, or enjoy the Crown of Egypt, by staining his Life
with the horrid Murder of the Innocent.

“And so at length giving up the Kingdom into the Hands of the People,
he return’d into Ethiopia. Upon this there was an Anarchy for the space
of Two Years; but the People falling into Tumults and intestine Broyls
and Slaughters one of another, Twelve of the chief Nobility of the
Kingdom joyn’d in a Solemn Oath, and then calling a Senate at Memphis,
and making some Laws for the better directing and cementing of them
in mutual peace and fidelity, they took upon them the Regal Power and
Authority.

“After they had govern’d the Kingdom very amicably for the space of
Fifteen Years, (according to the Agreement which they had mutually
sworn to observe) they apply’d themselves to the building of a
Sepulcher, where they might all lye together; that as in their
Life-time they had been equal in their Power and Authority, and had
always carried it with love and respect one towards another; so after
Death (being all bury’d together in one Place) they might continue the
Glory of their Names in one and the same Monument.

“To this end they made it their business to excel all their
Predecessors in the greatness of their Works: For near the Lake of
Myris in Lybia, they built a Four-square Monument of Polish’d Marble,
every square a Furlong in length, for curious Carvings and other pieces
of Art, not to be equall’d by any that should come after them. When
you are enter’d within the Wall, there’s presented a stately Fabrick,
supported round with Pillars, Forty on every side: The Roof was of
one intire Stone, whereon was curiously carv’d Racks and Mangers for
Horses, and other excellent pieces of Workmanship, and painted and
adorn’d with divers sorts of Pictures and Images; where likewise
were portray’d the Resemblances of the Kings, the Temples, and the
Sacrifices in most beautiful Colours. And such was the Cost and
Stateliness of this Sepulcher, begun by these Kings, that (if they had
not been dethron’d before it was perfected) none ever after could have
exceeded them in the state and magnificence of their Works. But after
they had reign’d over Egypt Fifteen Years, all of them but one lost
their Sovereignty in the manner following.

[Sidenote: [655-612 B.C.]]

“Psammeticus Saïtes [Psamthek I], one of the Kings, whose Province
was upon the Sea Coasts, traffickt with all sorts of Merchants, and
especially with the Phenicians and Grecians; by this means inriching
his Province, by vending his own Commodities, and the importation of
those that came from Greece, he not only grew very wealthy, but gain’d
an interest in the Nations and Princes abroad; upon which account he
was envy’d by the rest of the Kings, who for that reason made War upon
him. Some antient Historians tell a Story, That these Princes were
told by the Oracle, That which of them should first pour Wine out of a
brazen Viol to the God ador’d at Memphis, should be sole Lord of all
Egypt. Whereupon Psammeticus when the Priest brought out of the Temple
Twelve Golden Viols, pluckt off his Helmet, and pour’d out a Wine
Offering from thence; which when his Collegues took notice of, they
forbore putting him to death, but depos’d him, and banish’d him into
the Fenns, bordering upon the Sea-Coasts.[10]

“Whether therefore it were this, or Envy as is said before, that gave
Birth to this Dissention and Difference amongst them, it’s certain
Psammeticus hir’d Souldiers out of Arabia, Caria and Ionia, and in a
Field-Fight near the City Moniemphis, he got the day. Some of the Kings
of the other side were slain, and the rest fled into Africa, and were
not able further to contend for the Kingdom.

“Psammeticus having now gain’d possession of the whole, built a Portico
to the East Gate of the Temple at Memphis, in honour of that God, and
incompass’d the Temple with a Wall, supporting it with Colosses of
Twelve Cubits high in the room of Pillars. He bestow’d likewise upon
his Mercenary Souldiers many large Rewards over and above their Pay
promis’d them.”[c]

To return to later and less credulous historians, it will be well to
note a more authoritative account of this period.

THE RESTORATION IN EGYPT

[Sidenote: [655-612 B.C.]]

When Asshurbanapal again subjected the petty princes of Egypt, he had
favoured none so much as Neku I of Saïs. The latter had fallen in
battle against Tanut-Amen; his son Psamthek had sought refuge with
the Assyrians and had been brought back to his dominions by them. As
soon as circumstances allowed, he threw off the Assyrian yoke, as his
father had done before him. At the same time he took up the task begun
by Tefnekht, his predecessor and courageous ancestor, of suppressing
the petty princes and uniting Egypt. King Gyges of Lydia sent him
auxiliaries; they were the Carian and Ionian troops, which, according
to Herodotus, landed in Egypt one day and were employed by Psamthek
against his rivals. Soon the first mercenaries were followed by others;
they formed the backbone of the king’s army.

[Illustration: EGYPTIAN MUMMY-CASE]

What took place in the individual fights is not known; that is, we have
no knowledge of the battles with the Assyrians. But about the year 655
the object was obtained, Egypt freed and united. So as to establish his
rule safely, the king married Shepenapet, daughter of Queen Ameniritis.

The chief opponents of the new ruler were doubtless the mercenaries
organised as a warrior caste, the Ma, who had shared the land under
the Ethiopian and Assyrian supremacy. Herodotus relates that 240,000
warriors “who stood to the left of the king” had wandered to Ethiopia,
under Psamthek, since for three years they were not relieved in the
garrisons; the king, who hastened after them, could not persuade them
to return. Although the recital is legendary with regard to the immense
number, the fact fits in clearly with the history of the times that a
considerable number of the warrior caste, who would not submit to the
new circumstances, should have left the land, been taken up by the king
of Napata and colonised the valley of the Upper Nile.

It has already been mentioned that Psamthek, so as to protect himself
against the renewed invasion of the Assyrians, also turned to Asia.
As Aahmes I, after the expulsion of the Hyksos, invested Sherohan in
Palestine, so for twenty-nine years Psamthek took the field against
Ashdod, until he conquered the town. His power does not seem to have
extended farther south than the First Cataract. His grandson, Psamthek
II, first took the field against Ethiopia. To his time probably belong
the inscriptions which Greek, Carian, and Phœnician soldiers have
inscribed on the colossi of the temples of Abu Simbel in their mother
tongues. Southern Nubia did not remain long conquered. The three strong
border fortresses of Elephantine in the south, Daphne in the east, and
Marea in the west, essentially determine the limits of Egyptian power.

The new state, in which, after some two hundred years of anarchy,
the kingdom of the Pharaohs was again established, was only partly
national. The dynasty was, as the name teaches, not of Egyptian
origin, but in all probability Libyan. The troops which the princes
of Saïs could raise were doubtless for the greater part Libyans, and
the particular characteristic was due to the mercenaries who had
come across the sea. In future days the Ionians and Carians who were
colonised in the “camps” between Bubastis and Pelusium, on that most
dangerous east border of the land, were the chief support of the
throne; under Uah-ab-Ra [Apries] their number increased to thirty
thousand men.

[Sidenote: [612-596 B.C.]]

Thus from the beginning the kings of the restoration, like the
Ptolemies, held a much freer position, which raised them far above
their predecessors. They, manifestly with intention, held Saïs as
residence, although Memphis was honoured as the oldest capital, and
structures were built on the ruins of ancient Thebes. With full
knowledge they carried on a considerable commerce. Psamthek’s son, Neku
II (612-596), began to build a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea; he
sent out a Phœnician fleet to circumnavigate Africa, which returned to
the Mediterranean three years after its departure from Suez. A fleet
was maintained on the Arabian as well as in the Mediterranean Sea.

With the Greeks, who in earlier times came to Egypt only as pirates
or were driven there by storm, but now sought to draw all the coasts
of the Mediterranean into their commerce, active negotiations were
taken up. From trading with them arose the numerous caste of the
interpreters. Neku II sends oblations to Brandichæ; to his son,
Psamthek II, there came an embassy from Elis; the Egyptian divinities
begin to become known to the Greeks: whilst amongst Asiatics closely
related to the culture and customs of the Egyptians there reigned
active negotiation and a reciprocal influence, the Hellenes, of quite
other disposition and more active in commerce, remained strangers
to the Egyptians. They were met with suspicion, and restrictions
were laid upon them. Aahmes was the first to assign them a place in
Naucratis, south of Saïs, where they gained influence and property and
could organise themselves as an independent community, but the Greek
merchants were forbidden to navigate in any other branch of the Nile.

Internally the XXVIth Dynasty in every sense bears the stamp of
restoration. The end of a formidable crisis had come, and the endeavour
was made to re-establish conditions as they were conceived to have been
of old--that is to say--to introduce the abstract ideal.

Therefore the Egyptians held themselves more aloof from the strangers,
most carefully observing all laws as to cleanliness; the god of the
strangers and hostile powers, the till-now-honoured Set, was cast
out of the Pantheon, his name and image effaced everywhere: also the
divinities taken up from the Syrian neighbours, such as Astarte and
Anata, completely disappeared. In religion they turned back to the
oldest laws; the dead formulas of the tombs of the Pyramids were
revived, the worship of the early kings of Memphis, Sneferu, Khufu,
Sahu-Ra, was again taken up.

The art of this period is throughout archaic, constituting a period of
efflorescence distinguished by excellence and neatness of the forms,
but wanting in all originality. In writing, the endeavour is made as
far as possible to imitate the old models. Naturally in this manner the
relative simplicity and naturalness of the olden times was not reached;
the heritage of a thousand years’ development, the endless magic
and formal ritual with its wearying system and its dead phrases, is
carefully preserved and ever increased. If, according to Greek reports,
the Egyptians believed in the transmigration of souls after death into
the body of another being, and that, after having gone through all the
animals of land and sea and air, they returned to human form after
three thousand years, this doctrine, which is nowhere to be found in
manuscripts left to us, may have arisen at this time from their view
of conditions after death and the consubstantiality of all life. That
Egypt which the Greeks learnt to know was a well-preserved mummy of
primitive times and served to impress them by its uniqueness and its
age, and individually to stimulate, but was no more in a position to
awaken a new life.

In the social domain, if we can believe the reports of the Greeks,
the separation of classes was brought about. The priesthood was an
exclusive caste, and their dignity was hereditary; next to them come
the completely exclusive warrior class, consisting of the successors of
the Ma, divided into the Calasirians and Hermotybians. Priests as well
as warriors are exempt from taxes and in possession of a great part of
the agricultural land, which they hire out to peasants for large sums
of money. The remaining part of the soil is royal dominion. Far below
the privileged classes stands the mass of the people, the labourers,
manufacturers, merchants, finally the shepherds of the Delta, of
Semitic descent, and the inhabitants of the Delta living on fisheries
of the swamps, both of which are considered unclean in Egypt. In theory
the principle may also be set down here that every class forms a
decided caste; that this was not practically carried through is taught
us by the report of Herodotus, II, 147, that the Shepherd race, being
unclean, could marry only within itself. From which we may infer that
other castes were permitted to intermarry.[d]

THE PERSIAN CONQUEST AND THE END OF EGYPTIAN AUTONOMY

[Sidenote: [596-572 B.C.]]

With the XXVIth Dynasty the curtain was practically drawn for all time
on Egyptian autonomy. The recurrent struggle between Asia and Africa
was renewed with disastrous consequences to the people of the Nile. We
have here to do with the Persian conquest, and in particular with the
deeds of Cambyses.

Neku reigned six years according to Manetho, sixteen according to
Herodotus, and this latter figure is confirmed by two steles at
Florence and Leyden. His son, Psamthek II, whom Herodotus calls Psammis
(596), reigned six years and died on his return from an expedition into
Ethiopia. It was probably during this expedition that some Greek and
Phœnician soldiers carved their names on the leg of one of the colossi
of Abu-Simbel.

In the reign of Uah-ab-Ra, the Apries of the Greeks (591), Syria and
Palestine were the theatre of important events. The petty people of
these countries, threatened by the Chaldean power, tried to save their
independence by the help of Egypt.

Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, first turned his forces against
the kingdom of Judah, which succumbed in spite of Egypt’s tardy and
inefficient intervention. Jerusalem was taken, and the people led
away to captivity. The Jewish prophets, in their anger against Egypt,
announced for it the fate of Judah, and, if we are to believe Josephus,
these predictions were accomplished; for Nebuchadrezzar is said to have
defeated and killed Uah-ab-Ra and subdued Egypt. But Herodotus and
Diodorus say nothing of this defeat, and speak, on the contrary, of a
naval victory of Apries over the Phœnicians and Cypriotes. M. Renan’s
explorations have brought to light the ruins of a temple raised by the
Egyptians at Gebel, a fact which seems to indicate that they remained
masters of the country.

Uah-ab-Ra undertook to subdue the Greek colony of Cyrene, and, as it
would not have been prudent to oppose his Greek auxiliaries to a people
of the same race, he employed only native troops on this expedition,
which was an unfortunate one. The Egyptian soldiers, believing he had
undertaken it solely in order to get rid of them, revolted. To appease
them, Uah-ab-Ra sent an officer named Aahmes, whose good nature pleased
the soldiers. As he was speaking to them, one of them put a helmet on
his head, and there was a cry that they ought to make him their king.
He did not wait to be persuaded, and immediately put himself at the
head of the rebels.

Uah-ab-Ra, learning this, gave orders to one of those who remained
faithful to him to bring Aahmes to him, dead or alive. The envoy
received only a very coarse answer, and when he returned, the king had
his nose and ears cut off. The indignant Egyptians instantly went over
to Aahmes. Uah-ab-Ra at the head of his Carian and Ionian mercenaries,
to the number of thirty thousand, marched against the rebels, who
were far more numerous. He was beaten and led back, a prisoner, into
the palace which had been his. Aahmes at first treated him with
consideration, but the Egyptians insisted that he should be delivered
up to them, and strangled. He had reigned twenty years. Aahmes had
him buried in the tomb of his ancestors, and espoused a daughter of
Psamthek II in order to graft himself on the Saïtic Dynasty.

[Sidenote: [572-525 B.C.]]

Aahmes II, though he had become king by a reaction of the national
party against the foreigner, nevertheless showed himself still more
favourable to the Greeks than his predecessors had been. He permitted
them to establish themselves at Naucratis, on the Canopic branch of
the Nile, and to raise temples to their gods. One of these temples,
the Hellenion, was built at the public expense by the principal Greek
towns in Asia. Particular temples were consecrated to Apollo by the
Milesians, to Hera by the Samians, and to Zeus by the Æginians.
Aahmes sent his statue to several towns in Greece, and when the
temple of Delphi was destroyed by fire, he desired to contribute to
the subscription opened for its reconstruction, and offered a talent
of alum from Egypt. He entered into an alliance with the Cyrenæans,
and married one of the daughters of the country; he also allied
himself with Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, and with Crœsus, king of
the Lydians. He made no war except against the Cypriotes, whom he
subjected to a tribute. He chiefly occupied himself, as Psamthek had
done, in developing the trade of Egypt. Like him he erected monuments
at Saïs and Memphis, which are no longer in existence, but of which
Herodotus speaks with admiration. There is at the Louvre a monolithic
chapel in pink granite, which dates from the reign of Aahmes, and the
British Museum possesses the sarcophagus of one of his wives, Queen
Ankhnes, who long resided at Thebes. It is believed that the hypogees
of Assassif, near Gurnah, belong to the Saïtic epoch. There is one of
them which, in extent and richness, yields to none of the tombs of
Biban-el-Moluk. This is the tomb of a high priest who was at the same
time a royal functionary.

Aahmes was nothing more than a soldier of fortune, and it appears that
the ceremonious etiquette of the ancient kings of Egypt wearied him.
When he had employed his morning in administering justice, he passed
the rest of the time at table with his friends. Certain courtiers
represented to him that he was compromising his dignity. He answered
that a bow-string could not always be stretched. At the beginning of
his reign the obscurity of his birth made him despised. Perceiving
this, he had melted a gold basin, in which he used to wash his feet,
made from it the golden statue of a god and offered it to the public
veneration.

“Thus it was with me,” he said; “I was a plebeian, now I am your
king; render me, then, the honour and respect which are due me.” The
people understood the allegory, and ended by becoming attached to this
sensible man, who took his trade of king seriously. It was from him,
according to Herodotus, that the Athenians borrowed their famous law
against idleness.

“He ordered each Egyptian to declare to the nomarch, every year, what
were his means of subsistence. He who did not comply with the law, or
could not prove that he lived by honest means, was punished with death.
Solon, the Athenian, borrowed this law from Egypt, and established it
in Athens, where it is still in force, because it is a wise one and no
fault can be found with it.”

Herodotus says that Egypt was never happier or more flourishing than in
the reign of Aahmes, and that there were then in that country twenty
thousand well-peopled towns or villages.

All this prosperity was to disappear in one day, for Egypt was about
to founder like Nineveh and Jerusalem and Sardis and Babylon, without
previous decay, in one of those sudden and overwhelming storms which
sweep monarchies away.

A new empire had just arisen in Asia. Persia had absorbed Media and
subdued Chaldea and Asia Minor. Lydia had succumbed so quickly that
Aahmes had not been able to succour his ally, Crœsus. Cyrus, the
founder of the Persian Empire, left Egypt in peace, and she took good
care not to stir; but his son Cambyses felt the need of aggrandising
his states, and as in default of reasons wars never lack pretexts, here
is the one he gave, or which was perhaps invented as an afterthought.

It was said that Cyrus had asked Aahmes to send him the best physician
for diseases of the eye, to be found in his dominion. This physician
wished to avenge himself on the king of Egypt, who had torn him from
the arms of his wife and children to send him into Persia. He persuaded
Cambyses to demand the daughter of Aahmes, counting on a refusal,
which would not fail to be considered as an insult. Aahmes knew well
that Cambyses would not make his daughter a queen, but a slave of
the harem; he sent a daughter of Uah-ab-Ra. The latter disclosed the
ruse to the king of Persia, and demanded of him to avenge her father,
whose murderer Aahmes had been. Cambyses flew into a violent rage and
resolved to carry war into Egypt.

A desert that an army could not cross in less than three days’ march
protected Egypt on the side of Asia. Following the advice of Phanes,
a Greek officer and deserter from the Egyptian army, Cambyses secured
for himself the alliance of the Arab king, who stationed camels laden
with skins full of water, all along the route the Persians were to
follow. The town of Pelusium, which was the key of Egypt, was besieged
by Cambyses. Polyænus relates that he caused dogs, cats, and ibises to
be collected, and placed them in front of his army; the Egyptians dared
not fly their arrows for fear of hitting the sacred animals, and the
town was taken without resistance. Aahmes had just died, after a reign
of forty-four years (528). His son, Psamthek III, the Psammenitus of
Herodotus, came to meet the enemy. The Greek and Carian mercenaries in
the pay of the king of Egypt, learning the treason of Phanes, their
former chief, revenged themselves on his children.

“They led them into the camp,” says Herodotus, “and, having placed a
mixing bowl between the two armies, they cut their throats under the
eyes of their father, mingled their blood with wine and water in the
bowl, and, when all the auxiliaries had drunk, rushed into battle.”

It was fierce and bloody; many perished on either side; but at last the
Egyptians had the worst of it and fled in disorder to Memphis. Cambyses
summoned the town to surrender; the crowd destroyed the Mytilenean
vessel which carried the ambassadors, massacred those who manned it,
and dragged their limbs through the citadel. The town was taken, and
Psamthek brought before the conqueror. He had reigned only six months.

THE ATROCITIES OF CAMBYSES

[Sidenote: [525 B.C.]]

Cambyses treated him with the utmost severity, and had him led before
the town, together with some other Egyptians.

“The king’s daughter,” says Herodotus, “was clad as a slave and sent,
pitcher in hand, in search of water, with several other young girls
of rank. They passed, weeping, in front of their captive fathers, who
groaned at their humiliation. Psammenitus [Psamthek III] saw them and
lowered his eyes towards the earth. Then Cambyses caused his son and
two thousand young men of the same age to pass before him, with cords
round their necks and bridles in their mouths. They were being led to
death to avenge the Mytileneans slain at Memphis, for the royal judges
had ordained that, for every man killed on that occasion, ten Egyptians
of the first families should be put to death. Psammenitus saw them
pass and recognised his son; but while the other Egyptians round him
wept and lamented themselves, he preserved the same countenance as at
the sight of his daughter. When the young men had passed, he perceived
an old man who generally ate at his table. This man, despoiled of his
goods, and reduced to live on charity, was imploring pity from the
soldiers and even from Psammenitus and the Egyptian captives brought
into the outskirts of the town. Psammenitus could not restrain his
tears; he beat himself on the head and called to his friend. Three
guards, deputed to watch him, made this known to Cambyses. He was
astonished and sent a messenger to Psammenitus, who questioned him thus:

“‘Cambyses, thy master, demands wherefore, having neither wept or
groaned when thou sawest thy daughter treated as a slave and thy son
marching to execution, thou shouldst interest thyself in the lot of
this beggar who, from what we learn, is neither thy relative nor ally.’

“He answered, ‘Son of Cyrus, the misfortunes of my house are too great
to be wept; but the fate of a friend, once happy, and reduced to
begging in his old age, has seemed to me to deserve tears.’

“This answer was reported, and appeared a just one. The Egyptians say
that Crœsus, who had come into Egypt in the train of Cambyses, wept,
and the Persians who were present wept also. Even Cambyses felt some
pity. He ordered Psammenitus brought before him and his son to be
withdrawn from the number of those about to die.

“Those sent to seek the child did not find him alive; he had been
the first struck. They made Psammenitus rise and conducted him into
the presence of Cambyses. He remained in the retinue and suffered no
violence. The government of Egypt would even have been restored to him
if he had not been suspected of exciting disturbances; for the Persians
are wont to honour the children of kings and to replace them on the
thrones lost by their fathers. But Psammenitus, having conspired,
received his reward. Convicted by Cambyses of having urged the
Egyptians to revolt, he drank bull’s blood and died of it on the spot.

“From Memphis, Cambyses went on to Saïs, and as soon as he had reached
the tomb of Amasis [Aahmes] he ordered the corpse to be exhumed, to be
beaten with rods, to have the hair and beard torn out, to be pricked
with goads--in short, to be subjected to all sorts of outrages. The
executioners soon grew tired of maltreating a lifeless body, from which
they could break off nothing, as it was embalmed. Then Cambyses had it
burnt without any respect of holy things. Indeed the Persians believe
that fire is a god, and it is not permitted, either by their law or by
that of the Egyptians, to burn the dead. Thus Cambyses performed on
this occasion an act equally condemned by the laws of both peoples.”

In violating the tomb of the man who had usurped the throne of Egypt,
Cambyses perhaps counted on rallying the legitimists, for he thus
presented himself as the avenger and heir of Uah-ab-Ra. From the
inscriptions on a statuette in the Vatican, it appears that, in the
early days of his conquest, he avoided giving offence to the religion
of the vanquished. He caused the great temple of Nit, where some
Persian troops had installed themselves, to be evacuated, and had it
repaired at his own expense. He even carried his zeal so far as to be
initiated into the mysteries of Osiris. But this apparent and wholly
political deference could not last long.

[Illustration: DEATH OF PSAMMENITUS [PSAMTHEK III]]

The religious symbols of the Egyptians, the external forms of their
worship, inspired profound aversion in the Persians, whose religion
greatly resembled the strict monotheism of the Semitic peoples.
This antipathy, which was only awaiting an opportunity to manifest
itself, blazed out after an unfortunate expedition of Cambyses against
Ethiopia. Instead of ascending the Nile as far as Napata, he had taken
the shorter route of the desert.

The provisions gave out, and his soldiers were reduced to devouring
each other. He returned, having lost many men, and then learnt the
complete destruction of another army which he had sent against the
Ammonians and which had been entombed under whirlwinds of sand. He
was exasperated at this disaster, and, as the Egyptians naturally
attributed it to the vengeance of the gods, his fury turned against the
Egyptian religion.

“From Assuan to Thebes and from Thebes to Memphis,” says Mariette, “he
marked his route by ruin: the temples were devastated, the tombs of the
kings were opened and pillaged.” The mummy of Queen Ankhnes, wife of
Aahmes, was torn from its sarcophagus in the depths of a funeral vault
behind the Ramesseum, and burned as that of Aahmes himself had been.
When this sarcophagus, which is now in London, was discovered by a
French officer, remains of charred bones were found in it, according to
Champollion Figéac, some of them preserving traces of gilding.

“Cambyses having returned to Memphis,” says Herodotus, “the god Apis,
whom the Greeks call Epaphos, manifested himself to the Egyptians. As
soon as he had shown himself, they donned their richest clothing and
made great rejoicings. Cambyses, believing that they were rejoicing
at the ill-success of his arms, called the magistrates of Memphis
before him, and asked them why, having exhibited no joy the first time
that they saw him in their town, they were exhibiting so much of it
since his return and after he had lost part of his army. They told him
that their god, who was generally very long in appearing, had just
manifested himself, and that the Egyptians were accustomed to celebrate
this epiphany by public festivities. Cambyses, hearing this, said that
they lied, and punished them with death for liars. When they had been
killed he sent for the priests to come into his presence, and, having
received the same answer from them, he told them that if any god showed
himself familiarly to the Egyptians, he would not hide himself from
him, and he ordered them to bring Apis to him. The priests immediately
went in search of him.

“This Apis, who is the same as Epaphos, is born of a cow which can bear
no further offspring. The Egyptians say that this cow conceives Apis
by lightning, which descends from heaven. These are the distinguishing
signs of the calf they call Apis: it is black, and bears a white square
on its forehead; it has the figure of an eagle on its back, on its
tongue that of a beetle, and the hairs of its tail are double.

“As soon as the priest had brought Apis, Cambyses, like a maniac,
drew his sword to pierce its belly, but only struck its thigh. Then,
beginning to laugh, he said to the priests:

“‘O blockheads, are there such gods, made of flesh and blood and
susceptible to the stroke of steel? This god is well worthy of the
Egyptians, but you shall have no cause to rejoice for having attempted
to laugh at our expense.’

“Thereupon he had them whipped by those deputed for that purpose, and
ordered such Egyptians as were found celebrating a festival to be
slain. Thus the festivities ceased and the priests were punished. Apis,
wounded in the thigh, languished, lying in the temple, and when he
was dead the priests buried him, unknown to Cambyses. As to him, who
was already wanting in good sense, he was from that time smitten with
madness, the Egyptians say, in punishment of his crime.”

Among the funeral steles of the Apis, found by Mariette in the
excavations of the Serapeum at Memphis, and which are now in the
Egyptian Museum at the Louvre, are two connected with the facts
recounted by Herodotus: one, whose inscription is almost illegible,
contained the epitaph of the Apis who died in the reign of Cambyses,
and was born, as it seems, in the twenty-fifth year of Aahmes. We
possess, the catalogue says, his sarcophagus, sculptured by order of
Cambyses. The other is the epitaph of the bull who died in the fourth
year of Darius.

“We think,” says M. de Rougé, “that this is the same Apis whom
Cambyses, in his fury, wounded when, on his return from the unfortunate
Ethiopian expedition, he found the Egyptians abandoning themselves to
the rejoicings which accompanied the festivities of the theophany of a
new Apis (in 518 B.C.).” If this be so, this Apis must have survived
his wound nearly five years.

[Sidenote: [522-332 B.C.]]

Darius wished to repair the mistakes of his predecessor, and tried to
conciliate the Egyptians. He put to death the satrap Aryandes, whose
tyranny was already provoking revolts, and, learning that the Apis had
just died, he joined in the public mourning and promised one hundred
talents of gold to whoever should find a new Apis. He visited the
great temple of Ptah and would have placed his statue there beside
that of Sesostris [Ramses II]. The priests told him that he had not
yet equalled the exploits of Sesostris, since he had not subdued the
Scythians. Darius was not offended at this exhibition of national
pride; he answered simply that if he lived as long as Sesostris he
would endeavour to equal him. He had a great temple of Amen, whose
ruins still exist, built in the oasis of Thebes. Finally, he finished
the canal of communication which Seti I and Neku II had wished to
establish between the Nile and the Red Sea. According to Diodorus, his
memory was venerated by the Egyptians, who placed him in the number of
their great legislators.

The kings of Persia who form the XXVIIth Dynasty did not, however,
succeed in making themselves accepted by Egypt. They had not, like
the Shepherd kings, adopted her religion, her language, her writing,
and her manners, and therefore they were always foreigners to her.
Their dominion was rarely oppressive, and yet it was interrupted by
insurrections which always found a support in the Greek republics.

After one hundred and twenty years, Egypt recovered her independence
under three native dynasties, the XXVIIIth, the XXIXth, and the XXXth.
But she lost it sixty-four years after, through the cowardice of her
king, who fled into Ethiopia without fighting, as Meneptah had fled
before the Unclean. Egypt was a second time conquered by the Persians,
and Ochus renewed the follies and pillaging of Cambyses (340 B.C.).[b]

The XXVIIIth Dynasty is regarded as consisting of one king only, since
at his death the rule passed to the princes of Mendes. This king was
Amen-rut (Amyrtæus), 405-399 B.C., son of Pausiris and grandson of that
Amyrtæus who was the ally of Inarus of Libya. Amen-rut revolted against
Persia, and became independent on the death of Darius II.

Nia-faa-rut I, prince of Mendes (399-393), succeeded Amen-rut. He and
his successors--Haker (393-380), Psamut (380), and Nia-faa-rut II
(379)--form the XXIXth Dynasty, and continued, by the alliances with
Persia’s enemies, to maintain the native rule of Egypt.

This state of affairs continued under the XXXth Dynasty, which ruled
at Sebennytus. Under the first king, Nekht-Hor-heb (Nectanebo I),
the Persians, two hundred thousand strong, made a desperate attempt,
with the help of the Greek general Iphicrates and twenty thousand of
his countrymen, to invade the Delta, but Nectanebo defeated them near
Mendes. This victory secured peace and independence to Egypt for a term
of years, during which art and commerce revived.

Tachus’ reign was short (364-361), and he had internal as well as
external troubles to deal with. He died an exile at the court of
Artaxerxes. Nekht-neb-ef (Nectanebo II), 361-340, brought his dynasty
and the empire of the Pharoahs, after a duration of over four thousand
years, to an end by succumbing to the Persians under Ochus (Artaxerxes
III).[a]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 322 B.C.]]

It is not surprising that, after the eight years during which this
second Persian dynasty lasted, Alexander should have been received as
a liberator and proclaimed son of Amen, that is to say, legitimate
successor of the ancient kings of Egypt. The most able of his generals,
Ptolemy, son of Lagus, founded a dynasty which may, in spite of its
foreign origin, be considered as national as that of the Ramessides
or of the Saïtic kings. Greek influence did not make itself felt
outside Alexandria. The Lagides respected the religions and customs of
Egypt, which became the most important of the Greek kingdoms, while
still preserving her original civilisation. She even preserved it
under the Roman dominion; and if we did not read the inscriptions, we
could never guess that the temples of Esneh, of Edfu, of Denderah,
and of Philæ belong to the time of the Lagides, the Cæsars, and the
Antonines. Enfolded in the great Roman unity, Egypt did not regret her
independence. Alexandria was the second town of the world, the capital
of the East. The philosophic movement of which it was the seat entered
as an important factor into the elaboration of Christian dogma. But
the establishment of the new religion was the death-blow of old Egypt,
for a people is dead when it has denied its gods. The edicts of the
Christian emperors, ordering the destruction of the temples, dealt the
last blow to Egyptian art. Those monuments which were not entirely
destroyed were distorted to meet the needs of the new worship.

Then came the Mussulman conquest, which waged further war against the
ruins. Finally, in our days, the introduction of Western civilisation
into Egypt has done the monuments more harm than all the rest. When the
viceroy wishes to build a barrack or a sugar factory, he takes stones
from the temples; it saves expense.

Thus is accomplished the sad prediction of the Egyptian philosopher
whose works bear the name of Hermes Trismegistus:

“O Egypt, Egypt, there shall remain of thy religion but vague stories
which posterity will refuse to believe, and words graven in stone
recounting thy piety. The Scythian, the Indian, or some other barbarous
neighbour shall dwell in Egypt. The Divinity shall reascend into the
heaven. And Egypt shall be a desert, widowed of men and gods.”[b]

FOOTNOTES

[10] [Herodotus tells the story somewhat differently.]

CHAPTER IX. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE EGYPTIANS

If I wished to characterise in one word the peculiar bearing and
ruling element of the Egyptian mind--however unsatisfactory in
other respects such general designations may be--I should say that
the intellectual eminence of that people was in its scientific
profundity--in an understanding that penetrated or sought to
penetrate by magic into all the depths and mysteries of nature,
even into their most hidden abyss. So thoroughly scientific was
the whole leaning and character of the Egyptian mind, that even
the architecture of this people had an astronomical import, even
far more than that of the other nations of early antiquity. I
have already had occasion to speak of the deep and mysterious
signification of their treatment of the dead. In all the natural
sciences, in mathematics, astronomy, and even in medicine, they
were the masters of the Greeks; and even the profoundest thinkers
among the latter, the Pythagoreans, and afterwards the great Plato
himself, derived from them the first elements of their doctrines,
or, caught at least the first outline of their mighty speculations.
Here, too, in the birthplace of hieroglyphics, was the chief seat
of the mysteries; and Egypt has at all times been the native
country of many true, as well as of many false, secrets.--SCHLEGEL.

Customs that differ from our own always seem strange customs. So the
Egyptians, viewed from a latter-day European or American standpoint,
seem a very strange people. And it being easy to generalise from
insufficient data, many notions regarding the Egyptians have become
current which appear not to represent that people as they really were.
The more the monuments are studied, and the closer we get to the real
life of the peoples of antiquity, the less strange these peoples appear.

Indeed, when we come to appreciate their life as it really was,
it is surprising how “natural” and human it all appears. Certain
peculiarities there were, to be sure, with each people and with each
successive age; but in the broad view the peoples of the most remote
antiquity are best understood if we think of them as very similar
to ourselves in the general sweep of their feelings, desires, and
thoughts. Thus, for example, we have seen that the modern Egyptologist
has quite dispelled the notion, once prevalent, that the Egyptians were
a solemn, morose people, thinking only of the life to come. The truer
view, on the other hand, appears to be that they were a peculiarly
social, pleasure-loving people. The observance of certain religious
rites, which make such an impression upon us because they differ from
our own customs in this regard, doubtless did not appear to them to
have at all the significance we ascribe to them.

Even in matters which seem to be most strikingly borne out by the
records of the monuments, it is easy to entertain a misconception
if one presses too closely the idea that the traits thus discovered
belong exclusively to a particular people. Thus in the matter of that
conservatism which is commonly spoken of as the predominant trait of
the national character of the Egyptians. Conservative they surely were.
But so is every other living creature that remains long in a single
unvarying habitat. The basis of civilisation is the conservatism which
leads each generation to cling fast to the customs it had inherited.
The history of customs, of language, of religions, in short of all
culture, shows how tenaciously every people, after a certain stage, has
held to the traditions of its past.

It seems as if a people, like an individual species of animal, reaches
sooner or later a state of equilibrium in regard to its environment,
and will change no further, except as the environment changes. Now
in Egypt the physical environment appears to have changed but little
within historic times, and the geographical conditions were such that
the people there were afforded a high degree of isolation from outside
influences. Hence the observed slowness of change in the customs of
this “strange” people.

Yet, even admitting all this, one must not, as we have suggested,
press the point of Egyptian conservatism too far. The most casual
glance along the line of their history shows many notable changes in
their radical customs from age to age, even in the relatively short
period open to our inspection. There were times when great pyramids and
temples were all the vogue; other times when they were quite ignored.

Even the custom of embalming the dead, so striking a peculiarity, was
more or less subject to fluctuating fashions.

One must bear in mind that the period of Egyptian history open to
our inspection, from the beginning of secure records till the final
overthrow and disappearance of old Egypt as a nation, was, according
to an average chronology, only about twenty-five hundred, or three
thousand years. Now it is an open question whether, for every Egyptian
idea or custom that remained even relatively fixed throughout this
period, one could not find current to-day among the most progressive
nations of the world an analogous idea or custom, that could prove at
least as long a pedigree. To cite but a single illustration, every
civilised nation on the globe to-day has its whole being as closely
bound up with religious observances as was the being of the Egyptian
commonwealth. And with a single exception the religious systems in
question have held sway over their subjects, substantially unchanged,
for a period as long as the entire sweep of Egyptian history under
consideration. Confucianism, Brahminism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism,
Judaism,--each is hoary with the weight of something like thirty
centuries; each had its origin in an age of superstition which we
are prone to think far inferior to our own “enlightened” time; yet
each holds its millions of devotees as rigidly and as inexorably
as ever Egyptian was held by the cult of Osiris. Bearing this
single illustration in mind, we shall be able to view the Egyptian
“conservatism” more truly, as an example of a universal human trait,
rather than as the peculiarity of a “strange” people.

Although we have emphasised the view that the Egyptians were very
much like other peoples in their fundamental traits of character and
habits, it must not be overlooked that there is a pretty sharp line of
demarcation to be drawn between the customs of Oriental and Western
nations, and that the Egyptians were essentially Orientals.

THE POSITION OF THE KING

One of the most typical characteristics of the Oriental mind is a
deference to authority signalised in the ready acceptance of an
autocratic government. Doubtless it never occurred to any Egyptian that
he might do away with kings altogether. The conception of the king
as the head of the state was so deeply impressed on the mind of the
people, that the very possibility of a state without an autocratic head
could scarcely be conceived.

But in reading of the extreme deference shown to the kings of Egypt,
one is likely to gain a misconception of their actual status. We
have been taught traditionally to regard the Egyptians as a meek,
peace-loving people, profoundly imbued with religious sentiments, and
accustomed to look upon their king as almost a god, and to pay him
divine honours. Such indeed was doubtless the fact as regards external
and tangible conditions, and no doubt the average Egyptian conceived
the kingly authority as something altogether sacred. But beneath the
surface of court life everywhere there is a counter current which the
monarch himself can never disregard, however little its existence is
recognised by the generality of his subjects. Professor Erman has
emphasised with great astuteness the effect of these hidden influences
upon the real life of the Egyptian monarch. He contends that the
conditions surrounding the Egyptian court were not different from
those about the thrones of other Oriental monarchs, and he points out
with great vividness the distinction between the theoretical and the
real position of the sovereign. Theoretically, the king is absolutely
supreme; his will is law, all the property is his; even the lives of
his subjects are at his mercy. But practically, the situation is quite
different. Old counsellors of the king’s father are at hand whose
bidding is obeyed by the clerks and officials; old rich families must
be pandered to; the generals of the troops have a real power that
must be respected; and the priests are an ever present restriction
upon royal authority. Then there are always relatives who aspire to
the throne. Among the large families of Oriental despots it is always
something of a lottery as to which child succeeds to power, and
there are sure to be mothers who feel that their offspring have been
slighted. The familiar stories of the mothers of Solomon and of Cyrus
the Younger illustrate the point.

“Even the very potent rulers,” says Professor Erman, “were constantly
in dread of their own relatives, as was shown by the protocol of
a trial for high treason. The reign of Ramses III was certainly
brilliant; the country finally at peace, and the priesthood had been
won over by enormous gifts and by temple-building. The aspect of his
reign was as bright as could be. And yet there reigned also under him
the fearful powers that wrecked each of these dynasties, and it was
perhaps due only to a happy chance that he himself escaped. In his own
harem treason rose, headed by a distinguished woman of the name of Thi,
who was undoubtedly of royal blood, if indeed she were not either his
mother or his stepmother. Which prince had been chosen as pretender for
the crown, we do not know (a pseudonym is given in the papyrus), but
we see how far the matter had gone before discovery; twice the women
of the harem wrote to their mothers and brothers, ‘Arouse the people,
and bestir the hostile spirits to begin hostilities against the king.’
One of the women wrote then to her brother, who commanded the troops
in Ethiopia, and definitely bade him come and fight the king. When one
sees how many high officials shared in the treason or knew of it, one
appreciates the danger overhanging such an oriental kingdom.”

It will be well to bear this corrective view in mind in considering
the position of the Egyptian king as suggested by the monumental
inscriptions and pictures. But this view does not at all alter the fact
that the people at large were absolutely subservient to the idea of
kingship. Certain individuals might strive to overthrow any particular
monarch, but it was only that they might set up another. The idea of
doing away with monarchy itself never entered their heads. That idea
was born upon European soil, long after the power of ancient Egypt had
departed.

It is an easy step from monarchs to armies and war methods, although
in Egypt the relationship was not so close and intimate as in the case
of many other nations. We have seen all along that the Egyptians were
not pre-eminently a warlike people, yet, first and last, war entered
very largely into their life history as with every other nation, and
there was one period under the New Kingdom when, as we have seen,
the Egyptians became a conquering people. As the chief monarch of
this epoch, Ramses II was greatly given to recording his own deeds in
monumental fashion, very full data are at hand for interpreting the war
methods of the people during this epoch. There is nothing particularly
unique about these methods. The Egyptian army consisted principally
of militia armed with bows and javelins. The cavalry, consisting of
companies of charioteers, was led by the king himself. Equestrianship
had not yet entered into warfare. In sieges, scaling-ladders and
battering-rams were used. The monuments show us that the soldiers
were drilled to the sound of bugles quite in the modern fashion. In a
word, there was nothing particularly to distinguish the war customs of
the Egyptians of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties from those of other
nations of their time, and these methods, as we shall have occasion to
see, were not greatly improved upon until about a thousand years later,
when the Macedonian phalanx, as trained by Philip and Alexander along
lines first laid out by the great Theban Epaminondas, introduced a new
element into warfare.[a]

The king was the representative of the deity, and his royal authority
was directly derived from the gods. He was the head of the religion and
of the state; he was the judge and law-giver; and he commanded the army
and led it to war. It was his right and his office to preside over the
sacrifices, and pour out libations to the gods; and, whenever he was
present, he had the privilege of being the officiating high priest.

The sceptre was hereditary; but, in the event of a direct heir failing,
the claims for succession were determined by proximity of parentage,
or by right of marriage. The king was always either of the military or
priestly class, and the princes also belonged to one of them.

The army or the priesthood were the two professions followed by all men
of rank, the navy not being an exclusive service; and the “long ships
of Sesostris” and other kings were commanded by generals and officers
taken from the army, as was the custom of the Turks, and some others
in modern Europe to a very recent time. The law, too, was in the hands
of the priests; so that there were only two professions. Most of the
kings, as might be expected, were of the military class, and during
the glorious days of Egyptian history, the younger princes generally
adopted the same profession. Many held offices also in the royal
household, some of the most honourable of which were fan-bearers on the
right of their father, royal scribes, superintendents of the granaries,
or of the land, and treasurers of the king; and they were generals of
the cavalry, archers, and other corps, or admirals of the fleet.

Princes were distinguished by a badge hanging from the side of the
head, which inclosed, or represented, the lock of hair emblematic of
a “son”; in imitation of the youthful god “Horus, the son of Isis and
Osiris,” who was held forth as the model for all princes, and the type
of royal virtue. For though the Egyptians shaved the head, and wore
wigs or other coverings to the head, children were permitted to leave
certain locks of hair; and if the sons of kings, long before they
arrived at the age of manhood, had abandoned this youthful custom,
the badge was attached to their head-dress as a mark of their rank as
princes; or to show that they had not, during the lifetime of their
father, arrived at kinghood; on the same principle that a Spanish
prince, of whatever age, continues to be styled an “infant.”

And it is a curious fact that this ancient people had already adopted
the principle, that the king “could do no wrong”: and while he was
exonerated from blame, every curse and evil were denounced against his
ministers, and those advisers who had given him injurious counsel. The
idea, too, of the king “never dying” was contained in their common
formula of “life having been given him forever.”

Love and respect were not merely shown to the sovereign during his
lifetime, but were continued to his memory after his death; and the
manner in which his funeral obsequies were celebrated tended to show,
that, though their benefactor was no more, they retained a grateful
sense of his goodness, and admiration for his virtues.

The Egyptians are said to have been divided into castes, similar to
those of India; but though a marked line of distinction was maintained
between the different ranks of society, they appear rather to have been
classes than castes, and a man did not necessarily follow the precise
occupation of his father. Sons, it is true, usually adopted the same
profession or trade as their parent, and the rank of each depended on
his occupation; but the children of a priest frequently chose the army
for their profession, and those of a military man could belong to the
priesthood.

The priests and military men held the highest position in the country
after the family of the king, and from them were chosen his ministers
and confidential advisers, “the wise counsellors of Pharaoh,” and all
the principal officers of state.

The priests consisted of various grades--as the chief priests, or
pontiffs; the prophets; judges; sacred scribes; the sphragistæ, who
examined the victims for sacrifice; the stolistæ, dressers, or keepers
of the sacred robes; the bearers of the shrines, banners, and other
holy emblems; the sacred sculptors, draughtsmen, and masons; the
embalmers; the keepers of sacred animals; and various officers employed
in the processions and other religious ceremonies; under whom were the
beadles, and inferior functionaries of the temple. There was also the
king’s own priest; and the royal scribes were chosen either from the
sacerdotal or the military class. Women were not excluded from certain
offices in the temple; they were priestesses of the gods, of the kings
and queens, and they had many employments connected with religion.

The long duration of their system, and the feeling with which it was
regarded by the people, may also plead some excuse for it; and while
the function of judges and the administration of the laws gave them
unusual power, they had an apparent claim to those offices, from
having been the framers of the codes of morality, and of the laws they
superintended. Instead of setting themselves above the king, and making
him succumb to their power, like the unprincipled Ethiopian pontiffs,
they acknowledged him as the head of the religion and the state; nor
were they above the law; no one of them, nor even the king himself,
could govern according to his own arbitrary will; his conduct was
amenable to an ordeal of his subjects at his death, the people being
allowed to accuse him of misgovernment, and to prevent his being buried
in his tomb on the day of his funeral.

But though the regulations of the priesthood may have suited the
Egyptians in early times, certain institutions being adapted to men in
particular states of society, they erred in encouraging a belief in
legends they knew to be untrue, instead of purifying and elevating the
religious views of the people, and committed the fault of considering
their unbending system perfect, and suited to all times. Abuses
therefore crept in; credulity, already shamefully encouraged, increased
to such an extent that it enslaved the mind, and paralysed men’s
reasoning powers; and the result was that the Egyptians gave way to the
grossest superstitions, which at length excited universal ridicule and
contempt.

Next in rank to the priests were the military. To them was assigned
one of the three portions into which the land of Egypt was divided
by an edict of Sesostris [Ramses II], in order, says Diodorus, “that
those who exposed themselves to danger in the field might be more ready
to undergo the hazards of war, from the interest they felt in the
country as occupiers of the soil; for it would be absurd to commit the
safety of the community to those who possessed nothing which they were
interested in preserving.” Each soldier, whether on duty or no, was
allowed twelve aruræ of land (a little more than eight English acres),
free from all charge; and another important privilege was, that no
soldier could be cast into prison for debt; Bocchoris [Bakenranf] the
framer of this law, considering that it would be dangerous to allow the
civil power the right of arresting those who were the chief defence
of the state. They were instructed from their youth in the duties and
requirements of soldiers, and trained in all the exercises that fitted
them for an active career; and a sort of military school appears to
have been established for the purpose.

Each man was obliged to provide himself with the necessary arms,
offensive and defensive, and everything requisite for a campaign; and
he was expected to hold himself in readiness for taking the field when
required, or for garrison duty. The principal garrisons were posted
in the fortified towns of Pelusium, Marea, Eileithyia, Heracleopolis,
Syene, Elephantine, and other intermediate places; and a large portion
of the army was frequently called upon, by the warlike monarchs,
to invade a foreign country, or to suppress those rebellions which
occasionally broke out in the conquered provinces.

The whole military force, consisting of 410,000, was divided into two
corps, the Calasiries and Hermotybies. They furnished a body of men to
do the duty of royal guards, 1000 of each being annually selected for
that purpose; and each soldier had an additional allowance of “five
_minæ_ of bread, with two of beef, and four _arusters_ of wine,” as
daily rations, during the period of his service.

The Calasiries (_Klashr_) were the most numerous, and amounted to
250,000 men, at the time that Egypt was most populous. They inhabited
the nomes of Thebes, Bubastis, Aphthis, Tanis, Mendes, Sebennytus,
Athribis, Pharbæthus, Thmuis, Onuphis, Anysis, and the Isle of
Myecphoris, which was opposite Bubastis; and the Hermotybies, who lived
in those of Busiris, Saïs, Chemmis, Papremis, the Isle of Prosopitis,
and the half of Natho, made up the remaining 160,000. It was here
that they abode while retired from military service, and in these
nomes their farms or portions of land were situated, which tended to
encourage habits of industry, and keep up a taste for active employment.

Besides the native corps they had mercenary troops, who were enrolled
either from the nations in alliance with the Egyptians, or from those
who had been conquered by them. They were divided into regiments,
sometimes disciplined in the same manner as the Egyptians, though
allowed to retain their arms and costume; but they were not on the same
footing as the native troops; they had no land, and merely received
pay, like other hire soldiers. Strabo speaks of them as mercenaries;
and the million of men he mentions must have included these foreign
auxiliaries. When formally enrolled in the army, they were considered a
part of it, and accompanied the victorious legions on their return from
foreign conquest; and they sometimes assisted in performing garrison
duty in Egypt, in the place of those Egyptian troops which were left to
guard the conquered provinces.

The strength of the army consisted in archers, whose skill contributed
mainly to the success of the Egyptians, as of our own ancestors; and
their importance is shown by the Egyptian “soldier” being represented
as an archer kneeling, often preceded by the word _Klashr_, converted
by Herodotus into _Calasiris_. They fought either on foot or in
chariots, and may therefore be classed under the separate heads of a
mounted and unmounted corps; and they constituted a great part of both
wings. Several bodies of heavy infantry, divided into regiments, each
distinguished by its peculiar arms, formed the centre; and the cavalry
[in the later periods] covered and supported the foot.

WEAPONS OF WAR

The offensive weapons of the Egyptians were the bow, spear, two species
of javelin, sling, a short and straight sword, dagger, knife, falchion
or _ensis falcatus_, axe or hatchet, battle-axe, pole-axe, mace or
club, and the _lisan_--a curved stick similar to that still in use
among the modern Ethiopians. Their defensive arms consisted of a helmet
of metal or a quilted head-piece; a cuirass, or coat of armour, made
of metal plates, or quilted with metal bands, and an ample shield. The
soldier’s chief defence was his shield, which, in length, was equal
to about half his height, and generally double its own breadth. It
was most commonly covered with bull’s hide having the hair outward,
sometimes strengthened by one or more rims of metal, and studded with
nails or metal pins, the inner part being a wooden frame.

The Egyptian bow was a round piece of wood, from five to five and a
half feet in length, tapering to a point at both ends. Their arrows
varied from twenty-two to thirty-four inches in length; some were of
wood, others of reed; frequently tipped with a metal head; and winged
with three feathers, glued longitudinally, and at equal distances, upon
the other end of the shaft, as on our own arrows. Sometimes, instead of
the metal head, a piece of hard wood was inserted into the reed, which
terminated in a long tapering point.

The spear, or pike, was of wood, between five and six feet in length,
with a metal head, into which the shaft was inserted and fixed with
nails. The head was of bronze or iron, often very large, and with a
double edge. The javelin, lighter and shorter than the spear, was also
of wood, and similarly armed with a strong two-edged metal head, of
an elongated diamond, or leaf shape, either flat or increasing in
thickness at the centre, and sometimes tapering to a very long point.

The sling was a thong of leather, or string plaited; broad in the
middle, and having a loop at one end, by which it was fixed upon and
firmly held with the hand; the other extremity terminating in a lash,
which escaped from the finger as the stone was thrown. The Egyptian
sword was straight and short, from two and a half to three feet in
length, having generally a double edge, and tapering to a sharp point.
It was used for cut and thrust. They had also a dagger.

The axe, or hatchet, was small and simple, seldom exceeding two, or two
and a half feet, in length: it had a single blade, and no instance is
met with of a double axe resembling the _bipennis_ of the Romans. The
blade of the battle-axe was, in form, not unlike the Parthian shield;
a segment of a circle, divided at the back into two smaller segments,
whose three points were fastened to the handle with metal pins. It
was of bronze, and sometimes (as the colour of those in the paintings
shows) of steel; and the length of the handle was equal to, or more
than double that of, the blade. The pole-axe was about three feet in
length, but apparently more difficult to wield than the preceding,
owing to the great weight of a metal ball to which the blade was fixed;
and required, like the mace, a powerful as well as a skilful arm.

The mace was very similar to the pole-axe, without a blade. It was
of wood, bound with bronze, about two feet and a half in length, and
furnished with an angular piece of metal, projecting from the handle,
which may have been intended as a guard, though in many instances
they represent the hand placed above it, while the blow was given. In
ancient times, when the fate of a battle was frequently decided by
personal valour, the dexterous management of such arms was of great
importance; and a band of resolute veterans, headed by a gallant chief,
spread dismay among the ranks of an enemy. The curved stick, or club
(called _lisan_, “tongue”), was used by heavy and light-armed troops
as well as by archers; and if it does not appear a formidable arm, yet
the experience of modern times bears ample testimony to its efficacy in
close combat.

The helmet was usually quilted; and though bronze helmets are said to
have been worn by the Egyptians, they generally adopted the former,
which being thick, and well padded, served as an excellent protection
to the head, without the inconvenience of metal in so hot a climate.
Some of them descended to the shoulder, others only a short distance
below the level of the ear, and the summit, terminating in an obtuse
point, was ornamented with two tassels. They were of a green, red,
or black colour; and a longer one, which fitted less closely to the
back of the head, was fringed at the lower edge with a broad border,
and in some instances consisted of two parts, or an upper and under
fold. Another, worn by the spearmen, and many corps of infantry and
charioteers, was also quilted, and descended to the shoulder with
a fringe; but it had no tassels, and, fitting close to the top of
the head, it widened towards the base, the front, which covered the
forehead, being made of a separate piece, attached to the other part.
There is no representation of an Egyptian helmet with a crest, but that
of the Shardana, once enemies and afterwards allies of the Pharaohs,
shows they were used long before the Trojan war.

The outer surface of the corselet of mail, or coat of scale-armour,
consisted of about eleven horizontal rows of metal plates, well secured
by bronze pins; and at the hollow of the throat a narrower range
of plates was introduced, above which were two more, completing the
collar or covering of the neck. The breadth of each plate or scale was
little more than an inch, eleven or twelve of them sufficing to cover
the front of the body; and the sleeves, which were sometimes so short
as to extend less than halfway to the elbow, consisted of two rows
of similar plates. Many, indeed most, of the corselets were without
collars; in some the sleeves were rather longer, reaching nearly to
the elbow, and they were worn both by heavy infantry and bowmen. The
ordinary corselet may have been little less than two feet and a half
in length; it sometimes covered the thighs nearly to the knee; and in
order to prevent its pressing heavily upon the shoulder, they bound
their girdle over it, and tightened it at the waist. But the thighs,
and that part of the body below the girdle, were usually covered by a
kilt, or other robe, detached from the corselet; and many of the light
and heavy infantry were clad in a quilted vest of the same form as the
coat of armour, for which it was a substitute; and some wore corselets,
reaching only from the waist to the upper part of the breast, and
supported by straps over the shoulder, which were faced with bronze
plates.

[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN SOLDIER]

Heavy-armed troops were furnished with a shield and spear; some with
a shield and mace; and others, though rarely, with a battle-axe, or a
pole-axe, and shield. They also carried a sword, falchion, curved stick
or _lisan_, simple mace, or hatchet; which may be looked upon as their
side-arms. The light troops had nearly the same weapons, but their
defensive armour was lighter; and the slingers and some others fought,
like the archers, without shields.

The chariot corps constituted a very large and effective portion of
the Egyptian army. Each car contained two persons, like the _diphros_
(δίφρος) of the Greeks. On some occasions it carried three, the
charioteer or driver and two chiefs; but this was rarely the case,
except in triumphal processions, when two of the princes accompanied
the king in their chariot, bearing the regal sceptre, or the
_flabella_, and required a third person to manage the reins. In the
field each had his own car, with a charioteer; and the insignia of his
office being attached behind him by a broad belt, his hands were free
for the use of the bow and other arms. The driver generally stood on
the off-side, in order to have the whip-hand free; and this interfered
less with the use of the bow than the Greek custom of driving on the
near-side; which last was adopted in Greece as being more convenient
for throwing the spear. When on an excursion for pleasure, or on a
visit to a friend, an Egyptian gentleman mounted alone, and drove
himself, footmen and other attendants running before and behind
the car; and sometimes an archer used his bow and acted as his own
charioteer.

In the battle scenes of the Egyptian temples, the king is represented
alone in his car, unattended by any charioteer; with the reins fastened
round his body, while engaged in bending his bow against the enemy;
though it is possible that the driver was omitted, in order not to
interfere with the principal figure. The king had always a “second
chariot,” in order to provide against accidents; as Josiah is stated
to have had when defeated by Neku; and the same was in attendance on
state occasions. The cars of the whole chariot corps contained each two
warriors, comrades of equal rank; and the charioteer who accompanied a
chief was a person of confidence, as we see from the familiar manner
in which one of them is represented conversing with a son of the great
Ramses.

In driving, the Egyptians used a whip, like the heroes and charioteers
of Homer; and this, or a short stick, was generally employed even
for beasts of burden, and for oxen at the plough, in preference to
the goad. The whip consisted of a smooth, round wooden handle, and a
single or double thong: it sometimes had a lash of leather, or string,
about two feet in length, either twisted or plaited; and a loop being
attached to the lower end, the archer was enabled to use the bow, while
it hung suspended from his wrist.

When a hero encountered a hostile chief, he sometimes dismounted from
his car, and substituting for his bow and quiver the spear, battle-axe,
or falchion, he closed with him hand to hand, like the Greeks and
Trojans described by Homer; and the lifeless body of the foe being left
upon the field, was stripped of its arms by his companions. Sometimes
a wounded adversary, incapable of further resistance, having claimed
and obtained the mercy of the victor, was carried from the field in
his chariot; and the ordinary captives, who laid down their arms and
yielded to the Egyptians, were treated as prisoners of war, and were
sent bound to the rear under an escort, to be presented to the monarch,
and to grace his triumph, after the termination of the conflict. The
hands of the slain were then counted before him; and this return of the
enemy’s killed was duly registered, to commemorate his success, and the
glories of his reign.

The Egyptian chariots had no seat; but the bottom part consisted of a
frame interlaced with thongs or rope, forming a species of network, in
order, by its elasticity, to render the motion of the carriage without
springs more easy: and this was also provided for by placing the wheels
as far back as possible, and resting much of the weight on the horses,
which supported the pole. That the chariot was of wood is sufficiently
proved by the sculptures, wherever workmen are seen employed in making
it; and the fact of their having more than three thousand years ago
already invented and commonly used a form of pole, only introduced into
our own country in the nineteenth century, is an instance of the truth
of Solomon’s assertion, “there is no new thing under the sun,” and
shows the skill of their workmen at that remote time.

BATTLE METHODS

When an expedition was resolved upon against a foreign nation, each
province furnished its quotum of men. The troops were generally
commanded by the king in person; but in some instances a general was
appointed to that post, and intrusted with the sole conduct of the war.
A place of rendezvous was fixed, in early times generally at Thebes,
Memphis, or Pelusium; and the troops having assembled in the vicinity,
remained encamped there, awaiting the leader of the expedition. As
soon as he arrived, the necessary preparations were made; a sacrifice
was performed to the gods whose assistance was invoked in the
approaching conflict; and orders having been issued for their march,
a signal was given by sound of trumpet; the troops fell in, and with
a profound bow each soldier in the ranks saluted the royal general,
and prepared to follow him to the field. The march then commenced, as
Clemens and the sculptures inform us, to the sound of the drum; the
chariots led the van; and the king, mounted in his car of war, and
attended by his chief officers carrying _flabella_, took his post in
the centre, preceded and followed by bodies of infantry armed with
bows, spears, or other weapons, according to their respective corps.

On commencing the attack in the open field, a signal was again made
by sound of trumpet. The archers drawn up in line first discharged
a shower of arrows on the enemy’s front, and a considerable mass of
chariots advanced to the charge; the heavy infantry, armed with spears
or clubs, and covered with their shields, moved forward at the same
time in close array, flanked by chariots and cavalry, and pressed
upon the centre and wings of the enemy, the archers still galling the
hostile columns with their arrows, and endeavouring to create disorder
in their ranks.

Their mode of warfare was not like that of nations in their infancy,
or in a state of barbarism; and it is evident, from the number of
prisoners they took, that they spared the prostrate who asked for
quarter: and the representations of persons slaughtered by the
Egyptians, who have overtaken them, are intended to allude to what
happened in the heat of action, and not to any wanton cruelty on the
part of the victors. Indeed, in the naval fight of Ramses III, the
Egyptians, both in the ships and on the shore, are seen rescuing
the enemy, whose galley has been sunk, from a watery grave; and the
humanity of that people is strongly argued, whose artists deem it a
virtue worthy of being recorded among the glorious actions of their
countrymen.

Those who sued for mercy and laid down their arms, were spared and
sent bound from the field; and the hands of the slain being cut off,
and placed in heaps before the king, immediately after the action,
were counted by the military secretaries in his presence, who thus
ascertained and reported to him the account of the enemy’s slain.
Sometimes their tongues, and occasionally other members, were laid
before him in the same manner; in all instances being intended as
authentic returns of the loss of the foe: for which the soldiers
received a proportionate reward, divided among the whole army, the
capture of prisoners probably claiming a higher premium, exclusively
enjoyed by the captor.

The arms, horses, chariots, and booty, taken in the field or in camp,
were also collected, and the same officers wrote an account of them,
and presented it to the monarch. The booty was sometimes collected
in an open space, surrounded by a temporary wall, indicated in the
sculptures by the representation of shields placed erect, with a wicker
gate, on the inner and outer face of which a strong guard was posted,
the sentries walking to and fro with drawn swords. It was forbidden to
the Spartan soldier, when on guard, to have his shield, in order that,
being deprived of this defence, he might be more cautious not to fall
asleep; and the same appears to have been a custom of the Egyptians,
as the watch here on duty at the camp-gates are only armed with swords
and maces, though belonging to the heavy-armed corps, who, on other
occasions, were in the habit of carrying a shield.

A system of regular fortification was adopted in the earliest times.
The form of the fortresses was quadrangular; the walls of crude brick
fifteen feet thick, and often fifty feet high, with square towers
at intervals along each face. But though some were kept up after the
accession of the XVIIIth Dynasty, the practice of fortifying towns
seems to have been discontinued, and fortresses or walled towns were
not then used, except on the edge of the desert, and on the frontiers
where large garrisons were required. To supply their place, the temples
were provided with lofty pyramidal stone towers, which, projecting
beyond the walls, enabled the besieged to command and rake them, while
the parapet-wall over the gateway shielded the soldiers who defended
the entrance; and the whole plan of an outer wall of circumvallation
was carried out by the large crude brick enclosure of the _temenos_,
within which the temple stood. Each temple was thus a detached fort,
and was thought as sufficient a protection for itself and for the town
as a continuous wall, which required a large garrison to defend it; and
neither Thebes nor Memphis, the two capitals, were walled cities.

[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN BOWMAN]

The field encampment was either a square, or a parallelogram, with a
principal entrance in one of the faces; and near the centre were the
general’s tent, and those of the principal officers. The general’s
tent was sometimes surrounded by a double rampart or fosse, enclosing
two distinct areas, the outer one containing three tents, probably
of the next in command, or of the officers on the staff; and the
guards slept or watched in the open air. Other tents were pitched
outside these enclosures; and near the external circuit, a space was
set apart for feeding horses and beasts of burden, and another for
ranging the chariots and baggage. It was near the general’s tent, and
within the same area, that the altars of the gods, or whatever related
to religious matters, the standards, and the military chest, were
kept; and the sacred emblems were deposited beneath a canopy, with an
enclosure similar to that of the general’s tent.

In attacking a fortified town, they advanced under cover of the arrows
of the bowmen; and either instantly applied the scaling-ladder to
the ramparts, or undertook the routine of a regular siege: in which
case, having advanced to the walls, they posted themselves under
cover of testudos, and shook and dislodged the stones of the parapet
with a species of battering-ram, directed and impelled by a body of
men expressly chosen for this service: but when the place held out
against these attacks, and neither a _coup de main_, the ladder, nor
the ram, was found to succeed, they used the testudo for concealing
and protecting the sappers, while they mined the place; and certainly,
of all people, the Egyptians were the most likely to have recourse to
this stratagem of war, from the great practice they had in underground
excavations, and in directing shafts through the solid rock.[b]

SOCIAL CUSTOMS

The subject of manners and customs of the Egyptians has had a
peculiar fascination for almost all students of Egyptian history. It
is difficult to get away from the feeling that there is something
mysterious and occult about Egyptian life, and thousands of people have
gazed with mingled admiration and awe upon the monumental remains of
this people without caring in the least for the strange-sounding names
of the monarchs or for the details of their political history.

From the time of the explorations of the French under Napoleon,
which led to the monumental publication edited by Champollion[c]
and his associates, some inklings of the Egyptian life passed into
common knowledge. Additional light was thrown upon the subject by the
publication of the elaborate “Denkmäler” of Lepsius.[h] But the first
full exposition of the social conditions of ancient Egypt was due to
the investigations of Wilkinson, who devoted the best years of his life
to the subject, and whose publications are still standard authority.
Wilkinson’s elaborate investigation of the monuments and his astute
inferences drawn from what he saw enabled him to produce a picture of
Egyptian life which the work of more recent investigators has seldom
supplanted as to essentials.

Of the more recent Egyptologists few have failed to show an interest
in this phase of Egyptian history. Birch,[i] Maspero,[m] Mariette,[n]
Chabas,[f] Budge,[g] Petrie,[o] Renouf[d]--all have dealt with various
phases of Egyptian life. Amelia B. Edwards[e] popularised the knowledge
of the specialists in widely read publications, and Georg Ebers,[k]
himself a specialist of the highest standing, gave even wider currency
to the most interesting phases of the subject through the medium of
his novels. In recent years the field that Wilkinson made his own
has been invaded with great success by Professor Adolf Erman of the
Berlin University, the worthy successor of Lepsius. Professor Erman
has profited by the widest and most critical studies of the Egyptian
writings, and through this means he has been enabled to supplement the
work of Wilkinson in certain important directions, notably in reference
to questions of judicial procedure and the details of governmental
administration--subjects into which, unfortunately, a lack of space
does not permit us to enter fully here. In his work, _Aegypten und
Aegyptisches Leben im Altertum_, Professor Erman has summarised the
sources to which the Egyptologist must go for information as to the
life of this people. The writings of the Hebrews, he tells us, have
come down to us so much re-edited in later times that they must be
accepted with caution as representing Egyptian life of an early period.

The writings of the Greeks, chief among whom in this field is
Herodotus, are important as to certain features of the later Egyptian
life. Such things as a tourist sees who, “ignorant of the language,
travels for a few months in a foreign country,” Herodotus tells us;
but very naturally he is unable to supply us with adequate or reliable
information regarding those earlier periods of Egyptian history, which
have chief interest now because they represent the Egyptian in his time
of might and prosperity.

For what we can hope to learn of these earlier times we must turn to
the Egyptian monuments themselves. These monumental remains are of four
types, namely:

(1) The inscriptions on temple walls and on monuments.

(2) The royal tombs.

(3) Inscribed papyri representing the literature of the country, and

(4) Papyri of another class representing letters, deeds, and other
business documents.

As to the inscriptions, which form numerically so large a proportion
of the Egyptian mementos, and which, naturally enough, were first
attractive to the investigator, it may be said that as a whole they
are most disappointing since their “inscriptions and representations
refer almost solely to the worship of the gods, to sacrifices and
processions, or they give us bombastic hymns to the gods, or they may
perhaps contain the information that such and such a king built this
sanctuary of eternal stones for his father the god, who rewarded him
for this pious act by granting him a life of millions of years. If, as
an exception, we find an inscription telling us of the warlike feats
of a ruler, these are related in such official style and stereotyped
formula, that little can be gained towards the knowledge of Egyptian
life.”

The tombs are much more satisfactory for the present purpose since they
contain representations of events in the home life of the deceased, and
also various implements, utensils, and trinkets such as he might have
used while living. But, unfortunately, it is only the early period of
Egyptian life that is depicted in this manner. Moreover, the relics
found in the tombs are sometimes misleading, since it apparently became
the custom to supply articles ready made for this purpose, rather than
to utilise objects of actual utility such as the deceased might really
have employed while living.

The papyri which represent the literary remains of ancient Egypt are
much less illuminative than might be expected; the greater number
of them are magical or religious in character, the most conspicuous
example being the _Book of the Dead_, numberless recensions of which
are extant in whole or in part. These supply valuable glimpses of the
moral nature of the Egyptians and are of high value to the student
of religion and philosophy, but they naturally tell us little of the
everyday life of the people.

Of the secular manuscripts the chief portion are school books, intended
to incite youthful students at once to virtue and to knowledge,
quite after the manner of the modern books, particularly of the last
generation. These also fail to give more than incidental glimpses into
the real life of the people. As to the value for this purpose of the
romances which make up so important a part of the literary remains of
the Egyptians, scarcely more can be said. They are romances in the
modern acceptance of the term. No school of realists had come to urge
the writer to go to contemporary nature for his models; hence, as Erman
aptly says, the country described in these writings “is not Egypt, but
Fairyland.”

It is always surprising in studying the literature of a past time, to
note the facility with which the details of everyday life are omitted.
Such a writer as Herodotus tells many interesting things about the
manners and customs of Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, Scythians
even, but he scarcely tells us a word except inferentially, or by way
of pointing a contrast, of the everyday life of his own people, the
Greeks themselves. Similarly the Egyptian writers, had they visited
Greece, would doubtless have had much to say of the strange customs of
that “barbaric people”; but it never occurs to them to enter into any
details as to the everyday life of their own race.

The reason for this is sufficiently obvious. One writes chiefly for
a contemporary audience, and it would be tedious and absurd to fill
one’s pages with details regarding things that constitute part of the
most elementary knowledge of every reader. What Greek would have cared
to listen to Herodotus, had he chosen to fill his pages with prosy
dissertations upon the way in which his hearers and readers built their
houses, attired themselves, ate their meals, and pursued their everyday
vocations? Every line of such a disquisition would have been filled
with fascinating interest for posterity, but posterity was but little
in the mind of the writer himself. It is precisely the same with the
writings of to-day.

If one will consider in this light the first novel that comes to
hand, he will be astonished to note how much is taken for granted,
and how little even the most realistic story would tell to a person
utterly ignorant of our manners and customs about the precise details
of our everyday life. Even the newspapers, which seem to thresh out
the veriest chaff of life, are mostly guiltless of specific reference
to any of those everyday commonplaces, the lack of which in ancient
writings fills us with such regret. It is not surprising then, though
none the less to be deplored, that the relatively abundant stores of
Egyptian literature give after all only an incomplete and imperfect
picture of the manners and customs of the people.

To the remaining source of information--the papyri inscribed with
letters and business documents--the investigator is able to turn with
greater confidence. Here we see the people no longer posing consciously
for inspection, but acting their real life and expressing their true
sentiments. Just as the modern biographer feels that he is giving the
most intimate insight into the character of his subject when he quotes
from his personal letters, so these letters and allied documents of
the old Egyptians give us perhaps the clearest insight obtainable into
the true character of the people, and it is those who have studied
these documents most closely who have been most strongly impressed with
the similarity between the true characteristics of ancient and modern
peoples. What, for example, could seem more modern than the account of
the police investigation into the alleged robbery of the tombs of the
kings at Memphis, which was held in the time of Ramses IX, of the XXth
Dynasty, about the year 1100 B.C.?

Professor Erman’s account, transcribed from the papyri, telling of
this investigation, reads for all the world like the police columns of
a modern newspaper. It appears that bands of thieves, tempted by the
rich spoils always buried with ancient kings, had attempted to force
their way into various pyramids where the bodies of these monarchs
reposed, and that in some cases they had been successful. Rumours of
this sacrilege coming to the attention of the governor of the city, the
investigation in question was set on foot, and the divergent opinions
expressed by the various authorities, the bickerings and jealousies
that are evidenced, and the net result in a verdict which leaves
us somewhat in doubt as to the real facts of the case,--all these
features have an aspect of modernity that is positively startling.
As an interesting sequel to this investigation it may be added that
the police were finally obliged to admit themselves no match for the
thieves, and that the authorities, despairing of being able to protect
the tombs of their ancestors, resorted finally to the strange expedient
of removing the royal effigies to a secret cave in the distant
mountain of Deir-el-Bahari. In this cave were placed the mummies of a
distinguished line of monarchs, including Amenhotep I, Tehutimes II,
Tehutimes III, and Seti I, and lastly the great Ramses II himself.

The humiliating step was taken so secretly, and the hiding-place
was so carefully guarded from the knowledge of all but a few, that
apparently when these died the secret died with them. At any rate, the
resting-place of the greatest sovereigns of Egypt was quite unknown
for about three thousand years, and it was revealed by accident in
our own time. In the year 1881, as described in a preceding section,
the authorities entered the crypt which a company of fellahs had
discovered about ten years before, but the knowledge of which they had
kept secret. Perhaps only once before in the history of archæological
discovery had so startling a find been made, or one that aroused
such enthusiastic interest in the minds both of specialists and of
the general public as when these effigies of the great monarchs were
dragged from their tomb. It is only the recent dead to whom sacredness
attaches, and the archæologist has no scruples about making a museum
exhibit of forms that had once ruled a great people, and which their
immediate successors had reverenced as gods.

It will appear from this brief analysis that the remains of Egyptian
writings give us in many ways an insight into the life of the people,
but that nevertheless our knowledge of that life is much more
restricted than could be wished. After the last line of extant writing
has been scrutinised and analysed, it still remains true that the chief
source of our information regarding the manners and customs of the
Egyptians is not to be found in written words but in graphic pictures.
Just as the illustrations of a modern magazine would tell posterity, if
preserved, far more about our everyday life, than could be gleaned from
the pages of text which they supplement, so the delineations of which
the Egyptians were so fond, perform a like service. It was chiefly
through study of these that Wilkinson was able to reconstruct the life
of the people, and it is still to these that the modern investigator
must turn.

[Illustration: EGYPTIAN FIGURES

(From the Monuments)]

The manuscripts give us important hints and suggestions, and throw here
and there a ray of light into some dark corner, but the chief story is
told, not by hieroglyphic or hieratic scrolls, but by actual pictures.
These, as has been said, show us the people for a limited period,
pursuing the ordinary vocations of life. They show us that the Egyptian
gave heed to much the same manner of things that interest the modern.
With the aid of these pictures we are able to go with the Egyptian, not
merely into the fields and vineyards where he labours, but also into
the private dwellings, where we may attend him as he feasts, plays upon
musical instruments, dances, and indulges in various sports and games.

We shall be forced to believe that he was very human; very like
ourselves in his aspirations and desires, even in his method of their
attempted realisation; and yet so strangely do the archaic forms of
those delineations impress themselves upon the mind, that we shall
never quite free ourselves of the impression that here we have to do
with the beings of another and very different world.

Something of mystery, something of the occult, clings to the Egyptian,
however we may try to dispel the illusion. This power the residents of
contemporary Egypt had over the old Greek, and this power they still
retain. They work a spell upon the mind of whoever contemplates them,
which no reasoning can quite exorcise. We know and we believe that
these were ordinary mortals like ourselves; and yet, in spite of this
knowledge, we _feel_ that there was something quite different about
them. And this superstitious feeling perhaps lies at the foundation
of the mysterious charm that the Egyptians have exercised upon all
succeeding generations.[a]

THE EGYPTIANS AS SEEN BY HERODOTUS

How the classical world regarded the Egyptians is made clear to us
through the pages of Herodotus, who speaks as an eye-witness. It is the
Egyptians of the later epoch of whom he speaks, to be sure; but his
comments would probably apply with little change to the customs of much
earlier periods.

Those Egyptians who live in the cultivated parts of the country, are
of all whom I have seen the most ingenious, being attentive to the
improvement of the memory beyond the rest of mankind. To give some
idea of their mode of life: for three days successively in every month
they use purges, vomits, and clysters; this they do out of attention
to their health, being persuaded that the diseases of the body are
occasioned by the different elements received as food. Besides this,
we may venture to assert, that after the Africans there is no people
in health and constitution to be compared with the Egyptians. To this
advantage the climate, which is here subject to no variation, may
essentially contribute: changes of all kinds, and those in particular
of the seasons, promote and occasion the maladies of the body. To their
bread, which they make with spelt, they give the name of cyllestis;
they have no vines in the country, but they drink a liquor fermented
from barley; they live principally upon fish, either salted or dried in
the sun; they eat also quails, ducks, and some smaller birds, without
other preparation than first salting them; but they roast and boil
such other birds and fishes as they have, excepting those which are
preserved for sacred purposes.

At the entertainments of the rich, just as the company is about to rise
from the repast, a small coffin is carried round, containing a perfect
representation of a dead body: it is in size sometimes of one but never
of more than two cubits, and as it is shown to the guests in rotation,
the bearer exclaims, “Cast your eyes on this figure, after death you
yourself will resemble it; drink then, and be happy.” Such are the
customs they observe at entertainments.

They contentedly adhere to the customs of their ancestors, and
are averse to foreign manners. Among other things which claim our
approbation, they have a song, which is also used in Phœnicia, Cyprus,
and other places, where it is differently named. Of all the things
which astonished me in Egypt, nothing more perplexed me than my
curiosity to know whence the Egyptians learned this song, so entirely
resembling the Linus of the Greeks: it is of the remotest antiquity
among them, and they call it Maneros. They have a tradition that
Maneros was the only son of their first monarch; and that having
prematurely died, they instituted these melancholy strains in his
honour, constituting their first, and in earlier times, their only song.

The Egyptians surpass all the Greeks, the Lacedæmonians excepted, in
the reverence which they pay to age: if a young person meet his senior,
he instantly aside to make way for him; if a senior enter an apartment,
the youth always rise from their seats; this ceremony is observed by
no other of the Greeks. When the Egyptians meet they do not speak, but
make a profound reverence, bowing with the hand down to the knee.

Their habit, which they call calasiris, is made of linen, and fringed
at the bottom; over this they throw a kind of shawl made of white wool,
but in these vests of wool they are forbidden by their religion either
to be buried or to enter any sacred edifice; this is a peculiarity of
those ceremonies which are called Orphic and Pythagorean: whoever has
been initiated in these mysteries can never be interred in a vest of
wool, for which a sacred reason is assigned.

Of the Egyptians it is further memorable that they first imagined what
month or day was to be consecrated to each deity; they also, from
observing the days of nativity, venture to predict the particular
circumstances of a man’s life and death: this is done by the poets
of Greece, but the Egyptians have certainly discovered more things
that are wonderful than all the rest of mankind. Whenever any prodigy
occurs, they commit the particulars to writing and mark the events
which follow it: if they afterward observe any similar incident, they
conclude that the result will be similar also. The art of divination
in Egypt is confined to certain of their deities. There are in this
country oracles of Hercules, of Apollo, of Minerva and Diana, of
Mars, and of Jupiter; but the oracle of Latona at Buto is held in
greater estimation than any of the rest: the oracular communication is
regulated by no fixed system, but is differently obtained in different
places.

[Illustration: HEAD-RESTS FOR THE DEAD

(Now in the British Museum)]

The art of medicine in Egypt is thus exercised: one physician is
confined to one disease; there are of course a great number who
practise this art; some attend to disorders of the eyes; others to
those of the head; some take care of the teeth, others are conversant
with all diseases of the bowels; whilst many attend to the cure of
maladies which are less conspicuous.

With respect to their funerals and ceremonies of mourning; whenever
a man of any importance dies, the females of his family, disfiguring
their heads and faces with dirt, leave the corpse in the house and
run publicly about, accompanied by their female relations, with their
garments in disorder, their breasts exposed, and beating themselves
severely: the men on their parts do the same, after which the body is
carried to the embalmers.

If an Egyptian or a foreigner be found, either destroyed by a crocodile
or drowned in the water, the city nearest which the body is discovered,
is obliged to embalm and pay it every respectful attention, and
afterward deposit it in some consecrated place: no friend or relation
is suffered to interfere; the whole process is conducted by the priests
of the Nile, who bury it themselves with a respect to which a lifeless
corpse would hardly seem entitled.

To the customs of Greece they express aversion, and, to say the truth,
to those of all other nations. This remark applies, with only one
exception, to every part of Egypt. Chemmis is a place of considerable
note in the Thebaid, it is near Neapolis, and remarkable for a temple
of Perseus the son of Danæ. This temple is of a square figure, and
surrounded with palm trees. The vestibule, which is very spacious,
is constructed of stone, and on the summit are placed two large
marble statues. Within the consecrated enclosure stand the shrine and
statue of Perseus, who, as the inhabitants affirm, often appears in
the country and the temple. They sometimes find one of his sandals,
which are of the length of two cubits, and whenever this happens,
fertility reigns throughout Egypt. Public games, after the manner of
the Greeks, are celebrated in his honour. Upon this occasion they have
every variety of gymnastic exercise. The rewards of the conquerors are
cattle, vests, and skins. I was once induced to inquire why Perseus
made his appearance to them alone, and why they were distinguished
from the rest of Egypt by the celebration of gymnastic exercises. They
informed me in return, that Perseus was a native of their country, as
were also Danaus and Lynceus, who made a voyage into Greece, and from
whom, in regular succession, they related that Perseus was descended.
This hero visited Egypt for the purpose, as the Greeks also affirm, of
carrying from Africa the Gorgon’s head. Happening to come among them,
he saw and was known to his relations. The name of Chemmis he had
previously known from his mother, and he himself instituted the games
which they continued to celebrate.

These which I have described are the manners of those Egyptians who
live in the higher parts of the country. They who inhabit the marshy
grounds differ in no material instance.

Like the Greeks, they confine themselves to one wife. To procure
themselves the means of sustenance more easily, they make use of the
following expedient: when the waters have risen to their extremest
height, and all their fields are overflowed, there appears above the
surface an immense quantity of plants of the lily species, which the
Egyptians call the lotus: having cut down these, they dry them in
the sun. The seed of the flower, which resembles that of the poppy,
they bake and make into a kind of bread; they also eat the root of
this plant, which is round, of an agreeable flavour, and about the
size of an apple. There is a second species of the lotus, which grows
in the Nile, and which is not unlike a rose. The fruit, which grows
from the bottom of the root, is like a wasp’s nest: it is found to
contain a number of kernels of the size of an olive-stone, which are
very grateful, either fresh or dried. Of the byblus, which is an
annual plant, after taking it from a marshy place, where it grows,
they cut off the tops, and apply them to various uses. They eat or
sell what remains, which is nearly a cubit in length. To make this a
still greater delicacy, there are many who previously roast it. With a
considerable part of this people fish constitutes the principal article
of food; they dry it in the sun, and eat it without other preparation.

The inhabitants in the marshy grounds make use of an oil, which they
term the kiki, expressed from the Sillicyprian plant. In Greece this
plant springs spontaneously without any cultivation, but the Egyptians
sow it on the banks of the river, and of the canals; it there produces
fruit in great abundance, but of a very strong odour: when gathered,
they obtain from it, either by friction or pressure, an unctuous
liquid, which diffuses an offensive smell, but for burning it is equal
in quality to the oil of olives.

The Egyptians are provided with a remedy against gnats, of which there
are a surprising number. As the wind will not suffer these insects to
rise far from the ground, the inhabitants of the higher part of the
country usually sleep in turrets. They who live in the marshy grounds
use this substitute: each person has a net, with which they fish by
day, and which they render useful by night. They cover their beds with
their nets, and sleep securely beneath them. If they slept in their
common habits, or under linen, the gnats would not fail to torment
them, which they do not even attempt through a net.

[Illustration: FOWLERS CATCHING GEESE; AND POULTERERS

(Wilkinson)]

Their vessels of burden are constructed of a species of thorn, which
resembles the lotos of Cyrene, and which distils a gum. From this thorn
they cut planks, about two cubits square: after disposing these in
the form of bricks, and securing them strongly together, they place
from side to side benches for the rowers. They do not use timber
artificially carved, but bend the planks together with the bark of the
byblus made into ropes. They have one rudder, which goes through the
keel of the vessel; their mast is made of the same thorn, and the sails
are formed from the byblus. These vessels are haled along by land, for
unless the wind be very favourable they can make no way against the
stream. When they go with the current, they throw from the head of the
vessel a hurdle made of tamarisk, fastened together with reeds; they
have also a perforated stone of the weight of two talents; this is let
fall at the stern, secured by a rope. The name of this kind of bark
is baris, which the above hurdle, impelled by the tide, draws swiftly
along. The stone at the stern regulates its motion. They have immense
numbers of these vessels, and some of them of the burden of many
thousand talents.

During the inundation of the Nile, the cities only are left
conspicuous, appearing above the waters like the islands of the Ægean
Sea. As long as the flood continues, vessels do not confine themselves
to the channel of the river, but traverse the fields and the plains.
They who then go from Naucratis to Memphis, pass by the pyramids; this,
however, is not the usual course, which lies through the point of the
Delta, and the city of Cercasorus. If from the sea and the town of
Canopus, the traveller desires to go by the plains to Naucratis, he
must pass by Anthilla and Archandros.

Of these places Anthilla is the most considerable: whoever may be
sovereign of Egypt, it is assigned perpetually as part of the revenues
of the queen, and appropriated to the particular purpose of providing
her with sandals; this has been observed ever since Egypt was tributary
to Persia. I should suppose that the other city derives its name from
Archander, the son of Pthius, son-in-law of Danaus, and grandson of
Achæus. There may probably have been some other Archander, for the name
is certainly not Egyptian.[j]

[Illustration: PERSONS COMING TO BE REGISTERED

(Wilkinson)]

So much for the customs of the Egyptians as Herodotus saw them.
Abandoning now the contemporary point of view, let us seek a modern
interpretation.

HOMES OF THE PEOPLE

Of the various institutions of the ancient Egyptians, says the greatest
interpreter of Egyptian customs, none are more interesting than those
which relate to their social life; and when we consider the condition
of other countries in the early ages when they flourished, from the
tenth to the twentieth century before our era, we may look with respect
on the advancement they had then made in civilisation, and acknowledge
the benefits they conferred upon mankind during their career. For,
like other people, they have had their part in the great scheme of the
world’s development, and their share of usefulness in the destined
progress of the human race; for countries, like individuals, have
certain qualities given them, which, differing from those of their
predecessors and contemporaries, are intended in due season to perform
their requisite duties. The interest felt in the Egyptians is from
their having led the way, or having been the first people we know of
who made any great progress, in the arts and manners of civilisation;
which, for the period when they lived, was very creditable, and far
beyond that of other kingdoms of the world. Nor can we fail to remark
the difference between them and their Asiatic rivals, the Assyrians,
who, even at a much later period, had the great defects of Asiatic
cruelty--flaying alive, impaling, and torturing their prisoners; as the
Persians, Turks, and other Orientals have done to the present century;
the reproach of which cannot be extended to the ancient Egyptians.
Being the dominant race of that age, they necessarily had an influence
on others with whom they came in contact; and it is by these means
that civilisation is advanced through its various stages; each people
striving to improve on the lessons derived from a neighbour whose
institutions they appreciate, or consider beneficial to themselves.
It was thus that the active mind of the talented Greeks sought and
improved on the lessons derived from other countries, especially from
Egypt; and though the latter, at the late period of the seventh century
B.C., had lost its greatness and the prestige of superiority among the
nations of the world, it was still the seat of learning and the resort
of studious philosophers; and the abuses consequent on the fall of an
empire had not yet brought about the demoralisation of after times.

In the treatment of women they seem to have been very far advanced
beyond other wealthy communities of the same era, having usages very
similar to those of modern Europe; and such was the respect shown to
women that precedence was given to them over men, and the wives and
daughters of kings succeeded to the throne like the male branches of
the royal family. Nor was this privilege rescinded, even though it
had more than once entailed upon them the troubles of a contested
succession: foreign kings often having claimed a right to the throne
through marriage with an Egyptian princess. It was not a mere
influence that they possessed, which women often acquire in the most
arbitrary Eastern communities; nor a political importance accorded to
a particular individual, like that of the Sultana Valideh, the Queen
Mother, at Constantinople; it was a right acknowledged by law, both in
private and public life.

As in all warm climates, the poorer classes of Egyptians lived much
in the open air; and the houses of the rich were constructed to be
cool throughout the summer; currents of refreshing air being made to
circulate freely through them by the judicious arrangement of the
passages and courts.

[Illustration: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN COMBS

(Now in the British Museum)]

The houses were built of crude brick, stuccoed and painted with all the
combination of bright colour, in which the Egyptians delighted; and a
highly decorated mansion had numerous courts, and architectural details
derived from the temples. Poor people were satisfied with very simple
tenements; their wants being easily supplied, both as to lodging and
food; and their house consisted of four walls, with a flat roof of palm
branches laid across a split date tree as a beam, and covered with mats
plastered over with a thick coating of mud. It had one door, and a few
small windows closed by wooden shutters. As it scarcely ever rained,
the mud roof was not washed into the sitting-room; and this cottage
rather answered as a shelter from the sun, and as a closet for their
goods, than for the ordinary purpose of a house in other countries.
Indeed, at night the owners slept on the roof, during the greater part
of the year; and as most of their work was done out of doors, they
might easily be persuaded that a house was far less necessary for them
than a tomb.

In their plans the houses of towns, like the villas in the country,
varied according to the caprice of the builders. The ground plan, in
some of the former, consisted of a number of chambers on three sides
of a court, which was often planted with trees. Others consisted of
two rows of rooms on either side of a long passage, with an entrance
court from the street; and others were laid out in chambers round a
central area, similar to the Roman _impluvium_, and paved with stone,
or containing a few trees, a tank, or a fountain, in its centre.
Sometimes, though rarely, a flight of steps led to the front door from
the street.

Houses of small size were often connected together, and formed the
continuous sides of streets; and a courtyard was common to several
dwellings. Others of a humbler kind consisted merely of rooms opening
on a narrow passage, or directly on the street. These had only a
basement story, or ground floor; and few houses exceeded two stories
above it. They mostly consisted of one upper floor; and though Diodorus
speaks of the lofty houses in Thebes four and five stories high,
the paintings show that few had three, and the largest seldom four,
including as he does the basement story.[b]

[Illustration: SERVANT PRESENTING A LOTUS FLOWER TO A GUEST]

[Illustration: CAT MUMMIES

(Now in the British Museum)]

CHAPTER X. THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION

This country is so thickly peopled with divinities that it is
easier to find a god than a man.--PETRONIUS.

Few things are so hard to understand as the religion of an alien race.
Indeed, we have but too many illustrations before us constantly that
even among the same people, and where ideas are based upon the same
authorities, a great divergence of opinion is possible. It is little
to be expected, then, that any people should fully understand the
religious faith of another people. To add to the difficulty, all the
great religions are of Oriental origin and date from a pre-scientific
era. Now the essential characteristic both of Oriental and of
non-scientific thinking is its vagueness. The Arabic historian, even
of the present day, loves to indulge in absurd flights of rhetoric.
He sprinkles his pages with grotesque metaphors; he uses the most
hyperbolic exaggerations; nor is he particular to avoid the most
glaring contradictions; and over it all he throws the veil of hazy
mysticism.

If this be true of the Oriental style of composition when applied to
staid matter-of-fact recitals, certainly one could expect nothing
more definite when the theme is religion. It is no matter for
surprise, then, that the sacred books of all great religions are
couched in phraseology well calculated to befog the mind of any one
who approaches them in any other spirit than that of preconceived
faith. This applies no more and no less to the Egyptian than to all
other Oriental religions. On the other hand, the data supplied us for
the interpretation of the Egyptian faith are far more abundant than
are accessible in the case of most other of the great religions of
antiquity.

Despite the confusion and vagueness and seeming contradiction that
pertain to the Egyptian records, it is probably true that a reasonably
correct idea may be formed, at least in general terms, of the evolution
and development, no less than of the final status, of the faith which
was dominant with the people of the Nile for at least three thousand
years. Certainly at least a rough outline of the development of that
faith is accessible, and it is the more worthy of presentation because
it may be taken at the same time as illustrative of the probable
evolution of the faith of other peoples.

The most obvious and striking fact that appeals to the investigator of
the Egyptian religion is that enormous numbers of gods hold sway: Ra,
Horus, Osiris, Isis, Tmu, Amen, Set,--the list extends itself almost
endlessly. Moreover, there is no little confusion as to the precise
status of the various gods thus named. To casual inspection it would
seem as if the Egyptian of the later time had no very clear idea
himself as to how many gods were really included in the hierarchy, or
as to the precise identity of the more important ones. And, indeed,
such was probably the fact.

The only rational explanation of this confusion appears to be the
alleged fact that in an early prehistoric day the various communities
of Egypt, not yet consolidated under a single government, had each
its own special deity. This local deity, presiding jealously over the
interests of its own people, came naturally to have greater or less
importance in proportion to the growth or decay of the community over
which it presided. Moreover, there must have been a constant tendency,
through a shifting of portions of the population from one community to
another, to confuse the attributes of the various gods even from the
earliest time; since the person who removed from one village to another
could not well be expected quite to forget the local god who had
formerly been the chief object of his worship. Then as one community
or another became dominant after the government was centralised,
there must have been a tendency in successive ages to emphasise the
importance of one local god or another.

Thus it is clear that in the time of the New Kingdom, when Thebes
became the capital and chief centre of the empire, Amen, the local god
of Thebes, came to assume an importance hitherto denied him. At last
it was even customary to identify Amen with Ra, the greatest god of
all, or king of the gods, and the compound name, Amen-Ra, came into
use. Various other names were compounded through a similar confusion of
attributes, chiefly perhaps through the natural tendency to identify
one’s local god with a god of more widely recognised authority. A
moment’s reflection makes it clear that the tendency of all this was
towards the recognition of a most important central god, who, to a
certain extent, ruled over and controlled the hierarchy of the lesser
deities. But indeed, it seems clear that from the earliest times
the existence of such a supremely powerful god had been everywhere
recognised.

It may be doubted even whether it is possible for any religion worthy
of the name to fail of an analysis leading to this result. The human
mind naturally reaches back from effect to cause, and while it cannot
quite clearly grasp the idea of an ultimate single cause, yet neither
can it escape the analysis that leads to that idea.

In this view it might be contended that the Egyptian religion, and
indeed, every other religion, is monotheistic; certainly its trend
was towards monotheism, and certainly this conception best accords
with the natural cast of the Oriental mind. It is natural to attempt
to visualise, in the spiritual world, a state of things not widely
different from the conditions of the actual world, and a people who
had no higher conception of the body politic than the thought of an
autocracy presided over by a single supreme monarch, would have been
strangely untrue to their psychological prejudices had they failed to
conceive a like state of things existing in the hierarchy of the gods.

Side by side with this tendency towards monotheism, however, exists
always the counter tendency towards a multiplication of deities. The
founding of a new city or colony would imply, sooner or later, the
creation of a god to preside over the new community. If at first an old
god were transplanted for the purpose, local jealousy would be sure
to demand a deity whose sole interests in the local community could
be expected. Again, the deification of kings and perhaps the other
departed notables must of necessity lead to a perpetual enhancement of
the list of gods. But this multiplicity of minor deities must not be
supposed to be necessarily antagonistic to the essential monotheistic
idea in the case of the Egyptian, any more than the multiplication of
saints affects the status of the Christian religion.

Over and above all other gods, from first to last, there seems always
to have been a conception of Ra, the Uncreated, the autocrat of the
heavens. Horus the sun-god, who fought each day in the interest
of mankind against the malicious demon Set, or Sutekh, and who was
overcome each night only to revive again and renew the combat with each
succeeding morning, was a god of great and widely recognised power.
Yet it appears that he was not quite identified, as has sometimes been
supposed, with the supreme god Ra. To the latter attached a certain
intangibility, a certain vagueness inconsistent with the obvious visual
reality of the sun-god, or with the being of any other god whose
qualities could be explicitly defined. In the very nature of the case
the conception of Ra was vague. He represented the last analysis of
thought, from which the mind recoils dazed and acknowledging itself
baffled.

While we can hardly doubt that this must have been the status of the
supreme god Ra in the minds of the most philosophical thinkers of
Egypt, yet it is no less certain that there was a constant tendency to
associate the qualities of various other gods with the qualities of
the supreme deity; in other words, to elevate a lesser deity to the
kingship of the gods, somewhat as an important subject might now and
again be elevated to the earthly kingship.

The most tangible effort in this direction was made late in the
XVIIIth Dynasty by Amenhotep IV, who came afterwards to be known as
Khun-aten, “the splendour of the sun-disk,” and whom later generations
characterised as the heretic king. This monarch strove to subordinate,
if not indeed to eliminate, all the hosts of minor gods by instituting
the kingship of the sun-god alone as the supreme, perhaps as the only,
deity. The effort was not successful, and the reaction that followed
left the old religion more firmly fixed than ever, in its previous
beliefs and observances. None the less, the attempt has great historic
interest, partly because it shows that the idea of essential monotheism
underlying a superficial plurality of gods was current in Egypt, and
even attained official recognition at just about the time of the
Egyptian captivity of the Children of Israel. It is aside from the
present purpose to inquire to what extent the ideas of the latter may
have been influenced by this strong current of Egyptian thought.

It has just been said that the reaction against the sun-worship heresy
left the old faith more firmly established than before. Never again
was a prominent and conspicuous effort made to depart from the ancient
faith. Whatever details of variation may have been introduced, the
religion as a whole remained unchanged throughout the remaining course
of Egyptian history. But this fixity again, far from being peculiar to
the Egyptians, is but the history of every great theological system.
The very fulcrum of such a system is the reliance upon the authority
of the past. The abiding support of a traditional faith is that
conservatism which lies at the foundation of all civilisation, and
indeed, paradoxical though it seems, of all progress. The conservative,
his eye fixed on the past, plants himself firmly in the path of
progress, crying “Halt!” to every innovation. Yet during the time of a
nation’s vitality this attempted damming up of the stream of progress
results in, at most, a temporary stasis, since now and again the
stress of new ideas suffices to burst the bonds. But there may come a
time when the vitality of a nation is sapped, and when the power of
conservatism may avail against all progressive movements.

Such a time came in Egypt at just about the era when the nations of
Persia and of Greece were preparing to take hand in the world combat,
and from that time on traditional theology, as represented by the
priestcraft, was dominant in Egypt, and the once potent civilisation
of the Nile Valley ceased to hold its own. The records that outside
nations have given us of Egyptian conditions date solely from this
later period, and must therefore always be taken with certain
reservations. Nevertheless, as regards the more tangible things which
they describe, they perhaps are not greatly different from what they
would have been if written a thousand years earlier. They tell us
of great pyramids that were the tombs of kings, of strange customs
of mummifying the dead, and of the worship of animals, so crass in
character as to be almost inconceivable to the modern mind. The
pyramids, to be sure, dated from an ancient epoch; moreover, they
still stand, defiant of time, to testify to the truth of the Greek
recitals. The mummies have been preserved in countless numbers, and
if animal worship died out with the incoming of a new religion after
the Macedonian invasion, there is no reason to doubt the substantial
accuracy, as regards mere externals, of the accounts of it which the
Greeks preserve to us.

We shall do well, then, to turn to the pages of Herodotus and Diodorus
for a description of the external observances practised by the
Egyptians, remembering always that this is the testimony of alien,
even though sympathetic, witnesses, but scarcely doubting that it
is testimony at least as unprejudiced as any that a modern would-be
interpreter can draw from the monumental records.

The aggregate impression which one gathers, from even a casual
consideration of the subject, is that the religion of the Egyptians,
despite its very striking peculiarities of external observances,
differed singularly little from the other great religions in its
essentials. It was polytheistic, but with an underlying conception
of monotheism. Its chief observances implied an abiding faith in the
immortality of the soul. Its fundamental teachings were essentially
moral according to the best light of the time. And if, as viewed by an
outsider, it seemed to develop a grotesque ritual and a jumble of vague
theistic conceptions, in these regards, also, it can hardly claim to be
unique among Oriental religions.[a]

RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS AND OFFERINGS

Herodotus gives an interesting description of certain religious
observances as practised in his day. He says:

The priests of the gods, who in other places wear their hair long, in
Egypt wear it short. It is elsewhere customary, in cases of death, for
those who are most nearly related, to cut off their hair in testimony
of sorrow; but the Egyptians, who at other times have their heads
closely shorn, suffer the hair on this occasion to grow. Other nations
will not suffer animals to approach the place of their repast; but
in Egypt they live promiscuously with the people. Wheat and barley
are common articles of food in other countries; but in Egypt they are
thought mean and disgraceful; the diet here consists principally of
spelt, a kind of corn which some call zea. Their dough they knead with
their feet; whilst in the removal of mud and dung, they do not scruple
to use their hands. Male children, except in those places which have
borrowed the custom from hence, are left in other nations as nature
formed them; in Egypt they are circumcised. The men have two vests,
the women only one. In opposition to the customs of other nations, the
Egyptians fix the ropes to their sails on the inside. The Greeks, when
they write or reckon with counters, go from the left to the right,
the Egyptians from right to left; notwithstanding which they persist
in affirming that the Greeks write to the left, but they themselves
always to the right. They have two sorts of letters, one of which is
appropriated to sacred subjects, the other used on common occasions
[the hieroglyphic and hieratic characters].

Their veneration of their deities is superstitious to an extreme:
one of their customs is to drink out of brazen goblets, which it is
the universal practice among them to cleanse every day. They are so
regardful of neatness, that they wear only linen, and that always newly
washed; and it is from the idea of cleanliness, which they regard much
beyond comeliness, that they use circumcision. Their priests every
third day shave every part of their bodies, to prevent vermin or any
species of impurity from adhering to those who are engaged in the
service of the gods: the priesthood is also confined to one particular
mode of dress; they have one vest of linen and their shoes are made
of the byblus [papyrus]; they wash themselves in cold water twice in
the course of the day, and as often in the night; it would indeed be
difficult to enumerate their religious ceremonies, all of which they
practise with superstitious exactness. The sacred ministers possess
in return many and great advantages: they are not obliged to consume
any part of their domestic property; each has a portion of the sacred
viands ready dressed, assigned him, besides a large and daily allowance
of beef and of geese; they have also wine, but are not permitted to
feed on fish.

Beans are sown in no part of Egypt, neither will the inhabitants
eat them, either boiled or raw; the priests will not even look at
this pulse, esteeming it exceedingly unclean. Every god has several
attendant priests, and one of superior dignity, who presides over the
rest; when any one dies he is succeeded by his son.

They esteem bulls as sacred to Epaphus, which previously to sacrifice,
are thus carefully examined: if they can but discover a single black
hair in his body, he is deemed impure; for this purpose a priest is
particularly appointed, who examines the animal as it stands, and as
reclined on its back: its tongue is also drawn out, and he observes
whether it be free from those blemishes which are specified in their
sacred books, and of which I shall speak hereafter. The tail also
undergoes examination, every hair of which must grow in its natural
and proper form: if in all these instances the bull appears to be
unblemished, the priest fastens the byblus round his horns; he then
applies a preparation of earth, which receives the impression of his
seal, and the animal is led away; this seal is of so great importance,
that to sacrifice a beast which has it not, is deemed a capital offence.

I proceed to describe their mode of sacrifice: Having led the animal
destined and marked for the purpose, to the altar, they kindle a fire;
a libation of wine is poured upon the altar; the god is solemnly
invoked, and the victim then is killed; they afterwards cut off his
head, and take the skin from the carcass; upon the head they heap many
imprecations: such as have a market-place at hand carry it there, and
sell it to the Grecian traders; if they have not this opportunity,
they throw it into the river. They devote the head, by wishing that
whatever evil menaces those who sacrifice, or Egypt in general, it
may fall upon that head.[11] This ceremony respecting the head of the
animal, and this mode of pouring a libation of wine upon the altar, is
indiscriminately observed by all the Egyptians: in consequence of the
above, no Egyptian will on any account eat of the head of a beast. As
to the examination of the victims, and their ceremony of burning them,
they have different methods, as their different occasions of sacrifice
require.

Of that goddess whom they esteem the first of their deities, and in
whose honour their greatest festival is celebrated, I shall now make
more particular mention. After the previous ceremony of prayers,
they sacrifice an ox; they then strip off the skin, and take out the
intestines, leaving the fat and the paunch; they afterwards cut off
the legs, the shoulders, the neck, and the extremities of the loin;
the rest of the body is stuffed with fine bread, honey, raisins, figs,
frankincense, and various aromatics; after this process they burn it,
pouring upon the flame a large quantity of oil: whilst the victim is
burning, the spectators flagellate themselves, having fasted before
the ceremony; the whole is completed by their feasting on the residue
of the sacrifice. All the Egyptians sacrifice bulls without blemish,
and calves; the females are sacred to Isis, and may not be used for
this purpose. This divinity is represented under the form of a woman,
and, as the Greeks paint Io, with horns upon her head; for this reason
the Egyptians venerate cows far beyond all other cattle. Neither will
any man or woman among them kiss a Grecian, nor use a knife, or spit,
or any domestic utensil belonging to a Greek, nor will they eat even
the flesh of such beasts as by their law are pure, if it has been cut
with a Grecian knife. If any of these cattle die, they thus dispose of
their carcasses: the females are thrown into the river, the males they
bury in the vicinity of the city, and by way of mark, one and sometimes
both of the horns are left projecting from the ground: they remain
thus a stated time, and till they begin to putrefy, when a vessel
appointed for this particular purpose is dispatched from Prosopitis,
an island of the Delta, nine schæni in extent, and containing several
cities. Atarbechis, one of these cities, in which is a temple of
Venus, provides the vessels for this purpose, which are sent to the
different parts of Egypt: these collect and transport the bones of the
animals, which are all buried in one appointed place. This law and
custom extends to whatever cattle may happen to die, as the Egyptians
themselves put none to death.

Those who worship in the temple of the Theban Jupiter, or belong to the
district of Thebes, abstain from sheep, and sacrifice goats. The same
deities receive in Egypt different forms of worship; the ceremonies of
Isis and of Osiris, who they say is no other than the Grecian Bacchus,
are alone unvaried; in the temple of Mendes, and in the whole Mendesian
district, goats are preserved and sheep sacrificed. The veneration of
the Mendesians for these animals, and for the males in particular, is
equally great and universal: this is also extended to goat-herds. There
is one he-goat more particularly honoured than the rest, whose death
is seriously lamented by the whole district of the Mendesians. In the
Egyptian language the word Mendes is used in common for Pan and for a
goat.

The Egyptians regard the hog as an unclean animal, and if they casually
touch one they immediately plunge themselves, clothes and all, into the
water. This prejudice operates to the exclusion of all swine-herds,
although natives of Egypt, from the temples: with people of this
description, a connection by marriage is studiously avoided, and they
are reduced to the necessity of intermarrying among those of their own
profession. The only deities to whom the Egyptians offer swine, are
Bacchus and Luna; to these they sacrifice them when the moon is at the
full, after which they eat the flesh. Why they offer swine at this
particular time, and at no other, the Egyptians have a tradition among
themselves, which delicacy forbids me to explain. The following is the
mode in which they sacrifice this animal to Luna: as soon as it is
killed, they cut off the extremity of the tail, which, with the spleen
and the fat, they enclose in the caul, and burn; upon the remainder,
which at any other time they would disdain, they feast at the full
moon, when the sacrifice is performed. They who are poor make figures
of swine with meal, which having first baked, they offer on the altar.

On the day of the feast of Bacchus, at the hour of supper, every
person, before the door of his house, offers a hog in sacrifice. The
swine-herd of whom they purchased it, is afterwards at liberty to take
it away. Except this sacrifice of the swine, the Egyptians celebrate
the feast of Bacchus in the same manner as the Greeks.[b]

GIFTS AND RICHES OF TEMPLES

There are certain very practical features of the administration of the
temples which Herodotus quite overlooked, but which have come to light
through the efforts of modern scholarship. Some of these are admirably
pointed out by Professor Erman:

Not the least of the circumstances which lent the priesthood of the New
Kingdom that power which finally triumphed over royalty itself, was
their wealth. For this they were indebted to gifts, and, indeed, so far
as we can see, chiefly to gifts from the kings; it is only now and then
that we find a private person making an endowment. From the earliest
times all the rulers are busy in this fatal direction (some, like the
pious kings of the Vth dynasty, were more so than others); even under
the old kingdom many temples had attained such prosperity that they
even possessed military forces of their own.

The golden age for the temples began with the Asiatic campaigns of
the XVIIIth Dynasty. An approximate idea of the gifts which Tehutimes
III made to Amen may be obtained from the remains of an inscription
at Karnak; fields and gardens of the choicest of the South and North,
landed property on high ground, with sweet trees growing on it, milch
cows, and bullocks, and quantities of gold, silver, and lapis lazuli;
then captive Asiatics and negroes,--there were at least 878 souls--men,
women, and children,--who had to fill the god’s granaries, spin and
weave, and till his fields for him. Finally he settled upon Amen three
of the towns conquered by him, En-heugsa, Yenu-amu, and Hurenkhara,
which had to pay an annual tribute to the god. Since almost every
sovereign of the New Kingdom boasts in nearly the same words of having
exhibited his piety in a practical fashion, one is first inclined to
take this constant self-glorification of the Pharaohs, as so much in
the Egyptian text has to be taken, for a conventional empty phrase.
But in that case, our doubt would go too far, since at least some of
the kings did make to the temples gifts which surpass all that might
be considered probable. The lucky chance which has preserved for us
the great Harris papyrus places us in a position to bring forward the
evidence of figures. King Ramses III left behind after his death a
comprehensive manifesto, in which he enumerates in detail all that
he had done for the sanctuaries of his country during the thirty-one
years of his reign. The numbers of these lists are evidently taken
from the accounts of the state and of the different temples, and are
consequently deserving of credit.

This great record, which fills a papyrus roll 1333 feet long, with
seventy-nine pages of a large size, is divided into five sections,
according to the recipients of the gifts. The first contains the gifts
to the Theban temples, then follows the gifts to Heliopolis, those to
Memphis, and those to the smaller sanctuaries of the country; finally,
the fifth section contains the total of all the donations.

Taking together the similar items amongst the donations, tributes,
and sacrificial offerings, we have then the chief items of the sum
of the income of the Egyptian temples during one and thirty years,
somewhat as follows: about 1 ton (1015 kg. 336. g.) of gold; about 3
tons (2993 kg. 964 g.) silver and the value of silver; 940 kg. 3 g. of
black bronze; about 13 tons (13,059 kg. 865 g.) bronze; about 14 lbs.
(7 kg. 124 g.) precious stones; 1,093,803 pieces of valuable stone;
169 towns, 1,071,780 plots of arable land; 514 vineyards and orchards;
178 ships; 133,433 slaves; 514,968 head of cattle (especially oxen);
680,714 geese; 494,800 fish; 2,382,605 fruits: 5,740,352 sacks of corn;
6,744,428 loaves of bread; 256,460 jars of wine; 466,303 jars of beer;
368,461 jars of incense, honey, oil, etc., 1,933,766 items.

In order to give the reader some idea of the large sums here dealt
with, I may remark that even in our own time, when the value of the
metals has so greatly decreased, the quantity of precious metals in
question would be worth about four million marks (about $1,000,000,
or £200,000). And it must not be forgotten that on those same six or
seven millions of Egyptians who, in addition to the state taxes, had
to produce these treasures “_ad majorem dei gloriam_,” there devolved
at the same time the building of the temples of Medinet Habu, Karnak,
Tel-el-Tehudeh, and others. Truly the forces of the little country were
unduly strained for the unproductive purposes of worship.

But what made these conditions so completely unsound was the
disproportionate division of the treasure expended. If the many temples
of the country had participated equally in these gifts, no one of them
would have attained to an extreme height of power and wealth. But,
probably on political grounds, which we can now no longer determine,
Ramses III favoured one temple in the most partial manner, and that the
very one to which his predecessors had already conferred the richest
endowments. This was the sanctuary of the Theban Amen, which carried
off the lion’s share of all the gifts of the generous sovereign.

Thus, for example, of the total 113,433 slaves which Ramses gave away,
no fewer than 86,486 fell to Amen; of the 493,386 head of cattle,
421,362; of the 1,071,780 divisions of land, 898,168; of the 514
vineyards, 433; and so on: the 2756 gold and silver images of the
gods were destined exclusively for him, and so were the nine foreign
towns; it must even here be regarded as an exceptionally mean gift,
when he received only 56 of the 160 Egyptian towns. On the whole,
it will scarcely be wrong to assume that of the total of the gifts,
three-fourths found their way into Amen’s treasuries; of the 86,486
slaves, the god Khonsu and the goddess Mut received in all only 3908.

Since, then, the earlier sovereigns of the New Kingdom had also
laboured to fill the treasury of their favourite god Amen, this god
ended by possessing resources, beside which those of all the other gods
shrank to nothing, and again it is the document of Ramses III which
enables us to estimate it in figures.

If we compare these figures with one another, we cannot doubt that
under the XXth Dynasty the Amen of Thebes possessed at least five times
as much property as the sun-god of Heliopolis, and ten times (if not
far more) as much as Ptah of Memphis. And yet these latter were the
two gods who had formerly been the most distinguished, and certainly
also the richest, in the whole country. The enormous magnitude of
temple property like this, of course, demanded a much more complicated
machinery for its administration than had been required for the modest
possessions of the ancient sanctuaries. Even one of the larger temples
of the middle kingdom could have its treasure, its granaries, and
its affairs of writing carried on by certain members of its priestly
college, for the labours which they entailed could be executed side by
side; beyond the inferior servants there had been scarcely any regular
officials in these temples. It is quite otherwise in the New Kingdom;
the priests can no longer manage the administration unaided, and call
in a host of officials to help. This is true of all the temples, but,
of course, especially so of that of the Theban Amen. This god possessed
a general administration of the house, _i.e._ the temple furniture;
he has special departments for the treasure, for the lands, for the
barns, for the oxen, and for the peasants, and every one of these
departments has its overseer of princely rank, and its scribe. There
is also a superior chief scribe for Amen, who keeps the roll of the
sanctuary’s possessions. And since in a great temple of the New Kingdom
the erection of new buildings and the works of restoration are never
interrupted, he has also his own administration of construction, to
which _all_ works are subordinated; of course, provision is also made
for the required number of labourers and craftsmen of all kinds, from
the painter down to the stone-mason. To secure order in the temple and
on the estates, the god keeps his own military forces with superior
and inferior officers, and since amongst his dependents very secular
proceedings often take place, he has also his own prison. Of the large
staff of subordinate officials, who must have existed in such an
administration, we, of course, know very little, as this class keeps
out of sight. Still such people as the overseer of the sacrificial
storehouses, doorkeepers of every description, and barbers have left us
monuments, and must consequently have enjoyed a certain prosperity.

What we have here stated respecting the temple administration would
be of still greater interest if we knew the mutual relations of all
these offices, and how it came to pass that we find, now these, now
those, united in the same hands. That the high priest arrogated to
himself, at least nominally, now one, now another, especially important
office, is comprehensible enough; but it remains unexplained how, for
instance, the management of the constructions can be at one time handed
over as a secondary function to the chief scribe, and another time
to the superintendent of barns, the more since the former presided
in addition over the god’s bulls, and the latter has the treasury
under his protection, and “seals all contracts in Amen’s temple.” It
is, moreover, a characteristic circumstance that these high temple
officials are frequently also state functionaries; the gradual
transformation of the old kingdom into the priestly state of the XXIst
Dynasty, which is ruled by the high priests of Amen, already distinctly
reveals itself in such dual officers. Still, the kingly power did not
submit to the spiritual without resistance, and it may be that both the
reformation of Khun-aten and the disturbances at the end of the XIXth
Dynasty, when no sacrifices were brought into the temples, were in good
part called forth by the effort to oppose a barrier to the individual
and increasing power of the Amen priesthood. It must be owned that the
latter issued from both trials stronger than ever.[c]

The opulence of the Egyptian temples is the more amazing for being
lavished upon mere beasts. This animal-worship deeply impressed
classical authors. The account of Diodorus is particularly full and
vivid.

DIODORUS ON ANIMAL WORSHIP

The Adoration and Worshipping of Beasts among the Egyptians seems
justly to many a most strange and unaccountable thing, and worthy
Enquiry; for they worship some Creatures even above measure, when they
are dead as well as when they are living; as Cats, Ichneumons, Dogs,
Kites, the Bird Ibis, Wolves and Crocodiles, and many other such like.
The Cause of which I shall endeavour to give, having first premis’d
something briefly concerning them. And first of all, they dedicate
a piece of Land to every kind of Creature they adore, assigning the
Profits for feeding and taking care of them. To some of these Deities
the Egyptians give Thanks for recovering their Children from Sickness,
as by shaving their Heads, and weighing the Hair, with the like Weight
of Gold or Silver, and then giving that Mony to them that have the Care
of the Beasts. To the Kites, while they are flying they cry out with
a loud Voice, and throw pieces of Flesh for them upon the Ground till
such time as they take it. To the Cats and Ichneumons they give Bread
soakt in Milk, stroaking and making much of them, or feed them with
pieces of Fish taken in the River Nile. In the same manner they provide
for the other Beasts Food according to their several kinds.

They are so far from not paying this Homage to their Creatures, or
being asham’d of them, that on the contrary they glory in them, as in
the highest Adoration of the Gods, and carry about special Marks and
Ensigns of Honour for them through City and Country; upon which Account
those that have the Care of the Beasts (being seen afar off) are
honour’d and worshipp’d by all by falling down upon their Knees. When
any one of them dye they wrap it in fine Linen, and with Howling beat
upon their Breasts, and so carry it forth to be salted, and then after
they have anointed it with the Oyl of Cedar and other things, which
both give the Body a fragrant Smell and preserve it a long time from
Putrefaction, they bury it in a secret place. He that wilfully kills
any of these Beasts, is to suffer Death; but if any kill a Cat or the
Bird Ibis, whether wilfully or otherwise, he’s certainly drag’d away to
Death by the Multitude, and sometimes most cruelly without any formal
Tryal or Judgment of Law. For fear of this, if any by chance find any
of these Creatures dead, they stand aloof, and with lamentable Cries
and Protestations tell every body that they found it dead.

And such is the religious Veneration imprest upon the Hearts of Men
towards these Creatures, and so obstinately is every one bent to adore
and worship them, that even at the time when the Romans were about
making a League with Ptolemy, and all the People made it their great
Business to caress and shew all Civility and Kindness imaginable to
them that came out of Italy, and through Fear strove all they could
that no Occasion might in the least be given to disoblige them or be
the Cause of a War, yet it so happ’ned that upon a Cat being kill’d
by a Roman, the People in a Tumult ran to his Lodging, and neither
the Princes sent by the King to dissuade them, nor the Fear of the
Romans could deliver the Person from the Rage of the People, tho’ he
did it against his Will; and this I relate not by Hear-say, but was
myself an Eye-witness of it at the time of my Travels into Egypt. If
these things seem incredible and like to Fables, those that we shall
hereafter relate will look more strange. For it’s reported, that at a
time when there was a Famine in Egypt, many were driven to that strait,
that by turns they fed one upon another; but not a Man was accused to
have in the least tasted of any of these sacred Creatures. Nay, if a
Dog be found dead in a House, the whole Family shave their Bodies all
over, and make great Lamentation; and that which is most wonderful,
is, That if any Wine, Bread or any other Victuals be in the House where
any of these Creatures die, it’s a part of their Superstition, not to
make use of any of them for any purpose whatsoever. And when they have
been abroad in the Wars in foreign Countries, they have with great
Lamentation brought with them dead Cats and Kites into Egypt, when in
the mean time they have been ready to starve for want of Provision.

Moreover what Acts of Religious Worship they perform’d towards Apis in
Memphis, Mnevis in Heliopolis, the Goat in Mendes, the Crocodile in the
Lake of Mœris, and the Lyon kept in Leontopolis, and many other such
like, is easie to describe, but very difficult to believe, except a
Man saw it. For these Creatures are kept and fed in consecrated Ground
inclos’d, and many great Men provide Food for them at great Cost and
Charge; for they constantly give them fine Wheat-Flower, Frumenty,
Sweet-meats of all sorts made up with Honey, and Geese sometimes
rosted, and sometimes boyl’d; and for such as fed upon raw Flesh, they
provide Birds. To say no more, they are excessive in their Costs and
Charges in feeding of these Creatures; and forbear not to wash them in
hot Baths, to anoint them with the most precious Unguents, and perfume
them with the sweetest Odours. They provide likewise for them most
rich Beds to lye upon, with decent Furniture, and are extraordinary
careful about their generating one with another, according to the Law
of Nature. They breed up for every one of the Males (according to their
Kinds) the most beautiful She-mate, and call them their Concubines or
Sweet-hearts, and are at great Costs in looking to them.

When any of them dye, they are as much concern’d as at the Deaths of
their own Children, and lay out in Burying of them as much as all
their Goods are worth, and far more. For when Apis through Old Age
dy’d at Memphis after the Death of Alexander, and in the Reign of
Ptolemy Lagus, his Keeper not only spent all that vast Provision he
had made, in burying of him, but borrow’d of Ptolemy Fifty Talents of
Silver for the same purpose. And in our time some of the Keepers of
these Creatures have lavisht away no less than a Hundred Talents in
the maintaining of them. To this may be further added, what is in use
among them concerning the sacred Ox, which they call Apis. After the
splendid Funeral of Apis is over, those Priests that have the Charge
of the Business, seek out another Calf, as like the former as possibly
they can find; and when they have found one, an end is put to all
further Mourning and Lamentation; and such Priests as are appointed for
that purpose, lead the young Ox [or Bull] through the City of Nile,
and feed him Forty Days. Then they put him into a Barge, wherein is a
Golden Cabbin, and so transport him as a God to Memphis, and place him
in Vulcan’s Grove. During the Forty Days before mention’d, none but
Women are admitted to see him, who being plac’d full in his view, pluck
up their Coats. After, they are forbad to come into Sight of this New
God. For the Adoration of this Ox, they give this Reason. They say that
the Soul of Osiris pass’d into an Ox; and therefore whenever the Ox is
Dedicated, to this very Day the Spirit of Osiris is infus’d into one Ox
after another to Posterity. But some say, that the Members of Osiris
(who was kill’d by Typhon) were thrown by Isis into an Ox made of Wood,
cover’d with Ox-Hides, and from thence the City Busiris was so call’d.
Many other things they fabulously report of Apis, which would be too
tedious particularly to relate. But in as much as all that relate to
this Adoration of Beasts are wonderful and indeed incredible, it’s very
difficult to find out the true Causes and Grounds of this Superstition.

We have before related, that the Priests have a private and secret
account of these things in the History of the Gods; but the Common
People give these Three Reasons for what they do. The First of which is
altogether Fabulous, and agrees with the old Dotage: For they say, that
the First Gods were so very few, and Men so many above them in number,
and so wicked and impious, that they were too weak for them, and
therefore transform’d themselves into Beasts, and by that means avoided
their Assaults and Cruelty. But afterwards they say that the Kings and
Princes of the Earth (in gratitude to them that were the first Authors
of their well-being) directed how carefully those Creatures whose
shapes they had assum’d should be fed while they were alive, and how
they were to be Buried when they were dead.

Another Reason they give is this: The antient Egyptians, they say,
being often defeated by the Neighbouring Nations, by reason of the
disorder and confusion that was among them in drawing up of their
Battalions, found out at last the way of Carrying Standards or Ensigns
before their Several Regiments; and therefore they painted the Images
of these Beasts, which now they adore, and fixt ’em at the end of a
Spear, which the Officers carry’d before them, and by this means every
Man perfectly knew the Regiment he belong’d unto; and being that by
the Observation of this good Order and Discipline, they were often
Victorious, they ascrib’d their Deliverance to these Creatures; and to
make to them a grateful Return, it was ordain’d for a Law, that none
of these Creatures, whose Representations were formerly thus carry’d,
should be kill’d, but religiously and carefully ador’d, as is before
related.

The Third Reason alledg’d by them, is the Profit and Advantage these
Creatures bring to the common support and maintenance of Humane Life.
For the Cow is both serviceable to the Plow, and for breeding others
for the same use. The Sheep yeans twice a Year, and yields Wool for
Cloathing and Ornament, and of her Milk and Cream are made large and
pleasant Cheeses. The Dog is useful both for the Guard of the House,
and the pleasure of Hunting in the Field, and therefore their God whom
they call Anubis, they represent with a Dog’s Head, signifying thereby
that a Dog was the Guard both to Osiris and Isis. Others say, that
when they fought for Osiris, Dogs guided Isis, and by their barking
and yelling (as kind and faithful Associates with the Inquisitors)
drove away the wild Beasts, and diverted others that were in their way;
and therefore in celebrating the Feast of Isis, Dogs lead the way in
the Procession. Those that first instituted this Custom, signifying
thereby the ancient kindness and good Service of this Creature. The Cat
likewise is very serviceable against the Venemous Stings of Serpents,
and the deadly Bite of the Asp.

The Ichneumon secretly watches where the Crocodile lays her Eggs, and
breaks them in pieces, and that he does with a great deal of eagerness,
by natural instinct, without any necessity for his own support; and if
this Creature were not thus serviceable, Crocodiles would abound to
that degree, that there were no Sailing in Nile: Yea, the Crocodiles
themselves are destroy’d by this Creature in a wonderful and incredible
manner. For the Ichneumon rouls himself in the Mud, and then observing
the Crocodile sleeping upon the Bank of the River with his Mouth wide
open, suddenly whips down through his Throat into his very Bowels, and
presently gnaws his way through his Belly, and so escapes himself, with
the Death of his Enemy.

Among the Birds, the Ibis is serviceable for the destroying of Snakes,
Locusts and the Palmer Worm. The Kite is an Enemy to the Scorpions,
horn’d Serpents, and other little Creatures, that both bite and sting
Men to Death. Others say, that this Bird is Deify’d, because the Augurs
make use of the swift flight of these Birds in their Divinations.
Others say, that in ancient Time, a Book bound about with a Scarlet
Thred (wherein were written all the Rites and Customs of Worshipping of
the Gods) was carry’d by a Kite, and brought to the Priests at Thebes:
For which Reason the Sacred Scribes wore a red Cap with a Kite’s
Feather in it. The Thebans worship the Eagle, because she seems to be a
Royal Bird, and to deserve the Adoration due to Jupiter himself. They
say, the Goat was accounted amongst the number of the Gods as Priapus
is honour’d among the Grecians: For this Creature is exceeding Lustful,
and therefore is to be highly honour’d. By this Representation they
would signify their Gratitude to the Gods, for the Populousness of
their Country.

The Sacred Bulls Apis and Mnevis (they say) they honour as Gods by the
Command of Osiris, both for their Usefulness in Husbandry, and likewise
to keep up an honourable and lasting Memory of those that first found
out Bread-corn and other Fruits of the Earth. But however, it’s lawful
to sacrifice red Oxen, because Typhon seem’d to be of that Colour, who
treacherously murder’d Osiris, and was himself put to Death by Isis for
the Murther of her Husband. They report likewise, that anciently Men
that had red Hair, like Typhon, were sacrifis’d by the Kings at the
Sepulcher of Osiris. And indeed, there are very few Egyptians that are
red, but many that are Strangers: And hence arose the Fable of Busiris
his Cruelty towards Strangers amongst the Greeks, not that there ever
was any King call’d Busiris; but Osiris his Sepulcher was so call’d
in the Egyptian Language. They say they pay divine Honour to Wolves,
because they come so near in their Nature to Dogs, for they are very
little different, and mutually ingender and bring forth Whelps.

They give likewise another reason for their Adoration, but most
fabulous of all other; for they say, that when Isis and her Son Orus
were ready to joyn Battle with Typhon, Osiris came up from the Shades
below in the form of a Wolf, and assisted them, and therefore when
Typhon was kill’d the Conquerors commanded that Beast to be worshipp’d,
because the Day was won presently upon his Appearing. Some affirm,
that at the time of the Irruption of the Ethiopians into Egypt, a
great Number of Wolves flockt together, and drove the invading Enemy
beyond the City Elaphantina, and therefore that Province is call’d
Lycopolitana; and for these Reasons came these Beasts before mention’d,
to be thus ador’d and worshipped.

Now it remains, that we speak of Deifying the Crocodile, of which many
have inquir’d what might be the Reason; being that these Beasts devour
Men, and yet are ador’d as Gods, who in the mean time are pernicious
Instruments of many cruel Accidents. To this they answer, that their
Country is not only defended by the River, but much more by the
Crocodiles; and therefore the Theeves out of Arabia and Africa being
affraid of the great number of these Creatures, dare not pass over the
River Nile, which protection they should be depriv’d of, if the Beasts
should be fallen upon, and utterly destroy’d by the Hunters.

But there’s another Account given of these Things: For one of the
Ancient Kings, called Menes, being set upon and pursu’d by his own
Dogs, was forc’d into the Lake of Mœris, where a Crocodile (a Wonder
to be told) took him up and carri’d him over to the other side, where
in Gratitude to the Beast he built a City, and call’d it Crocodile;
and commanded Crocodiles to be Ador’d as Gods, and Dedicated the Lake
to them for a place to Feed and Breed in. Where he built a Sepulcher
for himself with a foursquare Pyramid, and a Labyrinth greatly admir’d
by every Body. In the same manner they relate Stories of other Things,
which would be too tedious here to recite. For some conceive it to
be very clear and evident (by several of them not Eating many of the
Fruits of the Earth) that Gain and Profit by sparing has infected them
with this Superstition: for some never Taste Lentils, nor other Beans;
and some never eat either Cheese or Onions or such like Food, although
Egypt abounds with these Things. Thereby signifying that all should
learn to be temperate; and whatsoever any feed upon, they should not
give themselves to Gluttony. But others give another Reason; for they
say that in the Time of the Ancient Kings, the People being Prone to
Sedition, and Plotting to Rebel, one of their wise and prudent Princes
divided Egypt into several Parts, and appointed the Worship of some
Beast or other in every Part, or forbad some sort of Food, that by that
means everyone Adoring their own Creature, and slighting that which was
worshipped in another Province, the Egyptians might never agree among
themselves.

But some give this Reason for Deifying of these Creatures: They say,
that in the beginning, Men that were of a fierce and beastly Nature
herded together and devoured one another; and being in perpetual War
and Discord, the stronger always destroy’d the weaker. In process of
time, those that were too weak for the other (taught at length by
Experience) got in Bodies together, and had the Representation of those
Beasts (which they afterwards worshipped) in their Standards, to which
they ran together when they were in a Fright, upon every occasion,
and so make up a considerable Force against them that attempted to
assault them. This was imitated by the rest, and so the whole Multitude
got into a Body; and hence it was that that Creature, which everyone
suppos’d was the cause of his Safety, was honour’d as a God, as justly
deserving that Adoration. And therefore at this day the People of Egypt
differ in their Religion, everyone Worshipping that Beast which their
Ancestors did in the beginning.[d]

A MODERN ACCOUNT OF THE WORSHIP OF APIS, THE SACRED BULL

Among the ceremonies connected with Osiris, the fête of Apis holds a
conspicuous place.

For Osiris was also worshipped under the form of Apis, the Sacred Bull
of Memphis, or as a human figure with a bull’s head, accompanied by
the name “Apis-Osiris.” According to Plutarch, “Apis was a fair and
beautiful image of the Soul of Osiris;” and the same author tells
us that “Mnevis, the Sacred Ox of Heliopolis, was also dedicated to
Osiris, and honoured by the Egyptians with a reverence next to that
paid to Apis, whose sire some pretend him to be.” This agrees with
the statement of Diodorus, who says, Apis and Mnevis were both sacred
to Osiris, and worshipped as gods throughout the whole of Egypt; and
Plutarch suggests that, from these well-known presentations of Osiris,
the people of Elis and Argos derived the idea of Bacchus with an ox’s
head; Bacchus being reputed to be the same as Osiris. Herodotus, in
describing him, says, “Apis, also called Epaphus, is a young bull,
whose mother can have no other offspring, and who is reported by the
Egyptians to conceive from lightning sent from heaven, and thus to
produce the god Apis. He is known by certain marks: his hair is black;
on his forehead is a white triangular spot, on his back an eagle, and
a beetle under his tongue and the hair of his tail is double.” Ovid
represents him of various colours. Strabo says his forehead and some
parts of his body are of a white colour, the rest being black; “by
which signs they fix upon a new one to succeed the other, when he
dies;” and Plutarch thinks that, “on account of the great resemblance
they imagine between Osiris and the Moon, his more bright and shining
parts being shadowed and obscured by those that are of a darker hue,
they call the Apis the living image of Osiris, and suppose him begotten
by a ray of generative light, flowing from the moon, and fixing upon
his mother, at a time when she was strongly disposed for it.”

Pliny speaks of Apis “having a white spot in the form of a crescent
upon his right side, and a lump under his tongue in the form of a
beetle.” Ammianus Marcellinus says the white crescent on his right side
was the principal sign, and Ælianus mentions twenty-nine marks, by
which he was recognised, each referable to some mystic signification.
But he pretends that the Egyptians did not allow those given by
Herodotus and Aristagoras. Some suppose him entirely black; and others
contend that certain marks, as the predominating black colour, and the
beetle on his tongue, show him to be consecrated to the sun, as the
crescent to the moon. Ammianus and others say that “Apis was sacred to
the Moon, Mnevis to the Sun”; and most authors describe the latter of a
black colour.

It is difficult to decide if Herodotus is correct respecting the
peculiar marks of Apis. There is, however, evidence from the bronzes,
found in Egypt, that the vulture (not eagle) on his back was one of his
characteristics, supplied, no doubt, like many others, by the priests
themselves; who probably put him to much inconvenience, and pain too,
to make the marks and hairs conform to his description.

To Apis belonged all the clean oxen, chosen for sacrifice; the
necessary requisite for which, according to Herodotus, was, that they
should be entirely free from black spots, or even a single black
hair; though, as I shall have occasion to remark in treating of the
sacrifices, this statement of the historian is far from accurate. It
may also be doubted if the name Epaphus, by which he says Apis was
called by the Greeks in their language, was of Greek origin.

He is called in the hieroglyphic legends Hapi; and the bull, the
demonstrative and figurative sign following his name, is accompanied
by the _crux ansata_, or emblem of life. It has seldom any ornament on
its head; but the figure of Apis- (or Hapi-) Osiris generally wears the
globe of the sun, and the Asp, the symbol of divine majesty; which are
also given to the bronze figures of this bull.

Memphis was the place where Apis was kept, and where his worship was
particularly observed. He was not merely looked upon as an emblem,
but, as Pliny and Cicero say, was deemed “a god by the Egyptians”: and
Strabo calls “Apis the same as Osiris.” Psamthek I there erected a
grand court (ornamented with figures in lieu of columns twelve cubits
in height, forming an inner peristyle), in which he was kept when
exhibited in public. Attached to it were the two stables (_delubra_, or
_thalami_), mentioned by Pliny: and Strabo says “Before the enclosure
where Apis is kept, is a vestibule, in which also the mother of the
sacred bull is fed; and into this vestibule Apis is introduced, in
order to be shown to strangers. After being brought out for a little
while, he is again taken back; at other times he is only seen through a
window.” “The temple of Apis is close to that of Vulcan; which last is
remarkable for its architectural beauty, its extent, and the richness
of its decoration.”

_Festivals and Ceremonials of Apis Worship_

The festival in honour of Apis lasted seven days; on which occasion a
large concourse of people assembled at Memphis. The priests then led
the sacred bull in solemn procession, all people coming forward from
their houses to welcome him as he passed.

When the Apis died, certain priests, chosen for this duty, went in
quest of another, who was known from the signs mentioned in the sacred
books. As soon as he was found, they took him to the city of the Nile,
preparatory to his removal to Memphis, where he was kept forty days;
during which period women alone were permitted to see him. These forty
days being completed, he was placed in a boat, with a golden cabin
prepared to receive him, and he was conducted in state upon the Nile to
Memphis.

Pliny and Ammianus, however, declare that they led the bull Apis to
the fountain of the priests, and drowned him with much ceremony, as
soon as the time prescribed in the sacred books was fulfilled. This
Plutarch limits to twenty-five years (“the square of five, and the
same number as the letters of the Egyptian alphabet”), beyond which
it was forbidden that he should live; and having put him to death,
they sought another to succeed him. His body was embalmed, and a grand
funeral procession took place at Memphis, when his coffin, “placed on a
sledge, was followed by the priests,” “dressed in the spotted skins of
fawns (leopards), bearing the thyrsus in their hands, uttering the same
cries, and making the same gesticulations as the votaries of Bacchus
during the ceremonies in honour of that god.”

When the Apis died a natural death, his obsequies were celebrated on
the most magnificent scale; and to such extravagance was this carried,
that those who had the office of taking charge of him were often ruined
by the heavy expenses entailed upon them. On one occasion, during the
reign of the first Ptolemy, upwards of fifty talents were borrowed
to defray the necessary cost of his funeral; “and in our time,” says
Diodorus, “the curators of other sacred animals have expended a hundred
talents in their burial.”

The Egyptians not only paid divine honours to the bull Apis, but,
considering him the living image and representative of Osiris, they
consulted him as an oracle, and drew from his actions good or bad
omens. They were in the habit of offering him any kind of food with
the hand: if he took it, the answer was considered favourable; if he
refused, it was thought to be a sinister omen. Pliny and Ammianus
observe that he refused what the unfortunate Germanicus presented to
him; and the death of that prince, which happened shortly after, was
thought to confirm most unequivocally the truth of those presages. The
Egyptians also drew omens respecting the welfare of their country,
according to the stable in which he happened to be. To these two
stables he had free access; and when he spontaneously entered one, it
foreboded benefits to Egypt, as the other the reverse; and many other
tokens were derived from accidental circumstances connected with this
sacred animal.

Pausanias says that those who wished to consult Apis first burnt
incense on an altar, filling the lamps with oil which were lighted
there, and depositing a piece of money on the altar to the right of the
statue of the god. Then placing their mouth near his ear, in order to
consult him, they asked whatever questions they wished. This done, they
withdrew, covering their two ears until they were outside the sacred
precincts of the temple; and there listening to the first expression
any one uttered, they drew from it the desired omen.

Children, also, according to Pliny and Solinus, who attended in great
numbers during the processions in honour of the divine bull, received
the gift of foretelling future events; and the same authors mention
a superstitious belief at Memphis, of the influence of Apis upon the
Crocodile, during the seven days when his birth was celebrated. On this
occasion, a gold and silver patera was annually thrown into the Nile,
at a spot called from its form the “Bottle”; and while this festival
was held, no one was in danger of being attacked by crocodiles, though
bathing carelessly in the river. But it could no longer be done with
impunity after the sixth hour of the eighth day. The hostility of that
animal to man was then observed invariably to return, as if permitted
by the deity to resume its habits.

Apis was usually kept in one or other of the two stables--seldom going
out, except into the court attached to them, where strangers came to
visit him. But on certain occasions he was conducted through the town
with great pomp. He was then escorted by numerous guards, who made a
way amidst the crowd, and prevented the approach of the profane; and a
chorus of children singing hymns in his honour headed the procession.

The greatest attention was paid to the health of Apis; they took
care to obtain for him the most wholesome food; and they rejoiced if
they could preserve his life to the full extent prescribed by law.
Plutarch also notices his being forbidden to drink the water of the
Nile, in consequence of its having a peculiarly fattening property.
“For,” he adds, “they endeavour to prevent fatness, as well in Apis,
as in themselves: always studious that their bodies may sit as light
about their souls as possible, in order that their mortal part may not
oppress and weigh down the more divine and immortal.”

Many fêtes were held at different seasons of the year; for, as
Herodotus observes, far from being contented with one festival, the
Egyptians celebrate annually a very great number: of which that of
Diana (Pakht), kept at the city of Bubastis, holds the first rank, and
is performed with the greatest pomp. Next to it is that of Isis, at
Busiris, a city situated in the middle of the Delta, with a very large
temple, consecrated to that Goddess, the Ceres of the Greeks. The third
in importance is the fête of Minerva (Nit), held at Saïs; the fourth,
of the Sun, at Heliopolis; the fifth, of Latona, in the city of Buto;
and the sixth is that performed at Papreims, in honour of Mars.[e]

Strabo, the famous geographer of antiquity, visited Egypt in 24 B.C.,
and ascended the Nile. Among other records of his trip, he has left us
a picturesque account of his peep at the sacred bull.

At Heliopolis, he says, we saw large buildings in which the priests
lived. For it is said that anciently this was the principal residence
of the priests, who studied philosophy and astronomy. But there are
no longer either such a body of persons or such pursuits. No one was
pointed out to us on the spot, as presiding over these studies, but
only persons who perform sacred rites, and who explained to strangers
(the peculiarities of) the temples.

[Illustration]

In sailing up the river we meet with Babylon, a strong fortress, built
by some Babylonians who had taken refuge there, and had obtained
permission from the kings to establish a settlement in that place. At
present it is an encampment for one of the three legions which garrison
Egypt. There is a mountainous ridge, which extends from the encampment
as far as the Nile. At this ridge are wheels and screws, by which water
is raised from the river, and one hundred and fifty prisoners are
(thus) employed.

The pyramids on the other side (of the river) at Memphis may be clearly
discerned from this place, for they are not far off.

Memphis itself also, the residence of the kings of Egypt, is near,
being only three schœni distant from the Delta. It contains temples,
among which is that of Apis, who is the same as Osiris. Here the ox
Apis is kept in a sort of sanctuary, and is held, as I have said, to be
a god. The forehead and some other small parts of the body are white;
the other parts are black. By these marks the fitness of the successor
is always determined, when the animal to which they pay these honours
dies. In front of the sanctuary is a court, in which there is another
sanctuary for the dam of Apis. Into this court the Apis is let loose at
times, particularly for the purpose of exhibiting him to strangers. He
is seen through a door in the sanctuary, and he is permitted to be seen
also out of it. After he has frisked about a little in the court, he is
taken back to his own stall. The temple of Apis is near the Hephæsteum
(or temple of Vulcan); the Hephæsteum itself is very sumptuously
constructed, both as regards the size of the naos and in other
respects. In front of the Dromos is a colossal figure consisting of a
single stone. It is usual to celebrate bull-fights in this Dromos; the
bulls are bred expressly for this purpose, like horses. They are let
loose, and fight with one another, the conqueror receiving a prize.[f]

THE METHODS OF EMBALMING THE DEAD

Even more striking than the worship of Apis was the custom of embalming
the dead, which was in vogue uninterruptedly for some thousands of
years. Herodotus tells us of the exact method of procedure:

There are certain persons appointed by law to the exercise of the
profession of embalming. When a dead body is brought to them, they
exhibit to the friends of the deceased, different models highly
finished in wood. The most perfect of these they say resembles one
whom I do not think it religious to name in such a matter; the second
is of less price, and inferior in point of execution; another is still
more mean; they then inquire after which model the deceased shall be
represented: when the price is determined, the relations retire, and
the embalmers thus proceed: In the most perfect specimens of their
art, they draw the brain through the nostrils, partly with a piece
of crooked iron, and partly by the infusion of drugs; they then with
an Ethiopian stone make an incision in the side, through which they
extract the intestines; these they cleanse thoroughly, washing them
with palm-wine, and afterwards covering them with pounded aromatics:
they then fill the body with powder of pure myrrh, cassia, and all
other perfumes, except frankincense. Having sown up the body, it is
covered with nitre for the space of seventy days, which time they may
not exceed; at the end of this period it is washed, closely wrapped in
bandages of cotton, dipped in a gum which the Egyptians use as glue: it
is then returned to the relations, who enclose the body in a case of
wood, made to resemble a human figure, and place it against the wall
in the repository of their dead. The above is the most costly mode of
embalming. They who wish to be less expensive, adopt the following
method: they neither draw out the intestines, nor make any incision in
the dead body, but inject an unguent made from the cedar; after taking
proper means to secure the injected oil within the body, it is covered
with nitre for the time above specified: on the last day they withdraw
the liquor before introduced, which brings with it all the bowels and
intestines; the nitre eats away the flesh, and the skin and bones
only remain: the body is returned in this state, and no further care
taken concerning it. There is a third mode of embalming appropriated
to the poor. A particular kind of ablution is made to pass through the
body, which is afterwards left in nitre for the above seventy days,
and then returned. The wives of men of rank, and such females as have
been distinguished by their beauty or importance, are not immediately
on their decease delivered to the embalmers: they are usually kept
for three or four days, which is done to prevent any indignity being
offered to their persons. An instance of this once occurred.[b]

Diodorus gives a slightly different account of the methods of the
embalmer, adding certain most instructive details as to burial customs:

“Now tho’ we have said perhaps more than is needful of their sacred
Creatures, yet with this we have set forth the Laws of the Egyptians,
which are very remarkable. But when a Man comes to understand their
Rites and Ceremonies in Burying their Dead, he’ll be struck with much
greater Admiration.

“For after the Death of any of them, all the Friends and Kindred of
the deceased throw Dirt upon their Heads, and run about through the
City; mourning and lamenting till such time as the Body be interr’d,
and abstain from Baths, Wine and all pleasants Meats in the mean time;
and forbear to cloath themselves with any rich Attire. They have three
sorts of Funerals: The Stately and Magnificent, the Moderate, and the
Meanest. In the first they spend a Talent of Silver, in the second
twenty Minas [about £62 10_s._ or $300], in the last they are at very
small Charges. They that have the Charge of wrapping up and burying the
Body, are such as have been taught the Art by their Ancestors. These
give in a Writing to the Family of every thing that is to be laid out
in the Funeral, and inquire of them after what Manner they would have
the Body interr’d. When every thing is agreed upon, they take up the
Body and deliver it to them whose Office it is to take Care of it. Then
the Chief among them (who is call’d the Scribe) having the Body laid
upon the Ground, marks out how much of the left Side towards the Bowels
is to be incis’d and open’d, upon which the Paraschistes (so by them
call’d) with an Ethiopian Stone dissects so much of the Flesh as by the
Law is justifiable, and having done it, he forthwith runs away might
and main, and all there present pursue him with Execrations, and pelt
him with Stones, as if he were guilty of some horrid Offence, for they
look upon him as an hateful Person, who wounds and offers Violence to
the Body in that kind, or does it any Predjudice whatsoever.

[Illustration: GOLDEN EWERS AND BASINS FROM THE TOMB OF RAMSES III]

“But as for those whom they call the Taricheutæ [the Embalmers], they
highly honour them, for they are the Priests Companions, and as Sacred
Persons are admitted into the Temple. As soon as they come to the
dissected Body, one of the Taricheutæ thrusts up his Hand through the
Wound, into the Breast of the Dead, and draws out all the Intestins,
but the Reins and the Heart. Another cleanses all the Bowels, and
washes them in Phœnician Wine mixt with diverse Aromatick Spices.
Having at last wash’d the Body, they first anoint it all over with the
Oyl of Cedar and other precious Ointments for the space of forty days
together; that done, they rub it well with Myrrhe, Cinnamon, and such
like things, not only apt and effectual for long Preservation, but for
sweet scenting of the Body also, and so deliver it to the Kindred of
the Dead, with every Member so whole and intire, that no Part of the
Body seems to be alter’d till it come to the very Hairs of the Eyelids
and the Eye-brows, insomuch as the Beauty and Shape of the Face seems
just as it was before. By which Means many of the Egyptians laying
up the Bodies of their Ancestors in stately Monuments, perfectly see
the true Visage and Countenance of those that were buried, many Ages
before they themselves were born. So that in viewing the Proportion
of every one of their Bodies and the Lineaments of their Faces, they
take exceeding great Delight, even as much as if they were still living
among them.

“Moreover, the Friends and nearest Relations of the Dead acquaint the
Judges and the rest of their Friends with the Time prefixt for the
Funeral of such an one by Name, declaring that such a day he is to
pass the Lake. At which Time forty Judges appear and sit together in a
Semicircle, in a Place beyond the Lake; where a Ship (before provided
by such as have the Care of the Business) is hal’d up to the Shoar,
govern’d by a Pilot, whom the Egyptians call Charon. And therefore they
say, that Orpheus seeing this Ceremony when he was in Egypt, invented
the Fable of Hell, partly imitating them in Egypt, and partly adding
something of his own; of which we shall speak particularly hereafter.

[Illustration: IMPLEMENTS USED IN EMBALMING

(Now in the British Museum)]

“The Ship being now in the Lake, every one is at Liberty by the Law to
accuse the Dead before the Coffin be put aboard; and if any Accuser
appears and makes good his Accusation, that he liv’d an ill Life,
then the Judges give Sentence, and the Body is debarr’d from being
buried after the usual Manner; but if the Informer be convicted of
a scandalous and malicious Accusation, he’s very severely punish’d.
If no Informer appear, or that the Information prove false, all the
Kindred of the Deceased leave off Mourning, and begin to set forth
his Praises; but say nothing of his Birth (as is the Custom among the
Greeks) because they account all in Egypt to be equally noble. But they
recount how the deceased was educated from a Child, his Breeding till
he came to Man’s Estate, his Piety towards the Gods and his Justice
towards Men, his Chastity and other Virtues, wherein he excell’d; and
they pray and call upon the infernal Deities to receive the deceas’d
into the Society of the Just. The common People take it from the other,
and approve of all that is said in his Praise with a loud Shout, and
set forth likewise his Vertues with the highest Praises and Strains
of Commendation, as he that is to live for ever with the just in the
Kingdom of Jove.

“Then they (that have Tombs of their own) interr the Corps in Places
appointed for that Purpose; they that have none of their own, build
a small Apartment in their own Houses, and rear up the Coffin to the
Sides of the strongest Wall of the Building. Such as are deny’d common
Burial, either because they are in Debt, or convicted of some horrid
Crime, they bury in their own Houses; and in After-times it often
happens that some of their Kindred growing rich, pay off the Debts
of the deceas’d, or get him absolv’d, and then bury their Ancestor
with State and Splendour. For amongst the Egyptians it’s a Sacred
Constitution, that they should at their greatest Costs honour their
Parents and Ancestors who are translated to an Eternal Habitation.

“It’s a Custom likewise among them to give the Bodies of their Parents
in Pawn to their Creditors, and they that do not presently redeem
them, fall under the greatest Disgrace imaginable, and are deny’d
Burial after their Deaths. One may justly wonder at the Authors of this
excellent Constitution, who both by what we see practis’d among the
living, and by the decent Burial of the dead, did (as much as possibly
lay within the Power of Men) endeavour to promote Honesty and faithful
Dealing one with another. For the Greeks (as to what concern’d the
Rewards of the Just and the Punishment of the Impious) had nothing
amongst them but invented Fables and Poetical Fictions, which never
wrought upon Men for the Amendment of their Lives, but on the contrary,
were despis’d and laught at by the lewder Sort.

“But among the Egyptians, the Punishment of the bad and the Rewards of
the good being not told as idle Tales, but every day seen with their
own Eyes, all Sorts were warn’d of their Duties, and by this Means was
wrought and continu’d a most exact Reformation of Manners and orderly
Conversation among them. For those certainly are the best Laws that
advance Virtue and Honesty, and instruct Men in a prudent Converse
in the World, rather than those that tend only to the heaping up of
Wealth, and teach Men to be rich.”[d]

FOOTNOTES

[11] See Leviticus, chap. xvi. 21. “And Aaron shall lay both his hands
upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities
of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their
sins, putting them upon the head of the goat.”--TRANSLATOR.

CHAPTER XI. EGYPTIAN CULTURE

Egypt remains a light-house in the profound darkness of remote
antiquity.--RENAN.

By far the greater number of the remains of Egyptian civilisation that
have come down to us, are monuments that may be classed as works of
art. Indeed, when one speaks of ancient Egypt, one thinks instinctively
of her art remains; her pyramids, temples, and sphinxes, her obelisks
and colossal sculptures. As one wanders through the halls of such
great collections as those of the British Museum, or of the Louvre, it
seems to him as if art must have been the very life of Egypt, and as
if a considerable proportion of her people must have been engaged in
producing the multitude of monuments that are here preserved. But there
is, of course, a certain illusion in this thought.

The number of art monuments preserved in Egypt is, indeed, very large
in the aggregate, but it must be remembered that they represent the
accumulated treasures of many centuries. Thanks to the climate of
Egypt, a vastly larger proportion of her monuments have been preserved
than have come down to us from any other people of antiquity, and this
fact should be borne constantly in mind when one endeavours to estimate
the real status of art in that country. Now that the results of many
centuries of labour are gathered into a comparatively few collections,
the impression made upon the observer is naturally somewhat different
from what it would have been could he have seen the same monuments in
their original locations scattered throughout the kingdom.

Nevertheless, after making all deductions for the perverted historical
perspective thus induced, the fact remains that we are quite justified
in speaking of the Egyptians as a singularly artistic race. Indeed,
it would be absurd to deny this position to the people who, first of
any on the earth so far as known, created a truly great and truly
individual art.

It has been held a matter for surprise that the Greeks, who so fully
appreciated, and, indeed, so greatly overestimated, the learning and
the occult wisdom of the Egyptians, should have failed to be impressed
by their works of art. But, rightly considered, there is nothing at all
remarkable in this. It must be remembered that Herodotus, who gives us
our earliest glimpses of Egypt through Grecian eyes, lived in the age
of Pericles, when the masterpieces of Phidias and his contemporaries
were constantly before the eyes of the Greek traveller as the criterion
by which other works of art were to be judged. It can hardly be
wondered at that, judged by this test, the Egyptian sculptures did not
seem remarkable. Herodotus had not the spirit of the antiquarian nor of
the modern scientific historian, and he therefore made no allowance for
the fact that the major part of the sculptures visible had been made
almost a thousand years before the age of Phidias; but it is that fact
which the modern investigator should bear constantly in mind.

It would be absurd to claim for the Egyptian statues that they compare
for a moment as finished works of art with the Grecian productions of
the Golden Age. But when one reflects that it was the Egyptians who led
the way and first pointed out the possibility of modelling in stone;
when one reflects that, so far as extant remains can give us any clew,
there were no forerunners of the Egyptians who even remotely approached
their standard; when, in a word, one remembers that this art was an
indigenous product, as nearly independent of outside influences as any
human creations ever can be--then, and then only, is one prepared to
appreciate the real merit of the Egyptian sculptor.

To one who approaches this work merely in the cold spirit of the modern
critic, untouched by the enthusiasm of the antiquarian, the sculpture
of the Egyptians may well be characterised as crude in the extreme.
In the first instance it is cold, rigid, immobile, lacking utterly
the plasticity and action of the Greek product. Secondly, it is but
crudely modelled. No Egyptian artist ever learned to draw in the modern
acceptance of that word, or to model in more than the most elementary
fashion. These, indeed, taken by themselves, are radical defects,
and at first sight they render the Egyptian monuments grotesque,
rather than pleasing, to the trained artistic eye. But when one has
lived long enough among these statues to enter more fully into their
spirit, when one has learned to put away the classical traditions and
to relax somewhat his standards of technique, he will see this work
in quite another light. He will recognise it as the titanic effort of
a constructive genius in that earlier and more truly creative period
when technique has not been mastered, but when a true artistic impulse
is impelling the aspirant towards new and beautiful ideals which he
himself will never quite attain, but to which his work points the way.
It is large work in the fullest sense of the word, this art of the
Egyptians, and he who can get no farther than to note its often faulty
drawing, its imperfect modelling, is forever shut out from a true
appreciation of its merits. But, on the other hand, the dreamer who
sees, as some antiquarians are wont to do, matchless perfections in its
very crudities, and intentional artistic effects in the mere faults of
its technique--this enthusiast misses the true lessons of Egyptian art
as widely as the overcritical and unsympathetic carper.

However much the various schools of critics may differ in their
estimates, the task of the historian at least is clear. He must think
of Egyptian art in its relations of time and place. To him it is
important because of its position in the scale of the evolution of art
in the world. And in this view, putting aside at once hypercriticism
and overfervid enthusiasm, Egyptian art can hardly fail to impress the
observer as one of the most marvellous of human creations.[a]

While Greece was still in its infancy, Egypt had long been the leading
nation of the world; she was noted for her magnificence, her wealth,
and power, and all acknowledged her pre-eminence in wisdom and
civilisation. It is not, therefore, surprising that the Greeks should
have admitted into their early art some of the forms then most in
vogue; and though the wonderful taste of that gifted people speedily
raised them to a point of excellence never attained by the Egyptians or
any others, the rise and first germs of art and architecture must be
sought in the valley of the Nile. In the oldest monuments of Greece,
the sloping or pyramidal line constantly predominates; the columns in
the oldest Greek order are almost purely Egyptian, in the proportions
of the shaft, and in the form of its shallow flutes without fillets;
and it is a remarkable fact that the oldest Egyptian columns are those
which bear the closest resemblance to the Greek Doric.

[Illustration: TEMPLE ON THE ISLAND OF PHILÆ]

Though great variety was permitted in objects of luxury, as furniture,
vases, and other things depending on caprice, the Egyptians were
forbidden to introduce any material innovations into the human figure,
such as would alter its general character; and all subjects connected
with religion retained to the last the same conventional type. A god in
the latest temple was of the same form as when represented on monuments
of the earliest date; and King Menes would have recognised Amen, or
Osiris, in a Ptolemaic or a Roman sanctuary. In sacred subjects the law
was inflexible; and religion, which has frequently done so much for
the development and direction of taste in sculpture, had the effect of
fettering the genius of Egyptian artists. No improvements, resulting
from experience and observation, were admitted in the mode of drawing
the human figure; to copy nature was not allowed; it was therefore
useless to study it, and no attempt was made to give the proper action
to the limbs. Certain rules, certain models, had been established by
the priesthood; and the faulty conceptions of ignorant times were
copied and perpetuated by every successive artist. For, as Plato and
Synesius say, the Egyptian sculptors were not suffered to attempt
anything contrary to the regulations laid down regarding the figures of
the gods; they were forbidden to introduce any change, or to invent new
subjects and habits; and thus the art, and the rules which bound it,
always remained the same.

Egyptian bas-relief appears to have been, in its origin, a mere copy of
painting, its predecessor. The first attempt to represent the figures
of gods, sacred emblems, and other subjects consisted in drawing, or
painting, simple outlines of them on a flat surface, the details being
afterwards put in with colour; but in process of time these forms
were traced on stone with a tool, and the intermediate space between
the various figures being afterwards cut away, the once level surface
assumed the appearance of a bas-relief. It was, in fact, a pictorial
representation on stone, which is evidently the character of all the
bas-reliefs on Egyptian monuments; and which readily accounts for the
imperfect arrangement of their figures.

Deficient in conception, and above all in a proper knowledge of
grouping, they were unable to form those combinations which give true
expression; every picture was made up of isolated parts, put together
according to some general notions, but without harmony, or preconceived
effect. The human face, the whole body, and everything they introduced,
were composed in the same manner of separate members placed together
one by one according to their relative situations: the eye, the nose,
and other features composed a face, but the expression of feelings
and passions was entirely wanting; and the countenance of the king,
whether charging an enemy’s phalanx in the heat of battle, or peaceably
offering incense in a sombre temple, presented the same outline and
the same inanimate look. The peculiarity of the front view of an eye,
introduced in a profile, is thus accounted for: it was the ordinary
representation of that feature added to a profile, and no allowance was
made for any change in the position of the head.

It was the same with drapery: the figure was first drawn, and the
drapery then added, not as part of the whole, but as an accessory; they
had no general conception, no previous idea of the effect required to
distinguish the warrior or the priest, beyond the impressions received
from costume, or from the subject of which they formed a part; and the
same figure was dressed according to the character it was intended
to perform. Every portion of a picture was conceived by itself, and
inserted as it was wanted to complete the scene; and when the walls
of the building, where a subject was to be drawn, had been accurately
ruled with squares, the figures were introduced, and fitted to this
mechanical arrangement. The members were appended to the body, and
these squares regulated their form and distribution, in whatever
posture they might be placed.

[Illustration]

The proportions of the human figure did not continue always the same.
During the IVth and other early dynasties it differed from that of the
Augustan age of the XVIIIth and XIXth; and another change took place
under the Ptolemies. The chief alteration was in the height of the knee
from the ground, which was higher during the XVIIIth and XIXth than
in the ancient and later periods. The whole height of the figure in
bas-reliefs and paintings was then divided into nineteen parts; and the
wall having been ruled in squares, according to its intended size, all
the parts of it were put in according to their established positions;
the knee, for instance, falling on the sixth line. But the length of
the foot was not, as in Greece, the standard from which they reckoned;
for being equal to 3 spaces, it could not be taken as the base of 19;
though the height of the foot being 1 might answer for the unit.

In the paintings of the tombs greater license was allowed in the
representation of subjects relating to private life, the trades,
or the manners and occupations of the people; and some indication
of perspective in the position of the figures may occasionally be
observed: but the attempt was imperfect, and, probably, to an Egyptian
eye, unpleasing; for such is the force of habit, that even where nature
is copied, a conventional style is sometimes preferred to a more
accurate representation.

In the representation of animals, they appear not to have been
restricted to the same rigid style; but genius once cramped can
scarcely be expected to make any great effort to rise, or to succeed
in the attempt; and the same union of parts into a whole, the same
preference for profile, and the same stiff action, are observable in
these as in the human figure. Seldom did they attempt to draw the face
in front, either of men or animals; and when this was done, it fell far
short of the profile, and was composed of the same juxtaposition of
parts. It must, however, be allowed, that in general the character and
form of animals were admirably portrayed; the parts were put together
with greater truth; and the same conventionality was not maintained, as
in the shoulders and other portions of the human body.

The mode of representing men and animals in profile is primitive, and
characteristic of the commencement of art: the first attempts made
by an uncivilised people are confined to it; and until the genius of
artists bursts forth, this style continues to hold its ground. From its
simplicity it is readily understood; the most inexperienced perceive
the object intended to be represented, and no effort is required to
comprehend it. Hence it is that, though few combinations can be made
under such restrictions, those few are perfectly intelligible.

As the wish to record events gave the first, religion gave the second,
impulse to sculpture. The simple pillar of wood or stone, which was
originally chosen to represent the deity, afterwards assumed the
human form, the noblest image of the power that created it; though
the _Hermæ_ of Greece were not, as some have thought, the origin of
statues, but were borrowed from the mummy-shaped gods of Egypt.

Pausanias thinks that “all statues were in ancient times of wood,
particularly those made in Egypt”; but this must have been at a period
so remote as to be far beyond the known history of that country; though
it is probable that when the arts were in their infancy, the Egyptians
were confined to statues of that kind; and they occasionally erected
wooden figures in their temples, even till the times of the latter
Pharaohs.

[Illustration: HEAD

(Now in the British Museum)]

Long after men had attempted to make out the parts of the figure,
statues continued to be very rude; the arms were placed directly
down the sides to the thighs, and the legs were united together; nor
did they pass beyond this imperfect state in Greece until the age of
Dædalus. Fortunately for themselves and for the world, the Greeks were
allowed to free themselves from old habits; while the Egyptians, at
the latest periods, continued to follow the imperfect models of their
early artists, and were forever prevented from arriving at excellence
in sculpture: and though they made great progress in other branches
of art, though they evinced considerable taste in the forms of their
vases, their furniture, and even in some architectural details, they
were forever deficient in ideal beauty, and in the mode of representing
the natural positions of the human figure.

In Egypt, the prescribed automaton character of the figures effectually
prevented all advancement in the statuary’s art, the limbs being
straight, without any attempt at action, or, indeed, any indication
of life: they were really statues of the person they represented,
not the person “living in marble”; in which they differed entirely
from those of Greece. No statue of a warrior was sculptured in the
varied attitudes of attack and defence; no wrestler, no _discobolus_,
no pugilist exhibited the grace, the vigour, or the muscular action
of a man; nor were the beauties, the feeling, and the elegance of
female forms displayed in stone: all was made to conform to the same
invariable model, which confined the human figure to a few conventional
postures.

A sitting statue, whether of a man or woman, was represented with the
hands placed upon the knees, or held across the breast; a kneeling
figure sometimes supported a small shrine or sacred emblem; and when
standing, the arms were placed directly down the sides of the thighs,
one foot (and that always the left) being advanced beyond the other, as
if in the attitude of walking, but without any attempt to separate the
legs.

[Illustration: STATUETTE OF FIGURE WITH HAWK’S HEAD

(After Bardon)]

The oldest Egyptian sculptures on all large monuments were in low
relief, and, as usual at every period, painted (obelisks and everything
carved in hard stone, some funereal tablets, and other small objects,
being in intaglio); and this style continued in vogue until the time of
Ramses II, who introduced intaglio very generally on large monuments;
and even his battle scenes at Karnak and the Memnonium are executed
in this manner. The reliefs were little raised above the level of the
wall; they had generally a flat surface with the edges softly rounded
off, far surpassing the intaglio in effect; and it is to be regretted
that the best epoch of art, when design and execution were in their
zenith, should have abandoned a style so superior; which, too, would
have improved in proportion to the advancement of that period.

Intaglio continued to be generally employed, until the accession of the
XXVIth Dynasty, when the low relief was again introduced; and in the
monuments of Psamthek and Aahmes are numerous instances of the revival
of the ancient style. This was afterwards universally adopted, and a
return to intaglio on large monuments was only occasionally attempted,
in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.

After the accession of the XXVIth Dynasty some attempt was made to
revive the arts, which had been long neglected; and independent of
the patronage of government, the wealth of private individuals was
liberally employed in their encouragement. Public buildings were
erected in many parts of Egypt, and beautified with rich sculpture; the
city of Saïs, the royal residence of the Pharaohs of that dynasty, was
adorned with the utmost magnificence; and extensive additions were made
to the temples of Memphis, and even to those of the distant Thebes.

The fresh impulse thus given to art was not without effect; the
sculptures of that period exhibit an elegance and beauty which
might even induce some to consider them equal to the productions of
an earlier age; and in the tombs of Assassif, at Thebes, are many
admirable specimens of Egyptian art. To those, however, who understand
the true feeling of this peculiar school, it is evident that though in
minuteness and finish they are deserving of the highest commendation,
yet in grandeur of conception and in boldness of execution, they fall
far short of the sculptures of Seti and the second Ramses.

[Illustration: FISHING WITH A DRAG NET

(Wilkinson)]

The skill of the Egyptian artists in drawing bold and clear outlines
is, perhaps, more worthy of admiration than anything connected
with this branch of art; and in no place is the freedom of their
drawing more conspicuous than in the figures in the unfinished part
of Belzoni’s tomb at Thebes. It was in the drawing alone that they
excelled, being totally ignorant of the correct mode of colouring a
figure; and their painting was not an imitation of nature, but merely
the harmonious combination of certain hues, which they well understood.
Indeed, to this day, the harmony of positive colours is thoroughly felt
in Egypt and the East; and it is strange to find the little perception
of it in northern Europe, where theories take upon themselves to
explain to the mind what the eye has not yet learned, as if a grammar
could be written before the language is understood.

Egyptian architecture evidently derived much from the imitation of
different natural productions, as palm trees and various plants of
the country; but Egyptian columns were not borrowed from the wooden
supports of the earliest buildings. Columns were not introduced
into the interior of their houses until architecture had made very
great progress; the small original temple and the primitive dwelling
consisted merely of four walls; and neither the column nor its
architrave were borrowed from wooden constructions nor from the house.
And though the architrave was derived in Egypt, as elsewhere, from
constructed buildings, that member originated in the stone beam,
reaching from pillar to pillar in the temples. And if the square stone
pillar was used in the quarry, the stone architrave was unknown to the
Egyptians until they found reason to increase the size of, and add a
portico to, their temples. And that the portico was neither a necessary
nor an original part of their temples is plainly shown by the smaller
sanctuaries being built, even at the latest times, without it. Some
members of Egyptian architecture, it is true, were derived from the
woodwork of the primitive house or temple, as the overhanging cornice
and the torus that runs up the ends of the walls, which it separates
from the cornice, the former being the projecting roof of palm
branches, and the other the framework of reeds bound together, which
secured the mud (or bricks) composing the walls.

As painted decoration preceded sculpture, the ornaments (in later times
carved in stone) were at first represented in colour, and the mouldings
of Egyptian monuments were then merely painted on the flat surfaces
of the walls and pillars. The next step was to chisel them in relief.
The lotus blossom, the papyrus head, water-plants, the palm tree, and
the head of a goddess, were among the usual ornaments of a cornice,
or a pillar; and these favourite devices of ancient days continued in
after times to be repeated in relief, when an improved style of art
had substituted sculpture for the mere painted representation. But
when the square pillar had been gradually converted into a polygonal
shape, the ornamental devices not having room enough upon its narrow
facettes, led to the want and invention of another form of column; and
from that time a round shaft was surmounted by the palm-tree capital,
or by the blossom or the bud of the papyrus, which had hitherto only
been painted, or represented in relief, upon the flat surfaces of a
square pillar. Hence the origin of new orders differing so widely from
the polygonal column.

For the capitals the Egyptians frequently selected objects which were
favourites with them, as the lotus and other flowers, and these,
as well as various animals or their heads, were adopted, to form a
cornice, particularly in their houses and tombs, or to ornament fancy
articles of furniture and of dress.

In this they committed an error, which the Greeks, with a finer
perception of taste and adaptability, rightly avoided. These refined
people knew that in architecture conventional devices had a much more
pleasing effect than objects merely copied from nature; for, besides
the incongruity of an actual representation of flowers to compose
mouldings and other decorative parts of architecture, the imperfect
imitation in an unsuitable material has a bad effect.

[Illustration: CARVED EGYPTIAN CHAIRS

(Now in the British Museum)]

The ceilings of Egyptian temples were painted blue and studded with
stars, to represent the firmament (as in early European churches);
and on the part over the central passage, through which the king and
the religious processions passed, were vultures and other emblems;
the winged globe always having its place over the doorways. The
whole building, as well as its sphinxes and other accessories, were
richly painted; and though a person unaccustomed to see the walls of a
large building so decorated, might suppose the effect to be far from
pleasing, no one who understands the harmony of colours will fail to
admit that they perfectly understood their distribution and proper
combinations, and that an Egyptian temple was greatly improved by the
addition of painted sculptures.

Gilding was employed in the decoration of some of the ornamental
details of the building; and was laid on a purple ground, to give it
greater richness; an instance of which may be seen in the larger temple
at Kalabshi, in Nubia. It was sparingly employed, and not allowed to
interfere, by an undue quantity, with the effect of the other colours;
which they knew well how to introduce in their proper proportions; and
such discords as light green and strawberry-and-cream were carefully
avoided.

The Egyptians showed considerable taste in the judicious arrangement
of colours for decorative purposes; they occasionally succeeded in
form, as in the shapes of many of their vases, their furniture, and
their ornaments; and they had still greater knowledge of proportion,
so necessary for their gigantic monuments; but though they knew well
how to give to their buildings the effect of grandeur, vastness, and
durability, they had little idea of the beautiful; and were far behind
the Greeks in the appreciation of form. It is, however, rare to find
any people who combine colour, form, and proportion; and even the
Greeks occasionally failed to attain perfection in their beautiful
vases, some of which are faulty in the handles and the foot.

[Illustration: RUINS OF AN EGYPTIAN TEMPLE]

Among the peculiarities of Egyptian architecture, one of the most
important is the studied avoidance of uniformity in the arrangement
of the columns, and many of the details. Of these some are evident to
the eye, others are only intended to have an influence on the general
effect, and are not perceptible without careful examination. Thus the
capitals of the columns in the great hall at Karnak are at different
heights, some extending lower down the shaft than others; evidently
with a view to correct the sameness of symmetrical repetition, and to
avoid fatiguing the sight with too much regularity. This is not to be
perceived until the eye is brought on a level with the lower part of
the capitals; and its object was only effect, like that of many curved
lines introduced in a Greek temple, as at the Parthenon.

But the Egyptians often carried their dislike of uniformity to an
extreme, beyond even what is justified by the study of variety.
Where they avoided that extreme their motive was legitimate; and it
is remarkable that they were the first people whose monuments offer
instances of that diversity so characteristic of Saracenic and Gothic
architecture.

The arch was employed in Egypt at a very early period; and crude
brick arches were in common use in roofing tombs at least as early as
Amenhotep I, in the sixteenth century before our era. And since one was
discovered at Thebes bearing his name, others have been found of the
age of Tehutimes III (his fourth successor) and of Ramses V. It even
seems to have been known in the time of the XIIth Dynasty, judging from
what appear to be vaulted granaries at Beni-Hasan.[b]

Egyptian architecture was long a marvel to the later world, since it
was so thoroughly overscrolled with strange designs of animals, and
gods, and symbols that provoked a helpless curiosity. These figures,
graceful as they were, were not of merely decorative import. They were
less art than literature; less literature than chronicle: in a word,
they were the characters of a strange system of writing.

THE HIEROGLYPHICS

It is extremely difficult to give in brief space, or, indeed, to give
at all, a clear idea of the exact character of this Egyptian writing,
which for so many centuries fascinated, while puzzling, the observers,
utterly baffling all their efforts to decipher it. The Egyptians were
the aristocrats of antiquity. It is true that the Greeks described all
non-Hellenic nations as barbarians, but it should not be inferred from
this that the Greeks applied to this term the exact significance it
has come to have in more recent times. What the Greek really seems to
have implied was that the speech of all other nations was barbarous or
unintelligible; but he by no means regarded all other nations as less
civilised than himself. To be sure, he did hold this attitude towards
Romans, Persians, Scythians and various other contemporary nations, but
he made an exception in the case of the Babylonians, and particularly
in the case of the Egyptians. The latter people, indeed, he regarded
with something akin to reverence, as a people who could claim an
antiquity of civilisation to which Greece could not at all pretend.

The wise men of Greece, as we have seen, travelled in Egypt and sat at
the feet of the Egyptian priests. There is nothing to show that they
were not received courteously, but there are many evidences that they
were given no more than a half-hearted welcome, and that what they
gained of Egyptian lore was but a surface knowledge; for the Egyptians,
like the Greeks, regarded all other nations as barbarians, and it would
seem that they applied this term with the full weight of its modern
meaning. To them the Greeks, no less than their other neighbours,
were uninteresting parvenus, unworthy of the serious regard of an
aristocratic people. It is believed that in the early days all commerce
of outside nations with Egypt was as fully interdicted as could be
done by Egyptian laws. At a later period the outsiders made forcible
intrusion, and, in time, apparently the Egyptians became partially
reconciled to this new order of things. But it was long before any
scholars from the outer world were permitted to penetrate the Egyptian
mysteries. In particular, we have no evidence that any Greek or Roman
of the early day ever had the slightest comprehension of the true
character of Egyptian writing.

Listen for example to the strange theories of Claudius Ælianus, the
Roman historian of the third century, who solemnly explained the
hieroglyphics as follows--to quote the quaint diction of a sixteenth
century translation:[a]

“BY WHAT CHARACTERS, PICTURES, AND IMAGES, THE LEARNED EGIPTIANS
EXPRESSED THE MYSTERIES OF THEIR MINDES

“When they would signifie wrathe and fury, they set downe the image
of a Lyon. When they would signifie talke, they set downe the figure
of a toung. When they would signifie fleshly pleasure, they set down
the number of XVI. When they would signifie lerning, they set down
the picture of Dew dropping from the clowdes. By a Kat they meane
destruction. By a Flye, they meane shamelesnes. By the Ant running into
the Corne, they meane provision. By a man walking in water without
a hed, they meane a thing unpossible. By a swarme of Bees following
the maister Bee, they signifie obedient subjects. By a man hiding his
privy members with his hands, they meane Temperance. By the floures of
Poppy, they signifie sicknes. By an armed man shooting in a Bowe of
steele, they meane Rebellion. By an Eagle flying against the Sun, they
meane windy weather. By an Owle standing uppon a tree, they signifie
death. By a Lace tyed in many knots, they meane mutual Love. By Bookes
and Scrowles, they meane Auncientnes. By a Ladder set against a Castle
wall, they meane a seedge about a Town or a Fortresse. By a Mule,
they signifie a Woman with a barrain wombe. By a Mole, they meane
blindnesse. By a Lapwing sitting uppon a Cluster of Grapes, they meane
a plentiful Vintage. By a Sceptre and an eye on the top thereof looking
downwarde, they meane power and polisie. By a Spindle ful of thred
broken of from the Distaf, they mean the shortnes of mans life.”[e]

This is very absurd, yet nothing more rational was known of the subject
in classical times. The very name which the Greeks supplied to the
strange Egyptian script shows their ignorance of it. They called it
hieroglyphics, from ἱερός, sacred, γλύφειν, to carve, implying their
belief that this writing was purely of a sacred character, which, it
is now well known, is by no means the case. It would seem as if in
the later day, when, after the death of Alexander, Egypt came under
the rule of the Macedonian Ptolemies, there must have been Greeks
who acquired a knowledge of the Egyptian writing, just as there were
undoubtedly Egyptians who learned Greek. Yet the number of these was
probably more limited than one might suppose, for the Greeks were the
Frenchmen of antiquity; imbued with a reverential love of their own
language, they were little given to acquiring any other. Even so, it
would seem that there must have been, here and there, an inquiring
mind, which would take up the study of the hieroglyphics and ferret
out their secrets under the guidance of Egyptian tutors; but if such
there were, few records of their accomplishments have come down to us,
and none at all that can serve to give the slightest clew to the true
character of the strange inscriptions.

About the beginning of our era, Egypt having become a Roman province,
all its personal life was stamped out. The hieroglyphic language was
no longer written or read. Long before that, the language of the
people had been greatly modified from its ancient purity, and in the
day of Egypt’s greatness it was only the scholarly few, chiefly the
priests, who could read and write the language. Now the speech became
still further modified, until finally, through the slow mutations of
time, modern Coptic has developed as its lineal descendant. In the
early days, however,--probably before the time of the oldest extant
records,--the original picture writing, or hieroglyphics proper,
had been modified into a sort of running script, which the Greeks
called hieratic; and this again had undergone another modification
some four or five centuries before our era, in the development of a
script, called enchorial or demotic, which in the day of the Ptolemies
represented the language of the Egyptian people. But after the complete
disruption of Egypt under the Romans, the hieratic and demotic forms
of the writing, as well as the hieroglyphics proper, ceased to be
employed; and presently, as has been said, all three forms became quite
unintelligible to any person living. From that time on, until the early
days of the nineteenth century, the records of Egypt, preserved so
numerously on their monuments, on the papyrus rolls and mummy-cases,
were a closed book. No man lived, during this period, in Egypt or out
of Egypt, who did more than effect the crudest guess at the meaning of
this strange writing.

For something like two thousand years the Egyptian language was a
dead language in the fullest sense of the term, and the records,
locked imperishably in the hieroglyphics, seemed likely to hold their
mysterious secret from the prying minds of all generations of men.
But then, in the early days of the nineteenth century, the key was
unexpectedly found, and, to the delight of the scholarly world, the
Egyptian Pandora box was opened.[a]

THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX

This came about through a study of the famous Rosetta stone, an
Egyptian monument now preserved in the British Museum. On this stone
three sets of inscriptions are recorded. The upper one, occupying about
a fourth of the surface, is a pictured scroll, made up of chains of
those strange outlines of serpents, hawks, lions, and so on, which
are recognised, even by the least initiated, as hieroglyphics. The
middle inscription, made up of lines, angles, and half-pictures, one
might suppose to be a sort of abbreviated or shorthand hieroglyphic.
It is called the enchorial or demotic character. The third, or lower,
inscription is manifestly Greek. It is now known that these three
inscriptions are renderings of the same message, and that this message
is a “decree of the Priests of Memphis conferring divine honours on
Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, King of Egypt, B.C. 195.”

“This stone was found by the French in 1798 among the ruins of Fort St.
Julian, near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. It passed into the hands
of the British by the treaty of Alexandria, and was deposited in the
British Museum in the year 1801.”

The value of the Rosetta stone depended on the fact that it gave
promise, even when originally inspected, of furnishing a key to the
centuries-old mystery of the hieroglyphics. For two thousand years the
secret of these strange markings had been forgotten. Nowhere in the
world--quite as little in Egypt as elsewhere--had any man the slightest
clew to their meaning; there were even those who doubted whether
these droll picturings really had any specific meaning, questioning
whether they were not merely vague symbols of esoteric religious import
and nothing more. And it was the Rosetta stone that gave the answer
to these doubters, and restored to the world a lost language and a
forgotten literature.

The trustees of the British Museum recognised that the problem of the
Rosetta stone was one on which the scientists of the world might well
exhaust their ingenuity, and they promptly published to the world a
carefully lithographed copy of the entire inscription, so that foreign
scholarship had equal opportunity with British to try to solve the
riddle. How difficult a riddle it was, even with this key in hand, is
illustrated by the fact that, though scholars of all nations brought
their ingenuity to bear upon it, nothing more was accomplished for a
dozen years than to give authority to three or four guesses regarding
the nature of the upper inscriptions, which, as it afterwards proved,
were quite incorrect and altogether misleading. This in itself is
sufficient to show that ordinary scholarship might have studied the
Rosetta stone till the end of time without getting far on the track of
its secrets. The key was there, but to apply it required the inspired
insight--that is to say, the shrewd guessing power--of genius.

The man who undertook the task had perhaps the keenest scientific
imagination and the most versatile profundity of knowledge of his
generation--one is tempted to say, of all generations. For he was none
other than the extraordinary Dr. Thomas Young, the demonstrator of the
vibratory nature of light.

Young had his attention called to the Rosetta stone by accident, and
his usual rapacity for knowledge at once led him to speculate as to the
possible aid this trilingual inscription might give in the solution of
Egyptian problems. Resolving at once to attempt the solution himself,
he set to work to learn Coptic, which was rightly believed to represent
the nearest existing approach to the ancient Egyptian language. His
amazing facility in the acquisition of languages stood him in such good
stead that within a year of his first efforts he had mastered Coptic,
had assured himself that the ancient Egyptian language was really
similar to it, and had even made a tentative attempt at the translation
of the Egyptian scroll. His results were only tentative, to be sure.
Yet they constituted the very beginnings of our knowledge regarding the
meaning of hieroglyphics. Just how far they carried, has been a subject
of ardent controversy ever since. Not that there is any doubt about the
specific facts; what is questioned is the exact importance of these
facts. For it is undeniable that Young did not complete and perfect
the discovery, and, as always in such matters, there is opportunity
for difference of opinion as to the share of credit due to each of the
workers who entered into the discovery.

Young’s specific discoveries were these: (1) that many of the pictures
of the hieroglyphics stand for the names of the objects actually
delineated; (2) that other pictures are sometimes only symbolic; (3)
that plural numbers are represented by repetition; (4) that numerals
are represented by dashes; (5) that hieroglyphics may read either from
the right or from the left, but always from the direction in which the
animals and human figures face; (6) that proper names are surrounded
by a graven oval ring, making what he called a cartouche; (7) that the
cartouches of the preserved portion of the Rosetta stone stand for the
name of Ptolemy alone; (8) that the presence of a female figure after
such cartouches, in other inscriptions, always denotes the female
sex; (9) that within the cartouches the hieroglyphic symbols have a
positively phonetic value, either alphabetic or syllabic, and (10) that
several different characters may have the same phonetic value.

[Illustration: THE ROSETTA STONE

(Original in British Museum, London)]

Just what these phonetic values are, Dr. Young pointed out in the case
of fourteen characters, representing nine sounds, six of which are
accepted to-day as correctly representing the letters to which he
ascribed them, and the three others as being correct regarding their
essential or consonantal element. It is clear, therefore, that he
was on the right track thus far, and on the very verge of complete
discovery. But, unfortunately, he failed to take the next step, which
would have been to realise that the phonetic values given to the
characters within the cartouches were often ascribed to them also
when used in the general text of an inscription; in other words, that
the use of an alphabet was not confined to proper names. This was the
great secret which Young missed, but which his French successor, Jean
François Champollion, working on the foundation that Young had laid,
was enabled to ferret out.

Young’s initial studies of the Rosetta stone were made in 1814; his
later publications bore date of 1819. Champollion’s first announcement
of results came in 1822; his second and more important one in 1824.
By this time, through study of the cartouches of other inscriptions,
he had made out almost the complete alphabet, and the “Riddle of the
Sphinx” was practically solved. He proved that the Egyptians had
developed a relatively complete alphabet (mostly neglecting the vowels,
as early Semitic alphabets did also) centuries before the Phœnicians
were heard of in history. What relation this alphabet bore to the
Phœnician, we shall have occasion to ask in another connection; for the
moment it suffices to know that these strange pictures of the Egyptian
scroll are really letters.

Even this statement, however, must in a measure be modified. These
pictures are letters and something more. Some of them are purely
alphabetical in character, and some are symbolic in another way.
Some characters represent syllables. Others stand sometimes as mere
representatives of sounds, and again, in a more extended sense, as
representatives of things, such as all hieroglyphics doubtless were
in the beginning. In a word, this is an alphabet, but not a perfected
alphabet such as modern nations are accustomed to; hence the enormous
difficulties and complications it presented to the early investigators.

Champollion did not live to clear up all the mysteries of the
hieroglyphics. His work was taken up and extended by his pupil
Rosellini, and in particular by Richard Lepsius in Germany; followed
by M. Renouf, and by Samuel Birch, of the British Museum, and more
recently by such well-known Egyptologists as MM. Maspero, Mariette,
and Chabas, in France; Drs. Brugsch, Meyer, and Erman in Germany; Dr.
E. A. Wallis Budge, the present head of the Department of Oriental
Antiquities at the British Museum, and Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie.
But the work of later investigators has been largely one of exhumation
and translation of records, rather than of finding methods.

Let us now turn more specifically to the writing itself. A glance shows
that the objects delineated are, as might be expected, those which
were familiar to the people that originated the writing. Here we see
Egyptian hawks, serpents, ibises, and the like, and the human figure,
depicted in the crude yet graphic way characteristic of Egyptian
art. But in addition to these familiar figures there are numerous
conventionalised designs. These also, there is reason to believe, were
originally representations of familiar objects, but, for convenience
of rendering, the pictures have been supplanted by conventionalised
designs. It is now known that this writing of the Egyptians was of a
most extraordinary compound character. Part of its pictures are used
as direct representations of the objects presented. But let us examine
some examples:

[Illustration: _mat_ eye. _maui_ eyes. _pau_ birds.]

But, again, the picture of an object may stand for some idea symbolised
by that object, thus becoming an ideograph, as in the following
instances:

[Illustration: _net_ honey. _ba_ soul. _pet_ to see.]

Here the sacred ibis or the sacred bull symbolises the soul. The bee
stands for honey, the eyes for the verb “to see.”

Yet again the Egyptian pictures may stand neither as pictures of
things, nor as ideographs, but as having the phonetic value of a
syllable.

[Illustration: _pa_ the. _meh_ to fill. _pet_ the sky or heaven. _χu_
to protect. _t´a_ male.]

Such syllabic signs may be used either singly, as above, or in
combination, as we shall see illustrated in a moment.

But one other stage of evolution is possible; namely, the use of signs
with a purely alphabetical significance. The Egyptians made this
step also, and their strangely conglomerate writing makes use of the
following alphabet:

[Illustration: _a_ _ȧ_ _ạ̄_ _i_ _u_ _b_ _p_ _f_ _m_ _n_ _r and l_ _h_
_ḥ_ _χ (kḥ)_ _s_ _ś (sh)_ _k_ _q_ _ḳ_ _t_ _ṭ_ _θ (th)_ _t´ (tch)_]

In a word, then, the Egyptian writing has passed through all the stages
of development, from the purely pictorial to the alphabetical, but with
this strange qualification--that while advancing to the later stages
it retains the use of the crude earlier forms. As Canon Taylor has
graphically phrased it, the Egyptian writing is a completed structure,
but one from which the scaffolding has not been removed.

The next step would have been to remove the now useless scaffolding,
leaving a purely alphabetical writing as the completed structure.
Looking at the matter from the modern standpoint, it seems almost
incredible that so intelligent a people as the Egyptians should have
failed to make this advance. Yet the facts stand, that as early as the
time of the Pyramid Builders, say 4000 years B.C., the Egyptians had
made the wonderful analysis of sounds without which the invention of
an alphabet would be impossible. They had set aside certain of their
hieroglyphic symbols and given them alphabetical significance. They
had learned to write their words with the use of this alphabet; and it
would seem as if, in the course of a few generations, they must come
to see how unnecessary was the cruder form of picture writing which
this alphabet would naturally supplant; but in point of fact they
never did come to a realisation of this seemingly simple proposition.
Generation after generation, and century after century, they continued
to use their same cumbersome, complex writing, and it remained for an
outside nation to prove that an alphabet pure and simple was capable of
fulfilling all the conditions of a written language.

Thus in practice there is found in the hieroglyphics the strangest
combination of ideographs, syllabic signs, and alphabetical signs or
true letters, used together indiscriminately.

It was, for example, not at all unusual after spelling a word
syllabically or alphabetically to introduce a figure giving the idea of
the thing intended, and then even to supplement this with a so-called
determinative sign or figure:

[Illustration: _qeften_ monkey. _qenu_ cavalry. _temati_ wings. _t´ātu_
quadrupeds.]

Here _qeften_, monkey, is spelled out in full, but the picture of a
monkey is added as a determinative; second, _qenu_, cavalry, after
being spelled is made unequivocal by the introduction of a picture of a
horse; third, _temati_, wings, though spelled elaborately, has pictures
of wings added; and fourth, _tatu_, quadrupeds, after being spelled,
has a picture of a quadruped, and then the picture of a hide, which is
the usual determinative of a quadruped, followed by three dashes to
indicate the plural number.

These determinatives are in themselves so interesting, as illustrations
of the association of ideas, that it is worth while to add a few more
examples. The word _pet_, which signifies “heaven,” and which has also
the meaning “up” or “even,” is represented primarily by what may be
supposed to be a conventionalised picture of the covering to the earth.
But this picture used as a determinative is curiously modified in the
expression of other ideas, as it symbolises “evening” when a closed
flower is added, and “night” when a star hangs in the sky, and “rain or
tempest” when a series of zigzag lines, which by themselves represent
water, are appended.

[Illustration: _māśer_ evening. _kekiu_ darkness. _ḳerḥ_ night. _ḥai_
rain. _śenār_ tempest.]

As aids to memory such pictures are obviously of advantage, but this
advantage, in the modern view, is outweighed by the cumbrousness of the
system of writing as a whole.

Why was such a complex system retained? Chiefly, no doubt, because the
Egyptians, like all other highly developed peoples, were conservatives.
They held to their old method after a better one had been invented,
just as half the Western world to-day holds to an antiquated system of
weights and measures after a far simpler system of decimals has been
introduced. But this inherent conservatism was enormously aided, no
doubt, by the fact that the Egyptian language, like the Chinese, has
many words that have a varied significance, making it seem necessary,
or at least highly desirable, either to spell such words with different
signs, or, having spelled them in the same way, to introduce the varied
determinatives.

Here are some examples of discrimination between words of the same
sound by the use of different signs:

[Illustration: _pa_ the. _paut_ nine. _pa_ house. _paut_ stuff, matter.
_paut_ company. _paut_ good. _paut_ cycle.]

Here, it will be observed, exactly the same expedient is adopted which
we still retain when we discriminate between words of the same sound by
different spelling, as, to, two, too; whole, hole; through, threw, etc.

But the more usual Egyptian method was to resort to determinatives; the
results seem to us most extraordinary. After what has been said, the
following examples will explain themselves:

[Illustration: _un_ to be. _un_ to open. _un_ shrine. _un_ appearance.
_un_ lightness. _un_ shaved. _un_ to pull out hair.

_pet_ the sky. _pet_ heaven & earth. _pet_ heaven earth & hell. _pet_
to see. _pet_ to open out, to extend. _pet_ a kind of unguent.]

It goes without saying that the great mass of people in Egypt were
never able to write at all. Had they been accustomed to do so, the
Egyptians would have been a nation of artists. Even as the case
stands, a remarkable number of men must have had their artistic sense
considerably developed, for the birds, animals, and human figures
constantly presented on their hieroglyphic scrolls are drawn with a
degree of fidelity which the average European of to-day would certainly
find far beyond his skill.[d]

LITERATURE

The literary remains of Egypt have come to us through two channels,
one of these being the inscriptions on walls and monuments, to which
reference has just been made, and the other the papyrus rolls that
constituted books proper. Of course the main body of the monumental
inscriptions can only by courtesy be said to belong to the literature
of the country. For the most part they are records of political and
religious affairs such as hardly come within the domain of literature.
On the other hand, there are certain examples of a more distinctly
literary character.

One of the most important illustrations of this class of inscription
is a poem which recounts certain of the deeds of Ramses the Great, in
particular the great fight which this monarch made against the Kheta
or Hittites. We have quoted it in the chapter devoted to Ramses II.
There are other monumental inscriptions that have a purely historical
character, inasmuch as they give lists of names of the kings of the
various dynasties. Unfortunately, no one of these chronological
inscriptions is complete. The same is true of the most important
historical document on papyrus--a document known as the Turin papyrus
because it is preserved in the museum in that city. It is worth noting,
however, that these chronological lists, as far as they go, tend to
support the list of Manetho, to which reference has previously been
made. These lists of Manetho, it will be recalled, have come down to us
only through certain excerpts made by Josephus and others, the original
work having been lost in its entirety. But a comparison of these
lists at second-hand with the original Egyptian documents has shown,
as Professor Petrie remarks, what a real history the work of Manetho
must have been, and how great a deprivation its loss is to the modern
historian.

The papyrus rolls on which most of the literary remains of Egypt are
inscribed are true books. The book of folded leaves is a comparatively
modern invention. Throughout antiquity, including the classical times,
the roll constituted the only form of book in use, unless, indeed,
we include waxen tablets, which are hardly to be considered books
in the proper sense of the word; at least it is not known that they
were ever used for the transcription of lengthy works to be placed on
sale, though it is probable that authors used them, at least for the
rough drafts of their compositions. It is well known that in later
classical times the parchment roll came to be substituted for the roll
of papyrus, though the latter held its own for a long time, and was
still employed exceptionally in the Middle Ages; but the old Egyptian
parchment was unknown, and though inscriptions were sometimes made on
pieces of linen, the regular material for book-making was papyrus.

The papyrus sheet was made by gluing together pieces of the outer rind
or bark of the stem of the papyrus plant, these pieces being placed in
two layers and dried under pressure. The sheets of papyrus were from
six or eight to about fourteen inches in width, and were often many
feet in length. The inscription, made with a reed pen, not altogether
unlike a modern quill, was written in columns at right angles to the
length of the papyrus sheet, these columns being of varying width, but
usually of a size convenient for the scribe in writing and for the
reader. If we may judge from a statue that has been preserved, the
scribe at work sat with his feet crossed like a modern tailor. Papyrus
is, of course, a very fragile and perishable substance; therefore it
is only in the dry climate of Egypt that documents of this nature are
likely to be preserved. Thanks to the unusual atmosphere of Egypt,
however, large numbers of these documents have come down to us,
some of them dating from the third millennium B.C. These documents
represent various classes of literature. Of historical writings, the
most important is the Turin papyrus, already referred to. A still more
ancient document is known as the Prisse papyrus, being named after
its discoverer, Prisse d’Avenne. Is is virtually a series of essays
containing moral precepts and dissertations on the art of right living.
Aside from its contents, this particular papyrus roll has unusual
interest because it shows us the hieratic writing of the Egyptians in
its oldest known form, the hieratic character being a much modified
cursive form of hieroglyphic simplified in the interest of rapid
writing. It was believed by the French philologist, De Rougé, that
this hieratic character formed the basis of the Phœnician alphabet,
and a large number of scholars have accepted this conclusion, which,
however, is now seemingly about to be abandoned. Other essays of the
Egyptians, on medical and mathematical subjects, have been preserved in
considerable numbers.

[Illustration: STATUE OF A SCRIBE (FIFTH DYNASTY)

(Now in the Louvre)]

There is yet another form of literary production that is abundantly
represented among the papyrus documents. This is the religious work
known as the _Book of the Dead_, a book that was substantially the
Bible of the Egyptians, numerous copies of which in whole or in part
are still in existence. An additional interest attaches to many copies
of the _Book of the Dead_ in the fact that pictures are introduced to
illustrate the narrative. One is prone to think of book illustration
as a relatively modern art; but in point of fact, as these documents
prove, it is an art that was practised by the ancient Egyptians more
than two thousand years before the Christian era.

From a purely literary standpoint, the most important remains preserved
on papyrus are the various more or less perfect copies of romances
and of poems. The romances are somewhat of the character of what we
should call fairy tales, though elements of realism are not lacking in
some of them; and the poems include love songs and other lyrics. It is
extremely difficult to judge the artistic merits of productions in so
alien a tongue, and it has been noted by Egyptologists that certain
recitals were apparently very popular in Egypt, the merits of which are
lost upon the modern interpreter, because even the greatest of modern
students can hardly claim a degree of proficiency in the language that
suffices for the appreciation of the niceties of usage. There are
certain of the tales and poems, however, which in point of conception,
thought, and construction must be admitted to have conspicuous merit,
even when judged by modern standards.

As soon as the tales of ancient Egypt had been recovered in sufficient
number to allow some idea of its popular literature, it was seen
that stories of travel and adventure formed a considerable portion.
But for a long time no tale of the sea came to light. In fact, it
seemed doubtful that such a one existed. The Greek and Latin writings
constantly reiterate the statement that the Egyptians regarded the sea
as impure, and that none would venture on it of his own will, and upon
this authority modern investigators had a well-formed theory that Egypt
never had a navy or native sailors.

To them Queen Hatshepsu’s voyages of exploration and the naval
victories of Ramses III were the deeds of hired Phœnicians. But the
discovery of a tale at St. Petersburg--a tale which takes us far
back to the XIIth Dynasty, before any Phœnicians had yet appeared on
the shores of the Mediterranean, or Egypt had any thought of Syrian
conquest--tends to upset these old ideas, and lead us to the belief
that the sailors whom Pharaoh sent for the perfumes and goods of Arabia
were native born Egyptians.

The tale of _The Castaway_ was discovered in the Imperial Hermitage
Museum at St. Petersburg by M. Golenischeff in 1880. No one knows where
the papyrus was found, or how it got in Russia, or even came to be in
the Hermitage Museum. It has taken its place as a classic of the XIIth
Dynasty, as that of the _Two Brothers_ is of the XIXth.

On reading it, one immediately thinks of _Sindbad the Sailor_,
except that the serpents it was Sindbad’s fortune to meet were far
from being the amiable creatures described by the Egyptian sailor.
There is, indeed, no very good reason to consider the famous tale of
the _Thousand and One Nights_ as a modern version of the Egyptian
narrative. The sailors’ love for the recital of marvellous adventure is
too natural, too far-spread, for us to fasten the one upon the other.

The tale of _The Castaway_ seems clearly to be a theological idea
dressed up in romance form. The mysterious island is the Isle of the
Double, _i.e._ the home of dead souls, and the serpent is its guardian.
The voyage describes the long journey to the other world--that trip on
the mysterious western sea, and the final reaching of the home of the
soul. The basic conception of the whole thing is typically Egyptian.
Perhaps our estimate of Egyptian literature cannot be completed
better than by the presentation of the actual text of this romance.
Our version is from G. Maspero’s rendering of M. Golenischeff’s
translation of the original papyrus in the Imperial Hermitage Museum,
St. Petersburg.[a]

THE CASTAWAY: A TALE OF THE TWELFTH DYNASTY

The learned attendant said: “Rejoice thy heart, O my chief, for we
have just reached the fatherland; after having manned the prow of the
ship and worked the oars, the prow has grazed the sand. All our men
are rejoicing and embracing each other, for if others beside ourselves
have come safely home, not a man among us is missing, and, moreover,
we have gone to the farthest limits of Uauat, and have crossed the
regions of Senmut. Here we are returned in peace, and here we are back
in our fatherland. Listen, O my chief, for if thou dost not uphold
me, I have no support. Wash thee, pour water over thy hands, then go,
address thyself to Pharaoh, and may thy heart preserve thy speech from
confusion, for if a man’s mouth may save him, on the other hand, his
words may cause his face to be covered over;[12] act according to the
impulse of thy heart, and anything thou mayest say will put me at ease.

“Now I shall relate to thee what happened to me personally. I set out
for the mines of Honhem, and went to sea in a ship one hundred and
fifty cubits long and forty wide, with one hundred and fifty of the
best sailors in the land of Egypt, men who had seen heaven and earth,
and whose hearts were stouter than those of lions. They had foretold
that the wind would not be unfavourable, or that we would have none at
all; but a gust of wind sprang up as soon as we were on the deep, and
as we approached the shore, the breeze freshened and stirred the waves
to a height of eight cubits. As for myself, I seized a plank, but the
rest perished, without one remaining. A wave of the sea threw me upon
an island after I had spent three days with no other companion than
my own heart. I lay down to rest in a thicket, and darkness enveloped
me; then I employed my legs in search of something for my mouth. I
found figs and grapes and many kinds of fine vegetables, berries, nuts,
melons of all kinds, fish, birds,--nothing was lacking. I satisfied
my hunger, and threw away the surplus of what I had gathered. I dug a
ditch, lit a fire, and prepared a sacrifice to the gods.

“Suddenly I heard a voice like thunder, caused, as I believed, by a
wave of the sea. The trees trembled, the earth shook; I uncovered my
face, and saw that a serpent was approaching. He was thirty cubits
long, with a beard that hung down for over two cubits; his body was as
if incrusted with gold on a colour of lapis lazuli. He planted himself
before me, opened his mouth, and while I remained dumbfounded before
him, he said:

“‘What has brought thee, what has brought thee, little one, what has
brought thee? If thou delayest to tell me what has brought thee to this
isle, I will make thee know what thou art; either thou shalt disappear
like a flame, or thou shalt tell me something I never before have
heard, and which I knew not before.’ Then he seized me in his mouth,
carried me to his lair, and laid me down unharmed; I was safe and sound
and whole.

“Then he opened his mouth, and while I remained speechless before him,
he said, ‘What has brought thee, what has brought thee, little one, to
this isle which is in the sea and whose shores are in the midst of the
waves?’

“I replied with arms hanging low before him.[13] I said: ‘I embarked
for the mines, by Pharaoh’s order, in a ship one hundred and fifty
cubits long and forty wide. It was manned by one hundred and fifty of
the best sailors of the land of Egypt, who had seen heaven and earth,
and whose hearts were stouter than those of the gods. They had declared
that the wind would not be unfavourable, or even that there would be
none at all, for each one of them surpassed his companions in the
prudence of his heart and the strength of his arms, and I, I yielded to
them in nothing; but a storm arose while we were on the deep, and as we
approached the shore the gale still freshened and threw up the waves to
a height of eight cubits. As for myself, I seized a plank, but the rest
on the ship perished and not one remained with me during three days.
And now here I am with thee, for I was cast on this isle by a wave of
the sea.’

“Thereupon he said to me: ‘Fear not, fear not, little one, let not thy
face show sorrow. If thou art here with me, it is because God has let
thee live. ’Tis he who has brought thee to the Isle of the Double,
where nothing is lacking, and which is filled with all good things.
Behold; thou shalt pass month after month here until thou hast stayed
four months in this isle, then a ship shall come from thy country with
sailors; thou mayest then depart with them to thy country and thou
shalt die in thy native city. Let us talk and be happy; whosoever
enjoys chatting can support misfortune; let me tell thee what there
is on this island. I am here surrounded by my brothers and children,
together we are seventy-five serpents, children and retainers, without
including a young girl whom Fortune sent me, on whom the fire of heaven
fell and burnt to ashes. As for thee, if thou art strong and thy heart
is patient thou shalt yet press thy children to thy heart and embrace
thy wife; thou shalt again behold thy house, and best of all thou shalt
reach thy country and be among thy people.’ Then he bowed to me and I
touched the ground before him. ‘Now this is what I have to tell thee on
this subject, I shall describe thee to Pharaoh and make thy greatness
known to him. I shall send thee paint and offertory perfumes,[14]
pomades, cinnamon, and incense employed in the temples, the kind that
is offered to the gods. I shall also tell all that, thanks to thee,
I was enabled to see, and the whole nation together shall give thee
thanks. For thee I shall slay asses in sacrifice. I shall pluck birds
for thee, and send ships to thee filled with all the marvels of Egypt,
as if to a god, friend of men in a distant country which men know not.’

“He smiled at what I said on account of what was on his heart, and
said: ‘Thou art not rich in essences, for all that thou hast enumerated
unto me is naught after all but incense, while I, I am lord of the land
of Punt, and there have I plenty of essences. But the offertory perfume
of which thou speakest of sending me is not plentiful in this isle; but
when once thou leavest it, never shalt thou see it again, for it shall
be changed into waves.’

“And behold the ship appeared as he had predicted. I perched myself
upon a high tree to try to distinguish who were on it. I hastened to
tell him the news, but found that he knew it already; and he said to
me, ‘Good journey, good journey home, little one, let thine eyes rest
upon thy children, and may thy name remain fair in thy city--these are
my wishes for thee.’ Then I bent before him with low-hanging arms, and
he gave me presents of essences, offertory perfume, pomade, cinnamon,
thuya, sapan wood, powdered antimony, cypress, ordinary incense in
great quantity, elephants’ teeth, greyhounds, baboons, green monkeys,
and all kinds of good and precious things. I put all on board the ship
that had come, and prostrating myself, I offered him worship. He said
to me, ‘Behold, thou shalt arrive in thy country after two months, thou
shalt press thy children to thy heart and thou shalt lie in thy tomb.’
And after that I went down to the shore towards the ship and called to
the sailors on board. I gave thanks on the shores to the lord of the
isle as well as to those who lived upon it.

“When we had come, the second month, to the city of Pharaoh, just
as the other had predicted, we drew near the palace. I entered unto
Pharaoh, and gave him all the presents I had brought into the country
from that island, and he thanked me before the assembled people.
That is why he made an attendant of me, and let me join the king’s
courtiers. Look upon me, now that I have reached the shore once more,
and having seen and undergone so much. Hear my prayer, for it is good
to listen to people. Some one said to me, ‘Become a learned man, my
friend, thou wilt arrive at honours,’ and behold I have arrived.”

This is taken from beginning to end as it is found in the book. Who
has written it is the scribe with nimble fingers. Ameni-Amen-aa, Life,
Health, Strength.[c]

[Illustration: COSTUME OF A QUEEN OF ANCIENT EGYPT]

FOOTNOTES

[12] Possibly an allusion to the custom of covering the faces of
criminals while they were being led to the scaffold. The order, “Cover
his face,” was equivalent to a condemnation.--M. MASPERO.

[13] This is the attitude in which the monuments represent suppliants
or inferiors before their masters.--MASPERO.

[14] Hakonu was one of the seven canonical oils which were offered to
the gods and departed spirits during sacrifice.--MASPERO.

CHAPTER XII. CONCLUDING SUMMARY OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY

In thus following the course of Egyptian history as outlined in the
pages of such ancient authorities as Herodotus, Manetho, and Diodorus,
and such recent students as Brugsch Pasha, Mariette Pasha, and
Professors Erman, Maspero, and Petrie, we have been enabled to gain a
tolerably clear picture of the life of the most celebrated nation of
antiquity.

There is one feature of that life, however, which this story leaves
quite in the dark; namely, its beginnings. The ancients, beyond vaguely
hinting at an Ethiopian origin of the Egyptians, confessed themselves
in the main totally ignorant of the subject. And it must be confessed
that the patient researches of modern workers have not sufficed fully
to lift the veil of this ignorance. Theories have been propounded, to
be sure. It was broadly suggested by Heeren that one might probably
look to India as the original cradle of the Egyptian race. Hebrew
scholars, however, naturally were disposed to find that cradle in
Mesopotamia, and some later archæologists, among them so great an
authority as Maspero, believe that the real beginnings of Egyptian
history should be traced to equatorial Africa. But there are no sure
data at hand to enable one to judge with any degree of certainty as to
which of these hypotheses, if any one of them, is true.

The whole point of view of modern thought regarding this subject has
been strangely shifted during the last half century. Up to that time
it was the firm conviction of the greater number of scholars that,
in dealing with the races of antiquity, we had but to cover a period
of some four thousand years before the Christian era. Any hypothesis
that could hope to gain credence in that day must be consistent with
this supposition. But the anthropologists of the past two generations
have quite dispelled that long current illusion, and we now think of
the history of man as stretching back tens, or perhaps hundreds, of
thousands of years into the past.

Applying a common-sense view to the history of ancient nations from
this modified standpoint, it becomes at once apparent how very easy
it may be to follow up false clews and arrive at false conclusions.
Let us suppose, for example, that, as Heeren believed and as some more
modern investigators have contended, the skulls of the Egyptians and
those of the Indian races of antiquity, as preserved in the tombs of
the respective countries, bear a close resemblance to one another.
What, after all, does this prove? Presumably it implies that these
two widely separated nations have perhaps had a common origin. But
it might mean that the Egyptians had one day been emigrants from
India, or conversely, that the Indians had migrated from Egypt, or
yet again, that the forbears of both nations had, at a remoter epoch,
occupied some other region, perhaps in an utterly different part of
the globe from either India or Egypt. And even such a conclusion as
this would have to be accepted with a large element of doubt. For, up
to the present, it must freely be admitted that the studies of the
anthropologists have by no means fixed the physical characters of the
different races with sufficient clearness to enable us to predicate
actual unity of race or unity of origin from a seeming similarity of
skulls alone, or even through more comprehensive comparison of physical
traits, were these available.

More than this, any such comparison as that which attempts to link the
Egyptians with Indians or Hebrews or Ethiopians is, after all, only
a narrow view of the subject extending over a comparatively limited
period of time. If it were shown that the first members of that race
which came to be known as the Egyptians came to the valley of the Nile
from India or Mesopotamia or Ethiopia, the fact would have undoubted
historic interest, but it would after all only take us one step farther
back along the course of the evolution of that ancient civilisation,
and the question would still remain an open one as to what was the
real cradle of the race. For in the modern view, as has just been
said, when one speaks of the evolution of civilisation, his mind must
grasp the idea of tens of thousands of years, during which, the most
casual reflection will make it clear, races may have migrated this
way and that, northward, eastward, westward, southward, and may have
reversed their course of migration over and over again, leaving few
traces through which the historian of a later time could follow them in
imagination.

There is indeed a tradition, which Diodorus has preserved to us, that
the Egyptian of an early day made a great conquering tour through
Greece and all of western Asia to India, and back again to the region
of the Nile. We have already pointed out that such vague traditions as
this probably represent a racial memory of actual historical events,
distorted of course as to all details. But all this, it must be
repeated over and over again, is only conjecture.

Anthropology is the newest of sciences, and it will scarcely in our day
attain a knowledge that will enable the historian to solve the problem
of the origin of any one of the remoter races of antiquity. The history
of such relatively newer races as the Hebrews, the Greeks, and the
Romans may indeed be, at least conjecturally, made out at no distant
day; but we must expect that the probably far remoter civilisation of
China, India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt will long continue to baffle the
investigator.

But even present knowledge suffices to change utterly the point of
view with which the modern historian regards these so-called ancient
races. So long as one regarded the history of the world as comprising
only some four thousand years before the Christian era, it was quite
clear that in speaking of the earliest historical ages of Egypt, one
was dealing with time that might properly be called the childhood of
our race. One came to speak trippingly of the “Dawn of Civilisation” as
illustrated by the events of the time of the Pyramid Builders. But now
all that has changed, and it has become clear that we know nothing of
the dawn of civilisation.

The earliest records of Egypt that have come down to us, as
illustrated, for example, in the document known as the Prisse papyrus,
which is sometimes spoken of as the oldest book in the world, show
that, at a time which probably preceded the building of the Pyramids,
namely, as early as the IInd Dynasty, the Egyptians regarded the
civilisation of their day as already past its prime. Men of that time
were already tiring of the degenerate epoch in which they lived, and
looking back to the good old days when, as it seemed to them, the
Egyptians were a great people. As Dr. Taylor has remarked, it was a
curious irony of fate that should have preserved to us such thoughts
as these in the oldest written document which has been spared for our
inspection. But the moral is quite clear. Professor Mahaffy has well
outlined it when he says that one is perhaps justified in feeling
that, in point of fact, the old Egyptian who traced the words of the
Prisse papyrus was right, and that that ancient time was really not
the spring-time of humanity, but the veritable autumn of civilisation.
Such a thought as this would have been incomprehensible to the student
of any generation before our own, but the long vistas of time that
have been opened up to our eyes through the investigations of the last
half century make such a strange estimate seem more than plausible.
For, after all, what is the sweep of, say, six or eight thousand years
which is opened to us as the truly historic period of man’s existence,
compared to the tens of thousands of years that preceded?

Almost at the beginning of Egyptian history, as we have seen, a race
was in the field which constructed the most gigantic monuments that
human ingenuity has even yet conceived. Surely it was no dawn of
civilisation that could achieve such works as these. In the broadest
view, then, there is no such thing as ancient history open to the
observation of the modern historian. All history that we can know
from the time of the Pyramid Builders to our own day is in this view
properly but recent history, and, as has just been suggested, perhaps
only the history of an oscillating decline through the period of the
senility of our race. But, however fascinating such a view as this may
be, for practical purposes one must look a little more narrowly. Still,
the broad view which regards the ancient Egyptian as a brother in blood
to the modern European will be the surest ground on which to build a
record of universal history.

Professor Mahaffy has pointed out, in the same connection just quoted,
that, not merely in practical civilisation, but in the appreciation
of all the moral bearings of an advanced life, the Egyptian of two or
three, or perhaps five, thousand years before the Christian era, was on
a plane differing in no essential from the plane of modern Christendom;
and this thought is the one that should perhaps be the most prominently
borne in mind by any one who will gain the truest lesson from the study
of the sweep of universal history.

So long as the ancient Egyptian is regarded as playing the part
of a weird strange member of a civilisation utterly alien to the
modern, so long the modern is shut out from the best lessons of that
ancient history. But when, on the other hand, one considers the
ancient resident of the valley of the Nile as a human being, with
desires, emotions, and aspirations almost precisely like our own;
a man struggling to solve the same problems of practical socialism
that we are struggling for to-day,--then, and then only, can the
lessons of ancient Egyptian history be brought home to us in their
true meaning and with their true significance. And clearest of all
will this significance be, perhaps, if we constantly bear in mind the
possibility that the whole sweep of Egyptian history, during the three
or four thousand years that separated the Pyramid Builders from the
contemporaries of Alexander, was a time of national decay--a dark age,
if you will, in Egyptian history.

It is probably because such a view as this is justified that the
current conception has arisen which regards the Egyptian as a mystic,
a religion-haunted person; for, in point of fact, it is true that,
during the greater part of the period of this Egyptian history,
their race was a priest-ridden one. To turn once more to a phrase of
Professor Mahaffy’s, “The priesthood of Egypt perhaps embalmed the
civilisation of the Nile, but they surely killed it.” Yet there must
have been a time when the nation was young and aspiring, when its
mixed population--no matter whence derived--had that vigour which
is only known to mixed races. There were giants in these days, not
in stature, but in ideas; the great Pyramids, the mighty Sphinx,
attest their existence. Then there came that development of culture,
accompanied of course by a degree of weakened virility, which made the
great literature of the XIIth Dynasty possible, and then priestcraft
throttled the nation with a grip which, despite severe and heroic
struggles, was never altogether shaken off. Just what it means when the
clammy hand of a fixed theology clutches at the throat of progressive
civilisation, we have a near-at-hand illustration in the European Dark
Ages, out of which we, at the beginning of the twentieth century, are
only just striving to emerge, after some fourteen or fifteen centuries
of combat. Our own experience, then, prepares us well to understand the
Egyptian history.

It will doubtless be at least another century, perhaps two or three
centuries, before the inhabitants of Christendom can look out upon the
world with as rational a view as that which Plato attained in the fifth
century B.C., or Cicero in the first, or Marcus Aurelius some two or
three centuries later, just as the storm-cloud of Oriental superstition
was thickening. So it need not surprise us that Egypt should have
suffered in a like manner for a like period.

In the last analysis, then, it would seem that it is the likeness
of Egyptian history to our own history, rather than its mysterious
differences, that gives it the greatest charm. The differences are the
surface details; the resemblances are as deep as human nature itself.
In obtaining this conviction, we curiously reversed the old estimate
of the strange weird people of the Nile, but in so doing we prepare
ourselves far better than we otherwise could to grasp the import of
universal history.[a]

APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts. No
anchor, no cable, no fences, avail to keep a fact. Babylon, Troy,
Tyre, Palestine, and even early Rome are passing already into
fiction. The Garden of Eden, the sun standing still in Gibeon,
is poetry thenceforward to all nations. Who cares what the fact
was, when we have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an
immortal sign?--EMERSON.

Such is the land which, viewed with the eyes of later epochs, seems a
theatre of marvels; such the people whose fortune it was to step first,
or among the first, from the ranks of barbarians into the phalanx of
civilisation. How and when and where they took this step--or rather
made this long slow climb--we do not know. But they themselves had
traditions regarding their origin and early history, some of which have
come down to us, chiefly through the medium of Greek historians.

These traditions are not, of course, to be weighed in the same scale
with the concrete findings of the modern historical investigators. But
neither, on the other hand, should they be altogether set aside. We
live in a world curiously woven full of paradox and illusion. Often
it chances that the records, even of recent times, which bear the
fullest stamp of authenticity, are really nothing more than fables--a
mixture of prejudice, and falsehood, and myth, and fetich. And, on the
other hand, it may chance that a purely fabulous record contains the
very essence of history. Indeed, always, where the tradition is of
long standing and widely accepted among a people at some stage of its
evolution, such tradition must be redolent of the _Zeitgeist_ of its
epoch.

It may be, as such fables commonly are, an impossible tale of gods and
godlike heroes, of superhuman feats and supernatural revelations; yet
none the less it is in one sense historically true. If nothing more, it
is the epitomised history of the psychology of an epoch. But generally
it is more than that: it is the idealised expression of a racial memory
of actual events--idealised, glorified, transfigured, yet perhaps never
actually created save upon a substratum of facts. And how infinitely
expressive this idealised record becomes. It condenses the events of
centuries, sometimes into a phrase; it embodies the essence of the
civilisation of an epoch in a parable.

Who would give up the Homeric legends, with their records of gods and
supernatural heroes, for the realistic recitals of a Thucydides? Who
would give up the myths of Greece for a record of actual wars and
conquests? Fortunately we have not to make the choice; we may retain
the one record to supplement and complete the other. So the historian
should do with the early records of every people, wherever accessible.

Apart from the monuments of the Egyptians themselves, the oldest
account of this people which has come down to us in profane literature
is that given by Herodotus. This account has peculiar interest because
it is given by an eye-witness. Herodotus travelled in Egypt some time
about the beginning of the fifth century B.C., when Egypt was just
being opened up to the foreigner. It does not appear that Herodotus
knew the language of the country, and he was, therefore, necessarily
debarred from attaining as intimate a knowledge of the people as might
otherwise have been possible. It has been suspected also that the
Egyptian priests amused themselves not a little in filling the mind of
Herodotus with tales of very doubtful authenticity. But be that as it
may, Herodotus had a keen eye, and he has left us vivid and interesting
descriptions of the many marvels that he saw, some of which are here
presented. In making these citations we shall not for the moment
attempt the rôle of the critic, accepting rather the entertaining
narrative just as it is given.

It will be obvious that in many points this narrative partakes of
the ludicrous; yet even these portions of the tale have their value.
What Herodotus tells us of the causes of the rises of the Nile, for
example, is important as showing the attitude of Greek thought towards
this singular phenomenon. The naïve recital in which Herodotus tells
how the wind blows the sun from his course, serves in itself to give
a clew, not to the mind of Herodotus alone, but to the minds of his
contemporaries,--a clew which will be of the utmost value in aiding one
to estimate the status of various historical reports that come to us
from antiquity. But, on the other hand, what Herodotus has to tell us
of his actual observations as to the land and the manners and customs
of its people, is of the utmost importance as the contemporary record
of a keen observer, and may be accepted, so far as it relates to the
actual observations of the author, as historically accurate in the
fullest modern sense of the word.

Next to the works of Herodotus, the amplest description of Egypt that
has come down to us from antiquity is that of Diodorus the Sicilian.
This author was a contemporary of Cæsar and Augustus. He wrote a
very famous history of the world under the title of _The Historical
Library_, in forty books, of which only about eleven have reached us
intact.

It is not clear whether Diodorus, like Herodotus, visited Egypt in
person, but he at least was familiar with all the knowledge and
tradition of his time relating to that country. He lived several
centuries later than Herodotus, when Egypt had long been the field
of foreign invasion. Whatever the Greek and the Roman had been
able to learn of Egyptian history was therefore accessible to him,
and what he has to tell us of Egypt has the peculiar merit of
epitomising practically all classical knowledge of the people of the
Nile. Practically nothing more was added to the stock of Western
knowledge regarding Egyptian history from his day till the nineteenth
century. Certain statements which Diodorus accepted were indeed
such as latter-day scepticism would instinctively reject, but, that
qualification aside, the history of Egypt as Diodorus relates it was
practically her history as known to the Western world until nineteenth
century enterprise found the key to the Egyptian monuments. For this
reason, if for no other, the story of Diodorus will have peculiar and
lasting interest; but in addition to this, the narrative has intrinsic
merits that render it well worthy of preservation.

It will be of the utmost interest here, at the very beginning, to
compare and contrast his account of Egypt with that of Herodotus. If we
shall find in it certain things, such as his account of the spontaneous
generation of mice from the mud of the Nile, which seem to justify what
has been quoted from the critics as to his credulity, we shall find, on
the other hand, in his critical analysis of the different stories as to
the origin of the Nile, and, in his finally correct choosing of a true
explanation of the annual rise of that river, clear proof that he did
possess and did sometimes utilise a keen critical judgment. Meantime it
will be equally clear that he possessed, in no small degree, a capacity
to write interesting history very different from the more arid records
which make up some of his later annals.[a]

Let us turn, then, to the pages of Herodotus and listen to a classical
account of the Nile.

In its more extensive inundations, the Nile does not overflow the
Delta only, but part of that territory which is called Libyan, and
sometimes the Arabian frontier, and extends about the space of two
days’ journey on each side, speaking on an average. Of the nature of
this river I could obtain no certain information, from the priests or
from others. It was nevertheless my particular desire to know why the
Nile, beginning at the summer solstice, continues gradually to rise for
the space of one hundred days, after which for the same space it as
gradually recedes, remaining throughout the winter, and till the return
of the summer solstice, in its former low and quiescent state: but all
my inquiries of the inhabitants proved ineffectual, and I was unable to
learn why the Nile was thus distinguished in its properties from other
streams. I was equally unsuccessful in my wishes to be informed why
this river alone wafted no breeze from its surface.

[Illustration: HEAD-DRESS OF A QUEEN OF ANCIENT EGYPT]

From a desire of gaining a reputation for sagacity, this subject has
employed the attention of many among the Greeks. There have been
three different modes of explaining it, two of which merit no further
attention than barely to be mentioned; one of them affirms the increase
of the Nile to be owing to the Etesian winds, which by blowing in an
opposite direction, impede the river’s entrance to the sea. But it
has often happened that no winds have blown from this quarter, and
the phenomenon of the Nile has still been the same. It may also be
remarked, that were this the real cause, the same events would happen
to other rivers, whose currents are opposed to the Etesian winds,
which, indeed, as having a less body of waters, and a weaker current,
would be capable of still less resistance: but there are many streams,
both in Syria and Libya, none of which exhibit the same appearances
with the Nile.

The second opinion is still less agreeable to reason, though more
calculated to excite wonder. This affirms, that the Nile has these
qualities, as flowing from the Ocean, which entirely surrounds the
earth.

The third opinion, though more plausible in appearance, is still more
false in reality. It simply intimates that the body of the Nile is
formed from the dissolution of snow, which coming from Libya through
the regions of Ethiopia, discharges itself upon Egypt. But how can
this river, descending from a very warm to a much colder climate,
be possibly composed of melted snow? There are many other reasons
concurring to satisfy any person of good understanding, that this
opinion is contrary to fact. The first and the strongest argument may
be drawn from the winds, which are in these regions invariably hot: it
may also be observed that rain and ice are here entirely unknown. Now
if in five days after a fall of snow it must necessarily rain, which
is indisputably the case, it follows that if there were snow in those
countries, there would certainly be rain. The third proof is taken from
the colour of the natives, who from excessive heat are universally
black; moreover, the kites and the swallows are never known to migrate
from this country: the cranes also, flying from the severity of a
Scythian winter, pass that cold season here. If, therefore, it snowed
although but little in those places through which the Nile passes, or
in those where it takes its rise, reason demonstrates that none of the
above-mentioned circumstances could possibly happen.

The argument which attributes to the ocean these phenomena of the
Nile, seems rather to partake of fable than of truth or sense. For my
own part, I know no river of the name of Oceanus; and am inclined to
believe that Homer, or some other poet of former times, first invented
and afterwards introduced it in his compositions.

But as I have mentioned the preceding opinions only to censure and
confute them, I may be expected perhaps to give my own sentiments on
this subject. It is my opinion that the Nile overflows in the summer
season, because in the winter the sun, driven by the storms from his
usual course, ascends into the higher regions of the air above Libya.
My reason may be explained without difficulty; for it may be easily
supposed, that to whatever region this power more nearly approaches,
the rivers and streams of that country will be proportionably dried up
and diminished.

If I were to go more at length into the argument, I should say that
the whole is occasioned by the sun’s passage through the higher parts
of Libya. For as the air is invariably serene, and the heat always
tempered by cooling breezes, the sun acts there as it does in the
summer season, when his place is in the centre of the heavens. The
solar rays absorb the aqueous particles, which their influence forcibly
elevates into the higher regions; here they are received, separated,
and dispersed by the winds. And it may be observed, that the south and
southwest, which are the most common winds in this quarter, are of all
others most frequently attended with rain: it does not, however, appear
to me that the sun remits all the water which he every year absorbs
from the Nile; some is probably withheld. As winter disappears, he
returns to the middle place of the heavens, and again by evaporation
draws to him the waters of the rivers, all of which are then found
considerably increased by the rains, and rising to their extreme
heights. But in summer, from the want of rain, and from the attractive
power of the sun, they are again reduced; but the Nile is differently
circumstanced, it never has the benefit of rains, whilst it is
constantly acted upon by the sun,--a sufficient reason why it should in
the winter season be proportionably lower than in summer. In winter the
Nile alone is diminished by the influence of the sun, which in summer
attracts the water of the rivers indiscriminately; I impute, therefore,
to the sun the remarkable properties of the Nile.

To the same cause is to be ascribed, as I suppose, the state of the air
in that country, which from the effect of the sun is always extremely
rarefied, so that in the higher parts of Libya there prevails an
eternal summer. If it were possible to produce a change in the seasons,
and to place the regions of the north in those of the south, and those
of the south in the north, the sun, driven from his place by the storms
of the north, would doubtless affect the higher parts of Europe, as it
now does those of Libya. It would also, I imagine, then act upon the
waters of the Ister, as it now does on those of the Nile.

That no breeze blows from the surface of the river, may, I think, be
thus accounted for: Where the air is in a very warm and rarefied state,
wind can hardly be expected, this generally rising in places which are
cold. Upon this subject I shall attempt no further illustration, but
leave it in the state in which it has so long remained.

[Illustration: A WATER-CARRIER ON THE NILE]

In all my intercourse with Egyptians, Libyans, and Greeks, I have
only met with one person who pretended to have any knowledge of the
sources of the Nile. This was the priest who had the care of the sacred
treasures in the temple of Minerva, at Saïs. He assured me, that on
this subject he possessed the most unquestionable intelligence, though
his assertions never obtained my serious confidence. He informed me,
that betwixt Syene, a city of the Thebaïd, and Elephantine, there
were two mountains, respectively terminating in an acute summit: the
name of the one was Crophi, of the other Mophi. He affirmed, that
the sources of the Nile, which were fountains of unfathomable depth,
flowed from the centres of these mountains; that one of these streams
divided Egypt, and directed its course to the north; the other in
like manner flowed towards the south, through Ethiopia. To confirm
his assertion, that those springs were unfathomable, he told me, that
Psammetichus [Psamthek I], sovereign of the country, had ascertained
it by experiment; he let down a rope of the length of several thousand
orgyiæ, but could find no bottom. This was the priest’s information, on
the truth of which I presume not to determine. If such an experiment
was really made, there might perhaps in these springs be certain
vortices, occasioned by the reverberation of the water from the
mountains, of force sufficient to buoy up the sounding line, and
prevent its reaching the bottom.

I was not able to procure any other intelligence than the above, though
I so far carried my enquiry, that, with the view of making observation,
I proceeded myself to Elephantine: of the parts which lie beyond
that city, I can only speak from the information of others. Beyond
Elephantine this country becomes rugged; in advancing up the stream it
will be necessary to hale the vessel on each side by a rope, such as is
used for oxen. If this should give way, the impetuosity of the stream
forces the vessel violently back again. To this place from Elephantine
is a four days’ voyage.

Thus, without computing that part of it which flows through Egypt, the
course of the Nile is known to the extent of four months’ journey,
partly by land and partly by water; for it will be found on experience,
that no one can go in a less time from Elephantine to the Automoli. It
is certain that the Nile rises in the west, but beyond the Automoli
all is uncertainty, this part of the country being, from the excessive
heat, a rude and uncultivated desert.

It may not be improper to relate an account which I received from
certain Cyrenæans. On an expedition which they made to the oracle
of Ammon, they said they had an opportunity of conversing with
Etearchus, the sovereign of the country: among other topics the Nile
was mentioned, and it was observed, that the particulars of its source
were hitherto entirely unknown. Etearchus informed them, that some
Nassamonians once visited his court; (these are a people of Africa
who inhabit the Syrtes, and a tract of land which from thence extends
towards the east) on his making enquiry of them concerning the deserts
of Libya, they related the following incident: some young men, who were
sons of persons of distinction, had on their coming to man’s estate
signalised themselves by some extravagance of conduct. Among other
things, they deputed by lot five of their companions to explore the
solitudes of Libya, and to endeavour at extending their discoveries
beyond all preceding adventurers.

All that part of Libya towards the Northern Ocean, from Egypt to the
promontory of Soloëis, which terminates the third division of the
earth, is inhabited by the different nations of the Libyans, that
district alone excepted, in possession of the Greeks and Phœnicians.
The remoter parts of Libya beyond the seacoast, and the people who
inhabit its borders, are infested by various beasts of prey; the
country yet more distant is a parched and immeasurable desert. The
young men left their companions, being well provided with water and
with food, and first proceeded through the region which was inhabited;
they next came to that which was infested by wild beasts, leaving
which, they directed their course westward, through the desert.

After a journey of many days, over a barren and sandy soil, they at
length discerned some trees growing in a plain; these they approached,
and seeing fruit upon them, they gathered it. Whilst they were thus
employed, some men of dwarfish stature came where they were, seized
their persons, and carried them away. They were mutually ignorant of
each other’s language, but the Nassamonians were conducted over many
marshy grounds to a city, in which all the inhabitants were of the same
diminutive appearance, and of a black colour. This city was washed by a
great river, which flowed from west to east, and abounded in crocodiles.

Such was the conversation of Etearchus, as it was related to me; he
added, as the Cyrenæans further told me, that the Nassamonians returned
to their own country, and reported the men whom they had met to be
all of them magicians. The river which washed their city, according
to the conjecture of Etearchus, which probability confirms, was the
Nile. The Nile certainly rises in Libya, which it divides; and if it
be allowable to draw conclusions from things which are well known,
concerning those which are uncertain and obscure, it takes a similar
course with the Ister. This river, commencing at the city of Pyrene,
among the Celtæ, flows through the centre of Europe. These Celtæ are
found beyond the Columns of Hercules; they border on the Cynesians, the
most remote of all the nations who inhabit the western parts of Europe.
At that point which is possessed by the Istrians, a Milesian colony,
the Ister empties itself into the Euxine.

The sources of the Ister, as it passes through countries well
inhabited, are sufficiently notorious; but of the fountains of the
Nile, washing as it does the rude and uninhabitable deserts of Libya,
no one can speak with precision. All the knowledge which I have been
able to procure from the most diligent and extensive enquiries, I
have before communicated. Through Egypt it directs its course towards
the sea. Opposite to Egypt are the mountains of Cilicia, from whence
to Sinope, on the Euxine, a good traveller may pass in five days: on
the side immediately opposite to Sinope, the Ister is poured into the
sea. Thus the Nile, as it traverses Libya, may properly enough be
compared to the Ister. But on this subject I have said all that I think
necessary.[b]

ANOTHER ANCIENT ACCOUNT OF THE NILE

The River Nile, says Diodorus, breeds many Creatures of several Forms
and Shapes, amongst which, Two are especially remarkable, the Crocodile
and the Horse as it’s call’d: Amongst these the Crocodile of the least
Creature becomes the greatest; for it lays an Egg much of the bigness
of that of a Goose, and after the young is hatcht, it grows to the
length of Sixteen Cubits, and lives to the Age of a Man: It wants a
Tongue, but has a Body naturally arm’d in a wonderful manner. For its
Skin is cover’d all over with Scales of an extraordinary hardness;
many sharp Teeth are rang’d on both sides its Jaws, and Two of them
are much bigger than the rest. This Monster does not only devour Men,
but other Creatures that come near the River. His Bites are sharp and
destructive, and with his Claws he tears his Prey cruelly in Pieces,
and what Wounds he makes, no Medicine or Application can heal. The
Egyptians formerly catcht these Monsters with Hooks, baited with raw
Flesh; but of later times, they have us’d to take ’em with strong
Nets like Fishes; sometimes they strike them on the Head with Forks
of Iron, and so kill them. There’s an infinite Multitude of these
Creatures in the River and the Neighbouring Pools, in regard they are
great Breeders, and are seldom kill’d. For the Crocodile is ador’d as a
God by some of the Inhabitants; and for Strangers to hunt and destroy
them is to no purpose, for their Flesh is not eatable. But Nature has
provided relief against the increase of this destructive Monster; for
the Ichneumon, as it’s call’d (of the Bigness of a little Dog) running
up and down near the Waterside, breaks all the Eggs laid by this Beast,
wherever he finds them; and that which is most to be admir’d, is, that
he does this not for Food or any other Advantage, but out of a natural
Instinct for the meer Benefit of Mankind.

The Beast call’d the River Horse, is Five Cubits long, Four Footed, and
cloven Hoof’d like to an Ox. He has Three Teeth or Tushes on either
side his Jaw, appearing outwards larger than those of a Wild-Boar; as
to his Ears, Tayl and his Neighing, he’s like to a Horse. The whole
Bulk of his Body is not much unlike an Elephant; his Skin is firmer and
thicker almost than any other beast. He lives both on Land and Water;
in the Day time he lies at the Bottom of the River, and in the Night
time comes forth to Land, and feeds upon the Grass and Corn. If this
Beast were so fruitful as to bring forth Young every Year, he would
undo the Husbandman, and destroy a great part of the Corn of Egypt.
He’s likewise by the help of many Hands often caught, being struck
with Instruments of Iron; for when he is found, they hem him round
with their Boats, and those on Board wound him with forked Instruments
of Iron, cast at him as so many Darts; and having strong Ropes to the
Irons, they fix in him, they let him go till he loses his Blood, and so
dies: His Flesh is extraordinary hard, and of ill digestion. There’s
nothing in his inner Parts that can be eaten, neither his Bowels, nor
any other of his Intrails.

Besides these before mention’d, Nile abounds with multitudes of
all sorts of Fish; not only such as are fresh taken to supply the
Inhabitants at hand, but an innumerable Number likewise which they
salt up to send Abroad. To conclude, no River in the World is more
Beneficial and Serviceable to Mankind, than Nile.

[Illustration: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN BOAT, SHOWING THE METHOD OF USING
RUDDER, SAIL, AND OARS]

Its Inundation begins at the Summer Solstice, and increases till the
Equinoctial in Autumn; during which time he brings in along with him
new Soyl, and waters as well the Till’d and Improv’d Ground as that
which lies waste and untill’d, as long as it pleases the Husbandman;
for the Water flowing gently and by degrees, they easily divert its
Course, by casting up small Banks of Earth; and then by opening a
Passage for it, as easily turn it over their Land again, if they see
it needful. It’s so very advantageous to the Inhabitants, and done
with so little pains, that most of the Country People turn in their
Cattel into the sow’d Ground to eat, and tread down the Corn, and Four
or Five Months after they reap it. Some lightly run over the Surface
of the Earth with a Plow, after the Water is fallen, and gain a mighty
Crop without any great Cost or Pains: But Husbandry amongst all other
Nations is very laborious and chargable, only the Egyptians gather
their Fruits with little Cost or Labour. That part of the Country
likewise where Vines are planted after this watering by the Nile,
yields a most plentiful Vintage. The Fields that after the Inundation
are pastur’d by their Flocks, yield them this advantage, that the Sheep
Yean twice in a Year, and are shorn as often. This Increase of the
Nile is wonderful to Beholders, and altogether incredible to them that
only hear the Report; for when other Rivers about the Solstice fall
and grow lower all Summer long, this begins to increase, and continues
to rise every day, till it comes to that height that it overflows
almost all Egypt; and on the contrary in the same manner in the Winter
Solstice, it falls by degrees till it wholly returns into its proper
Channel. And in regard the Land of Egypt lies low and Champain, the
Towns, Cities and Country Villages that are built upon rising-ground
(cast up by Art) look like the Islands of the Cyclades: Many of the
Cattel sometimes are by the River intercepted, and so are drown’d; but
those that fly to the higher Grounds are preserv’d. During the time
of the Inundation, the Cattel are kept in the Country Towns and small
Cottages, where they have Food and Fodder before laid up and prepar’d
for them. But the common People now at liberty from all Imployments
in the Field, indulge themselves in Idleness, feasting every day, and
giving themselves up to all sorts of Sports and Pleasures. Yet out of
fear of the Inundation, a Watch Tower is built in Memphis, by the Kings
of Egypt, where those that are imploy’d to take care of this concern,
observing to what height the River rises, send Letters from one City to
another, acquainting them how many Cubits and Fingers the River rises,
and when it begins to decrease; and so the People coming to understand
the Fall of the Waters, are freed from their fears, and all presently
have a foresight what plenty of Corn they are like to have; and this
Observation has been Registred from time to time by the Egyptians for
many Generations.

There are great Controversies concerning the Reasons of the overflowing
of Nile, and many both Philosophers and Historians have endeavour’d
to declare the Causes of it. Some who have attempted to give their
Reasons, have been very wide from the Mark. For as for Hellanicus,
Cadmus, Hecatæus, and such like ancient Authors, they have told little
but frothy Stories, and meer Fables. Herodotus, above all other Writers
very industrious, and well acquainted with General History, made it his
Business to find out the Causes of these things, but what he says is
notwithstanding very doubtful, and some things seem to be repugnant and
contradictory one to another.

No Writer hitherto has pretended that he himself ever saw or heard of
any one else that affirm’d he had seen the Spring-heads of Nile: All
therefore amounting to no more but Opinion and Conjecture, the Priests
of Egypt affirm that it comes from the Ocean, which flows round the
whole Earth: But nothing that they say is upon any solid grounds, and
they resolve Doubts by things that are more doubtful; and to prove what
they say, they bring Arguments that have need to be proved themselves.

Thales, who is reckon’d one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, is of
Opinion that the Etesean Winds that beat fiercely upon the Mouth of
the River, give a check and stop to the Current, and so hinder it from
falling into the Sea, upon which the River swelling, and its Channel
fill’d with Water, at length overflows the Country of Egypt, which
lies flat and low. Though this seem a plausible Reason, yet it may be
easily disprov’d. For if it were true what he says, then all the Rivers
which run into the Sea against the Etesean Winds would overflow in like
manner; which being never known in any other part of the World, some
other reason and more agreeable to Truth must of necessity be sought
for. Anaxagoras the Philosopher ascribes the Cause to the melting of
the Snow in Ethiopia, whom the Poet Euripides (who was his Scholar)
follows.

Neither is it any hard Task to confute this Opinion, since it’s
apparent to all, that by reason of the parching Heats, there’s no Snow
in Ethiopia at that time of the Year. For in these Countries there’s
not the least Sign either of Frost, Cold or any other effects of
Winter, especially at the time of the overflowing of Nile. And suppose
there be abundance of Snow in the higher Parts of Ethiopia, yet what
is affirm’d is certainly false: For every River that is swell’d with
Snow, fumes up in cold Fogs, and thickens the Air; but about Nile, only
above all other Rivers, neither mists gather, nor are there any cold
Breezes, nor is the Air gross and thick. Herodotus says that Nile is
such in its own nature, as it seems to be in the time of its increase;
for that in Winter, when the Sun moves to the South, and runs its daily
course directly over Africa, it exhales so much Water out of Nile, that
it decreases against Nature; and in Summer when the Sun returns to
the North, the Rivers of Greece, and the Rivers of all other Northern
Countries, fall and decrease; and therefore that it is not so strange
for Nile about Summer time to increase, and in Winter to fall and grow
lower. But to this it may be answer’d, that if the Sun exhale so much
moisture out of Nile in Winter time, it would do the like in other
Rivers in Africa, and so they must fall as well as Nile, which no where
happens throughout all Africa, and therefore this Author’s Reason is
frivolous; for the Rivers of Greece rise not in the Winter, by reason
of the remoteness of the Sun, but by reason of the great Rains that
fall at that time. Ephorus, who gives the last account of the thing,
endeavours to ascertain the Reason, but seems not to find out the Truth.

[Illustration: COLOSSAL SEATED FIGURES OF GODS]

The whole Land of Egypt (says he) is cast up from the River, and
the Soyl is of a loose and spungy nature, and has in it many large
Clifts and hollow Places, wherein are abundance of Water, which in the
Winter-time is frozen up, and in the Summer issues out on every side,
like Sweat from the Pores, which occasions the River Nile to rise. This
Writer does not only betray his own Ignorance of the nature of Places
in Egypt, that he never saw them himself, but likewise that he never
was rightly inform’d by any that was acquainted with them. And indeed
no Man is to expect any certainty from Ephorus, who may be palpably
discern’d not to make it his business in many things to declare the
Truth.

The Philosophers indeed in Memphis have urg’d strong Reasons of the
Increase of Nile, which are hard to be confuted; and though they are
improbable, yet many agree to them. For they divide the Earth into
Three Parts, one of which is that wherein we inhabit; another quite
contrary to these Places in the Seasons of the Year; the Third lying
between these Two, which they say is uninhabitable by reason of the
scorching heat of the Sun; and therefore if Nile should overflow in
the Winter-time, it would be clear and evident that its Source would
arise out of our Zone, because then we have the most Rain: But on the
contrary being that it rises in Summer, it’s very probable that in
the Country opposite to us it’s Winter-time, where then there’s much
Rain, and that those Floods of Water are brought down thence to us:
And therefore that none can ever find out the Head-Springs of Nile,
because the River has its Course through the opposite Zone; which is
uninhabited. And the exceeding sweetness of the Water, they say, is the
Confirmation of this Opinion; for passing through the Torrid Zone, the
Water is boil’d, and therefore this River is sweeter than any other in
the World; for Heat does naturally dulcorate Water. But this reason is
easily refuted; for it’s plainly impossible that the River should rise
to that height, and come down to us from the opposite Zone; especially
if it be granted that the Earth is round. But if any yet shall be so
obstinate as to affirm it is so as the philosophers have said, I must
in short say it’s against and contrary to the Laws of Nature.

For being they hold Opinions that in the nature of the things can
hardly be disprov’d, and place an inhabitable part of the World between
us and them that are opposite to us; they conclude, that by this
device, they have made it impossible, and out of the reach of the Wit
of Man to confute them. But it is but just and equal, that those who
affirm any thing positively, should prove what they say, either by
good Authority or strength of Reason. How comes it about that only the
River Nile should come down to us from the other opposite Zone? Have we
not other Rivers that this may be as well apply’d to? As to the Causes
alledg’d for the sweetness of the Water, they are absurd: For if the
Water be boyl’d with the parching Heat, and thereupon becomes sweet,
it would have no productive quality, either of Fish or other Kinds of
Creatures and Beasts; for all Water whose Nature is chang’d by Fire,
is altogether incapable to breed any living thing, and therefore being
that the Nature of Nile contradicts this decoction and boyling of the
Water, we conclude that the Causes alledg’d of its increase are false.

But to the true cause, Agartharchides of Cnidus comes nearest. For
he says, that in the Mountainous parts of Ethiopia, there are Yearly
continual Rains from the Summer Solstice to the Equinox in Autumn, and
therefore there’s just cause for Nile to be low in the Winter, which
then flows only from its own natural Spring-heads, and to overflow
in Summer through the abundance of Rains. And though none hitherto
have been able to give a Reason of these Inundations, yet he says his
Opinion is not altogether to be rejected; for there are many things
that are contrary to the Rules of Nature, for which none are able to
give any substantial Reason. That which happens in some parts of Asia,
he says, gives some confirmation to his Opinion. For in the Confines of
Scythia, near Mount Caucasus, after the Winter is over, he affirms that
abundance of Snow falls every Year for many Days together: And that in
the Northern Parts of India, at certain Times, there falls abundance of
Hail, and of an incredible Bigness: And that near the River Hydaspis,
in Summer-time, it rains continually; and the same happens in Ethiopia
for many Days together; and that this disorder of the Air whirling
about, occasions many Storms of Rain in Places near adjoyning; and that
therefore it’s no wonder if the Mountainous Parts of Ethiopia, which
lies much higher than Egypt, are soakt with continual Rains, wherewith
the River being fill’d, overflows; especially since the natural
Inhabitants of the Place affirm, that thus it is in their Country.
And though these things now related, are in their nature contrary to
those in our own Climates, yet we are not for that Reason to disbelieve
them. For with us the South Wind is cloudy and boysterous, whereas in
Ethiopia it’s calm and clear; and that the North Winds in Europe are
fierce and violent, but in those Regions low and almost insensible.

But however (after all) though we could heap up variety of Arguments
against all these Authors concerning the Inundation of Nile, yet those
which we have before alledg’d shall suffice, lest we should transgress
those bounds of Brevity which at the first we propos’d to our selves.

A GREEK VIEW OF THE ORIGINS OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY

The Egyptians report, says Diodorus, that at the beginning of the
World, the first Men were created in Egypt, both by reason of the happy
Climate of the Country, and the nature of the River Nile. For this
River being very Fruitful, and apt to bring forth many animals, yields
of it self likewise Food and Nourishment for the things produc’d. For
it yields the Roots of Canes, the Fruit of the Lote-Tree, the Egyptian
Bean, that which they call Corseon, and such like Rarities, always
ready at hand.

[Illustration: WALL INSCRIPTION WITH FIGURES IN RED

(Now in the British Museum)]

And that all living Creatures were first produc’d among them, they use
this Argument, that even at this day, about Thebes at certain Times,
such vast Mice are bred, that it causes admiration to the Beholders;
some of which to the Breast and Fore-feet are animated and begin to
move, and the rest of the Body (which yet retains the nature of the
Soyl) appears without form.

Whence it’s manifest, that in the beginning of the World, through the
Fertileness of the Soyl the first Men were form’d in Egypt, being that
in no other parts of the World any of these Creatures are produc’d;
only in Egypt these supernatural Births may be seen.

The first Generation of Men in Egypt, therefore contemplating the
Beauty of the Superior World, and admiring with astonishment the frame
and order of the Universe, judg’d there were Two chief Gods that were
Eternal, that is to say, The Sun and the Moon, the first of which
they call’d Osiris, and the other Isis, both Names having proper
Etymologies; for Osiris in the Greek Language, signifies a Thing with
many Eyes, which may be very properly apply’d to the Sun darting his
Rays into every Corner, and as it were with so many Eyes viewing and
surveying the whole Land and Sea.

Some also of the antient Greek Mythologists call Osiris Dionysus, and
sirname him Sirius. Some likewise set him forth cloath’d with the
spotted Skin of a Fawn (call’d Nebris) from the variety of Stars that
surround him.

Isis likewise being interpreted, signifies Antient, that Name being
ascrib’d to the Moon from Eternal Generations. They add likewise to
her, Horns, because her Aspect is such in her Increase and in her
Decrease, representing a Sickle; and because an Ox among the Egyptians
is offer’d to her in Sacrifice. They hold that these Gods govern the
whole World, cherishing and increasing all things; and divide the Year
into Three Parts (that is to say, Spring, Summer, and Autumn) by an
invisible Motion perfecting their constant course in that time: And
though they are in their Natures very differing one from another, yet
they compleat the whole Year with a most excellent Harmony and Consent.
They say that these Gods in their Natures do contribute much to the
Generation of all things, the one being of a hot and active Nature, the
other moist and cold, but both having something of the Air; and that
by these, all things are brought forth and nourish’d: And therefore
that every particular Being in the Universe is perfected and compleated
by the Sun and Moon, whose Qualities, as before declar’d, are Five; A
Spirit or quickning Efficacy, Heat or Fire, Dryness or Earth, Moisture
or Water, and Air, of which the World does consist, as a Man made up of
Head, Hands, Feet, and other parts. These Five they reputed for Gods,
and the People of Egypt who were the first that spoke articulately,
gave Names proper to their several Natures, according to the Language
they then spake. And therefore they call’d the Spirit Jupiter, which is
such by Interpretation, because a quickning Influence is deriv’d from
this into all Living Creatures, as from the original Principle; and
upon that account he is esteem’d the common Parent of all things.

Fire they call’d by Interpretation Vulcan, and him they had in
Veneration as a Great God, as he that greatly contributed to the
Generation and Perfection of all Beings whatsoever.

The Earth, as the Common Womb of all Productions, they call’d Metera,
as the Greeks in process of time, by a small alteration of one Letter,
and an omission of Two Letters, call’d the Earth Demetra, which was
antiently call’d Gen Metera, or the Mother Earth.

Water or Moisture, the Antients call’d Oceanus; which by Interpretation
is a nourishing Mother, and so taken by some of the Grecians.

But the Egyptians account their Nile to be Oceanus, at which all the
Gods were Born. For in Egypt only among all the Countries in the World,
are many Cities built by the ancient Gods, as by Jupiter, Sol, Mercury,
Apollo, Pan, Elithia, and many others.

To the Air they gave the Name of Minerva, signifying something proper
to the nature thereof, and call’d her the Daughter of Jupiter,
and counted a Virgin, because the Air naturally is not subject to
Corruption, and is in the highest part of the Universe; whence rises
the Fable, that she was the issue of Jupiter’s Brain: They say she’s
call’d also Tritogeneia, or Thrice Begotten, because she changes her
natural Qualities thrice in the Year, the Spring, Summer, and Winter;
and that she was call’d Glaucopis, not that she hath Grey Eyes (as some
of the Greeks have suppos’d, for that’s a weak Conceit) but because the
Air seems to be of a Grey Colour, to the view. They report likewise,
that these Five Gods travel through the whole World, representing
themselves to Men sometimes in the shapes of Sacred living Creatures,
and sometimes in the Form of Men, or some other Representation. And
this is not a Fable, but very possible, if it be true, that these
generate all things; and the Poet [Homer] who travell’d into Egypt, in
some part of his Works, affirms this Appearance, as he learnt it from
their Priests,

The Gods also like Strangers come from far
In divers Shapes within the Towns appear,
Viewing Men’s good and wicked Acts.

And these are the Stories told by the Egyptians of the Heavenly and
Immortal Gods. And besides these, they say there are others that
are Terrestrial, which were begotten of these former Gods, and were
Originally Mortal men, but by reason of their Wisdom and Beneficence to
all Mankind, have obtain’d Immortality, of which some have been Kings
of Egypt. Some of whom by interpretation, have had the same Names with
the Celestial Gods, others have kept their own proper Names. For they
report that Sol, Saturn, Rhea, Jupiter (surnam’d by some Ammon), Juno,
Vulcan, Vesta, and lastly, Mercury, reign’d in Egypt; and that Sol was
the first King of Egypt, whose Name was the same with the Celestial
Planet call’d Sol.

But there are some of the Priests who affirm Vulcan to be the first of
Kings, and that he was advanc’d to that Dignity upon the account of
being the first that found out the use of Fire, which was so beneficial
to all Mankind. For a Tree in the Mountains hapning to be set on Fire
by Lightning, the Wood next adjoyning was presently all in a Flame; and
Vulcan thereupon coming to the Place, was mightily refresht by the heat
of it, being then Winter Season; and when the Fire began to fail, he
added more combustible Matter to it, and by that means preserving it,
call’d in other Men to enjoy the Benefit of that which he himself was
the first Inventer, as he gave out.

Afterwards they say Saturn reign’d, and marry’d his Sister Rhea, and
that he begat of her Osiris and Isis; but others say, Jupiter and Juno,
who for their great Virtues, rul’d over all the World. That of Jupiter
and Juno were born Five Gods, one upon every day of the Five Egyptian
intercalary Days. The Names of these Gods are Osiris, Isis, Typhon,
Apollo and Venus. That Osiris was interpreted Bacchus, and Isis plainly
Ceres. That Osiris marry’d Isis, and after he came to the Kingdom, did
much, and perform’d many things for the common Benefit and Advantage of
Mankind. For he was the first that forbad Men eating one another; and
at the same time Isis found out the way of making of Bread of Wheat and
Barley, which before grew here and there in the Fields amongst other
common Herbs and Grass, and the use of it unknown: And Osiris teaching
the way and manner of Tillage, and well management of the Fruits of
the Earth, this change of Food became grateful; both because it was
naturally sweet and delicious, and Men were thereby restrain’d from the
mutual Butcheries of one another: For an evidence of this first finding
out the use of these Fruits, they alledge an antient Custom amongst
them: For even at this day, in the time of Harvest, the Inhabitants
offer the first Fruits of the Ears of Corn, howling and wailing about
the Handfuls they offer, and invoking this Goddess Isis: And this they
do in return of due Honour to her for that Invention at the first. In
some Cities also, when they celebrate the Feast of Isis in a Pompous
Procession, they carry about Vessels of Wheat and Barley, in memory of
the first Invention, by the care and industry of this Goddess. They
say likewise, that Isis made many Laws for the good of Human Society,
whereby Men were restrain’d from lawless Force and Violence one upon
another, out of fear of Punishment. And therefore Ceres was call’d by
the ancient Greeks, Themophorus (that is) Lawgiver, being the Princess
that first constituted Laws for the better Government of her People.

Osiris moreover built Thebes in Egypt, with an Hundred Gates, and
call’d it after his Mother’s Name: But in following Times, it was
call’d Diospolis, and Thebes; of whose first Founder not only
Historians, but the Priests of Egypt themselves, are much in doubt. For
some say that it was not built by Osiris, but many Years after by a
King of Egypt, whose History we shall treat of hereafter in its proper
place. They report likewise, that he built Two magnificent Temples,
and Dedicated them to his Parents, Jupiter and Juno; and likewise Two
Golden Altars, the greater to the great God Jupiter; the other to his
Father Jupiter, who had formerly reign’d there, whom they call Ammon.
That he also erected Golden Altars to other Gods, and instituted their
several Rites of Worship, and appointed Priests to have the Oversight
and Care of the Holy things. In the time of Osiris and Isis, Projectors
and ingenious Artists were in great honour and Esteem; and therefore
in Thebes there were then Goldsmiths and Braziers, who made Arms and
Weapons for the Killing of Wild Beasts, and other Instruments for the
husbanding of the Ground, and improvement of Tillage; besides Images of
the Gods, and Altars in Gold. They say that Osiris was much given to
Husbandry, that he was the Son of Jupiter, brought up in Nysa, a Town
of Arabia the Happy, near to Egypt, call’d by the Greeks Dionysus, from
his Father, and the Place of his Education.

Here near unto Nysa (they say) he found out the use of the Vine, and
there planting it, was the first that drank Wine; and taught others how
to plant it and use it, and to gather in their Vintage, and to keep
and preserve it. Above all others, he most honoured Hermes, one of an
admirable Ingenuity, and quick Invention, in finding out what might
be useful to Mankind. This Hermes was the first (as they report) that
taught how to speak distinctly and articulately, and gave Names to many
things that had none before. He found out Letters, and instituted the
Worship of the Gods; and was the first that observ’d the Motion of the
Stars, and invented Musick; and taught the manner of Wrestling; and
invented Arithmetick, and the Art of curious Graving and Cutting of
Statues. He first found out the Harp with Three Strings, in resemblance
of the Three Seasons of the Year, causing Three several Sounds, the
Treble, Base and Mean. The Treble, to represent the Summer; The Base,
the Winter; and the Mean, the Spring. He was the first that taught the
Greeks Eloquence; thence he’s call’d Hermes, a Speaker or Interpreter.
To conclude, he was Osiris’s Sacred Scribe, to whom he communicated
all his Secrets, and was chiefly steer’d by his Advice in every thing.
He (not Minerva, as the Greeks affirm) found out the use of the
Olive-tree, for the making of Oyl.

It’s moreover reported, that Osiris being a Prince of a publick
Spirit, and very ambitious of Glory, rais’d a great Army, with which
he resolv’d to go through all parts of the World that were inhabited,
and to teach Men how to plant Vines, and to sow Wheat and Barly. For he
hop’d that if he could civilize Men, and take them off from their rude
and Beast-like Course of Lives, by such a publick good and advantage,
he should raise a Foundation amongst all Mankind, for his immortal
Praise and Honour, which happen’d accordingly. For not only that Age,
but Posterity ever after honour’d those among the chiefest of their
Gods, that first found out their proper and ordinary Food. Having
therefore settl’d his Affairs in Egypt, and committed the Government
of his whole Kingdom to his Wife Isis, he join’d with her Mercury, as
her chief Councellor of State, because he far excell’d all others in
Wisdom and Prudence. But Hercules his near Kinsman, he left General
of all his Forces within his Dominions, a Man admir’d by all for his
Valour and Strength of Body. As to those parts which lay near Phœnicia,
and upon the Sea-Coasts of them, he made Busiris Lord Lieutenant, and
of Ethiopia and Lybia, Anteus.

Then marching out of Egypt, he began his Expedition, taking along with
him his Brother, whom the Greeks call’d Apollo. This Apollo is reported
to have discover’d the Laurel-Tree, which all Dedicate especially to
this God. To Osiris they attribute the finding out of the Ivy-Tree, and
dedicate it to him, as the Greeks do to Bacchus: And therefore in the
Egyptian Tongue, they call Ivy Osiris’s Plant, which they prefer before
the Vine in all their Sacrifices, because this loses its Leaves, and
the other always continues fresh and green: Which Rule the Ancients
have observ’d in other Plants, that are always green, dedicating Mirtle
to Venus, Laurel to Apollo, and the Olive-Tree to Pallas.

It’s said, that Two of his Sons accompany’d their Father Osiris in this
Expedition, one call’d Anubis, and the other Macedo, both valiant Men:
Both of them wore Coats of Mail, that were extraordinary remarkable,
cover’d with the Skins of such Creatures as resembled them in Stoutness
and Valour. Anubis was cover’d with a Dog’s, and Macedon with the Skin
of a Wolf; and for this reason these Beasts are religiously ador’d
by the Egyptians. He had likewise for his Companion, Pan, whom the
Egyptians have in great Veneration; for they not only set up Images and
Statues up and down in every Temple, but built a City in Thebides after
his Name, call’d by the Inhabitants Chemmin, which by interpretation is
Pan’s City. There went along with them likewise those that were skilful
in Husbandry, as Maro in the planting of Vines, and Triptolemus in
sowing of Corn, and gathering in the Harvest.

All things being now prepar’d, Osiris having vow’d to the Gods to
let his Hair grow till he return’d into Egypt, marcht away through
Æthiopia; and for that very Reason it’s a piece of Religion, and
practis’d among the Egyptians at this Day, that those that travel
Abroad, suffer their Hair to grow, till they return Home. As he pass’d
through Æthiopia, a Company of Satyrs were presented to him, who (as
it’s reported) were all Hairy down to their Loyns: For Osiris was a
Man given to Mirth and Jollity, and took great pleasure in Musick and
Dancing; and therefore carry’d along with him a Train of Musicians,
of whom Nine were Virgins, most Excellent Singers, and expert in
many other things (whom the Greeks call Muses) of whom Apollo was
the Captain; and thence call’d the Leader of the Muses: Upon this
account the Satyrs, who are naturally inclin’d to skipping, dancing
and singing, and all other sorts of Mirth, were taken in as part of
the Army: For Osiris was not for War, nor came to fight Battels, and
to decide Controversies by the Sword, every Country receiving him
for his Merits and Virtues, as a God. In Ethiopia having instructed
the Inhabitants in Husbandry, and Tillage of the Ground, and built
several stately Cities among them, he left there behind him some to be
Governors of the Country, and others to be Gatherers of his Tribute.

While they were thus imploy’d, ’tis said that the River Nile, about the
Dogdays (at which time it uses to be the highest) broke down its Banks,
and overflow’d the greatest part of Egypt, and that part especially
where Prometheus govern’d, insomuch as almost all the Inhabitants were
drown’d; so that Prometheus was near unto Killing of himself for very
grief of heart; and from the sudden and violent Eruption of the Waters,
the River was call’d Eagle.

Hercules, who was always for high and difficult enterprizes, and ever
of a stout Spirit, presently made up the Breaches, and turn’d the
River into its Channel, and kept it within its ancient Banks; and
therefore some of the Greek Poets from this fact have forg’d a Fable,
That Hercules kill’d the Eagle that fed upon Prometheus his Heart.
The most ancient Name of this river was Oceames, which in the Greek
pronunciation is Oceanus; afterwards call’d Eagle, upon the violent
Eruption. Lastly it was call’d Egyptus, from the Name of a King that
there reign’d. The last Name which it still retains, it derives from
Nileus, a King of those Parts.

Osiris being come to the Borders of Ethiopia, rais’d high Banks on
either side of the River, lest in the time of its Inundation it should
overflow the Country more than was convenient, and make it marish and
boggy; and made Floodgates to let in the Water by degrees, as far as
was necessary. Thence he pass’d through Arabia, bordering upon the Red
Sea as far as to India, and the utmost Coasts that were inhabited:
He built likewise many Cities in India, one of which he call’d Nysa,
willing to have a remembrance of that in Egypt where he was brought
up. At this Nysa in India, he planted Ivy, which grows and remains
here only of all other Places in India, or the Parts adjacent. He left
likewise many other Marks of his being in those Parts, by which the
latter Inhabitants are induc’d to believe, and do affirm that this God
was born in India.

He likewise addicted himself much to hunting of Elephants; and took
care to have Statues of himself in every place, as lasting Monuments
of his Expedition. Thence passing to the rest of Asia, he transported
his Army through the Hellespont into Europe; and in Thrace he kill’d
Lycurgus King of the Barbarians, who oppos’d him in his Designs. Then
he order’d Maro (at that time an Old Man) to take care of the Planters
in that Country, and to build a City, and call it Maroneo, after his
own Name. Macedon his Son he made King of Macedonia, so calling it
after him. To Triptolemus he appointed the Culture and Tillage of the
Land in Attica. To conclude, Osiris having travell’d through the whole
World, by finding out Food fit and convenient for Man’s Body, was a
Benefactor to all Mankind. Where Vines would not grow and be fruitful,
he taught the Inhabitants to make Drink of Barley, little inferiour in
strength and pleasant Flavour to Wine it self. He brought back with
him into Egypt the most pretious and richest things that ever place
did afford; and for the many Benefits and Advantages that he was the
Author of, by the common Consent of all Men, he gain’d the Reward of
Immortality and Honour equal to the Heavenly Deities.

After his Death, Isis and Mercury celebrated his Funeral with
Sacrifices and other Divine Honours, as to one of the Gods, and
instituted many Sacred Rites mystical Ceremonies in Memory of the
mighty Works wrought by this Hero, now Deify’d. Antiently the Egyptian
Priests kept the manner of the Death of Osiris secret in their own
Registers among themselves; but in after-times it fell out, that
some that could not hold, blurted it out, and so it came Abroad. For
they say that Osiris, while he govern’d in Egypt with all Justice
imaginable, was Murder’d by his wicked Brother Typhon; and that he
mangled his dead Body into Six and Twenty Pieces, and gave to each of
his Confederates in the Treason a Piece, by that means to bring them
all within the same horrid Guilt, and thereby the more to ingage them
to advance him to the Throne, and to defend and preserve him in the
Possession.

But Isis, the Sister and Wife likewise of Osiris, with the assistance
of her Son Orus, reveng’d his Death upon Typhon and his Complices, and
possess’d her self of the Kingdom of Egypt. It’s said the Battel was
fought near a River not far off a Town now call’d Antæa in Arabia, so
call’d from Anteus, whom Hercules slew in the time of Osiris. She found
all the Pieces of his Body, save his Privy Members; and having a desire
to conceal her Husband’s Burial, yet to have him honour’d as a God by
all the Egyptians, she thus contriv’d it. She clos’d all the Pieces
together, cementing them with Wax and Aromatick Spices, and so brought
it to the shape of a Man of the bigness of Osiris; then she sent for
the Priests to her, one by one, and swore them all that they should not
discover what she should then intrust them with. Then she told them
privately that they only should have the Burial of the King’s Body;
and recounting the many good Works he had done, charg’d them to bury
the Body in a proper place among themselves, and to pay unto him all
Divine Honour, as to a God. That they should Dedicate to him one of the
Beasts bred among them, which of them they pleas’d, and that while it
was alive, they should pay it the same Veneration as they did before to
Osiris himself; and when it was dead, that they should Worship it with
the same Adoration and Worship given to Osiris. But being willing to
incourage the Priests to these Divine Offices by Profit and Advantage,
she gave them the Third part of the Country for the Maintenance of the
Service of the Gods and their Attendance at the Altars.

[Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN HUNTSMAN]

In memory, therefore, of Osiris’s good Deeds, being incited thereunto
by the Commands of the Queen, and in expectation of their own Profit
and Advantage, the Priests exactly perform’d every thing that Isis
injoin’d them; and therefore every Order of the Priests at this Day
are of opinion that Osiris is bury’d among them. And they have those
Beasts in great Veneration, that were so long since thus consecrated;
and renew their Mournings for Osiris over the Graves of those Beasts.
There are Two sacred Bulls especially, the one call’d Apis, and the
other Mnevis, that are Consecrated to Osiris, and reputed as Gods
generally by all the Egyptians. For this Creature of all others was
extraordinarily serviceable to the first Inventers of Husbandry, both
as to the sowing Corn, and other Advantages concerning Tillage, of
which all reapt the Benefit. Lastly, they say, that after the Death
of Osiris, Isis made a Vow never to Marry any other Man, and spent
the rest of her Days in an exact Administration of Justice among her
Subjects, excelling all other Princes in her Acts of Grace and Bounty
towards her own People; and therefore after her Death, she was numbred
among the Gods, and as such had Divine Honour and Veneration, and was
buri’d at Memphis, where they shew her Sepulchre at this day in the
Grove of Vulcan.

Yet there are some that deny that these Gods are Buri’d at Memphis;
but near the Mountains of Ethiopia and Egypt, in the Isle of Nile,
lying near to a place call’d Philas, and upon that account also nam’d
the Holy Field. They confirm this by undoubted Signs and Marks left in
this Island, as by a Sepulchre built and erected to Osiris, religiously
Reverenc’d by all the Priests of Egypt, wherein are laid up Three
Hundred and Threescore Bowls, which certain Priests, appointed for that
purpose, fill every Day with Milk, and call upon the Gods by Name, with
Mourning and Lamentation.

The several parts therefore of Osiris being found, they report were
bury’d in this manner before related; but his Privy-members (they say)
were thrown into the River by Typhon, because none of his Partners
would receive them; and yet that they were divinely honour’d by Isis;
for she commanded an Image of this very part to be set up in the
Temples, and to be religiously ador’d; and in all their Ceremonies and
Sacrifices to this God, she ordered that part to be held in divine
Veneration and Honour. And therefore the Grecians, after they had
learn’d the Rites of the Feasts of Bacchus, and the Orgian Solemnities
from the Egyptians in all their Mysteries and Sacrifices to this God,
they ador’d that Member by the Name of Phallus.

From Osiris and Isis, to the Reign of Alexander the Great, who built a
City after his own Name, the Egyptian Priests reckon above Ten Thousand
Years, or (as some write) little less than Three and Twenty Thousand
Years. They affirm, that those that say this God Osiris was born at
Thebes in Boetia of Jupiter and Semele, relate that which is false. For
they say that Orpheus after he came into Egypt, was initiated into the
Sacred Mysteries of Bacchus or Dionysus, and being a special Friend to
the Thebans in Boetia, and of great esteem among them, to manifest his
Gratitude, transferr’d the Birth of Bacchus or Osiris over into Greece.

And that the Common People, partly out of Ignorance, and partly out of
a desire they had that this God should be a Grecian, readily receiv’d
these Mysteries and Sacred Rites among them; and that Orpheus took
the occasion following to fix the Birth of the God and his Rites and
Ceremonies among the Greeks: As thus, Cadmus (they say) was born at
Thebes in Egypt, and amongst other Children begat Semele: That she was
got with Child by one unknown, and was deliver’d at Seven Months end of
a Child very like to Osiris, as the Egyptians describe him. But such
Births are not us’d to live, either because it is not the pleasure of
the Gods it should be so, or that the Law of Nature will not admit it.
The Matter coming to Cadmus his Ear, being before warn’d by the Oracle
to protect the Laws of his Country, he wrapt the Infant in Gold, and
instituted Sacrifices to be offer’d to him, as if Osiris had appear’d
again in this shape; and caus’d it to be spread abroad, that it was
begotten of Jupiter, thereby both to honour Osiris, and to cover his
Daughter’s Shame.

The Priests say that the Grecians have arrogated to themselves both
their Gods and Demy-Gods (or Heroes), and say that divers Colonies were
transported over to them out of Egypt: For Hercules was an Egyptian,
and by his Valour made his way into most parts of the World, and set up
a Pillar in Africa; and of this they endeavour to make proof from the
Grecians themselves.[c]

APPENDIX B. THE PROBLEM OF EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY

The Egyptians that pretended so great antiquity, three hundred
kings before Amasis: and as Mela writes, 13,000 years from the
beginning of their chronicles, that bragged so much of their
knowledge of old, for they invented arithmetic, astronomy,
geometry; of their wealth and power, that vaunted of 20,000 cities;
yet at the same time their idolatry and superstition was most
gross; they worshipped, so Diodorus Siculus records, sun and moon
under the name of Isis and Osiris, and after, such men as were
beneficial to them, or any creature that did them good. In the city
of Bubasti they adored a cat, saith Herodotus, ibis and storks, an
ox (saith Pliny), leaks and onions, Manobius.

Porrum et cæpe deos imponere nubibus ausi,
Hos tu Nile deos colis.--BURTON’S _Anatomy of Melancholy_.

Notwithstanding the light thrown upon Egyptian history by the records
from the monuments, the lists of the priest Manetho still form the
basis of all computations of Egyptian chronology of the earlier
periods. There are several reasons for this. In the first place, the
records themselves, though in the aggregate wonderfully voluminous,
yet, so far as deciphered, cover, after all, only scattered bits of
the long periods of time involved. Mostly the individual records are
the glorifications of the deeds of a single king. Some kings left
scanty records, and often even these were wilfully destroyed by some
subsequent ruler of another dynasty. Or, a king might leave the record
of his predecessor, but substitute his own name for the rightful one
in the chronicle. Even the great Ramses II was guilty of such an act
as this. The fact of such tampering with the record would generally
be perceptible, but it may not be so easy to determine whose was the
rightful name which the falsifier erased.

Much more important than this, however, is the obstacle that arises
from the fact that the Egyptians, like all other nations of antiquity,
lacked a fixed era from which to reckon. They computed years with
reasonable accuracy, but they never reckoned long periods consecutively
from any single date. Hence the record of any particular king stands
more or less by itself, or associated at most with recent predecessors.
If the records of some of these predecessors have been lost, the gap
may be of such a doubtful character as to throw uncertainty upon the
chronology of long periods, or, indeed, of the entire remoter history.
Thus it is that the records from the monuments, despite their great
historic value and absorbing personal interest, do not in themselves,
as yet, suffice to reveal in its entirety the history of the long
succession of Egyptian dynasties. But fortunately these contemporary
records have been found in many cases to accord marvellously with
Manetho’s lists. Hence the faith in these lists as a whole has been
greatly strengthened, and the historian of to-day, in basing his
Egyptian chronology upon Manetho for the periods not covered by
known monuments, is by no means working altogether in the dark. It is
true that there have been two schools of opinion as to how far this
reliance should be carried: one school contending very warmly that
Manetho’s lists are probably in places the records of contemporaneous
dynasties,--it being known that the government was in many periods
divided,--and hence that the entire period of time required for the
dynasties as listed must be materially shortened; the other school
maintaining that Manetho himself took note of such contemporaneous
dynasties and eliminated them from his list, retaining only a single
line of what he regarded as legitimate succession.

For the general student, it really does not matter greatly which of
these views is correct. The general accuracy of Manetho is admitted on
all hands, and the monuments sustain him to the extent of making sure
a long list of dynasties, whether or not his exact number be admitted.
When we recall that Manetho himself was, relatively speaking, a modern,
living in the third century B.C., and hence writing about periods that
were, even according to minimum estimates, farther separated from his
age than he is from our own, it would not seem strange if he should
have made some mistakes. But it is well enough also to remember that
his lists would probably not have been challenged with so much fervour
in our time, had it not been for certain ulterior bearings of this
question of chronology. The clew will be evident to whoever notices
that in the different estimates of Egyptian chronology the older
historians--those of the earlier decades of the nineteenth century--are
pretty generally the ardent advocates of a lower or more recent date
for the beginning of the first dynasty.

In a word, during the period when the question of the antiquity of
man was still matter of ardent controversy, even the most fair-minded
historian could not help letting his prejudice on that subject
influence his judgment regarding Egyptian chronology. The year 2349
B.C., which his Bible margin had taught him to recall as a date when
the history of mankind began anew after an all-devastating flood,
stood out in his mind as a danger mark that he must not let himself
be carried past if he could possibly avoid it. If he preferred the
Septuagint reckoning, he gained a few centuries more of leeway, say
till 3250 B.C., but this was the ultimate limit, behind which no
evidence could carry him.

Meantime historians who had not this bias were unequivocally fixing
the beginning of the Egyptian dynasties a thousand years or so
farther back. But their reckoning could count for nothing in the
general verdict so long as the old estimate of man’s antiquity was
held. No sooner, however, had it come to be generally conceded that
the long-authoritative dates were incorrect, than a reaction set in
among the Egyptologists. Once it was conceded that man had been an
inhabitant of the earth for hundreds of thousands of years, and that
the years of his early civilisation must reach back into the tens of
thousands, the form of the bias of the average searcher into ancient
history was changed. That very human tendency which makes one like to
excel his neighbour, caused the Egyptologists now to vie with their
only competitors, the Assyriologists, in lengthening out their records,
instead of shortening them. We do not mean that a bias was consciously
admitted in one case or the other; but historians are human, and their
judgments, like those of other mortals, are never altogether free from
human prejudice.

The clear and simple fact seems to be, that no knowledge is at hand
that enables the historian to fix with certainty the remoter dates
of Egyptian history. The very most that can be done, at present,
is to determine minimum dates, as is done by the most recent German
writers of authority, and to content ourselves with stating these,
understanding that they make no pretence to absolute accuracy. When
Professor Meyer, for example, says that the minimum date for the
founding of the Old Memphis Kingdom by King Menes is 3180 B.C., he does
not at all imply that Mariette is wrong in fixing the same event at
5004 B.C., or about two thousand years earlier. He simply means that in
the present state of knowledge he does not feel justified in choosing
a definite date; he is certain, however, that the true date cannot be
placed later than 3180 B.C.

Some such latitude as this we must admit, then, in dealing with ancient
Egyptian chronology. Of course the amount of possible variation
progressively decreases as we come down the ages; but the chronology
does not become absolutely fixed until we reach the comparatively
recent period of King Psamthek I, who reigned from near the middle of
the seventh century before our era.

Fortunately, however, these uncertainties of exact chronology need
interfere but little with our interest and enjoyment in considering
Egyptian history. Chronology is, indeed, as Professor Petrie has
phrased it, “the backbone of history.” But this applies rather to
the general sequence of events than to the exact citation of years;
and fortunately there is no uncertainty at all about the sequence of
important events in Egyptian history, even from the remotest times.
We may not know the exact year in which the great Pyramid was built;
but we do know exactly who built it, and the names and deeds of his
predecessors and successors, as well as the general epoch in which the
events took place. For the purpose of any one but the specialist, we
could scarcely ask more than this. And a like certainty attaches to
all other of the really great epochs of Egyptian history. The general
student may feel quite content with the degree of precision of the
attainable records; and, paying but slight attention to the less
important dynasties, may well fix his attention upon those culminating
periods when the great deeds were accomplished which render the history
of Egypt memorable for all generations of men. The first of these
periods, and the one which now claims our attention, was the epoch of
the so-called Old Kingdom of Memphis--the epoch of the ushering in of
Egyptian history, as known to succeeding generations; yet also the
epoch of the building of the Pyramids--the most gigantic and permanent
structures ever created by human minds and human hands.

Apart from questions of chronology, the sequence of chief events in
Egyptian history is now fairly established and accepted by all schools
of Egyptologists. This course of history proper we have followed under
guidance of specialists who have devoted their lives to the elucidation
of this subject. It may be well, however, to repeat a word of warning
that has already been said as to the incompleteness of the records
on which this narrative is based. It is one thing to assert that the
main events of Egyptian history are known in proper sequence, and it
is quite another to assume that a knowledge of all the events of that
history is accessible. In point of fact, it must be freely admitted
that our knowledge of Egyptian history as a whole is meagre indeed.
Here and there a great event or a great name stands out prominently,
but there are long stretches of time between, when not so much as the
name of a single man is known in many generations.

Generally speaking, however, the periods marked by dearth of records
may be presumed to be periods equally marked by dearth of great
events; and in one sense our history of these distant times assumes
truer relation of perspective than can possibly be given to the
chronicle of later periods which are replete with insignificant and
bewildering details of minor events. Without scruple or regret,
therefore, we may here and there condense the narrative of many
generations of Egyptian history into a line or paragraph, while giving
extended treatment to the deeds and accomplishments of a few great
heroes who make Egyptian history illustrious.

But before turning to the history proper, it will be well to make a
more detailed examination of the chronological foundations on which our
knowledge rests. Eduard Meyer has outlined them succinctly.[a] From
our sources of information, he says, it is evident that we can place
ourselves on certain chronological ground for Egyptian history.

Manetho has rightly retained its general outline. He divides the kings,
from the foundation of the kingdom by Menes until the fall of the last
Darius, into thirty-one ruling houses, or dynasties. His division does
not seem to be always correct; for instance, the Turin papyrus makes
several more divisions out of the Ist Dynasty. Nevertheless, Manetho’s
order has long been commonly accepted, and for many reasons its further
retention commends itself.

The Turin papyrus just mentioned seems to have been written under
Ramses III, as the name of this king appears in the accounts on the
back. It contains a record of the Egyptian kings (the dynasties of the
gods precede them), with a statement of the years of their reigns,
and to some degree of their ages. Unfortunately the papyrus is much
mutilated, and amidst numerous small fragments there exist only a
few large pieces. But it is possible to obtain a general view of the
papyrus by putting the most important fragments into their right
places. It contains (if pages have not been torn off at the end) ten
columns of from twenty-seven to twenty-eight lines, and it mentions
about two hundred and twenty kings’ names, from Menes until before, or
during, the Hyksos period.

These are divided into dynasties, which are sometimes specified only by
a title, and sometimes by the word “reigned” being repeated after the
king’s name. Under the longer lists totals are given. In the few cases
where the figures of the papyrus have been verified by the help of the
memorials, they have been found to be correct. However, the author is
guilty of a great error in the total of the XIIth Dynasty.

The gaps in the papyrus are partially filled by the royal monumental
tablets, which are altogether of a funereal character--a later king or
citizen is shown offering sacrifice to the old rulers.

Three lists carry historical weight:

(1) The tablet of Seti I in Abydos, discovered in 1864 and quite
complete, contains seventy-six names. The tablet of Ramses II, now in
London, is a copy of this.

(2) The tablet of Tehutimes III from Karnak, now in the Louvre, very
much injured and promiscuously put together, contains sixty-one names.

(3) The tablet from the tomb of Tunrei at Saqqarah (under Ramses II,
discovered in 1860), contains fifty-one names, of which forty-seven
remain.

Manetho’s list in its different editions comes next to these accounts.
It was long thought that by putting it in its original form, we
should arrive at a safe basis of Egyptian chronology. A more careful
examination, however, shows us that Manetho is not to be trusted.
Where we can verify his figures in the more ancient periods they
are almost without exception wrong, and this from no fault of the
copyists and makers or extractors; there are constant confusion and
gaps in the succession of names. Numerous examples of such errors
may be seen in the comparison of Manetho’s list with the monuments.
It is only about the XXth Dynasty that his figures seem to be
reliable. Another circumstance must be added. According to Manetho’s
arrangement, the dynasties follow each other, so that he includes a
Theban and a contemporaneous Hyksos family in the XVIIth Dynasty, and
does not reckon each one as a separate ruling house. In truth, such
contemporaneous governments did repeatedly take place, and consequently
they must reduce the dates of Manetho, even if the numbers be correct.
King Menes would not, according to Manetho (under Unger’s calculation),
be placed in the year 5613 B.C., but considerably later.

So we must give up the search for absolute dates as hopeless, and limit
ourselves to an approximate computation of the periods of Egyptian
history. The genealogies of the ruling houses, as well as those of
private people, are of great service, for where we can trace a pedigree
through long periods, we are able to give an approximate estimate of
the number of generations. Thus we arrive at the “minimum” dates, with
which we must content ourselves for the present.

For the long periods from the VIIth to the XIth Dynasties and from
the XIVth to the XVIIth, which are almost completely destitute of
monuments, the dates are extremely problematic. The dates therefore
given for the XIIth Dynasty, for the Pyramid period and for Menes, only
prove that they cannot well be put later, whilst they leave the way
open for any one to put them farther back.[b]

The lists of Manetho, above referred to, are so important as to require
fuller notice.

MANETHO’S TABLE OF THE EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES

=======+=============+===================+=========+=======+======+======
Dynasty| Name | Capital | Province| Length|Years |Years
| of Dynasty | | | of |before|before
| | | | Years |Hegira|Christ
-------+-------------+-------------------+---------+-------+------+------
I |Thinis |Harabat-el-Madfuneh|Girgeh | 253 | 5626 | 5004
II |Thinis |Harabat-el-Madfuneh|Girgeh | 302 | 5373 | 4751
III |Memphis |Mitrahineh |Gizeh | 214 | 5071 | 4449
IV |Memphis |Mitrahineh |Gizeh | 284 | 4857 | 4235
V |Memphis |Mitrahineh |Gizeh | 248 | 4573 | 3951
VI |Elephantine |Gezireh-Assuan |Esneh | 203 | 4325 | 3703
VII |Memphis |Mitrahineh |Gizeh |70 days| 4122 | 3500
VIII |Memphis |Mitrahineh |Gizeh | 142 | 4122 | 3500
IX |Heracleopolis|Ahnas-el-Medineh |Beni Suef| 109 | 3980 | 3358
X |Heracleopolis|Ahnas-el-Medineh |Beni Suef| 185 | 3871 | 3249
XI |Thebes |Medinet Habu |Keneh } | 213 | 3686 | 3064
XII |Thebes |Medinet Habu |Keneh } | | |
XIII |Thebes |Medinet Habu |Keneh | 453 | 3173 | 2851
XIV |Xoïs |Sakha |Menufieh | 184 | 3020 | 2398
XV |Hyksos |San |Sharkieh}| | |
XVI |Hyksos |San |Sharkieh}| 511 | 2836 | 2214
XVII |Hyksos |San |Sharkieh}| | |
XVIII |Thebes |Medinet Habu |Keneh | 241 | 2325 | 1703
XIX |Thebes |Medinet Habu |Keneh | 174 | 2084 | 1462
XX |Thebes |Medinet Habu |Keneh | 178 | 1910 | 1288
XXI |Tanis |San |Sharkieh | 130 | 1732 | 1110
XXII |Bubastis |Tel-Basta |Sharkieh | 170 | 1602 | 980
XXIII |Tanis |San |Sharkieh | 89 | 1432 | 810
XXIV |Saïs |Sa-el-Hagar |Gharbieh | 6 | 1343 | 721
XXV |Ethiopian |Sa-el-Hagar |Gharbieh | 50 | 1337 | 715
XXVI |Saïs |Sa-el-Hagar |Gharbieh | 138 | 1287 | 665
XXVII |Persian |Sa-el-Hagar |Gharbieh | 121 | 1149 | 527
XXVIII |Saïs |Sa-el-Hagar |Gharbieh | 7 | 1028 | 406
XXIX |Mendes |Ashmun-el-Ruman |Dakalieh | 21 | 1021 | 399
XXX |Sebennytes |Samanudi |Gharbieh | 38 | 1000 | 378
XXXI |Persian |Samanudi |Gharbieh | 8 | 962 | 340

End of list according to Manetho

XXXII |Macedonian | | | 27 | 954 | 332
XXXIII |Greek | | | 275 | 927 | 305
XXXIV |Roman | | | 411 | 652 | 30
| | | | | | A.D.
| |Edict of Theodosius| | | 241 | 381
-------+-------------+-------------------+---------+-------+------+------

No one can help being struck by the enormous total to which Manetho’s
summing up of the dynasties brings us. By means of the Egyptian
priest’s lists we are in truth carried back to the times that for all
other peoples are purely mythical, but for Egypt are certainly historic.

Embarrassed by this fact and finding no other means of discrediting
Manetho’s authenticity and veracity, some modern writers have supposed
that Egypt has been at various periods of its history divided into
several kingdoms, and that Manetho gives us as successive some royal
families whose reigns were in fact simultaneous.

According to these authorities the Vth Dynasty, for example, would
have reigned at Memphis at the same time that the VIth governed at
Elephantine. It is not necessary to demonstrate the advantages of
such an arrangement. By bringing certain dates closer together and by
correcting others it is possible by an ingenious and clever arrangement
of the dynasties to shorten almost at will the space of time covered by
Manetho’s lists; thus while, in the table, we have the date 5626 A.H.,
that is, before the Hegira, [5004 B.C.] as that of the foundation of
the Egyptian monarchy, other writers like Bunsen do not go farther back
than 4245 A.H. or 3623 B.C.

On whose side does the truth lie? The more one studies the question,
the more it is seen how difficult it is to reply. The greatest of
all obstacles to the establishment of a definite Egyptian chronology
is that the Egyptians never had a chronology proper. The employment
of an era, properly so called, was unknown to them, and up to the
present time it has never been proved that they reckoned otherwise
than by the years of the reign. And moreover these years were far
from having a fixed point of beginning, since sometimes they began at
the commencement of the year in which the preceding king died, and
sometimes with the coronation of the new king. Whatever may be the
apparent precision of its calculations, modern science will always
be baffled in its attempts to establish that which the Egyptians
themselves did not possess.[c]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter]

CHAPTER I. THE EGYPTIAN RACE AND ITS ORIGIN

[b] EDUARD MEYER, _Geschichte der Alten Aegyptens_.

[d] W.M. FLINDERS PETRIE, from the article “Egyptology” in the New
Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.

[g] ADOLF ERMAN, _Aegypten und Aegyptisches Leben im Alterthum_.

CHAPTER II. THE OLD MEMPHIS KINGDOM

[b] EDUARD MEYER, _Geschichte des Alterthums_.

[d] A. WIEDEMANN, _Aegyptische Geschichte_.

[e] DIODORUS SICULUS, _The Historical Library_ (translated from the
Greek by G. Booth).

[f] G.C.C. MASPERO, _The Dawn of Civilisation_ (translated from the
French by M. L. McClure).

[g] SAMUEL BIRCH, translation of the Inscription of Una in _Records of
the Past_.

[h] H.C. BRUGSCH, _Geschichte Aegyptens unter den Pharaonen_.

CHAPTER III. THE OLD THEBAN KINGDOM

[b] H. C. BRUGSCH, _Geschichte Aegyptens unter den Pharaonen_.

[c] G.C.C. MASPERO, _Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient_.

[d] HERODOTUS, _The History of Herodotus_ (translated from the Greek by
William Beloe).

[e] WILLIAM BELOE, Translator of the History of Herodotus.

[f] K.R. LEPSIUS, _Letters from Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Peninsula of
Sinai_ (translated from the German by Leonora and Joanna B. Horner).

[g] EDUARD MEYER, _Geschichte des Alterthums_.

[h] W.N. FLINDERS PETRIE, _A History of Egypt_.

[i] FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS, _The Works of Josephus_ (translated from the
Greek by William Whiston).

[j] MANETHO, cited by Josephus.

CHAPTER IV. THE RESTORATION

[b] SAMUEL BIRCH, _Records of the Past_.

[c] G.C.C. MASPERO, _The Struggle of the Nations_ (translated from the
French by M.L. McClure).

[d] G.C.C. MASPERO, _Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient_.

CHAPTER V. THE NINETEENTH DYNASTY

[b] G.C.C. MASPERO, _Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient_.

[c] EDUARD MEYER, _Geschichte des Alterthums_.

[d] H.C. BRUGSCH, _Geschichte Aegyptens unter den Pharaonen_.

CHAPTER VI. THE FINDING OF THE ROYAL MUMMIES

[b] G.C.C. MASPERO, _La Trouvaille de Deir-el-Bahari_.

CHAPTER VII. THE PERIOD OF DECAY

[b] G.C.C. MASPERO, _The Struggle of the Nations_ (translated from the
French by M.L. McClure).

[c] G.C.C. MASPERO, _Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient_.

[d] EDUARD MEYER, _Geschichte des Alterthums_.

CHAPTER VIII. THE CLOSING SCENES

[b] L. MÉNARD, _Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient_.

[c] DIODORUS SICULUS, _The Historical Library_ (translated from the
Greek by G. Booth).

[d] EDUARD MEYER, _Geschichte des Alterthums_.

CHAPTER IX. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE EGYPTIANS

[b] J. GARDNER WILKINSON, _A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians_.

[c] J. F. C. CHAMPOLLION, _Descriptions de l’Égypte_; _l’Égypte sous
les Pharaohs_; _etc._

[d] P. LE PAGE RENOUF, in Birch’s _Records of the Past_.

[e] AMELIA B. EDWARDS, _A Thousand Miles Up the Nile_.

[f] FRANÇOIS CHABAS, in Birch’s _Records of the Past_.

[g] E. A. T. W. BUDGE, _The Book of the Dead_.

[h] K. R. LEPSIUS, _Denkmäler_.

[i] SAMUEL BIRCH, _Records of the Past_.

[j] HERODOTUS, _The History of Herodotus_ (translated from the Greek by
William Beloe).

[k] GEORG EBERS, _An Egyptian Princess_; _A History of Egypt_; _etc._

[m] G. C. C. MASPERO, _Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient_.

[n] AUGUSTE MARIETTE, _Aperçu de l’histoire d’Égypte_.

[o] W. N. FLINDERS PETRIE, Numerous Works; see _Bibliography_, p. 302.

CHAPTER X. THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION

[b] HERODOTUS, _The History of Herodotus_ (translated from the Greek by
William Beloe).

[c] ADOLF ERMAN, _Aegypten und Aegyptisches Leben im Alterthum_.

[d] DIODORUS SICULUS, _The Historical Library_ (translated from the
Greek by G. Booth).

[e] J. GARDNER WILKINSON, _A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians_.

[f] STRABO, _The Geography of Strabo_ (translated from the Greek by J.
Falconer and H. C. Hamilton).

CHAPTER XI. EGYPTIAN CULTURE

[b] J. GARDNER WILKINSON, _A Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians_.

[c] G. C. C. MASPERO, rendering in _Les Contes Populaires de l’Égypte
Ancienne_ of M. Golenischeff’s translation of the original papyrus in
the Imperial Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

[d] HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, _The History of the Art of Writing_.

[e] CLAUDIUS ÆLIANUS, _The Variable History of Ælianus_ (translated
from the Greek by A. Fleming).

APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS

[b] HERODOTUS, _History of Herodotus_ (translated from the Greek by
William Beloe).

[c] DIODORUS SICULUS, _The Historical Library_ (translated from the
Greek by G. Booth).

APPENDIX B. THE PROBLEM OF EGYPTIAN CHRONOLOGY

[b] EDUARD MEYER, _Geschichte des Alterthums_.

[c] A. MARIETTE, _Aperçu de l’histoire d’Égypte_.

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF EGYPTIAN HISTORY

BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE
PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY, WITH CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

In the preparation of the present work the editors have had occasion
to consult a very large number of books, in addition to those actually
quoted. Not all of these are here listed; neither is any effort made
to have the present bibliography complete in other respects. Many
names of recent works that might easily be added are purposely omitted
because of the facility with which the student will come upon them.
On the other hand, a good many works are included because their very
obscurity would lead to their being overlooked. Some of these had
great importance in their day, and must be looked to by any one who
would appreciate the history of development and research in this
field. Others had at best only incidental importance, yet should not
be quite forgotten. Brief critical estimates are in many cases added
to orientate the would-be investigator; and in the case of the more
important authorities, biographical notes are also appended.

* * * * *

=Adams=, W. M., The Mystery of Ancient Egypt. The New Review, 1893; The
House of the Hidden Places. London, 1895.--=Ælianus=, Claudius, The
Variable History of Ælianus. London, 1576.

_Claudius Ælianus_ was a Roman citizen who lived in the second
century A.D., the exact date being uncertain. Though a Roman, he
preferred Greek to Latin, and wrote all his works in the former
language. He has been denominated the “honey-tongued,” from the
character of his style, and the “sophist,” from his teaching
rhetoric. Two of his works are still extant: the _Varia Historia_,
from which our excerpts are taken, and a book on natural history,
which enjoyed great repute in later classical and mediæval times.
Both of these works are written apparently without system, though
the author himself declared that it was his intention to shift from
one topic to another to keep up the reader’s interest. The work
on natural history, having of course no other than an antiquarian
interest in modern times, has never been translated; but the
_Varia Historia_ has been rendered into English twice; the quaint
old translation of Fleming, made in 1576, being the one which we
select for our excerpts. The value of this work depends largely
upon the fact that it is made up from the writings of still more
ancient historians whose works are mainly lost.

=Amélineau=, E., La Géographie de l’Égypte à l’époque copte. Paris,
1893; Résumé de l’histoire de l’Égypte. Paris, 1894; Les nouvelles
fouilles d’Abydos, Angero; Les Moines égyptiens. Paris, 1890; La morale
égyptienne. Paris, 1892; Les idées morales dans l’Égypte ancienne.
Paris, 1895; Essai sur l’évolution historique et philosophique
des idées morales dans l’Égypte ancienne. Paris, 1896; Histoire
de la sépulture et des funérailles dans l’ancienne Égypte. Paris,
1896.--=Anonymous=, Ausführliches Verzeichniss der aegyptischen
Altertümer, Gipsabgüsse und Papyrus der Berl. Samml. Berlin, 1894.

* * * * *

=Batten=, S. H., Pharaoh of the Exodus. Melbourne, 1880.--=Bénédite=,
G., Le temple de Philæ. Paris, 1895.--=Berkley=, E., Pharaohs and
their People. London, 1884.--=Birch=, S., Records of the Past. London,
18 vols., 1873; Egypt to 300 B.C. London, 1875; Two Tablets of the
Ptolemaic Period (Archeologia, vol. 39). London, 1863.

_Dr. Samuel Birch_ was born in London, 3rd November, 1813;
died there 27th December, 1885. He was a scholar of recognised
profundity and also of remarkable versatility. He went early to the
British Museum in the department of antiquities, his specialty at
that time being Chinese. Later on he became chief of the department
of antiquities, including oriental, classical, mediæval, and early
British archæology. He became recognised as an expert in all these
departments, and his publications cover almost the entire range of
archæology. He was an innovator in both Assyriology and Egyptology.
In the latter field his publications are many and varied, one of
the most important being his Grammar of the Egyptian Language,
which was incorporated with the great work on Egyptian history by
Baron Bunsen. As the science of Egyptology was then in a transition
state, this and the other works of Dr. Birch are of course now
superseded, though by no means rendered valueless. One of the
most important editorial tasks of Dr. Birch was the bringing out
of a series known as _The Records of the Past_, which consisted
of translations from Egyptian and Assyrio-Babylonian records.
Dr. Birch himself contributed several of these. He also had the
distinction of being the first translator of the Egyptian Book of
the Dead. To some extent Dr. Birch suffered from his versatility;
being known in so many fields, he is not thought of pre-eminently
in connection with any one of them, but he will always be
remembered as an innovator in the field of Egyptology.

=Bokh=, A., Manetho und die Hundstern-Periode. Berlin,
1845.--=Borchardt=, Zur Geschichte der Pyramiden, Ztschr. für Aegypt.
Spr., 1894.--=Boudier=, E., Vers égyptiens, métrique démotique. Paris,
1897.--=Breasted=, I. H., De hymnis in solem sub rege Amenophide
IV conceptis. Berlin, 1894.--=Brimmer=, M., Egypt. Three Essays on
the History, Religion, and Art of Egypt. Boston, 1891.--=Brugsch=,
H. C., Geschichte Aegyptens unter den Pharaonen. Leipsic, 1877, 2
vols. Genesis of the Earth and of Man. London, 1880. Die aegyptischen
Altertümer in Berlin. Berlin, 1857. Recueil des monuments égyptiens.
Leipsic, 1862-1863. Dictionnaire géographique de l’ancienne Égypte.
Leipsic, 1877-1880. Thesaurus inscriptionum ægyptiarum. Leipsic,
1883-1891. Religion und Mythologie der alten aegypter. Leipsic, 1890.
Die aegyptologie, Abriss der Entzifferungen und Forschungen. Leipsic,
1891.

_Heinrich Carl Brugsch_ was born at Berlin, 1827; died there, 1894.
He belonged to that rather large company of German investigators,
who are at once scholars and diplomatists. His residence in Egypt
was not as an ordinary tourist or investigator, but as an officer
of the Egyptian Government, with the title of Bey and later of
Pasha. Like his famous countrymen, Niebuhr and Bunsen, before him,
he found time in the midst of official duties for a wide range of
scholarly activities, and he soon became known, not only as one
of the foremost Egyptologists, but as incomparably the highest
authority on one form of the Egyptian writing, namely, the demotic.
His _History of Egypt under the Pharaohs_, derived entirely from
the monuments, is a work of the most standard authority. It is,
in the main, a work rather for the scholar than for the general
public; but it is by no means without popular interest, and,
notwithstanding its bulk, it has been translated into English.
The reader will recall that we have based our chronology upon the
system of Dr. Brugsch,--a system confessedly artificial, which,
however, meets the difficulties of the subject perhaps better than
any other yet devised.

=Budge=, E. A. W., The Book of the Dead. London, 1895; Egyptian Ideas
of the Future Life. London, 1899; Egyptian Magic. London, 1899; The
Mummy: Chapters on Egyptian Funeral Archæology. Cambridge, 1893; Egypt
in the Neolithic and Archaic Periods. London and New York, 1902.

_Ernest A. Wallis Budge_, M.A., Litt.D., D.Lit., F.S.A., Keeper of
Assyrian and Egyptian Antiquities, British Museum. Dr. Budge has at
once the profundity and the versatility of his famous predecessor
at the British Museum, Dr. Birch. The list of his writings on
oriental archæology is much too long to be cited in full here.
Among other things he has put would-be students of the subject
under lasting obligations by preparing an elementary treatise on
the Egyptian language, and following it up with a more advanced
work for the use of the student, He has also made an elaborate
translation of the Book of the Dead, utilising the recent advances
in the knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphics to improve upon the
former translations. His latest work in this field is a popular
history of Egypt, in eight volumes, published at London, 1902. In
addition to his recognised profound scholarship, Dr. Budge has in
a high degree the capacity for literary presentation, and he has
not felt himself above considering the needs of the unscholarly
public and of the beginner in oriental studies. Thus his catalogue
of Egyptian antiquities at the British Museum, which is ostensibly
only a guide-book to the collection there, is in itself a work of
real literary merit, which would serve as a valuable introduction
to the study of archæology even if placed in the hands of students
who have not access to the collection which it specifically
describes.

=Bunsen=, C. K. J., Egypt’s Place in Universal History. London,
1848-1867.

_Baron Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen_ was born at Korbach,
Germany, 25th August, 1791, and died at Bonn, 28th November,
1860. Baron Bunsen had the original instincts of the scholar,
as proved by his numerous writings; but it was his fate to be
shifted early in life from the field of professional scholarship
to that of the diplomatist, and his researches were carried
on under somewhat disadvantageous circumstances. He had come
early under the influence of Niebuhr, and had planned a life of
scholarship; but becoming the tutor of Frederick William III, and
being advanced through royal influence to a diplomatic post in
Rome, and afterwards in London, he came to be more widely known
as a diplomatist and statesman than as a scholar. Nevertheless,
he contributed much to a popular knowledge of history, through
his _Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgeschichte_, and its English
translation as above. It had a wide circulation, and did perhaps
more than almost any other single work to popularise the relatively
new subject of Egyptology. His _Gott in der Geschichte_ (God in
History) also had great popularity. The eminently philosophical
character of these writings is valued even at the present day,
though it must be conceded that the point of view regarding many
of the subjects treated has quite radically changed in the past
half century. It follows that the interest in Baron Bunsen’s books
must to a large extent be antiquarian rather than historical at the
present day, though they cannot be ignored by any one who wishes
to have a full comprehension of the growth and development of the
science of Egyptology.

* * * * *

=Cailliaud=, F., Travels in the Oases of Thebes. London,
1829.--=Casanova=, Memoirs on the History and Archæology of
Egypt.--=Chabas=, J. F., in Birch’s _Records of the Past_. London,
1873, 12 vols.; Étude sur l’antiquité historique. Paris, 1873; Mélanges
Égyptologiques. Châlons, 1863-1873.

_Joseph François Chabas_ was born 2nd January, 1817, in Briançon;
died 17th May, 1882, at Versailles. He was a specialist in
Egyptology, who wrote widely and was recognised as an authority
of importance. He is best known to the English reader through
certain translations, notably of the inscriptions on the obelisks,
published in Birch’s _Records of the Past_. He produced no general
historical work, such as would have brought his name before the
public at large, and hence he is less familiarly known than many
other Egyptologists of less worth.

=Chaillé-Long=, C., L’Égypte et ses provinces perdues. Paris,
1892.--=Champollion=, J. F., L’Égypte sous les Pharaohs. Paris, 1814;
Descriptions de l’Égypte, etc.; De l’écriture hiératiques des anciens
Égyptiens. Paris, 1824; Précis du Système Hiéroglyphique des anciens
Égyptiens. Paris, 1824, 2 vols.; Monuments de l’Égypte et de la Nubie.
Paris, 1835-1845, 4 vols.

_Jean François Champollion_ was born at Figéac, Lot, France, 23rd
December, 1790; died at Paris, 4th March, 1832. Champollion’s
work has received comprehensive attention in our text (see
Egypt, Chapter XI) in connection with the interpretation of the
hieroglyphics, in which work Champollion was an innovator of the
first rank. His fame rests chiefly upon this accomplishment, but
his entire life was devoted to Egyptology, and he would have been
remembered always as one of the fathers of the science, even
had he not been the chief originator in the particular work of
interpreting the hieroglyphics. Naturally much of his work has been
superseded by more recent investigations. This must be true, in the
nature of things, of the work of any innovator in science; but, as
we have seen, the whole modern science of Egyptology rests securely
on the foundation which Champollion laid.

=Charmes=, G., L’Égypte archéol. hist. lit. Paris, 1891.--=Chesney=,
I., The Land of the Pyramids. London, 1884.--=Clot-Beg=, A. B., Aperçu
général sur l’Égypte. Paris, 1840; De la peste observée en Égypte.
Paris, 1840; Description de l’Égypte; Coup d’œil sur la peste et les
quarantaines. Paris, 1851.--=Cook=, F. C., Records of the Past. London,
1873, 18 vols.--=Cooper=, W. A., Short History of Egyptian Monuments.
London, 1876.--=Cory=, I. P., Ancient Fragments of Phœnician, Chaldean,
Egyptian, and other writers. London, 1826, second edition, 1832.

This work has been revised by E. Richmond Hodges in an edition
published in 1876, containing some improvements but lacking the
original Greek and Latin texts. The work is purely a compilation
consisting solely of fragmentary remains of various classical
authors. It gathers into a single work a great variety of matter,
much of which was hitherto inaccessible to the average scholar;
fragments, many of which give us an interesting view of various
historical characters. We shall have occasion to quote some of
these excerpts in other connections. The original work contained
certain Neo-Platonic forgeries known as the Oracles of Zoroaster,
the Hermetic Creed, and the Orphic and Pythagorean fragments
which are discarded by the editor of the new edition as being of
doubtful authenticity and little value. Even these, however, have
an antiquarian interest, and the fact that the excerpts are given
in the original languages as well as in the translation, makes the
earlier edition of the work, as published by Cory himself, still
particularly valuable.

=Cougny=, G., L’art antique (L’Égypte, etc.) Paris, 1891.--=Cusieri=,
Storia fisica e politicia dell’ Egitto delle prime memorie de suoi
abitanti al 1842. Florence, 1862, 2 vols.

* * * * *

=Daressy=, I., Contribution a l’étude de la 21ème dynastie égyptienne
in Rev. Archéol. 3e serie 27.--=Davis=, Ch. H. S., The Book of the
Dead. New York; Egyptian Mythology. In Biblia, VI, 9.--=Daunou=, P.
C. F., Cours d’études historiques. Paris, 1842, 20 vols.--=Diodorus
Siculus=, The Historical Library. London, 1700.

A somewhat extended account of _Diodorus_ and his work will be
found in Part I in the chapter on world histories, and a further
note in Egypt, Appendix A, p. 268. It is unnecessary to make
further comment here, beyond mentioning the translation from which
our excerpts are made. This, as will be seen, was published just
at the beginning of the eighteenth century; but it has never been
superseded, few scholars having cared to undertake the task of
translating an author whose works are so voluminous. Even were
more recent translations available, the one we have used would
still have been selected, because of the quaintness of its diction,
which, as has been suggested, conveys to the average reader a
better idea of the original language than would a more modern
rendering.

=Driault=, E., La Question d’Orient depuis ses origines jusqu’ à nos
jours. Paris, 1898.--=Dümichen=, J., Geographie des alten Aegyptens.
Berlin, 1887; Bauurkunde der Tempelanlagen von Dendéra. Leipsic, 1865;
Historische Inschriften. Leipsic, 1867-1869, 2 vols.; Der Grosspalast
des Petnamenap. Leipsic, 1894; Karte des Stadtgebietes von Memphis und
benachbarter Districte. Leipsic, 1895; Die Flotte einer aegyptischen
Königin. Leipsic, 1868.

_Johannes Dümichen_ was born 15th October, 1833, in Weisholz,
Germany; died 7th February, 1894, at Strassburg. Dr. Dümichen was a
student of Lepsius and Brugsch, and he devoted his entire life to
Egyptology. He made several journeys to Egypt and wrote extensively
regarding the archæological features of the subject. His works are
mainly technical, and while very valuable for specialists, are not
always equally interesting to the general reader. What would have
been perhaps his most important contribution, his comprehensive
history of Egypt undertaken for the Oncken series, was incomplete
at the time of his death; having dealt only with the geographical
and archæological features. The work was completed by Eduard Meyer
(see below).

=Duncker=, M., Geschichte des Alterthums. Berlin, 1855, 1877, etc., 6
vols; History of Antiquity (translated by Evelyn Abbott). London, 1877,
6 vols.

_Maxmilian Wolfgang Duncker_ was born 15th October, 1811, at
Berlin; died 21st July, 1896. The writings of Duncker cover a wide
range of historical subjects, but he will chiefly be remembered
for his _History of Antiquity_, which took rank on publication as
the most important contribution to the subject. It was improved in
successive editions, and was translated into English. Its merits of
style are unusually great for a German work, and, needless to say,
it was built on authorities with the usual German comprehensiveness
of view. Dealing with the subject of oriental history, however, it
is necessarily out of date regarding many subjects, and the more
scientific, if somewhat less popular, work of Meyer has latterly
superseded it to a large extent.

* * * * *

=Ebers=, G., Egypt. London, 1880; Über das hieroglyph. Schriftsystem,
Berlin, 1875.

_Georg Moritz Ebers_ was born 1st March, 1837; died August, 1898.
The name of Ebers is probably better known to the general public
than that of any other Egyptologist. But the average reader of
his very popular novels is not perhaps aware that the author was
a technical Egyptologist of the highest rank. Ebers made personal
explorations in Egypt, the most notable result being the discovery
of the papyrus which has since borne his name,--a remarkable
document dealing with the practice of medicine in old Egypt, which
remains our chief source of knowledge regarding this subject.

=Erman=, A., Aegypten und aegyptisches Leben in Altertum. Tübingen,
1887; Life in Ancient Egypt. London, 1894; Die Entstehung eines
Totentextbuches, in Ztschr. für Aegypt. Spr. no. 32, 1894.

_Dr. Adolf Erman_, Professor of Egyptology in the University of
Berlin, Director of the Berlin Museum, member of the Royal Prussian
Academy of Sciences, at Berlin, etc., was born 31st October,
1854, at Berlin. Professor Erman is the successor of Lepsius in
the chair of Egyptology at the University of Berlin, and it is
felt that the mantle of the great Egyptologist has fallen on
worthy shoulders. Professor Erman’s writings have mainly had to
do with grammatical and literary investigations. His editions of
the romances of old Egypt are models of scholarly interpretation.
They give the original hieratic text with translations into
Egyptian hieroglyphics, into Latin, and into German. Such works
are, of course, intended chiefly for the scholar. Persons capable
of such works of scholarship are seldom interested in the exact
manner of presentation of their subject, and very generally they
scorn popular treatment in their writings. But Professor Erman,
following the precedent of here and there a forerunner such as
Heeren, has written a strictly popular work on the life of the
ancient Egyptians that is by far the most complete treatise on the
subject attempted since the time of Wilkinson. The reader will not
have overlooked the masterly characterisation of Egyptian history
which Professor Erman has written for the present work.

* * * * *

=Ferguson=, J., History of Architecture. London, 1874, 4 vols.

_James Ferguson_ was born at Ayr, Scotland, 22nd January, 1808;
died 9th January, 1886. The personal history of Ferguson is quite
unlike that of almost any other Anglo-Saxon of similar achievements
except Grote; but is in some ways closely suggestive of the great
historian of Greece. It even more closely resembles the life of
Schliemann, the great German, whose rediscovery of Troy has made
his name familiar to every one. Like Schliemann Ferguson devoted
the years of his early manhood to a purely commercial pursuit, and
like him he followed this pursuit with such success as to acquire
a fortune, which enabled him to retire while still in the prime of
manhood. Oddly enough, the parallel between these two lives is made
still closer by the fact that the particular commodity with which
each dealt chiefly was indigo. But beyond this the parallel no
longer holds, for the seat of Schliemann’s commercial activities,
as will be recalled, was Russia, while Ferguson made his fortune in
India. No sooner had Ferguson acquired a fortune that would justify
him in retiring, than he turned at once to a field of study that
undoubtedly stood in need of investigation, and made that study his
life-work. Guided by the same energy and judgment that gained him
a fortune in his commercial pursuits, Ferguson soon made himself
master of the subject of architecture, and presently came to be
known as the chief authority on the history of architecture in
antiquity.

=Fleay=, I. G., Egyptian Chronology. London, 1899 (Jour. Brit. Archeol.
Assoc., 1899).--=Fries=, S. A., 1st Israel jemals in Aegypten gewesen?
In _Sphinx_, I, 207-221.

* * * * *

=Gagnol=, Cours d’histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient. Tours,
1891.--=Ganeval=, L., L’Égypte. Lyon, 1882.--=Gardner=, A., Naukratis.
London, 1889.--=Gau=, F. C., Antiquités de la Nubie, ou monuments
inédits des bords du Nil. Paris, 1822.--=Geyersburg=, C. H. de, Egypt
and Palestine in Primitive Times. London, 1895.--=Girard=, Description
de l’Égypte.--=Golenischeff=, Impérial Inventaire de la Collection
égyptienne de l’Ermitage. St. Petersburg, 1891.--=Gradenwitz=, O.,
Einführung in die Papyruskunde. Leipsic, 1900. =Grandbey=, Rapport
sur les temples égyptiens. Cairo, 1888.--=Gravierre=, I. de la, La
marine des Ptolémées. Paris, 1885, 2 vols.--=Groff=, W., La fille de
Pharaoh. Cairo.--=Gruson=, H., Im Reiche des Litches (Pyramiden nach
den ältesten Quellen). Braunschweig, 1893.--=Guimet=, Plutarque et
l’Égypte. Paris, 1898.--=Gutschmid=, A. von, Kleine Schriften, vol. 1.
Schriften zur Aegyptologie. Leipsic, 1889.

* * * * *

=Halévy=, Jos., Revue Sémitique d’épigraphie et d’histoire ancienne.
Paris, 1893.--=Harkness=, M. E., Egyptian Life and History. London,
1884.--=Heeren=, A. H. L., Ideen ueber die Politik, den Verkehr und den
Handel der vornehmsten Völker der Alten Welt, 3 edit. Göttingen, 1815,
4 vols. English translation: Historical Researches, etc. Oxford, 1878,
5 vols.

_Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren_ was born at Arbergen, near Bremen,
1760; died at Göttingen, 1842. The celebrated author of _Historical
Researches into the Politics, Intercourse, and Trade of the
Carthaginians, Ethiopians, and Egyptians_ was, during the greater
part of his life, Professor of History at Göttingen; he had,
however, earlier in his career, filled the chair of Philosophy in
the same university, and the happy mingling of the philosophical
with the historical cast of mind is at all times evidenced in his
writings. The historical writings of Professor Heeren cover a wide
field, but his greatest renown was achieved with his _History of
the Nations of Antiquity_. In this Professor Heeren broke new
ground. His scheme of treatment was quite different from that of
any one who had preceded him. His intention was not so much to
elucidate the political history, as to deal with those commercial
relations and social customs which, after all, are the chief
foundations of a nation’s life. In particular he was perhaps
the first great historian who fully grasped the import of the
commercial relations of ancient nations. He made himself master of
all knowledge obtainable in his day bearing on this topic, and his
work at once took rank as the foremost authority on its subject. So
much as this goes almost without saying, for hardly any one attains
to professorship in a German university who has not the qualities
of scholarship calculated to make him an authority on any topic
which he will undertake to treat. But, what is much more unusual
among the Germans, Professor Heeren had also the gift of style.
His work is not only authoritative, but readable. Indeed, in this
regard, it is surpassed even now by very few works in the domain of
history. As evidence of this characteristic, the works of Professor
Heeren were at once translated both into French and into English,
and have the widest popularity in France, England, and America. In
the nature of the case, the authoritative character of his works
cannot have been maintained at their original standard, since the
new discoveries and excavations in the Orient have so altered
the phases of our conception of oriental history. In one sense,
therefore, it is unfortunate that Professor Heeren could not have
written after the excavations of Layard in Nineveh had given the
new stock of material for ferreting out the history of Mesopotamia.
Nevertheless, as far as it went, the history of Heeren was founded
firmly upon facts which the new researches have left unshaken, and
his work, as a whole, still has great value for the historical
student of the period. There are sections of it, indeed, which have
neither been supplanted nor duplicated.

=Hegel=, G. W. F., Lectures on the Philosophy of History. London,
1857.--=Herodotus=, History of Herodotus. London, 1806, 4 vols.

_Herodotus_, the celebrated “Father of History,” or, as K. O.
Müller styles him, the “Father of Prose,” was born at Halicarnassus
in Asia Minor, about 484 B.C., and died at Hurii, Italy, about 424
B.C.; there is no certainty as to the exact dates. Reference has
been made to Herodotus in Egypt. Here it is desirable to add a few
words as to the translation from which our excerpts are chosen.
Needless to say, there have been numerous translations of Herodotus
of varying degrees of merit. Doubtless the most authoritative,
historically considered, is the famous one which Professor George
Rawlinson, with the aid of his brother, Sir Henry Rawlinson, and of
Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, made about the middle of the nineteenth
century. This particular translation, however, is of chief value
not so much for its text as for the scholarly notes which the
translators have appended. As to the text itself, there is at least
one still more recent translation--that by Macaulay--which may
perhaps claim to give even a closer rendering. For the use of the
scholar these translations cannot be too highly commended, but it
still remains true that by far the most readable and, so to say,
Herodotus-like, English rendering of the “Father of History” is
that which was made about a century ago by the Rev. William Beloe
(1756-1817), an English divine, who from 1803 to 1806 was keeper
of printed books at the British Museum, and who produced a variety
of writings of considerable note in their day. His version of
Herodotus has been said, properly enough, to lack the close verbal
accuracy of some more recent performances; but, on the other hand,
the accuracy of its rendering as a translation in the best sense,
rather than a mere literary transcription, is not in question,
and modern critics concede that in point of readableness, Beloe
is quite without a peer. And, broadly considered, one surely is
justified in saying that Herodotus not readable is not Herodotus at
all. Beloe explicitly repudiates the literal plan of translation,
aiming, as he states in his preface, to give as nearly as possible
the spirit of the author, along with a clear interpretation of his
text. How well he succeeded is evidenced by a critical estimate
which says of him that “something in his mental constitution
qualified him admirably for reproducing the limpid simplicity and
amiable garrulity of Herodotus.”

=Hieratische Papyrus= aus den Kgl. Museen zu Berlin, hrsg. von der
Generalverwaltung Berlin.--=Hommel=, F. Der Babylonische Ursprung der
aegyptischen Cultur. München, 1892.

* * * * *

=Jacotin=, Carte topographique de l’Égypte. Paris. 1869.--=St. John=,
Egypt and Nubia. London. 1845.--=Johnson=, V. E., Egyptian Science
from the Monuments and Ancient Books. London, 1892.--=Jornard=, E. F.,
Description de l’Égypte. Paris, 1809.

* * * * *

=Kayser=, F., Aegypten einst und jetzt. Frieburg, 1879, 2nd
ed.--=Kenrick=, J., Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs. London, 1850,
2 vols.--=Kminek-Szedlo=, I., Catalogo di antichita egizie. Torino,
1895.--=Krall=, J., Studien zur Geschichte des alten Aegyptens, in
Sitzber, d. Wiener Acad. d. Wiss. Wien. 1890; Beiträge zur Geschichte
der Blennyer und Nubier. Wien, 1898.--=Krummel=, L., Die Religion der
alten Aegypter. Heidelberg, 1893.

* * * * *

=Lassus=, L’Art égyptien. Paris, 1898.--=Laurent=, F., Études sur
l’histoire de l’humanité. Paris, 1865, 18 vols.--=Lauth=, Aegyptische
Chronologie. Strassburg, 1877.--=Lefébure=, L’Importance du nom
chez les égyptiens. Sphinx, I; Le contre-charme. Sphinx, I; Rites
égyptiens. Paris, 1890.--=Lenormant=, F., Chaldean Magic and its
Origin and Development. London, 1877.--=Lepsius=, K. R., Letters from
Egypt. London, 1853; Königsbuch der alten Aegypter. Berlin, 1858; Das
Totenreich der égypter. Leipsic, 1842; Denkmäler aus Aegypten und
Aethiopien. Berlin, 1849-1859, 12 vols.; Chronologie der Aegypter.
Berlin, 1848; Über einige Berührungspunkte der Aegypt., griech.
und röm. Chronologie. Berlin Acad., 1859; Über die zwölfte Aegypt.
Königsdynastie. Berlin Acad., 1853.

_Karl Richard Lepsius_ was born 23rd December, 1810, at Naumburg,
Prussia; died 10th July, 1884, at Berlin. Professor Lepsius was one
of the most distinguished of Egyptologists. In his maturer years
he had a professorship in Berlin, itself a matter of distinction
in that land of scholarship. He made excursions to Egypt in an
official capacity, and familiarised himself at first hand with
the monuments and records that were his life study. As a writer
Professor Lepsius was less distinguished than some of his confrères
in the field, though all that he wrote had, of course, the stamp of
the highest authority. His letters from Egypt and Nubia, being of
a more popular character than his other writings, were translated
into English and widely circulated. It must be admitted, however,
that his descriptions of the famous ruins have interest rather
because they reflect the opinions of a great scholar than because
of their intrinsic literary merit.

=Lieblein=, Aegyptische Chronologie, Christiana, 1863; Recherches sur
la chronologie égyptienne. Paris, 1873; Hieroglyph. Namenwörterbuch.
Leipsic, 1871-1892; Index alphabéthique de tous les mots contenus dans
le livre des morts. Paris, 1875; Gammel-aegyptisk Religion populaert
fremstillet. Christiana, 1883-1885; Handel und Schiffahrt auf dem
Roten Meer in alten Zeiten. Leipsic, 1887; Le livre égyptien que mon
nom fleurisse. Leipsic, 1895.--=Loret=, V., L’Égypte aux temps des
Pharaohs. Paris, 1889; La flore pharahonique. Paris, 1892.

* * * * *

=Mahler=, Ed., Materialen zur Chronologie des alten Aegyptens in
Ztschr. für äg. Spr. no. 32, 1894.--=Mallet=, D., Les premiers
établissements des Grecs en Égypte. Paris, 1893.--=Magrizi=,
Description topographique et historique de l’Égypte. Paris, 1895.
(Trans. from Arabic).--=Mariette=, Choix des monuments et des dessins.
Paris, 1856; Le Sérapeum de Memphis. Paris, 1857-1866, 9 parts; Aperçu
de l’histoire de l’Égypte. Paris, 1864; Nouvelle table d’Abydos.
Paris, 1865; Fouilles executées en Égypte, en Nubie, et au Soudan.
Paris, 1867; Abydos description des fouilles. Paris, 1870-1880,
2 vols.; Catalogue général des monuments d’Abydos. Paris, 1880;
Dendéra: description générale du grand temple de cette ville. Paris,
1870-1880, 5 vols.; Les papyrus égyptiens du musée Bolaq. Paris,
1871-1873, 3 vols.; Karnak, Étude historique et archéol. Paris, 1875;
Deinri al-Bahari. Paris, 1877; Monuments Divers. Paris, 1872-1889;
Les Mastabas de l’ancien empire, ed. by G. Maspero. Paris, 1882-1886;
Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte. Paris, 1878 (2nd ed., 1893).

_August Eduard Mariette_ was born 12th February, 1821, at Boulogne;
died 18th January, 1881, at Bulaq. He was one of the most assiduous
workers, and came to be one of the greatest authorities in the
field of Egyptology. He early made explorations in Egypt, and after
founding the famous Museum at Bulaq spent the remainder of his
life on the ground, almost incessantly occupied with explorations
and with the interpretation of his archæological finds. His first
famous excavations were made at Memphis, about the middle of the
nineteenth century; later on he excavated the famous temple of
Abydos. His publications are very numerous, but they are chiefly
of a scholarly rather than a popular character. He was the highest
authority on the hieratic form of Egyptian writing. Notwithstanding
the technical character of much of his writing, he had a wide
popular reputation, partly due to his official position as director
of the Museum at Bulaq. Like most Frenchmen, Mariette could write
in a popular vein when he chose, and his _Aperçu_, above noted
(translated into English by Miss Mary Brodrick under the title
of _Outlines of Ancient Egyptian History_) is one of the most
entertaining popular studies of the subject.

=Martine=, Histoire du monde oriental dans l’antiquité. Paris,
1894.--=Maspero=, G., Du genre épistolaire chez les égyptiens. Paris,
1872; Sur quelques papyrus du Louvre. Paris, 1875; Études égyptiennes.
Paris, 1879-1882; Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient. Paris,
1886, 4th ed.; L’archéologie égyptienne. Paris, 1887; Les contes
populaires de l’Égypte ancienne. Paris, 1889; Les momies royales de
Deir et Bahari. Paris, 1889; Lectures historiques; histoire ancienne;
Égypte, Assyrie. Paris, 1890; Histoire ancienne des peuples de l’Orient
classique. Paris, 1895; The Struggle of the Nations. Soc. Prom. Chr.
Know. London, 1896; Études de mythologie et d’archéologie égyptienne.
Paris, 1893; The Dawn of Civilisation. Soc. Prom. Chr. Know. London,
1897; Manual of Egyptian Archæology. Paris, 1893; La carrière
administrative de deux hauts fonctionnaires égyptiens vers la fin de la
III dynastie, in Journal asiatique, Vol. XV.

_Gaston Camille Charles Maspero_ was born at Paris 24th June, 1846;
member of the Institute, formerly Professor of Egyptian Archæology
and Ethnology in the _Collège de France_, more recently Director
of the Egyptian Museum at Bulaq. Professor Maspero is one of the
most famous of living orientalists, and since the death of Mariette
Pasha, whose work he has continued in Egypt, he is doubtless
the most authoritative of French Egyptologists. While making a
specialty of this field, however, he has by no means confined
himself to it, and his brilliant writings cover the entire field
of oriental antiquity. While Professor Maspero is known everywhere
to scholars, and recognised by them, as an authority on the topics
of which he treats, his fame as a popular writer is still wider.
In fact in this field he, perhaps, has no peer among Egyptologists
and orientalists, living or dead. His work entitled _Les Origines_
has been translated into English, under the title of _The Dawn of
Civilisation_, as have also its companion volumes, one of which
bears the striking title of _The Struggle of the Nations_, but
these more elaborate works in no wise detract from the importance
and authority of the brilliant earlier _Histoire du peuple de
l’Orient_, from which we shall have occasion to make numerous
extracts, and which, for some unaccountable reason, has not
hitherto been made accessible to English readers. The gift of style
is no rarity among French historians, but Professor Maspero has
it in a degree unusual even among his compatriots, and the whole
range of historical literature can show few works which combine the
qualities of authority and readableness in a higher degree than his.

=Melida=, Historia del arte Egipcio. Madrid, 1899.--=Mémoires=,
publiées par les membres de la mission archéologique française au Caire
sous la direction de Maspero; Memoirs of the Egypt Exploration Fund.
London.--=Ménard=, L., La vie privée des anciens. Paris, 1880-1883, 4
vols.; L’histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient. Paris, 1883. These
works are valuable because of their admirable style. They are the work
of one who is a writer, rather than an Egyptologist; nevertheless,
they are based on a careful study of the authorities, and they may be
turned to with confidence.--=Meglin=, F., Histoire de l’Égypte. Paris,
1823.--=Meyer=, E., Geschichte des alten Aegyptens. Berlin, 1887;
Geschichte des Alterthums. Stuttgart, 1884, etc., 5 vols. (in progress).

_Eduard Meyer_ was born in 1855, at Hamburg, Germany; he is at
present ordinary Professor of Ancient History in the University of
Halle, of which university he is also a graduate. Professor Meyer’s
historical studies, from the outset, have looked particularly to
the history of antiquity. Quite early in life he developed a plan
for writing a comprehensive history of both oriental and classical
antiquity, and the first volume of this work, under the title of
_Geschichte des Alterthums_, appeared in 1884. It is, in some
regards, the most valuable history of antiquity as yet written,
combining, as it does, the characteristic qualities of German
scholarship, with a degree of condensation very unusual in German
works, and a fair measure of popularity of style. The first volume
of Professor Meyer’s history deals solely with the nations of the
Orient, and it furnishes perhaps the best available outline for
the studies of any one who would undertake a full investigation of
Egyptian history. Unfortunately the work is out of print; but a new
edition is promised. The more extended work on Egyptian history was
contributed to the Oncken series.

=Milne=, History of Egypt under Roman Rule. London, 1899.--=Minutoli=,
Über die aegypt. Pigments und Maltechnik der Alten. 1892.--=Molchow=,
E., Aegypten und Palästina. Zürich, 1881.--=Mook=, F., Aegypten’s
vormetallische Zeit. Würzburg, 1880.--=Morgan=, Fouilles à Dahschour.
Wien, 1895; Catalogue des monuments et inscriptions de l’Égypte
antique par Morgan, Bouriant, Legrain, Jequier et Barsant. Wien, 1894.
(Valuable technical works.)--=Müller=, W. Max, Who were the Ancient
Ethiopians? Philadelphia, 1894; Asien und Aegypten nach altaegyptischen
Denkmälern. Leipsic, 1895.

* * * * *

=Naville=, The Temple of Deir al-Bahari. London, 1894; The Store-city
of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus. London, 1888. (Valuable works of
an original explorer.)--=Norovitch=, L’Europe et l’Égypte. Paris, 1898.

* * * * *

=Ollivier-Beauregard=, La caricature égyptienne. Paris,
1894.--=Osburn=, W., Monumental History of Egypt. London, 1854. (Of
antiquarian interest.)--=Oxley=, W., Egypt. London, 1884.

* * * * *

=Palmer=, W., Egyptian Chronicles. London, 1861, 2 vols.--=Parsons=,
A. R., New Light from the Great Pyramid. New York, 1894.--=Parthey=,
I. F. O., Erdkunde des alten Aegyptens.--=Paturet=, La condition
juridique de la femme dans l’ancienne Égypte. Paris, 1886.--=Pensa=,
G., Les Cultures de l’Égypte. Paris, 1897.--=Pentaur=, in Brugsch’s
Egypt. London, 1881, 2 vols. (The work ascribed to Pentaur is a poem
describing the exploits of Ramses II, like the _Battle of Kadesh_.
Pentaur, however, is not the author of it, but merely the transcriber
of one copy of this poem. See p. 212.)--=Perring=, I. S., Pyramids of
Gizeh. London, 1839-1842, 3 vols.--=Perrot= and =Chipiez=, Histoire
de l’art dans de l’antiquité. Paris, 1881-1889. (The series of works
on ancient art by these French authors constitutes one of the most
important contributions to the subject ever written. The works are
accessible in an English translation.)--=Petrie=, W. M. F., A History
of Egypt from the Earliest Times to the XVIth Dynasty. London, 1894;
Inductive Metrology. London, 1877; Plans, Descriptions, and Theories.
London, 1880; The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh. London, 1883; Tanis I.
London, 1885; Tanis II, Nebesheh and Defenneh. London, 1887; Naukratis
I. London, 1886; Racial Portraits, 190 Photographs from the Egyptian
Monuments. London, 1888; Historical Scarabs. London, 1889; Hawara,
Biahmu, and Arsinoe. London, 1889; Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara. London,
1890; Tell el Hesy (Lachish). London, 1891; Ten Years’ Diggings.
London, 1892; Tell-el-Amarna. London, 1894; Egyptian Tales. London,
1894-1895; Egyptian Decorative Art. London, 1895; Syria and Egypt from
the Tell-el-Amarna letters. London, 1898.

_Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie_ was born in 1853 at Charlton,
England; D.C.L. Oxford, 1893; LL.D. Edinburgh, 1895; he is at
present Professor of Egyptology in University College, London.
Professor Petrie is perhaps more widely known to the public
at large than any other living Egyptologist. Though still a
comparatively young man, he has devoted more than twenty years to
almost continuous exploration of the ruins of ancient Egypt. From
the very outset he gained a reputation as a discoverer of buried
cities, which his subsequent exertions have amply sustained.
Professor Petrie comes naturally by the instincts of the explorer,
as he is a grandson of Captain Matthew Flinders, who was celebrated
for his explorations of the Australian coast at the beginning of
the nineteenth century. The recitals of the fabulous wonders of
Australia are not more fascinating or more marvellous than the
narratives Professor Petrie has been enabled to give of the long
lost and long forgotten mysteries of Egypt.

=Piehl=, Deux déesses égyptiennes (in Mélanges de Harlez). Leiden;
Inscriptions hiéroglyphiques recueillies en Europe et en Égypte.
Leipsic, 1895.--=Poole=, R. S., Cities of Egypt. London, 1882; Egypt.
London, 1881.

* * * * *

=Rawlinson=, G., Egypt and Babylon. London, 1885; Ancient Egypt.
London, 1887; History of Ancient Egypt. London, 1881, 2 vols. (Canon
Rawlinson’s works on Egypt were perhaps written to round out his series
of oriental histories. They are of course based on the authorities,
and are at once dependable and entertaining.)--=Regaldi=, L’Egitto
antico. Firenze, 1882.--=Renouf=, P. le Page, The Book of the Dead in
Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., Vol. XI, 1894-1896; Lectures on the Origin
and Growth of Religion. London, 1880. (These works, written by the
successor of Dr. Birch, and the predecessor of Dr. Budge as Keeper of
the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum, have,
of course, the fullest authority. The religious phases of oriental
archæology had a peculiar interest for the author, and his writings
are confined to this field and the field of philology.)--=Reynier=,
L., State of Egypt after the Battle of Heliopolis. London, 1802; De
l’Égypte sous la domination des Romains. Paris, 1807.--=Revillout=,
Lettres sur les monnaies égyptiennes. Paris, 1895; Mélange sur la
métrologie, l’econ. polit. et l’histoire de l’ancienne Égypte. Paris,
1895.--=Riegl=, Zur Frage des Nachlebens der altaegyptischen Kunst in
der spätern Antike.--=Robinson=, C. S., Pharaoh of the Bondage and
Exodus. New York, 1887.--=Robiou=, F., La religion de l’ancienne Égypte
et les influences étrangères. Paris, 1888.--=Rosellini=, I monumenti
dell’ Egitto e della Nubia. Pisa, 1832-1844. (The work of one of the
most famous pupils of Champollion still has interest and value, though
necessarily antiquated in many regards.)--=Rougé=, E. de, Recherches
sur les monuments qu’on peut attribuer aux six premières dynasties de
Manéthon. Paris, 1866; Études sur divers monuments du règne de Tutmes
III, découverts a Thèbes par E. Mariette. Paris, 1861; Géographie
ancienne de la Basse-Égypte. Paris, 1890. (The name of De Rougé is
permanently associated with the theory that the Phœnician alphabet
was derived from an early form of the Egyptian hieratic writing. The
original paper in which De Rougé advanced this theory was accidentally
destroyed, and the theory did not gain prominence until after the death
of the author. Its correctness is still in doubt, though it has able
champions.)

* * * * *

=Salvolini=, F., Campagne de Ramses le Grand contre les Scheta.
Paris, 1835. (The work of another famous pupil of Champollion, and
innovator in Egyptology.)--=Sayce=, A. H., Egypt of the Hebrews and
Herodotus. London, 1895; Ancient Empires of the East. London, 1844;
Records of the Past.--=Schack-Schackenburg=, Aegyptolische Studien.
1894.--=Schiaparelli=, Il libro dei funerali de antichi Egiziani.
Torino, 1890.--=Schmidt=, O. P., A Self-verifying Chronological History
of Ancient Egypt. Cincinnati, 1889.--=Schweinfurth=, Der Moerissee
nach den neuesten Forschungen. In Petermann’s Mitteil. 1893.--=Sethe=,
Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Alterthumskunde Aegyptens. Leipsic,
1900, 3 parts (in progress).--=Sylvestre de Sacy=, Abd-al-latif,
translated by Sacy. Paris, 1810, 3 vols.--=Simaiki=, A. A., La province
romaine d’Égypte. Paris, 1892.--=Sharpe=, The Chronology and Geography
of Ancient Egypt. London. 1849; History of Egypt to Arab Conquest.
London, 1876, 2 vols. (Works that are out of date, though still having
considerable value, particularly for the later period of Egyptian
history; most entertainingly written.)--=Smith=, P., The Ancient
History of the East from Earliest Times to Conquest of Alexander the
Great. London, 1871.--=Smyth=, C., Piazzi, Our Inheritance in the Great
Pyramid. London, 1890.--=Spiegelberg=, W., Studien sum Rechtswesen des
Pharaohenreiches der Dynastie XVIII-XXI. Hanover, 1892; Rechnungen
aus der Zeit Setis I. Strassburg, 1896; Zur Geographie des alten
Aegyptens by Dümichen. Ed. by Spiegelberg. Leipsic, 1894; Die Novelle
in alten Aegypten. Strassburg, 1898; Arbeiter und Arbeiterbewegung
in Pharaonenreich unter den Ramessiden. Strassburg, 1895; Die
erste Erwähnung Israels in eine aegyptischen Text. Berlin Acad.,
1896.--=Stangen=, Aegypten. Leipsic, 1882.--=Steindorff=, Aegypten und
mykenische Cultur. Berlin, 1892; Grabfunde des mittleren Reiches in
den kgl. Museen zu Berlin; Zur Geschichte der Hyksos. Leipzig, 1894;
Zur Geschichte der XI Dynastie in Ztschr. für Aegypt. Spr. no. 33.
1895; Blütezeit des Pharaonenreiches. Bielefield, 1900.--=Strabo=,
The Geography of Strabo. (Strabo was one of the greatest geographers
of antiquity. A somewhat extended reference to his work has been
made already, and further notice will be taken of it in a later
book.)--=Strauss=, V. von Torney, Der altaegyptische Götterglaube.
Heidelberg, 1890, 2 parts.--=Stucken=, Ed. Die Astralmythen der
Hebräer, Babylonier und Aegypter. Leipsic.

* * * * *

=Tiele=, Histoire comparée des anciennes religions et des peuples
sémitiques. Paris, 1882.--=Tomkins=, H. G., Campaign of Ramses II
against the Kadesh on Orontes. London, 1882.--=Torr=, Cecil, Memphis
and Mycenæ and Examination of Egyptian Chronology and its Application
to the Early History of Greece. Cambridge.--=Tylor= and =Somers
Clarke=, The Tomb of Sebeknekht. London.--=Tylor= and =L. Griffith=,
The tomb of el-Paheri at El-Kab. London.

* * * * *

=Valbuena=, R. F., Egipto y Asiria resucitados. Madrid, 1895.--=Vise=,
R. W., Operations carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837. London,
1840-1842, 3 vols.

* * * * *

=Wallis=, H., Egyptian Chemic Art. London, 1900.--=Watkins=, I.
W., Popular History of Egypt. London, 1886.--=Watson=, G. H., Art
and Antiquities of Ancient Egypt. London, 1843.--=Wendel=, History
of Egypt. New York, 1890.--=Wessley=, Studien über das Verhältniss
des griechischen zum aegyptischen Recht im Lagidenreich. Leipsic,
1891.--=Wiedemann=, A., The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the
Immortality of the Soul. London, 1895; Aegyptische Geschichte. Gotha,
1884; Geschichte von Altaegypten. Cöln and Stuttgart, 1891; Die
Religion der alten Aegypter. München, 1890, and Engl. translation;
Religion of the Ancient Egyptians. London, 1897; Zum Tierkult der
alten Aegypter. Leiden (In Mélanges Ch. de Harlez). (Admirable
works combining authoritative treatment with relatively popular
presentation.)--=Wilcken=, N., Griechische Ostraca aus Ägypten und
Nubien. 1899, 2 vols.--=Wilkinson=, Sir G., Popular Account of the
Ancient Egyptians. London, 1854, 2 vols.; The Egyptians in the Time
of the Pharaohs. London, 1857; Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Egyptians. London, 1878, 3 vols.

_Sir John Gardner Wilkinson_ was born in 1797 at Hardendale,
Westmoreland; died October, 1875. Whoever would know the Egyptian
as he was and become conversant with the manners and customs
of his everyday life, must turn to the pages of Wilkinson. His
Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians has been from the day of
its publication the chief source of information on this subject.
Wilkinson had the good fortune to enter the field of Egyptian
exploration at a time when the subject was new, and he at once
made the field of manners and customs of the Egyptians peculiarly
his own. He travelled extensively, and lived for long periods
continuously in Egypt, studying all accessible monuments of this
marvellous people, with the result that he was able in the end to
reproduce the story of life in ancient Egypt with something not
very far removed from the distinctness of an eye-witness.

=Wilson=, Sir W., Egypt of the Past. London, 1881.--=Woltmann= and
=Woermann=, K., History of Painting. London, 1880, 2 vols. (One of the
most authoritative works on ancient art.)

* * * * *

=Young=, T., Account of Recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphics. London,
1823. (Reference to Young’s connection with the discovery of the
meaning of the hieroglyphics will be found in Book II, Chapter III.)

* * * * *

=Zincke=, E. B., Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedives. London,
1873.

PART III

THE HISTORY OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

BASED CHIEFLY UPON THE FOLLOWING AUTHORITIES

E. BABELON, E. A. WALLIS BUDGE, F. DELITZSCH, JOSEPH HALÉVY, A. H.
L. HEEREN, H. V. HILPRECHT, F. HOMMEL, L. W. KING, A. H. LAYARD,
F. LENORMANT, G. C. C. MASPERO, JOACHIM MENANT, EDUARD MEYER, J.
OPPERT, J. P. PETERS, HUGO RADAU, HENRY RAWLINSON, R. W. ROGERS, A.
H. SAYCE, E. SCHRADER, C. P. TIELE, H. WINCKLER, A. WIEDEMANN

TOGETHER WITH AN ESSAY ON

THE RELATIONS OF BABYLONIA WITH OTHER SEMITIC COUNTRIES

JOSEPH HALÉVY

WITH ADDITIONAL CITATIONS FROM

CLAUDIUS ÆLIANUS, C. J. BALL, G. B. BARTON, G. BERTIN, THE HOLY
BIBLE, P. E. BOTTA, D. G. BRINTON, EUGÈNE BURNOUF, ISAAC PRESTON
CORY, MICHAEL J. DE GOEJE, DIODORUS SICULUS, ADOLF ERMAN, E.
FLANDRIN, G. K. C. GERLAND, G. S. GOODSPEED, G. F. GROTEFEND, I.
GUIDI, H. GUNKEL, HERODOTUS, EDWARD HINCKS, MORRIS JASTROW, P.
JENSEN, ALFRED JEREMIAS, C. H. W. JOHNS, C. JOHNSTON, FLAVIUS
JOSEPHUS, A. H. KEANE, A. VON KREMER, CHRISTIAN LASSEN, J. F.
McCURDY, M. MONTGOMERY, J. P. MAHAFFY, J. DE MORGAN, G. NAGEL,
THEODOR NÖLDEKE, W. G. PALGRAVE, W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, T. G.
PINCHES, PLINY MAJOR, QUINTUS CURTIUS, H. RASSAM, GEO. RAWLINSON,
KARL RITTER, G. C. E. DE SARZEC, V. SCHEIL, NATHAN SCHMIDT, GEORGE
SMITH, C. JULIUS SOLINUS, ALOYS SPRENGER, B. STADE, STRABO, W. H.
FOX TALBOT, G. WEBER, J. GARDNER WILKINSON, HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS,
W. WRIGHT

BY HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS.

_All rights reserved._

MESOPOTAMIA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. THE RELATIONS OF BABYLONIA WITH OTHER
SEMITIC COUNTRIES. BY JOSEPH HALÉVY 309

MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE 318

CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE 337

CHAPTER II. OLD BABYLONIAN HISTORY 349

CHAPTER III. THE RISE OF ASSYRIA 366

CHAPTER IV. FOUR GENERATIONS OF ASSYRIAN GREATNESS 397

CHAPTER V. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA 438

CHAPTER VI. RENASCENCE AND FALL OF BABYLON 446

CHAPTER VII. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 460

CHAPTER VIII. THE RELIGION OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS 515

CHAPTER IX. BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN CULTURE 534

APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS 571

APPENDIX B. EXCAVATIONS IN MESOPOTAMIA, AND THEIR RESULTS 600

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS 627

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY 629

THE RELATIONS OF BABYLONIA WITH OTHER SEMITIC COUNTRIES

WRITTEN SPECIALLY FOR THE PRESENT WORK

BY JOSEPH HALÉVY

Professor in the Collège de France, Paris

Ingratitude in masses, as in individuals, is very apt to be the reward
of great benefactors. Egypt, taciturn, proud, and self-contained, was
respected and admired by all her neighbours, while Greece and Judea,
the shining beacons of Mediterranean civilisation, from the point of
view of morals and science, have had the mortification of receiving
ineffaceable stigmas. In the popular language of our own day, “Greek”
and “Jew” are such offensive sobriquets that the descendants of these
two glorious races seek to avoid the use of those names when describing
their origins.

Babylonia, after her conquest and disappearance from the scene of the
world, although she was vastly superior to her destroyers, did not
escape this little-deserved fate. To the contemporaries of her fall,
Babylon is only the city of courtesans and insipid magic; nevertheless,
in the days of her strength, she ruled the barbarian world that
surrounded her by other means than naked flesh and empty formulas of
incantation. For thousands of years she shone with an unparalleled
brilliancy, and illuminated with her vivifying rays the rude peoples
with which she was in contact. Her influence left indelible traces
even on the civilisations of western Asia and of the Greek world,
partly through the agency of the Phœnicians and Aramæans. And if her
disappearance caused no disturbance in the march of progress, it is
because her mission was fulfilled long before the epoch of her decline.
From the reign of Xerxes, plundered Babylon gradually decayed; on
the arrival of Alexander she was already three-fourths in ruins. The
war of the Diadochi and the advent of the Parthian dynasty completed
her entombment. There was none to assume her moral heritage at that
time, for the heir had already taken all that was precious and truly
imperishable.

A truly intellectual culture is manifested in the possession of a form
of writing. The existence of it in Babylon is proved by documents that
go back to the fifth millennium B.C. The letters consist as yet of
linear strokes representing certain parts of the human body, various
kinds of animals, plants, and natural or manufactured objects. It was
not until later that these strokes assumed the wedge form that has
caused the name “cuneiform” system to be applied to them. The primitive
characters are few in number--about fifteen--and are joined with one
another to form a syllabary that is both ideographic and phonetic.

The intrinsic nature of these values is a striking proof of the Semitic
origin of the system, and completely refutes the hypothesis of the
earlier decipherers that there existed on Babylonian soil prior to the
Semites an alien race called “Sumerian” or “Accadian,” from whom came
the cuneiform characters, as well as the entire Semitic civilisation
of Babylonia. Such syllables as _ab_, “father”; _an_, “god”; _el_,
“pure, bright”; _en_, “lord”; _sal_, “servant, woman”; _il_, “high”;
_is_, “tree, wood”; _ul_, “past”; _mu_, “name”; _rat_, “canal”; _sag_,
“summit, head”; _rig_, “plant, green leaf,” etc., are taken from
fundamental Semitic words of the Babylonian language, which, except for
slight variations, was also that of Elam and Assyria. Nowhere, and at
no period of their existence, is any linguistic modification noticed
which could be attributed to the intrusion of a foreign element.

Without risk of being accused of exaggeration, we may place the
beginning of writing in the sixth, or even in the seventh, millennium
before our era; and yet the Babylonian language has the worn and
phonetically impoverished character which it always preserved
in comparison with its sister languages. This is an astonishing
phenomenon, and gives an idea of the extreme antiquity, not only of the
existence of the Semites in Babylonia, but of the development of the
great civilisation of which they were the creators.

For, after the appearance of the written documents on stone and on
clay tablets, we meet with a most remarkable ancient civilisation:
monarchical institutions, communal organisations, flourishing
agriculture, systematic canalisation, metal working, proprietorship of
land, extensive commercial transactions, fixed taxes, the establishment
of governors in subject countries. With regard to science, astronomy
was cultivated and there were observatories for the study of the
movements of the stars and the eclipses. The Babylonians had the
divisions of the year, the month, and the day; they fixed weights
and measures, and calculated square and cube roots. A rational
classification facilitated the knowledge of botany and zoology.
Dynastic lists were drawn up with care, in which the principal
historical events of the reigns were recorded. Finally, the spiritual
needs of the nation were satisfied by a vast mythological system which
is lost in the night of time, and on the basis of which innumerable
epic tales were developed. Among these the stories of the creation and
of the deluge, the descent of Ishtar into Hades, the adventures of
Gilgames and Etanna, etc., rank among the most beautiful products of
the poetic imagination. On the other hand, the fetichistic mysticism
of prehistoric times was transformed into a learned magic, which was
combined with religious and moral elements, and claimed to be based
upon miraculous facts that had, however, been proved by experience.

A Babylonian furnished with these elements of intellectual culture
must, in spite of his superstitions and the real gaps in his knowledge,
have seemed a superior being to the neighbouring tribes which had the
same racial instincts, but whose development was still embryonic and
had taken place under totally different conditions. It is nothing
astonishing, then, that the most capable of these semi-savages hastened
to adopt, in different degrees, a large part of the Babylonian
civilisation, the advantages of which they had learned to appreciate.
As usual, it is the apparent and material side that was accepted
first; after a more intimate acquaintance with the Babylonian mode of
life, these peoples were captivated by the religious conceptions and
the powerful attraction of the legends and the magic. All this slowly
filtered into the mind of the other Semitic peoples, and became so well
embodied there that some centuries later it formed an integral part
of their national substance, and to such a degree that it has been
possible to disentangle their true origin only by means of an arduous
research which has not yet said the last word.

The extension of Babylonian civilisation beyond its primitive cradle
had its greatest strength during the glorious reign of Sargon I,
the first monarch known to have made military expeditions into the
countries of the west. We shall have, then, to consider, first, the
pre-Sargonic, second, the post-Sargonic, epochs.

Before the reign of Sargon, about thirty-eight hundred years before our
common era, Babylonia had succeeded in forming itself into a national
body, having the same manners, speaking the same language, and using
the same alphabet. No alien people broke into this unity of race and
genius, which included on its eastern side the inhabitants of the
Elamitic plain, forming a simple annex to Babylonia on that side of the
Tigris. The great excess of population flowed into the fertile plains
extending between the Tigris and the mighty chain of the Zagros, and
founded the little kingdoms of Suti, Lulubi, Namar, and with greater
success the powerful kingdom of Assyria, which during the years of its
prosperity became the most powerful military state of the oriental
world.

These very ancient colonies were often in conflict with the mother
country, and Assyria even succeeded in imposing its iron yoke for
several generations; but, save for Sennacherib’s moment of violent
passion, Babylonia remained for all of them a centre of light and of
religious mystery. The Babylonian divinities have their temples and
serve as types for various localisations. In Assyria, especially,
Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela, Ishtar of Kidmur, etc., are
worshipped. The Babylonian origin is perpetuated in the new capital
Ninua (Nineveh), which is the name of a locality of Babylonia, while
the ancient capital Asshur recalls the name of the most ancient god of
the Babylonian epic of creation.

It goes without saying that among the neighbouring tribes of different
languages Babylonian influence could not penetrate so completely. In
the south the numerous Aramæan tribes persisted in their nomadic state;
in the mountainous districts of the east the Susio-Amardians, in the
north the Vannians and the Mitannians, while accepting Babylonian
civilisation, use along with the ordinary Babylonian syllabary a
more limited one for writing their own languages. Traces of Assyrian
influences in ancient epochs have been proved in Cappadocia, which
shows the great antiquity of the kingdom of Assyria. But the most
important and most enduring influence manifests itself in the Semitic
region of the extreme west, in Syrio-Phœnicia and in Palestine.

Through the discovery of the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna, which date from
the reigns of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV, it was learned with
astonishment that in the fourteenth century before our era, Babylonian
was the diplomatic language, not only of the western Semites, but also
of the sovereigns of Egypt. Syria and Phœnicia then formed a vassal
province of the Pharaohs, probably as a result of the conquests of
Tehutimes III; the use of Egyptian writing, or at least of the special
Assyrian type, was to be expected there, but it is the Babylonian
alphabet, the Babylonian dialect, that we find in use. We are forced
to conclude that the extension of Babylonian culture was due to an
occupation of Syria by the Babylonians at an extremely early period,
when Assyria was still too feeble to bar the way to the country of its
origin. History shows the truth of this, for it tells us that Sargon
I spent three years in Syria, and finally made himself master of it;
in one of his maritime expeditions he even crossed to the island of
Cyprus and took possession. It is probable that this vassalage of
Syria to Babylonia underwent frequent reactions and interruptions of
continuity, due in great part to the policy of Egypt, which was seeking
an outlet to the north. The plan of thwarting the covetousness of the
Pharaohs for this province, if not of simply annexing the valley of the
Nile to the great empire of the East, was carried out by Sargon I in an
invasion of Egypt, the success of which is recorded in the account of
the haruspices [Tablet of Omens]. His son Naram-Sin, according to the
same documents, likewise invaded Egypt and killed its king, whose name
has unfortunately disappeared on account of the breaking of the tablet.
Egypt, intimidated, made no hostile movement for several centuries,
which undoubtedly strengthened the Babylonian authority in Syria under
all the dynasties that successively occupied the throne in the capital
of Chaldea.

In the age of Abraham, when Elam exercised supremacy over Babylonia,
the king of the latter country, Khammurabi, the Amraphel of Genesis,
figures among the kings who had accompanied the Elamite suzerain in his
expedition against several tribes of eastern and southern Palestine
(Gen. xiv.). Seven centuries later the Egyptian functionaries of
Syrio-Phœnicia correspond in Babylonian with the court of Thebes. This
province had been conquered a half-century before by Tehutimes III; and
the Egyptian supremacy left its trace in the invention of the Phœnician
alphabet, which marks the decision to break with Babylonian sympathies
in favour of the intellectual culture of Egypt, of which the city of
Byblus was to be the principal centre.

A remarkable circumstance furnished the occasion for this decision.
In this city, where mystic tendencies seem to have prevailed over the
desire for the riches that navigation and commerce bring, a local
goddess was worshipped, called Baal-Gebal, “Lady of Byblus,” who
represented one of the numerous Semitic goddesses known under the name
of Baalat or Belit. She was identified with the great Egyptian goddess
Isis, and the myth of Osiris was attached to the shore of this city
to such an extent that the priesthood of Byblus was believed to be
in possession of the true meaning of these mysteries. At the bottom
of this process was the desire of finding a ground of agreement for
all the religious conceptions of the civilised nations of the age. In
the matter of religion, as in the arts and industry, the rôle of the
Phœnicians consisted in serving as intermediaries, as zealous apostles
who saw the advantage of being useful to the barbarians after having
obtained profit from them, and hoped to profit further in the future.

So, after this reconcilement with the Egyptian religion, the
exportation of manufactured articles to the valley of the Nile, or
of imitations of Egyptian art, which was so strongly marked with a
religious stamp, could develop indefinitely in all the Mediterranean
regions and contribute to the prosperity of the mother country and her
colonies. So, after the fourteenth century before the common era, the
invention of alphabetic writing had barred the way for the extension
of Babylonian writing into the European world. The ancient spiritual
legacy of Babylonia’s thousand years of domination, a natural product
of the Semitic genius, was too strongly anchored in Syrio-Phœnicia to
be totally eclipsed, or even to descend to an inferior rank under the
pressure of Egyptian influence.

Egypt, with its language deprived of all outlet and with its
essentially funereal mythology, was incapable of producing a movement
of renaissance in foreign peoples. The spiritual condition remained
without notable change, but, direct contact with Babylonia having
become more difficult, the Phœnicians were obliged to record in their
own language their ancestral and divine traditions, in which the
universal elements received from Babylonia always remained preponderant.

Of Phœnician literature nothing is known in the original language, but
some cosmogonic data taken from the book of Sanchoniathon by Philo of
Byblus reflect myths that can have been produced only on the soil of
Babylon, although the Philhellenic author is unable to interpret them
with exactness. The primordial couple of chaos, Apason and Tomoth,
are in reality the Babylonian divinities prior to the creation:
Apsu, “ocean, abyss,” and Tiamat, “sea”; but Philo, carried away by
Neoplatonic doctrine and confounding similar consonants, attributes
to Apason the meaning of “desire,” and seems to discern in Tiamat
the divinity Mot, “death,” symbolical of matter. Another goddess,
Chosartes, recalls the consort of Asshur, Kishar, of cosmogonic
character. On the Syrio-Phœnician monuments we often read the name
of the goddess Anath, bearing the title of “force of life or of the
living,” but the masculine consort is not met with. The Babylonian
inscriptions fill the gap by very frequently furnishing the couple Anu
and Anata. Philistia worshipped principally the ichthyomorphous god
Dagon, who is no other than the Babylonian Daganu, associated with Anu.

Among other divine personages we note in the first place Tammuz,
consort of Astarte, who was slain by a boar in the flower of his youth.
His death was mourned for a month each year, and his resurrection
was later celebrated with frenzied demonstrations of joy. This myth
of nature, symbolical of the passing of summer and metaphorically of
that of ardent and passionate youth, has as its basis the Babylonian
tale of Du’uzu, eponym of the month of that name (Tammuz), who died
prematurely, and whom the goddess Ishtar (Astarte), the incarnation
of ardent passion, endeavours, though in vain, to bring back from the
kingdom of death. The grief and the heroic effort of the goddess are
told in a touching manner in the beautiful poem, entitled _The Descent
of Ishtar into Hades_. The Phœnicians mourned Tammuz under the honorary
title of Adon, Adonim, “lord,” whence the Greek Adonis. From Phœnicia
this rite passed to Greece, and was celebrated there with no less pomp,
while the descent of Ishtar became there the point of departure for
several analogous legends.

Less known is the cult of the Babylonian god of war, Nergal, who had
sanctuaries in Phœnicia. Among celestial gods we identify Hadad or
Hadod, styled “king of the gods,” Rimmon, Nabu, Sin, and Mar, called
among the Babylonians Adad, Ramman (god of the air), Nabu, Sin, Allat,
and Marduk (god of Babylon). The inscriptions of Sam’al add to these
Nusk and Be’el-Kharran, one of whom is the Babylonian Nusku, the
other a local Bel of the Babylonian city of Kharran, whose cult was
transplanted to the city of the same name in Upper Mesopotamia.

Since very remote antiquity certain names of Babylonian divinities have
been fixed in Syrio-Phœnicia as names of places and persons: the city
of Nebo in Moab, the desert of Sin, and probably also Mount Sinai in
Arabia Petræa, the fortress of Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin;
Ana, a chief of Esau, Anath, a judge of Israel, Hadad, the common name
of a king of Aram and a king of Idumæa. So many reminiscences of the
superior rank of the Babylonian religion clearly prove how the mind
of the western Semites was imbued and moulded into permanent form by
their ancient masters in the ages preceding the occupation of Syria by
the Egyptians. Egypt did almost nothing to modify the tendencies of
the subject peoples; she contented herself with collecting the taxes,
and gave nothing in exchange. We must not then be surprised that, if
we except the maritime coast, Egyptian dominion left no trace on the
civilisation of the interior of Syria. These peoples, when they became
independent, continued to cultivate the germs of civilisation they had
received in such abundance, but regarded them as their own creations.

Passing to the nomads of northern Arabia we find ourselves before an
ethnographic unknown, the ancient tribes having disintegrated and new
ones formed, a transformation that was certainly repeated several
times. There is as yet no agreement on the question whether the tribes
called in ancient times Ishmaelites and Ceturians spoke Arabic or
Aramæan. It is, however, certain that fragments of southern tribes
of true Arabian race moved to the north at periods very difficult
to determine. It is not very long since it was affirmed that these
unstable populations lacked every element of civilisation, and it was
even claimed that they were a pure example of unmixed Semitic race, to
which an instinctive monotheism was attributed.

These speculations have been dissipated by the testimony of the
Assyrian texts, which show that the Arabs possessed statues of their
gods. These proud children of the desert even signed their submission
to the government of Nineveh, in order to recover the statues which the
Assyrians had taken from them in the course of an expedition into the
interior of Arabia. The possession of statues implies the existence
in the oases of fixed sanctuaries, of religious rites, and of a
traditional priesthood.

When we consider that the conquering nation of the Persians did not
arrive at the idea of anthropomorphic gods until the time of Artaxerxes
II, and then solely under the influence of the Babylonian cult, we
cannot doubt that the worship of statues by the nomadic Arabs in the
seventh century before our era was due to the same influence. The
Ishmaelites were particularly devoted to Atar Celeste, that is, to the
great goddess Ishtar, whose cult spread from Babylon among all the
Semites of Syria.

In the oasis of Teyma a stele has been found that fixes the revenues of
a priest, who had lately been installed, to provide for the expenses
of the cult of an adopted divinity, and this priest is dressed in the
mode of the Babylonian priesthood. Such a borrowing is all the more
remarkable because the garments of sacrificing priests had in antiquity
a meaning intimately connected with the religious mysteries. This fact
supposes the presence of Babylonian instructors at some previous epoch.

Hedjaz forms the first province, whose inhabitants belong to the
Arabian race, properly so called, whose idiom and whose writing are
very different from those of the Aramæan populations of the north.
Some of these tribes settled in the east of Syria, on the edge of the
desert, especially in the oasis of Safa, south of Damascus. We must
wait until the numerous graffiti, discovered in recent times, are
published, before we can get an exact idea of the theophorous names
used among these tribes. The names Bel and Hadad figure here, however;
but this may be a late borrowing from their Aramæan neighbours. From
northern Hedjaz we have a considerable number of inscriptions and
graffiti, copies of which are still to be regarded with caution, and
there, too, the names Bel, Hadad and compounds of the Babylonian Nabu,
are found in the list of names of the nomads.

More interesting is the ancient name of Mecca, Macoraba, which
originally designated the celebrated central sanctuary of the region.
This name is derived front the verb _karaba_, which in Babylonian
means “worship, bless, pray”, in evident proof of an ancient borrowing
from the idiom of the cuneiform texts. We shall know some day what
the inscriptions of middle and southern Hedjaz contain in the way of
theophorous names. These inscriptions certainly exist, and await a
traveller courageous enough to save them from total destruction at the
stupid hands of the pilgrims. The famous black stone of Kaaba seems to
bear an inscription of which it would be well to have a photograph.

We know still less what is reserved for us in the graffiti scattered
in the intermediate region between Hedjaz and Yemen; the graphic
chain cannot have been interrupted in this latitude, which from great
antiquity formed the entrance to the highly civilised kingdom of Sheba,
and which, owing to its production of aromatic essences, had commercial
relations with the peoples of the Mediterranean.

Yemen was composed of four kingdoms, of which that of Sheba seems
to have been the most ancient and most powerful; the other three
are Catabania, Hadramaut, Mahrah or Tafat. Of the latter we have
no indigenous information prior to Islamism, and there is reason
to believe that it formed a vassal state of Hadramaut. The latter
is pre-eminently the spice-producing region, and Catabania may be
considered as an ancient colony of Hadramaut, which was founded on
the northern route for a commercial purpose, and later gained its
independence.

In its turn Catabania founded, again, on the northern route, another
colony, which, on gaining its freedom, called itself the Minyæan
people, after the principal city, Ma’in. The Minyæi left traces of
their activity at Egra on the frontier of Nabatia, and in central Egypt
at Oxyrhyncus, where they had a settlement at the time of the first
Ptolemies; but their presence in Egypt in the Persian period is proved
by a votive inscription, thanking their gods for having saved their
caravan from the danger by which it had been threatened during the war
between the Egyptians and the Medes, _i.e._, the Persians. From Egypt
they sent their caravans to Gaza in Phœnicia and into all Syria.

Prior to this the trade in incense and spices seems to have been in the
hands of the Sabæans. Solomon (about the year 1000 B.C.) sought to make
a treaty with this people, whose queen had made him an official visit
at Jerusalem. It is to be presumed that the Sabæans also sent caravans
directly to Nineveh and Babylon by way of the oases of Negran, Wady
Dawassir, and Gebel-Sammar. Owing to these almost uninterrupted visits,
the peoples of southern Arabia were in a position to learn and practise
customs and rites peculiar to the eastern Semites; for example,
the employment of aromatic fumigation as a means of purification
after sexual intercourse. The Sabæan pantheon contained El (the
Assyrio-Babylonian Ilu) under the guise of a divine personage, and not
simply as an abstract term for “god.” The Babylonian Ishtar, daughter
of Sin, is transformed into a male divinity, Athtar, son of Sin. The
manifold diversification of the Babylonian goddess appears also in the
Sabæan Athtar; the great religious centres of Sheba each possess their
own Athtar. Nabu, the Babylonian god of writing and prophecy, was also
worshipped by the Catabanians under the somewhat disguised form of
Anbai. From the point of view of art, the technique of sculpture and
decoration often recalls the Babylonian style. Finally, we meet in the
kingdom of Sheba the Assyrian institution of the _limmi_, or annual
archons, an institution that existed also at Carthage, but nowhere else
on the Asiatic continent, least of all in a monarchical state.

We know very little of the religion of the Agazi or Semites of
Abyssinia; a pre-Christian inscription asserts, however, that the cult
of El and of Astar (Astarte) flourished among them. Their pantheon
included also a god of war called Mahram, the equivalent of the Ninib
or Adar of the Semites of the north.

On the opposite side, at the extreme east of the Arabian peninsula,
along the Persian gulf, the most important agglomeration formed the
kingdom of Gerrha. The Gerrhæans maintained commercial relations with
both Egypt and Chaldea. One of their cities bore the name of Bilbana,
“Bil (Bel) has built,” a certain indication that it had adopted the
cult of the most popular Babylonian god. Facing this coast is the
Bahrein group of islands, the largest of which contains a number of
tombs in which cuneiform inscriptions in the Babylonian language have
been found.

We have now made the round of the whole Semitic region, and everywhere
we have been able to show striking Babylonian influences in spite of
the enormous distance in time and space that separates the converging
rays from their point of radiation. But before concluding, we must
halt upon a particular territory, a territory that forms but an
imperceptible point in this vast region, but which in spite of its
material diminutiveness brought forth a nation that was destined to
assume the glorious rôle of being the legitimate heir of the great
Babylonian ancestor, and of directing the conscience not only of the
Semitic race, but of the most civilised portion of the human race in
general.

This nation, which chance seems to have thrown into the world without
defence, in the midst of hostile elements that were furious for its
destruction, and whose name, Israel, exactly symbolises the unremitting
struggle against the terribly destructive powers that surround it, this
nation, I say, had the strength to transform the splendid polytheistic
heritage that had fallen to it from Babylon into a monotheistic theory
of an astounding originality. The transformation of the antique legacy
took place only after centuries of struggle between the best part of
the nation, the party of the prophets, and the conservatism of the mass
of the people, who were everywhere attached to the ancient traditions.

The writings of this monotheistic minority, which finally imposed
itself upon the entire nation, enable us to appreciate the importance
of the ancient elements, the dross of which was rejected in the
refining process of the prophets. Genesis has preserved two great
and very characteristic Babylonian epics,--the Creation, and the
Deluge,--but how different in spirit, in spite of the close similarity
in outline and external form.

In the Babylonian cosmogony, chaos, incarnate in the female dragon
Tiamat, the primordial ocean, brings forth at the same time the gods
and the most horrible, malevolent monsters. Having learned that the
gods wish to build themselves a more commodious residence in her
domain, she gathers her forces, furiously attacks the clan of gods,
and puts them to flight. They unite again and choose as their champion
Marduk, the son of Yan, who succeeds in vanquishing the terrible
ancestress. Marduk cuts the body of Tiamat into two pieces, and of them
he constructs heaven and earth. Then he proceeds to make the heavenly
bodies, and arranges them in an immutable order; he stocks the earth
with plants and animals, and has man made by the goddess Arura, who
fashions him out of the dust of the earth.

This myth, splendid as an epic invention, is too rude to contain the
least philosophical principle. The Hebrew thinker, while retaining
the general outline, has eliminated the whole crowd of monstrous or
ugly divinities unworthy to receive the homage of the human race. The
picture has lost nothing in extent; but a single, all-powerful god
first creates chaotic matter, and then organises it, step by step, for
the sole benefit of the human race. The cycle of the ten antediluvian
patriarchs, which includes millions of years, is reduced to sixteen
hundred years, and thus brought within the range of actual humanity.
Finally, the deluge, in the primitive legend the result of the mad
arrogance of the god Bel, is justified by the extraordinary corruption
of the men of that epoch.

Like a true reformer the prophetic narrator has raised upon the
Babylonian basis a new system whose rational and moral side need
not fear comparison with any other religious doctrine of humanity.
Among the Greeks, no religious or social reform could be developed
and preserved that took for a basis their castes of irresponsible
gods. Egypt perished without having attempted to rise from its coarse
animal-worship. Babylonianism alone, by its hymns and its epics, still
lives to-day as an important factor in universal religion, although
under a form idealised by genius. Materially, Babylon is but a memory,
but a delicate part of its atoms passed into the vigorous constitution
of its spiritual heir, the sacred book of Hebrew monotheism, to become
the common property of humanity.

MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY IN OUTLINE

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY COMPRISING A CURSORY VIEW OF THE SOURCES OF
MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY AND OF THE SWEEP OF EVENTS, AND A TABLE OF
CHRONOLOGY

The Babylonians and Assyrians were two very important peoples of remote
antiquity, inhabiting the region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in
southwestern Asia. The Greeks regarded these peoples as constituting
one nation and called their country Mesopotamia, a name that could
properly be applied to only a part of their territory. The Babylonians
and Assyrians, themselves, on the other hand, regarded each other as
alien peoples, though both belonged to the same Semitic stock. The
Babylonians were the more ancient, and their territory lay to the
south, where, many scholars believe, they had been preceded by a people
of a different race.

Though the seat of this early civilisation is geographically small
in extent, yet the peoples who entered into it were by no means
homogeneous, nor was their history a continuous record of unbroken
political succession. On the contrary, at least two different races
of people were involved,--a Turanian stock in the early Babylonian
history, a Semitic stock in all the later periods,--and at least
three successive kingdoms or empires, not to speak of mere changes of
dynasty. The earliest period known to us--that which left records at
Nippur and Shirpurla, in old Babylonia--had its seat in the southern
portion of the territory bordering on the sea; thence, seemingly,
civilisation spread northward. Assyriologists are not fully agreed as
to the share which the non-Semitic race had in this early civilisation.
It has even been questioned whether these so-called Sumerians really
existed at all.[15] In any event the Semitic Babylonians acquired full
control at a very early period.

The Assyrian kingdom--which came to be a veritable world-empire--had
its seat at Calah and afterwards at Nineveh. It conquered and absorbed
the old Babylonian kingdom, and then reached out for domination to the
east and to the west, finally overrunning even Egypt.

The Bible accounts preserve records of some of its most famous kings,
including Sennacherib. The Greek legends are chiefly concerned with
a mythical Semiramis, the alleged founder of Nineveh, and with a
seemingly mythical Sardanapalus, who perished after an inglorious
reign, in the destruction of Nineveh, which came about suddenly and
dramatically in the year 606 B.C.--the Sardanapalus myth being,
however, based on an actuality.

After the destruction of Nineveh, Babylon, the capital of Babylonia,
resumed renewed importance as a world metropolis. Nebuchadrezzar, the
most famous king of this period, besieged Jerusalem and carried the
Israelites to his capital (the Babylonian capital). The classical
accounts preserve reminiscences of the magnificence of Babylon in this
period. The course of the New Babylonian empire, though brilliant, was
brief, ending with the overthrow of Babylon by the Persians under Cyrus
in the year 538 B.C. Babylon was not, like Nineveh, totally destroyed;
but it never regained autonomy or anything approaching its former
importance. It was one of the Persian capitals for two centuries, until
in 331 B.C., with the downfall of the Persian empire, it passed into
the hands of Alexander the Great, who, after his eastern conquests,
chose it as the capital of his newly acquired empire. But Alexander
died in his new capital almost immediately, and his death was the last
great world-historic event that occurred in Mesopotamia. In the course
of a few centuries thereafter, the whole region that for so many years
had been the very heart of the world’s civilisation, became a barren
wilderness, and Babylon itself, like Nineveh before it, was reduced to
a mere earth-covered mound of ruins, the very location of which was
practically forgotten.

Such a fate was tragic enough; yet after all it seems less cruel than
the destiny of such nations as Egypt, and in later time, Greece,
which live on in senescence long after all vestige of their power
has departed. And in any event, Mesopotamia had had its full share
of glory, for no other region of the globe, within historic times,
with the possible exception of Egypt alone, has so long held rank as
a centre of influence and civilisation. If the earlier walls of the
Temple of Bel (Baal) at Nippur really date from 6000 or 7000 years
B.C. as the records seem to prove, there was a continuous, powerful
empire in Mesopotamia for at least five or six thousand years. The
civilisations of Greece, of Rome, or of any modern state, seem mere
mushroom growths in comparison.

In studying the history of Egypt we have caught occasional glimpses
of this oldest Asiatic civilisation of Babylonia and Assyria, and it
is almost impossible to avoid drawing comparisons between these two
countries, so closely related are the two peoples in the minds of all
students. It is true that the ethnological types are quite different,
and that the two peoples, during the greater part of their existence,
did not mingle much with one another. Often they were at war, and it is
traditional that for the most part the Egyptians repelled rather than
invited any advances from their Asiatic neighbours. Nevertheless, their
own interests dictated a commercial policy that led first and last to
an extensive intermingling between all the contemporary civilisations
of western Asiatic antiquity, and there are abundant evidences that the
same influence extended also to the Nile Valley.

But even had this not been the case,--even had Egypt and Mesopotamia
been shut off absolutely one from the other,--it would still be
impossible for the modern student to disassociate the two, so many
are the links of association between them. The fact that these two
are the oldest civilisations known to us, and the further fact that
there has been a constant question in the minds of investigators as to
which one of these ancient peoples can claim priority of development,
form in themselves an indissoluble bond of union. Yet in some respects
the story of the Babylonians and Assyrians is unique; because this
well-nigh greatest of civilisations was blotted out absolutely
almost before the oldest European civilisation was under way. Egypt,
indeed, declined in power at about the same period and permanently
lost autonomy, but its pyramids and temples and numberless antiquities
remain as obvious testimonials of its former greatness; whereas the
monuments of Mesopotamia--the ruins of such wonderful cities as Nippur,
Babylon, and Nineveh--were completely buried under the accumulating
earth deposits of centuries, and almost absolutely lost to view. For
more than two thousand years the names of these once famous cities
were only reminiscences. No one knew accurately even their site, and
scarcely an antiquity of any description was known to be preserved that
evidenced the sometime greatness of the Mesopotamian civilisation.

During this long period a few reminiscences preserved in the writings
of Berosus, Diodorus, Herodotus, and a few other classical writers,
and in the text of Hebrew writings, gave all the clews that were
obtainable, and apparently all that could ever be obtained regarding
one of the most remarkable peoples of antiquity.

We have said that the entire destruction of the Mesopotamian
civilisation gave it peculiar interest. It should not be forgotten,
however, that at least one other very important people of antiquity,
namely the Hittites, met with a like fate. Probably there were
still others whose names even are unknown to us. But the story of
Mesopotamia stands quite by itself in the fact that it has been very
largely restored to us through the efforts of modern explorers. We
have seen that the decipherment of the hieroglyphics led to a much
fuller understanding of Egyptian history than had previously been
possible; yet, after all, these new revelations sufficed to fill in
the outlines of an old story, rather than to create an altogether new
one. But in the case of Babylonia and Assyria the modern investigators
had virtually a blank canvas upon which to work in reconstructing the
history. The Bible references and the classical myths gave but the most
shadowy outlines. Yet traditions are all powerful for the transmission
of knowledge in a vague form, and throughout all generations it had
never been doubted that the reminiscences of Mesopotamian greatness had
a firm foundation in fact, though few historians were visionary enough
to dare hope that more tangible evidence would ever be forthcoming, and
not even the most enthusiastic dreamer could have suspected that such
records as the nineteenth century has restored to us had been preserved.

Even now, looking back from the standpoint of accomplishment, it seems
almost incredible that the monuments of a great civilisation--treasures
of art, and voluminous literary records--should have been absolutely
hidden from human view for a minimum period of more than two thousand
years, and should then have been restored in almost their original
condition. Yet such is the fact regarding the antiquities of
Mesopotamia.

[Illustration: THE ASSYRIAN GOD NABU]

OUR SOURCES FOR MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY

The reports that have come down to us from antiquity dealing with
the history of Babylonia and Assyria are relatively meagre in extent
and decidedly untrustworthy from an historical standpoint. Without
doubt numerous classical writers dealt with the subject, but of
such writings, only a few have been preserved. So far as known, the
principal native historian of the later period of Babylonian history
was Berosus. He was a Chaldean priest living in the time of Alexander
the Great, as his own writings testify. He had access to the ancient
documents of his country, and is believed to have made excellent use
of them. Unfortunately, only meagre remnants of his history have
come down to us, and these more or less distorted through the medium
of transcribers, the chief of these being Alexander Polyhistor and
Eusebius. Had we the entire work of Berosus, he would, perhaps, perform
some such function for Mesopotamia as Manetho performed for Egypt; but
as the case stands, the remnants of Berosus serve to transmit certain
interesting traditions, particularly with reference to Babylonian
cosmogony, rather than to preserve any considerable historical records.

The classical historian whose account of the Babylonians and Assyrians
has been most largely copied was Ctesias. This writer was a Greek who
served for seventeen years (415-398 B.C.) as court physician to the
Persian king Artaxerxes Mnemon, and who wrote a history of Persia
alleged to be based upon native documents. In this history Ctesias
considered the contemporary civilisation, but he was interested rather
in picturesque traditions than in the sober historical narratives,
and the records he preserved are chiefly of a nature which the modern
critical historian pronounces fabulous. The original work of Ctesias
has perished, but its character is fairly established through the
writings of other authors who used Ctesias as a source. Foremost among
the latter is Diodorus, whose account of the Assyrians represents the
ideas that were current throughout classical times, and continued in
vogue until the nineteenth century.

The most authentic classical accounts of the Babylonians are those
given by Herodotus and by Strabo, both of whom spoke as eye-witnesses.
Unfortunately, these writers did not have access to the native
materials, and their accounts, while throwing interesting sidelights
upon the later civilisation, do very little towards enlightening us as
to the actual history of the greatest of Asiatic peoples of antiquity.

A few other fragments have been preserved from the classical writings,
notably some bits from Abydenus, preserved through Eusebius. To these
must be added numerous references to the Babylonians and Assyrians in
the biblical writings. Taken altogether, however, these classical and
oriental traditions fail to give us more than the vaguest picture of
Mesopotamian history.

The real sources of that history are the original chronicles of the
Babylonians and Assyrians themselves, which were inscribed on stone
slabs and on tablets of clay. The clay tablets, after being inscribed,
were dried, forming almost imperishable bricks. Tens of thousands of
these were preserved beneath the ruins of Mesopotamian cities, and
were first brought to light in the nineteenth century. Among these are
several lists of kings, and other chronological documents of a somewhat
general character. One document attempts the synchronism of Babylonian
and Assyrian history. Then there are numerous tablets and cylinders and
wall inscriptions which record the deeds of individual kings, including
such famous monarchs as Sennacherib. Vast quantities of documents are
doubtless still buried in Mesopotamia, and a large proportion of the
inscriptions that have been exhumed are still undeciphered. But enough
of these documents have been discovered and read to restore the outline
of Babylonian and Assyrian history as a whole; and for certain periods,
including the time of greatest Assyrian power, very full records are
at hand. The result of these recent discoveries has been the practical
substitution of secure historical records for the old classical and
oriental traditions regarding the Babylonians and Assyrians.

The modern workers who have assisted in the restoration of
Mesopotamian history through the recovery and decipherment of the
monumental inscriptions make up in the aggregate a large company. The
chief explorers of the earliest period were Botta and Layard. Then came
Fresnel, Thomas, and Oppert, followed by Rassam, George Smith, Ernest
de Sarzec; the Germans, Koldewey and Moritz, and the Americans, Peters,
Hilprecht, and Haynes.

The work of interpreting the newly found Assyrian records began with
Sir Henry Rawlinson in England, Eberhard Schrader in Germany, and a
small company of other workers, about the middle of the nineteenth
century. The difficulties of deciphering records in an unknown
language, and of an extremely intricate character, at first seemed
almost insuperable; but with the aid of the knowledge of Ancient
Persian, already acquired earlier in the century through the efforts
of Grotefend and his followers, together with the hints gained by
comparison with the Hebrew language and other extant Semitic tongues, a
working knowledge of the Assyrian language was at last attained. Since
then the decipherment of the inscriptions has gone on unceasingly, and
a constantly growing band of workers has added to our knowledge.

Most of the excavators and explorers have, very naturally, given us
personal accounts of their labours. Botta’s labours, however, were
chiefly made public through the publications of Victor Place; and in
more recent times, Heuzey has published the chief accounts of the
excavations of De Sarzec. Layard, on the other hand, the greatest of
all Assyrian explorers, gave full accounts of his own discoveries, and
interpreted the monuments as well as described them. He restored to us
a picture of Mesopotamian civilisation somewhat as Wilkinson had done
for Egypt. Of the more recent workers who have written about Babylonia
and Assyria the most important are Meyer, Hommel, Winckler, Muerdter,
and Delitzsch in Germany; Tiele in Holland; Lenormant, Babelon, Menant
and Halévy in France; Sayce in England, and Peters, Hilprecht, Harper
and Rogers in America.

Thanks to the records thus made available, the history of this most
ancient civilisation is no longer a mere hazy figment of tradition,
but has become a sharply outlined picture. We are able to trace, not
indeed the origin of the Mesopotamian civilisation--for the beginnings
of national life evade us here as elsewhere--but its very early
development in the cities of old or southern Babylonia. Antiquarian
documents, aided by estimates as to the rate of deposit of sediment
at the mouth of the rivers, enable us to fix, at least approximately,
the dates for this early civilisation. These figures cannot pretend to
exact accuracy, but the Assyriologist assures us with some confidence
that they carry us back to a period something like six or seven
thousand years B.C. At this remote time the civilisation of southern
Babylonia was already established in its main features. The people
of Ur, Nippur, Shirpurla, and Babylon were able even then to build
elaborate palaces and temples, to carve interesting sculptures, to
make ornaments of glass, and to record their thought in words traced
in the most complex script. In a word, the main characteristics of
Mesopotamian civilisation were fully established several millenniums
before the Christian era, and abundant proofs of this fact have been
preserved to us.

It must not be supposed, however, that the records exhumed from
the ruins of these ancient capitals have given us full information
regarding the entire stretch of this long material existence. The
fact is quite otherwise. Only comparatively short periods are covered
fully by the historical records in the wedge writing, and there are
reaches of some thousands of years in the aggregate, regarding which
our knowledge is still most fragmentary. Indeed, the history of the old
Babylonian kingdom in its entirety is known at present only in the most
general way. But it seems almost miraculous that we should know even
the outlines of this ancient story.

THE ANCIENT KINGDOMS OF BABYLONIA

The earliest known inhabitants of Babylonia were a people of whose
origin nothing is known except that they were not Semites. After a time
they are called sometimes Sumerians, sometimes Accadians. Sumer was
the southern portion of Babylonia, Accad the northern. The Accadian
language is now considered a dialect of the Sumerian, the older form.

Civilisation in the land goes back at least to 6000 B.C. Between 5000
and 4000 B.C. this people was invaded by a warlike Semitic race, the
Babylonians of history, who came, perhaps, from Arabia. What portion of
the aborigines the invaders did not expel or destroy they assimilated,
gradually assuming the older civilisation.

The chronology of the earlier period is largely speculative. Recent
chronology begins with the kingdom of Babylon about the time of
Khammurabi. For the earlier kingdoms, we, for the most part, follow the
dates of Professor Rogers.

Without referring to the legendary history of Babylonia, related by
Berosus, which is mentioned elsewhere, our earliest knowledge of the
land is of a country of independent kingdoms, the cities with the
temples forming their centres. The ruler is often the patesi or high
priest.

THE KINGDOM OF KENGI

Before 4500 B.C. =En-shag-kush-anna= is king of Kengi, in southern
Babylonia, but whether he was Sumerian or Semite, we do not
know. He is patesi of En-lil, the later Bel. Of his kingdom,
Shirpurla-Girsu (or Sungir) is the capital and Nippur the
religious centre. Later, Sungir is called Sumer and gave its
name to the whole of southern Babylonia. The chief rival of
Kengi is the Semitic kingdom of Kish in the north, which
En-shag-kush-anna defeated but only temporarily checked. We know
of no other king of Kengi.

_Monuments._--Several vase inscriptions found at Nippur.

THE KINGDOM OF KISH

Recovers itself quickly after its reverse by En-shag-kush-anna. A
certain U-dug is patesi of Kish at the time of this revival.

4400 =Mesilim=, king of Kish, subjugates Shirpurla, at the time of
Lugal-shug-gur. This supremacy is maintained for a short period,
4200 until E-anna-tum, king of Shirpurla, shakes off the yoke.
Kish is left very feeble after this, but gradually recovers its
power.

3850 =Alusharshid=, the last great king of Kish before the conquest
of Sargon I.

_Monuments._--Many vase inscriptions.

THE KINGDOM OF GISHBAN

4400 =Ush= is patesi, contemporary of Mesilim of Kish. He wages war
with Shirpurla on the question of boundaries. Gishban is subjugated
4200 by E-anna-tum of Shirpurla. At the latter’s death, =Ur-lumma=,
patesi, invades Shirpurla and probably suffers a slight defeat.

4120 Great defeat of Ur-lumma by Entemena of Shirpurla.

4000 =Lugal-zaggisi=, patesi, son of Ukush, leads a victorious army
against the south. The whole of Babylonia to the southern gulf
is subjugated. He becomes king of Erech and is styled “king
of the whole world.” He revives the ancient cults of Lower
Mesopotamia.

_Monuments._--Vase inscriptions.

THE KINGDOM OF SHIRPURLA

Shirpurla, sometimes called Lagash--the modern Telloh--is situated
north of Mugheir on the east side of the Shatt-el-Khai. The oldest king
that we know is

4500 =Urukagina.=--A great warrior and administrator. He builds and
restores temples and also a canal for the capital Sungir (Girsu).
4400 One of his successors is =En-ge-gal=, and another, =Lugal-shug-gur=,
is reduced by Mesilim of Kish to a patesi.

4300 In the enfeebled kingdom, dominated by the rulers of Kish, a
new family headed by =Ur-Nina= comes to the throne. He is famous
as a temple builder, but also begins to prepare his kingdom to
throw off the yoke of Kish. He calls himself king though his son
is still patesi.

_Monuments._--Vase inscriptions.

4250 =Akurgal= succeeds Ur-Nina. He is the father of E-anna-tum and
En-anna-tum I.

4200 =E-anna-tum=, the hero who delivers his country from the
thraldom of Kish, and resumes the royal title. After this he
puts Gishban under his yoke, and wages successful wars against
Erech, Ur, Larsa, Az, and Ukh. He builds a wall around one of
the suburbs of Shirpurla, digs canals for boundary lines, etc.
Is a great and wise administrator as well as a mighty warrior.

_Monuments._--The famous “Vulture Stele” now in the Louvre--many
inscriptions.

=En-anna-tum I= succeeds his brother E-anna-tum. An unsuccessful
invasion of Shirpurla by the patesi of Gishban.

4120 =En-teme-na=, son of En-anna-tum I, defeats and destroys army
of the patesi of Gishban.

_Monuments._--The Cone of En-teme-na. The “silver vase”--an
exquisite piece of art placed on the altar of the god Nina at
Singur.

4100 =En-anna-tum II=, the last patesi of the dynasty of Ur-Nina,
since his son, Lummadu, bears no title. Conquest of Shirpurla by
Lugal-zaggisi of Gishban.

4100-3800 There are patesis in Shirpurla, ruled over by
Lugal-zaggisi and his successors.

3800-3100 The darkest age of Babylonian history. Lugal-ushumgal
was patesi and vassal of Sargon I. In all probability the kings
of Agade ruled over Shirpurla until dispossessed by the second
dynasty of Ur. Of all the patesis, the vassal rulers, of this
period =Ur-Bau= 3500 (?) and =Gudea= 3300 (?) are the most
prominent. Ur-Bau’s rule seems to have been peaceful; Gudea is a
warrior; he wrests the territory of Anshan from Elam. Builds the
temple of Nina at Singur.

_Monuments._--Many inscriptions.

The civilisation of Shirpurla was a high one, and it contained
no Semitic elements.

THE KINGDOM OF UR (THE BIBLICAL “UR OF THE CHALDEES”)

IST DYNASTY

The first king of this dynasty appears after the conquest of Erech
by Lugal-zaggisi of Gishban. He would appear to have overthrown
Lugal-zaggisi.

3900 =Lugal-kigubni-dudu.=

=Lugal-kisali=, his son.

Their rule includes Ur, Erech, and Nippur, and possibly they
conquered Shirpurla. The fate of this dynasty with the names of
its other rulers is unknown, but it probably falls before the
power of Agade.

_Monuments._--Inscriptions of the two above-mentioned kings.

THE KINGDOM OF GUTI AND LULUBI

There are inscriptions relating to two kings, =Lasirab= of
Guti and =Anu-banini= of Lulubi. They seem to have been
contemporaneous with Sargon I (3800 B.C.).

THE KINGDOM OF AGADE

3800 The earliest known dynasty is Semitic, and the first ruler
is =Sargon I= (=Shargani-shar-ali=), son of Itti-Bel. By
conquest he founds an empire from Elam to the Mediterranean, and
from the extreme south of Babylonia to Apirak and Guti.

_Monuments._--Engraved seals of wonderful execution,
inscriptions, and contract tablets.

3750 =Naram-Sin=, son of Sargon, succeeds him. First to assume
title “King of the Four Quarters of the World”--a great
conqueror and builder. Campaigns against Apirak and Magan
(Arabia).

Builds temples at Nippur and Agade. Temple E-barra of Shamash
at Sippar. This temple is the one in which Nabonidus found the
“tablet with the writing of the name of Naram-Sin,” by which we
are able to fix the date of his reign.

Under Sargon I and Naram-Sin there is a high state of
organisation and civilisation in the kingdom. There were judges,
musicians, physicians, good roads, etc. Thureau-Dangin says:
“The epoch of Sargon and Naram-Sin certainly marks a culminating
point in the history of the old Orient.”

_Monuments._--Inscriptions.

3700 =Bingani-shar-ali=, son of Naram-Sin.

Further history of the kingdom of Agade is still unknown.
Apparently the later kings gradually lose their power before
that of the second dynasty of Ur.

The first period of Babylonian history is now closed. The
Semites are in full possession of the land. We have the main
seat of power at Agade with the rulers of Shirpurla reduced to
patesis.

THE SECOND DYNASTY OF UR

These kings add the title “King of Sumer and Accad” to that of Ur,
combining the hostile elements of the North and South under one rule;
“restoring,” says Radau, “in old Babylonia the peace which had been
disturbed for many centuries, even from the time of the original
Semitic invasion.”

3200 =Ur-gur= holds sway over both Semites and Sumerians (Agade
and Shirpurla). His capital is at Ur. Famous as a temple
builder. Builds temple Teimila to Nannar (moon god) at Ur,
temple E-anna to Ishtar at Erech, temple E-barra to Shamash at
Larsa.

_Monuments._--Pyramidal tower at Nippur. Inscriptions.

3150 =Dun-gi I= succeeds. Continues his father’s work.

Builds temples of Nin-mar, Nina, Ningirsu, Dam-gal-nunna, and
Ea, in Sungir, Nippur, and Kutha.

These two were ancestors of a long line of kings, concerning
whom history is still silent. Apparently ground in southern
Babylonia was soon lost, for we find

THE KINGDOM OF ERECH

3100-3000 Two kings of pure Semitic names are known at this period.
=Singashid=, probably the founder of the dynasty, and
=Sin-gamil=. The probable history of this kingdom is that of
a strong Semitic colony in southern Babylonia making itself
independent and establishing a king and capital at Erech. With
Sin-gamil, the thread of its history is lost.

_Monuments._--Inscriptions relating to building of palace,
temples, and restoration of temples at Erech.

THE KINGDOM OF ISIN

A Semitic kingdom, similar to that of Erech, is established at Isin in
the north. These kings extend their power to Nippur, Ur, Eridu, and
finally to Erech, extinguishing the dynasty ruling there.

The kings add “king of Sumer and Accad” to that of Isin, showing also
that the second dynasty of Ur has ceased to exist.

3000 =Libit-Ishtar.=

_Monuments_ and cylinder inscriptions.

Other kings are, =Ishbigarra=, =Bur-Sin I=, =Ur-Ninib=,
=Idin-Dagan=.

2850 =Ishme Dagan=, the last to bear the title of Sumer and Accad.
His son En-anna-tum is a vassal of the third dynasty of Ur.

_Monuments._--Tablet inscriptions.

THE THIRD DYNASTY OF UR

The early kings call themselves simply Kings of Ur.

2800 =Gungunu= puts an end to the dynasty of Isin. He is succeeded
by =Ur-gur II= and =Dungi II=, order uncertain.

They build many temples, and Ur-gur II fortifies the wall of his
capital, hence he must have been harassed by enemies. We have
records that the patesis of Shirpurla still existed at this time.

_Monuments._--Votive and seal inscriptions.

2700 =Dungi III.=--The kings from now on add “King of the Four Quarters
of the World” to their title, and for this reason some scholars
reckon this king as the first of a fourth dynasty. He is followed
by =Bur-Sin II=, =Gamil-Sin=, and =Ine-Sin=; the latter ruling
about 2580. We have no knowledge of other kings, but about
2450-2400 the “Kingship of the Four Quarters of the World” is
overthrown in the north by the Ist Dynasty of Babylon and in
the south by Nur-Adad of Larsa.

_Monuments._--Building records and contract tablets.

THE KINGDOM OF LARSA

2400 Successful rebellion of southern Babylonia against the kings
of Ur. The kingdom of Larsa founded by =Nur-Adad=.

2370 =Sin-iddin= succeeds his father and extends his kingdom over
Sumer and Accad.

2350 =Kudur-nankhundi=, king of Elam, invades southern Babylonia.
Under Kudur-nankhundi’s successor, =Kudur-lagamar=
2340 (=Kudur-dugmal=, probably the Hebrew =Chedoriaomer=)
the Elamites establish a kingdom in Larsa with =Rim-Sin=
(=Eri-aku=) at its head. He adopts Sin-iddin’s titles.
2312 The latter appeals to Khammurabi, king of Babylon, who
overpowers Rim-Sin.

THE KINGDOM OF BABYLON

IST DYNASTY, 2450-2150 B.C.

In the days of Sumer and Accad there is no mention of Babylon, which
must, however, have developed into some importance during the supremacy
of Isin (3000-2850). Dates are now more reliable.

2450 =Sumu-abi= overthrows the Ur Dynasty in Babylon, but the
rebellion does not extend beyond that city.

2440 =Sumu-la-ilu.=--He builds six strong fortresses in Babylon.

2405 =Zabu.=--He builds temple E-dubar in Sippar. The country is
evidently in revolution, for mention is made of a pretender,
Immeru.

2290 =Apil-Sin.=

2370 =Sin-muballit.=

Only monuments of these reigns, contract tablets.

2342 =Khammurabi.=--Probably the =Amraphel= of the Bible, a
contemporary of Abraham. The maker of a united Babylon, for in
2312 called upon by Sin-iddin, he expels Rim-Sin and the Elamites
from Larsa, and adding southern Babylonia to his dominions,
resumes the titles of the kings of Ur, Isin, and Larsa. He
begins to develop his new kingdom, digging canals for water
supply. Builds a great storehouse for wheat in Babylonia.
Enlarges temples of E-zida and E-sagila in Borsippa.

_Monuments._--Letters and inscriptions.

2287-2150 The remaining kings of the dynasty lived in complete
peace. The few remains of their age witness a high civilisation
and great prosperity.

_Monuments._--Contract tablets.

IIND DYNASTY, 2150-1783 B.C.

2150-1783 Called the dynasty of Uru-Azag (probably referring to a
district of the city of Babylon). Eleven kings of Sumerian
origin reign for 368 years. There is but little known of them.

No monuments of this dynasty.

IIIRD DYNASTY, 1783-1207 B.C.

1783 The Kossæans or Kassites (Kasshu) from the mountains of
Elam establish a dynasty with =Gandish= or =Gaddash= the first
king. They had entered the country as roving bands, had overrun
it, and finally attained the power. Culture and civilisation are
assimilated by the newcomers.

1700 =Agum-kakrime=, the first king of the dynasty of whom we have
any details. His kingdom is greater than that of Khammurabi. The
land of Padan is subject to him. Some statues of gods that had
been previously carried away are restored to Babylon.

1450 =Karaindash.=--In this reign we have the first evidence of
intercourse between the kingdoms of Assyria and Babylonia--a
treaty with Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, king of Assyria, concerning
boundary line. Builds a temple to Nana, goddess of E-Anna.

1430 =Kadashman-Bel.=--He corresponds with Amenhotep III, of Egypt.

_Monuments._--Letters found at Tel-el-Amarna.

1420 =Burnaburiash I.=--Contemporary with Puzur-Asshur of Assyria,
with whom he seems to have had difficulties regarding questions
of boundary. Builds a temple to the Sun-god at Larsa.

1410 =Kurigalzu I.=--The city of Dur-Kurigalzu is named after him.
He probably rebuilds it.

_Monuments._--Correspondence with Pharaoh of Egypt.
(Tel-el-Amarna.)

1400 =Burnaburiash II.=--His successor. Long and prosperous reign.

_Monuments._--Correspondence with Amenhotep IV, of Egypt.
(Tel-el-Amarna.)

1370 =Kharakhardash=, marries a daughter of Asshur-uballit, king of
Assyria. His son, =Kadashman-Kharbe I=, conducts a campaign
against the Sutu, whom he conquers, and among whom he settles
some of his subjects.

1360 Rebellion of the Kassites, who, jealous of the growing
Assyrian influence, kill the king and place on the throne
=Nazibugash=, who is defeated and killed by Asshur-uballit, the
king of Assyria.

1350 =Kurigalzu II.=--Placed on the throne by the Assyrian king,
invades Elam, and conquers the city of Susa (or Shushan). Battle
with Bel-nirari, king of Assyria, with doubtful result.

1340-1286 Continuous struggle between Babylonia and Assyria under
the following kings: =Nazi-Maruttash= (1340), =Kadashman-Turgu=,
=Kadashman-Buriash= (1330), =Kudur-Bel= (1304-1299),
=Shagarakti-Buriash= (1298-1286).

1285-1270 The king of Assyria, Tukulti-Ninib I, invades Babylon,
enters the town, removes the treasures of the temple, and
carries away the god Marduk to Assyria. This invasion took place
probably under the reign of =Bibeiashu=, whose successors,
=Bel-shum-iddin=, =Kadashman-Kharbe II= (1277-1275), and
=Adad-shum-iddin= (1274-1269), were very likely only vassals of
Tukulti-Ninib, who was the real king of Babylon for seven years.

1270 The Babylonians rise in revolt, drive the Assyrians from Babylon,
1269 and make =Adad-shum-usur= king, under whom the power of Babylon
begins to revive. Assyria attacked, the king, Bel-kudur-usur,
slain, and a portion of Assyrian territory annexed.

1238-1224 =Meli-Shipak.=--Successful against the Assyrian king,
1223-1211 Ninib-apal-esharra, so that under =Marduk-apal-iddin=,
the Babylonian dominion extends over nearly the whole of the
valley.

1210 Under the last two kings of this dynasty, =Zamamu-shum-iddin= and
1209 =Bel-shum-iddin=, Babylonia threatened by the Assyrian Asshur-dan.

1207 End of the dynasty as result of a Semitic revolution.

IVTH DYNASTY, 1207-1075 B.C.

The origin of this (Isin) dynasty still doubtful. There are eleven
kings, of whom four or five are unknown to us.

1135 =Nebuchadrezzar I=, sixth king, exhibits the old-time spirit.
Invades Assyria, but is repulsed. Is successful in campaigns
against the people of Elam and Lulubi, even penetrates into
Syria.

_Monuments_.--Monolithic inscription concerning grant of land to
Ritti Marduk of Bit-Karziyabku.

1110 In the reign of =Marduk-nadin-akhe=, Tiglathpileser I of
Assyria invades Babylon and takes the capital.

1083 At death of =Marduk-shapik-zer-mati=, a usurper,
=Adad-apal-iddin= takes the throne.

1078 End of dynasty with death of =Nabu-shum=.

VTH, VITH, VIITH, VIIITH DYNASTIES, 1075-728 B.C.

A series of short-lived dynasties all struggling with the rising power
of Assyria.

1075 Dynasty of Sea Lands, at the estuaries of the Tigris and
the Euphrates upon the Persian Gulf, which later exercises
great influence upon the history of Babylonia. This dynasty
numbers only three kings, who reign together twenty-one years
five months, or, according to the Babylonian chronicle,
twenty-three years; viz. =Sibar-Shipak=, slain and buried in
palace of Sargon. In his reign the Elamites pillage Sippar and
do much damage; =Ea-mukin-zer=, of whom nothing is known, and
=Kasshu-nadin-akhe=. These kings engaged on rebuilding the
temple of the Sun at Sippar.

1053-1033 The dynasty of Sea Lands in Babylonia followed by
the dynasty of Bit-Bazi, numbering also only three
kings: =Eulbar-shakin-shum=, =Ninib-kudur-usur=, and
=Silanim-shukamuna=, followed by a dynasty of Elam with only
one king, whose name is unknown.

1027 The VIIIth Dynasty. Babylonian stock having exhausted its
vigour, now intermixed with Kassite and other foreign blood.

747 =Nabu-nasir= (=Nabonassar=) of the VIIIth Dynasty comes to the
throne. A time of literary activity.

732 =Nabu-nadinzer=, his successor, slain by =Nabu-shum-ukin=.

731 =Ukinzer= replaces Nabu-shum-ukin. Tiglathpileser III invades
Babylon and determines to end the rule of native princes in the
land.

728 =Tiglathpileser=, king of Babylon. =End of the Old Babylonian
Empire.=

THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE

FIRST PERIOD, 1830-1120 B.C.

Assyria was colonised from Babylonia. The date is uncertain, but
Nineveh was in existence in 3000 B.C. The early rulers appear to have
been subject priest-princes of the kings of Babylonia.

1830-1810 The first known rulers (Ishakke) are =Ishme-Dagan= and
his son, =Shamshi-Adad I=, who builds a great temple in the city
of Asshur, dedicated to the gods Anu and Adad.

1800-1700 Little known of their successors =Igur-kapkapu=,
=Shamshi-Adad II=, while the dates of =Khallu= and =Irishum= are
unknown.

_Monuments._--A few inscriptions.

1700 =Bel-Kapkapu.=--The first to take the title of king, and
therefore considered the real founder of the monarchy, probably
the Bel-bani, of whom Esarhaddon claimed to be a direct
descendant.

1700-1450 A dark age of Assyrian history. We know nothing of it,
except that after the battle of Megiddo (_ca._ 1525) the ruler
of Assyria sends presents to Tehutimes III.

1450 Assyria is now recognised by Babylonia as an independent
kingdom. Its ruler, =Asshur-bel-nish-eshu=, makes a treaty with
Karaindash, king of Kardunyash (Babylonia) concerning boundaries.

1420 =Puzur-Asshur=, treats with the Babylonians concerning the
boundary.

1400 =Asshur-nadin-akhe II=, his successor, contemporary of
Amenhotep IV, king of Egypt. Builds or restores a palace in
Asshur.

_Monuments._--Friendly correspondence with Amenhotep IV in the
Tel-el-Amarna letters.

1370 Succeeded by =Asshur-uballit=, whose daughter, Muballitat
Sheru’a, is married to Karakhardash, king of Babylon. The
murder of his son, Kadashman-Kharbe I, brought about Assyrian
intervention, and a grandson of Asshur-uballit, Kurigalzu,
is placed on the throne. Babylonia now partially subject to
Assyria. Campaigns of Asshur-uballit against the Shubari.

1360 His son =Bel-nirari= said to have conquered the inhabitants of
the neighbouring Elamite foothills. These Assyrian conquests
lead to a conflict between Kurigalzu II and Bel-nirari, in which
the latter is victorious. A rearrangement of the boundary lines
between the two countries is the result.

1350 His son, =Pudu-ilu=, a great warrior, considerably extends his
kingdom.

_Monuments._--A few brief inscriptions.

1345 His son and successor, =Adad-nirari I=, continues conquests
in neighbouring territory. Rebuilds captured cities. Struggle
with Babylonian king. He adds considerably to strength of
kingdom.

_Monuments._--A bronze sword, on which he calls himself king of
Kishshati; an inscription, the oldest yet found with an eponym
date.

1330 His son, =Shalmaneser I=, establishes colonies between the
Euphrates and Tigris as a bulwark against the nomadic
populations of the farther north. Subjects the Musri in northern
Syria. Assyrians cross the Euphrates for the first time. The
rapidly growing kingdom firmly established as far as the Balikh
and perhaps the Euphrates. New capital built at Calah.

_Monuments._--Two broken tablets.

1290 Under his son and successor, =Tukulti-Ninib I=, there is
renewed trouble between Assyria and Babylonia. Invasion of
Babylonia; capital taken. Conquered city governed from Calah,
Assyrian officers stationed both in the north and south of the
country. Tukulti-Ninib adopts the title of “King of Sumer and
Accad” in addition to his former titles, “King of Kishshati” and
“King of Asshur.” This rule over Babylonia maintained for seven
years only. The king is killed in civil war. The most brilliant
reign in Assyrian history up to this time. The steady and rapid
progress of the Assyrians now checked.

1280 Rapid decline of Assyrian power under =Asshurnazirpal I=,
Tukulti-Ninib’s son. An attack of Babylonia is repulsed with
difficulty.

1250 Under his successors, =Asshur-narara= and =Nabu-daian=, the
Assyrian power continues to wane, while the Babylonian increases.

1240-1235 Under =Bel-kudur-usur= and =Ninib-apal-esharra=
Assyria is invaded by the Babylonians under Meli-shipak and
Marduk-apal-iddin. All the southern and part of the northern and
western conquered territory lost.

1210 Under =Asshur-dan I= rehabilitation of Assyrian power. He
crosses the Lower Zab, invades Babylonian territory, and
restores a small section of it to Assyria.

1150 Further Assyrian gains under =Mutakkil-Nusku= and
1140 =Asshur-rish-ishi=, who restores temple of Ishtar at Calah.

SECOND PERIOD, 1120-885 B.C.

1120 =Tiglathpileser I= (=Tukulti-apal-esharra=, my help is the god
Ninib).--He builds up anew the Assyrian Empire, and thus
records his work of conquest: “In all forty-two countries and
their kings from the Lower Zab (and) the border of the distant
mountains to beyond the Euphrates to the land of the Hittites
and the Upper Sea of the Setting Sun, from the beginning of my
sovereignty until my fifth year my hand has conquered.” His
great success in war equalled by a marvellous story of peaceful
achievements. The capital of Assyria brought back from Calah to
Asshur; the temples of Ishtar, Adad, and Bel rebuilt, palaces
restored and rebuilt.

_Monuments._--The eight-sided prism found at Calah: several
fragmentary annals of the early years of his reign.

1090 Under his successors, =Asshur-bel-kala= and =Shamshi-Adad
III=, both sons of Tiglathpileser, further peaceful development,
with gradually a falling off in the power and dignity of the
kingdom. The former king maintains terms of peace with the king
of Babylonia, Marduk-shapik-zer-mati, who thereby seems to be
considered an independent monarch. As to Shamshi-Adad I, he is
known to us only as the rebuilder of the temple of Ishtar in
Nineveh.

1050-950 A dark age. The fortunes of Assyria are at low ebb.
In this period reigned =Asshurnazirpal II=, =Erba-Adad=,
=Asshur-nadin-akhe=, and =Asshur-erbi=. The last loses territory
to the Aramæans, but he seems to have invaded Phœnicia.

950 =Tiglathpileser II=, who calls himself “King of Kishshati and
King of Asshur.”

930 =Asshur-dan II=, his son.

911 =Adad-nirari II.=--Revival of struggle with Babylonia. Defeats
Shamash-mudammik of Babylon in battle of Mount Yalman, also his
successor Nabu-shum-ishkun. Assyrian cities given to Babylonia.
Treaty of peace between the two nations.

890 =Tukulti-Ninib II.=--The period of weakness is passing. Babylon
ceases to be troublesome, and the Assyrians begin to seek
tribute in the north and west. The king ravages Armenia and the
land of Kummukh.

THIRD PERIOD, 885-722 B.C.

885 =Asshurnazirpal III=, begins campaigns of conquest at once.
In ten years all of Tiglathpileser I’s empire in the north, east,
and west, conquered or intimidated into subjection with atrocious
cruelties and barbarous devastations, is under heavy tribute.

876 A great invasion of the west. At his approach all the cities
from Carchemish to Tyre hasten to send presents and arrange for
tribute. The campaign ends in the gathering of timber for the
temple of Ishtar at Nineveh.

867 A short and bloody campaign against Kummukh, Qurkhi and the
country around Mount Masius. Asshurnazirpal rebuilds Calah, and
constructs a canal to supply the city with water from the Lower
Zab.

_Monuments._--The royal palace unearthed at Nimrud; monolith
containing accounts of his reign discovered by Layard at Nimrud;
several lesser inscriptions.

860 =Shalmaneser II=, his son, continues his father’s conquests
with similar cruelty. Campaign against Nairi and first of many
campaigns in the north and east lasting until 830 with no real
success.

857 The Aramæans of Bit-Adini in the Mesopotamian valley finally
conquered and their land placed under Assyrian government.

854 Shalmaneser proceeds successfully against a coalition of North
Syrian princes, Israel and Phœnicia. Battle of Qarqar. Yearly
tribute imposed on states of northern Syria.

852 Marduk-nadin-shun of Babylon calls Shalmaneser to help him
against his rebellious brother Marduk-bel-usati. Shalmaneser
attacks and vanquishes the rebels and Marduk-nadin-shum rules
under an Assyrian protectorate. The king of Assyria is once more
the real ruler of Babylon.

849-834 Campaigns against the west. The results are not definite,
and little is done except to pave the way for the future. Attack
upon Ben-Hadad II of Damascus and his allies. Jehu sends aid
against Damascus and the Assyrians get their first hold upon
Israel.

827 Rebellion of Shalmaneser’s son Asshur-danin-apli which splits
the kingdom into two discordant parts.

825 Death of Shalmaneser.

_Monuments._--The black basalt obelisk containing story of his
wars; monolith with portrait in bas-relief; gate inscriptions
from Balauat.

823 =Shamshi-Adad IV=, after two years of civil war with his
brother, is acknowledged legitimate king.

822-814 Campaigns in north, east, and west to receive allegiance.

813 Invasion of Chaldea.

812 Invasion of Babylon where Marduk-balatsu-iqbi refuses to pay
tribute--a decisive victory.

_Monuments._--Inscriptions.

811 =Adad-nirari III= succeeds his father--a ruler who increases
Assyrian prestige immensely. Successful campaigns in the west.
Eight brilliant campaigns against the Medes.

796-795 Babylon invaded--now practically an Assyrian province.
The king tries to efface all national differences. Temples built
in Assyria similar to those of Babylon, and Babylonian forms
introduced into the ritual.

_Monuments._--A statue of Nabu from the temple of Calah;
inscriptions.

782 =Shalmaneser III=, a period of decline sets in. Of his ten
campaigns, six are against the growing power of Urartu, which is
trying to wrest the land of Nairi from the Assyrians.

772 =Asshur-dan III.=--The decay continues. Campaigns against
Damascus, and Khatarikka in Syria. Two invasions of Babylon
(771-767).

763-758 A series of rebellions in various parts of the kingdom.

754 =Asshur-nirari II.=--A reign of decadence. Campaigns against
Arpad and Nairi, but no attempt to collect tribute.

746 Rebellion in Calah. Asshur-nirari disappears and with him the
royal family that has ruled Assyria for centuries.

FOURTH PERIOD, 745-606 B.C.

745 =Pulu.=--A man of obscure origin obtains the throne, probably
as the outcome of the Calah rebellion. He takes the name of
=Tiglathpileser (III)=, and begins at once the formation of
a great world-empire and proceeds first against Babylonia.
Reconquers the country as far south as Nippur and reorganises
the government. Makes a fixed policy of planting colonies and
transporting captives. He next subdues the troublesome land
east of Assyria, and sends his general, Asshur-danin-ani, into
Media. Second expedition into Media (737), but withal the
country remains practically independent. He takes up a difficult
problem in the north where Argistis of Urartu had regained
much territory, and his successor, Sarduris II, has formed an
alliance with many northern princes. The armies of Sarduris and
Tiglathpileser meet and the former is forced to retire.

742 Tiglathpileser, free from Sarduris, attacks Arpad, which falls,
740. Many neighbouring states send presents. The king of Unqi
resists, but is soon taken and his country annexed to Assyria.

739 Part of Nairi taken. Tiglathpileser sets out to break the
coalition of Syrian princes against him, aiming at Uzziah of
Judah, the ringleader. Menahem of Israel weakens and pays the
Assyrian heavy tribute, whereupon he abandons attacks on Judah,
but subdues, and returns home with tribute from, all the other
members of the league.

735 Campaign against Urartu--does not conquer but breaks the spirit
of the country.

734-732 Campaigns in Syria. Damascus taken. Ahaz of Judah gives
homage. Other lands incorporated with Assyria. Gaza captured.

731-729 He invades Babylonia to settle the internal strife raging
there. Determines to do away with native princes. Ukinzer
deposed. Merodach-baladan of Bit-Yakin gives homage.

728 Proclaimed legitimate king of Babylon.

_Monuments._--The annals badly defaced by Esarhaddon; the slabs
of Nimrud; inscription on clay tablets.

726 =Shalmaneser IV= succeeds.

725 Hoshea of Israel in alliance with Shabak of Egypt refuses
tribute. Shalmaneser lays siege to Samaria.

THE SARGONIDES, 722-606 B.C.

722 =Sargon II=--a usurper succeeds. Samaria falls in this year.
The inhabitants are removed to the Median mountains and replaced
by colonists from Kutha.

721 Merodach-baladan rebels and is proclaimed king of Babylon.
Sargon proceeds unsuccessfully against him. Rebellion in Hamath,
joined by Gaza and Samaria.

720 The confederation defeated at Raphia.

720-710 Continuous campaigns. Successful attack on Urartu.
Coalition in the north broken up.

717 Assyrian governors installed throughout the country. The career
of Carchemish ended.

710 Merodach-baladan defeated. Sargon adopts title “Shakkanak,”
Governor, of Babylon.

707 The great palace in his city of Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad) is
finished. The walls are covered with magnificent inscriptions. He
enters it the next year.

_Monuments._--The palace of Dur-Sharrukin with
inscriptions--other inscriptions.

705 =Sennacherib= (=Sin-akhe-erba=) succeeds his father.

702 Visits rebellious Babylonia and makes Bel ibni king.

701 Coalition against Sennacherib of Syrian princes and Tirhaqa
of Egypt. The Assyrian attacks Phœnician cities and most of
Syria submits. Battle of Altaku. Sennacherib’s army ravaged by
pestilence, and he returns to Nineveh which he has made his
capital.

700 Bel-ibni becomes hostile to Assyria through force of public
opinion. Merodach-baladan and Marduk-ushezib of Chaldea join him.
Sennacherib defeats them and has his own son Asshur-nadin-shum
proclaimed king of Babylon.

694 Campaigns against the Chaldeans settled in Elam.
Asshur-nadin-shum captured by the Elamites and Nergal-ushezib
crowned.

692 Mushezib-Marduk made king of Babylon. With the Elamites, the
Babylonians oppose Sennacherib at Khalule (691) and are utterly
defeated.

689 Destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib.

688-682 Sennacherib absent in Arabia.

681 Murder of Sennacherib by his sons Nergal-shar-eser and
Adarmalik.

681 =Esarhaddon= (=Asshur-akhe-iddin=) succeeds his father.

681-672 Nine campaigns to repress rebellions in different parts of
the empire.

672 Destruction of Sidon. City of Kar-Asshur-akhe-iddin built on
the same spot.

670 Esarhaddon appears in Egypt to punish Tirhaqa. Memphis taken.
The whole country surrenders to Esarhaddon who reorganises the
government.

668 Esarhaddon abdicates. He appoints his son Shamash-shum-ukin
viceroy of Babylonia, and another son, Asshurbanapal, receives
the throne of Assyria.

_Monuments._--The “Black Stone,” the stele of Zenjirli; other
inscriptions.

668 =Asshurbanapal= begins his reign.

667 Sends an army to Egypt which defeats Tirhaqa who has retaken
Memphis. Conspiracy of Egyptian princes to restore Tirhaqa. They
are taken and punished. Exacts tribute from King Baal of Tyre,
and other princes.

655 Psamthek I of Egypt throws off the Assyrian yoke.

Campaign against Elam.

War with Shamash-shum-ukin, who plots against Assyria, and severe
punishment of Babylonia. Cruel onslaught on Elam for assistance
to Shamash-shum-ukin and his allies. The same fate is meted out
to the Arabians.

Asshurbanapal is famous as a builder. Temple of E-kur-gal-kurra
in Nineveh adorned. Rebuilding of E-sagila in Babylon completed.
E-zida in Borsippa is embellished. The palace of Nineveh
reconstructed and a great library built and equipped. Vast
building operations in Babylonia and Arbela. His reign is one of
great glory in works of peace, but Egypt has been lost, and many
foreign provinces are on the verge of regaining their liberty.

_Monuments._--Many records from the library of Nineveh.

626-609 Asshurbanapal succeeded by =Asshur-etil-ili-ukinni=,
=Sin-shum-lishir=, and =Sin-shar-ishkum= (=Saracus=), of whom we
have but little knowledge.

625 First appearance of the Scythian tribes in Assyria. They invade
the land and burn Calah.

609 =Sin-shar-ishkum= attacks Babylonia, of which Nabopolassar is
now king. The latter allies himself with the Scythian tribe of
the Manda, which attacks Nineveh.

606 Sin-shar-ishkum sets fire to palace and perishes in the flames.

Nineveh taken and destroyed, as well as Dur-Sharrukin and Asshur.

The Manda secure the old land of Assyria, together with the
northern provinces as far as the river Halys. The Babylonians
take the southern and the Syrio-Phœnician possessions. =End of
the Assyrian Empire.=

THE NEW EMPIRE OF BABYLON

606-538 B.C.

=Nabopolassar= (=Nabu-apal-usur=), an Assyrian governor of
Babylonia about 625, finally becomes king, and a powerful rival
of Assyria. After the destruction of Nineveh he receives his
share of the old empire, and continues his reign in peace. Neku
II of Egypt marches upon Babylonia. Country developed by canals
and great buildings. Temple of Belit at Sippar rebuilt.

604-562 =Nebuchadrezzar= (=Nabu-kudur-usur=). Before he becomes
king, he has defeated Neku at Carchemish (605). Campaign against
Judah. Jerusalem twice besieged in 597, when Jehoiachin had to
surrender, in whose place Mattaniah, a son of Josiah, was made
king under the name of Zedekiah; and again in 586 when the city
is taken, plundered, and destroyed. Population deported and
Gedaliah placed as governor.

585-573 Investment of Tyre for thirteen years. Finally taken in 573
and King Ithobaal II deposed.

567 Invasion of Egypt in the reign of Aahmes II; heavy booty
secured, but no lasting results. Splendid works of peace shown in
numerous inscriptions. Extensive building operations. The walls
of Babylon rebuilt and rendered impregnable. Canals repaired and
temples reconstructed. Temples of Borsippa repaired and the walls
reconstructed, also at Sippar, Larsa, Ur, Dilbat, Baz, and Erech.

_Monuments._--Many inscriptions.

562 =Amil-Marduk= (the biblical =Evil-merodach=). No inscriptions found.
560 Assassinated by =Nergal-shar-usur= (=Neriglissor=).--Under
him Babylon adorned and enlarged. The temple E-sagila beautified.
Canal system regulated. Succeeded by
556 =Labashi-Marduk=, who was killed after a reign of only
nine months, and succeeded by
555 =Nabu-Na’id= (=Nabonidus=), a usurper. Chiefly engaged in building
and restoring temples. The temple E-ulbar restored and temples at
Sippar and Kharran in Babylonia rebuilt.

539 Babylonia invaded by Cyrus of Elam and Persia.

538 Sippar taken. Babylon surrenders. Triumphal entrance of Cyrus
into the city. =Babylonia a Persian province.=

FOOTNOTES

[15] [The theories of those who deny the existence of the Sumerians
have been already given in the Introductory Essay, pages 309-317, by
Professor Halévy, the leader of the anti-Sumerian school. The present
trend of opinion is, however, largely toward the Sumerian theory.]

CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE

Cities have been, and vanished; fanes have sunk,
Heaped into shapeless ruin; sands o’erspread
Fields that were Edens; millions too have shrunk
To a few starving hundreds, or have fled
From off the page of being. Now the dead
Are the sole habitants of Babylon;
Kings, at whose bidding nations toiled and bled,
Heroes, who many a field of carnage won,
Their names--their boasted names to utter death are done.

--JAMES GATES PERCIVAL.

It should be explained here at the very beginning that in speaking of
the Mesopotamian civilisation as a unit, we are adopting for the sake
of convenience a form of expression that is not historically accurate.
Even the word “Mesopotamia” cannot be justified on strict analysis. The
word is from the Greek, and means, literally, “between the rivers,”
an obvious reference to the fact that the important portion of the
territory in question lies between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The
word was used by the Greeks in indiscriminate application to Babylonia
and Assyria, and its extreme convenience as a generic term has led to
its retention in lieu of a better one; yet, as has been said, it cannot
be applied with strict accuracy unless its etymological significance be
quite overlooked; for, curiously enough, neither Babylon nor Nineveh
was wholly situated in the territory which the Greek word describes.
Babylon lay partly on the western shore of the Euphrates river, and
Nineveh was situated on the eastern shore of the Tigris. But in
common usage, as so often happens, the exact implication of the word
“Mesopotamia” has been overlooked, and the word itself has come to be
applied to the entire region of Babylonia and Assyria. In this sense,
rather than in the more restricted one, we shall find it convenient as
a substitute for the more cumbersome appellation, Babylonia-Assyria.

It has already been pointed out that we have to do with different
races of people in dealing with Mesopotamian history. After a long
dispute, carried on chiefly by philologists, it is now generally
conceded that the earliest civilisation of southern Babylonia was due
to a non-Semitic people, the Sumerians.[16] To this people, it would
seem, must be ascribed the honour of developing the chief features of
Mesopotamian civilisation, including the invention of the cuneiform
system of writing. It is not at all clear at precisely what time the
Semitic people, destined ultimately to become predominant in this
region, made their appearance. Nor is the place of Semitic origin
agreed upon among students of the subject. Some authors,[17] as Von
Kremer, Guidi, and Hommel, hold that Babylonia was itself originally
the cradle of the race. Others, including Sprenger, Sayce, Schrader, De
Goeje, Wright, and Barton, contend that the Semites invaded Babylonia
from Arabia. Yet others, including Palgrave, Gerland, Bertin, Brinton,
Nöldeke, Jastrow, Keane, and Schmidt, hold to the African origin; while
a modification of these views advocated by Wiedemann, De Morgan, and
Erman supposes that both the Semites and Hamites rose in Arabia, and
had their common civilisation before the Hamites went to Africa.
Confronted with such conflict of opinions, the historian must be
content to regard the exact antecedents of the Semites, previous to
their appearance in Babylonia, as quite unknown.

As to the date of the beginnings of Semitic civilisation in
Mesopotamia, Dr. John P. Peters, making use of Ainsworth’s estimates as
to the amount and rate of alluvial deposit at the head of the Persian
Gulf, computes that the seacoast must have been established this
side of the site of the city of Ur about 6600 B.C., which date must,
therefore, represent the earliest possible period for the foundation of
that city. Ur was apparently the most southerly city of old Babylonia,
and Nippur apparently the most northerly. Dr. Peters’ excavations at
Nippur lead him to base its foundation at some period previous to 6000
B.C., and possibly previous to 7000 B.C.[a] He sums up his theory as
follows:

“My suggestion, from the various facts here marshalled, would be that
the original home of civilisation in Babylonia was the strip of land
from Nippur southward to the neighbourhood of Ur, and not, as has
sometimes been argued, the region about Babylonia and northward to
Sippara; while the latter region is in itself older, it does not seem
to have been older as the home of civilised man.

“The ancestors of the civilisation of Babylonia seem to have come from
the region between Nippur and what was then the coast of the Persian
Gulf. This would accord also with the tradition preserved to us in
later sources that civilisation came to Babylonia out of the Persian
Gulf. Possibly Eridu, on the Arabian plateau near the western shore and
not far from the head of what was then the Persian Gulf, may represent
the oldest seat of that civilisation. However that may be, at a very
early period Nippur became the centre of civilisation and religion,
being founded at a time when everything below Ur probably was still
under water. As early as the close, if not the beginning, of the
seventh millennium B.C., this strip of land at the head of the then
Persian Gulf seems to have been the home of the civilised men, and from
here civilisation spread northward.”[f]

THE LAND

The land of the Euphrates and Tigris lies between the Iranian country
on the east and the Syrio-Arabian district on the west, from the chain
of mountains of the Zagros to the rocky heights of the Lebanon and the
Syrian desert. From the mountains of Armenia, in which both rivers have
their source, the land gradually declines to the plain, extending from
the point of their union to where they fall into the Persian Gulf.

The upper-river beds, winding through a high-lying, sometimes fertile
steppe country, are surrounded by heights, where plane and cypress
groves alternate with green meads and a rich growth of many-coloured
flowers and plants.

As the land grows flatter, these valleys widen to fertile pastures on
the river-banks, whilst the wide central plain grows more and more bare
and treeless, until it ends at last in a desert trodden only by a few
wandering shepherds with their flocks, and full of ostriches, bustards,
and wild game. This is known as the between-river (Mesopotamia)
district, which extends into a wide plain of rich brown soil, about
a hundred miles above the mouth, where the two rivers approach most
nearly, and the banks touch the so-called Median wall.

This plain, famous for its uncommon fertility as well as for its
historic importance, the “Shinar” Land of the Semites, and the
Babylonia of the Greeks, is as rainless as Egypt, and would have dried
up into a sandy desert, had not nature and human artifice contrived
means of irrigation.

For in the spring, when the snow melts on the Armenian mountains,
both rivers overflow their banks and water the thirsty land. This
overflowing of the gently moving Euphrates is as regular as that of
the Nile; the wide tract of water is unopposed in its inundation of
the plain and, like the Nile, it deposits a rich mud soil, and man’s
resources are called into play to aid nature by the artificial conduct
of water and by means of dams to give the neighbouring district a share
in the fertilising irrigation.

But the bed of the Tigris growing decidedly more narrow as it nears
the sea, receives the devastating stream from the eastern and northern
mountains, and the force of the waters transports the fertile soil from
the fields and transforms the plains into a wide swampy land, covered
with reeds and rushes.

The inhabitants, therefore, had the double task of stemming the force
of the stream to prevent destructive inundations, and of securing
a course for the fertilising waters by canals and lakes. So the
Babylonian plains were sown with such a number of small and great
canals, dams and ditches, that the waterworks and means of irrigation
were a source of wonder and astonishment to the whole of antiquity.
These canals, cut in every direction and decreasing in size until
they were almost rivulets, were furnished with countless machines and
pump-works. Many of these canals, which should have been kept free by
continuous clearing from the stoppage of mud, were lost in the sand;
others, emptying into the Tigris, increased its size, the nearer it
approached the sea, while the waters of the Euphrates were decreased
through the drain of the canals.[b]

The Tigris and the Euphrates have both flood seasons and carry their
waters over a wide extent of country, exactly as the Nile. This fact
is so perfectly clear that there can be no doubt concerning it, though
Herodotus directly asserts the contrary, saying, “The river does not,
as in Egypt, overflow the corn lands of its own accord, but is spread
over them by the help of engines.” The rise is indeed not so prolonged
as the rise of the Nile, but its influence is, nevertheless, distinctly
to be seen. Furthermore, the water was retained in sufficient quantity
to supply an irrigation system far back from the river for the grain
harvest, after the fall of the river. This entire system is now a vast
ruin. The river rises and falls as it wills, and sweeping far over the
western bank, turns the country into a morass. The harm of this is both
negative and positive. It makes impossible any such great ingathering
of grain as existed when this great valley was the world’s granary, and
it fills the land with a dangerous miasma, which produces fevers and
leaves the inhabitants weak and sickly. There are few instances in the
world of a sadder waste of a beautiful and fertile country.[e]

Old writers give the most brilliant descriptions of the wonders of the
district. Xenophon praises the quality and quantity of the dates, of
the groves of palms which line the banks of the lower course of the two
rivers and break the uniformity of the landscape, and are still very
productive where the cruel Turkish rule has not changed the garden into
a desert.

Herodotus lays particular stress upon the natural fertility of the
country, for he writes: “Babylon is, as we know, famed for the best
tillage of all lands, producing always two hundredfold of fruit and, in
very good years, three hundredfold. The leaves of the wheat and barley
are all four fingers wide, and I very well know, but I would rather not
say, to what size the millet and seed grow; for I am certain that those
who have not been in Babylon, will not believe it. There are few trees,
no fig trees, no vine, no olive. They have no oil but what they make
from sesame. But palm trees grow all over the country, and the fruit is
eaten and honey and wine made from it.”

This country is now almost a desert, without buildings and vegetation,
a world of tower-like ruins, which vary the monotony of the vast plains.

“From these heights,” says Ritter in his _Geography_, “one sees in the
solemn stillness of this ruined world the far-reaching wide mirror
of the Euphrates, winding majestically through that solitude like a
royal pilgrim among the silent ruins of his departed kingdom. The
palaces and temples, and the magnificent buildings, have all dropped
into dust and ruin; hanging gardens and blooming paradises have fallen
into gray, rush-grown, swampy marshes; and even there, where once the
captive Israelites hung up their harps in the royal capital, and sang
their songs of mourning over fallen Jerusalem, only a few imperishable
willows remain, and the silence is unbroken by a voice of joy or
mourning.”

Assyria, a mountainous district between the Tigris and the mountainous
western boundary of Iran, is not so fertile as Babylonia, but its high
position gives it a bracing climate.

Like the southern plains, it has little rain, but it is partially
watered by the numerous rivers which flow eastward and westward to the
Tigris, and partially by the canals and water conduits, and is rendered
tolerably fertile by careful cultivation.

In the south only a few palm trees and cypresses break the monotony of
the wide tilled fields, as in the Babylonian plain, but in the centre
of the country are Aturia and Arbelitis (Adiabene) where the Upper
Zab, the Zabatus or Lycus of classical writers, pours its blue waters
into the Tigris, and there are fruitful hills, with protected valleys,
full of corn, wine, sesame, figs, olives, and oranges; naphtha streams
give forth their precious oil, and farther northward on the borders
of Armenia and Media there are mountainous districts, the heights of
which are crowned with woods of oak and pine. The eastern district at
the foot of the Zagros (Chalonitis) is particularly prized for its
wealth of palms, fruit trees, and olives, and the country of Arpakha
(Arrapachitis) in the Chaldean mountains is considered the home of
Abraham. From hence he descended into the river district of the centre
and settled in the land around Kharran.

Northward lies the pasture land of Mesopotamia, whose wide plains
became the scenes of bloody battles, and where races and royal families
sought to eternalise their transitory power by the foundation of
cities, which have mostly vanished, leaving no trace behind them. Like
the Assyrian hill country, it gradually declines into grass-grown
steppes until, in the south, it becomes a desert whose waterless wastes
are trodden only by wandering Arabs.[b]

So far back as we have yet been able to penetrate, we find in the
southern part of Mesopotamia a number of petty independent kingdoms,
governed from their capital cities. Our present knowledge of this land
and its inhabitants may be briefly summed up.

After the river Euphrates, with countless windings and sharp falls, has
cleft the Syrio-Mesopotamian plain where it fertilises the districts
contiguous on its banks, it approaches to within a few miles of the
Tigris, and both streams water a completely flat plain, intersected
by numerous rivers and canals, and, for the most part, flooded by the
Euphrates in the summer.

The numerous districts on both sides of the lower Tigris and west of
the Euphrates which are out of reach of the irrigation have a desert
character, as rain is as rare here as in Egypt. But the irrigated land
was proportionately fertile; at least it was so in antiquity and the
Middle Ages. The district at the mouth of the streams was of a marshy
character with numerous swamps and lakes. In olden times the confluence
of both rivers, at latitude about 31° N., formed a long narrow bay
which has now been filled up by their deposits. The Arabian Desert
lies at the west of the Euphrates, or rather on its western arm, the
Pallakopas. The country on the east of the Tigris rises gradually to
the wild mountainous boundary of the Iranian highlands, which descends
in terrace form to the Tigris, to which it sends numerous rivers, which
in earlier times flowed direct into the sea.

At the present time the greater part of this district is a swampy
desert traversed only by wandering tribes, whilst in antiquity, and
again at the time of the Caliphs, it was made one of the most fertile
countries in the world by dint of careful irrigation, regulation, and
the construction of dams and canals.[18]

The most ancient population of this country formed several closely
related races which had no connection with the other nations of Western
Asia, but in the course of historical evolution they lost their
language and nationality and were submerged in the neighbouring races.

In the land of Makan, the district of the mouth of the two chief
rivers, were the Sumerians (Sumer, with its chief city of Ur, on
the Euphrates); and in the northern part of the river country
(Melucha land) from Erech, now Warka, upwards to the borders of the
Mesopotamian steppes, lived the Accadians, so called from Agade, their
capital, north of Babylon. To the east of the Tigris, far into the
pathless districts of the Zagros Mountains, dwelt the warlike races
of the Kossæans (Assyrian Kasshu). From their home, mode of life
and character, they were evidently the predecessors of the modern
Kurds, who belong, by language, to the Iranians. Next came the land
of Elam, or Anshan, as it was called in the language of the country,
the district of the rivers Choaspes and Eulæos, called by the Greeks
Kissian, with the capital Shushan, the Susa of the Greeks.

Whilst the Kossæans were always a wild mountainous people, and
the inhabitants of the plains of Elam, although they had a firmly
established state organization, were dependent on their western
neighbours for culture, Sumer and Accad (_i.e._ Babylonia) possessed an
ancient and a complete, independently evolved culture, which, although
second to that of the Lower Nile in innate worth and exclusive
evolution, perhaps exceeded it in historical influence. The surplus of
water from inundations was distributed over the country by means of
canals and dykes. Thus ensued a better-ordered life of the state from
the closer union of the different provinces. The temples of the great
gods formed the centres of the different districts from which, as with
the Egyptians, the cities of Babylonia arose first everywhere.

In Ur (now El-Mugheir) there was a temple of the moon-god Sin (or
Nannar). In Eridu (now Abu Shahrein) was the temple of Ea, the ancient
god of the ocean, and in Larsa (now Senkereh) that of the sun-god
Babbar (or Shamash), the lord of the city. The latter was worshipped
in like manner in Sippar (now Abu Habba), whilst in the neighbouring
Agade (Accad) the goddess Anunit was the deity of the city. On the
south lay the sacred “Gate of the Gods” Ka-Dingira, the Semitic Babel
(Babylon), the capital of the country. [With it was later united the
city of Borsippa.] The city Erech (Orchoë, now Warka), the sanctuary
of the goddess Nana (Ishtar), was held in special veneration. North of
Larsa was Girsu; on the canal Shatt-el-Khai was probably Lagash (now
Telloh); north of this the city of Isin; near it was for a time the
chief city of all Babylonia, Nippur, which was the home of the god Bel.
It is here that the excavations of the University of Pennsylvania have
been so fruitful. About fifteen miles northeast of Babylon was Kutha
(now Tel-Ibrahim), whose god was Nergal; near Kutha was Kish. In the
northern limit of Babylonia were Dur-Kurigalzu, nearly opposite the
present Baghdad; and Upi [or Opis.]

It seems therefore that the lay dynasty arose mainly from the
priesthood of these temples, for the kings are universally found in
closest relation to the city deities, in whose honour they built or
restored the temples, and down to their last day the priestly dignity
ranked foremost in the title of the Babylonian kings.[c]

ORIGINAL PEOPLES OF BABYLON: THE SUMERIANS

It is coming to be a common agreement among Assyriologists that the
original peoples of Babylon were of a race that was not Semitic. Just
what it was these scholars are not yet prepared to say; although the
inclination of belief is that it was an Indo-European race and most
likely of the Turanian family. An attempt has recently been made to
connect the aborigines with the Ugro-Finnish branch of the Ural-Altaic
family, but with what success it is still too soon to say. But whatever
these people, the Sumerians, may have been, they occupied the land of
Babylonia until dislodged by a great wave of Semitic migration. This
fact has not gone unchallenged, and from the ranks of Philology there
has come a strong contention for a Semitic origin of the Babylonians,
and the assertion that the Sumerian texts “do not represent a real
language, but a kind of cipher written according to an artificial
system of grammar.” And throughout the following discussion, written by
Professor Hommel, it must not be forgotten that Professor Halévy, the
originator of the theory of the Sumerian texts summarised above, still
champions his contention and adduces evidence for it that seems to him
conclusive.[a]

It has often been observed that southern Babylonia was originally the
proper home of the Sumerians, while as early as the beginning of the
fourth millennium before the Christian era the Semitic Babylonians
were already settled in northern Babylonia, and, as is proved by the
Naram-Sin inscription and several dating from the time of Sargon, his
father (_circa_ 3800 B.C.) had already acquired the Sumerian character
(and, by inference, the Sumerian civilisation). In the case of southern
Babylonia, the discoveries at Telloh have put us in possession of a
number of sculptures--some of them in relief, others severed heads
of statues, dating from the period between _circa_ 4000 B.C., or
earlier, and _circa_ 3000. These present two different types. One is
characterised by a rounded head with slightly prominent cheek bones,
always beardless, and usually with clean-shaven crown. To this type
certainly belong the representations of vanquished foes on the archaic
sculpture, known as the Vulture stele, though the primitive method of
representing the brow and nose by a single slightly curved line gives a
merely superficial resemblance to the Semitic cast of countenance. The
other is a longer-skulled (dolichocephalous) type, with thick, black
hair and long, flowing beard.

It is certainly by no mere accident that the heads of the Telloh
statues, most of which are supposed to represent kings, are of the
first-mentioned (Sumerian) type, while the bronze votive offerings,
which likewise bear the name of Gudea, are carried, as is evident at
a glance, by Semites. And as there were Semites among the subjects of
Gudea, where the Sumerians were the dominant race, so we find the same
Semitic type clearly marked in the figures round the stem of a vase;
while the party of musicians, who are seen approaching with submissive
gestures on the fragment of a bas-relief, which probably also dates
from the reign of Gudea, must likewise be of Semitico-Babylonian
descent.

Fortunately, ancient Babylonian art gives us the opportunity, not
merely of studying the wholly non-Semitic language of the earliest
inhabitants of Babylonia in lengthy bilingual original inscriptions
such as many of the statues of Gudea bear, but of seeing with our own
eyes the bodily semblance of this singular people, and so observing
the striking correspondence of non-Semitic elements in speech and
facial type. In this connection we would draw attention to an ancient
Babylonian statue of a female figure, now in the Louvre at Paris. We
may confidently assume that the woman represented is a Sumerian and
not a Semitic Babylonian; and it may thus be regarded as a splendid
counterpart to the Gudea statues, which by the whole character of
workmanship it calls to mind. Whether we have here a queen or some
other lady of high rank (the supposition that she is a goddess appears
to be excluded by the absence of the head-dress goddesses are wont
to wear) cannot, of course, be determined with certainty. It is only
natural that various mixed types should have developed in course of
time, especially in northern Babylonia; and many of the faces we meet
with--on the seal-cylinders more particularly--may be representations
of such.

That the Sumerians, like the Semites, were not an autochthonous race
in Babylonia follows from the condition of the soil, which had to be
rendered fit for agriculture, and indeed, for human habitation, by a
system of canals. Whence, then, did the Sumerians originally come,
before they took possession of the swampy Euphrates valley and settled
there?

There is a word in Sumerian, “Kar” (Turkish _yer_), which means
“country” (as does the Turkish word). But in Sumerian it has also
come to signify “mountain” and likewise “east” (since the mountains
lie only in the east of Babylonia)--meanings which the Turkish word
does not bear. This is, therefore, a clear indication that, even after
the Sumerians had settled in Babylonia, the range on the Median
frontier and what lay behind it always passed with them for their true
country, the original home whence they had come. There is also extreme
significance in the fact that they were originally unacquainted with
both the lion and the horse, as also with wine (and consequently with
the vine) and the palm tree; for they had no names for them, and called
the lion “great dog” (_nug magh_), the horse “ass of the mountains” or
“of the east,” wine the “drink of life” (_gish-tin_, from _gash-tin_),
and the palm “tree of Magan” (_mis-magan_), or “the upright” (_ügin_,
in its Semitic form _mus-ukannu_).

THE SEMITIC BABYLONIANS

By far the greater part of Babylonian literature, as well as the many
official documents of the kings of Babylon (in the more restricted
sense of the term) and Asshur is written in a language which was
clearly perceived, as early as 1849, to be intimately related to
the so-called Semitic languages of Anterior Asia. The relationship
is but confirmed by the type presented to us in various statues and
sculptures in relief, apart, of course, from the Sumerian sculptures
of the very oldest period; though in Babylonia we frequently meet with
a hybrid type, yet even in this the Semitic element is unmistakable.
In the heads of Assyrian figures the Semitic characteristics are very
strikingly marked. But since the Babylonians and Assyrians were a
single nation as far as language is concerned, and differed in blood
only by the fact that there seems to have been a strong admixture
of some foreign element in the former, while the latter presents a
strongly marked and far purer racial type, it may be taken as proved
that this type is that of the Semitic races, a conclusion which is
doubly vouched for by language and by facial conformation. It has
already been remarked in the foregoing chapter, that (unlike the
Sumerians) the Semitic population of Babylonia, which we meet with in
northern Babylonia as early as 3800 B.C., and which predominated there
from 2500 B.C. (or even earlier) onwards, was distinguished by an
abundant growth of black hair and long beards.

[Illustration: A RELIGIOUS PROCESSION]

From the circumstance that in the third millennium before the
Christian era the old Babylonian kings who resided in Middle Babylonia
(particularly at Nisin and Erech) and in Ur and Larsa bore Semitic
names, though the inscriptions that have come down to us from their
reigns are written entirely in Sumerian, we are probably justified
in concluding that in Middle Babylonia, where the dominant Sumerian
population of the south and the dominant Semitic population of the
north must have come most directly into contact, the interfusion of
the two races was at that time taking place on a very large scale.
On the other hand, in northern Babylonia, where Sumerians had lived
from the very earliest period, but had never risen to any political
importance as compared with the Semitic immigrants, the two must have
lived strictly apart down to 2000 B.C. (the latest date of which we
can be certain), for not long before that time colonists went out
from northern Babylonia and founded the empire of Assyria. The far
greater purity of the Semitic type among the Assyrians, together with
the absolute identity of their language and civilisation with that of
Babylonia, leads inevitably to the inference that the intermixture of
Sumerian blood with Semitic in North Babylonia had either not begun, or
had as yet proceeded but a very little way.

[Illustration: AN ASSYRIAN GOD]

Tested thus by philology, the Assyrio-Babylonian language, together
with Canaanitish (under which title we include Phœnician, Hebrew, and
Moabitish), Aramaic (Syrian, the so-called Biblical Chaldee, Palmyrene,
etc.), and Arabic (and under this heading not only the Sabæan tongue of
southern Arabia, but the Ethiopian and Amharic languages of Abyssinia,
should be placed), belong to a single well-defined group which we have
long been accustomed to call Semitic (cf. Stade’s _Geschichte des
Volkes Israel_) and the races which spoke and speak them are known to
ethnology as Semites. From the remotest antiquity down to modern times
these races have maintained a singular purity of blood and racial type;
the Canaanites represented in Egyptian tombs of the XIIth Dynasty, the
Assyrian heads in the bas-reliefs of Nineveh, the features of Jews at
the present time living in the midst of Indo-Germanic nations, and the
Bedouins who to-day roam the Syrian and Arabian deserts, all exhibit
a family likeness so remarkable that we see that throughout the whole
course of history they can have mingled but little with alien races.
The question of how and from what causes the Semitic type in Assyria
came to be preserved in greater purity than in Babylonia itself, whence
the Assyrians emigrated, is one that has been briefly touched upon
above.

Under these circumstances it is only to be expected that the constant
type of character proper to other Semites should be discoverable,
or, at least, in part recognisable in the Babylonians and Assyrians;
although we are bound to take into account the fact that even in later
days the Hebrews retained much of their old nomadic habits, that the
Aramæans of the Assyrian period were for the most part nomadic, and
that the Arabs are so still; while from the very beginning of their
appearance in history the Semitic inhabitants of the regions about
the Euphrates and Tigris are a home-dwelling people on a high level
of civilisation. Many traits of primitive national character tend
to be obliterated or modified by such an advance to a superior stage
of civilisation, while others, foreign to the brother or kindred
races which remained longer or still remain in the nomadic stage, are
developed.

In the Assyrians and Babylonians, as a matter of fact, we must meet
with so much that recalls instinctively their kin with those whom
the Bible and universal history have long rendered us familiar that
it offers the fullest confirmation of the conclusions arrived at by
a study of their language and physical type. It is very difficult to
compress into a few words a correct description of Semitic national
character.

[Illustration: SIEGE OF A CITY (NINEVEH)]

Eduard Meyer, in his otherwise admirable _Geschichte des Alterthums_,
says, “A very matter of fact habit of thought, keen observation of
detail, a calculating intellect ever directed to practical aims,
keeping the creations of the imagination completely under control and
averse from any freer flight of the spirit into the Illimitable, such
are the characteristics that distinguish the Arabs and Phœnicians,
Hebrews and Assyrians,”--a judgment which, though in the main correct,
is nevertheless not exhaustive. [Some of Professor Meyer’s other
estimates are less satisfactory to Professor Hommel, who quotes
the following with entire disapproval, claiming that they quite
misrepresent the true character of the Semitic mind: “This same
abominably matter-of-fact habit of thought, which dominates the Koran
and by means of which it wrought its effect, lies at the root of the
human sacrifices of the Canaanites, the religious phrases of the
Assyrians, and, finally, of Yahvism” (_i.e._ the religion of the Old
Testament). “The relation of the individual to the god is regarded in a
strictly rationalistic and calculating spirit. An ethical or mystical
relation to the Deity is wholly alien to the Semitic mind.”] Compare
these and other passages of the same sort [Professor Hommel continues]
with the fact that, on the contrary, a monotheistic tendency stronger
than in any other race in the world, and combining with it the idea of
a heartfelt surrender of the whole man to the Deity, was one of the
principal characteristics of the Semitic mind as a whole (though most
highly developed among the Israelites).

It is true that the cruelty of the Assyrians to foreign prisoners of
war, which often shocks us and estranges our sympathies from the whole
nation, recall certain instances of a like defect among the ancient
Israelites too strongly not to tempt us to think of it as a Semitic
propensity; but nevertheless these are mere excesses and excrescences
which must not be set to the account of national character. The Semite
is not naturally cruel. If he were so, the trait must have come out
most strongly in the Bedouin Arabs, who for centuries have remained at
the barbaric stage in religious matters; whereas this is not so, but
rather the reverse. With many races (some of them Indo-Germanic) of
whom the most unspeakable horrors and acts of violence are recorded in
the course of history, sheer lust of blood and torture has been the
motive of such actions (or rather crimes), while the cruelties just
referred to sprang from the dark side (revolting, it must be confessed)
of a national virtue: true zeal for the Holiest.

THE ORIGINAL HOME OF THE BABYLONIAN SEMITE

On such questions as the degree of kinship in which the Babylonians
and Assyrians stood to other Semites, their original home, their last
halting-places, and consequently the sequence of Semitic migrations,
Eduard Meyer holds the same views as the famous orientalist, Sprenger,
to wit, that Arabia, _i.e._ the desert as distinct from the arable
land, used from the very earliest times to send forth the surplus
of her predatory and rapacious Bedouin population to the great
pastoral districts in the vicinity, that is, to Palestine, the plain
of Mesopotamia (Aram), and, in times long out of mind, to northern
Babylonia also; that they were, so to speak, deposited there from time
to time, and that all Semitic nations whom we meet with in a state of
civilisation in the course of subsequent history have come into being
in this manner.

“But this ingenious theory has been directly refuted by later
investigations set on foot by A. von Kremer, and followed up by
Ign. Guidi at Rome, and, more especially, by myself, with a view to
discovering what domestic animals and cultivated plants were known
to the original Semitic stock. By the year 1879 Guidi and I had
come independently and, to some extent, by different ways to the
conclusion that the original home of the Semites could not possibly be
Arabia, but must be sought farther to the northeast. In the treatise,
_Die sprachgeschichtliche Stellung des Babylonisch-Assyrischen_, I
succeeded in proving further that the people who afterwards became the
Babylonians and Assyrians must have separated from the common stock in
some part of central Asia where the lion was indigenous, and emigrated
into northern Babylonia through one of the passes of the Medio-Elamite
range certainly no later than the fifth millennium B.C. The rest,
however, came by way of the southern shore of the Caspian Sea--probably
towards the end of the fourth millennium and at all events later than
the Hamites of northern Babylonia--and entered what was afterwards
Aramæan Mesopotamia from the north, then occupied it, and spread
gradually from thence to Syria, Palestine, and Arabia.” (Hommel.) So,
by subsequent offshoots and migrations, they became the Aramæans,
Canaanites, and Arabs.

This theory furnishes, on the one hand, the first satisfactory
explanation of many points in which Babylonian development, in language
and various respects, differs from that of other Semites. On the
other hand, it sets the large amount they have in common in a most
interesting light, since it proves to be the primitive heritage of the
Semitic race.

The whole question of the manner of Semitic migrations and offshoots
is one that cannot be a matter of indifference to the historian, as
may be objected in some quarters; and for a right understanding of
the history of Babylonia in the earliest times, it is of the utmost
consequence that we should know whether the Semitic Babylonians were
a distinct branch, as compared with their brethren, whose relations
among themselves were much closer, and whether the beginning of their
migration had led their steps through the land where grew the olive,
fig, vine, and other cultivated plants not to be found in Babylonia;
and lastly, it is imperative for a right comprehension of the history
of Semitic civilisation to arrive at a decision on these questions.
The fact that we find in the Assyrio-Babylonian language no trace of
the common Semitic name (found in Aramaic, Canaanitish, and Arabic)
for the three plants just mentioned, and others of the same nature,
constitutes, together with weighty philological considerations, the
positive argument in favour of the theory I have set forth: namely,
that the route by which the Semitic settlers of the lower Euphrates
came did not lie through regions where these plants are indigenous, but
that they migrated in advance of the rest of the Semites straight from
the east or northeast into anterior Asia and so to their new home of
Babylonia.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[16] [Compare, however, Professor Halévy’s Introductory Essay.]

[17] [See _Sketch of Semitic Origins_, by G. A. Barton, Ph.D. New York
and London, 1902.]

[18] [This entire system is now a vast ruin, according to Rogers, who
adds: “The great valley has a climate which appears little fitted to
produce men of energy and force, for the temperature over its entire
surface is very high in the summer season. It is, however, altogether
probable that in the period of the ancient history neither the heat
nor the sand was such a menace.… During the period of the glory of
Babylon these sand waves (from Arabia) had certainly not gone beyond
the Euphrates, and they could hardly have reached it.”]

CHAPTER II. OLD BABYLONIAN HISTORY

We have here the mere dust of history, rather than history itself;
here an isolated individual makes his appearance in the record of
his name, to vanish when we attempt to lay hold of him; there the
stem of a dynasty which breaks abruptly off, pompous preambles,
devout formulas, dedications of objects or buildings; here and
there the account of some battle, or the indication of some
foreign country with which relations of friendship or commerce
were maintained--these are the scanty materials out of which to
construct a connected narrative.--MASPERO.

Recent researches in old Babylonia have brought to light a very
large quantity of historical documents which tell a most important
story, inasmuch as they have to do with the very remotest periods of
antiquity. At Telloh, the site of the ancient city of Shirpurla, the
French explorers have found an abundance of interesting material,
while the Americans have exhumed, and are still exhuming, at Nippur, a
mass of documents which bids fair to rival in quantity the voluminous
records from the libraries of the Assyrian kings. In a single season’s
excavating, Mr. Haynes has very recently brought to light thousands of
inscribed tablets, some of which date from a period as long anterior to
the time of the great Assyrian kings as that time is to our own.

The historian is to be particularly congratulated in that many of
these ancient documents have the most direct bearing upon his studies.
It has already been pointed out that the Babylonians were much more
amply endowed with historical sense than were the Egyptians. They had
a tolerably full appreciation of the importance of chronology, and
though, like the Egyptians, they lacked a fixed era from which to
reckon, they, to some extent, compensated for this defect by the ample
series of king lists and “synchronisms” which various monarchs caused
to be written. Several of these chronological documents have been
restored to us by the various excavators, and, thanks to these, the
outlines of considerable periods of early Babylonian history are now
more accurately known than many much more recent epochs of occidental
history.

Unfortunately, these ancient lists consist, for the most part, of
tables of names having strange and unfamiliar sounds. To the average
reader these names are necessarily repellant. Such words as E-anna-tum,
Urumush or Alusharshid, Samsu-iluna, Kadashman-Kharbe cannot well be
otherwise than mystifying when unconnected with any vivid sequence of
tangible events. And for the most part the names of these earliest
rulers of Babylonia stand, in the present state of our knowledge, as
mere names, with only here and there a suggestion of tangibility.
Now and then we hear that a bas-relief of a certain king has been
preserved, as in the case of one Ur-Nina, “builder of an edifice
attached to the temple of Nina at Lagash,”[19] and in such a case the
mind conjures a curious world of associations at thought of an actual
likeness, real or alleged, being preserved for a period of more than
six thousand years. The king whose image is thus tangibly brought
to view after all these centuries of oblivion must seem a very real
personage, however little else is known of him or of his achievements.

Again, in the case of certain other monarchs, there are brief records
of campaigns and conquests against neighbouring peoples whose very
names, perhaps, have been preserved to us only through this incidental
mention. In such cases the mind is stimulated to the formation of
vague pictures of unknown peoples of that remote era, and the least
imaginative person must feel a bewildered sense of wonderment as to
what these peoples were like, whence they came, and whither they
vanished. But for that matter the Babylonian kings themselves, and
the peoples over whom they ruled, seem shadowy and mysterious enough,
to say nothing of their neighbours. The present knowledge does not by
any means suffice to give us a full list of the names of these early
monarchs.

In all probability there are lists still in existence buried in the
ruins of various cities, as yet unexplored, that in time will restore
to us a reasonably full record of those long stretches of time which
now seem so hazy. In numerous places the excavations are still going
on, discoveries are daily being made, undeciphered material is being
read; in a word, new chapters of this oldest past are being almost
daily brought to light. Whatever is written to-day regarding early
Babylonian history must then, in the nature of the case, be subject
to possible revision to-morrow. At least this is true to the extent
that additions are sure to be made to the present incomplete knowledge
in the near future. It does not follow, however, that the knowledge
of the present will be altogether superseded. Such king lists as have
been already deciphered, covering in the aggregate considerable periods
of time, may be depended upon, in general, as accurate and permanent
records, which will be supplemented rather than supplanted by the new
records of future discovery. Meantime, we must be content with the
glimpses into here and there an epoch, and with the citation of here
and there a name, covering as best we may some three or four thousand
years of Babylonian history in a few meagre chapters.

Tantalising as it is to catch such mere glimpses into realms that must
be fascinating could we but know their fuller history, there is at
least a certain consolation in the thought that our generation is the
first within the past two thousand years to gain even a glimpse of
these epochs of history. Even in classical times nothing was known of
early Babylonia: such reminiscences of Mesopotamian greatness as were
preserved pertained to the later Assyrian history and to New Babylonia.
And the Assyrians and New Babylonians themselves were possessed of but
little information regarding their remote ancestors, whose records
were, in the main, as completely hidden from them as they have been
from all succeeding generations of men until our own time.

To co-ordinate properly the great mass of information, unearthed of
late years concerning the numerous states that existed in Babylonia
in the earliest historic period, is the task that Dr. Hugo Radau has
undertaken with great success. The following extract from his recently
published work[20] will give the reader the latest knowledge of these
petty kingdoms, and enable him to understand how the greater ones
absorbed the lesser, and how the way was thus paved for the union of
all Babylonia under one ruler.[a]

THE BEGINNINGS OF HISTORY

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 4500 B.C.]]

The oldest king of Babylonia of whom we have any record, is
Enshagkushanna, whose date we have placed before 4500 B.C. He calls
himself “lord of Kengi,” the southern part of Babylonia. As to his
nationality, whether he was a so-called “Sumerian” or a “Semite,” we
have no means of knowing. Besides “lord of Kengi,” he seems to have
had another title, viz. “king of … “ The lacuna probably contained the
names of the capital of the kingdom. He must have waged war against
Kish in northern Babylonia, which city he terms “wicked of heart.”
He was the victor, and presented the spoil to “Enlil, king of the
lands.” Enlil--the later Bel--was the chief god in Nippur; Nippur
accordingly was called En-lil-ki, the “city of Enlil.” Hence Enlil
of Nippur seems to have been the god who wielded the chief influence
over the inhabitants of Early Babylonia. From inscriptions of certain
patesis[21] of Shirpurla, as well as from those of Lugalzaggisi, we
know that this temple was under the control of the king, who called
himself accordingly _patesi-gal_, “the great patesi.” But it also had
its own “chief local administrator,” the _dam-kar-gal_, who in his
turn had several minor priests or patesis under him. The cult of this
god seems to have been well arranged; the king, being the _summus
episcopus_, had a host of other officers (priests) under him, who
exercised the ordinary functions of the so-called priesthood of Bel.
Few as the historical notices are, yet they enable us to get an insight
into the condition of the land and of the people at this remote time.
They show us that a struggle went on between the south (Kengi) and the
north (Kish) which struggle lasted undoubtedly for several centuries.

Prominent cities at this time were the capital of Kengi, _i.e._
Shirpurla-Girsu, as we shall see later on; not Erech (Hilprecht),
Nippur, and Kish.

It is necessary, however, before tracing the different steps in the
development of Kish, to turn our attention to a kingdom called in
the inscriptions “Shirpurla.” The inscriptions of the rulers of this
kingdom give us an impression of a power and might which presupposes
centuries for its development. All that we know of its art and
civilisation tends in the same direction.

THE RULERS OF SHIRPURLA

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 4500-4100 B.C.]]

Shirpurla is the modern Tel-Loh (or Telloh) where De Sarzec found the
inscriptions relating to the rulers of this dynasty. It is situated
fifteen hours north of Mugheir, on the east side of the Shatt-el-Khai,
and about twelve hours east of Warka. At this early time the city of
Shirpurla seems to have included four component parts, viz. Girsu,
Nina, Uruazagga, Erim. Thus it happened that one and the same king
might call himself either “king of Shirpurla” or “king of Girsu.” These
suburbs were built by various rulers in honour of their favourite gods
or goddesses. Whether Shirpurla is the right reading, or Sirgulla
(Hommel), we do not know. According to Pinches, _Guide to the Kuyunjik
Gallery_, p. 7, London, 1883, and _Babyl. Records_, iii, p. 24,
Shirpurla may read Lagash, which reading is adopted throughout by
Jensen in K. B. iii. We retain the old reading Shirpurla, because this
writing occurs most frequently in the monuments.

The rulers of Shirpurla may conveniently be grouped under four
divisions:

(1) The dynasty of Urukagina--beginning with this ruler or his
predecessor(s) and ending with Lugalshuggur and his successor(s).

(2) The dynasty of Ur-Nina, ending with Lummadur.

(3) The patesis between Lummadur and Ur-Ba’u.

(4) Ur-Ba’u and his successors, ending with Gala-Lama.

To Urukagina, the oldest member of the first dynasty of Shirpurla, we
have assigned the approximate date of 4500 B.C. His greatness consisted
not so much in successful wars against the neighbouring cities, as in
securing a peaceful administration for his country and city. As “king
of Girsu-Shirpurla,” he devoted his energy to the building of different
storehouses, that should take up “the abundance of the countries,”
and erected temples for different gods--thus showing his devotion and
piety. He built “for Nina the beloved canal, the canal Nina-ki-tum-a,”
and thus supplied his city with water. Bel of Nippur still exercises
the highest influence. Ningirsu (“the lord of Girsu”) is the chief
city-god, under whose control the capital stands. He is the _Gud_ or
“hero” of Enlil. In somewhat later inscriptions, Ningirsu has the title
_gud-lig-ga_, “the strong hero” of Enlil. Many other gods are mentioned
in his inscriptions.

To this oldest dynasty of Shirpurla belongs also a certain En-gegal
(“lord of abundance” or “very rich”). He, like Urukagina, calls himself
“_lugal Pur-shir-la_,” “king of Shirpurla.” Besides this he bears the
proud title “_lugal ki-gal-la_,” “the great king,” and terms himself
_shib (dingir) Nin-gir-su_, “the priest of Ningirsu,” a title similar
to that of _patesi-gal_. From the title “the great king” we may venture
to conclude that he, unlike his predecessor, must have carried his
arms successfully against his enemies, who had previously succeeded in
plundering Shirpurla; but fate decreed that his royal capital should
be reduced to the seat of a patesi. Kish, having been defeated some
time before by Enshagkushanna, seems to have acquired new strength. Its
king, Mesilim, became lord paramount of Shirpurla, thus reducing its
rulers to mere patesis. The name of only one of these earliest patesis
is preserved to us, _i.e._ Lugal-shug-gur, who is mentioned in the
inscription of Mesilim. The sovereignty of Kish over Shirpurla does
not seem to have lasted very long. Shirpurla regained its former glory
under a new dynasty, namely, that of Ur-Nina.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 4300-4200 B.C.]]

With Ur-Nina begins a new dynasty, probably the mightiest of early
Babylonia, the duration of its sovereignty extending from 4300 B.C.
to 4100 B.C. Looking at the art and the inscriptions of these kings,
we cannot help thinking that in Shirpurla civilisation must have been
far advanced, so far advanced as to force upon us the conclusion that
“several centuries have elapsed before men could reach this stage of
civilisation.” The greater number of these art treasures are preserved
in the Louvre; the inscriptions found on them have been published in
_Découvertes en Chaldée_ and in the _Revue d’Assyriologie_.

The first king of this dynasty was Ur-Nina (servant of Nina). The
dynasty of Urukagina must have been reduced to mere nothingness by the
kings of Kish, so that Ur-Nina found it easy to take possession of the
throne. He must have been of an old family, for he mentions the name of
his father and grandfather, who have the title neither of patesi nor of
king. He, like his predecessor seems to have been great in peace. He
built temples and various storehouses. A passage in his inscriptions
where he records the building of the “wall of Shirpurla,” suggests
that the old enemy, Kish, was still troublesome, so that he found it
necessary to fortify his capital against the deadly enemies from the
north.

The son of Ur-Nina, who succeeded him upon the throne of Shirpurla,
was Akurgal. As yet no inscriptions of this monarch have been found.
All that is known about him is gathered either from the inscriptions
of his son (Eannatum) or from those of his father (Ur-Nina). In these
inscriptions eight sons of Ur-Nina are mentioned. If we classify them
according to their height, and take this as a basis for determining
their age, we would get the following result:

UR-NINA
--------------------------------------------------------------
(1) Lid-da, (2) Mu-ri-kur-ta, (3) A-ni-kur-ra, (4) Lugal-shir,
(5) A-kur-gal, (6) Nun-pad, (7) E-ud-bu, (8) Nina-ku-tur-a.

It is remarkable that the first-born, Lidda, is mentioned in only
one inscription. Did he never succeed his father upon the throne
of Shirpurla? Did Akurgal, his fifth son, in preference to all the
others, inherit the royal sceptre, and thus become the immediate
successor of Ur-Nina? Interesting as these questions are, we are yet,
with the means on hand, unable to decide them. This much only we
know, that both Eannatum and Enannatum I, call themselves, “son of
Akurgal.” Another interesting fact is that Eannatum, in his “Stèle des
Vautours,” calls his father _lugal_ (“king”) of Shirpurla, while in
his other inscriptions he only terms him “patesi of Shirpurla.” Not
very much can be concluded from this, because even Ur-Nina is styled
by Eannatum “patesi of Shirpurla.” The translation of this latter
passage, is not yet certain. Ur-Nina’s successor, however,--either
Lidda or Akurgal,--may have lost the title “king” in consequence of an
unsuccessful war. Eannatum, on the other hand, being more successful,
resumes again for a short time the title “king” after his victory over
Kish. This latter fact is very important. Eannatum expressly tells us
that Innanna gave him the nam-lugal Kish-ki, “the kingship of Kish,”
while as ruler of Shirpurla he was only patesi. The state of affairs
then was as follows:

Ur-Nina, a usurper, was able to constitute himself king of Shirpurla in
consequence of the weakness of the patesis of Shirpurla who preceded
him, they having been reduced by the kings of Kish to complete
powerlessness. Ur-Nina’s successors, however, were not able to retain
the title of their father. Was it internal disharmony between the sons
of Ur-Nina which caused this? They lost the title “king,” and had to
accept that of patesi. Undoubtedly they were forced to do this by one
of the successors of Mesilim, _i.e._ by a king of Kish. Eannatum--a
great hero--was able to overcome the old enemy Kish. He even was so
fortunate as to add to his old title, “patesi of Shirpurla,” that
of “king” (sc. of “Kish”) and by a stretch of this latter title he
may have also called himself “king of Shirpurla.” The successors of
Eannatum called themselves, and are called without exception “patesis
of Shirpurla.”

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 4200 B.C.]]

After these preliminary remarks about the titles of the different
members of the dynasty of Ur-Nina, we now turn our attention to
Eannatum (_i.e._ “The house of heaven is stable”), the son of Akurgal
himself. Whether he reigned contemporaneously with his brother
Enannatum I or not, we cannot tell. The fact that the sons of Enannatum
I succeeded upon the throne of Shirpurla makes it reasonable to suppose
that Eannatum preceded Enannatum I. This latter ruler seems to have
played only a minor rôle in early Babylonia history. Only two of his
inscriptions have so far come down to us. Eannatum, his brother, on
the contrary, is the greatest of the whole dynasty. The deeds of this
monarch have been preserved to us on different monuments, among which
the “Stèle des Vautours” is the most important. In order to obtain
a full conception of his time we must compare this “Stèle” with the
so-called “Cone” of Entemena. Those monuments in connection with the
Galet A, give us the following interesting piece of history:

The god of Shirpurla (Ningirsu) and the god of Gishban, at the
instigation of Enlil (god of Nippur), agree to settle the boundaries
between their respective territories (Cone i, 1-7). Mesilim, king of
Kish,--a contemporary of Lugalshuggur, patesi of Shirpurla,--in the
quality of lord paramount of Shirpurla, corroborates the result of
this “settling of boundaries,” and erects a statue on the junction of
the two territories, to mark out the boundaries of the territory of
Shirpurla on the one side and of Gishban on the other (Cone i, 8-12).
Ush, however, a certain ambitious patesi of Gishban, is not satisfied
with this decision. He takes away the statue which Mesilim had erected,
and then invades Shirpurla, undoubtedly to extend his territory beyond
the boundary previously fixed (13-21). A war between Shirpurla and
Gishban ensues.

Mesilim, who feels dishonoured by this action of Ush, takes the side
of Shirpurla and defeats Gishban (22-31). Gishban in course of time
again becomes restless. It invades, under its patesi Gunammide, the
territory of Shirpurla, and more specifically the Guedin, a district
sacred to Ningirsu. “Gunammide, the patesi of Gishban, according
to the command of his god … the Guedin, the beloved territory of
Ningirsu he destroyed.” Eannatum, after having fortified Shirpurla
sufficiently (“the wall of Uruazagga he built”), and having led his
armies victoriously against Elam and Gishgal, feels himself strong
enough to deal a deadly (?) blow at Gishban. “Gishban he put under the
yoke, twenty of its dead ones he buried.” Having done this, he restores
the sacred territory, the Guedin, to Ningirsu; concludes a treaty with
Enakalli, (one of) the successor(s) of Gunammide; digs a canal “from
the great river (_i.e._ the Euphrates?) to the Guedin,” and makes the
Gishbanites swear never to invade the sacred territory of Ningirsu
again, nor to trespass this boundary.

“In the future time the territory of Ningirsu, when (the Gishbanites)
should invade it again, the dyke and the canal, if they should trespass
it, the statue, if they should take it away--at that time when they
invade it, then the _sa-shush-gal_ (_i.e._ Eannatum) of Utu, the
powerful king by whom they have sworn, shall rise against Gishban.”

“The Stèle des Vautours” has for its main object the commemoration of
this treaty with Enakalli, patesi of Gishban, after the latter city had
been defeated by Eannatum. But Eannatum was not satisfied with this;
he imposes a heavy tribute upon Gishban, consisting of one karu of
grain for Nina and one karu for Ningirsu, besides 144,000 (?) great
karu. (Cone ii, 19 ff.) After having reduced Gishban to tranquillity,
Eannatum also carries his victorious weapons against Erech (Warka) and
Ur (the Ur of the Chaldeans), Ki-Utu (Larsa?) and Az (on the Persian
Gulf)--the patesi of which latter city he kills--against Melimme and
Arua. These latter cities were all in the neighbourhood of Shirpurla.
Last of all he crushes and defeats Zuzu, king of Ukh. But even this
does not exhaust the record of his victories. He becomes king of
Kish--Kish, which for so long had itself been sovereign over Shirpurla.
How this victory was accomplished is not evident from the inscriptions
so far extant. Probably at some future time we may find an account of
this war.

Eannatum was not only a hero in war, but also a wise administrator.
He not only renewed three suburbs of his capital, one of
which--Uruazagga--he even surrounded by a wall, but also improved the
condition of Shirpurla itself by digging different canals, which he
consecrated to his god Ningirsu: the Kishedin, which probably marked
the boundary between the Guedin and Gishban, and which the Gishbanites
had to swear never to cross; the Lummagirnuntashagazaggipadda along the
territory of Ningirsu; and the Lummadimshar.

Urukagina, we have seen, was the first to build a canal, viz. one for
Nina, which he called Nina-ki-tum-a. In the Cone of Entemena are also
mentioned the canal Lummasirta, the Imdubba, and the Namnundakiggara.
Here, then, we have the beginning of the most characteristic feature of
Babylonia. Babylonia becomes the “land of canals,” such as the Psalmist
had in mind when he wrote that touching psalm, “By the rivers of
Babylon we sat down and wept.” Further, Eannatum was not unmindful of
his duty to the gods. He confesses that all that he is and that he has
comes from his gods. Accordingly, he shows his gratitude by erecting
sanctuaries for Enlil, Ninkharsag, Ningirsu, and Utu, and by restoring
old buildings, which had been erected by his predecessors in honour of
the gods, among which is to be found the Tirash.

In spite of the solemn promise of Gishban never to invade the territory
of Shirpurla again, or to pass over the boundary canal, it very
soon--probably at the end of the reign of Eannatum, or better, at
the beginning of that of Enannatum I--becomes rebellious as before.
It invades the territory of Girsu, under the leadership of a certain
Urlumma, patesi of Gishban, passes over the boundary canals which
Eannatum had made, removes the steles erected on those canals in
honour of Ningirsu, casts them into the fire, and even destroys the
sanctuaries which Eannatum had built on one of these canals (_i.e._ the
Namnundakigarra) in honour of Enlil, Ninkharsag, Ningirsu, and Utu, and
lays waste the country. Enannatum promptly arises to chastise “those
dogs” who had dared to break their solemn promise. Whether this battle
was decisive or not, is not evident. It seems, however, that Enannatum
I gained but a slight victory over Gishban.

For Entemena, the son of Enannatum, finds it necessary to renew the
war with Gishban. “He puts Urlumma under the yoke,” _i.e._ subdues
him, forces him to return to his own country, and pursues him to the
very midst of Gishban. This triumphant victory began with the decisive
battle at the canal Lummasirta in the territory of Shirpurla. “Of his
(_i.e._ Urlumma’s) army sixty men on the side of the Lummasirta he
left.” On account of the severe loss Gishban fled. Entemena pursued
after it, of which pursuit he records that “he left the bones of the
soldiers (of Urlumma) in the field.” Many of these soldiers of Gishban
must have fallen, so many that Entemena was obliged “to bury their dead
in five different places.”

Arrived in Gishban, Entemena makes a certain priest of Innannaab-ki
(or Nin-ab-ki), Ili by name, patesi of Gishban, probably after having
deposed Urlumma. As a compensation for the new dignity thus conferred,
Entemena commands Ili to build in the territory of Karkar--which latter
had also become rebellious--boundary canals and some other buildings.
The canal which Eannatum had built “from the great river (Euphrates?)
to the Guedin” Entemena prolongs to the Tigris, and also repairs the
other canals, which had been destroyed more or less by the Gishbanites,
and dedicates them anew to Ningirsu and Nina.

Interesting also is the subscription of this Cone:

“When the men of Gishban the boundary canal of Ningirsu and
the boundary canal of Nina--for the purpose of ravaging these
territories--shall pass over, then may Enlil destroy the men of Gishban
and the men of the mountains; may Ningirsu bring his curse over them;
may he lift up his great power; may the soldiery of his (Entemena’s)
city be filled with bravery; may in the midst of the city be courage in
their hearts.”

With Lummadur, the son of Enannatum II, we arrive at the last
representative of the house of Ur-Nina. Nothing but his name is known
to us. From the absence of the title patesi behind his name, we may
conclude that Enannatum II was the last patesi of the line of Ur-Nina,
and that the old enemies, Kish and Gishban, have finally succeeded in
overpowering Shirpurla.

It is hardly possible to look back upon this dynasty of Ur-Nina--which,
as we have seen, dates from before 4000 B.C.--without being impressed
by the high civilisation, cult, the many buildings and canals, military
skill, and style of writing. Surely such a people as this could not
have sprung into existence as a _deus ex machina_; it must have had its
history--a history which presupposes a development of several centuries
more. We would gladly follow up the history of the successors of
Lummadur, but the lack of material prevents us from so doing. Passing,
therefore, over an interval of about two hundred years in the history
of Shirpurla, we turn now to the enemies of the “hero Ningirsu,” _i.e._
Kish and Gishban (or, better, Gishukh).

KINGS OF KISH AND GISHBAN

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 4200-4000 B.C.]]

Various changes had befallen the land of Kish. When speaking of
Enshagkushanna, we saw that Kish was defeated. It had, however, in
course of time again increased in strength. Mesilim was able to
establish himself as ruler over Shirpurla at the time of Lugalshuggur.
His successors may have retained their glory for a considerable period.
They were, however, not able to withstand the mighty weapons of
Eannatum. This latter king not only shook off the old yoke which Kish
had fastened upon Shirpurla, but even became “king of Kish.” He must
have reduced Kish to total impotence. Hence it came about that Kish was
vanquished by another power, of which we shall hear shortly.

Just as Gishban, after its defeat by Eannatum, felt strong enough
to disregard the solemn promise never to invade the territory of
Shirpurla, so Kish, after its overthrow by Eannatum, seems to have
rapidly regained its old power. For we find a certain En-ne-ugun,
“king of Kish,” who is also termed “king of the hordes of Gishban,”
desirous with the help of this latter city to extend the power of his
capital. He was, however, defeated by a certain king of a certain
country (the names cannot be read on account of the mutilated condition
of the tablets). “His statue”--this unknown victorious king records,
while relating his victory over En-ne-ugun--“his shining silver, the
utensils, his property, he carried away, and presented them to Bel at
Nippur.”

In course of time, however, and probably not very long after this
defeat, Kish seems to have recovered from this blow. A certain
Urzaguddu must have been very successful in his wars, for, in addition
to his title “king of Kish,” he calls himself also “king of …”
Unfortunately here again we have a gap, so that we cannot determine of
what city he became king.

Very little is known of the next king of Kish, Lugaltarsi. At what
time subsequent to Urzaguddu he lived we cannot tell. So much only is
certain, that he reigned some time before Alusharshid, about 3850 B.C.
His inscription--the only one so far known to us--is preserved in the
British Museum in which he records the building of Bad-kisal in honour
of Bel and Ishtar. We can now place Manishtusu and Alusharshid also
among the kings of Kish. Both flourished somewhere about 3850 B.C.,
before Sargon I.

When reading the inscriptions of these kings, it is as if a new race
were speaking to us, so widely different is the language used by these
rulers from that of their predecessors, or of any other kings we
have so far met with. We here find for the first time the so-called
Semitic-Babylonian inscriptions. It is the same language which is also
employed in the inscriptions of Sharganisharali and his successors,
in that of Lasirab, king of Guti, and of Annubanini, king of Lalubu,
all of whom were more or less contemporary with these kings of Kish.
Scholars who believe that we must postulate two different races among
the inhabitants of early Babylonia call the kings who wrote in this
style “Semitic kings,” while the others are referred to the Sumerian
population. As a result of this they read the names of these kings in a
Semitic way. Manishtusu becomes Ma-an-is-tu-iro (so Winckler). Urumush
becomes Alu-usharshid (_i.e._ “He--some deity--founded the city”).

The inscription of Manishtusu, whom we place provisionally before
Urumush, runs, “Manishtuirba, king of Kish, has presented (this) to
Belit-Malkatu.”

Of more importance, from the historical point of view as well as
from the linguistic, is the next ruler who followed soon after the
former. This ruler is Alusharshid. From his inscriptions--to be found
in fifty-one fragments of vases, which have been excavated by the
expedition of the University of Pennsylvania under Dr. Peters, and
partly published by Hilprecht--we learn that he subdued Elam, on the
eastern side of the Tigris, and the country of Bara’se (Para’se), from
which lands he brought back these marble vases, and dedicated them to
his gods at Nippur and Sippar.

For but a short period subsequent to Alusharshid does Kish seem to have
enjoyed its old power. The might of Kish gave place to that of Agade,
as we shall see shortly. Leaving, therefore, Kish for the present, we
turn our attention to the other enemy of Old Shirpurla, viz. Gishban.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 4000 B.C.]]

At about 4000 B.C., not long after the time of Eannatum, Gishban seems
to have acquired new power and might. It directed its chief attention
not so much towards Shirpurla as towards the south. Probably the rulers
of Shirpurla had at this time been reduced to utter weakness by its
old enemies (_i.e._ Kish and Gishban), of which enemies Gishban was
destined to play the most important rôle in the development of ancient
Babylonian history.

Lugalzaggisi, the son of Ukush, patesi of Gishban, we find at the
head of the armies of Gishban, which he leads victoriously against
the south. After Erech had opened its doors, the whole of Babylonia
to the Persian Gulf fell an easy prey to the conquering hero. He,
although originally only the son of a patesi, becomes king of Erech,
nay, even king of the “whole world.” “Enlil, king of the lands, has
given to Lugulzaggisi the kingship of the world; _he_ has made him to
prosper before the world; _he_ it was that had placed the lands under
his sceptre--the lands ‘from the rising of the sun even unto the going
down of the same.’ _He_ it also was that gave him the tribute of those
lands, which he made to dwell in peace, notwithstanding that they
had been brought under a new régime.” With these words Lugalzaggisi
acknowledges, as the kings of Shirpurla did, that Enlil, and Enlil
alone, had granted to him so unprecedented a dominion, extending from
the lower sea of the Tigris and the Euphrates (_i.e._ the Persian Gulf)
to the upper sea (_i.e._ the Mediterranean). Constituted thus “lord of
the world,” he now becomes its “summus episcopus.” “In the sanctuaries
of Kengi, as patesi of the lands, and in Erech, as high priest, they
(the gods) established him.”

To quote Hilprecht: “Babylonia, as a whole, had no fault to find with
this new and powerful régime. The Sumerian civilisation was directed
into new channels from stagnation; the ancient cults between the lower
Tigris and Euphrates began to revive and its temples to shine in new
splendour.” Thus, endowed with the highest temporal and spiritual
power, he “makes Erech to abound in rejoicing.” Nor does he forget
the other representative cities of his domain: “Ur, like a steer,
to the top of the heavens he raised.” “Over Larsa, the beloved city
of Shamash, he poured out waters of joy.” His own native town and
land receive chief attention: “Gishban, the beloved city of … to an
unheard-of power he raised.” He, as wise ruler and statesman, not only
shows his good will and favour towards the larger and more influential
cities, but also protects the weaker ones: “Ki-Innanna-ab he kept in an
enclosure, like a sheep that is to be shorn.”

Indeed, “Lugalzaggisi stands out from the dawn (?) of Babylonian
history as a giant who deserves our full admiration for the work he
accomplished.”

Seeing that Semitisms occur in almost all the earliest inscriptions
so far known to us, and that the rulers themselves may have been and
probably were Semites--let us confess this--then the other question
arises: At what time did the Semites come into the country, so as to
induce the original inhabitants to employ expressions foreign to their
own language? Where did they come from? To the last question, which
has been repeatedly discussed by scholars, different answers have
been given. Some make Africa the original home of the Semites; others
Arabia; and Hilprecht, who last spoke of this problem, assigns for this
purpose Kish, or better, Kharran some distance north of Babylonia.
According to his theory, Lugalzaggisi, the great conqueror from Gishban
(Kharran), was the first Semite to occupy any territory in Babylonia,
and thus opened the way for the Semitic population. But Lugalzaggisi
_does not antedate_ Ur-Nina. Ur-Nina is a Semite, as we have seen,
consequently Semites were in the country _before_ Lugalzaggisi.

Gishban is not Kharran, but the neighbouring state of Shirpurla; hence
the Semites did not come from Kharran, but actually occupied already
the whole country of Babylonia. Thus the two questions--when did
the Semites invade Babylonia? and, whence did they come?--are still
awaiting an answer. It is possible that some tablets may give us a key
to this problem, but so far these tablets have not been found.

[Sidenote: _ca._ 6000-3800 B.C.]

But further, if the Semites at so early a time as 4500 B.C. (Urukagina)
had possession of Babylonia and had adopted the old language of the
country, which language they interspersed with their own idiom, they
must have been for a long time resident in the land. This would bring
the immigration of the Semites back to at least 5000 B.C. and earlier,
when the Sumerian power began to decay. We must therefore push back the
height of Sumerian influence to a yet more remote period.

Hence, whatever view we take in regard to the two peoples and their
languages, we are led to the same general result: _Civilisation and
history must go back to at least 6000 B.C._

THE FIRST DYNASTY OF UR

Of Ur--the Biblical “Ur of the Chaldees”--we have already heard at the
time of Eannatum. It was situated at the western side of the Euphrates,
opposite the place where the Shatt-el-Khai flows into it. Up to the
time of Lugalzaggisi it may not have been of very great importance.
This latter ruler, however, “raised it like a steer to the top of the
heaven,” hence at no long period subsequent to Lugalzaggisi we meet two
kings, father and son, ruling at Ur. It is not impossible that this
dynasty may itself have brought about the overthrow of Lugalzaggisi,
as to whose successors we have no information. Probably, also, it took
possession of the more northern part of Babylonia (Nippur), for we find
that both these kings present vases to Enlil, the “lord of the lands.”

The names of these two monarchs forming the _first_ dynasty of Ur are:

Lugalkigubnidudu, and his son (?); Lugalkisalsi.

Their dominion extended over Ur, Erech, and Nippur, probably also over
Shirpurla, for the kings of the south could not have gained possession
of Nippur without passing Shirpurla. This would explain why we know so
very little about Shirpurla at this time. It is, however, remarkable
that both these kings should call themselves first “kings of Erech,”
and then “kings of Ur”; while on the other hand, Lugalkigubnidudu
expressly says that Enlil added (_tab_) the lordship (_nam-en_) to the
kingship (_nam-lugal_), which lordship so added was Erech. We would
expect that, if he were originally king of Ur, the title, “king of Ur,”
would come first. Here, then, we have an analogy to and a confirmation
of the argument used in regard to Urzaguddu. The latter king had also
two titles, viz. “king of Kish” and “king of …,” and it was argued
that the latter title, “king of …,” was the original, _i.e._ Urzaguddu
became later on “king of Kish.” So here “king of Ur” was the original
title; Lugalkigubnidudu subsequently became “king of Erech.”

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 4000-3800 B.C.]]

How long this dynasty flourished, how many rulers were comprised in
it, and when and by whom it was overthrown, we cannot tell. Probably,
however, it was replaced by a mighty kingdom which arose in the north
(that of Agade), destined to bear sway over “the four corners of the
world.”

Once more--before we leave southern Babylonia and pass over to the
north--we have to direct our attention to Shirpurla. The traces which
we possess of the life of Shirpurla and its patesis during this time
(_i.e._ 4100-3800 B.C.) are but fragmentary. Only one patesi is known
to us from a tablet recently published by Thureau-Dangin, in the _Revue
d’Assyriologie_. This patesi, Lugalanda by name, cannot have lived very
long after Lummadur, for the writing of that tablet shows all the
palæographic peculiarities of the inscriptions of Eannatum. Probably he
belonged to those patesis over whom Lugalzaggisi or his successors may
have ruled.

With the next two patesis, Lugalushumgal and his son (?) Ur-E,
we arrive at the time of Sharganisharali [Sargon], 3800 B.C. A
considerable gap in this period has still to be filled up. Let us
hope that the future excavations, combined with the industry of the
decipherer, will bring some light into this darkest of all periods in
Old Babylonian history.

Mentioning only another patesi that belongs to this period, Ur-(dingir)
Utu(?)--whose name is followed by [nam?] patesi Uru-um-ki-ma (_i.e._
Ur)--we pass from the south to the north of Babylonia, _i.e._ to the
city of Agade.

KINGS OF AGADE

Agade, near the modern Abu-Habba, formed in olden times with Sippar a
double city. It was situated near the Euphrates and north of Babylon.
As early as 3800 B.C. Semitic kings ruled in this city, extending their
sceptres over the whole of Babylonia.

[Illustration: THE FINDING OF THE INFANT SARGON]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3800 B.C.]]

The first king, as far as our knowledge goes, was Sharganisharali,
cited by us as Sargon I. He was the son of a certain Itti-Bel. This
latter is neither called a king nor even a patesi. In this we may
see a confirmation of the so-called “legend of Sargon,” according to
which this monarch was “of an inferior birth on his father’s side,”
and so either a usurper or the founder of the dynasty of Agade. This
legend--probably written in the eighth century B.C.--purports to be
a copy of an inscription written on a statue of this great king, and
bears a certain similarity to the Biblical account of Moses. It reads:
“Shargena, the powerful king, the king of Agade, am I. My mother was
of noble family (?) [others: was poor], my father I did not know,
whereas the brother of my father inhabited the mountains. My town was
Azipiranu, which is situated on the bank of the Euphrates. My mother
of noble family (?) (or, who was poor) conceived me and gave birth to
me secretly. She put me into a basket of _shurru_ (reeds?), and shut
up the mouth (?) of it (?) with bitumen; she cast me into the river,
which did not overwhelm (?) me. The river carried me away and brought
me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me up
in … Akki, the drawer of water, reared me to boyhood. Akki, the drawer
of water, made me a gardener. During my activity as gardener, Ishtar
loved me. X + IV years I exercised dominion, … years I commanded the
black-headed people (_i.e._ the Semites) and ruled them,” etc. The rest
of this legend tells us something about his campaign against Dur-ilu on
the borders of Elam; it is, however, too fragmentary to be coherent.

In connection with this legend we would call the attention of the
reader once more to the fact that not merely the identity of this
Shargena with our Sharganisharali, his deeds and warlike expeditions
recorded in the so-called “Tablet of Omens,” with the date of his rule,
have been doubted, but even his very existence. A series of new facts
connected with the time of Naram-Sin and Sharganisharali have since
come to light by the publication of a great number of contract-tablets
written during the reign of these kings. These tablets are to be found
in _Revue d’Assyriologie_, iv, No. iii. Hence it is now impossible to
doubt the historicity of Sharganisharali, as was done by Niebuhr.

Down to the time of Hilprecht’s publication of _Old Babylonian
Inscriptions_, Part I, our knowledge of Sargon I was almost entirely
drawn from the “legend” and the “Tablet of Omens.” Hence it happened
that the great deeds which were attributed to Sargon and Naram-Sin
in the “Tablet of Omens” were said to be “purely legendary” (so by
Winckler, _Geschichte Babylon. und Assyr._, p. 38). Others thought
that his deeds had been simply projected backwards (so Maspero,
_Dawn of Civilization_, New York, 1895, p. 599; “Sargon II is he who
projected backward”); others again, not believing that Sargon I could
have undertaken such expeditions and have become practically the “king
of the four corners of the earth,” invented another king Sargon (so
Hommel, _Gesch. Baby. und Assyr._, Berlin, 1883, p. 307, note 4; this
Sargon he places at about 2000 B.C.).

Thanks to the excavations at Telloh and the industry of Thureau-Dangin,
we are now in a position to prove that the statements of the “Tablet of
Omens” are correct in almost every particular.

Let us hear what this “Tablet of Omens” has to say. Eleven of these
“omens” are ascribed to Sargon and two to Naram-Sin. They generally
begin with the phrase: “When the moon was in such and such position,”
then Sargon, etc.

The first omen records Sargon’s expedition to and subjection of Elam.

The second tells how he marched to the land Akharri (_i.e._ the
West-land), and subjected it, and that his army subjugated the _kibrati
irbitta_, _i.e._ “the four corners of the world.”

The third tells us that he brought sorrow upon Kish and Babylon, and
built a city after the pattern (?) of Agade, and called it Ub-da-ki,
_i.e._ “place (city) of the world.”

The fourth records another expedition against the West and the taking
possession of the four corners of the earth. So also the fifth omen.

The sixth omen is too fragmentary to yield any certain sense.

The seventh gives us a fuller account of the expedition against
Akharri; he crosses the sea of the West and wages war against it for
three years, takes it, erects there his statues, and transports the
prisoners, whom he had taken, over land and sea.

The eighth describes the repairing of one of his palaces, which he
calls “E-ki-a-am i-ni-lik,” _i.e._ “the house”: “so let us walk.”

In the next we hear of a campaign against a certain Kashtubilla of
Kasalla, who had revolted. Sargon goes against him, conquers him and
his army, and destroys the rebellious country.

The tenth probably is one of the most important. It reads: “Sargon,
against whom under this omen the elders of the whole country had
revolted, and in Agade had shut him up--Sargon went out, conquered
them, and cast them down, subdued their army, and.…”

The last omen tells us something about Sargon’s campaign against the
land Suri, how he overcame it, and took it, and how he destroyed its
army.

The two omens relating to Naram-Sin record a campaign against Apirak
(Omen i) and against Magan (Omen ii). In both expeditions Naram-Sin was
so successful, that he even took captive the kings of these countries,
viz.: Resh-Ramman (Adad), king of Apirak, and N. N. king of Magan.

According to this “Tablet of Omens,” then Sargon I subdued Elam, the
“West-land,” brought woe upon Babylon and Kish, conquered the country
Kasalla, suppressed a revolt which had arisen against him while on his
expeditions, and finally subdued the land Suri “in its totality.”[b]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3750-2700 B.C.]]

Sargon’s son and successor, Naram-Sin, followed up the successes of
his father by marching into Magan, whose king he took captive. He
assumed the imperial title of “king of the four zones,” and, like his
father, was addressed as a “god.” He is even called “the god of Agade”
(Accad), reminding us of the divine honours claimed by the Pharaohs
of Egypt, whose territory now adjoined that of Babylonia. A finely
executed bas-relief, representing Naram-Sin, and bearing a striking
resemblance to early Egyptian art in many of its features, has been
found at Diarbekir. Babylonian art, however, had already attained a
high degree of excellence; two seal cylinders of the time of Sargon
are among the most beautiful specimens of the gem-cutter’s art ever
discovered. The empire was bound together by roads, along which there
was a regular postal service, and clay seals, which took the place of
stamps, are now in the Louvre bearing the names of Sargon and his son.
A cadastral survey seems also to have been instituted, and one of the
documents relating to it states that a certain Uru-Malik, whose name
appears to indicate his Canaanitish origin, was governor of the land of
the Amorites, as Syria and Palestine were called by the Babylonians. It
is probable that the first collection of astronomical observations and
terrestrial omens was made for a library established by Sargon.

Bingani-shar-ali was the son of Naram-Sin, but we do not yet know
whether he followed his father on the throne. Another son was
high priest of the city of Tutu, and in the name of his daughter,
Lipus-Eaum, a priestess of Sin, some scholars have seen that of the
Hebrew deity, Yahveh. The Babylonian god, Ea, however, is more likely
to be meant.

THE KINGS OF UR

The fall of Sargon’s empire seems to have been as sudden as its rise.
The seat of supreme power in Babylonia was shifted southward to Erech,
Isin, and Ur. At least three dynasties appear to have reigned at Ur
and claimed suzerainty over the other Babylonian states. One of these,
under Gungunu, succeeded in transferring the capital of Babylonia from
Isin to Ur. It is still uncertain whether Gungunu belonged to the
second or third dynasty of Ur; if to the second, among his successors
would have been Ur-Gur, a great builder, who built or restored the
temples of the Moon-god at Ur, of the Sun-god at Larsa, of Ishtar
at Erech, and of Bel at Nippur. His son and successor was Dungi II,
one of whose vassals was Gudea the _patesi_ or high priest of Lagash
[Shirpurla]. Gudea was also a great builder, and the materials for his
buildings and statues were brought from all parts of western Asia,
cedar wood from the Amanus Mountains, quarried stones from Lebanon,
copper from northern Arabia, gold and precious stones from the desert
between Palestine and Egypt, dolerite from Magan (the Sinaitic
peninsula), and timber from Dilmun in the Persian Gulf. Some of his
statues, now in the Louvre, are carved out of Sinaitic dolerite, and
on the lap of one of them is the plan of his palace, with the scale
of measurement attached. Six of the statues bore special names, and
offerings were made to them as to the statues of the gods. Gudea
claims to have conquered Anshan in Elam, and was succeeded by his son,
Ur-Ningirsu. His date may be provisionally fixed at 2700 B.C.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2700-2340 B.C.]]

The high priests of Lagash still owned allegiance to Ur, when the
last dynasty of Ur was dominant in Babylonia. The dynasty was
Semitic, not Sumerian, though one of its kings was Dungi II. He was
followed by Bur-Sin II, Gimil-Sin, and Ine-Sin, whose power extended
to the Mediterranean, and of whose reigns we possess a large number
of contemporaneous monuments in the shape of contracts and similar
business documents, as well as chronological tables. After the fall of
the dynasty, Babylonia passed under foreign influence.

ACCESSION OF A SOUTH ARABIAN DYNASTY

Sumu-abi (“Shem is my father”), from southern Arabia (or perhaps
Canaan), made himself master of northern Babylonia, while Elamite
invaders occupied the South. After a reign of fourteen years, Sumu-abi
was succeeded by his son, Sumu-la-ilu, in the fifth year of whose reign
the fortress of Babylon was built, and the city became for the first
time a capital. Rival kings, Pungun-ila and Immeru, are mentioned
in the contract tablets as reigning at the same time as Sumu-la-ilu
(or Samu-la-ilu); and under Sin-muballit, the great-grandson of
Sumu-la-ilu, the Elamites laid the whole of the country under tribute,
and made Eri-Aku, or Arioch, called Rim-Sin by his Semitic subjects,
king of Larsa. Eri-Aku was the son of Kudur-Mabuk, who was prince of
Yamudbal [or E-mutbal], on the eastern border of Babylonia, and also
“governor of Syria.”

The Elamite supremacy was at last shaken off by the son and successor
of Sin-muballit, Khammurabi, whose name is also written Ammurapi and
Khammuram, and who was the Amraphel of Genesis xiv. 1. The Elamites,
under their king, Kudur-Lagamar or Chedorlaomer, seem to have taken
Babylon and destroyed the temple of Bel-Merodach; but Khammurabi
retrieved his fortunes, and in the thirtieth year of his reign (in 2340
B.C.), he overthrew the Elamite forces in a decisive battle and drove
them out of Babylonia. The next two years were occupied in adding Larsa
and Yamudbal to his dominion, and in forming Babylonia into a single
monarchy, the head of which was Babylon.

A great literary revival followed the recovery of Babylonian
independence, and the rule of Babylon was obeyed as far as the shores
of the Mediterranean. Vast numbers of contract tablets, dated in
the reigns of Khammurabi and other kings of the dynasty, have been
discovered, as well as autograph letters of the kings themselves,
more especially of Khammurabi. Among the latter is one ordering the
despatch of two hundred and forty soldiers from Assyria and Situllum,
a proof that Assyria was at the time a Babylonian dependency. Constant
intercourse was kept up between Babylonia and the West, Babylonian
officials and troops passing to Syria and Canaan, while “Amorite”
colonists were established in Babylonia for the purposes of trade.
One of these Amorites, Abi-ramu or Abram by name, is the father of
a witness to a deed dated in the reign of Khammurabi’s grandfather.
Ammi-satana, the great-grandson of Khammurabi, still entitles himself
“king of the land of the Amorites,” and both his father and son
bear the Canaanitish (and South Arabian) names of Abesukh or Abishua
[Ebishum], and Ammi-zadok [or Ammi-sadugga].

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 2287-1100 B.C.]]

Samsu-satana, the son of Ammi-zadok, was the last king of the first
dynasty of Babylon, which was followed by a dynasty of eleven Sumerian
kings for 368 years. We know but little of them; their capital has not
yet been discovered, and no trading documents dated in their reigns
have been found. They were overthrown and Babylonia was conquered
by Kassites or Kossæans from the mountains of Elam, under Kandish
[Gandish] or Gaddas (in 1800 B.C.), who established a dynasty which
lasted for 576 years and nine months.

THE KASSITE DYNASTY

Under this foreign domination, Babylonia lost its empire over western
Asia. Syria and Palestine became independent, and the high priests of
Asshur made themselves kings of Assyria. The divine attributes with
which the Semitic kings of Babylonia had been invested disappeared
at the same time; the title of “god” is never given to a Kassite
sovereign. Babylon, however, remained the capital of the kingdom and
the holy city of western Asia. Like the sovereigns of the Holy Roman
Empire, it was necessary for the prince, who claimed rule in western
Asia, to go to Babylon and there be acknowledged as the adopted son of
Bel before his claim to legitimacy could be admitted. Babylon became
more and more a priestly city, living on its ancient prestige and
merging its ruler into a pontiff. From henceforth, down to the Persian
era, it was the religious head of the civilised East.

One of the earlier Kassite kings was Agum-kakrime, who recovered the
images of Merodach and his consort, which had been carried away to
Khani. At a later date Kadashman-Bel and Burna-buriash I corresponded
with the Egyptian Pharaohs, Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV (1400
B.C.). The Assyrian king Asshur-uballit still owned allegiance to his
Babylonian suzerain, and intermarriages took place between the royal
families of Assyria and Babylonia. Babylonia, moreover, still sought
opportunities of recovering its old supremacy in Palestine, which the
conquests of the XVIIIth Dynasty had made an Egyptian province, and
along with Mitanni or Aram-Naharain and the Hittites intrigued against
the Egyptian government with disaffected conspirators in the West.
After the death of Burna-buriash, however, civil war in Babylonia led
to Assyrian interference in the affairs of the country, and from this
time forward even the nominal obedience of Assyria to its old suzerain
was at an end.

ASSYRIAN CONQUEST OF BABYLON

Frequent wars broke out between the two nations, and eventually
(about 1280 B.C.) Tukulti-Ninib of Assyria, in the fifth year of
his reign, captured Babylon and sent the treasures of E-sagila, the
temple of Bel-Merodach, to Asshur. For seven years the Assyrian
monarch reigned over Babylonia, then a revolt obliged him to retire;
Adad-shum-usur of the native dynasty was placed on the Babylonian
throne; and Tukulti-Ninib was shortly afterwards murdered by his son,
Asshurnazirpal I. Assyria steadily increased in power, while Babylonia
fell more and more into decay. Shalmaneser I, the builder of Calah (now
Nimrud) in 1300 B.C., carried his victorious arms in all directions,
and Tiglathpileser I extended the Assyrian Empire as far as the
Mediterranean (1100 B.C.).

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1230-745 B.C.]]

The Kassite Dynasty had fallen about 1230 B.C., in consequence of an
attack on the part of the Elamites, and a new dynasty which sprang from
Isin took its place, and lasted for 132½ years. Then came a series of
short-lived dynasties, ending with that of Nabu-nasir, the Nabonassar
of classical writers, who ascended the throne of Babylon in 747 B.C.
Assyria was at the time in the throes of a revolution. Civil war and
pestilence were devastating the kingdom, and its northern provinces had
been wrested from it by Ararat (or Van) [Urartu]. In 746 B.C. Calah
rebelled, and on the thirteenth of Airu (April), in the following
year, Pulu or Pul, who took the name of Tiglathpileser III, seized the
throne, and inaugurated a new and vigorous policy.[c]

At this point it seems well to interrupt the story of Babylonia for a
time until we have traced the origins and rise of that Assyrian power
in which the fortunes of Babylon were soon involved and subordinated
until the destruction of Nineveh, when the New Babylonian Empire
emerged into historic prominence.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[19] [Such is the way in which a few Assyriologists read the more
commonly accepted “Shirpurla.” Professor Hommel interprets it
“Sirgulla,” in favour of which there is something to be said.]

[20] [Quoted by permission from “Early Babylonian History,” New York
and London, 1902.]

[21] [The patesi was an official whose office was sacerdotal as well
as administrative. We find him at the head of a state before the ruler
assumes the title of king and also a viceregent when the country has
been conquered by a more powerful nation. The custom seems to have been
in this case for the victorious monarch to reduce the vanquished to the
rank of patesi, and in such capacity he and his successors continue the
local administration.]

CHAPTER III. THE RISE OF ASSYRIA

Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches, and
with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was
among the thick boughs.

The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her
rivers running round about his plants, and sent out her little
rivers unto all the trees of the field.

Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field,
and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long
because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth.

All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under
his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their
young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations.

Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the length of his branches:
for his root was by great waters.--_Ezekiel_ xxxi. 3-7.

The Assyrian Empire is in some respects unique in history. Despite
the proverbial tendency of history to repeat itself, there has been
no duplication of the tragic history of this wonderful body politic.
It rose to be the most powerful of nations; it reached out and gained
the widest empire that had hitherto been seen; its capital, Nineveh,
was for a few centuries the metropolis of the world. But in the very
fulness of its imperial flight it was struck down and utterly destroyed.

Other empires have been subjugated; Nineveh was annihilated. The very
name “Assyrian” became only a memory and a tradition. Late in the
seventh century B.C. Nineveh was the boasted mistress of the world; two
centuries later the mounds that covered her ruins were noted by the
Greek historian Xenophon, who marched past them with the ill-fated Ten
Thousand, merely as the relics of some ancient city of unknown name.
So brief may be the highest fame! Yet the sequel is stranger still.
As we have seen, these forgotten mounds treasured secrets of history
which they have since given up to the explorer, and our own generation
has seen Assyria restored to its place in history. The details of its
career are more fully known to us than those of almost any other nation
of antiquity. Such a phœnix-like regeneration is a fitting sequel to
the fantastic career with its tragic dénouement, which is about to
claim our attention.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 3000-1120 B.C.]]

It must not be supposed that the Assyrian Empire came suddenly to
the height of power just suggested. On the contrary, its rise was
slow, and accomplished by intermittent impulses. Naturally enough,
the growing nation has left us no such exhaustive records of its
history during earlier days as have come to us from its time of might.
Indeed, for some centuries after Assyria began to assume importance,
we have but fragmentary records of its history. Only here and there
a great monarch puts the stamp of his achievements upon an epoch so
indelibly that time itself cannot wipe it out. Such names as Sargon
II, Shalmaneser, and Tiglathpileser were remembered by posterity as
the names of great heroes whose deeds various successors strove to
emulate, and whose names were taken up, sometimes by usurpers of the
throne, sometimes by legitimate descendants of royalty, and thus doubly
perpetuated.

It is not till we are well within the last thousand years of the
pre-Christian era, however, that the monarchs of Assyria come to be
so well known to us as to seem like true historic personages in the
same sense in which these terms would be applied to the Alexanders and
Cæsars of a later period. Such kings as Sargon II, Asshurnazirpal,
Tiglathpileser III, Shalmaneser II and a little later, Sennacherib,
Esarhaddon, and Asshurbanapal, left records so voluminous and so
perfectly authenticated as to bring their authors into the clearest
light of history. Nowhere else outside of Egypt have such full records
been preserved of the deeds of ancient monarchs as in the case of
these Assyrian kings. Naturally enough, the record ceases before the
destruction of Nineveh; there was no Assyrian scribe left to tell of
that tragic event.

But now the scene shifts to Babylon; the kings of that principality
take up the broken record, and for a few generations supply us with
historical documents of the utmost importance. And where the Babylonian
records end, the Persian chronicles begin. These are supplemented in
due course by the reports of the Grecian historians, beginning with
Herodotus, so that the historical sequence is practically unbroken.

We have seen that these Assyrian and Babylonian records were quite
unknown throughout later classical times, and from then on until
restored late in the nineteenth century. A peculiar interest, then,
attaches to the comparison of these records with the traditions of
Babylonian and Assyrian heroes which the classical writers have
preserved. In general, it can hardly be said that the comparison is
flattering to the classical mind. No Assyrian tablet tells us of any
such person as Ninus, the alleged founder of Nineveh. Nor is there any
royal cylinder that tells of the mighty conquests of Queen Semiramis.
There is, indeed, a queen of that name mentioned, but she is the
consort of a late king of Nineveh, and there is nothing recorded to
suggest that her achievements were in any respect noteworthy. We are
forced to conclude, then, that the Greek historians, in recording
the alleged history of Assyria, depended upon verbal traditions.
They appear to have been altogether ignorant of the contents of the
authentic historical documents, many of which were still accessible
in the libraries of Babylonia when Herodotus visited that city. It is
interesting to note, however, that the Greeks had a vivid realisation
of the sometime greatness of Assyria, even though they were unable to
form a clear and correct image of the picture. Semiramis was really
an idealised impersonation of the general conception of the Assyrian
conqueror. Sargon, Tiglathpileser, and their successors were forgotten
in name, but their deeds were vaguely remembered, and out of the
reminiscences of their actual conquests arose the conception of a
mythical ruler, whose name was destined for centuries to supplant the
names of actual heroes. What happened here is but a repetition of what
has happened elsewhere under similar conditions. There is no myth
without its background of fact. Had there never been great conquerors
ruling over Assyria, there would never have arisen the legend of
Semiramis. That “there is no smoke without some fire” is a maxim which
the historian should never overlook; it is a maxim to which the story
of Assyrian history gives peculiar emphasis.

So much has been said about the sources of Assyrian history that only a
word need be added here. We shall have occasion as we proceed, to call
attention in greater detail to the specific records of various kings.
In addition to these, however, there are certain historical documents
of a more general character, which have been largely instrumental in
enabling the modern investigator to reconstruct Babylonian and Assyrian
history. The most important of these are certain Babylonian king-lists
and a so-called Synchronistic History, in which the succession of
rulers in Babylonia and in Assyria is synchronised. These chronological
documents taken together do not enable us fully to reconstruct the
history of the long periods in question, but the gaps are relatively
insignificant, in particular after about the year 1000 B.C.; and for
the later monarchs of Assyria the records are often so voluminous as to
furnish accurate details regarding all the events of importance.

It has already been pointed out that the earliest history of Assyria is
no less obscure than that of early Babylonia. As nearly as the facts
can now be restored to us, it would appear that for some centuries the
people to the north of Babylonia were struggling for supremacy against
the older civilisation of the South. Gradually the northerners--the
Assyrians, as they became known--gained in strength until, finally,
about the beginning of the fourteenth century B.C., under Shalmaneser
I, Asshur obtained a position at least equal to Babylonia. After the
death of this monarch Assyria seems to have weakened for a time, and
it is not until about 1100 B.C. that another great monarch appeared to
put the stamp of his personality upon the epoch. This new ruler was
known as Tiglathpileser I. He has been called the first of the great
Assyrian conquerors, though perhaps this estimate does scant justice to
certain of his predecessors. In any event, he restored the influence
of Assyria, subjugated Babylonia, and is said to have been the first
Assyrian ruler to be crowned as “King of the Four Corners of the
Earth.” It is believed that Nineveh was established as the capital of
the empire in the reign of the son and successor of Tiglathpileser, who
bore the unfamiliar name of Asshur-bel-kala.

[Illustration: AN ASSYRIAN PRINCE]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 950-825 B.C.]]

It is curious how largely the personality of an individual monarch
dominates the history of an epoch among oriental nations. An
illustration of this familiar fact is shown by antithesis in the
scantiness of the records for about a century after the death of
Tiglathpileser. Imperfect records reappear about 950 B.C., but it is
not till about three-quarters of a century later that Assyria rises
again to a time of might. Then, under Asshurnazirpal, one of the most
enterprising and most cruel of conquerors, the stamp of Assyrian
influence was put upon all surrounding nations. Shalmaneser II largely
sustained the traditions of his father, and the power of Assyria was
upheld, if not extended, by the next rulers, Tiglathpileser III and
Shalmaneser IV.

How fully the deeds of these later Assyrian monarchs are known to us
will appear in the succeeding pages. Monarchs of even greater celebrity
were to come after; yet perhaps the reign of Asshurnazirpal (885-860
B.C.) may not unjustly be regarded as the period when Assyria obtained
its greatest power and its highest civilisation. The bas-reliefs from
the palace of Asshurnazirpal, which were exhumed by Layard and which
are now exhibited in the British Museum, are in some respects the most
perfect examples of Assyrian art that have been preserved. It is true
that the artists of two centuries later had developed a more elaborate
fashion in the matter of details; but the rugged outlines of the
earlier masters tell of art in its creative period. The models produced
in this epoch were never to be altered in their essentials during the
entire course of Assyrian history. Such hunting scenes as that in which
Asshurnazirpal, standing in his chariot, is seen shooting an arrow at
an enraged and wounded lion, were perhaps never quite equalled by any
Assyrian artist of a later epoch. The art of this time shows examples
also of massive sculptures, such as the human-headed bulls and lions,
in relative abundance. A curious feature of the later sculptures is
that they usually present inscriptions written across pedestal and
figure alike. Needless to say, these inscriptions record deeds of the
great conqueror. Unfortunately, many of them are repetitions, but even
so they preserve relatively comprehensive records of the achievements
of the great king.

Even fuller records are preserved of Shalmaneser II. In particular,
the black obelisk on which the deeds of this king are presented, both
in graphic pictures and in extensive inscriptions, is one of the most
famous of Assyrian antiquities. The exact character of this inscription
and of the other records in question will be detailed in the succeeding
pages.[a] Before proceeding to the history proper, let us study the
theatre where the drama was played and the origins of the actors.

LAND AND PEOPLE

The land of Assyria, in the more restricted sense of the term, lies for
the most part on the left bank of the Tigris, and is bounded on the
south by the Lower Zab. Hence, strictly speaking, it would not form
part of Mesopotamia were it not that the capital importance of the
Tigris to the country and the trend of its other rivers make it a kind
of appendage to the alluvial plain, and that the mountain ranges of
the North constitute a boundary which cuts it off from the rest of the
world, and thus naturally assigns it to Mesopotamia. Consequently, as
soon as the Assyrians gained their independence and started on a career
of conquest, it was natural that they should first extend their borders
in that direction.

Mesopotamia consists of a great low-lying plain divided by no physical
barrier. It was natural, therefore, that the policy of all powerful
rulers in that region should have had for its aim the political
unification of all parts of the country, united as they were already by
a common civilisation and economic interdependence. The efforts of the
Assyrians were likewise directed towards this end, though it was long
before they obtained it. In the kingdom of Babylonia, which asserted
its sway over the whole southern portion of the plain and its dependent
provinces, they were at first confronted by an adversary strong enough
to resist them, and all that fell to them for the time being was the
northern half of Mesopotamia, the greater part of which remained under
their dominion, and was merged into an Assyrian empire, just as the
whole of Babylonia had been merged into a Babylonian empire. We shall
see, however, that the memory of the separate existence of the two
component parts of the empire at an earlier stage still subsisted in
certain customs and relics of civil law, just as it did in Babylonia.

The Assyrians were a Semitic race, and, but for slight differences
of dialect, spoke the same language as the Semitic-Babylonians. The
Assyrian branch of the race constituted, in the first instance, an
outpost on the left bank of the Tigris, where it developed on somewhat
different lines from the Semites who remained in Mesopotamia. We
have every reason for assuming that, before the Assyrians made their
way into the country, the whole of Mesopotamia, the north no less
than the south, was occupied by a Semitic population, distinct from
the Aramæans--themselves probably recent immigrants--and united
by a common civilisation. This is the race which we have styled
Babylonians, as distinguished from the Sumerians, or, more exactly,
Semitic-Babylonians, in treating of Babylonia. We are absolutely in
the dark as to the extent to which these Semites of the North may
have absorbed elements of an elder Sumerian population that may have
survived, for in the earliest times concerning which we have any
historic testimony the Semites were predominant even in northern
Babylonia, much more, therefore, in northern Mesopotamia.

The Assyrians must have developed on independent lines, for in all
other respects they differ materially from the Babylonians. In the
latter we have made the acquaintance of a people peaceably disposed,
nay, actually unwarlike, concerned mainly with the development of their
civilisation--qualities which, when we compare them with the Assyrians,
we are inclined to set to the account of their Sumerian blood. The
latter were probably the most warlike of all the Semitic nations of
the East, and maintained the purity of their racial type; for the
features of the figures in their sculptures exhibit to a marked degree
the characteristics which strike us nowadays as peculiar to the Jewish
race. They also differ from the Babylonians in figure, for the latter
are usually represented as short and thick-set, while the Assyrians are
of somewhat lofty stature and powerful build.

The land of Assyria is very different from Mesopotamia proper. The
nearness of the mountain ranges makes the climate cooler, and the
soil is probably less productive than that of the lowlands along the
river. Nor were the means of transport within its borders as good as
in Mesopotamia proper, for the Tigris only constituted the frontier,
and the swiftness of its current made it less well adapted for traffic
than the Euphrates, which formed the most convenient natural line of
communication in the plain of Mesopotamia.

In Babylonia we made the acquaintance of a country which had developed
its own civilisation, and one where the inhabitants held in proud
and honourable remembrance the various stages of its economic and
political development,--a sentiment reflected in the religious cults
of the ancient cities, the centres of civilisation. With Assyria it is
otherwise. That country began to play its part in Mesopotamian history
with the set purpose of appropriating what Babylonia had achieved. The
Assyrians had no such gains, hallowed by the associations of thousands
of years to boast of in their own country. They were a tardy supplement
to the Semitic immigration. They felt themselves an appendage to the
Semitic population already settled in Mesopotamia, and consequently
regarded its ancient cults as, in a measure, their own. The fact
implies an unconscious confession that they had nothing analogous or
equivalent to set against the old centres of Babylonian civilisation,
and, as a matter of fact, the chief towns of Assyria cannot for a
moment be compared in importance with those of Babylonia. The most
famous of the former owed their day of splendour to the rise of the
Assyrian Empire or even, to some extent, to the fancy of individual
kings; and when the Assyrian Empire passed from the stage of history
these, its artificial creations, were abolished with it.

Babylonia rose again after every fresh blow, because her rise to the
position she held had its root in a vital need of the peoples of
anterior Asia; while soon after the fall of the Assyrian Empire the
very names of the great cities of Assyria had passed from the memory
of the dwellers in the land. The case is different with the cities
of northern Mesopotamia, which belonged to the Assyrian Empire,
but existed before its rise, and survived its fall. The only other
exception among the large Assyrian cities is Arbela, which, being
situate at the junction of the trade routes to northern Mesopotamia,
Armenia, and Media, had probably been in existence before the time of
the Assyrian Empire, and likewise retained its importance to a later
period.

ASSYRIAN CAPITALS: ASSHUR AND NINEVEH

The oldest capital of Assyria was Asshur, situated on the right
bank of the Tigris, on the site of the present Kalah Sherghat. It
was originally the seat of rulers called patesis, who were probably
subjects of the Babylonian monarchy. In the first half of the second
millennium B.C. these rulers extended their sway over the district
which they styled “the land of the city of Asshur,” and assumed the
title of “king.” Asshur was always held in honour as the ancient
capital, but it lay so far to the south (being, in fact, almost beyond
the borders of the country), that it soon became imperative for the
“kings of Assyria” to transfer the centre of government to a more
convenient place. Shalmaneser I (_circa_ 1300) accordingly chose Calah
for his residence. The natural result was the decline of the importance
of Asshur, since its situation was not such as to assure it a leading
position. In later times it subsisted mainly upon its old reputation,
and enjoyed special privileges, which were confirmed even by Sargon.
It was the seat of Asshur, the chief national divinity. The kings
of Assyria, from Shalmaneser I to Sargon, held their court at Calah
(Nimrud). Its consequence seems to have declined after the reign of
Tiglathpileser I, for his son, Asshur-bel-kala removed to Nineveh,
which remained the royal residence till the reign of Asshurnazirpal.
The latter rebuilt Calah and so improved it that it remained the
capital until Sargon chose Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad), which in turn
Nineveh replaced as capital.

Nineveh (Ninua), situated above Calah, on the left bank of the Tigris,
and opposite the present town of Mosul, is now represented by the two
mounds of Kuyunjik and Neby-Yunus. It was one of the oldest and most
important cities of the province of Assyria, and was highly esteemed
from the very earliest times of the Assyrian Empire as being the seat
of a cult of an Ishtar known as “Ishtar of Ninua,” to distinguish
her from the Ishtar of Arbela. We must therefore look upon it as a
city which originally stood on an equal footing with Asshur, and was
subjugated by the patesi of the latter city. It became the royal
residence in the reign of Asshur-bel-kala, the son of Tiglathpileser
(or even earlier), and remained so until the reign of Asshurnazirpal.
But it really owed its fame as the capital and chief city of Assyria,
which it represented in the eyes of other nations, to Sennacherib.
He built an entirely new Nineveh, which was to show forth worthily
the power and glory of the Assyrian Empire. His successors continued
to reside there, and contributed to its splendour. Esarhaddon and
Asshurbanapal built palaces there, and Nineveh formed the last bulwark
of the Assyrian Empire.

In the Euphrates Valley, and mainly on the right bank, between the bank
where the river turns towards the southwest and Babylonia, various
states had come into being which, by the force of their natural
connection with Babylonia, inclined towards that kingdom rather than
towards Assyria and northern Mesopotamia. There are Laqi, Khindanu,
and (east of the latter) Sukhi, or Shuhi, which last extended from
somewhere near the mouth of the Khabur to Babylonia, and was under
Babylonian ascendency down to a late period. These states had probably
in the first instance been dependencies of the Babylonian Empire, but
had enjoyed virtual independence from the time of the fall of Babylonia
and the rise of Assyria. Asshurnazirpal was the first to subjugate
these “governors,” who, up to this time, had “paid no tribute” to the
Assyrian kings, and who were supported by Babylonia in their struggle
with Assyria. The population of these states was composed of the same
elements as that of Mesopotamia. The original Semitic-Babylonian
settlers had been ousted by Aramæan immigrants. This was most evident
in Laqi, the westernmost, which was not a homogeneous body politic in
the reign of Asshurnazirpal, but was governed by various sheikhs. And,
generally speaking, these states were semi-nomadic commonwealths.

THE RISE OF ASSYRIA

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1741-1300 B.C.]]

The city of Asshur was originally a patesi-ship. The situation of
Asshur seems to point to a close connection with Babylonia rather than
with northern Mesopotamia, and for the present, at least, it seems
most likely that we ought to regard it as a vassal state to Babylonia
or the Kingdom of the Four Quarters of the World. Nor must we ignore
the possibility that it may have formed part of the realm of the
“Kishshati.”

A record left by an Assyrian king enables us to determine one point
of time, at least, when Asshur was still a dependency and ruled by
a patesi. Tiglathpileser I built that part of the great temple of
Asshur which was intended for the worship of the gods Anu and Ramman
(Adad), and in the record he has left he observes that this temple was
built by the patesi Shamshi-Adad, the son of Ishme-Dagan, patesi of
Asshur, six hundred and forty-one years before the reign of his own
great-grandfather Asshur-dan, sixty years earlier. Accordingly Asshur
must have been ruled by patesis sixty plus six hundred and forty-one
years before 1100, when Tiglathpileser was on the throne, and its
exaltation to the rank of a kingdom must have taken place later than
that. The names of two patesis of Asshur and those of their fathers are
known to us from inscriptions of their own. One of them, Shamshi-Adad,
and his father, Igur-Kapkapu, we may place before or after Shamshi,
the son of Ishme-Dagan, with equal probability, while the form of
the other two names, Irishum and his father Khallu, being simple and
exhibiting nothing of the compound character of later Assyrian names,
leads us to conjecture that they belong to an earlier period.

The names of these six patesis and their work in the building of the
temple of Asshur represent our whole stock of knowledge concerning
Asshur before it rose to be a royal city. The first king of Assyria of
whom we know anything is Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, who is introduced to
us by the Synchronistic History as a contemporary of the Kossæan[22]
king Karaindash of Babylon. As this monarch reigned some time about
the first half of the fifteenth century B.C., there is an interval of
over three hundred years between him and the patesi Shamshi-Adad, an
interval of which we know nothing except that the rise of Asshur and
the establishment of the kingdom of Assyria must fall within it. Of
the circumstances and conditions under which these events took place
we know nothing in detail, but an explanation naturally suggests
itself from the state of Babylonia. During this same period Babylonia
had sunk to such a depth of decrepitude that her own strength was no
longer adequate to secure her against hordes of invaders, and she could
continue to exist only under the protection of the Kossæan kings and
their armies. These disorders, which inevitably attend such a state
of things, served, as they invariably do in the East, to promote the
formation of new states under energetic and enterprising leaders, and
to these circumstances the kingdom of Asshur probably owed its rise.

From the reign of Shalmaneser I (_circa_ 1300) onwards the kings of
Assyria bear the title of “Shar Kishshati” and even place it before
that of “King of Asshur.” “Shar Kishshati” means “King of the World,”
and the title is thus formed in the same fashion as the Babylonian
“King of the Four Quarters of the World.” And the Assyrian title, like
the Babylonian, was not merely general in scope, but was bound up with
the possession of a particular district and particular cities.

It is doubtful whether Assyria subdued the kingdom of the Kishshati
from the outset, or gained possession of it at a later period.
According to the scanty records at present open to us, the latter
hypothesis seems the more probable. The first Assyrian king to bear the
title of “Shar Kishshati” is Shalmaneser I (about 1300), and he gives
it to his father, Adad-nirari I (or Ramman-nirari), although the latter
does not assume it in his own inscription. Shalmaneser attaches so much
weight to this title that on a couple of bricks, which date from his
reign, he actually styles himself “King of Kishshati” alone, and omits
the royal title of Assyria; and we therefore may conclude that the
union of northern Mesopotamia and Assyria was the work of Adad-nirari
and of Shalmaneser.

This would be at least one fixed point in the earliest history of
Assyria from which to trace the development of the empire. Before
Shalmaneser we have to do only with the little kingdom of Asshur,
which was chiefly engaged in struggles with Babylonia and its eastern
neighbours, and after his time with the united dominions of Assyria and
northern Mesopotamia, the leading power of Mesopotamian civilisation
against the West and the attacks of barbarians on every side. The
Synchronistic History is our principal guide to Assyrian history, as
it was to the history of Babylonia before it came into touch with
Assyria. We have but few inscriptions of the kings of this early stage
of Assyria’s existence, and only by the aid of the above-mentioned
document can we more or less connectedly trace the course of history.
Before the reign of Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, at which the chronicle now
begins, we can be sure of nothing but a great blank.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1450-1325 B.C.]]

With Asshur-bel-nish-eshu, who reigned in the first half of the
fifteenth century, begins a line of kings with a certain degree of
continuity. Of himself we only know what is told in the Synchronistic
History, namely, that he concluded an alliance with Karaindash of
Babylon by which they guaranteed one another in possession of their
dominions. He was presently--though perhaps not immediately--succeeded
by Puzur-Asshur [probably about 1420 B.C.] of whom we are told the same
thing. He entered into friendly alliance with Burna-buriash.

Of his supposed successor, Asshur-nadin-akhe, we know, from the
letters of his son Asshur-uballit to Amenhotep IV, that he, like his
Babylonian contemporary, held communication with the kings of Egypt. In
an inscription of a later king mention is made of a building of his,
the foundation of a palace at Asshur. For the rest, it is by no means
impossible that he may have reigned before Puzur-Asshur, and that the
latter, as well as Asshur-uballit, was his son.

We possess a letter written by Asshur-uballit to Amenhotep IV of Egypt.
It gives an account of presents made to the king of Egypt--a war
chariot yoked to two white horses, and a seal cylinder--makes excuse
for the tardy return of Egyptian ambassadors on the plea that they had
been stopped by the (nomadic) Sutu, and contains the usual importunate
requests for richer presents in return. In Babylonia, Asshur-uballit
succeeded in making a way for Assyrian interference, and thus came
a step nearer to the goal all kings of Assyria longed to reach, the
suzerainty of Babylon. Apart from the attempt of Asshur-narara and
Nabu-daian, which presumably came to nothing, the little kingdom
of Assyria had been on friendly terms with Babylonia, and had made
alliance which probably contributed more to her own security than that
of the other party. Internal troubles were the pretext which first
rendered feasible his successful interference in Babylonian affairs.

The assassination of the Babylonian king by the malcontent Kossæans,
and the elevation of Nazibugash to the throne, gave Asshur-uballit
an admirable pretext for restoring “order” in Babylonia and placing
Kurigalzu, his other grandson, on the throne. Adad-nirari mentions
another expedition of his against the Shubari. His successor,
Bel-nirari I [about 1370 B.C.], boasts in his inscription that he
conquered the Kasshu (Kossæans) and enlarged the borders of the land.
This probably refers to a distinct campaign against the Kasshu, and not
to the war with Kurigalzu II, in which he was likewise victorious. The
latter enterprise also resulted in territorial expansion, which does
not necessarily seem to have been made permanent.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1325-1275 B.C.]]

Pudi-ilu (about 1350), the son and successor of Bel-nirari, waged war,
we are told by his son, Adad-nirari, against the otherwise unknown
Turuki and Nigimkhi, who probably dwelt somewhere in the direction of
Armenia, and extended the Assyrian frontier to the north (Gutium).
Adad-nirari I (about 1325) has left an inscription which has been
discovered at Kalah Shergat (Asshur). According to it, he, like his
predecessors, waged most of his wars on the northeastern frontier
of his kingdom, and endeavoured, by building cities, to revive the
prosperity of the region occupied by the Shubari, Lulumi, Guti,
and Kasshu of the northeast, which had been laid waste by previous
wars. His inscription relates mainly to the buildings he erected in
connection with the temple of Asshur. It is the first from Assyria
with a definite date. It was indited in the limmu (_i.e._ the year of
office) of Shulman-kharradu.

His son, Shalmaneser I (about 1300), was one of the mightiest Assyrian
kings, and probably the first who raised Asshur to a position equal, if
not superior, to that of Babylonia. We do not know much about him from
inscriptions left by himself, and are therefore obliged to depend on
occasional statements of succeeding kings. He ruled over Mesopotamia
westward to the Balikh at least, if not to the Euphrates, and assured
to Assyria the possession of the northern tract between the Euphrates
and Tigris, which was afterward the provinces of Gumathene and Sophene.
He founded colonies there, and planted them with Assyrian settlers
to form a bulwark to Mesopotamia against the tribes of the North.
Afterwards, when the power of Assyria was impaired, these colonies were
in great straits, but they held their own, and were then reinforced
by Asshurnazirpal, to whom they served as a welcome basis for the new
Assyrian province of Tuskhan which he established there.

With the extension of the kingdom and the inclusion of northern
Mesopotamia, the need of another capital than Asshur, which lay too
far to the south, made itself felt. The city Shalmaneser chose for
this purpose was Calah, which remained the capital down to the time
of Sargon, except during the period of decline which followed upon
the reign of Tiglathpileser I. His object in this change of residence
was clearly to give expression to the altered state of things which
had come about in Assyria and Mesopotamia. Assyria was not to be the
privileged kingdom, but the two political organisations, Asshur and the
Kingdom of the Kishshati, were to be equal members of the new empire,
each retaining its own centre in Asshur and Kharran respectively, while
the king founded his own capital for himself, to avoid giving the
preference to either.

Shalmaneser’s son, Tukulti-Ninib I (about 1275) [but probably somewhat
earlier] was no less fortunate in his enterprises than his father. He
was the first to achieve the object of every king in Assyria--dominion
over Babylon. Adad-nirari III, in his list of his ancestors, styles him
“King of Sumer and Accad,” from which we may certainly conclude that
he held the same sort of position toward the whole of Babylonia, and
the kingdom of Babylon more particularly, as was afterward attained by
Shalmaneser II--that is to say, he must have ruled over the several
provinces of all Babylonia and exercised a kind of suzerainty over
Babylon.

The rapid rise of Assyria seems to have been followed by equally rapid
decline. For a hundred years we have hardly any information concerning
it, and do not even know the names of the kings who reigned during that
period. The lack of inscriptions, or, at any rate, of vaunting records
in the reigns of later kings, seems in itself to indicate a time of
humiliation, while the conditions which we find prevailing when our
sources of information become more copious, show that soon after the
reign of Tukulti-Ninib, and therefore probably before the end of the
thirteenth century B.C., the power of Assyria must have been seriously
curtailed and exposed to grievous shocks. Whence they arose we shall
presently see.[b]

There is scarcely a year in which additional information concerning
this obscure period does not come to light. A recently deciphered
fragment of the Babylonian Chronicle mentions an Assyrian king,
Tukulti-Asshur-Bel, contemporaneous with Tukulti-Ninib, but of the
relation of the two kings nothing is stated. Professor Winckler in
_Altorientalische Forschungen_, suggests that the former was the
latter’s son, and co-regent while he was engaged in ruling and reducing
Babylon. Professor Rogers sums up the end of Tukulti-Ninib’s life: “For
seven years was this rule over Babylonia maintained. The Babylonians
rebelled, drove out the Assyrian conquerors, and set up once more a
Babylonian, Adad-shum-usur (about 1268-1239 B.C.), over them. When
Tukulti-Ninib returned to Assyria he found even his own people in
rebellion under the leadership of his son. In the civil war that
followed he lost his life, and the most brilliant reign in Assyrian
history up to that time was closed.”

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1275-1235 B.C.]]

This rebellious son was not the above mentioned Tulkulti-Asshur-Bel,
but Asshurnazirpal I. His reign continues the period of decline, and in
it it is believed that Adad-shum-usur actually attacked Assyria. Next
come two kings, Asshur-narara and Nabu-daian, whose reigns seem to have
been contemporaneous (about 1250 B.C.). A fragment of a clay tablet
was found containing a letter from Adad-shum-usur to these two kings,
in which he remonstrates on their folly in taking up arms against him,
which shows that Babylon’s power was still waxing.[a]

We do not know how it came to pass that Assyria lost the ascendancy
she had gained over Babylonia under Tukulti-Ninib, but it is certain
that some fifty years later Bel-kudur-usur found himself relegated to
Assyria proper, and was obliged to fight for the possession of his
capital. [According to Professor Rogers, Meli-Shipak (about 1238) and
Marduk-apal-iddin (about 1223-1211) were the Babylonian kings in this
war. He places Adad-shum-iddin’s death at 1269, and Adad-shum-usur’s at
1238 B.C., basing these dates on some recent illuminative suggestions
of Professor Hommel.] The Synchronistic History, which is incomplete at
this point, states that Ninib-apal-esharra (who was probably the son
of Bel-kudur-usur) was forced to retreat. The Babylonians appear to
have pursued and besieged him in his own capital of Asshur, and there
a battle was fought, in which, according to the apparent purport of
the Synchronistic History, the Assyrians were beaten. But the victory,
if victory it were, cannot have been decisive, for after the battle
the Babylonians withdrew without making any further attempt to invade
the remoter parts of the country. The defeat of the Assyrians must,
therefore, have been more like a successful defence of their city.
Slight as this clew is, it makes it evident that for a while Assyria
had to fight for her life against Babylon, and that she held her own
with difficulty. The development of this state of things must be sought
in the great hiatus made by the reign of Bel-kudur-usur. The titles of
the Babylonian kings of the period also go to prove that at this time
Babylonia had actually repossessed herself of northern Mesopotamia.

Since we find Tiglathpileser in possession of much the same
dominions as Tukulti-Ninib (though Sumer and Accad did not belong
to him), the course of events during all the twelfth century, from
Ninib-apal-esharra to Asshur-rish-ishi, is self-evident. The business
in hand was the reconquest of what had been lost, and at it the
succeeding rulers steadily and successfully laboured.

Of Ninib-apal-esharra, the Synchronistic History says nothing except
that he successfully withstood the Babylonian attack, nor does
Tiglathpileser mention any other deeds of his. The latter, however,
expressly gives him the character of a capable commander, “who led the
troops of Asshur aright,” presumably with reference to his retreat
after the death of Bel-kudur-usur and the repulse of the Babylonian
king.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1200-1116 B.C.]]

His son and successor, Asshur-dan (about 1200 B.C.), won some
victories over Babylon and reconquered some parts beyond the Zab from
Samana-shum-iddin (king of Babylonia). Tiglathpileser lays stress upon
the fact that he lived to a great age (to about 1150 B.C.). Of his son,
Mutakkil-Nusku, no particulars are known. He probably carried on the
work of his predecessors, for Assyria gradually regained all she had
lost.

Then Asshur-rish-ishi (about 1140 B.C.), the father of Tiglathpileser
I, reports that he had reconquered the Lulumi and Kuti, whom
Adad-nirari had formerly subjugated, and who had either fallen under
the sway of Babylon or made themselves independent; and that he had
repulsed the nomads, whom Adad-nirari had likewise driven back, and who
had naturally taken advantage of Assyria’s weakness to press forward
again. His war with Nebuchadrezzar I, king of Babylon, seems to have
been waged mainly for the possession of Mesopotamia, which the defeat
of the nomads was also intended to secure. It is most probable that he
gained his end, the evacuation of the kingdom of Kishshati, of which
Nebuchadrezzar styles himself king in one of his inscriptions.[b]

THE FIRST GREAT ASSYRIAN CONQUEROR

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1116-1050 B.C.]]

Asshur-rish-ishi’s son, Tiglathpileser I (Tu-kulti-apal-esharra,
meaning “My help is the son of Esharra,” _i.e._ the god Ninib), is the
first of the great Assyrian conquerors. Directly after his accession
to the throne he marched against the Mushke (Mushkaya) to conquer the
districts previously taken by them. The Mushke (the Meshech of the
Old Testament, and the Moschi of the Greeks) were defeated, as well
as the people of Kummukh and the mountainous races of the Kharia and
Qurkhi country stretching from the north of the Tigris to the Upper
Zab. In the next campaign the same district was traversed, but the
king then crossed the Lower Zab, and thence proceeded northward into
the mountains. The whole mountainous district was then incorporated
with the Assyrian kingdom, and Tiglathpileser was then able to proceed
to the subjugation of the lands of western Armenia and Pontis, never
before entered by the Assyrian rulers.

[Illustration: AN ASSYRIAN KING]

He crossed sixteen mountains, reached (what he calls the land of the
Nairi) the upper Euphrates, which he crossed, and defeated in a great
battle twenty-five kings [twenty-three according to others], who
encountered him with their troops and war chariots. The enemies were
pursued as far as the banks of the Black Sea, when all the princes
swore fealty and bound themselves to pay tribute. On the return march
the town Milidia, _i.e._ Melitene on the Euphrates, was taken and
forced to pay tribute.

The next, the fourth campaign of the king was directed against the
Aramæans, of the North Mesopotamian steppe; he penetrated as far
as the Euphrates, and conquered several places in the vicinity of
Carchemish. Then followed an expedition to the east against [the Musri
and] the then unknown race of the Qumani. In later years Tiglathpileser
undertook campaigns in the west. An inscription at the source of the
Supnat, the first easterly tributary of the Tigris, tells us that he
traversed the country of Nairi (Armenia) three times, and that he
subjugated all the country “from the great sea of the west country to
the sea of Nairi.” In particular we learn that he made a voyage in
ships from Arvad (Aradus) on the Mediterranean Sea, that he hunted in
Lebanon (he was a passionate hunter), and that the kings of Egypt sent
him some rare sea fishes as a present. It is very probable that one
of the mutilated inscriptions which the Assyrian kings had put up on
the Dog River (the Nahr-el-Kelb, north of Beirut), quite close to the
victory monuments of Ramses II, related to Tiglathpileser. He also made
war against Marduk-nadin-akhe of Babylon, but with no success; at least
we learn that the Babylonian king, in the year 1110 B.C., carried off
images of gods from an Assyrian city. [According to Professor Rogers,
Tiglathpileser marched to Babylon and was there acknowledged King of
the Four Quarters of the World.]

However, Tiglathpileser in a second campaign was completely victorious
in a battle of the Lower Zab, and took all the capitals of the northern
half of Accad: Dur-Kurigalzu, the double town Sippar, Babylon, and Upi.
The steppe district on the western bank of the Euphrates (the land of
the Shuhi or Sukhi) was also subjugated by him. Thus did Tiglathpileser
create a great kingdom, which included the whole district of the
Euphrates and Tigris, as far as Babylon, as well as the mountainous
country of western Armenia and eastern Asia Minor, as far as Pontis;
and his supremacy was also recognised by northern Syria.

Of the organisation of the kingdom, we only know that the contiguous
districts, such as the valley of the Khabur, eastern Kummukh, and
Qurkhe were incorporated with the state, and governed by Assyrian
ministers, whilst the more distant countries retained their native
rulers, and were only bound to the payment of tribute. The kingdom
has no enduring position. We hear that Asshur-bel-kala (about 1090
B.C.), the son of Tiglathpileser, lived in the greatest peace with
Marduk-shapik-zer-mati, the Babylonian king. When, after the latter’s
fall, Adad-apal-iddin, the son of Esagila-shaduni, was raised to the
throne, Asshur-bel-kala married his daughter and brought her home to
Assyria, with many presents. [In this reign, according to Rogers, the
seat of empire was probably established at Nineveh.]

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1050-884 B.C.]]

Babylonia had evidently regained her complete independence, though the
Assyrian chronicles fail to relate the means whereby it was achieved.
Asshur-bel-kala was succeeded by his brother Shamshi-Adad (about 1080
B.C.), of whom we know nothing further; and then follows a great gap in
the line of kings. [Here may be inserted the names of Asshurnazirpal II
about 1050 B.C., Erba-Adad, and Asshur-nadin-akhe.]

Of King Asshur-erbi it is only mentioned that under him the districts
conquered by Tiglathpileser, namely, the country Pitru on the Sagur
near Carchemish, and the city of Mutkinu, east of the Euphrates, were
taken by the Aramæan king. This was evidently the king of the country
of Bit-Adini, whose chief dominion lay east of the Euphrates, the
capital being Tel-Barsip, which is probably Birejik, opposite the
Zeugma of the Greeks. At the beginning of the ninth century we again
have more accurate information about Assyria, and so find that, beyond
a part of the mountainous district east and southeast of Nineveh, the
kings now have only the country on the upper Tigris (around Amida),
Kummukh, and a great part of the cultivated land of Mesopotamia.

The district on the Euphrates, opposite Carchemish, is independent
and split up into several princedoms (Bit-Adini, Nila, Bit-Bachiani,
and farther north, Tel-Abnai), the exact boundaries of which it has
hitherto been impossible to determine. The country on the Balikh seems
to have remained Assyrian; it is very remarkable that the city of
Kharran is not mentioned in any of the later campaigns. The district
farther east, Nisibis and the neighbouring Gozan, the fruitful valleys
of the Khabur and its tributaries, even the city of Suru in the land of
Bit-Khalupe on the Euphrates (Sura, east of Thapsachos), were governed
by Assyrian ministers. The government of Assyrian ministers in the
lower valley of the Khabur is of special interest to us.

The whole district of this river, as well as the land of Sangara
farther east, is full of heaps and ruins, which mark the localities
of old and later times. The most important are the ruins at the place
now called Arban on the Khabur. Here are the remains of an ancient
palace, built in the Assyrian style, with four winged oxen, with men’s
heads, an open-mouthed lion, the portrait in relief of a warrior,
etc. The oxen bear the inscription “Palace of the Mushesh-Ninib.”
The possibility of getting at a satisfactory date for this palace is
unfortunately not yet apparent. That scarabs of Tehutimes III and
Amenhotep III have been found in Arban and Calah, is no sufficient
clew. As King Asshurnazirpal III of Assyria went down the Khabur in
the year 884 B.C., Shulman-khaman-ilani of Sadikkan and Ilu-Adad of
Shuma brought him heavy tribute. Doubtless one of these two places
is the Arban of to-day, and their governors were semi-independent
Assyrian ministers, known as the Mushesh-Ninib, for the names, writing,
and style of art show us that we have not here to do with a native
government. The population of the valley of the Khabur was doubtless
Aramæan, like that of Kharran and Nisibis.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1090-885 B.C.]]

The eleventh and tenth centuries B.C. confirmed the complete freedom
of the local government of the countries of Western Asia. Whilst the
kingdom of the Pharaohs was decaying from age, a new nation was rising
in Syria and evolving an active intelligent life of its own.

The Phœnician merchants circulated the products of the civilisation
of Syria along all the coasts of the Mediterranean, and the dwellers
on the Ægean Sea having already entered the circle of cultured races,
competing with the Phœnicians in trade and the traverse of the sea,
took possession of the coasts one after another and thereby developed
a complete political and intellectual life. The fate of Western Asia
was determined by the evolution of Syria’s culture not taking a
wide-reaching, powerful, political form, but rather hindering it. Since
the days of the Kheta kingdom’s glory, there has been no great power
in Syria. So when a conquering, military state was now formed on the
Tigris, under a fearless, warlike prince, it met with no sustained
resistance.

The success of Assyria was due to her military organisation. Little
as we know of its particulars, there can be no doubt that the whole
race regarded war and conquest as the real aims of existence, and
the more successful they were, the more they ignored all other sides
of life; whereas the little states of Syria made tillage, trade, and
industry the chief occupations of their life, albeit every inhabitant
was presumably bound, like the Israelites, to take up arms in case of
need, in the defence of his country. The sole great military power
was Egypt, but her warrior caste was composed of foreign mercenaries
who exploited the country, although from a military point of view they
evidently did not benefit it more than the generality of their class in
similar cases.

The outcome of events was thus a foregone conclusion. The Assyrian
campaigns of two centuries ended in the political and national fall
of the races of Syria. The progress of events then led further to the
annihilation of nationality in the whole of Western Asia. The kingdom
of Tiglathpileser I fell, soon after his death, and there now ensues
a little later a gap of more than a century in our information about
Assyria. The very scanty notices commence about 950 B.C. Asshur-dan II,
mentioned as “the maker of a canal,” reigned at that time. [A recently
discovered inscription of Adad-nirari II speaks of his grandfather
Tiglathpileser. Therefore, a new Tiglathpileser, the second of his
name, is now reckoned in the list of kings, and the approximate dates
950-930 B.C. assigned to his reign. Nothing is known of him except
that he is called “King of Kishshati and King of Asshur.” Asshur-dan
II’s reign is now put down as beginning 930 B.C., and Adad-nirari
II’s at 911.] Asshur-dan’s successor, Adad-nirari II, mentioned with
the building at the “Gate of the Tigris” (890 B.C.), conquers King
Shamash-mudammik of Babylon in a battle on Mount Yalman, and made war
against his successor, Nabu-shum-ishkun [who was also defeated and
yielded certain cities]. In the peace made by an alliance, the boundary
was fixed near the city of Tel-Bari, south of the Lower Zab.

The next king, Tukulti-Ninib II (890-885 B.C.), fought in the northwest
mountains, and at the source of Supnat, the first tributary of the
Tigris, he had his statue (stele) erected near that of Tiglathpileser.
In spite of repeated attacks, the mountainous districts on the east as
far as the lake of Van, the chief part of the land of Qurkhi, retained
essentially their independence. The warlike efforts of these rulers had
been hitherto directed against the races of the mountains of Kasjar
(Masius), the south of the Tigris, and close to Aramæan Mesopotamia,
which, in spite of numerous campaigns, had never been subjugated. If
Nisibis, Gozan, and the valley of the Khabur, and apparently also
Kharran, belonged to the Assyrians under Asshurnazirpal, they either
remained independent after the twelfth century, or were subjugated
by the kings of this period. In the east, the mountainous races of
Khubushkia and Kirruri (on the Upper Zab, and as far as the lake
of Urumiyeh) are tributary, and on the Lower Zab, we find under
Asshurnazirpal, an Assyrian governor of Dagara, in the land of the
Euphrates, whose fortified citadels were mostly situated on the banks
of the river, or like Anat, on an island, paid tribute. Tukulti-Ninib’s
son, Asshurnazirpal III (885 to 860), entered on fresh conquests
directly after his accession to the throne.[c]

THE REIGN AND CRUELTY OF ASSHURNAZIRPAL

[Sidenote: [885-880 B.C.]]

Tiglathpileser’s work of conquest was to be begun over again;
Asshurnazirpal felt the full force of the mission, and he accomplished
it with a cruelty worthy of the hero he took for pattern, and his
successors applied themselves, as did he, to avenge, arms in hand,
Asshur’s temporary humiliation.

Scarcely was Asshurnazirpal seated on the throne, when he turned
attention to his armies,--his war chariots and armed men were numerous
and well equipped; they were ready to take the march. It was the land
of Numme which received the first blow. Accustomed to prolonged and
uninterrupted peace, the inhabitants had never even thought of measures
for defence, and they fled to the mountains at the approach of the
Assyrians, who made bloodless captures of the towns of Libe, Surra,
Abuku, Arura, and Arubi, situated at the base of Mounts Rime, Aruni,
and Etini. “These majestic peaks,” relates Asshurnazirpal, “rise up
like daggers’ blades, and only the birds of the sky in their flight
can reach their summits. The natives entrenched themselves among them
as though in eagles’ nests. None of the kings, my fathers, had ever
penetrated so far. In three days I reached those heights; I brought
terror in the midst of their hiding places, I shook their nests; two
hundred defenders perished by the sword, and I seized their flock and
a rich booty. Their corpses strewed the mountains like leaves from
the trees, and those who escaped had to take refuge in caves.” These
proceedings terrified the peaceful inhabitants of the Kirruri district,
who hastened from Simirra, Ulmania, Adanit, Khargai, and Kharasi, to
throw themselves at the conqueror’s feet and offered all that he was
wont to seize--horses, oxen, sheep, and brazen vessels. They were given
an Assyrian governor. Such was the fright throughout the whole of
Nairi that while he still lingered in Kirruri, Asshurnazirpal received
ambassadors from the people of Gozan and Khubushkia who came from far
to the east, bringing presents asking for the chains of slavery.

[Illustration: ASSHURNAZIRPAL

(Based on Sculptures in the British Museum)]

From Kirruri the Assyrian king went a little to the east into the
district of Qurkhi, pillaging in turn at least a dozen towns and
finally arrived at the borders of Urartu. The only serious resistance
he encountered was under the walls of Nishtum, which paid dear for
its courage. These beginnings were a forecast of the future, and
Asshurnazirpal did not even wait for the following year to recommence.
While still wearing the dignity of “limmu,” on the 24th day of the
month Abu (July-August), he set out to lay waste the country now
called the Bohtan district, between the Tigris and the western spurs
of the Judi Mountains. Here were the districts of Nippur and Pazati,
comprising more than twenty important towns, among which Atkun and
Pilazi were burned. Asshurnazirpal then crossed the Tigris and invaded
Kummukh to claim the annual tribute it had forgotten to furnish. [It is
possible that he went for the purpose of quelling a rebellion.]

At the moment he was thinking of going on to the Moschi, more to
the northwest, a messenger brought him a letter which contained the
following news: “The city of Suru (Surieh of the present day), which
is subject to Bit-Khalupe, is in revolt; the inhabitants have put
Khamitai, their governor, to death, and have proclaimed Akhi-yababa,
son of Lamaman, whom they have brought from Bit-Adini, as their king.”
Furious at this information, Asshurnazirpal invoked Asshur and Adad,
counted his chariots and soldiers, and flew to the seat of trouble by
descending the course of the Khabur. His progress was hampered by the
arrival of many persons, their hands filled with presents and their
mouths with protestations of fidelity. There were Shulman-khaman-ilani
of Sadikkan, Ilu-Adad of Shuma, and a hundred others.

The city of Suru took fright, and the rebels came out to meet
him, bringing the keys of the citadel. They kissed his feet, but
Asshurnazirpal was inflexible. “I killed one out of every two of
them,” he says, and one-half of the remainder was reduced to slavery.
Akhi-yababa, a prisoner, witnessed the pillage of his palace, he saw
his wives, sons, and daughters in chains, and his tutelary gods, his
chariot, his armour, and his treasure carried off. He saw all his
ministers flayed alive as well as the leaders of the rebellion. A
pyramid erected at the city gate was covered with their skins; some
were walled up in the masonry, others were crucified and exposed on
stakes along the side of the pyramid. One would hesitate to believe
all this and would willingly take the Assyrian monarchs for boasters
of their cruelty, if the bas-reliefs with which they decorated their
palace walls, and which to-day ornament our museums, did not speak to
our eyes or their accompanying inscriptions speak to our intelligence.
We must tax our wits to imagine more refinement of torture or of
methods of execution.

Before Asshurnazirpal returned to Nineveh, he made a military tour
of the regions about the junction on the Khabur and Euphrates, which
formed the country of Laqi. All the petty dynasties of this land
brought their tribute. Then he advanced as far as Khindanu, on the
Euphrates, the frontier of the Shuhi country. On returning to his
capital the king was followed by an endless file of slaves, horses,
oxen, sheep, chariots laden with stuffs of wool and linen, ingots of
gold, bronze and iron, copper and leaden vessels, and wooden framework;
the booty, he says, was as numberless as the stars of the sky. The
soldiers had laid hold of every manner of object, and in the division a
use was found for everything.

At Nineveh the king occupied himself with embellishing his palace
while he waited for the spring. In one of the inner courts he erected
a statue to himself of colossal size, and the history of his recent
conquests was engraved on the palace gates. He was daily obliged
to receive the homage of ambassadors who arrived from all parts to
acknowledge his suzerainty, offer presents, and claim the sad honour of
serving such a master, for they had learned by experience that it was
too late for a city to offer its submission when the king was at its
gates.

[Sidenote: [880-876 B.C.]]

It happened that Asshurnazirpal was _en pleine fête_ surrounded by
his court when news came of a rebellion in the region situated around
the sources of the Tigris. The leader of this insurrection was an
Assyrian, Khula by name, whom in former days Shalmaneser had appointed
governor of Darudamusa and Khalzilukha. The king set out at once, and,
arriving at the sources of the Tigris, he sought out the steles which
his predecessors, Tiglathpileser and Tukulti-Ninib, had erected, and
by their side set up one for himself. On the way he stopped to levy
tribute on the country of Izalla and took by assault the cities of
Kinabu, Mariru, and Tela. After a bloody contest under the walls of the
last place he put out the eyes and cut off the noses and ears of the
prisoners whose lives he spared. Khula was flayed alive.

There stood in this region, within the land of Nirbu, a city which
bore the name of Asshur and had probably been built by Tiglathpileser
in order to control the surrounding country. Since this town had also
taken part in the rebellion, Asshurnazirpal caused it to be razed to
its foundations as well as the city of Tushka, upon whose ruins he
built a pyramid surmounted by his statue and bearing an inscription
which related the conquest of the land of Nairi. Here he received
tribute of the kings of Nairi. The districts of Urumi and Bituni
also brought their gifts. But scarcely had Asshurnazirpal turned his
back when all the tribes of Nairi revolted, and he had to return and
prosecute a regular man-hunt among the mountains.

The year had been very full, and it was easy to foresee that the
disasters following the reign of Tiglathpileser would soon be repaired.
In three campaigns Asshurnazirpal had carried the torch over a portion
of the land of Nairi, to the south and east of Lake Van, to the sources
of the Tigris, through the Khabur Valley, and down the Euphrates. But
like the effect of a tempest which passes and devours everything,
the Assyrian domination founded only in fear was fatally ephemeral
and became shaky just as soon as the chastising arm was observed to
withdraw.

[Sidenote: [876-854 B.C.]]

Feeling secure in the direction of Nairi, which he had treated so
harshly, Asshurnazirpal turned his attention to the fertile slopes
along the left bank of the Tigris. He risked encountering the
Babylonians, but these latter had no longer any fear for him, and
the weakened, scattered Kassite (or Kossæan) tribes could scarcely
be called formidable. Babitu, Dagara, Bara, Kakzi, and twenty other
places underwent the fate reserved for cities taken by assault; one
hundred and fifty towns were pillaged and burnt, and the whole land
of Nishir was devastated. The rainy season suspended hostilities, and
Asshurnazirpal returned to winter quarters at Nineveh, but as soon as
the weather permitted on the first of Sivan (May) he returned to Zamua.
The capital of Zamua was Zamri, and there King Amikha resided, in no
condition to resist. He fled to the mountains where Asshurnazirpal
dared not pursue him, and contented himself with laying hands on the
riches of the palace. All the surrounding districts hastened to offer
their submission with the exception of the city of Mizu, which was
taken by assault.

The following year was consumed in military expeditions to the sources
of the Tigris, in the lands of Kummukh, Qurkhi, and Kashiari, where
certain cities like Mattiate and Irisia had neglected to pay tribute or
manifested symptoms of rebellion. Asshurnazirpal experienced no serious
or well-organised resistance except beneath the walls of Bit-Ura in the
land of Dirra. “The city,” he says, “crowns a height, is surrounded
by a strong double enceinte and lifts itself like a great thumb above
the mountain. With the help of Asshur--my lord--I attacked it with my
valorous soldiers, and besieged it for two days from the side of the
rising sun. Arrows fell upon it like the hail of the god Adad. Finally,
my warriors, whose zeal I had encouraged, fell upon the city like
vultures. I took the citadel, I put eight hundred men to the sword,
and I cut off their heads. I made a mound with their corpses before
the city gate; the prisoners were beheaded and I put seven hundred of
them to the cross. The city was pillaged and destroyed; I transformed
it into a heap of ruins.” Passing thence into the land of Qurkhi,
Asshurnazirpal committed the same atrocities: two hundred captives had
their heads cut off, and two thousand others were reduced to slavery.
One of the kinglets of the land who had succeeded in winning the king’s
good graces from the time of the first war, Ammibaal, by name, son of
Zamani, had become odious to his people, because of his friendship for
the tyrant, and he was put to death by his own officers. The king of
Assyria hastened to avenge his faithful vassal. When the culprits saw
the storm advancing, they tried to ward it off by offering all they
possessed to the invader, and for once he remained satisfied.

He had under his authority all the regions between the source of the
Supnat and the borders of the land of Shabitani on one side; between
the land of Kirruri and that of Kilzani on the other, from the banks of
the Zab to the city of Tel-Bari which is above Zaban from Tel-Sa-abtan
to Tel-Sa-zabtan; besides this he annexed to his empire the cities of
Kimiru and Kuratu, the land of Birut and of Kardunyash, and he imposed
tribute upon the whole of Nairi.

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEFS SHOWING ASSYRIANS TORTURING PRISONERS

(After Layard)]

What was to be done with so much wealth constantly accumulating in the
storehouses of Nineveh, and for whom was this gold, these jewels, this
bronze, these rich stuffs? To what use could he put these thousands
of slaves who ran the risk of becoming so many idle mouths to feed?
Asshurnazirpal had the idea of building a palace which would surpass
the wildest dreams of his predecessors, and he fixed its location in
the city of Calah, which was particularly _the_ city of his dynasty.

British archæologists, who have made a special study of the ruins of
Calah, astonished at the treasures they found buried under the mound
Nimrud, have attempted to reconstruct from their own imaginations and
the recovered documents the general aspect of the city in the days of
Asshurnazirpal, who has left his name and inscriptions in every corner
of it. “In a strong and healthy position,” says George Rawlinson, “on
a low spur of the Jebel Maklub, protected on either side by a deep
river, the new capital grew to greatness. Palace after palace rose on
its lofty platforms, rich with carved woodwork, gilding, painting,
sculpture, and enamel, each aiming to outshine its predecessors; while
stone lions, sphinxes, obelisks, shrines, and temple towers embellished
the scene, breaking its monotonous sameness by variety. The lofty
ziggurat (pyramid) attached to the temple of Ninib, dominating over the
whole, gave unity to the vast mass of palatial and sacred edifices. The
Tigris, skirting the entire western base of the mound, glossed in its
waves, and, doubling the apparent height, rendered less observable the
chief weakness of the architecture. When the setting sun lighted up the
whole with the gorgeous lines seen only under an eastern sky, Calah
must have seemed to the traveller who beheld it for the first time like
a vision of fairyland.”

From the pyramid of the temple of Ninib the Assyrian priests observed
the motions of the heavens, calculated the return of eclipses, and
questioned the future. In the temple searched by Layard traces were
everywhere found of Asshurnazirpal and what he himself calls “the
glory of his name.” His portrait has been found repeated a dozen times
on the bas-reliefs; he has all the features of a corrupt and cruel
monarch. His low, retreating forehead lacks nobility; the eyes are
unusually large; the cheekbones stand out prominently; the nostrils of
the round, aquiline nose are too large; the clipped moustache, brushed
and curled at the ends, reveals thick, sensual lips, while the chin
and face are covered with that heavy false beard which falls upon the
breast in symmetrical twists, and was worn by all the kings. The thick,
short neck, the broad shoulders and thick-set body, gave the king a
robust, vigorous aspect. His statue in the British Museum represents
him standing. In one hand he holds a scythe, in the other a sceptre.
On his breast is written, “Asshurnazirpal, great king, powerful king,
king of legions, king of Assyria, son of Tukulti-Ninib (?), great king,
powerful king, king of legions, king of Assyria, son of Adad-nirari,
great king, powerful king, king of Assyria. He possesses lands from
the shores of the Tigris as far as Labana [Lebanon]; he has subjected
to his power the great sea, and all the lands from the rising to the
setting of the sun.”

Several years after this statue was erected Asshurnazirpal would not
have fixed the Lebanon range as the western limit of his empire, for
the fortunes of war still smiled upon him. The last portion of his
reign is filled with two great expeditions in which he covered himself
with glory. The definite submission of the middle and lower Euphrates
region, including the land of Kardunyash, and the conquest of a part
of Syria and Phœnicia. A revolt in the lands of Laqi and Shuhi, on
the Middle Euphrates, was an excellent pretext for recommencing the
war interrupted by the work of embellishing Calah. [He marched upon
Suru, levying tribute at every step.] For a long time this little land
of Shuhi had been warring with the Assyrians, and though unceasingly
beaten and ransomed, it nevertheless managed to hold up its head, and
had been able hitherto to maintain its independence. Its sovereigns
appear to have had continual friendly relations with their neighbours
the kings of Babylon, at least on the occasions when it was necessary
to resist the men of the North.

This time the Shuhites again appealed to the Chaldeans, whom the
inscription, through tradition, doubtless, still calls the Kassites or
Kossæans. [Suru was taken, and among the prisoners were the brother and
the general of Nabu-apal-iddin, king of Babylon.]

Then terror seized the soul of the weak Nabu-apal-iddin, king of
Babylon, and all Chaldea trembled. Unfortunate wars and intestine
quarrels had put Babylon out of condition to fight against the
all-pervading Assyrian superiority. Nevertheless Asshurnazirpal
does not say that he entered Babylonia, which he even seems to have
prudently respected. He contents himself with telling us that he
erected his statue in the city of Suru, and spread terror throughout
Chaldea and all the lands watered by the Euphrates.

The following year he was compelled to suppress a revolt of the
mountaineers inhabiting the southern slopes of Mount Masius in the very
heart of Mesopotamia. This was the state of Bit-Adini, whose principal
cities were Kaprabi and Tel-Aban. Asshurnazirpal scattered an army of
eight thousand horsemen, and brought back to Calah two thousand four
hundred slaves to work at the embellishment of his capital.

In spite of the peace which ruled in the Tigris and Euphrates basins,
whose resources were, moreover, completely exhausted, Asshurnazirpal
now resolved to strike a great blow on their western side, which would
be a field for rapine in which no Assyrian had ever yet set foot.
The occasion seemed favourable, for on the west of the Euphrates the
Hittites were in no condition to wage war; they had not yet recovered
from the terrible blows dealt them by Tiglathpileser, and their
resistance in any case would not be very great.

Asshurnazirpal went right ahead [starting on the 8th day of Airu
(April), 876.--ROGERS], traversing the states of Bit-Bahian, Amila,
and Bit-Adini as far as the Euphrates, which he crossed on floats in
sight of Carchemish. Into the city he made a bloodless entry, receiving
the homage and tribute of King Sangara. A Hittite prince, Lubarna, who
ruled in the valley of the river Apre (modern Afrin) [in a state called
Patin] and possessed places of considerable importance such as Hazaz
and Kunulua (the capital). Lubarna made preparations to oppose the
march of the invader, but on seeing him approach fell on his knees and
stripped himself of all he possessed for offerings. He was soon master
of both slopes of the Lebanon, and he could see the great Phœnician
Sea (Mediterranean). There, in astonishment, and grateful to the gods
for all their blessings, he offered them a sacrifice of thanks on a
wave-washed rock. “I received,” he says, “the tribute of the kings of
the land of the sea, the people of Tyre, Sidon, Byblus, Makhallat,
Maiz, Kaiz,[23] Akharri, and of Arvad, which is situated full on the
sea; they brought me silver, gold, tin, iron, iron utensils, garments
of wool and linen, ‘pagut,’ large and small, of sandal and ebony wood,
skins of marine animals, and they kissed my feet.”

Asshurnazirpal, protected by Ninib and Nergal, the gods of strength,
embarked on a vessel which he captured in the harbour of Arvad and took
a sea trip, during which he killed a dolphin. Several days later he
hunted among the steep gorges of Lebanon, killed buffaloes and boars,
capturing a number of them alive, which he sent to Assyria. He boasts
of having killed one hundred and twenty lions himself, and claims
that these animals succumbed to fright before his almightiness. He
further enumerates troops of wild animals which he drove back to their
lairs,--antelopes, deer, ibexes, gazelles, tigers, foxes, leopards;
he also killed some eagles and vultures. Among these mountains this
true son of Nimrod quite forgot himself until the king of Egypt, whom
the fame of his deeds had reached, sent a congratulatory embassy
asking for his friendship. When later the kings of Egypt and Assyria
met on the shore of the Mediterranean, it was by no means for mutual
congratulation and the exchange of presents.

After this, Asshurnazirpal turned northward into the Amanus Mountains,
where he cut down cedar, pine, and cypress trees for his great
buildings in Calah. No one will ever know how much effort, nor the
lives of how many slaves it cost, to transport those gigantic logs cut
in the Amanus forests over the mountainous and trackless country to the
banks of the Tigris.

Asshurnazirpal never revisited the shores of the Mediterranean, and
like Moses he but caught a glimpse of the promised land which his
successors were destined to conquer, and whose inexhaustible riches
they so long exploited. What we know of the remainder of his reign is
the story of unimportant expeditions, principally for the collection
of tribute in the north of Mesopotamia and around the sources of the
Tigris. The district of Khipani and its capital, Khuzirina, as well as
the states of Assa, Qurkhi, and Adini, underwent new trials; the city
of Amida, the modern Diarbekir, witnessed a pyramid of human skulls
rising before its walls, and three thousand slaves--those whose eyes
were not put out or who were not crucified--were sent to Nineveh, where
they were employed in digging a great irrigation canal to make use of
the waters of the Upper Zab, the borders of which were planted with
trees torn from the forests of Syria.

The last eight years of his life seem to have been more peaceful than
their predecessors, although we can scarcely suppose that he passed
them in profound peace, which would be as hard to reconcile with his
turbulent and sanguinary nature as with the terrible condition of
the lands he had conquered, all of which were trying to regain their
freedom. At all events, he left his successors an immense empire, an
unbroken frontier, and an Assyrian domination recognised from the
Zagros to the Amanus Mountains, and from the sources of the Euphrates
to the gates of Babylon.[d]

SHALMANESER II AND HIS SUCCESSORS

Aside from the ruthlessness of his conquests, Asshurnazirpal was
chiefly remarkable for rebuilding the city of Calah, constructing a
canal, erecting himself a wonderful palace, whose ruins have been found
at Nimrud, and the building or rebuilding of a great aqueduct. He, who
had butchered and battled so liberally, died in 860 B.C. in peace.

His son, Shalmaneser II (Shulman-asharid) (860-824 B.C.) commenced
warlike operations at once. After a campaign eastward (860) he entered
upon a systematic conquest of the western countries. After several
campaigns (859-856) Akhuni’s district of Bit-Adini, on both sides
of the Euphrates, was completely subjugated, incorporated with the
kingdom, and peopled with Assyrian colonists, and Tel-Barship on the
Euphrates was changed into an Assyrian residence city under the name
of Kar-Shulman-asharid (City of Shalmaneser). Finally he succeeded
in capturing the prince who had fled across the Euphrates into the
mountains. Next followed the campaigns on the west of the Euphrates. In
the year 859 he twice defeated a coalition of North Syrian princes, the
rulers of Carchemish, Patin, Sama’al, etc., joined by the kings of Que,
and Khilukha; then he subjugated the Amanus district and the district
on the lower Orontes (the country of Patin). In the following year, the
annual tribute of all the North Syrian states was definitely settled.

[Sidenote: [854-829 B.C.]]

In the year 854 B.C. Shalmaneser advanced farther south. Khalman
made submission, but a strong coalition was formed against him in
the district of Hamath by Hadad-ezer, or Ben-Hadad II, of Damascus,
Irkhulina of Hamath, and Ahab of Israel. The adjacent smaller states
of the princes, Matinu-Baal of Arvad (Aradus), Baasha of Ammon, etc.,
followed suit.

The Syrian states evidently recognised the full extent of the danger
threatening them; Ahab of Israel probably made peace with Damascus
so as to be able to withstand the Assyrians. Only the Phœnician
cities were obdurate; whilst the Arabian prince, Gindibu, sent a
thousand camel riders, and even the Egyptian king sent one thousand
men. A battle took place at Qarqar in the vicinity of the Orontes.
Shalmaneser boasts of a complete victory. [His inscription says:
“Fourteen thousand of their warriors I slew with arms; like Adad I
rained a deluge upon them, I strewed hither and yon their bodies, I
filled the face of the ruins with their widespread soldiers; chariots,
saddle-horses, and yoke-horses I took from them.”]

But he attained no further successes, and his power was limited to
northern Syria. In the years 850, 849, and 846, Shalmaneser renewed
his attacks upon central Syria, the last time with one hundred and
twenty thousand men, but without great success. Their tribute money
was not much safeguard to the North Syrian princes, the places in the
district of Carchemish and in the Amanus Mountains were again and again
plundered and burned, and the inhabitants massacred. Only the king of
Patin, who was farthest away, and therefore the most powerful of the
vassals, seems to have been better treated.

The fifth campaign, in 842, was more successful, but in the meanwhile
the revolutions in Damascus and Samaria overthrew the old dynasties,
and Hazael and Jehu ascended the throne. In a battle at the foot
of Mount Lebanon, Hazael was conquered and shut up in his capital;
but Damascus was not taken. Shalmaneser laid waste the Hauran, then
repaired to the coast, where Tyre and Sidon, and also Jehu of Israel,
paid him tribute. The tribute payment of the latter (gold, lead,
vessels, etc.) is depicted on Shalmaneser’s black obelisk. In the year
839 the campaign was repeated without any far-reaching success; and
Tyre, Sidon, and Byblus paid tribute. When the people of Patin slew
their king, the Assyrian general, Asshur-daian (or Dan-Asshur), took
fearful revenge for the death of the faithful vassal. But Shalmaneser
extended his dominion in this district northward only. In the years 838
and 837, twenty-four kings of Tabal (in Cappadocia), as well as the
king of Milid (Melitene), were compelled to pay tribute; and in 835 and
834, King Kati of Que; _i.e._ East Cilicia west of Mount Amanus, was
vanquished, and the town Tarzi (_i.e._ in all probability Tarsus), was
taken and given to his brother Kirri.

Shalmaneser II had the same success in the east and north of his
kingdom. After the mountainous district on the Tigris had been
conquered, the Assyrians came into direct contact with the powerful
race of the Alarodians, whose territory extended on both sides of the
Lake of Van, from the source of the Euphrates to the land of Garzan,
or Gozan, on Lake Urumiyeh. After making a fearful visitation to
Khubushkia and its vicinity, Shalmaneser had already attacked their
king, Arame, on the east in 860. In 857 he invaded his district
on the west, after crossing the Arsanias. In 845 he penetrated as
far as the source of the Euphrates, and in 833 Asshur-daian, his
commander-in-chief, repeated the same campaign. It seems that Arame
and his successor, Siduri (or Sarduris), in the year 833, made, on the
whole, a valiant defence.

Much greater success attended the campaigns against the southeasterly
mountainous races of Urartu on the “sea of the land of the Nairi,”
_i.e._ the lake of Urumiyeh, and the districts of Manna, Parsua,
Amada[24] (Media), etc., at the south and east of the same as well
as that against the land of Namri southeast of the Zab. In the years
844, 836, 830, and 829 the campaigns in these districts were conducted
sometimes by the king himself, and sometimes by his commander-in-chief.

[Illustration: THE OBELISK OF SHALMANESER II]

The famous representations on Shalmaneser’s black obelisk show how King
Sua of Gozan and the Lord of Musri (_i.e._ the eastern mountainous
district) sent him a collection of wonderful animals, double-humped
camels, apes, a rhinoceros, an elephant, and a yak, besides gold,
silver, bronze vessels, and horses.

Between the great campaigns there were a few smaller struggles; in 855
in the Masius Mountains, in 853 against the kings of Tel-Abnai, and in
847 against the town of Ishtarat and the country of Yati, districts
south of the source of the Tigris; in 848 against the unknown land of
Paqarakhubuni, west of the Euphrates, and finally in 831 against the
Qurkhi. The black obelisk records that the desert district of Sukhi,
on the other side of the Euphrates, subjected by Asshurnazirpal,
remained dependent, and Marduk-bel-usur of Sukhi brings to the king as
tribute silver and gold, elephants’ teeth, garments, and also stags
and lions. In the years 852 and 851 Shalmaneser advanced to Babylon.
The king of Babylon, Nabu-apal-iddin, had just died, and his brother
Marduk-bel-usate had taken up arms against Marduk-nadin-shum, the
son of Nabu-apal-iddin. Shalmaneser went to the assistance of the
rightful king, defeated the rebels in two expeditions, and presented
rich gifts in the sacred cities of Babylon, Borsippa, and Kutha to the
chief gods enthroned there. Then repairing farther southward into the
land of Chaldea proper, he vanquished the kings of Bit-Adini and of
Bit-Dakkuri, and exacted tribute from Mussallim-Marduk and Yakin, who
was ruler of the sea country, which was subsequently called Bit-Yakin
after him.

We see that the unity of the kingdoms of Sumer and Accad was now no
more; but that south of Kardunyash, the district of Babylon, there
arose a line of smaller states. Perhaps the South was always separated
from Kardunyash after the Kossæan conquest.

[Sidenote: [829-783 B.C.]]

In the last years of Shalmaneser’s reign his son Asshur-danin-apli
rebelled against him with a great portion of the kingdom, including
Asshur, Arbela, the town of Imgur-Bel, founded by Asshurnazirpal,
Amido, and Tel-Abnai, on the upper Tigris, Zaban on the Zab, etc. But
another son, Shamshi-Adad IV, quelled the insurrection [and it took him
four years of hard fighting to dissipate the opposition] and succeeded
his father on the throne. The first campaigns of the new ruler were
directed against the Nairi countries, the mountains on the north and
east of the Tigris, and his general, Mushaqqil-Asshur, penetrated
as far as the “Sea of the Sunset,” which means as far as the Black
Sea. Then the king attacked Babylonia; a line of frontier places was
taken, and [in the battle of Dur-Papsukal, in northern Babylonia] King
Marduk-balatsu-iqbi, who had been supported by the rulers of Chaldea,
Elam, Namri, and the Aramæan races of eastern Babylonia, was slain.

This expedition was repeated in the years 813 and 812; and other wars
the king mentioned, in shorter notices, cannot be more accurately
localised. He made no attempt of any encroachment of Syria’s rights.

[Sidenote: [806-774 B.C.]]

The successes of [his son] Adad-nirari III (811-783 B.C.) are of
greater importance. In the North and South all the races hitherto
subjugated, including the Medes, the people of Parsua, etc., were
kept in subjection. Frequent mention is made of expeditions against
Manna, Khubushkia, Namri, and Aa. The king says that his kingdom was
extended as far as the coasts of the “great Sea of the Sunrise,”
_i.e._ the Caspian Sea. In 803 mention was made of an expedition “to
the sea coasts” (_i.e._ Babylonia, not Syria). As in Shalmaneser’s
time, all the kings of the land of Kaldi (Chaldea) paid tribute; in
the chief cities of Babylonia the king offers sacrifice, gains rich
booty, and fixes boundaries. Many expeditions were moreover made
against the Aramæan race of Itu’a which dwelt in Babylonia, and these
were repeated in subsequent reigns. “On the west of the Euphrates,”
says Adad-nirari, “I subjugated the land of Khatti, the whole land of
Akharri, Phœnicia, Tyre, Sidon, the kingdom of Israel (Bit-Khumri),
Edom and Philistia as far as the coasts of the West Sea, and imposed
taxes and tribute upon them.” He makes special mention of an expedition
against Mari, king of Damascus, who was besieged in his capital and
forced to capitulate, and pay 2300 talents of silver, 20 talents of
gold, 300 talents of bronze, 5000 talents of iron, so that the loot
of the Assyrian king was very considerable. These events cannot be
accurately fixed, chronologically. The chronological lists mention
campaigns in 806, 805, and 797, against Arpad, Khazaz, and Mansuate
in northern Syria. The war against Damascus was included in one of
them, for it led to the payment of tribute by the Phœnician cities
and the southern states (Israel, Edom, and Philistia). [There exists
an inscription of this reign referring to Sammuramat as “Lady of
the Palace and its Mistress.” There is some reason for conjecturing
that this might have been the woman round whose name and undoubted
prestige in so glorious a reign, clustered the legends of Semiramis. No
previous Assyrian king ruled over so great a territory, or collected
so much tribute as Adad-nirari III, or, as it is sometimes written,
Ramman-nirari III. After him came a period of decline in which there
are no royal inscriptions, and of which our knowledge comes from brief
notes in the Eponym lists.]

[Sidenote: [774-745 B.C.]]

The next king Shalmaneser III (782-773) also went to Syria and made war
against Damascus, 773, the land of Khatarikka, 772, and the land of
Lebanon.

His successor Asshur-dan III (772-754) also made war against Lebanon
in the years 767 and 755, and against Arpad in the year 754. The
subjugation of Hamath probably occurred in one of these expeditions.
Battles are mentioned against Babylonia (in the district of the Aramæan
race, Itu’a and the city of Gannanat) in 777, 771, 769, and 767, in
which the city of Kalneh was presumably taken. But Shalmaneser III
was chiefly concerned in the subjugation of the land of Urartu, the
Alarodians. He is mentioned not less than six times as taking the field
against them (781-778, 776, 774); but his efforts met with no, or at
least no enduring, success.

In all probability the formation of a great Armenian kingdom with
the city of Van (Thuspa of the Greeks) as the central point dates
from this period. Its founder was Sarduris, the son of Litipris,
who was probably identical with the king Sarduris who was conquered
in 833 by Shalmaneser. In two inscriptions written in Assyrian, he
calls himself “King of the land of Nairi.” His successors (Ispuinish,
Minuas, Argistis I, Sarduris II) then utilised the Assyrian writing for
inscribing the language of their country. For in the same record they
call their kingdom Biaina, whilst it is called Urartu by the Assyrians.
The inscriptions of the rulers are rather numerous and written quite
in the Assyrian style. They record the buildings of the kings in Van
itself, where a citadel was built by Argistis, sacrifices and gifts
to Khaldi and the numerous other deities of the Armenian Pantheon,
campaigns and conquests.

When still co-regent with Ispuinish, his father, Minuas erected
monuments in the two high passes south of Lake Urumiyeh which record
his conquests, and other inscriptions also relate his successes against
the land of Manna and its vicinity. These battles presumably occurred
in the latter time of Adad-nirari III, and are the continuation of his
campaigns in the eastern mountains. Minuas also fought against the land
of Alzi, against the king of the city of Milid (Melitene), and against
the Kheta. An inscription on a wall of rock on the Arsanias below an
old castle (near Palu) records among others his successes in this
direction. In the north he penetrated to and beyond the Araxes; one of
his inscriptions is to be found on the right bank of the river opposite
Armavir, and two others, written by his son Argistis, north of Eriwan.
The latter seems to have been the most powerful ruler of Urartu. A long
inscription on the rock of the citadel of Van records his successes in
the land of Manna, which he seems to have subjugated, and also in the
west, against Melitene, the land of Khatti (Kheta), etc.

Repeated victories over the Assyrians are mentioned, which were
evidently won against Shalmaneser III and Asshurdan III, or their
generals. Sarduris II, the son of Argistis, was also very successful
in both districts. For it appears from his inscriptions, confirmed by
later events, that Melitene, Kummukh, Gurgum, and other princedoms
on the Amanus, became feudal states of the kingdom of Urartu, which
included the whole Armenian plateau from the sources of the Euphrates
and Araxes across Lake Urumiyeh. How Sarduris II succumbed to the
Assyrian will be shown later.

The reign of Asshur-dan III seems to have been much more peaceful than
the preceding ones, for the short chronicle of this period repeatedly
records that the king remained “in the land,” and therefore undertook
no campaign.

The successes of Argistis were of great importance. Insurrections also
broke out in the interior in the years 763 to 758, first in the city of
Asshur, then in Arrapachitis (Arpakha), a city situated in the vicinity
of the Upper Zab, east of Nineveh, and finally in Guzanu, in the
Khabur country. After its subjugation, Asshur-dan, as already related,
repaired twice more to Syria (755 and 754), but it was not possible
with the increasing extension of the Armenian power in this direction
to retain supremacy over the smaller states of Syria.

[Sidenote: [747-740 B.C.]]

The next reign, that of Asshur-nirari II (754-745) was still less
eventful. He took the field only in the years 749 and 748 against the
mountainous country of Namri, in the southeast [and in 754 against
Arpad]. Otherwise, he remained “in the land.” In the last year of
his reign the chronicle mentions an insurrection in Calah. The fact
doubtless was that in the spring of the following year (746) the throne
was ascended by a usurper who called himself after the first of the
great Assyrian conquerors, Tiglathpileser.

The overthrown dynasty, which went back to Ishme-dagan and Shamshi-Adad
and the ancient Bel-kap-kapu, had held the throne in uninterrupted
succession for more than a thousand years.[c]

TIGLATHPILESER III (745-727 B.C.)

The eminent Dutch historian Tiele calls the new monarch Tiglathpileser
II, but a recently discovered inscription of Adad-nirari II speaks of
his grandfather, Tiglathpileser, and so the latter, of whom nothing
is known beyond his name, is now denoted the second ruler of his
name. Therefore the subject of the present chapter is here called
Tiglathpileser III.

Tiglathpileser III mounted the throne of Assyria on the 13th Airu
(about April) of the year 745 B.C., and resided, says Tiele, during
the greater part of his reign at Calah and Nineveh, where he built
palaces. He was without any doubt an Assyrian, and not a Chaldean, as
has been supposed. Whether he was the rightful heir, or whether he was
even of royal blood, remains undecided. His real name was Pulu (Pul,
Poros), and there is reason to suppose that he was either a military
commander or a younger son of the king, who took advantage of the
confusion during the last years of the reign of Asshurnirari II to put
the crown on his own head. He assumed the name of the great conqueror,
Tiglathpileser.

He may have employed the first months of his reign in restoring quiet
in the country and establishing himself securely on the throne. It
is only in September of the year 745 (month Tasrit) that he marches
into the field and turns his arms against Babylonia. Nabonassar
(Nabu-nasir) had ruled at Babylon since 747, but nothing else is known
of him, though he seems to have been the founder of a new method of
reckoning time. Tiglathpileser’s first campaign was not, however,
directed against him, at least not immediately; his first object was
to destroy the Aramæans’ and Chaldeans’ ever-increasing power in that
country. After he had won possession of the city of Sippar, which
lay between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and perhaps even of Nippur
also, and had conquered Dur-Kurigalzu, together with some other less
important strongholds of Kardunyash, as far as the Ukni, he subdued
the nomadic Aramæans east of the Tigris, reorganised the government of
the conquered territory, dividing it into four provinces, over which
Assyrian governors were placed, founded two cities [Kar-Asshur was one
and probably Dur-Tukulti-apal-esharra the other] as administrative
centres to preserve the allegiance of the new territory, and peopled
the new settlements with the prisoners of war. The priesthood of
Babylon, Borsippa, and Kutha brought gifts from the temples of their
gods into the king’s headquarters, and thus averted the danger which
threatened their towns also. For the time Tiglathpileser contented
himself with the successes gained. It was not at present his intention
to subdue all Babylonia, or perhaps he was not yet strong enough to do
so. Apparently all he desired was to secure the southern frontiers of
Assyria against the invasions of the Aramæans and Chaldeans, who were
becoming more and more audacious, before he ventured farther afield.

The security of the eastern border was of scarcely less importance. In
the year 744 he marched against the ever turbulent Namri which lay in
this direction; here, too, he compelled all to bow to his victorious
arms, even penetrated the western portion of the future Media, and
exacted tribute from all the Median princes as far as the eastern
mountains of Biknu. He did not proceed in person to further conquests,
but entrusted the punishment of those Medians who dwelt farther east to
his general, Asshur-daninani, who returned victorious, bringing with
him rich booty, especially in horses. However, this country was not
incorporated in the empire.

His hand was now free for the re-establishment of the weakened power
of Assyria in the west. But one of his most powerful enemies who had,
perhaps, already stirred up Namri to resistance, namely Sarduris II of
Urartu, or Chaldia, sought to prevent this. When Tiglathpileser had
reached Arpad in Syria, he found his flank, and when he would have
marched still farther, his rear, threatened by a considerable army
at whose head was Sarduris, and which besides the latter’s troops
consisted of those of the northern Hittite states of Melid, Gurgum,
Kummukh, and Agusi. The defeat of the allies was complete. Sarduris
had to abandon his camp and seek refuge in flight. About seventy-three
thousand prisoners fell into the Assyrians’ hands.

[Sidenote: [740-732 B.C.]]

The three following years were not fortunate. When Tiglathpileser
marched against Kummukh he does not appear to have left an adequate
garrison behind him in Arpad, for in the year 742 the town, and with
it the key of the west country, was in the power of his enemies, and
he found himself obliged to besiege it for three years. Not till the
year 740 did he take it, and thither came Kushtashpi of Kummukh, Rezin
of Damascus, Hiram of Tyre, Uriakki of Que, Pisiris of Carchemish, and
Tarkhulara of Gurgum, to offer him rich presents. One of the Hittite
princes, Tutammu of Unqi, a district between the Orontes and the Afrin,
refused his submission. His capital, Kinalia, was taken for the second
time and the whole country placed under an Assyrian governor. In the
year 739 Tiglathpileser continued his conquest northeast of Arpad,
devastated Kilkhi, a district belonging to Nairi, and conquered Ulluba,
where he founded an Assyrian capital under the name of Asshuriqisha.
But it was long before the land of the Khatti (Syria) was pacified.
Between 740 and 738 no less than nineteen districts belonging to the
Syrian kingdom of Hamath, and some other adjacent districts, broke
away from Assyria, and from some mutilated parts of the inscriptions
it is believed we may conclude that they asked for help from Azariah
[Uzziah], the warlike king of Judah. At all events, the latter at
that time ventured to defy the power of Assyria, and Tiglathpileser
connected this hostile attitude with the rising of the people of
Hamath. About 738 Azariah was defeated and the country of Hamath
added to Assyria. Then the king had recourse to his favourite means
for the suppression of the sentiment of nationality--namely, the
transplantation of prisoners of war in the most extensive fashion.
Whilst all princes of any consideration and even an Arabian queen
now offered the conqueror their submission and presents, he received
the joyful tidings of important successes won by his generals on the
other frontiers of the empire. The eastern Aramæans had shaken off the
Assyrian yoke and advanced to the Zab, but were driven back, though
with some difficulty. At the same time the governor of Lullume was
harassing the Babylonians, whilst the governor of Nairi held in check
the populations on the northern frontier. Booty and prisoners were sent
to the king in the land of the Khatti.

The three following years (737-735) he was occupied with expeditions
in the east and northeast. Some districts of Media were then under
the Babylonian rule, and now passed to that of the Assyrians. But
the most important event of this year was the march to Turushpa,
the capital of Urartu [Chaldia], the residence of Sarduris, on the
Lake of Van. No Assyrian conqueror had penetrated so far as this,
nor did Tiglathpileser succeed in taking the town in which Sarduris
had fortified himself after his first defeat; but the power of this
dangerous rival was broken for a long time.

[Sidenote: [732-731 B.C.]]

Tiglathpileser now determined to bring the west under his yoke, and did
not rest until he had brought all the Hittite and Semitic countries
to the coast of the Mediterranean and the frontiers of Egypt, except
some Arabian districts, under his sway. This took him three years, from
734-732. The immediate inducement to this expedition was probably that
Ahaz of Judah, threatened by Rezin of Damascus and Pekah of Israel,
called in the aid of Assyria. Moreover, the last two had probably paid
no tribute, and, generally speaking, Assyria needed little persuasion
to fish in troubled waters. The first attack was directed against
Rezin. Beaten in the open field, he was compelled to retreat to his
capital. Here Tiglathpileser shut him in “like a bird in its cage”;
he conquered all the towns round about, including the important city
of Sam’ala, and marched on, after having destroyed, according to his
wont, all crops around Damascus, and thus increased the difficulty
of transporting the means of existence. He marched into Israel
(Bit-Khumri), wasting whole districts, some of which he added to his
empire,--for the present, however, leaving the capital undisturbed.
The immediate goal was now the Philistine Gaza, whose king, Hanno
(Khanunu), probably trusting in Damascus and Israel, had at first
renounced his allegiance, but now on the approach of the Assyrian army
fled to Egypt. The town was taken, and a rich booty fell into the hands
of the victors. Askalon, whose prince Mitinti had made an attempt at
rebellion, was punished--though probably not till later--and Rukipti,
Mitinti’s son, raised to the throne. Shamshi, “the queen of Arabia in
the land of Sheba,” also offered resistance, but was likewise utterly
defeated and with difficulty escaped with bare life. Her country,
which is certainly not to be confounded with the Sheba of the South,
became an Assyrian province. Other Arab tribes submitted voluntarily,
and amongst them the well-known Tema; and Tiglathpileser appointed
the powerful tribe of the Idibi’il, as being nearest to Egypt, to be
wardens of the marches at the gates of that still mighty empire. Now
came the turn of Samaria, the only city of Israel which the conqueror
had not yet reduced. He appears, indeed, to have visited it, but not
to have besieged and taken it, yet he raised Hoshea, who had meantime
slain Pekah, to the throne, or confirmed him in its possession. It was
longer before Damascus fell. It continued to hold out for two years
more. That it was then taken is probable.

Of all the kingdoms of the West there now remained only Tyre and Tabal,
which latter lay much farther north. The king did not go in person
against either of these towns, but he sent Rabshakeh, who subdued
them and changed the government in Tabal, while on Tyre he imposed a
tax of not less than one hundred and fifty talents [about £60,000, or
$300,000]. Whether this took place now or later, cannot be said with
certainty.

[Sidenote: [731-726 B.C.]]

Victorious over all rebellious subjects in his colossal empire,
and dreaded by all his neighbours, Tiglathpileser now felt himself
strong enough to make a direct attack on the Aramæans and Chaldeans
of Babylonia, and to conquer the holy city itself. In the year 731
he ventured and accomplished this act of daring. In Babylonia itself
no one seems to have resisted him, and the population seem rather to
have received him as a deliverer. He entered Sippar, Nippur, Babylon,
Borsippa, Kutha, Kish, Dilbat, and Erech, each in their turn, and
received the protection of the great gods, by offering them sacrifices.
Then he fell on the Aramaic-Chaldean tribe of Pekud (Pekod), subdued
it as far as the frontiers of Elam, continued his victorious march
through the Chaldean states of Bit-Silani and Bit-Sha’alli, which
soon succumbed to his arms. Nabu-ushabshi, the king of the former
state, was impaled before the gate of his capital, Sarrabani, and
the town levelled with the ground; Zakiru of Sha’alli was sent to
Assyria in chains, and the capital, which still offered resistance,
was starved into surrender. Bit-Amukkani, whose king, Ukinzer
(Chinziros), who appears to have been at that time the leading chief
of the Chaldeans, and consequently regarded as king of Babylon, was
not so easily overcome. It is true that the whole country was ravaged
and the king shut up in his capital of Sapia; that a sortie of the
garrison miscarried; that in fear of the overwhelming strength of
Assyria, Balasu of Bit-Dakkuri, Nadin of Larak (Bit-Shala), and even
Marduk-bal-iddin [Merodoch-baladan] of Bit-Yakin on the seacoast, the
man who was later to become so terrible an enemy to Assyria, came here
to offer their costly gifts and their submission; but Sapia was not
taken and Ukinzer not conquered, so that nominally he shared the rule
over Babylon for yet another year. Still, from this time forward it was
not without reason that Tiglathpileser styled himself king or overlord
of Babylon, king of Sumer and Accad; he might boast that he ruled from
the Persian Gulf to the far East, over the coasts of the Mediterranean
as far as Egypt, and that he had extended his kingdom farther than
any of his predecessors. He reigned for three years more, for the most
part in peace, as far as we know. Of his last two years it is reported
that he clasped the hands of Bel; that is, that he received the highest
religious consecration as king of Babylon. In the year 727 Shalmaneser
IV succeeded him on the throne. The latter only ruled for five years,
and of his short reign little is known.

SHALMANESER IV

[Illustration: ASSYRIAN KING IN HIS WAR CHARIOT]

In the list of the Babylonian kings for these five years, there
stands, not his name, but that of Ulule, who was neither, as has been
believed hitherto, an independent prince nor a viceroy appointed
by Shalmaneser, but none other than Shalmaneser himself, who also
probably resided at Babylon. Perhaps his expedition against Phœnicia
and Israel falls as early as the year of his accession. The occasion
of the war against Tyre, whose king, Elulæus, at that time stood at
the head of the Phœnician towns, is said to have been an expedition
undertaken by the latter against the Khittim of Cyprus. It is more
probable that the Tyrian king, like Hoshea of Israel, had taken
advantage of Tiglathpileser’s death to renounce his allegiance to
Assyria. Shalmaneser again subdued Hoshea and raised tribute from
him. At the same time he sent into Phœnicia a part of his army, which
devastated the whole country, and once more made it tributary. After
this the whole empire seems to have quieted down, for the following
year (726) was a year of peace. But the calm was not of long duration.
Scarcely had the Assyrian troops marched away, when Hoshea turned to
the Egyptian king, in the hope that with his aid he might free himself
from the yoke of Assyria, and from thenceforward once more refused the
tribute.

We have here probably a great conspiracy, in which Elulæus was also
concerned, for Shalmaneser now marched against both kings. He took
Hoshea prisoner, evidently after a struggle, wasted the whole land of
Israel, but at Samaria, whose population may very likely have incited
the king to revolt, he encountered an obstinate resistance. Meantime
the whole Phœnician mainland, either from fear or under pressure from
the superior force of Assyria, hastened to desert from Elulæus and
to submit to Shalmaneser. The Tyrian king found himself under the
necessity of retreating to his fortress on the island of Tyre, where he
was at once besieged. It was only under Shalmaneser’s successor that
Samaria was taken after a three years’ siege, and Tyre after one of
five years. We cannot but experience a feeling of respect for these
two cities, which ventured unaided--for the help from Egypt failed, as
usual, to appear--to defy the gigantic power of Assyria.

[It is by no means undisputed that Shalmaneser marched against both
Elulæus and Hoshea, as Professor Tiele states. Some of the historians
believe that no action was taken against the king of Tyre, and that
since there are no allusions to the five years’ siege in any of
the inscriptions, Josephus, the sole authority, made a mistake in
attributing to Shalmaneser an attack on Tyre that was really made by
Sennacherib.]

The scanty records of Shalmaneser’s reign bear witness to material
prosperity. That he was, as has been thought, a feeble ruler, under
whose administration the empire declined, is entirely unproved.
His early death prevented him from acquiring the same glory as his
predecessor, and if, immediately after his decease, the vassals of
the empire raised the standards of rebellion in every direction, this
speaks rather for than against the influence of his personality.[e]

FOOTNOTES

[22] [It is so uncertain that Karaindash, etc., were actually Kossæans
that the word Kassite or Kasshite is kept by some scholars, as
Hilprecht,[f] Goodspeed,[g] McCurdy,[h] and Rogers.[i]]

[23] [According to the best authority Makhallat, Maiz, and Kaiz formed
Tripolis.]

[24] [Also written “Mada” in a later inscription of Adad-nirari III.
This is the true land of Media, which the Greeks confused with that of
Manda.]

CHAPTER IV. FOUR GENERATIONS OF ASSYRIAN GREATNESS (722-626 B.C.)

After the death of Shalmaneser IV, the throne of Assyria was taken by a
man of doubtful antecedents, who became the founder of a very powerful
dynasty. This king, like some previous usurpers, adopted a name famous
in Assyrian history. He became known to the world as Sargon II, and
Rogers says he was not of royal blood; Tiele, however, from whom we
shall quote, thinks differently.[a]

[Sidenote: [722-716 B.C.]]

In the year 722 B.C. Sargon became king in Asshur. He was an Assyrian
of royal blood, who seems, however, to have belonged to another
branch than that of the dynasty which had ruled before Tiglathpileser
III, nor does he appear to have been closely related to the latter
and his successor. He boasts that he restored to the ancient seat
of government, the city of Asshur, her long usurped rights, and to
Kharran, the object of his especial favour, her former liberties, which
had also long been curtailed. Evidently, therefore, he appeared to
a certain extent in the character of an innovator, or rather as the
restorer of the ancient order.

Samaria fell shortly after his accession, and a part of its inhabitants
were led away into banishment, to be replaced later on by others.
Whether or no Sargon was present in person is not clear, but it is
certain that he could not long devote his attention to the western
portion of the empire. Scarcely was Shalmaneser IV dead before the
Chaldeans revenged themselves for the humiliation they had suffered
at the hands of Tiglathpileser. Marduk-baliddin [Merodach-baladan] of
Bit-Yakin, at that time the most powerful amongst them, since through
his timely submission to the Assyrians his country had been preserved
from the miseries of war, had made himself master of the city of
Babylon, and now ruled as king over the whole Babylonian country.
Sargon marched south, perhaps in the hope of recovering what was lost.
But in this he was unsuccessful. He did not venture to attack Babylon
itself, but turned his arms against an Aramæan tribe, the Tu’mun,
who had surrendered their chief to the Chaldean king. The tribe was
subjugated and carried to Syria. Sargon now pressed on as far as the
town of Dur-ilu in whose suburb he sustained with Babylon’s ally, the
Elamite king Khumbanigash, a hotly contested fight, from which he
asserts that he came off victor. This campaign, however, yielded no
further advantages. Elam retained its independence and Merodach-baladan
possession of Babylon. An indirect result was that the South had
learned to know Sargon as a military commander, and, for the future,
good care was taken not to molest him.

The danger threatened from another quarter. Syria was up in arms. At
the head of the rising was Hamath, where a man of mean origin, Ya-ubidi
or Il-ubidi, had seized the government. Arpad, Simirra, Damascus, and
Samaria followed his example. He found a support in Hanno (Khanunu) of
Gaza, who had resumed his throne, and even in Shabak,[25] the Ethiopian
king of Egypt, whom Hoshea’s unhappy fate does not seem to have
frightened from endeavouring to measure his strength with the imperial
might of Assyria. Even before the allies could unite their forces,
Sargon, who probably received early intelligence of what was going on
in the countries of the Mediterranean coast, encamped before Qarqar,
where Ya-ubidi had fixed his headquarters, stormed and burnt the city,
had the ringleader flayed alive and his principal adherents put to
death, increased his host with three hundred warriors who fought in
chariots, and six hundred horsemen from amongst the conquered, and then
marched south against the allied armies of Hanno and Shabak. At Raphia
on the Egyptian frontier was fought the decisive battle, which turned
out a brilliant victory for the Assyrians. Hanno was taken and carried
off to Assyria with nine thousand of his subjects, and Shabak owed his
safety only to his precipitate flight in which he was accompanied only
by his chief herdsman. Hezekiah seems to have thought it wise not to
defy the victor; perhaps he even sent Sargon a present. Tyre also must
have been pacified in this year (720).

Meantime the other enemies of the empire were not yet cowed. The whole
north, northeast and northwest, longed impatiently to shake off the
Assyrian yoke. In this they were supported by Mitatti of Zikirtu, Rusas
of Urartu and Mita of Muskhe, who had secretly formed a league over
which Sargon was to triumph only after a long and fierce struggle. In
the year 719 Mitatti contrived to persuade some towns of the loyal
Iranzu of Man to revolt, whilst Rusas brought several other towns under
his sway. Sargon proceeded against them with so much energy that the
instigators themselves held cautiously aloof, while they beheld their
country laid waste and most of its inhabitants carried into the west,
especially to Damascus. In the year 718 unrest revealed itself in
Tabal, where Kiakki, prince of Sinukhtu, refused to pay his tribute.
But he, too, was soon led away captive to Assyria, together with seven
thousand of his subjects, and Matti of Atun, a faithful vassal, was
invested with Kiakki’s province. In the year 717 Sargon had to suppress
a dangerous rising. Pisiris, the Hittite prince of Carchemish, which
was one of the keys of the West, attempted, with the support of Mita
of Muskhe, to make himself independent. But his city was taken, the
majority of his subjects carried off, and an enormous booty stored in
Asshurnazirpal’s palace at Calah, which Sargon had restored for himself.

[Sidenote: [716-715 B.C.]]

These disturbances were nothing compared with the war which now, in
the year 716, broke out against Sargon and lasted several years. Rusas
of Urartu had persuaded the chief men of the Assyrian provinces of
Karalla and Man to secede, in which he was supported by Zikirtu and
by the mountain region of Umildish, which was governed by a certain
Bagdatti. It appears that the rebellion had spread all over the eastern
frontier, and the princes of western Media also took arms. Sargon
boldly attacked his enemies. He began with the country of Man, which
lay nearest, soon got Bagdatti into his power, and had him flayed. The
chief men of Man raised Ullusunu, the brother of Aza, whom Bagdatti
had murdered, to the throne and compelled him to join Rusas’s party,
to which the princes of the Nairi states, Karalla and Allabra, whose
names, Asshurli and Itti, denote them as Assyrian deserters, also went
over. But scarcely had Sargon set out against them before Ullusunu and
his nobles found themselves obliged to offer their submission. Sargon
confirmed the former in his kingdom, and compelled his two allies with
other petty chiefs to return to their allegiance. The territory of the
city of Kisheshim was ruled by a governor, Bel-shar-usur, probably a
Babylonian. Sargon gave it the name of Kar-Nergal and made it into an
Assyrian province. A like fate befell the west Median town of Kharkhar,
which had expelled its sovereign, Kibaba, and solicited support
from Dalta of Ellipi; henceforth it was called Kar-Sharrukin [City
of Sargon]. On this the governors of other Median towns made their
submission.

[Sidenote: [715-711 B.C.]]

But after these isolated successes it was still long before the
eastern states were quieted. In the following year (715) Rusas wrested
twenty-two towns from Ullusunu, and a certain Daiukku, who is called
viceregent of Man, was involved in the affair. Khubushkia, a state
of Nairi, and the neighbouring districts, became refractory, and
the territory of Kar-Sharrukin, incorporated only the year before,
again seceded. At the same time in the west Mita of Muskhe made an
invasion into the Assyrian district of Que [in eastern Cilicia] with
considerable success. Nevertheless, Sargon succeeded in maintaining the
upper hand at all points. He reconquered Kar-Sharrukin, fortified it
more strongly than before, and received the homage of the governors of
twenty-two Median cities. His general in the west was not content with
reconquering the towns taken by Mita, but even pressed southward as
far as the Arabian Desert, and transferred the tribes subdued there to
Samaria.

Secure of the west, Sargon now felt in a condition to strike at the
real authors of all the trouble in the east. After Man and some
Median districts had paid their tributes, the next thing was to
proceed against Mitatti of Zikirtu. So complete was the overthrow
of this prince that, after the burning of his capital, Parda, and
the desolation of his country, he with his whole people sought
another home. It was a harder task to subdue Rusas, the soul of the
confederacy. But this, too, was accomplished by the warlike king. Rusas
was defeated among his high hills. His whole royal house, amounting to
some 250 persons, fell with his horsemen into the victor’s hands, and
he himself only escaped with much difficulty and hid in the mountains.
Rusas still built hopes on one of his allies; if he would make a stand
all was not yet lost. This was Urzana of Muzazir, a former vassal of
Asshur, who had, however, joined Rusas as the chief of a kindred tribe.
In his mountain country, protected by its natural strength and almost
impenetrable, he believed himself entirely safe. But the dauntless
spirit of the ancient Assyrian warriors was not extinct in Sargon. He
piously commended himself to the protection of the gods, assembled a
carefully selected body of troops, and ventured with them on the almost
impossible enterprise. When Urzana understood that the valiant hero
was actually approaching with his veterans, he fled, according to the
praiseworthy custom of Asiatic despots, with all speed into the higher
mountains, leaving his capital and his own family to the mercy of the
enemy. Muzazir’s fate was now soon decided; with a large number of
prisoners, and an extraordinarily rich booty, including the two great
gods of the country, Sargon returned to his own country. This was the
death-blow for Rusas. The whole structure so laboriously prepared lay
in ruins, and filled with despair he fell upon his sword.

When Sargon had thus secured his empire against the danger threatening
from the half-savage barbarians of the north, he re-established order
in the northwest and west. Next he turned, not against the chief author
of the trouble, Mita of Muskhe himself, but against Tabal, which lay
not far and somewhat to the south of Muskhe. Ambaris of Tabal, to whom
previously, while his father Khulle was still alive, Sargon had amongst
other tokens of favour given one of his daughters to wife, and whose
kingdom he had increased by the grant of Cilicia, had been ungrateful
enough to join with Rusas and Mita. In the year 713 Sargon punished him
as he had deserved, and made his country into an Assyrian province. The
same thing happened to Khamman and Melid in the following year. Sargon
peopled the country with foreign prisoners of war, and endeavoured by
the erection of ten fortresses to secure it against Urartu and Muskhe.
Continuing its southward march, the Assyrian army remained for a time
in the region of the Amanus, and then, in the year 711, attacked Gurgum
in the neighbourhood of Kummukh, which became an Assyrian province.

[Sidenote: [711-709 B.C.]]

It is very doubtful whether Sargon took a personal share in these
expeditions. It was during just these years that he was occupied with
the construction of his new residence of Dur-Sharrukin. It is certain
that the devastation of Ashdod, which concluded the campaign of 711,
was effected not under the king’s superintendence, but under that of
the king, Akhimiti, whom Sargon had installed there, but who had been
expelled, and Yaman, a man of mean origin, raised to the throne by the
people. On the approach of the Assyrian army this hero fled to Egypt,
but the king of Melukhkha (Egypt), fearing the vengeance of Assyria,
sent him back loaded with iron bands. The population of Ashdod was also
carried away and replaced by other tribes. Fortified by these triumphs,
Sargon could now collect his forces in order to undertake a war which
should set the crown to all his achievements. This was the conquest of
Babylon, which had been for the last twelve years in the possession of
the Chaldean king, Merodach-baladan.

Two years were required for this undertaking, in which Sargon proceeded
with great caution. Merodach-baladan was ready for the attack. He had
not neglected to make the necessary dispositions and to strengthen
his fortresses. In one of them, Dur-Atkhara, which was probably the
nearest to Assyria, and whose defensive works he had caused to be
raised, he had concentrated the whole military power of the Aramæan
tribe of Gambuli, and had sent to their assistance a portion of his own
choicest troops, six hundred horsemen and four thousand foot. Sargon
directed himself against this fortress, and whilst he was besieging it,
it is probable that another division of his army won several successes
in the east, where it had to keep the Elamite king, Shutur-nakhundi,
occupied, and prevent him from joining hands with his ally. Dur-Atkhara
fell; more than eighteen thousand prisoners and a great booty became
the spoil of the conqueror, and the rest of the defenders hastily
took to flight. The Assyrian king made the town his headquarters; he
subsequently gave it the name of Dur-Nabu, and placed it under an
Assyrian governor. The Khamarani tribe which dwelt on the banks of the
Euphrates, in their terror at the approach of his army, had already
taken refuge in the town of Sippar. At the news of the surrender of
Dur-Atkhara, and the defeat of the Gambuli, the Aramæan tribes of
Rubu, Khindaru, Yatburu, and Puqudu, who dwelt east of the Tigris, and
relied on the protection of Babylon and Elam, withdrew behind the
river Ukni. The Assyrians threw a bridge across the Umlias, a river to
the north of Elam, and took several strongholds there, whereupon some
chiefs of the Aramæans did homage to the king at Dur-Atkhara. They were
assigned to the new government of Gambuli. The remainder were attacked
and defeated in the territory of the Ukni, so that of them also many
submitted, and were made subject to Gambuli. Now the army of Assyria
operating east of the Tigris attacked Elam from Yatburu, subdued all
the surrounding country, the seven principalities of Yatburu, with
which two fortresses conquered from Elam were incorporated, and a
part of the Elamite territory itself. It compelled the forces of the
land of Rash, which belonged to Elam, to retire to a fortress, and
the Elamite king to seek refuge in the high mountains of his country.
Secured against any surprise from this quarter, Sargon himself with
the main body now crossed the Euphrates into the Chaldaic-Babylonian
state of Bit-Dakkuri, whose capital, Dur-Ladinna, henceforth became his
headquarters.

There was now no room for Merodach-baladan in Babylon. Threatened on
three sides, and in danger of being cut off by Sargon from his own
principality, he and his troops left the city during the night and
directed their steps to the Elamite part of Yatburu, whence they might
advance against the enemy in co-operation with Shutur-nakhundi. But,
although he offered the latter the most costly presents, the Elamite
had not yet forgotten the lesson he had received. He declined to expose
himself to new defeats, and so, perhaps, lose both land and people.
Merodach-baladan left Yatburu, having gained nothing, and collected his
army in a stronghold of his own country, called Iqbi-Bel.

Meantime, at Dur-Ladinna, in Bit-Dakkuri, not only did Sargon receive
the submission of the inhabitants and the neighbouring Bit-Amukkani,
but the authorities of Babylon also came in solemn embassy, bringing
an invitation to enter the holy city, with which he immediately
complied. At the great festival of the lord of the gods in the month of
Shabat (January) he was permitted “to clasp the hands” of that great
Bel-Marduk and Nabu, the king of the universe.

But still the south of Babylonia was not yet subjugated, for there
Merodach-baladan was still in arms. He collected all his forces in the
immediate neighbourhood of his capital, and at the same time, for fear
of treachery, led thither the population of the ancient cities of Ur,
Larsa, Kishik, etc. Strong defences were set up and special canals dug,
behind which he entrenched himself with his allies. But the great king
did not shrink before all these obstacles. Scarcely was the campaign
of the year 709 begun, before he marched south, distributed his troops
along the enemy’s whole line of defence, and inflicted on the latter so
terrible a defeat that the trenches appeared as though full of blood,
and the Suti, who had marched from Bit-Yakin to the rescue, did not
venture an attack, but hurriedly retreated. Then Sargon fell on the
auxiliaries and slaughtered them like sheep. Terror now seized on the
Chaldeans’ main army; Merodach-baladan left his camp with all speed and
retreated to his city. But it, too, was soon taken after a short siege,
and with this the power of Merodach-baladan was broken. It is uncertain
whether he himself fell into his enemy’s hands or saved himself by
flight; but probably the latter was the case, for immediately after
Sargon’s death he is again in a position to take action, at least
if the Merodach-baladan, who then revolted against Sennacherib, is
the same who was conquered by Sargon and his son. But for the time
Babylonia was freed from the Aramaic-Chaldean domination, and breathed
again. Sargon restored the ancient rights of the natives which the
oppressors had curtailed in favour of the foreigners. To the towns of
southern Babylonia he gave back their stolen gods; he everywhere showed
himself extremely liberal to the temples and the ancient religion of
the country. In all directions he appeared as deliverer, avenger of
the insulted gods, restorer of the ancestral religion, protector of
the priests and of all the natives of the country. His triumph did not
signalise the commencement of foreign rule, but, on the contrary, it
was he who put an end to it.

[Sidenote: [709-708 B.C.]]

Sargon’s rejoicings over his victory were still further increased by
the embassies and reports which he received one after the other. Uperi,
the king of the island of Dilmun, in the Persian Sea, did homage to
him while he was still at Bit-Yakin, and gave costly presents. When
he had marched from southern Babylonia to consolidate his dominion in
the conquered countries, still more welcome tidings reached him at
Irma’i. Even his great enemy in the northwest, Mita of Muskhe, who had
stood with Rusas at the head of the confederacy against Asshur, but
who had been overcome by the governor of Que, now sent ambassadors to
Sargon with presents and protestations of homage and devotion. When,
finally, the king had again returned to Babylon, there came envoys from
seven districts of Cyprus, “whose names had never been known to the
kings, his fathers, since the rule of the god Sin,” and who offered
him valuable gifts and kissed his feet. Thus the empire of the mighty
conqueror stretched from the island of Dilmun, in the Persian Gulf, to
the Isle of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean.

Sargon returned to Calah in the beginning of 708, his fourteenth year
as king of Assyria, and third as king of Babylon, after spending
some time in the latter city. Whilst he was at Calah, resting on his
laurels--he did not again, himself, take the field--and from thence
prosecuting the construction of his new residence of Dur-Sharrukin,
not far from Nineveh, his armies had still to conduct two wars, one
in the year 708, the other, perhaps, in the same, but probably in the
following year. Urartu had to a certain extent recovered from the
blows it had suffered in the defeats and death of its king, Rusas; and
the new king, Argistis, began to grow restless, and persuaded Prince
Mutallu of Kummukh to a revolt against the Assyrian domination. Sargon
sent a high official with a powerful army and full royal authority,
who put Mutallu to flight, taking the capital of the province, and so
restoring the Assyrian dominion. The rich booty was sent to Calah to
the king, and the latter placed a very strong garrison at the disposal
of the new viceroy, to prevent any further attempts at risings, and
at the same time to constitute a defence against Argistis. But it was
once more apparent that the Assyrian Empire, as a purely military
power, rested on a tottering foundation, and could only be sustained by
continued wars and victories.

The other war was that for the succession in Ellipi to the north of
Elam. There, after the death of Dalta, who after some resistance had
become a loyal vassal of Assyria, a dispute over the inheritance broke
out between his two sons, Nibe and Ishpabara. The first applied for
help to Shutur-nankhundi of Elam; the second to Sargon. The latter sent
seven of his commanders, who succeeded in defeating Nibe, taking his
capital, Marubishti, and there installing Ishpabara as king.

[Sidenote: [708-705 B.C.]]

Sargon, who, even in the early years of his reign, in the midst of his
most terrible wars, had not neglected the reconstruction of palaces
and temples at Nineveh and Calah, now devoted himself entirely to the
realisation of a long cherished plan, whose execution he had begun
long ago. A new suburb of Nineveh, called by his name, was to come
into existence as a permanent memorial of his fame and piety, and at
the same time serve as a summer residence. This was Dur-Sharrukin with
its temples to various gods, with its palaces and gardens, whose walls
and gates, like those of a sacred city, looked to the four quarters of
the heavens and were named after the high gods, and whose inhabitants,
selected from the prisoners of war of all the nations whom the king
had conquered and placed under Assyrian magistrates, afforded a living
testimony to his mighty deeds. On the 22nd Tasrit (September) 707, the
gods were solemnly introduced into their temples, and on the 6th Airu
(April) of the following year, the king took possession of the new
residence. He was not permitted to enjoy it long. In the year 705 he
fell by an assassin’s hand. [This is doubted by some authorities, who
believe that he died a natural death.]

Sargon was, without doubt, one of the greatest princes who sat on the
throne of Assyria and Babylon. He was no mere conqueror, who thought
merely of increasing the size of his empire, but also a true king
who occupied himself for its welfare. What chiefly strikes us in him
is the comparative moderation by which he was distinguished from his
predecessors and in particular from his son and successor. The horrors
and devastations of war were the inevitable accompaniment of the
forcible subjugation of the whole of western Asia, and some obstinate
rebels were punished according to the barbarous custom of his age and
race. But in general he contented himself with expelling the conquered
prince or making him prisoner. He also remained faithful to the
policy first pursued by Tiglathpileser III, namely that of furthering
the unity of the empire by transplanting whole populations to other
districts. But in his records it is only now and then that we encounter
the refined cruelties perpetrated by the other Assyrian kings, and he
never dwells on them with so much complacency as they display.[b]

SENNACHERIB

[Sidenote: [705-681 B.C.]]

Sargon II was succeeded by his son Sin-akhe-erba, the Sennacherib
of the Bible, who reigned long and gloriously. The period now in
question has a double interest. It is a time when Assyria is at the
height of its power; and the interest that attaches to any strong
empire is enhanced by the fact that the Assyrians of this period came
in contact with the people of Israel. Sennacherib, in particular,
bears a name familiar to all succeeding generations because of the
repeated mention of this ruler in the Hebrew scriptures. Until the
records of the Assyrian monuments were brought to light, nothing was
known of him, except what referred to his disastrous campaign against
Jerusalem, together with the brief reference to his murder by his son.
Now, however, an abundance of material is at hand telling of the deeds
of Sennacherib. The most important of these records are contained on
large cylinders of the type which many Assyrian kings employed. These
cylinders tell of various campaigns of the great conqueror, including
several attacks upon Israel. Two or three brief excerpts from the
chronicles of Sennacherib will serve to give an idea of the phraseology
in which these royal documents are couched. The first two excerpts here
selected were translated by George Smith from a cylinder now in the
British Museum.

Column I of this cylinder begins as follows:

“Sennacherib the great king, the powerful king, king of Assyria, king
of the four regions, the appointed ruler, worshipper of the great gods,
guardian of right, lover of justice, maker of peace, going the right
way, preserver of good. The powerful prince, the warlike hero, leader
among kings, giant devouring the enemy, breaker of bonds. Asshur, the
great mountain, an empire unequalled, has committed to me, and over all
who dwell in palaces has exalted my servants. From the upper sea of the
setting sun to the lower sea of the rising sun all the dark races he
has subdued to my feet, and stubborn kings avoided war, their countries
abandoned, and, like Sudinni birds, … fled to desert places.”[26]

Column II contains a record of the campaign against the Hittites:

“In my third expedition to the land of the Hittites I went. Elulæus
king of Sidon, fear of the might of my dominion overwhelmed him, and
to a distance in the midst of the sea he fled, and his country I
took. Great Sidon, Lesser Sidon, Bit-Sitte, Sarepta Machalliba, Ushu
Alhzibu, and Akko his strong cities, fortresses, walled and enclosed,
his castles; the might of the soldiers of Asshur my lord overwhelmed
them, and they submitted to my feet. Tubahal in the throne of the
kingdom over them I seated, and taxes and tribute to my dominion
yearly, unceasing, I fixed upon him. Of Menahem of Samsimuruna, Tubahal
of Sidon, Abdilihiti of Arvad, Urumilki of Gubal (Byblos), Mitinti
of Ashdod, Buduilu of Beth-Ammon, Kammusunadab of Moab, Malikrammu
of Edom, kings of the Hittites, all of them of the coast, the whole,
their presents and furniture, to my presence they carried, and kissed
my feet, and Zidqa, king of Askalon, who did not submit to my yoke;
the gods of the house of his father, himself, his wife, his sons, his
daughters, and his brothers, the seed of the house of his father I
removed, and to Assyria I sent him. Sharruludari, son of Rukipti their
former king, over the people of Askalon I appointed, and the gifts of
taxes due to my dominion I fixed on him, and he performed my pleasure.”

Full of interest is the record of an invasion of Palestine.
Sennacherib, it will be recalled, was the Assyrian that came down like
a wolf on the fold, as recorded in Byron’s stirring lines. The Hebrew
account is from 2 Kings xix. 35:

[Illustration: SENNACHERIB ON HIS THRONE

(Layard)]

“And it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord went out,
and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five
thousand; and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were
all dead corpses. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went
and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh. And it came to pass, as he was
worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, that Adrammelech and
Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword; and they escaped into the
land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead.”[a]

It is hardly necessary to state that no such record as this is to
be found on the cylinder before us. The oriental scribe, whether of
Egypt, Assyria, or Persia, rarely made the mistake of putting details
of unfortunate expeditions on record. Doubtless Sennacherib once
invaded western Asia unsuccessfully, and quite likely a plague may have
decimated his hosts, but that particular invasion is not likely to
furnish a favourable theme for the court chronicler.

An invasion of Palestine is, indeed, recorded on the present cylinder,
but it is an invasion with very different results. Listen to the
official account of the conquest of Jerusalem furnished by this
cylinder of Sennacherib, as translated by Dr. Budge. The scribe reports
the king as speaking in the first person:

“I drew nigh to Ekron and I slew the governors and princes who had
transgressed, and I hung upon poles round about the city their dead
bodies; the people of the city who had done wickedly and had committed
offences I counted as spoil, but those who had not done these things
I pardoned. I brought their king, Padi, forth from Jerusalem and I
stablished him upon the throne of dominion over them, and I laid
tribute upon him.

“I then besieged Hezekiah of Judah who had not submitted to my
yoke, and I captured forty-six of his strong cities and fortresses
and innumerable small cities which were round about them, with the
battering of rams and the assault of engines, and the attack of
foot-soldiers, and by mines and breaches (made in the walls). I brought
out therefrom 200,150 people, both small and great, male and female,
and horses, and mules, and asses, and camels, and oxen, and innumerable
sheep I counted as spoil. (Hezekiah) himself, like a caged bird, I shut
up within Jerusalem his royal city. I threw up mounds against him,
and I took vengeance upon any man who came forth from his city. His
cities which I had captured I took from him and gave to Mitinti, king
of Ashdod, and Padi, king of Ekron, and Silli-bel, king of Gaza, and I
reduced his land. I added to their former yearly tribute, and increased
the gifts which they paid unto me. The fear of the majesty of my
sovereignty overwhelmed Hezekiah, and the Urbi and his trusty warriors,
whom he had brought into his royal city of Jerusalem to protect it,
deserted. And he despatched after me his messenger to my royal city
Nineveh to pay tribute and to make submission with thirty talents of
gold, eight hundred talents of silver, precious stones, eye paint …
ivory couches and thrones, hides and tusks, precious woods, and divers
objects, a heavy treasure, together with his daughters, and the women
of his palace, and male and female musicians.”

It must not be supposed, however, that either this record of a
successful invasion or the Hebrew account of that other disastrous one
is altogether false, however much the facts may have been exaggerated,
or however poetical the guise in which they are presented. It is merely
to be understood that the two records refer to different campaigns
or to different portions of the same campaign, as explained later
by Professor Tiele. It is supposed by some modern interpreters that
the destruction of Sennacherib’s hosts actually occurred through the
plague. The king himself, however, escaped to return to Nineveh and
there to continue his rule for many years. He was finally killed by his
own sons, as is recorded on a contemporary Babylonian document. What
would not the Hebrew scholar give, could he find contemporary documents
of these events from the Hebrew standpoint, instead of being obliged
to depend on records handed down, perhaps, by tradition for many
generations, or at best, copied from one hand to another for centuries?

The value of contemporary documents as records of fact may, indeed,
be overestimated, for it is possible to pervert, exaggerate, or
understate the facts even in the day of their occurrence; but in any
event the contemporary document has obvious advantage over documents
of subsequent generations, which can be nothing more than copies,
variously distorted, of earlier records. As for such mere matters of
fact as the dates of ancient kings, and the particular details of
campaigns and conquests, the historic importance of the contemporary
record cannot be questioned; hence the enormous value of these tablets
of Assyria and Babylon. But, questions of historical value aside, a
peculiar charm attaches to whatever is old, and it is nothing less than
fascinating to look at such a document as this cylinder, and feel that
the very lines you scan were once read by Sennacherib himself before
he met his untimely end “on the 20th day of the month Tebet” some
twenty-five centuries ago.[h]

[Sidenote: [705-702 B.C.]]

It was in the year 705 B.C. that Sennacherib, who was not, perhaps,
entirely guiltless of Sargon’s death, mounted the throne and became
the supreme king both in Babylon and Assyria. To Merodach-baladan,
who may have been either the recognised king of the Sea Lands, or the
son or namesake of the latter, the occasion now seemed favourable for
recovering the throne lost to Sargon. Sennacherib and his army marched
up in all haste, and though it appears that Merodach-baladan had all
the Aramæan and Chaldean tribes on his side, and was moreover supported
by Elamite auxiliaries, he suffered a defeat and so lost his kingdom.
According to the Assyrian narrator, this defeat was so complete that
the Chaldean was forced to take flight in the greatest haste, leaving
behind him his whole baggage-train, as well as his family and court.
He had reigned nine months. The land was heavily scourged, great and
small towns were taken and laid waste, and the inhabitants dragged
into exile. The same fate was meted out to all Arabians, Aramæans, and
Chaldeans who were living in the Babylonian towns.

When the campaign in Chaldea was at an end, the troops were sent
against the Aramæan tribes, which dwelt on the banks of the Tigris
and Euphrates. Here, too, there was devastation and plundering. A
considerable booty, as was to be expected from these nomads, consisting
chiefly of cattle, but also including camels, fell into the hands of
the conquerors, and no less than two hundred thousand men and women
were carried off to Assyria as slaves. It fared still worse with one
small, heroic tribe, the Hirimmi, who offered an obstinate resistance
to the Assyrians. When, finally, the latter succeeded in overcoming
them, of all the rebels they left no prisoner of war alive, and hanged
the corpses on poles upon the wall surrounding the town. Sennacherib
annexed the whole territory to his realm, while he laid on it a very
moderate tax for the benefit of the Assyrian god.

We may assume it as probably certain that the king did not personally
take part in the campaign, but occupied himself the while with the
adjustment of Babylonian state affairs. His policy may be distinctly
followed. It was only toward the Chaldeans and their allies that he
appeared in the character of an enemy. They alone were punished or
carried off. The actual citizens of Babylon, Erech, Nippur, Kish,
and Kharsag-kalama he left unmolested, and to propitiate them still
further, he even gave them a king belonging to the ruling Babylonian
house--namely, the young Bel-ibni, whose father held an important
office, and who had himself been brought up from childhood at the
Assyrian court. Of him Sennacherib might hope that he would be faithful
to Assyria and at the same time not unfriendly to the Babylonians, and
therefore he now bestowed on him the title of “King of Sumer and Accad.”

The establishment of order in Babylon was turned to account by
Sennacherib for the purpose of averting the danger with which his
eastern frontier was threatened by the nomads who wandered there, and
by the mountain people, and also for extending his empire in every
direction. He now attacked the Kasshu and Yasubigallu, by which names
we doubtless have to understand those barbarous Kossæans, and their
allies, whose successors, centuries later, according to Diodorus, still
made the Mesopotamian frontier insecure, and who were related to those
Kassites who had so long reigned over Babylon. Their surest protection
was the inaccessible nature of the country. Steep mountain paths and
thick forests made it difficult for an Assyrian army to advance, while
for vehicles it was impossible.

The king himself led the march, and thus showed himself a worthy
successor of the undaunted heroes who in earlier centuries had founded
the Assyrian power. His chariot had frequently to be carried behind
him, and then he mounted on horseback or performed the journey on
foot at the head of his troops. Sennacherib succeeded in taking their
three strongholds. The smaller places he laid in ashes and the nomads’
tents were burnt. But for greater security he desired to bring the
wild tribes under Assyrian rule, and to force them to settle in fixed
abodes. He selected Bit-Kilamzakh as a centre, fortified it far more
effectually than before, making it a formidable fortress to keep the
inhabitants of the country in check, and peopled it with captives
whom he had carried off in former warlike expeditions. He caused a
tablet inscribed with the history of this campaign to be set up in the
capital, in order that the terror of the Assyrian arms might be kept
perpetually alive. As soon as he had subdued the Kasshu he marched
against Ellipi. Sennacherib fell on the country like a tempest. The two
royal seats Marubishti and Accudu, with all the smaller towns, were
taken by him and given up to be plundered and burnt, whilst all crops
were destroyed and even the cornfields delivered over to the fire. It
was with a certain satisfaction that Sennacherib boasted of having
transformed Ellipi into a desert, and led away the whole population
with its goods and chattels. When these successes became known, a
number of Median princes, dwelling at a more remote distance, hastened
to offer their submission.

Meantime the king’s attention was directed to events in the west. The
elevation of the young and high-spirited Tirhaqa to the throne of
Egypt, probably as husband of King Shabak’s widow, and guardian of
his son who was a minor, had aroused in some princes of the strips of
land along the Mediterranean coast the hope that by an alliance with
him they might shake off the Assyrian yoke. To these belonged Elulæus
(Luli) king of Tyre and Sidon, Zedekiah, (Zidga) king of Askalon, and
above all Hezekiah, the king of Judah. The latter took on himself the
leadership, at least in the southwest.

Sennacherib’s third campaign was directed against this coalition,
and is probably to be assigned to the year 702 B.C. With its usual
promptitude, the Assyrian army marched on Phœnicia, and thus attacked
one of the allies before the rest had a chance to unite their forces.
Elulæus fled in haste to Cyprus, where Citium still belonged to him;
and all his towns on the continent, within a short space of time, fell
into the hands of the Assyrian. All the princes of the other petty
Phœnician states came that they might offer their submission.

[Sidenote: [701 B.C.]]

Sennacherib immediately starts along the seacoast for Askalon,
southernmost of the revolted states, and soon overpowers it. Zedekiah,
the king, suffers the usual fate; with the hereditary gods of his
house, his wife, his sons, daughters, brothers, and his whole family he
is dragged away to Assyria.

Now that the whole coast-line had submitted, Sennacherib turned to
Ekron, which lay farther to the north, but more inland. But in Altaku
[Eltekeh], which lay south of Ekron and belonged to it, he encountered
some resistance, and was at the same time caught by an Egyptian army,
which at last appeared to the rescue of the Philistine towns. According
to the Assyrian account it was very numerous and was composed of the
troops of the king of Musuri, and of the bowmen, chariots, and horses
of the king of Melukhkha. Still, whatever these two names may mean
here, it is certain that neither Tirhaqa himself nor any other Egyptian
king was leading the army, but that it was merely commanded by Egyptian
princes and two generals belonging to the horsemen. These did not show
themselves a match for the powerful Assyrian conqueror. In spite of the
number of their followers they suffered a total defeat, and it does
not say much for their skill and courage that they all, princes and
commanders, fell alive into the enemy’s hands. In consequence of this,
the relieving army appears to have retraced its march to Egypt, so that
nothing now stood in the way of Sennacherib continuing his conquests
in Philistia and Canaan. The ruling high priest and the princes who
had stirred up the rebellion, he caused to be put to death and their
corpses displayed on stakes on the town walls; such of the inhabitants
as had made common cause with the rebels were led away captive; the
innocent, on the contrary, went free.

Now at last came the turn of Hezekiah. The following is the main
outline of what the Assyrians relate concerning the campaign against
Judah. When it became apparent that even after the overthrow of his
allies, Hezekiah was not inclined to give himself up readily to the
mercy of his powerful enemy, the latter marched into his country. Forty
strong towns besides the citadels and countless smaller places were
beleaguered, taken by storm, razed to the ground or burned, and more
than two hundred thousand prisoners, with a great number of horses,
asses, and camels were carried away from them. Hezekiah himself,
Sennacherib shut up in his capital, Jerusalem (Ursalimmu), like “a bird
in its cage.” But the town was in a strong position and provided with a
good garrison. Hezekiah had not only assembled his faithful warriors,
but had also enlisted a number of Arabian soldiers. When these,
however, required pay, and in case of refusal threatened to withdraw,
Hezekiah--the Assyrian says from dread of the glory of Asshur--paid the
heavy tribute which Sennacherib demanded of him--namely, thirty talents
of gold [about £9000 or $45,000] and three hundred talents of silver,
besides precious stones, woods, and other articles, and also sent to
Nineveh his daughters and the women of the palace, accompanied by male
and female slaves together with an envoy, who was at the same time
commissioned to proffer his master’s homage.

From this narrative no one who did not know the official style of the
Assyrian historical writers would guess that Jerusalem was not taken,
and that Sennacherib, with the remainder of his army, was obliged to
quit Judah with all possible speed. But it was not their business
to report failures of this kind. Doubtless in this account of the
course of Sennacherib’s campaign, the main features are correct and
also described in the right chronological order. It is certain that,
after the overthrow of Phœnicia, the king found it advisable first to
reduce the small Philistine states on the seacoast to obedience that
he might then attack the Jewish king, who at last, when he had been
deprived of everything save his capital, and when his own soldiers were
deserting him, saw himself compelled to produce the war-tax demanded.
The assertion that he sent it by an envoy to Nineveh cannot possibly be
correct, and must have been invented for the purpose of rounding off
the narrative without relating the true issue of the affair.

We possess two traditions concerning the close of the war which, though
they may differ from one another in other respects, agree in this, that
an extraordinary event unexpectedly compelled Sennacherib to return
with some precipitation to Assyria. One is the biblical tradition; the
other is the account of Herodotus.[b]

The biblical account, as found in 2 Kings, we have already quoted.
The account of Herodotus relates to a certain king Sethos, a priest
of Vulcan (believed to represent Shabak of the XXVth Dynasty). This
king, says Herodotus, treated the military of Egypt with extreme
contempt, and as if he had no occasion for their services. Among other
indignities he deprived them of their aruræ, or fields of fifty feet
square, which, by way of reward, his predecessors had given to each
soldier; the result was that, when Sennacherib, king of Arabia and
Assyria, attacked Egypt with a mighty army, the warriors whom he had
thus treated refused to assist him. In this perplexity the priest
retired to the shrine of his god, before which he lamented his danger
and misfortunes; here he sunk into a profound sleep, and his deity
promised him, in a dream, that if he marched to meet the Assyrians,
he should experience no injury, for that he would furnish him with
assistance. The vision inspired him with confidence; he put himself
at the head of his adherents and marched to Pelusium, the entrance of
Egypt: not a soldier accompanied the party, which was entirely composed
of tradesmen and artisans. On their arrival at Pelusium, so immense a
number of mice infested by night the enemy’s camp that their quivers
and bows, together with what secured their shields to their arms, were
gnawed in pieces. In the morning the Arabians, finding themselves
without arms, fled in confusion, and lost great numbers of their men.
There is now to be seen in the temple of Vulcan a marble statue of this
king, having a mouse in his hand, and with this inscription, “Whoever
thou art, learn, from my fortune, to reverence the gods.”[c]

Taking together all the circumstances in which the somewhat
contradictory reports are agreed, we may picture the course of events
as follows: On the advance of the Assyrian king, Hezekiah collects his
picked men, who are reinforced by foreign soldiers, in his capital, and
resolves to defend it. Meantime the Assyrian army overruns the whole
of Judah, takes one fortified town after another, and all the citadels
and smaller places, and Sennacherib has penetrated as far as Libnah,
a small town lying in the southwest of the Jewish territory. There he
learns that Tirhaqa is approaching with an Egyptian army, to fight
against him and liberate Judah. So long as the capital is not yet in
his power, and Judah consequently not wholly subdued, he cannot go out
against him without losing all the advantages gained. He will therefore
try whether he cannot, by threatening Hezekiah, induce him to deliver
up the town of his own accord; and he sends him messengers with letters
peremptorily calling on him to submit. But with prophetic fire Isaiah
pours out his wrath at the insults offered to Jehovah by this servant
of Asshur, and vehemently urges steadfast resistance.

[Sidenote: [701-696 B.C.]]

Sennacherib meantime continues his victorious march, and now that he
is master of all Judah with the sole exception of the capital, he can
detach a part of his army. If Hezekiah will not yield of his own free
will he must be compelled to do so. A strong body of troops under
the leadership of the Rabshakeh, or generalissimo, marched against
the strong fortress and closely beset it on all sides. But it is the
Rabshakeh who chiefly figures in the foreground of the affair. The
Hebrews tell of his efforts to induce the people and the garrison of
Jerusalem to desert their king. He sought to attain this end by means
of scornful speeches on the helplessness of Judah.

Hezekiah, perhaps again spurred on by Isaiah, who still continues to
trust in a miraculous deliverance, does not give way at once, but
defends the city against a superior foe for some time, though it was
the only town that remained to him and was as isolated and forsaken “as
a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers.” But at
last, when famine in the town has reached its highest pitch and signs
of impatience and discontent manifest themselves among the garrison,
he makes up his mind to submission, and sends a messenger to Lachish
to inquire the terms of surrender. They are very hard. But there is no
longer any choice, and he tenders the Assyrian conquerors the amount
required at the hand of the envoy, who subsequently accompanied it to
Nineveh. Whether the siege was thereupon immediately raised, or whether
it was thought well to keep the town still under observation until the
contest with Egypt was decided, we cannot say positively. But, as a
great misfortune, either pestilence or some other natural phenomenon,
actually did soon after smite the Assyrian army, and the whole of the
conqueror’s force, reduced to a miserable handful, quitted Judah and
the West, the true believers among the Egyptians and Israelites saw
in it a miraculous deliverance which the gods had sent them, and the
latter at the same time regarded it as a fulfilment of the prophecies
of Isaiah, which at first did not seem to be coming true.

Of course the event had not in reality the importance which the
grateful Egyptians and Israelites attributed to it. Although it secured
them relief, and Sennacherib’s army was so weakened that he thought
it advisable to beat a hasty retreat, yet his supremacy over Phœnicia
and Canaan remained for a long time unshaken, and in the following
year he was again in the field with a powerful army. Subsequently he
appears again to have marched westward and to have made a particular
fight against Arabia and Edom. But it does not appear that in this
campaign he also made war against Phœnicia, Philistia, and Judah, as
he certainly would not have failed to do had traces of insubordination
showed themselves. The chastisement had been too severe, and the
country was too greatly exhausted.

In the year 700 B.C. Sennacherib’s presence was again required in
Babylonia. It was the third and last year of Bel-ibni’s rule at
Babylon. Sennacherib had him brought to Assyria, together with his
whole family. He had proved unequal to the task which Sennacherib had
assigned him.

After the victories, which intimidated even Elam, Sennacherib went to
Babylon, and there in place of Bel-ibni, set up his own eldest son
Asshur-nadin-shum on the throne as king of Sumer and Accad. His six
years’ reign began in the year 700 B.C., and now Sennacherib thought
himself safe from the machinations of Chaldean pretenders.

For some years he had really had his hands free in the south. He
employed the time in bringing into subjection some of the northwestern
neighbours of his empire. This campaign, which the Assyrians reckon
as the fifth, and which must have taken place somewhere between 699
and 696, ended with a war in Cilicia. According to Berosus it was
occasioned by a Greek invasion, and the Assyrian army obtained the
victory only after suffering great loss. Abydenus even speaks of a
sea-fight on the Cilician coast, in which the Greek fleet was worsted.
Both historians agree in this, that Sennacherib immortalised his famous
deeds by the erection of his statue or the setting up of bronze pillars
with inscriptions, and that he built the town of Tarsus, which he
called Tharsin, so that the Cydnus flowed through it as the Arazanes
(Aralshtu) through Babylon. Strange as it may seem, the Assyrians
themselves make no mention of the foundation of this important town,
but Berosus is too credible a witness for his statement to be rejected.

Even before 694 Sennacherib had busied himself in the preparations
of a great plan. Merodach-baladan had sought and found in Nagitu, on
the coast of Elam, a refuge and place of security where he believed
his deadly enemy could not reach him. After the latter’s expedition
against Bit-Yakin in the year 700, the remainder of the population of
that territory had found it expedient to take ships with their gods,
as their master had done, and cross to the region where the latter
had taken up his abode. Sennacherib apparently feared that this new
state would prove a source of danger to the province entrusted to
his son; all the more since Merodach-baladan had now become a vassal
of Elam, Asshur’s ancient and hereditary enemy. The difficulty was
great, particularly as Nagitu was not accessible from the land side,
without passing through Elamite territory. He had among his captives
shipbuilders from Khatti, and he set them to work at Nineveh on the
Tigris and Tel-Barsip on the Euphrates. The ships were towed down the
Euphrates and the Tigris [or they may have been transported overland by
camels]. They were manned by Tyrian, Sidonian, and Ionic seamen, who
were also prisoners of war. He, himself, had meantime marched to the
Persian Gulf with his army, and had fixed his camp close to the ships.
From the description of the voyage it is evident what a deep impression
this very unusual expedition made on the Assyrians. Even before they
set sail they made an unexpected acquaintance with the sea, which they
believed four hours’ distance away; they may perhaps have been aware
that, even so far up as Bab-Salimeti, the river was subject to the ebb
and flow; but a spring flood, which suddenly laid the camp under water,
and even made its way into the royal tent, took them by surprise.
They had to seek refuge on the ships and remain on them five days and
nights, “as in a great bird-cage,” says Sennacherib. Whether this
experience of life on shipboard was enough for the bold monarch, or
whether he had no intention of taking part in the maritime expedition,
it is certain that he did not leave the shore. The transports were
taken to the mouth of the Euphrates; costly sacrifices to Ea, the sea
god, among which were a golden ship and a golden fish, were thrown
into the rivers to obtain his protection for the fleet, and then it
set sail. It is not told how long the voyage lasted, but merely that
the country whither they went lay at the mouth of the Eulæus (Ulai),
the chief river of Elam. There the great battle was fought, and of
course the Assyrians came off the victors. They took possession of
various Elamite towns, and carried off the Chaldeans and all the goods
from Bit-Yakin, together with a number of Aramæans and captured ships,
to Bab-Salimeti, where the king awaited them. Of Merodach-baladan
not a word is said. Therefore he did not fall into the hands of the
Assyrians, and was not robbed of his sovereignty by the defeat. Thus
far, at least, the victory was of no lasting significance for the
Assyrians. It appears simply to have destroyed the prosperity of the
Chaldean colony for some time, and to have deterred the indefatigable
adversary from direct attacks. But this extraordinary and costly
expedition shows how greatly he was dreaded and with what implacable
hatred his house was pursued by that of Sargon.

[Sidenote: [696-692 B.C.]]

While the Assyrian king was engaged in the seacoast war, Khallus, the
king of Elam, instigated by the Babylonians who had left the town in
good time with Merodach-baladan and had sought refuge with him, invaded
Accad with his army, penetrated as far as Sippar, where he instituted
a massacre, and brought Asshur-nadin-shum prisoner to Elam. On the
Babylonian throne he set up a Babylonian, Suzub, son of Gakhul. It is
a characteristic trait that the Assyrian account is silent as to the
unhappy fate which overtook Sennacherib’s oldest son. Suzub, on his
accession to the throne, took the name of Negal-ushezib. He is the
Regebelos of the Ptolemaic Canon, and must be carefully distinguished
from the Chaldean Suzub who did not reign over Babylon till a later
date (692) and under another name.

But the new king was lord over only part of the country. The whole
South was still in the hands of the Assyrians and had to be conquered
by him.

About June, 694 or 693, he succeeded in getting possession of Nippur,
but his farther advance was checked by the tidings that the Assyrians
had meantime marched as far as Erech. Sennacherib immediately
despatched a large force against the king of Elam, whom he rightly
regarded as the chief author of all the trouble. Erech fell and
was sacked, and, laden with rich booty, including even the chief
gods of the sacred city, the Assyrians marched forward. At Nippur,
Nergal-ushezib awaited them, and in the battle which followed he
remained victor. But his rule was of short duration. As to the end
of his reign the Babylonian and Assyrian records are agreed. The
former asserts that, after the Assyrians had carried away the gods and
inhabitants of Erech, Nergal-ushezib was taken prisoner in the battle
at Nippur and conducted to Assyria. According to the second, he was
thrown from his horse in the battle, taken prisoner and brought in
chains before Sennacherib, who then shut him up in prison at the gate
of Nineveh. The two accounts seem to make the story complete.

After the misfortune that had overtaken their king, the Babylonians
bestowed the crown on Suzub the Chaldean, who had also fled to
Elam. He reigned independently for four years, under the name of
Mushezib-Marduk. The Assyrians consequently content themselves with
mentioning several advantages won by them over the Elamites, and also
relating that they took Suzub prisoner on their march from Erech to
Asshur. They themselves practically acknowledged that Babylon did not
fall into their hands, when they inform us that, after Suzub’s capture,
the Babylonians closed their city gates against the Assyrians and
offered an obstinate resistance.

So far as we may judge, the whole of this campaign of Sennacherib’s
was a political blunder, which does not speak well for his sagacity.
There was in fact nothing to be feared from Merodach-baladan; the real
peril, which threatened from Elam, escaped the Assyrian king. The
maritime expedition undertaken at so much labour and expense, was more
adventurous than glorious, and failed in its main object: the arch
enemy, at whom it was aimed, retained his liberty and his kingdom. And
meantime Babylon was left without protection, and Sennacherib’s own son
was bereft of throne and freedom. He had not even provided himself with
sufficient forces to avenge the descent of the Elamites and reconquer
the lost territory. The sole fruit of the campaign (exclusive of booty
and prisoners) was the carrying away of a Babylonian king, whose
place was at once taken by another prince, not less hostile. A poor
compensation for the loss of the capital, the whole territory belonging
to it and of his own son! Under Sennacherib’s government it was
continually apparent that only under compulsion had the Babylonians
submitted to the yoke of the Assyrians, and that they preferred to
unite with Elam rather than again obey a Sargonid.

[Sidenote: [692-689 B.C.]]

In Elam, meantime, a rising took place against Khallus, possibly
because he had been unsuccessful in his war against Assyria. [He was
killed in the uprising.] Kudur-nankhundi became king in his stead.
Sennacherib thought this a favourable opportunity to attack his old
enemies, the Elamites. It was in 692, probably, that he took advantage
of Elam’s disordered condition to inflict a heavy punishment on
that country. From Rasa to Bit-Burnaki he ravaged and plundered to
his heart’s content. He introduced Assyrian garrisons and placed
the territory under the care of a governor. Besides this, he took
thirty-five fortified towns. Such was the devastation “that the smoke
of the flames covered the face of the wide heaven like a heavy storm,”
and so great was the terror he spread that Kudur-nankhundi left his
residence at Madaktu in all haste, and fled to a town called Khaidala,
which lay far up in the mountains. But nature saved him from the
hands of the Assyrians. Sennacherib did indeed give orders to march
to Madaktu, but he could not carry his intention into effect. It was
winter, and in (Tebet) December an earthquake, coupled with storms of
rain and snow, compelled him to retreat. The mountain streams were
so swollen that no army could now cross them with safety. Only three
months afterwards Kudur-nankhundi died “suddenly, before his time,”
and his own brother Umman-minanu mounted the throne. Scarcely had
Umman-minanu assumed the sceptre of Elam than he allowed himself to be
beguiled into an alliance with Babylon against Asshur. At Babylon now
reigned Suzub II, the Chaldean, Mushezib-Marduk. After his flight from
Sennacherib, in the year 700 or 699, he had returned to Babylon, where,
after the misfortunes that overtook his namesake, he was made king,
no doubt to the great chagrin of the Assyrians. When he sent gold and
silver from the treasury of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk and
Zarpanit, to the Elamite king, he found the latter prepared to collect
an army at once and march with it to Babylon for a joint attack upon
Asshur. Sennacherib was astounded that the lesson he had imparted to
Elam in the previous year had borne no better fruit. But the Chaldeans
and Elamites had good ground to hope for success. The Assyrian’s latest
victories had not been rich in lasting results. He had not succeeded in
conquering Babylon. He had been obliged to retreat hastily from Elam.
He had not been able to defend Chaldea. Moreover, the kings of Babylon
and Elam could now count on a number of allies. The number of the enemy
impressed the Assyrians, who likened them to a swarm of locusts. “Like
a violent gale which drives the rain-clouds across the firmament, so
rose the cloud of dust at their approach.” But calling on the gods, his
heavenly protectors, Sennacherib ventures an attack.

It was a fierce battle; both sides fought with the greatest fury.
Sennacherib, himself, was distinguished by his personal courage. With
helm and mail, spear and bow, Asshur’s sacred bow, which none but the
kings of Assyria carried, he stands in his war chariot like an angry
lion, and like a heavy storm from Adad, the god of tempests, he rushes
on the enemy, covering the plain with corpses as with grass. His horses
wallow in blood; blood and fragments of the slain cleave to the pole of
his war chariot. A choice troop of Elamite nobles, equipped with golden
daggers and bracelets, are slaughtered like sheep, and the Elamite
commander and grand vizier, Khumbanundash, a man of great ability, also
falls. Others are taken prisoners. Yet the kings of Elam and Babylon
and the Chaldean chiefs got away, according to the Assyrian writer, who
delights in depicting their sufferings in a very imaginative fashion,
with a loss of tents and baggage and of one hundred and fifty thousand
dead left on the battle-field. They were pursued for a distance of
some miles, but their capture was not effected. There is something
loathsome in the lively colours in which the scene is painted; the
pitiless slaughter and horrible mutilation of the slain are described
with bloodthirsty complacency. The writer of the Assyrian tablet knew
well that his savage, revengeful master based his renown on such
inhuman acts. And yet it was no victory for the Assyrians. They may
have remained in possession of the field, but the murderous battle was
so undecisive that the Elamites and Babylonians could claim the victory
as well. The losses on both sides must have been so great that neither
of the two parties ventured to continue the war. Both sides assumed the
attitude of waiting for a more favourable opportunity. The prevalent
idea that after the battle of Khalule Sennacherib immediately conquered
Babylon is decidedly false and is contradicted by the true reading of
both Assyrian and Babylonian records.

Not till the year 690 or 689 did Sennacherib find a favourable
opportunity to risk another attack on Babylon. From Elam there was now
nothing more to fear. The power of Umman-minanu was much weakened and
he was soon to lose it altogether. The Assyrian king marched on Babylon
with the impetuousity which distinguished all his warlike expeditions,
and was at times disadvantageous to him; and on this occasion his
effort was crowned with the desired success. Now he directed his arms
against Mushezib-Marduk’s town, not as his predecessors, including
his own father, had done, as a rescuer bringing deliverance from a
usurper and therefore striking at the latter and his dependents, and
sparing the inhabitants: upon the town which had so long withstood him,
so repeatedly and obstinately lifted its head against him, a fearful
vengeance was to be taken. It was literally wiped out; nothing was
spared; corpses lay piled up in the streets; all its treasures were
pillaged and divided amongst the soldiers; the temples were desecrated,
and the gods torn from their sanctuaries. Then the whole town was
delivered up to the flames; the walls and ramparts, the temples and
the ziggurat, (probably the two towers of Babylon and Borsippa),
were thrown down and hurled into the Arakhtu or other canals, and
the water from the river and the canals was turned on the ruins that
they might be flooded. The very place where the sacred town had stood
became unrecognisable and was changed into a marsh. Mushezib-Marduk
escaped and sought refuge in Elam, but Umman-minanu, fearing Assyrian
vengeance, surrendered his ally, and the latter and his family were
brought prisoners to Nineveh.

Such a deed may well have spread fear and horror even in Assyria
itself. Sennacherib had done what none had even ventured before.
Towards the town which many an Assyrian king had treated with respect
and which had never been sacked, he had behaved with a relentlessness
which hitherto had only been exhibited to foreign rebels. He was now
master of Babylon. For the remaining eight years of his life, he
was called King of Babylon, even according to the Babylonian list
of kings, although the Ptolemaic canon mentions this period as an
interim. King Ummanaldash [Khumba-Khaldashu] who (the 7th of Adar 690
or 689?) succeeded Umman-minanu on the throne of Elam, and who reigned
eight years, left the Assyrian king in peaceful possession. There are
sufficient grounds for the assumption that this supremacy over Babylon
of a tyrant embittered by earlier reverses was a reign of terror.

For the last years of Sennacherib’s reign authentic accounts are
almost entirely wanting. An expedition to Arabia, against a certain
king Hazael (Khazailu), in which the capital of Edom is stormed and
the deity of the place falls into his hands, certainly belongs to this
period of his reign.

[Sidenote: [695-681 B.C.]]

Like most of the Assyrian princes, Sennacherib, in spite of his
unsettled existence, was a great builder. But he bestowed the most
care on the re-establishment and embellishment of his beloved Nineveh.
In the earlier part of his reign he had also strengthened this town
with an outer wall and an inner rampart (_duru_ and _shalkhu_), and
in the year 695 he had built a great palace by the northwest wall,
after pulling down a small palace which stood there. The latter had
fallen into decay, partly as a result of the overflowings of the canal
on which it stood, partly from the heat of the sun. The canal was now
diverted, and on its margin was built a new and loftier palace, in
which ivory and costly woods were not spared. There the king had a park
laid out and irrigated by the waters of the Khushur (Khosr) which were
made to flow through it, and it was planted with trees from the Amanus
Mountains. At the same time the town was extended and embellished.

Scarcely was this structure completed when Sennacherib caused another
palace, which lay farther south of the same wall, to be pulled down. It
had served former kings as armoury, magazine, and stables, and had now
become not only too small but also decayed. Some fields were added to
it and earth brought to raise them, and upon this now rose a palace,
not of tiles, but of hewn stone after the fashion of the land of Khatti
(Aram). For this also cedars from Amanus and great lion and animal
colossi, which had been hewn out of stone in the town of Baladai and
then cased in bronze, were employed, and cunning architects disposed
them with great care and magnificence. The purpose of the building
remained the same; horses and every sort of cattle found stabling,
stuffs and weapons were laid up there, but it had now also to serve
as a barrack for the national troops. The king’s name is displayed on
every wall.

Immediately after the completion of this building on the 20th day of
Adar, 691, that is, in the same year in which the battle of Khalule
took place, Sennacherib began another and not less important work,
which was only completed and inaugurated after the sack of Babylon.
This was an undertaking intended to provide the city of Nineveh with
good drinking water. A number of canals had to be dug, which served at
the same time to fertilise some uncultivated strips of land. In the
capital which was thus, as it were, born again, the old warrior now
probably rested on his laurels for a few years longer.

In the latter period of his life, Sennacherib appears to have
handed over a part of his royal functions to his son Esarhaddon
(Asshur-akhe-iddin), if he did not actually make him co-ruler. The
latter was not his eldest son, for his name, “Asshur grants brothers,
or, a brother,” shows the contrary, but he was perhaps, the second, and
therefore direct heir to the throne after the death, or at least in
the absence of, the king’s eldest son, Asshur-nadin-shum, who had been
carried off by the Elamites. Esarhaddon was certainly destined to the
succession by his father, and was the latter’s favourite. Sennacherib
issued a decree by which the whole of his booty brought from the
Babylonio-Chaldean district of Bit-Amukkani was assigned to him, and
his name was at the same time changed to Asshur-etilli-ukinnibal
(Asshur, the lord has lent a son)--a name which was more appropriate
for one who now took the place of eldest son, but which Esarhaddon
himself does not appear to have adopted. His brothers, whether younger
or older, were not pleased at this. Two of them at least, Sharezer,
whose full name was probably Nergal-shar-usur (or the Nergilus of
Berosus), and Adarmalik, disputed the succession, taking advantage
of the circumstance that Esarhaddon, at the head of the army, was
absent in the northwest, most probably in a war with Armenia. Whilst
Sennacherib was praying in a temple, they fell on him and slew him,
and Nergal-shar-usur took possession of the throne, [but was at once
superseded. Some histories deny his accession]. Thus died Sennacherib,
on the 20th Tebet (about December) 681, by the hands of his own sons.

From the official sources, which are the only ones we possess, it is
difficult to obtain an idea of the character of the Assyrian sovereign,
but the records of Sennacherib’s reign certainly make a far more
unfavourable impression than those which Sargon left behind. Both were
conquerors, but the one shows more respect for law and justice. Stern,
at times to harshness, against uncompromising adversaries, Sargon yet
gives place to mildness where mercy can be made to harmonise with
the interests of the empire. Sennacherib, on the other hand, takes
an obvious delight in scenes of blood and desolation, in inflicting
punishments which only awaken disgust at their brutish cruelty.
The destruction of Babylon, the burning and blotting out of a town
venerable from its age and importance, and so sacred to the pious
Assyrians, was indeed a blind vengeance which fixes an indelible blot
on the name of the author of the crime. Not less courageous and warlike
than his predecessors, he was rash and presumptuous rather than bold,
and his plans were rather venturesome than well calculated. Impetuous
in attack, he neglected the needful precautions, and attained the
immediate goal, often only to lose more than he gained. Whether he was
concerned in his father’s murder cannot be determined; that he was, as
his name indicates, a younger son, is no certain evidence of this, but
it is a suspicious circumstance that he nowhere mentions his celebrated
father’s name. If he was guilty, Nemesis overtook him. As a king he
was far inferior to Sargon. Nineveh alone had much to thank him for.
Babylon, on the contrary, which had called in Sargon as her deliverer,
sought to secure her independence of him, and preferred to his yoke
the dearly bought protection of Elam. After he died, having reigned
something like twenty-four years, it was a long time before the empire
was as powerful and flourishing as at the commencement of his rule. In
thinking of Sargon and Sennacherib we are involuntarily reminded of
Cyrus and Cambyses, who differed from one another in the same way.[b]

ESARHADDON AND ASSHURBANAPAL

[Sidenote: [681-668 B.C.]]

Sennacherib, as we have seen, was murdered by his sons. It appears that
this event did not occur at once after the return from the disastrous
campaign against the Israelites, as might be inferred from the Hebrew
record, but a good many years later. Esarhaddon, who succeeded his
father, was obliged to win back the kingdom from the regicides before
he could securely occupy the throne of Assyria. He seems to have had
no great difficulty in this, however, and for many years he continued
in undisputed sway, not merely sustaining but extending the influence
that his father had wielded. The greatest glory of his reign was his
successful invasion of Egypt. Opinions have differed considerably as to
the character of Esarhaddon. Professor Tiele’s verdict, which we give
_in extenso_ later, is somewhat less favourable than that of various
other authorities. The opinion of Professor Maspero is perhaps worth
quoting in some detail. He says:

“Esarhaddon is one of the finest and most attractive characters of
Assyrian history. He was as active and resolute as Asshurnazirpal or
Tiglathpileser, without being hard on his subjects or cruel to those
he conquered, as they were. He delighted in being merciful as much as
his predecessors had rejoiced in being merciless, and the accounts of
his wars no longer make constant mention of captives being burnt alive,
kings impaled on the gates of their cities, or whole populations being
burnt out by fire. He took pleasure in restoring the ruins with which
his father and grandfather had covered the land, and in the first year
of his reign he gave orders for the rebuilding of Babylon, which was
commenced on a grand scale.

“All the Chaldean prisoners were set free, and those who liked to work
under the architects could do so for payment in oil, wine, honey, and
other commodities of life; and when laying the foundation stones of
different edifices, he himself wore the special dress of the masons.
The temple of Bit-Zaggaton, the seat of Marduk, the protector of
the town, issued from the ruins and the walls, and royal castles
were raised beyond their former height. Beyond Babylon Esarhaddon
consecrated thirty-six temples at Asshur and Agade; and they were lined
with shining sheets of gold and silver.

“The palace which he built at Nineveh on the site of an old building
surpassed all that had hitherto been seen. The quarries of alabaster
in the mountains of Gordyene and the forests of Phœnicia furnished
material for the halls; thirty-two Hittite kings on the Mediterranean
coast sent great beams of pines, cedars, and cypresses. The roof was
made of carved cedar wood, supported by columns of cypress encircled
with gold and silver; stone lions and bulls stood at the doorways; the
panels of the doors were made of ebony and cypress, encrusted with
iron, silver, and ivory. The palace of Babylon was entirely destroyed,
and the one commenced at Calah with Egyptian booty was never finished.
The conquerors had been much impressed by the long avenues of sphinxes
at the entrance of the Memphite temples, and in imitation of the idea
Esarhaddon had sphinxes, lions, and bulls at the entrances of his
buildings. The construction lasted three years (671-669), and it was
only just far enough completed for the decoration to be started, when
he fell seriously ill in 669.” Two years later he died.

It will probably be felt by most readers of the records left by
Esarhaddon himself--which are, of course, our sole authority in the
matter, save for a few chance biblical references--that Professor
Maspero’s verdict as just quoted is over-enthusiastic. Nevertheless,
it can hardly be doubted that Esarhaddon was in many ways a much more
admirable character than his father. The following excerpt from one
of Esarhaddon’s inscriptions, contained on a hexagonal prism of baked
clay found near Nineveh, and now in the British Museum, will suggest
something as to the precise interpretation one should place upon the
words “attractive” and “merciful” as applied to an Assyrian conqueror:

“Esarhaddon, king of Sumer and Accad, (son of Sennacherib, king of)
Assyria, (son of Sargon) king of Assyria, (who in the name of Asshur,
Bel,) the Moon, the Sun, Nabu Marduk, Ishtar of Nineveh, and Ishtar
of Arbela, the great gods his lords from the rising of the sun to the
setting of the sun marched victorious without a rival.

“Conqueror of the city of Sidon, which is on the sea, sweeper away of
all its villages; its citadel and residence I rooted up, and into the
sea I flung them. Its place of justice I destroyed. Abd-milkot its king
who away from my arms into the middle of the sea had fled; like a fish
from out of the sea I caught him, and cut off his head. His treasure,
his goods, gold and silver and precious stones, skins of elephants,
teeth of elephants, dan wood, ku wood, cloths, dyed purple and yellow,
of every description, and the regalia of his palace I carried off as
my spoil. Men and women without number, oxen and sheep and mules, I
swept them all off to Assyria. I assembled the kings of Syria and the
seacoast, all of them. (The city of Sidon) I built anew, and I called
it ‘The City of Esarhaddon.’ Men, captured by my arms, natives of the
lands and seas of the East, within it I placed to dwell, and I set my
own officers in authority over them.

“And Sanduarri king of Kundu and Sizu, an enemy and heretic, not
honouring my majesty, who had abandoned the worship of the gods trusted
to his rocky stronghold and Abd-milkot king of Sidon took for his ally.
The names of the great gods side by side he wrote and to their power he
trusted; but I trusted to Asshur, my lord. Like a bird from out of the
mountains I took him, and I cut off his head. I wrought the judgment of
Asshur my lord on the men who were criminals. The heads of Sanduarri
and Abd-milkot by the side of those of their chiefs I hung up: and
with captives young and old, male and female, to the gate of Nineveh I
marched.

“Trampler on the heads of the men of Khilakki and Duhuka, who dwell
in the mountains, which front the land of Tabal, who trusted to their
mountains and from days of old never submitted to my yoke: twenty-one
of their strong cities and smaller towns in their neighbourhood I
attacked, captured, and carried off the spoil; I ruined, destroyed, and
burnt them with fire. The rest of the men, who crimes and murders had
not committed, I only placed the yoke of my empire heavily upon them.”

It is notable that the successor of Esarhaddon, his son Asshurbanapal,
seems to have placed the same favourable opinion upon the character
of his father, as compared with his grandfather Sennacherib, that
moderns are disposed to adjudge. This is suggested by the fact that
Asshurbanapal in various inscriptions refers to “Esarhaddon, king of
Assyria, the father, my begetter,” and never to his grandfather, whom
he probably would have mentioned, following custom, had he held him
in any particular regard. Asshurbanapal himself was, at least in his
earlier years, a warrior of no mean quality; but he was, it would
appear, primarily a lover of the arts of peace. There is a marked
difference in the tone of his inscriptions, as compared with those of
his predecessors, even when describing his conquests. Many times they
suggest one who loves the pleasures of life rather than one who gloats
over the infliction of death. The following are the words in which he
describes the expedition against Egypt and Ethiopia, and against Tyre,
as recorded on a cylinder now preserved in the British Museum:

“In my second expedition to Egypt and Ethiopia I directed the march.
Tandamani [Tanut-Amen] of the progress of my expedition heard, and that
I had crossed over the borders of Egypt. Memphis he abandoned, and to
save his life he fled into Thebes. The kings, prefects, and governors,
whom in Egypt I had set up, to my presence came, and kissed my feet.
After Tandamani the road I took, I went to Thebes the strong city.
The approach of my powerful army he saw, and Thebes he abandoned, and
fled to Kipkip. That city (Thebes) the whole of it, in the service of
Asshur and Ishtar, my hands took; silver, gold, precious stones, the
furniture of his palace, all there was, garments of wool and linen,
great horses, people male and female, two lofty obelisks covered with
beautiful carving, two thousand five hundred talents (over ninety tons)
their weight, standing before the gate of a temple, from their places
I removed and brought to Assyria. The spoil great and unnumbered, I
carried off from the midst of Thebes. Over Egypt and Ethiopia, my
soldiers I caused to march, and I acquired glory. With a full hand
peacefully I returned to Nineveh, the city of my dominion.

“In my third expedition against Baal, king of Tyre, dwelling in the
midst of the sea, I went; who my royal will disregarded, and did not
hear the words of my lips. Towers round him I raised, on sea and land
his roads I took, their spirits I humbled and caused to melt away, to
my yoke I made them submissive. The daughter proceeding from his body
and the daughters of his brothers, for concubines he brought to my
presence. Yahimelek his son, the glory of the country, of unsurpassed
renown, at once he sent forward to make obeisance to me. His daughter
and the daughters of his brothers with their great dowries I received.
Favour I granted him, and the son proceeding from his body, I restored
and gave him. Yakinlu, king of Arvad, dwelling in the midst of the sea,
who to the kings my fathers was not submissive, submitted to my yoke.
His daughter with many gifts, for a concubine to Nineveh he brought,
and kissed my feet. Mukallu, king of Tabal, who against the kings my
fathers made attacks, the daughter proceeding from his body, and her
great dowry, for a concubine to Nineveh he brought, and kissed my
feet. Over Mukallu great horses an annual tribute I fixed upon him.
Sandasharme of Cilicia, who to the kings my fathers did not submit, and
did not perform their pleasure, the daughter proceeding from his body,
with many gifts, for a concubine to Nineveh he brought, and kissed my
feet.”

[Illustration: ASSYRIANS CROSSING RIVER BY MEANS OF AIR BAGS]

Of Asshurbanapal as patron of art and literature we shall have occasion
to speak more fully in a later chapter, in referring to the contents
of his famous library. Not less noteworthy than this library was the
gallery of art constituting the walls of the great king’s dining room.
We turn now to the more detailed consideration of the life-histories of
Esarhaddon and Asshurbanapal, as interpreted by a modern authority.[a]

ESARHADDON’S REIGN (681-668 B.C.)

[Sidenote: [681 B.C.]]

Sennacherib’s murderers did not stand alone, but had a considerable
following. Asshur-akhe-iddin (Asshur is brother), Esarhaddon, as the
Hebrews call him, who had been already destined to the throne by his
father, had therefore to conquer the crown assigned him at the point
of the sword. Although it was (Tebet) December--Sennacherib, as we
have seen, had fallen on the 20th of this month--and consequently the
time favourable for warlike operations had gone by, yet he perceived
that this was a case for prompt action. He lay with his army in the
northwest, but without waiting a single day, without stopping to
collect men, horses, chariots, or material, without even supplying
himself with provisions, and in spite of snow and tempest, which might
be feared at that season, he hurried straight to Nineveh; “like a bird
of prey with outstretched wings.” At Khanigalbat, a neighbourhood the
position of which is unknown to us, but which must be sought in or near
North Aramæa [probably near Melid], the army of the rebels intercepted
him. But these were soon defeated and scattered. A great part very
probably went over to Esarhaddon. The two chiefs of the rebellion, his
brothers, sought safety in flight and were received in Urartu. That
one of them, as Abydenus would have us believe, fell in the battle, is
not very probable. Still it is certain that they never again attempted
to get possession of the government. On the 2nd of Adar (February) the
rising was extinguished, and five weeks later, on the 8th of Nisan,
that is, the beginning of the year 681 B.C. [Professor Rogers gives the
month of Siran, 680, for this date], Esarhaddon mounted the throne of
his father.

When his brothers’ rebellion was suppressed, Esarhaddon was indeed in
safe possession of the Assyrian throne, but by no means in undisputed
enjoyment of the sovereignty over the whole of his father’s empire. He
was continually obliged to engage in wars and to quell risings.

The son of that arch-enemy of the Assyrians, Merodach-baladan, who
is generally called Nabu-ziru-kinish-lishir (Nabu, guide the true
scion!), had naturally taken advantage of the confusion resulting from
the murder of Sennacherib and the war of the succession, to repudiate
his allegiance, and may perhaps have already thought of reconquering
Babylon. From Esarhaddon’s accession he had ceased to send the
presents required from a vassal, and had also omitted to appoint an
envoy to offer his homage to the new king, and thus to recognise his
overlordship. He had evidently overestimated the difficulties with
which the king had to contend, and had not anticipated that the latter
would so soon repress the rebellion and be in a position to proceed
against him with decisive energy. It is uncertain whether he himself
risked the attack; it appears, however, that he had already penetrated
as far as Ur. Esarhaddon, who was at Nineveh when he received the news
of his defection, could certainly not now be spared there. But he
ordered the governors of the province bordering on the maritime country
to go out against the rebellious Chaldean at the head of an army which
was despatched to them, and this proved sufficient. According to the
Assyrian accounts Nabu-ziru-kinish-lishir did not await the attack,
but fled to Elam. But this realm was no longer what it once had been.
Ummanaldash II, who now reigned there, was not inclined to endanger
the peace of his kingdom and involve himself in a war with Assyria
for a stranger’s sake; the fugitive was seized and put to death.
Na’id-Marduk, who accompanied him on his expedition to Elam, feared
a like fate. He chose the wiser course; he hastened to Assyria, made
his submission, and in reward was invested with the sovereignty of
his brother’s kingdom, that is, of the whole seacoast. Henceforth he
faithfully paid the annual tribute.

[Sidenote: [677-676 B.C.]]

It was not so easy to put down another movement at another end of the
empire. Very soon after Esarhaddon’s accession, perhaps even before,
certain kings of the west country planned an attempt to free themselves
from the Assyrian yoke. These were the kings of Sidon and of two other
cities whose position is uncertain, but is certainly to be sought east
of Sidon, namely Kundu and Sizu. Over the two last ruled Sanduarri,
whose name proclaims him as one of the Hittites or related to them,
and over Sidon, Abd-milkot. They had to bind themselves by an oath
to recover their independence with their united forces, and fought
with great persistence. This is shown by the fact that they were not
subdued till the fourth year of Esarhaddon, and also of the fearful
vengeance of the Assyrians, so little in accordance with this king’s
customary procedure. In the year 677 Sidon succumbed to the besieging
force. The city was plundered, wasted, and depopulated. Town and
citadel were “thrown into the sea” and the place where they had stood
made unrecognisable. The population was brought to Assyria, with all
its goods and cattle and all the treasures of that rich commercial
city. But Esarhaddon did not, like his father, take pleasure in mere
destruction. A new town rose in the place where the former had stood.
He called it by his own name [Kar-Asshur-akhe-iddin], and allowed
conquered mountain peoples and inhabitants of the coast of the Persian
Gulf to settle there--the old means, devised by Tiglathpileser, for
absorbing sentiments of nationality and independence into the unity of
the great empire. Abd-milkot had meantime fled, probably to Cyprus; for
Esarhaddon says that he “took him out of the sea like a fish.” He was
overtaken, made prisoner, and put to death, and in the month Tasrit of
the following year, 676, his severed head reached Assyria. It was some
time before Sanduarri was conquered in his mountain country, but in the
month Adar of the same year he suffered a like fate to that which had
overtaken his ally. Then the barbarous triumph took place in Nineveh.
All the captured subjects of the defeated kings, with the great and
distinguished men at their head, were led through the broad streets
of the capital, and two of the noblest carried the severed heads of
the rulers round their necks. Revolt against the supreme king, which
meant sin against Asshur, the god of the gods, when conducted with much
obstinacy as was displayed by these two men, could not be severely
enough punished.

If Esarhaddon intended by these severities to spread terror among the
kings of the west country, he attained his object. Although according
to the wont of the Assyrian annalists, the scribe places the narrative
of the war in the king’s own mouth, he took no personal part in it, but
remained quietly at Nineveh. Thither now came the ambassadors of some
twelve kings, whom the Assyrians called simply Khatti-kings and kings
of the seacoast, and with them those of ten kings who ruled in Cyprus,
to offer him their homage and presents.

When the ten Cypriote rulers, whose names have for the most part a
Greek sound, joined in the homage of the Assyrian, Phœnician, and
Canaanite kings, it is obvious that Esarhaddon’s army, when it pursued
the flying king to Cyprus, had there re-established the Assyrian rule
which had not been exercised since the time of Sargon.

All these princes had to bring him costly material for the building
of his great palace at Nineveh. There is an inclination to credit
Esarhaddon with a special preference for Babylon, and to assume that
he had made that town his headquarters, at least towards the end
of his life. Our knowledge of the building he erected is, however,
not favourable to this view. He certainly governed directly and not
merely by vassal-kings that part of his realm of which Babylon was the
capital, and there are good grounds for the assumption that he actually
cherished the intention of establishing himself at Babylon; but it
is none the less certain that for him, as for his fathers, until the
nomination of Asshurbanapal as vassal-king of Assyria, the centre of
the dominion was Assyria, and the Assyrian capital was his chief home.

[Sidenote: [676-673 B.C.]]

Although Esarhaddon now imitated his father in his care for the
decoration of the Assyrian capital, he did not limit himself to this so
exclusively as his predecessors. On the contrary he boasts of having
built the temples of the town of Asshur and Accad, and of having
adorned them with silver and gold. That he did not neglect Accad or
Babylonia is shown by the work, which surpassed all other undertakings,
completed in his reign and for which he gave orders in his early
years,--the reconstruction of the ruined capital itself.

In Elam it was with disapproving eyes that men regarded this renovation
of Babylon by an Assyrian king and with it the re-establishment of the
Assyrian rule in that territory. The king of Elam, Ummanaldash II,
therefore decided to attack Esarhaddon in this part of the country.
In 675, the sixth year of Esarhaddon’s reign, he invaded Babylon
with an army, we know not on what pretext, and penetrated as far as
Sippar. The misfortune was not, however, a lasting one. In that very
year Ummanaldash died in his palace. Perhaps there is some connection
between these Elamite disturbances and Esarhaddon’s campaign against
the (to us) unknown country of Ruriza which he conquered in Tebet of
the year 673. This may be said with certainty of the measures which he
took against the Gambuli. That warlike Aramaic-Chaldean race, which
had once constituted the vanguard of Merodach-baladan’s army, had
then, at least, dwelt in a swampy tract of country where they lived
“like fish in the midst of the rivers.” At this time their king was
Belbasha (En-basha?), the son of Bananu, and in his impracticable
country he had been able to preserve his independence. It was not he
and his Gambulians that Esarhaddon now feared, but rather that he might
easily be won over to ally himself with his neighbour Elam. Belbasha
is pressed to choose and Esarhaddon makes ready to convince him by the
unanswerable argument of his arms. But the Aramæan does not wait for
the struggle. Knowing well that he has now no help from Elam to look
to, he decides of his own accord to attest his submission to Assyria
and sends the required presents. Thus Esarhaddon gains his object. The
submission is accepted, the country spared, the capital, Shapi-Bel,
extraordinarily fortified, the command laid on the prince to furnish
it with bowmen and to defend it as “the door which unlocks Elam.” How
well Esarhaddon had judged was to be shown later, when his heir had to
punish the son and successor of Bel-basha for his intrigues with Elam.

[Sidenote: [673-672 B.C.]]

These few facts, with the circumstance that, in the same year, 673,
probably while the court was at Babylon, the queen died, are all that
we know concerning the history of the southern realm under the reign of
Esarhaddon.

More is known of the king’s warlike expeditions, or at least those of
his army, for it is not likely that he himself took part in them all.
Some of them are of little importance to history, or were directed
against tribes whose locality we can no longer determine. We pass
them over in silence here. Attention may, however, be called to an
expedition against Teushpa, the king of the Kimmirri or Cimmerians, or
more accurately against the Umman-manda, who dwelt at a great distance,
and who were afterwards to be the cause of so much trouble to Asshur
and Babylon. The Cimmerians are also referred to in other records as
the enemies of Assyria in Esarhaddon’s day. According to these they
joined in a great coalition which was formed against Asshur; at its
head stood Kashtariti of Kar-Kasshi, a Median prince, who evidently
dwelt on the borders of Elam, and Mamitiarsu, governor of the Medes,
and to which the Manneans also belonged. At the outset, at least,
they were successful, took several towns now unknown to us (Khartam,
Kishassu, and five others), and so great was the fear which they thus
spread through Assyria, that in order to propitiate the gods, the
priest (_amelu khalti_) was commanded to perform sacred rites and
celebrate festivals in their honour from 3rd Airu to the 15th Abu--that
is, during one hundred days. The issue of the struggle is not given in
the Assyrian records, but it appears that the Babylonian chronicle told
of the invasion of Assyria by the Kimmirri and of their defeat.

Perhaps this gave Esarhaddon an opportunity to revenge himself
on the Medes and to conduct a war against their country with
great persistence. He penetrated farther into it than any of his
forefathers--namely, to the land of Patusharra (Patiskhoria?) which lay
deep in Median territory, in the neighbourhood of the Bikni Mountains,
where so much crystal was found. There ruled Shitir-parna and Eparna,
two powerful princes whose names appear to be Iranian. They were
subdued by the Assyrians and carried to Assyria with a rich booty,
consisting chiefly of cattle, horses, and chariots. This visitation had
the result that other princes from farther Media, who had not hitherto
acknowledged the Assyrian supremacy, came of their own accord and
tendered their submission.

At the other extremity of his empire, Esarhaddon maintained his
sovereignty in the same fashion. The means by which Assyria had made
herself, and remained during many centuries, the mistress of western
Asia, was the pursuit of a traditional policy whose principles the
impulsive Sennacherib had forsaken in the most deplorable fashion, but
which distinguished Esarhaddon, as well as his grandfather Sargon.
By a judicious blending of gracious forgiveness on the one hand and
severe punishment on the other, he managed not only to confirm Assyrian
sovereignty in the northern regions of Arabia, but also to extend
it. Faithful to the rule by which those who had submitted of their
own accord must be at once taken in favour, and admitted as allies,
he listened to the petition of King Hazael (Khazailu) of Kedar when
the latter came to Nineveh and requested that the images of the gods
which had been carried thither, might be given back. Esarhaddon had
them restored, caused his name and his famous deeds to be inscribed on
them, and gave them back to Hazael. But on this king’s death he took
care that the latter’s son Ya’lu, whom he raised to be king in his
father’s stead, should be still more closely bound to Assyria and pay
higher tribute. Under the same condition he restored to another tribe,
together with the gods of which they had been previously despoiled, a
certain princess Tabua who had been carried away from their midst and
had grown up in the royal palace at Nineveh, and thus reinstated her
in her position. It was soon evident that he had an object in these
tokens of favour. He wished by this means to smooth himself a path to
some Arabian tribes beyond, which were still independent and therefore
dangerous to the frontiers, and who roamed about in the land of Bazu
and in the mountains of Khazu. The march thither was very difficult,
180 _kashbu kakkar_ (double hours) through an arid desert full of
snakes and scorpions, so that it appeared almost advisable to secure a
safe retreat. If the expedition against these remote tribes had failed,
we should have learned nothing of it, at least from Assyrian sources;
but it was successful. Six Arabian kings and two queens were defeated
and probably put to death, and their treasures, gods, and subjects were
then carried to Assyria; so many of the latter, at least, that the
remainder were unable to defend themselves.

[Sidenote: [672-671 B.C.]]

The glory of Esarhaddon’s reign is the conquest of Egypt, for
which the Arabian campaign, just described, no doubt served as
a preparation. A decisive contest with Egypt was sooner or later
unavoidable, especially since Tirhaqa had just brought the divided
kingdom into a certain unity and was evidently striving again to raise
it to the position of a great power.

In the year 672 Egypt took the first step. As usual, the prize was the
overlordship of the West. Tirhaqa managed to persuade Baal, the king
of Tyre, to break with Assyria, and thus threatened to draw the whole
of the Mediterranean coast into rebellion. Prompt measures were taken,
and in Nisan of 671 a powerful Assyrian army marched westward. The
immediate goal is Tyre. It is surrounded and the water-supply cut off.
Without waiting for the town to fall, Esarhaddon now proceeds south
and halts at Aphek, not far from Samaria, thence within fifteen days,
with a certain caution and perhaps not without encountering resistance,
he leads his army to Rapikhu [Raphia] on the Egyptian stream which
forms the boundary between that country and Canaan. Unfortunately the
text breaks off abruptly where the narrative of the actual struggle
with Egypt begins. But we learn from other sources that the object was
attained and Egypt conquered. On the 3rd, 16th, and 18th Tammuz (June)
three battles were fought, in which the Assyrians remained victorious.
Memphis was taken on the 12th of the month, and although Tirhaqa
succeeded in fleeing to his own land of Ethiopia, his son and his
brother’s sons were taken prisoners.

[Sidenote: [671-668 B.C.]]

Esarhaddon was now actually king over Egypt, and here again shows
himself to be a prudent ruler. He was content with the title of dignity
of “King of the Kings of Egypt”--that is, with the overlordship of
the country. Had he incorporated it into Assyria, he would have
weakened rather than strengthened his empire. His sole aim was to
keep it disunited and consequently weak, and by the expulsion of the
Ethiopian to put an end to the latter’s dangerous intrigues in the
west. Therefore he did not put in his own generals, courtiers, or
governors, but sought to bind the provincial princes to him by granting
them a certain measure of independence. The sole danger for him lay
in a united Egypt under the warlike king on whose assistance the ever
restless kings of Phœnicia, Philistia, and Canaan might reckon; and he
therefore contented himself with obtaining from the provincial princes
an oath of fidelity to Assyria. Only the supremacy of Asshur must be
distinctly apparent, so the Egyptian name of the northern capital,
Saïs, was altered to the Assyrian one of Kar-bel-matati (fortress of
the lord of the lands), and that of Neku’s son into Nabu-shezib-anni
(Nabu preserved me!). After this Esarhaddon went back to Assyria, and
on his homeward march he gave orders to carve his royal image and
the account of his conquest of Egypt on the rocks by the Dog River
(Nahr-el-Kelb) at Beirut, where, besides inscriptions and images of
various Egyptian kings, some of his forefathers had caused theirs also
to be cut.

[Illustration: THE PRISMS OF SENNACHERIB, ESARHADDON AND ASSHURBANAPAL]

The conquest of Egypt is the last great undertaking of Esarhaddon’s
reign, which was to last only two or three years longer. In the year
670 he was occupied with Assyrian affairs, all details of which are,
however, wanting. But by the following year it had become manifest that
conditions in Egypt were not permanently settled. It was evident that
a new expedition to the valley of the Nile was imperative. Esarhaddon
assembled his forces and proposed to head his troops himself, to assert
upholding the Assyrian domination in Egypt. Yet first--perhaps because
he already had a presentiment of his approaching end, or because he
did not trust the aspect of internal affairs--he appointed his eldest
son, Asshurbanapal, as co-ruler in Assyria; if we are not to assume,
what is also possible, that this was done before the campaign of
the year 671. The expedition came to nothing. On the 10th of the month
Arakhsamnu (Marsheshwan, about October), of the year 668, in the
twelfth year of his reign, the king died, either in Egypt or, as it is
probable, before he reached it.

As the great king of a mighty empire Esarhaddon indeed stands very
high; for although he was not more soft hearted, or, indeed, where
insubordination had to be punished, less harsh than his predecessor,
yet he did not act in obedience to ungoverned passion, but with
deliberation, and this foresighted policy allowed him always to choose
the golden mean between needless severity and dangerous indulgence.
In a few years he strengthened the foundations of the Assyrian rule,
and considerably extended it; he erected magnificent buildings, and
made desolated Babylon rise again from her rubbish-heaps. By raising
his son, Asshurbanapal, to the throne during his own lifetime, he made
a struggle for the possession of the crown such as that with which
his own reign had begun an impossibility, while by his wise and firm
government he had laid the foundations for his son’s long, and, at
least in the beginning, brilliant and glorious reign. Sennacherib had
little in common with his great father; Esarhaddon was worthy to be the
grandson of Sargon.

ASSHURBANAPAL’S EARLY YEARS (668-652 B.C.)

We have already seen that Esarhaddon made his son Asshurbanapal
vassal-king of Assyria during his own lifetime. With festive display
the young prince entered the royal palace which his grandfather
Sennacherib had built, where his father Esarhaddon was born, and grown
to manhood and had since held his court, and where he himself, as a
friend of learning and science, now began to collect that extensive
library which, after centuries had passed, was to make his deeds
and the traditions of his nation known to the learning of the West.
There in the presence of his father and his brothers, of the princes,
captains, and great men of Assyria, he received the oath of fealty from
the dependent kings and courtiers, calling on the name of the gods and
binding themselves to obedience to his commands, and the maintenance of
the ancient laws and institutions. It was an important step on the part
of the old king. He did not indeed resign the government of Assyria.
He remained king over this part of his kingdom as well as of the
others, and the dignity to which he raised his son was only the petty
or vassal-kingship, a filial government under his own still existing
supremacy, whilst he was himself apart from this primarily king of
Babylon, Sumer, and Accad, as well as king of the kings of the Egyptian
countries. But for this very reason the appointment of the crown-prince
as vassal-king of Assyria, in reality implied the transformation of
that country, hitherto the centre of the empire, and whose capital
had been the seat of the central government, into a kingdom occupying
merely a secondary position, whilst Babylon became the seat of the
chief rule and assumed the first place. It had become manifest that the
true centre of the empire had shifted to Babylon, and that the latter
now possessed more vital energy than Assyria.

[Sidenote: [668-664 B.C.]]

Esarhaddon’s death had opened up to the Ethiopian the prospect of a
reconquest of his lost territory. It was to be expected that Tirhaqa
would take advantage of an opportunity so favourable to him, and soon,
no doubt as early as the year 668, there came a messenger to Nineveh
with the announcement that the king of Cush had marched into Egypt
and not only overrun the whole south of the country, but had even
made a triumphant entry into Memphis, the town which Esarhaddon had
included in Assyria. The governors whom the last Assyrian king had
set up had not indeed gone over to the enemy, but neither had they
ventured to resist him. On his advance they had deserted their chief
towns and retired with their armed forces to the desert. Asshurbanapal
recognised the gravity of the event, for it endangered the peace of
the coast districts along the Mediterranean. He did not himself take
the field, but he immediately sent a considerable force into the west
under the leadership of the Tartan and other captains. The latter
proceeded to Egypt by those forced marches for which the Assyrian army
was distinguished, and hastened to the assistance of the governors who
were hard pressed by Tirhaqa. At Karbanit, or Karbana, a town which
lay west of the Canopic branch of the Nile, near its mouth, the armies
joined battle. The defeat of the Egyptians was so complete that Tirhaqa
thought it advisable to evacuate Memphis without giving himself time
to break up his camp. This and all the Ethiopians’ armed river-boats
fell into the hands of the Assyrians. Tirhaqa withdrew to Thebes and
entrenched himself there.

Asshurbanapal, who had been informed of these successes of his army,
decided to attack the enemy in Thebes. But as the Tartan’s army had
also greatly suffered, he ordered the Rabshakeh, who apparently
commanded the garrisons of the West, to collect a new army from the
soldiers and auxiliaries under his command belonging to all governors
and vassal-kings west of the Euphrates. Impressed by the defeat which
Tirhaqa had sustained, the twenty-two kings of the seacoast, the plain,
and the island of Cyprus hastened to obey this command, and not only
to furnish soldiers, but also on demand of the supreme king to supply
ships for the purpose of blockading the coast and prevent possible
attempts at risings on the part of the maritime states on the banks
of the Mediterranean, and perhaps also for sailing up the Nile. This
army pushed on to join that of the Tartan and the troops of the loyal
Egyptian vassals, and the united forces then marched against Thebes,
which was reached a month and ten days later.

Meanwhile Tirhaqa had abandoned the town itself while it was still
time, and had entrenched himself on the other bank of the river in
the city of the tombs. Besides this, he had persuaded three of the
principal vassal-kings to desert from the Assyrian and go over to his
side. These were Sharludari, prince of Pelusium (Si’nu), Pakruru, ruler
of Pisept in Egyptian Arabia, and no less a person than Neku himself,
the king whom Esarhaddon had placed at the head of all. They even seem
to have taken the initiative, because they preferred to have a ruler of
kindred race as overlord, rather than obey a foreigner. So they offered
to conclude an alliance with the Ethiopian, by which his supremacy was
recognised, and they undertook the defence of Lower Egypt. Had their
design succeeded, the Assyrian army would also have had a hostile
power in its rear and have seen its retreat cut off. But fortunately
for the Assyrians the conspiracy was discovered. Their messengers were
seized, the letters intercepted, and their cunning plans thus cunningly
frustrated.

But first Asshurbanapal had followed the example of his father and
pardoned Neku. After he had exacted from him an oath of fealty to
Asshur, and laid him under heavier burdens than before, he again put
upon him the royal purple and furnished him with the symbols of his
office: golden rings on hands and feet, a carved sword in a golden
sheath, horses, and chariots; and so he sent him back to Egypt,
that he might rule it as chief of the other vassals in Asshur’s
name. He himself was again invested with Kar-bel-matati,--that is,
Saïs,--and his son, Nabu-shezib-anni, received the principality of
Athribis in Lower Egypt, to which also a significant Assyrian name,
Limir-shakku-Asshur (let the governor of Asshur beware) was given. The
other kings also renewed their alliance with Assyria. But Asshurbanapal
did not omit to strengthen the garrisons, and to give those whom he had
pardoned Assyrian officers intended to keep a watchful eye upon them.

For a time Egypt enjoyed peace under Neku’s sway and Assyria’s
lordship. But after the death of Tirhaqa, Tamut-Amen, too, began to
think of a reconquest of Egypt. He set out with his army, and like
the former Ethiopian king, is hailed with delight in Elephantine
and Thebes as a deliverer; then after he has fortified the southern
capital, he continues his march to Memphis, where he first encounters
resistance. But the rebels, as the king calls them--these were of
course the Assyrian garrison with the troops of Neku who ruled over
Memphis and Saïs--were so thoroughly beaten in a desperate sally, that
they evacuated Memphis and retired to the strongholds of the Delta.
Some princes headed by that Pa-Kerer (Pakruru) of Pisept, who had
always borne the Assyrian yoke with reluctance, came to offer their
submission, which was graciously accepted. This was the last time that
an Assyrian army undertook a campaign against Egypt.

While Asshurbanapal had restored his supremacy in Egypt for a certain
time, for the present at least, it was unshaken in the northern
provinces of the West. The most important event mentioned by the
Assyrian record of these days (evidently about 664) is the accession of
Lydia. Asshurbanapal relates that the Lydian king, prompted by a dream
which revealed to him the magnanimity of Asshur, sent his ambassadors
to Nineveh to request the alliance and protection of the great ruler.
For the deity had said to him that by the renown of this name he
should overcome his enemies. He did in fact succeed in doing so. The
Cimmerians were beaten by him. It may be assumed, though it is not
stated, that Gyges received other help from the Assyrians besides the
recognition as their ally. However that may be, he conquered, and, on
the successful termination of the war, sent two Cimmerian rebels with a
great present to Nineveh. There they were no little flattered at this
homage, but also no little embarrassed to make themselves understood by
the newcomers, or to understand them; for even at a court where, as the
Assyrian writer says, the languages of East and West were met together,
there was no one acquainted with the speech of these barbarians.

Probably for the same reason as Gyges, Mukallu of Tabal, his eastern
neighbour, and Yakinlu of Arvad, with perhaps also Sandasharme, of
Cilicia, placed themselves under the protecting wing of Assyria.
Knowing the tastes of the great ruler of nations, each of them sent him
a daughter for his harem, with a rich present, and it appears that this
was the custom. Some even, that they might exhibit the more zeal, sent
him, besides their own daughters, those of their brothers and other
relatives.

In the east, too, Asshurbanapal manifested the still unbroken
superiority of his arms. There, shortly after or at the same time as
the Egyptian campaigns, he had already chastised a mountain people
whose raids had greatly distressed the inhabitants of Yamudbal
[E-mutbal], on the borders of Elam, so that the chiefs of the town of
Dur-ilu had made complaints concerning them. He had sent a force which
subdued the tribe, brought the chieftain Tandai alive to Assyria and
carried off a great number of captives. The king had them taken to
Egypt and in their place peopled the wasted country with prisoners of
war from other regions.

[Sidenote: [664 B.C.]]

Of far greater importance was the campaign against Man. The cause is
not stated, but may well have been that the king of Man, Akhsheri,
declared himself independent, or had shown an evident disposition
to attack Assyria. If this were so, he had been over-hasty in his
proceedings. However little of the warrior there may have been in
Asshurbanapal’s nature, the Assyrian army, in the early periods of his
reign at least, was yet too fearless and its commanders too valiant for
any man to be able to defy the powerful monarchy. Akhsheri attempted
a night surprise of the troops sent against him, before they had
even crossed his frontiers; but in this he was not successful. The
Manneans were defeated in a bloody battle, and for a distance of six
leagues round their dead covered the battle-field. Nothing retarded
the victorious army from entering Man, where it laid waste eight great
towns whose position is unknown to us, as well as a crowd of small
places, and so reached the domain of the capital, Izirtu. It was
surrounded, together with the towns of Urbija and Armijate, and after
the inhabitants, driven to the last extremity, had surrendered, they
were led away and their whole territory conquered and laid waste.

But the object was attained. The frightful misery of the war which had
visited that unhappy country had embittered the population against the
man to whom they ascribed its guilt, namely, their old king, Akhsheri.
In any case, he had shown his incapacity to defend his country. With
all his brothers and his father and family, he was put to death, and
so great was the nation’s fury that they would not even concede him an
honourable tomb, but threw the corpse on to the streets of his city.
His son Ualli, himself already a middle-aged man, was raised to the
throne, and he hastened to acknowledge Assyria’s supreme authority. He
sent his young son to Nineveh, to kiss the monarch’s feet, and did not
neglect to send his daughter also, to add to Asshurbanapal’s crowd of
women. His submission was of course accepted, but his annual tribute
was raised by some thirty horses. Other attempts at rebellion in the
northeast were soon suppressed.

[Sidenote: [_ca._ 664-648 B.C.]]

But whilst these disturbances in the northeast were suppressed without
much difficulty, in the southeast signs soon appeared which gave
warning of that great storm which in a few years was to be raised there
and to threaten the empire with destruction. The throne of Elam was
still occupied by Urtaki, who had always preserved a friendship with
Esarhaddon, and had received from him repeated tokens of good will.
Asshurbanapal had followed up this policy of his father and treated
Urtaki as an ally, and when Elam was suffering from a severe famine
after a prolonged drought he had not even refrained from extending
a helping hand. He sent grain into the afflicted country, and not
only permitted those of Urtaki’s subjects who fled to his country to
settle there, but also allowed them to return to their native land,
unhindered, when the rains had again appeared and a sufficient harvest
secured. If in this he was prompted by motives of policy it was at
least an intelligent and peaceable one. In a proclamation to the
Elamite tribe of the Rash, and the tribes of the Sea Lands, he could
appeal with truth to these tokens of neighbourliness. But they did not
prevent Urtaki from taking arms against him and invading Babylonia.

It seems that Asshurbanapal could scarcely believe the news which he
received. Instead of hurrying to the spot to avert the danger, as had
been the custom of his warlike father, he sent a messenger to inquire
into the state of affairs and to report to him upon it. The latter
returned with the tidings that the Elamites had poured themselves over
Accad like a swarm of locusts, and had even set up a fortified camp
in sight of the city of Babylon. He now hastily collected an army
which drove the invaders from Accad, and even inflicted a defeat on
them on the frontier. It is with a certain unction that the Assyrian
scribe recounts the melancholy fate which soon after overtook all these
enemies of his king. In the year which followed these events they all
died: Bel-basha, as it seems, from a poisonous bite; Nabu-shum-eresh in
a flood; Urtaki and his generals, in their despair, by their own hands
in each other’s presence. Whether the narrator learned this on good
authority or had only heard it from rumour, can scarcely be determined;
but that in reality they all died soon after is certain; for in the
subsequent war with Elam, sons or successors are found in their places.

The crown of Elam fell to Teumman, brother of the two previous kings,
who was “like a devil,” says our Assyrian informant. That he was a
tyrant who would shrink from no means of preserving his power, was
also the conviction of the relatives of Ummanaldash and Urtaki, the
last two kings of Elam. The one had left two sons, Kudurru and Paru,
the other three, Ummanigash, Ummanappa, and Tammaritu. Well aware that
their uncle was determined to remove them from his path, with all that
belonged to them, in order to secure the succession to his own son,
they abandoned their country with a great following, among which were
included sixty members of the royal family and a bodyguard of bowmen,
and sought shelter and protection with Asshurbanapal.

Naturally Teumman could not let this pass unnoticed. He therefore
hastened to despatch two ambassadors to Nineveh, Umbadara, an Elamite,
and a Chaldean, Nabu-dammik, and to demand through them the surrender
of the fugitives. But Asshurbanapal, encouraged by favourable omens,
dreams of his seers, and oracles of the gods; in other words, incited
by his priesthood to whose guidance he always submitted in pious zeal,
steadfastly refused to comply with Teumman’s demand and assembled an
army. In the month of Ulul it was ready to march. He did not himself
take the field, for in fact his army, led by one of his generals, had
merely to support the Elamite force of Ummanigash, his brothers and
cousins. Ummanigash himself was generalissimo, if only in name. The
Assyrian general was empowered to set Ummanigash on the throne of Elam
in the name of the Assyrian supreme king, after the conquest of the
country.

Teumman was also in the field with an army. But when he learned that
the troops of his rival and of the Assyrians had already marched
into the towns of Dur-ilu, which lay not far from the frontier of
his country, and several times therefore had been the scene of a
struggle between the two powers, he turned back, abandoning the western
provinces of his kingdom, and entrenched himself in his capital,
Shushan [Susa], which lay on the eastern bank of the river Ulai [modern
Karun]. Meanwhile the allied Assyrians and Elamites entered the royal
city of Mataktu, which lay to the west of that river, and there
Ummanigash is crowned king. Teumman, indeed, makes one more effort;
owing to the damage which the text had undergone it is not exactly
shown of what kind, but from the context it is plain that he sent out
an army in vain to hinder the advance of his enemies. The latter, once
more encouraged by a dream, cross the river after Teumman’s troops have
suffered a defeat at Tul-Liz, and now attack Shushan itself. There the
decisive battle takes place. It ends with the complete defeat of the
Elamites: a great massacre begins, the river is filled with corpses,
and innumerable women wander about the neighbourhood lamenting. Many
distinguished and a large number of lesser prisoners fall into the
hands of the Assyrians. All seek safety in flight. One of Teumman’s
sons, who had advised him against the war and had foretold the issue,
rends his clothes in his despair. The eldest son, Tammaritu, follows
his father in his flight to the forest, and when the king’s chariot
breaks down there, they are overtaken and both slain. The king’s head
is sent as a trophy to Assyria, where it was set up on the great gate
of Nineveh, an eloquent witness to the nation of the might of Asshur
and Ishtar. His son-in-law, Urtaki, himself begged an Assyrian to cut
off his head and send it as good tidings to Asshurbanapal. Yet others
of the great men of the kingdom come of their own accord and make
their submission. The chief magistrates of the province of Khidali
behead their own prince, Ishtarnandi, and one of them himself brings
his master’s severed head into the Assyrian camp. Tammaritu, the third
brother of Ummanigash, entrusts the government of this principality to
the Assyrian generals, and Ummanigash himself now makes his entry into
Shushan, and is there crowned as a vassal of Assyria. As pledge of his
loyalty he delivers a grandson of Marduk-bal-iddin, better known by the
Hebrew appellation Merodach-baladan, probably the author of the whole
resistance to the Assyrian king, to the latter’s representatives.

But the war was not ended with the punishment of Elam. Dunanu, the son
of Bel-basha, prince of Gambul, was now to be taught what it was to
side with the enemy. The army, on its return from Elam, breaks into
his territory, conquers the capital Shapi-Bel, carries away from it
all who have not fallen by the sword, lays the whole place waste, and
flings the ruins into the waters of the stream which flows around it;
whereupon a motley crew of human beings are raked together and brought
there to re-people the desolate country.

It was a grim revenge that was taken on all enemies, even when they
were already dead, on their corpses. At the triumphal entry of the
army into Nineveh, Dunanu was compelled to carry the head of his ally,
Teumman, round his neck. When Teumman’s ambassadors, who had remained
in Nineveh, saw this, one of them tore out his beard in his despair,
and the other plunged a dagger into his own heart. Dunanu was placed on
the rack in Arbela and died in tortures. All his brothers, including
Samgunu, as well as Merodach-baladan’s grandson and his brothers,
were also put to death; the chiefs of the Gambuli were even flayed,
after they had had their tongues torn out as blasphemers of the high
gods, after which all corpses were cut in pieces, and were then sent
all over the empire, in token of the overlordship of Assyria. With
a refinement of cruelty Asshurbanapal even caused the corpse of his
old opponent, the Tigenna Nabu-shum-eresh, which he had had brought
to Assyria from Gambul for the purpose, to be disfigured in the great
gate of Nineveh by the latter’s own sons. Even before all this was
brought to a conclusion, Sarduris III of Urartu, perhaps because he
was already threatened by the Iranian enemies, who were soon to put
an end to the Kingdom of Van, and was anxious to obtain the help
of his powerful neighbour, despatched an ambassador to the latter.
Asshurbanapal did not omit to make use of the occasion to bring
Teumman’s ambassadors before the newcomers, in order to inspire the
former with a consciousness of his greatness, and to give the latter a
warning example in case their sovereign also should prove unfaithful.

Thus the greatest danger that had hitherto threatened the empire seemed
permanently averted, and if ever a pitiless revenge was qualified
to deprive the conquered nations of the desire to fight for their
independence, this must certainly have been the case after such a
sanguinary judgment. But it was soon to be manifested that it had
availed nothing. Assyria had only succeeded in making herself more
detested than before, and had only stirred up princes and peoples alike
to resist everything rather than any longer endure the yoke of the
hangman of Asia.

THE BROTHERS’ WAR (652-648 B.C.)

About the year 652 a formidable war broke out against Assyria. It
had, perhaps, long been secretly preparing before Asshurbanapal had
any suspicion of the danger which threatened him. He believed that
his conciliatory policy had secured the permanent attachment of the
Babylonians. He had invested his brother, Shamash-shum-ukin, with
the royal dignity, raised him to be lord of all Sumer and Accad, and
had placed an army of foot-soldiers, horses, and chariots at his
disposal. Those of the inhabitants of towns, plains, and farms who had
left the country during the period of anarchy, or had been carried
off, he had permitted to return. As for the Babylonians who had
settled in Assyria, he did not merely place them on a level with his
own immediate subjects, but treated them with especial distinction,
continued the privileges which Esarhaddon had granted them, and raised
them to important offices, and they even moved about his royal court
unmolested, clad in magnificent garments with golden ornaments. They
still continued to protest their submission to the Assyrian domination,
yet all the time they were conspiring with Shamash-shum-ukin against
the king.

[Illustration: AN ASSYRIAN BOWMAN]

The first intimation of this conspiracy came to the king from Kudur,
the governor of Erech. This faithful servant had received from
Sin-tabni-usur, the governor of Ur, information to the effect that
envoys from the king of Babylon had been there and that some of the
people had already risen. Sin-tabni-usur had no mind to give ear to the
proposals from Babylon, and had consequently requested reinforcements.
Kudur sent him five hundred men, who, at his request, were afterwards
increased by troops belonging to the governor of Arpakha and Amida.
But it seems that Sin-tabni-usur was unable to maintain himself until
these supports came up, and even before their arrival found himself
constrained to go over to the party of the rebels.

Asshurbanapal was soon to learn with horror that the movement, the soul
of which was his disloyal brother, had spread with great swiftness,
and that Kudur’s anxiety was not without foundation. Shamash-shum-ukin
sent messengers in all directions, and they did not work in vain. All
Accad and Chaldea, all the Aramæans of Babylonia, all the inhabitants
of the Sea Lands joined with him. His chief ally in this district was:
Nabu-bel-shume, grandson of Merodach-baladan, that irreconcilable
enemy of Assyria, who was now king of Chaldea; Mannuki-Babili,
prince of Bit-Dakkuri; Ea-shum-basha, prince of Bit-Amukkani, and
Nadan of Puqudu. Ummanigash, king of Elam, who owed his throne to
Asshurbanapal, was also gained over by Shamash-shum-ukin. Asshurbanapal
had fancied that he might venture to impose on the Elamite, who owed
him so much, conditions which the latter could certainly only fulfil
with great difficulty. He had demanded the restoration of the goddess
Nana of Erech, which had been in the possession of Elam for centuries,
and whose worship had become so popular that the kings still sent
their gifts to the goddess of Erech. Ummanigash could not comply with
this demand without exciting universal discontent in his kingdom, and,
doubtless, in consequence of this, was all the more inclined to listen
to the proposals of the Babylonian prince. They were supported by a
rich gift, for which the temple treasures of Bel-Marduk in Babylon,
of Nabu in Borsippa, and of Nergal in Kutha had been plundered.
Ummanigash immediately sent auxiliaries to Chaldea. The Guti nomads
on the Assyrio-Babylonian frontier, the kings of the West, with Baal
of Tyre at their head, and the king of Melukhkha, by whom Psamthek is
here doubtless meant; these, too, Shamash-shum-ukin found prepared to
join him in a rising against Assyria. The secession of Gyges, king of
Lydia, who had previously concluded an alliance with the Egyptian king,
probably also belongs to this time, and it is certain that various
Egyptian sheikhs also sided with Babylon. Only the peoples of the
northeast and north of the empire appear to have taken no part in the
movement. They were held in check by the energetic governors of Amida
and Arpakha, the last of whom even prevented the north of Elam from
rising against the supreme king.

There was need of energy and wisdom to exorcise the storm, which was
approaching from so many sides at once. Asshurbanapal, with whom
religion occupied so prominent a place, of course turned first to his
gods. But he did not neglect active measures. Yet it is not clear or
probable that he himself took up arms. When Tammaritu came to him in
the year 650, he was at Nineveh. But in the preceding years he had
sent out various armies to attack the allies at different points. As
soon as the news from Babylon reached him, he issued a proclamation
to the Babylonians, in which he denounced his brother’s treachery as
ingratitude and exhorted those whom he had so favoured not to join
Shamash-shum-ukin. It is true that these words found no echo amongst
the nobility of Babylon, but they were not perhaps without influence
on the temper of the nation. At any rate, the latter finally turned
against their king. When Ummanigash’s troops invaded Chaldea and
Kardunyash, in the year 657, they encountered an Assyrian force. At the
head of the Elamites was the son of Teumman, that Elamite king whom
Asshurbanapal had put to death, and who had been chosen by Ummanigash
as his general, because he had the death of his father to revenge on
the Assyrians. With him came the governors of Billate and Khilmu,
Zazaz and Paru; Attumetu, the captain of the bowmen, Neshu the Elamite
commander, and a Babylonian division joined them. The account of the
battle is too much damaged for us to form any conclusion about it. But
it is evident that the Assyrians obtained some success, to which the
severed head of Attumetu, which was sent to Asshurbanapal at Nineveh,
bore witness.

It was not so easy to coerce the chief author of the war.
Shamash-shum-ukin’s first measure was to close all the gates of
Babylon, Borsippa, and Sippar, to place garrisons in all places of any
importance, and make himself master of all the towns in Babylonia. As a
sign that he renounced his allegiance, he caused all the sacrifices to
the highest gods, which Asshurbanapal had instituted, to be suspended,
and appropriated all the gifts assigned to them, a measure which
excited the indignation of the supreme king more than anything else.

This happened in the year 650, for it must have been in the April of
that year that Bel-ibni was appointed governor of the lands on the
coast. Chaldea and the surrounding territories were now also subdued.
These had revolted in the previous year after Shamash-shum-ukin had
raised the standard of rebellion in the year 652. On the 4th Nisan 651,
Merodach-baladan’s grandson, Nabu-bel-shume, had collected an army
of Accadians, Chaldeans, and Kardunyashu (the men of the coast) in
which he had included the Assyrians whom Asshurbanapal had sent him as
auxiliaries or garrison. Between the 22nd Tammuz and 22nd Abu of the
same year, Sin-tabni-usur, the governor, had joined them, and between
7th Abu and the 7th Ulul the Elamite auxiliaries had also marched up.
But in the end the Assyrian army had defeated them all and compelled
the Elamites to retreat. Nabu-bel-shume had followed them with his
troops to Elam. The Assyrians, on whom he could not depend, he had
previously sent under a reliable commander in the same direction, very
probably under pretence of letting them march against Elam, and thus
had delivered into the hands of Indabigash. Perhaps this defeat was the
cause of Tammaritu’s fall. It must have at least followed soon after.
The south of Babylonia was certainly again brought under the Assyrian
dominion towards the end of year 651.

Asshurbanapal could now turn his thoughts to attacking the arch-rebel
in his own territory. It seems that the latter had again entered
into relations with Elam, and either now went there in person or
sent messengers. But on the 17th Arakhsamnu (Marsheshwan) 651,
Asshurbanapal’s warriors advanced against his brother. In the year 650
they stormed in fearful fashion through northern Babylonia, instituted
a formidable massacre of Shamash-shum-ukin’s subjects in town and
country, made themselves masters of the canals, and finally surrounded
Sippar, Babylon, and Borsippa, which the Babylonian king had fortified.
The siege must have lasted a year or two, for it was not till 648 that
the capital was taken.

And it would not have fallen then--so obstinately was it defended--had
not the misery within the walls reached the acme. The famine was so
dreadful that the besieged fed on the flesh of their own children,
and famine was followed by plague. The gods themselves fought for
the Assyrians, as the historian remarks. Then despair fell upon the
people. In their fury they laid hold on Shamash-shum-ukin, and threw
him, doubtless together with some of his satellites, into the fire. The
town was then, of course, handed over to the enemy, and thus escaped
the fate which Sennacherib had already inflicted on it. A strict trial
was held. Those who had been concerned in the rebellion, such of them
as had escaped the sword, hunger, and plague, who had saved themselves
betimes during the rising and so could not be burnt with their master,
were dragged from the hiding-place where they had concealed themselves
into the light of day, and slain without grace or mercy, so that not
one of them escaped. Those who had incited to rebellion and defamed
Asshur had their tongues torn out of their mouths before they were
sent to death. But the heaviest punishment overtook those who had
already been punished as rebels by the king’s grandfather, Sennacherib,
and whose severed limbs were now thrown to the dogs and all kinds of
beasts of prey. The corpses of those who had been destroyed by disease,
hunger, and wretchedness, and which filled the streets of Babylon,
Sippar, Kutha, and the surrounding country, were dragged away and piled
up in heaps, and the insulted gods and angry goddesses were appeased
by the care which was now bestowed upon their sanctuaries and altars.
All fugitives were pardoned and granted life; they were permitted to
settle in Babylon. Nor was the town plundered in any way. Asshurbanapal
contented himself with the spoil from the palace of his rebellious
brother, with his harem, household chariots, munitions of war, and the
tokens of his royal dignity, and all this he had carried to Assyria
with the captured warriors.

[Sidenote: [648 B.C.]

In the south of the country the ferment seems to have lasted longer.
The Accadians, Chaldeans, Aramæans, and inhabitants of the coast,
who had formerly served Shamash-shum-ukin and then submitted to the
Assyrian governor, Bel-ibni, had now of their own accord once more
risen against Asshurbanapal; but the Assyrian army, now the army of
Babylon, marched into their territory, and soon brought the whole
country back to the Assyrian dominion. Governors and princes appointed
by the king reintroduced the Assyrian laws, and saw that the yearly
tribute was henceforth paid regularly.

THE LAST WARS OF ASSHURBANAPAL (648-626 B.C.)

As before related, Merodach-baladan’s grandson, Nabu-bel-shume, had
delivered those troops which Asshurbanapal had sent him for the defence
of his country against the Elamites and insurgent Babylonians into
Indabigash’s hand. Even before Babylon was taken, the Assyrian king
had sent an envoy to the latter to demand the release of these men.
Indabigash had answered with proposals for peace. He does not seem
to have dared to risk a struggle with Assyria, nor yet to have been
prepared to comply with Asshurbanapal’s request; the party of the
Chaldeans and their friends was probably too powerful in Elam for
this. After Babylon had fallen, the Assyrian sent a fresh messenger,
supported by a numerous army, with a vigorous ultimatum to Elam. “If
thou restorest not these men,” so ran the message, “then will I come
and destroy thy cities, carry away the people of Shushan, Madaktu, and
Khidalu, thrust thee from thy royal throne, and put another in thy
place. As formerly I destroyed Teumman, so will I destroy thee.” But
the envoy had not yet got so far as Deri, when the war party killed
Indabigash from a natural fear lest he should yield, and had made
Ummanaldash, the son of Attumetu, king.

[Illustration]

Of course the latter refused Asshurbanapal’s request, and the war broke
out afresh. Asshurbanapal now intended to establish Tammaritu for
the second time in the government of Elam, a policy which again was
destined not to be realised. A powerful army, led by this claimant,
marched into the enemy’s country, and several border-towns immediately
submitted through fear, and came to offer their men and cattle. The
first resistance was encountered at Bit-Imbi, once a royal city of
Elam, “which shut in the front of Elam like a great bulwark,” and had
been conquered by Sennacherib and razed to the ground. But a later
Elamite king had built a new Bit-Imbi opposite the old town and
surrounded it with a strong wall and outworks. This town defended
itself obstinately, but it was conquered, and those who would not
submit were beheaded and their lips sent to Assyria as trophies of
victory. The captain of the bowmen, Imbappi, who was a son-in-law of
the Elamite king and had commanded in the city, fell alive into the
enemy’s hands, together with the harem, the sons of the former king
Teumman, and the rest of the population, and was led away to Assyria.

This feat of arms appears to have been of great importance, for no
sooner did it reach Ummanaldash’s ears than he fled from Madaktu
into the mountains. The same course was followed by another prince
(Umbahabua?) who had reigned in Elam for a time, before Ummanaldash,
but, in face of a rebellion, had retreated to Bubilu. He too left
his dwelling, and hid himself in the low-lying districts on the
seacoast. Elam was now open to the Assyrian army, which made use of the
opportunity to march into Shushan and there again consecrate Tammaritu
king. But the latter perceived that it was only as a shadow king that
he had been set up. When the Assyrian troops who had accompanied him
withdrew to their own country with the greater part of the population
as prisoners and an enormous spoil, he was completely undeceived and
sought to prevent this impoverishment of the land by force. But he was
unsuccessful. In the eyes of the Assyrians this was base ingratitude;
he was deposed and again carried off, and before the return march was
finally entered upon, a regular drive was made over the whole of Elam,
during which the chief towns were sacked. But no Assyrian garrison
remained behind in the country, and there is no word of its permanent
annexation. Immediately after the withdrawal of the Assyrian army,
Ummanaldash II came out from his hiding-place and once more obtained
possession of the government.

But Asshurbanapal was not satisfied with this _non possum_, and this
time he sent Tammaritu himself as ambassador with another demand. The
oracle he had asked from the goddess of Erech had enjoined on him to
fetch back the image of the goddess Nana, which had been carried off
to Elam centuries before. It will be remembered that this oracle had
already served as an excuse to draw Ummanigash into a war. It was now
again made use of. But Ummanaldash, no more than his predecessor, could
comply with the demand without setting throne and life at stake. No
other choice remained for him than to try the fortune of war.

The war proceeded as it had the first time, but was conducted with more
energy and certainly lasted longer. Bit-Imbi was again taken, then the
Rashi country and the city of Khamanu with its territory, a conquest
which the Assyrians thought important enough to be perpetuated in a
relief. Although all this was only frontier territory, Ummanaldash
thought it advisable to leave Madaktu, the western capital of his
country, and to retreat to Dur-Undasi, a town on the farther side of
the Ulai, but west of the river Ididi, which formed a strong natural
defence. Thus he abandoned a great part of his country, but even there
he did not feel himself safe and crossed the Ididi that he might range
his troops behind it in order of battle. The Assyrians pursued their
triumphal march, took one town after the other, and at last came to
Dur-Undasi. But here the army refused to go farther, and two days
went by before they could make up their minds to cross the apparently
dangerous river. However, in the nick of time, Ishtar of Arbela, the
warlike goddess, whose priesthood doubtless accompanied the army with a
portable sanctuary or ark, sent one of her seers a dream in which she
promised her help, and this restored the army’s courage. The crossing
was a success, the army of Ummanaldash was beaten, and twelve Elamite
provinces east of the Ididi with fourteen royal cities and a number of
smaller places were abandoned to destruction.

Still there was no intention of taking possession of the country, and
when Ummanaldash with the remnant of his army had gone farther into
the mountains, and consequently there was no longer a dangerous enemy
on the east side of the Ididi to hinder the operations on the west
side, the Assyrians marched back into Shushan. There was the goddess
for whose sake the whole expedition had been undertaken. On former
occasions, when Shushan had been taken, the object of the war was to
set the Elamite pretender on the throne, then the restoration could
hardly be demanded. But now Asshur was in arms against Elam itself,
and consideration need no longer be shown. The goddess was brought
back to Erech to her sanctuary, E-khili-anha, “the house of power in
the heavens,” and the king caused new and permanent sanctuaries to be
erected for her.

To all appearances and contrary to his practice, he had himself come
to Shushan. At least, it is related that he clasped the hands of the
goddess, that is, performed a religious ceremony in her sanctuary and
that he also had the gratification of entering the palace of Shushan
and seating himself on the throne of the hereditary enemy of Assyria.
Elam was one of the oldest and most famous monarchies of Asia, and
Shushan was the sacred city, the seat of the gods and the place of
their oracles. In the treasure chamber of the royal citadel were heaped
up all those valuables which the kings of Elam had collected “down
to the kings of those days,” and which had never yet been touched by
a victorious enemy. No little of the treasure had been taken away by
former Elamite kings from Sumer, Accad, and Kardunyash, and there was
also a collection of valuables and jewels with royal insignia, which
former kings of Accad, down to Shamash-shumukin, had presented to
Elam in exchange for her help. All this, with all the glories of the
royal palace, where a rich and splendour-loving court had resided,
Asshurbanapal took with him to his own states. The very tombs of the
kings were not spared by the conqueror: they were destroyed and exposed
to the light of day; even the corpses were carried off, so that the
shades had to wander about homeless. In order to mortify the enemy as
much as possible, the Assyrian soldiers were allowed to desecrate those
sacred forests, whose precincts no unhallowed foot might ever tread,
and then to burn them.

Whilst the Elamite war was still raging in the west, the Arabs had
again arisen. Abiyate, whom Asshurbanapal had appointed in the place
of Yauta-ben-Hazael as Assyrian vassal-king of Aribi, entered into
negotiations with Natnu, prince of Nabathea, to whom Yauta had formerly
fled, but who had at that time thought it safer to seek the friendship
of Assyria. He now allowed himself to be persuaded to trouble the
borders of the western provinces of Assyria, in conjunction with
Abiyate. Lest the forces in this district should not be strong enough
to face the joint attacks of the Arabs, a powerful army was despatched
from Assyria to quell the rising. Arrived on the 25th Sivan at Khadata,
which probably lay at the eastern extremity of this desert, the army
pursued its way unchallenged to Laribda, a well-watered oasis, where
the camp was fixed, and then marched on to Khurarina, not far from
Yarki and Azalli, still in the same desert, where the first encounter
took place. There the Isamme, the Bedouins, who worship the god
Atarsamain and the Nabatheans, sought to stop the further progress of
the Assyrian army, but were defeated. The victors, having provided
themselves with water from Azalli, marched on to Kurasiti. There again
stood Bedouins who worship Atarsamain, with Yauta-ben-Bir-Dadda and
the men of Kedar, but they too gave way, and not only a rich booty,
but Yauta’s gods and women, with his mother, fell into the Assyrians’
hands and were carried with them to Damascus. On the night of the
3rd Abu, after a rest of about forty days, the Assyrian army marched
to the town of Khulkhuliti, south of Damascus, and in the mountain
region of Khulkurina a battle was fought with the two sons of Te’ri,
namely, the leaders of the rebellion, Abiyate and Aamu. Aamu was taken
alive, chained hand and foot, and sent to Nineveh, where Asshurbanapal
had him flayed. The remainder of the troops sought refuge in the
hiding-places in the mountains; but when the Assyrians set guard in
all the surrounding places and cut off their supplies of water, they
found themselves under the necessity first of killing their camels and
then of surrendering themselves. They, too, were taken to Assyria,
and thus the country was as though “inundated with Arabs and camels.”
Yauta-ben-Bir-Dadda still kept the field with his troops; but when
disease and famine had made terrible havoc among them, they came to
the conclusion that they were no match for the might of the Assyrian
gods, rose against their king, and drove him from them. He was seized
by the enemy and sent to Assyria. There his son was killed before his
eyes by Asshurbanapal’s own hand, and he and his cousin bound with a
dog-chain to Nerib-mashuakti-atuati, the eastern gate of Nineveh. The
king counted it as a favour that he escaped with his life.

Even Ummanaldash was also destined to fall into the Assyrians’ hands.
His own subjects rose against him, perhaps at the instigation of a
certain Ummanigash, a son of Ametirra, and he sought refuge in the
mountains. The Assyrians made use of these disturbances to march into
Elam, fan the fire of rebellion, and lead Ummanaldash in triumph to
their own country. The ancient monarchy, which had so often threatened
Assyria, was now entirely broken. For a time Elam still prolonged a
melancholy existence. She was not annexed to the Assyrian Empire. But
when, within a few years, the latter’s power had disappeared, Elam fell
an easy prey to the Persians, when Prince Sispis, or Teispes, of the
race of the Achæmenidæ, placed himself on the throne of Shushan.

Little dreaming that the hour of Asshur’s downfall was so soon to
strike, Asshurbanapal revelled in the joy of victory. In memory of all
these triumphs, and in order to show his gratitude for the help of
the gods, he built a new sanctuary for the great goddess of Nineveh,
the spouse of Asshur, and when it was ready and he presented himself
in it in order to consecrate it with ceremonial sacrifices, he had
his royal chariot dragged to the gate of the temple by four captive
kings,--Tammaritu, Pa’e, Ummanaldash, and Yauta. This barbarous triumph
was his last, and the last also of the renowned Assyrian army.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[25] [The word is Sib’e, who is possibly Sewe or So, but many scholars
differ as to his identity. See Winckler,[d] Goodspeed,[e] and Budge.[f]]

[26] [Rogers,[g] whose more recent translation differs in some
respects, reads this last line, “like a falcon which dwells in the
clefts they fled alone to inaccessible places.” In Column II he reads
the names Alhzibu, Akko, Tubahal, and Hittites as respectively Ekdippa,
Arko, Ethobal, and West Lands.]

CHAPTER V. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA

We have followed the fortunes of Assyria through several dynasties of
clearest historical record. But, curiously enough, as we now proceed
the landmarks disappear, and we enter a realm of myth, as if we were
going backward instead of forward in time. Even while Asshurbanapal
lives, the record becomes vague, and after him there is almost nothing
securely known of its details. Even the names of his successors are
somewhat in doubt. The only sure thing is the broad historical fact
that the empire declined in power until it was completely overthrown
by the Scythians and Babylonians about twenty years after the death of
Asshurbanapal--the precise date of this closing scene being, like all
other details of the epoch, more or less in doubt.

Our surprise at this cataclysmic overthrow is the greater in that we
have just seen the Assyrian Empire at such a height of apparent power
under Asshurbanapal. The palaces, libraries, and art treasures of that
king as now known to us convey an irresistible impression of a powerful
monarch. Yet it is held that the decline in Assyrian affairs had begun
even during the life of Asshurbanapal.[a]

Professor Rogers has well summed up an impression as to the cause of
this decline. After noting the glories of the reign in matters of
literature, sciences, and art, and giving Asshurbanapal a full meed of
praise as regards his attainment in this direction, Professor Rogers
continues:

In war only had he failed. But by the sword the kingdom of Assyria
had been founded, by the sword it had added kingdom unto kingdom
until it had become a world-empire. By the sword it had cleared the
way for the advance of its trader, and opened up to civilisation
great territories, some of which, like Urartu, had even adopted its
method of writing. It had held all the vast empire together by the
sword, and not by beneficent and unselfish rule. Even unto this very
reign barbaric treatment of men who yearned for liberty had been the
rule and not the exception. That which had been founded by the sword
and maintained by the sword would not survive if the sword lost its
keenness or the arm which wielded it lost its strength or readiness.
This had happened in the days of Asshurbanapal. He had conquered but
little new territory, made scarcely any advance, as most of the kings
who preceded him had done. He had not only not made distinct advances,
he had actually beaten a retreat, and the empire was smaller. Worse
even than this, he had weakened the borders which remained, and had not
erected fortresses, as had Sargon and Esarhaddon and even Sennacherib,
for the defence of the frontier against aggression. He had gained no
new allies, and had shown no consideration or friendship for any people
who might have been won to join hands with Assyria when the hour of
struggle between the Semites and the Indo-Europeans should come. On
the contrary, his brutality, singularly unsuited to his period and his
position of growing weakness, his bloodthirstiness, his destructive
raids into the territories of his neighbours, had increased the hatred
of Assyria into a passion. All these things threatened the end of
Assyrian prestige, if not the entire collapse of the empire.

The culture which Asshurbanapal had nurtured and disseminated was but
a cloak to cover the nakedness of Assyrian savagery. It never became
a part of the life of the people. It contributed not to national
patriotism, but only to national enervation. Luxury had usurped the
place of simplicity, and weakness had conquered strength. The most
brilliant colour of all Assyrian history was only overlaid on the
palace and temple walls. The shadows were growing long and deep, and
the night of Assyria was approaching.[b]

Whatever our precise estimate of this criticism of Asshurbanapal, it is
clear that the successors of that monarch were unable to sustain the
traditions of their fathers. Assyriologists have recently restored to
us the names of Bel-zakir-ishkun or Asshur-etil-ili, Sin-shar-ishkun,
as the immediate successors of Asshurbanapal, the last named being the
one who is believed to have been the occupant of the throne when the
conquering hosts of Cyaxares finally razed Nineveh to the ground.

It may fairly be presumed that there exist somewhere among the yet
unrecovered treasures of Mesopotamia, inscriptions giving more or
less full accounts of the destruction of Nineveh. But be that as it
may, no such inscription has yet come to light; at least none such
has been deciphered. There is an abundance of material in the various
museums of Europe and America that has not yet been fully investigated.
The reading of inscriptions in the arrow-head script is an extremely
difficult task; indeed, it has been claimed, perhaps half jestingly,
by one of the greatest of living orientalists, that only four scholars
in the world are competent to read securely Assyrian or Babylonian
texts from the original clay tablet. Doubtless this is an exaggeration,
but it is one full of suggestion as to the difficulties encountered
by the would-be investigator of Mesopotamian history; and at the same
time offering an explanation of the fact that so much material is
awaiting its turn, and must long remain unpublished, notwithstanding
the importance and interest of the historical secrets thus entombed.
Possibly, as has been suggested, the story of the destruction of
Nineveh may be among these secrets, but as to the validity of this
surmise time must decide.

Meanwhile the twentieth-century historian is but little better off than
his predecessor of the times before the advent of modern Assyriology
in regard to this particular problem. Whoever would picture to himself
the destruction of Nineveh has no resource but to turn back to such
classical accounts as that of Diodorus, giving whatever degree of
credence he may choose to the details of the story. One qualification,
however, may be added. We at least are tolerably sure, as our
predecessors could not be, that the last ruler of Nineveh did not bear
the name which classical tradition ascribed to him. Just as there was
no Ninus, founder of Nineveh, so there was no Sardanapalus last ruler
of that famous city. In regard to this detail, tradition was at fault
here as so often elsewhere. None the less will the name of Sardanapalus
long continue to symbolise the idea of the last ruler of Nineveh, whose
effeminate reign and tragic end form so interesting a theme for the
classical writer.[a]

LAST YEARS AND FALL OF THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE (626-609 B.C.)

In all probability, Asshurbanapal lived until 626, and during the
whole of his reign he remained firmly established in possession of
the Assyrian throne and also of the kingdom of Babylon. Elam had been
rendered powerless, Babylon had been conquered, and the desert dwellers
of the west were too much weakened and impoverished by the severe
lesson taught them, as well as by hunger and disease, to be dangerous.
Media was only in her youth, and Assyria was still strong enough to
resist the first onrush of this new, conquering state. Besides her
northeastern and northern neighbours, the states of Asia Minor and
the inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast had enough to do to defend
themselves against the barbarians who were pressing upon them from the
north and east. Egypt was indeed independent, but could not seriously
think of conquests in Asia. The condition of the Assyrian Empire
resembled the calm before the storm.

[Illustration: ASSYRIAN KING IN SACERDOTAL ROBES]

In his latter years the king doubtless devoted himself by preference
to the works of peace. He had already erected many buildings, even
during the period of his great wars. He had continued and completed
the work on the temples of Assyria and Babylonia, which Esarhaddon had
begun. Unfortunately the inscription which enumerates the principal
structures belonging to the first half of his reign only occasionally
mentions the places in which the temples he erected stood. In the later
years of the king’s reign the walls of Nineveh demanded his attention.
They were loosened by annual rains and the violent showers of Adad,
and had sunk. Asshurbanapal restored them and made them stronger than
before. When he had seen his great campaigns crowned with victory, he
at last undertook an important work in Nineveh, the town of Bel and
Ishtar. Bit-Riduti, the great palace, which Sennacherib had built and
established as a royal dwelling, had fallen to ruins. This king did
nothing without the gods. It was now again a dream which made known to
him their will that he should repair the damage to the palace. This
was done. The forced labour of Assyrian subjects brought the stone in
carts from the spoil of Elam; and the captive Arabian kings, decked out
with appropriate marks of distinction, shared in the labour as workmen.
When the palace was completed to the pinnacles and enlarged, it was
surrounded with noble grounds; and when the victims were slaughtered
at the consecration, the king made his entry carried in a gorgeous
palanquin and with festive rejoicings.

Of all the objects assembled in this palace the king set the highest
value on the library which he had founded and which has now for the
most part been unearthed and brought to Europe. Asshurbanapal was,
without any doubt, an admirer and patron of learning and a prince who
loved art. He did not allow the libraries of Babylonia to be plundered,
but he had the literary treasures which were buried there, including
whole works on philosophical, mythological, and poetic subjects,
copied in Assyrian characters and added to the historical records of
his own predecessors. He even seems to have studied them diligently
himself, and to have encouraged their perusal. The fruit of this study
is shown in his own memorials. In fact these have some literary value,
which cannot be said of the dry chronicles of former kings. He was
not, however, the first to found a library. Not only had the ancient
Babylonian kings--it is said even Sargon I of Agade--preceded him in
this respect, but the Assyrian kings had also set him an example.
This was certainly true of Sennacherib, in whose palace at Nineveh,
according to the calculation made by George Smith, probably twenty
thousand fragments are now awaiting the investigator who can find the
time and means to dig them out and make them accessible to western
learning. But it cannot be denied that Asshurbanapal earned the
gratitude of scholars by rendering so many treasures of the Babylonian
libraries accessible to his compatriots, and also by founding libraries
in other places; as, for example, in Babylon, and that he devoted more
attention to these things than any of his predecessors.

[Sidenote: [626-609 B.C.]]

The popular tradition of the downfall of the Assyrian Empire, which
took shape in later years and came from the Persians to the Greeks,
represents Sardanapalus (by whom none other than Asshurbanapal can be
meant) as the type of a luxurious, effeminate, oriental despot, who
forgets his kingly duties in the enjoyments of his harem, abandons his
empire to the enemies rising against him on all sides, and finally,
shut up in his capital, delivers himself in despair to the flames
with his wives and all his treasures. We now know how little this
picture agrees with the truth, but from what is historically credible
we can gather how it arose. Asshurbanapal did indeed take pleasure
in filling his women’s palace with the daughters of all the princes
subdued by him, and with those of their nearest relatives; and these
princes knew well what was pleasing to the supreme king. It is true
that this proceeded as much from love of display as from an inclination
to voluptuousness; it is true that policy also had a share in it,
because by this means his supremacy was confirmed and a pledge given
for further submissiveness; it is true that the custom was a usual one
with oriental monarchs; but a king who pursued it to such an extent
must have been easily transformed into a voluptuary in the minds of his
people.

There was also some reason for regarding him as weak and effeminate.
The great Assyrian monarchs, at least during the years of their youth
and vigorous manhood, had themselves frequently led their armies to
victory. It was seldom, if ever, that Asshurbanapal joined in the
fight. His official historians do, indeed, ascribe to him the honour
of all the victories during his reign, but they have not succeeded in
hiding the fact that his generals fought the battles. Yet he was by no
means a weakling. That he was an eager hunter is testified by a number
of hunting inscriptions, some of them accompanied by reliefs. In any
case, a prince who could find pleasure in so manly a pastime was no
effeminate voluptuary, little warlike though he may have shown himself
to be.

The king’s tragic end in the flames of his own palace, of which the
legend speaks, may have been shifted on to him from his brother,
Shamash-shum-ukin, or, still more probably, from the last Ninevite
king. That he, the last great king of Assyria, should have been
supposed to continue reigning until the end of the empire, while the
insignificant kings who really followed him were forgotten, is natural
enough. In short, Asshurbanapal was not a hero who strove to reap
the laurels of the battle-field through difficulty and privations on
distant campaigns. He preferred to linger in his luxurious palace, and
to alternate the delights of the harem and the pursuit of learning with
the royal lion-hunting. He was very pious, and did nothing without
consulting the oracles of his gods or the dreams of his seers. If
he thought the dignity of his empire, and with it the honour of his
gods, insulted by an obstinate rebellion, he would avenge them as his
predecessors had done by punishments of ingenious cruelty, inflicted
both on individuals and on whole countries. The fearful suffering
which the war on Asshur’s enemies wrought in its train, the pestilence
which filled the streets with corpses, the famine which drove parents
to destroy their own children, filled him with transports of joy.
His ruling idea was the unity and vastness of his empire. If he
left the sword in its sheath, the love of pleasure did not make him
neglect his duties as a ruler. He took care that his armies should
always be ready to take the field, which would not have been possible
without good organisation; and they triumphed over almost all his
enemies, maintained his sway against a powerful coalition, crushed the
formidable Elam so severely that she never recovered from the blows
she had received, and, if not during his reign, at least shortly after
it, repelled the advancing Medes. He regularly transmitted his orders
to all the governors in his empire, and was by them kept carefully
informed of anything of importance which happened in their provinces.
No one of his victorious military leaders ever ventured to turn his
arms against him. All, including the governors, recognised him and
honoured him as their king. Such he was in the fullest sense of the
word. In his palace at Nineveh, during two-and-forty years, he held
the reigns of government with a strong hand. And this is all the more
creditable to the influence of his personality, since the empire was
internally weakened by his own political mistakes, in particular by
the removal of the centre of government from Babylon, which Esarhaddon
had made its seat, to Nineveh, and by other causes, so that it went to
pieces a few years after his death.

After him at least two kings ruled over Assyria, who were probably
brothers, for one of them, Bel-zakir-ishkun, was the son of a
king of Assyria, and grandson of a king of Sumer and Accad, and
though their names are missing from the inscriptions, they can have
been none other than Asshurbanapal and Esarhaddon; and the other,
Asshur-etil-ili [who is sometimes known by a lengthened form of his
name, Asshur-etil-ili-ukinni] is expressly called the son and grandson
of these rulers. Probably Bel-zakir-ishkun reigned first, and then the
other.[27] No historical records have been preserved, dealing either
with the fortunes and achievements of these kings or with the fall of
Assyria. Certain texts have led some to conclude that a third king, a
namesake of Esarhaddon, may have swayed the sceptre at this period, but
this has been shown to be extremely questionable.

[Sidenote: [612-609 B.C.]]

Immediately after Asshurbanapal’s death, or perhaps even in the last
year of his reign, Babylon broke away from the Assyrian rule, and this
time the separation was permanent. The empire was much weakened by it.
The north and northwest, Urartu and the states of Asia Minor, gradually
fell into the power of the ever-advancing Medes. The Assyrian lordship
over the countries on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea now existed
in name only, so that King Josiah of Judah was able to effect his
reform unhindered, and to act as master in the territory of the ancient
kingdom of Israel, which for years had been an Assyrian province. And
in the year 608 Neku II, king of Egypt, was able to think of extending
his empire to the Euphrates, as in days long past, and to take arms
against Assyria with the idea of wresting from her all her western
provinces. The foundation of the new Babylonian Empire and the invasion
of the Egyptians, who could no longer be repelled by the Assyrians,
but were only to give way before the Babylonian arms, are described
elsewhere. Here we only mention them as among the causes which brought
about the fall of the Assyrian Empire. That empire no longer had any
real existence, at least as a ruling power. Thrust back to its old
frontiers, the ancient Assyrian state slowly languished and only
awaited the death-blow.

That blow was to come from the Medes in alliance with the Babylonians,
and was partly hastened, partly stayed, by the great migratory streams
of the Cimmerians and Scythians.[c]

Though Professor Tiele’s admirable history is recent, much new
information concerning the last days of the Assyrian rule at Nineveh
has come to light, and historians are now able to place the conquest
of the city by the Manda in the reign of Sin-shar-ishkun. Without
overlooking a certain Sin-shum-lishir, who is mentioned in several
places as an Assyrian king, and must have ruled about this time, but
whose personality has not yet been unwrapped from the historic gloom,
it is safe to say that this Sin-shar-ishkun was Asshur-etil-ili’s
successor. From contract tablets found at Sippar and Erech we know that
he occupied the Assyrian throne in 612 B.C., and that his dominion
included a part of Babylonia as well. Later records would show him
to be of much stronger character than the man he succeeded. In 610
or 609 he attempted to wrest more of the Babylonian provinces from
Nabopolassar, and the harassed king took the fatal step of appealing
to that people from the north, who for the most part had formed part
of the great Indo-European migration into western Asia. Already these
Scythian hordes, the Manda, had their eye on the rich Mesopotamian
Valley, and therefore Nabopolassar’s appeal did not fall upon unwilling
ears. Sin-shar-ishkun was indeed driven back, but when that happened
the Manda were in the coveted land. The reader will observe that we
have just spoken of the Manda and not the Medes as the assailants of
Nineveh. This is because of the recent clearing up of a historical
error that was our heritage from the Greek historians. They simply
confused the Manda, the nomadic tribes that lived northeast of Assyria
towards the Caspian Sea and were the classical Scythians, with the
Mada, or true Medes. As Professor Sayce says: “It was not until the
discovery of the monuments of Nabonidus and Cyrus that the truth at
last came to light and it was found that the history we had so long
believed was founded upon a philological mistake.” This matter will be
more fully explained in the account of Persia.[a]

Like his father, Cyaxares perceived that it would not be possible for
the Medes to extend and maintain their conquests westward so long as he
had to dread the rivalry of the Assyrian Empire, so lately the mistress
of those regions. Consequently he put into practice the lesson which
his father had received from the Assyrians. The as yet untrained hordes
of Medians were evidently no match for the better military organisation
of the Assyrians and the military skill of the Assyrian generals.
Cyaxares, therefore, began as became a warlike prince with the
remodelling of his army, dividing his troops, after the pattern of the
Assyrians, into the various arms--spearmen, bowmen, and horsemen--and
fortifying his citadel, Ecbatana. Then he again ventured to attack
Assyria, this time with better success. The Assyrian army was beaten
in Nineveh at last, and was surrounded. But an unexpected event came
to the assistance of the hard-pressed Ninevites--the Scythians invaded
Media.

Their invasion compelled Cyaxares to evacuate Assyria, and for a time
Nineveh breathed again. But only for a short time. Cyaxares succeeded
in putting an end to the Scythian domination in his kingdom in the
course of a few years.

[Sidenote: [609-401 B.C.]]

About 609 the Median army under the command of Cyaxares appeared for
the second time at the gates of Nineveh. According to Berosus, the
Babylonian king, whose son Nebuchadrezzar had married the Median king’s
daughter, also took part in this siege. It is easy to understand how
it was that Herodotus knew nothing of this, for the Persians were his
authorities. But he is certainly right in assigning the chief rôle to
the Medes, of whom Abydenus says nothing, for from this time forward
they kept possession of Assyria itself; and he is also right in placing
the taking of Nineveh during the period of Cyaxares’ government, and
not, like Berosus and the authors who follow him, in the time of
Astyages, since the latter did not ascend the throne of Media before
584 B.C. It is sufficient that Nineveh fell, and Assyria passed to the
power of the Medes, who at the same time acquired the dominion over
the North and the countries of Asia Minor as far as the Halys. All
other provinces of the fallen empire as far as the Mediterranean Sea,
including probably that part of ancient Assyria whose capital was the
city of Asshur, and also Kharran and Carchemish, fell to Babylonia.

We have no historical account of the details connected with the fall
of Nineveh. The story of the last Assyrian king, Asshur-etil-ili, or,
as some authorities call him, Saracus,[28] which represents him in his
despair burning himself with his palace and his treasures, is a popular
tale which is not indeed impossible, but probably arose by confusion
with Shamash-shum-ukin’s end. Nineveh was so completely desolated that
when Xenophon passed with the Ten Thousand in the year 401 B.C. he took
the ruins for the remains of Median towns destroyed by the Persians.
Subsequently a fortress, Ninus, seems to have been built there by the
Parthians. Calah also once more rose from its rubbish heaps after
lying desolate for a long time. Arbela remained untouched, and it is
therefore probable that it fell unresisting into the hands of the
conquerors. But the Assyrian monarchy was gone forever.

[Sidenote: [606 B.C.]]

The Assyrian monarchy was gone, but not the empire at whose head the
kings of Asshur had stood. It has been matter of astonishment that
so powerful an empire, to which through a series of centuries the
whole of western Asia had been subdued, could have been so suddenly
overturned by the fall of the capital. But this surprise proceeds from
an incorrect conception of history. Events had long prepared the fall
of Nineveh. The keen eye of Esarhaddon had already perceived that it
would be safer to remove the centre of the empire to Babylon. His son
Asshurbanapal, a less acute statesman than he, but a great king and a
strong administrator, had once more attempted to secure the hegemony
for Assyria. In this he had succeeded, being supported by favourable
circumstances and the influence of his own personality. But when the
sceptre fell from his strong hand, little more was needed to put an
end to the Assyrian dominion, and that end was only a question of
time. However, the empire survived for a few years longer, though not
in its full vigour. The hegemony now passed again to Babylon; but not
unimpaired, for, since Media had conquered Nineveh, the lion’s share
of Assyria itself fell to the Median kingdom, together with those
northern and northwestern provinces which had been lost long before.
But the Assyrian survived in the new Babylonian Empire, which continued
its policy of conquest, and the Greeks, who not long afterwards called
the Babylonians themselves Assyrians, were in this not so very far
from the truth. But the days of the Semitic dominion were hastening to
their end. Even the new monarchy under Babylon’s hegemony could only
be propped up by the force of Nebuchadrezzar’s personality. His feeble
successors were in no condition to prevent the spread of the Median
power nor the rise of the Persian monarchy, which had grown to such
proportions by the conquest of Elam, until the genius of Cyrus founded
a dominion which soon embraced the four ancient empires--the Median,
the Elamite, the Assyrio-Babylonian, and the Egyptian--and gave the
sceptre of western Asia to the Aryans.

The sense of relief which fell on the oppressed nations at the downfall
of the scourge of Asia can be gathered from the rejoicing accents
of the Jewish prophets. What an Isaiah, a Micah, had not dared to
hope, Nahum and Zephaniah saw approach and actually happen. Nahum
is convinced that the fate of Thebes will soon overtake Nineveh.
Her merchants, multiplied as the stars of heaven, her crowned, her
captains, her whole people, they shall be scattered like flying
grasshoppers, and no man shall gather them. “All that hear the bruit
of thee shall clap their hands over thee: for upon whom hath not thy
wickedness passed continually?” (Nahum iii. 19.) And Zephaniah (ii.
13-15), his contemporary, sees with satisfaction the desolation of the
proud city, who thought herself so safe and boasted herself to be the
first and the only one, but now had become desolate and a place for
beasts, in whose ruins the bittern and the screech-owl lodge.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[27] [It is now believed that these two kings were one and the same
person. See Professor Hilprecht in _Zeitschrift für Assyriologie_, Vol.
IV, p. 164 _et seq._ “The name of this king (Asshur-etil-ili),” says
Professor Rogers, “was originally read Bel-zakir-ishkun.”]

[28] [The most recent revelations in Assyrian history incline
the authorities to the belief that Saracus is identical with
Sin-shar-ishkun.]

CHAPTER VI. RENASCENCE AND FALL OF BABYLON

“Belshazzar’s grave is made,
His kingdom passed away,
He, in the balance weighed,
Is light and worthless clay,
The shroud his robe of state,
His canopy the stone;
The Mede is at his gate,
The Persian on his throne.”--BYRON’S “VISION OF BELSHAZZAR.”

Nowhere is there a more striking illustration of national regeneration
than is furnished by the story of the new Babylonian Empire. Freed from
Assyrian thraldom, Babylon, the old, old city, came forward to take the
place of the fallen Nineveh as the world-metropolis.

It has been customary to think and speak of the new Babylonian Empire
as evidencing the rejuvenation of an old people. In one sense this view
has full validity. But it must not be supposed that the new Babylonians
who came to power when Nineveh fell were the _bona fide_ descendants
of the rulers of old Babylonia. New blood had made itself felt in the
old race; indeed, without its influence it is highly improbable that
the rejuvenation could have been effected. The outsiders who made their
influence felt with such potency to restore and rejuvenate the old
empire, are known as the Chaldeans. The precise origin of this people
is in doubt. It is held to be established, however, that they were
Semitic, and hence could claim cousinship with the Babylonians and
Assyrians. They inhabited the Sea Lands to the south of Mesopotamia at
an early date, and have been supposed to come originally from Arabia.
They are heard of from time to time in Babylonian and Assyrian annals
as a half-barbaric and often troublesome people, divided into various
tribes or clans or petty principalities, bearing such unfamiliar names
as Bit-Silani, Bit-Sa’alli, and Bit-Sala.

It is supposed by modern orientalists that the Chaldeans long had their
eyes upon the fertile regions of the North, and even, from time to
time, been presumptuous enough to cross swords with the Babylonians
and Assyrians in the hope of dethroning them. Certain it is that the
rulers of the North had at various times waged war against their less
civilised cousins of the Sea Lands. Yet the evidence does not seem
to be very clear as to the precise share which the Chaldeans took in
the new movement inaugurated in Babylon with the death of the last
really powerful Assyrian king, Asshurbanapal. The name of the new ruler
who now came to power in Babylon was Nabopolassar; but it cannot be
asserted with confidence that he was of Chaldean origin. It is held,
however, that the influences that dominated the kingdom under his
reign were clearly Chaldean; though considering the vagueness that
surrounds the entire subject, it must be admitted that this assertion
is much easier to make than to prove. Still, all that we know about the
degeneration of old nations elsewhere, and the extreme difficulty of
resuscitating a senescent people, except by a mixture of races, tends
to confirm the theory that a race relatively new to civilisation was
chiefly instrumental in working the miracle of Babylonian regeneration.

In any event, the people who for something less than a century
made Babylon a great centre of world-influence were known to their
contemporaries and to succeeding generations as Chaldeans rather than
as Babylonians. Just to what extent the old Babylonian people shared
in the new work, can perhaps never be known; but the question is
relatively unimportant, because in any event it was a people of the
same old Semitic stock that carried on the historic story.

The most brilliant period of the new Babylonian Empire came soon
after the fall of Nineveh, in the reign of the world-famous king,
Nebuchadrezzar, the monarch who built the marvellous wall about the
city and the fabulous hanging gardens; the conqueror who overthrew the
Phœnicians and carried the Israelites into captivity.

A peculiar interest attaches to the period of the immediate successors
of Nebuchadrezzar because the Babylonian captivity of the Israelites
still continued, to which the Hebrew writers made such extended
references. The famous account in the Book of Daniel of the feast of
Belshazzar, with its brief but graphic reference to the alleged tragic
end of the Babylonian king, and the overthrow of Babylon itself at
the hands of “Darius the Mede,” have furnished never-to-be-forgotten
pictures to all subsequent generations. The modern archæologist has
rudely shattered some of these treasured images. Thus the Book of
Daniel makes allusion to the overthrow of Babylon in these words:
“Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords,
and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the
wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father
Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that
the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink
therein.… In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.
And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two
years old.” (Daniel v. 1, 2, 30, 31.)

[Sidenote: [555 B.C.]]

But within the past generation inscriptions have come to light
proving, to the amazement of a keenly interested world, that no king
named Belshazzar ever reigned in Babylon; and that the name of the
monarch overthrown by Cyrus the Persian or Elamite--not by “Darius
the Mede”--was Nabonidus. Nabonidus had a son, Belshazzar, but he
never ruled. This Nabonidus was not the son of Nebuchadrezzar or his
immediate successor, three successive rulers after Nebuchadrezzar
having reigned before he came to the throne. It is clear from
inscriptions of Nabonidus and of Cyrus his conqueror that Babylon
was overthrown without a struggle. A cylinder inscription by Cyrus
tells the story: the first part of which, translated by the Rev. C.
J. Ball, is as follows: “The continual offering he made to cease …
he (es)tablished in the cities the worship of Merodach, the King of
the Gods, he exalted (?) His name … by a yoke unrelaxing he ruined
them all. At their lamentation the Lord of the Gods waxed very wroth
… the Gods who dwelt among them forsook Their abode. In wrath because
he brought them into Shu-anna (_i.e._ Babylon), Merodach … He turned
towards all the districts whose dwellings were thrown down. And (to)
the people of Shinar and Accad, who were become as dead, He turned (His
regard?): He showed compassion upon all the lands together. He looked
for, He found him, yea, He sought out an upright Prince, after His own
heart, whom He took by his hand, Cyrus, king of the city of Anshan;
He named his name; to the kingdom of the whole world He called him by
na(me). The land of Qutû (and) all the Umman-Manda he humbled to his
feet; the Blackheaded folk, whom his hands subdued,--in faithfulness
and righteousness he looked after them. Merodach, the great Lord, the
guardian of His people, joyfully beheld his good deeds and his upright
heart. To His own city Babylon his march He commanded; He put them on
the road to Tin-tir (_i.e._ Babylon); like a comrade and helper He
marched at his side. His great hosts, whose number like the waters of a
river could not be known, with their weapons girded on, advanced beside
him. Without skirmish or battle He made him enter Shu-anna. His own
city Babylon He spared from distress; Nabonidus the king, who feared
him not, He delivered up to him. The people of Tin-tir in a body, the
entire land of Shinar and Accad, the nobles and grandees, bowed down
before Him, kissed His feet, rejoiced at His accession; their faces
brightened.”

The accounts given by Nabonidus himself confirm this record of Cyrus.
It would appear, then, that the Hebrew chroniclers, gifted rather
with the poetical imagination than with the calm historical sense,
confused the Babylonian conquest of Cyrus with a later campaign of
his successor, Darius. But no mere substitution of the cold facts of
history can ever rob the world of the beautiful traditional picture
of the feast of Belshazzar. Here, as elsewhere, myth must be allowed
to hold its own as the embodiment of the spirit of history. Myth and
history coincide as to the fact that the old dynasty in new Babylonia
was overthrown. And with that overthrow the sceptre of world-influence
passed from the hands of the Semitic race forever.

CONTEMPORARY CHRONOLOGY

[Sidenote: [615-538 B.C.]]

The epoch of the new Babylonian Empire covers a period of time from
about 615 to 538 B.C., approximately three-quarters of a century. We
have already, at the beginning of this book, outlined the position of
contemporary civilisations during the entire sweep of Assyrian and
new Babylonian history; but it may be well briefly to recapitulate
the position of other nations during the epoch of new Babylonian
domination, that a clearer picture of the time may be before the eyes
as we view the details of Babylonian history.

While reading of the achievements of Nebuchadrezzar and his successors,
then, it will be well to recall that:

_Egypt_ under the XXVIth Dynasty enjoys a brief period of
rejuvenescence as a world-power; curiously linked in time with the new
awakening of her old-time rival, Babylonia;

In _India_, at about this period, Buddha lives and founds the religion
that is to bear his name;

_Greece_ and _Rome_ are in a relative youth, not yet reckoning time
from a fixed era, and only beginning to make secure records on which
future generations may build. Their civilisation does not compare
in importance with that of Babylon, which is the recognised centre
of culture, looking upon these “new” nations in the west as utter
barbarians;

_Phœnicia_ is far past the zenith of its power; Samaria has fallen;
Jerusalem is to become subject to Babylon itself;

In _Asia Minor_, Sardis, the capital of Lydia, is waxing in power.

But the coming nation of the epoch is _Persia_, which turns the tables
on its fellow, Manda, hitherto the stronger of the half-civilised pair
of nations, and which finally, under Cyrus, captures Babylon itself,
and assumes undisputed sovereignty over the whole of southwestern
Asia.[a]

NABOPOLASSAR AND NEBUCHADREZZAR

[Sidenote: [626-562 B.C.]]

Nabopolassar (Nabu-apal-usur, _i.e._ “Nabu protect the heir”),
according to the Ptolemaic canon, reigned from 625 B.C. (the date
of his accession thus being 626) until 605 B.C., in which year he
died, shortly before the victory won by his son Nebuchadrezzar
over the Egyptians at Carchemish, having been in ill health before
Nebuchadrezzar started for Syria. We have seen how immediately upon
his accession to the throne of the Pharaohs, Neku II profited by the
impotence of the Assyrian kingdom, which was enfeebled to the last
degree by long years of Scythian incursions, to penetrate into the
Hamath district.

[He encountered the army of Judah at Meggido--the same historical
locality where, a thousand years before, Tehutimes III had vanquished
the combined forces of Syria and Phœnicia. The king of Jerusalem was
slain on the field, and his army, retreating in terror to the capital,
made his young son, Jehoahaz, king, ignoring the claims of Eliakim,
the eldest, probably because he was in favour of submitting to Neku.
Pharaoh now proceeded, unmolested, to Riblah in Cœle-Syria, where he
made his headquarters, and confident in his mastery over Judah, ordered
Jehoahaz to appear before him. When the new king arrived he was thrown
into chains and Eliakim put in his place under the name of Jehoiakim.]

Neku’s ambition was next directed to the conquest of the whole of
northern Syria; a project which he actually accomplished to a great
extent during the years 608 to 606, whilst the Babylonians, with their
Median allies, were besieging Nineveh. He must certainly have advanced
as far as Carchemish, since that was the spot where the Egyptian and
Babylonian forces met in 605. The fate of Syria was sealed thereby; it
became a province of Babylonia even as it had once been a province of
Assyria, and Judah became a vassal kingdom to Babylonia.

[Sidenote: [602-587 B.C.]]

Thus Nabopolassar, who died in 605, while his son was on the march for
Syria, only just missed the satisfaction of seeing the new kingdom of
Babylonia which he had founded enter upon the heritage of the Assyrian
Empire, out of which the western province could least of all be spared.
He did not see it: instead the news of his father’s death reached the
young Nebuchadrezzar (Nabu-kudur-usur, _i.e._ “Nabu protect the crown”)
shortly after the victory of the Egyptians, which decided the fate of
Syria for the time being; and leaving his generals to follow up the
victory, he had to return to Babylon in hot haste to assume the royal
dignity that awaited him. There he received the crown at the hands of
the great nobles without encountering any obstacles, and for the long
period of his glorious reign, which lasted forty-two years (604-562)
he guided the destinies of his country, extended and strengthened its
borders, and thus made Babylonia a great power, and Babylon one of the
most splendid and illustrious cities of ancient times. If we further
take into consideration that it was he who likewise conquered Syria for
Babylonia, we cannot but acknowledge his claim to be counted the first
ruler who entered upon the full possession of Assyria and consolidated
it.

Amid all the many and sometimes detailed inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar
which have been found in the ruins of Babylon and other cities, not
one contains any account of his campaigns; but from a passage in the
preamble of the great inscription of the kingdom, we see that in spite
of his preference for building and other peaceful labours he was a
mighty warrior. It runs: “Under his mighty protection (_i.e._ that of
the god Marduk) I have passed through far countries, distant mountains,
from the upper sea even to the lower sea (_i.e._ probably from the
Gulf of Issus to the mouth of the Nile) far-reaching ways, closed
paths where my step was stayed and my foot could not stand, a road of
hardships, a way of thirst; the disobedient I subdued and took the
adversaries captive, the land I guided aright, the people I caused to
be seized; I carried away the bad and the good among them, silver and
gold and precious stones, copper, palm wood and cedar wood, whatsoever
was costly, in gorgeous abundance; the products of the mountains and
that which the sea yielded, brought I as a gift of great weight, as a
rich tribute into my city of Babylon before his (the god’s) face.” And
although the different campaigns of which we know are distributed over
almost the whole of his long reign, we find mention of only one short
war against Aahmes of Egypt in the thirty-seventh year of it.

With regard to these wars, most of them aimed at completing the work
begun at the battle of Carchemish, and more particularly at preventing
further interference on the part of Egypt, and at banishing her
influence completely from Babylonian territory, which had now been
extended to her very frontier. It was probably in the third year
after Nebuchadrezzar’s battle (therefore in 602 B.C.) that Syria was
completely incorporated into the Babylonian kingdom, leaving him free
to think of displaying his power in the eyes of Jehoiakim, whom Neku
had set up as king in Jerusalem, by advancing against him with an army.
The desired result promptly followed, and from 601 to 599 Jehoiakim
became tributary to the king of the Chaldeans. In the fourth year, 598,
the king of Judah withheld the tribute, probably at the instigation of
Egypt. When the Babylonians invaded Judah (probably at the beginning
of 587) Jehoiakim was just dead; his son Jehoiachin (known also as
Jeconiah) was besieged at Jerusalem and, seeing further resistance
useless, surrendered to Nebuchadrezzar. He was carried away captive to
Babylon with his family and nearly all the princes, warriors, masons,
and smiths; but, once there, their lot was no hard one, for they
were permitted to settle without molestation and to exercise their
own religion. A great number of them lived thus at Tel-Abib (_i.e._
“heap of ruins”) on the canal Chebar [a canal found near Nippur and
now called Kabaru] as we know from the chronicles of Ezekiel, who was
one of them. Jerusalem was not destroyed, but Jehoiachin’s kinsman,
Mattaniah (another son of Josiah), was set over the few inhabitants
that remained there as a vassal of Babylonia, under the new name of
Zedekiah (595-587). The newly installed sovereign was a weak man, who
by his own good will would have been a loyal vassal; but ultimately
in spite of the warnings of the prophet Jeremiah, who fully realised
the true state of affairs, he threw in his lot with the war party, who
relied on the help of Egypt, and rebelled against Babylonia.

In 589 Psamthek II (Neku’s successor) himself was succeeded by the
young and warlike Uah-ab-Ra (the Hophra of the Bible and the Apries
of the Greeks), who sent a fleet to the assistance of the Phœnicians
in an attempt they made to revolt. Thereupon Nebuchadrezzar marched
his troops into Syria and set up his headquarters at Riblah, the old
headquarters of Neku, so as to operate from thence against Zedekiah,
Tyre, and Pharaoh. How Jerusalem was besieged (589-587) and destroyed,
how in the meantime Uah-ab-Ra’s army was vanquished, and how Tyre
was then invested (the siege lasting thirteen years) and forced to
pay tribute, if no more--all these events are likewise known to us
only from other sources than cuneiform inscriptions, and the detailed
description of them, at least in so far as they relate to the downfall
of the kingdom of Judah, and thus form a part of (not the opening era
of) Jewish history, lies ready to every reader’s hand in the books of
the Bible of which we have given a brief outline. As for Tyre (after
the siege) she remained under the rule of her own kings, though as a
vassal to Babylonia. All the worse was the fate which, in 587, overtook
Judah, whose hopes had been so cruelly deceived, for not only was the
city utterly destroyed (see the moving laments in the so-called Book of
Lamentations), and the king, blinded and fettered, carried away into
captivity after seeing his sons slain before his face; but with the
exception of the poor, the day labourers absolutely necessary for the
cultivation of the soil and vineyards, all who had escaped the previous
deportation were carried away by the Babylonian king to the “waters of
Babylon” (Psalm 137).

[Sidenote: [587-568 B.C.]]

[While his soldiers were keeping their long and weary station under the
walls of Tyre, Nebuchadrezzar turned his attention to another important
matter. Because the people of Judah and Tyre had looked to Egypt for
assistance, they had given the Babylonian king much trouble. Egypt,
therefore, must suffer for this; so that she would not feel inclined to
repeat her action of sending an army to Zedekiah’s aid. A new Egyptian
campaign was planned.]

A fragment at the beginning of which a prayer (“Thou destroyest
my enemies and makest my heart to rejoice”) was set down, assigns
the above-mentioned campaign in Egypt to the year 568 (_i.e._ the
thirty-seventh year of the reign). The passage which refers to
it,--“Year 37 of Nebuchadrezzar, king of (Babylonia to the land of)
Misir, (_i.e._ Egypt) to give a battle, he marched and (his troops
A-ma)-a-su, the king of Misir assembled and …” leaves no doubt that
Aahmes or Amasu is the king here meant, for only the year before, in
569, Aahmes had revolted against Uah-ab-Ra and forced him to recognise
him (Aahmes) as co-regent. He soon afterward became sole ruler in
Egypt; and, as such, he died in the year 528, shortly before the
conquest of Egypt by the Persians. Nebuchadrezzar meanwhile contented
himself with humbling the pride of Egypt, and refrained from conquering
the country, which even had it been successfully done would but have
raised difficulties for the Babylonian kingdom to cope with. His chief
aim, to keep Syria and Palestine clear of Egyptian influence, was
attained by the campaign.

Of Nebuchadrezzar’s other military expeditions, the one mentioned
(Jeremiah xlix. 28-33) against the Bedouins of Kedar and the Arab
tribes, which had settled to the east of Palestine, leads us again to
the borders of the Occident. The town of Teredon, at the mouth of the
Euphrates, was founded at this time as a bulwark against the Bedouins,
and by reason of its situation became, like Gerrha, on the Persian
Gulf, and Thapsacus, Tiphsah, on the middle Euphrates, a mercantile
station of some importance. Not until the time of the New Kingdom
of Babylonia did a flourishing trade develop along the Euphrates,
with Armenia and the east coast of Arabia for its extreme poles; and
from the reign of Nebuchadrezzar dates the part played by Babylon,
his capital, as the greatest emporium of the ancient world, and the
proverbial meaning which the name of Babylon has retained down to our
times, to signify the worst aspects (luxury and license) of a capital
city.

From Babylon and the mention of her trade it would be a natural
transition to the buildings erected by Nebuchadrezzar, if we were
not first bound to mention the northwest and east, which are of
extreme importance from an historical point of view, and in which
Nebuchadrezzar took the part of a mediator, if no more, between the
Medes and the Lydians.

[Sidenote: [604-560 B.C.]]

To return to the buildings erected by Nebuchadrezzar, which, up to this
time form the subject of nearly all the inscriptions discovered, the
latter all show his character in a favourable light. In all we find
evidence of the paternal care of a prince zealous for the welfare of
his dominions, and of a sincere and heartfelt piety which by no means
leaves the impression that it is a mere form of speech. We can listen
to his own words prefixed to his account of the buildings he erected
and revealing something of his heart.

“Since the Lord, Marduk, created me, and made fair preparation for
my birth from the womb, from that time forward, when I was born and
created, I have visited the holy places of God, and walked in the ways
of God. To Marduk, my Lord, I prayed; I took up my parable in prayer to
him, the speech of my heart came (before him) to him I spoke: ‘Eternal,
Holy, Lord of all things, for the king, whom thou lovest, whose name
thou callest according to thy good pleasure, guide his name well, lead
(or guard) him in a straight path. I, the prince, who obeyeth thee, am
the work of thy hands, thou didst create me, thou didst commit unto
me the royal dominion over the whole people, according to thy grace,
O Lord which thou sendest forth upon all. Teach me to love thy august
sovereignty, let the fear of thy divinity be in my heart, bestow
(upon me) that which is pleasing unto thee, thou who preparest my
life.’ Thereupon the Highest, the Glorious, the first among the gods,
the august Marduk, heard my supplication and accepted my prayers, he
caused his great majesty to rule favourably, he caused the fear of God
to abide in my heart, I fear his majesty.” And the conclusion runs:
“Babylon, the capital of the land, I established with the hills of the
forest. To Marduk, my lord, I prayed and lifted up my hand: ‘Marduk,
lord, the first of gods, thou mighty prince, thou hast created me, thou
hast committed to me royal dominion over the multitude of the people,
I love the majesty of thy courts as my precious life. Save thy city of
Babylon. I have made me no other capital out of all inhabited places.
As I love the fear of thy divinity and seek thy majesty, so incline
graciously to my supplication (literally, to the raising of my hands),
hear my prayers. I am the King, the Restorer, who delights thy heart,
the zealous ruler, the restorer of all thy cities. At thy command,
O merciful Marduk, may the house which I have built endure to all
eternity, may I satisfy myself in its abundance. May I come to old age
therein, may I satisfy myself with my glory, may I receive the weighty
tribute therein from the kings of all regions of the world and from all
mankind. From the horizon of the heavens unto the meridian and at (?)
the rising sun may I have no enemies nor possess any adversaries (lit.
them that put me in fear). May my posterity bear rule therein over the
black-headed people to all eternity.’”

Nebuchadrezzar, himself, attached the greatest importance to the
restoration of the temples of E-sagila and E-zida, as being the most
ancient sanctuaries of Babylon, and in his briefest inscriptions, the
stamp-marks on bricks, whether used for the building of these two
temples or any other edifice, always had added to his title of king,
that of restorer of the temples of E-sagila and E-zida. Of greater
interest to us, however, since we can still admire the ruins of it,
is a temple which is only briefly referred to in a few words in the
long inscription, but of which we have a detailed account in another,
shorter inscription, namely, the Temple of the Seven Spheres of Heaven
and Earth, which was built in seven stories near (or as a ziggurat of)
E-zida at Borsippa.

But although Nebuchadrezzar devoted most thought to his beloved Babylon
(and to Borsippa) he in nowise neglected other seats of worship of the
country. The temple of the Sun, at Sippar, the temple of a god as yet
unidentified, in the city of Baz (Paszitu), the temple of Idi-Anu (the
Eye of Anu), at Dilbat, the temple of Lugal-Amarda (Marad), E-Anna,
the temple of Ishtar, at Erech, the temple of the Sun, at Larsa, and
the temple of the Moon, at Erech, are enumerated one after another
as having been rebuilt by Nebuchadrezzar. With better right than his
father he calls himself on one of the Abu-Habba cylinders “the ruler of
Sumer and Accad, who laid the foundation of the land” (or as Winckler
translates it, “made fast the foundations of the land”), for in truth
his new creations extended over the whole territory that had been Sumer
and Accad as we are familiar with it in ancient Babylonian history,
from the reigns of Ur-Ba’u of Ur onward. Under him, after a long sleep
(lasting in places for a thousand years) among her ruins, the whole of
Babylonia kept the festival of her resurrection, and joyous sacrificial
hymns resounded through the length and breadth of the land during
Nebuchadrezzar’s long and prosperous reign, as in the days of her
distant prime.

To complete the picture of Nebuchadrezzar’s capital, we must in
conclusion cast a glance at the vast fortifications with which this
king girdled the city he had created, and so insured it against the
most formidable assault. Nebuchadrezzar did not rest satisfied with
completely restoring and enlarging these fortifications (a work
that his father had begun, since they had again been impaired); he
included a strip of arable land some four thousand cubits (about two
to three kilometres) in breadth, on the farther side of the rampart
Nimitti-Bel, within another “mountain high” wall, and made it a part
of the outworks, thus casting a gigantic threefold girdle of ramparts
(or walls) and moats about the city. Nor was that enough: “To quell
the countenance of the enemy that he should not harass the (threefold)
encompassment of Babylon, I surrounded the land with mighty streams,
comparable unto the waters of the sea; to cross them was as it were to
cross the ocean. To render an inundation from their midst (the midst of
these artificial courses) impossible, I heaped up masses of earth, I
set up brick dams round about them.”

And herewith we must take leave of this truly great ruler, and turn to
his successors, who, unhappily, did not resemble him, and of whom the
last, Nabonidus by name, could alone be compared to him in his zeal for
the restoration and adornment of the various temples of the country,
though in all other respects he fell far below the greatness of his
mighty ancestor. This inferiority is the reason that the New Babylonian
Kingdom hurried so swiftly to its unexpected end.

THE FOLLOWERS OF NEBUCHADREZZAR

[Sidenote: [560-555 B.C.]]

We know from the Ptolemaic canon, Hommel goes on, that after
Nebuchadrezzar’s death (562) Illoarudamos (probably a clerical error
for Illoarudakos, _i.e._ Amil-Marduk), the biblical Evil-Merodach,
ascended the throne and died in the second year of his reign (560).
Berosus calls him a son of Nebuchadrezzar, and describes his short
reign as unjust and licentious, this being the reason why he was
murdered by Neriglissor (Nergal-shar-usur), his sister’s husband, and
thus son-in-law to Nebuchadrezzar. As a matter of fact, in direct
confirmation of the chronological statements of the Ptolemaic canon,
the only contract tablets that have been discovered of the reign of
this king, date from his accession, about July 22, 560 B.C. He is
mentioned in the Old Testament, in the last four verses of the 2nd
Book of Kings; “And it came to pass in the seven and thirtieth year
of the captivity of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, in the twelfth month,
on the seven and twentieth day of the month, that Evil-Merodach, king
of Babylon, in the year that he began to reign, did lift up the head
of Jehoiachin, king of Judah, out of prison. And he spake kindly to
him and set his throne above the throne of the kings that were with
him in Babylon; and changed his prison garments, and he did eat bread
continually before him all the days of his life. And his allowance was
a continual allowance given him of the king, a daily rate for every
day, all the days of his life.” It is evident that the Bible here
refers to Amil-Marduk, for on the twenty-seventh Adar 560 this king was
still upon the throne (see the above date, 4th Abu), whilst the first
well-authenticated date of Neriglissor is 25th Marsheshwan, _i.e._
about 10th November of that same year.

From the reign of Amil-Marduk we have no inscription, but we are
in better case as regards his successor, Nergal-shar-usur (the
Nergal-sharezer of the Bible; Berosus, Neriglissor, Ptolemaic
canon, Neriga-solasar). He reigned from 559-556, for there are two
inscriptions on cylinders and a brief inscription on brick which we may
assign to this reign. The subject appears to be some restoration in
the shrine of E-zida at Babylon. Where the inscription again becomes
legible, the king gives an account of the construction of a canal, the
waters of which had gone away and withdrawn, and of palace building.

The following questions are suggested by these inscriptions. Firstly,
who was his father, the Bel-shum-ishkum twice mentioned in them? Let
it suffice here to note the possibility that he may be identical with
a former king of Assyria, the son of Asshurbanapal, who certainly
did not reign more than a few months. The chronology presents no
obstacle to the acceptance of this hypothesis. Let us then assume
that Bel-shum-ishkum was born about 645; he would then be about
twenty years of age at the death of Asshurbanapal, and about forty
at the fall of Nineveh, after which he probably found a refuge at
the Babylonian court. By that time (606) his son Nergal-shar-usur
might very well be about eighteen years old; if we take this for
granted, then the latter was thirty-seven in the year 587, in which
two persons of the same name (Nergal-sharezer, Jeremiah xxxix. 3) are
mentioned among Nebuchadrezzar’s nobles (one among the “princes” in
general, the other amongst the officials of highest rank), sixty-four
at his accession in 560 B.C. and not quite seventy when he died,
which gives a great show of probability to his identity with one or
other of these two Nergal-sharezers. Another question to which it
would be very interesting to find an answer is that of the wars of
Nergal-shar-usur, for, short as his reign was, it is evident from the
two cylinder inscriptions that he did wage wars. Unfortunately we have
no more exact information on the subject; but if we consider that as
early as the year 555, that is, only a year after Nergal-shar-usur’s
death, disorders of such magnitude had broken out in Mesopotamia, due
to the “Manda warriors” under the leadership of their king Ishtuvegu
(Astyages), that is to say, to Median hordes, that the Babylonians
appealed to Kurush (Cyrus), king of Anshan, who did, in fact, succeed
in driving the Medes back, we may be sure that the earliest incursions
of the Manda into Babylonian territory (of which Mesopotamia had
formed a part since the fall of Nineveh) took place in the reign of
Neriglissor. This hypothesis is directly confirmed by the tenor of
Nabonidus’ account of the invasion. In that case Neriglissor’s warlike
enterprises were not crowned with brilliant success, or at all events
did not expel the Manda from Mesopotamia altogether.

THE REIGN OF NABONIDUS (556-538 B.C.)

On the death of Neriglissor in 556, he was succeeded, according to
Berosus, by his son Labassarachos or Labarosoarchodos (in inscriptions
Labashi-Marduk), but it appears that a Babylonian of high rank,
Nabu-naidu (“Nabu is glorious”), the son of Nabu-balatsu-iqbi (“Nabu
hath foretold his life”), was immediately proclaimed king by an
opposition party, and although Labashi-Marduk made head against
Nabu-naidu (or Nabonidus, as he is usually known) for nine months, the
latter dates the beginning of his reign from the death of Neriglissor.
According to Berosus, Labashi-Marduk was a child, and fell victim to a
conspiracy, having already betrayed tokens of a bad disposition.

According to the Ptolemaic canon, Nabonidus reigned seventeen years,
which agrees with the circumstance that the latest of the numerous
contract tablets belonging to his reign up to this time discovered
are dated the 5th of Ulul (the middle of August) in his seventeenth
year. He concerned himself chiefly with the restoration of old temples
elsewhere than in Babylon, as those at Ur, Larsa, Sippar, and even at
Kharran in Mesopotamia, that is, the oldest sanctuaries in the country;
while in Babylon, where he certainly resided, if only at intervals,
he seems to have done nothing except to proceed with the building of
the walls on the river bank.[29] Nabonidus was actuated not merely
by religious motives, but by an interest in history and archæology,
which grew to be an absolute mania with him. His inscriptions give
us minute information as to how he dug and hunted for the foundation
cylinders of these primitive temples, nor does he fail to deal many
a sly hit at his predecessors (Nebuchadrezzar, for example), who had
not always conscientiously done this, and had consequently many a time
built something that was not in the original plan. When, after long
search, Nabonidus found these cylinders, often buried deep down in the
ground, he reproduced the tenor of them exactly, frequently giving the
precise number of years between his own reign and that of the ancient
Babylonian king in question, and so providing us with the most valuable
data for determining the earliest periods of Babylonian history. In
this way we have learned the date of Naram-Sim, the ancient king of
Agade, of Shagarakti-Buriash [sometimes read Shagarakti-Shuriash],
and lastly, as it would appear, of Khammurabi (although in this case
the computation is incorrect), together with many other data of
historical importance. For this reason the reign of Nabonidus is to us
among the most important in Babylonian history, but his passion for
archæology--which seems to have made him forget the world entirely,
and, in particular, overlook the danger with which the victories of
Cyrus menaced Babylonia--was of less service to himself, and ultimately
cost him his throne and liberty.

[Sidenote: [555-547 B.C.]]

We have already mentioned the fragment of the Babylonian chronicle
treating of the reign of Nabonidus and the conquest of Babylon and the
whole Babylonian empire by Cyrus. We will now regard the public events
of the reign of the last native king of Babylonia in the light of
this text. In the first year mention is made of a military expedition
with the object of subjugating a prince of whose name, unfortunately,
nothing (or at most the termination, _shu’ishshi_) has been preserved,
but whom we should, perhaps, be justified in regarding as the chieftain
of a Median tribe.

From the first section of the cylinder-inscription of Abu-Habba we
see that if, after the deliverance of Kharran, Nabonidus summoned his
troops from the frontier of Egypt and onward to the Gulf of Issus
and the Persian Gulf, to the work of building, or the collection of
building material; these were not military enterprises in the strict
sense of the term (and this is characteristic), but merely expeditions
for peaceful ends, which were all the easier for Nabonidus to achieve,
because, since the reign of Nebuchadrezzar the Babylonians had held
undisputed possession of the “Occident” right up to the Egyptian
frontier. The only exception to this rule seems to be the account of
the beginning of the first year (or the beginning of his reign) given
in the chronicle, where, among other things, it is said, “the king
summoned his warriors.” But this expedition was, in all likelihood,
only the less laborious gleaning left to Nabonidus after the conquest
of the Medes by Cyrus.

The next event narrated in the chronicle is the final defeat of the
Medes by Cyrus, which cannot, therefore, have taken place later than
the sixth year of the reign of Nabonidus, that is, 550 B.C., and may
have been earlier.

The account of the seventh year is difficult to understand, but this
much is plain, that in those years Nabonidus was not present at the
New Year’s celebration at E-sagila, nay, that the festival in question
did not take place at all. We do not know why this was so, but we may
conjecture that the reason was a hierarchical revolution, a kind of
vote of want of confidence in the king, who was pursuing his works
and researches in the temples of Sippar, Ur, Larsa, and other cities,
heedless of the danger that menaced the country from Cyrus.

[Sidenote: [547-538 B.C.]]

Of greater importance, historically, is the account of the ninth
year (547 B.C.). After repeating the statement concerning the
non-celebration of the feast of Bel, it proceeds: On the 5th of Nisan
the king’s mother died in the fortified camp on the far side (Sha am?
= sha ammat) of the Euphrates above Sippar; for three days mourning
prevailed and lamentation, in the month of Sivan there was mourning
(official) for the queen-mother throughout the (whole) land of Accad.
In the Nisan (of this year) Kurush (Cyrus), king of the land of Parsu,
had summoned his warriors and crossed the Tigris below Arbela, in order
to invade Asia Minor in the following month, Airu, “from the king he
took away his silver and goods, his own children he caused to mount the
[funeral pyre], after his children and the king (he himself, Cyrus?)
were therein.”

We know from Herodotus that an expedition of Cyrus against King
Crœsus of Lydia took place at this very time, and ended with the
siege and reduction of Sardis and the fall of the kingdom of Lydia,
after an indecisive battle had been fought in Cappadocia, near Pteria
(Boghaz-köi), a place since made famous by the discovery of a Hittite
bas-relief. Nabonidus had joined the alliance between Lydia, Sparta and
Aahmes of Egypt, on which Crœsus relied when he began the war against
Cyrus; probably he thought he could make an easy conquest of Media and
Elam after the defeat he expected Cyrus to suffer in Asia Minor. The
Babylonians do not seem to have taken any active part in the struggle
after Cyrus’ speedy victory over the Lydians, but nevertheless with
that victory the fate of Babylonia was practically sealed. For it was
obvious that Cyrus, who had not only ruled over the whole of Media,
since the taking of Ecbatana, but was also undisputed master of Armenia
right up to the western coast of Asia Minor, and thus had really become
emperor (or great king) would take the first opportunity of seizing
upon Babylonia and its wealthy Syrian provinces. Moreover, from this
time forth he had the best of reasons for regarding Nabonidus as a
disloyal neighbour who deserved condign punishment.

In the tenth and eleventh years the chronicle first notes the omission
of the Feast of Bel in exactly the same terms as in the case of
the seventh and ninth years, and when the narration begins we find
ourselves in the seventeenth and last year of the reign of Nabonidus
(539 B.C.). After a series of sentences which are very much defaced
the narrative proceeds: “In the month of Tammuz (June-July, 539),
Kurush [Cyrus] fought a battle at Kish (?) above the canal of Illat
(?) against the warriors of the land of Accad; the people of the land
of Accad rose up against the ranks of soldiers, on the 14th day (of
Tammuz) the city of Sippar was taken without a battle, Nabonidus fled.
On the 17th day (_i.e._ about July 5, 539), Ugbaru (Gobryas), governor
of Guti (_i.e._ the district to the east of Arbela), and the warriors
of Kurush marched into E-ki (Babylon); when Nabonidus thereupon
entrenched himself in E-ki (Babylon) he was taken captive. Even unto
the end of the month the _tukkimi_ (troops?) of the land of Guti
encompassed the gates of E-sagila, yet were not weapons of any sort
laid upon E-sagila and the (other) temples, nor was the embellishment
(_i.e._ the images and vessels of the temple) taken away. On the 3rd
of Marsheshwan (Arakhsamnu, _i.e._ about October 19), Kurush marched
into E-ki, the streets were filled in view of his entry, he established
peace in the city; Kurush proclaimed peace to the whole of Tintir
(Babylon), he set Ugbaru (Gobryas), his vicegerent, as vicegerent over
Babylon, and from the month Kislev even until Adar (November-December,
539--February-March, 538), he caused the gods of the land of Accad,
which Nabonidus had caused to be brought into Babylon, to be carried
back into their own places. In the same (?) month, on the 11th day,
Ugbaru went over and the king dies; from the 27th of the month Adar,
even to the 3rd of Nisan (the end of March, 538), there is mourning in
Accad, all the people loose (lit. cleave) their hair (?); on the 4th,
Kambujiya (Cambyses), the son of Kurush, goes to the temple of the city
(?) of Khadkalamasummu.…” What follows is defaced beyond translation,
and, to judge from the scraps of lines still decipherable, contains
nothing of historic interest; for example, it goes on to speak of the
temple of E-Anna at Erech.

[Sidenote: [538 B.C.]]

Thus we see that Babylon itself received King Cyrus with open arms, and
that, even as the Kossæans had usurped and long maintained the mastery
of Accad, so now the Persians superseded the native dynasty. The event
was therefore no new thing, and, as a matter of fact, Babylonian
history proceeds upon the old lines under Cyrus and his successors,
so that it is hard to see why most narratives should break off at
this point. The national literature and mode of writing continued
to flourish, but the history of Babylonia and Assyria, of which the
short-lived prosperity of the New Babylonian Kingdom was the last
chapter, concluded with the entry of Cyrus into Babylon; the subsequent
history of Babylonia is of local interest only, and has no further
significance for the world.

Lastly, as regards the important original Babylonian inscription of
the reign of Cyrus, which has been referred to before, it most fully
confirms the correctness of the impression made by the narrative of
the chronicle on every unprejudiced reader. The Babylonians, with the
hierarchy of the city of Babylon at their head, were utterly weary of
the feeble rule of Nabonidus, who does not seem even to have been of
the blood-royal, and hailed Cyrus as deliverer. At the bidding of Cyrus
the learned Babylonian scribes were charged to draw up an inscription,
and from its contents and wording (which can hardly have been dictated
by the king of Persia) we can clearly realise the view of the
situation taken by the priestly circles of the country (which governed
the populace). From the very beginning, defaced as it is, we perceive
that Nabonidus is made the scapegoat for everything. He is represented
with having sent forth “to Ur and the other cities oracles that did
not beseem them” (_i.e._ the gods), with “thinking daily upon evil”
(?), with having “caused the daily sacrifice to cease” and grossly
neglected the worship of the god Marduk; further, with having “let the
fortifications of Babylon fall into ruin, so that the lord of the gods
was greatly incensed in lamentation thereat,” as well as “with wrath
that he had brought in (into E-sagila) the gods (of other Babylonian
cities), who were thus constrained to forsake their (former) temples.

Then it came to pass that Marduk “looked upon his friend,” and “laid
hold of his hand, Kurush, king of Anshan, was his name called”; “he
subdued the land of the Kuti and the whole host of the Manda hordes
beneath his feet; he caused the black-headed people to fall into his
hands; in righteousness and justice came he unto them.” The god Marduk
“bade him to go to Babylon and take the road to Tintir, like a friend
and comrade went he at his side, the multitude of his troops, whereof
the number, like unto the waters of a river, was not known, girt on
the weapons and marched at his side; he (Marduk) caused him to enter
Shu-anna (Babylon) without strife or battle; Babylon, his city, he
spared with difficulty; Nabonidus the king, who did not fear him, he
gave over into his (Kurush’s) hands; all the people of Tintir, the
whole multitude of Sumer and Accad, the princes and the ruler who
submitted to his dynasty, kissed his feet and rejoiced in his royal
dominion; their faces shone. The Lord, who (draweth nigh) with succour,
who raiseth the dead to life, who in might bestoweth benefits upon the
whole earth, graciously blesseth him (Cyrus) and hath respect unto his
name. I, Kurush, King of the world, the mighty King, King of Babylon,
King of Sumer and Accad, King of the four quarters of the Earth, son
of Kambujiya, the great King, the King of the city of Anshan, grandson
of Kurush, the great King, the King of the city of Anshan, descendant
(_libbalbal_) of Sispis, the great King, the King of Anshan, the
eternal shoot of royalty, whose government Bel and Nabu love, to do
good unto his heart and for the superabundance of his joy.” Cyrus then
proceeds to lay stress upon his peaceful entry into Babylon and the
gladness and rejoicing amidst which he took up his abode there, on
how his troops occupied the city in peace and he himself visited the
other cities in peace, how he repaired their ruins and loosed their
chains (?), how Marduk was gracious towards him and his son Kambujiya
(Cambyses), and how, “at Marduk’s august bidding all the kings who
dwelt in royal chambers, from all quarters under heaven, from the upper
sea even to the lower sea, and likewise the kings of the Occident who
inhabit [the desert] and they that dwell in tents,” all brought weighty
tribute and kissed his feet at Babylon.

“From … even unto the cities of Asshur and Ishtar-Damiktu (?), the city
of Agade, the land of Ishnunnak, the cities of Zambaru, Mi-Turnu and
Dur-ilu, even unto the region of the land of Kuti, the cities on the
(bank of) Tigris, where their dwelling-place was from of old, I carried
the gods that dwelt there back to their places,” “the gods of Sumer,
and Accad, whom Nabonidus, to the great indignation of the lord of
gods, had caused to be brought into Babylon, I set once more into their
shrines in peace at the command of Marduk.”

Such is practically the tenor (and wording) of the Cyrus inscription,
which, considered in connection with the chronicle which has come down
to us from the reign of Nabonidus, sets this important matter of the
transference of the new Babylonian Empire to Cyrus the Achæmeniad in an
entirely new light. The termination of the political independence of
Babylon came about in quite other guise than the end of Nineveh; there
was no bloodshed, no siege, no judgment with fire and devastation. A
further act of peace was the permission given by Cyrus to the Jews who
dwelt in and about Babylon to return to the Holy Land. This is referred
to in the prophecy of the great unknown prophet of the latter half of
the Babylonian exile, the so-called Second Isaiah (Isaiah xliv. to
the end). “The Lord that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd and shall
perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built,
and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord
to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue
nations (the Medes and Lydians) before him; and I will loose the loins
of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates; and the gates shall
not be shut.”

The last words involuntarily recall to our minds the gates of Babylon,
which opened of themselves to the clement conqueror. And this prophecy,
no less than the conduct of the Babylonian priests, shows that Cyrus
was preceded by a reputation for clemency; for what would their ready
submission have availed the latter, had Cyrus been a savage conqueror
like other semi-barbaric tribal chiefs? Pillage and many horrors
would then have been the lot of Babylon when she opened her gates to
the foreign king. It seems probable, however, that the Babylonians
nourished the certain hope that Cyrus would spare them.

Thus the history of Babylonia closes peaceably upon the noble figure
of Cyrus, the Achæmeniad prince, who commands our warmest sympathies.
Planted in Babylonian soil at the beginning of time, the primitive
civilisation of the Sumerians was brought to the flower by the
Babylonian Semites, then further developed and transplanted to Asshur
and Nineveh. There the conditions grew ripe under which Assyria became
the ruling power of the world. After the fall of her empire, the
ancient mother-country became for a brief season the centre of the
civilisation which had taken its rise there two thousand years before,
and this civilisation now passed on as a legacy to the Persians,
not to die among them, but to revivify and educate, even as, on the
other hand, it drew fresh strength from the youthful vigour of the
Indo-Germanic race, untutored as yet, but abundantly endowed with all
intellectual gifts.[b]

FOOTNOTES

[29] [The authorities seem to be in dispute as to Nabonidus’ place of
residence. Professor Rogers says (_History of Babylon and Assyria_,
Vol. II, p. 361), “He [Nabonidus] did not reside at Babylon at all, but
at Tema, probably an insignificant place, with no other influence in
history.”]

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF OF EUNUCH WARRIORS IN BATTLE

(Found at Nimrud) (Layard)]

CHAPTER VII. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF BABYLONIA-ASSYRIA

WAR METHODS

The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering
spear: and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of
carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon
their corpses.--_Nahum_ iii. 3.

In following the political fortunes of Babylonia and Assyria we have
necessarily caught glimpses from time to time of the conditions of
civilisation which form everywhere the background of the picture.
But it is desirable to view some phases of this civilisation more in
detail, and an attempt will be made in the present book to summarise
these conditions as a whole, and to elaborate certain details in
reference to the more interesting or more important themes. Such an
attempt within the spacial limits necessarily imposed cannot hope to be
altogether satisfactory. In particular it must be borne in mind that we
are dealing, or attempting to deal, with a period of time not less than
three thousand years in extent, even if we consider only the minimum
epoch covered by a tolerably sure chronology.

It is obvious that in such a sweep of time numerous changes must
take place in the manners and customs of the people, and multiform
alterations must be developed in the various phases of civilisation.
This would necessarily be true even if the history of a single people
were involved. But, in point of fact, as we have seen, we have here
to do with four tolerably distinct peoples--the Sumerians, the
Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Chaldeans. To attempt a brief
exposition of the varied civilisations of these four peoples during
a period of several millenniums within brief bounds, would clearly
be a presumptuous task were full details accessible as to all the
periods involved. But we have already seen that such details are not
accessible. Meagre details have come down to us from the Sumerians,
and only less meagre ones Babylonians; and the reminiscences of the
Chaldeans, notwithstanding their later period in history, are but
slightly less vague. It is the Assyrians that must be looked to chiefly
for data that can afford us, at best, an inferential knowledge of
their predecessors; and we must all along remember that we are to a
certain extent seeing with Assyrian eyes in attempting to view the
Babylonian civilisation. Still, it should be recalled that important
changes in the manners and customs of any people are usually of slow
development everywhere, and that they were perhaps particularly so
here, because we have to do with the most conservative of races. The
Babylonians and Assyrians were own cousins to the Hebrews, and no
doubt partook in full measure of what Goethe styles the “obstinate
persistency” of that race. The main outline of their civilisation,
therefore, probably remained unchanged generation after generation.

On the other hand, it must be understood that the Sumerians, whatever
their precise racial affinities, were a very different people from
the Semitic races that superseded them. There is reason to believe
that they were essentially a creative race, whereas the Semites, and
in particular the Assyrians, were pre-eminently copyists and adapters
rather than originators. It would appear that all the chief features
of the later Assyrian civilisation were adumbrated, if not indeed
fully elaborated, in that early day when the Sumerians were dominant
in southern Babylonia. Even the cuneiform system of writing, with all
its extraordinary complexities, is believed by philologists to give
unequivocal evidence of Sumerian origin. But however correct this view
may be, we are constrained to view the Sumerians solely in the light of
their successors. The monumental remains exhumed from amid the ruins
of the palace of Asshurbanapal supply us with the chief documents for
the interpretation of a civilisation that had passed away something
like three thousand years before this palace itself or its documentary
treasures came into being.

This is somewhat as if one were to study the manners and customs of the
Italians of to-day in order to gain a knowledge of the civilisation of
Rome in the time of the Tarquinians. The parallel is really not quite
so complete as it might at first sight appear, for in many respects
practical civilisation changed more in the nineteenth century than
in all the previous centuries of recorded history. Beyond cavil, the
civilisation of the time of Sargon I had far greater resemblance to
the time of Asshurbanapal than the Rome of the early kings bears
to the Rome of King Victor Emmanuel. Nevertheless, we should bear
this corrective view in mind in the alleged attempt to deal with
Mesopotamian civilisation as a whole.

OUR SOURCES

The sources of our knowledge of Mesopotamian history have been pretty
fully discussed in previous chapters. Beyond the classical traditions,
our sole reliance must be placed upon the monuments. And of these the
sculptures are by far the most important in their bearings upon the
civilisation of the people.

Very little is said, except inferentially, by the written inscriptions,
that throws any definite light upon the manners and customs of the
people. But fortunately the Assyrians in particular were much given
to pictorial presentation of the scenes of at least certain features
of their everyday life; their bas-reliefs, therefore, furnish us with
the clearest index as to their life customs. The interpretation of
these bas-reliefs in this light was first taken up in detail by Sir
Henry Layard, and his expositions remain to this day the most complete
and satisfactory. We shall have occasion to turn frequently to his
pages in the present book, supplementing his accounts with certain
elaborations, in particular with reference to the religious and legal
documents, based on the more recent readings of the inscriptions.

However much the customs of the Babylonians and Assyrians may have
changed in the course of ages, there was one important regard in which
there was probably no conspicuous alteration from first to last.
This was the character of the government. Like other orientals, the
Mesopotamians had no conception of any government except a thoroughly
despotic one. They were ruled by kings whose authority was absolute,
and whose will was accepted as the sole law. A change of government
meant merely the overthrow of one king by some one who, attaining
supreme authority, was himself to be recognised as king.

But the assumption and retention of exclusive power in a body politic
by one individual presupposes a triumph of physical force. Kingship
in its oriental manifestation has its foundation in military power.
We find, therefore, that the Babylonian or Assyrian monarch is able
to make himself felt and remembered just in proportion as he is a
competent military leader. To be a great king he must be a great
conqueror. A record of conquests is substantially the whole story of
the royal annals. It is a very sanguinary and inhuman story as we have
seen.

The texts of the inscriptions deal with results rather than with
methods. We are told the names of peoples against whom warfare was
waged; lists of captives and booty are not forgotten, the idea being of
course to perpetuate the glory of the conqueror. To that end the name
of the conqueror himself is always given, the narrative being usually
told in the first person; but one never hears so much as the name of a
subordinate. It is the king alone to whom credit is to be given.

What the inscriptions lack in the way of reference to details of the
art of warfare is supplied by the Assyrian bas-reliefs. These represent
armies in action and enable us to form a very clear picture of the war
costumes, the weapons, and to a certain extent of the battle methods
of the Assyrians. In particular the details are given of the methods
of assault by which the Assyrians were accustomed to break down the
walls of a rebellious city. Battering-rams and scaling-towers are
depicted in the most realistic manner, and are a favourite subject of
the artist--partly, no doubt, because they lend themselves to pictorial
presentation; partly, perhaps, because the Assyrians excelled in this
particular phase of warfare. But other phases of warfare are by no
means overlooked. Even such details as the beheading or flaying alive
of captives are presented with gruesome realism.

For the reason already stated, our text will have to do chiefly with
the art of war as practised by the Assyrians, rather than by their
predecessors. Whether any of the implements or methods employed in this
relatively late period originated with the Assyrians themselves, we
have no present means of deciding. The presumption is, however, that
the Assyrian king pursued the art of war in much the same way it had
been practised by the old Babylonian kings from time immemorial.[a]

As the Assyrians possessed disciplined and organised troops, it is
probable that they were also acquainted, to a certain extent, with
military tactics, and that their battles were fought upon some kind of
system. We know that such was the case with the Egyptians; and their
monuments show that amongst their enemies, also, there were nations
not unacquainted with the military science. They had bodies of troops
in reserve; they advanced and retreated in rank, and performed various
manœuvres. Although, in the Assyrian sculptures, we have no attempt
at an actual representation of the general plan of a battle, as in
some Egyptian bas-reliefs, yet from the order in which the soldiers
are drawn up before the castle walls, and from the phalanx which they
then appear to form, it seems highly probable that similar means were
adopted, to resist the assaults of the enemy in the open field.

The king himself, attended by his vizier, his eunuchs, and principal
officers of state, was present in battle, and not only commanded, but
took an active part in the affray. Even [the traditional] Sardanapalus,
when called upon to place himself at the head of his armies to meet the
invading [traditional] Medes, showed, a courage equal to the occasion,
and repulsed his enemies. Like the Persian monarchs who succeeded, him
in the dominion of Asia, the Assyrian king was accompanied to the war,
however distant his seat might be, by his wives, his concubines, and
his children, and by an enormous retinue of servants. Even his nobles
were similarly attended. Their couches were of gold and silver, and the
hangings of the richest materials. Vessels of the same precious metals
were used at their tables; their tents were made of the most costly
stuffs, and were even adorned with precious stones. The canopy or tent
of Holofernes was of purple, gold, and emeralds and precious stones;
and every man had gold and silver (vessels) out of the king’s house.
(Judith ii. 18.) This book contains an interesting account of the
luxurious manner of living of the great Assyrian warriors, confirming
what has been said in the text, and showing that the Persians were, in
this respect, as almost in every other, imitators of the Assyrians.
Herodotus (Lib. IX., c. 82 and 83) describes the equipage, furnished
with gold and silver, and with various coloured hangings, and the gold
and silver couches and tables, found in the tents of Mardonius after
the defeat of the Persian army. They had been left by Xerxes when he
fled from Greece. They were also accompanied by musicians, who are
represented in the sculptures as walking before the warriors, on their
triumphant return from battle.

The army was followed by a crowd of sutlers, servants, and grooms; who,
whilst adding to its bulk, acted as an impediment upon its movements,
and carried ruin and desolation into the countries through which it
passed. As this multitude could not depend entirely for supplies upon
the inhabitants, whom they unmercifully pillaged, provisions in great
abundance, as well as live-stock, were carried with them. Holofernes,
in marching from Nineveh with his army, took with him “camels and asses
for their carriage, a very great number, and sheep, and oxen, and goats
without number, for their provision; and plenty of victuals for every
man.”

Quintus Curtius thus describes the march of a Persian army: The signal
was given from the tent of the king, on the top of which, so as to be
seen by all, was placed an image of the sun, in crystal. The holy fire
was borne on altars of silver, surrounded by the priests, chanting
their sacred hymns. They were followed by three hundred and sixty-five
youths, according to the number of the days in the year, dressed in
purple garments. The chariot, dedicated to the supreme deity, or to
the sun, was drawn by snow-white horses, led by grooms wearing white
garments, and carrying golden wands. The horse especially consecrated
to the sun was chosen from its size. It was followed by ten chariots,
embossed with gold and silver, and by the cavalry of twelve nations,
dressed in their various costumes, and carrying their peculiar arms.
Then came the Persian immortals, ten thousand in number, adorned
with golden chains, and wearing robes embroidered with gold, and
long-sleeved tunics, all glittering with precious stones. At a short
interval fifteen thousand nobles, who bore the honourable title of
relations of the king, walked in garments which, in magnificence and
luxury, more resembled those of women than of men. The doryphori (a
chosen company of spearmen) preceded the chariot in which the king
himself sat, high above the surrounding multitude. On either side
of this chariot were effigies of the gods in gold and silver. The
yoke was inlaid with the rarest jewels. From it projected two golden
figures of Ninus and Belus, each a cubit in length. A golden eagle with
outspread wings was placed between them. The king was distinguished,
from all those who surrounded him, by the magnificence of his robes,
and by the cidaris, or mitre, upon his head. By his side walked two
hundred of the most noble of his relations. Ten thousand warriors,
bearing spears whose staffs were of silver and heads of gold, followed
the royal chariot. The king’s led horses, forty in number, and thirty
thousand footmen, concluded the procession. At the distance of one
stadium followed the mother and wife of the king, in chariots. A crowd
of women, the handmaidens and ladies of the queens, accompanied them
on horseback. Fifteen cars, called armamaxæ, carried the children of
the king, their tutors and nurses, and the eunuchs. The king’s three
hundred and sixty concubines, who accompanied him, were adorned with
royal splendour. Six hundred mules and three hundred camels bore the
royal treasury, guarded by the archers. The friends and relations of
the ladies were mingled with a crowd of cooks and servants of all
kinds. The procession was closed by the light-armed troops.

[Illustration: THE ENEMY ASKING QUARTER OF ASSYRIAN HORSEMEN]

The armies were provided with the engines and materials necessary for
the siege of the cities they might meet with in their expedition. If
any natural obstructions impeded the approach to a castle, such as a
forest or a river, they were, if possible, removed. Rivers were turned
out of their courses, if they impeded the operations of the army; and
warriors are frequently represented in the sculptures cutting down
trees which surround a hostile city.

The first step in a siege was probably to advance the battering-ram.
If the castle was built, as in the plains of Assyria and Babylonia,
upon an artificial eminence, an inclined plane, reaching to the summit
of the mound, was formed of earth, stones, or trees, and the besiegers
were then able to bring their engines to the foot of the walls. This
road was not unfrequently covered with bricks, forming a kind of paved
way, up which the ponderous machines could be drawn without much
difficulty.

This mode of reaching the walls of a city is frequently alluded to
by the prophets, and is described by Isaiah: “Thus saith the Lord,
concerning the king of Assyria, he shall not come into this city, nor
shoot an arrow there, nor come before it with shields, _nor cast a
bank against it_.” Similar approaches were used by the Egyptians. They
not only enabled the besiegers to push their battering-rams up to the
castle, but at the same time to escalade the walls, the summit of which
might otherwise have been beyond the reach of their ladders.

The battering-rams were of several kinds. Some were joined to movable
towers which held warriors and armed men. The whole then formed one
great temporary building, the top of which is represented in the
sculptures, as on a level with the walls, and even turrets, of the
besieged city. In some bas-reliefs the battering-ram is without wheels;
it was then perhaps constructed on the spot, and was not intended to
be moved. The movable tower was probably sometimes unprovided with the
ram; but I have not met with it so represented in the sculptures. When
Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, besieged Jerusalem, he “built forts
against it round about.” These forts or towers, if stationary, were
solidly constructed of wood; if movable, they consisted of a light
frame covered with wickerwork. The Jews were forbidden to cut down and
employ, for this purpose, trees which afford sustenance to man. “Only
the trees which thou knowest that they be not trees for meat, thou
shalt destroy and cut them down: and _thou shalt build bulwarks against
the city_ that maketh war with thee until it be subdued.”

When the machine containing the battering-ram consisted of a simple
framework, not forming an artificial tower, a cloth of some kind
of drapery edged with fringes and otherwise ornamented appears to
have been occasionally thrown over it. Sometimes it may have been
covered with hides. It moved either on four or on six wheels, and
was provided with one ram or with two. The mode of working the rams
cannot be determined from the Assyrian sculptures. It may be presumed,
from the representations in the bas-reliefs, that they were partly
suspended by a rope fastened to the outside of the machine, and that
men directed and impelled them from within. Such was the plan adopted
by the Egyptians, in whose paintings the warriors, working the ram,
may be seen through the frame. Sometimes this engine was ornamented by
a carved or painted figure of the presiding divinity, kneeling on one
knee and drawing a bow. The artificial tower was usually occupied by
two warriors: one discharged his arrows against the besieged, whom he
was able from his lofty position to harass more effectually than if he
had been below; the other held up a shield for his companion’s defence.
Warriors are not unfrequently represented as stepping from the machine
to the battlements.

Ezekiel alludes to all these modes of attack. “Lay siege against it,”
he exclaims, speaking of the city of Jerusalem, “and build a fort
against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it,
and set battering-rams against it round about.”

Archers on the walls hurled stones from slings, and discharged their
arrows against the warriors in the artificial towers; whilst the rest
of the besieged were no less active in endeavouring to frustrate the
attempts of the assailants to make breaches in their walls. By dropping
a doubled chain or rope from the battlements, they caught the ram, and
could either destroy its efficacy altogether or break the force of its
blows. Those below, however, by placing hooks over the engine, and
throwing their whole weight upon them, struggled to retain it in its
place.

The besieged, if unable to displace the battering-ram, sought to
destroy it by fire and threw lighted torches or firebrands upon it.
But water was poured upon the flames, through pipes attached to the
artificial tower. Other engines and instruments of war were employed
by the besiegers. With a kind of catapult, apparently consisting
of a light wooden frame covered with canvas or hides, they threw
large stones and darts against the besieged, who, in their turn,
endeavoured to set fire to it by torches. A long staff with an iron
head, resembling a spear, was used to force stones out of the walls.
Mines were also opened, and the assailants sought to enter the castle
through concealed passages. Those who worked on them, or advanced to
the attack, were perhaps protected by the _testudo_, as represented in
the Egyptian paintings; but this defence is not seen in the Assyrian
sculptures. Attempts were made to set fire to the gates of the city by
placing torches against them, or to break them open with axes.

[Illustration: AN ASSYRIAN ARCHER]

Mounting to the assault by ladders was constantly practised, and
appears to have been the most general mode of attacking a castle;
for ladders are found on those bas-reliefs in which neither the
battering-ram nor other engines are introduced. It is remarkable
that the battering-ram is not introduced in the sculptures hitherto
discovered at Kuyunjik, nor, as far as I am aware, in those of
Khorsabad. It would appear, therefore, that at the period of the
building of those edifices it had fallen into disuse. Scaling-ladders
appear in Egyptian sculptures as early as the XIXth Dynasty. Ramses III
is seen taking a city, by their means, at Medinet Habu. They reached to
the top of the battlements, and several persons could ascend them at
the same time. Whilst warriors, armed with the sword and spear, scaled
the walls, archers posted at the foot of the ladders kept the enemy in
check and drove them from the walls.

The troops of the besieging army were ranged in ranks below. The king
was frequently present during the attack. Descending from his chariot,
which remained stationary at a short distance behind him, he discharged
his arrows against the enemy. He was attended by his shield bearer and
eunuchs, one of whom generally held over him the emblem of royalty, the
umbrella, whilst the others bore his arms. He is sometimes represented
in his chariots, superintending the operations, or repulsing a sally.
Warriors of high rank likewise came in chariots, accompanied by their
shield bearers and charioteers. The vizier and the chief of the eunuchs
are frequently seen in the midst of the combatants.

The besieging warriors were protected, as I have already mentioned,
by large shields of wickerwork, sometimes covered with hides, which
concealed the entire person. Three men frequently formed a group; one
held the shield, a second drew the bow, and a third stood ready with a
sword to defend the archer and shield bearer, in case the enemy should
sally from the castle. The besieged manned the battlements with archers
and slingers, who discharged their missiles against the assailants.
Large stones and hot water were also thrown upon those below. A woman
from the battlement of Thebez cast a millstone upon Abimelech’s head,
and broke his skull (Judges ix. 53).

When the battering-ram had made a breach, and the assault had
commenced, the women appeared upon the walls; and, tearing their
hair or stretching out their hands, implored mercy. The men are not
unfrequently represented as joining in asking for quarter. When the
assailants were once masters of the place, an indiscriminate slaughter
appears to have succeeded, and the city was generally given over to
the flames. In the bas-reliefs warriors are seen decapitating the
conquered and plunging swords or daggers into their hearts, holding
them by the hair of their heads. The prisoners were either impaled and
subjected to horrible torments or carried away as slaves. The manner of
impaling, adopted by the Assyrians, appears to have differed from that
still in use in the East. A stake was driven into the body immediately
under the ribs. When Darius took Babylon he impaled three thousand
prisoners (Herod, iii. 159). In a bas-relief discovered at Khorsabad, a
man was represented flaying a prisoner with a semicircular knife. The
Scythians scalped and flayed their enemies, and used their skins as
horse-trappings (Herod, iv. 64).

The women, children, and cattle were led away by the conquerors; and
that it was frequently the custom of the Assyrians to remove the
whole population of the conquered country to some distant part of
their dominions, and to replace it by colonies of their own, we learn
from the treatment of the people of Samaria. Eunuchs and scribes were
appointed to take an inventory of the spoil. They appear to have stood
near the gates, and wrote down with a pen, probably upon rolls of
leather, the number of prisoners, sheep, and oxen, and the amount of
the booty, which issued from the city. The women were sometimes taken
away in bullock carts, and are usually seen in the bas-reliefs bearing
a part of their property with them--either a vase or a sack perhaps
filled with household stuff. They were sometimes accompanied by their
children, and are generally represented as tearing their hair, throwing
dust upon their heads, and bewailing their lot.

After the city had been taken, a throne for the king appears to
have been placed in some conspicuous spot within the walls. He is
represented in the sculptures as sitting upon it, attended by his
eunuchs and principal officers, and receiving the prisoners brought
bound into his presence. The chiefs prostrate themselves before him,
whilst he places his foot upon their necks, as Joshua commanded the
captains of Israel to put their feet upon the necks of the captive
kings. This custom long prevailed in the East. In the rock sculpture
of Behistun, Darius is seen with his foot upon the neck of Gometes,
the rebellious Magian, who declared himself to be Bardius, the son of
Cyrus. When inferior prisoners were captured, their hands were tied
behind, or their arms and feet were bound by iron manacles.

They were urged onward by blows from the spears or swords of the
warriors to whom they were entrusted. In a bas-relief from Khorsabad,
captives are led before the king by a rope fastened to rings passed
through the lip and nose. This sculpture illustrates the passage in 2
Kings xix. 28: “I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy
lips.” The king is represented in the bas-relief as holding a rope
fastened to a ring, which passes through the lips of a prisoner, one of
whose eyes he appears to be piercing with his spear.

In the sculptures of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik, captives are seen bringing
small models of their cities to the victorious king, as a token of
their subjection. Similar models are borne in triumphal processions.

The heads of the slain were generally collected, and brought either to
the king or to an officer appointed to take account of their number.
When Ahab’s seventy sons were killed, their heads were cut off, and
brought in baskets to Jezreel. They were afterwards, laid “in two heaps
at the entering in of the gate” (2 Kings x. 8). The Egyptians generally
counted by hands. This mode of reckoning the loss of the enemy was long
resorted to in the East.

As soon as the soldiers entered the captured city, they began to
plunder, and then hurried away with the spoil. They led off the horses,
carried forth on their shoulders furniture and vessels of gold,
silver, and other metals, and made prisoners of the inhabitants, who,
probably, became the property of those who seized them. The Assyrian
warriors are seen in the sculptures bearing away in triumph the idols
of the conquered nations, or breaking them into pieces, weighing them
in scales, and dividing the fragments. Thus Hosea prophesied that the
calf, the idol of Samaria, should be carried away by the Assyrians.

When the city had been sacked it was usually given up to the flames
and utterly destroyed. The surrounding country was also laid waste. If
it had been a capital--a place of strength and renown--it was seldom
rebuilt on the same spot, which was avoided as unfortunate by those who
survived the catastrophe and returned to the ruins.

ASSYRIAN WAR COSTUMES AND WAR METHODS

The costume of the warriors differed according to their rank and
the nature of the service they had to perform. Those who fought
in chariots, and held the shield for the defence of the king, are
generally seen in coats of scale armour, which descend either to the
knees or to the ankles. A large number of the scales were discovered in
the earliest palace of Nimrud. They were generally of iron, slightly
embossed or raised in the centre, and some were inlaid with copper.
They were probably fastened to a shirt of felt or coarse linen. Such
is the armour always represented in the most ancient sculptures. At
a later period other kinds were used; the scales were larger, and
appear to have been fastened to bands of iron or copper. The armour was
frequently embossed with groups of figures and fanciful ornaments; but
there is no reason to believe that the rich designs on the breasts of
the kings were on metal.

The warriors were frequently dressed in an embroidered tunic, which
was probably made of felt or leather, sufficiently thick to resist the
weapons then in use. On the sculptures of Kuyunjik they are generally
seen in this attire. Their arms were bare from above the elbow, and
their legs from the knees downward, except when they wore shirts of
mail which descended to the ankles. They had sandals on their feet.
The warriors on the later Assyrian monuments, particularly on those
of Khorsabad, are distinguished by a peculiar ornament, somewhat
resembling the Highland phillibeg. It appears to be fastened to the
girdle, and falls below the short tunic.

In the sculptures of Kuyunjik and of monuments of the same period, the
dress of the soldiers appears to vary, according to the manner in which
they are armed. Those with spear and shield wear pointed or crested
helmets, and plain or embroidered tunics, confined at the waist by a
broad girdle. A kind of cross belt passes over the shoulders, and is
ornamented in the centre of the breast by a circular disk, probably
of metal. The slingers are attired in the embroidered tunic, which I
conjecture to be of felt or leather; and wear a pointed helmet, with
metal lappets falling over the ears. Both the spearmen and slingers
have greaves, which appear to have been laced in front.

The archers are dressed in very short embroidered tunics, which
scarcely cover half the thigh, the rest of the leg being left
completely bare. They are chiefly distinguished from other warriors by
the absence of the helmet. A simple band round the temples confines the
hair, which is drawn up in a bunch behind.

[Illustration: COSTUME OF AN ASSYRIAN SPEARMAN]

It is probable that these various costumes indicate people of different
countries, auxiliaries in the Assyrian armies, who used the weapons
most familiar to them, and formed different corps or divisions. Thus,
in the army of Xerxes were marshalled men of many nations, each armed
according to the fashion of his country, and fighting in his own
peculiar way. We may, perhaps, identify, in the Assyrian sculptures,
several of the costumes described by the Greek historian as worn by
those who formed the vast army of the Persian king.

The arms of the early Assyrians were the spear, the bow, the sword, and
the dagger. The sling is not represented in the most ancient monuments
as an Assyrian weapon, although used by a conquered nation; it was,
perhaps, introduced at a later period. The bows were of two kinds: one
long and slightly curved, the other short and almost angular; the two
appear to have been carried at the same time by those who fought in
chariots.

The arrows were probably made of reeds, and were kept in a quiver slung
over the back. The king, however, and the great officers of the state
were followed by attendants, who carried the quivers and supplied their
masters with arrows. The bow was drawn to the cheek or to the ear, as
by the Saxons, and not to the breast, after the fashion of the Greeks.
The barbs were of iron and copper, several of both materials having
been found in the ruins. When in battle it was customary for the archer
to hold two arrows in reserve in his right hand; they were placed
between the fingers, and did not interfere with the motion of the arm
whilst drawing the bow. When marching he usually carried the larger bow
over his shoulders, having first passed his head through it. The bow of
the king was borne by an attendant. The smaller bows were frequently
placed in the quiver, particularly by those who fought in chariots. A
leather or linen guard was fastened by straps to the inside of the left
arm to protect it when the arrow was discharged. The swords were worn
on the left side, and suspended by belts passing over the shoulders
or round the middle; some were short and others long. I have already
alluded to the beauty of the ornaments on the hilt and sheath.

The dagger appears to have been carried by all, both in time of peace
and war; even the priests and divinities are represented with them.
They were worn indifferently on the left and right side, or perhaps on
both at the same time. Generally two, or sometimes three, were inserted
into one sheath, which was passed through the girdle. The handles,
as I have already mentioned, were most elaborately adorned, and were
frequently in the shape of the head of a ram, bull, or horse, being
made of ivory or rare stones. A small chain was sometimes fastened
to the hilt or to the sheath, probably to retain it in its place. A
dagger, resembling in form those of the sculptures, was found amongst
the ruins of Nimrud; it is of copper. The handle is hollowed, either to
receive precious stones, ivory, or enamel.

The spear of the Assyrian footman was short, scarcely exceeding the
height of a man; that of the horseman appears to have been considerably
longer. The iron head of a spear from Nimrud is in the British Museum.
The shaft was probably of some strong wood, and did not consist of
a reed, like that of the modern Arab lance. The large club pointed
with iron, mentioned by Herodotus amongst the weapons carried by the
Assyrians, is not represented in the sculptures; unless, indeed, the
description of the historian applies to the mace, a weapon in very
general use amongst them, and frequently seen in the bas-reliefs.
This weapon consisted of a short handle, probably of wood, to which
was fixed a head, evidently of metal, in the shape of a flower,
rosette, lion, or bull. To the end of the handle was attached a thong,
apparently of leather, through which the hand was passed. I have not
found any representation of warriors using the hatchet, except when
cutting down trees, to clear the country preparatory to a siege. It
is, however, generally seen amongst the weapons of those who fought
in chariots, and was carried in the quiver, with the arrows and short
angular bow.

In the bas-reliefs of Kuyunjik, slingers are frequently represented
amongst the Assyrian troops. The sling appears to have consisted of a
double rope, with a thong, probably of leather, to receive the stone;
it was swung round the head. The slinger held a second stone in his
left hand, and at his feet is generally seen a heap of pebbles ready
for use. That the Persian slingers were exceedingly expert, used very
large stones, and could annoy their enemies whilst out of the reach of
their darts or arrows, we learn from several passages in Xenophon.

The javelin is frequently included amongst the weapons of the Assyrian
charioteers; but the warriors are not represented as using it in
battle. It was carried in the quiver amongst the arrows.

The shields of the Assyrians were of various forms and materials. In
the more ancient bas-reliefs a circular buckler, either of hide or
metal, perhaps in some instances of gold and silver, is most frequently
introduced. King Solomon made three hundred shields of beaten gold,
three pounds of gold to each shield (1 Kings x. 17). The servants of
Hadad-ezer, king of Zobah, carried shields of gold (2 Samuel viii. 7).
The shield of Goliath was of brass. It was held by a handle fixed to
the centre. Light oblong shields of wickerwork, carried in a similar
manner, are also found in the early sculptures; but those of a circular
form appear to have been generally used by the charioteers.

Suspended to the backs of the chariots, and also carried by warriors,
are frequently seen shields in the shape of a crescent, narrow and
curved outwards at the extremities. The face is ornamented by a row
of angular bosses, or teeth, in the centre of which is the head of a
lion. In the sculptures of Khorsabad the round shield is often highly
ornamented. It resembles, both in shape and in the devices upon it, the
bucklers now carried by the Kurds and Arabs, which are made of the hide
of the hippopotamus. In the bas-reliefs of Kuyunjik some warriors bear
oval shields, very convex, and sufficiently large to cover the greater
part of the body. The centre and outer rim are decorated with bosses.

The shield used during a siege concealed the whole person of the
warrior, and completely defended him from the arrows of the enemy. It
was made either of wickerwork or of hides, and was furnished at the
top with a curved point, or with a square projection, like a roof, at
right angles to the body of the shield, which may have served to defend
the heads of the combatants against missiles discharged from the walls
and towers. Such were probably the shields used by the Persian archers
at the battle of Platæa. The archers, whether fighting on foot or in
chariots, were accompanied by shield bearers, whose office it was to
protect them from the shafts of the enemy. Sometimes one shield covered
two archers. The shield bearer was usually provided with a sword, which
he held ready drawn for defence. The king was always attended in his
wars by this officer, and even in peace one of his eunuchs usually
carried a circular shield for his use. This shield bearer was probably
a person of rank, as in Egypt. On some monuments of the later Assyrian
period he is represented carrying two shields, one in each hand.

A great part of the strength of the Assyrian armies consisted in
chariots and horsemen, to which we have frequent allusion in the
inspired writings. The chariots appear to have been used by the king
and the highest officers of state, who are never seen in battle on
horseback nor, except in sieges, on foot. They contained either two or
three persons. The king was always accompanied by two attendants--the
warrior protecting him with a shield (who was replaced during peace
by the eunuch bearing the parasol), and the charioteer. The principal
warriors were also frequently attended by their shield bearers, though
more generally by the driver alone.

The chariot was used during a siege, as well as in open battle. The
king and his warriors are frequently represented as fighting in
chariots with the enemy beneath the walls of a castle, or as having
dismounted from their cars, to discharge their arrows against the
besieged. In the latter case, grooms on foot hold the horses. When the
king in his chariot formed part of a triumphal procession, armed men
led the horses. The chariot was also preceded and followed by men on
foot.

The horsemen formed a no less important part of the Assyrian army than
the charioteers.--“Assyrians clothed in blue, captains and rulers, all
of them desirable young men, horsemen riding upon horses” (Ezekiel
xxiii. 6). Horsemen are seen in the most ancient sculptures of Nimrud.
It is singular, as observes Sir Gardner Wilkinson (_Ancient Egyptians_,
Vol. I, p. 288), that horsemen are nowhere represented on the monuments
of Egypt, although there can be no doubt, from numerous passages in the
sacred writings, that cavalry formed an important part of the Egyptian
armies. I have already mentioned that disciplined bodies of cavalry
were represented in the bas-reliefs of Kuyunjik. We learn from the Book
of Judith that Holofernes had twelve thousand archers on horseback
(Judith ii. 15). Solomon had twelve thousand horsemen (1 Kings x. 26).
The king himself is never represented on horseback, although a horse
richly caparisoned, apparently for his use,--perhaps to enable him to
fly, should his chariot horses be killed,--is frequently seen led by a
warrior, and following his chariot.

In the earliest sculptures the horses, except such as are led behind
the king’s chariot, are unprovided with cloths or saddles. The rider
is seated on the naked back of the animal. At a later period, however,
a kind of pad appears to have been introduced; and in a sculpture at
Kuyunjik was represented a high saddle not unlike that now in use in
the East.[b]

THE ARTS OF PEACE IN BABYLONIA-ASSYRIA

Nothing else, perhaps, is so vitally important in the life-history of a
nation as its contact with other nations. Such contact alone, it would
seem, can enable a nation in some measure to ward off the lethargy of
age, or to overcome the incubus of custom and superstition.

The isolated nation does not get beyond a certain stage of evolution.
It learns a few secrets, and seems powerless to learn others of itself.
Only through contact with another community can it improve its customs,
get new ideas, acquire better habits of thought and action. We have
already pointed out how Egypt profited in this regard through the
foreign associations that came with the inroad of conquering tribes
from the south and east.

Babylon, however, occupied a far more favourable position than Egypt
for contact with other nations, not alone through such warlike
channels, but also through the yet more beneficent channels of peaceful
commerce. A glance at the map shows that Mesopotamia occupies the
very centre of the world of ancient civilisation. By reaching out its
hand, so to speak, this way or that, it came in contact with every
civilised nation of the period except China. It was the connecting
link between Persia and India on the one hand, and Lydia, Syria, and
Egypt on the other. Even Chinese ideas were to some extent accessible
through the mediation of India. No other great nation of antiquity
compares with Babylonia in this regard; and perhaps this was the most
important reason why this little strip of fertile land between the two
great rivers supported a continuous civilisation, on the whole ever
advancing, millennium after millennium.

If one would correctly understand the development of that Mesopotamian
civilisation, of which our own culture is the direct outgrowth, one
must give heed to the commercial relations which were so important a
factor of national growth, without which, indeed, no such civilisation
as that of Babylon and Nineveh could have come into existence.

But, of course, commerce builds up local industries. A nation must
be a producer of useful commodities before it can hope to secure,
by peaceful means, the commodities produced by other nations. In
connection with the commercial relations of a nation we must study also
its home industries, that is to say, broadly speaking, its agricultural
and manufacturing conditions. We must see something also of the social
customs that grow out of, and rest upon these industrial conditions;
and of the laws that are the official expression of the communal
intelligence--the index of the communal conscience of the epoch.[a]
And first we have the privilege of quoting from one who himself saw
Babylon, that is, of course, Herodotus.

BABYLON AND ITS CUSTOMS DESCRIBED BY AN EYE-WITNESS

The Assyrians are masters of many capital towns; but their place of
greatest strength and fame is Babylon, which, after the destruction of
Nineveh, was the royal residence. It is situated on a large plain, and
is a perfect square; each side, by every approach, is 120 furlongs in
length; the space, therefore, occupied by the whole is 480 furlongs.
[The different reports of the extent of the walls of Babylon are
given as follows: By Herodotus at 120 stadia each side, or 480 in
circumference. By Pliny and Solinus at 60 Roman miles, which, at eight
stadia to a mile, agrees with Herodotus. By Strabo at 385 stadia. By
Diodorus, from Ctesias, 360; but from Clitarchus, who accompanied
Alexander, 365; and, lastly, by Curtius, 368. It appears highly
probable that 360 or 365 was the true statement of the circumference.]

So extensive is the ground which Babylon occupies, its internal beauty
and magnificence exceeds whatever has come within my knowledge. It is
surrounded by a trench, very wide, deep, and full of water; the wall
beyond this is two hundred royal cubits high, and fifty wide; the royal
exceeds the common cubit by three digits. [These measures, being taken
from the proportions of the human body, are more permanent than any
other. The foot of a moderate-sized man and the cubit, that is the
space from the end of the fingers to the elbow, have always been near
twelve and eighteen inches respectively.--BELOE.]

I here think it right to describe the use to which the earth dug out
of the trench was converted, as well as the particular manner in which
they constructed the wall. The earth of the trench was first of all
laid in heaps, and, when a sufficient quantity was obtained, made into
square bricks and baked in a furnace. They used as cement a composition
of heated bitumen, which, mixed with tops of reeds, was placed betwixt
every thirtieth course of bricks. Having thus lined the sides of
the trench, they proceeded to build the wall in the same manner, on
the summit of which, and fronting each other, they erected small
watch-towers of one story, leaving a space betwixt them, through which
a chariot and four horses might pass and turn. In the circumference
of the wall, at different distances, were an hundred massy gates of
brass, whose hinges and frames were of the same metal. Within an eight
days’ journey from Babylon is a city called Is [Hit], near which flows
a river of the same name, which empties itself into the Euphrates.
With the current of this river, particles of bitumen descend towards
Babylon, by the means of which its walls were constructed. The great
river Euphrates, which, with its deep and rapid streams, rises in the
Armenian Mountains, and pours itself into the Red Sea, divides Babylon
into two parts. The walls meet and form an angle with the river at each
extremity of the town, where a breastwork of burnt bricks begins, and
is continued along each bank. The city, which abounds in houses from
three to four stories in height, is regularly divided into streets.
Through these, which are parallel, there are transverse avenues to the
river, opened through the wall and breastwork, and secured by an equal
number of little gates of brass.

The first wall is regularly fortified; the interior one, though less in
substance, is of almost equal strength. Besides these, in the centre
of each division of the city, there is a circular space surrounded by
a wall. In one of these stands the royal palace, which fills a large
and strongly defended space. The temple of Jupiter Belus occupies the
other, whose huge gates of brass may still be seen. It is a square
building, each side of which is of the length of two furlongs. In the
midst a tower rises, of the solid depth and height of one furlong, upon
which, resting as a base, seven other turrets are built in regular
succession. The ascent is on the outside, which, winding from the
ground, is continued to the highest tower; and in the middle of the
whole structure there is a convenient resting-place. In the last tower
is a large chapel, in which is placed a couch magnificently adorned,
and near it a table of solid gold; but there is no statue in the place.
No man is suffered to sleep here; but the apartment is occupied by a
female, who, as the Chaldean priests affirm, is selected by their deity
from the whole nation as the object of his pleasures.

They themselves have a tradition, which cannot easily obtain credit,
that their deity enters this temple and reposes by night on this couch.
A similar assertion is also made by the Egyptians of Thebes; for, in
the interior part of the temple of the Theban Jupiter, a woman in like
manner sleeps. Of these two women, it is presumed that neither of them
has any communication with the other sex. In which predicament the
priestess of the temple of Pataræ in Lycia is also placed. Here is no
regular oracle; but whenever a divine communication is expected, the
priestess is obliged to pass the preceding night in the temple.

In this temple there is also a small chapel, lower in the building,
which contains a figure of Jupiter in a sitting posture, with a large
table before him; these, with the base of the table and the seat of the
throne, are all of the purest gold, and are estimated by the Chaldeans
to be worth eight hundred talents. On the outside of this chapel there
are two altars: one is of gold, the other is of immense size, and
appropriated to the sacrifice of full-grown animals; those only which
have not left their dams may be offered on the altar of gold. Upon
the larger altar, at the time of the anniversary festival in honour
of their god, the Chaldeans regularly consume incense, to the amount
of a thousand talents. There was formerly in this temple a statue of
gold, twelve cubits high; this, however, I mention from the information
of the Chaldeans, and not from my own knowledge. Darius, the son of
Hystaspes, endeavoured by sinister means to get possession of this,
not daring openly to take it; but his son Xerxes afterwards seized it,
putting the priest to death who endeavoured to prevent its removal. The
temple, besides those ornaments which I have described, contains many
offerings of individuals.

Among the various sovereigns of Babylon, who contributed to the
strength of its walls, and the decoration of its temples, and of whom
I shall make mention when I treat of the Assyrians, there were two
females; the former of these was named Semiramis, who preceded the
other by an interval of five generations. This queen raised certain
mounds, which are indeed admirable works. Till then the whole plain
was subject to violent inundations from the river. The other queen
was called Nitocris. She being a woman of superior understanding, not
only left many permanent works, which I shall hereafter describe, but
also having observed the increasing power and restless spirit of the
Medes, and that Nineveh, with other cities, had fallen a prey to their
ambition, put her dominions in the strongest posture of defence. To
effect this she sunk a number of canals above Babylon, which by their
disposition rendered the Euphrates, which before flowed to the sea
in an almost even line, so complicated by its windings that in its
passage to Babylon it arrives three times at Ardericca, an Assyrian
village; and to this hour they who wish to go from the sea up the
Euphrates to Babylon are compelled to touch at Ardericca three times
on three different days. The banks also, which she raised to restrain
the river on each side, are really wonderful from their enormous height
and substance. At a considerable distance above Babylon, turning
aside a little from the stream, she ordered an immense lake to be
dug, sinking it till they came to the water. Its circumference was
no less than four hundred and twenty furlongs. The earth of this was
applied to the embankments of the river, and the sides of the trench
or lake were strengthened and lined with stones brought thither for
that purpose. She had in view by these works, first of all to break the
violence of the current by the number of circumflexions and also to
render the navigation to Babylon as difficult and tedious as possible.
These things were done in that part of her dominions which was most
accessible to the Medes, and with the further view of keeping them in
ignorance of her affairs by giving them no commercial encouragement.
Having rendered both of these works strong and secure, she proceeded to
execute the following project. The city being divided by the river into
two distinct parts, whoever wanted to go from one side to the other was
obliged in the time of the former kings to pass the water in a boat.
For this, which was a matter of general inconvenience, she provided
this remedy, and the immense lake which she had before sunk became the
further means of extending her fame. Having procured a number of large
stones, she changed the course of the river, directing it into the
canal prepared for its reception. When this was full the natural bed
of the river became dry, and the embankments on each side, near those
smaller gates which led to the water, were lined with bricks hardened
by fire, similar to those which had been used in the construction of
the wall. She afterwards, nearly in the centre of the city, with the
stones above-mentioned, strongly compacted with iron and with lead,
erected a bridge. Over this the inhabitants passed in the daytime by a
square platform, which was removed in the evening to prevent acts of
mutual depredation. When the above canal was thoroughly filled with
water, and the bridge completely finished and adorned, the Euphrates
was suffered to return to its original bed; thus both the canal and
the bridge were confessedly of the greatest utility to the public. The
above queen was also celebrated for another instance of ingenuity. She
caused her tomb to be erected over one of the principal gates of the
city, and so situated as to be obvious to universal inspection. It
was thus inscribed: “If any of the sovereigns, my successors, shall
be in extreme want of money let him open my tomb and take what money
he may think proper; if his necessity be not great, let him forbear;
the experiment will perhaps be dangerous.” The tomb remained without
injury till the time and reign of Darius. He was equally offended at
the gate’s being rendered useless, and that the invitation thus held
out to become affluent should have been so long neglected. The gate,
it is to be observed, was of no use, from the general aversion to pass
through a place over which a dead body was laid. Darius opened the
tomb; but instead of finding riches, he saw only a dead body, with a
label of this import: “If your avarice had not been equally base and
insatiable, you would not have disturbed the repose of the dead.” Such
are the traditions concerning this queen.

The following exists amongst many other proofs which I shall hereafter
produce of the power and greatness of Babylon. Independent of those
subsidies which are paid monthly to the Persian monarch, the whole of
his dominions are obliged throughout the year to provide subsistence
for him and for his army. Babylon alone raises a supply for four
months, eight being proportioned to all the rest of Asia, so that
the resources of this region are considered as adequate to a third
part of Asia. The government also of this country, which the Persians
call a satrapy, is deemed by much the noblest in the empire. When
Tritantæchmes, son of Artabazus, was appointed to this principality
by the king, he received every day an artaby of silver. The artaby
is a Persian measure which exceeds the Attic medimnus by about three
chænices. Besides his horses for military service this province
maintained for the sovereign’s use a stud of eight hundred stallions
and sixteen thousand mares, one horse being allotted to twenty mares.
He had, moreover, so immense a number of Indian dogs that four great
towns in the vicinity of Babylon were exempted from every other tax but
that of maintaining them.

The Assyrians have but little rain; the lands, however, are fertilised
and the fruits of the earth nourished by means of the river. This does
not, like the Egyptian Nile, enrich the country by overflowing its
banks, but is dispersed by manual labour or by hydraulic engines. The
Babylonian district, like Egypt, is intersected by a number of canals,
the largest of which, continued with a southeast course from the
Euphrates to that part of the Tigris where Nineveh stands, is capable
of receiving vessels of burden. Of all countries which have come within
my observation this is far the most fruitful in corn. Fruit trees,
such as the vine, the olive, and the fig, they do not even attempt
to cultivate; but the soil is so particularly well adapted for corn,
that it never produces less than two hundredfold. In seasons which
are remarkably favourable it will sometimes rise to three hundred.
The ear of their wheat as well as barley is four digits in size. The
immense height to which millet and sesamum will grow, although I have
witnessed it myself, I know not how to mention. I am well aware that
they who have not visited this country will deem whatever I may say
on this subject a violation of probability. They have no oil but what
they extract from the sesamum. The palm is a very common plant in this
country and generally fruitful. This they cultivate like fig trees,
and it produces them bread, wine, and honey. The process observed is
this: they fasten the fruit of that which the Greeks term the male tree
to the one which produces the date; by this means the worm which is
contained in the former entering the fruit ripens and prevents it from
dropping immaturely. The male palms bear insects in their fruit in the
same manner as the wild fig trees. Of all that I saw in this country,
next to Babylon itself, what to me appeared the greatest curiosity were
the boats. These which are used by those who come to the city are of a
circular form and made of skins. They are constructed in Armenia, in
the parts above Assyria, where the sides of the vessels being formed
of willow are covered externally with skins, and having no distinction
of head or stern, are modelled in the shape of a shield. Lining the
bottom of the boats with reeds, they take on board their merchandise,
and thus commit themselves to the stream. The principal article of
their commerce is palm wine, which they carry in casks. The boats have
two oars, one man to each; one pulls to him, the other pushes from
him. These boats are of very different dimensions; some of them are
so large as to bear freights to the value of five thousand talents;
the smaller of them has one ass on board, the larger several. On their
arrival at Babylon they dispose of all their cargo, selling the ribs
of their boats, the matting, and everything but the skins which cover
them; these they lay upon their asses and with them return to Armenia.
The rapidity of the stream is too great to render their return by water
practicable. This is perhaps the reason which induces them to make
their boats of skin rather than of wood. On their return with their
asses to Armenia they make other vessels in the manner we have before
described.

Their clothing is of this kind: they have two vests, one of linen
which falls to the feet, another over this which is made of wool, a
white sash connects the whole. The fashion of their shoes is peculiar
to themselves, though somewhat resembling those worn by the Thebans.
They wear their hair long, and covered with a turban, and are lavish
in their use of perfumes. Each person has a seal ring, and a cane, or
walking-stick, upon the top of which is carved an apple, a rose, a
lily, an eagle, or some figure or other, for to have a stick without a
device is unlawful.

In my description of their laws I have to mention one, the wisdom of
which I must admire, and which, if I am not misinformed, the Eneti, who
are of Illyrian origin, use also. In each of their several districts
this custom was every year observed: such of their virgins as were
marriageable were, at an appointed time and place, assembled together.
Here the men also came, and some public officer sold by auction the
young women one by one, beginning with the most beautiful. When she
was disposed of, and, as may be supposed, for a considerable sum, he
proceeded to sell the one who was next in beauty, taking it for granted
that each man married the maid he purchased. [Herodotus here omits
one circumstance of consequence, in my opinion, to prove that this
ceremony was conducted with decency. It passed under the inspection of
the magistrates, and the tribunal superintended the marriage of the
young women. Three men, respectable for their virtue, and who were
at the head of their several tribes, conducted the young women that
were marriageable to the place of assembly, and there sold them by the
voice of the public crier.--LARCHER. If the custom of disposing of
the young women to the best bidder was peculiar to the Babylonians,
that of purchasing the person intended for a wife, and of giving the
father a sum to obtain her, was much more general. It was practised
amongst the Greeks, the Trojans and their allies, and even amongst the
deities.--BELLANGER.]

The more affluent of the Babylonian youths contended with much ardour
and emulation to obtain the most beautiful; those of the common people
who were desirous of marrying, as if they had but little occasion for
personal accomplishments, were content to receive the more homely
maidens, with a portion annexed to them. For the crier, when he
had sold the fairest, selected next the most ugly, or one that was
deformed; she also was put up to sale, and assigned to whoever would
take her with the least money. This money was what the sale of the
beautiful maidens produced, who were thus obliged to portion out those
who were deformed, or less lovely than themselves. No man was permitted
to provide a match for his daughter, nor could any one take away the
woman whom he purchased without first giving security to make her his
wife. To this, if he did not assent, his money was returned to him.
There were no restrictions with respect to residence; those of another
village might also become purchasers. This, although the most wise of
all their institutions, has not been preserved to our time. One of
their later ordinances was made to punish violence offered to women,
and to prevent their being carried away to other parts; for after the
city had been taken, and the inhabitants plundered, the lower people
were reduced to such extremities that they prostituted their daughters
for hire.

They have also another institution, the good tendency of which claims
applause. Such as are diseased among them they carry into some public
square; they have no professors of medicine, but the passengers in
general interrogate the sick person concerning his malady, that if any
person has either been afflicted with a similar disease himself, or
seen its operation on another, he may communicate the process by which
his own recovery was effected, or by which, in any other instance, he
knew the disease to be removed. No one may pass by the afflicted person
in silence, or without inquiry into the nature of his complaint.

Previous to their interment, their dead are anointed with honey, and,
like the Egyptians, they are fond of funeral lamentations. Whenever a
man has had communication with his wife, he sits over a consecrated
vessel, containing burning perfumes; the woman does the same. In the
morning both of them go into the bath; till they have done this they
will neither of them touch any domestic utensil. This custom is also
observed in Arabia.

The Babylonians have one custom in the highest degree abominable. Every
woman who is a native of the country is obliged once in her life to
attend at the temple of Venus, and prostitute herself to a stranger.
Such women as are of superior rank do not omit even this opportunity
of separating themselves from their inferiors; these go to the temple
in splendid chariots, accompanied by a numerous train of domestics,
and place themselves near the entrance. This is the practice with
many, whilst the greater part, crowned with garlands, seat themselves
in the vestibule, and there are always numbers coming and going. The
seats have all of them a rope or string annexed to them, by which the
stranger may determine his choice. A woman, having once taken this
situation, is not allowed to return home till some stranger throws
her a piece of money, and leading her to a distance from the temple,
enjoys her person. It is usual for the man, when he gives the money,
to say, “May the goddess Mylitta be auspicious to thee!” Mylitta being
the Assyrian name of Venus. The money given is applied to sacred uses,
and must not be refused, however small it may be. The woman is not
suffered to make any distinction, but is obliged to accompany whoever
offers her money. She afterwards makes some conciliatory oblation to
the goddess, and returns to her house, never afterwards to be obtained
on similar or on any terms. Such as are eminent for their elegance
and beauty do not continue long, but those who are of less engaging
appearance have sometimes been known to remain from three to four years
unable to accomplish the terms of the law. It is to be remarked that
the inhabitants of Cyprus have a similar observance.

In addition to the foregoing account of Babylonian manners, we may
observe that there are three tribes of this people whose only food is
fish. They prepare it thus: having dried it in the sun, they beat it
very small in a mortar, and afterwards sift it through a piece of fine
cloth; they then form it into cakes, or bake it as bread.[c]

The foregoing description by Herodotus refers to the condition of
Babylon in the early part of the fifth century B.C., something like
fifty years after the overthrow of the new Babylonian empire by Cyrus.
The city still remained under Persian influence, Babylon being one of
the capitals of the “Great King.” The account given has a peculiar
value because it is the only description given by an eye-witness from
the Western world that has come down to us from so early a period.

Herodotus saw with the eyes of a Greek of the age of Pericles, and it
is now admitted that when he describes his personal experiences, he is
altogether dependable. His account, therefore, still has full value
as supplementing the records of the monuments. It is greatly to be
regretted that the Greek historian remained ignorant of the monumental
records themselves, though it would have been strange had he been able
to decipher them, since the Greeks were notoriously unfamiliar with any
language but their own.

The account of Babylon given by the great geographer, Strabo, which
will be presented in the next chapter, relates to a period not far
from the beginning of the Christian era, and hence carries us ahead
of the political story as told in the preceding books. At this time
Babylon had ceased to be the capital city, though still important.
Since Herodotus wrote, some five hundred years have passed. Alexander
has overthrown the Persians, and Alexander’s empire in turn has been
overthrown. Yet we may suppose that the old city of Babylon--the most
ancient city retaining influence at that day--has not very greatly
changed, except that its ancient monuments are falling into ruins.
A peculiar interest attaches to this description of the last stages
in the life-history of a city that has seen so many rotations of
fortune, and has lived on through so many shiftings of the political
kaleidoscope.

It is probable that Strabo, like Herodotus, writes as an eye-witness.
In any event his account has full authority, coming from one of the
greatest and most scientific of ancient geographers, who in addition to
his geographical learning had a keen historical sense.[a]

A LATER CLASSICAL ACCOUNT OF BABYLON

Babylon is situated in a plain. The wall is 385 stadia in circumference
and 32 feet in thickness. The height of the space between the towers
is 50, and of the towers, 60 cubits. The roadway upon the walls will
allow chariots with four horses when they meet to pass each other with
ease. Whence, among the seven wonders of the world, are reckoned this
wall and the hanging garden; the shape of the garden is a square, and
each side of it measures four plethra. It consists of vaulted terraces,
raised one above another, and resting upon cube-shaped pillars. These
are hollow and filled with earth, to allow trees of the largest size to
be planted. The pillars, the vaults, and the terraces are constructed
of baked bricks and asphalt.

The ascent to the highest story is by stairs, and at their side are
water-engines, by means of which persons, appointed expressly for the
purpose, are continually employed in raising water from the Euphrates
into the garden; for the river, which is a stadium in breadth, flows
through the middle of the city, and the garden is on the side of the
river. The tomb, also, of Belus is there. At present it is in ruins,
having been demolished, it is said, by Xerxes. It was a quadrangular
pyramid of baked brick, a stadium in height, and each of the sides a
stadium in length. Alexander intended to repair it. It was a great
undertaking, and required a long time for its completion (for ten
thousand men were occupied two months in clearing away the mound of
earth), so that he was not able to execute what he had attempted
before disease hurried him rapidly to his end. None of the persons
who succeeded him attended to this undertaking; other works also were
neglected, and the city was dilapidated, partly by the Persians, partly
by time, and through the indifference of the Macedonians to things of
this kind, particularly after Seleucus Nicator had fortified Seleucia,
on the Tigris, near Babylon, at the distance of about three hundred
stadia.

Both this prince and all his successors directed their care to that
city, and transferred to it the seat of empire. At present it is larger
than Babylon; the other is in great part deserted, so that no one
would hesitate to apply to it what one of the comic writers said of
Megalopolitæ in Arcadia:

“The great city is a great desert.”

On account of the scarcity of timber, the beams and pillars of the
houses were made of palm wood. They wind ropes of twisted reed round
the pillars, paint them over with colours, and draw designs upon
them; they cover the doors with a coat of asphaltus. These are lofty,
and all the houses are vaulted on account of the want of timber.
For the country is bare, a great part of it is covered with shrubs,
and produces nothing but the palm. This tree grows in the greatest
abundance in Babylonia. It is found in Susiana; also, in great
quantity, on the Persian coast, and in Carmania.

They do not use tiles for their houses, because there are no great
rains. The case is the same in Susiana and in Sitacene. In Babylon a
residence was set apart for the native philosophers called Chaldeans,
who are chiefly devoted to the study of astronomy. Some, who are not
approved of by the rest, profess to understand genethlialogy, or the
casting of nativities. There is also a tribe of Chaldeans who inhabit a
district of Babylonia in the neighbourhood of the Arabians and of the
sea called the Persian Sea. There are several classes of the Chaldean
astronomers. Some have the name of Orcheni, some Borsippeni, and many
others, as if divided into sects, who disseminate different tenets on
the same subjects. The mathematicians make mention of some individuals
among them, as Cidenas, Naburianus, and Sudinus. Seleucus, also, of
Seleucia, is a Chaldean, and many other remarkable men. Borsippa is a
city sacred to Diana and Apollo. Here is a large linen manufactory.
Bats of much larger size than those in other parts abound in it. They
are caught and salted for food.

The country of the Babylonians is surrounded on the east by the Susans,
Elymæi, and Parætaceni; on the south by the Persian Gulf, and the
Chaldeans as far as the Arabian Messeni; on the west by the Arabian
Scenitæ as far as Adiabene and Gordyæa; on the north by the Armenians
and Medes as far as the Zagros, and the nations about that river.

The country is intersected by many rivers, the largest of which are
the Euphrates and the Tigris; next to the Indian rivers, the rivers
in the southern parts of Asia are said to hold the second place. The
Tigris is navigable upward from its mouth to Opis and to the present
Seleucia. Opis is a village and a mart for the surrounding places. The
Euphrates also is navigable up to Babylon, a distance of more than
three thousand stadia. The Persians, through fear of incursions from
without and for the purpose of preventing vessels from ascending
these rivers, constructed artificial cataracts. Alexander, on arriving
there, destroyed as many of them as he could, those particularly (on
the Tigris from the sea) to Opis. But he bestowed great care upon the
canals, for the Euphrates, at the commencement of summer, overflows.
It begins to fill in the spring, when the snow in Armenia melts; the
ploughed land, therefore, would be covered with water and be submerged,
unless the overflow of the superabundant water of the Nile is diverted.
Hence the origin of canals. Great labour is requisite for their
maintenance, for the soil is deep, soft, and yielding, so that it would
easily be swept away by the stream; the fields would be laid bare, the
canals filled, and the accumulation of mud would soon obstruct their
mouths. Then again, the excess of water discharging itself into the
plains near the sea forms lakes and marshes and reed grounds, supplying
the reeds with which all kinds of platted vessels are woven; some of
these vessels are capable of holding water when covered over with
asphaltus; others are used with the material in its natural state.
Sails are also made of reeds; these resemble mats or hurdles.

It is not, perhaps, possible to prevent inundations of this kind
altogether, but it is the duty of good princes to afford all possible
assistance. The assistance required is to prevent excessive overflow
by the construction of dams, and to obviate the filling of rivers
produced by the accumulation of mud, by cleansing the canals and
removing stoppages at their mouths. The cleansing of the canals is
easily performed, but the construction of dams requires the labour
of numerous workmen. For the earth being soft and yielding does not
support the superincumbent mass, which sinks, and is itself carried
away, and thus a difficulty arises in making dams at the mouth.
Expedition is necessary in closing the canals to prevent all the water
flowing out. When the canals dry up in the summer-time they cause the
river to dry up also; and if the river is low (before the canals are
closed) it cannot supply the canals in time with water, of which the
country, burnt up and scorched, requires a very large quantity, for
there is no difference, whether the crops are flooded by an excess or
perish by drought and a failure of water. The navigation up the rivers
(a source of many advantages) is continually obstructed by both the
above-mentioned causes, and it is not possible to remedy this unless
the mouths of the canals were quickly opened and quickly closed, and
the canals were made to contain and preserve a mean between excess and
deficiency of water.

Aristobulus relates that Alexander himself, when he was sailing up the
river and directing the course of the boat, inspected the canals, and
ordered them to be cleared by his multitude of followers; he likewise
stopped up some of the mouths, and opened others. He observed that
one of these canals, which took a direction more immediately to the
marshes and to the lakes in front of Arabia, had a mouth very difficult
to be dealt with, and which could not be easily closed on account of
the soft and yielding nature of the soil; he (therefore) opened a new
mouth at the distance of thirty stadia, selecting a place with a rocky
bottom, and to this the current was diverted. But in doing this he was
taking precautions that Arabia should not become entirely inaccessible
in consequence of the lakes and marshes, as it was already almost
an island from the quantity of water (which surrounded it). For he
contemplated making himself master of this country, and he had already
provided a fleet and places of rendezvous, and had built vessels in
Phœnicia and at Cyprus, some of which were in separate pieces, others
were in parts, fastened together by bolts. These, after being conveyed
to Thapsacus in seven distances of a day’s march, were then to be
transported down the river to Babylon. He constructed other boats in
Babylonia, from cypress trees in the groves and parks, for there is a
scarcity of timber in Babylonia. Among the Cossæi [Kossæans] and some
other tribes the supply of timber is not great.

The pretext for the war, says Aristobulus, was that the Arabians were
the only people who did not send their ambassadors to Alexander; but
the true reason was his ambition to be lord of all.

When he was informed that they worshipped two deities only, Jupiter
and Bacchus, who supply what is most requisite for the subsistence of
mankind, he supposed that, after his conquests, they would worship
him as a third, if he permitted them to enjoy their former national
independence. Thus was Alexander employed in clearing the canals, and
in examining minutely the sepulchres of the kings, most of which are
situated among the lakes.

Eratosthenes, when he is speaking of the lakes near Arabia, says, that
the water, when it cannot find an outlet, opens passages underground,
and is conveyed through these as far as the Cœle-Syrians, it is also
compressed and forced into the parts near Rhinocolura and Mount Casius,
and there forms lakes and deep pits. But I know not whether this is
probable. For the overflowings of the water of the Euphrates, which
form the lakes and marshes near Arabia, are near the Persian Sea. But
the isthmus which separates them is neither large nor rocky, so that it
was more probable that the water forced its way in this direction into
the sea, either under the ground, or across the surface, than that it
traversed so dry and parched a soil for more than six thousand stadia:
particularly, when we observe, situated midway in this course, Libanus,
Antilibanus, and Mount Casius.

Such, then, are the accounts of Eratosthenes and Aristobulus.

But Polycleitus says, that the Euphrates does not overflow its banks,
because its course is through large plains; that of the mountains (from
which it is supplied) some are distant two thousand, and the Kossæan
Mountains scarcely one thousand stadia, that they are not very high,
nor covered with snow to a great depth, and therefore do not occasion
the snow to melt in great masses, for the most elevated mountains
are in the northern parts above Ecbatana; towards the south they are
divided, spread out, and are much lower; the Tigris also receives
the greater part of the water (which comes down from them) and thus
overflows its banks.

The last assertion is evidently absurd, because the Tigris descends
into the same plains (as the Euphrates); and the above-mentioned
mountains are not of the same height, the northern being more elevated,
the southern extending in breadth, but are of a lower altitude. The
quantity of snow is not, however, to be estimated by altitude only,
but by aspect. The same mountain has more snow on the northern than on
the southern side, and the snow continues longer on the former than on
the latter. As the Tigris therefore receives from the most southern
parts of Armenia, which are near Babylon, the water of the melted snow,
of which there is no great quantity, since it comes from the southern
side, it should overflow in a less degree than the Euphrates, which
receives the water from both parts (northern and southern), and not
from a single mountain only, but from many, as I have mentioned in the
description of Armenia. To this we must add the length of the river,
the large tract of country which it traverses in the Greater and in the
Lesser Armenia, the large space it takes in its course in passing out
of the Lesser Armenia and Cappadocia, after issuing out of the Taurus
in its way to Thapsacus (forming the boundary between Syria below and
Mesopotamia), and the large remaining portion of country as far as
Babylon and to its mouth, a course in all of thirty-six thousand stadia.

This, then, on the subject of the canals (of Babylonia).

Babylonia produces barley in larger quantity than any other country,
for a produce of three hundredfold is spoken of. The palm tree
furnishes everything else--bread, wine, vinegar, and meal; all kinds of
woven articles are also procured from it. Braziers use the stones of
the fruit instead of charcoal. When softened by being soaked in water,
they are food for fattening oxen and sheep.

It is said that there is a Persian song in which are reckoned up three
hundred and sixty useful properties of the palm.

They employ for the most part the oil of sesamum, a plant which is rare
in other places.

Asphaltus is found in great abundance in Babylonia. Eratosthenes
describes it as follows:

The liquid asphaltus, which is called naphtha, is found in Susiana;
the dry kind, which can be made solid, in Babylonia. There is a spring
of it near the Euphrates. When this river overflows at the time of
the melting of the snow, the spring also of asphaltus is filled and
overflows into the river, where large clods are consolidated, fit for
buildings constructed of baked bricks. Others say that the liquid kind
also is found in Babylonia. With respect to the solid kind, I have
described its great utility in the construction of buildings. They say
that boats (of reeds) are woven, which, when besmeared with asphaltus,
are firmly compacted. The liquid kind, called naphtha, is of a singular
nature. When it is brought near the fire, the fire catches it; and if
a body smeared over with it is brought near the fire, it burns with
a flame, which it is impossible to extinguish, except with a large
quantity of water; with a small quantity it burns more violently,
but it may be smothered and extinguished by mud, vinegar, alum, and
glue. It is said that Alexander, as an experiment, ordered naphtha
to be poured over a boy in a bath, and a lamp to be brought near his
body. The boy became enveloped in flames, and would have perished if
the bystanders had not mastered the fire by pouring upon him a great
quantity of water, and thus saved his life.

Poseidonius says that there are springs of naphtha in Babylonia, some
of which produce white, others black, naphtha; the first of these, I
mean the white naphtha, which attracts flame, is liquid sulphur; the
second, or black naphtha, is liquid asphaltus, and is burnt in lamps
instead of oil.

In former times the capital of Assyria was Babylon; it is now called
Seleucia upon the Tigris. Near it is a large village called Ctesiphon.
This the Parthian kings usually made their winter residence, with a
view to spare the Seleucians the burden of furnishing quarters for the
Scythian soldiery. In consequence of the power of Parthia, Ctesiphon
may be considered as a city rather than a village; from its size it is
capable of lodging a great multitude of people; it has been adorned
with public buildings by the Parthians, and has furnished merchandise,
and given rise to arts profitable to its masters.

The kings usually passed the winter there, on account of the salubrity
of the air, and the summer at Ecbatana and in Hyrcania, induced by the
ancient renown of these places.

As we call the country Babylonia, so we call the people Babylonians,
not from the name of the city, but of the country; the case is not
precisely the same, however, as regards even natives of Seleucia, as,
for instance, Diogenes, the stoic philosopher [who had the appellation
of the Babylonian, and not the Seleucian].[d]

We turn now from the classical accounts having to do with the manners
and customs of the Mesopotamians to more modern interpretations. The
account of the commercial relations of the Babylonians given in the
succeeding section still has full authority, notwithstanding it was
written before modern excavations had created the new science of
Assyriology. No later writer has so profoundly studied the conditions
of commerce and trade in antiquity as Heeren, and his accounts are
still the most illuminative accessible. The monumental pictures and
inscriptions, much as they have told us of the political history,
and of the art, literature, and science of the Mesopotamians, have
added singularly little to our knowledge of the peaceful relations of
oriental nations as evidenced by their commercial dealings. The chance
references of classical writers still furnish us the foundation of
our knowledge of this subject, and the Assyrian monuments, where they
have thrown any light on the subject at all, have chiefly served to
substantiate our previous inferences. Thus, to cite a single example,
the pictures on the black obelisk of Shalmaneser II show us such beasts
as apes and elephants being brought as tribute to the conqueror,
confirming in the most unequivocal way the belief, based on Ctesias and
Strabo, that the Assyrians held commercial relations with India.

The narrative of Heeren will be supplemented, however, by accounts of
the manners and customs of the people in question based upon a more
recent study of the monuments, both pictorial and documentary. We have
already noted that the sculptures rather than the written documents
furnish us a view of the everyday life of the people. Certain matters,
however, such as those pertaining to legal transactions, could not
possibly be known to us except through the medium of inscriptions.[a]

THE COMMERCE OF THE BABYLONIANS

As the European steps into a new world as soon as he has crossed
the Alps, says Heeren, so is the contrast equally striking to the
Asiatic traveller upon descending from the mountainous country of
Persia and Media, or Irak Ajemi, into the plain of ancient Babylon and
modern Baghdad, the capital of Irak Arabi. The connection, frequently
so mysterious and inexplicable, which exists between climates and
countries, and even between climates and inhabitants, is here most
remarkably exemplified. The manners of the people, their habitations,
their dress, are all different. While in Persia and Media the garments,
though long, were closely fitted to the person, they are here, on the
contrary, loose and flowing. The black sheepskin cap which covered the
head gives way to the lofty and proud folds of the turban, and the
girdle, with its single knife, is replaced with the costly shawl and
rich poniard. “On my entrance into the city of the Caliphs,” says a
modern traveller (Porter, ii, 243, _et seq._), “I found the streets
crowded with men in every variety of dress, and of every shade of
complexion. Instead of the low dwellings peculiar to Persia, the houses
were several stories high, with lattice windows closely shut. The great
Bazaar was full of people, and I saw on all sides innumerable shops and
coffee-houses. The sound of voices and the rustling of silks reminded
one of the buzzing of a swarm of bees. For even now, though but the
shadow of its former splendour, Baghdad is still the grand caravanserai
of Asia.” But what a change has taken place in manners and modes of
life! The rigid etiquette of the Persian court has disappeared; the
tone of society, the relation of the sexes, is under less constraint,
and everything betokens pleasure and voluptuousness. Though in the hot
season the glowing sky forces the inhabitants during the day into their
underground vaults, yet they enjoy the balmy coolness of night in the
open air on their house tops. The delightful temperature of the winter
months, from the middle of November to that of February, compensates
for the inconveniences of summer, though at the same time it offers
irresistible incentives to all manner of sensual enjoyments.

It must surely have been the same in former times. Can it be supposed
that those who came down the Euphrates from the royal cities of Persia
and Media to the great city of traffic had not the same spectacle
before their eyes? But what is modern Baghdad compared with the ancient
capital of the East? What crowds must have once thronged the streets
and squares of that city when the caravans of the East and West, with
the crews of ships trading to the south, were there collected together;
when the Chaldean and Persian sovereigns, with their numberless
attendants, made it their residence; when it was the emporium of the
world, and the great centre of attraction to all nations! How bustling
and animated must not these desolate places have been formerly, where
all now is still, save the call of the Bedouin or the roaring of the
lion!

The accounts of ancient Babylon given by Jewish and Grecian writers set
before us a picture of wealth, magnificence, and pomp, though at the
same time a less pleasing representation of luxury and licentiousness.
Their banquets were carried to a disgusting excess, and the pleasures
of the table degenerated into debauchery; nay, at the very time
when the victorious Persians rushed into the city, the princes of
Babylon were engaged in festivities; and Belshazzar was given up to
intoxication in company with thousands of his lords when the hand which
wrote on the wall of the royal banqueting house, and predicted his
approaching fate, aroused him to the dreadful reality of his condition.
But this total degeneracy of manners was above all conspicuous in the
other sex, amongst whom were no traces of that reserve which usually
prevails in an eastern harem. The prophet, therefore, when he denounces
the fall of Babylon, describes it under the image of a luxurious and
lascivious woman, who is cast headlong into slavery from the seat
where she sits so effeminately. Moreover, at these orgies the women
appeared, where they proceeded so far as to lay aside their garments,
and with them every feeling of shame; nay, there was even a religious
enactment, as we are informed by Herodotus, according to which every
woman was obliged to prostitute herself to strangers in the temple of
Mylitta once in her life, and was not allowed to reject any person who
presented himself.

The principal cause of this profligacy of manners was the riches and
luxury consequent upon extended commerce, which Babylon owed to its
geographical position. Climate and religion effected the rest.

I have already had occasion to notice this advantageous situation of
Babylonia, in which respect it was probably superior to every other
country in Asia. While this afforded admirable facilities for traffic
by land, it was equally convenient for maritime and river navigation.
The two large rivers which flowed on each side of it seemed the natural
channels of commercial intercourse with the interior of Asia, and the
Persian Gulf by no means presented the same difficulties and dangers to
the navigator as that of Arabia.

If we add to this the accounts which ancient authors have given us
of the industry, manners, and civil institutions of Babylon, it will
be evident that it owed its splendour and wealth to the same causes
which in latter times have been the occasion of an extensive commerce
to the cities of Baghdad and Bassorah. They unanimously describe the
Babylonians as a people fond of magnificence, and accustomed to a
multitude of artificial wants, which they could not have supplied
except by commercial relations with many countries, some of them very
remote. In their private life, especially in their dress, costliness
appears to have been more their object than either convenience or
utility. Their public festivals and sacrifices were attended with
immense expense, particularly in precious perfumes, with which they
could not have been provided but from foreign countries. The raw
materials, too, required for their celebrated manufactures--flax,
cotton, and wool, and perhaps silk--were either not the produce of
their soil, or certainly not in sufficient quantities for their
consumption. Lastly, many of their civil institutions were of such
a nature as only to be calculated for a city into which there was
a continual influx of strangers. On this principle alone can be
explained, not only their custom of exposing sick persons in the
market-place, that they might meet with some one competent to prescribe
for them, but also, and more particularly, the above-mentioned law,
which obliged their women to prostitute themselves in the temple of
Mylitta, and the public auction of marriageable virgins. It has been
already observed that the relations of the sexes are formed in a
peculiar manner in large commercial cities, and this will serve to
explain many remarkable institutions of several nations in Asia.

However certain may be the evidence drawn from these principles, and
the accounts of antiquity in general, viz., that Babylon was the great
centre where all nations assembled, and whence they departed to their
several destinations, yet it is difficult to enter in detail on the
commerce of the Babylonians, and to settle with any degree of accuracy
its nature and its course. The obscure traces of it which yet remain
must be laboriously sought for in the works of Greek and Hebrew writers
alone; the labour, however, will not be without its recompense, and the
general result of this investigation will be a picture, which, though
not complete in its subordinate details, will yet present a generally
faithful outline.

As a preliminary step, however, let us take a glance at the products
of Babylonian skill and industry, amongst which weaving of various
kinds deserves our first notice. The peculiar dress of the Babylonians
consisted partly of woollen, and partly of linen, or probably cotton
stuffs. “They wear,” says Herodotus, “a gown of linen (or cotton)
flowing down to the feet, over this, an upper woollen garment, and
a white (woollen) tunic covering the whole.” This garb, which must
have been too much for so warm a climate, seems to have been assumed
rather for ostentation, than to meet their actual wants, and probably
some alteration was made in it as the weather became warmer. Their
woven stuffs, however, were not confined to domestic use, but were
exported into foreign countries. Carpets, one of the principal objects
of luxury in the East, the floors of the rich being generally covered
with them, were nowhere so finely woven, and in such splendid colours,
as at Babylon. Particular representations were seen on them, of those
wonderful Indian animals, the griffin and others, with which we have
become acquainted by the ruins of Persepolis, whence the knowledge
of them was brought to the West. Foreign nations made use of these
carpets in the decoration of their harems and royal saloons; indeed,
this species of luxury appears nowhere to have been carried farther
than among the Persians. With them, not only the floors, but even beds
and sofas in the houses of the nobles were covered with two or three
of these carpets; nay, the oldest of their sacred edifices, the tomb
of Cyrus at Pasargada, was ornamented with a purple one of Babylonian
workmanship.

Babylonian garments were not less esteemed; those in particular called
sindones were in very high repute. It appears that they were usually of
cotton, and the most costly were so highly valued for their brilliancy
of colour and fineness of texture, as to be compared to those of
Media, and set apart for royal use; they were even to be found at the
tomb of Cyrus, which was profusely decorated with every description
of furniture in use amongst the Persian kings during their lives. The
superiority of Babylonian robes and carpets will not be a matter of
surprise, when we consider how near Babylon was to Carmania on the one
side, and to Arabia and Syria on the other, and that in these countries
the finest cotton was produced.

Large weaving establishments were not confined to the capital, but
existed likewise in other cities and inferior towns of Babylonia, which
Semiramis is said to have built on the banks of the Euphrates and
Tigris, and which she appointed as marts for those who imported Median
and Persian goods. These manufacturing towns also were, as will soon
be shown in respect to Opis, staples for land traffic. The most famous
of them was Borsippa, situated on the Euphrates, fifteen miles below
Babylon, and mentioned in history before the time of Cyrus. These were
the principal linen and cotton manufactories, and they still existed in
the age of Strabo.

Besides these, the Babylonians appear to have made all kinds of
apparel, and every article of luxury: such as sweet waters, which were
in common use, and probably necessary, from the heat of the climate;
walking-sticks delicately chased with figures of animals and other
objects, and also elegantly engraved stones, were in general use
amongst the Babylonians.

These stones begin to form a particular class, since the curiosities
called Babylonian cylinders have become less rare. Many of them have
undoubtedly served for seal rings; for in the East the seal supplies
the place of a signature, or at any rate makes it valid, as we still
see on specimens of Babylonian documents. The same may be said of the
cylinders. We have a striking illustration of the perfection to which
the Babylonians had brought the art of cutting precious stones in
the collection of M. Dorow, which contains a cylinder, formed from a
jasper, bearing a cuneiform inscription, and an image of a winged Ized,
or Genius, in a flowing Babylonian dress, represented in the act of
crushing with each hand an ostrich, the bird of Ahriman. These various
manufactures and works of art presuppose an extensive commerce, because
the necessary materials must have been imported from foreign countries.

From what has been already adduced, no doubt can be entertained that
Babylon enjoyed a lively commerce with the principal countries of the
Persian Empire. Not only did the Persian and Median lords decorate
their houses with the productions of Babylonian skill, but the kings
of Persia spent a great part of the year in that city with all their
numerous attendants, added to which the satraps exhibited in the same
capital a pomp but little inferior to royal magnificence. Owing to
this intimate connection between the chief provinces of Persia and
Babylonia, the country lying between this and Susa became the most
populous and cultivated in Asia; and a highway was made from Babylon to
Susa, which was twenty days’ journey distant, sufficiently commodious
for the baggage of an army to be conveyed on it without difficulty.
The investigation, however, is involved in greater difficulties as we
proceed towards the east beyond Persia, though a principal country
to which they traded, that is to say, Persian India, or the present
Belur-land, and with the parts adjacent, whence the Babylonians
imported many of their most highly prized commodities, afford a clear
proof of the direction and extent of this commerce.

The first article which we may confidently assert the Babylonians to
have obtained, at least in part, from these countries, were precious
stones, the use of which for seal rings was very general amongst them.
Ctesias says expressly, that these stones came from India; and that
onyxes, sardines, and the other stones used for seals were obtained in
the mountains bordering on the sandy desert. The testimonies of modern
travellers have proved that the account of this author is entitled to
full credit; and that even at the present time the lapis-lazuli is
found there in its greatest perfection; and if it be added to this that
what Ctesias relates of India undoubtedly refers for the most part to
these northern countries, we must consider it probable that the stones
in question were found in the mountains of which we are speaking;
while with regard to the sapphire of the ancients, that is to say, our
lapis-lazuli, I have no doubt that it is a native of this country. A
decisive proof is furnished by Theophrastus, a more recent author, but
worthy of credit. “Emeralds and jaspers,” says he, “which are used as
objects of decoration, come from the desert of Bactria (of Cobi). They
are sought for by persons who go thither on horseback at the time of
the north wind, which blows away the sand, and so discovers them.” “The
largest of the emeralds called Bactrian,” says he, in another place,
“is at Tyre, in the temple of Hercules. It forms a tolerably large
pillar.” The passage, however, of Ctesias, to which we have referred,
as a modern author has justly remarked, contains some indications,
which, relatively to onyxes, appear to refer to the Ghat Mountains;
since he speaks of a hot country not far from the sea.

The circumstance of large quantities of onyxes coming out of these
mountains at the present day, viz., the mountains near Cambaya and
Beroach, the ancient Barygaza, must render this opinion so much the
more probable, as it was this very part of the Indian coast with which
the ancients were most acquainted; and their navigation from the
Persian Gulf to these regions, as will be shown hereafter, admits of
no doubt. This opinion, however, must not lead us to conclude, that
the commerce of Babylon was confined to those countries; for that they
were acquainted with the above-mentioned northern districts is equally
certain.

Hence also the Babylonians imported Indian dogs. This breed is asserted
to be the largest and strongest that exist, and on that account the
best suited for hunting wild beasts, even lions, which they will
very readily attack. The great fondness felt by the Persians for
the pleasures of the chase, by whom it was regarded as a chivalrous
exercise, must have increased the value and use of these animals, which
soon became even an object of luxury. The Persian nobles were obliged
to keep a great number of them, as they formed a necessary part of
their domestic economy, and their train; and they were also accustomed
to take them with them on their journeys and military expeditions. Thus
Xerxes, as we are assured by Herodotus, was followed by an innumerable
quantity of dogs, when he marched against Greece; and an example taken
from the same writer shows to what a pitch the Persian lords and
satraps had carried their luxury in this particular. Tritantæchmes,
satrap of Babylon, devoted to the maintenance of these Indian dogs
no less than four towns of his government, which were exempted from
all other taxes. It is easy to settle the extent of this branch of
commerce, admitting, as is reasonable, that they were propagated in the
country.

The native country of these animals, according to Ctesias, was that
whence precious stones were obtained. And this account of the ancient
author has been confirmed by a modern traveller; for Marco Polo, in
his account of these regions, has not forgotten to mention large dogs,
which were even able to overcome lions.

A third, and no less certain class of productions, which the Persians
and Babylonians obtained from this part of the world, were dyes, and
amongst them the cochineal, or rather Indian lacca. The most ancient,
though not quite accurate description of this insect, and of the tree
upon which it settles, is also found in Ctesias. According to him, it
is a native of the country near the sources of the Indus, and produces
a red, resembling cinnabar. The Indians themselves use it for the
purpose of dyeing their garments, to which it gives a colour even
surpassing in beauty the dyes of the Persians.

Strabo has preserved to us from Eratosthenes a knowledge of the roads
by which the commodities of the Indian districts, bordering on the
Persian Empire, were conveyed to its principal cities, and especially
to Babylon. The usual high-road, through populous and cultivated
regions, first ran in a northerly direction, in order to avoid the
predatory tribes which infested the desert between Persia and Media.
It continued along the southern part of this desert, as far as one of
the most celebrated defiles in Asia, called the Caspian gates, through
which it proceeded to Hyrcania and Aria. In this latter country, taking
its course along the foot of the high and woody Hyrcanian and Parthian
Mountains, the road thence turned northward towards Bactra. This is the
same which Alexander followed in his expedition against the Bactrians;
and though he left it occasionally to attack the inhabitants of the
neighbouring mountains, he always returned to it. In Arrian it bears
the name of the great military road.

The great commercial route to India was the same as this as far as
Aria. Here, however, it took a different, that is to say, an easterly
direction, while the other proceeded northward towards Bactra. Thence
it ran to Prophthasia, Arachotus, and Ortospana, where it divided
itself into three branches. One of these went due east to the borders
of India; perhaps the second had a similar direction, with a little
inclination to the south; and the third turned northward towards
Bactria and formed the great road through which India had communication
with this country and its capital, Bactra. The city must then be
regarded as the commercial staple of eastern Asia. Its name belongs to
a people who never cease to afford matter for historical details from
the time they are first mentioned.

We cannot entertain any doubt as to the persons through whose hands
the commodities of India came to Bactra. It is evident, from what has
been said before, that the natives of the countries bordering on Little
Thibet and others, or the northern Indians of Herodotus and Ctesias,
formed the caravans which travelled into the gold desert, and that it
was the same people from whom western Asia obtained ingredients for
dyeing, and also the finest wool.

“The country where gold is found, and which the griffins infest,” says
Ctesias, “is exceedingly desolate. The Bactrians, who dwell in the
neighbourhood of the Indians, assert that the griffins watch over the
gold, though the Indians themselves deny that they do anything of the
kind, as they have no need of the metal; but (say they) the griffins
are only apprehensive on account of their young, and these are the
objects of their protection. The Indians go armed into the desert, in
troops of a thousand or two thousand men. But we are assured that they
do not return from these expeditions till the third or fourth year.”

It is clear, from the foregoing statement, that the Indians here
mentioned were no other than the natives of northern India; and by the
desert where they found gold, must be understood the sandy desert of
Cobi, bounding Tangut on the west and China on the north. With regard,
however, to the account of Ctesias, that caravans of a thousand or two
thousand men travelled into this desert, and returned after three or
four years laden with gold--what other direction could this journey
have had than to the rich countries in the most remote and eastern part
of Asia? I willingly leave it to the reader to judge what degree of
probability there is to support this conjecture. This distant obscurity
indeed prevents our having a clear view, yet this very obscurity
possesses a certain charm.

We are indebted to Strabo for an account of the road by which the wares
of Babylon were conveyed to the shores of the Mediterranean. It ran in
a due northern direction through the midst of Mesopotamia, and reached
the Euphrates near Anthemusia, five and twenty days’ journey distant,
where it turned off towards the west to the Mediterranean. This could
have been only a caravan road, because a numerous company of merchants
would be necessary for mutual defence against the predatory nomad
tribes, the Scenites, who infested the desert; or indeed for procuring
a safe passage by the payment of a ransom. I cannot advance it as
certain that this road was generally used under the Persian dynasty;
yet it appears in the highest degree probable from the circumstance
that roads were seldom or never altered by the ancients.

Another great military road, described by Herodotus, from station to
station, and leading to Sardis and other Greek commercial towns in
Asia Minor, was made by the Persian kings at a vast expense. It is
not, indeed, to be doubted that political reasons were a principal
inducement to the formation of this road, because the Persians, when
they were engaged in war with the Greeks, scarcely set so high a value
upon any of their provinces as they did upon Asia Minor, with which
they were very desirous to further and maintain an uninterrupted
communication. But we moreover learn from the description of Herodotus,
that it was a commercial road, upon which caravans travelled from the
chief cities of Persia into Asia Minor. According to him the road began
from Susa, and not from Babylon; yet the vicinity of these two cities
and their intimate connection, which has been remarked above, renders
this a circumstance of no importance.

This principal road of Asia, once so famous, having undergone no
other alteration than that occasioned by its different limits, is now
commonly used by caravans from Ispahan to Smyrna; Tavernier has given
us a full description of it. Its present course is from Smyrna to
Tokat, and thence to Erivan. Only the last half has varied; for, in
order to be in the direction of Ispahan, the traveller now proceeds
northeast, beyond the lake of Urumiyeh; whereas the ancients, on the
contrary, without going so far east, inclined more to the south, and
followed the course of the Tigris.

On the whole, however, the ancient and modern roads agree in one
particular, the reason of which we are told by Herodotus; that is to
say, they chose the longer in preference to the shorter way, that
they might travel through inhabited countries, and in security. The
direct road would have led them through the midst of the steppes of
Mesopotamia, where security would have been quite out of the question,
on account of the roving predatory hordes. Therefore in ancient times,
as well as the present, they chose the northern route along the foot
of the Armenian Mountains, where the traveller enjoyed security from
molestation.

As to the rest, the division into stations was evidently adopted for
the advantage of the caravans. According to Herodotus, the distance
between each station was five parasangs, a journey of seven or eight
hours; and this we learn from Tavernier is exactly the space which
caravans consisting of loaded camels are accustomed to traverse in
the course of a day; but those of horses travel much faster. As this
road, however, was perfectly safe, there can be no doubt that single
merchants and travellers performed the journey alone.

A third branch of Babylonian commerce in the interior of Asia had a
northern direction, particularly to Armenia. The Armenians had the
advantage of the Euphrates to convey their wares to Babylon, and
amongst these wine, which the soil of Babylonia did not produce, was
the principal. Herodotus has described this navigation; and we learn
from him that the ships or floats of the Armenians were constructed
similarly to those which are at present seen on the Tigris, under
the appellation of kilets. The skeleton only was of wood; this had a
covering of skins overlaid with reeds; and an oval form was given to
the whole, so that there was no difference between the stern and prow.
They were filled with goods, especially large casks of wine, and then
guided down the stream by two oars. The size of these barks varied
considerably; Herodotus observed some which were rated at more than
five thousand talents’ burthen [_i.e._ about 12,000 tons by the least
estimate]. On their arrival at Babylon, the conductors sold not only
the cargo, but also the skeleton; the skins, however, were carried
back by land on asses, which they brought with them for the purpose;
since, as the historian has remarked, the force of the stream rendered
it impossible for them to return up the river: thus, in Germany, the
market boats which go down the Danube to Vienna never return, but are
sold with the commodities which they convey.

We shall be led to conclude, that the navigation of the Euphrates
must have been very important, if we recollect the great works which
were performed in order to secure it. Herodotus speaks of it as
extraordinary; and, truly, if we believe, as there is great probability
for doing, that this trade was confined to the consumption of Babylon,
it must necessarily have been very considerable, from the immense
population of the city, and from the peculiarity of its soil, which,
as it yielded a superfluity of some things, was necessarily quite
deficient in others. Hence the Babylonians were obliged to import from
the northern regions those necessaries of life which their own soil
failed to produce; and we shall have more distinct notions respecting
this trade if we recollect that Herodotus includes under the name of
Armenia, in addition to the mountainous district which may be termed
Armenia proper, also the whole of that rich and fruitful country,
northern Mesopotamia.[e]

SHIPS AMONG THE ASSYRIANS

One does not think of the Assyrians as a naval people, yet that
they also went down to the sea in ships, we may learn from Layard’s
researches.

Although the Assyrians were properly an inland people, yet their
conquests and expeditions, particularly at a later period, brought
them into contact with maritime nations. We consequently find, on the
monuments of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik, frequent representations of naval
engagements and operations on the seacoast. In the most ancient palace
of Nimrud only bas-reliefs with a river have been discovered; they
furnish us, however, with the forms of vessels, evidently of Assyrian
construction--all those in the sculptures of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik
belonging probably to allies or to the enemy. It may be presumed that
the rivers navigated by the early Assyrians, and represented in their
bas-reliefs, were the Tigris, Euphrates, and Khabur.

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF OF AN ASSYRIAN GALLEY]

Herodotus thus describes the Babylonian vessels of a later period: “The
boats used by those who come to the city (Babylon) are of a circular
form, and made of skins. They are constructed in Armenia, in the parts
above Assyria. The ribs of the vessels are formed of willow boughs
and branches, and covered externally with skins. They are round like
a shield, there being no distinction between the head and stern. They
line the bottoms of their boats with reeds (or straw), and, taking
on board merchandise, principally palm wine, float down the stream.
The boats have two oars, one man to each; one pulls to him, the other
pushes from him. These vessels are of different dimensions; some of
them are so large that they bear freight to the value of five thousand
talents [£1,000,000 or $5,000,000]. The smaller have one ass on board,
the larger several. On their arrival at Babylon the boatmen dispose of
their goods, and also offer for sale the ribs and the reeds (or straw).
They then load their asses with the skins, and return with them to
Armenia, where they construct new vessels.”

I was, at one time, inclined to believe that the description of
Herodotus applied to the rafts still constructed on the rivers of
Mesopotamia, and used, it will be remembered, for the conveyance of the
sculptures from Nimrud to Bassorah. The materials of which they are
made are precisely those mentioned by the Greek historian, and they
are still disposed of at Baghdad in the same way as they were in his
day at Babylon. But the boats which excited the wonder of Herodotus
seem to have been more solidly built, and were capable of bearing
animals, to which purpose the modern raft could not be applied. They
were probably more like the circular vessels now used at Baghdad, built
of boughs, and sometimes covered with skins, over which bitumen is
smeared, to render the whole waterproof. The boats commonly employed
for the conveyance of goods and animals, on the lower part of the
Tigris and Euphrates, and for ferries on all parts of those rivers, are
constructed of planks of poplar wood, rudely joined together by iron
nails or wooden pins, and coated with bitumen.

In a bas-relief, from the most ancient palace of Nimrud, two kinds
of boats are introduced. The larger vessel contains the king in his
chariot, with his attendants and eunuchs. It is both impelled by oars
and towed by men. The smaller resembles that described by Herodotus.
The head does not differ in form from the stern, and two men sit face
to face at the oars.

In this bas-relief are also represented men supporting themselves upon
inflated skins--a manner of crossing rivers still generally practised
in Mesopotamia.

The larger boats were steered by a long oar, to the end of which was
attached a square or oval board. This oar was held in its place by a
rope fastened to a wooden pin at the stern. By this contrivance the
steersman had considerable control over the vessel, and could impel
it or turn the head at pleasure. This mode of steering and propelling
boats still prevails on the Mesopotamian rivers.

The vessels of the Khorsabad sculptures show a considerable advance
in the knowledge of ship-building. That they did not belong to the
Assyrians, but to some allied nation, appears to be indicated by the
peculiar costume of the figures in them.[30] The form of the vessel
is not inelegant; it is that of a sea monster, the prow being in the
shape of the head of a horse, and the stern in that of the tail of a
fish. Several men stand at the oars. The mast, supported by two ropes,
appears to be surmounted by a box, or what is technically called a
crow’s nest, which, in the galleys of the Egyptians, frequently held an
archer.

But it was in the sculptures of Kuyunjik that vessels were found
represented in the greatest perfection. From their position in the
bas-reliefs, with reference to the besieging army, it would seem that
they did not belong to the Assyrians themselves, but to a people with
whom they were at war, and whom they appear to have conquered. The sea
was also here indicated by the nature of the fish and marine animals;
such as the star or jelly fish and a kind of shark. A castle stood
on the shore; and the inhabitants, attacked on the land side, were
deserting the city and taking refuge in their vessels.

The larger galleys of these bas-reliefs were of peculiar form, and
may, I think, be identified with the vessels used to a comparatively
late period by the inhabitants of the great maritime cities of the
Syrian coast--by the people of Tyre and Sidon. Their height out of the
water, when compared with the depth of keel, was very considerable. The
fore part rose perpendicularly from a low sharp prow, which resembled
a ploughshare, and was probably of iron or some other metal, being
intended, like that of the Roman galley, to sink or disable the enemy’s
ships. The stern was curved from the keel, and ended in a point high
above the upper deck. There were two tiers of rowers; but whether they
were divided by a deck or merely sat upon benches placed at different
elevations in the hold, does not appear from the sculptures. Above the
rowers was a deck, on which stood the armed men. These vessels had
only one mast, to the top of which was attached a very long yard, held
by ropes. In the sculptures the sails were represented as furled. The
number of rowers in the bas-reliefs was generally eight on a side.
Only the heads of the upper tier of men were visible; the lower tier
was completely concealed, the oars passing through small apertures, or
portholes, in the sides of the vessel.

Besides the vessel I have described, a smaller is represented in the
same bas-reliefs. It has also a double tier of rowers; but the head and
stern are differently constructed from those of the larger galley, and
both being of the same shape, are not to be distinguished one from the
other except by the position of the rowers. They rise high above the
water, and are flat at the top, with a beak projecting outward. This
vessel had no mast, and was impelled entirely by oars. On the upper
deck are seen warriors armed with spears, and women.

It is impossible to determine from the sculptures the size of the
vessels, as the relative proportions between them and the figures they
contain are not preserved. It is most probable that the four rowers in
each tier are merely a conventional number, and we cannot, therefore,
conjecture the length of the ship from them. No representations of
naval engagements, as on the monuments of Egypt, have yet been found in
the Assyrian edifices. It is most probable that, not being a maritime
people, the Assyrians--as the Persians did afterwards--made use of the
fleets of their allies in their expeditions by sea, furnishing warriors
to man the ships.[b]

LAWS OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS

The sense of justice and its administration play a large part in the
history of any nation; and we are so fortunate as to possess certain
light on the courts and customs of Assyria.

Asshurbanapal opened his library, not only to the documents emanating
from the kings, but also as a depository for collections on law,
juridicial decisions, and contracts between private individuals.

The Assyrio-Chaldean legislation rested on laws and customs which were
already in force under the Sumerian civilisation. A great number of
tablets written in both languages give us the primitive text of the
law and the corresponding Assyrian translation. Others, written in
Assyrian, are full of citations from Sumerian texts.

First of all, there is a long fragment of laws relating to the family,
written in Assyrian and Sumerian. They read as follows:

“It has thus been decided by the sentence of the judge: ‘If a son (is
authorised) to say to his father: “Thou art not my father,” he (the
son) can sell him, treat him as a forfeit, and give him in payment like
money.

“‘If a son (is authorised) to say to his mother: “Thou art not my
mother,” he will cut her hair off, assemble the people, and make her go
out of his house.

“‘If a father (is authorised) to say to his son: “Thou art not my son,”
he (the father) can shut him up in his dwelling and in the cellar.

“‘If a mother (is authorised) to say to her son: “Thou art not my son,”
she can shut him up in her dwelling and in the upper chambers.

“‘If a wife (is authorised) to repudiate her husband, and to say to
him: “Thou art not my husband,” she can have him thrown into the river.

“‘If a man (is authorised) to say to his wife: “Thou art not my wife,”
he can have half a mina of silver paid to him.

“‘If the intendant lets a slave escape, if he dies (the slave), if he
becomes infirm, if in consequence of bad treatment he becomes ill, he
(the intendant) shall pay half a hin of corn a day (to the master of
the slave).’”

In these ancient records we likewise find laws concerning property.
One tablet seems to pertain to the observations made by a Sumerian
agriculturist, which were proposed to the Assyrian agriculturists of
the seventh century B.C. First of all are indicated the best conditions
of crop-growing, the time for sowing, the calculating of the income,
the tillage, irrigation, and the injurious animals which must be
destroyed.

It is evident that, in spite of the difference in property or wealth,
the interest is always the same, the calculation of interest on
different sums in contracts showing that the figures bear a relation to
one another.

Loans could be made with or without interest; they could be made with
or without security, and these securities were of different natures:

“For the interest of one’s money.… He has given as security.… A house,
a field, an orchard, a female slave, a male slave.”

Exchanges were frequent, and from the data on the tablets, the
principal things exchanged are known:

“They exchanged a house for money. They exchanged a field for money.
They exchanged an orchard for money. They exchanged a female slave for
money. They exchanged a male slave for money.”

Trials are inherent to human nature and to all epochs. Pleading took
place in Nineveh, Assyria, and Chaldea. On this subject the following
axiom used by the judges and the pleaders, holds perfectly to-day:

“He who listeneth not to his conscience, the judge will not listen to
his right.”

There must have been a fairly complicated code of procedure, for traces
are found of an appellative jurisdiction in which the sovereign was the
final judge.

The Sumerian laws likewise fixed the form of individual contracts. The
signature, “qatatu,” was the essential feature of the contract.

Signature took place by affixing the seal. One fragment of these
tablets bears witness to this custom so perpetuated in the East from
remotest times to the present. Herodotus mentions the existence of
seals as a peculiarity of the Babylonians.

“Every Babylonian,” said he, “had his seal for his personal use.” The
Assyrian “kunuk” answers, like our word “seal,” both to the instrument
and the mark it left on the plastic earth.

A large number of contracts of private business concerning all the
ordinary transactions of life, between individuals, on which figures
the mark of a seal, has been found: contracts of sale or exchange;
contracts of loan or hire; acknowledgments of debts, carrying the
guaranty of a mortgage or of chattels. They read like the records of
a notary’s office. These contracts, like all the documents of the
palace library, are written on the traditional bricks. These are easily
distinguished from other documents by their outer appearance. After a
few lines given up to the names of the contracting parties, we see the
imprints of their seals, or sometimes the imprint of three finger nails.

The general drift of their contracts is easy to understand; the
clauses are worded in formal language which proceeds from the nature
of the relations of the two parties according to the object of their
agreement. As a usual thing, these contracts are very simply drawn.
They begin by stating the names and qualifications of the parties who
are going to enter into agreement by the affixment of their seal or by
the nail mark, its substitute.

All contracting parties are not called upon to fulfil this formality;
it is only those who have the title of “dominus negotii” the vendor,
the lessor, the lender, those who “hold the pen” as the modern
expression is.

A place reserved in the text for the fixing of seal or imprint reveals
to us that their seals had different shapes. As many of these jewels
have descended to us, and as there are a great number in our public and
private collections, it is not without interest to describe them in
more detail.

Generally they are hard stones, cut and polished in different ways.
Some are conical or like a truncated pyramid, on the base of which the
design is sunk. Sometimes the seal is in the shape of a spheroid or
an ellipsoid. Many are cylindrical, the design being engraved on the
surface of the cylinder, and the imprint is obtained by rolling it on
plastic earth. Every variety of precious stones has been cut for this
purpose; the study of these jewels and their designs is of the greatest
interest to the student of art.

After the imprint of the seals, the object of the contract is stated,
then its nature and its amount, which is sometimes paid down, sometimes
at quarter-day; in certain cases a security is stipulated.

As to money loans, the interest is generally fixed upon by the
contracting parties. Where the contract is silent on this subject it
seems as if a general law were referred to, probably that which is
mentioned above.

Measurements, capacities, estimates, and prices are expressed with
great precision, and thus one may determine the importance of the
matter discussed in the contract. The form of drawing up, indicates
that the agreement passed before a magistrate who gave, if I may thus
express myself, authenticity to the stipulations agreed on between the
parties, from which they could not release themselves without penalty
of a fine or damages. Generally the fine was paid into the treasury
of Ishtar either at Arbela or Nineveh; then the judge decreed the
restitution of the sum paid over, with a certain sum for damages. The
contract often contained a more or less extended prayer formula and
thus placed the execution of the agreement under the protection of the
gods. The contract ends with the names of witnesses and their status,
and is dated on the day, month, and year of its drawing up.

The contract thus perfected was delivered to a special functionary, who
registered it in the public depository, the superintendence of which
was confided to him.

Here are some contracts which help us to understand the methods
of drawing up, and inform us as to the nature of the most usual
transactions of that epoch. We give first a contract relating to the
sale of a slave; it is thus worded:

_Sale of a Slave_

Seal of Nabu-rikhtav-usur, son of Akhardisu, man of Hasaï, workman of
Zikkar Ishtar, of the city of …

Seal of Tebetai, his son, seal of Silim Bin his son, owners of the
slave sold.

The girl Tavat-khasina, slave of Nabu-rikhtav-usur.… And Nitocris
obtained her for the price of sixteen drachmas of silver … for
Takhu her son, on account of his marriage. She will be slave to
Takhu. The price has been definitely fixed. Whoever in days to come
and at no matter what epoch shall contest this before me, be it
Nabu-rikhtav-usur, his sons, his sons’ sons, his brother, his brother’s
sons, or any other, or his attorney, should wish to annul the bargain
between Nitocris, her sons, or her sons’ sons, shall pay ten minas
of silver for the revocation of this contract, it shall not be sold.
Shapimayu, shepherd, Bel-shum-usur, son of Yudanani Rimbel, son of Atu,
are the three men, heirs of the woman because of the binding of her
hands (her first marriage) and of the interest on the wage of Karmeon
who was to inherit (if he lived).

Witnesses: Akhardisu, Zikkar-nipika, Mutumhisu, Khasba.

In the month of Ulul (August) the last day of the year of
Asshur-sadu-sakil.

As before Yum-shamash, Putainpaïte, Atu, Nabu-iddin-akhe, presiding.

This document is one of the most curious that we have. First of all,
it contains the name of an Egyptian woman, Nitocris (Nitit-eqar), then
that of Takhu her son, who bears equally an Egyptian name.

The vendor is the daughter of Nabu-rikhtav-usur; his sons intervene in
their quality of kinsmen for the sale of their slave, that is to say,
the servant of their house. The money is not to be paid to Nitocris or
direct descendants, but to third persons who are also designated; there
are the three heirs of one named Karmeon, who would be the heir if he
lived.

Here is another of the same kind:

_Sale of a Slave_

Seal of Khataï owner of the slave. Lu-akhi is the slave offered up.
And Dannaï obtained him from Khataï for the price of twenty drachmas
of silver. The price has been definitely fixed, the slave has been
paid for and delivered; no annulment of the bargain can now take
place. Whosoever in the future shall claim before me (the nullity of
the agreement, shall pay the fine). Witnesses: Shamash, Khimar, Zabda,
Kharaman, Mannuakhi, Zikkar, Shamash.

In the month of Ulul (August) the fifth day in the year of
Nabu-bel-iddin. In the presence of Zikkar Shamash, the officer.

Contracts of this nature are numerous, and they raise a question on a
point of the history of ancient slavery, which it would be interesting
to have cleared up. What was the origin of these slaves who were at
that time trafficked in, and who do not seem to have had to undergo
the law of the vanquished, and who were so easily carried off after
the seizure of a town? We have no information on this subject, and
we must limit ourselves to register that which is given us in the
above-mentioned texts.

The proprietor of the slave, Khataï, is a Syrian, whilst the slave,
Lu-akhe, is an Assyrian sold to another Assyrian, Dannaï, for a sum of
money equal to £3 [$15].

Sometimes the contract is not so simple. Complications may arise as to
titles of the property or in its manner of transmission. It is also
interesting to study the status of the contracting parties. One fact
seems to be universal, it is that the stranger--Phœnician, Jew, or
Egyptian--had the same civil rights of contracting, selling, or buying
as Assyrian subjects.

Here is a contract of another kind. It concerns the sale of a house.
Instead of their seal the parties affixed marks by pressing their
thumb-nails into the clay.

_Sale of a House_

Nail of Sharludari, nail of Ahasshuru, nail of the woman Amat-Sula,
wife of Belduru head of three legions, proprietors of the house to
be sold. A house in course of construction with its beams, columns,
materials, situate in the city of Nineveh, bounded by the house
of Mannuki-akhe, bounded by the house of Ankia, bounded by the
market-place. And Sil-asshur, the Egyptian officer, has acquired it by
means of a mina of the king’s money, from Sharladuri, Ahasshuru, and
the woman Amat-sula, wife of her husband. The price has been definitely
fixed, the house paid for and bought, the annulment of the contract
cannot be allowed.

No matter who, whoever he may be, in days to come, and no matter at
what epoch, even among these persons, contests the right and contract
of Sil-asshur shall pay ten minas of silver. Witnesses: Shushankhu,
officer of the king, Kharmaza, head of three legions, Razu, captain
of a vessel, Nabu-dur, officer, Kharmaza, captain of a vessel,
Sin-shar-usur, Zidka.

The sixteenth day of the month Sivan (May) of the year of Zaza, prefect
of the town of Arpad (1692 B.C.).

Before Shamash-ukin-akhe, Litturu, Nabu-shum-iddin.

This act is, above all, remarkable for the names of the contracting
parties, from which we can now recognise that people of different
nationalities were allowed to make contracts in Nineveh with the same
rights as the Assyrians. Thus the names of the witnesses Shushankhu
and Kharmaza are Egyptian, and their original form could easily be
restituted. The name of the woman Amat-Sula is Phœnician and reveals
the name of an unknown divinity; literally it means servant of Sula.[f]

THE CODE OF KHAMMURABI

We have purposely approached the subject of Mesopotamian law from the
Assyrian side, because the Assyrian laws represent the later forms of
elaboration of the old Babylonian codes on which they are based. In
conclusion, however, we shall present in its entirety the oldest known,
and at present the most famous, of these ancient codes, that of king
Khammurabi, that the reader may judge for himself as to the character
of the judicial and feudal system that was in vogue in Babylonia in
the third millennium before our era. This extraordinary document will
repay the closest study on the part of anyone who takes the slightest
interest in the evolution of human society. Until a comparatively
recent date the name of Khammurabi, the ruler who first united the
states of the Euphrates valley under one rule, and thus founded the
Babylonian empire, was scarcely known, whereas now we have a large mass
of material dating from his reign--his inscriptions, his letters, and
lastly, most important of all, his code of laws. It is difficult to
obtain more than a vague idea of a country merely from its name, or
from the lists of its kings and their military exploits, which is all
that we possess of most Assyrian and Babylonian kings. The real life of
the people wholly escapes us. This reason alone would make this code
inexpressibly valuable, because, by giving the laws which controlled
the social and commercial life of the people, even to minute details,
it gives a picture of the actual condition of the country.

Aside from its bearing on Babylonian civilisation, however, this code
is one of the most important monuments in the history of the human
race. It is the oldest known legal code in existence, antedating the
Mosaic code by at least a thousand years, and older than the laws of
Manu. It formed the basis of Babylonian legislation until the fall of
the empire, and was compiled by a king living about 2300 B.C., whose
rule extended from the Tigris to the Mediterranean. Khammurabi is
generally identified with Amraphel, the contemporary of Abraham; and it
cannot be questioned that these laws formed a part of the traditions
which the Hebrews brought with them to their new home.

_The Discovery of the Code_

The monument containing these laws was not found at Babylon, as might
have been expected, but at Susa (Shushan) in the so-called Acropolis.
The discovery is due to the French excavating expedition under M. de
Morgan, and was made in December and January of 1901-1902. The monument
is a block of black diorite nearly eight feet high. It has been
photographed and published with transcription and translation by Father
V. Scheil,[g] the Assyriologist of the expedition, in the _Mémoires de
la Délégation en Perse_, tome IV, _Textes Élamites Sémitiques_. The
whole inscription has since been translated by Dr. H. Winckler[h] in
_Der Alte Orient_, 4 Jahrgang, Heft 4, 1902, and the code alone by Rev.
C. H. W. Johns,[i] _The Oldest Code of Laws in the World_, Edinburgh,
1903.

The obverse of the stone contains a representation in bas-relief of
Khammurabi receiving the laws inscribed beneath, from Shamash, the
sun-god and god of right, who is pictured seated on a throne. The king
stands in a respectful attitude before him. The inscription several
times mentions the fact that the laws were given by Shamash; so the
very interesting theory in _The Times_, London, of April 14th, 1903,
that the god in the picture is Bel has not much foundation. This theory
would connect the code more closely with the Biblical narrative. To
quote from _The Times_,[j] “The old Bel was the god who dwelt on the
mountain of the world and gave laws to men and wore on his breast the
tablets of destiny. So here we have a curious proof of the existence
of the tradition of the mountain-given law long before the Mosaic
reception on Sinai.”

Below the bas-relief on the obverse are sixteen columns of writing with
1,114 lines, and on the reverse there are twenty-eight columns with
2,510 lines. Five columns of the obverse have been erased and the stone
repolished, probably to make room for an inscription of the conquering
Elamite king who carried the stone away from Babylon to Susa. Possibly
one of the dire calamities which Khammurabi, in the inscription,
invokes the gods to send on anyone who should deface his monument,
befell the unfortunate Elamite.

The writing is in a beautifully clear archaic script often used for
royal inscriptions, even after the cursive writing came into use. There
are a great many tablets dating from the same period written in the
cursive, some of them bearing the impression of seals in the archaic.
Some seven hundred lines of the inscription are devoted to proclaiming
the titles of the king, his care for his subjects, his reason for
erecting the monument, his maledictions on anyone who shall interfere
with it. Some passages in it remind one of the majesty of portions of
the Psalms. It begins:

“When Anu the supreme, king of the Anunnaki, and Bel, lord of heaven
and earth, who determines the fate of the universe, to Marduk the
eldest son of Ea, god of right, earthly power had assigned, among the
Igigi had made him great, Babylon with his august name had named,
in all the world had exalted him, in the heart (of that city) an
eternal kingdom, whose foundations are firm as heaven and earth, had
established,--then did Anu and Bel call me by name, Khammurabi, the
great prince, who fears god, to establish justice in the land, to
destroy the wicked and base, so that the strong oppress not the weak,
to go forth like Shamash (the sun) over the black heads (_i.e._, men)
to give light to the world, to promote the prosperity of the people.…”

Immediately following the code Khammurabi resumes: “The just decrees
which Khammurabi, the wise king, has established; for the land a sure
law and a happy reign he has procured. Khammurabi, the protecting
king, I am. From the black heads, which Bel gave me, to be a shepherd
over whom Marduk appointed me, I have not held aloof, have not rested;
places of peace I have provided for them; I opened up a way through
steep passes and sent them aid. With the powerful arms which Zamama and
Ishtar endowed me, with the clear glance that Ea granted me, with the
bravery which Marduk gave me, the enemy above and below I have rooted
out, the deeps I have conquered, established the prosperity of the
country, the dwellers in houses have I made to live in safety; a cause
for fear I have not suffered to exist. The great gods have chosen
me. I am the peace-bringing shepherd whose staff is straight (_i.e._,
sceptre is just), the good shadow which is spread over my city; to my
heart the people of Sumer and Accad I have taken, under my protection
have I caused them to live in peace, sheltered them in my wisdom, so
that the strong may not oppress the weak; to counsel the orphan and
the widow, their head have I raised in Babylon, the city of Anu and
Bel; in E-sagila, the temple whose foundations are firm as heaven and
earth, to speak justice to the land, to decide disputed questions, to
remedy evil, have I written my precious words on my monument; before my
picture, as of a king of justice I have placed them.… At the command of
Shamash, the great judge of heaven and earth, shall justice reign in
the land; by the order of Marduk my lord no destruction shall touch my
statue. In E-sagila, that I love, shall my name be remembered forever;
the oppressed man who has a cause for complaint shall come before my
picture of the king of justice, shall read the inscription, shall
apprehend my precious words, the writing shall explain to him his case,
he shall see his right, his heart shall become glad, (and he shall
say) ‘Khammurabi is a lord who is like a father to his subjects, he
has made the word of Marduk to be feared.’ … Khammurabi, the king of
righteousness, to whom Shamash gave the law, I am.”

The inscription contains also many references to public works and
historical events which make it one of the most important historical
records ever discovered. One reference to Asshur (Assyria) is
particularly important. It occurs in the introduction to the code and
records the restoration of “its protecting god to the city of Asshur.”
The name Asshur occurs again in a letter written by Khammurabi to
Sin-idinnam, and also in a private letter of the period, the former
published by Mr. L. W. King[k] in 1901.

We now turn to the code proper, and the following points are especially
noticeable throughout. The idea of responsibility is very clearly
fixed,--a man who hired an animal was responsible for that animal,--if
a boat he was responsible for the boat,--if he stored anything for
another, or carried anything to another, he was responsible so long as
the object was in his hands. Also of builders,--if a man built a house
he was responsible for its solidity; a physician was held responsible
for the life of his patient.

Secondly, we notice the importance of putting everything in writing--a
marriage without a written contract was invalid; a man who took
goods on deposit, an agent who obtained goods from a merchant, if he
had no document to show for it, could claim no legal aid in case of
disagreement. We have countless contract tablets from this period,
containing the seals and names of witnesses to just such transactions
as are provided for in the code, which show how well this principle was
observed.

The law of retaliation or _jus talionis_ is another important feature,
as it is prominent also in the Mosaic code. This is expressed by the
familiar phrase “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” The
attempt to make the punishment balance the crime exactly is carried to
such an extent that if a house fell and killed the owner, the builder
was to be put to death, if the owner’s son died, the builder’s son was
killed. In several of the laws we notice peculiarly humane provisions,
showing that the king really had the interests of his subjects at
heart, and that his words on the inscription and his desire to be
a father to his people were not a vain boast. This is especially
noticeable in a regulation concerning debtors (clause 45), in the
provisions for inheritance, and particularly in the clause concerning
the sick wife (148).

It is not to be supposed that all of the laws found in Khammurabi’s
code date from his reign. Some of them were much older, as is shown
by a difference in the grades of culture represented. Some even
assign different penalties for the same crime (see clauses 6 and 8).
As Prof. Jastrow[l] has pointed out, the ordeal by water cannot have
been invented in the same period as the minute provisions for the
inheritance of property.

The so-called Sumerian domestic laws which are very similar to those
before us were known prior to the discovery of Khammurabi’s code, and
are known to have been already in use at that time. The code contains
something like 280 clauses, and is arranged in comparatively systematic
order. Space has not permitted the giving of all the provisions in
detail. The plan has been to deal with each class of laws as a whole,
in some cases giving merely the synopsis of a class.[31]

_Miscellaneous Regulations_

1. If a man weaves a spell about another man (_i.e._, accuses him),
and throws a curse on him, and cannot prove it, the one who wove
the spell shall be put to death.

2. If a man weaves a spell about another man, and has not proved
it, he on whom suspicion was thrown shall go to the river, shall
plunge into the river. If the river seizes hold of him, he who
wove the spell shall take his house. If the river shows him to be
innocent, and he is uninjured, he who threw suspicion on him shall
be put to death. He who plunged into the river shall take the house
of him who wove the spell on him.

3. If a man has accused the witnesses in a lawsuit of malice and
has not proved what he said; if the suit was one of life (and
death), that man shall be put to death.

4. If he has sent corn and silver to the witnesses, he shall bear
the penalty of the suit.

5. If a judge has delivered a sentence, has made a decision
and fixed it in writing, and if afterwards he has annulled his
sentence, that judge for having altered his decision shall be
brought to judgment; for the penalty inflicted in his decision,
twelve-fold shall he pay it, and publicly shall they remove him
from his judgment seat. He shall not come back and shall not sit in
judgment with the other judges.

6. If a man has stolen property from the god or palace, that man
shall be put to death; and he who received the stolen goods from
his hands shall be put to death.

7. If a man has bought or received in deposit, silver, gold, a man
or woman slave, an ox, a sheep, an ass, or whatever it may be,
from the hands of a son of another or a slave of another, without
witness or contract, that man shall be put to death as a thief.

8. If anyone has stolen an ox, a sheep, an ass, a pig, or a boat,
if it belongs to the god or to the palace, he shall return it
thirty-fold; if it belongs to a noble he shall return it ten-fold;
if the thief has nothing with which to repay, he shall be put to
death.

9. If anyone who has lost something, finds his something that was
lost in the hand (possession) of another; if the man in whose hand
the lost object was found says: “A trader sold it to me, before
witnesses I paid for it,” and if the owner of the lost object says:
“Witnesses who know my lost object I will bring,” then shall the
purchaser bring the seller who sold it to him, and the witnesses
before whom he bought it, and the owner of the lost object shall
bring witnesses who know his lost goods: the judge shall consider
their words, and the witnesses before whom the purchase was made,
and the witnesses who know the object shall bear testimony before
God. The seller is a thief and shall be put to death. The owner of
the lost object shall receive the object; the buyer shall get back
the money he paid from the house of the seller.

10. If the buyer does not bring the seller who sold it to him and
the witnesses before whom he bought it; if the owner of the lost
object brings the witnesses who know his object, the buyer is a
thief and shall be killed; the owner shall get his lost object.

11. If the owner of the lost object does not bring his expert
witnesses, then he is a miscreant; he has accused falsely, he shall
die.

12. If the seller has gone to his fate, the buyer shall receive
from the house of the seller five times the costs of the suit.

13. If that man has not his witnesses at hand, the judge shall give
him a respite of six months. If in six months his witnesses do not
come, that man is a miscreant and shall bear the costs of the suit.

14. If anyone steals the minor son of a man, he shall be put to
death.

_Regulations concerning Slaves_

15. If anyone has caused a male slave of the palace or a female
slave of the palace, the male slave of a noble or the female slave
of a noble, to go out of the gate, he shall be put to death.

16. If anyone harbours in his house a runaway male or female slave
from the palace or the house of a noble, and does not bring them
out at the command of the _majordomo_, the master of the house
shall be put to death.

17. If anyone has caught a runaway male or female slave in the
field, and brings him back to his master, the master of the slave
shall give him two shekels of silver.

18. If that slave will not name his owner, to the palace he shall
bring him; his case shall be investigated; to his owner one shall
bring him.

19. If he retains that slave in his house, and if, later, the slave
is found in his hands, that man shall be put to death.

20. If the slave escapes from the house of the one who caught him,
that man shall swear to the owner of the slave in the name of God
and he shall be quit.

_Provisions concerning Robbery_

21. If anyone has broken a hole in a house, in front of that hole
one shall kill him and bury him.

22. If anyone has committed a robbery and is caught, he shall be
killed.

23. If the robber is not caught, the man who has been robbed shall
make claim before God to everything stolen from him, and the town
and its governor within the territory and limits of which the
robbery took place shall give back to him everything he has lost.

24. If it was a life, the city and governor shall pay one mina of
silver to his people.

25. If a fire breaks out in the house of a man, and some one who
has gone thither to put it out raise his eyes to the goods of the
master of the house, and take the goods of the master of the house,
that man shall be thrown into that fire.

_Concerning Leases and Tillage_

Special rules governed the estates of officers or constables in the
king’s employ. They seem to have had land given them by the state,
which was inalienable; they might not sell it, deed it to wife or
daughter, or give it in return for a debt. In the absence of the
proprietor he might give the land into the keeping of another to
manage it for him. This was usually done by a son or wife. Three
years’ absence or neglect forfeited his claim to the land. No man
could send a substitute in his place on pain of death for both
himself and the substitute. The king’s officers could buy land in
their own right which they were free to dispose of at pleasure, and
they could also sell the land which was theirs by official right to
another officer.

42. If anyone has taken a field to cultivate, and has not made
grain to grow in the field, he shall be charged with not having
done his duty in the field; he shall give grain equal to that
yielded by the neighbouring field to the owner of the field.

43. If he has not tilled the field, has let it lie, he shall
give to the owner of the field grain equal to the yield of the
neighbouring field; and the field which he left untilled, he shall
harrow, sow, and return it to its owner.

44. If anyone has hired an unreclaimed field for three years, to
open (cultivate) it, but has neglected it, has not opened the
field, in the fourth year he shall harrow the field, hoe it, and
plant it and return it to the owner of the field, and 10 GUR of
grain for every 10 GAN he shall measure out.

45. If a man has rented his field to a cultivator for the produce
and he has received his produce, and then a storm has come and
destroyed the harvest, the loss is the cultivator’s.

46. If he has not received the produce from his field, but has
given his field on a half or a third share, the grain which is in
the field shall the owner and cultivator share according to their
contract.

47. If the cultivator, because in the first year he did not obtain
his living (?), had the field cultivated by another, the owner
of the field shall not blame this cultivator, his field has been
cultivated; at the time of harvest he shall receive grain according
to his contract.

48. If a man has a debt and a storm has devastated his field and
carried off the harvest, or if the grain has not grown on account
of a lack of water, in that year he shall give no grain to the
creditor; he shall soak his tablet (in water, _i.e._, alter it),
and shall pay no interest for that year.

49. If anyone has borrowed money from a merchant and given a
ploughed field sown with grain or sesame to the merchant and said
to him: “Cultivate the field, harvest and take the grain or sesame
which is thereon;” when the cultivator has raised grain or sesame
in the field, at the time of harvest the owner of the field shall
take the grain or sesame which is in the field, and shall give to
the merchant grain in return for the money with its interest, which
he took from the merchant, and for the support of the cultivator.

50. If he has given him an (already) cultivated field (of grain) or
a field of sesame, the grain or sesame which is in the field shall
the owner of the field receive; money and interest to the merchant
he shall give.

51. If he has no money with which to pay him, he shall give to the
merchant sesame equal to the value of the money which he received
from the merchant, with interest according to the king’s tariff.

52. If the cultivator has not raised grain or sesame in the field,
his contract is not altered.

_Concerning Canals_

The canals built by Khammurabi are frequently referred to in his
inscriptions so that we expect to find them mentioned in his laws.
Clauses 53-56 are in connection with this subject:

53. If anyone is too lazy to keep his dikes in order and fails to
do so, and if a breach is made in his dike and the fields have been
flooded with water, the man in whose dike the breach was opened
shall replace the grain which he has destroyed.

54. If he is not able to replace the grain, he and his property
shall be sold, and the people whose grain the water carried off
shall share (the proceeds).

55. If anyone opens his irrigation canals to let in water, but is
careless and the water floods the field of his neighbour, he shall
measure out grain to the latter in proportion to the yield of the
neighbouring field.

56. If anyone lets in the water and it floods the growth of his
neighbour’s field, he shall measure out to him 10 GUR of grain for
every 10 GAN (of land).

Each cultivator had an intricate system of small water-ways
covering his land, into which he let water from the main canal
at certain times. When he had watered his field he dammed up the
connection again, but if he neglected to do so the water would keep
on coming in and eventually flood his neighbour’s land.

If a shepherd let his flock pasture in a field without permission,
he was compelled to return a definite amount of grain to the owner.
Anyone cutting down a tree without permission had to pay one-half
of a mina of silver.

About thirty-five clauses, from 65 to 100, have been erased. This
gap has been partly filled in from some old fragments of another
supposed copy of this code in the British Museum. One of these
supplementary fragments speaks of house rent: if a tenant has paid
his rent for a whole year, and the landlord turns him out before
the end of his term, the landlord shall pay back to the tenant a
proportionate amount of the money which the tenant gave him.

_Commerce, Debt_

The reverse of the stele begins with a continuation of the laws
regulating commercial relations, which are extremely important as
showing a highly developed system. If an agent found no opening
where he went, he was to return the capital to the merchant; also
if any mishap befell him in the place to which he went. If he were
robbed by the way, he was to swear before God that the loss was
through no fault of his and could then go free. The agent was to
make out a written statement of the goods received, and received
also a receipt for the money paid to the merchant. Without this
receipt he could lay no claim to his money in case of disagreement.

Curiously enough the wine sellers appear to have been women. We
read in clause 109: If a wine merchant when rebels meet in her
house does not arrest them and take them to the palace, that wine
merchant shall be put to death. 110. If a votary who does not live
in the temple shall open a tavern or enter a tavern to drink, she
shall be burned.

[Illustration: THE GOD SHAMASH DICTATING THE CODE OF LAWS TO KING
KHAMMURABI]

Laws concerning debt are treated of in clauses 113-119. A man might
be imprisoned for debt, or, as in the Mosaic code, he might sell
his wife and children into bondage for debt, but only for three
years. We have a peculiarly doleful picture of a prison of this
period, in a letter dating from the reign of Khammurabi. It
is written by an imprisoned man to his master. He describes his
place of confinement as a “house of want,” and begs for food and
clothing, to keep him from death and being devoured by dogs. If the
debtor died a natural death in his confinement, the case was at an
end, but:

116. If the confined man has died in the house of his confinement
as a result of blows or ill-treatment, the owner of the prisoner
shall call his merchant to account. If the man was free-born, his
son (of the merchant) one shall kill; if he was a slave, he shall
pay one-third of a mina of silver, and shall lose possession of
everything which he gave him.

117. If anyone has an indebtedness, sells wife, son, or daughter
for gold or gives them into bondage, three years in the house of
their buyer or their taskmaster shall they labour; in the fourth
year shall he let them go free.

118. If he gives away a man or woman slave into servitude, and if
the merchant passes them on, sells them for money, there is no
protest.

119. If anyone has contracted a debt and sells a slave who has
borne him children, the money which the merchant paid, the owner of
the slave shall pay back to him and buy back his slave.

Clauses 120-126 are in regard to depositing grain and other
property in another’s keeping. A written document was necessary and
the person who received the deposit made responsible for what had
been intrusted to him.

120. If anyone has stored his grain in the house of another for
keeping, and a disaster has happened in the granary, or the owner
of the house has opened the granary and taken out grain, or if he
disputes as to the whole amount which was deposited with him, the
owner of the grain shall pursue (claim) his grain before God, and
the master of the house shall return undiminished to its owner the
grain which he took.

_Domestic Legislation, Divorce, Inheritance_

The laws referring to domestic legislation are especially
interesting as showing the position of women. We know from other
documents of the period that they could hold property in their own
name and carry on business, and we see here that their position was
respected.

127. If anyone has caused a finger to be pointed at a votary or the
wife of a man and has not proved (his accusation against) that man,
one shall bring him before the judge and brand his forehead.

A contract was necessary for legal marriage:

128. If anyone has married a wife but has not drawn up a contract
with her, that woman is not a wife.

If a man was taken captive and if, during his absence, his wife
married some one else while there was means of subsistence in the
house, she was drowned. But if she had no means of support, her
action was considered justifiable. If, in the latter case, the
husband returned, his wife was to return to him; but the children
of her second marriage remained with their father. If the man was
a fugitive and had abandoned his native city, but returned after a
time and wanted his wife again, she was not to return to him.

The laws concerning divorce were much like those existing in
Mohammedan countries to-day. If a woman were childless and her
husband wished to divorce her, she received her dowry and marriage
portion and returned to her father’s house. If she had borne
children and her husband still wanted to divorce her, she received
besides her marriage portion sufficient means to bring up her
children; and after they were grown, of whatever they received
they were to give her a son’s share. She was also free to marry
again. If the woman were divorced through a fault of her own, she
received nothing.

141. If a man’s wife, who lives in his house, sets her face to go
out, causes discord, wastes her house, neglects her husband, to
justice one shall bring her. If her husband says, “I repudiate
her,” he shall let her go her way, he shall give her nothing for
her divorce. If her husband says, “I do not repudiate her,” her
husband may take another wife; that (first) wife shall stay in the
house of her husband as a slave.

A woman who wanted a divorce, if she could show fault in her
husband for it, might take her marriage portion and go home; but if
the fault were hers she was thrown into the water.

A peculiarly humane provision is the following:

148. If anyone has taken a wife and a sickness has seized her, and
if his face is set towards taking another wife, he may take (her),
but his wife whom the sickness has seized he may not repudiate her,
she shall live in the house he has built, and as long as she lives
he shall support her.

149. If that woman does not desire to live in the house of her
husband, he shall give her the marriage portion she brought from
her father’s house, and she shall go.

150. If anyone has given his wife, field, garden, house, or
property, and has left her a sealed tablet; after (the death of)
her husband, her children shall contest nothing with her. The
mother shall leave her inheritance to the child whom she loves; to
a brother she shall not give it.

Laws of inheritance are more particularly dealt with in clauses
162-184:

162. If anyone has married a wife, and she has borne him children;
if that woman has gone to her fate, of her marriage portion her
father shall claim nothing; her marriage portion belongs to her
children.

163. If anyone has married a wife and she has borne him no
children; if that woman has gone to her fate, if the dowry which
that man took from the house of his father-in-law his father-in-law
has returned; on the marriage portion of that woman the husband
shall make no claim, it belongs to the house of her father.

164. If his father-in-law has not returned him the dowry, from her
marriage portion he shall deduct all her dowry; and her marriage
portion he shall return to the house of her father.

165. If any man to his son, the first in his eyes, has given a
field, garden, and house, and has written a tablet for him; if
afterwards the father has gone to his fate, when the brothers make
a division, the present which the father gave him he shall keep;
in addition, the goods of their father’s house in equal parts they
shall share (with him).

166. If a man has taken wives for his sons, for his little son
a wife has not taken, if afterwards the father has gone to his
fate, when the brothers divide the goods of their father’s house,
to their little brother, who has not taken a wife, besides his
portion, money for a dowry they shall give him, and a wife they
shall cause him to take.

167. If a man has married a woman, if she has borne him children,
if that woman has gone to her fate; if afterwards he has taken
another wife, who has borne him children, and if afterwards the
father has gone to his fate: the children shall not divide the
property according to their mothers; they shall take the marriage
portion of their mother; their father’s property they shall share
in equal parts.

168. If anyone has set his face to cut off his son and says to the
judge, “I cut off my son,” the judge shall inquire into the matter;
and if the son has no grievous offence, which would lead to being
cut off from sonship, the father shall not cut off his son from
sonship.

169. If he has a grievous crime against his father to the extent of
cutting him off from sonship, for the first time he (the father)
shall turn away his face; but if he commit a grievous crime a
second time, the father shall cut off his son from sonship.

170. If to a man his wife has borne children, and if his servant
has borne him children; if the father during his life has said:
“You are my children,” to the children which his servant bore him,
and has counted them with his wife’s children: afterwards if that
father has gone to his fate, the goods of the father’s house shall
the children of the wife and the children of the servant share on
equal terms. In the division the children of the wife shall choose
(first) and take.

171. And if the father, during his life to the children which his
slave bore him has not said, “You are my children,” afterwards
when the father has gone to his fate, the property of the father’s
house the children of the servant shall not share with the children
of the wife. The freedom of the servant and her children shall be
assured. The children of the wife cannot claim the children of the
servant for servitude. The wife shall take her marriage portion and
the gift which her husband gave her and wrote on a tablet for her,
and shall remain in the house of her husband. As long as she lives
she shall keep them, and for money shall not give them; after her
they belong to her children.

172. If her husband has not given her a gift, her marriage portion
she shall receive entire; and of the property of her husband’s
house, a portion like a son she shall take. If her children force
her to go out of the house, the judge shall inquire into the
matter, and if a fault is imputed to the children, that woman shall
not go out of the house of her husband. If that woman has set her
face to go, the gift which her husband gave her she shall leave to
her children. The marriage portion which came from her father’s
house she shall keep, and the husband of her choice she shall take.

173. If that woman, there where she has entered, to her second
husband has borne children, and if afterward that woman dies, her
marriage portion shall her earlier and her later children divide
between them.

174. If to her second husband she has borne no children, her
marriage portion shall the children of her first husband take.

175. If a free-born woman has married a palace slave or the slave
of a noble, and has borne children; the owner of the slave on the
children of the free-born woman shall make no claim for servitude.

176. And if a free-born woman marries a slave of the palace or
the slave of a noble, and if when he married her she entered
the house of the palace slave or of the nobleman’s slave with a
marriage portion from the house of her father, and from the time
that they set up their house together have acquired property;
if afterward either the slave of the palace or the slave of the
nobleman has gone to his fate, the free-born woman shall take her
marriage portion, and whatever her husband and she since they began
housekeeping have made, into two parts they shall divide; one-half
the owner of the slave shall take, one-half the free-born woman
shall take for her children.

176 a. If the free-born woman had no marriage portion, everything
which her husband and she had acquired since they kept house
together, into two parts they shall divide. The owner of the slave
one-half shall take: one-half shall the free-born woman take for
her children.

177. If a widow, whose children are still young, has set her face
to enter the house of another without consulting the judge, she
shall not enter. When she enters another house the judge shall
inquire into that which was left from the house of her former
husband; and the goods of her former husband’s house to her later
husband and to that woman (herself) one shall confide, and a tablet
one shall make them deliver. They shall keep the house and bring up
the little ones; no utensil shall they give for money. The buyer
who shall buy a utensil belonging to the children of the widow,
shall lose his money; the property shall return to its owner.

178. If a votary or a vowed woman to whom her father has given
a marriage portion, a tablet has written, and on the tablet he
wrote for her did not write, “After her she may give to whom
she pleases,” has not permitted her all the wish of her heart;
afterwards when the father has gone to his fate, her field and
garden shall her brothers take, and according to the value of her
portion they shall give her grain, oil, and wool, and her heart
they shall content. If her brothers have not given her grain,
oil, and wool according to the value of her portion, and have not
contented her heart, she shall give her field and garden to a
cultivator who is pleasing to her, and her cultivator shall sustain
her. The field, garden, and whatever her father gave her she shall
keep as long as she lives, but for money she shall not give it,
to another she shall not part with it; her sonship (inheritance)
belongs to her brother.

179. If a votary or a vowed woman to whom her father has given a
marriage portion, and has written her a tablet, and on the tablet
which he wrote her has written, “property where (to whom) it seems
good to her to give (let her give),” has allowed her the fulness
of her heart’s desire: afterwards when the father has gone to his
fate, her property after her death to whomever it pleases her she
shall give; her brothers shall not strive with her.

180. If a father to his daughter, a bride or vowed woman, a
marriage portion has not given; after the father has gone to his
fate, she shall receive of the possession of the father’s house a
share like one son. As long as she lives she shall keep it; her
property after her death shall belong to her brothers.

181. If a father has vowed to God a hierodule or a temple virgin,
and has gone to his fate, she shall have a share in the possession
of the father’s house equal to one-third her portion as one of his
children. As long as she lives she shall keep it. Her property
after her death shall belong to her brothers.

182. If a father to his daughter, a votary of Marduk of Babylon,
has not given a marriage portion, a tablet has not written; after
the father has gone to his fate she shall share with her brothers
in the possession of her father’s house; a third of her share as
his child (she shall receive). Control over it shall not go from
her. The votary of Marduk shall give her property after her death
to whomever it pleases her.

183. If a father to his daughter by a concubine has given a
marriage portion, and has given her to a husband and has written
her a tablet; after the father has gone to his fate, in the goods
of the father’s house, she shall not share.

184. If a man to his daughter by a concubine a marriage portion has
not provided, to a husband has not given her; after the father has
gone to his fate her brothers shall provide her a marriage portion
according to the value of the father’s house, and to a husband they
shall give her.

_Laws concerning Adoption_

185. If a man has taken a small child as a son in his own name and
has brought him up, that foster child shall not be reclaimed.

186. If a man has taken a small child for his son, and if when he
took him his father and his mother he offended, that foster child
shall return to the house of his father.

187. The son of a familiar slave in the palace service, or the son
of a vowed woman, cannot be reclaimed.

188. If an artisan has taken a child to bring up, and has taught
him his handicraft, no one can make a complaint.

189. If he has not taught him his handicraft, that foster child
shall return to the house of his father.

190. If a man, a small child whom he took for his son and brought
him up, with his own sons has not counted, that foster son shall
return to his father’s house.

191. If a man who has taken a small child for his son and has
brought him up, has afterwards made a home for himself and acquired
children, if he sets his face to cut off the foster child; that
child shall not go his way. His adoptive father shall give him of
his goods one-third a son’s share, and then he shall go. Of the
field, garden, and house he shall not give him.

192. If the son of a favourite slave or the son of a vowed woman to
the father who brought him up and to the mother who brought him up
say, “Thou art not my father, thou art not my mother,” one shall
cut out his tongue.

193. If the son of a palace favourite or the son of a vowed woman
has known the house of his father and has hated the father who
brought him up and the mother who brought him up, and has gone to
the house of his father, one shall tear out his eyes.

194. If a man has given his son to a nurse and if his son has died
in the hand of the nurse, and if the nurse, without the consent of
his father or mother, another child has nourished, she shall be
brought to account and because she nourished another child, without
the consent of the father and mother, one shall cut off her breasts.

_Laws of Recompense_

195. If a son has struck his father, one shall cut off his hands.

196. If one destroys the eye of a free-born man, his eye one shall
destroy.

197. If anyone breaks the limb of a free-born man, his limb one
shall break.

198. If the eye of a nobleman he has destroyed, or the limb of a
nobleman he has broken, one mina of silver he shall pay.

199. If he has destroyed the eye of the slave of a free-born man or
has broken the limb of the slave of a free-born man, he shall pay
the half of its price.

200. If he knocks out the teeth of a man who is his equal, his
teeth one shall knock out.

201. If the teeth of a freedman he has made to fall out, he shall
pay one-third of a mina of silver.

202. If anyone has injured the strength of a man who is high above
him, he shall publicly be struck with sixty strokes of a cowhide
whip.

203. If he has injured the strength of a man who is his equal, he
shall pay one mina of silver.

204. If he has injured the strength of a freedman, one shall cut
off his ear.

205. If the slave of a man has injured the strength of a free-born
man, one shall cut off his ear.

206. If a man has struck another in a quarrel and has wounded him,
and that man shall swear, “I did not strike him wittingly,” he
shall pay the doctor.

207. If he dies of the blows, he shall swear again, and if it was a
free-born man, he shall pay one-half a mina of silver.

208. If it was a freedman, he shall pay one-third a mina of silver.

209. If anyone has struck a free-born woman and caused her to let
fall what was in her womb, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for
what was in her womb.

210. If that woman dies, one shall put his daughter to death.

211. If it was a freedwoman whom he caused to let fall that which
was in her womb, through his blows, he shall pay five shekels of
silver.

212. If that woman dies, he shall pay one-half a mina of silver.

213. If he has struck a man’s maid-servant and caused her to drop
what was in her womb, he shall pay two shekels of silver.

214. If that maid-servant dies he shall pay one-third a mina of
silver.

_Regulations concerning Physicians and Veterinary Surgeons_

215. If a doctor has treated a man for a severe wound with a lancet
of bronze and has cured the man, or has opened a tumour with a
bronze lancet and has cured the man’s eye; he shall receive ten
shekels of silver.

216. If it was a freedman, he shall receive five shekels of silver.

217. If it was a man’s slave, the owner of the slave shall give the
doctor two shekels of silver.

218. If a physician has treated a free-born man for a severe
wound with a lancet of bronze and has caused the man to die, or
has opened a tumour of the man with a lancet of bronze and has
destroyed his eye, his hands one shall cut off.

219. If a doctor has treated the slave of a freedman for a severe
wound with a bronze lancet and has caused him to die, he shall give
back slave for slave.

220. If he has opened his tumour with a bronze lancet and has
ruined his eye, he shall pay the half of his price in money.

221. If a doctor has cured the broken limb of a man, or has healed
his sick body, the patient shall pay the doctor five shekels of
silver.

222. If it was a freedman, he shall give three shekels of silver.

223. If it was a man’s slave, the owner of the slave shall give two
shekels of silver to the doctor.

224. If the doctor of oxen and asses has treated an ox or an ass
for a grave wound and has cured it, the owner of the ox or the ass
shall give to the doctor as his pay one-sixth of a shekel of silver.

225. If he has treated an ox or an ass for a severe wound and has
caused its death, he shall pay one-fourth of its price to the owner
of the ox or the ass.

_Illegal Branding of Slaves_

226. If a barber-surgeon, without consent of the owner of a slave,
has branded the slave with an indelible mark, one shall cut off the
hands of that barber.

227. If anyone deceives the barber-surgeon and makes him brand a
slave with an indelible mark, one shall kill that man and bury
him in his house. The barber shall swear, “I did not mark him
wittingly,” and he shall be guiltless.

_Regulations concerning Builders_

228. If a builder has built a house for some one and has finished
it, for every SAR of house he shall give him two shekels of silver
as his fee.

229. If a builder has built a house for some one and has not made
his work firm, and if the house he built has fallen and has killed
the owner of the house, that builder shall be put to death.

230. If it has killed the son of the house-owner, one shall kill
the son of that builder.

231. If it has killed the slave of the house-owner, he (the
builder) shall give to the owner of the house slave for slave.

232. If it has destroyed property, he shall restore everything he
destroyed; and because the house he built was not firm and fell in,
out of his own funds he shall rebuild the house that fell.

233. If a builder has built a house for some one and has not made
its foundations solid, and a wall falls, that builder out of his
own money shall make firm that wall.

_Regulations concerning Shipping_

234. If a boatman has caulked (?) a boat of 60 GUR for a man, he
shall give him two shekels of silver as his fee.

235. If a boatman has caulked a boat for a man, and has not made
firm his work; if in that year that ship is put into use and it
suffers an injury, the boatman shall alter that boat and shall make
it firm out of his own funds; and he shall give the strengthened
boat to the owner of the boat.

236. If a man has given his boat to a boatman on hire, if the
boatman has been careless, has grounded the boat or destroyed
it, the boatman shall give a boat to the owner of the boat in
compensation.

237. If a man has hired a boatman and a boat, and has loaded it
with grain, wool, oil, dates, or whatever the cargo was; if that
boatman has been careless, has grounded the ship and destroyed
all that was in it, the boatman shall make good the ship which he
grounded and whatever he destroyed of what was in it.

238. If a man has grounded a boat and has refloated it, he shall
pay the half of its price in silver.

239. If a man has hired a boatman, he shall give 6 GUR of grain a
year.

240. If a freight boat has struck a ferry-boat, and grounded it,
the owner of the grounded boat shall make a statement before God of
everything that was destroyed in the boat and (the owner of) the
freight boat which grounded the ferry-boat shall make good the boat
and whatever was destroyed.

_Regulations concerning the Hiring of Animals, Farming, Wages, etc._

241. If a man has forced an ox to too hard labour, he shall pay
one-third a mina of silver.

242. If a man hires (the ox) for one year, he shall pay 4 GUR of
grain as the hire of a working ox.

243. For the hire of an ox to carry burdens (?) he shall give 3 GUR
of grain to its owner.

244. If anyone has hired an ox or an ass, and if in the field a
lion has killed it, the loss is its master’s.

245. If anyone has hired an ox and has caused it to die through
ill-treatment or blows, he shall return ox for ox to the owner of
the ox.

246. If a man has hired an ox and has broken his leg or has cut its
nape, he shall return ox for ox to the owner of the ox.

247. If a man has hired an ox and has knocked out its eye, he shall
give one-half its value in silver to the owner of the ox.

248. If anyone has hired an ox and has broken its horn, cut off its
tail, or has injured its nostrils, he shall pay one-fourth of its
price in silver.

249. If anyone has hired an ox and God (an accident) has struck him
and he has died, he who hired the ox shall swear by the name of God
and be guiltless.

250. If a furious ox in his charge gores a man and kills him, that
case cannot be brought to judgment.

251. If an ox has pushed a man (with his horns) and in pushing
showed him his vice, and if he has not blunted his horns, has not
shut up his ox: if that ox gores a free-born man and kills him, he
shall pay one-half a mina of silver.

252. If it is the slave of a man he shall give one-third of a mina
of silver.

253. If a man has hired a man to live in his field and has
furnished him seed grain (?) and oxen, and has bound him to
cultivate the field; if that man has stolen grain or plants and
they are seized in his possession, one shall cut off his hands.

254. If he has taken the seed grain (?), for himself exhausted the
oxen; he shall make restitution according to the amount of the
grain which he took.

255. If he has given out the man’s oxen on hire or has stolen the
grain, has not caused it to grow in the field; one shall bring that
man to judgment, for 100 GAN of land he shall measure out 60 GUR of
grain.

256. If his community (clan) will not take up his cause, one shall
leave him in the field among the oxen. (?)

257. If a man has hired a harvester, he shall give him 8 GUR of
grain for one year.

258. If a man has hired an ox driver (?), he shall give him 6 GUR
of grain for one year.

259. If a man has stolen a watering wheel (Gis-Apin) from the
field, he shall pay 5 shekels of silver to the owner of the wheel.

260. If he has stolen a watering bucket[32] or a plough, he shall
pay three shekels of silver.

261. If a man has hired a herdsman to pasture cattle and sheep, he
shall pay him 8 GUR of grain a year.

262. If a man, oxen or sheep … [the stone is here defaced.]

263. If he has destroyed the oxen or sheep which were given him, ox
for ox and sheep for sheep he shall restore to their owner.

264. If a herdsman, to whom oxen and sheep have been given for
pasturing, has received his wages, whatever was agreed upon, and
his heart is contented; if he has diminished the oxen or the sheep,
has lessened the offspring, he shall give offspring and produce
according to the words of his agreement.

265. If a herdsman, to whom oxen and sheep have been given for
pasturing, has deceived, has changed the price, or has given them
for money; he shall be brought to judgment and he shall return to
their owner oxen and sheep ten times that which he stole.

266. If in the fold a disaster is brought about from God, or if a
lion has killed, the herdsman shall purge himself before God, and
the owner of the fold shall bear the disaster to the fold.

267. If the herdsman has been careless and in the fold has caused
loss, the shepherd shall make good in oxen and sheep the loss he
caused in the fold, and shall give them to their owner in good
condition.

268. If a man has hired an ox for threshing, 20 KA of grain is its
hire.

269. If he has hired an ass for threshing, 10 KA of grain is its
hire.

270. If he has hired a young animal for threshing, 1 KA of grain is
its hire.

271. If anyone has hired oxen, a cart, and driver, he shall pay 180
KA of grain for one day.

272. If anyone has hired a cart alone, he shall give 40 KA of grain
for one day.

273. If anyone has hired a day labourer, from the first of the year
to the fifth month, he shall give him 6 SHE of silver a day; from
the sixth month to the end of the year he shall give him 5 =SHE= of
silver a day.

274. If anyone hires an artisan,--The wages of a … are 5 SHE of
silver; the wages of a brick maker (?), 5 SHE of silver; the wages
of a tailor, 5 SHE of silver; the wages of a stone cutter (?) … SHE
of silver; the wages of a … SHE of silver; the wages of a … SHE of
silver; the wages of a carpenter, 4 SHE of silver; the wages of a …
4 SHE of silver; the wages of … SHE of silver; the wages of a mason
… SHE of silver,--a day he shall give.

275. If anyone has hired a (ferry-boat?) its hire is 3 SHE of
silver a day.

276. If he has hired a freight boat, he shall give 2½ SHE of silver
a day as its hire.

277. If anyone has hired a boat of 60 GUR he shall give one-sixth
of a shekel of silver as its hire.

_Regulations concerning the Buying of Slaves_

278. If anyone has bought a man or woman slave and before the end
of the month the bennu-sickness has fallen upon him, he shall
return him to the seller, and the buyer shall take back the money
which he paid.

279. If anyone has bought a man or woman slave and a complaint is
made, the seller shall answer for the complaint.

280. If anyone has bought another man’s man or woman slave in a
strange land; when he has come into the country and the owner of
the man or woman slave recognises his property; if that man or
woman slave are natives: without money he shall grant them their
freedom.

281. If they are from another country, the buyer shall declare
before God the money which he paid; the owner of the man or woman
slave shall give to the merchant the money which he paid, and shall
recover his man or woman slave.

282. If a slave has said to his master, “Thou art not my master,”
one shall bring him to judgment as his slave, and his master shall
cut off his ear.

Having presented this remarkable code in its entirety, it is hardly
necessary to comment upon it at length. It will repay the closest
examination on the part of anyone who is interested in the manners and
customs of this remote period. Prior to the excavations in Mesopotamia,
no historian could have dared hope that we should ever have presented
to us so varied and so authoritative an exposition of the laws that
governed society in any part of the world in the third millennium
before our era. Thanks to the imperishable nature of the materials
on which the Babylonians wrote, this seeming miracle has now come to
pass, and we are in a fair way to have a much more precise and accurate
knowledge of the culture of this ancient people than we are likely ever
to possess regarding European nations of two thousand years later. The
laws that governed the Greeks and Romans of the earlier period, and the
details as to the practicalities of their civilisation, are for the
most part preserved to us only through traditions that utterly lack the
authenticity of such an original document as this code of Khammurabi.
The sands of Egypt have recently given up to us a papyrus roll on
which is inscribed the famous treatise on the constitution of Athens
by Aristotle; and the eagerness with which this document has been
scanned by students of Greek history is in itself an evidence of the
paucity of authoritative documents regarding the classical world during
this relatively recent period. It is peculiarly gratifying then to be
able to go back to so much more remote a period and learn as it were
at first hand such interesting details of the laws that governed the
social intercourse of these forerunners of the Greeks. The fact that
the earliest European civilisation undoubtedly deferred in many ways to
this remoter civilisation of the Orient lends additional importance to
these wonderful documents from old Babylonia.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[30] Small boats similarly constructed are, however, introduced into a
bas-relief, which appears to represent a scene on an Assyrian river or
lake.

[31] [The translation is based on those mentioned in the introduction
together with a comparison of the Babylonian text as given in
transcription by V. Scheil.[g]]

[32] [The Egyptians call this _shaduf_. It is an arrangement to draw
water from the canal for irrigation, and is worked by hand, whereas the
wheel for the same purpose (_sakieh_) is turned by an animal.]

CHAPTER VIII. THE RELIGION OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS

It is always extremely difficult for a writer of any nationality to
appreciate the peculiar genius of another nation, even as regards
its political and social history. And when we turn to the question
of religion, the difficulty becomes well nigh an impassable barrier.
Obviously the effort must be made, but we can never feel too secure
in the results; certainly not unless we know the particular bias of
the individual interpreter. Perhaps we cannot better illustrate the
difficulties in question than by making two short quotations, each of
which includes an estimate of Babylonian influence in general, and of
its religious influence in particular.

One of these estimates runs thus:

“In spite of the skill and knowledge of the Babylonians, and their
wonderful progress in arts and sciences, they had a religion of the
lowest and most degrading kind. True insight into natural phenomena
was prevented, and progress beyond the surface of things stopped by a
religion which had a multitude of gods, which were supposed to bring
about in an irregular and capricious manner all the changes in nature
and all the misfortunes which happened to the people; thus foresight
and medicine were neglected, and unavailing prayers and useless
sacrifices offered to propitiate the deities, who were imagined to hold
the destiny of the human race in their hands.”

The other estimate is quite different:

“The history of Babylonia has an interest of a wider kind than that of
Egypt; from its more intimate connection with the general history of
the human race, and from the remarkable influence which its religion,
its science, and its civilisation have had on all subsequent human
progress. Its religious traditions, carried away by the Israelites who
came out from Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis xi. 31), have through this
wonderful people become the heritage of all mankind, while its science
and civilisation, through the medium of the Greeks and Romans, have
become the basis of modern research and advancement.”

Now the curious thing is that these contradictory estimates occur in
the same book, and only separated from one another by a few pages.
They were probably not written by the same man, for the edition we
are quoting is one published after the author’s death, and “edited
and brought up to date” by another writer. George Smith was the
author, A. H. Sayce the editor, and both alike have the highest rank
as Assyriologists, and any quotation from either must be considered
as having a high degree of authority. Which, then, is right? Had the
Babylonians a “religion of the lowest and most degrading kind,” or was
it a religion which has had a “remarkable influence upon all subsequent
human progress” through having been adopted by the Hebrews, and through
them becoming “the heritage of all mankind”?

Or, again, are the two citations less contradictory than they seem,
each being a correct statement of a particular point of view? Did the
Babylonian religion, which the Hebrews are said to have borrowed,
really have elements both of greatness and of degradation, and was
it, therefore, capable of being interpreted in one way or the other,
according to the particular element for the moment considered? Perhaps
this is the fairer view. Possibly these two phases might be found to
pertain to every religion whatsoever. In any event, we shall have
occasion often to quote contradictory views in attempting to get
at the truth about the religions of the various peoples who come
before us. And of a certainty we shall sometimes be left in doubt as
to the real character of the religion in question. So long as the
sects of Christendom cannot agree among themselves as to the correct
interpretation of the particular records which form their common
basis, we can hardly hope to interpret with full justice the religious
contemplations of people of another genius.

The following account of Assyrian religion by Joachim Menant is based
upon a study of documents from the library of Asshurbanapal, and, as
will be seen, is an exposition of certain details of the subject,
rather than an attempt at a comprehensive analysis. Nevertheless, its
explicit depiction of these details will perhaps give the reader a
clearer idea of the Assyrian religion than could be gained from a more
general treatment. As already pointed out, any interpretation of the
mysteries of an oriental religion must necessarily, in the present
state of our knowledge, leave much to be desired.[a]

It is rather difficult nowadays to distinguish the link which united
science to astrology and astrology to religion. The Assyrio-Chaldean
dogma is not formulated in a text by which we may grasp the whole, and
thus we are obliged to seek traces of it in fragments of different
sources and of different times, without being able to give them the
unity they must have had in their complete form; in other words, we
cannot reconstruct the Assyrian pantheon as a whole.

The most superficial examination suffices to show that we are in the
presence of a very complicated polytheism, but there is no text to
explain the hierarchy which must have reigned in the celestial world.
At the summit of this hierarchy one can perceive a divinity, one, and
at the same time divisible. Dogma proclaims this divinity in certain
passages, but when we wish to learn its exact individuality, it eludes
us, so that we may only seize the abstraction. We are led to believe
in a celestial hierarchy of beings inhabiting a superior world and
subordinated to an all-powerful God, who governs gods, world, and men.
He is enthroned in spaces inaccessible to us in our condition, and
appears only in legends; his power intervenes only when the order of
the universe is threatened, as we shall see in the legend of Ishtar,
when the goddess of the dwellings of the dead wishes to keep the
daughter of Sin in the dark dwelling, where she is so boldly detained.

This all-powerful God does not seem to be accessible to human beings;
secondary divinities revolve about him and seem, like him, to be
pure spirits. In the practice of the religion one has a glimpse of
an assembly of divinities, whose relations with humanity are more
tangible. These gods assume more definite form, as a general thing the
human one often joined with that of various animals, fish, oxen, or
birds. The wings seem to have but a single symbolical signification, to
denote beings of a superior order.

These gods have a rather definite hierarchy, twelve of them being
known as “great gods.” The one who appears to be the chief varies
according to locality and time. The chances of political conquest seem
to influence him, and he is changed according to the fortunes of war
that give the upper hand to such and such locality where his cult is
followed.

At Nineveh, the god which seems to have been the highest in the
celestial hierarchy, is Ilu; his character is no further defined and
his symbol is often only the abstract representation of the divinity.

[Illustration: WINGED BULL DISCOVERED AT ARBAN

(Layard)]

In the historical texts of the Assyrian kings we find an enumeration of
the great gods who were invoked by the sovereigns of the earth; their
number and order is not always constant, but such as they are we can
mention: Ilu (Ana), who is often confounded at Nineveh with Asshur;
then Bel (Baal); and lastly Anu. These three divinities appear as the
reflection of the gods of the superior world, which we have already
mentioned, but to which we have been unable to ascribe names. Then
follow the gods more particularly associated with the visible world:
Sin, the god of the moon; Shamash, god of the sun; Bin (Ramman or
Adad), god of the higher regions of the atmosphere, arbitrator of the
heavens and earth, the god who presides over tempests.

A series of divinities seems especially given over to the
superintendence of the planets: Adar over Saturn, Marduk over Jupiter,
Nergal over Mars, Ishtar over Venus, Nabu over Mercury.

Ishtar seems always to have a peculiar and special individuality,
notwithstanding that each of the great gods has a spouse who is often
invoked with him, and who seems to complete him. The rôle of the great
spouses of the great gods is not well understood; with Ishtar we can
see Beltis figure, whose name is transformed and often becomes like
that of Ishtar, a collective appellation of all female divinities;
those whose names seem to have a more permanent character are Zarpanit,
the goddess who particularly represents the fertile principle of the
universe, and Tasmit, the goddess of wisdom. All female divinities seem
to have direct relations with humanity, but they often disappear in the
higher and inaccessible world, and then only reveal themselves through
secondary influences. Secondary gods, whose number is infinite, are
born of these divine couples; a tablet from the Nineveh library gives
us the list of twelve sons of Anu with their attributes; of these sons
other divinities are born, but their descent we cannot follow. It is so
with other great gods.

At Babylon the divinities are the same, but the hierarchy is different;
Bel seems to have replaced Ilu (Ana), and Marduk takes the place of
Asshur. It is easy to be seen that these theogonies come from a common
source, which is every day becoming more accessible to us, but which we
have not yet sufficiently explored to know its exact nature.

The artistic development at which the Chaldeans had arrived from
the remotest antiquity, allows us easily to suppose that we ought
to discover in the pictured monuments that which the texts have not
yet revealed to us. Unfortunately we cannot fix upon the meaning
of the figures on the engraved stones until we shall have complete
enlightenment from the texts. The significance of a symbol cannot
be guessed at; also it is the most we can do if from all these
representations we are able to recognise the figures of four or
five divinities--Ilu, Nabu, Marduk, Ishtar, and Zarpanit. There is,
moreover, a special reason why we should be most cautious in our
comparisons; we know that when the Assyrians took possession of a
hostile town, they carried away the images of strange divinities, and
restored them to their possessors, after inscribing on these images
the names of Assyrian gods. Therefore we should not trust too much to
an Assyrian inscription to fix on the identification of the image of
a divinity, as deeds of this nature might have been repeated in every
campaign. It is thus, doubtless, that we may explain the fact that,
while in the whole of Mesopotamia the abstract idea of the divinity
was mentioned by the name Ilu, it appears on the monuments of the
Achæmenidæ as Ormuzd.

The Assyrio-Chaldean cult had a very solemn ritual; we already have a
great number of hymns addressed to the principal divinities; and as
every month and every day of the month was under the protection of
a particular divinity, one may understand that the Assyrio-Chaldean
ritual must have had a considerable development. There were hymns
dedicated to Nabu, Sin, Shamash, Anuit, to Fire, and to the Elements.
Here is a hymn which can give an idea of the lyric poetry of which the
library of Nineveh included numerous fragments:

“Lord Illuminator of darkness who penetrates obscurity. The Good God,
who uplifts those who are in abjection, who sustains the feeble. The
great gods turn their eyes towards thy light. The spirits of the abyss
eagerly contemplate thy face. The language of praise is addressed
to thee as a single word. The … of their heads seeks the light of
the Southern sun. Like a betrothed thou restest full of joy and
graciousness. In thy splendour thou attainest the limits of Heaven.
Thou art the Standard of this wide World. O God, the men who live afar
off contemplate thee and rejoice.”

Religious ceremonies bore a relation to external worship; they all
ended in invocation or sacrifice. The cylinder-engraved scenes give us
an idea of these ceremonies; we usually see the priest in an attitude
of adoration or prayer, sometimes alone, but often before an altar, on
which reposes the object of adoration, or that which is going to be
sacrificed. The most usual victim is a ram or a kid. The Assyrian kings
never began an important expedition without having invoked the gods and
held religious ceremonies; after a victory they offered a sacrifice on
the borders of their newly conquered states. These sacrifices generally
took place in the open air; nevertheless, temples were numerous in
Assyria and Chaldea; their traditional form is that of a step-pyramid
(ziggurat); every town had one or two temples of this kind under the
patronage of one of the divinities of the Assyrian pantheon.

A tablet from the library gives us a list of these different
sanctuaries, where the gifts of the faithful multiplied and accumulated
until the time when war came to disperse them.

Cosmogony occupies a large place on the tablets of Asshurbanapal’s
library. Amongst all these tablets, those which relate to the creation
of the world, particularly to the history of the flood, have acquired
notoriety. These ancient traditions form a whole which claims the
closest attention. Whatever the philological explanations one may
accept, there is one dominating matter which gives an incontestable
importance to these remains, and this is their relation to the Mosaic
statements. It is certain that the fall of Nineveh antedated the
Babylonian captivity, and that the Bible in its present form postdates
the return from captivity. It is not without interest, therefore, to
compare the biblical accounts with a text, which could not have been
altered from the day it was buried under the ruins of an Assyrian
palace. This is not all; these ancient Assyrian legends are really the
translation of a Sumerian text, which Asshurbanapal had copied and
translated from the libraries of lower Chaldea, and we know positively
that these texts antedate the reign of the ancient Sargon, and are
therefore earlier by several centuries than the time when Abraham must
have left Chaldea.

It is doubtless not the place here to give way to a discussion on
pure philology; we will simply say this: when we make a mistake in
translating a hymn addressed to the god Sin, and apply it to quite
another divinity of the Assyrian pantheon, it is a deplorable mistake;
but such an error, were it the most gross, would have no influence on
our present prejudices. It is otherwise if we refer to a text which can
influence our intimate beliefs, be it to fortify them, combat them, or
explain their origin. In England and other protestant countries the
discoveries of George Smith acquired a tremendous notoriety, and his
translations are accepted with an eagerness and confidence which a
severe criticism has not justified. In France these discoveries aroused
less curiosity from the first, and Assyriologists who study legendary
texts have done so with a dispassionateness which is all the more
conducive to scientific and correct historic results.

Nevertheless, from these sources and authorities, translations have
passed into elementary books, where it has been sought to use them
in the support of preconceived ideas, often by altering their true
meaning. We cannot set ourselves too strongly against such proceedings.
It is surely not a new principle, that disinterested science must with
perfect impartiality scrutinise all books, legends, and documents which
claim the attention of the human mind.

The history of the creation comprises a collection of several tablets,
of which the text was published in 1875, in the _Transactions of the
Society of Biblical Archæology_. This text includes six fragments
forming part of a series of tablets designated in Assyria under the
title of “Enuva” (_i.e._, Formerly).[b]

THE ASSYRIAN STORY OF THE CREATION

Since George Smith first published the tablets various other fragments
have been discovered, the most important new discovery, perhaps, being
made by Mr. L. W. King[j] of a tablet containing a reference to the
creation of man. He found that the tablets belonging to the series are
seven in number, and has published all the hitherto known material in
his _Seven Tablets of Creation_. The following extracts are taken from
his translation:

When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primeval Apsu who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamat, the mother of them both,--
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was found, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies [were ordained]
Then were created the gods in the midst of [heaven]
Lakhmu and Lakhamu were called into being [............]
Ages increased [........]
Then Anshar and Kishar were created, and over them [.......]
Long were the days, then there came forth [........]
Anu, their son,
Anshar and Anu [.........]
And the god Anu [.........]

Here follow three tablets telling of the revolt of Tiamat and her
defeat, which will be spoken of later on.

The fifth tablet begins:

He (Marduk) made the stations for the great gods;
The stars, their images, as the stars of the zodiac he fixed.
He ordained the year and into sections he divided it;
For the twelve months he fixed three stars.
........
The Moon-god he caused to shine forth, the night he intrusted to him.
He appointed him, a being of the night, to determine the days.

The rest of the tablet is rather badly mutilated. The sixth begins:

When Marduk heard the words of the gods,
His heart prompted him and he devised [a cunning plan].
He opened his mouth and unto Ea [he spake],
That which he had conceived in his heart he imparted [unto him],
“My blood will I take and bone will I [fashion],
I will make man, that man may........[.......]
I will create man who shall inhabit [the earth]
That the service of the gods may be established and that [their]
shrines [may be built].
But I will alter the ways of the gods, and I will change [their paths];
Together shall they be oppressed, and unto evil shall [they......]”
And Ea answered him and spake the word:

The rest of the tablet is too fragmentary for translation. The seventh
contains the fifty titles of Marduk.

Besides these seven tablets there are some which contain other accounts
of the creation. One of these refers to the creation of cattle and the
beasts of the field.[a]

When the gods in their assembly had made [the world]
And had created the heavens and had formed [the earth]
And had brought living creatures into being [......]
And [had fashioned] the cattle of the field, and the beasts of the
field, and the creatures [of the city],--
After [they had........] unto the living creatures [.......][c]

The rest is too mutilated for comprehension of anything besides single
words.

THE BABYLONIAN RELIGION

The fact that these tablets as well as so many others of Babylonian
origin were found in an Assyrian library, shows that the Assyrians took
their religion like the rest of their culture from the Babylonians.
Indeed the Assyrian myths, religious doctrines, and observances are so
similar to those of the mother-country that in speaking of Babylonian
religion the Assyrian is usually to be understood as well. The
Babylonian religion in turn was largely influenced by the Summerian
which was an astral religion. The names of the gods are found written
with the same ideograms although they were doubtless pronounced
differently. Many of the texts are found written in Summerian with
interlinear Assyrian translations.

Babylonian religion as we first see it is in the form of local cults.
Each city with its surrounding district had its own god, whose
authority was supreme. Thus Anu was worshipped in Erech, Bel in Nippur,
Ea in Eridu, Sin in Uru, Shamash in Larsa and Sippar. When these cities
began to be welded together into political systems, the gods also were
put together into an organised pantheon in which political situations
influenced the relations the gods were made to bear to each other. Thus
when Babylon became the capital of the empire its special god, Marduk,
became leader among the gods.

A second characteristic feature of the Babylonian religion is that it
is based on natural phenomena. The myths are nature myths. The story
of the original creation was in a way the prototype of what happened
every year. The earth is covered with water from the winter rains
(state of chaos). The spring sun (Marduk) fights with and overcomes the
water (Tiamat); the earth appears, green things of all kinds and life
are produced. The story of the flood may have referred to the annual
inundation, with perhaps the added element of severe winds and a tidal
wave from the south. Such inundations have occurred in historic times.
Ishtar’s descent into the lower world marks the autumn when everything
is dry and has been burned up by the fierce summer sun. Ishtar goes
to seek the water of life, which in the Babylonian world was a most
appropriate metaphor, because water actually was the life of the
country. Without it the land was arid and desolate as to-day; with it,
its luxuriant vegetation caused the region about Babylon to be called
the garden of the gods (Karaduniash).

The creation legend as we have it must have been written after the
consolidation of the empire with Babylon as its capital, because in the
story Marduk, although one of the younger gods, is made the champion
and leader of the others. The tablets on which the legend is contained
now usually go by the name of _enuma elish_, “when above,” from the
opening words. The opening lines of the story relating the creation
of the gods, and the latter part telling of the creation of animals
and man, we have already seen. The version of creation given here is
practically the one Berosus gives of the Babylonians, which is found in
Eusebius and which he quotes from Polyhistor (see Appendix A).

In the beginning was chaos, consisting of a watery mass. Only two
beings existed--Apsu, the Deep, and Tiamat, the universal mother.
These two represent the two formative elements from whose union the
gods were created. First Lakhmu and Lakhamu were born, then Anshar and
Kishar, and after a long interval the other great gods. Tiamat, after
having brought forth the gods, conceived a hatred for them and created
a large number of monsters to aid her in a battle against them and
gave the command to her son Kingu. She bore: “giant snakes, sharp as
to teeth, and merciless--with poison she filled their bodies as with
blood.” Anshar sends his son Anu against Tiamat, but he is afraid to
face her. After Ea also has been sent in vain, Marduk offers to take
up the fight, but first demands to be recognised by the other gods as
their champion. Anshar summons the great gods to a feast, informs them
of all that has taken place, and calls on them to appoint Marduk as
their defender. The gods do so and hail him with the following words
(the translation of the Assyrian texts is based upon that of Jensen[h]
in his _Cosmologie der Babylonier_):

Thou art the most honoured among the great gods
Thy fate has no equal, thy decree is Anu.
Marduk, thou art most honoured among the great gods
Thy fate has no equal, thy decree is Anu.
From now on thy word shall not be altered,
To put up and to lower, shall be in thy hand;
What goes out of thy mouth shall be established
Thy decree shall not be resisted.
No one among the great gods shall overstep thy boundary
........
Marduk, thou our avenger,
We give thee dominion over the whole world.

To test his powers the gods place a garment before Marduk and tell
him to bid it disappear and come back again at his word. When he has
accomplished this prodigy the gods are pleased and exclaim “Marduk is
king.” The avenger after equipping himself for the fray goes out to
meet Tiamat and her host, taking with him his thunderbolt, spear, and
net; he is followed by seven winds, which he has created. We take up
the story again at the point where Marduk challenges Tiamat to battle:

“Stand! I and thou let us fight together--”
When Tiamat heard these words
She became like one demented, and lost her senses.
Then cried out Tiamat wild and loud
Her limbs trembled to their very foundations,
She said an incantation, and spoke a formula,
And of the gods of battle, she asked their weapons.
They drew near, Tiamat and Marduk, wise among the gods,
They advanced to battle, came near to fight--
Then the lord spread out his net and surrounded her.
He let loose the evil wind that was behind him.
When Tiamat opened her mouth to its full extent,
He sent the evil wind into it, so that she could not close her lips.
Filled her belly with terrible winds
Her heart was … and she opened wide her mouth.
He seized the spear and pierced through her belly
Cut through her inward parts, and pierced her heart.
He overcame her and destroyed her life,
Threw down her body and stood upon it.
When he had killed Tiamat, the leader,
Her might was broken and her host scattered
And the gods, her helpers, who went at her side
Trembled, were afraid, and turned back.

After Marduk had dealt with the minor rebels

He returned to Tiamat, whom he had conquered
He cut her in two parts like a fish
He put up one half of her as a cover for the heavens,
Placed before it a bolt and established a watchman--
And commanded him not to let her waters come forth.

The rest of the legend deals with the creation and has been mentioned
elsewhere. Professor Gunkel[i] (in his _Schöpfung und Chaos_) in
speaking of this myth says that Tiamat’s offspring, the monsters of the
sea, are the stars in the constellations of the zodiac. The stars are
the children of the night. Marduk is the spring sun, who fights with
the waters, finally subdues them, and brings forth vegetation. This
story of Marduk and his fight with the dragon is sometimes identified
with the Christ story. The Babylonians also appear to have celebrated a
festival at the new year, when the sun turned back from the equator and
left the constellation of the water-man. This may be said to mark the
birth of spring. Three months later when the god has grown sufficiently
strong he fights with the waters (Tiamat Sin) and conquers.

The Babylonians pictured the earth as a cone-shaped mountain surrounded
by water. Over this was stretched the dome of heaven behind which was
the heavenly ocean and the home of the gods. In the dome were two gates
through which Shamash the sun-god passed out in the morning and entered
at night. The moon and stars were within the dome, and did not pass
through it as did the sun. Underneath the thick crust of the earth’s
surface the space was all filled with water, and within the crust was
Arallu, the home of the dead and land of “no return.” This was supposed
to be surrounded by seven walls. Although the real home of the gods
was beyond the dome of heaven, they usually lived on the earth and had
their council-chamber on the mountain of sunrise, near the gate through
which Shamash came out in the morning.

The Babylonian gods are very human. They are born, live, love,
fight, and even die, like the people on the earth. The conception is
wholly materialistic. Alfred Jeremias[k] says of this religion: “A
practical streak runs through the religion of the inhabitants of the
Euphrates valley. Their gods are gods of the living; they are in active
intercourse with them as helpers in every action, as rescuers from all
evil. The whole religious interest centres on the necessities of this
world. There is no room for the anxious reflection and philosophising
as to the whence, and whither of the soul, which is so characteristic
of the Egyptians. With death comes an end of strength and life, of
hope and comfort. Hence their religion as such has little to do with
conceptions of another world.”

The names of the chief gods have been already mentioned. Besides the
_ilani rabuti_, the great gods, there were a hosts of smaller ones,
and a large number of good and evil spirits. Sickness and disease were
supposed to be brought by demons, the children of the under-world who
performed the bidding of Allatu and Nergal, the rulers over hades.
Allatu’s chief messenger was Namtar, the demon of pestilence. The
Annunaki likewise did her errands of destruction. The Babylonians
lived in constant terror of offending some of these divinities, and
a large part of their literature was devoted to magical formulas and
prayers for aid and protection. Before undertaking any deed it was
customary to find out whether or not the omens were favourable. Certain
days were particularly unlucky and on them nothing could be done. The
7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th days of every month were among the unlucky
ones. The later Jewish sabbath is thus seen to have been originally
an unlucky day rather than a holy day. Hugo Winckler has suggested an
ingenious theory for the fact that thirteen has always been considered
an unlucky number. In order to make the Babylonian calendrical system
of lunar months agree with the solar year, it was necessary to insert
an extra month. This thirteenth month was regarded as being in the
way and disturbing calculations. So thirteen came to be regarded as a
superfluous, unlucky number. Another sign of the zodiac was appointed
for this extra month, and this was the sign of the raven.

A great many of the tablets which have been excavated contain omens.
Omens were drawn from dreams, from the conjunction of stars and
planets, from earthquakes, eclipses, and in short from all natural
phenomena. Connected with this was the magical literature, the hymns,
and penitential psalms. If all a man’s precautions had been in vain
and disease had come upon him, there were magical formulas which might
rescue him from his misery, certain prayers or hymns he might recite.
Every Babylonian had his own protecting god and goddess, to whose care
he was perhaps committed at birth, but the intervention of a priest
was necessary to appease the god. The following prayer, from a tablet
used as prayer-book for the use of priest and penitent, is taken from
King’s[c] _Babylonian Religion and Mythology_:

O my God, who art angry, accept my prayer, O my goddess, who art
angry, receive my supplication. Receive my supplication and let thy
spirit be at rest. O my goddess, look with pity on me and accept
my supplication. Let my sins be forgiven, let my transgressions be
blotted out. Let the ban be torn away, let the bonds be loosened.
Let the seven winds carry away my sighs. I will send away my
wickedness, let the bird bear it to the heavens. Let the fish carry
off my misery, let the river sweep it away. Let the beast of the
field take it from me. Let the flowing waters of the river wash me
clean.

To ascertain why the evil had come upon the man, questions like the
following were asked, some of which show an advanced moral code:

Has he estranged the father from his son or the son from his
father? Has he estranged the mother from her daughter or the
daughter from her mother? Has he estranged the brother from his
brother or the friend from his friend? Has he refused to set a
captive free? Has he shut out a prisoner from the light? has he
committed a sin against a god or against a goddess? Has he done
violence to one older than himself? Has he said yes for no or no
for yes? Has he used false scales? Has he accepted a wrong account?
Has he set up a false landmark? Has he broken into his neighbour’s
house? Has he come near his neighbour’s wife? Has he shed his
neighbour’s blood?

On one old tablet which has a Summerian interlinear translation the
stricken man turns to Marduk as an intercessor:

An evil curse like a demon has come upon the man
Sorrow and trouble have fallen upon him
Evil sorrow has fallen upon him
An evil curse, a spell, a sickness,
The evil curse has slain that man like a lamb.
His god has departed from his body,
His guardian goddess has left his side,
He is covered by sorrow and trouble as with a garment, and he is
overwhelmed.
Then Marduk saw him
He entered into the house of his father Ea and said to him:
“O my father, an evil curse like a demon has beset the man.”
Twice he spoke unto him and said
“I know not what that man has done nor whereby he may be cured.”
Ea made answer to his son Marduk:
“O my son, what thou dost not know, what can I tell thee?
O, Marduk, what thou dost not know, what can I tell thee?
What I know, thou knowest,
Go my son Marduk,
Take him to the house of purification
Take away the spell from him, remove the spell from him.”

A very pessimistic view of life is shown by the following complaint of
a sick man quoted by Jeremias: “The day is sighing, the night a flood
of tears; weeping is the month and misery the year.”

We have already seen specimens of Babylonian hymnology. The following
hymn to Sin, as translated from Shrader’s[m] work on cuneiform
inscriptions, shows real religious fervour:

Lord, ruler among the gods, who alone is great on heaven and earth,
Father Nannar, Lord, God Amar, ruler among the gods
........
Merciful, gracious father, in whose hand the life of the whole land
is held.
O Lord, thy divinity is like the distant heaven, like the wide sea,
full of majesty.
He who has created the land, founded the temple, called it by name
Father, generator of gods and men, who caused dwellings to be put up,
established sacrifice
Who calls to dominions, gives the sceptre, decides fate for distant
days,
Mighty leader, whose depths no god sees through
Valiant one, whose knees never grow tired, who opens the way for the
gods, his brothers,
Who passes glorious from the depths of heaven to its heights,
Who opens the gate of heaven, makes light for all men.
Father, generator of all, who looks upon living beings … who thinks
upon …
Lord, who utters judgment for heaven and earth, whose decree no one
alters
Who holds fire and water, who directs living beings, What god is like
to thee?
........
In heaven who is great? Thou alone art great.
On earth, who is great? Thou alone art great.
When thy word resounds in heaven, the Igigi throw themselves upon their
faces;
When thy word resounds on earth the Anunnaki kiss the ground.
When thy word speeds above like the storm wind, it causes food and
drink to flourish,
When thy word settles upon the east, the green arises,
Thy word makes stall and herd to be fat, expands living beings.
Thy word causes right and justice to arise, so that men speak justice.
Thy word is the distant heaven, the hidden under-world which no one
sees through,
Thy word, who can understand it, who is equal to it?
O Lord, thou hast no rival in heaven in dominion nor on the earth in
power, among the gods thy brothers.

THE EPIC OF GILGAMISH

The close relation existing between mythology and religion hardly
needs to be pointed out. The great epic of the Babylonians and
Assyrians--that of Gilgamish--is of special interest to us since
it contains the Babylonian story of the flood. The hero’s name was
formerly read as Izdubar, as the following quotation from Jeremias[n]
in his _Izdubar-Nimrod_ shows.[a]

The epic, which was preserved in the royal library of Nineveh in
the seventh century as a precious national possession, gives us a
glimpse into the Babylonian history of a remote past. The poem deals
principally with “kings who ruled the land in by-gone times,” and with
a city “which was old” at the time of the flood, and the epic itself
reaches back into very ancient times. Its scene is laid among cities
in the Euphrates district: Uruk (Erech), Nippur, the “city of ships,”
Sherippak and Babylon. The geographical horizon extends beyond these
cities to the mountain Nisir, east of the Tigris, and southwards,
beyond the Mashu mountain land, clear into the Persian Gulf. The
central point of interest is the city Uruk, called _Uruk supuri_, “the
well guarded.” Among the aristocracy of this city Izdubar makes himself
distinguished, being “perfect in power, like a mountain ox, excelling
the heroes in might.” He overcomes the jealousy of his fellow citizens
and establishes an indigenous kingdom, namely by conquering the tyrant
Khumbaba, who is shown by his name to be of Elamite descent. The
attempt has been made to identify this historical background with the
national uprising of Babylonia, which, according to Berosus, brought
about the downfall of an Elamite dynasty ruling 2450-2250 B.C. That
the tradition really did reach back to this age is proved by Babylonian
seal-cylinders of the oldest kings, which unquestionably reproduce
scenes from the epic, perhaps also the connection of the epic with
certain constellations of the zodiac.

More important than the historical is the mythological background.
Since Babylonian religion did not belong to the “aristocracy of book
religions,” it is difficult to form a system from the abundance of
religious literature, the views of which have been influenced by
varying popular opinion. Hence the portrayal of the divine world as
found in a finished epic is the more important. As in the inscription
of King Nabunaid, written 2,000 years later, so here we find the
two great divine triads, Anu, Bel, Ea, who represent three parts of
the world according to Babylonian ideas (heaven, earth, ocean), and
Shamash, Sin, Ishtar, who represent the chief heavenly bodies (Sun,
Moon, Venus).

The relations between gods and men is pictured in a naïve childlike
fashion, as in Homer. Ishtar tries to win the love of the hero Izdubar.
Shamash establishes friendship between the hero and Eabani, the three
great gods Anu, Bel, Ea whisper secrets into his ear. As Ishtar at one
time mounts from out the city to the heaven of her father Bel, so the
gods out of fear of the rising flood “crouch down like dogs at the
portals of heaven”; they flock like flies around the sacrifice and
“smell the good smell.”

One remarkable feature of the epic should be noticed here, namely,
the importance attached to dreams. The whole action is set in motion
by countless dreams, by means of which the gods show men the future
and give them council. This view is characteristic of Babylonian and
Assyrian religion. The ancient Babylonian king Gudea is shown the
outline of the temple building in a dream. Asshurbanapal on his coming
to the throne receives an address of encouragement from the priestly
class, which is based on a dream of his grandfather Sennacherib, and
in his campaigns inspiring dreams are sent to his soldiers from the
goddess of war.[n]

Nothing definite is known as to the time of the composition of this
epic. We do not know if the copy in Asshurbanapal’s library was made
from a Babylonian original or not. It is not probable that the whole
was written at one time or by one author.

The Gilgamish epic comprises twelve tablets. These are mutilated and
broken in places leaving gaps in the story, but they are sufficiently
well preserved to permit us to follow the main thread of the argument.
When the scene opens the city of Erech is suffering under the severe
misfortune of a protracted siege. The inhabitants are in distress and
the gods do nothing to help them. This siege lasts for three years,
during which time the gates of the city remain closed. Then Gilgamish
appears, whether as conqueror or deliverer the mutilated condition
of the tablet leaves in doubt. He was probably the former, since his
rule is very severe and the people complain of his tyrannical acts.
In their distress they appeal to the goddess Aruru, who is elsewhere
associated with Marduk in the creation of mankind, to make a person
who shall rival Gilgamish in strength and power. Aruru accordingly
creates Ea-bani, a creature whose whole body is covered with long hair
like a woman’s. The upper part of his body is like a man but his legs
are those of a beast. This strange being lives among the beasts of the
field, eating and drinking with them.

Gilgamish fearing that Ea-bani will be sent by the gods against him
sends out a man called the hunter to catch and bring him to Erech. The
hunter lies in wait for him three days, but on account of his great
strength is afraid to attack him and returns to the city. Gilgamish
then sends a harlot from the temple with the hunter, to tempt Ea-bani.
This plan is successful. Ea-bani forsakes his cattle out of love for
Achat, the harlot, and is persuaded by her to return to Erech and meet
Gilgamish. One thinks involuntarily here of the story of Adam and Eve.
There also it is a woman who tempts man and leads him to civilisation.

Ea-bani would like to match his strength with Gilgamish, but he is
warned in a dream not to do so. Gilgamish is also told in a dream of
Ea-bani’s coming, and the goddess to whom he appeals for interpretation
of his dream advises him to make friends with the approaching hero. The
intervention of Shamash, the sun-god, however, is necessary to persuade
Ea-bani to become a companion and friend to Gilgamish.

The two heroes then proceed against the Elamite tyrant, Khumbaba. The
epic tells of the long, hard road they have to follow, of their terror,
and of the wonderful cedar grove in which the fortress of Khumbaba is
placed. Gilgamish has several encouraging dreams to cheer them on,
and they eventually succeed in killing the tyrant. On their return
Gilgamish has the misfortune to incur Ishtar’s displeasure. The goddess
sues for his love and invites him to become her husband. He, however,
refuses her favour, even reproaching her for her cruel treatment of
her former lovers, Tammuz among them, all of whom she has forsaken
and destroyed. Ishtar in her rage at being repulsed hastens to her
father, Anu, who creates a divine bull to attack Gilgamish. The latter,
however, with Ea-bani’s help succeeds in conquering the bull. He
sacrifices his magnificent horns to Shamash and proudly boasts that he
will conquer Ishtar as well as the bull. But here his success is at an
end. Ea-bani dies, probably stricken by Ishtar, and Gilgamish himself
is afflicted by her with a dreadful disease, which strikes terror to
his heart at the thought that he must die like his friend.

Izdubar wept for Ea-bani, his friend;
In sorrow he laid himself down in the field.
“I will not die like Ea-bani,
Grief has entered my soul.
I am afraid of death
And lay me down in the field.”

Gilgamish then determines to seek Sit-napishtim and beseech his help to
rescue him from disease and death. After various experiences he comes
to the mountain Mashu, the sunset mountain, whose gates are guarded by
scorpion men. They let him enter and he journeys for twenty-four hours
in intense darkness before he emerges into the sunlight and passes by
a tree and grove with precious stones for fruit. He then comes to the
sea coast, ruled over by a princess Sabitum. She advises him to seek
out Arad-Ea, the former pilot of Sit-napishtim, who may possibly carry
him across the waters. Arad-Ea consents, builds a boat with the aid of
Gilgamish and they set out together. The most difficult part of the
voyage is the journey across the “waters of death.” The two finally
reach the island home of Sit-napishtim who, at Gilgamish’s request,
tells the story of his escape from the flood (as translated from
Jeremias[n]):

Sit-napishtim said to him, to Gishduba (Gilgamish),
“I will reveal to thee, Gishduba, something hidden.
And a secret of the gods will I tell thee.
Shurippak, a city which thou knowest--on the banks of the Euphrates
it is situated--
This city is old. The gods within it,
Their heart led the great gods to bring up a deluge.
Their father Anu was there, their counsellor, the mighty Bel,
Their herald Ninib, their leader En-nu-gi.
Ninigiazag (Ea) was with them and related their words to a hut of
reeds, saying: “O reed hut, O reed hut! O wall, wall!
Reed hut hear! wall understand!
Thou man of Shurippak, son of Ubaratutu,
Make a house, build a ship, leave thy possessions, seek thy life.
Abandon thy goods, and save thy life.
Bring up living seed of every kind into the ship,
The ship, which thou shalt build.
Its dimensions must be measured;
Its breadth and its strength must suit each other.
Thou shalt place it in the ocean.”
I understood and said to Ea, my lord,
“See, my lord, what thou hast commanded
I shall heed and perform.
But, how shall I answer to the city, to the people and to the elders?”
Ea opened his mouth and spake, said to me, his slave,
“This answer shalt thou say to them:
Because Bel hateth me
No longer will I live in your city, nor lay my head on Bel’s earth.
To the deep will I go down and live with Ea, my lord.
He will then cause it to rain upon ye abundantly.
A large number of birds, a crowd of fishes,
A quantity of animals, abundant harvest.…

The lines here are too mutilated to make much meaning. According to
some interpretations Sit-napishtim assures his fellow-citizens of
coming prosperity so that they have no misgivings as to his leaving
them; others, on the contrary, indicate that Sit-napishtim made no
secret of the coming deluge. Sit-napishtim then relates how he built
the ship, gives its dimensions, and tells what he put into it. He
continues (Jeremias’[n] translation):

“I brought up into the ship my whole family, and my dependants,
Cattle of the field, beasts of the field, artisans all together
I brought them up.
Shamash had appointed a signal,
‘The lord of darkness will send a heavy rain in the evening.
Then enter into the ship and close the door.’
The appointed time came;
The lord of darkness sent a heavy rain in the evening.
I feared the beginning of the day;
I was afraid to look upon the day.
I entered the ship and closed the door.
To the pilot of the ship, to Puzur-Bel, the boatman,
I intrusted the ship and what was in it.
When the first dawn appeared
A black cloud arose from the foundation of heaven
Ramman thundered within it.
Nabu and Marduk preceded it.
They advanced as leaders over mountain and earth.
Uragal pulled up the anchor;
Ninib went forth and caused the storm to follow.
The Annunaki raised their torches;
They lighted the earth with their beams.
The thunder of Ramman mounted to heaven;
Everything light was turned to darkness.”

Ramman floods the land, the tempest rages for a whole day, a strong
wind blows the water like mountains upon the people.

“Brother did not see his brother, men could not be distinguished;
in heaven
The gods were afraid of the deluge.
They quailed, they mounted up to the heaven of Anu.
The gods crouched down like dogs, at the borders of heaven.
Ishtar screamed like a woman in travail.
The lady of the gods cried with a loud voice
‘Former man has been turned again to clay
Because I counselled an evil thing in the council of the gods.’”

Ishtar complains that her offspring have become like fish spawn and the
gods weep with her. After six days, however, the storm abates, the sea
becomes quiet. Sit-napishtim looks out of the window and weeps at the
sight that meets his gaze. Mankind is turned to clay, the world is all
sea. After twelve days land appears, and the ship sticks fast on the
top of Mount Nisit, where it remains for six days.

“When the seventh day drew nigh,
I sent out a dove and let her go. The dove flew hither and thither,
But as there was no resting place for her, she returned.
Then I sent out a swallow and let her go. The swallow flew hither
and thither,
But as there was no resting place for her, she returned.
Then I sent out a raven and let her go.
The raven flew off and saw the diminishing of the waters,
She came near and croaked, but did not return.
Then I brought out (all), offered a sacrifice to the four winds;
I made a libation on the top of the mountain,
I laid out the vessels seven by seven,
Under them I put reed, cedar-wood and incense.
The gods smelled the smell. The gods smelled the good smell.
The gods gathered like flies about the lord of the sacrifice.”

When Ishtar arrives she bitterly accuses Bel for having destroyed
mankind and refuses to let him approach the sacrifice. Bel on his part
is angry that any man whatever has escaped. Ea interposes, rebukes Bel
for his deed, and tells him that in the future some other device shall
be used to punish mankind. Bel accepts the censure and himself leads
Sit-napishtim and his wife out of the ship and blesses them. They are
then transported to an island at the “mouth of the streams” where they
are to live forever.

After listening to this story Gilgamish is cured of his disease by
Sit-napishtim who also tells him of a plant which has the power to
prolong life. Gilgamish sets out with Arad-Ea to find it, and their
search is indeed successful; but later on in the journey a demon steals
the plant, and Gilgamish returns sorrowfully home. Here he continues
to mourn for his lost friend Ea-bani. In his desire to see him again
he appeals in turn to Bel, Sin, and Ea to assist him, but they are
powerless to help him. It is Nergal, god of the dead, who grants
his request and “opened the earth, let the spirit of Ea-bani come
out of the earth like a breath of wind.” When asked to describe the
under-world Ea-bani at first answers, “I cannot tell you, my friend, I
cannot tell you,” then he bids him sit down and weep while he gives him
a gloomy account of the place, which closes with the following lines
(Jeremias’ translation):

“On a couch he lieth, drinking pure water.
He who was killed in battle--thou hast seen it, I have seen it--
His father and his mother hold his head
And his wife kneels at his side.
He whose corpse lies in the field--thou hast seen it, I have seen it--
His soul has no rest in the world.
He whose soul has no one to care for it--thou hast seen it, I have seen
it.
The dregs of the cup, the remnants of the feast--what is thrown on the
street, that is his food.”[h]

This is the end of the epic. It has been suggested that the whole forms
a solar myth and is divided into twelve parts to correspond to the
twelve months. According to this theory the sixth tablet, relating to
Ishtar, and her treatment of Tammuz and her other lovers, corresponds
to the sixth month. It is the month when everything seems dry and dead
after the hot summer sun, and in this month the festival of Tammuz
was celebrated, as a characteristic of which was the weeping for
Tammuz related in Ezekiel viii. 14. The seventh tablet speaking of
Gilgamish’s illness would thus correspond to the seventh month, the one
following the summer solstice, when the power of nature seems to grow
less, and this was attributed to a disease of the sun.

ISHTAR’S DESCENT INTO HADES

This idea is brought out more fully in the legend of Ishtar’s descent
into the under world. It is possible that the story used to be recited
in connection with the festival of Tammuz just mentioned. Ishtar is
pictured as descending into the lower realms, probably in search of
her young husband. The picture it gives us of the conception the
Babylonians had of life after death is very valuable. The poem begins:

To the land of no return, to the land …
Ishtar the daughter of Sin inclined her ear.
To the house of darkness, the dwelling of Irkalla
To the house from which none who enter ever return
To the road whose course does not turn back.
To the house in which he who enters is deprived of light,
Where dust is their nurture and mud their food.
They see not the light, they dwell in darkness.
They are clothed like birds in a garment of feathers.
On the doors and bolts is spread dust.
When Ishtar reached the gate of the land of no return
She spoke to the porter at the gate
“Porter, open thy gate,
Open thy gate, I will enter.
If thou dost not open thy gate, and I do not enter,
I will strike the door, I will break the bolt,
I will strike the threshold and break down the door.
I will raise up the dead to consume the living,
The dead shall be more numerous than the living!”
The porter opened his mouth and spoke,
Spoke to the powerful Ishtar:
“Stay, my lady, do not break it down,
I will go and announce thy name to the queen Allatu.”

The porter then informs Allatu that her sister Ishtar stands at the
door. The goddess is displeased at the news but bids the porter open
the door and treat her according to the “ancient laws.” These demanded
that she should lose some part of her apparel at each of the seven
gates of the under-world until she stood naked before the throne of
its goddess. At the first gate the porter takes away her crown and she
asks: “Why, O porter, dost thou take the great crown from my head!” He
answers: “Enter, O lady, for these are the commands of the mistress of
the world.” At each gate Ishtar remonstrates at having her ornaments
taken from her, and each time the porter returns the same answer.

When Ishtar comes before Allatu, the latter commands her messenger
Namtar to smite the goddess with disease in all parts of her body.
But while Ishtar is being detained in the lower world, all life has
stopped on the earth’s surface. The gods demand her release. A being
is specially created to bring her back. The rest of the story and
the meaning of this and the flood myth is told by C. P. Tiele[o] as
follows:[a]

The story of Ishtar’s descent into hades is unmistakably a nature
myth, which describes in picturesque fashion her descent into the
under-world to seek the springs of living water, probably the central
force of light and heat in the world. When she is imprisoned there by
Allatu, the goddess of death and of the shadow world, and even visited
with all sorts of diseases, all growth and generation stand still in
the world, so that the gods take council and decide to demand her
release. Ea accordingly creates a wonderful being a kind of priest,
called “his light shineth,” who is to seek out the fountain of life,
and whom Allatu cannot withstand, however much she may scold and
curse. The goddess is set free, returns to the upper world and brings
her dead lover Tammuz back to life by sprinkling him with the water
of immortality. This myth is not cosmological nor ethical, but has
already become a pure anthropomorphic narration, the physical basis for
certain episodes and details of which is often not clear, and which
has a tendency to strengthen belief in immortality. The account of the
flood also, which we have in several versions and which was itself put
together out of various parts, some of them heterogeneous, betrays
the fact that it was put together by a polytheist and originated in a
nature myth. But the nature myths as such lie already so far behind
the author, there is such a naïve humour in the way the gods are
represented, everything happens in such a human fashion--one needs
only to think of Ishtar’s complaint that she has created men but no
brood of fishes, of the sly excuse with which Ea excuses himself to
Bel for having rescued his favourite from the destruction planned by
the latter, one needs only to hear how Bel is preached at by the wise
Ea for his unreasonable and blind passion, and how the great Ishtar
declares him to have forfeited his share of the sacrifice, and then see
how he silently acknowledges his wrong by himself accompanying the man
over whose rescue he had become so excited, and raising him with his
family to a place among the gods--one needs only to think of all this
to see that the narrator made use of the mythological material only to
describe the fall of sinful humanity and at the same time to remind
his hearers that the gods always have means at their command, such as
hunger, pestilence, and wild beasts, to punish the evil-doer.[o]

The Babylonian view of life after death was particularly gloomy. There
was no hope of anything better. The highest state of happiness pictured
was to lie on a couch and drink clear water; even for the pious it was
a place of gloom. And there was no possibility of escaping from it.
Sit-napishtim tells Gilgamish in this connection that death must come
to all (we translate again from the version of Jeremias[n]):

So long as houses are built,
So long as contracts are made,
So long as brothers quarrel,
So long as enmity exists,
So long as rivers bear their waves [to the sea]
........
The Anunnaki and the great gods determine fate
And Mammetum, the creator of destiny, with them.
They determine life and death,
The days of death are not known.[h]

We have seen the legend telling of a visit to the lower world; there
are two which tell of visits to heaven. One is in connection with
Etana. In Asshurbanapal’s library were a series of tablets containing
the Etana legend. One portion of the story tells how Shamash helped
Etana to find a plant which would help his wife in child-birth. Another
narrates how Etana mounted to heaven on the back of an eagle. They
pause at different stages to look at the earth beneath them. At the
first stop: “The earth appears like a mountain, the sea has become
a pool.” They go further and the eagle again calls to Etana to look
at the earth. This time the sea looks like a belt around the earth.
The next time he looks the sea has become a mere gardener’s ditch.
After reaching the gate of Anu, Bel, and Ea, the eagle wants to go
still further and persuades Etana to accompany him to Ishtar’s abode.
They fly until the earth appears a mere “garden bed,” but here the
rash attempt of the eagle to reach the highest regions appears to be
punished. The two are hurled down from heaven upon the earth. Another
part of the legend tells of a deceit practised upon the eagle by the
serpent, aided by Shamash, in which the eagle dies a miserable death.

The second story of a visit to heaven is found in the legend of Adapa.
This legend was on one of the tablets found at Tel Amarna. Adapa is a
son of the god Ea, and is represented as serving in his temple. One
day as he is fishing in the sea the south wind overturns his boat.
Adapa then fights with the south wind and succeeds in breaking its
wings so that it does not blow for seven days. At the end of this
time Anu, in heaven, becomes aware that the south wind has not been
blowing and inquires the reason. When told, he becomes very angry
that anyone should have had the audacity to interfere with any of his
creatures. He accordingly sends for Adapa to appear before him. Ea
gives his son advice as to his conduct, telling him how to secure the
good favour of the two porters at the gate, one of whom is Tammuz. He
tells him further: “When thou comest before Anu, they will offer thee
food of death--do not eat. Water of death they will offer thee--do not
drink. They will offer thee a garment--put it on. They will offer thee
oil--anoint thyself.” Adapa then reaches heaven, and everything happens
as Ea has told him. Only the food and water which are offered him are
of life not of death, and thus Adapa loses his chances of eternal
life. Anu looks at him in amazement and exclaims: “O Adapa, why didst
thou not eat and drink? Now thou canst not live.” Here, as in the case
of Adam in the biblical story, whose name by the way may possibly be
identical with Adapa, we see that a deceit was practised on man. In
each case he is told that the food and water of life will bring him
death, although the Babylonian story differs from the biblical in that
the former freely and gladly accords man knowledge, as represented by
the clothing and oil for anointment, which may be regarded as symbols
of civilisation.

In the Euphrates valley religion was very closely associated with the
actual life of the nation. The temples were storehouses and banking
establishments; the priests were lawyers and scribes. Every historical
inscription contains a reference to the gods. Victory was due to their
intervention. Nothing was conceived without them. Their festivals
were the great events of the year. The German excavating society has
recently brought to light the old procession street between Babylon and
Borsippa over which the image of the god Nabu used to be carried on
his annual visit to Marduk at Babylon. This street was decorated with
glazed, coloured tiles, representing a stately procession of lions and
other beasts, which show a high grade of artistic talent.

The Babylonian religion shows its development plainly. In its earliest
phase we have the belief in a great many spirits and demons, who could
be controlled by magic. Then comes the period of local cults followed
by the organised pantheon, in which we see faint signs of a conception
of one god manifested in many forms.[a]

To sum up in the words of Tiele: From all that has been said it
will be seen that the religion of the Babylonians had at an early
date attained a comparatively high stage of development. It had not
yet crossed the boundary of monotheism but remained a theocratic,
monarchical polytheism; nevertheless it came very near that boundary.
The gods of mythology were already treated with great freedom, and the
disgust which some of their deeds called forth was not disguised. A
comparatively pure and lofty conception of the highest divinity had
already been developed, even if it was called upon by different names.
However much superficiality and formality, however many superstitions
and magical customs may have been connected with the divine worship, it
was yet not lacking in deep religious feeling and moral earnestness,
which is shown particularly in the penitential psalms.[o]

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF OF WORKMEN AND CART

(After Layard)]

CHAPTER IX. BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN CULTURE

Of all the revelations regarding the Mesopotamian civilisation which
the researches of Botta and Layard and their followers have brought to
light, none perhaps are more interesting than those that showed the
position which art had attained in those far-off and forgotten times.
It had all along been remembered that powerful political empires had
risen and fallen here, however vaguely the details of the history may
have been preserved. It was recalled, too, that these peoples possessed
religions with the same fundamental elements as the Jewish creeds; but
that they had developed an artistic spirit and artistic craftsmanship
far beyond that of any other people of their time, had been entirely
forgotten. Yet, as we have seen, the most striking and conspicuous
of the monuments restored by the explorations were works of art. We
have obtained many glimpses of these in the preceding pages, and it
will not be necessary here to treat them in very great detail; indeed,
it would be quite impossible to do so within the necessary bounds of
space. Our concern is with the historic relations of the Mesopotamian
art development rather than with the details of the art itself.
Nevertheless, something more than incidental references will be made to
some features of the subject.[a]

The origin of Babylonian-Assyrian civilisation is lost in the darkness
of prehistoric times, like that of the Egyptians and Chinese. We shall
see that even their oldest monuments display a high grade of artistic
ability and presuppose a long development. The texts on the oldest
monuments are already written in cuneiform; the picture writing in
which this must have originated was already out of use, which shows
a great progress in civilisation. As to the origin of this culture
various suppositions have been made. According to the one which
has made most headway, it was borrowed by the Babylonians from a
non-Semitic race who inhabited the country before them, and then spread
gradually from the Persian Gulf, where it originated or whither it was
brought from without, towards the north.

It is pure supposition to say that civilisation in Babylonia started
out from the shores of the Persian Gulf and spread from there
towards the north, but it is a supposition which has a high degree
of probability. In this direction points the old legend of the
Babylonians, as Berossus relates it, which describes the origin of
civilisation--the legend of the divine fish-man Oannes, who came up
in the morning from the Erythræan Sea, instructed the inhabitants of
Chaldea, who were still living like animals, in the arts and sciences,
and then in the evening disappeared again under the waves. This
fish-god has long since been recognised as the god who is so frequently
depicted on Babylonian and Assyrian monuments, and it can now hardly be
longer doubted that he, the god of the waters, or rather the source of
light and fire in the waters, is the god Ea. This god with his circle
is without doubt indigenous to southern Chaldea. The oldest and most
important centre of his cult is Eridu, situated close to the sea. His
son Marduk, and the god connected with him whom the Semites call Nabu,
is especially honoured on the islands and coast of the Persian Gulf.
Thus if legend traces the culture of the Chaldeans from the instruction
of this god, this is the origin of the tradition that his worshippers,
who must have been mariners and dwellers on the sea coast, introduced
this civilisation into Chaldea.

In agreement with this is the fact that the decrees of Ea and the magic
formulæ of Eridu, his chief city situated near the sea, are repeatedly
designated as being very holy and powerful, and as very ancient; also
that the oldest sayings and traditions which are known to us in the
Gisdubas (Gilgamesh) epic, are located precisely in places on the
sea coast or not far distant from it. These were also the centres of
powerful states, as also of the kingdom of Ur, and the oldest monuments
of Chaldean civilisation which have yet become known to us were found
in southern Babylonia at Telloh.

However, wherever its origin may have been, the great age of Babylonian
culture, of which the Assyrian is only a later branch, stands beyond
doubt. The cylinders of Sargon I as well as the statues found at Telloh
show a high grade of development and presuppose an art which already
has a long past behind it. That the Egyptian culture is younger and
even derived from the Babylonian, and that the latter is thus the
oldest in the world, and at the same time was the mother of all other
civilisations of antiquity, as has been claimed (Hommel), can naturally
not be proved and is still doubtful; but it is not impossible. And
the most remarkable fact is, that at least the plastic art could
never again reach the heights it had already attained in such a gray
antiquity.

This does not mean to imply that the Babylonians did not further
develop the civilisation, the elements of which they had received from
their predecessors. They assimilated it and developed it independently;
it may even be assumed that they improved on it in more than one
respect, and applied it to higher ends. They also introduced into
it much that was peculiar to them. How far this was the case--what
with them was borrowed and what original, cannot yet be determined
in detail. At any rate we are not justified in attributing to their
non-Semitic teachers, as often happens, everything barbaric, cruel,
and repulsive that still characterises their customs, nor all the
superstitions still connected with their religion.

The original inhabitants excelled the Semites in artistic spirit and
ability, perhaps also as traders and mariners, and the latter probably
imitated the former, but seldom reached them and never surpassed
them. The Semites, on the other hand, put more depth and earnestness
into their religious life; energetically carried out the monarchic
principle in this, as also in the life of the state; simplified
the writing; enriched the literature, which was thus rendered more
practical, by highly remarkable epic narrations, especially with epic
poems, and even made an attempt to write history. Furthermore, by the
organisation of a capable army, by the warlike talents of their kings
and generals, as also by their unbending character and persevering
will, they established states which endured the most violent upheavals
and changes, and ruled all their neighbours for centuries. If they
were behind their predecessors in some points, they far surpassed them
in others. The conception that one people takes on the culture of
another, quite as one puts on a borrowed dress, is just as foolish as
the conception that a nation relinquishes its own individuality and
originality as soon as it learns something from another. The Greeks of
whom it has now been proved that they owed much to oriental peoples,
the Persians of whom everyone knows that they borrowed most of their
civilisation from Babylon, prove the contrary. The people who brought
its culture to the southern coasts of Babylonia and probably also to
the coasts of Elan and communicated it to the still uncultured races
living there, seems to have belonged to that peaceful, commercial
race which the Hebrews designated as the “sons of Kush,” which was
not unlike the Phœnicians and was placed in the same category; a race
which, while jealous of its independence, was not aggressive, although
inclined to colonisation and to making distant journeys. These dwellers
on the coasts, together with the inland tribes, were then conquered
by the Semites, perhaps after long battles. If, however, they became
in this way, as always, the teachers of their conquerors, the culture
which grew under their influence was none the less a creation, and thus
the inalienable property of the Babylonians.

LITERATURE AND SCIENCE

How high a state of civilisation the Babylonians had reached is shown
by the fact that the invention of writing was a long-accomplished fact
with them. The oldest inscriptions known to us, and which certainly
date as far back as 4000 B.C., are already written in a species of
character which from similarity to the second Egyptian style of writing
has been called hieratic, and it has been proved that this hieratic
style of writing has been evolved from older hieroglyphics, long since
fallen into disuse.

It is not known whether any other material than stone or clay was used
to write upon, and whether in such case syllabic writing was used or
not. It has been surmised that the Babylonians and Assyrians also used,
and perhaps exclusively at first, papyrus, leather, and other soft
materials to write upon, and engraved upon stone or clay only such
matter as they wished to preserve. This is not improbable, even though
we do not possess any such manuscripts. For as a matter of course the
first named materials could not withstand the Babylonian climate as
well as the Egyptian, and only the last named are proof against fire
and water. It is a fact, however, that the bas-reliefs show the scribes
recording the number of the slain on soft material, probably leather,
as well as upon hard tablets. Whether they also wrote books or letters
on papyrus or leather has not been definitely established.

However much the writing of the Babylonians and Assyrians may have
been an inheritance from very ancient times, and how much they may be
indebted to the early Chaldeans for the single form and the structure
of the whole system, the cuneiform writing in which they represented
their language was their own invention in more than one respect, since
they did not thoughtlessly use what was ready to hand, but modified and
altered it with deliberation.

Writing was also used by the Babylonians and Assyrians for purely
literary purposes. The narratives, legends, or poems were inscribed
on tablets of clay, and if in case of a work of greater size, the two
sides covered with microscopic characters did not suffice, a series
of such was used, which were clearly designated and numbered, so that
they were in fact leaves of a book. Generally the title of the whole,
as usual with the Hebrews, the first words and the first words of the
following tablet were inscribed on every tablet. This literature even
if limited to the productions of the imagination, is comparatively
abundant. Although in this respect it may not equal the literature of
some races still living, such as the Chinese, Arabian, Persian, and
Indian, nor that of the ancient times of Greece and India, which in the
last named country grows as luxuriantly as its vegetation, yet on the
other hand, it excels in this respect that of the other Semitic races,
the Hebrews not excepted. This is proved not only by the writings
so far discovered but also by the catalogues of books in Babylonian
libraries or of similar works elsewhere. However, enough has been
brought to light, and in a fair state of preservation, to enable us to
form an opinion of the literary talent of the Babylonians, and to prove
to us what great varieties of it they cultivated.

[Illustration: BAKED CLAY CYLINDER OF SARGON II, KING OF ASSYRIA,
B.C. 722-705, INSCRIBED WITH A CHRONICLE OF HIS EXPEDITION]

The Assyrians stand, in a literary sense, in about the same relation
to the Babylonians as the Romans to the Greeks, disciples who never
equalled their masters, although as far as can be seen, even relatively
considered, Roman literature stands higher in relation to Greek
than Assyrian stands in relation to Babylonian. The tendency of the
Assyrians was warlike, and directed to practical ideas: to found a
mighty empire, and to maintain their supremacy was the end for which
they strove. Therefore they were more interested in history than in
creations of the imagination; purely literary work had little charm
for them. Only much later, a desire is awakened in them to become
acquainted with the productions of the Babylonians in this field, and
to acquire as much as possible of it for themselves. And perhaps even
here interest in the ancient religions and national traditions played a
greater rôle than love for poetry.

The Assyrians seem to have had more taste for what may be designated
the science of the period, than for literature. Here also, they were
following the lead of the Babylonians, and accomplished little beyond
taking possession of the treasures of the Babylonian libraries. The
prestige which attached to the Babylonians in antiquity as the earliest
cultivators of science is well known, although some thought that
they had borrowed it from the Egyptians. Without doubt they reached
the greatest eminence in antiquity in the knowledge of astronomy.
Kalisthenes sent Aristotle astronomical observations from Babylon,
which, according to the most moderate statement, reach back to 1903
before Alexander, _i.e._, 2324 B.C.; and there is nothing improbable
in this. The number of eclipses mentioned on the astronomical tablets
would lead to a conclusion that there was an even longer period of
recorded calculations. It may be that the Ziggurat of the temples,
which originally had a religious significance, might, in Assyria at
least, have been used as observatories. It has even been surmised
that the Babylonians had some sort of a telescope, and this surmise
rests upon the finding of a lens in the ruins, and upon the fact that
they were acquainted with the planet Saturn, which is invisible to
the naked eye; but this doss not seem probable. One thing is certain,
they gave names to the constellations, especially to the signs of
the Zodiac, which have in part remained in use. They were acquainted
with five planets, and distinguished them very exactly from the other
heavenly bodies. They observed, and with great accuracy, the eclipses
of the sun and moon, perhaps also the sun spots, the comets, the orbit
of Venus, and the position of the Polar star; but they had some very
childish ideas about the causes of eclipses and the character of the
other heavenly phenomena. Naturally the Milky Way did not escape their
observation. They even calculated the regular recurrence of eclipses of
the moon as well as its phases.

A few of the mathematical tablets extant prove that they had made
great progress in arithmetic and higher mathematics, so indispensable
to the study of astronomy. The prevalent system was the sexagesimal,
with the 60 as the unit, but the decimal system seems to have been
known and used. However in spite of the recognition of the high value
of these researches, they hardly deserve the name of science. These
researches were certainly not undertaken from a love of science. The
prime object, no doubt, was to discover the will of the gods in regard
to the future. The science of mathematics itself was made subservient
to the art of divination. Astronomy was a secondary object, astrology
the principal one. Knowledge was sought of what must happen when there
should be a recurrence of certain phases of stars and heavenly bodies.
All observations of planets, comets, and other stars, of eclipses and
other phenomena, were immediately connected with occurrences on earth,
which at some former time had fallen in conjunction with them and
consequently must be expected again.

No more were other branches of science besides astronomy cultivated for
their own sakes. Their science of medicine was based almost entirely
upon magic, and appears to have stood on a lower plane than that of the
Egyptians, at least in so far as the still existing inscriptions will
permit us to judge. They indeed used as did the Vedic Indians external
and internal remedies, but they probably regarded them as charms;
whatever progress they may have made in the science of medicine, the
records of it in the ancient inscriptions prove that it was somewhat
less than what we know of the Vedic physicians and their cures. Thus
it is rather an exaggeration to speak of physical, geographical,
grammatical, and mythological writings of the Babylonians and
Assyrians, unless the myths and legends belonging to literature already
discussed are meant.

There are various reasons for the supposition that each of the
Babylonian libraries according to the studies of the several religious
and scientific schools had a distinctive character. The Assyrian
libraries, on the other hand, being all of later date, had more general
and more varied contents.

The idea that these libraries were for the use of the general public,
is not well founded, and rather improbable. They were probably designed
in the first place, for the learned men and scribes of the king, as
well as for his own use, for the instruction of his sons, and future
officials, as well as for archives of the state. They do not in the
least prove that culture, learning, and erudition were the property of
all classes in Assyria.[h]

_Epistolary Literature_

At the same time the large number of written private documents which
have been unearthed--the letters and contract tablets--show that
writing was not an unusual thing among the people as a whole.

From one point of view these old letters are the most interesting
form of Babylonian literature because they show better than anything
else the real life of the nation. At first thought it may seem that a
correspondence on clay must have been cumbersome, but most of these
little letters were not so large as an ordinary envelope and some of
them were only two or three inches long, and could easily be carried
in the pocket. Some of them were enclosed in an outer envelope of clay
which frequently contained a copy of the real document within.

In connection with the code of Khammurabi, his correspondence with one
of his officials, Sin-idinnam, is particularly interesting because
in these letters we find references to the same subjects which are
treated of in the laws. In them all, we see Khammurabi attending to
the minutest affairs of his kingdom, taking a personal interest in
everything. It seems to have been a comparatively easy matter to get
the king’s ear. He received letters complaining of things we should
perhaps consider beneath the notice of a powerful king, and he seems to
have devoted careful thought to all.

The letters of Khammurabi have been edited and translated by Mr. L. W.
King, of the British Museum. They have been also translated by Dr. G.
Nagel[i] for a doctor’s dissertation, at Berlin, and published in the
_Beiträge zur Assyriologie_, vol. IV. Some of the latter’s translations
are given below.[a]

_To Sin-idinnam say: Thus saith Khammurabi._ Naram-Sin the keeper
of flocks hath said: “To the leaders of the troops have our
shepherd lads been given.” Thus did he say. The shepherd lads of
Apil-Shamash and of Naram-Sin must not be given to the troopers.
Now send to Etil-hi-Marduk and his fellows that they give back the
shepherd lads of Apil-Shamash and of Naram-Sin which they have
taken.

_To Sin-idinnam say: Thus saith Khammurabi._ The whole canal was
dug, but it was not dug clear into Erech, so that water does not
come into the city. Also … on the bank of the Duru canal has fallen
in. This labour is not too much for the people at thy command to do
in three days. Directly upon receipt of this writing dig the canal
with all the people at thy command, clear into the city of Erech,
within three days. As soon as thou hast dug the canal, do the work
which I have commanded thee.

_To Sin-idinnam say: Thus saith Khammurabi._ Tummumu of Nippur has
announced to me as follows: “In the place Unaburu (?) I deposited
seventy tons of grain in a granary (?). Avel-ilu has opened the
granary and taken the grain.” Thus did he tell me. See, I am
sending Tummumu to thee with this. Let Avel-ilu be brought before
thee. Examine their dispute. The grain belonging to Tummumu which
Avel-ilu took, he shall give back to Tummumu.

_To Sin-idinnam say: Thus saith Khammurabi._ See, I have ordered
and sent Sin-aiaba-iddina, Guzalu and Shatammu to the war. They
will reach thee on the 12th day of Marshewan. When they have
reached thee, do thou proceed with them. The cows and flocks of
thy province, put into safe keeping. Also Nabu-malik, Ilu-naditum,
Shamash-mushalim, Sin-usili, Taribum, and Idin-Ninshah shall go
with thee and take part in the war.

_To Sin-idinnam say: Thus saith Khammurabi._ Immediately upon
receipt of this letter, have all the keepers of thy temple and
Ardi-Shamash, the son of Eriban, the shepherd of the Shamash temple
come before thee, together with their complete account. Send them
to Babylon to give their account. Let them ride day and night.
Within two days they should be in Babylon.[i]

We also have examples of the private correspondence of the same
period, showing the style of letter one Babylonian wrote to another.
The following remarks and translations of letters are taken from a
dissertation giving letters from the time of Khammurabi.[a]

The insignificant contents of some of these letters show that letter
writing at that time was a general custom and the theory again and
again thrusts itself forward that a comparatively regular postal
service was already in existence. These letters also show how far
Babylonian commerce extended in the second half of the third century
before Christ. Every letter throws new light upon that far distant past
and helps us to form an ever surer picture of the daily life of the old
Babylonian people. Following are a few examples to give an idea of the
epistolary style.

_To my father say: Thus speaks Elmeshu. May Shamash and Marduk keep
my father alive forever. Mayest thou, my father, be in health,
mayest thou live. May the protecting deity of my father lift up the
head of my father in favour. To greet my father have I written.
May the prosperity of my father before Shamash and Marduk endure
forever._ After Sin and Ramman had spoken thy name, my father,[33]
thou, my father, didst speak as follows: “As soon as I come to
Der-Ammizadaduga on the Sharku canal, I will send thee, within a
short space, a lamb with five mina of silver.” This didst thou say,
my father. My father made me expectant, but thou hast sent nothing.
Now after thou, my father, hadst started out to Taribu, the
queen, I sent a letter to my father. Thou, my father, hast never
voluntarily sent anyone who brought (even) a silver shekel. In
accordance with the … of Sin and Ramman who have blessed my father,
may my father send me that for which I am eager, so will my heart
not be grieved, and I will pray for my father to Shamash and Marduk.

_To my lord, say: Thus speaketh Belshunu, thy slave._ Since I have
been confined in prison thou, my lord, hast kept me alive. What is
the reason that for five months my lord has neglected me? The house
in which I am confined is a house of want. Now I have sent the
Mar-abulli (gate-keeper[?]) to you with a letter. I am also ill.
May my lord have pity on me, send me corn and vegetables so that
I may not die. Send me also a dress to cover my nakedness. Either
a half shekel of silver or two mina of wool let him (Mar-abulli)
bring, for my service let him bring it. Let not Mar-abulli be sent
empty away. If he cometh empty, the dogs will devour me. As thou,
my lord, so also every inhabitant of Sippar and Babylon knows that
I am confined without guilt; not because of a _bilshu_, I have
been imprisoned. Thou, my lord, didst send me beyond the river to
carry oil, but the Sutu people met me and took me captive. Speak
a favourable word to the servant of the king’s grand vizir. Send,
that I die not in the house of need. Send one _ka_ of oil and
five _ka_ of salt. What thou didst send a short time ago was not
delivered. Whatever thou sendest, send it well guarded.

_To my father say: Thus saith Zimri-erah. May Shamash and Marduk
give my father everlasting life._ Ibi-Ninshah the younger brother
of Nur-ilishu has fallen upon Nabu-atpalam and beaten him; he has
also spoken insults concerning me which are not to be endured. I
shall beat the young man! Wherefore has he cursed me? I have as yet
said nothing to the person. I thought to myself: “I will send to my
father, let him send his decision about the matter, and then I will
speak to the person.” Now I have sent a tablet to Nabu-atpalam, for
information in this matter. Up! make a decision in this matter,
send your judgment, give (?) a word.

_To the secretary of the merchants of Sippar, Iahruru speak: Thus
saith Ammidatitana._ The wool dealer has informed me as follows:
“I have written to the secretary of the merchants of Sippar,
Iahruru to send his spun wool to Babylon, but he has not sent
his spun wool.” Thus has he informed me. Why hast thou not sent
thy spun wool to Babylon? Since thou hast not feared to do this
thing, so send--as soon as thou seest this tablet--thy spun wool to
Babylon.[34]

_To Appa speak: Thus saith Gimil-Marduk. May Shamash keep thee
alive._ I have spoken in thy behalf to the person in question and
he said; “Let him come so that he may speak.” And the tablets which
thou didst take to examine, take them according to thy examination
and come quickly.

_To Etil-Shamash-iddina speak: Thus saith Avel-Ruhati. May Shamash
and Ishtar keep thee alive; I am well._ Humtani has given for
Amti-Shamash 8⅚ _kat_ and 15 _she_ of silver. To Musalimma, I will
give the money wherever he commands. I am going into the service of
the king’s daughter. I will quickly send thy desire. Send an answer
to my tablet.[j]

Among the large number of letters which have been preserved it has
been possible to find more than one written by the same person, and,
by putting these together, to get some idea of the life and character
of the writer. The letters of a certain Bel-Ibni are prominent among
these. They contain allusions to historical events mentioned on the
monuments, thus contributing valuable details to these rather barren
records of events. Bel-Ibni himself was a general in the army of
Ashurbanapal. Below is a translation of one of these letters made by
Dr. C. Johnston,[k] in the _Epistolary literature of the Assyrians and
Babylonians_ in the _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, vol.
XVIII.[a]

_To the lord of kings, my lord, thy servant Bel-Ibni! May Ashur,
Shamash and Marduk decree length of days, health of mind and body
for the lord of kings, my lord!_ Shuma, the son of Sham-iddina, son
of Gakhal, son of Tammaritu’s sister, fleeing from Elam, reached
the (country of the) Dakkha. I took him under my protection and
transferred him from Dakkha (hither). He is ill. As soon as he
completely recovers his health, I shall send him to the king, my
lord.

A messenger has come to him (with the news) that Nadan and the
Pukudeans of Til … had a meeting with Nabu-bel-shumate at the
city of Targibati, and they took a neutral oath to this effect:
“According to agreement we shall send you whatever news we may
hear.” To bind the bargain (?) they purchased from him fifty head
of cattle, and also said to him: “Our sheep shall come and graze
in the pasture (?) among the Ubanateans, in order that you may
have confidence in us.” Now (I should advise that) a messenger of
my lord, the king, come, and give Nadan plainly to understand as
follows: “If thou sendest anything to Elam for sale, or if a single
sheep gets over to the Elamite pasture (?) I will not let thee
live.” The king, my lord, may thoroughly rely upon my report.[k]

Professor Delitzsch in an article in the _Beiträge zur Assyriologie_,
vol. I. entitled _Beiträge zur Erklärung der babylonisch-assyrischen
Brieflitteratur_, has given a translation of a letter from the king to
this same Bel-Ibni:

_The word of the king to Bel-Ibni: May my greeting make glad thy
heart!_ Concerning thy communication about the Pukudeans on the
river Charru--In the future, whoever loves the house of his lords,
shall communicate whatever he sees and hears to his lords. See!
whilst thou inform me concerning the cause of thy communication.[l]

[Illustration: BAKED CLAY TABLETS FROM THE LIBRARY OF ASSHURBANAPAL AT
NINEVEH]

Some of the letters throw light on religious ceremonies, others are
communications from astrologers telling whether or not the signs of the
heavens are propitious for certain undertakings. There are still others
from physicians telling of patients under their care. The following is
translated by Dr. Johnston:[a]

_To the king, my lord, thy servant, Arad-Nana! Greeting most
heartily to my lord, the king! May Adar and Gula grant health of
mind and body to my lord, the king. A hearty greeting to the son of
the king.…_ With regard to the patient who has a bleeding from his
nose, the Rab-mugi reports: “Yesterday, towards evening, there was
much hemorrhage.” Those dressings are not scientifically applied.
They are placed on the alæ of the nose, oppress the breathing, and
come off when there is hemorrhage. Let them be placed within the
nostrils, and then the air will be kept away and the hemorrhage
restrained. If it is agreeable to my lord, the king, I will go
to-morrow and give instructions; (meantime) let me hear how he
does.[k]

Several letters have been preserved of a certain Ishtar-duri, who
appears to have lived during the reign of Sargon (722-705 B.C.), and
was perhaps identical with the eponym of the same name in the year
714. Dr. Johnston has translated a communication of his to the king:[a]

_To the king, my lord, thy servant Ishtar-duri! Greeting to the
king, my lord!_ I send forthwith to my lord, the king, in company
with my messenger, the physicians Nabu-shum-iddina and Nabu-erba,
of whom I spoke to the king, my lord. Let them be admitted to the
presence of the king, my lord, and let the king, my lord, converse
with them. I have not disclosed (to them) the true facts, but have
told them nothing. As the king, my lord, commands, (so) has it been
done.

Shamash-bel-uçur sends word from Der: “We have no inscriptions
to place upon the temple walls.” I send therefore to the king,
my lord, (to ask) that one inscription be written out and sent
immediately, (and that) the rest be speedily written, so that they
may place them upon the temple walls.

There has been a great deal of rain, (but) the harvest is gathered.
May the heart of the king, my lord, be of good cheer![k]

ART

Art occupies too prominent a position in the life of the Babylonians
and Assyrians, and they have produced too much that is original and
peculiar to them, for this history to pass over the question in
silence. Even a mere sketch of their culture would be incomplete
without it. At the same time great precaution is necessary. In the
determination of the chronological succession of undated monuments
so much depends on subjective valuation and æsthetic judgment that,
without a long and conscientious study of the history of art, one
is liable to serious error. And the determination of dates largely
influences one’s conception of the progress of Babylonian-Assyrian
art; æsthetic judgment, one’s decision concerning the character,
independence, and value of this artistic effort.

Here again, as in the language, religion, and in the whole civilisation
of this people the unity of the Babylonian-Assyrian race comes clearly
to light. Whatever differences may exist between Babylonian and
Assyrian art in the conception of detail, in certain peculiarities
of technique, in the choice of subjects, at bottom they are one. It
has ever been characterised as a national school in which one and the
same character prevails, so that a work of art, be it from Telloh,
Babylon, Nineveh, or Kalah, at once shows its connection with it. All
the differences are merely shades, changes caused by time. This is
especially noticeable when one considers what material for example
was used for building. In Babylonia it is difficult to obtain stone;
there are no rocks there. Consequently this material, which had to be
brought from a distance, and was therefore expensive, was kept like
precious and other metals for the decoration of the whole, for pillars,
bas-reliefs, dedicatory inscriptions, etc., or for making a firm
foundation, while dried and burnt bricks were used for the buildings
themselves. Among the Assyrians this difficulty did not exist.
Excellent stone, which was easily worked, was found in close proximity,
and the Assyrians understood how to hew and shape it. In spite of this,
they imitated the Babylonian custom and used mainly bricks for their
buildings. They preferred continually to repair these temples and
palaces, which soon fell into ruin, or else to replace them by others,
rather than to depart from the traditional mode of building of their
ancestors.

The question has been raised as to whether Babylonian-Assyrian art
may not perhaps have been a daughter of the Egyptian. Without doubt
Assyrian art was at least influenced by it. All the ivory objects
which have yet been found are plainly imitations of Egyptian motives,
although they were certainly not made by Egyptians, and some of
them date from the time of Asshurnazirpal. The lotus ornament also,
which is so often used as a temple decoration, points to an Egyptian
origin. Perhaps, however, the models were not borrowed directly from
the Egyptians. Certain dishes and cups for drink-offering, which
occur in Mesopotamia, as well as in western Asia and southern Europe,
are plainly ornamented with Egyptian cartouches, hieroglyphics, and
symbols, but in such a divergent form that no Egyptian could have made
them; and these objects have the name of the artificer in Aramaic
characters on the border or back. It is thus plainly to be seen that
this Egyptian fashion wandered into Assyria through the influence of
Aramäen artists.

When it is acknowledged, however, that Egyptian patterns were imitated
by the Assyrians at a comparatively late date, and that Egyptian
motives were borrowed from her artists, it does not by any means
follow that Babylonian-Assyrian art as a whole was of Egyptian origin.
This could be proved only from the oldest monuments to be found in
Babylonia. It was in fact believed, when the art works of Telloh first
became known, that they showed a great similarity to the products of
Egyptian art. They displayed the same simplicity and naïveness, the
same clean-shorn heads and faces, and many other coincidences. The
connoisseurs of art, however, believe differently. The similarity is
great; nevertheless a careful examination shows the independence of
Babylonian art in respect to Egyptian. Thus in the oldest monuments
the same peculiarities, truth and strength, appear, which in the later
development of art among the Assyrians were so greatly exaggerated,
whereas they are wholly lacking in Egyptian figures.

A further similarity is found between the oldest pyramids in the Nile
valley and the Babylonian-Assyrian Ziggurat. In the first place,
however, the pyramids had a wholly different object from the Ziggurat,
and, in the second place, it must not be forgotten that the Babylonian
temple architecture varies greatly from the Egyptian. If there is any
dependence it is not on the side of the Chaldeans; they did not borrow
their art from the Egyptians. At the same time the similarities are so
remarkable, especially between the old Chaldaic statues and the oldest
productions of Egyptian sculpture, such as the statues of Shafra,
Chufu, and Ra-em-ke, that we are compelled here, as in the case of the
writing, to suppose a common stock out of which both branches grew
independently and in a way peculiar to each.

The important discoveries made by the French consul, De Sarsac, at
Telloh have first thrown some light on the old Chaldean art in which
the whole Babylonian-Assyrian art has taken its origin. The question
as to whether the works of art found there are Semitic or non-Semitic
does not concern us here. It is more probably the latter. At any rate
we are here confronted with a civilisation preceding the flourishing
period of the known Semitic dominion in Babylonia.[35] A temple was
found there 53 by 31 metres square which shows the same fundamental
plan as the later Chaldean architecture, that is, a structure of burnt
on a foundation of dried brick, the corners exactly facing the points
of the compass (not the side as in Egypt), a Ziggurat in the centre,
the whole, as is seen from stamps on the stones, dating from the time
of the priest-prince Gudra, who is known from other sources, and who
rebuilt or founded this temple. Besides, a large number of larger
and smaller works of art were discovered, cylinders, reliefs, bronze
objects, especially statues, which had been collected either by the
ruler already mentioned or by other priestly princes or kings.[h]

Before building a temple or palace, a religious ceremony took place
corresponding to what we call to-day laying the corner-stone. Nabuna’id
relates that in the ruins of the oldest Chaldean temples he looked for
the foundation stone, the _temen_ which the original kings had placed
there, and that he had the good fortune to find this corner-stone,
whereas several of his predecessors had excavated only in vain. In
our days such cylindrical tubes have been found covered with close
writing difficult to decipher, which had been placed in little niches
at the corners of the foundation facing the four points of the compass.
Thus at Nimrod, Rawlinson caused excavations to be carried on in one
of the corners of the tower, feeling sure that he would find objects
similar to those which had been met with elsewhere. He relates his
discovery as follows: “At the end of half an hour a small cavity was
found. ‘Bring me,’” said Rawlinson to the man in charge of the digging,
“‘bring me the dedicatory cylinder.’ The workman put his hand into the
hole and showed the cylinder; those present could not believe their
eyes and looked at each other in amazement. The cylinder, covered with
inscriptions, then came out of the hiding-place where it had been
placed probably by the hands of Nebuchadrezzar himself, and where
it had lain for twenty-nine centuries.” In the fruitful excavations
which he undertook at Telloh, De Sarsac made similar discoveries. “I
found,” said he, “at a depth of scarcely thirty centimeters under the
original soil, four cubes of masonry of large bricks and bitumen,
measuring eighty centimeters on each side. In the centre of these cubes
was a cavity of twenty-seven centimeters by twelve and by thirty-five
of depth. This cavity filled with yellow sand enclosed a statuette
of bronze, representing now a man kneeling, again a woman standing,
sometimes also a bull. At the foot of each statue, usually embedded
in the bitumen which lined the cavity, were found two stone tablets,
one white, the other black. It was the black one which usually bore an
inscription in cuneiform characters, like or almost like the one carved
on the figure of bronze.” Moreover De Sarsac in place of statuettes
found cones of clay in the shape of large nails with hemispherical
heads, and having an inscription around the stem.[m]

It has been believed that three stages of development may be detected
in this ancient art. To the first belong the reliefs, which represent
scenes of war and burial which have not yet been satisfactorily
explained, drawn very awkwardly and comparatively rough and primitive.
This stage represents the infancy of art. To the second stage are
counted the eight statues of Gudea and the one of Ur-ba-’u which are
carved with great skill and fine artistic feeling out of hard stone, as
it appears of diorite.

The strength which characterises the sculptural efforts of the
Babylonians and especially of the Assyrians, is already manifest,
although without that exaggeration of the muscles and joints which is
so pronounced with the latter. Hands and feet in particular are most
carefully executed. The heads are totally different from the hairy and
bearded Assyrian, or even early Babylonian heads. They are perfectly
clean shaven, but sometimes seemingly decked with an artificial hair
arrangement or something of that sort; all just as in Egypt. In
addition, an attempt to suggest the folds of draperies is seen, which
we do not find among the Babylonians and Assyrians nor the Egyptians,
but only later among the Persians and Greeks. In the third so-called
classic period are placed works of art of most finished execution,
which show a decided advance, among which are pictures, in which beard
and hair are worked out with the greatest care.

It would be exaggerated scepticism to deny that these art productions
exceed in antiquity, nearly everything found in Babylonia until now.
The only exception could be the beautiful cylinder of the time of
Sargon I, if we assume that this monarch reigned about 3800 B.C.,
and that this work of art is of his time. But this is by no means
established as a fact.

It can also not be denied that these creations of early Chaldaic art,
although in some instances only feeble attempts, in others, however,
are of such finished perfection, that in succeeding periods they were
never excelled and seldom equalled.

We have here a similar case to one in Egypt, where, for instance, under
the kings of the fourth dynasty, sculpture reached an eminence, which
nothing of later date ever approached, and where the oldest works of
art have a value which none of the Egyptian sculptures of the following
centuries can claim. In both these countries therefore there is an
early, surprisingly rapid development, followed by a speedy decline;
where even in succeeding brilliant epochs no successful attempts to
equal the results of the first florescence were ever made. Such a
phenomenon is all the more striking when it is considered that these
later epochs, whether in Egypt, in Babel, or in Asshur, were by no
means periods of degeneration, but show, although with continual
fluctuations, marked progress in literature, science, government,
and general culture. It seems probable that the cause lies in the
difference of race. The artists who carved the statues of King
Schafra, were no more Semites than, judging from all appearances and
from the facial types of the monarchs, pictured, were the sculptors
who immortalised King Gudea. Later on the Egyptian population became
more and more affected by Semitic elements, and under the increasing
influence of the Semites, art declined.

Not until under the Saits, who certainly were not descended from a
race intermixed with Semitic blood, did art rise again to a height
which recalled the palmy days of the ancient realm. Thus early Chaldaic
art was the mother of that of Babylonia and Assyria, and the Semites
of Babylon and Asshur proved themselves diligent students, gifted
imitators, who gave to their works also the stamp of their own genius;
but they were never more than students and imitators, they never
produced anything original which might stand in equality by the side
of early Chaldaic art. The Semitic race occupies one of the foremost
positions in the history of civilisation, and is highly talented. But
in architecture and sculpture it has always worked in close connection
with foreign masters, and never produced anything really great by
itself.[36] The further it goes from the ancient centres, where the
great tradition of the former so highly developed art still lived
on, the more unskilful become its productions in this field. Assyria
where the Semitic blood was purer than in Babylonia, and which was
certainly surpassed in art by the latter, Phœnicia, Palestine, and
Arabia, are proofs of this. Only when the Semites have handed down the
old tradition which they have at least preserved, to the Aryans, the
Persians, and Greeks, is there an independent higher development of
plastic art. Be that as it may, considered as artists, the Babylonians
and Assyrians stand foremost among the Semites, but they are indebted
for this to the early Chaldeans.

The character of the Babylonian-Assyrian building has remained in
general about the same, from the earliest times, until the destruction
of the nation. The architect, more than any other artist, is dependent
upon the nature of the material at his disposal; and this in Babylonia
was almost exclusively in the form of tiles of clay, either dried
in the sun, or baked in the fire. The former, which were made most
skilfully in Babylonia, were generally used for foundations, either
by simply placing them in layers, or cementing them with wet clay or
pitch, or, as in the substructures of the Assyrian palaces, by using
them while still in a moist condition, in order that under the pressure
of the superstructure they might be united in one solid mass. For the
covering of the walls, baked tiles were used. Enamelled or glazed
bricks were used in those parts of the building which were most exposed
to moisture or the changes of the weather. In Assyria where stone
was not expensive this was also used as the outer coating of walls.
This, however, is the only important variation which the Assyrian
architects allowed themselves. Although it would have been easier for
them to erect more beautiful, more pleasing, and certainly more durable
buildings of stone, they were not able to rise to the attempt, although
they had only to carry out and use in larger measure what had already
been found in Chaldea. A short step was indeed taken in this direction.

The Babylonians already knew how to make wooden pillars or columns,
probably covered with metal, and made use of them in lighter
architecture, as for instance the _Naos_, or canopy over the figures
of the gods. The Assyrians not only copied this, but built columns
of stone, and a certain originality and gracefulness in the capitals
and bases of their pillars is not to be denied. However, the column
never played the same important rôle in their architecture as it does,
for instance, in the Græco-Roman and even in the Egyptian. In their
great buildings they clung almost servilely to the designs handed down
during centuries. The question as to whether the buildings had more
than one story, was formerly almost generally admitted as a fact, but
it is generally denied now, and can really hardly be determined. The
ruins give no positive support to either theory; but a few reliefs give
representations of two-storied buildings.

Tile construction presents necessarily a certain monotony which is
here accentuated by the absence of windows. To relieve this monotony,
glazing, colouring, or woodwork were resorted to, in case the use of
columns was excluded; sometimes more artistic measures were used,
such as projecting pilasters, which in Chaldea were somewhat crude,
but richly ornamented in Assyria; also mosaics of conical form, or
decorations of vases on the walls. The upper stones of the walls were
decorated with battlements. The inner, as well as the outer walls, had
a stone covering up to a certain height, and higher up a polychromatic
layer of stucco. Ivory, and particularly bronze decorations, were much
employed. In spite of all this, the impression given by Babylonian and
Assyrian buildings is one of massiveness, almost clumsiness, and the
decorations seem childish, paltry, and commonplace. Hence also the
disproportion of length and breadth, in other words the elongated form
of the rooms, whose roof not being supported by columns, had to rest on
the side walls, and whose breadth depended on the length of the roof
beams.

On the other hand, the almost exclusive use of tiles had this
advantageous result, that it was almost imperative to make prodigal
use of arch and vault construction. That the Chaldaic architects were
the inventors of these constructions, with which the Etruscans were
formerly erroneously credited, cannot be positively affirmed, for they
are also found in Egypt, although seldom made use of there. Without
doubt, however, the Babylonians and Assyrians developed them greatly
and knew how to make use of them with great skill. From the false arch,
which is formed by allowing each succeeding layer of stone to project
over the foregoing one, to the finished arch, all kinds are represented
by them. Not only were all underground canals and sewers, vaults of
masonry, but all gateways ended in arches, and even the ceilings of
some apartments, particularly those in the part of the palaces which
seems to have been the harem were wholly or partially vaulted.

The Babylonians and Assyrians have built extensively many and great
cities enclosed within mighty walls, extended palaces and peculiar
temples. They cannot be enumerated here or even described in general
terms.

A few important points, however, may be touched upon. In the first
place it must be noticed that, while in Egypt the monumental buildings
were tombs and temples, in Babylon and Asshur they were mainly palaces.
Although no pains nor expense were spared in the erection of the
temples, they were smaller than the palaces, of which they were in some
cases certainly annexes.

The tombs were constructed with great care, in order to guard against
the rapid decay of the corpses, yet the inhabitants of Mesopotamia
never reached the same degree of perfection in the embalming of
bodies as the Egyptians: they were also fitted out with everything
that, according to their faith, was necessary for the dead, but they
were piled upon each other, and thus excluded from view. Art was not
expended upon them; on the other hand, however, all known means of
art were used to decorate the residences of the kings and the earthly
habitations of the gods in the most splendid and sumptuous manner.
Their size increased continually. The early Chaldaic palace discovered
at Telloh, had an area of only 53 meters long by 31 broad; the
so-called Wasevas at Warka (Erech) was 200 meters long by 150 broad;
the palace of Sargon II at Dur-Sharrukin covered an area of about 10
hectares, and contained 30 open courts and more than 200 apartments.
Under the Sargonids the rooms also became larger. One in the palace
of Sennacherib was almost as long as the entire palace at Telloh,
_i.e._, 46 meters long by 12 wide. Another in the palace of Esarhaddon,
which was intended to be 15 meters by 12 meters, remained unfinished,
probably on account of the difficulty of construction. The palace
of Asshurbanapal was of somewhat smaller, though still magnificent
proportions. The great palace of Nebuchadrezzar II, consisting of the
old palace of his father and a new one constructed by him and joined
to the old, has not yet been sufficiently explored, but according to
the descriptions, must have surpassed in splendour, if not in size,
all those of his predecessors. All palaces were constructed on the
same plan, and contained separate living apartments for the king and
his court, for his wives, for the lower court officials, and, as it
appears, also a temple with various sanctuaries and a tower.

Too little is as yet known of the Babylonian-Assyrian temples to
judge with any certainty of their style of architecture. Here and
there, remains of temples have been found, but it has not yet been
proved that the buildings designated as temples were really devoted to
religious purposes. Most of the temples seem to have been small, at any
rate not intended for large assemblages. The altar stood outside and
consequently the religious services must usually have taken place there.

Every large town had many temples but always only one Ziggurat. This
constituted only one part of the principal temple, albeit the most
prominent one. There were various kinds of such towers, of three
or more, sometimes seven stories, which were attainable by a single
inclined plane encircling the whole building, or a double one rising
on two sides of it. The ground plan was a perfect square in some, in
others a parallelogram; all rested, however, on a massive substructure,
and seem to have been crowned with a small sanctuary.

Although these principal temples, including the Ziggurat, were not of
equal extent with the royal palaces, they were nevertheless imposing
buildings, and the towers in particular were erected with much care
and at great expense. It would be wrong to conclude from this ratio of
temples and palaces that the Assyrians were less religious and more
servile than the Egyptians, who, entirely dominated as they were by the
dogma of immortality, lavished more care on the tombs of the dead kings
than on the habitations of the living ones. The valuable decorations
and sculptures which the Assyrians and Babylonians gave to their gods
prove their pious tendency. In reality the whole palace was a sacred
edifice in which the representative of the deity lived on earth with
and beside his god.

The aid which architecture received from other arts has already been
briefly mentioned. There are still a few particulars to be noticed in
regard to this point. The Assyrians as well as the Babylonians were
skilful workers in bronze. Proofs of this are the bronze door-sill
1½ meters long, found at Borsippa, whose decorations of rosettes and
squares are in very good taste, and particularly the bronze gates at
Balawat, belonging to the 9th century B.C., which are masterpieces of
their kind, and a great number of other remains.

Painting was also employed to decorate the exterior as well as the
interior of walls. Ornaments and figures were painted with great
skill on stucco, _al fresco_ in such a case, or on tiles which were
afterwards glazed. These tiles were sometimes joined to make one
picture. In what remains of such work it is shown that painting had
attained quite an eminence in Babylon and Asshur. Drawing and grouping
are often very successful, and the treatment has often a certain
breadth. These paintings are also important because it is seen from
them how much conventionality prevailed in Assyrian sculpture. In
painting there is nothing of that exaggerated muscularity nor of the
almost clumsy strength of the sculptured figures. Beard and hair are
not as stiffly curled as in the sculptures, but hang more loosely and
naturally.[h] A beautiful example of glazed tiling has recently been
excavated by the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft at Babylon. It is in the
so-called Procession street leading from Babylon to Borsippa; on either
side of the street were walls faced with coloured tiles representing
a stately procession of lions and other animals, very artistically
drawn.[a]

Sculpture, more than painting, was employed in decorating buildings,
the works of which covered the greater part of the palace walls, and
ornamented the gateways, courts, terraces, and apartments. The material
which the sculptor used in Chaldea was usually valuable stone difficult
to procure, such as basalt, dolorite, diorite; in Assyria, generally a
commoner, more easily worked species, such as alabaster and sandstone.
The difference of material naturally influenced the work itself.
Figures of cast bronze are also often found.

The inscriptions of the Babylonian kings often speak of columns erected
in honour of the gods, of which some were made of solid gold or silver,
others only coated with precious metal, and the Assyrian kings also
mention such dedications. Naturally the columns of precious metal have
not survived, but a great number of stone pillars have been found. It
may be chance, that the greater number of statues in the round are from
Babylon, the greater number of bas-reliefs from Assyria. The objects
of these surviving sculptures are mainly of a religious or historical
character. But rarely does a representation of the domestic life of the
monarch or other social circles appear.

Only once is a banquet pictured, that of king Asshurbanapal and his
queen. Otherwise no women, except captives, appear in the reliefs.
On the whole little tendency is shown to represent female beauty and
grace, as compared with the Egyptians and especially with the Greeks.
The nude female figure is seldom pictured, and if so, in a repulsively
realistic form, as in the small figures of the mother goddess. Cheerful
or comic scenes, which are not wanting even in Egyptian reliefs and
vignettes, are never found here. Hasty conclusions, however, should not
be drawn from this, and it should not be forgotten, that most of the
surviving reliefs are from the palaces, few from the temples, still
fewer from the tombs, and none at all from private residences. This
is doubtless one of the reasons why representations of domestic or
private life are so scarce. In fact, in a few of the tombs reliefs have
been found whose subjects recall favourite representations in those of
Egypt. Most prevalent certainly, are those scenes relating to religious
and public life.

In the treatment of these objects, truth is often sacrificed to
certain conventionalities. Thus for instance the Lamassi and Shedi,
the man-headed lions and bulls have five legs, in order that they
may always present four to the eye, whether viewed from the front
or the side; the heads are usually represented in profile with the
eyes in full face, but sometimes in full face, although the image
presents a side view to the beholder, which was also customary in
Egypt; so also, the stiff curling of the hair and beard is unnatural.
Apparently no attempt had ever been made in Egypt to make portraits
of historical personages, and the individual differences of rank and
condition can only be recognised by objects of secondary importance.
There is, however, still some doubt upon this point. There is indeed
a great uniformity, but an attempt at least to differentiate facial
traits cannot be overlooked. Ignoring all accessories, the features
differ among kings and higher courtiers on the one hand, and lower
men-at-arms on the other, among men and eunuchs, among adults and
youths. Wherever the artists of Mesopotamia were not limited by
conventionality,--notably in the representation of animals,--they
have surpassed in accuracy, in truth and strength of representation
all other nations of antiquity, the Greeks hardly excepted. This is
particularly true of the representation of native animals, yet foreign
ones were treated with great skill, although the delineation of these
betrays less practice. Even in the picturing of therianthropic deities,
they remain as true to nature as possible, and with much taste and tact
allow the human attributes of the figure to predominate. Wherever it
is possible to partially or wholly break away from tradition, their
talent is displayed in a manner truly marvellous. Their only prominent
fault is their exaggerated realism, which shows itself not only in the
monstrous drawing of muscles and joints, but also in the disgusting
details of the nude figures of Astarte.

Too little of the sculpture of the new Babylonian realm has been
preserved to allow judgment of the state of art during this period.
The well known carving of Nebuchadrezzar II on a cameo would force
us to have a very high opinion of it, if convincing reasons did not
argue that, although genuine, it is the work of a foreign, probably a
Cyprian, artist.

There is no doubt that the art of music was cultivated among the
Babylonians and Assyrians, since the reliefs show musicians very
frequently, at religious festivals, at triumphal greetings of the
victorious king and at festivities. They play singly or in concert, and
also accompany singing. The musical instruments are of various kinds,
and the musicians, who are sometimes very daintily attired, are not
always eunuchs, and are of different ages.

On the whole it must be conceded, that the Assyrio-Babylonian nation
was artistically inclined and that it cultivated various branches of
art with talent and success. If they, the Assyrians in particular, had
been able to free themselves from tradition, they might have surpassed
their predecessors and teachers. They practised art, however, not for
itself alone, but as a means of glorifying the gods or the kings, and
the historical reliefs at least, are for the greater part nothing
more than illustrations to the inscriptions, a sort of war-report in
pictures. They were not an artistic people like the Greeks. Still
they have produced more and better results in this respect, than all
other nations of their race put together. And although in some special
instances they may have been excelled by the Egyptians, in others they
are far in advance of them. The Assyrians, following the example of the
Babylonians, showed their artistic talents also in the productions of
their industries; art and industry were with them closely related.

Among the productions to be considered here are primarily the hundreds
of seals, which are still in preservation, and whose number will not
seem so surprising when it is remembered that every Babylonian and
Assyrian of quality had his private seal. In early times these were
always, and in later times generally, cylinders, pierced through
the centre, to be worn around the neck suspended from a cord. The
impression was made by rolling them over moist clay. After the eighth
century conical and half-spherical seals appear. These cylinders are
made of many different materials, at first, of easily carved, later
of harder, material, such as porphyry, basalt, ferruginous marble,
serpentine, syenite and hematite. After that, semi-precious stones
were used, jasper, agate, onyx, chalcedony, rock-crystal, garnet,
etc. In the oldest stones the pictured objects were rather suggested
by indentations and strokes, than actually executed and carved; but
gradually a great skilfulness was attained, and there are beautiful
cuttings in the hard stones also. The execution varied greatly of
course, not only in proportion to the talent of the artist, but also
according to the rank and wealth of the person who gave the commission.
The subjects chosen are mostly of a religious nature, the adoration of
a goddess, an offering of sacrifice, various emblems such as winged
animals, sun, moon, and stars, and very frequently the tree of life, in
whose shadow stand two persons, or which is guarded by two genii. Under
the new Babylonian dominion and under the Achamenides, glyptics as an
art declined rapidly.

Ceramic art seems not to have occupied a very lofty position in
Babylonia at first. Clay vases and utensils, during a long period made
by hand, are crude and inartistic in earliest times. Gradually with the
introduction of the potter’s wheel, however, they become more graceful
in form, and towards the end of the Assyrian period are enamelled and
decorated with patterns painted in colours. However, Babylonian ceramic
art cannot compete with that of Greece, although it surpasses that of
Egypt. Glass has not been found in large quantities, to be sure, but
quite advanced progress had been made in its manufacture. The Assyrians
and Babylonians showed particular skill in the working of metals.
Bronze, a mixture of copper and tin, was known to them in the earliest
times. They had a knowledge of iron earlier than the Egyptians, and
certainly made much greater use of it. Gold objects are commoner than
those of silver, and lead is seldom used. Ornaments, such as bracelets,
ear-rings, and necklaces are usually cast of precious metal and often
inlaid with pearls. It may be taken as a proof of highly advanced
culture that they used not only spoons, but forks, a luxury introduced
into Europe only at the close of the Middle Ages, and that toilet
articles, such as combs, pins, etc., were ornamented with the greatest
care and skill.

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF OF WILD SOW AND YOUNG AMONG REEDS

(Layard)]

The Assyrians were also more skilled in mechanics than the Egyptians
and were not inferior to them in agriculture. Two reliefs, one
Assyrian, the other Egyptian, give us an opportunity to compare how
each nation overcame the difficulties attending the moving and putting
in place of their enormous collossi of stone. It is shown that the
Assyrians knew the use of the lever, which the Egyptians did not, and
that they took much greater precautions against upsetting the collossi.
How the Babylonians and Assyrians, like the Egyptians and Chinese, made
use of irrigation is well known. On the same tablets with the records
of their deeds of war, the rulers often spoke of the laying out of
canals, the regulating and deepening of the river beds “enduring waters
for the enduring use of town and country,” and associated their own
names with them. On account of the higher altitude of their country
than that of their southern brethren, the Assyrians had to surmount
greater difficulties in achieving such works, but this did not deter
them from rivalry with them. One canal leading from the Upper Zab and
one of its tributaries, irrigated the region between this river and the
Tigris, and also supplied the capital, Kalah, with drinking water.

Sennacherib did something similar for Nineveh, which together with
its environs was completely dependent upon rain. He had a network of
canals constructed, which were fed, partly by the Khushur, and partly
by the small mountain brooks of the Accad and Tash mountains. Here
also two objects were attained, to furnish Nineveh with good drinking
water, and to make the surrounding country fruitful; for the king had
it all planted with many kinds of plants, among which was the vine.
Floriculture was also much encouraged by the kings of Babylon and
Asshur. They admired beautiful parks in which strange foreign animals
were bred and nurtured. Marduk-bel-iddin, king of Bit-Yakin, apparently
the same who at one time overcame Babylon, owned sixty-seven vegetable
gardens and six parks of which a catalogue still exists, although
he was constantly at war or guarding against the vengeance of the
Assyrians.[h]

ASSYRIAN ART

But the world-historic relations of Mesopotamian art are best brought
out by a study of the later and more perfectly preserved examples
of Assyrian craftsmanship. It was the Assyrian who borrowed more
directly from the Egyptian in developing his art, and who passed on
artistic impulses to the Persians on the one hand, and to the Greeks on
the other. The question to what extent the Assyrians were themselves
influenced by the Mycenæan art of early Greece is one regarding which
students of the subject are not agreed, and which we need not enter
upon here.[a]

It is impossible to examine the monuments of Assyria without being
convinced that the people who raised them had acquired a skill in
sculpture and painting, and a knowledge of design and even composition,
indicating an advanced state of civilisation. It is very remarkable
that the most ancient ruins show this knowledge in the greatest
perfection attained by the Assyrians. The bas-relief representing
the lion hunt, now in the British Museum, is a good illustration of
the earliest school of Assyrian art yet known. It far exceeds the
sculptures of Khorsabad, Kuyunjik, or the later palaces of Nimrud, in
the vigour of the treatment, the elegance of the forms, and in what
the French aptly term _mouvement_. At the same time it is eminently
distinguished from them by the evident attempt at composition--by the
artistical arrangement of the groups. The sculptors who worked at
Khorsabad and Kuyunjik had perhaps acquired more skill in handling
their tools. Their work is frequently superior to that of the earlier
artists in delicacy of execution--in the details of the features,
for instance--and in the boldness of the relief; but the slightest
acquaintance with Assyrian monuments will show that they were greatly
inferior to their ancestors in the higher branches of art--in the
treatment of a subject and in beauty and variety of form. This decline
of art, after suddenly attaining its greatest perfection in its
earliest stage, is a fact presented by almost every people, ancient
and modern, with which we are acquainted. In Egypt the most ancient
monuments display the purest forms and the most elegant decorations.
A rapid retrogression, after a certain period, is apparent, and the
state of art serves to indicate approximately the epoch of most of her
remains. In the history of Greek and Roman art this sudden rise and
rapid fall are equally well known. Even changes in royal dynasties have
had an influence upon art, as a glance at monuments of that part of the
East of which we are specially treating will show. Thus the sculpture
of Persia, as that of Assyria, was in its best state at the time of
the earliest monarchs, and gradually declined until the fall of the
empire. After the Greek invasion it revived under the first kings of
the Arsacid branch, Greek taste still exercising an influence over the
Iranian provinces. How rapidly art degenerated to the most barbarous
forms, the medals and monuments of the later Arsacids abundantly prove.
When the Sassanians restored the old Persian monarchy and introduced
the ancient religion and sacred ceremonies of the empire, art again
appears to have received a momentary impulse. The coins, gems, and
rock sculptures of the first kings of this dynasty are distinguished
by considerable elegance, and spirit of design, and beauty of form.
But the decay was as rapid under them as it had been under their
predecessors. Even before the Chosroes raised the glory and power of
the empire to its highest pitch, art was fast degenerating. By the time
of Yezdigird it had become even more rude and barbarous than in the
last days of the Arsacids.

This decline in art may be accounted for by supposing that, in the
infancy of a people, or after the occurrence of any great event having
a very decided influence upon their manners, their religion, or their
political state, nature was the chief, if not the only, object of
study. When a certain proficiency had been attained, and no violent
changes took place to shake the established order of things, the
artist, instead of endeavouring to imitate that which he saw in nature,
received as correct delineations the works of his predecessors, and
made them his types and his models. In some countries, as in Egypt,
religion may have contributed to this result. Whilst the imagination,
as well as the hand, was fettered by prejudices, and even by laws,
or whilst indolence or ignorance led to the mere servile copying of
what had been done before, it may easily be conceived how rapidly
a deviation from correctness of form would take place. As each
transmitted the errors of those who had preceded him, and added to them
himself, it is not wonderful if, ere long, the whole became one great
error. It is to be feared that this prescriptive love of imitation has
exercised no less influence on modern art than it did upon the arts of
the ancients.

As the earliest specimens of Assyrian art which we possess are the
best, it is natural to conclude that either there are other monuments
still undiscovered which would tend to show a gradual progression,
or that such monuments did once exist, but have long since perished;
otherwise it must be inferred that those who raised the most ancient
Assyrian edifice derived their knowledge directly from another people,
or merely imitated what they had seen in a foreign land. Some are
inclined to look upon the style and character of these early sculptures
as purely Egyptian. But there is such a disparity in the mode of
treatment and in the execution, that the Egyptian origin of Assyrian
art appears to me to be a question open to considerable doubt. That
which they have in common would mark the first efforts of any people of
a certain intellectual order to imitate nature. The want of relative
proportions in the figures and the ignorance of perspective--the
full eye in the side face and the bodies of the dead scattered above
or below the principal figures--are as characteristic of all early
productions of art as they are of the rude attempts at delineation of
children. It is only in the later monuments of Nineveh that we find
evident and direct traces of Egyptian influence: as in the sitting
sphinxes and ivories of Nimrud, and in the lotus-shaped ornaments
of Khorsabad and Kuyunjik; perhaps also in the custom which then
prevailed of inserting the name of the king, or of the castle, upon
or immediately above their sculptured representations. Neither the
ornaments of the earliest palace of Nimrud, nor the costumes, nor the
elaborate nature of the embroideries upon the robes, with the groups
of human figures and animals, nor the mythological symbols, are of an
Egyptian character; they show a very different taste and style.

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF OF SCRIBES WRITING DOWN THE NUMBER OF HEADS
OF THE SLAIN

(Layard)]

The principal distinction between Assyrian and Egyptian art appears to
be that in the one conventional forms were much more strictly adhered
to than in the other. The angular mode of treatment, so conspicuous
in Egyptian monuments, even in the delineation of every object, is not
perceivable in those of Assyria. Had the arts of the two countries
been derived from the same source--or had one been imitated from
the other--they would both surely have displayed the same striking
peculiarity. The Assyrians, less fettered, sought to imitate nature
more closely, however rude and unsuccessful their attempts may have
been; and this is proved by the constant endeavour to show the muscles,
veins, and anatomical proportions of the human figure.

We must not lose sight of the assertion of Moses of Chorene--derived
no doubt from ancient traditions, if not from direct historical
evidence--that when Ninus founded the Assyrian Empire, a people far
advanced in civilisation and in the knowledge of the arts and sciences,
whose works the conquerors endeavoured to destroy, were already in
possession of the country. Who that people may have been, we cannot
now even conjecture. The same mystery hangs over the origin of the
arts in Egypt and in Assyria. They may have been derived, before the
introduction of any conventional forms, from a common source--from a
people whose very name, and the proofs of whose former existence, may
have perished even before tradition begins.

The monuments of Assyria furnish us with very important data, as to the
origin of many branches of art, subsequently brought to the highest
perfection in Asia Minor and Greece. I conceive the Assyrian influence
on Asia Minor to have been twofold. In the first place, direct, during
the time of the greatest prosperity of the Assyrian monarchy or
empire, when, as it has been shown, the power of its kings extended
over that country; in the second, indirect, through Persia, after the
destruction of Nineveh. Of the influence exercised upon the arts of
western Asia, during the early occupation of the Assyrians, few traces
have hitherto been discovered, unless the remarkable monuments on the
site of ancient Pteria, or Pterium, belong to this period. The evident
connection between the divinities and sacred emblems worshipped in
various parts of Asia Minor, and those of Assyria will be hereafter
particularly pointed out. The Assyrian origin of these monuments, and
of these religious symbols, once admitted, we shall have no difficulty
in recognising the influence of Assyria on the arts and customs of
Asia Minor. The antiquities of that country, prior to a well-known
period, the Persian occupation, have been but little investigated.
Few remains of an earlier epoch have yet been discovered. That such
remains do exist, perhaps buried under ground, I have little doubt. It
is most probable that, as we have additional materials for inquiry, we
shall be still more convinced of this Assyrian influence, pointed out
by Herodotus, when he declares the founder of the kingdom of Lydia to
have been a descendant of Ninus, and by other authors, who mention the
Syrian, or Assyrian, descent of many nations of Asia Minor.

But the second, or indirect, period of this influence is very fully
and completely illustrated by the monuments of Asia Minor, of the
time of the Persian domination. The known connection between these
monuments and the archaic forms of Greek art renders this part of the
inquiry both important and interesting. The Xanthian marbles, acquired
for England by Sir Charles Fellows, and now in the British Museum,
are remarkable illustrations of the threefold connection between
Assyria and Persia, Persia and Asia Minor, and Asia Minor and Greece.
Were those marbles properly arranged, and placed in chronological
order, they would afford a most useful lesson, and would enable even
a superficial observer to trace the gradual progress of art from its
primitive rudeness to the most classic conceptions of the Greek
sculptor. Not that he would find either style, the pure Assyrian
or the Greek, in its greatest perfection; but he would be able to
see how a closer imitation of nature, a gradual refinement of taste
and additional study, had converted the hard and rigid lines of the
Assyrians into the flowing draperies and classic forms of the highest
order of art.

I have termed this second period that of _indirect_ influence, because
the arts did not then penetrate directly into Asia Minor from Assyria,
but were conveyed thither through the Persians. The Assyrian Empire
had already existed for centuries, and had exercised the supreme power
over Asia, before it was disputed by the kingdoms of Persia and Media,
united under one monarch. The Persians were probably a rude people,
possessing neither a literature nor arts of their own, but deriving
what they had from their civilised neighbours. We have no earlier
specimen of Persian writing than the inscription containing the name
of Cyrus, on the ruins supposed to be those of his tomb, at Murghaub
[Pasargarda]; nor any earlier remains of Persian art than the buildings
and sculptures of Persepolis, and other monuments to be attributed
beyond a question to the kings of the Achæmenian dynasty. It has
already been shown that the writing of the Persians was imitated from
the Assyrians, and it can as easily be proved that their sculptures
were derived from the same source. The monuments of Persepolis
establish this beyond a doubt. They exhibit precisely the same mode of
treatment, the same forms, the same peculiarities in the arrangement
of the bas-reliefs against the walls, the same entrances formed by
gigantic winged animals with human heads, and, finally, the same
religious emblems. Had this identity been displayed in one instance
alone, we might have attributed it to chance, or to mere casual
intercourse; but when it pervades the whole system, we can scarcely
doubt that one was a close copy, an imitation, of the other. That the
peculiar characteristics of the Persepolitan sculptures were derived
from the monuments of the second Assyrian dynasty--that is, from
those of the latest Assyrian period--can be proved by the similarity
of shape in the ornaments and in the costume of many of the figures.
Thus, the head-dress of the winged monsters forming the portals is
lofty, squared, and richly ornamented at the top, resembling those of
Khorsabad and Kuyunjik, and differing from the round, unornamented cap
of the older figures at Nimrud.

The processions of warriors, captives, and tribute-bearers at
Persepolis are in every respect similar to those on the walls of Nimrud
and Khorsabad; we have the same mode of treatment in the figures, the
same way of portraying the eyes and hair. The Persian artist introduced
folds into the draperies; but, with this exception, he certainly did
not improve upon his Assyrian model. On the contrary, his work is
greatly inferior to it in the general arrangement of the groups and in
the elegance of the details.

From whence the Persians obtained the column and other architectural
ornaments used at Persepolis, it may be more difficult to determine.
We have seen that the column was not unknown to the later Assyrians,
although it does not appear to have been employed in the construction
of their palaces. The Persians, therefore, may have partly derived
their knowledge from them; and partly, perhaps principally, from the
Egyptians, whom, before the foundation of Persepolis, they had already
conquered. It will be observed that the capitals of their columns
frequently assume the shape of Assyrian religious types, the bull for
instance; whilst other portions of them nearly resemble in the form of
their ornaments, though not in their proportions, those of Egypt.

The Persians introduced into Asia Minor the arts and religion which
they received from the Assyrians. Thus the Harpy Tomb and the monument
usually attributed to Harpagus at Xanthus, and other still earlier
remains, show all the peculiarities of the sculpture of Persepolis, and
at the same time that gradual progress in the mode of treatment--the
introduction of action and sentiment, and a knowledge of anatomy--which
marks the distinction between Asiatic and Greek art. Whilst there was
a manifest improvement in the disposition of the draperies and in the
delineation of the human form, we still remark, even in the latest
works of the Persian period in Asia Minor, the absence of all attempt
to impart sentiment to the features, or even to give more than the side
view of the human face.

Many architectural ornaments, known to the Assyrians, passed from them,
directly or indirectly, into Greece. The Ionic column is an instance.
We have, moreover, in the earliest monuments of Nineveh that graceful
ornament, commonly called the honeysuckle, which was so extensively
used in Greece, and is to this day more generally employed than any
other moulding. In Assyria, as I have pointed out, it was invested with
sacred properties, and was either a symbol or an object of worship.
That the similarity between the Assyrian and Greek ornament is not
accidental, seems to be proved, beyond a question, by the alternation
of the lotus or tulip, whichever this flower may be, with the
honeysuckle, by the number of leaves or petals of the flower, and by
their proceeding in both from a semicircle, supported by two tendrils
or scrolls. The same ornament occurs, even in India, on a lath erected
by Asoka at Allahabad (about B.C. 250); but whether introduced by the
Greeks--which, from the date of the erection of the monument, shortly
after the Macedonian invasion, is not improbable--or whether derived
directly from another source, I cannot venture to decide.

[Illustration: ASSYRIAN HARNESS]

That the Assyrians possessed a highly refined taste can hardly be
questioned when we find them inventing an ornament which the Greeks
afterwards, with few additions and improvements, so generally adopted
in their most classic monuments. Others, no less beautiful, continually
occur in the most ancient bas-reliefs of Nimrud. The sacred bull, with
expanded wings, and the wild goat are introduced, kneeling before
the mystic flower which is the principal feature in the border just
described. The same animals are occasionally represented supporting
disks, or flowers, and rosettes. A bird, or human figure, frequently
takes the place of the bull and goat; and the simple flower becomes a
tree, bearing many flowers of the same shape. This tree, evidently a
sacred symbol, is elaborately and tastefully formed; and is one of the
most conspicuous ornaments of Assyrian sculpture.

The flowers at the ends of the branches are frequently replaced in
later Assyrian monuments and on cylinders by the fir or pine cone, and
sometimes by a fruit or ornament resembling the pomegranate.

The guilloche, or intertwining bands, continually found on Greek
monuments, and still in common use, was also well known to the
Assyrians, and was one of their most favourite ornaments. It was
embroidered on their robes, embossed on their arms and chariots, and
painted on their walls. This purity and elegance of taste was equally
displayed in the garments, arms, furniture, and trappings of the
Assyrians. The robes of the king were most elaborately embroidered.
The part covering his breast was generally adorned, not only with
flowers and scroll-work, but with groups of figures, animals, and even
hunting and battle scenes. In other parts of his dress similar designs
were introduced, and rows of tassels or fringes were carried round the
borders. The ear-rings, necklaces, armlets, and bracelets were all
of the most elegant forms. The clasps and ends of the bracelets were
frequently in the shape of the heads of rams and bulls, resembling our
modern jewellery. The ear-rings have generally on the later monuments,
particularly in the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad, the form of a cross.

In their arms the Assyrians rivalled even the Greeks in elegance of
design. The hilt of the sword was frequently ornamented with four
lions’ heads; two, with part of the neck and shoulders, made the
cross-bar or defence, and two more with extended jaws were introduced
into the handle. The end of the sheath was formed by two entire lions,
clasped together, their heads turned outward and their mouths open.
Sometimes the whole of the sheath was engraved or embossed, with groups
of human figures, animals, and flowers. The handles of the daggers were
no less highly ornamented, being sometimes in the form of the head of a
horse, bull, or ram. The sheath frequently terminated in the head of a
bird, to which a tassel was suspended. The part of the bow to which the
string was attached was in the shape of an eagle’s head. The quiver was
richly decorated with groups of figures and fanciful designs.

Ornaments in the form of the heads of animals, chiefly the lion, bull,
and ram, were very generally introduced even in parts of the chariot,
the harness of the horses, and domestic furniture. In this respect the
Assyrians resembled the Egyptians.[b]

ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE AND THE EVOLUTION OF ART

The study of a country’s art is interesting, primarily of course
purely as a study in the expression of beauty or in the portraiture
of national types and ideals. The study should not, however, stop
here, but one should consider also the effect each school has had upon
the evolution of the world-art. This phase of Assyrian art has been
examined by the Editor in a paper called “The Influence of Modern
Research on the Scope of World History,” a Prefatory Essay to Vol.
III of the New Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_, from which a quotation may be permitted here.[a]

Whoever would see the story of the evolution of Greek art illustrated,
should go to the British Museum and pass from the Egyptian hall, with
its grotesque colossi, to the Assyrian rooms, with their marvellous
bas-reliefs, and then on to the Elgin marbles from the Parthenon. In
particular, the art treasures of the Assyrian collection should demand
the closest scrutiny. In the Nineveh gallery, for example, where one
finds collections of strange Assyrian books, the walls are flanked
everywhere with bas-reliefs that come from some buried palace that once
stored the literary treasures.

[Illustration: BATTLE IN A MARSH IN SOUTHERN MESOPOTAMIA

(Layard)]

It appears that the kings of that far-off time and land were
connoisseurs of art as well as patrons of literature; and the art
treasures of their palaces certainly form the most striking, if not the
most important, part of the mementoes they have left to us. The more
closely these figures in low relief are examined, the more wonderful
they will seem. They take the place of the Egyptian carvings in the
round; and if they are less striking to first view than the great
sarcophagi, the grotesque gods, and colossal animal forms of that
people, they will prove infinitely more expressive and incomparably
more artistic on closer inspection. For these flat sculptures depict,
not alone gods and sacerdotal scenes, but everyday affairs and the
events of Assyrian history. The bas-relief was clearly the focal point
of Assyrian art. Even the great bulls and lions that guarded the
palace entrances were only partially detached from their background,
and a frescoed statue of King Asshurnazirpal shows the same tendency.
The full rounded statue was not indeed unknown to them, as several
examples testify; but their real _forte_ lay in mural decoration in low
relief. And the particular walls on which the artists mainly expended
their skill, if we may judge from what the ruins have revealed to us,
were not the walls of temples, but the palaces of kings. It is quite
clear that these great conquerors of antiquity were very human, very
like their successors of after times. They loved to have their heroic
deeds, real or alleged, heralded to the world, and recalled incessantly
to their own memories. So one finds whole histories epitomised on
these walls--wars, conquests, victories; the storming of cities, the
slaughter of the enemy, the leading of captives, and bringing of
tribute by subject people--everything, in short, but Assyrian reverses;
the court artist, true to his colours then as now, never made the
mistake of depicting those.

As historical records these sculptures are of priceless value, both
for what they tell of political history and for the light they throw
on the powers and limitations of antique art. But before you venture
to judge the Assyrian artist in the latter regard, you must pass on to
the room of Asshurnazirpal, and from that to the adjacent room, where
the mural decorations of the dining-hall of the last of the great
Assyrian kings, Asshurbanapal, have been placed _in situ_, reproducing
an effect which they first made in the palace of Nineveh in the seventh
century B.C. Here you may see at once both another phase of royal life
in Assyria and another stage of Assyrian art. Not war, but the chase is
now the theme. King Asshurbanapal is seen in pursuit of the goat, the
wild ass, the lion. The king, of course, towers above his attendants,
though not in the grotesque disproportion of the Egyptian paintings.
To the oriental mind such excessive stature seemed indissoluble from
royal station. One recalls how the mother of Darius, made captive at
Issus, mistook Hephæstion for the king, because he was taller than
Alexander; and how Agesilaus, when he went to Egypt as an ally of the
Egyptians, was held in contempt, despite his renown, because of his
diminutive stature; and one cannot help wondering what would have been
the real aspect of the Assyrian and Egyptian monarchs could they have
been subjected to the camera. Be that as it may, there was apparently
no doubt in the mind of the court artist as to what his chisel should
reveal in this respect, and the king may always be distinguished by his
stature, without regard to his royal robes. Still, it is notable, as a
distinction between Egyptian and Assyrian art, that the realistic eye
of the Assyrian sculptor never let him depict the king as a Brobdingnag
among the pigmies, after the Egyptian fashion. At the most he is a head
taller than those about him.

The royal hunter pursues his quarry sometimes on foot, more usually
standing in his chariot. His weapon is usually the bow, sometimes the
spear; on one occasion he grapples with the lion, hand to jowl, and
stabs the quarry to the heart with a short sword. The quiet dignity
and royal calm with which the feat is achieved must have insured the
artist a high and enduring place in the royal favour. The action,
however, of the human figures in these sculptures is always sedate and
reposeful, suggestive of reserved strength perhaps, or possibly of the
artist’s limitations. Whichever it is, the real power of the artist is
not shown in the human figures. These, to be sure, are in part strongly
anatomised; in the main, they are fairly proportioned, and, unlike the
Egyptian figures, they have the shoulders drawn in proper perspective.
But the faces are fixed, impassive; the eyes are not in perspective,
and, as a whole, they cannot claim high merit as works of art, viewed
from an abstract modern standpoint. Considered in relation to their
time, they are wonderful enough, so far ahead are they of anything
that we could suppose to have been accomplished in the world of that
day. But they fall far short of the standard which the same artist has
himself given us in animal figures of his composition. It seems as if
the human figures might have been done from memory, whereas the animal
forms are clearly enough from the natural model. Indeed, when we turn
to these animal figures we may criticise them, not with reservation as
to their age, but from the standpoint of modern art, and as individual
figures they will not be found wanting. The three fundamental
canons--“proportion, action, aspect”--have been successfully met. The
lions skulk sullenly from their cages, spring furiously into action,
or roll in death agony at the will of the depicter. The lioness, with
spine broken by an arrow, dragging her palsied hind-quarters, is a
veritable masterpiece. The same is true of many of the figures of
goats, of running and pacing wild asses, and of dogs. As a whole, these
animal frescoes are nothing less than wonderful. It is worth a visit to
London from the remotest land to see these sculptures from the palace
of the old Assyrian king.

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF OF A WOUNDED LIONESS

(Now in the British Museum)]

Still, though these bas-reliefs have intrinsic merits as works of art,
their chief value is for what they teach regarding the evolution of
art in the world. Previously to their discovery it had been supposed
that the stiff formalism of Egyptian sculpture represented the fullest
flight of pre-Grecian art, and that Greek art itself had stepped
suddenly forth, rather a new creation than an evolution. But the pick
and shovel of Layard at Nineveh dispelled that illusion. For these art
treasures, that had lain there under the deposits of centuries, were
found to represent an enormous advance upon Egyptian models, precisely
in the direction of that realism for which Greek art is distinguished.

If we would judge how direct and unequivocal was the impulse which the
dying nation transferred to the adolescent one in point of art, we
have but to take a few steps in the British Museum, from the Assyrian
rooms to the wonderful hall that holds Lord Elgin’s trophies from
the desecrated Parthenon. Look, then, upon the frieze of bas-relief
that bears the magic name of Phidias. If anything can reconcile us to
the act that deprived Greece of her priceless heirlooms, it is the
fact that they have found lodgment here close beside their oriental
prototypes, where half a million visitors each year may at least have
an opportunity to learn the lesson that human progress is an accretion,
a growth, a building upon foundations; and, specifically, that Greek
art, no less than other forms of human culture, was an evolution, and
not an isolated miracle. For what is the Parthenon frieze, as we now
come to it fresh from the palaces of Nineveh, but an Assyrian fresco
adapted to the needs and ideals of another race and developed by the
genius of a newer civilisation? The profiled figures in low relief
coursing together, are they different in conception from the profiled
figures of the palaces we have just left? The horses of the Parthenon
frieze might almost seem to have stepped bodily from the palaces of
Asshurbanapal. They have gained something in suppleness of limb, have
altered their attitude in a measure, to be sure, thanks to their new
environment. But their type has not changed by so much as an actual
breed of horses might be changed in as many generations. Note the
head, the most typical and characteristic feature of this Grecian
steed. Line for line it is the same head, trappings aside, that we have
just seen at Nineveh. Even the defects of the Assyrian drawing are
there--the too small and slender face, and receding lower jaw, the tiny
ear, the far too full and “chuffy” neck. Possibly no horse in nature
was ever like this, but the Assyrian artist so conceives it; the Greek
copies that conception; and the distorted type will be transmitted down
the generations to the Italian of the Renaissance, to the classical
painters of Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany, and France; nay,
even to the artist of the nineteenth century. The court artist of an
oriental prince of the ninth or tenth century B.C. conceives a certain
ideal; and, following him, a certain type of sculptured horse, such as
the artist who carved it has never seen, steps before the chariot on
Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe in nineteenth-century Paris.[c]

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF OF HORSES]

If Mesopotamian art and literature had been forgotten in succeeding
ages, Chaldean science had not shared the same fate. The fame of the
Babylonian astrology and astronomy was still fresh in the mind of the
Greeks of the day of Diodorus, as we shall see, and it is curious to
reflect that even at this relatively late period after Greece had
passed far beyond the culminating point of her own career the learned
Greek looked upon Chaldean science as something beyond the pale of the
science of his own nation. It would seem as if the cultivated Greek
looked back upon the Babylonian civilisation with something of that
reverence which “modern” European nations have reserved for Greece
itself. It is significant, too, that the Babylonians themselves, even
in the day of their decline, continued to regard the Greeks, along with
the rest of the outside world, as “barbarians” in something more than
the Greek sense of the word.

The older civilisation always thus regards the younger, regardless of
the actual relative merits of the two. It was an Egyptian priest who
lectured the famous Greek in these words: “O Solon! Solon! You Hellenes
are but children, and there is never an old man who is a Hellene. In
my mind you are all young. There is no old opinion handed down among
you by ancient tradition, nor any science hoary with age”; but the
same words might well have been pronounced by a priest of Chaldea. We
have learned through Diodorus that the Egyptians guarded the secrets
of their science very jealously from the Greeks, who travelled and
sojourned there for the express purpose of learning them; and there is
reason to suppose that much the same reception was accorded the Greek
traveller in Babylonia, since Herodotus seems to have learned so
little there beyond what his own direct observations taught him.

But how much ground the Babylonian had for this arrogance of
intellectual attitude the modern world had little material for
judging, beyond such general assertions as that of Diodorus, until
the records of the libraries were revealed. Then it was made evident
that as original scientific investigators the Babylonians were no whit
inferior to their contemporaries of the Nile, if, indeed, they were not
superior; that in short they fully merited the praise which classical
tradition accorded them. A people that thus excelled in theoretical
science, no less than in art and literature and in practical
civilisation, has many claims to be considered the foremost nation of
antiquity.[a]

A CLASSICAL ESTIMATE OF CHALDEAN PHILOSOPHY AND ASTROLOGY

“Here it will not be amiss to say something of the Chaldeans (as the
Babylonians call them) and of their Antiquity, that nothing worth
Remark may be omitted,” says Diodorus, as translated in 1700 by Booth.

“They being the most ancient Babylonians, hold the same station and
dignity in the Common-wealth as the Egyptian Priests do in Egypt: For
being deputed to Divine Offices, they spend all their Time in the study
of Philosophy, and are especially famous for the Art of Astrology.
They are mightily given to Divination, and foretel future Events,
and imploy themselves either by Purifications, Sacrifices, or other
Inchantments to avert Evils, or procure good Fortune and Success.
They are skilful likewise in the Art of Divination, by the flying of
Birds, and interpreting of Dreams and Prodigies: And are reputed as
true Oracles (in declaring what will come to pass) by their exact and
diligent viewing the Intrals of the Sacrifices. But they attain not to
this Knowledge in the same manner as the Grecians do; for the Chaldeans
learn it by Tradition from their Ancestors, the Son from the Father,
who are all in the mean time free from all other publick Offices and
Attendances; and because their Parents are their Tutors, they both
learn every thing without Envy, and rely with more confidence upon the
truth of what is taught them; and being train’d up in this Learning
from their very Childhood, they become most famous Philosophers,
(that Age being most capable of Learning, wherein they spend much
of their time). But the Grecians for the most part come raw to this
study, unfitted and unprepar’d, and are long before they attain to the
Knowledge of this Philosophy: And after they have spent some small time
in this Study, they are many times call’d off and forc’d to leave it,
in order to get a Livelihood and Subsistence. And although some few
do industriously apply themselves to Philosophy, yet for the sake of
Gain, these very Men are opinionative, and ever and anon starting new
and high Points, and never fix in the steps of their Ancestors. But
the Barbarians keeping constantly close to the same thing, attain to a
perfect and distinct Knowledge in every particular.

“But the Grecians cunningly catching at all Opportunities of Gain, make
new Sects and Parties, and by their contrary Opinions wrangling and
quarelling concerning the chiefest Points, lead their Scholars into a
Maze; and being uncertain and doubtful what to pitch upon for certain
truth, their Minds are fluctuating and in suspence all the days of
their Lives, and unable to give a certain assent unto any thing. For if
any Man will but examine the most eminent Sects of the Philosophers, he
shall find them much differing among themselves, and even opposing one
another in the most weighty parts of their Philosophy. But to return to
the Chaldeans, they hold that the World is eternal, which had neither
any certain Beginning, nor shall have any End; but all agree, that all
things are order’d, and this beautiful Fabrick is supported by a Divine
Providence, and that the Motions of the Heavens are not perform’d by
chance and of their own accord, but by a certain and determinate Will
and Appointment of the Gods.

“Therefore from a long observation of the Stars, and an exact Knowledge
of the motions and influences of every one of them, wherein they excel
all others, they fortel many things that are to come to pass.

“They say that the Five Stars which some call Planets, but they
Interpreters, are most worthy of Consideration, both for their motions
and their remarkable influences, especially that which the Grecians
call Saturn. The brightest of them all, and which often portends many
and great Events, they call Sol, the other Four they name Mars, Venus,
Mercury, and Jupiter, with our own Country Astrologers. They give the
Name of Interpreters to these Stars, because these only by a peculiar
Motion do portend things to come, and instead of Jupiters, do declare
to Men before-hand the good-will of the Gods; whereas the other Stars
(not being of the number of the Planets) have a constant ordinary
motion. Future Events (they say) are pointed at sometimes by their
Rising, and sometimes by their Setting, and at other times by their
Colour, as may be experienc’d by those that will diligently observe it;
sometimes foreshewing Hurricanes, at other times Tempestuous Rains, and
then again exceeding Droughts. By these, they say, are often portended
the appearance of Comets, Eclipses of the Sun and Moon, Earthquakes and
all other the various Changes and remarkable effects in the Air, boding
good and bad, not only to Nations in general, but to Kings and Private
Persons in particular. Under the Course of these Planets, they say are
Thirty Stars, which they call Counselling Gods, half of whom observe
what is done under the Earth, and the other half take notice of the
actions of Men upon the Earth, and what is transacted in the Heavens.
Once every Ten Days space (they say) one of the highest Order of these
Stars descends to them that are of the lowest, like a Messenger sent
from them above; and then again another ascends from those below to
them above, and that this is their constant natural motion to continue
for ever. The chief of these Gods, they say, are Twelve in number, to
each of which they attribute a Month, and one Sign of the Twelve in the
Zodiack.

“Through these Twelve Signs the Sun, Moon, and the other Five Planets
run their Course. The Sun in a Years time, and the Moon in the space
of a Month. To every one of the Planets they assign their own proper
Courses, which are perform’d variously in lesser or shorter time
according as their several motions are quicker or slower. These Stars,
they say, have a great influence both as to good and bad in Mens
Nativities; and from the consideration of their several Natures, may be
foreknown what will befal Men afterwards. As they foretold things to
come to other Kings formerly, so they did to Alexander who conquer’d
Darius, and to his Successors Antigonus and Seleucus Nicator; and
accordingly things fell out as they declar’d; which we shall relate
particularly hereafter in a more convenient time. They tell likewise
private Men their Fortunes so certainly, that those who have found the
thing true by Experience, have esteem’d it a Miracle, and above the
reach of Man to perform. Out of the Circle of the Zodiack they describe
Four and Twenty Stars, Twelve towards the North Pole, and as many to
the South.

“Those which we see, they assign to the living; and the other that do
not appear, they conceive are Constellations for the Dead; and they
term them Judges of all things. The Moon, they say, is in the lowest
Orb; and being therefore next to the Earth (because she is so small,)
she finishes her Course in a little time, not through the swiftness of
her Motion, but the shortness of her Sphear. In that which they affirm
(that she has but a borrow’d light, and that when she is eclips’d, it’s
caus’d by the interposition of the shadow of the Earth) they agree with
the Grecians.

“Their Rules and Notions concerning the Eclipses of the Sun are but
weak and mean, which they dare not positively foretel, nor fix a
certain time for them. They have likewise Opinions concerning the
Earth peculiar to themselves, affirming it to resemble a Boat, and to
be hollow, to prove which, and other things relating to the frame of
the World, they abound in Arguments; but to give a particular Account
of ’em, we conceive would be a thing foreign to our History. But this
any Man may justly and truly say, That the Chaldeans far exceed all
other Men in the Knowledge of Astrology, and have study’d it most of
any other Art or Science: But the number of Years during which the
Chaldeans say, those of their Profession have given themselves to the
study of this natural Philosophy, is incredible; for when Alexander
was in Asia, they reckon’d up Four Hundred and Seventy Thousand Years
since they first began to observe the Motions of the Stars. But lest we
should make too long a digression from our intended Design, let this
which we have said concerning the Chaldeans suffice.”[d]

THE BABYLONIAN YEAR

The Babylonian year, according to Eduard Meyer, consisted of simple
lunar months (twenty-nine or thirty days), which, as with the Greeks
and the Mohammedans, was determined by the course of the moon itself.

To make this year coincide with the course of the sun, an extra month
was intercalated; in olden times this seems to have been done after the
first or the sixth month.

This year, with the names of its months, was adopted by the Jews at
the time of the Exile, and is still in use with them. The commencement
of their year (Nisan) falls at the time of the spring equinox. The
Babylonians had no continuous chronology; they dated according to the
years of the kings, or, rather, they marked the year according to any
important event which took place in it. Thus we see dates like “on
the 30th Adar in the Sixth year after the conquest of Nisin by King
Rim-Sin.”

Later on in Babylon, and also in Assyria, they reckoned simply the
years of the kings, from the day of their accession to the throne. The
remainder of the year, in the course of which the predecessor had died,
was therefore considered the first part of the first year of the new
reign, and was very often called “the beginning of the reign” of the
king in question.

Chronological calculations were reckoned from the same starting-point
as in Egypt. They reckon the calendar year in which a king comes to
the throne as his first year, and hence his death takes place in the
first year of his successor. This is the method of the Ptolemaic canon,
one of the most important chronological monuments of antiquity. It
is the list beginning with Nabonassar (about 747 B.C.) of the native
and Persian kings of Babylonia, to which the Egyptian rulers up to
Alexander are added. It is an addition to the astronomical work of
Ptolemy, and was intended to throw light on the passages relating to
the Babylonian, and later on to the Alexandrian chronological methods.
It is authentic, and is confirmed by the monuments. Yet, in using the
same, it must be recollected that all dates of the Egyptian “vague”
year (and the Egyptian months) are reduced. Therefore the first year of
the Nabonassar era begins on the 1st Tehuti, the 26th February, 747 B.C.

In Assyria there is also a second and far more common form of
specifying the years. Since a very early date (as far back as the
fourteenth century) it was customary to name the year after some high
official. The year, as such, is called _limmu_, “eponymic year.”
Of course, they had continuous lists of these eponyms; and we have
recovered several fragments. The lists for the years 893 to 666 are
complete, and with fragments we can go still farther back. The kings
frequently used this system, and private persons regularly used this
eponym.

Some copies of the lists contain accounts of the changes of reigns,
and give short statements of important internal and external events
of the particular years. Thus an eclipse of the sun June 15, 763
B.C., mentioned therein can be astronomically fixed, and the dates
arrived at thereby concur exactly with the accounts of the Ptolemaic
canon. The chronological history of this epoch is therefore perfectly
determined.[e]

THE BABYLONIAN DAY AND ITS DIVISION INTO HOURS

This being the Babylonian method of reckoning dates, it is interesting
to note on what plan they subdivided the day. Investigations were
made in this line by that indefatigable Irishman, Edward Hincks, from
whose article “On the Assyrio-Babylonian Measures of Time,” in the
_Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy_, we quote.[a]

I begin with the day and its divisions.

Our knowledge on this subject is mainly derived from a tablet in the
British Museum, marked K. 15. A paper of mine was read before the Royal
Irish Academy in 1854, and was published in the twenty-third volume of
the _Transactions_ in which this tablet was discussed. As that paper
contained some slight philological errors, I will here repeat the
substance of it, correcting those errors.

I now translate the inscription on the Tablet as follows, omitting the
customary benedictory formula. “On the sixth day of the month Nisan
the day and the night are equal; six kazabs [kashbu] are the day; six
kazabs [kashbu] are the night.” It is evident that this inscription
records the observation of an equinox; and I will return to the
consideration of it with that view. At present I will only remark that
it points to a double division of the day, or _Nycthemeron_; viz., the
first into the day properly so called, and the night; which were in
this instance equal, though not generally so; the second into twelve
equal kazabs [kashbu].

I proceed to the second division of the day into twelve kazabs
[kashbu]. Each of these was equivalent, putting out of sight errors
of observation, to two hours of _mean solar time_, such as we use in
ordinary life. The word kazab [kashbu] is from a Hebrew root meaning
“to fail,” which is applied to streams that run dry. This suggests
the primary signification, “runnings out,” namely, of the water which
had been poured into a vessel with a small hole in the bottom. The
Babylonians measured time by clepsydræ, which, when they had been
filled, would be emptied in two hours of mean time. Such clepsydræ
would maintain a sufficiently accurate division of the day into twelve
kazabs [kashbu] if the first were set to run at apparent noon, the
second when the first had run out, and so on till the thirteenth, which
would be set to run at the next apparent noon, whether the twelfth was
just running out, or had already run out, or had still a little water
in it.

The kazab [kashbu] is mentioned as an ordinary measure of time in more
than one passage. The distance from the mainland to an island in the
Persian Gulf is said to be a voyage of thirty kazabs [kashbu] (Botta,
41. 48), just as that from Cyprus to Syria is said to be one of seven
days (Botta, 38. 41). Also, in Rawlinson, 42. 13, Sennacherib speaks
of slaughtering his enemies for the space of a journey or march of two
kazabs [kashbu]. This use of the word seems to me a positive proof that
the clepsydræ was in use among the Assyrians and Babylonians generally,
and was not confined to the astronomers.

There does not appear to me any reason to suppose that a division of
the day from sunrise to sunset into twelve hours, varying in length
according to the season of the year, and again of the night, from
sunset to sunrise into twelve similar hours, was ever known to the
Babylonians. Such a division was in use among the Egyptians, and was
adopted from them by the Greeks, but the Babylonians and Assyrians
knew nothing of it. I may here observe that some modern writers have
committed a strange mistake in supposing the clepsydræ to have been
invented so late as the third century before Christ and at Alexandria.
These writers have confounded two totally different things; viz., the
original invention of the clepsydræ marking mean solar time, which
goes back to remote antiquity, and is almost certainly due to the
Babylonians, and the adaptation of the clepsydræ to the _seasonable_
(καιρικαὶ) hours of the Egyptians and Greeks, which was accomplished
at the time and place which these writers mention. I have met with
no subdivisions of the kazab [kashbu], and I much doubt whether the
Babylonians had any means of marking such.[f]

ASSYRIAN SCIENCE

The exact sciences were cultivated in Assyria from the earliest times,
nor had natural sciences been neglected. Zoology, botany, mineralogy
are largely represented in the library of Nineveh, and as all these
tablets contain a Sumerian as well as the equivalent Assyrian text, we
are justified in believing that the Ninevites, in this respect, still
followed the traditions of their predecessors.

We find lists of animals arranged in a certain order which indicates
an attempt at classification; thus the dog, lion, and wolf are in the
same category, whilst the ox, sheep, and goat form another. In the
enumeration of the different animals, there is a very evident design of
establishing genera and families, and of distinguishing species. Thus
we have a family comprising the great Carnivora: the dog, lion, and
wolf; then we have different species in the dog family--such as the dog
itself, the domestic dog, the coursing dog, the small dog, the dog of
Elam, etc. The scientific side of this classification is revealed by an
easily recognised circumstance; thus one finds after the common name a
special nomenclature, which belongs to a scientific classification with
which the Assyrians seem to have been familiar.

Among the birds similar attempts at classification are evident. Birds
of rapid flight, sea-birds, or marsh birds are differentiated. Insects
form a very numerous class; we see an entire family whose species are
differentiated according as they attack plants, animals, clothing, or
wood. Vegetables seem to be classified according to their usefulness,
or the service that industry can make of them. One tablet enumerates
the uses to which wood can be put, according to its adaptability, for
the timber-work of palaces, the construction of vessels, the making
of carts, implements of husbandry, or even furniture. Minerals occupy
a long series in these tablets. They are classed according to their
qualities, gold and silver forming a division apart; precious stones
form still another, but there is nothing to indicate on what basis a
classification would be established.

If we pass from the natural sciences to geography, we find the latter
in a synthetic and fairly confused state. Nevertheless several lists
give us a series of the names of towns, rivers, and mountains, arranged
according to their geographical disposition, as we can easily prove.
Sometimes the data are of a practical character, and names are followed
by mention of natural or industrial products of localities, their
revenue taxes, or tributes. But the science, _par excellence_, which
was especially cultivated in Assyria, and which the learned men of
Asshurbanapal connected with the greatest care with antique Chaldean
traditions, was astronomy.

This science was not indeed born at Nineveh; the Greeks teach us that
astronomical observations were first made in lower Chaldea 1903 years
before Alexander, and consequently 2226 years before Christ. Whatever
the value of this date may be, the tradition of this origin is found in
the works of the Assyrians, who constantly refer to the observations
of their predecessors. Asshurbanapal had sent these learned men to the
old schools of Mesopotamia, Ur, Sippar, Agade, Babylon; there to imbibe
the elements of the science which was the glory of the southern empire.
In the seventh century before our era, observations were carried on
at Nineveh. At this date the fixed stars had long been distinguished
from the planets; the sidereal revolutions, the divisions of the year,
the course of the sun in the different constellations of the zodiac,
periodic return of eclipses, and even the precession of the equinoxes,
had been calculated. These achievements imply long and conscientious
observation, a special intelligence to undertake them, and simple
methods of rigorous calculation.

We are ignorant as to the nature of the instruments with which the
Assyrio-Chaldeans could observe the stars. The chances of error in
observations by the naked eye are evidently very great, and errors
can only be rectified by multiplied operations and the most minute
calculations. It is known that the determining of the periodicity of
the moon’s eclipses rests on a knowledge of the cycle of 223 lunations
which bring back the same eclipses periodically. It is certain that
the Assyrio-Chaldeans must have also known another cycle of 22,325
lunations equalling 1805 tropical years plus 8 days, or 1805 Julian
years of 365¼ days; after which the eclipses return with still greater
precision in the same order. How long did it take the human mind to
observe and understand a sufficient number of lunations so as to
combine the data they afforded and deduct the law that Meton formulated
and to which he has given his name?

In regard to eclipses of the sun, the cycle is so very much greater
that the beginnings of the observations on which the calculations of
their periodicity would rest, would take us back to a period which
is quite beyond the limits of the historic age. Diogenes Laertius
estimates it as 48,863 years. During that time 373 eclipses of the moon
and 832 eclipses of the sun had been observed. When they turned their
attention to the calculations resulting from these observations the
Assyrio-Chaldeans were marvellously helped by their system of notation.
Their numerical system lent itself with ease to the most complicated of
calculations. We must content ourselves with stating the results. As
we were saying a minute ago, the observations were carried on under
Asshurbanapal; the king sent astronomers to different points to study
celestial phenomena, and the results of their labours were sent him.
Here are the terms in which these reports were expressed:

“To the King, my Lord, his humble servant Ishtar-iddin-apal, chief
astronomer of the town of Arbela writes this: Peace and happiness to
the king my master and may he long prosper.

“On the 29th day, I observed the node of the moon, the clouds obscured
the field of observation, and we could not see the moon.

“In the month of Sebat (January) the 1st day during the year
Bel-haran-saduya (648 B.C.).”

The result of this mission was not satisfactory. The eclipse had been
predicted, but although the state of the atmosphere did not allow of
observation, the attesting of this failure proves the care with which
every circumstance that could serve to explain the phenomenon was
noted. Here is an observation which was entirely successful:

“To the director of observations my Lord, his humble servant
Nabu-shum-iddin, Great Astronomer of Nineveh writes this: May Nabu and
Marduk be propitious to the director of these observations, my Lord.

“The 15th day we observed the node of the moon, and the moon was
eclipsed.”

Here is a more complicated observation:

“To the king, my Lord, may the Gods Nabu and Marduk be propitious, may
the great gods grant to the king, my master, long life, the benefits of
the flesh and satisfaction of the heart.

“The 27th day the moon disappeared; the 28th 29th and 30th day we
continually observed the node of the obscuring sun. The eclipse did not
take place. The 1st day (of the following month) we saw the moon during
the first day of the month Tammuz (June) above the star Mercury of
which I have previously sent an observation to the king my master. In
its course during the day of Anu, around the shepherd star (the planet
Venus), it was seen declining: on account of rain the horns were not
very distinctly visible, and so it was in its whole course. The day
Anu I sent the observation of its conjunction, to the king my master.
It was prolonged and was visible above the star of the Chariot in its
course during the day of Baal; it disappeared towards the star of the
Chariot.

“To the King, my Lord, peace and happiness.”

The discovery of the precession of the equinoxes is generally
attributed to Hipparchus. It was he, indeed, who taught this fact
to the Greeks, and he estimated its yearly amount as from 36 to 39
seconds; but it is certain that he learned about it in Chaldea, and
that he obtained the elements of his calculations from the astronomical
observations made on the lower Euphrates. All the astronomical
knowledge of the Ninevite savants had the same point of origin.

Two thousand years before our era, from the time of a king of Agade
called Sharrukin (Shargani-shar-ali), and who is usually known as
Sargon I (the Ancient), the precession of the equinoxes was an
observed and calculated fact, since it had already brought sufficient
disturbance into the calendar to make a corrective element necessary.
Sargon had given a brilliancy to his century which the learned men
of Nineveh only echoed. In his time there was a library at Agade,
the importance of which we can judge by the fragments which were
preserved at Nineveh. We are certain that at these remote times the
great divisions of the uranographic chart were already determined upon.
Fixed stars were designated according to the different groups or
constellations which were known by the names they have retained to this
day.

Outside these fixed stars the signs of the zodiac were perfectly
determined in that portion of the celestial vault which the texts
designate by the name of harranu (the way), that is to say, the way of
the stars. These stars were the planets. The Chaldeans knew of seven,
and they were thus known to them: Shamash, the sun; Sin, the moon;
Alap-Shamash, Saturn; Rus, Jupiter; Ashbat, Venus; Sulpa-sadu, Mars;
Nivit-Anu, Mercury. The Ninevite savants borrowed their astronomical
knowledge from the Chaldeans; they made use of the calendar as it was
transmitted to them, and as such it has been used by all nations from
the remotest times up to the present day.

The Assyrian year was composed of twelve lunar months. It began with
the new moon preceding the vernal equinox. A well-known tablet thus
fixes the day of the equinoxes: “At the sixth day of the month of Nisan
(March) the days and nights are equal (and comprise), six kashbu for
the day and six kashbu for the night. May Nabu and Marduk be propitious
to the King, my Lord.”

To correct the error resulting from the difference between the lunar
and solar year, a supplementary month was intercalated, the length of
which necessarily varied with circumstances. The Ninevite tablets offer
us calendars arranged in conformity with the different exigencies of
life. Some are purely scientific, and show us the divisions of the year
into days, months, and seasons. Others are formed to meet the needs of
religion, and tell us, by the day, the feasts consecrated to divinities
invoked or honoured by special ceremonies. Others seem to take current
superstitions into account; thus days are marked by a particular
sign, according as they are considered propitious or disastrous. We
see tables constructed to indicate the influence of the stars on each
day of the year, with a mention of appropriate prayers, to propitiate
favourable auguries and ward off those which are fatal.

The importance of these last documents must not be exaggerated; they
are related to superstitions common to all ages and lands; and, in the
ancient East, as everywhere else, these beliefs merely represent one of
the most curious, but the least interesting phases of the aberrations
of the human mind.[g]

FOOTNOTES

[33] [This probably means that the father had been called to a high
office.]

[34] [This is a letter from King Ammidatitana, the king who was third
from the end of the first Babylonian dynasty. It is an example of the
usual style of a royal letter.]

[35] For a description of these monuments and the history of their
discovery, as well as for the conclusions which are to be drawn from
them for the history of art in Mesopotamia, the reader is referred
to De Sarsac’s album of reproductions [l’Art Chaldéen], also to L.
Heerzey, _Les fouilles de Chaldée_ in the _Revue Archæologique_, 1881,
new series, vol. xlii, p. 56 ff. and 257.

[36] Here of course only architecture and sculpture in general are
intended, without denying that the Semites, also those of Babylonia
and Assyria have accomplished original things in single cases, in
execution, and in certain genres, as, for example, in the reproduction
of animal forms.

[Illustration: BABYLONIAN KING LION HUNTING]

APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS

Such is the fate of empire: Asshur rose
Where elder thrones and prouder warriors stood;
Before the Memphian priest his precepts chose,
Men reasoned greatly of the highest good;
Before Troy was, or Xanthus rolled in blood,
Armies were ranged in battles’ dread array:
They fought--their glory withered in its bud;
They perished--with them ceased their tyrants’ sway;
New wars, new heroes came--their story passed away.--JAMES GATES
PERCIVAL.

It is a curious paradox that our knowledge of this oldest civilisation
should be the very newest and most novel record with which present-day
history has to deal. The Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Babylonians, of
whose accomplishments we speak so confidently to-day, lived out their
national life, and vanished from the earth, as nations, mostly before
civilisation had its dawning in Europe; and for two thousand years they
were but a reminiscence.

It was reserved for nineteenth century investigators literally to
dig from the earth their lost records, and to read the secrets of
their forgotten history. Marvellous secrets they were, as we shall
see; but before we turn to them, it will be of interest to recall
the reminiscences that did service as the history of these wonderful
peoples for so many centuries. In a few extracts we may set forth
the substance of all that the world remembered of that marvellous
civilisation from the days of Herodotus and Diodorus till the middle
of the nineteenth century. A mixture of fact and fable, it still has
absorbing interest, the more so that we may now compare it with the
surer records brought to light in our own time. Aside from their
intrinsic interest, the classical records have, in this regard, a
unique importance.

As to the precise classical authorities in question, we have already
become acquainted with Diodorus and Ælianus in the earlier portion
of this work. Another author we shall now have occasion to quote is
Berosus. As to this author and the exact status of his work, we cannot
do better than quote the following critical estimate from the _Babylone
et la Chaldée_ of Joachim Menant.

“Berosus came of a priestly family and was born in Babylon, about
330 B.C. He himself is authority for the information that he was a
contemporary of Alexander the Great. According to Tatian, he is the
most learned of all Asiatic historians. He was deeply versed in the
ancient traditions of his country and taught them to the Greeks,
through whom they have come down to us. Vitruvius informs us that he
left Babylon and went to live on the island of Cos, where he opened
a school of astrology. He invented, or at least introduced among the
Greeks, a particular kind of time-keeping. There still exist fragments
of astrological works to which Berosus has attached his name, and
owing to the special interests of the writers who have borrowed from
his works, the fame of the astrologer perhaps outshines that of the
historian. Pliny (VII. 37) declares that the Athenians erected a
golden-tongued statue to him in the Gymnasium, on account of his
wonderful predictions.

“He wrote in Greek, about 280 B.C., a history of ancient Chaldea and
dedicated it to Antiochus Soter. The work consisted of three volumes,
of which we possess now but a few excerpts preserved in the chronicles
of several historiographers who have lived at different periods and
whom it may be well to mention. First of all there is Flavius Josephus,
the great historian of the Jews, born at Jerusalem 33 A.D.; then there
are St. Clement, the Alexandrian catechist (born early in the second
century A.D., died 217), Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea (author of the
_Symbol of Nice_, who lived from 267 to 338), and finally, George
Syncellus (so called from the office he filled under the Bishop of
Constantinople, and who died about the year 800). These writers took
from Berosus only just what was needed for their purposes, and none
in fact seems to have been personally acquainted with the work of the
learned Chaldean.

“For instance, Syncellus, whose writings show marks of haste and are
by no means free from error, borrows his quotations from Eusebius,
whom he often pretends to correct. Eusebius seems to be indebted to
Julius Africanus, who wrote in the third century of our era, and the
latter in turn mentions his obligation to Alexander Polyhistor, who
flourished twenty-five years before Christ. Now Polyhistor takes his
references from Apollodorus, who lived some years before. Josephus in
all probability used Alexander Polyhistor as his source, although he
does not say so. Clement of Alexandria had at his elbow the works of
King Juba of Mauritania, who reigned about 30 B.C., and who seems to
have taken his material, unfortunately too limited in amount, from the
very works of Berosus, in whom he placed the utmost confidence.

“One thing is certain, the original text of Berosus in passing through
so many hands and suffering condensation and mutilation must have been
considerably altered.

“Berosus had free access to those famous clay-tablet libraries which
Pliny describes and whose importance modern research has revealed. As
at Nineveh, there were at Babylon, Borsippa, Orchoë [Erech], and in
the large cities of Chaldea, archives which contained the national
traditions to which the Chaldean priest was obliged to resort.

“In the days of Berosus the writings in these archives were understood
not only in Babylon, but throughout western Asia. The Assyrio-Chaldean
language was still written in cuneiform characters till the time of
the Seleucidæ and even during the first century B.C. Berosus was thus
enabled to consult these precious sources, and we know that he went
to them. Already in the priceless débris of these curious archives,
fragments in corroboration of Berosus have been discovered, and these
acquisitions only make us regret the more what is irrevocably lost.”

We shall now take up some of the portions of Berosus’ history
transcribed by later historiographers.[a]

THE CREATION AND THE FLOOD, DESCRIBED BY POLYHISTOR

Berosus, in the first book of his history of Babylonia, informs us
that he lived in the age of Alexander, the son of Philip. And he
mentions that there were written accounts, preserved at Babylon with
the greatest care, comprehending a period of about fifteen myriads
of years; and that these writings contained histories of the heavens
and of the sea; of the birth of mankind; and of the kings, and of the
memorable actions which they had achieved.

And in the first place he describes Babylonia as a country situated
between the Tigris and the Euphrates; that it abounded with wheat and
barley, and ocrus, and sesame; and that in the lakes were produced
the roots called gongæ, which are fit for food, and in respect for
nutriment similar to barley. That there were also palm trees and
apples, and a variety of fruits; fish also and birds, both those which
are merely of flight, and those which frequent the lakes. He adds, that
those parts of the country which bordered upon Arabia were without
water and barren; but that the parts which lay on the other side were
both hilly and fertile.

[Illustration: ASSYRIAN BOAT

(From the Monuments)]

At Babylon there was (in these times) a great resort of people of
various nations, who inhabited Chaldea, and lived in a lawless manner,
like the beasts of the field.

In the first year there appeared from that part of the Erythræan Sea
[the Persian Gulf] which borders upon Babylonia, an animal destitute
of reason, by name Oannes [perhaps the same as Anu], whose whole body
(according to the account of Apollodorus) was that of a fish; that
under the fish’s head he had another head, with feet also below,
similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish’s tail. His voice,
too, and language, was articulate and human; and a representation of
him is preserved even to this day.

This Being was accustomed to pass the day among men; but took no food
at that season; and he gave them an insight into letters and sciences,
and arts of every kind. He taught them to construct cities, to found
temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of
geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth,
and showed them how to collect the fruits; in short he instructed
them in everything which could tend to soften manners and humanise
their lives. From that time nothing material has been added by way of
improvement to his instructions. And when the sun had set, this Being,
Oannes, retired again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep;
for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other animals like
Oannes, of which Berosus proposes to give an account when he comes
to the history of the kings. Moreover, Oannes wrote concerning the
generation of mankind, and of their civil policy; and the following is
the purport of what he said:

“There was a time in which there existed nothing but darkness and
an abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous beings, which were
produced of a twofold principle. There appeared men, some of whom
were furnished with two wings, others with four, and with two faces.
They had one body but two heads: the one that of a man, the other of
a woman; likewise in their several organs, they were both male and
female. Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of
goats; some had horses’ feet; while others united the hind quarters of
a horse with the body of a man, resembling in shape the hippocentaurs.
Bulls likewise were bred there with the heads of men; and dogs with
fourfold bodies, terminated in their extremities with the tails of
fishes. In short, there were creatures in which were combined the limbs
of every species of animal. In addition to these, fishes, reptiles,
serpents, with other monstrous animals, which assumed each other’s
shape and countenance. Of all which were preserved delineations in the
temple of Belus at Babylon.

“The person who was believed to have presided over them, was a woman
named Omoroca [a Greek form of the Aramaic word ’Amqia, “the ocean”];
which in the Chaldean language is Thalath; in Greek, Thalassa, the
sea; but which might equally be interpreted the Moon. All things being
in this situation, Belus came, and cut the woman asunder: and of one
half of her he formed the earth, and of the other half the heavens;
and at the same time destroyed the animals within her. All this (he
says) was an allegorical description of nature. For, the whole universe
consisting of moisture, and animals being continually generated
therein, the deity above mentioned took off his own head: upon which
the other gods mixed the blood, as it gushed out, with the earth;
and from thence were formed men. On this account it is that they are
rational, and partake of divine knowledge.

“This Belus, by whom they signify Jupiter, divided the darkness, and
separated the Heavens from the Earth, and reduced the universe to
order. But the animals, not being able to bear the prevalence of light,
died. Belus, upon this, seeing a vast space unoccupied, though by
nature fruitful, commanded one of the gods to take off his head, and
to mix the blood with the earth; and from thence to form other men and
animals, which should be capable of bearing the air. Belus formed also
the stars, and the sun, and the moon, and the five planets.”

(Such, according to Alexander Polyhistor, is the account which Berosus
gives in his first book. In the second book was contained the history
of the ten kings of the Chaldeans, and the periods of the continuance
of each reign, which consisted collectively of 120 sars, or 432,000
years; reaching to the time of the Deluge. For Alexander, enumerating
the kings from the writings of the Chaldeans, after Ardates the IXth,
proceeds to the Xth, who is called by them Xisuthrus, in this manner:)

After the death of Ardates, his son Xisuthrus reigned 18 sars. In his
time happened a great Deluge; the history of which is thus described.
The Deity, Cronus, appeared to him in a vision, and warned him that
upon the fifteenth day of the month Dæsius [or Dæsia, _i.e._ May and
June] there would be a flood, by which mankind would be destroyed. He
therefore enjoined him to write a history of the beginning, procedure,
and conclusion of all things; and bury it in the city of the Sun at
Sippara; and to build a vessel, and to take with him into it his
friends and relations; and to convey on board everything necessary to
sustain life, together with all the different animals, both birds and
quadrupeds, and trust himself fearlessly to the deep. Having asked the
Deity, whither he was to sail, he was answered, “To the Gods”: upon
which he offered up a prayer for the good of mankind. He then obeyed
the divine admonition: and built a vessel five stadia in length and two
in breadth. Into this he put everything which he had prepared; and last
of all conveyed into it his wife, his children, and his friends.

After the flood had been upon the earth, and was in time abated,
Xisuthrus sent out birds from the vessel, which, not finding any food,
nor any place whereupon they might rest their feet, returned to him
again. After an interval of some days he sent them forth a second time;
and they now returned with their feet tinged with mud. He made a trial
a third time with these birds; but they returned to him no more: from
whence he judged that the surface of the earth had appeared above the
waters. He therefore made an opening in the vessel, and upon looking
out found that it was stranded upon the side of some mountain; upon
which he immediately quitted it with his wife, his daughter, and the
pilot. Xisuthrus then paid his adoration to the earth: and having
constructed an altar, offered sacrifices to the gods, and, with those
who had come out of the vessel with him, disappeared.

They who remained within, finding that their companions did not return,
quitted the vessel with many lamentations, and called continually on
the name of Xisuthrus. Him they saw no more; but they could distinguish
his voice in the air, and could hear him admonish them to pay due
regard to religion; and likewise informed them that it was on account
of his piety that he was translated to live with the gods; that his
wife and daughter, and the pilot, had obtained the same honour. To
this he added, that they should return to Babylonia; and, as it was
ordained, search for the writings at Sippara, which they were to make
known to all mankind: moreover, that the place wherein they then were,
was the land of Armenia [in the Hebrew, Ararat]. The rest having heard
these words, offered sacrifices to the gods; and, taking a circuit,
journeyed towards Babylonia.

The vessel being thus stranded in Armenia, some part of it yet remains
in the Corcyræan [or Gordyæan] Mountains of Armenia; and the people
scrape off the bitumen, with which it had been outwardly coated, and
make use of it by way of an alexipharmic and amulet. And when they
returned to Babylon, and had found the writings at Sippara, they built
cities, and erected temples: and Babylon was thus inhabited again.

OTHER CLASSICAL FRAGMENTS

_Of the Chaldean Kings_

This is the history which Berosus has transmitted to us. He tells
us that the first king was Alorus [or Ur, the Babylonian deity] of
Babylon, a Chaldean: he reigned ten sars: and afterwards Alaparus, and
Amelon, who came from Pantibiblon [Greek form of Sippara]: then Ammenon
the Chaldean, in whose time appeared the Musarus Oannes, the Annedotus
from the Erythræan Sea. (But Alexander Polyhistor, anticipating the
event, has said that he appeared in the first year; but Apollodorus
says that it was after forty sars; Abydenus, however, makes the second
Annedotus appear after twenty-six sars.) Then succeeded Megalarus from
the city of Pantibiblon; and he reigned eighteen sars: and after him
Daonus, the shepherd from Pantibiblon, reigned ten sars; in his time
(he says) appeared again from the Erythræan Sea a fourth Annedotus,
having the same form with those above, the shape of a fish blended with
that of a man. Then reigned Euedorachus, from Pantibiblon, for the term
of eighteen sars; in his days there appeared another personage from the
Erythræan Sea like the former, having the same complicated form between
a fish and a man, whose name was Odacon. (All these, says Apollodorus,
related particularly and circumstantially whatever Oannes had informed
them of: concerning these, Abydenus has made no mention.) Then reigned
Amempsinus, a Chaldean from Laranchæ [or Larissa]; and he, being the
eighth in order, reigned ten sars. Then reigned Otiartes, a Chaldean,
from Laranchæ; and he reigned eight sars. And upon the death of
Otiartes, his son Xisuthrus reigned eighteen sars: in his time happened
the great Deluge. So that the sum of all the kings is ten; and the term
which they collectively reigned was a hundred and twenty sars. [From
Eusebius.]

_Of the Chaldean Kings and the Deluge_

So much concerning the wisdom of the Chaldeans.

It is said that the first king of the country was Alorus, and that he
gave out a report that God had appointed him to be the Shepherd of the
people: he reigned ten sars: now a sar is esteemed to be three thousand
six hundred years; a ner six hundred; and a sos sixty.

After him Alaparus reigned three sars: to him succeeded Amillarus from
the city of Pantibiblon, who reigned thirteen sars: in his time came up
from the sea a second Annedotus, a semi-demon very similar in his form
to Oannes: after Amillarus reigned Ammenon twelve sars, who was of the
city of Pantibiblon: then Megalarus of the same place reigned eighteen
sars: then Daos, the shepherd, governed for the space of ten sars, he
was of Pantibiblon [Sippara]; in his time four double-shaped personages
came up out of the sea to land, whose names were Euedocus, Eneugamus,
Eneuboulus, and Anementus: afterwards in the time of Euedoreschus
appeared another Anodaphus. After these reigned other kings, and,
last of all, Sisithrus [Xisuthrus]: so that in the whole the number
amounted to ten kings, and the term of their reigns to an hundred and
twenty sars. (And, among other things not irrelative to the subject, he
continues thus concerning the Deluge): After Euedorechus some others
reigned and then Sisithrus. To him the deity Cronus foretold that on
the fifteenth day of the month Dæsius there would be a deluge of rain:
and he commanded him to deposit all the writings whatever which were in
his possession in the city of the Sun in Sippara. Sisithrus, when he
had complied with these commands, sailed immediately to Armenia, and
was presently inspired by God. Upon the third day after the cessation
of the rain Sisithrus sent out birds, by way of experiment, that he
might judge whether the flood had subsided. But the birds, passing over
an unbounded sea, without finding any place of rest, returned again to
Sisithrus. This he repeated with other birds. And when upon the third
trial he succeeded, for the birds then returned with their feet stained
with mud, the gods translated him from among men. With respect to the
vessel, which yet remains in Armenia, it is a custom of the inhabitants
to form bracelets and amulets of its wood. [From Eusebius.]

_Of the Tower of Babel_

They say that the first inhabitants of the earth, glorying in their
own strength and size, and despising the gods, undertook to raise a
tower whose top should reach the sky in the place in which Babylon now
stands: but when it approached the heaven, the winds assisted the gods,
and overthrew the work upon its contrivers: and its ruins are said to
be at Babylon: and the gods introduced a diversity of tongues among
men, who till that time had all spoken the same language: and a war
arose between Cronus and Titan. The place in which they built the tower
is now called Babylon, on account of the confusion of the tongues; for
confusion is by the Hebrews called Babel.[37] [From Eusebius.]

_Of Abraham [?]_

After the Deluge, in the tenth generation, was a certain man among the
Chaldeans renowned for his justice and great exploits, and for his
skill in the celestial sciences. [From Eusebius.]

_Of Nabonassar_

From the reign of Nabonassar only are the Chaldeans (from whom the
Greek mathematicians copy) accurately acquainted with the heavenly
motions: for Nabonassar collected all the mementos of the kings prior
to himself, and destroyed them, that the enumeration of the Chaldean
kings might commence with him. [From Syncellus.]

_Of the Destruction of the Jewish Temple_

He (Nabopolassar) sent his son Nebuchadrezzar with a great army against
Egypt, and against Judea, upon his being informed that they had
revolted from him; and by that means he subdued them all, and set fire
to the temple that was at Jerusalem; and removed our people entirely
out of their own country, and transferred them to Babylon, and our city
remained in a state of desolation during the interval of seventy years,
until the days of Cyrus, king of Persia. (He then says, that) this
Babylonian king conquered Egypt, and Syria, and Phœnicia, and Arabia,
and exceeded in his exploits all that had reigned before him in Babylon
and Chaldea. [From Josephus.]

_Of Nebuchadrezzar_

When Nabopolassar, his (Nebuchadrezzar’s) father, heard that the
governor, whom he had set over Egypt and the provinces of Cœle-Syria
and Phœnicia, had revolted, he was determined to punish his
delinquencies, and for that purpose entrusted part of his army to his
son Nebuchadrezzar, who was then of mature age, and sent him forth
against the rebel: and Nebuchadrezzar engaged and overcame him, and
reduced the country again under his dominion. And it came to pass that
his father, Nabopolassar, was seized with a disorder which proved
fatal, and he died in the city of Babylon, after he had reigned nine
and twenty years.

Nebuchadrezzar, as soon as he had received intelligence of his father’s
death, set in order the affairs of Egypt and the other countries, and
committed to some of his faithful officers the captives he had taken
from the Jews, and Phœnicians, and Syrians, and the nations belonging
to Egypt, that they might conduct them with that part of the forces
which had heavy armour, together with the rest of his baggage, to
Babylonia: in the meantime with a few attendants he hastily crossed
the desert to Babylon. When he arrived there he found that his affairs
had been faithfully conducted by the Chaldeans, and that the principal
person among them had preserved the kingdom for him: and he accordingly
obtained possession of all his father’s dominions. And he distributed
the captives in colonies in the most proper places in Babylonia: and
adorned the temple of Belus, and the other temples, in a sumptuous
and pious manner, out of the spoils which he had taken in this war.
He also rebuilt the old city, and added another to it on the outside,
and so far completed Babylon that none who might besiege it afterwards
should have it in their power to divert the river so as to facilitate
an entrance into it: and he effected this by building three walls
about the inner city, and three about the outer. Some of these walls
he built of burnt brick and bitumen, and some of brick only. When he
had thus admirably fortified the city, and had magnificently adorned
the gates, he added also a new palace to those in which his forefathers
had dwelt, adjoining them, but exceeding them in height and splendour.
Any attempt to describe it would be tedious: yet notwithstanding its
prodigious size and magnificence, it was finished within fifteen days.
In this palace he erected very high walks, supported by stone pillars;
and by planting what was called a pensile paradise, and replenishing it
with all sorts of trees, he rendered the prospect an exact resemblance
of a mountainous country. This he did to gratify his queen [Amytis],
because she had been brought up in Media, and was fond of a mountainous
situation. [From Josephus.]

_Of the Chaldean Kings after Nebuchadrezzar_

Nebuchadrezzar, whilst he was engaged in building the above-mentioned
wall, fell sick, and died after he had reigned forty-three years;
whereupon his son Evil-merodachus succeeded him in his kingdom. His
government, however, was conducted in an illegal and improper manner,
and he fell a victim to a conspiracy which was formed against his life
by Neriglissorus, his sister’s husband, after he had reigned about two
years.

Upon his death Neriglissorus, the chief of the conspirators, obtained
possession of the kingdom, and reigned four years.

He was succeeded by his son Labarosoarchodus [Labashi-Marduk], who was
but a child, and reigned nine months; for his misconduct he was seized
by conspirators, and put to death by torture.

After his death, the conspirators assembled, and by common consent
placed the crown upon the head of Nabonidus, a man of Babylon, and
one of the leaders of the insurrection. It was in this reign that the
walls of the city of Babylon which defend the banks of the river were
curiously built with burnt brick and bitumen.

In the seventeenth year of the reign of Nabonidus, Cyrus came out of
Persia with a great army, and, having conquered all the rest of Asia,
advanced hastily into the country of Babylonia. As soon as Nabonidus
perceived he was advancing to attack him, he assembled his forces and
opposed him, but was defeated, and fled with a few of his adherents,
and was shut up in the city of Borsippus. Upon this Cyrus took
Babylon, and gave orders that the outer walls should be demolished,
because the city appeared of such strength as to render a siege
almost impracticable. From thence he marched to Borsippus to besiege
Nabonidus; but Nabonidus delivered himself into his hands without
holding out the place: he was therefore kindly treated by Cyrus, who
provided him with an establishment in Carmania, but sent him out of
Babylonia. Nabonidus accordingly spent the remainder of his life in
that country, where he died. [From Josephus.[38]]

_Of the Feast of Sacea_

Berosus, in the first book of his Babylonian history, says: That in the
eleventh month, called Loos [July], is celebrated in Babylon the feast
of Sacea for five days, in which it is the custom that the masters
should obey their domestics, one of whom is led round the house,
clothed in a royal garment, and him they call Zoganes. [From Athenæus.]

_A Fragment of Megasthenes Concerning Nebuchadrezzar_

Abydenus, in his history of the Assyrians, has preserved the
following fragment of Megasthenes, who says: That Nabucodrosorus
[Nebuchadrezzar], having become more powerful than Hercules, invaded
Libya and Iberia [Spain], and when he had rendered them tributary, he
extended his conquests over the inhabitants of the shores upon the
right of the sea. It is, moreover, related by the Chaldeans that as he
went up into his palace he was possessed by some god; and he cried out
and said:

“Oh! Babylonians, I, Nabucodrosorus, foretell unto you a calamity which
must shortly come to pass, which neither Belus, my ancestor, nor his
queen Beltis, have power to persuade the Fates to turn away. A Persian
mule shall come, and by the assistance of your gods shall impose upon
you the yoke of slavery; the author of which shall be a Mede, the
vainglory of Assyria. Before he should thus betray my subjects, O! that
some sea or whirlpool might receive him, and his memory be blotted out
forever; or that he might be cast out to wander through some desert
where there are neither cities nor the trace of men, a solitary exile
among rocks and caverns, where beasts and birds alone abide. But for
me, before he shall have conceived these mischiefs in his mind a
happier end will be provided.”

When he had thus prophesied, he expired, and was succeeded by his
son Evilmaruchus [Evil-merodach], who was slain by his kinsman
Neriglisares; and Neriglisares left Labassoarascus his son; and when
he also had suffered death by violence, they crowned Nabannidochus
[Nabonidus], who had no connection with the royal family; and in his
reign Cyrus took Babylon, and granted him a principality in Carmania.

And concerning the rebuilding of Babylon by Nabuchodonosor, he
[Megasthenes] writes thus: It is said that from the beginning all
things were water, called the sea; that Belus caused this state of
things to cease, and appointed to each its proper place; and he
surrounded Babylon with a wall; but in process of time this wall
disappeared; and Nabuchodonosor walled it in again, and it remained
so with its brazen gates until the time of the Macedonian conquest.
And after other things he [Megasthenes] says: Nabuchodonosor having
succeeded to the kingdom, built the walls of Babylon in a triple
circuit in fifteen days; and he turned the river Armacale, a branch
of the Euphrates, and the Acracanus; and above the city of Sippara he
dug a receptacle for the waters, whose perimeter was forty parasangs
and whose depth was twenty cubits; and he placed gates at the entrance
thereof, by opening which they irrigated the plains, and these they
called echetognomones (sluices); and he constructed dikes against the
eruptions of the Erythræan Sea, and built the city of Teredon to check
the incursions of the Arabs; and he adorned the palaces with trees,
calling them hanging gardens. [From Abydenus.][b]

NINUS AND SEMIRAMIS

The reader, having already passed in review the chief events of
Mesopotamian history, is aware that the modern historian knows
nothing of a King Ninus, or of any warlike female ruler of Assyria.
Nevertheless this story of Diodorus--the only long account of Assyrian
affairs that has come down to us from antiquity--has true historical
value, as showing the manner of tradition that may be woven about the
half-remembered facts of history. The account has interest for yet
another reason: it is a record that passed current as the authentic
history of Assyria for some eighteen hundred years--from classical
times till after the middle of the nineteenth century.[a]

Asia was anciently govern’d, says Diodorus, by its own Native Kings, of
whom there’s no History extant, either as to any memorable Actions they
perform’d, or so much as to their Names.

Ninus is the First King of Assyria that is recorded in History; he
perform’d many great and noble Actions; of whom we have design’d to set
forth something particularly.

He was naturally of a Warlike Disposition, and very ambitious of Honour
and Glory, and therefore caus’d the strongest of his Young Men to be
train’d up in Martial Discipline, and by long and continual Exercise
inur’d them readily to undergo all the Toyls and Hazards of War.

Having therefore rais’d a gallant Army, he made a League with Arieus
King of Arabia, that was at that time full of strong and valiant Men.
For that Nation are constant Lovers of Liberty, never upon any Terms
admitting of any Foreign Prince: And therefore neither the Persian, nor
the Macedonian Kings after them, (though they were most powerful in
Arms) were ever able to conquer them. For Arabia being partly Desert,
and partly parcht up for want of Water (unless it be in some secret
Wells and Pits known only to the Inhabitants) cannot be subdu’d by any
Foreign Force.

Ninus therefore, the Assyrian King, with the Prince of Arabia his
Assistant, with a numerous Army, invaded the Babylonians, then next
bordering upon him: For the Babylon that is now, was not built at
that time; but the Province of Babylon had in it then many other
considerable Cities, whose Inhabitants he easily subdu’d, (being
rude and unexpert in Matters of War,) and impos’d upon them a Yearly
Tribute; but carried away the King with all his Children Prisoners, and
after put them to Death. Afterwards he entered Armenia with a great
Army, and having overthrown some Cities, he struck Terror into the
rest, and thereupon their King Barzanus seeing himself unable to deal
with him, met him with many rich Presents, and submitted himself; whom
Ninus out of his generous disposition, courteously receiv’d, and gave
him the Kingdom of Armenia, upon condition he should be his Friend for
the future, and supply him with Men and Provision for his Wars as he
should have occasion.

Being thus strengthen’d, he invaded Media, whose King Pharnus coming
out against him with a mighty Army, was utterly routed, and lost most
of his Men, and was taken Prisoner with his Wife and Seven Children,
and afterwards Crucified.

Ninus being thus successful and prosperous, his Ambition rose the
higher, and his desire most ardent to conquer all in Asia, which lay
between Tanais and Nile; (so far does Prosperity and Excess in getting
much, inflame the Desire to gain and compass more). In order hereunto,
he made one of his Friends Governor of the Province of Media, and he
himself in the meantime marcht against the other Provinces of Asia,
and subdu’d them all in Seventeen Years time, except the Indians
and Bactrians. But no Writer has given any Account of the several
Battels he fought, nor of the number of those Nations he conquer’d;
and therefore following Ctesias the Cnidian, we shall only briefly
run over the most famous and considerable Countries. He over-ran all
the Countries bordering upon the Sea, together with the adjoining
Continent, as Egypt and Phenicia, Celo-Syria, Cilicia, Pamphylia,
Lycia, Caria, Phrygia, Mysia, and Lydia; the Province of Troas and
Phrygia upon the Hellespont, together with Propontis, Bithynia,
Cappadocia, and the Barbarous Nations adjoyning upon Pontus, as far
as to Tanais; he gain’d likewise the Country of the Caddusians,
Tarpyrians, Hyrcanians, Dacians, Derbians, Carmanians, Choroneans,
Borchanians, and Parthians. He pierc’d likewise into Persia, the
Provinces of Susiana, and that call’d Caspiana, through those narrow
Straits, which from thence are call’d the Caspian Gates. He subdu’d
likewise many other less considerable Nations, which would be too
tedious here to recount. After much toyl and labour in vain, because
of the difficulty of the Passes, and the multitude of those Warlike
Inhabitants, he was forc’d to put off his War against the Bactrians to
another opportunity.

Having marcht back with his Army into Syria, he markt out a Place for
the building of a stately City: For in as much as he had surpast all
his Ancestors in the glory and success of his Arms, he was resolv’d to
build one of that state and grandeur as should not only be the greatest
then in the World, but such as none that ever should come after him
should be able easily to exceed.

The King of Arabia he sent back with his Army into his own Country,
with many rich Spoils, and noble Gifts. And he himself having got a
great number of his Forces together, and provided Mony and Treasure,
and other things necessary for the purpose, built a City near the River
Euphrates, very famous for its Walls and Fortifications; of a long
Form; for on both sides it ran out in length above an Hundred and Fifty
Furlongs; but the Two lesser Angles were only Ninety Furlongs apiece;
so that the Circumference of the whole was Four Hundred and Fourscore
Furlongs. And the Founder was not herein deceived, for none ever after
built the like, either as to the largeness of its Circumference, or the
stateliness of its Walls. For the Wall was an Hundred Foot in Height,
and so broad as Three Chariots might be driven together upon it in
breast: There were Fifteen Hundred Turrets upon the Walls, each of them
Two Hundred Foot high. He appointed the City to be inhabited chiefly by
the richest Assyrians, and gave liberty to People of any other Nation
(to as many as would) to dwell there, and allow’d to the Citizens a
large Territory next adjoining to them, and call’d the City after his
own Name, Ninus.

When he had finish’d his Work here, he marcht with an Army against the
Bactrians, where he marry’d Semiramis; who being so famous above any
of her Sex (as in History it is related) we cannot but say something of
her here in this Place, being one advanc’d from so low a Fortune, to
such a state and degree of Honour and Worldly Glory.

There’s a City in Syria, call’d Ascalon, near which is a deep Lake
abounding with Fish, where not far off stands a Temple dedicated to a
famous Goddess call’d by the Syrians Derceto [Dagon], she represents a
Woman in her Face, and a Fish in all other parts of her Body, upon the
account following, as the most Judicious among the Inhabitants report;
for they say, that Venus being angry at this Goddess, caus’d her to
fall into a vehement pang of Love with a beautiful Young Man, who was
among others sacrificing to her, and was got with Child by him, and
brought to Bed of a Daughter; and being asham’d afterwards of what she
had done, she kill’d the Young Man, and expos’d the Child among Rocks
in the Desert, and through Sorrow and Shame cast her self into the
Lake, and was afterwards transform’d into a Fish; whence it came to
pass, that at this very Day the Syrians eat no Fish, but adore them as
Gods. They say that the Infant that was expos’d, was both preserv’d and
nourish’d by a most wonderful Providence, by the means of a great Flock
of Pigeons that nestled near to the Place where the Child lay; for with
their Wings they cherish’t it, and kept it warm; and observing where
the Herdsmen and other Shepherds left their Milk in the Neighbouring
Cottages, took it up in their Bills, and as so many Nurses thrust their
Beaks between the Infants Lips, and so instil’d the Milk: And when the
Child was a Year old, and stood in need of stronger Nourishment, the
Pigeons fed it with pieces of Cheese which they pickt out from the
rest: When the Shepherds return’d, and found their Cheeses pickt round,
they wondred (at first) at the thing; but observing afterward how it
came to pass, they not only found out the cause, but likewise a very
beautiful Child, which they forthwith carry’d away to their Cottages,
and made a Present of it to the King’s Superintendent of his Flocks
and Herds (whose Name was Simma) who (having no Children of his own)
carefully bred up the Young Lady as if she had been his own Daughter,
and call’d her Semiramis, a denomination in the Syrian Language deriv’d
from Pigeons, which the Syrians ever after ador’d for Goddesses. And
these are the Stories told of Semiramis.

Being now grown up, and exceeding all others of her Sex for the Charms
of her Beauty, one of the King’s great Officers, call’d Menon, was
sent to take an account of the King’s Herds and Flocks: This Man was
Lord President of the King’s Council, and chief Governor of Syria, and
lodging upon this occasion at Simma’s House, at the sight of Semiramis,
fell in love with her, and with much intreaty obtain’d her from Simma,
and carried her away with him to Nineve, where he Marry’d her, and had
by her two Sons, Hypates and Hydaspes: And being a Woman of admirable
Parts as well as Beauty, her Husband was altogether at her Devotion,
and never would do any thing without her Advice, which was ever
successful.

About this time Ninus having finish’d his City (call’d after his own
Name), prepar’d for his Expedition against the Bactrians; and having
had experience of the greatness of their Forces, the valour of their
Souldiers, and the difficulties of passing into their Country, he
rais’d an Army of the choicest Men he could pick out from all Parts of
his Dominions; for because he was baffl’d in his former Expedition,
he was resolv’d to invade Bactria with a far stronger Army than he
did before. Bringing therefore his whole Army together at a General
Randezvouz, there were numbred (as Ctesias writes) Seventeen Hundred
Thousand Foot, above Two Hundred and Ten Thousand Horse, and no fewer
than Ten Thousand and Six Hundred Hooked Chariots. This number at
the first view seems to be very incredible; but to such as seriously
consider the largeness and populousness of Asia, it cannot be judg’d
impossible. For if any (not to say any thing of the Eight Hundred
Thousand Men that Darius had with him in his Expedition against the
Scythians, and the innumerable Army Xerxes brought over with him
into Greece) will but take notice of things done lately, even as of
Yesterday, he’l more easily credit what we now say. For in Sicily
Dionysius led only out of that one City of Syracuse, an Hundred and
Twenty Thousand Foot, and Twelve Thousand Horse; and lancht out of one
Port, a Navy of Four Hundred Sail, of which some were of Three Tyre
of Oars, and others of Five: And the Romans a little before the Times
of Hannibal, rais’d in Italy of their own Citizens and Confederates,
an Army little less than a Million of Fighting Men; and yet all Italy
is not to be compar’d with one Province of Asia for number of Men.
But this may sufficiently convince them that compute the ancient
Populousness of the Countries by the present depopulations of the
Cities at this day.

Ninus therefore marching with these Forces against the Bactrians,
divided his Army into Two Bodies, because of the straitness and
difficulty of the Passages. There are in Bactria many large and
populous Cities, but one is more especially Famous, call’d Bactria,
in which the King’s Palace, for greatness and magnificence, and the
Citadel for strength, far excel all the rest.

Oxyartes reign’d there at this time, who caus’d all that were able,
to bear Arms, and muster’d an Army of Four Hundred Thousand Men. With
these he met the Enemy at the Straights, entering into his Country,
where he suffered Ninus to enter with part of his Army: When he saw
a competent number enter’d, he fell upon them in the open Plain, and
fought them with that resolution, that the Bactrians put the Assyrians
to flight, and pursuing them to the next Mountains, kill’d a Hundred
Thousand of their Enemies; but after the whole Army enter’d, the
Bactrians were overpower’d by number, and were broken, and all fled to
their several Cities, in order to defend every one his own Country.
Ninus easily subdu’d all the rest of the Forts and Castles; but Bactria
itself was so strong and well provided, that he could not force it;
which occasion’d a long and tedious Siege, so that the Husband of
Semiramis (who was there in the King’s Camp) being Love-sick, impatient
of being any longer without his wife, sent for her, who being both
discreet and couragious, and endowed with other noble Qualifications,
readily imbrac’d the opportunity of shewing to the World her own
natural Valour and Resolution; and that she might with more safety
perform so long a Journey, she put on such a Garment as whereby she
could not be discern’d whether she were a Man or a Woman; and so made,
that by it she both preserv’d her Beauty from being scorcht by the heat
in her Journey, and likewise was thereby more nimble and ready for
any business she pleas’d to undertake, being of her self a youthful
and sprightly Lady; and this sort of Garment was in so high esteem,
that the Medes afterwards when they came to be Lords of Asia, wore
Semiramis’s Gown, and the Persians likewise after them.

As soon as she came to Bactria, and observ’d the manner of the Siege,
how Assaults were made only in open and plain Places most likely to
be enter’d, and that none dar’d to approach the Cittadel, because of
its natural Strength and Fortification, and that they within took more
care to defend the lower and weaker parts of the Walls, than the Castle
where they neglected their Guards, she took some with her that were
skilful in climbing up the Rocks, and with them with much Toyl, pass’d
over a deep Trench, and possess’d her self of part of the Castle;
whereupon she gave a Signal to them that were assaulting the Wall upon
the Plain. Then they that were within the City being suddenly struck
with a Panick Fear at the taking of the Castle, in desperation of
making any further defence forsook the Walls.

The City being taken in this manner, the King greatly admir’d the
Valour of the Woman, and bountifully rewarded her, and was presently
so passionately affected at the sight of her Beauty, that he us’d all
the Arguments imaginable to persuade her Husband to bestow his Wife
upon him, promising him as a Reward of his Kindness, to give him his
daughter Sosana in Marriage: But he absolutely refus’d; upon which the
King threaten’d him, that if he would not consent, he would pluck out
his Eyes.

Menon hereupon out of fear of the King’s Threats, and overpower’d with
the Love of his Wife, fell into a distracted Rage and Madness, and
forthwith hang’d himself. And this was the occasion of the advancement
of Semiramis to the Regal state and dignity.

Ninus having now possess’d himself of all the Treasures of Bactria
(where was abundance of Gold and Silver) and settled his Affairs
throughout the whole Province of Bactria, returned with his Army to his
own Country.

Afterwards he had a Son by Semiramis, call’d Ninyas, and dy’d leaving
his Wife Queen Regent. She bury’d her Husband Ninus in the Royal
Palace, and rais’d over him a Mount of Earth of a wonderful bigness,
being Nine Furlongs in height, and ten in breadth, as Ctesias says:
So that the City standing in a Plain near to the River Euphrates, the
Mount (many Furlongs off) looks like a stately Cittadel. And it’s said,
that it continues to this day, though Nineve was destroy’d by the Medes
when they ruin’d the Assyrian Empire.

SEMIRAMIS BUILDS A GREAT CITY

Semiramis was naturally of an high aspiring Spirit, ambitious to excel
all her Predecessors in glorious Actions, and therefore imploy’d all
her Thoughts about the building of a City in the Province of Babylon;
and to this end having provided Architects, Artists, and all other
Necessaries for the Work, She got together Two Millions of Men out of
all Parts of the Empire to be imploy’d in the building of the City.
It was so built as that the River Euphrates ran through the middle of
it, and she compass’d it round with a Wall of Three Hundred and Sixty
Furlongs in Circuit, and adorn’d with many stately Turrets; and such
was the state and grandeur of the Work, that the Walls were of that
breadth, as that Six Chariots abreast might be driven together upon
them. Their height was such as exceeded all Mens belief that heard
of it (as Ctesias Cnidius relates). But Clitarchus, and those who
afterwards went over with Alexander into Asia, have written that the
Walls were in Circuit Three Hundred Sixty Five Furlongs; the Queen
making them of that Compass, to the end that the Furlongs should be as
many in number as the Days of the Year: They were of Brick cemented
with Brimstone; in height as Ctesias says Fifty Orgyas; but as some
of the later Writers report, but Fifty Cubits only, and that the
Breadth was but a little more than what would allow two Chariots to
be driven afront. There were Two Hundred and Fifty Turrets, in height
and thickness proportionable to the largeness of the Wall. It is not
to be wondered at, that there were so few Towers upon a Wall of so
great a Circuit, being that in many Places round the City, there were
deep Morasses; so that it was judg’d to no purpose to raise Turrets
there where they were so naturally fortify’d: Between the Wall and the
Houses, there was a Space left round the City of Two Hundred Foot.

That the Work might be the more speedily dispatcht, to each of her
Friends was allotted a Furlong, with an allowance of all Expences
necessary for their several Parts, and commanded all should be finish’d
in a Years time; which being diligently perfected with the Queen’s
Approbation, she then made a Bridge over the narrowest part of the
River, Five Furlongs in length, laying the Supports and Pillars of the
arches with great Art and Skill in the Bottom of the Water Twelve Foot
distance from each other. That the Stones might be the more firmly
joyn’d, they were bound together with Hooks of Iron, and the Joints
fill’d up with melted Lead. And before the Pillars, she made and placed
Defences, with sharp pointed Angles, to receive the Water before it
beat upon the flat sides of the Pillars, which caus’d the Course of the
Water to run round by degrees gently and moderately as far as to the
broad sides of the Pillars, so that the sharp Points of the Angles cut
the Stream, and gave a check to its violence, and the roundness of them
by little and little giving way, abated the force of the Current. This
bridge was floor’d with great Joices and Planks of Cedar, Cypress and
Palm Trees, and was Thirty Foot in breadth, and for Art and Curiosity,
yielded to none of the works of Semiramis. On either side of the River
she rais’d a Bank, as broad as the Wall, and with great cost drew it
out in length an Hundred Furlongs. She built likewise Two Palaces at
each end of the Bridge upon the Bank of the River, whence she might
have a Prospect over the whole City, and make her Passage as by Keys
to the most convenient Places in it, as she had occasion. And whereas
Euphrates runs through the middle of Babylon, making its course to the
South, the Palaces lye the one on the East and the other on the West
Side of the River; both built at exceeding Costs and Expence. For that
on the West had an high and stately Wall, made of well burnt Brick,
Sixty Furlongs in compass; within this was drawn another of a round
Circumference, upon which were portray’d in the Bricks, before they
were burnt, all sorts of living Creatures, as if it were to the Life,
laid with great Art in curious Colours. This Wall was in Circuit Forty
Furlongs, Three Hundred Bricks thick, and in height (as Ctesias says) a
Hundred Yards, upon which were Turrets an Hundred and Forty Yards high.

The Third and most inward Wall immediately surrounded the Palace,
Thirty Furlongs in Compass, and far surmounted the middle Wall, both in
height and thickness; and on this Wall and the Towers were represented
the Shapes of all sorts of Living Creatures, artificially exprest in
most lively Colours. Especially was represented a General Hunting of
all sorts of wild Beasts, each Four Cubits high and upwards; amongst
these was to be seen Semiramis on Horseback, striking a Leopard through
with a Dart, and next to her, her Husband Ninus in close Fight with a
Lion, piercing him with his Lance. To this Palace she built likewise
Three Gates, under which were Apartments of Brass for Entertainments,
into which Passages were open’d by a certain Engin.

This Palace far excell’d that on the other side of the River, both
in greatness and adornments. For the outmost Wall of that (made of
well burnt Brick) was but Thirty Furlongs in compass. Instead of the
curious Portraiture of Beasts, there were the Brazen Statues of Ninus
and Semiramis, the Great Officers, and of Jupiter, whom the Babylonians
call Belus; and likewise Armies drawn up in Battalia, and divers sorts
of Hunting were there represented, to the great diversion and pleasure
of the Beholders. After all these in a low Ground in Babylon, she
sunk a Place for a Pond Four-square, every Square being Three Hundred
Furlongs in length, lin’d with Brick, and cemented with Brimstone, and
the whole Five and Thirty Foot in depth: Into this having first turn’d
the River, she then made a Passage in nature of a Vault, from one
Palace to another, whose Arches were built of firm and strong Brick,
and plaister’d all over on both sides with Bitumen Four Cubits thick.
The Walls of this Vault were Twenty Bricks in thickness, and Twelve
Foot High, beside and above the Arches; and the breadth was Fifteen
Foot. This Piece of Work being finish’d in Two Hundred and Sixty Days,
the River was turn’d into its ancient Channel again, so that the River
flowing over the whole Work, Semiramis could go from one Palace to the
other, without passing over the River. She made likewise Two Brazen
Gates at either end of the Vault, which continu’d to the time of the
Persian Empire.

In the middle of the City, she built a Temple to Jupiter, whom the
Babylonians call Belus (as we have before said) of which since
Writers differ amongst themselves, and the Work is now wholly decay’d
through length of Time, there’s nothing that can certainly be related
concerning it: Yet it’s apparent it was of an exceeding great height,
and that by the advantage of it, the Chaldean Astrologers exactly
observ’d the setting and rising of the Stars. The whole was built of
Brick, cemented with Brimstone, with great Art and Cost. Upon the top
she plac’d Three Statues of beaten Gold of Jupiter, Juno and Rhea.
That of Jupiter stood upright in the posture as if he were walking; he
was Forty Foot in height, and weigh’d a Thousand Babylonish Talents.
The Statue of Rhea was of the same weight sitting on a Golden Throne,
having Two Lions standing on either side, one at her Knees, and near to
them Two exceeding great Serpents of Silver, weighing Thirty Talents
apiece. Here likewise the Image of Juno stood upright, and weighed
Eight Hundred Talents, grasping a Serpent by the Head in her right
Hand, and holding a Scepter adorn’d with precious Stones in her left.

For all these Deities there was plac’d a Common Table made of beaten
Gold, Forty Foot long, and Fifteen broad, weighing Five Hundred
Talents: Upon which stood Two Cups weighing Thirty Talents, and near to
them as many Censers weighing Three Hundred Talents: There were there
likewise plac’d Three Drinking Bowls of Gold, one of which dedicated
to Jupiter, weigh’d Twelve Hundred Babylonish Talents, but the other
Two Six Hundred apiece; but all those the Persian Kings sacrilegiously
carry’d away. And length of Time has either altogether consum’d, or
much defac’d the Palaces and the other Structures; so that at this day
but a small part of this Babylon is inhabited, and the greatest part
which lay within the Walls is turn’d into Tillage and Pasture.

There was likewise a Hanging Garden (as it’s call’d) near the Citadel,
not built by Semiramis, but by a later Prince, call’d Cyrus, for the
sake of a Curtesan, who being a Persian (as they say) by Birth, and
coveting Meadows on Mountain Tops, desir’d the King by an Artificial
Plantation to imitate the Land in Persia. This Garden was Four Hundred
Foot Square, and the Ascent up to it was as to the Top of a Mountain,
and had Buildings and Apartments out of one into another, like unto
a Theater. Under the Steps to the Ascent, were built Arches one
above another, rising gently by degrees, which supported the whole
Plantation. The highest Arch upon which the Platform of the Garden was
laid, was Fifty Cubits high, and the Garden itself was surrounded with
Battlements and Bulwarks. The Walls were made very strong, built at no
small Charge and Expence, being Two and Twenty Foot thick, and every
Sally-port Ten Foot wide: Over the several Stories of this Fabrick,
were laid Beams and Summers of huge Massy Stones each Sixteen Foot
long, and Four broad.

The Roof over all these was first cover’d with Reeds, daub’d with
abundance of Brimstone; then upon them was laid double Tiles pargeted
together with a hard and durable Mortar (such as we call Plaister
of Paris), and over them after all, was a Covering with Sheets of
Lead, that the Wet which drencht through the Earth, might not rot
the Foundation. Upon all these was laid Earth of a convenient depth,
sufficient for the growth of the greatest Trees. When the Soyl was laid
even and smooth, it was planted with all sorts of Trees, which both for
Greatness and Beauty, might delight the Spectators. The Arches (which
stood one above another, and by that means darted light sufficient one
into another) had in them many stately Rooms of all Kinds, and for all
purposes. But there was one that had in it certain Engins, whereby it
drew plenty of Water out of the River through certain Conduits and
Conveyances from the Platform of the Garden, and no body without was
the wiser, or knew what was done. This Garden (as we said before) was
built in later Ages.

But Semiramis built likewise other Cities upon the Banks of Euphrates
and Tigris, where she establish’d Marts for the vending of Merchandize
brought from Media and Paretacena, and other Neighbouring Countries.
For next to Nile and Ganges, Euphrates and Tigris are the noblest
Rivers of all Asia, and have their Spring-heads in the Mountains of
Arabia, and are distant one from another Fifteen Hundred Furlongs. They
run through Media and Paretacena into Mesopotamia, which from its lying
in the middle between these Two Rivers, has gain’d from them that Name;
thence passing through the Province of Babylon, they empty themselves
into the Red Sea. These being very large Rivers, and passing through
divers Countries, greatly inrich the Merchants that traffick in those
Parts; so that the Neighbouring Places are full of Wealthy Mart Towns,
and greatly advanc’d the glory and majesty of Babylon.

Semiramis likewise caus’d a great Stone to be cut out of the Mountains
of Armenia, an Hundred and Twenty Five Foot in length, and Five in
breadth and thickness; this she convey’d to the River by the help
of many Yokes of Oxen and Asses, and there put it Aboard a Ship,
and brought it safe by Water to Babylon, and set it up in the most
remarkable High-way as a wonderful Spectacle to all Beholders. From
its shape it’s call’d an Obelisk (Obelos in Greek signifies a Spit)
and is accounted one of the Seven Wonders of the World. There are
indeed many remarkable and wonderful things to be seen in Babylon;
but amongst these, the great quantity of Brimstone that there flows
out of the Ground, is not to be the least admir’d, which is so much,
that it not only supply’d all their occasions in building such great
and mighty Works, but the common People profusely gather it, and when
it’s dry, burn it instead of Fewel; and though it be drawn out by an
innumerable Company of People, as from a great Fountain, yet it’s as
plentiful as ever it was before. Near this Fountain there’s a Spring
not big, but very fierce and violent, for it casts forth a Sulphureous
and gross Vapour, which suddenly kills every living Creature that comes
near to it; for the Breath being stopt a long time, and all power
of Respiration taken away by the force of the Exhalation, the Body
presently swells so, that the Parts about the Lungs are all in a Flame.

Beyond the River there is a Morass, about which is a crusty Earth; if
any unacquainted with the Place get into it, at first he floats upon
the Top, when he comes into the Middle he’s violently hal’d away,
and striving to help himself, seems to be held so fast by something
or other, that all his Labour to get loose is in vain. And first his
Feet, then his Legs and Thighs to his Loyns are benumm’d, at length
his whole Body is stupify’d, and then down he sinks to the Bottom, and
presently after is cast up dead to the Surface. And thus much for the
Wonders of Babylon.

SEMIRAMIS BEGINS A CAREER OF CONQUEST

When Semiramis had finish’d all her Works, she marcht with a great Army
into Media, and encamp’d near to a Mountain call’d Bagistan; there she
made a Garden twelve Furlongs in Compass: It was in a plain Champain
Country, and had a great Fountain in it, which water’d the whole
Garden. Mount Bagistan is dedicated to Jupiter, and towards one side
of the Garden has steep Rocks seventeen Furlongs from the Top to the
Bottom. She cut out a Piece of the lower Part of the Rock, and caus’d
her own Image to be carv’d upon it, and a Hundred of her Guard that
were Launceteers standing round about her. She wrote likewise in Syriac
Letters upon the Rock, That Semiramis ascended from the Plain to the
Top of the Mountain by laying the Packs and Fardles of the Beasts that
follow’d her one upon another.

Marching away from hence, she came to Chaone, a City of Media, where
she incamp’d upon a rising Ground, from whence she took notice of an
exceeding great and high Rock, where she made another very great Garden
in the very Middle of the Rock, and built upon it stately Houses of
Pleasure, whence she might both have a delightful Prospect into the
Garden, and view the Army as they lay incamp’d below in the Plain;
being much delighted with this Place she stay’d here a considerable
Time, giving up her self to all kinds of Pleasures and Delights,
for she forbore marrying lest she should then be depos’d from the
Government, and in the mean time she made Choice of the handsomest
Commanders to be her Gallants; but after they had layn with her she cut
off their Heads.

From hence she march’d towards Ecbatana, and arriv’d at the Mountain
Zarcheum, which being many Furlongs in Extent, and full of steep
Precipices and craggy Rocks, there was no passing but by long and
tedious Windings and Turnings. To leave therefore behind her an Eternal
Monument of her Name, and to make a short Cut for her Passage, she
caus’d the Rocks to be hew’d down, and the Valleys to be fill’d up with
Earth, and so in a short time at a vast Expence laid the Way open and
plain, which to this day is call’d Semiramis’s Way.

When she came to Ecbatana, which is situated in a low and even Plain,
she built there a stately Palace, and bestow’d more of her Care and
Pains here than she had done at any other Place. For the City wanting
Water (there being no Spring near) she plentifully supply’d it with
good and wholesom Water, brought thither with a great deal of Toyl and
Expence, after this manner: There’s a Mountain call’d Orontes, twelve
Furlongs distant from the City, exceeding high and steep for the Space
of five and twenty Furlongs up to the Top; on the other side of this
Mount there’s a great Mear which empties it self into the River. At the
Foot of this Mountain she dug a Canal fifteen Foot in Breadth and Forty
in Depth, through which she convey’d Water in great Abundance into the
City. And these are the Things which she did in Media.

Afterwards she made a Progress through Persia and all the rest of her
Dominions in Asia, and all along as she went she plain’d all the Way
before her, levelling both Rocks and Mountains. On the other hand
in Champain Countries she would raise Eminences on which she would
sometimes build Sepulchres for her Officers and Commanders, and at
other times Towns and Cities. Throughout her whole Expeditions she
always us’d to raise an Ascent, upon which she pitcht her own Pavilion,
that from thence she might have a View of her whole Army. Many Things
which she perform’d in Asia remain to this day, and are call’d
Semiramis’s Works.

Afterwards she pass’d through all Egypt, and having conquer’d the
greatest Part of Lybia, she went to the Temple of Jupiter Hammon, and
there inquir’d of the Oracle how long she should live; which return’d
her this Answer, That she should leave this World and afterwards be for
ever honour’d by some Nations in Asia, when Ninyas her Son should be
plotting against her.

When she had perform’d these things, she marcht into Ethiopia, and
having subdu’d many Places in it, she had an Opportunity to see what
was there very remarkable and wonderful. For they say there’s a
foursquare Lake, a hundred and sixty Foot in Circuit, the Water of
which is in Colour like unto Vermilion, and of an extraordinary sweet
Flavour, much like unto old Wine; yet of such wonderful Operation, that
whosoever drinks of it goes presently mad, and confesses all the faults
that ever he had been before guilty of; but some will scarce believe
this Relation.

The Ethiopians have a peculiar way of burying their Dead; for after
they have embalm’d the Body they pour round about it melted Glass, and
then place it upon a Pillar, so that the Corps may be plainly seen
through the Glass, as Herodotus has reported the thing. But Ctesias of
Cnidus affirms that he tells a Winter-tale, and says that it’s true
indeed that the Body is embalm’d, but that Glass is not pour’d upon the
naked Body, for the Bodies thereby would be so scorch’d and defac’d
that they could not possibly retain any likeness to the dead: And that
therefore they make an hollow Statue of Gold, and put the Body within
it and then pour the melted Glass round upon this Statue, which they
set upon some high Place, and so the Statue which resembles the dead
is seen through the Glass, and thus he says they used to bury those of
the richer Sort; But those of meaner Fortunes they put into Statues of
Silver; and for the poor they make Statues of Potter’s Clay, every one
having Glass enough, for there’s Abundance to be got in Ethiopia, and
ready at hand for all the Inhabitants. But we shall speak more fully of
the Customs and Laws of the Ethiopians and the Product of the Land and
other things worthy of Remark presently when we come to relate their
Antiquities and old Fables and Stories.

SEMIRAMIS INVADES INDIA

Semiramis having settl’d her affairs in Egypt and Ethiopia, return’d
with her Army into Asia to Bactria: And now having a great Army, and
enjoying a long Peace, she had a longing Desire to perform some notable
Exploit by her Arms. Hearing therefore that the Indians were the
greatest Nation in the whole World, and had the largest and richest
Tract of Land of all others, she resolv’d to make War upon them.
Stabrobates was at that time King, who had innumerable Forces, and many
Elephants bravely accoutred and fitted to strike Terror into the Hearts
of his Enemies. For India for the Pleasantness of the Country excell’d
all others, being water’d in every Place with many Rivers, so that the
Land yielded every year a double Crop; and by that Means was so rich
and so abounded with Plenty of all things necessary for the Sustenance
of Man’s Life, that it supply’d the Inhabitants continually with such
things as made them excessively rich, insomuch as it was never known
that there was ever any Famine amongst them, the Climate being so happy
and favourable; and upon that account likewise there’s an incredible
Number of Elephants, which for Courage and Strength of Body far excel
those in Africa. Moreover this country abounds in Gold, Silver, Brass,
Iron and pretious Stones of all sorts, both for Profit and Pleasure.

All which being nois’d abroad, so stirr’d up the Spirit of Semiramis,
that (tho’ she had no Provocation given her), yet she was resolv’d upon
the War against the Indians. But knowing that she had need of great
Forces, she sent Dispatches to all the Provinces, with Command to the
Governors to list the choicest young Men they could find, ordering the
Proportion of Souldiers every Province and Country should send forth
according to the largeness of it; and commanded that all should furnish
themselves with new Arms and Armour, and all appear in three years time
at a general Randezvouz in Bactria bravely arm’d and accoutred in all
Points. And having sent the Shipwrights out to Phœnicia, Syria, Cyprus,
and other Places bordering upon the Sea-costs, she prepar’d Timber for
them fit for the Purpose, and order’d them to build Vessels that might
be taken asunder and convey’d from place to place wherever she pleas’d.
For the River Indus bordering upon that Kingdom being the greatest in
those parts, she stood in need of many River-boats to pass it in Order
to repress the Indians. But being there was no Timber near that River
she was necessitated to convey the Boats thither by Land from Bactria.

She further consider’d that she was much inferior to the Indians for
Elephants (which were absolutely necessary for her to make use of) she
therefore contriv’d to have Beasts that should resemble them, hoping by
this Means to strike a Terror into the Indians, who believ’d there were
no Elephants in any place but India.

To this End she provided three hundred thousand black Oxen, and
distributed the Flesh amongst a Company of ordinary Mechanicks and such
Fellows as she had to play the Coblers for her, and ordered them by
stitching the Skins together and stuffing them with Straw to imitate
the Shape of an Elephant, and in every one of them she put a Man to
govern them, and a Camel to carry them, so that at a distance they
appear’d to all that saw them as if they were really such Beasts.

They that were imploy’d in this Work wrought at it night and day in a
Place which was wall’d round for the Purpose, and Guards set at every
Gate, that none might be admitted either to go in or out, to the end
that none might see what they were doing, lest it should be nois’d
abroad and come to the Ears of the Indians.

Having therefore provided Shipping and Elephants in the space of two
years, in the third she randezvouz’d all her Forces in Bactria. Her
Army consisted (as Ctesias says) of three Millions of Foot, two hundred
Thousand Horse, and a hundred Thousand Chariots, and a hundred Thousand
Men mounted upon Camels with Swords four Cubits long. The Boats that
might be taken asunder were two Thousand; which the Camels carry’d
by Land as they did the Mock-Elephants, as we have before declar’d.
The Souldiers made their Horses familiar with these feign’d Beasts by
bringing them often to them, lest they should be terrify’d at the Sight
of them; which Perseus imitated many Ages after when he was to fight
with the Romans, who had Elephants in their Army out of Africa. However
this contrivance prov’d to be of no Advantage either to him or her, as
will appear in the Issue herein a little after related.

When Stabrobates the Indian King heard of these great Armies and the
mighty Preparations made against him, he did all he could to excel
Semiramis in everything. And first he built of great Canes four
Thousand River-boats: For abundance of these Canes grow in India about
the Rivers and Fenns, so thick as a Man can scarce fathom: And Vessels
made of these Reeds (they say) are exceeding useful, because they’l
never rot or be worm-eaten.

He was very diligent likewise in preparing of Arms and going from Place
to Place throughout all India, and so rais’d a far greater Army than
that of Semiramis. To his former Number of Elephants he added more,
which he took by hunting, and furnish’d them all with everything that
might make them look terrible in the Face of their Enemies, so that
by their Multitude and the Compleatness of their Armour in all Points
it seem’d above the Strength and Power of Man to bear up against the
violent Shock of these Creatures.

Having therefore made all these Preparations, he sent Embassadours to
Semiramis (as she was on her March towards him) to complain and upbraid
her for beginning a War without any Provocation or Injury offer’d her;
and by his private Letters taxed her with her whorish Course of Life,
and vow’d (calling the Gods to witness) that if he conquer’d her he
would nail her to the Cross. When she read the Letters, she smil’d, and
said, the Indian should presently have a Trial of her Valour by her
Actions. When she came up with her Army to the River Indus she found
the Enemies Fleet drawn up in a Line of Battle; whereupon she forthwith
drew up her own, and having mann’d it with the stoutest Souldiers,
joyn’d Battle, yet so ordering the Matter as to have her Land-forces
ready upon the Shoar to be assisting as there should be Occasion. After
a long and sharp Fight with Marks of Valour on both sides, Semiramis
was at length victorious, and sunk a Thousand of the Enemies Vessels,
and took a great number of Prisoners. Puffed up with this Success she
took in all the Cities and Islands that lay in the River, and carry’d
away a hundred Thousand Captives. After this the Indian King drew off
his Army (as if he fled for Fear) but in Truth to decoy his Enemies to
pass the River.

Semiramis therefore (seeing things fall out according to her wish) laid
a broad Bridge of Boats (at a vast Charge) over the River, and thereby
passed over all her Forces, leaving only threescore Thousand to guard
the Bridge, and with the rest of her Army pursu’d the Indians. She
plac’d the Mock-Elephants in the Front that the Enemies Scouts might
presently inform the King what Multitudes of Elephants she had in her
Army: And she was not deceiv’d in her hopes; for when the Spies gave
an Account to the Indians what a great Multitude of these Creatures
were advancing towards them, they were all in amaze, inquiring among
themselves, whence the Assyrians should be supply’d with such a vast
number of Elephants: But the Cheat could not be long conceal’d, for
some of Semiramis’s Souldiers being laid by the Heels for their
Carelessness upon the Guard (through Fear of further Punishment) made
their Escape and fled to the Enemy, and undeceiv’d them as to the
Elephants; upon which the Indian King was mightily encourag’d, and
caus’d Notice of the Delusion to be spread through the whole Army,
and then forthwith march’d with all his Force against the Assyrians,
Semiramis on the other hand doing the like.

When they approach’d near one to another, Stabrobates the Indian King
plac’d his Horse and Chariots in the Van-guard at a good distance
before the main Body of his Army. The Queen having plac’d her
Mock-Elephants at the like distance from her main Body, valiantly
receiv’d her Enemies Charge; but the Indian Horse were most strangely
terrify’d; for in Regard the Phantasms at a distance seem’d to be real
Elephants, the Horses of the Indians (being inur’d to those Creatures)
prest boldly and undauntedly forward; but when they came near and saw
another sort of Beast than usual, and the smell and every thing else
almost being strange and new to them, they broke in with great Terror
and Confusion, one upon another, so that they cast some of their Riders
headlong to the Ground, and ran away with others (as the Lot happen’d)
into the midst of their Enemies.

Whereupon Semiramis readily making use of her Advantage, with a Body
of choice Men fell in upon them, and routed them, forcing them back to
their main Body: And though Stabrobates was something astonish’d at
this unexpected Defeat, yet he brought up his Foot against the Enemy
with his Elephants in the Front: He himself was in the right Wing,
mounted upon a stately Elephant, and made a fierce Charge upon the
Queen her self, who happen’d then to be opposite to him in the left.

And tho’ the Mock-Elephants in Semiramis’s Army did the like, yet they
stood the violent shock of the other but a little while, for the Indian
Beasts being both exceeding strong and stout, easily bore down and
destroy’d all that oppos’d them, so that there was a great Slaughter;
for some they trampl’d under foot, others they rent in pieces with
their Teeth, and toss’d up others with their Trunks into the Air. The
Ground therefore being cover’d with Heaps of dead Carcases and nothing
but Death and Destruction to be seen on every hand, so that all were
full of Horror and Amazement, none durst keep their Order or Ranks any
longer.

Upon which the whole Assyrian Army fled outright, and the Indian King
encountered with Semiramis, and first wounded her with an Arrow in the
Arm, and afterwards with a Dart (in wheeling about) in the Shoulder,
whereupon the Queen (her Wounds not being mortal) fled, and by the
Swiftness of her Horse (which far exceeded the other that pursu’d her)
she got off. But all making one way to the Bridge of Boats, and such
a vast Multitude of Men thronging together in one strait and narrow
Passage, the Queen’s Souldiers miserably perish’d by treading down one
another under foot, and (which was strange and unusual) Horse and Foot
lay tumbling promiscuously one over another.

When they came at length to the Bridge, and the Indians at their
Heels, the consternation was so great that many on both sides the
Bridge were tumbled over into the River. But when the greatest part
of those that remain’d had got over, Semiramis caus’d the Cords and
Tenons of the Bridge to be cut, which done, the Boats (which were
before joyn’d together, and upon which was a great Number of Indians
not in the Pursuit) being now divided into many Parts, and carry’d
here and there by the force of the Current, Multitudes of the Indians
were drown’d, and Semiramis was now safe and secure, having such a
Barrier as the River betwixt her and her Enemies. Whereupon the Indian
King being forewarn’d by Prodigies from Heaven and the Opinions of the
Soothsayers, forbore all further pursuit. And Semiramis making Exchange
of Prisoners in Bactria return’d with scarce a third part of her Army.

A little time after, Semiramis being assaulted by an Eunuch through
the treacherous Contrivance of her Son, remembred the former Answer
given her by the Oracle at the Temple of Hammon, and therefore pass’d
the Business over without punishing of him who was chiefly concern’d
in the Plot: But surrendring the Crown to him, commanded all to obey
him as their lawful King, and forthwith disappear’d as if she had been
translated to the Gods, according to the Words of the Oracle. There
are some which fabulously say she was metamorphos’d into a Pigeon; and
that she flew away with a Flock of those Birds that lighted upon her
Palace: And hence it is that the Assyrians adore a Dove, believing
that Semiramis was enthron’d amongst the Gods. And this was the End
of Semiramis Queen of all Asia, except India, after she had liv’d
Sixty two years, and reign’d Forty two. And these are the Things which
Ctesias the Cnidian reports of her in his History.

ANOTHER VIEW OF SEMIRAMIS

Athenæus, and some other Writers, affirm that she was a most beautiful
Strumpet, and upon that account the King of Assyria fell in Love with
her, and at first was taken into his Favour, and at length becoming
his lawful Wife she prevail’d with her Husband to grant her the sole
and absolute Authority of the regal Government for the space of five
days. Taking therefore upon her the Scepter and royal Mantle of the
Kingdom, the first day she made a sumptuous Banquet and magnificent
Entertainments, to which she invited the Generals of the Army and all
the Nobility, in order to be observant to all her Commands.

The next day having both great and small at her beck, she committed her
Husband to the Gaol: And in Regard she was of a bold and daring Spirit,
apt and ready to undertake any great Matters, she easily gain’d the
Kingdom, which she held to the time of her old Age, and became famous
for her many great and wonderful Acts: And these are the Things which
Historians variously relate concerning her.[c]

The second account of Semiramis which Diodorus summarises in the
concluding paragraph above from “Athenæus and some other writers” would
appear to have been widely accepted in classical times. The same story
is told by Ælianus, and is worth quoting, if for nothing else, for the
quaintness of diction of Fleming’s sixteenth century translation.

“Of Semiramis some say this, and some set downe that, and amonge all
other thinges this (as deserving a monument of sempeternall memorye)
is recorded that shee was the moste bewtifull, the most amiable Lady
and Queene throughout the universall worlde, albeit shee dyd litle
regarde her fine proporcion, her excellent comlynesse, her angelicall
grace: and had no respect to the trymming and decking of her body
with gorgeous garments, and robes of royalty. It fortuned that this
Semiramis, by reason of the rumor and fame of her surpassing beauty,
was sent for into Assiria, that the king of that region might satisfie
himselfe with the sight of her peerelesse majestie, before whose
presence she came according to the tennor of the message.

“The King of Assiria, had no sooner cast his wanton eye upon her, but
was forthwith inflamed with the fire of affection towardes her. After
certaine circumstances over passed, she required of the King a rich
rewarde, namely, a robe of estate, the government of Asia for five
dayes continuaunce, and the absolute authorytie in all thinges that
were done in the kingdome. Which peticion of the Queene was granted
unto by the King, no deniall made to the contrary. In conclusion when
she was set and established in the throne of majesty, and had gotten
all things (without exception) in the gripes of her aspiryng minde she
commanded the King to be slayne, whereby he was dispossessed of his
dominion, and she presently thereupon enjoyed the scepter and crowne
imperiall over Assiria universall.”[d]

REIGN OF NINYAS TO SARDANAPALUS

To complete our view of the classical traditions regarding Assyria, we
must hear what Diodorus has to tell us of the successors of Semiramis.
Comparison of his account with the lists of Assyrian monarchs, as
now known to us, will show how greatly the perspective of Assyrian
history was foreshortened as viewed by the classical eye, and how
vague appeared the outline of the historical picture. Not even the
names of the greatest of oriental monarchs were remembered, though the
reminiscences of their deeds had not quite been forgotten. We shall
see in subsequent chapters how the names and the accurate records of
the deeds were restored to history. It may be added, however, that
no authentic account of the destruction of Nineveh has been as yet
recovered. For aught that is known to the contrary, the picturesque
story of Sardanapalus, as narrated by Diodorus, may be true in its
essentials, though it is improbable that the name of the last ruler of
Nineveh is correctly given. Still, the rather theatrical character of
the Greek conception of oriental customs is not to be forgotten.

It should be added that modern historians are not quite agreed as
to the exact period of Assyrian history to which the Sardanapalus
stories were applied. Lenormant was disposed to believe that the
Greek tradition was based upon reminiscences of a relatively early
destruction of Nineveh. It is known that the Assyrian Empire suffered
a partial eclipse after its first period of greatness, and it is
possible that some unknown king of about the tenth century B.C. was the
original of the Sardanapalus fable. Most recent historians, however,
are disposed to think that the Greek story really applies to the final
destruction of Nineveh, and that Asshurbanapal was the historical
monarch whose vaguely remembered deeds gave foundation to the chief
features of the story. The fact that Asshurbanapal was so great a
connoisseur of literature and art, lends a certain colour to this
supposition. It is of course understood that Asshurbanapal was not the
last ruler of Nineveh, and that the Greek myth, if based upon his life,
erred in associating him with the final catastrophe.[a] Here is the
story as Diodorus tells it:

Ninyas the Son of Ninus and Semiramis, succeeded, and reign’d
peaceably, nothing at all like his Mother for Valour and martial
Affairs. For he spent all his Time shut up in his Palace, insomuch as
he was never seen of any but of his Concubines and Eunuchs; for being
given up wholly to his Pleasures, he shook off all Cares and everything
that might be irksome and troublesome, placing all the Happiness of a
King in a Sordid Indulgence of all sorts of Voluptuousness. But that he
might reign the more securely, and be fear’d of all his Subjects, every
year he rais’d out of every Province a certain number of Souldiers,
under their several Generals, and having brought them in the City,
over every Country appointed such a Governor as he could most confide
in, and were most at his Devotion. At the end of the year he rais’d
as many more out of the Provinces, and sent the former home, taking
first of them an Oath of Fidelity. And this he did, that his Subjects
observing how he always had a great Army ready in the Field, those
of them who were inclin’d to be refractory or rebel (out of fear
of Punishment) might continue firm in their due Obedience. And the
further Ground likewise of this Yearly Change was, that the Officers
and Souldiers might from time to time be disbanded before they could
have time to be well acquainted one with another. For length of Time
in martial Imployments so improves the Skill and advances the Courage
and Resolution of the Commanders, that many times they conspire against
their Princes, and wholly fall off from their Allegiance.

His living thus close and unseen, was a covert to the Voluptuous Course
of his Life, and in the meantime (as if he had been a God) none durst
in the least mutter anything against him. And in this manner (creating
Commanders of his Army, constituting of Governors in Provinces,
appointing the Chamberlains and Officers of his Houshold, placing of
Judges in their several Countries, and the ordering and disposing of
all other Matters as he thought fit most for his own Advantage) he
spent his Days in Nineve.

After the same manner almost liv’d all the rest of the Kings for the
space of Thirty Generations, in a continu’d Line of Succession from
Father to Son, to the very Reign of Sardanapalus; in whose time the
Empire of the Assyrians devolv’d upon the Medes, after it had continu’d
above Thirteen Hundred and Sixty Years, as Ctesias the Cnidian says
in his Second Book. But it’s needless to recite their Names, or how
long each of them reign’d, in regard none of them did any thing worth
remembring, save only that it may deserve an Account how the Assyrians
assisted the Trojans, by sending them some Forces under the Command of
Memnon the Son of Tithon.

For when Teutamus reign’d in Asia, who was the Twentieth from Ninyas
the Son of Semiramis, it’s said the Grecians under their General
Agamemnon, made War upon the Trojans, at which time the Assyrians had
been Lords of Asia above a Thousand Years. For Priam the King of Troy
(being a Prince under the Assyrian Empire, when War was made upon him)
sent Ambassadors to crave aid of Teutamus, who sent him Ten Thousand
Ethiopians, and as many out of the Province of Susiana, with Two
Hundred Chariots under the Conduct of Memnon the Son of Tithon. For
this Tithon at that time was Governor of Persia, and in special Favour
with the King above all the rest of the Princes: And Memnon was in the
Flower of his Age, strong and couragious, and had built a Pallace in
the Cittadel of Susa, which retain’d the Name of Memnonia to the time
of the Persian Empire. He pav’d also there a Common High-way, which is
call’d Memnon’s Way to this day. But the Ethiopians of Egypt question
this, and say that Memnon was their Countryman, and shew several
antient Palaces which (they say) retain his Name at this day, being
call’d Memnon’s Palaces.

Notwithstanding, however it be as to this matter, yet it has been
generally and constantly held for a certain Truth, that Memnon led to
Troy Twenty Thousand Foot, and Two Hundred Chariots, and signaliz’d his
Valour with great Honour and Reputation, with the Death and Destruction
of many of the Greeks, till at length he was slain by an Ambuscade laid
for him by the Thessalians. But the Ethiopians recover’d his Body, and
burnt it, and brought back his Bones to Tithon. And these things the
Barbarians say are recorded of Memnon in the Histories of their Kings.

Sardanapalus, the Thirtieth from Ninus, and the last King of the
Assyrians, exceeded all his Predecessors in Sloth and Luxury; for
besides that, he was seen of none out of his Family, he led a most
effeminate Life: For wallowing in pleasure and wanton Dalliances,
he cloathed himself in Womens Attire, and spun fine Wool and Purple
amongst the throngs of his Concubines. He painted likewise his Face,
and deckt his whole Body with other Allurements and proceeded to such
a degree of Voluptuousness and sordid Uncleanness, that he compos’d
Verses for his Epitaph, with a Command to his Successors to have them
inscrib’d upon his Tomb after his Death, which were thus Translated by
a Grecian out of the Barbarian Language (An Epitaph fitter for an Ox
than a Man, says Aristotle),

What once I gorg’d I now enjoy,
And wanton Lusts me still imploy.
All other things by Mortals priz’d,
Are left as Dirt by me despis’d.

Being thus corrupt in his Morals, he not only came to a miserable
end himself, but utterly overturn’d the Assyrian Monarchy, which had
continu’d longer than any we read of.

For Arbaces a Mede, a Valiant and Prudent Man, and General of the
Forces which were sent every Year out of Media to Nineve, was stir’d up
by the Governor of Babylon (his Fellow Soldier, and with whom he had
contracted an intimate familiarity) to overthrow the Assyrian Empire.
This Captain’s Name was Belesis, a most Famous Babylonian Priest, one
of those call’d Caldeans, expert in Astrology and Divinations; of
great Reputation upon the account of foretelling future Events, which
happen’d accordingly. Amongst others, he told his Friend, the Median
General, that he should depose Sardanapalus, and be Lord of all his
Dominions. Arbaces hereupon hearkning to what he said, promis’d him,
that if he succeeded in his Attempt, Belesis should be chief Governor
of the Province of Babylon: Being therefore fully persuaded of the
truth of what was foretold, as if he had receiv’d it from an Oracle,
he enter’d into an Association with the Governors of the rest of the
Provinces, and by feasting and caressing of them, gain’d all their
Hearts and Affections. He made it likewise his great business to get
a sight of the King, that he might observe the Course and manner of
his Life; to this end he bestow’d a Cup of Gold upon an Eunuch, by
whom being introduc’d into the King’s Presence, he perfectly came to
understand his Lasciviousness, and Effeminate course of Life. Upon
sight of him, he contemn’d and despis’d him as a Vile and Worthless
Wretch, and thereupon was much more earnest to accomplish what the
Chaldean had before declar’d to him. At length he conspir’d with
Belesis so far, as that he himself persuaded the Medes and Persians
to a defection, and the other brought the Babylonians into the
Confederacy. He imparted likewise his Design to the King of Arabia, who
was at this time his special Friend.

And now the Years attendance of the Army being at an end, new Troops
succeeded, and came into their Place, and the former were sent every
one here and there, into their several Countries. Hereupon Arbaces
prevail’d with the Medes to invade the Assyrian Empire, and drew in the
Persians in hopes of Liberty, to join in the Confederacy. Belesis in
like manner persuaded the Babylonians to stand up for their Liberties.
He sent Messengers also into Arabia, and gain’d that Prince (who was
both his Friend, and had been his Guest) for a Confederate.

When therefore the Yearly Course was run out, all these with a great
number of forces flockt together to Nineve, in shew to serve their Turn
according to custom, but in truth to overturn the Assyrian Empire. The
whole number of Soldiers now got together out of those Four Provinces,
amounted to Four Hundred Thousand Men. All these (being now in one
Camp) call’d a Council of War in order to consult what was to be done.

Sardanapalus being inform’d of the Revolt, led forth the Forces of the
rest of the Provinces against them; whereupon a Battel being fought,
the Rebels were totally routed, and with a great Slaughter were forc’d
to the Mountains Seventy Furlongs from Nineve.

Being drawn up a Second time in Battalia to try their Fortune in the
Field, and now fac’d by the Enemy, Sardanapalus caus’d a Proclamation
to be made by the Heralds, that whosoever kill’d Arbaces the Mede,
should receive as a Reward, Two Hundred Talents of Gold, and double the
Sum to him (together with the Government of Media,) who should take him
alive. The like Sum he promis’d to such as should kill Belesis, or take
him alive. But not being wrought upon by these Promises, he fought them
again, and destroy’d many of the Rebels, and forc’d the rest to fly to
their Camp upon the Hills.

Arbaces being disheartn’d with these Misfortunes, call’d a Council
of War to consider what was fit further to be done: The greater part
were for returning into their own Countries, and possess themselves of
the strongest Places, in order to fit and furnish themselves with all
things further necessary for the War. But when Belesis the Babylonian
assur’d them that the Gods promis’d, that after many Toyls and Labours
they should have good success, and all should end well, and had us’d
several other Arguments (such as he thought best) he prevail’d with
them to resolve to run through all the hazards of the War.

Another Battle therefore was fought, wherein the King gain’d a third
Victory, and pursu’d the Revolters as far as to the Mountains of
Babylon. In this Fight Arbaces himself was wounded, though he fought
stoutly, and slew many of the Assyrians with his own Hand.

After so many Defeats and Misfortunes one upon the neck of another,
the Conspirators altogether despair’d of Victory, and therefore
the Commanders resolv’d every one to return to their own Country.
But Belesis, who lay all that Night Star-gazing in the open Field,
prognosticated to them the next day, that if they would but continue
together Five Days, unexpected Help would come, and they would see
a mighty change, and that Affairs would have a contrary aspect to
what they then had; for he affirm’d, that through his Knowledge in
Astrology, he understood that the Gods portended so much by the Stars;
therefore he intreated them to stay so many days, and make trial of his
Art, and wait so long to have an Experiment of the Goodness of the Gods.

All being thus brought back, and waiting till the time appointed,
News on a sudden was brought that mighty Forces were at hand, sent to
the King out of Bactria. Hereupon Arbaces resolv’d with the stoutest
and swiftest Soldiers of the Army, forthwith to make out against the
Captains that were advancing, and either by fair words to perswade
them to a defection, or by Blows to force them to join with them in
their Design. But Liberty being sweet to every one of them, first
the Captains and Commanders were easily wrought upon, and presently
after the whole Army join’d, and made up one intire Camp together. It
happen’d at that time, that the King of Assiria not knowing any thing
of the Revolt of the Bactrians, and puft up by his former Successes,
was indulging his Sloath and Idleness, and preparing Beasts for
Sacrifice, plenty of Wine, and other things necessary in order to feast
and entertain his Soldiers.

While his whole Army was now feasting and revelling, Arbaces (receiving
intelligence by some Deserters of the Security and Intemperance of the
Enemy) fell in upon them on the sudden in the Night; and being in due
order and discipline, and setting upon such as were in confusion, he
being before prepar’d, and the other altogether unprovided, they easily
broke into their Camp, and made a great Slaughter of some, forcing the
rest into the City.

THE DESTRUCTION OF NINEVEH

Hereupon Sardanapalus committed the charge of the whole Army to
Salemenus his Wife’s Brother, and took upon himself the defence of the
City. But the Rebels twice defeated the King’s Forces, once in the open
Field, and the Second time before the Walls of the City; in which last
ingagement Salemenus was kill’d, and almost all his Army lost, some
being cut off in the pursuit, and the rest (save a very few) being
intercepted, and prevented from entring into the City, were driven
headlong into the River Euphrates; and the number of the Slain was
so great, that the River was dy’d over with Blood, and retain’d that
Colour for a great distance, and a long course together.

The King being afterwards besieg’d, many of the Nations (through desire
of Liberty) revolted to the Confederates; so that Sardanapalus now
perceiving that the Kingdom was like to be lost, sent away his Three
Sons and Two Daughters, with a great deal of Treasure into Paphlagonia,
to Cotta, the Governor there, his most intire friend; and sent posts
into all the Provinces of the Kingdom, in order to raise Souldiers,
and make all other Preparations necessary to indure a siege. And he
was the more incouraged to this, for that he was acquainted with an
ancient Prophesy, That Nineve could never be taken by force, till the
River became the City’s Enemy; which the more incourag’d him to hold
out, because he conceiv’d that was never like to be; therefore he
resolv’d to indure the Siege till the Aids which he expected out of the
Provinces came up to him.

The Enemy on the other hand grown more couragious by their Successes,
eagerly urg’d on the Siege, but made little impression on the Besieg’d
by reason of the strength of the Walls; for Ballistes to cast Stones,
Testudos to cast up Mounts, and Battering Rams were not known in those
Ages. And besides (to say truth) the King had been very careful (as to
what concern’d the defence of the place) plentifully to furnish the
Inhabitants with every thing necessary. The Siege continu’d Two Years,
during which time nothing was done to any purpose, save that the Walls
were sometimes assaulted, and the Besieg’d pen’d up in the City. The
Third Year it happened that Euphrates overflowing with continual Rains,
came up into a part of the City, and tore down the Wall Twenty Furlongs
in length.

The King hereupon conceiving that the Oracle was accomplish’d, in that
the River was an apparent Enemy to the City, utterly despair’d, and
therefore that he might not fall into the Hands of his Enemies, he
caus’d a huge Pile of Wood to be made in his Palace Court, and heapt
together upon it all his Gold, Silver, and Royal Apparel, and enclosing
his Eunuchs and Concubines in an Apartment within the Pile, caus’d it
to be set on Fire, and burnt himself and them together, which when the
Revolters came to understand, they enter’d through the Breach of the
Walls, and took the City; and cloath’d Arbaces with a Royal Robe, and
committed to him the sole Authority, proclaiming him King.

When he had rewarded his followers, every one according to their
demerit, and appointed Governors over the several Provinces, Belesis
the Babylonian, who had foretold his advancement to the Throne, put
him in mind of his Services, and demanded the Government of Babylon,
which he had before promis’d him. He told him likewise of a Vow that
he himself had made to Belus, in the heat of the War, that when
Sardanapalus was conquer’d, and the Palace consum’d, he would carry the
Ashes to Babylon, and there raise a Mount near to his Temple, which
should be an eternal Monument to all that sailed through Euphrates, in
memory of him that overturn’d the Assyrian Empire.

But that which in truth induc’d him to make this Request was, that
he had been inform’d of the Gold and Silver by an Eunuch (that was
a Deserter) whom he had hid and conceal’d: Arbaces therefore being
ignorant of the Contrivance (because all the rest beside this Eunuch,
were consum’d with the King) granted to him liberty both to carry away
the Ashes, and likewise the absolute Government of Babylon without
paying any Tribute. Whereupon Belesis forthwith prepar’d Shipping,
and together with the Ashes carry’d away most of the Gold and Silver
to Babylon. But when the King came plainly to understand the Cheat,
he committed the Examination and Decision of this Theft to the other
Captains who were his Assistants in the deposing of Sardanapalus.
Belesis upon his Trial confess’d the Fact, and thereupon they condemn’d
him to lose his Head.

But the King being a Man of a noble and generous Spirit, and willing
to adorn the beginning of his Reign with the Marks of his Grace and
Mercy, not only pardon’d him, but freely gave him all the Gold and
Silver which had been carry’d away; neither did he deprive him of
the Government of Babylon, which at the first he conferr’d upon him,
saying, That his former good Services did overballance the Injuries
afterwards. This gracious Disposition of the King being nois’d abroad,
he thereby not only gain’d the Hearts of his People, but was highly
honour’d, and his Name famous among all the Provinces, and all judg’d
him worthy of the Kingdom, who was so compassionate and gracious to
offenders.

The like Clemency he shew’d to the Inhabitants of Nineve; for though he
dispers’d them into several Country Villages, yet he restor’d to every
one of them their Estates, but raz’d the City to the ground.

The rest of the Silver and Gold that could be found in the Pile (of
which there were many Talents) he convey’d to Echatana the Seat Royal
of Media.

And thus was the Assyrian Empire overturn’d by the Medes after it
had continu’d Thirty Generations: from Ninus above Fourteen Hundred
Years.[c]

FOOTNOTES

[37] [Babylon is actually the Greek form of the Assyrian Bab-ilu,
“Gate of God.” The somewhat similar Hebrew word meaning “confusion” is
Bilbool (from balbel). Hence the legend.]

[38] [It is interesting to note that the name of the last native
king of Babylonia is given correctly by Josephus, who seems here to
follow the Greek writers in preference to the canonical records of
his own race. The latter, it will be recalled, substitute the name of
Belshazzar, a name not borne by any historical Babylonian king.]

APPENDIX B. EXCAVATIONS IN MESOPOTAMIA, AND THEIR RESULTS

The consecrated metals found
And ivory tablets, underground,
Winged seraphim, and creatures crown’d
When air and daylight filled the mound,
Fell into dust immediately.
And even as these, the images
Of awe and worship--even as these--
So, smitten with the sun’s increase,
Her glory mouldered and did cease
From immemorial Nineveh.--ROSSETTI.

A wish expressed by Herder early in the nineteenth century, that
explorations might be made in the region of the buried cities of
Babylonia and Assyria, was destined to meet with early realisation.
The exact sites of various of these cities, long utterly forgotten,
were discovered; excavations were made, and a harvest of buried
records brought to light, surpassing in interest and importance the
wildest dreams of anticipation. Not merely the ruins of city walls and
of fallen palaces were exhumed, but with them wonderfully preserved
sculptures and ornaments of surprising artistic excellence; and, more
important still, voluminous written records, historical and literary,
imprinted on slabs and cylinders of brick--the books of the period--in
strange wedge-shaped characters of unknown import, which modern
scholarship soon sufficed to decipher. How these marvellous feats were
accomplished had best be explained before we turn to the historical
records which they brought to light. It is a thrilling record, which
has no exact counterpart elsewhere in history.[a] The story of how the
work was begun is told by that pioneer in the field of Assyriology, Sir
A. H. Layard:

THE RUINS OF NINEVEH AND M. BOTTA’S FIRST DISCOVERY

Were the traveller to cross the Euphrates to seek for such ruins in
Mesopotamia and Chaldea as he had left behind him in Asia Minor or
Syria, his search would be vain. The graceful column rising above the
thick foliage of the myrtle, ilex, and oleander; the gradines of the
amphitheatre covering a gentle slope, and overlooking the dark blue
waters of a lake-like bay; the richly carved cornice or capital half
hidden by the luxuriant herbage, are replaced by the stern, shapeless
mound rising like a hill from the scorched plain, the fragments of
pottery, and the stupendous mass of brickwork occasionally laid bare by
the winter rains. He has left the land where nature is still lovely,
where, in his mind’s eye, he can rebuild the temple or the theatre,
half doubting whether they would have made a more grateful impression
upon the senses than the ruin before him. He is now at a loss to
give any form to the rude heaps upon which he is gazing. Those of
whose works they are the remains, unlike the Roman and the Greek, have
left no visible traces of their civilisation, or of their arts: their
influence has long since passed away. The more he conjectures, the more
vague the results appear. The scene around is worthy of the ruin he is
contemplating; desolation meets desolation: a feeling of awe succeeds
to wonder; for there is nothing to relieve the mind, to lead to hope,
or to tell of what has gone by. These huge mounds of Assyria made a
deeper impression upon me, gave rise to more serious thoughts and more
earnest reflection, than the temples of Baalbec and the theatres of
Ionia.

In the middle of April I left Mosul for Baghdad. As I descended the
Tigris on a raft, I again saw the ruins of Nimrud, and had a better
opportunity of examining them. It was evening as we approached the
spot. The spring rains had clothed the mound with the richest verdure,
and the fertile meadows, which stretched around it, were covered with
flowers of every hue. Amidst this luxuriant vegetation were partly
concealed a few fragments of bricks, pottery, and alabaster, upon which
might be traced the well-defined wedges of the cuneiform character.
Did not these remains mark the nature of the ruin, it might have been
confounded with a natural eminence. A long line of consecutive narrow
mounds, still retaining the appearance of walls or ramparts, stretched
from its base, and formed a vast quadrangle. The river flowed at some
distance from them: its waters, swollen by the melting of the snows on
the Armenian hills, were broken into a thousand foaming whirlpools by
an artificial barrier, built across the stream. On the eastern bank
the soil had been washed away by the current; but a solid mass of
masonry still withstood its impetuosity. The Arab, who guided my small
raft, gave himself up to religious ejaculations as we approached this
formidable cataract, over which we were carried with some violence.
Once safely through the danger, he explained to me that this unusual
change in the quiet face of the river was caused by a great dam which
had been built by Nimrod, and that in the autumn, before the winter
rains, the huge stones of which it was constructed, squared, and united
by cramps of iron, were frequently visible above the surface of the
stream.[39] It was, in fact, one of those monuments of a great people,
to be found in all the rivers of Mesopotamia, which were undertaken to
ensure a constant supply of water to the innumerable canals, spreading
like network over the surrounding country, and which, even in the days
of Alexander, were looked upon as the works of an ancient nation. No
wonder that the traditions of the present inhabitants of the land
should assign them to one of the founders of the human race! The Arab
explained the connection between the dam and the city built by Athur,
the lieutenant of Nimrod, the vast ruins of which were then before us,
and of its purpose as a causeway for the mighty hunter to cross to the
opposite palace, now represented by the mound of Hammum Ali. He was
telling me of the histories and fate of the kings of a primitive race,
still the favourite theme of the inhabitants of the plains of Shinar,
when the last glow of twilight faded away, and I fell asleep as we
glided onward to Baghdad.

My curiosity had been greatly excited, and from that time I formed the
design of thoroughly examining, whenever it might be in my power, these
singular ruins.

It was not until the summer of 1842 that I again passed through Mosul
on my way to Constantinople. I was then anxious to reach the Turkish
capital, and, travelling Tatar, had no time to explore ruins. I had
not, however, forgotten Nimrud. I had frequently spoken to others
on the subject of excavations in this and another mound, to which a
peculiar interest also attached; and at one time had reason to hope
that some persons in England might have been induced to aid in the
undertaking. I had even proposed an examination of the ruins to M.
Coste, an architect who had been sent by the French government, with
its embassy to Persia, to draw and describe the monuments of that
country.

On my arrival at Mosul, I found that M. Botta had, since my first
visit, been named French consul there; and had already commenced
excavations on the opposite side of the river, in the large mound
called Kuyunjik. These excavations were on a very small scale, and, at
the time of my passage, only fragments of brick and alabaster, upon
which were engraved a few letters in the cuneiform character, had been
discovered.

[Illustration: EXCAVATIONS AT KUYUNJIK

(Layard)]

Whilst detained by unexpected circumstances at Constantinople, I
entered into correspondence with a gentleman in England on the subject
of excavations; but, with this exception, no one seemed inclined to
assist or take any interest in such an undertaking. I also wrote to
M. Botta, encouraging him to proceed, notwithstanding the apparent
paucity of results, and particularly calling his attention to the mound
of Nimrud, which, however, he declined to explore on account of its
distance from Mosul and its inconvenient position. I was soon called
away from the Turkish capital to the provinces; and for some months
numerous occupations prevented me turning my attention to the ruins and
antiquities of Assyria.

In the meanwhile M. Botta, not discouraged by the want of success which
had attended his first essay, continued his excavations in the mound
of Kuyunjik: and to him is due the honour of having found the first
Assyrian monument. This remarkable discovery owed its origin to the
following circumstances. The small party employed by M. Botta were
at work on Kuyunjik, when a peasant from a distant village chanced
to visit the spot. Seeing that every fragment of brick and alabaster
uncovered by the workmen was carefully preserved, he asked the reason
of this, to him, strange proceeding. On being informed that they were
in search of sculptured stones, he advised them to try the mound on
which his village was built, and in which, he declared, many such
things as they wanted had been exposed on digging for the foundations
of new houses. M. Botta, having been frequently deceived by similar
stories, was not at first inclined to follow the peasant’s advice, but
subsequently sent an agent and one or two workmen to the place.

After a little opposition from the inhabitants, they were permitted
to sink a well in the mound; and at a small distance from the surface
they came to the top of a wall which, on digging deeper, they found
to be built of sculptured slabs of gypsum. M. Botta, on receiving
information of this discovery, went at once to the village, which was
called Khorsabad. He directed a wider trench to be formed, and to be
carried in the direction of the wall. He soon found that he had opened
a chamber, which was connected with others, and constructed of slabs of
gypsum covered with sculptured representations of battles, sieges, and
similar events. His wonder may be easily imagined.

A new history had been suddenly opened to him--the records of an
unknown people were before him. He was equally at a loss to account
for the age and the nature of the monument. The art shown in the
sculptures, the dresses of the figures, the mythic forms on the walls,
were all new to him, and afforded no clew to the epoch of the erection
of the edifice, and to the people who were its founders. Numerous
inscriptions, accompanying the bas-reliefs, evidently contained the
explanation of the events thus recorded in sculpture. They were in the
cuneiform, or arrow-headed, character. The nature of these inscriptions
was at least evidence that the building belonged to a period preceding
the conquest of Alexander; for it was generally admitted that after
the subjugation of the west of Asia by the Macedonians, the cuneiform
writing ceased to be employed. But too little was then known of this
character to enable M. Botta to draw any inference from the peculiar
arrangement of the wedges, which distinguishes the varieties used
in different countries. However, it was evident that the monument
appertained to a very ancient and very civilised people; and it was
natural from its position to refer it to the inhabitants of Nineveh--a
city, which, although it could not have occupied a site so distant from
the Tigris, must have been in the vicinity of the place. M. Botta had
discovered an Assyrian edifice, the first, probably, which had been
exposed to the view of man since the fall of the Assyrian Empire.

M. Botta was not long in perceiving that the building which had been
thus partly excavated, unfortunately owed its destruction to fire; and
that the gypsum slabs, reduced to lime, were rapidly falling to pieces
on exposure to the air. No precaution could arrest this rapid decay;
and it was to be feared that this wonderful monument had only been
uncovered to complete its ruin. The records of victories and triumphs,
which had long attested the power and swelled the pride of the Assyrian
kings, and had resisted the ravages of ages, were now passing away
forever. They could scarcely be held together until an inexperienced
pencil could secure an imperfect evidence of their former existence.

Almost all that was first discovered thus speedily disappeared; and
the same fate has befallen nearly everything subsequently found at
Khorsabad. A regret is almost felt that so precious a memorial of a
great nation should have been thus exposed to destruction, when no
precaution could keep entire or secure the greater part of it; but as
far as the object of the monument is concerned, the intention of its
founders will be amply fulfilled, and the records of their might will
be more widely spread, and more effectually preserved, by modern art,
than the most exalted ambition could have contemplated.

M. Botta lost no time in communicating his remarkable discovery to the
principal scientific body in France. Knowing the interest I felt in
his labours, he allowed me to see his letters and drawings as they
passed through Constantinople; and I was amongst the first who were
made acquainted with his success. And here I gladly avail myself of the
opportunity of mentioning, with the acknowledgment and praise which
they deserve, his disinterestedness and liberality, so honourable to
one engaged in the pursuit of knowledge. During the entire period of
his excavations, M. Botta regularly sent me not only his descriptions,
but copies of the inscriptions, without exacting any promise as to the
use I might make of them. That there are few who would have acted thus
liberally, those who have been engaged in a search after antiquities in
the East will not be inclined to deny.

M. Botta’s communications were laid before the “Académie,” by M. Mohl;
and that body, perceiving at once the importance of the discovery, lost
no time in applying to the Minister of Public Instruction for means to
carry on the researches. The recommendation was attended to with that
readiness and munificence which almost invariably distinguished the
French government in undertakings of this nature. Ample funds to meet
the cost of extensive excavations were at once assigned to M. Botta,
and an artist of acknowledged skill was placed under his orders to draw
such parts of the monument discovered as could not be preserved or
removed.

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF OF FISH, HILLS, AND TREES]

With the exception of a few interruptions on the part of the local
authorities, who were suspicious of the objects of the excavations, the
work was carried on with activity and success, and by the beginning of
1845 the monument had been completely uncovered. The researches of M.
Botta were not extended beyond Khorsabad; and having secured many fine
specimens of Assyrian sculpture for his country, he returned to Europe
with a rich collection of inscriptions, the most important result of
his discovery.[b]

LAYARD’S DISCOVERIES AT NINEVEH

It is indeed a matter for regret there is not the space to continue
Layard’s own account of his discoveries. Professor Hommel has
summarised this, however, in an exceedingly satisfactory manner, and
his account is here given.

Brilliant as Botta’s achievements had been, they were quite cast into
the shade by what the English statesman, Sir (then Mr.) A. H. Layard,
the sole discoverer of Nineveh, had accomplished for all branches of
investigation and knowledge of Assyrian antiquity, by means of the
excavations, principally in Kuyunjik and Nimrud, but also in Neby
Yunus, Kalah Shergat, and other mounds of ruins in the neighbourhood
of Nineveh; these excavations were made with the assistance of Hormuzd
Rassam, who subsequently continued them. We remember how, from as far
back as the year 1840, it was Layard’s ardent desire to be able to
undertake some excavations. He had hailed Botta’s lucky find without
envy, and was indeed the first who, in some letters in the _Malta
Times_ which afterwards went the rounds of many European newspapers,
directed public attention to the newly discovered Assyrian royal
palace, which Botta at first assigned to the Sassanian period. Then, in
the autumn of 1845, the eagerly-looked-for funds were at last obtained
by the munificence of the English ambassador at Constantinople, Sir
Stratford Canning (afterwards Lord Stratford de Redcliffe), to whom
the British Museum already owed the acquisition of the costly marbles
of Halicarnassus. Thus, towards the end of the year 1845, Layard was
able to begin the excavations. He set to work on the Nimrud pile of
ruins, which lies a distance of five hours to the south of Mosul, and
had previously attracted his attention when Botta was still in Mosul.
He laboured under the greatest difficulties, far greater than those
which Botta had to overcome--to see how far this statement is from
exaggeration, Layard’s own account should be perused--the work having
at first to be carried on in profound secrecy so as to excite as little
suspicion as possible in the Turkish authorities and in the population.

It was not to be long before Layard’s efforts were crowned with
success. By the end of November several bas-reliefs were laid bare,
whose execution appeared to surpass even those of the sculptures of
Khorsabad, and which were accompanied by cuneiform inscriptions. In
spite of many interruptions the work proceeded rigorously, and manifold
were the discoveries thus brought to light. One deserving of special
interest was that of the gigantic head of one of the colossal winged
lions, with men’s heads, which the Assyrians placed at the entrance of
their palaces for the sake of spreading terror amongst the inhabitants
of surrounding districts. For it was everywhere whispered and believed
that none other than Nimrod in person had risen from the earth. All
this had occurred in the spring of the year 1846. The funds for the
excavations lasted till the middle of June 1847; and when Layard
returned to Europe he had laid bare in Nimrud no less than three great
Assyrian royal palaces, namely: the grand northwestern palace, which
Asshurnazirpal had built (884-861 B.C.) on the ruins of an ancient
structure (dating from Shalmaneser I, the founder of Calah, _circa_
1300 B.C.?); the central palace, probably built by Asshurnazirpal’s
successor, Shalmaneser II (a predecessor of the biblical Shalmaneser),
where was found the famous black obelisk; and lastly, Esarhaddon’s
once magnificent southwestern palace (681-669 B.C.). The northwestern
palace yielded the richest spoil: it was also far better preserved
than the contents of Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad, where Botta had
made his excavations. As Sir Stratford Canning had presented the
British Museum with everything moveable which Layard had discovered and
brought to light, even at the end of this first expedition of Layard’s,
a collection of Assyrian antiquities (principally bas-reliefs and
inscriptions), such as existed nowhere else, was despatched to London.
The unwearied energy of the discoverer of Nineveh succeeded in taking
it unhurt, first to Bassorah, from whence the valuable freight was
forwarded to the ship--truly not the smallest part of the task he had
begun so gloriously, and now still more gloriously accomplished.

The period which followed was employed by Layard in summarising
the results obtained in a vigorous narrative, furnished with many
illustrations, the work called _Nineveh and its Remains_, which was
published just as Layard was on the point of going to Assyria for the
second time--on this occasion at the expense of the British Museum.
The sensation which the book created in England was enormous, and its
most important result was that henceforth the government turned its
attention to the excavations. So in 1849 Layard was given leave of
absence from his diplomatic post at Constantinople for the purpose of
making new discoveries on Assyrian soil, and Hormuzd Rassam, who had
already been his assistant and happened just then to be in London, was
sent after him (also officially).

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF REPRESENTING A FORTIFIED CITY, A RIVER WITH A
BOAT AND RAFT, AND A CANAL

(Found at Kuyunjik.--Layard)]

If on the first expedition Layard had done little more than explore
Nimrud (the ancient Calah), the labours of the second (1849-1851),
were on the contrary practically limited to the mounds of ruins of
Kuyunjik with Neby Yunus, the site of Nineveh itself. Here Botta had
first begun his excavations, but entirely without success, for he had
merely caused diggings to be made to the depth of a few feet, and
without any method, instead of making his chief object the remains of
the platform, on which the buildings he was seeking had been erected.
And it was here that Layard, at the end of his first expedition, and
after having been obliged to dig twenty feet down, had discovered
Sennacherib’s southwestern palace (705-682 B.C.). But the real fruits
of this discovery were now the object of the second undertaking. For if
in this Layard was still occupied with Nimrud, the work there was only
a species of gleaning, the excavations and discoveries in Arban, on the
Khabur and in Bavian were, in comparison with the rest, only a short
trial-trip, and the main thing still remained the minute investigation
and laying bare of the great southwestern palace in Kuyunjik. It was
not till this was finished that he employed the rest of his time and
money in a visit to Babylonia (at the end of 1850), of which, however,
Layard himself says “that they (_i.e._ the discoveries amongst the
ruins of ancient Babylon) were far fewer and of far less importance
than he had expected”; he also gave the first exact description of the
mounds of Niffer, the ancient Nippur, southeast of Babylon. All his
experiences and all the results of this second expedition were set down
by Layard in the _Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_,
a work, seven hundred pages in length and with many illustrations,
besides plans and maps, which appeared in London as early as the
beginning of the year 1853.

This popular book had, like the former one, a prodigious success,
and was shortly after translated into German; as a supplement to it
Layard’s great publications were announced, namely, that magnificent
work, the _Monuments of Nineveh_, and a volume of inscriptions which
was the forerunner to the great work on inscriptions published by the
British Museum in five volumes (1861-1884).

But to return to Layard’s excavations which he resumed in the middle
of October, 1849, at the place where he had interrupted them two
years before. It is simply impossible within a short space to give
a clear idea of what Layard and his workmen, assisted by Hormuzd
Rassam, brought to light before the middle of the year 1850 in that
southwestern palace of Sennacherib which Asshurbanapal restored. Any
one who would form a clear idea of it must peruse Layard’s magnificent
descriptions of it for himself. Assyrian antiquity rose from the earth
and grew more and more distinct, and so intelligible was the language
of the hundreds of bas-reliefs, that, even without understanding the
inscriptions, every one was in a position to construct for himself
a tolerably clear picture of the manners and customs, the life and
occupations, in short, the whole civilisation of the ancient Assyrians,
and this merely from the illustrations in Layard’s two popular books.
But the most important discovery made in this palace, indeed the most
important in its results of all the Assyrian excavations, was the
remains of a regular library of thousands of clay tablets, which were
heaped up in two chambers, covering the floor a foot thick. These
the restorer of the palace, the accomplished king Asshurbanapal (668
B.C., the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, and Asnapper of the Bible) had
had collected, and had deposited them, partly here, partly (probably
in duplicate) in other palaces, as in particular in the northern
palace, which was also in Kuyunjik, and was discovered by Rassam.
The tablets of gray and yellow clay found in the so-called Lion Room
of Asshurbanapal’s northern palace, were in most cases broken into
smaller or larger fragments, probably because in the general ruin they
had fallen down from the upper story into the space in which they
covered the ground; many, however, were still whole. Of course only
later investigation could succeed in bringing the broken fragments
together again, and then only partially; one of these tablets, restored
by piecing together sixteen fragments, gives the Babylonian story of
the Flood, which George Smith successfully recognised from amongst
the thousands of scattered fragments; the reader will appreciate the
condition in which most of these clay book-pages (to use a paradoxical
expression) have come down to us. The size of the tablets seldom
exceeds nine by six and a half inches; but many, especially tablets
containing contracts, were considerably smaller. The greater number
bore the inscription, “Series of tablets …, tablet number …; Palace of
Asshurbanapal, king of the universe, king of Assyria …,” after which
came a series of phrases, mostly stereotyped, which indicates the
tablet in question as belonging to the library of Asshurbanapal, the
great collector of ancient Babylonian literature in Assyrian character.
In the restored tablet of the Flood, the place of the signature is
clearly recognisable on the first of the columns; it is the last of the
columns, for they are always to be counted from right to left (instead
of from left to right). But especially clear to the eye of a layman is
the addition to the signature, which represents a kind of library mark,
unlike that of the specially prized Ishtar hymn in two languages (S.
M. 954, British Museum); the latter differs somewhat from the ordinary
tenor of these signatures, inasmuch as a whole genealogy is put,
instead of the sentence usual elsewhere; translated literally it runs:

“(series:) ir shimma dimmir Ninna.”--Complaint to the goddess
Ishtar.

(The usual number of the tablet is not placed here.)

He has written and engraved it like its original.

“Palace of Asshurbanapal, king of Assyria,
Son of Esarhaddon, king of the universe, king of Assyria, ruler
of Babylon,
King of Sumer and Accad, king of the kings of Ethiopia and Egypt,
King of the four regions, son of Sennacherib,
King of the universe, king of Assyria, who puts his trust in the
god Asshur and the goddess Ninlil, in Nabu and Tashmit.
May the god Nabu be thy guide!”

In general, however, these signatures ran as follows:

(The first word of the tablet following.)

“Xth tablet (of the series beginning thus:).…

“Palace of Asshurbanapal, the king of the universe, the king of
Assyria, to whom Nabu and Tashmit had given ear, who took clear
eyes for the preparation (?) of the writing of tablets, whilst
under the kings my predecessors nothing of the kind (nin shipru
shu’ atu) was attempted--the wisdom of Nabu, (tikip santakki), a
fullness of beauty, did I write, arrange, and engrave on tablets;
to see and read it I placed it in my palace.”

After which, in some examples, there follows:

“May the light of Asshur, the king of the gods, be thy guide!
Whosoever shall write his name by my name,
May Asshur and Ninlil (Beltis) destroy him and root his name and
his seed out of the land!”

The contents of the tablets in which Asshurbanapal caused the wisdom of
the god Nabu (identified by the ancients with Mercury) to be written of
in this fashion, were varied to an extent scarcely conceivable. They
contained the primitive spells and formulas for oaths of the people of
Sumer, as well as the somewhat later hymns to the gods, and penitential
psalms of the Accadian population of northern Babylonia, almost all of
them with interlinear translations into the Semitic language of ancient
Babylon; also legends of Semitic character and epic poems almost
as old as the Accadian hymns; astronomical and astrological texts;
historical inscriptions (as, for instance, those of Agum-kakrime and
the ancient Sargon); chronological lists, calendars, and a great deal
besides; all of which was collected by Asshurbanapal and by him handed
down to posterity. It is hard to say in what direction the literary
pieces thus preserved fail to cast a light on the ancient Babylonians
into whose cultivation the Assyrians were, indeed, once initiated,
and to whom they were in all essentials indebted for their own; it is
certain that we should now be acquainted with no single one of those
primitive magic verses, had not Asshurbanapal had them written out
afresh. And what should we know of the Sumerians and Accadians without
these songs? But this is not enough. A great part of the Asshurbanapal
library consists of philosophical aids to the knowledge and
acquisition of the Sumerio-Accadian language, as well as of the Semitic
Assyrio-Babylonian, and to the writing (the so-called syllabary) as
well as to the spoken language; these aids include vocabularies,
grammatical paradigms, and even collections of phrases in two languages.

Whilst Layard was exploring the southwestern palace at Kuyunjik, adding
undreamt-of treasures to those acquired in his first expedition to the
country, and finding quantities of new cuneiform texts of the so-called
third species of the Assyrian genus, so that he seemed to have been
the first to gather the materials for the deciphering of this kind
of cuneiform writing, it had been already completed, at least in the
main, by the labours of Saulcy (1849) and, above all, by those of Henry
Rawlinson (1847-1851). Layard’s book, _Nineveh and its Remains_, which
appeared in 1849, had already introduced us into the midst of Assyrian
antiquity, although the inscriptions which accompanied the sculptures
could not yet give us any further information elucidating them. But in
the _Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon_, which appeared
in the beginning of 1853, we already find the correct interpretation
of several Assyrian names of kings, countries, towns, and gods, and
even the correct rendering of the substance of connected historical
inscriptions, which Layard owed to the information communicated in
the interval by Henry Rawlinson and the Irishman, E. Hincks, who had
also brought great acuteness to bear on this department of study. The
numerous fresh historical documents which Layard brought with him
could not have appeared at a more favourable time; above all, the
first of the chests containing Asshurbanapal’s library could not have
entered London at a better moment. For, once a basis was established
for the reading of the cuneiform writing of the Babylonian and
Assyrian languages, all that was needed to advance along the path so
successfully entered upon was new texts, and these now began to flow
in, in abundance.[c]

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF REPRESENTING TIGLATHPILESER III

(Found at Nimrud.--Layard)]

LATER DISCOVERIES IN BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

The work of exploration rested entirely between the years 1855 and
1872. Great progress was made, however, in the decipherment of
inscriptions and the popularisation of the results, and the mind of the
public was prepared to appreciate the greatness of the work that was to
follow.

The importance of George Smith’s decipherment in 1872 of the Babylonian
story of the Deluge was at once recognised, and led to his being
sent to Nineveh in January, 1873, under the auspices of the _Daily
Telegraph_. As soon as he had discovered some further fragments of
the deluge story, however, the newspaper was satisfied, and he was
recalled. On a second expedition, sent out in the same year by the
British Museum, Smith made no startling discoveries. Smith’s work,
while small in amount when compared with that of the early explorers,
brought to light much valuable material, and aroused great enthusiasm
in England. The British Museum sent him on a third expedition in 1876;
but he was prevented from making any excavations, and died of fever on
his way back.

The next expedition, that of Hormuzd Rassam in 1877, resulted, among
other things, in the identification of the site of Sippar, and the
discovery of numerous interesting inscriptions and of some beautifully
ornamented inscribed bronze plates that had adorned the gates of the
palace of Shalmaneser II.

In this same year, 1877, M. Ernest de Sarzec, then just appointed
French consul at Bassorah on the Persian Gulf, began that series
of brilliant explorations which he has carried on more or less
continuously ever since. His enthusiasm for archæological research was
backed by an extensive knowledge of the conditions of the country, and
his efforts were rewarded with an unusual degree of success from the
very start.

The first four years were devoted to an extensive and systematic
excavation of Telloh, a great mound about five miles from the
Shatt-el-khai, in southern Babylonia, and now identified with the
ancient Shirpurla. The first season was marked by the discovery of
two large terra-cotta cylinders, twenty-four inches long and twelve
in diameter. The inscriptions on these cylinders, which contained
fully two thousand lines each, were the longest then known from an
early period. By the end of the four seasons of work a great temple
had been uncovered, one hundred and seventy-five by one hundred feet
in dimensions, and built on a mound from sixteen to twenty feet high.
The bricks of the outer wall, which was five feet thick, were one foot
square and bore the name Gudea. The objects found in the interior of
the temple have proved very important to early Babylonian history. One
room contained eight statues of an early period, all headless, however,
having been mutilated by barbarians of a later time.

Scarcely less important was De Sarzec’s discovery in 1894 of a chamber
in which were found thirty thousand tablets. While a considerable
proportion of them were religious documents, most of these tablets were
commercial, agricultural, and industrial archives.

The Louvre has profited greatly by the work of De Sarzec, for a large
part of his discoveries has found its way thither.

The American expeditions have been among the most successful ones in
this field. The Wolfe expedition of 1884-1885--so called from Miss
Catherine Lorillard Wolfe, who defrayed its expenses--confined its work
to a thorough exploration of the whole field, not only visiting the
sites of previous excavations, but examining many new mounds as well.
The succeeding expeditions have been sent out under the auspices of
the University of Pennsylvania. The first one, in 1888-1889, under the
direction of Dr. John P. Peters, with Professors H. V. Hilprecht and
R. F. Harper as Assyriologists, began excavations at Niffer, the site
of ancient Nippur. They had many difficulties with native tribes and
Turkish officials, but succeeded in making a trigonometrical survey
of all the mounds and obtaining a great number of antiquities of all
sorts. Dr. Peters, however, modestly characterises the expedition as
“more or less of a failure.”

In 1890 work was begun again. Thousands of tablets and various kinds
of objects were obtained, and were all sent to the Imperial Museum
at Constantinople. Professor Hilprecht was sent to Constantinople to
catalogue the finds. He did the work with great skill and tact, and the
Sultan repaid the University of Pennsylvania for his services by the
gift of a large part of the collection.

[Illustration: ASSYRIAN STELE]

The third expedition was sent out in 1893 under the direction of Mr. J.
H. Haynes, who had been the business manager of the first two. With a
single brief interruption of two months in 1894 he carried on the work
steadily until 1896, accomplishing what no European had ever ventured
to attempt before. This expedition and the fourth one, which set out
under Haynes in 1899 and was joined by Hilprecht in 1900, procured many
thousands of tablets and antiquities of other kinds. These finds have
enriched the store of Babylonian literature with vast quantities of
texts, religious, commercial, and historical.

The first German expedition, in 1897, like the first American, simply
explored Babylonia and Assyria. Then in 1899 Dr. Robert Koldewey, who
had been a member of the first expedition, accompanied by Dr. Bruno
Meissner, went out under the auspices of the German Orient Society.
They went to work at the mound of El-Kasr, Babylon, which covers the
remains of the palace of Nebuchadrezzar. Their first success was in
the finding of a new Hittite inscription and many tablets of the
Neo-Babylonian period. Great results may be expected from their future
work.

The Turks, themselves, have naturally the best opportunity for carrying
on the work of exploration, for they can count upon the support instead
of the opposition of the officials, and can keep the natives under
control. Thus far one expedition has been sent out. It was under the
direction of Father Scheil, a distinguished Assyriologist, a French
Dominican. Its complete success shows that if the Turkish government
can once be aroused to the importance of the work, greater discoveries
may be expected.

One of the most important discoveries of cuneiform inscriptions was
made at Tel-el-Amarna in Egypt in 1888. From these tablets, which are
letters and despatches of Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV and of many
monarchs of western Asia, much valuable chronological material has been
obtained, as well as much light upon social relations.

The great discoveries of the past thirty years are but an inspiration
to further exploration. The work is bound to be carried on until the
buried cities have been completely brought to light again.[ad]

THE RESULTS OF THE EXCAVATIONS

We have followed the story of the excavations in Babylonia and Assyria
with some detail because of the unique character of the record. It
remains now to examine the results of these excavations in their
bearings upon the story of history. For, of course, it is the material
supplied by the workers in this field rather than the work itself which
has pertinence in the present connection.

[Illustration: HUNTING SCENE FROM A BAS-RELIEF IN THE PALACE OF
ASSHURNAZIRPAL]

Great numbers of historical documents have been restored to us,
sufficing, as has already been suggested, to rebuild the history of the
all but forgotten nations. Such historical documents as are not to be
found in connection with Greece or Rome, or even of the civilisation of
the Middle Ages down to about the tenth century A.D., are supplied us
from the ruins of the Babylonian and Assyrian cities. These documents,
as already pointed out, are in the form of inscriptions on fragments
of brick. These inscriptions, in an altogether unknown character,
were at first enigmatic, but oriental scholarship soon availed to
decipher them. The story of this decipherment must be outlined here
for comparison with the account of the decipherment of the Egyptian
hieroglyphics, which has already been presented. In no other cases
except these two has the historian been called upon to deal with a
great mass of documents written in an absolutely dead language. It
must be remembered that the so-called dead languages of the classical
world were never really forgotten. All through the Middle Ages there
were numberless scholars who had an expert knowledge of Greek and
Latin. Indeed, these languages were the current medium of scholarly
intercourse throughout the dark ages. But the Babylonian and Assyrian
languages, like the Egyptian, were dead in the fullest significance of
the term; that is to say, they were utterly unknown to any human being
for a period of more than two thousand years. Their restoration was one
of the marvels of nineteenth-century scholarship; and while the details
of this feat of scholarship do not properly come within the province of
the historian in the narrower sense, they have such universal interest
that we shall do well to present at least their outline here.

Before turning to the story of decipherment, however, it will be well
to gain an idea as to the number and the variety and character of the
historical documents in question. And perhaps the best way to do this
will be to take a glance at the contents of the Assyrian collections
in the British Museum, giving particular attention to the marvellous
library of King Asshurbanapal, one of the last of the great rulers of
Assyria--a remarkable collection of books, the discovery of which has
been already referred to in the previous section. Nothing could give
one a more vivid realisation of the character of this ancient oriental
civilisation than the most casual glance at the sample books from this
old library. Having inspected, however casually, this marvellous set
of documents, one is prepared to take up the chronological history of
the Babylonians and the Assyrians with a fresh interest based upon
the comprehension that this people, so long regarded as scarcely more
than mythical, possessed a civilisation strangely comparable in many
essential features to the civilisation of our own time.[a]

TREASURES FROM NINEVEH

The most casual wanderer in the British Museum can hardly fail to
notice two pairs of massive sculptures, in the one case winged bulls,
in the other, winged lions, both human-headed, which guard the entrance
to the Egyptian hall, close to the Rosetta stone. Each pair of these
weird creatures once guarded an entrance to the palace of a king in the
famous city of Nineveh. As one stands before them his mind is carried
back over some twenty-seven intervening centuries, to the days when
the “Cedar of Lebanon” was “fair in his greatness” and the scourge of
Israel. A wave of emotion sweeps over one when he first sees them, and
Byron’s stirring lines, reminiscent of school-day oratory, ring in the
memory:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold,
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.

The Assyrian! The ruler of Nineveh! For two thousand five hundred years
he was only a name and a memory; yet here stand great monuments to
testify to the reality of his sometime greatness.

These huge lions are pertinent in the present connection because of
the inscriptions that are graven across their pedestals. A glance
reveals the strange characters in which these records are written,
graven neatly in straight lines across the stone, and looking, to
casual inspection, like nothing else so much as random flights of
arrow-heads. The resemblance is so striking that this is sometimes
called the arrow-headed character, though it is more generally
known as the wedge or cuneiform character. A strange writing this.
It seems almost incredible that it can really be susceptible of
interpretation and translation into a modern language. And, indeed,
the feat of interpreting it was one of the greatest achievements of
nineteenth-century scholarship; but of this we shall have more to say
in a moment.

But importance aside, what an interest must now attach to objects with
such a history as belongs to these! The very sculptures before us, for
example, were perhaps seen by Jonah when he made that famous voyage
to Nineveh some seven or eight hundred years B.C. A little later the
Babylonian and the Mede revolted from Assyrian tyranny, and descended
upon the fair city of Nineveh, and almost literally levelled it to
the ground. But these great sculptures, among other things, escaped
destruction, and at once hidden and preserved by the accumulating
débris of the centuries, they stood there age after age, their very
existence quite forgotten. When Xenophon marched past their site with
the ill-starred Expedition of the Ten Thousand, in the year 400 B.C.,
he saw only a mound which seemed to mark the site of some ancient ruin;
but so ephemeral is fame that the Greek did not suspect that he looked
upon the site of that city which only two centuries before had been the
mistress of the world.

So ephemeral is fame! And yet the moral scarcely holds in the sequel;
for we of to-day, in this new, undreamed-of Western world, behold these
mementoes of Assyrian greatness, fresh from their twenty-five hundred
years of entombment, and with them records which restore to us the
history of that long-forgotten people in such detail as it was not
known to any previous generation since the fall of Nineveh. For two
thousand five hundred years no one saw these treasures or knew that
they existed. One hundred generations of men came and went without
once pronouncing the names of Kings Asshurnazirpal or Asshurbanapal.
And to-day, after centuries of oblivion, these names are restored to
history, and, thanks to the character of their monuments, are assured
a permanency of fame that can almost defy time itself. It would be
nothing strange, but rather in keeping with their previous mutations
of fortune, if the names of Asshurnazirpal and Asshurbanapal should be
familiar household words to future generations that have forgotten the
existence of an Alexander, a Cæsar, and a Napoleon. For when Macaulay’s
prospective New Zealander explores the ruins of the British Museum, the
records of the ancient Assyrians will presumably be there unscathed, to
tell their story as they have told it to our generation, although every
manuscript and printed book may have gone the way of fragile textures.

But the past of the Assyrian sculptures is quite necromantic enough
without conjuring for them a necromantic future. The story of their
restoration is like a brilliant romance of history. Prior to the middle
of the nineteenth century the inquiring student could learn in an hour
or so all that was known in fact and in fable of the renowned city of
Nineveh. He had but to read a few chapters of the Bible and a few pages
of Diodorus to exhaust the important literature of the subject. If
he turned also to the pages of Herodotus and Xenophon, of Justin and
Ælianus, these served chiefly to confirm the suspicion that the Greeks
themselves knew almost nothing more of the history of their famed
oriental forerunners.

The current fables told of a first king Ninus and his wonderful
queen, Semiramis; of Sennacherib, the conqueror; of the effeminate
Sardanapalus, who neglected the warlike ways of his ancestors, but
perished gloriously at the last, with Nineveh itself, in a self-imposed
holocaust. And that was all. How much of this was history, how much
myth, no man could say; and for all any one suspected to the contrary,
no man could ever know. And to-day the contemporary records of the city
are before us in such profusion as no other nation of antiquity, save
Egypt alone, can at all rival. Whole libraries of Babylonian documents
are at hand that were written twenty or even thirty centuries before
our era. These, be it understood, are the original books themselves,
not copies. The author of that remote time speaks to us directly, hand
to eye, without intermediary transcriber. And there is not a line of
any Hebrew or Greek inscriptions of a like age that has been preserved
to us; there is little enough that can match these ancient books by a
thousand years. When one reads of Moses or Isaiah, Homer, Hesiod, or
Herodotus, he is but following the transcription--often unquestionably
faulty, and probably never in all parts perfect--of successive copyists
of later generations. The oldest known copy of the Bible, for example,
dates from the fourth century A.D.--1000 years after the last Assyrian
records were made, and read, and buried, and forgotten.

[Illustration: BAS-RELIEF FROM AN ASSYRIAN PALACE, SHOWING ASSYRIAN
SOLDIERS, PRISONERS BEING FLAYED ALIVE, CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS, ETC.]

As to the earlier Mesopotamian records, they date back some
5000--perhaps 7000--years B.C.: at least 1000 years before the period
assigned by Archbishop Usher’s long-accepted _Chronology_ for the
creation of the world itself. Solomon, who lived about 1000 B.C., is
accredited with the declaration that “of the making of many books
there is no end.” Modern exegesists tell us that it was not Solomon,
but a later Alexandrian interloper, who actually coined the phrase;
but nevertheless it appears that the saying would have been perfectly
intelligible, in Mesopotamia, not merely to Solomon’s contemporaries,
but to generations that lived long before the Jewish nation, as such,
came into existence. At all events, there was at least one king of
Assyria--namely, Asshurbanapal--who lived only a few generations after
Solomon, and whose palace boasted a library of some 10,000 volumes--a
library, if you please, in which the books were numbered and shelved
systematically, and classified, and cared for by an official librarian.
From this library, records have come to us during the past half-century
that have reconstructed the history of Asiatic antiquity.

If you would care to see some of these strange documents, you have but
a little way to go from the site of the winged lion here in the British
Museum. Meantime, there are other sculptures here which you can hardly
pass unnoticed. As we pass the human-headed lions and enter the hall of
Asshurnazirpal, we shall see other evidences of Assyrian greatness that
might easily lead our thoughts astray from the writing. Here, forming
the wall, are bas-reliefs on which the famous scene of the lion hunt
is shown; a little farther on are all manner of war scenes; and there
some domestic incidents, the making of bread or a like comestible, and
its baking in an oven; and there again is the interior of a stable with
a man gravely grooming a horse much as it might be done in any stable
to-day.

All these must not be allowed to distract our attention, for these
graphic illustrations have nothing directly to do with writing.
Here, however, at the end of the hall, are some other bas-reliefs
more pertinent to our present inquiry. That winged god, for example,
carrying a fawn, has a fine flight of arrows across the background
and figures alike, differing in the latter regard from the lion we
have just left. In the hall just beyond are some illustrations of a
different combination of picture and text. Here is the famous obelisk
of Shalmaneser, which, like all the things thus far noted in the
Assyrian collection, was found by Sir Henry Layard at Nineveh. It is
virtually an illustrated book, telling in word and text of the conquest
of many countries by King Shalmaneser II.

The figures of the upper row report the payment of tribute by “Sua of
Gilzani, who brought silver, gold, lead, vessels of copper, horses, and
dromedaries.” It will be observed, of course, that only one side of
the obelisk is here shown. The other three sides in each case depict
other phases of the payment of the tribute by the same conquered
enemy. The second tier of figures is of peculiar interest, because
it shows the payment of tribute by “Yaua, the son of Khumri.” This
is, as the Bible student interprets it, “Jehu, the son of Omri.” The
conquered Israelite brings “silver and gold, lead and bowls, dishes,
cups, and other vessels of gold,” and the forms of these vessels, as
well as the costumes of the Hebrews themselves, are well shown in the
illustrations. The third row of figures represents the “payment of the
tribute of the land of Musri, consisting of dromedaries, buffaloes,
elephants, apes, and other animals.” The grotesque figures of the
alleged apes, with their altogether human heads, are suggestive as
showing how these strange foreign animals appealed to the imagination
of the Assyrian artist, causing him to depart from that fine realism
which he brought to bear upon the delineation of more familiar animals.
The fourth set of pictures shows the payment of tribute of the land
of Sukhi, and the fifth a not dissimilar tribute from the country of
Patin. The inscriptions at the top and base of the obelisk give details
of the conquests, recording among other things how Shalmaneser captured
1121 chariots and 470 battle horses and the whole camp of Hazael, king
of Damascus.

Perhaps the most curious example of economy of material in a makeshift
book that the Assyrian collection at the British Museum has to show,
is illustrated in the figure of the god Nabu, which forms part of
the Nineveh collection, and which stands in the hall just beyond the
obelisk of Shalmaneser. Here, as a glance at the illustration will
show, the skirt of the robe of the human figure is used as a ground
for an elaborate inscription. The effect is rather decorative and
distinctly unique. This figure has the further interest of affording
an illustration of what the Assyrian artist could do when he adopted
the expedient, for him unusual, of working in the round. The great
masterpieces of Assyrian art were modelled in bas-relief. Occasionally,
however, the artist attempted the full figure, as in the present
case; but it can hardly be claimed that the success of this is at
all comparable with that attained by the other method. There are
low reliefs in the hunting scenes contained in the dining-hall of
Asshurbanapal, as represented here in the British Museum, that are
real works of art. The wounded lioness dragging her haunches, the
hunted goats, the pacing wild asses, are veritable masterpieces. No
such claim can be made for the god Nabu or for any other full statue
that the excavations of Nineveh have revealed. But on the other hand
the texture of the skirt of this god gives it an abiding interest of a
unique character.

A further interest attaches to this statue, as to many others of the
Assyrian monuments, because of its bearing upon the religion of that
famous people. Until the discovery of these long-buried monuments,
practically all that was known of the religion of the Babylonians and
Assyrians was contained in the pages of Herodotus. Strange tales he
tells of what he saw in the temples of Babylon, where, as he alleges,
all the women of the city, of whatever class or rank, were obliged
at least once in a lifetime to prostitute themselves for hire. The
inscriptions on the monuments tell us nothing of such practical phases
of worship as this, but they do show that the Assyrians were an
intensely religious people, closely comparable in that regard to their
cousins the Hebrews. Their religion, too, it would appear, was of that
firmly grasped self-sufficient kind which puts aside all doubt; which
assumes as a primordial fact that one’s own view is right; that one’s
gods are the only true gods, and that all the outside world must be
regarded as one’s proper prey. A further illustration of this phase
of the subject will claim our attention when we come to examine the
religious writings of the Assyrians a little more in detail.

[Illustration: OBELISK OF SHALMANESER II

(Now in the British Museum)]

Another illustration of a curiously Assyrian combination of art and
letters is shown in the sculptured lion that guards the entrance
to the next hall. This lion is a memento of the same reign as that
human-headed one at the other doorway, but it is very different in
workmanship, and clearly the product of another artist. For one thing
it is a veritable lion, not a mythical compound beast, except, indeed,
that it shares with the other the peculiarity of a fifth leg. Assyrian
tastes seem to have required that four legs should be visible from
whatever point of view the statue of an animal was regarded; hence
the anomaly. For the rest, this gigantic beast shows many points of
realistic delineation, and it is artistically full of interest. The
head in particular expresses feeling in a most unequivocal way.

But the most curious characteristic of this sculpture is the way in
which the writing is carried from the slab right across the body of the
animal itself, and also across its front legs. Perhaps this was done at
the command of the king, merely as a convenient expedient that all the
desired records of the conquest might be given a place, but the effect
at a little distance is curiously as if the artist had striven to get
the feeling of hair in a stiff and formal manner, in keeping with the
conventional rendering of the mane. Again it has been suggested that
the writing has been carried across the body of the lion to safeguard
it. There was a not unusual custom among ancient monarchs of scraping
out the inscription of a predecessor and supplanting it with one’s
own. So great a monarch as Ramses II, in Egypt, did not scruple to
do this, and a remarkable case is shown on an Arabian temple where
the conscienceless monarch actually substitutes his own name for the
correct one of the builder, in a tablet claiming authorship of the
temple of which the tablet is a part. That the kings of Assyria had
occasion to fear such jugglery is shown by the inscriptions on the
book tablets in the royal library at Nineveh, where Asshurbanapal,
after telling that the books are of his library, calls a curse upon
any one who shall ever put another name beside his own. Perhaps, then,
King Asshurnazirpal thought to transmit a record of his deeds more
securely to posterity by inscribing them across the back of this lion,
for doubtless the sculpture was considered a masterpiece, and the king
felt, we may suppose, that artistic taste might prevent a sacrilege
which mere conscience would not interdict.

THE LIBRARY OF A KING OF NINEVEH

We come now to the place in the British Museum in which some of these
treasures of the old Assyrian king are guarded. They occupy part
of the series of cases placed down the centre of the room known as
the Nineveh Gallery. Perhaps it is not too much to speak of these
collections as forming the most extraordinary set of documents of all
the rare treasures of the British Museum, for it includes not books
alone, but public and private letters, business announcements, marriage
contracts--in a word, all the species of written records that enter
into the everyday life of an intelligent and cultured community.

[Illustration: DETAIL FROM THE OBELISK OF SHALMANESER II]

But by what miracle have such documents been preserved through all
these centuries? A glance makes the secret evident. It is simply a case
of time-defying materials. Each one of these Assyrian documents appears
to be, and in reality is, nothing more or less than an inscribed
fragment of brick, having much the colour and texture of a weathered
terra-cotta tile of modern manufacture. These slabs are usually oval
or oblong in length, and an inch or so in thickness. Each of them was
originally a portion of brick clay, on which the scribe indented the
flights of arrow-heads with some sharp-cornered instrument, after which
the document was made permanent by baking. They are somewhat fragile,
of course, as all bricks are, and many of them have been more or less
crumbled in the destruction of the palace at Nineveh; but to the
ravages of mere time they are as nearly invulnerable as almost anything
in nature. Hence it is that these records of a remote civilisation
have been preserved to us, while the similar records of such later
civilisations as the Grecian have utterly perished; much as the flint
implements of the cave-dweller come to us unchanged, while the iron
implements of a far more recent age have crumbled away.

Consider even in the most casual way the mere samples that are
exhibited here in the museum. This first case, the label tells
us, contains tablets--sample leaves, if you will--from the famous
“Creation” and “Deluge” series. That is to say, from the book which has
been called the Chaldean Genesis, and which excited such a furor of
attention when George Smith of the British Museum first deciphered part
of its contents, because it seemed to give so striking a clew to the
origin of the sacred book of the Hebrews. The Hebrew legends are very
differently received to-day from what they were even fifty years ago,
thanks to the advance of science; but these Chaldean stories of the
creation and destruction of mankind still have absorbing interest as
historical documents in the story of the mental evolution of our race,
both for what they teach of the ideas of remote generations of men, and
for what they taught the generation of our immediate predecessors about
the true status of comparative mythology.

It will be recalled that the Assyrians were Semites closely related to
the Hebrews. Indeed, tradition held that Father Abraham, in common with
the ancestors of the Assyrians, came from the land of the Chaldeans. It
is not surprising, therefore, to find that these sacred books of the
Assyrians are replete with the same traditions and give expression to
much the same cast of thought as the sacred books of the Hebrews. Thus,
here we have a closely comparable account of the creation of the world
out of primeval chaos and of the destruction of all but a favoured few
in a universal deluge. Even the story of the sending out from the ark
of first one bird and then another, until finally the raven found a
place to alight, when the ark itself had stranded on a mountain top, is
reproduced with such closeness of detail as practically to demonstrate
a common origin of the two traditions.

Here, again, is a story of how Sargon, an early king of Agade, was
cast away, Moses-like, in a basket, to be rescued from the waters of
the Euphrates by a compassionate discoverer of his plight. There is
even a tablet which gives intimations of the story of the building of
the Tower of Babel. And with it all there is imbued the same black,
dreadful view of life that actuated the authors of the Old Testament.
Always we are made to feel the threat of the angry deity; always this
religion is a religion of fear. Generosity, brotherly love, compassion,
morality--in a broad sense these words play but little part in the
terminology of the Semite. The Semitic conqueror was notorious for his
cruelty. He loved to persecute his victim, to crucify him, to flay
him alive. The writers of the Hebrew and of the Assyrian books alike
record these deeds without a shudder. They show to the psychologist
a race lacking in imagination, which is the mother of sympathy, but
imbued through and through with egotism. The legends of the sacred
books give further evidence of these same traits. Here before us, among
the other tablets just noted, are the famous stories of the descent of
Ishtar, the Goddess of Love, into the nether regions, and of the trials
and perils which she encountered there, and those that fell upon the
outside world because of her absence. It is recorded that when finally
a messenger was sent from a superior power demanding her release, the
powers of the nether world gave her up unwillingly, but retained the
innocent messenger to torture in her stead; and it probably never
occurred to the mind of the Assyrian soothsayer that it might have been
within the power of the superior gods to release the innocent messenger
as well.

Another famous set of tablets records the adventures of Gilgamish,
whose heroic trials and mighty deeds suggest the Hercules of the
Greeks. All in all, these religious and mythological texts give us
the closest insight into the moral nature of the Assyrian, not merely
during the period of Asshurbanapal, but for many generations before,
since these sacred books are in the main but copies of old Babylonian
ones, dating from the most remote periods of antiquity.

The tablets of the next case illustrate a different phase of
Assyrian mental activity. They are virtually books of reference, and
schoolbooks--that is, “Grammatical Tablets, Lists of Cuneiform Signs,
Explanatory Lists of Words, etc.--drawn up for use in the Royal Library
at Nineveh.” They include a tablet of “words and phrases used in legal
documents, to serve as grammatical examples; one column being in the
Sumero-Accadian language, the other an Assyrian translation; also
lists of a verbal formation, and an explanatory list of words”--a
dictionary, if you please! Even more remarkable is a tablet giving a
list of picture characters with the archaic forms of cuneiform signs
to which they were thought to correspond; this list being supplemented
by another in which the archaic forms themselves are interpreted with
the “modern” equivalent. This tablet shows that, in the belief of the
ancient Assyrian, the cuneiform character had been developed, at a
remote epoch, from a purely historical writing (as was doubtless the
case), but that the exact line of this development had faded from the
memories of men in the latter-day epoch of the seventh century B.C.

In the case beyond are tablets with lists of “Names of Birds, Plants,
Bronze Objects, Articles of Clothing, etc., for reference as an aid
to writing literary compositions.” Then lists of officials, and other
documents relating to the history of Babylonia-Assyria, including
historical inscriptions of Sennacherib. Beyond, a set of letters,
public and private, mostly inscribed on oval bits of clay, three or
four inches long, and sometimes provided with envelopes of the same
material. Of this numerous collection of letters, the one that attracts
most popular attention is that in which King Sennacherib refers to
certain objects given by him to his son Esarhaddon. This is commonly
known as the “will of Sennacherib.” Near this is another letter that
is interesting because it is provided with a baked-clay envelope, into
which the letter slipped as a kernel of a nut into its shell. The
envelope bears the inscription, “To the King, my Lord, from Asshur
Ritsua,” and it is authenticated by two impressions of the writer’s
seal.

This use of seals, by-the-bye, is quite general, particularly in the
case of official documents. Sometimes, as in the case of a contract
tablet shown here, the witness, in lieu of seal, gives the stamp of
his finger nail, this being equivalent, I suppose, to “John Doe, his
mark.” It is hardly to be supposed that the average Assyrian could
write any more than the average Greek or Roman could, or, for that
matter, the average European of a century ago. The professional
scribe did the writing, of course, whence the necessity for seals
to assure authenticity of even ordinary letters. Doubtless the
art of gem engraving, which the old Chaldeans carried to amazing
perfection, followed by the Greeks and Romans, has been allowed to
decline in recent generations largely because the increasing spread of
education--not to mention gummed envelopes--made seals less and less a
necessity. Perhaps the art may be revived in the age of the typewriter.
But if one stops to speak of seals, he could hardly be restrained
from rushing off to the wonderful collection in the gem department
of the British Museum, where the Græco-Roman intaglios would drive
all thought of other collections from his head,--though even there
the Cyprian finds would lead him back irrevocably to the Babylonian
model,--whereas, for the moment, our true concern is not with seals of
any sort, but with the documents they are purposed to authenticate.

These documents are of the strangest assortment; and yet not strange,
so precisely similar are they to the official records of modern
communal existence. Thus here is one tablet, of about the year 650
B.C., recording the sale of a house. There another tells of the leasing
of certain property, for a term of six years, for twelve shekels of
silver. And, capping the climax, here are tablets recording the loan
of money, veritable notes, with even the rate of interest--twenty per
cent--carefully prescribed. One learns that the money broker did a
thriving business in old Nineveh. How near to us those days are, after
all!

And nearer yet they seem when we pass to the cases of the tablets
of omens and forecasts based upon the position of the stars and
planets, the actions of animals and reptiles, the flight of birds,
and the appearance of newly born offspring. For when superstition is
in question all races are kin, and all times are contemporary. The
European of to-day who shudders when he sees the moon over his left
shoulder, is brother in spirit to the Assyrian astrologer who used
this “astrolabe” to forecast the events of his own immediate future.
And these incantations, religious and magical rites, prayers, hymns,
litanies--do they not make it clear that the Assyrian was indeed our
elder brother? Does this lifted veil then show us a vista of three
millennia, or only of as many generations? At least it serves to
bring home to us--and I doubt if any other exhibit could do it as
forcibly--how slow, how snail-like is the rate of human progress.
Yet, after all, how vain this moralising; for who does not know that
the day when Nineveh saw its prime was only the yesterday of human
civilisation? If one doubted it before, he can doubt no longer,
since he has wandered down the rooms in which the relics from the
library of Asshurbanapal are exhibited, glancing thus casually at the
accommodating English labels.

Naturally, the stock of material bearing upon this topic has been
constantly increased by new explorations, notably by those of Oppert at
Nineveh, and of De Sarzec at Telloh, by which the French Government has
supplemented the early collections of the pioneer of the work, Botta;
by various German exploring companies; and, more recently, by the
American exploring expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, under
Dr. John P. Peters, which secured such important results at Nippur.
But the greatest repository of all still remains that which Layard and
his assistant and successor in the work, Rassam, followed by George
Smith, secured for the British Museum. The other collections afford
important sidelights; but the main story of Assyrian life and history,
as at present known to us, is told only by the books from the wonderful
library of the palace of Asshurbanapal at Nineveh; and these can be
studied only in the British Museum, or in the publications which the
workers of that institution have from time to time given to the world.

After glancing at these documents for the first time, none but a
heedless person can fail to have brought home to him a more vivid
picture of the life of antiquity, and a truer historical perspective
than he can previously have possessed. For more than two thousand years
Greek culture has dominated the world, and it has been the custom to
speak of the Greek as if he were the veritable inventor of art and of
culture; but these documents have led to a truer view. Here one looks
back, as it were, over the heads of the Greeks, and catches glimpses of
a people that possessed a high civilisation when the Greeks were still
an upstart nation, only working their way out of barbarism.

Now it appears to be nothing less than a law of nature that every
nation should look with contempt upon every other nation which it
regards as contemporary. With a highly artistic people, whose chief
pride is their artistic taste, this feeling reaches its climax. The
Greek attitude in this regard is proverbial. But it is just as fixed a
law of nature that every nation should look with reverence upon some
elder civilisation. The Romans adopted the Greek word “barbarian,” and
applied it to all other nations--except the Greeks. The Greeks did not
return the compliment. For them the Romans were parvenus--parvenus to
be looked on with hatred and contempt. I doubt not the Athenian child
gave the deadliest possible insult to his playfellow when he called him
a Roman; just as the Parisian child of to-day reserves the appellation
“_anglais_” as the bitterest anathema of his vocabulary. But when the
Greek turned his eyes in the other direction, and looked out upon
Egyptian and Babylonian civilisation, he was gazing into the past, and
his contempt changed to reverence, precisely as with the Frenchman
of to-day, who looks back with reverence upon the civilisation of
ancient Greece and Rome, while utterly contemning all phases of the
nineteenth-century civilisation save his own.

It was gladly admitted by the Greeks that these oriental civilisations
had flowered while Greek culture was yet in the bud. Solon, the
law-giver, was reported to have travelled in Egypt, and to have been
mildly patronised by the Egyptian priests as the representative of an
infant race. Herodotus, though ostensibly writing of the Persian war,
devotes whole sections of his history to Egypt, and accepts, as did
his countrymen, the Egyptian claims to immense antiquity without a
scruple. Plato even resided for some years in Egypt, as Diodorus tells
us, in the hope of gaining an insight into the mysteries of oriental
philosophy.

Regarding the Assyrio-Babylonians, apparently hardly any story was
too fanciful to gain a measure of credence with the classical world.
Herodotus, to be sure, only credits the Assyrians with ruling for
five hundred and twenty years before the overthrow of Nineveh; and
Diodorus, following Ctesias, raises the figure only to about one
thousand four hundred years. But these figures were probably based on
a vague comprehension that Assyria proper had a relatively late period
of flowering, as was, indeed, the fact; and the rumours regarding the
age of Babylonian civilisation as a whole may be best illustrated by
recalling that Cicero thought it necessary to express his scepticism
regarding a claim, seemingly prevalent in his time, that Babylonian
monuments preserve astronomical observations dating back over a period
of two hundred and seventy thousand years. Pliny, on the other hand,
quoting “Epigenes, a writer of first-rate authority,” claims for the
astronomical records only a period of seven hundred and twenty years,
noting also that Berosus and Critodemus still further limit the period
to four hundred and eighty years. But the very range of numbers shows
how utterly vague were the notions involved; and Pliny himself draws
the inference of “the eternal use of letters” among the Babylonians,
indicating that even the minimum period took the matter beyond the
range of western history.

But for that matter nothing could be more explicit than the testimony
of Diodorus, who, writing some three centuries after what we now speak
of as the “golden age” of Greece, plainly indicates that not Greece but
Mesopotamia was looked to in his day as the classic land of culture.
And we of to-day are enabled--the first of any generation in our
era--to catch glimpses of the data on which that estimate was based,
and to understand, by the witness of our own eyes, that the fabled
glory of ancient Assyria was no myth, but a very tangible reality.

[Illustration: ASSYRIAN LETTER OF BAKED CLAY AND FRAGMENT OF ITS BROKEN
ENVELOPE

(Now in the British Museum)]

HOW THE ASSYRIAN BOOKS WERE READ

But all along we have followed the story of these strange books, taking
for granted their meaning as interpreted on the labels, and ignoring
for the moment the great marvel about them, which is not that we have
the material documents themselves, but that we have a knowledge of
their actual contents. The flights of arrow-heads on wall, on slab,
or tiny brick have surely a meaning; but how has any one guessed that
meaning? These must be words--but _what_ words? The hieroglyphics of
the Egyptians were mysterious in all conscience; yet, after all, their
symbols have a certain suggestiveness, whereas there is nothing that
seems to promise a mental leverage in the unbroken succession of these
cuneiform dashes. Yet the Assyrian scholar of to-day can interpret
these strange records almost as readily and as surely as the classical
scholar interprets a Greek manuscript. And this evidences one of the
greatest triumphs of nineteenth-century scholarship; for, since almost
two thousand years, no man has lived, previous to our century, to
whom these strange inscriptions would not have been as meaningless
as they are to the most casual stroller who looks on them with vague
wonderment here in the museum to-day. For the Assyrian language, like
the Egyptian, was veritably a dead language; not, like Greek and Latin,
merely passed from practical everyday use to the closet of the scholar,
but utterly and absolutely forgotten by all the world. Such being the
case, it is nothing less than marvellous that it should have been
restored.

It is but fair to add that this restoration probably never would have
been effected with Assyrian or with Egyptian had the language, in
dying, left no cognate successor; for the powers of modern linguistry,
though great, are not actually miraculous. But, fortunately, a language
once developed is not blotted out _in toto_; it merely outlives its
usefulness and is gradually supplanted, its successor retaining many
traces of its origin. So, just as Latin, for example, has its living
representatives in Italian and the other Romance tongues, the language
of Assyria is represented by cognate Semitic languages. As it chances,
however, these have been of aid rather in the later stages of Assyrian
study than at the very outset; for the first clew to the message of the
cuneiform writing came through a slightly different channel.

Curiously enough, it was a trilingual inscription that gave the clew,
as in the case of the Rosetta stone; though with a very striking
difference withal. The trilingual inscription now in question, instead
of being a small portable monument, covers the surface of a massive
bluff at Behistun, in western Persia. Moreover, all three of its
inscriptions are in cuneiform character, and all three are in languages
that, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, were absolutely
unknown. This inscription itself, as a striking monument of unknown
import, had been seen by successive generations. Tradition ascribed
it, as we learn from Ctesias, through Diodorus, to the fabled Assyrian
queen, Semiramis. Tradition is quite at fault in this; but it is only
recently that knowledge has availed to set it right. The inscription,
as is now known, was really written about the year 515 B.C., at the
instance of Darius I, king of Persia, some of whose deeds it recounts
in the three chief languages of his widely scattered subjects.

The man who, at the actual risk of life and limb, copied this wonderful
inscription, and, through interpreting it, became the veritable “Father
of Assyriology,” was the English general, Sir Henry Rawlinson. His feat
was another British triumph over the same rivals who had competed for
the Rosetta stone; for some French explorers had been sent by their
government, some years earlier, expressly to copy this inscription, and
had reported that to reach the inscription was impossible. But British
courage did not find it so, and in 1835 Rawlinson scaled the dangerous
height and made a paper cast of about half the inscription. Diplomatic
duties called him away from the task for some years, but in 1848 he
returned to it, and completed the copy of all parts of the inscription
that have escaped the ravages of time. And now the material was in
hand for a new science, which General Rawlinson, assisted by a host of
others, soon began to elaborate.

The key to the value of the Behistun inscription lies in the fact that
its third language is ancient Persian. It appears that the ancient
Persians had adopted the cuneiform character from their western
neighbours, the Assyrians, but in so doing had made one of those
essential modifications and improvements which are scarcely possible to
accomplish except in the transition from one race to another. Instead
of building with the arrow-heads a multitude of syllabic characters,
including many homophones, as had been, and continued to be, the custom
of the Assyrians, the Persians selected a few of these characters, and
ascribed to them phonetic values that were almost purely alphabetical.
In a word, while retaining the wedge as the basal stroke of their
script, they developed an alphabet; making that last wonderful
analysis of phonetic sounds which even to this day has escaped the
Chinese, which the Egyptians had only partially effected and which the
Phœnicians were accredited by the Greeks with having introduced into
the western world. In addition to this all-essential step, the Persians
had introduced the minor, but highly convenient, custom of separating
the words of a sentence from one another by a particular mark,
differing in this regard not only from the Assyrians and the Egyptians,
but from the early Greek scribes as well.

Thanks to these simplifications, the old Persian language has been
practically restored about the beginning of the nineteenth century,
through the efforts of the German, Grotefend; and further advances
in it were made just at this time by Burnouf in France, and Lassen
in Germany, as well as by Rawlinson himself, who largely solved the
problem of the Persian alphabet independently. So the Persian portion
of the Behistun inscription could at last be partially deciphered.
This, in itself, however, would have been no very great aid towards the
restoration of the languages of the other portions, had it not chanced
fortunately that the inscription is sprinkled with proper names. Now,
proper names, generally speaking, are not translated from one language
to another, but transliterated as nearly as the genius of the language
will permit. It was the fact that the Greek word “Ptolemaios” was
transliterated on the Rosetta stone, that gave the first clew to the
sounds of the Egyptian characters. Had the upper part of the Rosetta
stone been preserved, on which, originally, there were several other
names, Young would not have halted where he did in his decipherment.

But fortune, which had been at once so kind, and so tantalising in the
case of the Rosetta stone, had dealt more gently with the Behistun
inscription; for no fewer than ninety proper names were preserved in
the Persian portion, and duplicated, in another character, in the
Assyrian inscription. A study of these gave a clew to the sounds of the
Assyrian characters. The decipherment of this character, however, even
with this aid, proved enormously difficult, for it was soon evident
that here it was no longer a question of a nearly perfect alphabet of
a few characters, but of a syllabary of several hundred characters,
including many homophones, or different forms for representing the same
sound. But with the Persian translation for a guide on the one hand,
and the Semitic languages, to which family the Assyrian belonged, on
the other, the appalling task was gradually accomplished, the leading
investigators being General Rawlinson, Professor Hincks, and Mr. Fox
Talbot, in England; Professor Jules Oppert in Paris; and Professor
Eberhard Schrader in Germany; though a host of other scholars soon
entered the field.

This great linguistic feat was accomplished about the middle of the
century. But so great a feat was it, that many scholars of the highest
standing, including Ernest Renan in France, and Sir George Cornwall
Lewis in England, declined at first to accept the results, contending
that the Assyriologists had merely deceived themselves by creating
an arbitrary language. The matter was put to the test in 1855, at
the suggestion of Mr. Fox Talbot, when four scholars, one being Mr.
Talbot himself, and the others General Rawlinson, Professor Hincks,
and Professor Oppert, laid before the Royal Asiatic Society their
independent translations of an hitherto untranslated Assyrian text. A
committee of the society, including England’s greatest historian of the
century, George Grote, broke the seals of the four translations, and
reported that they found them unequivocally in accord as regards their
main purport, and even surprisingly uniform as regards the phraseology
of certain passages; in short, as closely similar as translations from
the obscure texts of any difficult language ever are. This decision
gave the work of Assyriologists an official status, so to say, and the
reliability of their method has never since been in question.

Thus it has come about that these inscribed bricks from the palace of
Asshurbanapal, which, when the first of them was discovered, were as
meaningless as so many blank slabs, have been made to deliver up their
message. And a marvellous message it is, as we have already seen.

Merely to have satisfied a vague curiosity as to the past traditions,
however, would be but a small measure of the intellectual work which
the oriental antiquities have had a large share in accomplishing. Their
message has been one of truly world-historic import. Thanks to these
monuments from Egypt and Mesopotamia, the student of human civilisation
has to-day a sweep of view that hitherto has been utterly withheld from
him. Until the crypts by the Nile and the earth mounds by the Tigris
and Euphrates gave up their secrets, absolutely nothing was known to
scholarship of the main sweep of civilisation more anciently than about
the sixth century B.C. Beyond that all was myth, fable, unauthenticated
tradition. And now the indubitable monuments of civilisation carry us
back over a period at least three times as great. Archbishop Usher’s
famed _Chronology_, which so long dominated the ideas of men, is swept
away, and we learn from evidence graven in stone and baked indelibly
in bricks that in the year 4004 B.C., which our Bible margins still
point out as the year of Creation, vast communities of people, in
widely separated portions of the earth, had attained a high degree of
civilisation. In the year when the proverbial first man wandered naked
in Eden, the actual man lived with thousands of his fellow-men in vast
cities, where he built houses and temples, erected wonderful monuments,
practised such arts as glass-making, sculpture, and painting, and
recorded his thoughts in written words. And from that day to this
stretches the thread of civilisation, unbroken by any universal flood
or other cataclysm.

Now, to be sure, we are told that Archbishop Usher and his kith and
kin were but gullible and misguided enthusiasts, to have thought they
detected chronological sequence where none such existed; but it was
rank heresy to have propounded such a view until the new monuments gave
us the rudiments of a true chronology. Other evidence had, indeed,
proven the antiquity of the earth and of man himself, but the antiquity
of civilisation still depends upon these oriental monuments alone for
its demonstration. The chronology of ancient history has no other
authenticated source; and chronology, as Professor Petrie has said, is
“the backbone of history.” To be sure, the exact chronology of remote
antiquity is not by any means as fixed and secure as might be desired.
The antiquarian in dealing with the remoter epochs must count by
centuries rather than by years. But the broad outlines of the question
are placed beyond cavil. So long as the danger mark of the flood year
stared the investigator in the face, every foot of earlier chronology
was controversial ground, and each remoter century must battle for
recognition. But now, thanks to the accumulation of evidence, all that
is past, and the most ardent partisans of Hebrew records vie with one
another in tracing back the evidences of civilisation in Egypt and
Mesopotamia, by centuries and by millennia. It is thought by Professor
Hilprecht, that the more recent excavations by the Americans at the
site of Nippur have carried the evidence back to 6000 or perhaps
even 7000 years B.C., and no one’s equanimity is disturbed by the
suggestion, except, possibly, that of the Egyptologist, whose records
as yet pause something like a thousand years earlier, and who feels a
certain jealousy lest his Egyptian of seven thousand years ago should
be proven an uninteresting parvenu.

But note how these new figures disturb the balance of history. If our
forerunners of eight or nine thousand years ago were in a noonday glare
of civilisation, where shall we look for the much-talked-of “dawnings
of history”? By this new standard the Romans seem our contemporaries
in latter-day civilisation; the “golden age” of Greece is but of
yesterday; the Pyramid builders are only relatively remote. The men who
built the temple of Bel, at Nippur, in the year, let us say, 5000 B.C.,
must have felt themselves at a pinnacle of civilisation and culture. As
Professor Mahaffy has suggested, the time of the Pyramids may have been
the veritable autumn of civilisation. Where, then, must we look for its
spring-time? The answer to that question must come, if it comes at all,
from what we now speak of as prehistoric archæology; the monuments from
Memphis and Nippur and Nineveh, covering a mere 10,000 years or so, are
records of later history.[j]

FOOTNOTES

[39] Diodorus Siculus, it will be remembered, states that the stones
of the bridge built by Semiramis across the Euphrates were united by
similar iron cramps, whilst the interstices were filled up with molten
lead.

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter]

CHAPTER I. LAND AND PEOPLE

[b] G. WEBER, _Allgemeine Weltgeschichte_.

[c] EDUARD MEYER, _Geschichte des Alterthums_.

[d] F. HOMMEL, _Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens_.

[e] R. W. ROGERS, _History of Babylonia and Assyria_.

[f] J. P. PETERS, _Nippur_.

CHAPTER II. OLD BABYLONIAN HISTORY

[b] HUGO RADAU, _Early Babylonian History down to the IVth Dynasty of
Ur_.

[c] A. H. SAYCE, from the article “Babylonia and Assyria,” in the New
Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.

[d] E. A. T. W. BUDGE, _Babylonian Life and History_.

CHAPTER III. THE RISE OF ASSYRIA

[b] H. WINCKLER, _Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens_.

[c] EDUARD MEYER, _Geschichte des Alterthums_.

[d] E. BABELON, _Histoire de l’Orient_.

[e] C. P. TIELE, _Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte_.

CHAPTER IV. FOUR GENERATIONS OF ASSYRIAN GREATNESS

[b] C. P. TIELE, _Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte_.

[c] HERODOTUS, _The History of Herodotus_ (translated from the Greek by
William Beloe).

[g] E. A. T. W. BUDGE, _Annals of Shalmaneser II, Sennacherib, and
Asshurbanipal_.

CHAPTER V. THE DECLINE AND FALL OF ASSYRIA

[b] R. W. ROGERS, _History of Babylonia and Assyria_.

[c] C. P. TIELE, _Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte_.

CHAPTER VI. RENASCENCE AND FALL OF BABYLON

[b] F. HOMMEL, _Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens_.

CHAPTER VII. MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF BABYLONIA-ASSYRIA

[b] A. H. LAYARD, _Nineveh and its Remains_.

[c] HERODOTUS, _The History of Herodotus_ (translated from the Greek by
William Beloe).

[d] STRABO, _The Geography of Strabo_ (translated from the Greek by J.
Falconer and H. C. Hamilton).

[e] A. H. L. HEEREN, _Historical Researches into the Politics,
Intercourse, and Trade of the Principal Nations of Antiquity_ (Asiatic
Nations).

[f] JOACHIM MENANT, _La Bibliothèque du Palais de Ninive_.

CHAPTER VIII. THE RELIGION OF THE BABYLONIANS AND ASSYRIANS

[b] JOACHIM MENANT, _La Bibliothèque du Palais de Ninive_.

[c] L. W. KING, _Babylonian Religion and Mythology_.

[h] P. JENSEN, _Cosmologie der Babylonier_.

[i] H. GUNKEL, _Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit_.

[j] L. W. KING, _Seven Tablets of Creation_.

[m] EBERHARD SCHRADER, _Die Keilinschriften und Das Alte Testament, 3rd
edition_.

[n] A. JEREMIAS, _Izdubar Nimrod_.

[o] C. P. TIELE, _Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte_.

CHAPTER IX. BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN CULTURE

[b] A. H. LAYARD, _Nineveh and its Remains_.

[c] HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, “The Influence of Modern Research on the
Scope of World History,” Prefatory Essay in Volume III of the New
Volumes of the Ninth Edition of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.

[d] DIODORUS SICULUS, _The Historical Library_ (translated from the
Greek by G. Booth).

[e] EDUARD MEYER, _Geschichte des Alterthums_.

[f] EDWARD HINCKS, from an article “On the Assyrio-Babylonian Measures
of Time,” in Volume XXIV of the _Transactions of the Royal Irish
Academy_, 1874.

[g] JOACHIM MENANT, _La Bibliothèque du Palais de Ninive_.

[h] C. P. TIELE, _Babylonisch-Assyrische Geschichte_.

[i] G. NAGEL, in _Beiträge zur Assyriologie_, Vol. IV.

[j] M. MONTGOMERY, _Briefe aus der Zeit Hammurabis_.

[k] C. JOHNSTON, in the “Epistolary Literature of the Assyrians and
Babylonians” in the _Journal of the American Oriental Society_, Vol.
XVIII.

[l] FRIEDRICH DELITZSCH, article “Beiträge zur Erklärung der
babylonisch-assyrischen Brieflitteratur” in _Beiträge zur
Assyriologie_, Vol. I.

[m] F. LENORMANT, _Histoire ancienne de l’Orient_.

APPENDIX A. CLASSICAL TRADITIONS

[b] ISAAC PRESTON CORY, _Ancient Fragments_.

[c] DIODORUS SICULUS. _The Historical Library_, (translated from the
Greek by G. Booth).

[d] CLAUDIUS ÆLIANUS, _The Variable History of Ælianus_ (translated
from the Greek by A. Fleming).

APPENDIX B. EXCAVATIONS IN MESOPOTAMIA AND THEIR RESULTS

[b] A. H. LAYARD, _Nineveh and its Remains_.

[c] F. HOMMEL, _Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens_.

[d] R. W. ROGERS, _History of Babylonia and Assyria_.

[j] HENRY SMITH WILLIAMS, _The History of the Art of Writing_.

A GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY

BASED ON THE WORKS QUOTED, CITED, OR EDITORIALLY CONSULTED IN THE
PREPARATION OF THE PRESENT HISTORY, WITH CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

* * * * *

=Ælianus=, Claudius, The Variable History of Ælianus. Translated
by A. Fleming. London, 1576.--=Ainsworth=, W., Researches in
Assyria, Babylonia, and Chaldea. London, 1842; Chaldeans of Central
Kurdestan.--=Amiaud=, A., in de Sarzec’s Découvertes en Chaldée. Paris,
1814, 2 vols.; (in collab. with =F. Scheil=) Les inscriptions de
Salmanasar. Paris, 1890.--=Aures=, A., Traité de métrologie assyrienne.
Paris, 1891.

* * * * *

=Babelon=, E., Manuel d’archéol. orientale. Paris, 1888.--=Bertin=,
G., Babylonian Chronology and History. London, 1892; The
Pre-Akkadian Semites. London, 1886.--=Bewsher=, Lieut., Mesopotamia:
Sheriat-el-Beyta to Tell Ibrahim.--=Bezold=, C., The Tell-el-Amarna
Tablets in the British Museum. London, 1892; Catalogue of the Cuneiform
Tablets in the Kuyunjik collection in the British Museum. London,
1889; Überblick über die babylonisch-assyrische Literatur. Leipsic,
1886.--=Billerbeck=, A., Susa. Leipsic, 1893.--=Birch=, S., Records
of the Past. London, 1873, 12 vols.--=Bonavia=, E., Flora of the
Assyrian Monuments. London, 1894.--=Boscawen=, W. St. C., Lectures on
the History of Assyria. London, 1886; Assyria and Babylonia. London,
1836.--=Botta=, P. E., and =Flandrin=, E., Monuments de Ninive. Paris,
1849-1850, 5 vols.

_Paul Émil Botta_ was born at Turin December 6, 1802, and died
at Achères, near Poissy, France, March 29th, 1870. He was French
consul at Alexandria, and in 1842 was transferred to the office of
vice-consul at Mosul, of which he was the first titulary consul.
In December, 1842, he studied the tumulus which covered the right
bank of the Tigris opposite Mosul; superficially explored Kuyunjik;
and then at Khorsabad discovered (from March to October, 1843) the
remains of the town and palace of Doursaryonkin, founded by Sargon
II, king of Assyria. The objects found during these discoveries
were transported to France in 1846, and form the main contents of
the Musée Assyrien of the Louvre.

=Brandis=, J., Über den historischen Gewinn aus der Entzifferung der
Assyr. Inschriften. Berlin, 1856.--=Brown=, F. T., Assyriology. New
York, 1885.--=Bruce=, P., Three Inscriptions of Nabopolassar, King of
Babylonia, B.C. 625-604; In Amer. Jour. of Sem. Lang., vol. 16, p.
178. Chicago, 1900.--=Brünnow=, R. E., Classified List of All Simple
and Compound Cuneiform Ideographs. Leyden, 1887-1889.--=Bruston=,
C. A., Les inscriptions assyriennes et l’Ancien Testament. Paris,
1875.--=Budge=, E. A. W., Babylonian Life and History. London, 1884;
The History of Esar-Haddon. London, 1880; Annals of Shalmanasser II,
Sennacherib and Assurbani-Pal. London, 1880; A Guide to the Babylonian
and Assyrian Antiq. of the British Museum. London, 1900.

* * * * *

=Cara=, P. C. de, Gli Hethei-Pelasgi. Rome, 1895.--=Cartwright=, J.,
Travels through Syria, Mesopotamia, etc. London, 1911.--=Cassas=, L.
F., Voyage Pittoresque en Syrie. Paris, 1799.--=Cavaniol=, H., Les
monuments en Chaldée, en Assyrie et à Babylone. Paris, 1870.--=Clercq=,
L. de, Antiquités assyriennes. Paris, 1888.--=Cloquet=, L., L’art
monumental des égyptiens et des assyriens. Paris, 1896.

* * * * *

=Delattre=, A. J., Esquisse de géographie assyrienne. Paris, 1883; Les
inscriptions historiques de Ninive, etc. Paris, 1879; L’Asie occid.
dans les inscriptions assyriennes. Brussels, 1885; L’assyriologie
depuis onze ans. Paris, 1891; L’exactitude en histoire d’après un
Assyriologiste. Louvain, 1888.--=Delitzsch=, Friedrich, Die Entstehung
des ältestens Schriftsystems. Leipsic, 1897; Handel, Recht und Sitte
im alten Babylonien (in Velhagen and Klasing’s Monatshefte, Jahr. 13,
Vol. II, p. 47. Berlin, 1899); Assyrische Studien. Leipsic, 1874.

_Friedrich Delitzsch_, the son of Franz Delitzsch, was born
at Erlangen, September 3, 1850. Professor of Assyriology in
the University of Berlin, he devoted himself to the study of
Assyriology, and attained a wide reputation as an Assyriologist.
He was appointed Professor of Assyriology at the University of
Leipsic. His writings have been mostly upon the subject of Assyria
and ancient Assyrian life, and he has made some translations from
the works of other historians, notably George Smith’s _Chaldean
Account of Genesis_. He made a deep sensation in Germany in 1902
by his lecture on “Babel and the Bible,” in which he pointed out
the similarity of the story of Moses in the bulrushes to the
ancient legend of the birth of Sargon I, king of Babylon; noted
the Babylonian custom of resting every seventh day, the word being
shabattu (whence Sabbath), and many other points in which the
Babylonian influence is shown in the Bible.

=Dieulafoy=, J., La Perse et la Chaldée. Paris, 1887.--=Diodorus=, S.,
The Historical Library, London, 1700.--=Duncker=, M., Geschichte des
Alterthums. Leipsic, 1878, 6 vols. English translation: The History of
Antiquity. London, 1880, 6 vols.

* * * * *

=Edwards=, C., The Witness of Assyria. London, 1893.--=Epping=, C.,
Astronomisches aus Babylon. Freiburg, 1889.--=Evans=, G., An Essay
on Assyriology. London, 1883.--=Evetts=, B. T. A., Cylinders of
Sennacherib. London, 1889; Inscription of the Reign of Evil-Merodach,
Neriglissar and Laborosoarchod. Leipsic, 1892.

* * * * *

=Feer=, H. L., Les Ruines de Ninive. Paris, 1864.--=Ferguson=, J., The
Palaces of Niniveh and Persepolis Restored. London, 1857.--=Fontane=,
M., Histoire Universelle. Paris, 1881-1889, 6 vols.

_Marius Fontane_ was born at Marseilles, September 4, 1838. He was
destined to follow a commercial career, and was sent by a French
house in Marseilles to represent it in the Orient. While there
he was brought into relations with M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, and
became his private secretary. Through the efforts of M. de Lesseps,
Fontane was successively associated as secretary-general to the
Suez and Panama Canal Companies. M. Fontane was early drawn into
literary work, and in spite of his official duties found time to
devote much attention to political economy, religion, learning, and
history in all its branches. In his Universal History he devotes
much space to questions of race and primitive religions in the
historical evolution of humanity. Marius Fontane has come into
prominence largely through his writings on the subject of history,
but also through his explorations in the countries lying about the
Isthmus of Suez.

=Fradenburg=, J. N., Fire from Strange Altars. Cincinnati,
1891.--=Fraser=, J. B., Mesopotamia and Assyria, from the Earliest Ages
to the Present Time. New York, 1892.

* * * * *

=Gatschet=, A. S., Historic Documents from the XIVth Century B.C. (In
Amer. Anthropologist, vol. 10, p. 121. Washington, 1897.)--=Ginzel=,
F. K., Die astronomischen Kentnisse der Babylonier und ihre
culturhistorische Bedeutung. Leipsic, 1901.--=Goss=, W. H., Hebrew
Captives of the Kings of Assyria. London, 1890.--=Guyard=, S., Mélanges
d’Assyriologie. Paris, 1883.--=Goodspeed=, George S., A History of
Babylonia and Assyria. New York, 1903.

* * * * *

=Halévy=, J., Documents religieux de l’Assyrie. Paris, 1882; La
nouvelle évolution de l’accadisme. Paris, 1878; Aperçu grammatical
sur l’allographie assyro-babylonienne. Paris, 1885; Essai sur les
inscriptions du Safa. Paris, 1882; Recherches critiques sur l’origine
de la civilisation babylonienne. Paris, 1876.

_Joseph Halévy_, of Jewish origin, was born at Adrianople, December
15, 1827. He came to study at Paris, and became a naturalised
Frenchman. In 1868 he visited northern Abyssinia to study the
Jewish religion of the Falashas. (The Falashas are a Hamitic tribe
which professes the Jewish religion, and claims descent from Hebrew
immigrants who followed the queen of Sheba.) In 1869 he was sent
to Yemen on a mission of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles
Lettres. He remained there two years, and brought back six hundred
and eighty-three Sabaic inscriptions. In 1872 he received a gold
medal from the Société de Géographie and the Volney prize from
the Institut. He afterwards became Professor of Ethiopian at the
École pratique des hautes études. He was one of the most active
collaborators in the _Journal Asiatique_, and wrote frequently
on the most disputed questions concerning the philology and
the archæology of the East to the Académie des Inscriptions.
His theories as to the origins of the Mesopotamian peoples and
languages made a profound impression on all the scholarly world,
and while they have met with bitter opposition they are entitled
to all the consideration that is due to such deep and tireless
research.

=Harkness=, M. E., Assyrian Life and History. London, 1883.--=Harper=,
R. F., Assyrian and Babylonian Letters. London, 1892-1902, 8
vols.--=Havet=, E., Mémoire sur la date des écrits. Paris.--=Heeren=,
A. H. L., Historical Researches, etc. Oxford, 1839, 2nd ed.,
5 vols.--=Hegel=, G. W. F., Lectures on the Philosophy of
History. London, 1857.--=Helm=, O. (in collab. with =Hilprecht=,
H. V.), Chemische Untersuchung von altbabylonischen Kupferund
Bronze-Gegenständen und deren Alters-Bestimmung (in Berl. Gesellsch. f.
Anthrop. Verh.). Berlin, 1901.--=Herder=, J. G. von, Outlines of the
Philosophy of History of Man. London, 1803, 2 vols.

_Johann Gottfried von Herder_ was born at Mohrungen, East Prussia,
August 25, 1744. His education was mostly private. His first
writings appeared when he was about twenty years of age. His first
considerable work, _Fragmente über die neure deutsche Literatur_,
appeared in 1767. This work attracted the favourable attention of
Lessing, and made him widely known. In 1776 he obtained the post of
upper court preacher and upper member of the Consistory at Weimar.
At this post he passed the rest of his life. “He possessed a power
of intuition which must be considered in many cases as prophetic,
and which made him a pathfinder whose traces are followed up to
the present day.” His _Study of the Philosophy of History_ will
naturally be compared with the work on the same subject by his
contemporary Hegel. It created almost a furor of excitement in
its day, and may still be read with interest and profit by every
earnest student of history. Its essential attitude of mind appears
peculiarly archaic in our day, evidencing the utterly changed
point of view from which history is regarded in our generation.
Herder, like most other philosophical historians of his time,
saw everywhere the hand of God in history, and was firmly imbued
with the idea that all human events were but the working out of a
divine plan, the broad outlines of which had been fully revealed
to man. The modern historian tries to be a scientist rather than a
philosopher, and he finds scant proof of this basis on which Herder
worked, but views or attempts to view the course of world-history
as a candid or impartial investigator of facts and of rational
human motives, feeling by no means sure that he grasps the full
import of any metaphysical theological bearings of these facts and
motives, if such there be. Yet for this very reason the writings of
Herder have a peculiar value, as they not alone evidence the mental
grasp of the age in which they were written, but serve at the same
time to point out a significant difference between that time and
our own.

=Herodotus=, The History of Herodotus. London, 1806, 2nd ed., 4
vols.--=Heuzey=, L., Un palais chaldéen. Paris, 1888. La construction
du roi Our-Nina d’après les levés et les notes de M. de Sarzec (in Rev.
d’Assyr. et d’Archéol., vol. 4, p. 87. Paris, 1898).--=Hilprecht=,
H. V., The Babylonian Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania
(Old Babylonian Inscriptions), Am. Phil. Soc. Philadelphia, 1896;
Recent Researches in the Bible Lands. Philadelphia, 1896; The Recent
Excavations of the University at Nippur (in Univ. of Pennsylvania Bul.,
vol. 2, p. 87, and vol. 3, p. 373, Philadelphia, 1899).

_Hermann Hilprecht_ was born at Hohenerxleben, Germany, June 28,
1859. He is at present professor in the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Hilprecht was interested from the outset in the
expedition of the University of Pennsylvania to Babylonia, to which
we have more than once referred. At a later stage he was curator
and scientific director of the expedition, in which Mr. Haynes had
charge of the field-work, 1893-95 and 1897-1900, after Dr. Peters’
retirement. Though he spent but a month in actual field-work, he
spent several years in working up at Constantinople or Philadelphia
the ample supply of materials which the various expeditions
procured, and his results, as published from time to time, have
been noted everywhere as distinct and important additions to our
technical knowledge of Assyriology. The greatest popular interest
in these discoveries perhaps grows out of the light that they throw
on the extreme antiquity of Babylonian history. Dr. Peters and
Professor Hilprecht both assure us that the secure records gained
by the excavations of Nippur carry the history of Babylonia back to
a period at least a thousand years earlier than the date ascribed
by Archbishop Usher’s long-famed chronology for the creation of the
world, and Professor Hilprecht’s latest investigations justify the
belief that the earliest records from Nippur are not newer than the
year 7000 B.C.

=Hincks=, E., On the Assyrio-Babylonian Measures of Time. Dublin,
1874.--=Hird=, W. G., Monumental Records. London, 1889.--=Hoefer=, J.
C. F., Mémoires sur les ruines de Ninive. Paris, 1850.--=Hommel=, F.,
Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens. Berlin, 1885; Semitische Völker
und Sprachen. Leipsic, 1881; Abriss der babylonisch-assyrischen und
israel. Gesch. Leipsic, 1880; Der babylonische Ursprung der aegypt.
Kultur. München, 1892.

_Fritz Hommel_ was born at Ansbach, July 31, 1854. Professor of
Semitic Languages in the University of Munich. Professor Hommel is
a distinguished member of that band of German students who have
made orientalism their life-work. His particular studies have had
to do chiefly with the Semitic race. His history of Babylonia
and Assyria is one of the most recent and certainly among the
most comprehensive and authoritative works on the subject that
have yet been written. As Professor Hommel is yet a comparatively
young man, he very naturally belongs to the advanced school of
Assyriologists, and his work may be looked to with confidence for
an expression of the furthest present advance of research. In
particular, Professor Hommel is distinguished as an ardent champion
of the Babylonian or Chaldean origin of the Phœnician alphabet
in opposition to the theory of de Rougé, which ascribed to it an
Egyptian origin. Most of Hommel’s publications are to be had only
in the original German.

=Howorth=, H. H., The Early History of Babylonia (in Engl. Hist. Rev.,
vol. 13, pp. 1, 209, vol. 14, p. 625, vol. 16, p. 1); On the Earliest
Inscriptions from Chaldea (in Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archeol., vol. 21, p.
289, London, 1899).

* * * * *

=Jastrow=, M., The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. Boston, 1898;
Nabopolassar and the Temple to the Sun-god at Sippar (in Amer. Jour,
of Sem. Lang.; Chicago, 1899, vol. 15, p. 65).--=Jensen=, P., Kish (in
Ztschr. für Assyriologie; Berlin, 1901, vol. 15): Assyrisch-babylon,
Mythen und Epen (in Keilschrftl. Bibl.; Berlin, 1900, vol. 6): Die
Cosmologie der Babylonier. Strassburg, 1890.--=Johnson=, C., The Fall
of the Assyrian Empire (in studies in honour of B. L. Gildersleeve;
Baltimore, 1902, p. 113): The Fall of Nineveh (in Amer. Orient. Soc.
Journ.; New Haven, 1901, vol. 22, pt. 1, p. 20).--=Justinius=, Justin’s
History of the World. London, 1875.--=Jeremias=, A., Hölle und Paradies
bei den Babyloniern. Leipsic, 1900.

* * * * *

=Kaulen=, F., Assyrien und Babylonien, nach den neuesten Entdeckungen.
Freiburg, 1891, 4th ed.--=Kennedy=, J., Early Commerce of Babylonia
with India, etc. London, 1898.--=King=, L. W., Babylonian Religion and
Mythology, London, 1899; Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, etc.
London, 1898-1900, 3 vols.

_Leonard William King_ was born in London, December 8, 1869, and
educated at Rugby and King’s College, Cambridge. As assistant in
the department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquity of the British
Museum, he has made very extensive studies in the literature of
Babylonia and Assyria. He has collected and arranged many series
of cuneiform inscriptions, besides adding much to the literature
on both Babylonia and Assyria. His writings are for the most part
rather technical.

=Kinns=, S., Graven in the Rock. London, 1891.--=Knudtzon=, J. A.,
Assyr. Gebete an den Sonnengott. Leipsic, 1893, 2 vols.--=Kohler=,
J., and =Peisser=, F. E., Aus dem babylonischen Rechtleben. Leipsic,
1890.--=Koldewey=, R., in Zeitschrift für Assyriologie. Dec.,
1887.--=Krall=, J., Grundriss der altorientalischen Geschichte. Wien,
1899.--=Krüger=, J., Geschichte der Assyrier und Iranier, vom XIII, bis
zum V. Jahrh. v. C. Frankfurt, 1856.

* * * * *

=Langlois=, V., Le Dunuk-Dasch, tombeau de Sardanapale à Tarsovo (in
Rev. Archéol.; Paris, 1853, vol. 10).--=Laurent=, A., La Magie et
la Divination de l’Orient. Paris, 1894.--=Layard=, A. H., Nineveh
and its Remains. London, 1849, 2 vols.; Nineveh and Babylon. London,
1853; Early Adventures in Persia, Susiana and Babylonia. London, 1887;
Monuments of Nineveh. London, 1849-1854.

_Sir Austin Henry Layard_ was born in Paris, of English parentage,
March 5, 1817. He spent the years of his early youth in Florence.
On returning to England he began the study of law. In 1839 he
took an extended tour, chiefly within the Turkish Empire. Here
he learned Persian and Arabic. In 1842 he spent some months in
exploring the antiquities of southwestern Persia. It was during
this expedition that he became interested in the excavations
being made at the supposed site of Nineveh by M. Botta. In 1845
he returned to Mosul and began his series of researches. The
material that he gathered in this expedition greatly enriched
the oriental department of the British Museum; and by means of
the cuneiform inscriptions found the ancient oriental history
was completely reconstructed. In 1852 he made a second series of
excavations in Assyria, adding largely to his former discoveries.
The same year he was elected to Parliament. In 1854 he visited
Crimea, witnessing some battles there. He was chosen lord rector of
Aberdeen University in 1855, and in 1866 became a trustee of the
British Museum. Shortly after this he was elected foreign member
of the Institute of France. In 1869, Ambassador to Spain; in 1878,
to Constantinople. He died July 5, 1894. The name of this famous
Englishman will always be indelibly associated with the origin of
the science of Assyriology. To Layard it was chiefly due that the
once famous but long almost forgotten city of Nineveh was exhumed
and its buried treasures given to the world. The story of these
exhumations is a part of the history of Assyria-Babylonia, and has
already been told.

=Lehmann=, C., Altbabylon, Maass und Gewicht. Berlin, 1889;
Beiträge zur alten Geschichte. Leipsic, 1901; Shamasshumukin, König
von Babylonia, 668-669 v. C. Leipsic, 1892; Zwei Hauptprobleme
der altorientalischen Chronologie und ihre Lösung. Leipsic,
1898.--=Lenormant=, F., Les dieux de Babylone et de l’Assyrie. Paris,
1877; Lettres assyriologiques, 2nd series; Études accadiennes. Paris,
1879-1880; Chaldean Magic: Origin and Development. London, 1877;
Premières civilisations. Paris; in collab. with =Chevalier=, E., A
Manual of the Ancient History of the East. London, 1869-1870, 2 vols.;
in collab. with =Babelon=, E., Histoire ancienne de l’Orient. Paris,
1881-1886.

_François Lenormant_ was born in Paris 17th January, 1837; died
there 10th December, 1883. His education was private. Early in
life he showed a special aptitude and liking for the study of the
oriental languages. He travelled extensively in Egypt, Turkey, and
Greece, and became prominent for his researches in the Accadian
languages. In 1874 he was appointed Professor of Archæology at the
Bibliothèque, Paris. The son of an archæologist of distinguished
merit, Lenormant grew up in an atmosphere of scholarship, and
early evinced a keen taste for all that pertained to archæology.
He entered the field of Assyriology in its infancy, and soon
became known as a leader among the masters in that field, and his
early death was regarded everywhere as one of the severest blows
which oriental archæology could have received. Lenormant was
regarded by his fellow-workers as having a peculiar genius for his
task, and his taste for literary work was no less keen than his
scholarship. The fact that his great work on Oriental History was
at once translated into English vouches for its popular interest.
Unfortunately he did not live to complete his still more important
work on the same subject, to which the last years of his life were
devoted.

=Lincke=, A. A., Bericht über die Fortschritte der Assyriologie,
1886-1893. Leipsic, 1894.--=Lindl=, E., Die Datenliste der ersten
Dynastie von Babylon; in Beiträge zur Assyriologie. Leipsic,
1901.--=Loftus=, W. K., Chaldea and Susiana. London, 1857.--=Lotz=,
W., Die Imschriften Tiglathpileser I. Leipsic, 1880.--=Lyon=, G.,
Keilschrifttexte Sargon’s, Königs von Assyrien, 722-705 v. C. Leipsic,
1883.

* * * * *

=Maccalester=, S. H., Babylon and Nineveh. Boston, 1892.--=Macphail=,
S. E., Monumental witness to Old Testament History. London,
1879.--=Martin=, G., La campaigne de Sennakerib en Palestine, etc.
Montauban, 1892.--=Martin=, F., Textes religieux assyriens et
babyloniens. Paris, 1900.--=Maspero=, G. C. C., Histoire ancienne
des peuples de l’Orient. Paris, 1886; The Struggle of the Nations.
London, 1896; The Dawn of Civilisation. London, 1897; Life in Ancient
Assyria. London, 1892.--=Meissner=, B., Beiträge zum altbabylonischen
Privatrecht. Leipsic, 1893.--=Menant=, J., Babylone et la Chaldée.
Paris, 1875; Découvertes assyriennes. La Bibliothèque du palais de
Ninive. Paris, 1880; Empreintes de cachets assyrio-chaldéens relevés
au Musée britannique sur des contrats d’intériet privé. Paris, 1883;
Les pierres gravées de la Haute-Asie. Recherches sur la glyptique
orientale. Paris, 1883, 1886; Les noms propres assyriens; recherches
sur la formation des expressions idéographiques. Paris, 1861;
Hammourabi (King of Babylon) Inscriptions. Paris, 1873; Les langues
perdues de la Perse et de l’Assyrie. Paris, 1890; Annales des rois
d’Assyrie. Paris, 1874; Ninive et Babylone. Paris, 1888; Les fausses
antiquités de l’Assyrie. Paris, 1888.

_Joachim Menant_ was born at Cherbourg, France, 16th April,
1820. The life of this famous orientalist furnishes yet another
illustration of the practical man of affairs who finds also time
for the most abstruse scholarship. Throughout a long life until
1890, when at the ripe age of three score years and ten, he was
retired with the title of Honorary Councillor. Menant lived the
practical everyday life of a magistrate, and practised this
profession with such assiduity and judgment as to attain the
highest distinction. Yet, at the same time, he found leisure hours
enough to make himself everywhere recognised as one of the most
accomplished of Assyriologists. A comparatively young man, when
the discoveries of Botta and Layard and their successors first
brought the Assyrian treasures to the attention of the world,
Menant seemed from the very first to have been seized with a
desire to investigate the strange inscriptions from Nineveh. He
was among the first who undertook the investigation of the strange
cuneiform writing and from then till now he has kept well in the
van of the constantly growing company of Assyriologists. The list
of his works is little more than a succession of papers on one or
another of the subjects most intimately connected with this field.
Most of them are of a technical character, and, therefore, have
necessarily appeared only to a limited audience. In one or two
instances, however, and notably in the case of the little book
on the library of Asshurbanapal, he has descended to the popular
level, and has shown himself capable of handling the most abstruse
topics in a way to make them delightfully interesting to the least
scholarly of readers. Strange to say, this beautiful little book
has never been hitherto translated into English, and a like neglect
has attended nearly all the other publications of the author. It
is difficult to find an explanation of this neglect unless it be
the author’s well-known attitude towards the status of the ancient
Hebrew records. On more than one occasion he has expressed the
opinion that to single out the Jews among the peoples of antiquity
as the one important race of their time is wofully to distort the
perspective of history. Needless to say such an opinion as this
throws one counter to the prejudices of a large proportion of
people, including the mass of Assyriologists among the rest.

=Ménard=, L., Histoire des anciens peuples de l’Orient. Paris,
1883.--=Meyer=, E., Geschichte des Alterthums. Stuttgart, 1884, etc., 5
vols., in progress.--=Monaco=, A., Orientalia. Rome, 1891.--=Muecke=,
Ch., Von Euphrat zum Tiber. Untersuchungen zur alten Geschichte.
Leipsic, 1899.--=Mueller-Simonis=, P., Relations des missions
scientifiques. Washington, 1892.--=Mürdter=, F., Gesch. Babyloniens und
Assyriens. Stuttgart, 1891.

* * * * *

=Niebuhr=, B. G., Lectures on Ancient History. London, 1852,
2 vols.--=Niebuhr=, M., Geschichte Assurs und Babels. Berlin,
1854.--=Niebuhr=, C., Die erste Dynastie von Babel (in Vorderasiat.
Ges. Mitt., vol. 3, p. 43). Berlin, 1897; Studien zur Geschichte des
alten Orientes. Leipsic, 1894; Die Chronologie der Geschichte Israels,
Aegyptens, Babyloniens und Assyriens von 2000-700 v. Chr. Leipsic,
1895.--=Nikel=, J., Herodot und die Keilschriftforschung. Paderborn,
1896.

* * * * *

=Oppert=, J., Babylone et Chaldée. Paris, 1874; L’immortalité de l’âme
chez les Chaldéens. Paris, 1875; The Real Chronology of the Babylonian
Dynasties. London, 1888 (in collab. with J. =Menant=); Documents
juridiques de l’Assyrie et de la Chaldée. Paris, 1877; Histoire des
empires de Chaldée et d’Assyrie. Versailles, 1865 (in collab. with J.
=Menant=); Fastes de Sargon. Paris, 1863; Expédition scientifique en
Mésopotamie. Paris, 1859-1863, 2 vols.; Fragments mythologiques. Paris,
1882; Fragments de cosmogonie chaldéenne. Paris, 1879; La fixation de
la Chronologie des derniers rois de Babylone. Paris, 1893; La condition
des esclaves à Babylone. Paris, 1888; Les inscriptions assyriennes des
Sargonides et les fastes de Ninive. Paris, 1863.

_Jules Oppert_ was born at Hamburg, 9th July, 1825. Professor
Oppert is a German by birth but a Parisian by adoption. His
whole oriental studies have been not alone made in Paris, but
many of them under the direct auspices of the French Government,
so that Frenchmen are perhaps justified in claiming him almost
as a fellow-countryman. Professor Oppert has that comprehensive
scholarship which is characteristic rather of the German than
the Frenchman. He is a philologist and linguist of the broadest
type. Unfortunately for the general public the German cast of his
mind shows itself still further in his apparent contempt for the
literary graces. He is a scholar who works for scholars, and it is
but seldom that he has written anything which comes well within the
grasp of the general public. His is, therefore, a name which one
meets everywhere in pursuing the literature of Assyriology, but the
results of whose investigations must usually come to the general
reader, as it were, through an interpreter.

* * * * *

=Peiser=, F. E., Keilinschriftliche Aktenstücke. Berlin, 1890; Studien
zur Oriental. Alterthumskunde. Berlin, 1897. (In Vorderasiat, Ges.
Mitt. 1897, 4 vols.); Babylon, Verträge. Berlin, 1890; A Sketch of
Babylonian Society (in Smithsonian Institute. Annual Report, 1898.
Washington, 1899).--=Perrot=, G., A History of Art in Assyria. London,
1884.--=Peters=, J. P., Nippur, or Explorations and Adventures,
etc. New York and London, 1897, 2 vols.; Some Recent Results of the
University of Pennsylvania, Excavations at Nippur (in Amer. Jour. of
Archeol., vol. 10, pp. 13, 352, 439, Princeton, 1895); The Seat of the
Earliest Civilisation in Babylon and the Date of its Beginnings (in
Amer. Orient. Soc. Jour., New Haven, 1896).

_Dr. John Punnett Peters_ was formerly professor of Hebrew in the
University of Pennsylvania; at present rector of St. Michael’s
Protestant Episcopal Church, New York City. For more than a
generation after the discoveries of Botta and Layard and their
successors in Mesopotamia had been furthered by companies of
English and French and German explorers, America had taken no part
in the work, but in 1880, the University of Pennsylvania determined
to make amends for this neglect by sending out a fully equipped
exploring party. The leader of this movement, and the man who
personally conducted the explorations of the first two years in the
field, was Professor J. P. Peters. Through his energetic efforts
the numberless difficulties that such an enterprise involves were
overcome, and some most important discoveries were made. The chief
of these was the location of the Babylonian city of Nippur, the
site of that ancient temple of Bel, which was, as Dr. Peters points
out, to many generations of old Babylonians and Assyrians what
the temple of Jerusalem has been to the peoples of Christendom.
His discoveries at Nippur have added greatly to the work that has
been carried on at Babylon and Nineveh, and “helped to carry our
knowledge of civilised man two thousand years farther back than
was known less than half a century ago.” At Nippur he discovered
what is probably the oldest known temple in the world. Both his
expeditions met with very bitter and determined opposition from
government officials and wandering inhabitants in the vicinity of
Nippur, and it is mainly due to his fearless determination that
successful excavations were finally made.

=Pinches=, T. G., Religious Ideas of the Babylonians. London, 1893;
Notes. London, 1892; Sumerian or Cryptography (in Royal Asiatic Soc.
Jour.; 1900, p. 75, 1900); The Babylonian and Assyrian Cylinder-Seals
of the British Museum (in Jour. Brit. Archeol. Assoc.; vol. 41,
p. 396, London, 1885). The Bronze Gates of Balawat in Assyria (in
Jour. Brit. Archeol. Assoc.; vol. 35, p. 233, London, 1879); The
Temples of Ancient Babylonia (in Proc. Soc. Bibl. Archeol., vol. 22,
p. 358, London, 1900).--=Place=, V., Ninive et l’Assyrie. Paris,
1867-1890.--=Pognon=, H., Inscription de Meron-Nerar, roi d’Assyrie.
Paris, 1884. Les inscriptions babyloniennes du Wadi Brissa. Paris,
1887.--=Prévost-Paradol=, L. A., Essai sur l’histoire universelle.
Paris, 1890, 2 vols.

* * * * *

=Radau=, H., Early Babylonian History. New York, 1900.--=Ragozin=, Z.
A., The Story of Chaldea (Stories of the Nations). London, 1888; Media,
Babylon and Persia. London, 1889; Assyria. London, 1888.--=Ranwolf=,
L., Journey into Syria, Armenia, Mesopotamia.--=Rassam=, H.,
Excavations and Discoveries in Assyria. London; Asshur and the Land of
Nimrod. Cincinnati, 1897; Babylonian Cities. London, 1883.

_Hormuzd Rassam_ was born of Chaldean Christian parents at Mosul,
Turkey, in 1826. In 1845 he became acquainted with Austin H.
Layard, who was then exploring Assyrian ruins, and becoming much
interested in the work of Layard, he accompanied him to England
in 1847, continuing his studies in that country. In 1864 he was
sent by the British Government on a mission to Abyssinia to
secure the release of several Europeans who were held prisoners
by King Theodore, but he was himself imprisoned for two years
by that king. Shortly after securing his release he visited the
Babylonian-Assyrian region for the British Museum, and while on
this expedition and others following, he made many important
discoveries. Notable among these discoveries are the bronze gates
of Balawat, from the time of Shalmaneser II (858-824 B.C.), and
the Abu-Habba tablet, recording the restoration of the temple
by Nabu-apal-iddin, a contemporary of Shalmaneser II. The name
of Rassam is associated with that of Layard, and with the early
history of Assyriology. Rassam was primarily an explorer; he
assisted Layard in his earlier work at Nineveh, and himself
carried on the investigations for the British Government after
Layard had been called to other fields. Rassam has never become an
Assyriologist in the technical acceptance of the term, contenting
himself generally with securing the material on which the
investigations of numerous scholars have been based. The greatest
single feat which he accomplished was the discovery of the now
famous library of Asshurbanapal. He has himself told the story
of his discoveries in books that are not so widely known as they
deserve to be.

=Rawlinson=, G., The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World. 2nd
ed. London, 1871; A Manual of Ancient History. Oxford, 1869; Herodotus.
London, 1858-75, 4 vols.; Papers in Jour. Royal Asiatic Soc.; vols.
X, XI, XII. London, 1885; The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia.
London, 1861-1891.

_George Rawlinson_ (brother of Sir Henry Rawlinson) was born at
Chadlington, Oxfordshire, England, in 1815. He was educated at
Swansea and at Ealing School. He graduated from Trinity College,
Oxford, with classical honours, in 1838. He was elected Fellow of
Exeter College in 1840. In 1859, as Bampton Lecturer, he delivered
his famous lecture on _Historical Evidences of the Truth of the
Scriptural Records_. He was chosen Camden Professor of Ancient
History in 1861, and in 1872 was made Canon of Canterbury. His
historical writings cover nearly the entire history of the Ancient
Orient. Some one has said of Canon Rawlinson that his scholarship
is of a peculiarly German type, and the criticism would seem to
be essentially just. Few other Englishmen of our generation have
covered so wide a field of history, and covered it so thoroughly as
has Professor Rawlinson. The whole field of southwestern Asia in
antiquity he has made peculiarly his own, and in a series of widely
circulated books he has imparted his knowledge to the world, some
of them, as that on the Parthian Monarchy, dealing with nations
that other historians had very much neglected. All of this work,
as has been said, is based upon scholarly investigations that
might justly be said to be profound. If in his estimate of certain
portions of this history, in particular as regards the newer ideas
of the chronology of the remoter periods, Professor Rawlinson has
hardly kept pace with the leaders of the newest generation, this
is certainly not more than one should expect in one whose memories
carry him back to the very beginnings of the “time” controversy.
The Canon died in 1902.

=Rawlinson=, H. C., Outline of the History of Assyria. London,
1852.--=Records of the Past= (=Birch=, S.). London, 1873, 12
vols.--=Revue d’Assyriologie=. Paris, 1886, etc.--=Rich=, C. I.,
Babylonia and Persepolis: Memoirs on the Ruins of Babylon. London,
1818.--=Robertson=, H. S., Voices of the Past from Assyria and
Babylonia. London, 1900.--=Rogers=, R. W., History of Babylonia and
Assyria. London, 1901, 2 vols.

* * * * *

=Sachau=, E., Reise in Syrien und Mesopotamien. Leipsic, 1885; Am
Euphrat und Tigris. Leipsic, 1900.--=Sarzec=, G. C. E., de, Découvertes
en Chaldée. Paris, 1884-1893, 2 vols.

_Gustave Charles Ernest Chocquin de Sarzec_ was born 11th August,
1836. After the discoveries of Botta and Layard had shown the
scientific world what neglected treasure-houses were to be found
in Mesopotamia, it was natural that explorers should seek out
the other fields of ancient activity, in particular those to the
south in Old Babylonia, and yet older Chaldea. Among those who
went into the latter field most successfully was M. de Sarzec. His
explorations at Tello, one of the oldest seats of Mesopotamian
civilisation revealed a vast quantity of most interesting
antiquities of a type in many ways different from those of the
comparatively recent Assyrian period. In particular the statues
in the round, which seem to have been a common form of artistic
expression with the ancient Chaldeans, have interest because of
their difference from the bas-reliefs that were the favourite
sculptures of the artists of Nineveh. In the interpretation of the
large store of material which De Sarzec secured he had had the
assistance of M. Layon Heuzey and M. Amiaud.

=Sayce=, A. H., Lectures on the Religions of Ancient Assyria and
Babylonia. London, 1888; Ancient Empires of the East. London, 1884;
Assyria: its Princes, Priests, and People. London, 1882; Babylonians
and Assyrians: Life and Customs. New York, 1899; Social Life among
the Assyrians. London, 1893; Primer of Assyriology. London, 1894; The
Races of the Old Testament. London, 1891; Fresh Light from the Ancient
Monuments. London, 1884.

_Archibald Henry Sayce_, born at Shirehampton, near Bristol, 25th
September, 1846. Deputy Professor of comparative Philology at
Oxford from 1876 to 1890; at present Professor of Assyriology at
Oxford. The well-known Oxford Professor has been one of the most
versatile and active of orientalists. He seems equally at home
whether the field be Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Assyria, and he is a
writer of such indefatigable industry that scholarly works on one
subject or another are constantly coming from his pen. Professor
Sayce is by no means a closet student only but is a traveller of
wide experience, and latterly it has become his custom to spend his
winters and springs house-boating in Egypt. He has a rare merit
of combining the utmost scholarship with a capacity for clear
presentation of his subject, and his works are therefore almost as
well known to the general reader as they are to the specialist.
In each generation there are but a few men who combining these
traits act as interpreters between the land of scholarship and the
abiding place of ordinary mortals and among these in our generation
Professor Sayce takes a foremost rank.

=Saulcy=, L. F. J. C., de, Recherches sur la chronologie des empires
de Ninive, de Babylone et d’Ekbatane. Paris, 1854.--=Schäfer=, B.,
Die Entdeckungen in Assyrien und Aegypten in ihrer Beziehung zur
heiligen Schrift. Wien, 1896.--=Schmidt=, V., Assyriens of Aegyptens
gamle Historie. Copenhagen, 1872-1877.--=Schrader=, E., Cuneiform
Inscriptions and the Old Testament. London, 1873, 2 vols.; Die
Höllenfahrt der Istar ein altbabylon. Epos; Giessen, 1874; Eine
Sammlung von Übersetzungen der wichtigsten Texte (Keilinschriftliche
Bibliothek). Berlin, 1889-1901, vols. 1-6; Keilinschriften und
Geschichtsforschung. Giessen, 1878.

_Eberhard Schrader_ was born at Brunswick, Germany, 5th January,
1836. He studied at the gymnasium in Brunswick and in the
University at Göttingen. Shortly after finishing his studies
in Göttingen he was appointed Professor of Hebrew and Semitic
Languages at Zürich, and later he filled corresponding chairs
at Giessen and Jena. In 1875 he was given a professorship and
made a member of the Royal Academy at Berlin. He also edited
_Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek_. Only a few of his works have
been translated into English, most notable among these being _The
Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament_.

=Smith=, G., Assyrian Discoveries. London, 1875; Assyria, from
the Earliest Times. London, 1875; The Chaldean Genesis. London,
1881; The History of Babylon. London, 1877; History of Sennacherib
(from inscriptions). London, 1878; History of Asshurbanipal (from
inscriptions). London, 1871; Assyria from the Earliest Times to the
Fall of Nineveh. New York, 1876.

_George Smith_ was born in London, England, 26th March, 1840. He
is said to have first become interested in Assyriology from having
to engrave some cuneiform plates for publication. He at once took
up the study, and a little later was appointed to a position
in the Assyrian department of the British Museum. He very soon
became one of the great promoters of Assyriology. With Sir Henry
Rawlinson he edited vols. III-IV of _The Cuneiform Inscriptions
of Western Asia_. In 1872 he discovered among the clay books of
the British Museum fragments of a story of the Deluge, similar to
the biblical version. Soon after this he visited Nineveh to make
further search for clay books in Asshurbanapal’s palace, and his
expedition was very successful. The Deluge story proved to be
part of a great poem written on twelve tablets. He made two other
expeditions for the Museum, but on the last one was stricken with
fever and died at Aleppo, 19th August, 1876. George Smith was
known among orientalists as a man who had a peculiar instinct for
the translation of obscure texts. He devoted his entire life to
oriental studies, and came to be recognised as one of the foremost
of orientalists.

=Spiegel=, F., Die altpersischen Keilinschriften 2nd ed. Leipsic,
1881.--=Strabo=, The Geography of Strabo. London, 1854, 3
vols.--=Strassmaier=, J. N., Babylonische Texte. Leipsic, 1889;
Inschriften von Nabuchodonosor, König von Babylon (609-561). Leipsic,
1889.--=Streck=, M., Die alte Landschaft Babylonien nach den arabischen
Geographen. Leyden, 1900, 2 vols.

* * * * *

=Talbot=, W. H. Fox (in Records of the Past). London, 1856, 18 vols.;
Inscription of Tiglath Pileser I, King of Assyria, B.C. 1150 (in Jour.
Royal Asiatic Soc.). London, 1857.

_William Henry Fox Talbot_ was born 11th February, 1800, at Laycock
Abbey, near Chippenham, England. He was educated at Harrow and at
Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining the Porson prize there in 1820.
Contributed papers to the Royal Society in 1822, and in the same
year began a series of optical researches and experiments which
afterward played an important part in photography. In connection
with his scientific studies he devoted much of his time to the
study of archeology, and in later life gave his entire time to it.
He shares the honour with Sir Henry Rawlinson and Dr. Hincks of
being one of the first to decipher the cuneiform inscriptions of
Nineveh. He died at Laycock Abbey, 17th September, 1877. Talbot was
a master in the field of Assyriology. He was, indeed, one of the
first to gain distinction in this line, and in a peculiar sense one
of the founders of the science.

=Taylor=, W. C., Students’ Manual of Ancient History. London,
1882.--=Tiele=, C. P., History of Assyria. London, 1886; Eastern Asia
according to the most recent Discoveries. London, 1894; Comparative
History of Egyptian and Mesopotamian Religion; Babyl.-assyr.
Geschichte. Gotha, 1886-1888, 2 vols. (in Records of the Past). London,
1873, 18 vols.

_Cornelis Petrus Tiele_ was born at Leyden, Holland, 16th December,
1830. He was educated in the university of that city, giving
especial attention to the study of philosophy and history. In
1877 he was appointed to the chair of History and Religion in the
University of Leyden. His numerous publications on history and
philosophy have been widely translated. Professor Tiele enjoys
the distinction somewhat rare among his countrymen of a quite
cosmopolitan reputation. As an authority on ancient religions he
has no superior, and his writings are almost as well known in
Germany, France, England, and America as in his native Holland.

* * * * *

=Valbuena=, R. F., Egipto y Asiria resucitados la parte. Madrid,
1895.--=Van den Berg=, E., Petite histoire ancienne des peuples de
l’Orient. Paris, 1883.--=Vaux=, W. G. W., Nineveh and Persepolis.
London, 1880.--=Vigoroux=, F., La Bible et les découvertes en Assyrie.
Paris, 1887.

* * * * *

=Wachsmuth=, C., Einleitung in das Studium d. alten Geschichte.
Leipsic, 1895.--=Wahrmund=, A., Babylonierthum und Christenthum.
Leipsic, 1882.--=Ward=, W. H., Notes on Original Antiquities.
Baltimore, 1887; Report on the Wolfe Expedition to Babylonia. Boston,
1886; The Babylonian Caduceno (in Amer. Orient. Soc. Jour., vol. 14).
New Haven, 1890; The Story of the Serpent and the Tree (in Amer.
Antiq. and Orient. Jour., vol. 20, p. 211). Chicago, 1898.--=Weber=,
G., Allgemeine Weltgeschichte. Leipsic, 1857-1880, 15 vols.--=Weiss=,
J. B. von, Geschichte des Orients. 1886.--=Weissbach=, F. H., Zur
Lösung der sumerischen Frage. Leipsic, 1897; Über einige neuere
Arbeiten zur babyl. pers. Chronologie (in Deutsche Morgenland. Ges.
Zeitch., vol. 55, p. 195. Leipsic, 1901).--=Wernicke=, C., Geschichte
des Alterthums. 1890.--=Wilberforce=, R. F., The Five Empires.
London, 1899.--=Winckler=, H., Sammlung von Keilschrifttexten.
Leipsic, 1893-1894; Untersuchungen zur altorientalischen Geschichte.
Leipsic, 1889; Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens. Leipsic, 1892;
Altorientalische Forschungen, Leipsic, 1893-1897; Völker und Staaten
des alten Orients. Leipsic, 1900.--=Woltmann=, A. K., History of
Painting. London, 1880, 2 vols.--=Wood=, R., The Ruins of Palmyra.

* * * * *

=Zimmern=, H., The Babylonian and the Hebrew Genesis. London, 1901.

[Illustration: BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.

BORMAY & CO.]

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Historians' History of the World in Twenty-Five Volumes, Volume 1 - Prolegomena; Egypt, Mesopotamia" ***

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