Part 3 (1/2)

[14] The Louvre Museum in Paris has an excellent collection of Egyptian subjects.

CHAPTER IV

a.s.sYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS

CHALDEA

=The Land.=--From the high and snowy mountains of Armenia flow two deep and rapid rivers, the Tigris to the east, the Euphrates to the west. At first in close proximity, they separate as they reach the plain. The Tigris makes a straight course, the Euphrates a great detour towards the sandy deserts; then they unite before emptying into the sea. The country which they embrace is Chaldea. It is an immense plain of extraordinarily fertile soil; rain is rare and the heat is overwhelming. But the streams furnish water and this clayey soil when irrigated by ca.n.a.ls becomes the most fertile in the world. Wheat and barley produce 200-fold; in good years the returns are 300-fold. Palms const.i.tute the forests and from these the people make their wine, meal and flour.[15]

=The People.=--For many centuries, perhaps as long as Egypt, Chaldea has been the abode of civilized peoples. Many races from various lands have met and mingled in these great plains. There were Turanians of the yellow race, similar to the Chinese, who came from the north-east; Cus.h.i.+tes, deep brown in color, related to the Egyptians, came from the east; Semites, of the white race, of the same stock as the Arabs, descended from the north.[16] The Chaldean people had its origin in this mixture of races.

=The Cities.=--Chaldean priests related that their kings had ruled for 150,000 years. While this is a fable, they were right in ascribing great antiquity to the Chaldean empire. The soil of Chaldea is everywhere studded with hills and each of these is a ma.s.s of debris, the residue of a ruined city. Many of these have been excavated and many cities brought to view, (Our, Larsam, Bal-ilou), and some inscriptions recovered. De Sa.r.s.ec, a Frenchman, has discovered the ruins of an entire city, overwhelmed by the invader and its palace destroyed by fire. These ancient peoples are still little known to us; many sites remain to be excavated when it is hoped new inscriptions will be found. Their empire was destroyed about 2,300 B.C.; it may then have been very old.[17]

THE a.s.sYRIANS

=a.s.syria.=--The country back of Chaldea on the Tigris is a.s.syria. It also is fertile, but cut with hills and rocks. Situated near the mountains, it experiences snow in winter and severe storms in summer.

=Origins.=--Chaldea had for a long time been covered with towns while yet the a.s.syrians lived an obscure life in their mountains. About the thirteenth century B.C. their kings leading great armies began to invade the plains and founded a mighty empire whose capital was Nineveh.

=Ancient Accounts.=--Until about forty years ago we knew almost nothing of the a.s.syrians--only a legend recounted by the Greek Diodorus Siculus. Ninus, according to the story, had founded Nineveh and conquered all Asia Minor; his wife, Semiramis, daughter of a G.o.ddess, had subjected Egypt, after which she was changed into the form of a dove. Incapable kings had succeeded this royal pair for the s.p.a.ce of 1,300 years; the last, Sardanapalus, besieged in his capital, was burnt with his wives. This romance has not a word of truth in it.

=Modern Discoveries.=--In 1843, Botta, the French consul at Mossoul, discovered under a hillock near the Tigris, at Khorsabad, the palace of an a.s.syrian king. Here for the first time one could view the productions of a.s.syrian art; the winged bulls cut in stone, placed at the gate of the palace were found intact and removed to the Louvre Museum in Paris. The excavations of Botta drew the attention of Europe, so that many expeditions were sent out, especially by the English; Place and Layard investigated other mounds and discovered other palaces. These ruins had been well preserved, protected by the dryness of the climate and by a covering of earth. They found walls adorned with bas-reliefs and paintings; statues and inscriptions were discovered in great number. It was now possible to study on the ground the plan of the structures and to publish reproductions of the monuments and inscriptions.

The palace first discovered, that of Khorsabad, had been built by King Sargon at Nineveh, the site of the capital of the a.s.syrian kings. The city was built on several eminences, and was encircled by a wall 25 to 30 miles[18] in length, in the form of a quadrilateral. The wall was composed of bricks on the exterior and of earth within. The dwellings of the city have disappeared leaving no traces, but we have recovered many palaces constructed by various kings of a.s.syria.

Nineveh remained the residence of the kings down to the time that the a.s.syrian empire was destroyed by the Medes and Chaldeans.

=Inscriptions on the Bricks.=--In these inscriptions every character is formed of a combination of signs shaped like an arrow or wedge, and this is the reason that this style of writing is termed cuneiform (Latin _cuneus_ and _forma_). To trace these signs the writer used a stylus with a triangular point; he pressed it into a tablet of soft clay which was afterwards baked to harden it and to make the impression permanent. In the palace of a.s.surbanipal a complete library of brick tablets has been found in which brick serves the purpose of paper.

=Cuneiform Writing.=--For many years the cuneiform writing has occupied the labors of many scholars impatient to decipher it. It has been exceedingly difficult to read, for, in the first place, it served as the writing medium of five different languages--a.s.syrian, Susian, Mede, Chaldean, and Armenian, without counting the Old Persian--and there was no knowledge of these five languages. Then, too, it is very complicated, for several reasons:

1. It is composed at the same time of symbolic signs, each of which represents a word (sun, G.o.d, fish), and of syllabic signs, each of which represents a syllable.

2. There are nearly two hundred syllabic signs, much alike and easy to confuse.

3. The same sign is often the representation of a word and a syllable.

4. Often (and this is the hardest condition) the same sign is used to represent different syllables. Thus the same sign is sometimes read ”ilou,” and sometimes ”an.” This writing was difficult even for those who executed it. ”A good half of the cuneiform monuments which we possess comprises guides (grammars, dictionaries, pictures), which enable us to decipher the other half, and which we consult just as a.s.syrian scholars did 2,500 years ago.”[19]

Cuneiform inscriptions have been solved in the same manner as the Egyptian hieroglyphics--there was an inscription in three languages--a.s.syrian, Mede, and Persian. The last gave the key to the other two.

=The a.s.syrian People.=--The a.s.syrians were a race of hunters and soldiers. Their bas-reliefs ordinarily represent them armed with bow and lance, often on horseback. They were good knights--alert, brave, clever in skirmish and battle; also bombastic, deceitful, and sanguinary. For six centuries they hara.s.sed Asia, issuing from their mountains to hurl themselves on their neighbors, and returning with entire peoples reduced to slavery. They apparently made war for the mere pleasure of slaying, ravaging, and pillaging. No people ever exhibited greater ferocity.

=The King.=--Following Asiatic usage they regarded their king as the representative of G.o.d on earth and gave him blind obedience. He was absolute master of all his subjects, he led them in battle, and at their head fought against other peoples of Asia. On his return he recorded his exploits on the walls of his palace in a long inscription in which he told of his victories, the booty which he had taken, the cities burned, the captives beheaded or flayed alive. We present some pa.s.sages from these stories of campaigns:

a.s.surn.a.z.ir-hapal in 882 says, ”I built a wall before the great gates of the city; I flayed the chiefs of the revolt and with their skins I covered this wall. Some were immured alive in the masonry, others were crucified or impaled along the wall. I had some of them flayed in my presence and had the wall hung with their skins. I arranged their heads like crowns and their transfixed bodies in the form of garlands.”

In 745 Tiglath-Pilezer II writes, ”I shut up the king in his royal city. I raised mountains of bodies before his gates. All his villages I destroyed, desolated, burnt. I made the country desert, I changed it into hills and mounds of debris.”