^U ^torp of tU ij^attons. 
 
 CHALDEA
 
 THE STORY OF THE NATIONS. 
 
 Large Crown Svo., Cloth, Illustrated, ^s. 
 Presentation Editiofi, Gilt Edges, ^s. 6d. 
 
 1. ROME. Arthur Oilman, M.A. 
 
 2. THE JEWS. Prof. J. K. HosMER. 
 
 3. GERMANY. Rev. S. Baring-Goulu. 
 
 4. CARTHAGE. Prof. A.J. Church. 
 
 5. ALEXANDER'S EMPIRE. Prof. 
 
 J. P. Mahaffy. 
 
 6. THE MOORS IN SPAIN. Stanley 
 
 Lane-Poole. 
 
 7. ANCIENT EGYPT. Prof. George 
 
 Rawlinson. 
 
 8. HUNGARY. Prof. A. Vambery. 
 
 9. THE SARACENS. A. Oilman, M.A. 
 
 10. IRELAND. Hon. Emily Lawless. 
 
 11. CHALDEA. Z. A. Ragozin. 
 
 12. THE GOTHS. Henry Bradley 
 
 13. ASSYRIA. Z. A. Ragozin. 
 
 14. TURKEY. Stanley Lane-Poole. 
 
 15. HOLLAND. Prof. J. E. T. Rogers. 
 
 16. MEDIEVAL FRANCE. Oustave 
 
 Masson. 
 
 17. PERSIA. S. G. W. Benjamin. 
 
 18. PHOENICIA. Prof. Geo. Rawlinson. 
 
 19. MEDIA. Z. A. Ragozin. 
 
 20. THE HANSA TOWNS. Helen 
 
 ZiMMERN. 
 
 21. EARLY BRITAIN. Prof Alfred J. 
 Church. 
 
 22. THE BARBARY CORSAIRS. 
 
 Stanley Lane-Poole. 
 
 23. RUSSIA. W. R. Morfill. 
 
 24. THE JEWS UNDER ROMAN 
 
 RULE. W. D. Morrison. 
 
 25. SCOTLAND. J. Mackintosh, ll.d. 
 
 26. SWITZERLAND. Mrs. Lina Hug 
 
 and Richard Stead. 
 
 London : 
 T. FISHER TTNWIN, Paternoster Square, E.G.
 
 SHAMASH THE SUN -GOD. 
 (From the Sun Temple at Sippar.")
 
 CHALDEA 
 
 FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE RISE 
 OF ASSYRIA 
 
 (treated as a general introduction to the study of 
 
 ANCIENT history) 
 
 BY 
 
 ZENAIDE A. RAGOZIN 
 
 MEMBER OF THE '" SOClfixfi ETHNOI.OGIQUE " OF PARIS; OF THE "AMERICAN 
 ORIENTAL SOCIETY " ; CORKESPONDING MEMBER OF THE " ATH^N^K 
 
 oriental' of Paris; author of "ASbYRiA," "media," etc. 
 
 " He (Carlyle) says it is part of his creed that history is poetiy, could we 
 tell it right." — Emerson. 
 
 "Da mihi, Domine, scire quod sciendum est." -" Imitation of Christ." 
 ("Grant that the knowledge I get may be the knowledge worth having." — 
 
 Mattlww Arnold's translationj 
 
 THIRD EDITION 
 
 Xon£)on 
 T. FISHER UN WIN 
 
 paternoster square 
 new york : g. p. putnam's sons 
 
 MDCCCXCI
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall 
 By T. FISHER UNWIN. 
 
 Copyright by G. V. Putnam's Sons, 1886 
 (For the United States of America).
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 IMVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BAilBAI.A 
 
 TO THE MEMBERS OF 
 
 THE CLASS, 
 
 IN LOVING REMEMBRANCE OF MANY HAPPY HOURS, THIS 
 VOLUME AND THE FOLLOWING ONES ARE AFFEC- 
 TIONATELY INSCRIBED BY THEIR FRIEND, 
 
 The Author. 
 
 Idlewild Plantation, 
 San Antonio.
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN, PATERNOSTER SQUARE, LONDON. E.C
 
 CLASSIFIED CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 I. 
 
 PACK 
 
 Mesopotamia. — The Mounds. — The First 
 
 Searchers 1-18 
 
 § r. Complete destruction of Nineveh. — §§ 2-4. Xenophon 
 and the " Retreat of the Ten Thousand." The Greeks pass 
 the ruins of Calah and Nineveh, and know them not. — 
 § 5. Alexander's passage through Mesopotamia. — § 6. The 
 Arab invasion and rule. — § 7. Turkish rule and mismanage- 
 ment. — § 8. Peculiar natural conditions of Mesopotamia. — 
 § 9. Actual desolate state of the country. — § 10. The plains 
 studded with Mounds. Their curious aspect. — § 11. Frag- 
 ments of works of art amidst the rubbish. — § 12. Indiffer- 
 ence and superstition of the Turks and Arabs. — § 13. Exclu- 
 sive absorption of European scholars in Classical Antiquity. 
 — § 14. Forbidding aspect of the Mounds, compared with 
 other ruins. — § 15. Rich, the first explorer. — § 16. Botta's 
 work and want of success. — § 17. Botta's great discovery. 
 — § 18. Great sensation created by it. — § 19. Layard's first 
 expedition. 
 
 II. 
 
 La YARD AND HIS WORK 1 9-35 
 
 § I. Layard's arrival at Nimrud. His excitement and 
 dreams. — § 2. Beginning of difficulties. The Ogre-like 
 Pasha of Mossul. — § 3. Opposition from the Pasha. His 
 malice and cunning. — § 4. Discovery of the gigantic head. 
 V
 
 yj CLASSIFIED CONTENTS. 
 
 1 AC.F 
 
 Fright of the Arabs, who declare it to be Nimrod. — § 5. 
 Strange ideas of the Arabs about the sculptures. — § 6. Lay- 
 ard's life in the desert. — § 7. Terrible heat of summer. — § 8. 
 Sand-storms and hot hurricanes. — § 9. Layard's wretched 
 dwelling. — § 10. Unsuccessful attempts at improvement. — 
 § II. In what the task of the explorer consists. — § 12. Dif- 
 ferent modes of carrying on the work of excavation. 
 
 III. 
 The Ruins 36-9C 
 
 § I. Every country's culture and art determined by its geo- 
 graphical conditions. — § 2. Chaldea's absolute deficiency in 
 wood and stone. — § 3. Great abundance of mud fit for the 
 fabrication of bricks ; hence the peculiar architecture of • 
 Mesopotamia. Ancient ruins still used as quarries of bricks 
 for building. Trade of ancient bricks at Hillah. — § 4. Vari- 
 ous cements used. — § 5. Construction of artificial platforms. 
 — § 6. Ruins of Ziggurats : peculiar shape and uses of this 
 sort of buildings. — § 7. Figures showing the immense amount 
 of labor used on these constructions. — § 8. Chaldean archi- 
 tecture adopted unchanged by the Assyrians. — § 9. Stone 
 used for ornament and casing of walls. Water transport in 
 old and modern times. — § 10. Imposing aspect of the palaces. 
 — § II. Restoration of Sennacherib's palace by Fergusson. 
 — § 12. Pavements of palace halls. — § 13. Gateways and 
 sculptured slabs along the walls. Friezes in painted tiles. 
 — § 14. Proportions of palace halls and roofuig. — § 15. 
 Lighting of halls. — § 16. Causes of the kings' passion for 
 building. — § 17. Drainage of palaces and platforms. — § 18. 
 Modes of destruction. — § 19. The Mounds a protection to 
 the ruins they contain. Refilling the excavations. — § 20. 
 Absence of ancient tombs in Assyria. — § 21. Abundance and 
 vastness of cemeteries in Chaldea.— § 22. Warka (Erech) 
 the great Necropolis. Loftus' description. — § 23. " Jar-cof- 
 fins." — §24. " Dish-cover " coffins. — §25. Sepulchral vaults. 
 — § 26. "Slipper-shaped" coffins. — § 27. Drainage of sepul- 
 chral mounds. — § 28. Decoration of walls in painted clay 
 cones. — § 29. De Sarzec's discoveries at Tell-Loh.
 
 CLASSIFIED COXTEUTS. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Book of the Past. — The Library of 
 
 Nineveh ...... 92-115 
 
 § I. Object of making books. — § 2. Books not always of 
 paper. — § 3. Universal craving for an immortal name. — § 4. 
 Insufficiency of records on various writing materials. Uni- 
 versal longing for knowledge of the remotest past. — § 5. 
 Monumental records. — § 6. Ruins of palaces and temples, 
 tombs and caves — the Book of the Past. — §§ 7-8. Discov- 
 ery by Layard of the Royal Library at Nineveh. — § 9. George 
 Smith's work at the British Museum. — § 10. His expeditions 
 to Nineveh, his success and death. — § 11. Value of the Li- 
 brary. — §§ 12-13. Contents of the Library. — § 14. The 
 Tablets. — § 15. The cylinders and foundation-tablets. 
 
 CHALDEA. 
 
 I. 
 
 Nomads and Settlers. — The Four Stages of 
 
 Culture u 6-1 26 
 
 § I. Nomads. — § 2. First migrations. — § 3. Pastoral life — 
 the second stage. — § 4. Agricultural life ; beginnings of the 
 State. — §5. City-building; royalty. — §6. Successive migra- 
 tions and their causes. — § 7. Formation of nations. 
 
 II. 
 
 The Great Races. — Chapter X. of Genesis 127-142 
 
 §1. Shinar. — § 2. Berosus. — § 3. Who were the settlers in 
 Shinar ? — § 4. The Flood probably not universal. — §§ 5-6. 
 The blessed race and the accursed, according to Genesis. — 
 § 7. Genealogical form of Chap. X. of Genesis. — § 8. Epo- 
 nyms. — § 9. Omission of some white races from Chap. X. 
 — §10. Omission of the Black Race. — § 11. Omission of 
 the Yellow Race. Characteristics of the Turanians. — § 12.
 
 Viii CLASSIFIED CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Chinese. — § 13. Who were the Turanians? What be- 
 came of the Cainites ? — § 14. Possible identity of both. — 
 § 15. The settlers in Shinar — Turanians. 
 
 III. 
 
 Turanian Chaldea. — Shumir and Accad. — 
 
 The Beginnings of Religion , 146-18 1 
 
 § r. Shumir and Accad. — § 2. Language and name. — § 3. 
 Turanian migrations and traditions. — § 4. Collection of 
 sacred texts. — § 5. " Religiosity " — a distinctively human 
 characteristic. Its first promptings and manifestations. — 
 § 6. The Magic Collection and the work of Fr. Lenormant. 
 — § 7. The Shumiro-Accads' theory of the world, and their 
 elementary spirits. — § 8. The incantation of the Seven Mas- 
 kim.— §9. The evil spirits.— § 10. The Arali.— § 11. The 
 sorcerers. — § 12. Conjuring and conjurers. — §13. The benef- 
 icent Spirits. Ea. — §14. Meridug. — §15. A charm against 
 an evil spell. — § 16. Diseases considered as evil demons. — 
 § 17. Talismans. The Keriihim. — § 18. More talismans. — 
 § 19. The demon of the South-West Wind. — § 20. The first 
 gods. — §21. t^(/, the Sun. — §22. Nin ^(7;-, the nightly Sun. 
 — § 23. Gibil, Fire. — § 24. Dawn of moral consciousness. — 
 § 25. Man's Conscience divinized. — §§ 26-28. Penitential 
 Psalms. — § 29, General character of Turanian religions. 
 
 Appendix to Chapter III 181-185 
 
 Professor L. Dyer's poetical version of the Incantation 
 against the Seven Maskim. 
 
 IV. 
 
 CU.SHITES AND SEMITES. EaRLY ChALDEAN 
 
 History , . . . . 184-228 
 
 § I. Cannes. — § 2. Were the second settlers Cushites or 
 Semites ? — § 3. Cushite hypothesis. Earliest migrations. — 
 § 4. The Ethiopians and the Egyptians. — § 5. The Canaan- 
 ites. — § 6. Possible Cushite station on the islets of the Per- 
 sian Gulf. — § 7. Colonization of Chaldea possibly by Cush- 
 ites. — § 8. Vagueness of very ancient chronology. — § 9. Early 
 dates. — § 10. Exorbitant figures of Berosus. — § 11. Early
 
 CLASSIFIED CONTENTS. {^ 
 
 I AGE 
 
 Chaldea — a nursery of nations. — § 12. Nomadic Semitic 
 tribes. — § 13. The tribe of Arpha.xad. — § 14. Ur of the Chal- 
 dees. — § 15. Scholars divided between the Cushite and Se- 
 mitic theories. — § 16. History commences with Semitic cul- 
 ture. — § 17. Priestly rule. Th.&patesis. — §§ 1S-19. Sharrukin 
 I. (Sargon I.) of Agade. — §§ 20-21. The second Sargon's 
 literary labors. — §§ 22-23. Chaldean folk-lore, maxims and 
 songs. — § 24. Discovery of the elder Sargon's date — 3800 
 B.C. — § 25. Gudea of Sirgulla and Ur-ea of Ur. — § 26. Pre- 
 dominance of Shumir. Ur-ea and his son Dungi first kings of 
 * ' Shumir and Accad. " — § 27. Their inscriptions and build- 
 ings. The Elamite invasion. — §28. Elam. — ^§29-31. Khu- 
 dur-Lagamar and Abraham. — § 32. Hardness of the Elamite 
 rule. — § 33. Rise of Babylon. — § 34. Hammurabi. — § 35. 
 Invasion of the Kasshi. 
 
 Babylonian Religion .... 229-257 
 
 § I. Babylonian calendar. — § 2. Astronomy conducive to re- 
 ligious feehng. — § 3. Sabeism. — § 4. Priestcraft and astrol- 
 ogy. — § 5. Transformation of the old religion. — § 6. Vague 
 dawning of the monotheistic idea. Divine emanations. — § 7. 
 The Supreme Triad. — § 8. The Second Triad. — § 9. The 
 five Planetary deities. — §§io-ii. Duality of nature. Mascu- 
 line and feminine principles. The goddesses. — § 12. The 
 twelve Great Gods and their Temples. — § 13. The temple of 
 Shamash at Sippar and Mr. Rassam's discovery. — § 14. Sur- 
 vival of the old Turanian superstitions. — § 15. Divination, a 
 branch of Chaldean " Science." — §§ 16-17. Collection of one 
 hundred tablets on divination. Specimens. — §18. The three 
 classes of " wase men." " Chaldeans," in later times, a by- 
 word for "magician," and "astrologer." — § 19. Our inherit- 
 ance from the Chaldeans: the sun-dial, the week, the calen- 
 dar, the Sabbath. 
 
 VI. 
 Legends and Stories .... 258-293 
 
 § I. The Cosmogonies of different nations. — § 2. The antiq- 
 uity of the Sacred Books of Babylonia. — § 3. The legend of 
 Cannes, told by Berosus. Discoverv, by Geo. Smith, of the
 
 X CLASSIFIED CONTENTS. 
 
 PACH 
 
 Creation Tablets and the Deluge Tablet. — §§ 4-5. Chaldean 
 account of the Creation. — § 6. The Cylinder with the human 
 couple, tree and serpent. — § 7. Berosus' account of the crea- 
 tion. — § 8. The Sacred Tree. Sacredness of the Symbol. — 
 § 9. Signification of the Tree-Symbol. The Cosmic Tree. — 
 § 10. Connection of the Tree-Symbol and of Ziggurats with 
 the legend of Paradise. — § 11. The Ziggurat of Borsippa. — 
 § 12. — It is identified with the Tower of Babel. — §§ 13-14. 
 Peculiar Orientation of the Ziggurats. — § 15. Traces of le- 
 gends about a sacred grove or garden. — § 16. Mummu-Tia- 
 mat, the enemy of the gods. Battle of Bel and Tiamat. — 
 § 17. The Rebellion of the seven evil spirits, originally mes- 
 sengers of the gods. — § iS. The great Tower and the Con- 
 fusion of Tongues. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Myths. — Heroes and the Mythical Epos . 294-330 
 
 § I. Definition of the word Myth. — § 2. The Heroes. — § 3. 
 The Heroic Ages and Heroic Myths. The National Epos. 
 — § 4. The oldest known Epic. — § 5. Berosus' account of 
 the Flood. — § 6. Geo. Smith's discovery of the original Chal- 
 dean narrative. — § 7. The Epic divided into books or Tab- 
 lets. — § 8. Izdubar the Hero of the Epic. — § 9. Erech's hu- 
 miliation under the Elamite Conquest. Izdubar's dream. — 
 § 10. Eabani the Seer. Izdubar's invitation and promises to 
 him. — § ir. Message sent to Eabani by Ishtar's handmaid- 
 ens. His arrival at Erech. — § 12. Izdubar and Eabani's 
 victory over the tyrant Khumbaba. — § 13. Ishtar's love mes- 
 sage. Her rejection and wrath. The two friends' victory 
 over the Bull sent by her. — § 14. Ishtar's vengeance. Izdu- 
 bar's journey to the Mouth of the Rivers. — § 15. Izdubar 
 sails the Waters of Death and is healed by his immortal an- 
 cestor Hasisadra. — § 16 Izdubar's return to Erech and la- 
 ment over Eabani. The seer is translated among the gods. 
 — § 17. The Deluge narrative in the Eleventh Tablet of the 
 Izdubar Epic. — §§ 18-21. Mythic and solar character of the 
 Epic analyzed. — § 22. Sun-Myth of the Beautiful Youth, his 
 early death and resurrection. — §§ 23-24. Dumuzi-Tammuz, 
 the husband of Ishtar. The festival of Dumuzi in June.— § 25,
 
 CLASSIFIED CONTENTS. x! 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ishtar's Descent to the Land of the Dead. — § 26. Universal- 
 ity of the Solar and Chthonic Myths. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Religion and Mythology. — Idolatry and An- 
 thropomorphism. — The Chaldean Le- 
 gends and the Book ,of Genesis. — 
 
 Retrospect ZZ^~ZZ^ 
 
 § I. Definition of Mythology and Religion, as distinct from 
 each other. — §§ 2-3. Instances of pure religious feeling in the 
 poetry of Shumir and Accad. — § 4. Religion often stifled by 
 Mythology. — §§ 5-6. The conception of the immortality of 
 the soul suggested by the sun's career. — § 7. This expressed 
 in the Solar and Chthonic Myths.— § 8. Idolatry.— § 9. The 
 Hebrews, originally polytheists and idolators, reclaimed by 
 their leaders to Monotheism. — § 10. Their intercourse with 
 the tribes of Canaan conducive to relapses. — § 11. Intermar- 
 riage severely forbidden for this reason. Striking similarity 
 between the Book of Genesis and the ancient Chaldean le- 
 gends. — § 13. Parallel between the two accounts of the crea- 
 tion. — § 14. Anthropomorphism, different from polytheism 
 and idolatry, but conducive to both. — §§ 15-17. Parallel con- 
 tinued. — §§ 18-19. Retrospect.
 
 PRINCIPAL WORKS READ OR CONSULT- 
 ED IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS 
 VOLUME. 
 
 Baer, Wilhelm. Der Vorgeschichtliche Mensch. 
 
 I vol., Leipzig : 1874. 
 Baudissin, W. von. Studien zur Semitischen Religions- 
 
 geschichte. 2 vols. 
 Budge, E. A. Wallis. Babylonian Life and History. ("By- 
 paths of Bible Knowledge " Series, V.) 1884. London : The 
 
 Religious Tract Society, i vol. 
 
 History of Esarhaddon. i vol. 
 
 Bunsen, Chr. Carl Jos. Gott in der Geschichte, oder Der Fort 
 
 schritt des Glaubens an eine sittliche Weltordnung. 3 vols. 
 
 Leipzig: 1857. 
 Castren, Alexander. Kleinere Schriften. St. Petersburg ; 
 
 1862. I vol. 
 Cory. Ancient Fragments. London : 1876. i vol. 
 Delitzsch, Dr. Friedrich. Wo lag das Paradies? eine Bib- 
 
 lisch-Assyriologische Studie. Leipzig: 1881. I vol. 
 Die Sprache der Kossaer. Leipzig: 1885 (or 1884?). 
 
 I vol. 
 DuNCKER, Max. Geschichte des Alterthums. Leipzig: 1878. 
 
 Vol. 1st. 
 Fergusson, James. Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Re- 
 stored. I vol. 
 Happel, Julius. Die Altchinesische Reichsreligion, vom 
 
 Standpunkte der Vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte. 46 pages, 
 
 Leipzig : 1882. 
 Haupt, Paul. Der Keilinschriftliche Sintflutbericht, eine 
 
 Episode des Babylonischen Nimrodepos. 36 pages. Got- 
 
 tingen : 1881 
 
 xiii
 
 Xiv PRINCIPAL WORKS CONSULTED. 
 
 HoMMEL, Dr. Fritz. Geschichte Babyloniens und Assyriens 
 (first instalment, 160 pp., 1885 ; and second instalment, 160 pp., 
 1886). (Allgemeine Geschichte in einzelnen Darstellungen, Ab- 
 theilung 95 und 1 17.) 
 
 Die Vorsemitischen Kulturen in .^gypten und Baby- 
 
 LONiEN. Leipzig : 1882 and 1883. 
 
 Layard, Austen H. Discoveries among the ruins of Nineveh 
 AND Babylon. (American Edition.) New York: 1853. i vol. 
 
 Nineveh and its Remains. London: 1849. 2 vols. 
 
 Lenormant, Francois. Les Premieres Civilisations. Etudes 
 d'Histoire et d'Archeologie. 1874. Paris : Maisonneuve et Cie. 
 
 2 vols. 
 
 Les Origines de l'Histoire, d'apres la Bible et les Tradi- 
 tions des Peuples Orientaux. Paris : Maisonneuve et Cie, 
 
 3 vol. ler vol. 1880 ; 2e vol. 18S2 ; 36 vol. 1884. 
 
 La Genese. Traduction d'apres I'Hebreu. Paris : 1883. 
 
 I vol. 
 Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chald.\er. Jena, 
 
 1878. I vol. 
 Il Mito di Adone-Tammuz nei Documenti cuneiformi. 
 
 32 pages. Firenze : 1879. 
 SuR LE NOM DE Tammouz. (E.xtrait des Memoires du Con- 
 
 gres international des Orientalistes.) 17 pages. Paris: 1873. 
 A Manual of the Ancient History of the East. Trans- 
 
 lated by E. Chevallier. American Edition. Philadelphia: 
 
 1871. 2 vols. 
 LoFfus. Chaldea and Susiana. i vol. London : 1857. 
 Lotz, Guilelmus. Qu.^stiones de Historia S.\bbati. Lipsiae .- 
 
 1883. 
 Maury, Alfred L. F. La Magie et l'Astrologie dans I'anti- 
 
 quite et en Moyen Age. Paris: 1877. i vol. Quatrieme edi- 
 tion. 
 Maspero, G. Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l'Orient. 
 
 3e edition, 1878. Paris : Hachette & Cie. i vol. 
 M^nant, Joachim. La Bibliotheque du Palais de Ninive. 
 
 I vol. (Bibliotheque Orientale Elzevirienne.) Paris: 1880. 
 Meyer, Eduard. Geschichte des Alterthums. Stuttgart: 
 
 1884. Vol. ist. 
 Muller, Max. Lectures on the Science of Langu.vge. 2 vols. 
 
 American edition. New York : 1875.
 
 PRINCIPAL WORKS CONSULTED. -am 
 
 MURDTER, F. KURZGEFASSTE GeSCHICHTE BABYLONIENS UND 
 
 ASSYRIENS, mit besonderer Beriicksichtigung des Alten Testa- 
 ments. Mit Vorwort und Beigaben von Friedrich Delitzsch. 
 Stuttgart : 1882. i vol. 
 
 OPPERT, Jules. L'l.MMORTALITE DE l'AME CHEZ, I.ES ChALDEENS. 
 
 28 pages. (Extrait des Annales de Philosophic Chretienne, 
 
 1874.) Perrot et Chipiez. 
 Quatrefages, a. de. L'Espece Humaine. Sixieme edition. 
 
 I vol. Paris : 1880. 
 Rawlinson, George. The Five Great Monarchies of the 
 
 Ancient Eastern World. London : 1865. ist and 2d vols. 
 Records of the Past. Published under the sanction of the 
 
 Society of Biblical Archaeology. Volumes I. III. V. VII. IX. 
 
 XI. 
 Sayce. a. H. Fresh Light from Ancient Monuments. (" By- 
 
 Paths of Bible Knowledge " Series, II.) 3d edition, 1885. Lon- 
 don : I vol. 
 
 The Ancient Empires of the East, i vol. London, 1S84. 
 
 — Babylonian Literature, i vol. London, 1884. 
 
 Schrader, Eberhard. Keilinschriften und Geschichtsforsch- 
 
 ung. Giessen : 1878. i vol. 
 Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament. Giessen : 
 
 1883. I vol. 
 
 Istar's Hollenfahrt. I vol. Giessen : 1874. 
 
 ZuR Frage nach dem Ursprung der Altbabylontschen 
 
 KULTUR. Berlin : 1884. 
 
 Smith, George. Assyria from the Earliest Times to the Fall of 
 Nineveh. ("Ancient History from the Monuments" Series.) 
 London : i vol. 
 
 Tylor, Edward B. Primitive Culture. Second American Edi- 
 tion. 2 vols. New^ York : 1877. 
 
 ZiMMERN, Heinrich. Babylonische Busspsalmen, umschrieben, 
 iibersetzt und erklart. 17 pages, 4to. Leipzig: 1885. 
 
 Numerous Essays by Sir Henry Rawlinson, Friedr. Delitzsch, 
 E. Schrader and others, in Mr. Geo. Rawlinson 's translation of He- 
 rodotus, in the Calwer Bibellexikon, and in various periodicals, such 
 as "Proceedings" and "Transactions " of the "Society of Biblical 
 Archceology," " Jahrbiicher fur Protestantische Theologie," " Zeit- 
 schrift fiir Keilschriftforschung," "Gazette Archeologique," and 
 others.
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 SHAMASH THE SUN-GOD. 
 
 From a tablet in the British Museum. 
 
 1. CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS. . Mciiaut. 
 
 2. TEMPLE OF EA AT ERIDHU . Hommel. 
 
 3. VIEW OF EUPHRATES NEAR 
 
 BABYLON Babelon. 
 
 4. MOUND OF BABIL .... Oppert. 
 
 5. BRONZE DISH . ' . . . . Per rot ami 
 
 6. BRONZE DISH (rUG PAT- 
 
 TERN) Perrot and 
 
 7. SECTION OF BRONZE DISH . Per rot and 
 
 8. VIEW OF NEBBi-YUNUS . . Babelon. 
 
 9. BUILDING IN BAKED BRICK . Perrot and 
 
 10. MOUND OF NINEVEH . . . Honimei. 
 
 11. MOUND OF MUGHEIR (AN- 
 
 CIENT Ur) Taylor. 
 
 12. TERRACE WALL AT KHORSA- 
 
 BAD Perrot and 
 
 13. RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED 
 
 SKINS (ancient) . . . Kaiiloi. 
 
 14. RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED 
 
 SKINS (modern) . . . Kaulcn. 
 
 15. EXCAVATIONS AT MUGHEIR 
 
 (ur) Hoininel. 
 
 xvii 
 
 Fro7itispiece. 
 10 
 
 23 
 
 
 31 
 
 
 zz 
 
 Chipiez. 
 
 35 
 
 Ciiipiez. 
 
 37 
 
 Ciiipiez. 
 
 39 
 
 
 41 
 
 Chipiez. 
 
 43 
 
 
 45 
 
 
 47 
 
 Ciiipiez. 
 
 49 
 
 
 51 
 
 
 51 
 
 
 53
 
 XVlll THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 16. WARRIORS SWIMMING ON IN- 
 
 FLATED SKINS .... Babelon. 55 
 
 17. VIEW OF KOYUNjiK . . . Hommel. 57 
 
 18. STONE LION AT ENTRANCE 
 
 OF A TEMPLE .... Perrot ami CJiipicz. 59 
 
 19. COURT OF HAREM AT KHOR- 
 
 SABAD. RESTORED . . Pcr/ot cl/ld C/u'picz. 6 1 
 
 20. CIRCULAR PILLAR BASE . . Ferrot and CMpiez. 63 
 
 21. INTERIOR VIEW OF HAREM 
 
 CHAMBER Perrot and Chipiez. 65 
 
 22. 23. COLORED FRIEZE IN 
 
 ENAMELLED TILES . . . Perrot and CJiipicz. 67 
 
 24. PAVEMENT SLAB .... Perrot and Chipiez. 69 
 
 25. SECTION OF ORNAMENTAL 
 
 DOORWAY, KHORSABAD . Perrot and CJiipiez. 71 
 
 26. WINGED LION WITH HUMAN 
 
 HEAD Perrot and Chipiez. 73 
 
 27. WINGED BULL Perrot and Chipiez. 75 
 
 28. MAN-LION Perrot and Chipiez. 77 
 
 29. FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED 
 
 BRICK Perrot and CJiipiez. 79 
 
 30. ram's head IN ALABASTER, British Museum. 81 
 
 31. EBONY comb Perrot and Chipiez. 81 
 
 32. BRONZE fork AND spoon . PerrotaudChipiez. 81 
 
 33. ARMENIAN LOUVRE . . . Botta. 83 
 
 34> 35- VAULTED DRAINS . . . Perrot and Chipiez. 84 
 
 36. CHALDEAN JAR-COFFIN . . Taylor. 85 
 
 37. " DISH - COVER " TOMB AT 
 
 MUGHEiR Taylor. 87 
 
 38. " DISH-COVER " TOMB . . Taylor. 87 
 
 39. SEPULCHRAL VAULT AT 
 
 MUGHEIR Taylor. 89 
 
 40. STONE JARS FROM GRAVES . Honimel. 89
 
 LIST OF JLLUSTEATIONS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 41. DRAIN IN MOUND .... Perrot and Chipiez. 90 
 
 42. WALL WITH DESIGNS IN 
 
 TERRA-COTTA , . . LoftUS. 9 1 
 
 43. TERRA-COTTA CONE . . . LoftllS. 9 1 
 
 44. HEAD OF ANCIENT CHAL- 
 
 DEAN Perrot and Chipiez. loi 
 
 45. SAME, PROFILE VIEW , . . P err ot and Chipiez. loi 
 
 46. CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTION . Perrot and Chipicz. 107 
 
 47. INSCRIBED CLAY TABLET . Smith's Chald. Gen. 109 
 
 48. CLAY TABLET IN ITS CASE . Honwicl. I I I 
 
 49. ANTIQUE BRONZE SETTING 
 
 OF CYLINDER .... Pervot and Chipicz. 1 1 2 
 
 50. CHALDEAN CYLINDER AND 
 
 IMPRESSION Perrot and Chipicz. 113 
 
 51. ASSYRIAN CYLINDER ... II3 
 
 52. PRISM OF SENNACHERIB . British Museum. 115 
 
 53. INSCRIBED CYLINDER FROM 
 
 BORSIP Mcnant. 1 1 7 
 
 54. DEMONS FIGHTING . . . British Museum. 165 
 
 55. DEMON OF THE SOUTH-WEST 
 
 WIND Perrot and Chipiez. 169 
 
 56. HEAD OF DEMON .... British Museum. 170 
 
 57. OANNES Smith's Chald. Gen. 187 
 
 58. CYLINDER OF SARGON FROM 
 
 AGADE Hommel. 207 
 
 59. STATUE OF GUDEA . . . Hommel. 217 
 
 60. BUST INSCRIBED WITH NAIMK 
 
 OF NEBO British Museum. 243 
 
 61. BACK OF TABLET WITH AC- 
 
 COUNT OF FLOOD . . . Smith's Chald. Gen. 262 
 
 62. BABYLONIAN CYLINDER . . Smith's Chald. Gen. 266 
 
 6^. FEMALE WINGED FIGURES 
 
 AND SACRED TREES . . British Muscum. 269
 
 THE STORY OF CIIALDEA. 
 
 64. WINGED SPIRITS BEFORE SA- 
 
 CRED TREE 
 
 65. SARGON OF ASSYRIA BEFORE 
 
 SACRED TREE . . . • 
 dd. EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE BE- 
 FORE SACRED TREE . . 
 
 67. FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIG- 
 
 URE BEFORE SACRED 
 TREE 
 
 68. TEMPLE AND HANGING GAR- 
 
 DENS AT KOYUNJIK 
 
 69. PLAN OF A ZIGGURAT 
 
 70. " ZIGGURAT " RESTORED 
 
 71. BIRS-NIMRUD . . . 
 
 72. 73. BEL FIGHTS DRAGON 
 
 74. BATTLE BETWEEN BEL AND 
 
 ■ DRAGON .... 
 
 75. IZDUBAR AND LION . 
 
 76. IZDUBAR AND LION 
 
 77. IZDUBAR AND EABANI 
 
 78. IZDUBAR AND LION . 
 
 79. SCORPION-MAN . . . 
 
 80. STONE OBJECT FOUND AT 
 
 ABU-HABBA . . . . . 
 
 Smith's Chald. Gen. 270 
 
 Perrot and Chipiez. 271 
 
 Per rot and Chipiez. 273 
 
 Perrot and Chipiez. 275 
 
 British Museum. 
 Perrot and Chipiez. 
 Perrot arid Chipiez. 
 Perrot and CJiipiez. 
 Perrot and Chipiez. 
 
 Smith's Chald. Gen. 
 Smith's Chald. Gen. 
 British Museum. 
 Smith's Chald. Gen. 
 Perrot and Chipiez. 
 Smith's Chald. Gen. 
 
 277 
 278 
 279 
 281 
 289 
 
 291 
 306 
 307 
 309 
 310 
 
 311 
 
 312
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I. 
 
 MESOPOTAMIA. 
 
 -THE MOUNDS. — THE 
 SEARCHERS. 
 
 FIRST 
 
 1. In or about the year before Christ 606, Nine. 
 veh, the great city, was destroyed. For many hun- 
 dred years had she stood in arrogant splendor, her 
 palaces towering above the Tigris and mirrored in its 
 swift waters; army after army had gone forth from 
 her gates and returned laden with the spoils of con- 
 quered countries •, her monarchs had ridden to the 
 high place of sacrifice in chariots drawn by captive 
 kings. But her time came at last. The nations 
 assembled and encompassed her around. Popular 
 tradition tells how over two years lasted the siege ; 
 how the very river rose and battered her walls; till 
 one day a vast flame rose up to heaven ; how the 
 last of a mighty line of kings, too proud to surren- 
 der, thus saved himself, his treasures and his cap- 
 ital from the shame of bondage. Never was city 
 to rise again where Nineveh had been. 
 
 2. Two hundred years went by. Great changes 
 
 3
 
 2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 had passed ov^er the land. The Persian kings now 
 held the rule of Asia. But their greatness also was 
 leaning towards its decline and family discords 
 undermined their power, A young prince had re- 
 belled against his elder brother and resolved to tear 
 the crown from him by main force. To accomplish 
 this, he had raised an army and called *n the help 
 of Grecian hirelings. They came, 13,000 in number, 
 led by brave and renowned generals, and did their 
 duty by him ; but their valor could not save him 
 from defeat and death. Their own leader fell into 
 an ambush, and they commenced their retreat un- 
 der the most disastrous circumstances and with lit- 
 tle hope of escape. 
 
 3. Yet they accomplished it. Surrounded by open 
 enemies and false friends, tracked and pursued, 
 through sandy wastes and pathless mountains, now 
 parched with heat, now numbed with cold, they at 
 last reached the sunny and friendly Hellespont. It 
 was a long and weary march from Babylon on the 
 Euphrates, near \\hich city the great battle had 
 been fought. They might not have succeeded had 
 they not chosen a great and brave commander, 
 Xenophon, a noble Athenian, whose fame as 
 scholar and writer equals his renown as soldier and 
 general. Few books are more interesting than the 
 lively relation he has left of his and his companions' 
 toils and sufferings in this expedition, known in 
 history as " The Retreat of the Ten Thousand " — 
 for to that number had the original 13,000 been 
 reduced by battles, privations and disease, So cul- 
 tivated a man could not fail, even in llie midst of
 
 MESOPOTAMIA. , 
 
 danger and weighed down by care, to observe what- 
 ever was noteworthy in the strange lands which he 
 traversed. So he tells us how one day his little 
 army, after a forced march in the early morning 
 hours and an engagement with some light troops of 
 pursuers, having repelled the attack and thereby 
 secured a short inteival of safety, travelled on till 
 they came to the banks of the Tigris. On that 
 spot, he goes on, there was a vast desert city. Its 
 wall wac twenty-five feet wide, one hundred feet 
 high and nearly seven miles in circuit. It was built 
 of brick with a basement, twenty feet high, of stone. 
 Close by the city there stood a stone pyramid, one 
 hundred feet in width, and two hundred in height. 
 Xenophon adds that this city's name was Larissa 
 and that it had anciently been inhabited by Medes ; 
 that the king of Persia, when he took the sover- 
 eignty away from the Medes, besieged it, but could 
 not in any way get possession of it, until, a cloud 
 having obscured the sun, the inhabitants forsook 
 the city and thus it was taken. 
 
 4. Some eighteen miles further on (a day's march") 
 the Greeks came to another great deserted city, 
 which Xenophon calls Mespila. It had a similar 
 but still higher wall. This city, he tells us, had also 
 been inhabited by Medes, and taken by the king of 
 Persia. Now these curious ruins were all that was 
 left of Kalah and Nineveh, the two Assyrian capitals. 
 In the short space of two hundred years, men had 
 surel}' not yet lost the memory of Nineveh's exist- 
 ence and rule, yet they trod the very site where it 
 had stood and knew it not, and called its ruins by a
 
 I IKTKOD I 'CTION. 
 
 meaningless Greek name, handing down concerning 
 it a tradition absurdly made up of true and ficti- 
 tious details, jumbled into inextricable confusion. 
 For Nineveh had been the capital of the Assyrian 
 Empire, while the Medes were one of the nations 
 who attacked and destroyed it. And though an 
 eclipse of the sun — (the obscuring cloud could mean 
 nothing else) — did occur, created great confusion 
 and produced important results, it was at a later 
 period and on an entirely different occasion. As 
 to " the king of Persia," no such personage had any- 
 thing whatever to do with the catastrophe of Nine- 
 veh, since the Persians had not yet been heard of 
 at that time as a powerful people, and their coun- 
 try was only a small and insignificant principality, 
 tributary to Media, So effectually had the haughty 
 city been swept from the face of the earth ! 
 
 5. Another hundred years brought on other and 
 even greater changes. The Persian monarchy had 
 followed in the wake of the empires that had gone 
 before it and fallen before Alexander, the youthful 
 hero of Macedon. As the conqueror's fleet of light- 
 built Grecian ships descended the Euphrates tow- 
 ards Babylon, they were often hindered in their 
 progress by huge dams of stone built across the 
 river. The Greeks, with great labor, removed sev- 
 eral, to make navigation more easy. They did 
 the same on several other rivers, — nor knew that 
 they were destroying the last remaining vestige of 
 a great people's civilization, — for these dams had 
 been used to save the water and distribute it into 
 the numerous canals, which covered the arid coun-
 
 MESOPOTAMIA. 
 
 5 
 
 try with their fertilizing network. They may have 
 been told what travellers are told in our own days 
 by the Arabs — that these dams had been con- 
 structed once upon a time by Nimrod, the Hunter- 
 King. For some of them remain even still, show- 
 ing their huge, square stones, strongly united by 
 iron cramps, above the water before the river is 
 swollen with the winter rains. 
 
 6. More than one-and-twenty centuries have rolled 
 since then over the immense valley so well named 
 Mesopotamia — ■" the L:ind between the Rivers," — 
 and each brought to it more changes, more wars, 
 more disasters, with rare intervals of rest and pros- 
 perity. Its position between the East and the 
 West, on the very high-road of marching armies 
 and wandering tribes, has always made it one of the 
 great battle grounds of the world. About one thou- 
 sand years after Alexander's rapid invasion and 
 short-lived conquest, the Arabs overran the coun- 
 try, and settled there, bringing with them a new 
 civilization and the new religion given them by 
 their prophet Mohammed, which they thought it 
 their mission to carry, by force of w^ord or sword, 
 to the bounds of the earth. They even founded 
 there one of the principal seats of their sovereignty. 
 and Baghdad yielded not greatly in magnificence 
 and power to Babylon of old. 
 
 7. Order, laws, and learning now flourished for a 
 few hundred years, when new hordes of barbarous 
 people came pouring in from the East, and one of 
 them, the Turks, at last established itself in the land 
 and stayed. They rule there now. The valley of
 
 6 INTRO :)UCTWN. 
 
 the Tigris and Euphrates is a province of the Otto- 
 man or Turkish Empire, which has its capital in 
 Constantinople ; it is governed by pashas, officials 
 sent by the Turkish government, or the " Sublime 
 Porte," as it is usually called, and the ignorant, op- 
 pressive, grinding treatment to which it has now 
 been subjected for several hundred years has re- 
 duced it to the lowest depth of desolation. Its 
 wealth is exhausted, its industry destroyed, its pros- 
 perous cities have disappeared or dwindled into in- 
 significance. Even Mossul, built by the Arabs on 
 the right bank of the Tigris, opposite the spot where 
 Nineveh once stood, one of their finest cities, fa- 
 mous for the manufacturing of the delicate cotton 
 tissue to which it gave its name — {imislm, moussc- 
 Ime) — would have lost all importance, had it not the 
 honor to be the chief town of a Turkish district and 
 to harbor a pasha. And Baghdad, although still the 
 capital of the whole province, is scarcely more than 
 the shadow of her former glorious self; and her 
 looms no longer supply the markets of the world 
 with wonderful shawls and carpets, and gold and sil- 
 ver tissues of marvellous designs. 
 
 8. Mesopotamia is a region which must suffer 
 under neglect and misgovernment even more than 
 others ; for, though richly endowed by nature, it is 
 of a peculiar formation, requiring constant care and 
 intelligent management to yield all the return of 
 which it is capable. That care must chiefly consist 
 in distributing the waters of the two great rivers and 
 their affluents over all the land by means of an intri- 
 cate system of canals, regulated by a complete and
 
 MESOPOTAMIA. ij 
 
 well-kept set of dams and sluices, with other simpler 
 arrangements for the remoter and smaller branches. 
 The yearly inundations caused by the Tigris and 
 Euphrates, which overflow their banks in spring, 
 are not sufificient ; only a narrow strip of land on 
 each side is benefited by them. In the lowlands 
 towards the Persian Gulf there is another inconven- 
 ience: the country there being perfectly flat, the 
 waters accumulate and stagnate, forming vast pesti- 
 lential swamps where rich pastures and wheat-fields 
 should be — and have been in ancient times. In 
 short, if left to itself. Upper Mesopotamia, (ancient 
 Assyria), is unproductive from the barrenness of its 
 soil, and Lower Mesopotamia, (ancient Chaldea and 
 Babylonia), runs to waste, notwithstanding its ex- 
 traordinary fertilit}', from want of drainage. 
 
 9. Such is actually the condition of the once pop- 
 ulous and flourishing valley, owing to the principles 
 on which the Turkish rulers carry on their govern- 
 ment. They look on their remoter provinces as 
 mere sources of revenue for the state and its officials. 
 But even admitting this as their avowed and chief 
 object, they pursue it in an altogether wrong-headed 
 and short-sighted way. The people are simply and 
 openly plundered, and no portion of what is taken 
 from them is applied co any uses of local public util- 
 ity, as roads, irrigation, encouragement of commerce 
 and industry and the like ; what is not sent home to 
 the Sultan goes into the private pouches of the 
 pasha and his many subaltern officials. This is like 
 taking the milk and omitting to feed the cow. The 
 consequence is, the people lose their interest in
 
 3v INTRODUCTION. 
 
 work of an}' kind, leave off striving for an increase 
 of property which they will not be permitted to en- 
 joy, and resign themselves to utter destitution with 
 a stolid apathy most painful to witness. The land 
 has been brought to such a degree of impoverish- 
 ment that it is actually no longer capable of produc- 
 ing crops suf^cient for a settled population. It is 
 cultivated only in patches along the rivers, where 
 the soil is rendered so fertile by the yearly inunda- 
 tions as to yield moderate returns almost unasked, 
 and that mostly by wandering tribes of Arabs cr of 
 Kurds from the mountains to the north, who raise 
 their tents and leave the spot the moment they have 
 gathered in their little harvest — if it has not been 
 appropriated first by some of the pasha's tax-collect- 
 ors or by roving parties of Bedouins — robber-tribes 
 from the adjoining Syrian and Arabian deserts, who, 
 mounted on their own matchless horses, are carried 
 across the open border with as much facility as the 
 drifts of desert sand so much dreaded by travellers. 
 The rest of the country is left to nature's own de- 
 vices and, wherever it is not cut up by mountains or 
 rocky ranges, offers the well-known twofold charac- 
 ter of steppe-land : luxuriant grassy vegetation dur- 
 ing one-third of the year and a parched, arid waste 
 the rest of the time, except during the winter rains 
 and spring floods. 
 
 lO. A wild and desolate scene ! Imposing too in 
 its sorrowful grandeur, and well suited to a land 
 which may be called a graveyard of empires and na- 
 tions. The monotony of the landscape would be 
 unbroken, but for certain elevations and hillocks of
 
 MESOPOTAMIA. g 
 
 strange and varied shapes, which spring up, as it were, 
 from the plain in every direction ; some are high and 
 conical or pyramidal in form, others are quite exten- 
 sive and rather flat on the summit, others again 
 long and low, and all curiously unconnected with 
 each other or any ridge of hills or mountains. This 
 is doubly striking in Lower Mesopotamia or Baby- 
 lonia, proverbial for its excessive flatness. The few 
 permanent villages, composed of mud-huts or plaited 
 reed-cabins, are generally built on these eminences, 
 others are used as burying-grounds, and a mosque, 
 the Mohammedan house of prayer, sometimes rises 
 on one or the other. They are pleasing objects in 
 the beautiful spring season, when corn-fields wave 
 on their summits, and their slopes, as well as all the 
 surrounding plains, are clothed with the densest and 
 greenest of herbage, enlivened with countless flow- 
 ers of every hue, till the surface of the earth looks, 
 from a distance or from a height, as gorgeous as the 
 richest Persian carpet. But, on approaching nearer 
 to these hillocks or mounds, an unprepared traveller 
 would be struck by some peculiar features. Their 
 substance being rather soft and yielding, and the 
 winter rains pouring down with exceeding violence, 
 their sides are furrowed in many places wijih ravines, 
 dug by the rushing streams of rain-water. These 
 streams of course wash down much of the substance 
 itself and carry it far into the plain, where it lies 
 scattered on the surface quite distinct from the soil. 
 These washings are found to consist not of earth or 
 sand, but of rubbish, something like that which lies 
 in heaps wherever a house is being built or demol-
 
 lO 
 
 IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 ished, and to contain innumerable fragments of 
 bricks, potter}-, stone evidently worked by the hand 
 and chisel ; many of these fragments moreover bear- 
 ing inscriptions in complicated characters composed 
 of one curious figure shaped like the head of an ar- 
 row, and used^in every possible position and combi- 
 nation, — like this: 
 
 A Tim Ht<-^T^<Ti'<< 
 
 I. — CUNEIFORM CHARACTERS. 
 
 11. In the crevices or ravines themselves, the 
 waters having cleared away masses of this loose rub- 
 bish, have laid bare whole sides of walls of solid 
 brick-work, sometimes even a piece of a human head 
 or limb, or a corner of sculptured stone-slab, always 
 of colossal size and bold, striking execution. All 
 this tells its own tale and the conclusion is self-ap- 
 parent : that these elevations are not natural hil- 
 locks or knolls, but artificial mounds, heaps of earth 
 and building materials \\hich have been at some 
 time placed there by men, then, collapsing and 
 crumbling to rubbish from neglect, have concealed 
 within their ample sides all that remains of those 
 ancient structures and works of art, clothed them- 
 selves in verdure, and deceitfully assumed all the 
 outward signs of natural hills. 
 
 12. The Arabs never thought of exploring these 
 curious heaps. Mohammedan nations, as a rule, 
 take little interest in relics of antiquity; moreover 
 they are very superstitious, and, as their religious 
 law strictly forbids them to represent the human
 
 MESOPOTAMIA. I j 
 
 form either in painting or sculpture lest such repro- 
 duction might lead ignorant and misguided people 
 back to the abominations of idolatry, so they look 
 on relics of ancient statuary with suspicion amount- 
 ing to fear and connect them with magic and witch- 
 craft. It is, therefore, with awe not devoid of horror 
 that they tell travellers that the mounds contain un- 
 derground passages which are haunted not only by 
 wild beasts, but by evil spirits — for have not some- 
 times strange figures carved in stone been dimly 
 perceived in the crevices? Better instructed for- 
 eigners have long ago assumed that within these 
 mounds must be entombed whatever ruins may be 
 preserved of the great cities of yore. Their number 
 formed no objection, for it was well known how pop- 
 ulous the valley had been in the days of its splendor, 
 and that, besides several famous cities, it could boast 
 no end of smaller ones, often separated from each 
 other by a distance of only a few miles. The long 
 low mounds were rightly supposed to represent 
 the ancient walls, and the higher and vaster ones 
 to have been the site of the palaces and temples. 
 The Arabs, though utterly ignorant of history of any 
 ■kind, have preserved in their religion some traditions 
 from the Bible, and so it happens that out of these 
 wrecks of ages some biblical names still survive. 
 Almost everything of which they do not know the 
 origin, they ascribe to Nimrod; and the smaller of 
 the two mounds opposite Mosul, which mark the 
 spot where Nineveh itself once stood, they call " Jo- 
 nah's Mound," and stoutly believe the mosque 
 which crowns it, surrounded by a comparatively
 
 12 
 
 INTRODCCTIOy. 
 
 prosperous village, to contain the tomb of Jonah 
 himself, the prophet who was sent to rebuke and 
 warn the wicked city. As the Mohammedans 
 honor the Hebrew prophets, the whole mound is 
 sacred in their eyes in consequence. 
 
 13. If travellers had for some time been aware of 
 these general facts concerning the Mounds, it was 
 many years before their curiosity and interest were 
 so far aroused as to make them go to the trouble 
 and expense of digging into them, in order to find 
 out what they really contained. Until within the 
 last hundred years or so, not only the general pub- 
 lic, but even highly cultivated men and distin- 
 guished scholars, under the words " study of an- 
 tiquity," understood no more than the study of so- 
 called '■^Classical Antiquity," i.e., of the language, 
 history and literature of the Greeks and Romans, 
 together with the ruins, works of art, and remains 
 of all sorts left by these two nations. Their knowl- 
 edge of other empires and people they took from 
 the Greek and Roman historians and writers, with- 
 out doubting or questioning their statements, or — as 
 we say now — without subjecting their statements to 
 any criticism. Moreover, European students in 
 their absorption in and devotion to classical studies, 
 were too apt to follow the example of their favorite 
 authors and to class the entire rest of the world, as 
 far as it was known in ancient times, under the 
 sweeping and somewhat contemptuous by-name of 
 " Barbarians," thus allowing them but a secondary 
 importance and an inferior claim to attention. 
 
 14. Things began greatly to change towards the
 
 MESOPO TA MTA . I -i 
 
 end of the last century. Yet the mounds of Assyria 
 and Babylonia were still suffered to keep their secret 
 unrevealed. This want of interest may be in part 
 explained by their peculiar nature. They are so dif- 
 ferent from other ruins. A row of massiv^e pillars 
 or of stately columns cut out on the clear blue sky, 
 with the desert around or the sea at their feet, — a 
 broken arch or battered tombstone clothed with 
 ivy and hanging creepers, with the blue and purple 
 mountains for a background, are striking objects 
 which first take the eye by their beauty, then invite 
 inspection by the easy approach they offer. But 
 these huge, shapeless heaps ! What labor to re- 
 move even a small portion of them ! And when 
 that is done, who knows whether their contents will 
 at all repay the effort and expense? 
 
 15. The first European whose love of learning 
 was strong enough to make him disregard all such 
 doubts and difficulties, was Mr. Rich, an English- 
 man. He was not particularly successful, nor were 
 his researches- very extensive, being carried on 
 entirely with his private means ; yet his name will 
 always be honorably remembered, for he was the 
 first who went to work with pickaxe and shovel, 
 who hired men to dig, who measured and described 
 some of the principal mounds on the Euphrates, 
 thus laying down the groundwork of all later and 
 more fruitful explorations in that region. It was in 
 1820 and Mr. Rich was then political resident or 
 representative of the East India Company at Bagh- 
 dad. He also tried the larger of the two mounds 
 opposite Mosul, '^ncouraged by the report that, a
 
 14 
 
 INTROD UC TION. 
 
 short time before he arrived there, a sculpture rep- 
 resenting men and animals had been disclosed to 
 view. Unfortunately he could not procure even a 
 fragment of this treasure, for the people of Mosul, 
 influenced by their iileina — (doctor of the law) — who 
 had declared these sculptures to be " idols of the 
 infidels," had walked across the river from the city 
 in a body and piously shattered them to atoms. 
 Mr. Rich had not the good luck to come across any 
 such find himself, and after some further efforts, 
 left the place rather disheartened. He carried 
 home to England the few relics he had been able to 
 obtain. In the absence of more important ones, 
 Lhey were very interesting, consisting in fragments 
 of inscriptions, of pottery, in engraved stone, bricks 
 and pieces of bricks. After his death all these arti- 
 cles were placed in the British Museum, where they 
 formed the foundation of the present noble Chal- 
 dea-Assyrian collection of that great institution. 
 Nothing more was undertaken for years, so that it 
 could be said with literal truth that,' up to 1842, "a 
 case three feet square inclosed all that remained, 
 not only of the great city Nineveh, but of Babylon 
 itself!"* 
 
 16. The next in the field was Mr. Botta, appointed 
 French Consul at Mosul in 1842. He began to dig 
 at the end of the same year, and naturally attached 
 himself specially to the larger of the two mounds 
 opposite Mosul, named KOYUNJIK, after a small 
 village at its base. This mound is the Mespila of 
 
 * Layard's "Discoveries at Nineveh," Introduction.
 
 MESOPOTAMIA. j- 
 
 Xenophon. He began enthusiastically, and worked 
 on for over three months, but repeated disappoint- 
 ments were beginning to produce discouragement, 
 when one day a peasant from a distant village hap- 
 pened to be looking on at the small party of work- 
 men. He was much amused on observing that 
 every — to him utterly worthless— fragment of alabas- 
 ter, brick or pottery, was carefully picked out of the 
 rubbish, most tenderly handled and laid aside, and 
 laughingly remarked that they might be better re- 
 paid for their trouble, if they would try the mound 
 on which his village was built, for that lots of such 
 rubbish had kept continually turning up, when they 
 were digging the foundations of their houses. 
 
 17. Mr. Botta had by this time fallen into a rather 
 hopeless mood ; yet he did not dare to neglect the 
 hint, and sent a few men to the mound which had 
 been pointed out to him, and which, as well as the 
 village on the top of it, bore the name of Khorsa- 
 BAD. His agent began operations from the top. A 
 well was sunk into the mound, and very soon 
 brought the workmen to the top of a wall, which, on 
 further digging, was found to be lined along its base 
 with sculptured slabs of some soft substance much 
 like gypsum or limestone. This discovery quickh- 
 brought Mr. Botta to the spot, in a fever of excite- 
 ment. He now took the direction of the works 
 himself, had a trench dug from the outside straight 
 into the mound, wide and deep, towards the place 
 already laid open from above. What was his aston- 
 ishment on finding that he had entered a liall 
 entirel)' lined all round, except where interruptions
 
 l6 TNTRODUCTTON. 
 
 indicated the place of doorways leading into other 
 rooms, with sculptured slabs similar to the one first 
 discovered, and representing scenes of battles, sieges 
 and the like. He waltzed as in a dream. It was a 
 new and wonderful world suddenly opened. For 
 these sculptures evidently recorded the deeds of the 
 builder, some powerful conqueror and king. And 
 those long and close lines engraved in the stone, all 
 along the slabs, in the same peculiar character as the 
 short inscriptions on the bricks that lay scattered 
 on the plain — they must surely contain the text to 
 these sculptured illustrations. But who is to read 
 them ? They are not like any known writing in the 
 world and may remain a sealed book forever. 
 Who, then, was the builder? To what age belong 
 these structures? Which of the wars we read about 
 are here portrayed ? None of these questions, 
 which must have strangely agitated him, could Mr. 
 Botta have answered at the time. But not the less 
 to him remains the glory of having, first of living 
 men, entered the palace of an Assyrian king. 
 
 i8. Mr. Botta henceforth devoted himself exclu- 
 sively to the mound of Khorsabad. His discovery 
 created an immense sensation in Europe. Scholarly 
 indifference was not proof against so unlooked-for 
 a shock ; the revulsion was complete and the spirit 
 of research and enterprise was effectually aroused, 
 not to slumber again. The French consul was sup- 
 plied by his government with ample means to carry 
 on excavations on a large scale. If the first success 
 may be considered as merely a great piece of good 
 fortune, the following ones were certainly due to
 
 MESOrOTAMTA. 1 7 
 
 intelligent, untiring labor and ingenuous scholarship. 
 We see the results in Botta's voluminous work 
 " Monuments de Ninivc " " and in the fine Assyr- 
 ian collection of the Louvre, in the first room of 
 which is placed, as is but just, the portrait of the 
 man to whose efforts and devotion it is due. 
 
 19. The great English investigator Layard, then 
 a young and enthusiastic scholar on his Eastern trav- 
 els, passing through Mosul in 1842, found Mr. Botta 
 engaged on his first and unpromising attempts at 
 Koyunjik, and subsequently wrote to him from 
 Constantinople exhorting him to persist and not 
 give up his hopes of success. He was one of the 
 first to hear of the astounding news from Khorsa- 
 bad, and immediately determined to carry out a 
 long-cherished project of his own, that of exploring 
 a large mound known among the Arabs under the 
 name of NiMRUD, and situated somewhat lower on 
 the Tigris, near that river's junction with one of its 
 chief tributaries, the Zab. The difificult}' lay in 
 procuring the necessar}- funds. Neither the trus- 
 tees of the British Museum nor the English Govern- 
 ment were at first willing to incur such considerable 
 expense on what was still looked upon as very un- 
 certain chances. It was a private gentleman, Sir 
 Stratford Canning, then English minister at Con- 
 stantinople, who generously came forward, anc/ 
 announced himself willing to meet the outlay with- 
 in certain limits, while authorities at home were to 
 
 * In five huge folio volumes, one of text, two of inscriptions, and 
 two of illustrations. The title shows that Botta erroneously imag- 
 ined the ruins he had discovered to be those of Nineveh itself. 
 
 4
 
 i8 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 be solicited and worked upon. So Mr. Layard was 
 enabled to begin operations on the mound which 
 he had specially selected for himself in the autumn 
 of 1845, the year after that in which the building of 
 Khorsabad was finally laid open by Botta. The 
 results of his expedition were so startlingly vast and 
 important, and the particulars of his work on the 
 Assyrian plains are so interesting and picturesque, 
 that they will furnish ample materials for a separate 
 chapter.
 
 11, 
 
 LAYARD AND HIS WORK. 
 
 I. In the first part of November, 1845, ^^'^ find the 
 enthusiastic and enterprising young scholar on the 
 scene of his future exertions and triumphs. His 
 first night in the wilderness, in a ruinous Arab vil- 
 lage amidst the smaller mounds of Nimrud, is 
 vividly described by him : — " I slept little during 
 the night. The hovel in which we had taken shel- 
 ter, and its inmates, did not invite slumber; but 
 such scenes and companions were not new to me ; 
 they could have been forgotten, had my brain been 
 less excited. Hopes, long-cherished, were now to 
 be realized, or were to end in disappointment. 
 Visions of palaces underground, of gigantic mon- 
 sters, of sculptured figures, and endless inscriptions 
 floated before me. After forming plan after plan 
 for removing the earth, and extricating these treas- 
 ures, I fancied myself wandering in a maze of 
 chambers from which I could find no outlet. Then 
 again, all was reburied, and I was standing on the 
 grass-covered mound." 
 
 2. Although not doomed to disappointment in 
 the end, these hopes were yet to be thwarted in 
 many ways before the visions of that r.ight became
 
 20 
 
 lA^TRODVCTlOIV. 
 
 reality. For many and various were the difficulties 
 which Layard had to contend with during the fol- 
 lowing months as well as during his second expedi- 
 tion in 1848. The material hardships of perpetual 
 camping out in an uncongenial climate, without any 
 of the simplest conveniences of life, and the fevers 
 and sickness repeatedly brought on b}' exposure to 
 winter rains and summer heat, should perhaps be 
 counted among the least of them, for they had their 
 compensations. Not so the ignorant and ill-natured 
 opposition, open or covert, of the Turkish authori- 
 ties. That was an evil to which no amount of phi- 
 losophy could ever fully reconcile him. His expe- 
 riences in that line form an amusing collection. 
 Luckily, the first was also the worst. The pasha 
 whom he found installed at Mosul was, in appear- 
 ance and temper, more like an ogre than a man. 
 He was the terror of the country. His cruelty and 
 rapacity knew no bounds. When he sent his tax- 
 collectors on their dreaded round, he used to dis- 
 miss them with this short and pithy instruction : 
 "Go, destroy, eat ! " (i.e. " plunder "), and for his 
 own profit had revived several kinds of contribu- 
 tions which had been suffered to fall into disuse, es- 
 pecially one called " tooth-money,"— "a compensa- 
 tion in money, levied upon all villages in which a 
 man of such rank is entertained, for the wear and 
 tear of his teeth in masticating the food he conde- 
 scends to receive from the inhabitants." 
 
 3. The letters with which Layard was provided 
 secured him a gracious reception from this amiable 
 personage, who allowed him to begin operations
 
 LA YARD AND HIS WORK. 21 
 
 on the great mound of Nimrud with the party 
 of Arab workmen whom he had hired for the 
 purpose. Some time after, it came to the Pasha's 
 knowledge that a few fragments of gold leaf had 
 been found in the rubbish and he even procured 
 a small particle as sample. He immediately con- 
 cluded, as the Arab chief had done, that the Eng- 
 lish traveller was digging for hidden treasure — an 
 object far more intelligible to them than that of 
 disinterring and carrying home a quantity of old 
 broken stones. This incident, by arousing the great 
 man's rapacity, might have caused him to put a 
 stop to all further search, had not Layard, who 
 well knew that treasure of this kind was not likely 
 to be plentiful in the ruins, immediately proposed 
 that his Excellency should keep an agent at the 
 mound, to take charge of all the precious metals 
 which might be discovered there in the course of 
 the excavations. The Pasha raised no objections 
 at the moment, but a few days later announced to 
 Layard that, to his great regret, he felt it his duty 
 to forbid the continuation of the work, since he had 
 just learned that the diggers were disturbing a 
 Mussulman burying-ground. As the tombs of true 
 believers are held very sacred and inviolable by 
 Mohammedans, this would have been a fatal obsta- 
 cle, had not one of the Pasha's own officers confi- 
 dentially disclosed to Layard that the tombs were 
 sham ones, that he and his men had been secretly 
 employed to fabricate them, and for two nights had 
 been bringing stones for the purpose from the 
 surrounding villages. "We have destro)'cd more
 
 22 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tombs of true believers," said the Aga, — (officer) — 
 " in making sham ones, than ever you could have 
 defiled. We have killed our horses and ourselves 
 in carrying those accursed stones." Fortunately 
 the Pasha, whose misdeeds could not be tolerated 
 even by a Turkish government, was recalled about 
 Christmas, and succeeded by an official of an en- 
 tirely different stamp, a man whose reputation for 
 justice and mildness had preceded him, and whose 
 arrival was accordingly greeted with public rejoic- 
 ings. Operations at the mound now proceeded for 
 some time rapidly and successfully. But this very 
 success at one time raised new difficulties for our 
 explorers. 
 
 4. One day, as Layard w^as returning to the 
 mound from an excursion, he was met on the way 
 by two Arabs who had ridden out to meet him at 
 full speed, and from a distance shouted to him in 
 the wildest excitement: " Hasten, O Bey! hasten 
 to the diggers! for they have found Nimrod him- 
 self. It is wonderful, but it is true! we have seen 
 him with our eyes. There is no God but God 1 *' 
 Greatly puzzled, he hurried on and, descending into 
 the trench, found that the workmen had uncovered 
 a gigantic head, the body to M'hich was still im- 
 bedded in earth and rubbish. This head, beauti- 
 fully sculptured in the alabaster furnished by the 
 neighboring hills, surpassed in height the tallest 
 man present. The great shapely features, in their 
 majestic repose, seemed to guard some mighty 
 secret and to defy the bustling curiosity of those 
 who gazed on them in wonder and fear. '* One of
 
 LA YARD AND //IS WORK. 
 
 ^l 
 
 the workmen, on catching the first ghmpse of the 
 monster, had thrown down his basket and run off 
 toward Mossul as fast as his legs could carry him." 
 5. The Arabs came in crowds from the sur- 
 
 
 2. — TEMPLli OF KA Ar KKIDHU (aBU-SIIAUREIN). BACK-STAIKS. 
 CHocinicl.) 
 
 rounding encampments ; they could scarcely be 
 persuaded that the image was of stone, and con- 
 tended that it was not the work of men's hands, 
 but of infidel giants of olden times. The com- 
 motion soon spread to Mosul, where the terrified 
 workman, " entering breathless into the bazars,
 
 .4 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 announced to every one he met that Nimrod 
 had appeared." The authorities of the town were 
 alarmed, put their heads together and decided that 
 such idolatrous proceedings were an outrage to re- 
 ligion. The consequence was that Layard was re- 
 quested by his friend Ismail-Pasha to suspend 
 operations for awhile, until the excitement should 
 have subsided, a request with which he thought it 
 wisest to comply without remonstrance, lest the 
 people of Mosul might come out in force and deal 
 with his precious find as they had done with the 
 sculptured figure at Koyunjik in Rich's time. The 
 alarm, however, did not last long. Both Arabs and 
 Turks soon became familiar with the strange crea- 
 tions which kept emerging out of the earth, and 
 learned to discuss them with great calm and grav- 
 ity. The colossal bulls and lions with wings and 
 human heads, of which several pairs were discov- 
 ered, some of them in a state of perfect preserva- 
 tion, were especially the objects of wonder and con- 
 jectures, which generally ended in a curse " on all 
 infidels and their works," the conclusion arrived at 
 being that " the idols " were to be sent to England, to 
 form gateways to the palace of the Queen. And 
 when some of these giants, now in the British Mu- 
 seum, were actually removed, with infinite pains 
 and labor, to be dragged down to the Tigris, and 
 floated down the river on rafts, there was no end to 
 the astonishment of Layard's simple friends. On 
 one such occasion an Arab Sheikh, or chieftain, 
 whose tribe had engaged to assist in moving one of 
 the winged bulls, opened his heart to him. " In the
 
 LAYARD AND HIS WORK. 25 
 
 name of the Most High," said he, " tell me, O Bey, 
 what you are going to do with these stones. So 
 many thousands of purses spent on such things ! 
 Can it be, as you say, that your people learn wisdom 
 from them? or is it as his reverence the Cadi de- 
 clares, that they are to go to the palace of your 
 Queen, who, with the rest of the unbelievers, wor- 
 ships these idols'* As for wisdom, these figures 
 will not teach you to make any better knives, or scis- 
 sors, or chintzes ; and it is in the making of these 
 things that the English show their wisdom." 
 
 6. Such was the view very generally taken of 
 Layard's work by both Turks and Arabs, from the 
 Pasha down to the humblest digger in his band of 
 laborers, and he seldom felt called upon to play 
 the missionary of science, knowing as he did that all 
 such efforts would be but wasted breath. This want 
 of intellectual sympathy did not prevent the best 
 understanding from existing between himself and 
 these rangers of the desert. The primitive life 
 which he led amongst them for so many months, 
 the kindly hospitality which he invariably experi- 
 enced at their hands during the excursions made 
 and the visits he paid to different Bedouin tribes in 
 the intervals of recreation which he was compelled to 
 allow himself from time to time — these are among 
 the most pleasurable memories of those wonderful, 
 dreamlike years. He lingers on them lovingly and 
 retraces them through many a page of both his 
 books* — pages which, for their picturesque vivid- 
 
 * " Nineveh and its Remains," and " Discoveries in Nineveh and 
 B^b-lon."
 
 26 ' ijVTRODUCTION. 
 
 ness, must be perused with delight even by such as 
 are but slightly interested in the discovery of buried 
 palaces and winged bulls. One longs to have 
 been with him through some of those peerless 
 evenings when, after a long day's work, he sat 
 before his cabin in the cool starlight, watching 
 the dances with which those indefatigable Arabs, 
 men and women, solaced themselves deep into the 
 night, while the encampment was lively with the 
 hum of voices, and the fires lit to prepare the simple 
 meal. One longs to have shared in some of those 
 brisk rides across plains so thickly enamelled with 
 flowers, that it seemed a patchwork of many col- 
 ors, and " the dogs, as they returned from hunt- 
 ing, issued from the long grass dyed red, yellow, or 
 blue, according to the flowers through which they 
 had last forced their way," — the joy of the Arab's 
 soul, which made the chief, Layard's friend, contin- 
 ually exclaim, " rioting in the luxuriant herbage 
 and scented air, as his mare waded through the 
 flowers : — ' What delight has God given us equal to 
 this? It is the only thing worth living for. What 
 do the dwellers in cities know of true happiness? 
 They never have seen grass or flowers ! May God 
 have pity on them ! ' " How glorious to watch the 
 face of the desert changing its colors almost from 
 day to da}', white succeeding to pale straw color, 
 red to white, blue to red, lilac to blue, and bright 
 gold to that, according to the flowers with which it 
 decked itself! Out of sight stretches the gorgeous 
 carpet, dotted v^ith the black camel's-hair tents ol 
 the Arabs, enlivened with flocks of sheep and camels,
 
 LA YARD AND HIS WORK. 2/ 
 
 and whole studs of horses of noble breed which are 
 brought out from Mosul and left to graze at liberty, 
 in the days of healthy breezes and fragrant pastures. 
 
 7. So much for spring. A beautiful, a perfect sea- 
 son, but unfortunately as brief as it is lovely, and 
 too soon succeeded by the terrible heat and long 
 drought of summer, which sometimes set in so sud- 
 denly as hardly to give the few villagers time to 
 gather in their crops. Chaldea or Lower Mesopo- 
 tamia is in this respect even worse off than the 
 higher plains of Assyria. A temperature of 120° 
 in the shade is no unusual occurrence in Baghdad ; 
 true, it can be reduced to 100° in the cellars of 
 the houses by carefully excluding the faintest ray 
 of light, and it is there that the inhabitants mostly 
 spend their days in summer. The oppression is 
 such that Europeans are entirely unmanned and 
 unfitted for any kind of acti\it)'. " Camels sicken, 
 and birds are so distressed by the high temperature, 
 that they sit in the date-trees about Baghdad, with 
 their mouths open, panting for fresh air." " 
 
 8. But the most frightful feature of a Mesopota- 
 mian summer is the frequent and violent sand- 
 storms, during which travellers, in addition to all the 
 dangers offered by snow-storms — being buried alive 
 and losing their way — are exposed to that of suffo- 
 cation not only from the furnace-like heat of the 
 desert-wind, but from the impalpable sand, which is 
 whirled and driven before it, and fills the eyes, mouth 
 
 * Rawlinson's " Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World," 
 Vol. I., Chap. II.
 
 28 INTRODUCTIOX. 
 
 and nostrils of horse and rider. The three miles' ride 
 from Layard's encampment to the mound of Nim- 
 rud must have been something more than pleasant 
 morninc: exercise in such a season, and thou£[-h the 
 deep trenches and wells afforded a comparatively 
 cool and delightful retreat, he soon found that fever 
 was the price to be paid for the indulgence, and was 
 repeatedly laid up with it. " The verdure of the 
 plain," he says in one place, " had perished almost 
 in a day. Hot winds, coming from the desert, had 
 burnt up and carried away the shrubs ; flights of 
 locusts, darkening the air, had destroyed the few 
 patches of cultivation, and had completed the havoc 
 commenced by the heat of the sun. . . . Violent 
 whirlwinds occasionally swept over the face of the 
 country. They could be seen as they advanced 
 from the desert, carrying along with them clouds of 
 dust and sand. Almost utter darkness prevailed 
 during their passage, which lasted generally about 
 an hour, and nothing could resist their fury. On 
 returning home one afternoon after a tempest of 
 the kind, I found no traces of my dwellings; they 
 had been completely carried away. Ponderous 
 wooden frame-works had been borne over the bank 
 and hurled some hundred yards distant ; the tents 
 had disappeared, and my furniture was scattered 
 over the plain." 
 
 9. Fortunately it would not require much labor 
 to restore the wooden frames to their proper place 
 and reconstruct the reed-plaited, mud-plastered walls 
 as well as the roof composed of reeds and boughs — 
 such being the sumptuous residences of which Lay-
 
 LA YARD AND HIS WORK. 2Q 
 
 arc! shared the largest with various domestic animals, 
 from whose immediate companionship he was saved 
 by a thin partition, the other hovels being devoted 
 to the wives, children and poultry of his host, to his 
 own servants and different household uses. But the 
 time came when not even this accommodation, poor 
 as it was, could be enjo}'ed with any degree of com- 
 fort. When the summer heat set in in earnest, the 
 huts became uninhabitable from their closeness and 
 the vermin with which they swarmed, Avhile a can- 
 vas tent, though far preferable in the way of airi- 
 ness and cleanliness, did not afford sufficient shelter. 
 lo. " In this dilemma," says Layard, " I ordered a 
 recess to be cut into the bank of the river where 
 it rose perpendicularly from the water's edge. By 
 screening the front with reeds and boughs of trees, 
 and covering the whole Avith similar materials, a small 
 room was formed. I was much troubled, however, 
 with scorpions and other reptiles, which issued from 
 the earth forming the walls of my apartment ; and 
 later in the summer by the gnats and sandflies 
 which hov^ered on a calm night over the river." It 
 is difficult to decide between the respective merits 
 of this novel summer retreat and of the winter 
 dwelling, ambitiousl}' constructed of mud bricks 
 dried in the sun, and roofed with solid wooden 
 beams. This imposing residence, in which La\-ard 
 spent the last months of his first winter in Assyria, 
 would have been sufficient protection against wind 
 and weather, after it had been duly coated with 
 mud. Unfortunately a heavy shower fell before ii 
 was quite completctl, and so saturated the bricks
 
 30 
 
 INTK OD UC T/OJV. 
 
 that they did not dry again before the followinc^ 
 spring. " The consequence was," he pleasantly re- 
 marks, " that the only verdure on which my eyes 
 were permitted to feast before my return to Europe, 
 was furnished by my own property — the walls in the 
 interior of the rooms being continual!)- clothed with 
 a crop of grass." 
 
 11. These few indications are sufficient to give a 
 tolerably clear idea of what might be called " Pleas- 
 ures and hardships of an explorer's life in the desert." 
 As for the work itself, it is simple enough in the 
 telling, although it must have been extremely weari- 
 some and laborious in the performance. The sim- 
 plest way to get at the contents of a mound, would 
 be to remove all the earth and rubbish- by carting 
 it away, — a piece of work which our searchers might 
 no doubt have accomplished with great facility, had 
 they had at their disposal a few scores of thousands 
 of slaves and captives, as had the ancient kings who 
 built the huge constructions the ruins of which had 
 now to be disinterred. With a hundred or two of 
 hired workmen and very limited funds, the case was 
 slightly different. The task really amounted to this : 
 to achieve the greatest possible results at the least 
 possible expense of labor and time, and this is how 
 such excavations are carried out on a plan uni- 
 formly followed everywhere as the most practical 
 and direct : 
 
 12. Trenches, more or less wide, are conducted 
 from different sides towards the centre of the mound. 
 This is obviously the surest and shortest way to 
 arrive at whatever remains of walls may be im.-

 
 22 IXrRODUCTIO.V. 
 
 bedded in it. But even this preliminary operation 
 has to be carried out with some judgment and dis- 
 cernment. It is known that the Chaldeans and 
 Assyrians constructed their palaces and temples not 
 upon the level, natural soil, but upon an artificial 
 platform of brick and earth, at least thirty feet high. 
 This platform was faced on all sides with a strong 
 wall of solid burned brick, often moreover cased 
 wath stone. A trench dug straight from the plain 
 into the lower part of the mound would conse- 
 quently be wasted labor, since it could never bring 
 to anything but that same blind wall, behind which 
 there is only the solid mass of the platform. Dig- 
 ging therefore begins in the slope of the mound, at 
 a height corresponding to the supposed height of 
 the platform, and is carried on straight across its 
 surface until a wall is reached, — a wall belonging to 
 one of the palaces or temples. This wall has then 
 to be followed, till a break in it is found, indicating 
 an entrance or doorway.* The burrowing process 
 becomes more and more complicated, and some- 
 times dangerous. Shafts have to be sunk from 
 above at frequent intervals to introduce air and light 
 into the long and narrow^ corridor ; the sides and 
 vault have to be propped by beams to prevent the 
 soft earthy mass from falling in and crushing the 
 diggers. Every shovelful of earth cleared away is 
 removed in baskets which are passed from hand to 
 hand till they are emptied outside the trench, or else 
 lowered empty and sent up full, through the shafts 
 by means of ropes and pulleys, to be emptied on the 
 top. When a doorway is reached, it is cleared all 
 * See Figure 15, on p. 53.
 
 lift \ I 
 
 M vi 
 
 Mi' 
 
 ijfc 
 
 f I. 
 
 ', 1 
 
 
 
 ■: i
 
 ,4 INTKODUCriON. 
 
 through the thickness of the wall, which is very 
 great ; then a similar tunnel is conducted all along 
 the inside of the wall, the greatest care being needed 
 not to damage the sculptures which generally line it, 
 and which, as it is, are more or less injured and 
 cracked, their upper parts sometimes entirely de- 
 stroyed by the action of fire. When the tunnel has 
 been carried along the four sides, every doorway or 
 portal carefully noted and cleared, it is seen from the 
 measurements, — especially the width — whether the 
 space explored be an inner court, a hall or a cham- 
 ber. If the latter, it is sometimes entirely cleared 
 from above, when the rubbish frequently yields 
 valuable finds in the shape of various small articles. 
 One such chamber, uncovered by Layard, at Koy- 
 unjik, proved a perfect mine of treasures. The 
 most curious relics were brought to light in it : 
 quantities of studs and small rosettes in mother- 
 of-pearl, ivory and metal, (such as were used to 
 ornament the harness of the war-horses), bowls, 
 cups and dishes of bronze,* besides caldrons, shields 
 and other items of armor, even glass bowls, lastly 
 fragments of a royal throne — possibly the very 
 throne on which King Sennacherib sat to give 
 audience or pronounce judgments, for the palace 
 at Koyunjik where these objects were found was 
 built by that monarch so long familiar to us only 
 from the Bible, and the sculptures and inscriptions 
 which cover its walls are the annals of his conquests 
 abroad and his rule at home. 
 
 A description of the removal of the colossal bulls 
 and lions w^hich were shipped to England and now 
 * See Figures 5 6, and 7.
 
 LA YARD AND HIS WORK. 
 
 35 
 
 are safely housed in the British Museum, ought by 
 rights to form the close of a chapter devoted to 
 " Layard and his work." But the reference must 
 
 5. — BRONZE DISH. 
 
 sufifice ; the vivid and entertaining narrative should 
 be read in the original, as the passages are too long 
 for transcription, and would be marred by quoting.
 
 iCJMP^jjl 
 
 m 
 
 
 SQ^ 
 
 
 5^ 
 
 «B 
 
 
 
 IS 
 
 i^fl 
 
 Wi^ 
 
 
 •e^ 
 
 M 
 
 "vBafy* 
 
 '^ 
 
 m 
 
 r^^^ 
 ^^^ 
 
 u 1 yp^"''^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 S 
 
 p 
 
 |jM,^g 
 
 ^ 
 
 H 
 
 bhS^ 
 
 ia^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 
 
 s^l 
 
 III. 
 
 THE RUINS. 
 
 " And they said to one another, Go to, let us make brick, and barn 
 thcni throughly. Aud they had brick for stone and slime for mor- 
 tar," — Cc'u. xi. 3. 
 
 I. It is a principle, long ago laid down and univer- 
 sally recognized, that every country makes its own 
 people. That is, the mode of life and the intellect- 
 ual culture of a people are shaped by the character- 
 istic features of the land in which it dwells ; or, in 
 other words, men can live only in a manner suited 
 to the peculiarities of their native country. Men 
 settled along the sea-shore will lead a different life, 
 will develop different qualities of mind and body 
 from the owners of vast inland pasture-grounds or 
 the holders of rugged mountain fastnesses. They 
 will all dress differently, eat different food, follow 
 different pursuits. Their very dwellings and public 
 buildings will present an entirely different aspect, 
 according to the material which they will have at 
 hand in the greatest abundance, be it stone, wood 
 or any other substance suitable for the purpose. 
 Thus every country will create its own peculiai 
 style of art, determined chiefly by its own natural 
 productions. On these, architecture, the art of the
 
 THE RUINS. 
 
 37 
 
 builder, will be even more dependent than any- 
 other. 
 
 2. It would seem as though Chaldea or Lower 
 Mesopotamia, regarded from this point of view, could 
 
 6. — BRONZE DISH (rUG-PATTERN). 
 
 never have originated any architecture at all, for it 
 is, at first sight, absolutely deficient in building 
 materials of any sort. The whole land is alluvial, 
 that is, formed, gradually, through thousands of
 
 38 
 
 IN TROD UC7-/ON. 
 
 years, of the rich mud deposited by the two rivers, 
 as they spread into vast marshy flats towards the 
 end of their course. Such soil, when hardened into 
 sufficient consistency, is the iinest of all for cultiva- 
 tion, and a greater source of wealth than mines of 
 the most precious ore; but it bears no trees and 
 contains no stone. The people who were first 
 tempted to settle in the lowlands towards the Per- 
 sian Gulf by the extraordinary fertility of that re- 
 gion, found nothing at all available to construct 
 their simple dwellings — nothing but reeds of enor- 
 mous size, which grew there, as they do now, in 
 the greatest profusion. These reeds " cover the 
 marshes in the summer-time, rising often to the 
 height of fourteen or fifteen feet. The Arabs of 
 the marsh region form their houses of this material, 
 binding the stems together and bending them into 
 arches, to make the skeletons of their buildings; 
 while, to form the walls, they stretch across from 
 arch to arch mats made of the leaves." * 
 
 3. There can be no doubt that of such habitations 
 consisted the villages and towns of those first set- 
 tlers. They gave quite sufficient shelter in the very 
 mild winters of that region, and, when coated with a 
 layer of mud which soon dried and hardened in the 
 sun, could exclude even the violent rains of that sea- 
 son. But they were in no way fitted for more am- 
 bitious and dignified purposes. Neither the palaces 
 of the kings nor the temples of the gods could be 
 constructed out of bent reeds. Something more 
 
 * Rawlinson's " Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 46.
 
 THE RUINS. 
 
 39 
 
 durable must be found, some material that would 
 lend itself to constructions of any size or shape. 
 The mud coating of the cabins naturally suggested 
 such a material. Could not this same mud or clay, 
 of which an inexhaustible supply was always on 
 hand, be moulded into cakes of even size, and after 
 being left to dry in the sun, be piled into walls of 
 
 
 
 ■"-^-i^ )'f^ " 
 
 
 ij/;'L 
 
 
 7. — SECTION OF BRONZE DISH. 
 
 the required height and thickness? And so men 
 began to make bricks. It was found that the clay 
 gained much in consistency when mixed with finely 
 chopped straw — another article of which the coun- 
 try, abounding in wheat and other grains, yielded 
 unlimited quantities. But even with this improve- 
 ment the sun-dried bricks could not withstand the
 
 40 
 
 INTRODUCTIOiV. 
 
 continued action of many rainy seasons, or many 
 torrid summers, but had a tendency to crumble 
 away when parched too dry, or to soak and dissolve 
 back into mud, when too long exposed to rain. 
 All these defects were removed by the simple ex- 
 pedient of baking the bricks in kilns or ovens, a 
 process which gives them the hardness and solidity 
 of stone. But as the cost of kiln-dried bricks is 
 naturally very much greater than that of the orig- 
 inal crude article, so the latter continued to be used 
 in far greater quantities ; the walls were made en- 
 tirely of them and only protected by an outward 
 casing of the hard baked bricks. These being so 
 much more expensive, and calculated to last forever, 
 great care Avas bestowed on their preparation ; the 
 best clay was selected and they were stamped with 
 the names and titles of the king by whose order the 
 palace or temple was built, for which they were to 
 be used. This has been of great service in identi- 
 fying the various ruins and assigning them dates, at 
 least approximately. As is to be expected, there is 
 a notable difference in the specimens of different 
 periods. While on some bricks bearing the name 
 of a king who lived about 3000 B.C. the inscription 
 is uncouth and scarcely legible, and even their 
 shape is rude and the material very inferior, those 
 of the later Babylonian period (600 B.C.) are hand- 
 some and neatly made. As to the quality, all 
 explorers agree in saying it is fully equal to that 
 of the best modern English bricks. The excellence 
 of these bricks for building purposes is a fact so 
 well known that for now two thousand years — ever
 
 42 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 since the destruction of Babylon — its walls, temples 
 and palaces have been used as quarries for the con- 
 struction of cities and villages. The little town of 
 HiLLAH, situated nearest to the site of the ancient 
 capital, is built almost entirely with bricks from one 
 single mound, that of Kasr — once the gorgeous 
 and far-famed palace of Nebuchadnezzar, whose 
 name and titles thus grace the walls of the most 
 lowly Arab and Turkish dwellings. All the other 
 mounds are similarly used, and so far is the valuable 
 mine from being exhausted, that it furnishes forth, 
 to this day, a brisk and flourishing trade. While 
 a party of workmen is continually employed in dig- 
 ging for the available bricks, another is busy con- 
 veying them to Hillah ; there they are shipped on 
 the Euphrates and carried to any place where build- 
 ing materials are in demand, often even loaded on 
 donkeys at this or that landing-place and sent miles 
 away inland ; some are taken as far as Baghdad, 
 where they have been used for ages. The same 
 thing is done wherever there are mounds and ruins. 
 Both Layard and his successors had to allow their 
 Arab workmen to build their own temporary houses 
 out of ancient bricks, only watching them narrowly, 
 lest they should break some valuable relic in the 
 process or use some of the handsomest and best- 
 preserved specimens. 
 
 4. No construction of bricks, either crude or kiln- 
 dried, could have sufficient solidity without the help 
 of some kind of cement, to make them adhere 
 firmly together. This also the lowlands of Chaldea 
 and Babylonia yield in sufficient quantity and of
 
 9 — LUILDING IN BAKED BRICK (MODERN). 
 (Perrot and Chippiez.)
 
 44 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 various qualities. While in the early structures a 
 kind of sticky red clay or loam is used, mixed with 
 chopped straw, bitumen or pitch is substituted at a 
 later period, which substance, being applied hot, 
 adheres so firmly to the bricks, that pieces of these 
 are broken off when an attempt is made to procure 
 a fragment of the cement. This valuable article 
 was brought down by water from Is on the Euphra- 
 tes (now called HlT^, where abundant springs 
 of bitumen are to this day in activity. Calcareous 
 earth — i.e., earth strongly mixed with lime — being 
 very plentiful to the west of the lower Euphrates, 
 towards the Arabian frontier, the Babylonians of 
 the latest times learned to make of it a white mor- 
 tar which, for lightness and strength, has never been 
 surpassed. 
 
 5. All the essential materials for plain but dur- 
 able constructions being thus procurable on the 
 spot or in the immediate neighborhood, the next 
 important point was the selection of proper sites for 
 raising these constructions, which were to serve 
 purposes of defence as well as of worship and royal 
 majesty. A rocky eminence, inaccessible on one or 
 several sides, or at least a hill, a knoll somewhat ele- 
 vated above the surrounding plain, have usually 
 been chosen wherever such existed. But this was 
 not the case in Chaldea. There, as far as eye can 
 see, not the slightest undulation breaks the dead 
 flatness of the land. Yet there, more than any- 
 where else, an elevated position was desirable, if 
 only as a. protection from the unhealthy exhalations 
 of a vast tract of swamps, and from the intolerable

 
 46 
 
 INTR0DUC7V0N. 
 
 nuisance of swarms of aggressive and venomous 
 insects, which infest the entire river region during 
 the long summer season. Safety from the attacks 
 of the numerous roaming tribes which ranged the 
 country in every direction before it was definitely 
 settled and organized, was also not among the last 
 considerations. So, what nature had refused, the 
 cunning and labor of man had to supply. Artificial 
 hills or platforms were constructed, of enormous 
 size and great height — from thirty to fifty, even 
 sixty feet, and on their fiat summits the buildings 
 were raised. These platforms sometimes supported 
 only one palace, sometimes, as in the case of the 
 immense mounds of Koyunjik and Nimrud in As- 
 syria, their surface had room for several, built by 
 successive kings. Of course such huge piles could 
 not be entirely executed in solid masonry, even of 
 crude bricks. These w^ere generally mixed with 
 earth and rubbish of all kinds, in more or less regu- 
 lar, alternate layers, the bricks being laid in clay. 
 But the outward facing was in all cases of baked 
 brick. The platform of the principal mound which 
 marks the place of ancient Ur, (now called MUG- 
 HEIR),* is faced with a wall ten feet thick, of red 
 kiln-dried bricks, cemented with bitumen. In As- 
 syria, where stone was not scarce, the sides of the 
 platform were even more frequently " protected 
 by massive stone-masonry, carried perpendicularly 
 from the natural ground to a height somewhat 
 exceeding that of the platform, and either made 
 
 * Ur of the Chaldees, from which Abraham went forth.
 
 777^ RUINS. 
 
 A7 
 
 plain at the top, or else crowned into stone battle- 
 ments cut into gradines." * 
 
 6. Some mounds are considerably higher than the 
 others and of a peculiar shape, almost like a pyra- 
 mid, that is, ending in a point from which it slopes 
 
 II. — MOUND OF MUGHEIR (aNCTENT UR). 
 
 down rapidly on all sides. Such is the pyramidal 
 mound of Nimrud, which Layard describes as being 
 so striking and picturesque an object as you ap- 
 proach the ruins from any point of the plain.f Such 
 also is the still more picturesque mound of BOR- 
 SIP (now BiRS Nimrud) near Babylon, the larg- 
 
 * Rawlinson's " Five Monarchies," Vol. L, p. 349. 
 \ Figure 10.
 
 ^8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 est of this kind.'" These mounds are the remains of 
 peculiar constructions, called ZiGGURATS, composed 
 of several platforms piled one on the other, each 
 square in shape and somewhat smaller than the 
 preceding one ; the topmost platform supported 
 a temple or sanctuary, which by these means was 
 raised far above the dwellings of men, a constant 
 reminder not less eloquent than the exhortation in 
 some of our religious services: "Lift up your 
 hearts ! " Of these heavenward pointing towers, 
 which were also used as observatories by the Chal- 
 deans, great lovers of the starry heavens, that of 
 Borsip, once composed of seven stages, is the 
 loftiest ; it measures over 1 50 feet in perpendicular 
 height. 
 
 7, It is evident that these artificial hills could 
 have been erected only at an incredible cost of labor. 
 The careful measurements which have been taken 
 of several of the principal mounds have enabled 
 explorers to make an accurate calculation of the 
 exact amount of labor employed on each. The 
 result is startling, even though one is prepared for 
 something enormous. The great mound of Koyun- 
 jik — which represents the palaces of Nineveh itself — 
 covers an area of one hundred acres, and reaches 
 an elevation of 95 feet at its highest point. To 
 heap up such a pile of brick and earth " would re- 
 quire the united exertions of 10,000 men for twelve 
 years, or of 20,000 men for six years." f Then only 
 could the construction of the palaces begin. The 
 
 * Figure 71, p. 281. 
 
 \ Rawlinson's " Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 317 and 318,
 
 THE RUINS. 
 
 49 
 
 mound of Nebbi-Yunus, which has not yet been 
 excavated, covers an area of forty acres and is loft- 
 ier and steeper than its neighbor : " its erection 
 would have given full employment to 10,000 men 
 for the space of five years and a half." Clearly, 
 none but conquering monarchs, who yearly took 
 thousands of prisoners in battles and drove home 
 into captivity a part of the population of every 
 
 
 ^A 
 
 ^. '^ 
 
 ^■.ir-.> 
 
 ■'i'.^ '^' I *■ 
 
 1^ 
 
 -l!- 
 
 
 ■S 
 
 mil-' 
 
 :';:) 
 
 y [ilLfc; ' %w- 
 
 
 
 ^\ *■ 
 
 > -m. 
 
 ■|iilL'''i 
 
 '<■'/. 
 
 ■'II,. •; 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 t m^fM}^^^^ 
 
 .11:1 
 
 :t<: 
 
 !#?::.. MA^ 'Hy-'^''^^-^ 
 
 ^^^^^^&5^^-iS'^^^t>^^i:fM^^«15i^ 
 
 12. — TERRACE WALL AT KHORSAEAD. 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.) 
 
 country they subdued, could have employed such 
 hosts of workmen on their buildings — not once, but 
 continually, for it seems to have been a point of 
 honor with the Assyrian kings that each should 
 build a new palace for himself. 
 
 8. When one considers the character of the land 
 along the upper course of the Tigris, where the As- 
 syrians dwelt, one cannot help wondering why they 
 went on building mounds and using nothing but 
 
 6
 
 CQ INTRODUCTIOA\ 
 
 bricks in their constructions. There is no reason 
 for it in the nature of the country. The cities of 
 Assyria — Nineveh (Koyunjik), Kalah (Nimrud), 
 Arbela, Dur-Sharruktn (Khorsabad) were built 
 in the midst of a hilly region abounding in many 
 varieties of stone, from soft limestone to hard ba- 
 salt ; some of them actually stood on rocky ground, 
 their moats being in part cut through the rock. 
 Had they wanted stone of better qualit}^ they had 
 only to get it from the Zagros range of mountains, 
 which skirts all Assyria to the East, separating it 
 from Media. Yet they never availed themselves 
 of these resources, which must have led to great 
 improvements in their architecture, and almost en- 
 tirely reserved the use of stone for ornamental pur- 
 poses. This would tend to show, at all events, that 
 the Assyrians were not distinguished for inventive 
 genius. They had wandered northward from the 
 lowlands, where they had dwelt for centuries as a 
 portion of the Chaldean nation. When they sepa- 
 rated from it and went off to found cities for them- 
 selves, they took v/ith them certain arts and tricks 
 of handicraft learned in the old home, and never 
 thought of making any change in them. It does 
 not even seem to have occurred to them that b}- 
 selecting a natural rocky elevation for their build- 
 ings they would avoid the necessity of an artificial 
 platform and save vast amount of labor and time. 
 
 9. That they did put stone to one practical use— 
 the outward casing of their walls and platforms — we 
 have already seen. The blocks must have been cut 
 in the Zagros mountains and brought by water—
 
 13- — RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS. (ANCIENT.) 
 (Kaulen,) 
 
 14. — RAFT BUOYED BY INFLATED SKINS, (^MODERN.) 
 (Kaulen.)
 
 52 
 
 INTROD UCTION. 
 
 rafted down the Zab, or some other of the rivers 
 which, springing from those mountains, flow into 
 the Tigris. The process is represented with perfect 
 clearness on some of the sculptures. That repro- 
 duced in Fig. 1 3 is of great interest, as showing a 
 peculiar mode of transport, — rafts floated on in- 
 flated skins — which is at the present moment in as 
 general and constant use as it appears to have been 
 in the same parts three thousand years ago and 
 probably more. When Layard wished to send off 
 the bulls and lions which he had moved from Nim- 
 rud and Koyunjik down the Tigris to Baghdad and 
 Busrah, (or Bassorah), there to be embarked for 
 Europe, he had recourse to this conveyance, as no 
 other is known for similar purposes. This is how 
 he describes the primitive, but ingenious contriv- 
 ance : " The skins of full-grown sheep and goats, 
 taken off with as few incisions as possible, are dried 
 and prepared, one aperture being left, through 
 which the air is forced by the lungs. A framework 
 of poplar beams, branches of trees, and reeds, hav- 
 ing been constructed of the size of the intended 
 raft, the inflated skins are tied to it by osier twigs. 
 The raft is then complete and is moved to the water 
 and launched. Care is taken to place the skins with 
 their mouths upward, that, in case any should burst 
 or require refilling, they can be easily reached. 
 Upon the framework are piled bales of goods, and 
 property belonging to merchants and travellers. 
 .... The raftmen impel these rude vessels by long 
 poles, to the ends of which are fastened a few pieces 
 of split cane. (See Fig. 14.) . . . During the floods in
 
 THE RUINS. 53 
 
 spring, or after heavy rains, small rafts may float 
 from Mosul to Baghdad in about eighty-four hours ; 
 but the larger are generally six or seven days in 
 performing the voyage. In summer, and when the 
 
 15. — EXCAVATIOMS AT MUGHEIK. (URj. 
 
 river is low, they are frequently nearly a month in 
 reaching their destination. When they ha\'e been 
 unloaded, they are broken up, and the beams, wood 
 and twigs sold at considerable profit. The skins 
 are washed and afterward rubbed with a preparation,
 
 54 
 
 INTRO D UCTIOAT. 
 
 to keep them from cracking and rotting. They are 
 then brought back, either on the shoulders of the 
 raftmen or upon donkeys, to Mossul and Tekrit, 
 where the men engaged in the navigation of 
 the Tigris usually reside." Numerous sculptures 
 show us that similar skins were also used by swim- 
 mers, who rode upon them in the water, probably 
 when they intended to swim a greater distance than 
 they could have accomplished by their unassisted 
 efforts. (See Figure i6.) 
 
 lO. Our imagination longs to reconstruct those 
 gigantic piles as they must have struck the beholder 
 in their towering hugeness, approached from the 
 plain probably by several stairways and by at least 
 one ascent of a slope gentle enough to offer a con- 
 venient access to horses and chariots. What an im- 
 posing object must have been, for instance, the 
 palace of Sennacherib, on the edge of its battle- 
 mented platform (mound of Koyunjik), rising 
 directly above the waters of the Tigris, — named in 
 the ancient language " the Arrow " from the swift- 
 ness of its current — into the golden and crimson glory 
 of an Eastern sunset ! Although the sameness and 
 unwieldy nature of the material used must have put 
 architectural beauty of outline out of the question, 
 the general effect must have been one of massive 
 grandeur and majesty, aided as it was by the elabo- 
 rate ornamentation lavished on every portion of the 
 building. Unfortunately the work of reconstruc- 
 tion is left almost entirely to imagination, which 
 derives but little help from the shapeless heaps into
 
 o ^ 
 
 r- ^' 
 O o
 
 56 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 which time has converted those ancient, mighty 
 halls. 
 
 II, Fergusson, an English explorer and scholar 
 whose works on subjects connected with art and 
 especially architecture hold a high place, has at- 
 tempted to restore the palace of Sennacherib such 
 as he imagines it to have been, from the hints fur- 
 nished by the excavations. He has produced a strik- 
 ing and most effective picture, of which, however, 
 an entire half is simply guesswork. The whole 
 nether part — the stone-cased, battlemented platform 
 wall, the broad stairs, the esplanade handsomely 
 paved with patterned slabs, and the lower part of 
 the palace with its casing of sculptured slabs and 
 portals guarded by winged bulls — is strictly accord- 
 ing to the positive facts supplied by the excavations. 
 For the rest, there is no authority whatever. We do 
 not even positively know whether there was any sec- 
 ond story to Assyrian palaces at all. At all events, 
 no traces of inside staircases have been found, and 
 the upper part of the walls of even the ground-floor 
 has regularly been either demolished or destroyed 
 by fire. As to columns, it is impossible to ascertain 
 how far they may have been used and in what way. 
 Such as were used could have been, as a rule, only 
 of wood — trunks of great trees hewn and smoothed 
 — and consequently every vestige of them has dis- 
 appeared, though some round column bases in 
 
 stone have been found.* The same remarks apply 
 
 A^ . 
 
 * See Fig. 20, p. 63, There is but one exception, in the case of a 
 recent exploration, during which one solitary broken column-shaft 
 was discovered.
 
 THE RUINS. 
 
 57 
 
 to the restoration of an Assyrian palace court, also 
 after Fergusson, while that of a palace hall, after 
 Layard, is not open to the same reproach and gives 
 simply the result of actual discoveries. Without, 
 therefore, stopping long to consider conjectures 
 
 17. — VIEW OF KOYUN'JIK 
 (Hommel.) 
 
 more or less unsupported, let us rather try to repro- 
 duce in our minds a clear perception of what the 
 audience hall of an Assyrian king looked like from 
 what we may term positive knowledge. We shall 
 find that our materials will go far towards creating 
 for us a vivid and authentic picture.
 
 58 
 
 IXTRODUCTION. 
 
 12. On entering such a hall the first thing to 
 strike us would probably be the pavement, either of 
 large alabaster slabs delicately carved in graceful pat- 
 terns, as also the arched doorways leading into the 
 adjacent rooms (see Figs. 24 and 25, pp. 69 and 71), 
 or else covered with rows of inscriptions, the charac- 
 ters being deeply engraven and afterwards filled with 
 a molten metallic substance, like brass or bronze, 
 which would give the entire floor the appearance of 
 being covered with inscriptions in gilt characters, the 
 strange forms of cuneiform writing making the whole 
 look like an intricate and fanciful design. 
 
 13. Our gaze would next be fascinated by the 
 colossal human-headed winged bulls and lions keep- 
 ing their silent watch in pairs at each of the por- 
 tals, and we should notice with astonishment that 
 the artists had allowed them each an extra leg, 
 making the entire number five instead of four. 
 This was not done at random, but with a very well- 
 calculated artistic object — that of giving the mon- 
 ster the right number of legs, whether the spectator 
 beheld it in front or in profile, as in both cases one 
 of the three front legs is concealed by the others. 
 The front view shows the animal standing, while it 
 appears to be striding when viewed from the side, 
 (See Figures 18 and 27, pp. 59 and 75.) The walls were 
 worthy of these majestic door-keepers. The crude 
 brick masonry disappeared up to a height of twelve 
 to fifteen feet from the ground under the sculptured 
 slabs of soft grayish alabaster which were solidly 
 applied to the wall, and held together by strong 
 iron cramps. Sometimes one subject or one gigan-
 
 o 3 
 a '3. 
 
 5 U 
 
 H 3 
 2 - 
 
 W 2
 
 5o INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tic figure of king or deity was represented on one 
 slab ; often the same subject occupied several slabs, 
 and not unfrequently was carried on along an en- 
 tire wall. In this case the lines begun on one slab 
 were continued on the next with such perfect 
 smoothness, so absolutely without a break, as to 
 warrant the conclusion that the slabs were sculpt- 
 ured after they had been put in their places, not 
 before. Traces of paint show that color was to a 
 certain extent employed to enliven these represen- 
 tations, probably not over plentifully and with some 
 discrimination. Thus color is found in many places 
 on the eyes, brows, hair, sandals, the draperies, the 
 mitre or high head-dress of the kings, on the har- 
 ness of horses and portions of the chariots, on the 
 flowers carried by attendants, and sometimes on 
 trees. Where a siege is portrayed, the flames which 
 issue out of windows and roofs seem always to 
 have been painted red. There is reason to believe, 
 however, that color was but sparingly bestowed on 
 the sculptures, and therefore they must have pre- 
 sented a pleasing contrast with the richness of the 
 ornamentation which ran along the walls immedi- 
 ately above, and which consisted of hard baked 
 bricks of large size, painted and glazed in the fire, 
 forming a continuous frieze from three to five feet 
 wide. Sometimes the painting represented human 
 figures and various scenes, sometimes also winged 
 figures of deities or fantastic animals, — in which case 
 it was usually confined above and below by a simple 
 but graceful running pattern ; or it would consist 
 wholly of a more or less elaborate continuous pat-
 
 < N 
 
 w S 
 
 O
 
 62 IN TRODUC TION. 
 
 tern like Fig. 22, 23, or 25, these last symbolical 
 compositions with a religious signification. (See 
 also Fig. 21, "Interior view," etc.) Curiously 
 enough the remains — mostly very trifling frag- 
 ments — which have been discovered in various ruins, 
 show that these handsomely finished glazed tiles ex- 
 hibited the very same colors which are nowadays 
 in such high favor with ourselves for all sorts of 
 decorative purposes : those used most frequently 
 were a dark and a pale yellow, white and cream- 
 color, a delicate pale green, occasionally orange and 
 a pale lilac, very little blue and red ; olive-green and 
 brown are favorite colors for grounds. " Now and 
 then an intense blue and a bright red occur, gener- 
 ally together ; but these positive hues are rare, and 
 the taste of the Assyrians seems to have led them 
 to prefer, for their patterned walls, pale and dull 
 hues. . . . The general tone of their coloring is 
 quiet, not to say sombre. There is no striving after 
 brilliant effects. The Assyrian artist seeks to 
 please by the elegance of his forms and the har- 
 mony of his hues, not to startle by a display of 
 bright and strongly contrasted colors.*" 
 
 14. It has been asked : how were those halls 
 roofed and how were they lighted? questions which 
 have given rise to much discussion and which can 
 scarcely ever be answered in a positive wa}', since in 
 no single instance has the upper part of the walls or 
 any part whatever of the roofing been preserved. 
 Still, the peculiar shape and dimensions of the princi- 
 
 * G. Rawlinson's " Five Monarchies," Vol. I., pp. 467,
 
 THE RUINS. 
 
 63 
 
 pal palace halls goes far towards establishing a sort 
 of circumstantial evidence in the case. They are 
 invariably long and narrow, the proportions in some 
 being so striking as to have made them more like 
 corridors than apartments — a feature, by the by, 
 which must have greatly impaired their architectural 
 beauty : they were three or four times as long as 
 they were wide, and even more. The great hall of 
 
 20. — CIRCULA R I'l LLA R-l! A SE. 
 
 the palace of Asshur-nazir-pal on the platform of 
 the Nimrud mound (excavated b}- Layard, who calls 
 it, from its position, "the North-West palace") is 
 160 feet long by not quite 40 wide. Of the five 
 halls in the Khorsabad palace the largest measures 
 116 ft. by 33, the smallest 87 by 25, while the most 
 imposing in size of all }'ct laid open, the great hall 
 of Sennacherib at Koyunjik, shows a length of fully 
 180 ft. with a width of 40, It is scarcely probable
 
 64 
 
 IXTROD UCTION. 
 
 that the old builders, who in other points have 
 shown so much artistic taste, should have selected 
 this uniform and unsatisfactory shape for their state 
 apartments, unless they were forcibly held to it by 
 some insuperable imperfection in the means at their 
 disposal. That they knew how to use proportions 
 more pleasing in their general effect, we see from 
 the inner open courts, of which there w^ere several 
 in every palace, and which, in shape and dimensions 
 are very much like those in our own castles and pal- 
 aces, — nearly square, (about i8o ft. or 120 ft. each 
 way) or slightly oblong: 93 ft. by 84, 124 ft. by 90, 
 150 ft. by 125. Only two courts have been found 
 to lean towards the long-and-narrow shape, one be- 
 ing 250 ft. by 150, and the other 220 by lOO. But 
 even this is very different from those passage- 
 like galleries. The only thing which entirely ex- 
 plains this awkward feature of all the royal halls, 
 is the dif^culty of providing them with a roof. It 
 is impossible to make a flat roof of nothing but 
 bricks, and although the Assyrians knew how to 
 construct arches, they used them only for very 
 narrow vaults or over gate-ways and doors, and 
 could not have carried out the principle on any 
 very extensive scale. The only obvious expedi- 
 ent consisted in simply spanning the width of 
 the hall with wooden beams or rafters. Now no 
 tree, not even the lofty cedar of Lebanon or the tall 
 cypress of the East, will give a rafter, of equal 
 thickness from end to end, more than 40 ft. in 
 length, few even that. There was no getting over 
 or around this necessity, and so the matter was set-
 
 ^a I |LL|4i|,L'Zii|4Jii!,-v'' ' '^'W iiafHij'-MM ijuiaiwyii!!!!'^ j „ 
 
 r'r" r-\ ^zi^'.'i r- uM ' i '-^-t -^i^.-^i; 
 
 21. — INTERIOR VIEW OF ONE OF THE CHAMBERS OF THE IIAUEiM AT 
 KHORSABAD. (RESTORED.) 
 
 (T'errot and Chipiez.) 
 
 7
 
 66 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tied for the artists quite aside from their own 
 wishes. This also explains the great value which 
 was attached by all the Assyrian conquerors to fine 
 timber. It was often demanded as tribute, nothing 
 could be more acceptable as a gift, and expeditions 
 were frequently undertaken into the distant moun- 
 tainous regions of the Lebanon on purpose to cut 
 some. The difficulty about roofing would naturally 
 fall away in the smaller rooms, used probably as 
 sleeping and dwelling apartments, and accordingly 
 they vary freely from oblong to square ; the latter 
 being generally about 25 ft. each way, sometimes 
 less, but never more. There were a great many 
 such chambers in a palace ; as many as sixty-eight 
 have been discovered in Sennacherib's palace at 
 Koyunjik, and a large portion of the building, be it 
 remembered, is not yet fully explored. Some were 
 as highly decorated as the great halls, some faced 
 with plain slabs or plastered, and some had no or- 
 naments at all and showed the crude brick. These 
 differences probably indicate the difference of rank 
 in the royal household of the persons to whom the 
 apartments were assigned. 
 
 15. The question of light has been discussed by 
 eminent explorers — Layard, Botta, Fergusson — at 
 even greater length and with a greater display of in- 
 genuity than that of roofing. The results of the 
 learned discussion maybe shortly summed up as fol- 
 lows : We may take it for granted that the halls 
 were sufficiently lighted, for the builders would not 
 have bestowed on them such lavish artistic labor had 
 they not meant their work to be seen in all its details
 
 
 22. — CULUKEU FKIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES. 
 
 23. — COLOREIJ FRIEZE IN ENAMELLED TILES.
 
 58 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and to the best advantage. This could be effected 
 only in one of three ways, or in two combined : 
 either by means of numerous small windows pierced 
 at regular intervals above the frieze of enamelled 
 bricks, between that and the roof, — or by means of 
 one large opening in the roof of woodwork, as pro- 
 posed by Layard in his own restoration, or by smaller 
 openings placed at more frequent intervals. This 
 latter contrivance is in general use now in Armenian 
 houses, and Botta, who calls it a louvre, gives a 
 drawing of it.* It is very ingenious, and would have 
 the advantage of not admitting too great a mass of 
 sunlight and heat, and of being easily covered with 
 carpets or thick felt rugs to exclude the rain. The 
 second method, though much the grandest in point 
 of effect, would present none of these advantages 
 and would be objectionable chiefly on account of 
 the rain, which, pouring down in torrents— as it 
 does, for weeks at a time, in those countries — must 
 very soon damage the flooring where it is of brick, 
 and eventually convert it into mud, not to speak of 
 the inconvenience of making the state apartments 
 infit for use for an indefinite period. The small side 
 I'/indows just below the roof would scarcely give suf- 
 ficent light by themselves. Who knows but they may 
 have been combined with the louvre system, and 
 thus something very satisfactory finally obtained. 
 
 1 6. The kings of Chaldea, Babylonia and Assyria 
 seem to have been absolutely possessed with a ma- 
 nia for building. Scarcely one of them but left in- 
 scriptions telling how he raised this or that palace, 
 
 *See Fig. 33, p. 83.
 
 niE RUINS. 
 
 69 
 
 this or that teinple in one or other city, often in 
 many cities. Few contented themselves with re- 
 pairing the buildings left by their predecessors. 
 This is easy to be ascertained, for they always men- 
 tion all they did in that line. Vanity, which seems 
 
 
 
 '^ry vry wry Vv.'y ^^i^ ^^ , y V;iy ^1^ v.ty vn:. 
 
 24. — PAVEMENT SLAB. 
 
 to have been, together with the love of booty, almost 
 their ruling passion, of course accounts for this in a 
 great measure. But there are also other causes, of 
 which the principal one was the very perishable na- 
 ture of the constructions, all their heavy massive- 
 ness notwithstanding. Being made of compara-
 
 no IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 tivcly soft and yielding material, their very weight 
 would cause the mounds to settle and bulge out at 
 the sides in some places, producing crevices in 
 others, and of course disturbing the balance of the 
 thick but loose masonry of the walls constructed on 
 top of them. These accidents could not be guarded 
 against by the outer casing of stone or burnt brick, 
 or even by the strong buttresses which were used 
 from a very early period to prop up the unwieldy 
 piles : the pressure from within was too great to be 
 resisted. 
 
 17. An outer agent, too, was at work, surely and 
 steadily destructive : the long, heavy winter rains. 
 Crude brick, when exposed to moisture, easily dis- 
 solves into its original element — mud ; even burned 
 brick is not proof against very long exposure to 
 violent wettings ; and we know that the mounds 
 were half composed of loose rubbish. Once 
 thoroughly permeated with moisture, nothing could 
 keep these huge masses from dissolution. The 
 builders were well aware of the danger and strug- 
 gled against it to the best of their ability by a 
 very artfully contrived and admirably executed sys- 
 tem of drainage, carried through the mounds in all 
 directions and pouring the accumulated waters into 
 the plain out of mouths beautifully constructed in 
 the shape of arched vaults.'^ Under the flooring of 
 most of the halls have been found drains, running 
 along the centre, then bending ofT towards a conduit 
 in one of the corners, which carried the contents 
 down into one of the principal channels. 
 
 * Figures 34 and 35, p. 84.
 
 THE RUINS. 71 
 
 18. But all these precautions were, in the long run, 
 of little avail, so that it was frequently a simpler and 
 less expensive proceeding for a king to build a new 
 palace, than to keep repairing and propping up an 
 old one which crumbled to pieces, so to speak, under 
 
 25. — SECTION OF ORNAMENTAL DOORWAY (ENAMELLED BRICK OR 
 
 tiles). KHORSABAD. 
 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.) 
 
 the workmen's hands. It is not astonishing that 
 sometimes, when they had to give up an old man- 
 sion as hopeless, they proceeded to demolish it, in 
 order to carry away the stone and use it in struct- 
 ures of their own, probably not so much as a matter
 
 72 
 
 IN TROD UCTION. 
 
 of thrift, as with a view to quickening the work, 
 stone-cutting in the quarries and transport down the 
 river always being a lengthy operation. This ex- 
 plains why, in some later palaces, slabs were found 
 with their sculptured face turned to the crude brick 
 wall, and the other smoothed and prepared for the 
 artist, or with the sculptures half erased, or piled 
 up against the wall, ready to be put in place. The 
 nature of the injuries which caused the ancient 
 buildings to decay and lose all shape, is very faith- 
 fully described in an inscription of the Babylonian 
 king Nebuchadnezzar, in which he relates how he 
 constructed the Ziggurat of Borsip on the site of 
 an ancient construction, which he repaired, as far as 
 it went. This is what he says : " The temple of the 
 Seven Spheres, the Tower of Borsip which a for- 
 mer king had built .... but had not finished its 
 upper part, from remote days had fallen into decay. 
 The channels for drawing off the water had not been 
 properly provided ; rain and tempest had washed 
 away its bricks ; the bricks of the roof were cracked ; 
 the bricks of the building were washed away into 
 heaps of rubbish." All this sufficiently accounts 
 for the peculiar aspect offered by the Mesopotamian 
 ruins. Whatever process of destruction the build- 
 ings underwent, whether natural or violent, by con- 
 querors' hands, whether through exposure to fire or 
 to stress of weather, the upper part would be the 
 first to suffer, but it would not disappear, from the 
 nature of the material, which is not combustible. 
 The crude bricks all through the enormous thickness 
 of the walls, once thoroughly loosened, dislodged,
 
 26. — WINGED LION WITH IIUiMAN IIEAIJ. 
 (.Perrot and Chipicz.J
 
 74 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 dried up or soaked through, would lose their 
 consistency and tumble down into the courts and 
 halls, choking them up with the soft rubbish into 
 which they crumbled, the surplus rolling down the 
 sides and forming those even slopes which, from a 
 distance, so deceivingly imitate natural hills. Time, 
 accumulating the drift-sand from the desert and 
 particles of fertile earth, does the rest, and clothes 
 the mounds with the verdant and flowery garment 
 which is the delight of the Arab's eyes. 
 
 19. It is to this mode of destruction the Assyrian 
 kings allude in their annals by the continually recur- 
 ring phrase : " I destroyed their cities, I overwhelmed 
 them, I burned them in the fire, / made heaps of 
 thcmy However difificult it is to get at the treasures 
 imbedded in these " heaps," we ought not to repine 
 at the labor, since they owe their preservation en- 
 tirely to the soft masses of earth, sand and loose rub- 
 bish which have protected them on all sides from the 
 contact with air, rain and ignorant plunderers, keep- 
 ing them as safely — if not as transparently — housed 
 as a walnut in its lump of candied sugar. The explor- 
 ers know this so well, that when they leave the ruins, 
 after completing their work for the time, they make 
 it a point to fill all the excavated spaces with the 
 very rubbish that has been taken out of them at the 
 cost of so much labor and time. There is some- 
 thing impressive and reverent in thus re-burying 
 the relics of those dead ages and nations, whom the 
 mysterious gloom of their self-erected tombs be- 
 comes better than the glare of the broad, curious 
 daylight. When Layard, before his departure, after
 
 THE RUINS. 
 
 75 
 
 once more wandering with some friends through all 
 the trenches, tunnels and passages of the Nimrud 
 mound, to gaze for the last time on the wonders on 
 which no man had looked before him, found himself 
 
 27. — WINGED BULL. 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.) 
 
 once more on the naked platform and ordered the 
 workmen to cover them up again, he was strongly 
 moved by the contrast : '" We look around in vain," 
 says he, " for any traces of the wonderful remains 
 we have just seen, and are half inclined to believe 
 that we have dreamed a dream, or have been listen-
 
 ,pr6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in<j to some tale of Eastern romance. Some, who 
 may hereafter tread on the spot when the grass 
 again grows over the Assyrian palaces, may indeed 
 suspect that I have been relating a vision." 
 
 20. It is a curious fact that in Assyria the ruins 
 speak to us only of the living, and that of the dead 
 there are no traces whatever. One might think peo- 
 ple never died there at all. Yet it is well known 
 that all nations have bestowed as much care on the 
 interment of their dead and the adornment of their 
 last resting-place as on the construction of their 
 dwellings — nay, some even more, for instance, the 
 Egyptians. To this loving veneration for the dead 
 history owes half its discoveries ; indeed we should 
 have almost no reliable information at all on the 
 very oldest races, who lived before the invention of 
 writing, were it not for their tombs and the things 
 we find in them. It is very strange, therefore, that 
 nothing of the kind should be found in Assyria, a 
 country which stood so high in culture. For the 
 sepulchres which are found in such numbers in some 
 mounds down to a certain depth, belong, as is 
 shown by their very position, to later races, mostly 
 even to the modern Turks and Arabs. This pecu- 
 liarity is so puzzling that scholars almost incline to 
 suppose that the Assyrians either made away with 
 their dead in some manner unknown to us, or else 
 took them somewhere to bury. The latter conjec- 
 ture, though not entirely devoid of foundation, as 
 we shall see, is unsupported by any positive facts, 
 and therefore was never seriously discussed. The
 
 ::;fT:r-Tr-T7r---cr^ 

 
 78 
 
 IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 question is simply left open, until something hap- 
 pens to shed light on it. 
 
 21. It is just the contrary in Babylonia. It can 
 boast few handsome ruins or sculptures. The plat- 
 forms and main walls of many palaces and tem- 
 ples have been known from the names stamped on 
 the bricks and the cylinders found in the founda- 
 tions, but they present only shapeless masses, from 
 which all traces of artistic work have disappeared. 
 In compensation, there is no country in the world 
 where so many and such vast cemeteries have been 
 discovered. It appears that the land of Chaldea, 
 — perhaps because it was the cradle of nations which 
 afterwards grew to greatness, as the Assyrians and 
 the Hebrews — was regarded as a place of peculiar 
 holiness by its own inhabitants, and probably also 
 by neighboring countries, which would explain the 
 mania that seems to have prevailed through so 
 many ages, for burying the dead there in unheard 
 of numbers. Strangely enough, some portions of it 
 even now are held sacred in the same sense. There 
 are shrines in Kerbela and Nedjif (somewhat to the 
 west of Babylon) where every caravan of pilgrims 
 brings from Persia hundreds of dead bodies in their 
 felt-covered coffins, for burial. They are brought 
 on camels and horses. On each side of the animal 
 swings a coffin, unceremoniously thumped by the 
 rider's bare heels. These coffins are, like merchan- 
 dise, unladen for the night — and sometimes for days 
 too — in the khans or caravanseries (the enclosed 
 halting-places), where men and beasts take their 
 rest together. Under that tropical clime, it is easy
 
 THE RUINS. 
 
 79 
 
 to imagine the results. It is in part to this disgust- 
 ing custom that the great mortality in the caravans 
 is to be attributed, one fifth of which leave their 
 bones in the desert in healthy seasons. However 
 that may be, the gigantic proportions of the 
 Chaldean burying-grounds struck even the ancient 
 
 2g. — FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK. 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.) 
 
 Greek travellers with astonishment, and some of 
 them positively asserted that the Assyrian kings 
 used to be buried in Chaldea. If the kings, why 
 not the nobler and wealthier of their subjects? The 
 transport down the rivers presented no diflficulties. 
 Still, as already remarked, all this is mere conjec- 
 ture. 
 22. Among the Chaldeans cities Erech (now
 
 8o IN TR OD UC TIOM. 
 
 Warka) was considered from very old times one of 
 the holiest. It had many extremely ancient temples 
 and a college of learned priests, and around it grad- 
 ually formed an immense " city of the dead " or Ne- 
 cropolis. The English explorer, Loftus, in 1854-5, 
 specially turned his attention to it and his account 
 is astounding. First of all, he was struck by the ma- 
 jestic desolation of the place. Warka and a few other 
 mounds are raised on a slightly elevated tract of the 
 desert, above the level of the yearly inundations, and 
 accessible only from November to March, as all the 
 rest of the time the surrounding plain is either a 
 lake or a swamp. " The desolation and solitude of 
 Warka," says Loftus, " are even more striking than 
 the scene which is presented at Babylon itself. 
 There is no life for miles around. No river glides 
 in grandeur at the base of its mounds ; no green 
 date groves flourish near its ruins. The jackal and 
 the hyaena appear to shun the dull aspect of its 
 tombs. The king of birds never hovers over the 
 deserted waste. A blade of grass or an insect finds 
 no existence there. The shrivelled lichen alone, 
 clinging to the weathered surface of the broken 
 brick, seems to glory in its universal dominion over 
 those barren walls. Of all the desolate pictures I 
 have ever seen that of Warka incomparably sur- 
 passes all." Surely in this case it cannot be said 
 that appearances are deceitful ; for all that space, 
 and much more, is a cemetery, and what a cemetery ! 
 " It is difificult," again says Loftus, " to convey any- 
 thing like a correct idea of the piles upon piles of 
 human remains which there utterly astound the
 
 < £ 
 z 5
 
 82 INTRODUCTION-. 
 
 beholder. Excepting only the triangular space be- 
 tween the three principal ruins, the whole remain- 
 der of the platform, the whole space between the 
 walls and an unknown extent of desert beyond 
 them, are everywhere filled with the bones and 
 sepulchres of the dead. There is probably no other 
 site in the world which can compare with Warka in 
 this respect." It must be added that the coffins do 
 not simply lie one next to the other, but in layers, 
 down to a depth of 30-60 feet. Different epochs 
 show different modes of burial, among which the 
 following four are the most remarkable. 
 
 23. Perhaps the queerest coffin shape of all is that 
 composed of two earthen jars {a and b), which accu- 
 rately fit together, or one slightly fits into the other, 
 the juncture being made air-tight by a coating of 
 bitumen {d, d). The body can be placed in such a 
 coffin only with slightly bent knees. At one end {c) 
 there is an air-hole, left for the escape of the gases 
 which form during the decomposition of the body 
 and which might otherwise burst the jars — a precau- 
 tion probably suggested by experience (fig. 36). 
 Sometimes there is only one jar of much larger size, 
 but of the same shape, with a similar cover, also 
 made fast with bitumen, or else the mouth is closed 
 with bricks. This is an essentially national mode of 
 burial, perhaps the most ancient of all, yet it re- 
 mained in use to a very late period. It is to be 
 noted that this is the exact shape of the water jars 
 now carried about the streets of Baghdad and fa- 
 miliar to every traveller. 
 
 24. Not much less original is the so-called " dish-
 
 THE RUINS. 
 
 83 
 
 cover coffin," also very ancient and national. The 
 illustrations sufficiently show its shape and arrange- 
 ment.* In these coffins two skeletons are sometimes 
 found, showing that when a widow or widower died, 
 it was opened, to lay the newly dead by the side of 
 the one who had gone before. The cover is all of 
 
 33. — ARMENIAN llOUVKE 
 (Botta.) 
 
 one piece — a very respectable achievement of the 
 potter's art. In Mughcir (ancient Ur), a mound 
 was found, entirely filled with this kind of coffins. 
 
 25. Much more elaborate, and consequently prob- 
 ably reserved for the noble and wealthy, is the sepul- 
 chral vault in brick, of nearly a man's height.f In 
 these sepulchres, as in the preceding ones, the skele- 
 
 * Figs. 37 and 38, p. 87. 
 
 t Fig. 39- P- 89.
 
 THE RUINS. 
 
 85 
 
 ton is always found lying in the same position, evi- 
 dently dictated by some religious ideas. The head 
 is pillowed on a large brick, commonly covered with 
 a piece of stuff or a rug. In the tattered rags which 
 sometimes still exist, costly embroideries and fringed 
 golden tissue have more than once been, recognized, 
 while some female skeletons still showed handsome 
 heads of hair gathered into fine nets. The body 
 lies on a reed mat, on its left side, the right hand 
 stretched out so as to reach with the tips of the fin- 
 gers a bowl, generally of copper or bronze, and some- 
 times of fine workmanship, usually placed on the 
 
 -CHALDEAN JAR-COl'FIN. 
 
 (Taylor.) 
 
 palm of the left hand. Around are placed various 
 articles — dishes, in some of which remnants of food 
 are found, such as date stones, — jars for water, 
 lamps, etc. Some skeletons wear gold and silver 
 bangles on their wrists and ankles. These \'aults 
 were evidently family sepulchres, for several skele- 
 tons are generally found in them ; in one there were 
 no less than eleven. (Fig. 39, p. 89.) 
 
 26. All these modes of burial are very old and pe- 
 culiarly Chaldean. But there is still another, which 
 belongs to more recent times, even as late as the 
 first centuries after Christ, and was used by a differ-
 
 86 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ent and foreign race, the Parthians, one of those 
 who came in turns and conquered the country, 
 stayed there awhile, then disappeared. These cof- 
 fins are, from their curious form, known under the 
 name of " slipper-shaped." They are glazed, green 
 on the outside and blue on the inside, but of very 
 inferior make : poor clay, mixed with straw, and 
 only half baked, therefore very brittle. It is 
 thought that they were put in their place empty, 
 then the body was laid in, the lid put down, and 
 the care of covering them with sand left to the 
 winds. The lid is fastened with the same mortar 
 which is used in the brick masonry surrounding the 
 cofifin, where such a receptacle has been made for it; 
 but they more usually lie pell-mell, separated only 
 by thin layers of loose sand. There are mounds 
 which are, as one may say, larded with them : wher- 
 ever you begin to dig a trench, the narrow ends 
 stick out from both sides. In these coffins also 
 various articles were buried w^ith the dead, some- 
 times valuable ones. The Arabs know this ; they 
 dig in the sand with their hands, break the coffins 
 open with their spears, and grope in them for booty. 
 The consequence is that it is extremely difficult to 
 procure an entire coffin. Loftus succeeded, how- 
 ever, in sending some to the British Museum, having 
 first pasted around them several layers of thick 
 paper, without which precaution they could not 
 have borne the transport. 
 
 2-j. On the whole, the ancient Chaldean sepul- 
 chres of the three first kinds a :e distinguished by 
 greater care and tidiness. They are not only sepa-
 
 37- — " UISH-COVER" tomb at MUGHEIk. 
 (Taylor.) 
 
 38. — "dish-cover" tomb. 
 
 (Taylor.)
 
 8 8 INTROD UC TION. 
 
 rated by brick partitions on the sides, and also above 
 and below by a thin layer of brick masonry, but the 
 greatest care was taken to protect them against 
 dampness. The sepulchral mounds are pierced 
 through and through, from top to bottom, by drain- 
 age pipes or shafts, consisting of a series of rings, 
 solidly joined together Avith bitumen, about one 
 foot in diameter. These rings are made of baked 
 clay. The top one is shaped somewhat like a fun- 
 nel, of which the end is inserted in perforated 
 bricks, and which is provided with small holes, to 
 receive any infiltration of moisture. Besides all this 
 the shafts, which are sunk in pairs, are surrounded 
 with broken pottery. How ingenious and practical 
 this system was, we see from the fact that both the 
 coffins and their contents are found in a state of 
 perfect dryness and preservation. (Fig. 41, p. 90.) 
 
 28. In fact the Chaldeans, if they could not reach 
 such perfection as the Assyrians in slab-sculpture, 
 on account of not having stone either at home or 
 within easy reach, seem to have derived a greater 
 variety of architectural ornaments from that inex- 
 haustible material of theirs — baked clay or terra- 
 cotta. We see an instance of it in remnants — un- 
 fortunately very small ones, of some walls belong- 
 ing to that same city of Erech. On one of the 
 mounds Loftus was puzzled by the large quantity 
 of small terra-cotta cones, whole and in fragments, 
 lying about on the ground. The thick fiat end of 
 them was painted red, black or Arhite. What was 
 his amazement when he stumbled on a piece of wall 
 ''some seven feet in height and not more than thirty
 
 39- — SErULCHRAL VAULT AT MUGHEIR. 
 (Taylor.) 
 
 .JO— STONE JARS FROM GRAVES. (l.ARSAM.) 
 (liommel.)
 
 90 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in length), which showed him what their use had 
 been. They were grouped into a variety of pat- 
 terns to decorate the entire wall, being stuck with 
 their thin end into a layer of soft clay with which it 
 was coated for the purpose. Still more original and 
 even rather incomprehensible is a wall decoration 
 consisting of several bands, composed each of three 
 rows of small pots or cups — about four inches in 
 diameter — stuck into the soft clay coating in the 
 same manner, with the mouth turned outward oi 
 
 41. — DRAIN IN MOUND. 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.) 
 
 course ! Loftus found such a wall, but unfortunately 
 has gfvcn no design of it. (Figures 43 and 44.) 
 
 29. As to the ancient Babylonian, or rather Chal- 
 dean, art in sculpture, the last word has by no 
 means been said on that subject. Discoveries crowd 
 in every year, constantly leading to the most unex- 
 pected conclusions. Thus, it was long an accepted 
 fact that Assyria had very few statues and Baby- 
 lonia none at all, when a few years ago (1881),
 
 
 ■?3> ■-■ - 
 
 42. — WALL AVITH DE- 
 SIGNS IN TERRA-COT- 
 TA CONES, A']" WARKA 
 (ERECH). 
 
 (Loftus.) 
 
 43. — terra-cotta cone, 
 natural size. 
 
 (Loftus.)
 
 92 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 what should a French explorer, Mr. E. De Sarzec, 
 French consul in Basra, bring home but nine mag- 
 nificent statues made of a dark, nearly black stone 
 as hard as granite, called diorite." Unfortunately 
 they are all headless ; but, as though to make up 
 for this mutilation, one head was found separate, — 
 a shaved and turbaned head beautifully preserved 
 and of remarkable workmanship, the very pattern 
 of the turban being plain enough to be reproduced 
 by any modern loom.f These large prizes were ac- 
 companied by a quantity of small works of art rep- 
 resenting both men and animals, of a highly artistic 
 design and some of them of exquisite finish of 
 execution. This astounding find, the result of sev- 
 eral years' indefatigable work, now^ gracing the As- 
 syrian rooms of the Louvre in Paris, comes from one 
 of the Babylonian mounds which had not been 
 opened before, the ruins of a mighty temple at a 
 place now called TelL-Loh, and supposed to be the 
 site of SiR-BURLA, or SiRGULLA, one of the most an- 
 cient cities of Chaldea. This " Sarzec-collection," as 
 it has come to be generally called, not only entirely 
 upsets the ideas which had been formed on Old- 
 Chaldean art, but is of immense historical import- 
 ance from the inscriptions which cover the back of 
 every statue, (not to speak of the cylinders and 
 other small objects,) and which, in connection with 
 the monuments of other ruins, enable scholars to 
 fix, at least approximately, the date at which flour- 
 ished the city and rulers who have left such extra- 
 ordinary memorials of their artistic gifts. Some 
 place them at about 4500 B.C., others about 4000. 
 
 * bee Fig. 59, p. 217. \ See Figs. 44 and 45, p. loi.
 
 THE RUINS. 
 
 93 
 
 However overwhelming such a valuation may be at 
 first sight, it is not an unsupported fancy, but proofs 
 concur from many sides to show that the builders 
 arid sculptors of Sirgulla could in no case have lived 
 and worked much later than 4000 B.C. It is impos- 
 sible to indicate in a few lines all the points, the 
 conjectures, the vexed questions, on which this 
 discovery sheds light more or less directly, more or 
 less decisively ; they come up continually as the 
 study of those remote ages proceeds, and it will be 
 years before the materials supplied by the Sarzec- 
 Collection are exhausted in all their bearings.
 
 IV. 
 
 THE BOOK OF THE PAST. — THE LIBRARY OF 
 NINEVEH. 
 
 I. When we wish to learn the great deeds of past 
 ages, and of mighty men long dead, we open a book 
 and read. When we wish to leave to the genera- 
 tions who will come long after us a record of the 
 things that were done by ourselves or in our own 
 times, we take pen, ink and paper, and write a book. 
 What we have written is then printed, published in 
 .several hundreds — or thousands — of copies, as the 
 case may be, and quickly finds its way to all the 
 countries of the world inhabited by people who are 
 trained from childhood to thought and study. So 
 that we have the satisfaction of knowing that the in- 
 formation which we have labored to preserve will be 
 obtainable any number of years or centurjes after 
 we shall have ceased to exist, at no greater trouble 
 than procuring the book from the shelves of a book- 
 store, a public or a private library. It is all very 
 simple. And there is not a small child who does 
 not perfectly know a book by its looks, and even 
 has not a pretty correct idea of how a book is made 
 and what it is good for. 
 
 94
 
 THE BOOK OF THE FAST. gr 
 
 2. But books are not always of the shape and ma- 
 terial so familiar to us. Metal, stone, brick, walls 
 and pillars, nay, the very rocks of nature's own mak- 
 ing, can be books, conveying information as plainly 
 as our volumes of paper sheets covered with written 
 or printed lines. It only needs to know how to read 
 them, and the necessary knowledge and skill may 
 be acquired by processes as simple as the art of or- 
 dinary reading and writing, though at the cost of a 
 somewhat greater amount of time and pains. 
 
 3. There are two natural cravings, which assert 
 themselves strongly in every mind not entirely ab- 
 sorbed by the daily work for bread and by the anx- 
 ious care how to procure that work: these are the 
 wish, on the one hand, to learn how the people who 
 came before us lived and what they did, on the 
 other — to transmit our own names and the memory 
 of our deeds to those who will come after us. We 
 are not content with our present life ; we want to 
 stretch it both backward and forward — to live both 
 in the past and the future, as it were. This curios- 
 ity and this ambition are but parts of the longing 
 for immortality which was never absent from any 
 human soul. In our own age they are satisfied 
 mainly by books; indeed they were originally the 
 principal causes why books began to be made at all. 
 And how easy to satisfy these cravings in our time, 
 when writing materials have become as common as 
 food and far cheaper, and reading may be had for 
 nothing or next to nothing ! For, a very few dol- 
 lars will supply a writer with as much paper as he 
 can possibly use up in a year, while the public libra-
 
 96 
 
 INTR OD UC TIOiV. 
 
 ries, the circulating and college libraries and the 
 reading-rooms make study a matter more of love 
 and perseverance than of money. 
 
 4. Yet if the papermill and the printing press 
 were the only material aid to our researches into the 
 past, these researches would stop short very soon, 
 seeing that printing was invented in Europe scarce 
 four hundred years ago, and paper has not been 
 manufactured for more than six hundred years at the 
 outside. True, other materials have been used to 
 write on before paper: bark of trees, skins of ani- 
 mals — (parchment) — cunningly worked fibres of 
 plants — (papyrus, byblos) — even wooden tablets 
 covered with a thin layer of wax, on which charac- 
 ters were engraved with a pointed instrument or 
 " style," — and these contrivances have preserved for 
 us records which reach back many hundreds of years 
 beyond the introduction of paper. But our curiosity, 
 when once aroused, is insatiable, and an area of 
 some twenty, or thirty, or forty centuries seems to 
 it but a narrow field. Looking back as far as that — 
 and no kind of manuscript information takes us much 
 further — we behold the world wondrously like what 
 it is now. With some differences in garb, in man- 
 ners, and a much greater one in the range of knowl- 
 edge, we find men living very nearly as we do and 
 enacting very nearly the same scenes : nations live 
 in families clustered within cities, are governed by 
 laws, or ruled by monarclis, carry on commerce and 
 wars, extend their limits by conquest, excel in all 
 sorts of useful and ornamental arts. Only we notice 
 that larger regions are unknown, vaster portions of
 
 Tllh nOOK OF THE PAST. 
 
 97 
 
 the earth, with their populations, are unexplored, 
 than in our days. The conclusion is clearly forced 
 on us, that so complicated and perfect an organiza- 
 tion of public and private life, a condition of society 
 implying so many discoveries and so long a practice 
 in thought and handicraft, could not have been an 
 early stage of existence. Long vistas are dimly 
 visible into a past far vaster than the span as yet 
 laid open to our view, and we long to pierce the 
 tantalizing gloom. There, in that gloom, lurk the 
 beginnings of the races whose high achievements 
 we admire, emulate, and in many ways surpass ; 
 there, if we could but send a ray of light into the 
 darkness of ages, we must find the solution of nuvcx- 
 berless questions which suggest themselves as we 
 go: Whence come those races? What was the 
 earlier history of other races with which we find 
 them contending, treating, trading? When did 
 they learn their arts, their songs, their forms of wor- 
 ship ? But here our faithful guide, manuscript lit- 
 erature, forsakes us ; we enter on a period when 
 none of the ancient substitutes for paper were yet 
 invented. But then, there were the stones. T/iey 
 did not need to be invented — only he\\n and 
 smoothed for the chisel. 
 
 5. Fortunately for us, men, twenty-five, and fort}', 
 and fifty centuries ago, were actuated b\' the same 
 feelings, the same aspirations as they are now, and 
 of these aspirations, the passionate wish of perpetu- 
 ating their names and the memory of their deeds 
 has always been one of the most powerful. This 
 wish they connected with and made subservient to 
 
 9
 
 98 
 
 IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 the two things which were great and holy in their 
 eyes : their religion and the power of their kings. 
 So they built, in brick and stone, at an almost incal- 
 culable expense of time, human labor and human 
 life, palaces and temples. On these huge piles they 
 lavished treasures untold, as also all the resources 
 of their invention and their skill in art and orna- 
 ment ; they looked on them with exulting pride, 
 not only because they thought them, by their vast- 
 ness and gorgeousness, fit places for public worship 
 and dwellings worthy of their kings, but because 
 these constructions, in their towering grandeur, 
 their massive solidity, bid fair to defy time and out- 
 last the nations which raised them, and which thus 
 felt assured of leaving behind them traces of their 
 existence, memorials of their greatness. That a 
 few defaced, dismantled, moss-grown or sand- 
 choked fragments of these mighty buildings would 
 one day be the only trace, the sole memorial of a 
 rule and of nations that would then have past away 
 forever, even into nothingness and oblivion, scarcely 
 was anticipated by the haughty conquerors who 
 filled those halls with their despotic presence, and 
 entered those consecrated gates in the pomp of tri- 
 umph to render thanks for bloody victories and 
 warlike exploits which elated their souls in pride 
 till they felt themselves half divine. Nothing 
 doubting but that those walls, those pillars, those 
 gateways would stand down to the latest ages, they 
 confided to them that wliich was most precious to 
 their ambition, the reconl of their deeds, the praises 
 of their names, thus using those stony surfaces as
 
 THE BOOR- OF THE PAST. gg 
 
 SO many blank pages, which they covered with row 
 after row of wondrous characters, carefully engrav^ed 
 or chiselled, and even with painted or sculptured 
 representations of their own persons and of the 
 scenes, in war or peace, in which they had been 
 leaders and actors. 
 
 6, Thus it is that on all the points of the globe 
 where sometime great and flourishing nations have 
 held their place, then yielded to other nations or 
 to absolute devastation — in Egypt, in India, in Per- 
 sia, in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, in 
 the sandy, now desert plains of Syria, in the once 
 more populous haunts of ancient Rome and Greece 
 — the traveller meets clusters of great ruins, lofty 
 still in their utter abandonment, with a strange, 
 stern beauty hovering around their weather-beaten, 
 gigantic shafts and cornices, wrapt in the pathetic 
 silence of desolation, and yet not dumb — for their 
 pictured faces eloquently proclaim the tale of buoy- 
 ant life and action entrusted to them many thou- 
 sands of years ago. Sometimes, it is a natural rock, 
 cut and smoothed down at a height sufficient to 
 protect it from the wantonh- destructive hand of 
 scoffing invaders, on which a king of a deeper turn 
 of thought, more mindful than others of the law 
 which dooms all the works of men to deca}', has 
 caused a relation of the principal events of his reign 
 to be engraved in those curious characters which 
 have for centuries been a puzzle and an enigma. 
 Many tombs also, besides the remains of the re- 
 nowned or wealthy dead, for whom they have been 
 erected at a cost as extravaijant and with art as
 
 jOO INTRODUCTION. 
 
 elaborate as the abodes of the living, contain the 
 full description of their inmate's lineage, his life, his 
 habits and pursuits, with prayers and invocations 
 to the divinities of his race and descriptions or por- 
 trayed representations of religious ceremonies. Or, 
 the walls of caves, either natural, or cut in the rock 
 for purposes of shelter or concealment, yield to the 
 explorer some more chapters out of the old, old 
 r.tory, in \\hich our interest never slackens. This 
 story man has himself been writing, patiently, labo- 
 riously, on every surface on which he could trace 
 words and lines, ever since he has been familiar 
 with the art of expressing his thoughts in visible 
 signs, — and so each such surviving memorial may 
 truly be called a stray leaf, half miraculously pre 
 served to us, out of the great Book of the Past, 
 which it has been the task of scholars through ages, 
 and especially during the last eighty years, to deci- 
 pher and teach others how to read. 
 
 7. Of this venerable book the walls of the Assyr- 
 ian palaces, with their endless rows of inscriptions, 
 telling year for year through centuries the history of 
 the kings who built them, are so many invaluable 
 pages, while the sculptures which accompany these 
 annals are the illustrations, lending life and reality 
 to what would otherwise be a string of dry and 
 unattractive records. But a greater wonder has 
 been brought to light from amidst the rubbish and 
 dust of twenty-five centuries: a collection of lit- 
 erary and scientific works, of religious treatises, of 
 private and public documents, deposited in rooms 
 constructed on purpose to contain them, arranged
 
 44- — IIKAD OF ANCIENl' CHALL-I^.i;;. FROM TELL-LOH (SIRGULLA). 
 
 SARZEC COLLECTION. 
 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.) 
 
 TP— bAME, PROI-ILE VJEW
 
 I02 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in admirable order, in short — a LIBRARY. Truly 
 and literally a library, in the sense in which we use 
 the word. Not the only one cither, nor the first by 
 many hundred years, although the volumes are of 
 singular make and little like those we are used to. 
 
 8. When Layard was at work for the second time 
 amidst the ruins along the Tigris, he devoted much 
 of his labor to the great mound of Koyunjik, in 
 which the remains of two sumptuous palaces were 
 distinctly discerned, one of them the royal residence 
 of Sennacherib, the other that of his grandson 
 Asshurbanipal, who lived some 650 years before 
 Christ — two of the mightiest conquerors and most 
 magnificent sovereigns of the Eastern world. In 
 the latter palace he came upon two comparatively 
 small chambers, the floor of which was entirely lit- 
 tered with fragments^some of considerable size, 
 some very small — of bricks, or rather baked-clay 
 tablets, covered on both sides with cuneiform writ- 
 ing. It was a layer more thaii a foot in height 
 which must have been formed by the falling in of 
 the upper part of the edifice. The tablets, piled in 
 good order along the walls, perhaps in an upper 
 story — if, as many think, there was one — must have 
 been precipitated promiscuously into the apartment 
 and shattered by the fall. Yet, incredible as it may 
 appear, several were found entire. Layard filled 
 many cases with the fragments and sent them off 
 to the British Museum, full}' aware of their prob- 
 able historical value. 
 
 9. There they lay for years, heaped up at random, 
 a mine of treasures which made the mouths of schol-
 
 THE BOOK OF THE FAST. 103 
 
 ars water, but appalled them by the amount of 
 labor, nay, actual drudgery, needful only to sift and 
 sort them, even before any study of their contents 
 could be begun. At length a young and ambitious 
 archaeologist, attached to the British Museum, 
 George Smith, undertook the long and wearisome 
 task. He was not originally a scholar, but an en- 
 graver, and was employed to engrave on wood 
 cuneiform texts for the magnificent atlas edited 
 by the British Museum under the title of "Cunei- 
 form Inscriptions of Western Asia." Being en- 
 dowed with a quick and enquiring mind, Smith 
 did not content himself, like most of his colleagues, 
 with a conscientious and artistic, but merely tech- 
 nical reproduction ; he wished to know ivhat he was 
 doing and he learned the language of the inscrip- 
 tions. When he took on himself the sorting of the 
 fragments, it was in the hope of distinguishing him- 
 self in this new field, and of rendering a substantial 
 service to the science which had fascinated him. 
 Nor was he deceived in this hope. He succeeded 
 in finding and uniting a large quantity of fragments 
 belonging together, and thus restoring pages of 
 writing, with here and there a damaged line, a word 
 effaced, a broken corner, often a larger portion 
 missing, but still enough left to form continuous 
 and readable texts. In some cases it was found 
 that there was more than one copy of this or that 
 work or document, and then sometimes the parts 
 which were hopelessly injured in one copy, would 
 be found whole or nearK' so in another. 
 
 10. The results accomplished by this patient mc-
 
 I04 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 chanical process were something astonishins^. And 
 when he at length restored in this manner a series of 
 twelve tablets containing an entire poem of the 
 greatest antiquity and highest interest, the occasion 
 seemed important enough to warrant the enterpris- 
 ing owners of the London Daily TclcgrapJi in send- 
 ing the young student to resume excavations and 
 try to complete some missing links. For of some of 
 the tablets restored by him only portions could be 
 found among the fragments of the British Museum. 
 Of course he made his way straight to the Archive 
 Chambers at Koyunjik, had them opened again 
 and cleared them of another large instalment of 
 their valuable contents, among Avhich he had the 
 inconceivable good fortune to find some of the very 
 pieces which were missing in his collection. Joy- 
 fully he returned to England twice with his treas- 
 ures, and hopefully set out on a third expedition of 
 the same kind. He had reason to feel buoyant ; he 
 had already made his name famous by several works 
 which greatly enriched the science he loved, and 
 had he not half a life-time before him to continue 
 the work which few could do as well ? Alas, he lit- 
 tle knew that his career was to be cut short sud- 
 denly by a loathsome and brutal foe : he died of 
 the plague in Syria, in 1876 — just thirty-six years 
 old. He was faithful to the end. His diary, in 
 which he made some entries even within a very 
 few days before his death, shows that at the last, 
 when he knew his danger and was fast losing hope, 
 his mind was equally divided between thoughts of 
 his family and of his work. The following lines,
 
 THE rWOK OF THE PAST. jqc 
 
 almost the last intelligible ones he wrote, are deeply 
 touching in their simple, single-minded earnestness: 
 — " Not so well. If Doctor present, I should re- 
 cover, but he has not come , very doubtful case ; if 
 fatal farewell to. . . . My ivork has been entirely for 
 the science I study. . . . There is a large field of 
 study in my collection. I intended to work it out, 
 but desire now that my antiquities and notes may 
 be thrown open to all students. I have done my 
 duty thoroughly. I do not fear the change but 
 desire to live for my family. Perhaps all ma}' be 
 well yet." — George Smith's death was a great loss, 
 which his brother-scholars of all countries have not 
 ceased to deplore. But the work now proceeds 
 vigorously and skilfully. The precious texts arc 
 sorted, pieced, and classified, and a collection of 
 them, carefully selected, is reproduced by tlie aid 
 of the photographer and the engraver, so that, 
 should the originals ever be lost or destroyed, (not 
 a very probable event), the Museum indeed would 
 lose one of its most precious rarities, but science 
 would lose nothing. 
 
 II. iVn eminent French scholar and assyriologist, 
 Joachim Menant, has the following picturesque lines 
 in his charming little book " La BibliotJicqnc dn 
 Palais dc Ni)iivc": "When we reflect that these 
 records have been traced on a substance which 
 neither fire nor water could destroy, we can easily 
 comprehend how those who wrote them thus thirty 
 or forty centuries ago, believed the monuments of 
 their history to be safe for all future times, — mucli 
 safer than the frail sheets which printing scatters
 
 I06 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 with such prodigious fertihty. ... Of all the na- 
 tions who have bequeathed to us written records of 
 their past life, we may assert that none has left 
 monuments more imperishable than Assyria and 
 Chaldea. Their number is already considerable ; 
 it is daily increased by new discoveries. It is not 
 possible to foresee what the future has in store for 
 us in this respect ; but we can even now make a 
 valuation of the entire material which we possess. 
 .... The number of the tablets from the Nineveh 
 Library alone passes ten thousand. ... If we com- 
 pare these texts with those left us by other nations, 
 we can easily become convinced that the history of 
 the Assyro-Chaldean civilization will soon be one of 
 the best known of antiquity. It has a powerful 
 attraction for us, for we know that the life of the 
 Jewish people is mixed up with the history of Nin- 
 eveh and Babylon. ..." 
 
 13. It will be seen from this that throughout the 
 following pages we shall continually have to refer 
 to the contents of Asshurbanipal's royal library. 
 We must therefore dispense in this place with any 
 details concerning the books, more than a general 
 survey of the subjects they treated. Of these, reli- 
 gion and science were the chief. Under "science" 
 we must understand principally mathematics and 
 astronomy, two branches in which the old Chaldeans 
 reached great perfection and left us many of our 
 own most fundamental notions and practices, as we 
 shall see later on. Among the scientific works must 
 also be counted those on astrology, i.e., on the influ- 
 ence which the heavenly bodies were supposed to
 
 
 
 
 
 5 i 
 
 
 :i S ^ 
 
 £1.^; 
 
 
 \, - J^-^-'- ■ vr"" -, ^:-^/2 
 
 
 L^E_-J-5>;S5[»rij'J i 

 
 I08 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 exert on the fate of men, according to their positions 
 and combinations, for astrology was considered a 
 real science, not only by the Chaldeans, but by 
 much later nations too ; also hand-books of geogra- 
 phy, really only lists of the seas, mountains and 
 rivers, nations and cities then known, lastly lists of 
 plants and animals with a very rude and defective 
 attempt at some sort of classification. History is 
 but scantily represented ; it appears to have been 
 mostly confined to the great wall inscriptions and 
 some other objects, of which more hereafter. But 
 — what we should least expect — grammars, diction- 
 aries, school reading-books, occupy a prominent 
 place. The reason is that, when this library was 
 founded, the language in which the venerable books 
 of ancient sages were written not only was not 
 spoken any longer, but had for centuries been for- 
 gotten by all but the priests and those who made 
 scholarship their chief pursuit, so that it had to be 
 taught in the same way that the so-called " dead 
 languages," Latin and Greek, are taught at our 
 colleges. This was the more necessary as the 
 prayers had to be recited in the old language called 
 the Accadian, that being considered more holy — just 
 as, in Catholic countries, the common people are 
 even now made to learn and say their prayers in 
 Latin, though they understand not a word of the 
 language. The ancient Accadian texts were mostly 
 copied with a modern Assyrian translation, either 
 interlinear or facing it, which has been of immense 
 service to those who now decipher the tablets. 
 
 13. So much for what may be called the classical
 
 THE BOOK OF THE PAST. igg 
 
 and reference department of the library. Important 
 as it is, it is scarcely more so than the documentary 
 department or Archive proper, where documents 
 and deeds of all kinds, both public and private, were 
 deposited for safe keeping. Here by the side of 
 treatises, royal decrees and despatches, lists of trib- 
 ute, reports, from generals and governors, also those 
 daily sent in by the superintendents of the royal 
 observatories, — we find innumerable private docu- 
 ments : deeds of sale duly signed, witnessed and 
 sealed, for land, houses, slaves — any kind of prop- 
 erty, — of money lent, of mortgage^;, with the rate 
 of interest, contracts of ^g^^^^^^^^^^^^^s:'—-^ 
 
 all sorts. The most re- ^^^A^^T^^'^-^^^lS^i-^'^ '^i 
 markable of private doc- ^^^*:r,^('2'''.!tvvl'f ^^"^ 
 
 1-11 ^^^^*«^2^£if -'iorj 
 
 uments is one which has -:^^-=i^E? *^g ^ia ii w^^ _^^^^^ 
 
 been called the "will of ^t.-^^^^~^^^Z^i.v:v. 
 
 King Sennacherib," by (Smith's "Assyria.") 
 
 which he entrusts some valuable personal prop- 
 erty to the priests of the temple of Ncbo, to be 
 kept for his favorite son, — whether to be delivered 
 after his (the king's) death or at another time is 
 not stated. 
 
 14. It requires some effort to bear in mind the na- 
 ture and looks of the things which we must represent 
 to ourselves when we talk of Assyrian ''books." The 
 above (Fig. 47) is the portrait of a " volume " in per- 
 fect condition. But it is seldom indeed that one such 
 is found. Layard, in his first description of his start- 
 ling " find," says : "They (the tablets) were of differ- 
 ent sizes; the largest were flat, and measured nine 
 inches by six and a half; the smaller were slightly
 
 I I o IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 convex, and some were not more than an inch long, 
 with but one or two lines of writing. The cunei- 
 form characters on most of them were singularly 
 sharp and well-defined, but so minute in some in- 
 stances as to be illegible without a magnifying 
 glass." Most curiously, glass lenses have been 
 found among the ruins, which may have been used 
 for the purpose. Specimens have also been found 
 of the very instruments which were employed to 
 trace the cuneiform characters, and their form suffi- 
 ciently accounts for the peculiar shape of these 
 characters which was imitated by the engravers on 
 stone. It is a little iron rod — (or style, as the an- 
 cients used to call such implements) — not sharp, but 
 triangular at the end : \J . By slightly pressing this 
 end on the cake of soft moist clay held in the left 
 hand no other shape of sign could be obtained than 
 a wedge, y, the direction being determined by a 
 turn of the wrist, presenting the instrument in dif- 
 ferent positions. When one side of the tablet was 
 full, the other was to be filled. If it was small, it 
 was sufficient to turn it over, continuing to hold the 
 edges between the thumb and third finger of the left 
 hand. But if the tablet was large and had to be laid 
 on a table to be written on, the face that was finished 
 would be pressed to the hard surface, and the clay 
 being soft, the writing would be effaced. This was 
 guarded against by a contrivance as ingenious as it 
 was simple. Empty places were left here and there 
 in the lines, in which were stuck small pegs, like 
 matches. On these the tablet was supported when 
 turned over, and also while baking in the oven.
 
 THE BCOK OF THE PAST. 
 
 Ill 
 
 On many of the tablets that have been preserved 
 are to be seen httle holes or dints, where the pegs 
 have been stuck. Still, it should be mentioned that 
 
 48. — CLAY TAULET l.\ ITS CASE. 
 (Honimel.) 
 
 these holes are not confined to the large tablets and 
 not found on all large tablets. When the tablet 
 was full, it was allowed to drv, then <renerallv. but
 
 112 
 
 INTRO D UC TION. 
 
 not always, baked. Within the last few years sev- 
 eral thousands unbaked tablets have been found in 
 Babylonia ; they crumbled into dust under the find- 
 ers' fingers. It was then proposed to bake such of 
 them as could at all bear handling. The exper- 
 iment was successful, and numbers of valuable 
 documents were thus preserved and transported to 
 the great repository of the British Museum. The 
 tablets are covered with writing on both sides and 
 most accurately classed and numbered, when they 
 form part of a series, in which case they are all of 
 
 the same shape and size. 
 The poem discovered by 
 George Smith is written 
 out on twelve tablets, 
 each of which is a sepa- 
 rate book or chapter of 
 the whole. There is an 
 astronomical work in over 
 seventy tablets. The first 
 of them begins with the words: " WhcJi the gods 
 Anu and . ..." These w^ords are taken as the title 
 of the entire series. Each tablet bears the notice : 
 First, second, third tablet of " When the gods Anu 
 and . . . ." To guard against all chance of confusion, 
 the last line of one tablet is repeated as the first line 
 of the following one — a fashion which we still see 
 in old books, where the last word or two at the bot- 
 tom of a page is repeated at the top of the next. 
 
 15. The clay tablets of the ancient Chaldeans are 
 distinguished from the Assyrian ones by a curious 
 peculiarity : they are sometimes enclosed in a case 
 
 49. — ANTIQUE BRONZE SET 
 TING OF CYLINDER. 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.)
 
 THE BOOK OF THE PAST. 
 
 113 
 
 of the same material, with exactly the same inscrip- 
 tion and seals as on the inner tablet, even more 
 carefully executed.^ It is evidently a sort of dupli- 
 cate document, made in the prevision that the outer 
 
 tMs-t 
 
 50- 
 
 -CIIAI.DEAN CYLINDER AND IMPUESSION. 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.) 
 
 -'„^<^r^^.^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 51. — ASSYRIAN CYLINDER. 
 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.) 
 
 one might be injured, vvhen the inner record vrould 
 remain. Rows of figures across the tablet are im- 
 pressed on iu v/ith seals called from their shape cylin- 
 ders, which were rolled o\-cr the soft moist clay. 
 These cylinders Vv'ere generally of some valuable, 
 ■■•* isce Firj. 4S, p. III. 
 
 TO
 
 114 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 hard stone — jasper, amethyst, cornelian, onyx, agate, 
 etc., — and were used as signet rings were later and 
 are still. They are found in great numbers, being 
 from their hardness well-nigh indestructible. They 
 were generally bored through, and through the hole 
 was passed either a string to wear them on, or a 
 metal axis, to roll them more easily.* There is a 
 large and most valuable collection of seal cylinders 
 at the British Museum. Their size ranges from a 
 quarter of an inch to two inches or a little more. 
 But cylinders were also made of baked clay and 
 larger size, and then served a different purpose, that 
 of historical documents. These are found in the 
 foundations of palaces and temples, mostly in the 
 four corners, in small niches or chambers, generally 
 produced by leaving out one or more bricks. These 
 tiny monuments range from a couple of inches to 
 half a foot in height, seldom more ; they are some- 
 times shaped like a prism with several faces (mostly 
 six), sometimes like a barrel, and covered with that 
 compact and minute writing which it often requires 
 a magnifying glass to make out. Owing to their 
 sheltered position, these singular records are gener- 
 ally very well preserved. Although their original 
 destination is only to tell by whom and for what pur- 
 pose the building has been erected, they frequently 
 proceed to give a full though condensed account of 
 the respective kings' reigns, so that, should the up- 
 per structure with its engraved annals be destroyed 
 by the vicissitudes of war or in the course of natural 
 decay, some memorial of their deeds should still be 
 preserved — a prevision which, in several cases, has 
 * See above, Figs. 49 and 50.
 
 52. — PRISM OF SENNACHERIIi. Al.So CAI.I.KL- " 1 A V L(.)R CYLINDF.R.
 
 I 1 6 INTR OD UC TIO.V. 
 
 been literally fulfilled. Sometimes the manner ^nd 
 material of these records were still more fanciful. 
 At Khorsabad, at the very interior part of the con- 
 struction, was found a large stone chest, which en- 
 closed several inscribed plates in various materials. 
 . „ . . In this only extant specimen of an Assyrian 
 foundation stone were found one littb golden tab- 
 let, one of silver, others of copper, lead and tin ; a 
 sixth text was engraved on alabaster, and the sev- 
 enth document was written on the chest itself." ''■ 
 Unfortunately the heavier portion of this remarka- 
 ble find was sent with a collection which foundered 
 on the Tigris and was lost. Only the small plates, 
 — gold, silver, copper and tin (antimonium scholars 
 now think it to be) — survived, and the inscriptions 
 on them have been read and translated. They all 
 commemorate, in very nearly the same terms, the 
 foundation and erection of a new city and palace 
 by a very famous king and conqueror, general!}' 
 (though not correctly) called Sargon, and three of 
 them end with a request to the kings his successors 
 to keep the building in good repair, with a prayer 
 iOr their welfare if they do and a heavy curse if they 
 fail in this duty: "Whoever alters the works of my 
 hand, destro)'s my constructions, pulls down the 
 walls which I have raised, — may Asshur, Nineb, Ra- 
 man and the great gods who dwell there, pluck his 
 name and seed from the land and let him sit bound 
 at the feet of his foe." Most inscriptions end with 
 invocations of the same kind, for, in tiie words of 
 
 * Dr. Julius Oppert, " Records of the Past," Vol. XI., p. 31.
 
 THE BOOK OF THE FAST. 
 
 117 
 
 IVIenant : " it was not mere whim which impelled 
 the kings of .Assyria to build so assiduousl}\ Pal- 
 aces had in those times a destination which they 
 have no longer in ours. Not only was the palace 
 indeed the dzvelling of royalty, as the inscriptions 
 have it, — it was also the BoOK, which each sovereign 
 
 INSCRIBED CYLINDER FROM BORSIT. 
 
 began at his accession to the throne and in which 
 he Avas to record the history of his reign." ^ 
 
 And each such book of brick and stone we can 
 ivith perfect truth call a chapter — or a volume — of 
 the great Book of the Past whose leaves are scat- 
 tered over the face of the earth. 
 
 * " Les Ecritures Cuneifornies," of Joachim Menant : page 198 
 {2d edition, 1864). 
 
 vVsiV 

 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 I. 
 
 NOMADS AND SETTLERS, — THE FOUR STAGES OF 
 CULTURE. 
 
 I. Men, whatever their pursuit or business, can 
 live only in one of two ways: they can stay where 
 they arc, or they can ^o from one place to another. 
 In the present state of the world, we generally do a 
 little of both. There is some place — city, village, 
 or farm — where we have our home and our work. 
 But from time to time we go to other places, on 
 visits or on business, or travel for a certain length 
 of time to great distances and many places, for in- 
 struction and pleasure. Still, there is usually some 
 place which we think of as home and to which we 
 return. Wandering or roving is not our natural or 
 permanent condition. But there are races for whom 
 it is. The Bedouin Arabs are the principal and best 
 known of such races. Who has not read with de- 
 light accounts of their wild life in the deserts of 
 Arabia and Northern Africa, so full of adventure 
 and romance, — of their wonderful, priceless horses 
 
 ii8
 
 NOMADS AND SETTLERS. j jf^ 
 
 who arc to tbcin as their own children, — of their 
 noble quah'ties, bravery, hospitahty, generosity, so 
 strangely blended with love of booty and a passion 
 for robbing expeditions ? They are indeed a noble 
 race, and it is not their choice, but their country 
 which has made them robbers and rovers — Nomads, 
 as such wandering races are called in history and 
 geography. They cannot build cities on the sand 
 of the desert, and the small patches of pasture and 
 palm groves, kept fresh and green by solitary- 
 springs and called "oases," are too far apart, too 
 distant from permanently peopled regions to admit 
 of comfortable settlement. In the south of Arabia 
 and along the sea-shore, where the land is fertile 
 and inviting, they live much as other nations do, 
 and when, a thousand }'cars ago, Arabs conquered 
 vast and wealth)' countries both in Europe and Asia, 
 and in Africa too, they not only became model 
 husbandmen, but built some of the finest cities 
 in the world, had wise and strictly enforced laws 
 and took the lead in literature and science. Very 
 different are the scattered nomadic tribes which 
 still roam the steppes of Eastern Russia, of Siberia 
 and Central Asia. They are not as gifted by far as 
 the Arabs, yet would probably quickly settle down 
 to farming, were it not that their wealth consists in 
 flocks of sheep and studs of horses, which require 
 the pasture yielded so abundantly by the grassy 
 steppes, and with which they have to move from 
 one place, when it is browsed bare, to another, 
 and still another, carrying their felt-tents and sim- 
 ple utensils with them, living on the milk of their
 
 120 THE STORY OF CffALDEA. 
 
 marcs and the meat of tlicir sheep. The Red In- 
 dian tribes of the far West present still another as- 
 pect of nomadic Hfe--that of the hunter, fierce and 
 entirely untamed, the simplest and wildest of all. 
 
 2. On the whole, however, nomadic life is at the 
 present day the exception. Most of the nations 
 that are not savages live in houses, not in portable 
 tents, in cities, not encampments, and form com- 
 pact, solidly bound communities, not loose sets of 
 tribes, now friendh', now hostile to one another. 
 But it has not always been so. There have been 
 times when settled life was the exception and no- 
 madic life the rule. And the older the times, the 
 fewer were the permanent communities, the more 
 numerous the roving tribes. For wandering in 
 search of better places must have been among the 
 first impulses of intelligent humanity. Even when 
 men had no shelter but caves, no pursuit but hunt- 
 ing the animals, whose flesh was their food and in 
 whose skins they clothed themselves, they must fre- 
 quently have gone forth, in families or detachments, 
 cither to escape from a neighborhood too much in- 
 fested with the gigantic wild beasts which at one 
 time peopled the earth more thickly than men, or 
 simph' because the numbers of the original cave- 
 dwellers had become too great for the cave to hold 
 them.. The latter must have been a very usual oc- 
 currence : families stayed together until they had 
 no longer room enough, or quarrelled, when they 
 separated. Those who went never saw again the 
 place and kindred they left, although they carried 
 with them memories of both, the few simple arts
 
 ji\CMAnS AXD SETTLERS. j2I 
 
 they liaii learned there and the customs in wliich 
 they had been trained. They would stop at some 
 congenial halting-place, when, after a time, the 
 same process would be repeated — and so again and 
 again. 
 
 3. How was the first horse conquered, the first 
 wild-dog tamed and conciliated.'^ How were cattle 
 first enticed to give man their milk, to depend on 
 his care and follow his movements ? Who shall tell ? 
 However that may have happened, it is certain that 
 the transition from a hunter's wild, irregular and 
 almost necessarily lawless existence to the gentler 
 pursuits of pastoral life must have been attended by 
 a great change in manners and character. The feel- 
 ing of ownership too, one of the principal promo- 
 ters of a well-regulated state of society, must have 
 quickly developed with the possession of rapidly in- 
 creasing wealth in sheep and horses, — the principal 
 property of nomadic races. But it was not a kind 
 of property which encouraged to settling, or uniting 
 in close communities ; quite the contrar}-. Large 
 flocks need vast pasture-grounds. Besides, it is de- 
 sirable to keep them apart in order to avoid confu- 
 sion and disputes about wells and springs, those 
 rare treasures of the steppes, which are liable to ex- 
 haustion or drying up, and which, therefore, one 
 flock-owner is not likely to share Avith another, 
 though that other were of his own race and kin. 
 The Book of Genesis, which gives us so faithful and 
 lively a picture of this nomadic pastoral life of an- 
 cient nations, in the account of the M-anderings of 
 Abraham and the other Hebrew patriarchs, has pre-
 
 122 THE SrORY OF CIIALDEA. 
 
 served such an incident in the quarrel between 
 the herdsmen of Abraham and his nephew Lot, 
 which led to their separation. This is what Abra- 
 liani said to Lot: "Is not the whole land before 
 thee? vScparate thyself, I pray thee, from me: if 
 thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the 
 right ; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I 
 will go to the left." * So also it is said of Esau that 
 he "went into the country from the face of his 
 brother Jacob: for their riches were more than 
 they might dwell together, and the land wherein 
 they were strangers could not bear them be- 
 cause of their cattle." f This was a facility of- 
 fered by those immense plains, unclaimed as yet by 
 any one people in particular, and which must oft- 
 times have averted strife and bloodshed, but which 
 ceased from the moment that some one tribe, tired 
 of wandering or tempted by some more than 
 usually engaging spot, settled down on it, mark- 
 ing that and the country around it, as far as its 
 power reached, for its own. There is even now in 
 the East something very similar to this mode of 
 occupation. \\\ the Turkish Empire, which is, in 
 many places, thinly peopled, there are large tracts 
 of waste land, sometimes very fertile, accounted as 
 nobody's property, and acknowledged to belong, 
 legally and forever, to the first man who takes pos- 
 session of them, provided he cultivates them. The 
 government asks no purchase price for the land, but 
 
 * Genesis, xiii. 7-11. t Genesis, xxxvi. 6-7.
 
 NOMA DS A A 'D SE TTL ER2. i o ^ 
 
 demands taxes from it as soon as it has found an 
 owner and begins to yield crops. 
 
 4. The pastoral nomad's life is, like the hunter's, 
 a singularly free one, — free both from restraint, and, 
 comparatively, from toil. For watching and tend- 
 ing flocks is not a laborious occupation, and no au- 
 thority can always reach or weigh very heavily on 
 people who are here to-day and elsewhere to-mor- 
 row. Therefore, it is only with the third stage of 
 human existence, the agricultural one, that civiliza- 
 tion, which cannot subsist without permanent homes 
 and authority, really commences. The farmer's 
 homestead is the beginning of the State, as the 
 hearth or fireplace was the beginning of the family. 
 The different labors of the fields, the house, and the 
 dairy require a great number of hands and a well- 
 regulated distribution of the work, and so keep sev- 
 eral generations of the settler's family together, on 
 the same farm. Life in common makes it absolutely 
 necessary to have-a set of simple rules for home 
 government, to prevent disputes, keep up order 
 and harmony, and settle questions of mutual rights 
 and duties. Who should set down and enforce 
 these rules but the head of the family, the founder 
 of the race — the patriarch? And when the family 
 has become too numerous for the original homestead 
 to hold it, and part of it has to leave it, to found a 
 new home for itself, it does not, as in the primiti\'e 
 nomadic times, wander off at random and break all 
 ties, but settles close by on a portion of the family 
 land, or takes possession of a new piece of ground 
 somewhat further off, but still within easy reach. In
 
 124 '^^^ STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 Ihe first case the land which had been common prop- 
 erty gets broken up into lots, which, though belong- 
 ing more particularly to the members who separate 
 from the old stock, are not for that withdrawn from 
 ihe authority of the patriarch. There are several 
 homesteads now, which form a village, and, later on, 
 several villages ; but the bond of kindred, of tradi- 
 tion and custom is religiously preserved, as well as 
 subordination to the common head of the race, 
 whose power keeps increasing as the community 
 grows in numbers and extent of land, as the greater 
 complications of relationships, property, inherit- 
 ance, demand more laws and a stricter rule, — until 
 he becomes not so much Father as King. Then 
 naturally come collisions with neighboring similar 
 settlements, friendly or hostile, which result in alli- 
 ances or quarrels, trade or war, and herewith we 
 have the State complete, with inner organization 
 and foreign policy. 
 
 5. This stage of culture, in jts higher develop- 
 ment, combines with the fourth and last — city-build- 
 ing, and city-life, when men of the same race, and 
 conscious of a common origin, but practically stran- 
 gers to each other, form settlements on a large scale, 
 which, being enclosed in walls, become places of 
 refuge and defence, centres of commerce, industry 
 and government. For, when a community has 
 become very numerous, with wants multiplied by 
 continual improvements and increasing culture, each 
 family can no longer make all the things it needs, 
 and a portion of the population devotes itself to 
 manufacture and arts, occupations best pursued in
 
 NOMADS AND SETTLERS. 
 
 125 
 
 cities, while the other goes on cultivating the land 
 and raising cattle, the two sets of produces — those 
 of nature and those of the cunning hand and brain 
 — being bartered one for the other, or, when coin is 
 invented, exchanged through that more convenient 
 medium. In the same manner, the task of govern- 
 ment having become too manifold and complicated 
 for one man, the former Patriarch, now^ I^ing' is 
 obliged to surround himself with assistants — either 
 the elders of the race, or persons of his own choice, 
 — and send others to different places, to rule in his 
 name and under his authority. The city in which 
 the King and his immediate ministers and officers 
 reside, naturally becomes the most important one — ■ 
 the Capital of the State. 
 
 6. It does not follow by any means that a people, 
 once settled, never stirred from its adopted countr}-. 
 The migratory or w^andering instinct never quite- 
 died out — our own love of travelling sufficient!}- 
 proves that — and it was no unfrequent occurrence 
 in very ancient times for large tribes, even portions 
 of nations, to start off again in search of new homes 
 and to found new cities, compelled thereto cither 
 by the gradual overcrowding of the old country, or 
 by intestine discords, or by the invasion of new- 
 nomadic tribes of a different race who drove the old 
 settlers before them to take possession of their settle- 
 ments, massacred them if they resisted and reduced 
 those who remained to an irksome subjection. 
 Such invasions, of course, might also be perpetrated 
 with the same results by regular armies, led by king:. 
 and orenerals from some other settled and onranized
 
 126 TllJi STORY OF CIIALDEA. 
 
 country. The alternative between bondage and 
 emigration must have been frequently offered, and 
 the choice in favor of the latter was helped not a 
 little by the spirit of adventure inborn in man, 
 tempted by so many unexplored regions as there 
 were in those remote ages. 
 
 7. Such have been the beginnings of all nations. 
 There can be no other. And there is one more 
 observation which will scarcely ever prove wrong. 
 It is that, however far we may go back into the past, 
 the people whom we find inhabiting any country at 
 the very dawn of tradition, can always be shown to 
 have come from somewhere else, and not to have 
 been the first either. Every swarm of nomads or 
 adventurers who either pass through a country or 
 stop and settle there, always find it occupied al- 
 ready. Now the older population was hardly ever 
 entirely destroyed or dislodged by the new-comers. 
 A portion at least remained, as an inferior or sub- 
 ject race, but in time came to mix with them, 
 mostly in the way of intermarriage. Then again, if 
 the new-comers were peaceable and there was room 
 enough— which there generally was in very early 
 limes — they would frequently be suffered to form 
 separate settlements, and dwell in the land ; when 
 they would either remain in a subordinate condi- 
 tion, or, if they were the finer and better gifted 
 race, they would quickly take the upper hand, teach 
 the old settlers their own arts and ideas, their man- 
 ners and their laws. If the new settlement was 
 effected by conquest, the arrangement was short and 
 simple: the conquerors, though less numerous, at
 
 NOMADS AN J) SETTLERS. J27 
 
 once established themselves as masters and formed 
 a ruling nobility, an aristocracy, while the old own- 
 ers of the land, those at least that did not choose to 
 emigrate, became what may be called " the com- 
 mon people," bound to do service and pay tribute 
 or taxes to their self-instituted masters. Every 
 country has generally experienced, at various times, 
 all these modes of invasion, so that each nation may 
 be said to have been formed gradually, in successive 
 layers, as it were, and often of very different ele- 
 ments, which either finally amalgamated or kept 
 apart, according to circumstances. 
 
 The early history of Chaldea is a particularly good 
 illustration of all that has just been said.
 
 II. 
 
 THE GREAT RACES. — CHATTER X. OF GENESIS. 
 
 1, The Bible says (Genesis xi. 2) : "And it came 
 to pass, as they journe}'cd in the east, that they 
 found a plain in the land of Shinar ; and they dwelt 
 there." 
 
 Shinar — or, more correctly, Shincar — is what may 
 be called Babylonia proper, that part of Mesopota- 
 mia where Babylon was, and south of it, almost to 
 the Gulf. "They" are descendants of Noah, long 
 after the Flood. They found the plain and dwelt 
 there, but they did not find the whole land desert ; 
 it had been occupied long before them. How long? 
 For such remote ages an exact valuation of time in 
 years is not to be thought of. 
 
 2. What people were those whom the descendants 
 of Noah found in the land to which they came from 
 the East ? It seems a simple question, yet no an- 
 swer could have been given to it even as lately as 
 fifteen or sixteen years ago, and when the answer 
 was first suggested by unexpected discoveries made 
 in the Royal Library at Nineveh, it startled the dis- 
 coverers extremely. The only indication on the 
 subject then known was this, from a Chaldean 
 writer of a late period : " There was originally at 
 
 12S
 
 THE GREA T RA CES. 1 20 
 
 Babylon " (i.e., in the land of Babylon, not the city 
 alone) " a multitude of men of foreign race who had 
 settled in Chaldea." This is told by Berosus, a 
 learned priest of Babylon, who lived immediately 
 after Alexander the Great had conquered the coun- 
 try, and when the Greeks ruled it (somewhat after 
 300 B.C.). He wrote a history of it from the most 
 ancient times, in which he gave an account of the 
 oldest traditions concerning its beginnings. As he 
 wrote his book in Greek, it is probable that his ob- 
 ject was to acquaint the new masters with the his- 
 tory and religion of the land and people whom they 
 had come to rule. Unfortunately the work was 
 lost — as so many valuable works have been, as long 
 as there was no printing, and books existed only in 
 a few manuscript copies — and we know of it only 
 some short fragments, quoted by later writers, in 
 whose time Berosus' history was still accessible. 
 The above lines are contained in one such fragment, 
 and naturally led to the question : who were these 
 men of foreign race who came from somewhere else 
 
 o 
 
 and settled in Chaldea in immemorial times? 
 
 3. One thing appears clear: they belonged to 
 none of the races classed in the Bible as descended 
 from Noah, but probably to one far older, which 
 had not been included in the Flood. 
 
 4. For it begins to be pretty generally under- 
 stood nowadays that the Flood may not have been 
 absolutely universal, but have extended over the 
 countries which the Hebrews knew, which made their 
 world, and that not literally all living beings except 
 those who are reported to have been in the Ark may 
 
 1 1
 
 1^0 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 have perished in it. From a negligent habit of 
 reading Chap. VI.-IX. of Genesis without reference 
 to the texts of other chapters of the same Book, it 
 has become a general habit to understand it in thfs 
 literal manner. Yet the evidence is by no means so 
 positive. The question was considered an open one 
 by profounder students even in antiquity, and freely 
 discussed both among the Jews themselves and the 
 Fathers of the early Christian Church. The follow- 
 ing are the statements given in the Book of Genesis ; 
 we have only to take them out of their several places 
 and connect them. 
 
 5. When Cain had killed his brother Abel, God 
 banished him from the eartJi which had received his 
 brother's blood and laid a curse on him: " a fugi- 
 tive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth " — 
 using another word than the first time, one which 
 means earth in general (/r/f), in opposition to the 
 earth {addmdh), or fruitful land to the east of Eden, 
 in which Adam and Eve dwelt after their expulsion. 
 Then Cain went forth, still further East, and dwelt 
 in a land which was called " the land of Nod," i.e., " of 
 wandering " or " exile." He had a son, Enoch, after 
 whom he named the city which he built, — the first 
 city,— -and descendants. Of these the fifth, Lamech, 
 a fierce and lawless man, had three sons, two of 
 whom, Jabal and Jubal, led a pastoral and nomadic 
 life ; but the third, Tubalcain, invented the use of 
 metals : he was " the forger of every cutting instru- 
 ment of brass and iron." This is what the Chap. 
 IV. of Genesis tells of Cain, his crime, his exile and 
 immediate posterity. After that they are heard of
 
 THE GREA T RA CES. I , j 
 
 no more. Adam, meanwhile, has a third son, born 
 after he had lost the first two and whom he calls 
 Seth (more correctly SJictJi). The descendants of 
 this son are enumerated in Chap. V. ; the list ends 
 with Noah. These are the parallel races : the ac- 
 cursed and the blest, the proscribed of God and the 
 loved of God, the one that " goes out of the pres- 
 ence of the Lord " and the one that " calls on the 
 name of the Lord," and " walks with God." Of the 
 latter race the last-named, Noah, is " a just man, 
 perfect in his generation," and " finds grace in the 
 eyes of the Lord." 
 
 6. Then comes the narrative of the Flood (Chap. 
 VL-VIIL), the covenant of God with Noah and 
 re-peopling of the earth by his posterity (Chap. 
 IX.). Lastly Chap. X. gives us the list of the gen- 
 erations of Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham and 
 Japheth ; — "of these were the nations divided in 
 the earth after the flood. 
 
 7. Now this tenth chapter of Genesis is the 
 oldest and most important document in existence 
 concerning the origins of races and nations, and 
 comprises all those with whom the Jews, in the 
 course of their early history, have had any dealings, 
 at least all those who belonged to the great white di- 
 vision of mankind. But in order properly to under- 
 stand it and appreciate its value and bearing, it 
 must not be forgotten that EACH NAME IN THE LIST 
 IS THAT OF A RACE, A PEOPLE OR A TRIBE, NOT 
 
 THAT OF A MAN. It was a common fashion among 
 the Orientals — a fashion adopted also by ancient 
 European nations — to express in this manner the
 
 132 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 kindred connections of nations among themselves 
 and their differences. Both for brevity and clear- 
 ness, such historical genealogies are very convenient. 
 They must have been suggested by a proceeding 
 most natural in ages of ignorance, and which con- 
 sists in a tribe's explaining its own name by taking 
 it for granted that it was that of its founder. Thus 
 the name of the Assyrians is really Asshur. Why? 
 Clearly, they would answer, if asked the question, 
 because their kingdom was founded by one whose 
 name was Asshur. Another famous nation, the 
 Aramaeans, are supposed to be so called because 
 the name of their founder was Aram ; the Hebrews 
 name themselves from a similarly supposed ancestor, 
 Heber. These three nations, — and several more, 
 the Arabs among others — spoke languages so much 
 alike that they could easily understand each other, 
 and had generally many common features in looks 
 and character. How account for that? By making 
 their founders, Asshur, and Aram, and Heber, etc., 
 sons or descendants of one great head or progenitor, 
 Shem, a son of Noah. It is a kind of parable which 
 is extremely clear once one has the key to it, when 
 nothing is easier than to translate it into our own 
 sober, positive forms of speech. The above bit of 
 genealogy would read thus : A large portion of hu- 
 manity is distinguished by certain features more or 
 less peculiar to itself ; it is one of several great races, 
 and has been called for more than a hundred years 
 the Semitic, (better Shemitic) race, the race of 
 Shem. This race is composed of many different 
 tribes and nations, who have gone each its own way,
 
 THE GREAT RACES. 
 
 133 
 
 have each its own name and history, speak dialects 
 of the same original language, and have preserved 
 many common ideas, customs and traits of character, 
 — which all shows that the race was once united and 
 dwelt together, then, as it increased in numbers, 
 broke up into fractions, of which some rose to be 
 great and famous nations and some remained com- 
 paratively insignificant tribes. The same applies to 
 the subdivisions of the great white race (the whitest 
 of all) to which nearly all the European nations be- 
 long, and which is personified in the Bible under 
 the name of Japhet, third son of Noah, — and to 
 those of a third great race, also originally white, 
 which is broken up into very many fractions, both 
 great nations and scattered tribes, all exhibiting a 
 decided likeness to each other. The Bible gives 
 the names of all these most carefully, and sums up 
 the whole of them under the name of the second 
 son of Noah, Ham, whom it calls their common pro- 
 genitor. 
 
 8. That the genealogies of Chap. X. of Genesis 
 should be understood in this sense, has long been 
 admitted by scientists and churchmen. St. Augus- 
 tine, one of the greatest among the Fathers of the 
 early church, pointedly says that the names in it 
 represent ** nations, not men." * On the other hand 
 there is also literal truth in them, in this way, that, 
 if all mankind is descended from one human couple, 
 every fraction of it must necessarily have had some 
 one particular father or ancestor, only in so remote a 
 
 * " Gentcs noii homines.'''' {De Civitatc Dei, XVII., -.)
 
 134 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 past that his individuality or actual name cannot 
 possibly have been remembered, when every people, 
 as has been remarked above, naturally gave him its 
 own name. Of these names many show by their 
 very nature that they could not have belonged to 
 individuals. Some are plural, like MiZRAlM, " the 
 Egyptians ; " some have the article : " tJie Amorite, 
 the HivlTE ; " one even is the name of a city : SiDON 
 is called "the first-born of Canaan;" now Sidon 
 was long the greatest maritime city of the Canaan- 
 ites, who held an undisputed supremacy over the 
 rest, and therefore " the first-born." The name 
 means " fisheries " — an appropriate one for a city on 
 the sea, which must of course have been at first a 
 settlement of fishermen. " CANAAN " really is the 
 name of a vast region, inhabited by a great many 
 nations and tribes, all differing from each other in 
 many ways, yet manifestly of one race, wherefore 
 they are called " the sons of Canaan," Canaan being 
 personified in a common ancestor, given as one of 
 the four sons of Ham. Modern science has, for 
 convenience' sake, adopted a special word for such 
 imaginary personages, invented to account for a 
 nation's, tribe's, or city's name, while summing up, 
 so to speak, its individuality : they arc called EpO- 
 NVMS. The word is Greek, and means " one from 
 whom or for whom somebody or something is 
 named," a " namesake." It is not too much to say 
 that, while popular tradition always claims that the 
 eponymous ancestor or city-founder gave his name 
 to his family, race, or city, the contrary is in reality 
 invariably the case, the name of the race or city
 
 THE GREAT RACES. t -, 
 
 1 -> 
 
 J3 
 
 being transferred to him. Or, in other words, the 
 eponym is really only that name, transformed into a 
 traditional person by a bold and vivid poetical fig- 
 ure of speech, which, if taken for what it is, makes 
 the beginnings of political history wonderfully plain 
 and easy to grasp and classify. 
 
 9. Yet, complete and correct as is the list 
 of Chap. X., within the limits which the writer 
 has set to himself, it by no means exhausts the 
 nations of the earth. The reason of the omissions, 
 however, is easily seen. Among the posterity of 
 Japhet the Greeks indeed are mentioned, (under the 
 name of Javan, which should be pronounced Yaivan, 
 and some of his sons), but not a single one of the 
 other ancient peoples of Europe, — Germans, Italians, 
 Celts, etc., — who also belonged to that race, as we, 
 their descendants, do. But then, at the time Chap. 
 X. was written, these countries, from their remote- 
 ness, were outside of the world in which the Hebrews 
 moved, beyond their horizon, so to speak. They 
 either did not know them at all, or, having nothing 
 to do with them, did not take them into considera- 
 tion. In neither case would they have been given 
 a place in the great list. The same may be said of 
 another large portion of the same race, which dwelt 
 to the far East and South of the Hebrews — the 
 Hindoos, (the white conquerors of India), and the 
 Persians. There came a time indeed, when the 
 latter not only came into contact with the Jews, 
 but were their masters ; but either that was after 
 Chap. X. was written or the Persians were identified 
 by the writers with a kindred nation, the Per-
 
 136 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 sians* near neighbor, who had flourished much 
 earlier and reacted in many ways on the countries 
 westward of it ; this nation was the Medes, who, 
 under the name of Madai, are mentioned as one of 
 the sons of Japhet, with Javan the Greek, 
 
 10. More noticeable and more significant than 
 these partial omissions is the determination with 
 which the authors of Chap. X. consistently ignore all 
 those divisions of mankind which do not belong to 
 one of the three great ivhite races. Neither the 
 Black nor the Yellow races are mentioned at all ; 
 they are left without the pale of the Hebrew brother- 
 hood of nations. Yet the Jews, who staid three or 
 four hundred years in Egypt, surely learned there 
 to know the real negro, for the Egyptians were con- 
 tinually fighting with pure-blood black tribes in the 
 south and south-west, and bringing in thousands of 
 black captives, who were made to work at their great 
 buildings and in their stone-quarries. But these 
 people were too utterly barbarous and devoid of all 
 culture or political importance to be taken into ac- 
 count. Besides, the Jews could not be aware of the 
 vast extent of the earth occupied by the black race, 
 since the greater part of Africa was then unknown 
 to the world, and so were the islands to the south 
 of India, also Australia and its islands — all seats of 
 different sections of that race. 
 
 11. The same could not be said of the Yellow 
 Race. True, its principal representatives, the na- 
 tions of the far East of Asia — the Chinese, the Mon- 
 gols and the Mandchous, — could not be known to 
 the Hebrews at any time of antiquity, but there
 
 THE GREAT RACES. 
 
 137 
 
 were more than enough representatives of it who 
 could not be wwknown to them.* For it was both a 
 very old and extremely numerous race, which early 
 spread over the greater part of the earth and at one 
 time probably equalled in numbers the rest of man- 
 kind. It seems always to have been broken up into 
 a great many tribes and peoples, whom it has been 
 found convenient to gather under the general desig- 
 nation of Turanians, from a very ancient name, — 
 TuR or TURA — which was given them by the white 
 population of Persia and Central Asia, and which is 
 still preserved in that of one of their principal sur- 
 viving branches, the Turks. All the different 
 members of this great family have had very striking 
 features in common, — the most extraordinary being 
 an incapability of reaching the highest culture, of 
 progressing indefinitely, improving continually. A 
 strange law of their being seems to have condemned 
 them to stop short, when they had attained a cer- 
 tain, not very advanced, stage. Thus their speech 
 has remained extremely imperfect. They spoke, 
 and such Turanian nations as now exist still speak, 
 languages, which, however they may differ, all have 
 this peculiarity, that they are composed cither 
 entirely of monosyllables, (the most rudimentary 
 form of speech), or of monosyllables pieced into 
 words in the stiffest, most unwieldy manner, stuck 
 
 * If, as has been suggested, the " land of Sinim " in Isaiah xlix., 
 12, is meant for China, such a solitary, incidental and unspecified 
 mention of a country the name of which may have been vaguely used 
 to express the remotest East, cannot invalidate the scheme so evi- 
 dently and persistently pursued in the composition of Chap. X.
 
 138 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 together, as it were, with nothing to join them, 
 wherefore this kind of language has been called 
 agglutmativc. Chinese belongs to the former class 
 of languages, the " monosyllabic," Turkish to the 
 latter, the "agglutinative." Further, the Turani- 
 ans were probably the first to invent writing, but 
 never went in that art beyond having one particu- 
 lar sign for every single word — (such is Chinese writ- 
 ing with its forty thousand signs or thereabouts, as 
 many as words in the language) — or at most a 
 sign for every syllable. They had beautiful be- 
 ginnings of poetry, but in that also never went 
 beyond beginnings. They were also probably the 
 first who built cities, but were wanting in the qual- 
 ities necessary to organize a society, establish a 
 state on solid and lasting foundations. At one 
 time they covered the whole of Western Asia, dwelt 
 there for ages before any other race occupied it, — 
 fifteen hundred years, according to a very trust- 
 worthy tradition, — and were called by the ancients 
 " the oldest of men ; " but they vanish and are not 
 heard of any more the moment that white invaders 
 come into the land ; these drive the Turanians be- 
 fore them, or bring them into complete subjection, 
 or mix with them, but, by force of their own 
 superiorly gifted nature, retain the dominant posi- 
 tion, so that the others lose all separate existence. 
 Thus it was everywhere. For wherever tribes of 
 the three Biblical races came, they mostly found 
 Turanian populations who had preceded them. 
 There are now a great number of Turanian tribes, 
 more or less numerous — Kirghizes, Bashkirs, Os-
 
 THE ORE A T RACES. 
 
 139 
 
 tiaks, Tunguzes, etc., etc. — scattered over the vast 
 expanse of Siberia and Eastern Russia, where they 
 roam at will with their flocks and herds of horses, 
 occasionally settling down, — fragmentary remnants 
 of a race which, to this latest time, has preserved 
 its original peculiarities and imperfections, whose 
 day is done, which has long ceased to improve, un- 
 less it assimilates with the higher white race and 
 adopts their culture, when all that it lacked is sup- 
 plied by the nobler element which mixes with it, as 
 in the case of the Hungarians, one of the most high- 
 spirited and talented nations of Europe, originally 
 of Turanian stock. The same may be said, in a 
 lesser degree, of the Finns — the native inhabitants 
 of the Russian principality of Finland. 
 
 12. All this by no means goes to show that the 
 Yellow Race has ever been devoid of fine faculties 
 and original genius. Quite the contrary; for, if 
 white races everywhere stepped in, took the work 
 of civilization out of their hands and carried it on 
 to a perfection of which they were incapable, still 
 they, the Turanians, had everywhere begun that 
 work, it was their inventions which the others took 
 up and improved : and we must remember that it 
 is very much easier to improve than to invent. 
 Only there is that strange limitation to their power 
 of progress and that want of natural refinement, 
 which are as a wall that encloses them around. 
 Even the Chinese, who, at first sight, are a brilliant 
 exception, are not so on a closer inspection. True, 
 they have founded and organized a great empire 
 which still endures ; they have a vast literature,
 
 I40 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 they have made most important inventions — print- 
 ing, manufacturing paper out of rags, the use of 
 the compass, gunpowder — centuries before Euro- 
 pean nations made them in their turn. Yet the 
 latter do all those things far better; they have im- 
 proved these, to them, new inventions more in a 
 couple of hundred years than the Chinese in a 
 thousand. In fact it is a good many centuries since 
 the Chinese have ceased to improve anything at all. 
 Their language and writing are childishly imperfect, 
 though the oldest in existence. In government, 
 in the forms of social life, in their ideas generally, 
 they follow rules laid down for them three thou- 
 sand years ago or more and from which to swerve 
 a hair's breadth were blasphemy. As they have 
 always stubbornly resisted foreign influences, and 
 gone the length of trying actually to erect material 
 walls between themselves and the rest of the world, 
 their empire is a perfectly fair specimen of what 
 the Yellow Race can do, if left entirely to itself, 
 and quite as much of what it zd^wnot do, and now 
 they have for centuries presented that unique phe- 
 nomenon — a great nation at a standstill. 
 
 13. All this obviously leads us to a very interest* 
 ing and suggestive question : what is this great race 
 which we find everywhere at the very roots of his- 
 tory, so that not only ancient tradition calls them 
 " the oldest of men," but modern science more and 
 more inclines to the same opinion? Whence came 
 it ? How is it not included in the great family of 
 nations, of which Chap. X. of Genesis gives so clear 
 and comprehensive a scheme? Parallel to this
 
 THE GKEA T RA CES. , , , 
 
 141 
 
 question arises another: what became of Cain's 
 posterity? What, above all, of the descendants of 
 those three sons of Lamech, whom the writer of 
 Genesis clearly places before us as heads of nations 
 and thinks of sufficient importance to specify what 
 their occupations were? (See Genesis iv. 19-22.) 
 Why do we never hear any more of this entire half 
 of humanity, severed in the very beginning from 
 the other half — the lineage of the accursed son 
 from that of the blest and favored son ? And may 
 not the answer to this series of questions be the 
 answer to the first series also ? 
 
 14. With regard to the second series this answer 
 is plain and decisive. The descendants of Cain were 
 necessarily out of the pale of the Hebrew world. 
 The curse of God, in consequence of which their* 
 forefather is said to have gone " out of the presence 
 of the Lord," at once and forever separated them 
 from the posterity of the pious son, from those who 
 "walked with God." The writer of Genesis tells 
 us that they lived in the "Land of Exile " and 
 multiplied, then dismisses them. For what could 
 the elect, the people of God, or even those other 
 nations who went astray, who were repeatedly 
 chastised, but whose family bond with the righteous 
 race was never entirely severed — what could they 
 have in common with the banished, the castaway, 
 the irretrievably accursed ? These did not count, 
 they were not of humanity. What more probable, 
 therefore, than that, being excluded from all the 
 other narratives, they should not be included in 
 that of the Flood ? And in that case, who should
 
 1^2 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 they be but that most ancient race, set apart by its 
 color and several striking peculiarities, which every- 
 where preceded their white brethren, but were 
 invariably supplanted by them and not destined to 
 supremacy on the earth ? This supposition has 
 been hazarded by men of great genius, and if bold, 
 still has much to support it ; if confirmed it would 
 solve many puzzles, throw strong and unexpected 
 light on many obscure points. The very antiq- 
 uity of the Yellow Race tallies admirably with the 
 Biblical narrative, for of the two Biblical brothers 
 Cain was the eldest. And the doom laid on the 
 race, " a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be on 
 the earth," has not been revoked through all ages. 
 Wherever pure Turanians are — they are nomads. 
 And when, fifteen hundred years ago and later, 
 countless swarms of barbarous people flooded 
 Europe, coming from the east, and swept all before 
 them, the Turanian hordes could be known chiefly 
 by this, that they destroyed, burned, laid waste — 
 and passed, vanished : whereas the others, after 
 treating a country quite as savagely, usually settled 
 in it and founded states, most of which exist even 
 now — for, French, German, English, Russian, we 
 are all descended from some of those barbarous 
 invaders. And this also would fully explain how 
 it came to pass that, although the Hebrews and 
 their forefathers — let us say the Semites generally 
 — everywhere found Turanians on their way, nay, 
 dwelt in the same lands with them, the sacred his- 
 torian ignores them completely, as in Gen. xi. 2.
 
 THE GREA T RACES. 
 
 143 
 
 15. For they were Turanians, arrived at a, for 
 them, really high state of culture, who peopled the 
 land of Shinar, when " tJiey " — descendants of Noah, 
 — journeying in the East, found that plain where 
 they dwelt for many years.
 
 III. 
 
 TURANIAN CHALDEA. — SHUMIR AND ACCAD. — THE 
 BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION. 
 
 I. It is not Berosus alone who speaks of the 
 " multitudes of men of foreign race" who colonized 
 Chaldea " in the beginning." It was a universally 
 admitted fact throughout antiquity that the popula- 
 tion of the country had always been a mixed one, but 
 a fact known vaguely, without particulars. On this 
 subject, as on so many others, the discoveries made 
 in the royal library of Nineveh shed an unexpected 
 and most welcome light. The very first, so to speak 
 preliminary, study of the tablets showed that there 
 were amongst them documents in two entirely dif- 
 ferent languages, of which one evidently was that 
 of an older population of Chaldea. The other and 
 later language, usually called Assyrian, because it 
 was spoken also by the Assyrians, being very like 
 Hebrew, an understanding of it was arrived at with 
 comparative ease. As to the older language there 
 was absolutely no clue. The only conjecture which 
 could be made with any certainty was, that it must 
 have been spoken by a double people, called the 
 people of Shumir and Accad. because later kings of
 
 TURANIAN CHALDEA. j^c 
 
 Babylon, in their inscriptions, always gave them- 
 selves the title of "Kings of Shumir and Accad," a 
 title which the Assyrian sovereigns, who at times 
 conquered Chaldea, did not fail to take also. But 
 who and what were these people might never have 
 been cleared up, but for the most fortunate discov- 
 ery of dictionaries and grammars, which, the texts 
 being supplied with Assyrian translations, served 
 our modern scholars, just as they did Assyrian stu- 
 dents 3000 years ago, to decipher and learn to 
 understand the oldest language of Chaldea. Of 
 course, it was a colossal piece of work, beset with 
 difficulties which it required an almost fierce deter- 
 mination and superhuman patience to master. But 
 every step made was so amply repaid by the results 
 obtained, that the zeal of the laborers was never 
 suffered to flag, and the effected reconstruction, 
 though far from complete even now, already enables 
 us to conjure a very suggestive and life-like picture 
 of those first settlers of the Mesopotamian Low- 
 lands, their character, religion and pursuits. 
 
 2. The language thus strangely brought to light 
 was very soon perceived to be distinctly of that 
 peculiar and primitive type — partly monosyllables, 
 partly words rudely pieced together, — which has 
 been described in a preceding chapter as character- 
 istic of the Turanian race, and which is known in sci- 
 ence by the general name of agglutinative, i.e.. 
 " glued or stuck together," without change in the 
 words, either by declension or conjugation. The 
 people of Shumir and Accad, therefore, were one and 
 the same Turanian nation, the difference in the name 
 
 12
 
 146 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 being merely a geographical one. Shumir is South- 
 ern or Lower Chaldea, the country towards and 
 around the Persian Gulf, — that very land of Shinar 
 which is mentioned in Genesis xi. 2. Indeed " Shi- 
 nar" is only the way in which the Hebrews pro- 
 nounced and spelt the ancient name of Lower Chal- 
 dea. ACCAD is Northern or Upper Chaldea. The 
 most correct way, and the safest from all misunder- 
 standing, is to name the people the Shumiro-Accads 
 and their language, the Shumiro-Accadian ; but 
 for brevity's sake, the first name is frequently 
 dropped, and many say simply " the Accads " and 
 "the Accadian language." It is clear, however, 
 that the royal title must needs unite both names, 
 which together represented the entire country of 
 Chaldea. Of late it has been discovered that the 
 Shumiro-Accads spoke two slightly differing dia- 
 lects of the same language, that of Shumir being 
 most probably the older of the two, as culture 
 and conquest seem to have been carried steadily 
 northward from the Gulf. 
 
 3. That the Accads themselves came from some- 
 where else, is plain from several circumstances, 
 although there is not the faintest symptom or trace 
 of any people whom they may have found in the 
 country. They brought into it the very first and 
 most essential rudiments of civilization, the art of 
 writing, and that of working metals ; it was prob- 
 ably also they who began to dig those canals with- 
 out which the land, notwithstanding its fabulous 
 fertility, must always be a marshy waste, and who 
 began to make bricks and construct buildings out of
 
 TURANIAN CHALDEA. j .7 
 
 them. There is ground to conclude that they came 
 down from mountains in the fact that the name 
 " Accad " means "Mountains" or "Highlands," a 
 name which they could not possibly have taken in 
 the dead fiats of Lower Chaldea, but must have 
 retained as a relic of an older home. It is quite 
 possible that this home may have been in the 
 neighboring wild and mountainous land of Shushan 
 (Susiana on the maps), whose first known popu- 
 lation was also Turanian. These guesses take us 
 into a past, where not a speck of positive fact can 
 be discerned. Yet even that must have been only 
 a station in this race's migration from a far more 
 northern centre. Their written language, even 
 after they had lived for centuries in an almost 
 tropical country, where palms grew in vast groves, 
 almost forests, and lions were common game, as 
 plentiful as tigers in the jungles of Bengal, con- 
 tained no sign to designate either the one or the 
 other, while it was well stocked with the signs of 
 metals, — of which there is no vestige, of course, 
 in Chaldea, — and all that belongs to the work- 
 ing thereof. As the Altai range, the great Sibe- 
 rian chain, has always been famous for its rich 
 mines of every possible metal ore, and as the val- 
 leys of the Altai are known to be the nests from 
 which innumerable Turanian tribes scattered to the 
 north and south, and in which many dwell to this 
 day after their own nomadic fashion, there is no ex- 
 travagance in supposing that there may have been 
 our Accads' original point of departure. Indeed the 
 Altai is so indissolubly connected with the origin of
 
 148 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 most Turanian nations, that many scientists prefer 
 to call the entire Yellow Race, with all its gradations 
 of color, " the Altaic." Their own traditions point 
 the same way. Several of them have a pretty 
 legend of a sort of paradise, a secluded valley some- 
 where in the Altai, pleasant and watered by many 
 streams, where their forefathers either dwelt in the 
 first place or whither they were providentially con- 
 ducted to be saved from a general massacre. The 
 valley was entirely enclosed with high rocks, steep 
 and pathless, so that when, after several hundred 
 years, it could no longer hold the number of its in- 
 habitants, these began to search for an issue and 
 found none. Then one among them, who was a 
 smith, discovered that the rocks were almost en- 
 tirely of iron. By his advice, a huge fire was made 
 and a great many mighty bellows were brought into 
 play, by which means a path was melted through 
 the rocks. A tradition, by the by, which, while 
 confirming the remark that the invention of metal- 
 lurgy belongs originally to the Yellow Race in its 
 earliest stages of development, is strangely in ac- 
 cordance with the name of the Biblical Tubalcain, 
 " the forger of every cutting instrument of brass 
 and iron." That the Accads were possessed of this 
 distinctive accomplishment of their race is moreover 
 made very probable by the various articles and or- 
 naments in gold, brass and iron which are continu- 
 ally found in the very oldest tombs. 
 
 4. But infinitely the most precious acquisition se- 
 cured to us by the unexpected revelation of this 
 stage of remotest antiquity is a wonderfully exten-
 
 TUKANIA.V CHALDEA. 
 
 149 
 
 sive collection of prayers, invocations and other 
 sacred texts, from which we can reconstruct, with 
 much probability, the most primitive religion in the 
 world — for such undoubtedly was that of the 
 Accads. As a clear and authentic insight into the 
 first manifestation of the religious instinct in man 
 was just what was wanting until now, in order to 
 enable us to follow its development from the first, 
 crudest attempts at expression to the highest aspi- 
 rations and noblest forms of worship, the value of 
 this discovery can never be overrated. It intro- 
 duces us moreover into so strange and fantastical a 
 world as not the most imaginative of fictions can 
 surpass. 
 
 5. The instinct of religion — " religiosity," as it has 
 been called — is inborn to man ; like the faculty of 
 speech, it belongs to man, and to man only, of all 
 living beings. So much so, that modern science is 
 coming to acknowledge these two faculties as tJie 
 distinctive characteristics which mark man as a 
 being apart from and above the rest of creation. 
 Whereas the division of all that exists upon the 
 earth has of old been into three great classes or 
 realms — the "mineral realm," the "vegetable 
 realm" and the "animal realm," in which latter 
 man was included — it is now proposed to erect the 
 human race with all its varieties into a separate 
 " realm," for this very reason : that man has all that 
 animals have, and two things more which they have 
 not — speech and religiosity, which assume a faculty 
 of abstract thinking, observing and drawing general 
 conclusions, solely and distinctively human. Now
 
 I 50 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 the very first observations of man in the most prim- 
 itive stage of his existence must necessarily have 
 awakened in him a twofold consciousness — that of 
 power and that of helplessness. He could do many 
 things. Small in size, weak in strength, destitute 
 of natural clothing and weapons, acutely sensitive 
 to pain and atmospheric changes as all higher 
 natures are, he could kill and tame the huge and 
 powerful animals which had the advantage of him 
 in all these things, whose numbers and fierceness 
 threatened him at every turn with destruction, from 
 which his only escape would seem to have been con- 
 stant cowering and hiding. He could compel the 
 earth to bear for him choicer food than for the 
 other beings who lived on her gifts. He could com- 
 mand the service of fire, the dread visitor from 
 heaven. Stepping victoriously from one achieve- 
 ment to another, ever widening his sphere of 
 action, of invention, man could not but be filled 
 with legitimate pride. But on the other hand, 
 he saw himself surrounded with things which he 
 could neither account for nor subdue, which had 
 the greatest influence on his well-being, either favor- 
 able or hostile, but which were utterly beyond his 
 comprehension or control. The same sun which 
 ripened his crop sometimes scorched it ; the rain 
 which cooled and fertilized his field, sometimes 
 swamped it ; the hot winds parched him and his cat- 
 tle ; in the marshes lurked disease and death. All 
 these and many, many more, were evidently POW- 
 ERS, and could do him great good or work him 
 great harm, while he was unable to do either to
 
 TURANIAN CHALDEA. j 5 1 
 
 them. These things existed, he felt their action 
 every day of his Hfe, consequently they were to him 
 living Beings, alive in the same way that he was, 
 possessed of will, for good or for evil. In short, to 
 primitive man everything in nature was alive with 
 an individual life, as it is to the very young child, 
 who would not beat the chair against which he has 
 knocked himself, and then kiss it to make friends, 
 did he not think that it is a living and feeling being 
 like himself. The feeling of dependence and abso- 
 lute helplessness thus created must have more than 
 balanced that of pride and self-reliance. Man felt 
 himself placed in a world where he was suffered to 
 live and have his share of what good things he could 
 get, but which was not ruled by him, — in a spirit- 
 world. Spirits around him, above him, below him, 
 — what could he do but humble himself, confess his 
 dependence, and pray to be spared? For surely, 
 if those spirits existed and took enough interest in 
 him to do him good or evil, they could hear him 
 and might be moved by supplication. To establish 
 a distinction between such spirits which did only 
 harm, were evil in themselves, and those whose 
 action was generally beneficial and only on rare 
 occasions destructive, was the next natural step, 
 which led as naturally to a perception of divine dis- 
 pleasure as the cause of such terrible manifestations 
 and a seeking of means to avert or propitiate it. 
 While fear and loathing were the portion of the 
 former spirits, the essentially evil ones, love and 
 gratitude, were the predominant feelings inspired by 
 the latter, — feelings which, together with the ever
 
 152 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 present consciousness of dependence, are the very 
 essence of religion, just as praise and worship are 
 the attempts to express them in a tangible form. 
 
 6. It is this most primitive, material and unques- 
 tioning stage in the growth of religious feeling, 
 which a large portion of the Shumiro-Accadian doc- 
 uments from the Royal Library at Nineveh brings 
 before us with a force and completeness which, 
 however much room there may still be for uncer- 
 tainty in details, on the whole really amounts to 
 more than conjecture. Much will, doubtless, be dis- 
 covered yet, much will be done, but it will only serve 
 to fill in a sketch, of which the outlines are already 
 now tolerably fixed and authentic. The materials for 
 this most important reconstruction are almost en- 
 tirely contained in a vast collection of two hundred 
 tablets, forming one consecutive work in three 
 books, over fifty of which have been sifted out of 
 the heap of rubbish at the British Museum and first 
 deciphered by Sir Henry Rawlinson, one of the 
 greatest, as he was the first discoverer in this field, 
 and George Smith, Avhose achievements and too 
 early death have been mentioned in a former chap- 
 ter. Of the three books into which the collection 
 is divided, one treats "of evil spirits," another of 
 diseases, and the third contains hymns and prayers 
 — the latter collection showing signs of a later and 
 higher development. Out of these materials the 
 lately deceased French scholar, Mr. Frangois Le- 
 normant, whose name has for the last fifteen years or 
 so of his life stood in the very front of this branch 
 of Oriental research, has been the first to reconstruct
 
 TURAXIAN CHALDEA. jr^ 
 
 an entire picture in a book not very voluminous in- 
 deed, but which must always remain a corner-stone 
 in the history of human culture. This book shall 
 be our guide in the strange world we now enter.* 
 
 7. To the people of Shumir and Accad, then, the 
 universe was peopled with Spirits, whom they dis- 
 tributed according to its different spheres and re- 
 gions. For they had formed a very elaborate and 
 clever, if peculiar idea of what they supposed the 
 world to be like. According to the ingenious ex- 
 pression of a Greek writer of the ist century A.D. 
 they imagined it to have the shape of an inverted 
 round boat or bowl, the thickness of which would 
 represent the mixture of land and water {ki-ci) 
 which we call the crust of the earth, while the hol- 
 low beneath this inhabitable crust was fancied as a 
 bottomless pit or abyss {gc), in which dwelt many 
 powers. Above the convex surface of the earth 
 {Jd-d) spread the sky {ana), itself divided into two 
 regions : — the highest heaven or firmament, which, 
 with the fixed stars immovably attached to it, re- 
 volved, as round an axis or pivot, around an im- 
 mensely high mountain, which joined it to the 
 earth as a pillar, and was situated somewhere in the 
 far North-East — some say North — and the lower 
 heaven, where the planets — a sort of resplendent 
 animals, seven in number, of beneficent nature- 
 wandered forever on their appointed path. To 
 these were opposed seven evil demons, sometimes 
 
 * " La Magie et la Divination chez les Chaldeens," 1S74-5. ^^'^' 
 man translation o£ it, 1S7S.
 
 154 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 called " the Seven Fiery Phantoms." But above 
 all these, higher in rank and greater in power, is 
 the Spirit {Zi) of heaven {ana), Zi-ANA, or, as 
 often, simply Ana— " Heaven." Between the lower 
 heaven and the surface of the earth is the atmos- 
 pheric region, the realm of Im or Mermer, the 
 Wind, where he drives the clouds, rouses the storms, 
 and whence he pours down the rain, which is stored 
 in the great reservoir of Ana, in the heavenly 
 Ocean. As to the earthly Ocean, it is fancied as a 
 broad river, or watery rim, flowing all round the 
 edge of the imaginary inverted bowl ; in its waters 
 dwells Ea (whose name means "the House of Wa- 
 ters "), the great Spirit of the Earth and Waters {Zi- 
 ki-a), either in the form of a fish, whence he is fre- 
 quently called " Ea the fish," or "the Exalted Fish," 
 or on a magnificent ship, with which he travels round 
 the earth, guarding and protecting it. The minor 
 spirits of earth {Aiituma-ki) are not much spoken 
 of except in a body, as a sort of host or legion. All 
 the more terrible are the seven spirits of the abyss, 
 the Maskim, of whom it is said that, although their 
 seat is in the depths of the earth, yet their voice 
 resounds on the heights also : they reside at will in 
 the immensity of space, " not enjoying a good name 
 either in heaven or on earth." Their greatest de- 
 light is to subvert the orderly course of nature, to 
 cause earthquakes, inundations, ravaging tempests. 
 Although the Abyss is their birth-place and proper 
 sphere, they are not submissive to its lord and ruler 
 MUL-GE (" Lord of the Abyss"). In that they are 
 like their brethren of the lower heaven who do not
 
 TURAmAN CHALDEA. 
 
 155 
 
 acknowledge Ana's supremacy, in fact are called 
 "spirits of rebellion," because, being originally 
 Ana's messengers, they once " secretly plotted a 
 wicked deed," rose against the heavenly powers, 
 obscured the Moon, and all but hurled him from his 
 seat. But the Maskim are ever, more feared and 
 hated, as appears from the following description, 
 which has become celebrated for its real poetical 
 force: 
 
 8. " They are seven ! they are seven ! — Seven 
 they are in the depths of Ocean, — seven they are, 
 disturbers of the face of Heaven. — They arise from 
 the depths of Ocean, from hidden lurking-places. — 
 They spread like snares. — Male they are not, female 
 they are not. — Wives they have not, children are 
 not born to them. — Order they know not, nor benefi- 
 cence ; — prayers and supplication they hear not. — 
 Vermin grown in the bowels of the mountains — 
 foes of Ea — they are the throne-bearers of the gods 
 — they sit in the roads and make them unsafe. — 
 The fiends ! the fiends ! — They are seven, they are 
 seven, seven they are ! 
 
 " Spirit of Heaven {Zi-a7ia, Ana), be they conjured ! 
 " Spirit of Earth {Zi-kt-a, Ed), be they conjured ! " 
 
 9. Besides these regular sets of evil spirits in 
 sevens — seven being a mysterious and consecrated 
 number — there are the hosts untold of demons which 
 assail man in every possible form, which are always 
 on the watch to do him harm, not only bodily, but 
 moral in the way of civil broils and family dissen- 
 sions; confusion is their work; it is they who 
 "steal the child from the father's knee," who " drive
 
 156 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 the son from his father's house," who withhold from 
 the wife the blessing of children ; they have stolen 
 days from heaven, which they have made evil days, 
 that bring nothing but ill-luck and misfortune, — 
 and nothing can keep them out : " They fall as rain 
 from the sky, they spring from the earth, — they 
 steal from house to house, — doors do not stop them, 
 — bolts do not shut them out, — they creep in at the 
 doors like serpents, — they blow in at the roof like 
 winds." Various are their haunts : the tops of 
 mountains, the pestilential marshes by the sea, but 
 especially the desert. Diseases are among the most 
 dreaded of this terrible band, and first among these 
 Namtar or DiBBARA, the demon of Pestilence, 
 Idpa (Fever), and a certain mysterious disease of 
 the head, which must be insanity, of which it is said 
 that it oppresses the head and holds it tight like a 
 tiara (a heavy headdress) or " like a dark prison," 
 and makes it confused, that " it is like a violent 
 tempest ; no one knows whence it comes, nor what 
 is its object." 
 
 10. All these evil beings are very properly classed 
 together under the general name of " creations of 
 the Abyss," births of the nether world, the world of 
 the dead. For the unseen world below the hab- 
 itable earth was naturally conceived as the dwelling 
 place of the departed spirits after death. It is very 
 remarkable as characteristic of the low standard 
 of moral conception which the Shumiro-Accads 
 had attained at this stage of their development, 
 that, although they never admitted that those 
 who died ceased to exist altogether, there is very
 
 TURANIAN CHALDEA. jcy 
 
 little to show that they imagined any happy state 
 for them after death, not even as a reward for a 
 righteous hfe, nor, on the other hand, looked to 
 a future state for punishment of wrongs committed 
 in this world, but promiscuously consigned their 
 dead to the Arali, a most dismal region which is 
 called the " support of chaos," or, in phrase no less 
 vague and full of mysterious awe, " the Great 
 Land" {Kt-gal), "the Great City" {Urti-gal), "the 
 spacious dwelling," " where they wander in the 
 dark," — a region ruled by a female divinity called 
 by different names, but most frequently " Lady of 
 the Great Land " {Nin-kt-gal), or " Lady of the 
 Abyss " {Nin-gc), who may the rather be under- 
 stood as Death personified, that Namtar (Pestilence) 
 is her chief minister. The Shumiro-Accads seem 
 to have dimly fancied that association with so many 
 evil beings whose proper home the Arali was, must 
 convert even the human spirits into beings almost 
 as noxious, for one or two passages appear to imply 
 that they were afraid of ghosts, at least on one 
 occasion it is threatened to send the dead back into 
 the upper world, as the direst calamity that can be 
 inflicted. 
 
 II. As if all these terrors were not sufificient to 
 make life a burden, the Shumiro-Accads believed in 
 sorcerers, wicked men who knew how to compel the 
 powers of evil to do their bidding and thus could 
 inflict death, sickness or disasters at their pleasure. 
 This could be done in many ways — by a look, by 
 uttering certain words, by drinks made of herbs 
 prepared under certain conditions and ceremonies.
 
 158 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 Nay, the power of doing harm sometimes fatally 
 belonged even to innocent persons, who inflicted it 
 unintentionally by their look — for the effect of 
 "the evil eye " did not always depend on a person's 
 own will. 
 
 12. Existence under such conditions must have 
 been as unendurable as that of poor children who 
 have been terrified by silly nurses into a belief in 
 ogres and a fear of dark rooms, had there not existed 
 real or imaginary defences against this array of hor- 
 rible beings always ready to fall on unfortunate hu- 
 manity in all sorts of inexplicable ways and for no 
 other reason but their own detestable delight in do- 
 ing evil. These defences could not consist in rational 
 measures dictated by a knowledge of the laws of 
 physical nature, since they had no notion of such 
 laws ; nor in prayers and propitiatory offerings, 
 since one of the demons' most execrable qualities 
 was, as we have seen, that they " knew not benefi- 
 cence " and "heard not prayer and supplication." 
 Then, if they cannot be coaxed, they must be com- 
 pelled. This seems a very presumptuous assump- 
 tion, but it is strictly in accordance with human in- 
 stinct. It has been very truly said * that " man was 
 so conscious of being called to exercise empire over 
 the powers of nature, that, the moment he entered 
 into any relations with them, it was to try and sub- 
 ject them to his will. Only instead of studying the 
 phenomena, in order to grasp their laws and apply 
 
 * Alfred Maury, " La Magie et I'Astrologie dans I'Antiquite et au 
 Moyen-age." Introduction, p. i.
 
 TURANIAN CHALDEA. 
 
 159 
 
 them to his needs, he fancied he could, by means 
 of peculiar practices and consecrated forms, compel 
 the physical agents of nature to serve his wishes 
 and purposes. . . . This pretension had its root in 
 the notion which antiquity had formed of the nat- 
 ural phenomena. It did not see in them the conse- 
 quence of unchangeable and necessary laws, always 
 active and always to be calculated upon, but fancied 
 them to depend on the arbitrary and varying will 
 of the spirits and deities it had put in the place of 
 physical agents." It follows that in a religion 
 which peoples the universe with spirits of which the 
 greater part are evil, magic — i.e., conjuring with 
 words and rites, incantations, spells — must take the 
 place of worship, and the ministers of such a relig- 
 ion are not priests, but conjurers and enchanters. 
 This is exactly the state of things revealed by the 
 great collection of texts discovered by Sir H. Raw- 
 linson and G. Smith. They contain forms for con- 
 juring all the different kinds of demons, even to evil 
 dreams and nightmares, the object of most such 
 invocations being to drive them away from the 
 habitations of men and back to where they properly 
 belong — the depth of the desert, the inaccessible 
 mountain tops, and all remote, waste and uninhab- 
 ited places generally, where they can range at will, 
 and find nobody to harm. 
 
 13. Yet there are also prayers for protection and 
 help addressed to beings conceived as essentially 
 good and beneficent — a step marking a great ad- 
 vance in the moral feeling and religious conscious- 
 ness of the people. Such beings — gods, in fact —
 
 l60 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 were, above all, Ana and Ea, whom we saw invoked 
 in the incantation of the Seven Maskim as " Spirit 
 of Heaven," and " Spirit of Earth." The latter 
 especially is appealed to as an unfailing refuge to 
 ill-used and terrified mortals. He is imagined as 
 possessed of all knowledge and wisdom, which he 
 uses only to befriend and protect. His usual 
 residence is the deep, — (hence his name, ^-a, " the 
 House of Waters ") — but he sometimes travels 
 round the earth in a magnificent ship. His very 
 name is a terror to the evil ones. He knows the 
 words, the spells that will break their power and 
 compel their obedience. To him, therefore, the 
 people looked in their need with infinite trust. 
 Unable to cope with the mysterious dangers and 
 snares which, as they fancied, beset them on all 
 sides, ignorant of the means of defeating the wicked 
 beings who, they thought, pursued them with 
 abominable malice and gratuitous hatred, they 
 turned to Ea. He would know. He must be asked, 
 and he would tell. 
 
 14. But, as though bethinking themselves that Ea 
 was a being too mighty and exalted to be lightly 
 addressed and often disturbed, the Shumiro-Accads 
 imagined a beneficent spirit, Meri-dug (more cor- 
 rectly Mirri-Dugga), called son of Ea and Dam- 
 KINA, (a name of Earth). Meridug's only ofifice 
 is to act as mediator between his father and 
 suffering mankind. It is he who bears to Ea the 
 suppliant's request, exposes his need sometimes 
 in very moving words, and requests to know the 
 remedy — if illness be the trouble — or the counter-
 
 TU RANI AX CHALDEA. jgj 
 
 spell, if the victim be held in the toils of witchcraft. 
 Ea tells his son, who is then supposed to reveal 
 the secret to the chosen instrument of assistance — 
 of course the conjuring priest, or better, soothsayer. 
 As most incantations are conceived on this prin- 
 ciple, they are very monotonous in form, though 
 frequently enlivened by the supposed dialogue 
 between the father and son. Here is one of the 
 more entertaining specimens. It occupies an entire 
 tablet, but unfortunately many lines have been 
 hopelessly injured, and have to be omitted. The 
 text begins: 
 
 "The Disease of the Head has issued from the Abyss, from the 
 dwelling of the Lord of the Abyss." 
 
 Then follow the symptoms and the description 
 of the sufferer's inability to help himself. Then 
 " Meridug has looked on his misery. He has 
 entered the dwelling of his father Ea, and has 
 spoken unto him : 
 
 " ' My father, the Disease of the Head has issued from tlie Abyss.' 
 
 "A second time he has spoken unto hint : 
 
 " ' What he iiuisL do against it the man knows not. How shall he 
 find healing ? ' 
 
 '• Ea has replied to his son Meridug: 
 
 " ' My son, how dost thou not know ? What should I teach thee ? 
 What I know, thou also knowest. But come hither, my son Meri- 
 dug. Take a bucket, fill it with water from the mouth of the rivers ; 
 impart to this water thy exalted magic power ; sprinkle with it the 
 man, son of his god, .... wrap up his head, .... and on the 
 highway pour it out. May insanity be dispelled ! that the disease of 
 his head vanish like a phantom of the night. May Ea's word drive 
 it out ! May Damkina heal him.' " 
 
 13
 
 1 62 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 15. Another dialogue of the same sort, in which 
 Ea is consulted as to the means of breaking the 
 power of the Maskim, ends by his revealing that 
 
 " The white cedar is the tree which breaks the Maskim 's noxious 
 might." 
 
 In fact the white cedar was considered an infal- 
 lible defence against all spells and evil powers. 
 f\ny action or ceremony described in the conjura- 
 tion must of course be performed even as the words 
 are spoken. Then there is a long one, perhaps 
 the best preserved of all, to be recited by the suf- 
 ferer, who is supposed to be under the effects of 
 an evil spell, and from Avhich it is evident that the 
 words are to accompany actions performed by the 
 conjurer. It is divided into parallel verses, of which 
 the first runs thus : 
 
 " As this onion is being peeled of its skins, thus shall it be of the 
 spell. The burning fire shall consume it ; it shall no more be 
 planted in a row, .... the ground shall not receive its root, its head 
 shall contain no seed and the sun shall not take care of it ; — it shall not 
 be offered at the feast of a god or a king. — The man who has cast 
 the evil spell, his eldest son, his wife, — the spell, the lamentations, 
 the transgressions, the written spells, the blasphemies, the sins, — the 
 evil which is in my body, in my flesh, in my sores, — may they all be 
 destroyed as this onion, and may the burning fire consume them this 
 day ! May the evil spell go far away, and may I see the light again ! " 
 
 Then the destruction of a date is similarly de- 
 scribed : 
 
 *' It shall not return to the bough from which it has been plucked." 
 
 The untying of a knot : 
 " Its threads shall not return to the stem which has produced them.' 
 
 The tearing up of some wool :
 
 TURANIAN CHALDEA. jg? 
 
 " It shall not return to the back of its sheep." 
 
 The tearing of some stuff, and after each act the 
 second verse : 
 
 " The man who has cast the spell," etc. 
 
 is repeated. 
 
 i6. It is devoutly to be hoped, for the patients' 
 sake, that treatments like these took effect on the 
 disease, for they got no other. Diseases being con- 
 ceived as personal demons who entered a man's 
 body of their own accord or under compulsion from 
 powerful sorcerers, and illness being consequently 
 considered as a kind of possession, clearly the only 
 thing to do was to drive out the demon or break 
 the spell with the aid of the beneficent Ea and his 
 son. If this intervention was of no avail, nothing 
 remained for the patient but to get well as he 
 could, or to die. This is why there never was a 
 science of medicine in the proper sense in Chaldea, 
 even as late as three or four hundred years B.C., 
 and the Greek travellers who then visited Babylon 
 must have been not a little shocked at the custom 
 they found there of bringing desperately sick per- 
 sons out of the houses with their beds and expos- 
 ing them in the streets, when any passer-by could 
 approach them, inquire into the disease and suggest 
 some remedy — which was sure to be tried as a last 
 chance. This extraordinary experiment was of 
 course not resorted to until all known forms of 
 conjuration had been gone through and had proved 
 inefificient. 
 
 17. The belief that certain words and impreca-
 
 164 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 tions could break the power of demons or sorcerers 
 must have naturally led to the notion that to wear 
 such imprecations, written on some substance or ar- 
 ticle, always about one's person must be a continual 
 defence against them ; while o-n the other hand, 
 words of invocation to the beneficent spirits and 
 images representing them, worn in the same way, 
 must draw down on the wearer those spirits' pro- 
 tection and blessing. Hence the passion for talis- 
 mans. They were of various kinds : strips of stuff, 
 with the magic words written on them, to be fast- 
 ened to the body, or the clothes, or articles of 
 household furniture, were much used ; but small 
 articles of clay or hard stone were in greater 
 favor on account of their durability. As houses 
 could be possessed by evil spirits just as well as 
 individuals, talismans were placed in different parts 
 of them for protection, and this belief was so 
 enduring that small clay figures of gods were found 
 in Assyrian palaces under thresholds — as in the 
 palace of Khorsabad, by Botta — placed there " to 
 keep from it fiends and enemies." It has been 
 discovered in this manner that many of the sculp- 
 tures which adorned the Assyrian palaces and 
 temples were of talismanic nature. Thus the 
 winged bulls placed at the gateways were nothing 
 but representations of an Accadian class of guardian 
 spirits, — the KiriWii, Hebrew Kerubini, of which we 
 have made Cherub, Cherubim — who were supposed 
 to keep watch at entrances, even at that of the 
 Arali, while some sculptures on which demons, in 
 the shape of hideous monsters, arc seen fighting
 
 54- — DEMUNS FIGHTING. 
 (tTum the British Museum.)
 
 1 65 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 each other, are, so to speak, imprecations in stone, 
 which, if translated into words, would mean : " May 
 the evil demons stay outside, may they assail and 
 tight each other," — as, in that case, they would 
 clearly have no leisure to assail the inhabitants of 
 the dwelling. That these sculptures really were re- 
 garded as talismans and expected to guard the 
 inmates from harm, is abundantly shown by the 
 manner in which they are mentioned in several 
 inscriptions, down to a very late date. Thus Esar- 
 haddon, one of the last kings of Assyria (about 
 700 B.C.), says, after describing a very sumptuous 
 palace which he had built : — "I placed in its gates 
 bulls and colossi, who, according to their fixed 
 command, against the wicked turn themselves ; 
 they protect the footsteps, making peace to be 
 upon the path of the king their creator." 
 
 18. The cylinder seals with their inscriptions and 
 engraved figures were mostly also talismans of like 
 nature ; which must be the reason why so many are 
 found in graves, tied to the dead person's wrist by a 
 string — evidently as a protection against the fiends 
 which the departed spirit was expected to meet. 
 The magic power was of course conferred on all 
 talismans by the words which the conjurer spoke 
 over them with the necessary ceremonies. One 
 such long incantation is preserved entire. It is 
 designed to impart to the talisman the power of 
 keeping the demons from all parts of the dwelling, 
 which are singly enumerated, with the conse- 
 quences to the demons who would dare to trespass : 
 those who steal into gutters, remove bolts or
 
 TURANIAN CHALDEA. 
 
 167 
 
 hinges, shall be broken like an earthen jug, crushed 
 like clay; those who overstep the wooden frame of 
 the house shall be clipped of their wings ; those 
 who stretch their neck in at the window, the win- 
 dow shall descend and cut their throat. The most 
 original in this class of superstitions was that 
 which, according to Lenormant, consisted in the 
 notion that all these demons were of so unutterably 
 ugly a form and countenance, that they must fly 
 away terrified if they only beheld their own like- 
 ness. As an illustration of this principle he gives 
 an incantation against "the wicked Namtar. " It 
 begins with a highly graphic description of the 
 terrible demon, who is said to " take man captive 
 like an enemy," to " burn him like a flame," to 
 " double him up like a bundle," to " assail man, 
 although having neither hand nor foot, like a 
 noose." Then follows the usual dialogue between 
 Ea and Meridug, (in the identical words given 
 above), and Ea at length reveals the prescription : 
 "Come hither, my son Meridug. Take mud of the 
 Ocean and knead out of it a likeness of him, (the 
 Namtar.) Lay down the man, after thou hast 
 purified him ; lay the image on his bare abdomen, 
 impart to it my magic power and turn its face west- 
 ward, that the wicked Namtar, who dwells in his 
 body, may take up some other abode. Amen." 
 The idea is that the Namtar, on beholding his own 
 likeness, will flee from it in dismay ! 
 
 19. To this same class belongs a small bronze 
 statuette, which is to be seen in the Louvre. Mr. 
 Lenormant thus describes it : " It is the imas/e of a
 
 1(58 'J'Jfii STORY Ol' CIIALDEA. 
 
 horrible demon, standing, with the body of a dog, 
 the talons of an eagle, arms ending in a lion's paws, 
 the tail of a scorpion, the head of a skeleton, but 
 with eyes, and a goat's horns, and with four large 
 vv'ings at the back, unfolded. A ring placed at the 
 back of the head served to hang the figure up. 
 Along the back is an inscription in the Accadian 
 language, informing us that this pretty creature is 
 the Demon of the South-west Wind, and is to be 
 placed at the door or window. For in Chaldea the 
 South-west Wind comes from the deserts of Arabia, 
 its burning breath consumes everything and pro- 
 duces the same ravages as the Simoon in Africa. 
 Therefore this particular talisman is most frequently 
 met with. Our museums contain many other fig- 
 ures of demons, used as talismans to frighten away 
 the evil spirits they were supposed to represent. 
 One has the head of a goat on a disproportionately 
 long neck ; another shows a hyena's head, with huge 
 open mouth, on a bear's body with lion's paws." 
 On tlie principle that possession is best guarded 
 against by the presence of beneficent spirits, the 
 exorcisms — i.e., forms of conjuring designed to 
 drive the evil demons out of a man or dwelling — 
 are usually accompanied with a request to good 
 spirits to enter the one or the other, instead of the 
 wicked ones who have been ejected. The supreme 
 power which breaks that of all incantations, talis- 
 mans, conjuring rites whatever, is, it would appear, 
 supposed to reside in a great, divine name, — pos- 
 sibly a name of Ea himself. At all events, it is 
 Ea's own secret. For even in his dialosfues with
 
 55. — DEMON OF THE SOUTH-WEST WIND 
 (.Perrot and Chipiez.)
 
 I70 
 
 THE STONY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 Meridug, when entreated for this supreme aid in 
 desperate cases, he is only supposed to impart it to 
 his son to use against the obdurate demons and 
 thereby crush their power, but it is not given, so 
 that the demons are only threatened with it, but 
 it is not actually uttered in the course of the incan- 
 tations. 
 
 20. Not entirely unassisted did Ea pursue his 
 gigantic task of protection and 
 healing. Along with him invo- 
 cations are often addressed to 
 several other spirits conceived 
 as essentially good divine be- 
 ings, whose beneficent influence 
 is felt in many ways. Such 
 was Im, the Storm-Wind, with 
 its accompanying vivifying 
 showers ; such are the purify- 
 ing and wholesome Waters, the 
 Rivers and Springs which feed 
 the earth ; above all, such were 
 the Sun and Fire, als^ the 
 -HEAD OF DEMON. M^o,,^ objccts of doublc rcvcr- 
 ence and gratitude because they dispel the darkness 
 of night, which the Shumiro-Accads loathed and 
 feared excessively, as the time when the wicked 
 demons are strongest and the power of bad men for 
 weaving deadly spells is greatest. The third Book 
 of the Collection of Magic Texts is composed al- 
 most entirely of hymns to these deities — as well as 
 to Ea and Meridug — which betray a somewhat later 
 stage in the nation's religious development, by the
 
 TURANIAN CHALDEA. jyi 
 
 poetical beauty of some of the fragments, and es- 
 pecially by a purer feeling of adoration and a higher 
 perception of moral goodness, Avhich are absent 
 from the oldest incantations. 
 
 21. At noon, when the sun has reached the high- 
 est point in its heavenly course, the earth lies before 
 it Avithout a shadow ; all things, good or bad, are 
 manifest ; its beams, after dispelling the unfriendly 
 gloom, pierce into every nook and cranny, bringing 
 into light all ugly things that hide and lurk ; the 
 evil-doer cowers and shuns its all-revealing splendor, 
 and, to perform his accursed deeds, waits the return 
 of his dark accomplice, night. What wonder then 
 that to the Shumiro-Accads Ud, the Sun in all its 
 midday glory, was a very hero of protection, the 
 source of truth and justice, the "supreme judge in 
 Heaven and on earth," who " knows lie from truth," 
 who knows the truth that is in the soul of man. 
 The hymns to Ud that have been deciphered are 
 full of beautiful images. Take for instance the fol- 
 lowing : — 
 
 "O Sun,* I have called unto thee in the bright heavens. In the 
 shadow of the cedar art thou ; " (i.e., it is thou who makest the cedar 
 to cast its shadow, holy and auspicious as the tree itself.) "Thy 
 feet are on the summits. . . . The countries have wished for thee, 
 they have longed for thy coming, O Lord! Thy radiant light 
 illumines all countries. . . . Thou makest lies to vanish, thou 
 destroyest the noxious influence of portents, omens, spells, dreams 
 and evil apparitions ; thou turnest wicked plots to a happy 
 issue. . . ." 
 
 * " Ud " not being a proper name, but the name of the sun in the 
 language of Shumir and Accad, it can be rendered in translation by 
 " Sun," with a capital.
 
 1^2 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 This is both true and finely expressed. For what 
 most inveterate beHever in ghosts and apparitions 
 ever feared them by daylight ? and the last touch 
 shows much moral sense and observation of the 
 mysterious \\orkings of a beneficent power which 
 often not merely defeats evil but even turns it into 
 good. There is splendid poetry in the following 
 fragment describing the glor\' of sunrise : — ■ 
 
 " O Sun ! thou hast stepped forth from the background of heaven, 
 thou hast pushed back the bolts of the brilliant heaven, — yea, the 
 gate of heaven. O Sun ! above the land thou hast raised thy head ! 
 ( ) Sun 1 thou hast covered the immeasurable space of heaven and 
 countries !" 
 
 Another hymn describes how, at the Sun's ap- 
 pearance in the brilliant portals of the heavens, 
 and during his progress to their highest point, 
 all the great gods turn to his light, all the good 
 spirits of heaven and earth gaze up to his face, 
 surround him joyfully and reverently, and escort 
 him in solemn procession. It needs only to put 
 all these fragments into fine verse to make out of 
 them a poem which will be held beautiful even in 
 our day, when from our very childhood we learn 
 to know the difference between good and poor poe- 
 try, growing up, as we do, on the best of all ages 
 and all countries. 
 
 22. When the sun disappeared in the West, sink- 
 ing rapid}}', and diving, as it were, into the very 
 midst of darkness, the Shumiro-Accads did not 
 fancy him as either asleep or inactive, but on the 
 contrary as still engaged in his everlasting work. 
 Under the name of NiN-DAR, he travels through
 
 TURANIAN CITALDEA, 
 
 173 
 
 the dreary regions ruled by Mulge and, his essence 
 being light, he combats the powers of darkness in 
 their own home, till He comes out of it, a trium- 
 phant hero, in the morning. Nin-dar is also the 
 keeper of the hidden treasures of the earth — its 
 metals and precious stones, because, according to 
 Mr. Lenormant's ingenious remark, "they only 
 wait, like him, the moment of emerging out of the 
 earth, to emit a bright radianc}'." This radiancy of 
 precious stones, which is like a concentration of 
 light in its purest form, was probably the reason 
 why they were in such general use as talismans, 
 quite as much as their hardness and durability. 
 
 23. But -while the Sun accomplishes his nightly 
 underground journey, men would be left a prey to 
 mortal terrors in the upper world, deprived of light, 
 their chief defence against the evil brood of dark- 
 ness, were it not for his substitute. Fire, who is by 
 nature also a being of light, and, as such, the friend 
 of men, from whose paths and dwellings he scares 
 not only wild beasts and foes armed with open vio- 
 lence, but the far more dangerous hosts of unseen 
 enemies, both demons and spells cast by wicked 
 sorcerers. It is in this capacity of protector that 
 the god GiRiL (Fire) is chiefly invoked. In one 
 very complete hymn he is addressed thus : — 
 
 " Thou who diivest away the evil ^^askil■n, who furtherest the 
 well-being of life, whostrikest the breast of the wicked with terror, — 
 Fire, the destroyer of foes, dread weapon which drivest away Pesti- 
 lence." 
 
 This last attribute would show that the Shumiro- 
 Accads had noticed the hygienic properties of fire,
 
 174 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 which does indeed help to dispel miasmas on ac- 
 count of the strong ventilation which a great blaze 
 sets going. Thus at a comparatively late epoch, 
 some 400 years B.C., a terrible plague broke out at 
 Athens, the Greek city, and Hippocrates, a physi- 
 cian of great genius and renown, who has been 
 called " the Father of Medicine," tried to diminish 
 the contagion by keeping huge fires continually 
 blazing at different points of the city. It is the 
 same very correct idea which made men invoke Gi- 
 bil as he who purifies the works of man. He is 
 also frequently called " the protector of the dwell- 
 ing, of the family," and praised for " creating light 
 in the house of darkness," and for bringing peace to 
 all creation. Over and above these claims to grati- 
 tude, Gibil had a special importance in the life of a 
 people given to the works of metallurgy, of which 
 nre is the chief agent: "It is thou," says one 
 hymn, " who mixest tin and copper, it is thou who 
 purifiest silver and gold." Now the mixture of tin 
 and copper produces bronze, the first metal which 
 has been used to make weapons and tools of, in 
 most cases long before iron, which is much more dif- 
 ficult to work, and as the quality of the metal de- 
 pends on the proper mixture of the two ingredients, 
 it is but natural that the aid of the god Fire should 
 have been specially invoked for the operation. But 
 Fire is not only a great power on earth, it is also, in 
 the shape of Lightning, one of the dreadest and 
 most mysterious powers of the skies, and as such 
 sometimes called son of Ana (Heaven), or, in a more 
 roundabout way, "the Hero, son of the Ocean " —
 
 TURA NIA N CHA L DEA . 
 
 75 
 
 meaning the celestial Ocean, the great reservoir of 
 rains, from which the lightning seems to spring, as 
 it flashes through the heavy showers of a Southern 
 thunder storm. In whatever shape he appear, and 
 whatever his functions, Gibil is hailed as an invaria- 
 bly beneficent and friendly being. 
 
 24. When the feeling of helplessness forced on 
 man by his position in the midst of nature takes the 
 form of a reverence for and dependence on beings 
 whom he conceives of as essentially good, a far 
 nobler religion and far higher moral tone are the 
 immediate consequence. This conception of abso- 
 lute goodness sprang from the observation that 
 certain beings or spirits — like the Sun, Fire, the 
 Thunderstorm — though possessing the power of do- 
 ing both good and harm, used it almost exclusively 
 for the benefit of men. This position once firmly 
 established, the conclusion naturally followed, that 
 if these good beings once in awhile sent down a 
 catastrophe or calamit}'. — if the Sun scorched the 
 fields or the Thunderstorm swamped them, if the 
 wholesome North Wind swept away the huts and 
 broke down the trees — it must be in anger, as a 
 mark of displeasure — in punishment. By what 
 could man provoke the displeasure of kind and ben- 
 eficent beings? Clearly by not being like them, 
 by doing not good, but evil. And what is evil ? 
 That which is contrary to the nature of the good 
 spirits : doing wrong and harm to men ; committing 
 sins and wicked actions. To avoid, therefore, pro- 
 voking the anger of those good but powerful 
 spirits, so terrible in its manifestations, it is neces-
 
 176 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDE/r. 
 
 sary to try to please them, and that can be done only 
 by being like them, — good, or at least striving to 
 be so, and, when temptation, ignorance, passion or 
 weakness of will have betrayed man into a trans- 
 gression, to confess it, express regret for the offence 
 and an intention not to offend again, in order to 
 obtain forgiveness and be spared. A righteous life, 
 then, prayer and repentance are the proper means 
 of securing divine favor or mercy. It is evident 
 that a religion from which such lessons naturally 
 spring is a great improvement on a belief in beings 
 who do good or evil indiscriminately, indeed prefer 
 doing evil, a belief which cannot teach a distinction 
 between moral right and wrong, or a rational distri- 
 bution of rewards or punishment, nor consequently 
 inculcate the feeling of duty and responsibility, 
 without which goodness as a matter of principle is 
 impossible and a reliable state of society unattain- 
 able. 
 
 25. This higher and therefore later stage of 
 moral and religious development is very perceptible 
 in the third book of the Magic Collection. With 
 the appreciation of absolute goodness, conscience 
 has awakened, and speaks with such insistence and 
 authority that the Shumiro-Accad, in the simplic- 
 ity of his mind, has earnestly imagined it to be the 
 voice of a personal and separate deity, a guardian 
 spirit belonging to each man, dwelling within him 
 and living his life. It is a god — sometimes even a 
 divine couple, both " god and goddess, pure spirits " 
 — who protects him from his birth, yet is not proof 
 against the spells of sorcerers and the attacks of the
 
 TURANIAN CHALDErl. , --. 
 
 demons, and even can be compelled to work evil in 
 the person committed to its care, and frequent!}- 
 called therefore "the son of his god," as we saw 
 above, in the incantation against the Disease of the 
 Head. The conjuration or exorcism which drives 
 out the demon, of course restores the guardian 
 spirit to its own beneficent nature, and the patient 
 not only to bodily well-being, but also to peace of 
 mind. That is what is desired, when a prayer for 
 the cure of a sick or possessed person ends with the 
 words: "May he be placed again in the gracious 
 hands of his god ! " When therefore a man is rep- 
 resented as speaking to " his god " and confessing 
 to him his sin and distress, it is onlj' a way of ex- 
 pressing that silent self-communing of the soul, in 
 which it reviews its own deficiencies, forms good 
 resolutions and prays to be released from the intol- 
 erable burden of sin. There are some most beauti- 
 ful prayers of this sort in the collection. They 
 have been called "the Penitential Psalms," from 
 their striking likeness to some of those psalms in 
 which King David confesses his iniquities and 
 humbles himself before the Lord. The likeness 
 extends to both spirit and form, almost to words. 
 If the older poet, in his spiritual groping, ad- 
 dresses " his god and goddess," the higher, better 
 self which he feels within him and feels to be divine 
 — his Conscience, instead of the One God and Lord, 
 his feeling is not less earnest, his appeal not less 
 pure and confiding. He confesses his transgres- 
 sion, but pleads ignorance and sues fgr niercy. 
 Here are some of the principal verses, of which 
 
 14
 
 1 78 I^J^E STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 each is repeated twice, once addressed to " my 
 god," and the second time to " my goddess." The 
 title of the Psalm is: "The complaints of the re- 
 pentant heart. Sixty-five verses in all." 
 
 26. " My Lord, may the anger of his heart be allayed ! May the 
 fool attain understanding ! The god who knows the unknown, may 
 he be conciliated ! The goddess who knows the unknown, may she 
 be conciliated ! — I eat the food of wrath and drink the waters of 
 anguish. . . . O my god, my transgressions are very great, very great 
 my sins. ... I transgress, and know it not. I sin, and know it not. 
 I feed on transgressions, and know it not. I wander on wrong 
 paths, and know it not. — The Lord, in the wrath of his heart, has 
 overwhelmed me with confusion. ... I lie on the ground, and none 
 reaches a hand to me. I am silent and in tears, and none takes me 
 by the hand. I cry out, and there is none that hears me. I am 
 exhausted, oppressed, and none releases me. . . . JNIy god, who 
 knowest the unknown, be merciful ! . . . . My goddess, who know- 
 est the unknown, be merciful ! . . . . How long, O my god .'.... 
 How long, O my goddess .''.... Lord, thou wilt not repulse thy 
 servant. In the midst of the stormy waters, come to my assistance, 
 take me by the hand ! I commit sins — turn them into blessedness ! 
 I commit transgressions — let the wind sweep them away ! My blas- 
 phemies are very many — rend them like a garment ! . . . . God who 
 knowest the unknown,* my sins are seven times seven, — forgive my 
 sins! . . . ." 
 
 27. The religious feeling once roused to this ex- 
 tent, it is not to be wondered at that in some invoca- 
 tions the distress or disease which had formerly 
 been taken as a gratuitous visitation, begins to be 
 considered in the light of a divine punishment, even 
 though the afflicted person be the king himself. 
 This is very evident from the concluding passage of 
 
 * Another and more recent translator renders this line : " God 
 who knowest I knew not." Whichever rendering is right, the 
 thought is beautiful and profound.
 
 TURANIAN CHALDEA. 
 
 1/9 
 
 a hymn to the Sun, in which it is the conjurer who 
 speaks on behalf of the patient, while presenting an 
 offering: — 
 
 " O Sun, leave not my uplifted hands unregarded ! — Eat his food, 
 refuse not his sacrifice, bring back his god to him, to be a support 
 unto his hand ! — May his sin, at thy behest, be forgiven him, his mis- 
 deed be forgotten! — May his trouble leave him! May he recover 
 from his illness ! — Give to the king new vital strength. . . . Escort 
 the king, who lies at thy feet ! — Also me, the conjurer, thy respect- 
 ful servant ! " 
 
 28. There is another hymn of the same kind, not 
 less remarkable for its artistic and regular construc- 
 tion than for its beauty of feeling and diction. The 
 penitent speaks five double lines, and the priest 
 adds two more, as though endorsing the prayer and 
 supporting it with the weight of his own sacred 
 character. This gives very regular strophes, of 
 which, unfortunately, only two have been well pre- 
 served : — 
 
 Penitent. — " I, thy servant, full of sighs, I call to thee. Whoever 
 is beset with sin, his ardent supplication thou acceptest. If thou 
 lookest on a man with pity, that man liveth. Ruler of all, mistress 
 of mankind ! Merciful one, to whom it is good to turn, who dost 
 receive sighs ! " Priest. — " While his god and his goddess are 
 wroth with him he calls on thee. Thy countenance turn on him, 
 take hold of his hand." 
 
 Penitent. — " Besides thee there is no deity to lead in righteousness. 
 Kindly look on me, accept my sighs. Speak : how long ? and let 
 thine heart be appeased. When, O Lady, will thy countenance turn 
 on me? Even like doves I moan, I feed on sighs." Priest. — '• His 
 heart is full of woe and trouble, and full of sighs. Tears he sheds 
 and breaks out into lamentation." * 
 
 * This hvmn is given by II. Zinimern. as the text to a dissertation 
 on the language and grammar.
 
 I§0 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 29. Such is a not incomplete outline of this 
 strange and primitive religion, the religion of a peo- 
 ple whose existence was not suspected twenty-five 
 years ago, yet which claims, with the Egyptians and 
 the Chinese, the distinction of being one of the old- 
 est on earth, and in all probability was older than 
 both. This discovery is one of the most important 
 conquests of modern science, not only from its being 
 highly interesting in itself, but from the light it 
 throws on innumerable hitherto obscure points in 
 the history of the ancient world, nay, on many cu- 
 rious facts which reach down to our own time. 
 Thus, the numerous Turanian tribes which exist in 
 a wholly or half nomadic condition in the immense 
 plains of Eastern and South-eastern Russia, in the 
 forests and wastes of Siberia, on the steppes and 
 highlands of Central Asia, have no other religion 
 now than this of the old Shumiro-Accads, in its 
 earliest and most material shape. Everything to 
 them is a spirit or has a spirit of its own ; they have 
 no worship, no moral teaching, but only conjuring, 
 sorcerers, not priests. These men are called Slia- 
 mans and have great influence among the tribes. 
 The more advanced and cultivated Turanians, like 
 the Mongols and Mandchous. accord to one great 
 Spirit the supremacy over all others and call that 
 Spirit which they conceive as absolutely good, mer- 
 ciful and just, " Heaven," just as the Shumiro-Ac- 
 cads invoked " Ana." This has been and still is 
 the oldest national religion of the Chinese. They 
 say " Heaven " wherever we would say " God," and
 
 TURAXIAX CHALDEA. iSi 
 
 with the same idea of lov'ing adoration and reverent 
 dread, which does not prevent them from invoking 
 the spirit of every hill, river, wind or forest, and 
 numbering among this host also the souls of the 
 deceased. This clearly corresponds to the second 
 and higher stage of the Accadian religion, and marks 
 the utmost limit which the Yellow Race have been 
 able to attain in spiritual life. True, the greater 
 part of the Chinese now have another religion : 
 they are Buddhists ; while the Turks and the great 
 majority of the Tatars, Mongols and Mandchous, 
 not to speak of other less important divisions, are 
 Mussulmans. But both Buddhism and IMahome- 
 tanism are foreign religions, wliich the}' have bor- 
 rowed, adopted, not worked out for themselves. 
 Here then we are also met by that fatal law of limi- 
 tation, which through all ages seems to have said 
 to the men of yellow skin and high cheek-bones, 
 "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further." Thus it 
 was in Chaldea. The work of civilization and spirit- 
 ual development begun by the people of Shumir and 
 Accad was soon taken out of their Jiandsand carried 
 on by newcomers from the east, those descendants 
 of Noah, who " found a plain in the land of Shinar 
 and dwelt there." 
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III. 
 
 Professor Louis D}-cr, of Harvard University, has 
 attempted a rendering into English verse of the 
 famous incantation of the Seven Maskim. The 
 result of the experiment is a translation most faith-
 
 182 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 ful in the spirit and main features, if not always 
 literal ; and which, by his kind permission, we here 
 offer to our readers. 
 
 A CHARM. 
 
 Seven are they, they are seven ; 
 
 In the caverns of ocean they dwell, 
 They are clothed in the lightnings of heaven, 
 
 Of their growth the deep waters can tell ; 
 Seven are they, they are seven. 
 
 II. 
 
 Eroad is their way and their course is wide, 
 Where the seeds of destruction they sow. 
 
 O'er the tops of the hills where they stride, 
 To lay waste the smooth highways below, — 
 
 Broad is their way and their course is wide. 
 
 III. 
 Man they are not, nor womankind, 
 
 For in fury they sweep from the main, 
 And have wedded no wife but the wind. 
 
 And no child have begotten but pain, — 
 Man they are not, nor womankind. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Fear is not in them, not awe ; 
 
 Supplication they heed not, nor prayer. 
 For they know no compassion nor law, 
 
 And are deaf to the cries of despair, — 
 Fear is not in them, not awe. 
 
 V. 
 
 Cursed they are, they are cursed. 
 They are foes to wise Ea's great name ; 
 
 By the whirlwind are all things dispersed 
 On the paths of the flash of their flamC; — 
 
 Curced they are, they are cursed.
 
 TUKAXIAN CHALDEA. 
 
 183 
 
 Spirit of Heaven, oh, help ! Help, oh. Spirit of Earth i 
 T-hey are seven, thrice said they are seven ; 
 For the gods they are IJearers of Thrones, 
 But for men they are Breeders of Dearth 
 And the authors of sorrows and moans. 
 They are seven, thrice said they are seven. 
 Spirit of Heaven, oh, help 1 Help, oh, Spirit of Earth \
 
 IV. 
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. — EARLY CHALDEAN HIS- 
 TORY. 
 
 I. We have just seen that the hymns and prayers 
 which compose the third part of the great Magic 
 Collection really mark a later and higher stage in 
 the religious conceptions of the Turanian settlers of 
 Chaldea, the people of Shumir and Accad. This 
 improvement was not entirely due to a process of 
 natural development, but in a great measure to the 
 influence of that other and nobler race, who came 
 from the East. When the priestly historian of 
 Babylon, Berosus, calls the older population " men 
 of foreign race," it is because he belonged himself 
 to that second race, who remained in the land, intro- 
 duced their own superior culture, and asserted their 
 supremacy to the end of Babylon. The national 
 legends have preserved the memory of this import- 
 ant event, which they represent as a direct divine 
 revelation. Ea, the all-wise himself, it was believed, 
 had appeared to men and taught them things hu- 
 man and divine. Berosus faithfully reports the 
 legend, but seems to have given the God's name 
 " Ea-Han " (" Ea the Fish") under the corrupted 
 
 184
 
 CUSHITES AXD SEMITES. 
 
 185 
 
 Greek form of Oanxes. This is the narrative, of 
 uhich we already know the first Hne : 
 
 " There was originally at Babylon a multitude of 
 men of foreign race who had colonized Chaldea. and 
 they lived without order, like animals. But in the 
 first year" (meaning the first year of the new order 
 of things, the new dispensation) " there appeared, 
 from out of the Erythrean Sea (the ancient Greek 
 name for the Persian Gulf) where it borders upon 
 Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, who was 
 called Oanxes. The whole body of the animal Avas 
 that of a fish, but under the fish's head he had 
 another head, and also feet below, growing out of 
 his fish's tail, similar to those of a n]an ; also human 
 speech, and his image is preserved to this day. 
 This being used to spend the whole day amidst 
 men, without taking anv food, and he gave them 
 an insight into letters, and sciences, and every kind 
 of art ; he taught them how to found cities, to con- 
 struct temples, to introduce laws and to measure 
 land ; he showed them how to sow seeds and gather 
 in crops ; in short, he instructed them in everything 
 that softens manners and makes up civilization, so 
 that from that time no one has invented anything 
 new. Then, when the sun went down, this mon- 
 strous Cannes used to plunge back into the sea and 
 spend the night in the midst of the boundless waves, 
 for he was amphibious." 
 
 2. The question, WJio were the bringers of this 
 advanced civilization ? has caused much division 
 among the most eminent scholars. Two solutions 
 are offered. Both bein<jf based on manv' and serious
 
 1 86 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 grounds and supported by illustrious names, and 
 the point being far from settled yet, it is but fair to 
 state them both. The two greatest of German 
 assyriologists, Professors Eberhard Schrader and 
 Friedrich Delitzsch, and the German school which 
 acknowledges them as leaders, hold that the bring- 
 ers of the new and more perfect civilization were 
 Semites — descendants of Shem, i.e., people of the 
 same race as the Hebrews — while the late Francois 
 Lenormant and his followers contend that they 
 were Cushites in the first instance, — i.e., belonged 
 to that important family of nations which we find 
 grouped, in Chapter X. of Genesis, under the name 
 of Cush, himself a son of Ham — and that the Sem- 
 itic immigration came second. As the latter hypoth- 
 esis puts forward, among other arguments, the 
 authority of the Biblical historians, and moreover 
 involves the destinies of a very numerous and vast- 
 ly important branch of ancient humanity, we will 
 yield to it the right of precedence. 
 
 3. The name " Ham" signifies " brown, dark " (not 
 " black "). Therefore, to speak of certain nations as 
 "sons of Ham," is to say that they belonged to 
 "the Dark Race." Yet, originally, this great sec- 
 tion of Noah's posterity was as white of color as the 
 other two. It seems to have first existed as a sepa- 
 rate race in a region not very distant from the high 
 table-land of Central Asia, the probable first cradle 
 of mankind. That division of this great section 
 which again separated and became the race of Cush, 
 appears to have been drawn southwards by reasons 
 which it is, of course, impossible to ascertain. It
 
 57- — OANNES. 
 
 (Smith's " Chaldean Genesis.")
 
 1 88 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 is easier to guess at the route they must have taken 
 along th^ Hindu Cusii,* a range of mountains 
 which must have been to it a barrier in the west, 
 and which joins the western end of the Himalaya, 
 the mightiest mountain-chain in the world. The 
 break between the Hindu-Cush and the Himalaya 
 forms a mountain pass, just at the spot where the 
 river INDUS (most probably the PiSCHON of Gen., 
 Ch. n.) turns abruptly to the south, to water the 
 rich plains of India. Through this pass, and follow- 
 ing the course of the river, further Cushite detach- 
 ments must have penetrated into that vast and 
 attractive peninsula, even to the south of it, where 
 they found a population mostly belonging to the 
 Black branch of humanity, so persistently ignored 
 by the writer of Chap. X. Hundreds of years spent 
 under a tropical clime and intermarriage with the 
 Negro natives altered not only the color of their 
 skin, but also the shape of their features. So that 
 when Cushite tribes, with the restless migratory 
 spirit so characteristic of all early ages, began to 
 work their way back again to the north, then to the 
 west, along the shores of the Indian Ocean and the 
 Persian Gulf, they were both dark-skinned and thick- 
 lipped, with a decided tendency towards the Negro 
 type, lesser or greater according to the degree of 
 mixture with the inferior race. That this type was 
 foreign to them is proved by the facility with which 
 their features resumed the nobler cast of the w^hite 
 races wherever they stayed long enough among 
 these, as was the case in Chaldea, in Arabia, in the 
 
 * Names are often deceptive. That of the Hindu-Cusli is now 
 thouglit l(j mean " Killers of Hindus," probably in allusion to robber 
 tribes of the mountains, and to have nothing to do with the Cushite race.
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. 
 
 189 
 
 countries of Canaan, whither many of these tribes 
 wandered at various times. 
 
 4. Some Cushite detachments, who reached the 
 straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, crossed over into Africa, 
 and setthng there amidst the barbarous native negro 
 tribes, formed a nation which became known to 
 its northern neighbors, the Egyptians, to the 
 Hebrews, and tliroughout the ancient East under 
 its own proper name of CUSH, and whose out- 
 ward characteristics came, in the course of time, 
 so near to the pure Negro type ar, to be scarcely 
 recognizable from it. This is the same nation 
 which, to us moderns, is better knoM-n under 
 the name of ETHloriANS, given to it by the Greeks, 
 as well as to the eastern division of the same race. 
 The Egyptians themselves were another branch of 
 the same great section of humanity, represented in 
 the genealogy of Chap. X. by the name of MiZRAlM, 
 second son of Ham. These must have come from 
 the east along the Persian Gulf, then across North- 
 ern Arabia and the Isthmus of Suez. In the color 
 and features of the Egyptians the mixture with 
 black races is also noticeable, but not enough to 
 destroy the beauty and expressiveness of the orig- 
 inal type, at all events far less than in their south- 
 ern neighbors, the Ethiopians, with whom, more- 
 over, they were throughout on the worst of terms, 
 whom they loathed and invariably designated under 
 the name of "vile Cush." 
 
 5. A third and very important branch of the Ha- 
 m'te family, the Caxaanites, after reaching the 
 Persian Gulf, and probabh' sojourning there some
 
 IQO THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 time, spread, not to the south, but to the west, 
 across the plains of Syria, across the mountain 
 chain of Lebanon and to the very edge of the 
 Mediterranean Sea, occupying all the land which 
 later became Palestine, also to the north-west, as 
 far as the mountain chain of Taurus. This group 
 was very numerous, and broken up into a great 
 many peoples, as we can judge from the list of na- 
 tions given in Chap. X. (v. 15-18) as " sons of Ca- 
 naan." In its migrations over this comparatively 
 northern region, Canaan found and displaced not 
 black natives, but Turanian nomadic tribes, who 
 roamed at large over grassy wildernesses and sandy 
 wastes and are possibly to be accounted as the rep- 
 resentatives of that portion of the race which the 
 biblical historian embodies in the pastoral names of 
 Jabal and Jubal — (Gen, iv., 20-22) — "The father of 
 such as dwell in tents and have cattle," and '' the 
 father of all such as handle the harp and pipe." In 
 which case the Turanian settlers and builders of cit- 
 ies would answer to Tubalcain, the smith and arti- 
 ficer. The Canaanites, therefore, are those among 
 the Hamites who, in point of color and features, 
 have least differed from their kindred white races, 
 though still sufficiently bronzed to be entitled to 
 the name of " sons of Ham," i.e., " belonging to the 
 dark-skinned race." 
 
 6. Migrating races do not traverse continents with 
 the same rapidity as marching armies. The prog- 
 ress is slow, the stations are many. Every station 
 becomes a settlement, sometimes the beginning of 
 a new nation — so many landmarks along the way.
 
 CUSHTTES AND SEMITES. 
 
 191 
 
 And the distance between the startnig-point arid 
 the furthest point reached by the race is measured 
 not only by thousands of miles, but also by hun- 
 dreds and hundreds of years ; only the space can be 
 actually measured, while the time can be computed 
 merely by conjecture. The route from the south of 
 India, along the shore of Malabar, the Persian Gulf, 
 across the Arabian deserts, then down along the 
 Red Sea and across the straits into Africa, is of such 
 tremendous length that the settlements which the 
 Cushite race left scattered along it must have been 
 more than usually numerous. According to the 
 upholders of a Cushite colonization of Chaldea, one 
 important detachment appears to have taken pos- 
 session of the small islands along the eastern shore of 
 th.e Persian Gulf and to have stayed there for several 
 centuries, probably choosing these island homes on 
 account of their seclusion and safety from invasion. 
 There, unmolested and undisturbed, they could 
 develop a certain spirit of abstract speculation to 
 which their natural bent inclined them. They were 
 great star-gazers and calculators — two tastes which 
 go well together, for Astronomy cannot exist with- 
 out Mathematics. But star-gazing is also favorable 
 to dreaming, and the Cushite islanders had time for 
 dreams. Thoughts of heavenly things occupied 
 them much ; they worked out a religion beautiful 
 in many ways and full of deep sense ; their priests 
 dwelt in communities or colleges, probably one on 
 every island, and spent their time not only in scien- 
 tific study and religious contemplation, but also In 
 the more practical art of government, for there do
 
 192 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 not appear as yet to have been any kings among 
 them. 
 
 7. But there came a time when the small is- 
 lands were overcrowded with the increased popu- 
 lation, and detachments began to cross the water 
 and land at the furthest point of the Gulf, in the 
 land of the great rivers. Here they found a people 
 not unpractised in several primitive arts, and pos- 
 sessed of some important fundamental inventions — 
 writing, irrigation by means of canals — but deplora- 
 bly deficient in spiritual development, and positively 
 barbarous in the presence of an altogether higher 
 culture. The Cushites rapidly spread through the 
 land of Shumir and Accad, and taught the people 
 with whom they afterwards, as usual, intermarried, 
 until both formed but one nation — with this difter- 
 encc, that towards the north of Chaldea the Cushite 
 element became predominant, while in the south 
 numbers remained on the side of the Turanians. 
 Whether this result was attained altogether peace- 
 fully or was preceded by a period of resistance and 
 fighting, we have no means of ascertaining. If 
 there was such a period, it cannot have lasted long, 
 for intellect was on the side of the newcomers, and 
 that is a power which soon wins the day. At all 
 events the final fusion must have been complete 
 and friendly, since the old national legend reported 
 by Berosus cleverly combines the two elements, by 
 attributing the part of teacher and revealer to the 
 Shumiro-Accad's own favorite divine being Ea, 
 while it is not impossible that it alludes to the com. 
 ing of the Cushites in making the amphibious
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. ^QX 
 
 Cannes rise out of the Persian Gulf, " where it bor- 
 ders on Chaldea." The legend goes on to say that 
 Cannes set down his revelations in books which he 
 consigned into the keeping of men, and that several 
 more divine animals of the same kind continued to 
 appear at long intervals. Who knows but the latter 
 strange detail may have been meant to allude fan- 
 tastically to the arrival of successive Cushite colo- 
 nies? In the long run of time, of course all such 
 meaning would be forgotten and the legend remain 
 as a miraculous and inexplicable incident. 
 
 8. It would be vain to attempt to fix any dates 
 for events which took place in such remote antiquity, 
 in the absence of any evidence or document that 
 might be grasped. Yet, by close study of facts, by 
 laborious and ingenious comparing of later texts, of 
 every scrap of evidence furnished by monuments, of 
 information contained in the fragments of Berosus 
 and of other writers, mostly Greek, it has been pos- 
 sible, with due caution, to arrive at some approxi- 
 mative dates, which, after all, are all that is needed 
 to classify things in an order intelligible and correct 
 in the main. Even should further discoveries and 
 researches arrive at more exact results, the gain will 
 be comparatively small. At such a distance, differ- 
 ences of a couple of centuries do not matter much. 
 When we look down a long line of houses or trees, 
 the more distant ones appear to run together, and 
 we do not always see where it ends — yet we can 
 perfectly well pursue its direction. The same with 
 the so-called double stars in astronomy : they are 
 stars which, though really separated by thousands 
 
 15
 
 1-94 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 of miles, appear as one on account of the immense 
 distance between them and our eye, and only the 
 strongest telescope lenses show them to be separate 
 bodies, though still close together. Yet this is suffi- 
 cient to assign them their place so correctly on the 
 map of the heavens, that they do not disturb the 
 calculations in which they are included. The same 
 kind of perspective applies to the history of remote 
 antiquity. As the gloom which has covered it so 
 long slowly rolls back before the light of scientific 
 research, we begin to discern outlines and landmarks, 
 at first so dim and wavering as rather to mislead 
 than to instruct ; but soon the searcher's eye, sharp- 
 ened by practice, fixes them sufficiently to bring 
 them into connection with the later and more fully 
 illumined portions of the eternally unrolling pict- 
 ure. Chance, to which all discoverers are so much 
 indebted, frequently supplies such a landmark, and 
 now and then one so firm and distinct as to become 
 a trustworthy centre for a whole group. 
 
 9. The annals of the Assyrian king Asshurbani- 
 pal (the founder of the great Library at Nineveh) 
 have established beyond a doubt the first positive 
 date that has been secured for the History of Chal- 
 dea. That king was for a long time at war with the 
 neighboring kingdom of Elam, and ended by con- 
 quering and destroying its capital, Shushan (Susa), 
 after carrying away all the riches from the royal 
 palace and all the statues from the great temple. 
 This happened in the year 645 B.C. In the in- 
 scriptions in which he records this event, the king 
 informs us that in that temple he found a statue of
 
 C us HUES AND SEMITES. 
 
 195 
 
 the Chaldean goddess Nana, which had been car- 
 ried away from her own temple in the city of Ur- 
 UKH (Erech, now Warka) by a king of Elam of the 
 name of Khudur-Nankhundi, who invaded the 
 land of Accad 1635 years before, and that he, As- 
 shurbanipal, by the goddess's own express com- 
 mand, took her from where she had dwelt in Elam, 
 " a place not appointed her," and reinstated her in 
 her own sanctuary " which she had delighted in." 
 1635 added to 645 make 2280, a date not to be dis- 
 puted. Now if a successful Elamite invasion in 
 2280 found in Chaldea famous sanctuaries to dese- 
 crate, the religion to which these sanctuaries be- 
 longed, that of the Cushite, or Semitic colonists, 
 must have been established in the country already 
 for several, if not many, centuries. Indeed, quite 
 recent discoveries show that it had been so consid- 
 erably over a thousand years, so that we cannot 
 possibly accept a date later than 4000 B.C. for the 
 foreign immigration. The Shumiro-Accadian cul- 
 ture was too firmly rooted then and too completely 
 worked out — as far as it went — to allow less than 
 about 1000 years for its establishment. This takes 
 us as far back as 5000 B.C. — a pretty respectable fig- 
 ure, especially when we think of the vista of time 
 which opens behind it, and for which calculation 
 fairly fails us. For if the Turanian settlers brought 
 the rudiments of that culture from the highlands of 
 Elam, how long had they sojourned there before 
 they descended into the plains ? And how long had 
 it taken them to reach that station on their way
 
 196 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 from the race's mountain home in the far North- 
 east, in the Altai valleys ? 
 
 10. However that may be, 5000 B.C. is a moderate 
 and probable date. But ancient nations were not 
 content with such, when they tried to locate and 
 classify their own beginnings. These being neces- 
 sarily obscure and only vaguely shadowed out in 
 traditions which gained in fancifulness and lost in 
 probability with every succeeding generation that 
 received them and handed them down to the next, 
 they loved to magnify them by enshrouding them 
 in the mystery of innumerable ages. The more ap- 
 palling the figures, the greater the glory. Thus we 
 gather from some fragments of Berosus that, ac- 
 cording to the national Chaldean tradition, there 
 was an interval of over 259,000 years between the 
 first appearance of Cannes and the first king. Then 
 come ten successive kings, each of whom reigns a 
 no less extravagant number of years (one 36,000, 
 another 43,000, even 64,000; 10,800 being the most 
 modest figure), till the aggregate of all these differ- 
 ent periods makes up the pretty sum total of 691,- 
 200 years, supposed to have elapsed from the first 
 appearance of Cannes to the Deluge. It is so im- 
 possible to imagine so prodigious a number of years 
 or couple with it anything at all real, that we might 
 just as well substitute for such a figure the simpler 
 " very, very long ago," or still better, the approved 
 fairy tale beginning, " There was once upon a 
 time. . . ." It conveys quite as definite a notion, 
 and would, in such a case, be the more appropriate.
 
 CUSniTES AND SEMITES. 
 
 197 
 
 that all a nation's most marvellous traditions, most 
 fabulous legends, are naturally placed in those stu- 
 pendously remote ages which no record could reach, 
 no experience control. Although these traditions 
 and legends generally had a certain body of actual 
 truth and dimly remembered fact in them, which 
 might still be apparent to the learned and the cul- 
 tivated few, the ignorant masses of the people swal- 
 lowed the thing whole, as real history, and found 
 things acknowledged as impossible easy to believe, 
 for the simple reason that " it was so very long 
 ago ! " A Chaldean of Alexander's time certainly 
 did not expect to meet a divine Man-Fish in his 
 walks along the sea-shore, but — there was no know- 
 ing what might or might not have happened seven 
 hundred thousand years ago ! In the legend of the 
 six successive apparitions under the first ten long- 
 lived kings, he would not have descried the simple 
 sense so lucidly set forth by Mr. Maspero, one of 
 the most distinguished of French Orientalists : — 
 " The times preceding the Deluge represented an 
 experimental period, during which mankind, being 
 as yet barbarous, had need of divine assistance to 
 overcome the difficulties with which it was sur- 
 rounded. Those times were filled up with six man- 
 ifestations of the deity, doubtless answering to the 
 number of sacred books in which the priests saw 
 the most complete expression of revealed law."* 
 This presents another and more probable explana- 
 tion of the legend than the one suggested above, 
 
 *"Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de 1' Orient," rSyS, p. 160.
 
 198 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 (end of §7); but there is no more actual /r^*?/" of 
 the one than of the other being the correct one. 
 
 II. If Chaldea was in after times a battle-ground 
 of nations, it was in the beginning a very nursery 
 and hive of peoples. The various races in their 
 migrations must necessarily have been attracted 
 and arrested by the exceeding fertility of its soil, 
 which it is said, in the times of its highest pros- 
 perity and under proper conditions of irrigation, 
 yielded two hundredfold return for the grain it re- 
 ceived. Settlement must have followed settlement 
 in rapid succession. But the nomadic element was 
 for a long time still very prevalent, and side by side 
 with the builders of cities and tillers of fields, shep- 
 herd tribes roamed peacefully over the face of the 
 land, tolerated and unmolested by the permanent 
 population, with which they mixed but warily, 
 occasionally settling down temporarily, and shifting 
 their settlements as safety or advantage required it, 
 — or wandering off altogether from that common 
 halting-place, to the north, and west, and south- 
 west. This makes it very plain why Chaldea is 
 given as the land where the tongues became con- 
 fused and the second separation of races took 
 place. 
 
 12. Of those principally nomadic tribes the great- 
 est part did not belong, like the Cushites or Canaan- 
 ites, to the descendants of Ham, "the Dark," but to 
 those of Shem, whose name, signifying " Glory, Re- 
 nown," stamps him as the eponymous ancestor of 
 that race which has always firmly believed itself to 
 be the chosen one of God. They were Semites.
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. 
 
 199 
 
 When they arrived on the plains of Chaldea, they 
 were inferior in civilization to the people among 
 whom they came to dwell. They knew nothing of 
 city arts and had all to learn. They did learn, for 
 superior culture always asserts its power, — even to 
 the language of the Cushite settlers, which the 
 latter were rapidly substituting for the rude and 
 poor Turanian idiom of Shumir and Accad. This 
 language, or rather various dialects of it, were com- 
 mon to most Hamitic and Semitic tribes, among 
 whom that from which the Hebrews sprang brought 
 it to its greatest perfection. The others worked it 
 into different kindred dialects — the Assyrian, the 
 Aramaic or Syrian, the Arabic — according to their 
 several peculiarities. The Phoenicians of the sea- 
 shore, and all the Canaanite nations, also spoke 
 languages belonging to the same family, and there- 
 fore classed among the so-called Semitic tongues. 
 Thus it has come to pass that philology, — or the 
 Science of Languages, — adopted a wrong name for 
 that entire group, calling the languages belonging 
 to it, " Semitic," while, in reality, they are originally 
 " Hamitic." The reason is that the Hamitic ori- 
 gin of those important languages which have been 
 called Semitic these hundred years had not been 
 discovered until very lately, and to change the name 
 now would produce considerable confusion. 
 
 13. Most of the Semitic tribes who dwelt in 
 Chaldea adopted not only the Cushite language, 
 but the Cushite culture and religion. Asshur 
 carried all three northward, where the Assyrian 
 kingdom arose out of a few Babylonian colonies,
 
 200 ^-^^^ STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 and Aram westward to the land which was after- 
 wards called Southern Syria, and where the great 
 city of Damascus long flourished and still exists. 
 But there was one tribe of higher spiritual gifts 
 than the others. It was not numerous, for through 
 many generations it consisted of only one great 
 family governed by its own eldest chief or patri- 
 arch. It is true that such a family, with the patri- 
 arch's own children and children's children, its 
 wealth of horses, camels, flocks of sheep, its host of 
 servants and slaves, male and female, represented 
 quite a respectable force ; Abraham could muster 
 three hundred eighteen armed and trained servants 
 who had been born in his own household. This 
 particular tribe seems to have wandered for some 
 time on the outskirts of Chaldea and in the land 
 itself, as indicated by the name given to its ep- 
 onym in Chap. X. : Arphaxad (more correctly 
 Arphakshad), corrupted from Areph-Kasdim, 
 which means, " bordering on the Chaldeans," or per- 
 haps " boundaries " — in the sense of " land " — of the 
 Chaldeans. Generation after generation pushed fur- 
 ther westward, traversed the land of Shinar, crossed 
 the Euphrates and reached the city of Ur, in or near 
 which the tribe dwelt many years. 
 
 14. Ur was then the greatest city of Southern 
 Chaldea, The earliest known kings of Shumir re- 
 sided in it, and besides that, it was the principal 
 commercial mart of the country. For, strange as it 
 may appear when we look on a modern map, Ur, 
 the ruins of which are now 150 miles from the sea, 
 was then a maritime city, with harbor and ship
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES 20I 
 
 docks. The waters of the Gulf reached much fur- 
 ther inland than they do now. There was then a 
 distance of many miles between the mouths of the 
 Tigris and Euphrates, and Ur lay very near the 
 mouth of the latter river. Like all commercial and 
 maritime cities, it was the resort not only of all the 
 different races which dwelt in the land itself, but 
 also of foreign traders. The active intellectual life 
 of a capital, too, which was at the same time a 
 great religious centre and the seat of a powerful 
 priesthood, must of necessity have favored inter- 
 change of ideas, and have exerted an influence on 
 that Semitic tribe of whom the Bible tells us that 
 it " went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into 
 the land of Canaan," led by the patriarch Terah and 
 his son Abraham (Genesis xi. 31). The historian of 
 Genesis here, as throughout the narrative, does not 
 mention any date whatever for the event he relates ; 
 nor does he hint at the cause of this removal. On 
 the first of these points the study of Chaldean cune- 
 iform monuments throws considerable light, while 
 the latter does not admit of more than guesses — 
 of which something hereafter. 
 
 15. Such is a broad and cursory outline of the 
 theory according to which Cushite immigrations 
 preceded the arrival of the Semites in the land of 
 Shumir and Accad. Those who uphold it give 
 several reasons for their opinion, such as that the 
 Bible several times mentions a Cush located in the 
 East and evidently different from the Cush which 
 has been identified as Ethiopia ; that, in Chap. X. 
 of Genesis (8-12), Nimrod, the legendary hero,
 
 202 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 whose empire at first was in " the land of Shinar," 
 and who is said to have " gone forth out of that 
 land into Assyria," is called a son of Cush ; that 
 the most ancient Greek poets knew of " Ethio- 
 pians " in the far East as opposed to those of the 
 South — and several more. Those scholars who 
 oppose this theory dismiss it wholesale. They will 
 not admit the existence of a Cushite element or 
 migration in the East at all, and put down the 
 expressions in the Bible as simple mistakes, either 
 of the writers or copyists. According to them, 
 there was only one immigration in the land of 
 Shumir and Accad, that of the Semites, achieved 
 through many ages and in numerous instalments. 
 The language which superseded the ancient Shu- 
 miro-Accadian idiom is to them a Semitic one in 
 the directest and most exclusive sense ; the culture 
 grafted on that of the earlier population is by them 
 called purely " Semitic ; " while their opponents fre- 
 quently use the compound designation of " Cushito- 
 Semitic," to indicate the two distinct elements of 
 which, to them, it appears composed. It must be 
 owned that the anti-Cushite opinion is gaining 
 ground. Yet the Cushite theory cannot be con- 
 sidered as disposed of, only " not proven," — or not 
 sufificiently so, and therefore in abeyance and fallen 
 into some disfavor. With this proviso we shall 
 adopt the word " Semitic," as the simpler and more 
 generally used. 
 
 i6. It is only with the rise of Semitic culture 
 in Southern Mesopotamia that we enter on a 
 period which, however remote, misty, and full of
 
 CUSHITES AiYD SEMITES. 
 
 203 
 
 blanks, may still be called, in a measure, " histor- 
 ical," because there is a certain number of facts, 
 of which contemporary monuments give positive 
 evidence. True, the connection between those 
 facts is often not apparent ; their causes and effects 
 are frequently not to be made out save by more 
 or less daring conjectures ; still there are numerous 
 landmarks of proven fact, and with these real his- 
 tory begins. No matter if broad gaps have to 
 be left open or temporarily filled with guesses. 
 New discoveries are almost daily turning up, in- 
 scriptions, texts, which unexpectedly here supply 
 a missing link, there confirm or demolish a con- 
 jecture, establish or correct dates which had long 
 been puzzles or suggested on insufficient founda- 
 tions. In short, details may be supplied as yet 
 brokenly and sparingly, but the general outline 
 of the condition of Chaldea may be made out as 
 far back as forty centuries before Christ. 
 
 17. Of one thing there can be no doubt : that 
 our earliest glimpse of the political condition of 
 Chaldea shows us the country divided into nu- 
 merous small states, each headed by a great city, 
 made famous and powerful by the sanctuary or 
 temple of some particular deity, and ruled by a 
 patesi, a title which is now thought to mean priest- 
 king, i.e., priest and king in one. There can be 
 little doubt that the beginning of the city was 
 everywhere the temple^ with its college of minister- 
 ing priests, and that the surrounding settlement 
 was gradually formed by pilgrims and worshippers. 
 That royalty developed out of the priesthood is
 
 204 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 also more than probable, and consequently must 
 have been, in its first stage, a form of priestly rule, 
 and, in a great measure, subordinate to priestly 
 influence. There comes a time when for the title 
 of patesi is substituted that of "king" simply — a 
 change which very possibly indicates the assump- 
 tion by the kings of a more independent attitude 
 towards the class from which their power originally 
 sprang. It is noticeable that the distinction be- 
 tween the Semitic newcomers and the indigenous 
 Shumiro-Accadians continues long to be traceable 
 in the names of the royal temple-builders, even 
 after the new Semitic idiom, which we call the 
 Assyrian, had entirely ousted the old language — a 
 process which must have taken considerable time, 
 for it appears, and indeed stands to reason, that the 
 newcomers, in order to secure the wished for in- 
 fluence and propagate their own culture, at first not 
 only learned to understand but actually used them- 
 selves the language of the people among whom 
 they came, at least in their public documents. 
 This it is that explains the fact that so many in- 
 scriptions and tablets, while written in the dialect 
 of Shumir or Accad, are Semitic in spirit and in 
 the grade of culture they betray. Furthermore, 
 even superficial observation shows that the old 
 language and the old names survive longest in 
 Shumir, — the South. From this fact it is to be 
 inferred with little chance of mistake that the 
 North, — the land of Accad, — was earlier Semitized, 
 that the Semitic immigrants established their first
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. 205 
 
 headquarters in that part of the country, that their 
 power and influence thence spread to the South. 
 
 18. Fully in accordance with these indications, 
 the first grand historical figure that meets us at the 
 threshold of Chaldean history, dim with the mists 
 of ages and fabulous traditions, yet unmistakably 
 real, is that of the Semite Sharrukin, king of Ac- 
 cad — or Agade, as the great Northern city came to 
 be called — more generally known in history under 
 the corrupt modern reading of Sargon, and called 
 Sargon I,, " the First," to distinguish him from 
 another monarch of the same name who was found 
 to have reigned many centuries later. As to the 
 city of Agade, it is no other than the city of Accad 
 mentioned in Genesis x., 10. It was situated close to 
 the Euphrates on a wade canal just opposite Sip- 
 par, so that in time the two cities came to be con- 
 sidered as one double city, and the Hebrews always 
 called it "the two Sippars " — Sepharvaim, which 
 is often spoken of in the Bible. It was there that 
 Sharrukin established his rule, and a statue was 
 afterwards raised to him there, the inscription on 
 which, making him speak, as usual, in the first per- 
 son, begins with the proud declaration : " Sharrukin, 
 the mighty king, the king of Agade, am I." Yet, 
 although his reforms and conquests were of lasting 
 importance, and himself remained one of the favorite 
 heroes of Chaldean tradition, he appears to have been 
 an adventurer and usurper. Perhaps he was, for this 
 very reason, all the dearer to the popular fancy, 
 which, in the absence of positive facts concerning 
 his birth and origin, wove around them a halo of
 
 2o6 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 romance, and told of him a story which must be 
 nearly as old as mankind, for it has been told over 
 and over again, in different countries and ages, of 
 a great many famous kings and heroes. This of 
 Sharrukin is the oldest known version of it, and the 
 inscription on his statue puts it into the king's own 
 mouth. It makes him say that he knew not his 
 father, and that his mother, a princess, gave him 
 birth in a hiding-place, (or " an inaccessible place "), 
 near the Euphrates, but that his family were the 
 rulers of the land. " She placed me in a basket of 
 rushes," the king is further made to say; "with 
 bitumen the door of my ark she closed. She 
 launched me on the river, which drowned me not. 
 The river bore me along ; to Akki, the water-carrier, 
 it brought me. Akki, the water-carrier, in the ten- 
 derness of his heart lifted me up. Akki, the water- 
 carrier, as his own child brought me up. Akki, the 
 water-carrier, made me his gardener. And in my 
 
 gardenership the goddess Ishtar loved me " 
 
 19. Whatever his origin and however he came 
 by the royal power, Sargon w^as a great monarch. 
 It is said that he undertook successful expeditions 
 into Syria, and a campaign into Elam ; that with 
 captives of the conquered races he partly peopled 
 his new capital, Agade, where he built a palace and 
 a magnificent temple ; that on one occasion he was 
 absent three years, during which time he advanced 
 to the very shores of the Mediterranean, which he 
 calls " the sea of the setting sun," and where he left 
 memorial records of his deeds, and returned home 
 in triumph, bringing with him immense spoils. The
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. 
 
 207 
 
 mscription contains only the following very moder- 
 ate mention of his military career: "For forty-five 
 years the kingdom I have ruled. And the black- 
 head race (Accadian) I have governed. In multi- 
 
 : < 
 1 3 
 
 - J3 
 
 tildes of bronze chariots I rode over rugged lands. 
 I governed the upper countries. Three times to 
 the coast of the (Persian) sea I advanced. . . ." * 
 20. This Sharrukin must not be confounded with 
 * Translation of Professor A. II. Sayce.
 
 208 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 another king of the same name, who reigned also 
 in Agade, some 1800 years later (about 2000 B.C.), 
 and in whose time was completed and brought 
 into definite shape a vast religious reform which 
 had been slowly working itself out ever since 
 the Semitic and Accadian elements began to 
 mix in matters of spiritual speculation and wor- 
 ship. What was the result of the amalgamation 
 will form the subject of the next chapter. Suflfice 
 it here to say that the religion of Chaldea in 
 the form which it assumed under the second 
 Sharrukin remained fixed forever, and when Baby- 
 lonian religion is spoken • of, it is that which is 
 understood by that name. The great theological 
 work demanded a literary undertaking no less 
 great. The incantations and magic forms of the 
 first, purely Turanian, period had to be col- 
 lected and put in order, as well as the hymns 
 and prayers of the second period, composed under 
 the influence of a higher and more spiritual re- 
 ligious feeling. But all this literature was in the 
 language of the older population, while the ruling 
 class — the royal houses and the priesthood — were 
 becoming almost exclusively Semitic. It was nec- 
 essary, therefore, that they should study the old 
 language and learn it so thoroughly as not only 
 to understand and read it, but to be able to use it, 
 in speaking and writing. For that purpose Sargon 
 not only ordered the ancient texts, when collected 
 and sorted, to be copied on clay tablets with the 
 translation — either between the lines, or on opposite 
 columns — into the now generally used modern Sem-
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. 2OQ 
 
 itic language, which we may as well begin to call by- 
 its usual name, Assyrian, but gave directions for 
 the compilation of grammars and vocabularies, — the 
 very works which have enabled the scholars of the 
 present day to arrive at the understanding of that 
 prodigiously ancient tongue which, without such 
 assistance, must have remained a sealed book for- 
 ever. 
 
 21. Such is the origin of the great collection in 
 three books and two hundred tablets, the contents 
 of which made the subject of the preceding chapter. 
 To this must be added another great work, in sev- 
 enty tablets, in Assyrian, on astrology, i.e., the sup- 
 posed influence of the heavenly bodies, according 
 to their positions and conjunctions, on the fate of 
 nations and individuals and on the course of things 
 on earth generally — an influence which was firmly 
 believed in ; and probably yet a third work, on 
 omens, prodigies and divination. To carry out these 
 extensive literary labors, to treasure the results 
 worthily and safely, Sargon II, either founded or 
 greatly enlarged the library of the priestly college 
 at Urukh (Erech), so that this city came to be 
 called " the City of Books." This repository be- 
 came the most important one in all Chaldea, and 
 when, fourteen centuries later, the Assyrian Asshur- 
 banipal sent his scribes all over the country, to col- 
 lect copies of the ancient, sacred and scientific texts 
 for his own royal library at Nineveh, it was at Erech 
 that they gathered their most abundant harvest, 
 being specially favored there by the priests, who 
 were on excellent terms with the king after he had 
 
 16
 
 2IO THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 brought back from Shushan and restored to them 
 the statue of their goddess Nana. Agade thus 
 became the headquarters, as it were, of the Se- 
 mitic influence and reform, which spread thence 
 towards the South, forming a countercurrent to 
 the culture of Shumir, which had steadily pro- 
 gressed from the Gulf northward. 
 
 22. It is just possible that Sargon's collection 
 may have also comprised literature of a lighter 
 nature than those ponderous works on magic 
 and astrology. At least, a work on agriculture 
 has been found, which is thought to have been 
 compiled for the same king's library," and which 
 contains bits of popular poetry (maxims, riddles, 
 short peasant songs) of the kind that is now 
 called "folk-lore." Of the correctness of the sup- 
 position there is, as yet, no absolute proof, but 
 as some of these fragments, of which unfortunately 
 but few could be recovered, are very interesting 
 and pretty in their way, this is perhaps the best 
 place to insert them. The following four may be 
 called " Maxims," and the first is singularly pithy 
 and powerfully expressed. 
 
 1. Like an oven that is old 
 
 Against thy foes be hard and strong. 
 
 2. May he suffer vengeance, 
 May it be returned to him, 
 Who gives the provocation. 
 
 3. If evil thou doest, 
 
 To the everlasting sea 
 Thou shalt surely go. 
 
 » A. H. Savce.
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES, 2 1 1 
 
 4. Thou wentest, thou spoiledst 
 The land of the foe, 
 For the foe came and spoiled 
 Thy land, even thine. 
 
 23. It will be noticed that No. 3 alone expresses 
 moral feeling of a high standard, and is distinctively 
 Semitic in spirit, the same spirit which is expressed 
 in a loftier and purely religious vein, and a more po- 
 etical form in one of the "Penitential Psalms," 
 where it says : 
 
 Whoso fears not his god — will be cut off even like a reed. 
 Whoso honors not the goddess — his bodily strength shall waste away ; 
 Like a star of heaven, his light shall wane ; like waters of the night 
 he shall disappear. 
 
 Some fragments can be well imagined as being 
 sung by the peasant at work to his ploughing team, 
 in whose person he sometimes speaks : 
 
 5. A heifer am I, — to the cow I am yoked ; 
 
 The plough handle is strong — lift it up ! lift it up ! 
 
 6. My knees are marching — my feet are not resting; 
 With no wealth of thy own — grain thou makest for me.* 
 
 24. A great deal of additional interest in the 
 elder Sargon of Agade has lately been excited by an 
 extraordinary discovery connected with him, which 
 produced a startling revolution in the hitherto 
 accepted Chaldean chronology. This question of 
 dates is always a most intricate and puzzling one in 
 dealing with ancient Oriental nations, because they 
 did not date their years from some particular event, 
 
 * Translated by A. H. Sayce, in his paper "Babylonian Folk- 
 lore" in the " Folk-lore Journal," Vol. I., Jan., 1883.
 
 2 1 2 THE STOR Y OF CHALDEA. 
 
 as we do, and as did the Mohammedans, the Greeks 
 and the Romans. In the inscriptions things are said 
 to have happened in the year so-and-so of such a 
 king's reign. Where to place that king is the next 
 question — unanswerable, unless, as fortunately is 
 mostly the case, some clue is supplied, to borrow 
 a legal term, by circumstantial evidence. Thus, if 
 an eclipse is mentioned, the time can easily be de- 
 termined by the help of astronomy, which can cal- 
 culate backward as well as forward. Or else, an 
 event or a person belonging to another country is 
 alluded to, and if they are known to us from other 
 sources, that is a great help. Such a coincidence 
 (which is called a SYNCHRONISM) is most valuable, 
 and dates established by synchronisms are generally 
 reliable. Then, luckily for us, Assyrian and Baby- 
 lonian kings of a late period, whose dates are fixed 
 and proved beyond a doubt, were much in the habit, 
 in their historical inscriptions, of mentioning events 
 that had taken place before their time and specify- 
 ing the number of years elapsed, often also the king 
 under whose reign the event, whatever it was, had 
 taken place. This is the most precious clue of all, 
 as it is infallible, and besides ascertaining one 
 point, gives a firm foothold, whereby to arrive at 
 many others. The famous memorandum of As- 
 shurbanipal, already so often referred to, about the 
 carrying away of the goddess Nana, (i.e., her statue) 
 from her temple at Erech is evidence of this kind. 
 Any dates suggested without any of these clues as 
 basis are of necessity untrustworthy, and no true 
 scholar dreams of offering any such date, except as a
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. 21 3 
 
 temporary suggestion, awaiting confirmation or abo- 
 lition from subsequent researches. So it was with 
 Sargon I. of Agade. There was no positive indica- 
 tion of the time at which he lived, except that he 
 could not possibly have lived later than 2000 B.C. 
 Scholars therefore agreed to assign that date to him, 
 approximatively — a little more or less — thinking 
 they could not go very far wrong in so doing. Great 
 therefore was the commotion produced by the dis- 
 covery of a cylinder of Nabonidus, the last king of 
 Babylon (whose date is 550 B.C.), wherein he speaks 
 of repairs he made in the great Sun-temple at Sip- 
 par, and declares having dug deep in its foundations 
 for the cylinders of the founder, thus describing his 
 success : " Shamash (the Sun-god), the great lord 
 . . . suffered me to behold the foundation-cylin- 
 der of NaraM-Sin, the son of Sharrukin, which for 
 thrice thousand and twice hundred years none of 
 the kings that lived before me had seen." The 
 simple addition 3200+ 550 gives 3750 B.C. as the 
 date of Naram-Sin, and 3800 as that of his father 
 Sargon, allowing for the latter's long reign ! A 
 scene-shifting of 1800 years at one slide seemed 
 something so startling that there was much hesita- 
 tion in accepting the evidence, unanswerable as it 
 seemed, and the possibility of an error of the en- 
 graver was seriously considered. Some other docu- 
 ments, however, were found independently of each 
 other and in different places, corroborating the 
 statement on Nabonidus' cylinder, and the tremen- 
 dously ancient date of 3800 B.C. is now generally ac*
 
 214 ^^^ STO/iV OF CHALDEA. 
 
 ceptcd the elder Sargon of Agade — perhaps the re- 
 motest a7ithentic date yet arrived at in history. 
 
 25. V/hen we survey and attempt to grasp and 
 classify the materials we have for an early " His- 
 tory of Chaldea," it appears almost presumptuous 
 to grace so necessarily lame an attempt with so 
 ambitious a name. The landmarks are so few and 
 far between, so unconnected as yet, and there is so 
 much uncertainty about them, especially about plac- 
 ing them. The experience with Sargon of Agade 
 has not been encouraging to conjectural chronol- 
 ogy ; yet with such we must in many cases be 
 content until more lucky finds turn up to set us 
 right. What, for instance, is the proper place of 
 GUDEA, W\Q patesi oi SiRBURLA (also read SiRGULLA 
 or SiRTlLLA, and, lately, Zirlaba), whose magnif- 
 icent statues Mr. de Sarzec found in the principal 
 hall of the temple of which the bricks bear his 
 stamp? (See p. 217.) The title of patcsi, (not 
 " king"), points to great antiquity, and he is pretty 
 generally understood to have lived somewhere be- 
 tween 4000 and 3000 B.C. That he was not a Se- 
 mite, but an Accadian prince, is to be concluded 
 not only from the language of his inscriptions and 
 the writing, which is of the most archaic — i.e., an- 
 cient and old-fashioned — character, but from the 
 fact that the head, which was found with the stat- 
 ues, is strikingly Turanian in form and features, 
 shaved, too, and turbaned after a fashion still used 
 in Central Asia. Altogether it might easily be 
 taken for that of a modern Mongolian or Tatar.* 
 The discovery of this builder and patron of art has 
 * See Figs. 44 and 45, p. loi.
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. 
 
 ^15 
 
 greatly eclipsed the glory of a somewhat later ruler, 
 Ur-EA, King of Ur,'-^ who had long enjoyed the 
 reputation of being the earliest known temple- 
 builder. He remains at all events the first powerful 
 monarch we read of in Southern Chaldea, of which 
 Ur appears to have been in some measure the cap- 
 ital, at least in so far as to have a certain suprem- 
 acy over the other great cities of Shumir. 
 
 26. Of these Shumir had many, even more ven- 
 erable for their age and holiness than those of 
 Accad. For the South was the home of the old 
 race and most ancient culture, and thence both had 
 advanced northward. Hence it was that the old 
 stock was hardier there and endured longer in its 
 language, religion and nationality, and was slower 
 in yielding to the Semitic counter-current of race 
 and culture, which, as a natural consequence," ob- 
 tained an earlier and stronger hold in the North, 
 and from there radiated over the whole of Mesopo- 
 tamia. There was Eridhu, by the sea "at the 
 mouth of the Rivers," the immemorial sanctuary of 
 Ea ; there was Sirgulla, so lately unknown, now 
 the most promising mine for research ; there was 
 Larsam, famous with the glories of its " House of 
 the Sun " {E-Babbara in the old language), the rival 
 of Ur, the city of the Moon-god, whose kings Ur-EA 
 and his son DuNGI were, it appears, the first to take 
 
 * This name was at first read Urukh, then Likbabi, then Likba- 
 gash, then Urbagash, then Urba'u, and now Professor Friedr. De- 
 litzsch announces that the final and correct reading is in all proba- 
 bility either Ur-ea or Arad-ea.
 
 2 1 6 THE STOR Y OF CHA LDEA. 
 
 the ambitious title of " Kings of Shumir and Accad " 
 and " Kings of the Four Regions." As for Babylon, 
 proud Babylon, which we have so long been accus- 
 tomed to think of as the very beginning of state life 
 and political rule in Chaldea, it was perhaps not yet 
 built at all, or only modestly beginning its existence 
 under its Accadian name of TiN-TlR-KI (" the Place 
 of Life "), or, somewhat later, Ka-Dimirra (" Gate 
 of God "), when already the above named cities, 
 and several more, had each its famous temple with 
 ministering college of priests, and, probably, library, 
 and each its king. But political power was for a 
 long time centred at Ur. The first kings of Ur 
 authentically known to us are Ur-ea and his son 
 Dungi, who have left abundant traces of their ex- 
 istence in the numerous temples they built, not in 
 Ur alone, but in most other cities too. Their bricks 
 have been identified at Larsam (Senkereh), and, it 
 appears, at Sirburla (Tel-Loh), at Nipur (Niffer) 
 and at Urukh (Erech, Warka), and as the two lat- 
 ter cities belonged to Accad, they seem to have 
 ruled at least part of that country and thus to 
 have been justified in assuming their high-sound- 
 ing title. 
 
 27. It has been noticed that the bricks bearing 
 the name of Ur-ea " are found in a lower position 
 than any others, at the very foundation of build- 
 ings; " that "they are of a rude and coarse make, 
 of many sizes and ill-fitted together;" that baked 
 bricks are rare among them ; that they are held 
 together by the oldest substitutes for mortar — mud 
 and bitumen — and that the writing upon them is
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. 
 
 217 
 
 curiously rude and imperfect.* But whatever King 
 Ur-ea's architectural efforts may lack in perfection, 
 they certainly make up in size and number. Those 
 
 59. — STATUE OF GUDEA, WITH INSCRIPTION ; FROM TELL-LOH, 
 
 (SIRBURLA OR SIRGULLA). SARZEC COLLECTION. 
 
 (Hommel). 
 
 that he did not complete, his son Dungi continued 
 after him. It is remarkable that these great build- 
 
 * Geo. Rawlinson, " Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient East- 
 ern World" (1862), Vol. I., pp. 198 and ff.
 
 2 1 8 THE S TOR Y OF CHA L DEA . 
 
 ers seem to have dovoted their energies exclusively 
 to religious purposes ; also that, while their names 
 are Shumiro-Accadian, and their inscriptions are 
 often . in that language, the temples they con- 
 structed were dedicated to various deities of the 
 new, or rather reformed religion. When we see 
 the princes of the South, according to an ingen- 
 ious remark of Mr. Lenormant, thus begin a sort of 
 practical preaching of the Semitized religion, we 
 may take it as a sign of the times, as an unmistaka- 
 ble proof of the influence of the North, political as 
 well as religious. A very curious relic of King 
 Ur-ea was found — his own signet cylinder — which 
 was lost by an accident, then turned up again 
 and is now in the British Museum. It repre- 
 sents the Moon-god seated on a throne, — as is but 
 meet for the king of the Moon-god's special city — 
 with priests presenting worshippers. No definite 
 date is of course assignable to Ur-ea and the impor- 
 tant epoch of Chaldean history which he represents. 
 But a very probable approximative one can be ar- 
 rived at, thanks to a clue supplied by the same 
 Nabonidus, last King of Babylon, who settled the 
 Sargon question for us so unexpectedly. That 
 monarch was as zealous a repairer of temples as his 
 predecessors had been zealous builders. He had 
 reasons of his own to court popularity, and could 
 think of nothing better than to restore the time- 
 honored sanctuaries of the land. Among others he 
 repaired the Sun-temple (E-Babbara) at Larsam, 
 whereof we are duly informed by a special cylinder. 
 In it he tells posterity that he found a cylinder of
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. 
 
 219 
 
 King Hammurabi intact in its chamber under the 
 corner-stone, which cylinder states that the temple 
 was founded 700 years before Hammurabi's time ; 
 as Ur-ea was the founder, it only remains to deter- 
 mine the latter king's date in order to know that 
 of the earlier one.* Here unfortunately scholars 
 differ, not having as yet any decisive authority to 
 build upon. Some place Hammurabi before 2000 
 B.C., others a little later. It is perhaps safest, there- 
 fore, to assume that Ur-ea can scarcely have lived 
 much earlier than 2800 or much later than 2500 
 B.C. At all events, he must necessarily have lived 
 somewhat before 2300 B.C., for about this latter 
 year took place the Elamite invasion recorded by 
 Asshurbanipal, an invasion which, as this King ex- 
 pressly mentions, laid waste the land of Accad and 
 desecrated its temples — evidently the same ones 
 which Ur-ea and Dungi so piously constructed. 
 Nor was this a passing inroad or raid of booty-seek- 
 ing mountaineers. It was a real conquest. Khu- 
 dur-Nankhundi and his successors remained in 
 Southern Chaldea, called themselves kings of the 
 country, and reigned, several of them in succession, 
 so that this series of foreign rulers has become known 
 in history as '" the Elamite dynasty." There was 
 no room then for a powerful and temple-building 
 national dynasty like that of the kings of Ur. 
 
 28. This is the first time we meet authentic mon- 
 umental records of a country M-hich was destined 
 
 *Geo. Smith, in "Records of the Past," Vol. V., p. 75- Fritz 
 Hommel, " Die Semiten," p. 210 and note loi.
 
 220 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 through the next sixteen centuries to be in contin- 
 ual contact, mostly hostile, with both Babylonia 
 and her northern rival Assyria, until its final anni- 
 hilation by the latter. Its capital was Shushan, 
 (afterwards pronounced by foreigners " Susa "), and 
 its own original name Shushinak. Its people 
 were of Turanian stock, its language was nearly 
 akin to that of Shumir and Accad. But at 
 some time or other Semites came and settled in 
 Shushinak. Though too few in number to change 
 the country's language or customs, the superiority 
 of their race asserted itself. They became the no- 
 bility of the land, the ruling aristocracy from which 
 the kings were taken, the generals and the high 
 functionaries. That the Turanian mass of the popula- 
 tion was kept in subjection and looked down upon, 
 and that the Semitic nobility avoided intermarry- 
 ing with them is highly probable ; and it would 
 be difficult otherwise to explain the difference of 
 type between the two classes, as shown in the rep- 
 resentations of captives and warriors belonging to 
 both on the Assyrian sculptures. The common herd 
 of prisoners employed on public labor and driven 
 by overseers brandishing sticks have an unmistakably 
 Turanian type of features — high cheek-bones, broad, 
 flattened face, etc., while the generals, ministers and 
 nobles have all the dignity and beauty of the hand- 
 somest Jewish type. " Elam," the name under which 
 the country is best known both from the Bible 
 and later monuments, is a Turanian word, which 
 means, like " Accad," " Highlands." It is the only 
 name under which the historian of Chap. X. of
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. 221 
 
 Genesis admits it into his list of nations, and, con- 
 sistently following out his system of ignoring all 
 members of the great yellow race, he takes into con- 
 sideration only the Semitic aristocracy, and makes 
 of Elam a son of Shem, a brother of Asshur and 
 Arphakhshad. (Gen. x. 22.) 
 
 29. One of Khudur-Nankhundi's next successors, 
 Khudur-Lagamar, was not content with the addi- 
 tion of Chaldea to his kingdom of Elam. He had 
 the ambition of a born conqueror and the general- 
 ship of one. The Chap. XIV. of Genesis — which 
 calls him Chedorlaomer — is the only document we 
 have descriptive of this king's warlike career, and a 
 very striking picture it gives of it, sufficient to show 
 us that we have to do with a very remarkable char- 
 acter. Supported by three allied and probably 
 tributary kings, that of Shumir (Shinear), of Larsam, 
 (Ellassar) and of the GoiM, (in the unrevised trans- 
 lation of the Bible " king of nations ") i.e., the no- 
 madic tribes which roamed on the outskirts and in 
 the yet unsettled, more distant portions of Chaldea, 
 Khudur-Lagamar marched an army 1200 miles 
 across the desert into the fertile, wealthy and pop- 
 ulous valleys of the Jordan and the lake or sea of 
 Siddim, afterwards called the Dead Sea, where five 
 great cities — Sodom, Gomorrah, and three others — 
 were governed by as many kings. Not only did he 
 subdue these kings and impose his rule on them, 
 but contrived, even after he returned to the Persian 
 Gulf, to keep on them so firm a hand, that for 
 twelve years they " served " him, i.e., paid him trib- 
 ute regularly, and only in the thirteenth year, en-
 
 222 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 couraged by his prolonged absence, ventured to 
 rebel. But they had underrated Khudur-Lagamar's 
 vigilance and activity. The very next year he was 
 among them again, together with his three faithful 
 allies, encountered them in the vale of Siddim 
 and beat them, so that they all fled. This was 
 the battle of the " four kings with five." As to 
 the treatment to which the victor subjected the 
 conquered country it is very briefly but clearly de- 
 scribed : "And they took all the goods of Sodom 
 and Gomorrah, and all their victuals, and went their 
 way." 
 
 30. Now there dwelt in Sodom a man of foreign 
 race and great wealth, Lot, the nephew of Abra- 
 ham. For Abraham and his tribe no longer lived 
 at Chaldean Ur. The change of masters, and very 
 probably the harsher rule, if not positive oppres- 
 sion, consequent on the Elamite conquest, had 
 driven them thence. It was then they went forth 
 into the land of Canaan, led by Terah and his son 
 Abraham, and when Terah died, Abraham became 
 the patriarch and chief of the tribe, which from this 
 time begins to be called in the Bible "Hebrews," 
 from an eponymous ancestor, Heber or Eber, whose 
 name alludes to the passing of the Euphrates, or, 
 perhaps, in a wider sense, to the passage of the 
 tribe through the land of Chaldea.* For years the 
 tribe travelled without dividing, from pasture to 
 
 * It should be mentioned, however, that scholars have of late been 
 inclined to see in this name an allusion to the passage of the Jordan 
 at the time of the conquest of Canaan by Israel, after the Egyptian 
 bondage.
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. 22^ 
 
 pasture, over the vast land where dwelt the Canaan- 
 iteSjWell seen and even favored of them, into Egypt 
 and out of it again, until the quarrel occurred be- 
 tween Abraham's herdsmen and Lot's, (see Genesis, 
 Chap. XIII.), and the separation, when Lot chose 
 the plain of the Jordan and pitched his tent toward 
 Sodom, while Abraham dwelt in the land of Canaan 
 as heretofore, with his family, servants and cattle, in 
 the plain of Mamre. It was while dwelling there, in 
 friendship and close alliance with the princes of the 
 land, that one who had escaped from the battle in 
 the vale of Siddim, came to Abraham and told him 
 how that among the captives whom Khudur-Laga- 
 mar had taken from Sodom, was Lot, his brother's 
 son, with all his goods. Then Abraham armed his 
 trained servants, born in his own household, three 
 hundred and eighteen, took with him his friends, 
 Mamre and his brothers, wath their young men, and 
 starting in hot pursuit of the victorious army, which 
 was now carelessly marching home towards the des- 
 ert with its long train of captives and booty, over- 
 took it near Damascus in the night, when his own 
 small numbers could not be detected, and produced 
 such a panic by a sudden and vigorous onslaught 
 that he put it to flight, and not only rescued his 
 nephew Lot w'ith his goods and women, but brought 
 back all the captured goods and the people too. 
 And the King of Sodom came out to meet him on 
 his return, and thanked him, and wanted him to 
 keep all the goods for himself, only restoring the 
 persons. Abraham consented that a proper share 
 of the rescued g-oods should be eiven to his friends
 
 224 ^-^^ STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 and their young men, but refused all presents of- 
 fered to himself, with the haughty words: " I have 
 lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high 
 God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I will 
 not take a thread, even to a shoe-latchet, and that 
 I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou 
 shouldest say, I have made Abraham rich." 
 
 31. Khudur-Lagamar, of whom the spirited Bibli- 
 cal narrative gives us so life-like a sketch, lived, ac- 
 cording to the most probable calculations, about 
 2200 B.C. Among the few vague forms whose 
 blurred outlines loom out of the twilight of those 
 dim and doubtful ages, he is the second with any flesh- 
 and-blood reality about him, probably the first con- 
 queror of whom the world has any authentic record. 
 For Egypt, the only country which rivals in anti- 
 quity the primitive states of Mesopotamia, although 
 it had at this time already reached the height of its 
 culture and prosperity, was as yet confined by its 
 rulers strictly to the valley of the Nile, and had not 
 entered on that career of foreign wars and conquests 
 which, some thousand years later, made it a terror 
 from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. 
 
 32. The Elamitic invasion was not a passing raid. 
 It was a real conquest, and established a heavy for- 
 eign rule in a highly prosperous and flourishing 
 land — a rule which endured, it would appear, about 
 three hundred years. That the people chafed un- 
 der it, and were either gloomily despondent or 
 angrily rebellious as long as it lasted, there is plenty 
 of evidence in their later literature. It is even 
 thought, and with great moral probability, that the
 
 CUSHITES AND SEMITES. ^2^ 
 
 special branch of religious poetry which has been 
 called " Penitential Psalms " has arisen out of the 
 sufferings of this long period of national bondao-e 
 and humiliation, and if, as seems to be proved by 
 some lately discovered interesting fragments of 
 texts, these psalms were sung centuries later in 
 Assyrian temples on mournful or very solemn pub- 
 lic occasions, they must have perpetuated the mem- 
 ory of the great national calamity that fell on the 
 mother-country as indelibly as the Hebrew psalms, 
 of which they were the models, have perpetuated 
 that of King David's wanderings and Israel's tribu- 
 lations. 
 
 33. But there seems to have been one Semitic 
 royal house which preserved a certain indepen- 
 dence and quietly gathered power against better 
 days. To do this they must have dissembled and 
 done as much homage to the victorious barbarians 
 as would ensure their safety and serve as a blind 
 while they strengthened their home rule. This 
 dynasty, destined to the glorious task of restoring 
 the country's independence and founding a new na- 
 tional monarchy, was that of Tin-tir-ki, or Kadi- 
 mirra — a name now already translated into the Se- 
 mitic Bab-ILU, (" the Gate of God ") ; they reigned 
 over the large and important district of Karduny- 
 ASH, important from its central position, and from 
 the fact that it seems to have belonged neither to 
 Accad, nor to Shumir, but to have been politically 
 independent, since it is always mentioned by itself. 
 Still, to the Hebrews, Babylon lay in the land of 
 Shinar, and it is strongly supposed that the " Am- 
 
 17
 
 226 "^^^^ STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 raphel king of Shinar " who marched with Khudur- 
 Laganiar, as his ally, against the five kings of the 
 Jordan and the Dead Sea, was no other than a king 
 of Babylon, one of whose names has been read 
 Amarpal, while " Ariokh of EUassar " was an Ela- 
 mite, Eri-aku, brother or cousin of Khudur-Laga- 
 mar. and King of Larsam, where the conquerors had 
 established a powerful dynasty, closely allied by 
 blood to the principal one, which had made the ven- 
 erable Ur its headquarters. This Amarpal, more 
 frequently mentioned under his other name of SiN- 
 MUBALLIT, is thought to have been the father of 
 Hammurabi, the deliverer of Chaldea and the 
 founder of the new empire. 
 
 34. The inscriptions which Hammurabi left are 
 numerous, and afford us ample means of judging 
 of his greatness as warrior, statesman and admin- 
 istrator. In his long reign of fifty-five years he 
 had, indeed, time to achieve much, but what he did 
 achieve ivas much even for so long a reign. In 
 what manner he drove out the foreigners we are not 
 told, but so much is clear that the decisive victory 
 was that which he gained over the Elamite king 
 of Larsam. It was probably by expelling the hated 
 race by turns from every district they occupied, 
 that Hammurabi gathered the entire land into his 
 own hands and was enabled to keep it together and 
 weld it into one united empire, including both Ac- 
 cad and Shumir, with all their time-honored cities 
 and sanctuaries, making his own ancestral city, 
 Babylon, the head and capital of them all. This 
 king was in every respect a great and wise ruler.
 
 CU SUITES AND SEMITES. 22/ 
 
 for, after freeing and uniting the country, he was 
 very careful of its good and watchful of its agricult- 
 ural interests. Like all the other kings, he restored 
 many temples and built several new ones. But he 
 also devoted much energy to public works of a 
 more generally useful kind. During the first part 
 of lais reign inundations seem to have been frequent 
 and disastrous, possibly in consequence of the ca- 
 nals and waterworks having been neglected under 
 the oppressive foreign rule. The inscriptions speak 
 of a city having been destroyed " by a great flood," 
 and mention " a great wall along the Tigris " — prob- 
 ably an embankment, as having been built by Ham- 
 murabi for protection against the river. But prob- 
 ably finding the remedy inadequate, he undertook 
 and completed one of the greatest public works 
 that have ever been carried out in any country : the 
 excavation of a gigantic canal, which he called by 
 his own name, but which was afterwards famous un- 
 der that of " Royal Canal of Babylon." From this 
 canal innumerable branches carried the fertilizing 
 waters through the country. It was and remained 
 the greatest work of the kind, and was, fifteen cent- 
 uries later, the wonder of the foreigners who visited 
 Babylon. Its constructor did not overrate the ben- 
 efit he had conferred when he wrote in an inscrip- 
 tion which can scarcely be called boastful : " I have 
 caused to be dug the Nahr-Hammurabi, a benedic- 
 tion for the people of Shumir and Accad. I have 
 directed the waters of its branches over the desert 
 plains ; I have caused them to run in the dry chan^ 
 nels and thus given unfailing waters to the peo-
 
 228 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 pie. ... I have changed desert plains into well- 
 watered lands. I have given them fertility and 
 plenty, and made them the abode of happiness." 
 
 35. There are inscriptions of Hammurabi's son. 
 But after him anew catastrophe seems to have over- 
 taken Chaldea. He is succeeded by a line of for- 
 eign kings, who must have obtained possession of 
 the country by conquest. They were princes of a 
 fierce and warlike mountain race, the Kasshi, who 
 lived in the highlands that occupy the whole north- 
 western portion of Elam, where they probably be- 
 gan to feel cramped for room. This same people 
 has been called by the later Greek geographers 
 COSSAEANS or CiSSlANS, and is better known under 
 either of these names. Their language, of which 
 very few specimens have survived, is not yet under- 
 stood ; but so much is plain, that it is very different 
 both from the Semitic language of Babylon and that 
 of Shumir and Accad, so that the names of the Kas- 
 shi princes are easily distinguishable from all others. 
 No dismemberment of the empire followed this 
 conquest, however, if conquest there was. The 
 kings of the new dynasty seem to have succeeded 
 each other peacefully enough in Babylon. But the 
 conquering days of Chaldea were over. We read 
 no more of expeditions into the plains of Syria and 
 to the " Sea of the Setting Sun." For a power was 
 rising in the North-West, which quickly grew into 
 a formidable rival : through many centuries As- 
 syria kept the rulers of the Southern kingdom too 
 busy guarding their frontiers and repelling inroads 
 to allow them to think of foreign conquests.
 
 V. 
 
 BABYLONIAN RELIGION. 
 
 I. In relating the legend of the Divine Man-Fish, 
 who came out of the Gulf, and was followed, at 
 intervals, by several more similar beings, Berosus 
 assures us, that he "taught the people all the 
 things that make up civilization," so that *' noth- 
 ing new was invented after that any more." But 
 if, as is suggested, *'this monstrous Cannes" is 
 really a personification of the strangers who came 
 into the land, and, being possessed of a higher cul- 
 ture, began to teach the Turanian population, the 
 first part of this statement is as manifestly an exag- 
 geration as the second. A people who had in- 
 vented writing, who knew how to build, to make 
 canals, to work metals, and who had passed out of 
 the first and grossest stage of religious conceptions, 
 might have much to learn, but certainly not every- 
 thing. What the newcomers — whether Cushites or 
 Semites — did teach them, was a more orderly way 
 of organizing society and ruling it b)' means of 
 laws and an established government, and, above all, 
 astronomy and mathematics — sciences in which the 
 Shumiro-Accads were little proficient, while the 
 later and mixed nation, the Chaldeans, attained in 
 
 229
 
 23C 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 them a very high perfection, so that many of their 
 discoveries and the first principles laid down by 
 them have come down to us as finally adopted 
 facts, confirmed by later science. Thus, the divis- 
 ion of the year into twelve months corresponding to 
 as many constellations, known as "the twelve signs 
 of the Zodiac," was familiar to them. They had 
 also found out the division of the year into twelve 
 months, only all their months had thirty days. So 
 they were obliged to add an extra month — an inter- 
 calary month, as the scientific term is — every six 
 years, to start even with the sun again, for they 
 knew where the error in their reckoning lay. These 
 things the strangers probably taught the Shumiro- 
 Accads, but at the same time borrowed from them 
 their way of counting. The Turanian races to this 
 day have this peculiarity, that they do not care for 
 the decimal system in arithmetic, but count by 
 dozens and sixties, preferring numbers that can be 
 divided by twelve and sixty. The Chinese even 
 now do not measure time by centuries or periods of 
 a hundred years, but by a cycle or period of sixty 
 years. This was probably the origin of the divis- 
 ion, adopted in Babylonia, of the sun's course into 
 360 equal parts or degrees, and of the day into 
 twelve "■ kasbus'" or double hours, since the kasbu 
 answered to two of our hours, and was divided into 
 sixty parts, which we might thus call " double min- 
 utes," while these again were composed of sixty 
 "double seconds." The natural division of the 
 year into twelve months made this so-called 
 " docenal " and " sexagesimal " system of calculation
 
 • BAB YL OxVJAiV NEL/G/OjV. 2 3 1 
 
 particularly convenient, and it was applied to every- 
 thing — measures of weight, distance, capacity and 
 size as well as time. 
 
 2. Astronomy is a strangely fascinating science, 
 with two widely different and seemingly contra- 
 dictory aspects, equally apt to develop habits of 
 hard thinking and of dreamy speculation. For, if 
 on one hand the study of mathematics, without 
 which astronomy cannot subsist, disciplines the 
 mind and trains it to exact and complicated opera- 
 tions, on the other hand, star-gazing, in the solitude 
 and silence of a southern night, irresistibly draws 
 it into a higher world, where poetical aspirations, 
 guesses and dreams take the place of figures with 
 their demonstrations and proofs. It is probably to 
 these habitual contemplations that the later Chal- 
 deans owed the higher tone of religious thought 
 which distinguished them from their Turanian pred- 
 ecessors. They looked for the deity in heaven, not 
 on earth. They did not cower and tremble before 
 a host of wicked goblins, the creation of a terrified 
 fancy. The spirits whom they worshipped inhab- 
 ited and ruled those beautiful bright worlds, whose 
 harmonious, concerted movements they watched 
 admiringly, reverently, and could calculate cor- 
 rectly, but without understanding them. The stars 
 generally became to them the visible manifestations 
 and agents of divine power, especially the seven 
 most conspicuous heavenly bodies : the Moon, 
 whom they particularly honored, as the ruler of 
 night and the measurer of time, the Sun and the 
 five planets then known, those which we call Saturn,
 
 232 
 
 THE STORY OP CHALDEA. 
 
 Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Mercury. It is but just 
 to the Shumiro-Accads to say that the perception 
 of the divine in the beauty of the stars was not for- 
 eign to them. This is amply proved by the fact 
 that in their oldest writing the sign of a star is used 
 to express the idea not of any particular god or 
 goddess, but of the divine principle, the deity gen- 
 erally. The name of every divinity is preceded by 
 the star, meaning " the god so-and-so." When used 
 in this manner, the sign was read in the old lan- 
 guage " Dingir " — " god, deity." The Semitic lan- 
 guage of Babylonia which we call " Assyrian," while 
 adapting the ancient writing to its own needs, 
 retained this use of the sign "star," and read it Uu, 
 "god." This word — Ilu or El — we find in all Sem- 
 itic languages, either ancient or modern, in the 
 names they give to God, in the Arabic Allah as 
 well as in the Hebrew Elohim. 
 
 3. This religion, based and centred on the wor- 
 ship of the heavenly bodies, has been called Sabeism, 
 and was common to most Semitic races, Avhose 
 primitive nomadic life in the desert and wide, fiat 
 pasture-tracts, with the nightly watches required by 
 the tending of vast flocks, inclined them to contem- 
 plation and star-gazing. It is to be noticed that 
 the Semites gave the first place to the Sun, and not, 
 like the Shumiro-Accads, to the Moon, possibly 
 from a feeling akin to terror, experiencing as they 
 did his destructive power, in the frequent droughts 
 and consuming heat of the desert.* 
 
 * See A. H. Sayce, "The Ancient Empires of the East " (1883), 
 p. 389.
 
 BAB YL ONI AN RELIGION. 233 
 
 4. A very prominent feature of the new order of 
 things was the great power and importance of the 
 priesthood. A successful pursuit of science re- 
 quires two things: intellectual superiority and 
 leisure to study, i.e., freedom from the daily care 
 how to procure the necessaries of life. In very an- 
 cient times people in general were quite willing to 
 acknowledge the superiority of those men who knew 
 more than they did, who could teach them and 
 help them with wise advice ; they were willing also 
 to support such men by voluntary contributions, 
 in order to give them the necessary leisure. That 
 a race with whom science and religion were one 
 should honor the men thus set apart and learned 
 in heavenly things and allow them great influence 
 in private and public affairs, believing them, as they 
 did, to stand in direct communion with the divine 
 powers, was but natural; and from this to letting 
 them take to themselves the entire government of 
 the country as the established rulers thereof, was 
 but one step. There was another circumstance 
 which helped to bring about this result. The 
 Chaldeans were devout believers in astrology, a 
 form of superstition into which an astronomical 
 religion like Sabcism is very apt to degenerate. 
 For once it is taken for granted that the stars are 
 divine beings, possessed of intelligence, and will, 
 and power, what more natural than to imagine that 
 they can rule and shape the destinies of men by a 
 mysterious influence? This influence was supposed 
 to depend on their movements, their position in 
 the sky, their ever changing combinations and rela-
 
 234 
 
 THE STORY OF CJIALDKA. 
 
 tions to each other ; under this supposition every 
 movement of a star— its rising, its setting, or cross- 
 ing the path of another — every sHghtest change in 
 the aspect of the heavens, every unusual phenom- 
 enon — an ecHpse, for instance — must be possessed 
 of some weighty sense, boding good or evil to men, 
 whose destiny must constantly be as clearly written 
 in the blue sky as in a book. If only one could 
 learn the language, read the characters ! Such 
 knowledge was thought to be within the reach of 
 men, but only to be acquired by the exceptionally 
 gifted and learned few, and those whom they might 
 think worthy of having it imparted to them. That 
 these few must be priests was self-evident. They 
 were themselves fervent believers in astrology, 
 which they considered quite as much a real science 
 as astronomy, and to which they devoted themselves 
 as assiduously. They thus became the acknowl- 
 edged interpreters of the divine will, partakers, so 
 to speak, of the secret councils of heaven. Of 
 course such a position added greatly to their power, 
 and that they should never abuse it to strengthen 
 their hold on the public mind and to favor their 
 own ambitious views, was not in human nature. 
 Moreover, being the clever and learned ones of the 
 nation, they really were at the time the fittest to 
 rule it — and rule it they did. When the Semitic 
 culture spread over Shumir, whither it gradually ex- 
 tended from the North., i.e., the land of Accad, 
 there arose in each great city— Ur, Eridhu, Larsam, 
 Erech, — a mighty temple, with its priests, its library, 
 its Ziggurat or observatory. The cities and the
 
 BAB YLONIA.X RELIGION. 
 
 ^35 
 
 tracts of country belonging to them were governed 
 by their respective colleges. And when in progress 
 of time, the power became centred in the hands of 
 single men, they still were priest-kings, pafcsis, 
 whoSe royalty must have been greatly hampered 
 and limited by the authority of their priestly col- 
 leagues. Such a form of government is known un- 
 der the name of theocracy, composed of two Greek 
 words and meaning "divine government." 
 
 5. This religious reform represents a complete 
 though probably peaceable revolution in the condi- 
 tion of the " Land between the Rivers." The new 
 and higher culture had thoroughly asserted itself as 
 predominant in both its great provinces, and in 
 nothing as much as in the national religion, which, 
 coming in contact with the conceptions of the Sem- 
 ites, was affected by a certain nobler spiritual 
 strain, a purer moral feeling, which seems to have 
 been more peculiarly Semitic, though destined to 
 be carried to its highest perfection only in the 
 Hebrew branch of the race. Moral tone is a subtle 
 influence, and will work its way into men's hearts 
 and thoughts far more surely and irresistibly than 
 any amount of preaching and commanding, for men 
 are naturally drawn to what is good and beautiful 
 when it is placed before them. Thus the old set- 
 tlers of the land, the Shumiro-Accads, to whom their 
 gross and dismal goblin creed could not be of much 
 comfort, were not slow in feeling this ennobling 
 and beneficent influence, and it is assuredly to that 
 we owe the beautiful prayers and hymns which 
 mark the hiijher stage of their religion. The con-
 
 236 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 sciousness of sin, the feeling of contrition, of de- 
 pendence on an offended yet merciful divine power, 
 so strikingly conspicuous in the so-called " Peniten- 
 tial Psalms " (see p. 178), the fine poetry in some 
 of the later hymns, for instance those to the Sun 
 (see p. 171), are features so distinctively Semitic, 
 that they startle us by their resemblance to certain 
 portions of the Bible. On the other hand, a nation 
 never forgets or quite gives up its own native creed 
 and religious practices. The wise priestly rulers of 
 Shumir and Accad did not attempt to compel the 
 people to do so, but even while introducing and 
 propagating the new religion, suffered them to go on 
 believing in their hosts of evil spirits and their few 
 beneficent ones, in their conjuring, soothsaying, cast- 
 ing and breaking of spells and charms. Nay, more. 
 As time went on and the learned priests studied more 
 closely the older creed and ideas, they were struck 
 with the beauty of some few of their conceptions — 
 especially that of the ever benevolent, ever watch- 
 ful Spirit of Earth, Ea, and his son Meridug, the 
 mediator, the friend of men. These conceptions, 
 these and some other favorite national divinities, 
 they thought worthy of being adopted by them 
 and worked into their own religious system, which 
 was growing more complicated, more elaborate 
 every day, while the large bulk of spirits and de- 
 mons they also allowed a place in it, in the rank of 
 inferior " Spirits of heaven " and " Spirits of earth," 
 which were lightly classed together and counted by 
 hundreds. By the time a thousand years had 
 passed, the fusion had become so complete that
 
 BAB YLONIAiV RELIGION. ^ , - 
 
 there really was both a new religion and a new na- 
 tion, the result of a long work of amalgamation. 
 The Shumiro-Accads of pure yet low race were no 
 longer, nor did the Semites preserve a separate ex- 
 istence ; they had become merged into one nation 
 of mixed races, which at a later period became 
 known under the general name of Chaldeans, whose 
 religion, regarded with awe for its prodigious an- 
 tiquity, yet was comparatively recent, being the 
 outcome of the combination of two infinitely older 
 creeds, as we have just seen. When Hammurabi 
 established his residence at Babel, a city which had 
 but lately risen to importance, he made it the cap- 
 ital of the empire first completely united under his 
 rule (see p. 226), hence the name of Babylonia is 
 given by ancient writers to the old land of Shumir 
 and Accad, even more frequently than that of Chal- 
 dea, and the state religion is called indifferently 
 the Babylonian or Chaldean, and not unfrequently 
 Chaldeo-Babylonian. 
 
 6. This religion, as it was definitely established 
 and handed down unchanged through a succession 
 of twenty centuries and more, had a twofold char- 
 acter, which must be well grasped in order to under- 
 stand its general drift and sense. On the one hand, 
 as it admitted the existence of many divine powers, 
 who shared between them the government of the 
 world, it was decidedly Polytheistic — " a religion 
 of many gods." On the other hand, a dim percep- 
 tion had already been arrived at, perhaps through 
 observation of the strictly regulated movements of 
 the stars, of the presence of One supreme ruling
 
 238 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 and directing Power. For a class of men given to 
 the study of astronomy could not but perceive that 
 all those bright Beings which they thought so 
 divine and powerful, were not absolutely inde- 
 pendent ; that their movements and combinations 
 were too regular, too strictly timed, too identical in 
 their ever recurring repetition, to be entirely volun- 
 tary ; that, consequently, they obeyed — obeyed a 
 Law, a Power above and beyond them, beyond 
 heaven itself, invisible, unfathomable, unattainable 
 by human thought or eyes. Such a perception 
 was, of course, a step in the right direction, towards 
 Monotheism, i.e., the belief in only one God. But 
 the perception was too vague and remote to be fully 
 realized and consistently carried out. The priests 
 who, from long training in abstract thought and 
 contemplation, probably could look deeper and 
 come nearer the truth than other people, strove to 
 express their meaning in language and images 
 which, in the end, obscured the original idea and 
 almost hid it out of sight, instead of making it 
 clearer. Besides, they did not imagine the world 
 as created by God, made by an act of his will, but 
 as being a form of him, a manifestation, part of 
 himself, of his own substance. Therefore, in the 
 great all of the universe, and in each of its portions, 
 in the mysterious forces at work in it — light and 
 heat and life and growth — they admired and adored 
 not the power of God, but his very presence ; one 
 of the innumerable and infinitely varied forms in 
 which he makes himself known and visible to men, 
 manifests himself to them — in short, an emanation
 
 BABYLOXIAX RELIGIOA\ 
 
 239 
 
 of God. The word " emanation " has been adopted 
 as the only one which to a certain extent conveys 
 this very subtle and complicated idea. An emana- 
 tion is not quite a thing itself, but it is a portion of 
 it, which comes out of it and separates itself from 
 it, yet cannot exist without it. So the fragrance 
 of a flower is not the flower, nor is it a growth or 
 development of it, yet the flower gives it forth and 
 it cannot exist by itself without the flower — it is an 
 emanation of the flower. The same can be said of 
 the mist which visibly rises from tb.e warm earth in 
 low and moist places on a summer evening — it is an 
 emanation of the earth. 
 
 7, The Chaldeo-Babylonian priests knew of many 
 such divine emanations, which, by giving them 
 names and attributing to them definite functions, 
 they made into so many separate divine persons. 
 Of these some ranked higher and some lower, a 
 relation which was sometimes expressed by the 
 human one of " father and son." They were or- 
 dered in groups, very scientifically arranged. Above 
 the rest were placed two Triads or " groups of 
 three." The first triad comprised Anu, Ea and 
 Bel, the supreme gods of all — all three retained 
 from the old Shumiro-Accadian list of divinities. 
 Anu is Ana, " Heaven," and the surnames or 
 epithets which are given him in different texts, 
 sufficiently show what conception had been formed 
 of him : he is called " the Lord of the starry 
 heavens," "the Lord of Darkness," " the first-born, 
 the oldest, the Father of the Gods." Ea, retaining 
 his ancient attributions as " Lord of the Deep," the
 
 240 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 pre-eminently wise and beneficent spirit, represents 
 the Divine Intelligence, the founder and maintainer 
 of order and harmony, while the actual task of sep- 
 arating the elements of chaos and shaping them 
 into the forms which make up the world as we 
 know it, as well as that of ordering the heavenly 
 bodies, appointing them their path and directing 
 them thereon, was devolved on the third person 
 of the triad, Bel, the son of Ea. Bel is a Semitic 
 name, which means simply " the lord." 
 
 8. From its nature and attributions, it is clear 
 that to this triad must have attached a certain 
 vagueness and remoteness. Not so the second 
 triad, in which the Deity manifested itself as stand- 
 ing in the nearest and most direct relation to man 
 as most immediately influencing him in his daily 
 life. The persons of this triad were the Moon, the 
 Sun, and the Power of the Atmosphere, — SiN, 
 Shamash, and Raman, the Semitic names for the 
 Shumiro-Accadian Uru-Ki or Nannar, Ud or 
 Babbar, and Im or Mermer. Very characteristic- 
 ally, Sin is frequently called " the god Thirty," in 
 allusion to his functions as the measurer of time pre- 
 siding over the month. Of the feelings with which 
 the Sun was regarded and the beneficent and splen- 
 did qualities attributed to him, we know enough from 
 the beautiful hymns quoted in Chap. III. (see p. 
 172). As to the god Raman, frequently represented 
 on tablets and cylinders by his characteristic sign, 
 the double or triple-forked lightning-bolt — his im- 
 portance as the dispenser of rain, the lord of the 
 whirlwind and tempest, made him very popularj an
 
 BABYLONIAN RELIGION. 34 1 
 
 object as much of dread as of gratitude ; and as the 
 crops depended on the supply of water from the 
 canals, and these again could not be full without 
 abundant rains, it is not astonishing that he should 
 have been particularly entitled " protector or lord 
 of canals," giver of abundance and " lord of fruit- 
 fulness." In his more terrible capacity, he is thus 
 described : " His standard titles are the minister of 
 heaven and earth," " the lord of the air," " he who 
 makes the tempest to rage." He is regarded as the 
 destroyer of crops, the rooter-up of trees, the scat- 
 terer of the harvest. Famine, scarcity, and even 
 their consequence, pestilence, are assigned to him. 
 He is said to have in his hand a " flaming sword " 
 with which he effects his works of destruction, and 
 this " flaming sword, which probably represents 
 lightning, becomes his emblem upon the tablets and 
 cylinders." * 
 
 9. The astronomical tendencies of the new relig- 
 ion fully assert themselves in the third group of 
 divinities. They are simply the five planets then 
 known and identified with various deities of the old 
 creed, to whom they are, so to speak, assigned as 
 their own particular provinces. Thus NiNDAR (also 
 called NiNIP or Nineb), originally another name 
 or form of the Sun (see p. 172), becomes the ruler 
 of the most distant planet, the one we now call Sat- 
 urn ; the old favorite, Meridug, under the Semitized 
 name of Marduk, rules the planet Jupiter. It is he 
 whom later Hebrew writers have called Merodach, 
 
 * Rawlinson's " Five Monarchies," Vol. I., p. 164. 
 18
 
 242 
 
 TEE SrORY OF CHALUfiA. 
 
 the name wc find in the Bible. The planet Mars 
 belongs to Nergal, the warrior-god, and Mercury 
 to Nebo, more properly Nabu, the " messenger of 
 the gods " and the special patron of astronomy, 
 while the planet Venus is under the sway of a fem- 
 inine deity, the goddess ISHTAR, one of the most 
 important and popular on the list. But of her more 
 anon. She leads us to the consideration of a very 
 essential and characteristic feature of the Chaldeo- 
 Babylonian religion, common, moreover, to all Ori- 
 ental heathen religions, especially the Semitic ones, 
 lo. There is a distinction — the distinction of sex 
 — which runs through the whole of animated nature, 
 dividing all things that have life into two separate 
 halves — male and female — halves most different in 
 their qualities, often opposite, almost hostile, yet 
 eternally dependent on each other, neither being com- 
 plete or perfect, or indeed able to exist without the 
 other. Separated by contrast, yet drawn together 
 by an irresistible sympathy which results in the clos- 
 est union, that of love and affection, the two sexes 
 still go through life together, together do the work 
 of the world. What the one has not or has in an in- 
 sufficient degree it finds in its counterpart, and it is 
 only their union which makes of the world a whole 
 thing, full, rounded, harmonious. The masculine na- 
 ture, active, strong, and somewhat stern, even Avhen 
 merciful and bounteous, inclined to boisterousness 
 and violence and often to cruelty, is well set off, or 
 rather completed and moderated, by the feminine 
 nature, not less active, but more quietly so, dispens-
 
 BABYLONIAN RELIGION. 
 
 243 
 
 in» gentle influences, open to milder moods, more 
 uniformly soft in feeling and manner. 
 
 II. In no relation of life is the difference, yet 
 harmony, of masculine and feminine action so plain 
 as in that between husband and wife, father and 
 
 60. A BUST 1.\SCR1I;KI> Willi IHK .N'A.ME OV NKBO. 
 
 (British Museuoi.) 
 
 mother. It requires no very great effort of imag- 
 ination to carry the distinction beyond the bounds 
 of animated nature, into the world at large. To 
 men for whom every portion or force of the universe 
 was endowed with a particle of the divine nature
 
 244 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 and power, many were the things which seemed to 
 be paired in a contrasting, yet joint action similar 
 to that of the sexes. If the great and distant 
 Heaven appeared to them as the universal ruler and 
 lord, the source of all things — the Father of the 
 Gods, as they put it — surely the beautiful Earth, 
 kind nurse, nourisher and preserver of all things that 
 have life, could be called the universal Mother. If 
 the fierce summer and noonday sun could be looked 
 on as the resistless conqueror, the dread King of 
 the world, holding death and disease in his hand, 
 was not the quiet, lovely moon, of mild and sooth- 
 ing light, bringing the rest of coolness and healing 
 dews, its gentle Queen? In short, there is not a 
 power or a phenomenon of nature which does not 
 present to a poetical imagination a twofold aspect, 
 answering to the standard masculine and feminine 
 qualities and peculiarities. The ancient thinkers — 
 priests — who framed the vague guesses of the grop- 
 ing, dreaming mind into schemes and systems of 
 profound meaning, expressed this sense of the two- 
 fold nature of things by worshipping a double di- 
 vine being or principle, masculine and feminine. 
 Thus every god was supplied with a wife, through 
 the entire series of divine emanations and manifes- 
 tations. And as all the gods were in reality only 
 different names and forms of the Supreme and Un- 
 fathomable One, so all the goddesses represent 
 only Belit, the great feminine principle of nature 
 — productiveness, maternity, tenderness — also con- 
 tained, like everything else, in that One, and ema- 
 nating- from it in endless succession. Hence it
 
 BABYLONIAN RELIGION. 
 
 245 
 
 comes that the goddesses of the Chaldeo-Babylo- 
 nian rcHgion, though different in name and appar- 
 »ently in attributions, become wonderfully alike 
 when looked at closer. They are all more or less 
 repetitions of Belit, the wife of BEL. Her name 
 — which is only the feminine form of the god's, 
 meaning "the Lady," as Bel means "the Lord," — 
 sufificiently shows that the two are really one. Of 
 the other goddesses the most conspicuous are Anat 
 or Nana (Earth), the wife of Anu (Heaven), An- 
 UNIT (the Moon), wife of Shamash (the Sun), and 
 lastly ISHTAR, the ruler of the planet Venus in her 
 own right, and by far the most attractive and in- 
 teresting of the list. She was a great favorite, wor- 
 shipped as the Queen of Love and Beauty, and also 
 as the Warrior-Queen, who rouses men to deeds of 
 bravery, inspirits and protects them in battle — per- 
 haps because men have often fought and made war 
 for the love of women, and also probably because 
 the planet Venus, her own star, appears not only 
 in the evening, close after sunset, but also immedi- 
 ately before daybreak, and so seems to summon the 
 human race to renewed efforts and activity. Ishtar 
 could not be an exception to the general principle 
 and remain unmated. But her husband, DUMUZ (a 
 name for the Sun), stands to her in an entirely 
 subordinate position, and, indeed, would be but lit- 
 tle known were it not for a beautiful story that was 
 told of them in a very old poem, and which will find its 
 place among many more in one of the next chapters. 
 12. It would be tedious and unnecessary to recite 
 here more names of gods and goddesses, though
 
 246 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 there are quite a number, and more come to light 
 all the time as new tablets are discovered and read. 
 Most of them are in reality only different names for 
 the same conceptions, and the Chaldeo-Babylonian 
 pantheon — or assembly of divine persons — is very 
 sufficiently represented by the so-called " twelve 
 great gods," who were universally acknowledged to 
 be at its head, and of whom we will here repeat the 
 names : Anu, Ea and Bel, Sin, Shamash and Ra- 
 man, NiNDAR, Maruduk, Nergal, Nebo, Belit 
 and ISHTAR. Each had numerous temples all over 
 the country. But every great city had its favor- 
 ite whose temple was the oldest, largest and most 
 sumptuous, to whose worship it was especially de- 
 voted from immemorial times. Ea, the most be- 
 loved god of old Shumir, had his chief sanctuary, 
 which he shared with his son Meridug, at Eridhu 
 (now Abu-Shahrein), the most southern and almost 
 the most ancient city of Shumir, situated near the 
 mouth of the Euphrates, since the Persian Gulf 
 reached quite as far inland in the year 4000 B.C., 
 and this was assuredly an appropriate station for 
 the great " lord of the deep," the Fish-god Cannes, 
 who emerged from the waters to instruct man- 
 kind. Ur, as we have seen, was the time-hon- 
 ored seat of the Moon-god. At Erech Anu and 
 Anat or Nana — Heaven and Earth — were specially 
 honored from the remotest antiquity, being jointly 
 worshipped in the temple called " the House of 
 Heaven." This may have been the reason of the 
 particular sacredness attributed to the ground all 
 around Erech, as witnessed by the exceeding per-
 
 BABYLONIAN RELIGION. 
 
 247 
 
 sistency with which people strove for ages to bury 
 their dead in it, as though under the immediate pro- 
 tection of the goddess of Earth* (see Ch. III. of In- 
 troduction). Larsam paid especial homage to Sha- 
 mash and was famous for its very ancient " House 
 of the Sun." The Sun and Moon — Shamash and 
 Anunit — had their rival sanctuaries at SiPPAR on 
 the " Royal Canal," which ran nearly parallel to the 
 Euphrates, and Agade, the city of Sargon, situated 
 just opposite on the other bank of the canal. The 
 name of Agade was lost in the lapse of time, and 
 both cities became one, the two portions being dis- 
 tinguished only by the addition '' Sippar of the 
 Sun " and " Sippar of Anunit." The Hebrews 
 called the united city "The two Sippars" — SePH- 
 ARVAIM, the name we find in the Bible. 
 
 13. The site of this important city was long 
 doubtful; but in 1881 one of the most skilful and 
 indefatigable searchers, Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, a 
 gentleman who began his career as assistant to Lay- 
 ard, made a discovery which set the question at 
 rest. He was digging in a mound known to the 
 Arabs by the name of Abu-Habba, and had made 
 his way into the apartments of a vast structure 
 which he knew to be a temple. From room to 
 room he passed until he came to a smaller cham- 
 ber, paved with asphalt, which he at once surmised 
 to be the archive-room of the temple. " Hereto- 
 fore," says Mr. Rassam in his report, "all Assy- 
 
 * It was the statue of this very goddess Nana which was carried 
 away by the Elamite conqueror, Khudur-Nankhundi in 2280 B.C. and 
 restored to its place by Assurbanipal in 645 B.C.
 
 :248 ^'^-^^ STORY OF CIIALDEA. 
 
 rian and Babylonian structures were found to be 
 paved generally cither with stone or brick, con- 
 sequently this novel discovery led me to have the 
 asphalt broken into and examined. On doing so 
 we found, buried in a corner of the chamber, about 
 three feet below the surface, an inscribed earthen- 
 ware coffer, inside which was deposited a stone 
 tablet. . . ." Rassam had indeed stumbled on the 
 archive of the famous Sun-temple, as was proved 
 not only by the tablet, but by the numerous docu- 
 ments which accompanied it, and which gave the 
 names of the builders and restorers of the temple. 
 As to the tablet, it is the finest and best preserved 
 work of art of the kind which has yet been found. 
 It was deposited about the year 880 B.C. on occasion 
 of a restoration, and represents the god himself, 
 seated on a throne, receiving the homage of wor- 
 shippers, while above him the sun-disc is held sus- 
 pended from heaven on two strong cords, like a gi- 
 gantic lamp, by two ministering beings, who may 
 very probably belong to the host of Igigi or spirits 
 of heaven. The inscription, in beautifully clear and 
 perfectly preserved characters, informs us that this 
 is " The image of Shamash, the great lord, who 
 dwells in the * House of the Sun,' {E-Babbard) 
 which is within the city of Sippar." * (See Front- 
 ispiece.) This was a truly magnificent find, and 
 who knows but something as unexpected and as 
 conclusive may turn up to fix for us the exact 
 
 * The three circles above the god represent the Moon-god, the Sun- 
 god, and Ishtar. So we are informed by the two lines of writing 
 which run above the roof.
 
 BABYLONIAN RELIGION. 
 
 249 
 
 place of the temple of Anunit, and consequently 
 of the venerable city of Agade. As to Bai5V- 
 LON, it was originally placed under divine pro- 
 tection generally, as shown by its proper Semitic 
 name, Babilu, which means, as we have already 
 ieen, "the Gate of God," and exactly answers to the 
 Shumiro-Accadian name of the city (Ka-Dingirka, 
 jr Ka-Dimirra) ; but later on it elected a special 
 protector in the person of Maruduk, the old favor- 
 ite, Meridug. When Babylon became the capital 
 of the united monarchy of Shumir and Accad, its 
 patron divinity, under the name of Bel-Maruduk, 
 (" the Lord Maruduk ") rose to a higher rank than 
 he had before occupied ; his temple outshone all 
 others and became a wonder of the world for its 
 wealth and splendor. He had another, scarcely less 
 splendid, and founded by Hammurabi himself in 
 Borsip. In this way religion was closely allied to 
 politics. For in the days before the reunion of the 
 great cities under the rule of Hammurabi, whichever 
 of them was the most powerful at the time, its 
 priests naturally claimed the pre-eminence for their 
 local deity even beyond their own boundaries. So 
 that the fact of the old Kings of Ur, Ur-ea and 
 his descendants, not limiting themselves to the 
 worship of their national IMoon-god, but building 
 temples in many places and to many gods, was per- 
 haps a sign of a conciliating general policy as much 
 as of liberal religious feeling. 
 
 14. One would think that so very perfect a system 
 of religion, based too on so high and noble an order 
 of ideas, should have entirely superseded the coarse
 
 250 
 
 THE STOKY OF CHALDEA 
 
 materialism and conjuring practices of the goblin- 
 creed of the primitive Turanian settlers. Such, 
 however, was far from being the case. We saw that 
 the new religion made room, somewhat contempt- 
 uously perhaps, for the spirits of the old creed, 
 carelessly massing them wholesale into a sort of 
 regiment, composed of the three hundred Igigi, or 
 spirits of heaven, and the six hundred Anunnaki, 
 or spirits of earth. The conjurers and sorcerers 
 of old were even admitted into the priesthood in an 
 inferior capacity, as a sort of lower order, probably 
 more tolerated than encouraged — tolerated from 
 necessity, because the people clung to their an- 
 cient beliefs and practices. But if their ofificial po- 
 sition as a priestly class were subordinate, their real 
 power was not the less great, for the public favor 
 and credulity were on their side, and they were 
 assuredly more generally popular than the learned 
 and solemn priests, the counsellors and almost the 
 equals of the kings, whose thoughts dwelt among 
 the stars, who reverently searched the heavens for 
 revelations of the divine will and wisdom, and who, 
 by pursuing accurate observation and mathematical 
 calculation together with the wildest dreams, made 
 astronomy and astrology the inextricable tangle of 
 scientific truth and fantastic speculation that we 
 see it in the great work (in seventy tablets) pre- 
 pared for the library of Sargon II. at Agade. That 
 the ancient system of conjuring and incantations re- 
 mained in full force and general use, is sufificiently 
 proved by the contents of the first two parts of the 
 great collection in two hundred tablets compiled in
 
 BABYLONIAN RELIGION. 
 
 251 
 
 the reign of the same king, and from the care with 
 which the w^ork was copied and recopied, com- 
 mented on and translated in later ages, as we see 
 from the copy made for the Royal Library at Nin- 
 eveh, the one which has reached us. 
 
 15. There was still a third branch of so-called 
 "science," which greatly occupied the minds of the 
 Chaldeo-Babylonians from their earliest times down 
 to the latest days of their existence : it was the art 
 of Divination, i.e., of divining and foretelling future 
 events from signs and omens, a superstition born of 
 the old belief in every object of inanimate nature 
 being possessed or inhabited by a spirit, and the 
 later belief in a higher power ruling the world 
 and human affairs to the smallest detail, and con- 
 stantly manifesting itself through all things in na- 
 ture as through secondary agents, so that nothing 
 whatever could occur without some deeper signifi- 
 cance, which might be discovered and expounded by 
 specially trained and favored individuals. In the 
 case of atmospheric prophecies concerning weather 
 and crops, as connected with the appearance of 
 clouds, sky and moon, the force and direction of 
 winds, etc., there may have been some real observa- 
 tion to found them on. But it is very clear that 
 such a conception, if carried out consistently to ex- 
 treme lengths and applied indiscriminately to every- 
 thing, must result in arrant folly. Such was as- 
 suredly the case with the Chaldeo-Babylonians, who 
 not only carefully noted and explained dreams, 
 drew lots in doubtful cases by means of inscribed 
 arrows, interpreted the rustle of trees, the plashing
 
 252 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 of fountains and murmur of streams, the direction 
 and form of lightnings, not only fancied that they 
 could see things in bowls of water and in the shift 
 ing forms assumed by the flame which consumed 
 sacrifices, and the smoke which rose therefrom, and 
 that they could raise and question the spirits of the 
 dead, but drew presages and omens, for good or 
 evil, from the flight of birds, the appearance of the 
 liver, lungs, heart and bowels of the animals offered 
 in sacrifice and opened for inspection, from the 
 natural defects or monstrosities of babies or the 
 young of animals — in short, from any and every- 
 thing that they could possibly subject to observa- 
 tion. 
 
 16. This idlest of all kinds of speculation was re- 
 duced to a most minute and apparently scientific 
 system quite as early as astrology and incantation, 
 and forms the subject of a third collection, in about 
 one hundred tablets, and probably compiled by 
 those same indefatigable priests of Agade for Sar- 
 gon, w4io was evidently of a most methodical turn 
 of mind, and determined to have all the traditions 
 and the results of centuries of observation and 
 practical experiences connected with any branch of 
 religious science fixed forever in the shape of thor- 
 oughly classified rules, for the guidance of priests 
 for all coming ages. This collection has come to 
 us in an even more incomplete and mutilated con- 
 dition than the others ; but enough has been pre- 
 served to show us that a right-thinking and relig- 
 iously-given Chaldeo-Babylonian must have spent 
 his life taking notes of the absurdest trifles, and
 
 BABVLONIAN RELIGION: 
 
 -If T 
 
 questioning the diviners and priests about them, in 
 order not to get into scrapes by misinterpreting the 
 signs and taking that to be a favorable omen which 
 boded dire calamity — or the other way, and thus 
 doing things or leaving them undone at the wrong 
 moment and in the wrong way. What excites, 
 perhaps, even greater wonder, is the utter absurdity 
 of some of the incidents gravely set down as affect- 
 ing the welfare, not only of individuals, but of the 
 whole country. What shall we say, for instance, 
 of the importance attached to the proceedings of 
 stray dogs? Here are some of the items as given 
 by Mr. Fr. Lenormant in his most valuable and 
 entertaining book on Chaldean Divination: — 
 
 " If a gray dog enter the palace, the latter will be 
 consumed by flames. — If a yellow dog enter the pal- 
 ace, the latter will perish in a violent catastrophe. — 
 If a tawny dog enter the palace, peace will be con- 
 cluded with the enemies. — If a dog enter the palace 
 and be not killed, the peace of the palace will be 
 disturbed. — If a dog enter the temple, the gods will 
 have no mercy on the land. — If a white dog enter 
 the temple, its foundations will subsist. — If a black 
 dog enter the temple, its foundations will be 
 shaken. — If a gray dog enter the temple, the latter 
 will lose its possessions. ... If dogs assemble in 
 troops and enter the temple, no one will remain in 
 authority. ... If a dog vomits in a house, the 
 master of that house will die." 
 
 17. The chapter on monstrous births is extensive. 
 Not only is every possible anomaly registered, from 
 an extra fing-er or toe to an ear smaller than the
 
 254 '^^^^- '^^<^^^' OF CIIALDEA. 
 
 other, with its corresponding presage of good or 
 evil to the country, the king, the army, but the most 
 impossible monstrosities are seriously enumerated, 
 with the political conditions of which they are sup- 
 posed to be the signs. For instance: — If a woman 
 give birth to a child with lion's ears, a mighty king 
 will rule the land . . . with a bird's beak, there will 
 be peace in the land. . , . If a queen give birth to 
 a child with a lion's face, the king will have no 
 rival ... if to a snake, the king will be mighty. . . . 
 If a mare give birth to a foal with a lion's mane, 
 the lord of the land will annihilate his enemies . , . 
 with a dog's paws, the land will be diminished , . . 
 with a lion's paws, the land will be increased. ... If 
 a sheep give birth to a lion, there will be war, the 
 king will have no rival. ... If a mare give birth to 
 a dog, there will be disaster and famine." 
 
 1 8. The three great branches of religious science 
 — astrology, incantation and divination — were rep- 
 resented by three corresponding classes of " wise 
 men," all belonging, in different degrees, to the 
 priesthood : the star-gazers or astrologers, the magi- 
 cians or sorcerers, and the soothsayers or fortune- 
 tellers. The latter, again, were divided into many 
 smaller classes according to the particular kind of 
 divination which they practised. Some specially 
 devoted themselves to the interpretation of dreams, 
 others to that of the flight of birds, or of the signs 
 of the atmosphere, or of casual signs and omens 
 generally. All were in continual demand, consulted 
 alike by kings and private persons, and all proceeded 
 in strict accordance with the rules and principles
 
 BAB YL OAVAN RELIGION. 2<K 
 
 laid down in the three great works of King Sargon's 
 time. When the Babylonian empire ceased to exist 
 and the Chaldeans were no longer a nation, these 
 secret arts continued to be practised by them, and 
 the name "Chaldean " became a by-word, a syno- 
 nym for *' a wise man of the East," — astrologer, 
 magician or soothsayer. They dispersed all over 
 the world, carrying their delusive science with them, 
 practising and teaching it, welcomed everywhere by 
 the credulous and superstitious, often highly hon- 
 ored and always richly paid. Thus it is from the 
 Chaldeans and their predecessors the Shumiro- 
 Accads that the belief in astrology, witchcraft and 
 every kind of fortune-telling has been handed down 
 to the nations of Europe, together with the prac- 
 tices belonging thereto, many of which we find lin- 
 gering even to our day among the less educated 
 classes. The very words " magic " and " magician " 
 are probably an inheritance of that remotest of 
 antiquities. One of the words for " priest " in the 
 old Turanian tongue of Shumir was vng-a, which, in 
 the later Semitic language, became maj^. The R^rd- 
 inag — "great priest," or perhaps " chief conjurer," 
 was a high functionary at the court of the Assyrian 
 kings. Hence " magus," " magic," " magician," in 
 all the European languages, from Latin downward. 
 19. There can be no doubt that we have little rea- 
 son to be grateful for such an heirloom as this mass 
 of superstitions, which have produced so much evil 
 in the world and still occasionally do mischief 
 enough. But we must not forget to set off against 
 it the many excellent things, most important dis-
 
 256 THE STORY OF CIIALDEA. 
 
 coveries in the province of astronomy and mathe- 
 matics which have come to us from the same dis- 
 tant source. To the ancient Chaldeo-Babylonians 
 we owe not only our division of time, but the inven- 
 tion of the sun-dial, and the 'week of seven days, 
 dedicated in succession to the Sun, the Moon, and 
 the five planets — an arrangement which is still 
 maintained, the names of our days being merely 
 translations of the Chaldean ones. And more than 
 that ; there were days set apart and kept holy, as 
 days of rest, as far back as the time of Sargon of 
 Agade ; it was from the Semites of Babylonia — per- 
 haps the Chaldeans of Ur — that both the name and 
 the observance passed to the Hebrew branch of the 
 race, the tribe of Abraham. George Smith found 
 an Assyrian calendar where the day called Sabattit 
 or Sabattuv is explained to mean " completion of 
 work, a day of rest for the soul." On this day, it 
 appears it was not lawful to cook food, to change 
 one's dress, to offer a sacrifice; the king was for- 
 bidden to speak in public, to ride in a chariot, to 
 perform any kind of military or civil duty, even to 
 take medicine.* This, surely, is a keeping of the 
 Sabbath as strict as the most orthodox Jew could 
 well desire. There are, however, essential differences 
 between the two. In the first place, the Babyloni- 
 ans kept five Sabbath days every month, which 
 made more than one a week; in the second place, 
 
 * Friedrich Delitzsch, " Beigaben " to the German translat. of 
 Smith's "Chaldean Genesis" (1876), p. 300. A. H. Sayce, "The 
 Ancient Empires of the East" (1883), p. 402. W. Lotz, " Quaes- 
 tiones de Historia Sabbati."
 
 BAB YL ONI AN RELIGION. 257 
 
 they came round on certain dates of each month, 
 independently of the day of the week : on the 7th, 
 14th, 19th, 2ist and 28th. The custom appears to 
 have passed to the Assyrians, and there are indica- 
 tions which encourage the supposition that it was 
 shared by other nations connected with the Jews, 
 the Babylonians and Assyrians, for instance, by the 
 Phoenicians. 
 
 19
 
 VI. 
 
 LEGENDS AND STORIES. 
 
 I. In every child's life there comes a moment 
 when it ceases to take the world and all it holds as 
 a matter of course, when it begins to wonder and to 
 question. The first, the great question naturall)- 
 is — " Who made it all ? The sun, the stars, the sea, 
 the rivers, the flowers, and the trees — whence come 
 they? who made them? " And to this question we 
 are very ready with our answer: — "God made it 
 all. The One, the Almighty God created the 
 world, and all that is in it, by His own sovereign 
 will." When the child further asks: '' Hcnv did He 
 do it ? " we read to it the story of the Creation 
 which is the beginning of the Bible, our Sacred 
 Book, either without any remarks upon it, or with 
 the warning, that, for a full and proper understand- 
 ing of it, years are needed and knowledge of man}' 
 kinds. Now, these same questions have been 
 asked, by children and men, in all ages. Ever since 
 man has existed upon the earth, ever since he be- 
 gan, in the intervals of rest, in the hard labor and 
 struggle for life and limb, for food and warmth, to 
 raise his head and look abroad, and take in the 
 wonders that surround,' i him, he has thus pondered 
 
 ^58
 
 LEGENDS AND STORIES. 
 
 259 
 
 and questioned. And to this questioning, each 
 nation, after its own h'ghts, has framed very much 
 the same answer; the same in substance and spirit 
 (because the only possible one), acknowledging the 
 agency of a Divine Power, in filling the world with 
 life, and ordaining the laws of nature, — but often 
 very different in form, since, almost every creed 
 having stopped short of the higher religious con- 
 ception, that of One Deity, indivisible and all-power- 
 ful, the great act was attributed to many gods — 
 "the gods," — not to God. This of course opened 
 the way to innumerable, more or less ingenious, 
 fancies and vagaries as to the part played in it by 
 this or that particular divinity. Thus all races, 
 nations, even tribes have worked out for themselves 
 their own COSMOGONY, i.e., their own ideas on the 
 Origin of the World. The greatest number, not 
 having reached a very high stage of culture or 
 attained literary skill, preserved the teachings of 
 their priests in their memory, and transmitted them 
 orally from father to son ; such is the case even 
 now with many more peoples than we think of — 
 with all the native tribes of Africa, the islanders of 
 Australia and the Pacific, and several others. But 
 the nations who advanced intellectually to the front 
 of mankind and influenced the long series of coming 
 races by their thoughts and teachings, recorded in 
 books the conclusions they had arrived at on the 
 great questions which have always stirred the 
 heart and mind of man ; these were carefully pre- 
 served and recopied from time to time, for the in- 
 struction of each rising generation. Thus many
 
 26o THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 great nations of olden times have possessed Sacred 
 Books, which, having been written in remote an- 
 tiquity by their best and wisest men, were rev- 
 erenced as something not only holy, but beyond 
 the unassisted powers of the human intellect, some- 
 thing imparted, revealed directly by the deity itself, 
 and therefore to be accepted, undisputed, as abso- 
 lute truth. It is clear that it was in the interest of 
 the priests, the keepers and teachers of all religious 
 knowledge, to encourage and maintain in the peo- 
 ple at large this unquestioning belief. 
 
 2. Of all such books that have become known to 
 us, there are none of greater interest and import- 
 ance than the sacred books of Ancient Babylonia. 
 Not merely because they are the oldest known, 
 having been treasured in the priestly libraries of 
 Agade, Sippar, Cutha, etc., at an incredibly early 
 date, but principally because the ancestors of the 
 Hebrews, during their long station in the land of 
 Shinar, learned the legends and storie;s they con- 
 tained, and working them over after their own 
 superior religious lights, remodelled them into the 
 narrative which was written down many centuries 
 later as part of the Book of Genesis. 
 
 3. The original sacred books were attributed to 
 the god Ea himself, the impersonation of the Di- 
 vine Intelligence, and the teacher of mankind in the 
 shape of the first Man-Fish, Oannes — (the name 
 being only a Greek corruption of the Accadian Ea- 
 HAN, " Ea the Fish").* So Berosus informs us. 
 
 * See Fr. Lenormant, " Die Magie und Wahrsagekunst der Chal- 
 daer," p. 377.
 
 LEGENDS AND STORIES. 26 1 
 
 After describing Oannes and his proceedings (see 
 p. 185), he adds that " he wrote a Book on the Origin 
 of things and the beginnings of civilization, and gave 
 it to men." The "origin of things" is the history 
 of the Creation of the world, Cosmogony. Accord- 
 ingly, this is what Berosus proceeds to expound, 
 quoting directly from the Book, for he begins :— 
 " There was a time, sajs lie, (meaning Oannes) when 
 all was darkness and water." Then follows a very 
 valuable fragment, but unfortunately only a frag- 
 ment, one of the few preserved by later Greek writers 
 who quoted the old priest of Babylon for their own 
 purposes, while the work itself was, in some way, 
 destroyed and lost. True, these fragments contain 
 short sketches of several of the most important 
 legends ; still, precious as they are, they convey 
 only second-hand information, compiled, indeed, 
 from original sources by a learned and conscien- 
 tious writer, but for the use of a foreign race, ex- 
 tremely compressed, and, besides, with the names 
 all altered to suit that race's language. So long as 
 the " original sources " were missing, there was a 
 gap in the study both of the Bible and the religion 
 of Babylon, which no ingenuity could fill. Great, 
 therefore, were the delight and excitement, both 
 of Assyriologists and Bible scholars, when George 
 Smith, while sorting the thousands of tablet-frag- 
 ments which for years had littered the floor of 
 certain remote chambers of the British Museum, 
 accidentally stumbled on some which were evidently 
 portions of the original sacred legends partly ren- 
 dered by Berosus. To search for all available frag-
 
 262 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 ments of the precious documents and piece them 
 together became the task of Smith's life. And as 
 nearly all that he found belonged to copies from 
 the Royal Library at Nineveh, it was chiefly in 
 
 :'. ;^" i': 
 
 J ^■~-i-'j% O 
 
 
 order to enlarge the collection that he undertook 
 his first expedition to the Assyrian mounds, from 
 which he had the good fortune to bring back many 
 missing fragments, belonging also to different 
 copies, so that one frequently completes the other.
 
 LEGENDS AND STORIES. 
 
 263 
 
 Thus the oldest Chaldean legends were in a great 
 measure restored to us, though unfortunately very 
 few tablets are in a sufficiently well preserved con- 
 dition to allow of making out an entirely intelligible 
 and uninterrupted narrative. Not only are many 
 parts still missing altogether, but of those which 
 have been found, pieced and collected, there is not 
 one of which one or more columns have not been 
 injured in such a way that either the beginning or 
 the end of all the lines are gone, or whole lines 
 broken out or erased, with only a few words left 
 here and there. How hopeless the task must some- 
 times have seemed to the patient workers may 
 be judged from the foregoing specimen pieced to- 
 gether of sixteen bits, which Geo. Smith gives in 
 his book. This is one of the so-called " Deluge-tab- 
 lets," i.e., of those which contain the Chaldean ver- 
 sion of the story of the Deluge. Luckily more 
 copies have been found of this story than of any of 
 the others, or we should have had to be content 
 still with the short sketch of it given by Berosus, 
 
 4. If, therefore, the ancient Babylonian legends 
 of the beginnings of the world will be given here in 
 a connected form, for the sake of convenience and 
 plainness, it must be clearly understood that they 
 were not preserved for us in such a form, but are 
 the result of a long and patient work of research 
 and restoration, a work Avhich still continues ; and 
 every year, almost every month, brings to light 
 some new materials, some addition, some correction 
 to the old ones. Yet even as the work now stands, 
 it justifies us in asserting that our knowledge of this
 
 264 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 marvellous antiquity is fuller and more authentic 
 than that we have of many a period and people not 
 half so remote from us in point of place and dis- 
 tance. 
 
 5. The cosmogonic narrative which forms the 
 first part of what Geo. Smith has very aptly called 
 " the Chaldean Genesis " is contained in a number 
 of tablets. As it begins by the words " When 
 above,'' they are all numbered as No. i, or 3, or 5 
 " of the series When ABOVE. The property of As- 
 sJiurbanipal, king of nations, king of Assyria'' The 
 first lines are intact : — " When the heaven above 
 and the earth below were as yet unnamed," — (i.e., 
 according to Semitic ideas, did not exist) — Apsu 
 (the "Abyss ") and MuMMU-TlAMAT (the "billowy 
 Sea ") were the beginning of all things ; their wa- 
 ters mingled and flowed together ; that was the 
 Primeval Chaos ; it contained the germs of life but 
 "the darkness was not lifted " from the waters, and 
 therefore nothing sprouted or grew — (for no growth 
 or life is possible without light). The gods also 
 were not ; " they were as yet unnamed and did not 
 rule the destinies." Then the great gods came 
 into being, and the divine hosts of heaven and 
 earth (the Spirits of Heaven and Earth). " And the 
 days stretched themselves out, and the god Anu 
 (Heaven.) . . . ." Here the text breaks off 
 abruptly ; it is probable, however, that it told how, 
 after a long lapse of time, the gods Anu, Ea and 
 Bel, the first and supreme triad, came into being. 
 The next fragment, which is suf^ciently well pre- 
 served to allow of a connected translation, tells of the
 
 LEGENDS AND STORIES. 265 
 
 establishment of the heavenly bodies : " He " (Anu, 
 whose particular dominion the highest heavens were, 
 hence frequently called " the heaven of Anu ") " he 
 appointed the mansions of the great gods " (signs 
 of the Zodiac), established the stars, ordered the 
 months and the year, and limited the beginning and 
 end thereof ; established the planets, so that none 
 should swerve from its allotted track; "he ap- 
 pointed the mansions of Bel and Ea with his own ; 
 he also opened the great gates of heaven, fastening 
 their bolts firmly to the right and to the left " (east 
 and west) ; he made Nannar (the Moon) to shine 
 and allotted the night to him, determining the time 
 of his quarters which measure the days, and saying 
 to him " rise and set, and be subject to this law." 
 Another tablet, of which only the beginning is in- 
 telligible, tells how the gods (in the plural this 
 time) created the living beings which people the 
 earth, the cattle of the field and the city, and the 
 wild beasts of the field, and the things that creep in 
 the field and in the city, in short all the living crea- 
 tures. 
 
 6. There are some tablets which have been sup- 
 posed to treat of the creation of man and perhaps to 
 give a story of his disobedience and fall, answer- 
 ing to that in Genesis ; but unfortunately they are 
 in too mutilated a condition to admit of certainty, 
 and no other copies have as j-et come to light, 
 However, the probability that such was really the 
 case is very great, and is much enhanced by a cylin- 
 der of very ancient Babylonian workmanship, now 
 in the British Museum, and too important not to
 
 266 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA 
 
 be reproduced here. The tree in the middle, the 
 human couple stretching out their hands for the 
 fruit, the serpent standing behind the tvonian in — 
 one might almost say — a whispering attitude, all 
 this tells its own tale. And the authority of this 
 artistic presentation, which so strangely fits in to 
 fill the blank in the written narrative, is doubled by 
 the fact that the engravings on the cylinders are in- 
 variably taken from subjects connected with relig- 
 
 62. — BABYLONIAN CYLINDER, SUPrOSED TO REPRESENT THE 
 TEMPTATION AND FALL. 
 
 ion, or at least religious beliefs and traditions. As 
 to the creation of man, we may partly eke out the 
 missing details from the fragment of Bcrosus al- 
 ready quoted. He there tells us — and so well-in- 
 formed a writer must have spoken on good author- 
 ity — that Bel gave his own blood to be kneaded 
 with the clay out of which men Avcre formed, and 
 that is why they are endowed with reason and have 
 a share of the divine nature in them — certainly a 
 most ingenious way of expressing the blending of 
 the earthly and the divine elements which has
 
 LEGENDS AND STORIES. 
 
 267 
 
 made human nature so deep and puzzling a prob- 
 lem to the profounder thinkers of all ages. 
 
 7. For the rest of the creation, Berosus' account 
 (quoted from the book said to have been given men 
 by the fabulous Oannes), agrees with what we find 
 in the original texts, even imperfect as we have 
 them. He says that in the midst of Chaos — at the 
 time when all was darkness and water — the prin- 
 ciple of life which it contained, restlessly working, 
 but without order, took shape in numberless mon- 
 strous formations : there were beings like men, 
 some winged, with two heads, some with the legs 
 and horns of goats, others with the hind part of 
 horses ; also bulls with human heads, dogs with 
 four bodies and a fish's tail, horses with the heads 
 of dogs, in short, every hideous and fantastical 
 combination of animal forms, before the Divine 
 Will had separated them, and sorted them into 
 harmony and order. All these monstrous beings 
 perished the moment Bel separated the heavens 
 from the earth creating light, — for they were births 
 of darkness and lawlessness and could not stand the 
 new reign of light and law and divine reason. In 
 memory of this destruction of the old chaotic world 
 and production of the new, harmonious and beau- 
 tiful one, the w^alls of the famous temple of Bel- 
 Mardouk at Babylon were covered with paintings 
 representing the infinite variety of monstrous and 
 mixed shapes with which an exuberant fancy had 
 peopled the primeval chaos ; Berosus Avas a priest 
 of this temple and he speaks of those paintings as 
 still existing. Though nothing has remained of
 
 268 ^-^^^ STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 them in the ruins of the temple, we have represen- 
 tations of the same kind on many of the cyHnders 
 which, used as seals, did duty both as personal 
 badges — (one is almost tempted to say " coats of 
 arms ") — and as talismans, as proved by the fact of 
 such cylinders being so frequently found on the 
 wrists of the dead in the sepulchres. 
 
 8. The remarkable cylinder with the human cou- 
 ple and the serpent leads us to the consideration 
 of a most important object in the ancient Babylo- 
 nian or Chaldean religion — the Sacred Tree, the 
 Tree of Life. That it was a very holy symbol is 
 clear from its being so continually reproduced on 
 cylinders and on sculptures. In this particular 
 cylinder, rude as the design is, it bears an un- 
 mistakable likeness to a real tree — of some conifer- 
 ous species, cypress or iir. But art soon took hold 
 of it and began to load it wuth symmetrical embel- 
 lishments, until it produced a tree of entirely conven- 
 tional design, as shown by the following specimens, 
 of which the first leans more to the palm, while the 
 second seems rather of the coniferous type. (Figs. 
 No. 63 and 65.) It is probable that such artificial 
 trees, made up of boughs — perhaps of the palm and 
 cypress — tied together and intertwined with rib- 
 bons (something like our Maypoles of old), were set 
 up in the temples as reminders of the sacred sym- 
 bol, and thus gave rise to the fixed type which re- 
 mains invariable both in such Babylonian works of 
 art as we possess and on the Assyrian sculptures, 
 where the tree, or a portion of it, appears not only 
 in the running ornaments on the walls but on seal
 
 ^yt. 
 
 ^-^v^P^^^-T^I 
 
 
 
 
 O^ ^ 
 

 
 2;o THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 cylinders and even in the embroidery on the robes 
 of kings. In the latter case indeed, it is almost 
 certain, from the belief in talismans which the 
 Assyrians had inherited, along with the whole of 
 their religion from the Chaldean mother country', 
 that this ornament was selected not only as ap- 
 propriate to the sacredness of the royal person, but 
 as a consecration and protection. The holiness of 
 the symbol is further evidenced by the kneeling 
 posture of the animals which sometimes accompany 
 it (see Fig. 22, page 67), and the attitude of adora- 
 tion of the human fig- 
 ures, or winged spirits 
 ittending it, by the 
 prevalence of the sa- 
 cred number seven in its 
 component parts, and 
 by the fact that it is re- 
 64.-\viNGED si'iRiTs BEFORE THE produccd on a great 
 SACRED TREE. many of those glazed 
 
 (Smith's " Chaidea.") earthenware coffins 
 
 which are so plentiful at Warka (ancient Erech). 
 This latter fact clearly shows that the tree-symbol 
 not only meant life in general, life on earth, but 
 a hope of life eternal, beyond the grave, or why 
 should it have been given to the dead ? These 
 coffins at Warka belong, it is true, to a late pe- 
 riod, some as late as a couple of hundred years 
 after Christ, but the ancient traditions and their 
 meaning had, beyond a doubt, been preserved. 
 Another significant detail is that the cone is fre- 
 quently seen in the hands of men or spirits, and al-
 
 
 
 
 65. — SAUGON OF ASSYRIA EKFORE THE SACRED TREE- 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.)
 
 272 THE STORY OF CIIALDEA. 
 
 ways in a way connected with worsliip or auspicious 
 protection ; sometimes it is held to the king's nos- 
 trils by his attendant protecting spirits, (known by 
 their wings); a gesture of unmistakable significancy, 
 since in ancient languages " the breath of the nos- 
 trils " is synonymous with " the breath of life." 
 
 9. There can be no association of ideas more 
 natural than that of vegetation, as represented by a 
 tree, with life. By its perpetual growth and devel- 
 opment, its wealth of branches and foliage, its blos- 
 soming and fruit-bearing, it is a noble and striking 
 illustration of the world in the widest sense — the 
 Universe, the Cosmos, while the sap which courses 
 equally through the trunk and through the veins of 
 the smallest leaflet, drawn by an incomprehensible 
 process through invisible roots from the nourishing 
 earth, still more forcibly suggests that mysterious 
 principle, Life, which we tJiink we understand be- 
 cause we see its effects and feel it in ourselves, 
 but the sources of which will never be reached, 
 as the problem of it will never be solved, either 
 by the prying of experimental science or the 
 musings of contemplative speculation ; life eter- 
 nal, also, — for the workings of nature are eternal, 
 — and the tree that is black and lifeless to-day, 
 we know from long experience is not dead, but 
 will revive in the fulness of time, and bud, and 
 grow and bear again. All these things we know 
 are the efTects of laws ; but the ancients attributed 
 them to living Powers,— the Chthonic POWERS 
 (from the Greek word Chthon, "earth, soir*), 
 which have by some later and dreamy thinkers been
 
 66. — EAGLE-HEADED FIGURE UEFORE THE SACRED TREE. 
 
 (Smith's " Chaldca.") 
 
 20
 
 274 
 
 THE STORY OF CIIALDEA. 
 
 called weirdly but not unaptly, "the Mothers,'' 
 mysteriously at work in the depths of silence and 
 darkness, unseen, unreachable, and inexhaustibly 
 productive. Of these powers again, what more per- 
 fect symbol or representative than the Tree, as 
 standing for vegetation, one for all, the part for the 
 whole? It lies so near that, in later times, it was 
 enlarged, so as to embrace the whole universe, in 
 the majestic conception of the Cosmic Tree which 
 has its roots on earth and heaven for its crown, 
 while its fruit are the golden apples — the stars, and 
 Fire, — the red lightning, 
 
 10. All these suggestive and poetical fancies would 
 in themselves suffice to make the tree-symbol a 
 favorite one among so thoughtful and profound a 
 people as the old Chaldeans. But there is some- 
 thing more. It is intimately connected with an- 
 other tradition, common, in some form or other, to 
 all nations who have attained a sufficiently high 
 grade of culture to make their mark in the world 
 \ — that of an original ancestral abode, beautiful, 
 happy, and remote, a Paradise. It is usually imag- 
 ined as a great mountain, watered by springs which 
 becoume great rivers, bearing one or more trees of 
 wonderful properties and sacred character, and is 
 considered as the principal residence of the gods. 
 Each nation locates it according to its own knowl- 
 edge of geography and vague, half-obliterated mem- 
 ories. Many texts, both in the old Accadian and 
 the Assyrian languages, abundantly prove that the 
 Chaldean religion preserved a distinct and rever-- 
 ent conception of such a mountain, and placed it
 
 
 FOUR-WINGED HUMAN FIGURE HEFORE THE SACRED TREL, 
 (Perrot and Chipie;.)
 
 276 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 in the far north or north-east, calling it the " Father 
 of Countries," plainly an allusion to the original 
 abode of man — the " Mountain of Countries," (i.e., 
 " Chief Mountain of the World ") and also Arallu, 
 because there, where the gods dwelt, they also im- 
 agined the entrance to the Arali to be the Land of 
 the Dead. There, too, the heroes and great men 
 were to dwell forever after their death. There is 
 the land with a sky of silver, a soil which pro- 
 duces crops without being cultivated, where bless- 
 ings are for food and rejoicing, which it is hoped 
 the king will obtain as a reward for his piety af- 
 ter having enjoyed all earthly goods during his 
 life.* In an old Accadian hymn, the sacred mount, 
 which is identical with that imagined as the pillar 
 joining heaven and earth, the pillar around which 
 the heavenly spheres revolve, (see page 153) — is 
 called " the mountain of Bel, in the east, whose 
 double head reaches unto the skies ; which is like 
 to a mighty buffalo at rest, whose double horn 
 sparkles as a sunbeam, as a star." So vivid was the 
 conception in the popular mind, and so great the 
 reverence entertained for it, that it was attempted 
 to reproduce the type of the holy mountain in the 
 palaces of their kings and the temples of their gods. 
 That is one of the reasons why they built both on 
 artificial hills. There is in the British Museum a 
 sculpture from Koyunjik, representing such a tem- 
 ple, or perhaps palace, on the summit of a mound, 
 converted into a garden and watered by a stream 
 
 * Franjois Lenormant, " Origines de I'Histoire," Vol. II., p. 130.
 
 LEGENDS AND STORIES. 
 
 277 
 
 which Issues from the "hanging garden" on the 
 right, the latter being laid out on a platform of 
 masonry raised on arches ; the water was brought 
 up by machinery. It is a perfect specimen of a 
 
 " Paradise," as these artificial parks were called by 
 the Greeks, who took the word (meaning " park " 
 or " garden ") from the Persians, who, in their turn, 
 had borrowed the thing from the Assyrians and 
 Babylonians, when they conquered the latter's em-
 
 278 
 
 THE STORY OF CIIALDEA. 
 
 pire. The Ziggiirat, or pyramidal construction in 
 stages, with the temple or shrine on the top, also 
 owed its peculiar shape to the same original concep- 
 tion : as the gods dwelt on the summit of the 
 Mountain of the World, so their shrines should 
 
 ;ip;i:;:-::.;}t i{M^ 
 
 69. — PLAN OF A ZIGGURAT. 
 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.) 
 
 occupy a position as much like their residence as 
 the feeble means of man would permit. That this 
 is no idle fancy is proved by the very name of " Zig- 
 gurat," which means ^' mountain peak,'" and also by 
 the names of some of these temples : one of the old-
 
 "ZIGGURAT" restored, according to PROKAIilLITIES. 
 (Perrot aaj Chipiez.)
 
 28o THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 est and most famous indeed, in the city of Asshur, 
 was named " the House of the Mountain of Coun- 
 tries." An excellent representation of a Ziggurat, 
 as it must have looked with its surrounding palm 
 grove by a river, is given us on a sculptured slab, 
 also from Koyunjik. The original is evidently a 
 small one, of probably five stages besides the 
 platform on which it is built, with its two sym- 
 metrical paths up the ascent. Some, like the great 
 temple at Ur, had only three stages, others again 
 seven — always one of the three sacred numbers: 
 three, corresponding to the divine Triad ; five, to the 
 five planets ; seven, to the planets, sun and moon. 
 The famous Temple of the Sevei Spheres at Borsip 
 (the Birs-Nimrud), often mentioned already, and 
 rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar about 600 B.C. from a far 
 older structure, as he explains in his inscription (see 
 p. "ji), was probably the most gorgeous, as it was the 
 largest ; besides, it is the only one of which we have 
 detailed and reliable descriptions and measurements, 
 which may best be given in this place, almost en- 
 tirely in the words of George Rawlinson : * 
 
 II. The temple is raised on a platform exception- 
 ally low — only a few feet above the level of the 
 plain ; the entire height, including the platform, was 
 156 feet in a perpendicular line. The stages — of 
 which the four upper were lower than the first three 
 • — receded equally on three sides, but doubly as much 
 on the fourth, probably in order to present a more 
 imposing front from the plain, and an easier ascent. 
 
 * "Five Monarchies," Vol. III., pp. 380-387.
 
 
 ^^!| 
 
 yii' 
 
 
 ill x,i 
 
 wn 
 
 u 
 
 pha ^^ik ti 
 
 II 
 
 liiii 
 
 ilir 1 J I 
 
 j\4/i ]^m 
 
 
 li!l 
 
 
 r ' 
 
 '" n'\ fh'i^ 
 
 % 1
 
 282 THE STORY Of CHALDEA. 
 
 " The ornamentation of the edifice was chiefly by 
 means of color. The seven Stages represented the 
 Seven Spheres, in which moved, according to an- 
 cient Chaldean astronomy, the seven planets. To 
 each planet fancy, partly grounding itself upon fact, 
 had from of old assigned a peculiar tint or hue. 
 The Sun (Shamash) was golden ; the Moon (Sin or 
 Nannar), silver ; the distant Saturn (Adar), almost 
 beyond the region of light, was black; Jupiter 
 (Marduk) was orange ; the fiery Mars (Nergal) was 
 red; Venus (Ishtar) was a pale yellow; Mercury 
 (Nebo or Nabu, whose shrine stood on the top 
 stage), a deep blue. The seven stages of the tower 
 gave a visible embodiment to these fancies. The 
 basement stage, assigned to Saturn, was blackened 
 by means of a coating of bitumen spread over the 
 face of the masonry ; the second stage, assigned to 
 Jupiter, obtained the appropriate orange color by 
 means of a facing of burnt bricks of that hue ; the 
 third stage, that of Mars, was made blood-red by 
 the use of half-burnt bricks formed of a bright-red 
 clay ; the fourth stage, assigned to the Sun, appears 
 to have been actually covered with thin plates of 
 gold ; the fifth, the stage of Venus, received a pale 
 yellow tint from the employment of bricks of that 
 hue ; the sixth, the sphere of Mercury, was given an 
 azure tint by vitrifaction, the w'hole stage having 
 been subjected to an intense heat after it was 
 erected, whereby the bricks composing it were con- 
 verted into a mass of blue, slag ; the seventh stage, 
 that of the moon, was probably, like the fourth, 
 coated with actual plates of metal. ..Thus the build-
 
 LEGENDS AXD STORIES. 
 
 ^S3 
 
 ing rose up in stripes of varied color, arranged al- 
 most as nature's cunning hand arranges hues in the 
 rainbow, tones of red coming first, succeeded by a 
 broad stripe of yellow, the yellow being followed 
 by blue. Above this the glowing silvery summit 
 melted into the bright sheen of the sky. . . . The 
 Tower is to be regarded as fronting the north-east, 
 the coolest side, and that least exposed to the sun's 
 rays from the time that they become oppressive in 
 Babylonia. On this side was the ascent, which con- 
 sisted probabl}' of a broad staircase extending along 
 the whole front of the building. The side platforms, 
 at any rate of the first and second stages, probably 
 of all. were occupied by a series of chambers. . . . 
 In these were doubtless lodged the priests and other 
 attendants upon the temple service. ..." 
 
 12. The interest attaching to this temple, won- 
 derful as it is in itself, is greatly enhanced by the 
 circumstance that its ruins have through many cent- 
 uries been considered as those of the identical 
 Tower of Babel of the Bible. Jewish literary men 
 who travelled over the country in the Middle Ages 
 started this idea, which quickly spread to the West. 
 It is conjectured that it was suggested by the vitri- 
 fied fragments of the outer coating of the sixth, blue, 
 stage, (that of Mercury or Nebo), the condition of 
 which was attributed to lightning having struck the 
 building. 
 
 13. That the Ziggurats of Chaldea should have 
 been used not onh' as pedestals to uphold shrines, 
 but as observatories by the priestly astronomers
 
 284 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 and astrologers, was quite in accordance with the 
 strong mixture of star-worship grafted on the older 
 religion, and with the power ascribed to the 
 heavenly bodies over the acts and destinies of men. 
 These constructions, therefore, were fitted for astro- 
 nomical uses by being very carefully placed with 
 their corners pointing exactly to the four cardinal 
 points — North, South, East and West. Only two 
 exceptions have been found to this rule, one in 
 Babylon, and the Assyrian Ziggurat at Kalah, 
 (Nimrud) explored by Layard, of which the sides, 
 not the corners, face the cardinal points. For the 
 Assyrians, who carried their entire culture and re- 
 ligion northward from their ancient home, also 
 retained this consecrated form of architecture, with 
 the difference that with them the Ziggurats were 
 not temple and observatory in one, but only obser- 
 vatories attached to the temples, which were built 
 on more independent principles and a larger scale, 
 often covering as much ground as a palace. 
 
 14. The singular orientation of the Chaldean Zig- 
 gurats (subsequently retained by the Assyrians), — 
 i.e., the manner in which they are placed, turned to 
 the cardinal points with their angles, and not with 
 their faces, as are the Egyptian pyramids, with 
 only one exception, — has long been a puzzle which 
 no astronomical considerations were sufficient to 
 solve. But quite lately, in 1883, Mr. Pinches, Geo. 
 Smith's successor in the British Museum, found 
 a small tablet, giving lists of signs, eclipses, etc., 
 affecting the various countries, and containing
 
 LEGENDS AXD STORIES. 
 
 285 
 
 the following short geographical notice, in illus- 
 tration of the position assigned to the cardinal 
 points: "The South is Elam, the North is Ac- 
 cad, the East is Suedin and Gutium, the West is 
 Phoenicia. On the right is Accad, on the left is 
 Elam, in front is Phoenicia, behind are Suedin and 
 Gutium." In order to appreciate the bearing of 
 this bit of topography on the question in hand, we 
 must examine an ancient map, when we shall at once 
 perceive that the direction given by the tablet to 
 the South (Elam) answers to our Soiith-East ; that 
 given to the North (Accad) answers to our North- 
 West ; while West (Phoenicia, i.e., the coast-land of 
 the Mediterranean, down almost to Egypt) stands 
 for our South-West, and East (Gutium, the high- 
 lands where the Armenian mountains join the Za- 
 gros, now Kurdish Mountains,) for our North-East. 
 If we turn the map so that the Persian Gulf shall 
 come in a perpendicular line under Babylon, we 
 shall produce the desired effect, and then it will 
 strike us that the Ziggurats did face the cardinal 
 points, according to Chaldean geography, ivith their 
 sides, and that the discovery of the small tablet, as 
 was remarked on the production of it, "settles the 
 difficult question of the difference in orientation be- 
 tween the Assyrian and Egyptian monuments." It 
 was further suggested that " the two systems of car- 
 dinal points originated no doubt from two differ- 
 ent races, and their determination was due probably 
 to the geographical position of the primitive Jiovie of 
 each race." Now the South-West is called "the 
 front," " and the migrations of the people therefore
 
 286 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 must have been from North-East to South-West."* 
 This beautifully tallies with the hypothesis, or con- 
 jecture, concerning the direction from which the 
 Shumiro-Accads descended into the lowlands by 
 the Gulf (see pp. 146-8), and, moreover, leads us to 
 the question whether the fact of the great Ziggurat 
 of the Seven Spheres at Borsip facing the North- 
 East with its front may not have some connection 
 with the holiness ascribed to that region as the orig- 
 inal home of the race and the seat of that sacred 
 mountain so often mentioned as " the Great Moun- 
 tain of Countries " (see p. 280), doubly sacred, as the 
 meeting-place of the gods and the place of entrance 
 to the " Arallu " or Lower World.f 
 
 15. It is to be noted that the conception of the 
 divine grove or garden with its sacred tree of life 
 was sometimes separated from that of the holy 
 primeval mountain and transferred by tradition to 
 a more immediate and accessible neighborhood. 
 That the city and district of Babylon may have been 
 the centre of such a tradition is possibly shown 
 by the most ancient Accadian name of the former 
 — TiN-TiR-Ki meaning " the Place of Life," while 
 the latter was called Gan-Dunyash or KaR- 
 DUNYASH — " the garden of the god Dunyash," 
 
 * See " Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology," Feb., 
 1883, pp. 74-76, and "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society," Vol. 
 XVI., 1884, p. 302. 
 
 \ The one exception to the above rule of orientation among the 
 Ziggurats of Chaldea is that of the temple of Bel, in Babylon, 
 (E-Saggila in the old language,) which is oriented in the usual way 
 —its sides facing the real North, South, East and West.
 
 LEGENDS AND STORIES. 287 
 
 (probably one of the names of the god Ea) — an ap- 
 pellation which this district, although situated in 
 the land of Accad or Upper Chaldea, preserved to 
 the latest times as distinctively its own. Another 
 sacred grove is spoken of as situated in Eridhu, 
 This city, altogether the most ancient we have any 
 mention of, was situated at the then mouth of the 
 Euphrates, in the deepest and flattest of lowlands, 
 a sort of borderland between earth and sea, and 
 therefore very appropriately consecrated to the 
 great spirit of both, the god Ea, the amphibious 
 Cannes. It was so much identified with him, that 
 in the Shumirian h}^mns and conjurings his son 
 Meridug is often simply invoked as " Son of 
 Eridhu." It must have been the oldest seat of 
 that spirit-worship and sorcerer-priesthood which 
 we find crystallized in the earliest Shumiro-i\ccadian 
 sacred books. This prodigious antiquity carries us 
 to something like 5000 years B.C., which explains 
 the fact that the ruins of the place, near the modern 
 Arab village of Abu-Shahrein, are now so far re- 
 moved from the sea, being a considerable distance 
 even from the junction of the two rivers where 
 they form the Shat-cl-arab. The sacred grove of 
 Eridhu is frequently referred to, and that it was 
 connected with the tradition of the tree of life we 
 see from a fragment of a most ancient hymn, which 
 tells of " a black pine, growing at Eridhu, sprung 
 up in a pure place, with roots of lustrous crystal ex- 
 tending downwards, even into the deep, marking 
 the centre of the earth, in the dark forest into the 
 heart whereof man hath not penetrated," Might
 
 238 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 not this be the reason why the wood of the pine 
 was so much used in charms and conjuring, as the 
 surest safeguard against evil influences, and its very 
 shadow was held wholesome and sacred ? But we 
 return to the legends of the Creation and primeval 
 world. 
 
 i6. Mummu-Tiamat, the impersonation of chaos, 
 the power of darkness and lawlessness, does not 
 vanish from the scene when Bel puts an end to 
 her reign, destroys, by the sheer force of light 
 and order, her hideous progeny of monsters and 
 frees from her confusion the germs and rudimen- 
 tal forms of life, which, under the new and di- 
 vine dispensation, are to expand and combine into 
 the beautifully varied, yet harmonious world we 
 live in. Tiamat becomes the sworn enemy of the 
 gods and their creation, the great principle of op- 
 position and destruction. When the missing texts 
 come to light, — if ever they do — it will probably be 
 found that the serpent who tempts the woman in 
 the famous cylinder, is none other than a form of 
 the rebellious and vindictive Tiamat, who is called 
 now a "Dragon," now "the Great Serpent." At 
 last the hostility cannot be ignored, and things come 
 to a deadly issue. It is determined in the council 
 of the gods that one of them must fight the wicked 
 dragon ; a complete suit of armor is made and ex- 
 hibited by Anu himself, of which the sickle-shaped 
 sword and the beautifully bent bow are the princi- 
 pal features. It is Bel who dares the venture and 
 goes forth on a matchless war chariot, armed with 
 the sword, and the bow, and his great weapon, the
 
 LEGENDS AND STORIES. 
 
 289 
 
 thunderbolt, sending the Hghtning before him and 
 scattering arrows around. Tiamat, the Dragon of 
 the Sea, came out to meet him, stretching her im- 
 mense body along, bearing death and destruction, 
 and attended by her followers. The god rushed on 
 
 72. — HEL FIGHTS THE DRAGON — TIAMAT (ASSYRIAN CYLINDER.) 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.) 
 
 73, - BEL FIGHTS THE DRAGON — TIAMAT (BABYLONIAN CYLINDER). 
 
 the monster with such violence that he threw her 
 down and was already fastening fetters on her 
 limbs, when she uttered a great shout and started 
 up and attacked the righteous leader of the gods, 
 while banners were raised on both sides as at a 
 pitched battle. Meridug drew his sword and
 
 290 
 
 THE STOKY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 wounded her ; at the same time a violent wind 
 struck against her face. She opened her jaws to 
 swallow up Meridug, but before she could close 
 them he bade the wind to enter into her body. It 
 entered and filled her with its violence, shook her 
 heart and tore her entrails and subdued her cour- 
 age. Then the god bound her, and put an end 
 to her works, while her followers stood amazed, 
 then broke their lines and fled, full of fear, seeing 
 that Tiamat, their leader, was conquered. There 
 she lay, her weapons broken, herself like a sword 
 thrown down on the ground, in the dark and bound, 
 conscious of her bondage and in great grief, her 
 might suddenly broken by fear. 
 
 17. The battle of Bel-Marduk and the Dragon 
 was a favorite incident in the cycle of Chaldean tra- 
 dition, if we judge from the number of representa- 
 tions we have of it on Babylonian cylinders, and 
 even on Assyrian wall-sculptures. The texts which 
 relate to it are, however, in a frightful state of mu- 
 tilation, and only the last fragment, describing the 
 final combat, can be read and translated with any- 
 thing like completeness. With it ends the series 
 treating of the Cosmogony or Beginnings of the 
 World. But it may be completed by a few more le- 
 gends of the same primitive character and preserved 
 on detached tablets, in double text, as usual — Acca- 
 dian and Assyrian. To these belongs a poem nar- 
 rating the rebellion, already alluded to, (see p. 182,) 
 of the seven evil spirits, originally the messengers 
 and throne-bearers of the gods, and their war against 
 the moon, the whole being evidently a fanciful ren-
 
 292 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 dering of an eclipse. " Those wicked gods, the 
 rebel spirits," of whom one is likened to a leopard, 
 and one to a serpent, and the rest to other animals 
 — suggesting the fanciful shapes of storm-clouds — 
 while one is said to be the raging south wind, began 
 the attack " with evil tempest, baleful wind," and 
 " from the foundations of the heavens like the light- 
 ning they darted." The lower region of the sky 
 was reduced to its primeval chaos, and the gods sat 
 in anxious council. The moon-god (Sin), the sun- 
 god (Shamash), and the goddess Ishtar had been 
 appointed to sway in close harmony the lower sky 
 and to command the hosts of heaven; but when the 
 moon-god was attacked by the seven spirits of evil, 
 his companions basely forsook him, the sun-god re- 
 treating to his place and Ishtar taking refuge in the 
 highest heaven (the heaven of Anu). Nebo is de- 
 spatched to Ea, who sends his son Meridug with this 
 instruction : — " Go, my son Meridug ! The light of 
 the sky, my son, even the moon-god, is grievously 
 darkened in heaven, and in eclipse from heaven is 
 vanishing. Those seven wicked gods, the serpents 
 of death who fear not, are waging unequal war with 
 the laboring moon." Meridug obeys his father's 
 bidding, and overthrows the seven powers of dark- 
 
 ness 
 
 * 
 
 18. There is one more detached legend known 
 from the surviving fragments of Berosus, also sup- 
 posed to be derived from ancient Accadian texts : 
 it is that of the great tower and the confusion of 
 
 * See A. H. Sayce, " Babylonian Literature," p. 35.
 
 LEGENDS AND STORIES. 
 
 293 
 
 tongues. One such text has indeed been found by 
 the indefatigable George Smith, but there is just 
 enough left of it to be very tantalizing and very un- 
 satisfactory. The narrative in Berosus amounts to 
 this : that men having grown beyond measure proud 
 and arrogant, so as to deem themselves superior 
 even to the gods, undertook to build an immense 
 tower, to scale the sky ; that the gods, offended 
 with this presumption, sent violent winds to over- 
 throw the construction when it had already reached 
 a great height, and at the same time caused men to 
 speak different languages, — probably to sow dissen- 
 sion among them, and prevent their ever again unit- 
 ing in a common enterprise so daring and impious. 
 The site was identified with that of Babylon itself, 
 and so strong was the belief attaching to the legend 
 that the Jews later on adopted it unchanged, and 
 centuries afterwards, as we saw above, fixed on the 
 ruins of the hugest of all Ziggurats, that of Borsip, 
 as those of the great Tower of the Confusion of 
 Tongues. Certain it is, that the tradition, under all 
 its fanciful apparel, contains a very evident vein of 
 historical fact, since it was indeed from the plains of 
 Chaldea that many of the principal nations of the 
 ancient East, various in race and speech, dispersed 
 to the north, the west, and the south, after having 
 dwelt there for centuries as in a common cradle, 
 side by side, and indeed to a great extent as one 
 people.
 
 VII. 
 
 MYTHS. — HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 
 
 I. The stones by which a nation attempts to ac- 
 count for the mysteries of creation, to explain the 
 Origin of the World, are called, in scientific lan- 
 guage, CosMOGONic Myths. The word Myth is 
 constantly used in conversation, but so loosely and 
 incorrectly, that it is most important once for all to 
 define its proper meaning. It means simply a pJie- 
 noinenon of nature presented not as the result of a laiv 
 but as tlie act of divine or at least super Jiuman persons, 
 good or evil poivers — (for instance, the eclipse of the 
 Moon described as the war against the gods of the 
 seven rebellious spirits). Further reading and prac- 
 tice will show that there are many kinds of myths, 
 of various origins ; but there is none, which, if prop- 
 erly taken to pieces, thoroughly traced and cornered, 
 will not be covered by this definition. A Myth 
 has also been defined as a legend connected more 
 or less closely with some religious belief, and, in its 
 main outlines, handed down from prehistoric times. 
 There are only two things which can prevent the 
 contemplation of nature and speculation on its mys- 
 teries from running into mythology : a knowledge 
 
 294
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EFOS. 
 
 295 
 
 of the physical laws of nature, as supplied by mod- 
 ern experimental science, and a strict, unswerving 
 belief in the unity of God, absolute and undivided, 
 as affirmed and defined by the Hebrews in so many 
 places of their sacred books : " The Lord he is God, 
 there is none else beside him." " The Lord he is 
 God, in Heaven above and upon the earth beneath 
 there is none else." " I am the Lord, and there is 
 none else, there is no God beside me." " I am God 
 and there is none else." But experimental science 
 is a very modern thing indeed, scarcely a few hun- 
 dred years old, and Monotheism, until the propaga- 
 tion of Christianity, was professed by only one small 
 nation, the Jews, though the chosen thinkers of other 
 nations have risen to the same conception in many 
 lands and many ages. The great mass of mankind 
 has always believed in the personal individuality of 
 all the forces of nature, i.e., in many gods ; every- 
 thing that went on in the world was to them the 
 manifestation of the feelings, the will, the acts of 
 these gods — hence the myths. The earlier the 
 times, the more unquestioning the belief and, as a 
 necessary consequence, the more exuberant the 
 creation of myths. 
 
 2. But gods and spirits are not the only actors in 
 myths. Side by side with its sacred traditions on 
 the Origin of things, every nation treasures fond 
 but vague memories of its own beginnings — vague, 
 both from their remoteness and from their not be- 
 ing fixed in writing, and being therefore liable to 
 the alterations and enlargements which a story in- 
 variably undergoes when told many times to and
 
 296 ^-^^ STORY OP CHALDEA. 
 
 by different people, i.e., when it is transmitted from 
 generation to generation by oral tradition. These 
 memories generally centre around a few great 
 names, the names of the oldest national heroes, of 
 the first rulers, lawgivers and conquerors of the na- 
 tion, the men who by their genius made it a nation 
 out of a loose collection of tribes or large families, 
 who gave it social order and useful arts, and safety 
 from its neighbors, or, perhaps, freed it from foreign 
 oppressors. In their grateful admiration for these 
 heroes, whose doings naturally became more and 
 more marvellous with each generation that told of 
 them, men could not believe that they should have 
 been mere imperfect mortals like themselves, but 
 insisted on considering* them as directly inspired by 
 the deity in some one of the thousand shapes they 
 invested it with, or as half-divine of their own na- 
 ture. The consciousness of the imperfection inher- 
 ent to ordinary humanity, and the limited powers 
 awarded to it, has always prompted this explana- 
 tion of the achievements of extraordinarily gifted 
 individuals, in whatever line of action their excep- 
 tional gifts displayed themselves. Besides, if there 
 is something repugnant to human vanity in having 
 to submit to the dictates of superior reason and the 
 rule of superior power as embodied in mere men of 
 flesh and blood, there is on the contrary something 
 very flattering and soothing to that same vanity in 
 the idea of having been specially singled out as the 
 object of the protection and solicitude of the divine 
 powers ; this idea at all events takes the galling 
 sting from the constraint of obedience. Hence
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 
 
 297 
 
 every nation has very jealously insisted on and de- 
 voutly believed in the divine origin of its rulers 
 and the divine institution of its laws and customs. 
 Once it was implicitly admitted that the world 
 teemed with spirits and gods, who, not content with 
 attending to their particular spheres and depart- 
 ments, came and went at their pleasure, had walked 
 the earth and directly interfered with human affairs, 
 there was no reason to disbelieve any occurrence, 
 however marvellous — provided it had happened 
 very, very long ago. (See p. 197.) 
 
 3. Thus, in the traditions of every ancient nation, 
 there is a vast and misty tract of time, expressed, 
 if at all, in figures of appalling magnitude — hun- 
 dreds of thousands, nay, millions of years — between 
 the unpierceable gloom of an eternal past and 
 the broad daylight of remembered, recorded his- 
 tory. There, all is shadowy, gigantic, superhuman. 
 There, gods move, dim yet visible, shrouded in 
 a golden cloud of mystery and awe ; there, by 
 their side, loom other shapes, as dim but more 
 familiar, human yet more than human — the Heroes, 
 Fathers of races, founders of nations, the com- 
 panions, the beloved of gods and goddesses, nay, 
 their own children, mortal themselves, yet doing 
 deeds of daring and might such as only the im- 
 mortals could inspire and favor, the connecting 
 link between these and ordinary humanity — as 
 that gloaming, uncertain, shifting, but not alto- 
 gether unreal streak of time is the border-land 
 between Heaven and Earth, the very hot-bed of 
 myth, fiction and romance. For of their favorite
 
 298. 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 heroes, people began to tell the same stories as 
 of their gods, in modified forms, transferred to 
 their own surroundings and familiar scenes. To 
 take one of the most common transformations: 
 if the Sun-god waged war against the demons of 
 darkness and destroyed them in heaven (see p. 171), 
 the hero hunted wild beasts and monsters on 
 earth, of course always victoriously. This one 
 theme could be varied by the national poets in 
 a thousand ways and woven into a thousand differ- 
 ent stories, which come with full right under 
 the head of "myths." Thus arose a number of 
 so-called HEROIC Myths, which, by dint of being 
 repeated, settled into a certain defined tradi- 
 tional shape, like the well-known fairy-tales of 
 our nurseries, which are the same everywhere 
 and told in every country with scarcely any 
 changes. As soon as the art of writing came 
 into general use, these favorite and time-honored 
 stories, which the mass of the people probably 
 still received as literal truth, were taken down, 
 and, as the work naturally devolved on priests and 
 clerks, i.e., men of education and more or less 
 literary skill, often themselves poets, they were 
 worked over in the process, connected, and re- 
 modelled into a continuous whole. The separate 
 myths, or adventures of one or more particular 
 heroes, formerly recited severally, somewhat after 
 the manner of the old songs and ballads, frequently 
 became so many chapters or books in a long, well- 
 ordered poem, in which they were introduced and 
 distributed, often with consummate art, and told
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 200 
 
 with great poetical beauty. Such poems, of which 
 several have come down to us, are called Epic 
 Poems, or simply Epics. The entire mass of 
 fragmentary materials out of which they are com- 
 posed in the course of time, blending almost in- 
 extricably historical reality with mythical fiction, 
 is the National Epos of a race, its greatest 
 intellectual treasure, from which all its late poetry 
 and much of its political and religious feeling 
 draws its food ever after. A race that has no 
 national epos is one devoid of great memories, 
 incapable of high culture and political develop- 
 ment, and no such has taken a place among the 
 leading races of the world. All those that have 
 occupied such a place at any period of the world's 
 history, have had their Mythic and Heroic Ages, 
 brimful of wonders and fanciful creations. 
 
 4. From these remarks it will be clear that the 
 preceding two or three chapters have been treating 
 of what may properly be called the Religious and 
 Cosmogonic Myths of the Shumiro-Accads and the 
 Babylonians. The present chapter will be devoted 
 to their Heroic Myths . or Mythic Epos, as em- 
 bodied in an Epic which has been in great part 
 preserved, and which is the oldest known in the 
 world, dating certainly from 2000 years B.C., and 
 probably more. 
 
 5. Of this poem the few fragments we have of 
 Berosus contain no indication. They only tell of 
 a great deluge which took place under the last of 
 that fabulous line of ten kings which is said to "have 
 begun 259,000 years after the apparition of the
 
 300 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 divine Man-Fish, Cannes, and to have reigned 
 in the aggregate a period of 432,000 years. The 
 description has always excited great interest from 
 its extraordinary resemblance to that given by the 
 Bible. Berosus tells how XISUTHROS, the last of 
 the ten fabulous kings, had a dream in which the 
 deity announced to him that on a certain day all 
 men should perish in a deluge of waters, and 
 ordered him to take all the sacred writings and 
 bury them at Sippar, the City of the Sun, then 
 to build a ship, provide it with ample stores of 
 food and drink and enter it with his family and 
 his dearest friends, also animals, both birds and 
 quadrupeds of every kind. Xisuthros did as he 
 had been bidden. When the flood began to abate, 
 on the third day after the rain had ceased to fall, 
 he sent out some birds, to see whether they would 
 find any land, but the birds, having found neither 
 food nor place to rest upon, returned to the ship. 
 A few days later, Xisuthros once more sent the 
 birds out ; but they again came back to him, this 
 time with muddy feet. Cn being sent out a third 
 time, they did not return at all. Xisuthros then 
 knew that the land was uncovered ; made an open- 
 ing in the roof of the ship and saw that it was 
 stranded on the top of a mountain. He came out 
 of the ship with his wife, daughter and pilot, built 
 an altar and sacrificed to the gods, after which he 
 disappeared together with these. When his com- 
 panions came out to seek him they did not see 
 him, but a voice from heaven informed them that 
 he had been translated among the gods to live
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 30 1 
 
 forever, as a reward for his piety and righteousness. 
 The voice went on to command the survivors to 
 return to Babylonia, unearth the sacred writings 
 and make them known to men. They obeyed and, 
 moreover, built many cities and restored Babylon. 
 
 6. However interesting this account, it was re- 
 ceived at second-hand and therefore felt to need con- 
 iirmation and ampler development. Besides which, 
 as it stood, it lacked all indication that could throw 
 light on the important question which of the two 
 traditions — that reproduced by Berosus or the Bib- 
 lical one — was to be considered as the oldest. Here 
 again it was George Smith who had the good 
 fortune to discover the original narrative (in 1872), 
 while engaged in sifting and sorting the tablet- 
 fragments at the British Museum. This is how it 
 happened : "" — " Smith found one-half of a whitish- 
 yellow clay tablet, which, to all appearance, had 
 been divided on each face into three columns. In 
 the third column of the obverse or front side he 
 read the words : ' On the mount Nizir the ship 
 stood still. Then I took a dove and let her fly. 
 The dove flew hither and thither, but finding no 
 resting-place, returned to the ship.' Smith at once 
 knew that he had discovered a fragment of the 
 cuneiform narrative of the Deluge. With inde- 
 fatigable perseverance he set to work to search the 
 thousands of Assyrian tablet-fragments heaped up 
 in the British Museum, for more pieces. His 
 efforts were crowned with success. He did not 
 
 *Paul Haupt, " Der KeiUuschriftliche Siindflutbericht," 1881.
 
 302 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 indeed find a piece completing the half of the 
 tablet first discovered, but he found instead frag- 
 ments of two more copies of the narrative, which 
 completed the text in the most felicitous manner 
 and supplied several very important variations of it. 
 One of these duplicates, which has been pieced out 
 of sixteen little bits (see illustration on p. 262), bore 
 the usual inscription at the bottom : ' The prop- 
 erty of Asshurbanipal, King of hosts, King of 
 the land of Asshur,' and contained the information 
 that the Deluge-narrative was the eleventh tablet 
 of a series, several fragments of which, Smith had 
 already come across. With infinite pains he put 
 all these fragments together and found that the 
 story of the Deluge was only an incident in a 
 great Heroic Epic, a poem written in twelve 
 books, making in all about three thousand lines, 
 which celebrated the deeds of an ancient king of 
 Erech. 
 
 7. Each book or chapter naturally occupied a 
 separate tablet. All are by no means equally well 
 preserved. Some parts, indeed, are missing, while 
 several are so mutilated as to cause serious gaps 
 and breaks in the narrative, and the first tablet has 
 not yet been found at all. Yet, with all these 
 drawbacks it is quite possible to build up a very 
 intelligible outline of the whole story, while the 
 eleventh tablet, owing to various fortunate addi- 
 tions that came to light from time to time, has 
 been restored almost completely. 
 
 8. The epic carries us back to the time when 
 Erech was the capital of Shumir, and when the
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 
 
 303 
 
 land was under the dominion of the Elamite con- 
 querors, not passive or content, but striving man- 
 fully for deliverance. We may imagine the struggle 
 to have been shared and headed by the native 
 kings, whose memory would be gratefully treasured 
 by later generations, and whose exploits would 
 naturally become the theme of household tradition 
 and poets' recitations. So much for the bare his- 
 torical groundwork of the poem. It is easily to 
 be distinguished from the rich by-play of fiction 
 and wonderful adventure gradually woven into it 
 from the ample fund of national myths and legends, 
 which have gathered around the name of one hero- 
 king, GiSDHUBAR or IZDUBAR,* said to be a native 
 of the ancient city of Marad and a direct descend- 
 ant of the last antediluvian king HAsiSADRA, the 
 same whom Berosus calls Xisuthros. 
 
 9. It is unfortunate that the first tablet and the 
 top part of the second are missing, for thus we 
 lose the opening of the poem, which would prob- 
 ably give us valuable historical indications. What 
 there is of the second tablet shows the city of 
 Erech groaning under the tyranny of the Elamite 
 conquerors. Erech had been governed by the 
 divine Dumuzi, the husband of the goddess Ishtar. 
 He had met an untimely and tragic death, and 
 been succeeded by Ishtar, who had not been able, 
 however, to make a stand against the foreign in- 
 vaders, or, as the text picturesquely expresses it, 
 
 * There are difficulties in the way of reading this name, and 
 scholars are not sure that this is the right pronunciation of it ; but 
 they retain it, until some new discovery helps to settle the question.
 
 204 ^-^^ STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 "to hold up her head against the foe." Izdubar, 
 as yet known to fame only as a powerful and in- 
 defatigable huntsman, then dwelt at Erech, where 
 he had a singular dream. It seemed to him that 
 the stars of heaven fell down and struck him on 
 the back in their fall, while over him stood a 
 terrible being, with fierce, threatening countenance 
 and claws like a lion's, the sight of whom paralyzed 
 him with fear. 
 
 10. Deeply impressed with this dream, which ap- 
 peared to him to portend strange things, Izdubar 
 sent forth to all the most famous seers and wise 
 men, promising the most princely rewards to who- 
 ever would interpret it for him : he should be en- 
 nobled with his family ; he should take the high 
 seat of honor at the royal feasts; he should be 
 clothed in jewels and gold ; he should have seven 
 beautiful wives and enjoy every kind of distinction. 
 But there was none found of wisdom equal to the 
 task of reading the vision. At length he heard 
 of a wonderful sage, named Eabani, far-famed for 
 " his wisdom in all things and his knowledge of 
 all that is either visible or concealed," but who 
 dwelt apart from mankind, in a distant wilderness, 
 in a cave, amidst the beasts of the forest. 
 
 " With the gazelles he ate his food at night, with the beasts of the 
 field he associated in the daytime, with the living things of the waters 
 his heart rejoiced." 
 
 This strange being is always represented on the 
 Babylonian cylinders as a Man-Bull, with horns on 
 his head and a bull's feet and tail. He was not
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 
 
 305 
 
 easily accessible, nor to be persuaded to come to 
 Erech, even though the Sun-god, Shamash, him- 
 self " opened his lips and spoke to him from heaven," 
 making great promises on Izdubar's behalf : — 
 
 "They shall clothe thee in royal robes, they shall make thee great; 
 and Izdubar shall become thy friend, and he shall place thee in a 
 luxurious seat at his left hand; the kings of the earth shall kiss thy 
 feet ; he shall enrich thee and make the men of Erech keep silence 
 before thee." 
 
 The hermit was proof against ambition and re- 
 fused to leave his wilderness. Then a follower of 
 Izdubar, Zaidu, the huntsman, was sent to bring 
 him; but he returned alone and reported that, 
 when he had approached the seer's cave, he had 
 been seized with fear and had not entered it, but 
 had crawled back, climbing the steep bank on his 
 hands and feet. 
 
 II. At last Izdubar bethought him to send out 
 Ishtar's handmaidens, Shamhatu (" Grace ") and 
 Harimtu ("Persuasion"), and they started for 
 the wilderness under the escort of Zaidu. Sham- 
 hatu was the first to approach the hermit, but 
 he heeded her little ; he turned to her companion, 
 and sat down at her feet ; and when Harimtu 
 (" Persuasion ") spoke, bending her face towards 
 him, he listened and was attentive. And she said 
 to him : 
 
 "Famous art thoU; Eabani, even like a god; why then associate 
 with the wild things of the desert? Thy place is in the midst of 
 Erech, the great city, in the temple, the seat of Anu and Ishtar, in 
 the palace of Izdubar, the man of might, who towers amidst the lead- 
 ers as a bull." " She spoke to him, and before her words the wis- 
 dom of his heart fled and vanished." 
 
 22
 
 75. — IZDUBAR AND THE LION (BAS-RELIEF FROM KHORSABAD). 
 
 (Smith's " Chaldea.")
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 307 
 
 He answered: 
 
 " I will go to Erech, to the temple, the seat of Anu and Ishtar, to 
 the palace of Izdubar, the man of might, who towers amidst the 
 leaders as a bull. I will meet him and see his might. But I shall 
 bring to Erech a lion — let Izdubar destroy him if he can. He is 
 bred in the wilderness and of great strength." 
 
 76. — IZDUBAR A.ND THE LION. 
 (British Museum.) 
 
 So Zaidu and the two women went back to 
 Erech, and Eabani went with them, leading his 
 lion. The chiefs of the city received him Avith 
 great honors and gave a splendid entertainment in 
 sign of rejoicing. 
 
 12. It is evidently on this occasion that Izdu- 
 bar conquers the seer's esteem by fighting and kill-
 
 3o8 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 ing the lion, after which the hero and the sage en- 
 ter into a solemn covenant of friendship. But the 
 third tablet, which contains this part of the story, 
 is so much mutilated as to leave much of the sub- 
 stance to conjecture, while all the details, and the 
 interpretation of the dream which is probably 
 given, are lost. The same is unfortunately the 
 case with the fourth and fifth tablets, from which 
 we can only gather that Izdubar and Eabani, who 
 have become inseparable, start on an expedition 
 against the Elamite tyrant, Khumbaba, who holds 
 his court in a gloomy forest of cedars and cypresses, 
 enter his palace, fall upon him unawares and kill 
 him, leaving his body to be torn and devoured by 
 the birds of prey, after which exploit Izdubar, as 
 his friend had predicted to him, is proclaimed king 
 in Erech. The sixth tablet is far better preserved, 
 and gives us one of the most interesting incidents 
 almost complete. 
 
 13. After Izdubar's victor}% his glory and power 
 were great, and the goddess Ishtar looked on him 
 with favor and wished for his love. 
 
 "Izdubar," she said, "be my husband and I will be thy wife: 
 pledge thy troth to me. Thou shalt drive a chariot of gold and 
 precious stones, thy days shall be marked with conquests; kings, 
 princes and lords shall be subject to thee and kiss thy feet; they 
 shall bring thee tribute from mountain and valley, thy herds and 
 flocks shall multiply doubly, thy mules shall be fleet, and thy oxen 
 strong under the yoke. Thou shalt have no rival." 
 
 But Izdubar, in his pride, rejected the Jove of the 
 goddess ; he insulted her and taunted her with hav- 
 ing loved Dumuzi and others before him. Great
 
 HEROES AND THE MYl^HICAL EPOS. 
 
 309 
 
 was the wrath of Ishtar ; she ascended to heaven 
 and stood before her father Anu : 
 
 •' My father, Izdubar has insulted me. Izdubar scorns my beauty 
 and spurns my love." 
 
 She demanded satisfaction, and Anu, at her re- 
 quest, created a monstrous bull, which he sent 
 against the city of Erech. But Izdubar and his 
 friend went out to fight the bull, and killed him. 
 
 
 r^'^ 
 
 ^ c} —^ 
 
 77. — IZDUBAR AND EABANI FIGHT THE BULL OF ISHTAR. — IZDUBAR 
 FIGHTS EABANl's LION (BABYLONIAN CYLINDER). 
 (Smith's "Chaldea. ") 
 
 Eabani took hold of his tail and horns, and Izdu- 
 bar gave him his deathblow. They drew the heart 
 out of his body and offered it to Shamash. Then 
 Ishtar ascended the wall of the city, and standing 
 there cursed Izdubar. She gathered her handmaid- 
 ens around her and they raised loud lamentations 
 over the death of the divine bull. But Izdubar 
 called together his people and bade them lift up 
 the body and carry it to the altar of Shamash and 
 lay it before the god. Then they washed their 
 hands in the Euphrates and returned to the city,
 
 3IO 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 where they made a feast of rejoicing and revelled 
 deep into the night, while in the streets a procla- 
 mation to the people of Erech was called out, which 
 began with the triumphant words : 
 
 " Who is skilled among leaders ? Who is great among men? Iz- 
 dubar is skilled among leaders ; Izdubar is great among men." 
 
 14. But the vengeance of the offended goddess 
 was not to be so easily defeated. It now fell on the 
 hero in a more direct and personal way. Ishtar's 
 
 78. — IZDUBAR AND SaBANI (BABYLONIAN CYLINDER). 
 (Perrot and Chipiez.) 
 
 mother, the goddess Anatu, smote Eabani with 
 sudden death and Izdubar with a dire disease, a 
 sort of leprosy, it would appear. Mourning for his 
 friend, deprived of strength and tortured with in- 
 tolerable pains, he saw visions and dreams which 
 oppressed and terrified him, and there was now no 
 wise, familiar voice to soothe and counsel him. At 
 length he decided to consult his ancestor, Hasisa- 
 dra, who dwelt far away, "at the mouth of the 
 rivers," and was immortal, and to ask of him how 
 he mieht find healing and strength. He started on
 
 HERGES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 
 
 ^11 
 
 his way alone and came to a strange country, where 
 he met gigantic, monstrous beings, half men, half 
 scorpions : their feet were below the earth, while 
 their heads touched the gates of heaven ; they were 
 the warders of the sun and kept their watch over 
 its rising and setting. They said one to another: 
 " Who is this that comes to us with the mark of the 
 divine wrath on his body ? " Izdubar made his per- 
 son and errand known to them ; then they gave 
 him directions how to reach the land of the blessed 
 
 at the mouth of the rivers, 
 but warned him that the way 
 was long and full of hard- 
 ships. He set out again 
 and crossed a vast tract of 
 country, where there was 
 nothing but sand, not one 
 cultivated field ; and he 
 walked on and on, never 
 looking behind him, until he came to a beautiful 
 grove by the seaside, where the trees bore fruits 
 of emerald and other precious stones ; this grove 
 was guarded by two beautiful maidens, SiDURI 
 and Sabitu, but they looked with mistrust on the 
 stranger with the mark of the gods on his body, 
 and closed their dwelling against him. 
 
 15. And now Izdubar stood by the shore of the 
 Waters of Death, which are wide and deep, and 
 separate the land of the living from that of the 
 blessed and immortal dead. Here he encountered 
 the ferryman UrubeL; to him he opened his heart 
 and spoke of the friend whom he had loved and 
 
 79. — SCORPION-MEN. 
 (Smith's " Chaldea.")
 
 HEROES AXD THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 313 
 
 lost, and Urubel took him into his ship. For one 
 month and fifteen days they sailed on the Waters 
 of Death, until they reached that distant land by 
 the mouth of the rivers, where Izdubar at length 
 met his renowned ancestor face to face, and, even 
 while he prayed for his advice and assistance, a 
 very natural feeling of curiosity prompted him to 
 ask " how he came to be translated alive into the 
 assembly of the gods." Hasisadra, with great com- 
 plaisance, answered his descendant's question and 
 gave him a full account of the Deluge and his own 
 share in that event, after which he informed him in 
 what way he could be freed from the curse laid on 
 him by the gods. Then turning to the ferryman : 
 
 " Urubel, the man whom thou hast brought hither, behold, disease 
 has covered his body, sickness has destroyed the strength of his 
 limbs. Take him with thee, Urubel, and purify him in the waters, 
 that his disease may be changed into beauty, that he may throw off 
 his sickness and the waters carry it away, that health may cover his 
 skin, and the hair of his head be restored and descend in flowing 
 locks down to his garment, that he may go his way and return to his 
 own country." 
 
 16. When all had been done according to Hasis- 
 adra's instruction, Izdubar, restored to health and 
 vigor, took leave of his ancestor, and entering the 
 ship once more was carried back to the shore of the 
 living by the friendly Urubel, who accompanied him 
 all the way to Erech. But as they approached the 
 city tears flowed down the hero's face and his heart 
 was heavy within him for his lost friend, and he 
 once more raised his voice in lamentation for him : 
 
 " Thou takcst no part in the noble feast ; to the assembly they call 
 thee not; thou liftest not the bow from the ground; what is hit by
 
 314 
 
 THE STORY OF CIIALDEA. 
 
 the bow is not for thee ; thy hand grasps not the club and strikes not 
 the prey, nor stretches thy foeman dead on the earth. The wife thou 
 lovest thou kissest not ; the wife thou hatest thou strikest not. The 
 child thou lovest thou kissest not ; the child thou hatest thou strik- 
 est not. The might of the earth has swallowed thee. O Darkness, 
 Darkness, Mother Darkness ! thou enfoldest him like a mantle ; like 
 a deep well thou enclosest him ! " 
 
 Thus Izdubar mourned for his friend, and went in- 
 to the temple of Bel, and ceased not from lamenting 
 and crying to the gods, till Ea mercifully inclined 
 to his prayer and sent his son Meridug to bring 
 Eabani's spirit out of the dark world of shades into 
 the land of the blessed, there to live forever among 
 the heroes of old, reclining on luxurious couches 
 and drinking the pure water of eternal springs. 
 The poem ends with a vivid description of a war- 
 rior's funeral : 
 
 " I see him who has been slain in battle. His father and mother 
 hold his head; his wife weeps over him; his friends stand around; 
 his prey lies on the ground uncovered and unheeded. The van- 
 quished captives follow; the food provided in the tents is con- 
 sumed." 
 
 17. The incident of the Deluge, which has been 
 merely mentioned above, not to interrupt the nar- 
 rative by its disproportionate length, (the eleventh 
 tablet being the best preserved of all), is too impor- 
 tant not to be given in full.* 
 
 " I will tell thee, Izdubar, how I was saved from the flood," begins 
 Hasisadra, in answer to his descendant's question, " also will I im- 
 part to thee the decree of the great gods. Thou knowest Surippak, 
 the city that is by the Euphrates. This city was already very ancient 
 when the gods were moved in their hearts to ordain a great deluge, 
 
 * Translated from the German version of Paul Haupt, " Der Keil- 
 inschriftliche Sitndfluthbericht."
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 3 i 5 
 
 all of them, their father Anu, their councillor the warlike Bel, their 
 throne-bearer Ninib, their leader Ennugi. The lord of inscrutable 
 wisdom, the god Ea, was with them and imparted to me their decision. 
 ' Listen,' he said, 'and attend! Man of Surippak, son of Ubaratutu,* 
 go out of thy house and build thee a ship. They are willed to destroy 
 the seed of life ; but thou preserve it and bring into the ship seed of 
 every kind of life. The ship which thou shalt build let it be ... . 
 in length, and .... in width and height,t and cover it also with a 
 deck.' When I heard this I spoke to Ea, my lord: 'If I construct 
 the ship as thou biddest me, O lord, the people and their elders will 
 laugh at me.' But Ea opened his lips once more and spoke to me 
 his servant: 'Men have rebelled against me, and I will do judgment 
 on them, high and low. But do thou close the door of the ship when 
 the time comes and I tell thee of it. Then enter the ship and bring 
 into it thy store of grain, all thy property, thy family, thy men-ser- 
 vants and thy women-servants, and also thy next of kin. The cattle 
 of the fields, the wild beasts of the fields, I shall send to thee myself, 
 that they may be safe behind thy door.'— Then I built the ship and 
 provided it with stores of food and drink; I divided the interior into 
 .... compartments. t I saw to the chinks and filled them ; I 
 poured bitumen over its outer side and over its inner side. All that 
 I possessed I brought together and stowed it in the ship ; all that 
 I had of gold, of silver, of the seed of life of every kind ; all my men- 
 servants and my women-servants, the cattle of the field, the wild 
 beasts of the field, and also my nearest friends. Then, when Sha- 
 mash brought round the appointed time, a voice spoke to me : — 
 ' This evening the heavens will rain destruction, wherefore go thou 
 into the ship and close thy door. The appointed time has come,' 
 spoke the voice, ' this evening the heavens will rain destruction.' 
 And greatly I feared the sunset of that day, the day on which I was 
 to begin my voyage. I was sore afraid. Yet I entered into the ship 
 and closed the door behind me, to shut off the ship. And I confided 
 the great ship to the pilot, with all its freight. — Then a great black 
 cloud rises from the depths of the heavens, and Raman thunders 
 in the midst of it, while Nebo and Nergal encounter each other, and 
 the Throne-bearers walk over mountains and vales. The mighty god 
 of Pestilence lets loose the whirlwinds ; Ninib unceasingly makes the 
 
 * The ninth king in the fabulous list of ten. 
 t The figures unfortunately obliterated.
 
 3i6 
 
 THE STORY OF CIIALDEA. 
 
 canals to overflow ; the Anunnaki bring up floods from the depths 
 of the earth, which quakes at their violence. Raman's mass of wa- 
 ters rises even to heaven ; light is changed into darkness. Confu- 
 sion and devastation fills the earth. Brother looks not after brother, 
 men have no thought for one another. In the heavens the very gods 
 are afraid ; they seek a refuge in the highest heaven of Anu ; as a 
 dog in its lair, the gods crouch by the railing of heaven. Ishtar 
 cries aloud with sorrow : * Behold, all is turned into mud, as I fore- 
 told to the gods ! I prophesied this disaster and the extermination 
 of my creatures — men. But I do nqt give them birth that they mav 
 fill the sea like the brood of fishes.' Then the gods wept with her 
 and sat lamenting on one spot. For six days and seven nights wind, 
 flood and storm reigned suj^reme ; but at dawn of the seventh day 
 the tempest decreased, the waters, which had battled like a mighty 
 host, abated their violence; the sea retired, and storm and flood 
 both ceased. I steered about the sea, lamenting that the homesteads 
 of men were changed into mud. The corpses drifted about like 
 logs. I opened a port-hole, and when the light of day fell on my 
 face I shivered and sat down and wept. I steered over the countries 
 which now were a terrible sea. Then a piece of land rose out of the 
 waters. The ship steered towards the land Nizir. The mountain 
 of the land Nizir held fast the ship and did not let it go. Thus it 
 was on the first and on the second day, on the third and the fourth 
 also on the fifth and sixth days. At dawn of the seventh day I took 
 out a dove and sent it forth. The dove went forth to and fro, but 
 found no resting-place and returned. Then I took out a swallow 
 and sent it forth. The swallow went forth, to and fro, but found no 
 resting-place and returned. Then I took out a raven and sent it 
 forth. The raven went forth, and when it saw that the waters had 
 abated, it came near again, cautiously wading through the water, but 
 did not return. Then I let out all the animals, to the four winds of 
 heaven, and offered a sacrifice. I raised an altar on the highest 
 summit of the mountain, placed the sacred vessels on it seven by 
 seven, and spread reeds, cedar-wood and sweet herbs under them. 
 The gods smelled a savor; the gods smelled a sweet savor ; like flies 
 they swarmed around the sacrifice. And when the goddess Ishtar 
 came, she spread out on high the great bows of her father Anu : — ' By 
 the necklace of my neck,' she said, ' I shall be mindful of these days, 
 never shall I lose the memory of them ! May all the gods come to 
 the altar ; Bel alone shall not come, for that he controlled not his 
 wrath, and brought on the deluge, and gave up my men to destruc-
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 317 
 
 tion.' When after that Bel came nigh and saw the ship, he was per- 
 plexed, and his heart was filled with anger against the gods and 
 against the spirits of Heaven : — ' Not a soul shall escape,' he cried ; 
 ' not one man shall come alive out of destruction ! ' Then the god 
 Ninib opened his lips and spoke, addressing the warlike Bel : — 
 * Who but Ea can have done this? Ea knew, and informed him of 
 everything.' Then Ea opened his lips and spoke, addressing the 
 warlike Bel : — ' Thou art the mighty leader of the gods : but why 
 hast thou acted thus recklessly and brought on this deluge? Let the 
 sinner suffer for his sin and the evil-doer for his misdeeds ; but to 
 this man be gracious that he may not be destroyed, and incline tow- 
 ards him favorably, that he may be preserved. And instead of 
 bringing on another deluge, let lions and hyenas come and take from 
 the number of men ; send a famine to unpeople the earth ; let the 
 god of Pestilence lay men low. I have not imparted to Hasisadra 
 the decision of the great gods : I only sent him a dream, and he un- 
 derstood the warning.' — Then Bel came to his senses. He entered 
 the ship, took hold of my hand and lifted me up ; he also lifted up 
 my wife and laid her hand in mine. Then he turned towards us, 
 stood between us and spoke this blessing on us : — ' Until now Hasis- 
 adra was only human : but now he shall be raised to be equal with 
 the gods, together with his wife. He shall dwell in the distant land, 
 by the mouth of the rivers.' Then they took me and translated me 
 to the distant land by the mouth of the rivers." 
 
 18. Such is the great Chaldean Epic, the discovery 
 of which produced so profound a sensation, not to 
 say excitement, not only among special scholars, 
 but in the reading world generally, while the full 
 importance of it in the history of human culture 
 cannot yet be realized at this early stage of our his- 
 torical studies, but will appear more and more 
 clearly as their course takes us to later nations and 
 other lands. We will here linger over the poem 
 only long enough to justify and explain the name 
 given to it in the title of this chapter, of " Mythi- 
 cal Epos."
 
 3l8 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 19. Were the hero Izdubar a purely human per- 
 son, it would be a matter of much wonder how the 
 small nucleus of historical fact which the story of 
 his adventures contains should have become en- 
 twined and overgrown with such a disproportionate 
 quantity of the most extravagant fiction, oftentimes 
 downright monstrous in its fancifulness. But the 
 story is one far older than that of any mere human 
 hero and relates to one far mightier : it is the story 
 of the Sun in his progress through the year, retrac- 
 ing his career of increasing splendor as the spring 
 advances to midsummer, the height of his power 
 when he reaches the month represented in the Zo- 
 diac by the sign of the Lion, then the decay of his 
 strength as he pales and sickens in the autumn, and 
 at last his restoration to youth and vigor after he 
 has passed the Waters of Death — Winter, the death 
 of the year, the season of nature's deathlike torpor, 
 out of which the sun has not strength sufficient to 
 rouse her, until spring comes back and the circle 
 begins again. An examination of the Accadian cal- 
 endar, adopted by the more scientifically inclined 
 Semites, shows that the names of most of the 
 months and the signs by which they were repre- 
 sented on the maps of the corresponding constella- 
 tions of the Zodiac, directly answer to various inci- 
 dents of the poem, following, too, in the same or- 
 der, which is that of the respective seasons of the 
 year, — which, be it noted, began with the spring, in 
 the middle of our month of March, If we compare 
 the calendar months with the tablets of the poem 
 we will find that they, in almost every case, corre-
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTrf/CAL EPOS. -ijg 
 
 spond. As the first tablet is unfortunately still miss- 
 ing, we cannot judge how far it may have answered 
 to the name of the first month — "■ the Altar of Bel." 
 But the second month, called that of " the Propi- 
 tious Bull," or the " Friendly Bull," very well corre- 
 sponds to the second tablet which ends with Izdu- 
 bar's sending for the seer Eabani, half bull half man, 
 while the name and sign of the third, 'f the Twins," 
 clearly alludes to the bond of friendship concluded 
 between the two heroes, who became inseparable. 
 Their victory over the tyrant Khumbaba in the 
 fifth tablet is symbolized by the sign representing 
 the victory of the Lion over the Bull, often abbre- 
 viated into that of the Lion alone, a sign plainly 
 enough interpreted by the name " Month of Fire," 
 so appropriate to the hottest and driest of seasons 
 even in moderate climes — July-August. What 
 makes this interpretation absolutely conclusive is 
 the fact that in the symbolical imagery of all the 
 poetry of the East, the Lion represents the princi- 
 ple of heat, of fire. The seventh tablet, containing 
 the wooing of the hero by the goddess Ishtar, is too 
 plainly reproduced in the name of the correspond- 
 ing month, " the Month of the Message of Ishtar," 
 to need explanation. The sign, too, is that of a 
 woman with a bow, the usual mode of representing 
 the goddess. The sign of the eighth month, '' the 
 Scorpion," commemorates the gigantic Warders of 
 the Sun, half men half scorpions, whom Izdubar 
 encounters when he starts on his journey to the 
 "land of the dead. The ninth month is called ** the 
 Cloudy," surely a meet name for Noveniber-De-
 
 320 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 cember, and in no way inconsistent with the con- 
 tents of the ninth tablet, which shows Izdubar nav- 
 igating the " Waters of Death." In the tenth 
 month (December-January), the sun reaches his 
 very lowest point, that of the winter solstice with 
 its shortest days, whence the name " Month of the 
 Cavern of the Setting Sun," and the tenth tablet 
 tells how Izdubar reached the goal of his journey, 
 the land of the illustrious dead, to which his great 
 ancestor has been translated. To the eleventh 
 month, " the Month of the Curse of Rain," -\vlth the 
 sign of the Waterman, — (January-February being 
 in the low lands of the two rivers the time of the 
 most violent and continuous rains) — answers the 
 eleventh tablet with the account of the Deluge. 
 The " Fishes of Ea " accompany the sun in the 
 twelfth month, the last of the dark season, as he 
 emerges, purified and invigorated, to resume his 
 triumphant career with the beginning of the new 
 year. From the context and sequence of the myth, 
 it would appear that the name of the first month, 
 " the Altar of Bel," must have had something to do 
 with the reconciliation of the god after the Deluge, 
 from which humanity may be said to take a new 
 beginning, which would make the name a most au- 
 spicious one for the new year, while the sign — a Ram 
 — might allude to the animal sacrificed on the altar. 
 Each month being placed under the protection of 
 some particular deity it is worthy of notice that 
 Anu and Bel are the patrons of the first month, Ea 
 of the second, (in connection with the wisdom of 
 £abani, who is called " the creature of Ea,") while
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 
 
 321 
 
 Ishtar presides over the sixth, (" Message of Ish- 
 tar,") and Raman, the god of the atmosphere, of 
 rain and storm and thunder, over the eleventh, (" the 
 Curse of Rain "). 
 
 20. The solar nature of the adventurous career 
 attributed to the favorite national hero of Chaldea, 
 now universally admitted, was first pointed out by 
 Sir Henry Rawlinson : but it was Francois Lenor- 
 mant who followed it out and established it in its 
 details. His conclusions on the subject are given 
 in such clear and forcible language, that it is a 
 pleasure to reproduce them:* — " ist. The Chal- 
 deans and Babylonians had, concerning the twelve 
 months of the year, myths for the most part belong- 
 ing to the series of traditions anterior to the separa- 
 tion of the great races of mankind which descended 
 from the highlands of Pamir, since we find analo- 
 gous myths among the pure Semites and other na- 
 tions. As early as the time when they dwelt on the 
 plains of the Tigris and Euphrates, they connected 
 these myths with the different epochs of the year, 
 not with a view to agricultural occupations, but in 
 connection with the great periodical phenomena of 
 the atmosphere and the different stations in the 
 sun's yearly course, as they occurred in that par- 
 ticular region ; hence the signs characterizing the 
 twelve solar mansions in the Zodiac and the sym- 
 bolical names given to the months by the Accads. 
 — 2d. It was those myths, strung together in their 
 successive order, w^hich served as foundation to the 
 
 * " Les Premieres Civilisations," Vol. II., pp. 78 ff. 
 23
 
 2 22 "^^E S7VRY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 epic story of Izdubar, the fiery and solar hero, and 
 in the poem which was copied at Erech by Asshur- 
 banipal's order each of them formed the subject of 
 one of the twelve tablets, making up the number of 
 twelve separate books or chapters answering the 
 twelve months of the year." — Even though the evi- 
 dence is apparently so complete as not to need fur- 
 ther confirmation, it is curious to note that the signs 
 which compose the name of Izdubar convey the 
 meaning '* mass of fire," while Hasisadra's Accadian 
 name means '' the sun of life," " the morning sun," 
 and his father's name, Ubaratutu, is translated "the 
 glow of sunset." 
 
 21. George Smith indignantly repudiated this 
 mythic interpretation of the hero's exploits, and 
 claimed for them a strictly historical character. 
 But we have seen that the two are by no means 
 incompatible, since history, when handed down 
 through centuries by mere oral tradition, is liable to 
 many vicissitudes in the telling and retelling, and 
 people are sure to arrange their favorite and most 
 familiar stories, the mythical signification of which 
 has long been forgotten, around the central figure 
 of the heroes they love best, around the most im- 
 portant but vaguely recollected events in their na- 
 tional life. Hence it came to pass that identically 
 the same stories, with but slight local variations, 
 were told of heroes in different nations and coun- 
 tries ; for the stock of original, or, as one may say, 
 primary myths is comparatively small and the same 
 for all, dating back to a time when mankind was 
 not yet divided. In the course of ages and mi-
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 
 
 323 
 
 grations it has been altered, like a rich hereditary 
 robe, to fit and adorn many and very different per- 
 sons. 
 
 22. One of the prettiest, oldest, and most univer- 
 sally favorite solar myths is the one which represents 
 the Sun as a divine being, youthful and of surpass- 
 ing beauty, beloved by or wedded to an equally 
 powerful goddess, but meeting a premature death 
 by accident and descending into the dark land 
 of shades, from which, however, after a time he 
 returns as glorious and beautiful as before. In 
 this poetical fancy, the land of shades symbolizes 
 the numb and lifeless period of winter as aptly as 
 the Waters of Death in the Izdubar Epic, while the 
 seeming death of the young god answers to the 
 sickening of the hero at that declining season of the 
 year when the sun's rays lose their vigor and are 
 overcome by the powers of darkness and cold. The 
 goddess who loves the fair young god, and mourns 
 him with passionate grief, until her wailings and 
 prayers recall him from his death-like trance, is Na- 
 ture herself, loving, bountiful, ever productive, but 
 pale, and bare, and powerless in her widowhood, 
 while the sun-god, the spring of life whence she 
 draws her very being, lies captive in the bonds of 
 their common foe, grim Winter, which is but a form 
 of Death itself. Their reunion at the god's resur- 
 rection in spring is the great wedding-feast, the 
 revel and holiday-time of the world. 
 
 23. This simple and perfectly transparent myth 
 has been worked out more or less elaborately in all 
 the countries of the East, and has found its way in
 
 324 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 some form or other into all the nations of the three 
 great white races — of Japhet, Shem, and Ham — yet 
 here again the precedence in point of time seems 
 due to the older and more primitive — the Yellow or 
 Turanian race ; for the most ancient, and probably 
 original form of it is the one which was inherited by 
 the Semitic settlers of Chaldea from their Shumiro- 
 Accadian predecessors, as shown by the Accadian 
 name of the young solar god, DUMUZI, " the un- 
 fortunate husband of the goddess Ishtar," as he is 
 called in the sixth tablet of the Izdubar epic. The 
 name has been translated " Divine Offspring," but 
 in later times lost all signification, being corrupted 
 into Tammuz. In some Accadian hymns he is in- 
 voked as " the Shepherd, the lord Dumuzi, the 
 lover of Ishtar." Well could a nomadic and pas- 
 toral people poetically liken the sun to a shepherd, 
 whose flocks were the fleecy clouds as they speed 
 across the vast plains of heaven or the bright, innu- 
 merable stars. This comparison, as pretty as it is 
 natural, kept its hold in all ages and nations on the 
 popular fancy, which played on it an infinite variety 
 of ingenious changes, but it is only cuneiform sci- 
 ence which has proved that it could be traced back 
 to the very earliest race whose culture has left its 
 mark on the world. 
 
 24. Of Dumuzi's tragic death no text deciphered 
 until now unfortunately gives the details. Only 
 the remarkable fragment about the black pine of 
 Eridhu, " marking the centre of the earth, in the 
 dark forest, into the heart whereof man hath not 
 penetrated," (see p. 287) tantalizingly ends with
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 325 
 
 these suggestive words: "Within it Dumuzi . . ." 
 Scholars have found reason for conjecturing that 
 this fragment was the beginning of a mythical nar- 
 rative recounting Dumuzi's death, which must have 
 been represented as taking place in that dark and 
 sacred forest of Eridhu, — probably through the 
 agency of a wild beast sent against him by a jealous 
 and hostile power, just as the bull created by Anu 
 was sent against Izdubar. " One thing, however, is 
 sure, that both in the earlier (Turanian) and in the 
 later (Semitic) calendary of Chaldea, there was a 
 month set apart in honor and for the festival of 
 Dumuzi. It was the month of June-July, begin- 
 ning at the summer solstice, when the days begin to 
 shorten, and the sun to de<;line towards its lower 
 winter point — a retrograde movement, ingeniously 
 indicated by the Zodiacal sign of that month, the 
 Cancer or Crab. The festival of Dumuzi lasted 
 during the six first days of the month, with proces- 
 sions and ceremonies bearing two distinct charac- 
 ters. The worshippers at first assembled in the 
 guise of mourners, with lamentations and loud wail- 
 ings, tearing of clothes and of hair, as though cele- 
 brating the young god's funeral, while on the sixth 
 day his resurrection and reunion to Ishtar was com- 
 memorated with the noisiest, most extravagant de- 
 monstrations of rejoicing. This custom is alluded 
 to in Izdubar's scornful answer to Ishtar's love- 
 message, when he says to her : " Thou lovedst Du- 
 
 *A. H. Sayce, "Babylonian Literature." p. 39; Fr. Lenormant, 
 " II Mito di Adone-Tammuz," pp. i:-i3.
 
 326 
 
 THE STORY OF rUALDEA. 
 
 muzi, for whom they moiwn year after year,'' and was 
 witnessed by the Jews when they were carried pris- 
 oners to Babylon as late as 600 B.C., as expressly 
 mentioned by Ezekiel, the prophet of the Captiv- 
 ity : — " Then he brought me to the door of the 
 Lord's house which was towards the north ; and be- 
 hold, there sat the women weeping for Tammiizy 
 (Ezekiel, iii, 14.) 
 
 25. A favorite version of Dumuzi's resurrection 
 was that which told how Ishtar herself followed 
 him into the Lower World, to claim him from their 
 common foe, and thus yielded herself for a time 
 into the power of her rival, the dread Queen of the 
 Dead, who held her captive, and would not have re- 
 leased her but for the direct interference of the 
 great gods. This was a rich mine of epic material, 
 from which songs and stories must have flowed 
 plentifully. We are lucky enough to possess a 
 short epic on the subject, in one tablet, one of the 
 chief gems of the indefatigable George Smith's 
 discoveries, — a poem of great literary beauty, and 
 nearly complete to within a few lines of the end, 
 which are badly injured and scarcely legible. It is 
 known under the name of " The Descent of Ish- 
 tar," as it relates only this one incident of the 
 myth. The opening lines are unsurpassed for 
 splendid poetry and sombre grandeur in any, even 
 the most advanced literature. 
 
 26. "Towards the land whence there is no return, towards the 
 house of corruption, Ishtar, the daughter of Sin, has turned her 
 mind .... towards the dwelling that has an entrance but no 
 exit, towards the road that may be travelled but not retraced, tow-
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 
 
 327 
 
 ards the hall from which the light of day is shut out, where hunger 
 feeds on dust and mud, where light is never seen, where the shades 
 of the dead dwell in the dark, clothed with wings like birds. On 
 the lintel of the gate and in the lock dust lies accumulated. — Ishtar, 
 when she reached the land whence there is no return, to the keeper 
 of the gate signified her command : ' Keeper, open thy gate that I 
 may pass. If thou openest not and I may not enter, I will smite the 
 gate, and break the lock, I will demolish the threshold and enter by 
 force; then will I let loose the dead to return to the earth, that they 
 may live and eat again ; I will make the risen dead more numerous 
 than the living.' The gate-keeper opened his lips and spoke: — 'Be 
 appeased, O Lady, and let me go and report thy name to Allat the 
 Queen.'" 
 
 Here follow a few much injured lines, the sense 
 of which could not be restored in its entirety. The 
 substance is that the gate-keeper announces to 
 AUat that her sister Ishtar has come for the Water 
 of Life, which is kept concealed in a distant nook 
 of her dominions, and Allat is greatly disturbed at 
 the news. But Ishtar announces that she comes in 
 sorrow, not enmity : — 
 
 " I wish to weep over the heroes who have left their wives. I wish 
 to weep over the wives who have been taken from their husbands' 
 arms. I wish to weep over the Only Son — (a name of Uumuzi) — 
 who has been taken away before his time." 
 
 Then Allat commands the keeper to open the 
 gates and take Ishtar through the sevenfold en- 
 closure, dealing by her as by all Vvdio come to those 
 gates, that is, stripping her of her garments ac- 
 cording to ancient custom. 
 
 "The keeper went and opened the gate : ' Enter, O Lady, and may 
 the halls of the Land whence there is no return be gladdened by thy 
 presence.' At the first gate he bade her enter and laid his hand on 
 her ; he took the high headdress from her head : ' Why, O keeper, 
 takest thou the high headdress from my head?' — ' Enter, O Lady; 
 such is Allat's command.' "
 
 328 I^^E STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 The same scene is repeated at each of the seven 
 gates; the keeper at each strips Ishtar of some 
 article of her attire- — her earrings, her necklace, 
 her jewelled girdle, the bracelets on her arms and 
 the bangles at her ankles, and lastly her long flow- 
 ing garment. On each occasion the same words 
 are repeated by both. When Ishtar entered the 
 presence of Allat, the queen looked at her and 
 taunted her to her face : then Ishtar could not con- 
 trol her anger and cursed her. Allat turned to her 
 chief minister Namtar, the god of Pestilence — meet 
 servant of the queen of the dead ! — who is also the 
 god of Fate, and ordered him to lead Ishtar away 
 and afflict her with sixty dire diseases, — to strike 
 her head and her heart, and her eyes, her hands 
 and her feet, and all her limbs. So the goddess 
 was led away and kept in durance and in misery. 
 Meanwhile her absence was attended with most 
 disastrous consequences to the upper world. With 
 her, life and love had gone out of it; there were no 
 marriages any more, no births, either among men or 
 animals ; nature was at a standstill. Great was the 
 commotion among the gods. They sent a messen- 
 ger to Ea to expose the state of affairs to him, and, 
 as usual, to invoke his advice and assistance. Ea, 
 in his fathomless wisdom, revolved a scheme. He 
 created a phantom, Uddusunamir. 
 
 " ' Go,' he said to him ; ' towards the Land whence there is no re- 
 turn direct thy face ; the seven gates of the Arallu will open before 
 thee. Allat shall see thee and rejoice at thy coming, her heart shall 
 grow calm and her wrath shall vanish. Conjure her with the name 
 of the great gods, stiffen thy neck and keep thy mind on the Spring
 
 HEROES AND THE MYTHICAL EPOS. 
 
 329 
 
 of Life. Let the Lady (Ishtar) gain access to the Spring of Life and 
 drink of its waters.' — Allat, when she heard these things, beat her 
 breast and bit her fingers with rage. Consenting, sore against her 
 will, she spoke: — 'Go, Uddusunamir! May the great jailer place 
 thee in durance ! May the foulness of the city ditches be thy food, 
 the waters of the city sewers thy drink 1 A dark dungeon be thy 
 dwelling, a sharp pole thy seat ! ' " 
 
 Then she ordered Namtar to let Ishtar drink of 
 the Spring of Life and to bear her from her sight. 
 Namtar fulfilled her command and took the goddess 
 through the seven enclosures, at each gate restoring 
 to her the article of her attire that had been taken at 
 her entrance. At the last gate he said to her : 
 
 "Thou hast paid no ransom to Allat for y deliverance; so now 
 return to Dumuzi, the lover of thy youth ; sprinkle over him the 
 sacred waters, clothe him in splendid garments, adorn him with 
 gems." 
 
 26. The last lines are so badly mutilated that no 
 efforts have as yet availed to make their sense any- 
 thing but obscure, and so it must remain, unless 
 new copies come to light. Yet so much is, at all 
 events, evident, that they bore on the reunion of 
 Ishtar and her young lover. The poem is thus com- 
 plete in itself ; but some think that it was introduced 
 into the Izdubar epic as an independent episode, 
 after the fashion of the Deluge narrative, and, if so, 
 it is supposed to have been part of the seventh tab- 
 let. Whether such were really the case or no, mat- 
 ters little in comparison with the great importance 
 these two poems possess as being the most ancient 
 presentations, in a finished literary form, of the two 
 most significant and universal nature-myths — the
 
 330 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 Solar and the Chthonic (see p. 272), the poetical 
 fancies in which primitive mankind clothed the won- 
 ders of the heavens and the mystery of the earth, be- 
 ing content to admire and imagine where it could 
 not comprehend and explain. We shall be led back 
 continually to these, in v&xy X.xw'Oix, primary myths, 
 for they not only served as groundwork to much of 
 the most beautiful poetry of the world but sug. 
 gested some of its loftiest and most cherished relig- 
 ious conceptions. 
 
 *Fora metrical version by Prof. Dyer of the story of " Ishtar's 
 Descent," see Appendix, p. 367.
 
 VIII. 
 
 RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. — IDOLATRY AND AN- 
 THROPOMORPHISM. — THE CHALDEAN LEGENDS 
 AND THE BOOK OF GENESIS. — RETROSPECT. 
 
 I. In speaking of ancient nations, the words *' Re- 
 ligion " and " Mythology " are generally used indis- 
 criminately and convertibly. Yet the conceptions 
 they express are essentially and radically different. 
 The broadest difference, and the one from which all 
 others flow, is that the one — Religion — is a thing of 
 the feelings, while the other — Mythology — is a thing 
 of the imagination. In other words, Religion comes 
 from WITHIN — from that consciousness of limited 
 power, that inborn need of superior help and guid- 
 ance, forbearance and forgiveness, from that long- 
 ing for absolute goodness and perfection, which 
 make up the distinctively human attribute of " re- 
 ligiosity," that attribute which, together with the 
 faculty of articulate speech, sets Man apart from 
 and above all the rest of animated creation. (See p. 
 149.) Mythology, on the other hand, comes wholly 
 from WITHOUT. It embodies impressions received 
 by the senses from the outer world and transformed 
 by the poetical faculty into images and stories. 
 
 33^
 
 332 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 (See definition of " Myth " on p. 294.) Professor 
 Max Miiller of Oxford has been the first, in his 
 standard work " The Science of Language," clearly 
 to define this radical difference between the two 
 conceptions, which he has never since ceased to 
 sound as a keynote through the long series of his 
 works devoted to the study of the religions and 
 mythologies of various nations. A few illustrations 
 from the one nation with which we have as yet be- 
 come familiar will help once for all to establish a 
 thorough understanding on this point, most essen- 
 tial as it is to the comprehension of the workings of 
 the human mind and soul throughout the long roll 
 of struggles, errors and triumphs, achievements and 
 failures which we call the history of mankind. 
 
 2. There is no need to repeat here instances of 
 the Shumiro-Accadian and Chaldean myths ; the 
 last three or four chapters have been filled with them. 
 But the instances of religious feeling, though scat- 
 tered in the same field, have to be carefully gleaned 
 out and exhibited, for they belong to that undercur- 
 rent of the soul which pursues its way unobtrusively 
 and is often apparently lost beneath the brilliant play 
 of poetical fancies. But it is there nevertheless, and 
 every now and then forces its way to the surface 
 shining forth with a startling purity and beauty. 
 When the Accadian poet invokes the Lord " who 
 knows lie from truth," " who knows the truth that 
 is in the soul of man," who " maketh lies to vanish," 
 who " turneth wicked plots to a happy issue " — 
 this is religion, not mythology, for this is not a story, 
 it is the expression of a feeling. That " the Lord "
 
 RELIGION AiVD MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 333 
 
 whose divine omniscience and goodness is thus glo- 
 rified is really the Sun, makes no difference ; tJiat is 
 an error of judgment, a want of knowledge, but the 
 religious feeling is splendidly manifest in the invo- 
 cation. But when, in the same hymn, the Sun is 
 described as " stepping forth from the background 
 of the skies, pushing back the bolts and opening the 
 gate of the brilliant heaven, and raising his head 
 above the land," etc., (see p. 172) that is only a very 
 beautiful, imaginative description of a glorious nat- 
 ural phenomenon — sunrise ; it is magnificent poetry, 
 religious in so far as the sun is considered as a Be- 
 ing, a Divine Person, the object of an intensely de- 
 vout and grateful feeling ; still this is not religion, it 
 is mythology, for it presents a material image to the 
 mind, and one that can be easily turned into nar- 
 rative, into a story, — which, in fact, suggests a hero, 
 a king, and a story. Take, again, the so-called 
 " Penitential Psalms." To the specimen given on 
 p. 178, let us add, for greater completeness, the fol- 
 lowing three remarkable fragments : 
 
 I. "God, my creator, take hold of my arms 1 Direct the breath of 
 my mouth, my hands direct, O lord of light." 
 
 II. "Lord, let not thy servant sink! Amidst the tumultuous waters 
 take hold of his hand ! " 
 
 III. " He who fears not his God, will be cut off even like a reed. 
 He who honoi"s not his goddess, his bodily strength will waste away : 
 like to a star of heaven, his splendor will pale ; he will vanish like to 
 the waters of the night." 
 
 3. All this is religion, of the purest, loftiest 
 kind ; fruitful, too, of good, the only real test of 
 true religion. The deep humility, the trustful ap-
 
 334 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 peal, the feeling of dependence, the consciousness 
 of weakness, of sin, and the longing for deliverance 
 from them — these are all very different from the 
 pompous phrases of empty praise and sterile admi- 
 ration ; they are things which flow from the heart, 
 not the fancy, which lighten its weight of sorrow 
 and self-reproach, brighten it with hope and good 
 resolutions, in short, make it happier and better — 
 what no mere imaginative poetry, however fine, can 
 do. 
 
 4. The radical distinction, then, between religious 
 feeling and the poetical faculty of mythical crea- 
 tion, is easy to establish and follow out. On the 
 other hand, the two are so constantly blended, so 
 almost inextricably interwoven in the sacred poe- 
 try of the ancients, in their views of life and the 
 world, and in their worship, that it is no wonder 
 they should be so generally confused. The most cor- 
 rect way of putting the case would be, perhaps, to 
 say that the ancient Religions — meaning by the word 
 the whole body of sacred poetry and legends as well 
 as the national forms of worship — were made up 
 originally in about equal parts of religious feeling 
 and of mythology. In many cases the exuberance of 
 the imagination gained the upper hand, and there 
 was such a riotous growth of mythical imagery and 
 stories that the religious feeling was almost stifled 
 under them. In others, again, the myths them- 
 selves suggested religious ideas of the deepest im- 
 port and loftiest sublimity. Such was particularly 
 the case with the solar and Chthonic Myths — the 
 poetical presentation of the career of the Sun and
 
 RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 335 
 
 the Earth — as connected with the doctrine of the 
 soul's immortality, 
 
 5. A curious and significant observation has been 
 made in excavating the most ancient graves in the 
 world, those of the so-called Mound-builders. This 
 name is not that of any particular race or nation, but 
 is given indiscriminately to all those peoples who 
 lived, on any part of the globe, long before the earli- 
 est beginnings of even the remotest times which have 
 been made historical by preserved monuments or 
 inscriptions of any kind. All we know of those 
 peoples is that they used to bury their dead — at 
 least those of special renown or high rank — in deep 
 and spacious stone-lined chambers dug in the ground, 
 with a similar gallery leading to them, and covered 
 by a mound of earth, sometimes of gigantic dimen- 
 sions — a very hill. Hence the name. Of their 
 life, their degree of civilization, what they thought 
 and believed, we have no idea except in so far as 
 the contents of the graves give us some indications. 
 For, like the later, historical races, of which we find 
 the graves in Chaldea and every other country of 
 the ancient world, they used to bury along with the 
 dead a multitude of things : vessels, containing food 
 and drink ; weapons, ornaments, household imple- 
 ments. The greater the power or renown of the 
 dead man, the fuller and more luxurious his funeral 
 outfit. It is indeed by no means rare to find the 
 skeleton of a great chief surrounded by those of sev- 
 eral women, and, at a respectful distance, more 
 skeletons — evidently those of slaves — whose frac- 
 tured skulls more than suggest the ghastly custom
 
 336 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 of killing wives and servants to do honor to an illus- 
 trious dead and to keep him company in his narrow 
 underground mansion. Nothing but a belief in the 
 continuation of existence after death could have 
 prompted these practices. For what was the sense 
 of giving him wives and slaves, and domestic arti- 
 cles of all kinds, food and weapons, unless it were 
 for his service and use on his journey to the un- 
 known land where he was to enter on a new stage 
 of existence, which the survivors could not but 
 imagine to be a reproduction, in its simple condi- 
 tions and needs, of the one he was leaving? There 
 is no race of men, however primitive, however un- 
 tutored, in which this belief in immortality is not 
 found deeply rooted, positive, unquestioning. The 
 belief \s implanted in man by the zvisJi ; it answers 
 one of the most imperative, unsilenceable longings 
 of human nature. For, in proportion as life is 
 pleasant and precious, death is hideous and repel- 
 lent. The idea of utter destruction, of ceasing to 
 be, is intolerable to the mind ; indeed, the senses re- 
 volt against it, the mind refuses to grasp and ad- 
 mit it. Yet death is very real, and it is inevitable ; 
 and all human beings that come into the world 
 have to learn to face the thought of it, and the re- 
 ality too, in others, before they lie down and accept 
 it for themselves. But what if death be 7iot de- 
 struction ? If it be but a passage from this into an- 
 other world, — distant, unknown and perforce mys- 
 terious, but certain nevertheless, a world on the 
 threshold of which the earthly body is dropped as 
 an unnecessary garment ? Then were death shorn
 
 RELIGIOA' AND MYTHOL OG Y. ^ ^ ~ 
 
 of half its terrors. Indeed, the only unpleasantness 
 about it would be, for him who goes, the momentary 
 pang and the uncertainty as to what he is going to ; 
 and, for those who remain, the separation and the 
 loathsome details — the disfigurement, the corrup- 
 tion. But these are soon gotten over, while the 
 separation is only for a time ; for all must go the 
 same way, and the late-comers will find, will join 
 their lost ones gone before. Surely it must be so I 
 It were too horrible if it were not ; it must be — it is ! 
 The process of feeling which arrived at this conclu- 
 sion and hardened it into absolute faith, is very 
 plain, and we can easily, each of us, reproduce it in 
 our own souls, independently of the teachings we 
 receive from childhood. But the mind is naturally 
 inquiring, and involuntarily the question presents 
 itself : this solution, so beautiful, so acceptable, so 
 universal, — but so abstract — what suggested it ? 
 What analogy first led up to it from the material 
 world of the senses ? To this question we find no 
 reply in so many words, for it is one of those that 
 go to the very roots of our being, and such gener- 
 ally remain unanswered. But the graves dug by 
 those old Mound-Builders present a singular feature, 
 which almost seems to point to the answer. The 
 tenant of the funereal chamber is most frequently 
 found deposited in a crouching attitude, his back 
 leaning against the stone-lined wall, and zuith his 
 face turned towards the West, in the direction of the 
 
 setting sun Here, then, is the suggestion, the 
 
 analogy ! The career of the sun is very like that of 
 man. His rising in the east is like the birth of man. 
 
 24
 
 338 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 During the hours of his power, which we call the 
 Day, he does his allotted work, of giving light and 
 warmth to the world, now riding radiant and trium- 
 phant across an azure sky, now obscured by clouds, 
 struggling through mists, or overwhelmed by tem- 
 pests. How like the vicissitudes that checker the 
 somewhat greater number of hours — or days — of 
 which the sum makes up a human life ! Then 
 when his appointed time expires, he sinks down, — ■ 
 lower, lower — and disappears into darkness, — dies. 
 So does man. What is this night, death? Is it de- 
 struction, or only a rest, or an absence ? It is at all 
 events not destruction. For as surely as we see the 
 sun vanish in the west this evening, feeble and 
 beamless, so surely shall we behold him to-morrow 
 morning rise again in the east, glorious, vigorous 
 and young. What happens to him in the interval ? 
 Who knows ? Perhaps he sleeps, perhaps he trav- 
 els through countries we know not of and does 
 other work there ; but one thing is sure : that he is 
 not dead, for he will be up again to-morrow. Why 
 should not man, whose career so much resembles 
 the sun's in other respects, resemble him in this? 
 Let the dead, then, be placed with their faces to 
 the west, in token that theirs is but a setting like 
 the sun's, to be followed by another rising, a re- 
 newed existence, though in another and unknown 
 world. 
 
 6. All this is sheer poetry and mythology. But 
 how great its beauty, how obvious its hopeful sug- 
 gestiveness, if it could appeal to the groping minds 
 of those primitive men, the old Mound-Builders,
 
 RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 339 
 
 and there lay the seed of a faith which has been 
 more and more clung to, as mankind progressed in 
 spiritual culture ! For all the noblest races have 
 cherished and worked out the myth of the setting 
 sun in the most manifold ways, as the symbol of 
 the soul's immortality. The poets of ancient India, 
 some three thousand years ago, made the Sun the 
 leader and king of the dead, who, as they said, 
 followed where he had gone first, "showing the 
 way to many." The Egyptians, perhaps the wisest 
 and most spiritual of all ancient nations, came to 
 make this myth the keystone of their entire relig- 
 ion, and placed all their burying-places in the west, 
 amidst or beyond the Libyan ridge of hills behind 
 which the sun vanished from the eyes of those who 
 dwelt in the valley of the Nile. The Greeks im- 
 agined a happy residence for their bravest and 
 wisest, which they called the Islands of the Blest, 
 and placed in the furthest West, amidst the waters 
 of the ocean into which the sun descends for his 
 nightly rest. 
 
 7. But the sun's course is twofold. If it is com- 
 plete — beginning and ending — within the given 
 number of hours which makes the day, it is re- 
 peated on a larger scale through the cycle of 
 months which makes the year. The alternations of 
 youth and age, triumph and decline, power and 
 feebleness, are there represented and are regularly 
 brought around by the different seasons. But the 
 moral, the symbol, is still the same as regards final 
 immortality. For if summer answers to the heyday 
 of noon, autumn to the milder glow and the extinc-
 
 •^40 "^^^^ STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 tion of evening, and winter to the joyless dreariness 
 of night, spring, like the morning, ever brings back 
 the god, the hero, in the perfect splendor of a 
 glorious resurrection. It was the solar-year myth 
 with its magnificent accompaniment of astronomi- 
 cal pageantry, which took the greater hold on the 
 fancy of the scientifically inclined Chaldeans, and 
 vv^hich we find embodied with such admirable com- 
 pleteness in their great epic. We shall see, latel 
 on, more exclusively imaginative and poetical races 
 showing a marked preference for the career of the 
 sun as the hero of a day, and making the several 
 incidents of the solar-day myth the subject of an 
 infinite variety of stories, brilliant or pathetic, 
 tender or heroic. But there is in nature another 
 order of phenomena, intimately connected with and 
 dependent on the phases of the sun, that is, the 
 seasons, yet very different in their individual char- 
 acter, though pointing the same way as regards 
 the suggestion of resurrection and immortality — 
 the phenomena of the Earth and the Seed. These 
 may in a more general way be described as Nature's 
 productive power paralyzed during the numbed 
 trance of winter, which is as the sleep of death, 
 when the seed lies in the ground hid from sight 
 and cold, even as a dead thing, but awaking to new 
 life in the good time of spring, when the seed, in 
 which life was never extinct but only dormant, 
 bursts its bonds and breaks into verdant loveliness 
 and bountiful crops. This is the essence and mean- 
 ing of the Chthonic or Earth-myth, as universal as 
 the Sun-myth, but of which different features have
 
 RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 341 
 
 also been unequally developed by different races 
 according to their individual tendencies. In the 
 Chaldean version, the " Descent of Ishtar," the par- 
 ticular incident of the seed is quite wanting, unless 
 the name of Dumuzi's month, ''The Boon of the 
 Seed " (" Lc Bienfait dc la Sc)ne7tcey Lenormant), 
 may be considered as alluding to it. It is her fair 
 young bridegroom, the beautiful Sun-god, whom the 
 widowed goddess of Nature mourns and descends 
 to seek among the dead. This aspect of the myth 
 is almost exclusively developed in the religions of 
 most Canaanitic and Semitic nations of the East, 
 where we shall meet with it often and often. And 
 here it may be remarked, without digressing or 
 anticipating too far, that throughout the ancient 
 world, the Solar and Chthonic cycles of myths have 
 been the most universal and important, the very 
 centre and groundwork of many of the ancient 
 mythic religions, and used as vehicles for more or 
 less sublime religious conceptions, according to the 
 higher or lower spiritual level of the worshipping 
 nations. 
 
 8. It must be confessed that, amidst the nations 
 of Western Asia, this level was, on the whole, not a 
 very lofty one. Both the Hamitic and Semitic 
 races were, as a rule, of a naturally sensuous disposi- 
 tion ; the former being, moreover, distinguished by 
 a very decidedly material turn of mind. The Kush- 
 ites, of whom a branch perhaps formed an import- 
 ant portion of the mixed population of Lower 
 Mesopotamia, and especially the Canaar.ites, who 
 spread themselves over all the country between the
 
 342 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 great rivers and the Western Sea — the Mediter- 
 ranean — were no exception to this rule. If their 
 priests — their professed thinkers, the men trained 
 through generations for intellectual pursuits — had 
 groped their way to the perception of One Divine 
 Power ruling the world, they kept it to themselves, 
 or, at least, out of sight, behind a complicated array 
 of cosmogonic myths, nature-myths, symbols and 
 parables, resulting in Chaldea in the highly artifi- 
 cial system which has been sketched above — (see 
 Chapters V. and VI.) — a system singularly beauti- 
 ful and deeply significant, but of which the mass of 
 the people did not care to unravel the subtle intri- 
 cacies, being quite content to accept it entire, in 
 the most literal spirit, elementary nature-gods, astro- 
 nomical abstractions, cosmogonical fables and all — 
 questioning nothing, at peace in their mind and 
 righteously self-conscious if they sacrificed at the 
 various time-honored local shrines, and conformed 
 to the prescribed forms and ceremonies. To these 
 they privately added those innumerable practices 
 of conjuring and rites of witchcraft, the heirloom of 
 the older lords of the soil, which we saw the col- 
 leges of learned priests compelled, as strangers and 
 comparative newcomers, to tolerate and even sanc- 
 tion by giving them a place, though an inferior 
 one, in their own nobler system (see p. 250). Thus 
 it was that, if a glimmer of Truth did feebly illu- 
 mine the sanctuary and its immediate ministers, the 
 people at large dwelt in the outer darkness of hope- 
 less polytheism and, worse still, of idolatry. For, 
 in bowing before the altars of their temples and the
 
 RELIGION AND MVTIIOLOGV. 
 
 343 
 
 images in wood, stone or metal in which art strove 
 to express what the sacred writings taught, the un- 
 learned worshippers did not stop to consider that 
 these were but pieces of human workmanship, deriv- 
 ing their sacredness solely from the subjects they 
 treated and the place they adorned, nor did they 
 strive to keep their thoughts intent on the invisible 
 Beings represented by the images. It was so much 
 simpler, easier and more comfortable to address 
 their adoration to what was visible and near, to the 
 shapes that were so closely within reach of their 
 senses, that seemed so directly to receive their offer- 
 ings and prayers, that became so dearly familiar 
 from long associations. The bulk of the Chaldean 
 nation for a long time remained Turanian, and the 
 materialistic grossness of the original Shumiro-Acca- 
 dian religion greatly fostered its idolatrous tenden- 
 cies. The old belief in the talismanic virtues of all 
 images (see p. 162) continued to assert itself, and 
 was easily transferred to those representing the di- 
 vinities of the later and more elaborate worship. 
 Some portion of the divine substance or spirit was 
 supposed somehow to pass into the material repre- 
 sentation and reside therein. This is very clear 
 from the way in which the inscriptions speak of the 
 statues of gods, as though they were persons. Thus 
 the famous cylinder of the Assyrian conqueror As- 
 shurbanipal tells how he brought back " the god- 
 dess Nana," (i.e., her statue) who at the time of the 
 great Elamite invasion, *' had gone and dwelt in 
 Elam, a place not appointed for her," and now 
 spoke to him the king, saying : *' From the midst
 
 344 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 of Elam bring me out and cause me to enter into 
 Bitanna " — her own old sanctuary at Erech, "which 
 she had delighted in." Then again the Assyrian 
 conquerors take especial pride in carrying off with 
 them the statues of the gods of the nations they 
 subdue, and never fail to record the fact in these 
 words: " I carried away their gods,'' beyond a doubt 
 with the idea that, in so doing, they put it out of 
 their enemies' power to procure the assistance of 
 their divine protectors. 
 
 9. In the population of Chaldea the Semitic ele- 
 ment Avas strongly represented. It is probable that 
 tribes of Semites came into the country at intervals, 
 in successive bands, and for a long time wandered 
 unhindered with their flocks, then gradually amalga- 
 mated with the settlers they found in possession, 
 and whose culture they adopted, or else formed 
 separate settlements of their own, not even then, 
 however, quite losing their pastoral habits. Thus 
 the Hebrew tribe, when it left Ur under Terah and 
 Abraham (see page 121), seems to have resumed its 
 nomadic life with the greatest willingness and ease, 
 after dwelling a long time in or near that popular 
 city, the principal capital of Shumir, the then domi- 
 nant South. Whether this tribe were driven out 
 of Ur, as some will have it,* or left of their own 
 accord, it is perhaps not too bold to conjecture that 
 the causes of their departure were partly connected 
 with religious motives. For, alone among the Chal- 
 deans and all the surrounding nations, this handful 
 
 * Maspero, " Histoire Ancienne," p. 173.
 
 RELIC I0.\ AND MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 343 
 
 of Semites had disentangled the conception of mono- 
 theism from the obscuring wealth of Chaldean my. 
 thology, and had grasped it firmly. At least their 
 leaders and elders, the patriarchs, had arrived at the 
 conviction that the One living God was He whom 
 they called "the Lord," and they strove to inspire 
 their people with the same faith, and to detach them 
 from the mythical beliefs, the idolatrous practices 
 which they had adopted from those among whom 
 they lived, and to which they clung with the tenac- 
 ity of spiritual blindness and long habit. The later 
 Hebrews themselves kept a clear remembrance of 
 their ancestors having been heathen polytheists, 
 and their own historians, writing more than a thou- 
 sand years after Abraham's times, distinctly state 
 the fact. In a long exhortation to the assembled 
 tribes of Israel, which they put in the mouth of 
 Joshua, the successor of Moses, they make him say : 
 — " Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood " 
 (i.e., the Euphrates, or perhaps the Jordan) " in old 
 time, even Terah, the father of Abraham and the 
 father of Nachor, and they served other godsy And 
 further on : " . . . Put away the gods ivhich your 
 fathers served on the other side of the food and in 
 
 Egypt, and serve ye the Lord Choose you 
 
 this day whom you will serve, whether the gods 
 which your fathers served that were on the other 
 side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in 
 whose land ye dwell ; as for me and my house, we 
 will serve the Lord." (Joshua, xxiv. 2, 14, 15.) 
 What more probable than that the patriarchs, Terah 
 and Abraham, should have led their people out of
 
 346 
 
 THE STORY OF CIIALDEA. 
 
 the midst of the Chaldeans, away from their great 
 capital Ur, which held some of the oldest and most 
 renowned Chaldean sanctuaries, and forth into the 
 wilderness, partly with the object of removing them 
 from corrupting associations. At all events that 
 branch of the Hebrew tribe which remained in 
 Mesopotamia with Nahor, Abraham's brother (sec 
 Gen. xxiv. xxix. and ff.), continued heathen and 
 idolatrous, as we see from the detailed narrative 
 in Genesis xxxi., of how Rachel "had stolen the 
 images that were her fathers'' (xxxi. 19), when 
 Jacob fled from Laban's house with his family, his 
 cattle and all his goods. No doubt as to the value 
 and meaning attached to these " images " is left 
 when we see Laban, after having overtaken the 
 fugitives, reprove Jacob in these words : — " And 
 now, though thou wouldst needs be gone, because 
 thou sore longedst for thy father's house, yet where- 
 fore hast thou stolen my gods f " (xxxi. 30), to which 
 Jacob, who knows nothing of Rachel's theft, replies : 
 — " With whomsoever tlioii findest thf gods, let him 
 not live" (xxxi. 32). But "Rachel had taken the 
 images and put them in the camel's furniture, and 
 sat upon them. And Laban searched all the tent, 
 but found them not " (xxxi. 34). Now what could 
 have induced Rachel to commit so dishonorable and, 
 moreover, dangerous an action, but the idea that, 
 in carrying away these images, her family's house- 
 hold " gods," she would insure a blessing and pros- 
 perity to herself and her house ? That by so doing, 
 she would, according to the heathens' notion, rob 
 her father and old home of what she wished to se-
 
 RELIGION AXD MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 347 
 
 cure herself (see page 344), does not seem to have 
 disturbed her. It is clear from this that, even after 
 she was wedded to Jacob the monotheist, she re- 
 mained a heathen and idolater, though she concealed 
 the fact from him. 
 
 10. On the other hand, wholesale emigration was 
 not suf^cient to remove the evil. Had it indeed 
 been a wilderness, unsettled in all its extent, into 
 which the patriarchs led forth their people, they 
 might have succeeded in weaning them completely 
 from the old influences. But, scattered over it and 
 already in possession, were numerous Canaanite 
 tribes, wealthy and powerful under their chiefs — 
 Amorites, and Hivites, and Hittites, and many 
 more. In the pithy and picturesque Biblical lan- 
 guage, "the Canaanite was in the land" (Genesis, 
 xii. 6), and the Hebrews constantly came into con- 
 tact with them, indeed were dependent on their 
 tolerance and large hospitality for the freedom with 
 which they were suffered to enjoy the pastures of 
 *' the land wherein they were strangers," as the vast 
 region over which they ranged is frequently and 
 pointedly called. Being but a handful of men, they 
 had to be cautious in their dealings and to keep on 
 good terms with the people among whom they were 
 brought. " I am a stranger and a sojourner with 
 you," admits Abraham, " bowing himself down be- 
 fore the people of the land," (a tribe of Hittites 
 near Hebron, west of the Dead Sea), when he offers 
 to buy of them a field, there to institute a family 
 burying-place for himself and his race; for he had 
 no legal right to any of the land, not so much as
 
 348 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 would yield a sepulchre to his dead, even though 
 the "children of Heth " treat him with high honor, 
 and, in speaking to him, say, " My lord," and "thou 
 art a mighty prince among us " (Genesis, xxiii.). 
 This transaction, conducted on both sides in a spirit 
 of great courtesy and liberality, is not the only in- 
 stance of the friendliness with which the Canaanite 
 owners of the soil regarded the strangers, both in 
 Abraham's lifetime and long after his death. His 
 grandson, the patriarch Jacob, and his sons find the 
 same tolerance among the Hivites of Shalem, who 
 thus commune among themselves concerning them : 
 — " These men are peaceable with us ; therefore let 
 them dwell in the land and trade therein ; for the 
 land, behold it is large enough for them ; let us take 
 their daughters for wives, and let us give them our 
 daughters." And the Hivite prince speaks in this 
 sense to the Hebrew chief: — "The soul of my son 
 longeth for your daughter: I pray you, give her him 
 to wife. And make ye marriages with us, and give 
 your daughters unto us and take our daughters 
 unto you. And ye shall dwell with us, and the 
 land shall be before you ; dwell and trade ye therein, 
 and get you possessions therein." 
 
 1 1. But this question of intermarriage was always 
 a most grievous one ; the question of all others at 
 which the Hebrew leaders strictly drew the line of 
 intercourse and good-fellowship ; the more stub- 
 bornly that their people were naturally much in- 
 clined to such unions, since they came and went 
 freely among their hosts, and their daughters went 
 out, unhindered, " to see the daughters of the land."
 
 RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. ^^q 
 
 Now all the race of Canaan followed religions very- 
 similar to that of Chaldea, only grosser still in their 
 details and forms of worship. Therefore, that the 
 old idolatrous habits might not return strongly upon 
 them under the influence of a heathen household, 
 the patriarchs forbade marriage with the women of 
 the countries through which they passed and re- 
 passed with their tents and flocks, and themselves 
 abstained from it. Thus we see Abraham sending 
 his steward all the way back to Mesopotamia to 
 seek a wife for his son Isaac from among his own 
 kinsfolk who had stayed there with his brother 
 Nahor, and makes the old servant solemnly swear 
 " by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of 
 earth " : " Thou shalt not take a wife unto my son 
 of the daughters of the Canaanites among whom 
 I dwell." And when Esau, Isaac's son, took two 
 wives from among the Hittite women, it is expressly- 
 said that they were " a grief of mind unto Isaac and 
 Rebekah ; " and Isaac's most solemn charge to his 
 other son, Jacob, as he sends him from him with 
 his blessing, is : " Thou shalt not take a wife of the 
 daughters of Canaan." Whithersoever the Hebrews 
 came in the course of their long wanderings, which 
 lasted many- centuries, the same twofold prohibi- 
 tion was laid on them : of marrying with native 
 women — "for surely," they are told, "they will 
 turn away your heart after their gods," and of fol- 
 lowing idolatrous religions, a prohibition enforced 
 by the severest penalties, even to that of death. 
 But nothing could keep them long from breaking 
 the law in both respects. The very frequency and
 
 ^i,0 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 emphasis with which the command is repeated, the 
 violence of the denunciations against offenders, the 
 terrible punishments threatened and often actually 
 inflicted, sufficiently show how imperfectly and 
 unwillingly it was obeyed. Indeed the entire Old 
 Testament is one continuous illustration of the 
 unslackening zeal with which the wise and enlight- 
 ened men of Israel — its lawgivers, leaders, priests 
 and prophets — pursued their arduous and often 
 almost hopeless task, of keeping their people pure 
 from worships and practices which to them, who 
 had realized the fallacy of a belief in many gods, 
 were the most pernicious abominations. In this 
 spirit and to this end they preached, they fought, 
 they promised, threatened, punished, and in this 
 spirit, in later ages, they wrote. 
 
 12. It is not until a nation is well established and 
 enjoys a certain measure of prosperity, security and 
 the leisure which accompanies them, that it begins 
 to collect its own traditions and memories and set 
 them down in order, into a continuous narrative. 
 So it was with the Hebrews, The small tribe 
 became a nation, which ceased from its wanderings 
 and conquered for itself a permanent place on the 
 face of the earth. But to do this took many hun- 
 dred years, years of memorable adventures and 
 vicissitudes, so that the materials which accumu- 
 lated for the future historians, in stories, traditions, 
 songs, Avere ample and varied. Much, too, must 
 have been written down at a comparatively early 
 period. Hozu early must remain uncertain, since 
 there is unfortunately nothing to show at what
 
 RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. 35 1 
 
 time the Hebrews learned the art of writing and 
 their characters thought, like other alphabets, to be 
 borrowed from those of the Phcenicians. However 
 that may be, one thing is sure : that the different 
 books which compose the body of the Hebrew 
 Sacred Scriptures, which we call " the Old Testa- 
 ment," were collected from several and different 
 sources, and put into the shape in which they have 
 descended to us at a very late period, some almost 
 as late as the birth of Christ. The first book of all, 
 that of Genesis, describing the beginnings of the 
 Jewish people, — (" Genesis'' is a Greek word, which 
 means " Origin ") — belongs at all events to a some- 
 what earlier date. It is put together mainly of two 
 narratives, distinct and often different in point of 
 spirit and even fact. The later compiler who had 
 both sources before him to work into a final form, 
 looked on both with too much respect to alter 
 either, and generally contented himself w'ith giving 
 them side by side, (as in the s'lory of Hagar, which is 
 told twice and differently, in Chap. XVI. and Chap. 
 XXL), or intermixing them throughout, so that it 
 takes much attention and pains to separate them, 
 (as in the stor>^ of the Flood, Chap. VI.-VIII.). This 
 latter storj' is almost identical with the Chaldean 
 Deluge-legend included in the great Izdubar epic, of 
 which it forms the eleventh tablet. (See Chap. VII.) 
 Indeed, ever\^ child can see, by comparing the Chal- 
 dean cosmogonic and mythical legends with the 
 first chapters of the Book of Genesis, those w^hich 
 relate to the beginnings not so much of the Hebrew- 
 people as of the human race and the world in gen-
 
 352 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 eral, that both must originally have flowed from 
 one and the same spring of tradition and priestly 
 lore. The resemblances are too staring, close, con- 
 tinuous, not to exclude all rational surmises as to 
 casual coincidences. The differences are such as 
 most strikingly illustrate the transformation which 
 the same material can undergo when treated by two 
 races of different moral standards and spiritual ten- 
 dencies. Let us briefly examine both, side by side. 
 13. To begin with the Creation. The description 
 of the primeval chaos — a waste of waters, from 
 which " the darkness was not lifted," (see p. 261) — 
 answers very well to that in Genesis, i. 2 : " And the 
 earth was without form and void ; and darkness was 
 upon the face of the deep." The establishment of 
 the heavenly bodies and the creation of the animals 
 also correspond remarkably in both accounts, and 
 even come in the same order (see p. 264, and Gene- 
 sis, i. 14-22). The famous cylinder of the British 
 Museum (see No. 62, p. 266) is strong presumption in 
 favor of the identity of the Chaldean version of the 
 first couple's disobedience with the Biblical one. We 
 have seen the important position occupied in the 
 Chaldean religion by the symbol of the Sacred Tree, 
 which surely corresponds to the Tree of Life in 
 Eden (see p. 268), and probably also to that of 
 Knowledge, and the different passages and names 
 ingeniously collected and confronted by scholars 
 leave no doubt as to the Chaldeans having had the 
 legend of an Eden, a garden of God (see p. 274). A 
 better preserved copy of the Creation tablets with 
 the now missing passages may be recovered any
 
 RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. 3-^ 
 
 day, and there is no reason to doubt that they will 
 be found as closely parallel to the Biblical narrative 
 as those that have been recovered until now. But 
 even as we have them at present it is very evident 
 that the groundwork, the material, is the same in 
 both. It is the manner, the spirit, which differs. 
 In the Chaldean account, polytheism runs riot. 
 Every element, every power of nature — Heaven, 
 Earth, the Abyss, Atmosphere, etc. — has been per- 
 sonified into an individual divine being actively and 
 severely engaged in the great work. The Hebrew 
 narrative is severely monotheistic. In it GOD does 
 all that " the gods " between them do in the other. 
 Every poetical or allegorical turn of phrase is care- 
 fully avoided, lest it lead into the evil errors of the 
 sister-nation. The symbolical myths — such as that 
 of Bel's mixing his own blood with the clay out of 
 which he fashions man, (see p. 266) — are sternly dis- 
 carded, for the same reason. One only is retained : 
 the temptation by the Serpent. But the Serpent 
 being manifestly the personification of the Evil 
 Principle which is forever busy in the soul of man, 
 there was no danger of its being deified and wor- 
 shipped ; and as, moreover, the tale told in this 
 manner very picturesquely and strikingly points a 
 great moral lesson, the Oriental love of parable and 
 allegory could in this instance be allowed free scope. 
 Besides, the Hebrew writers of the sacred books 
 were not beyond or above the superstitions of their 
 country and age ; indeed they retained all of these 
 that did not appear to them incompatible with 
 monotheism. Thus throuehout the Books of the
 
 354 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 Old Testament the Chaldean belief in witchcraft, 
 divination from dreams and other signs is retained 
 and openly professed, and astrology itself is not 
 condemned, since among the destinations of the 
 stars is mentioned that of serving to men " for 
 signs " : " And God said, let there be lights in the 
 firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the 
 night ; and let them be for signs and for seasons, 
 and for days and years" (Genesis, i. 14). Even 
 more explicit is the passage in the triumphal song 
 of Deborah the prophetess, where celebrating the 
 victory of Israel over Sisera, she says: "They 
 fought from heaven : the stars in their courses 
 fought against Sisera" (Judges, v. 20). But a be- 
 lief in astrology by no means implies the admission 
 of several gods. In one or two passages, indeed, 
 we do find an expression which seems to have 
 slipped in unawares, as an involuntary reminis- 
 cence of an original polytheism ; it is where God, 
 communing with himself on Adam's trespass, says : 
 " Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know 
 good and evil " (Gen. iii. 22). An even clearer 
 trace confronts us in one of the two names that arc 
 given to God. These names are "Jehovah," (more 
 correctly " Yahveh ") and " Elohim." Now the 
 latter name is the plural of El, " god," and so really 
 means " the gods." If the sacred writers retained it, 
 it was certainly not from carelessness or inadver- 
 tence. As they use it, it becomes in itself almost a 
 profession of faith. It seems to proclaim the God 
 o( their religion as "the One God who is all the
 
 RELIGICY AND MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 355 
 
 gcd^," in whom all the forces of the universe are 
 contained and merged. 
 
 14. There is one feature in the Biblical narrative, 
 which, at first sight, wears the appearance of myth- 
 ical treatment : it is the familiar way in which God 
 is represented as coming and going, speaking and 
 acting, after the manner of men, especially in such 
 passages as these: "And they heard the voice of 
 the Lord God zvalkhig in the garden in the cool 0/ 
 the day " (Gen. iii. 8) ; or, " Unto Adam also and 
 to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins and 
 he clothed them" (Gen. iii. 21). But such a judg- 
 ment would be a serious error. There is nothing; 
 mythical in this; only the tendency, common to all 
 mankind, of endowing the Deity with human attri- 
 butes of form, speech and action, whenever the at- 
 tempt was made to bring it very closely within the 
 reach of their imagination. This tendency is so 
 universal, that it has been classed, under a special 
 name, among the distinctive features of the human 
 m.ind. It has been called Anthropomorphisim, 
 (from two Greek words Anthropos, "man," and vior- 
 phe, "form,") and can never be got rid of, because 
 it is part and parcel of our very nature. Ma.:i's 
 spiritual longings are infinite, his perceptive fac- 
 ulties are limited. His spirit has wings of flame 
 that would lift him up and bear him even beyond 
 the endlessness of space into pure abstraction ; his 
 senses have soles of lead that ever weigh him down, 
 back to the earth, of which he is and to which he 
 must needs cling, to exist at all. He can conceive, 
 by a great effort, an abstract idea, eluding the grasp
 
 356 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 of senses, unclothed in matter ; but he can realize, 
 imagine, only by using such appliances as the senses 
 supply him with. Therefore, the more fervently he 
 grasps an idea, the more closely he assimilates it, 
 the more it becomes materialized in his grasp, and 
 when he attempts to reproduce it out of himself — 
 behold ! it has assumed the likeness of himself or 
 something he has seen, heard, touched — the spirit- 
 uality of it has become weighted with flesh, even 
 as it is in himself. It is as it were a reproduction, 
 in the intellectual world, of the eternal strife, in 
 physical nature, between the two opposed forces of 
 attraction and repulsion, the centrifugal and cen- 
 tripetal, of which the final result is to keep each 
 body in its place, with a well-defined and limited 
 range of motion allotted to it. Thus, however 
 pure and spiritual the conception of the Deity 
 may be, man, in making it real to himself, in bring- 
 ing it down within his reach and ken, within the 
 shrine of his heart, zvill and must perforce make 
 of it a Being, human not only in shape, but also in 
 thought and feeling. How otherwise could he grasp 
 it at all ? And the accessories with which he will 
 surround it will necessarily be suggested by his own 
 experience, copied from those among which he 
 moves habitually himself. " Walking in the garden 
 in the cool of the day " is an essentially Oriental 
 and Southern recreation, and came quite naturally 
 to the mind of a writer living in a land steeped in 
 sunshine and sultriness. Had the writer been a 
 Northerner, a denizen of snow-clad plains and ice- 
 bound rivers, the Lord might probably have been
 
 RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 357 
 
 represented as coming in a swift, fur-lined sleigh. 
 Anthropomorphism, then, is in itself neither my- 
 thology nor idolatry ; but it is very clear that it 
 can with the utmost ease glide into either or both, 
 with just a little help from poetry and, especially, 
 from art, in its innocent endeavor to fix in tangible 
 form the vague imaginings and gropings, of which 
 words often are but a fleeting and feeble rendering. 
 Hence the banishment of all material symbols, the 
 absolute prohibition of any images whatever as an 
 accessory of religious worship, which, next to the 
 recognition of One only God, is the keystone of the 
 Hebrew law: — "Thou shalt have no other gods 
 before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any 
 graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in 
 heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or 
 that is in the water under the earth. — Thou shalt 
 not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them " 
 (Exodus, XX. 3-5). 
 
 But, to continue our parallel. 
 
 15. The ten antediluvian kings of Berosus, who 
 succeed the apparition of the divine Man-Fish, Ea- 
 Oannes (see p. 196), have their exact counterpart in 
 the ten antediluvian patriarchs of Genesis, v. Like 
 the Chaldean kings, the patriarchs live an unnat- 
 ural number of years. Only the extravagant fig- 
 ures of the Chaldean tradition are considerably re- 
 duced in the Hebrew version. While the former 
 allots to its kings reigns of tens of thousands of 
 years (see p. 196), the latter cuts them down to hun- 
 dreds, and the utmost that it allows to an)' of its
 
 358 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 patriarchs is nine hundred and sixty-nine years of life 
 (Methuselah). 
 
 1 6. The resemblances between the two Deluge 
 narratives are so obvious and continuous, that it is 
 not these, but the differences that need pointing 
 out. Here again the sober, severely monotheistic 
 character of the Hebrew narrative contrasts most 
 strikingly with the exuberant polytheism of the 
 Chaldean one, in which Heaven, Sun, Storm, Sea, 
 even Rain are personified, deified, and consistently 
 act their several appropriate and most dramatic 
 parts in the great cataclysm, while Nature herself, 
 as the Great Mother of beings and fosterer of life, is 
 represented, in the person of Ishtar, lamenting the 
 slaughter of men (see p. 327). Apart from this 
 fundamental difference in spirit, the identity in all 
 the essential points of fact is amazing, and varia- 
 tions occur only in lesser details. The most charac- 
 teristic one is that, while the Chaldean version de- 
 scribes the building and furnishing of a ship, with 
 all the accuracy of much seafaring knowledge, and 
 does not forget even to name the pilot, the Hebrev7 
 writer, with the clumsiness and ignorance of nauti- 
 cal matters natural to an inland people unfamiliar 
 with the sea or the appearance of ships, speaks only 
 of an ark or cJicst. The greatest discrepancy is in 
 the duration of the flood, which is much shorter in 
 the Chaldean text than in the Hebrew. On the sev- 
 enth day already, Hasisadra sends out the dove (see 
 p. 316). But then in the Biblical narrative itself, 
 made up, as was remarked above, of two parallel 
 texts joined together, this same point is given dif-
 
 RELIGIOX AN'D MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 359 
 
 ferently in different places. According to Genesis, 
 vii. 12, " the rain was upon the earth forty days and 
 forty nights," while verse 24 of the same chapter 
 tells us that " the waters prevailed upon the earth 
 an hundred and fifty days." Again, the number of 
 the saved is far larger in the Chaldean account : Ha- 
 sisadra takes with him into the ship all his men-ser- 
 vants, his women-servants, and even his "nearest 
 friends," while Noah is allowed to save only his own 
 immediate family, " his sons, and his wife, and his 
 sons' wives " (Genesis, vi. 18). Then, the incident 
 of the birds is differently told : Hasisadra sends 
 out three birds, the dove, the swallow, and the ra- 
 ven ; Noah only two — first the raven, then three 
 times in succession the dove. But it is startling to 
 find both narratives more than once using the same 
 words. Thus the Hebrew writer tells how Noah 
 " sent forth a raven, which went to and fro," and 
 how " the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot 
 and returned." Hasisadra relates : " I took out a 
 dove and sent it forth. The dove went forth, to and 
 fro, but found no resting-place and returned." And 
 further, when Hasisadra describes the sacrifice he 
 offered on the top of Mount Nizir, after he came 
 forth from the ship, he says : '' The gods smelled a 
 savor ; the gods smelled a sweet savor." " And the 
 Lord smelled a sweet savor," says Genesis, — viii. 
 21 — of Noah's burnt-offering. These few hints 
 must suffice to show how instructive and enter- 
 taining is a parallel study of the two narratives ; 
 it can be best done by attentively reading both al-
 
 360 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 ternatel}-, and comparing them together, paragraph 
 by paragraph. 
 
 17. The legend of the Tower of Languages (see 
 above, p. 293, and Genesis, xi. 3-9), is the last in 
 the series of parallel Chaldean and Hebrew tradi- 
 tions. In the Bible it is immediately followed by 
 the detailed genealogy of the Hebrews from Shem 
 to Abraham. Therewith evidently ends the con- 
 nection between the two people, who are severed 
 for all time from the moment that Abraham g-oes 
 forth with his tribe from Ur of the Chaldees, 
 probably in the reign of Amarpal (father of Ham- 
 murabi), whom the Bible calls Amraphel, king of 
 Shinear. The reign of Hammurabi was, as we 
 have already seen (see p. 219), a prosperous and 
 brilliant one. He was originally king of Tintir 
 (the oldest name of Babylon), and Avhen he united 
 all the cities and local rulers of Chaldea under his 
 supremacy, he asserted the pre-eminence among 
 them for his own city, which he began to call by 
 its new name, Ka-DIMIRRA (Accadian for "Gate 
 of God," Y/hich was translated into the Semitic 
 BaB-Il). This king in every respect opens a new 
 chapter in the history of Chaldea. Moreover, a 
 great movement was taking place in all the region 
 between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf ; 
 nations Avere forming and growing, and Chaldea's 
 most formidable rival and future conqueror, As- 
 syria, was gradually gathering strength in the 
 north, a fierce young lion-cub. By this newcomer 
 among nations our attention will henceforth mainly 
 be claimed. Let us, therefore, pause on the high
 
 RELIGION AXD MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 361 
 
 place to which we have now arrived, and, casting 
 a glance backward, take a rapid survey of the 
 ground w^e have covered. 
 
 18. Looking with strained eyes into a past dim 
 and gray with the scarce-lifting mists of unnum- 
 bered ages, we behold our starting-point, the \o\: 
 land by the Gulf, Shumir, taking shape and color 
 under the rule of Turanian settlers, the oldest 
 known nation in the world. They drain and till 
 the land, they make bricks and build cities, and 
 prosper n:aterially. But the spirit in them is dark 
 and lives in cowering terror of self-created demons 
 and evil things, which they yet believe they can 
 control and compel. So their religion is one, not 
 of worship and thanksgiving, but of dire conjur- 
 ing and incantation, inconceivable superstition and 
 witchcraft, an unutterable dreariness hardly light- 
 ened by the glimmering of a nobler faith, in the con- 
 ception of the wise and beneficent Ea and his ever 
 benevolently busy son, IMeridug. But gradually 
 there comes a change. Shumir lifts its gaze up- 
 ward, and as it takes in more the beauty and the 
 goodness of the world — in Sun and Moon and 
 Stars, in the wholesome Waters and the purifying 
 serviceable Fire, the good and divine Powers — the 
 Gods multiply and the host of elementary spirits, 
 mostly evil, becomes secondary. This change is 
 greatly helped by the arrival of the meditative, 
 star-gazing strangers, who take hold of the nature- 
 w'orship and the nature-myths they find among 
 the people to which they have come — a higher and 
 more advanced race — and weave these, with their
 
 3G2 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 own star-worship and astrological lore, into a new 
 faith, a religious system most ingeniously com- 
 bined, elaborately harmonized, and full of pro- 
 foundest meaning. The new religion is preached 
 not only in words, but in brick and stone : temples 
 arise all over the land, erected by the patesis — the 
 priest-kings of the different cities — and libraries 
 in which the priestly colleges reverently treasure 
 both their own works and the older religious lore 
 of the country. The ancient Turanian names of 
 the gods are gradually translated into the nev,- 
 Cushito-Semitic language ; yet the prayers and 
 hymns, as well as the incantations, are still pre- 
 served in the original tongue, for the people of 
 Turanian Shumir are the more numerous, and must 
 be ruled and conciliated, not alienated. The more 
 northern region, Accad, is, indeed, more thinly 
 peopled ; there the tribes of Semites, who now 
 arrive in frequent instalments, spread rapidly and 
 unhindered. The cities of Accad with their temples 
 soon rival those of Shumir and strive to eclipse 
 them, and their patesis labor to predominate politi- 
 cally over those of the South. And it is with the 
 North that the victory at first remains ; its pre-em- 
 inence is asserted in the time of Sharrukin of Agade, 
 about 3800 B.C., but is resumed by the South some 
 thousand years later, when a powerful dynasty (that 
 to which belong Ur-ea and his son Dungi) establishes 
 itself in Ur, while Tintir, the future head and cen- 
 tre of the* united land of Chaldea, the great Baby- 
 Ion, if existing at all, is not yet heard of. It is 
 these kincfs of Ur who first take the sicrnificant
 
 RELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 563 
 
 title " kings of Shumlr and Accad," Meanwhile 
 new and higher moral influences have been at 
 work ; the Semitic immigration has quickened the 
 half mythical, half astronomical religion with a 
 more spiritual element — of fervent adoration, of 
 prayerful trust, of passionate contrition and self- 
 humiliation in the bitter consciousness of sin, 
 hitherto foreign to it, and has produced a new and 
 beautiful religious literature, which marks its third 
 and last stage. To this stage belong the often 
 mentioned " Penitential Psalms," Semitic, nay, 
 rather Hebrew in spirit, although still written in 
 the old Turanian language (but in the northern 
 dialect of Accad, a fact that in itself bears witness 
 to their comparative lateness and the locality in 
 which they sprang up), and too strikingly identical 
 with similar songs of the golden age of Hebrew 
 poetry in substance and form, not to have been 
 the models from which the latter, by a sort of 
 unconscious heredity, drew its inspirations. Then 
 comes the great Elamitic invasion, with its plunder- 
 ing of cities, desecration of temples and sanctua- 
 ries, followed probably by several more through 
 a period of at least three hundred years. The last, 
 that of Khudur Lagamar, since it brings prom- 
 inently forward the founder of the Hebrew nation, 
 deserves to be particularly mentioned by that 
 nation's historians, and, inasmuch as it coincides 
 with the reign of Amarpal, king of Tintir and father 
 of Hammurabi, serves to establish an important 
 landmark in the history both of the Jews and of 
 Chaldea. When we reach this comparatively re-
 
 364 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 cent date the mists have in great part rolled aside, 
 and as we turn from the ages we have just sur- 
 veyed to those that still lie before us, history 
 guides us with a bolder step and shows us the land- 
 scape in a twilight which, though still dim and 
 sometimes misleading, is yet that of breaking deiy, 
 not of descending night. 
 
 19. When we attempt to realize the prodigious 
 vastness and remoteness of the horizon thus opened 
 before us, a feeling akin to awe overcomes us. Un- 
 til within a very few years, Egypt gloried in the 
 undisputed boast of being the oldest country in the 
 world, i.e., of reaching back, by its annals and mon- 
 uments, to an earlier date than any other. But the 
 discoveries that are continually being made in the 
 valley of the two great rivers have forever silenced 
 that boast. Chaldea points to a monumentally re- 
 corded date nearly 40CO B.C. This is more than 
 Egypt can do. Her oldest authentic monuments, 
 — her great Pyramids, are considerably later. Mr. 
 F. Hommel, one of the leaders of Assyriology, forci- 
 bly expresses this feeling of wonder in a recent pub- 
 lication : * " If," he says, '* the Semites were already 
 settled in Northern Babylonia (Accad) in the be- 
 ginning of the fourth thousand B.C., in possession 
 of the fully developed Shumiro-Accadian culture 
 adopted by them, — a culture, moreover, which ap- 
 pears to have sprouted in Accad as a cutting from 
 Shumir — then the latter must naturally be far, far 
 
 * Ztschr. fiir Keilschriftfoischung, " Zur altbabylonischen Chrono- 
 logic," Heft I.
 
 nELIGION AND MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 365 
 
 older still, and have existed in its completed form 
 IN THE FIFTH THOUSAND B.C.— an age to which I 
 now unhesitatingly ascribe the South-Babylonian 
 incantations." This would give our mental vision 
 a sweep of full six thousand years, a pretty re- 
 spectable figure ! But when we remember that 
 these first known settlers of Shumir came from 
 somewhere else, and that they brought with them 
 more than the rudiments of civilization, we are at 
 once thrown back at least a couple of thousands of 
 years more. For it must have taken all of that and 
 more for men to pass from a life spent in caves and 
 hunting the wild beasts to a stage of culture com- 
 prising the invention of a complete system of writ- 
 ing, the knowledge and working of metals, even to 
 the mixing of copper and tin into bronze, and an 
 expertness in agriculture equal not only to tilling, 
 but to draining land. If we further pursue human- 
 ity — losing at last all count of time in years or even 
 centuries — back to its original separation, to its first 
 appearance on the earth, — if we go further still and 
 try to think of the ages upon ages during which 
 man existed not at all, yet the earth did, and was 
 beautiful to look upon — {Jiad there been any to look 
 on it), and good for the creatures who had it all to 
 themselves — a dizziness comes over our senses, be- 
 fore the infinity of time, and we draw back, faint 
 and awed, as we do v/hen astronomy launches us, 
 on a slender thread of figures, into the infinity of 
 space. The six ages of a thousand years each which 
 are all that our mind can firmly grasp then come to 
 seem to us a very poor and puny fraction of etcr-
 
 366 
 
 THE STORY OF CHALDEA. 
 
 nity, to which we are tempted to apply almost 
 scornfully the words spoken by the poet of as many 
 years : " Six ages ! six little ages ! six drops of 
 lime! " 
 
 * Matthew Arnold, in " Mycerinus " : 
 
 " Six years ! six little years ! six drops of time ! " 
 
 .-3-<g33Ba»
 
 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Professor Louis Dyer has devoted some time to preparing a 
 free metrical translation of " Ishtar's Descent." Unfortunately, 
 owing to his many occupations, only the first part of the poem is as 
 yet finished. This he most kindly has placed at our disposal, author- 
 izing us to present it to our readers. 
 
 ISHTAR IN URUGAL. 
 
 Along the gloomy avenue of death 
 
 To seek the dread abysm of Urugal, 
 
 In everlasting Dark whence none returns, 
 
 Ishtar, the Moon-god's daughter, made resolve, 
 
 And that way, sick with sorrow, turned her face. 
 
 A road leads downward, but no road leads back 
 From Darkness' realm. There is Irkalla queen. 
 Named also Ninkigal, mother of pains. 
 Her portals close forever on her guests 
 And exit there is none, but all who enter. 
 To daylight strangers, and of joy unknown, 
 Within her sunless gates restrained must stay. 
 And there the only food vouchsafed is dust, 
 For slime they live on, who on earth have died. 
 Day's golden beam greets none and darkness reigns 
 Where hurtling bat-like forms of feathered men 
 Or human-fashioned birds imprisoned flit. 
 Close and with dust o'erstrewn, the dungeon doors 
 Are held by bolts with gathering mould o'ersealed. 
 
 By love distracted, though the queen of love. 
 Pale Ishtar downward flashed toward death's domain, 
 And swift approached these gates of Urugal, 
 Then paused impatient at its portals griin ; 
 
 367
 
 368 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 For love, whose strength no earthly bars restrain. 
 
 Gives not the key to open Darkness' Doors. 
 
 By service from all living men made proud, 
 
 Ishtar brooked not resistance from the dead. 
 
 She called the jailer, then to anger changed 
 
 The love that sped her on her breathless way, 
 
 And from her parted lips incontinent 
 
 Swept speech that made the unyielding warder qua;'. 
 
 " Quick, turnkey of the pit ! swing wide these doors 
 And fling them swiftly open. Tarry not! 
 For I will pass, even I will enter in. 
 Dare no denial, thou, bar not my way. 
 Else will I burst thy bolts and rend thy gates, 
 This lintel shatter else and wreck these doors. 
 The pent-up dead I else will loose, and lead 
 Back the departed to the lands they left. 
 Else bid the famished dwellers in the pit 
 Rise up to live and eat their fill once more. 
 Dead myriads then shall burden groaning earth, 
 Sore tasked without them by her living throngs." 
 
 Love's mistress, mastered by strong hate. 
 The warder heard, and wondered first, then feared 
 The angered goddess Ishtar what she spake. 
 Then answering said to Ishtar's wrathful might : 
 " O princess, stay thy hand ; rend not the door. 
 But tarry here, while unto Ninkigal 
 I go, and tell thy glorious name to her." 
 
 ISHTAR'S LAMENT, 
 
 " Ai.L love from earthly life with me departed, 
 
 With me to tarry in the gates of death ; 
 In heaven's sun no warmth is longer hearted, 
 
 And chilled shall cheerlc-.s men now draw slow breath. 
 
 " I left in sadness life wh ch I had given, 
 
 I turned from gladness and I walked with woe, 
 
 Toward living death by grief untimely driven, 
 
 I search for Thammuz whom harsh fate laid low.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 " The darkling pathway o'er the restless waters 
 
 Of seven seas that circle Death's domain 
 I trod, and followed after earth's sad daughters 
 
 Torn from their loved ones and ne'er seen again. 
 
 " Here must I enter in, here make my dwelling 
 With Thammuz in the mansion of the dead, 
 
 Driven to Famine's house by love compelling 
 And hunger for the sight of that dear head. 
 
 " O'er husbands will I weep, whom death has taken, 
 Whom fate in manhood's strength from life has swept, 
 
 Leaving on earth their living wives forsaken, — 
 O'er them with groans shall bitter tears be wept. 
 
 "And I will weep o'er wives, whose short day ended 
 Ere in glad offspring joyed their husbands' eyes ; 
 
 Snatched from loved arms they left their lords untended,- 
 O'er them shall tearful lamentations rise. 
 
 " And I will weep o'er babes who left no brothers, 
 Young lives to the ills of age by hope opposed, 
 
 'I'hc sons of saddened sires and tearful mothers, 
 One moment's life by death eternal closed." 
 
 569 
 
 NINKIGAL'S COMMAND TO THE WARDER. 
 
 " Leave thou this presence, slave, open the gate; 
 Since power is hers to force an entrance here. 
 Let her come in as come from life the dead. 
 Submissive to the laws of Death's domain. 
 Do unto her what unto all thou doest." 
 
 Want of space bids us limit ourselves to these few fragments — 
 surely sufficient to make our readers wish that Professor Dyer might 
 spare some time to the completion of his task. 
 
 26
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abel, killed by Cain, 129. 
 
 Abraham, wealthy and powerful 
 chief, 200 ; goes forth from Ur, 
 201 ; his victory over Khudur- 
 Lagamar, 222-224. 
 
 Abu-Habba, see Sippar. 
 
 Abu-Shahrein, see Eridhu. 
 
 Accad, Northern or Upper Chal- 
 dea, 145 ; meaning of the word, 
 ib. ; headquarters of Semitism, 
 204-205. 
 Accads, see Shumiro-Accads. 
 
 Accadian language, see Shumiro- 
 Accadian, 
 
 Agade, capital of Accad, 205. 
 
 Agglutinative languages, mean- 
 ing of the word, 136-137 ; char- 
 acteristic of Turanian nations, 
 ib. ; spoken by the people of 
 Shumir and Accad, 144. 
 
 Agricultural life, third stage of 
 culture, first beginning of real 
 civilization, 122. 
 
 Akki, the water-carrier, see 
 Sharrukin of Agade. 
 
 Alexander of Macedon conquers 
 Babylon, 4 ; his soldiers destroy 
 the dams of the Euphrates, 5. 
 
 Allah, Arabic for "God," see Ilu. 
 
 Allat, queen of the Dead, 327-329. 
 
 Altai, the great Siberian moun- 
 tain chain, 146 ; probable cra- 
 dle of the Turanian race, 147. 
 
 Altaic, another name for the 
 Turanian or Yellow Race, 147. 
 
 Amarpal, also Sin-Muballit, king 
 
 of Babylon, perhaps Amraphel, 
 King of Shinar, 226. 
 Amorite, the, a tribe of Canaan, 
 
 133- 
 
 Amraphel, see Amarpal. 
 
 Ana, or Zi-ana — "Heaven," or 
 " Spirit of Heaven," p. 154. 
 
 Anatu, goddess, mother of Ish- 
 tar, smites Eabani with death 
 and Izdubar with leprosy, 310. 
 
 Anthropomorphism, meaning of 
 the word, 355; definition and 
 causes of, 355-357- 
 
 Anu, first god of the first Baby- 
 lonian Triad, same as Ana, 
 240; one of the "twelve great 
 gods," 246. 
 
 Anunnaki, minor spirits of earth, 
 154, 250. 
 
 Anunit (the Moon), wife of Sha- 
 mash, 245. 
 
 Apsu (the Abyss), 264. 
 
 Arali, or Arallu, the Land of the 
 Dead, 157 ; its connection with 
 the Sacred Mountain, 276. 
 
 Arallu, see Arali. 
 
 Aram, a son of Shem, epony- 
 mous ancestor of the Aramae- 
 ans in Gen. x., 131. 
 
 Arabs, their conquest and pros- 
 perous rule in Mesopotamia, 5 ; 
 Baghdad, their capital, 5 ; no- 
 mads in Mesopotamia, 8 ; their 
 superstitious horror of the ruins 
 and sculptures, 1 1 ; they take 
 the gigantic head for Nimrod, 
 22-24; their strange ideas 
 about the colossal winged bulls 
 
 371
 
 372 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 and lions and their destination, 
 24-25; their habit of plunder- 
 ing ancient tombs at Warka, 
 86; their conquests and high 
 culture in Asia and Africa, 118. 
 
 Arbela, city of Assyria, built in 
 hilly region, 50. 
 
 Architecture, Chaldean, created 
 by local conditions, 37-39; As- 
 syrian, borrowed from Chaldea, 
 50. 
 
 Areph-Kasdim, see Arphaxad, 
 meaning of the word, 200. 
 
 Arphaxad, eldest son of Shem, 
 200. 
 
 Arphakshad, see Arphaxad. 
 
 Asshur, a son of Shem, epony- 
 mous ancestor of the Assyrians 
 in Genesis X., 131. 
 
 Asshurbanipal, King of Assyria, 
 his Library, 100-112; con- 
 quers Elam, destroys Shushan, 
 and restores the statue of the 
 goddess Nana to Erech, 194- 
 195. 
 
 A«shurnazirpal» King of As- 
 syria, size of hall in his palace 
 at Calah (Nimrud), 63. 
 
 Assyria, the same as Upper Mes- 
 opotamia, 7 ; rise of, 228. 
 
 Astrology, meaning of the word, 
 106 ; a corruption of astronomy, 
 234 ; the special study of priests, 
 ib. 
 
 Astronomy, the ancient Chal- 
 deans' proficiency in, 230 ; fas- 
 cination of, 231 ; conducive to 
 religious speculation, 232 ; de- 
 generates into astrology, 234; 
 the god Nebo, the patron of, 
 242. 
 
 B. 
 
 ilabbar, see Ud. 
 
 Babel, same as Babylon, 237. 
 
 Bab-el-Mander, Straits of, 1S9. 
 
 Bab-ilu, Semitic name of Baby- 
 lon; meaning of the name, 
 225, 249. 
 
 Babylonia, a part of Lower Mes- 
 
 opotamia, 7 ; excessive flat- 
 ness of, 9 ; later name for 
 " Shumir and Accad " and for 
 " Chaldea," 237. 
 
 Baghdad, capital of the Arabs' 
 empire in Mesopotamia, 5; its 
 decay, 6 ; 
 
 Bassorah, see Busrah. 
 
 Bedouins, robber tribes of, S ; 
 distinctively a nomadic people, 
 116-118. 
 
 Bel, third god of the first Baby- 
 lonian Triad, 239 ; meaning of 
 the name, 240; one of the 
 " twelve great gods," 246 ; his 
 battle with Tiamat, 288-290, 
 
 Belit, the wife of Bel, the femi- 
 nine principle of nature, 244- 
 245 ; one of the " twelve great 
 gods," 246. 
 
 Bel-Maruduk, see Marduk. 
 
 Berosus, Babylonian priest ; his 
 History of Chaldea, 128; his 
 version of the legend of Oanncs, 
 184-185; his account of the 
 Chaldean Cosmogony, 260-261, 
 267 ; his account of the great 
 tower and the confusion of 
 tongues, 292-293 ; his account 
 of the Deluge, 299-301. 
 
 Birs-Nimrud or Birs-i-Nimrud, 
 see Borsippa. 
 
 Books, not always of paper, 93; 
 stones and bricks used as books, 
 97 ; walls and rocks, ib., 97-99. 
 
 Borsippa (Mound of Birs-Nim- 
 rud), its peculiar shape, 47 ; 
 Nebuchadnezzar's inscription 
 found at, 72 ; identified with 
 the Tower of Babel, 293. 
 
 Botta begins excavations at 
 Koyunjik, 14; his disappoint- 
 ment, 15; his great discovery 
 at Khorsabad, 15-16. 
 
 Bricks, how men came to make, 
 39 ; sun-dried or raw, and kiln- 
 dried or baked, 40 ; ancient 
 bricks from the ruins used for 
 modern constructions ; trade 
 with ancient bricks at Hillah, 
 42.
 
 lA'DEX. 
 
 > 7 1 
 
 British Museum, Rich's collec- 
 tion presented to, 14. 
 
 Busrah, or Bassorah, bulls and 
 lions shipped to, down the 
 Tigris, 52. 
 
 Eybios, ancient writing material, 
 94. c. 
 
 Ca-Dimirra (or Ka-Dimirra), sec- 
 ond name of Babylon ; mean- 
 ing of the name, 216, 249 
 
 Cain, his crime, banishment, and 
 posterity, I2g. 
 
 Calah, or Kalah, one of the As- 
 syrian capitals, the Larissa of 
 Xenophon, 3. 
 
 Calendar, Chaldean, 230,318-321, 
 
 325- 
 
 Canaan, son of Ham, eponymous 
 ancestor of many nations, 134. 
 
 Canaanites, migrations of, 190. 
 
 Cement, various qualities of, 44. 
 
 Chaldea, the same as Lower 
 Mesopotamia, 7 ; alluvial for- 
 mation of, 37-3S ; its extraordi- 
 nary abundance in cemeteries, 
 78 ; a nursery of nations, 198 ; 
 more often called by the an- 
 cients " Babylonia," 237. 
 
 Chaldeans, in the sense of 
 " wise men of the East," astrol- 
 oger, magician, soothsayer, — a 
 separate class of the priesthood, 
 
 254-255-. 
 
 Charm against evil spells, 162. 
 
 Cherub, Cherubim, see Kirubu. 
 
 China, possibly mentioned in 
 Isaiah, 136, note. 
 
 Chinese speak a monosyllabic lan- 
 guage, 137; their genius and its 
 limitations, 138, 139 ; oldest na- 
 tional religion of, I So, 181 ; their 
 " docenal " and '" sexagesimal" 
 system of counting, 230-231. 
 
 Chronology, vagueness of an- 
 cient, 193-194 ; extravagant 
 figures of, 196-197 ; difficulty 
 of establishing, 211-212. 
 
 Chthon, meaning of the word, 272. 
 
 Chthonic Powers, 272, 273. 
 
 Chthonic Myths, see Myths. 
 
 Cissians, see Kasshi. 
 
 Cities, building of, fourth stage 
 of culture, 123, 124. 
 
 Classical Antiquity, meaning of 
 the term ; too exclusive study 
 of, 12. 
 
 Cofans, ancient Chaldean, found 
 at Warka : "jar-coffins," 82; 
 " dish-cover " coffins, 84 ; "slip- 
 per-shaped" coffin (compara- 
 tively modern), 84-S6. 
 
 Conjuring, against demons and 
 sorcerers, 158-159; admitted 
 into the later reformed religion, 
 
 Conjurors, admitted into the 
 Babylonian priesthood, 250. 
 
 Cossaeans, see Kasshi. 
 
 Cosmogonic Myths, see Myths. 
 
 Cosmogony, meaning of the 
 word, 259; Chaldean, imparted 
 by Berosus, 260-261 ; original 
 tablets discovered by Geo. 
 Smith, 261-263 ; their contents, 
 264 and ff. ; Berosus again, 267. 
 
 Cosmos, meaning of the word, 
 
 -72- 
 
 Cuneiform writing, shape and 
 specimen of, 10 ; introduced 
 into Chaldea by the Shumiro- 
 Accads, 145. 
 
 Cush, or Kush, eldest son of 
 Ham, 1S6; probable early mi- 
 grations of, 188 ; ancient name 
 of Ethiopia, 189. 
 
 Cushites, colonization of Tura- 
 nian Chaldea by, 192. 
 
 Cylinders : seal cylinders in 
 hard stones, 113-114; founda- 
 tion-cylinders, 1 14 ; seal-cylin- 
 ders worn as talismans, 166; 
 Babylonian cylinder, supposed 
 to represent the Temptation 
 and Fall, 266. 
 
 D. 
 
 Damkina, goddess, wife of Ea, 
 mother of Meridug, 160. 
 
 Decoration : of palaces, 58-62 ; 
 of walls at Warka, 87-80.
 
 3/4 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Delitzsch, Friedrich, eminent As- 
 syriologist, favors the Semitic 
 theory, i86. 
 
 Deluge, Berosus' account of, 299 
 -301 ; cuneiform account, in 
 the nth tablet of the Izdubar 
 Epic, 314-317- 
 
 Demon of the South-West Wind, 
 168. 
 
 Diseases conceived as demons, 
 
 '63- . 
 Divination, a branch of Chal- 
 dean "science," in what it con- 
 sists, 251-252; collection of 
 texts on, in one hundred tablets, 
 252-253 ; specimens of, 253- 
 
 254- 
 
 Draining of palace mounds, 70; 
 of.sepulchral mounds at Warka, 
 86-87. 
 
 Dumuzi, the husband of the god- 
 dess Ishtar, 303 ; the hero of a 
 solar M_yth, 323-326. 
 
 Dur-Sharrukin, (see Khorsabad), 
 built in hilly region, 50. 
 
 E. 
 
 Ea, sometimes Zi-ki-a, the Spirit 
 of the Earth and Waters, 
 154; protector against evil spir- 
 its and men, 160 ; his chief 
 sanctuary at Eridhu, 215; sec- 
 ond god of the first Babylonian 
 Triad, 239 ; his attributions, 
 240 ; one of the " twelve great 
 
 ^ gods," 246. 
 
 Eabani, the seer, 304 ; invited by 
 Izdubar, 304-305 ; becomes 
 Izdubar's friend, 307 ; van- 
 quishes with him the Elamite ty- 
 rant Khumbaba, 30S ; smitten 
 by Ishtar and Anatu, 310; 
 restored to life by the gods, 314. 
 
 E-Babbara, " House of the Sun," 
 215, 248. 
 
 Eber, see Heber. 
 
 El, see Ilu. 
 
 Elam, kingdom of, conquered 
 by Asshurbanipal, 194; mean- 
 ing of the name, 230. 
 
 Elamite conquest of Chaldea, 
 
 219-221, 224-225. 
 Elohim. one of the Hebrew 
 
 names for God, a plural of El, 
 
 354. See Ilu. 
 Emanations, theory of divine, 
 
 238-239 ; meaning of the word, 
 
 239- 
 Enoch, ccn of Cain, 129. 
 Enoch, the first city, built by 
 
 Cain, 129. 
 Epic Poems, or Epics, 298-299. 
 Epic-Chaldasan, oldest known in 
 
 the world, 299; its division into 
 
 tablets, 302. 
 Eponym, meaning of the word, 
 
 133- 
 Eponymous genealogies in Gene- 
 sis X., 132-134. 
 Epos, national, meaning of the 
 
 word, 299. 
 Erech (now Mound of Warka), 
 oldest name Urukh, immense 
 burying-grounds around, 80-82 ; 
 plundered by Khudur-Nankhun- 
 di, king of Elam, 195 ; library 
 of, 209. 
 Eri-Aku (Arioch of Ellassar), 
 
 Elamite king of Larsam, 226. 
 Eridhu (modern Abu-Shahreiin), 
 the most ancient city of Shumir, 
 215 ; specially sacred to Ea, 
 215, 246, 2S7. 
 Ethiopians, see Cush. 
 Excavations, how carried on, 
 30-34. 
 
 F. 
 Fergusson, Jas., English explorer 
 
 and writer on art subjects, 56. 
 Finns, a nation of Turanian stock, 
 
 138. 
 Flood, or Deluge, possibly not 
 universal, 12S-129. 
 
 Gan-Dunyash, or Kar-Dunyash, 
 most ancient name of Baby- 
 lonia proper, 225, 286. 
 
 Genesis, first book of the Penta- 
 teuch, 127-129 ; Chapter X. of,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 0/D 
 
 130-142 ; meaning of tlie word, 
 
 353- 
 Gibil, Fire, 173; hymn to, 16; 
 
 his friendliness, 174; mvoked 
 
 to prosper the fabrication of 
 
 bronze, 16. 
 Gisdhubar, see Izdubar. 
 G\xdit.2i, patesi of Sirburla, 214. 
 
 H. 
 
 ITam, second son of Noah, 130; 
 meaning of the name, 186. 
 
 Hammurabi, king of Babylon and 
 all Chaldea, 226; his long and 
 glorious reign, ib. ; his public 
 works and the " Royal Canal," 
 227. 
 
 Harimtu (" Persuasion "), one of 
 the handmaidens of Ishtar, 
 
 3°5- . , 
 
 Hasisadra, same as Xisuthros, 
 303 ; gives Izdubar an account 
 of the great Flood, 314-317. 
 
 Heber, a descendant of Shem, 
 eponymous ancestor of the He- 
 brews in Genesis X., 131, 222. 
 
 Heroes, 296-298. 
 
 Heroic Ages, 299. 
 
 Heroic Myths, see Myths. 
 
 Hillah, built of bricks from the 
 palace of Nebuchadnezzar, car- 
 ries on trade with ancient bricks, 
 
 ' 4-- 
 
 Himalaya Mountains, 18S. 
 
 Hindu-Cush (or Kush) Moun- 
 tains, 188. 
 
 Hit, ancient Is, on the Euj^hrates, 
 springs of bitumen at, 44. 
 
 Hivite, the, a tribe of Canaan, 
 
 Hungarians, a nation of Turanian 
 stock, 138. 
 
 I. 
 
 Idpa, the Demon of Fever, 156. 
 Igigi, three hundred, spirits of 
 
 heaven, 250. 
 Ilu, or El, Semitic name for 
 
 " god," 232. 
 Im, or Mermer, " Wind," 154, 
 
 Indi.-i, iSS. 
 
 Indus, the great river of India, 
 188. 
 
 Intercalary months, introduced 
 by the Chaldeans to correct the 
 reckoning of their year, 230. 
 
 Is, see Hit. 
 
 Ishtar, the goddess of the plan- 
 et Venus, 242 ; the Warrior- 
 Queen and Queen of Love, 245 ; 
 one of the " twelve great gods," 
 246; offers her love to Izdubar, 
 30S ; is rejected and sends a 
 monstrous bull against him, 
 309 ; causes Eabani's death and 
 Izdubar's illness, 310; descent 
 of, into the land of shades, 326- 
 
 Izdubar, the hero of the great 
 Chaldean Epic, 303 ; his^dreani 
 - at Erech, 304 ; invites Eabani, 
 304-305 ; vanquishes with his 
 help Khumbaba, the Elamite 
 tyrant of Erech, 30S ; offends 
 Ishtar, 30S ; vanquishes the 
 divine Bull, with Eabani's 
 help, 309 ; is smitten with lep- 
 rosy, 310 ; travels to " the mouth 
 of the great rivers " to consult 
 his immortal ancestor Hasisa- 
 dra. 310-313; is ]5urified and 
 healed, 313; returns to Erech; 
 his lament over Eabani's death, 
 313-314; solar character of the 
 Epic, 318-322. 
 
 J- 
 
 Jabal and Jubal, sons of Lamech, 
 descendants of Gain, 129. 
 
 Japheth, third son of Noah, 130. 
 
 Javan, a son of Japhet, epony- 
 mous ancestor of the Ionian 
 Greeks, 134. 
 
 " Jonah's IVIound," see Nebbi- 
 Yunus. 
 
 Jubal, see Jabal and Jubal. 
 
 Ka-Dingirra, .see Ca-Dimirra. 
 Kar-Dunyash, see Gan-Dunyash.
 
 Zl<^ 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Kasbu, the Chaldean double 
 hour, 230. 
 
 Kasr, Mound of, ruins of the pal- 
 ace of Nebuchadnezzar. 
 
 Kasshi (Cossasans or Cissians), 
 conquer Chaldea, 22S. 
 
 Kerbela and Nedjif, goal of 
 pilgrim-caravans from Persia, 
 7S. . 
 
 Kerubim, see Kirubu. 
 
 Khorsabad, Mound of, Bottn's 
 excavations and brilliant dis- 
 covery at, 15-16. 
 
 Khudur-Lagamar (Chedorlao- 
 mer), king of Elam and Chal- 
 dea, his conquests, 221 ; plun- 
 ders Sodom and Gomorrah 
 with his allies, 222 ; is overtaken 
 by Abraham and routed, 223; 
 his probable date, 224. 
 
 Khudur-Nankhundi, king of 
 Elam, invades Chaldea and 
 carries the statue of the god- 
 dess Nana away from Erech, 
 195. 
 
 Khumbaba, the Elamite tyrant of 
 Erech vanquished by Izdubar 
 and Eabani, 308. 
 
 Kirubu, name of the Winged 
 Bulls, 164. 
 
 Koyunjik, Mound of Xenophon's 
 Mespila, 14; Botta's unsuccess- 
 ful exploration of, 15; valuable 
 find of small articles in a cham- 
 ber at, in the palace of Sen- 
 nacherib, 34. 
 
 Kurds, nomadic tribes of, S. 
 
 Lamech, fifth descendant of Cain, 
 129. 
 
 Larissa, ruins of ancient Calah, 
 seen by Xenophon, 3. 
 
 Larsam (now Senkereh), city of 
 Shumir, 215. 
 
 Layard meets Botta at Mossul in 
 1842, 17 ; undertakes the explo- 
 ration of Nimrud, 17-iS ; his 
 work and life in the East, 19- 
 32 ; discovers the Royal Library 
 at Nineveh (Koyunjik), 100. 
 
 Lebanon Mountains, 190. 
 
 Lenormant, Francois, eminent 
 French Orientalist ; his work 
 on the religion of the Shumiro- 
 Accads, 152-3; favors the Cush- 
 ite theory, 186. 
 
 Library of Asshurbanipal in 
 his palace at Nineveh (Koyun- 
 jik) ; discovered by Layard, 100 ; 
 re-opened by George Smith, 
 103 ; contents and importance 
 of, for modern scholarship, 106- 
 109; of Erech, 209. 
 
 Loftus, English explorer; his 
 visit to Warka in 1854-5, 80-82 ; 
 procures slipper-shaped coffins 
 for the British Museum, 36. 
 
 Louvre, Assyrian Collection at 
 the, 17; " Sarzec collection" 
 added, 89. 
 
 Louvre, Armenian contrivance 
 for lighting houses, 68. 
 
 M. 
 
 Madai, a son of Japhet, epony- 
 mous ancestor of the Medes, 
 
 ^35- 
 Magician, derivation of the 
 
 word, 255. 
 Marad, ancient city of Chaldea, 
 
 Marduk, or Maruduk (Hebrew 
 Merodach), god of the planet 
 Jupiter, 241 ; one of the " twelve 
 great gods," 246 ; special patron 
 of Babylon, 249. 
 
 Maskim, the seven, evil spirits, 
 
 154 ; incantation against the, 
 
 155 ; the same, poetical version, 
 182. 
 
 Maspero, G., eminent French Ori- 
 entalist, 197. 
 
 Medes, Xenophon's erroneous 
 account of, 3-4 ; mentioned un- 
 der the name of Madai in Gene- 
 sis X., 135. _ 
 
 Media, divided from Assyria by 
 the Zagros chain, 50. 
 
 Menant, Joachim, French As- 
 syriologist ; his little book on
 
 INDEX. 
 
 377 
 
 the Royal Library at Nineveh, 
 
 "OS- 
 
 Meridug, son of Ea, the Media- 
 tor, i6o; his dialogues with Ea, 
 161-162. 
 
 Mermer, see Im. 
 
 Merodach, see Marduk. 
 
 Mesopotamia, meaning of the 
 name, 5 ; peculiar formation of, 
 6; division of, into Upper and 
 Lower, 7. 
 
 Mespila, ruins of Nineveh,, seen 
 by Xenophon, 3 ; now Mound 
 of Koyunjik, 14. 
 
 Migrations of tribes, nations, 
 races; probable first causes of 
 prehistoric migrations, 119; 
 caused by invasions and con- 
 quests, 125; of the Turanian 
 races, 146-147 ; of the Cushites, 
 188 ; of the Canaanites, 190. 
 
 Mizraim (" the Egyptians "), a 
 son of Ham, eponymous ances- 
 tor of the Egyptians, 133; op- 
 posed to Cush, 189. 
 
 Monosyllabic languages — Chi- 
 nese, 136-137. 
 
 Monotheism, meaning of the 
 word, 238 ; as conceived by 
 the Hebrews, 344-345. 
 
 Mosul, the residence of a Turk- 
 ish Pasha ; origin of the name, 
 6; the wicked Pasha of, 20-23. 
 
 Mound-Builders, their tombs, 
 
 335-338- 
 
 Mounds, their appearance, 9- 
 10; their contents, 11; forma- 
 tion of, 72 ; their usefulness in 
 protecting the ruins and works 
 of art, 74 ; sepulchral mounds 
 at Warka, 79-87. 
 
 Mugheir, see Ur. 
 
 Mul-ge, " Lord of the Abyss," 154. 
 
 Mummu-Tiamat (the " Billowy 
 Sea"), 264; her hostility to the 
 gods, 28S ; her fight with Bel, 
 288-290. 
 
 Mythology, definition of, 331 ; 
 distinction from Religion, 331- 
 
 334- 
 Myths, meaning of the word, 
 
 294 ; Cosmogonic, 294 ; Heroic, 
 297-298; Solar, 322,339-340; 
 Chthonic, 330, 340-341. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nabonidus, last king of Babylon, 
 discovers Naram-sin's cylinder, 
 213; discovers Hammurabi's 
 cylinder at Larsam, 21S-219. 
 
 Namtar, the Demon of Pesti- 
 lence, 156, 157 ; incantation 
 against, 167 ; Minister of Allat, 
 Queen of the Dead, 328, 329. 
 
 Nana, Chaldean goddess, her 
 statue restored by Asshurbani- 
 pal, 195, 343-344; ^vifc of Anu, 
 245. 
 
 Nannar, see Uru-Ki. 
 
 Naram-Sin, son of Sargon I. 
 of Agade ; his cylinder dis- 
 covered by Nabonidus, 213. 
 
 Nations, gradual formation of, 
 125-126. 
 
 Nebbi-Yunus, Mound of, its 
 sacredness, II ; its size, 49. 
 
 Nebo, or Nabu, the god of 
 the planet Mercury, 242 ; one 
 of the "twelve great gods," 
 246. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar, king of Baby- 
 lon ; his palace, now Mound of 
 Kasr, 42 ; his inscription of 
 Borsippa, 72. 
 
 Nedjif, see Kerbela. 
 
 Nergal, the god of the planet 
 Mars, and of War, 242 ; one of 
 the " twelve great gods," 246. 
 
 Niffer, see Nippur. 
 
 Nimrod, danis on the Euphrates 
 attributed to, by the Arabs, 5; 
 his name preserved, and many 
 ruins called by it, 11 ; gigantic 
 head declared by the Arabs to 
 be the head of, 22-24. 
 
 Nimrud, Mound of, I.avard un- 
 dertakes the exploration of, 17. 
 
 Nin-dar, the nightly sun, 175. 
 
 Nineveh, greatness and utter de- 
 struction of, I ; ruins of, seen 
 by Xenophon, called by him
 
 37^ 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Mespila, 3 ; site of, opposite 
 
 Mossul, II. 
 Nin-ge, see Nin-ki-gal. 
 Ninib, or Nineb, tiie god of the 
 
 planet Saturn, 241 ; one of the 
 
 " twelve great gods," 246. 
 Nin-ki-gal, or ]Sin-ge, "the Ijady 
 
 of the Abyss," 157. 
 Nippur (now Niffer), city of 
 
 Accad, 2x6. 
 Nizir, Mount, the mountain on 
 
 which Hasisadra's ship stood 
 
 still, 301 ; land and Mount, 316 
 Noah and his three sons, 130. 
 Nod, land of ("Land of Exile," 
 
 or "of Wanderings"), 129. 
 Nomads, meaning of the word, 
 
 and causes of nomadic life in 
 
 modern times, iiS. 
 
 Gannes, legend of, told by Be- 
 
 ■ rosus, 185. 
 Oasis, meaning of the word, iiS. 
 
 Palaces, their imposing aspect, 
 54 ; palace of Sennacherib re- 
 stored by Fergusson, 56; orna- 
 mentation of palaces, 58 ; 
 winged Bulls and Lions at gate- 
 ways of, 58 ; sculptured slabs 
 along the walls of, 58-60 ; 
 painted tiles used for the friezes 
 of, 60-62 ; proportions of halls, 
 63; roofing of, 62-66; lighting 
 of, 66-68. 
 
 Papyrus, ancient writing mate- 
 rial, 94. 
 
 Paradise, Chaldean legend of, 
 see Sacred Tree and Ziggurat. 
 Meaning of the word, 277. 
 
 Parallel between the Book of 
 Genesis and the Chaldean le- 
 gends, 350-360. 
 
 Pastoral life, second stage of 
 culture, 120; necessarily no- 
 madic, 121. 
 
 Patesis, meaning of the word, 
 
 203; first form of royalty in 
 Chaldean cities, ib., 235. 
 
 Patriarchal authority, first form 
 of government, 123; the tribe, 
 or enlarged family, first form 
 of the State, 123. 
 
 Penitential Psalms, Chaldean, 
 177-179. 
 
 Persian Gulf, flatness and marshi- 
 ness of the region around, 7 ; 
 reached further inland than 
 now, 201. 
 
 Persians, rule in Asia, 2; the 
 war between two royal brothers, 
 2 ; Persian monarchy con- 
 quered by Alexander, 4 ; not 
 named in Genesis X., 134. 
 
 Platforms, artificial, 46-49. 
 
 Polytheism, meaning of the word, 
 237 ; tendency, to, of the He- 
 brews, combated by their lead- 
 ers, 345-350- 
 
 Priesthood, Chaldean, causes of 
 its power and influence, 233- 
 234- 
 
 R. 
 
 Races, Nations, and Tribes rep- 
 resented in antiquity under 
 the name of a man, an ancestor, 
 130-134; black race and yel- 
 low race omitted from the list 
 in Genesis X., 134-142; prob- 
 able reasons for the omission, 
 135, 140. _ 
 
 Raman, third god of the second 
 Babylonian Triad, his attribu- 
 tions, 240-241 ; one of the 
 " twelve great gods," 246. 
 
 Rassam, Hormuzd, explorer, 247, 
 248. 
 
 Rawlinson, Sir Henry, his work 
 at the British Museum, 152. 
 
 Religion of the Shumiro-Accads 
 the most primitive in the world, 
 148 ; characteristics of Tura- 
 nian religions, 180, 181 ; defini- 
 tion of, as distinguished from 
 Mythology, 331-334- 
 
 Religiosity, distinctively human
 
 INDEX. 
 
 379 
 
 characteristic, 143 ; its awaken- 
 ing and development, 149-152. 
 Rich, the first explorer, 13 ; his 
 disappointment at Mossul, 14. 
 
 Sabattuv, the Babylonian and 
 Assyrian " Sabbath," 256. 
 
 Sabeism, the worship of the 
 heavenly bodies, a Semitic form 
 of religion, 232 ; fostered by a 
 pastoral and nomadic life, ib. 
 
 Sabitu, one of the maidens in the 
 magic grove, 311. 
 
 Sacred Tree, sacredness of the 
 Symbol, 268 ; its conventional 
 appearance on sculptures and 
 cylinders. 268-270 ; its signifi- 
 cation, 272-274 ; its connection 
 with the legend of Paradise, 
 274-276. 
 
 Sargon of Agade, see Sharrukin, 
 
 Sarzec, E. de, French explorer ; 
 his great find at Tell-Loh, 8S- 
 go : statues found by him, 214. 
 
 Scorpion-men, the Warders of 
 the Sun, 311. 
 
 Schrader, Eberhard, eminent As- 
 syriologist, favors the Semitic 
 theory, 186. 
 
 Semites (more correctly Shemites), 
 one of the three great races given 
 in Genesis X. ; named from its 
 eponymous ancestor, Shem, 131. 
 
 Semitic language, 199 ; culture, 
 the beginnmg of historical times 
 in Chaldea, 202, 203. 
 
 Sennacherib, king of Assyria, 
 his palace at Koyunjik, 34 ; 
 Fergusson's restoration of his 
 palace, 56 ; his " Will " in the 
 library of Nineveh, 109. 
 
 Senkereh, see Larsam. 
 
 Sepharvaim, see Sippar. 
 
 Seth (more correctly Sheth), third 
 son of Adam. 
 
 Shamash, the Sun-god, second 
 god of the Second Babylonian 
 Triad, 240; one of the "twelve 
 
 great gods," 246 ; his temple 
 
 at Sippar discovered by H. 
 
 Rassam, 247, 248. 
 Shamhatu ("Grace"), one of the 
 
 handmaidens of Ishtar, 305. 
 Sharrukin I. of Agade (Sargoa I.), 
 
 205 ; legend about his birlli, 
 
 206 ; his glorious reign, 206 ; 
 Sharrukin II. of Agade (Sargon 
 II.), 205 ; his religious reform 
 and literary labors, 207, 298 ; 
 probable founder of the library 
 at Erech, 209 ; date of, lately 
 discovered, 213. 
 
 Shem. eldest son of Noah, 130 ; 
 meaning of tlie name, 198. 
 Shinar, or Shinear, geographical 
 position of, 127. 
 
 Shumir, Southern or Lower Chal- 
 dea, 145. 
 
 Shumir and Accad, oldest name 
 for Chaldea, 143, 144. 
 
 Shumiro-Accadian, oldest lan- 
 guage of Chaldea, 108 ; Agglu- 
 tinative, 145. 
 
 Shumiro-Accads, oldest popula- 
 tion of Chaldea, of Turanian 
 race, 144 ; their language agglu- 
 tinative, 145 ; introduce into 
 Chaldea cuneiform writing, 
 metallurgy and irrigation, ib. ; 
 their probable migration, 146 ; 
 iheir theory of the world, 153. 
 
 Shushan (Susa), capital of Elam, de- 
 stroyed by Asshurbanipal, 194. 
 
 Siddim, battle in the veil of, 221, 
 222. 
 
 Sidon, a Phoenician city, meaning 
 of the name, 133 ; the " first- 
 born " son of Canaan, epony- 
 mous ancestor of the city in 
 Genesis X., ib. 
 
 Siduri, one of the maidens in the 
 magic grove, 311. 
 
 Sin, the INIoon-god, first god of 
 the Second Babylonian Triad, 
 240; one of the "twelve great 
 gods," 246 ; attacked ])y the 
 seven rebellious spirits, 291. 
 
 Sin-Muballit, see Amarpal.
 
 ;oO 
 
 hXDEX. 
 
 Sippar, sister city of Agade, 205 ; 
 Temple of Sliamasli at, exca- 
 vated by H. Rassam, 247, 248. 
 
 Sir-burla (also Sir-gulla, or Sir- 
 tella, or Zirbab), ancient city 
 of Chaldea, now Mound of 
 Tell-Loh ; discoveries at, by 
 Sarzec, 88-go. 
 
 Sir-gulla, see Sir-burla. 
 
 Smith, George, English ex- 
 plorer ; his work at the British 
 Museum, 102 ; his expeditions 
 to Nineveh, 103; his success, 
 and his death, 104; his discov- 
 ery of the Deluge Tablets, 301. 
 
 Sorcerers believed in, 157. 
 
 Spirits, belief in good and evil, 
 the first beginning of religion, 
 150; elementary, in the primi- 
 tive Shumiro-Accadian religion, 
 153-155 ; evil, 155-157 ; allowed 
 an inferior place in the later re- 
 formed religion, 236, 250; re- 
 bellion of the seven evil, their 
 attack against the Moon-god, 
 290, 291. 
 
 Statues found at Tell-Loh, SS, 
 
 214. 
 Style, ancient writing instrument, 
 
 94, 109. 
 Synchronism, meaning of the 
 
 word, 212. 
 
 T. 
 
 Tablets, in baked or unbaked 
 clay, used as books, 109; their 
 shapes and sizes, 109; mode 
 of writing on, 109-110; bak- 
 ing of, no; great numbers of, 
 deposited in the British Mu- 
 seum. 110-112; Chaldean tab- 
 lets in clay cases, 112; tablets 
 found under the foundation 
 stone at Khorsabad, 113, 114; 
 " Shamash tablet," 24S. 
 
 Talismans, worn on the person 
 or placed in buildings, 164. 
 
 Tammuz, see Dumuzi. 
 
 Taurus Mountains, 190. 
 
 Tell-I.oh (also Tello), see Sir- 
 burla. 
 
 Temples of Ea and Meridug at 
 Eridhu, 246 ; of the Moon-god 
 at Ur, ib.; of Anu and Nana 
 at Erech, ib.; of Shamash and 
 Anunit at Sippar and Agade, 
 247 ; of Bel Maruduk at Baby- 
 lon and Borsippa, 249. 
 
 Theocracy, meaning of the word, 
 
 Tiamat, see Mummu-Tiamat. 
 
 Tin-tir-ki, oldest name of Baby- 
 lon, meaning of the name, 216. 
 
 Triads in Babylonian religion, 
 and meaning of the word, 239- 
 240. 
 
 Tubalcain, son of Lamech, de- 
 scendant of Cain, the inventor 
 of metallurgy, 129. 
 
 Turanians, collective name for 
 the whole Yellow Race, 136; 
 origin of the name, ib.; the lim- 
 itations of their genius, 136- 
 139; their imperfect forms of, 
 speech, monosyllabic and agglu- 
 tinative, 136, 137 ; " the oldest 
 of men," 137 ; everywhere pre- 
 cede the white races, 138; 
 omitted in Genesis X., 135, 
 139; possibly represent the 
 discarded Cainites or posterity 
 of Cain, T40-142; their tradi- 
 tion of a Paradise in the Altai, 
 147 ; characteristics of Tura- 
 nian Religions, 180-1S1. 
 
 Turks, their misrule in Mesopo- 
 tamia, 5-6; greed and oppres- 
 siveness of their ofiicials, 7-8 ; 
 one of the principal modern 
 representatives of the Turanian 
 race, 136. 
 
 U. 
 
 Ubaratutu, father of Haslsadra,322 
 
 Ud, or Babbar, the midday Sun, 
 171 ; hymns to, 171, 172 ; tem- 
 ple of, at Sippar, 247-248. 
 
 Uddusunamir, phantom created 
 by Ea, and sent to Allat, to 
 rescue Ishtar, 328, 329. 
 
 Ur (Mound of Mugheir), con- 
 struction of its platform, 46 ; 
 earliest known capital of Shu-
 
 INDEX. 
 
 381 
 
 mir, maritime and commercial, 1 
 200 ; Terah and Abraham go j 
 fortii from, 201. 1 
 
 Ur-ea, king of Ur, 215; his build- | 
 ings, 210-218; his signet cylin-i 
 der, 218. i 
 
 Urubel, the ferryman on the j 
 Waters of Dtath, 311 ; purifies I 
 Izdubar and 1 eturns with him | 
 to Erech, 313. j 
 
 Urukh, see Erech. I 
 
 Uru-ki, or Nannar, the Shumiro- 
 Accadian Moon-god, 240. 
 
 V. 
 
 Vaults, of drains, 70; sepulchral, 
 at Warka, 83, 85. 
 
 W. 
 
 Warka, see Erech 
 X. 
 
 Xenophon leads the Retreat of 
 the Ten Thousand, 2; passes by 
 the ruins of Calah and Nineveh, 
 which he calls Larissa and 
 Mespila, 3. 
 
 Xisuthros, the king of, Berosus' 
 Deluge-narrative, 300. See 
 Hasisadra. 
 
 Y. 
 
 Yahveh, the correct form of 
 "Jehovah," one of the He- 
 brew names for God, 354. 
 
 Zab, river, tributary of the Tigris, 
 
 17- 
 
 Zagros, mountain range of, di- 
 vides Assyria from Media, 50; 
 stone quarried in, and trans- 
 ported down the Zab, 50. 51. 
 
 Zaidu, the huntsman, sent to 
 Eabani, 305. 
 
 Zi-ana, see Ana. 
 
 Ziggurats, their peculiar shape 
 and uses, 48 ; used as observa- 
 tories attached to temples, 234; 
 meaning of the word, 278 ; their 
 connection with the legend of 
 Paradise, 278-280; their singu- 
 lar orientation and its causes, 
 284-286 ; Ziggurat of EirsNim- 
 rud (Borsippa), 280-283; iden- 
 tified with the Tower of I!abcl, 
 
 293- 
 
 Zi-ki-a, see Ea. 
 
 Zirlab, see Sir-burla. 
 
 Zodiac, twelve signs of, familiar 
 to the Chaldeans, 230; signs of, 
 established by Anu, 265; rep- 
 resented in the twelve books 
 of the Izdubar Epic, 318-321. 
 
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