History Of Ancient Civilization Part 3

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

CHAPTER IV

a.s.sYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS

CHALDEA

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

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

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

THE a.s.sYRIANS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the seventh century Sennacherib wrote: "I pa.s.sed like a hurricane of desolation. On the drenched earth the armor and arms swam in the blood of the enemy as in a river. I heaped up the bodies of their soldiers like trophies and I cut off their extremities. I mutilated those whom I took alive like blades of straw; as punishment I cut off their hands." In a bas-relief which shows the town of Susa surrendering to a.s.surbanipal one sees the chiefs of the conquered tortured by the a.s.syrians; some have their ears cut off, the eyes of others are put out, the beard torn out, while some are flayed alive.

Evidently these kings took delight in burnings, ma.s.sacres, and tortures.

=Ruin of the a.s.syrian Empire.=--The a.s.syrian regime began with the capture of Babylon (about 1270). From the ninth century the a.s.syrians, always at war, subjected or ravaged Babylonia, Syria, Palestine, and even Egypt. The conquered always revolted, and the ma.s.sacres were repeated. At last the a.s.syrians were exhausted. The Babylonians and Medes made an alliance and destroyed their empire. In 625 their capital, Nineveh, "the lair of lions, the b.l.o.o.d.y city, the city gorged with prey," as the Jewish prophets call it, was taken and destroyed forever. "Nineveh is laid waste," says the prophet Nahum, "who will bemoan her?"

THE BABYLONIANS

=The Second Chaldean Empire.=--In the place of the fallen a.s.syrian empire there arose a new power--in ancient Chaldea. This has received the name Babylonian Empire or the Second Chaldean Empire. A Jewish prophet makes one say to Jehovah, "I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation which shall march through the breadth of the land to possess dwelling places that are not theirs. Their horses are swifter than leopards. Their hors.e.m.e.n spread themselves; (their hors.e.m.e.n) shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat." They were a people of knights, martial and victorious, like the a.s.syrians. They subjected Susiana, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Jordan. But their regime was short: founded in 625, the Babylonian Empire was overthrown by the Persians in 538 B.C.

=Babylon.=--The mightiest of its kings, Nebuchadrezzar (or Nebuchadnezzar), 604-561, who destroyed Jerusalem and carried the Jews into captivity, built many temples and places in Babylon, his capital.

These monuments were in crude brick as the plain of the Euphrates has no supply of stone; in the process of decay they have left only enormous ma.s.ses of earth and debris. And yet it has been possible on the site of Babylon to recover some inscriptions and to restore the plan of the city. The Greek Herodotus who had visited Babylon in the fifth century B.C., describes it in detail. The city was surrounded by a square wall cut by the Euphrates; it covered about 185 square miles, or seven times the extent of Paris. This immense s.p.a.ce was not filled with houses; much of it was occupied with fields to be cultivated for the maintenance of the people in the event of a siege. Babylon was less a city than a fortified camp. The walls equipped with towers and pierced by a hundred gates of bra.s.s were so thick that a chariot might be driven on them. All around the wall was a large, deep ditch full of water, with its sides lined with brick. The houses of the city were constructed of three or four stories. The streets intersected at right angles. The bridge and docks of the Euphrates excited admiration; the fortified palace also, and the hanging gardens, one of the seven wonders of the world. These gardens were terraces planted with trees, supported by pillars and rows of arches.

=Tower of Babylon.=--Hard by the city Nebuchadnezzar had aimed to rebuild the town of Babel. "For the admiration of men," he says in an inscription: "I rebuilt and renovated the wonder of Borsippa, the temple of the seven spheres of the world. I laid the foundations and built it according to its ancient plan." This temple, in the form of a square, comprised seven square towers raised one above another, each tower being dedicated to one of the seven planets and painted with the color attributed by religion to this planet. They were, beginning with the lowest: Saturn (black), Venus (white), Jupiter (purple), Mercury (blue), Mars (vermilion), the moon (silver), the sun (gold). The highest tower contained a chapel with a table of gold and magnificent couch whereon a priestess kept watch continually.

CUSTOMS AND RELIGION

=Customs.=--We know almost nothing of these peoples apart from the testimony of their monuments, and nearly all of these refer to the achievements of their kings. The a.s.syrians are always represented at war, hunting, or in the performance of ceremonies; their women never appear on the bas-reliefs; they were confined in a harem and never went into public life. The Chaldeans on the contrary, were a race of laborers and merchants, but of their life we know nothing. Herodotus relates that once a year in their towns they a.s.sembled all the girls to give them in marriage; they sold the prettiest, and the profits of the sale of these became a dower for the marriage of the plainest.

"According to my view," he adds, "this is the wisest of all their laws."

=Religion.=--The religion of the a.s.syrians and Chaldeans was the same, for the former had adopted that of the latter. It is very obscure to us, since it originated, like that of the Chaldean people, in a confusion of religions very differently mingled. The Turanians, like the present yellow race of Siberia, imagined the world full of demons (plague, fever, phantoms, vampires), engaged in prowling around men to do them harm; sorcerers were invoked to banish these demons by magical formulas. The Cus.h.i.tes adored a pair of G.o.ds, the male deity of force and the female of matter. The Chaldean priests, united in a powerful guild, confused the two religions into a single one.

=The G.o.ds.=--The supreme G.o.d at Babylon is Ilou; in a.s.syria, a.s.sur. No temple was raised to him. Three G.o.ds proceed from him: Anou, the "lord of darkness," under the figure of a man with the head of a fish and the tail of an eagle; Bel, the "sovereign of spirits," represented as a king on the throne; Nouah, the "master of the visible world," under the form of a genius with four extended wings. Each has a feminine counterpart who symbolizes fruitfulness. Below these G.o.ds are the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets, for in the transparent atmosphere of Chaldea the stars shine with a brilliancy which is strange to us; they gleam like deities. To these the Chaldeans raised temples, veritable observatories in which men who adored them could follow all their motions.

=Astrology.=--The priests believed that these stars, being powerful deities, had determining influence on the lives of men. Every man comes into the world under the influence of a planet and this moment decides his destiny; one may foretell one's fortune if the star under which one is born is known. This is the origin of the horoscope. What occurs in heaven is indicative of what will come to pa.s.s on earth; a comet, for example, announces a revolution. By observing the heavens the Chaldean priests believed they could predict events. This is the origin of Astrology.

=Sorcery.=--The Chaldeans had also magical words; these were uttered to banish spirits or to cause their appearance. This custom, a relic of the Turanian religion, is the origin of sorcery. From Chaldea astrology and sorcery were diffused over the Roman empire, and later over all Europe. In the formulas of sorcery of the sixteenth century corrupted a.s.syrian words may still be detected.[20]

=Sciences.=--On the other hand it is in Chaldea that we have the beginning of astronomy. From this land have come down to us the zodiac, the week of seven days in honor of the seven planets; the division of the year into twelve months, of the day into twenty-four hours, of the hour into sixty minutes, of the minute into sixty seconds. Here originated, too, the system of weights and measures reckoned on the unit of length, a system adopted by all the ancient peoples.

ARTS

=Architecture.=--We do not have direct knowledge of the art of the Chaldeans, since their monuments have fallen to ruin. But the a.s.syrian artists whose works we possess imitated those of Chaldea, and so we may form a judgment at the same time of the two countries. The a.s.syrians like the Chaldeans built with crude, sun-dried brick, but they faced the exterior of the wall with stone.

=Palaces.=--They constructed their palaces[21] on artificial mounds, making these low and flat like great terraces. The crude brick was not adapted to broad and high arches. Halls must therefore be straight and low, but in compensation they were very long. An a.s.syrian palace, then, resembled a succession of galleries; the roofs were flat terraces provided with battlements. At the gate stood gigantic winged bulls. Within, the walls were covered now with panelling in precious woods, now with enamelled bricks, now with plates of sculptural alabaster. Sometimes the chambers were painted, and even richly encrusted marbles were used.

=Sculpture.=--The sculpture of the a.s.syrian palaces is especially admirable. Statues, truly, are rare and coa.r.s.e; sculptors preferred to execute bas-reliefs similar to pictures on great slabs of alabaster.

They represented scenes which were often very complicated--battles, chases, sieges of towns, ceremonies in which the king appeared with a great retinue. Every detail is scrupulously done; one sees the files of servants in charge of the feast of the king, the troops of workmen who built his palace, the gardens, the fields, the ponds, the fish in the water, the birds perched over their nests or flitting from tree to tree. Persons are exhibited in profile, doubtless because the artist could not depict the face; but they possess dignity and life. Animals often appeared, especially in hunting scenes; they are ordinarily made with a startling fidelity. The a.s.syrians observed nature and faithfully reproduced it; hence the merit of their art.

The Greeks themselves learned in this school, by imitating the a.s.syrian bas-reliefs. They have excelled them, but no people, not even the Greeks, has better known how to represent animals.

FOOTNOTES: