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The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 01

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Title: The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 01

Editor: Rossiter Johnson
        Charles F. Horne
        LL. D. John Rudd


        
Release date: July 24, 2005 [eBook #16352]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

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THE GREAT EVENTS

BY

FAMOUS HISTORIANS

A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY, EMPHASIZING
THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES
IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS

NON-SECTARIAN            NON-PARTISAN            NON-SECTIONAL

ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST
DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF
INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED
NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES,
BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING


EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D.


ASSOCIATE EDITORS

CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D. JOHN RUDD, LL.D.

_With a staff of specialists_


_VOLUME 1_



The National Alumni

COPYRIGHT, 1905,

By THE NATIONAL ALUMNI




CONTENTS

VOLUME I



_General Introduction_


_An Outline Narrative of the Great Events_
  CHARLES F. HORNE

_Dawn of Civilization_ (_B.C. 5867_)
  G.C.C. MASPERO

_Compilation of the Earliest Code_ (_B.C. 2250_)
  HAMMURABI

_Theseus Founds Athens_ (_B.C. 1235_)
  PLUTARCH

_The Formation of the Castes in India_ (_B.C. 1200_)
  GUSTAVE LE BON
  W.W. HUNTER

_Fall of Troy_ (_B.C. 1184_)
  GEORGE GROTE

_Accession of Solomon_
_Building of the Temple at Jerusalem_ (_B.C. 1017_)
  HENRY HART MILMAN

_Rise and Fall of Assyria_
_Destruction of Nineveh_ (_B.C. 789_)
  F. LENORMANT AND E. CHEVALLIER

_The Foundation of Rome_ (_B.C. 753_)
  BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR

_Prince Jimmu Founds Japan's Capital_ (_B.C. 660_)
  SIR EDWARD REED
  THE "NEHONGI"

_The Foundation of Buddhism_ (_B.C. 623_)
  THOMAS W. RHYS-DAVIDS

_Pythian Games at Delphi_ (_B.C. 585_)
  GEORGE GROTE

_Solon's Early Greek Legislation_ (_B.C. 594_)
  GEORGE GROTE

_Conquests of Cyrus the Great_ (_B.C. 550_)
  GEORGE GROTE

_Rise of Confucius, the Chinese Sage_ (_B.C. 550_)
  R.K. DOUGLAS

_Rome Established as a Republic_
_Institution of Tribunes_ (_B.C. 510-494_)
  HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL

_The Battle of Marathon_ (_B.C. 490_)
  SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY

_Invasion of Greece by Persians under Xerxes_
_Defence of Thermopylæ_ (_B.C. 480_)
  HERODOTUS

_Universal Chronology_ (_B.C. 5867-451_)
  JOHN RUDD





LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME I



_Sphinx, with Great and Second Pyramids of Gizeh_ (_page 12_)
Frontispiece From an original photograph.

_The Rosetta Stone, and Description_
Facsimile of original in the British Museum.

_The Sabine Women_--_now mothers_--_suing for peace between the
combatants_ (_their Roman husbands and their Sabine relatives_)
Painting by Jacques L. David.






THE GREAT EVENTS

BY

FAMOUS HISTORIANS

       *       *       *       *       *

General Introduction


THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS is the answer to a problem which
has long been agitating the learned world. How shall real history, the
ablest and profoundest work of the greatest historians, be rescued from
its present oblivion on the dusty shelves of scholars, and made welcome
to the homes of the people?

THE NATIONAL ALUMNI, an association of college men, having given this
question long and earnest discussion among themselves, sought finally
the views of a carefully elaborated list of authorities throughout
America and Europe. They consulted the foremost living historians and
professors of history, successful writers in other fields, statesmen,
university and college presidents, and prominent business men. From this
widely gathered consensus of opinions, after much comparison and sifting
of ideas, was evolved the following practical, and it would seem
incontrovertible, series of plain facts. And these all pointed toward
"THE GREAT EVENTS."

In the first place, the entire American public, from top to bottom of
the social ladder, are at this moment anxious to read history. Its
predominant importance among the varied forms of literature is fully
recognized. To understand the past is to understand the future. The
successful men in every line of life are those who look ahead, whose
keen foresight enables them to probe into the future, not by magic, but
by patiently acquired knowledge. To see clearly what the world has done,
and why, is to see at least vaguely what the world will do, and when.

Moreover, no man can understand himself unless he understands others;
and he cannot do that without some idea of the past, which has produced
both him and them. To know his neighbors, he must know something of the
country from which they came, the conditions under which they formerly
lived. He cannot do his own simple duty by his own country if he does
not know through what tribulations that country has passed. He cannot be
a good citizen, he cannot even vote honestly, much less intelligently,
unless he has read history. Fortunately the point needs little urging.
It is almost an impertinence to refer to it. We are all anxious, more
than anxious to learn--_if only the path of study be made easy_.

Can this be accomplished? Can the vanishing pictures of the past be made
as simply obvious as mathematics, as fascinating as a breezy novel of
adventure? Genius has already answered, yes. Hand to a mere boy
Macaulay's sketch of Warren Hastings in India, and the lad will see as
easily as if laid out upon a map the host of interwoven and elaborate
problems that perplexed the great administrator. Offer to the youngest
lass the tale told by Guizot of King Robert of France and his struggle
to retain his beloved wife Bertha. Its vivid reality will draw from the
girl's heart far deeper and truer tears than the most pathetic romance.

We begin to realize that in very truth History has been one vast
stupendous drama, world-embracing in its splendor, majestic, awful,
irresistible in the insistence of its pointing finger of fate. It has
indeed its comic interludes, a Prussian king befuddling ambassadors in
his "Tobacco Parliament"; its pauses of intense and cumulative suspense,
Queen Louise pleading to Napoleon for her country's life; but it has
also its magnificent pageants, its gorgeous culminating spectacles of
wonder. Kings and emperors are but the supernumeraries upon its boards;
its hero is the common man, its plot his triumph over ignorance, his
struggle upward out of the slime of earth.

_Yet the great historians are not being widely read_. The ablest and
most convincing stories of his own development seem closed against the
ordinary man. Why? In the first place, the works of the masters are too
voluminous. Grote's unrivalled history of Greece fills ten large and
forbidding volumes. Guizot takes thirty-one to tell a portion of the
story of France. Freeman won credit in the professorial world by
devoting five to the detailing of a single episode, the Norman Conquest.
Surely no busy man can gather a general historic knowledge, if he must
read such works as these! We are told that the great library of Paris
contains over four hundred thousand volumes and pamphlets on French
history alone. The output of historic works in all languages approaches
ten thousand volumes every year. No scholar, even, can peruse more than
the smallest fraction of this enormously increasing mass. Herodotus is
forgotten, Livy remains to most of us but a recollection of our
school-days, and Thucydides has become an exercise in Greek.

There is yet another difficulty. Even the honest man who tries, who
takes down his Grote or Freeman, heroically resolved to struggle through
it at all speed, fails often in his purpose. He discovers that the
greatest masters nod. Sometimes in their slow advance they come upon a
point that rouses their enthusiasm; they become vigorous, passionate,
sarcastic, fascinating, they are masters indeed. But the fire soon dies,
the inspiration flags, "no man can be always on the heights," and the
unhappy reader drowses in the company of his guide.

This leads us then to one clear point. From these justly famous works a
selection should be made. Their length should be avoided, their prosy
passages eliminated; the one picture, or perhaps the many pictures,
which each master has painted better than any rival before or since,
that and that alone should be preserved.

Read in this way, history may be sought with genuine pleasure. It is
only pedantry has made it dreary, only blindness has left it dull. The
story of man is the most wonderful ever conceived. It can be made the
most fascinating ever written.

With this idea firmly established in mind, we seek another line of
thought. The world grows smaller every day. Russia fights huge battles
five thousand miles from her capital. England governs India. Spain and
the United States contend for empire in the antipodes. Our rapidly
improving means of communication, electric trains, and, it may be,
flying machines, cables, and wireless telegraphy, link lands so close
together that no man lives to-day the subject of an isolated state.
Rather, indeed, do all the kingdoms seem to shrink, to become but
districts in one world-including commonwealth.

To tell the story of one nation by itself is thus no longer possible.
Great movements of the human race do not stop for imaginary boundary
lines thrown across a map. It was not the German students, nor the
Parisian mob, nor the Italian peasants who rebelled in 1848; it was the
"people of Europe" who arose against their oppressors. To read the
history of one's own country only is to get distorted views, to
exaggerate our own importance, to remain often in densest ignorance of
the real meaning of what we read. The ideas American school-boys get of
the Revolution are in many cases simply absurd, until they have been
modified by wider reading.

From this it becomes very evident that a good history now must be, not a
local, but a world history. The idea of such a work is not new. Diodorus
penned one two hundred years before Christ. But even then the tale took
forty books; and we have been making history rather rapidly since
Diodorus' time. Of the many who have more recently attempted his task,
few have improved upon his methods; and the best of these works only
shows upon a larger scale the same dreariness that we have found in
other masters.

Let us then be frank and admit that no one man can make a thoroughly
good world history. No one man could be possessed of the almost infinite
learning required; none could have the infinite enthusiasm to delight
equally in each separate event, to dwell on all impartially and yet
ecstatically. So once more we are forced back upon the same conclusion.
We will take what we already have. We will appeal to each master for the
event in which he did delight, the one in which we find him at his best.

This also has been attempted before, but perhaps in a manner too
lengthy, too exact, too pedantic to be popular. The aim has been to get
in everything. Everything great or small has been narrated, and so the
real points of value have been lost in the multiplicity of lesser facts,
about which no ordinary reader cares or needs to care. After all, what
we want to know and remember are the Great Events, the ones which have
really changed and influenced humanity. How many of us do really know
about them? or even know what they are? or one-twentieth part of them?
And until we know, is it not a waste of time to pore over the lesser
happenings between?

Yet the connection between these events must somehow be shown. They must
not stand as separate, unrelated fragments. If the story of the world is
indeed one, it must be shown as one, not even broken by arbitrary
division into countries, those temporary political constructions, often
separating a single race, lines of imaginary demarcation, varying with
the centuries, invisible in earth's yesterday, sure to change if not to
perish in her to-morrow. Moreover, such a system of division
necessitates endless repetition. Each really important occurrence
influences many countries, and so is told of again and again with
monotonous iteration and extravagant waste of space.

It may, however, be fairly urged that the story should vary according to
the country for which it is designed. To our individual lives the events
happening nearest prove most important. Great though others be, their
influence diminishes with their increasing distance in space and time.
For the people of North America the story of the world should have the
part taken by America written large across the pages.

From all these lines of reasoning arose the present work, which the
National Alumni believe has solved the problem. It tells the story of
the world, tells it in the most famous words of the most famous writers,
makes of it a single, continued story, giving the results of the most
recent research. Yet all dry detail has been deliberately eliminated;
the tale runs rapidly and brightly. Whatever else may happen, the reader
shall not yawn. Only important points are dwelt on, and their relative
value is made clear.

Each volume of THE GREAT EVENTS opens with a brief survey of the period
with which it deals. The broad world movements of the time are pointed
out, their importance is emphasized, their mutual relationship made
clear. If the reader finds his interest specially roused in one of these
events, and he would learn more of it, he is aided by a directing note,
which, in each case, tells him where in the body of the volume the
subject is further treated. Turning thither he may plunge at once into
the fuller account which he desires, sure that it will be both vivid and
authoritative; in short, the best-known treatment of the subject.

Meanwhile the general survey, being thus relieved from the necessity of
constant explanation, expansion, and digression, is enabled to flow
straight onward with its story, rapidly, simply, entertainingly. Indeed,
these opening sketches, written especially for this series, and in a
popular style, may be read on from volume to volume, forming a book in
themselves, presenting a bird's-eye view of the whole course of earth,
an ideal world history which leaves the details to be filled in by the
reader at his pleasure. It is thus, we believe, and thus only, that
world history can be made plain and popular. The great lessons of
history can thus be clearly grasped. And by their light all life takes
on a deeper meaning.

The body of each volume, then, contains the Great Events of the period,
ranged in chronological order. Of each event there are given one,
perhaps two, or even three complete accounts, not chosen hap-hazard, but
selected after conference with many scholars, accounts the most accurate
and most celebrated in existence, gathered from all languages and all
times. Where the event itself is under dispute, the editors do not
presume to judge for the reader; they present the authorities upon both
sides. The Reformation is thus portrayed from the Catholic as well as
the Protestant standpoint. The American Revolution is shown in part as
England saw it; and in the American Civil War, and the causes which
produced it, the North and the South speak for themselves in the words
of their best historians.

To each of these accounts is prefixed a brief introduction, prepared for
this work by a specialist in the field of history of which it treats.
This introduction serves a double purpose. In the first place, it
explains whatever is necessary for the understanding and appreciation
of the story that follows. Unfortunately, many a striking bit of
historic writing has become antiquated in the present day. Scholars have
discovered that it blunders here and there, perhaps is prejudiced,
perhaps extravagant. Newer writers, therefore, base a new book upon the
old one, not changing much, but paraphrasing it into deadly dullness by
their efforts after accuracy. Thanks to our introduction we can revive
the more spirited account, and, while pointing out its value to the
reader, can warn him of its errors. Thus he secures in briefest form the
results of the most recent research.

Another purpose of the introduction is to link each event with the
preceding ones in whatever countries it affects. Thus if one chooses he
may read by countries after all, and get a completed story of a single
nation. That is, he may peruse the account of the battle of Hastings and
then turn onward to the making of the _Domesday Book_, where he will
find a few brief lines to cover the intervening space in England's
history. From the struggles of Stephen and Matilda he is led to the
quarrel of her son, King Henry, with Thomas Becket, and so onward step
by step.

Starting with this ground plan of the design in mind, the reader will
see that its compilation was a work of enormous labor. This has been
undertaken seriously, patiently, and with earnest purpose. The first
problem to be confronted was, What were the Great Events that should be
told? Almost every writer and teacher of history, every well-known
authority, was appealed to; many lists of events were compiled, revised,
collated, and compared; and so at last our final list was evolved,
fitted to bear the brunt of every criticism.

Then came the heavier problem of what authorities to quote for each
event. And here also the editors owe much to the capable aid of many
generous, unremunerated advisers. Thus, for instance, they sought and
obtained from the Hon. Joseph Chamberlain his advice as to the
authorities to be used for the Jameson raid and the Boer war. The
account presented may therefore be fairly regarded as England's own
authoritative presentment of those events. Several little known and
wholly unused Russian sources were pointed out by Professor Rambaud,
the French Academician. But this is mentioned only to illustrate the
impartiality with which the editors have endeavored to cover all fields.
If, under the plea of expressing gratitude to all those who have lent us
courteous assistance, we were to spread across these pages the long roll
of their distinguished names, it would sound too much like boasting of
their condescension.

The work of selecting the accounts has been one of time and careful
thought. Many thousands of books have been read and read again. The
cardinal points of consideration in the choice have been: (1) Interest,
that is, vividness of narration; (2) simplicity, for we aim to reach the
people, to make a book fit even for a child; (3) the fame of the author,
for everyone is pleased to be thus easily introduced to some
long-heard-of celebrity, distantly revered, but dreaded; and (4)
accuracy, a point set last because its defects could be so easily
remedied by the specialist's introduction to each event.

These considerations have led occasionally to the selection of very
ancient documents, the original "sources" of history themselves, as, for
instance, Columbus' own story of his voyage, rather than any later
account built up on this; Pliny's picture of the destruction of Pompeii,
for Pliny was there and saw the heavens rain down fire, and told of it
as no man has done since. So, too, we give a literal translation of the
earliest known code of laws, antedating those of Moses by more than a
thousand years, rather than some modern commentary on them. At other
times the same principles have led to the other extreme, and on modern
events, where there seemed no wholly satisfactory or standard accounts,
we have had them written for us by the specialists best acquainted with
the field.

As the work thus grew in hand, it became manifest that it would be, in
truth, far more than a mere story of events. With each event was
connected the man who embodied it. Often his life was handled quite as
fully as the event, and so we had biography. Lands had to be
described--geography. Peoples and customs--sociology. Laws and the
arguments concerning them--political economy. In short, our history
proved a universal cyclopædia as well.

To give it its full value, therefore, an index became obviously
necessary--and no ordinary index. Its aim must be to anticipate every
possible question with which a reader might approach the past, and
direct him to the answer. Even, it might be, he would want details more
elaborate than we give. If so, we must direct him where to find them.

Professional index-makers were therefore summoned to our help, a
complete and readable chronology was appended to each volume, and the
final volume of the series was turned over to the indexers entirely. We
believe their work will prove not the least valuable feature of the
whole. Briefly, the Index Volume contains:

1. A complete list of the Great Events of the world's history. Opposite
each event are given the date, the name of the author and standard work
from which our account is selected, and a number of references to other
works and to a short discussion of these in our Bibliography. Thus the
reader may pursue an extended course of study on each particular event.

2. A bibliography of the best general histories of ancient, mediæval,
and modern times, and of important political, religious, and educational
movements; also a bibliography of the best historical works dealing with
each nation, and arranged under the following subdivisions: (_a_) The
general history of the nation; (_b_) special periods in its career;
(_c_) the descriptions of the people, their civilization and
institutions. On each work thus mentioned there is a critical comment
with suggestions to readers. This bibliography is designed chiefly for
those who desire to pursue more extended courses of reading, and it
offers them the experience and guidance of those who have preceded them
on their special field.

3. A classified index of famous historic characters. The names are
grouped under such headings as "Rulers, Statesmen, and Patriots,"
"Famous Women," "Military and Naval Commanders," "Philosophers and
Teachers," "Religious Leaders," etc. Under each person's name is given a
biographical chronology of his career, showing every important event in
which he played a part, together with the date of the event, and the
volume and page of this series where a full account of it may be found.
This plan provides a new and very valuable means of reading the
biography of any noted personage, one of the great advantages being that
the accounts of the various events in his life are not all in the
language of the same author, not written by a man anxious to bring out
the importance of his special hero. The writers are mainly interested in
the event, and show the hero only in his true and unexaggerated relation
to it. Under each name will also be found references to such further
authorities on the biography of the personage as may be consulted with
profit by those students and scholars who wish to pursue an exhaustive
study of his career.

4. A biographical index of the authors represented in the series. This
consists of brief sketches of the many writers whose work has been drawn
upon for the narratives of Great Events. It is intended for ready
reference, and gives only the essential facts. This index serves a
double purpose. Suppose, for instance, that a reader is familiar with
the name of John Lothrop Motley, but happens not to know whether he is
still living, whether he had other occupation than writing, or what
offices he held. This index will answer these questions. On the other
hand, an admirer of Thomas Jefferson or Theodore Roosevelt may wish to
know whether we have taken anything--and, if so, what--from their
writings. This index will answer at once.

5. A general index covering every reference in the series to dates,
events, persons, and places of historic importance. These are made
easily accessible by a careful and elaborate system of cross-references.

6. A separate and complete chronology of each nation of ancient,
mediæval, and modern times, with references to the volume and page where
each item is treated, either as an entire article or as part of one; so
that the history of any one nation may be read in its logical order and
in the language of its best historians.

Such, as the National Alumni regard it, are the general character, wide
scope, and earnest purpose of THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS. Let
us end by saying, in the friendly fashion of the old days when
bookmakers and their readers were more intimate than now: "Kind reader,
if this our performance doth in aught fall short of promise, blame not
our good intent, but our unperfect wit."

THE NATIONAL ALUMNI.





AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE

TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF

THE GREAT EVENTS

A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE PROGRESS OF THE HUMAN RACE, ITS ADVANCE IN
KNOWLEDGE AND CIVILIZATION, AND THE BROAD WORLD MOVEMENTS WHICH HAVE
SHAPED ITS DESTINY

CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D.

CONTINUED THROUGH THE SUCCESSIVE VOLUMES AND COVERING THE SUCCESSIVE
PERIODS OF

THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS





AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE

TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF

THE GREAT EVENTS

(FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE OVERTHROW OF THE PERSIANS)

CHARLES F. HORNE


History, if we define it as the mere transcription of the written
records of former generations, can go no farther back than the time such
records were first made, no farther than the art of writing. But now
that we have come to recognize the great earth itself as a story-book,
as a keeper of records buried one beneath the other, confused and half
obliterated, yet not wholly beyond our comprehension, now the historian
may fairly be allowed to speak of a far earlier day.

For unmeasured and immeasurable centuries man lived on earth a creature
so little removed from "the beasts that die," so little superior to
them, that he has left no clearer record than they of his presence here.
From the dry bones of an extinct mammoth or a plesiosaur, Cuvier
reconstructed the entire animal and described its habits and its home.
So, too, looking on an ancient, strange, scarce human skull, dug from
the deeper strata beneath our feet, anatomists tell us that the owner
was a man indeed, but one little better than an ape. A few æons later
this creature leaves among his bones chipped flints that narrow to a
point; and the archæologist, taking up the tale, explains that man has
become tool-using, he has become intelligent beyond all the other
animals of earth. Physically he is but a mite amid the beast monsters
that surround him, but by value of his brain he conquers them. He has
begun his career of mastery.

If we delve amid more recent strata, we find the flint weapons have
become bronze. Their owner has learned to handle a ductile metal, to
draw it from the rocks and fuse it in the fire. Later still he has
discovered how to melt the harder and more useful iron. We say roughly,
therefore, that man passed through a stone age, a bronze age, and then
an iron age.

Somewhere, perhaps in the earliest of these, he began to build rude
houses. In the next, he drew pictures. During the latest, his pictures
grew into an alphabet of signs, his structures developed into vast and
enduring piles of brick or stone. Buildings and inscriptions became his
relics, more like to our own, more fully understandable, giving us a
sense of closer kinship with his race.


SOURCES OF EARLY KNOWLEDGE

There are three different lines along which we have succeeded in
securing some knowledge of these our distant ancestors, three telephones
from the past, over which they send to us confused and feeble
murmurings, whose fascination makes only more maddening the vagueness of
their speech.

First, we have the picture-writings, whether of Central America, of
Egypt, of Babylonia, or of other lands. These when translatable bring us
nearest of all to the heart of the great past. It is the mind, the
thought, the spoken word, of man that is most intimately he; not his
face, nor his figure, nor his clothes. Unfortunately, the translation of
these writings is no easy task. Those of Central America are still an
unsolved riddle. Those of Babylon have been slowly pieced together like
a puzzle, a puzzle to which the learned world has given its most able
thought. Yet they are not fully understood. In Egypt we have had the
luck to stumble on a clew, the Rosetta Stone, which makes the ancient
writing fairly clear.[1]

[Footnote 1: See page 1 for an engraving and account of this famous
stone. It was found over a century ago and its value was instantly
recognized, but many years passed before its secrets were deciphered. It
contains an inscription repeated in three forms of writing: the early
Egyptian of the hieroglyphics, a later Egyptian (the demotic), and
Greek.]

Where this mode of communication fails, we turn to another which carries
us even farther into the past. The records which have been less
intentionally preserved, not only the buildings themselves, but their
decorations, the personal ornaments of men, idols, coins, every
imaginable fragment, chance escaped from the maw of time, has its own
story for our reading. In Egypt we have found deep-hidden, secret tombs,
and, intruding on their many centuries of silence, have reaped rich
harvests of knowledge from the garnered wealth. In Babylonia the rank
vegetation had covered whole cities underneath green hillocks, and
preserved them till our modern curiosity delved them out. To-day, he who
wills, may walk amid the halls of Sennacherib, may tread the streets
whence Abraham fled, ay, he may gaze upon the handiwork of men who lived
perhaps as far before Abraham as we ourselves do after him.

Nor are our means of penetrating the past even thus exhausted. A third
chain yet more subtle and more marvellous has been found to link us to
an ancestry immeasurably remote. This unbroken chain consists of the
words from our own mouths. We speak as our fathers spoke; and they did
but follow the generations before. Occasional pronunciations have
altered, new words have been added, and old ones forgotten; but some
basal sounds of names, some root-thoughts of the heart, have proved as
immutable as the superficial elegancies are changeful. "Father" and
"mother" mean what they have meant for uncounted ages.

Comparative philology, the science which compares one language with
another to note the points of similarity between them, has discovered
that many of these root-sounds are alike in almost all the varied
tongues of Europe. The resemblance is too common to be the result of
coincidence, too deep-seated to be accounted for by mere communication
between the nations. We have gotten far beyond the possibility of such
explanations; and science says now with positive confidence that there
must have been a time when all these nations were but one, that their
languages are all but variations of the tongue their distant ancestors
once held in common.

Study has progressed beyond this point, can tell us far more intricate
and fainter facts. It argues that one by one the various tribes left
their common home and became completely separated; and that each
root-sound still used by all the nations represents an idea, an object,
they already possessed before their dispersal. Thus we can vaguely
reconstruct that ancient, aboriginal civilization. We can even guess
which tribes first broke away, and where again these wanderers
subdivided, and at what stage of progress. Surely a fascinating science
this! And in its infancy! If its later development shall justify present
promise, it has still strange tales to tell us in the future.


THE RACES OF MAN

Turn now from this tracing of our means of knowledge, to speak of the
facts they tell us. When our humankind first become clearly visible they
are already divided into races, which for convenience we speak of as
white, yellow, and black. Of these the whites had apparently advanced
farthest on the road to civilization; and the white race itself had
become divided into at least three varieties, so clearly marked as to
have persisted through all the modern centuries of communication and
intermarriage. Science is not even able to say positively that these
varieties or families had a common origin. She inclines to think so; but
when all these later ages have failed to obliterate the marks of
difference, what far longer period of separation must have been required
to establish them!

These three clearly outlined families of the whites are the Hamites, of
whom the Egyptians are the best-known type; the Semites, as represented
by ancient Babylonians and modern Jews and Arabs; and the great Aryan or
Indo-European family, once called the Japhites, and including Hindus,
Persians, Greeks, Latins, the modern Celtic and Germanic races, and even
the Slavs or Russians.

The Egyptians, when we first see them, are already well advanced toward
civilization.[2] To say that they were the first people to emerge from
barbarism is going much further than we dare. Their records are the most
ancient that have come clearly down to us; but there may easily have
been other social organisms, other races, to whom the chances of time
and nature have been less gentle. Cataclysms may have engulfed more than
one Atlantis; and few climates are so fitted for the preservation of
man's buildings as is the rainless valley of the Nile.

[Footnote 2: See the _Dawn of Civilization_, page 1.]

Moreover, the Egyptians may not have been the earliest inhabitants even
of their own rich valley. We find hints that they were wanderers,
invaders, coming from the East, and that with the land they appropriated
also the ideas, the inventions, of an earlier negroid race. But whatever
they took they added to, they improved on. The idea of futurity, of
man's existence beyond the grave, became prominent among them; and in
the absence of clearer knowledge we may well take this idea as the
groundwork, the starting-point, of all man's later and more striking
progress.

Since the Egyptians believed in a future life they strove to preserve
the body for it, and built ever stronger and more gigantic tombs. They
strove to fit the mind for it, and cultivated virtues, not wholly animal
such as physical strength, nor wholly commercial such as cunning. They
even carved around the sepulchre of the departed a record of his doings,
lest they--and perhaps he too in that next life--forget. There were
elements of intellectual growth in all this, conditions to stimulate the
mind beyond the body.

And the Egyptians did develop. If one reads the tales, the romances,
that have survived from their remoter periods, he finds few emotions
higher than childish curiosity or mere animal rage and fear. Amid their
latest stories, on the contrary, we encounter touches of sentiment, of
pity and self-sacrifice, such as would even now be not unworthy of
praise. But, alas! the improvement seems most marked where it was most
distant. Perhaps the material prosperity of the land was too great, the
conditions of life too easy; there was no stimulus to effort, to
endeavor. By about the year 2200 B.C. we find Egypt fallen into the grip
of a cold and lifeless formalism. Everything was fixed by law; even
pictures must be drawn in a certain way, thoughts must be expressed by
stated and unvariable symbols. Advance became well-nigh impossible.
Everything lay in the hands of a priestly caste the completeness of
whose dominion has perhaps never been matched in history. The leaders
lived lives of luxurious pleasure enlightened by scientific study; but
the people scarce existed except as automatons. The race was dead; its
true life, the vigor of its masses, was exhausted, and the land soon
fell an easy prey to every spirited invader.

Meanwhile a rougher, stronger civilization was growing in the river
valleys eastward from the Nile. The Semitic tribes, who seem to have had
their early seat and centre of dispersion somewhere in this region, were
coalescing into nations, Babylonians along the lower Tigris and
Euphrates, Assyrians later along the upper rivers, Hebrews under David
and Solomon[3] by the Jordan, Phoenicians on the Mediterranean coast.

[Footnote 3: See _Accession of Solomon_, page 92.]

The early Babylonian civilization may antedate even the Egyptian; but
its monuments were less permanent, its rulers less anxious for the
future. The "appeal to posterity," the desire for a posthumous fame,
seems with them to have been slower of conception. True, the first
Babylonian monarchs of whom we have any record, in an era perhaps over
five thousand years before Christianity, stamped the royal signet on
every brick of their walls and temples. But common-sense suggests that
this was less to preserve their fame than to preserve their bricks.
Theft is no modern innovation.

They were a mathematical race, these Babylonians. In fact, Semite and
mathematician are names that have been closely allied through all the
course of history, and one cannot help but wish our Aryan race had
somewhere lived through an experience which would produce in them the
exactitude in balance and measurement of facts that has distinguished
the Arabs and the Jews. The Babylonians founded astronomy and
chronology; they recorded the movements of the stars, and divided their
year according to the sun and moon. They built a vast and intricate
network of canals to fertilize their land; and they arranged the
earliest system of legal government, the earliest code of laws, that has
come down to us.[4]

[Footnote 4: _Compilation of the Earliest Code_, page 14.]


The sciences, then, arise more truly here than with the Egyptians. Man
here began to take notice, to record and to classify the facts of
nature. We may count this the second visible step in his great progress.
Never again shall we find him in a childish attitude of idle wonder.
Always is his brain alert, striving to understand, self-conscious of its
own power over nature.

It may have been wealth and luxury that enfeebled the Babylonians as,
it did the Egyptians. At any rate, their empire was overturned by a
border colony of their own, the Assyrians, a rough and hardy folk who
had maintained themselves for centuries battling against tribes from the
surrounding mountains. It was like a return to barbarism when about B.C.
880 the Assyrians swept over the various Semite lands. Loud were the
laments of the Hebrews; terrible the tales of cruelty; deep the scorn
with which the Babylonians submitted to the rude conquerors. We approach
here a clearer historic period; we can trace with plainness the
devastating track of war;[5] we can read the boastful triumph of the
Assyrian chiefs, can watch them step by step as they adopt the culture
and the vices of their new subjects, growing ever more graceful and more
enfeebled, until they too are overthrown by a new and hardier race, the
Persians, an Aryan folk.

[Footnote 5: See _Rise and Fall of Assyria_, page 105.]

Before turning to this last and most prominent family of humankind, let
us look for a moment at the other, darker races, seen vaguely as they
come in contact with the whites. The negroes, set sharply by themselves
in Africa, never seem to have created any progressive civilization of
their own, never seem to have advanced further than we find the wild
tribes in the interior of the country to-day. But the yellow or Turanian
races, the Chinese and Japanese, the Turks and the Tartars, did not
linger so helplessly behind. The Chinese, at least, established a social
world of their own, widely different from that of the whites, in some
respects perhaps superior to it. But the fatal weakness of the yellow
civilization was that it was not ennobling like the Egyptian, not
scientific like the Babylonian, not adventurous and progressive as we
shall find the Aryan.

This, of course, is speaking in general terms. Something somewhat
ennobling there may be in the contemplations of Confucius;[6] but no man
can favorably compare the Chinese character to-day with the European,
whether we regard either intensity of feeling, or variety, range,
subtlety, and beauty of emotion. So, also, the Chinese made scientific
discoveries--but knew not how to apply them or improve them. So also
they made conquests--and abandoned them; toiled--and sank back into
inertia.

[Footnote 6: See _Rise of Confucius_, page 270.]

The Japanese present a separate problem, as yet little understood in its
earlier stages.[7] As to the Tartars, wild and hardy horsemen roaming
over Northern Asia, they kept for ages their independent animal strength
and fierceness. They appear and disappear like flashes. They seem to
seek no civilization of their own; they threaten again and again to
destroy that of all the other races of the globe. Fitly, indeed, was
their leader Attila once termed "the Scourge of God."


[Footnote 7: See _Prince Jimmu_, page 140.]


THE ARYANS

Of our own progressive Aryan race, we have no monuments nor inscriptions
so old as those of the Hamites and the Semites. What comparative
philology tells is this: An early, if not the original, home of the
Aryans was in Asia, to the eastward of the Semites, probably in the
mountain district back of modern Persia. That is, they were not, like
the other whites, a people of the marsh lands and river valleys. They
lived in a higher, hardier, and more bracing atmosphere. Perhaps it was
here that their minds took a freer bent, their spirits caught a bolder
tone. Wherever they moved they came as conquerors among other races.

In their primeval home and probably before the year B.C. 3000, they had
already acquired a fair degree of civilization. They built houses,
ploughed the land, and ground grain into flour for their baking. The
family relations were established among them; they had some social
organization and simple form of government; they had learned to worship
a god, and to see in him a counterpart of their tribal ruler.

From their upland farms they must have looked eastward upon yet higher
mountains, rising impenetrable above the snowline; but to north and
south and west they might turn to lower regions; and by degrees, perhaps
as they grew too numerous for comfort, a few families wandered off along
the more inviting routes. Whichever way they started, their adventurous
spirit led them on. We find no trace of a single case where hearts
failed or strength grew weary and the movement became retrograde, back
toward the ancient home. Spreading out, radiating in all directions, it
is they who have explored the earth, who have measured it and marked its
bounds and penetrated almost to its every corner. It is they who still
pant to complete the work so long ago begun.

Before B.C. 2000 one of these exuded swarms had penetrated India,
probably by way of the Indus River. In the course of a thousand years or
so, the intruders expanded and fought their way slowly from the Indus to
the Ganges. The earlier and duskier inhabitants gave way before them or
became incorporated in the stronger race. A mighty Aryan or Hindu empire
was formed in India and endured there until well within historic times.

Yet its power faded. Life in the hot and languid tropics tends to
weaken, not invigorate, the sinews of a race. Then, too, a formal
religion, a system of castes[8] as arbitrary as among the Egyptians,
laid its paralyzing grip upon the land. About B.C. 600 Buddhism, a new
and beautiful religion, sought to revive the despairing people; but they
were beyond its help.[9] Their slothful languor had become too deep.
From having been perhaps the first and foremost and most civilized of
the Aryan tribes, the Hindus sank to be degenerate members of the race.
We shall turn to look on them again in a later period; but they will be
seen in no favorable light.

[Footnote 8: See _The Formation of the Castes_, page 52.]

[Footnote 9: See _The Foundation of Buddhism_, page 160.]

Meanwhile other wanderers from the Aryan home appear to the north and
west. Perhaps even the fierce Tartars are an Aryan race, much altered
from long dwelling among the yellow peoples. One tribe, the Persians,
moved directly west, and became neighbors of the already noted Semitic
group. After long wars backward and forward, bringing us well within the
range of history, the Persians proved too powerful for the whole Semite
group. They helped destroy Assyria,[10] they overthrew the second
Babylonian empire which Nebuchadnezzar had built up, and then, pressing
on to the conquest of Egypt, they swept the Hamites too from their place
of sovereignty.[11]

[Footnote 10: See _Destruction of Nineveh_, page 105.]

[Footnote 11: See _Conquests of Cyrus_, page 250.]

How surely do those tropic lands avenge themselves on each new savage
horde of invaders from the hardy North. It is not done in a generation,
not in a century, perhaps. But drop by drop the vigorous, tingling,
Arctic blood is sapped away. Year after year the lazy comfort, the loose
pleasure, of the south land fastens its curse upon the mighty warriors.
As we watch the Persians, we see their kings go mad, or become
effeminate tyrants sending underlings to do their fighting for them. We
see the whole race visibly degenerate, until one questions if
Marathon[12] were after all so marvellous a victory, and suspects that
at whatever point the Persians had begun their advance on Europe they
would have been easily hurled back.

[Footnote 12: See _The Battle of Marathon_, page 322.]

It was in Europe only that the Aryan wanderers found a temperate
climate, a region similar to that in which they had been bred. Recent
speculation has even suggested that Europe was their primeval home, from
which they had strayed toward Asia, and to which they now returned.
Certainly it is in Europe that the race has continued to develop.
Earliest of these Aryan waves to take possession of their modern
heritage, were the Celts, who must have journeyed over the European
continent at some dim period too remote even for a guess. Then came the
Greeks and Latins, closely allied tribes, representing possibly a single
migration, that spread westward along the islands and peninsulas of the
Mediterranean. The Teutons may have left Asia before B.C. 1000, for they
seem to have reached their German forests by three centuries beyond that
time, and these vast migratory movements were very slow. The latest
Aryan wave, that of the Slavs, came well within historic times. We
almost fancy we can see its movement. Russian statesmen, indeed, have
hopes that this is not yet completed. They dream that they, the youngest
of the peoples, are yet to dominate the whole.


THE GREEKS AND LATINS

Of these European Aryans the only branches that come within the limits
of our present period, that become noteworthy before B.C. 480, are the
Greeks and Latins.

Their languages tell us that they formed but a single tribe long after
they became separated from the other peoples of their race. Finally,
however, the Latins, journeying onward, lost sight of their friends, and
it must have taken many centuries of separation for the two tongues to
grow so different as they were when Greeks and Romans, each risen to a
mighty nation, met again.

The Greeks, or Hellenes as they called themselves, seem to have been
only one of a number of kindred tribes who occupied not only the shores
of the Ægean, but Thrace, Macedonia, a considerable part of Asia Minor,
and other neighboring regions. The Greeks developed in intellect more
rapidly than their neighbors, outdistanced them in the race for
civilization, forgot these poor relations, and grouped them with the
rest of outside mankind under the scornful name "barbarians."

Why it was that the Greeks were thus specially stimulated beyond their
brethren we do not know. It has long been one of the commonplaces of
history to declare them the result of their environment. It is pointed
out that in Greece they lived amid precipitous mountains, where, as
hunters, they became strong and venturesome, independent and
self-reliant. A sea of islands lay all around; and while an open ocean
might only have awed and intimidated them, this ever-luring prospect of
shore beyond shore rising in turn on the horizon made them sailors, made
them friendly traffickers among themselves. Always meeting new faces,
driving new bargains, they became alert, quick-witted, progressive, the
foremost race of all the ancient world.

They do not seem to have been a creative folk. They only adapted and
carried to a higher point what they learned from the older nations with
whom they now came in contact. Phoenicia supplied them with an alphabet,
and they began the writing of books. Egypt showed them her records, and,
improving on her idea, they became historians. So far as we know, the
earliest real "histories" were written in Greece; that is, the earliest
accounts of a whole people, an entire series of events, as opposed to
the merely individual statements on the Egyptian monuments, the
personal, boastful clamor of some king.

Before we reach this period of written history we know that the Greeks
had long been civilized. Their own legends scarce reach back farther
than the first founding of Athens,[13] which they place about B.C. 1500.
Yet recent excavations in Crete have revealed the remains of a
civilization which must have antedated that by several centuries.

[Footnote 13: See _Theseus Founds Athens_, page 45.]

But we grope in darkness! The most ancient Greek book that has come down
to us is the _Iliad_, with its tale of the great war against Troy.[14]
Critics will not permit us to call the _Iliad_ a history, because it was
not composed, or at least not written down, until some centuries after
the events of which it tells. Moreover, it poetizes its theme, doubtless
enlarges its pictures, brings gods and goddesses before our eyes,
instead of severely excluding everything except what the blind bard
perchance could personally vouch for.

[Footnote 14: See _Fall of Troy_, page 70.]

Still both the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ are good enough history for
most of us, in that they give a full, outline of Grecian life and
society as Homer knew it. We see the little, petty states, with their
chiefs all-powerful, and the people quite ignored. We see the heroes
driving to battle in their chariots, guarded by shield and helmet,
flourishing sword and spear. We learn what Ulysses did not know of
foreign lands.. We hear Achilles' famed lament amid the dead, and note
the vague glimmering idea of a future life, which the Greeks had caught
perhaps from the Egyptians, perhaps from the suggestive land of dreams.

With the year B.C. 776 we come in contact with a clear marked
chronology. The Greeks themselves reckoned from that date by means of
olympiads or intervals between the Olympic games. The story becomes
clear. The autocratic little city kings, governing almost as they
pleased, have everywhere been displaced by oligarchies. The few leading
nobles may name one of themselves to bear rule, but the real power lies
divided among the class. Then, with the growing prominence of the
Pythian games[15] we come upon a new stage of national development. The
various cities begin to form alliances, to recognize the fact that they
may be made safer and happier by a larger national life. The sense of
brotherhood begins to extend beyond the circle of personal acquaintance.

[Footnote 15: See _Pythian Games at Delphi_, page 181.]

This period was one of lawmaking, of experimenting. The traditions, the
simple customs of the old kingly days, were no longer sufficient for the
guidance of the larger cities, the more complicated circles of society,
which were growing up. It was no longer possible for a man who did not
like his tribe to abandon it and wander elsewhere with his family and
herds. The land was too fully peopled for that. The dissatisfied could
only endure and grumble and rebel. One system of law after another was
tried and thrown aside. The class on whom in practice a rule bore most
hard, would refuse longer assent to it. There were uprisings, tumults,
bloody frays.

Sparta, at this time the most prominent of the Greek cities, evolved a
code which made her in some ways the wonder of ancient days. The state
was made all-powerful; it took entire possession of the citizen, with
the purpose of making him a fighter, a strong defender of himself and of
his country. His home life was almost obliterated, or, if you like, the
whole city was made one huge family. All men ate in common; youth was
severely restrained; its training was all for physical hardihood. Modern
socialism, communism, have seldom ventured further in theory than the
Spartans went in practice. The result seems to have been the production
of a race possessed of tremendous bodily power and courage, but of
stunted intellectual growth. The great individual minds of Greece, the
thinkers, the creators, did not come from Sparta.

In Athens a different _régime_ was meanwhile developing Hellenes of
another type. A realization of how superior the Greeks were to earlier
races, of what vast strides man was making in intelligence and social
organization, can in no way be better gained than by comparing the law
code of the Babylonian Hammurabi with that of Solon in Athens.[16] A
period of perhaps sixteen hundred years separates the two, but the
difference in their mental power is wider still.

[Footnote 16: See _Solon's Legislation_, page 203, and _Compilation of
the Earliest Code_, page 14.]

While the Greeks were thus forging rapidly ahead, their ancient kindred,
the Latins, were also progressing, though at a rate less dazzling. The
true date of Rome's founding we do not know. Her own legends give B.C.
753.[17] But recent excavations on the Palatine hill show that it was
already fortified at a much earlier period. Rome, we believe, was
originally a frontier fortress erected by the Latins to protect them
from the attacks of the non-Aryan races among whom they had intruded.
This stronghold became ever more numerously peopled, until it grew into
an individual state separate from the other Latin cities.

[Footnote 17: See _The Foundation of Rome_, page 116.]

The Romans passed through the vicissitudes which we have already noted
in Greece as characteristic of the Aryan development. The early war
leader became an absolute king, his power tended to become hereditary,
but its abuse roused the more powerful citizens to rebellion, and the
kingdom vanished in an oligarchy.[18] This last change occurred in Rome
about B.C. 510, and it was attended by such disasters that the city sank
back into a condition that was almost barbarous when compared with her
opulence under the Tarquin kings.

[Footnote 18: See _Rome Established as a Republic_, page 300.]

It was soon after this that the Persians, ignorant of their own
decadence, and dreaming still of world power, resolved to conquer the
remaining little states lying scarce known along the boundaries of their
empire. They attacked the Greeks, and at Marathon (B.C. 490) and Salamis
(B.C. 480) were hurled back and their power broken.[19]

[Footnote 19: See _Battle of Marathon_, page 322, and _Invasion of
Greece_, page 354.]

This was a world event, one of the great turning points, a decision that
could not have been otherwise if man was really to progress. The
degenerate, enfeebled, half-Semitized Aryans of Asia were not permitted
to crush the higher type which was developing in Europe. The more
vigorous bodies and far abler brains of the Greeks enabled them to
triumph over all the hordes of their opponents. The few conquered the
many; and the following era became one of European progress, not of
Asiatic stagnation.



(FOR THE NEXT SECTION OF THIS GENERAL SURVEY SEE VOLUME II.)





DAWN OF CIVILIZATION

B.C. 5867[20]

G.C.C. MASPERO


     It is a far cry to hark back to 11,000 years before Christ, yet
     borings in the valley of the Nile, whence comes the first recorded
     history of the human race, have unveiled to the light pottery and
     other relics of civilization that, at the rate of deposits of the
     Nile, must have taken at least that number of years to cover.

     [Footnote 20: Champollion.]

     Nature takes countless thousands of years to form and build up her
     limestone hills, but buried deep in these we find evidences of a
     stone age wherein man devised and made himself edged tools and
     weapons of rudely chipped stone. These shaped, edged implements, we
     have learned, were made by white-heating a suitable flint or stone
     and tracing thereon with cold water the pattern desired, just as
     practised by the Indians of the American continent, and in our day
     by the manufacturers of ancient (_sic_) arrow-, spear-, and
     axe-heads. This shows a civilization that has learned the method of
     artificially producing fire, and its uses.

     Egypt is the monumental land of the earth, as the Egyptians are the
     monumental people of history. The first human monarch to reign over
     all Egypt was Menes, the founder of Memphis. As the gate of Africa,
     Egypt has always held an important position in world-politics. Its
     ancient wealth and power were enormous. Inclusive of the Soudan,
     its population is now more than eight millions. Its present
     importance is indicated by its relations to England. Historians
     vary in their compilations of Egyptian chronology. The epoch of
     Menes is fixed by Bunsen at B.C. 3643, by Lepsius at B.C. 3892, and
     by Poole at B.C. 2717. Before Menes Egypt was divided into
     independent kingdoms. It has always been a country of mysteries,
     with the mighty Nile, and its inundations, so little understood by
     the ancients; its trackless desert; its camels and caravans; its
     tombs and temples; its obelisks and pyramids, its groups of gods:
     Ra, Osiris, Isis, Apis, Horus, Hathor--the very names breathe
     suggestions of mystery, cruelty, pomp, and power. In the sciences
     and in the industrial arts the ancient Egyptians were highly
     cultivated. Much Egyptian literature has come down to us, but it is
     unsystematic and entirely devoid of style, being without lofty
     ideas or charms. In art, however, Egypt may be placed next to
     Greece, particularly in architecture.

     The age of the Pyramid-builders was a brilliant one. They prove the
     magnificence of the kings and the vast amount of human labor at
     their disposal. The regal power at that time was very strong. The
     reign of Khufu or Cheops is marked by the building of the great
     pyramid. The pyramids were the tombs of kings, built in the
     necropolis of Memphis, ten miles above the modern Cairo. Security
     was the object as well as splendor.

     As remarked by a great Egyptologist, the whole life of the Egyptian
     was spent in the contemplation of death; thus the tomb became the
     concrete thought. The belief of the ancient Egyptian was that so
     long as his body remained intact so was his immortality; whence
     arose the embalming of the great, and hence the immense structures
     of stone to secure the inviolability of the entombed monarch.


The monuments have as yet yielded no account of the events which tended
to unite Egypt under the rule of one man; we can only surmise that the
feudal principalities had gradually been drawn together into two groups,
each of which formed a separate kingdom. Heliopolis became the chief
focus in the north, from which civilization radiated over the wet plain
and the marshes of the Delta.

Its colleges of priests had collected, condensed, and arranged the
principal myths of the local regions; the Ennead to which it gave
conception would never have obtained the popularity which we must
acknowledge it had, if its princes had not exercised, for at least some
period, an actual suzerainty over the neighboring plains. It was around
Heliopolis that the kingdom of Lower Egypt was organized; everything
there bore traces of Heliopolitan theories--the protocol of the kings,
their supposed descent from Ra, and the enthusiastic worship which they
offered to the sun.

The Delta, owing to its compact and restricted area, was aptly suited
for government from one centre; the Nile valley proper, narrow,
tortuous, and stretching like a thin strip on either bank of the river,
did not lend itself to so complete a unity. It, too, represented a
single kingdom, having the reed and the lotus for its emblems; but its
component parts were more loosely united, its religion was less
systematized, and it lacked a well-placed city to serve as a political
and sacerdotal centre. Hermopolis contained schools of theologians who
certainly played an important part in the development of myths and
dogmas; but the influence of its rulers was never widely felt.

In the south, Siut disputed their supremacy, and Heracleopolis stopped
their road to the north. These three cities thwarted and neutralized one
another, and not one of them ever succeeded in obtaining a lasting
authority over Upper Egypt. Each of the two kingdoms had its own natural
advantages and its system of government, which gave to it a peculiar
character, and stamped it, as it were, with a distinct personality down
to its latest days. The kingdom of Upper Egypt was more powerful,
richer, better populated, and was governed apparently by more active and
enterprising rulers. It is to one of the latter, Mini or Menes of
Thinis, that tradition ascribes the honor of having fused the two Egypts
into a single empire, and of having inaugurated the reign of the human
dynasties.

Thinis figured in the historic period as one of the least of Egyptian
cities. It barely maintained an existence on the left bank of the Nile,
if not on the exact spot now occupied by Girgeh, at least only a short
distance from it. The principality of the Osirian Reliquary, of which it
was the metropolis, occupied the valley from one mountain to the other,
and gradually extended across the desert as far as the Great Theban
Oasis. Its inhabitants worshipped a sky-god, Anhuri, or rather two twin
gods, Anhuri-shu, who were speedily amalgamated with the solar deities
and became a warlike personification of Ra.

Anhuri-shu, like all other solar manifestations, came to be associated
with a goddess having the form or head of a lioness--a Sokhit, who took
for the occasion the epithet of Mihit, the northern one. Some of the
dead from this city are buried on the other side of the Nile, near the
modern village of Mesheikh, at the foot of the Arabian chain, whose deep
cliffs here approach somewhat near the river: the principal necropolis
was at some distance to the east, near the sacred town of Abydos. It
would appear that, at the outset, Abydos was the capital of the country,
for the entire nome bore the same name as the city, and had adopted for
its symbol the representation of the reliquary in which the god reposed.

In very early times Abydos fell into decay, and resigned its political
rank to Thinis, but its religious importance remained unimpaired. The
city occupied a long and narrow strip between the canal and the first
slopes of the Libyan mountains. A brick fortress defended it from the
incursions of the Bedouin, and beside it the temple of the god of the
dead reared its naked walls. Here Anhuri, having passed from life to
death, was worshipped under the name of Khontamentit, the chief of that
western region whither souls repair on quitting this earth.

It is impossible to say by what blending of doctrines or by what
political combinations this Sun of the Night came to be identified with
Osiris of Mendes, since the fusion dates back to a very remote
antiquity; it had become an established fact long before the most
ancient sacred books were compiled. Osiris Khontamentit grew rapidly in
popular favor, and his temple attracted annually an increasing number of
pilgrims. The Great Oasis had been considered at first as a sort of
mysterious paradise, whither the dead went in search of peace and
happiness. It was called Uit, the Sepulchre; this name clung to it after
it had become an actual Egyptian province, and the remembrance of its
ancient purpose survived in the minds of the people, so that the
"cleft," the gorge in the mountain through which the doubles journeyed
toward it, never ceased to be regarded as one of the gates of the other
world.

At the time of the New Year festivals, spirits flocked thither from all
parts of the valley; they there awaited the coming of the dying sun, in
order to embark with him and enter safely the dominions of Khontamentit.
Abydos, even before the historic period, was the only town, and its god
the only god, whose worship, practised by all Egyptians, inspired them
all with an equal devotion.

Did this sort of moral conquest give rise, later on, to a belief in a
material conquest by the princes of Thinis and Abydos, or is there an
historical foundation for the tradition which ascribes to them the
establishment of a single monarchy? It is the Thinite Menes, whom the
Theban annalists point out as the ancestor of the glorious Pharaohs of
the XVIII dynasty: it is he also who is inscribed in the Memphite
chronicles, followed by Manetho, at the head of their lists of human
kings, and all Egypt for centuries acknowledged him as its first mortal
ruler.

It is true that a chief of Thinis may well have borne such a name, and
may have accomplished feats which rendered him famous; but on closer
examination his pretensions to reality disappear, and his personality is
reduced to a cipher.

"This Menes, according to the priests, surrounded Memphis with dikes.
For the river formerly followed the sand-hills for some distance on the
Libyan side. Menes, having dammed up the reach about a hundred stadia to
the south of Memphis, caused the old bed to dry up, and conveyed the
river through an artificial channel dug midway between the two mountain
ranges.

"Then Menes, the first who was king, having enclosed a space of ground
with dikes, founded that town which is still called Memphis: he then
made a lake around it to the north and west, fed by the river; the city
he bounded on the east by the Nile." The history of Memphis, such as it
can be gathered from the monuments, differs considerably from the
tradition current in Egypt at the time of Herodotus.

It appears, indeed, that at the outset the site on which it subsequently
arose was occupied by a small fortress, Anbu-hazu--the white wall--which
was dependent on Heliopolis and in which Phtah possessed a sanctuary.
After the "white wall" was separated from the Heliopolitan principality
to form a nome by itself it assumed a certain importance, and furnished,
so it was said, the dynasties which succeeded the Thinite. Its
prosperity dates only, however, from the time when the sovereigns of the
V and VI dynasties fixed on it for their residence; one of them, Papi I,
there founded for himself and for his "double" after him, a new town,
which he called Minnofiru, from his tomb. Minnofiru, which is the
correct pronunciation and the origin of Memphis, probably signified "the
good refuge," the haven of the good, the burying-place where the blessed
dead came to rest beside Osiris.

The people soon forgot the true interpretation, or probably it did not
fall in with their taste for romantic tales. They rather despised, as a
rule, to discover in the beginnings of history individuals from whom the
countries or cities with which they were familiar took their names: if
no tradition supplied them with this, they did not experience any
scruples in inventing one. The Egyptians of the time of the Ptolemies,
who were guided in their philological speculations by the pronunciation
in vogue around them, attributed the patronship of their city to a
Princess Memphis, a daughter of its founder, the fabulous Uchoreus;
those of preceding ages before the name had become altered thought to
find in Minnofiru or "Mini Nofir," or "Menes the Good," the reputed
founder of the capital of the Delta. Menes the Good, divested of his
epithet, is none other than Menes, the first king of all Egypt, and he
owes his existence to a popular attempt at etymology.

The legend which identifies the establishment of the kingdom with the
construction of the city, must have originated at a time when Memphis
was still the residence of the kings and the seat of government, at
latest about the end of the Memphite period. It must have been an old
tradition at the time of the Theban dynasties, since they admitted
unhesitatingly the authenticity of the statements which ascribed to the
northern city so marked a superiority over their own country. When the
hero was once created and firmly established in his position, there was
little difficulty in inventing a story about him which would portray him
as a paragon and an ideal sovereign.

He was represented in turn as architect, warrior, and statesman; he had
founded Memphis, he had begun the temple of Phtah, written laws and
regulated the worship of the gods, particularly that of Hapis, and he
had conducted expeditions against the Libyans. When he lost his only son
in the flower of his age, the people improvised a hymn of mourning to
console him--the "Maneros"--both the words and the tune of which were
handed down from generation to generation.

He did not, moreover, disdain the luxuries of the table, for he invented
the art of serving a dinner, and the mode of eating it in a reclining
posture. One day, while hunting, his dogs, excited by something or
other, fell upon him to devour him. He escaped with difficulty and,
pursued by them, fled to the shore of Lake Moeris, and was there
brought to bay; he was on the point of succumbing to them, when a
crocodile took him on his back and carried him across to the other side.
In gratitude he built a new town, which he called Crocodilopolis, and
assigned to it for its god the crocodile which had saved him; he then
erected close to it the famous labyrinth and a pyramid for his tomb.

Other traditions show him in a less favorable light. They accuse him of
having, by horrible crimes, excited against him the anger of the gods,
and allege that after a reign of sixty-two years he was killed by a
hippopotamus which came forth from the Nile. They also relate that the
Saite Tafnakhti, returning from an expedition against the Arabs, during
which he had been obliged to renounce the pomp and luxuries of life, had
solemnly cursed him, and had caused his imprecations to be inscribed
upon a "stele"[21] set up in the temple of Amon at Thebes. Nevertheless,
in the memory that Egypt preserved of its first Pharaoh, the good
outweighed the evil. He was worshipped in Memphis, side by side with
Phtah and Ramses II.; his name figured at the head of the royal lists,
and his cult continued till the time of the Ptolemies.

[Footnote 21: The burned tile showing the impression of the stylus, made
on the clay while plastic.--ED.]

His immediate successors have only a semblance of reality, such as he
had. The lists give the order of succession, it is true, with the years
of their reigns almost to a day, sometimes the length of their lives,
but we may well ask whence the chroniclers procured so much precise
information. They were in the same position as ourselves with regard to
these ancient kings: they knew them by a tradition of a later age, by a
fragment papyrus fortuitously preserved in a temple, by accidentally
coming across some monument bearing their name, and were reduced, as it
were, to put together the few facts which they possessed, or to supply
such as were wanting by conjectures, often in a very improbable manner.
It is quite possible that they were unable to gather from the memory of
the past the names of those individuals of which they made up the first
two dynasties. The forms of these names are curt and rugged, and
indicative of a rude and savage state, harmonizing with the
semi-barbaric period to which they are relegated: Ati the Wrestler, Teti
the Runner, Qeunqoni the Crusher, are suitable rulers for a people the
first duty of whose chief was to lead his followers into battle, and to
strike harder than any other man in the thickest of the fight.

The inscriptions supply us with proofs that some of these princes lived
and reigned:--Sondi, who is classed in the II dynasty, received a
continuous worship toward the end of the III dynasty. But did all those
who preceded him, and those who followed him, exist as he did? And if
they existed, do the order and relation agree with actual truth? The
different lists do not contain the same names in the same position;
certain Pharaohs are added or suppressed without appreciable reason.
Where Manetho inscribes Kenkenes and Ouenephes, the tables of the time
of Seti I give us Ati and Ata; Manetho reckons nine kings to the II
dynasty, while they register only five. The monuments, indeed, show us
that Egypt in the past obeyed princes whom her annalists were unable to
classify: for instance, they associated with Sondi a Pirsenu, who is not
mentioned in the annals. We must, therefore, take the record of all this
opening period of history for what it is--namely, a system invented at a
much later date, by means of various artifices and combinations--to be
partially accepted in default of a better, but without, according to it,
that excessive confidence which it has hitherto received. The two
Thinite dynasties, in direct descent from the fabulous Menes, furnish,
like this hero himself, only a tissue of romantic tales and miraculous
legends in the place of history. A double-headed stork, which had
appeared in the first year of Teti, son of Menes, had foreshadowed to
Egypt a long prosperity, but a famine under Ouenephes, and a terrible
plague under Semempses, had depopulated the country; the laws had been
relaxed, great crimes had been committed, and revolts had broken out.

During the reign of the Boethos a gulf had opened near Bubastis, and
swallowed up many people, then the Nile had flowed with honey for
fifteen days in the time of Nephercheres, and Sesochris was supposed to
have been a giant in stature. A few details about royal edifices were
mixed up with these prodigies. Teti had laid the foundation of the great
palace of Memphis, Ouenephes had built the pyramids of Ko-kome near
Saqqara. Several of the ancient Pharaohs had published books on
theology, or had written treatises on anatomy and medicine; several had
made laws called Kakôû, the male of males, or the bull of bulls. They
explained his name by the statement that he had concerned himself about
the sacred animals; he had proclaimed as gods, Hapis of Memphis, Mnevis
of Heliopolis, and the goat of Mendes.

After him, Binothris had conferred the right of succession upon all
women of the blood-royal. The accession of the III dynasty, a Memphite
one according to Manetho, did not at first change the miraculous
character of this history. The Libyans had revolted against Necherophes,
and the two armies were encamped before each other, when one night the
disk of the moon became immeasurably enlarged, to the great alarm of the
rebels, who recognized in this phenomenon a sign of the anger of heaven,
and yielded without fighting. Tosorthros, the successor of Necherophes,
brought the hieroglyphs and the art of stone-cutting to perfection. He
composed, as Teti did, books of medicine, a fact which caused him to be
identified with the healing god Imhotpu. The priests related these
things seriously, and the Greek writers took them down from their lips
with the respect which they offered to everything emanating from the
wise men of Egypt.

What they related of the human kings was not more detailed, as we see,
than their accounts of the gods. Whether the legends dealt with deities
or kings, all that we know took its origin, not in popular imagination,
but in sacerdotal dogma: they were invented long after the times they
dealt with, in the recesses of the temples, with an intention and a
method of which we are enabled to detect flagrant instances on the
monuments.

Toward the middle of the third century before our era the Greek troops
stationed on the southern frontier, in the forts at the first cataract,
developed a particular veneration for Isis of Philæ. Their devotion
spread to the superior officers who came to inspect them, then to the
whole population of the Thebaid, and finally reached the court of the
Macedonian kings. The latter, carried away by force of example, gave
every encouragement to a movement which attracted worshippers to a
common sanctuary, and united in one cult two races over which they
ruled. They pulled down the meagre building of the Saite period, which
had hitherto sufficed for the worship of Isis, constructed at great cost
the temple which still remains almost intact, and assigned to it
considerable possessions in Nubia, which, in addition to gifts from
private individuals, made the goddess the richest land-owner in Southern
Egypt. Knumu and his two wives, Anukit and Satit, who, before Isis, had
been the undisputed suzerains of the cataract, perceived with jealousy
their neighbor's prosperity: the civil wars and invasions of the
centuries immediately preceding had ruined their temples, and their
poverty contrasted painfully with the riches of the new-comer.

The priests resolved to lay this sad state of affairs before King
Ptolemy, to represent to him the services which they had rendered and
still continued to render to Egypt, and above all to remind him of the
generosity of the ancient Pharaohs, whose example, owing to the poverty
of the times, the recent Pharaohs had been unable to follow. Doubtless
authentic documents were wanting in their archives to support their
pretensions: they therefore inscribed upon a rock, in the island of
Sehel, a long inscription which they attributed to Zosiri of the III
dynasty. This sovereign had left behind him a vague reputation for
greatness. As early as the XII dynasty Usirtasen III had claimed him as
"his father"--his ancestor--and had erected a statue to him; the priests
knew that, by invoking him, they had a chance of obtaining a hearing.

The inscription which they fabricated set forth that in the eighteenth
year of Zosiri's reign he had sent to Madir, lord of Elephantine, a
message couched in these terms: "I am overcome with sorrow for the
throne, and for those who reside in the palace, and my heart is
afflicted and suffers greatly because the Nile has not risen in my time,
for the space of eight years. Corn is scarce, there is a lack of
herbage, and nothing is left to eat: when any one calls upon his
neighbors for help, they take pains not to go. The child weeps, the
young man is uneasy, the hearts of the old men are in despair, their
limbs are bent, they crouch on the earth, they fold their hands; the
courtiers have no further resources; the shops formerly furnished with
rich wares are now filled only with air, all that was within them has
disappeared. My spirit also, mindful of the beginning of things, seeks
to call upon the savior who was here where I am, during the centuries of
the gods, upon Thot-Ibis, that great wise one, upon Imhotpu, son of
Phtah of Memphis. Where is the place in which the Nile is born? Who is
the god or goddess concealed there? What is his likeness?"

The lord of Elephantine brought his reply in person. He described to
the king, who was evidently ignorant of it, the situation of the island
and the rocks of the cataract, the phenomena of the inundation, the gods
who presided over it, and who alone could relieve Egypt from her
disastrous plight.

Zosiri repaired to the temple of the principality and offered the
prescribed sacrifices; the god arose, opened his eyes, panted, and cried
aloud, "I am Khnumu who created thee!" and promised him a speedy return
of a high Nile and the cessation of the famine.

Pharaoh was touched by the benevolence which his divine father had shown
him; he forthwith made a decree by which he ceded to the temple all his
rights of suzerainty over the neighboring nomes within a radius of
twenty miles.

Henceforward the entire population, tillers and vinedressers, fishermen
and hunters, had to yield the tithe of their income to the priests; the
quarries could not be worked without the consent of Khnumu, and the
payment of a suitable indemnity into his coffers; finally, metals and
precious woods, shipped thence for Egypt, had to submit to a toll on
behalf of the temple.

Did the Ptolemies admit the claims which the local priests attempted to
deduce from this romantic tale? and did the god regain possession of the
domains and dues which they declared had been his right? The stele shows
us with what ease the scribes could forge official documents when the
exigencies of daily life forced the necessity upon them; it teaches us
at the same time how that fabulous chronicle was elaborated, whose
remains have been preserved for us by classical writers. Every prodigy,
every fact related by Manetho, was taken from some document analogous to
the supposed inscription of Zosiri.

The real history of the early centuries, therefore, eludes our
researches, and no contemporary record traces for us those vicissitudes
which Egypt passed through before being consolidated into a single
kingdom, under the rule of one man. Many names, apparently of powerful
and illustrious princes, had survived in the memory of the people; these
were collected, classified, and grouped in a regular manner into
dynasties, but the people were ignorant of any exact facts connected
with the names, and the historians, on their own account, were reduced
to collect apocryphal traditions for their sacred archives.

The monuments of these remote ages, however, cannot have entirely
disappeared: they existed in places where we have not as yet thought of
applying the pick, and chance excavations will some day most certainly
bring them to light. The few which we do possess barely go back beyond
the III dynasty: namely, the hypogeum of Shiri, priest of Sondi and
Pirsenu; possibly the tomb of Khuithotpu at Saqqara; the Great Sphinx of
Gizeh; a short inscription on the rocks of Wady Maghara, which
represents Zosiri (the same king of whom the priests of Khnumu in the
Greek period made a precedent) working the turquoise or copper mines of
Sinai; and finally the step pyramid where this Pharaoh rests. It forms a
rectangular mass, incorrectly oriented, with a variation from the true
north of 4° 35', 393 ft., 8 in. long from east to west, and 352 ft.
deep, with a height of 159 ft. 9 in. It is composed of six cubes, with
sloping sides, each being about 13 ft. less in width than the one below
it; that nearest to the ground measures 37 ft. 8 in. in height, and the
uppermost one 29 ft. 2 in.

It was entirely constructed of limestone from neighboring mountains. The
blocks are small and badly cut, the stone courses being concave, to
offer a better resistance to downward thrust and to shocks of
earthquake. When breaches in the masonry are examined, it can be seen
that the external surface of the steps has, as it were, a double stone
facing, each facing being carefully dressed. The body of the pyramid is
solid, the chambers being cut in the rock beneath. These chambers have
often been enlarged, restored, and reworked in the course of centuries,
and the passages which connect them form a perfect labyrinth into which
it is dangerous to venture without a guide. The columned porch, the
galleries and halls, all lead to a sort of enormous shaft, at the bottom
of which the architect had contrived a hiding-place, destined, no doubt,
to contain the more precious objects of the funerary furniture. Until
the beginning of this century the vault had preserved its original
lining of glazed pottery. Three quarters of the wall surface was covered
with green tiles, oblong and lightly convex on the outer side, but flat
on the inner: a square projection pierced with a hole served to fix them
at the back in a horizontal line by means of flexible wooden rods. Three
bands which frame one of the doors are inscribed with the titles of the
Pharaoh. The hieroglyphs are raised in either blue, red, green, or
yellow, on a fawn-colored ground.

The towns, palaces, temples, all the buildings which princes and kings
had constructed to be witnesses of their power or piety to future
generations, have disappeared in the course of ages, under the feet and
before the triumphal blasts of many invading hosts: the pyramid alone
has survived, and the most ancient of the historic monuments of Egypt is
a tomb.





COMPILATION OF THE EARLIEST CODE

B.C. 2250

HAMMURABI


     The foundation of all law-making in Babylonia from about the middle
     of the twenty-third century B.C. to the fall of the empire was the
     code of Hammurabi, the first king of all Babylonia. He expelled
     invaders from his dominions, cemented the union of north and south
     Babylonia, made Babylon the capital, and thus consolidated an
     empire which endured for almost twenty centuries. The code which he
     compiled is the oldest known in history, older by nearly a thousand
     years than the Mosaic, and of earlier date than the so-called Laws
     of Manu. It is one of the most important historical landmarks in
     existence, a document which gives us knowledge not otherwise
     furnished of the country and people, the civilization and life of a
     great centre of human action hitherto almost hidden in obscurity.
     Hammurabi, who is supposed to be identical with Amraphel, a
     contemporary of Abraham, is regarded as having certainly
     contributed through his laws to the Hebrew traditions. The
     discovery of this code has, therefore, a special value in relation
     to biblical studies, upon which so many other important side-lights
     have recently been thrown.

     The discovery was made at Susa, Persia, in December and January,
     1901-2, by M. de Morgan's French excavating expedition. The
     monument on which the laws are inscribed, a stele of black diorite
     nearly eight feet high, has been fully described by Assyriologists,
     and the inscription transcribed. It has been completely translated
     by Dr. Hugo Winckler, whose translation (in _Die Gesetze
     Hammurabis_, Band IV, Heft 4, of _Der Alte Orient_) furnishes the
     basis of the version herewith presented. Following an
     autobiographic preface, the text of the code contains two hundred
     and eighty edicts and an epilogue. To readers of the code who are
     familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures many biblical parallels will
     occur.


When Anu the Sublime, king of the Anunaki, and Bel [god of the earth],
the Lord of Heaven and earth, who decreed the fate of the land, assigned
to Marduk [or Merodach, the great god of Babylon] the over-ruling son of
Ea [god of the waters], God of righteousness, dominion over earthly man,
and made him great among the Igigi, they called Babylon by his
illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting
kingdom in it [Babylon], whose foundations are laid so solidly as those
of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the
exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness
in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the
strong should not harm the weak; so that I should rule over the
black-headed people like Shamash [the sun-god], and enlighten the land,
to further the well-being of mankind.

Hammurabi, the prince, called of Bel am I, making riches and increase,
enriching Nippur and Dur-ilu beyond compare, sublime patron of E-kur
[temple of Bel in Nippur, the seat of Bel's worship]; who reëstablished
Eridu and purified the worship of E-apsu [temple of Ea, at Eridu, the
chief seat of Ea's worship]; who conquered the four quarters of the
world, made great the name of Babylon, rejoiced the heart of Marduk, his
lord who daily pays his devotions in Saggil [Marduk's temple in
Babylon]; the royal scion whom Sin made; who enriched Ur [Abraham's
birthplace, the seat of the worship of Sin, the moon-god]; the humble,
the reverent, who brings wealth to Gish-shir-gal; the white king, heard
of Shamash, the mighty, who again laid the foundations of Sippana [seat
of worship of Shamash and his wife, Malkat]; who clothed the gravestones
of Malkat with green [symbolizing the resurrection of nature]; who made
E-babbar [temple of the sun in Sippara] great, which is like the
heavens; the warrior who guarded Larsa and renewed E-babbar [temple of
the sun in Larsa, biblical Elassar, in Southern Babylonia], with Shamash
as his helper; the lord who granted new life to Uruk [biblical Erech],
who brought plenteous water to its inhabitants, raised the head of
E-anna [temple of Ishtar-Nana at Uruk], and perfected the beauty of Anu
and Nana; shield of the land, who reunited the scattered inhabitants of
Isin; who richly endowed E-gal-mach [temple of Isin]; the protecting
king of the city, brother of the god Zamama [god of Kish]; who firmly
founded the farms of Kish, crowned E-me-te-ursag [sister city of Kish]
with glory, redoubled the great holy treasures of Nana, managed the
temple of Harsag-kalama [temple of Nergal at Cuthah]; the grave of the
enemy, whose help brought about the victory; who increased the power of
Cuthah; made all glorious in E-shidlam [a temple], the black steer
[title of Marduk] who gored the enemy; beloved of the god Nebo, who
rejoiced the inhabitants of Borsippa, the Sublime; who is indefatigable
for E-zida [temple of Nebo in Babylon]; the divine king of the city; the
White, Wise; who broadened the fields of Dilbat, who heaped up the
harvests for Urash; the Mighty, the lord to whom come sceptre and crown,
with which he clothes himself; the Elect of Ma-ma; who fixed the temple
bounds of Kesh, who made rich the holy feasts of Nin-tu [goddess of
Kesh]; the provident, solicitous, who provided food and drink for Lagash
and Girsu, who provided large sacrificial offerings for the temple of
Ningirsu [at Lagash]; who captured the enemy, the Elect of the oracle
who fulfilled the prediction of Hallab, who rejoiced the heart of Anunit
[whose oracle had predicted victory]; the pure prince, whose prayer is
accepted by Adad [god of Hallab, with goddess Anunit]; who satisfied the
heart of Adad, the warrior, in Karkar, who restored the vessels for
worship in E-ud-gal-gal; the king who granted life to the city of Adab;
the guide of E-mach; the princely king of the city, the irresistible
warrior, who granted life to the inhabitants of Mashkanshabri, and
brought abundance to the temple of Shid-lam; the White, Potent, who
penetrated the secret cave of the bandits, saved the inhabitants of
Malka from misfortune, and fixed their home fast in wealth; who
established pure sacrificial gifts for Ea and Dam-gal-nun-na, who made
his kingdom everlastingly great; the princely king of the city, who
subjected the districts on the Ud-kib-nun-na Canal [Euphrates?] to the
sway of Dagon, his Creator; who spared the inhabitants of Mera and
Tutul; the sublime prince, who makes the face of Ninni shine; who
presents holy meals to the divinity of Nin-a-zu, who cared for its
inhabitants in their need, provided a portion for them in Babylon in
peace; the shepherd of the oppressed and of the slaves; whose deeds find
favor before Anunit, who provided for Anunit in the temple of Dumash in
the suburb of Agade; who recognizes the right, who rules by law; who
gave back to the city of Assur its protecting god; who let the name of
Istar of Nineveh remain in E-mish-mish; the Sublime, who humbles himself
before the great gods; successor of Sumula-il; the mighty son of
Sin-muballit; the royal scion of Eternity; the mighty monarch, the sun
of Babylon, whose rays shed light over the land of Sumer and Akkad; the
king, obeyed by the four quarters of the world; Beloved of Ninni, am I.

When Marduk sent me to rule over men, to give the protection of right to
the land, I did right and righteousness in..., and brought about the
well-being of the oppressed.


CODE OF LAWS

1. If any one ensnare another, putting a ban upon him, but he cannot
prove it, then he that ensnared him shall be put to death.

2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to
the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser
shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the
accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the
accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river
shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.

3. If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and
does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offence
charged, be put to death.

4. If he satisfy the elders to impose a fine of grain or money, he shall
receive the fine that the action produces.

5. If a judge try a case, reach a decision and present his judgment in
writing; if later error shall appear in his decision, and it be through
his own fault, then he shall pay twelve times the fine set by him in the
case, and he shall be publicly removed from the judge's bench, and never
again shall he sit there to render judgment.

6. If any one steal the property of a temple or of the court, he shall
be put to death, and also the one who receives the stolen thing from him
shall be put to death.

7. If any one buy from the son or the slave of another man, without
witnesses or a contract, silver or gold, a male or female slave, an ox
or a sheep, an ass or anything, or if he take it in charge, he is
considered a thief and shall be put to death.

8. If any one steal cattle or sheep, or an ass, or a pig or a goat, if
it belong to a god or to the court, the thief shall pay thirtyfold
therefor; if they belonged to a freed man [of the king] he shall pay
tenfold; if the thief has nothing with which to pay he shall be put to
death.

9. If any one lose an article, and find it in the possession of another:
if the person in whose possession the thing is found say "A merchant
sold it to me, I paid for it before witnesses," and if the owner of the
thing say "I will bring witnesses who know my property," then shall the
purchaser bring the merchant who sold it to him, and the witnesses
before whom he bought it, and the owner shall bring witnesses who can
identify his property. The judge shall examine their testimony--both of
the witnesses before whom the price was paid, and of the witnesses who
identify the lost article on oath. The merchant is then proven to be a
thief and shall be put to death. The owner of the lost article receives
his property, and he who bought it receives the money he paid from the
estate of the merchant.

10. If the purchaser does not bring the merchant and the witnesses
before whom he bought the article, but its owner bring witnesses who
identify it, then the buyer is the thief and shall be put to death, and
the owner receives the lost article.

11. If the owner do not bring witnesses to identify the lost article, he
is an evil-doer, he has traduced, and shall be put to death.

12. If the witnesses be not at hand, then shall the judge set a limit,
at the expiration of six months. If his witnesses have not appeared
within the six months, he is an evil-doer, and shall bear the fine of
the pending case.

14. If any one steal the minor son of another, he shall be put to death.

15. If any one take a male or female slave of the court, or a male or
female slave of a freed man, outside the city gates, he shall be put to
death.

16. If any one receive into his house a runaway male or female slave of
the court, or of a freedman, and does not bring it out at the public
proclamation of the major domus, the master of the house shall be put to
death.

17. If any one find a runaway male or female slave in the open country
and bring them to their masters, the master of the slaves shall pay him
two shekels of silver.

18. If the slave will not give the name of the master, the finder shall
bring him to the palace; a further investigation must follow and the
slave shall be returned to his master.

19. If he hold the slaves in his house, and they are caught there, he
shall be put to death.

20. If the slave that he caught run away from him, then shall he swear
to the owners of the slave, and he is free of all blame.

21. If any one break a hole into a house [break in to steal], he shall
be put to death before that hole and be buried.

22. If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be
put to death.

23. If the robber is not caught, then shall he who was robbed claim
under oath the amount of his loss; then shall the community, and ... on
whose ground and territory and in whose domain it was compensate him for
the goods stolen.

24. If persons are stolen, then shall the community and ... pay one mina
of silver to their relatives.

25. If fire break out in a house, and some one who comes to put it out,
cast his eye upon the property of the owner of the house, and take the
property of the master of the house, he shall be thrown into that
self-same fire.

26. If a chieftain or a man [common soldier], who has been ordered to go
upon the king's highway [for war] does not go, but hires a mercenary, if
he withholds the compensation, then shall this officer or man be put to
death, and he who represented him shall take possession of his house.

27. If a chieftain or man be caught in the misfortune of the king
[captured in battle], and if his fields and garden be given to another
and he take possession, if he return and reaches his place, his field
and garden shall be returned to him, he shall take it over again.

28. If a chieftain or a man be caught in the misfortune of a king, if
his son is able to enter into possession, then the field and garden
shall be given to him, he shall take over the fee of his father.

29. If his son is still young, and cannot take possession, a third of
the field and garden shall be given to his mother, and she shall bring
him up.

30. If a chieftain or a man leave his house, garden and field and hires
it out, and some one else takes possession of his house, garden and
field and uses it for three years: if the first owner return and claims
his house, garden and field, it shall not be given to him, but he who
has taken possession of it and used it shall continue to use it.

31. If he hire it out for one year and then return, the house, garden
and field shall be given back to him, and he shall take it over again.

32. If a chieftain or a man is captured on the "Way of the King" [in
war], and a merchant buy him free, and bring him back to his place; if
he have the means in his house to buy his freedom, he shall buy himself
free: if he have nothing in his house with which to buy himself free, he
shall be bought free by the temple of his community; if there be nothing
in the temple with which to buy him free, the court shall buy his
freedom. His field, garden and house shall not be given for the purchase
of his freedom.

33. If a ... or a ... [from the connection, some man higher in rank than
a chieftain] enter himself as withdrawn from the "Way of the King," and
send a mercenary as substitute, but withdraw him, then the ... or ...
shall be put to death.

34. If a ... [same as in 33] or a ... harm the property of a captain,
injure the captain, or take away from the captain a gift presented to
him by the king then the ... or ... shall be put to death.

35. If any one buy the cattle or sheep which the king has given to
chieftains from him he loses his money.

35. The field, garden and house of a chieftain, of a man, or of one
subject to quit-rent, cannot be sold.

37. If any one buy the field, garden and house of a chieftain, man or
one subject to quit-rent, his contract tablet of sale shall be broken
[declared invalid] and he loses his money. The field, garden and house
return to their owners.

38. A chieftain, man or one subject to quit-rent cannot assign his
tenure of field, house and garden to his wife or daughter, nor can he
assign it for a debt.

39. He may, however, assign a field, garden or house which he has
bought, and holds as property, to his wife or daughter or give it for
debt.

40. He may sell field, garden and house to a merchant [royal agents] or
to any other public official, the buyer holding field, house and garden
for its usufruct.

41. If any one fence in the field, garden and house of a chieftain, man
or one subject to quit-rent, furnishing the palings therefor; if the
chieftain, man or one subject to quit-rent return to field, garden and
house, the palings which were given to him become his property.

42. If any one take over a field to till it, and obtain no harvest
therefrom, it must be proved that he did no work on the field, and he
must deliver grain, just as his neighbor raised, to the owner of the
field.

43. If he do not till the field, but let it lie fallow, he shall give
grain like his neighbor's to the owner of the field, and the field which
he let lie fallow he must plow and sow and return to its owner.

44. If any one take over a waste-lying field to make it arable, but is
lazy, and does not make it arable, he shall plow the fallow field in the
fourth year, harrow it and till it, and give it back to its owner and
for each ten _gan_ [a measure of area] ten _gur_ [dry measure] of grain
shall be paid.

45. If a man rent his field for tillage for a fixed rental, and receive
the rent of his field, but bad weather come and destroy the harvest, the
injury falls upon the tiller of the soil.

46. If he do not receive a fixed rental for his field, but lets it on
half or third shares of the harvest, the grain on the field shall be
divided proportionately between the tiller and the owner.

47. If the tiller, because he did not succeed in the first year, has had
the soil tilled by others, the owner may raise no objection; the field
has been cultivated and he receives the harvest according to agreement.

48. If any one owe a debt for a loan, and a storm prostrates the grain,
or the harvest fail, or the grain does not grow for lack of water; in
that year he need not give his creditor any grain, he washes his
debt-tablet in water [a symbolic action indicating the inability to pay]
and pays no rent for this year.

49. If any one take money from a merchant, and give the merchant a field
tillable for corn or sesame and order him to plant corn or sesame in the
field, and to harvest the crop; if the cultivator plant corn or sesame
in the field, at the harvest the corn or sesame that is in the field
shall belong to the owner of the field and he shall pay corn as rent,
for the money he received from the merchant, and the livelihood of the
cultivator shall he give to the merchant.

50. If he give a cultivated corn-field or a cultivated sesame-field, the
corn or sesame in the field shall belong to the owner of the field, and
he shall return the money to the merchant as rent.

51. If he have no money to repay, then he shall pay in corn or sesame in
place of the money as rent for what he received from the merchant,
according to the royal tariff.

52. If the cultivator do not plant corn or sesame in the field, the
debtor's contract is not weakened.

53. If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does
not so keep it; if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded,
then shall he in whose dam the break occurred be sold for money, and the
money shall replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined.

54. If he be not able to replace the corn, then he and his possessions
shall be divided among the farmers whose corn he has flooded.

55. If any one open his ditches to water his crop, but is careless, and
the water flood the field of his neighbor, then he shall pay his
neighbor corn for his loss.

56. If a man let in the water, and the water overflow the plantation of
his neighbor, he shall pay ten _gur_ of corn for every ten _gan_ of
land.

57. If a shepherd, without the permission of the owner of the field, and
without the knowledge of the owner of the sheep, lets the sheep into a
field to graze, then the owner of the field shall harvest his crop, and
the shepherd, who had pastured his flock there without permission of
the owner of the field, shall pay to the owner twenty _gur_ of corn for
every ten _gan_.

58. If after the flocks have left the pasture and been shut up in the
common fold at the city gate, any shepherd let them into a field and
they graze there, this shepherd shall take possession of the field which
he has allowed to be grazed on, and at the harvest he must pay sixty
_gur_ of corn for every ten _gan_.

59. If any man, without the knowledge of the owner of a garden, fell a
tree in a garden he shall pay half a mina in money.

60. If any one give over a field to a gardener, for him to plant it as a
garden, if he work at it, and care for it for four years, in the fifth
year the owner and the gardener shall divide it, the owner taking his
part in charge.

61. If the gardener has not completed the planting of the field, leaving
one part unused, this shall be assigned to him as his.

62. If he do not plant the field that was given over to him as a garden,
if it be arable land [for corn or sesame] the gardener shall pay the
owner the produce of the field for the years that he let it lie fallow,
according to the product of neighboring fields, put the field in arable
condition and return it to its owner.


63. If he transform waste land into arable fields and return it to its
owner, the latter shall pay him for one year ten _gur_ for ten _gan_.

64. If any one hand over his garden to a gardener to work, the gardener
shall pay to its owner two-thirds of the produce of the garden, for so
long as he has it in possession, and the other third shall he keep.

65. If the gardener do not work in the garden and the product fall off,
the gardener shall pay in proportion to other neighboring gardens.

[Here a portion of the text is missing, apparently comprising
thirty-five paragraphs.]

100. ... interest for the money, as much as he has received, he shall
give a note therefor, and on the day, when they settle, pay to the
merchant.

101. If there are no mercantile arrangements in the place whither he
went, he shall leave the entire amount of money which he received with
the broker to give to the merchant.

102. If a merchant intrust money to an agent [broker] for some
investment, and the broker suffer a loss in the place to which he goes,
he shall make good the capital to the merchant.

103. If, while on the journey, an enemy take away from him anything that
he had, the broker shall swear by God [take an oath] and be free of
obligation.

104. If a merchant give an agent corn, wool, oil or any other goods to
transport, the agent shall give a receipt for the amount, and compensate
the merchant therefor. Then he shall obtain a receipt from the merchant
for the money that he gives the merchant.

105. If the agent is careless, and does not take a receipt for the money
which he gave the merchant, he cannot consider the unreceipted money as
his own.

106. If the agent accept money from the merchant, but have a quarrel
with the merchant [denying the receipt], then shall the merchant swear
before God and witnesses that he has given this money to the agent, and
the agent shall pay him three times the sum.

107. If the merchant cheat the agent, in that as the latter has returned
to him all that had been given him, but the merchant denies the receipt
of what had been returned to him, then shall this agent convict the
merchant before God and the judges, and if he still deny receiving what
the agent had given him shall pay six times the sum to the agent.

108. If a tavern-keeper [feminine] does not accept corn according to
gross weight in payment of drink, but takes money, and the price of the
drink is less than that of the corn, she shall be convicted and thrown
into the water.

109. If conspirators meet in the house of a tavern-keeper, and these
conspirators are not captured and delivered to the court, the
tavern-keeper shall be put to death.

110. If a "sister of a god" [one devoted to the temple] open a tavern,
or enter a tavern to drink, then shall this woman be burned to death.

111. If an inn-keeper furnish sixty _ka_ of _usakani_-drink to ... she
shall receive fifty _ka_ of corn at the harvest.

112. If anyone be on a journey and intrust silver, gold, precious
stones, or any movable property to another, and wish to recover it from
him; if the latter do not bring all of the property to the appointed
place, but appropriate it to his own use, then shall this man, who did
not bring the property to hand it over be convicted, and he shall pay
fivefold for all that had been intrusted to him.

113. If any one have a consignment of corn or money, and he take from
the granary or box, without the knowledge of the owner, then shall he
who took corn without the knowledge of the owner out of the granary or
money out of the box be legally convicted, and repay the corn he has
taken. And he shall lose whatever commission was paid to him, or due
him.

114. If a man have no claim on another for corn and money, and try to
demand it by force, he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver in every
case.

115. If any one have a claim for corn or money upon another and imprison
him; if the prisoner die in prison a natural death, the case shall go no
further.

116. If the prisoner die in prison from blows or maltreatment, the
master of the prisoner shall convict the merchant before the judge. If
he was a free-born man, the son of the merchant shall be put to death;
if it was a slave, he shall pay one-third of a mina of gold, and all
that the master of the prisoner gave he shall forfeit.

117. If any one fail to meet a claim for debt, and sell himself, his
wife, his son and daughter for money or give them away to forced labor:
they shall work for three years in the house of the man who bought them
or the proprietor and in the fourth year they shall be set free.

118. If he give a male or female slave away for forced labor, and the
merchant sublease them, or sell them for money, no objection can be
raised.

119. If any one fail to meet a claim for debt, and he sell the maid
servant who has borne him children, for money, the money which the
merchant has paid shall be repaid to him by the owner of the slave and
she shall be freed.

120. If any one store corn for safe keeping in another person's house,
and any harm happen to the corn in storage, or if the owner of the house
open the granary and take some of the corn, or if especially he deny
that the corn was stored in his house: then the owner of the corn shall
claim his corn before God [on oath], and the owner of the house shall
pay its owner for all of the corn that he took.

121. If any one store corn in another man's house he shall pay him
storage at the rate of one _gur_ for every five _ka_ of corn per year.

122. If any one give another silver, gold or anything else to keep, he
shall show everything to some witness, draw up a contract, and then hand
it over for safe keeping.

123. If he turn it over for safe keeping without witness or contract,
and if he to whom it was given deny it, then he has no legitimate claim.

124. If any one deliver silver, gold or anything else to another for
safe keeping, before a witness, but he deny it, he shall be brought
before a judge, and all that he has denied he shall pay in full.

125. If any one place his property with another for safe keeping, and
there, either through thieves or robbers, his property and the property
of the other man be lost, the owner of the house, through whose neglect
the loss took place, shall compensate the owner for all that was given
to him in charge. But the owner of the house shall try to follow up and
recover his property, and take it away from the thief.

126. If any one who has not lost his goods, state that they have been
lost, and make false claims: if he claim his goods and amount of injury
before God, even though he has not lost them, he shall be fully
compensated for all his loss claimed [_i.e._, the oath is all that is
needed].

127. If any one point the finger [slander] at a sister of a god or the
wife of any one, and cannot prove it, this man shall be taken, before
the judges and his brow shall be marked [by cutting the skin, or perhaps
hair].

128. If a man take a woman to wife, but have no intercourse with her,
this woman is no wife to him.

129. If a man's wife be surprised with another man, both shall be tied
and thrown into the water, but the husband may pardon his wife and the
king his slaves.

130. If a man violate the wife [betrothed or child-wife] of another man,
who has never known a man, and still lives in her father's house, and
sleep with her and be surprised, this man shall be put to death, but the
wife is blameless.

131. If a man bring a charge against one's wife, but she is not
surprised with another man [_delit flagrant_ is necessary for divorce],
she must take an oath and then may return to her house.

132. If the "finger is pointed" at a man's wife about another man, but
she is not caught sleeping with the other man, she shall jump into the
river for her husband [prove her innocence by this test].

133. If a man is taken prisoner in war, and there is a sustenance in his
house, but his wife leave house and court, and go to another house:
because this wife did not keep her court, and went to another house, she
shall be judicially condemned and thrown into the water.

134. If any one be captured in war and there is no sustenance in his
house, if then his wife go to another house, this woman shall be held
blameless.

135. If a man be taken prisoner in war and there be no sustenance in his
house and his wife go to another house and bear children; and if later
her husband return and come to his home: then this wife shall return to
her husband, but the children follow their father.

136. If any one leave his house, run away, and then his wife go to
another house, if then he return, and wishes to take his wife back:
because he fled from his home and ran away, the wife of this runaway
shall not return to her husband.

137. If a man wish to separate from a woman who has borne him children,
or from his wife who has borne him children: then he shall give that
wife her dowry, and a part of the usufruct of field, garden and
property, so that she can rear her children. When she has brought up her
children, a portion of all that is given to the children, equal as that
of one son, shall be given to her. She may then marry the man of her
heart.

138. If a man wishes to separate from his wife who has borne him no
children, he shall give her the amount of her purchase money [amount
formerly paid to the bride's father] and the dowry which she brought
from her father's house, and let her go.

139. If there was no purchase price he shall give her one mina of gold
as a gift of release.

140. If he be a freed man he shall give her one-third of a mina of gold.

141. If a man's wife, who lives in his house, wishes to leave it,
plunges into debt, tries to ruin her house, neglects her husband, and is
judicially convicted: if her husband offer her release, she may go on
her way, and he gives her nothing as a gift of release. If her husband
does not wish to release her, and if he take another wife, she shall
remain as servant in her husband's house.

142. If a woman quarrel with her husband, and say: "You are not
congenial to me," the reasons for her prejudice must be presented. If
she is guiltless, and there is no fault on her part, but he leaves and
neglects her, then no guilt attaches to this woman, she shall take her
dowry and go back to her father's house.

143. If she is not innocent, but leaves her husband, and ruins her
house, neglecting her husband, this woman shall be cast into the water.

144. If a man take a wife and this woman give her husband a
maid-servant, and she bear him children, but this man wishes to take
another wife, this shall not be permitted to him; he shall not take a
second wife.

145. If a man take a wife, and she bear him no children, and he intend
to take another wife: if he take this second wife, and bring her into
the house, this second wife shall not be allowed equality with his wife.

146. If a man take a wife and she give this man a maid servant as wife
and she bear him children, and then this maid assume equality with the
wife: because she has borne him children her master shall not sell her
for money, but he may keep her as a slave, reckoning her among the
maid-servants.

147. If she have not borne him children, then her mistress may sell her
for money.

148. If a man take a wife, and she be seized by disease, if he then
desire to take a second wife he shall not put away his wife, who has
been attacked by disease, but he shall keep her in the house which he
has built and support her so long as she lives.

149. If this woman does not wish to remain in her husband's house, then
he shall compensate her for the dowry that she brought with her from her
father's house, and she may go.

150. If a man give his wife a field, garden and house and a deed
therefor, if then after the death of her husband the sons raise no
claim, then the mother may bequeath all to one of her sons whom she
prefers, and need leave nothing to his brothers.

151. If a woman who lived in a man's house, made an agreement with her
husband, that no creditor can arrest her, and has given a document
therefor: if that man, before he married that woman, had a debt, the
creditor cannot hold the woman for it. But if the woman, before she
entered the man's house, had contracted a debt, her creditor cannot
arrest her husband therefor.

152. If after the woman had entered the man's house, both contracted a
debt, both must pay the merchant.

153. If the wife of one man on account of another man has their mates
[her husband and the other man's wife] murdered, both of them shall be
impaled.

154. If a man be guilty of incest with his daughter, he shall be driven
from the place [exiled].

155. If a man betroth a girl to his son, and his son have intercourse
with her, but he [the father] afterward defile her, and be surprised,
then he shall be bound and cast into the water [drowned].

156. If a man betroth a girl to his son, but his son has not known her,
and if then he defile her, he shall pay her half a gold mina, and
compensate her for all that she brought out of her father's house. She
may marry the man of her heart.

157. If any one be guilty of incest with his mother after his father,
both shall be burned.

158. If any one be surprised after his father with his chief wife, who
has borne children, he shall be driven out of his father's house.

159. If any one, who has brought chattels into his father-in-law's
house, and has paid the purchase-money, looks for another wife, and says
to his father-in-law: "I do not want your daughter," the girl's father
may keep all that he had brought.

160. If a man bring chattels into the house of his father-in-law, and
pay the "purchase price" [for his wife]: if then the father of the girl
say: "I will not give you my daughter," he shall give him back all that
he brought with him.

161. If a man bring chattels into his father-in-law's house and pay the
"purchase price," if then his friend slander him, and his father-in-law
say to the young husband: "You shall not marry my daughter," then he
shall give back to him undiminished all that he had brought with him;
but his wife shall not be married to the friend.

162. If a man marry a woman, and she bear sons to him; if then this
woman die, then shall her father have no claim on her dowry; this
belongs to her sons.

163. If a man marry a woman and she bear him no sons; if then this woman
die, if the "purchase price" which he had paid into the house of his
father-in-law is repaid to him, her husband shall have no claim upon the
dowry of this woman; it belongs to her father's house.

164. If his father-in-law do not pay back to him the amount of the
"purchase price" he may subtract the amount of the "purchase price" from
the dowry, and then pay the remainder to her father's house.

165. If a man give to one of his sons whom he prefers, a field, garden
and house and a deed therefor: if later the father die, and the brothers
divide [the estate], then they shall first give him the present of his
father, and he shall accept it; and the rest of the paternal property
shall they divide.

166. If a man take wives for his sons, but take no wife for his minor
son, and if then he die: if the sons divide the estate, they shall set
aside besides his portion the money for the "purchase price" for the
minor brother who had taken no wife as yet, and secure a wife for him.

167. If a man marry a wife and she bear him children: if this wife die
and he then take another wife and she bear him children: if then the
father die, the sons must not partition the estate according to the
mothers, they shall divide the dowries of their mothers only in this
way; the paternal estate they shall divide equally with one another.

168. If a man wish to put his son out of his house, and declare before
the judge: "I want to put my son out," then the judge shall examine into
his reasons. If the son be guilty of no great fault, for which he can be
rightfully put out, the father shall not put him out.

169. If he be guilty of a grave fault, which should rightfully deprive
him of the filial relationship, the father shall forgive him the first
time; but if he be guilty of a grave fault a second time the father may
deprive his son of all filial relation.

170. If his wife bear sons to a man, or his maid-servant have borne
sons, and the father while still living says to the children whom his
maid-servant has borne: "My sons," and he count them with the sons of
his wife; if then the father die, then the sons of the wife and of the
maid-servant shall divide the paternal property in common. The son of
the wife is to partition and choose.

171. If, however, the father while still living did not say to the sons
of the maid-servant: "My sons," and then the father dies, then the sons
of the maid-servant shall not share with the sons of the wife, but the
freedom of the maid and her sons shall be granted. The sons of the wife
shall have no right to enslave the sons of the maid; the wife shall take
her dowry [from her father], and the gift that her husband gave her and
deeded to her [separate from dowry, or the purchase money paid her
father], and live in the home of her husband: so long as she lives she
shall use it, it shall not be sold for money. Whatever she leaves shall
belong to her children.

172. If her husband made her no gift, she shall be compensated for her
gift, and she shall receive a portion from the estate of her husband,
equal to that of one child. If her sons oppress her, to force her out of
the house, the judge shall examine into the matter, and if the sons are
at fault the woman shall not leave her husband's house. If the woman
desire to leave the house, she must leave to her sons the gift which her
husband gave her, but she may take the dowry of her father's house. Then
she may marry the man of her heart.

173. If this woman bear sons to her second husband, in the place to
which she went, and then die, her earlier and later sons shall divide
the dowry between them.

174. If she bear no sons to her second husband, the sons of her first
husband shall have the dowry.

175. If a state slave or the slave of a freed man marry the daughter of
a free man, and children are born, the master of the slave shall have no
right to enslave the children of the free.

176. If, however, a state slave or the slave of a freed man marry a
man's daughter, and after he married her she bring a dowry from a
father's house, if then they both enjoy it and found a household, and
accumulate means, if then the slave die, then she who was free born may
take her dowry, and all that her husband and she had earned; she shall
divide them into two parts, one-half the master for the slave shall
take, and the other half shall the free-born woman take for her
children. If the free-born woman had no gift she shall take all that her
husband and she had earned and divide it into two parts; and the master
of the slave shall take one-half and she shall take the other for her
children.

177. If a widow, whose children are not grown, wishes to enter another
house [remarry], she shall not enter it without the knowledge of the
judge. If she enter another house the judge shall examine the estate of
the house of her first husband. Then the house of her first husband
shall be intrusted to the second husband and the woman herself as
managers. And a record must be made thereof. She shall keep the house in
order, bring up the children, and not sell the household utensils. He
who buys the utensils of the children of a widow shall lose his money,
and the goods shall return to their owners.

178. If a "devoted woman" or a prostitute [connected with the temple
neither can marry] to whom her father has given a dowry and a deed
therefor, but if in this deed it is not stated that she may bequeath it
as she pleases, and has not explicitly stated that she has the right of
disposal; if then her father die, then her brothers shall hold her field
and garden, and give her corn, oil and milk according to her portion,
and satisfy her. If her brothers do not give her corn, oil and milk
according to her share, then her field and garden shall be given to a
farmer whom she chooses and the farmer shall support her. She shall have
the usufruct of field and garden and all that her father gave her so
long as she lives, but she cannot sell or assign it to others. Her
position of inheritance belongs to her brothers.

179. If a "sister of a god" [whose hire went to the revenue of the
temple, counterpart to the public prostitute], or a prostitute, receive
a gift from her father, and a deed in which it has been explicitly
stated that she may dispose of it as she pleases, and give her complete
disposition thereof: if then her father die, then she may leave her
property to whomsoever she pleases. Her brothers can raise no claim
thereto.

180. If a father give a present to his daughter--either marriageable or
a prostitute [unmarriageable]--and then die, then she is to receive a
portion as a child from the paternal estate, and enjoy its usufruct so
long as she lives. Her estate belongs to her brothers.

181. If a father devote a temple-maid or temple-virgin to God and give
her no present: if then the father die, she shall receive the third of a
child's portion from the inheritance of her father's house, and enjoy
its usufruct so long as she lives. Her estate belongs to her brothers.

182. If a father devote his daughter as a wife of Marduk of Babylon [as
in 181], and give her no present, nor a deed; if then her father die,
then shall she receive one-third of her portion as a child of her
father's house from her brothers, but she shall not have the management
thereof. A wife of Marduk may leave her estate to whomsoever she wishes.

183. If a man give his daughter by a concubine a dowry, and a husband,
and a deed; if then her father die, she shall receive no portion from
the paternal estate.

184. If a man do not give a dowry to his daughter by a concubine, and no
husband; if then her father die then her brother shall give her a dowry
according to her father's wealth and secure a husband for her.

185. If a man adopt a child and to his name as son, and rear him, this
grown son cannot be demanded back again.

186. If a man adopt a son, and if after he has taken him he injure his
foster father and mother, then this adopted son shall return to his
father's house.

187. The son of a paramour in the palace service, or of a prostitute,
cannot be demanded back.

188. If an artisan has undertaken to rear a child and teaches him his
craft, he cannot be demanded back.

189. If he has not taught him his craft, this adopted son may return to
his father's house.

190. If a man does not maintain a child that he has adopted as son and
reared with his other children, then his adopted son may return to his
father's house.

191. If a man, who had adopted a son and reared him, founded a
household, and had children, wish to put this adopted son out, then this
son shall not simply go his way. His adoptive father shall give him of
his wealth one-third of a child's portion, and then he may go. He shall
not give him of the field, garden and house.

192. If a son of a paramour or a prostitute say to his adoptive father
or mother: "You are not my father, or my mother," his tongue shall be
cut off.

193. If the son of a paramour or a prostitute desire his father's house,
and desert his adoptive father and adoptive mother, and goes to his
father's house, then shall his eye be put out.

194. If a man give his child to a nurse and the child die in her hands,
but the nurse unbeknown to the father and mother nurse another child,
then they shall convict her of having nursed another child without the
knowledge of the father and mother and her breasts shall be cut off.

195. If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.

196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.

197. If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken.

198. If he put out the eye of a freed man, or break the bone of a freed
man, he shall pay one gold mina.

199. If he put out the eye of a man's slave, or break the bone of a
man's slave, he shall pay one-half of its value.

200. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be
knocked out.

201. If he knock out the teeth of a freed man, he shall pay one-third of
a gold mina.

202. If any one strike the body of a man higher in rank than he, he
shall receive sixty blows with an ox-hide whip in public.

203. If a free-born man strike the body of another free-born man of
equal rank, he shall pay one gold mina.

204. If a freed man strike the body of another freed man, he shall pay
ten shekels in money.

205. If the slave of a freed man strike the body of a freed man, his ear
shall be cut off.

206. If during a quarrel one man strike another and wound him, then he
shall swear, "I did not injure him wittingly," and pay the physician.

207. If the man die of his wound, he shall swear similarly, and if he
[the deceased] was a free-born man, he shall pay half a mina in money.

208. If he was a freed man, he shall pay one-third of a mina.

209. If a man strike a free-born woman so that she lose her unborn
child, he shall pay ten shekels for her loss.

210. If the woman die, his daughter shall be put to death.

211. If a woman of the freed class lose her child by a blow, he shall
pay five shekels in money.

212. If this woman die, he shall pay half a mina.

213. If he strike the maid-servant of a man, and she lose her child, he
shall pay two shekels in money.

214. If this maid-servant die, he shall pay one-third of a mina.

215. If a physician make a large incision with a operating knife and
cure it, or if he open a tumor [over the eye] with an operating knife,
and saves the eye, he shall receive ten shekels in money.

216. If the patient be a freed man, he receives five shekels.

217. If he be the slave of some one, his owner shall give the physician
two shekels.

218. If a physician make a large incision with the operating knife, and
kill him, or open a tumor with the operating knife, and cut out the eye,
his hands shall be cut off.

219. If a physician make a large incision in the slave of a freed man,
and kill him, he shall replace the slave with another slave.

220. If he had opened a tumor with the operating knife, and put out his
eye, he shall pay half his value.

221. If a physician heal the broken bone or diseased soft part of a man,
the patient shall pay the physician five shekels in money.

222. If he were a freed man he shall pay three shekels.

223. If he were a slave his owner shall pay the physician two shekels.

224. If a veterinary surgeon perform a serious operation on an ass or an
ox, and cure it, the owner shall pay the surgeon one-sixth of a shekel
as fee.

225. If he perform, a serious operation on an ass or ox, and kill it, he
shall pay the owner one-fourth of its value.

226. If a barber, without the knowledge of his master, cut the sign of a
slave on a slave not to be sold, the hands of this barber shall be cut
off.

227. If any one deceive a barber, and have him mark a slave not for sale
with the sign of a slave, he shall be put to death, and buried in his
house. The barber shall swear: "I did not mark him wittingly," and shall
be guiltless.

228. If a builder build a house for some one and complete it, he shall
give him a fee of two shekels in money for each _sar_ of surface.

229. If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it
properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then
that builder shall be put to death.

230. If it kill the son of the owner the son of that builder shall be
put to death.

231. If it kill a slave of the owner, then he shall pay slave for slave
to the owner of the house.

232. If it ruin goods, he shall make compensation for all that has been
ruined, and inasmuch as he did not construct properly this house which
he built and it fell, he shall reërect the house from his own means.

233. If a builder build a house for some one, even though he has not
yet completed it; if then the walls seem toppling, the builder must make
the walls solid from his own means.

234. If a shipbuilder build a boat of sixty _gur_ for a man, he shall
pay him a fee of two shekels in money.

235. If a shipbuilder build a boat for some one, and do not make it
tight, if during that same year that boat is sent away and suffers
injury, the shipbuilder shall take the boat apart and put it together
tight at his own expense. The tight boat he shall give to the boat
owner.

236. If a man rent his boat to a sailor, and the sailor is careless, and
the boat is wrecked or goes aground, the sailor shall give the owner of
the boat another boat as compensation.

237. If a man hire a sailor and his boat, and provide it with corn,
clothing, oil and dates, and other things of the kind needed for fitting
it: if the sailor is careless, the boat is wrecked, and its contents
ruined, then the sailor shall compensate for the boat which was wrecked
and all in it that he ruined.

238. If a sailor wreck any one's ship, but saves it, he shall pay the
half of its value in money.

239. If a man hire a sailor, he shall pay him six _gur_ of corn per
year.

240. If a merchantman run against a ferryboat, and wreck it, the master
of the ship that was wrecked shall seek justice before God; the master
of the merchantman, which wrecked the ferryboat, must compensate the
owner for the boat and all that he ruined.

241. If any one impresses an ox for forced labor, he shall pay one-third
of a mina in money.

242. If any one hire oxen for a year, he shall pay four _gur_ of corn
for plow-oxen.

243. As rent of herd cattle he shall pay three _gur_ of corn to the
owner.

244. If any one hire an ox or an ass, and a lion kill it in the field,
the loss is upon its owner.

245. If any one hire oxen, and kill them by bad treatment or blows, he
shall compensate the owner, oxen for oxen.

246. If a man hire an ox, and he break its leg or cut the ligament of
its neck, he shall compensate the owner with ox for ox.

247. If any one hire an ox, and put out its eye, he shall pay the owner
one-half of its value.

248. If any one hire an ox, and break off a horn, or cut off its tail or
hurt its muzzle, he shall pay one-fourth of its value in money.

249. If any one hire an ox, and God strike it that it die, the man who
hired it shall swear by God and be considered guiltless.

250. If while an ox is passing on the street [market?] some one push it,
and kill it, the owner can set up no claim in the suit [against the
hirer].

251. If an ox be a goring ox, and it is shown that he is a gorer, and he
do not bind his horns, or fasten the ox up, and the ox gore a free-born
man and kill him, the owner shall pay one-half a mina in money.

252. If he kill a man's slave, he shall pay one-third of a mina.

253. If any one agree with another to tend his field, give him seed,
intrust a yoke of oxen to him, and bind him to cultivate the field, if
he steal the corn or plants, and take them for himself, his hands shall
be hewn off.

254. If he take the seed-corn for himself, and do not use the yoke of
oxen, he shall compensate him for the amount of the seed-corn.

255. If he sublet the man's yoke of oxen or steal the seed-corn,
planting nothing in the field, he shall be convicted, and for each one
hundred _gan_ he shall pay sixty _gur_ of corn.

256. If his community will not pay for him, then he shall be placed in
that field with the cattle [at work].

257. If any one hire a field laborer, he shall pay him eight _gur_ of
corn per year.

258. If any one hire an ox-driver, he shall pay him six _gur_ of corn
per year.

259. If any one steal a water-wheel from the field, he shall pay five
shekels in money to its owner.

260. If any one steal a _shadduf_ [used to draw water from the river or
canal] or a plow, he shall pay three shekels in money.

261. If any one hire a herdsman for cattle or sheep, he shall pay him
eight _gur_ of corn per annum.

262. If any one, a cow or a sheep ... [broken off].

263. If he kill the cattle or sheep that were given to him, he shall
compensate the owner with cattle for cattle and sheep for sheep.

264. If a herdsman, to whom cattle or sheep have been intrusted for
watching over, and who has received his wages as agreed upon, and is
satisfied, diminish the number of the cattle or sheep, or make the
increase by birth less, he shall make good the increase and profit which
was lost in the terms of settlement.

265. If a herdsman, to whose care cattle or sheep have been intrusted,
be guilty of fraud and make false returns of the natural increase, or
sell them for money, then shall he be convicted and pay the owner ten
times the loss.

266. If the animal be killed in the stable by God [an accident], or if a
lion kill it, the herdsman shall declare his innocence before God, and
the owner bears the accident in the stable.

267. If the herdsman overlook something, and an accident happen in the
stable, then the herdsman is at fault for the accident which he has
caused in the stable, and he must compensate the owner for the cattle or
sheep.

268. If any one hire an ox for threshing, the amount of the hire is
twenty _ka_ of corn.

269. If he hire an ass for threshing, the hire is twenty _ka_ of corn.

270. If he hire a young animal for threshing, the hire is ten _ka_ of
corn.

271. If any one hire oxen, cart and driver, he shall pay one hundred and
eighty _ka_ of corn per day.

272. If any one hire a cart alone, he shall pay forty _ka_ of corn per
day.

273. If any one hire a day laborer, he shall pay him from the New Year
until the fifth month [April to August, when days are long and work
hard] six gerahs in money per day; from the sixth month to the end of
the year he shall give him five gerahs per day.

274. If any one hire a skilled artisan, he shall pay as wages of the ...
five gerahs, as wages of the potter five gerahs, of a tailor five gerahs,
of ... gerahs, ... of ... gerahs ... of ... gerahs, of a carpenter four
gerahs, of a rope-maker four gerahs, of ... gerahs, of a mason ... gerahs
per day.

275. If any one hire a ferryboat, he shall pay three gerahs in money per
day.

276. If he hire a freight-boat, he shall pay two and one-half gerahs per
day.

277. If any one hire a ship of sixty _gur_ he shall pay one-sixth of a
shekel in money as its hire per day.

278. If any one buy a male or female slave, and before a month has
elapsed the _benu_-disease be developed, he shall return the slave to
the seller, and receive the money which he had paid.

279. If any one buy a male or female slave, and a third party claim it,
the seller is liable for the claim.

280. If while in a foreign country a man buy a male or female slave
belonging to another [of his own country]: if when he return home the
owner of the male or female slave recognize it: if the male or female
slave be a native of the country, he shall give them back without any
money.

281. If they are from another country, the buyer shall declare the
amount of money he paid before God, and the owner shall give the money
paid therefor to the merchant, and keep the male or female slave.

282. If a slave say to his master: "You are not my master," if they
convict him his master shall cut off his ear.


THE EPILOGUE

Laws of justice which Hammurabi, the wise king, established, A righteous
law, and pious statute did he teach the land. Hammurabi, the protecting
king am I. I have not withdrawn myself from the men, whom Bel gave to
me, the rule over whom Marduk gave to me, I was not negligent, but I
made them a peaceful abiding place. I expounded all great difficulties,
I made the light shine upon them. With the mighty weapons which Zamama
and Ishtar intrusted to me, with the keen vision with which Ea endowed
me, with the wisdom that Marduk gave me, I have uprooted the enemy above
and below [in north and south], subdued the earth, brought prosperity to
the land, guaranteed security to the inhabitants in their homes; a
disturber was not permitted. The great gods have called me, I am the
salvation-bearing shepherd [ruler], whose staff [sceptre] is straight
[just], the good shadow that is spread over my city; on my breast I
cherish the inhabitants of the land of Sumer and Akkad [Babylonia]; in
my shelter I have let them repose in peace; in my deep wisdom have I
inclosed them. That the strong might not injure the weak, in order to
protect the widows and orphans, I have in Babylon the city where Anu and
Bel raise high their head, in E-Sagil, the Temple, whose foundations
stand firm as heaven and earth, in order to bespeak justice in the land,
to settle all disputes, and heal all injuries, set up these my precious
words, written upon my memorial stone, before the image of me, as king
of righteousness.

The king who ruleth among the kings of the cities am I. My words are
well considered; there is no wisdom like unto mine. By the command of
Shamash [the sun-god], the great judge of heaven and earth, let
righteousness go forth in the land: by the order of Marduk, my lord, let
no destruction befall my monument. In E-Sagil, which I love, let my name
be ever repeated; let the oppressed, who has a case at law, come and
stand before this my image as king of righteousness; let him read the
inscription, and understand my precious words: the inscription will
explain his case to him; he will find out what is just, and his heart
will be glad [so that he will say]:

"Hammurabi is a ruler, who is as a father to his subjects, who holds the
words of Marduk in reverence, who has achieved conquest for Marduk over
the north and south, who rejoices the heart of Marduk, his lord, who has
bestowed benefits forever and ever on his subjects, and has established
order in the land."

When he reads the record, let him pray with full heart to Marduk, my
lord, and Zarpanit, my lady; and then shall the protecting deities and
the gods, who frequent E-Sagil, graciously grant the desires daily
presented before Marduk, my lord, and Zarpanit, my lady.

In future time, through all coming generations, let the king, who may be
in the land, observe the words of righteousness which I have written on
my monument; let him not alter the law of the land which I have given,
the edicts which I have enacted; my monument let him not mar. If such a
ruler have wisdom, and be able to keep his land in order, he shall
observe the words which I have written in this inscription; the rule,
statute and law of the land which I have given; the decisions which I
have made will this inscription show him; let him rule his subjects
accordingly, speak justice to them, give right decisions, root out the
miscreants and criminals from his land, and grant prosperity to his
subjects.

Hammurabi, the king of righteousness, on whom Shamash has conferred
right [or law] am I. My words are well considered, my deeds are not
equaled, to bring low those that were high, to humble the proud, to
expel insolence. If a succeeding ruler considers my words, which I have
written in this my inscription, if he do not annul my law, nor corrupt
my words, nor change my monument, then may Shamash lengthen that king's
reign, as he has that of me, the king of righteousness, that he may
reign in righteousness over his subjects. If this ruler do not esteem my
words, which I have written in my inscription, if he despise my curses,
and fear not the curse of God, if he destroy the law which I have given,
corrupt my words, change my monument, efface my name, write his name
there, or on account of the curses commission another so to do, that
man, whether king or ruler, patesi [priest-viceroy] or commoner, no
matter what he be, may the great God [Anu], the Father of the gods, who
has ordered my rule, withdraw from him the glory of royalty, break his
sceptre, curse his destiny. May Bel, the lord, who fixeth destiny, whose
command cannot be altered, who has made my kingdom great, order a
rebellion which his hand cannot control; may he let the wind of the
overthrow of his habitation blow, may he ordain the years of his rule in
groaning, years of scarcity, years of famine, darkness without light,
death with seeing eyes be fated to him; may he [Bel] order with his
potent mouth the destruction of his city, the dispersion of his
subjects, the cutting off of his rule, the removal of his name and
memory from the land. May Belit, the great Mother, whose command is
potent in E-Kur [the Babylonian Olympus], the Mistress, who hearkens
graciously to my petitions, in the seat of judgment and decision [where
Bel fixes destiny], turn his affairs evil before Bel, and put the
devastation of his land, the destruction of his subjects, the pouring
out of his life like water into the mouth of King Bel. May Ea, the great
ruler, whose fated decrees come to pass, the thinker of the gods, the
omniscient, who maketh long the days of my life, withdraw understanding
and wisdom from him, lead him to forgetfulness, shut up his rivers at
their sources, and not allow corn or sustenance for man to grow in his
land. May Shamash, the great Judge of heaven and earth, who supporteth
all means of livelihood, Lord of life-courage, shatter his dominion,
annul his law, destroy his way, make vain the march of his troops, send
him in his visions forecasts of the uprooting of the foundations of his
throne and of the destruction of his land. May the condemnation of
Shamash overtake him forthwith; may he be deprived of water above among
the living, and his spirit below in the earth. May Sin [the moon-god],
the Lord of Heaven, the divine father, whose crescent gives light among
the gods, take away the crown and regal throne from him; may he put upon
him heavy guilt, great decay, that nothing may be lower than he. May he
destine him as fated, days, months and years of dominion filled with
sighing and tears, increase of the burden of dominion, a life that is
like unto death. May Adad, the lord of fruitfulness, ruler of heaven and
earth, my helper, withhold from him rain from heaven, and the flood of
water from the springs, destroying his land by famine and want; may he
rage mightily over his city, and make his land into flood-hills [heaps
of ruined cities]. May Zamama, the great warrior, the first born son of
E-Kur, who goeth at my right hand, shatter his weapons on the field of
battle, turn day into night for him, and let his foe triumph over him.
May Ishtar, the goddess of fighting and war, who unfetters my weapons,
my gracious protecting spirit, who loveth my dominion, curse his kingdom
in her angry heart; in her great wrath, change his grace into evil, and
shatter his weapons on the place of fighting and war. May she create
disorder and sedition for him, strike down his warriors, that the earth
may drink their blood, and throw down the piles of corpses of his
warriors on the field; may she not grant him a life of mercy, deliver
him into the hands of his enemies, and imprison him in the land of his
enemies. May Nergal, the mighty among the gods, whose contest is
irresistible, who grants me victory, in his great might burn up his
subjects like a slender reed-stalk, cut off his limbs with his mighty
weapons, and shatter him like an earthen image. May Nin-tu, the sublime
mistress of the lands, the fruitful mother, deny him a son, vouchsafe
him no name, give him no successor among men. May Nin-karak, the
daughter of Anu, who adjudges grace to me, cause to come upon his
members in E-kur, high fever, severe wounds, that cannot be healed,
whose nature the physician does not understand, which he cannot treat
with dressing, which, like the bite of death, cannot be removed, until
they have sapped away his life.

May he lament the loss of his life-power, and may the great gods of
heaven and earth, the Anunnaki altogether inflict a curse and evil upon
the confines of the temple, the walls of this E-barra [the Sun temple of
Sippara], upon his dominion, his land, his warriors, his subjects and
his troops. May Bel curse him with the potent curses of his mouth that
cannot be altered, and may they come upon, him forthwith.





THESEUS FOUNDS ATHENS

B.C. 1235

PLUTARCH


     The founding of the city of Athens, apart from the mythological
     lore which ascribes its name to Athené, the goddess, is credited by
     the Greeks to Sais, a native of Egypt. The real founder of Athens,
     the one who made it a city and kingdom, was Theseus; an
     unacknowledged illegitimate child. The usual myth surrounds his
     birth and upbringing.

     King Ægeus, of Attica, his father, had an intrigue with Æthra.
     Before leaving, Ægeus informed her that he had hidden his sword and
     sandals beneath a great stone, hollowed out to receive them. She
     was charged that should a son be born to them and, on growing to
     man's estate, be able to lift the stone, Æthra must send him to his
     father, with these things under it, in all secrecy. These
     happenings were in Troezen, in which place Ægeus had been
     sojourning.

     All came about as expected. Theseus, the son, lifted the stone,
     took thence the deposit and departed for Attica, his father's home.
     On his way Theseus had a number of adventures which proved his
     prowess, not the least being his encounter with and defeat of
     Periphetes, the "club-bearer," so called from the weapon he used.

     Theseus had complied with the custom of his country by journeying
     to Delphi and offering the first-fruits of his hair, then cut for
     the first time. This first cutting of the hair was always an
     occasion of solemnity among the Greeks, the hair being dedicated to
     some god. It will be remembered that Homer speaks of this in the
     _Iliad_.

     One salient fact must be borne in mind in Grecian history, which is
     that it was a settled maxim that each city should have an
     independent sovereignty. "The patriotism of a Greek was confined to
     his city, and rarely kindled into any general love for the common
     welfare of Hellas."[22]

     [Footnote 22: Smith.]

     A Greek citizen of Athens was an alien in any other city of the
     peninsula. This political disunion caused the various cities to
     turn against each other, and laid them open to conquest by the
     Macedonians.


As he [Theseus] proceeded on his way, and reached the river Cephisus,
men of the Phytalid race were the first to meet and greet him. He
demanded to be purified from the guilt of bloodshed, and they purified
him, made propitiatory offerings, and also entertained him in their
houses, being the first persons from whom he had received any kindness
on his journey.

It is said to have been on the eighth day of the month Cronion, which is
now called Hecatombaion, that he came to his own city. On entering it he
found public affairs disturbed by factions, and the house of Ægeus in
great disorder; for Medea, who had been banished from Corinth, was
living with Ægeus, and had engaged by her drugs to enable Ægeus to have
children. She was the first to discover who Theseus was, while Ægeus,
who was an old man, and feared every one because of the disturbed state
of society, did not recognize him. Consequently she advised Ægeus to
invite him to a feast, that she might poison him.

Theseus accordingly came to Ægeus's table. He did not wish to be the
first to tell his name, but, to give his father an opportunity of
recognizing him, he drew his sword, as if he meant to cut some of the
meat with it, and showed it to Ægeus. Ægeus at once recognized it,
overset the cup of poison, looked closely at his son, and embraced him.
He then called a public meeting and made Theseus known as his son to the
citizens, with whom he was already very popular because of his bravery,
It is said that when the cup was overset the poison was spilt in the
place where now there is the enclosure in the Delphinium, for there
Ægeus dwelt; and the Hermes to the east of the temple there they call
the one who is "at the door of Ægeus."

But the sons of Pallas, who had previously to this expected that they
would inherit the kingdom on the death of Ægeus without issue, now that
Theseus was declared the heir, were much enraged, first that Ægeus
should be king, a man who was merely an adopted child of Pandion, and
had no blood relationship to Erechtheus, and next that Theseus, a
stranger and a foreigner, should inherit the kingdom. They consequently
declared war.

Dividing themselves into two bodies, the one proceeded to march openly
upon the city from Sphettus, under the command of Pallas their father,
while the other lay in ambush at Gargettus, in order that they might
fall upon their opponents on two sides at once. But there was a herald
among them named Leos, of the township of Agnus, who betrayed the plans
of the sons of Pallas to Theseus. He suddenly attacked those who were
in ambush, and killed them all, hearing which the other body under
Pallas dispersed. From this time forth they say that the township of
Pallene has never intermarried with that of Agnus, and that it is not
customary amongst them for heralds to begin a proclamation with the
words "Acouete Leo," (Oyez) for they hate the name of Leo because of the
treachery of that man.

Shortly after this the ship from Crete arrived for the third time to
collect the customary tribute. Most writers agree that the origin of
this was, that on the death of Androgeus, in Attica, which was ascribed
to treachery, his father Minos went to war, and wrought much evil to the
country, which at the same time was afflicted by scourges from heaven
(for the land did not bear fruit, and there was a great pestilence, and
the rivers sank into the earth).

So that as the oracle told the Athenians that, if they propitiated Minos
and came to terms with him, the anger of heaven would cease and they
should have a respite from their sufferings, they sent an embassy to
Minos and prevailed on him to make peace, on the condition that every
nine years they should send him a tribute of seven youths and seven
maidens. The most tragic of the legends states these poor children when
they reached Crete were thrown into the Labyrinth, and there either were
devoured by the Minotaur or else perished with hunger, being unable to
find the way out. The Minotaur, as Euripides tells us, was:

    "A form commingled, and a monstrous birth,
    Half man, half bull, in twofold shape combined."

So when the time of the third payment of the tribute arrived, and those
fathers who had sons not yet grown up had to submit to draw lots, the
unhappy people began to revile Ægeus, complaining that he, although the
author of this calamity, yet took no share in their affliction, but
endured to see them left childless, robbed of their own legitimate
offspring, while he made a foreigner and a bastard the heir to his
kingdom.

This vexed Theseus, and determining not to hold aloof, but to share the
fortunes of the people, he came forward and offered himself without
being drawn by lot. The people all admired his courage and patriotism,
and Ægeus finding that his prayers and entreaties had no effect on his
unalterable resolution, proceeded to choose the rest by lot. Hellanicus
says that the city did not select the youths and maidens by lot, but
that Minos himself came thither and chose them, and that he picked out
Theseus first of all, upon the usual conditions, which were that the
Athenians should furnish a ship, and that the youths should embark in it
and sail with him, not carrying with them any weapon of war; and that
when the Minotaur was slain, the tribute should cease.

Formerly, no one had any hope of safety; so they used to send out the
ship with a black sail, as if it were going to a certain doom; but now
Theseus so encouraged his father, and boasted that he would overcome the
Minotaur, that he gave a second sail, a white one, to the steersman, and
charged him on his return, if Theseus were safe, to hoist the white one,
if not, the black one as a sign of mourning. But Simonides says that it
was not a white sail which was given by Ægeus, but "a scarlet sail
embrued in holm oak's juice," and that this was agreed on by him as the
signal of safety. The ship was steered by Phereclus, the son of
Amarsyas, according to Simonides.

When they reached Crete, according to most historians and poets, Ariadne
fell in love with Theseus, and from her he received the clew of string,
and was taught how to thread the mazes of the Labyrinth. He slew the
Minotaur, and, taking with him Ariadne and the youths, sailed away.
Pherecydes also says that Theseus also knocked out the bottoms of the
Cretan ships, to prevent pursuit. But Demon says that Taurus, Minos'
general, was slain in a sea-fight in the harbor, when Theseus sailed
away.

But according to Philochorus, when Minos instituted his games, Taurus
was expected to win every prize, and was grudged this honor; for his
great influence and his unpopular manners made him disliked, and scandal
said that he was too intimate with Pasiphaë. On this account, when
Theseus offered to contend with him, Minos agreed. And, as it was the
custom in Crete for women as well as men to be spectators of the games,
Ariadne was present, and was struck with the appearance of Theseus, and
his strength, as he conquered all competitors. Minos was especially
pleased, in the wrestling match, at Taurus's defeat and shame, and,
restoring the children to Theseus, remitted the tribute for the future.

As he approached Attica, on his return, both he and his steersman in
their delight forgot to hoist the sail which was to be a signal of their
safety to Ægeus; and he in his despair flung himself down the cliffs and
perished. Theseus, as soon as he reached the harbor, performed at
Phalerum the sacrifices which he had vowed to the gods if he returned
safe, and sent off a herald to the city with the news of his safe
return.

This man met with many who were lamenting the death of the king, and, as
was natural, with others who were delighted at the news of their safety,
and who congratulated him and wished to crown him with garlands. These
he received, but placed them on his herald's staff, and when he came
back to the seashore, finding that Theseus had not completed his
libation, he waited outside the temple, not wishing to disturb the
sacrifice. When the libation was finished he announced the death of
Ægeus, and then they all hurried up to the city with loud lamentations:
wherefore to this day, at the Oschophoria, they say that it is not the
herald that is crowned, but his staff, and that at the libations the
bystanders cry out, "Eleleu, Iou, Iou!" of which cries the first is used
by men in haste, or raising the pæan for battle, while the second is
used by persons in surprise and trouble.

Theseus, after burying his father, paid his vow to Apollo, on the
seventh day of the month Pyanepsion; for on this day it was that the
rescued youths went up into the city. The boiling of pulse, which is
customary on this anniversary, is said to be done because the rescued
youths put what remained of their pulse together into one pot, boiled it
all, and merrily feasted on it together. And on this day also the
Athenians carry about the Eiresione, a bough of the olive tree garlanded
with wool, just as Theseus had before carried the suppliants' bough, and
covered with first-fruits of all sorts of produce, because the
barrenness of the land ceased on that day; and they sing,

    "Eiresione, bring us figs,
      And wheaten loaves, and oil,
    And wine to quaff, that we may all
      Rest merrily from toil."

However, some say that these ceremonies are performed in memory of the
Heracleidæ, who were thus entertained by the Athenians; but most writers
tell the tale as I have told it.

After the death of Ægeus, Theseus conceived a great and important
design. He gathered together all the inhabitants of Attica and made them
citizens of one city, whereas before they had lived dispersed, so as to
be hard to assemble together for the common weal, and at times even
fighting with one another.

He visited all the villages and tribes, and won their consent, the poor
and lower classes gladly accepting his proposals, while he gained over
the more powerful by promising that the new constitution should not
include a king, but that it should be a pure commonwealth, with himself
merely acting as general of its army and guardian of its laws, while in
other respects it would allow perfect freedom and equality to every one.
By these arguments he convinced some of them, and the rest knowing his
power and courage chose rather to be persuaded than forced into
compliance.

He therefore destroyed the prytanea, the senate house, and the
magistracy of each individual township, built one common prytaneum and
senate house for them all on the site of the present acropolis, called
the city Athens, and instituted the Panathenaic festival common to all
of them. He also instituted a festival for the resident aliens, on the
sixteenth of the month, Hecatombaion, which is still kept up. And
having, according to his promise, laid down his sovereign power, he
arranged the new constitution under the auspices of the gods; for he
made inquiry at Delphi as to how he should deal with the city, and
received the following answer:

    "Thou son of Ægeus and of Pittheus' maid,
    My father hath within thy city laid
    The bounds of many cities; weigh not down
    Thy soul with thought; the bladder cannot drown."

The same thing they say was afterward prophesied by the Sibyl concerning
the city, in these words:

    "The bladder may be dipped, but cannot drown."

Wishing still further to increase the number of his citizens, he invited
all strangers to come and share equal privileges, and they say that the
words now used, "Come hither all ye peoples," was the proclamation then
used by Theseus, establishing as it were a commonwealth of all nations.
But he did not permit his state to fall into the disorder which this
influx of all kinds of people would probably have produced, but divided
the people into three classes, of Eupatridæ or nobles, Geomori or
farmers, Demiurgi or artisans.

To the Eupatridæ he assigned the care of religious rites, the supply of
magistrates for the city, and the interpretation of the laws and customs
sacred or profane; yet he placed them on an equality with the other
citizens, thinking that the nobles would always excel in dignity, the
farmers in usefulness, and the artisans in numbers. Aristotle tells us
that he was the first who inclined to democracy, and gave up the title
of king; and Homer seems to confirm this view by speaking of the people
of the Athenians alone of all the states mentioned in his catalogue of
ships.

Theseus also struck money with the figure of a bull, either alluding to
the bull of Marathon, or Taurus, Minos' general, or else to encourage
farming among the citizens. Hence, they say, came the words, "worth
ten," or "worth a hundred oxen." He permanently annexed Megara to
Attica, and set up the famous pillar on the Isthmus, on which he wrote
the distinction between the countries in two trimeter lines, of which
the one looking east says,

    "This is not Peloponnesus, but Ionia,

and the one looking west says,

    "This is Peloponnesus, not Ionia."

And also he instituted games there, in emulation of Heracles; that, just
as Heracles had ordained that the Greeks should celebrate the Olympic
games in honor of Zeus, so by Theseus' appointment they should celebrate
the Isthmian games in honor of Poseidon.





THE FORMATION OF THE CASTES IN INDIA

B.C. 1200

GUSTAVE LE BON[23] W.W. HUNTER


     The institution of caste was not peculiar to India. In Rome there
     was a long struggle over the connubium. Among the Greeks the right
     of commensality, or eating together, was restricted. In fact, the
     phenomena of caste are world-wide in their extent. In India the
     priests and nobles contended for the first place. India had
     progressed along the line of ethnic evolution from a loose
     confederacy of tribes into several nations, ruled by kings and
     priests, and the iron fetters of caste were becoming more rigidly
     welded. At first the father of the family was the priest. Then the
     chiefs and sages took the office of spiritual guide, and conducted
     the sacrifices. As writing was unknown, the liturgies were learned
     by heart, and handed down in families. The exclusive knowledge of
     the ancient hymns became hereditary, as it were. The ministrants
     increased in number, and thus sprang up the powerful priestly
     caste.

     [Footnote 23: Translated from the French by Chauncey C.
     Starkweather.]

     Then the warrior class arose and grew strong in numbers and power,
     becoming differentiated from the agriculturists, and forming the
     military caste. The husbandmen drifted into another caste, and the
     three orders were rigidly separated by a cessation of
     intermarriage.

     At the bottom came the Sudras, or slave bands, the servile dregs of
     the population. In course of time, from various influences, the
     third class became almost eliminated in many provinces. From the
     cradle to the grave these cruel barriers still intervene between
     the strata of the people, relentless as fate and insurmountable as
     death.


GUSTAVE LE BON

In ancient times the power of kings [in India] was only nominal. In the
Aryan village, forming a little republic, the chief, bearing the name of
rajah, was secure in his fortress, exercising full sway. Such was the
political system prevailing in India through all the ages, and which has
always been respected by the conquerors, whoever they might be. So, for
so many centuries back we see arise the first elements of an
organization which still endures.

We find here also the beginnings of that system of castes, which, at
first indistinct and floating, when the classes sought only to be
distinguished from each other, was to become so rigid, when it was
constituted under the influence of ethnological reasons, as to dig
fathomless abysses between the races.

In the Vedas may be traced the progression of the distance between the
priests and the warriors, at first slight, and then increasing more and
more. The division of functions did not stop there. While the
sacrificing priest was consecrating himself more exclusively day by day
to the accomplishment of the sacred rites and to the composition of
hymns; while the warrior passed his days in adventurous expeditions or
daring feats, what would have become of the land and what would it have
produced if others had not applied themselves without ceasing, to
cultivate it? A third class became distinct, the agriculturists.

In one of the last hymns of Rig Veda these three classes appear,
absolutely separated and already designated by the three words Brahmans,
Kchatryas, Vaisyas.

The fourth class, that of the Sudras, was to arise later and to include
the mass of conquered peoples when the latter joined the circle of Aryan
civilization. The classes, hitherto mingling, now became rigidly
separated castes.

The most important of these divisions, and that which was first formed,
was the one between the priests and the warriors. The Brahmans,
intermediaries between men and the gods, soon became more and more
exacting, and finally considered themselves as entirely superior beings
and were accepted as such.

The distinction between the warriors and the agriculturists also soon
became marked, arising doubtless rather from a difference in fortune
than in functions.

The war chief, who returned laden with booty, covered himself with rings
of gold, rich vestments, and gleaming arms. He became "rajah," that is
to say "shining," for such was the meaning of the word at the Vedic
epoch.

Still no absolute barrier between the classes had arisen. They mingled
to offer sacrifices, and sometimes ate in common.

Heredity of office and profession began to be established. The sacred
songs were handed down in families, as were also the functions of the
sacrificers. And here among the Vedic Aryans are seen in process of
elaboration the germs of the institution which later gained so much
power in India and which dominates it still with apparent immutability.

The system of castes has been the corner-stone of all the institutions
of India for two thousand years. Such is its importance, and so
generally is it misunderstood, that it will be well briefly to explain
its origins, sources, and consequences. A system, the result of which is
to permit a handful of Europeans to hold sway over two hundred and fifty
millions of men deserves the attention of the observer.

The system of castes has existed for more than twenty centuries in
India. It doubtless had its origin in the recognition of the inevitable
laws of heredity. When the white-skinned conquerors, whom we call
Aryans, penetrated India, they found, in addition to other invaders of
Turanian origin, black, half-savage populations whom they subjugated.
The conquerors were half-pastoral, half-stationary tribes, under chiefs
whose authority was counterbalanced by the all-powerful influence of the
priests whose duty it was to secure the protection of the gods. Their
occupations were divided into classes, that of Brahmans or priests,
Kchatryas or warriors, and Vaisyas, laborers or artisans. The last class
was perhaps formed by the invaders anterior to the Aryans, whom we have
just mentioned.

These divisions corresponded, as is evident, to our three ancient
castes, the clergy, the nobility, and the third estate. Beneath these
classes was the aboriginal population, the Sudras, forming three
quarters of the whole population.

Experience soon revealed the inconveniences which might rise from the
mixture of the superior race with the inferior ones, and all the
proscriptions of religion tended thereafter to prevent it. "Every
country which gives birth to men of mixed races," said the ancient
law-giver of the Hindus, the sage Manu, "is soon destroyed together with
those who inhabit it." The decree is harsh, but it is impossible not to
recognize its truth. Every superior race which has mingled with another
too inferior has speedily been degraded or absorbed by it.

The Spaniards in America, the Portuguese in India, are proofs of the
sad results produced by such mixtures. The descendants of the brave
Portuguese adventurers, who in other days conquered part of India, fill
to-day the employments of servants, and the name of their race has
become a term of contempt.

Imbued with the importance of this anthropological truth, the Code of
Manu, which has been the law of India for so many centuries, and which,
like all codes, is the result of long anterior experiences, neglects
nothing to preserve the purity of blood.

It pronounces severe penalties against all intermingling of the superior
castes between themselves, and especially with the caste of the Sudras.
There are no frightful threats which it does not employ to keep the
latter apart.

But in the course of the centuries nature triumphed over these
formidable prohibitions. Woman always has her charms, no matter how
inferior she may be in caste. In spite of Manu, crossings of caste were
numerous, and one need not travel India throughout to perceive that,
to-day, the populations of all the races are mixed to a large extent.
The number of individuals white enough to prove that their blood is
quite pure is very restricted. The word caste, taken in its primitive
sense, is no longer a synonym of color, as it used to be in Sanscrit,
and, if caste had had only formerly prevailing ethnological reasons to
invoke, it would have had no reason for continuing. In fact, the
primitive divisions of caste have long since disappeared. They were
replaced by new divisions, the origin of which is other than the
difference of races, except in the case of the Brahmans, who still form
the less mixed portion of the population.

Among the causes which have perpetuated the system of castes, the law of
heredity has furthermore continued to play a fundamental part. Aptness
is inevitably hereditary among the Hindus, and, also inevitably, the son
follows the profession of the father. The principle of heredity of the
professions being universally admitted, there has resulted the formation
of castes as numerous as the professions themselves, and to-day in India
castes are numbered by the thousand. Each new profession has for an
immediate consequence the formation of a new caste.

The European who comes to India to live soon perceives to what an
extent the castes have multiplied in observing the number of different
persons whom he is obliged to hire to wait on him. To the two preceding
causes of the formations of castes, the ethnological cause, now very
weak, and the professional, which is still very strong, are added
political office, and the heterogeneity of religious beliefs.

The castes springing from political office might, strictly speaking, be
placed in the category of professional castes, but those produced by
diversity of religious beliefs should be attached to none of the
preceding causes. In theory, that is, only judged by the reading of
books, all India would be divided into two or three great religions
only. But practically these religions are very numerous. New gods,
considered as simple incarnations of ancient ones, are born and die
every day, and their votaries soon form a new caste as rigid in its
exclusions as the others.

Two fundamental signs mark the conformity of castes, and separate from
all the others the persons belonging to them. The first is that the
individuals of the same caste cannot eat except among themselves. The
second is that they can only marry among themselves.

These two proscriptions are quite fundamental, and the first not less
than the second. You may meet by the hundreds in India Brahmans who are
employed by the government in the post-office and railway service, or
even Brahmans who are beggars. But the humble functionary or wretched
mendicant would rather die than sit at table with the viceroy of India.

The quality of Brahmans is hereditary, like a title of nobility in
Europe. It is not a synonym of priest, as is generally believed, because
it is from this caste that priests are recruited. This caste was
formerly so exalted that the rank of royalty was not sufficient to
enable one to aspire to the hand of a Brahman's daughter.

The Hindu would rather die than violate the laws of his caste. Nothing
is more terrible than for him to lose it. Such loss may be compared to
excommunication in the middle ages, or to a condemnation for an infamous
crime in modern Europe. To lose his caste is to lose everything at one
blow, parents, relations, and fortune. Every one turns his back upon
the culprit and refuses to have any dealings with him. He must enter the
casteless category, which is employed only for the most abject
functions.

As to the social and political consequences of such a system, the only
social bond among the Hindus is caste. Outside of caste the world does
not exist for him. He is separated from persons of another caste by an
abyss much deeper than that which separates Europeans of the most
different nationalities. The latter may intermarry, but persons of
different castes cannot. The result is that every village possesses as
many groups as there are castes represented.

With such a system union against a master is impossible. This system of
caste explains the phenomenon of two hundred and fifty millions of men
obeying, without a murmur, sixty or seventy thousand strangers[24] whom
they detest. The only fatherland of the Hindu is his caste. He has never
had another. His country is not a fatherland to him, and he has never
dreamed of its unity.

[Footnote 24: English.]


W.W. HUNTER

At a very early period we catch sight of a nobler race from the
northwest, forcing its way in among the primitive peoples of India. This
race belonged to the splendid Aryan or Indo-Germanic stock from which
the Brahman, the Rajput, and the Englishman alike descend. Its earliest
home seems to have been in Western Asia. From that common camping-ground
certain branches of the race started for the east, others for the
farther west. One of the western offshoots built Athens and Sparta, and
became the Greek nation; another went on to Italy, and reared the city
on the Seven Hills, which grew into Imperial Rome. A distant colony of
the same race excavated the silver ores of prehistoric Spain; and when
we first catch a sight of ancient England, we see an Aryan settlement
fishing in wattle canoes, and working the tin mines of Cornwall.
Meanwhile other branches of the Aryan stock had gone forth from the
primitive Asiatic home to the east. Powerful bands found their way
through the passes of the Himalayas into the Punjab, and spread
themselves, chiefly as Brahmans and Rajputs, over India.

The Aryan offshoots, alike to the east and to the west, asserted their
superiority over the earlier peoples whom they found in possession of
the soil. The history of ancient Europe is the story of the Aryan
settlements around the shores of the Mediterranean; and that wide term,
modern civilization, merely means the civilization of the western
branches of the same race. The history of India consists in like manner
of the history of the eastern offshoots of the Aryan stock who settled
in that land.

We know little regarding these noble Aryan tribes in their early
camping-ground in Western Asia. From words preserved in the languages of
their long-separated descendants in Europe and India, scholars infer
that they roamed over the grassy steppes with their cattle, making long
halts to raise crops of grain. They had tamed most of the domestic
animals; were acquainted with iron; understood the arts of weaving and
sewing; wore clothes, and ate cooked food. They lived the hardy life of
the comparatively temperate zone; and the feeling of cold seems to be
one of the earliest common remembrances of the eastern and the western
branches of the race.

The forefathers of the Greek and the Roman, of the English and the
Hindu, dwelt together in Western Asia, spoke the same tongue, worshipped
the same gods. The languages of Europe and India, although at first
sight they seem wide apart, are merely different growths from the
original Aryan speech. This is especially true of the common words of
family life. The names for _father, mother, brother, sister_, and
_widow_ are the same in most of the Aryan languages, whether spoken on
the banks of the Ganges, of the Tiber, or of the Thames. Thus the word
_daughter_, which occurs in nearly all of them, has been derived from
the Aryan root _dugh_, which in Sanscrit has the form of _duh_, to milk;
and perhaps preserves the memory of the time when the daughter was the
little milkmaid in the primitive Aryan household.

The ancient religions of Europe and India had a common origin. They were
to some extent made up of the sacred stories or myths which our joint
ancestors had learned while dwelling together in Asia. Several of the
Vedic gods were also the gods of Greece and Rome; and to this day the
Divinity is adored by names derived from the same old Aryan word
(_deva_, the Shining One), by Brahmans in Calcutta, by the Protestant
clergy of England, and by Roman Catholic priests in Peru.

The Vedic hymns exhibit the Indian branch of the Aryans on their march
to the southeast, and in their new homes. The earliest songs disclose
the race still to the north of the Khaibar pass, in Kabul; the later
ones bring them as far as the Ganges. Their victorious advance eastward
through the intermediate tract can be traced in the Vedic writings
almost step by step. The steady supply of water among the five rivers of
the Punjab led the Aryans to settle down from their old state of
wandering half-pastoral tribes into regular communities of husbandmen.
The Vedic poets praised the rivers which enabled them to make this great
change--perhaps the most important step in the progress of a race. "May
the Indus," they sang, "the far-famed giver of wealth, hear us;
[fertilizing our] broad fields with water." The Himalayas, through whose
southwestern passes they had reached India, and at whose southern base
they long dwelt, made a lasting impression on their memory. The Vedic
singer praised "Him whose greatness the snowy ranges, and the sea, and
the aerial river declare." The Aryan race in India never forgot its
northern home. There dwelt its gods and holy singers; and there
eloquence descended from heaven among men; while high amid the Himalayan
mountains lay the paradise of deities and heroes, where the kind and the
brave forever repose.

The Rig-Veda forms the great literary memorial of the early Aryan
settlements in the Punjab. The age of this venerable hymnal is unknown.
Orthodox Hindus believe, without evidence, that it existed "from before
all time," or at least from 3001 years B.C. European scholars have
inferred from astronomical data that its composition was going on about
1400 B.C. But the evidence might have been calculated backward, and
inserted later in the Veda. We only know that the Vedic religion had
been at work long before the rise of Buddhism in the sixth century B.C.
The Rig-Veda is a very old collection of 1017 short poems, chiefly
addressed to the gods, and containing 10,580 verses. Its hymns show us
the Aryans on the banks of the Indus, divided into various tribes,
sometimes at war with each other, sometimes united against the
"black-skinned" aborigines. Caste, in its later sense, is unknown. Each
father of a family is the priest of his own household. The chieftain
acts as father and priest to the tribe; but at the greater festivals he
chooses some one specially learned in holy offerings to conduct the
sacrifice in the name of the people. The king himself seems to have been
elected; and his title of Vis-pat, literally "Lord of the Settlers,"
survives in the old Persian Vis-paiti, and as the Lithuanian Wiez-patis
in east-central Europe at this day. Women enjoyed a high position; and
some of the most beautiful hymns were composed by ladies and queens.
Marriage was held sacred. Husband and wife were both "rulers of the
house" (_dampati_); and drew near to the gods together in prayer. The
burning of widows on their husbands' funeral pile was unknown; and the
verses in the Veda which the Brahmans afterwards distorted into a
sanction for the practice, have the very opposite meaning. "Rise,
woman," says the Vedic text to the mourner; "come to the world of life.
Come to us, Thou hast fulfilled thy duties as a wife to thy husband."

The Aryan tribes in the Veda have blacksmiths, coppersmiths, and
goldsmiths among them, besides carpenters, barbers, and other artisans.
They fight from chariots, and freely use the horse, although not yet the
elephant, in war. They have settled down as husbandmen, till their
fields with the plough, and live in villages or towns. But they also
cling to their old wandering life, with their herds and "cattle-pens."
Cattle, indeed, still form their chief wealth--the coin in which payment
of fines is made--reminding us of the Latin word for money, _pecunia_,
from _pecus_, a herd. One of the Vedic words for war literally means "a
desire for cows." Unlike the modern Hindus, the Aryans of the Veda ate
beef; used a fermented liquor or beer, made from the _soma_ plant; and
offered the same strong meat and drink to their gods. Thus the stout
Aryans spread eastward through Northern India, pushed on from behind by
later arrivals of their own stock, and driving before them, or reducing
to bondage, the earlier "black-skinned" races. They marched in whole
communities from one river valley to another; each house-father a
warrior, husbandman, and priest; with his wife, and his little ones, and
his cattle.

These free-hearted tribes had a great trust in themselves and their
gods. Like other conquering races, they believed that both themselves
and their deities were altogether superior to the people of the land,
and to their poor, rude objects of worship. Indeed, this noble
self-confidence is a great aid to the success of a nation. Their
divinities--_devas_, literally "the shining ones," from the Sanscrit
root _div_, "to shine"--were the great powers of nature. They adored the
Father-heaven,--_Dyaush-pitar_ in Sanscrit, the _Dies piter_ or
_Jupiter_ of Rome, the _Zeus_ of Greece; and the Encompassing
Sky--_Varuna_ in Sanscrit, _Uranus_ in Latin, _Ouranos_ in Greek.
_Indra_, or the Aqueous Vapor, that brings the precious rain on which
plenty or famine still depends each autumn, received the largest number
of hymns. By degrees, as the settlers realized more and more keenly the
importance of the periodical rains to their new life as husbandmen, he
became the chief of the Vedic gods. "The gods do not reach unto thee, O
Indra, nor men; thou overcomest all creatures in strength." Agni, the
God of Fire (Latin _ignis_), ranks perhaps next to Indra in the number
of hymns addressed to him. He is "the Youngest of the Gods," "the Lord
and Giver of Wealth." The Maruts are the Storm Gods, "who make the rock
to tremble, who tear in pieces the forest." Ushas, "the High-born Dawn"
(Greek _Eos_), "shines upon us like a young wife, rousing every living
being to go forth to his work." The Asvins, the "Horsemen" or fleet
outriders of the dawn, are the first rays of sunrise, "Lords of Lustre."
The Solar Orb himself (Surya), the Wind (Vayu), the Sunshine or Friendly
Day (Mitra), the intoxicating fermented juice of the Sacrificial Plant
(Soma), and many other deities are invoked in the Veda--in all, about
thirty-three gods, "who are eleven in heaven, eleven on earth, and
eleven dwelling in glory in mid-air."

The Aryan settler lived on excellent terms with his bright gods. He
asked for protection, with an assured conviction that it would be
granted. At the same time, he was deeply stirred by the glory and
mystery of the earth and the heavens. Indeed, the majesty of nature so
filled his mind, that when he praises any one of his Shining Gods, he
can think of none other for the time being, and adores him as the
supreme ruler. Verses may be quoted declaring each of the greater
deities to be the One Supreme: "Neither gods nor men reach unto thee, O
Indra!" Another hymn speaks of Soma as "king of heaven and earth, the
conqueror of all." To Varuna also it is said, "Thou art lord of all, of
heaven and earth; thou art king of all those who are gods, and of all
those who are men." The more spiritual of the Vedic singers, therefore,
may be said to have worshipped One God, though not One alone.

"In the beginning there arose the Golden Child. He was the one born lord
of all that is. He established the earth and this sky. Who is the God to
whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He who gives life, he who gives strength; whose command all the Bright
Gods revere; whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death. Who is
the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He who, through his power, is the one king of the breathing and
awakening world. He who governs all, man and beast. Who is the God to
whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm; he through whom
the heaven was established, nay, the highest heaven; he who measured out
the light and the air. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
sacrifice?

"He who by his might looked even over the water-clouds; he who alone is
God above all gods. Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
sacrifice?"

While the aboriginal races buried their dead in the earth or under rude
stone monuments, the Aryan--alike in India, in Greece, and in
Italy--made use of the funeral-pile. Several exquisite Sanscrit hymns
bid farewell to the dead:--"Depart thou, depart thou by the ancient
paths to the place whither our fathers have departed. Meet with the
Ancient Ones; meet with the Lord of Death. Throwing off thine
imperfections, go to thy home. Become united with a body; clothe thyself
in a shining form." "Let him depart to those for whom flow the rivers of
nectar. Let him depart to those who, through meditation, have obtained
the victory; who, by fixing their thoughts on the unseen, have gone to
heaven. Let him depart to the mighty in battle, to the heroes who have
laid down their lives for others, to those who have bestowed their goods
on the poor." The doctrine of transmigration was at first unknown. The
circle round the funeral-pile sang with a firm assurance that their
friend went direct to a state of blessedness and reunion with the loved
ones who had gone before. "Do thou conduct us to heaven," says a hymn of
the later Atharva-Veda; "let us be with our wives and children." "In
heaven, where our friends dwell in bliss--having left behind the
infirmities of the body, free from lameness, free from crookedness of
limb--there let us behold our parents and our children." "May the
water-shedding Spirits bear thee upward, cooling thee with their swift
motion through the air, and sprinkling thee with dew." "Bear him, carry
him; let him, with all his faculties complete, go to the world of the
righteous. Crossing the dark valley which spreadeth boundless around
him, let the unborn soul ascend to heaven. Wash the feet of him who is
stained with sin; let him go upward with cleansed feet. Crossing the
gloom, gazing with wonder in many directions, let the unborn soul go up
to heaven."

By degrees the old collection of hymns, or the Rig-Veda, no longer
sufficed. Three other collections or service-books were therefore added,
making the Four Vedas. The word Veda is from the same root as the Latin
_vid-ere_, to see: the early Greek _feid-enai_, infinitive of _oida_, I
know: and the English _wisdom_, or I _wit_. The Brahmans taught that the
Veda was divinely inspired, and that it was literally "the _wisdom_ of
God." There was, first, the Rig-Veda, or the hymns in their simplest
form. Second, the Sama-Veda, made up of hymns of the Rig-Veda to be used
at the Soma sacrifice. Third, the Yajur-Veda, consisting not only of
Rig-Vedic hymns, but also of prose sentences, to be used at the great
sacrifices; and divided into two editions, the Black and White Yajur.
The fourth, or Atharva-Veda, was compiled from the least ancient hymns
at the end of the Rig-Veda, very old religious spells, and later
sources. Some of its spells have a similarity to the ancient German and
Lithuanian charms, and appear to have come down from the most primitive
times, before the Indian and European branches of the Aryan race struck
out from their common home.

To each of the four Vedas were attached prose works, called Brahmanas,
in order to explain the sacrifices and the duties of the priests. Like
the Four Vedas, the Brahmanas were held to be the very word of God. The
Vedas and the Brahmanas form the revealed Scriptures of the Hindus--the
_sruti_, literally "Things _heard_ from God." The Vedas supplied their
divinely-inspired psalms, and the Brahmanas their divinely-inspired
theology or body of doctrine. To them were afterward added the Sutras,
literally "_Strings_ of pithy sentences" regarding laws and ceremonies.
Still later the Upanishads were composed, treating of God and the soul;
the Aranyakas, or "Tracts for the forest recluse;" and, after a very
long interval, the Puranas, or "Traditions from of old." All these
ranked, however, not as divinely-inspired knowledge, or things "heard
from God" (_sruti_), like the Vedas and Brahmanas, but only as sacred
traditions--_smriti_, literally "The things _remembered_."

Meanwhile the Four Castes had been formed. In the old Aryan colonies
among the Five Rivers of the Punjab, each house-father was a husbandman,
warrior, and priest. But by degrees certain gifted families, who
composed the Vedic hymns or learned them off by heart, were always
chosen by the king to perform the great sacrifices. In this way probably
the priestly caste sprang up. As the Aryans conquered more territory,
fortunate soldiers received a larger share of the lands than others, and
cultivated it not with their own hands, but by means of the vanquished
non-Aryan tribes. In this way the Four Castes arose. First, the priests
or Brahmans. Second, the warriors or fighting companions of the king,
called Rajputs or Kchatryas, literally "of the _royal_ stock." Third,
the Aryan agricultural settlers, who kept the old name of Vaisyas, from
the root _vis_, which in the primitive Vedic period had included the
whole Aryan people. Fourth, the Sudras, or conquered non-Aryan tribes,
who became serfs. The three first castes were of Aryan descent, and were
honored by the name of the Twice-born Castes. They could all be present
at the sacrifices, and they worshipped the same Bright Gods. The Sudras
were "the slave-bands of black descent" of the Veda. They were
distinguished from their "Twice-born" Aryan conquerors as being only
"Once-born," and by many contemptuous epithets. They were not allowed to
be present at the great national sacrifices, or at the feasts which
followed them. They could never rise out of their servile condition; and
to them was assigned the severest toil in the fields, and all the hard
and dirty work of the village community.

The Brahmans or priests claimed the highest rank. But they seemed to
have had a long struggle with the Kchatryas, or warrior caste, before
they won their proud position at the head of the Indian people. They
afterward secured themselves in that position by teaching that it had
been given to them by God. At the beginning of the world, they said, the
Brahman proceeded from the mouth of the Creator, the Kchatryas or Rajput
from his arms, the Vaisya from his thighs or belly, and the Sudra from
his feet. This legend is true so far that the Brahmans were really the
brain power of the Indian people, the Kchatryas its armed hands, the
Vaisyas the food-growers, and the Sudras the down-trodden serfs. When
the Brahmans had established their power, they made a wise use of it.
From the ancient Vedic times they recognized that if they were to
exercise spiritual supremacy, they must renounce earthly pomp. In
arrogating the priestly function, they gave up all claim to the royal
office. They were divinely appointed to be the guides of nations and the
counsellors of kings, but they could not be kings themselves. As the
duty of the Sudra was to serve, of the Vaisya to till the ground and
follow middle-class trades or crafts; so the business of the Kchatryas
was to fight the public enemy, and of the Brahman to propitiate the
national gods.

Each day brought to the Brahmans its routine of ceremonies, studies, and
duties. Their whole life was mapped out into four clearly defined stages
of discipline. For their existence, in its full religious significance,
commenced not at birth, but on being invested at the close of childhood
with the sacred thread of the Twice-born. Their youth and early manhood
were to be entirely spent in learning the Veda by heart from an older
Brahman, tending the sacred fire, and serving their preceptor. Having
completed his long studies, the young Brahman entered on the second
stage of his life, as a householder. He married, and commenced a course
of family duties. When he had reared a family, and gained a practical
knowledge of the world, he retired into the forest as a recluse, for the
third period of his life; feeding on roots or fruits, practising his
religious duties with increased devotion. The fourth stage was that of
the ascetic or religious mendicant, wholly withdrawn from earthly
affairs, and striving to attain a condition of mind which, heedless of
the joys, or pains, or wants of the body, is intent only on its final
absorption into the deity. The Brahman, in this fourth stage of his
life, ate nothing but what was given to him unasked, and abode not more
than one day in any village, lest the vanities of the world should find
entrance into his heart. This was the ideal life prescribed for a
Brahman, and ancient Indian literature shows that it was to a large
extent practically carried out. Throughout his whole existence the true
Brahman practised a strict temperance; drinking no wine, using a simple
diet, curbing the desires; shut off from the tumults of war, as his
business was to pray, not to fight, and having his thoughts ever fixed
on study and contemplation. "What is this world?" says a Brahman sage.
"It is even as the bough of a tree, on which a bird rests for a night,
and in the morning flies away."

The Brahmans, therefore, were a body of men who, in an early stage of
this world's history, bound themselves by a rule of life the essential
precepts of which were self-culture and self-restraint. The Brahmans of
the present India are the result of 3000 years of hereditary education
and temperance; and they have evolved a type of mankind quite distinct
from the surrounding population. Even the passing traveller in India
marks them out, alike from the bronze-cheeked, large-limbed,
leisure-loving Rajput or Kchatryas, the warrior caste of Aryan descent;
and from the dark-skinned, flat-nosed, thick-lipped low castes of
non-Aryan origin, with their short bodies and bullet heads. The Brahman
stands apart from both, t

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