Mesopotamian Archaeology
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Title: Mesopotamian Archaeology
Author: Percy S. P. Handcock
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MESOPOTAMIAN
ARCHÆOLOGY
[Illustration: Frontispiece]
MESOPOTAMIAN ARCHÆOLOGY
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ARCHÆOLOGY OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA. BY PERCY S.
P. HANDCOCK, M.A. WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS, ALSO MAPS
[Illustration]
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. LTD., AND PHILIP LEE WARNER, ST. MARTIN’S
STREET. MDCCCCXII
DEDICATED TO
A. M. LORD
IN RECOGNITION
OF MANY ACTS OF FRIENDSHIP
PREFACE
In every department of science the theories of yesterday are perpetually
being displaced by the empirical facts of to-day, though the
ascertainment of these facts is frequently the indirect outcome of the
theories which the facts themselves dissipate. Hence it is that the
works of the greatest scholars and experts have no finality, they are
but stepping-stones towards the goal of perfect knowledge. Since the
publications of Layard, Rawlinson, Botta and Place much new material has
been made accessible for the reconstruction of the historic past of the
Babylonians and Assyrians, and we are consequently able to fill in many
gaps in the picture so admirably, and as far as it went, so faithfully
drawn by the pioneers in the field of excavation and research. This
work, which owes its origin to a suggestion made by Dr. Wallis Budge,
represents an endeavour on the part of the writer to give a brief
account of the civilization of ancient Babylonia and Assyria in the
light of this new material.
It is hoped that the infinitude of activities and pursuits which go to
make up the civilization of any country will justify the writer’s
treatment of so many subjects in a single volume. It will be observed
that space allotted to the consideration of the different arts and
crafts varies on the one hand according to the relative importance of
the part each played in the life of the people, and on the other hand
according to the amount of material available for the study of the
particular subject.
No effort has been spared to make the chapters on Architecture,
Sculpture and Metallurgy as comprehensive as the limitations of the
volume permit, while for the sake of those who desire to pursue the
study of any of the subjects dealt with in this book, and to work up the
sketch into a picture, a short bibliography is given at the end.
It has not been thought desirable to amass a vast number of references
in the footnotes, and the writer is thereby debarred from acknowledging
his indebtedness to the works of other writers on all occasions as he
would like to have done.
In addition to the chapters which deal expressly with the cultural
evolution of the dwellers in Mesopotamia, two chapters are devoted to
the consideration of the Cuneiform writing—its pictorial origin, the
history of its decipherment, and the literature of which it is the
vehicle, while another chapter is occupied with a historical review of
the excavations. The short chronological summary at the end obviously
makes not the slightest pretension to even being a comprehensive
summary; it merely purports to give the general chronological order of
some of the better known rulers and kings of Babylonia and Assyria to
whom allusion is made in this volume, together with a notice of some of
the more significant land-marks in the history of the two countries.
The writer’s thanks are due to the Trustees of the British Museum for
permission to photograph some of the objects in the Babylonian and
Assyrian Collections, and to Dr. Wallis Budge for facilities and
encouragement in carrying out the work; to the University of Chicago
Press for allowing him to reproduce illustrations from the _American
Journal of Semitic Languages_ and also diagrams from Harper’s Memorial
Volumes; to M. Ernest Leroux for permitting him to make use of some of
the plates contained in the monumental works of De Sarzec and Heuzey,
and to M. Ch. Eggimann of the “Libraire Centrale d’art et d’architecture
ancienne maison Morel,” for his very kind permission to reproduce two of
the plates contained in Dieulafoy, _L’Art Antique de la Perse_. He is
similarly indebted to the Deutsche-Orient Gesellschaft for allowing him
to make an autotype copy of one of the plates in Andrae’s _Der Anu-Adad
Tempel_. He further desires to acknowledge the generosity of Prof. H. V.
Hilprecht in allowing him to make use of many of the illustrations
contained in his numerous publications, and also of Dr. Fisher for
permitting him to reproduce some of the photographs contained in his
magnificently illustrated work on the excavations at Nippur. He is very
sensible of his indebtedness to these two gentlemen, as also to M.
Leroux and the Deutsche-Orient Gesellschaft, for the photographs of
excavations in progress are obviously of a unique character and admit of
no repetition; he further desires to express his obligations to Dr. W.
Hayes Ward for his most kind permission to copy a number of
seal-impressions and other illustrations contained in his recently
published work—_Cylinder-Seals of Western Asia_. Lastly, he welcomes the
opportunity of acknowledging the kindness of Mr. Mansell for allowing
him to publish many photographs of objects in the British Museum and the
Louvre contained in his incomparable collection, and for in other ways
facilitating the illustration of this volume. Most of the plans and
drawings used for this volume are the work of Miss E. K. Reader, who has
performed her task with her usual skill.
P. S. P. H.
_March, 1912._
ERRATA ET CORRIGENDA
p. 6, l. 3, _for_ 2500 B.C. _read_ 2400 B.C.
p. 6, l. 18, _for_ 2500 B.C. _read_ 2400 B.C.
p. 43, l. 7 from foot, _read_ both French and English explorers
p. 62, l. 2, _for_ considerable _read_ much
p. 89, l. 5, _for_ ± _read_ —
p. 110, l. 2, _for_ 2500 B.C. _read_ 2400 B.C.
p. 125, l. 7 from foot, _for_ or _read_ and
p. 130, l. 23, _for_ 2400 B.C. _read_ 2350 B.C.
p. 155, l. 31, _for_ having _read_ have
p. 235, l. 9 from foot, _for_ Sumu-la-ilu _read_ Sumu-ilu
p. 247, l. 1, _for_ 2500 B.C. _read_ 2400 B.C.
p. 249, l. 35, _after_ crudeness _read_ these heads
The reference numbers as printed on Plates VII to XI are inaccurate, and
should be altered as follows, in agreement with the List of
Illustrations and the references in the text:—
_Present number _Correct number
and position_ and position_
ZIGGURAT OF ASHUR-NAṢIR-PAL VII _Facing_ p. 64 VIII Facing p. 78
INSCRIPTIONS ON CLAY VIII ” 78 IX ” 106
RUINED MOUNDS AND COURT OF MEN IX ” 106 X ” 132
WATER CONDUIT, NIPPUR X ” 132 XI ” 138
EXCAVATIONS IN TEMPLE COURT XI ” 138 VII ” 64
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION—
(_a_) Land and People 1
(_b_) Sketch of Babylonian and Assyrian History 28
II. EXCAVATIONS 40
III. DECIPHERMENT OF THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS 85
IV. CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS 95
V. ARCHITECTURE 119
VI. SCULPTURE 181
VII. METALLURGY 242
VIII. PAINTING 270
IX. CYLINDER-SEALS 284
X. SHELL-ENGRAVING AND IVORY-WORK 309
XI. TERRA-COTTA FIGURES AND RELIEFS 317
XII. STONEWARE AND POTTERY 325
XIII. DRESS, MILITARY ACCOUTREMENTS, ETC. 337
XIV. LIFE, MANNERS, CUSTOMS, LAW, RELIGION 364
SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY 406
LIST OF THE MORE IMPORTANT KINGS AND
RULERS AND A BRIEF CHRONOLOGICAL
SUMMARY 408
INDEX 411
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE IN COLOURS
PLATE
I. Coloured Lion at Khorsabad _Frontispiece_
PLATES IN HALF-TONE
FACING PAGE
II. Kouyunjik and Nebi Yûnus (two views) 42
Nimrûd (Calah) 42
Khorsabad 42
III. Excavations at Nimrûd (Calah) in Ashur-naṣir-pal’s
Palace 44
IV. “Fish-God,” and Entrance Passage, Kouyunjik 48
V. Doorway at Tellô, erected by Gudea 54
South-eastern façade of Ur-Ninâ’s building at
Tellô 54
VI. Remains of a Stele in a building under that of
Ur-Ninâ 58
The Well of Eannatum 58
XI. Excavations in the Temple Court, Nippur 64
VIII. The Ziggurat and Palace of Ashur-naṣir-pal,
Ashur 78
IX. Inscriptions on clay illustrating the sizes and
shapes of the Tablets, etc., used by the Babylonians
and Assyrians 106
X. The Ruined Mounds of Nippur 132
Court of the Men from the North-East, Nippur 132
XI. Water Conduit of Ur-Engur, Nippur 138
XII. Portion of the “Vulture Stele” of Eannatum,
Patesi of Lagash 186
XIII. Stele of Victory of Narâm-Sin 192
XIV. Stele engraved with Khammurabi’s Code of
Laws 198
The Sun-God Tablet 198
XV. Bas-relief of Ashur-naṣir-pal 202
XVI. Bas-reliefs of Ashur-naṣir-pal (four subjects) 204
XVII. Siege of a City by battering-ram and archers 206
XVIII. Ashur-bani-pal’s Hunting Scenes: Lion and
lioness in a garden 218
XIX. Ashur-bani-pal’s Hunting Scenes (two subjects) 218
XX. Ashur-bani-pal’s Hunting Scenes: Hunting
wild asses with dogs 220
Ashur-bani-pal pouring out a libation over
dead lions 220
XXI. Ashur-bani-pal reclining at meat 222
Musicians and Attendants 222
XXII. Limestone figure of an early Sumerian 224
Three archaic stone heads 224
XXIII. Head and two diorite statues of Gudea;
upper part of female statuette 228
XXIV. Statues of Nebo and Ashur-naṣir-pal; torso
of a woman 230
XXV. Winged man-headed genii 236
XXVI. Stone lion of Ashur-naṣir-pal 238
XXVII. The Kasr lion 240
XXVIII. Miscellaneous objects of bronze, from
Nimrûd 254
XXIX. Bronze bowl, from Nimrûd 256
XXX. Decorated arch at Khorsabad 278
XXXI. Glazed bricks 282
XXXII. Ivory panels, from Nimrûd 314
XXXIII. Pottery, from Nimrûd and Nineveh 334
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
FIGURE PAGE
1. Pictographs 97
2. Pictographs 99
3. Late Babylonian “squeeze” of an early inscription 117
4. Brick-stamp of Narâm-Sin 117
5. Clay covering of the “Sun-Tablet” 117
6. Restoration of the temple at Nippur 137
7. Restoration of the Anu-Adad temple at Ashur 144
8. Restoration of Sargon’s palace at Khorsabad 151
9. Domed roofs in Assyria 155
10, 11. Terra-cotta drains 159
12. Columnar piers at Tellô 161
13. Large column capital; small column capital 165
14. Columns (various) 166
15. Early arch at Nippur 170
16. Early arch at Tellô 170
17. Corbelled arch at Nippur 173
18. Round arch at Babylon 173
19-22. Arched drains at Khorsabad 174
23. Burial-vault at Ashur 176
24. Burial-vault at Ur (Muḳeyyer) 176
24_a_. Ziggurat on Assyrian bas-relief 180
24_b_. Ziggurat at Khorsabad 180
25. Six early bas-reliefs 182
26. Stele of Ur-Ninâ and mace-head of Mesilim 185
27. Two fragments of the “Vulture Stele”; little
sculptured block (Entemena’s reign) 189
28. Five bas-reliefs, including one of Narâm-Sin 194
29. Bas-relief of Sargon, king of Assyria 209
30. Bas-relief of Sennacherib; removal of stone bull 213
31. Sennacherib at Lachish 215
32. Statue of Esar, king of Adab 223
33. Early stone statue of a woman 224
34. Statue of Manishtusu; seated figure of a woman;
head of a woman 225
35. Seated figure of Shalmaneser II 231
36. Stone lion-head; figure of a dog; stone figure of
a human-headed bull inlaid with shell 234
37. Copper spear-head; hollow copper tube 243
38. Early copper figures 245
39. Copper figures of Basket-bearers; copper figure
of Gudea 247
40. Figures and heads of animals in copper and bronze 250
41. Two Assyrian swords; an Assyrian axe 254
42. Bronze dish 257
43, 44. Bronze gate-bands 259, 260
45. Silver vase of Entemena 265
46. Coloured clay relief lion from Babylon 274
47. Coloured bull at Babylon; coloured bull at Nimrûd
(Calah) 275
48. Three cylinder seals; clay tablet bearing a
seal-impression 285
49-77. Impressions from cylinder-seals 289-307
78-83. Engravings on shells 310-312
84. Carved ivory panel from Nimrûd 314
85. Early terra-cotta figures 318
86. Terra-cotta figures of later date 320
87. Terra-cotta figure of a dog 323
88. Terra-cotta plaque showing dog with attendant 323
89. Stone vase of Narâm-Sin 328
90. Decorated stone vase of Gudea 328
91. Three stone vessels, one of which bears an inscription
of Sennacherib, and another the name of Xerxes;
small glass vessel of Sargon 330
92, 93. Two early clay pots from Nippur 332
94. Boomerang-shaped weapons 342
95. Assyrian jewellery 348
96, 97. Combs 349
98, 99. Foot-spearman and Foot-archers of the first
Assyrian period 350
100-102. Archers in the reign of Sargon 351
103-105. Archers in the reign of Sennacherib 352
106, 107. Assyrian cavalry 354, 355
108. Assyrian chariotry 356
109. Assyrian helmets and head-gears 357
110. Assyrian weapons of offence 358
111. Battering-rams and shields 360
112. Naval equipment of the Assyrians 362
113-115. Babylonian emblems 396, 398
MAPS
(1) Mesopotamia, (2) Babylonia _Folder at end_
Mesopotamian Archæology
CHAPTER I—INTRODUCTION
(_a_) LAND AND PEOPLE
The Mesopotamian civilization shares with the Egyptian civilization the
honour of being one of the two earliest civilizations in the world, and
although M. J. de Morgan’s excavations at Susa the ruined capital of
ancient Elam, have brought to light the elements of an advanced
civilization which perhaps even antedates that of Mesopotamia, it must
be remembered that the Sumerians who, so far as our present knowledge
goes, were the first to introduce the arts of life and all that they
bring with them, into the low-lying valley of the Tigris and Euphrates,
probably themselves emigrated from the Elamite plateau on the east of
the Tigris; at all events the Sumerians expressed both “mountain” and
“country” by the same writing-sign, the two apparently being synonymous
from their point of view; in support of this theory of a mountain-home
for the Sumerians, we may perhaps further explain the temple-towers, the
characteristic feature of most of the religious edifices in Mesopotamia,
as a conscious or unconscious imitation in bricks and mortar of the
hills and ridges of their native-land, due to an innate aversion to the
dead-level monotony of the Babylonian plain, while it is also a
significant fact that in the earliest period Shamash the Sun-god is
represented with one foot resting on a mountain, or else standing
between two mountains. However this may be, the history of the Elamites
was intimately wrapped up with that of the dwellers on the other side of
the Tigris, from the earliest times down to the sack of Susa by
Ashur-bani-pal, king of Assyria, in the seventh century. Both peoples
adopted the cuneiform system of writing, so-called owing to the
wedge-shaped formation of the characters, the wedges being due to the
material used in later times for all writing purposes—the clay of their
native soil—: both spoke an agglutinative, as opposed to an inflexional
language like our own, and both inherited a similar culture.
A further, and in its way a more convincing argument in support of the
mountain-origin theory is afforded by the early art of the Sumerians. On
the most primitive seal cylinders[1] we find trees and animals whose
home is in the mountains, and which certainly were not native to the
low-lying plain of Babylonia. The cypress and the cedar-tree are only
found in mountainous districts, but a tree which must be identified with
one or the other of them is represented on the early seal cylinders; it
is of course true that ancient Sumerian rulers fetched cedar wood from
the mountains for their building operations, and therefore the presence
of such a tree on cylinder seals merely argues a certain acquaintance
with the tree, but _ceteris paribus_ it is more reasonable to suppose
that the material earthly objects depicted, were those with which the
people were entirely familiar and not those with which they were merely
casually acquainted. Again, on the early cylinders the mountain bull,
known as the _Bison bonasus_, assumes the rôle played in later times by
the lowland water-buffalo. This occurs with such persistent regularity
that the inference that the home of the Sumerians in those days was in
the mountains is almost inevitable. Again, as Ward points out, the
composite man-bull Ea-bani, the companion of Gilgamesh, has always the
body of a bison, never that of a buffalo. So too the frequent occurrence
of the ibex, the oryx, and the deer with branching horns, all argues in
the same direction, for the natural home of all these animals lay in the
mountains.
The Mesopotamian valley may, for the immediate purpose of this book, be
divided into two halves, a dividing-line being roughly drawn between the
two rivers just above Abû Habba (Sippar); the northern half embraces the
land occupied by the Assyrians, and the southern half that occupied by
the Babylonians. The precise date at which Assyria was colonized by
Babylonia is not known, but to the first known native[2] king of
Assyria, Irishum, we may assign an approximate date of 2000 B.C.
Babylonia proper is an alluvial plain the limits of which on the east
and west are the mountains of Persia and the table-land of Arabia
respectively. This valley has been gradually formed at the expense of
the sea’s domain, for in the remote past the Persian Gulf swept over the
whole plain at least as far northward as the city of Babylon where
sea-shells have been found, and probably a good deal further. It owes
its formation to the silt brought down by the two rivers and deposited
at the mouth of the Gulf: the amount of land thus yearly reclaimed from
the sea in early times is not known, but as Spasinus Chorax the modern
Mohammerah, which is now some forty-seven miles inland, was situated on
the sea-coast in the time of Alexander, we know that the conquest of the
land over the sea has been progressing since his time at the rate of 115
feet yearly.
Thus the physical characteristics of the country in which Babylonian
civilization was developed, if it was not actually the place of its
origin, form a close parallel to those of Lower Egypt; in Egypt however
such evidence as there is, would indicate the South, or Upper Egypt as
the earliest scene of civilization, the North being conquered by the
Mesniu (Metal-users) of the South, not only in the battle-field but also
in culture and civilization. Both countries have but a small sea-board
where their rivers find an outlet, the Nile into the Mediterranean, and
the Tigris and Euphrates into the Persian Gulf; both countries had
emerged and were yearly emerging out of the sea, for it is certain that
at one time the Mediterranean penetrated as far south as Esneh, while as
already mentioned, the Persian Gulf extended at least as far as Babylon;
we are accordingly not surprised to find in both the Babylonian and
Egyptian cosmologies a tradition which told of the creation of the world
out of a primæval mass of water, though this idea looms less
conspicuously in the Egyptian than in the Babylonian and Hebrew
cosmologies. Both countries also were visited by a yearly inundation
which, while it brought no small amount of devastation in its train, at
the same time deposited the mud so essential to the enrichment of the
soil, the desolation being checked or at least mitigated in either
country by an elaborate system of irrigation canals, which same canals
were in the summer-time the means of conveying the life-giving water to
the dry and thirsty land. Both Babylonia and Egypt enjoy a warm climate,
though Egypt is much more dry and therefore healthier, and the
corresponding dryness of its soil has preserved the tangible evidences
of its ancient history in a far more perfect condition than the
marsh-country of Lower Mesopotamia; and lastly the climate of Egypt is
not subject to the same violent changes of temperature incidental to
the seasons in the Valley of the Euphrates.
The evidence of any racial connection between the earliest known
inhabitants of the two countries is very precarious; as regards their
art, their customs and their language, the Sumerians on the one hand,
and the pre-dynastic and early dynastic Egyptians on the other, show a
complete independence of each other; both countries were probably
invaded at an early period of their histories by the Semites, who in the
case of Mesopotamia completely supplanted their predecessors of
different stock, but who were at the same time themselves absorbed by
the higher civilization of the Sumerians to which they were the destined
heirs, and to the further development of which they themselves were to
contribute so largely; but at what period or periods the Semites swept
over Egypt and the north coast of Africa, impressing their indelible and
unmistakable stamp upon the foundation-structure of the Egyptian and
Libyan languages is not known; whenever it was, we can safely assume
that their advent took place in prehistoric days, for the hieroglyphs
and probably also the language of the dynastic Egyptians were the
natural development of the language and crude picture-signs of their
predecessors, and the theory of a violent break in the continuity of
early Egyptian civilization at the commencement of the first dynasty is
daily becoming more untenable. We are similarly unable to assign any
definite date to the arrival of the Semites in the Mesopotamian Valley,
though the Neo-Babylonian King Nabonidus gives us a traditional date for
Shar-Gâni-sharri[3] (Sargon) and his son Narâm-Sin, kings of Agade, who,
so far as we know, established the first Semitic empire in the country.
There were indeed Semitic Kings of Kish before the time of
Shar-Gâni-sharri, but the extent of their sway was clearly very limited
compared with the far-reaching empire of the rulers of Agade. But there
are reasons for doubting the accuracy of the traditional date of 3750
B.C. which Nabonidus assigns to Narâm-Sin, the chief reason being the
extraordinary gap in the yieldings of Babylonian excavations between the
time of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin, and that of Gudea, the
priest-king of Lagash in Southern Babylonia, who reigned about 2400
B.C.; that is to say, concerning a period of about 1300 years the
excavations have afforded us practically no information whatever, while
both at the beginning and at the close of that period, we have abundant
evidence of the civilization and history of the inhabitants of
Babylonia; secondly, the style of art characteristic of the time of
Gudea and the kings of Ur, as also the style of writing found in their
inscriptions, presuppose no such long interval between the time of
Sargon and their own day. But there are yet other considerations which
are even more potent, and which deserve greater attention than has been
up to the present accorded to them, depending as they do upon the
stratification of the ruined mounds themselves. Now it is a very
significant fact that the architectural remains of Ur-Engur (_circ._
2400 B.C.) at Nippur, are found immediately above those of Narâm-Sin,
for such an arrangement is hardly conceivable if a period of some
thirteen hundred years separated these two rulers. Again, the
excavations carried on by Dr. Banks for the University of Chicago at
Bismâya have been productive of similar evidence, for immediately below
the ruined ziggurat of Dungi, Ur-Engur’s successor on the throne of Ur,
large square bricks of the size and shape characteristic of the time of
Shar-Gâni-sharri were discovered, while among the bricks a strip of gold
inscribed with the name of Narâm-Sin was also brought to light. The
evidence afforded by the excavations on these two sites would thus
appear to be exceedingly strong against the traditional date recorded by
Nabonidus.[4]
It is therefore tempting to reason that that long silent period, the
silence of which cannot be adequately accounted for, had no existence at
all, that Nabonidus’ statement is therefore to be discredited, and that
Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin probably lived and reigned more than a
thousand years later, i.e. about 2650 B.C. On the other hand it is
important to remember that the Babylonians were astronomers and
mathematicians of no mean order, and that they exercised the greatest
possible care in calculating dates, that moreover Nabonidus was a king
of Babylonia, and therefore “a priori” likely to be in possession of
reliable traditions, if any existed, and further, that he lived 2500
years nearer to the time than we do. The inscription of Nabonidus in
question was found in the mound of Sippar near Agade. It says:—“The
foundation corner-stone of the temple E-ulba in the town of the eternal
fire (Agade) had not been seen since the times before Sargon King of
Babylonia and his son Narâm-Sin.... The cylinder of Narâm-Sin, son of
Sargon, whom for 3200 years, no king among his predecessors had seen,
Shamash the great lord of Sippara hath revealed to him.” Thus according
to Nabonidus, Narâm-Sin lived about 3750 B.C. The archæological evidence
is however so strong in this particular case, both negatively in regard
to the absence of any tangible evidence of the long interval in
question, and positively in regard to the stratification of the mounds
containing the relics of these two kings and also in regard to the
similarity between the earlier sculptures and inscriptions of
Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin and those belonging to the latter half of
the third millennium B.C., that we are no longer able to maintain the
implicit confidence in the historical accuracy of Nabonidus which early
scholars once had.
From the inscriptions of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin that have been
brought to light, we gather that the authors of these inscriptions were
Semites, in other words we learn that the empire of Agade was a Semitic
Empire, and since they extended their empire over all Western Asia, the
Sumerian power located more in the south must have proportionately
dwindled. But their Sumerian predecessors had established their
influence and power in Mesopotamia for a long and indefinite time before
this date, for Sumerian inscriptions which are almost certainly to be
assigned to the pre-Sargonic period give us the names of a large number
of early kings and rulers of Babylonia; their early date is shown by the
writing of these inscriptions which bear a more archaic stamp than those
of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin. For just as uninscribed sculptures
are relatively dateable by the style of art to which they conform, so
that it is possible to provisionally say that this sculpture or
cylinder-seal is older than that, because it presents a more archaic and
less finished style of art, so is it possible to approximately date
un-named and un-dated inscriptions by the style of writing adopted in
those inscriptions. We thus have two means at our disposal by which we
can assign uninscribed monuments of an early period to their relatively
correct places in the evolution of art and culture; on the one hand the
stratum of the ruined mound in which the object in question has been
found can often itself be relatively dated by actually inscribed
monuments found either in the stratum itself, or in the stratum
immediately above or below; or failing these, by the depth at which the
stratum lies below the top of the mound, though this latter alone is a
poor criterion owing to the fact that such accumulation will obviously
vary in different places. The value of all such evidence however depends
on whether or not the strata have been disturbed, as is often
unfortunately the case.
The reason why the ruins of Mesopotamian cities have assumed the form of
mounds lies in the fact that a conquering chief demolished the clay
walls and buildings of his vanquished foe, but instead of clearing the
débris away, he built on the top of it; for his new building operations
the new-comer often utilized part of the old material, hence the
uncertainty of a date assigned to an object, based on the mere
assumption that such object belongs to the stratum in which it has
ultimately found itself, without other corroborative evidence. On the
other hand we are in these days always able to apply the purely
archæological test, which depends upon a close examination of the style
of art or the mode of writing.
Some of these pre-Sargonic rulers already alluded to can be arranged in
strictly chronological order, i.e. the rulers of the city of Lagash, one
of the earliest centres of Sumerian civilization in Babylonia. Lagash
lies fifteen hours’ journey north of Ur and two hours’ east of Warka
(the ancient Erech), and it is Lagash which has provided us with more
material for our study of early Sumerian life and culture than any other
city in the Euphrates valley.
The order of the early pre-Sargonic rulers of Lagash is as follows:
Ur-Ninâ, apparently the founder of the dynasty, inasmuch as he bestows
no royal title on his father or grandfather, and his successors traced
themselves back to him; Akurgal, Eannatum, Enannatum I, Entemena,
Enannatum II, Enetarzi, Enlitarzi, Lugal-anda, and Urukagina. But though
their chronological order is certain, the length of their reigns is
unknown, and their dates can only be approximately ascertained, and
even these approximate and relative dates depend entirely on the date of
Shar-Gâni-sharri. Assuming the latter’s date to have been about 2650
B.C., Ur-Ninâ’s date would be roughly about 3000 B.C. Ur-Ninâ the first
member of the dynasty has left us a number of his sculptures and stelæ,
but there are other nameless works of art discovered either in the
neighbourhood or actually in Lagash itself which present a less
developed form of art, and where inscriptions are concerned, a more
archaic style of writing, while in certain cases the monuments in
question were actually discovered in the strata underneath the building
of Ur-Ninâ, and with these the history of Mesopotamian art and of the
civilization to which it bears such eloquent testimony commences.
RACE
The race to which the Sumerians belonged is not known, but the fact that
their language being agglutinative and not inflexional, was therefore
neither Aryan nor Semitic, but at least and in this respect akin to the
Mongolian languages, of which Turkish, Finnish, Chinese and Japanese are
the most illustrious examples to-day, has led certain scholars to seek a
connection between some of the Sumerian roots and certain Chinese words,
it must however be admitted that this supposed connection is rather
hypothetical at present. Further efforts have also been made by
Lacouperie and others to establish parallels between Chinese art and
culture and those of the Sumerians, but the evidence is not very
convincing.
SOIL
As the surface-soil of Babylonia did not originate there, but was
brought down by the rivers and deposited by them as their currents lost
impetus in approaching the sea, and were thus unable to carry their
burden further, it is well to trace this soil to its original source.
Both the Euphrates and the Tigris rise in the mountains of Armenia,[5]
the geological formation of which is chiefly granite, gneiss and other
feldspathic rocks. These rocks were gradually decomposed by the rains,
their detritus being hurried rapidly down-stream; the rivers in the
course of their career travel through a variety of geological formations
including limestone, sandstone and quartz, all of which contribute
something to the silt which is destined to form part of the delta’s
soil; the latter being composed mainly of chalk, sand, and clay, is
extremely fertile, which won for it a reputation testified to even by
the classical writers: thus Herodotus who flourished in the seventh
century B.C. tells us (I, 293) that “of all the countries that we know,
there is none which is so fruitful in grain. It makes no pretension
indeed, of growing the olive, the vine, or any other trees of the kind;
but in grain it is so fruitful as to yield commonly two hundredfold, and
when the production is greatest even three hundredfold. The blade of the
wheat-plant and barley is often four fingers in breadth. As for millet
and the sesame, I shall not say to what height they grow, though within
my own knowledge, for I am not ignorant that what I have already written
concerning the fruitfulness of Babylonia, must seem incredible to those
who have never visited the country.... Palm trees grow in great numbers
over the whole of the flat country, mostly of the kind that bears fruit,
and this fruit supplies them with bread, wine and honey.” However
exaggerated this account may be, all ancient writers agree in ascribing
to Babylonian soil a fertility and productivity surpassing that of any
other country with which they were acquainted.
But the present state of the country is very different from what it was,
neglect of cultivation having reduced it once more to a desert waste,
or, in the immediate neighbourhood of the rivers, to a pestiferous
marsh. The rivers have furthermore varied their courses time and again,
though this remark applies more to the sluggish stream of the Euphrates
with its low banks, than to the more swiftly flowing Tigris whose
current is confined by higher banks, and whose course has consequently
undergone less change. At the present time, great efforts are being made
to make amends for the neglect to which the once fertile plain of
Babylonia has so long been subject, and in the early part of last year
(1911) the firm of Sir John Jackson (Limited), contractors and
engineers, secured the contract for the building of a great dam at the
head of the Hindiyah Canal: this latter is a channel for which the
Euphrates has forsaken its own bed, and consequently the Euphrates’ bed
upon whose banks the city of Babylon lies, is in summer-time perfectly
dry, all the water flowing down the Hindiyah Canal except at the time of
the inundation. Thus it is that the population have practically ceased
to attempt the cultivation of the Euphrates’ banks, and have for the
most part migrated across country to this canal. The latter however,
being quite inadequate for the burden thus thrust upon it by the
undivided waters of the Euphrates, has become badly water-logged, and
much good land has become swamp. The Turks have been endeavouring for a
long time to erect a dam which would drive back part of the water into
the bed of the river, and thus at the same time make the regulation of
the flow in the canal a possibility, but they have not attained their
object. The engineers of Sir William Willcocks were successful in
filling up the space between the two arms of the barrage, but the dam
was almost immediately breached at another point. When however the
scheme now in hand is duly realized, the banks of the Euphrates will
once again be dotted with the fertility of bygone days, while the
district dependent for its prosperity upon the conditions of the
Hindiyah Canal will be similarly improved.
By the side of these rivers flourished the acacia, the pomegranate and
the poplar, but the tree which stood the Babylonians in best stead, was
the date-palm, from the sap of which they made sugar and also a
fermented liquor, while its fibrous barks served for ropes, and its
wood, being at the same time light and strong, was extensively used as a
building material. So many and so divers were the uses which the
date-palm served, that the Babylonians had a popular song[6] in which
they celebrated the three hundred and sixty benefits of this invaluable
tree. The important part which it played in the life of the early
Sumerian population is indicated by the epithet applied by Entemena to
the goddess Ninâ, whom he addresses as the lady “who makes the dates
grow,” while various amphora-shaped vats, and also a kind of oval basin
evidently used in the manufacture or preservation of date-wine were
discovered by De Sarzec at Tellô.
The date-tree finds a place on the Assyrian bas-reliefs, but it must be
confessed that the artistic products of the Babylonians and Assyrians do
not afford us so much information as might be expected regarding the
flora and fauna of the country. Vines and palms are of frequent
occurrence on the later bas-reliefs, while oaks and terebinths were also
known, for Esarhaddon uses them as material in his building operations
at Babylon, and cedar trees were regularly procured for the same
purpose.
Of the various trees represented on early seals, hardly any can be
identified with any degree of certainty, the date-palm perhaps being
excepted: the reed of the marshes appears fairly soon, but the fig-tree
on the other hand occurs only in later times, which accords with
Herodotus’ intimation that they were not grown in Mesopotamia in his
day; this notwithstanding, they must have been known and presumably
cultivated sufficiently early, for amongst the offerings made by Gudea
(2450 B.C.) to the goddess Bau, figs are enumerated, while the
olive-tree must also have been known at an early date, for objects in
clay in the form of an olive belonging to the time of Urukagina are
still extant.
The Lotus is sometimes engraved on a seal, always in the hand of a god,
and with other Egyptian elements it is frequently found on the ivories
and bronze dishes from Nimrûd.
Millet and other cereals have been the subject of artistic delineation;
flowers of a nondescript character appear in later times, though the
conventional designs of the rosettes, so familiar in Assyrian art, an
example of which is to be found in Pl. XXX, without doubt owed its
origin to an actual attempt to reproduce a living flower, while ivy only
occurs on a late Græco-Egyptian cylinder, and on a Syro-Hittite cylinder
we find a representation of the thistle.
Reeds are found more often than any other tree or plant, alike on
cylinder-seals and bas-reliefs. They were in great demand for the
construction of huts and light boats, but the clay of their native soil
furnished an all-availing and all-abundant material for the building
operations of their palaces, temples and houses; its possibilities were
recognized at a very early date, and were made use of accordingly. Stone
is practically unknown in the low-lying plain of Babylonia,and when
required, it had to be quarried far away in the mountains and
transported at great cost and labour, hence it was comparatively seldom
used for artistic or decorative effects pure and simple, but was rather
employed where the desire for durability rendered it necessary; for this
reason the stone used in Babylonia is generally basalt, diorite,
dolerite or some other hard stone of volcanic origin. In Assyria on the
other hand, both alabaster and various kinds of limestone were easily
procurable, and were used largely for building purposes, while they
both, also, adapted themselves readily to the chisel of the sculptor
whose duty it was to record the chief events of the king’s reign in
pictorial form upon the walls of his palace.
Of the cereals, wheat, barley, vetches and millet were the most
important, and they all grew in large quantities, while as regards
domestic animals—horses, oxen, sheep, pigs, goats, asses and dogs were
the most familiar; upon the bas-reliefs from Kouyunjik, one of the
mounds representing the ancient Nineveh (the other being Nebi Yûnus
(“Prophet Jonah”), so-called by the natives, owing to their belief that
the prophet Jonah was buried there), camels are to be found, while they
also form part of the tribute brought by tributary princes to
Shalmaneser II King of Assyria 860-825 B.C., and are represented
accordingly on the bronze gates from Balâwât and on the so-called Black
Obelisk, principally famous for its representation of Jehu and his
tribute-bearers. The camels represented here belong to the double-humped
Bactrian breed, which have less staying-power than the single-humped
dromedaries of Arabia and Africa. In Babylonia at the present day, these
last-named are a most important means of locomotion, but in the hilly
country of Assyria, they are of less use, owing to their tendency to
slip on any but the flattest of grounds. There is apparently only one
isolated occurrence of a camel on a cylinder-seal, and that belongs to
the Persian period. The Assyrian word used for “camel” is probably of
Arabic origin, and Arabia was doubtless the home of the camel. As for
horses, oxen, sheep, goats and dogs, they are constantly represented in
Assyrian art. The horse being native to Asia, was in all probability
domesticated in Mesopotamia earlier than in Egypt; very early evidence
of its existence in Mesopotamia was thought to be afforded by an archaic
seal-cylinder, now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York, in which a
god is represented driving a four-wheeled chariot, in contrast to the
Assyrian war-chariots which were two-wheeled; the chariot is drawn by an
animal of uncertain character, which Ward originally regarded as a
horse, but in view of a representation of a bull drawing a chariot,
found on an early Assyrian seal which he dates about 2000 B.C., it is
clear that the bull was used to draw chariots in early times, and Ward
accordingly regards the ambiguous animal alluded to, as also a bull. The
Sumerian name for the horse was “the ass of the mountains,” an
indication that the animal was first known to them in its wild state: we
find it figured on one of Nebuchadnezzar I’s boundary stone (_circ._
1120 B.C.), but it was certainly known in the valley much earlier. The
Hyksos, or shepherd-kings from Asia introduced the horse into Egypt
about 1700 B.C., while mention is made of horses in a letter from
Burraburiash the king of Babylon to Amenḥetep, king of Egypt about 1400
B.C.
An extremely early fragment from Nippur (cf. Fig. 25, E) published by
Hilprecht and quoted and reproduced by Ward,[7] shows us a horned animal
dragging a plough, which Ward thinks may be a gazelle or an antelope; if
the latter be the case, we may perhaps infer that an animal of that
species was used for draft purposes before the bull, and certainly
before the horse. However that may be, in later days the horse seems to
have been reserved for the battle-field and the chase. The Assyrian
soldiers both rode them and harnessed them to their war-chariots, and it
is worth noticing how much more successful the Assyrian sculptors were
in their representations of the horse than the Egyptians. The horses on
the bas-reliefs apparently belong to a smaller, shorter and more
thick-set breed than Arabs, and the breed is still supposed to be extant
in Kurdistan. The Assyrians do not seem to have been in the habit of
endowing the horse with wings or with a human head, as they sometimes
did the bull and the lion, though some of the Pehlevi[8] seals and rings
of later days (A.D. 226-632) show figures of winged horses.
The _Ox_ with “long upright and bent horns” seems to have been
domesticated from the very earliest period, and it is represented on
cylinder-seals which by their inscriptions show that they belong to the
early period when the line-writing had not as yet been supplanted by its
later off-shoot cuneiform, while on one of these early seals (cf. Fig.
63) the god himself is depicted riding on one of these bulls; it is
however to be observed that the bull plays a less conspicuous part in
the artistic representations of Mesopotamia than in those of Egypt,
where the tombs so often exhibit the daily scenes of agricultural life.
Only very rarely is the bull represented on cylinder-seals or sculptures
as a sacrificial victim, the best example being afforded by a fragment
of the Vulture Stele of Eannatum; the same king informs us elsewhere
that he sacrificed bulls to the sun-god in Larsa, and a bull-calf to
En-lil, the lord of Nippur, who is better known under the Semitic name
of Bêl, a name which however he never bore;[9] if however the bull were
used but seldom in sacrificial worship, there is no doubt that he was
regarded throughout Mesopotamian history as the embodiment of, and
therefore the natural symbol for strength and fertility, while the
winged bulls of Sargon (cf. Pl. XXV) are the most familiar and perhaps
the most characteristic monuments of Assyrian art.
The _Mule_ was used as a beast of burden; carts were drawn by mules, and
women and children were borne by them, while they were used for carrying
merchandise, and for menial work of every kind; they are occasionally
seen on Assyrian bas-reliefs and form one of the subjects of
Ashur-bani-pal’s famous Hunting Scenes, where they are in charge of the
king’s servants.
The _Sheep_ was domesticated from the earliest times, but
representations of the goat are more common; in Fig. 62 we have an
extremely archaic seal on which a man is seen driving a goat followed by
two sheep. A further example of the goat and sheep is found on the early
stone relief seen in Fig. 25, F.
The _Goat_ is of frequent occurrence both on seals and also in
bas-reliefs. The goat was, as far as we can tell, the most commonly used
sacrificial victim, the worshipper often being represented as bringing a
goat in his arms. (For an early example of a goat in Babylonian art, cf.
the copper goat’s head from Fâra, 40, B.) Fig. The beard is sometimes
clearly delineated,[10] thereby showing it to be a goat and not an
antelope, while both the sheep and goat are well represented on the
bronze gate-sheaths from Balâwât. Though the sheep however does not
appear to have assumed so important a part as the goat in sacrificial
worship, it played a far more conspicuous rôle in augury, and
innumerable omens were deduced from an inspection of the various parts
of its liver.
The _Ass_ was known from the earliest period, both the wild ass, which
Ashur-bani-pal seems to have been so fond of hunting (cf. Pl. XX), and
also the domesticated ass. Ward has only found one example of its early
representation on cylinder-seals, but the god Nin-girsu’s chariot on the
famous Vulture Stele is drawn by an ass, and the fact that Urukagina,
one of the kings of the First Dynasty of Lagash, enacted that if a good
ass was foaled in the stable of one of the king’s subjects, the king
could only purchase it by offering a fair price, and that even then he
could not compel the owner to part with it, shows that the ass was in
common use in his day.
The _Dog_ finds a place on some of the earliest seals from Babylonia,
and is especially common on those representing the legend of Etana and
the Eagle (cf. Fig. 62): he also appears on the later Babylonian seals,
and is of very frequent occurrence in the Assyrian bas-reliefs.
Here they are seen employed in the chase (cf. Pl. XX). The Assyrian
hounds apparently resembled mastiffs, and according to Layard the breed
is still extant in Tibet though not in Mesopotamia. We have another good
reproduction of a dog on a terra-cotta plaque found by Sir H. Rawlinson
at Birs-Nimrûd (cf. Fig. 88), while Ashur-bani-pal has left us a number
of clay models of his dogs, made in one piece like the colossal bulls,
but rather crude in workmanship. Though we thus know little about the
breeds of dogs with which the Assyrians and Babylonians were familiar,
we at all events know, that they were acquainted with dogs of various
colours, for they derived omens from piebald dogs, yellow dogs, black
dogs, white dogs and the rest.
The _Gazelle_ was known in Mesopotamia from an early day, and he
sometimes appears to take the place of the goat as a victim for
sacrifice.
The _Antelope_ is often found represented on early cylinder-seals, and
apparently it was occasionally yoked to the plough, as may be seen from
an early stone relief from Nippur,[11] but it is not always easy to
distinguish between the antelope and the goat in Babylonian art.
The _Ibex_ is similarly liable to be confused with the mountain sheep,
owing to the shape of their horns, but where correctly depicted, it has
a beard. A good and very early example of the Ibex is to be found
engraved on a fragment of shell belonging to the earliest Sumerian
period (cf. Louvre Cat. No. 222).
The _Boar_ was not often figured, but was without doubt sufficiently
common as it is to-day; it is found on an extremely archaic seal (cf.
Fig. 54), and numbers of little swine are repeated in four registers on
a later cylinder-seal, while on other seals, the huntsman is seen
spearing a boar, and lastly a sow with her young are represented on one
of the wall-reliefs from Sennacherib’s palace at Kouyunjik. It is
interesting to note that as early as the time of Khammurabi[12] pork was
a highly valued food, so much so that it frequently formed part of the
temple offerings, and Ungnad calls attention to one case where a certain
maleficent person stole one of the temple-pigs and paid a heavy penalty
for so doing, while in the official lists of the provisions for the
temple, various parts of the pig are specifically enumerated, while
from the inspection of pigs favourable and unfavourable omens were
derived.
The _Rabbit_ or _Hare_ is rarely found in early sculptures or
engravings, but it occurs on the later so-called Syro-Hittite cylinders,
and is occasionally portrayed on the Assyrian bas-reliefs.[13]
The _Oryx_, the _Mountain-Sheep_, the _Stag_, the _Tortoise_, the
_Porcupine_, the _Monkey_, all occur occasionally on the cylinders,
while as regards the monkey, he forms part of the tribute brought by
subject peoples to Shalmaneser II on the Black Obelisk, and is also
similarly depicted on the bas-reliefs which adorned the walls of
Ashur-naṣir-pal’s palace at Nimrûd, in both of which latter, the monkeys
represented appear to belong to an Indian species, and were clearly
novelties in the eyes of the Assyrians, who no doubt valued them
accordingly.
There are solitary instances of the _Fox_, the _Frog_ and the _Bear_,
but none of the foregoing play what may be called an important part in
the history of the country’s art. The _Lion_ and the _Serpent_ occupy a
prominent position in artistic representations, and were undoubtedly
familiar and formidable entities in real life, while the majesty of the
former and the subtlety of the latter were alone sufficient to obtain
for them a place in the mythological and heraldic symbolism of the
dwellers of Mesopotamia. The lion was known everywhere, in highlands and
lowlands alike, while he still haunts the low marsh country of
Babylonia. On the cylinder-seals he generally appears engaged in deadly
combat with Gilgamesh, the hero of Babylonian folk-lore, or his friend
Ea-bani who of course on all occasions worsts him; he is figured in clay
and stone from the earliest (cf. Fig. 26, B) to the latest times, he is
embroidered on garments, and decorates scabbards, while he plays an
all-important part in the heraldic device of the ancient city of
Lagash, which is composed of an eagle with outspread wings, clutching
two lions facing in opposite directions (cf. Fig. 27), doubtless
emblematic of the dominion exercised by the king of Lagash over the
peoples of the East and West respectively. He enjoys the doubtful honour
of being the peculiar object of the Assyrian King’s attention in later
days, and afforded him the sport which he loved above all others (cf.
Pl. XIX); individual kings slew great numbers, and Tukulti-Ninib I (1275
B.C.), to take a single example, places it on record that he slew some
920 lions, just as Amenḥetep III king of Egypt similarly boasts that he
killed 102 lions in the first ten years of his reign. Originally no
doubt lions were sufficiently plentiful, but as their numbers were
thinned, it became necessary to capture and preserve them in cages till
they were required for the royal hunt (cf. Pl. XXVII). The lion is
sometimes reproduced in colossal size, and endowed with wings and the
head of a man, in which capacity, stationed at the portals of the King’s
palace, his vocation is to ward off the advances of malevolent and
maleficent demons, while at other times, he is less fully equipped, and
is provided only with a head, bust and hands of a man. Always a creature
of weight in more ways than one, his body is not unfittingly adapted to
the requirements of the scales; a considerable number of bronze
lion-weights have come down to us, the workmanship of which was probably
Phœnician (as was also the ivory work of the Assyrian empire), while the
weight represented by each lion was inscribed in Phœnician characters.
Sometimes again the hollow bronze head of a lion formed the ornate
fitting of the end of a chariot-pole. As a general rule, the lion
emblematized the King’s enemies, hence it is that, whenever he is seen
engaged in conflict, he is always overpowered either by sheer bodily
strength as in the case of Gilgamesh, or transfixed by an arrow,
speared, or stabbed as we see him so frequently on the bas-reliefs of
Assyrian palaces. But lions were probably domesticated now and again as
they are to-day. On Sir Henry Layard’s first visit to Hillah, he was
presented with two lions by Osman Pasha; one of these, he tells us, was
a well-known frequenter of the bazaars, the butcher-shops of which he
was in the habit of regularly looting, but apart from this amiable
little vagary, he appears to have been fairly well-behaved. In his
description of the animal, Layard says that he was “taller and larger
than a St. Bernard dog, and like the lion generally found on the banks
of the rivers of Mesopotamia was without the dark and shaggy mane of the
African species.” He further informs us that he had however, seen lions
with a long black mane on the river Karûn, which river flows into the
Gulf not far from Moḥammerah in the extreme south of Babylonia; but
lions of either class are very rarely seen in Mesopotamia to-day, and
these as a rule, only at a distance.
The serpent played a smaller part in Mesopotamian art than the lion, but
at least from some points of view, a not less significant one. Two
serpents entwined round a pole form the centre of the device engraved on
the famous cup (cf. Fig. 90) dedicated by Gudea, patesi or priest-king
of Lagash about 2450 B.C., to his god Nin-gish-zi-da, who was apparently
emblematized by serpents, and on either side of the entwined reptiles,
are two winged and serpent-headed monsters, while in a few
cylinder-seals of the older period, we find a bearded god whose body
consists of a serpent’s coil. In this connection we may compare the
device on a cylinder-seal of the same Gudea (cf. Fig. 64), where the
intermediary god who is introducing the patesi to a seated deity, whom
Ward believes with some reason to be Ea, is characterized by serpents
rising from his shoulders.
But the most familiar example of the serpent in Babylonian mythological
representation is that of the seal on which two beings, perhaps divine,
perhaps human, are seated on either side of a tree, and behind one of
the two an erect serpent is figured; this seal owes its fame to the
opinion held by earlier scholars that this scene represents the
pictorial counterpart in Babylonia of the Hebrew tradition of the Fall.
Judging from the representations of snakes found on vases,
boundary-stones, cylinder-seals and elsewhere, the snakes prevalent in
Mesopotamia at the time when these monuments were prepared, must have
been of considerable size, while we know from the literature that some
of these snakes were poisonous. The Assyrian kings further make mention
of the prevalence of snakes in some of the countries whither they
conducted expeditions, or which were subject to them, thus Esarhaddon
for example tells us that the land of Bazu swarmed with snakes and
scorpions like grasshoppers.
Among other beasts familiar to the inhabitants of Mesopotamia may be
mentioned, the _Bison_ (“rimu”) an animal of the mountains and forests,
which plays a conspicuous part in the story of Gilgamesh; the old
pictograph for the bison consists of the head of an ox in which were
inclosed the three diagonal wedges which together signify “mountain,”
and thus indicate the place of its origin. Various species of the bovine
race have been identified on the cylinder-seals of Babylonia, showing
that at the time of the making of the seals, the memory of their
existence and probably the actuality of their presence were still felt
and known. The _buffalo_ which haunts the swamps of Southern Babylonia
often occurs on cylinder-seals belonging to the time of Shar-Gâni-sharri
and his successors, and is found engraved on fragments of shell
belonging to the earliest Sumerian period. Layard tells us that these
ugly animals which thrive in the marshes to-day supply the Arabs with
large quantities of milk and butter; they are normally managed with
ease, but they have a peculiar antipathy to the smell of soap, and in
consequence the odour of freshly-washed clothes is apt to irritate them
in no small degree. The wild-bull was assiduously hunted by the Sargonid
Assyrian kings, among whom we may especially mention Ashur-naṣir-pal in
this connection. (For a graphic illustration of that king’s exploits in
the chase cf. Pl. XVI). After the Sargonids, the bull-hunt appears no
longer as one of the principal royal sports, possibly owing to the
relentlessness with which these animals had been hunted down by the
kings of that dynasty. In the jungles, at all events in Layard’s day,
lions, leopards, lynxes, wild-cats, jackals, hyenas, wolves, deer,
porcupines and boars still abounded, while hyenas are sufficiently
common to-day.
The _Leopard_ is occasionally figured on the more archaic seals, but
seldom on those of later date, it is distinguished specifically by its
spots; a good example of the leopard is afforded by an archaic seal much
earlier than the time of Shar-Gâni-sharri.[14] It will thus be seen that
the artistic and literary bequests of Mesopotamia have aided us in no
small degree in our endeavour to get a general idea as to the
animal-world of that country in bygone days. Such however has been the
case, only to a very limited extent in regard to birds, where colour is
a more determining factor in their infinite variations than form and
shape: here it was that the Egyptian shone forth in all his native
genius, and succeeded in vividly depicting so many different kinds of
birds upon the walls of his tombs by the aid of his brush and colours.
In Assyria and Babylonia, on the other hand, where the artistic genius
of the people can never really be said to have used colours alone as the
mode of its expression, the only birds frequently found, are the eagle
and the vulture,—the eagle as the emblem of sovereign royalty, the
vulture as the ever-ready devourer of the remains of slaughtered
foes—though without doubt a great variety of birds haunted the plains
and marshes as they do to-day.
The _Eagle_, the royal bird _par excellence_, is the embodiment of
kingly rule in the heraldic arms of Lagash as early as the time of her
first dynasty, and by the time of Gudea (2450 B.C.) the double-headed
eagle, generally characteristic of Hittite art, has made its appearance.
It is upon the eagle’s pinions that Etana seeks unsuccessfully to ascend
to Heaven, which legend is pictorially represented (cf. Fig. 62) on
various archaic seals. In course of time the eagle becomes the aerial
support of Ashur, the god from whom Assyria derived its name, and lends
its form to the winged disc, which, as M. Heuzey well says, is a “yet
more mysterious emblem of divinity”; the Assyrians further deemed it
worthy to receive the honour of being united with the body of a man, the
composite creature thus produced being accredited with powers more than
those enjoyed by mere men, and apparently partaking of a semi-divine
character, while on other occasions we see its wings applied to the
human-headed body of a bull (cf. Pl. XXV) or a lion, the combined effect
of which must have been such as to stagger the boldest of subterranean
demons.
The long and bare-necked _Vulture_ is not of frequent occurrence in
Mesopotamian art, while on cylinder-seals, it only occurs on those known
as Syro-Hittite. The birds of prey from which the “Vulture-stele”
derives its name, no doubt are intended to represent vultures; as also
are the birds depicted on the bas-reliefs which adorned the walls of
Ashur-bani-pal’s palace at Nineveh,[15] for in either case they are
busily engaged in carrying off the sharply severed limbs and heads of
fallen foes.
The _Ostrich_ only appears in Mesopotamian art at a late period, though
in Elam rows of ostriches are found depicted on early pottery, closely
and inexplicably resembling the familiar ostriches on the pre-dynastic
pottery of ancient Egypt. It sometimes however assumes a conspicuous
position in the embroidery of an Assyrian king’s robe and is found also
on a chalcedony seal in Paris.[16]
The _Stork_, which in winter time feeds in the Babylonian marshes,
occurs on the cylinder-seals, but in some cases it is difficult to
determine the bird figured; the _Crane_ and the _Bustard_ both appear to
be represented, while we have an undoubted instance of the _Swan_ in a
soft serpentine seal which Ward regards as early Assyrian.[17] The
_Cock_ is confined or practically confined to cylinder-seals of the
Persian period.
_Ducks_ are known to have existed by the discovery of stone and marble
weights in the form of ducks, one of which is inscribed with the name of
Nabû-shum, and another with that of Erba-Marduk.
_Doves_ were used and appreciated from the earliest times, for Eannatum
informs us that he offered four doves in sacrifice to the god Enzu,
while _Swallows_ and _Ravens_ abounded, for in the Deluge-story, both
the swallow and raven as well as the dove are sent forth by
Ṣit-napishtim to ascertain how far the waters were abated.[18]
Locusts are found on one or two seals, and also appear as articles of
diet on the Assyrian bas-reliefs (cf. Layard, Series II, Pl. 9), where
they are seen strung up on a stick, while the scorpion is of frequent
occurrence on the cylinder-seals, and is found on some of the earliest.
Fishes figure alike on seals and on palace walls, but their presence
generally seems due to the artist’s desire to remove all doubt from the
spectator’s mind with regard to the water, of the success of his
reproduction of which he is by no means too sanguine. We have one
humorous episode in fish-life depicted on the walls of Sennacherib’s
palace at Kouyunjik, where a crab is seen effectually pressing its
nippers into the body of a luckless fish, while it also occurs once on a
cylinder-seal.
Fish were undoubtedly used for food from the earliest times; thus
Eannatum records that he presented certain fish as offering to his gods,
while one of the reforms introduced by Urukagina, a king of the First
Dynasty of Lagash, was the deprivation from office of the extortionate
fishery inspectors. The marshes still abound in fish, some of which
attain to a considerable size; they are for the most part barbel or
carp, their flesh although coarse affording a regular supply of food to
the Arabs.
It was not unnatural or unfitting that in a country which had been
created and was yearly being created out of and at the expense of the
sea, and in which the principal means of transit were the rivers and the
canals, the fish as the lord of the waters should fulfil an important
place in the mythological and religious conceptions entertained by the
inhabitants of that country: thus it was that the god Ea of Eridu, one
of the most famous and most important of the Babylonian gods, and the
Oannes of the Greeks, who according to one account was the creator of
the world, was represented in the form of a fish.
But it is necessary to avoid falling into the danger of assuming that
all the animals, birds, fish and trees, either figured on monuments or
mentioned in the literature of antiquity, belonged to the fauna or flora
of Mesopotamia at the time when these engravings and sculptures were
executed; the only absolutely certain and equally obvious inference is
that the existence of such fauna or flora was known, while the degree of
familiarity of the artist with the specimen in question may, with a good
deal of reservation and allowance for the crudeness of early art, be
inferred from the comparative accuracy with which he has reproduced it,
and also the frequency of its occurrence on contemporaneous works of
art. With regard to the evidence of the literature, unfortunately in
many cases there is some uncertainty as to the identification of the
animals and plants alluded to, and furthermore, many of the animals
represented pictorially on the monuments or alluded to in the literature
form part of the tribute brought by subject states, the precise locality
of which, to complicate matters yet further, is often uncertain.
Sometimes, as in the case of the horse (cf. p. 15), the early
ideographic form of writing teaches us something about the origin of the
object mentioned, while the appearance of an animal or tree in early
Mesopotamian art, and the existence of the same tree or animal in
Mesopotamia to-day is good argument for including it among the ancient
fauna and flora of the country. Again with exceptions it may be assumed
that animals offered and accepted as tribute by the kings of Babylonia
and Assyria were utilized in some way other than merely being afforded
accommodation in a zoological gardens, in which connection we may
perhaps fairly infer that kings of Assyria who accepted camels from
vassal chiefs found use for them as a means of transit, though in the
rough country of Assyria itself the camel would not be of great use any
more than to-day, owing to the tendency of camels to slip on rough
ground, and the consequently practical necessity of confining their use
to flat sandy ground, such as is found in Babylonia, where they are seen
by the thousand to-day.
(_b_) SKETCH OF BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN HISTORY
In the early days of Babylonian history, the country was divided up into
a number of small principalities or city-states, and the practical
realization of the approved truism that “unity is strength” was only
attained at a later date. In this respect also, the early history of
Babylonian civilization presents a parallel to that of ancient Egypt,
where we find the country similarly apportioned out into a series of
districts or nomes, which in course of time tended to amalgamate and in
fact crystallized into a northern and a southern kingdom. But in Egypt
the process of unification was carried a step further, and at about the
time of the First Dynasty, the inhabitants of Egypt owed allegiance to
one lord and one lord only—the king of the north and the south, his dual
sovereignty being emblematized by his assumption of the crown of the
north, and the crown of the south.
It is of course impossible to fix the date of the first appearance of
the Sumerians in Babylonia, but the sites of their earliest known
settlements were all situated in Sumer or Southern Babylonia, their
principal cities being Ur, Erech, Nippur, Larsa, Eridu, Lagash and Umma.
It is equally impossible to give anything in the nature of a definite
date for the occupation of Northern Babylonia or Akkad by the Semites,
suffice it to say that at the earliest period of which historical
records have been brought to light, there appears to be evidence of the
presence of Semites or Akkadians in Akkad alongside of the Sumerians in
Sumer. The principal centres of Semitic occupation were the city of
Akkad or Agade, Babylon, Borsippa (Birs-Nimrûd), Cutha, Opis, Sippar and
Kish.
The city of Kish became an influential factor in Babylonian politics
from the most ancient times.
Thus a certain Mesilim, king of Kish, whose inscribed mace-head was
discovered at Tellô (Lagash),[19] informs us that he had dedicated the
same to the god Nin-girsu, during the patesiate of Lugal-shar-engur at
Lagash, and that he had further restored the temple of this same god.
Nothing further is known regarding this patesi of Lagash, but Mesilim
reigned at Kish at a very early date, for Entemena of Lagash commences
his historical sketch of the relationship which had existed between his
own city and that of Umma with the period of Mesilim.
Now the racial origin of Mesilim is a matter of doubt, but there is no
doubt as to the Semitic origin of Sharru-Gi, Manishtusu and Urumush,
later kings of Kish, whose reigns must be assigned to the pre-Sargonic
period, and it is perhaps therefore reasonable to suppose that the
earlier Mesilim was also a Semite. If that be the case, the mace-head of
this ruler contains evidence that the early Sumerian city of Lagash was
at one time under the domination of Semites, and conclusively proves
that—so far as documentary evidence is concerned—Sumerians and Semites
existed side by side in Babylonia from the earliest period of
Mesopotamian civilization.
Some time after, Lagash succeeded in asserting her independence, and
many of her subsequent rulers style themselves “kings.” The First
Dynasty of Lagash which was seemingly founded by Ur-Ninâ established
themselves securely for some considerable time, but the reign of
Urukagina saw the end of the dynasty, and the capture and sack of the
city by Lugal-zaggisi, a ruler of the neighbouring city of Umma.
The limits of Lugal-zaggisi’s empire included Ur, Erech, Larsa and
Nippur, and he was undoubtedly one of the most powerful rulers of his
day. Other pre-Sargonic kings whose power was specifically associated
with Erech and Ur, were Lugal-kigub-nidudu and Lugal-kisalsi, but the
extent of their sway cannot be estimated with any degree of certainty.
In the time immediately preceding the establishment of the empire of
Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin, the rallying point of the Semitic forces
of Akkad seems to have been the city of Kish, the conquests of whose
three kings Sharru-Gi Manishtusu and Urumush prepared the way for their
successors at Agade. Thus both Manishtusu and Urumush seem to have
extended their power southward into the land of Sumer, while both these
kings warred successfully against Elam.
The empire of Shar-Gâni-sharri and Narâm-Sin was however destined to
entirely eclipse that of their forerunners, for it not only embraced
Mesopotamia north and south, but also Syria and Palestine, and was in
fact the first Babylonian empire worthy of the name.
Meanwhile the power of the Sumerians in the south had received a
temporary check, and the patesis of Lagash, and other Sumerian centres
at the time, clearly ruled on sufferance and not on the strength of
rights which they were prepared to assert successfully in the
battle-field.
But on the accession of Gudea about 2450 B.C., the momentarily smoking
flame of Sumerian influence in Babylonia was kindled anew, and a strong
anti-Semitic wave set in. This wave does not seem to have been
characterized by a series of wars or battles, for the records of Gudea,
the most powerful ruler among the later patesis of Lagash, seldom refer
to anything in the nature of military achievements, but the
extensiveness of his building operations testifies to the abundance of
resources at his command, while the names of the countries which he laid
under contribution for building-materials conclusively prove that the
influence exercised by Lagash during the reign of Gudea was
considerable. The list of the places from which he derived wood and
stone includes the mountains in Arabia and on the Syrian coast, while he
obtained copper from the mines in the Elamite territory east of the
Tigris.
But the importance of Lagash was soon to pass away, and Ur became the
dominating power in Babylonia. The dynasty of Ur (_circ._ 2400 B.C.),
which lasted close on 120 years, was founded by Ur-Engur. He included
the whole of Southern Babylonia within his sphere of influence, while in
the north, he has left evidence of his architectural undertakings at
Nippur; hence he styled himself the “King of Sumer and Akkad,” but the
fact that his son and successor Dungi found it necessary to reduce
Babylon indicates that his authority in Akkad was not unquestioned.
Dungi reigned 58 years, during which he reduced the whole of Babylonia
beneath his sway, and apparently annexed the greater part of Elam. So
firmly had he established his control over Elam, that we find the
capital of that country (Susa) still retained by his successors, though
frequent expeditions had to be undertaken to maintain the “status quo.”
The dynasty of Ur would appear to have been brought to an end by an
invasion of Elamites; at all events Ibi-Sin, the last king of Ur, was
carried away by the Elamites, and the rule in Babylonia then passed to
the city of Isin. The dynasty of Isin lasted some 225 years, during
which Babylonia enjoyed great prosperity.
In the latter part of the first half of this period the power in
Babylonia seems to have passed temporarily into the hands of Gungunu,
king of Ur and Larsa, who laid claim to rule over the whole of Sumer and
Akkad, but his supremacy was of short duration, and Isin soon recovered
her position as the paramount power in Babylonia.
Meanwhile the Semitic element in the north was gradually regaining its
ascendency, and finally asserted itself as a concrete fact in the
establishment of a dynasty by Sumu-abu, at the city of Babylon itself,
about 2000 B.C.
At about this time the Elamites established themselves in Southern
Babylonia at Ur and Larsa under Kudur-Mabuk and his sons Arad-Sin and
Rîm-Sin, and during the earlier part of the dynasty exercised a
suzerainty over the whole of that region. Subsequently Rîm-Sin met with
a severe defeat at the hands of Khammurabi, the most illustrious king of
the dynasty and the Amraphel of the Book of Genesis, while he met with
his death at the hands of Samsu-iluna, Khammurabi’s successor. With the
death of Rîm-Sin Elamite power in Babylonia came to an end.
Khammurabi consolidated the power of Babylon, and extended his influence
on all sides, but his chief title to fame depends upon his codification
of Babylonian law. But Babylon’s supremacy in the south was soon to be
successfully challenged by Iluma-ilu who founded a kingdom on the shores
of the Persian Gulf, and inaugurated the so-called “Second Dynasty” of
the lists of the kings.
Iluma-ilu was a contemporary of Samsu-iluna, whose attacks he twice
repelled. Abêshu’, the successor of Samsu-iluna on the throne of
Babylon, similarly tried to reduce the rebellious “Country of the Sea”
beneath his sway, but without success, and from this time on, Southern
Babylonia was ruled over by the kings of the “Country of the Sea.”
But Samsu-iluna had another foe to contend with, besides the southern
rebels, a foe moreover ultimately destined to subjugate the whole of
Babylonia, under whose rule she was governed for several centuries.
The Kassites were a warlike people whose home lay on the east of the
Tigris, and to the north of Elam, and they apparently commenced raiding
Babylonian territory in the reign of Samsu-iluna, though they do not
seem to have materially affected the Babylonian power. About a century
later however, the dynasty of Babylon was brought to an end by an
invasion of the Hittites of Cappadocia who sacked the city, destroyed
the temple of the great city-god, Marduk, and carried off his statue as
a trophy. The Hittite conquest must have paved the way for the invasion
of the Kassites who established themselves securely on the throne of
Babylon for a very long period. At first their sphere of influence would
appear to have been confined to the northern half of the plain, but
later on they extended their power to the Country of the Sea.
Meanwhile, Assyria in Northern Mesopotamia had emerged as a separate and
independent kingdom, and already the signs of her future greatness were
visible on the horizon.
The date of the colonization of Assyria is not known, but in any case it
must have been before the time of Khammurabi, for the country bore the
name of “Assyria” in his time, and was embraced within the limits of his
empire. The struggle for supremacy finally ended in a victory for the
northerners who under their king Tukulti-Ninib (_circ._ 1275 B.C.)
effected the conquest of Babylonia. In addition to his title “King of
Assyria,” Tukulti-Ninib styled himself “King of Karduniash (i.e.
Babylon), King of Sumer and Akkad.” From that date down to the
destruction of Nineveh (_circ._ 606 B.C.), and the foundation of the
short-lived Neo-Babylonian empire by Nabopolassar, Babylonia takes a
subsidiary place in the political history of Western Asia.
The immediate successors of Tukulti-Ninib I appear to have been
perpetually engaged in war with the Babylonians, who at no period of
their history readily submitted to the Assyrian yoke. Tiglath-Pileser
I’s accession to the throne about 1100 B.C. inaugurated a new period in
the history of Assyrian expansion. Some of the mountain-tribes who had
owed allegiance to former Assyrian monarchs had revolted, and
Tiglath-Pileser made it his business to crush them. The northern
Moschians who sixty years previously had been the vassals of Assyria,
had under the leadership of five kings invaded the territory of
Commagene, but they were effectively reduced by Tiglath-Pileser, and the
land of Commagene was conquered “throughout its whole extent.”
Various other tribes in the north, of whom the Nairi would appear to
have been the most important, were similarly brought beneath the
Assyrian sway.
In a campaign against Babylonia he was also successful for the moment,
and effected the reduction of Babylon, Sippar, Opis and other cities in
Lower Mesopotamia. But his triumph here was short-lived, and the
Assyrians were expelled by Marduk-nadin-akhê, the king of Babylon, who
further invaded Assyria, and carried off the statues of some of the
Assyrian gods.
Ashur-bêl-kala, the son and successor of Tiglath-Pileser I, retrieved
the fortunes of the Assyrian arms in the south, and forced
Marduk-shapik-zêrim the successor of Marduk-nadin-akhê to sue for peace.
But after the reigns of Tiglath-Pileser I’s two sons, Assyria suffered a
severe disaster at the hands of the Hittites, and lost the territory
gained by Tiglath-Pileser. Northern Syria which had been compelled to
acknowledge the suzerainty of Tiglath-Pileser, now asserted her
independence, and for some time remained the mistress of her own
destinies.
Thus Assyria for the time being lost her position as a world-power, and
it was only in the reign of Tukulti-Ninib II (890-885 B.C.) that her
fortunes began to revive. The Nairi were again reduced by this king, and
apparently the whole of the valley of the Upper Tigris was once more
subjugated. Ashur-naṣir-pal (885-860 B.C.) carried on the work of
expansion and re-conquest. With the further extension of Assyrian power
northwards, the need of a capital occupying a more central position than
ancient Ashur was at once realized, and accordingly Ashur-naṣir-pal
transferred the seat of his government to Calah (Nimrûd) some forty
miles north of Ashur.
Nearly 500 years before, Shalmaneser I had laid the foundations of a
town at Calah, but the unsettled circumstances of the time had retarded
its growth. Ashur-naṣir-pal demolished what remained of the old town,
and founded a new town on the same site, and for at least a century
Calah remained the capital of the empire.
Ashur-naṣir-pal also extended his sphere of influence in a westerly
direction and made a triumphal march through Northern Syria, but he
appears to have cautiously refrained from coming into collision with the
powerful king of Damascus.
Ashur-naṣir-pal’s son and successor, Shalmaneser II (860-825)
consolidated the work of his father and grandfather and at the same time
made fresh conquests himself. His campaigns in the west brought him into
contact with the Israelites, and we find Ahab, king of Israel, mentioned
as one of the Syrian allies who rebelled against him. Some years later,
Shalmaneser became the suzerain of Israel, and received tribute from
Jehu, the usurper.
After the reigns of Shalmaneser’s immediate successors, the power of
Assyria began temporarily to decline, and the subject nations asserted
their independence, but in 745 B.C. Tiglath-Pileser III, or Pul as he is
called in 2 Kings xv. 19 and elsewhere, ascended the throne, and
restored the influence and authority of Assyria in Western Asia. His
wars in Syria meant disaster to Israel and the loss of independence to
Judah. Ahaz, king of Judah, had sought the help of Tiglath-Pileser
against the allied forces of Rezin, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of
Israel. Tiglath-Pileser at once seized this golden opportunity of
interfering with the internal affairs of Palestine, defeated Israel and
Damascus, and carried the Israelite tribes of Reuben, Gad and the
half-tribe of Manasseh into captivity (734 B.C.). Hoshea, assassinator
and usurper, purchased the right to the throne of Israel for ten talents
of gold and a certain amount of silver, but in the reign of
Tiglath-Pileser’s successor, Shalmaneser IV (727-722 B.C.) he became
involved in an intrigue with Egypt, which led to his deportation to
Assyria where he spent the rest of his days as a prisoner. Meanwhile
Samaria, the capital of his kingdom, was beleaguered, and after a two
years’ siege was captured by Sargon, who deported the larger half of the
population into Assyria. Sargon, “the son of a nobody,” i.e. a usurper,
was one of the greatest of the Assyrian kings (722-705 B.C.) and was the
first to come into actual conflict with the Egyptians. Palestine as a
whole showed no alacrity to take up arms against her powerful overlord,
but the Philistine town of Gaza, in reliance on the support of Egypt,
refused to submit. Hannon the Philistine commander, on failing to
repulse the Assyrian army retreated on Raphia, a town bordering on the
Egyptian frontier, where he was joined by Shabê the Egyptian general. At
Raphia the opposing armies joined battle, and after a fierce encounter,
the allies had to retire before the better equipped and more
disciplined army of Sargon. On his return, Sargon found it necessary to
again subdue Babylonia, and he also carried on war with Elam. He was
succeeded by his son Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.). After having suppressed
the revolts which always seem to have signalized the accession of a new
king, Sennacherib invaded Syria, established his authority over northern
Palestine, reduced the rebellious Philistine city of Askelon, and then
proceeded to attack the city of Ekron, to whose assistance an Egyptian
army had rallied. Their combined forces were routed by Sennacherib at
Altaku, and Ekron fell. Judah next occupied his attention; having
captured numerous small towns and enslaved some 200,000 of the
inhabitants, he proceeded to lay siege to Jerusalem. Hezekiah the king
of Judah, withstood the siege for some time, but pressed by famine, he
was compelled to yield and purchased the safety of his city by stripping
the Temple of its treasures. Sennacherib thereupon returned to Assyria,
but two years after, Hezekiah’s repudiation of his suzerainty occasioned
another expedition to Palestine. The Assyrian troops first stationed
themselves at Lachish, whence Sennacherib dispatched a messenger to
Hezekiah to demand his instant surrender. Meanwhile Sennacherib marched
westward with a view to engaging the Egyptian army lying at Pelusium,
one of the frontier towns of Egypt. But a sudden catastrophe—possibly an
outbreak of plague—overtook the Assyrian host, and Sennacherib returned
to Nineveh. On his arrival home, he found it necessary to once more
suppress rebellious Babylon, and to render his work more lasting, he
completely destroyed the city (689 B.C.). Towards the end of his reign
he conducted a campaign in Cilicia where he defeated the Greeks and is
said to have laid the foundations of the city of Tarsus. In 681 B.C. he
was murdered by his sons, and the crown eventually settled on the head
of Esarhaddon (681-668 B.C.). The most striking event of his reign was
the conquest of Lower Egypt (672 B.C.), but towards the end of his reign
Tirhakah, the Ethiopian king of Egypt, recaptured Memphis and threatened
to put an end to the Assyrian domination; his subjugation was one of the
first acts of Ashur-bani-pal, the successor of Esarhaddon. Judah also
became disaffected, but she was speedily reduced to submission and her
king Manasseh was removed into captivity.
Ashur-bani-pal succeeded Esarhaddon in 668 B.C. The work of
re-establishing the Assyrian power in Egypt occupied some time and was
finally accomplished by the capture of Thebes (666 B.C.). Under
Ashur-bani-pal Assyria attained the height of her power both at home and
abroad, and the limits of her empire were extended further than ever
before. After a lengthy war, Elam was subdued, but she subsequently
joined Shamash-shum-ukîn, the brother of Ashur-bani-pal, and viceroy of
Babylonia, in an organized revolt against Assyria, which resulted in the
defeat of Shamash-shum-ukîn, and the ultimate capture and sack of Susa
the Elamite capital (_circ._ 640 B.C.).
While Ashur-bani-pal was thus preoccupied with Babylonia and Elam, Lydia
on the one hand, and Egypt on the other seized the opportunity to throw
off the yoke of their suzerain. Lydia was reduced, but Egypt succeeded
in maintaining her independence. Towards the close of Ashur-bani-pal’s
reign, the wheel of fortune had already begun to turn, and clouds were
already gathering on the eastern horizon. The Medes had made an inroad
into Assyrian territory before his death in 626 B.C., and a few years
after that event, Cyaxares king of the Medes inflicted a defeat on the
Assyrian army and laid siege to Nineveh. But the end was temporarily
stayed by the advance of the Scythian hordes.
Shortly afterwards Nineveh was again attacked by Cyaxares and
Nabopolassar, an Assyrian general in command of Babylonia, and after a
two years’ siege the city was taken and destroyed (_circ._ 606 B.C.).
Assyria now passed under the power of the Medes, and Babylonia fell to
Nabopolassar who founded the New or Neo-Babylonian empire. This late
Babylonian empire only lasted about seventy years in all. Nabopolassar
was succeeded by Nebuchadnezzar, who at the time of his father’s death
was engaged in a campaign against Necho king of Egypt, upon whom he
inflicted a severe defeat at Carchemish. His Palestinian expeditions led
to the capture of Jerusalem, and the removal of a large part of the
population of Judah into captivity. Both Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah, kings
of Judah, strove to throw off the Babylonian yoke but without avail.
Nebuchadnezzar’s successors did little deserving of narration, and in
the reign of Nabonidus, Babylon, which was under the command of
Belshazzar, was captured by Cyrus, 539 B.C., and Babylonia passed under
the rule of the Persians. She remained under Persian rule until the time
of Alexander the Great’s ascendency when she became a Greek province.
CHAPTER II—EXCAVATIONS
The history of the actual excavations properly commences with the first
expedition sent out to dig, but there is one scholar who, although he
did not excavate on any large scale, was the first to bring cuneiform
inscriptions to Europe and on this account deserves special mention.
C. J. Rich, born in 1787 at Dijon, was from the early age of nine
attracted to the study of Oriental languages, and in course of time made
himself master of Hebrew, Persian, Aramaic and Arabic, while he is said
to have attempted to read Chinese Hieroglyphics at the phenomenal age of
fourteen. In 1803 he became a Cadet in the East India Company’s service,
his military post being subsequently exchanged for a civil appointment.
After visiting Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor and other countries, he
returned to Bombay, but was, before the age of twenty-four, appointed
the East India Company’s resident at Baghdad. In 1811 he visited the
ruins of Babylon, an account of which is to be found in his “Memoir on
the ruins of Babylon,” while his visit to Nineveh is recorded in his
“_Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan and on the site of ancient
Nineveh, with Journal of a voyage down the Tigris to Baghdad, and an
account of a visit to Shiraz and Persepolis_.” It is moreover to Rich
that we owe our first accurate plans of both Nineveh and Babylon. In the
course of his travels, he made large collections consisting chiefly of
Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Aramaic and Syriac manuscripts, a number of
Greek and oriental coins, and also many antiquities from Babylon and
Nineveh, including the first cuneiform tablets seen in Europe: his
collections were acquired by the Trustees of the British Museum, after
his death from cholera in 1820.
But as the pioneer in the actual field of excavation, M. Botta, the
French Consul at Mosul, occupied the first place in point of time. In
the year 1842, on the advice of Mohl, he began the exploration of the
Mound of Kouyunjik, one of the two mounds which mark the site of the
city of Nineveh, but meeting with scant success, he transferred his
attention in 1843 to the Mound of Khorsabad (the town of Chosroes) some
miles north of Mosul, where he laid bare the ruins of a palace which
proved to be that of Sargon, king of Assyria (722-705 B.C.) and the
father of Sennacherib. In the year 1851 the French Assembly voted the
money for an expedition to Babylonia, and also for another expedition to
Assyria, the object of which was to complete the excavations which
had been commenced with so much promise at Khorsabad: this expedition
was directed by Victor Place who at the same time succeeded Botta as
French Consular agent at Mosul. During the years 1851-1855 Place
completed the excavation of Sargon’s palace, and also laid bare the
surrounding buildings and rooms, carrying his work right up to the wall
of the town; Khorsabad was found to contain the ruins of a whole
fortified town, which had remained entombed for some 2500 years: the
town was named Dûr-Sharru-ukîn after its founder Sargon. The four corners
of the city walls were oriented towards the four cardinal points, the
walls themselves being pierced by eight enormous gates, each of which
was named after an Assyrian deity. The palace had been built on a
terraced mound 45 feet high, which was made of crude or unbaked bricks,
and was protected by a casing-wall of large square stones. The palace
contained wide halls, adorned with sculptures, winged bulls and the
like. The floors of the various chambers consisted generally of stamped
clay, and were no doubt hidden from view by elaborate rugs, sometimes,
however, tiles or blocks of marble concealed the unsightly clay.
The walls were of great thickness, i.e. from 9-1/2 to 16 feet, while in
one place they measured as much as 25-1/2 feet. The inner walls of the
less important chambers were only covered with a white plaster
surrounded by black lines, the so-called women’s apartments, on the
other hand, being decorated with frescoes and white or black arabesques.
Marble statues were unearthed in the harem court, and the remains of a
ziggurat or stage-tower—a characteristic feature in Mesopotamian
temples—were brought to light. Place’s excavations were not so
productive of large sculptures and monuments as those of Botta had been,
but they were particularly fruitful as regards smaller objects of glass,
stone, clay, and metal.
The first Englishman to enter the field was Layard who in 1845, only two
years after Botta’s first expedition, commenced excavating the ruined
mounds of Nimrûd. Nimrûd, which proved to be the ancient Calah, was
built on a rectangular plateau just as Khorsabad had been, and the
exploration of its site yielded a rich harvest of new materials for the
reconstruction of the history of the past. Ashur-naṣir-pal, king of
Assyria (885-860), following the example of Shalmaneser I (about 1300),
removed the seat of government from Ashur forty miles northwards, to
Calah, where he built a palace for himself, the excavation of which was
one of Layard’s greatest triumphs. This palace occupied the
north-western portion of the mound and was in part restored by Sargon;
to the north of this palace of Ashur-naṣir-pal lay the site of the
temple of Ninib or Adar, the god of war. Shalmaneser II (860-825) the
successor of Ashur-naṣir-pal, also built a palace at Calah, on the
south-east of that of his predecessor; this palace, known as the central
palace, was almost entirely rebuilt by Tiglath-Pileser III, the Biblical
Pul (745-727 B.C.).
_PLATE II_
[Illustration: 1. KOUYUNJIK AND NEBI YÛNUS FROM THE NORTH
2. KOUYUNJIK AND NEBI YÛNUS FROM MOSUL
3. NIMRÛD (CALAH)
4. KHORSABAD]
At the south-west corner, the palace of Esarhaddon (681-668) was
excavated, in the construction of which, that king utilized the
materials of the older palaces in the most unscrupulous fashion, but the
building was found to have been much damaged by fire. North of
Esarhaddon’s palace and south of that of Ashur-naṣir-pal, lay the
comparatively small palace of Adad-nirari III (812-783 B.C.), and in the
south-east corner of the parallelogram the insignificant remains of the
palace of Ashur-etil-ilâni (about 625) one of the last of Assyria’s
monarchs were brought to light.
Thus Layard discovered and excavated the remains of some seven royal
palaces at Nimrûd; of these seven that of Ashur-naṣir-pal was by far the
most important from the archæological and historical standpoint.
Wall bas-reliefs, human-headed winged lions and bulls (cf. Pl. XXV),
obelisks, bronze bowls, iron reaping-hooks and spear-heads, carved ivory
panels and mirrors, a “silver-plated” sceptre-head, and a variety of
bells are a few among the many valuable finds at Nimrûd, each of which
makes its contribution, be it small or be it great, to the restoration
of a page of human history and cultural evolution.
But undoubtedly the most impressive monuments yielded by Assyrian
excavations are the gigantic winged bulls and lions which were stationed
at the royal palace gates. The removal of these monsters of oriental
antiquity was an even more difficult task than their excavation, and
taxed the inventive powers of both French and English explorers to the
utmost.
Those excavated by the French at Khorsabad were embarked piecemeal for
Paris, the parts into which they had been sawn, with a view to
facilitating their transit, being fitted together again in the Louvre,
the museum which they now adorn. Layard however adopted a different
method in effecting the transport of the winged bulls from Nimrûd to
London, by means of which he successfully brought them over intact
without breaking them up in any way; the extraordinary difficulties
involved in this feat give us a vivid conception of the similar
difficulties which the Assyrians must have had to overcome in the
removal of these solid stone masses from the quarry to the entrances of
the palaces, and in the exact adjustment of them in their specific
places. Layard gives us a detailed description[20] of the plan he
devised for the removal of some of these unwieldy monsters, of which
thirteen pairs had already been discovered. His first efforts were
directed towards two of the smaller colossi. The first and greatest
problem to be solved was how to lower them without risk of their falling
and so being broken. The sculptures were first of all wrapped in mats or
felt to mitigate the effect of any misfortune that might befall them,
either through the ropes giving way or cutting the soft stone. Heavy
wooden rollers had been procured from the mountains; these were placed
upon sleepers laid parallel to the sculpture, and it only now remained
to lower the winged creature on to the rollers; this was effected by
means of ropes skilfully applied, the descent of the gradually sinking
monument being checked by thick beams which supported it in its fall and
were gradually withdrawn as the occasion required. As the bull
approached the rollers the beams had to be entirely removed, the whole
of the weight and strain thus being on the cables and ropes, which
stretched until finally they reached breaking point, and the bull fell
some four feet or more to the ground, but fortunately without being
damaged. A trench of about 200 feet in length, 15 feet wide, and in some
places 20 feet deep, having been duly made through which the bull might
proceed on the rollers to the edge of the mound—this course was
necessary owing to the impossibility of lifting such a massive
weight—the giant animal was slowly pulled by a large number of Arabs to
the end of the trench and down the slope of the mound, where it was
lowered on to a specially-constructed cart, which had been a nine days’
wonder to the natives ever since its appearance. The cart itself was
fitted with two strong axles which had been used by Botta in the removal
of sculptures from Khorsabad. “Each wheel was formed of three solid
pieces, nearly a foot thick, from the trunk of a mulberry tree, bound
together by iron hoops. Across the axles were laid three beams, and
above them several cross-beams, all of the same wood. A pole was fixed
to one axle to which were also attached iron rings for ropes to enable
men as well as buffaloes to draw the cart. The wheels were provided with
movable hooks for the same purpose.” The mulberry wood used had of
course to be procured in the mountains, there being no wood of the
required substance or size in the Mesopotamian valley. Buffaloes were
first harnessed to the pole, while a number of men tugged at the ropes
attached to the wheels and the movable hooks, but the buffaloes appear
to have soon struck, and they were consequently taken out, the whole of
the work now being done by three hundred Arabs. At length, after
multitudinous efforts, the bull arrived at the river where it was landed
on a specially-prepared platform from which it might slide on to a raft.
Thus much for the obstacles to be surmounted in the mere removal of
these enormous blocks of stone by an excavator of the nineteenth
century, from which we may form a small and very inadequate estimate of
the indomitable zeal and invincible energy of the Assyrians some
twenty-six or twenty-seven centuries ago in quarrying, carving,
transporting and fixing the guardian genii.
_PLATE III_
[Illustration: _From Layard_
EXCAVATIONS AT NIMRÛD (CALAH) IN ASHUR-NAṢIR-PAL’S PALACE]
Calah (Nimrûd) was the capital of Assyria for 220 years (885-668), but
at the close of that period she had to yield her pre-eminence to
Nineveh, which Sennacherib rebuilt and which was the capital of the
empire from his time till the end of the chapter, i.e. till about 630
B.C. Sennacherib naturally built a palace at his new capital, Nineveh,
and the discovery and excavation of this palace are also due to the
indefatigable efforts of the late Sir Henry Layard and his assistant
Hormuzd Rassam. This palace of Sennacherib occupied the south-west
corner of the northern of the two groups of mounds known as Kouyunjik
which mark the site of ancient Nineveh, Ashur-bani-pal’s (668-626 B.C.)
palace being located immediately to the north of it. Unfortunately
Sennacherib’s palace suffered from fire when the Medes took the city in
606 B.C. in consequence of which most of his wall bas-reliefs are
greatly marred. The complete excavation of this palace was the great
triumph of Layard’s second campaign (1849-1851), and the bas-reliefs
taken from the walls of its seventy or more halls and chambers now form,
in spite of their comparatively bad state of preservation, one of the
most priceless possessions of the British Museum. But one more
epoch-making discovery in the annals of Mesopotamian excavations must be
attributed to this world-renowned excavator.
One day Layard discovered two chambers connected with each other, and
after removing the débris, he found that “to the height of a foot or
more from the floor they were entirely filled with cuneiform tablets of
baked clay, some entire, but the greater part broken into many
fragments.”
In point of fact he had chanced upon part of the library of
Ashur-bani-pal, one of Assyria’s greatest kings; the library appears to
have been stored partly in the northern palace, that of Ashur-bani-pal
proper, and partly in the south-western palace built by Sennacherib; it
was in the latter that the rooms referred to were found; the other half
of this great library of the later Assyrian kings was subsequently
unearthed by Rassam. The contents of these tablets, made of the finest
clay and ranging from one to fifteen inches, are as varied as the
tablets themselves. Some of them contain historical records, others
astronomical reports, or mathematical calculations: there are also
letters of a private and public character, but the majority of the
tablets deal with astrology and medicine, both of which subjects were
intimately connected in the mind of the Babylonian. Prayers,
incantations, psalms and religious texts in general, formed a
considerable part of this library, and as a large proportion of the
“volumes” or tablets are not original works but copies from earlier
Babylonian productions, the value of the library,—now known under the
name of the “Kouyunjik collection,”—for the study of the religious and
mythological conceptions of both the Babylonians and Assyrians is more
than can be adequately estimated. Many of the tablets are bilingual, the
ideographic Sumerian being provided with an Assyrian interlinear
translation, and these, together with other tablets of the collection
containing syllabaries in which the Sumerian value, the Assyrian name,
and sometimes the Assyrian meaning of different signs are given, have
been of the utmost use in the rediscovery of the languages of
Mesopotamia. Layard also visited Babylonia, and began to excavate at
Babylon and Nippur, but his Babylonian operations were not attended with
the extraordinary success of his excavations at Nineveh and Calah.
In 1851 a French expedition was sent out to Babylonia under Fresnel and
Jules Oppert: they secured various relics from the ruined mounds of
Babylon, among which may be especially mentioned a fine collection of
coloured-brick fragments, but unfortunately all was lost through a
mishap on the Tigris in 1855.
In 1852 Rassam succeeded Layard in the field, and at once had to contend
with difficulties resulting from Rawlinson’s concessions to Victor
Place, to whom he had transferred the right of excavating what remained
to be excavated at Kouyunjik, which from Rassam’s point of view fell
within the sphere of British influence, and to which therefore British
excavators had a prior claim. In 1853 Rassam commenced operations at
Ḳalat Sherḳât, but apart from the discovery of two clay prisms inscribed
with the annals of Tiglath-Pileser I (1100-1080 B.C.), the ancient Ashur
did not yield much fruit on this occasion. At Calah, the scene of
Layard’s brilliant triumphs, Rassam discovered E-zida, the temple of
Nebo, the god who vied with Marduk for the first place in the Babylonian
pantheon of later days, and whose name is commemorated in the names of
several of the kings of the first Babylonian empire, as also in three of
those of the second empire, the most familiar of whom is the Biblical
Nebuchadnezzar; six large statues of the god were brought to light, two
of which at all events are by their inscriptions shown to be
contemporaneous with the Assyrian king Adad-nirari III (812-783); a
stele of King Shamshi-Adad II (825-812 B.C.), and the remains of an
inscribed obelisk of Ashur-naṣir-pal complete the list of his principal
finds on this site. But his name will be for ever associated with
Kouyunjik; his first efforts were productive of no very great results
beyond the discovery of a limestone obelisk of Ashur-naṣir-pal covered
with bas-reliefs, and now in the Assyrian Transept of the British
Museum, and a female torso from the palace of Ashur-bêl-kala, king of
Assyria about 1080 B.C. (cf. Pl. XXIV). Rassam however profited by
Victor Place’s omission to make use of the permission accorded to him by
Rawlinson to explore the northern part of Kouyunjik, but at the same
time took the precaution of making his initial operations under the
cover of night. His nocturnal labours were crowned with the greatest
success which the excavators of those days could have—the discovery of a
new palace—and after he was satisfied on this point, the digging was
allowed to proceed during the daytime, as it is a recognized rule that
the discoverer of a new palace has established his claim to the complete
excavation of it, as against the rest of the world. The newly-discovered
palace turned out to be that of Ashur-bani-pal, king of Assyria (668-626
B.C.), in whose reign Assyria attained the height of her power both at
home and abroad, extending her sway even as far as Thebes, the capital
of Upper Egypt, which was taken and sacked by this king in B.C. 666.
But Ashur-bani-pal as well as being a great warrior, was also a great
huntsman, and the bas-reliefs which he caused to be sculptured upon the
walls of his palace at Kouyunjik, in commemoration of his exploits in
the chase, are probably the masterpieces of Assyrian art. They thus
testify not only to the sportsmanship of this king, but also to the
encouragement which he gave to art, while Rassam’s further discovery of
the other half of Ashur-bani-pal’s library has shown that king to have
been an even greater patron of literature than there had hitherto been
reason to suppose.
_PLATE IV_
[Illustration: _Both from Layard_
“FISH-GOD,” KOUYUNJIK
ENTRANCE PASSAGE, KOUYUNJIK]
In the spring of 1854, funds failed and Rassam was in consequence
obliged to return, but shortly afterwards he accepted a political
appointment at Aden. The meanwhile, work had already been commenced in
Babylonia by W. K. Loftus who carried on small excavations at Warka, the
ancient Erech, the ruins of which are the largest in Babylonia, but
though many interesting antiquities were unearthed, none of them are of
an epoch-making character, the slipper-shaped coffins belonging to the
Parthian period, being perhaps the best known. Owing to the fact that
Erech has been occupied during the greater part of its history, i.e.
some 5000 years, it is not a fruitful mine for early antiquities.
Senkereh (Larsa) on the other hand, which has been identified with the
Ellasar of Genesis xiv. 1, seems to have remained more or less
unoccupied after the Persian period, and hence it is a better site for
the exploration and study of the earlier history of Southern
Mesopotamia. Inscribed bricks from Senkereh show that Khammurabi (the
Amraphel of Genesis xiv.?), and the most famous king of the first
dynasty of Babylon, repaired the ancient temple-tower there, as also did
his Neo-Babylonian successor, Nabonidus, some fourteen centuries later,
while the famous Nebuchadnezzar of Old Testament fame had also not
neglected it in his works of restoration. The lower strata of the mound
showed that Ur-Engur, King of Ur, whose reign may probably be assigned
to the latter part of the third millennium B.C., had also made his
presence felt in this ancient city of Larsa. Subsequently Larsa shared
the fate of other early Babylonian cities, and was used as a cemetery:
the tablets found near the coffins apparently belong to a much earlier
date, and were probably found by the grave-diggers to whom their altered
position is to be ascribed. Excavations were also conducted at the same
time at Tell Sifr, which resulted in the discovery of about a hundred
so-called case-tablets (i.e. tablets protected by a clay cover or
envelope), belonging to the time of the first dynasty of Babylon, which
in their turn led to the discovery of a hitherto unknown king of this
dynasty, Samsu-iluna, the successor of Khammurabi.
When Loftus was excavating at Warka at the beginning of 1854, J. E.
Taylor, the Vice-Consul at Basra, undertook excavations on behalf of the
British Museum at Muḳeyyer, the site of the ancient city of Ur. He
commenced operations on what appeared at the time, and what ultimately
turned out to be, the principal building of the city, the temple of the
Moon-god Sin, in the four corners of which he discovered four clay
cylinders, and also another barrel-shaped cylinder the inscription of
which is of even greater importance than those of the corner-cylinders.
We learn that Ur-Engur, King of Ur, built the temple, that his son Dungi
repaired it, and that Nabonidus the last King of Babylon restored it
some two thousand years later. These foundation-cylinders of Nabonidus
proved of great historical interest, the inscription on each of them
concluding with a prayer for Bêl-shar-uṣur, the King’s son and heir, the
Belshazzar of Daniel v., who was in command of Babylon at the time of
the capture of the city by Cyrus. Taylor also conducted excavations on
other Babylonian sites, the most important of which was Abû Shahrein,
the ancient Eridu whose god Ea was one of the most illustrious as well
as one of the most time-honoured gods in Babylonia. Its ruins are
smaller than those of Ur, but they contain the remains of a
temple-tower, consisting of two storeys, which Taylor laid bare. From
the inscribed bricks recovered, the identification of this site with the
ancient Eridu was established.
Towards the end of the year 1854, Sir Henry Rawlinson commenced
excavating Birs-Nimrûd, the Borsippa of antiquity; he commenced digging
at the four corners of what ultimately proved to be the famous E-zida,
the temple of Nebo, in search of clay cylinders such as had been found
at the corners of other Babylonian buildings; he recovered two such
foundation-cylinders which turned out to be duplicates, together with
fragmentary parts of other cylinders, all of which had been deposited
there by Nebuchadnezzar.
Soon after Rassam’s return from Assyria in the year 1854, Loftus entered
the service of the Trustees of the British Museum, and was sent out to
continue the excavation of Kouyunjik. Loftus ably followed up the work
of his predecessor; new reliefs were brought to light, the most
celebrated of which perhaps is that of Ashur-bani-pal and his queen
reclining at meat in the garden (cf. Pl. XXI), but again though the
spirit was willing, the funds were weak, and Loftus had to abandon all
hope of completing the excavation of the palace of Assyria’s most famous
king.
The abundant harvest, yielded by these numerous excavations in
Mesopotamia, and stored away in the Museums, afforded a supply of
material copious enough to occupy the intellectual acumen of the savants
for some time to come, while the general public whose interest in these
archæological expeditions depended on the tangible results forthcoming,
were inclined to await the decipherment and publication of the
accumulated mass of clay tablets, monuments and stelæ already to hand,
before furnishing the necessary funds for any fresh expeditions, and it
was not till 1873 that George Smith, the able assistant of Sir Henry
Rawlinson, whose discovery of the Babylonian account of the Deluge had
alike won for him great fame, and also kindled again the enthusiasm of
the public in the cause of excavation, was enabled, thanks to the
munificence of the proprietors of the “Daily Telegraph,” to personally
conduct an expedition to Mesopotamia. In the January of that year Smith
set out for Mosul, but on his arrival, he found to his dismay that the
requisite firmân had not as yet been granted by the Turkish Government,
and he accordingly journeyed southward, examining the ruined mounds of
Nimrûd and Ḳalat Sherḳât on the way. In northern Babylonia he spent but
a short time which he employed in visiting the sites of Babylon,
Borsippa (Birs-Nimrûd) and other ancient ruins, but by the beginning of
April, he obtained the necessary permission to excavate in Assyria, and
accordingly returned at once to Mosul. His attention was first of all
directed to Nimrûd, the scene of so many of Layard’s triumphs, but his
predecessors in the field had reaped their harvest to the full, and the
gleanings which remained were poor and meagre.
In the following month he transferred the seat of his operations to
Kouyunjik, with a view to discovering the remainder of Ashur-bani-pal’s
library. The work was far from easy owing to the complete state of
confusion in which the ruins then were, partly owing to the work of
earlier excavators, partly owing to the builders of the bridge at Mosul
who had made use of the remains of Assyria’s ancient buildings for the
construction of the bridge, and partly owing to the instability of some
of Layard’s tunnels, which had the meanwhile collapsed. Here too, the
harvest was past and the summer of Assyrian excavations was ended, but
the object which the “Daily Telegraph” proprietors had in view was
realized in the discovery of another fragment of the Babylonian account
of the Deluge, which proved to fill in the chief lacuna in the story.
Smith had entertained the hope that this all-important discovery would
be an inducement to his financiers to grant an additional sum for the
continuation of the work, but they declined. Smith accordingly had
reluctantly to set his face westward and return to London, but before
the year was out he was on his way back to the Orient, the Trustees of
the British Museum having voted £1000 for another expedition thither.
He arrived at Mosul on New Year’s Day 1874, and recommenced his quest
for tablets, but the time at his disposal was short, his firmân expiring
in the ensuing March; this notwithstanding, in the three months spent at
Kouyunjik on these two expeditions, he brought to light some three
thousand tablets dealing with a variety of different subjects, and
providing invaluable material for the student of Babylonian and Assyrian
astronomy, theology and chronology. To him is due not only the
rediscovery of the Babylonian story of the Flood, but also of portions
of the Creation legends, and of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the hero of
Babylonian folk-lore, while to the student of Old Testament History, his
discovery of Sargon’s own account of his campaign against the city of
Ashdod recorded in the twentieth chapter of Isaiah is of paramount
importance. In the spring of 1876 Smith conducted his third and last
expedition to Assyria, under the auspices of the British Museum, the
value of whose collections he had already so greatly enhanced. But he
arrived to find the cholera rampant all over the country, and confusion
and disorder reigned everywhere. To excavate under such circumstances
was an impossibility, but Smith spared no effort in his futile endeavour
to overcome the impossible, boldly facing all dangers and difficulties,
but he ultimately succumbed to the disastrous effects of climate and
exposure, and died at Aleppo in August 1876, a martyr to the cause of
science. George Smith was not only an excavator, but also a scholar, and
his scholastic achievements are the more praise-worthy, when it is
recollected that he was practically a self-educated man, who by dint of
his extraordinary perseverance and indomitable will succeeded where
other men of perhaps greater ability failed, and who on that account
alone is entitled to the prominent place which he occupies in the annals
of Assyriology.
Soon after the death of George Smith in 1876, the Trustees of the
British Museum requested Rassam to resume his long-abandoned labours in
Assyria, and after some unavoidable delay, operations were commenced in
January 1878. The work was greatly facilitated by the presence of Sir
Henry Layard as British special representative at Constantinople, for
the latter having always been on friendly terms with the Turkish
Government, was consequently able to secure concessions which might well
have been denied to anyone else. Rassam’s marching orders were
sufficiently explicit, he was sent out to continue the excavation of
Nineveh, but his heart was bent on the discovery of palaces and temples
rather than on the comparatively unexciting task of searching for
tablets, the importance or non-importance of which could never be
determined off-hand, without a detailed study of the contents. His
ambition was satisfied shortly after his arrival: a year before his
resumption of the work of Assyrian exploration two portions of a bronze
door-panel covered with figures and cuneiform characters had been sent
to him by a friend, and immediately on his return to Assyria he made
enquiries as to where these pieces of worked metal had been unearthed.
He soon discovered that they formed part of a large bronze door-panel
discovered quite accidentally by a peasant in a mound, some fifteen
miles east of Mosul, called Balâwât. Accordingly, his immediate desire
was to discover the remainder of this unique monument of ancient
metallurgy, and with that end in view he determined to explore the
Balâwât mound. He discovered that the site had been used as a cemetery
by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, and was consequently outside
the limits of his firmân, but disregarding the risk of a collision with
the authorities and the still more imminent risk of inciting the native
population to open resistance, for no people civilized or uncivilized
are in the habit of passively acquiescing in the disinterment of their
dead, he determined to hazard everything in pursuit of his prize.
Success attended his efforts, and very soon after the cutting of the
first trenches, fragments of bronze plates similar to those which had
previously come to light, were unearthed. In the course of a short time,
the remaining panels were duly restored to the light of day: these
panels had once upon a time decorated the wooden gates of a large
building, to which they were affixed. The scenes portrayed thereon
represent incidents in the life and campaigns of Shalmaneser II (860-825
B.C.), the successor of Ashur-naṣir-pal, and the first Assyrian king who
is known to have come into immediate contact with Israel. In the course
of his excavation of the mound, he came across the ruins of a small
temple, and a large coffer made of marble containing two tablets made of
the same material and bearing inscriptions of Ashur-naṣir-pal. Rassam’s
work at Kouyunjik and Nimrûd was also far from fruitless, though Nimrûd
certainly failed to yield a harvest in any way comparable to that of
bygone days, a few bas-reliefs, a number of clay tablets and some
enamelled tiles practically comprising all that Nimrûd contributed to
the study of Assyrian antiquity on this occasion. So too at Kouyunjik,
clay inscriptions were the chief and indeed practically the only fruits
of the excavations carried on by Rassam during his four expeditions
(1878-1882). The most epoch-making of these inscriptions consisted in a
ten-sided baked clay prism containing the annals of Ashur-bani-pal, and
four barrel-shaped cylinders inscribed with an account of Sennacherib’s
various campaigns. Rassam further attempted the complete exploration of
Nebi Yûnus, the second large mound which marks the site or part of the
site of ancient Nineveh, but he did not meet with the success which his
indefatigable efforts deserved, owing to the innate factiousness and
aptitude for intrigue which lie dormant in the Oriental breast even at
the best of times, and which on this occasion so far from being dormant,
showed themselves in all their pristine vigour, the result of which was
the cessation of Rassam’s labours, and the final dissipation of all his
hopes.
_PLATE V_
[Illustration: _Déc. en Chald., Plate 53, ii_
DOORWAY AT TELLÔ, ERECTED BY GUDEA; ON THE LEFT A LATER BUILDING OF
SELEUCID PERIOD]
[Illustration: _Déc. en Chald., Plate 54_
SOUTH-EASTERN FAÇADE OF UR-NINÂ’S BUILDING AT TELLÔ]
Meanwhile excavations were also going on in Babylonia, excavations
moreover which were destined to usher in a new era of Babylonian
exploration, and which proved of incalculable value both to the
archæologist, and also to the student of early art. In the spring of
1877, some few months before Rassam’s return to Assyria after an
interval of a quarter of a century, Ernest de Sarzec, the French
Vice-Consul at Basra, started tentative operations at the ruined mounds
of Tellô, whither his attention had been directed by J. Asfar, a native
Christian, and formerly a dealer in antiquities. Tellô had already won
for itself a name as a site likely to repay the labour entailed in its
methodical excavation, in consequence of the discovery of inscribed
cones and bricks in its ruins, and needless to say, it has more than
lived up to its early reputation, for of all the ancient sites of
Babylonian civilization, Tellô has yielded by far the richest harvest of
material for the reconstruction of Sumerian history, and the systematic
study of Sumerian art and culture. It would be impossible here to
chronicle all the far-reaching results of De Sarzec’s immortal work, and
we must therefore content ourselves with a notice of the more important
of his discoveries. On his very first visit to Tellô he was fortunate
enough to find a portion of a dolerite statue lying at the foot of one
of the mounds, from which he correctly inferred that the statue itself
must have originally occupied a position in some large building, the
ruins of which he assumed to be lying concealed within the mound in
question. He accordingly commenced excavating the mound, and very
shortly discovered that it contained a building of no small dimensions,
erected upon a large platform of crude, or sun-dried bricks: the objects
which he unearthed comprised a large statue of dolerite bearing an
inscription of Gudea, priest-king of Lagash about 2450 B.C., inscribed
door-sockets, sculptures and vases, copper statuettes of a votive
character, and last but most important of all, the first fragments of
the Vulture stele of Eannatum, one of the most famous works of early
Babylonian art, both in regard to its antiquity and also in regard to
the manner in which it illustrates not only the artistic but also the
military operations of the Sumerians at this remote period (cf. Pl.
XII). In his next two campaigns (1880-81) he systematically excavated
the building in the mound generally known as “A,” in the course of which
he discovered some nine or ten dolerite statues, numerous statuettes,
and a stone vase of Narâm-Sin, son of Shar-Gâni-sharri of Agade, who
probably lived some few centuries before Gudea. The building itself,
which in the main belongs to the Parthian-period, but in which part of
the old palace of Gudea had been incorporated is briefly discussed on
page 149. But as Prof. Hilprecht[21] truly says, the dolerite statues of
Gudea “will always remain the principal discovery connected with De
Sarzec’s name,” famous alike for the animation and life with which they
are inspired, and also for the skill and dexterity which these early
Babylonians display in their treatment of the hardest stones. Among
other valuable or rather invaluable finds may be mentioned the
well-known silver vase of Entemena (cf. Fig. 45), the carved mace-head
of Mesilim, an enormous copper spear-head, and some bas-reliefs of
Ur-Ninâ, the founder of the First Dynasty of Lagash. In mound “B,” De
Sarzec’s excavations not only laid bare the building of Ur-Ninâ (cf. Pl.
V) but also revealed the remains of a yet earlier structure lying
beneath the edifice of this ancient ruler, and resting on a pavement
some 16 feet below Ur-Ninâ’s platform. Copper statuettes and stone
bas-reliefs of a most archaic character were also brought to light on
this occasion.
In 1889 De Sarzec left Babylonia, not to return till 1894, when he
renewed his excavations in mound “B.” Two wells and a watercourse of
Eannatum’s time were discovered, while among the small relics of this
long-forgotten age were various pieces of shell carved with pictures of
trees and animals. It would be altogether impossible to over-estimate
the debt which both the historian of early Babylonia, and the student of
early Mesopotamian art owe to the work of that distinguished excavator;
if to Layard, Botta, and Place is due the opening up of the book of
Assyria’s ancient history, and the breaking of the seals that had kept
that book closed for so long a period, to De Sarzec we owe the recovery
of an even earlier page in the history of human life and progress. The
last quarter of the 19th century which embraced the period of De
Sarzec’s extraordinary activity in the archæological field (the first of
his expeditions being conducted in 1877 and the last in 1900) will
remain for all time memorable for the epoch-making discoveries in
Babylonia, discoveries which posterity will for ever associate with the
name of the illustrious French excavator.
_PLATE VI_
[Illustration: _Déc. en Chald., Pl. 56, ii_
REMAINS OF A STELE IN A BUILDING UNDER THAT OF UR-NINÂ]
[Illustration: _Déc. en Chald., Pl. 57, ii_
THE WELL OF EANNATUM]
The meanwhile Rassam, had used to the utmost the facilities granted to
him under the generous terms of the 1878 firmân, and had covered as much
ground and visited as many sites as possible, though whether science
would have gained more by the systematic exploration of a few mounds
than by the ransacking of many is a question which would probably have
to be answered in the affirmative. In 1879, he commenced operations in
Babylonia, the ruined mounds of Babylon and Borsippa being the first to
receive his attention. On his arrival he found a number of Arabs busily
engaged in extracting building material from the Babil mound, and in the
course of their digging they came upon four wells, some 140 feet deep,
and made of blocks of red granite, each block being about 3 feet high,
and fitted to the adjoining block with an extraordinary degree of
precision. From the general appearance of the mound as well as from the
magnitude of the ruined walls which it covered, Rassam came to the
conclusion arrived at by Rich nearly a century before, and accepted by
Hilprecht some years later, that to Babil we must look for the
world-renowned hanging gardens of Diodorus and Pliny.
Rassam’s trenches on the Ḳasr mound were attended with no important
results, but his work at the Jumjuma mound in the South,—so called from
the name of the modern village now situated there,—yielded a rich
harvest of tablets, mostly of a commercial character. Borsippa in like
manner responded to the appeal made to it by the spade of Rassam, many
tablets being recovered, while a large part of the renowned temple of
E-zida, dedicated to the god Nebo, once again saw the light of day: among
the smaller relics, the recovery of a bronze step of the famous
Nebuchadnezzar is deserving of special mention, and also a baked clay
cylinder of the time of Antiochus Soter 270 B.C., the latter being,
according to Hilprecht, “the last royal document composed in the Old
Babylonian writing and language.” But perhaps Rassam’s most valuable
contribution to Assyriology was the identification of the site of
ancient Sippar. Many unsuccessful attempts had previously been made to
locate this city, so frequently mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions,
and already George Smith had tentatively suggested the mound of Abû
Habba, located about thirty miles north of the City of Babylon, as its
possible site, but to Rassam we owe the actual identification of the
site of this old centre of the worship of Shamash the Sun-god in the
Babylonian plain. The ruins of Abû Habba are low but extensive, the
longest of the ancient city-walls measuring some 1400 yards, while on
the western side the remains of an old ziggurat, or temple-tower are
still to be seen. Rassam’s excavations on this site were abundantly
successful, the most important of his discoveries in the ancient
building with which he was principally concerned, being the famous stone
tablet of Nabû-aplu-iddina, king of Babylonia, about 870 B.C. The
inscription which records the restoration of the temple of the Sun-god
by that king is surmounted on the obverse side by a magnificent
bas-relief representing the worship of the Sun-god (cf. Pl. XIV and p.
205). The recovery of this remarkable tablet, apart from the value
attaching to it as a work of art and a historical document, meant
further the identification of one of the earliest sites of Mesopotamian
civilization, and the rediscovery of the time-honoured shrine of
Shamash. Among the other inscriptions unearthed on this occasion, the
large clay cylinders of Nabonidus (555-538 B.C.), the last king of the
Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, are of paramount importance. Allusion has
already been made to the tradition recorded by Nabonidus on his cylinder
regarding the date of Shar-Gâni-sharri of Agade, and his son Narâm-Sin,
and also to the archæological evidence calculated to diminish the
historical value of Nabonidus’ record (cf. p. 5). Rassam reconnoitred
many other sites in Babylonia, notably that of Tellô, from which he
recovered a few objects, including a number of tablets and two
gate-sockets inscribed with the name of Gudea, during his swift and
somewhat stealthy visit in the early part of 1879. But the three great
triumphs of the excavator whose long career came to its natural end in
1910, were the identification of Sippar’s long-forgotten site, the
discovery of the bronze gates at Balâwât, and last but far from least,
the unearthing of Ashur-bani-pal’s northern palace at Nineveh, and the
disclosure of the priceless relics of art and literature which it was
found to contain.
Meanwhile other nations besides the French and the English were
preparing themselves for the work so remarkably commenced, and so full
of promise for the future. Germany was slow to move, but thanks to the
munificence of Mr. L. Simon, an expedition was sent out to the Orient in
the autumn of 1886, under the auspices of the Royal Prussian Museums of
Berlin, and under the directorship of B. Moritz, R. Koldewey and L.
Meyer. But in spite of the tardiness of German activity in the field of
exploration, it must never be forgotten that to Friedrich Delitzsch
belongs the unique honour and glory of having placed Assyriology upon a
scientific basis, and in a real sense that distinguished scholar may be
regarded as the father of that science. At the same time Delitzsch’s
predecessor Schrader deserves a special mention, as being the first to
lecture in Germany on this subject, and to whose lectures Delitzsch and
other scholars doubtless owed much. The 1886 expedition commenced
operations early in 1887 at the ruins of El-Hibba and Surghul, two
mounds situated close to each other to the north-east of Tellô, which
resulted in the discovery of buildings innumerable, mostly of a private
character; the small relics yielded by the German excavations on these
two sites were for the most part considerably damaged by fire which had
played much havoc in both places.
But the chief point of interest in regard to the excavations at El-Hibba
and Surghul was the discovery of a number of early graves. Many of the
bodies had been burnt, from which Koldewey inferred that cremation[22]
was one of the ways in which the Sumerians of antiquity disposed of
their dead. Many of the inscriptions recovered were published by the
lately deceased Dr. Messerschmidt. The tablets in question include texts
belonging both to first and second Dynasties of Lagash (Tellô). One of
the tablets unearthed at Surghul and written by Gudea, the most famous
ruler of the Second Dynasty of Lagash, showed that both El-Hibba and
Surghul acknowledged Gudea as their suzerain-overlord.
At about the same time, the excavating spirit in America was also
gradually fanning itself into life, and to-day America is doing more
archæological work than any other country in the world.
The ancient city of Nippur had long been known as one of the most famous
centres of Babylonian religion, and of the worship of the great god
En-lil, and it was accordingly to this city that the Americans first
directed their attention, and it was here that they made those
epoch-making discoveries which have won for them so prominent a place in
the history of Mesopotamian excavation, and that in spite of all the
controversies which have arisen out of those discoveries. The
Americans had indeed sent out an expedition to Babylonia as early as
1884 under the directorship of Dr. W. Hayes Ward of the New York
“Independent,” but the object for which it was sent was general
exploration rather than for actual excavation. The first expedition
(1888-89) to Nippur, which was organized chiefly by Prof. J. P. Peters,
who was supported by Dr. Wm. Pepper, Provost Harrison, Messrs. E. W.
Clay, C. H. Clark, W. W. Frazier, and others, was chiefly tentative in
character, and served rather to show the magnitude of the work to be
accomplished than to achieve any definite and practical results. Peters
was the director of the first and second (1889-90) expeditions, while
Prof. R. F. Harper and Prof. H. V. Hilprecht were appointed
Assyriologists to the first expedition, Mr. Field being the architect.
The first expedition was engaged in excavating for two months and nine
days, while the second excavated for three months and eleven days. Dr.
Haynes was the field-director of the third expedition (1893-96), and
remained at the mounds of Nippur for nearly three years without a break.
The fourth expedition (1898-1900) was conducted by Hilprecht as
scientific director, Haynes as field-director, and Messrs. C. S. Fisher
and H. V. Geere as architects, and during the last campaign excavations
were carried on for some sixteen months, and led to many important
discoveries.
The first expedition, as stated, was of a preparatory character, and
consequently its results cannot be estimated merely by the number of
discoveries actually made. During the short two months in which the
excavators continued operations, a large building characterized by
enormous buttresses and two round towers was brought to light. The
building—without doubt a fortress—is of comparatively late date,
belonging to the Parthian period, and was built upon the ancient temple
of En-lil and its staged tower.
Bint-el-Amir, the mound which contained the ruins of this renowned
temple, was conical in shape and covered a surface of more than eight
acres.[23] A scientific examination of a mound of such gigantic
proportions was in itself no light task, while the exploration of the
buried temple was a work of pioneering, none of the large Babylonian
temples having as yet been completely excavated.
The excavation of this temple proved that the stage-tower “did not
occupy the central part of the temple-court,” and though it was
undoubtedly the most conspicuous feature of the temple-area, it was not
actually the temple itself: the latter is to be found in a large
building adjacent to the stage-tower. This building is at all events as
early as the time of the Shar-Gâni-sharri and his son Narâm-Sin. The
stage-tower, which probably never had more than three stages, owed its
latest form to Ur-Engur, king of Ur (_circ._ 2400), though
Ashur-bani-pal, King of Assyria nearly two thousand years after, had
occasion to repair and restore it. The bricks of Ashur-bani-pal, which
are intermingled with those of Ur-Engur, bear the stamped inscription,
“To Bel, the King of the lands, his King, Ashur-bani-pal, his favourite
shepherd, the powerful King, King of the four quarters of the earth,
built E-kur, his beloved temple, with baked bricks.” Four feet behind the
facing-wall of Ur-Engur, large bricks characteristic of Narâm-Sin’s time
were discovered, while the bricks of which the innermost core of the
tower was formed belong to the pre-Sargonic and early Sumerian
days.[24]
The extreme antiquity of the lower strata in this mound may be gauged
from the fact that Haynes in descending into the pre-Sargonic period
below the pavement of Narâm-Sin, penetrated through some thirty feet of
ruins before he arrived at the virgin soil.
_PLATE VII_
[Illustration: EXCAVATIONS IN THE TEMPLE COURT: NIPPUR
(_From C. S. Fisher’s “Excavations at Nippur,” by permission_)]
One of the most interesting discoveries in the early strata was a
vaulted drain (cf. Fig. 15 and p. 170) which purports to be the earliest
Babylonian arch known, while a large number of terra-cotta pipes as well
as a terra-cotta drain were also brought to light. The smaller objects
include votive stelæ (cf. Fig. 25), tablets, cylinder-seals and
terra-cotta vases (cf. Figs. 92, 93). But a large number of relics
contained in the strata above the level of Narâm-Sin were found to be
pre-Sargonic in spite of their position in the mound. They included
door-sockets, fragments of vases, slabs, statues, and more than fifty
brick-stamps, bearing an inscription of Sargon or Narâm-Sin.
But the discovery and partial excavation of the Temple “Library”[25] or
“archive” at Nippur have produced the most far-reaching and epoch-making
results, for thereby literally thousands of tablets have been
unearthed, affording an amount of new material for Assyriological study
seldom paralleled in the history of Babylonian exploration.
The greater part of the excavated material[26] is scientific or literary
in character. The majority of the tablets are unbaked, and have
consequently suffered from the detrimental effects of time, climate and
other influences, among which may be particularly mentioned the havoc
wrought by the invading Elamites during the third millennium B.C. In
consequence of this, the decipherer’s task is much more arduous than it
would otherwise have been, but in spite of the vandalism of the Elamites
and the work of destruction which they sought to, and to some extent did
accomplish, the archæologist probably owes the preservation of these
tablets to their burial in the ruined débris of which they formed a
part. These unbaked clay tablets seem to have been generally arranged on
shelves made of clay and about 1-1/2 feet wide, while they contain every
variety of “literature,” treating of astronomy, astrology, mathematics,
geography, history, medicine, grammar and religion. One of the tablets
gives us valuable information regarding the temple itself; the name of
the great hall of the temple was Emakh, and though En-lil and his consort
were without doubt the principal deities of the place, there were some
twenty-four shrines dedicated to other gods, just as was the case in
E-sagila, the great Temple of Marduk at Babylon, recently excavated by
the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft.
The late Assyrian, neo-Babylonian and Persian periods are also well
represented in the enormous accumulation of cuneiform tablets recovered
from this site, among the most interesting of which are the “Murashû
Tablets,” seven hundred or more of which were unearthed in a ruined
building some twenty feet below the surface. The care with which these
tablets had been made, and the numerous seal-impressions which they
bore, at once attracted Hilprecht’s attention. They proved to belong to
the business archives of Murashû Sons, brokers and bankers at Nippur,
who flourished in the time of the Persian kings, Artaxerxes I (464-424
B.C.) and Darius II (423-405 B.C.). But apart from ordinary banking
business, the firm acted as an agent for the Persian kings. Apparently
the kings of Persia were in the habit of farming out the taxes like the
Roman emperors of later days, and Murashû Sons undertook to levy the
king’s taxes from their Babylonian subjects in Nippur and elsewhere. The
interest of these tablets is not however confined to the information
which they afford us in regard to the mode of conducting business at
that period; but they are of even greater value for the insight which
they give us into the ordinary life of the people.
It was during the last expedition that the city-walls were carefully
examined, and also those which enclosed the temple-area, the name of the
former being Nîmit-Marduk and the name of the latter Imgur-Marduk.
Access to the temple was gained by a gate in the southern wall, which
was at all events as old as the time of Shar-Gâni-sharri of Agade. The
“Abullu Rabu,” the great gate of the city, was situated to the
north-east of the Temple; its length is 35 feet, by which we know that
that was the thickness of the wall itself, though unfortunately nothing
remains of the old city-wall at this point, the crude bricks of which it
was composed having been removed and used for building materials in the
later Nippur structures. The gateway itself consisted of a central road
some 13 feet wide used for ordinary traffic, on either side of which
was a raised passage for pedestrians, while the whole structure was
built of thumb-marked bricks, and is therefore pre-Sargonic. Under the
central roadway a foundation consisting of massive blocks of stone laid
in bitumen was discovered. Some distance north of this gate a large part
of the old city wall was discovered, belonging in the main to the times
of Narâm-Sin and Ur-Engur respectively, the work of the latter king
being of course superimposed on that of Narâm-Sin. Traces of some
hundred feet of the wall of Narâm-Sin are still visible, and also a
water-conduit consisting of baked bricks laid in bitumen. The wall was
rebuilt by Ur-Engur, who adorned its outer face with a series of panels
11 feet in width, and placed at intervals of 30 feet, of which some
seventeen were found in their original positions; the excavators were
unable to ascertain the thickness of the wall, but in one place it was
found preserved to the thickness of over 25 feet. Into the inner face of
this later wall were built a number of small chambers in which were
found relics of varying interest; a description of the later Parthian
fortress, and of the little Parthian palace discovered on the other side
of the Shatt-en-Nîl Canal, would treat of a period with which this
volume does not profess to deal, and the reader must accordingly refer
to the standard works of some of the excavators themselves (Peters,
Hilprecht or Fisher) for information concerning these later buildings,
as also for details regarding all the structures and discoveries at
Nippur. Sufficient however has perhaps been recounted to indicate the
extraordinary importance with which the American expeditions to Nippur
have been fraught, though even to-day we are not in a position to
adequately appreciate the full value of the self-sacrificing labours of
the excavators, and the ample results with which those labours have been
and are daily being attended.
Meanwhile, the Turks themselves, alive to the importance of the
monuments and relics recovered from the ruined mounds which ever since
Rassam’s departure from Baghdad in 1882 had been exploited with
considerable success by the agents of antiquity-dealers, determined to
send out an expedition of their own. The expedition was placed under the
directorship of Father Scheil, a young French Assyriologist, and Bedri
Bey, the Ottoman Inspector of Antiquities, who commenced operations in
the spring of 1894 at Abû Habba (Sippar), the site which had been the
particular hunting ground of the dealers, and which therefore was
calculated to be worth scientifically exploring. The most important
result of the expedition was the discovery of about seven hundred
tablets, mostly letters or contracts belonging to the time of the first
Babylonian dynasty, and especially to the reign of Samsu-iluna, the son
and successor of Khammurabi. In 1891 Dr. Wallis Budge excavated the
neighbouring mound of Dêr and recovered many texts, etc.; these are now
in the British Museum.
On March 26th, 1899, Dr. Koldewey, whose excavations at El-Hibba and
Surghul had been more than successful, commenced operations on the Ḳasr
mound at Babylon, the mound which marks the site of the world-famed
palace of Nebuchadnezzar.
The German excavations at Babylon undertaken by Koldewey, Meissner,
Andrae and M. L. Meyer, have not indeed yielded so rich a harvest as was
expected from the important part which that city played in the history
of the country, from the time of Khammurabi onwards, for Sennacherib’s
destruction of the city in 689 B.C. had been carried out with such
rigour that little was left to tell the tale of Babylon’s greatness
before his time, that little consisting chiefly of contract-tablets
belonging to the time of the First Dynasty, and a number of pot-burials
belonging to a yet earlier period. But however greatly we must regret
the dearth of material yielded by Babylon’s ruined mounds, for the
reconstruction of her earlier history, of the period during which she
was at the height of her power,—the period of the great king
Nebuchadnezzar (604-561 B.C.)—the German excavations have afforded us
much valuable information. The Ḳasr mound which was found to conceal the
remains of Nebuchadnezzar’s famous palace, the palace in which he lived
during the greater part of his reign and the same one in which Alexander
the Great died, seems to have been a new suburb of Babylon, and
contained nothing earlier than the seventh century. The massive
city-wall, which in all was found to be some 136 feet in thickness, was
discovered, and the palace of Nebuchadnezzar in part excavated, but the
two most important discoveries of the summer of 1899 were a stele of
dolerite and a sandstone bas-relief. The stele of dolerite is 4 feet 2
inches high, and on the smooth side of it the figure of a Hittite god is
depicted, while the reverse contains a Hittite inscription. The god has
his two arms raised and brandishes a trident in one hand, a large hammer
in the other, while a sword hangs from his side. A long plait of hair
hangs down his back, his head-gear being a Phrygian cap, his footwear the
pointed shoes so characteristically Hittite, and his tunic, decorated
with a fringe, reaches just to the knees. The second discovery consisted
in a sandstone slab rather over 4 feet long and about 4-1/2 feet in
height, showing in relief a group of figures of which the two most
noteworthy are the god Adad, armed with two flashes of lightning in
either hand, and the goddess Ishtar.
In the following year Koldewey was able to give more detailed
information regarding the general plan and arrangement of
Nebuchadnezzar’s palace. The palace contained a great number of rooms,
arranged around larger central courts. The walls of the various
buildings rest upon a massive foundation composed of bricks and
fragments. Upon this foundation-platform a rampart-wall running east to
west, over 56 feet thick and pierced with a single gateway, was
discovered, while at the corner of this wall, another building, older
than the wall itself, was brought to light. This building was made of
burnt brick and asphalt, the bricks themselves bearing an Aramaic
inscription and a walking lion.
On the east front of the Ḳasr in Babylon the paving-stones of the street
are made of white limestone, or red and white breccia, but the only part
of the street paving found in its original position is the layer of
burnt bricks covered with asphalt which served as a foundation for the
stone pavement above. The enormous limestone blocks measure over 3 feet
square and about 13-1/2 inches thick. On some of these limestone blocks
an inscription was found giving Nebuchadnezzar’s name, and stating that
he had paved the Babel street for the procession of the great lord
Marduk with “mountain-stone” slabs. The breccia slabs, none of which
have been recovered complete, were apparently of more modest dimensions,
being only about 26 inches square and 8 inches thick. There is no doubt
that these are the paving-stones wherewith Nebuchadnezzar paved the
“Processional street of Marduk” the locus of which is now certain.
Breccia had been used for building purposes before the time of
Nebuchadnezzar: thus we know that Nabopolassar, the founder of the
Neo-Babylonian Dynasty, had used it for paving the processional street,
while at the Amran mound a block of breccia was found bearing an
inscription of Sennacherib.
The discovery of the processional street of Marduk was of the greatest
importance in regard to the topography of ancient Babylon, while the
confirmation of the theory held by Delitzsch and others—hitherto based
chiefly on inferences drawn from Nebuchadnezzar’s texts—in the
identification of Marduk’s temple, E-sagila, with the old Babylonian
building concealed within the Amran mound, during the excavations of May
1900, was of even greater moment.
Koldewey was further fortunate enough to discover a temple erected in
honour of the goddess Nin-makh (Great Lady), who was at all events in
later times identified with Ishtar.[27] The importance of the discovery
lay in the completeness of the building, and not in the magnitude of its
dimensions, for it is quite small. During the excavation of this temple
a well-preserved Assyrian cylinder was found, on which Ashur-bani-pal
records that he has newly built Nin-makh’s temple in Babylon, in return
for which act of piety he clearly expected a rich reward, for he begs
the “sublime Nin-makh to look down compassionately” on his pious deeds,
to pronounce his prosperity daily before Bêl and Bêlit, to prescribe a
“life of many days as his fate,” and to establish his government firmly.
Another interesting discovery was that of a terra-cotta figure of a naked
goddess, doubtless a relic of the Nin-makh-cult (cf. Fig. 86).
The excavations on the Amran hill revealed the presence of buildings
prior to the time of Nebuchadnezzar. The upper strata of the mound
belong for the most part to the Parthian and Seleucidian times, but at a
depth of 68 feet below the surface of the mound, the floor of a
Babylonian building was uncovered, and the clay walls of this building,
which were over 9 feet thick, were still found in position to a
considerable height. The floor itself was made of burnt bricks covered
with asphalt, apparently only the bricks in the uppermost layer bearing
the impress of Nebuchadnezzar’s stamp, in consequence of which it seems
probable that the foundation of the building was laid before that king’s
time. Underneath the lowest flooring a solid foundation of brick some
6-1/2 feet thick was found. On the uppermost flooring various objects of
interest were brought to light, including a thin plate of gold, a silver
knob, a gold ear-ring, and fragments of engraved shells. But the real
importance of the excavations at the Amran mound centres round the
discovery of Marduk’s famous temple—E-sagila, the meaning of which is
“the house of heaven and earth.” The temple was founded by King Zabum
during the time of the First Dynasty of Babylon (_circ._ 2000 B.C.), the
period, that is to say, during which the city of Babylon became the most
powerful city-state in Southern Mesopotamia. But the supremacy of
Babylon meant the supremacy of Babylon’s god, and the prestige to which
Marduk attained at this time is shown by his identification with Bêl,
the ancient god of Nippur. But some few hundred years afterwards, when
the power and influence of Babylon had decreased, and dominion in the
Mesopotamian Valley had passed to the more warlike Assyrians in the
north, E-sagila and her god suffered with the people of Babylon, the
temple being looted and the god Marduk carried off by Tukulti-Ninib,
King of Assyria (_circ._ 1275 B.C.) Some six centuries later found the
Assyrians still all-powerful, though always engaged in suppressing
rebellions among the discontented Babylonian princes, until at last
Sennacherib resolved to wipe out Babylon from off the face of the earth.
E-sagila shared in the general catastrophe, and but little remains of
the early city or of the temple of her time-honoured god, though
fortunately various documents, vessels and other relics belonging to the
time before Sennacherib escaped that king’s fury, and have been
recovered recently by the German excavators. Esarhaddon however, the
successor of Sennacherib, and one of the most humane of Assyrian
monarchs,—which is not perhaps saying a very great deal—made it his
special business to rebuild the city of Babylon and the temple of her
god, but he did not live to see the realization of his project, and the
completion of the work was thus left to Esarhaddon’s joint successors,
Ashur-bani-pal and Shamash-shum-ukîn. The temple was roofed with cedar
and cypress-wood, and was rich with gold, silver and precious stones.
When all was finished, Marduk’s home-coming was celebrated with great
pomp and splendour, Shamash the sun-god, Ea, Marduk’s venerable father,
Nebo his illustrious son—even Nergal the god of the dead, came to
welcome the exiled deity back. But magnificent as was the reconstruction
of Marduk’s ancient fane by Ashur-bani-pal, Assyria’s mightiest king, it
was surpassed by that of Babylon’s native kings—Nabopolassar (625-604)
and his son Nebuchadnezzar. Ashur-bani-pal does not seem to have rebuilt
the temple-tower, which Sennacherib had of course destroyed, but
Nabopolassar reared once more the lofty stage-tower—the E-temen-an-ki
(“house of the foundations of heaven and earth”), and Nebuchadnezzar his
son carried on the laudable work. He built the walls of the chamber Ekua
of pure gold, while the roof he made of cedar-wood which he covered with
gold and precious stones, the sanctuaries of Nebo and Zarpanit being
treated in the same luxurious manner, while all the sacrificial vessels
seem to have been made of pure gold. Neriglissar (559-556 B.C.) a
successor of Nebuchadnezzar further built four gates to this temple,and
when the city was finally taken by Cyrus, it will be recalled that that
king made obeisance to Marduk, at whose behests he professed to have
taken the city—“He (Marduk) sought out a righteous prince, a man after
his own heart, whom he might take by the hand; and he called his name
Cyrus.”
Various graves were discovered in the course of the excavations at
Babylon, but mostly of a late date. A very interesting sarcophagus was
brought to light in 1910,[28] the “head” end of the terra-cotta cover of
which bore in relief the bearded head of a man with long hair, and an
Egyptian type of face. Two other sarcophagi were found at the same time,
and all of these burials were inside ruined houses.
Of the many other important results attending the labours of Koldewey
and his confrères, the discovery of the ancient canal Arakhtu, the
tracing of its quay-walls, the excavation of the great wall between the
north and south castles, and the clearing of the west wall of the
southern citadel, are especially deserving of mention, while for details
the reader must refer to the _Mitteilungen der Deutschen
Orient-Gesellschaft_.
But Babylon was not the only site in Lower Mesopotamia to receive the
attention of the Germans on this expedition. On June 14th, 1902,
Koldewey, Delitzsch and Baumgarten, with a party of labourers, took a
boat down the Euphrates, arriving eventually at the ruined mounds of
Fâra on the 18th. Digging was commenced in the northern part of the
ruin, and it was very soon evident that the whole site is of very
ancient date, not even the uppermost strata of the mounds containing
anything that can be assigned to a late period. Various implements of
bone and stone, including a number of stone hatchets, as well as saws
and knives made of flint or obsidian, all testified to the antiquity of
its occupation, and as nothing was discovered at a greater depth than 6
to 7 feet, Fâra promised at the outset to be one of the most important
sites for the study of early Sumerian civilization. The ruined mounds of
other long-forgotten cities had indeed yielded relics of the past quite
as old as those excavated at Fâra, but in nearly every case the upper
strata of such mounds were found to contain the remains of a later date
and a more recent occupation; Fâra however stands unique in this
respect, as for some reasons unknown, it appears only to have been
occupied in the earliest period of Babylonia’s history, during which it
undoubtedly “had its day,” but has ever since “ceased to be” until the
German excavators have at last rescued it from permanent oblivion. Among
the smaller objects discovered on this site, was a number of
seal-cylinders, the majority of which were made of alabaster, though
sometimes of shells, but very rarely of the hard stones so frequently
employed in later days. They were found sometimes amid the general
débris, sometimes in the tombs; for the most part they exhibit
battle-scenes, the combatants being either men, beasts, or mythical
monstrosities, as the case may be. The simpler specimens of the pottery
found resemble those unearthed by Koldewey at Surghul, while others were
more elaborately decorated. A few tablets were unearthed, mostly round
in shape, and all of them inscribed in archaic characters. The citizens
of Fâra placed the bodies of their dead either in clay sarcophagi, or
else in reed mats. The clay sarcophagi are oval in shape, and about six
feet in length; the sides are perpendicular, and they are closed with a
clay cover. The corpse was generally found lying on its side with the
legs drawn up embryonic-wise, as was the case in pre-Dynastic Egypt, and
one of the hands is holding to the mouth a cup made of stone, shell,
copper, or clay, an incidental proof of the Babylonian’s belief in the
reality of the life after death even at this remote period. The tombs of
the better classes contain also the implements, weapons and ornaments of
the deceased. The arms include spears, poniards and hatchets made of
“bronze” (?), the jewelry taking the form of chains, the beads of which
are in the case of the more wealthy made of lapis lazuli, and agate,
while the poorer folk had to content themselves with ordinary glass.
Bracelets and rings of silver and bronze were also discovered, together
with “bronze” staffs provided with lapis-points at either end. Among the
tools may be enumerated fishing-hooks and hatchets made of “bronze,”
while colour-boxes made of alabaster or shell were usually buried with
the corpse, and were therefore presumably regarded as toilet requisites
in the life beyond just as in the life which now is. The colours in most
cases were found well preserved, the principal of which were black,
yellow, red and light green. Many stone vessels of varying sizes and
shapes were brought to light, most of them being made of alabaster, in
fact alabaster was used quite extensively on this site, contrary to the
usage of the Babylonians of later days, who seldom employed the softer
stones which their Assyrian neighbours utilized so frequently and for so
many divers purposes. The excavators report that they were unable to
determine whether the sarcophagi or the mat-burials were the older, both
apparently being used synchronously; an assumption that the sarcophagi
were used by the better classes, the mat-interments by the poorer, would
in itself be sufficiently reasonable, but for the awkward fact that the
mat-graves are as richly provided with the accoutrements, ornaments and
implements of the deceased as are the sarcophagi themselves. Very few
sculptures were found, most of them being on alabaster and showing
considerable skill in their general execution. The early part of 1903
was signalized by the discovery of a building made of well-baked bricks,
in the ruined débris of which were discovered a large number of
well-preserved tablets.
Meanwhile excavations had been carried on at the same time at the mound
of Abû Hatab, Koldewey having received a report of the discovery of
inscribed bricks on this site. Operations were commenced here on
December 24th, 1902, and resulted in the discovery of a number of small
buildings, the walls of which were notable for their insubstantiality.
Some of the bricks were found to bear an inscription of Bur-Sin, king of
Ur (_circ._ 2350 B.C.). But Abû Hatab yielded little of interest to the
student of early prehistoric remains. The tombs here consisted for the
most part in two large pots “adjusted with their edges in a horizontal
position,” a form of sarcophagus found also in the early strata at
Babylon and Muḳeyyer (Ur). The corpse lay either on its back or side,
but in both cases it was contracted, this being obviously necessitated
by the limitations of the sarcophagus, as was similarly the case in the
early pot-burials of ancient Egypt. A vessel of clay or copper was
generally found placed near the head of the corpse, doubtless destined
to fulfil a purpose similar to that of the drinking cups found in the
graves at Fâra.
At about this time Andrae, Koldewey’s assistant, completed the
excavation of the temple of Nebo at Birs-Nimrûd (Borsippa), whence Nebo
paid his yearly visit to Marduk on the first day of the New Year.
Koldewey and Andrae did not however confine their attention to the
ruined mounds of Babylonia, but in 1903 commenced excavations at Ḳalat
Sherḳat, the site of Ashur, Assyria’s ancient capital, and the name of
the god from whom Assyria derives her name. As early as 1852 Sir Henry
Layard had conducted excavations on this site, the chief tangible result
of which was the discovery of Tiglath-Pileser I’s clay cylinders, though
fragments of bas-reliefs and other inscriptions were also discovered
here both by Layard and Rassam. Shalmaneser I (_circ._ 1300 B.C.) had
transferred the seat of his government from Ashur to Calah, but his
successor Tukulti-Ninib (_circ._ 1275 B.C.) restored the capital of the
empire to Ashur. The mounds which mark the site of this ancient city are
to a great extent of natural formation (cf. Pl. VIII), thereby differing
from most of the ruined mounds in Mesopotamia, which owe their existence
to artificial formation. From September 1903 to April 1904 operations
were of a tentative character and consisted of trial trenches, but in
April 1904 the Germans commenced excavating the large mound of
mud-brick, the ziggurat, the eastern plateau, and the large court of
Ashur’s temple, part of the fortification-wall also receiving attention,
while the main work centred round the palace-buildings of Shalmaneser I
(_circ._ 1300 B.C.). The great temple of Ashur, built or restored by
Ushpia, an early ruler of the city who antedates Irishum, is situated in
the north-east corner, and it adjoins the palace of Shalmaneser I. The
ziggurat or stage-tower lies to the west-south-west, and the palace of
Ashur-naṣir-pal adjoins the temple of Anu and Adad, which would appear
to be the best preserved building in Ashur. Various other buildings have
been discovered, of which the temple of Nebo and the palace of
Tukulti-Ninib I (_circ._ 1275 B.C.) may be specially mentioned. Numerous
graves were found of various kinds, those with brick walls being
undoubtedly Assyrian. Many valuable historical inscriptions were found,
while the discovery of a wall-decoration consisting of a series of
rosettes was another interesting result. The so-called “Mushlala” of
Adad-nirari I (_circ._ 1325 B.C.), according to whom it formed a part of
the temple of Ashur, was found to be identical with that restored by
Sennacherib with “mountain-stone,” and afterwards repaired by Esarhaddon
(681-668 B.C.) with “pîlu”-stone. The foundations of the building
situated at the southern side of the eastern plateau proved to be of
very great depth, while the plan of the building itself is said to
closely resemble the early Babylonian type. The temple of Ashur the
great lord of Assyria is alluded to by Irishum, king of Assyria (_circ._
2000 B.C.), by Shamshi-Adad who calls himself builder of the temple of
Ashur, by Adad-nirari and by Shalmaneser I. In Shalmaneser I’s reign it
was destroyed by fire, and that king undertook its restoration. An
inscription of Tiglath-Pileser II informs us that he decorated the
temple with enamelled bricks. Some of these inscriptions were found “in
situ” thus fixing the precise locus of Ashur’s famous shrine. The temple
was situated at the extreme north of the city, three of its sides
overlooking the open country and the fourth over-towered by the
ziggurat. Remains of Shalmaneser’s work have been found in the
foundation and pavement constructed by that king, and some of the
enamelled bricks which decorated the buildings of Sargon have also been
recovered, while the pavement of the great court, as well as pieces of
enamelled brick and the clay cones of Tiglath-Pileser II have been
brought to light. The temple itself was originally high above the level
of the street. A second smaller ziggurat was further found, which proved
to be a part of the temple of Anu and Adad, and the work of three
distinct periods has been traced in this structure.[29] Of interesting
relics here unearthed, we may specifically mention a three-pronged
thunderbolt of wood sheathed with gold.
_PLATE VIII_
[Illustration: THE ZIGGURAT AND PALACE OF ASHUR-NAṢIR-PAL: ASHUR
(_By permission of the German Oriental Society_)]
The remains of various palaces have been unearthed including those of
Adad-nirari and Shalmaneser I, and the royal residence of Tukulti-Ninib
has been also excavated. Many tablets were recovered, and a pot
containing 113 unbaked clay tablets was also brought to light: the
tablets are written in a script characteristic of the time of
Tiglath-Pileser I, and are chiefly concerned with receipts for cattle.
Much pottery was unearthed, together with a variety of objects including
some Roman imperial coins of the second century. The northern part of
the city was that which was favoured by the Assyrian kings, and
accordingly contains the remains of several temples and palaces, but the
ruins of private houses are perhaps of even greater interest than the
palaces of kings and the abodes of the gods. They are small in size, but
were evidently carefully drained. Within the houses a number of graves
were discovered, apparently belonging to the same period as the houses
themselves. In many cases the excavators state that they found clear
traces of cremation in the graves. Seven distinctly different kinds of
graves were found at Ashur—vaults, clay sarcophagi, baked clay trays
placed over the corpse, jars, brick graves, potsherd graves, and earth
graves. The vaults[30] are of various shapes and dimensions, are made of
burnt brick, and consist generally of a fairly spacious chamber and an
entrance shaft. The bodies—always more than one in each vault—lay on the
floor in a contracted position, surrounded with drinking vessels of
every description, and in all cases there was a small niche for a lamp.
The clay sarcophagi show even greater varieties, including jars into
which the bodies were pressed, and tubs both high and short into which
the corpse was placed in a seated position, while both of these classes
comprise many different types.
Another class of jar-burial, known as the “capsule,” consisted in two
jars drawn over the feet and head respectively and pressed together till
they met, thus forming a “capsule.” The Brick-graves were practically
Brick-sarcophagi, the graves being built coffin-wise, but few of these
have been found. The Potsherd graves are so called from the use of
potsherds to cover the corpse. Apparently these various methods of
burial coexisted at the same time, and they accordingly cannot be
classified into periods, as is the case to some extent in early Egypt.
Concerning the fortifications of the city, the inscriptions of the
various kings who built, repaired, or rebuilt these, afford us a good
deal of information, but the excavations themselves have not up to the
present told us as much as we could desire. Shalmaneser II’s work of
restoration on the southern wall has been identified by the clay-cones
of that king found in the upper part of the wall, while in some of his
inscriptions Shalmaneser calls himself the builder of the “Dûru” itself.
The quay-wall built by Adad-nirari I, restored by Adad-nirari II, and
later on by Adad-nirari III, has been excavated for nearly 490 yards of
its length; it is built of blocks of limestone and is faced with brick
on the river-side, coherency being added to the whole by an ample
employment of asphalt and clay-mortar. Part of the city-moat built by
Tukulti-Ninib I has also been found, the excavations having further
revealed the restoration of the city-wall, for which Ashur-naṣir-pal was
probably responsible.
The year 1908 saw the excavation of the temple erected in honour of the
god Nebo at Ashur by Sin-shar-ish-kun, the last king of Assyria (_circ._
615 B.C.).[31] The general ground-plan of this late Assyrian temple was
found to correspond to that of the Anu-Adad temple, and also to that of
the temple built by Sargon at Khorsabad.[32] Numerous stelæ and other
monuments of stone were recovered from the ruins of Ashur; they include
a basalt stele of Tukulti-Ninib,[33] a stele of Tiglath-Pileser III, and
another of Ashur-rêsh-ishi II,[34] a limestone stele of Ashur-naṣir-pal,
an alabaster stele with the representation of a king adoring a god and
goddess, which in some way resembles the Bavian relief of
Sennacherib,[35] and fragments of a diorite sculpture[36] with small
figures recalling the style of art characteristic of the Khammurabi
period. The interest of these monuments is chiefly centred in the
inscriptions which throw new light upon the number and order of the
Assyrian kings.
Meanwhile the Americans, whose excavations in Babylonia had been
inaugurated with so much promise, had again taken the field. On
Christmas day 1903 an expedition sent out by the Oriental Exploration
Fund of the University of Chicago, under the directorship of Professor
R. F. Harper (E. J. Banks as field-director) commenced excavations at
Bismâya, the name of a group of mounds situated between the Tigris and
Euphrates, and due south of Bagdad. The mounds are very extensive,
measuring about a mile in length and half a mile in breadth, but their
altitude is very low compared with that of other mounds, such as Erech,
Nippur (cf. Pl. X) or Borsippa. The temple was the first building at
Bismâya to receive attention, partly owing to the fact that it happened
to be concealed beneath one of the loftiest of the Bismayân mounds, and
partly because the general shape of the mound suggested the possible
existence of a stage-tower beneath its ruined débris. Trenches dug on
all sides of the mound towards the centre soon revealed the lower
storey of one of these temple towers, the second storey of which had
disappeared, though some of the burnt bricks which formed its outer
casing were found lying about. The surviving lower stage consisted in
crude bricks and clay, but was provided with a facing of burnt brick
some four feet thick. Many of these casing bricks were inscribed with
the name of Dungi, king of Ur (_circ._ 2400 B.C.). Beneath the bricks of
Dungi was found another layer of burnt bricks, some of which bore the
name of Ur-Engur, Dungi’s immediate predecessor on the throne of Ur. Of
small objects unearthed, the three most interesting were a thin strip of
gold found about two feet below the baked bricks of Dungi, and bearing
the name of the renowned Nârâm-Sin, the son of Shar-Gâni-sharri of
Agade, and the second was a small white marble statuette found at no
great distance from the strip of gold, and conforming to the style of
art characteristic of the age of Narêm-Sin, while the third was another
marble statue belonging to the earliest Sumerian period, and closely
resembling those excavated in the lowest strata at Tellô (Lagash). This
statue (cf. Fig. 32) is probably unique as a statue in the round
belonging to so early a period, and is especially noticeable for the
fact that the arms are in this case entirely free from the body, and
carved altogether in the round.
Just below the place where the gold of Narâm-Sin was recovered, large
bricks about 18 inches square and belonging to the age of
Shar-Gâni-sharri were found, while numerous inscriptions of this same
king were forthcoming from some of the other mounds at Bismâya. Beneath
the large Sargonic bricks there was a layer of thin oblong and
finger-marked bricks, while lower still, some five feet below the
surface, small plano-convex bricks set in bitumen were brought to light.
A great number of vase fragments made of marble, porphyry, granite,
alabaster and onyx, together with innumerable objects made of ivory,
mother of pearl, metal and stone were found round about the temple
tower.
In regard to the temple itself, an entrance was discovered on the
south-east side, the principal remaining features of which were the
marble gate-socket supported on two slabs of pink marble. At the south
corner, an oval-shaped room was brought to light, which was once covered
with a dome-shaped roof. But the base of the temple tower had depths
even below the stratum containing the small plano-convex bricks, which
yet remained to be fathomed.
Some sixteen or seventeen feet below the surface a large metal spike
(cf. Fig. 40) terminating in a lion’s head was recovered, while much
lower still, about thirty-nine to forty feet below the level of the
mound a number of fragments of wheel-made black pottery were revealed.
The date of this wheel-made pottery is of course unknown, but judging
from the depth at which it was found, Dr. Banks, the Field-director of
the expedition, suggests a date of 10,000 B.C. In the same year (1903)
in which these successful excavations were being carried on at Bismâya,
Nineveh, the ruined mounds of which once-famous city had already yielded
such a rich harvest to the great pioneers in the field of Mesopotamian
exploration, received further attention at the hands of the Trustees of
the British Museum, who sent out an expedition under Messrs. L. W. King
and R. C. Thompson, with a view to the further excavation of the
Kouyunjik mound. The principal result of the excavations carried on
there between the years 1903 and 1905 was the discovery of the site of
Nabû’s temple, which had however been so ruthlessly destroyed—presumably
by the Elamites—that no complete plan of the temple could be made.
Meanwhile the excavations at Tellô (Lagash) which had been brought
suddenly to an end by the death of the brilliant French excavator (M. de
Sarzec) in May, 1901, were resumed in January, 1903, under the
directorship of Captain Gaston Cros. The principal fresh discovery made
was a massive fortification wall built by Gudea (_circ._ 2450 B.C.). It
is about thirty-two and a half feet thick, and in places is still in
position to the height of twenty-six feet. Captain Cros also excavated a
large rectangular building, and brought to light various objects of
interest, including implements of flint and copper, together with a
brick-stamp of Narâm-Sin, which latter may be regarded as evidence that
building operations were carried on in Lagash by a Semitic king of Agade
during the period of Semitic supremacy.
CHAPTER III—DECIPHERMENT OF THE CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS
The first person to bring reports of cuneiform inscriptions to Europe
was Pietro della Valle, an Italian belonging to a Roman family of noble
birth. In the years 1614-26 he made a journey to Turkey, Egypt,
Palestine, Persia and India, and published an account of his travels in
1650, but the first communication of his discovery of cuneiform
inscriptions at Persepolis was contained in a letter written from Shiraz
and dated October 21st, 1621. Josafat Barbaro at the end of the
fifteenth century had already taken notice of the strange signs found on
the monuments at Persepolis, but Pietro della Valle was the first to
suspect that the inscriptions were something more than mere decorative
incisions on the rock. But though Pietro della Valle had made copies of
a few of the inscriptions on the walls of the ruined palaces of
Persepolis as early as 1621, to Chardin (1674) belongs the honour of
making the first copy of a complete cuneiform inscription, the so-called
“Window-Inscription,” the shortest of the trilingual Achaemenian
inscriptions, and his copy is to be found in the account of his travels
(published 1711). This same inscription was copied in 1694 by Kampfer,
who also copied the Babylonian text of the “H” inscription found at
Persepolis, and who was the first to adopt the term “cuneiform.” In the
work which he published in 1712 he discusses whether the unknown script
is alphabetic, syllabic, or ideographic, and decides in favour of the
last. In 1701, the Dutchman De Bruin commenced his travels: he devoted
the year 1704 to an examination of the ruins at Persepolis and ten years
later he published two new trilingual inscriptions in addition to an Old
Persian and a Babylonian inscription, but to copy was one thing and to
decipher was quite another, and well nigh a century elapsed before any
real progress was made towards the unravelling of these cryptic signs,
and the reconstruction of the languages which they embodied. In 1762 the
inscription on the Vase of Xerxes found by Count Caylus was published,
and a quadrilingual inscription of this king was published the same
year. In 1765 Carsten Niebuhr, a Dane, copied several Achaemenian
inscriptions at Persepolis, and pointed out that the first of the three
columns on each of the trilingual inscriptions that had been found,
contained only forty-two varieties of cuneiform characters from which he
surmised rightly that the system in the first column was neither
ideographic (each sign representing a word), nor syllabic (each sign
representing a syllable), but alphabetic. From 1798 onwards, Tychsen and
Münter, also a Dane, carried on the work begun by Niebuhr, and published
their results in 1802. Münter had correctly guessed that the ubiquitous
diagonal wedge ᐊ served to separate the words from each
other, and one word which occurred at the beginning of each inscription,
he rightly adjudged to be the word for “king.” In the meantime the
Zend[37] language of the later Zoroastrian faith had been rediscovered,
and with the aid of it, de Sacy had been able to decipher the Pehlevi[38]
inscriptions. Now only the older Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenian
kings awaited interpretation. In 1802 G. Friedrich Grotefend, of
Hanover, a schoolmaster by profession, entered the field, and by the
following process of reasoning he became the pioneer discoverer of part
of the Persian cuneiform alphabet, and the first decipherer of a
complete cuneiform inscription. Old writers had provided him with the
all-important information that the palaces of Persepolis, amid the ruins
of which so many of these cuneiform inscriptions had been found, were
built by the Achaemenian kings. The Pehlevi inscriptions moreover, which
had also been found on this site and had been deciphered by de Sacy, led
him to expect that the cuneiform inscriptions would contain something
analogous. Grotefend had already satisfied himself that the
inscriptions read from left to right, and selecting two short
inscriptions, one engraved on a gate-post of a building on the second
palace-terrace, and the other engraved on the wall of a building on the
third palace-terrace at Persepolis, he commenced his successful
investigations. Both inscriptions contained the group of signs which
Münter had already rightly inferred represented “king,” though what was
the Persian for “king” remained as yet unknown, the only difference
being that in Inscription I “king” was preceded by a group of signs
which may be conveniently designated “X,” while in Inscription II “king”
is preceded by a group of signs which may be called “Y,” and that
moreover in Inscription II “X” and the word for “king” following it
occurred after the “Y” + “king.” In I on the other hand “X” + “king” was
followed by another group of signs which may be labelled “Z,” without
however the usual accompanying “king.”
Thus I reads “X” + king......... “Z”.........
And II reads “Y” + king......... “X” + king.
From this, Grotefend concluded that the groups of signs “X” “Y” and “Z”
represented proper names, and that as “X” and “Y” were accompanied by
“king,” they must be king’s names, and lastly Achaemenian kings’ names,
for ancient writers stated that these palaces at Persepolis were built
by Achaemenian kings, and furthermore their position suggested that
these proper names must stand in genealogical relation to each other. In
I “X” must be the son of “Z,” and in II “Y” must be the son of “X”; “X”
and “Y” are accompanied with the sign for “king,” “Z” is not, therefore
“Z” the father of “X” is not a king, and consequently “X” is presumably
the founder of the dynasty. But apart from this hypothesis, some of the
names of the five kings composing the (fortunately) short Achaemenian
Dynasty—Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius, Xerxes and Artaxerxes—were at once
ruled out of court: thus Cyrus and Cambyses were out of the question,
for “X” and “Y” did not commence with the same cuneiform letter (it must
be remembered that it had already been rightly assumed that the system
was an alphabetic one), and moreover Cyrus’ father and son were both
named Cambyses, and accordingly if “X” were Cyrus then “Y” and “Z”
should be the same, which they are not. Cyrus and Artaxerxes were
likewise disqualified, as there was no such discrepancy in the length of
the words, there thus remained only Darius and Xerxes to be considered,
and as “X’s” father “Z” is not called king, and it is further known that
Hystaspes the father of Darius is not styled “king” by the classical
writers, “X” was rightly assumed to be Darius. Having ascertained the
oldest forms of the names of the Achaemenian kings in question from the
classical writers, and Hebrew and Persian literature, he applied these
forms to the groups of cuneiform signs which he had been led to believe
they represented, and he found the respective groups contained the same
number of individual signs as the proper names in question contained
letters, and for
“X” he accordingly read—D A R — — U SH = Darius
“Z” he read—G O SH T A S P = Hystaspes
— the Zend form of the name.
But “Y,” which on his hypothesis should be Xerxes, was not quite so easy
to explain. He already knew the values of four or five of the seven
signs composing group “Y,” and these known values occurred in the order
he expected, but the first and third signs in the group remained to be
dealt with. Grotefend observed that the first sign was the same as the
first sign of the group correctly guessed by Münter to represent “king”:
he ascertained that the Greek letter “x” was transliterated in the Zend
by “kh,” and rightly inferred that the Greek “x” commencing the proper
name Xerxes would be similarly transliterated by “kh” in old Persian, in
other words that the first sign in the group should be read “Kh.” The
result of Grotefend’s investigations was the discovery of the correct
values for eight letters in the Persian cuneiform alphabet, the letter
“a” having been already rightly read by Tychsen and Münter. His method
of decipherment was proved to be correct by the quadrilingual
vase-inscription already alluded to. The first version of this latter
inscription is written in Egyptian hieroglyphics and was deciphered by
Champollion as the name of Xerxes. The other three versions are written
in cuneiform characters, the first of which, the old Persian, gave
precisely the same group of signs as that which Grotefend read as Xerxes
on the inscription from Persepolis. As Sayce[39] well says, the
decipherment of cuneiform and all the far-reaching consequences
resultant from it, depended upon a successful guess, but a guess made
“in accordance with scientific method,” and it was upon Grotefend’s
discovery that all subsequent attempts to decipher cuneiform—Persian,
Median, or Assyrian—were based. But unfortunately, though Grotefend had
thus given the clue, and scented the track for all future scholars, his
own ignorance of eastern languages prevented him from reaping himself
the full harvest of his brilliant commencement, and the work so nobly
begun was not completed till a later day.
The next great step forward was taken by the French scholar Emile
Burnouf in 1836; he discovered that one inscription contained a list of
the satrapies, and as the names of the satrapies were known from the
Greek writers he was able on the partial knowledge of the alphabet
already attained, to fit in the names to the cuneiform signs, and as a
result he produced an alphabet of thirty letters mostly correct. About
the same time Lassen assigned the correct values to almost all the
letters in the alphabet, and further demonstrated that the language of
the inscriptions was akin to the language of the Zend and also to the
Sanskrit, though identical with neither.
Meanwhile Rawlinson had entered the field, and being attached to the
British Mission in Persia, he had opportunities which others lacked, his
position making it possible for him to copy and on a subsequent occasion
take squeezes[40] of the inscription on the sacred rock of Behistun,
which is filled with proper names. The French traveller Otter was
apparently the first European to draw attention to the inscribed rock of
Behistun, about the year 1734, and it is also mentioned by Oliver, but
the earliest reference to it is contained in the History of Diodorus
Siculus who flourished in the first century A.D. Kinneir who saw it in
1810 states that it is clear that the figures portrayed there are of the
same age and character as those from Persepolis. In 1818 Porter made a
sketch of the figures, but did not attempt to copy the inscription in
spite of the experience he had gained in copying the inscription at
Persepolis. The copying of it was no easy task, for Rawlinson had to be
lowered in a basket from the top, the ladders which he had with him not
being long enough to reach the upper part of the inscription from below.
He sent his copy[41] to Edwin Norris, the secretary of the Royal Asiatic
Society, who carefully revised it, and in 1849 an analysis and
commentary on the text was published. With Rawlinson and Norris must be
mentioned the Irish clergyman Hincks, who with his unrivalled genius in
the decipherment of inscriptions was the first to discover that the
alphabet was not a true one, but that a vowel-sound was attached to each
of the consonants; and also Beer Holtzman and Westergaard, all of whom
contributed to the work of investigation and made discoveries in regard
to both the grammar and lexicon. Rawlinson cannot indeed claim to have
actually discovered the first clue which led to the decipherment of
cuneiform, but his translation of the Behistun inscription was
unquestionably the most valuable contribution ever made towards the
unravelling of the old Persian language. His work was moreover at first
quite independent of Grotefend’s, and without any assistance from the
latter he had deciphered the names of Cyrus, Hystaspes and Darius on the
inscriptions from Elvend and Hamadan as early as 1835. Thus the efforts
of half a century resulted at length in the discovery of a new alphabet
and the resurrection of an old language. The Persian texts on the
inscriptions were accompanied by two other texts, which as Grotefend
divined must have been the two other principal languages used in the
Persian Empire. The third text closely resembling the inscriptions on
bricks and cylinder seals found in Babylon was naturally and correctly
assumed to be Assyrian.[42] The decipherment of this third transcript
was fraught with difficulties of every description; there was such an
endless variety of signs of a simple and complex order, and there was
nothing whatever to indicate where a word or a sentence started or
finished, and further the characters on the monuments from Persepolis
differed very considerably from those found on the Babylonian monuments,
which also varied among themselves very greatly. On the seal-cylinders
they were especially complicated, and it was almost impossible to see
any resemblance whatever between the characters on the latter and those
of the Persepolitan inscriptions.
But light was to come from another quarter: in 1842 Botta, French Consul
at Mosul, began excavating on the site of Nineveh, but not meeting with
success he transferred his operations to Khorsabad further north, and
there excavated a large palace which subsequently turned out to be that
of Sargon. In 1845 Layard entered the field, and carried on most
successful excavations at Nimrûd (the ancient Calah) and then at
Kouyunjik, one of the mounds which represents the site of Nineveh.
Botta published the inscriptions he had found in 1846-50, and also
classified the signs, which numbered 642, while he further demonstrated
the identity of the cuneiform system of the Nineveh inscriptions with
that of the third column on the Persepolitan monuments, but it was
reserved for the incomparable Hincks to discover the fact that the
Assyrian cuneiform system was syllabic and not alphabetic like the
Persian.
The proper names in the Persian columns gave the first clue to the
decipherment of the Assyrian columns. The values thus obtained for some
of the Assyrian signs made it possible to read many of the words, their
meanings being determined by a comparison with the Persian columns. It
was then seen that Assyrian was a Semitic language and resembled Hebrew
in particular; this was proved conclusively by De Saulcy in 1849. In
1850 Rawlinson submitted a translation of the inscription on the Black
obelisk of Shalmaneser II to the Royal Asiatic Society, a translation
which was in the main correct, and in the following year he published
the text and translation of the Assyrian transcript on the Behistun
inscription, and announced two facts, one already known, namely that the
Assyrian signs can be used ideographically, i.e. to denote an object or
idea, as well as to represent merely a syllable, the other fact was that
the characters were polyphonous, i.e. could represent more than one
syllable each: this was again proved to demonstration by the redoubtable
Hincks. Both facts alike argued that the cursive Assyrian cuneiform had
its origin in picture writing, for in the latest times when cuneiform
was as it were fully stereotyped, the signs were still used alone singly
to represent an object or an idea, and also the polyphonous character of
the individual signs testified to the same origin, for example the
picture of an arm would signify not merely an “arm” but also
“strength,” “might,” “grasp,” etc., and thus though the sign would—at
least originally—only have one general idea attached to it, it would
have quite a number of phonetic values: these phonetic values would in
the first be inseparably connected with the root _idea_, but in time
when the sign had become cursive and developed and no longer resembled
the original picture, the various phonetic values of the sign would not
necessarily have anything whatever to do with the original root idea.
For example, a character with the _meaning_ and _phonetic_ value of the
word “_win_,” would in later times come to represent the syllable
“_win_” quite apart from the basis meaning of the word win, thus the
sign could be used to represent the first syllable in the word
_win-ter_.
In 1857 the Royal Asiatic Society proposed to test the reliability of
the translations put forward by scholars of the Assyrian inscriptions in
the following manner: some eight hundred lines of cuneiform writing
contained on clay cylinders found by Layard at Ḳalat Sherḳat, the
ancient Ashur, were to be independently translated by any scholars who
were prepared to accept the proposal; the translations were to be sent
under seal to the society’s secretary, and were to be opened together
and examined before a commission on a set day. Rawlinson, Fox Talbot,
Hincks and Oppert entered the lists, and on May 25th their respective
products were opened and compared. The great similarity which they all
displayed afforded conclusive proof as to the correctness of the method
of decipherment, and demonstrated finally that the investigations
carried on, together with the results of those investigations, had not
been mere speculative guesses, but were based on sound scientific
principles.
Many other scholars deserve our gratitude for the share they took in the
decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, of whom one may perhaps
specially name Westergaarde, Löwenstern, De Saulcy and Longperier, but
for an account of the particular achievements of each, the reader must
refer to general works on the subject.[43]
CHAPTER IV—CUNEIFORM INSCRIPTIONS
All alphabets and all modes of writing have their ultimate origin in
pictures or hieroglyphs, and the cuneiform script offers no exception to
this universal rule. When the early pictorial symbols are used to
indicate objects and ideas other than the particular object of which the
symbol is a representation the accuracy or inaccuracy of the picture
becomes a matter of small importance, and an inevitable tendency to
sketch the picture in the most speedy manner possible ends finally in
the evolution of a purely cursive script. In Mesopotamia this course of
development—or deterioration—was hastened by the nature of the material
used in later times for all ordinary writing purposes, i.e. the
all-abundant clay of the valley, it being impossible to draw the lines
and curves necessary for the production of pictures on so plastic a
substance as clay. The shape assumed by the signs forming the characters
was due to the same cause, the point at which the stylus first comes in
contact with the soft clay being unavoidably thicker than the remainder
of the stroke which automatically tapers off into the form of a wedge.
But so forcible is the influence of habit and so strong the imitative
tendency, that we find the cuneiform characters which owed their
wedge-shaped formation entirely and solely to the adoption of clay as a
writing material, faithfully and slavishly copied on the colossal stone
bulls, stelæ and wall-reliefs of later Assyrian kings.
The early decipherers of cuneiform had no specific knowledge of its
pictographic origin, for all the inscriptions at that time discovered
showed the same stereotyped and cursive script, but since their day a
vast number of archaic inscriptions have been brought to light which
prove conclusively that cuneiform as such was no invention of either
Semites or Sumerians, but was simply the last stage in the process of
degeneration to which the early pictures of the pre-Semitic Sumerians
were subject. In the following illustrations (Figs. 1 and 2) we have a
number of characters taken from actual inscriptions and arranged in
order of evolution so to speak,[44] the sign in the left-hand column
containing the most archaic form of the sign as yet discovered, the
signs in the right-hand column showing the gradual transition to cursive
cuneiform, while the last sign in the column is the ordinary late
Assyrian ideograph. Thus in “A” we have the crude pi
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