HISTORY OF EGYPT CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA

By G. MASPERO, Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford;Member of the Institute and Professor at the College of France. 

Edited by A. H. SAYCE, Professor of Assyriology, Oxford. 

Translated by M. L. McCLURE, Member of the Committee of the Egypt Exploration Fund

CONTAINING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume III. 

LONDON

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

PUBLISHERS

[Illustration: 001. Jpg El Hammam (The Bath)]

[Illustration: 002. Jpg THE BANKS OF THE EUPHRATES AT IIILLAH]

 Drawn by Boudier, after J. Dieulafoy. The vignette, which is by Faucher-Gudin, is reproduced from an intaglio in the Cabinet des Médailles. 

CHAPTER I--ANCIENT CHALDÆA

The Creation, the Deluge, the history of the gods--The country, itscities its inhabitants, its early dynasties. 

[Illustration: 002a. Jpg]

"In the time when nothing which was called heaven existed above, and whennothing below had as yet received the name of earth, * Apsu, the Ocean, who first was their father, and Chaos-Tiâmat, who gave birth to themall, mingled their waters in one, reeds which were not united, rusheswhich bore no fruit. "** Life germinated slowly in this inert mass, inwhich the elements of our world lay still in confusion: when at lengthit did spring up, it was but feebly, and at rare intervals, throughthe hatching of divine couples devoid of personality and almost withoutform. "In the time when the gods were not created, not one as yet, whenthey had neither been called by their names, nor had their destiniesbeen assigned to them by fate, gods manifested themselves. Lakhmu andLakhamu were the first to appear, and waxed great for ages; then Ansharand Kishar were produced after them. Days were added to days, and yearswere heaped upon years: Anu, Inlil, and Ea were born in their turn, forAnshar and Kishar had given them birth. " As the generations emanated onefrom the other, their vitality increased, and the personality of eachbecame more clearly defined; the last generation included none butbeings of an original character and clearly marked individuality. Anu, the sunlit sky by day, the starlit firmament by night; Inlil-Bel, the king of the earth; Ea, the sovereign of the waters and thepersonification of wisdom. *** Each of them duplicated himself, Anu intoAnat, Bel into Belit, Ea into Damkina, and united himself to the spousewhom he had deduced from himself. Other divinities sprang from thesefruitful pairs, and the impulse once given, the world was rapidlypeopled by their descendants. Sin, Shamash, and Kamman, who presidedrespectively over the moon, the sun, and the air, were all three ofequal rank; next came the lords of the planets, Ninib, Merodach, Nergal, the warrior-goddess Ishtar, and Nebo; then a whole army of lesserdeities, who ranged themselves around Anu as round a supreme master. Tiâmat, finding her domain becoming more and more restricted owingto the activity of the others, desired to raise battalion againstbattalion, and set herself to create unceasingly; but her offspring, made in her own image, appeared like those incongruous phantoms whichmen see in dreams, and which are made up of members borrowed from ascore of different animals. They appeared in the form of bulls withhuman heads, of horses with the snouts of dogs, of dogs with quadruplebodies springing from a single fish-like tail. Some of them had the beakof an eagle or a hawk; others, four wings and two faces; others, thelegs and horns of a goat; others, again, the hind quarters of a horseand the whole body of a man. Tiâmat furnished them with terribleweapons, placed them under the command of her husband Kingu, and set outto war against the gods. 

 * In Chaldæa, as in Egypt, nothing was supposed to have a real existence until it had received its name: the sentence quoted in the text means practically, that at that time there was neither heaven nor earth. 

 ** Apsu has been transliterated kiracruv [in Greek], by the author an extract from whose works has been preserved by Damascius. He gives a different version of the tradition, according to which the amorphous goddess Mummu-Tiâmat consisted of two persons. The first, Tauthé, was the wife of Apasôn; the second, Moymis, was the son of Apasôn and of Tauthé. The last part of the sentence is very obscure in the Assyrian text, and has been translated in a variety of different ways. It seems to contain a comparison between Apsû and Mummu-Tiâmat on the one hand, and the reeds and clumps of rushes so common in Chaldæa on the other; the two divinities remain inert and unfruitful, like water-plants which have not yet manifested their exuberant growth. 

 *** The first fragments of the Chaldæan account of the Creation were discovered by G. Smith, who described them in the _Daily Telegraph_ (of March 4, 1875), and published them in the _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archæology_, and translated in his Chaldæan account of Genesis all the fragments with which he was acquainted; other fragments have since been collected, but unfortunately not enough to enable us to entirely reconstitute the legend. It covered at least six tablets, possibly more. Portions of it have been translated after Smith, by Talbot, by Oppert, by Lenormant, by Schrader, by Sayce, by Jensen, by Winckler, by Zimmern, and lastly by Delîtzsch. Since G. Smith wrote _The Chaldæan Account_, a fragment of a different version has been considered to be a part of the dogma of the Creation, as it was put forth at Kutha. 

[Illustration: 006. Jpg ONE OF THE EAGLE-HEADED GENII. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from an Assyrian bas-relief from Khorsabad

At first they knew not whom to send against her. Anshar despatched hisson Anu; but Anu was afraid, and made no attempt to oppose her. He sentEa; but Ea, like Anu, grew pale with fear, and did not venture to attackher. Merodach, the son of Ea, was the only one who believed himselfstrong enough to conquer her. The gods, summoned to a solemn banquet inthe palace of Anshar, unanimously chose him to be their champion, andproclaimed him king. "Thou, thou art glorious among the great gods, thywill is second to none, thy bidding is Anu; Marduk (Merodach), thou artglorious among the great gods, thy will is second to none, * thy biddingis Anu. ** From this day, that which thou orderest may not be changed, the power to raise or to abase shall be in thy hand, the word of thymouth shall endure, and thy commandment shall not meet with opposition. None of the gods shall transgress thy law; but wheresoever a sanctuaryof the gods is decorated, the place where they shall give their oraclesshall be thy place. *** Marduk, it is thou who art our avenger! We bestowon thee the attributes of a king; the whole of all that exists, thouhast it, and everywhere thy word shall be exalted. Thy weapons shall notbe turned aside, they shall strike thy enemy. O master, who trusts inthee, spare thou, his life; but the god who hath done evil, put outhis life like water. They clad their champion in a garment, and thusaddressed him: 'Thy will, master, shall be that of the gods. Speak theword, 'Let it be so, ' it shall be so. Thus open thy mouth, this garmentshall disappear; say unto it, 'Return, ' and the garment shall be there. "He spoke with his lips, the garment disappeared; he said unto it, "Return, " and the garment was restored. 

 * The Assyrian runs, "thy destiny is second to none. " This refers not to the _destiny_ of the god himself, but to the fate which he allots to others. I have substituted, here and elsewhere, for the word "destiny, " the special meaning of which would not have been understood, the word "will, " which, though it does not exactly reproduce the Assyrian expression, avoids the necessity for paraphrases or formulas calculated to puzzle the modern reader. 

 ** Or, to put it less concisely, "When thou commandest, it is Anu himself who commands, " and the same blind obedience must be paid to thee as to Anu. 

 *** The meaning is uncertain. The sentence seems to convey that henceforth Merodach would be at home in all temples that were constructed in honour of the other gods. 

Merodach having been once convinced by this evidence that he had thepower of doing everything and of undoing everything at his pleasure, thegods handed to him the sceptre, the throne, the crown, the insignia ofsupreme rule, and greeted him with their acclamations: "Be King!--Go!Cut short the life of Tiâmat, and let the wind carry her blood to thehidden extremities of the universe. "* He equipped himself carefully forthe struggle. "He made a bow and placed his mark upon it;"** he had aspear brought to him and fitted a point to it; the god lifted the lance, brandished it in his right hand, then hung the bow and quiver athis side. He placed a thunderbolt before him, filled his body with adevouring flame, then made a net in which to catch the anarchic Tiâmat;he placed the four winds in such a way that she could not escape, southand north, east and west, and with his own hand he brought them the net, the gift of his father Anu. "He created the hurricane, the evil wind, thestorm, the tempest, the four winds, the seven winds, the waterspout, thewind that is second to none; then he let loose the winds he had created, all seven of them, in order to bewilder the anarchic Tiâmat by chargingbehind her. And the master of the waterspout raised his mighty weapon, he mounted his chariot, a work without its equal, formidable; heinstalled himself therein, tied the four reins to the side, and dartedforth, pitiless, torrent-like, swift. "

 * Sayce was the first, I believe, to cite, in connection with this mysterious order, the passage in which Berossus tells how the gods created men from a little clay, moistened with the blood of the god Bêlos. Here there seems to be a fear lest the blood of Tiâmat, mingling with the mud, should produce a crop of monsters similar to those which the goddess had already created; the blood, if carried to the north, into the domain of the night, would there lose its creative power, or the monsters who might spring from it would at any rate remain strangers to the world of gods and men. 

 ** "Literally, he made his weapon known; "perhaps it would be better to interpret it, "and he made it known that the bow would henceforth be his distinctive weapon. "

[Illustration: 008. Jpg BEL-MERODACH, ARMED WITH THE THUNDERBOLT, DOESBATTLE WITH THE TUMULTUOUS TIAMAT. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from the bas-relief from Nimrûd preserved in the British Museum. 

He passed through the serried ranks of the monsters and penetrated asfar as Tiâmat, and provoked her with his cries. "'Thou hast rebelledagainst the sovereignty of the gods, thou hast plotted evil againstthem, and hast desired that my fathers should taste of thy malevolence;therefore thy host shall be reduced to slavery, thy weapons shall betorn from thee. Come, then, thou and I must give battle to one another!'Tiâmat, when she heard him, flew into a fury, she became mad with rage;then Tiâmat howled, she raised herself savagely to her full height, andplanted her feet firmly on the earth. She pronounced an incantation, recited her formula, and called to her aid the gods of the combat, both them and their weapons. They drew near one to another, Tiâmat andMarduk, wisest of the gods: They flung themselves into the combat, theymet one another in the struggle. Then the master unfolded his net andseized her; he caused the hurricane which waited behind him to passin front of him, and, when Tiâmat opened her mouth to swallow him, hethrust the hurricane into it so that the monster could not close herjaws again. The mighty wind filled her paunch, her breast swelled, hermaw was split. Marduk gave a straight thrust with his lance, burstopen the paunch, pierced the interior, tore the breast, then bound themonster and deprived her of life. When he had vanquished Tiâmat, who hadbeen their leader, her army was disbanded, her host was scattered, andthe gods, her allies, who had marched beside her, trembled, were scared, and fled. " He seized hold of them, and of Kingu their chief, and broughtthem bound in chains before the throne of his father. 

He had saved the gods from ruin, but this was the least part ofhis task; he had still to sweep out of space the huge carcase whichencumbered it, and to separate its ill-assorted elements, and arrangethem afresh for the benefit of the conquerors. He returned to Tiâmatwhom he had bound in chains. He placed his foot upon her, with hisunerring knife he cut into the upper part of her; then he cut theblood-vessels, and caused the blood to be carried by the north wind tothe hidden places. And the gods saw his face, they rejoiced, they gavethemselves up to gladness, and sent him a present, a tribute of peace;then he recovered his calm, he contemplated the corpse, raised it andwrought marvels. 

[Illustration: 010. Jpg A KUFA LADEN WITH STONES, AND MANNED BY A CREW OFFOUR MEN. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief at Koyunjik. Behind the _kufa_ may be seen a fisherman seated astride on an inflated skin with his fish-basket attached to his neck. 

He split it in two as one does a fish for drying; then he hung up one ofthe halves on high, which became the heavens; the other half he spreadout under his feet to form the earth, and made the universe such asmen have since known it. As in Egypt, the world was a kind of enclosedchamber balanced on the bosom of the eternal waters. * The earth, whichforms the lower part of it, or floor, is something like an overturnedboat in appearance, and hollow underneath, not like one of the narrowskiffs in use among other races, but a kufa, or kind of semicircularboat such as the tribes of the Lower Euphrates have made use of fromearliest antiquity down to our own times. 

 * The description of the Egyptian world will be found in vol. I. P. 21 of the present work. So far the only systematic attempt to reconstruct the Chaldæan world, since Lenormant, has been made by Jensen, who, after examining all the elements which went to compose it, one after another, sums up in a few pages, and reproduces in a plate, the principal results of his inquiry. It will be seen at a glance how much I have taken from his work, and in what respects the drawing here reproduced differs from his. 

[Illustration: 012. Jpg THE WORLD AS CONCEIVED BY THE CHALDÆANS]

The earth rises gradually from the extremities to the centre, like agreat mountain, of which the snow-region, where the Euphrates finds itssource, approximately marks the summit. It was at first supposed to bedivided into seven zones, placed one on the top of the other along itssides, like the stories of a temple; later on it was divided into four"houses, " each of which, like the "houses" of Egypt, corresponded withone of the four cardinal points, and was under the rule of particulargods. Near the foot of the mountain, the edges of the so-called boatcurve abruptly outwards, and surround the earth with a continuous wallof uniform height having no opening. The waters accumulated in thehollow thus formed, as in a ditch; it was a narrow and mysterious sea, an ocean stream, which no living man might cross save with permissionfrom on high, and whose waves rigorously separated the domain of menfrom the regions reserved to the gods. The heavens rose above the"mountain of the world" like a boldly formed dome, the circumferenceof which rested on the top of the wall in the same way as the upperstructures of a house rest on its foundations. Merodach wrought it outof a hard resisting metal which shone brilliantly during the day inthe rays of the sun, and at night appeared only as a dark blue surface, strewn irregularly with luminous stars. He left it quite solid in thesouthern regions, but tunnelled it in the north, by contriving withinit a huge cavern which communicated with external space by means of twodoors placed at the east and the west. * The sun came forth each morningby the first of these doors; he mounted to the zenith, following theinternal base of the cupola from east to south; then he slowly descendedagain to the western door, and re-entered the tunnel in the firmament, where he spent the night, ** Merodach regulated the course of the wholeuniverse on the movements of the sun. He instituted the year and dividedit into twelve months. To each month he assigned three decans, each ofwhom exercised his influence successively for a period of ten days; hethen placed the procession of the days under the authority of Nibiru, in order that none of them should wander from his track and be lost. "Helighted the moon that she might rule the night, and made her a star ofnight that she might indicate the days:*** 'From month to month, withoutceasing, shape thy disk, **** and at the beginning of the month kindlethyself in the evening, lighting up thy horns so as to make the heavensdistinguishable; on the seventh day, show to me thy disk; and on thefifteenth, let thy two halves be full from month to month. '" He cleareda path for the planets, and four of them he entrusted to four gods; thefifth, our Jupiter, he reserved for himself, and appointed him to beshepherd of this celestial flock; in order that all the gods might havetheir image visible in the sky, he mapped out on the vault of heavengroups of stars which he allotted to them, and which seemed to men likerepresentations of real or fabulous beings, fishes with the heads oframs, lions, bulls, goats and scorpions. 

 * Jensen has made a collection of the texts which speak of the interior of the heavens (Kirib shami) and of their aspect. The expressions which have induced many Assyriologists to conclude that the heavens were divided into different parts subject to different gods may be explained without necessarily having recourse to this hypothesis; the "heaven of Ami, " for instance, is an expression which merely affirms Anu's sovereignty in the heavens, and is only a more elegant way of designating the heavens by the name of the god who rules them. The gates of heaven are mentioned in the account of the Creation. 

 ** It is generally admitted that the Chaldæans believed that the sun passed over the world in the daytime, and underneath it during the night. The general resemblance of their theory of the universe to the Egyptian theory leads me to believe that they, no less than the Egyptians (cf. Vol. I. Pp. 24, 25, of the present work), for along time believed that the sun and moon revolved round the earth in a horizontal plane. 

 *** This obscure phrase seems to be explained, if we remember that the Chaldæan, like the Egyptian day, dated from the rising of one moon to the rising of the following moon; for instance, from six o'clock one evening to about six o'clock the next evening. The moon, the star of night, thus marks the appearance of each day and "indicates the days. "

 **** The word here translated by "disk" is literally the royal cap, decorated with horns, "Agu, " which Sin, the moon- god, wears on his head. 

The heavens having been put in order, * he set about peopling the earth, and the gods, who had so far passively and perhaps powerlessly watchedhim at his work, at length made up their minds to assist him. Theycovered the soil with verdure, and all collectively "made living beingsof many kinds. The cattle of the fields, the wild beasts of the fields, the reptiles of the fields, they fashioned them and made of themcreatures of life. "** According to one legend, these first animalshad hardly left the hands of their creators, when, not being able towithstand the glare of the light, they fell dead one after the other. Then Merodach, seeing that the earth was again becoming desolate, andthat its fertility was of no use to any one, begged his father Ea to cutoff his head and mix clay with the blood which welled from the trunk, then from this clay to fashion new beasts and men, to whom the virtuesof this divine blood would give the necessary strength to enable themto resist the air and light. At first they led a somewhat wretchedexistence, and "lived without rule after the manner of beasts. But, in the first year, appeared a monster endowed with human reason namedOannes, who rose from out of the Erythraean sea, at the point where itborders Babylonia. He had the whole body of a fish, but above his fish'shead he had another head which was that of a man, and human feet emergedfrom beneath his fish's tail; he had a human voice, and his image ispreserved to this day. He passed the day in the midst of men withouttaking any food; he taught them the use of letters, sciences and arts ofall kinds, the rules for the founding of cities, and the construction oftemples, the principles of law and of surveying; he showed them how tosow and reap; he gave them all that contributes to the comforts of life. Since that time nothing excellent has been invented. At sunset thismonster Oannes plunged back into the sea, and remained all night beneaththe waves, for he was amphibious. He wrote a book on the origin ofthings and of civilization, which he gave to men. " These are a few ofthe fables which were current among the races of the Lower Euphrateswith regard to the first beginnings of the universe. That they possessedmany other legends of which we now know nothing is certain, but eitherthey have perished for ever, or the works in which they were recordedstill await discovery, it may be under the ruins of a palace or in thecupboards of some museum. 

* The arrangement of the heavens by Merodach is described at the endof the fourth and beginning of the fifth tablets. The text, originallysomewhat obscure, is so mutilated in places that it is not alwayspossible to make out the sense with certainty. 

** The creation of the animals and then of man is related on the seventhtablet, and on a tablet the place of which, in the series, is stillundetermined. I have been obliged to translate the text rather freely, so as to make the meaning clear to the modern reader. 

[Illustration: 017. Jpg A GOD-FISH]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from Nimrûd. 

They do not seem to have conceived the possibility of an absolutecreation, by means of which the gods, or one of them, should haveevolved out of nothing all that exists: the creation was for them merelythe setting in motion of pre-existing elements, and the creator only anorganizer of the various materials floating in chaos. Popular fancyin different towns varied the names of the creators and the methodsemployed by them; as centuries passed on, a pile of vague, confused, andcontradictory traditions were amassed, no one of which was held to bequite satisfactory, though all found partisans to support them. Just asin Egypt, the theologians of local priesthoods endeavoured to classifythem and bring them into a kind of harmony: many they rejected andothers they recast in order to better reconcile their statements: theyarranged them in systems, from which they undertook to unravel, underinspiration from on high, the true history of the universe. That which Ihave tried to set forth above is very ancient, if, as is said to be thecase, it was in existence two or even three thousand years before ourera; but the versions of it which we possess were drawn up much later, perhaps not till about the VIIth century B. C. * It had been accepted bythe inhabitants of Babylon because it flattered their religious vanityby attributing the credit of having evolved order out of chaos toMerodach, the protector of their city. ** He it was whom the Assyrianscribes had raised to a position of honour at the court of the lastkings of Nineveh:*** it was Merodach's name which Berossus inscribed atthe beginning of his book, when he set about relating to the Greeksthe origin of the world according to the Chaldeans, and the dawn ofBabylonian civilization. 

 * The question as to whether the text was originally written in Sumerian or in the Semitic tongue has frequently been discussed; the form in which we have it at present is not very old, and does not date much further back than the reign of Assurbanipal, if it is not even contemporary with that monarch. According to Sayce, the first version would date back beyond the XXth century, to the reign of Khammurabi; according to Jensen, beyond the XXXth century before our era. 

 ** Sayce thinks that the myth originated at Eridu, on the shores of the Persian Gulf, and afterwards received its present form at Babylon, where the local schools of theology adapted it to the god Merodach. 

 *** The tablets in which it is preserved for us come partly from the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, partly from that of the temple of Nebo at Borsippa; these latter are more recent than the others, and seem to have been written during the period of the Persian supremacy. 

Like the Egyptian civilization, it had had its birth between the sea andthe dry land on a low, marshy, alluvial soil, flooded annually by therivers which traverse it, devastated at long intervals by tidal waves ofextraordinary violence. The Euphrates and the Tigris cannot be regardedas mysterious streams like the Nile, whose source so long defiedexploration that people were tempted to place it beyond the regionsinhabited by man. The former rise in Armenia, on the slopes of theNiphates, one of the chains of mountains which lie between the Black Seaand Mesopotamia, and the only range which at certain points reaches theline of eternal snow. At first they flow parallel to one another, theEuphrates from east to west as far as Malatiyeh, the Tigris from thewest towards the east in the direction of Assyria. Beyond Malatiyeh, theEuphrates bends abruptly to the south-west, and makes its way across theTaurus as though desirous of reaching the Mediterranean by the shortestroute, but it soon alters its intention, and makes for the south-eastin search of the Persian Gulf. The Tigris runs in an oblique directiontowards the south from the point where the mountains open out, andgradually approaches the Euphrates. Near Bagdad the two rivers are onlya few leagues apart. However, they do not yet blend their waters; afterproceeding side by side for some twenty or thirty miles, they againseparate and only finally; unite at a point some eighty leagues lowerdown. At the beginning of our geological period their course was notsuch a long one. The sea then penetrated as far as lat. 33°, and wasonly arrested by the last undulations of the great plateau of secondaryformation, which descend from the mountain group of Armenia: the tworivers entered the sea at a distance of about twenty leagues apart, falling into a gulf bounded on the east by the last spurs of themountains of Iran, on the west by the sandy heights which border themargin of the Arabian Desert. * They filled up this gulf with theiralluvial deposit, aided by the Adhem, the Diyâleh, the Kerkha, theKarun, and other rivers, which at the end of long independent coursesbecame tributaries of the Tigris. The present beds of the two rivers, connected by numerous canals, at length meet near the village of Kornahand form one single river, the Shatt-el-Arab, which carries their watersto the sea. The mud with which they are charged is deposited when itreaches their mouth, and accumulates rapidly; it is said that the coastadvances about a mile every seventy years. ** In its upper reaches theEuphrates collects a number of small affluents, the most important ofwhich, the Kara-Su, has often been confounded with it. Near the middleof its course, the Sadjur on the right bank carries into it the watersof the Taurus and the Amanus, on the left bank the Balikh and the Khaburcontribute those of the Karadja-Dagh; from the mouth of the Khabur tothe sea the Euphrates receives no further affluent. The Tigris is fed onthe left by the Bitlis-Khai, the two Zabs, the Adhem, and the Diyâleh. The Euphrates is navigable from Sumeisat, the Tigris from Mossul, bothof them almost as soon as they leave the mountains. They are subjectto annual floods, which occur when the winter snow melts on the higherranges of Armenia. The Tigris, which rises from the southern slope ofthe Niphates and has the more direct course, is the first to overflowits banks, which it does at the beginning of March, and reaches itsgreatest height about the 10th or 12th of May. The Euphrates rises inthe middle of March, and does not attain its highest level till theclose of May. From June onwards it falls with increasing rapidity; bySeptember all the water which has not been absorbed by the soil hasreturned to the river-bed. The inundation does not possess the sameimportance for the regions covered by it, that the rise of the Niledoes for Egypt. In fact, it does more harm than good, and the river-sidepopulation have always worked hard to protect themselves from it and tokeep it away from their lands rather than facilitate its access tothem; they regard it as a sort of necessary evil to which they resignthemselves, while trying to minimize its effects. ***

 * This fact has been established by Ross and Lynch in two articles in the _Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_, vol. Ix. Pp. 446, 472. The Chaldæans and Assyrians called the gulf into which the two rivers debouched, Nâr Marrâtum, or "salt river, " a name which they extended to the Chaldæan Sea, i. E. To the whole Persian Gulf. 

 ** Loftus estimated, about the middle of the last century, the progress of alluvial deposit at about one English mile in every seventy years; H. Rawlinson considers that the progress must have been more considerable in ancient times, and estimates it at an English mile in thirty years. Kiepert thinks, taking the above estimate as a basis, that in the sixth century before our era the fore-shore came from about ten to twelve German miles (47 to 56 English) higher up than the present fore-shore. G. Rawlinson estimates on his part that between the thirtieth and twentieth centuries B. C. , a period in which he places the establishment of the first Chaldæan Empire, the fore-shore was more than 120 miles above the mouth of Shatt-el-Arab, to the north of the present village of Kornah. 

 *** Fr. Lenormant has energetically defended this hypothesis in the majority of his works: it is set forth at some length in his work on _La Langue primitive de la Chaldée_. Hommel, on the other hand, maintains and strives to demonstrate scientifically the relationship of the non-Semitic tongue with Turkish. 

The traveller Olivier noticed this, and writes as follows: "The landthere is rather less fertile [than in Egypt], because it does notreceive the alluvial deposits of the rivers with the same regularity asthat of the Delta. It is necessary to irrigate it in order to render itproductive, and to protect it sedulously from the inundations which aretoo destructive in their action and too irregular. "

The first races to colonize this country of rivers, or at any ratethe first of which we can find traces, seem to have belonged to threedifferent types. The most important were the Semites, who spoke adialect akin to Aramaic, Hebrew, and Phoenician. It was for a longtime supposed that they came down from the north, and traces of theiroccupation have been pointed out in Armenia in the vicinity of Ararat, or halfway down the course of the Tigris, at the foot of the Gordyseanmountains. It has recently been suggested that we ought rather to seekfor their place of origin in Southern Arabia, and this view is gainingground among the learned. Side by side with these Semites, the monumentsgive evidence of a race of ill-defined character, which some havesought, without much success, to connect with the tribes of the Urall orAltaï; these people are for the present provisionally called Sumerians. *They came, it would appear, from some northern country; they broughtwith them from their original home a curious system of writing, which, modified, transformed, and adopted by ten different nations, haspreserved for us all that we know in regard to the majority of theempires which rose and fell in Western Asia before the Persian conquest. Semite or Sumerian, it is still doubtful which preceded the other at themouths of the Euphrates. The Sumerians, who were for a time all-powerfulin the centuries before the dawn of history, had already mingled closelywith the Semites when we first hear of them. Their language gave way tothe Semitic, and tended gradually to become a language of ceremony andritual, which was at last learnt less for everyday use, than for thedrawing up of certain royal inscriptions, or for the interpretation ofvery ancient texts of a legal or sacred character. Their religion becameassimilated to the religion, and their gods identified with the gods, ofthe Semites. The process of fusion commenced at such an early date, thatnothing has really come down to us from the time when the two races werestrangers to each other. We are, therefore, unable to say with certaintyhow much each borrowed from the other, what each gave, or relinquishedof its individual instincts and customs. We must take and judge them asthey come before us, as forming one single nation, imbued with thesame ideas, influenced in all their acts by the same civilization, andpossessed of such strongly marked characteristics that only in the lastdays of their existence do we find any appreciable change. In the courseof the ages they had to submit to the invasions and domination of somedozen different races, of whom some--Assyrians and Chaldæans--weredescended from a Semitic stock, while the others--Elamites, Cossaaans, Persians, Macedonians, and Parthians--either were not connected withthem by any tie of blood, or traced their origin in some distant mannerto the Sumerian branch. They got quickly rid of a portion of thesesuperfluous elements, and absorbed or assimilated the rest; likethe Egyptians, they seem to have been one of those races which, onceestablished, were incapable of ever undergoing modification, andremained unchanged from one end of their existence to the other. 

* The name _Accadian_ proposed by H. Rawlinson and by Hincks, andadopted by Sayce, seems to have given way to _Sumerian_, the title putforward by Oppert. The existence of the Sumerian or Sumero-Accadianhas been contested by Halévy in a number of noteworthy works. M. Halévywishes to recognize in the so-called Sumerian documents the Semitictongue of the ordinary inscriptions, but written in a priestly syllabiccharacter subject to certain rules; this would be practically a_cryptogram_, or rather an _allogram_. M. Halévy won over Messrs. Guyardand Pognon in France, Delitzsch and a part of the Delitzsch schoolin Germany, to his view of the facts. The controversy, which has beencarried on on both sides with a somewhat unnecessary vehemence, stillrages; it has been simplified quite recently by Delitzcsh's return tothe Sumerian theory. Without reviewing the arguments in detail, andwhile doing full justice to the profound learning displayed by M. Halévy, I feel forced to declare with Tiele that his criticisms "obligescholars to carefully reconsider all that has been taken as proved inthese matters, but that they do not warrant us in rejecting as untenablethe hypothesis, still a very probable one, according to which thedifference in the graphic systems corresponds to a real difference in. Idiom. "

Their country must have presented at the beginning very much the sameaspect of disorder and neglect which it offers to modern eyes. It wasa flat interminable moorland stretching away to the horizon, there tobegin again seemingly more limitless than ever, with, no rise or fall inthe ground to break the dull monotony; clumps of palm trees and slendermimosas, intersected by lines of water gleaming in the distance, thenlong patches of wormwood and mallow, endless vistas of burnt-up plain, more palms and more mimosas, make up the picture of the land, whoseuniform soil consists of rich, stiff, heavy clay, split up by the heatof the sun into a network of deep narrow fissures, from which theshrubs and wild herbs shoot forth each year in spring-time. By an almostimperceptible slope it falls gently away from north to south towardsthe Persian Gulf, from east to west towards the Arabian plateau. TheEuphrates flows through it with unstable and changing course, betweenshifting banks which it shapes and re-shapes from season to season. 

[Illustration: 025. Jpg GIGANTIC CHALDÆAN REEDS]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief of the palace of Nimrûd. 

The slightest impulse of its current encroaches on them, breaks throughthem, and makes openings for streamlets, the majority of which areclogged up and obliterated by the washing away of their margins, almostas rapidly as they are formed. Others grow wider and longer, and, sending out branches, are transformed into permanent canals or regularrivers, navigable at certain seasons. They meet on the left bankdetached offshoots of the Tigris, and after wandering capriciously inthe space between the two rivers, at last rejoin their parent stream:such are the Shatt-el-Haî and the Shatt-en-Nil. The overflowing waterson the right bank, owing to the fall of the land, run towards thelow limestone hills which shut in the basin of the Euphrates in thedirection of the desert; they are arrested at the foot of these hills, and are diverted on to the low-lying ground, where they lose themselvesin the morasses, or hollow out a series of lakes along its borders, the largest of which, Bahr-î-Nedjîf, is shut in on three sides by steepcliffs, and rises or falls periodically with the floods. A broad canal, which takes its origin in the direction of Hit at the beginning of thealluvial plain, bears with it the overflow, and, skirting the lowestterraces of the Arabian chain, runs almost parallel to the Euphrates. Inproportion as the canal proceeds southward the ground sinks still lower, and becomes saturated with the overflowing waters, until, the banksgradually disappearing, the whole neighbourhood is converted into amorass. The Euphrates and its branches do not at all times succeed inreaching the sea: they are lost for the most part in vast lagoons towhich the tide comes up, and in its ebb bears their waters away withit. Reeds grow there luxuriantly in enormous beds, and reach sometimesa height of from thirteen to sixteen feet; banks of black and putrid mudemerge amidst the green growth, and give off deadly emanations. Winteris scarcely felt here: snow is unknown, hoar-frost is rarely seen, but sometimes in the morning a thin film of ice covers the marshes, todisappear under the first rays of the sun. *

 * Loftus attributes the lowering of the temperature during the winter to the wind blowing over a soil impregnated with saltpetre. "We were, " he says, "in a kind of immense freezing chamber. "

[Illustration: 027. Jpg THE MARSHES ABOUT THE CONFLUENCE OF THE KERKHAAND TIGRIS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by J. Dieulafoy. For six weeks in November and December there is much rain: after thisperiod there are only occasional showers, occurring at longer and longerintervals until May, when they entirely cease, and the summer sets in, to last until the following November. There are almost six continuousmonths of depressing and moist heat, which overcomes both men andanimals and makes them incapable of any constant effort. * Sometimesa south or east wind suddenly arises, and bearing with it across thefields and canals whirlwinds of sand, burns up in its passage the littleverdure which the sun had spared. Swarms of locusts follow in its train, and complete the work of devastation. A sound as of distant rain is atfirst heard, increasing in intensity as the creatures approach. Soontheir thickly concentrated battalions fill the heavens on all sides, flying with slow and uniform motion at a great height. They at lengthalight, cover everything, devour everything, and, propagating theirspecies, die within a few days: nothing, not a blade of vegetation, remains on the region where they alighted. 

 * Loftus says that he himself had witnessed in the neighbourhood of Bagdad during the daytime birds perched on the palm trees in an exhausted condition, and panting with open beaks. The inhabitants of Bagdad during the summer pass their nights on the housetops, and the hours of day in passages within, expressly constructed to protect them from the heat. 

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the country was not lacking inresources. The soil was almost as fertile as the loam of Egypt, and, like the latter, rewarded a hundredfold the labour of the inhabitants. *Among the wild herbage which spreads over the country in the spring, and clothes it for a brief season with flowers, it was found that someplants, with a little culture, could be rendered useful to men andbeasts. There were ten or twelve different species of pulse to choosefrom--beans, 'lentils, chick-peas, vetches, kidney beans, onions, cucumbers, egg-plants, "gombo, " and pumpkins. From the seed of thesesame an oil was expressed which served for food, while the castor-oilplant furnished that required for lighting. The safflower and hennasupplied the women with dyes for the stuffs which they manufactured fromhemp and flax. Aquatic plants were more numerous than on the banksof the Nile, but they did not occupy such an important place amongfood-stuffs. The "lily bread" of the Pharaohs would have seemed meagrefare to people accustomed from early times to wheaten bread. Wheat andbarley are considered to be indigenous on the plains of the Euphrates;it was supposed to be here that they were first cultivated in WesternAsia, and that they spread from hence to Syria, Egypt, and the wholeof Europe. ** "The soil there is so favourable to the growth of cereals, that it yields usually two hundredfold, and in places of exceptionalfertility three hundredfold. The leaves of the wheat and barley have awidth of four digits. As for the millet and sesame, which in altitudeare as great as trees, I will not state their height, although I knowit from experience, being convinced that those who have not lived inBabylonia would regard my statement with incredulity. " Herodotus in hisenthusiasm exaggerated the matter, or perhaps, as a general rule, heselected as examples the exceptional instances which had been mentionedto him: at present wheat and barley give a yield to the husbandman ofsome thirty or forty fold. 

 * Olivier, who was a physician and naturalist, and had visited Egypt as well as Mesopotamia, thought that Babylonia was somewhat less fertile than Egypt. Loftus, who was neither, and had not visited Egypt, declares, on the contrary, that the banks of the Euphrates are no less productive than those of the Nile. 

 ** Native traditions collected by Berossus confirm this, and the testimony of Olivier is usually cited as falling in with that of the Chaldæan writer. Olivier is considered, indeed, to have discovered wild cereals in Mesopotamia. Pie only says, however, that on the banks of the Euphrates above Anah he had met with "wheat, barley, and spelt in a kind of ravine;" from the context it clearly follows that these were plants which had reverted to a wild state--instances of which have been observed several times in Mesopotamia. A. De Oandolle admitted the Mesopotamian origin of the various species of wheat and barley. 

[Illustration: 030. Jpg THE GATHERING OF THE SPATHES OF THE MALE PALMTREE]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a cylinder in the Museum at the Hague. The original measures almost an inch in height. 

"The date palm meets all the other needs of the population; they makefrom it a kind of bread, wine, vinegar, honey, cakes, and numerous kindsof stuffs; the smiths use the stones of its fruit for charcoal; thesesame stones, broken and macerated, are given as a fattening food tocattle and sheep. " Such a useful tree was tended with a loving care, the vicissitudes in its growth were observed, and its reproduction wasfacilitated by the process of shaking the flowers of the male palm overthose of the female: the gods themselves had taught this artifice tomen, and they were frequently represented with a bunch of flowers intheir right hand, in the attitude assumed by a peasant in fertilizinga palm tree. Fruit trees were everywhere mingled with ornamentaltrees--the fig, apple, almond, walnut, apricot, pistachio, vine, withthe plane tree, cypress, tamarisk, and acacia; in the prosperous periodof the country the plain of the Euphrates was a great orchard whichextended uninterruptedly from the plateau of Mesopotamia to the shoresof the Persian Gulf. 

The flora would not have been so abundant if the fauna had beensufficient for the supply of a large population. A considerableproportion of the tribes on the Lower Euphrates lived for a long timeon fish only. They consumed them either fresh, salted, or smoked: theydried them in the sun, crushed them in a mortar, strained the pulpthrough linen, and worked it up into a kind of bread or into cakes. Thebarbel and carp attained a great size in these sluggish waters, and ifthe Chalæans, like the Arabs who have succeeded them in these regions, clearly preferred these fish above others, they did not despise at thesame time such less delicate species as the eel, murena, silurus, andeven that singular gurnard whose habits are an object of wonder to ournaturalists. This fish spends its existence usually in the water, buta life in the open air has no terrors for it: it leaps out on the bank, climbs trees without much difficulty, finds a congenial habitat on thebanks of mud exposed by the falling tide, and basks there in the sun, prepared to vanish in the ooze in the twinkling of an eye if someapproaching bird should catch sight of it. Pelicans, herons, cranes, storks, cormorants, hundreds of varieties of seagulls, ducks, swans, wild geese, secure in the possession of an inexhaustible supply of food, sport and prosper among the reeds. The ostrich, greater bustard, thecommon and red-legged partridge and quail, find their habitat on theborders of the desert; while the thrush, blackbird, ortolan, pigeon, and turtle-dove abound on every side, in spite of daily onslaughts fromeagles, hawks, and other birds of prey. 

[Illustration: 032. Jpg A WINGED GENIUS HOLDING IN HIS HAND THE SPATHE OFTHE MALE DATE-PALM. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Nimrûd, in the British Museum. 

[Illustration: 033. Jpg THE HEAVILY MANED LION WOUNDED BY AN ARROW ANDVOMITING BLOOD. ]

Snakes are found here and there, but they are for the most part ofinnocuous species: three poisonous varieties only are known, and theirbite does not produce such terrible consequences as that of the hornedviper or Egyptian uraeus. There are two kinds of lion--one without mane, and the other hooded, with a heavy mass of black and tangled hair: theproper signification of the old Chaldæan name was "the great 'dog, " andthey have, indeed, a greater resemblance to large dogs than to thered lions of Africa. * They fly at the approach of man; they betakethemselves in the daytime to retreats among the marshes or in thethickets which border the rivers, sallying forth at night, likethe jackal, to scour the country. Driven to bay, they turn upon theassailant and fight desperately. The Chaldæan kings, like the Pharaohs, did not shrink from entering into a close conflict with them, and boasted of having rendered a service to their subjects by thedestruction of many of these beasts. 

* The Sumerian name of the lion is ur-malch "the great dog. " The bestdescription of the first-mentioned species is still that of Olivier, whosaw in the house o£ the Pasha of Bagdad five of them in captivity; cf. Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, p. 487. Father Scheil tells me the lionshave disappeared completely since the last twenty years. 

[Illustration: 034. Jpg THE URUS IN ACT OF CHARGING]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from Nimrûd (Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, 1st series, pi. 11). 

[Illustration: 035. Jpg a herd of onagers pursued by dogs and wounded byarrows. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the British Museum. 

The elephant seems to have roamed for some time over the steppes ofthe middle Euphrates;* there is no indication of its presence after theXIIIth century before our era, and from that time forward it was merelyan object of curiosity brought at great expense from distant countries. This is not the only instance of animals which have disappeared inthe course of centuries; the rulers of Nineveh were so addicted to thepursuit of the urus that they ended by exterminating it. Several sortsof panthers and smaller felidæ had their lairs in the thickets ofMesopotamia. The wild ass and onager roamed in small herds between theBalikh and the Tigris. Attempts were made, it would seem, at a veryearly period to tame them and make use of them to draw chariots; butthis attempt either did not succeed at all, or issued in such uncertainresults, that it was given up as soon as other less refractory animalswere made the subjects of successful experiment. 

 * The existence of the elephant in Mesopotamia and Northern Syria is well established by the Egyptian inscription of Amenemhabi in the XVth century before our era. 

[Illustration: 036. Jpg THE CHIEF DOMESTIC ANIMALS OP THE REGIONS OF THEEUPHRATES. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from Kouyunjik. 

The wild boar, and his relative, the domestic hog, inhabited themorasses. Assyrian sculptors amused themselves sometimes by representinglong gaunt sows making their way through the cane-brakes, followed bytheir interminable offspring. The hog remained here, as in Egypt, ina semi-tamed condition, and the people were possessed of only a smallnumber of domesticated animals besides the dog--namely, the ass, ox, goat, and sheep; the horse and camel were at first unknown, and wereintroduced at a later period. *

[Illustration: 037. Jpg THE SOW AND HER LITTER MAKING THEIR WAY THROUGH ABED OF REEDS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Kouyunjik. 

 * The horse is denoted in the Assyrian texts by a group of signs which mean "the ass of the East, " and the camel by other signs in which the character for "ass" also appears. The methods of rendering these two names show that the subjects of them were unknown in the earliest times; the epoch of their introduction is uncertain. A chariot drawn by horses appears on the "Stele of the Vultures. " Camels are mentioned among the booty obtained from the Bedouin of the desert. 

We know nothing of the efforts which the first inhabitants--Sumeriansand Semites--had to make in order to control the waters and to bring theland under culture: the most ancient monuments exhibit them as alreadypossessors of the soil, and in a forward state of civilization. * Theirchief cities were divided into two groups: one in the south, in theneighbourhood of the sea; the other in a northern direction, in theregion where the Euphrates and Tigris are separated from each other bymerely a narrow strip of land. The southern group consisted of seven, ofwhich Eridu lay nearest to the coast. This town stood on the left bankof the Euphrates, at a point which is now called Abu-Shahrein. A littleto the west, on the opposite bank, but at some distance from the stream, the mound of Mugheîr marks the site of Uru, the most important, if notthe oldest, of the southern cities. Lagash occupied the site of themodern Telloh to the north of Eridu, not far from the Shatt-el-Haî;Nisin and Mar, Larsam and Uruk, occupied positions at short distancesfrom each other on the marshy ground which extends between the Euphratesand the Shatt-en-Nîl. The inscriptions mention here and there otherless important places, of which the ruins have not yet beendiscovered--Zirlab and Shurippak, places of embarkation at the mouthof the Euphrates for the passage of the Persian Gulf; and the island ofDilmun, situated some forty leagues to the south in the centre of theSalt Sea, --"Nar-Marratum. " The northern group comprised Nipur, the"incomparable;" Barsip, on the branch which flows parallel to theEuphrates and falls into the Bahr-î-Nedjîf; Babylon, the "gate of thegod, " the "residence of life, " the only metropolis of the Euphratesregion of which posterity never lost a reminiscence; Kishu, Kuta, Agade;** and lastly the two Sipparas, that of Shamash and that ofAnunit. The earliest Chaldæan civilization was confined almost entirelyto the two banks of the Lower Euphrates: except at its northernboundary, it did not reach the Tigris, and did not cross this river. Separated from the rest of the world--on the east by the marshes whichborder the river in its lower course, on the north by the badly wateredand sparsely inhabited table-land of Mesopotamia, on the west by theArabian desert--it was able to develop its civilization, as Egypt haddone, in an isolated area, and to follow out its destiny in peace. Theonly point from which it might anticipate serious danger was on theeast, whence the Kashshi and the Elamites, organized into militarystates, incessantly harassed it year after year by their attacks. TheKashshi were scarcely better than half-civilized mountain hordes, butthe Elamites were advanced in civilization, and their capital, Susa, vied with the richest cities of the Euphrates, Uru and Babylon, inantiquity and magnificence. 

 * For an ideal picture of what may have been the beginnings of that civilization, see Delitzsch, Die Entstehung des àltesten Schriflssystems, p. 214, et seq. I will not enter into the question as to whether it did or did not come by sea to the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris. The legend of the fish-god Oannes (Berossus, frag. 1), which seems to conceal some indication on the subject, is merely a mythological tradition, from which it would be wrong to deduce historical conclusions. 

 ** Agade, or Agane, has been identified with one of the two towns of which Sippara is made up, more especially with that which was called Anunit Sippara; the reading Agadi, Agacle, was especially assumed to lead to its identification with the Accad of _Genesis x. 10_, and with the Akkad of native tradition. This opinion has been generally abandoned by Assyriologists, and Agane has not yet found a site. Was it only a name for Babylon?

[Illustration: 040. Jpg MAP OF CHALDÆA]

There was nothing serious to fear from the Guti, on the branch of theTigris to the north-east, or from the Shuti to the north of these; theywere merely marauding tribes, and, however troublesome they might beto their neighbours in their devastating incursions, they could notcompromise the existence of the country, or bring it into subjection. It would appear that the Chaldseans had already begun to encroach uponthese tribes and to establish colonies among them--El-Ashshur on thebanks of the Tigris, Harran on the furthest point of the Mesopotamianplain, towards the sources of the Balikh. Beyond these were vague andunknown regions--Tidanum, Martu, the sea of the setting sun, the vastterritories of Milukhkha and Mâgan. * Egypt, from the time they wereacquainted with its existence, was a semi-fabulous country at the endsof the earth. 

 * The question concerning Milukhkha and Mâgan has exercised Assyriologists for twenty years. The prevailing opinion appears to be that which identifies Mâgan with the Sinaitic Peninsula, and Milukhkha with the country to the north of Mâgan as far as the Wady Arish and the Mediterranean; others maintain, not the theory of Delitzsch, according to whom Mâgan and Milukhkha are synonyms for Shumir and Akkad, and consequently two of the great divisions of Babylonia, but an analogous hypothesis, in which they are regarded as districts to the west of the Euphrates, either in Chaldæan regions or on the margin of the desert, or even in the desert itself towards the Sinaitic Peninsula. What we know of the texts induces me, in common with H. Rawlinson, to place these countries on the shores of the Persian Gulf, between the mouth of the Euphrates and the Bahrein islands; possibly the Makse and the Melangitso of classical historians and geographers were the descendants of the people of Mâgan (Mâkan) and Milukhkha (Melugga), who had been driven towards the entrance to the Persian Gulf by some such event as the increase in these regions of the Kashdi (Chaldæans). The names, emigrated to the western parts of Arabia and to the Sinaitic Peninsula in after-times, as the name of India passed to America in the XVIth century of our era. 

How long did it take to bring this people out of savagery, and tobuild up so many flourishing cities? The learned did not readily resignthemselves to a confession of ignorance on the subject. As theyhad depicted the primordial chaos, the birth of the gods, and theirstruggles over the creation, so they related unhesitatingly everythingwhich had happened since the creation of mankind, and they laid claim tobeing able to calculate the number of centuries which lay between theirown day and the origin of things. The tradition to which most credencewas attached in the Greek period at Babylon, that which has beenpreserved for us in the histories of Berossue, asserts that there wasa somewhat long interval between the manifestation of Oannes andthe foundation of a dynasty. The first king was Alôros of Babylon, aChaldæan of whom nothing is related except that he was chosen by thedivinity himself to be a shepherd of the people. He reigned for tensari, amounting in all to 36, 000 years; for the saros is 3600 years, thener 600 years, and the soss 60 years. 

[Illustration: 041. Jpg TWO FISH-LIKE DEITIES OF THE CHALDÆANS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an intaglio in the British Museum. 

After the death of Alôros, his son Alaparos ruled for three sari, afterwhich Amillaros, of the city of Pantibibla, reigned thirteen sari. Itwas under him that there issued from the Bed Sea a second Annedôtos, resembling Oannes in his semi-divine shape, half man and half fish. After him Ammenon, also from Pantibibla, a Chaldaean, ruled for a termof twelve sari; under him, they say, the mysterious Oannes appeared. Afterwards Amelagaros of Pantibibla governed for eighteen sari; thenDavos, the shepherd from Pantibibla, reigned ten sari: under him thereissued from the Red Sea a fourth Annedôtos, who had a form similar tothe others, being made up of man and fish. After him Bvedoranchos ofPantibibla reigned for eighteen sari; in his time there issued yetanother monster, named Anôdaphos, from the sea. These various monstersdeveloped carefully and in detail that which Oannes had set forth in abrief way. Then Amempsinos of Larancha, a Chalæan, reigned ten sari; andObartes, also a Chaldæan, of Larancha, eight sari. Finally, on the deathof Obartes, his son Xisuthros held the sceptre for eighteen sari. Itwas under him that the great deluge took place. Thus ten kings are tobe reckoned in all, and the duration of their combined reigns amountsto one hundred and twenty sari. From the beginning of the world to theDeluge they reckoned 691, 200 years, of which 259, 200 had passedbefore the coming of Alôros, and the remaining 432, 000 were generouslydistributed between this prince and his immediate successors: the Greekand Latin writers had certainly a fine occasion for amusement over thesefabulous numbers of years which the Chaldæans assigned to the lives andreigns of their first kings. 

Men in the mean time became wicked; they lost the habit of offeringsacrifices to the gods, and the gods, justly indignant at thisnegligence, resolved to be avenged. * Now, Shamashnapishtim I wasreigning at this time in Shurippak, the "town of the ship:" he andall his family were saved, and he related afterwards to one of hisdescendants how Ea had snatched him from the disaster which fell uponhis people. ** "Shurippak, the city which thou thyself knowest, issituated on the bank of the Euphrates; it was already an ancient townwhen the hearts of the gods who resided in it impelled them to bring thedeluge upon it--the great gods as many as they are; their father Anu, their counsellor Bel the warrior, their throne-bearer Ninib, theirprince Innugi. The master of wisdom, Ea, took his seat with them, ***and, moved with pity, was anxious to warn Shamashnapishtim, his servant, of the peril which threatened him;" but it was a very serious affair tobetray to a mortal a secret of heaven, and as he did not venture to doso in a direct manner, his inventive mind suggested to him an artifice. 

 * The account of Bcrossus implies this as a cause of the Deluge, since he mentions the injunction imposed upon the survivors by a mysterious voice to be henceforward respectful towards the gods, [Greek word]. The Chalæan account considers the Deluge to have been sent as a punishment upon men for their sins against the gods, since it represents towards the end (cf. P. 52 of this History) Ea as reproaching Bel for having confounded the innocent and the guilty in one punishment. 

 ** The name of this individual has been read in various ways: Shamashnapishtim, "sun of life, " Sitnapishtim, "the saved, " and Pirnapishtim. In one passage at least we find, in place of Shamashnapishtim, the name or epithet of Aclrakhasis, or by inversion Khasisadra, which appears to signify "the very shrewd, " and is explained by the skill with which he interpreted the oracle of Ea. Khasisadra is most probably the form which the Greeks have transcribed by Xisuthros, Sisuthros, Sisithes. 

 *** The account of the Deluge covers the eleventh tablet of the poem of Gilgames. The hero, threatened with death, proceeds to rejoin his ancestor Shamashnapishtim to demand from him the secret of immortality, and the latter tells him the manner in which he escaped from the waters: he had saved his life only at the expense of the destruction of men. The text of it was published by Smith and by Haupt, fragment by fragment, and then restored consecutively. The studies of which it is the object would make a complete library. The principal translations are those of Smith, of Oppert, of Lenor-mant, of Haupt, of Jensen, of A. Jeremias, of Sauveplane, and of Zimmern. 

[Illustration: 045. Jpg Page with ONE OF THE TABLETS OF THE DELUGESERIES. ]

 Facsimile by Faucher-Gudin, from the photograph published by G. Smith, Chaldæan Account of the Deluge from terra-cotta tablets found at Nineveh. 

He confided to a hedge of reeds the resolution that had been adopted:*"Hedge, hedge, wall, wall! Hearken, hedge, and understand well, wall!Man of Shurippak, son of Ubaratutu, construct a wooden house, build aship, abandon thy goods, seek life; throw away thy possessions, save thylife, and place in the vessel all the seed of life. The ship which thoushalt build, let its proportions be exactly measured, let its dimensionsand shape be well arranged, then launch it in the sea. " Shamashnapishtimheard the address to the field of reeds, or perhaps the reeds repeatedit to him. "I understood it, and I said to my master Ea 'The command, O my master, which thou hast thus enunciated, I myself will respect it, and I will execute it: but what shall I say to the town, the people andthe elders?'" Ea opened his mouth and spake; he said to his servant:"Answer thus and say to them: 'Because Bel hates me, I will no longerdwell in your town, and upon the land of Bel I will no longer lay myhead, but I will go upon the sea, and will dwell with Ea my master. NowBel will make rain to fall upon you, upon the swarm of birds and themultitude of fishes, upon all the animals of the field, and upon allthe crops; but Ea will give you a sign: the god who rules the rain willcause to fall upon you, on a certain evening, an abundant rain. When thedawn of the next day appears, the deluge will begin, which will coverthe earth and drown all living things. '" Shamashnapishtim repeated thewarning to the people, but the people refused to believe it, and turnedhim into ridicule. The work went rapidly forward: the hull was a hundredand forty cubits long, the deck one hundred and forty broad; all thejoints were caulked with pitch and bitumen. A solemn festival wasobserved at its completion, and the embarkation began. ** "All that Ipossessed I filled the ship with it all that I had of silver, I filledit with it; all that I had of gold I filled it with it, all that I hadof the seed of life of every kind I filled it with it; I caused allmy family and my servants to go up into it; beasts of the field, wildbeasts of the field, I caused them to go up all together. Shamash hadgiven me a sign: 'When the god who rules the rain, in the evening shallcause an abundant rain to fall, enter into the ship and close thy door. 'The sign was revealed: the god who rules the rain caused to fall onenight an abundant rain. The day, I feared its dawning; I feared to seethe daylight; I entered into the ship and I shut the door; that the shipmight be guided, I handed over to Buzur-Bel, the pilot, the great arkand its fortunes. "

 * The sense of this passage is far from being certain; I have followed the interpretation proposed, with some variations, by Pinches, by Haupt, and by Jensen. The stratagem at once recalls the history of King Midas, and the talking reeds which knew the secret of his ass's ears. In the version of Berossus, it is Kronos who plays the part here assigned to Ea in regard to Xisuthros. 

 ** The text is mutilated, and does not furnish enough information to follow in every detail the building of the ark. From what we can understand, the vessel of Shamashnapishtim was a kind of immense kelek, decked, but without masts or rigging of any sort. The text identifies the festival celebrated by the hero before the embarkation with the festival Akitu of Merodach, at Babylon, during which "Nebo, the powerful son, sailed from Borsippa to Babylon in the bark of the river Asmu, of beauty. " The embarkation of Nebo and his voyage on the stream had probably inspired the information according to which the embarkation of Shamashnapishtim was made the occasion of a festival Akitu, celebrated at Shurippak; the time of the Babylonian festival was probably thought to coincide with the anniversary of the Deluge. 

"As soon as the morning became clear, a black cloud arose from thefoundations of heaven. Bamman growled in its bosom; Nebo and Mardukran before it--ran like two throne-bearers over hill and dale. Nerathe Great tore up the stake to which the ark was moored. Ninib came upquickly; he began the attack; the Anunnaki raised their torches and madethe earth to tremble at their brilliancy; the tempest of Ramman scaledthe heaven, changed all the light to darkness, flooded the earth like alake. * For a whole day the hurricane raged, and blew violently over themountains and over the country; the tempest rushed upon men like theshock of an army, brother no longer beheld brother, men recognized eachother no more. 

 * The progress of the tempest is described as the attack of the gods, who had resolved on the destruction of men. Ramman is the thunder which growls in the cloud; Nebo, Merodach, Nera the Great (Nergal), and Ninib, denote the different phases of the hurricane from the moment when the wind gets up until it is at its height; the Anunnaki represent the lightning which flashes carelessly across the heaven. 

[Illustration: 048. Jpg SHAMASHNAPISHTIM SHUT INTO THE ARK. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chalæan intaglio. 

In heaven, the gods were afraid of the deluge;* they betook themselvesto flight, they clambered to the firmament of Anu; the gods, howlinglike dogs, cowered upon the parapet. ** Ishtar wailed like a womanin travail; she cried out, "the lady of life, the goddess with thebeautiful voice: 'The past returns to clay, because I have prophesiedevil before the gods! Prophesying evil before the gods, I havecounselled the attack to bring my men to nothing; and these to whom Imyself have given birth, where are they? Like the spawn of fish theyencumber the sea! 'The gods wept with her over the affair of theAnunnaki;' the gods, in the place where they sat weeping, their lipswere closed. " It was not pity only which made their tears to flow:there were mixed up with it feelings of regret and fears for the future. Mankind once destroyed, who would then make the accustomed offerings?The inconsiderate anger of Bel, while punishing the impiety of theircreatures, had inflicted injury upon themselves. "Six days and nightsthe wind continued, the deluge and the tempest raged. The seventh day atdaybreak the storm abated; the deluge, which had carried on warfare likean army, ceased, the sea became calm and the hurricane disappeared, thedeluge ceased. I surveyed the sea with my eyes, raising my voice; butall mankind had returned to clay, neither fields nor woods could bedistinguished. *** I opened the hatchway and the light fell upon my face;I sank down, I cowered, I wept, and my tears ran down my cheeks when Ibeheld the world all terror and all sea. At the end of twelve days, apoint of land stood up from the waters, the ship touched the land ofNisir:**** the mountain of Nisir stopped the ship and permitted it tofloat no longer. One day, two days, the mountain of Nisir stopped theship and permitted it to float no longer. 

 * The gods enumerated above alone took part in the drama of the Deluge: they were the confederates and emissaries of Bel. The others were present as spectators of the disaster, and were terrified. 

 ** The upper part of the mountain wall is here referred to, upon which the heaven is supported. There was a narrow space between the escarpment and the place upon which the vault of the firmament rested: the Babylonian poet represented the gods as crowded like a pack of hounds upon this parapet, and beholding from it the outburst of the tempest and the waters. 

 ***The translation is uncertain: the text refers to a legend which has not come down to us, in which Ishtar is related to have counselled the destruction of men. 

 **** The Anunnaki represent here the evil genii whom the gods that produced the deluge had let loose, and whom Ramman, Nebo, Merodach, Nergal, and Ninib, all the followers of Bel, had led to the attack upon men: the other deities shared the fears and grief of Ishtar in regard to the ravages which these Anunnaki had brought about (cf. Below, pp. 141-143 of this History). 

Three days, four days, the mountain of Nisir* stopped the ship andpermitted it to float no longer. Five days, six days, the mountain ofNisir stopped the ship and permitted it to float no longer. The seventhday, at dawn, I took out a dove and let it go: the dove went, turnedabout, and as there was no place to alight upon, came back. I took out aswallow and let it go: the swallow went, turned about, and as there wasno place to alight upon, came back. I took out a raven and let it go:the raven went, and saw that the water had abated, and came near theship flapping its wings, croaking, and returned no more. "Shamashnapishtim escaped from the deluge, but he did not know whetherthe divine wrath was appeased, or what would be done with him when itbecame known that he still lived. ** He resolved to conciliate thegods by expiatory ceremonies. "I sent forth the inhabitants of the arktowards the four winds, I made an offering, I poured out a propitiatorylibation on the summit of the mountain. I set up seven and sevenvessels, and I placed there some sweet-smelling rushes, some cedar-wood, and storax. " He thereupon re-entered the ship to await there the effectof his sacrifice. 

 * I have adopted, in the translation of this difficult passage, the meaning suggested by Haupt, according to which it ought to be translated, "The field makes nothing more than one with the mountain;" that is to say, "mountains and fields are no longer distinguishable one from another. " I have merely substituted for mountain the version wood, piece of land covered with trees, which Jensen has suggested. 

 ** The mountain of Nisir is replaced in the version of Berossus by the Gordyæan mountains of classical geography; a passage of Assur-nazir-pal informs us that it was situated between the Tigris and the Great Zab, according to Delitzsch between 35° and 36° N. Latitude. The Assyrian-speaking people interpreted the name as _Salvation_, and a play upon words probably decided the placing upon its slopes the locality where those _saved_ from the deluge landed on the abating of the waters. Fr. Lenormant proposes to identify it with the peak Rowandîz. 

The gods, who no longer hoped for such a wind-fall, accepted thesacrifice with a wondering joy. "The gods sniffed up the odour, the godssniffed up the excellent odour, the gods gathered like flies above theoffering. "When Ishtar, the mistress of life, came in her turn, she heldup the great amulet which Anu had made for her. "* She was still furiousagainst those who had determined upon the destruction of mankind, especially against Bel: "These gods, I swear it on the necklace of myneck! I will not forget them; these days I will remember, and will notforget them for ever. Let the other gods come quickly to take part inthe offering. Bel shall have no part in the offering, for he was notwise: but he has caused the deluge, and he has devoted my people todestruction. " Bel himself had not recovered his temper: "When he arrivedin his turn and saw the ship, he remained immovable before it, and hisheart was filled with rage against the gods of heaven. 'Who is he whohas come out of it living? No man must survive the destruction!'" Thegods had everything to fear from his anger: Ninib was eager to exculpatehimself, and to put the blame upon the right person. Ea did not disavowhis acts: "he opened his mouth and spake; he said to Bel the warrior:'Thou, the wisest among the gods, O warrior, why wert thou not wise, anddidst cause the deluge? The sinner, make him responsible for his sin;the criminal, make him responsible for his crime: but be calm, and donot cut off all; be patient, and do not drown all. What was the good ofcausing the deluge? A lion had only to come to decimate the people. What was the good of causing the deluge? A leopard had only to come todecimate the people. What was the good of causing the deluge? Faminehad only to present itself to desolate the country. What was the goodof causing the deluge? Nera the Plague had only to come to destroy thepeople. As for me, I did, not reveal the judgment of the gods: I causedKhasisadra to dream a dream, and he became aware of the judgment of thegods, and then he made his resolve. '" Bel was pacified at the words ofEa: "he went up into the interior of the ship; he took hold of my handand made me go up, even me; he made my wife go up, and he pushed her tomy side; he turned our faces towards him, he placed himself betweenus, and blessed us: 'Up to this time Shamashnapishtim was a man:henceforward let Shamashnapishtim and his wife be reverenced like us, the gods, and let Shamashnapishtim dwell afar off, at the mouth of theseas, and he carried us away and placed us afar off, at the mouth of theseas. '" Another form of the legend relates that by an order of the god, Xisuthros, before embarking, had buried in the town of Sippara all thebooks in which his ancestors had set forth the sacred sciences--booksof oracles and omens, "in which were recorded the beginning, the middle, and the end. When he had disappeared, those of his companions whoremained on board, seeing that he did not return, went out and set offin search of him, calling him by name. He did not show himself to them, but a voice from heaven enjoined upon them to be devout towards thegods, to return to Babylon and dig up the books in order that they mightbe handed down to future generations; the voice also informed them thatthe country in which they were was Armenia. They offered sacrifice inturn, they regained their country on foot, they dug up the books ofSippara and wrote many more; afterwards they refounded Babylon. " It waseven maintained in the time of the Seleucido, that a portion of the arkexisted on one of the summits of the Gordyæan mountains. ** Pilgrimageswere made to it, and the faithful scraped off the bitumen which coveredit, to make out of it amulets of sovereign virtue against evil spells. 

[Illustration: 051. Jpg THE JUDÎ MOUNTAINS SOMETIMES IDENTIFIED WITH TUBNTSIB MOUNTAINS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by G. Smith, _Assyrian Discoveries_, p. 108. 

 * We are ignorant of the object which the goddess lifted up: it may have been the sceptre surmounted by a radiating star, such as we see on certain cylinders. Several Assyriologists translate it arrows or lightning. Ishtar is, in fact, an armed goddess who throws the arrow or lightning made by her father Anu, the heaven. 

 ** Bekossus, fragm. Xv. The legend about the remains of the ark has passed into Jewish tradition concerning the Deluge. Nicholas of Damascus relates, like Berossus, that they were still to be seen on the top of Mount Baris. From that time they have been continuously seen, sometimes on one peak and sometimes on another. In the last century they were pointed out to Chardin, and the memory of them has not died out in our own century. Discoveries of charcoal and bitumen, such as those made at Gebel Judî, upon one of the mountains identified with Nisir, probably explain many of these local traditions. 

The chronicle of these fabulous times placed, soon after the abating ofthe waters, the foundation of a new dynasty, as extraordinary or almostas extraordinary in character as that before the flood. According toBerossus it was of Chaldæan origin, and comprised eighty-six kings, whobore rule during 34, 080 years; the first two, Evechous and Khomasbelos, reigned 2400 and 2700 years, while the later reigns did not exceedthe ordinary limits of human life. An attempt was afterwards made toharmonize them with probability: the number of kings was reduced tosix, and their combined reigns to 225 years. This attempt arose froma misapprehension of their true character; names and deeds, everythingconnected with them belongs to myth and fiction only, and is irreducibleto history proper. They supplied to priests and poets material forscores of different stories, of which several have come down to us infragments. Some are short, and serve as preambles to prayers or magicalformulas; others are of some length, and may pass for real epics. Thegods intervene in them, and along with kings play an important part. Itis Nera, for instance, the lord of the plague, who declares war againstmankind in order to punish them for having despised the authority ofAnu. He makes Babylon to feel his wrath first: "The children of Babel, they were as birds, and the bird-catcher, thou wert he! thou takest themin the net, thou enclosest them, thou decimatest them--hero Nera!"One after the other he attacks the mother cities of the Euphrates andobliges them to render homage to him--even Uruk, "the dwelling of Anuand Ishtar--the town of the priestesses, of the _almehs_, and the sacredcourtesans; "then he turns upon the foreign nations and carries hisravages as far as Phoenicia. In other fragments, the hero Etana makes anattempt to raise himself to heaven, and the eagle, his companion, fliesaway with him, without, however, being able to bring the enterprise toa successful issue. Nimrod and his exploits are known to us from theBible. * "He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning ofhis kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land ofShinar. " Almost all the characteristics which are attributed by Hebrewtradition to Nimrod we find in G-ilgames, King of Uruk and descendant ofthe Shamashnapishtim who had witnessed the deluge. **

 * Genesis x. 9, 10. Among the Jews and Mussulmans a complete cycle of legends have developed around Nimrod. He built the Tower of Babel; he threw Abraham into a fiery furnace, and he tried to mount to heaven on the back of an eagle. Sayce and Grivel saw in Nimrod an heroic form of Merodach, the god of Babylonia: the majority of living Assyriologists prefer to follow Smith's example, and identify him with the hero Gilgames. 

 ** The name of this hero is composed of three signs, which Smith provisionally rendered Isdubar--a reading which, modified into Gishdhubar, Gistubar, is still retained by many Assyriologists. There have been proposed one after another the renderings Dhubar, Namrûdu, Anamarutu, Numarad, Namrasit, all of which exhibit in the name of the hero that of Nimrod. Pinches discovered, in 1890, what appears to be the true signification of the three signs, Gilgamesh, Gilgames; Sayce and Oppert have compared this name with that of Gilgamos, a Babylonian hero, of whom. Ælian has preserved the memory. A. Jeremias continued to reject both the reading and the identification. 

Several copies of a poem, in which an unknown scribe had celebrated hisexploits, existed about the middle of the VIIth century before our erain the Royal Library at Nineveh; they had been transcribed by order ofAssur-banipal from a more ancient copy, and the fragments of them whichhave come down to us, in spite of their lacunae, enable us to restorethe original text, if not in its entirety, at least in regard tothe succession of events. They were divided into twelve episodescorresponding with the twelve divisions of the year, and the ancientBabylonian author was guided in his choice of these divisions bysomething more than mere chance. Gilgames, at first an ordinary mortalunder the patronage of the gods, had himself become a god and son of thegoddess Aruru: "he had seen the abyss, he had learned everything thatis kept secret and hidden, he had even made known to men what had takenplace before the deluge. " The sun, who had protected him in his humancondition, had placed him beside himself on the judgment-seat, anddelegated to him authority to pronounce decisions from which there wasno appeal: he was, as it were, a sun on a small scale, before whom thekings, princes, and great ones of the earth humbly bowed their heads. *The scribes had, therefore, some authority for treating the events ofhis life after the model of the year, and for expressing them in twelvechants, which answered to the annual course of the sun through thetwelve months. 

 * The identity of Gilgames with the Accadian fire-god, or rather with the sun, was recognized from the first by H. Rawlinson, and has been accepted since by almost all Assyriologists. A tablet brought back by G. Smith, called attention to by Fr. Delitzsch, and published by Haupt, contains the remains of a hymn addressed to Gilgames, "the powerful king, the king of the Spirits of the Earth. "

[Illustration: 057. Jpg GILGAMES STRANGLES A LION. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from Khorsabad, in the Museum of the Louvre

The whole story is essentially an account of his struggles with Ishtar, and the first pages reveal him as already at issue with the goddess. Hisportrait, such as the monuments have preserved it for us, is singularlyunlike the ordinary type: one would be inclined to regard it asrepresenting an individual of a different race, a survival of some veryancient nation which had held rule on the plains of the Euphrates beforethe arrival of the Sumerian or Semitic* tribes. 

 * Smith (The Chaldæan Account of Genesis, p. 194) remarked the difference between the representations of Gilgames and the typical Babylonian: he concluded from this that the hero was of Ethiopian origin. Hommel declares that his features have neither a Sumerian nor Semitic aspect, and that they raise an insoluble question in ethnology. 

His figure is tall, broad, muscular to an astonishing degree, andexpresses at once vigour and activity; his head is massive, bony, almostsquare, with a somewhat flattened face, a large nose, and prominentcheek-bones, the whole framed by an abundance of hair, and a thick beardsymmetrically curled. All the young men of Uruk, the well-protected, were captivated by the prodigious strength and beauty of the hero; theelders of the city betook themselves to Ishtar to complain of the stateof neglect to which the young generation had relegated them. "He has nolonger a rival in their hearts, but thy subjects are led to battle, andGilgames does not send one child back to his father. Night and day theycry after him: 'It is he the shepherd of Uruk, the well-protected, heis its shepherd and master, he the powerful, the perfect and the wise. '"Even the women did not escape the general enthusiasm: "he leaves not asingle virgin to her mother, a single daughter to a warrior, a singlewife to her master. Ishtar heard their complaint, the gods heard it, andcried with a loud voice to Aruru: 'It is thou, Aruru, who hast given himbirth; create for him now his fellow, that he may be able to meet him ona day when it pleaseth him, in order that they may fight with each otherand Uruk may be delivered. 'When Aruru heard them, she created in herheart a man of Anu. Aruru washed her hands, took a bit of clay, cast itupon the earth, kneaded it and created Babani, the warrior, the exaltedscion, the man of Ninib, whose whole body is covered with hair, whosetresses are as long as those of a woman; the locks of his hair bristleon his head like those on the corn-god; he is clad in a vestmentlike that of the god of the fields; he browses with the gazelles, hequenches his thirst with the beasts of the field, he sports with thebeasts of the waters. " Frequent representations of Eabani are found uponthe monuments; he has the horns of a goat, the legs and tail of a bull. *He possessed not only the strength of a brute, but his intelligence alsoembraced all things, the past and the future: he would probably havetriumphed over Gilgames if Shamash had not succeeded in attaching themto one another by an indissoluble tie of friendship. The difficulty wasto draw these two future friends together, and to bring them face toface without their coming to blows; the god sent his courier Saîdu, the hunter, to study the habits of the monster, and to find out thenecessary means to persuade him to come down peaceably to Uruk. "Saîdu, the hunter, proceeded to meet Eabani near the entrance of thewatering-place. One day, two days, three days, Eabani met him at theentrance of the watering-place. He perceived Saîdu, and his countenancedarkened: he entered the enclosure, he became sad, he groaned, he criedwith a loud voice, his heart was heavy, his features were distorted, sobs burst from his breast. The hunter saw from a distance that his facewas inflamed with anger, " and judging it more prudent not to perseverefarther in his enterprise, returned to impart to the god what he hadobserved. 

 * Smith was the first, I believe, to compare his form to that of a satyr or faun; this comparison is rendered more probable by the fact that the modern inhabitants of Chaldæa believe in the existence of similar monsters. A. Jeremias places Eabani alongside Priapus, who is generally a god of the fields, and a clever soothsayer. Following out these ideas, we might compare our Eabani with the Graico-Roman Proteus, who pastures the flocks of the sea, and whom it was necessary to pursue and seize by force or cunning words to compel him to give oracular predictions. 

[Illustration: 060. Jpg GILGAMES FIGHTS, ON THE LEFT WITH A BULL, ON THERIGHT WITH EABANI. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio in the Museum at the Hague. The original measures about 1 7/10 inch in height. 

"I was afraid, " said he, in finishing his narrative, * "and I did notapproach him. He had filled up the pit which I had dug to trap him, hebroke the nets which I had spread, he delivered from my hands the cattleand the beasts of the field, he did not allow me to search the countrythrough. " Shamash thought that where the strongest man might fail by theemployment of force, a woman might possibly succeed by the attractionsof pleasure; he commanded Saîdu to go quickly to Uruk and there tochoose from among the priestesses of Ishtar one of the most beautiful. **The hunter presented himself before Grilgames, recounted to him hisadventures, and sought his permission to take away with him one of thesacred courtesans. "'Go, my hunter, take the priestess; when the beastscome to the watering-place, let her display her beauty; he will seeher, he will approach her, and his beasts that troop around him will bescattered. '"*** The hunter went, he took with him the priestess, he tookthe straight road; the third day they arrived at the fatal plain. Thehunter and the priestess sat down to rest; one day, two days, they satat the entrance of the watering-place from whose waters Eabani drankalong with the animals, where he sported with the beasts of the water. 

 * Haupt, Das Babylonische Nimrodepos, p. 9, 11. 42-50. The beginning of each line is destroyed, and the translation of the whole is only approximate. 

 ** The priestesses of Ishtar were young and beautiful women, devoted to the service of the goddess and her worshippers. Besides the title _qadishtu, _ priestess, they bore various names, _kizireti, ukhati, kharimâti_; the priestess who accompanied Saîdu was an _ukhat_. 

 *** As far as can be guessed from the narrative, interrupted as it is by so many lacunæ, the power of Eabani over the beasts of the field seems to have depended on his continence. From the moment in which he yields to his passions the beasts fly from him as they would do from an ordinary mortal; there is then no other resource for him but to leave the solitudes to live among men in towns. This explains the means devised by Shamash against him: cf. In the _Arabian Nights_ the story of Shehabeddin. 

"When Eabani arrived, he who dwells in the mountains, and who browsesupon the grass like the gazelles, who drinks with the animals, whosports with the beasts of the water, the priestess saw the satyr. " Shewas afraid and blushed, but the hunter recalled her to her duty. "It ishe, priestess. Undo thy garment, show him thy form, that he may betaken with thy beauty; be not ashamed, but deprive him of his soul. Heperceives thee, he is rushing towards thee, arrange thy garment; he iscoming upon thee, receive him with every art of woman; his beastswhich troop around him will be scattered, and he will press thee to hisbreast. " The priestess did as she was commanded; she received him withevery art of woman, and he pressed her to his breast. Six days and sevennights, Eabani remained near the priestess, his well-beloved. When hegot tired of pleasure he turned his face towards his cattle, and he sawthat the gazelles had turned aside and that the beasts of the field hadfled far from him. Eabani was alarmed, he fell into a swoon, his kneesbecame stiff because his cattle had fled from him. While he lay as ifdead, he heard the voice of the priestess: he recovered his senses, he came to himself full of love; he seated himself at the feet of thepriestess, he looked into her face, and while the priestess spoke hisears listened. For it was to him the priestess spoke--to him, Eabani. "Thou who art superb, Eabani, as a god, why dost thou live amongthe beasts of the field? Come, I will conduct thee to Uruk thewell-protected, to the glorious house, the dwelling of Anu andIshtar--to the place where is Gilgames, whose strength is supreme, andwho, like a Urus, excels the heroes in strength. " While she thus spoketo him, he hung upon her words, he the wise of heart, he realizedby anticipation a friend. Eabani said to the priestess: "Let us go, priestess; lead me to the glorious and holy abode of Anu and Ishtar--tothe place where is Gilgames, whose strength is supreme, and who, likea Urus, prevails over the heroes by his strength. I will fight with himand manifest to him my power; I will send forth a panther against Uruk, and he must struggle with it. "* The priestess conducted her prisonerto Uruk, but the city at that moment was celebrating the festival ofTammuz, and Gilgames did not care to interrupt the solemnities in orderto face the tasks to which Eabani had invited him: what was the use ofsuch trials since the gods themselves had deigned to point out to him ina dream the line of conduct he was to pursue, and had taken up thecause of their children. Shamash, in fact, began the instruction of themonster, and sketched an alluring picture of the life which awaited himif he would agree not to return to his mountain home. Not only wouldthe priestess belong to him for ever, having none other than him forhusband, but Gilgames would shower upon him riches and honours. "He willgive thee wherein to sleep a great bed cunningly wrought; he will seatthee on his divan, he will give thee a place on his left hand, andthe princes of the earth shall kiss thy feet, the people of Urukshall grovel on the ground before thee. " It was by such flatteriesand promises for the future that Gilgames gained the affection of hisservant Eabani, whom he loved for ever. 

 * I have softened down a good deal the account of the seduction, which is described with a sincerity and precision truly primitive. 

Shamash had reasons for being urgent. Khumbaba, King of Elam, hadinvaded the country of the Euphrates, destroyed the temples, andsubstituted for the national worship the cult of foreign deities;* thetwo heroes in concert could alone check his advance, and kill him. Theycollected their troops, set out on the march, having learned from afemale magician that the enemy had concealed himself in a sacred grove. They entered it in disguise, "and stopped in rapture for a moment beforethe cedar trees; they contemplated the height of them, they contemplatedthe thickness of them; the place where Khumbaba was accustomed to walkup and down with rapid strides, alleys were made in it, paths kept upwith great care. They saw at length the hill of cedars, the abode of thegods, the sanctuary of Irnini, and before the hill, a magnificent cedar, and pleasant grateful shade. " They surprised Khumbaba at the moment whenhe was about to take his outdoor exercise, cut off his head, and cameback in triumph to Uruk. ** "Gilgames brightened his weapons, he polishedhis weapons. He put aside his war-harness, he put on his white garments, he adorned himself with the royal insignia, and bound on the diadem:Gilgames put his tiara on his head, and bound on his diadem. "

 * Khumbaba contains the name of the Elamite god, Khumba, whichenters into the composition of names of towns, like Ti- Khumbi; or into those of princes, as Khumbanigash, Khumbasundasa, Khumbasidh. The comparison between Khumbaba and Combabos, the hero of a singular legend, current in the second century of our era, does not seem to be admissible, at least for the present. The names agree well in sound, but, as Oppert has rightly said, no event in the history of Combabos finds a counterpart in anything we know of that of Khumbaba up to the present. 

 ** G. Smith places at this juncture Gilgames's accession to the throne; this is not confirmed by the fragments of the text known up to the present, and it is not even certain that the poem relates anywhere the exaltation and coronation of the hero. It would appear even that Gilgames is recognized from the beginning as King of Uruk, the well- protected. 

Ishtar saw him thus adorned, and the same passion consumed her whichinflames mortals. * "To the love of Gilgames she raised her eyes, themighty Ishtar, and she said, 'Come, Gilgames, be my husband, thou! Thylove, give it to me, as a gift to me, and thou shalt be my spouse, andI shall be thy wife. I will place thee in a chariot of lapis and gold, with golden wheels and mountings of onyx: thou shalt be drawn in it bygreat lions, and thou shalt enter our house with the odorous incense ofcedar-wood. When thou shalt have entered our house, all the country bythe sea shall embrace thy feet, kings shall bow down before thee, thenobles and the great ones, the gifts of the mountains and of the plainthey will bring to thee as tribute. Thy oxen shall prosper, thy sheepshall be doubly fruitful, thy mules shall spontaneously come under theyoke, thy chariot-horse shall be strong and shall galop, thy bullunder the yoke shall have no rival. '" Gilgames repels this unexpecteddeclaration with a mixed feeling of contempt and apprehension: he abusesthe goddess, and insolently questions her as to what has become of hermortal husbands during her long divine life. "Tammuz, the spouse of thyyouth, thou hast condemned him to weep from year to year. ** Nilala, thespotted sparrow-hawk, thou lovedst him, afterward thou didst strikehim and break his wing: he continues in the wood and cries: 'O, mywings!'*** Thou didst afterwards love a lion of mature strength, andthen didst cause him to be rent by blows, seven at a time. **** Thoulovedst also a stallion magnificent in the battle; thou didst devote himto death by the goad and whip: thou didst compel him to galop for tenleagues, thou didst devote him to exhaustion and thirst, thou didstdevote to tears his mother Silili. 

 * Ishtar's declaration to Gilgames and the hero's reply have been frequently translated and summarized since the discovery of the poem. Smith thought to connect this episode with the "Descent of Ishtar to Hades, " which we shall meet with further on in this History, but his opinion is no longer accepted. The "Descent of Ishtar" in its present condition is the beginning of a magical formula: it has nothing to do with the acts of Gilgames. 

 ** Tammuz-Adonis is the only one known to us among this long list of the lovers of the goddess. The others must have been fairly celebrated among the Chaldæans, since the few words devoted to each is sufficient to recall them to the memory of the reader, but we have not as yet found anything bearing upon their adventures in the table of the ancient Chaldæo-Assyrian classics, which had been copied out by a Ninevite scribe for the use of Assur-bani-pal, the title of the poems is wanting. 

 *** The text gives _kappî_, and the legend evidently refers to a bird whose cry resembles the word meaning "my wings. " The spotted sparrow-hawk utters a cry which may be strictly understood and interpreted in this way. 

 **** This is evidently the origin of our fable of the "Amorous Lion. "

Thou didst also love the shepherd Tabulu, who lavished incessantly uponthee the smoke of sacrifices, and daily slaughtered goats to thee; thoudidst strike him and turn him into a leopard; his own servants went inpursuit of him, and his dogs followed his trail. * Thou didst loveIshullanu, thy father's gardener, who ceaselessly brought thee presentsof fruit, and decorated every day thy table. Thou raisedst thine eyes tohim, thou seizedst him: 'My Ishullanu, we shall eat melons, then shaltthou stretch forth thy hand and remove that which separates us. 'Ishullanu said to thee: 'I, what dost thou require from me? O my mother, prepare no food for me, I myself will not eat: anything I should eatwould be for me a misfortune and a curse, and my body would be strickenby a mortal coldness. ' Then thou didst hear him and didst become angry, thou didst strike him, thou didst transform him into a dwarf, thou didstset him up on the middle of a couch; he could not rise up, he could notget down from where he was. Thou lovest me now, afterwards thou wiltstrike me as thou didst these. "**

 * The changing of a lover, by the goddess or sorceress who loves him, into a beast, occurs pretty frequently in Oriental tales; as to the man changed by Ishtar into a brute, which she caused to be torn by his own hounds, we may compare the classic story of Artemis surprised at her bath by Actseon. 

 ** As to the misfortune of Ishullanu, we may compare the story in the _Abrabian Nights_ of the Fisherman and the Genie shut up in the leaden bottle. The king of the Black Islands was transformed into a statue from the waist to the feet by the sorceress, whom he had married and afterwards offended; he remained lying on a bed, from which he could not get down, and the unfaithful one came daily to whip him. 

"When Ishtar heard him, she fell into a fury, she ascended to heaven. The mighty Ishtar presented herself before her father Anu, before hermother Anatu she presented herself, and said: 'My father, Grilgameshas despised me. Grilgames has enumerated my unfaithfulnesses, myunfaithfulnesses and my ignominies. ' Anu opened his mouth and spake tothe mighty Ishtar: 'Canst thou not remain quiet now that Gilgameshas enumerated to thee thy unfaithfulnesses, thy unfaithfulnesses andignominies?'" But she refused to allow the outrage to go unpunished. She desired her father to make a celestial urus who would execute hervengeance on the hero; and, as he hesitated, she threatened to destroyevery living thing in the entire universe by suspending the impulses ofdesire, and the effect of love. Anu finally gives way to her rage: hecreates a frightful urus, whose ravages soon rendered uninhabitable theneighbourhood of Uruk the well-protected. The two heroes, Gilgames andEabani, touched by the miseries and terror of the people, set out on thechase, and hastened to rouse the beast from its lair on the banks ofthe Euphrates in the marshes, to which it resorted after each murderousonslaught. 

[Illustration: 068. Jpg GILGAMES AND EABANI FIGHTING WITH MONSTERS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio in the New York Museum. The original is about an inch and a half in height. 

A troop of three hundred valiant warriors penetrated into the thicketsin three lines to drive the animal towards the heroes. The beast withhead lowered charged them; but Eabani seized it with one hand by theright horn, and with the other by the tail, and forced it to rear. Gilgames at the same instant, seizing it by the leg, plunged his daggerinto its heart. The beast being despatched, they celebrated theirvictory by a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and poured out a libation toSharnash, whose protection had not failed them in this last danger. Ishtar, her projects of vengeance having been defeated, "ascended theramparts of Uruk the well-protected. She sent forth a loud cry, shehurled forth a malediction: 'Cursed be Gilgames, who has insulted me, and who has killed the celestial urus. ' Eabani heard these words ofIshtar, he tore a limb from the celestial urus and threw it in the faceof the goddess: 'Thou also I will conquer, and I will treat thee likehim: I will fasten the curse upon thy sides. ' Ishtar assembled herpriestesses, her female votaries, her frenzied women, and together theyintoned a dirge over the limb of the celestial urus. Gilgames assembledall the turners in ivory, and the workmen were astonished at theenormous size of the horns; they were worth thirty _mimæ_ of lapis, their diameter was a half-cubit, and both of them could contain sixmeasures of oil. " He dedicated them to Shamash, and suspended them onthe corners of the altar; then he washed his hands in the Euphrates, re-entered Uruk, and passed through the streets in triumph. A riotousbanquet ended the day, but on that very night Eabani felt himselfhaunted by an inexplicable and baleful dream, and fortune abandoned thetwo heroes. Gilgames had cried in the intoxication of success to thewomen of Uruk: "Who shines forth among the valiant? Who is gloriousabove all men? Gilgames shines forth among the valiant, Gilgames isglorious above all men. " Ishtar made him feel her vengeance in thedestruction of that beauty of which he was so proud; she covered himwith leprosy from head to foot, and made him an object of horror to hisfriends of the previous day. A life of pain and a frightful death--healone could escape them who dared to go to the confines of the world inquest of the Fountain of Youth and the Tree of Life which were said tobe there hidden; but the road was rough, unknown, beset by dangers, andno one of those who had ventured upon it had ever returned. Gilgamesresolved to brave every peril rather than submit to his fate, andproposed this fresh adventure to his friend Eabani, who, notwithstandinghis sad forebodings, consented to accompany him. They killed a tigeron the way, but Eabani was mortally wounded in a struggle in which theyengaged in the neighbourhood of Nipur, and breathed his last after anagony of twelve days' duration. 

"Gilgames wept bitterly over his friend Eabani, grovelling on the bareearth. " The selfish fear of death struggled in his spirit with regret athaving lost so dear a companion, a tried friend in so many encounters. "I do not wish to die like Eabani: sorrow has entered my heart, the fearof death has taken possession of me, and I am overcome. But I will gowith rapid steps to the strong Shamashnapishtim, son of Ubaratutu, to learn from him how to become immortal. " He leaves the plain of theEuphrates, he plunges boldly into the desert, he loses himself for awhole day amid frightful solitudes. "I reached at nightfall a ravine inthe mountain, I beheld lions and trembled, but I raised my face towardsthe moon-god, and I prayed: my supplication ascended even to the fatherof the gods, and he extended over me his protection. " A vision from onhigh revealed to him the road he was to take. With axe and daggerin hand, he reached the entrance of a dark passage leading into themountain of Mâshu, * "whose gate is guarded day and night by supernaturalbeings. "

 * The land of Mâshu is the land to the west of the Euphrates, coterminous on one part with the northern regions of the Red Sea, on the other with the Persian Gulf; the name appears to be preserved in that of the classic Mesene, and possibly in the land of Massa of the Hebrews. 

[Illustration: 071. Jpg THE SCORPION-MEN OF THE MOUNTAINS OF MÂSHU. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian intaglio. 

"The scorpion-men, of whom the stature extends upwards as far as thesupports of heaven, and of whom the breasts descend as low as Hades, guard the door. The terror which they inspire strikes down like athunderbolt; their look kills, their splendour confounds and overturnsthe mountains; they watch over the sun at his rising and setting. Grilgames perceived them, and his features were distorted with fear andhorror; their savage appearance disturbed his mind. The scorpion-mansaid to his wife: 'He who comes towards us, his body is marked by thegods. '* The scorpion-woman replied to him: 'In his mind he is a god, inhis mortal covering he is a man. ' The scorpion-man spoke and said:'It is as the father of the gods, has commanded, he has travelled overdistant regions before joining us, thee and me. '" Gilgames learnsthat the guardians are not evilly disposed towards him, and becomesreassured, tell them his misfortunes and implores permission to passbeyond them so as to reach "Sha-mashnapishtim, his father, who wastranslated to the gods, and who has at his disposal both life anddeath. " The scorpion-man in vain shows to him the perils before him, ofwhich the horrible darkness enveloping the Mâshu mountains is not theleast: Gilgames proceeds through the depths of the darkness for longhours, and afterwards comes out in the neighbourhood of a marvellousforest upon the shore of the ocean which encircles the world. One treeespecially excites his wonder: "As soon as he sees it he runs towardsit. Its fruits are so many precious stones, its boughs are splendidto look upon, for the branches are weighed down with lapis, and theirfruits are superb. " When his astonishment had calmed down, Gilgamesbegins to grieve, and to curse the ocean which stays his steps. "Sabitu, the virgin who is seated on the throne of the seas, " perceiving himfrom a distance, retires at first to her castle, and barricades herselfwithin it. He calls out to her from the strand, implores and threatensher in turn, adjures her to help him in his voyage. "If it can be done, I will cross the sea; if it cannot be done, I will lay me down on theland to die. " The goddess is at length touched by his tears. "Gilgames, there has never been a passage hither, and no one from time immemorialhas been able to cross the sea. Shamash the valiant crossed the sea;after Shamash, who can cross it? The crossing is troublesome, the waydifficult, perilous the Water of Death, which, like a bolt, is drawnbetween thee and thy aim. Even if, Gilgames, thou didst cross thesea, what wouldest thou do on arriving at the Water of Death?" Arad-Ea, Shamashnapishtim's mariner, can alone bring the enterprise to a happyending: "if it is possible, thou shalt cross the sea with him; if it isnot possible, thou shalt retrace thy steps. "

* We must not forget that Gilgames is covered with leprosy; this is thedisease with which the Chaldæan gods mark their enemies when they wishto punish them in a severe fashion. 

[Illustration: 073. Jpg GILGAMES AND ARAD-EA NAVIGATING THEIR VESSEL. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio in the British Museum. The original measures a little over an inch. 

Arad-Ea and the hero took ship: forty days' tempestuous cruising broughtthem to the Waters of Death, which with a supreme effort they passed. Beyond these they rested on their oars and loosed their girdles: thehappy island rose up before them, and Shamashnapishtim stood upon theshore, ready to answer the questions of his grandson. 

None but a god dare enter his mysterious paradise: the bark bearingan ordinary mortal must stop at some distance from the shore, and theconversation is carried on from on board. Gilgames narrated oncemore the story of his life, and makes known the object of his visit;Shamashnapishtim answers him stoically that death follows from aninexorable law, to which it is better to submit with a good grace. "However long the time we shall build houses, however long the time weshall put our seal to contracts, however long the time brothers shallquarrel with each other, however long the time there shall be hostilitybetween kings, however long the time rivers shall overflow their banks, we shall not be able to portray any image of death. When the spiritssalute a man at his birth, then the genii of the earth, the great gods, Mamitu the moulder of destinies, all of them together assign a fate tohim, they determine for him his life and death; but the day of his deathremains unknown to him. " Gilgames thinks, doubtless, that his forefatheris amusing himself at his expense in preaching resignation, seeing thathe himself had been able to escape this destiny. "I look upon thee, Shamashnapishtim, and thy appearance has not changed: thou art like meand not different, thou art like me and I am like thee. Thou wouldestbe strong enough of heart to enter upon a combat, to judge by thyappearance; tell me, then, how thou hast obtained this existence amongthe gods to which thou hast aspired?" Shamashnapishtim yields to hiswish, if only to show him how abnormal his own case was, and indicatethe merits which had marked him out for a destiny superior to that ofthe common herd of humanity. He describes the deluge to him, and relateshow he was able to escape from it by the favour of Ea, and how by thatof Bel he was made while living a member of the army of the gods. "'Andnow, ' he adds, 'as far as thou art concerned, which one of the Gods willbestow upon thee the strength to obtain the life which thou seekest?Come, go to sleep!' Six days and seven nights he is as a man whosestrength appears suspended, for sleep has fallen upon him like a blastof wind. Shamashnapishtim spoke to his wife: 'Behold this man who asksfor life, and upon whom sleep has fallen like a blast of wind. ' The wifeanswers Shamashnapishtim, the man of distant lands: 'Cast a spell uponhim, this man, and he will eat of the magic broth; and the road by whichhe has come, he will retrace it in health of body; and the great gatethrough which he has come forth, he will return by it to his country. 'Shamashnapishtim spoke to his wife: 'The misfortunes of this mandistress thee: very well, cook the broth, and place it by his head. 'And while Gilgames still slept on board his vessel, the material for thebroth was gathered; on the second day it was picked, on the third it wassteeped, on the fourth Shamashnapishtim prepared his pot, on the fifthhe put into it 'Senility, ' on the sixth the broth was cooked, on theseventh he cast his spell suddenly on his man, and the latter consumedthe broth. Then Gilgames spoke to Shamashnapishtim, the inhabitant ofdistant lands: 'I hesitated, slumber laid hold of me; thou hast cast aspell upon me, thou hast given me the broth. '" The effect would not havebeen lasting, if other ceremonies had not followed in addition to thisspell from the sorcerer's kitchen: Gilgames after this preparation couldnow land upon the shore of the happy island and purify himself there. Shamashnapishtim confided this business to his mariner Arad-Ea: "'Theman whom thou hast brought, his body is covered with ulcers, the leprousscabs have spoiled the beauty of his body. Take him, Arad-Ea, lead himto the place of purification, let him wash his ulcers white as snow inthe water, let him get rid of his scabs, and let the sea bear them awayso that at length his body may appear healthy. He will then changethe fillet which binds his brows, and the loin-cloth which hides hisnakedness: until he returns to his country, until he reaches the end ofhis journey, let him by no means put off the loin-cloth, however ragged;then only shall he have always a clean one. ' Then Arad-Ea took him andconducted him to the place of purification: he washed his ulcers whiteas snow in the water, he got rid of his scabs, and the sea carried themaway, so that at length his body appeared healthy. He changed the filletwhich bound his brows, the loincloth which hid his nakedness: untilhe should reach the end of his journey, he was not to put off theloin-cloth, however ragged; then alone was he to have a clean one. " Thecure effected, Gilgames goes again on board his bark, and returns to theplace where Shamashnapishtim was awaiting him. 

Shamashnapishtim would not send his descendant back to the land of theliving without making him a princely present. "His wife spoke to him, to him Shamashnapishtim, the inhabitant of distant lands: 'Gilgames hascome, he is comforted, he is cured; what wilt thou give to him, now thathe is about to return to his country?' He took the oars, Gilgames, hebrought the bark near the shore, and Shamashnapishtim spoke to him, toGilgames: 'Gilgames, thou art going from here comforted; what shall Igive thee, now that thou art about to return to thy country? I am aboutto reveal to thee, Gilgames, a secret, and the judgment of the gods I amabout to tell it thee. There is a plant similar to the hawthorn in itsflower, and whose thorns prick like the viper. If thy hand can lay holdof that plant without being torn, break from it a branch, and bear itwith thee; it will secure for thee an eternal youth. 'Gilgames gathersthe branch, and in his joy plans with Arad-Ea future enterprises:'Arad-Ea, this plant is the plant of renovation, by which a manobtains life; I will bear it with me to Uruk the well-protected, I willcultivate a bush from it, I will cut some of it, and its name shallbe, "the old man becomes young by it;" I will eat of it, and I shallrepossess the vigour of my youth. '" He reckoned without the gods, whosejealous minds will not allow men to participate in their privileges. The first place on which they set foot on shore, "he perceived a well offresh water, went down to it, and whilst he was drawing water, a serpentcame out of it, and snatched from him the plant, yea--the serpent rushedout and bore away the plant, and while escaping uttered a malediction. That day Gilgames sat down, he wept, and his tears streamed down hischeeks he said to the mariner Arad-Ba: 'What is the use, Arad-Ea, of myrenewed strength; what is the use of my heart's rejoicing in my returnto life? It is not myself I have served; it is this earthly lion I haveserved. Hardly twenty leagues on the road, and he for himself alone hasalready taken possession of the plant. As I opened the well, the plantwas lost to me, and the genius of the fountain took possession of it:who am I that I should tear it from him?'" He re-embarks in sadness, he re-enters Uruk the well-protected, and at length begins to think ofcelebrating the funeral solemnities of Eabani, to whom he was not ableto show respect at the time of his death. He supervises them, fulfilsthe rites, intones the final chant: "The temples, thou shalt enter themno more; the white vestments, thou shalt no longer put them on; thesweet-smelling ointments, thou shalt no longer anoint thyself with themto envelop thee with their perfume. Thou shalt no longer press thybow to the ground to bend it, but those that the bow has wounded shallsurround thee; thou no longer holdest thy sceptre in thy hand, butspectres fascinate thee; thou no longer adornest thy feet with wings, thou no longer givest forth a sound upon the earth. Thy wife whom thoulovedst thou embracest her no more; thy wife whom thou hatedst thoubeatest her no more. Thy daughter whom thou lovedst thou embracest herno more; thy daughter whom thou hatedst, thou beatest her no more. Theresounding earth lies heavy upon thee, she who is dark, she who isdark, Tjinazu the mother, she who is dark, whose side is-not veiled withsplendid vestments, whose bosom, like a new-born animal, is not covered. Eabani has descended from the earth to Hades; it is not the messengerof Nergal the implacable who has snatched him away, it is not the plaguewhich has carried him off, it is not consumption that has carried himoff, it is the earth which has carried him off; it is not the field ofbattle which has carried him off, it is the earth which has carried himoff!" Gilgames dragged himself along from temple to temple, repeatinghis complaint before Bel and before Sin, and at length threw himselfat the feet of the god of the Dead, Nergal: "'Burst open the sepulchralcavern, open the ground, that the spirit of Eabani may issue from thesoil like a blast of wind. ' As soon as Nergal the valiant heard him, he burst open the sepulchral vault, he opened the earth, he caused thespirit of Eabani to issue from the earth like a blast of wind. " Gilgamesinterrogates him, and asks him with anxiety what the state of the deadmay be: "'Tell, my friend, tell, my friend, open the earth and what thouseest tell it. '--'I cannot tell it thee, my friend, I cannot tell itthee; if I should open the earth before thee, if I were to tell to theethat which I have seen, terror would overthrow thee, thou wouldest faintaway, thou wouldest weep. '--'Terror will overthrow me, I shall faintaway, I shall weep, but tell it to me. '" And the ghost depicts for himthe sorrows of the abode and the miseries of the shades. Those onlyenjoy some happiness who have fallen with arms in their hands, and whohave been solemnly buried after the fight; the manes neglected by theirrelatives succumb to hunger and thirst. * "On a sleeping couch he lies, drinking pure water, he who has been killed in battle. 'Thou hast seenhim?'--'I have seen him; his father and his mother support his head, andhis wife bends over him wailing. ' 'But he whose body remains forgottenin the fields, --thou hast seen him?'--'I have seen him; his soul has norest at all in the earth. ' 'He whose soul no one cares for, --thou hastseen him?'--'I have seen him; the dregs of the cup, the remains of arepast, that which is thrown among the refuse of the street, that iswhat he has to nourish him. '" This poem did not proceed in its entirety, or at one time, from the imagination of a single individual. Eachepisode of it answers to some separate legend concerning Gilgames, orthe origin of Uruk the well-protected: the greater part preserves undera later form an air of extreme antiquity, and, if the events dealt withhave not a precise bearing on the life of a king, they paint in a livelyway the vicissitudes of the life of the people. ** These lions, leopards, or gigantic uruses with which Grilgames and his faithful Eabani carryon so fierce a warfare, are not, as is sometimes said, mythologicalanimals. 

 * Cf. Vol. I. Pp. 160, 161 of this History for analogous ideas among the Egyptians as to the condition of the dead who were neglected by their relatives: the Egyptian double had to live on the same refuse as the Chaldæan soul. 

 ** G. Smith, identifying Gilgames with Nimrod, believes, on the other hand, that Nimrod was a real king, who reigned in Mesopotamia about 2250 B. C. ; the poem contains, according to him, episodes, more or less embellished, in the life of the sovereign. 

Similar monsters, it was believed, appeared from time to time in themarshes of Chaldæa, and gave proof of their existence to the inhabitantsof neighbouring villages by such ravages as real lions and tigers commitin India or the Sahara. It was the duty of chiefs on the border lands ofthe Euphrates, as on the banks of the Nile, as among all peoples stillsunk in semi-barbarism, to go forth to the attack of these beastssingle-handed, and to sacrifice themselves one after the other, untilone of them more fortunate or stronger than the rest should triumphover these mischievous brutes. The kings of Babylon and Nineveh in latertimes converted into a pleasure that which had been an official duty oftheir early predecessors: Gilgames had not yet arrived at that stage, and the seriousness, not to speak of the fear, with which he enteredon the fight with such beasts, is an evidence of the early date of theportions of his history which are concerned with his hunting exploits. The scenes are represented on the seals of princes who reigned prior tothe year 3000 B. C. , and the work of the ancient engraver harmonizes soperfectly with the description of the comparatively modern scribe thatit seems like an anticipated illustration of the latter; the engravingsrepresent so persistently and with so little variation the images ofthe monsters, and those of Gilgames and his faithful Eabani, that thecorresponding episodes in the poem must have already existed as we knowthem, if not in form, at least in their main drift. Other portions ofthe poem are more recent, and it would seem that the expedition againstKhumbaba contains allusions to the Elamite* invasions from which Chaldæahad suffered so much towards the XXth century before our era. Thetraditions which we possess of the times following the Deluge, embody, like the adventures of Gilganes, very ancient elements, which thescribes or narrators wove together in a more or less skilful manneraround the name of some king or divinity. 

 * Smith thought he could restore from the poem a part of Chaldæan history: he supposed Izdubar-Nimrod to have been, about 2250, the liberator of Babylon, oppressed by Elam, and the date of the foundation of a great Babylonian empire to have coincided with his victory over the Elamites. The annals of Assurbanipal show us, in fact, that an Elamite king, Kudurnankhundi, had pillaged Uruk about 2280 B. C. , and had transported to Susa a statue of the goddess Ishtar. 

[Illustration: 082. Jpg GILGAMES STRUGGLES WITH A LION]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio in the British Museum. The original measures about 1 2/5 inch in height. 

The fabulous chronicle of the cities of the Euphrates existed, therefore, in a piecemeal condition--in the memory of the people or inthe books of the priests--before even their primitive history began;the learned who collected it later on had only to select some of thematerials with which it furnished them, in order to form out of them aconnected narrative, in which the earliest ages were distinguished fromthe most recent only in the assumption of more frequent and more directinterpositions of the powers of heaven in the affairs of men. Every cityhad naturally its own version, in which its own protecting deities, itsheroes and princes, played the most important parts. That of Babylonthrew all the rest into the shade; not that it was superior to them, but because this city had speedily become strong enough to assert itspolitical supremacy over the whole region of the Euphrates. Its scribeswere accustomed to see their master treat the lords of other towns assubjects or vassals. They fancied that this must have always beenthe case, and that from its origin Babylon had been recognized as thequeen-city to which its contemporaries rendered homage. They made itsindividual annals the framework for the history of the entire country, and from the succession of its princely families on the throne, diverseas they were in origin, they constructed a complete canon of the kingsof Chaldæa. 

But the manner of grouping the names and of dividing the dynastiesvaried according to the period in which the lists were drawn up, and atthe present time we are in possession of at least two systems which theBabylonian historians attempted to construct. Berossus, who communicatedone of them to the Greeks about the beginning of the IInd century B. C. , would not admit more than eight dynasties in the period of thirty-sixthousand years between the Deluge and the Persian invasion. The lists, which he had copied from originals in the cuneiform character, havesuffered severely at the hands of his abbreviators, who omitted themajority of the names which seemed to them very barbarous in form, whilethose who copied these abbreviated lists have made such further havocwith them that they are now for the most part unintelligible. Moderncriticism has frequently attempted to restore them, with varyingresults; the reconstruction here given, which passes for the mostprobable, is not equally certain in all its parts:--*

[Illustration: 084. Jpg CHRONOLOGIC TABLE]

It was not without reason that Berossus and his authorities had put thesum total of reigns at thirty-six thousand years; this number falls inwith a certain astrological period, during which the gods had granted tothe Chaldæans glory, prosperity, and independence, and whose terminationcoincided with the capture of Babylon by Cyrus. ** Others before them hademployed the same artifice, but they reckoned ten dynasties in the placeof the eight accepted by Berossus:--

 * After the example of G. B. Niebuhr, Gutschmid admitted here, as Oppert did, 45 Assyrians; he based his view on Herodotus, in which it is said that the Assyrians held sway in Asia for 520 years, until its conquest by the Medes. Upon the improbability of this opinion, see Schrader's demonstration. 

 ** The existence of this astronomical or astrological scheme on which Berossus founded his chronology, was pointed out by Brandis, afterwards by Gutschmid; it is now generally accepted. 

[Illustration: 085. Jpg TABLE]

Attempts have been made to bring the two lists* into harmony, withvarying results; in my opinion, a waste of time and labour. For evencomparatively recent periods of their history, the Chaldæans, likethe Egyptians, had to depend upon a collection of certain abbreviated, incoherent, and often contradictory documents, from which they found itdifficult to make a choice: they could not, therefore, always come to anagreement when they wished to determine how many dynasties had succeededeach other during these doubtful epochs, how many kings were included ineach dynasty, and what length of reign was to be assigned to each king. We do not know the motives which influenced Berossus in his preferenceof one tradition over others; perhaps he had no choice in the matter, and that of which he constituted himself the interpréter was the onlyone which was then known. In any case, the tradition he followed forms asystem which we cannot, modify without misinterpreting the intention ofthose who drew it up or who have handed it down to us. We must acceptor reject it just as it is, in its entirety and without alteration:to attempt to adapt it to the testimony of the monuments would beequivalent to the creation of a new system, and not to the correctionsimply of the old one. The right course is to put it aside for themoment, and confine ourselves to the original lists whose fragments havecome down to us: they do not furnish us, it is true, with a history ofChaldæa such as it unfolded itself from age to age, but they teach uswhat the later Chaldæans knew, or thought they knew, of that history. Still it is wise to treat them with some reserve, and not to forget thatif they agree with each other in the main, they differ frequently indetails. Thus the small dynasties, which are called the VIth and VIIth, include the same number of kings on both the tablets which establishtheir existence, but the number of years assigned to the names ofthe kings and the total years of each dynasty vary a little from oneanother:--

 * The first document having claim to the title of Royal Canon was found among the tablets of the British Museum, and was published by G. Smith. The others were successively discovered by Pinches; some erroneous readings in them have been corrected by Fr. Delitzsch, and an exact edition has been published by Knudtzon. Smith's list is the fragment of a chronicle in which the VIth, VIIth, and VIIIth dynasties only are almost complete. One of Pinches's lists consists merely of a number of royal names not arranged in any consistent order, and containing their non-Semitic as well as their Semitic forms. The other two lists are actual canons, giving the names of the kings and the years of their reigns; unfortunately they are much mutilated, and the lacunæ in them cannot yet be filled up. All of them have been translated by Sayce. 

[Illustration: 080. Jpg TABLE]

[Illustration: 081. Jpg TABLE]

Is the difference in the calculations the fault of the scribes, who, in mechanically copying and recopying, ended by fatally altering thefigures? Or is it to be explained by some circumstance of which we areignorant--an association on the throne, of which the duration is at onetime neglected with regard to one of the co-regents, and at another timewith regard to the other; or was it owing to a question of legitimacy, by which, according to the decision arrived at, a reign was prolonged orabbreviated? Cotemporaneous monuments will some day, perhaps, enableus to solve the problem which the later Chaldæans did not succeed inclearing up. While awaiting the means to restore a rigorously exactchronology, we must be content with the approximate informationfurnished by the tablets as to the succession of the Babylonian kings. 

Actual history occupied but a small space in the lists--barely twentycenturies out of a whole of three hundred and sixty: beyond the historicperiod the imagination was given a free rein, and the few facts whichwere known disappeared almost completely under the accumulation ofmythical narratives and popular stories. It was not that the documentswere entirely wanting, for the Chaldæans took a great interest in theirpast history, and made a diligent search for any memorials of it. Eachtime they succeeded in disinterring an inscription from the ruins of atown, they were accustomed to make-several copies of it, and to depositthem among the archives, where they would be open to the examinationof their archaeologists. * When a prince undertook the rebuilding ofa temple, he always made excavations under the first courses of theancient structure in order to recover the documents which preserved thememory of its foundation: if he discovered them, he recorded on the newcylinders, in which he boasted of his own work, the name of the firstbuilder, and sometimes the number of years which had elapsed since itserection. **

 * We have a considerable number of examples of copies of ancient texts made in this manner. For instance, the dedication of a temple at Uruk by King Singashid, copied by the scribe Nabubalatsuikbi, son of Miziraî ("the Egyptian "), for the temple of Ezida; the legendary history of King Sargon of Agadê, copied from the inscription on the base of his statue, of which there will be further mention (pp. 91- 93 of this History); a dedication of the King Khammurabi; the inscription of Agumkakrimi, which came from the library of Assurbanipal. 

 ** Nabonidos, for instance, the last king of Babylon before the Persian conquest, has left us a memorial of his excavations. He found in this manner the cylinders of Shagashaltiburiash at Sippara, those of Khammurabi, and those of Naramsin. 

We act in a similar way to-day, and our excavations, like those of theChaldaeans, end in singularly disconnected results: the materials whichthe earth yields for the reconstruction of the first centuries consistalmost entirely of mutilated records of local dynasties, isolatednames of sovereigns, dedications of temples to gods, on sites no longeridentifiable, of whose nature we know nothing, and too brief allusionsto conquests or victories over vaguely designated nations. * Thepopulation was dense and life active in the plains of the LowerEuphrates. The cities in this region formed at their origin so manyindividual and, for the most part, petty states, whose kings and patrongods claimed to be independent of all the neighbouring kings and gods:one city, one god, one lord--this was the rule here as in the ancientfeudal districts from which the nomes of Egypt arose. The strongestof these principalities imposed its laws upon the weakest: formed intounions of two or three under a single ruler, they came to constitute adozen kingdoms of almost equal strength on the banks of the Euphrates. On the north we are acquainted with those of Agadê, Babylon, Kuta, Kharsag-Kalama, and that of Kishu, which comprised a part of Mesopotamiaand possibly the distant fortress of Harran: petty as these States were, their rulers attempted to conceal their weakness by assuming such titlesas "Kings of the Four Houses of the World, " "Kings of the Universe, ""Kings of Shumir and Akkad. " Northern Babylonia seems to have possesseda supremacy amongst them. We are probably wise in not giving too muchcredit to the fragmentary tablet which assigns to it a dynasty ofkings, of which we have no confirmatory information from othersources--Amilgula, Shamashnazir, Amilsin, and several others: this list, however, places among these phantom rulers one individual at least, Shargina-Sharrukin, who has left us material evidences of his existence. This Sargon the Elder, whose complete name is Shargani-shar-ali, wasthe son of a certain Ittibel, who does not appear to have been king. At first his possessions were confined to the city of Agadê and someundetermined portions of the environs of Babylon, but he soon succeededin annexing Babylon itself, Sippara, Kîshu, Uruk, Kuta, and Nipur: thecontemporary records attest his conquest of Elam, Guti, and even of thefar-off land of Syria, which was already known to him under the name ofAmuru. His activity as a builder was in no way behind his warlike zeal. He built Ekur, the sanctuary of Bel in Nipur, and the great templeEulbar in Agadê, in honour of Anunit, the goddess presiding over themorning star. He erected in Babylon a palace which afterwards became aroyal burying-place. He founded a new capital, a city which he peopledwith families brought from Kishu and Babylon: for a long time after hisday it bore the name which he bestowed upon it, Dur-Sharrukîn. Thissums up all the positive knowledge we have about him, and the laterChaldseans seem not to have been much better informed than ourselves. 

 * The earliest Assyriologists, H. Rawlinson, Oppert, considered the local kings as having been, for the most part, kings of all Chaldæa, and placed them in succession one after the other in the framework of the most ancient dynasties of Berossus. The merit of having established the existence of series of local dynasties, and of having given to Chaldæan history its modern form, belongs to G. Smith. Smith's idea was adopted by Menant, by Delitzsch-Murdter, by Tiele, by Winckler, and by all Assyriologists, with modifications suggested by the progress of decipherment. 

They filled up the lacunae of his history with legends. As he seemedto them to have appeared suddenly on the scene, without any apparentconnection with the king who preceded him, they assumed that he was ausurper of unknown origin, irregularly introduced by the favour of thegods into the lawful series of kings. An inscription engraved, it wassaid, on one of his statues, and afterwards, about the VIIth centuryB. C. , copied and deposited in the library of Nineveh, related at lengththe circumstances of his mysterious birth. "Sharrukîn, the mighty king, the king of Agadê, am I. My mother was a princess; my father, I did notknow him; the brother of my father lived in the mountains. My town wasAzupirâni, which is situated on the bank of the Euphrates. My mother, the princess, conceived me, and secretly gave birth to me: she placedme in a basket of reeds, she shut up the mouth of it with bitumen, sheabandoned me to the river, which did not overwhelm me. The river boreme; it brought me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer ofwater, received me in the goodness of his heart; Akki, the drawer ofwater, made me a gardener. As gardener, the goddess Ishtar loved me, andduring forty-four years I held royal sway; I commanded the Black Heads, *and ruled them. " This is no unusual origin for the founders of empiresand dynasties; witness the cases of Cyrus and Bomulus. * Sargon, likeMoses, and many other heroes of history or fable, is exposed to thewaters: he owes his safety to a poor fellah who works his shadouf on thebanks of the Euphrates to water the fields, and he passes his infancy inobscurity, if not in misery. Having reached the age of manhood, Ishtarfalls in love with him as she did with his fellow-craftsman, thegardener Ishullanu, and he becomes king, we know not by what means. 

 * The phrase "Black Heads, " _nishi salmat hahhadi_, has been taken in an ethnological sense as designating one of the races of Chaldæa, the Semitic; other Assyriologists consider it as denoting mankind in general. The latter meaning seems the more probable. 

 ** Smith had already compared the infancy of Sargon with that of Moses; the comparison with Cyrus, Bacchus, and Romulus was made by Talbot. Traditions of the same kind are frequent in history or folk-tales. 

The same inscription which reveals the romance of his youth, recountsthe successes of his manhood, and boasts of the uniformly victoriousissue of his warlike exploits. Owing to lacunae, the end of the accountis in the main wanting, and we are thus prevented from following thedevelopment of his career, but other documents come to the rescue andclaim to furnish its most important vicissitudes. He had reduced thecities of the Lower Euphrates, the island of Dilmun, Durîlu, Elam, thecountry of Kazalla: he had invaded Syria, conquered Phoenicia, crossedthe arm of the sea which separates Cyprus from the coast, and onlyreturned to his palace after an absence of three years, and after havingerected his statues on the Syrian coast. He had hardly settled down torest when a rebellion broke out suddenly; the chiefs of Chaldæa formeda league against him, and blockaded him in Agadê: Ishtar, exceptionallyfaithful to the end, obtains for him the victory, and he comes out of acrisis, in which he might have been utterly ruined, with a more secureposition than ever. All these events are regarded as having occurredsometime about 3800 B. C. , at a period when the VIth dynasty wasflourishing in Egypt. Some of them have been proved to be true by recentdiscoveries, and the rest are not at all improbable in themselves, though the work in which they are recorded is a later astrologicaltreatise. The writer was anxious to prove, by examples drawn from thechronicles, the use of portents of victory or defeat, of civic peaceor rebellion--portents which he deduced from the configuration of theheavens on the various days of the month: by going back as far as Sargonof Agadê for his instances, he must have at once increased the respectfor himself on account of his knowledge of antiquity, and the difficultywhich the common herd must have felt in verifying his assertions. Hiszeal in collecting examples was probably stimulated by the fact thatsome of the exploits which he attributes to the ancient Sargon had beenrecently accomplished by a king of the same name: the brilliant careerof Sargon of Agadê would seem to have been in his estimation somethinglike an anticipation of the still more glorious life of the Sargon ofNineveh. * What better proof of the high veneration in which the learnedmen of Assyria held the memory of the ancient Chaldæan conqueror?Naramsin, who succeeded Sargon about 3750 B. C. ** inherited hisauthority, and to some extent his renown. 

 * Hommel (Gescamede, p. 307) believes that the life of our Sargon was modelled, not on the Assyrian Sargon, but on a second Sargon, whom he places about 2000 B. C. Tiele refuses to accept the hypothesis, but his objections are not weighty, in my opinion; Hilprecht and Sayce accepted the authenticity of the facts in their details, and the recent discoveries have shown that they were right in so doing. There is a distant resemblance between the life of the legendary Sargon and the account of the victories of Ramses II. Ending in a conspiracy on his return. 

 ** The date of Naramsin is given us by the cylinder of Nabonidos, who is cited lower down. It was discovered by Pinches. Its authenticity is maintained by Oppert, by Latrille, by Tiele, by Hommel, who felt at first some hesitation, by Delitzsch-Murdter; it has been called in question, with hesitation, by Ed. Meyer, and more boldly by Winckler. There is at present no serious reason to question its accuracy, at least relatively, except the instinctive repugnance of modern critics to consider as legitimate, dates which carry them back further into the past than they are accustomed to go. 

The astrological tablets assert that he attacked the city of Apirak, onthe borders of Elam, killed the Sing, Rish-ramman, and led the peopleaway into slavery. He conquered at least part, if not the whole of Elam, and one of the few monuments which have come down to us was raised atSippara in commemoration of his prowess against the mountaineers of theZagros. He is represented on it overpowering their chief: his warriorsfollow after him and charge up the hill, carrying everything beforetheir steady onslaught. Another of his warlike expeditions is said tohave had as its field of operations a district of Mâgan, which, in theview of the writer, undoubtedly represented the Sinaitic Peninsula andperhaps Egypt. This expedition against Mâgan no doubt took place, andone of the few monuments of Naramsin which have reached us refers to it. Other inscriptions tell us incidentally that Naramsin reigned over the"four Houses of the world, " Babylon, Sippara, Nipur, and Lagash. Likehis father, he had worked at the building of the Ekur of Nipur and theBulbar of Agadê; he erected, moreover, at his own cost, the templeof the Sun at Sippara. * The latter passed through many and variedvicissitudes. Restored, enlarged, ruined on several occasions, the dateof its construction and the name of its founder were lost in the courseof ages. 

 * The text giving us this information is that in which Nabonidos affirms that Naramsin, son of Sargon of Agadô, had founded the temple of the Sun at Sippara, 3200 years before himself, which would give us 3750 B. C. For the reign of Naramsin. 

The last independent King of Babylon, Nabonaîd [Nabonidos], at lengthdiscovered the cylinders in which Naramsin, son of Sargon, had signifiedto posterity all that he had done towards the erection of a templeworthy of the deity to the god of Sippara: "for three thousand twohundred years not one of the kings had been able to find them. " Wehave no means of judging what these edifices were like for whichthe Chaldæans themselves showed such veneration; they have entirelydisappeared, or, if anything remains of them, the excavations hithertocarried out have not revealed it. Many small objects, however, whichhave accidentally escaped destruction give us a fair idea of the artistswho lived in Babylon at this time, and of their skill in handling thegraving-tool and chisel. An alabaster vase with the name ofNaramsin, and a mace-head of exquisitely veined marble, dedicated byShargani-shar-ali to the sun-god of Sippara, are valued only on accountof the beauty of the material and the rarity of the inscription; but aporphyry cylinder, which belonged to Ibnishar, scribe of the above-namedShargani, must be ranked among the masterpieces of Oriental engraving. It represents the hero Gilgames, kneeling and holding with both handsa spherically shaped vase, from which flow two copious jets forming astream running through the country; an ox, armed with a pair of giganticcrescent-shaped horns, throws back its head to catch one of the jetsas it falls. Everything in this little specimen is equally worthy ofadmiration--the purity of outline, the skilful and delicate cutting ofthe intaglio, the fidelity of the action, and the accuracy of form. A fragment of a bas-relief of the reign of Naramsin shows that thesculptors were not a bit behind the engravers of gems. This consists nowonly of a single figure, a god, who is standing on the right, wearing aconical head-dress and clothed in a hairy garment which leaves his rightarm free. The legs are wanting, the left arm and the hair are forthe most part broken away, while the features have also suffered; itsdistinguishing characteristic is a sublety of workmanship which islacking in the artistic products of a later age. The outline stands outfrom the background with a rare delicacy, the details of the musclesbeing in no sense exaggerated: were it not for the costume and pointedbeard, one would fancy it a specimen of Egyptian work of the bestMemphite period. 

[Illustration 096. Jpg THE SEAL OF SHARGANI-SHAR-ALI: GILGAMES WATERS THECELESTIAL OX. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Menant. 

One is almost tempted to believe in the truth of the tradition whichascribes to Naramsin the conquest of Egypt, or of the neighbouringcountries. 

[Illustration: 096a. Jpg Painting in Color of Charioteer]

 Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph published by Father Schiel. 

[Illustration: 097. Jpg Page image]

Did Sargon and Naramsin live at so early a date as that assigned tothem by Nabonidos? The scribes who assisted the kings of the secondBabylonian empire in their archaeological researches had perhapsinsufficient reasons for placing the date of these kings so far back inthe misty past: should evidence of a serious character A constrain us toattribute to them a later origin, we ought not to be surprised. In themean time our best course is to accept the opinion of the Chaldæans, and to leave Sargon and Naramsin in the century assigned to them byNabonidos, although from this point they look down as from a higheminence upon all the rest of Chaldæan antiquity. Excavations havebrought to light several personages of a similar date, whether alittle earlier, or a little later: Bingani-sharali, Man-ish-turba, and especially Alusharshid, who lived at Kishu and Nipur, and gainedvictories over Elam. 

[Illustration: 098. Jpg Page image: the arms op the city and kings ofLagash]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Lagash, now in the Louvre

After this glimpse of light on these shadowy kings darkness once morecloses in upon us, and conceals from us the majority of the sovereignswho ruled afterwards in Babylon. The facts and names which can bereferred with certainty to the following centuries belong not toBabylon, but to the southern States, Lagash, Uruk, Uru, Nishin, andLarsam. The national writers had neglected these principalities;we possess neither a resume of their chronicles nor a list of theirdynasties, and the inscriptions which speak of their the arms of thecity gods and princes are still very rare and kings of Lagash. Lagash, as far as our evidence goes, was, perhaps, the most illustrious ofall these cities. * It occupied the heart of the country, and its sitecovered both sides of the Shatt-el-Haî; the Tigris separated it on theeast from Anshan, the westernmost of the Elamite districts, with whichit carried on a perpetual frontier war. 

 * We are indebted almost exclusively to the researches of M. De Sarzec, and his discoveries at Telloh, for what we know of it. The results of his excavations, acquired by the French government, are now in the Louvre. The description of the ruins, the text of the inscriptions, and an account of the statues and other objects found in the course of the work, have been published by Heuzey-Sakzec, _Découvertes en Chaldée_. The name of the ancient town has been read Sirpurla, Zirgulla, etc. 

All parts of the country were not equally fertile: the fruitful andwell-cultivated district in the neighbourhood of the Shatt-el-Haî gaveplace to impoverished lands ending to the eastward, finally in swampymarshes, which with great difficulty furnished means of sustenance to apoor and thinly scattered population of fisher-folk. 

[Illustration: 099. Jpg FRAGMENT OF BAS-RELIEF BY URNINÂ, KING OFLAGASH. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stone in the Louvre. 

The capital, built on the left bank of the river, stretched out to thenorth-east and south-west a distance of some five miles. It was not somuch a city as an agglomeration of large villages, each grouped around atemple or palace--Uruazagga, Gishgalla, G-irsu, Nina, and Lagash, which latter imposed its name upon the whole. A branch of the riverShatt-el-Haî protected it on the south, and supplied the village ofNinâ with water; no trace of an inclosing wall has been found, and thetemples and palaces seem to have served as refuges in case of attack. It had as its arms, or totem, a double-headed eagle standing on a lionpassant, or on two demi-lions placed back to back. Its chief god wascalled Ningirsu, that is, the lord of Girsu, where his temple stood: hiscompanion Bau, and his associates Ninagal, Innanna and Ninsia, werethe deities of the other divisions of the city. The princes were firstcalled kings, but afterwards vicegerents--_patesi_--when they came underthe suzerainty of a more powerful king, the King of Uruk or of Babylon. 

The earlier history of this remarkable town is made up of thescanty memoirs of its rulers, together with those of the princes ofGishban--"the land of the Bow, " of which Ishin seems to have been theprincipal town. A very ancient document states, that, at the instigationof Inlil, the god of Nipur, the local deities, Ningirsu and Kirsig, setup a boundary between the two cities. In the course of time, Meshilim, a king of Kishu, which, before the rise of Agadê, was the chief town inthose parts, extended his dominion over Lagash and erected his stele atits border; Ush, vicegerent of Gishban, however, removed it, and had tosuffer defeat before he would recognize the new order of things. Afterthe lapse of some years, of which we possess no records, we find themention of a certain Urukagina, who assumes the title of king: herestored or enlarged several temples, and dug the canal which suppliedthe town of Nina with water. A few generations later we find the rulingauthority in the hands of a certain Urninâ, whose father Ninigaldun andgrandfather Gurshar received no titles--a fact which proves that theycould not have been reigning sovereigns. Urninâ appears to have been ofa peaceful and devout disposition, as the inscriptions contain frequentreferences to the edifices he had erected in honour of the gods, thesacred objects he had dedicated to them, and the timber for buildingpurposes which he had brought from Mâgan, but there is no mention inthem of any war. His son Akurgal was also a builder of temples, buthis grandson Idingiranagin, who succeeded Akurgal, was a warlike andcombative prince. 

[Illustration: 101. Jpg IDINGIRANAGIN HOLDING THE TOTEM OF LAGASH. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bas-relief F2 in the Louvre. 

It seems probable that, about that time, the kingdom of Gishban hadbecome a really powerful state. It had triumphed not only overBabylonia proper, but over Kish, Uru, Uruk, and Larsam, while one of itssovereigns had actually established his rule in some parts of NorthernSyria. Idingiranagin vanquished the troops of Gishban, and there is nowin the Louvre a trophy which he dedicated in the temple of Ninglrsu onhis return from the campaign. 

 * Hilpeecht, Bab. Expcd. Of the Univ. Of Pennsylvania, vol. I. , 2nd part, p. 47 sqq. 

[Illustration: 102. Jpg IDINGIRANAGIN IN HIS CHARIOT LEADING HIS TROOPS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the Louvre. The attendant standing behind the king has been obliterated, but we see clearly the contour of his shoulder, and his hands holding the reins. It is a large stele of close-grained white limestone, rounded at the top, and covered with scenes and inscriptions on both its faces. One of these faces treats only of religious subjects. Two warlike goddesses, crowned with plumed head-dresses and crescent-shaped horns, are placed before a heap of weapons and various other objects, which probably represent some of the booty collected in the campaign. It would appear that they accompany a tall figure of a god or king, possibly that of the deity Ningirsu, patron of Lagash and its kings. Ningirsu raises in one hand an ensign, of which the staff bears at the top the royal totem, the eagle with outspread wings laying hold by his talons of two half-lions back to back; with the other hand he brings a, club down heavily upon a group of prisoners, who struggle at his feet in the meshes of a large net. 

[Illustration: 103. Jpg Page image. VULTURES FEEDING UPON THE DEAD. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the fragment of a bas-relief in the Louvre. This is the human sacrifice after the victory, such as we find it in Egypt--the offering to the national god of a tenth of the captives, who struggle in vain to escape from fate. On the other stele the battle is at its height. Idingiranagin, standing upright in his chariot, which is guided by an attendant, charges the enemy at the head of his troops, and the plain is covered with corpses cut down by his fierce blows: a flock of vultures accompany him, and peck at each other in their struggles over the arms, legs, and decapitated heads of the vanquished. Victory once secured, he retraces his steps to bestow funeral honours upon the dead. 

[Illustration: 104. Jpg PILING UP THE MOUND OF THE DEAD AFTER THEBATTLE. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the fragment of a bas-relief in the Louvre. The bodies raised regularly in layers form an enormous heap: priests or soldiers wearing loin-cloths mount to its top, where they pile the offerings and the earth which are to form the funerary mound. The sovereign, moreover, has, in honour of the dead, consigned to execution some of the prisoners, and deigns to kill with his own hand one of the principal chiefs of the enemy. 

The design and execution of these scenes are singularly rude; men andbeasts--indeed, all the figures--have exaggerated proportions, uncouthforms, awkward positions, and an uncertain and heavy gait. The war endedin a treaty concluded with Enakalli, vicegerent of Grishban, by whichLagash obtained considerable advantages. Idingiranagin replaced thestele of Meshilim, overthrown by one of Enakalli's predecessors, anddug a ditch from the Euphrates to the provinces of Guedln to servehenceforth as a boundary. He further levied a tribute of corn for thebenefit of the goddess Nina and her consort Ningirsu, and appliedthe spoils of the campaign to the building of new sanctuaries for thepatron-gods of his city. 

[Illustration: 105. Jpg KING URNINA AND HIS FAMILY. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the Louvre. Cf. Another bas-relief of the same king, p. 244; and for the probable explanation of these pierced plaques, see p. 258 of the present work. 

His reign was, on the whole, a glorious and successful one. He conqueredthe mountain district of Elam, rescued Uruk and Uru, which had bothfallen into the hands of the people of Gishban, organized an expeditionagainst the town of Az and killed its vicegerent, in addition to whichhe burnt Arsua, and devastated the district of Mishime. He next directedan attack against Zuran, king of Udban, and, by vanquishing this Princeon the field of battle, he extended his dominion over nearly the wholeof Babylonia. 

The prosperity of his dynasty was subjected to numerous and strangevicissitudes. Whether it was that its resources were too feeble tostand the exigencies and strain of war for any length of time, or thatintestine strife had been the chief cause of its decline, we cannotsay. Its kings married many wives and became surrounded with a numerousprogeny: Urninâ had at least four sons. They often entrusted to theirchildren or their sons-in-law the government of the small towns whichtogether made up the city: these represented so many temporary fiefs, ofwhich the holders were distinguished by the title of "vicegerents. " Thisdismemberment of the supreme authority in the interest of princes, whobelieved for the most part that they had stronger claims to the thronethan its occupant, was attended with dangers to peace and to thepermanence of the dynasty. The texts furnish us with evidence of theexistence of at least half a dozen descendants of Akurgal--InannatumaI. , Intemena, his grandson Inannatuma II, all of whom seem to have beenvigorous rulers who energetically maintained the supremacy of their cityover the neighbouring estates. Inannatuma I. , however, proved no matchin the end against Urlamma, the vicegerent of Gishban, and lost part, atleast, of the territory acquired by Idingiranagin, but his son Intemenadefeated Urlamma on the banks of the Lumasirta Canal, and, having killedor deposed him, gave the vicegerency of Gishban to a certain Hi, priestof Ninab, who remained his loyal vassal to the end of his days. Withhis aid Intemena restored the stelae and walls which had been destroyedduring the war; he also cleared out the old canals and dug new ones, themost important of which was apparently an arm of the Shatt-el-Hai, andran from the Euphrates to the Tigris, through the very centre of thedomains of Ghirsu. 

Other kings and vicegerents of doubtful sequence were followed lastly byUrbau and his son Gudea. These were all piously devoted to Ningirsu ingeneral, and in particular to the patron of their choice from amongthe divinities of the country--Papsukal, Dunziranna, and Ninâgal. Theyrestored and enriched the temples of these gods: they dedicated tothem statues or oblation vases for the welfare of themselves and theirfamilies. It would seem, if we are to trust the accounts which they giveof themselves, that their lives were passed in profound peace, withoutother care than that of fulfilling their duties to heaven and itsministers. Their actual condition, if we could examine it, woulddoubtless appear less agreeable and especially less equable; revolutionsin the palace would not be wanting, nor struggles with the other peoplesof Chaldæa, with Susiana and even more distant nations. When Agadê roseinto power in Northern Babylonia, they fell under its rule, and one ofthem, Lugal-ushum-gal, acknowledged himself a dependant of Sargon. Onthe decline of Agade, and when that city was superseded by Uru in thehegemony of Babylonia proper, the vicegerents of Lagash were transferredwith the other great towns to the jurisdiction of Uru, and flourishedunder the supremacy of the new dynasty. 

Grudea, son of Urbau, who, if not the most powerful of its princes, is at least the sovereign of whom we possess the greatest number ofmonuments, captured the town of Anshan in Elam, and this is probably notthe only campaign in which he took part, for he speaks of his successin an incidental manner, and as if he were in a hurry to pass to moreinteresting subjects. 

[Illustration: 108. Jpg THE SACRIFICE]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stone in the Louvre. 

That which seemed to him important in his reign, and which especiallycalled forth the recognition of posterity, was the number of his piousfoundations, distinguished as they were by beauty and magnificence. Thegods themselves had inspired him in his devout undertakings, and hadeven revealed to him the plans which he was to carry out. An old man ofvenerable aspect appeared to him in a vision, and commanded him to builda temple: as he did not know with whom he had to do, Nina his motherinformed him that it was his brother, the god Ningirsu. This having beenmade clear, a young woman furnished with style and writing tablet waspresented to him--Nisaba, the sister of Nina; she made a drawing in hispresence, and put before him the complete model of a building. He setto work on it _con amore_, and sent for materials to the most distantcountries--to Mâgan, Amanus, the Lebanon, and into the mountains whichseparate the valley of the Upper Tigris from that of the Euphrates. 

[Illustration: 109. Jpg SITTING STATUE OF GUDEA]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin

The sanctuaries which he decorated, and of which he felt so proud, areto-day mere heaps of bricks, now returned to their original clay; butmany of the objects which he placed in them, and especially the statues, have traversed the centuries without serious damage before finding aresting-place in the Louvre. The sculptors of Lagash, after the time ofIdingi-ranagin, had been instructed in a good school, and had learnedtheir business. Their bas-reliefs are not so good as those of Naramsin;the execution of them is not so refined, the drawing less delicate, andthe modelling of the parts not so well thought out. A good illustrationof their work is the fragment of a square stele which represents a sceneof offering or sacrifice. We see in the lower part of the picture afemale singer, who is accompanied by a musician, playing on a lyreornamented with the head of an ox, and a bull in the act of walking. In the upper part an individual advances, clad in a fringed mantle, andbearing in his right hand a kind of round paten, and in his left a shortstaff. An acolyte follows him, his arms brought up to his breast, whileanother individual marks, by clapping his hands, the rhythm of the odewhich a singer like the one below is reciting. The fragment is muchabraded, and its details, not being clearly exhibited, have rather tobe guessed at; but the defaced aspect which time has produced is of someservice to it, since it conceals in some respect the rudeness ofits workmanship. The statues, on the other hand, bear evidence of aprecision of chiselling and a skill beyond question. Not that there areno faults to be found in the work. They are squat, thick, and heavyin form, and seem oppressed by the weight of the woollen covering withwhich the Chaldeans enveloped themselves; when viewed closely, theyexcite at once the wonder and repulsion of an eye accustomed to thedelicate grace, and at times somewhat slender form, which usuallycharacterized the good statues of the ancient and middle empire ofEgypt. But when we have got over the effect of first impressions, we canbut admire the audacity with which the artists attacked their material. This is of hard dolerite, offering great resistance to the tool--harder, perhaps, than the diorite out of which the Memphite sculptor had tocut his Khephren: they succeeded in mastering it, and in handling it asfreely as if it were a block of limestone or marble. 

[Illustration: 111. Jpg Plan of the Ruins of Mughîer]

The surface of the breast and back, the muscular development of theshoulders and arms, the details of the hands and feet, all the nudeportions, are treated at once with a boldness and attention to minutiaerarely met with in similar works. The pose is lacking in variety; theindividual, whether male or female, is sometimes represented standingand sometimes sitting on a low seat, the legs brought together, the bustrising squarely from the hips, the hands crossed upon the breast, in aposture of submission or respectful adoration. The mantle passes overthe left shoulder, leaving the right free, and is fastened on the rightbreast, the drapery displaying awkward and inartistic folds: the latterwidens in the form of a funnel from top to bottom, being bell-shapedaround the lower part of the body, and barely leaves the ankles exposed. 

[Illustration: 112. Jpg STATUES FROM TELLOH. And HEAD OF ONE OF THESTATUE OF GUDEA. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec. 

All the large statues to be seen at the Louvre have lost their heads;fortunately we possess a few separate heads. Some are completely shaven, others wear a kind of turban affording shade to the forehead and eyes;among them all we see the same qualities and defects which we find inthe bodies: a hardness of expression, heaviness, absence of vivacity, and yet withal a vigour of reproduction and an accurate knowledge ofhuman anatomy. These are instances of what could be accomplished in acity of secondary rank; better things were doubtless produced in thegreat cities, such as Uru and Babylon. Chaldæan art, as we are ableto catch a glimpse of it in the monuments of Lagash, had neither thelitheness, nor animation, nor elegance of the Egyptian, but it wasnevertheless not lacking in force, breadth, and originality. Urningirsusucceeded his father Gudea, to be followed rapidly by several successivevicegerents, ending, it would appear, in Gala-lama. Their inscriptionsare short and insignificant, and show that they did not enjoy the sameresources or the same favour which enabled Gudea to reign gloriously. The prosperity of Lagash decreased steadily under their administration, and they were all the humble vassals of the King of Uru, Dungi, son ofUrbau; a fact which tends to make us regard Urbau as having been thesuzerain upon whom Gudea himself was dependent. Uru, the only city amongthose of Lower Chaldæa which stands on the right bank of the Euphrates, was a small but strong place, and favourably situated for becoming oneof the commercial and industrial centres in these distant ages. TheWady Eummein, not far distant, brought to it the riches of Central andSouthern Arabia, gold, precious stones, gums, and odoriferous resins forthe exigencies of worship. Another route, marked out by wells, traversedthe desert to the land of the semi-fabulous Mâshu, and from thenceperhaps penetrated as far as Southern Syria and the SinaiticPeninsula--Mâgan and Milukhkha on the shores of the Red Sea: this wasnot the easiest but it was the most direct route for those bound forAfrica, and products of Egypt were no doubt carried along it in orderto reach in the shortest time the markets of Uru. The Euphrates nowruns nearly five miles to the north of the town, but from the regionsbordering the Black Sea. 

[Illustration: 114. Jpg Plan of the Ruins of Abu-Shahreyn]

In ancient times it was not so distant, but passed almost by itsgates. The cedars, cypresses, and pines of Amamis and the Lebanon, thelimestones, marbles, and hard stones of Upper Syria, were brought downto it by boat; and probably also metals—iron, copper and lead. 

The Shatt-el-Haî, moreover, poured its waters into the Euphrates almostopposite the city, and opened up to it commercial relations with theUpper and Middle Tigris. And this was not all; whilst some of itsboatmen used its canals and rivers as highways, another section madetheir way to the waters of the Persian Gulf and traded with the ports onits coast. Eridu, the only city which could have barred their accessto the sea, was a town given up to religion, and existed only for itstemples and its gods. It was not long before it fell under the influenceof its powerful neighbour, becoming the first port of call for vesselsproceeding up the Euphrates. 

[Illustration: 115. Jpg AN ARAB CROSSING THE TIGRIS IN A "KUFA. "]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Chesney. 

In the time of the Greeks and Romans the Chaldaeans were accustomedto navigate the Tigris either in round flat-bottomed boats, of littledraught--"kufas, " in fact--or on rafts placed upon inflated skins, exactly similar in appearance and construction to the "keleks" of ourown day. These keleks were as much at home on the sea as upon the river, and they may still be found in the Persian Gulf engaged in the coastingtrade. Doubtless many of these were included among the vessels of Urumentioned in the texts, but there were also among the latter thoselong large rowing-boats with curved stem and stern, Egyptian in theirappearance, which are to be found roughly incised on some ancientcylinders. These primitive fleets were not disposed to risk thenavigation of the open sea. They preferred to proceed slowly along theshore, hugging it in all cases, except when it was necessary to reachsome group of neighbouring islands; many days of navigation were thusrequired to make a passage which one of our smallest sail-boats wouldeffect in a few hours, and at the end of their longest voyages theywere not very distant from their point of departure. It would be a greatmistake to suppose them capable of sailing round Arabia and of fetchingblocks of stone by sea from the Sinaitic Peninsula; such an expedition, which would have been dangerous even for Greek or Roman Galleys, wouldhave been simply impossible for them. If they ever crossed the Straitof Ormuzd, it was an exceptional thing, their ordinary voyages beingconfined within the limits of the gulf. The merchants of Uru wereaccustomed to visit regularly the island of Dilmun, the land of Mâgan, the countries of Milukhkha and Gubîn; from these places they broughtcargoes of diorite for their sculptors, building-timber for theirarchitects, perfumes and metals transported from Yemen by land, andpossibly pearls from the Bahrein Islands. They encountered seriousrivalry from the sailors of Dilmun and Mâgan, whose maritime tribes werethen as now accustomed to scour the seas. The risk was great for thosewho set out on such expeditions, perhaps never to return, but the profitwas considerable. 

[Illustration: 117. Jpg AN ASSYRIAN KELEK LADEN WITH BUILDING-STONE. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from "Kouyunjik" (Layard, _The Monuments of Nineveh_, 2nd series, pi. 13; cf. Place, _Ninive et l'Assyrie_, pl. 43, No. 1. )

Uru, enriched by its commerce, was soon in a position to subjugatethe petty neighbouring states--Uruk, Larsam, Lagash, and Nipur. Itsterritory formed a fairly extended sovereignty, whose lords entitledthemselves kings of Shumir and Akkad, and ruled over all SouthernChaldæa for many centuries. 

Several of these kings, the Lugalkigubnidudu and the Lugalkisalsi, ofwhom some monuments have been preserved to us, seem to have extendedtheir influence beyond these limits prior to the time of Sargon theElder; and we can date the earliest of them with tolerable probability. Urbau reigned some time about 2900 B. C. He was an energetic builder, andmaterial traces of his activity are to be found everywhere throughoutthe country. The temple of the Sun at Larsam, the temple of Nina inUruk, and the temples of Inlilla and Ninlilla in Nipur were indebtedto him for their origin or restoration: he decorated or repairedall structures which were not of his own erection: in Uru itselfthe sanctuary of the moon-god owes its foundation to him, and thefortifications of the city were his work. Dungi, his son, was anindefatigable bricklayer, like his father: he completed the sanctuaryof the moon-god, and constructed buildings in Uruk, Lagash, and Kutha. There is no indication in the inscriptions of his having been engagedin any civil struggle or in war with a foreign nation; we should make aserious mistake, however, if we concluded from this silence that peacewas not disturbed in his time. The tie which bound together the pettystates of which Uru was composed was of the slightest. The sovereigncould barely claim as his own more than the capital and the districtsurrounding it; the other cities recognized his authority, paid himtribute, did homage to him in religious matters, and doubtless renderedhim military service also, but each one of them nevertheless maintainedits particular constitution and obeyed its hereditary lords. Theselords, it is true, lost their title of king, which now belongedexclusively to their suzerain, and each one had to be content in hisdistrict with the simple designation of "vicegerent;" but having oncefulfilled their feudal obligations, they had absolute power overtheir ancient domains, and were able to transmit to their progeny theinheritance they had received from their fathers. Gudea probably, andmost certainly his successors, ruled in this way over Lagash, as a fiefdepending on the crown of Uru. After the manner of the Egyptian barons, the vassals of the kings of Chaldaea submitted to the control of theirsuzerain without resenting his authority as long as they felt thecurbing influence of a strong hand: but on the least sign of feeblenessin their master they reasserted themselves, and endeavoured to recovertheir independence. A reign of any length was sure to be disturbed byrebellions sometimes difficult to repress: if we are ignorant of anysuch, it is owing to the fact that inscriptions hitherto discovered arefound upon objects upon which an account of a battle would hardly finda fitting place, such as bricks from a temple, votive cones or cylindersof terra-cotta, amulets or private seals. We are still in ignorance asto Dungi's successors, and the number of years during which this firstdynasty was able to prolong its existence. We can but guess that itsempire broke up by disintegration after a period of no long duration. Its cities for the most part became emancipated, and their rulersproclaimed themselves kings once more. We see that the kingdom ofAmnanu, for instance, was established on the left bank of the Euphrates, with Uruk as its capital, and that three successive sovereigns atleast--of whom Singashid seems to have been the most active--were ableto hold their own there. Uru had still, however, sufficient prestige andwealth to make it the actual metropolis of the entire country. No onecould become the legitimate lord of Shumir and Accad before he hadbeen solemnly enthroned in the temple at Uru. For many centuries everyambitious kinglet in turn contended for its possession and made ithis residence. The first of these, about 2500 B. C. , were the lordsof Nishin, Libitanunit, Gamiladar, Inedîn, Bursîn I. , and Ismidâgan:afterwards, about 2400 B. C. , Gungunum of Nipur made himself master ofit. The descendants of Gungunum, amongst others Bursîn II. , Gimilsîn, Inêsin, reigned gloriously for a few years. Their records show thatthey conquered not only a part of Elam, but part of Syria. They weredispossessed in their turn by a family belonging to Lârsam, whose twochief representatives, as far as we know, were Nurramman and his sonSinidinnam (about 2300 B. C. ). Naturally enough, Sinidinnam was a builderor repairer of temples, but he added to such work the clearing of theShatt-el-Haî and the excavation of a new canal giving a more directcommunication between the Shatt and the Tigris, and in thus controllingthe water-system of the country became worthy of being considered one ofthe benefactors of Chaldæa. 

We have here the mere dust of history, rather than history itself: herean isolated individual makes his appearance in the record of his name, to vanish when we attempt to lay hold of him; there, the stem of adynasty which breaks abruptly off, pompous preambles, devout formulas, dedications of objects or buildings, here and there the account of somebattle, or the indication of some foreign country with which relationsof friendship or commerce were maintained--these are the scantymaterials out of which to construct a connected narrative. Egypt has notmuch more to offer us in regard to many of her Pharaohs, but we have inher case at least the ascertained framework of her dynasties, inwhich each fact and each new name falls eventually, and after someuncertainty, into its proper place. The main outlines of the picture aredrawn with sufficient exactitude to require no readjustment, the groupsare for the most part in their fitting positions, the blank spaces orpositions not properly occupied are gradually restricted, and filled infrom day to day; the expected moment is in sight when, the arrangementof the whole being accomplished, it will be necessary only to fill inthe details. In the case of Chaldæa the framework itself is wanting, and expedients must be resorted to in order to classify the elementsentering into its composition. Naramsîn is in his proper place, ornearly so; but as for Gudea, what interval separates him from Naramsîn, and at what distance from Gudea are we to place the kings of Uru? Thebeginnings of Chaldæa have merely a provisional history: the facts init are certain, but the connection of the facts with one another is toooften a matter of speculation. The arrangement which is put forward atpresent can be regarded only as probable, but it would be difficultto propose a better until the excavations have furnished us with freshmaterial; it must be accepted merely as an attempt, without pledging toit our confidence on the one hand, or regarding it with scepticism onthe other. 

CHAPTER II--THE TEMPLES AND THE GODS OF CHALDÆA

_THE CONSTRUCTION AND REVENUES OF THE TEMPLES--THE POPULAR GODS AND THETHEOLOGICAL TRIADS----THE DEAD AND HADES_. 

_Chaldæan cities: the resemblance of their ruins to natural moundscaused by their exclusive use of brick as a building material--Theircity walls: the temples and local gods; reconstruction of their historyby means of the stamped bricks of which they were built--The two typesof ziggurât: the arrangement of the temple of Nannar at Uru. 

The tribes of the Chaldæan gods--Genii hostile to men, their monstrousshapes; the south-west wind; friendly genii--The Seven, and theirattacks on the moon-god; Gibil, the fire-god, overcomes them and theirsnares--The Sumerian gods; Ningirsu: the difficulty of defining them andof understanding the nature of them; they become merged in the Semiticdeities. 

Characteristics and dispositions of the Chaldæan gods--the goddesses, like women of the harem, are practically nonentities; Mylitta andher meretricious rites--The divine aristocracy and its principalrepresentatives: their relations to the earth, oracles, speakingstatues, household gods--The gods of each city do not exclude thoseof neighbouring cities: their alliances and their borrowings from oneanother--The sky-gods and the earth-gods, the sidereal gods: the moonand the sun. 

The feudal gods: several among them unite to govern the world; the twotriads of Eridu--The supreme triad: Anu the heaven; Bel the earth andhis fusion with the Babylonian Merodach; Ea, the god of the waters--Thesecond triad: Sin the moon and Shamash the sun; substitution of Bammanfor Ishtar in this triad; the winds and the legend of Adapa, theattributes of Ramman--The addition of goddesses to these two triads;the insignificant position which they occupy. 

The assembly of the gods governs the world: the bird Zu steals thetablets of destiny--Destinies are written in the heavens and determinedby the movements of the stars; comets and their presiding deities, Neboand Ishtai--The numerical value of the gods--The arrangement of thetemples, the local priesthood, festivals, revenues of the gods and giftsmade to them--Sacrifices, the expiation of crimes--Death and the futureof the soul--Tombs and the cremation of the dead; the royal sepulchresand funerary rites--Hades and its sovereigns: Nergal, Allât, thedescent of Ishtar into the infernal regions, and the possibility of aresurrection The invocation of the dead--The ascension of Etana. _

[Illustration: 124. Jpg Chapter II]

CHAPTER II--THE TEMPLES AND THE GODS OF CHALDÆA

_The construction and revenues of the temples--Popular gods andtheological triads--The dead and Hades_. 

The cities of the Euphrates attract no attention, like those of theNile, by the magnificence of their ruins, which are witnesses, even after centuries of neglect, to the activity of a powerful andindustrious people: on the contrary, they are merely heaps of rubbish inwhich no architectural outline can be distinguished--mounds of stiffand greyish clay, cracked by the sun, washed into deep crevasses by therain, and bearing no apparent traces of the handiwork of man. 

[Illustration: 126. Jpg PLAN OF THE RUINS OF WAKKA]

In the estimation of the Chaldæan architects, stone was a material ofsecondary consideration: as it was necessary to bring it from a greatdistance and at considerable expense, they used it very sparingly, andthen merely for lintels, uprights, thresholds, for hinges on which tohang their doors, for dressings in some of their state apartments, incornices or sculptured friezes on the external walls of their buildings;and even then its employment suggested rather that of a band ofembroidery carefully disposed on some garment to relieve the plainnessof the material. Crude brick, burnt brick, enamelled brick, but alwaysand everywhere brick was the principal element in their construction. The soil of the marshes or of the plains, separated from the pebblesand foreign substances which it contained, mixed with grass or choppedstraw, moistened with water, and assiduously trodden underfoot, furnished the ancient builders with materials of incredible tenacity. This was moulded into thin square bricks, eight inches to a foot across, and three to four inches thick, but rarely larger: they were stamped onthe flat side, by means of an incised wooden block, with the name ofthe reigning sovereign, and were then dried in the sun. * A layer offine mortar or of bitumen was sometimes spread between the courses, orhandfuls of reeds would be strewn at intervals between the brickwork toincrease the cohesion: more frequently the crude bricks were piled oneupon another, and their natural softness and moisture brought abouttheir rapid agglutination. ** As the building proceeded, the weightof the courses served to increase still further the adherence of thelayers: the walls soon became consolidated into a compact mass, in whichthe horizontal strata were distinguishable only by the varied tints ofthe clay used to make the different relays of bricks. 

 * The making of bricks for the Assyrian monuments of the time of the Sargonids has been minutely described by Place, _Ninive et l'Assyrie_, vol. I. Pp. 211-214. The methods of procedure were exactly the same as those used under the earliest king known, as has been proved by the examination of the bricks taken from the monuments of Uru and Lagash. 

 ** This method of building was noticed by classical writers. The word "Bowarieh, " borne by several ancient mounds in Chaldoa, signifies, properly speaking, a mat of reeds; it is applied only to such buildings as are apparently constructed with alternate layers of brick and dried reeds. The proportion of these layers differs in certain localities: in the ruins of the ancient temple of Belos at Babylon, now called the "Mujelibeh, " the lines of straw and reeds run uninterruptedly between each course of bricks; in the ruins of Akkerkuf, they only occur at wider intervals--according to Niebuhr and Ives, every seventh or eighth course; according to Raymond, every seventh course, or sometimes every fifth or sixth course, but in these cases the layer of reeds becomes 3 1/2 to 3 3/4 inches wide. H. Rawlin-son thinks, on the other hand, that all the monuments in which we find layers of straw and reeds between the brick courses belong to the Parthian period. 

[Illustration: 128. Jpg A CHALDÆAN STAMPED BRICK. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a brick preserved in the Louvre. The bricks bearing historical inscriptions, which are sometimes met with, appear to have been mostly ex-voto offerings placed somewhere prominently, and not building materials hidden in the masonry. 

Monuments constructed of such a plastic material required constantattention and frequent repairs, to keep them in good condition: after afew years of neglect they became quite disfigured, the houses suffereda partial dissolution in every storm, the streets were covered witha coating of fine mud, and the general outline of the buildings andhabitations grew blurred and defaced. Whilst in Egypt the main featuresof the towns are still traceable above ground, and are so well preservedin places that, while excavating them, we are carried away fromthe present into the world of the past, the Chaldæan cities, on thecontrary, are so overthrown and seem to have returned so thoroughly tothe dust from which their founders raised them, that the most patientresearch and the most enlightened imagination can only imperfectlyreconstitute their arrangement. 

The towns were not enclosed within those square or rectangularenclosures with which the engineers of the Pharaohs fortified theirstrongholds. The ground-plan of Uru was an oval, that of Larsam formedalmost a circle upon the soil, while Uruk and Eridu resembled in shapea sort of irregular trapezium. The curtain of the citadel looked down onthe plain from a great height, so that the defenders were almost outof reach of the arrows or slings of the besiegers: the remains of theramparts at Uruk at the present day are still forty to fifty feethigh, and twenty or more feet in thickness at the top. Narrow turretsprojected at intervals of every fifty feet along the face of the wall:the excavations have not been sufficiently pursued to permit of ourseeing what system of defence was applied to the entrances. The areadescribed by these cities was often very large, but the populationin them was distributed very unequally; the temples in the differentquarters formed centres around which were clustered the dwellings of theinhabitants, sometimes densely packed, and elsewhere thinly scattered. The largest and richest of these temples was usually reserved for theprincipal deity, whose edifices were being continually decorated bythe ruling princes, and the extent of whose ruins still attracts thetraveller. The walls, constructed and repaired with bricks stampedwith the names of lords of the locality, contain in themselves alone analmost complete history. Did Urbau, we may ask, found the ziggurat ofNannar in Uru? We meet with his bricks at the base of the most ancientportions of the building, and we moreover learn, from cylindersunearthed not far from it, that "for Nannar, the powerful bull of Anu, the son of Bel, his King, Urbau, the brave hero, King of Uru, had builtE-Timila, his favourite temple. " The bricks of his son Dungi are foundmixed with his own, while here and there other bricks belonging tosubsequent kings, with cylinders, cones, and minor objects, strewnbetween the courses, mark restorations at various later periods. Whatis true of one Chaldæan city is equally true of all of them, and thedynasties of Uruk and of Lagash, like those of Uru, can be reconstructedfrom the revelations of their brickwork. The lords of heaven promisedto the lords of the earth, as a reward of their piety, both glory andwealth in this life, and an eternal fame after death: they have, indeed, kept their word. The majority of the earliest Chaldæan heroes would beunknown to us, were it not for the witness of the ruined sanctuarieswhich they built, and that which they did in the service of theirheavenly patrons has alone preserved their names from oblivion. Theirmost extravagant devotion, however, cost them less money and effort thanthat of the Pharaohs their contemporaries. While the latter had tobring from a distance, even from the remotest parts of the desert, thedifferent kinds of stone which they considered worthy to form part ofthe decoration of the houses of their gods, the Chaldæan kings gatheredup outside their very doors the principal material for their buildings:should they require any other accessories, they could obtain, atthe worst, hard stone for their statues and thresholds in Mâgan andMilukhkha, and beams of cedar and cypress in the forests of the Amanusand the Upper Tigris. Under these conditions a temple was soon erected, and its construction did not demand centuries of continuous labour, likethe great limestone and granite sanctuaries of Egypt: the same ruler wholaid the first brick, almost always placed the final one, and succeedinggenerations had only to keep the building in ordinary repair, withoutaltering its original plan. The work of construction was in almostevery case carried out all at one time, designed and finished fromthe drawings of one architect, and bears traces but rarely of thosedeviations from the earlier plans which sometimes make the comprehensionof the Theban temples so difficult a matter: if the state of decay ofcertain parts, or more often inadequate excavation, frequently preventus from appreciating their details, we can at least reinstate theirgeneral outline with tolerable accuracy. 

While the Egyptian temple was spread superficially over a large area, the Chalæan temple strove to attain as high an elevation as possible. The "ziggurats, " whose angular profile is a special characteristic ofthe landscapes of the Euphrates, were composed of several immense cubes, piled up on one another, and diminishing in size up to the small shrineby which they were crowned and wherein the god himself was supposed todwell. There are two principal types of these ziggurats. In the first, for which the builders of Lower Chaldæa showed a marked preference, the vertical axis, common to all the superimposed stories, did not passthrough the centre of the rectangle which served as the base of thewhole building; it was carried back and placed near to one of the narrowends of the base, so that the back elevation of the temple rose abruptlyin steep narrow ledges above the plain, while the terraces of the frontbroadened out into wide platforms. The stories are composed of solidblocks of crude brick; up to the present, at least, no traces ofinternal chambers have been found. * The chapel on the summit could notcontain more than one apartment: an altar stood before the door, andaccess to it was obtained by a straight external staircase, interruptedat each terrace by a more or less spacious landing. ** The second typeof temple frequently found in Northern Chaldæa was represented by abuilding on a square base with seven stories, all of equal height, connected by one or two lateral staircases, having on the summit, thepavilion of the god; this is the "terraced tower" which excited theadmiration of the Greeks at Babylon, and of which the temple of Bel wasthe most remarkable example. The ruins of it still exist, but it hasbeen so frequently and so completely restored in the course of ages, that it is impossible to say how much now remains of the originalconstruction. We know of several examples, however, of the other typeof ziggurat--one at Uru, another at Bridu, a third at Uruk, withoutmentioning those which have not as yet been methodically explored. Noneof them rises directly from the surface of the ground, but they are allbuilt on a raised platform, which consequently places the foundations ofthe temple nearly on a level with the roofs of the surrounding houses. The raised platform of the temple of Nannar at Uru still measures 20feet in height, and its four angles are orientated exactly to the fourcardinal points. Its façade was approached by an inclined plane, or bya flight of low steps, and the summit, which was surrounded by a lowbalustrade, was paved with enormous burnt bricks. On this terrace, processions at solemn festivals would have ample space to perform theirevolutions. The lower story of the temple occupies a parallelogram of198 feet in length by 173 feet in width, and rises about 27 feet inheight. 

 * Perrot-Ohipiez admit that between the first and second story there was a sort of plinth seven feet in height which corresponded to the foundation platform below the first story. It appears to me, as it did to Loftus, that the slope which now separates the two vertical masses of brickwork "is accidental, and owes its existence to the destruction of the upper portion of the second story. " Taylor mentions only two stories, and evidently considers the slope in question to be a bank of rubbish. 

 ** Perrot-Chipiez place the staircase leading from the ground-level to the terrace inside the building--"an arrangement which would have the advantage of not interfering with the outline of this immense platform, and would not detract from the strength and solidity of its appearance;" Reber proposes a different combination. At Uru, the whole staircase projects in front of the platform and "loads up to the edge of the basement of the second story, " then continues as an inclined plane from the edge of the first story to the terrace of the second, forming one single staircase, perhaps of the same width as this second story, leading from the base to the summit of the building. 

[Illustration: 134. Jpg THE TEMPLE OF NANNAR AT URU, APPROXIMATELYRESTORED. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. The restoration differs from that proposed by Perrot-Chipiez. I have made it by working out the description taken down on the spot by Taylor. 

The central mass of crude brick has preserved its casing of red tiles, cemented with bitumen, almost intact up to the top; it isstrengthened by buttresses--nine on the longer and six on the shortersides--projecting about a foot, which relieve its rather bare surface. The second story rises to the height of only 20 feet above, the first, and when intact could not have been more than 26 to 30 feet high. * Manybricks bearing the stamp of Dungi are found among the materials used inthe latest restoration, which took place about the VIth century beforeour era; they have a smooth surface, are broken here and there byair-holes, and their very simplicity seems to bear witness to the factthat Nabonidos confined himself to the task of merely restoring thingsto the state in which the earlier kings of Uru had left them. **

[Illustration: 135. Jpg THE TEMPLE OF URU IN ITS PRESENT STATE, ACCORDINGTO TAYLOR]

 Facsimile, by Faucher-Gudin, of the drawing published by Taylor. 

 * At the present time 14 feet high, plus 5 feet of rubbish, 119 feet long, 75 feet wide (Loftus, _Travels and Researches in Olialdsea and Susiana_, p. 129). 

 ** The cylinders of Nabonidos describing the restoration of the temple were found at the four angles of the second story by Taylor. 

Till within the last century, traces of a third story to this templemight have been distinguished; unlike the lower ones, it was not ofsolid brickwork, but contained at least one chamber: this was the Holyof Holies, the sanctuary of Nannar. The external walls were covered withpale blue enamelled tiles, having a polished surface. The interiorwas panelled with cedar or cypress--rare woods procured as articlesof commerce from the peoples of the North and West; this woodwork wasinlaid in parts with thin leaves of gold, alternating with panels ofmosaics composed of small pieces of white marble, alabaster, onyx, andagate, cut and polished. 

[Illustration: 136. Jpg FURTHER VIEW OF THE TEMPLE OF URU]

 In Its Present State, According To Loftus. Drawn by Bouchier, from Loftus. 

Here stood the statue of Nannar, one of those stiff and conventionalizedfigures in the traditional pose handed down from generation togeneration, and which lingered even in the Chaldæan statues of Greektimes. The spirit of the god dwelt within it in the same way as thedouble resided in the Egyptian idols, and from thence he watched overthe restless movements of the people below, the noise of whose turmoilscarcely reached him at that elevation. The gods of the Euphrates, likethose of the Nile, constituted a countless multitude of visible andinvisible beings, distributed into tribes and empires throughout all theregions of the universe. A particular function or occupation formed, so to speak, the principality of each one, in which he worked with anindefatigable zeal, under the orders of his respective prince or king;but, whereas in Egypt they were on the whole friendly to man, or at thebest indifferent in regard to him, in Chaldæa they for the most partpursued him with an implacable hatred, and only seemed to exist in orderto destroy him. These monsters of alarming aspect, armed with knives andlances, whom the theologians of Heliopolis and Thebes confined withinthe caverns of Hades in the depths of eternal darkness, were believedby the Chaldæans to be let loose in broad daylight over the earth, --suchwere the "gallu" and the "mas-kim, " the "âlu" and the "utukku, " besidesa score of other demoniacal tribes bearing curious and mysterious names. 

[Illustration: 137. Jpg Lion-headed genius. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a small terra-cotta figure of the Assyrian period, and now in the Louvre. It was one of the figures buried under the threshold of one of the gates of the town at Khorsabad, to keep off baleful influences. 

Some floated in the air and presided over the unhealthy winds. TheSouth-West Wind, the most cruel of them all, stalked over the solitudesof Arabia, whence he suddenly issued during the most oppressive monthsof the year: he collected round him as he passed the malarial vapoursgiven off by the marshes under the heat of the sun, and he spread themover the country, striking down in his violence not only man and beast, but destroying harvests, pasturage, and even trees. 

[Illustration: 138. Jpg THE SOUTH-WEST WIND]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bronze original now in the Louvre. The latter museum and the British Museum possess several other figures of the same demon. 

The genii of fevers and madness crept in silently everywhere, insidiousand traitorous as they were. The plague alternately slumbered or madefurious onslaughts among crowded populations. Imps haunted the houses, goblins wandered about the water's edge, ghouls lay in wait fortravellers in unfrequented places, and the dead quitting their tombs inthe night stole stealthily among the living to satiate themselves withtheir blood. The material shapes attributed to these murderous beingswere supposed to convey to the eye their perverse and ferociouscharacters. They were represented as composite creatures in whom thebody of a man would be joined grotesquely to the limbs of animals in themost unexpected combinations. They worked in as best they could, birds'claws, fishes' scales, a bull's tail, several pairs of wings, the headof a lion, vulture, hyaena, or wolf; when they left the creature a humanhead, they made it as hideous and distorted as possible. The South-WestWind was distinguished from all the rest by the multiplicity of theincongruous elements of which his person was composed. His dog-like bodywas supported upon two legs terminating in eagle's claws; in addition tohis arms, which were furnished with sharp talons, he had four outspreadwings, two of which fell behind him, while the other two rose up andsurrounded his head; he had a scorpion's tail, a human face with largegoggle-eyes, bushy eyebrows, fleshless cheeks, and retreating lips, showing a formidable row of threatening teeth, while from his flattenedskull protruded the horns of a goat: the entire combination was sohideous, that it even alarmed the god and put him to flight, when he wasunexpectedly confronted with his own portrait. There was no lack ofgood genii to combat this deformed and vicious band. They toowere represented as monsters, but monsters of a fine and noblebearing, --griffins, winged lions, lion-headed men, and more especiallythose splendid human-headed bulls, those "lamassi" crowned with mitres, whose gigantic statues kept watch before the palace and temple gates. Between these two races hostility was constantly displayed: restrainedat one point, it broke out afresh at another, and the evil genii, invariably beaten, as invariably refused to accept their defeat. Man, less securely armed against them than were the gods, was ever meetingwith them. "Up there, they are howling, here they lie in wait, --they aregreat worms let loose by heaven--powerful ones whose clamour rises abovethe city--who pour water in torrents from heaven, sons who have comeout of the bosom of the earth. --They twine around the high rafters, the great rafters, like a crown;--they take their way from house tohouse, --for the door cannot stop them, nor bar the way, nor repulsethem, --for they creep like a serpent under the door--they insinuatethemselves like the air between the folding doors, --they separate thebride from the embraces of the bridegroom, --they snatch the child frombetween the knees of the man, --they entice the unwary from out of hisfruitful house, --they are the threatening voice which pursues him frombehind. " Their malice extended even to animals: "They force the ravento fly away on the wing, --and they make the swallow to escape from itsnest;--they cause the bull to flee, they cause the lamb to flee--they, the bad demons who lay snares. "

The most audacious among them did not fear at times to attack the godsof light; on one occasion, in the infancy of the world, they had soughtto dispossess them and reign in their stead. Without any warning theyhad climbed the heavens, and fallen upon Sin, the moon-god; they hadrepulsed Shamash, the Sun, and Eamman, both of whom had come to therescue; they had driven Ishtar and Anu from their thrones: the wholefirmament would have become a prey to them, had not Bel and Nusku, Eaand Merodach, intervened at the eleventh hour, and succeeded in hurlingthem down to the earth, after a terrible battle. They never completelyrecovered from this reverse, and the gods raised up as rivals to them aclass of friendly genii--the "Igigi, " who were governed by five heavenlyAnunnas. 

[Illustration: 141. Jpg SIN DELIVERED BY MERODACH FROM THE ASSAULT OF THESEVEN EVIL SPIRITS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian intaglio published by Layard. 

The earthly Anunnas, the Anunnaki, had as their chiefs seven sonsof Bel, with bodies of lions, tigers, and serpents: "the sixth was atempestuous wind which obeyed neither god nor king, --the seventh, awhirlwind, a desolating storm which destroys everything, "--"Seven, seven, --in the depth of the abyss of waters they are seven, --anddestroyers of heaven they are seven. --They have grown up in the depthsof the abyss, in the palace;--males they are not, females they arenot, --they are storms which pass quickly. --They take no wife, they givebirth to no child, --they know neither compassion nor kindness, --theylisten to no prayer nor supplication. --As wild horses they are born inthe mountains, --they are the enemies of Ba, --they are the agents of thegods;--they are evil, they are evil--and they are seven, they are seven, they are twice seven. " Man, if reduced to his own resources, could haveno chance of success in struggling against beings who had almost reducedthe gods to submission. He invoked in his defence the help of the wholeuniverse, the spirits of heaven and earth, the spirit of Bel and ofBelit, that of Ninib and of Nebo, those of Sin, of Ishtar, and ofBamman; but Gibir or Gibil, the Lord of Fire, was the most powerfulauxiliary in this incessant warfare. The offspring of night and of darkwaters, the Anunnaki had no greater enemy than fire; whether kindledon the household hearth or upon the altars, its appearance put them toflight and dispelled their power. 

[Illustration: 142. Jpg STRUGGLE BETWEEN A GOOD AND AN EVIL GENIUS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard. 

"Gibil, renowned hero in the land, --valiant, son of the Abyss, exaltedin the land, --Gibil, thy clear flame, breaking forth, --when it lightensup the darkness, --assigns to all that bears a name its own destiny. --The copper and tin, it is thou who dost mix them, --gold and silver, it is thou who meltest them, --thou art the companion of the goddessNinkasi--thou art he who exposes his breast to the nightly enemy!--Causethen the limbs of man, son of his god, to shine, --make him to be brightlike the sky, --may he shine like the earth, --may he be bright like theinterior of the heavens, --may the evil word be kept far from him, " andwith it the malignant spirits. The very insistence with which help isclaimed against the Anunnaki shows how much their power was dreaded. The Chaldean felt them everywhere about him, and could not move withoutincurring the danger of coming into contact with them. He did not fearthem so much during the day, as the presence of the luminary deities inthe heavens reassured him; but the night belonged to them, and he wasopen to their attacks. If he lingered in the country at dusk, they werethere, under the hedges, behind walls and trunks of trees, ready torush out upon him at every turn. If he ventured after sundown into thestreets of his village or town, he again met with them quarrelling withdogs over the offal on a rubbish heap, crouched in the shelter of adoorway, lying hidden in corners where the shadows were darkest. Evenwhen barricaded within his house, under the immediate protection ofhis domestic idols, these genii still threatened him and left him not amoment's repose. * The number of them was so great that he was unable toprotect himself adequately from all of them: when he had disarmed thegreater portion of them, there were always several remaining againstwhom he had forgotten to take necessary precautions. What must havebeen the total of the subordinate genii, when, towards the IXth centurybefore our era, the official census of the invisible beings statedthe number of the great gods in heaven and earth to be sixty-fivethousand!**

 * The presence of the evil spirits everywhere is shown, among other magical formulas, by the incantation in Rawlinson, _Cun, Ins. W. As. _, vol. Ii. Pi. 18, where we find enumerated at length the places from which they are to be kept out. The magician closes the house to them, the hedge which surrounds the house, the yoke laid upon the oxen, the tomb, the prison, the well, the furnace, the shade, the vase for libation, the ravines, the valleys, the mountains, the door. 

 ** Assurnazirpal, King of Assyria, speaks in one of his inscriptions of these sixty-five thousand great gods of heaven and earth. 

We are often much puzzled to say what these various divinities, whosenames we decipher on the monuments, could possibly have represented. Thesovereigns of Lagash addressed their prayers to Ningirsu, the valiantchampion of Inlil; to Ninursag, the lady of the terrestrial mountain:to Ninsia, the lord of fate; to the King Ninagal; to Inzu, of whose realname no one has an idea; to Inanna, the queen of battles; to Pasag, toGalalim, to Dunshagana, to Ninmar, to Ningishzida. Gudea raised templesto them in all the cities over which his authority extended, and hedevoted to these pious foundations a yearly income out of his domainland or from the spoils of his wars. "Gudea, the 'vicegerent' ofLagash, after having built the temple Ininnu for Ningirsu, constructed atreasury; a house decorated with sculptures, such as no 'vicegerent'had ever before constructed for Ningirsu; he constructed it for him, he wrote his name in it, he made in it all that was needful, and heexecuted faithfully all the words from the mouth of Ningirsu. " Thededication of these edifices was accompanied with solemn festivals, inwhich the whole population took an active part. "During seven years nograin was ground, and the maidservant was the equal of her mistress, theslave walked beside his master, and in my town the weak rested bythe side of the strong. " Henceforward Gudea watched scrupulously lestanything impure should enter and mar the sanctity of the place. 

[Illustration: 145. Jpg THE GOD NINGIBSU, PATRON OF LAGASH. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec. The attribution of this figure to Ningirsu is very probable, but not wholly certain. 

Those we have enumerated were the ancient Sumerian divinities, but thecharacteristics of most of them would have been lost to us, had wenot learned, by means of other documents, to what gods the Semitesassimilated them, gods who are better known and who are representedunder a less barbarous aspect. Ningirsu, the lord of the division ofLagash which was called Girsu, was identified with Ninib; Inlil is Bel, Ninursag is Beltis, Inzu is Sin, Inanna is Ishtar, and so on with therest. The cultus of each, too, was not a local cultus, confined to someobscure corner of the country; they all were rulers over the whole ofChaldæa, in the north as in the south, at Uruk, at Urn, at Larsam, atNipur, even in Babylon itself. Inlil was the ruler of the earth and ofHades, Babbar was the sun, Inzu the moon, Inanna-Antmit the morning andevening star and the goddess or love, at a time when two distinctreligious and two rival groups of gods existed side by side on the banksof the Euphrates. The Sumerian language is for us, at the present day, but a collection of strange names, of whose meaning and pronunciation weare often ignorant. We may well ask what beings and beliefs wereoriginally hidden under these barbaric combinations of syllables whichare constantly recurring in the inscriptions of the oldest dynasties, such as Pasag, Dunshagana, Dumuzi-. Zuaba, and a score of others. Thepriests of subsequent times claimed to define exactly the attributes ofeach of them, and probably their statements are, in the main, correct. But it is impossible for us to gauge the motives which determined theassimilation of some of these divinities, the fashion in which it wascarried out, the mutual concessions which Semite and Sumerian must havemade before they could arrive at an understanding, and before theprimitive characteristics of each deity were softened down or entirelyeffaced in the process. Many of these divine personages, such as Ea, Merodach, Ishtar, are so completely transformed, that we may well ask towhich of the two peoples they owed their origin. The Semites finallygained the ascendency over their rivals, and the Sumerian gods fromthenceforward preserved an independent existence only in connection withmagic, divination, and the science of foretelling events, and also inthe formulas of exorcists and physicians, to which the harshness oftheir names lent a greater weight. Elsewhere it was Bel and Sin, Shamashand Eamman, who were universally worshipped, but a Bel, a Sin, aShamash, who still betrayed traces of their former connection with theSumerian Inlil and Inzu, with Babbar and Mermer. In whatever language, however, they were addressed, by whatever name they were called upon, they did not fail to hear and grant a favourable reply to the appeals ofthe faithful. 

Whether Sumerian or Semitic, the gods, like those of Egypt, were notabstract personages, guiding in a metaphysical fashion the forces ofnature. Each of them contained in himself one of the principal elementsof which our universe is composed, --earth, water, sky, sun, moon, andthe stars which moved around the terrestrial mountain. The succession ofnatural phenomena with them was not the result of unalterable laws; itwas due entirely to a series of voluntary acts, accomplished by beingsof different grades of intelligence and power. Every part of the greatwhole is represented by a god, a god who is a man, a Chaldæan, who, although of a finer and more lasting nature than other Chaldæans, possesses nevertheless the same instincts and is swayed by the samepassions. He is, as a rule, wanting in that somewhat lithe grace ofform, and in that rather easy-going good-nature, which were the primarycharacteristics of the Egyptian gods: the Chaldæan divinity has thebroad shoulders, the thick-set figure and projecting muscles of thepeople over whom he rules; he has their hasty and violent temperament, their coarse sensuality, their cruel and warlike propensities, theirboldness in conceiving undertakings, and their obstinate tenacity incarrying them out. Their goddesses are modelled on the tyra of theChaldæn women, or, more properly speaking, on that of their queens. Themajority of them do not quit the harem, and have no other ambition thanto become speedily the mother of a numerous offspring. Those who openlyreject the rigid constraints of such a life, and who seek to share therank of the gods, seem to lose all self-restraint when they put offthe veil: like Ishtar, they exchange a life of severe chastity forthe lowest debauchery, and they subject their followers to the sameirregular life which they themselves have led. "Every woman born in thecountry must enter once during her lifetime the enclosure of the templeof Aphrodite, must there sit down and unite herself to a stranger. Manywho are wealthy are too proud to mix with the rest, and repair thitherin closed chariots, followed by a considerable train of slaves. Thegreater number seat themselves on the sacred pavement, with a cordtwisted about their heads, --and there is always a great crowd there, coming and going; the women being divided by ropes into long lanes, downwhich strangers pass to make their choice. A woman who has once takenher place here cannot return home until a stranger has thrown into herlap a silver coin, and has led her away with him beyond the limits ofthe sacred enclosure. As he throws the money he pronounces these words:'May the goddess Mylitta make thee happy! '--Now, among the Assyrians, Aphrodite is called Mylitta. The silver coin may be of any value, butnone may refuse it, that is forbidden by the law, for, once thrown, itis sacred. The woman follows the first man who throws her the money, andrepels no one. When once she has accompanied him, and has thus satisfiedthe goddess, she returns to her home, and from thenceforth, howeverlarge the sum offered to her, she will yield to no one. The women whoare tall or beautiful soon return to their homes, but those who are uglyremain a long time before they are able to comply with the law; someof them are obliged to wait three or four years within the enclosure. "*This custom still existed in the Vth century before our era, and theGreeks who visited Babylon about that time found it still in full force. 

 * Herodotus, i. 199: of. Stabo, xvi. P. 1058, who probably has merely quoted this passage from Herodotus, or some writer who copied from Herodotus. We meet with a direct allusion to this same custom in the Bible, in the _Book of Barueh_; "The women also, with cords about them, sitting in the ways, burn bran for perfume; but if any of them, drawn by some that passeth by, lie with him, she reproacheth her fellow, that she was not thought as worthy as herself, nor her cord broken. "

The gods, who had begun by being the actual material of the elementwhich was their attribute, became successively the spirit of it, thenits ruler. * They continued at first to reside in it, but in the courseof time they were separated from it, and each was allowed to enter thedomain of another, dwell in it, and even command it, as they couldhave done in their own, till finally the greater number of them wereidentified with the firmament. 

 * Pk. Lbnoemant, _La Magie chez les Chaldéens_, p. 144, et seq. , where the author shows how Anu, after having at first been the Heaven itself, the starry vault stretched above the earth, became successively the Spirit of Heaven (_Zi-ana_), and finally the supreme ruler of the world: according to Lenormant, it was the Semites in particular who transformed the primitive spirit into an actual god-king. 

Bel, the lord of the earth, and Ea, the ruler of the waters, passed infothe heavens, which did not belong to them, and took their places besideAmi: the pathways were pointed out which they had made for themselvesacross the celestial vault, in order to inspect their kingdoms from theexalted heights to which they had been raised; that of Bel was in theTropic of Cancer, that of Ea in the Tropic of Capricorn. They gatheredaround them all the divinities who could easily be abstracted from thefunction or object to which they were united, and they thus constituteda kind of divine aristocracy, comprising all the most powerfulbeings who guided the fortunes of the world. The number of them wasconsiderable, for they reckoned seven supreme and magnificent gods, fifty great gods of heaven and earth, three hundred celestialspirits, and six hundred terrestrial spirits. Each of them deputedrepresentatives here below, who received the homage of mankind for him, and signified to them his will. The god revealed himself in dreams tohis seers and imparted to them the course of coming events, * or, insome cases, inspired them suddenly and spoke by their mouth: theirutterances, taken down and commented on by their assistants, wereregarded as infallible oracles. But the number of mortal men possessingadequate powers, and gifted with sufficiently acute senses to bearwithout danger the near presence of a god, was necessarily limited;communications were, therefore, more often established by means ofvarious objects, whose grosser substance lessened for human intelligenceand flesh and blood the dangers of direct contact with an immortal. Thestatues hidden in the recesses of the temples or erected on the summitsof the "ziggurats" became imbued, by virtue of their consecration, withthe actual body of the god whom they represented, and whose name waswritten either on the base or garment of the statue. ** The sovereignwho dedicated them, summoned them to speak in the days to come, and fromthenceforth they spoke: when they were interrogated according to therite instituted specially for each one, that part of the celestial soul, which by means of the prayers had been attracted to and held captiveby the statue, could not refuse to reply. ** Were there for this purposespecial images, as in Egypt, which were cleverly contrived so as toemit sounds by the pulling of a string by the hidden prophet? Voicesresounded at night in the darkness of the sanctuaries, and particularlywhen a king came there to prostrate himself for the purpose of learningthe future: his rank alone, which raised him halfway to heaven, preparedhim to receive the word from on high by the mouth of the image. 

 * A prophetic dream is mentioned upon, one of the statues of Telloh. In the records of Assurbanipal we find mention of several "seers"--_shabru_--one of whom predicts the general triumph of the king over his enemies, and of whom another announces in the name of Ishtar the victory over the Elamites and encourages the Assyrian army to cross a torrent swollen by rains, while a third sees in a dream the defeat and death of the King of Elam. These "seers" are mentioned in the texts of Gudea with the prophetesses "who tell the message" of the gods. 

 ** In a formula drawn up against evil spirits, for the purpose of making talismanic figures for the protection of houses, it is said of Merodach that he "inhabits the image" --_ashibu salam_--which has been made of him by the magician. 

 ** This is what Gudea says, when, describing his own statue which he had placed in the temple of Telloh, he adds that "he gave the order to the statue: 'To the statue of my king, speak!'" The statue of the king, inspired by that of the god, would thenceforth speak when interrogated according to the formularies. Cf. What is said of the divine or royal statues dedicated in the temples of Egypt, vol. I. Pp. 169, 170. A number of oracles regularly obtained in the time of Asarhaddon and Assurbanabal have been published by Knudtzon. 

[Illustration: 152. Jpg THE ADORATION OF THE MACE AND THE WHIP. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the Chaldæan intaglio reproduced in Heuzey-Sarzec, _Découvertes en Chaldée_, pl. 30bis, No. 13b. 

More frequently a priest, accustomed from childhood to the office, possessed the privilege of asking the desired questions and ofinterpreting to the faithful the various signs by means of which thedivine will was made known. The spirit of the god inspired, moreover, whatever seemed good to him, and frequently entered into objectswhere we should least have expected to find it. It animated stones, particularly such as fell from heaven; also trees, as, for example, thetree of Eridu which pronounced oracles; and, besides the battle-mace, with a granite head fixed on a wooden handle, the axe of Ramman, lancesmade on the model of Gilgames' fairy javelin, which came and went at itsmaster's orders, without needing to be touched. Such objects, when itwas once ascertained that they were imbued with the divine spirit, wereplaced upon the altar and worshipped with as much veneration as were thestatues themselves. 

[Illustration: 153. Jpg A protecting amulet. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the terra-cotta figurine of Assyrian date now in the Louvre. 

Animals never became objects of habitual worship as in Egypt: some ofthem, however, such as the bull and lion, were closely allied to thegods, and birds unconsciously betrayed by their flight or cries thesecrets of futurity. * In addition to all these, each family possessedits household gods, to whom its members recited prayers and pouredlibations night and morning, and whose statues set up over the domestichearth defended it from the snares of the evil ones. ** The Statereligion, which all the inhabitants of the same city, from the king downto the lowest slave, were solemnly bound to observe, really representedto the Chaldæans but a tithe of their religious life: it included somedozen gods, no doubt the most important, but it more or less left out ofaccount all the others, whose anger, if aroused by neglect, might becomedangerous. The private devotion of individuals supplemented the Statereligion by furnishing worshippers for most of the neglected divinities, and thus compensated for what was lacking in the official public worshipof the community. 

 * Animal forms are almost always restricted either to the genii, the constellations, or the secondary forms of the greater divinities: Ea, however, is represented by a man with a fish's tail, or as a man clothed with a fish-skin, which would appear to indicate that at the outset he was considered to be an actual fish. 

 ** The images of these gods acted as amulets, and the fact of their presence alone repelled the evil spirits. At Khorsabad they were found buried under the threshold of the city gates. A bilingual tablet in the British Museum has preserved for us the formula of consecration which was supposed to invest these protecting statuettes with divine powers. 

If the idea of uniting all these divine beings into a single supremeone, who would combine within himself all their elements and the wholeof their powers, ever for a moment crossed the mind of some Chaldæantheologian, it never spread to the people as a whole. Among all thethousands of tablets or inscribed stones on which we find recordedprayers and magical formulas, we have as yet discovered no documenttreating of the existence of a supreme god, or even containing thefaintest allusion to a divine unity. We meet indeed with many passagesin which this or that divinity boasts of his power, eloquentlydepreciating that of his rivals, and ending his discourse with theinjunction to worship him alone: "Man who shall come after, trustin Nebo, trust in no other god!" The very expressions which are used, commanding future races to abandon the rest of the immortals infavour of Nebo, prove that even those who prided themselves on beingworshippers of one god realized how far they were from believing in theunity of God. They strenuously asserted that the idol of their choicewas far superior to many others, but it never occurred to them toproclaim that he had absorbed them all into himself, and that heremained alone in his glory, contemplating the world, his creature. Sideby side with those who expressed this belief in Nebo, an inhabitantof Babylon would say as much and more of Merodach, the patron ofhis birthplace, without, however, ceasing to believe in the actualindependence and royalty of Nebo. "When thy power manifests itself, whocan withdraw himself from it?--Thy word is a powerful net which thouspreadest in heaven and over the earth:--it falls upon the sea, andthe sea retires, --it falls upon the plain, and the fields make greatmourning, --it falls upon the upper waters of the Euphrates, and the wordof Merodach stirs up the flood in them. --O Lord, thou art sovereign, who can resist thee?--Merodach, among the gods who bear a name, thou artsovereign. " Merodach is for his worshippers the king of the gods, he isnot the sole god. Each of the chief divinities received in a similarmanner the assurance of his omnipotence, but, for all that, his mostzealous followers never regarded them as the only God, beside whom therewas none other, and whose existence and rule precluded those of anyother. The simultaneous elevation of certain divinities to the supremerank had a reactionary influence on the ideas held with regard to thenature of each. Anu, Bel, and Ea, not to mention others, had enjoyedat the outset but a limited and incomplete personality, confined to asingle concept, and were regarded as possessing only such attributes aswere indispensable to the exercise of their power within a prescribedsphere, whether in heaven, or on the earth, or in the waters; as each inhis turn gained the ascendency over his rivals, he became invested withthe qualities which were exercised by the others in their own domain. His personality became enlarged, and instead of remaining merely agod of heaven or earth or of the waters, he became god of all threesimultaneously. Anu reigned in the province of Bel or of Ea as he ruledin his own; Bel joined to his own authority that of Anu and Ea; Eatreated Anu and Bel with the same absence of ceremony which they hadshown to him, and added their supremacy to his own. The personalityof each god was thenceforward composed of many divers elements: eachpreserved a nucleus of his original being, but superadded to this werethe peculiar characteristics of all the gods above whom he had beensuccessively raised. Anu took to himself somewhat of the temperamentsof Bel and of Ea, and the latter in exchange borrowed from himmany personal traits. The same work of levelling which altered thecharacteristics of the Egyptian divinities, and transformed themlittle by little into local variants of Osiris and the Sun, went on asvigorously among the Chaldæan gods: those who were incarnations ofthe earth, the waters, the stars, or the heavens, became thenceforthso nearly allied to each other that we are tempted to consider themas being doubles of a single god, worshipped under different namesin different localities. Their primitive forms can only be clearlydistinguished when they are stripped of the uniform in which they areall clothed. 

The sky-gods and the earth-gods had been more numerous at the outsetthan they were subsequently. We recognize as such Anu, the immovablefirmament, and the ancient Bel, the lord of men and of the soil on whichthey live, and into whose bosom they return after, death; but therewere others, who in historic times had partially or entirely lost theirprimitive character, --such as Nergal, Ninib, Dumuzi; or, among thegoddesses, Damkina, Esharra, and even Ishtar herself, who, at thebeginning of their existence, had represented only the earth, or oneof its most striking aspects. For instance, Nergal and Ninib were thepatrons of agriculture and protectors of the soil, Dumuzi was theground in spring whose garment withered at the first approach of summer, Damkina was the leafy mould in union with fertilizing moisture, Esharrawas the field whence sprang the crops, Ishtar was the clod which againgrew green after the heat of the dog days and the winter frosts. Allthese beings had been forced to submit in a greater or less degree tothe fate which among most primitive races awaits those older earth-gods, whose manifestations are usually too vague and shadowy to admit of theirbeing grasped or represented by any precise imagery without limiting andcurtailing their spheres. New deities had arisen of a more definite andtangible kind, and hence more easily understood, and having a real orsupposed province which could be more easily realized, such as the sun, the moon, and the fixed or wandering stars. The moon is the measure oftime; it determines the months, leads the course of the years, and theentire life of mankind and of great cities depends upon the regularityof its movements: the Chaldæans, therefore, made it, or rather thespirit which animated it, the father and king of the gods; butits suzerainty was everywhere a conventional rather than an actualsuperiority, and the sun, which in theory was its vassal, attracted moreworshippers than the pale and frigid luminary. Some adored the sun underits ordinary title of Shamash, corresponding to the Egyptian Râ; othersdesignated it as Merodach, Ninib, Nergal, Dumuzi, not to mention otherless usual appellations. Nergal in the beginning had nothing in commonwith Ninib, and Merodach differed alike from Shamash, Ninib, Nergal, and Dumuzi; but the same movement which instigated the fusion of so manyEgyptian divinities of diverse nature, led the gods of the Chaldæans todivest themselves little by little of their individuality and to losethemselves in the sun. Each one at first became a complete sun, andunited in himself all the innate virtues of the sun--its brilliancyand its dominion over the world, its gentle and beneficent heat, itsfertilizing warmth, its goodness and justice, its emblematic characterof truth and peace; besides the incontestable vices which darken certainphases of its being--the fierceness of its rays at midday and in summer, the inexorable strength of its will, its combative temperament, itsirresistible harshness and cruelty. By degrees they lost this uniformcharacter, and distributed the various attributes among themselves. IfShamash continued to be the sun in general, Ninib restricted himself, after the example of the Egyptian Harmakhis, to being merely the risingand setting sun, the sun on the two horizons. Nergal became the feverishand destructive summer sun. * Merodach was transformed into the youthfulsun of spring and early morning;** Dumuzi, like Merodach, became the sunbefore the summer. Their moral qualities naturally were affected by theprocess of restriction which had been applied to their physical being, and the external aspect now assigned to each in accordance with theirseveral functions differed considerably from that formerly attributedto the unique type from which they had sprung. Ninib was represented asvaliant, bold, and combative; he was a soldier who dreamed but ofbattle and great feats of arms. Nergal united a crafty fierceness tohis bravery: not content with being lord of battles, he became thepestilence which breaks out unexpectedly in a country, the death whichcomes like a thief, and carries off his prey before there is timeto take up arms against him. Merodach united wisdom with courage andstrength: he attacked the wicked, protected the good, and used his powerin the cause of order and justice. A very ancient legend, which wassubsequently fully developed among the Canaanites, related the story ofthe unhappy passion of Ishtar for Dumuzi. The goddess broke out yearlyinto a fresh frenzy, but the tragic death of the hero finally moderatedthe ardour of her devotion. She wept distractedly for him, went to begthe lords of the infernal regions for his return, and brought him backtriumphantly to the earth: every year there was a repetition of the samepassionate infatuation, suddenly interrupted by the same mourning. Theearth was united to the young sun with every recurring spring, and underthe influence of his caresses became covered with verdure; then followedautumn and winter, and the sun, grown old, sank into the tomb, fromwhence his mistress had to call him up, in order to plunge afresh withhim by a common impulse into the joys and sorrows of another year. 

 * The solar character of Nergal, at least in later times, is admitted, but with restrictions, by all Assyriologists. The evident connection between him and Ninib, of which we have proofs, was the ground of Delitzsch's theory that he was likewise the burning and destructive sun, and also of Jensen's analogous concept of a midday and summer sun. 

 ** Pr. Lenormant seems to have been the first to distinguish in Merodach, besides the god of the planet Jupiter, a solar personage. This notion, which has been generally admitted by most Assyriologists, has been defined with greater exactitude by Jensen, who is inclined to see in Merodach both the morning sun and the spring sun; and this is the opinion held at present. 

The differences between the gods were all the more accentuated, for thereason that many who had a common origin were often separated from oneanother by, relatively speaking, considerable distances. Having dividedthe earth's surface between them, they formed, as in Egypt, a completefeudal system, whose chiefs severally took up their residence in aparticular city. Anu was worshipped in Uruk, Enlil-Bel reigned in Nipur, Eridu belonged to Ea, the lord of the waters. The moon-god, Sin, alonegoverned two large fiefs, Uru in the extreme south, and Harran towardsthe extreme north-west; Shamash had Larsam and one of the Sipparas forhis dominion, and the other sun-gods were not less well provided for, Nergal possessing Kutha, Zamama having Kish, Ninib side by side with Belreigning in Nipur, while Merodach ruled at Babylon. Each was absolutemaster in his own territory, and it is quite exceptional to find two ofthem co-regnant in one locality, as were Ninib and Bel at Nipur, or Eaand Ishtar in Uruk; not that they raised any opposition on principleto the presence of a stranger divinity in their dominions, but theywelcomed them only under the titles of allies or subjects. Each, moreover, had fair play, and Nebo or Shamash, after having filledthe _rôle_ of sovereign at Borsippa or at Larsam, did not consider itderogatory to his dignity to accept a lower rank in Babylon or at Uru. Hence all the feudal gods played a double part, and had, as it were, a double civil portion--that of suzerain in one or two localities, andthat of vassals everywhere else--and this dual condition was the surestguarantee not only of their prosperity, but of their existence. Sinwould have run great risk of sinking into oblivion if his resources hadbeen confined to the subventions from his domain temples of Harran andUru. Their impoverishment would in such case have brought about hiscomplete failure: after having enjoyed an existence amid riches andsplendour in the beginning of history, he would have ended his life in acondition of misery and obscurity. But the sanctuaries erected to him inthe majority of the other cities, the honours which these bestowed uponhim, and the offerings which they made to him, compensated him for thepoverty and neglect which he experienced in his own domains; and he wasthus able to maintain his divine dignity on a suitable footing. Allthe gods were, therefore, worshipped by the Chaldeans, and the onlydifference among them in this respect arose from the fact that someexalted one special deity above the others. The gods of the richest andmost ancient principalities naturally enjoyed the greatest popularity. The greatness of Uru had been the source of Sin's prestige, and Merodachowed his prosperity to the supremacy which Babylon had acquired over thedistricts of the north. Merodach was regarded as the son of Ba, as thestar which had risen from the abyss to illuminate the world, and toconfer upon mankind the decrees of eternal wisdom. He was proclaimed aslord--"bîlu"--_par excellence_, in comparison with whom all other lordssank into insignificance, and this title soon procured for him a second, which was no less widely recognized than the first: he was spoken ofeverywhere as the Bel of Babylon, Bel-Merodach--before whom Bel of Nipurwas gradually thrown into the shade. The relations between these feudaldeities were not always pacific: jealousies arose among them like thosewhich disturbed the cities over which they ruled; they conspired againsteach other, and on occasions broke out into open warfare. Instead offorming a coalition against the evil genii who threatened their rule, and as a consequence tended to bring everything into jeopardy, theysometimes made alliances with these malign powers and mutually betrayedeach other. Their history, if we could recover it in its entirety, wouldbe marked by as violent deeds as those which distinguished the princesand kings who worshipped them. Attempts were made, however, and that toofrom an early date, to establish among them a hierarchy like that whichexisted among the great ones of the earth. The faithful, who, instead ofpraying to each one separately, preferred to address them all, invokedthem always in the same order: they began with Anu, the heaven, andfollowed with Bel, Ea, Sin, Shamash, and Bamman. They divided these sixinto two groups of three, one trio consisting of Anu, Bel, and Ea, theother of Sin, Shamash, and Bamman. All these deities were associatedwith Southern Chaldoa, and the system which grouped them must have takenits rise in this region, probably at Uruk, whose patron Anu V occupiedthe first rank among them. The theologians who classified them in thismanner seem never to have dreamt of explaining, like the authors ofthe Heliopolitan Ennead, the successive steps in their creation: thesetriads were not, moreover, copies of the human family, consisting ofa father and mother whose marriage brings into the world a new being. Others had already given an account of the origin of things, and ofMerodach's struggles with chaos; these theologians accepted the universeas it was, already made, and contented themselves with summing up itselements by enumerating the gods which actuated them. * They assigned thefirst place to those elements which make the most forcible impressionupon man--beginning with Anu, for the heaven was the god of their city;following with Bel of Nipur, the earth which from all antiquity hasbeen associated with the heaven; and concluding with Ea of Eridu, theterrestrial waters and primordial Ocean whence Anu and Bel, togetherwith all living creatures, had sprung--Ea being a god whom, had theynot been guided by local vanity, they would have made sovereign lordof all. Anu owed his supremacy to an historical accident rather than areligious conception: he held his high position, not by his own merits, but because the prevailing theology of an early period had been the workof his priesthood. 

 * I know of Sayce only who has endeavoured to explain the historical formation of the triads. They are considered by him as of Accadian origin, and probably began in an astronomical triad, composed of the moon-god, the sun-god, and the evening star, Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar; alongside this elementary trinity, "the only authentic one to be found in the religious faith of primitive Chaldæa, " the Semites may have placed the cosmogonical trinity of Anu, Bel, and Ea, formed by the reunion of the gods of Uruk, Nipur, and Eridu. 

The characters of the three personages who formed the supreme triad canbe readily deduced from the nature of the elements which they represent. Anu is the heaven itself--"ana"--the immense vault which spreads itselfabove our heads, clear during the day when glorified by the sun, obscureand strewn with innumerable star clusters during the night. Afterwardsit becomes the spirit which animates the firmament, or the god whichrules it: he resides in the north towards the pole, and the ordinaryroute chosen by him when inspecting his domain is that marked out by ourecliptic. He occupies the high regions of the universe, sheltered fromwinds and tempests, in an atmosphere always serene, and a light alwaysbrilliant. The terrestrial gods and those of middle-space take refuge inthis "heaven of Anu, " when they are threatened by any great danger, butthey dare not penetrate its depths, and stop, shortly after passing itsboundary, on the ledge which supports the vault, where they loll andhowl like dogs. It is but rarely that it may be entered, and thenonly by the highly privileged--kings whose destiny marked them out foradmittance, and heroes who have fallen valiantly on the field ofbattle. In his remote position on unapproachable summits Anu seems toparticipate in the calm and immobility of his dwelling. If he is quickin forming an opinion and coming to a conclusion, he himself never putsinto execution the plans which he has matured or the judgments whichhe has pronounced: he relieves himself of the trouble of acting, byassigning the duty to Bel-Merodach, Ea, or Eamman, and he often employsinferior genii to execute his will. "They are seven, the messengers ofAnu their king; it is they who from town to town raise the stormy wind;they are the south wind which drives mightily in the heavens; they arethe destroying clouds which overturn the heavens; they are the rapidtempests which bring darkness in the midst of clear day, they roam hereand there with the wicked wind and the ill-omened hurricane. " Anu sendsforth all the gods as he pleases, recalls them again, and then, to makethem his pliant instruments, enfeebles their personality, reducing it tonothing by absorbing it into his own. He blends himself with them, andtheir designations seem to be nothing more than doublets of his own: heis Anu the Lakhmu who appeared on the first days of creation; Ahu Urâshor Ninib is the sun-warrior of Nipur; and Anu is also the eagle Alalawhom Ishtar enfeebled by her caresses. Anu regarded in this light ceasesto be the god _par excellence_: he becomes the only chief god, and theidea of authority is so closely attached to his name that the latteralone is sufficient in common speech to render the idea of God. Belwould have been entirely thrown into the shade by him, as the earth-godsgenerally are by the sky-gods, if it had not been that he was confoundedwith his namesake Bel-Merodach of Babylon: to this alliance he owedto the end the safety of his life, in presence of Anu. Ea was themost active and energetic member of the triad. * As he represented thebottomless abyss, the dark waters which had filled the universe untilthe day of the creation, there had been attributed to him a completeknowledge of the past, present, and future, whose germs had lain withinhim, as in a womb. The attribute of supreme wisdom was revered in Ea, the lord of spells and charms, to which gods and men were alike subject:no strength could prevail against his strength, no voice against hisvoice: when once he opened his mouth to give a decision, his will becamelaw, and no one might gainsay it. If a peril should arise againstwhich the other gods found themselves impotent, they resorted tohim immediately for help, which was never refused. He had savedShamashnapishtirn from the Deluge; every day he freed his votaries fromsickness and the thousand demons which were the causes of it. He wasa potter, and had modelled men out of the clay of the plains. From himsmiths and workers in gold obtained the art of rendering malleableand of fashioning the metals. Weavers and stone-cutters, gardeners, husbandmen, and sailors hailed him as their teacher and patron. From hisincomparable knowledge the scribes derived theirs, and physicians andwizards invoked spirits in his name alone by the virtue of prayers whichhe had condescended to teach them. 

 * The name of this god was read "Nisrok" by Oppert, "Nouah" by Hincks and Lenormant. The true reading is Ia, Ea, usually translated "house, " "water-house"; this is a popular interpretation which appears to have occurred to the Chaldæans from the values of the signs entering into the name of the god. From the outset H. Rawlinson recognized in Ea, which he read Hea, Hoa, the divinity presiding over the abyss of waters; he compared him with the serpent of Holy Scripture, in its relation to the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, and deduced therefrom his character of lord of wisdom. His position as lord of the primordial waters, from which all things proceeded, clearly denned by Lenormant, is now fully recognized. His name was transcribed Aôs by Damascius, a form which is not easily explained; the most probable hypothesis is that of Hommel who considers Aos as a shortened form of Iaôs = Ia, Ea. 

Subordinate to these limitless and vague beings, the theologians placedtheir second triad, made up of gods of restricted power and invariableform. They recognized in the unswerving regularity with which the moonwaxed and waned, or with which the sun rose and set every day, aproof of their subjection to the control of a superior will, and theysignalized this dependence by making them sons of one or other of thethree great gods. Sin was the offspring of Bel, Shamash of Sin, Kamman of Anu. Sin was indebted for this primacy among the subordinatedivinities to the preponderating influence which Uru exercised overSouthern Chaldæa. Mar, where Ramman was the chief deity, never emergedfrom its obscurity, and Larsam acquired supremacy only many centuriesafter its neighbour, and did not succeed in maintaining it for anylength of time. The god of the suzerain city necessarily took precedenceof those of the vassal towns, and when once his superiority was admittedby the people, he was able to maintain his place in spite of allpolitical revolutions. Sin was called in Uru, "Uruki, " or "Nannar theglorious, " and his priests sometimes succeeded in identifying himwith Anu. "Lord, prince of the gods, who alone in heaven and earth isexalted, --father Nannar, lord of the hosts of heaven, prince of thegods, --father Nannar, lord, great Anu, prince of the gods, --fatherNannar, lord, moon-god, prince of the gods, --father Nannar, lord of Uni, prince of the gods.... --Lord, thy deity fills the far-off heavens, like the vast sea, with reverential fear! Master of the earth, thou whofixest there the boundaries [of the towns] and assignest to them theirnames, --father, begetter of gods and men, who establishest for themdwellings and institutest for them that which is good, who proclaimestroyalty and bestowest the exalted sceptre on those whose destiny wasdetermined from distant times, --chief, mighty, whose heart is great, godwhom no one can name, whose limbs are steadfast, whose knees never bend, who preparest the paths of thy brothers the gods.... --In heaven, who issupreme? As for thee, it is thou alone who art supreme! As for thee, thydecree is made known in heaven, and the Igigi bow their faces!--As forthee, thy decree is made known upon earth, and the spirits of the abysskiss the dust!--As for thee, thy decree blows above like the wind, and stall and pasture become fertile!--As for thee, thy decree isaccomplished upon earth below, and the grass and green things grow!--Asfor thee, thy degree is seen in the cattle-folds and in the lairs of thewild beasts, and it multiplies living things!--As for thee, thydecree has called into being equity and justice, and the peoples havepromulgated thy law!--As for thee, thy decree, neither in the far-offheaven, nor in the hidden depths of the earth, can any one recognizeit!--As for thee, thy decree, who can learn it, who can try conclusionswith it?--O Lord, mighty in heaven, sovereign upon earth, among the godsthy brothers, thou hast no rival. " Outside Uru and Harran, Sin did notobtain this rank of creator and ruler of things; he was simply themoon-god, and was represented in human form, usually accompanied by athin crescent, upon which he sometimes stands upright, sometimes appearswith the bust only rising out of it, in royal costume and pose. 

[Illustration: 169. Jpg THE GOD SUN RECEIVES THE HOMAGE OF TWOWORSHIPPERS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure by Menant. 

His mitre is so closely associated with him that it takes his place onthe astrological tablets; the name he bears--"agu"--often indicatesthe moon regarded simply as a celestial body and without connotationof deity. Babbar-Shamash, "the light of the gods, his fathers, " "theillustrious scion of Sin, " passed the night in the depths of the north, behind the polished metal walls which shut in the part of the firmamentvisible to human eyes. 

[Illustration: 170. Jpg SHAMASH SETS OUT, IN THE MORNING, FROM THEINTERIOR OF THE HEAVEN BY THE EASTERN GATE. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio of green jasper in the Louvre. The original measures about 1 3/10 inch in height. 

As soon as the dawn had opened the gates for him, he rose in the eastall aflame, his club in his hand, and he set forth on his headlongcourse over the chain of mountains which surrounds the world;* six hourslater he had attained the limit of his journey towards the south, hethen continued his journey to the west, gradually lessening his heat, and at length re-entered his accustomed resting-place by the westerngate, there to remain until the succeeding morning. He accomplished hisjourney round the earth in a chariot conducted by two charioteers, and drawn by two vigorous onagers, "whose legs never grew weary;" theflaming disk which was seen from earth was one of the wheels of hischariot. **

 * His course along the embankment which runs round the celestial vault was the origin of the title, _Line of Union between Heaven and Earth_; he moved, in fact, where the heavens and the earth come into contact, and appeared to weld them into one by the circle of fire which he described. Another expression of this idea occurs in the preamble of Nergal and Ninib, who were called "the separators"; the course of the sun might, in fact, be regarded as separating, as well as uniting, the two parts of the universe. 

 ** The disk has sometimes four, sometimes eight rays inscribed on it, indicating wheels with four or eight spokes respectively. Rawlinson supposed "that these two figures indicate a distinction between the male and female power of the deity, the disk with four rays symbolizing Shamash, the orb with eight rays being the emblem of Ai, Gula, or Anunit. "

[Illustration: 171. Jpg SHAMASH IN HIS SHRINE, HIS EMBLEM BEFORE HIM ONTHE ALTAR. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Rassam. The busts of the two deities on the front of the roof of the shrine are the two charioteers of the sun; they uphold and guide the rayed disk upon the altar. Cf. In the Assyrian period the winged disk led with cords by two genii. 

As soon as he appeared he was hailed with the chanting of hymns: "O Sun, thou appearest on the foundation of the heavens, --thou drawest back thebolts which bar the scintillating heavens, thou openest the gate ofthe heavens! O Sun, thou raisest thy head above the earth, --Sun, thouextendest over the earth the brilliant vaults of the heavens. "The powers of darkness fly at his approach or take refuge in theirmysterious caverns, for "he destroys the wicked, he scatters them, theomens and gloomy portents, dreams, and wicked ghouls--he converts evilto good, and he drives to their destruction the countries and men--whodevote themselves to black magic. " In addition to natural light, he shedsupon the earth truth and justice abundantly; he is the "high judge"before whom everything makes obeisance, his laws never waver, hisdecrees are never set at naught. "O Sun, when thou goest to rest in themiddle of the heavens--may the bars of the bright heaven salute theein peace, and may the gate of heaven bless thee!--May Misharu, thywell-beloved servant, guide aright thy progress, so that on Rbarra, the seat of thy rule, thy greatness may rise, and that A, thy cherishedspouse, may receive thee joyfully! May thy glad heart find in her thyrest!--May the food of thy divinity be brought to thee by her, --warrior, hero, sun, and may she increase thy vigour;--lord of Ebarra, whenthou ap-proachest, mayest thou direct thy course aright!---0 Sun, urgerightly thy way along the fixed road determined for thee, --O Sun, thouwho art the judge of the land, and the arbiter of its laws!"

It would appear that the triad had begun by having in the third place agoddess, Ishtar of Dilbat. Ishtar is the evening star which precedes theappearance of the moon, and the morning star which heralds the approachof the sun: the brilliance of its light justifies the choice whichmade it an associate of the greater heavenly bodies. "In the days ofthe past.... Ea charged Sin, Shamash, and Ishtar with the ruling of thefirmament of heaven; he distributed among them, with Anu, the commandof the army of heaven, and among these three gods, his children, he apportioned the day and the night, and compelled them to workceaselessly. "

[Illustration: 173. Jpg ISHTAR HOLDING HER STAR BEFORE SIN. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an intaglio at Rome. 

Ishtar was separated from her two companions, when the group of theplanets was definitely organized and claimed the adoration of thedevout; the theologians then put in her place an individual of a lessoriginal aspect, Ramman. Ramman embraced within him the elements of manyvery ancient genii, all of whom had been set over the atmosphere, andthe phenomena which are daily displayed in it--wind, rain, and thunder. These genii occupied an important place in the popular religion whichhad been cleverly formulated by the theologians of Uruk, and there havecome down to us many legends in which their incarnations play a part. They are usually represented as enormous birds flocking on their swiftwings from below the horizon, and breathing flame or torrents of waterupon the countries over which they hovered. The most terrible of themwas Zu, who presided over tempests: he gathered the clouds together, causing them to burst in torrents of rain or hail; he let loose thewinds and lightnings, and nothing remained standing where he had passed. He had a numerous family: among them cross-breeds of extraordinaryspecies which would puzzle a modern naturalist, but were matters ofcourse to the ancient priests. His mother Siris, lady of the rain andclouds, was a bird like himself; but Zu had as son a vigorous bull, which, pasturing in the meadows, scattered abundance and fertilityaround him. The caprices of these strange beings, their malice, andtheir crafty attacks, often brought upon them vexatious misfortunes. Shutu, the south wind, one day beheld Adapa, one of the numerousoffspring of Ea, fishing in order to provide food for his family. Inspite of his exalted origin, Adapa was no god; he did not possess thegift of immortality, and he was not at liberty to appear in the presenceof Anu in heaven. He enjoyed, nevertheless, certain privileges, thanksto his familiar intercourse with his father Ea, and owing to his birthhe was strong enough to repel the assaults of more than one deity. When, therefore, Shutu, falling upon him unexpectedly, had overthrown him, hisanger knew no bounds: "'Shutu, thou hast overwhelmed me with thy hatred, great as it is, --I will break thy wings! 'Having thus spoken with hismouth unto Shutu, Adapa broke his wings. For seven days, --Shutu breathedno longer upon the earth. " Anu, being disturbed at this quiet, whichseemed to him not very consonant with the meddling temperament of thewind, made inquiries as to its cause through his messenger Ilabrât. "Hismessenger Ilabrât answered him: 'My master, --Adapa, the son of Ea, has broken Shutu's wings. '--Anu, when he heard these words, cried out:'Help!'" and he sent to Ea Barku, the genius of the lightning, with anorder to bring the guilty one before him. Adapa was not quite at hisease, although he had right on his side; but Ea, the cleverest of theimmortals, prescribed a line of conduct for him. He was to put on atonce a garment of mourning, and to show himself along with the messengerat the gates of heaven. Having arrived there, he would not fail to meetthe two divinities who guarded them, --Dumuzi and Gishzida: "'In whosehonour this garb, in whose honour, Adapa, this garment of mourning?''On our earth two gods have disappeared--it is on this account I am asI am. ' Dumuzi and Gishzida will look at each other, * they will beginto lament, they will say a friendly word--to the god Anu for thee, theywill render clear the countenance of Anu, --in thy favour. When thoushalt appear before the face of Anu, the food of death, it shall beoffered to thee, do not eat it. The drink of death, it shall be offeredto thee, drink it not. A garment, it shall be offered to the, put it on. Oil, it shall be offered to thee, anoint thyself with it. The command Ihave given thee observe it well. '"

 * Dumuzi and Gishzida are the two gods whom Adapa indicates without naming them; insinuating that he has put on mourning on their account, Adapa is secure of gaining their sympathy, and of obtaining their intervention with the god Anu in his favour. As to Dumuzi, see pp. 158, 159 of the present work; the part played by Gishzida, as well as the event noted in the text regarding him, is unknown. 

Everything takes place as Ea had foreseen. Dumuzi and Gishzidawelcome the poor wretch, speak in his favour, and present him: "as heapproached, Anu perceived him, and said to him: 'Come, Adapa, why didstthou break the wings of Shutu?' Adapa answered Anu: 'My lord, --for thehousehold of my lord Ea, in the middle of the sea, ---I was fishing, and the sea was all smooth. --Shutu breathed, he, he overthrew me, andI plunged into the abode of fish. Hence the anger of my heart, --that hemight not begin again his acts of ill will, --I broke his wings. '" Whilsthe pleaded his cause the furious heart of Anu became calm. The presenceof a mortal in the halls of heaven was a kind of sacrilege, to beseverely punished unless the god should determine its expiation bygiving the philtre of immortality to the intruder. Anu decided on thelatter course, and addressed Adapa: "'Why, then, did Ea allow an uncleanmortal to see--the interior of heaven and earth?' He handed him a cup, he himself reassured him. --'We, what shall we give him? The food oflife--take some to him that he may eat. ' The food of life, some wastaken to him, but he did not eat of it. The water of life, some wastaken to him, but he drank not of it. A garment, it was taken to him, and he put it on. Oil, some was taken to him, and he anointed himselfwith it. " Anu looked upon him; he lamented over him: "'Well, Adapa, whyhast thou not eaten--why hast thou not drunk? Thou shalt not now haveeternal life. ' Ea, my lord, has commanded me: thou shalt not eat, thoushalt not drink. " Adapa thus lost, by remembering too well the commandsof his father, the opportunity which was offered to him of rising tothe rank of the immortals; Anu sent him back to his home just as he hadcome, and Shutu had to put up with his broken wings. 

Bamman absorbed one after the other all these genii of tempest andcontention, and out of their combined characters his own personality ofa hundred diverse aspects was built up. 

[Illustration: 177. Jpg THE BIRDS OF THE TEMPEST]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan cylinder in the Museum of New York. Lenormant, in a long article, which he published under the pseudonym of Mansell, fancied he recognized here the encounter between Sabitum and Gilgames on the shores of the Ocean. 

He was endowed with the capricious and changing disposition of theelement incarnate in him, and passed from tears to laughter, from angerto calm, with a promptitude which made him one of the most disconcertingdeities. The tempest was his favourite rôle. Sometimes he would burstsuddenly on the heavens at the head of a troop of savage subordinates, whose chiefs were known as Matu, the squall, and Barku, the lightning;sometimes these were only the various manifestations of his own nature, and it was he himself who was called Matu and Barku. He collected theclouds, sent forth the thunder-bolt, shook the mountains, and "beforehis rage and violence, his bellowings, his thunder, the gods of heavenarose to the firmament--the gods of the earth sank into the earth" intheir terror. The monuments represent him as armed for battle withclub, axe, or the two-bladed flaming sword which was usually employed tosignify the thunderbolt. As he destroyed everything in his blindrage, the kings of Chaldæa were accustomed to invoke him against theirenemies, and to implore him to "hurl the hurricane upon the rebelpeoples and the insubordinate nations. " When his wrath was appeased, andhe had returned to more gentle ways, his kindness knew no limits. Fromhaving been the waterspout which overthrew the forests, he became thegentle breeze which caresses and refreshes them: with his warm showershe fertilizes the fields: he lightens the air and tempers the summerheat. 

[Illustration: 178. Jpg RAMMAN ARMED WITH AN AXE. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Loftus. The original, a small stele of terra-cotta, is in the British Museum. The date of this representation is uncertain. Ramman stands upon the mountain which supports the heaven. 

He causes the rivers to swell and overflow their banks; he pours out thewaters over the fields, he makes channels for them, he directs them toevery place where the need of water is felt. 

But his fiery temperament is stirred up by the slightest provocation, and then "his flaming sword scatters pestilence over the land: hedestroys the harvest, brings the ingathering to nothing, tears up trees, and beats down and roots up the corn. "

[Illustration: 179. Jpg RAMMAN, THE GOD OF TEMPESTS AND THUNDER. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard. Properly speaking, this is a Susian deity brought by the soldiers of Assurbanipal into Assyria, but it carries the usual insignia of Ramman. 

In a word, the second triad formed a more homogeneous whole when Ishtarstill belonged to it, and it is entirely owing to the presence of thisgoddess in it that we are able to understand its plan and purpose; itwas essentially astrological, and it was intended that none should beenrolled in it but the manifest leaders of the constellations. Ramman, on the contrary, had nothing to commend him for a position alongside themoon and sun; he was not a celestial body, he had no definitely shapedform, but resembled an aggregation of gods rather than a single deity. By the addition of Ramman to the triad, the void occasioned by theremoval of Ishtar was filled up in a blundering way. We must, however, admit that the theologians must have found it difficult to find any onebetter fitted for the purpose: when Venus was once set along with therest of the planets, there was nothing left in the heavens whichwas sufficiently brilliant to replace her worthily. The priests werecompelled to take the most powerful deity they knew after the otherfive--the lord of the atmosphere and the thunder. *

 * Their embarrassment is shown in the way in which they have classed this god. In the original triad, Ishtar, being the smallest of the three heavenly bodies, naturally took the third place. Ramman, on the contrary, had natural affinities with the elemental group, and belonged to Anu, Bel, Ea, rather than to Sin and Shamash. So we find him sometimes in the third place, sometimes in the first of the second triad, and this post of eminence is so natural to him, that Assyriologists have preserved it from the beginning, and describe the triad as composed, not of Sin, Shamash, and Ramman, but of Ramman, Sin, and Shamash, or even of Sin, Ramman, and Shamash. 

The gods of the triads were married, but their goddesses for the mostpart had neither the liberty nor the important functions of the Egyptiangoddesses. * They were content, in their modesty, to be eclipsed behindthe personages of their husbands, and to spend their lives in the shade, as the women of Asiatic countries still do. It would appear, moreover, that there was no trouble taken about them until it was too late--whenit was desired, for instance, to explain the affiliation of theimmortals. Anu and Bel were bachelors to start with. When it wasdetermined to assign to them female companions, recourse was had to theprocedure adopted by the Egyptians in a similar case: there was added totheir names the distinctive suffix of the feminine gender, and in thismanner two grammatical goddesses were formed, Anat and Belit, whosedispositions give some indications of this accidental birth. There wasalways a vague uncertainty about the parts they had to play, and theirexistence itself was hardly more than a seeming one. Anat sometimesrepresented a feminine heaven, and differed from Anu only in her sex. At times she was regarded as the antithesis of Anu, i. E. As the earth incontradistinction to the heaven. Belit, as far as we can distinguish herfrom other persons to whom the title "lady" was attributed, shared withBel the rule over the earth and the regions of darkness where the deadwere confined. The wife of Ea was distinguished by a name which was notderived from that of her husband, but she was not animated by a moreintense vitality than Anat or Belit: she was called Damkina, the ladyof the soil, and she personified in an almost passive manner the earthunited to the water which fertilized it. The goddesses of the secondtriad were perhaps rather less artificial in their functions. Ningal, doubtless, who ruled along with Sin at Uru, was little more than anincarnate epithet. Her name means "the great lady, " "the queen, " and herperson is the double of that of her husband; as he is the man-moon, sheis the woman-moon, his beloved, and the mother of his children Shamashand Ishtar. But A or Sirrida enjoyed an indisputable authority alongsideShamash: she never lost sight of the fact that she had been a sun likeShamash, a disk-god before she was transformed into a goddess. Shamash, moreover, was surrounded by an actual harem, of which Sirridà was theacknowledged queen, as he himself was its king, and among its membersGula, the great, and Anunit, the daughter of Sin, the morning star, found a place. Shala, the compassionate, was also included among them;she was subsequently bestowed upon Ramman. They were all goddesses ofancient lineage, and each had been previously worshipped on her ownaccount when the Sumerian people held sway in Chaldæa: as soon as theSemites gained the upper hand, the powers of these female deities becameenfeebled, and they were distributed among the gods. There was but oneof them, Nana, the doublet of Ishtar, who had succeeded in preservingher liberty: when her companions had been reduced to comparativeinsignificance, she was still acknowledged as queen and mistress in hercity of Eridu. The others, notwithstanding the enervating influenceto which they were usually subject in the harem, experienced at timesinclinations to break into rebellion, and more than one of them, shakingoff the yoke of her lord, had proclaimed her independence: Anunit, forinstance, tearing herself away from the arms of Shamash, had vindicated, as his sister and his equal, her claim to the half of his dominion. Sippara was a double city, or rather there were two neighbouringSipparàs, one distinguished as the city of the Sun, "Sippara shaShamash, " while the other gave lustre to Anunit in assuming thedesignation of "Sippara sha Anunitum. " Rightly interpreted, these familyarrangements of the gods had but one reason for their existence--thenecessity of explaining without coarseness those parental connectionswhich the theological classification found it needful to establishbetween the deities constituting the two triads. In Chaldæa as in Egyptthere was no inclination to represent the divine families as propagatingtheir species otherwise than by the procedure observed in humanfamilies: the union of the goddesses with the gods thus legitimatedtheir offspring. 

 * The passive and almost impersonal character of the majority of the Babylonian and Assyrian goddesses is well known. The majority must have been independent at the outset, in the Sumerian period, and were married later on, under the influence of Semitic ideas. 

The triads were, therefore, nothing more than theological fictions. Eachof them was really composed of six members, and it was thus really acouncil of twelve divinities which the priests of Uruk had instituted toattend to the affairs of the universe; with this qualification, that thefeminine half of the assembly rarely asserted itself, and contributedbut an insignificant part to the common work. When once the greatdivisions had been arranged, and the principal functionaries designated, it was still necessary to work out the details, and to select v agentsto preserve an order among them. Nothing happens by chance in thisworld, and the most insignificant events are determined by previsionalarrangements, and decisions arrived at a long time previously. The godsassembled every morning in a hall, situated near the gates of the sun inthe east, and there deliberated on the events of the day. The sagaciousEa submitted to them the fates which are about to be fulfilled, andcaused a record of them to be made in the chamber of destiny on tabletswhich Shamash or Merodach carried with them to scatter everywhere on hisway; but he who should be lucky enough to snatch these tablets from himwould make himself master of the world for that day. This misfortune hadarisen only once, at the beginning of the ages. Zu, the storm-bird, wholives with his wife and children on Mount Sabu under the protection ofBel, and who from this elevation pounces down upon the country to ravageit, once took it into his head to make himself equal to the supremegods. He forced his way at an early hour into the chamber of destinybefore the sun had risen: he perceived within it the royal insignia ofBel, "the mitre of his power, the garment of his divinity, --the fataltablets of his divinity, Zu perceived them. He perceived the fatherof the gods, the god who is the tie between heaven and earth, --and thedesire of ruling took possession of his heart;--yea, Zu perceivedthe father of the gods, the god who is the tie between heaven andearth, --and the desire of ruling took possession of his heart, --'I willtake the fatal tablets of the gods, I myself, --and the oracles of allthe gods, it is I who will give them forth;--I will install myself onthe throne, I will send forth decrees, --I will manage the whole of theIgigi. '--And his heart plotted warfare;--lying in wait on the thresholdof the hall, he watched for the dawn. --When Bel had poured out theshining waters, --had installed himself on the throne, and donned thecrown, Zu took away the fatal tablets from his hand, --he seized power, and the authority to give forth decrees, --the god Zu, he flew away andconcealed himself in the mountains. " Bel immediately cried out, he wasinflamed with anger, and ravaged the world with the fire of hiswrath. "Anu opened his mouth, he spake, --he said to the gods hisoffspring:--'Who will conquer the god Zu?--He will make his name greatin every land. '--Bamman, the supreme, the son of Anu, was called, andAnu himself gave to him his orders;--yea, Bamman, the supreme, the sonof Anu, was called, and Anu himself gave to him his orders. --'Go, my sonKamman, the valiant, since nothing resists thy attack;--conquer Zu bythine arm, and thy name shall be great among the great gods, --among thegods, thy brothers, thou shalt have no equal: sanctuaries shall be builtto thee, and if thou buildest for thyself thy cities in the "four housesof the world, "* --thy cities shall extend over all the terrestrialmountain! 'Be valiant, then, in the sight of the gods, and may thyname be strong. ' Bamman answers, he addresses this bpeech to Anu hisfather:--'Father, who will go to the inaccessible mountains? Who is theequal of Zu among the gods, thy offspring? He has carried off in hishand the fatal tablets, --he has seized power and authority to give forthdecrees, --Zu thereupon flew away and hid himself in his mountain. --Now, the word of his mouth is like that of the god who unites heaven andearth;---my power is no more than clay, --and all the gods must bowbefore him. '" Anu sent for the god Bara, the son of Ishtar, to help him, and exhorted him in the same language he had addressed to Ramman: Bararefused to attempt the enterprise. Shamash, called in his turn, atlength consented to set out for Mount Sabu: he triumphed over thestorm-bird, tore the fatal tablets from him, and brought him before Eaas a prisoner. 

 * Literally, "Construct thy cities in the four regions of the world (cf. Pp. 12, 13 of the present work), and thy cities will extend to the mountain of the earth. " Anu would appear to have promised to Ramman a monopoly; if he wished to build cities which would recognize him as their patron, these cities will cover the entire earth. 

[Illustration: 186. Jpg SHAMASH FIGHTS WITH ZU AND THE STORM BIRDS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Layard. 

[Illustration: 186a. Jpg The Plenisphere taken from the Temple ofTentyra]

[Illustration: 186b. Jpg Text of The Plenisphere]

The sun of the complete day, the sun in the full possession of hisstrength, could alone win back the attributes of power which the morningsun had allowed himself to be despoiled of. From that time forth theprivilege of delivering immortal decrees to mortals was never taken outof the hands of the gods of light. 

Destinies once fixed on the earth became a law--"mamit"--a good or badfate, from which no one could escape, but of which any one might learnthe disposition beforehand if he were capable of interpreting theformulas of it inscribed on the book of the sky. The stars, even thosewhich were most distant from the earth, were not unconcerned in theevents which took place upon it. They were so many living beings endowedwith various characteristics, and their rays as they passed across thecelestial spaces exercised from above an active control on everythingthey touched. Their influences became modified, increased or weakenedaccording to the intensity with which they shed them, according to therespective places they occupied in the firmament, and according to thehour of the night and the month of the year in which they rose orset. Each division of time, each portion of space, each category ofexistences--and in each category each individual--was placed under theirrule and was subject to their implacable tyranny. The infant was borntheir slave, and continued in this condition of slavery until his life'send: the star which was in the ascendent at the instant of his birthbecame his star, and ruled his destiny. The Chaldæans, like theEgyptians, fancied they discerned in the points of light whichilluminate the nightly sky, the outline of a great number of variousfigures--men, animals, monsters, real and imaginary objects, a lance, abow, a fish, a scorpion, ears of wheat, a bull, and a lion. The majorityof these were spread out above their heads on the surface of thecelestial vault; but twelve of these figures, distinguishable by theirbrilliancy, were arranged along the celestial horizon in the pathway ofthe sun, and watched over his daily course along the walls of the world. These divided this part of the sky into as many domains or "houses, " inwhich they exercised absolute authority, and across which the god couldnot go without having previously obtained their consent, or havingbrought them into subjection beforehand. This arrangement is areminiscence of the wars by which Bel-Merodach, the divine bull, thegod of Babylon, had succeeded in bringing order out of chaos: he had notonly killed Tiâmat, but he had overthrown and subjugated the monsterswhich led the armies of darkness. He meets afresh, every year and everyday, on the confines of heaven and earth, the scorpion-men of his ancientenemy, the fish with heads of men or goats, and many more. The twelveconstellations were combined into a zodiac, whose twelve signs, transmitted to the Greeks and modified by them, may still be read onour astronomical charts. The constellations, immovable, or actuated by aslow motion, in longitude only, contain the problems of the future, but they are not sufficient of themselves alone to furnish man with thesolution of these problems. The heavenly bodies capable of explainingthem, the real interpreters of destiny, were at first the two divinitieswho rule the empires of night and day--the moon and the sun; afterwardsthere took part in this work of explanation the five planets which wecall Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Mars, and Mercury, or rather the five godswho actuate them, and who have controlled their course from the momentof creation--Merodach, Ishtar, Ninib, Nergal, and Nebo. The planetsseemed to traverse the heavens in every direction, to cross their ownand each other's paths, and to approach the fixed stars or recede fromthem; and the species of rhythmical dance in which they are carriedunceasingly across the celestial spaces revealed to men, if theyexamined it attentively, the irresistible march of their own destinies, as surely as if they had made themselves master of the fatal tablets ofShamash, and could spell them out line by line. 

The Chaldæns were disposed to regard the planets as perverse sheep whohad escaped from the fold of the stars to wander wilfully in search ofpasture. * At first they were considered to be so many sovereign deities, without other function than that of running through the heavens andfurnishing there predictions of the future; afterwards two of themdescended to the earth, and received upon it the homage of men* --Ishtarfrom the inhabitants of the city of Dilbat, and Nebo* from those ofBorsippa. Nebo assumed the _rôle_ of a soothsayer and a prophet. Heknew and foresaw everything, and was ready to give his advice upon anysubject: he was the inventor of the method of making clay tablets, and of writing upon them. Ishtar was a combination of contradictorycharacteristics. ****

 * Their generic name, read as "lubat, " in Sumero-Accadian, "bibbu" in Semitic speech (Fr. Lenormant, _Essai de Commentaire de Bérose_, pp. 370, 371), denoted a quadruped, the species of which Lenormant was not able to define; Jensen (_Die Kosmologie_, pp. 95-99) identified it with the sheep and the ram. At the end of the account of the creation, Merodach-Jupiter is compared with a shepherd who feeds the flock of the gods on the pastures of heaven (cf. P. 15 of the present work). 

 ** The site of Dilbat is unknown: it has been sought in the neighbourhood of Kishu and Babylon (Delitzsch, _Wo lag das Paradies?_ p. 219); it is probable that it was in the suburbs of Sippara. The name given to the goddess was transcribed AeXckit (Hesychius, _sub voce_), and signifies the herald, the messenger of the day. 

 *** The rôle of Nebo was determined by the early Assyriologists (Rawlin-son, _On the Religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians_, pp. 523-52G; Oppeet, _Expédition en Mésopotamie_, vol. Ii. P. 257; Lenormant, _Essai de Commentaire de Bérose_, pp. 114-116). He owed his functions partly to his alliance with other gods (Sayce, _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, pp. 118, 119). 

 **** See the chapter devoted by Sayce to the consideration of Ishtar in his Religion of the Ancient Babylonians (IV. Tammuz and Ishtar, p. 221, et seq. ), and the observations made by Jeremias on the subject in the sequel of his Izdubar-Nimrod (Ishtar-Astarte im Izdubar-Epos), pp. 56-66. 

[Illustration: 190. Jpg ISHTAR AS A WARRIOR-GODDESS]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure in Ménant's _Recherches sur la Glyptique orientale_. 

In Southern Chaldæa she was worshipped under the name of Nanâ, the supreme mistress. * The identity of this lady of the gods, "Bêlit-ilânit, " the Evening Star, with Anunit, the Morning Star, wasat first ignored, and hence two distinct goddesses were formed from thetwofold manifestation of a single deity: having at length discoveredtheir error, the Chaldæans merged these two beings in one, and theirnames became merely two different designations for the same star under atwofold aspect. The double character, however, which had been attributedto them continued to be attached to the single personality. 

 * With regard to Nana, consult, with reserve, Fk. Lenormant, Essai de Commentaire de Bérose, pp. 100-103, 378, 379, where the identity of Ishtar and Nana is still unrecognized. 

[Illustration: 191. Jpg NEBO]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian statue in alabaster in the British Museum. 

The Evening Star had symbolized the goddess of love, who attractedthe sexes towards one another, and bound them together by the chainof desire; the Morning Star, on the other hand, was regarded as thecold-blooded and cruel warrior who despised the pleasures of love andrejoiced in warfare: Ishtar thus combined in her person chastity andlasciviousness, kindness and ferocity, and a peaceful and warlikedisposition, but this incongruity in her characteristics did not seemto disconcert the devotion of her worshippers. The three other planetswould have had a wretched part to play in comparison with Nebo andIshtar, if they had not been placed under new patronage. The secondarysolar gods, Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal, led, if we examine their rôlecarefully, but an incomplete existence: they were merely portions of thesun, while Shamash represented the entire orb. What became of them apartfrom the moment in the day and year in which they were actively engagedin their career? Where did they spend their nights, the hours duringwhich Shamash had retired into the firmament, and lay hidden behind themountains of the north? As in Egypt the Horuses identified at first withthe sun became at length the rulers of the planets, so in Chaldæathe three suns of Ninib, Merodach, and Nergal became respectivelyassimilated to Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars;* and this identification wasall the more easy in the case of Saturn, as he had been considered fromthe beginning as a bull belonging to Shamash. Henceforward, therefore, there was a group of five powerful gods--distributed among the starsof heaven, and having abodes also in the cities of the earth--whosefunction it was to announce the destinies of the universe. Some, deceived by the size and brilliancy of Jupiter, gave the chief commandto Merodach, and this opinion naturally found a welcome reception atBabylon, of which he was the feudal deity. Others, taking into accountonly the preponderating influence exercised by the planets over thefortunes of men, accorded the primacy to Ninib, placing Merodach next, followed respectively by Ishtar, Nergal, and Nebo. The five planets, like the six triads, were not long before they took to themselvesconsorts, if indeed they had not already been married before they werebrought together in a collective whole. Ninib chose for wife, in thefirst place, Bau, the daughter of Anu, the mistress of Uru, highlyvenerated from the most remote times; afterwards Gula, the queen ofphysicians, whose wisdom alleviated the ills of humanity, and who wasone of the goddesses sometimes placed in the harem of Shamash himself. Merodach associated with him Zirbanit, the fruitful, who secures fromgeneration to generation the permanence and increase of living beings. Nergal distributed his favours sometimes to Laz, and sometimes toEsharra, who was, like himself, warlike and always victorious in battle. Nebo provided himself with a mate in Tashmit, the great bride, oreven in Ishtar herself. But Ishtar could not be content with a singlehusband: after she had lost Dumuzi-Tammuz, the spouse of her youth, shegave herself freely to the impulses of her passions, distributing herfavours to men as well as gods, and was sometimes subject to be repelledwith contempt by the heroes upon whom she was inclined to bestow herlove. The five planets came thus to be actually ten, and advantage wastaken of these alliances to weave fresh schemes of affiliation: Nebo wasproclaimed to be the son of Merodach and Zirbanit, Merodach the son ofBa, and Ninib the offspring of Bel and Esharra. 

 * Ishtar, Nebo, Sin, and Shamash being heavenly bodies, to begin with, and the other great gods, Anu, Bel, Ea, and Ramman having their stars in the heavens, the Chaldæans were led by analogy to ascribe to the gods which represented the phases of the sun, Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal, three stars befitting their importance, i. E. Three planets. 

There were two councils, one consisting of twelve members, the otherof ten; the former was composed of the most popular gods of SouthernChaldæa, representing the essential elements of the world, whilethe latter consisted of the great deities of Northern Chaldæa, whosefunction it was to regulate or make known the destinies of men. Theauthors of this system, who belonged to Southern Chaldæa, naturallygave the position to their patron gods, and placed the twelve abovethe ten. It is well known that Orientals display a great respect fornumbers, and attribute to them an almost irresistible power; we canthus understand how it was that the Chaldæans applied them to designatetheir divine masters, and we may calculate from these numbers theestimation in which each of these masters was held. The goddesses hadno value assigned to them in this celestial arithmetic, Ishtar excepted, who was not a mere duplication, more or less ingenious, of a previouslyexisting deity, but possessed from the beginning an independent life, and could thus claim to be called goddess in her own right. The membersof the two triads were arranged on a descending scale, Anu taking thehighest place: the scale was considered to consist of a soss of sixtyunits in length, and each of the deities who followed Anu was placed tenof these units below his predecessor, Bel at 50 units, Ea at 40, Sin at30, Shamash at 20, Ramman at 10 or 6. The gods of the planets were notarranged in a regular series like those of the triads, but the numbersattached to them expressed their proportionate influence on terrestrialaffairs: to Ninib was assigned the same number as had been given to Bel, 50, to Merodach perhaps 25, to Ishtar 15, to Nergal 12, and to Nebo10. The various spirits were also fractionally estimated, but this as aclass, and not as individuals: the priests would not have known how tohave solved the problem if they had been obliged to ascribe valuesto the infinity of existences. * As the Heliopolitans were obliged toeliminate from the Ennead many feudal divinities, so the Chaldæanshad left out of account many of their sovereign deities, especiallygoddesses, Bau of Uru, Nana of Uruk, and Allât; or if they did introducethem into their calculations, it was by a subterfuge, by identifyingthem with other goddesses, to whom places had been already assigned;Bau being thus coupled with Ohila, Nana with Ishtar, and Allât withNinhl-Beltis. If figures had been assigned to the latter proportionateto the importance of the parts they played, and the number of theirvotaries, how comes it that they were excluded from the cycle of thegreat gods? They were actually placed alongside rather than below thetwo councils, and without insistence upon the rank which they enjoyedin the hierarchy. But the confusion which soon arose among divinitiesof identical or analogous nature opened the way for inserting all theneglected personalities in the framework already prepared for them. Asky-god, like Dagan, would mingle naturally with Anu, and enjoy likehonours with him. The gods of all ranks associated with the sun or fire, Nusku, Gibil, and Dumuzi, who had not been at first received among theprivileged group, obtained a place there by virtue of their assimilationto Shamash, and his secondary forms, Bel-Merodach, Ninib, and Nergal. Ishtar absorbed all her companions, and her name put in the plural, Ishtarati, "the Ishtars, " embraced all goddesses in general, just as thename Hani took in all the gods. Thanks to this compromise, the systemflourished, and was widely accepted: local vanity was always able tofind a means for placing in a prominent place within it the feudaldeity, and for reconciling his pretensions to the highest rank with theorder of precedence laid down by the theologians of Uruk. The localgod was always the king of the gods, the father of the gods, he whowas worshipped above the others in everyday life, and whose public cultconstituted the religion of the State or city. 

 * As far as we can at present determine, the most ancient series established was that of the planetary gods, whose values, following each other irregularly, are not calculated on a scheme of mathematical progression, but according to the empirical importance, which a study of predictions had ascribed to each planet. The regular series, that of the great gods, bears in its regularity the stamp of its later introduction: it was instituted after the example of the former, but with corrections of what seemed capricious, and fixing the interval between the gods always at the same figure. 

The temples were miniature reproductions of the arrangement of theuniverse. The "ziggurat" represented in its form the mountain of theworld, and the halls ranged at its feet resembled approximatelythe accessory parts of the world: the temple of Merodach at Babyloncomprised them all up to the chambers of fate, where the sun receivedevery morning the tablets of destiny. The name often indicated thenature of the patron deity or one of his attributes: the temple ofShamash at Larsam, for instance was called E-Babbara, "the house ofthe sun, " and that of Nebo at Borsippa, E-Zida, "the eternal house. " Nomatter where the sanctuary of a specific god might be placed, it alwaysbore the same name; Shamash, for example, dwelt at Sippara as at Larsamin an E-Babbara. In Chaldæa, as in Egypt, the king or chief of theState was the priest _par excellence_, and the title of "vicegerent, "so frequent in the early period, shows that the chief was regarded asrepresenting the divinity among his own people; but a priestly body, partly hereditary, partly selected, fulfilled for him his dailysacerdotal functions, and secured the regularity of the services. Achief priest--"ishshakku"--was at their head, and his principal duty wasthe pouring out of the libation. Each temple had its "ishshakku, " but hewho presided over the worship of the feudal deity took precedence ofall the others in the city, as in the case of the chief priests ofBel-Merodach at Babylon, of Sin at Uru, and of Shamash at Larsam orSippara. He presided over various categories of priests and priestesseswhose titles and positions in the hierarchy are not well known. The"sangutu" appear to have occupied after him the most important place, aschamberlains attached to the house of the god, and as his liegemen. To some of these was entrusted the management of the harem of the god, while others were overseers of the remaining departments of hispalace. The "kîpu" and the "shatammu" were especially charged with themanagement of his financial interests, while the "pashishu" anointedwith holy and perfumed oil his statues of stone, metal, or wood, thevotive stelæ set up in the chapels, and the objects used in worshipand sacrifice, such as the great basins, the "seas" of copper whichcontained the water employed in the ritual ablutions, and the victimsled to the altar. After these came a host of officials, butchers andtheir assistants, soothsayers, augurs, prophets, --in fact, all theattendants that the complicated rites, as numerous in Chaldæa as inEgypt, required, not to speak of the bands of women and men who honouredthe god in meretricious rites. Occupation for this motley crowd wasnever lacking. Every day and almost every hour a fresh ceremony requiredthe services of one or other member of the staff, from the monarchhimself, or his deputy in the temple, down to the lowest sacristan. The12th of the month Blul was set apart at Babylon for the worship of Beland Beltis: the sovereign made a donation to them according as he wasdisposed, and then celebrated before them the customary sacrifices, andif he raised his hand to plead for any favour, he obtained it withoutfail. The 13th was dedicated to the moon, the supreme god; the 14th toBeltis and Nergal; the 15th to Shamash; the 16th was a fast in honourof Merodach and Zirbanit; the 17th was the annual festival of Nebo andTashmit; the 18th was devoted to the laudation of Sin and Shamash; whilethe 19th was a "white day" for the great goddess Gula. The whole yearwas taken up in a way similar to this casual specimen from the calendar. The kings, in founding a temple, not only bestowed upon it the objectsand furniture required for present exigencies, such as lambs and oxen, birds, fish, bread, liquors, incense, and odoriferous essences;they assigned to it an annual income from the treasury, slaves, andcultivated lands; and their royal successors were accustomed to renewthese gifts or increase them on every opportunity. Every victoriouscampaign brought him his share in the spoils and captives; everyfortunate or unfortunate event which occurred in connection with theState or royal family meant an increase in the gifts to the god, asan act of thanksgiving on the one hand for the divine favour, or as anoffering on the other to appease the wrath of the god. Gold, silver, copper, lapis-lazuli, gems and precious woods, accumulated in the sacredtreasury; fields were added to fields, flocks to flocks, slaves toslaves; and the result of such increase would in a few generationshave made the possessions of the god equal to those of the reigningsovereign, if the attacks of neighbouring peoples had not from time totime issued in the loss of a part of it, or if the king himself had not, under financial pressure, replenished his treasury at the expense of thepriests. To prevent such usurpations as far as possible, maledictionswere hurled at every one who should dare to lay a sacrilegious hand onthe least object belonging to the divine domain; it was predicted ofsuch "that he would be killed like an ox in the midst of his prosperity, and slaughtered like a wild urus in the fulness of his strength!... Mayhis name be effaced from his stelæ in the temple of his god! May hisgod see pitilessly the disaster of his country, may the god ravage hisland with the waters of heaven, ravage it with the waters of theearth. May he be pursued as a nameless wretch, and his seed fall underservitude! May this man, like every one who acts adversely to hismaster, find nowhere a refuge, afar off, under the vault of the skies orin any abode of man whatsoever. " These threats, terrible as they were, did not succeed in deterring the daring, and the mighty men of thetime were willing to brave them, when their interests promoted them. Gulkishar, Lord of the "land of the sea, " had vowed a wheat-field toNina, his lady, near the town of Deri, on the Tigris. Seven hundredyears later, in the reign of Belnadinabal, Ekarrakaîs, governor ofBîtsinmagir, took possession of it, and added it to the provincialpossessions, contrary to all equity. The priest of the goddess appealedto the king, and prostrating himself before the throne with many prayersand mystic formulas, begged for the restitution of the alienated land. Belnadinabal acceded to the request, and renewed the imprecations whichhad been inserted on the original deed of gift: "If ever, in thecourse of days, the man of law, or the governor of a suzerain who willsuperintend the town of Bîtsinmagir, fears the vengeance of the godZikum or the goddess Nina, may then Zikum and Nina, the mistress of thegoddesses, come to him with the benediction of the prince of the gods;may they grant to him the destiny of a happy life, and may they accordto him days of old age, and years of uprightness! But as for thee, whohast a mind to change this, step not across its limits, do not covetthe land: hate evil and love justice. " If all sovereigns were not soaccommodating in their benevolence as Belnadinabal, the piety of privateindividuals, stimulated by fear, would be enough to repair the loss, and frequent legacies would soon make up for the detriment caused tothe temple possessions by the enemy's sword or the rapacity of anunscrupulous lord. The residue, after the vicissitudes of revolutions, was increased and diminished from time to time, to form at length in thecity an indestructible fief whose administration was a function of thechief priest for life, and whose revenue furnished means in abundancefor the personal exigencies of the gods as well as the support of hisministers. 

This was nothing more than justice would prescribe. A loyal anduniversal faith would not only acknowledge the whole world to be thecreation of the gods, but also their inalienable domain. It belonged tothem at the beginning; every one in the State of which the god wasthe sovereign lord, all those, whether nobles or serfs, vicegerentsor kings, who claimed to have any possession in it, were but ephemerallease-holders of portions of which they fancied themselves the owners. Donations to the temples were, therefore, nothing more than voluntaryrestitutions, which the gods consented to accept graciously, deigningto be well pleased with the givers, when, after all-, they might haveconsidered the gifts as merely displays of strict honesty, which meritedneither recognition nor thanks. They allowed, however, the best part oftheir patrimony to remain in the hands of strangers, and they contentedthemselves with what the pretended generosity of the faithful might seefit to assign to them. Of their lands, some were directly cultivated bythe priests themselves; others were leased to lay people of every rank, who took off the shoulders of the priesthood all the burden of managingthem, while rendering at the same time the profit that accrued fromthem; others were let at a fixed rent according to contract. Thetribute of dates, corn, and fruit, which was rendered to the temples tocelebrate certain commemorative ceremonies in the honour of this or thatdeity, were fixed charges upon certain lands, which at length usuallyfell entirely into the hands of the priesthood as mortmain possessions. These were the sources of the fixed revenues of the gods, by means ofwhich they and their people were able to live, if not luxuriously, atleast in a manner befitting their dignity. The offerings and sacrificeswere a kind of windfall, of which the quantity varied strangely with theseasons; at certain times few were received, while at other times therewas a superabundance. The greatest portion of them was consumed onthe spot by the officials of the sanctuary; the part which could bepreserved without injury was added to the produce of the domain, andconstituted a kind of reserve for a rainy day, or was used to producemore of its kind. The priests made great profit out of corn and metals, and the skill with which they conducted commercial operations in silverwas so notorious that no private person hesitated to entrust them withthe management of his capital: they were the intermediaries betweenlenders and borrowers, and the commissions which they obtained in thesetransactions was not the smallest or the least certain of their profits. They maintained troops of slaves, labourers, gardeners, workmen, andeven women-singers and sacred courtesans of which mention has been madeabove, all of whom either worked directly for them in their severaltrades, or were let out to those who needed their services. The god wasnot only the greatest cultivator in the State after the king, sometimeseven excelling him in this respect, but he was also the most activemanufacturer, and many of the utensils in daily use, as well as articlesof luxury, proceeded from his workshops. His possessions secured for hima paramount authority in the city, and also an influence in the councilsof the king: the priests who represented him on earth thus became mixedup in State affairs, and exercised authority on his behalf in the samemeasure as the officers of the crown. 

[Illustration: 203. Jpg A VOTARY LED TO THE GOD TO RECEIVE THE REWARD OFTHE SACRIFICE]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio in the Berlin Museum. 

He, had, indeed, as much need of riches and renown as the least of hisclients. As he was subject to all human failings, and experienced allthe appetites of mankind, he had to be nourished, clothed, and amused, and this could be done only at great expense. The stone or woodenstatues erected to him in the sanctuaries furnished him with bodies, which he animated with his breath, and accredited to his clients as thereceivers of all things needful to him in his mysterious kingdom. Theimages of the gods were clothed in vestments, they were anointed withodoriferous oils, covered with jewels, served with food and drink; andduring these operations the divinities themselves, above in the heaven, or down in the abyss, or in the bosom of the earth, were arrayed ingarments, their bodies were perfumed with unguents, and their appetitesfully satisfied: all that was further required for this purpose was theoffering of sacrifices together with prayers and prescribed rites. Thepriest began by solemnly inviting the gods to the feast: as soon as theysniffed from afar the smell of the good cheer that awaited them, theyran "like a swarm of flies" and prepared themselves to partake of it. 

[Illustration: 204. Jpg THE SACRIFICE: A GOAT PRESENTED TO ISHTAR. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian intaglio illustrated in A. Rich, _Narrative of a Journey to the Site of Babylon in 1811_. The sacrifice of the goat, or rather its presentation to the god, is not infrequently represented on the Assyrian bas-reliefs. 

The supplications having been heard, water was brought to the gods forthe necessary ablutions before a repast. "Wash thy hands, cleanse thyhands, --may the gods thy brothers wash their hands!--From a clean disheat a pure repast, --from a clean cup drink pure water. " The statue, fromthe rigidity of the material out of which it was carved, was at a losshow to profit by the exquisite things which had been lavished upon it:the difficulty was removed by the opening of its mouth at the momentof consecration, thus enabling it to partake of the good fare to itssatisfaction. * The banquet lasted a long time, and consisted of everydelicacy which the culinary skill of the time could prepare: the coursesconsisted of dates, wheaten flour, honey, butter, various kinds ofwines, and fruits, together with roast and boiled meats. 

 * This operation, which was also resorted to in Egypt in the case of the statues of the gods and deceased persons, is clearly indicated in a text of the second Chaldæan empire published in _W. A. Insc_, vol. Iv. Pi. 25. The priest who consecrates an image makes clear in the first place that "its mouth not being open it can partake of no refreshment: it neither eats food nor drinks water. " Thereupon he performs certain rites, which he declares were celebrated, if not at that moment, at least for the first time by Ea himself: "Ea has brought thee to thy glorious place, --to thy glorious place he has brought thee, --brought thee with his splendid hand, --brought also butter and honey;--_he has poured consecrated water into thy mouth--and by magic has opened thy mouth. _" Henceforward the statue can eat and drink like an ordinary living being the meat and beverages offered to it during the sacrifice. 

[Illustration: 205. Jpg THE GOD SHAMASH SEIZES WITH HIS LEFT HAND THESMOKE OF THE SACRIFICE. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio pointed out by Heuzey-Sarzcc; the original is in the Louvre. The scene depicted behind Shamash deals with a legend still unknown. A goddess, pursued by a genius with a double face, has taken refuge under a tree, which bows down to protect her; while the monster endeavours to break down the obstacle branch by branch, a god rises from the stem and hands to the goddess a stone-headed mace to protect her against her enemy. 

In the most ancient times it would appear that even human sacrificeswere offered, but this custom was obsolete except on rare occasions, andlambs, oxen, sometimes swine's flesh, formed the usual elements ofthe sacrifice. The gods seized as it arose from the altar the unctuoussmoke, and fed on it with delight. When they had finished their repast, the supplication of a favour was adroitly added, to which they gave afavourable hearing. Services were frequent in the temples: there was onein the morning and another in the evening on ordinary days, in additionto those which private individuals might require at any hour of the day. The festivals assigned to the local god and his colleagues, togetherwith the acts of praise in which the whole nation joined, such as thatof the New Year, required an abundance of extravagant sacrifices, inwhich the blood of the victims flowed like water. Days of sorrow andmourning alternated with these days of joy, during which the people andthe magnates gave themselves up to severe fasting and acts of penitence. The Chaldeans had a lively sense of human frailty, and of the risksentailed upon the sinner by disobedience to the gods. The dread ofsinning haunted them during their whole life; they continuallysubjected the motives of their actions to a strict scrutiny, and onceself-examination had revealed to them the shadow of an evil intent, theywere accustomed to implore pardon for it in a humble manner. "Lord, mysins are many, great are my misdeeds!--O my god, my sins are many, greatmy misdeeds!--O my goddess, my sins are many, great my misdeeds!--I havecommitted faults and I knew them not; I have committed sin and I knewit not; I have fed upon misdeeds and I knew them not; I have walked inomissions and I knew them not. --The lord, in the anger of his heart, he has stricken me, --the god, in the wrath of his heart, has abandonedme, --Ishtar is enraged against me, and has treated me harshly!--I makean effort, and no one offers me a hand, --I weep, and no one comes tome, --I cry aloud, and no one hears me:--I sink under affliction, I amoverwhelmed, I can no longer raise up my head, --I turn to my mercifulgod to call upon him, and I groan!... Lord reject not thy servant, --andif he is hurled into the roaring waters, stretch to him thy hand;--thesins I have committed, have mercy upon them, --the misdeeds I havecommitted, scatter them to the winds--and my numerous faults, tear themto pieces like a garment. " Sin in the eyes of the Chaldæan was not, aswith us, an infirmity of the soul; it assaulted the body like an actualvirus, and the fear of physical suffering or death engendered by it, inspired these complaints with a note of sincerity which cannot bemistaken. 

Every individual is placed, from the moment of his birth, under theprotection of a god and goddess, of whom he is the servant, or ratherthe son, and whom he never addresses otherwise than as his god andhis goddess. These deities accompany him night and day, not so much toprotect him from visible dangers, as to guard him from the invisiblebeings which ceaselessly hover round him, and attack him on every side. If he is devout, piously disposed towards his divine patrons and thedeities of his country, if he observes the prescribed rites, recites theprayers, performs the sacrifices--in a word, if he acts rightly--theiraid is never lacking; they bestow upon him a numerous posterity, ahappy old age, prolonged to the term fixed by fate, when he must resignhimself to close his eyes for ever to the light of day. If, on thecontrary, he is wicked, violent, one whose word cannot be trusted, "hisgod cuts him down like a reed, " extirpates his race, shortens his days, delivers him over to demons who possess themselves of his body andafflict it with sicknesses before finally despatching him. Penitenceis of avail against the evil of sin, and serves to re-establish a rightcourse of life, but its efficacy is not permanent, and the moment atlast arrives in which death, getting the upper hand, carries its victimaway. The Chaldæans had not such clear ideas as to what awaited them inthe other world as the Egyptians possessed: whilst the tomb, the mummy, the perpetuity of the funeral revenues, and the safety of the double, were the engrossing subjects in Egypt, the Chaldæan texts are almostentirely silent as to the condition of the soul, and the living seem tohave had no further concern about the dead than to get rid of themas quickly and as completely as possible. They did not believe thateverything was over at the last breath, but they did not on that accountthink that the fate of that which survived was indissolubly associatedwith the perishable part, and that the disembodied soul was eitherannihilated or survived, according as the flesh in which it wassustained was annihilated or survived in the tomb. The soul wasdoubtless not utterly unconcerned about the fate of the _larva_ it hadquitted: its pains were intensified on being despoiled of its earthlycase if the latter were mutilated, or left without sepulture, a preyto the fowls, of the air. This feeling, however, was not sufficientlydeveloped to create a desire for escape from corruption entirely, and tocause a resort to the mummifying process of the Egyptians. 

[Illustration: 208. Jpg DECORATED WRAPPINGS FROM A MUMMY (Color)]

The Chaldæans did not subject the body, therefore, to those injections, to those prolonged baths in preserving fluids, to that laboriousswaddling which rendered it indestructible; whilst the family wept andlamented, old women who exercised the sad function of mourners washedthe dead body, perfumed it, clad it in its best apparel, painted itscheeks, blackened its eyelids, placed a collar on its neck, rings on itsfingers, arranged its arms upon its breast, and stretched it on a bed, setting up at its head a little altar for the customary offerings ofwater, incense, and cakes. 

[Illustration: 209. Jpg Chaldæan coffin in the form of a jar]

[Illustration: 209a. Jpg A VAULTED TOMB IN URU]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Taylor. 

[Illustration: 210. Jpg CHALDÆAN TOMB WITH DOMED ROOF. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Taylor. 

Evil spirits, prowled incessantly around the dead bodies of theChaldæans, either to feed upon them, or to use them in their sorcery:should they succeed in slipping into a corpse, from that moment it couldbe metamorphosed into a vampire, and return to the world to suck theblood of the living. The Chaldæans were, therefore, accustomed to inviteby prayers beneficent genii and gods to watch over the dead. Two ofthese would take their invisible places at the head and foot of the bed, and wave their hands in the act of blessing: these were the vassalsof Ea, and, like their master, were usually clad in fish-skins. Othersplaced themselves in the sepulchral chamber, and stood ready to strikeany one who dared to enter: these had human figures, or lions' headsjoined to the bodies of men. Others, moreover, hovered over the house inorder to drive off the spectres who might endeavour to enter through theroof. During the last hours in which the dead body remained among itskindred, it reposed under the protection of a legion of gods. 

We must not expect to find on the plains of the Euphrates the rock-cuttombs, the mastabas or pyramids, of Egypt. No mountain chain ran oneither side of the river, formed of rock soft enough to be cut andhollowed easily into chambers or sepulchral halls, and at the same timesufficiently hard to prevent the tunnels once cut from falling in. 

[Illustration: 111. Jpg CHALDEAN TOMB WITH FLAT ROOF. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Taylor. 

The alluvial soil upon which the Chaldæan cities were built, far from, preserving the dead body, rapidly decomposed it under the influence ofheat and moisture: vaults constructed in it would soon be invaded bywater in spite of masonry; paintings and sculpture would soon beeaten away by nitre, and the funereal furniture and the coffin quicklydestroyed. The dwelling-house of the Chaldæan dead could not, therefore, properly be called, as those of Egypt, an "eternal house. " It wasconstructed of dried or burnt brick, and its form varied much fromthe most ancient times. Sometimes it was a great vaulted chamber, thecourses forming the roof being arranged corbel-wise, and contained theremains of one or two bodies walled up within it. * At other timesit consisted merely of an earthen jar, in which the corpse hadbeen inserted in a bent-up posture, or was composed of two enormouscylindrical jars, which, when united and cemented with bitumen, formed akind of barrel around the body. Other tombs are represented by wretchedstructures, sometimes oval and sometimes round in shape, placed upon abrick base and covered by a flat or domed roof. The interior was not oflarge dimensions, and to enter it was necessary to stoop to a creepingposture. The occupant of the smallest chambers was content to have withhim his linen, his ornaments, some bronze arrowheads, and metal or clayvessels. Others contained furniture which, though not as complete asthat found in Egyptian sepulchres, must have ministered to all theneeds of the spirit. The body was stretched, fully clothed, upon amat impregnated with bitumen, the head supported by a cushion or flatbrick, ** the arms laid across the breast, and the shroud adjusted bybands to the loins and legs. Sometimes the corpse was placed on its leftside, with the legs slightly bent, and the right hand, extendingover the left shoulder, was inserted into a vase, as if to convey thecontents to the mouth. 

 * Vaulted chambers are confined chiefly to the ancient cemeteries of Uru at Mugheir; they are rather over six to seven feet long, with a breadth of five and a half feet. The walls are not quite perpendicular, but are somewhat splayed up to two-thirds of their height, where they begin to narrow into the vaulted roof. 

 ** The object placed under the head of the skeleton is the dried brick mentioned in the text; the vessel to which the hand is stretched out was of copper; the other vessels were of earthenware, and contained water, or dates, of which the stones were found. The small cylinders on the side were of stone; the two large cylinders, between the copper vessel and those of earthenware, were pieces of bamboo, of whose use we are ignorant. 

[Illustration: 213. Jpg THE INTERIOR OF THE TOMB]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Taylor

Clay jars and dishes, arranged around the body, contained the food anddrink required for the dead man's daily fare--his favourite wine, dates, fish, fowl, game, occasionally also a boar's head--and even stonerepresentations of provisions, which, like those of Egypt, were lastingsubstitutes for the reality. The dead man required weapons also toenable him to protect his food-store, and his lance, javelins and batonof office were placed alongside him, together with a cylinder bearinghis name, which he had employed as his seal in his lifetime. Besidethe body of a woman or young girl was arranged an abundance of spareornaments, flowers, scent-bottles, combs, cosmetic pencils, and cakesof the black paste with which they were accustomed to paint the eyebrowsand the edges of the eyelids. 

Cremation seems in many cases to have been preferred to burial in atomb. The funeral pile was constructed at some distance from the town, on a specially reserved area in the middle of the marshes. The body, wrapped up in coarse matting, was placed upon a heap of reeds and rushessaturated with bitumen: a brick wall, coated with moist clay, was builtaround this to circumscribe the action of the flames, and, the customaryprayers having been recited, the pile was set on fire, masses of freshmaterial, together with the funerary furniture and usual viaticum, being added to the pyre. When the work of cremation was considered tobe complete, the fire was extinguished, and an examination made of theresidue. It frequently happened that only the most accessible and mosteasily destroyed parts of the body had been attacked by the flames, andthat there remained a black and disfigured mass which the fire hadnot consumed. The previously prepared coating of mud was then made tofurnish a clay covering for the body, so as to conceal the sickeningspectacle from the view of the relatives and spectators. Sometimes, however, the furnace accomplished its work satisfactorily, and there wasnothing to be seen at the end but greasy ashes and scraps of calcinedbones. The remains were frequently left where they were, and the funeralpile became their tomb. They were, however, often collected and disposedof in a manner which varied with their more or less complete combustion. Bodies insufficiently burnt were interred in graves, or in publicchapels; while the ashes of those fully cremated, together with thescraps of bones and the _débris_ of the offerings, were placed in longurns. The heat had contorted the weapons and half melted the vesselsof copper; and the deceased was thus obliged to be content with thefragments only of the things provided for him. These were, however, sufficient for the purpose, and his possessions, once put to the testof the flames, now accompanied him whither he went: water alone waslacking, but provision was made for this by the construction on thespot of cisterns to collect it. For this purpose several cylinders ofpottery, some twenty inches broad, were inserted in the ground oneabove the other from a depth of from ten to twelve feet, and the lastcylinder, reaching the level of the ground, was provided with a narrowneck, through which the rainwater or infiltrations from the river flowedinto this novel cistern. Many examples of these are found in one and thesame chamber, * thus giving the soul an opportunity of finding water inone or other of them. The tombs at Uruk, arranged closely togetherwith coterminous walls, and gradually covered by the sand or by theaccumulation and _débris_ of new tombs, came at length to form an actualmound. In cities where space was less valuable, and where they were freeto extend, the tombs quickly disappeared without leaving any vestigesabove the surface, and it would now be necessary to turn up a greatdeal of rubbish before discovering their remains. The Chaldæa of to-daypresents the singular aspect of a country almost without cemeteries, andone would be inclined to think that its ancient inhabitants had takenpains to hide them. ** The sepulture of royal personages alone furnishesus with monuments of which we can determine the site. At Babylon thesewere found in the ancient palaces in which the living were no longerinclined to dwell: that of Shargina, for instance, furnished aburying-place for kings more than two thousand years after the deathof its founder. The chronicles devoutly indicate the spot where eachmonarch, when his earthly reign was over, found a last resting-place;and where, as the subject of a ceremonial worship similar to that ofEgypt, his memory was preserved from the oblivion which had overtakenmost of his illustrious subjects. 

 * The German expedition of 1886-87 found four of these reservoirs in a single chamber, and nine distributed in the chambers of a house entirely devoted to the burial of the dead. 

 ** Various explanations have been offered to account for this absence of tombs, Without mentioning the desperate attempt to get rid of the difficulty by the assumption that the dead bodies were cast into the river, Loftus thinks that the Chaldæans and Assyrians were accustomed to send them to some sanctuary in Southern Chaldæa, especially to Uru and Uruk, whose vast cemeteries, he contends, would have absorbed during the centuries the greater part of the Euphratean population; his opinion has been adopted by some historians, and, as far only as the later period is concerned, by Hommel. 

The dead man, or rather that part of him which survived--his"ekimmu"--dwelt in the tomb, and it was for his comfort that there wereprovided, at the time of sepulture or cremation, the provisions andclothing, the ornaments and weapons, of which he was considered to standin need. Furnished with these necessities by his children and heirs, hepreserved for the donors the same affection which he had felt for themin his lifetime, and gave evidence of it in every way he could, watchingover their welfare, and protecting them from malign influences. Ifthey abandoned or forgot him, he avenged himself for their neglect byreturning to torment them in their homes, by letting sickness attackthem, and by ruining them with his imprecations: he became thus noless hurtful than the "luminous ghost" of the Egyptians, and if he wereaccidentally deprived of sepulture, he would not be merely a plagueto his relations, but a danger to the entire city. The dead, who wereunable to earn an honest living, showed little pity to those who werein the same position as themselves: when a new-comer arrived among themwithout prayers, libations, or offerings, they declined to receive him, and would not give him so much as a piece of bread out of their meagrestore. The spirit of the unburied dead man, having neither place ofrepose nor means of subsistence, wandered through the town and country, occupied with no other thought than that of attacking and robbing theliving. He it was who, gliding into the house during the night, revealedhimself to its inhabitants with such a frightful visage as to drive themdistracted with terror. Always on the watch, no sooner does he surpriseone of his victims than he falls upon him, "his head against hisvictim's head, his hand against his hand, his foot against his foot. "He who has been thus attacked, whether man or beast, would undoubtedlyperish if magic were not able to furnish its all-powerful defenceagainst this deadly embrace. * This human survival, who is so forciblyrepresented both in his good and evil aspects, was nevertheless nothingmore than a sort of vague and fluid existence--a double, in fact, analogous in appearance to that of the Egyptians. 

 * The majority of the spells employed against sickness contain references to the spirits against which they contend--"the wicked ekimmu who oppresses men during the night, " or simply "the wicked ekimmu, " the ghost. 

With the faculty of roaming at will through space, and of going forthfrom and returning to his abode, it was impossible to regard him ascondemned always to dwell in the case of terra-cotta in which his bodylay mouldering: he was transferred, therefore, or rather hetransferred himself, into the dark land--the Aralu--situated very faraway--according to some, beneath the surface of the earth; according toothers, in the eastern or northern extremities of the universe. A riverwhich opens into this region and separates it from the sunlit earth, finds its source in the primordial waters into whose bosom this worldof ours is plunged. This dark country is surrounded by seven high walls, and is approached through seven gates, each of which is guarded by apitiless warder. Two deities rule within it--Nergal, "the lord of thegreat city, " and Beltis-Allat, "the lady of the great land, " whithereverything which has breathed in this world descends after death. Alegend relates that Allât, called in Sumerian Erishkigal, reigned alonein Hades, and was invited by the gods to a feast which they had preparedin heaven. Owing to her hatred of the light, she sent a refusal by hermessenger Narntar, who acquitted himself on this mission with such abad grace, that Ann and Ea were incensed against his mistress, andcommissioned Nergal to descend and chastise her; he went, and findingthe gates of hell open, dragged the queen by her hair from the throne, and was about to decapitate her, but she mollified him by her prayers, and saved her life by becoming his wife. The nature of Nergal fittedhim well to play the part of a prince of the departed: for he was thedestroying sun of summer, and the genius of pestilence and battle. Hisfunctions, however, in heaven and earth took up so much of his timethat he had little leisure to visit his nether kingdom, and he wasconsequently obliged to content himself with the _rôle_ of providingsubjects for it by despatching thither the thousands of recruits whichhe gathered daily from the abodes of men or from the field of battle. Allât was the actual sovereign of the country. She was represented withthe body of a woman, ill-formed and shaggy, the grinning muzzle of alion, and the claws of a bird of prey. She brandished in each hand alarge serpent--a real animated javelin, whose poisonous bite inflicteda fatal wound upon the enemy. Her children were two lions, which she isrepresented as suckling, and she passed through her empire, not seatedin the saddle, but standing upright or kneeling on the back of ahorse, which seems oppressed by her weight. Sometimes she set out onan expedition upon the river which communicates with the countriesof light, in order to meet the procession of newly arrived soulsceaselessly despatched to her: she embarked in this case upon anenchanted vessel, which made its way without sail or oars, its prowprojecting like the beak of a bird, and its stern terminating in thehead of an ox. She overcomes all resistance, and nothing can escape fromher: the gods themselves can pass into her empire only on the conditionof submitting to death like mortals, and of humbly avowing themselvesher slaves. 

[Illustration: 220. Jpg THE GODDESS ALLAT PASSES THROUGH THE NETHERREGIONS IN HER BARK. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze plaque of which an engraving was published by Clermont-Ganneau. The original, which belonged to M. Péretié, is now in the collection of M. De Clercq

[Illustration: 221. Jpg NERGAL, THE GOD OF HADES; BACK VIEW. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. This is the back of the bronze plate represented on the preceding page; the animal-head of the god appears in relief at the top of the illustration. 

The warders at the gates despoiled the new-comers of everything whichthey had brought with them, and conducted them in a naked conditionbefore Allât, who pronounced sentence upon them, and assigned to eachhis place in the nether world. The good or evil committed on earth bysuch souls was of little moment in determining the sentence: to securethe favour of the judge, it was of far greater importance to haveexhibited devotion to the gods and to Allât herself, to have lavishedsacrifices and offerings upon them and to have enriched their temples. The souls which could not justify themselves were subjected to horriblepunishment: leprosy consumed them to the end of time, and the mostpainful maladies attacked them, to torture them ceaselessly without anyhope of release. Those who were fortunate enough to be spared fromher rage, dragged out a miserable and joyless existence. They werecontinually suffering from the pangs of thirst and hunger, and foundnothing to satisfy their appetites but clay and dust. They shivered withcold, and they obtained no other garment to protect them than mantles offeathers--the great silent wings of the night-birds, invested with whichthey fluttered about and filled the air with their screams. This gloomyand cruel conception of ordinary life in this strange kingdom was stillworse than the idea formed of the existence in the tomb to which itsucceeded. In the cemetery the soul was, at least, alone with the deadbody; in the house of Allât, on the contrary, it was lost as it wereamong spirits as much afflicted as itself, and among the genii born ofdarkness. None of these genii had a simple form, or approached thehuman figure in shape; each individual was a hideous medley of humanand animal parts, in which the most repellent features were artisticallycombined. Lions' heads stood out from the bodies of scorpion-tailedjackals, whose feet were armed with eagles' claws: and among suchmonsters the genii of pestilence, fever, and the south-west wind tookthe chief place. When once the dead had become naturalized among thisterrible population, they could not escape from their condition, unless by the exceptional mandate of the gods above. They possessedno recollection of what they had done upon earth. Domestic affection, friendships, and the memory of good offices rendered to oneanother, --all were effaced from their minds: nothing remained there butan inexpressible regret at having been exiled from the world of light, and an excruciating desire to reach it once more. The threshold ofAllat's palace stood upon a spring which had the property of restoringto life all who bathed in it or drank of its waters: they gushed forthas soon as the stone was raised, but the earth-spirits guarded it with ajealous care, and kept at a distance all who attempted to appropriate adrop of it. They permitted access to it only by order of Ea himself, orone of the supreme gods, and even then with a rebellious heart at seeingtheir prey escape them. Ancient legends related how the shepherd Dumuzi, son of Ea and Damkina, having excited the love of Ishtar while he waspasturing his flocks under the mysterious tree of Eridu, which coversthe earth with its shade, was chosen by the goddess from among allothers to be the spouse of her youth, and how, being mortally wounded bya wild boar, he was cast into the kingdom of Allat. One means remainedby which he might be restored to the light of day: his wounds must bewashed in the waters of the wonderful spring, and Ishtar resolved togo in quest of this marvellous liquid. The undertaking was fraught withdanger, for no one might travel to the infernal regions without havingpreviously gone through the extreme terrors of death, and even the godsthemselves could not transgress this fatal law. "To the land withoutreturn, to the land which thou knowest--Ishtar, the daughter of Sin, turned her thoughts: she, the daughter of Sin, turned her thoughts--tothe house of darkness, the abode of Irkalla--to the house from which hewho enters can never emerge--to the path upon which he who goes shallnever come back--to the house into which he who enters bids farewellto the light--the place where dust is nourishment and clay is food; thelight is not seen, darkness is the dwelling, where the garments are thewings of birds--where dust accumulates on door and bolt. " Ishtararrives at the porch, she knocks at it, she addresses the guardian in animperious voice: "'Guardian of the waters, open thy gate--open thygate that I may enter, even I. --If thou openest not the door that I mayenter, even I, --I will burst open the door, I will break the bars, Iwill break the threshold, I will burst in the panels, I will excite thedead that they may eat the living, --and the dead shall be more numerousthan the living. '--The guardian opened his mouth and spake, he announcedto the mighty Ishtar: 'Stop, O lady, and do not overturn the door untilI go and apprise the Queen Allât of thy name. ' Allat hesitates, and thengives him permission to receive the goddess: 'Go, guardian, open thegate to her--but treat her according to the ancient laws. Mortalsenter naked into the world, and naked must they leave it: and sinceIshtar has decided to accept their lot, she too must be prepared todivest herself of her garments. '" The guardian went, he opened his mouth:'Enter, my lady, and may Kutha rejoice--may the palace and the landwithout return exult in thy presence! 'He causes her to pass through thefirst gate, divests her, removes the great crown from her head:--'Why, guardian, dost thou remove the great crown from my head?'--'Enter, mylady, such is the law of Allât. ' The second gate, he causes her to passthrough it, he divests her--removes the rings from her ears:--'Why, guardian, dost thou remove the rings from my ears?'--'Enter, my lady, such is the law of Allât. '" And from gate to gate he removes someornament from the distressed lady--now her necklace with its attachedamulets, now the tunic which covers her bosom, now her enamelled girdle, her bracelets, and the rings on her ankles: and at length, at theseventh gate, takes from her her last covering. When she at lengtharrives in the presence of Allat, she throws herself upon her in orderto wrest from her in a terrible struggle the life of Dumuzi; but Allatsends for Namtar, her messenger of misfortune, to punish, the rebelliousIshtar. "Strike her eyes with the affliction of the eyes--strikeher loins with the affliction of the loins--strike her feet with theaffliction of the feet--strike her heart with the affliction of theheart--strike her head with the affliction of the head--strike violentlyat her, at her whole body!" While Ishtar was suffering the torments ofthe infernal regions, the world of the living was wearing mourning onaccount of her death. In the absence of the goddess of love, the ritesof love could no longer be performed. The passions of animals and menwere suspended. If she did not return quickly to the daylight, theraces of men and animals would become extinct, the earth would become adesert, and the gods would have neither votaries nor offerings. 

[Illustration: 226. Jpg ISHTAR DESPOILED OF HER GARMENTS IN HADES]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio in the Hague Museum. Salomon Reinach has demonstrated that the naked figure is not the goddess herself, but a statue of the goddess which was adored in one of the temples. 

"Papsukal, the servant of the great gods, tore his face beforeShamash--clothed in mourning, filled with sorrow. Shamash went--hewept in the presence of Sin, his father, --and his tears flowed in thepresence of Ea, the king:--'Ishtar has gone down into the earth, andshe has not come up again!--And ever since Ishtar has descended intothe land without return... [the passions of men and beasts have beensuspended]... The master goes to sleep while giving his command, theservant goes to sleep on his duty. '" The resurrection of the goddessis the only remedy for such ills, but this is dependent upon theresurrection of Damuzi: Ishtar will never consent to reappear in theworld, if she cannot bring back her husband with her. Ea, the supremegod, the infallible executor of the divine will--he who alone can modifythe laws imposed upon creation--at length decides to accord to herwhat she desires. "Ea, in the wisdom of his heart, formed a malebeing, --formed Uddushunâmir, the servant of the gods:--'Go then, Uddushunâmir, turn thy face towards the gate of the land without return;--the seven gates of the land without return--may they become open atthy presence--may Allât behold thee, and rejoice in thy presence! Whenher heart shall be calm, and her wrath appeased, charm her in the nameof the great gods--turn thy thoughts to the spring'--'May the spring, mylady, give me of its waters that I may drink of them. '" Allât brokeout into a terrible rage, when she saw herself obliged to yield to herrival; "she beat her sides, she gnawed her fingers, " she broke out intocurses against the messenger of misfortune. "'Thou hast expressed to mea wish which should not be made!--Fly, Uddushunâmir, or I will shut theeup in the great prison--the mud of the drains of the city shall be thyfood--the gutters of the town shall be thy drink--the shadow ofthe walls shall be thy abode--the thresholds shall be thyhabitation--confinement and isolation shall weaken thy strength. '"* Sheis obliged to obey, notwithstanding; she calls her messenger Namtar andcommands him to make all the preparations for resuscitating the goddess. It was necessary to break the threshold of the palace in order to get atthe spring, and its waters would have their full effect only in presenceof the Anunnas. "Namtar went, he rent open the eternal palace, --hetwisted the uprights so that the stones of the threshold trembled;--hemade the Anunnaki come forth, and seated them on thrones of gold, --hepoured upon Ishtar the waters of life, and brought her away. " Shereceived again at each gate the articles of apparel she had abandonedin her passage across the seven circles of hell: as soon as she saw thedaylight once more, it was revealed to her that the fate of her husbandwas henceforward in her own hands. Every year she must bathe him in purewater, and anoint him with the most precious perfumes, clothe him in arobe of mourning, and play to him sad airs upon a crystal flute, whilsther priestesses intoned their doleful chants, and tore their breastsin sorrow: his heart would then take fresh life, and his youth flourishonce more, from springtime to springtime, as long as she shouldcelebrate on his behalf the ceremonies already prescribed by the deitiesof the infernal world. 

 * It follows from this passage that Ishtar could be delivered only at the cost of another life: it was for this reason, doubtless, that Ea, instead of sending the ordinary messenger of the gods, created a special messenger. Allât, furious at the insignificance of the victim sent to her, contents herself with threatening Uddushanâmir with an ignominious treatment if he does not escape as quickly as possible. 

Dumuzi was a god, the lover, moreover, of a goddess, and the deitysucceeded where mortals failed. * Ea, Nebo, Gula, Ishtar, and theirfellows possessed, no doubt, the faculty of recalling the dead to life, but they rarely made use of it on behalf of their creatures, and theirmost pious votaries pleaded in vain from temple to temple for theresurrection of their dead friends; they could never obtain the favourwhich had been granted by Allât to Dumuzi. 

 * Merodach is called "the merciful one who takes pleasure in raising the dead to life, " and "the lord of the pure libation, " the "merciful one who has power to give life. " In Jeremias may be found the list of the gods who up to the present are known to have had the power to resuscitate the dead; it is probable that this power belonged to all the gods and goddesses of the first rank. 

[Illustration: 229. Jpg DUMUZI REJUVENATED ON THE KNEES OF ISHTAR. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio. 

When the dead body was once placed in the tomb, it rose up no more, itcould no more be reinstated in the place in the household it hadlost, it never could begin once more a new earthly existence. Thenecromancers, indeed, might snatch away death's prey for a few moments. The earth gaped at the words of their invocations, the soul burst forthlike a puff of wind and answered gloomily the questions proposed to it;but when the charm was once broken, it had to retrace its steps tothe country without return, to be plunged once more in darkness. Thisprospect of a dreary and joyless eternity was not so terrifying to theChaldæans as it was to the Egyptians. The few years of their earthlyexistence were of far more concern to them than the endless ages whichwere to begin their monotonous course on the morrow of their funeral. The sum of good and evil fortune assigned to them by destiny theypreferred to spend continuously in the light of day on the fair plainsof the Euphrates and Tigris: if they were to economize during thisperiod with the view of laying up a posthumous treasure of felicity, their store would have no current value beyond the tomb, and would thusbecome so much waste. The gods, therefore, whom they served faithfullywould recoup them, here in their native city, with present prosperity, with health, riches, power, glory, and a numerous offspring, for theofferings of their devotion; while, if they irritated the deitiesby their shortcomings, they had nothing to expect but overwhelmingcalamities and sufferings. The gods would "cut them down like a reed, "and their "names would be annihilated, their seed destroyed;--they wouldend their days in affliction and hunger, --their dead bodies would be atthe mercy of chance, and would receive no sepulture. " They were contentto resign themselves, therefore, to the dreary lot of eternal miserywhich awaited them after death, provided they enjoyed in this world along and prosperous existence. Some of them felt and rebelled againstthe injustice of the idea, which assigned one and the same fate, withoutdiscrimination, to the coward and the hero killed on the battle-field, to the tyrant and the mild ruler of his people, to the wicked andthe righteous. These therefore supposed that the gods would makedistinctions, that they would separate such heroes from the common herd, welcome them in a fertile, sunlit island, separated from the abode ofmen by the waters of death--the impassable river which leads to thehouse of Allât. The tree of life flourished there, the spring of lifepoured forth there its revivifying waters; thither Ea transferredXisuthros after the Deluge; Gilgames saw the shores of this island andreturned from it, strong and healthy as in the days of his youth. Thesite of this region of delights was at first placed in the centre ofthe marshes of the Euphrates, where this river flows into the sea;afterwards when the country became better known, it was transferredbeyond the ocean. In proportion as the limits of the Chaldæanhorizon were thrust further and further away by mercantile or warlikeexpeditions, this mysterious island was placed more and more to theeast, afterwards to the north, and at length at a distance so great thatit tended to vanish altogether. As a final resource, the gods of heaventhemselves became the hosts, and welcomed into their own kingdom thepurified souls of the heroes. 

These souls were not so securely isolated from humanity that theinhabitants of the world were not at times tempted to rejoin them beforetheir last hour had come. Just as Gilgames had dared of old thedangers of the desert and the ocean in order to discover the island ofKhasisadra, so Etana darted through the air in order to ascend to thesky of Anu, to become incorporated while still living in the choir ofthe blessed. The legend gives an account of his friendship with theeagle of Shamash, and of the many favours he had obtained from andrendered to the bird. It happened at last, that his wife could not bringforth the son which lay in her womb; the hero, addressing himself tothe eagle, asked from her the plant which alleviates the birth-pangsof women and facilitates their delivery. This was only to be found, however, in the heaven of Anu, and how could any one run the risk ofmounting so high, without being destroyed on the way by the anger of thegods? The eagle takes pity upon the sorrow of his comrade, and resolvesto attempt the enterprise with him. "'Friend, ' she says, 'banish thecloud from thy face! Come, and I will carry thee to the heaven of thegod Anu. Place thy breast against my breast--place thy two hands uponthe pinions of my wings--place thy side against my side. ' He places hisbreast against the breast of the eagle, he places his two hands upon thepinions of the wings, he places his side against her side;--he adjustshimself firmly, and his weight was great. " The Chaldæan artists havemore than once represented the departure of the hero. They exhibit himclosely attached to the body of his ally, and holding her in a strongembrace. A first flight has already lifted them above the earth, and theshepherds scattered over the country are stupefied at the unaccustomedsight: one announces the prodigy to another, while their dogs seated attheir feet extend their muzzles as if in the act of howling with terror. "For the space of a double hour the eagle bore him--then the eagle spaketo him, to him Etana: 'Behold, my friend, the earth what it is; regardthe sea which the ocean contains! See, the earth is no more than amountain, and the sea is no more than a lake. ' The space of a seconddouble hour she bore him, then the eagle spake to him, to him Etana:'Behold, my friend, the earth what it is; the sea appears as the girdleof the earth! 'The space of a third double hour she bore him, then theeagle spake to him, to him Etana: 'See, my friend, the earth, what itis:--the sea is no more than the rivulet made by a gardener. '"

[Illustration: 233. Jpg ETANA CARRIED TO HEAVEN BY AN EAGLE. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio. 

"They at length arrive at the heaven of Anu, and rest there for amoment. Etana sees around him nothing but empty space--no living thingwithin it--not even a bird: he is struck with terror, but the eaglereassures him, and tells him to proceed on his way to the heaven ofIshtar. "'Come, my friend, let me bear thee to Ishtar, --and I will placethee near Ishtar, the lady, --and at the feet of Ishtar, the lady, thoushalt throw thyself. --Place thy side against my side, place thy handson the pinions of my wings. ' The space of a double hour she bore him:'Friend, behold the earth what it is. --The face of the earth stretchesout quite flat--and the sea is no greater than a mere. ' The space ofa second double hour she bore him: 'Friend, behold the earth what itis, --the earth is no more than a square plot in a garden, and the greatsea is not greater than a puddle of water. '" At the third hour Etanalost courage, and cried, "Stop!" and the eagle immediately descendedagain; but, Etana's strength being exhausted, he let go his hold, andwas dashed to pieces on the ground. 

The eagle escaped unhurt this time, but she soon suffered a more painfuldeath than that of Etana. She was at war with the serpent, though therecords which we as yet possess do not vouchsafe the reason, when shediscovered in the roots of a tree the nest in which her enemy concealedits brood. She immediately proposed to her young ones to pounce downupon the growing snakes; one of her eaglets, wiser than the rest, reminded her that they were under the protection of Shamash, the greatrighter of wrongs, and cautioned her against any transgression of thedivine laws. The old eagle felt herself wiser than her son, and rebukedhim after the manner of wise mothers: she carried away the serpent'syoung, and gave them as food to her own brood. The hissing serpentcrawled as far as Shamash, crying for vengeance: "The evil she has doneme, Shamash--behold it! Come to my help, Shamash! thy net is as wide asthe earth--thy snares reach to the distant mountain--who can escapethy net?--The criminal Zu, Zu who was the first to act wickedly, did heescape it?" Shamash refused to interfere personally, but he pointed outto the serpent an artifice by which he might satisfy his vengeance assecurely as if Shamash himself had accomplished it. "Set out upon theway, ascend the mountain, --and conceal thyself in a dead bull;--makean incision in his inside--tear open his belly, --take up thyabode--establish thyself in his belly. All the birds of the air willpounce upon it.... --and the eagle herself will come with them, ignorantthat thou art within it;--she will wish to possess herself of theflesh, she will come swiftly--she will think of nothing but the entrailswithin. As soon as she begins to attack the inside, seize her by herwings, beat down her wings, the pinions of her wings and her claws, tearher and throw her into a ravine of the mountain, that she may die therea death of hunger and thirst. "

The serpent did as Shamash advised, and the birds of the air began toflock round the carcase in which she was hidden. The eagle came with therest, and at first kept aloof, looking for what should happen. When shesaw that the birds flew away unharmed all fear left her. In vain did thewise eaglet warn her of the danger that was lurking within the prey; shemocked at him and his predictions, dug her beak into the carrion, andthe serpent leaping out seized her by the wing. Then "the eagle hermouth opened, and spake unto the snake, 'Have mercy upon me, andaccording to thy pleasure a gift I will lavish upon thee!' The snakeopened her mouth and spake unto the eagle, 'Did I release thee, Shamashwould take part against me; and the doom would fall upon me, which nowI fulfil upon thee. ' She tore out her wings, her feathers, her pinions;she tore her to pieces, she threw her into a cleft, and there she died adeath of hunger and of thirst. "

The gods allowed no living being to penetrate with impunity into theirempire: he who was desirous of ascending thither, however brave he mightbe, could do so only by death. The mass of humanity had no pretensionsto mount so high. Their religion gave them the choice between aperpetual abode in the tomb, or confinement in the prison of Allât; ifat times they strove to escape from these alternatives, and to pictureotherwise their condition in the world beyond, their ideas as to theother life continued to remain vague, and never approached the minuteprecision of the Egyptian conception. The cares of the present life weretoo absorbing to allow them leisure to speculate upon the conditions ofa future existence. 

[Illustration: 230. Jpg Endplate]

CHAPTER III--CHALDÆAN CIVILIZATION

_CHALDÆAN CIVILIZATION--ROYALTY--THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FAMILY AND ITSPROPERTY--CHALMAN COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY. _

_The kings not gods, but the vicegerents of the gods: their sacerdotalcharacter--The queens and the women of the royal family: the sons andthe order of succession to the throne--The royal palaces: descriptionof the palace of Gudea at Lagash, the façades, the zigurât, the privateapartments, the furniture, the external decoration--Costume of themen and women: the employees of the palace and the method of royaladministration; the military and the great lords. _

_The scribe and the clay books. --Cuneiform writing: its hieroglyphicorigin; the Protean character of the sounds which may be assigned to theideograms, grammatical tablets, and dictionaries--Their contracts, andtheir numerous copies of them: the finger-nail mark, the seal. _

_The constitution of the family: the position held by thewife--Marriage, the contract, the religious ceremonies--Divorce:the rights of wealthy women; woman and marriage among the lowerclasses--Adopted children, their position in the family; ordinarymotives for adoption--Slaves, their condition, their enfranchisement. _

_The Chaldæan towns: the aspect and distribution of the houses, domesticlife--The family patrimony: division of the inheritance--Lendingon usury, the rate of interest, commercial intercourse by land andsea--Trade corporations: brick-making, industrial implements in stoneand metal, goldsmiths, engravers of cylinders, weavers; the state of theworking classes. _

_Farming and cultivation of the ground: landmarks, slaves, and agricultural labourers--Scenes of pastoral life: fishing, hunting--Archaic literature; positive sciences: arithmetic and geometry, astronomy and astrology, the science of foretelling the future--Thephysician; magic and its influence on neighbouring countries. _

[Illustration: 239. Jpg CHAPTER III. ]

 Drawn by Boudier, from the sketch by Loftus. The initial vignette, which is by Faucher-Gudin, represents a royal figure kneeling and holding a large nail in both hands. The nail serves to keep the figure fixed firmly in the earth. It is a reproduction of the bronze figurine in the Louvre, already published by Heuzey-Sakzeo, _Découvertes en Chaldée_, pl. 28, No. 4. 

CHAPTER III--CHALDÆAN CIVILIZATION

_Royalty--The constitution of the family and its property--Chaldæancommerce and industry_. 

The Chaldæan kings, unlike their contemporaries the Pharaohs, rarelyput forward any pretensions to divinity. They contented themselves withoccupying an intermediate position between their subjects and the gods, and for the purpose of mediation they believed themselves to be endowedwith powers not possessed by ordinary mortals. They sometimes designatedthemselves the sons of Ea, or of Nînsun, or some other deity, butthis involved no belief in a divine parentage, and was merely pioushyperbole: they entertained no illusions with regard to any descent froma god or even from one of his doubles, but they desired to be recognizedas his vicegerents here below, as his prophets, his well-beloved, his pastors, elected by him to rule his human flocks, or as priestsdevotedly attached to his service. While, however, the ordinary priestchose for himself a single master to whom he devoted himself, thepriest-king exercised universal sacerdotal functions and claimed to bepontiff of all the national religions. His choice naturally was directedby preference to the patrons of his city, those who had raised hisancestors from the dust, and had exalted him to the supreme rank, butthere were other divinities who claimed their share of his homageand expected of him a devotion suited to their importance. If he hadattempted to carry out these duties personally in detail, he would havehad to spend his whole life at the foot of the altar; even when he haddelegated as many of them as he could to the regular clergy, there stillremained sufficient to occupy a large part of his time. Every month, every day, brought its inevitable round of sacrifices, prayers, andprocessions. On the 1st of the second Elul, the King of Babylon had topresent a gazelle without blemish to Sin; he then made an offering ofhis own choosing to Shamash, and cut the throats of his victimsbefore the god. These ceremonies were repeated on the 2nd without anyalteration, but from the 3rd to the 12th they took place during thenight, before the statues of Merodach and Ishtar, in turn with thoseof Nebo and Tashmit, of Mullil and Ninlil, of Eamman and of Zirbanit;sometimes at the rising of a particular constellation--as, for instance, that of the Great Bear, or that of the sons of Ishtar; sometimes at themoment when the moon "raised above the earth her luminous crown. " On sucha date a penitential psalm or a litany was to be recited; at anothertime it was forbidden to eat of meat either cooked or smoked, to changethe body-linen, to wear white garments, to drink medicine, to sacrifice, to put forth an edict, or to drive out in a chariot. Not only atBabylon, but everywhere else, obedience to the religious rites weighedheavily on the local princes; at Uru, at Lagash, at Nipur, and inthe ruling cities of Upper and Lower Chaldæa. The king, as soon as hesucceeded to the throne, repaired to the temple to receive his solemninvestiture, which differed in form according to the gods he worshipped:at Babylon, he addressed himself to the statue of Bel-Merodach in thefirst days of the month Nisan which followed his accession, and he "tookhim by the hands" to do homage to him. From thenceforth, he officiatedfor Merodach here below, and the scrupulously minute devotions, whichdaily occupied hours of his time, were so many acts of allegiance whichhis fealty as a vassal constrained him to perform to his suzerain. Theywere, in fact, analogous to the daily audiences demanded of a greatlord by his steward, for the purpose of rendering his accounts and ofinforming him of current business: any interruption not justified by amatter of supreme importance would be liable to be interpreted as a wantof respect or as revealing an inclination to rebel. By neglecting theslightest ceremonial detail the king would arouse the suspicions ofthe gods, and excite their anger against himself and his subjects: thepeople had, therefore, a direct interest in his careful fulfilment ofthe priestly functions, and his piety was not the least of his virtuesin their eyes. All other virtues--bravery, equity, justice--depended onit, and were only valuable from the divine aid which piety obtained forthem. The gods and heroes of the earliest ages had taken upon themselvesthe task of protecting the faithful from all their enemies, whether menor beasts. If a lion decimated their flocks, or a urus of gigantic sizedevastated their crops, it was the king's duty to follow the exampleof his fabulous predecessors and to set out and overcome them. Theenterprise demanded all the more courage and supernatural help, sincethese beasts were believed to be no mere ordinary animals, but werelooked on as instruments of divine wrath the cause of which was oftenunknown, and whoever assailed these monsters, provoked not only them butthe god who instigated them. Piety and confidence in the patron of thecity alone sustained the king when he set forth to drive the animal backto its lair; he engaged in close combat with it, and no sooner had hepierced it with his arrows or his lance, or felled it with axe anddagger, than he hastened to pour a libation upon it, and to dedicate itas a trophy in one of the temples. His exalted position entailed on himno less perils in time of war: if he did not personally direct the firstattacking column, he placed himself at the head of the band composed ofthe flower of the army, whose charge at an opportune moment was wont tosecure the victory. 

What would have been the use of his valour, if the dread of the gods hadnot preceded his march, and if the light of their countenances had notstruck terror into the ranks of the enemy? As soon as he had triumphedby their command, he sought before all else to reward them amply for theassistance they had given him. He poured a tithe of the spoil into thecoffers of their treasury, he made over a part of the conquered countryto their domain, he granted them a tale of the prisoners to cultivatetheir lands or to work at their buildings. Even the idols of thevanquished shared the fate of their people: the king tore them fromthe sanctuaries which had hitherto sheltered them, and took them asprisoners in his train to form a court of captive gods about his patrondivinity. Shamash, the great judge of heaven, inspired him with justice, and the prosperity which his good administration obtained for the peoplewas less the work of the sovereign than that of the immortals. 

We know too little of the inner family life of the kings, to attemptto say how they were able to combine the strict sacerdotal obligationsincumbent on them with the routine of daily life. We merely observe thaton great days of festival or sacrifice, when they themselves officiated, they laid aside all the insignia of royalty during the ceremony and wereclad as ordinary priests. We see them on such occasions representedwith short-cut hair and naked breast, the loin-cloth about their waist, advancing foremost in the rank, carrying the heavily laden "kufa, " orreed basket, as if they were ordinary slaves; and, as a fact, theyhad for the moment put aside their sovereignty and were merely templeservants, or slaves appearing before their divine master to do hisbidding, and disguising themselves for the nonce in the garb ofservitors. The wives of the sovereign do not seem to have been investedwith that semi-sacred character which led the Egyptian women to beassociated with the devotions of the man, and made them indispensableauxiliaries in all religious ceremonies; they did not, moreover, occupythat important position side by side with the man which the Egyptianlaw assigned to the queens of the Pharaohs. Whereas the monuments on thebanks of the Nile reveal to us princesses sharing the throne of theirhusbands whom they embrace with a gesture of frank affection, in Chaldæathe wives of the prince, his mother, sisters, daughters, and even hisslaves, remain invisible to posterity. 

[Illustration: 244. Jpg THE KING URNINA BEARING THE "KUFA. "]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey Sarzec. 

The harem in which they were shut up by custom, rarely opened its doors:the people seldom caught sight of them, their relatives spoke of themas little as possible, those in power avoided associating them in anypublic acts of worship or government, and we could count on our fingersthe number of those whom the inscriptions mention by name. Some of themwere drawn from the noble families of the capital, others came from thekingdoms of Chaldæa or from foreign courts; a certain number never roseabove the condition of mere concubines, many assumed the title of queen, while almost all served as living pledges of alliances made with rivalstates, or had been given as hostages at the concluding of a peace onthe termination of a war. * As the kings, who put forward no pretensionsto a divine origin, were not constrained, after the fashion of thePharaohs, to marry their sisters in order to keep up the purity of theirrace, it was rare to find one among their wives who possessed an equalright to the crown with themselves: such a case could be found only introublous times, when an aspirant to the throne, of base extraction, legitimated his usurpation by marrying a sister or daughter of hispredecessor. 

 * Political marriage-alliances between Egypt and Chaldæa were of frequent occurrence, according to the Tel el-Amarna tablets, and at a later period between Chaldæa and Assyria; among the few queens of the very earliest times, the wife of Nammaghani is the daughter of Urbau, vicegerent of Lagash, and consequently the cousin or niece of her husband, while the wife of Rimsin appears to be the daughter of a nobleman of the name of Rimnannar. 

The original status of the mother almost always determined that of herchildren, and the sons of a princess were born princes, even if theirfather were of obscure or unknown origin. * These princes exercisedimportant functions at court, or they received possessions whichthey administered under the suzerainty of the head of the family;the daughters were given to foreign kings, or to scions of the mostdistinguished families. The sovereign was under no obligation to handdown his crown to any particular member of his family; the eldest sonusually succeeded him, but the king could, if he preferred, select hisfavourite child as his successor even if he happened to be the youngest, or the only one born of a slave. As soon as the sovereign had made knownhis will, the custom of primogeniture was set aside, and his word becamelaw. We can well imagine the secret intrigues formed both by mothers andsons to curry favour with the father and bias his choice; we can picturethe jealousy with which they mutually watched each other, and the bitterhatred which any preference shown to one would arouse in the breastsof all the others. Often brothers who had been disappointed in theirexpectations would combine secretly against the chosen or supposed heir;a conspiracy would break out, and the people suddenly learn that theirruler of yesterday had died by the hand of an assassin and that a newone filled his place. 

 * This fact is apparent from the introduction to the inscription in which Sargon I. Is supposed to give an account of his life: "My father was unknown, my mother was a princess;" and it was, indeed, from his mother that he inherited his rights to the crown of Agade. 

Sometimes discontent spread beyond the confines of the palace, the armybecame divided into two hostile camps, the citizens took the side of oneor other of the aspirants, and civil war raged for several years tillsome decisive action brought it to a close. Meantime tributary vassalstook advantage of the consequent disorder to shake off the yoke, theBlamites and various neighbouring cities joined in the dispute andranged themselves on the side of the party from which there was mostto be gained: the victorious faction always had to pay dearly for thissomewhat dubious help, and came out impoverished from the struggle. Suchan internecine war often caused the downfall of a dynasty--at times, indeed, that of the entire state. *

 * The above is perfectly true of the later Assyrian and Chalæan periods: it is scarcely needful to recall to the reader the murders of Sargon II. And Sennacherib, or the revolt of Assurdaînpal against his father Shalmaneser III. With regard to the earliest period we have merely indications of what took place; the succession of King Urnina of Lagash appears to have been accompanied by troubles of this kind, and it is certain that his successor Akurgal was not the eldest of his sons, but we do not at present know to what events Akurgal owed his elevation. 

The palaces of the Chaldæan kings, like those of the Egyptians, presented the appearance of an actual citadel: the walls had to besufficiently thick to withstand an army for an indefinite period, andto protect the garrison from every emergency, except that of treason orfamine. One of the statues found at Telloh holds in its lap the planof one of these residences: the external outline alone is given, but bymeans of it we can easily picture to ourselves a fortified place, withits towers, its forts, and its gateways placed between two bastions. It represents the ancient palace of Lagash, subsequently enlarged andaltered by Oudea or one of the vicegerents who succeeded him, in whichmany a great lord of the place must have resided down to the time of theChristian era. The site on which it was built in the Girsu quarter of. The city was not entirely unoccupied at the time of its foundation. Urbau had raised a ziggurat on that very spot some centuries previously, and the walls which he had constructed were falling into ruin. 

[Illustration: 248. Jpg THE PLAN OF A PALACE BUILT BY GUDEA. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec. The plan is traced upon the tablet held in the lap of Statue E in the Louvre. Below the plan can be seen the ruler marked with the divisions used by the architect for drawing his designs to the desired scale; the scribe's stylus is represented lying on the left of the plan. [Prof. Pétrie has shown that the unit of measurement represented on this ruler is the cubit of the Pyramid-builders of Egypt. --Te. ]

Gudea did not destroy the work of his remote predecessor, he merelyincorporated it into the substructures of the new building, thusshowing an indifference similar to that evinced by the Pharaohs for themonuments of a former dynasty. The palaces, like the temples, neverrose directly from the soil, but were invariably built on the top of anartificial mound of crude brick. At Lagash, this solid platform rises tothe height of 40 feet above the plain, and the only means of accessto the top is by a single narrow steep staircase, easily cut off ordefended. 

[Illustration: 249. Jpg TERRA-COTTA BARREL-right]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the facsimile by Place. 

The palace which surmounts this artificial eminence describes a sort ofirregular rectangle, 174 feet long by 69 feet wide, and had, contraryto the custom in Egypt, the four angles orientated to the four cardinalpoints. The two principal sides are not parallel, but swell out slightlytowards the middle, and the flexion of the lines almost follows thecontour of one of those little clay cones upon which the kings were wontto inscribe their annals or dedications. This flexure was probablynot intentional on the part of the architect, but was owing to thedifficulty of keeping a wall of such considerable extent in a straightline from one end to another; and all Eastern nations, whether Chaldæansor Egyptians, troubled themselves but little about correctness ofalignment, since defects of this kind were scarcely ever perceptible inthe actual edifice, and are only clearly revealed in the plan drawn outto scale with modern precision. *

 * Mons. Heuzey thinks that the outward deflection of the lines is owing "merely to a primitive method of obtaining greater solidity of construction, and of giving a better foundation to these long façades, which are placed upon artificial terraces of crude brick always subject to cracks and settlements. " I think that the explanation of the facts which I have given in the text is simpler than that ingeniously proposed by Mons. Heuzey: the masons, having begun to build the wall at one end, were unable to carry it on in a straight line until it reached the spot denoted on the architect's plan, and therefore altered the direction of the wall when they detected their error; or, having begun to build the wall from both ends simultaneously, were not successful in making the two lines meet correctly, and they have frankly patched up the junction by a mass of projecting brickwork which conceals their unskilfulness. 

[Illustration: 250. Jpg PLAN OF THE EXISTING BUILDINGS OF TELLOH. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec. 

The façade of the building faces south-east, and is divided into threeblocks of unequal size. The centre of the middle block for a lengthof 18 feet projects some 3 feet from the main front, and, by directlyfacing the spectator, ingeniously masks the obtuse angle formed by themeeting of the two walls. This projection is flanked right and left byrectangular grooves, similar to those which ornament the façades of thefortresses and brick houses of the Ancient Empire in Egypt: the regularalternation of projections and hollows breaks the monotony of the facingby the play of light and shade. Beyond these, again, the wall surfaceis broken by semicircular pilasters some 17 inches in diameter, withoutbases, capitals, or even a moulding, but placed side by side like somany tree-trunks or posts forming a palisade. 

[Illustration: 251. Jpg DECORATION OF COLOURED CONES ON THE FAÇADE AT URUK]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by Loftus. 

Various schemes of decoration succeed each other in progressivesequence, less ornate and at greater distances apart, the furtherthey recede from the central block and the nearer they approach to theextremities of the façade. They stop short at the southern angle, andthe two sides of the edifice running from south to west, and again fromwest to north, are flat, bare surfaces, unbroken by projection or grooveto relieve the poverty and monotony of their appearance. The decorationreappears on the north-east front, where the arrangement of theprincipal façade is partly reproduced. The grooved divisions here startfrom the angles, and the engaged columns are wanting, or rather theyare transferred to the central projection, and from a distance have theeffect of a row of gigantic organ-pipes. We may well ask if this squatand heavy mass of building, which must have attracted the eye from allparts of the town, had nothing to relieve the dull and dismal colour ofits component bricks. 

[Illustration: 252. Jpg PILASTERS OF THE FACADE OF GUDEA'S PALACE]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec

The idea might not have occurred to us had we not found elsewhere anattempt to lessen the gloomy appearance of the architecture by colouredplastering. At Uruk, the walls of the palace are decorated by means ofterra-cotta cones, fixed deep into the solid plaster and painted red, black, or yellow, forming interlaced or diaper patterns of chevrons, spirals, lozenges, and triangles, with a very fair result: this mosaicof coloured plaster covered all the surfaces, both flat and curved, giving to the building a cheerful aspect entirely wanting in that ofLagash. 

A long narrow trough of yellowish limestone stood in front of thepalace, and was raised on two steps: it was carved in relief on theoutside with figures of women standing with outstretched hands, passingto each other vases from which gushed forth two streams of water. Thistrough formed a reservoir, which was filled every morning for the use ofthe men and beasts, and those whom some business or a command brought tothe palace could refresh themselves there while waiting to be receivedby the master. The gates which gave access to the interior were placedat somewhat irregular intervals: two opened from the principal façade, but on each of the other sides there was only one entrance. They werearched and so low that admittance was not easily gained; they wereclosed with two-leaved doors of cedar or cypress, provided with bronzehinges, which turned upon two blackish stones firmly set in the masonryon either side, and usually inscribed with the name of the founder orthat of the reigning sovereign. Two of the entrances possessed a sortof covered way, in which the soldiers of the external watch could takeshelter from the heat of the sun by day, from the cold at night, andfrom the dews at dawn. On crossing the threshold, a corridor, flankedwith two small rooms for porters or warders, led into a courtyardsurrounded with buildings of sufficient depth to take up nearly halfof the area enclosed within the walls. This court was moreover asemi-public place, to which tradesmen, merchants, suppliants, andfunctionaries of all ranks had easy access. A suite of three rooms shutoff in the north-east angle did duty for a magazine or arsenal. Thesouthern portion of the building was occupied by the State apartments, the largest of which measures only 40 feet in length. In these roomsGudea and his successors gave audience to their nobles and administeredjustice. The administrative officers and the staff who had charge ofthem were probably located in the remaining part of the building. Theroof was flat, and ran all round the enclosing wall, forming a terrace, access to it being gained by a staircase built between the principalentrance and the arsenal. At the northern angle rose a ziggurat. Customdemanded that the sovereign should possess a temple within his dwelling, where he could fulfil his religious duties without going into the townand mixing with the crowd. At Lagash the sacred tower was of older datethan the palace, and possibly formed part of the ancient building ofUrbau. It was originally composed of three stories, but the lower onewas altered by Gudea, and disappeared entirely in the thickness of thebasal platform. The second story thus became the bottom one; it wasenlarged, slightly raised above the neighbouring roofs, and was probablycrowned by a sanctuary dedicated to Ningirsu. It was, indeed, a monumentof modest proportions, and most of the public temples soared far aboveit; but, small as it was, the whole town might be seen from the summit, with its separate quarters and its belt of gardens; and beyond, theopen country intersected with streams, studded with isolated villages, patches of wood, pools and weedy marshes left by the retiringinundation, and in the far distance the lines of trees and bushes whichbordered the banks of the Euphrates and its confluents. Should a troopof enemies venture within the range of sight, or should a suspicioustumult arise within the city, the watchers posted on the highest terracewould immediately give the alarm, and 'through their warning the kingwould have time to close his gates, and take measures to resist theinvading enemy or crush the revolt of his subjects. 

[Illustration: 255. Jpg STONE SOCKET OF ONE OF THE DOORS IN THE PALACE OFGUDEA. ( right)]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec. 

The northern apartments of the palace were appropriated to Gudea and hisfamily. They were placed with their back to the entrance court, andwere divided into two groups; the sovereign, his male children and theirattendants, inhabited the western one, while the women and their slaveswere cloistered, so to speak, in the northern set. The royal dwellinghad an external exit by means of a passage issuing on the north-west ofthe enclosure, and it also communicated with the great courtyard by avaulted corridor which ran along one side of the base of the ziggurat:the doors which, closed these two entrances opened wide enough to admitonly one person at a time, and to the right and left were recesses inthe wall which enabled the guards to examine all comers unobserved, andstab them promptly if there were anything suspicious in their behaviour. Eight chambers were lighted from the courtyard. In one of them were keptall the provisions for the day, while another served as a kitchen:the head, cook carried on his work at a sort of rectangular dresser ofmoderate size, on which several fireplaces were marked out by littledividing walls of burnt bricks, to accommodate as many pots or pansof various sizes. A well sunk in the corner right down below thesubstructure provided the water needed for culinary purposes. The kingand his belongings accommodated themselves in the remaining five or sixrooms as best they could. A corridor, guarded as carefully as the onepreviously described, led to his private apartments and to those of hiswives: these comprised a yard, some half-dozen cells varying in size, a kitchen, a well, and a door through which the servants could come andgo, without passing through the men's quarters. The whole description inno way corresponds with the marvellous ideal of an Oriental palace whichwe form for ourselves: the apartments are mean and dismal, imperfectlylighted by the door or by some small aperture timidly cut in theceiling, arranged so as to protect the inmates from the heat anddust, but without a thought given to luxury or display. The walls wereentirely void of any cedar woodwork inlaid with gold, or panels ofmosaic such as we find in the temples, nor were they hung with dyed orembroidered draperies such as we moderns love to imagine, and which wespread about in profusion, when we attempt to reproduce the interior ofan ancient house or palace. *

 * Mons. De Sarzec expressly states that he was unable to find anywhere in the palace of Gudea "the slightest trace of any coating on the walls, either of colour or glazed brick. The walls appear to have been left bare, without any decoration except the regular joining of the courses of brickwork. " The wood panelling was usually reserved for the temples or sacred edifices: Mons. De Sarzec found the remains of carbonized cedar panels in the ruins of a sanctuary dedicated to Ningirsu. According to Mons. Heuzey, the wall-hangings were probably covered with geometrical designs, similar to tho«e formed by the terra-cotta cones on the walls of the palace at Uruk; the inscriptions, however, which are full of minute details with regard to the construction and ornamentation of the temples and palaces, have hitherto contained nothing which would lead us to infer that hangings were used for mural decoration in Chaldoa or Assyria. 

The walls had to remain bare for the sake of coolness: at the most theywere only covered with a coat of white plaster, on which were painted, in one or two colours, some scene of civil or religious life, or troopsof fantastic monsters struggling with one another, or men each with abird seated on his Wrist. The furniture was not less scanty than thedecoration; there were mats on the ground, coffers in which were keptthe linen and wearing apparel, low beds inlaid with ivory and metal andprovided with coverings and a thin mattress, copper or wooden stands tosupport lamps or vases, square stools on four legs united by crossbars, armchairs with lions' claw feet, resembling the Egyptian armchairsin outline, and making us ask if they were brought into Chaldaea bycaravans, or made from models which had come from some other country. A few rare objects of artistic character might be found, which borewitness to a certain taste for elegance and refinement; as, forinstance, a kind of circular trough of black stone, probably used tosupport a vase. Three rows of imbricated scales surrounded the base ofthis, while seven small sitting figures lean back against the upperpart with an air of satisfaction which is most cleverly rendered. The decoration of the larger chambers used for public receptions andofficial ceremonies, while never assuming the monumental character whichwe observe in contemporary Egyptian buildings, afforded more scope forrichness and variety than was offered by the living-rooms. 

[Illustration: 258. Jpg STAND OF BLACK STONE FROM THE PALACE OF TELLOH. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec. 

Small tablets of brownish limestone, let into the wall or affixed toits surface by terra-cotta pegs, and decorated with inscriptions, represented in a more or less artless fashion the figure of thesovereign officiating before some divinity, while his children andservants took part in the ceremony by their chanting. Inscribedbricks celebrating the king's exploits were placed here and there inconspicuous places. These were not embedded like the others in twolayers of bitumen or lime, but were placed in full view upon bronzestatues of divinities or priests, fixed into the ground or into somepart of the masonry as magical nails destined to preserve the bricksfrom destruction, and consequently to keep the memory of the dedicatorcontinually before posterity. Stelaa engraved on both sides recalled thewars of past times, the battle-field, the scenes of horror which tookplace there, and the return of the victor and his triumph. Sittingor standing figures of diorite, silicious sandstone or hard limestone, bearing inscriptions on their robes or shoulders, perpetuated thefeatures of the founder or of members of his family, and commemoratedthe pious donations which had obtained for him the favour of the gods:the palace of Lagash contained dozens of such statues, several of whichhave come down to us almost intact--one of the ancient Urbau, and nineof Gudea. 

To judge by the space covered and the arrangement of the rooms, thevicegerents of Lagash and the chiefs of towns of minor importancemust, as a rule, have been content with a comparatively small number ofservants; their court probably resembled that of the Egyptian barons wholived much about the same period, such as Khnûmhotpû of the nome of theGazelle, or Thothotpû of Hermopolis. In great cities such as Babylonthe palace occupied a much larger area, and the crowd of courtiers wasdoubtless as great as that which thronged about the Pharaohs. No exactenumeration of them has come down to us, but the titles which we comeacross show with what minuteness they defined the offices about theperson of the sovereign. His costume alone required almost as manypersons as there were garments. The men wore the light loin-cloth orshort-sleeved tunic which scarcely covered the knees; after the fashionof the Egyptians, they threw over the loin-cloth and the tunic a large"abayah, " whose shape and material varied with the caprice of fashion. They often chose for this purpose a sort of shawl of a plain material, fringed or ornamented with a flat stripe round the edge; often they seemto have preferred it ribbed, or artificially kilted from top to bottom. *

 * The relatively modern costume was described by Herodotus, i. 114; it was almost identical with the ancient one, as proved by the representations on the cylinders and monuments of Telloh. The short-sleeved tunic is more rarely represented, and the loin-cloth is usually hidden under the abayah in the case of nobles and kings. We see the princes of Lagash wearing the simple loin-cloth, on the monuments of Urninâ, for example. For the Egyptian abayah, and the manner of representing it, cf. Vol. I. Pp. 69, 71. 

The favourite material in ancient times, however, seems to have beena hairy, shaggy cloth or woollen stuff, whose close fleecy thread hungsometimes straight, sometimes crimped or waved, in regular rows likeflounces one above another. This could be arranged squarely around theneck, like a mantel, but was more often draped crosswise over the leftshoulder and brought under the right arm-pit, so as to leave the upperpart of the breast and the arm bare on that side. It made a convenientand useful garment--an excellent protection in summer from the sun, andfrom the icy north wind in the winter. The feet were shod with sandals, a tight-fitting cap covered the head, and round it was rolled a thickstrip of linen, forming a sort of rudimentary turban, which completedthe costume. *

 *Cf. The head belonging to one of the statues of Telloh, which is reproduced on p. 112 of this volume. We notice the same head-dress on several intaglios and monuments, and also on the terra-cotta plaque which will be found on p. 330 of this volume, and which represents a herdsman wrestling with a lion. Until we have further evidence, we cannot state, as G. Raw-linson did, that this strip forming a turban was of camel's hair; the date of the introduction of the camel into Chaldoa still remains uncertain. 

It is questionable whether, as in Egypt, wigs and false beards formedpart of the toilette. On some monuments we notice smooth faces andclose-cropped heads; on others the men appear with long hair, eitherfalling loose or twisted into a knot on the back of the neck. * Whilethe Egyptians delighted in garments of thin white linen, but slightlyplaited or crimped, the dwellers on the banks of the Euphrates preferredthick and heavy stuffs patterned and striped with many colours. Thekings wore the same costume as their subjects, but composed of richerand finer materials, dyed red or blue, decorated with floral, animal, or geometrical designs;** a high tower-shaped tiara covered theforehead, *** unless replaced by a diadem of Sin or some of the othergods, which was a conical mitre supporting a double pair of horns, andsometimes surmounted by a sort of diadem of feathers and mysteriousfigures, embroidered or painted on the cap. Their arms were loaded withmassive bracelets and their fingers with rings; they wore necklaces andearrings, and carried each a dagger in the belt. 

 * Dignitaries went bareheaded and shaved the chin; see, for example, the two bas-reliefs given on pp. 105 and 244 of this volume; cf. The heads reproduced as tailpieces on pp. 2, 124. The knot of hair behind on the central figure is easily distinguished in the vignette on p. 266 of this volume. 

 ** The details of colour and ornamentation, not furnished by the Chaldæan monuments, are given in the wall-painting at Beni-Nasan representing the arrival of Asiatics in Egypt, which belongs to a period contemporary with or slightly anterior to the reign of Gudea. The resemblance of the stuffs in which they are clothed to those of the Chaldæan garments, and the identity of the patterns on them with the geometrical decoration of painted cones on the palace at Uruk, have been pointed out with justice by H. G. Tomkins

 *** The high tiara is represented among others on the head of Mardukna-dinakhe, King of Babylon: cf. What is said of the conical mitre, the headdress of Sin, on pp. 14, 169 of this volume. 

[Illustration: 262. Jpg FEMALE SERVANT BARE TO THE WAIST. (left)]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bronze figure in the Louvre, published by Heuzey-Sarzec, _Découvertes en Chaldée_, pl. 14. 

The royal wardrobe, jewels, arms, and insignia formed so many distinctdepartments, and each was further divided into minor sections forbody-linen, washing, or for this or that kind of headdress or sceptre. The dress of the women, which was singularly like that of the men, required no less a staff of attendants. The female servants, as wellas the male, went about bare to the waist, at all events while workingindoors. When they went out, they wore the same sort of tunic orloin-cloth, but longer and more resembling a petticoat; they had thesame "abayah" drawn round the shoulders or rolled about the body likea cloak, but with the women it nearly touched the ground; sometimes anactual dress seems to have been substituted for the "abayah, " drawn into the figure by a belt and cut out of the same hairy material as thatof which the mantles were made. The boots were of soft leather, laced, and without heels; the women's ornaments were more numerous than thoseof the men, and comprised necklaces, bracelets, ankle, finger, and earrings; their hair was separated into bands and kept in place on theforehead by a fillet, falling in thick plaits or twisted into a coil onthe nape of the neck. 

[Illustration: 262. Jpg COSTUME OF A CHALDÆN LADY (right)]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the alabaster statuette in the Louvre, published in Heuzey. She holds in her hand the jar full of water, analogous to the streaming vase mentioned above. 

A great deal of the work was performed by foreign or native slaves, generally under the command of eunuchs, to whom the king and royalprinces entrusted most of the superintendence of their domesticarrangements; they guarded and looked after the sleeping apartments, they fanned and kept the flies from their master, and handed him hisfood and drink. Eunuchs in Egypt were either unknown or but littleesteemed: they never seem to have been used, even in times whenrelations with Asia were of daily occurrence, and when they might havebeen supplied from the Babylonian slave-markets. 

All these various officials closely attached to the person of thesovereign--heads of the wardrobe, chamberlains, cupbearers, bearers ofthe royal sword or of the flabella, commanders of the eunuchs or ofthe guards--had, by the nature of their duties, daily opportunities ofgaining a direct influence over their master and his government, and from among them he often chose the generals of his army or theadministrators of his domains. Here, again, as far as the fewmonuments and the obscurity of the texts permit of our judging, we findindications of a civil and military organization analogous to thatof Egypt: the divergencies which contemporaries may have been able todetect in the two national systems are effaced by the distance oftime, and we are struck merely by the resemblances. As all businesstransactions were carried on by barter or by the exchange of merchandisefor weighed quantities of the precious metals, the taxes wereconsequently paid in kind: the principal media being corn and othercereals, dates, fruits, stuffs, live animals and slaves, as well asgold, silver, lead, and copper, either in its native state or meltedinto bars fashioned into implements or ornamented vases. Hence wecontinually come across fiscal storehouses, both in town and country, which demanded the services of a whole troop of functionaries andworkmen: administrators of corn, cattle, precious metals, wine and oil;in fine, as many administrators as there were cultures or industries inthe country presided over the gathering of the products into thecentral depots and regulated their redistribution. A certain portionwas reserved for the salaries of the employés and the pay of the workmenengaged in executing public works: the surplus accumulated in thetreasury and formed a reserve, which was not drawn upon except in casesof extreme necessity. Every palace, in addition to its living-rooms, contained within its walls large store-chambers filled with provisionsand weapons, which made it more or less a fortress, furnished withindispensable requisites for sustaining a prolonged siege either againstan enemy's troops or the king's own subjects in revolt. The king alwayskept about him bodies of soldiers who perhaps were foreign mercenaries, like the Mazaiû of the armies of the Pharaohs, and who formed hispermanent body-guard in times of peace. When a war was imminent, amilitary levy was made upon his domains, but we are unable to find outwhether the recruits thus raised were drawn indiscriminately from thepopulation in general, or merely from a special class, analogous to thatof the warriors which we find in Egypt, who were paid in the same way bygrants of land. The equipment of these soldiers was of the rudest kind:they had no cuirass, but carried a rectangular shield, and, in the caseof those of higher rank at all events, a conical metal helmet, probablyof beaten copper, provided with a piece to protect the back of the neck;the heavy infantry were armed with a pike tipped with bronze ox-copper, an axe or sharp adze, a stone-headed mace, and a dagger; the lighttroops were provided only with the bow and sling. As early as the thirdmillennium b. C. , the king went to battle in a chariot drawn by onagers, or perhaps horses; he had his own peculiar weapon, which was a curvedbâton probably terminating in a metal point, and resembling the sceptreof the Pharaohs. Considerable quantities of all these arms were storedin the arsenals, which contained depots for bows, maces, and pikes, andeven the stones needed for the slings had their special department forstorage. At the beginning of each campaign, a distribution of weaponsto the newly levied troops took place; but as soon as the war was at anend, the men brought back their accoutrements, which were stored tillthey were again required. The valour of the soldiers and their chiefswas then rewarded; the share of the spoil for some consisted of cattle, gold, corn, a female slave, and vessels of value; for others, lands ortowns in the conquered country, regulated by the rank of the recipientsor the extent of the services they had rendered. 

[Illustration: 266. Jpg A SOLDIER BRINGING PRISONERS AND SPOIL. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the Chaldæan intaglio in the British. Museum. 

Property thus given was hereditary, and privileges were often added toit which raised the holder to the rank of a petty prince: for instance, no royal official was permitted to impose a tax upon such lands, or takethe cattle off them, or levy provisions upon them; no troop of soldiersmight enter them, not even for the purpose of arresting a fugitive. Mostof the noble families possessed domains of this kind, and constituted ineach kingdom a powerful and wealthy feudal aristocracy, whose relationsto their sovereign were probably much the same as those which boundthe nomarchs to the Pharaoh. The position of these nobles was not morestable than that of the dynasties under which they lived: while someamong them gained power by marriages or by continued acquisitions ofland, others fell into disgrace and were ruined. As the soil belonged tothe gods, it is possible that these nobles were supposed, in theory, 'todepend upon the gods; but as the kings were the vicegerents of the godsupon earth, it was to the king, as a matter of fact, that they owedtheir elevation. Every state, therefore, comprised two parts, eachsubject to a distinct régime: one being the personal domain of thesuzerain, which he managed himself, and from which he drew the revenues;the other was composed of fiefs, whose lords paid tribute and owedcertain obligations to the king, the nature of which we are as yetunable to define. 

The Chaldæan, like the Egyptian scribe, was the pivot on which themachinery of this double royal and seignorial administration turned. He does not appear to have enjoyed as much consideration as hisfellow-official in the Nile Valley: the Chaldæan princes, nobles, priests, soldiers, and temple or royal officials, did not covet thetitle of scribe, or pride themselves upon holding that office sideby side with their other dignities, as we see was the case with theirEgyptian contemporaries. The position of a scribe, nevertheless, was animportant one. We continually meet with it in all grades of society--inthe palace, in the temples, in the storehouses, in private dwellings; infine, the scribe was ubiquitous, at court, in the town, in the country, in the army, managing affairs both small and great, and seeing that theywere carried on regularly. His education differed but little from thatgiven to the Egyptian scribe; he learned the routine of administrativeor judicial affairs, the formularies for correspondence either withnobles or with ordinary people, the art of writing, of calculatingquickly, and of making out bills correctly. We may well ask whether heever employed papyrus or prepared skins for these purposes. It would, indeed, seem strange that, after centuries of intercourse, no caravanshould have brought into Chaldæan any of those materials which were insuch constant use for literary purposes in Africa;* yet the same claywhich furnished the architect with such an abundant building materialappears to have been the only medium for transmitting the language whichthe scribes possessed. They were always provided with slabs of a fineplastic clay, carefully mixed and kept sufficiently moist to take easilythe impression of an object, but at the same time sufficiently firm toprevent the marks once made from becoming either blurred or effaced. When a scribe had a text to copy or a document to draw up, he chose outone of his slabs, which he placed flat upon his left palm, and taking inthe right hand a triangular stylus of flint, copper, bronze, or bone, **he at once set to work. The instrument, in early times, terminated in afine point, and the marks made by it when it was gently pressed uponthe clay were slender and of uniform thickness; in later times, theextremity of the stylus was cut with a bevel, and the impression thentook the shape of a metal nail or a wedge. 

 * On the Assyrian monuments we frequently see scribes taking a list of the spoil, or writing letters on tablets and some other soft material, either papyrus or prepared skin. Sayce has given good reasons for believing that the Chaldæanns of the early dynasties knew of the papyrus, and either made it themselves, or had it brought from Egypt. 

 ** See the triangular stylus of copper or bronze reproduced by the side of the measuring-rule, and the plan on the tablet of Gudea, p. 248 of this volume. The Assyrian Museum in the Louvre possesses several large, flat styli of bone, cut to a point at one end, which appear to have belonged to the Assyrian scribes. Taylor discovered in a tomb at Eridu a flint tool, which may have served for the same purpose as the metal or bone styli. 

[Illustration: 268. Jpg MANUSCRIPT ON PAPYRUS IN HEIROGLYPHICS]

They wrote from left to right along the upper part of the tablet, andcovered both sides of it with closely written lines, which sometimes ranover on to the edges. When the writing was finished, the scribe sent hiswork to the potter, who put it in the kiln and baked it, or the writermay have had a small oven at his own disposition, as a clerk with uswould have his table or desk. The shape of these documents varied, andsometimes strikes us as being peculiar: besides the tablets and thebricks, we find small solid cones, or hollow cylinders of considerablesize, on which the kings related their exploits or recorded the historyof their wars or the dedication of their buildings. This method had afew inconveniences, but many advantages. These clay books were heavy tohold and clumsy to handle, while the characters did not stand out wellfrom the brown, yellow, and whitish background of the material; but, onthe other hand, a poem, baked and incorporated into the page itself, ran less danger of destruction than if scribbled in ink on sheets ofpapyrus. Fire could make no impression on it; it could withstand waterfor a considerable length of time; even if broken, the pieces were stillof use: as long as it was not pulverized, the entire document could berestored, with the exception, perhaps, of a few signs, or 'somescraps of a sentence. The inscriptions which have been saved from thefoundations of the most ancient temples, several of which date backforty or fifty centuries, are for the most part as clear and legibleas when they left the hands of the writer who engraved them or of theworkmen who baked them. It is owing to the material to which they werecommitted that we possess the principal works of Chaldæan literaturewhich have come down to us--poems, annals, hymns, magical incantations;how few fragments of these would ever have reached us had their authorsconfided them to parchment or paper, after the manner of the Egyptianscribes! The greatest danger that they ran was that of being leftforgotten in the corner of the chamber in which they had been kept, or buried under the rubbish of a building after a fire or some violentcatastrophe; even then the _débris_ were the means of preserving them, by falling over them and covering them up. Protected under the ruins, they would lie there for centuries, till the fortunate explorer shouldbring them to light and deliver them over to the patient study of thelearned. 

The cuneiform character in itself is neither picturesque nor decorative. It does not offer that delightful assemblage of birds and snakes, of menand quadrupeds, of heads and limbs, of tools, weapons, stars, trees, and boats, which succeed each other in perplexing order on the Egyptianmonuments, to give permanence to the glory of Pharaoh and the greatnessof his gods. Cuneiform writing is essentially composed of thin shortlines, placed in juxtaposition or crossing each other in a somewhatclumsy fashion; it has the appearance of numbers of nails scatteredabout at haphazard, and its angular configuration, and its stiff andspiny appearance, gives the inscriptions a dull and forbidding aspectwhich no artifice of the engraver can overcome. 

[Illustration: 271. Jpg Page image]

[Illustration: 272. Jpg Page Image]

Yet, in spite of their seemingly arbitrary character, this mass ofstrokes had its source in actual hieroglyphs. As in the origin of theEgyptian script the earliest writers had begun by drawing on stone orclay the outline of the object of which they desired to convey the idea. But, whereas in Egypt the artistic temperament of the race, and theincreasing skill of their sculptors, had by degrees brought the drawingof each sign to such perfection that it became a miniature portrait ofthe being or object to be reproduced, in Chaldæa, on the contrary, the signs became degraded from their original forms on account of thedifficulty experienced in copying them with the stylus on the claytablets: they lost their original vertical position, and were placedhorizontally, retaining finally but the very faintest resemblance to theoriginal model. For instance, the Chaldaean conception of the sky wasthat of a vault divided into eight segments by diameters running fromthe four cardinal points and from their principal subdivisions [symbol]the external circle was soon omitted, the transverse lines aloneremaining [symbol], which again was simplified into a kind of irregularcross [symbol]. The figure of a man standing, indicated by the linesresembling his contour, was placed on its side [symbol] and reducedlittle by little till it came to be merely a series of ill-balancedlines [symbol] [symbol]. We may still recognize in [symbol] the fivefingers and palm of a human hand [symbol]; but who would guess at thefirst glance that [symbol] stands for the foot which the scribes stroveto place beside each character the special hieroglyph from which it hadbeen derived. Several fragments of these still exist, a study of whichseems to show that the Assyrian scribes of a more recent period were attimes as much puzzled as we are ourselves when they strove to get at theprinciples of their own script: they had come to look on it as nothingmore than a system of arbitrary combinations, whose original form hadpassed all the more readily into oblivion, because it had been borrowedfrom a foreign race, who, as far as they were concerned, had ceased tohave a separate existence. The script had been invented by the Sumeriansin the very earliest times, and even they may have brought it in anelemental condition from their distant fatherland. The first articulatesounds which, being attached to the hieroglyphs, gave to eachan unalterable pronunciation, were words in the Sumerian tongue;subsequently, when the natural progress of human thought ledthi Chaldæans to replace, as in Egypt, the majority of the signsrepresenting ideas by those representing sounds, the syllabic valueswhich were developed side by side with the ideographic values werepurely Sumerian. The group [symbol] throughout all its forms, designates in the first place the sky, then the god of the sky, andfinally the concept of divinity in general. In its first two senses itis read ana, but in the last it becomes dingir, dimir; and though itnever lost its double force, it was soon separated from the ideas whichit evoked, to be used merely to denote the syllable an wherever itoccurred, even in cases where it had no connection with the sky orheavenly things. The same process was applied to other signs withsimilar results: after having merely denoted ideas, they came to standfor the sounds corresponding to them, and then passed on to be meresyllables--complex syllables in which several consonants may bedistinguished, or simple syllables composed of only one consonant andone vowel, or vice versa. The Egyptians had carried this system stillfurther, and in many cases had kept only one part of the syllable, namely, a mute consonant: they detached, for example, the final u frompu and bu, and gave only the values b and p to the human leg J and themat Q. The peoples of the Euphrates stopped halfway, and admitted actualletters for the vowel sounds a, i, and u only. Their system remained asyllabary interspersed with ideograms, but excluded an alphabet. 

[Illustration: 274. Jpg Page image]

It was eminently wanting in simplicity, but, taken as a whole, it wouldnot have presented as many difficulties as the script of the Egyptians, had it not been forced, at a very early period, to adapt itself to theexigencies of a language for which it had not been made. When it came tobe appropriated by the Semites, the ideographs, which up till then hadbeen read in Sumerian, did not lose the sounds which they possessed inthat tongue, but borrowed others from the new language. For example, "god" was called ilu, and "heaven" called shami: [symbol], whenencountered in inscriptions by the Semites, were read [symbol] whenthe context showed the sense to be "god, " and shami when the characterevidently meant "heaven. " They added these two vocables to the precedingana, an, dingir, dimir; but they did not stop there: they confoundedthe picture of the star [symbol] with that of the sky, and sometimesattributed to [symbol], the pronunciation kakkabu, and the meaning ofstar. The same process was applied to all the groups, and the Semiticvalues being added to the Sumerian, the scribes soon found themselves inpossession of a double set of syllables both simple and compound. Thismultiplicity of sounds, this polyphonous character attached to theirsigns, became a cause of embarrassment even to them. For instance, [symbol] when found in the body of a word, stood for the syllables hior hat, mid, mit, til, ziz; as an ideogram it was used for a score ofdifferent concepts: that of lord or master, inu, bilu; that of blood, damû; for a corpse, pagru, shalamtu; for the feeble or oppressed, kahtu, nagpu; as the hollow and the spring, nakbu; for the state of old age, labaru; of dying, mâtu; of killing, mîtu; of opening, pîtu; besidesother meanings. Several phonetic complements were added to it; it waspreceded by ideograms which determined the sense in which it was to beread, but which, like the Egyptian determinatives, were not pronounced, and in this manner they succeeded in limiting the number of mistakeswhich it was possible to make. With a final [symbol] it would alwaysmean [symbol] bilu, the master, but with an initial [symbol] (thus[symbol]) it denoted the gods Bel or Ea; with [symbol]. Which indicatesa man [symbol], it would be the corpse, pagru and shalamtu; with[symbol] prefixed, it meant [symbol]--mutanu, the plague or death andso on. In spite of these restrictions and explanations, the obscurity ofthe meaning was so great, that in many cases the scribes ran the risk ofbeing unable to make out certain words and understand certain passages;many of the values occurred but rarely, and remained unknown to thosewho did not take the trouble to make a careful study of the syllabaryand its history. It became necessary to draw up tables for their use, in which all the signs were classified and arranged, with their meaningsand phonetic transcriptions. These signs occupied one column, and inthree or four corresponding columns would be found, first, the nameassigned to it; secondly, the spelling, in syllables, of the phoneticvalues which the signs expressed, thirdly, the Sumerian and Assyrianwords which they served to render, and sometimes glosses which completedthe explanation. 

[Illustration: 276. Jpg Tables]

Even this is far from exhausting the matter. Several of thesedictionaries went back to a very early date, and tradition ascribes toSargon of Agade the merit of having them drawn up or of having collectedthem in his palace. The number of them naturally increased in the courseof centuries; in the later times of the Assyrian empire they were sonumerous as to form nearly one-fourth of the works in the library atNineveh under Assurbanipal. Other tablets contained dictionaries ofarchaic or obsolete terms, grammatical paradigms, extracts from lawsor ancient hymns analyzed sentence by sentence and often word by word, interlinear glosses, collections of Sumerian formulas translated intoSemitic speech--a child's guide, in fact, which the savants of thosetimes consulted with as much advantage as those of our own day havedone, and which must have saved them from many a blunder. 

When once accustomed to the difficulties and intricacies of theircalling, the scribes were never at a standstill. The stylus was pliedin Chaldæa no less assiduously than was the calamus in Egypt, and theindestructible clay, which the Chaldæans were as a rule content to use, proved a better medium in the long run than the more refined materialemployed by their rivals: the baked or merely dried clay tablets havewithstood the assaults of time in surprising quantities, while themajority of papyri have disappeared without leaving a trace behind. If at Babylon we rarely meet with those representations, which we findeverywhere in the tombs of Saqqara or Gîzeh, of the people themselvesand their families, their occupations, amusements, and dailyintercourse, we possess, on the other hand, that of which the ruins ofMemphis have furnished us but scanty instances up to the present time, namely, judicial documents, regulating the mutual relations of thepeople and conferring a legal sanction on the various events of theirlife. Whether it were a question of buying lands or contracting amarriage, of a loan on interest, or the sale of slaves, the scribe wascalled in with his soft tablets to engross the necessary agreement. Inthis he would insert as many details as possible--the day of the month, the year of the reigning sovereign, and at times, to be still moreprecise, an allusion to some important event which had just taken place, and a memorial of which was inserted in official annals, such as thetaking of a town, the defeat of a neighbouring king, the dedication ofa temple, the building of a wall or fortress, the opening of a canal, orthe ravages of an inundation: the names of the witnesses and magistratesbefore whom the act was confirmed were also added to those of thecontracting parties. The method of sanctioning it was curious. Anindentation was made with the finger-nail on one of the sides of thetablet, and this mark, followed or preceded by the mention of a name, "Nail of Zabudamik, " "Nail of Abzii, " took the place of our more or lesscomplicated sign-manuals. In later times, only the buyer and witnessesapproved by a nail-mark, while the seller appended his seal; aninscription incised above the impress indicating the position of thesignatory. Every one of any importance possessed a seal, which he woreattached to his wrist or hung round his neck by a cord; he scarcelyever allowed it to be separated from his person during his lifetime, andafter death it was placed with him in the tomb in order to prevent anyimproper use being made of it. It was usually a cylinder, sometimesa truncated cone with a convex base, either of marble, red or greenjasper, agate, cornelian, onyx or rock crystal, but rarely of metal. Engraved upon it in intaglio was an emblem or subject chosen bythe owner, such as the single figure of a god or goddess, an act ofadoration, a sacrifice, or an episode in the story of Gilgames, followedsometimes by the inscription of a name and title. The cylinder wasrolled, or, in the case of the cone, merely pressed on the clay, in thespace reserved for it. In several localities the contracting parties hadrecourse to a very ingenious procedure to prevent the agreements beingaltered or added to by unscrupulous persons. When the document had beenimpressed on the tablet, it was enveloped in a second coating of clay, upon which an exact copy of the original was made, the latter thusbecoming inaccessible to forgers: if by chance, in course of time, anydisagreement should take place, and an alteration of the visible textshould be suspected, the outer envelope was broken in the presence ofwitnesses, and a comparison was made to see if the exterior correspondedexactly with the interior version. Families thus had their privatearchives, to which additions were rapidly made by every generation;every household thus accumulated not only the evidences of its ownhistory, but to some extent that of other families with whom they hadformed alliances, or had business or friendly relations. *

 * The tablets of Tell-Sifr come from one of these family collections. They all, in number about one hundred, rested on three enormous bricks, and they had been covered with a mat of which the half-decayed remains were still visible: three other crude bricks covered the heap. The documents contained in them relate for the most part to the families of Sininana and Amililâni, and form part of their archives. 

[Illustration: 279. Jpg THE TABLET OF TELL-SIFR, BROKEN TO SHOW THE TWOTEXTS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Loftus. 

[Illustration: 280. Jpg TABLET BEARING THE IMPRESS OF A SEAL]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Layard. 

The constitution of the family was of a complex character. It wouldappear that the people of each city were divided into clans, all ofwhose members claimed to be descended from a common ancestor, who hadflourished at a more or less remote period. The members of each clanwere by no means all in the same social position, some having gone downin the world, others having raised themselves; and amongst them we findmany different callings--from agricultural labourers to scribes, andfrom merchants to artisans. No mutual tie existed among the majorityof these members except the remembrance of their common origin, perhapsalso a common religion, and eventual rights of succession or claims uponwhat belonged to each one individually. The branches which had becomegradually separated from the parent stock, and which, taken alltogether, formed the clan, possessed each, on the contrary, a verystrict organization. It is possible that, at the outset, the womanoccupied the more important position, but at an early date the manbecame the head of the family, * and around him were ranged the wives, children, servants, and slaves, all of whom had their various duties andprivileges. 

 * The change in the condition of women would be due to the influence of Semitic ideas and customs in Chaldæa. 

He offered the household worship to the gods of his race, in accordancewith special rites which had come down to him from his father; he madeat the tombs of his ancestors, at such times as were customary, theofferings and prayers which assured their repose in the other world, andhis powers were as extensive in civil as in religious matters. He hadabsolute authority over all the members of his household, and anythingundertaken by them without his consent was held invalid in the eyes ofthe law; his sons could not marry unless he had duly authorized themto do so. For this purpose he appeared before the magistrate with thefuture couple, and the projected union could not be held as an actualmarriage, until he had affixed his seal or made his nail-mark on thecontract tablet. It amounted, in fact, to a formal deed of sale, and theparents of the girl parted with her only in exchange for a proportionategift from the bridegroom. One girl would be valued at a silver shekel byweight, while another was worth a mina, another much less;* the handingover of the price was accompanied with a certain solemnity. When theyoung man possessed no property as yet of his own, his family advancedhim the sum needed for the purchase. On her side, the maiden did notenter upon her new life empty handed; her father, or, in the case ofhis death, the head of the family at the time being, provided her witha dowry suited to her social position, which was often augmented byconsiderable presents from her grandmother, aunts, and cousins. **

 * Shamashnazir receives, as the price of his daughter, ten shekels of silver, which appears to have been an average price in the class of life to which he belonged. 

 ** The nature of the dowry in ancient times is clear from the Sumero-Assyrian tablets in which the old legal texts are explained, and again from the contents of the contracts of Tell-Sifr, and the documents on stone, such as the Micliaux stone, in which we see women bringing their possessions into the community by marriage, and yet retaining the entire disposition of them. 

The dowry would consist of a carefully marked out field of corn, a groveof date-palms, a house in the town, a trousseau, furniture, slaves, orready money; the whole would be committed to clay, of which therewould be three copies at least, two being given by the scribe to thecontracting parties, while the third would be deposited in the hands ofthe magistrate. When the bride and bridegroom both belonged to the sameclass, or were possessed of equal fortunes, the relatives of the womancould exact an oath from the man that he would abstain from takinga second wife during her lifetime; a special article of the marriageagreement permitted the woman to go free should the husband break hisfaith, and bound him to pay an indemnity as a compensation for theinsult he had offered her. This engagement on the part of the man, however, did not affect his relations with his female servants. InChaldæa, as in Egypt, and indeed in the whole of the ancient world, they were always completely at the mercy of their purchaser, and thepermission to treat them as he would had become so much of a customthat the begetting of children by their master was desired rather thanotherwise: the complaints of the despised slave, who had not been takeninto her master's favour, formed one of the themes of popular poetry ata very early period. When the contract tablet was finally sealed, oneof the witnesses, who was required to be a free man, joined the handsof the young couple; nothing then remained to be done but to invite theblessing of the gods, and to end the day by a feast, which would uniteboth families and their guests. The evil spirits, however, always inquest of an easy prey, were liable to find their way into the nuptialchamber, favoured by the confusion inseparable from all householdrejoicing: prudence demanded that their attempts should be frustrated, and that the newly married couple should be protected from theirattacks. The companions of the bridegroom took possession of him, and, hand to hand and foot to foot, formed as it were a rampart round himwith their bodies, and carried him off solemnly to his expectant bride. He then again repeated the words which he had said in the morning: "Iam the son of a prince, gold and silver shall fill thy bosom; thou, eventhou, shalt be my wife, I myself will be thy husband;" and he continued:"As the fruits borne by an orchard, so great shall be the abundancewhich I shall pour out upon this woman. "* The priest then called downupon him benedictions from on high: "Therefore, O ye (gods), all that isbad and that is not good in this man, drive it far from him and give himstrength. As for thee, O man, exhibit thy manhood, that this woman maybe thy wife; thou, O woman, give that which makes thy womanhood, thatthis man may be thy husband. " On the following morning, a thanksgivingsacrifice celebrated the completion of the marriage, and by purifyingthe new household drove from it the host of evil spirits. **

 * This part of the ceremony is described on a Sumero- Assyrian tablet, of which two copies exist, discovered and translated by Pinches. The interpretation appears to me to result from the fact that mention is made, at the commencement of the column, of impious beings without gods, who might approach the man; in other places magical exorcisms indicate how much those spirits were dreaded "who deprived the bride of the embraces of the man. " As Pinches remarks, the formula is also found in the part of the poem of Gilgames, where Ishtar wishes to marry the hero, which shows that the rite and its accompanying words belong to a remote past. 

 ** The text that describes these ceremonies was discovered and published by Pinches. As far as I can judge, it contained an exorcism against the "knotting of the tag, " and the mention of this subject called up that of the marriage rites. The ceremony commanded on the day following the marriage was probably a purification: as late as the time of Herodotus, the union of man and woman rendered both impure, and they had to perform an ablution before recommencing their occupations. 

The woman, once bound, could only escape from the sovereign power of herhusband by death or divorce; but divorce for her was rather a trial towhich she submitted than a right of which she could freely make use. Herhusband could repudiate her at will without any complicated ceremonies. It was enough for him to say: "Thou art not my wife!" and to restoreto her a sum of money equalling in value the dowry he had received withher;* he then sent her back to her father, with a letter informinghim of the dissolution of the conjugal tie. ** But if in a moment ofweariness or anger she hurled the fatal formula at him: "Thou are notmy husband!" her fate was sealed: she was thrown into the river anddrowned. ***

 * The sum is fixed at half a mina by the text of the Sumerian laws; but it was sometimes less, e. G. Ten shekels, and sometimes more, e. G. A whole mina. 

 ** Repudiation of a wife, and the ceremonial connected with it, are summarized, as far as ancient times are concerned, by a passage in the Sumero-Assyrian tablet, published by Rawlinson, and translated by Oppert-Menant. Bertin, on the contrary, takes the same text to be a description of the principal marriage-rites, and from it he draws the conclusion that the possibility of divorce was not admitted in Chaldæa between persons of noble family. Meissner very rightly returns to Oppert's interpretation, a few details in which he corrects. 

 *** This fact was evident from the text of the so-called _Sumerian Laws concerning the Organization of the Family_, according to the generally received interpretation: according to that proposed by Oppert-Menant, it was the woman who had the right of causing the husband who had wronged her to be thrown into the river. The publication of the contracts of Iltani and of Bashtum appear to have shown conclusively the correctness of the ordinary translation: uncertainty with regard to one word prevents us from knowing whether the guilty wife were strangled before being thrown into the water, or if she were committed to the river alive. 

The adulteress was also punished with death, but with death by thesword: and when the use of iron became widespread, the blade was to beof that metal. Another ancient custom only spared the criminal to devoteher to a life of infamy: the outraged husband stripped her of her fleecygarments, giving her merely the loin-cloth in its place, which left herhalf naked, and then turned-her out of the house into the street, whereshe was at the mercy of the first passer-by. Women of noble or wealthyfamilies found in their fortune a certain protection from the abuse ofmarital authority. The property which they brought with them by theirmarriage contract, remained at their own disposal. * They had the entiremanagement of it, they farmed it out, they sold it, they spent theincome from it as they liked, without interference from any one: the manenjoyed the comforts which it procured, but he could not touch it, andhis hold upon it was so slight that his creditors could not lay theirhands on it. 

 * In the documents of the New Chaldæan Empire we find instances of married women selling their property themselves, and even of their being present, seated, at the conclusion of the sale, or of their ceding to a married daughter some property in their own possession, thus renouncing the power of disposing of it, and keeping merely the income from it; we have also instances of women reclaiming valuables of gold which their husbands had given away without their authorisation, and also obtaining an indemnity for the wrong they had suffered; also of their lending money to the mother-in-law of their brother; in fine, empowered to deal with their own property in every respect like an ordinary proprietor. 

If by his own act he divorced his wife, he not only lost all benefitfrom her property, but he was obliged to make her an allowance or to payher an indemnity;* at his death, the widow succeeded to these, withoutprejudice to what she was entitled to by her marriage contract or thewill of the deceased. The woman with a dowry, therefore, became more orless emancipated by virtue of her money. As her departure deprived thehousehold of as much as, and sometimes more than, she had brought intoit, every care was taken that she should have no cause to retire fromit, and that no pretext should be given to her parents for her recallto her old home; her wealth thus obtained for her the consideration andfair treatment which the law had, at the outset, denied to her. 

 * The restitution of the dowry after divorce is ascertained, as far as later times are concerned, from documents similar to that published by Kohler-Peiser, in which we see the second husband of a divorced wife claiming the dowry from the first husband. The indemnity was fixed beforehand at six silver minæ, in the marriage contract published by Oppert. 

When, however, the wife was poor, she had to bear without complaint thewhole burden of her inferior position. Her parents had no other resourcethan to ask the highest possible price for her, according to the rankin which they lived, or in virtue of the personal qualities she wassupposed to possess, and this amount, paid into their hands when theydelivered her over to the husband, formed, if not an actual dowry forher, at least a provision for her in case of repudiation or widowhood:she was not, however, any less the slave of her husband--a privilegedslave, it is true, and one whom he could not sell like his otherslaves, * but of whom he could easily rid himself when her first youthwas passed, or when she ceased to please him. **

 * It appears, however, in certain cases not clearly specified, that the husband could sell his wife, if she were a shrew, as a slave. 

 ** This form of marriage, which was of frequent occurrence in ancient times, fell into disuse among the upper classes, at least of Babylonian society. A few examples, however, are found in late times. It continued in use among the lower classes, and Herodotus affirms that in his time marriage markets were held regularly, as in our own time fairs are held for hiring male and female servants. 

In many cases the fiction of purchase was set aside, and mutual consenttook the place of all other formalities, marriage then becoming merelycohabitation, terminating at will. The consent of the father was notrequired for this irregular union, and many a son contracted a marriageafter this fashion, unknown to his relatives, with some young girleither in his own or in an inferior station: but the law refused toallow her any title except that of concubine, and forced her to wear adistinctive mark, perhaps that of servitude, namely, the representationof an olive in some valuable stone or in terra-cotta, bearing her ownand her husband's name, with the date of their union, which she kepthung round her neck by a cord. Whether they were legitimate wivesor not, the women of the lower and middle classes enjoyed as muchindependence as did the Egyptian women of a similar rank. As all thehousehold cares fell to their share, it was necessary that they shouldbe free to go about at all hours of the day: and they could be seenin the streets and the markets, with bare feet, their head and faceuncovered, wearing their linen loin-cloth or their long draped garmentsof hairy texture. * Their whole life was expended in a ceaseless toil fortheir husbands and children: night and morning they went to fetch waterfrom the public well or the river, they bruised the corn, made thebread, spun, wove, and clothed the entire household in spite of thefrequent demands of maternity. ** The Chaldæan women of wealth or noblebirth, whose civil status gave them a higher position, did not enjoy somuch freedom. They were scarcely affected by the cares of daily life, and if they did any work within their houses, it was more from a naturalinstinct, a sense of duty, or to relieve the tedium of their existence, than from constraint or necessity; but the exigencies of their rankreduced them to the state of prisoners. All the luxuries and comfortswhich money could procure were lavished on them, or they obtained themfor themselves, but all the while they were obliged to remain shut inthe harem within their own houses; when they went out, it was only tovisit their female friends or their relatives, to go to some templeor festival, and on such occasions they were surrounded with servants, eunuchs, and pages, whose serried ranks shut out the external world. 

 * For the long garment of the women, see the statue represented on p. 263 of the present work; for the loin- cloth, which left the shoulders and bust exposed, see the bronze figure on p. 262. The latter was no doubt the garment worn at home by respectable women; we see by the punishment inflicted on adulteresses that it was an outdoor garment for courtesans, and also, doubtless, for slaves and women of the lower classes. 

 ** Women's occupations are mentioned in several texts and on several ancient monuments. On the seal, an impress of which is given on p. 233 of this volume, we see above, on the left, a woman kneeling and crushing the corn, and before her a row of little disks, representing, no doubt, the loaves prepared for baking. The length of time for suckling a child is fixed at three years by the Sumero-Assyrian tablet relating the history of the foundling; protracted suckling was customary also in Egypt. 

There was no lack of children in these houses when the man had severalmistresses, either simultaneously or successively. Maternity was beforeall things a woman's first duty: should she delay in bearing children, or should anything happen to them, she was considered as accursed orpossessed, and she was banished from the family lest her presence shouldbe a source of danger to it. * In spite of this many households remainedchildless, either because a clause inserted in the contract preventedthe dismissal of the wife if barren, or because the children had diedwhen the father was stricken in years, and there was little hope offurther offspring. In such places adoption filled the gaps left bynature, and furnished the family with desired heirs. For this purposesome chance orphan might be brought into the household--one of thosepoor little creatures consigned by their mothers to the river, as inthe case of Shargani, according to the ancient legend; or who had beenexposed at the cross-roads to excite the pity of passers-by, ** like thefoundling whose story is given us in an old ballad. "He who had neitherfather nor mother, --he who knew not his father or mother, but whoseearliest memory is of a well--whose entry into the world was in thestreet, " his benefactor "snatched him from the jaws of dogs--and tookhim from the beaks of ravens. --He seized the seal before witnesses--andhe marked him on the sole of the foot with the seal of thewitness, --then he entrusted him to a nurse, --and for three years heprovided the nurse with flour, oil, and clothing. " When the weaning wasaccomplished, "he appointed him to be his child, --he brought him upto be his child, --he inscribed him as his child, --and he gave him theeducation of a scribe. " The rites of adoption in these cases did notdiffer from those attendant upon birth. On both occasions the newly borninfant was shown to witnesses, and it was marked on the soles of itsfeet to establish its identity; its registration in the family archivesdid not take place until these precautions had been observed, andchildren adopted in this manner were regarded thenceforward in the eyesof the world as the legitimate heirs of the family. 

 * Divorce for sterility was customary in very early times. Complete sterility or miscarriage was thought to be occasioned by evil spirits; a woman thus possessed with a devil came to be looked on as a dangerous being whom it was necessary to exorcise. 

 ** Many of these children were those of courtesans or women who had been repudiated, as we learn from the Sumero- Assyrian tablet of Rawlinson: "She will expose her child alone in the street, where the serpents in the road may bite it, and its father and mother will know it no more. "

People desiring to adopt a child usually made inquiries among theiracquaintances, or poor friends, or cousins who might consent to give upone of their sons, in the hope of securing a better future for him. Whenhe happened to be a minor, the real father and mother, or, in the caseof the death of one, the surviving parent, appeared before the scribe, and relinquished all their rights in favour of the adopting parents; thelatter, in accepting this act of renunciation, promised henceforth totreat the child as if he were of their own flesh and blood, and oftensettled upon him, at the same time, a certain sum chargeable on theirown patrimony. When the adopted son was of age, his consent to theagreement was required, in addition to that of his parents. The adoptionwas sometimes prompted by an interested motive, and not merely by thedesire for posterity or its semblance. Labour was expensive, slaves werescarce, and children, by working for their father, took the place ofhired servants, and were content, like them, with food and clothing. Theadoption of adults was, therefore, most frequent in ancient times. Theintroduction of a person into a fresh household severed the ties whichbound him to the old one; he became a stranger to those who had bornehim; he had no filial obligations to discharge to them, nor had heany right to whatever property they might possess, unless, indeed, anyunforeseen circumstance prevented the carrying out of the agreement, andlegally obliged him to return to the status of his birth. In return, heundertook all the duties and enjoyed the privileges of his new position;he owed to his adopted parents the same amount of work, obedience, andrespect that he would have given to his natural parents; he sharedin their condition, whether for good or ill, and he inherited theirpossessions. Provision was made for him in case of his repudiation bythose who had adopted him, and they had to make him compensation: hereceived the portion which would have accrued to him after their death, and he then left them. Families appear to have been fairly united, inspite of the elasticity of the laws which governed them, and of thedivers elements of which they were sometimes composed. No doubt polygamyand frequently divorce exercised here as elsewhere a deleteriousinfluence; the harems of Babylon were constantly the scenes of endlessintrigues and quarrels among the women and children of varied conditionand different parentage who filled them. Among the people of the middleclasses, where restricted means necessarily prevented a man havingmany wives, the course of family life appears to have been as calmand affectionate as in Egypt, under the unquestioned supremacy of thefather: and in the event of his early death, the widow, and later theson or son-in-law, took the direction of affairs. Should quarrels ariseand reach the point of bringing about a complete rupture between parentsand children, the law intervened, not to reconcile them, but to repressany violence of which either side might be guilty towards the other. It was reckoned as a misdemeanour for any father or mother to disown achild, and they were punished by being kept shut up in their own house, as long, doubtless, as they persisted in disowning it; but it was acrime in a son, even if he were an adopted son, to renounce his parents, and he was punished severely. If he had said to his father, "Thou artnot my father!" the latter marked him with a conspicuous sign and soldhim in the market. If he had said to his mother, "As for thee, thou artnot my mother!" he was similarly branded, and led through the streets oralong the roads, where with hue and cry he was driven from the town andprovince. *

 * I have adopted the generally received meaning of this document as a whole, but I am obliged to state that Oppert- Menant admit quite a different interpretation. According to them, it would appear to be a sweeping renunciation of children by parents, and of parents by children, at the close of a judicial condemnation. Oppert has upheld this interpretation against Haupt, and still keeps to his opinion. The documents published by Meissner show that the text of the ancient Sumerian laws applied equally to adopted children, but made no distinction between the insult offered to the father and that offered to the mother: the same penalty was applicable in both cases. 

The slaves were numerous, but distributed in unequal proportion amongthe various classes of the population: whilst in the palace they mightbe found literally in crowds, it was rare among the middle classes tomeet with any family possessing more than two or three at a time. Theywere drawn partly from foreign races; prisoners who had been wounded andcarried from the field of battle, or fugitives who had fallen into thehands of the victors after a defeat, or Elamites or Gutis who had beensurprised in their own villages during some expedition; not to mentionpeople of every category carried off by the Bedouin during their raidsin distant parts, such as Syria or Egypt, whom they were continuallybringing for sale to Babylon and Uru, and, indeed, to all those citiesto which they had easy access. The kings, the vicegerents, the templeadministration, and the feudal lords, provided employment for vastnumbers in the construction of their buildings or in the cultivation oftheir domains; the work was hard and the mortality great, but gaps weresoon filled up by the influx of fresh gangs. The survivors intermarried, and their children, brought up to speak the Chaldæan tongue andconforming to the customs of the country, became assimilated to theruling race; they formed, beneath the superior native Semite andSumerian population, an inferior servile class, spread alike throughoutthe towns and country, who were continually reinforced by individuals ofthe native race, such as foundlings, women and children sold by husbandor father, debtors deprived by creditors of their liberty, and criminalsjudicially condemned. The law took no individual account of them, but counted them by heads, as so many cattle: they belonged to theirrespective masters in the same fashion as did the beasts of his flock orthe trees of his garden, and their life or death was dependent uponhis will, though the exercise of his rights was naturally restrainedby interest and custom. He could use them as pledges or for payment ofdebt, could exchange them or sell them in the market. The price of aslave never rose very high: a woman might be bought for four and a halfshekels of silver by weight, and the value of a male adult fluctuatedbetween ten shekels and the third of a mina. The bill of sale wasinscribed on clay, and given to the purchaser at the time of payment:the tablets which were the vouchers of the rights of the formerproprietor were then broken, and the transfer was completed. Themaster seldom ill-treated his slaves, except in cases of reiterateddisobedience, rebellion, or flight; he could arrest his runaway slaveswherever he could lay his hands on them; he could shackle their ankles, fetter their wrists, and whip them mercilessly. As a rule, he permittedthem to marry and bring up a family; he apprenticed their children, and as soon as they knew a trade, he set them up in business in his ownname, allowing them a share in the profits. The more intelligent amongthem were trained to be clerks or stewards; they were taught to read, write, and calculate, the essential accomplishments of a skilful scribe;they were appointed as superintendents over their former comrades, oroverseers of the administration of property, and they ended by becomingconfidential servants in the household. The savings which they hadaccumulated in their earlier years furnished them with the means ofprocuring some few consolations: they could hire themselves out forwages, and could even acquire slaves who would go out to work for them, in the same way as they themselves had been a source of income to theirproprietors. If they followed a lucrative profession and were successfulin it, their savings sometimes permitted them to buy their own freedom, and, if they were married, to pay the ransom of their wife and children. At times, their master, desirous of rewarding long and faithful service, liberated them of his own accord, without waiting till they had savedup the necessary money or goods for their enfranchisement: in such casesthey remained his dependants, and continued in his service as freemento perform the services they had formerly rendered as slaves. They thenenjoyed the same rights and advantages as the old native race; theycould leave legacies, inherit property, claim legal rights, and acquireand possess houses and lands. Their sons could make good matches amongthe daughters of the middle classes, according to their education andfortune; when they were intelligent, active, and industrious, there wasnothing to prevent them from rising to the highest offices about theperson of the sovereign. 

[Illustration: 294. Jpg AN EGYPTIAN SLAVE MERCHANT]

[Illustration: 294-text. Jpg]

If we knew more of the internal history of the great Chaldæan cities, weshould no doubt come to see what an important part the servile elementplayed in them; and could we trace it back for a few generations, weshould probably discover that there were few great families who didnot reckon a slave or a freedman among their ancestors. It would beinteresting to follow this people, made up of such complex elements, inall their daily work and recreation, as we are able to do in the caseof contemporary Egyptians; but the monuments which might furnish us withthe necessary materials are scarce, and the positive information to begleaned from them amounts to but little. We are tolerably safe, however, in supposing the more wealthy cities to have been, as a whole, verysimilar in appearance to those existing at the present day in theregions which as yet have been scarcely touched by the advent ofEuropean civilization. Sinuous, narrow, muddy streets, littered withdomestic refuse and organic detritus, in which flocks of ravens andwandering packs of dogs perform with more or less efficiency the dutiesof sanitary officers; whole quarters of the town composed of huts madeof reeds and puddled clay, low houses of crude brick, surmounted perhapseven in those times with the conical domes we find later on the Assyrianbas-reliefs; crowded and noisy bazaars, where each trade is located inits special lanes and blind alleys; silent and desolate spaces occupiedby palaces and gardens, in which the private life of the wealthywas concealed from public gaze; and looking down upon this medley ofindividual dwellings, the palaces and temples with their zigguratscrowned with gilded and painted sanctuaries. In the ruins of Uru, Eridu, and Uruk, the remains of houses belonging doubtless to well-to-dofamilies have been brought to light. They are built of fine bricks, whose courses are cemented together with a thin layer of bitumen, butthey they are only lighted internally by small appertures pierced atirregular distances in the upper part of the walls: the low archeddoorway, closed by a heavy two-leaved door, leads into a blind passage, which opens as a rule on the courtyard in the centre of the building. 

[Illustration: 208a. Jpg Chaldean houses at Uru. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by Taylor. 

[Illustration: 208b plans of houses excavated at Eridu and Ubu. ]

 These plans were drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from sketches by Taylor. The houses reproduced to the left of the plan were those uncovered in the ruins of Uru; those on the right belong to the ruins of Eridu. On the latter, the niches mentioned in the text will be found indicated. 

In the interior may still be distinguished the small oblong rooms, sometimes vaulted, sometimes roofed with a flat, ceiling supported bytrunks of palm trees;* the walls are often of a considerable thickness, in which are found narrow niches here and there. The majority of therooms were merely store-chambers, and contained the family provisionsand treasures; others served as living-rooms, and were provided withfurniture. The latter, in the houses of the richer citizens no lessthan in those of the people, was of a very simple kind, and was mostlycomposed of chairs and stools, similar to those in the royal palaces;the bedrooms contained the linen chests and the beds with their thinmattresses, coverings, and cushions, and perhaps wooden head-rests, resembling those found in Africa, ** but the Chaldæans slept mostly onmats spread on the ground. 

 * Taylor, _Notes on the Ruins of Mugeyer_, in the _Journ. Of the Royal As. Soc_, vol. Xv. P. 266, found the remains of the palm-tree beams which formed the terrace still existing. He thinks (_Notes on Tel-el-Lahm_, etc. , in the _Journ, of the Royal As. Soc. _, vol. Xv. P. 411) with Loftus that some of the chambers were vaulted. Cf. Upon the custom of vaulting in Chaldæan houses, Piereot-Cupiez, _Histoire de l'Art_, vol. Ii. P. 163, et seq. 

 ** The dressing of the hair in coils and elaborate erections, as seen in the various figures engraved upon Chaldæan intaglios (cf. What is said of the different ways of arranging the hair on p. 262 of this volume), appears to have necessitated the use of these articles of furniture; such complicated erections of hair must have lasted several days at least, and would not have kept in condition so long except for the use of the head-rest. 

An oven for baking occupied a corner of the courtyard, side by side withthe stones for grinding the corn; the ashes on the hearth were alwaysaglow, and if by chance the fire went out, the fire-stick was alwaysat hand to relight it, as in Egypt. The kitchen utensils and householdpottery comprised a few large copper pans and earthenware pots roundedat the base, dishes, water and wine jars, and heavy plates of coarseware; metal had not as yet superseded stone, and in the same house wemeet with bronze axes and hammers side by side with the same implementsin cut flint, besides knives, scrapers, and mace-heads. *

 * Implements in flint and other kinds of stone have been discovered by Taylor, and are now in the British Museum. The bronze implements come partly from the tombs of Mugheîr, and partly from the ruins explored by Loftus at Tell-Sifr--that is to say, the ancient cities of Uru and Larsam: the name of Tell-Sifr, the "mound of copper, " comes from the quantity of objects in copper which have been discovered there. 

[Illustration: 300. Jpg CHALDÆAN HOUSEHOLD UTENSILS IN TERRA-COTTA]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketch by G. Rawlinson, and the heliogravure in Heuzey-Sarzec. 

At the present day the women of the country of the Euphrates spend agreat part of their time on the roofs of their dwellings. * They installthemselves there in the morning, till they are driven away by the heat;as soon as the sun gets low in the heavens, they return to their post, and either pass the day on neighbouring roofs whilst they bake, cook, wash and dry the linen; or, if they have slaves to attend to such menialoccupations, they sew and embroider in the open air. 

 * Olivier, _Voyage dans l'Empire Othoman, _ vol. Ii. Pp. 356, 357, 381, 382, 392, 393. 

They come down into the interior of the house during the hottest hoursof the day. In most of the wealthy houses, the coolest room is one belowthe level of the courtyard, into which but little light can penetrate. It is paved with plaques of polished gypsum, which resembles our finestgrey-and-white marble, and the walls are covered with a coat of delicateplastering, smooth to the touch and agreeable to the eye. This iswatered several times during the day in hot weather, and the evaporationfrom it cools the air. The few ruined habitations which have as yet beenexplored seem to bear witness to a considerable similarity between therequirements and customs of ancient times and those of to-day. Like themodern women of Bagdad and Mosul, the Chaldæan women of old preferredan existence in the open air, in spite of its publicity, to a seclusionwithin stuffy rooms or narrow courts. The heat of the sun, cold, rain, and illness obliged them at times to seek a refuge within four walls, but as soon as they could conveniently escape from them, they climbed upon to their roof to pass the greater part of their time there. 

Many families of the lower and middle classes owned the houses whichthey occupied. They constituted a patrimony which the owners made everyeffort to preserve intact through all reverses of fortune. * The headof the family bequeathed it to his widow or his eldest son, or left itundivided to his heirs, in the assurance, no doubt, that one of themwould buy up the rights of the others. 

 * A house could be let for various lengths of time--for three months, for a year, for five years, for an indefinite term, but with a minimum of six months, since the rent is payable at the beginning and in the middle of each year. 

The remainder of his goods, farms, gardens, corn-lands, slaves, furniture, and jewels, were divided among the brothers or naturaldescendants, "from the mouth to the gold;" that is to say, from themoment of announcing the beginning of the business, to that wheneach one received his share. In order to invest this act with greatersolemnity, it took place usually in the presence of a priest. Thoseinterested repaired to the temple, "to the gate of the god;" they placedthe whole of the inheritance in the hands of the chosen arbitrator, and demanded of him to divide it justly; or the eldest brother perhapsanticipated the apportionment, and the priest had merely to sanctionthe result, or settle the differences which might arise among the lawfulrecipients in the course of the operation. When this was accomplished, the legatees had to declare themselves satisfied; and when no furtherclaims arose, they had to sign an engagement before the priestlyarbitrator that they would henceforth refrain from all quarrelling onthe subject, and that they would never make a complaint one against theother. By dint of these continual redistributions from one generationto another, the largest fortunes soon became dispersed: the individualshares became smaller and smaller, and scarcely sufficed to keep afamily, so that the slightest reverse obliged the possessor tohave recourse to usurers. The Chaldæans, like the Egyptians, wereunacquainted with the use of money, but from the earliest times theemployment of precious metals for purposes of exchange was practisedamong them to an enormous extent. Though copper and gold were both used, silver was the principal medium in these transactions, and formed thestandard value of all purchaseable objects. It was never cut into flatrings or twists of wire, as was the case with the Egyptian "tabnu;" itwas melted into small unstamped ingots, which were passed from handto hand by weight, being tested in the scales at each transaction. "To weigh" was in the ordinary language the equivalent for "payment inmetal, " whereas "to measure" denoted that the payment was in grain. The ingots for exchange were, therefore, designated by the name ofthe weights to which they corresponded. The lowest unit was a shekel, weighing on an average nearly half an ounce, sixty shekels making amina, and sixty minas a talent. It is a question whether the Chaldæannspossessed in early times, as did the Assyrians of a later period, twokinds of shekels and minas, one heavy and the other light. Whether theloan were in metal, grain, or any other substance, the interest was veryhigh. * A very ancient law fixed it in certain cases at twelve drachmasper mina, per annum--that is to say, at twenty per cent. --and morerecent texts show us that, when raised to twenty-five per cent. , it didnot appear to them abnormal. 

 * We find several different examples, during the Second Chaldæann Empire, of an exchange of corn for provisions and liquids, or of beams for dates. As a fact, exchange has never completely died out in these regions, and at the present day, in Chaldæa, as in Egypt, corn is used in many cases either to pay Government taxes or to discharge commercial debts. 

The commerce of the chief cities was almost entirely concentrated in thetemples. The large quantities of metals and cereals constantly broughtto the god, either as part of the fixed temple revenue, or as dailyofferings, accumulated so rapidly, that they would have overflowed thestorehouses, had not a means been devised of utilizing them quickly: thepriests treated them as articles of commerce and made a profit out ofthem. * Every bargain necessitated the calling in of a public scribe. Thebill, drawn up before witnesses on a clay tablet, enumerated the sumspaid out, the names of the parties, the rate per cent. , the dateof repayment, and sometimes a penal clause in the event of fraud orinsolvency; the tablet remained in the possession of the creditor untilthe debt had been completely discharged. The borrower often gave as apledge either slaves, a field, or a house, or certain of his friendswould pledge on his behalf their own personal fortune; at times he wouldpay by the labour of his own hands the interest which he would otherwisehave been unable to meet, and the stipulation was previously made in thecontract of the number of days of corvée which he should periodicallyfulfil for his creditor. If, in spite of all this, the debtor was unableto procure the necessary funds to meet his engagements, the principalbecame augmented by a fixed sum--for instance, one-third--and continuedto increase at this rate until the total value of the amount reachedthat of the security:** the slave, the field, or the house then ceasedto belong to their former, master, subject to a right of redemption, ofwhich he was rarely able to avail himself for lack of means. ***

 * It was to the god himself--Shamash, for example--that the loan was supposed to be made, and it is to him that the contracts stipulate that the capital and interest shall be paid. It is curious to lind among the most successful money- lenders several princesses consecrated to the sun-god. 

 ** It is easy to foresee, from the contracts of the New Assyrian or Babylonian Empire, how in this manner the original sum lent became doubled and trebled; generally the interest accumulated till it was quadrupled, after which, no doubt, the security was taken by the creditor. They probably calculated that the capital and compound interest was by then equal in value to the person or object given as a security. 

 *** The creditors protected themselves against this right of redemption by a maledictory formula inserted at the end of the contracts against those who should avail themselves of it; it is generally inscribed on the boundary stones of the First Chaldæan Empire. 

The small tradesman or free workman, who by some accident had becomeinvolved in debt, seldom escaped this progressive impoverishment exceptby strenuous efforts and incessant labour. Foreign commerce, it is true, entailed considerable risk, but the chances of acquiring wealth were sogreat that many individuals launched upon it in preference to moresure but less lucrative undertakings. They would set off alone or incompanies for Elam or the northern regions, for Syria, or even for sodistant a country as Egypt, and they would bring back in their caravansall that was accounted precious in those lands. Overland routes were notfree from dangers; not only were nomad tribes and professional banditsconstantly hovering round the traveller, and obliging him to exerciseceaseless vigilance, but the inhabitants of the villages through whichhe passed, the local lords and the kings of the countries which hetraversed, had no scruple in levying blackmail upon him in obliging himto pay dearly for right of way through their marches or territory. **There were less risks in choosing a sea route: the Euphrates on oneside, the Tigris, the Ulaî, and the Uknu on the other, ran through acountry peopled with a rich industrial population, among whom Chaldæanmerchandise was easily and profitably sold or exchanged for commoditieswhich would command a good price at the end of the voyage. The vesselsgenerally were keleks or "kufas, " but the latter were of immense size. 

 * We have no information from Babylonian sources relating to the state of the roads, and the dangers which merchants encountered in foreign lands; the Egyptian documents partly supply what is here lacking. The "instructions" contained in the _Sallier Papyrus, _ No. Ii. , show what were the miseries of the traveller, and the _Adventures of Sinuhît_ allude to the insecurity of the roads in Syria, by the very care with which the hero relates all the precautions which he took for his protection. These two documents are of the XIIth or XIIIth dynasty--that is to say, contemporaneous with the kings, of Uru and with Gudea. 

Several individuals, as a rule, would club together to hire one of theseboats and freight it with a suitable cargo. * The body of the boatwas very light, being made of osier or willow covered with skins sewntogether; a layer of straw was spread on the bottom, on which were piledthe bales or chests, which were again protected by a rough thatch ofstraw. The crew was composed of two oarsmen at least, and sometimes afew donkeys: the merchants then pursued their way up stream till theyhad disposed of their cargo, and taken in a sufficient freight for theirreturn voyage. The dangers, though apparently not so great as those bythe land route, were not the less real. The boat was liable to sinkor run aground near the bank, the dwellers in the neighbourhood of theriver might intercept it and pillage its contents, a war might break outbetween two contiguous kingdoms and suspend all commerce: the merchants'career continually vacillated between servitude, death, and fortune. 

 * The payment demanded was something considerable: the only contract which I know of existing for such a transaction is of the time of Darius I. , and exacts a silver shekel per day for the hire of boat and crew. 

Business carried on at home in the towns was seldom the means ofenriching a man, and sometimes scarcely afforded him a means oflivelihood. Rent was high for those who had not a house of their own;the least they could expect to pay was half a silver shekel per annum, but the average price was a whole shekel. On taking possession they paida deposit which sometimes amounted to one-third of the whole sum, theremainder being due at the end of the year. The leases lasted, as arule, merely a twelvemonth, though sometimes they were extended forterms of greater length, such as two, three, or even eight years. Thecost of repairs and of keeping the house in good condition fell usuallyupon the lessee, who was also allowed to build upon the land he hadleased, in which case it was declared free of all charges for a periodof about ten years, but the house, and, as a rule, all he had built, then reverted to the landlord. Most possessors of shops made their owngoods for sale, assisted by slaves or free apprentices. Every workmantaught his own trade to his children, and these in their turn wouldinstruct theirs; families which had an hereditary profession, or fromgeneration to generation had gathered bands of workmen about them, formed themselves into various guilds, or, to use the customary term, into tribes, governed by chiefs and following specified customs. Aworkman belonged to the tribe of the weavers, or of the blacksmiths, orof the corn-merchants, and the description of an individual would nothave been considered as sufficiently exact, if the designation of histribe were not inserted after his name in addition to his paternalaffiliation. The organization was like that of Egypt, but more fullydeveloped. The various trades, moreover, were almost the same among thetwo peoples, the exceptions being such as are readily accounted for bythe differences in the nature of the soil and physical constitution ofthe respective countries. We do not meet on the banks of the Euphrateswith those corporations of stone-cutters and marble workers which wereso numerous in the valley of the Nile. The vast Chaldæan plain, in theabsence of mountains or accessible quarries, would have furnished nooccupation for them: the Chaldæans had to go a long way in quest ofthe small quantities of limestone, alabaster, or diorite which theyrequired, and which they reserved only for details of architecturaldecoration for which a small number of artisans and sculptors were amplysufficient. The manufacture of bricks, on the other hand, made greatprogress; the crude bricks were larger than those of Egypt, and theywere more enduring, composed of finer clay and better executed; themanufacture of burnt brick too was carried to a degree of perfection towhich Memphis or Thebes never attained. An ancient legend ascribesthe invention of the bricks, and consequently the construction of theearliest cities, jointly to Sin, the eldest son of Bel, and Ninib hisbrother: this event was said to have taken place in May-June, and fromthat time forward the third month of the year, over which the twinspresided, was called, Murga in Sumerian, Simanu in the Semitic speech, the month of brick. This was the season which was especially devoted tothe processes of their manufacture: the flood in the rivers, which wasvery great in the preceding months, then began to subside, and the claywhich was deposited by the waters during the weeks of overflow, washedand refined as it was, lent itself readily to the operation. The sun, moreover, gave forth sufficient heat to dry the clay blocks in a uniformand gradual manner: later, in July and August, they would crack underthe ardour of his rays, and become converted externally into a friablemass, while their interior would remain too moist to allow them to beprudently used in carefully built structures. The work of brick-makingwas inaugurated with festivals and sacrifices to Sin, Merodach, Nebo, and all the deities who were concerned in the art of building: furtherreligious ceremonies were observed at intervals during the month tosanctify the progress of the work. The manufacture did not cease on thelast day of the month, but was continued with more or less activity, according to the heat of the sun, and the importance of the ordersreceived, until the return of the inundation: but the bricks intendedfor public buildings, temples, or palaces, could not be made outside aprescribed limit of time. The shades of colour produced naturally in theprocess of burning--red or yellow, grey or brown--were not pleasant tothe eye, and they were accustomed, therefore, to coat the bricks with anattractive enamel which preserved them from the disintegrating effectsof sun and rain. The paste was laid on the edges or sides whilethe brick was in a crude state, and was incorporated with it byvitrification in the heat of the kiln. The process was known from anearly date in Egypt, but was rarely employed there in the decorationof buildings, while in Chaldæa the use of such enamelled plaques wascommon. The substructures of palaces and the exterior walls of templeswere left unadorned, but the shrines which crowned the "ziggurat, "the reception-halls, and the headings of doors were covered with thesemany-coloured tiles. Fragments of them are found to-day in the ruins ofthe cities, and the analysis of these pieces shows the marvellous skillof the ancient workers in enamel; the shades of colour are pure andpleasant to the eye, while the material is so evenly put on and sosolid, that neither centuries of burial in a sodden soil, nor the wearand tear of transport, nor the exposure to the damp of our museums, havesucceeded in diminishing their brilliance and freshness. 

To get a clear idea of the industrial operations of the country, itwould be necessary to see the various corporations at their work, as weare able to do, in the case of Egypt in the scenes of the mastabas ofSaqqâra, or of the rock-chambers of Beni-Hasan. The manufacture of stoneimplements gave considerable employment, and the equipment of the deadin the tombs of Uru would have been a matter of small moment, if we wereto exclude its flint implements, its knives, cleavers, scrapers, adzes, axes, and hammers. The cutting of these objects is bold, and the finaltouches show skill, but we rarely meet with that purity of contour andintensity of polish which distinguish similar objects among Westernpeoples. A few examples, it is true, are of fairly artistic shape, andbear engraved inscriptions: one of these, a flint hammer of beautifulform, belonged to a god, probably Eamman, and seems to have come from atemple in which one of its owners had deposited it. 

[Illustration: 311a. Jpg CHALDÆAN STONE IMPLEMENTS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the sketches published by Taylor and by 'G. Rawlinson. On the left a scraper and two knives one above the other, an axe in the middle, on the right an axe and a hammer. All these objects were found in Taylor's excavations, and are now in the British Museum. 

It is an exception, and a remarkable exception. Stone was the materialof the implements of the poor--implements which were coarse in shape, and cost little: if much care were given to their execution, they wouldcome to be so costly that no one would buy them, or, if sold for amoderate sum, the seller would obtain no profit from the transaction. Beyond a certain price, it was more advantageous to purchase metalimplements, of copper in the early ages, afterwards of bronze, andlastly of iron. Among the metal-founders and smiths all kinds ofexamples of these were to be found--axes of an elegant and gracefuldesign, hammers and knives, as well as culinary and domestic utensils, cups, cauldrons, dishes, mountings of doors and coffers, statuettes ofmen, bulls, monsters, and gods--which could be turned to weapons ofall descriptions--arrow and lance heads, swords, daggers, and roundedhelmets with neck-piece or visor. 

[Illustration: 311b. Jpg CHALDÆAN STONE HAMMER BEARING AN INSCRIPTION. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the illustration published by Fr. Lenormant. 

[Illustration: CHALDÆN IMPLEMENTS OF BRONZE]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Rawlinson's _Five Great Monarchies_. On the right two axes, in the middle a hammer, on the left a knife, and below the head of a lance. 

Some of the metal objects manufactured by the Chaldaeans attained largedimensions; for instance, the "brazen seas" which were set up beforeeach sanctuary, either for the purpose of receiving the libations, orfor the prescribed rites of purification. As is often the case amonghalf-civilized peoples, the goldsmiths worked in the precious metalswith much facility and skill. We have not, succeeded up to the presentin finding any of those golden images which the kings were accustomedto dedicate in the temples out of their own possessions, or the spoilobtained from the enemy; but a silver vase dedicated to Ningirsu byEntena, vicegerent of Lagash, gives us some idea of this departmentof the temple furniture. It stands upright on a small square bronzepedestal with four feet. A piously expressed inscription runs roundthe neck, and the bowl of the vase is divided horizontally into twodivisions, framed above and below by twisted cord-work. Four two-headedeagles, with outspread wings and tail, occupy the lower division; theyare in the act of seizing with their claws two animals, placed backto back, represented in the act of walking: the intervals between theeagles are filled up alternatively by two lions, two wild goats, andtwo stags. Above, and close to the rise of the neck, are disposed sevenheifers lying down and all looking in the same direction: they are allengraved upon the flat metal, and are without relief or incrustation. The whole composition is harmoniously put together, the posture of theanimals and their general form are well conceived and boldly rendered, but the details of the mane of the lions and the feathers of the eaglesare reproduced with a realism and attention to minutio which belong tothe infancy of art. This single example of ancient goldsmiths'work wouldbe sufficient to prove that the early Chaldæns were not a whit behindthe Egyptians in this handicraft, even if we had not the goldenornaments, the bracelets, ear and finger rings to judge from, with whichthe tombs have furnished us in considerable numbers. 

[Illustration: VASE OF SILVER. AND BULL OF COPPER. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Heuzey-Sarzec

Alongside the goldsmiths there must have been a whole army of lapidariesand gem-cutters occupied in the engraving of cylinders. Numerous anddelicate operations were required to metamorphose a scrap of cruderock, marble, granite, agate, onyx, green and red jasper, crystal orlapis-lazuli, into one of those marvellous seals which are now found bythe hundred scattered throughout the museums of Europe. They had to berounded, reduced to the proper proportions, and polished, before thesubject or legend could be engraved upon them with the burin. To drill ahole through them required great dexterity, and some of the lapidaries, from a dread of breaking the cylinder, either did not pierce it at all, or merely bored a shallow hole into each extremity to allow it toroll freely in its metallic mounting. The tools used in engraving weresimilar to those employed at the present day, but of a rougher kind. Theburin, which was often nothing more than a flint point, marked out thearea of the design, and sketched out the figures; the saw was largelyemployed to cut away the depressions when these required no detailedhandling; and lastly, the drill, either worked with the hand or ina kind of lathe, was made to indicate the joints and muscles of theindividual by a series of round holes. The object thus summarily dealtwith might be regarded as sufficiently worked for ordinary clients; butthose who were willing to pay for them could obtain cylinders from whichevery mark of the tool had been adroitly removed, and where the beautyof the workmanship vied with the costliness of the material. 

[Illustration: 315. Jpg CHALDÆAN CYLINDER EXHIBITING TRACES OF THEDIFFERENT TOOLS USED BY THE ENGRAVER]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a heliogravure in Ménant's _Catalogue de la collection de M. De Clercq_

The seal of Shargani, King of Agadê, that of Bingani-shar-ali, and manyothers which have been picked up by chance in the excavations, aretrue bas-reliefs, reduced and condensed, so to speak, to the space ofsomething like a square inch of surface, but conceived with an artisticingenuity and executed with a boldness which modern engravers haverarely equalled and never surpassed. There are traces on them, it istrue, of some of the defects which disfigured the latter work of theAssyrians--heaviness of form, exaggerated prominence of musclesand hardness of outline--but there are also all the qualities whichdistinguish an original and forcible art. 

The countries of the Euphrates were renowned in classic times for thebeauty of the embroidered and painted stuffs which they manufactured. *Nothing has come down to us of these Babylonian tissues of which theGreek and Latin writers extolled the magnificence, but we may form someidea, from the statues and the figures engraved on cylinders, of whatthe weavers and embroiderers of this ancient time were capable. The loomwhich they made use of differed but slightly from the horizontal loomcommonly employed in the Nile Valley, and everything tends to show thattheir plain linen cloths were of the kind represented in the swathingsand fragments of clothing still to be found in the sepulchral chambersof Memphis and Thebes. The manufacture of fleecy woollen garments somuch affected by men and women alike indicates a great dexterity. Whenonce the threads of the woof had been stretched, those of the warpwere attached to them by knots in as many parallel lines--at regularintervals--as there were rows of fringe to be displayed on the surfaceof the cloth, the loops thus formed being allowed to hang down in theirrespective places: sometimes these loops were retained just as theystood, sometimes they were cut and the ends frayed out so as to give theappearance of a shaggy texture. 

 * Most modern writers understand by tapestry what the ancients were accustomed to call needle embroidery or painting on stuffs: I can find no indication on the most ancient monuments of Chaldæan or Egypt of the manufacturing of real tapestry. 

[Illustration: 316. Jpg Egyptian Manuscript]

 Part of an Egyptian Manuscript found in the Swathing of a Mummy

[Illustration: 316-text. Jpg Egyptian Manuscript]

Most of these stuffs preserved their original white or creamycolour--especially those woven at home by the women for the requirementsof their own toilet, and for the ordinary uses of the household. TheChaldæans, however, like many other Asiatic peoples, had a strongpreference for lively colours, and the outdoor garments and gala attireof the rich were distinguished by a profusion of blue patterns on a redground, or red upon blue, arranged in stripes, zigzags, checks, anddots or circles. There must, therefore, have been as much occupationfor dyers as there was for weavers; and it is possible that the twooperations were carried out by the same hands. We know nothing of thebakers, butchers, carriers, masons, and other artisans who supplied thenecessities of the cities: they were doubtless able to make two endsmeet and nothing more, and if we should succeed some day in obtaininginformation about them, we shall probably find that their condition wasas miserable as that of their Egyptian contemporaries. The courseof their lives was monotonous enough, except when it was broken atprescribed intervals by the ordinary festivals in honour of the godsof the city, or by the casual suspensions of work occasioned by thetriumphant return of the king from some warlike expedition, or by hisinauguration of a new temple. 

The gaiety of the people on such occasions was the more exuberant inproportion to the undisturbed monotony or misery of the days whichpreceded them. As soon, for instance, as Gudea had brought to completionIninnu, the house of his patron Ningirsu, "he felt relieved from thestrain and washed his hands. For seven days, no grain was bruised in thequern, the maid was the equal of her mistress, the servant walked in thesame rank as his master, the strong and the weak rested side by side inthe city. " The world seemed topsy-turvy as during the Roman Saturnalia;the classes mingled together, and the inferiors were probably accustomedto abuse the unusual licence which they momentarily enjoyed: when thefestival was over, social distinctions reasserted themselves, and eachone fell back into his accustomed position. Life was not so pleasantin Chaldæa as in Egypt. The innumerable promissory notes, the receiptedaccounts, the contracts of sale and purchase--these cunningly drawn updeeds which have been deciphered by the hundred--reveal to us a peoplegreedy of gain, exacting, litigious, of artisans in Egypt. This is takenfrom a source belonging to the XIIth or possibly the XIIIth dynasty. Wemay assume, from the fact that the two civilizations were about onthe same level, that the information supplied in this respect by theEgyptian monuments is generally applicable to the condition of Chaldæanworkmen of the same period. 

(Unreadable) and almost exclusively absorbed by material concerns. The climate, too, variable and oppressive in summer and winter alike, imposed upon the Chaldæan painful exactions, and obliged him to workwith an energy of which the majority of Egyptians would not have feltthemselves capable. The Chaldæan, suffering greater and more prolongedhardships, earned more doubtless, but was not on this account thehappier. However lucrative his calling might be, it was not sufficientlyso to supply him always with domestic necessities, and both tradespeopleand operatives were obliged to run into debt to supplement theirstraitened means. When they had once fallen into the hands of theusurer, the exorbitant interest which they had to pay kept them a longtime in his power. If when the bill fell due there was nothing to meetit, it had to be renewed under still more disastrous conditions; as thepledge given was usually the homestead, or the slave who assisted in thetrade, or the garden which supplied food for the family, the mortgagorwas reduced to the extreme of misery if he could not satisfy hiscreditors, This plague of usury was not, moreover, confined to thetowns; it raged with equal violence in the country, and the farmers alsobecame its victims. 

If, theoretically, the earth belonged to the gods, and under them tothe kings, the latter had made, and continued daily to make, such largeconcessions of it to their vassals, that the greater part of theirdomains were always in the hands of the nobles or private individuals. These could dispose of their landed property at pleasure, farm it out, sell it or distribute it among their heirs and friends. 

They paid on account of it a tax which varied at different epochs, butwhich was always burthensome; but when they had once satisfied thisexaction, and paid the dues which the temples might claim on behalfof the gods, neither the State nor any individual had the right tointerfere in their administration of it, or put any restrictions uponthem. Some proprietors cultivated their lands themselves--the poor bytheir own labour, the rich by the aid of some trustworthy slave whomthey interested in the success of his farming by assigning him a certainpercentage on the net return. Sometimes the lands were leased out inwhole or in part to free peasants who relieved the proprietors of allthe worry and risks of managing it themselves. A survey of the area ofeach state had been made at an early age, and the lots into which it hadbeen divided were registered on clay tablets containing the name ofthe proprietor as well as those of his neighbours, together with suchindications of the features of the land, dykes, canals, rivers, and buildings as would serve to define its boundaries: rough plansaccompanied the description, and in the most complicated instancesinterpreted it to the eye. This survey was frequently repeated, andenabled the sovereign to arrange his scheme of taxation on a solidbasis, and to calculate the product of it without material error. Gardens and groves of date-palms, together with large regions devotedto rough attempts at vegetable culture, were often to be met with, especially in the neighbourhood of towns; these paid their contributionsto the State, as well as the owners'rent, in kind--in fruit, vegetables, and fresh or dried dates. The best soil was reserved, for the growth ofwheat and other cereals, and its extent was measured in terms of corn;corn was also the standard in which the revenue was reckoned both inpublic and private contracts. Such and such a field required about fiftylitres of seed to the arura. Another needed sixty-two or seventy-fiveaccording to the fertility of the land and its locality. Landed propertywas placed under the guardianship of the gods, and its transfer orcession was accompanied by formalities of a half-religious, half-magicalcharacter: the party giving delivery of it called down upon the headof any one who would dare in the future to dispute the validity of thedeed, imprecations of which the text was inserted on a portion of thesurface of an egg-shaped nodule of flint, basalt, or other hard stone. These little monuments display on their cone-shaped end a seriesof figures, sometimes arranged in two parallel divisions, sometimesscattered over the surface, which represent the deities invoked to watchover the sanctity of the contract. It was a kind of representation inminiature of the aspect which the heavens presented to the Chaldæans. The disks of the sun and moon, together with Venus-Ashtar, are theprominent elements in the scene: the zodiacal figures, or the symbolsemployed to represent them, are arranged in an apparent orbit aroundthese--such as the Scorpion, the Bird, the Dog, the Thunderbolt ofRamman, the mace, the horned monsters, half hidden by the temples theyguard, and the enormous Dragon who embraces in his folds half the entirefirmament. "If ever, in the course of days, any one of the brothers, children, family, men or women, slaves or servants of the house, or anygovernor or functionary whatsoever, arises and intends to steal thisfield, and remove this landmark, either to make a gift of it to a god, or to assign it to a competitor, or to appropriate it to himself; if hemodifies the area of it, the limits and the landmark; if he divides itinto portions, and if he says: 'The field has no owner, since there hasbeen no donation of it; '--if, from dread of the terrible imprecationswhich protect this stele and this field, he sends a fool, a deaf orblind person, a wicked wretch, an idiot, a stranger, or an ignorant one, and should cause this stele to be taken away, * and should throw itinto the water, cover it with dust, mutilate it by scratching it with astone, burn it in the fire and destroy it, or write anything else uponit, or carry, it away to a place where it will be no longer seen, --thisman, may Anu, Bel, Ea, the exalted lady, the great gods, cast upon himlooks of wrath, may they destroy his strength, may they exterminate hisrace. " All the immortals are associated in this excommunication, andeach one promises in his turn the aid of his power. 

 * All the people enumerated in this passage might, in ignorance of what they were doing, be induced to tear up the stone, and unconsciously commit a sacrilege from which every Chaldæan in his senses would have shrunk back. The formula provides for such cases, and it secures that the curse shall fall not only on the irresponsible instruments, but reach the instigator of the crime, even when he had taken no actual part in the deed. 

[Illustration: 322. Jpg THE MICHAUX STONE (left)]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. The original is in the medal cabinet of the Bibliothèque Nationale. 

[Illustration: 323. Jpg THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MICHAUX STONE (right)]

Merodach, by whose spells the sick are re stored, will inflict upon theguilty one a dropsy which no incantation can cure. Shamas, the supremejudge, will send forth against him one of his inexorable judgments. Sin, the inhabitant of the brilliant heavens, will cover him with leprosy aswith a garment. Adar, the warrior, will break his weapons; and Zamama, the king of strifes, will not stand by him on the field of battle. Eamman will let loose his tempest upon his fields, and will overwhelmthem. The whole band of the invisibles hold themselves ready to defendthe rights of the proprietor against all attacks. In no part of theancient world was the sacred character of property so forcibly laiddown, or the possession of the soil more firmly secured by religion. 

In instruments of agriculture and modes of cultivation Chaldæa was nobetter off than Egypt. The rapidity with which the river rose in thespring, and its variable subsidence from year to year, furnished littleinducement to the Chaldæans to entrust to it the work of watering theirlands; on the contrary, they were compelled to protect themselves fromit, and to keep at a distance the volume of waters it brought down. Each property, whether of square, triangular, or any other shape, wassurrounded with a continuous earth-built barrier which bounded iton every side, and served at the same time as a rampart against theinundation. 

[Illustration: 324. Jpg TWO ROWS OF SHADUFS ON THE BANK OF A RIVER. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from Koyunjik. 

Rows of shadufs installed along the banks of the canals or streamsprovided for the irrigation of the lands. * The fields were laid out likea chess-board, and the squares, separated from each other by earthenridges, formed as it were so many basins: when the elevation of theground arrested the flow of the waters, these were collected intoreservoirs, whence by the use of other shadufs they were raised to ahigher level. 

 * In Mesopotamia and Chaldæa there may still be seen "everywhere ruins of ancient canals; and there are also to be met with, in many places, ridges of earth, which stretch for considerable distances in a straight line, and surround lands perfectly level. " (Olivier). 

The plough was nothing more than an obliquely placed mattock, whosehandle was lengthened in order to harness oxen to it. Whilst theploughman pressed heavily on the handle, two attendants kept incessantlygoading the beasts, or urging them forward with voice and whip, anda third scattered the seed in the furrow. A considerable capital wasneeded to ensure success in agricultural undertakings: contracts weremade for three years, and stipulated that payments should be made partlyin metal and partly in the products of the soil. 

[Illustration: 325. Jpg CHALDÆAN FARMING OPERATIONS. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio reproduced in Layard. The original is in the cabinet of medals in the Bibliothèque Nationale. 

The farmer paid a small sum when entering into possession, and theremainder of the debt was gradually liquidated at the end of eachtwelve months, the payment being in silver one year, and in corn the twofollowing. The rent varied according to the quality of the soil and thefacilities which it afforded for cultivation: a field, for instance, ofthree bushels was made to pay nine hundred measures, while another often bushels had only eighteen hundred to pay. In many instances thepeasant preferred to take the proprietor into partnership, the latterin such case providing all the expenses of cultivation, on theunderstanding that he should receive two-thirds of the gross product. The tenant was obliged to administer the estate as a careful householderduring the term of his lease: he was to maintain the buildings andimplements in good repair, to see that the hedges were kept up, to keepthe shadufs in working order, and to secure the good condition of thewatercourses. He had rarely enough slaves to manage the business withprofit: those he had purchased were sufficient, with the aid of hiswives and children, to carry on ordinary operations, but when anypressure arose, especially at harvest-time, he had to seek elsewhere theadditional labourers he required. The temples were the chief sources forthe supply of these. The majority of the supplementary labourers werefree men, who were hired out by their family, or engaged themselves fora fixed term, during which they were subject to a sort of slavery, theconditions of which were determined by law. The workman renounced hisliberty for fifteen days, or a month, or for a whole year; he disposed, so to speak, of a portion of his life to the provisional master of hischoice, and if he did not enter upon his work at the day agreed upon, or if he showed himself inactive in the duties assigned to him, he wasliable to severe punishment. He received in exchange for his labourhis food, lodging, and clothing; and if an accident should occur tohim during the term of his service, the law granted him an indemnity inproportion to the injury he had sustained. 

[Illustration: 327. Jpg THE FARM OXEN]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a green marble cylinder in the Louvre. 

His average wage was from four to six shekels of silver per annum. Hewas also entitled by custom to another shekel in the form of a retainingfee, and he could claim his pay, which was given to him mostly in corn, in monthly instalments, if his agreement were for a considerable time, and daily if it were for a short period. 

The mercenary never fell into the condition of the ordinary serf: heretained his rights as a man, and possessed in the person of the patronfor whom he laboured, or whom he himself had selected, a defender of hisinterests. When he came to the end of his engagement, he returned tohis family, and resumed his ordinary occupation until the next occasion. Many of the farmers in a small way earned thus, in a few weeks, sufficient means to supplement their own modest personal income. Otherssought out more permanent occupations, and hired themselves out asregular farm-servants. 

The lands which neither the rise of the river nor the irrigation systemcould reach so as to render fit for agriculture, were reserved for thepasture of the flocks in the springtime, when they were covered withrich grass. The presence of lions in the neighbourhood, however, obligedthe husbandmen to take precautions for the safety of their flocks. Theyconstructed provisional enclosures into which the animals were drivenevery evening, when the pastures were too far off to allow of the flocksbeing brought back to the sheepfold. The chase was a favourite pastimeamong them, and few days passed without the hunter's bringing back withhim a young gazelle caught in a trap, or a hare killed by an arrow. These formed substantial additions to the larder, for the Chaldæansdo not seem to have kept about them, as the Egyptians did, such tamedanimals as cranes or herons, gazelles or deer: they contented themselveswith the useful species, oxen, asses, sheep, and goats. Some of theancient monuments, cylinders, and clay tablets reproduce in a roughmanner scenes from pastoral life. The door of the fold opens, and we seea flock of goats sallying forth to the cracking of the herdsman's whip:when they reach the pasture they scatter over the meadows, and while theshepherd keeps his eye upon them, he plays upon his reed to the delightof his dog. In the mean time the farm-people are engaged in the carefulpreparation of the evening meal: two individuals on opposite sides ofthe hearth watch the pot boiling between them, while a baker makes hisdough into round cakes. 

[Illustration: 329a. Jpg COOKING: A QUARREL. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the terra-cotta plaques discovered by Loftus. 

Sometimes a quarrel breaks out among the comrades, and leads to astand-up fight with the fists; or a lion, perhaps, in quest of a meal, surprises and kills one of the bulls: the shepherd runs up, his axe inhis hand, to contend bravely with the marauder for the possession of hisbeast. The shepherd was accustomed to provide himself with assistancein the shape of enormous dogs, who had no more hesitation in attackingbeasts of prey than they had in pursuing game. In these combats thenatural courage of the shepherd was stimulated by interest: for he waspersonally responsible for the safety of his flock, and if a lion shouldfind an entrance into one of the enclosures. 

[Illustration: 329b. Jpg SCENES OF PASTORAL LIFE IN CHALDÆA. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a Chaldæan intaglio from Layard. Another cylinder of the same kind is reproduced at p. 233 of the present work; it represents Etana arising to heaven by the aid of his friend the eagle, while the pastoral scene below resembles in nearly all particulars that given above. 

[Illustration: 330. Jpg FIGHT WITH A LION]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the terra-cotta tablets discovered by Loftus. 

Fishing was not so much a pastime as a source of livelihood; for fishoccupied a high place in the bill of fare of the common folk. Caught bythe line, net, or trap, it was dried, in the sun, smoked, or salted. Thechase was essentially the pastime of the great noble--the pursuit ofthe lion and the bear in the wooded covers or the marshy thickets of theriver-bank; the pursuit of the gazelle, the ostrich, and bustard onthe elevated plains or rocky tablelands of the desert. The onager ofMesopotamia is a very beautiful animal, with its grey glossy coat, andits lively and rapid action. 

[Illustration: 331. Jpg THE DOG IN TUB LEASH]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a terra-cotta tablet discovered by Sir H. Rawlinson in the ruins of Babylon, and now in the British Museum

If it is disturbed, it gives forth a cry, kicks up its heels, and dashesoff: when at a safe distance, it stops, turns round, and faces itspursuer: as soon as he approaches, it starts off again, stops, and takesto its heels again, continuing this procedure as long as it is followed. The Chaldæans found it difficult to catch by the aid of dogs, but theycould bring it down by arrows, or perhaps catch it alive by stratagem. A running noose was thrown round its neck, and two men held the ends ofthe ropes. The animal struggled, made a rush, and attempted to bite, butits efforts tended only to tighten the noose still more firmly, andit at length gave in, half strangled; after alternating struggles andsuffocating paroxysms, it became somewhat calmer, and allowed itself tobe led. It was finally tamed, if not to the extent of becoming usefulin agriculture, at least for the purposes of war: before the horse wasknown in Chaldæa, it was used to draw the chariot. The original habitatof the horse was the great table-lands of Central Asia: it is doubtfulwhether it was brought suddenly into the region of the Tigrus andEuphrates by some barbaric invasion, or whether it was passed on fromtribe to tribe, and thus gradually reached that country. It soon becameacclimatized, and its cross-breeding with the ass led for centuries tothe production of magnificent mules. The horse was known to the kingsof Lagash, who used it in harness. The sovereigns of neighbouring citieswere also acquainted with it, but it seems to have been employed solelyby the upper classes of society, and never to have been generally usedin the war-chariot or as a charger in cavalry operations. 

[Illustration: 332. Jpg CHALDÆAN CARRYING A FISH. (left)]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the terra-cotta tablets discovered by Loftus. 

The Chaldæans carried agriculture to a high degree of perfection, andsucceeded in obtaining from the soil everything it could be made toyield. 

[Illustration: 333. Jpg THE ONAGER TAKEN WITH THE LASSO. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the Assyrian bas-relief of Nimrud. See p. 35 of the present work for an illustration of onagers pierced by arrows in the chase. 

Their methods, transmitted in the first place to the Greeks, andafterwards to the Arabs, were perpetuated long after their civilizationhad disappeared, and were even practised by the people of Iraq under theAbbasside Caliphs. Agricultural treatises on clay, which contained anaccount of these matters, were deposited in one or other of the sacredlibraries in which the priests of each city were long accustomed tocollect together documents from every source on which they could laytheir hands. There were to be found in each of these collections acertain number of works which were unique, either because the authorswere natives of the city, or because all copies of them had beendestroyed in the course of centuries--the Epic of Grilgames, forinstance, at Uruk; a history of the Creation, and of the battles ofthe gods with the monsters at Kutha: all of them had their specialcollections of hymns or psalms, religious and magical formulas, theirlists of words and grammatical phraseology, their glossaries andsyllabaries, which enabled them to understand and translate texts drawnup in Sumerian, or to decipher those whose writing presented more thanordinary difficulty. In these libraries there was, we find, as inthe inscriptions of Egypt, a complete literature, of which only someshattered fragments have come down to us. The little we are able toexamine has produced upon our modern investigators a complex impression, in which astonishment rather than admiration contends with a senseof tedious-ness. There may be recognized here and there, among thewearisome successions of phrases, with their rugged proper names, episodes which seem something like a Chaldaean "Genesis" or "Veda;" nowand then a bold flight of fancy, a sudden exaltation of thought, or afelicitous expression, arrests the attention and holds it captive fora time. In the narrative of the adventures of Grilgames, for instance, there is a certain nobility of character, and the sequence of events, intheir natural and marvellous development, are handled with gravity andfreedom: if we sometimes encounter episodes which provoke a smile orexcite our repugnance, we must take into account the rudeness of the agewith which they deal, and remember that the men and gods of the laterHomeric epic are not a whit behind the heroes of Babylonian story incoarseness. The recognition of divine omnipotence, and the keenly feltafflictions of the soul, awakened in the Chaldæan psalmist feelings ofadoration and penitence which still find, in spite of the differences ofreligion, an echo in our own hearts; and the unknown scribe, who relatedthe story of the descent of Ishtar to the infernal regions, was able toexpress with a certain gloomy energy the miseries of the "Land withoutreturn. "These instances are to be regarded, however, as exceptional:the bulk of Chaldæan literature seems nothing more than a heap ofpretentious trash, in which even the best-equipped reader can see nomeaning, or, if he can, it is of such a character as to seem unworthyof record. His judgment is natural in the circumstances, for the ancientEast is not, like Greece and Italy, the dead of yesterday whose soulstill hovers around us, and whose legacies constitute more than the halfof our patrimony: on the contrary, it was buried soul and body, godsand cities, men and circumstances, ages ago, and even its heirs, in thelapse of years, have become extinct. In proportion as we are able tobring its civilization to light, we become more and more conscious thatwe have little or nothing in common with it. Its laws and customs, itsmethods of action and its modes of thought, are so far apart from thoseof the present day, that they seem to us to belong to a humanity utterlydifferent from our own. The names of its deities do not appeal to ourimagination like those of the Olympian cycle, and no traditional respectserves to do away with the sense of uncouthness which we experiencefrom the jingle of syllables which enter into them. Its artists did notregard the world from the same point of view as we do, and its writers, drawing their inspiration from an entirely different source, made use ofobsolete methods to express their feelings and co-ordinate their ideas. It thus happens that while we understand to a shade the classicallanguage of the Greeks and Romans, and can read their works almostwithout effort, the great primitive literatures of the world, theEgyptian and Chaldæan, have nothing to offer us for the most part but asequence of problems to solve or of enigmas to unriddle with patience. How many phrases, how many words at which we stumble, require apainstaking analysis before we can make ourselves master of theirmeaning! And even when we have determined to our satisfaction theirliteral signification, what a number of excursions we must make in thedomain of religious, ethical, and political history before we can compelthem to render up to us their full import, or make them as intelligibleto others as they are to ourselves! When so many commentaries arerequired to interpret the thought of an individual or a people, somedifficulty must be experienced in estimating the value of the expressionwhich they have given to it. Elements of beauty were certainly, andperhaps are still, within it; but in proportion as we clear awaythe rubbish which encumbers it, the mass of glossaries necessary tointerpret it fall in and bury it so as to stifle it afresh. 

While the obstacles to our appreciation of Chaldæann literature are ofsuch a serious character, we are much more at home in our efforts toestimate the extent and depth of their scientific knowledge. Theywere as well versed as the Egyptians, but not more, in arithmeticand geometry in as far as these had an application to the affairs ofeveryday life: the difference between the two peoples consisted chieflyin their respective numerical systems--the Egyptians employing almostexclusively the decimal system of notation, while the Chaldæans combinedits use with the duodecimal. 

[Illustration: 337. Jpg Page image]

To express the units, they made use of so many vertical "nails"placed one after, or above, each other, thus [symbols] etc. ; tens wererepresented by bent brackets [symbols], up to 60; beyond this figurethey had the choice of two methods of notation: they could express thefurther tens by the continuous additions of brackets thus, [symbols]or they could represent 50 by a vertical "nail, " and add for everyadditional ten a bracket to the right of it, thus: [symbols]. Thenotation of a hundred was represented by the vertical "nail" witha horizontal stroke to the right thus [symbols], and the number ofhundreds by the symbols placed before this sign, thus [symbols], etc. :a thousand was written [symbols] i. E. Ten times one hundred, and theseries of thousands by the combination of different notations whichserved to express units, tens, and hundreds. They subdivided the unit, moreover, into sixty equal parts, and each of these parts into sixtyfurther equal subdivisions, and this system of fractions was used in allkinds of quantitive measurements. The fathom, the foot and its square, talents and bushels, the complete system of Chaldæan weights andmeasures, were based on the intimate alliance and parallel use ofthe decimal and duodecimal systems of notation. The sixtieth was morefrequently employed than the hundredth when large quantities were inquestion: it was called a "soss, " and ten sosses were equal to a "ner, "while sixty ners were equivalent to a "sar;" the series, sosses, ners, and sars, being employed in all estimations of values. Years andmeasures of length were reckoned in sosses, while talents and bushelswere measured in sosses and sars. The fact that these subdivisions wereall divisible by 10 or 12, rendered calculations by means of them easyto the merchant and workmen as well as to the mathematical expert. Theglimpses that we have been able to obtain up to the present of Chaldaeanscientific methods indicate that they were on a low level, but theywere sufficiently advanced to furnish practical rules for application ineveryday affairs: helps to memory of different kinds, lists of figureswith their names phonetically rendered in Sumerian and Semitic speech, tables of squares and cubes, and rudimentary formulas and figures forland-surveying, furnished sufficient instructions to enable any oneto make complicated calculations in a ready manner, and to work out infigures, with tolerable accuracy, the superficial area of irregularlyshaped plots of land. The Chaldaeans could draw out, with a fair amountof exactness, plans of properties or of towns, and their ambitionimpelled them even to attempt to make maps of the world. The latterwere, it is true, but rough sketches, in which mythological beliefsvitiated the information which merchants and soldiers had collected intheir journeys. The earth was represented as a disk surrounded by theocean stream: Chaldæa took up the greater part of it, and foreigncountries did not appear in it at all, or held a position out in thecold at its extremities. Actual knowledge was woven in an extraordinarymanner with mystic considerations, in which the virtues of numbers, their connections with the gods, and the application of geometricaldiagrams to the prediction of the future, played an important part. We know what a brilliant fortune these speculations attained inafter-years, and the firm hold they obtained for centuries over Westernnations, as formerly over the Bast. It was not in arithmetic andgeometry alone, moreover, that the Chaldaeans were led away by suchdeceits: each branch of science in its turn was vitiated by them, and, indeed, it could hardly be otherwise when we come to consider theChaldæan outlook upon the universe. Its operations, in their eyes, werenot carried on under impersonal and unswerving laws, but by voluntaryand rational agents, swayed by an inexorable fate against which theydared not rebel, but still free enough and powerful enough to avert bymagic the decrees of destiny, or at least to retard their execution. From this conception of things each subordinate science was obliged tomake its investigations in two perfectly distinct regions: it had atfirst to determine the material facts within its competence--such as theposition of the stars, for instance, or the symptoms of a malady; ithad then to discover the beings which revealed themselves through thesematerial manifestations, their names and their characteristics. Whenonce it had obtained this information, and could lay its hands uponthem, it could compel them to work on its behalf: science was thusnothing else than the application of magic to a particular class ofphenomena. 

The number of astronomical facts with which the Chaldæans had madethemselves acquainted was considerable. 

[Illustration: 340. Jpg CHALDÆAN MAP OF THE WORLD. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Peiser. 

It was a question in ancient times whether they or the Egyptians hadbeen the first to carry their investigations into the infinite depthsof celestial space: when it came to be a question as to which of the twopeoples had made the greater progress in this branch of knowledge, allhesitation vanished, and the pre-eminence was accorded by the ancientsto the priests of Babylon rather than to those of Heliopolis andMemphis. *

* Clement of Alexandria, Lucien, Diogenes Laertius, Macrobius, attributethe origin of astronomy to the Egyptians, and Diodorus Sioulus assertsthat they were the teachers of the Babylonians; Josephus maintains, onthe contrary, that the Egyptians were the pupils of the Chaldæans. 

[Illustration: 340. Jpg ASTRONOMICAL TABLE]

The Chaldaeans had conducted astronomical observations from remoteantiquity. * Callisthenes collected and sent to his uncle Aristotle anumber of these observations, of which the oldest had been made nineteenhundred and three years before his time--that is, about the middle ofthe twenty-third century before our era: he could have transcribedmany of a still earlier date if the archives of Babylon had been fullyaccessible to him. 

 * Epigenes asserts that their observations extended back to 720, 000 years before the time of Alexander, while Berossus and Critodemus limit their antiquity to 490, 000 years, which was further reduced to 473, 000 years by Diodorus, to 470, 000 by Cicero, and to 270, 000 by Hipparchus. 

The Chaldæan priests had been accustomed from an early date to record ontheir clay tablets the aspect of the heavens and the changes which tookplace in them night after night, the appearance of the constellations, their comparative brilliancy, the precise moments of their rising andsetting and culmination, together with the more or less rapid movementsof the planets, and their motions towards or from one another. To theirunaided eyes, sharpened by practice and favoured by the transparencyof the air, many stars were visible, as to the Egyptians, which we canperceive only by the aid of the telescope. These thousands of brilliantbodies, scattered apparently at random over the face of the sky, moved, however, with perfect regularity, and the period between their departurefrom and their return to the same point in the heavens was determinedat an early date: their position could be predicted at any hour, theircourse in the firmament being traced so accurately that its variousstages were marked out and indicated beforehand. The moon, theydiscovered, had to complete two hundred and twenty-three revolutions oftwenty-nine days and a half each, before it returned to the point fromwhich it had set out. This period of its career being accomplished, itbegan a second of equal length, then a third, and so on, in an infiniteseries, during which it traversed the same celestial houses and repeatedin them the same acts of its life: all the eclipses which it hadundergone in one period would again afflict it in another, and wouldbe manifest in the same places of the earth in the same order of time. *Whether they ascribed these eclipses to some mechanical cause, orregarded them as so many unfortunate attacks made upon Sin by the seven, they recognized their periodical character, and they were acquaintedwith the system of the two hundred and twenty-three lunations by whichtheir occurrence and duration could be predicted. Further observationsencouraged the astronomers to endeavour to do for the sun what they hadso successfully accomplished in regard to the moon. 

 * This period of two hundred and twenty-three lunations is that described by Ptolemy in the fourth book of his "Astronomy, " in which he deals with the average motion of the moon. The Chaldæans seem not to have been able to make a skilful use of it, for their books indicate the occurrence of lunar eclipses outside the predicted periods. 

No long experience was needed to discover the fact that the majority ofsolar eclipses were followed some fourteen days and a half after by aneclipse of the moon; but they were unable to take sufficient advantageof this experience to predict with certainty the instant of a futureeclipse of the sun, although they had been so struck with the connectionof the two phenomena as to believe that they were in a position toannounce it approximately. * They were frequently deceived in theirpredictions, and more than one eclipse which they had promised did nottake place at the time expected:** but their successful prognosticationswere sufficiently frequent to console them for their failures, and tomaintain the respect of the people and the rulers for their knowledge. Their years were vague years of three hundred and sixty days. The twelveequal months of which they were composed bore names which were borrowed, on the one hand, from events in civil life, such as "Simanu, " from themaking of brick, and "Addaru, " from the sowing of seed, and, on theother, from mythological occurrences whose origin is still obscure, suchas "Nisanu, " from the altar of Ea, and "Elul, " from a message of Ishtar. The adjustment of this year to astronomical demands was roughly carriedout by the addition of a month every six years, which was called asecond Adar, Blul, or Nisan, according to the place in which it wasintercalated. 

 * Tannery is of opinion that the Chaldæans must have predicted eclipses of the sun by means of the period of two hundred and twenty-three lunations, and shows by what a simple means they could have arrived at it. 

 ** An astronomer mentions, in the time of Assurbanipal, that on the 28th, 29th, and 30th of the month he prepared for the observation of an eclipse; but the sun continued brilliant, and the eclipse did not take place. 

The neglect of the hours and minutes in their calculation of the lengthof the year became with them, as with the Egyptians, a source of seriousembarrassment, and we are still ignorant as to the means employedto meet the difficulty. The months had relations to the signs of thezodiac, and the days composing them were made up of twelve double hourseach. The Chaldæns had invented two instruments, both of them of asimple character, to measure time--the clepsydra and the solar clock, the latter of which in later times became the source of the Greek"polos. " The sun-dial served to determine a number of simple factswhich were indispensable in astronomical calculations, such as thefour cardinal points, the meridian of the place, the solstitial andequinoctial epochs, and the elevation of the pole at the position ofobservation. The construction of the sundial and clepsydra, if not ofthe polos also, is doubtless to be referred back to a very ancient date, but none of the texts already brought to light makes mention of theemployment of these instruments. *

 * Herodotus (ii. 109) formally attributes the invention of the sun-dial and polos to the Babylonians. The "polos" was a solar clock. It consisted of a concave hemisphere with a style rising from its centre: the shadow of the style described every day an arc of a circle parallel to the equator, and the daily parallels were divided into twelve or twenty-four equal parts. Smith discovered, in the palace of Sennacherib at Koyunjik, a portion of an astrolabe, which is now in the British Museum. 

All these discoveries, which constitute in our eyes the scientificpatrimony of the Chaldæans, were regarded by themselves as the leastimportant results of their investigations. Did they not know, thanks tothese investigations, that the stars shone for other purposes than tolighten up the nights--to rule, in fact, the destinies of men and kings, and, in ruling that of kings, to determine the fortune of empires? Theirearliest astronomers, by their assiduous contemplation of the nightlyheavens, had come to the conclusion that the vicissitudes of theheavenly bodies were in fixed relations with mundane phenomena andevents. If Mercury, for instance, displayed an unusual brilliancy athis rising, and his disk appeared as a two-edged sword, riches andabundance, due to the position of the luminous halo which surroundedhim, would be scattered over Chaldæa, while discords would ceasetherein, and justice would triumph over iniquity. The first observer whowas struck by this coincidence noted it down; his successors confirmedhis observations, and at length deduced, in the process of the years, from their accumulated knowledge, a general law. Henceforward, each timethat Mercury assumed the same aspect it was of favourable augury, andkings and their subjects became the recipients of his bounty. As long ashe maintained this appearance no foreign ruler could install himself inChaldæa, tyranny would be divided against itself, equity would prevail, and a strong monarch bear sway; while the landholders and the kingwould be confirmed in their privileges, and obedience, together withtranquillity, would rule everywhere in the land. The number of theseobservations increased to such a degree that it was found necessary toclassify them methodically to avoid confusion. Tables of them were drawnup, in which the reader could see at one and the same moment the aspectof the heavens on such and such a night and hour, and the correspondingevents either then happening, or about to happen, in Chaldæan, Syria, or some foreign land. If, for instance, the moon displayed the sameappearance on the 1st and 27th of the month, Elam was threatened; but"if the sun, at his setting, appears double his usual size, withthree groups of bluish rays, the King of Chaldæa is ruined. " To theindications of the heavenly bodies, the Chaldæans added the portentswhich could be deduced from atmospheric phenomena: if it thundered onthe 27th of Tammuz, the wheat-harvest would be excellent and the produceof the ears magnificent; but if this, should occur six days later, thatis, on the 2nd of Abu, floods and rains were to be apprehended in ashort time, together with the death of the king and the division ofhis empire. It was not for nothing that the sun and moon surroundedthemselves in the evening with blood-red vapours or veiled themselvesin dark clouds; that they grew suddenly pale or red after having beenintensely bright; that unexpected fires blazed out on the confines ofthe air, and that on certain nights the stars seemed to have becomedetached from the firmament and to be falling upon the earth. Theseprodigies were so many warnings granted by the gods to the peopleand their kings before great crises in human affairs: the astronomerinvestigated and interpreted them, and his predictions had a greaterinfluence than we are prepared to believe upon the fortunes ofindividuals and even of states. The rulers consulted and imposed uponthe astronomers the duty of selecting the most favourable moment forthe execution of the projects they had in view. From an early date eachtemple contained a library of astrological writings, where the peoplemight find, drawn up as in a. Code, the signs which bore upon theirdestinies. One of these libraries, consisting of not less than seventyclay tablets, is considered to have been first drawn up in the reignof Sargon of Agadê, but to have been so modified and enriched with newexamples from time to time that the original is well-nigh lost. This wasthe classical work on the subject in the VIIth century before our era, and the astronomers-royal, to whom applications were accustomed to bemade to explain a natural phenomenon or a prodigy, drew their answersready-made from it. Astronomy, as thus understood, was not merely thequeen of sciences, it was the mistress of the world: taught secretlyin the temples, its adepts--at least, those who had passed through theregular curriculum of study which it required--became almost adistinct class in society. The occupation was a lucrative one, andits accomplished professors had numerous rivals whose educationalantecedents were unknown, but who excited the envy of the experts intheir trading upon the credulity of the people. These quacks went aboutthe country drawing up horoscopes, and arranging schemes of birthdayprognostications, of which the majority were without any authenticwarranty. The law sometimes took note of the fact that they werecompeting with the official experts, and interfered with their business:but if they happened to be exiled from one city, they found someneighbouring one ready to receive them. 

Chaldæa abounded with soothsayers and necromancers no less than withastrologers; she possessed no real school of medicine, such as we findin Egypt, in which were taught rational methods of diagnosing maladiesand of curing them by the use of simples. The Chaldaeans were contentto confide the care of their bodies to sorcerers and exorcists, who wereexperts in the art of casting out demons and spirits, whose presence ina living being brought about those disorders to which humanity is prone. The facial expression of the patient during the crisis, the words whichescaped from him in delirium, were, for these clever individuals, somany signs revealing the nature and sometimes the name of the enemyto be combated--the Fever-god, the Plague-god, the Headache-god. Consultations and medical treatment were, therefore, religious offices, in which were involved purifications, offerings, and a whole ritual ofmysterious words and gestures. The magician lighted a fire of herbsand sweet-smelling plants in front of his patient, and the clear flamearising from this put the spectres to flight and dispelled the maligninfluences, a prayer describing the enchantments and their effects beingafterwards recited. "The baleful imprecation like a demon has fallenupon a man;--wail and pain have fallen upon him, --direful wail hasfallen upon him, --the baleful imprecation, the spell, the pains inthe head!--This man, the baleful imprecation slaughters him like asheep, --for his god has quitted his body--his goddess has withdrawnherself in displeasure from him, --a wail of pain has spread itself as agarment upon him and has overtaken him!" The harm done by the magician, though terrible, could be repaired by the gods, and Merodach was movedto compassion betimes. Merodach cast his eyes on the patient, Merodachentered into the house of his father Ea, saying: "My father, the balefulcurse has fallen like a demon upon the man!" Twice he thus speaks, and then adds: "What this man ought to do, I know not; how shall he behealed?" Ea replies to his son Merodach: "My son, what is there that Icould add to thy knowledge?--Merodach, what is there that I could addto thy knowledge?--That which I know, thou knowest it:--go then, my son, Merodach, --lead him to the house of purification of the god who preparesremedies, --and break the spell that is upon him, draw away the charmwhich is upon him, --the ill which afflicts his body, --which he suffersby reason of the curse of his father, --or the curse of his mother, --orthe curse of his eldest brother, --or by the curse of a murderess who isunknown to the man. --The curse, may it be taken from him by the charmof Ea, --like a clove of garlic which is stripped skin by skin, --like acluster of dates may it be cut off, --like a bunch of flowers may it beuprooted! The spell, may heaven avert it, --may the earth avert it!" Thegod himself deigned to point out the remedy: the sick man was to takea clove of garlic, some dates, and a stalk bearing flowers, and was tothrow them into the fire, bit by bit, repeating appropriate prayers ateach stage of the operation. "In like manner as this garlic is peeledand thrown into the fire, --and the burning flame consumes it, --asit will never be planted in the vegetable garden, it will never drawmoisture from the pond or from the ditch, --its root will never againspread in the earth, --its stalk will not pierce the ground and beholdthe sun, --it will not serve as food for the gods or the king, --so may itremove the baleful curse, so may it loose the bond--of sickness, of sin, of shortcomings, of perversity, of crime!--The sickness which is in mybody, in my flesh, in my muscles, --like this garlic may it be strippedoff, --and may the burning flame consume it in this day;--may the spellof the sorcerer be cast out, that I may behold the light!" The ceremonycould be prolonged at will: the sick person pulled to pieces the clusterof dates, the bunch of flowers, a fleece of wool, some goats' hair, askein of dyed thread, and a bean, which were all in turn consumed inthe fire. At each stage of the operation he repeated the formula, introducing into it one or two expressions characterizing the nature ofthe particular offering; as, for instance, "the dates will no more hangfrom their stalks, the leaves of the branch will never again be unitedto the tree, the wool and the hair will never again lie on the backof the animal on which they grew, and will never be used for weavinggarments. " The use of magical words was often accompanied by remedies, which were for the most part both grotesque and disgusting in theircomposition: they comprised bitter or stinking wood-shavings, raw meat, snake's flesh, wine and oil, the whole reduced to a pulp, or made intoa sort of pill and swallowed on the chance of its bringing relief. TheEgyptian physicians employed similar compounds, to which theyattributed wonderful effects, but they made use of them in exceptionalcircumstances only. The medical authorities in Chaldæa recommended thembefore all others, and their very strangeness reassured the patient asto their efficacy: they filled the possessing spirits with disgust, andbecame a means of relief owing to the invincible horror with whichthey inspired the persecuting demons. The Chaldæans were not, however, ignorant of the natural virtues of herbs, and at times made use of them;but they were not held in very high esteem, and the physicians preferredthe prescriptions which pandered to the popular craving for thesupernatural. Amulets further confirmed the effect produced by therecipes, and prevented the enemy, once cast out, from re-entering thebody; these amulets were made of knots of cord, pierced shells, bronzeor terra-cotta statuettes, and plaques fastened to the arms or wornround the neck. On each of the latter kind were roughly drawn the mostterrible images that they could conceive, a shortened incantationwas scrawled on its surface, or it was covered with extraordinarycharacters, which when the spirits perceived they at once took flight, and the possessor of the talisman escaped the threatened illness. 

However laughable, and at the same time deplorable, this hopeless medleyof exact knowledge and gross superstition may appear to us at thepresent day, it was the means of bringing a prosperity to the cities ofChaldæa which no amount of actual science would ever have produced. Theneighbouring barbaric peoples were imbued with the same ideas as theChaldæns regarding the constitution of the world and the nature of thelaws which governed it. They lived likewise in perpetual fear of thoseinvisible beings whose changeable and arbitrary will actuated allvisible phenomena; they attributed all the reverses and misfortuneswhich overtook them to the direct action of these malevolent beings;they believed firmly in the influence of stars on the course of events;they were constantly on the look out for prodigies, and were greatlyalarmed by them, since they had no certain knowledge of the number andnature of their enemies, and the means they had invented for protectingthemselves from them or of overcoming them too often proved inefficient. In the eyes of these barbarians, the Chaldeans seemed to be possessed ofthe very powers which they themselves lacked. The magicians of Chaldæahad forced the demons to obey them and to unmask themselves before them;they read with ease in the heavens the present and future of men andnations; they interpreted the will of the immortals in its smallestmanifestations, and with them this faculty was not a limited andephemeral power, quickly exhausted by use: the rites and formulas knownto them enabled them to exercise it freely at all times, in all places, alike upon the most exalted of the gods and the most dreaded of mortals, without its ever becoming weakened. 

[Illustration:352. Jpg A CHALDÆAN AMULET. ]

 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Loftus. The original is in the British Museum. 

A race so endowed with wisdom was, indeed, destined to triumph overits neighbours, and the latter would have no chance of resisting sucha nation unless they borrowed from it its manners, customs, industry, writing, and all the arts and sciences which had brought about theirsuperiority. Chaldæann civilization spread into Elam and took possessionof the inhabitants of the shores of the Persian Gulf, and then, sinceits course was impeded on the south by the sea, on the west by thedesert, and on the east by the mountains, it turned in the direction ofthe great northern plains and proceeded up the two rivers, beside whoselower waters it had been cradled. It was at this very time that thePharaohs of the XIIIth dynasty had just completed the conquest ofNubia. Greater Egypt, made what she was by the efforts of twentygenerations, had become an African power. The sea formed her northernboundary, the desert and the mountains enclosed her on all sides, andthe Nile appeared the only natural outlet into a new world: she followedit indefatigably from one cataract to another, colonizing as she passedall the lands fertilized by its waters. Every step which she made inthis direction increased the distance between her capitals and theMediterranean, and brought her armies further south. Asia would havepractically ceased to exist, as far as Egypt was concerned, had not therepeated incursions of the Bedouin obliged her to make advances fromtime to time in that direction; still she crossed the frontier as seldomas possible, and recalled her troops as soon as they had reduced themarauders to order: Ethiopia alone attracted her, and it was there thatshe firmly established her empire. The two great civilized peoples ofthe ancient world, therefore, had each their field of action clearlymarked out, and neither of them had ever ventured into that of theother. There had been no lack of intercourse between them, and theencounter of their armies, if it ever really had taken place, had beenaccidental, had merely produced passing results, and up till then hadterminated without bringing to either side a decisive advantage. 

[Illustration: 354. Jpg MAGIC NAIL OF TERRA COTTA]

[Illustration: 355. Jpg EGYPTIAN CORNICE BEARING THE CARTOUCHES OF RAMSESI. ]

APPENDIX--THE PHARAOHS OF THE ANCIENT AND MIDDLE EMPIRES

(Dynasties I. -XIV. )

The lists of the Pharaohs of the Memphite period appear to have beendrawn up in much the same order as we now possess them, as early asthe XIIth dynasty: it is certain that the sequence was definitely fixedabout the time of the XXth dynasty, since it was under this that theCanon of Turin was copied. The lists which have come down to us appearto follow two traditions, which differ completely in certain cases:one has been preserved for us by the abbreviators of Manetho, whilethe other was the authority followed by the compilers of the tables ofAbydos and Saqqâra, as well as by the author of the Turin Papyrus. 

There appear to have been in the first five dynasties a certain numberof kings whose exact order and filiation were supposed to be well knownto the compilers; but, at the same time, there were others whose nameswere found on the monuments, but whose position with regard to theirpredecessors was indicated neither by historical documents nor bypopular romance. We find, therefore, in these two traditional listsa series of sovereigns always occupying the same position, and othershovering around them, who have no decided place. The hieroglyphic listsand the Royal Canon appear to have been chiefly concerned with theformer; but the authorities followed by Manetho have studiouslycollected the names of the latter, and have intercalated them indifferent places, sometimes in the middle, but mostly at the end of thedynasty, where they form a kind of _caput mortuum_. The most strikingexample of this arrangement is afforded us in the IVth dynasty. Thecontemporary monuments show that its kings formed a compact group, towhich are appended the first three sovereigns of the Vth dynasty, always in the same order: Menkaûrî succeeded Khâfrî, Shopsiskaf followedMenkaûrî, Usirkaf followed Shopsiskaf, and so on to the end. The listsof Manetho suppress Shopsiskaf, and substitute four other individualsin his place, namely, Katôises, Bikheris, Seberkheres, Thamphthis, whosereigns must have occupied more than half a century; these four weredoubtless aspirants to the throne, or local kings belonging to the timebetween the IVth and Vth dynasties, whom Manetho's authorities insertedbetween the compact groups made up of Kheops and his sons on the onehand, and of Usirkaf and his two real of supposed brothers on the other, omitting Shopsiskaf, and having no idea that Usirkaf was his immediatesuccessor, with or without rivals to the throne. 

In a course of lectures given at the _Collège de France_ (1893-95), Ihave examined at length the questions raised by a study of the variouslists, and I may be able, perhaps, some day to publish the result ofmy researches: for the present I must confine myself merely to whatis necessary to the elucidation of the present work, namely, theManethonian tradition on the one hand, and the tradition of themonumental tables on the other. The text which I propose to follow forthe latter, during the first five dynasties, is that of the second tableof Abydos; the names placed between brackets [ ] are taken either fromthe table of Saqqâra or from the Royal Canon of Turin. The numbers ofthe years, months, and days are those furnished by the last-mentioneddocument. 

[Illustration: 357. Jpg LISTS OF THE PHARAOHS OF THE ANCIENT EMPIRE]

[Illustration: 358. Jpg LISTS ON THE MONUMENTS]

From the VIth to the XIIth dynasty, the lists of Manetho are at fault:they give the origin and duration of the dynasties, without furnishingus with the names of the kings. 

[Illustration: 359. Jpg LISTS ON THE MONUMENTS]

This blank is partially filled by the table of Abydos, by the fragmentsof the Turin Papyrus, and by information supplied by the monuments. Nosuch definitely established sequence appears to have existed for thisperiod, as for the preceding ones. The Heracleopolitan dynastiesfigure, perhaps, in the Canon of Turin only; as for the later Memphitedynasties, the table of Abydos gives one series of Pharaohs, while theCanon adopts a different one. After the close of the VIth dynasty, andbefore the accession of the IXth, there was, doubtless, a period whenseveral branches of the royal family claimed the supremacy and ruled indifferent parts of Egypt: this is what we know to have taken place laterbetween the XXIInd and the XXIVth dynasties. The tradition of Abydoshad, perhaps, adopted one of these contemporaneous dynasties, whilethe Turin Papyrus had chosen another: Manetho, on the other hand, had selected from among them, as representatives of the legitimatesuccession, the line reigning at Memphis which immediately followedthe sovereigns of the VIth dynasty. The following table gives both theseries known, as far as it is possible for the present to re-establishthe order:--

[Illustration: 360. Jpg LISTS ON THE MONUMENTS]

The XIth (Theban) dynasty contains but a small number of kings accordingto the official lists. The tables on the monuments recognize only two, Nibkhrôurî and Sônkhkarî, but the Turin Canon admits at least half adozen. These differences probably arose from the fact that, the secondHeracleopolitan dynasty having reigned at the same time as the earlierTheban princes, the tables on the monuments, while rejecting theHeracleopolitans, recognized as legitimate Pharaohs only those of theTheban kings who had ruled over the whole of Egypt, namely, the firstand last of the series; the Canon, on the contrary, replaced the laterHeracleopolitans by those among the contemporary Thebans who hadassumed the royal titles. Whatever may have been the cause of thesecombinations, we find the lists again harmonizing with the accession ofthe XIIth (Theban) dynasty. 

For the succeeding dynasties we possess merely the names enumerated onthe fragments of the Turin Papyrus, several of which, however, arealso found either in the royal chamber at Karnak, or on contemporarymonuments. The order of the names is not always certain: it is, perhaps, best to transcribe the sequence as we are able to gather it from thefragments of the Royal Papyrus, without attempting to distinguishbetween those which belong to the XIIIth and those which must be. Relegated to the following dynasties. 

[Illustration: 361. Jpg LISTS ON THE MONUMENTS]

About fifty names still remain, but so mutilated and scattered oversuch small fragments of papyrus, that their order is most uncertain. Wepossess monuments of about one-fifth of these kings, and the lengths oftheir reigns, as far as we know them, all appear to have been short:we have no reason to doubt that they did really govern, and we can onlyhope that in time the progress of excavation will yield us records ofthem one after another. They bring us down to the period of the invasionof the Shepherds, and it is possible that some among them may be foundto be contemporaries of the XVth and XVIth dynasties. 

[Illustration: 362. Jpg Tailpiece]