Man, Past and Present - Agustus Henry Keane, A. Hingston Quiggin, Alfred Court Haddon (most popular novels txt) 📗

by no means clear, for many important cities are unexplored and even unidentified, but the general trend of recent opinion may be noted. The linguistic problem is peculiarly complicated by the fact that almost all the Sumerian texts show evidence of Semitic influence, and consist to a great extent of religious hymns and incantations which often appear to be merely translations of Semitic ideas turned by Semitic priests into the formal religious Sumerian language. J. Halevy, indeed, followed by others, regarded Sumerian as no true language, but merely a priestly system of cryptography[587], based on Semitic. As regards linguistic affinities, K. A. Hermann[588] endeavoured to establish a connection between the early texts and Ural-Altaic, more especially with Ugro-Finnish. A more recent suggestion that the language is of Indo-European origin and structure rests on equally slight resemblances. The comparison with Chinese has already been noticed. J. D. Prince[589] utters a word of caution against comparing ancient texts with idioms of more recent peoples of Western Asia, in spite of many tempting resemblances, and claims that until further light has been shed on the problem Sumerian should be regarded as standing quite alone, "a prehistoric philological remnant." Meyer[590] claims for the Sumerians not only linguistic but also physical isolation. The Sumerian type as represented on the monuments shows a narrow pointed nose, with straight bridge and small nostrils, cheeks and lips not fleshy, like the Semites, with prominent cheek-bones, small mouth, narrow lips finely curved, the lower jaw very short, with angular sharply projecting chin, oblique Mongolian eyes, low forehead, usually sloping away directly from the root of the nose. In fact the nose has almost the appearance of a bird's beak, projecting far in advance of mouth and chin, while the forehead almost disappears. The hair and beard are closely shaven. The Sumerians were undoubtedly a warlike people, fighting not like the Semites in loosely extended battle array, but in close phalanx, their large shields protecting their bodies from neck to feet, forming a rampart beyond which projected the inclined spears of the foremost rank. Battle axe and javelin were also used. Helmets protected head and neck. Besides lance or spear the royal leaders carried a curved throwing weapon, formed of three strands bound together at intervals with thongs of leather or bands of metal; this seems to have developed later into a sign of authority and hence into a sceptre. The bow, the typical weapon of the Semites and the mountainous people to the east, was unrepresented. The gods carried clubs with stone heads. It is important to notice that, in direct contrast to the Sumerians themselves, their gods had abundant hair on their heads, carefully curled and dressed, and a long curly beard on the chin, though cheeks and lips were closely shaven; these fashions recall those of the Semites. Thus, although the general view is to regard the Sumerians as the autochthones and the Semites as the later intruders in Babylonia, the Semitic character of the Sumerian gods points to an opposite conclusion. But the time has not yet come for any definite conclusion to be reached. All that can be said is that according to our present knowledge the assumption that the earliest population was Sumerian and that the Semites were the conquering intruders is only slightly more probable than the reverse[591].

Recent archaeological discoveries make Sumerian origins a little clearer. Explorations in Central Asia (as mentioned above p. 257) show that districts once well watered, and capable of supporting a large population, have been subject to periods of excessive drought, and this no doubt is the prime cause of the racial unrest which has ever been characteristic of the dwellers in these regions. A cycle of drought may well have prompted the Sumerian migration of the fourth millennium B.C., as it is shown to have prompted the later invasions of the last two thousand years[592]. Although there is no evidence to connect the original home of the Sumerians with any of the oases yet excavated in Central Asia, yet signs of cultural contact are not wanting, and it may safely be inferred that their civilisation was evolved in some region to the east of the Euphrates valley before their entrance into Babylonia[593].

Since Semitic influence was first felt in the north of Babylonia, at Akkad, it is assumed that the immigration was from the north-west from Arabia by way of the Syrian coastlands, and in this case also the impulse may have been the occurrence of an arid period in the centre of the Arabian continent. The Semites are found not as barbarian invaders, but as a highly cultivated people. They absorbed several cultural elements of the Sumerians, notably their script, and were profoundly influenced by Sumerian religion. The Akkadians are represented with elaborately curled hair and beard, and hence, in contradistinction to the shaven Sumerians, are referred to as "the black-headed ones." Their chief weapon was the bow, but they had also lances and battle axes. As among the Sumerians the sign of kingship was a boomerang-like sceptre[594]. Except for Babylon and Sippar, which throw little light on the early periods, no systematic excavation has been undertaken in northern Babylonia, and the site of Akkad is still unidentified.

The chronology of this early age of Babylonia is much disputed. The very high dates of 5000 or 6000 B.C. formerly assigned by many writers to the earliest remains of the Sumerians and the Babylonian Semites, depended to a great extent on the statement of Nabonidus (556 B.C.) that 3200 years separated his own age from that of Naram-Sin, the son of Sargon of Agade; for to Sargon, on this statement alone, a date of 3800 has usually been assigned[595]. This date presents many difficulties, leaving many centuries unrepresented by any royal names or records. Even the suggested emendation of the text reducing the estimate by a thousand years is not generally acceptable. Most authorities hesitate to date any Babylonian records before 3000 B.C.[596] and agree that the time has not arrived for fixing any definite dates for the early period.

Despite the legendary matter associated with his memory, Shar-Gani-sharri, commonly called Sargon of Akkad, about 2500 B.C. (Meyer), 2650 B.C. (King), was beyond question a historical person though it seems that there has been some confusion with Sharru-gi, or Sharrukin, also called Sargon, earliest king of Kish[597]. Tradition records how his mother, a royal princess, concealed his birth by placing him in a rush basket closed with bitumen and sending him adrift on the stream, from which he was rescued by Akki the water-carrier, who brought him up as his own child. The incident, about which there is nothing miraculous, presents a curious parallel to, if it be not the source of, similar tales related of Moses, Cyrus, and other ancient leaders of men. Sargon also tells us that he ruled from his capital, Agade, for 45 years over Upper and Lower Mesopotamia, governed the black-headed ones, as the Akkads are constantly called, rode in bronze chariots over rugged lands, and made expeditions thrice to the sea-coast. The expeditions are confirmed by inscriptions from Syria, though the cylinder of his son, Naram-Sin, found by Cesnola in Cyprus, is now regarded as of later date[598]. As they also penetrated to Sinai their influence appears to have extended over the whole of Syria and North Arabia. They erected great structures at Nippur, which was at that time so ancient that Naram-Sin's huge brick platform stood on a mass 30 feet thick of the accumulated debris of earlier buildings. Among the most interesting of recent discoveries at Nippur are pre-Semitic tablets containing accounts similar to those recorded in the book of Genesis, from which in some cases the latter have clearly been derived. The "Deluge Fragment" published in 1910 relates the warning given by the god Ea to Utnapishtim, the Babylonian Noah, and the directions for building a ship by means of which he and his family may escape, together with the beasts of the field and the birds of heaven[599]. A still later discovery agrees more closely with the Bible version, giving the name of the one pious man as Tagtog, Semitic Nuhu, and assigning nine months as the period of the duration of the flood. The same tablet also contains an account of the Fall of Man; but it is Noah, not Adam, who is tempted and falls, and the forbidden fruit is cassia[600].

Sennacherib's grandson, Ashurbanipal, who belongs to the late Assyrian empire when the centre of power had been shifted from Babylonia to Nineveh, has left recorded on his brick tablets how he overran Elam and destroyed its capital, Susa (645 B.C.). He states that from this place he brought back the effigy of the goddess, Nana, which had been carried away from her temple at Erech by an Elamite king by whom Akkad had been conquered 1635 years before, i.e. 2280 B.C. Over Akkad Elam ruled 300 years, and it was a king of this dynasty, Khudur-Lagamar, who has been identified by T. G. Pinches with the "Chedorlaomer, king of Elam" routed by Abraham (Gen. xiv. 14-17)[601]. Thus is explained the presence of Elamites at this time so far west as Syria, their own seat being amid the Kurdish mountains in the Upper Tigris basin.

The Elamites do not appear to have been of the same stock as the Sumerians. They are described as peaceful, industrious, and skilful husbandmen, with a surprising knowledge of irrigating processes. The non-Semitic language shows possible connections with Mitanni[602]. Yet the type would appear to be on the whole rather Semitic, judging at least from the large arched nose and thick beard of the Susian god, Ramman, brought by Ashurbanipal out of Elam, and figured in Layard's Monuments of Nineveh, 1st Series, Plate 65. This, however, may be explained by the fact that the Elamites were subdued at an early date by intruding Semites, although they afterwards shook off the yoke and became strong enough to conquer Mesopotamia and extend their expeditions to Syria and the Jordan. The capital of Elam was the renowned city of Susa (Shushan, whence Susiana, the modern Khuzistan). Recent excavations show that the settlement dates from neolithic times[603].

Even after the capture of Susa by Ashurbanipal, Elam again rose to great power under Cyrus the Great, who, however, was no Persian adventurer, as stated by Herodotus, but the legitimate Elamite ruler, as inscribed on his cylinder and tablet now in the British Museum:--"Cyrus, the great king, the king of Babylon, the king of Sumir and Akkad, the king of the four zones, the son of Kambyses, the great king, the king of Elam, the grandson of Cyrus the great king," who by the favour of Merodach has overcome the black-headed people (i.e. the Akkads) and at last entered Babylon in peace. On an earlier cylinder Nabonidus, last king of Babylon, tells us how this same Cyrus subdued the Medes--here called Mandas, "Barbarians"--and captured their king Astyages and his capital Ekbatana. But although Cyrus, hitherto supposed to be a Persian and a Zoroastrian monotheist, here appears as an Elamite and a polytheist, "it is pretty certain that although descended from Elamite kings, these were [at that time] kings of Persian race, who, after the destruction of the old [Elamite] monarchy by Ashurbanipal, had established a new dynasty at the city of Susa. Cyrus always traces his descent from Achaemenes, the chief of the leading Persian clan of Pasargadae[604]." Hence although wrong in speaking of Cyrus as an adventurer, Herodotus rightly calls him a Persian, and at this late date Elam itself may well have been already Aryanised in speech[605], while still retaining its old Sumerian religion. The Babylonian pantheon survived, in fact, till the time of Darius Hystaspes, who introduced Zoroastrianism with its supreme gods, Ahura-Mazda, creator of all good, and Ahriman, author of all evil.

It is now possible to gain some idea of the gradual growth of the city states of Babylonia. Beginning with a mere collection of rude reed huts,