Myths of Babylonia and Assyria 3

Myths of Babylonia and Assyria 3

Various aspects of Babylonian life and culture are dealt with

throughout this volume, and it is shown that the growth of science and

art was stimulated by unwholesome and crude superstitions. Many rank

weeds flourished beside the brightest blossoms of the human intellect

that wooed the sun in that fertile valley of rivers. As in Egypt,

civilization made progress when wealth was accumulated in sufficient

abundance to permit of a leisured class devoting time to study and

research. The endowed priests, who performed temple ceremonies, were

the teachers of the people and the patrons of culture. We may think

little of their religious beliefs, regarding which after all we have

only a superficial knowledge, for we have yet discovered little more

than the fragments of the shell which held the pearl, the faded petals

that were once a rose, but we must recognize that they provided

inspiration for the artists and sculptors whose achievements compel

our wonder and admiration, moved statesmen to inaugurate and

administer humanitarian laws, and exalted Right above Might.

 

These civilizations of the old world, among which the Mesopotamian and

the Nilotic were the earliest, were built on no unsound foundations.

They made possible "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that

was Rome", and it is only within recent years that we have begun to

realize how incalculable is the debt which the modern world owes to

them.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I.

 

THE RACES AND EARLY CIVILIZATION OF BABYLONIA

 

 

Prehistoric Babylonia--The Confederacies of Sumer and

Akkad--Sumerian Racial Affinities--Theories of Mongolian and

Ural-Altaic Origins--Evidence of Russian Turkestan--Beginnings of

Agriculture--Remarkable Proofs from Prehistoric Egyptian

Graves--Sumerians and the Mediterranean Race--Present-day Types in

Western Asia--The Evidence of Crania--Origin of the Akkadians--The

Semitic Blend--Races in Ancient Palestine--Southward Drift of

Armenoid Peoples--The Rephaims of the Bible--Akkadians attain

Political Supremacy in Northern Babylonia--Influence of Sumerian

Culture--Beginnings of Civilization--Progress in the Neolithic

Age--Position of Women in Early Communities--Their Legal Status in

Ancient Babylonia--Influence in Social and Religious Life--The

"Woman's Language"--Goddess who inspired Poets.

 

 

Before the dawn of the historical period Ancient Babylonia was

divided into a number of independent city states similar to those

which existed in pre-Dynastic Egypt. Ultimately these were grouped

into loose confederacies. The northern cities were embraced in the

territory known as Akkad, and the southern in the land of Sumer, or

Shumer. This division had a racial as well as a geographical

significance. The Akkadians were "late comers" who had achieved

political ascendency in the north when the area they occupied was

called Uri, or Kiuri, and Sumer was known as Kengi. They were a people

of Semitic speech with pronounced Semitic affinities. From the

earliest times the sculptors depicted them with abundant locks, long

full beards, and the prominent distinctive noses and full lips, which

we usually associate with the characteristic Jewish type, and also

attired in long, flounced robes, suspended from their left shoulders,

and reaching down to their ankles. In contrast, the Sumerians had

clean-shaven faces and scalps, and noses of Egyptian and Grecian

rather than Semitic type, while they wore short, pleated kilts, and

went about with the upper part of their bodies quite bare like the

Egyptian noblemen of the Old Kingdom period. They spoke a non-Semitic

language, and were the oldest inhabitants of Babylonia of whom we have

any knowledge. Sumerian civilization was rooted in the agricultural

mode of life, and appears to have been well developed before the

Semites became numerous and influential in the land. Cities had been

built chiefly of sun-dried and fire-baked bricks; distinctive pottery

was manufactured with much skill; the people were governed by

humanitarian laws, which formed the nucleus of the Hammurabi code, and

had in use a system of cuneiform writing which was still in process of

development from earlier pictorial characters. The distinctive feature

of their agricultural methods was the engineering skill which was

displayed in extending the cultivatable area by the construction of

irrigating canals and ditches. There are also indications that they

possessed some knowledge of navigation and traded on the Persian Gulf.

According to one of their own traditions Eridu, originally a seaport,

was their racial cradle. The Semitic Akkadians adopted the distinctive

culture of these Sumerians after settlement, and exercised an

influence on its subsequent growth.

 

Much controversy has been waged regarding the original home of the

Sumerians and the particular racial type which they represented. One

theory connects them with the lank-haired and beardless Mongolians,

and it is asserted on the evidence afforded by early sculptural

reliefs that they were similarly oblique-eyed. As they also spoke an

agglutinative language, it is suggested that they were descended from

the same parent stock as the Chinese in an ancient Parthian homeland.

If, however, the oblique eye was not the result of faulty and

primitive art, it is evident that the Mongolian type, which is

invariably found to be remarkably persistent in racial blends, did not

survive in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys, for in the finer and more

exact sculpture work of the later Sumerian period the eyes of the

ruling classes are found to be similar to those of the Ancient

Egyptians and southern Europeans. Other facial characteristics suggest

that a Mongolian racial connection is highly improbable; the prominent

Sumerian nose, for instance, is quite unlike the Chinese, which is

diminutive. Nor can far-reaching conclusions be drawn from the scanty

linguistic evidence at our disposal. Although the languages of the

Sumerians and long-headed Chinese are of the agglutinative variety, so

are those also which are spoken by the broad-headed Turks and Magyars

of Hungary, the broad-headed and long-headed, dark and fair Finns, and

the brunet and short-statured Basques with pear-shaped faces, who are

regarded as a variation of the Mediterranean race with distinctive

characteristics developed in isolation. Languages afford no sure

indication of racial origins or affinities.

 

Another theory connects the Sumerians with the broad-headed peoples of

the Western Asian plains and plateaus, who are vaguely grouped as

Ural-Altaic stock and are represented by the present-day Turks and the

dark variety of Finns. It is assumed that they migrated southward in

remote times in consequence of tribal pressure caused by changing

climatic conditions, and abandoned a purely pastoral for an

agricultural life. The late Sumerian sculpture work again presents

difficulties in this connection, for the faces and bulging occiputs

suggest rather a long-headed than a broad-headed type, and the theory

no longer obtains that new habits of life alter skull forms which are

usually associated with other distinctive traits in the structure of

skeletons. These broad-headed nomadic peoples of the Steppes are

allied to Tatar stock, and distinguished from the pure Mongols by

their abundance of wavy hair and beard. The fact that the Sumerians

shaved their scalps and faces is highly suggestive in this connection.

From the earliest times it has been the habit of most peoples to

emphasize their racial characteristics so as to be able, one may

suggest, to distinguish readily a friend from a foeman. At any rate

this fact is generally recognized by ethnologists. The Basques, for

instance, shave their pointed chins and sometimes grow short side

whiskers to increase the distinctive pear-shape which is given to

their faces by their prominent temples. In contrast, their neighbours,

the Andalusians, grow chin whiskers to broaden their already rounded

chins, and to distinguish them markedly from the Basques.[12] Another

example of similar character is afforded in Asia Minor, where the

skulls of the children of long-headed Kurds are narrowed, and those of

the children of broad-headed Armenians made flatter behind as a result

of systematic pressure applied by using cradle boards. In this way

these rival peoples accentuate their contrasting head forms, which at

times may, no doubt, show a tendency towards variation as a result of

the crossment of types. When it is found, therefore, that the

Sumerians, like the Ancient Egyptians, were in the habit of shaving,

their ethnic affinities should be looked for among a naturally

glabrous rather than a heavily-bearded people.

 

A Central Asiatic source for Sumerian culture has also been urged of

late with much circumstantial detail. It breaks quite fresh and

interesting ground. Recent scientific expeditions in Russian and

Chinese Turkestan have accumulated important archaeological data which

clearly establish that vast areas of desert country were at a remote

period most verdurous and fruitful, and thickly populated by organized

and apparently progressive communities. From these ancient centres of

civilization wholesale migrations must have been impelled from time to

time in consequence of the gradual encroachment of wind-distributed

sand and the increasing shortage of water. At Anau in Russian

Turkestan, where excavations were conducted by the Pumpelly

expedition, abundant traces were found of an archaic and forgotten

civilization reaching back to the Late Stone Age. The pottery is

decorated with geometric designs, and resembles somewhat other

Neolithic specimens found as far apart as Susa, the capital of ancient

Elam, on the borders of Babylonia, Boghaz Köi in Asia Minor, the seat

of Hittite administration, round the Black Sea to the north, and at

points in the southern regions of the Balkan Peninsula. It is

suggested that these various finds are scattered evidences of early

racial drifts from the Central Asian areas which were gradually being

rendered uninhabitable. Among the Copper Age artifacts at Anau are

clay votive statuettes resembling those which were used in Sumeria for

religious purposes. These, however, cannot be held to prove a racial

connection, but they are important in so far as they afford evidence

of early trade relations in a hitherto unsuspected direction, and the

long distances over which cultural influence extended before the dawn

of history. Further we cannot go. No inscriptions have yet been

discovered to render articulate this mysterious Central Asian

civilization, or to suggest the original source of early Sumerian

picture writing. Nor is it possible to confirm Mr. Pumpelly's view

that from the Anau district the Sumerians and Egyptians first obtained

barley and wheat, and some of their domesticated animals. If, as

Professor Elliot Smith believes, copper was first used by the Ancient

Egyptians, it may be, on the other hand, that a knowledge of this

metal reached Anau through Sumeria, and that the elements of the

earlier culture were derived from the same quarter by an indirect

route. The evidence obtainable in Egypt is of interest in this

connection. Large quantities of food have been taken from the stomachs

and intestines of sun-dried bodies which have lain in their

pre-Dynastic graves for over sixty centuries. This material has been

carefully examined, and has yielded, among other things, husks of

barley and millet, and fragments of mammalian bones, including those,

no doubt, of the domesticated sheep and goats and cattle painted on

the pottery.[13] It is therefore apparent that at an extremely remote

period a knowledge of agriculture extended throughout Egypt, and we

have no reason for supposing that it was not shared by the

contemporary inhabitants of Sumer.

 

The various theories which have been propounded regarding the outside

source of Sumerian culture are based on the assumption that it

commenced abruptly and full grown. Its rude beginnings cannot be

traced on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, but although no

specimens of the earliest form of picture writing have been recovered

from the ruins of Sumerian and Akkadian cities, neither have any been

found elsewhere. The possibility remains, therefore, that early

Babylonian culture was indigenous. "A great deal of ingenuity has been

displayed by many scholars", says Professor Elliot Smith, "with the

object of bringing these Sumerians from somewhere else as immigrants

into Sumer; but no reasons have been advanced to show that they had

not been settled at the head of the Persian Gulf for long generations

before they first appeared on the stage of history. The argument that

no early remains have been found is futile, not only because such a

country as Sumer is no more favourable to the preservation of such

evidence than is the Delta of the Nile, but also upon the more general

grounds that negative statements of this sort cannot be assigned a

positive evidence for an immigration."[14] This distinguished

ethnologist is frankly of opinion that the Sumerians were the

congeners of the pre-Dynastic Egyptians of the Mediterranean or Brown

race, the eastern branch of which reaches to India and the western to

the British Isles and Ireland. In the same ancient family are included

the Arabs, whose physical characteristics distinguish them from the

Semites of Jewish type.

 

Some light may be thrown on the Sumerian problem by giving

consideration to the present-day racial complexion of Western Asia.

The importance of evidence of this character has been emphasized

elsewhere. In Egypt, for instance, Dr. C.S. Myers has ascertained that

the modern peasants have skull forms which are identical with those of

their pre-Dynastic ancestors. Mr. Hawes has also demonstrated that the

ancient inhabitants of Crete are still represented on that famous

island. But even more remarkable is the fact that the distinctive

racial type which occupied the Palaeolithic caves of the Dordogne

valley in France continues to survive in their vicinity after an

interval of over twenty thousand years.[15] It is noteworthy,

therefore, to find that in south-western Asia at the present day one

particular racial type predominates over all others. Professor Ripley,

who summarizes a considerable mass of data in this connection, refers

to it as the "Iranian", and says: "It includes the Persians and Kurds,

possibly the Ossetes in the Caucasus, and farther to the east a large

number of Asiatic tribes, from the Afghans to the Hindus. These

peoples are all primarily long-headed and dark brunets. They incline

to slenderness of habit, although varying in stature according to

circumstances. In them we recognize at once undoubted congeners of our

Mediterranean race in Europe. The area of their extension runs off

into Africa, through the Egyptians, who are clearly of the same race.

Not only the modern peoples, but the Ancient Egyptians and the

Phoenicians also have been traced to the same source. By far the

largest portion of this part of Western Asia is inhabited by this

eastern branch of the Mediterranean race." The broad-headed type

"occurs sporadically among a few ethnic remnants in Syria and

Mesopotamia".[16] The exhaustive study of thousands of ancient crania

in London and Cambridge collections has shown that Mediterranean

peoples, having alien traits, the result of early admixture, were

distributed between Egypt and the Punjab.[17] Where blending took

place, the early type, apparently, continued to predominate; and it

appears to be reasserting itself in our own time in Western Asia, as

elsewhere. It seems doubtful, therefore, that the ancient Sumerians

differed racially from the pre-Dynastic inhabitants of Egypt and the

Pelasgians and Iberians of Europe. Indeed, the statuettes from Tello,

the site of the Sumerian city of Lagash, display distinctively

Mediterranean skull forms and faces. Some of the plump figures of the

later period suggest, however, "the particular alien strain" which in

Egypt and elsewhere "is always associated with a tendency to the

development of fat", in contrast to "the lean and sinewy appearance of

most representatives of the Brown race".[18] This change may be

accounted for by the presence of the Semites in northern Babylonia.

 

Whence, then, came these invading Semitic Akkadians of Jewish type? It

is generally agreed that they were closely associated with one of the

early outpourings of nomadic peoples from Arabia, a country which is

favourable for the production of a larger population than it is able

to maintain permanently, especially when its natural resources are

restricted by a succession of abnormally dry years. In tracing the

Akkadians from Arabia, however, we are confronted at the outset with

the difficulty that its prehistoric, and many of its present-day,

inhabitants are not of the characteristic Semitic type. On the Ancient

Egyptian pottery and monuments the Arabs are depicted as men who

closely resembled the representatives of the Mediterranean race in the

Nile valley and elsewhere. They shaved neither scalps nor faces as did

the historic Sumerians and Egyptians, but grew the slight moustache

and chin-tuft beard like the Libyans on the north and the majority of

the men whose bodies have been preserved in pre-Dynastic graves in the

Nile valley. "If", writes Professor Elliot Smith, "the generally

accepted view is true, that Arabia was the original home of the

Semites, the Arab must have undergone a profound change in his

physical characters after he left his homeland and before he reached

Babylonia." This authority is of opinion that the Arabians first

migrated into Palestine and northern Syria, where they mingled with

the southward-migrating Armenoid peoples from Asia Minor. "This blend

of Arabs, kinsmen of the proto-Egyptians and Armenoids, would then

form the big-nosed, long-bearded Semites, so familiar not only on the

ancient Babylonian and Egyptian monuments, but also in the modern

Jews."[19] Such a view is in accord with Dr. Hugo Winckler's

contention that the flow of Arabian migrations was northwards towards

Syria ere it swept through Mesopotamia. It can scarcely be supposed

that these invasions of settled districts did not result in the fusion

and crossment of racial types and the production of a sub-variety with

medium skull form and marked facial characteristics.

 

Of special interest in this connection is the evidence afforded by

Palestine and Egypt. The former country has ever been subject to

periodic ethnic disturbances and changes. Its racial history has a

remote beginning in the Pleistocene Age. Palaeolithic flints of

Chellean and other primitive types have been found in large numbers,

and a valuable collection of these is being preserved in a French

museum at Jerusalem. In a northern cave fragments of rude pottery,

belonging to an early period in the Late Stone Age, have been

discovered in association with the bones of the woolly rhinoceros. To

a later period belong the series of Gezer cave dwellings, which,

according to Professor Macalister, the well-known Palestinian

authority, "were occupied by a non-Semitic people of low stature, with

thick skulls and showing evidence of the great muscular strength that

is essential to savage life".[20] These people are generally supposed

to be representatives of the Mediterranean race, which Sergi has found

to have been widely distributed throughout Syria and a part of Asia

Minor.[21] An interesting problem, however, is raised by the fact

that, in one of the caves, there are evidences that the dead were

cremated. This was not a Mediterranean custom, nor does it appear to

have prevailed outside the Gezer area. If, however, it does not

indicate that the kinsmen of the Ancient Egyptians came into contact

with the remnants of an earlier people, it may be that the dead of a

later people were burned there. The possibility that unidentified

types may have contributed to the Semitic blend, however, remains. The

Mediterraneans mingled in Northern Syria and Asia Minor with the

broad-headed Armenoid peoples who are represented in Europe by the

Alpine race. With them they ultimately formed the great Hittite

confederacy. These Armenoids were moving southwards at the very dawn

of Egyptian history, and nothing is known of their conquests and

settlements. Their pioneers, who were probably traders, appear to have

begun to enter the Delta region before the close of the Late Stone

Age.[22] The earliest outpourings of migrating Arabians may have been

in progress about the same time. This early southward drift of

Armenoids might account for the presence in southern Palestine, early

in the Copper Age, of the tall race referred to in the Bible as the

Rephaim or Anakim, "whose power was broken only by the Hebrew

invaders".[23] Joshua drove them out of Hebron,[24] in the

neighbourhood of which Abraham had purchased a burial cave from

Ephron, the Hittite.[25] Apparently a system of land laws prevailed in

Palestine at this early period. It is of special interest for us to

note that in Abraham's day and afterwards, the landed proprietors in

the country of the Rephaim were identified with the aliens from Asia

Minor--the tall variety in the Hittite confederacy.

 

Little doubt need remain that the Arabians during their sojourn in

Palestine and Syria met with distinctive types, and if not with pure

Armenoids, at any rate with peoples having Armenoid traits. The

consequent multiplication of tribes, and the gradual pressure

exercised by the constant stream of immigrants from Arabia and Asia

Minor, must have kept this part of Western Asia in a constant state of

unrest. Fresh migrations of the surplus stock were evidently propelled

towards Egypt in one direction, and the valleys of the Tigris and

Euphrates in another. The Semites of Akkad were probably the

conquerors of the more highly civilized Sumerians, who must have

previously occupied that area. It is possible that they owed their

success to the possession of superior weapons. Professor Elliot Smith

suggests in this connection that the Arabians had become familiar with

the use of copper as a result of contact with the Egyptians in Sinai.

There is no evidence, however, that the Sumerians were attacked before

they had begun to make metal weapons. It is more probable that the

invading nomads had superior military organization and considerable

experience in waging war against detached tribal units. They may have

also found some of the northern Sumerian city states at war with one

another and taken advantage of their unpreparedness to resist a common

enemy. The rough Dorians who overran Greece and the fierce Goths who

shattered the power of Rome were similarly in a lower state of

civilization than the peoples whom they subdued.

 

The Sumerians, however, ultimately achieved an intellectual conquest

of their conquerors. Although the leaders of invasion may have formed

military aristocracies in the cities which they occupied, it was

necessary for the great majority of the nomads to engage their

activities in new directions after settlement. The Semitic Akkadians,

therefore, adopted Sumerian habits of life which were best suited for

the needs of the country, and they consequently came under the spell

of Sumerian modes of thought. This is shown by the fact that the

native speech of ancient Sumer continued long after the dawn of

history to be the language of Babylonian religion and culture, like

Latin in Europe during the Middle Ages. For centuries the mingling

peoples must have been bilingual, as are many of the inhabitants of

Ireland, Wales, and the Scottish Highlands in the present age, but

ultimately the language of the Semites became the prevailing speech in

Sumer and Akkad. This change was the direct result of the conquests

and the political supremacy achieved by the northern people. A

considerable period elapsed, however, ere this consummation was

reached and Ancient Babylonia became completely Semitized. No doubt

its brilliant historical civilization owed much of its vigour and

stability to the organizing genius of the Semites, but the basis on

which it was established had been laid by the ingenious and

imaginative Sumerians who first made the desert to blossom like the

rose.

 

The culture of Sumer was a product of the Late Stone Age, which should

not be regarded as necessarily an age of barbarism. During its vast

periods there were great discoveries and great inventions in various

parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Neoliths made pottery and

bricks; we know that they invented the art of spinning, for

spindle-whorls are found even in the Gezer caves to which we have

referred, while in Egypt the pre-Dynastic dead were sometimes wrapped

in finely woven linen: their deftly chipped flint implements are

eloquent of artistic and mechanical skill, and undoubted mathematical

ability must be credited to the makers of smoothly polished stone

hammers which are so perfectly balanced that they revolve on a centre

of gravity. In Egypt and Babylonia the soil was tilled and its

fertility increased by irrigation. Wherever man waged a struggle with

Nature he made rapid progress, and consequently we find that the

earliest great civilizations were rooted in the little fields of the