14. With regard to the second series this answer is plain and decisive. The descendants of Cain were necessarily out of the pale of the Hebrew world. The curse of God, in consequence of which their forefather is said to have gone "out of the presence of the Lord," at once and forever separated them from the posterity of the pious son, from those who "walked with God." The writer of Genesis tells us that they lived in the "Land of Exile" and multiplied, then dismisses them. For what could the elect, the people of God, or even those other nations who went astray, who were repeatedly chastised, but whose family bond with the righteous race was never entirely severed—what could they have in common with the banished, the castaway, the irretrievably accursed? These did not count, they were not of humanity. What more probable, therefore, than that, being excluded from all the other narratives, they should not be included in that of the Flood? And in that case, who should they be but that most ancient race, set apart by its color and several striking peculiarities, which everywhere preceded their white brethren, but were invariably supplanted by them and not destined to supremacy on the earth? This supposition has been hazarded by men of great genius, and if bold, still has much to support it; if confirmed it would solve many puzzles, throw strong and unexpected light on many obscure points. The very antiquity of the Yellow Race tallies admirably with the Biblical narrative, for of the two Biblical brothers Cain was the eldest. And the doom laid on the race, "a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be on the earth," has not been revoked through all ages. Wherever pure Turanians are—they are nomads. And when, fifteen hundred years ago and later, countless swarms of barbarous people flooded Europe, coming from the east, and swept all before them, the Turanian hordes could be known chiefly by this, that they destroyed, burned, laid waste—and passed, vanished: whereas the others, after treating a country quite as savagely, usually settled in it and founded states, most of which exist even now—for, French, German, English, Russian, we are all descended from some of those barbarous invaders. And this also would fully explain how it came to pass that, although the Hebrews and their forefathers—let us say the Semites generally—everywhere found Turanians on their way, nay, dwelt in the same lands with them, the sacred historian ignores them completely, as in Gen. xi. 2.

15. For they were Turanians, arrived at a, for them, really high state of culture, who peopled the land of Shinar, when "they"—descendants of Noah,—journeying in the East, found that plain where they dwelt for many years.

FOOTNOTES:

[AA] "Gentes non homines." (De Civitate Dei, XVII., 3.)

[AB] If, as has been suggested, the "land of Sinim" in Isaiah xlix., 12, is meant for China, such a solitary, incidental and unspecified mention of a country the name of which may have been vaguely used to express the remotest East, cannot invalidate the scheme so evidently and persistently pursued in the composition of Chap. X.



III.

TURANIAN CHALDEA.—SHUMIR AND ACCAD.—THE BEGINNINGS OF RELIGION.

1. It is not Berosus alone who speaks of the "multitudes of men of foreign race" who colonized Chaldea "in the beginning." It was a universally admitted fact throughout antiquity that the population of the country had always been a mixed one, but a fact known vaguely, without particulars. On this subject, as on so many others, the discoveries made in the royal library of Nineveh shed an unexpected and most welcome light. The very first, so to speak preliminary, study of the tablets showed that there were amongst them documents in two entirely different languages, of which one evidently was that of an older population of Chaldea. The other and later language, usually called Assyrian, because it was spoken also by the Assyrians, being very like Hebrew, an understanding of it was arrived at with comparative ease. As to the older language there was absolutely no clue. The only conjecture which could be made with any certainty was, that it must have been spoken by a double people, called the people of Shumir and Accad, because later kings of Babylon, in their inscriptions, always gave themselves the title of "Kings of Shumir and Accad," a title which the Assyrian sovereigns, who at times conquered Chaldea, did not fail to take also. But who and what were these people might never have been cleared up, but for the most fortunate discovery of dictionaries and grammars, which, the texts being supplied with Assyrian translations, served our modern scholars, just as they did Assyrian students 3000 years ago, to decipher and learn to understand the oldest language of Chaldea. Of course, it was a colossal piece of work, beset with difficulties which it required an almost fierce determination and superhuman patience to master. But every step made was so amply repaid by the results obtained, that the zeal of the laborers was never suffered to flag, and the effected reconstruction, though far from complete even now, already enables us to conjure a very suggestive and life-like picture of those first settlers of the Mesopotamian Lowlands, their character, religion and pursuits.

2. The language thus strangely brought to light was very soon perceived to be distinctly of that peculiar and primitive type—partly monosyllables, partly words rudely pieced together,—which has been described in a preceding chapter as characteristic of the Turanian race, and which is known in science by the general name of agglutinative, i.e., "glued or stuck together," without change in the words, either by declension or conjugation. The people of Shumir and Accad, therefore, were one and the same Turanian nation, the difference in the name being merely a geographical one. SHUMIR is Southern or Lower Chaldea, the country towards and around the Persian Gulf,—that very land of Shinar which is mentioned in Genesis xi. 2. Indeed "Shinar" is only the way in which the Hebrews pronounced and spelt the ancient name of Lower Chaldea. ACCAD is Northern or Upper Chaldea. The most correct way, and the safest from all misunderstanding, is to name the people the Shumiro-Accads and their language, the Shumiro-Accadian; but for brevity's sake, the first name is frequently dropped, and many say simply "the Accads" and "the Accadian language." It is clear, however, that the royal title must needs unite both names, which together represented the entire country of Chaldea. Of late it has been discovered that the Shumiro-Accads spoke two slightly differing dialects of the same language, that of Shumir being most probably the older of the two, as culture and conquest seem to have been carried steadily northward from the Gulf.

3. That the Accads themselves came from somewhere else, is plain from several circumstances, although there is not the faintest symptom or trace of any people whom they may have found in the country. They brought into it the very first and most essential rudiments of civilization, the art of writing, and that of working metals; it was probably also they who began to dig those canals without which the land, notwithstanding its fabulous fertility, must always be a marshy waste, and who began to make bricks and construct buildings out of them. There is ground to conclude that they came down from mountains in the fact that the name "Accad" means "Mountains" or "Highlands," a name which they could not possibly have taken in the dead flats of Lower Chaldea, but must have retained as a relic of an older home. It is quite possible that this home may have been in the neighboring wild and mountainous land of SHUSHAN (Susiana on the maps), whose first known population was also Turanian. These guesses take us into a past, where not a speck of positive fact can be discerned. Yet even that must have been only a station in this race's migration from a far more northern centre. Their written language, even after they had lived for centuries in an almost tropical country, where palms grew in vast groves, almost forests, and lions were common game, as plentiful as tigers in the jungles of Bengal, contained no sign to designate either the one or the other, while it was well stocked with the signs of metals,—of which there is no vestige, of course, in Chaldea,—and all that belongs to the working thereof. As the ALTAI range, the great Siberian chain, has always been famous for its rich mines of every possible metal ore, and as the valleys of the Altai are known to be the nests from which innumerable Turanian tribes scattered to the north and south, and in which many dwell to this day after their own nomadic fashion, there is no extravagance in supposing that there may have been our Accads' original point of departure. Indeed the Altai is so indissolubly connected with the origin of most Turanian nations, that many scientists prefer to call the entire Yellow Race, with all its gradations of color, "the Altaic." Their own traditions point the same way. Several of them have a pretty legend of a sort of paradise, a secluded valley somewhere in the Altai, pleasant and watered by many streams, where their forefathers either dwelt in the first place or whither they were providentially conducted to be saved from a general massacre. The valley was entirely enclosed with high rocks, steep and pathless, so that when, after several hundred years, it could no longer hold the number of its inhabitants, these began to search for an issue and found none. Then one among them, who was a smith, discovered that the rocks were almost entirely of iron. By his advice, a huge fire was made and a great many mighty bellows were brought into play, by which means a path was melted through the rocks. A tradition, by the by, which, while confirming the remark that the invention of metallurgy belongs originally to the Yellow Race in its earliest stages of development, is strangely in accordance with the name of the Biblical Tubalcain, "the forger of every cutting instrument of brass and iron." That the Accads were possessed of this distinctive accomplishment of their race is moreover made very probable by the various articles and ornaments in gold, brass and iron which are continually found in the very oldest tombs.

4. But infinitely the most precious acquisition secured to us by the unexpected revelation of this stage of remotest antiquity is a wonderfully extensive collection of prayers, invocations and other sacred texts, from which we can reconstruct, with much probability, the most primitive religion in the world—for such undoubtedly was that of the Accads. As a clear and authentic insight into the first manifestation of the religious instinct in man was just what was wanting until now, in order to enable us to follow its development from the first, crudest attempts at expression to the highest aspirations and noblest forms of worship, the value of this discovery can never be overrated. It introduces us moreover into so strange and fantastical a world as not the most imaginative of fictions can surpass.

5. The instinct of religion—"religiosity," as it has been called—is inborn to man; like the faculty of speech, it belongs to man, and to man only, of all living beings. So much so, that modern science is coming to acknowledge these two faculties as the distinctive characteristics which mark man as a being apart from and above the rest of creation. Whereas the division of all that exists upon the earth has of old been into three great classes or realms—the "mineral realm," the "vegetable realm" and the "animal realm," in which latter man was included—it is now proposed to erect the human race with all its varieties into a separate "realm," for this very reason: that man has all that animals have, and two things more which they have not—speech and religiosity, which assume a faculty of abstract thinking, observing and drawing general conclusions, solely and distinctively human. Now the very first observations of man in the most primitive stage of his existence must necessarily have awakened in him a twofold consciousness—that of power and that of helplessness. He could do many things. Small in size, weak in strength, destitute of natural clothing and weapons, acutely sensitive to pain and atmospheric changes as all higher natures are, he could kill and tame the huge and powerful animals which had the advantage of him in all these things, whose numbers and fierceness threatened him at every turn with destruction, from which his only escape would seem to have been constant cowering and hiding. He could compel the earth to bear for him choicer food than for the other beings who lived on her gifts. He could command the service of fire, the dread visitor from heaven. Stepping victoriously from one achievement to another, ever widening his sphere of action, of invention, man could not but be filled with legitimate pride. But on the other hand, he saw himself surrounded with things which he could neither account for nor subdue, which had the greatest influence on his well-being, either favorable or hostile, but which were utterly beyond his comprehension or control. The same sun which ripened his crop sometimes scorched it; the rain which cooled and fertilized his field, sometimes swamped it; the hot winds parched him and his cattle; in the marshes lurked disease and death. All these and many, many more, were evidently POWERS, and could do him great good or work him great harm, while he was unable to do either to them. These things existed, he felt their action every day of his life, consequently they were to him living Beings, alive in the same way that he was, possessed of will, for good or for evil. In short, to primitive man everything in nature was alive with an individual life, as it is to the very young child, who would not beat the chair against which he has knocked himself, and then kiss it to make friends, did he not think that it is a living and feeling being like himself. The feeling of dependence and absolute helplessness thus created must have more than balanced that of pride and self-reliance. Man felt himself placed in a world where he was suffered to live and have his share of what good things he could get, but which was not ruled by him,—in a spirit-world. Spirits around him, above him, below him,—what could he do but humble himself, confess his dependence, and pray to be spared? For surely, if those spirits existed and took enough interest in him to do him good or evil, they could hear him and might be moved by supplication. To establish a distinction between such spirits which did only harm, were evil in themselves, and those whose action was generally beneficial and only on rare occasions destructive, was the next natural step, which led as naturally to a perception of divine displeasure as the cause of such terrible manifestations and a seeking of means to avert or propitiate it. While fear and loathing were the portion of the former spirits, the essentially evil ones, love and gratitude, were the predominant feelings inspired by the latter,—feelings which, together with the ever present consciousness of dependence, are the very essence of religion, just as praise and worship are the attempts to express them in a tangible form.

6. It is this most primitive, material and unquestioning stage in the growth of religious feeling, which a large portion of the Shumiro-Accadian documents from the Royal Library at Nineveh brings before us with a force and completeness which, however much room there may still be for uncertainty in details, on the whole really amounts to more than conjecture. Much will, doubtless, be discovered yet, much will be done, but it will only serve to fill in a sketch, of which the outlines are already now tolerably fixed and authentic. The materials for this most important reconstruction are almost entirely contained in a vast collection of two hundred tablets, forming one consecutive work in three books, over fifty of which have been sifted out of the heap of rubbish at the British Museum and first deciphered by Sir Henry Rawlinson, one of the greatest, as he was the first discoverer in this field, and George Smith, whose achievements and too early death have been mentioned in a former chapter. Of the three books into which the collection is divided, one treats "of evil spirits," another of diseases, and the third contains hymns and prayers—the latter collection showing signs of a later and higher development. Out of these materials the lately deceased French scholar, Mr. Francois Lenormant, whose name has for the last fifteen years or so of his life stood in the very front of this branch of Oriental research, has been the first to reconstruct an entire picture in a book not very voluminous indeed, but which must always remain a corner-stone in the history of human culture. This book shall be our guide in the strange world we now enter.[AC]

7. To the people of Shumir and Accad, then, the universe was peopled with Spirits, whom they distributed according to its different spheres and regions. For they had formed a very elaborate and clever, if peculiar idea of what they supposed the world to be like. According to the ingenious expression of a Greek writer of the 1st century A.D. they imagined it to have the shape of an inverted round boat or bowl, the thickness of which would represent the mixture of land and water (ki-a) which we call the crust of the earth, while the hollow beneath this inhabitable crust was fancied as a bottomless pit or abyss (ge), in which dwelt many powers. Above the convex surface of the earth (ki-a) spread the sky (ana), itself divided into two regions:—the highest heaven or firmament, which, with the fixed stars immovably attached to it, revolved, as round an axis or pivot, around an immensely high mountain, which joined it to the earth as a pillar, and was situated somewhere in the far North-East—some say North—and the lower heaven, where the planets—a sort of resplendent animals, seven in number, of beneficent nature—wandered forever on their appointed path. To these were opposed seven evil demons, sometimes called "the Seven Fiery Phantoms." But above all these, higher in rank and greater in power, is the Spirit (Zi) of heaven (ana), ZI-ANA, or, as often, simply ANA—"Heaven." Between the lower heaven and the surface of the earth is the atmospheric region, the realm of IM or MERMER, the Wind, where he drives the clouds, rouses the storms, and whence he pours down the rain, which is stored in the great reservoir of Ana, in the heavenly Ocean. As to the earthly Ocean, it is fancied as a broad river, or watery rim, flowing all round the edge of the imaginary inverted bowl; in its waters dwells EA (whose name means "the House of Waters"), the great Spirit of the Earth and Waters (Zi-ki-a), either in the form of a fish, whence he is frequently called "Ea the fish," or "the Exalted Fish," or on a magnificent ship, with which he travels round the earth, guarding and protecting it. The minor spirits of earth (Anunnaki) are not much spoken of except in a body, as a sort of host or legion. All the more terrible are the seven spirits of the abyss, the MASKIM, of whom it is said that, although their seat is in the depths of the earth, yet their voice resounds on the heights also: they reside at will in the immensity of space, "not enjoying a good name either in heaven or on earth." Their greatest delight is to subvert the orderly course of nature, to cause earthquakes, inundations, ravaging tempests. Although the Abyss is their birth-place and proper sphere, they are not submissive to its lord and ruler MUL-GE ("Lord of the Abyss"). In that they are like their brethren of the lower heaven who do not acknowledge Ana's supremacy, in fact are called "spirits of rebellion," because, being originally Ana's messengers, they once "secretly plotted a wicked deed," rose against the heavenly powers, obscured the Moon, and all but hurled him from his seat. But the Maskim are ever more feared and hated, as appears from the following description, which has become celebrated for its real poetical force:

8. "They are seven! they are seven!—Seven they are in the depths of Ocean,—seven they are, disturbers of the face of Heaven.—They arise from the depths of Ocean, from hidden lurking-places.—They spread like snares.—Male they are not, female they are not.—Wives they have not, children are not born to them.—Order they know not, nor beneficence;—prayers and supplication they hear not.—Vermin grown in the bowels of the mountains—foes of Ea—they are the throne-bearers of the gods—they sit in the roads and make them unsafe.—The fiends! the fiends!—They are seven, they are seven, seven they are!

"Spirit of Heaven (Zi-ana, Ana), be they conjured!

"Spirit of Earth (Zi-ki-a, Ea), be they conjured!"

9. Besides these regular sets of evil spirits in sevens—seven being a mysterious and consecrated number—there are the hosts untold of demons which assail man in every possible form, which are always on the watch to do him harm, not only bodily, but moral in the way of civil broils and family dissensions; confusion is their work; it is they who "steal the child from the father's knee," who "drive the son from his father's house," who withhold from the wife the blessing of children; they have stolen days from heaven, which they have made evil days, that bring nothing but ill-luck and misfortune,—and nothing can keep them out: "They fall as rain from the sky, they spring from the earth,—they steal from house to house,—doors do not stop them,—bolts do not shut them out,—they creep in at the doors like serpents,—they blow in at the roof like winds." Various are their haunts: the tops of mountains, the pestilential marshes by the sea, but especially the desert. Diseases are among the most dreaded of this terrible band, and first among these NAMTAR or DIBBARA, the demon of Pestilence, IDPA (Fever), and a certain mysterious disease of the head, which must be insanity, of which it is said that it oppresses the head and holds it tight like a tiara (a heavy headdress) or "like a dark prison," and makes it confused, that "it is like a violent tempest; no one knows whence it comes, nor what is its object."

10. All these evil beings are very properly classed together under the general name of "creations of the Abyss," births of the nether world, the world of the dead. For the unseen world below the habitable earth was naturally conceived as the dwelling place of the departed spirits after death. It is very remarkable as characteristic of the low standard of moral conception which the Shumiro-Accads had attained at this stage of their development, that, although they never admitted that those who died ceased to exist altogether, there is very little to show that they imagined any happy state for them after death, not even as a reward for a righteous life, nor, on the other hand, looked to a future state for punishment of wrongs committed in this world, but promiscuously consigned their dead to the ARALI, a most dismal region which is called the "support of chaos," or, in phrase no less vague and full of mysterious awe, "the Great Land" (Ki-gal), "the Great City" (Urugal), "the spacious dwelling," "where they wander in the dark,"—a region ruled by a female divinity called by different names, but most frequently "Lady of the Great Land" (Nin-ki-gal), or "Lady of the Abyss" (Nin-ge), who may then rather be understood as Death personified, that Namtar (Pestilence) is her chief minister. The Shumiro-Accads seem to have dimly fancied that association with so many evil beings whose proper home the Arali was, must convert even the human spirits into beings almost as noxious, for one or two passages appear to imply that they were afraid of ghosts, at least on one occasion it is threatened to send the dead back into the upper world, as the direst calamity that can be inflicted.

11. As if all these terrors were not sufficient to make life a burden, the Shumiro-Accads believed in sorcerers, wicked men who knew how to compel the powers of evil to do their bidding and thus could inflict death, sickness or disasters at their pleasure. This could be done in many ways—by a look, by uttering certain words, by drinks made of herbs prepared under certain conditions and ceremonies. Nay, the power of doing harm sometimes fatally belonged even to innocent persons, who inflicted it unintentionally by their look—for the effect of "the evil eye" did not always depend on a person's own will.

12. Existence under such conditions must have been as unendurable as that of poor children who have been terrified by silly nurses into a belief in ogres and a fear of dark rooms, had there not existed real or imaginary defences against this array of horrible beings always ready to fall on unfortunate humanity in all sorts of inexplicable ways and for no other reason but their own detestable delight in doing evil. These defences could not consist in rational measures dictated by a knowledge of the laws of physical nature, since they had no notion of such laws; nor in prayers and propitiatory offerings, since one of the demons' most execrable qualities was, as we have seen, that they "knew not beneficence" and "heard not prayer and supplication." Then, if they cannot be coaxed, they must be compelled. This seems a very presumptuous assumption, but it is strictly in accordance with human instinct. It has been very truly said[AD] that "man was so conscious of being called to exercise empire over the powers of nature, that, the moment he entered into any relations with them, it was to try and subject them to his will. Only instead of studying the phenomena, in order to grasp their laws and apply them to his needs, he fancied he could, by means of peculiar practices and consecrated forms, compel the physical agents of nature to serve his wishes and purposes.... This pretension had its root in the notion which antiquity had formed of the natural phenomena. It did not see in them the consequence of unchangeable and necessary laws, always active and always to be calculated upon, but fancied them to depend on the arbitrary and varying will of the spirits and deities it had put in the place of physical agents." It follows that in a religion which peoples the universe with spirits of which the greater part are evil, magic—i.e., conjuring with words and rites, incantations, spells—must take the place of worship, and the ministers of such a religion are not priests, but conjurers and enchanters. This is exactly the state of things revealed by the great collection of texts discovered by Sir H. Rawlinson and G. Smith. They contain forms for conjuring all the different kinds of demons, even to evil dreams and nightmares, the object of most such invocations being to drive them away from the habitations of men and back to where they properly belong—the depth of the desert, the inaccessible mountain tops, and all remote, waste and uninhabited places generally, where they can range at will, and find nobody to harm.

13. Yet there are also prayers for protection and help addressed to beings conceived as essentially good and beneficent—a step marking a great advance in the moral feeling and religious consciousness of the people. Such beings—gods, in fact—were, above all, Ana and Ea, whom we saw invoked in the incantation of the Seven Maskim as "Spirit of Heaven," and "Spirit of Earth." The latter especially is appealed to as an unfailing refuge to ill-used and terrified mortals. He is imagined as possessed of all knowledge and wisdom, which he uses only to befriend and protect. His usual residence is the deep,—(hence his name, E-a, "the House of Waters")—but he sometimes travels round the earth in a magnificent ship. His very name is a terror to the evil ones. He knows the words, the spells that will break their power and compel their obedience. To him, therefore, the people looked in their need with infinite trust. Unable to cope with the mysterious dangers and snares which, as they fancied, beset them on all sides, ignorant of the means of defeating the wicked beings who, they thought, pursued them with abominable malice and gratuitous hatred, they turned to Ea. He would know. He must be asked, and he would tell.

14. But, as though bethinking themselves that Ea was a being too mighty and exalted to be lightly addressed and often disturbed, the Shumiro-Accads imagined a beneficent spirit, MERIDUG (more correctly MIRRI-DUGGA), called son of Ea and DAMKINA, (a name of Earth). Meridug's only office is to act as mediator between his father and suffering mankind. It is he who bears to Ea the suppliant's request, exposes his need sometimes in very moving words, and requests to know the remedy—if illness be the trouble—or the counter-spell, if the victim be held in the toils of witchcraft. Ea tells his son, who is then supposed to reveal the secret to the chosen instrument of assistance—of course the conjuring priest, or better, soothsayer. As most incantations are conceived on this principle, they are very monotonous in form, though frequently enlivened by the supposed dialogue between the father and son. Here is one of the more entertaining specimens. It occupies an entire tablet, but unfortunately many lines have been hopelessly injured, and have to be omitted. The text begins:

"The Disease of the Head has issued from the Abyss, from the dwelling of the Lord of the Abyss."

Then follow the symptoms and the description of the sufferer's inability to help himself. Then "Meridug has looked on his misery. He has entered the dwelling of his father Ea, and has spoken unto him:

"'My father, the Disease of the Head has issued from the Abyss.'

"A second time he has spoken unto him:

"'What he must do against it the man knows not. How shall he find healing?'

"Ea has replied to his son Meridug:

"'My son, how dost thou not know? What should I teach thee? What I know, thou also knowest. But come hither, my son Meridug. Take a bucket, fill it with water from the mouth of the rivers; impart to this water thy exalted magic power; sprinkle with it the man, son of his god, ... wrap up his head, ... and on the highway pour it out. May insanity be dispelled! that the disease of his head vanish like a phantom of the night. May Ea's word drive it out! May Damkina heal him.'"

15. Another dialogue of the same sort, in which Ea is consulted as to the means of breaking the power of the Maskim, ends by his revealing that

"The white cedar is the tree which breaks the Maskim's noxious might."

In fact the white cedar was considered an infallible defence against all spells and evil powers. Any action or ceremony described in the conjuration must of course be performed even as the words are spoken. Then there is a long one, perhaps the best preserved of all, to be recited by the sufferer, who is supposed to be under the effects of an evil spell, and from which it is evident that the words are to accompany actions performed by the conjurer. It is divided into parallel verses, of which the first runs thus:

"As this onion is being peeled of its skins, thus shall it be of the spell. The burning fire shall consume it; it shall no more be planted in a row, ... the ground shall not receive its root, its head shall contain no seed and the sun shall not take care of it;—it shall not be offered at the feast of a god or a king.—The man who has cast the evil spell, his eldest son, his wife,—the spell, the lamentations, the transgressions, the written spells, the blasphemies, the sins,—the evil which is in my body, in my flesh, in my sores,—may they all be destroyed as this onion, and may the burning fire consume them this day! May the evil spell go far away, and may I see the light again!"

Then the destruction of a date is similarly described:

"It shall not return to the bough from which it has been plucked."

The untying of a knot:

"Its threads shall not return to the stem which has produced them."

The tearing up of some wool:

"It shall not return to the back of its sheep."

The tearing of some stuff, and after each act the second verse:

"The man who has cast the spell," etc.

is repeated.

16. It is devoutly to be hoped, for the patients' sake, that treatments like these took effect on the disease, for they got no other. Diseases being conceived as personal demons who entered a man's body of their own accord or under compulsion from powerful sorcerers, and illness being consequently considered as a kind of possession, clearly the only thing to do was to drive out the demon or break the spell with the aid of the beneficent Ea and his son. If this intervention was of no avail, nothing remained for the patient but to get well as he could, or to die. This is why there never was a science of medicine in the proper sense in Chaldea, even as late as three or four hundred years B.C., and the Greek travellers who then visited Babylon must have been not a little shocked at the custom they found there of bringing desperately sick persons out of the houses with their beds and exposing them in the streets, when any passer-by could approach them, inquire into the disease and suggest some remedy—which was sure to be tried as a last chance. This extraordinary experiment was of course not resorted to until all known forms of conjuration had been gone through and had proved inefficient.

17. The belief that certain words and imprecations could break the power of demons or sorcerers must have naturally led to the notion that to wear such imprecations, written on some substance or article, always about one's person must be a continual defence against them; while on the other hand, words of invocation to the beneficent spirits and images representing them, worn in the same way, must draw down on the wearer those spirits' protection and blessing. Hence the passion for talismans. They were of various kinds: strips of stuff, with the magic words written on them, to be fastened to the body, or the clothes, or articles of household furniture, were much used; but small articles of clay or hard stone were in greater favor on account of their durability. As houses could be possessed by evil spirits just as well as individuals, talismans were placed in different parts of them for protection, and this belief was so enduring that small clay figures of gods were found in Assyrian palaces under thresholds—as in the palace of Khorsabad, by Botta—placed there "to keep from it fiends and enemies." It has been discovered in this manner that many of the sculptures which adorned the Assyrian palaces and temples were of talismanic nature. Thus the winged bulls placed at the gateways were nothing but representations of an Accadian class of guardian spirits,—the Kirubu, Hebrew Kerubim, of which we have made Cherub, Cherubim—who were supposed to keep watch at entrances, even at that of the Arali, while some sculptures on which demons, in the shape of hideous monsters, are seen fighting each other, are, so to speak, imprecations in stone, which, if translated into words, would mean: "May the evil demons stay outside, may they assail and fight each other,"—as, in that case, they would clearly have no leisure to assail the inhabitants of the dwelling. That these sculptures really were regarded as talismans and expected to guard the inmates from harm, is abundantly shown by the manner in which they are mentioned in several inscriptions, down to a very late date. Thus Esarhaddon, one of the last kings of Assyria (about 700 B.C.), says, after describing a very sumptuous palace which he had built:—"I placed in its gates bulls and colossi, who, according to their fixed command, against the wicked turn themselves; they protect the footsteps, making peace to be upon the path of the king their creator."



18. The cylinder seals with their inscriptions and engraved figures were mostly also talismans of like nature; which must be the reason why so many are found in graves, tied to the dead person's wrist by a string—evidently as a protection against the fiends which the departed spirit was expected to meet. The magic power was of course conferred on all talismans by the words which the conjurer spoke over them with the necessary ceremonies. One such long incantation is preserved entire. It is designed to impart to the talisman the power of keeping the demons from all parts of the dwelling, which are singly enumerated, with the consequences to the demons who would dare to trespass: those who steal into gutters, remove bolts or hinges, shall be broken like an earthen jug, crushed like clay; those who overstep the wooden frame of the house shall be clipped of their wings; those who stretch their neck in at the window, the window shall descend and cut their throat. The most original in this class of superstitions was that which, according to Lenormant, consisted in the notion that all these demons were of so unutterably ugly a form and countenance, that they must fly away terrified if they only beheld their own likeness. As an illustration of this principle he gives an incantation against "the wicked Namtar." It begins with a highly graphic description of the terrible demon, who is said to "take man captive like an enemy," to "burn him like a flame," to "double him up like a bundle," to "assail man, although having neither hand nor foot, like a noose." Then follows the usual dialogue between Ea and Meridug, (in the identical words given above), and Ea at length reveals the prescription: "Come hither, my son Meridug. Take mud of the Ocean and knead out of it a likeness of him, (the Namtar.) Lay down the man, after thou hast purified him; lay the image on his bare abdomen, impart to it my magic power and turn its face westward, that the wicked Namtar, who dwells in his body, may take up some other abode. Amen." The idea is that the Namtar, on beholding his own likeness, will flee from it in dismay!



19. To this same class belongs a small bronze statuette, which is to be seen in the Louvre. Mr. Lenormant thus describes it: "It is the image of a horrible demon, standing, with the body of a dog, the talons of an eagle, arms ending in a lion's paws, the tail of a scorpion, the head of a skeleton, but with eyes, and a goat's horns, and with four large wings at the back, unfolded. A ring placed at the back of the head served to hang the figure up. Along the back is an inscription in the Accadian language, informing us that this pretty creature is the Demon of the South-west Wind, and is to be placed at the door or window. For in Chaldea the South-west Wind comes from the deserts of Arabia, its burning breath consumes everything and produces the same ravages as the Simoon in Africa. Therefore this particular talisman is most frequently met with. Our museums contain many other figures of demons, used as talismans to frighten away the evil spirits they were supposed to represent. One has the head of a goat on a disproportionately long neck; another shows a hyena's head, with huge open mouth, on a bear's body with lion's paws." On the principle that possession is best guarded against by the presence of beneficent spirits, the exorcisms—i.e., forms of conjuring designed to drive the evil demons out of a man or dwelling—are usually accompanied with a request to good spirits to enter the one or the other, instead of the wicked ones who have been ejected. The supreme power which breaks that of all incantations, talismans, conjuring rites whatever, is, it would appear, supposed to reside in a great, divine name,—possibly a name of Ea himself. At all events, it is Ea's own secret. For even in his dialogues with Meridug, when entreated for this supreme aid in desperate cases, he is only supposed to impart it to his son to use against the obdurate demons and thereby crush their power, but it is not given, so that the demons are only threatened with it, but it is not actually uttered in the course of the incantations.



20. Not entirely unassisted did Ea pursue his gigantic task of protection and healing. Along with him invocations are often addressed to several other spirits conceived as essentially good divine beings, whose beneficent influence is felt in many ways. Such was Im, the Storm-Wind, with its accompanying vivifying showers; such are the purifying and wholesome Waters, the Rivers and Springs which feed the earth; above all, such were the Sun and Fire, also the Moon, objects of double reverence and gratitude because they dispel the darkness of night, which the Shumiro-Accads loathed and feared excessively, as the time when the wicked demons are strongest and the power of bad men for weaving deadly spells is greatest. The third Book of the Collection of Magic Texts is composed almost entirely of hymns to these deities—as well as to Ea and Meridug—which betray a somewhat later stage in the nation's religious development, by the poetical beauty of some of the fragments, and especially by a purer feeling of adoration and a higher perception of moral goodness, which are absent from the oldest incantations.

21. At noon, when the sun has reached the highest point in its heavenly course, the earth lies before it without a shadow; all things, good or bad, are manifest; its beams, after dispelling the unfriendly gloom, pierce into every nook and cranny, bringing into light all ugly things that hide and lurk; the evil-doer cowers and shuns its all-revealing splendor, and, to perform his accursed deeds, waits the return of his dark accomplice, night. What wonder then that to the Shumiro-Accads UD, the Sun in all its midday glory, was a very hero of protection, the source of truth and justice, the "supreme judge in Heaven and on earth," who "knows lie from truth," who knows the truth that is in the soul of man. The hymns to Ud that have been deciphered are full of beautiful images. Take for instance the following:—

"O Sun,[AE] I have called unto thee in the bright heavens. In the shadow of the cedar art thou;" (i.e., it is thou who makest the cedar to cast its shadow, holy and auspicious as the tree itself.) "Thy feet are on the summits.... The countries have wished for thee, they have longed for thy coming, O Lord! Thy radiant light illumines all countries.... Thou makest lies to vanish, thou destroyest the noxious influence of portents, omens, spells, dreams and evil apparitions; thou turnest wicked plots to a happy issue...."

This is both true and finely expressed. For what most inveterate believer in ghosts and apparitions ever feared them by daylight? and the last touch shows much moral sense and observation of the mysterious workings of a beneficent power which often not merely defeats evil but even turns it into good. There is splendid poetry in the following fragment describing the glory of sunrise:—

"O Sun! thou hast stepped forth from the background of heaven, thou hast pushed back the bolts of the brilliant heaven,—yea, the gate of heaven. O Sun! above the land thou hast raised thy head! O Sun! thou hast covered the immeasurable space of heaven and countries!"

Another hymn describes how, at the Sun's appearance in the brilliant portals of the heavens, and during his progress to their highest point, all the great gods turn to his light, all the good spirits of heaven and earth gaze up to his face, surround him joyfully and reverently, and escort him in solemn procession. It needs only to put all these fragments into fine verse to make out of them a poem which will be held beautiful even in our day, when from our very childhood we learn to know the difference between good and poor poetry, growing up, as we do, on the best of all ages and all countries.

22. When the sun disappeared in the West, sinking rapidly, and diving, as it were, into the very midst of darkness, the Shumiro-Accads did not fancy him as either asleep or inactive, but on the contrary as still engaged in his everlasting work. Under the name of NIN-DAR, he travels through the dreary regions ruled by Mul-ge and, his essence being light, he combats the powers of darkness in their own home, till He comes out of it, a triumphant hero, in the morning. Nin-dar is also the keeper of the hidden treasures of the earth—its metals and precious stones, because, according to Mr. Lenormant's ingenious remark, "they only wait, like him, the moment of emerging out of the earth, to emit a bright radiancy." This radiancy of precious stones, which is like a concentration of light in its purest form, was probably the reason why they were in such general use as talismans, quite as much as their hardness and durability.

23. But while the Sun accomplishes his nightly underground journey, men would be left a prey to mortal terrors in the upper world, deprived of light, their chief defence against the evil brood of darkness, were it not for his substitute, Fire, who is by nature also a being of light, and, as such, the friend of men, from whose paths and dwellings he scares not only wild beasts and foes armed with open violence, but the far more dangerous hosts of unseen enemies, both demons and spells cast by wicked sorcerers. It is in this capacity of protector that the god GIBIL (Fire) is chiefly invoked. In one very complete hymn he is addressed thus:—

"Thou who drivest away the evil Maskim, who furtherest the well-being of life, who strikest the breast of the wicked with terror,—Fire, the destroyer of foes, dread weapon which drivest away Pestilence."

This last attribute would show that the Shumiro-Accads had noticed the hygienic properties of fire, which does indeed help to dispel miasmas on account of the strong ventilation which a great blaze sets going. Thus at a comparatively late epoch, some 400 years B.C., a terrible plague broke out at Athens, the Greek city, and Hippocrates, a physician of great genius and renown, who has been called "the Father of Medicine," tried to diminish the contagion by keeping huge fires continually blazing at different points of the city. It is the same very correct idea which made men invoke Gibil as he who purifies the works of man. He is also frequently called "the protector of the dwelling, of the family," and praised for "creating light in the house of darkness," and for bringing peace to all creation. Over and above these claims to gratitude, Gibil had a special importance in the life of a people given to the works of metallurgy, of which fire is the chief agent: "It is thou," says one hymn, "who mixest tin and copper, it is thou who purifiest silver and gold." Now the mixture of tin and copper produces bronze, the first metal which has been used to make weapons and tools of, in most cases long before iron, which is much more difficult to work, and as the quality of the metal depends on the proper mixture of the two ingredients, it is but natural that the aid of the god Fire should have been specially invoked for the operation. But Fire is not only a great power on earth, it is also, in the shape of Lightning, one of the dreadest and most mysterious powers of the skies, and as such sometimes called son of Ana (Heaven), or, in a more roundabout way, "the Hero, son of the Ocean"—meaning the celestial Ocean, the great reservoir of rains, from which the lightning seems to spring, as it flashes through the heavy showers of a Southern thunder storm. In whatever shape he appear, and whatever his functions, Gibil is hailed as an invariably beneficent and friendly being.

24. When the feeling of helplessness forced on man by his position in the midst of nature takes the form of a reverence for and dependence on beings whom he conceives of as essentially good, a far nobler religion and far higher moral tone are the immediate consequence. This conception of absolute goodness sprang from the observation that certain beings or spirits—like the Sun, Fire, the Thunderstorm—though possessing the power of doing both good and harm, used it almost exclusively for the benefit of men. This position once firmly established, the conclusion naturally followed, that if these good beings once in awhile sent down a catastrophe or calamity,—if the Sun scorched the fields or the Thunderstorm swamped them, if the wholesome North Wind swept away the huts and broke down the trees—it must be in anger, as a mark of displeasure—in punishment. By what could man provoke the displeasure of kind and beneficent beings? Clearly by not being like them, by doing not good, but evil. And what is evil? That which is contrary to the nature of the good spirits: doing wrong and harm to men; committing sins and wicked actions. To avoid, therefore, provoking the anger of those good but powerful spirits, so terrible in its manifestations, it is necessary to try to please them, and that can be done only by being like them,—good, or at least striving to be so, and, when temptation, ignorance, passion or weakness of will have betrayed man into a transgression, to confess it, express regret for the offence and an intention not to offend again, in order to obtain forgiveness and be spared. A righteous life, then, prayer and repentance are the proper means of securing divine favor or mercy. It is evident that a religion from which such lessons naturally spring is a great improvement on a belief in beings who do good or evil indiscriminately, indeed prefer doing evil, a belief which cannot teach a distinction between moral right and wrong, or a rational distribution of rewards or punishment, nor consequently inculcate the feeling of duty and responsibility, without which goodness as a matter of principle is impossible and a reliable state of society unattainable.

25. This higher and therefore later stage of moral and religious development is very perceptible in the third book of the Magic Collection. With the appreciation of absolute goodness, conscience has awakened, and speaks with such insistence and authority that the Shumiro-Accad, in the simplicity of his mind, has earnestly imagined it to be the voice of a personal and separate deity, a guardian spirit belonging to each man, dwelling within him and living his life. It is a god—sometimes even a divine couple, both "god and goddess, pure spirits"—who protects him from his birth, yet is not proof against the spells of sorcerers and the attacks of the demons, and even can be compelled to work evil in the person committed to its care, and frequently called therefore "the son of his god," as we saw above, in the incantation against the Disease of the Head. The conjuration or exorcism which drives out the demon, of course restores the guardian spirit to its own beneficent nature, and the patient not only to bodily well-being, but also to peace of mind. That is what is desired, when a prayer for the cure of a sick or possessed person ends with the words: "May he be placed again in the gracious hands of his god!" When therefore a man is represented as speaking to "his god" and confessing to him his sin and distress, it is only a way of expressing that silent self-communing of the soul, in which it reviews its own deficiencies, forms good resolutions and prays to be released from the intolerable burden of sin. There are some most beautiful prayers of this sort in the collection. They have been called "the Penitential Psalms," from their striking likeness to some of those psalms in which King David confesses his iniquities and humbles himself before the Lord. The likeness extends to both spirit and form, almost to words. If the older poet, in his spiritual groping, addresses "his god and goddess," the higher, better self which he feels within him and feels to be divine—his Conscience, instead of the One God and Lord, his feeling is not less earnest, his appeal not less pure and confiding. He confesses his transgression, but pleads ignorance and sues for mercy. Here are some of the principal verses, of which each is repeated twice, once addressed to "my god," and the second time to "my goddess." The title of the Psalm is: "The complaints of the repentant heart. Sixty-five verses in all."

26. "My Lord, may the anger of his heart be allayed! May the fool attain understanding! The god who knows the unknown, may he be conciliated! The goddess who knows the unknown, may she be conciliated!—I eat the food of wrath and drink the waters of anguish.... O my god, my transgressions are very great, very great my sins.... I transgress, and know it not. I sin, and know it not. I feed on transgressions, and know it not. I wander on wrong paths, and know it not.—The Lord, in the wrath of his heart, has overwhelmed me with confusion.... I lie on the ground, and none reaches a hand to me. I am silent and in tears, and none takes me by the hand. I cry out, and there is none that hears me. I am exhausted, oppressed, and none releases me.... My god, who knowest the unknown, be merciful!... My goddess, who knowest the unknown, be merciful!... How long, O my god?... How long, O my goddess?... Lord, thou wilt not repulse thy servant. In the midst of the stormy waters, come to my assistance, take me by the hand! I commit sins—turn them into blessedness! I commit transgressions—let the wind sweep them away! My blasphemies are very many—rend them like a garment!... God who knowest the unknown,[AF] my sins are seven times seven,—forgive my sins!..."

27. The religious feeling once roused to this extent, it is not to be wondered at that in some invocations the distress or disease which had formerly been taken as a gratuitous visitation, begins to be considered in the light of a divine punishment, even though the afflicted person be the king himself. This is very evident from the concluding passage of a hymn to the Sun, in which it is the conjurer who speaks on behalf of the patient, while presenting an offering:—

"O Sun, leave not my uplifted hands unregarded!—Eat his food, refuse not his sacrifice, bring back his god to him, to be a support unto his hand!—May his sin, at thy behest, be forgiven him, his misdeed be forgotten!—May his trouble leave him! May he recover from his illness!—Give to the king new vital strength.... Escort the king, who lies at thy feet!—Also me, the conjurer, thy respectful servant!"

28. There is another hymn of the same kind, not less remarkable for its artistic and regular construction than for its beauty of feeling and diction. The penitent speaks five double lines, and the priest adds two more, as though endorsing the prayer and supporting it with the weight of his own sacred character. This gives very regular strophes, of which, unfortunately, only two have been well preserved:—

Penitent.—"I, thy servant, full of sighs, I call to thee. Whoever is beset with sin, his ardent supplication thou acceptest. If thou lookest on a man with pity, that man liveth. Ruler of all, mistress of mankind! Merciful one, to whom it is good to turn, who dost receive sighs!" Priest.—"While his god and his goddess are wroth with him he calls on thee. Thy countenance turn on him, take hold of his hand."

Penitent.—"Besides thee there is no deity to lead in righteousness. Kindly look on me, accept my sighs. Speak: how long? and let thine heart be appeased. When, O Lady, will thy countenance turn on me? Even like doves I moan, I feed on sighs." Priest.—"His heart is full of woe and trouble, and full of sighs. Tears he sheds and breaks out into lamentation."[AG]

29. Such is a not incomplete outline of this strange and primitive religion, the religion of a people whose existence was not suspected twenty-five years ago, yet which claims, with the Egyptians and the Chinese, the distinction of being one of the oldest on earth, and in all probability was older than both. This discovery is one of the most important conquests of modern science, not only from its being highly interesting in itself, but from the light it throws on innumerable hitherto obscure points in the history of the ancient world, nay, on many curious facts which reach down to our own time. Thus, the numerous Turanian tribes which exist in a wholly or half nomadic condition in the immense plains of Eastern and South-eastern Russia, in the forests and wastes of Siberia, on the steppes and highlands of Central Asia, have no other religion now than this of the old Shumiro-Accads, in its earliest and most material shape. Everything to them is a spirit or has a spirit of its own; they have no worship, no moral teaching, but only conjuring, sorcerers, not priests. These men are called Shamans and have great influence among the tribes. The more advanced and cultivated Turanians, like the Mongols and Mandchous, accord to one great Spirit the supremacy over all others and call that Spirit which they conceive as absolutely good, merciful and just, "Heaven," just as the Shumiro-Accads invoked "Ana." This has been and still is the oldest national religion of the Chinese. They say "Heaven" wherever we would say "God," and with the same idea of loving adoration and reverent dread, which does not prevent them from invoking the spirit of every hill, river, wind or forest, and numbering among this host also the souls of the deceased. This clearly corresponds to the second and higher stage of the Accadian religion, and marks the utmost limit which the Yellow Race have been able to attain in spiritual life. True, the greater part of the Chinese now have another religion; they are Buddhists; while the Turks and the great majority of the Tatars, Mongols and Mandchous, not to speak of other less important divisions, are Mussulmans. But both Buddhism and Mahometanism are foreign religions, which they have borrowed, adopted, not worked out for themselves. Here then we are also met by that fatal law of limitation, which through all ages seems to have said to the men of yellow skin and high cheek-bones, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no further." Thus it was in Chaldea. The work of civilization and spiritual development begun by the people of Shumir and Accad was soon taken out of their hands and carried on by newcomers from the east, those descendants of Noah, who "found a plain in the land of Shinar and dwelt there."

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.

Professor Louis Dyer, of Harvard University, has attempted a rendering into English verse of the famous incantation of the Seven Maskim. The result of the experiment is a translation most faithful in the spirit and main features, if not always literal; and which, by his kind permission, we here offer to our readers.

A CHARM.

I.

Seven are they, they are seven; In the caverns of ocean they dwell, They are clothed in the lightnings of heaven, Of their growth the deep waters can tell; Seven are they, they are seven.

II.

Broad is their way and their course is wide, Where the seeds of destruction they sow, O'er the tops of the hills where they stride, To lay waste the smooth highways below,— Broad is their way and their course is wide.

III.

Man they are not, nor womankind, For in fury they sweep from the main, And have wedded no wife but the wind, And no child have begotten but pain,— Man they are not, nor womankind.

IV.

Fear is not in them, not awe; Supplication they heed not, nor prayer, For they know no compassion nor law, And are deaf to the cries of despair,— Fear is not in them, not awe.

V.

Cursed they are, they are cursed, They are foes to wise Ea's great name; By the whirlwind are all things dispersed On the paths of the flash of their flame,— Cursed they are, they are cursed.

VI.

Spirit of Heaven, oh, help! Help, oh, Spirit of Earth! They are seven, thrice said they are seven; For the gods they are Bearers of Thrones, But for men they are Breeders of Dearth And the authors of sorrows and moans. They are seven, thrice said they are seven. Spirit of Heaven, oh, help! Help, oh, Spirit of Earth!

FOOTNOTES:

[AC] "La Magie et la Divination chez les Chaldeens," 1874-5. German translation of it, 1878.

[AD] Alfred Maury, "La Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquite et au Moyen-age." Introduction, p. 1.

[AE] "UD" not being a proper name, but the name of the sun in the language of Shumir and Accad, it can be rendered in translation by "Sun," with a capital.

[AF] Another and more recent translator renders this line: "God who knowest I knew not." Whichever rendering is right, the thought is beautiful and profound.

[AG] This hymn is given by H. Zimmern, as the text to a dissertation on the language and grammar.



IV.

CUSHITES AND SEMITES.—EARLY CHALDEAN HISTORY.

1. We have just seen that the hymns and prayers which compose the third part of the great Magic Collection really mark a later and higher stage in the religious conceptions of the Turanian settlers of Chaldea, the people of Shumir and Accad. This improvement was not entirely due to a process of natural development, but in a great measure to the influence of that other and nobler race, who came from the East. When the priestly historian of Babylon, Berosus, calls the older population "men of foreign race," it is because he belonged himself to that second race, who remained in the land, introduced their own superior culture, and asserted their supremacy to the end of Babylon. The national legends have preserved the memory of this important event, which they represent as a direct divine revelation. Ea, the all-wise himself, it was believed, had appeared to men and taught them things human and divine. Berosus faithfully reports the legend, but seems to have given the God's name "Ea-Han" ("Ea the Fish") under the corrupted Greek form of OANNES. This is the narrative, of which we already know the first line:

"There was originally at Babylon a multitude of men of foreign race who had colonized Chaldea, and they lived without order, like animals. But in the first year" (meaning the first year of the new order of things, the new dispensation) "there appeared, from out of the Erythrean Sea (the ancient Greek name for the Persian Gulf) where it borders upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with reason, who was called OANNES. The whole body of the animal was that of a fish, but under the fish's head he had another head, and also feet below, growing out of his fish's tail, similar to those of a man; also human speech, and his image is preserved to this day. This being used to spend the whole day amidst men, without taking any food, and he gave them an insight into letters, and sciences, and every kind of art; he taught them how to found cities, to construct temples, to introduce laws and to measure land; he showed them how to sow seeds and gather in crops; in short, he instructed them in everything that softens manners and makes up civilization, so that from that time no one has invented anything new. Then, when the sun went down, this monstrous Oannes used to plunge back into the sea and spend the night in the midst of the boundless waves, for he was amphibious."

2. The question, Who were the bringers of this advanced civilization? has caused much division among the most eminent scholars. Two solutions are offered. Both being based on many and serious grounds and supported by illustrious names, and the point being far from settled yet, it is but fair to state them both. The two greatest of German assyriologists, Professors Eberhard Schrader and Friedrich Delitzsch, and the German school which acknowledges them as leaders, hold that the bringers of the new and more perfect civilization were Semites—descendants of Shem, i.e., people of the same race as the Hebrews—while the late Francois Lenormant and his followers contend that they were Cushites in the first instance,—i.e., belonged to that important family of nations which we find grouped, in Chapter X. of Genesis, under the name of Cush, himself a son of Ham—and that the Semitic immigration came second. As the latter hypothesis puts forward, among other arguments, the authority of the Biblical historians, and moreover involves the destinies of a very numerous and vastly important branch of ancient humanity, we will yield to it the right of precedence.



3. The name "HAM" signifies "brown, dark" (not "black"). Therefore, to speak of certain nations as "sons of Ham," is to say that they belonged to "the Dark Race." Yet, originally, this great section of Noah's posterity was as white of color as the other two. It seems to have first existed as a separate race in a region not very distant from the high table-land of Central Asia, the probable first cradle of mankind. That division of this great section which again separated and became the race of Cush, appears to have been drawn southwards by reasons which it is, of course, impossible to ascertain. It is easier to guess at the route they must have taken along the HINDU CUSH,[AH] a range of mountains which must have been to it a barrier in the west, and which joins the western end of the Himalaya, the mightiest mountain-chain in the world. The break between the Hindu-Cush and the Himalaya forms a mountain pass, just at the spot where the river INDUS (most probably the PISCHON of Gen., Ch. II.) turns abruptly to the south, to water the rich plains of India. Through this pass, and following the course of the river, further Cushite detachments must have penetrated into that vast and attractive peninsula, even to the south of it, where they found a population mostly belonging to the Black branch of humanity, so persistently ignored by the writer of Chap. X. Hundreds of years spent under a tropical clime and intermarriage with the Negro natives altered not only the color of their skin, but also the shape of their features. So that when Cushite tribes, with the restless migratory spirit so characteristic of all early ages, began to work their way back again to the north, then to the west, along the shores of the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, they were both dark-skinned and thick-lipped, with a decided tendency towards the Negro type, lesser or greater according to the degree of mixture with the inferior race. That this type was foreign to them is proved by the facility with which their features resumed the nobler cast of the white races wherever they stayed long enough among these, as was the case in Chaldea, in Arabia, in the countries of Canaan, whither many of these tribes wandered at various times.

4. Some Cushite detachments, who reached the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, crossed over into Africa, and settling there amidst the barbarous native negro tribes, formed a nation which became known to its northern neighbors, the Egyptians, to the Hebrews, and throughout the ancient East under its own proper name of CUSH, and whose outward characteristics came, in the course of time, so near to the pure Negro type as to be scarcely recognizable from it. This is the same nation which, to us moderns, is better known under the name of ETHIOPIANS, given to it by the Greeks, as well as to the eastern division of the same race. The Egyptians themselves were another branch of the same great section of humanity, represented in the genealogy of Chap. X. by the name of MIZRAIM, second son of Ham. These must have come from the east along the Persian Gulf, then across Northern Arabia and the Isthmus of Suez. In the color and features of the Egyptians the mixture with black races is also noticeable, but not enough to destroy the beauty and expressiveness of the original type, at all events far less than in their southern neighbors, the Ethiopians, with whom, moreover, they were throughout on the worst of terms, whom they loathed and invariably designated under the name of "vile Cush."

5. A third and very important branch of the Hamite family, the CANAANITES, after reaching the Persian Gulf, and probably sojourning there some time, spread, not to the south, but to the west, across the plains of Syria, across the mountain chain of LEBANON and to the very edge of the Mediterranean Sea, occupying all the land which later became Palestine, also to the north-west, as far as the mountain chain of TAURUS. This group was very numerous, and broken up into a great many peoples, as we can judge from the list of nations given in Chap. X. (v. 15-18) as "sons of Canaan." In its migrations over this comparatively northern region, Canaan found and displaced not black natives, but Turanian nomadic tribes, who roamed at large over grassy wildernesses and sandy wastes and are possibly to be accounted as the representatives of that portion of the race which the biblical historian embodies in the pastoral names of Jabal and Jubal—(Gen. iv., 20-22)—"The father of such as dwell in tents and have cattle," and "the father of all such as handle the harp and pipe." In which case the Turanian settlers and builders of cities would answer to Tubalcain, the smith and artificer. The Canaanites, therefore, are those among the Hamites who, in point of color and features, have least differed from their kindred white races, though still sufficiently bronzed to be entitled to the name of "sons of Ham," i.e., "belonging to the dark-skinned race."

6. Migrating races do not traverse continents with the same rapidity as marching armies. The progress is slow, the stations are many. Every station becomes a settlement, sometimes the beginning of a new nation—so many landmarks along the way. And the distance between the starting-point and the furthest point reached by the race is measured not only by thousands of miles, but also by hundreds and hundreds of years; only the space can be actually measured; while the time can be computed merely by conjecture. The route from the south of India, along the shore of Malabar, the Persian Gulf, across the Arabian deserts, then down along the Red Sea and across the straits into Africa, is of such tremendous length that the settlements which the Cushite race left scattered along it must have been more than usually numerous. According to the upholders of a Cushite colonization of Chaldea, one important detachment appears to have taken possession of the small islands along the eastern shore of the Persian Gulf and to have stayed there for several centuries, probably choosing these island homes on account of their seclusion and safety from invasion. There, unmolested and undisturbed, they could develop a certain spirit of abstract speculation to which their natural bent inclined them. They were great star-gazers and calculators—two tastes which go well together, for Astronomy cannot exist without Mathematics. But star-gazing is also favorable to dreaming, and the Cushite islanders had time for dreams. Thoughts of heavenly things occupied them much; they worked out a religion beautiful in many ways and full of deep sense; their priests dwelt in communities or colleges, probably one on every island, and spent their time not only in scientific study and religious contemplation, but also in the more practical art of government, for there do not appear as yet to have been any kings among them.

7. But there came a time when the small islands were overcrowded with the increased population, and detachments began to cross the water and land at the furthest point of the Gulf, in the land of the great rivers. Here they found a people not unpractised in several primitive arts, and possessed of some important fundamental inventions—writing, irrigation by means of canals—but deplorably deficient in spiritual development, and positively barbarous in the presence of an altogether higher culture. The Cushites rapidly spread through the land of Shumir and Accad, and taught the people with whom they afterwards, as usual, intermarried, until both formed but one nation—with this difference, that towards the north of Chaldea the Cushite element became predominant, while in the south numbers remained on the side of the Turanians. Whether this result was attained altogether peacefully or was preceded by a period of resistance and fighting, we have no means of ascertaining. If there was such a period, it cannot have lasted long, for intellect was on the side of the newcomers, and that is a power which soon wins the day. At all events the final fusion must have been complete and friendly, since the old national legend reported by Berosus cleverly combines the two elements, by attributing the part of teacher and revealer to the Shumiro-Accad's own favorite divine being Ea, while it is not impossible that it alludes to the coming of the Cushites in making the amphibious Oannes rise out of the Persian Gulf, "where it borders on Chaldea." The legend goes on to say that Oannes set down his revelations in books which he consigned into the keeping of men, and that several more divine animals of the same kind continued to appear at long intervals. Who knows but the latter strange detail may have been meant to allude fantastically to the arrival of successive Cushite colonies? In the long run of time, of course all such meaning would be forgotten and the legend remain as a miraculous and inexplicable incident.

8. It would be vain to attempt to fix any dates for events which took place in such remote antiquity, in the absence of any evidence or document that might be grasped. Yet, by close study of facts, by laborious and ingenious comparing of later texts, of every scrap of evidence furnished by monuments, of information contained in the fragments of Berosus and of other writers, mostly Greek, it has been possible, with due caution, to arrive at some approximative dates, which, after all, are all that is needed to classify things in an order intelligible and correct in the main. Even should further discoveries and researches arrive at more exact results, the gain will be comparatively small. At such a distance, differences of a couple of centuries do not matter much. When we look down a long line of houses or trees, the more distant ones appear to run together, and we do not always see where it ends—yet we can perfectly well pursue its direction. The same with the so-called double stars in astronomy: they are stars which, though really separated by thousands of miles, appear as one on account of the immense distance between them and our eye, and only the strongest telescope lenses show them to be separate bodies, though still close together. Yet this is sufficient to assign them their place so correctly on the map of the heavens, that they do not disturb the calculations in which they are included. The same kind of perspective applies to the history of remote antiquity. As the gloom which has covered it so long slowly rolls back before the light of scientific research, we begin to discern outlines and landmarks, at first so dim and wavering as rather to mislead than to instruct; but soon the searcher's eye, sharpened by practice, fixes them sufficiently to bring them into connection with the later and more fully illumined portions of the eternally unrolling picture. Chance, to which all discoverers are so much indebted, frequently supplies such a landmark, and now and then one so firm and distinct as to become a trustworthy centre for a whole group.

9. The annals of the Assyrian king Asshurbanipal (the founder of the great Library at Nineveh) have established beyond a doubt the first positive date that has been secured for the History of Chaldea. That king was for a long time at war with the neighboring kingdom of ELAM, and ended by conquering and destroying its capital, SHUSHAN (Susa), after carrying away all the riches from the royal palace and all the statues from the great temple. This happened in the year 645 B.C. In the inscriptions in which he records this event, the king informs us that in that temple he found a statue of the Chaldean goddess NANA, which had been carried away from her own temple in the city of URUKH (Erech, now Warka) by a king of Elam of the name of KHUDUR-NANKHUNDI, who invaded the land of Accad 1635 years before, and that he, Asshurbanipal, by the goddess's own express command, took her from where she had dwelt in Elam, "a place not appointed her," and reinstated her in her own sanctuary "which she had delighted in." 1635 added to 645 make 2280, a date not to be disputed. Now if a successful Elamite invasion in 2280 found in Chaldea famous sanctuaries to desecrate, the religion to which these sanctuaries belonged, that of the Cushite, or Semitic colonists, must have been established in the country already for several, if not many, centuries. Indeed, quite recent discoveries show that it had been so considerably over a thousand years, so that we cannot possibly accept a date later than 4000 B.C. for the foreign immigration. The Shumiro-Accadian culture was too firmly rooted then and too completely worked out—as far as it went—to allow less than about 1000 years for its establishment. This takes us as far back as 5000 B.C.—a pretty respectable figure, especially when we think of the vista of time which opens behind it, and for which calculation fairly fails us. For if the Turanian settlers brought the rudiments of that culture from the highlands of Elam, how long had they sojourned there before they descended into the plains? And how long had it taken them to reach that station on their way from the race's mountain home in the far Northeast, in the Altai valleys?

10. However that may be, 5000 B.C. is a moderate and probable date. But ancient nations were not content with such, when they tried to locate and classify their own beginnings. These being necessarily obscure and only vaguely shadowed out in traditions which gained in fancifulness and lost in probability with every succeeding generation that received them and handed them down to the next, they loved to magnify them by enshrouding them in the mystery of innumerable ages. The more appalling the figures, the greater the glory. Thus we gather from some fragments of Berosus that, according to the national Chaldean tradition, there was an interval of over 259,000 years between the first appearance of Oannes and the first king. Then come ten successive kings, each of whom reigns a no less extravagant number of years (one 36,000, another 43,000, even 64,000; 10,800 being the most modest figure), till the aggregate of all these different periods makes up the pretty sum total of 691,200 years, supposed to have elapsed from the first appearance of Oannes to the Deluge. It is so impossible to imagine so prodigious a number of years or couple with it anything at all real, that we might just as well substitute for such a figure the simpler "very, very long ago," or still better, the approved fairy tale beginning, "There was once upon a time, ..." It conveys quite as definite a notion, and would, in such a case, be the more appropriate, that all a nation's most marvellous traditions, most fabulous legends, are naturally placed in those stupendously remote ages which no record could reach, no experience control. Although these traditions and legends generally had a certain body of actual truth and dimly remembered fact in them, which might still be apparent to the learned and the cultivated few, the ignorant masses of the people swallowed the thing whole, as real history, and found things acknowledged as impossible easy to believe, for the simple reason that "it was so very long ago!" A Chaldean of Alexander's time certainly did not expect to meet a divine Man-Fish in his walks along the sea-shore, but—there was no knowing what might or might not have happened seven hundred thousand years ago! In the legend of the six successive apparitions under the first ten long-lived kings, he would not have descried the simple sense so lucidly set forth by Mr. Maspero, one of the most distinguished of French Orientalists:—"The times preceding the Deluge represented an experimental period, during which mankind, being as yet barbarous, had need of divine assistance to overcome the difficulties with which it was surrounded. Those times were filled up with six manifestations of the deity, doubtless answering to the number of sacred books in which the priests saw the most complete expression of revealed law."[AI] This presents another and more probable explanation of the legend than the one suggested above, (end of Sec. 7); but there is no more actual proof of the one than of the other being the correct one.

11. If Chaldea was in after times a battle-ground of nations, it was in the beginning a very nursery and hive of peoples. The various races in their migrations must necessarily have been attracted and arrested by the exceeding fertility of its soil, which it is said, in the times of its highest prosperity and under proper conditions of irrigation, yielded two hundredfold return for the grain it received. Settlement must have followed settlement in rapid succession. But the nomadic element was for a long time still very prevalent, and side by side with the builders of cities and tillers of fields, shepherd tribes roamed peacefully over the face of the land, tolerated and unmolested by the permanent population, with which they mixed but warily, occasionally settling down temporarily, and shifting their settlements as safety or advantage required it,—or wandering off altogether from that common halting-place, to the north, and west, and south-west. This makes it very plain why Chaldea is given as the land where the tongues became confused and the second separation of races took place.

12. Of those principally nomadic tribes the greatest part did not belong, like the Cushites or Canaanites, to the descendants of Ham, "the Dark," but to those of SHEM, whose name, signifying "Glory, Renown," stamps him as the eponymous ancestor of that race which has always firmly believed itself to be the chosen one of God. They were Semites. When they arrived on the plains of Chaldea, they were inferior in civilization to the people among whom they came to dwell. They knew nothing of city arts and had all to learn. They did learn, for superior culture always asserts its power,—even to the language of the Cushite settlers, which the latter were rapidly substituting for the rude and poor Turanian idiom of Shumir and Accad. This language, or rather various dialects of it, were common to most Hamitic and Semitic tribes, among whom that from which the Hebrews sprang brought it to its greatest perfection. The others worked it into different kindred dialects—the Assyrian, the Aramaic or Syrian, the Arabic—according to their several peculiarities. The Phoenicians of the sea-shore, and all the Canaanite nations, also spoke languages belonging to the same family, and therefore classed among the so-called Semitic tongues. Thus it has come to pass that philology,—or the Science of Languages,—adopted a wrong name for that entire group, calling the languages belonging to it, "Semitic," while, in reality, they are originally "Hamitic." The reason is that the Hamitic origin of those important languages which have been called Semitic these hundred years had not been discovered until very lately, and to change the name now would produce considerable confusion.

13. Most of the Semitic tribes who dwelt in Chaldea adopted not only the Cushite language, but the Cushite culture and religion. Asshur carried all three northward, where the Assyrian kingdom arose out of a few Babylonian colonies, and Aram westward to the land which was afterwards called Southern Syria, and where the great city of Damascus long flourished and still exists. But there was one tribe of higher spiritual gifts than the others. It was not numerous, for through many generations it consisted of only one great family governed by its own eldest chief or patriarch. It is true that such a family, with the patriarch's own children and children's children, its wealth of horses, camels, flocks of sheep, its host of servants and slaves, male and female, represented quite a respectable force; Abraham could muster three hundred eighteen armed and trained servants who had been born in his own household. This particular tribe seems to have wandered for some time on the outskirts of Chaldea and in the land itself, as indicated by the name given to its eponym in Chap. X.: ARPHAXAD (more correctly ARPHAKSHAD), corrupted from AREPH-KASDIM, which means, "bordering on the Chaldeans," or perhaps "boundaries"—in the sense of "land"—of the Chaldeans. Generation after generation pushed further westward, traversed the land of Shinar, crossed the Euphrates and reached the city of Ur, in or near which the tribe dwelt many years.

14. Ur was then the greatest city of Southern Chaldea. The earliest known kings of Shumir resided in it, and besides that, it was the principal commercial mart of the country. For, strange as it may appear when we look on a modern map, Ur, the ruins of which are now 150 miles from the sea, was then a maritime city, with harbor and ship docks. The waters of the Gulf reached much further inland than they do now. There was then a distance of many miles between the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates, and Ur lay very near the mouth of the latter river. Like all commercial and maritime cities, it was the resort not only of all the different races which dwelt in the land itself, but also of foreign traders. The active intellectual life of a capital, too, which was at the same time a great religious centre and the seat of a powerful priesthood, must of necessity have favored interchange of ideas, and have exerted an influence on that Semitic tribe of whom the Bible tells us that it "went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan," led by the patriarch Terah and his son Abraham (Genesis xi. 31). The historian of Genesis here, as throughout the narrative, does not mention any date whatever for the event he relates; nor does he hint at the cause of this removal. On the first of these points the study of Chaldean cuneiform monuments throws considerable light, while the latter does not admit of more than guesses—of which something hereafter.

15. Such is a broad and cursory outline of the theory according to which Cushite immigrations preceded the arrival of the Semites in the land of Shumir and Accad. Those who uphold it give several reasons for their opinion, such as that the Bible several times mentions a Cush located in the East and evidently different from the Cush which has been identified as Ethiopia; that, in Chap. X. of Genesis (8-12), Nimrod, the legendary hero, whose empire at first was in "the land of Shinar," and who is said to have "gone forth out of that land into Assyria," is called a son of Cush; that the most ancient Greek poets knew of "Ethiopians" in the far East as opposed to those of the South—and several more. Those scholars who oppose this theory dismiss it wholesale. They will not admit the existence of a Cushite element or migration in the East at all, and put down the expressions in the Bible as simple mistakes, either of the writers or copyists. According to them, there was only one immigration in the land of Shumir and Accad, that of the Semites, achieved through many ages and in numerous instalments. The language which superseded the ancient Shumiro-Accadian idiom is to them a Semitic one in the directest and most exclusive sense; the culture grafted on that of the earlier population is by them called purely "Semitic;" while their opponents frequently use the compound designation of "Cushito-Semitic," to indicate the two distinct elements of which, to them, it appears composed. It must be owned that the anti-Cushite opinion is gaining ground. Yet the Cushite theory cannot be considered as disposed of, only "not proven,"—or not sufficiently so, and therefore in abeyance and fallen into some disfavor. With this proviso we shall adopt the word "Semitic," as the simpler and more generally used.

16. It is only with the rise of Semitic culture in Southern Mesopotamia that we enter on a period which, however remote, misty, and full of blanks, may still be called, in a measure, "historical," because there is a certain number of facts, of which contemporary monuments give positive evidence. True, the connection between those facts is often not apparent; their causes and effects are frequently not to be made out save by more or less daring conjectures; still there are numerous landmarks of proven fact, and with these real history begins. No matter if broad gaps have to be left open or temporarily filled with guesses. New discoveries are almost daily turning up, inscriptions, texts, which unexpectedly here supply a missing link, there confirm or demolish a conjecture, establish or correct dates which had long been puzzles or suggested on insufficient foundations. In short, details may be supplied as yet brokenly and sparingly, but the general outline of the condition of Chaldea may be made out as far back as forty centuries before Christ.

17. Of one thing there can be no doubt: that our earliest glimpse of the political condition of Chaldea shows us the country divided into numerous small states, each headed by a great city, made famous and powerful by the sanctuary or temple of some particular deity, and ruled by a patesi, a title which is now thought to mean priest-king, i.e., priest and king in one. There can be little doubt that the beginning of the city was everywhere the temple, with its college of ministering priests, and that the surrounding settlement was gradually formed by pilgrims and worshippers. That royalty developed out of the priesthood is also more than probable, and consequently must have been, in its first stage, a form of priestly rule, and, in a great measure, subordinate to priestly influence. There comes a time when for the title of patesi is substituted that of "king" simply—a change which very possibly indicates the assumption by the kings of a more independent attitude towards the class from which their power originally sprang. It is noticeable that the distinction between the Semitic newcomers and the indigenous Shumiro-Accadians continues long to be traceable in the names of the royal temple-builders, even after the new Semitic idiom, which we call the Assyrian, had entirely ousted the old language—a process which must have taken considerable time, for it appears, and indeed stands to reason, that the newcomers, in order to secure the wished for influence and propagate their own culture, at first not only learned to understand but actually used themselves the language of the people among whom they came, at least in their public documents. This it is that explains the fact that so many inscriptions and tablets, while written in the dialect of Shumir or Accad, are Semitic in spirit and in the grade of culture they betray. Furthermore, even superficial observation shows that the old language and the old names survive longest in Shumir,—the South. From this fact it is to be inferred with little chance of mistake that the North,—the land of Accad,—was earlier Semitized, that the Semitic immigrants established their first headquarters in that part of the country, that their power and influence thence spread to the South.

18. Fully in accordance with these indications, the first grand historical figure that meets us at the threshold of Chaldean history, dim with the mists of ages and fabulous traditions, yet unmistakably real, is that of the Semite SHARRUKIN, king of Accad—or AGADE, as the great Northern city came to be called—more generally known in history under the corrupt modern reading of SARGON, and called Sargon I., "the First," to distinguish him from another monarch of the same name who was found to have reigned many centuries later. As to the city of Agade, it is no other than the city of Accad mentioned in Genesis x., 10. It was situated close to the Euphrates on a wide canal just opposite Sippar, so that in time the two cities came to be considered as one double city, and the Hebrews always called it "the two Sippars"—SEPHARVAIM, which is often spoken of in the Bible. It was there that Sharrukin established his rule, and a statue was afterwards raised to him there, the inscription on which, making him speak, as usual, in the first person, begins with the proud declaration: "Sharrukin, the mighty king, the king of Agade, am I." Yet, although his reforms and conquests were of lasting importance, and himself remained one of the favorite heroes of Chaldean tradition, he appears to have been an adventurer and usurper. Perhaps he was, for this very reason, all the dearer to the popular fancy, which, in the absence of positive facts concerning his birth and origin, wove around them a halo of romance, and told of him a story which must be nearly as old as mankind, for it has been told over and over again, in different countries and ages, of a great many famous kings and heroes. This of Sharrukin is the oldest known version of it, and the inscription on his statue puts it into the king's own mouth. It makes him say that he knew not his father, and that his mother, a princess, gave him birth in a hiding-place, (or "an inaccessible place"), near the Euphrates, but that his family were the rulers of the land. "She placed me in a basket of rushes," the king is further made to say; "with bitumen the door of my ark she closed. She launched me on the river, which drowned me not. The river bore me along; to Akki, the water-carrier, it brought me. Akki, the water-carrier, in the tenderness of his heart lifted me up. Akki, the water-carrier, as his own child brought me up. Akki, the water-carrier, made me his gardener. And in my gardenership the goddess Ishtar loved me...."

19. Whatever his origin and however he came by the royal power, Sargon was a great monarch. It is said that he undertook successful expeditions into Syria, and a campaign into Elam; that with captives of the conquered races he partly peopled his new capital, Agade, where he built a palace and a magnificent temple; that on one occasion he was absent three years, during which time he advanced to the very shores of the Mediterranean, which he calls "the sea of the setting sun," and where he left memorial records of his deeds, and returned home in triumph, bringing with him immense spoils. The inscription contains only the following very moderate mention of his military career: "For forty-five years the kingdom I have ruled. And the black-head race (Accadian) I have governed. In multitudes of bronze chariots I rode over rugged lands. I governed the upper countries. Three times to the coast of the (Persian) sea I advanced...."[AJ]



20. This Sharrukin must not be confounded with another king of the same name, who reigned also in Agade, some 1800 years later (about 2000 B.C.), and in whose time was completed and brought into definite shape a vast religious reform which had been slowly working itself out ever since the Semitic and Accadian elements began to mix in matters of spiritual speculation and worship. What was the result of the amalgamation will form the subject of the next chapter. Suffice it here to say that the religion of Chaldea in the form which it assumed under the second Sharrukin remained fixed forever, and when Babylonian religion is spoken of, it is that which is understood by that name. The great theological work demanded a literary undertaking no less great. The incantations and magic forms of the first, purely Turanian, period had to be collected and put in order, as well as the hymns and prayers of the second period, composed under the influence of a higher and more spiritual religious feeling. But all this literature was in the language of the older population, while the ruling class—the royal houses and the priesthood—were becoming almost exclusively Semitic. It was necessary, therefore, that they should study the old language and learn it so thoroughly as not only to understand and read it, but to be able to use it, in speaking and writing. For that purpose Sargon not only ordered the ancient texts, when collected and sorted, to be copied on clay tablets with the translation—either between the lines, or on opposite columns—into the now generally used modern Semitic language, which we may as well begin to call by its usual name, Assyrian, but gave directions for the compilation of grammars and vocabularies,—the very works which have enabled the scholars of the present day to arrive at the understanding of that prodigiously ancient tongue which, without such assistance, must have remained a sealed book forever.

21. Such is the origin of the great collection in three books and two hundred tablets, the contents of which made the subject of the preceding chapter. To this must be added another great work, in seventy tablets, in Assyrian, on astrology, i.e., the supposed influence of the heavenly bodies, according to their positions and conjunctions, on the fate of nations and individuals and on the course of things on earth generally—an influence which was firmly believed in; and probably yet a third work, on omens, prodigies and divination. To carry out these extensive literary labors, to treasure the results worthily and safely, Sargon II. either founded or greatly enlarged the library of the priestly college at Urukh (Erech), so that this city came to be called "the City of Books." This repository became the most important one in all Chaldea, and when, fourteen centuries later, the Assyrian Asshurbanipal sent his scribes all over the country, to collect copies of the ancient, sacred and scientific texts for his own royal library at Nineveh, it was at Erech that they gathered their most abundant harvest, being specially favored there by the priests, who were on excellent terms with the king after he had brought back from Shushan and restored to them the statue of their goddess Nana. Agade thus became the headquarters, as it were, of the Semitic influence and reform, which spread thence towards the South, forming a counter-current to the culture of Shumir, which had steadily progressed from the Gulf northward.