Contents
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PREFACE
In these lectures an attempt is made, not so much to restate familiar facts, as to accommodate them to new and supplementary evidence which has been published in America since the outbreak of the war. But even without the excuse of recent discovery, no apology would be needed for any comparison or contrast of Hebrew tradition with the mythological and legendary beliefs of Babylon and Egypt. Hebrew achievements in the sphere of religion and ethics are only thrown into stronger relief when studied against their contemporary background.The bulk of our new material is furnished by some early texts, written towards the close of the third millennium B.C. They incorporate traditions which extend in unbroken outline from their own period into the remote ages of the past, and claim to trace the history of man back to his creation. They represent the early national traditions of the Sumerian people, who preceded the Semites as the ruling race in Babylonia; and incidentally they necessitate a revision of current views with regard to the cradle of Babylonian civilization. The most remarkable of the new documents is one which relates in poetical narrative an account of the Creation, of Antediluvian history, and of the Deluge. It thus exhibits a close resemblance in structure to the corresponding Hebrew traditions, a resemblance that is not shared by the Semitic-Babylonian Versions at present known. But in matter the Sumerian tradition is more primitive than any of the Semitic versions. In spite of the fact that the text appears to have reached us in a magical setting, and to some extent in epitomized form, this early document enables us to tap the stream of tradition at a point far above any at which approach has hitherto been possible.
Though the resemblance of early Sumerian tradition to that of the Hebrews is striking, it furnishes a still closer parallel to the summaries preserved from the history of Berossus. The huge figures incorporated in the latter's chronological scheme are no longer to be treated as a product of Neo-Babylonian speculation; they reappear in their original surroundings in another of these early documents, the Sumerian Dynastic List. The sources of Berossus had inevitably been semitized by Babylon; but two of his three Antediluvian cities find their place among the five of primitive Sumerian belief, and two of his ten Antediluvian kings rejoin their Sumerian prototypes. Moreover, the recorded ages of Sumerian and Hebrew patriarchs are strangely alike. It may be added that in Egypt a new fragment of the Palermo Stele has enabled us to verify, by a very similar comparison, the accuracy of Manetho's sources for his prehistoric period, while at the same time it demonstrates the way in which possible inaccuracies in his system, deduced from independent evidence, may have arisen in remote antiquity. It is clear that both Hebrew and Hellenistic traditions were modelled on very early lines.
Thus our new material enables us to check the age, and in some measure the accuracy, of the traditions concerning the dawn of history which the Greeks reproduced from native sources, both in Babylonia and Egypt, after the conquests of Alexander had brought the Near East within the range of their intimate acquaintance. The third body of tradition, that of the Hebrews, though unbacked by the prestige of secular achievement, has, through incorporation in the canons of two great religious systems, acquired an authority which the others have not enjoyed. In re-examining the sources of all three accounts, so far as they are affected by the new discoveries, it will be of interest to observe how the same problems were solved in antiquity by very different races, living under widely divergent conditions, but within easy reach of one another. Their periods of contact, ascertained in history or suggested by geographical considerations, will prompt the further question to what extent each body of belief was evolved in independence of the others. The close correspondence that has long been recognized and is now confirmed between the Hebrew and the Semitic-Babylonian systems, as compared with that of Egypt, naturally falls within the scope of our enquiry.
Excavation has provided an extraordinarily full archaeological commentary to the legends of Egypt and Babylon; and when I received the invitation to deliver the Schweich Lectures for 1916, I was reminded of the terms of the Bequest and was asked to emphasize the archaeological side of the subject. Such material illustration was also calculated to bring out, in a more vivid manner than was possible with purely literary evidence, the contrasts and parallels presented by Hebrew tradition. Thanks to a special grant for photographs from the British Academy, I was enabled to illustrate by means of lantern slides many of the problems discussed in the lectures; and it was originally intended that the photographs then shown should appear as plates in this volume. But in view of the continued and increasing shortage of paper, it was afterwards felt to be only right that all illustrations should be omitted. This very necessary decision has involved a recasting of certain sections of the lectures as delivered, which in its turn has rendered possible a fuller treatment of the new literary evidence. To the consequent shifting of interest is also due a transposition of names in the title. On their literary side, and in virtue of the intimacy of their relation to Hebrew tradition, the legends of Babylon must be given precedence over those of Egypt.
For the delay in the appearance of the volume I must plead the pressure of other work, on subjects far removed from archaeological study and affording little time and few facilities for a continuance of archaeological and textual research. It is hoped that the insertion of references throughout, and the more detailed discussion of problems suggested by our new literary material, may incline the reader to add his indulgence to that already extended to me by the British Academy.
L. W. KING.
LEGENDS OF BABYLON AND EGYPT
IN RELATION TO HEBREW TRADITION
LECTURE I—EGYPT, BABYLON, AND PALESTINE, AND SOME TRADITIONAL ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION
At the present moment most of us have little time or thought to spare for subjects not connected directly or indirectly with the war. We have put aside our own interests and studies; and after the war we shall all have a certain amount of leeway to make up in acquainting ourselves with what has been going on in countries not yet involved in the great struggle. Meanwhile the most we can do is to glance for a moment at any discovery of exceptional interest that may come to light.The main object of these lectures will be to examine certain Hebrew traditions in the light of new evidence which has been published in America since the outbreak of the war. The evidence is furnished by some literary texts, inscribed on tablets from Nippur, one of the oldest and most sacred cities of Babylonia. They are written in Sumerian, the language spoken by the non-Semitic people whom the Semitic Babylonians conquered and displaced; and they include a very primitive version of the Deluge story and Creation myth, and some texts which throw new light on the age of Babylonian civilization and on the area within which it had its rise. In them we have recovered some of the material from which Berossus derived his dynasty of Antediluvian kings, and we are thus enabled to test the accuracy of the Greek tradition by that of the Sumerians themselves. So far then as Babylonia is concerned, these documents will necessitate a re-examination of more than one problem.
The myths and legends of ancient Egypt are also to some extent involved. The trend of much recent anthropological research has been in the direction of seeking a single place of origin for similar beliefs and practices, at least among races which were bound to one another by political or commercial ties. And we shall have occasion to test, by means of our new data, a recent theory of Egyptian influence. The Nile Valley was, of course, one the great centres from which civilization radiated throughout the ancient East; and, even when direct contact is unproved, Egyptian literature may furnish instructive parallels and contrasts in any study of Western Asiatic mythology. Moreover, by a strange coincidence, there has also been published in Egypt since the beginning of the war a record referring to the reigns of predynastic rulers in the Nile Valley. This, like some of the Nippur texts, takes us back to that dim period before the dawn of actual history, and, though the information it affords is not detailed like theirs, it provides fresh confirmation of the general accuracy of Manetho's sources, and suggests some interesting points for comparison.
But the people with whose traditions we are ultimately concerned are the Hebrews. In the first series of Schweich Lectures, delivered in the year 1908, the late Canon Driver showed how the literature of Assyria and Babylon had thrown light upon Hebrew traditions concerning the origin and early history of the world. The majority of the cuneiform documents, on which he based his comparison, date from a period no earlier than the seventh century B.C., and yet it was clear that the texts themselves, in some form or other, must have descended from a remote antiquity. He concluded his brief reference to the Creation and Deluge Tablets with these words: "The Babylonian narratives are both polytheistic, while the corresponding biblical narratives (Gen. i and vi-xi) are made the vehicle of a pure and exalted monotheism; but in spite of this fundamental difference, and also variations in detail, the resemblances are such as to leave no doubt that the Hebrew cosmogony and the Hebrew story of the Deluge are both derived ultimately from the same original as the Babylonian narratives, only transformed by the magic touch of Israel's religion, and infused by it with a new spirit."(1) Among the recently published documents from Nippur we have at last recovered one at least of those primitive originals from which the Babylonian accounts were derived, while others prove the existence of variant stories of the world's origin and early history which have not survived in the later cuneiform texts. In some of these early Sumerian records we may trace a faint but remarkable parallel with the Hebrew traditions of man's history between his Creation and the Flood. It will be our task, then, to examine the relations which the Hebrew narratives bear both to the early Sumerian and to the later Babylonian Versions, and to ascertain how far the new discoveries support or modify current views with regard to the contents of those early chapters of Genesis.
(1) Driver, Modern Research as illustrating the Bible (The
Schweich Lectures, 1908), p. 23.
I need not remind you that Genesis is the book of Hebrew origins, and that
its contents mark it off to some extent from the other books of the Hebrew
Bible. The object of the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua is to describe
in their origin the fundamental institutions of the national faith and to
trace from the earliest times the course of events which led to the Hebrew
settlement in Palestine. Of this national history the Book of Genesis
forms the introductory section. Four centuries of complete silence lie
between its close and the beginning of Exodus, where we enter on the
history of a nation as contrasted with that of a family.(1) While Exodus
and the succeeding books contain national traditions, Genesis is largely
made up of individual biography. Chapters xii-l are concerned with the
immediate ancestors of the Hebrew race, beginning with Abram's migration
into Canaan and closing with Joseph's death in Egypt. But the aim of the
book is not confined to recounting the ancestry of Israel. It seeks also
to show her relation to other peoples in the world, and probing still
deeper into the past it describes how the earth itself was prepared for
man's habitation. Thus the patriarchal biographies are preceded, in
chapters i-xi, by an account of the original of the world, the beginnings
of civilization, and the distribution of the various races of mankind. It
is, of course, with certain parts of this first group of chapters that
such striking parallels have long been recognized in the cuneiform texts.
(1) Cf., e.g., Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical
Commentary on Genesis (1912), p. ii f.; Driver, The Book
of Genesis, 10th ed. (1916), pp. 1 ff.; Ryle, The Book of
Genesis (1914), pp. x ff.
In approaching this particular body of Hebrew traditions, the necessity
for some caution will be apparent. It is not as though we were dealing
with the reported beliefs of a Malayan or Central Australian tribe. In
such a case there would be no difficulty in applying a purely objective
criticism, without regard to ulterior consequences. But here our own
feelings are involved, having their roots deep in early associations. The
ground too is well trodden; and, had there been no new material to
discuss, I think I should have preferred a less contentious theme. The new
material is my justification for the choice of subject, and also the fact
that, whatever views we may hold, it will be necessary for us to
assimilate it to them. I shall have no hesitation in giving you my own
reading of the evidence; but at the same time it will be possible to
indicate solutions which will probably appeal to those who view the
subject from more conservative standpoints. That side of the discussion
may well be postponed until after the examination of the new evidence in
detail. And first of all it will be advisable to clear up some general
aspects of the problem, and to define the limits within which our
criticism may be applied.
It must be admitted that both Egypt and Babylon bear a bad name in Hebrew tradition. Both are synonymous with captivity, the symbols of suffering endured at the beginning and at the close of the national life. And during the struggle against Assyrian aggression, the disappointment at the failure of expected help is reflected in prophecies of the period. These great crises in Hebrew history have tended to obscure in the national memory the part which both Babylon and Egypt may have played in moulding the civilization of the smaller nations with whom they came in contact. To such influence the races of Syria were, by geographical position, peculiarly subject. The country has often been compared to a bridge between the two great continents of Asia and Africa, flanked by the sea on one side and the desert on the other, a narrow causeway of highland and coastal plain connecting the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates.(1) For, except on the frontier of Egypt, desert and sea do not meet. Farther north the Arabian plateau is separated from the Mediterranean by a double mountain chain, which runs south from the Taurus at varying elevations, and encloses in its lower course the remarkable depression of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, and the 'Arabah. The Judaean hills and the mountains of Moab are merely the southward prolongation of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, and their neighbourhood to the sea endows this narrow tract of habitable country with its moisture and fertility. It thus formed the natural channel of intercourse between the two earliest centres of civilization, and was later the battle-ground of their opposing empires.
(1) See G. A. Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy
Land, pp. 5 ff., 45 ff., and Myres, Dawn of History, pp.
137 ff.; and cf. Hogarth, The Nearer East, pp. 65 ff., and
Reclus, Nouvelle Géographie universelle, t. IX, pp. 685 ff.
The great trunk-roads of through communication run north and south, across
the eastern plateaus of the Haurân and Moab, and along the coastal plains.
The old highway from Egypt, which left the Delta at Pelusium, at first
follows the coast, then trends eastward across the plain of Esdraelon,
which breaks the coastal range, and passing under Hermon runs northward
through Damascus and reaches the Euphrates at its most westerly point.
Other through tracks in Palestine ran then as they do to-day, by Beesheba
and Hebron, or along the 'Arabah and west of the Dead Sea, or through Edom
and east of Jordan by the present Hajj route to Damascus. But the great
highway from Egypt, the most westerly of the trunk-roads through
Palestine, was that mainly followed, with some variant sections, by both
caravans and armies, and was known by the Hebrews in its southern course
as the "Way of the Philistines" and farther north as the "Way of the
East".
The plain of Esraelon, where the road first trends eastward, has been the battle-ground for most invaders of Palestine from the north, and though Egyptian armies often fought in the southern coastal plain, they too have battled there when they held the southern country. Megiddo, which commands the main pass into the plain through the low Samaritan hills to the southeast of Carmel, was the site of Thothmes III's famous battle against a Syrian confederation, and it inspired the writer of the Apocalypse with his vision of an Armageddon of the future. But invading armies always followed the beaten track of caravans, and movements represented by the great campaigns were reflected in the daily passage of international commerce.
With so much through traffic continually passing within her borders, it may be matter for surprise that far more striking evidence of its cultural effect should not have been revealed by archaeological research in Palestine. Here again the explanation is mainly of a geographical character. For though the plains and plateaus could be crossed by the trunk-roads, the rest of the country is so broken up by mountain and valley that it presented few facilities either to foreign penetration or to external control. The physical barriers to local intercourse, reinforced by striking differences in soil, altitude, and climate, while they precluded Syria herself from attaining national unity, always tended to protect her separate provinces, or "kingdoms," from the full effects of foreign aggression. One city-state could be traversed, devastated, or annexed, without in the least degree affecting neighbouring areas. It is true that the population of Syria has always been predominantly Semitic, for she was on the fringe of the great breeding-ground of the Semitic race and her landward boundary was open to the Arabian nomad. Indeed, in the whole course of her history the only race that bade fair at one time to oust the Semite in Syria was the Greek. But the Greeks remained within the cities which they founded or rebuilt, and, as Robertson Smith pointed out, the death-rate in Eastern cities habitually exceeds the birth-rate; the urban population must be reinforced from the country if it is to be maintained, so that the type of population is ultimately determined by the blood of the peasantry.(1) Hence after the Arab conquest the Greek elements in Syria and Palestine tended rapidly to disappear. The Moslem invasion was only the last of a series of similar great inroads, which have followed one another since the dawn of history, and during all that time absorption was continually taking place from desert tribes that ranged the Syrian border. As we have seen, the country of his adoption was such as to encourage the Semitic nomad's particularism, which was inherent in his tribal organization. Thus the predominance of a single racial element in the population of Palestine and Syria did little to break down or overstep the natural barriers and lines of cleavage.
(1) See Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 12
f.; and cf. Smith, Hist. Geogr., p. 10 f.
These facts suffice to show why the influence of both Egypt and Babylon
upon the various peoples and kingdoms of Palestine was only intensified at
certain periods, when ambition for extended empire dictated the reduction
of her provinces in detail. But in the long intervals, during which there
was no attempt to enforce political control, regular relations were
maintained along the lines of trade and barter. And in any estimate of the
possible effect of foreign influence upon Hebrew thought, it is important
to realize that some of the channels through which in later periods it may
have acted had been flowing since the dawn of history, and even perhaps in
prehistoric times. It is probable that Syria formed one of the links by
which we may explain the Babylonian elements that are attested in
prehistoric Egyptian culture.(1) But another possible line of advance may
have been by way of Arabia and across the Red Sea into Upper Egypt.
(1) Cf. Sumer and Akkad, pp. 322 ff.; and for a full
discussion of the points of resemblance between the early
Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations, see Sayce, The
Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions, chap. iv, pp.
101 ff.
The latter line of contact is suggested by an interesting piece of
evidence that has recently been obtained. A prehistoric flint knife, with
a handle carved from the tooth of a hippopotamus, has been purchased
lately by the Louvre,(1) and is said to have been found at Gebel el-'Arak
near Naga' Hamâdi, which lies on the Nile not far below Koptos, where an
ancient caravan-track leads by Wâdi Hammâmât to the Red Sea. On one side
of the handle is a battle-scene including some remarkable representations
of ancient boats. All the warriors are nude with the exception of a loin
girdle, but, while one set of combatants have shaven heads or short hair,
the others have abundant locks falling in a thick mass upon the shoulder.
On the other face of the handle is carved a hunting scene, two hunters
with dogs and desert animals being arranged around a central boss. But in
the upper field is a very remarkable group, consisting of a personage
struggling with two lions arranged symmetrically. The rest of the
composition is not very unlike other examples of prehistoric Egyptian
carving in low relief, but here attitude, figure, and clothing are quite
un-Egyptian. The hero wears a sort of turban on his abundant hair, and a
full and rounded beard descends upon his breast. A long garment clothes
him from the waist and falls below the knees, his muscular calves ending
in the claws of a bird of prey. There is nothing like this in prehistoric
Egyptian art.
(1) See Bénédite, "Le couteau de Gebel al-'Arak", in
Foundation Eugène Piot, Mon. et. Mém., XXII. i. (1916).
Perhaps Monsieur Bénédite is pressing his theme too far when he compares
the close-cropped warriors on the handle with the shaven Sumerians and
Elamites upon steles from Telloh and Susa, for their loin-girdles are
African and quite foreign to the Euphrates Valley. And his suggestion that
two of the boats, flat-bottomed and with high curved ends, seem only to
have navigated the Tigris and Euphrates,(1) will hardly command
acceptance. But there is no doubt that the heroic personage upon the other
face is represented in the familiar attitude of the Babylonian hero
Gilgamesh struggling with lions, which formed so favourite a subject upon
early Sumerian and Babylonian seals. His garment is Sumerian or Semitic
rather than Egyptian, and the mixture of human and bird elements in the
figure, though not precisely paralleled at this early period, is not out
of harmony with Mesopotamian or Susan tradition. His beard, too, is quite
different from that of the Libyan desert tribes which the early Egyptian
kings adopted. Though the treatment of the lions is suggestive of
proto-Elamite rather than of early Babylonian models, the design itself is
unmistakably of Mesopotamian origin. This discovery intensifies the
significance of other early parallels that have been noted between the
civilizations of the Euphrates and the Nile, but its evidence, so far as
it goes, does not point to Syria as the medium of prehistoric intercourse.
Yet then, as later, there can have been no physical barrier to the use of
the river-route from Mesopotamia into Syria and of the tracks thence
southward along the land-bridge to the Nile's delta.
(1) Op. cit., p. 32.
In the early historic periods we have definite evidence that the eastern
coast of the Levant exercised a strong fascination upon the rulers of both
Egypt and Babylonia. It may be admitted that Syria had little to give in
comparison to what she could borrow, but her local trade in wine and oil
must have benefited by an increase in the through traffic which followed
the working of copper in Cyprus and Sinai and of silver in the Taurus.
Moreover, in the cedar forests of Lebanon and the north she possessed a
product which was highly valued both in Egypt and the treeless plains of
Babylonia. The cedars procured by Sneferu from Lebanon at the close of the
IIIrd Dynasty were doubtless floated as rafts down the coast, and we may
see in them evidence of a regular traffic in timber. It has long been
known that the early Babylonian king Sharru-kin, or Sargon of Akkad, had
pressed up the Euphrates to the Mediterranean, and we now have information
that he too was fired by a desire for precious wood and metal. One of the
recently published Nippur inscriptions contains copies of a number of his
texts, collected by an ancient scribe from his statues at Nippur, and from
these we gather additional details of his campaigns. We learn that after
his complete subjugation of Southern Babylonia he turned his attention to
the west, and that Enlil gave him the lands "from the Upper Sea to the
Lower Sea", i.e. from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Fortunately
this rather vague phrase, which survived in later tradition, is restated
in greater detail in one of the contemporary versions, which records that
Enlil "gave him the upper land, Mari, Iarmuti, and Ibla, as far as the
Cedar Forest and the Silver Mountains".(1)
(1) See Poebel, Historical Texts (Univ. of Penns. Mus.
Publ., Bab. Sect., Vol. IV, No. 1, 1914), pp. 177 f., 222
ff.
Mari was a city on the middle Euphrates, but the name may here signify the
district of Mari which lay in the upper course of Sargon's march. Now we
know that the later Sumerian monarch Gudea obtained his cedar beams from
the Amanus range, which he names Amanum and describes as the "cedar
mountains".(1) Doubtless he felled his trees on the eastern slopes of the
mountain. But we may infer from his texts that Sargon actually reached the
coast, and his "Cedar Forest" may have lain farther to the south, perhaps
as far south as the Lebanon. The "Silver Mountains" can only be identified
with the Taurus, where silver mines were worked in antiquity. The
reference to Iarmuti is interesting, for it is clearly the same place as
Iarimuta or Iarimmuta, of which we find mention in the Tell el-Amarna
letters. From the references to this district in the letters of Rib-Adda,
governor of Byblos, we may infer that it was a level district on the
coast, capable of producing a considerable quantity of grain for export,
and that it was under Egyptian control at the time of Amenophis IV.
Hitherto its position has been conjecturally placed in the Nile Delta, but
from Sargon's reference we must probably seek it on the North Syrian or
possibly the Cilician coast. Perhaps, as Dr. Poebel suggests, it was the
plain of Antioch, along the lower course and at the mouth of the Orontes.
But his further suggestion that the term is used by Sargon for the whole
stretch of country between the sea and the Euphrates is hardly probable.
For the geographical references need not be treated as exhaustive, but as
confined to the more important districts through which the expedition
passed. The district of Ibla which is also mentioned by Narâm-Sin and
Gudea, lay probably to the north of Iarmuti, perhaps on the southern
slopes of Taurus. It, too, we may regard as a district of restricted
extent rather than as a general geographical term for the extreme north of
Syria.
(1) Thureau-Dangin, Les inscriptions de Sumer de d'Akkad,
p. 108 f., Statue B, col. v. 1. 28; Germ. ed., p. 68 f.
It is significant that Sargon does not allude to any battle when
describing this expedition, nor does he claim to have devastated the
western countries.(1) Indeed, most of these early expeditions to the west
appear to have been inspired by motives of commercial enterprise rather
than of conquest. But increase of wealth was naturally followed by
political expansion, and Egypt's dream of an Asiatic empire was realized
by Pharaohs of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The fact that Babylonian should then
have been adopted as the medium of official intercourse in Syria points to
the closeness of the commercial ties which had already united the
Euphrates Valley with the west. Egyptian control had passed from Canaan at
the time of the Hebrew settlement, which was indeed a comparatively late
episode in the early history of Syria. Whether or not we identify the
Khabiri with the Hebrews, the character of the latter's incursion is
strikingly illustrated by some of the Tell el-Amarna letters. We see a
nomad folk pressing in upon settled peoples and gaining a foothold here
and there.(2)
(1) In some versions of his new records Sargon states that
"5,400 men daily eat bread before him" (see Poebel, op.
cit., p. 178); though the figure may be intended to convey
an idea of the size of Sargon's court, we may perhaps see in
it a not inaccurate estimate of the total strength of his
armed forces.
(2) See especially Professor Burney's forthcoming commentary
on Judges (passim), and his forthcoming Schweich Lectures
(now delivered, in 1917).
The great change from desert life consists in the adoption of agriculture,
and when once that was made by the Hebrews any further advance in economic
development was dictated by their new surroundings. The same process had
been going on, as we have seen, in Syria since the dawn of history, the
Semitic nomad passing gradually through the stages of agricultural and
village life into that of the city. The country favoured the retention of
tribal exclusiveness, but ultimate survival could only be purchased at the
cost of some amalgamation with their new neighbours. Below the surface of
Hebrew history these two tendencies may be traced in varying action and
reaction. Some sections of the race engaged readily in the social and
commercial life of Canaanite civilization with its rich inheritance from
the past. Others, especially in the highlands of Judah and the south, at
first succeeded in keeping themselves remote from foreign influence.
During the later periods of the national life the country was again
subjected, and in an intensified degree, to those forces of political
aggression from Mesopotamia and Egypt which we have already noted as
operating in Canaan. But throughout the settled Hebrew community as a
whole the spark of desert fire was not extinguished, and by kindling the
zeal of the Prophets it eventually affected nearly all the white races of
mankind.
In his Presidential Address before the British Association at Newcastle,(1) Sir Arthur Evans emphasized the part which recent archaeology has played in proving the continuity of human culture from the most remote periods. He showed how gaps in our knowledge had been bridged, and he traced the part which each great race had taken in increasing its inheritance. We have, in fact, ample grounds for assuming an interchange, not only of commercial products, but, in a minor degree, of ideas within areas geographically connected; and it is surely not derogatory to any Hebrew writer to suggest that he may have adopted, and used for his own purposes, conceptions current among his contemporaries. In other words, the vehicle of religious ideas may well be of composite origin; and, in the course of our study of early Hebrew tradition, I suggest that we hold ourselves justified in applying the comparative method to some at any rate of the ingredients which went to form the finished product. The process is purely literary, but it finds an analogy in the study of Semitic art, especially in the later periods. And I think it will make my meaning clearer if we consider for a moment a few examples of sculpture produced by races of Semitic origin. I do not suggest that we should regard the one process as in any way proving the existence of the other. We should rather treat the comparison as illustrating in another medium the effect of forces which, it is clear, were operative at various periods upon races of the same stock from which the Hebrews themselves were descended. In such material products the eye at once detects the Semite's readiness to avail himself of foreign models. In some cases direct borrowing is obvious; in others, to adapt a metaphor from music, it is possible to trace extraneous motifs in the design.(2)
(1) "New Archaeological Lights on the Origins of
Civilization in Europe," British Association, Newcastle-on-
Tyne, 1916.
(2) The necessary omission of plates, representing the
slides shown in the lectures, has involved a recasting of
most passages in which points of archaeological detail were
discussed; see Preface. But the following paragraphs have
been retained as the majority of the monuments referred to
are well known.
Some of the most famous monuments of Semitic art date from the Persian and
Hellenistic periods, and if we glance at them in this connexion it is in
order to illustrate during its most obvious phase a tendency of which the
earlier effects are less pronounced. In the sarcophagus of the Sidonian
king Eshmu-'azar II, which is preserved in the Louvre,(1) we have indeed a
monument to which no Semitic sculptor can lay claim. Workmanship and
material are Egyptian, and there is no doubt that it was sculptured in
Egypt and transported to Sidon by sea. But the king's own engravers added
the long Phoenician inscription, in which he adjures princes and men not
to open his resting-place since there are no jewels therein, concluding
with some potent curses against any violation of his tomb. One of the
latter implores the holy gods to deliver such violators up "to a mighty
prince who shall rule over them", and was probably suggested by
Alexander's recent occupation of Sidon in 332 B.C. after his reduction and
drastic punishment of Tyre. King Eshmun-'zar was not unique in his choice
of burial in an Egyptian coffin, for he merely followed the example of his
royal father, Tabnîth, "priest of 'Ashtart and king of the Sidonians",
whose sarcophagus, preserved at Constantinople, still bears in addition to
his own epitaph that of its former occupant, a certain Egyptian general
Penptah. But more instructive than these borrowed memorials is a genuine
example of Phoenician work, the stele set up by Yehaw-milk, king of
Byblos, and dating from the fourth or fifth century B.C.(2) In the
sculptured panel at the head of the stele the king is represented in the
Persian dress of the period standing in the presence of 'Ashtart or
Astarte, his "Lady, Mistress of Byblos". There is no doubt that the stele
is of native workmanship, but the influence of Egypt may be seen in the
technique of the carving, in the winged disk above the figures, and still
more in the representation of the goddess in her character as the Egyptian
Hathor, with disk and horns, vulture head-dress and papyrus-sceptre. The
inscription records the dedication of an altar and shrine to the goddess,
and these too we may conjecture were fashioned on Egyptian lines.
(1) Corp. Inscr. Semit., I. i, tab. II.
(2) C.I.S., I. i, tab. I.
The representation of Semitic deities under Egyptian forms and with
Egyptian attributes was encouraged by the introduction of their cults into
Egypt itself. In addition to Astarte of Byblos, Ba'al, Anath, and Reshef
were all borrowed from Syria in comparatively early times and given
Egyptian characters. The conical Syrian helmet of Reshef, a god of war and
thunder, gradually gave place to the white Egyptian crown, so that as
Reshpu he was represented as a royal warrior; and Qadesh, another form of
Astarte, becoming popular with Egyptian women as a patroness of love and
fecundity, was also sometimes modelled on Hathor.(1)
(1) See W. Max Müller, Egyptological Researches, I, p. 32
f., pl. 41, and S. A. Cook, Religion of Ancient Palestine,
pp. 83 ff.
Semitic colonists on the Egyptian border were ever ready to adopt Egyptian
symbolism in delineating the native gods to whom they owed allegiance, and
a particularly striking example of this may be seen on a stele of the
Persian period preserved in the Cairo Museum.(1) It was found at Tell
Defenneh, on the right bank of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, close to
the old Egyptian highway into Syria, a site which may be identified with
that of the biblical Tahpanhes and the Daphnae of the Greeks. Here it was
that the Jewish fugitives, fleeing with Jeremiah after the fall of
Jerusalem, founded a Jewish colony beside a flourishing Phoenician and
Aramaean settlement. One of the local gods of Tahpanhes is represented on
the Cairo monument, an Egyptian stele in the form of a naos with the
winged solar disk upon its frieze. He stands on the back of a lion and is
clothed in Asiatic costume with the high Syrian tiara crowning his
abundant hair. The Syrian workmanship is obvious, and the Syrian character
of the cult may be recognized in such details as the small brazen
fire-altar before the god, and the sacred pillar which is being anointed
by the officiating priest. But the god holds in his left hand a purely
Egyptian sceptre and in his right an emblem as purely Babylonian, the
weapon of Marduk and Gilgamesh which was also wielded by early Sumerian
kings.
(1) Müller, op. cit., p. 30 f., pl. 40. Numismatic evidence
exhibits a similar readiness on the part of local Syrian
cults to adopt the veneer of Hellenistic civilization while
retaining in great measure their own individuality; see
Hill, "Some Palestinian Cults in the Graeco-Roman Age", in
Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. V (1912).
The Elephantine papyri have shown that the early Jews of the Diaspora,
though untrammeled by the orthodoxy of Jerusalem, maintained the purity of
their local cult in the face of considerable difficulties. Hence the
gravestones of their Aramaean contemporaries, which have been found in
Egypt, can only be cited to illustrate the temptations to which they were
exposed.(1) Such was the memorial erected by Abseli to the memory of his
parents, Abbâ and Ahatbû, in the fourth year of Xerxes, 481 B.C.(2) They
had evidently adopted the religion of Osiris, and were buried at Saqqârah
in accordance with the Egyptian rites. The upper scene engraved upon the
stele represents Abbâ and his wife in the presence of Osiris, who is
attended by Isis and Nephthys; and in the lower panel is the funeral
scene, in which all the mourners with one exception are Asiatics. Certain
details of the rites that are represented, and mistakes in the
hieroglyphic version of the text, prove that the work is Aramaean
throughout.(3)
(1) It may be admitted that the Greek platonized cult of
Isis and Osiris had its origin in the fusion of Greeks and
Egyptians which took place in Ptolemaic times (cf. Scott-
Moncrieff, Paganism and Christianity in Egypt, p. 33 f.).
But we may assume that already in the Persian period the
Osiris cult had begun to acquire a tinge of mysticism,
which, though it did not affect the mechanical reproduction
of the native texts, appealed to the Oriental mind as well
as to certain elements in Greek religion. Persian influence
probably prepared the way for the Platonic exegesis of the
Osiris and Isis legends which we find in Plutarch; and the
latter may have been in great measure a development, and
not, as is often assumed, a complete misunderstanding of the
later Egyptian cult.
(2) C.I.S., II. i, tab. XI, No. 122.
(3) A very similar monument is the Carpentras Stele
(C.I.S., II., i, tab. XIII, No. 141), commemorating Taba,
daughter of Tahapi, an Aramaean lady who was also a convert
to Osiris. It is rather later than that of Abbâ and his
wife, since the Aramaic characters are transitional from the
archaic to the square alphabet; see Driver, Notes on the
Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel, pp. xviii ff., and
Cooke, North Semitic Inscriptions, p. 205 f. The Vatican
Stele (op. cit. tab. XIV. No. 142), which dates from the
fourth century, represents inferior work.
If our examples of Semitic art were confined to the Persian and later
periods, they could only be employed to throw light on their own epoch,
when through communication had been organized, and there was consequently
a certain pooling of commercial and artistic products throughout the
empire.(1) It is true that under the Great King the various petty states
and provinces were encouraged to manage their own affairs so long as they
paid the required tribute, but their horizon naturally expanded with
increase of commerce and the necessity for service in the king's armies.
At this time Aramaic was the speech of Syria, and the population,
especially in the cities, was still largely Aramaean. As early as the
thirteenth century sections of this interesting Semitic race had begun to
press into Northern Syria from the middle Euphrates, and they absorbed not
only the old Canaanite population but also the Hittite immigrants from
Cappadocia. The latter indeed may for a time have furnished rulers to the
vigorous North Syrian principalities which resulted from this racial
combination, but the Aramaean element, thanks to continual reinforcement,
was numerically dominant, and their art may legitimately be regarded as in
great measure a Semitic product. Fortunately we have recovered examples of
sculpture which prove that tendencies already noted in the Persian period
were at work, though in a minor degree, under the later Assyrian empire.
The discoveries made at Zenjirli, for example, illustrate the gradually
increasing effect of Assyrian influence upon the artistic output of a
small North Syrian state.
(1) Cf. Bevan, House of Seleucus, Vol. I, pp. 5, 260 f.
The artistic influence of Mesopotamia was even more widely
spread than that of Egypt during the Persian period. This is
suggested, for example, by the famous lion-weight discovered
at Abydos in Mysia, the town on the Hellespont famed for the
loves of Hero and Leander. The letters of its Aramaic
inscription (C.I.S., II. i, tab. VII, No. 108) prove by
their form that it dates from the Persian period, and its
provenance is sufficiently attested. Its weight moreover
suggests that it was not merely a Babylonian or Persian
importation, but cast for local use, yet in design and
technique it is scarcely distinguishable from the best
Assyrian work of the seventh century.
This village in north-western Syria, on the road between Antioch and
Mar'ash, marks the site of a town which lay near the southern border or
just within the Syrian district of Sam'al. The latter is first mentioned
in the Assyrian inscriptions by Shalmaneser III, the son and successor of
the great conqueror, Ashur-nasir-pal; and in the first half of the eighth
century, though within the radius of Assyrian influence, it was still an
independent kingdom. It is to this period that we must assign the earliest
of the inscribed monuments discovered at Zenjirli and its neighbourhood.
At Gerjin, not far to the north-west, was found the colossal statue of
Hadad, chief god of the Aramaeans, which was fashioned and set up in his
honour by Panammu I, son of Qaral and king of Ya'di.(1) In the long
Aramaic inscription engraved upon the statue Panammu records the
prosperity of his reign, which he ascribes to the support he has received
from Hadad and his other gods, El, Reshef, Rekub-el, and Shamash. He had
evidently been left in peace by Assyria, and the monument he erected to
his god is of Aramaean workmanship and design. But the influence of
Assyria may be traced in Hadad's beard and in his horned head-dress,
modelled on that worn by Babylonian and Assyrian gods as the symbol of
divine power.
(1) See F. von Luschan, Sendschirli, I. (1893), pp. 49
ff., pl. vi; and cf. Cooke, North Sem. Inscr., pp. 159 ff.
The characters of the inscription on the statue are of the
same archaic type as those of the Moabite Stone, though
unlike them they are engraved in relief; so too are the
inscriptions of Panammu's later successor Bar-rekub (see
below). Gerjin was certainly in Ya'di, and Winckler's
suggestion that Zenjirli itself also lay in that district
but near the border of Sam'al may be provisionally accepted;
the occurrence of the names in the inscriptions can be
explained in more than one way (see Cooke, op. cit., p.
183).
The political changes introduced into Ya'di and Sam'al by Tiglath-pileser
IV are reflected in the inscriptions and monuments of Bar-rekub, a later
king of the district. Internal strife had brought disaster upon Ya'di and
the throne had been secured by Panammu II, son of Bar-sur, whose claims
received Assyrian support. In the words of his son Bar-rekub, "he laid
hold of the skirt of his lord, the king of Assyria", who was gracious to
him; and it was probably at this time, and as a reward for his loyalty,
that Ya'di was united with the neighbouring district of Sam'al. But
Panammu's devotion to his foreign master led to his death, for he died at
the siege of Damascus, in 733 or 732 B.C., "in the camp, while following
his lord, Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria". His kinsfolk and the whole
camp bewailed him, and his body was sent back to Ya'di, where it was
interred by his son, who set up an inscribed statue to his memory.
Bar-rekub followed in his father's footsteps, as he leads us to infer in
his palace-inscription found at Zenjirli: "I ran at the wheel of my lord,
the king of Assyria, in the midst of mighty kings, possessors of silver
and possessors of gold." It is not strange therefore that his art should
reflect Assyrian influence far more strikingly than that of Panammu I. The
figure of himself which he caused to be carved in relief on the left side
of the palace-inscription is in the Assyrian style,(1) and so too is
another of his reliefs from Zenjirli. On the latter Bar-rekub is
represented seated upon his throne with eunuch and scribe in attendance,
while in the field is the emblem of full moon and crescent, here ascribed
to "Ba'al of Harran", the famous centre of moon-worship in Northern
Mesopotamia.(2)
(1) Sendschirli, IV (1911), pl. lxvii. Attitude and
treatment of robes are both Assyrian, and so is the
arrangement of divine symbols in the upper field, though
some of the latter are given under unfamiliar forms. The
king's close-fitting peaked cap was evidently the royal
headdress of Sam'al; see the royal figure on a smaller stele
of inferior design, op. cit., pl. lxvi.
(2) Op. cit. pp. 257, 346 ff., and pl. lx. The general style
of the sculpture and much of the detail are obviously
Assyrian. Assyrian influence is particularly noticeable in
Bar-rekub's throne; the details of its decoration are
precisely similar to those of an Assyrian bronze throne in
the British Museum. The full moon and crescent are not of
the familiar form, but are mounted on a standard with
tassels.
The detailed history and artistic development of Sam'al and Ya'di convey a
very vivid impression of the social and material effects upon the native
population of Syria, which followed the westward advance of Assyria in the
eighth century. We realize not only the readiness of one party in the
state to defeat its rival with the help of Assyrian support, but also the
manner in which the life and activities of the nation as a whole were
unavoidably affected by their action. Other Hittite-Aramaean and
Phoenician monuments, as yet undocumented with literary records, exhibit a
strange but not unpleasing mixture of foreign motifs, such as we
see on the stele from Amrith(1) in the inland district of Arvad. But
perhaps the most remarkable example of Syrian art we possess is the king's
gate recently discovered at Carchemish.(2) The presence of the
hieroglyphic inscriptions points to the survival of Hittite tradition, but
the figures represented in the reliefs are of Aramaean, not Hittite, type.
Here the king is seen leading his eldest son by the hand in some stately
ceremonial, and ranged in registers behind them are the younger members of
the royal family, whose ages are indicated by their occupations.(3) The
employment of basalt in place of limestone does not disguise the
sculptor's debt to Assyria. But the design is entirely his own, and the
combined dignity and homeliness of the composition are refreshingly
superior to the arrogant spirit and hard execution which mar so much
Assyrian work. This example is particularly instructive, as it shows how a
borrowed art may be developed in skilled hands and made to serve a purpose
in complete harmony with its new environment.
(1) Collection de Clercq, t. II, pl. xxxvi. The stele is
sculptured in relief with the figure of a North Syrian god.
Here the winged disk is Egyptian, as well as the god's
helmet with uraeus, and his loin-cloth; his attitude and his
supporting lion are Hittite; and the lozenge-mountains, on
which the lion stands, and the technique of the carving are
Assyrian. But in spite of its composite character the design
is quite successful and not in the least incongruous.
(2) Hogarth, Carchemish, Pt. I (1914), pl. B. 7 f.
(3) Two of the older boys play at knuckle-bones, others whip
spinning-tops, and a little naked girl runs behind
supporting herself with a stick, on the head of which is
carved a bird. The procession is brought up by the queen-
mother, who carries the youngest baby and leads a pet lamb.
Such monuments surely illustrate the adaptability of the Semitic craftsman
among men of Phoenician and Aramaean strain. Excavation in Palestine has
failed to furnish examples of Hebrew work. But Hebrew tradition itself
justifies us in regarding this trait as of more general
application, or at any rate as not repugnant to Hebrew thought, when it
relates that Solomon employed Tyrian craftsmen for work upon the Temple
and its furniture; for Phoenician art was essentially Egyptian in its
origin and general character. Even Eshmun-'zar's desire for burial in an
Egyptian sarcophagus may be paralleled in Hebrew tradition of a much
earlier period, when, in the last verse of Genesis,(1) it is recorded that
Joseph died, "and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt".
Since it formed the subject of prophetic denunciation, I refrain for the
moment from citing the notorious adoption of Assyrian customs at certain
periods of the later Judaean monarchy. The two records I have referred to
will suffice, for we have in them cherished traditions, of which the
Hebrews themselves were proud, concerning the most famous example of
Hebrew religious architecture and the burial of one of the patriarchs of
the race. A similar readiness to make use of the best available resources,
even of foreign origin, may on analogy be regarded as at least possible in
the composition of Hebrew literature.
(1) Gen. l. 26, assigned by critics to E.
We shall see that the problems we have to face concern the possible
influence of Babylon, rather than of Egypt, upon Hebrew tradition. And one
last example, drawn from the later period, will serve to demonstrate how
Babylonian influence penetrated the ancient world and has even left some
trace upon modern civilization. It is a fact, though one perhaps not
generally realized, that the twelve divisions on the dials of our clocks
and watches have a Babylonian, and ultimately a Sumerian, ancestry. For
why is it we divide the day into twenty-four hours? We have a decimal
system of reckoning, we count by tens; why then should we divide the day
and night into twelve hours each, instead of into ten or some multiple of
ten? The reason is that the Babylonians divided the day into twelve
double-hours; and the Greeks took over their ancient system of
time-division along with their knowledge of astronomy and passed it on to
us. So if we ourselves, after more than two thousand years, are making use
of an old custom from Babylon, it would not be surprising if the Hebrews,
a contemporary race, should have fallen under her influence even before
they were carried away as captives and settled forcibly upon her
river-banks.
We may pass on, then, to the site from which our new material has been obtained—the ancient city of Nippur, in central Babylonia. Though the place has been deserted for at least nine hundred years, its ancient name still lingers on in local tradition, and to this day Niffer or Nuffar is the name the Arabs give the mounds which cover its extensive ruins. No modern town or village has been built upon them or in their immediate neighbourhood. The nearest considerable town is Dîwânîyah, on the left bank of the Hillah branch of the Euphrates, twenty miles to the south-west; but some four miles to the south of the ruins is the village of Sûq el-'Afej, on the eastern edge of the 'Afej marshes, which begin to the south of Nippur and stretch away westward. Protected by its swamps, the region contains a few primitive settlements of the wild 'Afej tribesmen, each a group of reed-huts clustering around the mud fort of its ruling sheikh. Their chief enemies are the Shammâr, who dispute with them possession of the pastures. In summer the marshes near the mounds are merely pools of water connected by channels through the reed-beds, but in spring the flood-water converts them into a vast lagoon, and all that meets the eye are a few small hamlets built on rising knolls above the water-level. Thus Nippur may be almost isolated during the floods, but the mounds are protected from the waters' encroachment by an outer ring of former habitation which has slightly raised the level of the encircling area. The ruins of the city stand from thirty to seventy feet above the plain, and in the north-eastern corner there rose, before the excavations, a conical mound, known by the Arabs as Bint el-Emîr or "The Princess". This prominent landmark represents the temple-tower of Enlil's famous sanctuary, and even after excavation it is still the first object that the approaching traveller sees on the horizon. When he has climbed its summit he enjoys an uninterrupted view over desert and swamp.
The cause of Nippur's present desolation is to be traced to the change in the bed of the Euphrates, which now lies far to the west. But in antiquity the stream flowed through the centre of the city, along the dry bed of the Shatt en-Nîl, which divides the mounds into an eastern and a western group. The latter covers the remains of the city proper and was occupied in part by the great business-houses and bazaars. Here more than thirty thousand contracts and accounts, dating from the fourth millennium to the fifth century B.C., were found in houses along the former river-bank. In the eastern half of the city was Enlil's great temple Ekur, with its temple-tower Imkharsag rising in successive stages beside it. The huge temple-enclosure contained not only the sacrificial shrines, but also the priests' apartments, store-chambers, and temple-magazines. Outside its enclosing wall, to the south-west, a large triangular mound, christened "Tablet Hill" by the excavators, yielded a further supply of records. In addition to business-documents of the First Dynasty of Babylon and of the later Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Persian periods, between two and three thousand literary texts and fragments were discovered here, many of them dating from the Sumerian period. And it is possible that some of the early literary texts that have been published were obtained in other parts of the city.
No less than twenty-one different strata, representing separate periods of occupation, have been noted by the American excavators at various levels within the Nippur mounds,(1) the earliest descending to virgin soil some twenty feet below the present level of the surrounding plain. The remote date of Nippur's foundation as a city and cult-centre is attested by the fact that the pavement laid by Narâm-Sin in the south-eastern temple-court lies thirty feet above virgin soil, while only thirty-six feet of superimposed débris represent the succeeding millennia of occupation down to Sassanian and early Arab times. In the period of the Hebrew captivity the city still ranked as a great commercial market and as one of the most sacred repositories of Babylonian religious tradition. We know that not far off was Tel-abib, the seat of one of the colonies of Jewish exiles, for that lay "by the river of Chebar",(2) which we may identify with the Kabaru Canal in Nippur's immediate neighbourhood. It was "among the captives by the river Chebar" that Ezekiel lived and prophesied, and it was on Chebar's banks that he saw his first vision of the Cherubim.(3) He and other of the Jewish exiles may perhaps have mingled with the motley crowd that once thronged the streets of Nippur, and they may often have gazed on the huge temple-tower which rose above the city's flat roofs. We know that the later population of Nippur itself included a considerable Jewish element, for the upper strata of the mounds have yielded numerous clay bowls with Hebrew, Mandaean, and Syriac magical inscriptions;(4) and not the least interesting of the objects recovered was the wooden box of a Jewish scribe, containing his pen and ink-vessel and a little scrap of crumbling parchment inscribed with a few Hebrew characters.(5)
(1) See Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, pp. 289
ff., 540 ff.; and Fisher, Excavations at Nippur, Pt. I
(1905), Pt. II (1906).
(2) Ezek. iii. 15.
(3) Ezek. i. 1, 3; iii. 23; and cf. x. 15, 20, 22, and
xliii. 3.
(4) See J. A. Montgomery, Aramaic Incantation Texts from
Nippur, 1913
(5) Hilprecht, Explorations, p. 555 f.
Of the many thousands of inscribed clay tablets which were found in the
course of the expeditions, some were kept at Constantinople, while others
were presented by the Sultan Abdul Hamid to the excavators, who had them
conveyed to America. Since that time a large number have been published.
The work was necessarily slow, for many of the texts were found to be in
an extremely bad state of preservation. So it happened that a great number
of the boxes containing tablets remained until recently still packed up in
the store-rooms of the Pennsylvania Museum. But under the present
energetic Director of the Museum, Dr. G. B. Gordon, the process of
arranging and publishing the mass of literary material has been "speeded
up". A staff of skilled workmen has been employed on the laborious task of
cleaning the broken tablets and fitting the fragments together. At the
same time the help of several Assyriologists was welcomed in the further
task of running over and sorting the collections as they were prepared for
study. Professor Clay, Professor Barton, Dr. Langdon, Dr. Edward Chiera,
and Dr. Arno Poebel have all participated in the work. But the lion's
share has fallen to the last-named scholar, who was given leave of absence
by John Hopkins University in order to take up a temporary appointment at
the Pennsylvania Museum. The result of his labours was published by the
Museum at the end of 1914.(1) The texts thus made available for study are
of very varied interest. A great body of them are grammatical and
represent compilations made by Semitic scribes of the period of
Hammurabi's dynasty for their study of the old Sumerian tongue.
Containing, as most of them do, Semitic renderings of the Sumerian words
and expressions collected, they are as great a help to us in our study of
Sumerian language as they were to their compilers; in particular they have
thrown much new light on the paradigms of the demonstrative and personal
pronouns and on Sumerian verbal forms. But literary texts are also
included in the recent publications.
(1) Poebel, Historical Texts and Historical and
Grammatical Texts (Univ. of Penns. Mus. Publ., Bab. Sect.,
Vol. IV, No. 1, and Vol. V), Philadelphia, 1914.
When the Pennsylvania Museum sent out its first expedition, lively hopes
were entertained that the site selected would yield material of interest
from the biblical standpoint. The city of Nippur, as we have seen, was one
of the most sacred and most ancient religious centres in the country, and
Enlil, its city-god, was the head of the Babylonian pantheon. On such a
site it seemed likely that we might find versions of the Babylonian
legends which were current at the dawn of history before the city of
Babylonia and its Semitic inhabitants came upon the scene. This
expectation has proved to be not unfounded, for the literary texts include
the Sumerian Deluge Version and Creation myth to which I referred at the
beginning of the lecture. Other texts of almost equal interest consist of
early though fragmentary lists of historical and semi-mythical rulers.
They prove that Berossus and the later Babylonians depended on material of
quite early origin in compiling their dynasties of semi-mythical kings. In
them we obtain a glimpse of ages more remote than any on which excavation
in Babylonia has yet thrown light, and for the first time we have
recovered genuine native tradition of early date with regard to the cradle
of Babylonian culture. Before we approach the Sumerian legends themselves,
it will be as well to-day to trace back in this tradition the gradual
merging of history into legend and myth, comparing at the same time the
ancient Egyptian's picture of his own remote past. We will also ascertain
whether any new light is thrown by our inquiry upon Hebrew traditions
concerning the earliest history of the human race and the origins of
civilization.
In the study of both Egyptian and Babylonian chronology there has been a tendency of late years to reduce the very early dates that were formerly in fashion. But in Egypt, while the dynasties of Manetho have been telescoped in places, excavation has thrown light on predynastic periods, and we can now trace the history of culture in the Nile Valley back, through an unbroken sequence, to its neolithic stage. Quite recently, too, as I mentioned just now, a fresh literary record of these early predynastic periods has been recovered, on a fragment of the famous Palermo Stele, our most valuable monument for early Egyptian history and chronology. Egypt presents a striking contrast to Babylonia in the comparatively small number of written records which have survived for the reconstruction of her history. We might well spare much of her religious literature, enshrined in endless temple-inscriptions and papyri, if we could but exchange it for some of the royal annals of Egyptian Pharaohs. That historical records of this character were compiled by the Egyptian scribes, and that they were as detailed and precise in their information as those we have recovered from Assyrian sources, is clear from the few extracts from the annals of Thothmes III's wars which are engraved on the walls of the temple at Karnak.(1) As in Babylonia and Assyria, such records must have formed the foundation on which summaries of chronicles of past Egyptian history were based. In the Palermo Stele it is recognized that we possess a primitive chronicle of this character.
(1) See Breasted, Ancient Records, I, p. 4, II, pp. 163
ff.
Drawn up as early as the Vth Dynasty, its historical summary proves that
from the beginning of the dynastic age onward a yearly record was kept of
the most important achievements of the reigning Pharaoh. In this
fragmentary but invaluable epitome, recording in outline much of the
history of the Old Kingdom,(1) some interesting parallels have long been
noted with Babylonian usage. The early system of time-reckoning, for
example, was the same in both countries, each year being given an official
title from the chief event that occurred in it. And although in Babylonia
we are still without material for tracing the process by which this
cumbrous method gave place to that of reckoning by regnal years, the
Palermo Stele demonstrates the way in which the latter system was evolved
in Egypt. For the events from which the year was named came gradually to
be confined to the fiscal "numberings" of cattle and land. And when these,
which at first had taken place at comparatively long intervals, had become
annual events, the numbered sequence of their occurrence corresponded
precisely to the years of the king's reign. On the stele, during the
dynastic period, each regnal year is allotted its own space or
rectangle,(2) arranged in horizontal sequence below the name and titles of
the ruling king.
(1) Op. cit., I, pp. 57 ff.
(2) The spaces are not strictly rectangles, as each is divided vertically from the next by the Egyptian hieroglyph for "year".
The text, which is engraved on both sides of a great block of black basalt, takes its name from the fact that the fragment hitherto known has been preserved since 1877 at the Museum of Palermo. Five other fragments of the text have now been published, of which one undoubtedly belongs to the same monument as the Palermo fragment, while the others may represent parts of one or more duplicate copies of that famous text. One of the four Cairo fragments(1) was found by a digger for sebakh at Mitrahîneh (Memphis); the other three, which were purchased from a dealer, are said to have come from Minieh, while the fifth fragment, at University College, is also said to have come from Upper Egypt,(2) though it was purchased by Professor Petrie while at Memphis. These reports suggest that a number of duplicate copies were engraved and set up in different Egyptian towns, and it is possible that the whole of the text may eventually be recovered. The choice of basalt for the records was obviously dictated by a desire for their preservation, but it has had the contrary effect; for the blocks of this hard and precious stone have been cut up and reused in later times. The largest and most interesting of the new fragments has evidently been employed as a door-sill, with the result that its surface is much rubbed and parts of its text are unfortunately almost undecipherable. We shall see that the earliest section of its record has an important bearing on our knowledge of Egyptian predynastic history and on the traditions of that remote period which have come down to us from the history of Manetho.
(1) See Gautier, Le Musée Égyptien, III (1915), pp. 29 ff., pl. xxiv ff., and Foucart, Bulletin de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale, XII, ii (1916), pp. 161 ff.; and cf. Gardiner, Journ. of Egypt. Arch., III, pp. 143 ff., and Petrie, Ancient Egypt, 1916, Pt. III, pp. 114 ff.
(2) Cf. Petrie, op. cit., pp. 115, 120.
From the fragment of the stele preserved at Palermo we already knew that its record went back beyond the Ist Dynasty into predynastic times. For part of the top band of the inscription, which is there preserved, contains nine names borne by kings of Lower Egypt or the Delta, which, it had been conjectured, must follow the gods of Manetho and precede the "Worshippers of Horus", the immediate predecessors of the Egyptian dynasties.(1) But of contemporary rulers of Upper Egypt we had hitherto no knowledge, since the supposed royal names discovered at Abydos and assigned to the time of the "Worshippers of Horus" are probably not royal names at all.(2) With the possible exception of two very archaic slate palettes, the first historical memorials recovered from the south do not date from an earlier period than the beginning of the Ist Dynasty. The largest of the Cairo fragments now helps us to fill in this gap in our knowledge.
(1) See Breasted, Anc. Rec., I, pp. 52, 57.
(2) Cf. Hall, Ancient History of the Near East, p. 99 f.
On the top of the new fragment(1) we meet the same band of rectangles as
at Palermo,(2) but here their upper portions are broken away, and there
only remains at the base of each of them the outlined figure of a royal
personage, seated in the same attitude as those on the Palermo stone. The
remarkable fact about these figures is that, with the apparent exception
of the third figure from the right,(3) each wears, not the Crown of the
North, as at Palermo, but the Crown of the South. We have then to do with
kings of Upper Egypt, not the Delta, and it is no longer possible to
suppose that the predynastic rulers of the Palermo Stele were confined to
those of Lower Egypt, as reflecting northern tradition. Rulers of both
halves of the country are represented, and Monsieur Gautier has shown,(4)
from data on the reverse of the inscription, that the kings of the Delta
were arranged on the original stone before the rulers of the south who are
outlined upon our new fragment. Moreover, we have now recovered definite
proof that this band of the inscription is concerned with predynastic
Egyptian princes; for the cartouche of the king, whose years are
enumerated in the second band immediately below the kings of the south,
reads Athet, a name we may with certainty identify with Athothes, the
second successor of Menes, founder of the Ist Dynasty, which is already
given under the form Ateth in the Abydos List of Kings.(5) It is thus
quite certain that the first band of the inscription relates to the
earlier periods before the two halves of the country were brought together
under a single ruler.
(1) Cairo No. 1; see Gautier, Mus. Égypt., III, pl. xxiv
f.
(2) In this upper band the spaces are true rectangles, being
separated by vertical lines, not by the hieroglyph for
"year" as in the lower bands; and each rectangle is assigned
to a separate king, and not, as in the other bands, to a
year of a king's reign.
(3) The difference in the crown worn by this figure is
probably only apparent and not intentional; M. Foucart,
after a careful examination of the fragment, concludes that
it is due to subsequent damage or to an original defect in
the stone; cf. Bulletin, XII, ii, p. 162.
(4) Op. cit., p. 32 f.
(5) In Manetho's list he corresponds to {Kenkenos}, the
second successor of Menes according to both Africanus and
Eusebius, who assign the name Athothis to the second ruler
of the dynasty only, the Teta of the Abydos List. The form
Athothes is preserved by Eratosthenes for both of Menes'
immediate successors.
Though the tradition of these remote times is here recorded on a monument
of the Vth Dynasty, there is no reason to doubt its general accuracy, or
to suppose that we are dealing with purely mythological personages. It is
perhaps possible, as Monsieur Foucart suggests, that missing portions of
the text may have carried the record back through purely mythical periods
to Ptah and the Creation. In that case we should have, as we shall see, a
striking parallel to early Sumerian tradition. But in the first extant
portions of the Palermo text we are already in the realm of genuine
tradition. The names preserved appear to be those of individuals, not of
mythological creations, and we may assume that their owners really
existed. For though the invention of writing had not at that time been
achieved, its place was probably taken by oral tradition. We know that
with certain tribes of Africa at the present day, who possess no knowledge
of writing, there are functionaries charged with the duty of preserving
tribal traditions, who transmit orally to their successors a remembrance
of past chiefs and some details of events that occurred centuries
before.(1) The predynastic Egyptians may well have adopted similar means
for preserving a remembrance of their past history.
(1) M. Foucart illustrates this point by citing the case of
the Bushongos, who have in this way preserved a list of no
less than a hundred and twenty-one of their past kings; op.
cit., p. 182, and cf. Tordey and Joyce, "Les Bushongos", in
Annales du Musée du Congo Belge, sér. III, t. II, fasc. i
(Brussels, 1911).
Moreover, the new text furnishes fresh proof of the general accuracy of
Manetho, even when dealing with traditions of this prehistoric age. On the
stele there is no definite indication that these two sets of predynastic
kings were contemporaneous rulers of Lower and Upper Egypt respectively;
and since elsewhere the lists assign a single sovereign to each epoch, it
has been suggested that we should regard them as successive
representatives of the legitimate kingdom.(1) Now Manetho, after his
dynasties of gods and demi-gods, states that thirty Memphite kings reigned
for 1,790 years, and were followed by ten Thinite kings whose reigns
covered a period of 350 years. Neglecting the figures as obviously
erroneous, we may well admit that the Greek historian here alludes to our
two pre-Menite dynasties. But the fact that he should regard them as
ruling consecutively does not preclude the other alternative. The modern
convention of arranging lines of contemporaneous rulers in parallel
columns had not been evolved in antiquity, and without some such method of
distinction contemporaneous rulers, when enumerated in a list, can only be
registered consecutively. It would be natural to assume that, before the
unification of Egypt by the founder of the Ist Dynasty, the rulers of
North and South were independent princes, possessing no traditions of a
united throne on which any claim to hegemony could be based. On the
assumption that this was so, their arrangement in a consecutive series
would not have deceived their immediate successors. But it would
undoubtedly tend in course of time to obliterate the tradition of their
true order, which even at the period of the Vth Dynasty may have been
completely forgotten. Manetho would thus have introduced no strange or
novel confusion; and this explanation would of course apply to other
sections of his system where the dynasties he enumerates appear to be too
many for their period. But his reproduction of two lines of predynastic
rulers, supported as it now is by the early evidence of the Palermo text,
only serves to increase our confidence in the general accuracy of his
sources, while at the same time it illustrates very effectively the way in
which possible inaccuracies, deduced from independent data, may have
arisen in quite early times.
(1) Foucart, loc. cit.
In contrast to the dynasties of Manetho, those of Berossus are so
imperfectly preserved that they have never formed the basis of Babylonian
chronology.(1) But here too, in the chronological scheme, a similar
process of reduction has taken place. Certain dynasties, recovered from
native sources and at one time regarded as consecutive, were proved to
have been contemporaneous; and archaeological evidence suggested that some
of the great gaps, so freely assumed in the royal sequence, had no right
to be there. As a result, the succession of known rulers was thrown into
truer perspective, and such gaps as remained were being partially filled
by later discoveries. Among the latter the most important find was that of
an early list of kings, recently published by Père Scheil(2) and
subsequently purchased by the British Museum shortly before the war. This
had helped us to fill in the gap between the famous Sargon of Akkad and
the later dynasties, but it did not carry us far beyond Sargon's own time.
Our archaeological evidence also comes suddenly to an end. Thus the
earliest picture we have hitherto obtained of the Sumerians has been that
of a race employing an advanced system of writing and possessed of a
knowledge of metal. We have found, in short, abundant remains of a
bronze-age culture, but no traces of preceding ages of development such as
meet us on early Egyptian sites. It was a natural inference that the
advent of the Sumerians in the Euphrates Valley was sudden, and that they
had brought their highly developed culture with them from some region of
Central or Southern Asia.
(1) While the evidence of Herodotus is extraordinarily
valuable for the details he gives of the civilizations of
both Egypt and Babylonia, and is especially full in the case
of the former, it is of little practical use for the
chronology. In Egypt his report of the early history is
confused, and he hardly attempts one for Babylonia. It is
probable that on such subjects he sometimes misunderstood
his informants, the priests, whose traditions were more
accurately reproduced by the later native writers Manetho
and Berossus. For a detailed comparison of classical
authorities in relation to both countries, see Griffith in
Hogarth's Authority and Archaeology, pp. 161 ff.
(2) See Comptes rendus, 1911 (Oct.), pp. 606 ff., and
Rev. d'Assyr., IX (1912), p. 69.
The newly published Nippur documents will cause us to modify that view.
The lists of early kings were themselves drawn up under the Dynasty of
Nîsin in the twenty-second century B.C., and they give us traces of
possibly ten and at least eight other "kingdoms" before the earliest
dynasty of the known lists.(1) One of their novel features is that they
include summaries at the end, in which it is stated how often a city or
district enjoyed the privilege of being the seat of supreme authority in
Babylonia. The earliest of their sections lie within the legendary period,
and though in the third dynasty preserved we begin to note signs of a
firmer historical tradition, the great break that then occurs in the text
is at present only bridged by titles of various "kingdoms" which the
summaries give; a few even of these are missing and the relative order of
the rest is not assured. But in spite of their imperfect state of
preservation, these documents are of great historical value and will
furnish a framework for future chronological schemes. Meanwhile we may
attribute to some of the later dynasties titles in complete agreement with
Sumerian tradition. The dynasty of Ur-Engur, for example, which preceded
that of Nîsin, becomes, if we like, the Third Dynasty of Ur. Another
important fact which strikes us after a scrutiny of the early royal names
recovered is that, while two or three are Semitic,(2) the great majority
of those borne by the earliest rulers of Kish, Erech, and Ur are as
obviously Sumerian.
(1) See Poebel, Historical Texts, pp. 73 ff. and
Historical and Grammatical Texts, pl. ii-iv, Nos. 2-5. The
best preserved of the lists is No. 2; Nos. 3 and 4 are
comparatively small fragments; and of No. 5 the obverse only
is here published for the first time, the contents of the
reverse having been made known some years ago by Hilprecht
(cf. Mathematical, Metrological, and Chronological
Tablets, p. 46 f., pl. 30, No. 47). The fragments belong to
separate copies of the Sumerian dynastic record, and it
happens that the extant portions of their text in some
places cover the same period and are duplicates of one
another.
(2) Cf., e.g., two of the earliest kings of Kish, Galumum
and Zugagib. The former is probably the Semitic-Babylonian
word kalumum, "young animal, lamb," the latter
zukakîbum, "scorpion"; cf. Poebel, Hist. Texts, p. 111.
The occurrence of these names points to Semitic infiltration
into Northern Babylonia since the dawn of history, a state
of things we should naturally expect. It is improbable that
on this point Sumerian tradition should have merely
reflected the conditions of a later period.
It is clear that in native tradition, current among the Sumerians
themselves before the close of the third millennium, their race was
regarded as in possession of Babylonia since the dawn of history. This at
any rate proves that their advent was not sudden nor comparatively recent,
and it further suggests that Babylonia itself was the cradle of their
civilization. It will be the province of future archaeological research to
fill out the missing dynasties and to determine at what points in the list
their strictly historical basis disappears. Some, which are fortunately
preserved near the beginning, bear on their face their legendary
character. But for our purpose they are none the worse for that.
In the first two dynasties, which had their seats at the cities of Kish and Erech, we see gods mingling with men upon the earth. Tammuz, the god of vegetation, for whose annual death Ezekiel saw women weeping beside the Temple at Jerusalem, is here an earthly monarch. He appears to be described as "a hunter", a phrase which recalls the death of Adonis in Greek mythology. According to our Sumerian text he reigned in Erech for a hundred years.
Another attractive Babylonian legend is that of Etana, the prototype of Icarus and hero of the earliest dream of human flight.(1) Clinging to the pinions of his friend the Eagle he beheld the world and its encircling stream recede beneath him; and he flew through the gate of heaven, only to fall headlong back to earth. He is here duly entered in the list, where we read that "Etana, the shepherd who ascended to heaven, who subdued all lands", ruled in the city of Kish for 635 years.
(1) The Egyptian conception of the deceased Pharaoh
ascending to heaven as a falcon and becoming merged into the
sun, which first occurs in the Pyramid texts (see Gardiner
in Cumont's Études Syriennes, pp. 109 ff.), belongs to a
different range of ideas. But it may well have been combined
with the Etana tradition to produce the funerary eagle
employed so commonly in Roman Syria in representations of
the emperor's apotheosis (cf. Cumont, op. cit., pp. 37 ff.,
115).
The god Lugal-banda is another hero of legend. When the hearts of the
other gods failed them, he alone recovered the Tablets of Fate, stolen by
the bird-god Zû from Enlil's palace. He is here recorded to have reigned
in Erech for 1,200 years.
Tradition already told us that Erech was the native city of Gilgamesh, the hero of the national epic, to whom his ancestor Ut-napishtim related the story of the Flood. Gilgamesh too is in our list, as king of Erech for 126 years.
We have here in fact recovered traditions of Post-diluvian kings. Unfortunately our list goes no farther back than that, but it is probable that in its original form it presented a general correspondence to the system preserved from Berossus, which enumerates ten Antediluvian kings, the last of them Xisuthros, the hero of the Deluge. Indeed, for the dynastic period, the agreement of these old Sumerian lists with the chronological system of Berossus is striking. The latter, according to Syncellus, gives 34,090 or 34,080 years as the total duration of the historical period, apart from his preceding mythical ages, while the figure as preserved by Eusebius is 33,091 years.(1) The compiler of one of our new lists,(2) writing some 1,900 years earlier, reckons that the dynastic period in his day had lasted for 32,243 years. Of course all these figures are mythical, and even at the time of the Sumerian Dynasty of Nîsin variant traditions were current with regard to the number of historical and semi-mythical kings of Babylonia and the duration of their rule. For the earlier writer of another of our lists,(3) separated from the one already quoted by an interval of only sixty-seven years, gives 28,876(4) years as the total duration of the dynasties at his time. But in spite of these discrepancies, the general resemblance presented by the huge totals in the variant copies of the list to the alternative figures of Berossus, if we ignore his mythical period, is remarkable. They indicate a far closer correspondence of the Greek tradition with that of the early Sumerians themselves than was formerly suspected.
(1) The figure 34,090 is that given by Syncellus (ed.
Dindorf, p. 147); but it is 34,080 in the equivalent which
is added in "sars", &c. The discrepancy is explained by some
as due to an intentional omission of the units in the second
reckoning; others would regard 34,080 as the correct figure
(cf. Hist. of Bab., p. 114 f.). The reading of ninety
against eighty is supported by the 33,091 of Eusebius
(Chron. lib. pri., ed. Schoene, col. 25).
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