HISTORY OF EGYPT
CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT DISCOVERY
BY L. W. KING and H. R. HALL
Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, British Museum
Containing over 1200 colored plates and illustrations.
Copyright 1906
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
It should be noted that many of the monuments and sites of excavations in
Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, and Kurdistan described in this volume have
been visited by the authors in connection with their own work in those
countries. The greater number of the photographs here published were taken
by the authors themselves. Their thanks are due to M. Ernest Leroux, of
Paris, for his kind permission to reproduce a certain number of plates
from the works of M. de Morgan, illustrating his recent discoveries in
Egypt and Persia, and to Messrs. W. A. Mansell & Co., of London, for
kindly allowing them to make use of a number of photographs issued by
them.
PREFACE
The present volume contains an account of the most important additions
which have been made to our knowledge of the ancient history of Egypt and
Western Asia during the few years which have elapsed since the publication
of Prof. Maspero’s Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient Classique,
and includes short descriptions of the excavations from which these
results have been obtained. It is in no sense a connected and continuous
history of these countries, for that has already been written by Prof.
Maspero, but is rather intended as an appendix or addendum to his work,
briefly recapitulating and describing the discoveries made since its
appearance. On this account we have followed a geographical rather than a
chronological system of arrangement, but at the same time the attempt has
been made to suggest to the mind of the reader the historical sequence of
events.
At no period have excavations been pursued with more energy and activity,
both in Egypt and Western Asia, than at the present time, and every
season’s work obliges us to modify former theories, and extends our
knowledge of periods of history which even ten years ago were unknown to
the historian. For instance, a whole chapter has been added to Egyptian
history by the discovery of the Neolithic culture of the primitive
Egyptians, while the recent excavations at Susa are revealing a hitherto
totally unsuspected epoch of proto-Elamite civilization. Further than
this, we have discovered the relics of the oldest historical kings of
Egypt, and we are now enabled to reconstitute from material as yet
unpublished the inter-relations of the early dynasties of Babylon.
Important discoveries have also been made with regard to isolated points
in the later historical periods. We have therefore attempted to include
the most important of these in our survey of recent excavations and their
results. We would again remind the reader that Prof. Maspero’s great work
must be consulted for the complete history of the period, the present
volume being, not a connected history of Egypt and Western Asia, but a
description and discussion of the manner in which recent discovery and
research have added to and modified our conceptions of ancient Egyptian
and Mesopotamian civilization.
Contents
CHAPTER I—THE DISCOVERY OF PREHISTORIC
EGYPT
CHAPTER II—ABYDOS AND THE FIRST THREE
DYNASTIES
CHAPTER III—MEMPHIS AND THE PYRAMIDS
CHAPTER IV—RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN WESTERN
ASIA AND THE DAWN OF CHALDÆAN HISTORY
CHAPTER V—ELAM AND BABYLON, THE COUNTRY OF
THE SEA AND THE KASSITES
CHAPTER VI—EARLY BABYLONIAN LIFE AND
CUSTOMS
CHAPTER VII—TEMPLES AND TOMBS OF THEBES
CHAPTER VIII—THE ASSYRIAN AND
NEO-BABYLONIAN EMPIRES IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCH
CHAPTER IX—THE LAST DAYS OF ANCIENT EGYPT
List of Illustrations
the Bed of an Ancient Watercourse in The Wadiyên, Thebes.
Palaeolithic Implements of the Quaternary Period. From the Desert Plateau and Slopes West of Thebes.
Palaeolithic Implements. From Man, March, 1905.
Upper Desert Plateau, Where Paleolithic Implements Are Found. Thebes: 1,400 Feet Above the Nile.
Flint Knife mounted in a gold handle
Buff Ware Vase, Predynastic Period
Camp of the Expedition Of The University Of California at Nag’ Ed-dêr, 1901.
Portion of the “Stele Of Vultures” Found At Telloh
Obverse of a Slate Relief representing the King of Upper Egypt in the form of a Bull
Obverse of a Slate Relief with representations of the Egyptian nomes
Reverse of a Slate Relief representing animals
Professor Petrie’s Camp at Abydos, 1901.
The Tomb of King Den at Abydos
Examples of conical vase-stoppers taken from Abydos
The Tomb of King Tjeser at Bêt Khallâf
False Door of the Tomb Of Teta, an official of the IVth Dynasty
The Shunet ez-Zebib: The Fortress-town of the IId Dynasty at Abydos
Statue No. 1 of the Cairo Museum
Exterior of the Southern Brick Pyramid of Dashur: XIIth Dynasty
The Pyramids of Giza during the inundation
List of Archaic cuneiform signs
Fragment of a list Of Archaic Cuneiform signs
Obelisk of Manishtusu, King of the City of Kish
Babil, the most northern mound which marks the site of the ancient city of Babylon
“Stele of Victory,” representing Naram-Sin conquering his enemies
Roughly hewn sculpture of a lion standing over a fallen man, found at Babylon
General view of the excavations on the Kasr at Babylon
View within the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II.
Excavations in the temple of Ninib at Babylon
The principal mound of Birs Nimrud, which marks the site of the ancient capital of Borsippa
The principal mound at Sherghat, which marks the site of Ashuk, the ancient capital of the Assyrians
The mound of Kuyunjik, one Of the palace mounds of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh
Clay Memorial-tablet of Eannadu, viceroy of Shirpurla
Marble gate-socket bearing an inscription of Entemena, a powerful Patesi of Shirpurla
Stone gate-socket bearing an inscription of Ur-Engur, an early king of the city of Ur
Statue of Gudea, viceroy of Shirpurla
Tablet inscribed in Sumerian with details of a survey of certain property
Clay tablet, found at Susa, bearing an inscription in the early proto-Elamite character
Clay tablet, recently found at Susa, bearing an inscription in the early proto-Elamite character.
Block of limestone, found at Susa, bearing inscriptions of Karibu-sha-Shushinak
Brick stamped with an inscription of Kudur-mabug
A Kudurru, or Boundary-stone, inscribed with a text of Nazimaruttash
A Kudurru, or Boundary-stone, inscribed with a text of Melishikhu
Upper Part of the Stele of Hammurabi, King Of Babylon
Clay contract-tablet and its outer case, First Dynasty
A camping-ground in the desert, between Birejik And Urfa
Approach to the city of Samarra, situated on the left bank of the Tigris
A small caravan in the mountains of Kurdistan
Portrait-sculpture of Hammurabi, King of Babylon
A modern machine for irrigation on the Euphrates
Kaiks, or native boats on the Euphrates at Birejik
The modern bridge of boats across the Tigris opposite Mosul
A small Kelek, or raft, upon the Tigris at Baghdad
Statue of Mera, Chief Steward, IXth Dynasty
Wall of XIth Dynasty: Dêr el-Bahari
Wall of XVIIIth Dynasty: Dêr el-Bahari.
Excavation of the north lower colonnade of the XIth dynasty temple, Dêr el-Bahari, 1904
The granite threshold and sandstone pillars of the XIth dynasty temple at Dêr el-Bahari
Excavation of the tomb of a priestess, on a platform of the XIth Dynasty temple, Dêr el-Bahari, 1904
Cases of antiquities leaving Dêr el-Bahari for transport to Cairo
Shipping cases of antiquities on board the Nile steamer at Luxor, for the Egypt Exploration Fund
The Two Temples of Dêr el-Bahari
The upper court and trilithon gate of the XVIIIth Dynasty temple at Dêr el-Bahari
The tomb-mountain of Amenhetep III, in the western valley, Thebes
The Tomb-hill of Shêkh ’abd el-Kûrna, Thebes
Wall-painting from a Tomb of Shêkh ’abd el-Kûrna, Western Thebes
Fresco in the Tomb of Senmut at Thebes
The valley of the Tombs of the Queens at Thebes
M. Legrain’s excavation of the Karnak statues
Portrait-group of a great noble and his wife, of the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty
A tomb fitted up as an Explorer’s Residence
Stone Object Bearing a Votive Inscription of Arik-dên-ilu
Entrance into one of the Galleries or Tunnels of the principal mound at Sherghat
Stone Tablet of Tukulti-Ninib I, King of Assyria
The Ziggurat, or Temple Tower, of the Assyrian city of Calah
Work on one of the Rock-inscriptions of Sennacherib, near Bavian in Assyria
The Principal Rock Sculptures in the Gorge of the Gomel near Bavian
Ancient Flight of steps and gallery on the face of the Rock-citadel of Van
Part of the ancient fortifications of the city of Van
Within the Shrine of E-makh, Temple of the Goddess Nin-makh
The Great Dam of Aswân, showing water rushing through the sluices
The Kiosk at Philæ in process of underpinning and restoration, January, 1902
The Ancient Quay Of Philæ, November, 1904
The Rock of Konosso in January, 1902, Before The Building of the Dam
The Isle of Konosso, with its inscriptions, November 1904
EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA
In the Light of Recent Excavation and Research
CHAPTER I—THE DISCOVERY OF PREHISTORIC EGYPT
During the last ten years our conception of the beginnings of Egyptian
antiquity has profoundly altered. When Prof. Maspero published the first
volume of his great Histoire Ancienne des Peuples des l’Orient
Classique, in 1895, Egyptian history, properly so called, still began
with the Pyramid-builders, Sne-feru, Khufu, and Khafra (Cheops and
Chephren), and the legendary lists of earlier kings preserved at Abydos
and Sakkara were still quoted as the only source of knowledge of the time
before the IVth Dynasty. Of a prehistoric Egypt nothing was known, beyond
a few flint flakes gathered here and there upon the desert plateaus, which
might or might not tell of an age when the ancestors of the
Pyramid-builders knew only the stone tools and weapons of the primeval
savage.
Now, however, the veil which has hidden the beginnings of Egyptian
civilization from us has been lifted, and we see things, more or less, as
they actually were, unobscured by the traditions of a later day. Until the
last few years nothing of the real beginnings of history in either Egypt
or Mesopotamia had been found; legend supplied the only material for the
reconstruction of the earliest history of the oldest civilized nations of
the globe. Nor was it seriously supposed that any relics of prehistoric
Egypt or Mesopotamia ever would be found. The antiquity of the known
history of these countries already appeared so great that nobody took into
consideration the possibility of our discovering a prehistoric Egypt or
Mesopotamia; the idea was too remote from practical work. And further,
civilization in these countries had lasted so long that it seemed more
than probable that all traces of their prehistoric age had long since been
swept away. Yet the possibility, which seemed hardly worth a moment’s
consideration in 1895, is in 1905 an assured reality, at least as far as
Egypt is concerned. Prehistoric Babylonia has yet to be discovered. It is
true, for example, that at Mukay-yar, the site of ancient Ur of the
Chaldees, burials in earthenware coffins, in which the skeletons lie in
the doubled-up position characteristic of Neolithic interments, have been
found; but there is no doubt whatever that these are burials of a much
later date, belonging, quite possibly, to the Parthian period. Nothing
that may rightfully be termed prehistoric has yet been found in the
Euphrates valley, whereas in Egypt prehistoric antiquities are now almost
as well known and as well represented in our museums as are the
prehistoric antiquities of Europe and America.
With the exception of a few palasoliths from the surface of the Syrian
desert, near the Euphrates valley, not a single implement of the Age of
Stone has yet been found in Southern Mesopotamia, whereas Egypt has
yielded to us the most perfect examples of the flint-knapper’s art known,
flint tools and weapons more beautiful than the finest that Europe and
America can show. The reason is not far to seek. Southern Mesopotamia is
an alluvial country, and the ancient cities, which doubtless mark the
sites of the oldest settlements in the land, are situated in the alluvial
marshy plain between the Tigris and the Euphrates; so that all traces of
the Neolithic culture of the country would seem to have disappeared,
buried deep beneath city-mounds, clay and marsh. It is the same in the
Egyptian Delta, a similar country; and here no traces of the prehistoric
culture of Egypt have been found. The attempt to find them was made last
year at Buto, which is known to be one of the most antique centres of
civilization, and probably was one of the earliest settlements in Egypt,
but without success. The infiltration of water had made excavation
impossible and had no doubt destroyed everything belonging to the most
ancient settlement. It is not going too far to predict that exactly the
same thing will be found by any explorer who tries to discover a Neolithic
stratum beneath a city-mound of Babylonia. There is little hope that
prehistoric Chaldæa will ever be known to us. But in Egypt the conditions
are different. The Delta is like Babylonia, it is true; but in the Upper
Nile valley the river flows down with but a thin border of alluvial land
on either side, through the rocky and hilly desert, the dry Sahara, where
rain falls but once in two or three years. Antiquities buried in this soil
in the most remote ages are preserved intact as they were first interred,
until the modern investigator comes along to look for them. And it is on
the desert margin of the valley that the remains of prehistoric Egypt have
been found. That is the reason for their perfect preservation till our own
day, and why we know prehistoric Egypt so well.
The chief work of Egyptian civilization was the proper irrigation of the
alluvial soil, the turning of marsh into cultivated fields, and the
reclamation of land from the desert for the purposes of agriculture. Owing
to the rainless character of the country, the only means of obtaining
water for the crops is by irrigation, and where the fertilizing Nile water
cannot be taken by means of canals, there cultivation ends and the desert
begins. Before Egyptian civilization, properly so called, began, the
valley was a great marsh through which the Nile found its way north to the
sea. The half-savage, stone-using ancestors of the civilized Egyptians
hunted wild fowl, crocodiles, and hippopotami in the marshy valley; but
except in a few isolated settlements on convenient mounds here and there
(the forerunners of the later villages), they did not live there. Their
settlements were on the dry desert margin, and it was here, upon low
tongues of desert hill jutting out into the plain, that they buried their
dead. Their simple shallow graves were safe from the flood, and, but for
the depredations of jackals and hyenas, here they have remained intact
till our own day, and have yielded up to us the facts from which we have
derived our knowledge of prehistoric Egypt. Thus it is that we know so
much of the Egyptians of the Stone Age, while of their contemporaries in
Mesopotamia we know nothing, nor is anything further likely to be
discovered.
But these desert cemeteries, with their crowds of oval shallow graves,
covered by only a few inches of surface soil, in which the Neolithic
Egyptians lie crouched up with their flint implements and polished pottery
beside them, are but monuments of the later age of prehistoric Egypt. Long
before the Neolithic Egyptian hunted his game in the marshes, and here and
there essayed the work of reclamation for the purposes of an incipient
agriculture, a far older race inhabited the valley of the Nile. The
written records of Egyptian civilization go back four thousand years
before Christ, or earlier, and the Neolithic Age of Egypt must go back to
a period several thousand years before that. But we can now go back much
further still, to the Palaeolithic Age of Egypt. At a time when Europe was
still covered by the ice and snows of the Glacial Period, and man fought
as an equal, hardly yet as a superior, with cave-bear and mammoth, the
Palaeolithic Egyptians lived on the banks of the Nile. Their habitat was
doubtless the desert slopes, often, too, the plateaus themselves; but that
they lived entirely upon the plateaus, high up above the Nile marsh, is
improbable. There, it is true, we find their flint implements, the great
pear-shaped weapons of the types of Chelles, St. Acheul, and Le Moustier,
types well known to all who are acquainted with the flint implements of
the “Drift” in Europe. And it is there that the theory, generally accepted
hitherto, has placed the habitat of the makers and users of these
implements.
The idea was that in Palaeolithic days, contemporary with the Glacial Age
of Northern Europe and America, the climate of Egypt was entirely
different from that of later times and of to-day. Instead of dry desert,
the mountain plateaus bordering the Nile valley were supposed to have been
then covered with forest, through which flowed countless streams to feed
the river below. It was suggested that remains of these streams were to be
seen in the side ravines, or wadis, of the Nile valley, which run up from
the low desert on the river level into the hills on either hand. These
wadis undoubtedly show extensive traces of strong water action; they curve
and twist as the streams found their easiest way to the level through the
softer strata, they are heaped up with great water-worn boulders, they are
hollowed out where waterfalls once fell. They have the appearance of dry
watercourses, exactly what any mountain burns would be were the
water-supply suddenly cut off for ever, the climate altered from rainy to
eternal sun-glare, and every plant and tree blasted, never to grow again.
Acting on the supposition that this idea was a correct one, most observers
have concluded that the climate of Egypt in remote periods was very
different from the dry, rainless one now obtaining. To provide the water
for the wadi streams, heavy rainfall and forests are desiderated. They
were easily supplied, on the hypothesis. Forests clothed the mountain
plateaus, heavy rains fell, and the water rushed down to the Nile, carving
out the great watercourses which remain to this day, bearing testimony to
the truth. And the flints, which the Palaeolithic inhabitants of the
plateau-forests made and used, still lie on the now treeless and sun-baked
desert surface.
This is certainly a very weak conclusion. In fact, it seriously damages
the whole argument, the water-courses to the contrary notwithstanding. The
palæoliths are there. They can be picked up by any visitor. There they
lie, great flints of the Drift types, just like those found in the
gravel-beds of England and Belgium, on the desert surface where they were
made. Undoubtedly where they were made, for the places where they lie are
the actual ancient flint workshops, where the flints were chipped.
Everywhere around are innumerable flint chips and perfect weapons, burnt
black and patinated by ages of sunlight. We are taking one particular spot
in the hills of Western Thebes as an example, but there are plenty of
others, such as the Wadi esh-Shêkh on the right bank of the Nile opposite
Maghagha, whence Mr. H. Seton-Karr has brought back specimens of flint
tools of all ages from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic periods.
The Palæolithic flint workshops on the Theban hills have been visited of
late years by Mr. Seton-Karr, by Prof. Schweinfurth, Mr. Allen Sturge, and
Dr. Blanckenhorn, by Mr. Portch, Mr. Ayrton, and Mr. Hall. The weapons
illustrated here were found by Messrs. Hall and Ayrton, and are now
preserved in the British Museum. Among these flints shown we notice two
fine specimens of the pear-shaped type of St. Acheul, with curious
adze-shaped implements of primitive type to left and right. Below, to the
right, is a very primitive instrument of Chellean type, being merely a
sharpened pebble. Above, to left and right, are two specimens of the
curious half-moon-shaped instruments which are characteristic of the
Theban flint field and are hardly known elsewhere. All have the beautiful
brown patina, which only ages of sunburn can give. The “poignard” type to
the left, at the bottom of the plate, is broken off short.
In the smaller illustration we see some remarkable types: two scrapers or
knives with strongly marked “bulb of percussion” (the spot where the
flint-knapper struck and from which the flakes flew off), a very regular
coup-de-poing which looks almost like a large arrowhead, and on the
right a much weathered and patinated scraper which must be of immemorial
age. This came from the top plateau, not from the slopes (or subsidiary
plateaus at the head of the wadis), as did the great St. Acheulian
weapons. The circular object is very remarkable: it is the half of the
ring of a “morpholith “(a round flinty accretion often found in the Theban
limestone) which has been split, and the split (flat) side carefully
bevelled. Several of these interesting objects have been found in
conjunction with Palæolithic implements at Thebes. No doubt the flints lie
on the actual surface where they were made. No later water action has
swept them away and covered them with gravel, no later human habitation
has hidden them with successive deposits of soil, no gradual deposit of
dust and rubbish has buried them deep. They lie as they were left in the
far-away Palæolithic Age, and they have lain there till taken away by the
modern explorer.
But this is not the case with all the Palæolithic flints of Thebes. In the
year 1882 Maj.-Gen. Pitt-Rivers discovered Palæolithic flints in the
deposit of diluvial detritus which lies between the cultivation and the
mountains on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor. Many of these are
of the same type as those found on the surface of the mountain plateau
which lies at the head of the great wadi of the Tombs of the Kings,
while the diluvial deposit is at its mouth. The stuff of which the
detritus is composed evidently came originally from the high plateau, and
was washed down, with the flints, in ancient times.
This is quite conceivable, but how is it that the flints left behind on
the plateau remain on the original ancient surface? How is it conceivable
that if (on the old theory) these plateaus were in Palæolithic days
clothed with forest, the Palæolithic flints could even in a single
instance remain undisturbed from Palæolithic times to the present day,
when the forest in which they were made and the forest soil on which they
reposed have entirely disappeared? If there were woods and forests On the
heights, it would seem impossible that we should find, as we do,
Palæolithic implements lying in situ on the desert surface, around the
actual manufactories where they were made. Yet if the constant rainfall
and the vegetation of the Libyan desert area in Palæolithic days is all a
myth (as it most probably is), how came the embedded palaeoliths, found by
Gen. Pitt-Rivers, in the bed of diluvial detritus which is apparently débris
from the plateau brought down by the Palæolithic wadi streams?
Water erosion has certainly formed the Theban wadis. But this water
erosion was probably not that which would be the result of perennial
streams flowing down from wooded heights, but of torrents like those of
to-day, which fill the wadis once in three years or so after heavy
rain, but repeated at much closer intervals. We may in fact suppose just
so much difference in meteorological conditions as would make it possible
for sudden rain-storms to occur over the desert at far more frequent
intervals than at present. That would account for the detritus bed at the
mouth of the wadi, and its embedded flints, and at the same time
maintain the general probability of the idea that the desert plateaus were
desert in Palæolithic days as now, and that early man only knapped his
flints up there because he found the flint there. He himself lived on the
slopes and nearer the marsh.
This new view seems to be much sounder and more probable than the old one,
maintained by Flinders Petrie and Blanckenhorn, according to which the
high plateau was the home of man in Palæolithic times, when the rainfall,
as shown by the valley erosion and waterfalls, must have caused an
abundant vegetation on the plateau, where man could live and hunt his
game.[1] Were this so, it is patent that
the Palæolithic flints could not have been found on the desert surface as
they are. Mr. H. J. L. Beadnell, of the Geological Survey of Egypt, to
whom we are indebted for the promulgation of the more modern and probable
view, says: “Is it certain that the high plateau was then clothed with
forests? What evidence is there to show that it differed in any important
respect from its present aspect? And if, as I suggest, desert conditions
obtained then as now, and man merely worked his flints along the edges of
the plateaus overlooking the Nile valley, I see no reason why flint
implements, dating even from Palæolithic times should not in favourable
cases still be found in the spots where they were left, surrounded by the
flakes struck off in manufacture. On the flat plateaus the occasional
rains which fall—once in three or four years—can effect but
little transport of material, and merely lower the general level by
dissolving the underlying limestone, so that the plateau surface is left
with a coating of nodules and blocks of insoluble flint and chert. Flint
implements might thus be expected to remain in many localities for
indefinite periods, but they would certainly become more or less
‘patinated,’ pitted on the surface, and rounded at the angles after long
exposure to heat, cold, and blown sand.” This is exactly the case of the
Palæolithic flint tools from the desert plateau.
[1]
Petrie, Nagada and Ballas, p. 49.
We do not know whether Palæolithic man in Egypt was contemporary with the
cave-man of Europe. We have no means of gauging the age of the Palæolithic
Egyptian weapons, as we have for the Neolithic period. The historical
(dynastic) period of Egyptian annals began with the unification of the
kingdom under one head somewhere about 4500 B.C. At that time copper as
well as stone weapons were used, so that we may say that at the beginning
of the historical age the Egyptians were living in the “Chalcolithic”
period. We can trace the use of copper back for a considerable period
anterior to the beginning of the Ist Dynasty, so that we shall probably
not be far wrong if we do not bring down the close of the purely Neolithic
Age in Egypt—the close of the Age of Stone, properly so called—later
than +5000 B.C. How far back in the remote ages the transition period
between the Palæolithic and Neolithic Ages should be placed, it is utterly
impossible to say. The use of stone for weapons and implements continued
in Egypt as late as the time of the XIIth Dynasty, about 2500-2000 B.C.
But these XIIth Dynasty stone implements show by their forms how late they
are in the history of the Stone Age. The axe heads, for instance, are in
form imitations of the copper and bronze axe heads usual at that period;
they are stone imitations of metal, instead of the originals on whose
model the metal weapons were formed. The flint implements of the XIIth
Dynasty were a curious survival from long past ages. After the time of the
XIIth Dynasty stone was no longer used for tools or weapons, except for
the sacred rite of making the first incision in the dead bodies before
beginning the operations of embalming; for this purpose, as Herodotus
tells us, an “Ethiopian stone” was used. This was no doubt a knife of
flint or chert, like those of the Neolithic ancestors of the Egyptians,
and the continued use of a stone knife for this one purpose only is a very
interesting instance of a ceremonial survival. We may compare the wigs of
British judges.
We have no specimen of a flint knife which can definitely be asserted to
have belonged to an embalmer, but of the archaistic flint weapons of the
XIIth Dynasty we have several specimens. They were found by Prof. Petrie
at the place named by him “Kahun,” the site of a XIIth Dynasty town built
near the pyramid of King Usertsen (or Senusret) II at Illahun, at the
mouth of the canal leading from the Nile valley into the oasis-province of
the Payyum. These Kahun flints, and others of probably the same period
found by Mr. Seton-Karr at the very ancient flint works in the Wadi
esh-Shêkh, are of very coarse and poor workmanship as compared with the
stone-knapping triumphs of the late Neolithic and early Chalcolithic
periods. The delicacy of the art had all been lost. But the best flint
knives of the early period—dating to just a little before the time
of the Ist Dynasty, when flint-working had attained its apogee, and copper
had just begun to be used—are undoubtedly the most remarkable stone
weapons ever made in the world. The grace and utility of the form, the
delicacy of the fluted chipping on the side, and the minute care with
which the tiny serrations of the cutting edge, serrations so small that
often they can hardly be seen with the naked eye, are made, can certainly
not be parallelled elsewhere. The art of flint-knapping reached its zenith
in Ancient Egypt. The specimen illustrated has a handle covered with gold
decorated with incised designs representing animals.
The prehistoric Egyptians may also fairly be said to have attained greater
perfection than other peoples in the Neolithic stage of culture, in other
arts besides the making of stone tools and weapons. Their pottery is of
remarkable perfection. Now that the sites of the Egyptian prehistoric
settlements have been so thoroughly explored by competent archæologists
(and, unhappily, as thoroughly pillaged by incompetent natives), this
prehistoric Egyptian pottery has become extremely well known. In fact, it
is so common that good specimens may be bought anywhere in Egypt for a few
piastres. Most museums possess sets of this pottery, of which great
quantities have been brought back from Egypt by Prof. Petrie and other
explorers. It is of very great interest, artistically as well as
historically. The potter’s wheel was not yet invented, and all the vases,
even those of the most perfect shape, were built up by hand. The
perfection of form attained without the aid of the wheel is truly
marvellous.
The commonest type of this pottery is a red polished ware vase with black
top, due to its having been baked mouth downward in a fire, the ashes of
which, according to Prof. Petrie, deoxidized the hæmatite burnishing, and
so turned the red colour to black. “In good examples the hæmatite has not
only been reduced to black magnetic oxide, but the black has the highest
polish, as seen on fine Greek vases. This is probably due to the formation
of carbonyl gas in the smothered fire. This gas acts as a solvent of
magnetic oxide, and hence allows it to assume a new surface, like the
glassy surface of some marbles subjected to solution in water.” This black
and red ware appears to be the most ancient prehistoric Egyptian pottery
known. Later in date are a red ware and a black ware with rude geometrical
incised designs, imitating basketwork, and with the incised lines filled
in with white. Later again is a buff ware, either plain or decorated with
wavy lines, concentric circles, and elaborate drawings of boats sailing on
the Nile, ostriches, fish, men and women, and so on.
These designs are in deep red. With this elaborate pottery the Neolithic
ceramic art of Egypt reached its highest point; in the succeeding period
(the beginning of the historic age) there was a decline in workmanship,
exhibiting clumsy forms and bad colour, and it is not until the time of
the IVth Dynasty that good pottery (a fine polished red) is once more
found. Meanwhile the invention of glazed pottery, which was unknown to the
prehistoric Egyptians, had been made (before the beginning of the Ist
Dynasty). The unglazed ware of the first three dynasties was bad, but the
new invention of light blue glazed faience (not porcelain properly so
called) seems to have made great progress, and we possess fine specimens
at the beginning of the Ist Dynasty. The prehistoric Egyptians were also
proficient in other arts. They carved ivory and they worked gold, which is
known to have been almost the first metal worked by man; certainly in
Egypt it was utilized for ornament even before copper was used for work.
We may refer to the illustration of a flint knife with gold handle,
already given.[2]
[2]
See illustration.
The date of the actual introduction of copper for tools and weapons into
Egypt is uncertain, but it seems probable that copper was occasionally
used at a very early period. Copper weapons have been found in
pre-dynastic graves beside the finest buff pottery with elaborate red
designs, so that we may say that when the flint-working and pottery of the
Neolithic Egyptians had reached its zenith, the use of copper was already
known, and copper weapons were occasionally employed. We can thus speak of
the “Chalcolithic” period in Egypt as having already begun at that time,
no doubt several centuries before the beginning of the historical or
dynastic age. Strictly speaking, the Egyptians remained in the
“Chalcolithic” period till the end of the XIIth Dynasty, but in practice
it is best to speak of this period, when the word is used, as extending
from the time of the finest flint weapons and pottery of the prehistoric
age (when the “Neolithic” period may be said to close) till about the IId
or IIId Dynasty. By that time the “Bronze,” or, rather, “Copper,” Age of
Egypt had well begun, and already stone was not in common use.
The prehistoric pottery is of the greatest value to the archæologist, for
with its help some idea may be obtained of the succession of periods
within the late Neolithic-Chalcolithic Age. The enormous number of
prehistoric graves which have been examined enables us to make an
exhaustive comparison of the different kinds of pottery found in them, so
that we can arrange them in order according to pottery they contained. By
this means we obtain an idea of the development of different types of
pottery, and the sequence of the types. Thus it is that we can say with
some degree of confidence that the black and red ware is the most ancient
form, and that the buff with red designs is one of the latest forms of
prehistoric pottery. Other objects found in the graves can be classified
as they occur with different pottery types.
With the help of the pottery we can thus gain a more or less reliable
conspectus of the development of the late “Neolithic” culture of Egypt.
This system of “sequence-dating” was introduced by Prof. Petrie, and is
certainly very useful. It must not, however, be pressed too far or be
regarded as an iron-bound system, with which all subsequent discoveries
must be made to fit in by force. It is not to be supposed that all
prehistoric pottery developed its series of types in an absolutely orderly
manner without deviations or throws-back. The work of man’s hands is
variable and eccentric, and does not develop or evolve in an undeviating
course as the work of nature does. It is a mistake, very often made by
anthropologists and archæologists, who forget this elementary fact, to
assume “curves of development,” and so forth, or semi-savage culture, on
absolutely even and regular lines. Human culture has not developed either
evenly or regularly, as a matter of fact. Therefore we cannot always be
sure that, because the Egyptian black and red pottery does not occur in
graves with buff and red, it is for this reason absolutely earlier in date
than the latter. Some of the development-sequences may in reality be
contemporary with others instead of earlier, and allowance must always be
made for aberrations and reversions to earlier types.
This caveat having been entered, however, we may provisionally accept
Prof. Petrie’s system of sequence-dating as giving the best classification
of the prehistoric antiquities according to development. So it may fairly
be said that, as far as we know, the black and red pottery (“sequence-date
30—“) is the most ancient Neolithic Egyptian ware known; that the
buff and red did not begin to be used till about “sequence-date 45;” that
bone and ivory carvings were commonest in the earlier period
(“sequence-dates 30-50”); that copper was almost unknown till
“sequence-date 50,” and so on. The arbitrary numbers used range from 30 to
80, in order to allow for possible earlier and later additions, which may
be rendered necessary by the progress of discovery. The numbers are of
course as purely arbitrary and relative as those of the different
thermometrical systems, but they afford a convenient system of
arrangement. The products of the prehistoric Egyptians are, so to speak,
distributed on a conventional plan over a scale numbered from 30 to 80, 30
representing the beginning and 80 the close of the term, so far as its
close has as yet been ascertained. It is probable that “sequence-date 80”
more or less accurately marks the beginning of the dynastic or historical
period.
This hypothetically chronological classification is, as has been said,
due to Prof. Petrie, and has been adopted by Mr. Randall-Maclver and
other students of prehistoric Egypt in their work.[3] To Prof. Petrie then is due the
credit of systematizing the study of Egyptian prehistoric antiquities;
but the further credit of having discovered these antiquities
themselves and settled their date belongs not to him but to the
distinguished French archæologist, M. J. de Morgan, who was for several
years director of the museum at Giza, and is now chief of the French
archæological delegation in Persia, which has made of late years so many
important discoveries. The proof of the prehistoric date of this class of
antiquities was given, not by Prof. Petrie after his excavations at
Dendera in 1897-8, but by M. de Morgan in his volume, Recherches sur
les Origines de l’Égypte: l’Âge de la Pierre et les
Métaux, published in 1895-6. In this book the true chronological
position of the prehistoric antiquities was pointed out, and the
existence of an Egyptian Stone Age finally decided. M. de Morgan’s
work was based on careful study of the results of excavations carried on
for several years by the Egyptian government in various parts of Egypt,
in the course of which a large number of cemeteries of the primitive type
had been discovered. It was soon evident to M. de Morgan that these
primitive graves, with their unusual pottery and flint implements, could
be nothing less than the tombs of the prehistoric Egyptians, the
Egyptians of the Stone Age.
[3]
El Amra and Abydos, Egypt Exploration Fund, 1902.
Objects of the prehistoric period had been known to the museums for many
years previously, but owing to the uncertainty of their provenance and the
absence of knowledge of the existence of the primitive cemeteries, no
scientific conclusions had been arrived at with regard to them; and it was
not till the publication of M. de Morgan’s book that they were recognized
and classified as prehistoric. The necropoles investigated by M. de Morgan
and his assistants extended from Kawâmil in the north, about twenty miles
north of Abydos, to Edfu in the south. The chief cemeteries between these
two points were those of Bât Allam, Saghel el-Baglieh, el-’Amra, Nakâda,
Tûkh, and Gebelên. All the burials were of simple type, analogous to those
of the Neolithic races in the rest of the world. In a shallow, oval grave,
excavated often but a few inches below the surface of the soil, lay the
body, cramped up with the knees to the chin, sometimes in a rough box of
pottery, more often with only a mat to cover it. Ready to the hand of the
dead man were his flint weapons and tools, and the usual red and black, or
buff and red, pots lay beside him; originally, no doubt, they had been
filled with the funeral meats, to sustain the ghost in the next world.
Occasionally a simple copper weapon was found. With the body were also
buried slate palettes for grinding the green eye-paint which the Egyptians
loved even at this early period. These are often carved to suggest the
forms of animals, such as birds, bats, tortoises, goats, etc.; on others
are fantastic creatures with two heads. Combs of bone, too, are found,
ornamented in a similar way with birds’ or goats’ heads, often double. And
most interesting of all are the small bone and ivory figures of men and
women which are also found. These usually have little blue beads for eyes,
and are of the quaintest and naivest appearance conceivable. Here we have
an elderly man with a long pointed beard, there two women with inane
smiles upon their countenances, here another woman, of better work this
time, with a child slung across her shoulder. This figure, which is in the
British Museum, must be very late, as prehistoric Egyptian antiquities go.
It is almost as good in style as the early Ist Dynasty objects. Such were
the objects which the simple piety of the early Egyptian prompted him to
bury with the bodies of his dead, in order that they might find solace and
contentment in the other world.
All the prehistoric cemeteries are of this type, with the graves pressed
closely together, so that they often impinge upon one another. The
nearness of the graves to the surface is due to the exposed positions, at
the entrances to wadis, in which the primitive cemeteries are
usually found. The result is that they are always swept by the winds,
which prevent the desert sand from accumulating over them, and so have
preserved the original level of the ground. From their proximity to the
surface they are often found disturbed, more often by the agency of
jackals than that of man.
Contemporaneously with M. de Morgan’s explorations, Prof. Flinders Petrie
and Mr. J. Quibell had, in the winter of 1894-5, excavated in the
districts of Tukh and Nakada, on the west bank of the Nile opposite
Koptos, a series of extensive cemeteries of the primitive type, from which
they obtained a large number of antiquities, published in their volume
Nagada and Dallas. The plates giving representations of the antiquities
found were of the highest interest, but the scientific value of the
letter-press is vitiated by the fact that the true historical position of
the antiquities was not perceived by their discoverers, who came to the
conclusion that these remains were those of a “New Pace” of Libyan
invaders. This race, they supposed, had entered Egypt after the close of
the flourishing period of the “Old Kingdom” at the end of the VIth
Dynasty, and had occupied part of the Nile valley from that time till the
period of the Xth Dynasty.
This conclusion was proved erroneous by M. de Morgan almost as soon as
made, and the French archæologist’s identification of the primitive
remains as pre-dynastic was at once generally accepted. It was obvious
that a hypothesis of the settlement of a stone-using barbaric race in the
midst of Egypt at so late a date as the period immediately preceding the
XIIth Dynasty, a race which mixed in no way with the native Egyptians
themselves, and left no trace of their influence upon the later Egyptians,
was one which demanded greater faith than the simple explanation of M. de
Morgan.
The error of the British explorers was at once admitted by Mr. Quibell,
in his volume on the excavations of 1897 at el-Kab, published in 1898.[4] Mr. Quibell at once
found full and adequate confirmation of M. de Morgan’s discovery in his
diggings at el-Kab. Prof. Petrie admitted the correctness of M. de
Morgan’s views in the preface to his volume Diospolis Parva, published
three years later in 1901.[5] The preface to the first volume of M.
de Morgan’s book contained a generous recognition of the method and
general accuracy of Prof. Petrie’s excavations, which contrasted
favourably, according to M. de Morgan, with the excavations of others,
generally carried on without scientific control, and with the sole aim of
obtaining antiquities or literary texts.[6] That M. de Morgan’s own work was
carried out as scientifically and as carefully is evident from the fact
that his conclusions as to the chronological position of the prehistoric
antiquities have been shown to be correct. To describe M. de Morgan’s
discovery as a “happy guess,” as has been done, is therefore beside the
mark.
[4]
El-Kab. Egyptian Research Account, 1897, p. 11.
[5]
Diospolis Parva. Egypt Exploration Fund, 1901, p. 2.
[6]
Recherches: Age de la Pierre, p. xiii.
Another most important British excavation was that carried on by Messrs.
Randall-Maclver and Wilkin at el-’Amra. The imposing lion-headed
promontory of el-’Amra stands out into the plain on the west bank of the
Nile about five miles south of Abydos. At the foot of this hill M. de
Morgan found a very extensive prehistoric necropolis, which he examined,
but did not excavate to any great extent, and the work of thoroughly
excavating it was performed by Messrs. Randall-MacIver and Wilkin for the
Egypt Exploration Fund. The results have thrown very great light upon the
prehistoric culture of Egypt, and burials of all prehistoric types, some
of them previously unobserved, were found. Among the most interesting are
burials in pots, which have also been found by Mr. Garstang in a
predynastic necropolis at Ragagna, north of Abydos. One of the more
remarkable observations made at el-’Amra was the progressive development
of the tombs from the simplest pot-burial to a small brick chamber, the
embryo of the brick tombs of the Ist Dynasty. Among the objects recovered
from this site may be mentioned a pottery model of oxen, a box in the
shape of a model hut, and a slate “palette” with what is perhaps the
oldest Egyptian hieroglyph known, a representation of the fetish-sign of
the god Min, in relief. All these are preserved in the British Museum. The
skulls of the bodies found were carefully preserved for craniometric
examination.
In 1901 an extensive prehistoric cemetery was being excavated by Messrs.
Reisner and Lythgoe at Nag’ed-Dêr, opposite Girga, and at el-Ahaiwa,
further north, another prehistoric necropolis has been excavated by these
gentlemen, working for the University of California.
The cemetery of Nag’ed-Dêr is of the usual prehistoric type, with its
multitudes of small oval graves, excavated just a little way below the
surface. Graves of this kind are the most primitive of all. Those at
el-’Amra are usually more developed, often, as has been noted, rising to
the height of regular brick tombs. They are evidently later, nearer to the
time of the Ist Dynasty. The position of the Nag’ed-Dêr cemetery is also
characteristic. It lies on the usual low ridge at the entrance to a desert
wadi, which is itself one of the most picturesque in this part of
Egypt, with its chaos of great boulders and fallen rocks. An illustration
of the camp of Mr. Reisner’s expedition at Nag’ed-Dêr is given above. The
excavations of the University of California are carried out with the
greatest possible care and are financed with the greatest possible
liberality. Mr. Reisner has therefore been able to keep an absolutely
complete photographic record of everything, even down to the successive
stages in the opening of a tomb, which will be of the greatest use to
science when published.
For a detailed study of the antiquities of the prehistoric period the
publications of Prof. Petrie, Mr. Quibell, and Mr. Randall-Maclver are
more useful than that of M. de Morgan, who does not give enough details.
Every atom of evidence is given in the publications of the British
explorers, whereas it is a characteristic of French work to give brilliant
conclusions, beautifully illustrated, without much of the evidence on
which the conclusions are based. This kind of work does not appeal to the
Anglo-Saxon mind, which takes nothing on trust, even from the most
renowned experts, and always wants to know the why and wherefore. The
complete publication of evidence which marks the British work will no
doubt be met with, if possible in even more complete detail, in the
American work of Messrs. Reisner, Lythgoe, and Mace (the last-named is an
Englishman) for the University of California, when published. The question
of speedy versus delayed publication is a very vexing one. Prof. Petrie
prefers to publish as speedily as possible; six months after the season’s
work in Egypt is done, the full publication with photographs of everything
appears. Mr. Reisner and the French explorers prefer to publish nothing
until they have exhaustively studied the whole of the evidence, and can
extract nothing more from it. This would be admirable if the French
published their discoveries fully, but they do not. Even M. de Morgan has
not approached the fulness of detail which characterizes British work and
which will characterize Mr. Reisner’s publication when it appears. The
only drawback to this method is that general interest in the particular
excavations described tends to pass away before the full description
appears.
Prof. Petrie has explored other prehistoric sites at Abadiya, and Mr.
Quibell at el-Kab. M. de Morgan and his assistants have examined a large
number of sites, ranging from the Delta to el-Kab. Further research has
shown that some of the sites identified by M. de Morgan as prehistoric are
in reality of much later date, for example, Kahun, where the late flints
of XIIth Dynasty date were found. He notes that “large numbers of
Neolithic flint weapons are found in the desert on the borders of the
Fayyum, and at Helwan, south of Cairo,” and that all the important
necropoles and kitchen-middens of the predynastic people are to be found
in the districts of Abydos and Thebes, from el-Kawamil in the North to
el-Kab in the South. It is of course too soon to assert with confidence
that there are no prehistoric remains in any other part of Egypt,
especially in the long tract between the Fayyûm and the district of
Abydos, but up to the present time none have been found in this region.
This geographical distribution of the prehistoric remains fits in
curiously with the ancient legend concerning the origin of the ancestors
of the Egyptians in Upper Egypt, and supports the much discussed theory
that they came originally to the Nile valley from the shores of the Red
Sea by way of the Wadi Hammamat, which debouches on to the Nile in the
vicinity of Koptos and Kus, opposite Ballas and Tûkh. The supposition
seems a very probable one, and it may well be that the earliest Egyptians
entered the valley of the Nile by the route suggested and then spread
northwards and southwards in the valley. The fact that their remains are
not found north of el-Kawâmil nor south of el-Kab might perhaps be
explained by the supposition that, when they had extended thus far north
and south from their original place of arrival, they passed from the
primitive Neolithic condition to the more highly developed copper-using
culture of the period which immediately preceded the establishment of the
monarchy. The Neolithic weapons of the Fayyûm and Hel-wân would then be
the remains of a different people, which inhabited the Delta and Middle
Egypt in very early times. This people may have been of Mediterranean
stock, akin to the primitive inhabitants of Palestine, Greece, Italy, and
Spain; and they no doubt were identical with the inhabitants of Lower
Egypt who were overthrown and conquered by Kha-sekhem and the other
Southern founders of the monarchy (who belonged to the race which had come
from the Red Sea by the Wadi Hammamat), and so were the ancestors of the
later natives of Lower Egypt. Whether the Southerners, whose primitive
remains we find from el-Kawâmil to el-Kab, were of the same race as the
Northerners whom they conquered, cannot be decided. The skull-form of the
Southerners agrees with that of the Mediterranean races. But we have no
nécropoles of the Northerners to tell us much of their peculiarities. We
have nothing but their flint arrowheads.
But it should be observed that, in spite of the present absence of all
primitive remains (whether mere flints, or actual graves with bodies and
relics) of the primeval population between the Fayyûm and el-Kawâmil,
there is no proof that the primitive race of Upper Egypt was not
coterminous and identical with that of the lower country. It might
therefore be urged that the whole Neolithic population was “Mediterranean”
by its skull-form and body-structure, and specifically “Nilotic”
(indigenous Egyptian) in its culture-type. This is quite possible, but we
have again to account for the legends of distant origin on the Red Sea
coast, the probability that one element of the Egyptian population was of
extraneous origin and came from the east into the Nile valley near Koptos,
and finally the historical fact of an advance of the early dynastic
Egyptians from the South to the conquest of the North. The latter fact
might of course be explained as a civil war analogous to that between
Thebes and Asyût in the time of the IXth Dynasty, but against this
explanation is to be set the fact that the contemporary monuments of the
Southerners exhibit the men of the North as of foreign and non-Egyptian
ethnic type, resembling Libyans. It is possible that they were akin to the
Libyans; and this would square very well with the first theory, but it may
also be made to fit in with a development of the second, which has been
generally accepted.
According to this view, the whole primitive Neolithic population of North
and South was Miotic, indigenous in origin, and akin to the
“Mediterraneans “of Prof. Sergi and the other ethnologists. It was not
this population, the stone-users whose nécropoles have been found by
Messrs. de Morgan, Pétrie, and Maclver, that entered the Nile valley by
the Wadi Hammamat. This was another race of different ethnic origin, which
came from the Red Sea toward the end of the Neolithic period, and, being
of higher civilization than the native Nilotes, assumed the lordship over
them, gave a great impetus to the development of their culture, and
started at once the institution of monarchy, the knowledge of letters, and
the use of metals. The chiefs of this superior tribe founded the monarchy,
conquered the North, unified the kingdom, and began Egyptian history. From
many indications it would seem probable that these conquerors were of
Babylonian origin, or that the culture they brought with them (possibly
from Arabia) was ultimately of Babylonian origin. They themselves would
seem to have been Semites, or rather proto-Semites, who came from Arabia
to Africa by way of the straits of Bab el-Mandeb, and proceeded up the
coast to about the neighbourhood of Kusêr, whence the Wadi Hammamat
offered them an open road to the valley of the Nile. By this route they
may have entered Egypt, bringing with them a civilization, which, like
that of the other Semites, had been profoundly influenced and modified by
that of the Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia. This Semitic-Sumerian
culture, mingling with that of the Nilotes themselves, produced the
civilization of Ancient Egypt as we know it.
This is a very plausible hypothesis, and has a great deal of evidence in
its favour. It seems certain that in the early dynastic period two races
lived in Egypt, which differed considerably in type, and also, apparently,
in burial customs. The later Egyptians always buried the dead lying on
their backs, extended at full length. During the period of the Middle
Kingdom (XIth-XIIIth Dynasties) the head was usually turned over on to the
left side, in order that the dead man might look through the two great
eyes painted on that side of the coffin. Afterward the rigidly extended
position was always adopted. The Neolithic Egyptians, however, buried the
dead lying wholly on the left side and in a contracted position, with the
knees drawn up to the chin. The bodies were not embalmed, and the extended
position and mummification were never used. Under the IVth Dynasty we find
in the necropolis of Mêdûm (north of the Payyûm) the two positions used
simultaneously, and the extended bodies are mummified. The contracted
bodies are skeletons, as in the case of most of the predynastic bodies.
When these are found with flesh, skin, and hair intact, their preservation
is due to the dryness of the soil and the preservative salts it contains,
not to intentional embalming, which was evidently introduced by those who
employed the extended position in burial. The contracted position is found
as late as the Vth Dynasty at Dashasha, south of the Eayyûm, but after
that date it is no longer found.
The conclusion is obvious that the contracted position without
mummification, which the Neolithic people used, was supplanted in the
early dynastic period by the extended position with mummification, and by
the time of the VIth Dynasty it was entirely superseded. This points to
the supersession of the burial customs of the indigenous Neolithic race by
those of another race which conquered and dominated the indigenes. And,
since the extended burials of the IVth Dynasty are evidently those of the
higher nobles, while the contracted ones are those of inferior people, it
is probable that the customs of extended burial and embalming were
introduced by a foreign race which founded the Egyptian monarchical state,
with its hierarchy of nobles and officials, and in fact started Egyptian
civilization on its way. The conquerors of the North were thus not the
descendants of the Neolithic people of the South, but their conquerors; in
fact, they dominated the indigenes both of North and South, who will then
appear (since we find the custom of contracted burial in the North at
Dashasha and Mêdûm) to have originally belonged to the same race.
The conquering race is that which is supposed to have been of Semitic or
proto-Semitic origin, and to have brought elements of Sumerian culture to
savage Egypt. The reasons advanced for this supposition are the following:—
(1) Just as the Egyptian race was evidently compounded of two elements, of
conquered “Mediterraneans” and conquering x, so the Egyptian language is
evidently compounded of two elements, the one Nilotic, perhaps related in
some degree to the Berber dialects of North Africa, the other not x, but
evidently Semitic.
(2) Certain elements of the early dynastic civilization, which do not
appear in that of the earlier pre-dynastic period, resemble well-known
elements of the civilization of Babylonia. We may instance the use of the
cylinder-seal, which died out in Egypt in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty,
but was always used in Babylonia from the earliest to the latest times.
The early Egyptian mace-head is of exactly the same type as the early
Babylonian one. In the British Museum is an Egyptian mace-head of red
breccia, which is identical in shape and size with one from Babylonia
(also in the museum) bearing the name of Shargani-shar-ali (i.e. Sargon,
King of Agade), one of the earliest Chaldæan monarchs, who must have lived
about the same time as the Egyptian kings of the IId-IIId Dynasties, to
which period the Egyptian mace-head may also be approximately assigned.
The Egyptian art of the earliest dynasties bears again a remarkable
resemblance to that of early Babylonia. It is not till the time of the IId
Dynasty that Egyptian art begins to take upon itself the regular form
which we know so well, and not till that of the IVth that this form was
finally crystallized. Under the 1st Dynasty we find the figure of man or,
to take other instances, that of a lion, or a hawk, or a snake, often
treated in a style very different from that in which we are accustomed to
see a man, a lion, a hawk, or a snake depicted in works of the later
period. And the striking thing is that these early representations, which
differ so much from what we find in later Egyptian art, curiously resemble
the works of early Babylonian art, of the time of the patesis of Shirpurla
or the Kings Shargani-shar-ali and Narâm-Sin. One of the best known relics
of the early art of Babylonia is the famous “Stele of Vultures” now in
Paris. On this we see the enemies of Eannadu, one of the early rulers of
Shirpurla, cast out to be devoured by the vultures. On an Egyptian relief
of slate, evidently originally dedicated in a temple record of some
historical event, and dating from the beginning of the Ist Dynasty
(practically contemporary, according to our latest knowledge, with
Eannadu), we have an almost exactly similar scene of captives being cast
out into the desert, and devoured by lions and vultures. The two reliefs
are curiously alike in their clumsy, naïve style of art. A further point
is that the official represented on the stele, who appears to be thrusting
one of the bound captives out to die, wears a long fringed garment of
Babylonish cut, quite different from the clothes of the later Egyptians.
(3) There are evidently two distinct and different main strata in the
fabric of Egyptian religion. On the one hand we find a mass of myth and
religious belief of very primitive, almost savage, cast, combining a
worship of the actual dead in their tombs—which were supposed to
communicate and thus form a veritable “underworld,” or, rather,
“under-Egypt”—with veneration of magic animals, such as jackals,
cats, hawks, and crocodiles. On the other hand, we have a sun and sky
worship of a more elevated nature, which does not seem to have amalgamated
with the earlier fetishism and corpse-worship until a comparatively late
period. The main seats of the sun-worship were at Heliopolis in the Delta
and at Edfu in Upper Egypt. Heliopolis seems always to have been a centre
of light and leading in Egypt, and it is, as is well known, the On of the
Bible, at whose university the Jewish lawgiver Moses is related to have
been educated “in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” The philosophical
theories of the priests of the Sun-gods, Râ-Harmachis and Turn, at
Heliopolis seem to have been the source from which sprang the monotheistic
heresy of the Disk-Worshippers (in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty), who,
under the guidance of the reforming King Akhunaten, worshipped only the
disk of the sun as the source of all life, the door in heaven, so to
speak, through which the hidden One Deity poured forth heat and light, the
origin of life upon the earth. Very early in Egyptian history the
Heliopolitans gained the upper hand, and the Râ-worship (under the Vth
Dynasty, the apogee of the Old Kingdom) came to the front, and for the
first time the kings took the afterwards time-honoured royal title of “Son
of the Sun.” It appears then as a more or less foreign importation into
the Nile valley, and bears most undoubtedly a Semitic impress. Its two
chief seats were situated, the one, Heliopolis, in the North on the
eastern edge of the Delta,—just where an early Semitic settlement
from over the desert might be expected to be found,—the other, Edfu,
in the Upper Egyptian territory south of the Thebaïd, Koptos, and the Wadi
Ham-mamat, and close to the chief settlement of the earliest kings and the
most ancient capital of Upper Egypt.
(4) The custom of burying at full length was evidently introduced into
Egypt by the second, or x race. The Neolithic Egyptians buried in the
cramped position. The early Babylonians buried at full length, as far as
we know. On the same “Stele of Vultures,” which has already been
mentioned, we see the burying at full length of dead warriors.[7] There is no trace of any
early burial in Babylonia in the cramped position. The tombs at
Warka (Erech) with cramped bodies in pottery coffins are of very late
date. A further point arises with regard to embalming. The Neolithic
Egyptians did not embalm the dead. Usually their cramped bodies are found
as skeletons. When they are mummified, it is merely owing to the
preservative action of the salt in the soil, not to any process of
embalming. The second, or x race, however, evidently introduced the
custom of embalming as well as that of burial at full length and the use
of coffins. The Neolithic Egyptian used no box or coffin, the nearest
approach to this being a pot, which was inverted over the coiled up body.
Usually only a mat was put over the body.
[7]
See illustration.
Now it is evident that Babylonians and Assyrians, who buried the dead at
full length in chests, had some knowledge of embalming. An Assyrian king
tells us how he buried his royal father:—
“Within the grave, the secret place,
In kingly oil, I gently laid him.
The grave-stone marketh his resting-place.
With mighty bronze I sealed its entrance,
And I protected it with an incantation.”
The “kingly oil” was evidently used with the idea of preserving the body
from decay. Salt also was used to preserve the dead, and Herodotus says
that the Babylonians buried in honey, which was also used by the
Egyptians. No doubt the Babylonian method was less perfect than the
Egyptian, but the comparison is an interesting one, when taken in
connection with the other points of resemblance mentioned above.
We find, then, that an analysis of the Egyptian language reveals a Semitic
element in it; that the early dynastic culture had certain characteristics
which were unknown to the Neolithic Egyptians but are closely parallelled
in early Babylonia; that there were two elements in the Egyptian religion,
one of which seems to have originally belonged to the Neolithic people,
while the other has a Semitic appearance; and that there were two sets of
burial customs in early Egypt, one, that of the Neolithic people, the
other evidently that of a conquering race, which eventually prevailed over
the former; these later rites were analogous to those of the Babylonians
and Assyrians, though differing from them in points of detail. The
conclusion is that the x or conquering race was Semitic and brought to
Egypt the Semitic elements in the Egyptian religion and a culture
originally derived from that of the Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia, the
non-Semitic parent of all Semitic civilizations.
The question now arises, how did this Semitic people reach Egypt? We have
the choice of two points of entry: First, Heliopolis in the North, where
the Semitic sun-worship took root, and, second, the Wadi Hamma-mat in the
South, north of Edfu, the southern centre of sun-worship, and
Hierakonpolis (Nekheb-Nekhen), the capital of the Upper Egyptian kingdom
which existed before the foundation of the monarchy. The legends which
seem to bring the ancestors of the Egyptians from the Red Sea coast have
already been mentioned. They are closely connected with the worship of the
Sky and Sun god Horus of Edfu. Hathor, his nurse, the “House of Horus,”
the centre of whose worship was at Dendera, immediately opposite the mouth
of the Wadi Hammamat, was said to have come from Ta-neter, “The Holy
Land,” i.e. Abyssinia or the Red Sea coast, with the company or paut
of the gods. Now the Egyptians always seem to have had some idea that they
were connected racially with the inhabitants of the Land of Punt or
Puenet, the modern Abyssinia and Somaliland. In the time of the XVIIIth
Dynasty they depicted the inhabitants of Punt as greatly resembling
themselves in form, feature, and dress, and as wearing the little
turned-up beard which was worn by the Egyptians of the earliest times, but
even as early as the IVth Dynasty was reserved for the gods. Further, the
word Punt is always written without the hieroglyph determinative of
a foreign country, thus showing that the Egyptians did not regard the
Punites as foreigners. This certainly looks as if the Punites were a
portion of the great migration from Arabia, left behind on the African
shore when the rest of the wandering people pressed on northwards to the
Wadi Hammamat and the Nile. It may be that the modern Gallas and
Abyssinians are descendants of these Punites.
Now the Sky-god of Edfu is in legend a conquering hero who advances down
the Nile valley, with his Mesniu, or “Smiths,” to overthrow the
people of the North, whom he defeats in a great battle near Dendera. This
may be a reminiscence of the first fights of the invaders with the
Neolithic inhabitants. The other form of Horus, “Horus, son of Isis,” has
also a body of retainers, the Shemsu-Heru, or “Followers of
Horns,” who are spoken of in late texts as the rulers of Egypt before the
monarchy. They evidently correspond to the dynasties of Manes,
Νεκύες or “Ghosts,” of Manetho, and are
probably intended for the early kings of Hierakonpolis. The mention of
the Followers of Horus as “Smiths” is very interesting, for it would
appear to show that the Semitic conquerors were notable as metal-users,
that, in fact, their conquest was that old story in the dawn of the
world’s history, the utter overthrow and subjection of the stone-users by
the metal-users, the primeval tragedy of the supersession of flint by
copper. This may be, but if the “Smiths” were the Semitic conquerors who
founded the kingdom, it would appear that the use of copper was known in
Egypt to some extent before their arrival, for we find it in the graves
of the late Neolithic Egyptians, very sparsely from “sequence-date 30” to
“45,” but afterwards more commonly. It was evidently becoming known. The
supposition, however, that the “Smiths” were the Semitic conquerors, and
that they won their way by the aid of their superior weapons of metal,
may be provisionally accepted.
In favour of the view which would bring the conquerors by way of the Wadi
Hammamat, an interesting discovery may be quoted. Immediately opposite
Den-dera, where, according to the legend, the battle between the Mesniu
and the aborigines took place, lies Koptos, at the mouth of the Wadi
Hammamat. Here, in 1894, underneath the pavement of the ancient temple,
Prof. Petrie found remains which he then diagnosed as belonging to the
most ancient epoch of Egyptian history. Among them were some extremely
archaic statues of the god Min, on which were curious scratched drawings
of bears, crioceras-shells, elephants walking over hills, etc., of
the most primitive description. With them were lions’ heads and birds of a
style then unknown, but which we now know to belong to the period of the
beginning of the Ist Dynasty. But the statues of Min are older. The crioceras-shells
belong to the Red Sea. Are we to see in these statues the holy images of
the conquerors from the Red Sea who reached the Nile valley by way of the
Wadi Hammamat, and set up the first memorials of their presence at Koptos?
It may be so, or the Min statues may be older than the conquerors, and
belong to the Neolithic race, since Min and his fetish (which we find on
the slate palette from el-’Amra, already mentioned) seem to belong to the
indigenous Nilotes. In any case we have in these statues, two of which are
in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, probably the most ancient cult-images
in the world:
This theory, which would make all the Neolithic inhabitants of Egypt one
people, who were conquered by a Semitic race, bringing a culture of
Sumerian origin to Egypt by way of the Wadi Hammamat, is that generally
accepted at the present time. It may, however, eventually prove necessary
to modify it. For reasons given above, it may well be that the Neolithic
population was itself not indigenous, and that it reached the Nile valley
by way of the Wadi Hammamat, spreading north and south from the mouth of
the wadi. It may also be considered probable that a Semitic wave
invaded Egypt by way of the Isthmus of Suez, where the early sun-cultus of
Heliopolis probably marks a primeval Semitic settlement. In that case it
would seem that the Mesniu or “Smiths,” who introduced the use of
metal, would have to be referred to the originally Neolithic pre-Semitic
people, who certainly were acquainted with the use of copper, though not
to any great extent. But this is not a necessary supposition. The Mesniu
are closely connected with the Sky-god Horus, who was possibly of Semitic
origin, and another Semitic wave, quite distinct from that which entered
Egypt by way of the Isthmus, may very well also have reached Egypt by the
Wadi Hammamat, or, equally possibly, from the far south, coming down to
the Nile from the Abyssinian mountains. The legend of the coming of Hathor
from Ta-neter may refer to some such wandering, and we know that the
Egyptians of the Old Kingdom communicated with the Land of Punt, not by
way of the Red Sea coast as Hatshepsut did, but by way of the Upper Nile.
This would tally well with the march of the Mesniu northwards from
Edfu to their battle with the forces of Set at Dendera.
In any case, at the dawn of connected Egyptian history, we find two main
centres of civilization in Egypt, Heliopolis and Buto in the Delta in the
North, and Edfu and Hierakonpolis in the South. Here were established at
the beginning of the Chalcolithic stage of culture, we may say, two
kingdoms, of Lower and Upper Egypt, which were eventually united by the
superior arms of the kings of Upper Egypt, who imposed their rule upon the
North but at the same time removed their capital thither. The dualism of
Buto and Hierakonpolis really lasted throughout Egyptian history. The king
was always called “Lord of the Two Lands,” and wore the crowns of Upper
and Lower Egypt; the snakes of Buto and Nekhebet (the goddess of Nekheb,
opposite Nekhen or Hierakonpolis) always typified the united kingdom. This
dualism of course often led to actual division and reversion to the
predynastic order of things, as, for instance, in the time of the XXIst
Dynasty.
It might well seem that both the impulses to culture development in the
North and South came from Semitic inspiration, and that it was to the
Semitic invaders in North and South that the founding of the two kingdoms
was due. This may be true to some extent, but it is at the same time very
probable that the first development of political culture at Hierakonpolis
was really of pre-Semitic origin. The kingdom of Buto, since its capital
is situated so near to the seacoast, may have owed its origin to oversea
Mediterranean connections. There is much in the political constitution of
later Egypt which seems to have been of indigenous and pre-Semitic origin.
Especially does this seem to be so in the case of the division and
organization of the country into nomes. It is obvious that so soon as
agriculture began to be practised on a large scale, boundaries would be
formed, and in the unique conditions of Egypt, where all boundaries
disappear beneath the inundation every year, it is evident that the fixing
of division-lines as permanently as possible by means of landmarks was
early essayed. We can therefore with confidence assign the formation of
the nomes to very early times. Now the names of the nomes and the symbols
or emblems by which they were distinguished are of very great interest in
this connection. They are nearly all figures of the magic animals of the
primitive religion, and fetish-emblems of the older deities. The names
are, in fact, those of the territories of the Neolithic Egyptian tribes,
and their emblems are those of the protecting tribal demons. The political
divisions of the country seem, then, to be of extremely ancient origin,
and if the nomes go back to a time before the Semitic invasions, so may
also the kingdoms of the South and North.
Of these predynastic kingdoms we know very little, except from legendary
sources. The Northerners who were conquered by Aha, Narmer, and
Khâsekhehiui do not look very much like Egyptians, but rather resemble
Semites or Libyans. On the “Stele of Palermo,” a chronicle of early kings
inscribed in the period of the Vth Dynasty, we have a list of early kings
of the North,—Seka, Desau, Tiu, Tesh, Nihab, Uatjântj, Mekhe. The
names are primitive in form. We know nothing more about them. Last year
Mr. C. T. Currelly attempted to excavate at Buto, in order to find traces
of the predynastic kingdom, but owing to the infiltration of water his
efforts were unsuccessful. It is improbable that anything is now left of
the most ancient period at that site, as the conditions in the Delta are
so very different from those obtaining in Upper Egypt. There, at
Hierakonpolis, and at el-Kab on the opposite bank of the Nile, the sites
of the ancient cities Nekhen and Nekheb, the excavators have been very
successful. The work was carried out by Messrs. Quibell and Green, in the
years 1891-9. Prehistoric burials were found on the hills near by, but the
larger portion of the antiquities were recovered from the temple-ruins,
and date back to the beginning of the 1st Dynasty, exactly the time when
the kings of Hierakonpolis first conquered the kingdom of Buto and founded
the united Egyptian monarchy.
The ancient temple, which was probably one of the earliest seats of
Egyptian civilization, was situated on a mound, now known as el-Kom
el-ahmar, “the Red Hill,” from its colour. The chief feature of the
most ancient temple seems to have been a circular mound, revetted by a
wall of sandstone blocks, which was apparently erected about the end of
the predynastic period. Upon this a shrine was probably erected. This was
the ancient shrine of Nekhen, the cradle of the Egyptian monarchy. Close
by it were found some of the most valuable relics of the earliest
Pharaonic age, the great ceremonial mace-heads and vases of Narmer and
“the Scorpion,” the shields or “palettes” of the same Narmer, the vases
and stelas of Khâsekhemui, and, of later date, the splendid copper
colossal group of King Pepi I and his son, which is now at Cairo. Most of
the 1st Dynasty objects are preserved in the Ashmo-lean Museum at Oxford,
which is one of the best centres for the study of early Egyptian
antiquities. Narmer and Khâsekhemui are, as we shall see, two of the first
monarchs of all Egypt. These sculptured and inscribed mace-heads, shields,
etc., are monuments dedicated by them in the ancestral shrine at
Hierakonpolis as records of their deeds. Both kings seem to have waged war
against the Northerners, the Anu of Heliopolis and the Delta, and
on these votive monuments from Hierakonpolis we find hieroglyphed records
of the defeat of the Anu, who have very definitely Semitic
physiognomies.
On one shield or palette we see Narmer clubbing a man of Semitic
appearance, who is called the “Only One of the Marsh” (Delta), while below
two other Semites fly, seeking “fortress-protection.” Above is a figure of
a hawk, symbolizing the Upper Egyptian king, holding a rope which is
passed through the nose of a Semitic head, while behind is a sign which
may be read as “the North,” so that the whole symbolizes the leading away
of the North into captivity by the king of the South. It is significant,
in view of what has been said above with regard to the probable Semitic
origin of the Heliopolitan Northerners, to find the people typical of the
North-land represented by the Southerners as Semites. Equally Semitic is
the overthrown Northerner on the other side of this well-known monument
which we are describing; he is being trampled under the hoofs and gored by
the horns of a bull, who, like the hawk, symbolizes the king. The royal
bull has broken down the wall of a fortified enclosure, in which is the
hut or tent of the Semite, and the bricks lie about promiscuously.
In connection with the Semitic origin of the Northerners, the form of the
fortified enclosures on both sides of this monument (that to whose
protection the two Semites on one side fly, and that out of which the
kingly bull has dragged the chief on the other) is noticeable. As usual in
Egyptian writing, the hieroglyph of these buildings takes the form of a
plan. The plan shows a crenelated enclosure, resembling the walls of a
great Babylonian palace or temple, such as have been found at Telloh,
Warka, or Mukayyar. The same design is found in Egypt at the Shuret
ez-Zebib, an Old Kingdom fortress at Abydos, in the tomb of King Aha at
Nakâda, and in many walls of mastaba-tombs of the early time. This is
another argument in favour of an early connection between Egypt and
Babylonia. We illustrate a fragment of another votive shield or palette of
the same kind, now in the museum of the Louvre, which probably came
originally from Hierakonpolis. It is of exactly similar workmanship to
that of Narmer, and is no doubt a fragment of another monument of that
king. On it we see the same subject of the overthrowing of a Northerner
(of Semitic aspect) by the royal bull. On one side, below, is a fortified
enclosure with crenelated walls of the type we have described, and within
it a lion and a vase; below this another fort, and a bird within it. These
signs may express the names of the two forts, but, owing to the fact that
at this early period Egyptian orthography was not yet fixed, we cannot
read them. On the other side we see a row of animated nome-standards of
Upper Egypt, with the symbols of the god Min of Koptos, the hawk of Horus
of Edfu, the ibis of Thot of Eshmunên, and the jackals of Anubis of
Abydos, which drag a rope; had we the rest of the monument, we should see,
bound at the end of the rope, some prisoner, king, or animal symbolic of
the North. On another slate shield, which we also reproduce, we see a
symbolical representation of the capture of seven Northern cities, whose
names seem to mean the “Two Men,” the “Heron,” the “Owl,” the “Palm,” and
the “Ghost” Cities.
“Ghost City” is attacked by a lion, “Owl City” by a hawk, “Palm City” by
two hawk nome-standards, and another, whose name we cannot guess at, is
being opened up by a scorpion.
 |
 |
The operating animals evidently represent nomes and tribes of the Upper
Egyptians. Here again we see the same crenelated walls of the Northern
towns, and there is no doubt that this slate fragment also, which is
preserved in the Cairo Museum, is a monument of the conquests of Narmer.
It is executed in the same archaic style as those from Hierakonpolis. The
animals on the other side no doubt represent part of the spoil of the
North.
Returning to the great shield or palette found by Mr. Quibell, we see the
king coming out, followed by his sandal-bearer, the Hen-neter or
“God’s Servant,”[8] to view the dead bodies of the slain Northerners which
lie arranged in rows, decapitated, and with their heads between their
feet. The king is preceded by a procession of nome-standards.
Above the dead men are symbolic representations of a hawk perched on a
harpoon over a boat, and a hawk and a door, which doubtless again refer to
the fights of the royal hawk of Upper Egypt on the Nile and at the gate of
the North. The designs on the mace-heads refer to the same conquest of the
North.
[8]
In his commentary (Hierakonpolis, i. p. 9) on this scene,
Prof. Petrie supposes that the seven-pointed star sign means
“king,” and compares the eight-pointed star “used for king
in Babylonia.” The eight-pointed star of the cuneiform
script does not mean “king,” but “god.” The star then ought
to mean “god,” and the title “servant of a god,” and this
supposition may be correct. Hen-neter, “god’s servant,”
was the appellation of a peculiar kind of priest in later
days, and was then spelt with the ordinary sign for a god,
the picture of an axe. But in the archaic period, with which
we are dealing, a star like the Babylonian sign may very
well have been used for “god,” and the title of Narmer’s
sandal-bearer may read Hen-neter. He was the slave of the
living god Narmer. All Egyptian kings were regarded as
deities, more or less.
The monuments Khâsekhemui, a king, show us that he conquered the North
also and slew 47,209 “Northern Enemies.” The contorted attitudes of the
dead Northerners were greatly admired and sketched at the time, and were
reproduced on the pedestal of the king’s statue found by Mr. Quibell,
which is now at Oxford. It was an age of cheerful savage energy, like most
times when kingdoms and peoples are in the making. About 4000 B.C. is the
date of these various monuments.
Khâsekhemui probably lived later than Narmer, and we may suppose that his
conquest was in reality a re-conquest. He may have lived as late as the
time of the IId Dynasty, whereas Narmer must be placed at the beginning of
the Ist, and his conquest was probably that which first united the two
kingdoms of the South and North. As we shall see in the next chapter, he
is probably one of the originals of the legendary “Mena,” who was regarded
from the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty onwards as the founder of the
kingdom, and was first made known to Europe by Herodotus, under the name
of “Menés.”
Narmer is therefore the last of the ancient kings of Hierakonpolis, the
last of Manetho’s “Spirits.” We may possibly have recovered the names of
one or two of the kings anterior to Narmer in the excavations at Abydos
(see Chapter II), but this is uncertain. To all intents and purposes we
have only legendary knowledge of the Southern kingdom until its close,
when Narmer the mighty went forth to strike down the Anu of the North, an
exploit which he recorded in votive monuments at Hierakonpolis, and which
was commemorated henceforward throughout Egyptian history in the yearly
“Feast of the Smiting of the Anu.” Then was Egypt for the first time
united, and the fortress of the “White Wall,” the “Good Abode” of Memphis,
was built to dominate the lower country. The Ist Dynasty was founded and
Egyptian history began.
CHAPTER II—ABYDOS AND THE FIRST THREE DYNASTIES
Until the recent discoveries had been made, which have thrown so much
light upon the early history of Egypt, the traditional order and names of
the kings of the first three Egyptian dynasties were, in default of more
accurate information, retained by all writers on the history of the
period. The names were taken from the official lists of kings at Abydos
and elsewhere, and were divided into dynasties according to the system of
Manetho, whose names agree more or less with those of the lists and were
evidently derived from them ultimately. With regard to the fourth and
later dynasties it was clear that the king-lists were correct, as their
evidence agreed entirely with that of the contemporary monuments. But no
means existed of checking the lists of the first three dynasties, as no
contemporary monuments other than a IVth Dynasty mention of a IId Dynasty
king, Send, had been found. The lists dated from the time of the XVIIIth
and XIXth Dynasties, so that it was very possible that with regard to the
earliest dynasties they might not be very correct. This conclusion gained
additional weight from the fact that no monuments of these earliest kings
were ever discovered; it therefore seemed probable that they were purely
legendary figures, in whose time (if they ever did exist) Egypt was still
a semi-barbarous nation. The jejune stories told about them by Manetho
seemed to confirm this idea. Mena, the reputed founder of the monarchy,
was generally regarded as a historical figure, owing to the persistence of
his name in all ancient literary accounts of the beginnings of Egyptian
history; for it was but natural to suppose that the name of the man who
unified Egypt and founded Memphis would endure in the mouths of the
people. But with regard to his successors no such supposition seemed
probable, until the time of Sneferu and the pyramid-builders.
This was the critical view. Another school of historians accepted all the
kings of the lists as historical en bloc, simply because the
Egyptians had registered their names as kings. To them Teta, Ateth, and
Ata were as historical as Mena.
Modern discovery has altered our view, and truth is seen to lie between
the opposing schools, as usual. The kings after Mena do not seem to be
such entirely unhistorical figures as the extreme critics thought; the
names of several of them, e.g. Merpeba, of the Ist Dynasty, are correctly
given in the later lists, and those of others were simply misread, e. g.
that of Semti of the same dynasty, misread “Hesepti” by the list-makers.
On the other hand, Mena himself has become a somewhat doubtful quantity.
The real names of most of the early monarchs of Egypt have been recovered
for us by the latest excavations, and we can now see when the list-makers
of the XIXth Dynasty were right and when they were wrong, and can
distinguish what is legendary in their work from what is really
historical. It is true that they very often appear to have been wrong,
but, on the other hand, they were sometimes unexpectedly near the mark,
and the general number and arrangement of their kings seems correct; so
that we can still go to them for assistance in the arrangement of the
names which are communicated to us by the newly discovered monuments.
Manetho’s help, too, need never be despised because he was a copyist of
copyists; we can still use him to direct our investigations, and his
arrangement of dynasties must still remain the framework of our
chronological scheme, though he does not seem to have been always correct
as to the places in which the dynasties originated.
More than the names of the kings have the new discoveries communicated to
us. They have shed a flood of light on the beginnings of Egyptian
civilization and art, supplementing the recently ascertained facts
concerning the prehistoric age which have been described in the preceding
chapter. The impulse to these discoveries was given by the work of M. de
Morgan, who excavated sites of the early dynastic as well as of the
predynastic age. Among these was a great mastaba-tomb at Nakâda, which
proved to be that of a very early king who bore the name of Aha, “the
Fighter.” The walls of this tomb are crenelated like those of the early
Babylonian palaces and the forts of the Northerners, already referred to.
M. de Morgan early perceived the difference between the Neolithic
antiquities and those of the later archaic period of Egyptian
civilization, to which the tomb at Nakâda belonged. In the second volume
of his great work on the primitive antiquities of Egypt (L’Age des
Métaux et lé Tombeau Royale de Négadeh), he described the antiquities
of the Ist Dynasty which had been found at the time he wrote. Antiquities
of the same primitive period and even of an earlier date had been
discovered by Prof. Flinders Petrie, as has already been said, at Koptos,
at the mouth of the Wadi Hammamat. But though Prof. Petrie correctly
diagnosed the age of the great statues of the god Min which he found, he
was led, by his misdating of the “New Race” antiquities from Ballas and
Tûkh, also to misdate several of the primitive antiquities,—the
lions and hawks, for instance, found at Koptos, he placed in the period
between the VIIth and Xth Dynasties; whereas they can now, in the light of
further discoveries at Abydos, be seen to date to the earlier part of the
Ist Dynasty, the time of Narmer and Aha.
It is these discoveries at Abydos, coupled with those (already described)
of Mr. Quibell at Hierakonpolis, which have told us most of what we know
with regard to the history of the first three dynasties. At Abydos Prof.
Petrie was not himself the first in the field, the site having already
been partially explored by a French Egyptologist, M. Amélineau. The
excavations of M. Amélineau were, however, perhaps not conducted strictly
on scientific lines, and his results have been insufficiently published
with very few photographs, so that with the best will in the world we are
unable to give M. Amélineau the full credit which is, no doubt, due to him
for his work. The system of Prof. Petrie’s publications has been often,
and with justice, criticized, but he at least tells us every year what he
has been doing, and gives us photographs of everything he has found. For
this reason the epoch-making discoveries at Abydos have been coupled
chiefly with the name of Prof. Petrie, while that of M. Amélineau is
rarely heard in connection with them. As a matter of fact, however, M.
Amélineau first excavated the necropolis of the early kings at Abydos, and
discovered most of the tombs afterwards worked over by Prof. Petrie and
Mr. Mace. Yet most of the important scientific results are due to the
later explorers, who were the first to attempt a classification of them,
though we must add that this classification has not been entirely accepted
by the scientific world.
The necropolis of the earliest kings of Egypt is situated in the great bay
in the hills which lies behind Abydos, to the southwest of the main
necropolis. Here, at holy Abydos, where every pious Egyptian wished to
rest after death, the bodies of the most ancient kings were buried. It is
said by Manetho that the original seat of their dominion was This, a town
in the vicinity of Abydos, now represented by the modern Grîrga, which
lies a few miles distant from its site (el-Birba). This may be a fact, but
we have as yet obtained no confirmation of it. It may well be that the
attribution of a Thinite origin to the Ist and IId Dynasties was due
simply to the fact that the kings of these dynasties were buried at
Abydos, which lay within the Thinite nome. Manetho knew that they were
buried at Abydos, and so jumped to the conclusion that they lived there
also, and called them “Thinites.”
Their real place of origin must have been Hierakonpolis, where the
pre-dynastic kingdom of the South had its seat. The Hid Dynasty was no
doubt of Memphite origin, as Manetho says. It is certain that the seat of
the government of the IVth Dynasty was at Memphis, where the
pyramid-building kings were buried, and we know that the sepulchres of two
Hid Dynasty kings, at least, were situated in the necropolis of Memphis
(Sakkâra-Mêdûm). So that probably the seat of government was transferred
from Hierakonpolis to Memphis by the first king of the Hid Dynasty.
Thenceforward the kings were buried in the Memphite necropolis.
The two great nécropoles of Memphis and Abydos were originally the seats
of the worship of the two Egyptian gods of the dead, Seker and
Khentamenti, both of whom were afterwards identified with the Busirite god
Osiris. Abydos was also the centre of the worship of Anubis, an
animal-deity of the dead, the jackal who prowls round the tombs at night.
Anubis and Osiris-Khentamenti, “He who is in the West,” were associated in
the minds of the Egyptians as the protecting deities of Abydos. The
worship of these gods as the chief Southern deities of the dead, and the
preeminence of the necropolis of Abydos in the South, no doubt date back
before the time of the Ist Dynasty, so that it would not surprise us were
burials of kings of the predynastic Hierakonpolite kingdom discovered at
Abydos. Prof. Petrie indeed claims to have discovered actual royal relics
of that period at Abydos, but this seems to be one of the least certain of
his conclusions. We cannot definitely state that the names “Ro,” “Ka,” and
“Sma” (if they are names at all, which is doubtful) belong to early kings
of Hierakonpolis who were buried at Abydos. It may be so, but further
confirmation is desirable before we accept it as a fact; and as yet such
confirmation has not been forthcoming. The oldest kings, who were
certainly buried at Abydos, seem to have been the first rulers of the
united kingdom of the North and South, Aha and his successors. N’armer is
not represented. It may be that he was not buried at Abydos, but in the
necropolis of Hierakonpolis. This would point to the kings of the South
not having been buried at Abydos until after the unification of the
kingdom.
That Aha possessed a tomb at Abydos as well as another at Nakâda seems
peculiar, but it is a phenomenon not unknown in Egypt. Several kings,
whose bodies were actually buried elsewhere, had second tombs at Abydos,
in order that they might possess last resting-places near the tomb
of Osiris, although they might not prefer to use them. Usertsen (or
Senusret) III is a case in point. He was really buried in a pyramid at
Illahun, up in the North, but he had a great rock tomb cut for him in the
cliffs at Abydos, which he never occupied, and probably had never intended
to occupy. We find exactly the same thing far back at the beginning of
Egyptian history, when Aha possessed not only a great mastaba-tomb at
Nakâda, but also a tomb-chamber in the great necropolis of Abydos. It may
be that other kings of the earliest period also had second sepulchres
elsewhere. It is noteworthy that in none of the early tombs at Abydos were
found any bodies which might be considered those of the kings themselves.
M. Amélineau discovered bodies of attendants or slaves (who were in all
probability purposely strangled and buried around the royal chamber in
order that they should attend the king in the next world), but no
royalties. Prof. Petrie found the arm of a female mummy, who may have been
of royal blood, though there is nothing to show that she was. And the
quaint plait and fringe of false hair, which were also found, need not
have belonged to a royal mummy. It is therefore quite possible that these
tombs at Abydos were not the actual last resting-places of the earliest
kings, who may really have been buried at Hierakonpolis or elsewhere, as
Aha was. Messrs. Newberry and Gtarstang, in their Short History of
Egypt, suppose that Aha was actually buried at Abydos, and that the
great tomb with objects bearing his name, found by M. de Morgan at Nakâda,
is really not his, but belonged to a royal princess named Neit-hetep,
whose name is found in conjunction with his at Abydos and Nakâda. But the
argument is equally valid turned round the other way: the Nakâda tomb
might just as well be Aha’s and the Abydos one Neit-hetep’s. Neit-hetep,
who is supposed by Messrs. Newberry and Garstang to have been Narmer’s
daughter and Aha’s wife, was evidently closely connected with Aha, and she
may have been buried with him at Nakâda and commemorated with him at
Abydos.[1] It is probable that the XIXth Dynasty list-makers and Manetho
considered the Abydos tombs to have been the real graves of the kings, but
it is by no means impossible that they were wrong.
[1]
A princess named Bener-ab (“Sweet-heart”), who may have
been Aha’s daughter, was actually buried beside his tomb at
Abydos.
This view of the royal tombs at Abydos tallies to a great extent with that
of M. Naville, who has energetically maintained the view that M. Amélineau
and Prof. Petrie have not discovered the real tombs of the early kings,
but only their contemporary commemorative “tombs” at Abydos. The only real
tomb of the Ist Dynasty, therefore, as yet discovered is that of Aha at
Nakâda, found by M. de Morgan. The fact that attendant slaves were buried
around the Abydos tombs is no bar to the view that the tombs were only the
monuments, not the real graves, of the kings. The royal ghosts would
naturally visit their commemorative chambers at Abydos, in order to be in
the company of the great Osiris, and ghostly servants would be as
necessary to their Majesties at Abydos as elsewhere.
It must not be thought that this revised opinion of the Abydos tombs
detracts in the slightest degree from the importance of the discovery of
M. Amélineau and its subsequent and more detailed investigation by Prof.
Petrie. These monuments are as valuable for historical purposes as the
real tombs themselves. The actual bodies of these primeval kings
themselves we are never likely to find. The tomb of Aha at Nakâda had been
completely rifled in ancient times.
The commemorative tombs of the kings of the Ist and IId Dynasties at
Abydos lie southwest of the great necropolis, far within the bay in the
hills. Their present aspect is that of a wilderness of sand hillocks,
covered with masses of fragments of red pottery, from which the site has
obtained the modern Arab name of Umm el-Ga’ab, “Mother of Pots.” It
is impossible to move a step in any direction without crushing some of
these potsherds under the heel. They are chiefly the remains of the
countless little vases of rough red pottery, which were dedicated here as
ex-votos by the pious, between the XIXth and XXVIth Dynasties, to
the memory of the ancient kings and of the great god Osiris, whose tomb,
as we shall see, was supposed to have been situated here also.
Intermingled with these later fragments are pieces of the original Ist
Dynasty vases, which were filled with wine and provisions and were placed
in the tombs, for the refreshment and delectation of the royal ghosts when
they should visit their houses at Abydos. These were thrown out and broken
when the tombs were violated. Here and there one sees a dip in the sand,
out of which rise four walls of great bricks, forming a rectangular
chamber, half-filled with sand. This is one of the royal tomb-chambers of
the Ist Dynasty. That of King Den is illustrated above. A straight
staircase descends into it from the ground-level above. In several of the
tombs the original flooring of wooden beams is still preserved. Den’s is
the most magnificent of all, for it has a floor of granite blocks; we know
of no other instance of stone being used for building in this early age.
Almost every tomb has been burnt at some period unknown. The brick walls
are burnt red, and many of the alabaster vases are almost calcined. This
was probably the work of some unknown enemy.
The wide complicated tombs have around the main chamber a series of
smaller rooms, which were used to store what was considered necessary for
the use of the royal ghost. Of these necessaries the most interesting to
us are the slaves, who were, as there is little reason to doubt, purposely
killed and buried round the royal chamber so that their spirits should be
on the spot when the dead king came to Abydos; thus they would be always
ready to serve him with the food and other things which had been stored in
the tomb with them and placed under their charge. There were stacks of
great vases of wine, corn, and other food; these were covered up with
masses of fat to preserve the contents, and they were corked with a
pottery stopper, which was protected by a conical clay sealing, stamped
with the impress of the royal cylinder-seal. There were bins of corn,
joints of oxen, pottery dishes, copper pans, and other things which might
be useful for the ghostly cuisine of the tomb. There were numberless small
objects, used, no doubt, by the dead monarch during life, which he would
be pleased to see again in the next world,—carved ivory boxes,
little slabs for grinding eye-paint, golden buttons, model tools, model
vases with gold tops, ivory and pottery figurines, and other objets
d’art; the golden royal seal of judgment of King Den in its ivory
casket, and so forth. There were memorials of the royal victories in peace
and war, little ivory plaques with inscriptions commemorating the founding
of new buildings, the institution of new religious festivals in honour of
the gods, the bringing of the captives of the royal bow and spear to the
palace, the discomfiture of the peoples of the North-land.
All these things, which have done so much to reconstitute for us the
history of the earliest period of the Egyptian monarchy, were placed under
the care of the dead slaves whose bodies were buried round the empty
tomb-chamber of their royal master in Abydos.
The killing and entombment of the royal servants is of the highest
anthropological interest, for it throws a vivid light upon the manners of
the time. It shows the primeval Egyptians as a semi-barbaric people of
childishly simple ways of thought. The king was dead. For all his kingship
he was a man, and no man was immortal in this world. But yet how could one
really die? Shadows, dreams, all kinds of phenomena which the primitive
mind could not explain, induced the belief that, though the outer man
might rot, there was an inner man which could not die and still lived on.
The idea of total death was unthinkable. And where should this inner man
still live on but in the tomb to which the outer man was consigned? And
here, doubtless it was believed, in the house to which the body was
consigned, the ghost lived on. And as each ghost had his house with the
body, so no doubt all ghosts could communicate with one another from tomb
to tomb; and so there grew up the belief in a tomb-world, a subterranean
Egypt of tombs, in which the dead Egyptians still lived and had their
being. Later on the boat of the sun, in which the god of light crossed the
heavens by day, was thought to pass through this dead world between his
setting and his rising, accompanied by the souls of the righteous. But of
this belief we find no trace yet in the ideas of the Ist Dynasty. All we
can see is that the sahus, or bodies of the dead, were supposed to
reside in awful majesty in the tomb, while the ghosts could pass from tomb
to tomb through the mazes of the underworld. Over this dread realm of dead
men presided a dead god, Osiris of Abydos; and so the necropolis of Abydos
was the necropolis of the underworld, to which all ghosts who were not its
rightful citizens would come from afar to pay their court to their ruler.
Thus the man of substance would have a monumental tablet put up to himself
in this necropolis as a sort of pied-à-terre, even if he could not
be buried there; for the king, who, for reasons chiefly connected with
local patriotism, was buried near the city of his earthly abode, a second
tomb would be erected, a stately mansion in the city of Osiris, in which
his ghost could reside when it pleased him to come to Abydos.
Now none could live without food, and men living under the earth needed it
as much as men living on the earth. The royal tomb was thus provided with
an enormous amount of earthly food for the use of the royal ghost, and
with other things as well, as we have seen. The same provision had also to
be made for the royal resting-place at Abydos. And in both cases royal
slaves were needed to take care of all this provision, and to serve the
ghost of the king, whether in his real tomb at Nakâda, or elsewhere, or in
his second tomb at Abydos. Ghosts only could serve ghosts, so that of the
slaves ghosts had to be made. That was easily done; they died when their
master died and followed him to the tomb. No doubt it seemed perfectly
natural to all concerned, to the slaves as much as to anybody else. But it
shows the child’s idea of the value of life. An animate thing was hardly
distinguished at this period from an inanimate thing. The most ancient
Egyptians buried slaves with their kings as naturally as they buried jars
of wine and bins of corn with them. Both were buried with a definite
object. The slaves had to die before they were buried, but then so had the
king himself. They all had to die sometime or other. And the actual
killing of them was no worse than killing a dog, no worse even than
“killing” golden buttons and ivory boxes. For, when the buttons and boxes
were buried with the king, they were just as much dead as the slaves. Of
the sanctity of human life as distinct from other life, there was
probably no idea at all. The royal ghost needed ghostly servants, and they
were provided as a matter of course.
But as civilization progressed, the ideas of the Egyptians changed on
these points, and in the later ages of the ancient world they were
probably the most humane of the peoples, far more so than the Greeks, in
fact. The cultured Hellenes murdered their prisoners of war without
hesitation. Who has not been troubled in mind by the execution of Mkias
and Demosthenes after the surrender of the Athenian army at Syracuse? When
we compare this with Grant’s refusal even to take Lee’s sword at
Appomattox, we see how we have progressed in these matters; while Gylippus
and the Syracusans were as much children as the Ist Dynasty Egyptians. But
the Egyptians of Gylippus’s time had probably advanced much further than
the Greeks in the direction of rational manhood. When Amasis had his rival
Apries in his power, he did not put him to death, but kept him as his
coadjutor on the throne. Apries fled from him, allied himself with Greek
pirates, and advanced against his generous rival. After his defeat and
murder at Momemphis, Amasis gave him a splendid burial. When we compare
this generosity to a beaten foe with the savagery of the Assyrians, for
instance, we see how far the later Egyptians had progressed in the paths
of humanity.
The ancient custom of killing slaves was first discontinued at the death
of the lesser chieftains, but we find a possible survival of it in the
case of a king, even as late as the time of the XIth Dynasty; for at
Thebes, in the precinct of the funerary temple of King Neb-hapet-Râ
Mentuhetep and round the central pyramid which commemorated his memory,
were buried a number of the ladies of his harîm. They were all
buried at one and the same time, and there can be little doubt that they
were all killed and buried round the king, in order to be with him in the
next world. Now with each of these ladies, who had been turned into
ghosts, was buried a little waxen human figure placed in a little model
coffin. This was to replace her own slave. She who went to accompany the
king in the next world had to have her own attendant also. But, not being
royal, a real slave was not killed for her; she only took with her a waxen
figure, which by means of charms and incantations would, when she called
upon it, turn into a real slave, and say, “Here am I,” and do whatever
work might be required of her. The actual killing and burial of the slaves
had in all cases except that of the king been long “commuted,” so to
speak, into a burial with the dead person of ushabtis, or
“Answerers,” little figures like those described above, made more usually
of stone, and inscribed with the name of the deceased. They were called
“Answerers” because they answered the call of their dead master or
mistress, and by magic power became ghostly servants. Later on they were
made of wood and glazed faïence, as well as stone. By this means
the greater humanity of a later age sought a relief from the primitive
disregard of the death of others.
Anthropologically interesting as are the results of the excavations at Umm
el-Gra’ab, they are no less historically important. There is no need here
to weary the reader with the details of scientific controversy; it will
suffice to set before him as succinctly and clearly as possible the net
results of the work which has been done.
Messrs. Amélineau and Petrie have found the secondary tombs and have
identified the names of the following primeval kings of Egypt. We arrange
them in their apparent historical order.
1. Aha Men (?).
2. Narmer (or Betjumer) Sma (?).
3. Tjer (or Khent). Besh.
4. Tja Ati.
5. Den Semti.
6. Atjab Merpeba.
7. Semerkha Nekht.
8. Qâ Sen.
9. Khâsekhem (Khâsekhemui)
10. Hetepsekhemui.
11. Räneb.
12. Neneter.
13. Sekhemab Perabsen.
Two or three other names are ascribed by Prof. Petrie to the
Hierakonpolite dynasty of Upper Egypt, which, as it occurs before the time
of Mena and the Ist Dynasty, he calls “Dynasty 0.” Dynasty 0, however, is
no dynasty, and in any case we should prefer to call the “predynastic”
dynasty “Dynasty I.” The names of “Dynasty minus One,” however, remain
problematical, and for the present it would seem safer to suspend judgment
as to the place of the supposed royal names “Ro” and “Ka”(Men-kaf), which
Prof. Petrie supposes to have been those of two of the kings of Upper
Egypt who reigned before Mena. The king “Sma”(“Uniter”) is possibly
identical with Aha or Narmer, more probably the latter. It is not
necessary to detail the process by which Egyptologists have sought to
identify these thirteen kings with the successors of Mena in the lists of
kings and the Ist and IId Dynasties of Manetho. The work has been very
successful, though not perhaps quite so completely accomplished as Prof.
Petrie himself inclines to believe. The first identification was made by
Prof. Sethe, of Gottingen, who pointed out that the names Semti and
Merpeba on a vase-fragment found by M. Amélineau were in reality those of
the kings Hesepti and Merbap of the lists, the Ousaphaïs and Miebis of
Manetho. The perfectly certain identifications are these:—
5. Den Semti = Hesepti, Ousaphaïs, Ist Dynasty.
6. Atjab Merpeba = Merbap, Miebis, Ist Dynasty.
7. Semerkha Nekht= Shemsu or Semsem (?), Semempres, Ist Dynasty.
8. Qâ Sen = Qebh, Bienehhes, Ist Dynasty.
9. Khâsekhemui Besh = Betju-mer (?), Boethos, IId Dynasty.
10. Neneter = Bineneter, Binothris, IId Dynasty.
Six of the Abydos kings have thus been identified with names in the lists
and in Manetho; that is to say, we now know the real names of six of the
earliest Egyptian monarchs, whose appellations are given us under
mutilated forms by the later list-makers. Prof. Petrie further identifies
(4) Tja Ati with Ateth, (3) Tjer with Teta, and (1) Aha with Mena. Mena,
Teta, Ateth, Ata, Hesepti, Merbap, Shemsu (?), and Qebh are the names of
the 1st Dynasty as given in the lists. The equivalent of Ata Prof. Petrie
finds in the name “Merneit,” which is found at Umm el-Ga’ab. But there is
no proof whatever that Merneit was a king; he was much more probably a
prince or other great personage of the reign of Den, who was buried with
the kings. Prof. Petrie accepts the identification of the personal name of
Aha as “Men,” and so makes him the only equivalent of Mena. But this
reading of the name is still doubtful. Arguing that Aha must be Mena, and
having all the rest of the kings of the Ist Dynasty identified with the
names in the lists, Prof. Petrie is compelled to exclude Narmer from the
dynasty, and to relegate him to “Dynasty 0,” before the time of Mena. It
is quite possible, however, that Narmer was the successor, not the
predecessor, of Mena. He was certainly either the one or the other, as the
style of art in his time was exactly the same as that in the time of Aha.
The “Scorpion,” too, whose name is found at Hierakonpolis, certainly dates
to the same time as Narmer and Aha, for the style of his work is the same.
And it may well be that he is not to be counted as a separate king,
belonging to “Dynasty 0 “(or “Dynasty -I”) at all, but as identical with
Narmer, just as “Sma” may also be. We thus find that the two kings who
left the most developed remains at Hierakonpolis are the two whose
monuments at Abydos are the oldest of all on that site. That is to say,
the kings whose monuments record the conquest of the North belong to the
period of transition from the old Hierakonpolite dominion of Upper Egypt
to the new kingdom of all Egypt. They, in fact, represent the “Mena” or
Menés of tradition. It may be that Aha bore the personal name of Men,
which would thus be the original of Mena, but this is uncertain. In any
case both Aha and Narmer must be assigned to the Ist Dynasty, with the
result that we know of more kings belonging to the dynasty than appear in
the lists.
Nor is this improbable. Manetho’s list is evidently based upon old
Egyptian lists derived from the authorities upon which the king-lists of
Abydos and Sakkâra were based. These old lists were made under the XIXth
Dynasty, when an interest in the oldest kings seems to have been awakened,
and the ruling monarchs erected temples at Abydos in their honour. This
phenomenon can only have been due to a discovery of Umm el-Ga’ab and its
treasures, the tombs of which were recognized as the burial-places (real
or secondary) of the kings before the pyramid-builders. Seti I. and his
son Ramses then worshipped the kings of Umm el-Ga’ab, with their names set
before them in the order, number, and spelling in which the scribes
considered they ought to be inscribed. It is highly probable that the
number known at that time was not quite correct. We know that the spelling
of the names was very much garbled (to take one example only, the signs
for Sen were read as one sign Qebh), so that one or two
kings may have been omitted or displaced. This may be the case with
Narmer, or, as his name ought possibly to be read, Betjumer. His
monuments show by their style that he belongs to the very beginning of the
Ist Dynasty. No name in the Ist Dynasty list corresponds to his. But one
of the lists gives for the first king of the IId Dynasty (the successor of
“Qebh” = Sen) a name which may also be read Betjumer, spelt syllabically
this time, not ideographically. On this account Prof. Naville wishes to
regard the Hierakonpolite monuments of Narmer as belonging to the IId
Dynasty, but, as we have seen, they are among the most archaic known, and
certainly must belong to the beginning of the Ist Dynasty. It is therefore
probable that Khasekhemui Besh and Narmer (Betjumer?) were confused by
this list-maker, and the name Betjumer was given to the first king of the
IId Dynasty, who was probably in reality Khasekhemui. The resemblance of
Betju to Besh may have contributed to this confusion.
So Narmer (or Betjumer) found his way out of his proper place at the
beginning of the 1st Dynasty. Whether Aha was also called “Men” or not, it
seems evident that he and Narmer were jointly the originals of the
legendary Mena. Narmer, who possibly also bore the name of Sma, “the
Uniter,” conquered the North. Aha, “the Fighter,” also ruled both South
and North at the same period. Khasekhemui, too, conquered the North, but
the style of his monuments shows such an advance upon that of the days of
Aha and Narmer that it seems best to make him the successor of Sen (or
“Qebh “), and, explaining the transference of the name Betjumer to the
beginning of the IId Dynasty as due to a confusion with Khasekhemui’s
personal name Besh, to make Khasekhemui the founder of the IId Dynasty.
The beginning of a new dynasty may well have been marked by a reassertion
of the new royal power over Lower Egypt, which may have lapsed somewhat
under the rule of the later kings of the Ist Dynasty.
Semti is certainly the “Hesepti” of the lists, and Tja Ati is probably
“Ateth.” “Ata” is thus unidentified. Prof. Petrie makes him = Merneit,
but, as has already been said, there is no proof that the tomb of Merneit
is that of a king. “Teta” may be Tjer or Khent, but of this there is no
proof. It is most probable that the names “Teta,” “Ateth,” and “Ata” are
all founded on Ati, the personal name of Tja. The king Tjer is then not
represented in the lists, and “Mena” is a compound of the two oldest
Abydos kings, Narmer (Betjumer) Sma (?) and Aha Men (?).
These are the bare historical results that have been attained with regard
to the names, identity, and order of the kings. The smaller memorials that
have been found with them, especially the ivory plaques, have told us of
events that took place during their reigns; but, with the exception of the
constantly recurring references to the conquest of the North, there is
little that can be considered of historical interest or importance. We
will take one as an example. This is the tablet No. 32,650 of the British
Museum, illustrated by Prof. Petrie, Royal Tombs i (Egypt
Exploration Fund), pi. xi, 14, xv, 16. This is the record of a single
year, the first in the reign of Semti, King of Upper and Lower Egypt. On
it we see a picture of a king performing a religious dance before the god
Osiris, who is seated in a shrine placed on a dais. This religious dance
was performed by all the kings in later times. Below we find hieroglyphic
(ideographic) records of a river expedition to fight the Northerners and
of the capture of a fortified town called An. The capture of the town is
indicated by a broken line of fortification, half-encircling the name, and
the hoe with which the emblematic hawks on the slate reliefs already
described are armed; this signifies the opening and breaking down of the
wall.
On the other half of the tablet we find the viceroy of Lower Egypt,
Hemaka, mentioned; also “the Hawk (i. e. the king) seizes the seat of the
Libyans,” and some unintelligible record of a jeweller of the palace and a
king’s carpenter. On a similar tablet (of Sen) we find the words “the
king’s carpenter made this record.” All these little tablets are then the
records of single years of a king’s life, and others like them, preserved
no doubt in royal archives, formed the base of regular annals, which were
occasionally carved upon stone. We have an example of one of these in the
“Stele of Palermo,” a fragment of black granite, inscribed with the annals
of the kings up to the time of the Vth Dynasty, when the monument itself
was made. It is a matter for intense regret that the greater portion of
this priceless historical monument has disappeared, leaving us but a piece
out of the centre, with part of the records of only six kings before
Snefru. Of these six the name of only one, Neneter, of the lid Dynasty,
whose name is also found at Abydos, is mentioned. The only important
historical event of Neneter’s reign seems to have occurred in his
thirteenth year, when the towns or palaces of Ha (“North”) and
Shem-Râ (“The Sun proceeds”) were founded. Nothing but the institution and
celebration of religious festivals is recorded in the sixteen yearly
entries preserved to us out of a reign of thirty-five years. The annual
height of the Nile is given, and the occasions of numbering the people are
recorded (every second year): nothing else. Manetho tells us that in the
reign of Binothris, who is Neneter, it was decreed that women could hold
royal honours and privileges. This first concession of women’s rights is
not mentioned on the strictly official “Palermo Stele.”
More regrettable than aught else is the absence from the “Palermo Stele”
of that part of the original monument which gave the annals of the
earliest kings. At any rate, in the lines of annals which still exist
above that which contains the chronicle of the reign of Neneter no entry
can be definitely identified as belonging to the reigns of Aha or Narmer.
In a line below there is a mention of the “birth of Khâsekhemui,”
apparently a festival in honour of the birth of that king celebrated in
the same way as the reputed birthday of a god. This shows the great honour
in which Khâsekhemui was held, and perhaps it was he who really finally
settled the question of the unification of North and South and
consolidated the work of the earlier kings.
As far as we can tell, then, Aha and Narmer were the first conquerors of
the North, the unifiers of the kingdom, and the originals of the legendary
Mena. In their time the kingdom’s centre of gravity was still in the
South, and Narmer (who is probably identical with “the Scorpion”)
dedicated the memorials of his deeds in the temple of Hierakonpolis. It
may be that the legend of the founding of Memphis in the time of “Menés”
is nearly correct (as we shall see, historically, the foundation may have
been due to Merpeba), but we have the authority of Manetho for the fact
that the first two dynasties were “Thinite” (that is, Upper Egyptian), and
that Memphis did not become the capital till the time of the Hid Dynasty.
With this statement the evidence of the monuments fully agrees. The
earliest royal tombs in the pyramid-field of Memphis date from the time of
the Hid Dynasty, so that it is evident that the kings had then taken up
their abode in the Northern capital. We find that soon after the time of
Khâsekhemui the king Perabsen was especially connected with Lower Egypt.
His personal name is unknown to us (though he may be the “Uatjnes” of the
lists), but we do know that he had two banner-names, Sekhem-ab and
Perabsen. The first is his hawk or Horus-name, the second his Set-name;
that is to say, while he bore the first name as King of Upper Egypt under
the special patronage of Horus, the hawk-god of the Upper Country, he bore
the second as King of Lower Egypt, under the patronage of Set, the deity
of the Delta, whose fetish animal appears above this name instead of the
hawk. This shows how definitely Perabsen wished to appear as legitimate
King of Lower as well as Upper Egypt. In later times the Theban kings of
the XIIth Dynasty, when they devoted themselves to winning the allegiance
of the Northerners by living near Memphis rather than at Thebes, seem to
have been imitating the successors of Khâsekhemui.
Moreover, we now find various evidences of increasing connection with the
North. A princess named Ne-maat-hap, who seems to have been the mother of
Sa-nekht, the first king of the Hid Dynasty, bears the name of the sacred
Apis of Memphis, her name signifying “Possessing the right of Apis.”
According to Manetho, the kings of the Hid Dynasty are the first
Memphites, and this seems to be quite correct. With Ne-maat-hap the royal
right seems to have been transferred to a Memphite house. But the
Memphites still had associations with Upper Egypt: two of them, Tjeser
Khet-neter and Sa-nekht, were buried near Abydos, in the desert at Bêt
Khallâf, where their tombs were discovered and excavated by Mr. Garstang
in 1900. The tomb of Tjeser is a great brick-built mastaba, forty feet
high and measuring 300 feet by 150 feet. The actual tomb-chambers are
excavated in the rock, twenty feet below the ground-level and sixty feet
below the top of the mastaba. They had been violated in ancient times, but
a number of clay jar-sealings, alabaster vases, and bowls belonging to the
tomb furniture were found by the discoverer. Sa-nekht’s tomb is similar.
In it was found the preserved skeleton of its owner, who was a giant seven
feet high.
It is remarkable that Manetho chronicles among the kings of the early
period a king named Sesokhris, who was five cubits high. This may have
been Sa-nekht.
Tjeser had two tombs, one, the above-mentioned, near Abydos, the other at
Sakkâra, in the Memphite pyramid-field. This is the famous Step-Pyramid.
Since Sa-nekht seems really to have been buried at Bêt Khal-laf, probably
Tjeser was, too, and the Step-Pyramid may have been his secondary or sham
tomb, erected in the necropolis of Memphis as a compliment to Seker, the
Northern god of the dead, just as Aha had his secondary tomb at Abydos in
compliment to Khentamenti. Sne-feru, also, the last king of the Hid
Dynasty, seems to have had two tombs. One of these was the great Pyramid
of Mêdûm, which was explored by Prof. Petrie in 1891, the other was at
Dashûr. Near by was the interesting necropolis already mentioned, in which
was discovered evidence of the continuance of the cramped position of
burial and of the absence of mummification among a certain section of the
population even as late as the time of the IVth Dynasty. This has been
taken to imply that the fusion of the primitive Neolithic and invading
sub-Semitic races had not been effected at that time.
With the IVth Dynasty the connection of the royal house with the South
seems to have finally ceased. The governmental centre of gravity was
finally transferred to Memphis, and the kings were thenceforth for several
centuries buried in the great pyramids which still stand in serried order
along the western desert border of Egypt, from the Delta to the province
of the Fayyum. With the latest discoveries in this Memphite pyramid-field
we shall deal in the next chapter.
The transference of the royal power to Memphis under the Hid Dynasty
naturally led to a great increase of Egyptian activity in the Northern
lands. We read in Manetho of a great Libyan war in the reign of
Neche-rophes, and both Sa-nekht and Tjeser seem to have finally
established Egyptian authority in the Sinaitic peninsula, where their
rock-inscriptions have been found.
In 1904 Prof. Petrie was despatched to Sinai by the Egypt Exploration
Fund, in order finally to record the inscriptions of the early kings in
the Wadi Maghara, which had been lately very much damaged by the
operations of the turquoise-miners. It seems almost incredible that
ignorance and vandalism should still be so rampant in the twentieth
century that the most important historical monuments are not safe from
desecration in order to obtain a few turquoises, but it is so. Prof.
Petrie’s expedition did not start a day too soon, and at the suggestion of
Sir William Garstin, the adviser to the Ministry of the Interior, the
majority of the inscriptions have been removed to the Cairo Museum for
safety and preservation. Among the new inscriptions discovered is one of
Sa-nekht, which is now in the British Museum. Tjeser and Sa-nekht were not
the first Egyptian kings to visit Sinai. Already, in the days of the 1st
Dynasty, Semerkha had entered that land and inscribed his name upon the
rocks. But the regular annexation, so to speak, of Sinai to Egypt took
place under the Memphites of the Hid Dynasty.
With the Hid Dynasty we have reached the age of the pyramid-builders. The
most typical pyramids are those of the three great kings of the IVth
Dynasty, Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura, at Giza near Cairo. But, as we have
seen, the last king of the Hid Dynasty, Snefru, also had one pyramid, if
not two; and the most ancient of these buildings known to us, the
Step-Pyramid of Sakkâra, was erected by Tjeser at the beginning of that
dynasty. The evolution of the royal tombs from the time of the 1st Dynasty
to that of the IVth is very interesting to trace. At the period of
transition from the predynastic to the dynastic age we have the great
mastaba of Aha at Nakâda, and the simplest chamber-tombs at Abydos. All
these were of brick; no stone was used in their construction. Then we find
the chamber-tomb of Den Semti at Abydos with a granite floor, the walls
being still of brick. Above each of the Abydos tombs was probably a low
mound, and in front a small chapel, from which a flight of steps descended
into the simple chamber. On one of the little plaques already mentioned,
which were found in these tombs, we have an archaic inscription, entirely
written in ideographs, which seems to read, “The Big-Heads (i. e. the
chiefs) come to the tomb.” The ideograph for “tomb” seems to be a rude
picture of the funerary chapel, but from it we can derive little
information as to its construction. Towards the end of the Ist Dynasty,
and during the lid, the royal tombs became much more complicated, being
surrounded with numerous chambers for the dead slaves, etc. Khâsekhemui’s
tomb has thirty-three such chambers, and there is one large chamber of
stone. We know of no other instance of the use of stone work for building
at this period except in the royal tombs. No doubt the mason’s art was
still so difficult that it was reserved for royal use only.
Under the Hid Dynasty we find the last brick mastabas built for royalty,
at Bêt Khallâf, and the first pyramids, in the Memphite necropolis. In the
mastaba of Tjeser at Bêt Khallâf stone was used for the great portcullises
which were intended to bar the way to possible plunderers through the
passages of the tomb. The Step-Pyramid at Sakkâra is, so to speak, a
series of mastabas of stone, imposed one above the other; it never had the
continuous casing of stone which is the mark of a true pyramid. The
pyramid of Snefru at Mêdûm is more developed. It also originated in a
mastaba, enlarged, and with another mastaba-like erection on the top of
it; but it was given a continuous sloping casing of fine limestone from
bottom to top, and so is a true pyramid. A discussion of recent theories
as to the building of the later pyramids of the IVth Dynasty will be found
in the next chapter.
In the time of the Ist Dynasty the royal tomb was known by the name of
“Protection-around-the-Hawk, i.e. the king”(Sa-ha-heru); but under
the Hid and IVth Dynasties regular names, such as “the Firm,” “the
Glorious,” “the Appearing,” etc., were given to each pyramid.
We must not omit to note an interesting point in connection with the royal
tombs at Abydos, In that of King Khent or Tjer (the reading of the
ideograph is doubtful) M. Amélineau found a large bed or bier of granite,
with a figure of the god Osiris lying in state sculptured in high relief
upon it. This led him to jump to the conclusion that he had found the tomb
of the god Osiris himself, and that a skull he found close by was the
veritable cranium of the primeval folk-hero, who, according to the
euhemerist theory, was the deified original of the god. The true
explanation is given by Dr. Wallis Budge in his History of Egypt,
i, p. 19. It is a fact that the tomb of Tjer was regarded by the Egyptians
of the XIXth Dynasty as the veritable tomb of Osiris. They thought they
had discovered it, just as M. Amélineau did. When the ancient royal tombs
of Umm el-Ga’ab were rediscovered and identified at the beginning of the
XIXth Dynasty, and Seti I built the great temple of Abydos to the divine
ancestors in honour of the discovery, embellishing it with a relief of
himself and his son Ramses making offerings to the names of his
predecessors (the “Tablet of Abydos “), the name of King Khent or Tjer
(which is perhaps the really correct original form) was read by the royal
scribes as “Khent” and hastily identified with the first part of the name
of the god Khent-amenti Osiris, the lord of Abydos. The tomb was
thus regarded as the tomb of Osiris himself, and it was furnished with a
great stone figure of the god lying on his bier, attended by the two hawks
of Isis and Nephthys; ever after the site was visited by crowds of
pilgrims, who left at Umm el-Ga’ab the thousands of little votive vases
whose fragments have given the place its name of the “Mother of Pots.”
This is the explanation of the discovery of the “Tomb of Osiris.” We have
not found what M. Amélineau seems rather naively to have thought possible,
a confirmation of the ancient view that Osiris was originally a man who
ruled over Egypt and was deified after his death; but we have found that
the Egyptians themselves were more or less euhemerists, and did think so.
It may seem remarkable that all this new knowledge of ancient Egypt is
derived from tombs and has to do with the resting-places of the kings when
dead, rather than with their palaces or temples when living. Of temples at
this early period we have no trace. The oldest temple in Egypt is perhaps
the little chapel in front of the pyramid of Snefru at Mêdûm. We first
hear of temples to the gods under the IVth Dynasty, but of the actual
buildings of that period we have recovered nothing but one or two
inscribed blocks of stone. Prof. Petrie has traced out the plan of the
oldest temple of Osiris at Abydos, which may be of the time of Khufu, from
scanty evidences which give us but little information. It is certain,
however, that this temple, which is clearly one of the oldest in Egypt,
goes back at least to his time. Its site is the mound called Kom
es-Sultan, “The Mound of the King,” close to the village of el-Kherba, and
on the borders of the cultivation northeast of the royal tombs at Umm
el-Oa’ab.
Of royal palaces we have more definite information. North of the Kom
es-Sultan are two great fortress-enclosures of brick: the one is known as
Sûnet es-Zebîb, “the Storehouse of Dried Orapes;” the other is
occupied by the Coptic monastery of Dêr Anba Musâs. Both are certainly
fortress-palaces of the earliest period of the Egyptian monarchy. We know
from the small record-plaques of this period that the kings were
constantly founding or repairing places of this kind, which were always
great rectangular enclosures with crenelated brick walls like those of
early Babylonian buildings.
We have seen that the Northern Egyptian possessed similar fortress-cities
which were captured by Narmer. These were the seats of the royal residence
in various parts of the country. Behind their walls was the king’s house,
and no doubt also a town of nobles and retainers, while the peasants lived
on the arable land without.
The Shûnet ez-Zebîb and its companion fortress were evidently the royal
cities of the 1st and IId Dynasties at Abydos. The former has been
excavated by Mr. E. R. Ayrton for the Egypt Exploration Fund, under the
supervision of Prof. Petrie. He found jar-sealings of Khâsekhemui and
Perabsen. In later times the place was utilized as a burial-place for
ibis-mummies (it had already been abandoned as a city before the time of
the XIIth Dynasty), and from this fact it received the name of Shenet
deb-hib, or “Storehouse of Ibis Burials.” The Arab invaders adapted
this name to their own language in the nearest form which would have any
meaning, as Shûnet ez-Zebïb, “the Storehouse of Dried Grapes.” The
Arab word shûna (“Barn” or “Storehouse”) was, it should be noted,
taken over from the Coptic sheune, which is the old-Egyptian shenet.
The identity of sheune or shûna with the German “Scheune” is
a quaint and curious coincidence. In the illustration of the Shûnet
ez-Zebib the curved line of crenelated wall, following the contour of the
hill, should be noted, as it is a remarkable example of the building of
this early period.
It will have been seen from the foregoing description of what far-reaching
importance the discoveries at Abydos have been. A new chapter of the
history of the human race has been opened, which contains information
previously undreamt of, information which Egyptologists had never dared to
hope would be recovered. The sand of Egypt indeed conceals inexhaustible
treasures, and no one knows what the morrow’s work may bring forth.
Ex Africa semper aliquid novi!
CHAPTER III—MEMPHIS AND THE PYRAMIDS
Memphis, the “beautiful abode,” the “City of the White Wall,” is said to
have been founded by the legendary Menés, who in order to build it
diverted the stream of the Nile by means of a great dyke constructed near
the modern village of Koshêsh, south of the village of Mitrahêna, which
marks the central point of the ancient metropolis of Northern Egypt. It
may be that the city was founded by Aha or Narmer, the historical
originals of Mena or Menés; but we have another theory with regard to its
foundation, that it was originally built by King Merpeba Atjab, whose tomb
was also discovered at Abydos near those of Aha and Narmer. Merpeba is the
oldest king whose name is absolutely identified with one occurring in the
XIXth Dynasty king-lists and in Manetho. He is certainly the “Merbap” or
“Merbepa” (“Merbapen”) of the lists and the Miebis of Manetho. In
both the lists and in Manetho he stands fifth in order from Mena, and he
was therefore the sixth king of the Ist Dynasty. The lists, Manetho, and
the small monuments in his own tomb agree in making him the immediate
successor of Semti Den (Ousaphaïs), and from the style of these latter it
is evident that he comes after Tja, Tjer, Narmer, and Aha. That is to say,
the contemporary evidence makes him the fifth king from Aha, the first
original of “Menés.”
Now after the piety of Seti I had led him to erect a great temple at
Abydos in memory of the ancient kings, whose sepulchres had probably been
brought to light shortly before, and to compile and set up in the temple a
list of his predecessors, a certain pious snobbery or snobbish piety
impelled a worthy named Tunure, who lived at Memphis, to put up in his own
tomb at Sakkâra a tablet of kings like the royal one at Abydos. If
Osiris-Khentamenti at Abydos had his tablet of kings, so should
Osiris-Seker at Sakkâra. But Tunure does not begin his list with Mena; his
initial king is Merpeba. For him Merpeba was the first monarch to be
commemorated at Sakkâra. Does not this look very much as if the strictly
historical Merpeba, not the rather legendary and confused Mena, was
regarded as the first Memphite king? It may well be that it was in the
reign of Merpeba, not in that of Aha or Narmer, that Memphis was founded.
The XIXth Dynasty lists of course say nothing about Mena or Merpeba having
founded Memphis; they only give the names of the kings, nothing more. The
earliest authority for the ascription of Memphis to “Menés”, is Herodotus,
who was followed in this ascription, as in many other matters, by Manetho;
but it must be remembered that Manetho was writing for the edification of
a Greek king (Ptolemy Philadelphus) and his Greek court at Alexandria, and
had therefore to evince a respect for the great Greek classic which he may
not always have really felt. Herodotus is not, of course, accused of any
wilful misstatement in this or in any other matter in which his accuracy
is suspected. He merely wrote down what he was told by the Egyptians
themselves, and Merpeba was sufficiently near in time to Aha to be easily
confounded with him by the scribes of the Persian period, who no doubt
ascribed everything to “Mena” that was done by the kings of the Ist and
IId Dynasties. Therefore it may be considered quite probable that the
“Menés” who founded Memphis was Merpeba, the fifth or sixth king of the
Ist Dynasty, whom Tunure, a thousand years before the time of Herodotus
and his informants, placed at the head of the Memphite “List of Sakkâra.”
The reconquest of the North by Khâsekhemui doubtless led to a further
strengthening of Memphis; and it is quite possible that the deeds of this
king also contributed to make up the sum total of those ascribed to the
Herodotean and Manethonian Menés.
It may be that a town of the Northerners existed here before the time of
the Southern Conquest, for Phtah, the local god of Memphis, has a very
marked character of his own, quite different from that of Khen-tamenti,
the Osiris of Abydos. He is always represented as a little bow-legged
hydrocephalous dwarf very like the Phoenician Kabeiroi. It may be
that here is another connection between the Northern Egyptians and the
Semites. The name “Phtah,” the “Opener,” is definitely Semitic. We may
then regard the dwarf Phtah as originally a non-Egyptian god of the
Northerners, probably Semitic in origin, and his town also as antedating
the conquest. But it evidently was to the Southerners that Memphis owed
its importance and its eventual promotion to the position of capital of
the united kingdom. Then the dwarf Phtah saw himself rivalled by another
Phtah of Southern Egyptian origin, who had been installed at Memphis by
the Southerners. This Phtah was a sort of modified edition of Osiris, in
mummy-form and holding crook and whip, but with a refined edition of the
Kabeiric head of the indigenous Phtah. The actual god of “the White Wall”
was undoubtedly confused vith the dead god of the necropolis, whose name
was Seker or Sekri (Sokari), “the Coffined.” The original form of this
deity was a mummied hawk upon a coffin, and it is very probable that he
was imported from the South, like the second Phtah, at the time of the
conquest, when the great Northern necropolis began to grow up as a
duplicate of that at Abydos. Later on we find Seker confused with the
ancient dwarf-god, and it is the latter who was afterwards chiefly revered
as Phtah-Socharis-Osiris, the protector of the necropolis, the mummied
Phtah being the generally recognized ruler of the City of the White Wall.
It is from the name of Seker that the modern Sak-kâra takes its title.
Sakkâra marks the central point of the great Memphite necropolis, as it is
the nearest point of the western desert to Memphis. Northwards the
necropolis extended to Griza and Abu Roâsh, southwards, to Daslmr; even
the nécropoles of Lisht and Mêdûm may be regarded as appanages of Sakkâra.
At Sakkâra itself Tjeser of the IIId Dynasty had a pyramid, which, as we
have seen, was probably not his real tomb (which was the great mastaba at
Bêt Khallâf), but a secondary or sham tomb corresponding to the “tombs” of
the earliest kings at Umm el-Ga’ab in the necropolis of Abydos. Many later
kings, however, especially of the Vith Dynasty, were actually buried at
Sakkâra. Their tombs have all been thoroughly described by their
discoverer, Prof. Maspero, in his history. The last king of the Hid
Dynasty, Snefru, was buried away down south at Mêdûm, in splendid
isolation, but he may also have had a second pyramid at Sakkâra or Abu
Roash.
The kings of the IVth Dynasty were the greatest of the pyramid builders,
and to them belong the huge edifices of Griza. The Vth Dynasty favoured
Abusîr, between Cîza and Sakkâra; the Vith, as we have said, preferred
Sakkâra itself. With them the end of the Old Kingdom and of Memphite
dominion was reached; the sceptre fell from the hands of the Memphite
kings and was taken up by the princes of Herakleopolis (Ahnasyet
el-Medina, near Béni Suêf, south of the Eayyûm) and Thebes. Where the
Herakleopolite kings were buried we do not know; probably somewhere in the
local necropolis of the Gebel es-Sedment, between Ahnasya and the Fayyûm.
The first Thebans (the XIth Dynasty) were certainly buried at Thebes, but
when the Herakleopolites had finally disappeared, and all Egypt was again
united under one strong sceptre, the Theban kings seem to have been drawn
northwards. They removed to the seat of the dominion of those whom they
had supplanted, and they settled in the neighbourhood of Herakleopolis,
near the fertile province of the Fayyûm, and between it and Memphis. Here,
in the royal fortress-palace of Itht-taui, “Controlling the Two Lands,”
the kings of the XIIth Dynasty lived, and they were buried in the
nécropoles of Dashûr, Lisht, and Illahun (Hawara), in pyramids like those
of the old Memphite kings. These facts, of the situation of Itht-taui, of
their burial in the southern an ex of the old necropolis of Memphis, and
of the fori of their tombs (the true Upper Egyptian and Thebian form was a
rock-cut gallery and chamber driven deep into the hill), show how
solicitous were the Amenemhats and Senusrets of the suffrages of Lower
Egypt, how anxious they were to conciliate the ancient royal pride of
Memphis.
Where the kings of the XIIIth Dynasty and the Hyksos or “Shepherds” were
buried, we do not know. The kings of the restored Theban empire were all
interred at Thebes. There are, in fact, no known royal sepulchres between
the Fayyûm and Abydos. The great kings were mostly buried in the
neighbourhood of Memphis, Abydos, and Thebes. The sepulchres of the
“Middle Empire”—the XIth to XIIIth Dynasties—in the
neighbourhood of the Fayyûm may fairly be grouped with those of the same
period at Dashûr, which belongs to the necropolis of Memphis, since it is
only a mile or two south of Sakkâra.
It is chiefly with regard to the sepulchres of the kings that the most
momentous discoveries of recent years have been made at Thebes, and at
Sakkâra, Abusîr, Dashûr, and Lisht, as at Abydos. For this reason we deal
in succession with the finds in the nécropoles of Abydos, Memphis, and
Thebes respectively. And with the sepulchres of the “Old Kingdom,” in the
Memphite necropolis proper, we have naturally grouped those of the “Middle
Kingdom” at Dashûr, Lisht, Illahun, and Hawara.
Some of these modern discoveries have been commented on and illustrated by
Prof. Maspero in his great history. But the discoveries that have been
made since this publication have been very important,—those at
Abusîr, indeed, of first-rate importance, though not so momentous as those
of the tombs of the Ist and IId Dynasties at Abydos, already described. At
Abu Roash and at Gîza, at the northern end of the Memphite necropolis,
several expeditions have had considerable success, notably those of the
American Dr. Reisner, assisted by Mr. Mace, who excavated the royal tombs
at Umm el-Ga’ab for Prof. Petrie, those of the German Drs. Steindorff and
Borchardt,—the latter working for the Beutsch-Orient Gesellschaft,—and
those of other American excavators. Until the full publication of the
results of these excavations appears, very little can be said about them.
Many mastaba-tombs have, it is understood, been found, with interesting
remains. Nothing of great historical importance seems to have been
discovered, however. It is otherwise when we come to the discoveries of
Messrs. Borchardt and Schâfer at Abusîr, south of Gîza and north of
Sakkâra. At this place results of first-rate historical importance have
been attained.
The main group of pyramids at Abusir consists of the tombs of the kings
Sahurà, Neferarikarâ, and Ne-user-Râ, of the Vth Dynasty. The pyramids
themselves are smaller than those of Gîza, but larger than those of
Sakkâra. In general appearance and effect they resemble those of Gîza, but
they are not so imposing, as the desert here is low. Those of Gîza,
Sakkâra, and Dashûr owe much of their impressiveness to the fact that they
are placed at some height above the cultivated land. The excavation and
planning of these pyramids were carried out by Messrs. Borchardt and
Schâfer at the expense of Baron von Bissing, the well-known Egyptologist
of Munich, and of the Deutsch-Orient Gesell-schaft of Berlin. The
antiquities found have been divided between the museums of Berlin and
Cairo.
One of the most noteworthy discoveries was that of the funerary temple of
Ne-user-Râ, which stood at the base of his pyramid. The plan is
interesting, and the granite lotus-bud columns found are the most ancient
yet discovered in Egypt. Much of the paving and the wainscoting of the
walls was of fine black marble, beautifully polished. An interesting find
was a basin and drain with lion’s-head mouth, to carry away the blood of
the sacrifices. Some sculptures in relief were discovered, including a
gigantic representation of the king and the goddess Isis, which shows that
in the early days of the Vth Dynasty the king and the gods were already
depicted in exactly the same costume as they wore in the days of the
Ramses and the Ptolemies. The hieratic art of Egypt had, in fact, now
taken on itself the final outward appearance which it retained to the very
end. There is no more of the archaism and absence of conventionality,
which marks the art of the earliest dynasties.
We can trace by successive steps the swift development of Egyptian art
from the rude archaism of the Ist Dynasty to its final consummation under
the Vth, when the conventions became fixed. In the time of Khäsekhemui, at
the beginning of the IId Dynasty, the archaic character of the art has
already begun to wear off. Under the same dynasty we still have styles of
unconventional naïveté, such as the famous Statue “No. 1” of the Cairo
Museum, bearing the names of Kings Hetepahaui, Neb-râ, and Neneter. But
with the IVth Dynasty we no longer look for unconventionality. Prof.
Petrie discovered at Abydos a small ivory statuette of Khufu or Cheops,
the builder of the Great Pyramid of Gîza. The portrait is a good one and
carefully executed. It was not till the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty,
indeed, that the Egyptians ceased to portray their kings as they really
were, and gave them a purely conventional type of face. This convention,
against which the heretical King Amenhetep IV (Akhunaten) rebelled, in
order to have himself portrayed in all his real ungainliness and ugliness,
did not exist till long after the time of the IVth and Vth Dynasties.
The kings of the XIIth Dynasty especially were most careful that their
statues should be accurate portraits; indeed, the portraits of Usertsen
(Senusret) III vary from a young face to an old one, showing that the king
was faithfully depicted at different periods of his life.
But the general conventions of dress and deportment were finally fixed
under the Vth Dynasty. After this time we no longer have such absolutely
faithful and original presentments as the other little ivory statuette
found by Prof. Petrie at Abydos (now in the British Museum), which shows
us an aged monarch of the Ist Dynasty. It is obvious that the features are
absolutely true to life, and the figure wears an unconventionally
party-coloured and bordered robe of a kind which kings of a later day may
have worn in actual life, but which they would assuredly never be depicted
as wearing by the artists of their day. To the end of Egyptian history,
the kings, even the Roman emperors, were represented on the monuments
clothed in the official costume of their ancestors of the IVth and Vth
Dynasties, in the same manner as we see Khufu wearing his robe in the
little figure from Abydos, and Ne-user-Rà on the great relief from Abusîr.
There are one or two exceptions, such as the representations of the
original genius Akhunaten at Tell el-Amarna and the beautiful statue of
Ramses II at Turin, in which we see these kings wearing the real costume
of their time, but such exceptions are very rare.
The art of Abusîr is therefore of great interest, since it marks the end
of the development of the priestly art. Secular art might develop as it
liked, though the crystallizing influence of the ecclesiastical canon is
always evident here also. But henceforward it was an impiety, which only
an Akhunaten could commit, to depict a king or a god on the walls of a
temple otherwise (except so far as, the portrait was concerned) than as he
had been depicted in the time of the Vth Dynasty.
Other buildings have been excavated by the Germans at Abusîr, notably the
usual town of mastaba-tombs belonging to the chief dignitaries of the
reign, which is always found at the foot of a royal pyramid of this
period. Another building of the highest interest, belonging to the same
age, was also excavated, and its true character was determined. This is a
building at a place called er-Rîgha or Abû Ghuraib, “Father of Crows,”
between Abusîr and Gîza. It was formerly supposed to be a pyramid, but the
German excavations have shown that it is really a temple of the Sun-god Râ
of Heliopolis, specially venerated by the kings of the Vth Dynasty, who
were of Heliopolitan origin. The great pyramid-builders of the IVth
Dynasty seem to have been the last true Memphites. At the end of the reign
of Shepseskaf, the last monarch of the dynasty, the sceptre passed to a
Heliopolitan family. The following VIth Dynasty may again have been
Memphite, but this is uncertain. The capital continued to be Memphis, and
from the beginning of the Hid Dynasty to the end of the Old Kingdom and
the rise of Herakle-opolis and Thebes, Memphis remained the chief city of
Egypt.
The Heliopolitans were naturally the servants of the Sun-god above all
other gods, and they were the first to call themselves “Sons of the Sun,”
a title retained by the Pharaohs throughout all subsequent history. It was
Ne-user-Râ who built the Sun-temple of Abu Ghuraib, on the edge of the
desert, north of his pyramid and those of his two immediate predecessors
at Abusir. As now laid bare by the excavations of 1900, it is seen to
consist of an artificial mound, with a great court in front to the
eastward. On the mound was erected a truncated obelisk, the stone emblem
of the Sun-god. The worshippers in the court below looked towards the
Sun’s stone erected upon its mound in the west, the quarter of the sun’s
setting; for the Sun-god of Heliopolis was primarily the setting sun,
Tum-Râ, not Râ Harmachis, the rising sun, whose emblem is the Great Sphinx
at Gîza, which looks towards the east. The sacred emblem of the
Heliopolitan Sun-god reminds us forcibly of the Semitic bethels or
baetyli, the sacred stones of Palestine, and may give yet another
hint of the Semitic origin of the Heliopolitan cult. In the court of the
temple is a huge circular altar of fine alabaster, several feet across, on
which slain oxen were offered to the Sun, and behind this, at the eastern
end of the court, are six great basins of the same stone, over which the
beasts were slain, with drains running out of them by which their blood
was carried away. This temple is a most interesting monument of the
civilization of the “Old Kingdom” at the time of the Vth Dynasty.
At Sakkâra itself, which lies a short distance south of Abusir, no new
royal tombs have, as has been said, been discovered of late years. But a
great deal of work has been done among the private mastaba-tombs by the
officers of the Service des Antiquités, which reserves to itself
the right of excavation here and at Dashûr. The mastaba of the sage and
writer Kagernna (or rather Gemnika, “I-have-found-a-ghost,” which sounds
very like an American Indian appellation) is very fine.
“I-have-found-a-ghost” lived in the reign of the king Tatkarâ Assa, the
“Tancheres” of Manetho, and he wrote maxims like his great contemporary
Phtahhetep (“Offered to Phtah”), who was also buried at Sakkâra. The
officials of the Service des Antiquités who cleaned the tomb
unluckily misread his name Ka-bi-n (an impossible form which could only
mean, literally translated, “Ghost-soul-of” or “Ghost-soul-to-me”), and
they have placed it in this form over the entrance to his tomb. This
mastaba, like those, already known, of Mereruka (sometimes misnamed
“Mera”) and the famous Ti, both also at Sakkâra, contains a large number
of chambers, ornamented with reliefs. In the vicinity M. Grébaut, then
Director of the Service of Antiquities, discovered a very interesting
Street of Tombs, a regular Via Sacra, with rows of tombs of the
dignitaries of the VIth Dynasty on either side of it. They are generally
very much like one another; the workmanship of the reliefs is fine, and
the portrait of the owner of the tomb is always in evidence.
Several of the smaller mastabas have lately been disposed of to the
various museums, as they are liable to damage if they remain where they
stand; moreover, they are not of great value to the Museum of Cairo, but
are of considerable value to various museums which do not already possess
complete specimens of this class of tombs. A fine one, belonging to the
chief Uerarina, is now exhibited in the Assyrian Basement of the British
Museum; another is in the Museum of Leyden; a third at Berlin, and so on.
Most of these are simple tombs of one chamber. In the centre of the rear
wall we always see the stele or gravestone proper, built into the
fabric of the tomb. Before this stood the low table of offerings with a
bowl for oblations, and on either side a tall incense-altar. From the
altar the divine smoke (senetr) arose when the hen-ka, or
priest of the ghost (literally, “Ghost’s Servant”), performed his duty of
venerating the spirits of the deceased, while the Kher-heb, or
cantor, enveloped in the mystic folds of the leopard-skin and with bronze
incense-burner in hand, sang the holy litanies and spells which should
propitiate the ghost and enable him to win his way to ultimate perfection
in the next world.
The stele is always in the form of a door with pyloni-form cornice. On
either side is a figure of the deceased, and at the sides are carved
prayers to Anubis, and at a later date to Osiris, who are implored to give
the funerary meats and “everything good and pure on which the god there
(as the dead man in the tomb has been constituted) lives;” often we find
that the biography and list of honorary titles and dignities of the
deceased have been added.
Sakkâra was used as a place of burial in the latest as well as in the
earliest time. The Egyptians of the XXVIth Dynasty, wearied of the long
decadence and devastating wars which had followed the glorious epoch of
the conquering Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, turned for a
new and refreshing inspiration to the works of the most ancient kings,
when Egypt was a simple self-contained country, holding no intercourse
with outside lands, bearing no outside burdens for the sake of pomp and
glory, and knowing nothing of the decay and decadence which follows in the
train of earthly power and grandeur. They deliberately turned their backs
on the worn-out and discredited imperial trappings of the Thothmes and
Ramses, and they took the supposed primitive simplicity of the Snefrus,
the Khufus, and the Ne-user-Râs for a model and ensampler to their lives.
It was an age of conscious and intended archaism, and in pursuit of the
archaistic ideal the Mem-phites of the Saïte age had themselves buried in
the ancient necropolis of Sakkâra, side by side with their ancestors of
the time of the Vth and VIth Dynasties. Several of these tombs have lately
been discovered and opened, and fitted with modern improvements. One or
two of them, of the Persian period, have wells (leading to the sepulchral
chamber) of enormous depth, down which the modern tourist is enabled to
descend by a spiral iron staircase. The Serapeum itself is lit with
electricity, and in the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes nothing disturbs the
silence but the steady thumping pulsation of the dynamo-engine which
lights the ancient sepulchres of the Pharaohs. Thus do modern ideas and
inventions help us to see and so to understand better the works of ancient
Egypt. But it is perhaps a little too much like the Yankee at the Court of
King Arthur. The interiors of the later tombs are often decorated with
reliefs which imitate those of the early period, but with a kind of
delicate grace which at once marks them for what they are, so that it is
impossible to confound them with the genuine ancient originals from which
they were adapted.
Riding from Sakkâra southwards to Dashûr, we pass on the way the gigantic
stone mastaba known as the Mastabat el-Fara’ûn, “Pharaoh’s Bench.”
This was considered to be the tomb of the Vth Dynasty king, Unas, until
his pyramid was found by Prof. Maspero at Sakkâra. From its form it might
be thought to belong to a monarch of the Hid Dynasty, but the great size
of the stone blocks of which it is built seems to point rather to the
XIIth. All attempts to penetrate its secret by actual excavation have been
unavailing.
Further south across the desert we see from the Mastabat el-Fara’ûn four
distinct pyramids, symmetrically arranged in two lines, two in each line.
The two to the right are great stone erections of the usual type, like
those of Gîza and Abusîr, and the southernmost of them has a peculiar
broken-backed appearance, due to the alteration of the angle of
inclination of its sides during construction. Further, it is covered
almost to the ground by the original casing of polished white limestone
blocks, so that it gives a very good idea of the original appearance of
the other pyramids, which have lost their casing. These two pyramids very
probably belong to kings of the Hid Dynasty, as does the Step-Pyramid of
Sakkâra. They strongly resemble the Gîza type, and the northernmost of the
two looks very like an understudy of the Great Pyramid. It seems to mark
the step in the development of the royal pyramid which was immediately
followed by the Great Pyramid. But no excavations have yet proved the
accuracy of this view. Both pyramids have been entered, but nothing has
been found in them. It is very probable that one of them is the second
pyramid of Snefru.
The other two pyramids, those nearest the cultivation, are of very
different appearance. They are half-ruined, they are black in colour, and
their whole effect is quite different from that of the stone pyramids. For
they are built of brick, not of stone. They are pyramids, it is true, but
of a different material and of a different date from those which we have
been describing. They are built above the sepulchres of kings of the XIIth
Dynasty, the Theban house which transferred its residence northwards to
the neighbourhood of the ancient Northern capital. We have, in fact,
reached the end of the Old Kingdom at Sakkâra; at Dashûr begin the
sepulchres of the Middle Kingdom. Pyramids are still built, but they are
not always of stone; brick is used, usually with stone in the interior.
The general effect of these brick pyramids, when new, must have been
indistinguishable from that of the stone ones, and even now, when it has
become half-ruined, such a great brick pyramid as that of Usertsen
(Senusret) III at Dashûr is not without impressiveness. After all, there
is no reason why a brick building should be less admirable than a stone
one. And in its own way the construction of such colossal masses of bricks
as the two eastern pyramids of Dashûr must have been as arduous, even as
difficult, as that of building a moderate-sized stone pyramid. The
photograph of the brick pyramids of Dashûr on this page shows well the
great size of these masses of brickwork, which are as impressive as any of
the great brick structures of Babylonia and Assyria.
EXTERIOR OF THE SOUTHERN BRICK PYRAMID OF DASHÛR:
XIITH DYNASTY.
Excavated by M. de Morgan, 1895. This is the secondary tomb of Amenemhat III;
about 2200 B.C.
The XIIth Dynasty use of brick for the royal tombs was a return to the
custom of earlier days, for from the time of Aha to that Tjeser, from the
1st Dynasty to the Hid, brick had been used for the building of the royal
mastaba-tombs, out of which the pyramids had developed.
At this point, where we take leave of the great pyramids of the Old
Kingdom, we may notice the latest theory as to the building of these
monuments, which has of late years been enunciated by Dr. Borchardt, and
is now generally accepted. The great Prussian explorer Lepsius, when he
examined the pyramids in the ‘forties, came to the conclusion that each
king, when he ascended the throne, planned a small pyramid for himself.
This was built in a few years’ time, and if his reign were short, or if he
were unable to enlarge the pyramid for other reasons, it sufficed for his
tomb. If, however, his reign seemed likely to be one of some length, after
the first plan was completed he enlarged his pyramid by building another
and a larger one around it and over it. Then again, when this addition was
finished, and the king still reigned and was in possession of great
resources, yet another coating, so to speak, was put on to the pyramid,
and so on till colossal structures like the First and Second Pyramid of
Giza, which, we know, belonged to kings who were unusually long-lived,
were completed. And finally the aged monarch died, and was buried in the
huge tomb which his long life and his great power had enabled him to
erect. This view appeared eminently reasonable at the time, and it seemed
almost as though we ought to be able to tell whether a king had reigned
long or not by the size of his pyramid, and even to obtain a rough idea of
the length of his reign by counting the successive coats or accretions
which it had received, much as we tell the age of a tree by the rings in
its bole. A pyramid seemed to have been constructed something after the
manner of an onion or a Chinese puzzle-box.
Prof. Pétrie, however, who examined the Griza pyramids in 1881, and
carefully measured them all up and finally settled their trigonometrical
relation, came to the conclusion that Lepsius’s theory was entirely
erroneous, and that every pyramid was built and now stands as it was
originally planned. Dr.Borchardt, however, who is an architect by
profession, has examined the pyramids again, and has come to the
conclusion that Prof. Pétrie’s statement is not correct, and that there is
an element of truth in Lepsius’s hypothesis. He has shown that several of
the pyramids, notably the First and Second at Giza, show unmistakable
signs of a modified, altered, and enlarged plan; in fact, long-lived kings
like Khufu seem to have added considerably to their pyramids and even to
have entirely remodelled them on a larger scale. This has certainly been
the case with the Great Pyramid. We can, then, accept Lepsius’s theory as
modified by Dr. Borchardt.
Another interesting point has arisen in connection with the Great Pyramid.
Considerable difference of opinion has always existed between
Egyptologists and the professors of European archaeology with regard to
the antiquity of the knowledge of iron in Egypt. The majority of the
Egyptologists have always maintained, on the authority of the
inscriptions, that iron was known to the ancient Egyptians from the
earliest period. They argued that the word for a certain metal in old
Egyptian was the same as the Coptic word for “iron.” They stated that in
the most ancient religious texts the Egyptians spoke of the firmament of
heaven as made of this metal, and they came to the conclusion that it was
because this metal was blue in colour, the hue of iron or steel; and they
further pointed out that some of the weapons in the tomb-paintings were
painted blue and others red, some being of iron, that is to say, others of
copper or bronze. Finally they brought forward as incontrovertible
evidence an actual fragment of worked iron, which had been found between
two of the inner blocks, down one of the air-shafts, in the Great Pyramid.
Here was an actual piece of iron of the time of the IVth Dynasty, about
3500 B.C.
This conclusion was never accepted by the students of the development of
the use of metal in prehistoric Europe, when they came to know of it. No
doubt their incredulity was partly due to want of appreciation of the
Egyptological evidence, partly to disinclination to accept a conclusion
which did not at all agree with the knowledge they had derived from their
own study of prehistoric Europe. In Southern Europe it was quite certain
that iron did not come into use till about 1000 B.C.; in Central Europe,
where the discoveries at Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut exhibit the
transition from the Age of Bronze to that of Iron, about 800 B.C. The
exclusively Iron Age culture of La Tène cannot be dated earlier than the
eighth century, if as early as that. How then was it possible that, if
iron had been known to the Egyptians as early as 3500 B.C., its knowledge
should not have been communicated to the Europeans until over two thousand
years later? No; iron could not have been really known to the Egyptians
much before 1000 B.C. and the Egyptological evidence was all wrong. This
line of argument was taken by the distinguished Swedish archaeologist,
Prof. Oscar Montelius, of Upsala, whose previous experience in dealing
with the antiquities of Northern Europe, great as it was, was hardly
sufficient to enable him to pronounce with authority on a point affecting
far-away African Egypt. And when dealing with Greek prehistoric
antiquities Prof. Montelius’s views have hardly met with that ready
agreement which all acknowledge to be his due when he is giving us the
results of his ripe knowledge of Northern antiquities. He has, in fact,
forgotten, as most “prehistoric” archaeologists do forget, that the
antiquities of Scandinavia, Greece, Egypt, the Semites, the bronze-workers
of Benin, the miners of Zimbabwe, and the Ohio mound-builders are not to
be treated all together as a whole, and that hard and fast lines of
development cannot be laid down for them, based on the experience of
Scandinavia.
We may perhaps trace this misleading habit of thought to the influence of
the professors of natural science over the students of Stone Age and
Bronze Age antiquities. Because nature moves by steady progression and
develops on even lines—nihil facit per sal-tum—it seems
to have been assumed that the works of man’s hands have developed in the
same way, in a regular and even scheme all over the world. On this
supposition it would be impossible for the great discovery of the use of
iron to have been known in Egypt as early as 3500 B.C. for this knowledge
to have remained dormant there for two thousand years, and then to have
been suddenly communicated about 1000 B.C. to Greece, spreading with
lightning-like rapidity over Europe and displacing the use of bronze
everywhere. Yet, as a matter of fact, the work of man does develop in
exactly this haphazard way, by fits and starts and sudden leaps of
progress after millennia of stagnation. Throwsback to barbarism are just
as frequent. The analogy of natural evolution is completely inapplicable
and misleading.
Prof. Montelius, however, following the “evolutionary” line of thought,
believed that because iron was not known in Europe till about 1000 B.C. it
could not have been known in Egypt much earlier; and in an important
article which appeared in the Swedish ethnological journal Ymer in
1883, entitled Bronsaldrn i Egypten (“The Bronze Age in Egypt”), he
essayed to prove the contrary arguments of the Egyptologists wrong. His
main points were that the colour of the weapons in the frescoes was of no
importance, as it was purely conventional and arbitrary, and that the
evidence of the piece of iron from the Great Pyramid was insufficiently
authenticated, and therefore valueless, in the absence of other definite
archaeological evidence in the shape of iron of supposed early date. To
this article the Swedish Egyptologist, Dr. Piehl, replied in the same
periodical, in an article entitled Bronsaldem i Egypten, in which
he traversed Prof. Montelius’s conclusions from the Egyptological point of
view, and adduced other instances of the use of iron in Egypt, all, it is
true, later than the time of the IVth Dynasty. But this protest received
little notice, owing to the fact that it remained buried in a Swedish
periodical, while Prof. Montelius’s original article was translated into
French, and so became well-known.
For the time Prof. Montelius’s conclusions were generally accepted, and
when the discoveries of the prehistoric antiquities were made by M. de
Morgan, it seemed more probable than ever that Egypt had gone through a
regular progressive development from the Age of Stone through those of
copper and bronze to that of iron, which was reached about 1100 or 1000
B.C. The evidence of the iron fragment from the Great Pyramid was put on
one side, in spite of the circumstantial account of its discovery which
had been given by its finders. Even Prof. Pétrie, who in 1881 had accepted
the pyramid fragment as undoubtedly contemporary with that building, and
had gone so far as to adduce additional evidence for its authenticity,
gave way, and accepted Montelius’s view, which held its own until in 1902
it was directly controverted by a discovery of Prof. Pétrie at Abydos.
This discovery consisted of an undoubted fragment of iron found in
conjunction with bronze tools of VIth Dynasty date; and it settled the
matter.[1] The VIth Dynasty date of this piece of iron, which was more
probably worked than not (since it was buried with tools), was held to be
undoubted by its discoverer and by everybody else, and, if this were
undoubted, the IVth Dynasty date of the Great Pyramid fragment was also
fully established. The discoverers of the earlier fragment had no doubt
whatever as to its being contemporary with the pyramid, and were supported
in this by Prof. Pétrie in 1881. Therefore it is now known to be the fact
that iron was used by the Egyptians as early as 3500 B.C.[2]
[1]
See H. R. Hall’s note on “The Early Use of Iron in Egypt,”
in Man (the organ of the Anthropological Society of
London), iii (1903), No. 86.
[2]
Prof. Montelius objected to these conclusions in a review
of the British Museum “Guide to the Antiquities of the
Bronze Age,” which was published in Man, 1005 (Jan.), No 7.
For an answer to these objections, see Hall, ibid., No. 40.
It would thus appear that though the Egyptians cannot be said to have used
iron generally and so to have entered the “Iron Age” before about 1300
B.C. (reign of Ramses II), yet iron was well known to them and had been
used more than occasionally by them for tools and building purposes as
early as the time of the IVth Dynasty, about 3500 B.C. Certainly dated
examples of its use occur under the IVth, VIth, and XIIIth Dynasties. Why
this knowledge was not communicated to Europe before about 1000 B.C. we
cannot say, nor are Egyptologists called upon to find the reason. So the
Great Pyramid has played an interesting part in the settlement of a very
important question.
It was supposed by Prof. Pétrie that the piece of iron from the Great
Pyramid had been part of some arrangement employed for raising the stones
into position. Herodotus speaks of the machines, which were used to raise
the stones, as made of little pieces of wood. The generally accepted
explanation of his meaning used to be that a small crane or similar wooden
machine was used for hoisting the stone by means of pulley and rope; but
M. Legrain, the director of the works of restoration in the Great Temple
of Karnak, has explained it differently. Among the “foundation deposits”
of the XVIIIth Dynasty at Dêr el-Bahari and elsewhere, beside the little
plaques with the king’s name and the model hoes and vases, was usually
found an enigmatic wooden object like a small cradle, with two sides made
of semicircular pieces of wood, joined along the curved portion by round
wooden bars. M. Legrain has now explained this as a model of the machine
used to raise heavy stones from tier to tier of a pyramid or other
building, and illustrations of the method of its use may be found in
Choisy’s Art de Bâtir chez les anciens Egyptiens. There is little
doubt that this primitive machine is that to which Herodotus refers as
having been used in the erection of the pyramids.
The later historian, Diodorus, also tells us that great mounds or ramps of
earth were used as well, and that the stones were dragged up these to the
requisite height. There is no doubt that this statement also is correct.
We know that the Egyptians did build in this very way, and the system has
been revived by M. Legrain for his work at Karnak, where still exist the
remains of the actual mounds and ramps by which the great western pylon
was erected in Ptolemaïc times. Work carried on in this way is slow and
expensive, but it is eminently suited to the country and understood by the
people. If they wish to put a great stone architrave weighing many tons
across the top of two columns, they do not hoist it up into position; they
rear a great ramp or embankment of earth against the two pillars,
half-burying them in the process, then drag the architrave up the ramp by
means of ropes and men, and put it into position. Then the ramp is cleared
away. This is the ancient system which is now followed at Karnak, and it
is the system by which, with the further aid of the wooden machines, the
Great Pyramid and its compeers were erected in the days of the IVth
Dynasty. Plus cela change, plus c’est la même chose.
The brick pyramids of the XIIth Dynasty were erected in the same way, for
the Egyptians had no knowledge of the modern combination of wooden
scaffolding and ladders. There was originally a small stone pyramid of the
same dynasty at Dashûr, half-way between the two brick ones, but this has
now almost disappeared. It belonged to the king Amenemhat II, while the
others belonged, the northern to Usertsen (Sen-usret) III, the southern to
Amenemhat III. Both these latter monarchs had other tombs elsewhere,
Usertsen a great rock-cut gallery and chamber in the cliff at Abydos,
Amenemhat a pyramid not very far to the south, at Hawara, close to the
Fayyûm. It is uncertain whether the Hawara pyramid or that of Dashûr was
the real burial-place of the king, as at neither place is his name found
alone. At Hawara it is found in conjunction with that of his daughter, the
queen-regnant Se-bekneferurâ (Skemiophris), at Dashûr with that of a king
Auabrâ Hor, who was buried in a small tomb near that of the king, and
adjoining the tombs of the king’s children. Who King Hor was we do not
quite know. His name is not given in the lists, and was unknown until M.
de Morgan’s discoveries at Dashûr. It is most probable that he was a
prince who was given royal honours during the lifetime of Amenemhat III,
whom he predeceased.[3] In the beautiful wooden statue of him found in his
tomb, which is now in the Cairo Museum, he is represented as quite a
youth. Amenemhat III was certainly succeeded by Amenemhat IV, and it is
impossible to intercalate Hor between them.
[3]
See below, p. 121. Possibly he was a son of Amenemhat III.
The identification of the owners of the three western pyramids of Dashûr
is due to M. de Morgan and his assistants, Messrs. Legrain and Jéquier,
who excavated them from 1894 till 1896. The northern pyramid, that of
Usertsen (Senusret) III, is not so well preserved as the southern. It is
more worn away, and does not present so imposing an appearance. In both
pyramids the outer casing of white stone has entirely disappeared, leaving
only the bare black bricks. Each stood in the midst of a great necropolis
of dignitaries of the period, as was usually the case. Many of the
mastabas were excavated by M. de Morgan. Some are of older periods than
the XIIth Dynasty, one belonging to a priest of King Snefru, Aha-f-ka
(“Ghost-fighter”), who bore the additional titles of “director of prophets
and general of infantry.” There were pluralists even in those days. And
the distinction between the privy councillor (Geheimrat) and real privy
councillor (Wirk-licher-Greheimrat) was quite familiar; for we find it
actually made, many an old Egyptian officially priding himself in his tomb
on having been a real privy councillor! The Egyptian bureaucracy was
already ancient and had its survivals and its anomalies even as early as
the time of the pyramid-builders.
In front of the pyramid of Usertsen (Senusret) III at one time stood the
usual funerary temple, but it has been totally destroyed. By the side of
the pyramid were buried some of the princesses of the royal family, in a
series of tombs opening out of a subterranean gallery, and in this gallery
were found the wonderful jewels of the princesses Sit-hathor and Merit,
which are among the greatest treasures of the Cairo Museum. Those who have
not seen them can obtain a perfect idea of their appearance from the
beautiful water-colour paintings of them by M. Legrain, which are
published in M. de Morgan’s work on the “Fouilles à Dahchour” (Vienna,
1895). Altogether one hundred and seven objects were recovered, consisting
of all kinds of jewelry in gold and coloured stones. Among the most
beautiful are the great “pectorals,” or breast-ornaments, in the shape of
pylons, with the names of Usertsen II, Usertsen III, and Amenemhat III;
the names are surrounded by hawks standing on the sign for gold, gryphons,
figures of the king striking down enemies, etc., all in cloisonné
work, with beautiful stones such as lapis lazuli, green felspar, and
carnelian taking the place of coloured enamels. The massive chains of
golden beads and cowries are also very remarkable. These treasures had
been buried in boxes in the floor of the subterranean gallery, and had
luckily escaped the notice of plunderers, and so by a fortunate chance
have survived to tell us what the Egyptian jewellers could do in the days
of the XIIth Dynasty. Here also were found two great Nile barges,
full-sized boats, with their oars and other gear complete. They also may
be seen in the Museum of Cairo. It can only be supposed that they had
served as the biers of the royal mummies, and had been brought up in state
on sledges. The actual royal chamber was not found, although a
subterranean gallery was driven beneath the centre of the pyramid.
The southern brick pyramid was constructed in the same way as the northern
one. At the side of it were also found the tombs of members of the royal
house, including that of the king Hor, already mentioned, with its
interesting contents. The remains of the mummy of this ephemeral monarch,
known only from his tomb, were also found. The entrails of the king were
placed in the usual “canopic jars,” which were sealed with the seal of
Amenemhat III; it is thus that we know that Hor died before him. In many
of the inscriptions of this king, on his coffin and stelo, a peculiarly
affected manner of writing the hieroglyphs is found,—the birds are
without their legs, the snake has no tail, the bee no head. Birds are
found without their legs in other inscriptions of this period; it was a
temporary fashion and soon discarded.
In the tomb of a princess named Nubhetep, near at hand, were found more
jewels of the same style as those of Sit-hathor and Merit. The pyramid
itself contained the usual passages and chambers, which were reached with
much difficulty and considerable tunnelling by M. de Morgan. In fact, the
search for the royal death-chambers lasted from December 5, 1894, till
March 17, 1895, when the excavators’ gallery finally struck one of the
ancient passages, which were found to be unusually extensive, contrasting
in this respect with the northern pyramid. The royal tomb-chamber had, of
course, been emptied of what it contained. It must be remembered that, in
any case, it is probable that the king was not actually buried here, but
in the pyramid of Hawara.
The pyramid of Amenemhat II, which lies between the two brick pyramids,
was built entirely of stone. Nothing of it remains above ground, but the
investigation of the subterranean portions showed that it was remarkable
for the massiveness of its stones and the care with which the masonry was
executed. The same characteristics are found in the dependent tombs of the
princesses Ha and Khnumet, in which more jewelry was found. This splendid
stonework is characteristic of the Middle Kingdom; we find it also in the
temple of Mentuhetep III at Thebes.
Some distance south of Dashûr is Mêdûm, where the pyramid of Sneferu
reigns in solitude, and beyond this again is Lisht, where in the years
1894-6 MM. Gautier and Jéquier excavated the pyramid of Usertsen
(Sen-usret) I. The most remarkable find was a cache of the seated statues
of the king in white limestone, in absolutely perfect condition. They were
found lying on their sides, just as they had been hidden. Six figures of
the king in the form of Osiris, with the face painted red, were also
found. Such figures seem to have been regularly set up in front of a royal
sepulchre; several were found in front of the funerary temple of
Mentu-hetep III, Thebes, which we shall describe later. A fine altar of
gray granite, with representations in relief of the nomes bringing
offerings, was also recovered. The pyramid of Lisht itself is not built of
bricks, like those of Dashûr, but of stone. It was not, however, erected
in so solid a fashion as those of earlier days at Gîza or Abusîr, and
nothing is left of it now but a heap of débris. The XIIth Dynasty
architects built walls of magnificent masonry, as we have seen, and there
is no doubt that the stone casing of their pyramids was originally very
fine, but the interior is of brick or rubble; the wonderful system of
building employed by kings of the IVth Dynasty at Giza was not practised.
South of Lisht is Illahun, and at the entrance to the province of the
Fayyûm, and west of this, nearer the Fayyûm, is Hawara, where Prof. Petrie
excavated the pyramids of Usertsen (Senusret) II and Amenem-hat III. His
discoveries have already been described by Prof. Maspero in his history,
so that it will suffice here merely to compare them with the results of M.
de Morgan’s later work at Dashûr and that of MM. Gautier and Jéquier at
Lisht, to note recent conclusions in connection with them, and to describe
the newest discoveries in the same region.
Both pyramids are of brick, lined with stone, like those of Dashûr, with
some differences of internal construction, since stone walls exist in the
interior. The central chambers and passages leading to them were
discovered; and in both cases the passages are peculiarly complex, with
dumb chambers, great stone portcullises, etc., in order to mislead and
block the way to possible plunderers. The extraordinary sepulchral chamber
of the Hawara pyramid, which, though it is over twenty-two feet long by
ten feet wide over all, is hewn out of one solid block of hard yellow
quartzite, gives some idea of the remarkable facility of dealing with huge
stones and the love of utilizing them which is especially characteristic
of the XIIth Dynasty. The pyramid of Hawara was provided with a funerary
temple the like of which had never been known in Egypt before and was
never known afterwards. It was a huge building far larger than the pyramid
itself, and built of fine limestone and crystalline white quartzite, in a
style eminently characteristic of the XIIth Dynasty. In actual superficies
this temple covered an extent of ground within which the temples of
Karnak, Luxor, and the Ramesseum, at Thebes, could have stood, but has now
almost entirely disappeared, having been used as a quarry for two thousand
years. In Roman times this destroying process had already begun, but even
then the building was still magnificent, and had been noted with wonder by
all the Greek visitors to Egypt from the time of Herodotus downwards. Even
before his day it had received the name of the “Labyrinth,” on account of
its supposed resemblance to the original labyrinth in Crete.
That the Hawara temple was the Egyptian labyrinth was pointed out by
Lepsius in the ‘forties of the last century. Within the last two or three
years attention has again been drawn to it by Mr. Arthur Evans’s discovery
of the Cretan labyrinth itself in the shape of the Minoan or early
Mycenæan palace of Knossos, near Candia in Crete. It is impossible to
enter here into all the arguments by which it has been proved that the
Knossian palace is the veritable labyrinth of the Minotaur legend, nor
would it be strictly germane to our subject were we to do so; but it may
suffice to say here that the word
has been proved to be of Greek-or rather of pre-Hellenic-origin, and would
mean in Karian “Place of the Double-Axe,” like La-braunda in Karia, where
Zeus was depicted with a double axe (labrys) in his hand. The non-Aryan,
“Asianic,” group of languages, to which certainly Lycian and probably
Karian belong, has been shown by the German philologer Kretschmer to have
spread over Greece into Italy in the period before the Aryan Greeks
entered Hellas, and to have left undoubted traces of its presence in Greek
place-names and in the Greek language itself. Before the true Hellenes
reached Crete, an Asianic dialect must have been spoken there, and to this
language the word “labyrinth” must originally have belonged. The classical
labyrinth was “in the Knossian territory.” The palace of Knossos was
emphatically the chief seat of the worship of a god whose emblem was the
double-axe; it was the Knossian “Place of the Double-Axe,” the Cretan
“Labyrinth.”
It used to be supposed that the Cretan labyrinth had taken its name from
the Egyptian one, and the, word itself was supposed to be of Egyptian
origin. An Egyptian etymology was found for it as “Ro-pi-ro-henet,”
“Temple-mouth-canal,” which might be interpreted, with some violence to
Egyptian construction, as “The temple at the mouth of the canal,” i.e. the
Bahr Yusuf, which enters the Fayyûm at Hawara. But unluckily this word
would have been pronounced by the natives of the vicinity as
“Elphilahune,” which is not very much like
“Ro-pi-ro-henet” is, in fact, a mere figment of the philological
imagination, and cannot be proved ever to have existed. The element Ro-henet,
“canal-mouth” (according to the local pronunciation of the Fayyûm and
Middle Egypt, called La-hunè), is genuine; it is the origin of the
modern Illahun (el-Lahun), which is situated at the “canal-mouth.”
However, now that we know that the word labyrinth can be explained
satisfactorily with the help of Karian, as evidently of Greek (pre-Aryan)
origin, and as evidently the original name of the Knossian labyrinth, it
is obvious that there is no need to seek a far-fetched explanation of the
word in Egypt, and to suppose that the Greeks called the Cretan labyrinth
after the Egyptian one.
The contrary is evidently the case. Greek visitors to Egypt found a
resemblance between the great Egyptian building, with its numerous halls
and corridors, vast in extent, and the Knossian palace. Even if very
little of the latter was visible in the classical period, as seems
possible, yet the site seems always to have been kept holy and free from
later building till Roman times, and we know that the tradition of the
mazy halls and corridors of the labyrinth was always clear, and was
evidently based on a vivid reminiscence. Actually, one of the most
prominent characteristics of the Knossian palace is its mazy and
labyrinthine system of passages and chambers. The parallel between the two
buildings, which originally caused the Greek visitors to give the
pyramid-temple of Hawara the name of “labyrinth,” has been traced still
further. The white limestone walls and the shining portals of “Parian
marble,” described by Strabo as characteristic of the Egyptian labyrinth,
have been compared with the shining white selenite or gypsum used at
Knossos, and certain general resemblances between the Greek architecture
of the Minoan age and the almost contemporary Egyptian architecture of the
XIIth Dynasty have been pointed out.[4] Such resemblances may go to swell
the amount of evidence already known, which tells us that there was a
close connection between Egyptian and Minoan art and civilization,
established at least as early as 2500 B.C.
[4]
See H. R. Hall, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1905 (Pt.
ii). The Temple of the Sphinx at Gîza may also be compared
with those of Hawara and Knossos. It seems most probable
that the Temple of the Sphinx is a XIIth Dynasty building.
For it must be remembered that within the last few years we have learned
from the excavations in Crete a new chapter of ancient history, which, it
might almost seem, shows us Greece and Egypt in regular communication from
nearly the beginnings of Egyptian history. As the excavations which have
told us this were carried on in Crete, not in Egypt, to describe them does
not lie within the scope of this book, though a short sketch of their
results, so far as they affect Egyptian history in later days, is given in
Chapter VII. Here it may suffice to say that, as far as the early period
is concerned, Egypt and Crete were certainly in communication in the time
of the XIIth Dynasty, and quite possibly in that of the VIth or still
earlier. We have IIId Dynasty Egyptian vases from Knossos, which were
certainly not imported in later days, for no ancient nation had
antiquarian tastes till the time of the Saïtes in Egypt and of the Romans
still later. In fact, this communication seems to go so far back in time
that we are gradually being led to perceive the possibility that the
Minoan culture of Greece was in its origin an offshoot from that of
primeval Egypt, probably in early Neolithic times. That is to say, the
Neolithic Greeks and Neolithic Egyptians were both members of the same
“Mediterranean” stock, which quite possibly may have had its origin in
Africa, and a portion of which may have crossed the sea to Europe in very
early times, taking with it the seeds of culture which in Egypt developed
in the Egyptian way, in Greece in the Greek way. Actual communication and
connection may not have been maintained at first, and probably they were
not. Prof. Petrie thinks otherwise, and would see in the boats painted on
the predynastic Egyptian vases (see Chapter I) the identical galleys by
which, in late Neolithic times, commerce between Crete and Egypt was
carried on across the Mediterranean. It is certain, however, that these
boats are ordinary little river craft, the usual Nile felûkas and
gyassas of the time; they are depicted together with emblems of the
desert and cultivated land,-ostriches, antelopes, hills, and
palm-trees,-and the thoroughly inland and Upper Egyptian character of the
whole design springs to the eye. There can be no doubt whatever that the
predynastic boats were not seagoing galleys.
It was probably not till the time of the pyramid-builders that connection
between the Greek Mediterraneans and the Nilotes was re-established.
Thence-forward it increased, and in the time of the XIIth Dynasty, when
the labyrinth of Amenemhat III was built, there seems to have been some
kind of more or less regular communication between the two countries.
It is certain that artistic ideas were exchanged between them at this
period. How communication was carried on we do not know, but it was
probably rather by way of Cyprus and the Syrian coast than directly across
the open sea. We shall revert to this point when we come to describe the
connection between Crete and Egypt in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty,
when Cretan ambassadors visited the Egyptian court and were depicted in
tomb paintings at Thebes. Between the time of the XIIth Dynasty and that
of the XVIIIth this connection seems to have been very considerably
strengthened; for at Knossos have been found an Egyptian statuette of an
Egyptian named Abnub, who from his name must have lived about the end of
the XIIIth Dynasty, and the top of an alabastron with the royal name of
Khian, one of the Hyksos kings.
Quite close to Hawara, at Illahun, in the ruins of the town which was
built by Usertsen’s workmen when they were building his pyramid, Prof.
Petrie found fragments of pottery of types which we now know well from
excavations in Crete and Cyprus, though they were then unknown. They are
fragments of the polychrome Cretan ware called, after the name of the
place where it was first found in Crete, Kamares ware, and of a black ware
ornamented with small punctures, which are often filled up with white.
This latter ware has been found elsewhere associated with XIIIth Dynasty
antiquities. The former is known to belong in Crete to the “early Minoan”
period, long anterior to the “late Minoan” or “Palace” period, which was
contemporary with the Egyptian XVIIIth Dynasty. We have here another
interesting proof of a connection between XIIth Dynasty Egypt and early
Minoan Crete. The later connection, under the XVIIIth and following
dynasties, is also illustrated in the same reign by Prof. Petrie’s finds
of late Mycenaean objects and foreign graves at Medinet Gurob.[5]
[5]
One man who was buried here bore the name An-Tursha,
“Pillar of the Tursha.” The Tursha were a people of the
Mediterranean, possibly Tylissians of Crete.
These excavations at Hawara, Illahun, Kahun, and Gurob were carried out in
the years 1887-9. Since then Prof. Petrie and his co-workers have
revisited the same district, and Gurob has been re-examined (in 1904) by
Messrs. Loat and Ayrton, who discovered there a shrine devoted to the
worship of fish. This work was carried on at the same time as Prof.
Petrie’s main excavation for the Egypt Exploration Fund at Annas, or
Ahnas-yet el-Medina, the site of the ancient Henensu, the Herakleopolis of
the Greeks. Prof. Naville had excavated there for the Egypt Exploration
Fund in 1892, but had not completely cleared the temple. This work was now
taken up by Prof. Petrie, who laid the whole building bare. It is
dedicated to Hershefi, the local deity of Herakleopolis. This god, who was
called Ar-saphes by the Greeks, and identified with Herakles, was in fact
a form of Horus with the head of a ram; his name means “Terrible-Face.”
The greater part of the temple dates to the time of the XIXth Dynasty, and
nothing of the early period is left. We know, however, that the Middle
Kingdom was the flourishing period of the city of Hershefi. For a
comparatively brief period, between the age of Memphite hegemony and that
of Theban dominion, Herakleopolis was the capital city of Egypt. The kings
of the IXth and Xth Dynasties were Herakleopolites, though we know little
of them. One, Kheti, is said to have been a great tyrant. Another,
Nebkaurâ, is known only as a figure in the “Legend of the Eloquent
Peasant,” a classical story much in vogue in later days. Another,
Merikarâ, is a more real personage, for we have contemporary records of
his days in the inscriptions of the tombs at Asyût, from which we see that
the princes of Thebes were already wearing down the Northerners, in spite
of the resistance of the adherents of Herakleopolis, among whom the most
valiant were the chiefs of Asyût. The civil war eventuated in favour of
Thebes, and the Theban XIth Dynasty assumed the double crown. The sceptre
passed from Memphis and the North, and Thebes enters upon the scene of
Egyptian history.
With this event the Nile-land also entered upon a new era of development.
The metropolis of the kingdom was once more shifted to the South, and,
although the kings of the XIIth Dynasty actually resided in the North,
their Theban origin was never forgotten, and Thebes was regarded as the
chief city of the country. The XIth Dynasty kings actually reigned at
Thebes, and there the later kings of the XIIIth Dynasty retired after the
conquest of the Hyksos. The fact that with Thebes were associated all the
heroic traditions of the struggle against the Hyksos ensured the final
stability of the capital there when the hated Semites were finally driven
out, and the national kingdom was re-established in its full extent from
north to south. But for occasional intervals, as when Akhunaten held his
court at Tell el-Amarna and Ramses II at Tanis, Thebes remained the
national capital for six hundred years, till the time of the XXIId
Dynasty.
Another great change which differentiates the Middle Kingdom (XIth-XIIIth
Dynasties) from the Old Kingdom was caused by Egypt’s coming into contact
with other outside nations at this period. During the whole history of the
Old Kingdom, Egyptian relations with the outer world had been nil. We have
some inkling of occasional connection with the Mediterranean peoples, the
Ha-nebu or Northerners; we have accounts of wars with the people of
Sinai and other Bedawin and negroes; and expeditions were also sent to the
land of Punt (Somaliland) by way of the Upper Nile. But we have not the
slightest hint of any connection with, or even knowledge of, the great
nations of the Euphrates valley or the peoples of Palestine. The
Babylonian king Narâm-Sin invaded the Sinaitic peninsula (the land of
Magan) as early as 3750 b. c, about the time of the IIId Egyptian Dynasty.
The great King Tjeser, of that dynasty, also invaded Sinai, and so did
Snefru, the last king of the dynasty. But we have no hint of any collision
between Babylonians and Egyptians at that time, nor do either of them
betray the slightest knowledge of one another’s existence. It can hardly
be that the two civilized peoples of the world in those days were really
absolutely ignorant of each other, but we have no trace of any connection
between them, other than the possible one before the founding of the
Egyptian monarchy.
This early connection, however, is very problematical. We have seen that
there seems to be in early Egyptian civilization an element ultimately of
Babylonian origin, and that there are two theories as to how it reached
Egypt. One supposes that it was brought by a Semitic people of Arab
affinities (represented by the modern Grallas), who crossed the Straits of
Bab el-Man-deb and reached Egypt either by way of the Wadi Hammamat or by
the Upper Nile. The other would bring it across the Isthmus of Suez to the
Delta, where, at Heliopolis, there certainly seems to have been a
settlement of a Semitic type of very ancient culture. In both cases we
should have Semites bringing Babylonian culture to Egypt. This, as we may
remind the reader, was not itself of Semitic origin, but was a development
due to a non-Semitic people, the Sumerians as they are called, who, so far
as we know, were the aboriginal inhabitants of Babylonia. The Sumerian
language was of agglutinative type, radically distinct both from the pure
Semitic idioms and from Egyptian. The Babylonian elements of culture which
the early Semitic invaders brought with them to Egypt were, then,
ultimately of Sumerian origin. Sumerian civilization had profoundly
influenced the Semitic tribes for centuries before the Semitic conquest of
Babylonia, and when the Sumerians became more and more a conquered race,
finally amalgamating with their conquerors and losing their racial and
linguistic individuality, they were conquered by an alien race but not by
an alien culture. For the culture of the Semites was Sumerian, the Semitic
races owing their civilization to the Sumerians. That is as much as to say
that a great deal of what we call Semitic culture is fundamentally
non-Semitic.
In the earliest days, then, Egypt received elements of Sumerian culture
through a Semitic medium, which introduced Semitic elements into the
language of the people, and a Semitic racial strain. It is possible. that
both theories as to the routes of these primeval conquerors are true, and
that two waves of Semites entered the Nile valley towards the close of the
Neolithic period, one by way of the Upper Nile or Wadi Hammamat, the other
by way of Heliopolis.
After the reconsolidation of the Egyptian people, with perhaps an
autocratic class of Semitic origin and a populace of indigenous Nilotic
race, we have no trace of further connection with the far-away centre of
Semitic culture in Babylonia till the time of the Theban hegemony. Under
the XIIth Dynasty we see Egyptians in friendly relations with the Bedawin
of Idumsea and Southern Palestine. Thus Sanehat, the younger son of
Amenemhat I, when the death of his royal father was announced, fled from
the new king Usertsen (Senusret) into Palestine, and there married the
daughter of the chief Ammuanshi and became a Syrian chief himself, only
finally returning to Egypt as an old man on the assurance of the royal
pardon and favour. We have in the reign of Usertsen (Senusret) II the
famous visit of the Arab chief Abisha (Abêshu’) with his following to the
court of Khnumhetep, the prince of the Oryx nome in Middle Egypt, as we
see it depicted on the walls of Khnumhetep’s tomb at Beni Hasan. We see
Usertsen (Senusret) III invading Palestine to chastise the land of Sekmem
and the vile Syrians.[6]
[6]
We know of this campaign from the interesting historical
stele of the general Sebek-khu (who took part in it), which
was found during Mr. Garstang’s excavations at Abydos, not
previously referred to above. They were carried out in 1900,
and resulted in the complete clearance of a part of the
great cemetery which had been created during the XIIth
Dynasty. The group of objects from the tombs of this
cemetery, and those of XVIIIth Dynasty tombs also found, is
especially valuable as showing the styles of objects in use
at these two periods (see Garstang, el-Ardbah, 1901).
The arm of Egypt was growing longer, and its weight was being felt in
regions where it had previously been entirely unknown. Eventually the
collision came. Egypt collided with an Asiatic power, and got the worst of
the encounter. So much the worse that the Theban monarchy of the Middle
Kingdom was overthrown, and Northern Egypt was actually conquered by the
Asiatic foreigners and ruled by a foreign house for several centuries. Who
these conquering Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, were no recent discovery has
told us. An old idea was that they were Mongols. It was supposed that the
remarkable faces of the sphinxes of Tanis, now in the Cairo Museum, which
bore the names of Hyksos kings, were of Mongolian type, as also those of
two colossal royal heads discovered by M. Naville at Bubastis. But M.
Golénischeff has now shown that these heads are really those of XIIth
Dynasty kings, and not of Hyksos at all. Messrs. Newberry and Garstang
have lately endeavoured to show that this type was foreign, and probably
connected with that of the Kheta, or Hittites, of Northern Syria, who came
into prominence as enemies of Egypt at a later period. They think that the
type was introduced into the Egyptian royal family by Nefret, the queen of
Usertsen (Senusret) II, whom they suppose to have been a Hittite princess.
At the same time they think it probable that the type was also that of the
Hyksos, whom they consider to have been practically Hittites. They
therefore revive the theory of de Cara, which connects the Hyksos with the
Hittites and these with the Pelasgi and Tyrseni.
This is a very interesting theory, which, when carried out to its logical
conclusion, would connect the Hyksos and Hittites racially with the
pre-Hellenic “Minoan” Mycenseans of Greece, as well as with the Etruscans
of Italy. But there is little of certainty in it. It is by no means
impossible that we may eventually come to know that the Hittites (Kheta,
the Khatte of the Assyrians) and other tribes of Asia Minor were
racially akin to the “Minoans” of Greece, but the connection between the
Hyksos and the Hittites is to seek. The countenances of the Kheta on the
Egyptian monuments of Ramses II’s time have an angular cast, and so have
those of the Tanis sphinxes, of Queen Nefret, of the Bubastis statues, and
the statues of Usertsen (Senusret) III and Amenemhat III. We might then
suppose, with Messrs. Newberry and Garstang, that Nefret was a Kheta
princess, who gave her peculiar racial traits to her son Usertsen
(Senusret) III and his son Amenem-hat, were it not far more probable that
the resemblance between this peculiar XIIth Dynasty type and the Kheta
face is purely fortuitous.
There is really no reason to suppose that the type of face presented by
Nefret, Usertsen, and Amenemhat is not purely Egyptian. It may be seen in
many a modern fellah, and the truth probably is that the sculptors have in
the case of these rulers very faithfully and carefully depicted their
portraits, and that their faces happen to have been of a rather hard and
forbidding type. But, if we grant the contention of Messrs. Newberry and
Garstang for the moment, where is the connection between these XIIth
Dynasty kings and the Hyksos? All the Tanite monuments with this peculiar
facial type which would be considered Hyksos are certainly of the XIIth
Dynasty. The only statue of a Hyksos king, which was undoubtedly
originally made for him and is not one of the XIIth Dynasty usurped, is
the small one of Khian at Cairo, discovered by M. Naville at Bubastis, and
this has no head. So that we have not the slightest idea of what a Hyksos
looked like. Moreover, the evidence of the Hyksos names which are known to
us points in quite a different direction. The Kheta, or Hittites, were
certainly not Semites, yet the Hyksos names are definitely Semitic. In
fact it is most probable that the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, were, as the
classical authorities say they were, and as their name (hiku-semut
or hihu-shasu,) “princes of the deserts” or (“princes of the
Bedawîn”) also testifies, purely and simply Arabs.
Now it is not a little curious that almost at the same time that a nomad
Arab race conquered Lower Egypt and settled in it as rulers (just as ‘Amr
and the followers of Islam did over two thousand years later), another
Arab race may have imposed its rule upon Babylonia. Yet this may have been
the case; for the First Dynasty of Babylon, to which the famous Hammurabi
belonged, was very probably of Arab origin, to judge by the forms of some
of the royal names. It is by no means impossible that there was some
connection between these two conquests, and that both Babylonia and Egypt
fell, in the period before the year 2000 B.C. before some great migratory
movement from Arabia, which overran Babylonia, Palestine, and even the
Egyptian Delta.
In this manner Egypt and Babylonia may have been brought together in
common subjection to the Arab. We do not know whether any regular
communication between Egypt, under Semitic rule, and Babylonia was now
established; but we do know that during the Hyksos period there were
considerable relations between Egypt and over-sea Crete, and relations
with Mesopotamia may possibly have been established. At any rate, when the
war of liberation, which was directed by the princes of Thebes, was
finally brought to a successful conclusion and the Arabs were expelled, we
find the Egyptians a much changed nation. They had adopted for war the use
of horse and chariot, which they learnt from their Semitic conquerors,
whose victory was in all probability largely gained by their use, and,
generally speaking, they had become much more like the Western Asiatic
nations. Egypt was no longer isolated, for she had been forcibly brought
into contact with the foreign world, and had learned much. She was no
longer self-contained within her own borders. If the Semites could conquer
her, so could she conquer the Semites. Armed with horse and chariot, the
Egyptians went forth to battle, and their revenge was complete. All
Palestine and Syria were Egyptian domains for five hundred years after the
conquest by Thothmes I and III, and Ashur and Babel sent tribute to the
Pharaoh of Egypt.
The reaction came, and Egypt was thrown prostrate beneath the feet of
Assyria; but her claim to dominion over the Western Asiatics was never
abandoned, and was revived in all its pomp by Ptolemy Euergetes, who
brought back in triumph to Egypt the images of the gods which had been
removed by Assyrians and Babylonians centuries before. This claim was
never allowed by the Asiatics, it is true, and their kings wrote to the
proudest Pharaoh as to an absolute equal. Even the King of Cyprus calls
the King of Egypt his brother. But Palestine was admitted to be an
Egyptian possession, and the Phoenicians were always energetic supporters
of the Egyptian régime against the lawless Bedawîn tribes, who were
constantly intriguing with the Kheta or Hittite power to the north against
Egypt.
The existence of this extra-Egyptian imperial possession meant that the
eyes of the Egyptians were now permanently turned in the direction of
Western Asia, with which they were henceforth in constant and intimate
communication. The first Theban period and the Hyksos invasion, therefore,
mark a turning-point in Egyptian history, at which we may fitly leave it
for a time in order to turn our attention to those peoples of Western Asia
with whom the Egyptians had now come into permanent contact.
Just as new discoveries have been made in Egypt, which have modified our
previous conception of her history, so also have the excavators of the
ancient sites in the Mesopotamian valley made, during the last few years,
far-reaching discoveries, which have enabled us to add to and revise much
of our knowledge of the history of Babylonia and Assyria. In Palestine and
the Sinaitic peninsula also the spade has been used with effect, but a
detailed account of work in Sinai and Palestine falls within the limits of
a description of Biblical discoveries rather than of this book. The
following chapters will therefore deal chiefly with modern discoveries
which have told us new facts with regard to the history of the ancient
Sumerians themselves, and of the Babylonians, Elamites, Kassites, and
Assyrians, the inheritors of the ancient Sumerian civilization, which was
older than that of Egypt, and which, as we have seen, probably contributed
somewhat to its formation. These were the two primal civilizations of the
ancient world. For two thousand years each marched upon a solitary road,
without meeting the other. Eventually the two roads converged. We have
hitherto dealt with the road of the Egyptians; we now describe that of the
Mesopotamians, up to the point of convergence.
CHAPTER IV—RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN WESTERN ASIA
AND THE DAWN OF
CHALDÆAN HISTORY
In the preceding pages it has been shown how recent excavations in Egypt
have revealed an entirely new chapter in the history of that country, and
how, in consequence, our theories with regard to the origin of Egyptian
civilization have been entirely remodelled. Excavations have been and are
being carried out in Mesopotamia and the adjacent countries with no less
enthusiasm and energy than in Egypt itself, and, although it cannot be
said that they have resulted in any sweeping modification of our
conceptions with regard to the origin and kinship of the early races of
Western Asia, yet they have lately added considerably to our knowledge of
the ancient history of the countries in that region of the world. This is
particularly the case in respect of the Sumerians, who, so far as we know
at present, were the earliest inhabitants of the fertile plains of
Mesopotamia. The beginnings of this ancient people stretch back into the
remote past, and their origin is still shrouded in the mists of antiquity.
When first we come across them they have already attained a high level of
civilization. They have built temples and palaces and houses of burnt and
unburnt brick, and they have reduced their system of agriculture to a
science, intersecting their country with canals for purposes of irrigation
and to ensure a good supply of water to their cities. Their sculpture and
pottery furnish abundant evidence that they have already attained a
comparatively high level in the practice of the arts, and finally they
have evolved a complicated system of writing which originally had its
origin in picture-characters, but afterwards had been developed along
phonetic lines. To have attained to this pitch of culture argues long
periods of previous development, and we must conclude that they had been
settled in Southern Babylonia many centuries before the period to which we
must assign the earliest of their remains at present discovered.
That this people were not indigenous to Babylonia is highly probable, but
we have little data by which to determine the region from which they
originally came. Prom the fact that they built their ziggurats, or temple
towers, of huge masses of unburnt brick which rose high above the
surrounding plain, and that their ideal was to make each “like a
mountain,” it has been argued that they were a mountain race, and the home
from which they sprang has been sought in Central Asia. Other scholars
have detected signs of their origin in their language and system of
writing, and, from the fact that they spoke an agglutinative tongue and at
the earliest period arranged the characters of their script in vertical
lines like the Chinese, it has been urged that they were of Mongol
extraction. Though a case may be made out for this hypothesis, it would be
rash to dogmatize for or against it, and it is wiser to await the
discovery of further material on which a more certain decision may be
based. But whatever their origin, it is certain that the Sumerians
exercised an extraordinary influence on all races with which, either
directly or indirectly, they came in contact. The ancient inhabitants of
Elam at a very early period adopted in principle their method of writing,
and afterwards, living in isolation in the mountainous districts of
Persia, developed it on lines of their own. [* See Chap. V, and note.] On
their invasion of Babylonia the Semites fell absolutely under Sumerian
influence, and, although they eventually conquered and absorbed the
Sumerians, their civilization remained Sumerian to the core. Moreover, by
means of the Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia Sumerian culture continued
to exert its influence on other and more distant races. We have already
seen how a Babylonian element probably enters into Egyptian civilization
through Semitic infiltration across the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb or by way
of the Isthmus of Suez, and it was Sumerian culture which these Semites
brought with them. In like manner, through the Semitic Babylonians, the
Assyrians, the Kassites, and the inhabitants of Palestine and Syria, and
of some parts of Asia Minor, Armenia, and Kurdistan, all in turn
experienced indirectly the influence of Sumerian civilization and
continued in a greater or less degree to reproduce elements of this early
culture.
It will be seen that the influence of the Sumerians furnishes us with a
key to much that would otherwise prove puzzling in the history of the
early races of Western Asia. It is therefore all the more striking to
recall the fact that but a few years ago the very existence of this
ancient people was called in question. At that time the excavations in
Mesopotamia had not revealed many traces of the race itself, and its
previous existence had been mainly inferred from a number of Sumerian
compositions inscribed upon Assyrian tablets found in the library of
Ashur-bani-pal at Nineveh. These compositions were furnished with Assyrian
translations upon the tablets on which they were inscribed, and it was
correctly argued by the late Sir Henry Rawlinson, the late M. Oppert,
Prof. Schrader, Prof. Sayce, and other scholars that they were written in
the language of the earlier inhabitants of the country whom the Semitic
Babylonians had displaced. But M. Halévy started a theory to the effect
that Sumerian was not a language at all, in the proper sense of the term,
but was a cabalistic method of writing invented by the Semitic Babylonian
priests.
Drawn up by an Assyrian scribe to assist him in his studies
of early texts. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
The argument on which the upholders of this theory mainly relied was that
many of the phonetic values of the Sumerian signs were obviously derived
from Semitic equivalents, and they hastily jumped to the conclusion that
the whole language was similarly derived from Semitic Babylonian, and was,
in fact, a purely arbitrary invention of the Babylonian priests. This
theory ignored all questions of inherent probability, and did not attempt
to explain why the Babylonian priests should have troubled themselves to
make such an invention and afterwards have stultified themselves by
carefully appending Assyrian translations to the majority of the Sumerian
compositions which they copied out. Moreover, the nature of these
compositions is not such as we should expect to find recorded in a
cabalistic method of writing. They contain no secret lore of the
Babylonian priests, but are merely hymns and prayers and religious
compositions similar to those employed by the Babylonians and Assyrians
themselves.
But in spite of its inherent improbabilities, M. Halévy succeeded in
making many converts to his theory, including Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch
and a number of the younger school of German Assyriologists. More
conservative scholars, such as Sir Henry Rawlinson, M. Oppert, and Prof.
Schrader, stoutly opposed the theory, maintaining that Sumerian was a real
language and had been spoken by an earlier race whom the Semitic
Babylonians had conquered; and they explained the resemblance of some of
the Sumerian values to Semitic roots by supposing that Sumerian had not
been suddenly superseded by the language of the Semitic invaders of
Babylonia, but that the two tongues had been spoken for long periods side
by side and that each had been strongly influenced by the other. This very
probable and sane explanation has been fully corroborated by subsequent
excavations, particularly those that were carried out at Telloh in
Southern Babylonia by the late M. de Sarzec. In these mounds, which mark
the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Shirpurla, were found thousands
of clay tablets inscribed in archaic characters and in the Sumerian
language, proving that it had actually been the language of the early
inhabitants of Babylonia; while the examples of their art and the
representations of their form and features, which were also afforded by
the diggings at Telloh, proved once for all that the Sumerians were a race
of strongly marked characteristics and could not be ascribed to a Semitic
stock.
The system of writing invented by the ancient Sumerians was adopted by the
Semitic Babylonians, who modified it to suit their own language. Moreover,
the archaic forms of the characters, many of which under the Sumerians
still retained resemblances to the pictures of objects from which they
were descended, were considerably changed. The lines, of which they were
originally composed, gave way to wedges, and the number of the wedges of
which each sign consisted was gradually diminished, so that in the time of
the Assyrians and the later Babylonians many of the characters bore small
resemblance to the ancient Sumerian forms from which they had been
derived. The reading of Sumerian and early Babylonian inscriptions by the
late Assyrian scribes was therefore an accomplishment only to be acquired
as the result of long study, and it is interesting to note that as an
assistance to the reading of these early texts the scribes compiled lists
of archaic signs. Sometimes opposite each archaic character they drew a
picture of the object from which they imagined it was derived. This fact
is significant as proving that the Assyrian scribes recognized the
pictorial origin of cuneiform writing, but the pictures they drew opposite
the signs are rather fanciful, and it cannot be said that their guesses
were very successful. That we are able to criticize the theories of the
Assyrians as to the origin and forms of the early characters is in the
main due to M. de Sarzec’s labours, from whose excavations many thousands
of inscriptions of the Sumerians have been recovered.
The main results of M. de Sarzec’s diggings at Telloh have already been
described by M. Maspero in his history, and therefore we need not go over
them again, but will here confine ourselves to the results which have been
obtained from recent excavations at Telloh and at other sites in Western
Asia. With the death of M. de Sarzec, which occurred in his sixty-fifth
year, on May 31, 1901, the wonderfully successful series of excavations
which he had carried out at Telloh was brought to an end. In consequence
it was feared at the time that the French diggings on this site might be
interrupted for a considerable period. Such an event would have been
regretted by all those who are interested in the early history of the
East, for, in spite of the treasures found by M. de Sarzec in the course
of his various campaigns, it was obvious that the site was far from being
exhausted, and that the tells as yet unexplored contained inscriptions and
antiquities extending back to the very earliest periods of Sumerian
history.
Opposite each the scribe has drawn a picture of the object
from which he imagined it was derived. Photograph by Messrs.
Mansell & Co.
The announcement which was made in 1902, that the French government had
appointed Capt. Gaston Cros as the late M. de Sarzec’s successor, was
therefore received with general satisfaction. The fact that Capt. Cros had
already successfully carried out several difficult topographical missions
in the region of the Sahara was a sufficient guarantee that the new
diggings would be conducted on a systematic and exhaustive scale.
The new director of the French mission in Chaldæa arrived at Telloh in
January, 1903, and one of his first acts was to shift the site of the
mission’s settlement from the bank of the Shatt el-Hai, where it had
always been established in the time of M. de Sarzec, to the mounds where
the actual digging took place. The Shatt el-Hai had been previously chosen
as the site of the settlement to ensure a constant supply of water, and as
it was more easily protected against attack by night. But the fact that it
was an hour’s ride from the diggings caused an unnecessary loss of time,
and rendered the strict supervision of the diggers a matter of
considerable difficulty. During the first season’s work rough huts of
reeds, surrounded by a wall of earth and a ditch, served the new
expedition for its encampment among the mounds of Telloh, but last year
these makeshift arrangements were superseded by a regular house built out
of the burnt bricks which are found in abundance on the site. A reservoir
has also been built, and caravans of asses bring water in skins from the
Shatt el-Hai to keep it filled with a constant supply of water, while the
excellent relations which Capt. Cros has established with the Karagul
Arabs, who occupy Telloh and its neighbourhood, have proved to be the best
kind of protection for the mission engaged in scientific work upon the
site.
The group of mounds and hillocks, known as Telloh, which marks the site of
the ancient Sumerian city of Shirpurla, is easily distinguished from the
flat surrounding desert. The mounds extend in a rough oval formation
running north and south, about two and a half miles long and one and a
quarter broad. In the early spring, when the desert is covered with a
light green verdure, the ruins are clearly marked out as a yellow spot in
the surrounding green, for vegetation does not grow upon them. In the
centre of this oval, which approximately marks the limits of the ancient
city and its suburbs, are four large tells or mounds running, roughly,
north and south, their sides descending steeply on the east, but with
their western slopes rising by easier undulations from the plain. These
four principal tells are known as the “Palace Tell,” the “Tell of the
Fruit-house,” the “Tell of the Tablets,” and the “Great Tell,” and, rising
as they do in the centre of the site, they mark the position of the
temples and the other principal buildings of the city.
An indication of the richness of the site in antiquities was afforded to
the new mission before it had started regular excavation and while it was
yet engaged in levelling its encampment and surrounding it with a wall and
ditch. The spot selected for the camp was a small mound to the south of
the site of Telloh, and here, in the course of preparing the site for the
encampment and digging the ditch, objects were found at a depth of less
than a foot beneath the surface of the soil. These included daggers,
copper vases, seal-cylinders, rings of lapis and cornelian, and pottery.
M. de Sarzec had carried out his latest diggings in the Tell of the
Tablets, and here Capt. Cros continued the excavations and came upon the
remains of buildings and recovered numerous objects, dating principally
from the period of Gudea and the kings of Ur. The finds included small
terra-cotta figures, a boundary-stone of Gamil-Sin, and a new statue of
Gudea, to which we will refer again presently.
In the Tell of the Fruit-house M. de Sarzec had already discovered numbers
of monuments dating from the earlier periods of Sumerian history before
the conquest and consolidation of Babylonia under Sargon of Agade, and had
excavated a primitive terrace built by the early king Ur-Ninâ. Both on and
around this large mound Capt. Cros cut an extensive series of trenches,
and in digging to the north of the mound he found a number of objects,
including an alabaster tablet of Ente-mena which had been blackened by
fire. At the foot of the tell he found a copper helmet like those
represented on the famous Stele of Vultures discovered by M. de Sarzec,
and among the tablets here recovered was one with an inscription of the
time of Urukagina, which records the complete destruction of the city of
Shirpurla during his reign, and will be described in greater detail later
on in this chapter. On the mound itself a considerable area was uncovered
with remains of buildings still in place, the use of which appears to have
been of an industrial character. They included flights of steps, canals
with raised banks, and basins for storing water. Not far off are the
previously discovered wells of Bannadu, so that it is legitimate to
suppose that Capt. Cros has here come upon part of the works which were
erected at a very early period of Sumerian history for the distribution of
water to this portion of the city.
An early Semitic king of the city of Kish in Babylonia. The
photograph is taken from M. de Morgan’s Délégation en Perse,
Mém., t. i, pi. ix.
In the Palace Tell Capt. Cros has sunk a series of deep shafts to
determine precisely the relations which the buildings of Ur-Bau and Gudea,
found already on this part of the site, bear to each other, and to the
building of Adad-nadin-akhê, which had been erected there at a much later
period. Prom this slight sketch of the work carried out during the last
two years at Telloh it will have been seen that the Prench mission in
Chaldæa is at present engaged in excavations of a most important
character, which are being conducted in a regular and scientific manner.
As the area of the excavations marks the site of the chief city of the
Sumerians, the diggings there have yielded and are yielding material of
the greatest interest and value for the reconstruction of the early
history of Chaldæa. After briefly describing the character and results of
other recent excavations in Mesopotamia and the neighbouring lands, we
will return to the discoveries at Telloh and sketch the new information
they supply on the history of the earliest inhabitants of the country.
Another French mission that is carrying out work of the very greatest
interest to the student of early Babylonian history is that which is
excavating at Susa in Persia, under the direction of M. J. de Morgan,
whose work on the prehistoric and early dynastic sites in Egypt has
already been described. M. de Morgan’s first season’s digging at Susa was
carried out in the years 1897-8, and the success with which he met from
the very first, when cutting trenches in the mound which marks the
acropolis of the ancient city, has led him to concentrate his main efforts
in this part of the ruins ever since. Provisional trenches cut in the part
of the ruins called “the Royal City,” and in others of the mounds at Susa,
indicate that many remains may eventually be found there dating from the
period of the Achæmenian Kings of Persia. But it is in the mound of the
acropolis at Susa that M. de Morgan has found monuments of the greatest
historical interest and value, not only in the history of ancient Elam,
but also in that of the earliest rulers of Chaldæa.
In the diggings carried out during the first season’s work on the site, an
obelisk was found inscribed on four sides with a long text of some
sixty-nine columns, written in Semitic Babylonian by the orders of
Manishtusu, a very early Semitic king of the city of Kish in Babylonia.[*
See illustration.] The text records the purchase by the King of Kish of
immense tracts of land situated at Kish and in its neighbourhood, and its
length is explained by the fact that it enumerates full details of the
size and position of each estate, and the numbers and some of the names of
the dwellers on the estates who were engaged in their cultivation. After
details have been given of a number of estates situated in the same
neighbourhood, a summary is appended referring to the whole neighbourhood,
and the fact is recorded that the district dealt with in the preceding
catalogue and summary had been duly acquired by purchase by Manishtusu,
King of Kish. The long text upon the obelisk is entirely taken up with
details of the purchase of the territory, and therefore its subject has
not any great historical value. Mention is made in it of two personages,
one of whom may possibly be identified with a Babylonian ruler whose name
is known from other sources. If the proposed identification t should prove
to be correct, it would enable us to assign a more precise date to
Manishtusu than has hitherto been possible. One of the personages in
question was a certain Urukagina, the son of Engilsa, patesi of Shirpurla,
and it has been suggested that he is the same Urukagina who is known to
have occupied the throne of Shirpurla, though this identification would
bring Manishtusu down somewhat later than is probable from the general
character of his inscriptions. The other personage mentioned in the text
is the son of Manishtusu, named Mesalim, and there is more to be said for
the identification of this prince with Mesilim, the early King of Kish,
who reigned at a period anterior to that of Eannadu, patesi of Shirpurla.
The mere fact of so large and important an obelisk, inscribed with a
Semitic text by an early Babylonian king, being found at Susa was an
indication that other monuments of even greater interest might be
forthcoming from the same spot; and this impression was intensified when a
stele of victory was found bearing an inscription of Naram-Sin, the early
Semitic King of Agade, who reigned about 3750 B.C. One face of this stele
is sculptured with a representation of the king conquering his enemies in
a mountainous country. [* See illustration.] The king himself wears a
helmet adorned with the horns of a bull, and he carries his battle-axe and
his bow and an arrow. He is nearly at the summit of a high mountain, and
up its steep sides, along paths through the trees which clothe the
mountain, climb his allies and warriors bearing standards and weapons. The
king’s enemies are represented suing for mercy as they turn to fly before
him. One grasps a broken spear, while another, crouching before the king,
has been smitten in the throat by an arrow from the king’s bow. On the
plain surface of the stele above the king’s head may be seen traces of an
inscription of Narâm-Sin engraved in three columns in the archaic
characters of his period. From the few signs of the text that remain, we
gather that Narâm-Sin had conducted a campaign with the assistance of
certain allied princes, including the Princes of Sidur, Saluni, and
Lulubi, and it is not improbable that they are to be identified with the
warriors represented on the stele as climbing the mountain behind
Narâm-Sin.
In reference to this most interesting stele of Narâm-Sin we may here
mention another inscription of this king, found quite recently at Susa and
published only this year, which throws additional light on Narâm-Sin’s
allies and on the empire which he and his father Sargon founded. The new
inscription was engraved on the base of a diorite statue, which had been
broken to pieces so that only the base with a portion of the text
remained. From this inscription we learn that Narâm-Sin was the head of a
confederation of nine chief allies, or vassal princes, and waged war on
his enemies with their assistance. Among these nine allies of course the
Princes of Sidur, Saluni, and Lulubi are to be included. The new text
further records that Narâm-Sin made an expedition against Magan (the
Sinaitic peninsula), and defeated Manium, the lord of that region, and
that he cut blocks of stone in the mountains there and transported them to
his city of Agade, where from one of them he made the statue on the base
of which the text was inscribed. It was already known from the so-called
“Omens of Sargon and Narâm-Sin” (a text inscribed on a clay tablet from
Ashur-bani-pal’s library at Nineveh which associates the deeds of these
two early rulers with certain augural phenomena) that Narâm-Sin had made
an expedition to Sinai in the course of his reign and had conquered the
king of the country. The new text gives contemporary confirmation of this
assertion and furnishes us with additional information with regard to the
name of the conquered ruler of Sinai and other details of the campaign.
That monuments of such great interest to the early history of Chaldæa
should have been found at Susa in Persia was sufficiently startling, but
an easy explanation was at first forthcoming from the fact that
Narâm-Sin’s stele of victory had been used by the later Elamite king,
Shutruk-Nakhkhunte, for an inscription of his own; this he had engraved in
seven long lines along the great cone in front of Narâm-Sin, which is
probably intended to represent the peak of the mountain. From the fact
that it had been used in this way by Shutruk-Nakhkhunte, it seemed
permissible to infer that it had been captured in the course of a campaign
and brought to Susa as a trophy of war. But we shall see later on that the
existence of early Babylonian inscriptions and monuments in the mound of
the acropolis at Susa is not to be explained in this way, but was due to
the wide extension of both Sumerian and Semitic influence throughout
Western Asia from the very earliest periods. This subject will be treated
more fully in the chapter dealing with the early history of Blam.
The upper surface of the tell of the acropolis at Susa for a depth of
nearly two metres contains remains of the buildings and antiquities of the
Achæmenian kings and others of both later and earlier dates. In these
upper strata of the mound are found remains of the Arab, Sassanian,
Parthian, Seleucian, and Persian periods, mixed indiscriminately with one
another and with Elamite objects and materials of all ages, from that of
the earliest patesis down to that of the Susian kings of the seventh
century B.C.
The most northern of the mounds which now mark the site of
the ancient city of Babylon; used for centuries as a quarry
for building materials.
The reason of this mixture of the remains of many races and periods is
that the later builders on the mound made use of the earlier building
materials which they found preserved within it. Along the skirts of the
mound may still be seen the foundations of the wall which formed the
principal defence of the acropolis in the time of Xerxes, and in many
places not only are the foundations preserved but large pieces of the wall
itself still rise above the surface of the soil.
Stele of Narâm-Sin, an early Semitic King of Agade in
Babylonia, who reigned about B. C. 3750. From the photograph
by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
The plan of the wall is quite irregular, following the contours of the
mound, and, though it is probable that the wall was strengthened and
defended at intervals by towers, no trace of these now remains. The wall
is very thick and built of unburnt bricks, and the system of fortification
seems to have been extremely simple at this period.
The group probably represents Babylon or the Babylonian king
triumphing over the country’s enemies. The Arabs regard the
figure as an evil spirit, and it is pitted with the marks of
bullets shot at it. They also smear it with filth when they
can do so unobserved; in the photograph some newly smeared
filth may be seen adhering to the side of the lion.
The earlier citadel or fortress of the city of Susa was built at the top
of the mound and must have been a more formidable stronghold than that of
the Achæmenian kings, for, besides its walls, it had the additional
protection of the steep slopes of the mound.
Below the depth of two metres from the surface of the mound are found
strata in which Elamite objects and materials are, no longer mixed with
the remains of later ages, but here the latest Elamite remains are found
mingled with objects and materials dating from the earliest periods of
Elam’s history. The use of un-burnt bricks as the principal material for
buildings erected on the mound in all ages has been another cause of this
mixture of materials, for it has little power of resistance to water, and
a considerable rain-storm will wash away large portions of the surface and
cause the remains of different strata to be mixed indiscriminately with
one another. In proportion as the trenches were cut deeper into the mound
the strata which were laid bare showed remains of earlier ages than those
in the upper layers, though here also remains of different periods are
considerably mixed. The only building that has hitherto been discovered at
Susa by M. de Morgan, the ground plan of which was in a comparatively good
state of preservation, was a small temple of the god Shu-shinak, and this
owed its preservation to the fact that it was not built of unburnt brick,
but was largely composed of burnt brick and plaques and tiles of enamelled
terra-cotta.
But although the diggings of M. de Morgan at Susa have so far afforded
little information on the subject of Elamite architecture, the separate
objects found have enabled us to gain considerable knowledge of the
artistic achievements of the race during the different periods of its
existence. Moreover, the stelæ and stone records that have been recovered
present a wealth of material for the study of the long history of Elam and
of the kings who ruled in Babylonia during the earliest ages.
Showing the depth in the mound to which the diggings are
carried.
The most famous of M. de Morgan’s recent finds is the long code of laws
drawn up by Hammurabi, the greatest king of the First Dynasty of Babylon.[1]
This was engraved upon a huge block of black diorite, and was found in the
tell of the acropolis in the winter of 1901-2. This document in itself has
entirely revolutionized current theories as to the growth and origin of
the principal ancient legal codes. It proves that Babylonia was the
fountainhead from which many later races borrowed portions of their
legislative systems. Moreover, the subjects dealt with in this code of
laws embrace most of the different classes of the Babylonian people, and
it regulates their duties and their relations to one another in their
ordinary occupations and pursuits. It therefore throws much light upon
early Babylonian life and customs, and we shall return to it in the
chapter dealing with these subjects.
[1]
It will be noted that the Babylonian dynasties are referred to throughout this
volume as “First Dynasty,” “Second Dynasty,” “Third Dynasty,” etc. They are
thus distinguished from the Egyptian dynasties, the order of which is indicated
by Roman numerals, e.g. “Ist Dynasty,” “IId Dynasty,” “IIId Dynasty.”
The American excavators at Nippur, under the direction of Mr. Haynes, have
done much in the past to increase our knowledge of Sumerian and early
Babylonian history, but the work has not been continued in recent years,
and, unfortunately, little progress has been made in the publication of
the material already accumulated. In fact, the leadership in American
excavation has passed from the University of Pennsylvania to that of
Chicago. This progressive university has sent out an expedition, under the
general direction of Prof. R. F. Harper (with Dr. E. J. Banks as director
of excavations), which is doing excellent work at Bismya, and, although it
is too early yet to expect detailed accounts of their achievements, it is
clear that they have already met with considerable success. One of their
recent finds consists of a white marble statue of an early Sumerian king
named Daudu, which was set up in the temple of E-shar in the city of
Udnun, of which he was ruler. From its archaic style of workmanship it may
be placed in the earliest period of Sumerian history, and may be regarded
as an earnest of what may be expected to follow from the future labours of
Prof. Harper’s expedition.
At Fâra and at Abû Hatab in Babylonia, the Deutsch-Orient Gesellschaft,
under Dr. Koldewey’s direction, has excavated Sumerian and Babylonian
remains of the early period. At the former site they unearthed the remains
of many private houses and found some Sumerian tablets of accounts and
commercial documents, but little of historical interest; and an
inscription, which seems to have come from Abu Hatab, probably proves that
the Sumerian name of the city whose site it marks was Kishurra. But the
main centre of German activity in Babylonia is the city of Babylon itself,
where for the last seven years Dr. Koldewey has conducted excavations,
unearthing the palaces of Nebuchadnezzar II on the mound termed the Kasr,
identifying the temple of E-sagila under the mound called Tell Amran
ibn-Ali, tracing the course of the sacred way between E-sagila and the
palace-mound, and excavating temples dedicated to the goddess Ninmakh and
the god Ninib.
In the middle distance may be seen the metal trucks running
on light rails which are employed on the work for the
removal of the débris from the diggings.
Dr. Andrae, Dr. Koldewey’s assistant, has also completed the excavation of
the temple dedicated to Nabû at Birs Nimrud. On the principal mound at
this spot, which marks the site of the ancient city of Borsippa, traces of
the ziggurat, or temple tower, may still be seen rising from the soil, the
temple of Nabû lying at a lower level below the steep slope of the mound,
which is mainly made up of débris from the ziggurat. Dr. Andrae has
recently left Babylonia for Assyria, where his excavations at Sher-ghat,
the site of the ancient Assyrian city of Ashur, are confidently expected
to throw considerable light on the early history of that country and the
customs of the people, and already he has made numerous finds of
considerable interest.
Since the early spring of 1903 excavations have been conducted at
Kuyunjik, the site of the city of Nineveh, by Messrs. L. W. King and R. C.
Thompson on behalf of the Trustees of the British Museum, and have
resulted in the discovery of many early remains in the lower strata of the
mound, in addition to the finding of new portions of the two palaces
already known and partly excavated, the identification of a third palace,
and the finding of an ancient temple dedicated to Nabû, whose existence
had already been inferred from a study of the Assyrian inscriptions.[2] All
these diggings at Babylon, at Ashur, and at Nineveh throw more light upon
the history of the country during the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods,
and will be referred to later in the volume.
[2]
It may be noted that excavations are also being actively
carried on in Palestine at the present time. Mr. Macalister
has for some years been working for the Palestine
Exploration Fund at Gezer; Dr. Schumacher is digging at
Megiddo for the German Palestine Society; and Prof. Sellin
is at present excavating at Taanach (Ta’annak) and will
shortly start work at Dothan. Good work on remains of later
historical periods is also being carried on under the
auspices of the Deutsch-Orient Gesellschaft at Ba’albek and
in Galilee. It would be tempting to include here a summary
of the very interesting results that have recently been
achieved in this fruitful field of archaeological research,
for it is true that these excavations may strictly be said
to bear on the history of a portion of Western Asia. But the
problems which they raise would more naturally be discussed
in a work dealing with recent excavation and research in
relation to the Bible, and to have summarized them
adequately would have increased the size of the present
volume considerably beyond its natural limits. They have
therefore not been included within the scope of the present
work.
Meanwhile, we will return to the diggings described at the beginning of
this chapter, as affording new information concerning the earliest periods
of Chaldæan history.
A most interesting inscription has recently been discovered by Capt. Cros
at Telloh, which throws considerable light on the rivalry which existed
between the cities of Shirpurla and Gishkhu, and at the same time
furnishes valuable material for settling the chronology of the earliest
rulers whose inscriptions have been found at Mppur and their relations to
contemporary rulers in Shirpurla.
The cities of Gishkhu and Shirpurla were probably situated not far from
one another, and their rivalry is typical of the history of the early
city-states of Babylonia. The site of the latter city, as has already been
said, is marked by the mounds of Telloh on the east bank of the Shatt
el-Hai, the natural stream joining the Tigris and Euphrates, which has
been improved and canalized by the dwellers in Southern Babylonia from the
earliest period.
The site of Gishkhu may be set with considerable probability not far to
the north of Telloh on the opposite bank of the Shatt el-Hai. These two
cities, situated so close to one another, exercised considerable political
influence, and though less is known of Gishkhu than of the more famous
Babylonian cities such as Ur, Brech, and Larsam, her proximity to
Shirpurla gave her an importance which she might not otherwise have
possessed. The earliest knowledge we possess of the relations existing
between Gishkhu and Shirpurla refers to the reign of Mesilim, King of
Kish, the period of whose rule may be provisionally set before that of
Sargon of Agade, i.e, about 4000 B.C.
At this period there was rivalry between the two cities, in consequence of
which Mesilim, King of Kish, was called in as arbitrator. A record of the
treaty of delimitation that was drawn up on this occasion has been
preserved upon the recently discovered cone of Entemena. This document
tells us that at the command of the god Enlil, described as “the king of
the countries,” Ningirsu, the chief god of Shirpurla, and the god of
Gishkhu decided to draw up a line of division between their respective
territories, and that Mesilim, King of Kish, acting under the direction of
his own god Kadi, marked out the frontier and set up a stele between the
two territories to commemorate the fixing of the boundary.
This policy of fixing the boundary by arbitration seems to have been
successful, and to have secured peace between Shirpurla and Gishkhu for
some generations. But after a period which cannot be accurately determined
a certain patesi of Gishkhu, named Ush, was filled with ambition to extend
his territory at the expense of Shirpurla. He therefore removed the stele
which Mesilim had set up, and, invading the plain of Shirpurla, succeeded
in conquering and holding a district named Gu-edin. But Ush’s successful
raid was not of any permanent benefit to his city, for he was in his turn
defeated by the forces of Shirpurla, and his successor upon the throne, a
patesi named Enakalli, abandoned a policy of aggression, and concluded
with Eannadu, patesi of Shirpurla, a solemn treaty concerning the boundary
between their realms, the text of which has been preserved to us upon the
famous Stele of Vultures in the Louvre.[3]
[3]
A fragment of this stele is also preserved in the British
Museum. It is published in Cuneiform Texts in the British
Museum, Pt. vii.
According to this treaty Gu-edin was restored to Shirpurla, and a deep
ditch was dug between the two territories which should permanently
indicate the line of demarcation. The stele of Mesilim was restored to its
place, and a second stele was inscribed and set up as a memorial of the
new treaty. Enakalli did not negotiate the treaty on equal terms with
Eannadu, for he only secured its ratification by consenting to pay heavy
tribute in grain for the supply of the great temples of Nin-girsu and Ninâ
in Shirpurla. It would appear that under Eannadu the power and influence
of Shirpurla were extended over the whole of Southern Babylonia, and
reached even to the borders of Elam. At any rate, it is clear that during
his lifetime the city of Gishkhu was content to remain in a state of
subjection to its more powerful neighbour. But it was always ready to
seize any opportunity of asserting itself and of attempting to regain its
independence.
The characters of the inscription well illustrate the
pictorial origin of the Sumerian system of writing.
Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
Accordingly, after Eannadu’s death the men of Gishkhu again took the
offensive. At this time Urlumma, the son and successor of Enakalli, was on
the throne of Gishkhu, and he organized the forces of the city and led
them out to battle. His first act was to destroy the frontier ditches
named after Ningirsu and Ninâ, the principal god and goddess of Shirpurla,
which Eannadu, the powerful foe of Gishkhu, had caused to be dug. He then
tore down the stele on which the terms of Eannadu’s treaty had been
engraved and broke it into pieces by casting it into the fire, and the
shrines which Eannadu had built near the frontier, and had consecrated to
the gods of Shirpurla, he razed to the ground. But again Shirpurla in the
end proved too strong for Gishkhu. The ruler in Shirpurla at this time was
Enannadu, who had succeeded his brother Eannadu upon the throne. He
marched out to meet the invading forces of the men of Gishkhu, and a
battle was fought in the territory of Shirpurla. According to one account,
the forces of Shirpurla were victorious, while on the cone of Ente-mena no
mention is made of the issue of the combat. The result may not have been
decisive, but Enannadu’s action at least checked Urlumma’s encroachments
for the time.
It would appear that the death of the reigning patesi in Shirpurla was
always the signal for an attack upon that city by the men of Gishkhu. They
may have hoped that the new ruler would prove a less successful leader
than the last, or that the accession of a new monarch might give rise to
internal dissensions in the city which would weaken Shirpurla’s power of
resisting a sudden attack. As Eannadu’s death had encouraged Urlumma to
lead out the men of Gishkhu, so the death of Enannadu seemed to him a good
opportunity to make another bid for victory. But this time the result of
the battle was not indecisive. Entemena had succeeded his father Enannadu,
and he led out to victory the forces of Shir-purla. The battle was fought
near the canal Lumma-girnun-ta, and when the men of Gishkhu were put to
flight they left sixty of their fellows lying dead upon the banks of the
canal. Entemena tells us that the bones of these warriors were left to
bleach in the open plain, but he seems to have buried those of the men of
Gishkhu who fell in the pursuit, for he records that in five separate
places he piled up burial-mounds in which the bodies of the slain were
interred. Entemena was not content with merely inflicting a defeat upon
the army of Gishkhu and driving it back within its own borders, for he
followed up his initial advantage and captured the capital itself. He
deposed and imprisoned Urlumma, and chose one of his own adherents to rule
as patesi of Gishkhu in his stead. The man he appointed for this high
office was named Hi, and he had up to that time been priest in Ninâb.
Entemena summoned him to his presence, and, after marching in a triumphal
procession from Girsu in the neighbourhood of Shirpurla to the conquered
city, proceeded to invest him with the office of patesi of Gishkhu.
Entemena also repaired the frontier ditches named after Ningirsu and Ninâ,
which had been employed for purposes of irrigation as well as for marking
the frontier; and he gave instructions to Hi to employ the men dwelling in
the district of Karkar on this work, as a punishment for the active part
they had taken in the recent raid into the territory of Shirpurla.
Entemena also restored and extended the system of canals in the region
between the Tigris and the Euphrates, lining one of the principal channels
with stone.
Marble Gate-Socket Bearing An Inscription Of Entemena, A Powerful
Patesi, Or Viceroy, Of Shirpurla.
In the photograph the gate-socket is resting on its side so as to show the
inscription, but when in use it was set flat upon the ground and partly
buried below the level of the pavement of the building in which it was
used. It was fixed at the side of a gateway and the pivot of the heavy
gate revolved in the shallow hole or depression in its centre. As stone is
not found in the alluvial soil of Babylonia, the blocks for gate-sockets
had to be brought from great distances and they were consequently highly
prized. The kings and patesis who used them in their buildings generally
had their names and titles engraved upon them, and they thus form a
valuable class of inscriptions for the study of the early history.
Photograph by Messrs. Man-sell & Co.
He thus added greatly to the wealth of Shirpurla by increasing the area of
territory under cultivation, and he continued to exercise authority in
Gishkhu by means of officers appointed by himself. A record of his victory
over Gishkhu was inscribed by Entemena upon a number of clay cones, that
the fame of it might be preserved in future days to the honour of Ningirsu
and the goddess Ninâ. He ends this record with a prayer for the
preservation of the frontier. If ever in time to come the men of Gishkhu
should break out across the frontier-ditch of Ningirsu, or the
frontier-ditch of Ninâ, in order to seize or lay waste the lands of
Shirpurla, whether they be men of the city of Gishkhu itself or men of the
mountains, he prays that Enlil may destroy them and that Ningirsu may lay
his curse upon them; and if ever the warriors of his own city should be
called upon to defend it, he prays that they may be full of courage and
ardour for their task.
The greater part of this information with regard to the struggles between
Gishkhu and Shirpurla, between the period of Mesilim, King of Kish, and
that of Entemena, is supplied by the inscription of the latter ruler which
has been found written around a small cone of clay. There is little doubt
that the text was also engraved by the orders of Entemena upon a stone
stele which was set up, like those of Mesilim and Eannadu, upon the
frontier. Other copies of the inscription were probably engraved and
erected in the cities of Gishkhu and Shirpurla, and to ensure the
preservation of the record Entemena probably had numerous copies of it
made upon small cones of clay which were preserved and possibly buried in
the structure of the temples of Shirpurla. Entemena’s foresight in this
matter has been justified by results, for, while his great memorials of
stone have perished, the preservation of one of his small cones has
sufficed to make known to later ages his own and his forefathers’ prowess
in their continual contests with their ancient rival Gishkhu.
After the reign of Entemena we have little information with regard to the
relations between Gishkhu and Shirpurla, though it is probable that the
effects of his decisive victory continued to exercise a moderating
influence on Gishkhu’s desire for expansion and secured a period of
peaceful development for Shirpurla without the continual fear of
encroachments on the part of her turbulent neighbour. We may assume that
this period of tranquillity continued during the reigns of Enannadu II,
Enlitarzi, and Lugal-anda, but, when in the reign of Urukagina the men of
Gishkhu once more emerge from their temporary obscurity, they appear as
the authors of deeds of rapine and bloodshed committed on a scale that was
rare even in that primitive age.
In the earlier stages of their rivalry Gishkhu had always been defeated,
or at any rate checked, in her actual conflicts with Shirpurla. When
taking the aggressive the men of Gishkhu seem generally to have confined
themselves to the seizure of territory, such as the district of Gu-edin,
which was situated on the western bank of the Shaft el-Hai and divided
from their own lands only by the frontier-ditch. If they ever actually
crossed the Shaft el-Hai and raided the lands on its eastern bank, they
never ventured to attack the city of Shirpurla itself. And, although their
raids were attended with some success in their initial stages, the ruling
patesis of Shirpurla were always strong enough to check them; and on most
occasions they carried the war into the territory of Gishkhu, with the
result that they readjusted the boundary on their own terms. But it would
appear that all these primitive Chalæan cities were subject to alternate
periods of expansion and defeat, and Shirpurla was not an exception to the
rule. It was probably not due so much to Urukagina’s personal qualities or
defects as a leader that Shirpurla suffered the greatest reverse in her
history during his reign, but rather to Gishkhu’s gradual increase in
power at a time when Shirpurla herself remained inactive, possibly lulled
into a false sense of security by the memory of her victories in the past.
Whatever may have been the cause of Gishkhu’s final triumph, it is certain
that it took place in Urukagina’s reign, and that for many years
afterwards the hegemony of Southern Babylonia remained in her hands, while
Shirpurla for a long period passed completely out of existence as an
independent or semi-independent state.
The evidence of the catastrophe that befell Shirpurla at this period is
furnished by a small clay tablet recently found at Telloh during Captain
Cros’s excavations on that site. The document on which the facts in
question are recorded had no official character, and in all probability it
had not been stored in any library or record chamber. The actual spot at
Telloh where it was found was to the north of the mound in which the most
ancient buildings have been recovered, and at the depth of two metres
below the surface. No other tablets appear to have been found near it, but
that fact in itself would not be sufficient evidence on which to base any
theory as to its not having originally formed part of the archives of the
city. Its unofficial character is attested by the form of the tablet and
the manner in which the information upon it is arranged. In shape there is
little to distinguish the document from the tablets of accounts inscribed
in the reign of Urukagina, great numbers of which have been found recently
at Telloh. Roughly square in shape, its edges are slightly convex, and the
text is inscribed in a series of narrow columns upon both the obverse and
the reverse. The text itself is not a carefully arranged composition, such
as are the votive and historical inscriptions of early Sumerian rulers. It
consists of a series of short sentences enumerating briefly and without
detail the separate deeds of violence and sacrilege performed by the men
of Gishkhu after their capture of the city. It is little more than a
catalogue or list of the shrines and temples destroyed during the sack of
the city, or defiled by the blood of the men of Shirpurla who were slain
therein. No mention is made in the list of the palace of the Urukagina, or
of any secular building, or of the dwellings of the citizens themselves.
There is little doubt that these also were despoiled and destroyed by the
victorious enemy, but the writer of the tablet is not concerned for the
moment with the fate of his city or his fellow citizens. He appears to be
overcome with the thought of the deeds of sacrilege committed against his
gods; his mind is entirely taken up with the magnitude of the insult
offered to the god Ningirsu, the city-god of Shirpurla. His bare
enumeration of the deeds of sacrilege and violence loses little by its
brevity, and, when he has ended the list of his accusations against the
men of Gishkhu, he curses the goddess to whose influence he attributes
their success.
No composition at all like this document has yet been recovered, and as it
is not very long we may here give a translation of the text. It will be
seen that the writer plunges at once into the subject of his charges
against the men of Gishkhu. No historical résumé prefaces his
accusations, and he gives no hint of the circumstances that have rendered
their delivery possible. The temples of his city have been profaned and
destroyed, and his indignation finds vent in a mere enumeration of their
titles. To his mind the facts need no comment, for to him it is barely
conceivable that such sacred places of ancient worship should have been
defiled. He launches his indictment against Gishkhu in the following
terms: “The men of Gishkhu have set fire to the temple of E-ki [… ],
they have set fire to Antashura, and they have carried away the silver and
the precious stones therefrom! They have shed blood in the palace of
Tirash, they have shed blood in Abzubanda, they have shed blood in the
shrine of Enlil and in the shrine of the Sun-god, they have shed blood in
Akhush, and they have carried away the silver and the precious stones
therefrom! They have shed blood in the Gikana of the sacred grove of the
goddess Ninmakh, and they have carried away the silver and the precious
stones therefrom! They have shed blood in Baga, and they have carried away
the silver and the precious stones therefrom! They have shed blood in
Abzu-ega, they have set fire to the temple of Gatumdug, and they have
carried away the silver and the precious stones therefrom, and have
destroyed her statue! They have set fire to the…. of the temple E-anna
of the goddess Ninni, and they have carried away the silver and the
precious stones therefrom, and have destroyed her statue! They have shed
blood in Shapada, and they have carried away the silver and precious
stones therefrom! They have…. in Khenda, they have shed blood in the
temple of Nindar in the town of Kiab, and they have carried away the
silver and the precious stones therefrom! They have set fire to the temple
of Dumuzi-abzu in the town of Kinunir, and they have carried away the
silver and the precious stones therefrom! They have set fire to the temple
of Lugaluru, and they have carried away the silver and the precious stones
therefrom! They have shed blood in E-engura, the temple of the goddess
Ninâ, and they have carried away the silver and the precious stones
therefrom! They have shed blood in Sag…, the temple of Amageshtin, and
the silver and the precious stones of Amageshtin have they carried away!
They have removed the grain from Ginarbaniru, the field of the god
Ningirsu, so much of it as was under cultivation! The men of Gishkhu, by
the despoiling of Shirpurla, have committed a transgression against the
god Ningirsu! The power that is come unto them, from them shall be taken
away! Of transgression on the part of Urukagina, King of Girsu, there is
none. As for Lugalzaggisi, patesi of Gishkhu, may his goddess Ni-daba bear
on her head (the weight of) this transgression!”
Such is the account, which has come down to us from the rough tablet of
some unknown scribe, of the greatest misfortune experienced by Shirpurla
during the long course of her history. Many of the great temples mentioned
in the text as among those which were burnt down and despoiled of their
treasures are referred to more than once in the votive and historical
inscriptions of earlier rulers of Shirpurla, who occupied the throne
before the ill-fated Urukagina. The names of some of them, too, are to be
found in the texts of the later pate-sis of that city, so that it may be
concluded that in course of time they were rebuilt and restored to their
former splendour. But there is no doubt that the despoiling and partial
destruction of Shirpurla in the reign of Urukagina had a lasting effect
upon the fortunes of that city, and effectively curtailed her influence
among the greater cities of Southern Babylonia.
We may now turn our attention to the leader of the men of Gishkhu, under
whose direction they achieved their final triumph over their ancient, and
for long years more powerful, rival Shirpurla. The writer of our tablet
mentions his name in the closing words of his text when he curses him and
his goddess for the destruction and sacrilege that they have wrought. “As
for Lugalzaggisi,” he says, “patesi of Gishkhu, may his goddess Nidaba
bear on her head (the weight of ) this transgression!” Now the name of
Lugalzaggisi has been found upon a number of fragments of vases made of
white calcite stalagmite which were discovered by Mr. Haynes during his
excavations at Nippur. All the vases were engraved with the same
inscription, so that it was possible by piecing the fragments of text
together to obtain a more or less complete copy of the records which were
originally engraved upon each of them. From these records we learned for
the first time, not only the name of Lugalzaggisi, but the fact that he
founded a powerful coalition of cities in Babylonia at what was obviously
a very early period in the history of the country. In the text he
describes himself as “King of Erech, king of the world, the priest of Ana,
the hero of Nidaba, the son of Ukush, patesi of Gishkhu, the hero of
Nidaba, the man who was favourably regarded by the sure eye of the King of
the Lands (i.e. the god Enlil), the great patesi of Enlil, unto whom
understanding was granted by Enki, the chosen of the Sun-god, the exalted
minister of Enzu, endowed with strength by the Sun-god, the worshipper of
Ninni, the son who was conceived by Nidaba, who was nourished by
Ninkharsag with the milk of life, the attendant of Umu, priestess of
Erech, the servant who was trained by Ninâgidkhadu, the mistress of Erech,
the great minister of the gods.” Lugalzaggisi then goes on to describe the
extent of his dominion, and he says: “When the god Enlil, the lord of the
countries, bestowed upon Lugalzaggisi the kingdom of the world, and
granted unto him success in the sight of the world, when he filled the
lands with his power, and conquered them from the rising of the sun unto
the setting of the same, at that time he made straight his path from the
Lower Sea of the Tigris and Euphrates unto the Upper Sea, and he granted
him dominion over all from the rising of the sun unto the setting of the
same, so that he caused the lands to dwell in peace.”
Now when first the text of this inscription was published there existed
only vague indications of the date to be assigned to Lugalzaggisi and the
kingdom that he founded. It was clear from the titles which he bore, that,
though Gishkhu was his native place, he had extended his authority far
beyond that city and had chosen Erech as his capital. Moreover, he claimed
an empire extending from “the Lower Sea of the Tigris and Euphrates unto
the Upper Sea.” There is no doubt that the Lower Sea here mentioned is the
Persian Gulf, and it has been suggested that the Upper Sea may be taken to
be the Mediterranean, though it may possibly have been Lake Van or Lake
Urmi. But whichever of these views might be adopted, it was clear that
Lugalzaggisi was a great conqueror, and had achieved the right to assume
the high-sounding title of lugal halama, “king of the world.” In these
circumstances it was of the first importance for the study of primitive
Chaldæan history and chronology to ascertain approximately the period at
which Lugalzaggisi reigned.
The evidence on which such a question could be provisionally settled was
of the vaguest and most uncertain character, but such as it was it had to
suffice, in the absence of more reliable data. In settling all problems
connected with early Chaldæan chronology, the starting-point was, and in
fact still is, the period of Sargon I, King of Agade, inasmuch as the date
of his reign is settled, according to the reckoning of the scribes of
Nabonidus, as about 3800 B.C. It is true that this date has been called in
question, and ingenious suggestions for amending it have been made by some
writers, while others have rejected it altogether, holding that it merely
represented a guess on the part of the late Babylonians and could be
safely ignored in the chronological schemes which they brought forward.
But nearly every fresh discovery made in the last few years has tended to
confirm some point in the traditions current among the later Babylonians
with regard to the earlier history of their country. Consequently,
reliance may be placed with increased confidence on the truth of such
traditions as a whole, and we may continue to accept those statements
which yet await confirmation from documents more nearly contemporary with
the early period to which they refer. It is true that such a date as that
assigned by Nabonidus to Sargon is not to be regarded as absolutely fixed,
for Nabonidus is obviously speaking in round numbers, and we may allow for
some minor inaccuracies in the calculations of his scribes. But it is
certain that the later Babylonian priests and scribes had a wealth of
historical material at their disposal which has not come down to us. We
may therefore accept the date given by Nabonidus for Sargon of Agade and
his son Narâm-Sin as approximately accurate, and this is also the opinion
of the majority of writers on early Babylonian history.
The diggings at Nippur furnished indications that certain inscriptions
found on that site and written in a very archaic form of script were to be
assigned to a period earlier than that of Sargon. One class of evidence
was obtained from a careful study of the different levels at which the
inscriptions and the remains of buildings were found. At a comparatively
deep level in the mound inscriptions of Sargon himself were recovered,
along with bricks stamped with the name of Narâm-Sin, his son. It was,
therefore, a reasonable conclusion roughly to date the particular stratum
in which these objects were found to the period of the empire established
by Sargon, with its centre at Agade. Later on excavations were carried to
a lower level, and remains of buildings were discovered which appeared to
belong to a still earlier period of civilization. An altar was found
standing in a small enclosure surrounded by a kind of curb. Near by were
two immense clay vases which appeared to have been placed on a ramp or
inclined plane leading up to the altar, and remains were also found of a
massive brick building in which was an arch of brick. No inscriptions were
actually found at this level, but in the upper level assigned to Sargon
were a number of texts which might very probably be assigned to the
pre-Sargonic period. None of these were complete, and they had the
appearance of having been intentionally broken into small fragments. There
was therefore something to be said for the theory that they might have
been inscribed by the builders of the construction in the lowest levels of
the mound, and that they were destroyed and scattered by some conqueror
who had laid their city in ruins.
But all such evidence derived from noting the levels at which inscriptions
are found is in its nature extremely uncertain and liable to many
different interpretations, especially if the strata show signs of having
been disturbed. Where a pavement or building is still intact, with the
inscribed bricks of the builder remaining in their original positions,
conclusions may be confidently drawn with regard to the age of the
building and its relative antiquity to the strata above and below it. But
the strata in the lowest levels at Nippur, as we have seen, were not in
this condition, and such evidence as they furnished could only be accepted
if confirmed by independent data. Such confirmation was to be found by
examination of the early inscriptions themselves.
It has been remarked that most of them were broken into small pieces, as
though by some invader of the country; but this was not the case with
certain gate-sockets and great blocks of diorite which were too hard and
big to be easily broken. Moreover, any conqueror of a city would be
unlikely to spend time and labour in destroying materials which might be
usefully employed in the construction of other buildings which he himself
might erect. Stone could not be obtained in the alluvial plains of
Babylonia and had to be quarried in the mountains and brought great
distances.
Stone Gate-Socket Bearing An Inscription of Uk-Engur, An Early King
of The City Of Ur. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
From any building of his predecessors which he razed to the ground, an
invader would therefore remove the gate-sockets and blocks of stone for
his own use, supposing he contemplated building on the site. If he left
the city in ruins and returned to his own country, some subsequent king,
when clearing the ruined site for building operations, might come across
the stones, and he would not leave them buried, but would use them for his
own construction. And this is what actually did happen in the case of some
of the building materials of one of these early kings, from the lower
strata of Nippur. Certain of the blocks which bore the name of
Lugalkigubnidudu had been used again by Sargon, King of Agade, who
engraved his own name upon them without obliterating the name of the
former king.
It followed that Lugalkigubnidudu belonged to the pre-Sargonic period,
and, although the same conclusive evidence was not forthcoming in the case
of Lugalzag-gisi, he also without much hesitation was set in this early
period, mainly on the strength of the archaic forms of the characters
employed in his inscriptions. In fact, they were held to be so archaic
that, not only was he said to have reigned before Sargon of Agade, but he
was set in the very earliest period of Chaldæan history, and his empire
was supposed to have been contemporaneous with the very earliest rulers of
Shirpurla. The new inscription found by Captain Cros will cause this
opinion to be considerably modified. While it corroborates the view that
Lugalzaggisi is to be set in the pre-Sargonic period, it proves that he
lived and reigned very shortly before him. As we have already seen, he was
the contemporary of Urukagina, who belongs to the middle period of the
history of Shirpurla. Lugalzaggisi’s capture and sack of the city of
Shirpurla was only one of a number of conquests which he achieved. His
father Ukush had been merely patesi of the city of Gish-khu, but he
himself was not content with the restricted sphere of authority which such
a position implied, and he eventually succeeded in enforcing his authority
over the greater part of Babylonia. From the fact that he styles himself
King of Erech, we may conclude that he removed his capital from Ukush to
that city, after having probably secured its submission by force of arms.
In fact, his title of “king of the world” can only have been won as the
result of many victories, and Captain Cros’s tablet gives us a glimpse of
the methods by which he managed to secure himself against the competition
of any rival. The capture of Shirpurla must have been one of his earliest
achievements, for its proximity to Gish-khu rendered its reduction a
necessary prelude to any more extensive plan of conquest. But the kingdom
which Lugalzaggisi founded cannot have endured long.
Under Sargon of Agade, the Semites gained the upper hand in Babylonia, and
Erech, Grishkhu, and Shirpurla, as well as the other ancient cities in the
land, fell in turn under his domination and formed part of the extensive
empire which he ruled.
Concerning the later rulers of city-states of Babylonia which succeeded
the disruption of the empire founded by Sargon of Agade and consolidated
by Narâm-Sin, his son, the excavations have little to tell us which has
not already been made use of by Prof. Maspero in his history of this
period.[4]
[4]
The tablets found at Telloh by the late M. de Sarzec, and
published during his lifetime, fall into two main classes,
which date from different periods in early Chaldæan
history. The great majority belong to the period when the
city of Ur held pre-eminence among the cities of Southern
Babylonia, and they are dated in the reigns of Dungi, Bur-
Sin, Gamil-Sin, and Ine-Sin. The other and smaller
collection belongs to the earlier period of Sargon and
Narâm-Sin; while many of the tablets found in M. de Sarzec’s
last diggings, which were published after his death, are to
be set in the great gap between these two periods. Some of
those recently discovered, which belong to the period of
Dungi, contain memoranda concerning the supply of food for
the maintenance of officials stopping at Shirpurla in the
course of journeys in Babylonia and Elam, and they throw an
interesting light on the close and constant communication
which took place at this time between the great cities of
Mesopotamia and the neighbouring countries.
The most famous of the later patesis, or viceroys, of
Shirpurla, the Sumerian city in Southern Babylonia now
marked by the mounds of Telloh. Photograph by Messrs.
Mansell & Co.
Ur, Isin, and,Larsam succeeded one another in the position of leading city
in Babylonia, holding Mppur, Eridu, Erech, Shirpurla, and the other chief
cities in a condition of semi-dependence upon themselves. We may note that
the true reading of the name of the founder of the dynasty of Ur has now
been ascertained from a syllabary to be Ur-Engur; and an unpublished
chronicle in the British Museum relates that his son Dungi cared greatly
for the city of Eridu, but sacked Babylon and carried off its spoil,
together with the treasures from E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk.
Such episodes must have been common at this period when each city was
striving for hegemony. Meanwhile, Shirpurla remained the centre of
Sumerian influence in Babylonia, and her patesis were content to owe
allegiance to so powerful a ruler as Dungi, King of Ur, while at all times
exercising complete authority within their own jurisdiction.
During the most recent diggings that have been carried out at Telloh a
find of considerable value to the history of Sumerian art has been made.
The find is also of great general interest, since it enables us to
identify a portrait of Gudea, the most famous of the later Sumerian
patesis. In the course of excavating the Tell of Tablets Captain Cros
found a little seated statue made of diorite. It was not found in place,
but upside down, and appeared to have been thrown with other débris
scattered in that portion of the mound. On lifting it from the trench it
was seen that the head of the statue was broken off, as is the case with
all the other statues of Gudea found at Telloh. The statue bore an
inscription of Gudea, carefully executed and well preserved, but it was
smaller than other statues of the same ruler that had been already
recovered, and the absence of the head thus robbed it of any extraordinary
interest. On its arrival at the Louvre, M. Léon Heuzey was struck by its
general resemblance to a Sumerian head of diorite formerly discovered by
M. de Sarzec at Telloh, which has been preserved in the Louvre for many
years. On applying the head to the newly found statue, it was found to fit
it exactly, and to complete the monument, and we are thus enabled to
identify the features of Gudea. Prom a photographic reproduction of this
statue, it is seen that the head is larger than it should be, in
proportion to the body, a characteristic which is also apparent in a small
Sumerian statue preserved in the British Museum.
Probably situated in the neighbourhood of Telloh. The
circular shape is very unusual, and appears to have been
used only for survey-tablets. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell
& Co.
Gudea caused many statues of himself to be made out of the hard diorite
which he brought for that purpose from the Sinaitic peninsula, and from
the inscriptions preserved upon them it is possible to ascertain the
buildings in which they were originally placed. Thus one of the statues
previously found was set up in the temple of Ninkharsag, two others in
E-ninnû, the temple of the god Ningirsu, three more in the temple of the
goddess Bau, one in E-anna, the temple of the goddess Ninni, and another
in the temple of Gatumdug. The newly found statue of the king was made to
be set up in the temple erected by Gudea at Girsu in honour of the god
Ningishzida, as is recorded in the inscription engraved on the front of
the king’s robe, which reads as follows:
“In the day when the god Ningirsu, the strong warrior of Enlil, granted
unto the god Ningishzida, the son of Ninâzu, the beloved of the gods, (the
guardianship of) the foundation of the city and of the hills and valleys,
on that day Gudea, patesi of Shirpurla, the just man who loveth his god,
who for his master Ningirsu hath constructed his temple E-ninnu, called
the shining Imgig, and his temple E-pa, the temple of-the seven zones of
heaven, and for the goddess Ninâ, the queen, his lady, hath constructed
the temple Sirara-shum, which riseth higher than (all) the temples in the
world, and hath constructed their temples for the great gods of Lagash,
built for his god Ningishzida his temple in Girsu. Whosoever shall
proclaim the god Ningirsu as his god, even as I proclaim him, may he do no
harm unto the temple of my god! May he proclaim the name of this temple!
May that man be my friend, and may he proclaim my name! Gudea hath made
the statue, and ‘Unto – Gudea – the – builder – of – the – temple – hath
life-been-given hath he called its name, and he hath brought it into the
temple.”
The long name which Gudea gave to the statue, “Unto – Gudea – the –
builder – of – the – temple – hath – life-been-given,” is characteristic
of the practice of the Sumerian patesis, who always gave long and
symbolical names to statues, stelae, and sacred objects dedicated and set
up in their temples. The occasion on which the temple was built, and this
statue erected within it, seems to have been the investiture of the god
Ningishzida with special and peculiar powers, and it possibly inaugurated
his introduction into the pantheon of Shirpurla. Ningishzida is called in
the inscription the son of Ninazu, who was the husband of the Queen of the
Underworld.
In one of his aspects he was therefore probably a god of the underworld
himself, and it is in this character that he was appointed by Ningirsu as
guardian of the city’s foundations. But “the hills and valleys” (i.e. the
open country) were also put under his jurisdiction, so that in another
aspect he was a god of vegetation. It is therefore not improbable that,
like the god Dumuzi, or Tammuz, he was supposed to descend into the
underworld in winter, ascending to the surface of the earth with the
earliest green shoots of vegetation in the spring.[5]
[5]
Cf. Thureau-Dangin, Rev. d’Assyr., vol. vi. (1904), p. 24.
A most valuable contribution has recently been made to our knowledge of
Sumerian religion and of the light in which these early rulers regarded
the cult and worship of their gods, by the complete interpretation of the
long texts inscribed upon the famous cylinders of Gudea, the patesi of
Shirpurla, which have been preserved for many years in the Louvre. These
two great cylinders of baked clay were discovered by the late M. de Sarzec
so long ago as the year 1877, during the first period of his diggings at
Telloh, and, although the general nature of their contents has long been
recognized, no complete translation of the texts inscribed upon them had
been published until a few months ago. M. Thureau-Dangin, who has made the
early Sumerian texts his special study, has devoted himself to their
interpretation for some years past, and he has just issued the first part
of his monograph upon them. In view of the importance of the texts and of
the light they throw upon the religious beliefs and practices of the early
Sumerians, a somewhat detailed account of their contents may here be
given.
The occasion on which the cylinders were made was the rebuilding by Gudea
of E-ninnû, the great temple of the god Ningirsu, in the city of
Shirpurla. The two cylinders supplement one another, one of them having
been inscribed while the work of construction was still in progress, the
other after the completion of the temple, when the god Ningirsu had been
installed within his shrine with due pomp and ceremony. It would appear
that Southern Babylonia had been suffering from a prolonged drought, and
that the water in the rivers and canals had fallen, so that the crops had
suffered and the country was threatened with famine. Gudea was at a loss
to know by what means he might restore prosperity to his country, when one
night he had a dream, and it was in consequence of this dream that he
eventually erected one of the most sumptuously appointed of Sumerian
temples. By this means he secured the return of Ningirsu’s favour and that
of the other gods, and his country once more enjoyed the blessings of
peace and prosperity.
In the opening words of the first of his cylinders Gudea describes how the
great gods themselves took counsel and decreed that he should build the
temple of E-ninnû and thereby restore to his city the supply of water it
had formerly enjoyed. He records that on the day on which the destinies
were fixed in heaven and upon earth, Enlil, the chief of the gods, and
Ningirsu, the city-god of Shirpurla, held converse. And Enlil, turning to
Ningirsu, said: “In my city that which is fitting is not done. The stream
doth not rise. The stream of Enlil doth not rise. The high waters shine
not, neither do they show their splendour. The stream of Enlil bringeth
not good water like the Tigris. Let the King (i.e. Ningirsu) therefore
proclaim the temple. Let the decrees of the temple E-ninnû be made
illustrious in heaven and upon earth!” The great gods did not communicate
their orders directly to Gudea, but conveyed their wishes to him by means
of a dream. And while the patesi slept a vision of the night came to him,
and he beheld a man whose stature was so great that it equalled the
heavens and the earth. And by the crown he wore upon his head Gudea knew
that the figure must be a god. And by his side was the divine eagle, the
emblem of Shirpurla, and his feet rested upon the whirlwind, and a lion
was crouching upon his right hand and upon his left. And the figure spoke
to the patesi, but he did not understand the meaning of the words. Then it
seemed to Gudea that the sun rose from the earth and he beheld a woman
holding in her hand a pure reed, and she carried also a tablet on which
was a star of the heavens, and she seemed to take counsel with herself.
And while Gudea was gazing he seemed to see a second man who was like a
warrior; and he carried a slab of lapis lazuli and on it he drew out the
plan of a temple. And before the patesi himself it seemed that a fair
cushion was placed, and upon the cushion was set a mould, and within the
mould was a brick, the brick of destiny. And on the right hand the patesi
beheld an ass which lay upon the ground.
Such was the dream which Gudea beheld in a vision of the night, and he was
troubled because he could not interpret it. So he decided to go to the
goddess Ninâ, who could divine all mysteries of the gods, and beseech her
to tell him the meaning of the vision. But before applying to the goddess
for her help, he thought it best to secure the mediation of the god
Ningirsu and the goddess Gatumdug, in order that they should use their
influence with Ninâ to induce her to reveal the interpretation of the
dream. So the patesi set out to the temple of Ningirsu, and, having
offered a sacrifice and poured out fresh water, he prayed to the god that
his sister, Ninâ, the child of Eridu, might be prevailed upon to give him
help. And the god hearkened to his prayer. Then Gudea made offerings, and
before the sleeping-chamber of the goddess Gatumdug he offered a sacrifice
and poured out fresh water. And he prayed to the goddess, calling her his
queen and the child of the pure heaven, who gave life to the countries and
befriended and preserved the people or the man on whom she looked with
favour.
“I have no mother,” cried Gudea, “but thou art my mother! I have no
father, but thou art a father to me!” And the goddess Gatumdug gave ear to
the patesi’s prayer. Thus encouraged by her favour and that of Ningirsu,
Gudea set out for the temple of the goddess Ninâ.
On his arrival at the temple, the patesi offered a sacrifice and poured
out fresh water, as he had already done when approaching the presence of
Ningirsu and Gatumdug. And he prayed to Ninâ, as the goddess who divines
the secrets of the gods, beseeching her to interpret the vision that had
been sent to him; and he then recounted to her the details of his dream.
When the patesi had finished his story, the goddess addressed him and told
him that she would explain the meaning of his dream to him. And this was
the interpretation of the dream. The man whose stature was so great that
it equalled the heavens and the earth, whose head was that of a god, at
whose side was the divine eagle, whose feet rested on the whirlwind, while
a lion couched on his right hand and on his left, was her brother, the god
Ningirsu. And the words which he uttered were an order to the patesi that
he should build the temple E-ninnû. And the sun which rose from the earth
before the patesi was the god Ningishzida, for like the sun he goes forth
from the earth. And the maiden who held a pure reed in her hand, and
carried the tablet with the star, was her sister, the goddess Nidaba: the
star was the pure star of the temple’s construction, which she proclaimed.
And the second man, who was like a warrior and carried the slab of lapis
lazuli, was the god Nindub, and the plan of the temple which he drew was
the plan of E-ninnû. And the brick which rested in its mould upon the
cushion was the sacred brick of E-ninnû. And as for the ass which lay upon
the ground, that, the goddess said, was the patesi himself.
Having interpreted the meaning of the dream, the goddess Ninâ proceeded to
give Gudea instruction as to how he should go to work to build the temple.
She told him first of all to go to his treasure-house and bring forth his
treasures from their sealed cases, and out of these to make certain
offerings which he was to place near the god Ningirsu, in the temple in
which he was dwelling at that time. The offerings were to consist of a
chariot, adorned with pure metal and precious stones; bright arrows in a
quiver; the weapon of the god, his sacred emblem, on which Gudea was to
inscribe his own name; and finally a lyre, the music of which was wont to
soothe the god when he took counsel with himself. Ninâ added that if the
patesi carried out her instructions and made the offerings she had
specified, Ningirsu would reveal to him the plan on which the temple was
to be built, and would also bless him. Gudea bowed himself down in token
of his submission to the commands of the goddess, and proceeded to execute
them forthwith. He brought out his treasures, and from the precious woods
and metals which he possessed his craftsmen fashioned the objects he was
to present, and he set them in Ningirsu’s temple near to the god. He
worked day and night, and, having prepared a suitable spot in the
precincts of the temple at the place of judgment, he spread out upon it as
offerings a fat sheep and a kid and the skin of a young female kid. Then
he built a fire of cypress and cedar and other aromatic woods, to make a
sweet savour, and, entering the inner chamber of the temple, he offered a
prayer to Ningirsu. He said that he wished to build the temple, but he had
received no sign that this was the will of the god, and he prayed for a
sign.
While he prayed the patesi was stretched out upon the ground, and the god,
standing near his head, then answered him. He said that he who should
build his temple was none other than Gudea, and that he would give him the
sign for which he asked. But first he described the plan on which the
temple was to be built, naming its various shrines and chambers and
describing the manner in which they were to be fashioned and adorned. And
the god promised that when Gudea should build the temple, the land would
once more enjoy abundance, for Ningirsu would send a wind which should
proclaim to the heavens the return of the waters. And on that day the
waters would fall from the heavens, the water in the ditches and canals
would rise, and water would gush out from the dry clefts in the ground.
And the great fields would once more produce their crops, and oil would be
poured out plenteously in Sumer[sp.] and wool would again be weighed in
great abundance. In that day the god would go to the mountain where dwelt
the whirlwind, and he would himself direct the wind which should give the
land the breath of life. Gudea must therefore work day and night at the
task of building the temple. One company of men was to relieve another at
its toil, and during the night the men were to kindle lights so that the
plain should be as bright as day. Thus the builders would build
continuously. Men were also to be sent to the mountains to cut down cedars
and pines and other trees and bring their trunks to the city, while masons
were to go to the mountains and were to cut and transport huge blocks of
stone to be used in the construction of the temple. Finally the god gave
Gudea the sign for which he asked. The sign was that he should feel his
side touched as by a flame, and thereby he should know that he was the man
chosen by Ningirsu to carry out his commands.
Gudea bowed his head in submission, and his first act was to consult the
omens, and the omens were favourable. He then proceeded to purify the city
by special rites, so that the mother when angered did not chide her son,
and the master did not strike his servant’s head, and the mistress, though
provoked by her handmaid, did not smite her face. And Gudea drove all the
evil wizards and sorcerers from the city, and he purified and sanctified
the city completely. Then he kindled a great fire of cedar and other
aromatic woods, to make a sweet savour for the gods, and prayers were
offered day and night; and the patesi addressed a prayer to the Anun-naki,
or Spirits of the Earth, who dwelt in Shirpurla, and assigned a place to
them in the temple. Then, having completed his purification of the city
itself, he consecrated its immediate surroundings. Thus he consecrated the
district of Gu-edin, whence the revenues of Ningirsu were derived, and the
lands of the goddess Ninâ with their populous villages. And he consecrated
the wild and savage bulls which no man could turn aside, and the cedars
which were sacred to Ningirsu, and the cattle of the plains. And he
consecrated the armed men, and the famous warriors, and the warriors of
the Sun-god. And the emblems of the god Ningirsu, and of the two great
goddesses, Ninâ and Ninni, he installed before them in their shrines.
Then Gudea sent far and wide to fetch materials for the construction of
the temple. And the Elamite came from Elani, and men of Susa came from
Susa, and men brought wood from the mountains of Sinai and Melukh-kha. And
into the mountain of cedars, where no man before had penetrated, the
patesi cut a road, and he brought cedars and beams of other precious woods
in great quantities to the city. And he also made a road into the mountain
where stone was quarried, into places where no man before had penetrated.
And he carried great blocks of stone down from the mountain and loaded
them into barges and brought them to the city. And the barges brought
bitumen and plaster, and they were loaded as though they were carrying
grain, and all manner of great things were brought to the city. Copper ore
was brought from the mountain of copper in the land of Kimash, and gold
was brought in powder from the mountains, and silver was brought from the
mountains and porphyry from the land of Melukhkha, and marble from the
mountain of marble. And the patesi installed goldsmiths and silversmiths,
who wrought in these precious metals, for the adornment of the temple; and
he brought smiths who worked in copper and lead, who were priests of
Nin-tu-kalama. In his search for fitting materials for the building of the
temple, Gudea journeyed from the lower country to the upper country, and
from the upper country to the lower country he returned.
The only other materials now wanting for the construction of the temple
were the sun-dried bricks of clay, of which the temple platform and the
structure of the temple itself were in the main composed. Their
manufacture was now inaugurated by a symbolical ceremony carried out by
the patesi in person. At dawn he performed an ablution with the fitting
rites that accompanied it, and when the day was more advanced he slew a
bull and a kid as sacrifices, and he then entered the temple of Ningirsu,
where he prostrated himself. And he took the sacred mould and the fair
cushion on which it rested in the temple, and he poured a libation into
the mould. Afterwards, having made offerings of honey and butter, and
having burnt incense, he placed the cushion and the mould upon his head
and carried it to the appointed place. There he placed clay in the mould,
shaping it into a brick, and he left the brick in its mould within the
temple. And last of all he sprinkled oil of cedar-wood around.
The next day at dawn Gudea broke the mould and set the brick in the sun.
And the Sun-god was rejoiced at the brick that he had fashioned. And Gudea
took the brick and raised it on high towards the heavens, and he carried
the brick to his people. In this way the patesi inaugurated the
manufacture of the sun-dried bricks for the temple, the sacred brick which
he had made being the symbol and pattern of the innumerable bricks to be
used in its construction. He then marked out the plan of the temple, and
the text states that he devoted himself to the building of the temple like
a young man who has begun building a house and allows no pleasure to
interfere with his task. And he chose out skilled workmen and employed
them on the building, and he was filled with joy. The gods, too, are
stated to have helped with the building, for Enki fixed the temennu of the
temple, and the goddess Ninâ looked after its oracles, and Gatumdug, the
mother of Shir-purla, fashioned bricks for it morning and evening, while
the goddess Bau sprinkled aromatic oil of cedar-wood. Gudea himself laid
its foundations, and as he did so he blessed the temple seven times,
comparing it to the sacred brick, to the holy libation-vase, to the divine
eagle of Shirpurla, to a terrible couching panther, to the beautiful
heavens, to the day of offerings, and to the morning light which brightens
the land. He caused the temple to rise towards heaven like a mountain, or
like a cedar growing in the desert. He built it of bricks of Sumer, and
the timbers which he set in place were as strong as the dragon of the
deep.
While he was engaged on the building Gudea took counsel of the god Enki,
and he built a fountain for the gods, where they might drink. With the
great stones which he had brought and fashioned he built a reservoir and a
basin for the temple. And seven of the great stones he set up as stelæ,
and he gave them favourable names. The text then recounts the various
parts and shrines of the temple, and it describes their splendours in
similes drawn from the heavens and the earth and the abyss, or deep,
beneath the earth. The temple itself is described as, being like the
crescent of the new moon, or like the sun in the midst of the stars, or
like a mountain of lapis lazuli, or like a mountain of shining marble.
Parts of it are said to have been terrible and strong as a savage bull, or
a lion, or the antelope of the abyss, or the monster Lakhamu who dwells in
the abyss, or the sacred leopard that inspires terror. One of the doors of
the temple was guarded by a figure of the hero who slew the monster with
six heads, and at another door was a good dragon, and at another a lion;
opposite the city were set figures of the seven heroes, and facing the
rising sun was fixed the emblem of the Sun-god. Figures of other heroes
and favourable monsters were set up as guardians of other portions of the
temple. The fastenings of the main entrance were decorated with dragons
shooting out their tongues, and the bolt of the great door was fashioned
like a raging hound.
After this description of the construction and adornment of the temple the
text goes on to narrate how Gudea arranged for its material endowment. He
stalled oxen and sheep, for sacrifice and feasting, in the outhouses and
pens within the temple precincts, and he heaped up grain in its granaries.
Its storehouses he filled with spices so that they were like the Tigris
when its waters are in flood, and in its treasure-chambers he piled up
precious stones, and silver, and lead in abundance. Within the temple
precincts he planted a sacred garden which was like a mountain covered
with vines; and on the terrace he built a great reservoir, or tank, lined
with lead, in addition to the great stone reservoir within the temple
itself. He constructed a special dwelling-place for the sacred doves, and
among the flowers of the temple garden and under the shade of the great
trees the birds of heaven flew about unmolested.
The first of the two great cylinders of Gudea ends at this point in the
description of the temple, and it is evident that its text was composed
while the work of building was still in progress. Moreover, the writing of
the cylinder was finished before the actual work of building the temple
was completed, for the last column of the text concludes with a prayer to
Ningirsu to make it glorious during the progress of the work, the prayer
ending with the words, “O Ningirsu, glorify it! Glorify the temple of
Ningirsu during its construction!” The text of the second of the two great
cylinders is shorter than that of the first, consisting of twenty-four
instead of thirty columns of writing, and it was composed and written
after the temple was completed. Like the first of the cylinders, it
concludes with a prayer to Ningirsu on behalf of the temple, ending with
the similar refrain, “O Ningirsu, glorify it! Glorify the temple of
Ningirsu after its construction!” The first cylinder, as we have seen,
records how it came about that Gudea decided to rebuild the temple E-ninnû
in honour of Ningirsu. It describes how, when the land was suffering from
drought and famine, Gudea had a dream, how Ninâ interpreted the dream to
mean that he must rebuild the temple, and how Ningirsu himself promised
that this act of piety would restore abundance and prosperity to the land.
Its text ends with the long description of the sumptuous manner in which
the patesi carried out the work, the most striking points of which we have
just summarized. The narrative of the second cylinder begins at the moment
when the building of the temple was finished, and when all was ready for
the great god Nin-girsu to be installed therein, and its text is taken up
with a description of the ceremonies and rites with which this solemn
function was carried out. It presents us with a picture, drawn from life,
of the worship and cult of the ancient Sumerians in actual operation. In
view of its importance from the point of view of the study and comparison
of the Sumerian and Babylonian religious systems, its contents also may be
summarized. We will afterwards discuss briefly the information furnished
by both the cylinders on the Sumerian origin of many of the religious
beliefs and practices which were current among the later Semitic
inhabitants of Babylonia and Assyria.
When Gudea had finished building the new temple of E-ninnû, and had
completed the decoration and adornment of its shrines, and had planted its
gardens and stocked its treasure-chambers and storehouses, he applied
himself to the preliminary ceremonies and religious preparations which
necessarily preceded the actual function of transferring the statue of the
god Ningirsu from his old temple to his new one. Gudea’s first act was to
install the Anunnaki, or Spirits of the Earth, in the new temple, and when
he had done this, and had supplied additional sheep for their sacrifices
and food in abundance for their offerings, he prayed to them to give him
their assistance and to pronounce a prayer at his side when he should lead
Ningirsu into his new dwelling-place. The text then describes how Gudea
went to the old temple of Ningirsu, accompanied by his protecting spirits
who walked before him and behind him. Into the old temple he carried
sumptuous offerings, and when he had set them before the god, he addressed
him in prayer and said: “O my King, Ningirsu! O Lord, who curbest the
raging waters! O Lord, whose word surpasseth all others! O Son of Enlil, O
warrior, what commands shall I faithfully carry out? O Ningirsu, I have
built thy temple, and with joy would I lead thee therein, and my goddess
Bau would install at thy side.” We are told that the god accepted Gudea’s
prayer, and thereby he gave his consent to be removed from the old temple
of E-ninnû to his new one which bore the same name.
But the ceremony of the god’s removal was not carried out at once, for the
due time had not arrived. The year ended, and the new year came, and then
“the month of the temple” began. The third day of the month was that
appointed for the installation of Ningirsu. Gudea meanwhile had sprinkled
the ground with oil, and set out offerings of honey and butter and wine,
and grain mixed with milk, and dates, and food untouched by fire, to serve
as food for the gods; and the gods themselves had assisted in the
preparations for the reception of Ningirsu. The god Asaru made ready the
temple itself, and Ninmada performed the ceremony of purification. The god
Enki issued oracles, and the god Nindub, the supreme priest of Eridu,
brought incense. Ninâ performed chants within the temple, and brought
black sheep and holy cows to its folds and stalls. This record of the help
given by the other gods we may interpret as meaning that the priests
attached to the other great Sumerian temples took part in the preparation
of the new temple, and added their offerings to the temple stores. To many
of the gods, also, special shrines within the temple were assigned.
When the purification of E-ninnû was completed and the way between the old
temple and the new made ready, all the inhabitants of the city prostrated
themselves on the ground. “The city,” says Gudea, “was like the mother of
a sick man who prepareth a potion for him, or like the cattle of the plain
which lie down together, or like the fierce lion, the master of the plain,
when he coucheth.” During the day and the night before the ceremony of
removal, prayers and supplications were uttered, and at the first light of
dawn on the appointed day the god Ningirsu went into his new temple “like
a whirlwind,” the goddess Bau entering at his side “like the sun rising
over Shirpurla.” She entered beside his couch, like a faithful wife, whose
cares are for her own household, and she dwelt beside his ear and bestowed
abundance upon Shirpurla.
As the day began to brighten and the sun rose, Gudea set out as offerings
in the temple a fat ox and a fat sheep, and he brought a vase of lead and
filled it with wine, which he poured out as a libation, and he performed
incantations. Then, having duly established Ningirsu and Bau in the chief
shrine, he turned his attention to the lesser gods and installed them in
their appointed places in the temple, where they would be always ready to
assist Ningirsu in the temple ceremonies and in the issue of his decrees
for the welfare of the city and its inhabitants. Thus he established the
god Galalim, the son of Ningirsu, in a chosen spot in the great court in
front of the temple, where, under the orders of his father, he should
direct the just and curb the evil-doer; he would also by his presence
strengthen and preserve the temple, while his special duty was to guard
the throne of destiny and, on behalf of Ningirsu, to place the sceptre in
the hands of the reigning patesi. Near to Ningirsu and under his orders
Gudea also established the god Dunshaga, whose function it was to sanctify
the temple and to look after its libations and offerings, and to see to
the due performance of the ceremonies of ablution. This god would offer
water to Ningirsu with a pure hand, he would pour out libations of wine
and strong drink, and would tend the oxen, sheep, kids, and other
offerings which were brought to the temple night and day. To the god
Lugalkurdub, who was also installed in the temple, was assigned the
privilege of holding in his hand the mace with the seven heads, and it was
his duty to open the door of the Gate of Combat. He guarded the sacred
weapons of Ningirsu and destroyed the countries of his enemies. He was
Ningirsu’s chief leader in battle, and another god with lesser powers was
associated with him as his second leader.
Ningirsu’s counsellor was the god Lugalsisa, and he also had his appointed
place in E-ninnû. It was his duty to receive the prayers of Shirpurla and
render them propitious; he superintended and blessed Ningirsu’s journey
when he visited Eridu or returned from that city, and he made special
intercessions for the life of Gudea. The minister of Ningirsu’s harîm was
the god Shakanshabar, and he was installed near to Nin-girsu that he might
issue his commands, both great and small. The keeper of the harîm was the
god Urizu, and it was his duty to purify the water and sanctify the grain,
and he tended Ningirsu’s sleeping-chamber and saw that all was arranged
therein as was fitting. The driver of Ningirsu’s chariot was the god
Ensignun; it was his duty to keep the sacred chariot as bright as the
stars of heaven, and morning and evening to tend and feed Ningirsu’s
sacred ass, called Ug-kash, and the ass of Eridu. The shepherd of
Ningirsu’s kids was the god Enlulim, and he tended the sacred she-goat who
suckled the kids, and he guarded her so that the serpent should not steal
her milk. This god also looked after the oil and the strong drink of
E-ninnû, and saw that its store increased.
Ningirsu’s beloved musician was the god Ushum-gabkalama, and he was
installed in E-ninnû that he might take his flute and fill the temple
court with joy. It was his privilege to play to Ningirsu as he listened in
his harîm, and to render the life of the god pleasant in E-ninnû.
Ningirsu’s singer was the god Lugaligi-khusham, and he had his appointed
place in E-ninnû, for he could appease the heart and soften anger; he
could stop the tears which flowed from weeping eyes, and could lessen
sorrow in the sighing heart. Gudea also installed in E-ninnû the seven
twin-daughters of the goddess Bau, all virgins, whom Ningirsu had
begotten. Their names were Zarzaru, Impaë, Urenuntaëa, Khegir-nuna,
Kheshaga, Gurmu, and Zarmu. Gudea installed them near their father that
they might offer favourable prayers.
The cultivator of the district of Gu-edin was the god Gishbare, and he was
installed in the temple that he might cause the great fields to be
fertile, and might make the wheat glisten in Gu-edin, the plain assigned
to Ningirsu for his revenues. It was this god’s duty also to tend the
machines for irrigation, and to raise the water into the canals and
ditches of Shirpurla, and thus to keep the city’s granaries well filled.
The god Kal was the guardian of the fishing in Gu-edin, and his chief duty
was to place fish in the sacred pools. The steward of Gu-edin was the god
Dimgalabzu, whose duty it was to keep the plain in good order, so that the
birds might abound there and the beasts might raise their young in peace;
he also guarded the special privilege, which the plain enjoyed, of freedom
from any tax levied upon the increase of the cattle pastured there. Last
of all Gudea installed in E-ninnû the god Lugalenurua-zagakam, who looked
after the construction of houses in the city and the building of
fortresses upon the city wall; in the temple it was his privilege to raise
on high a battle-axe made of cedar.
All these lesser deities, having close relations to the god Ningirsu, were
installed by Gudea in his temple in close proximity to him, that they
might be always ready to perform their special functions. But the greater
deities also had their share in the inauguration of the temple, and of
these Gudea specially mentions Ana, Enlil, Ninkharsag, Enki, and Enzu, who
all assisted in rendering the temple’s lot propitious. For at least three
of the greater gods (Ana, Enlil, and the goddess Nin-makh) Gudea erected
shrines near one another and probably within the temple’s precincts, and,
as the passage which records this fact is broken, it is possible that the
missing portion of the text recorded the building of shrines to other
deities. In any case, it is clear that the composer of the text represents
all the great gods as beholding the erection and inauguration of
Ningirsu’s new temple with favour.
After the account of the installation of Ningirsu, and his spouse Bau, and
his attendant deities, the text records the sumptuous offerings which
Gudea placed within Ningirsu’s shrine. These included another chariot
drawn by an ass, a seven-headed battle-axe, a sword with nine emblems, a
bow with terrible arrows and a quiver decorated with wild beasts and
dragons shooting out their tongues, and a bed which was set within the
god’s sleeping-chamber. On the couch in the shrine the goddess Bau
reclined beside her lord Ningirsu, and ate of the great victims which were
sacrificed in their honour.
When the ceremony of installation had been successfully performed, Gudea
rested, and for seven days he feasted with his people. During this time
the maid was the equal of her mistress, and master and servant consorted
together as friends. The powerful and the humble man lay down side by
side, and in place of evil speech only propitious words were heard. The
rich man did not wrong the orphan and the strong man did not oppress the
widow. The laws of Ninâ and Ningirsu were observed, justice was bright in
the sunlight, and the Sun-god trampled iniquity under foot. The building
of the temple also restored material prosperity to the land, for the
canals became full of water and fish swarmed in the pools, the granaries
were filled with grain and the flocks and herds brought forth their
increase. The city of Shirpurla was satiated with abundance.
Such is a summary of the account which Gudea has left us of his rebuilding
of the temple E-ninnû, of the reasons which led him to undertake the work,
and of the results which followed its completion. It has often been said
that the inscriptions of the ancient Sumerians are without much intrinsic
value, that they mainly consist of dull votive formulæ, and that for
general interest the best of them cannot be compared with the later
inscriptions of the Semitic inhabitants of Mesopotamia. This reproach, for
which until recently there was considerable justification, has been
finally removed by the working out of the texts upon Gudea’s cylinders.
For picturesque narrative, for wealth of detail, and for striking similes,
it would be hard to find their superior in Babylonian and Assyrian
literature. They are, in fact, very remarkable compositions, and in
themselves justify the claim that the Sumerians were possessed of a
literature in the proper sense of the term.
But that is not their only value, for they give a vivid picture of ancient
Sumerian life and of the ideals and aims which actuated the people and
their rulers. The Sumerians were essentially an unmilitary race. That they
could maintain a stubborn fight for their territory is proved by the
prolonged struggle maintained by Shirpurla against her rival Gishkhu, but
neither ruler nor people was inflamed by love of conquest for its own
sake. They were settled in a rich and fertile country, which supplied
their own wants in abundance, and they were content to lead a peaceful
life therein, engaged in agricultural and industrial pursuits, and devoted
wholly to the worship of their gods. Gudea’s inscriptions enable us to
realize with what fervour they carried out the rebuilding of a temple, and
how the whole resources of the nation were devoted to the successful
completion of the work. It is true that the rebuilding of E-ninnû was
undertaken in a critical period when the land was threatened with famine,
and the peculiar magnificence with which the work was carried out may be
partly explained as due to the belief that such devotion would ensure a
return of material prosperity. But the existence of such a belief is in
itself an index to the people’s character, and we may take it that the
record faithfully represents the relations of the Sumerians to their gods,
and the important place which worship and ritual occupied in the national
life.
Moreover, the inscriptions of Gudea furnish much valuable information with
regard to the details of Sumerian worship and the elaborate organization
of the temples. From them we can reconstruct a picture of one of these
immense buildings, with its numerous shrines and courts, surrounded by
sacred gardens and raising its ziggurat, or temple tower, high above the
surrounding city. Within its dark chambers were the mysterious figures of
the gods, and what little light could enter would have been reflected in
the tanks of sacred water sunk to the level of the pavement. The air
within the shrines must have been heavy with the smell of incense and of
aromatic woods, while the deep silence would have been broken only by the
chanting of the priests and the feet of those that bore offerings. Outside
in the sunlight cedars and other rare trees cast a pleasant shade, and
birds flew about among the flowers and bushes in the outer courts and on
the garden terraces. The area covered by the temple buildings must have
been enormous, for they included the dwellings of the priests, stables and
pens for the cattle, sheep, and kids employed for sacrifice, and
treasure-chambers and storehouses and granaries for the produce from the
temple lands.
We also get much information with regard to the nature of the offerings
and the character of the ceremonies which were performed. We may mention
as of peculiar interest Gudea’s symbolical rite which preceded the making
of the sun-dried bricks, and the ceremony of the installation of Ningirsu
in the presence of the prostrate city. The texts also throw an interesting
light on the truly Oriental manner in which, when approaching one deity
for help, the cooperation and assistance of other deities were first
secured. Thus Gudea solicited the intercession of Ningirsu and Gatumdug
before applying to the goddess Ninâ to interpret his dream. The extremely
human character of the gods themselves is also well illustrated. Thus we
gather from the texts that Ningirsu’s temple was arranged like the palace
of a Sumerian ruler and that he was surrounded by gods who took the place
of the attendants and ministers of his human counterpart. His son was
installed in a place of honour and shared with him the responsibility of
government. Another god was his personal attendant and cupbearer, who
offered him fair water and looked after the ablutions. Two more were his
generals, who secured his country against the attacks of foes. Another was
his counsellor, who received and presented petitions from his subjects and
superintended his journeys. Another was the head of his harîm, a position
of great trust and responsibility, while a keeper of the harîm looked
after the practical details. Another god was the driver of his chariot,
and it is interesting to note that the chariot was drawn by an ass, for
horses were not introduced into Western Asia until a much later period.
Other gods performed the functions of head shepherd, chief musician, chief
singer, head cultivator and inspector of irrigation, inspector of the
fishing, land steward, and architect. His household also included his wife
and his seven virgin daughters. In addition to the account of the various
functions performed by these lesser deities, the texts also furnish
valuable facts with regard to the characters and attributes of the greater
gods and goddesses, such as the attributes of Ningirsu himself, and the
character of Ninâ as the goddess who divined and interpreted the secrets
of the gods.
But perhaps the most interesting conclusions to be drawn from the texts
relate to the influence exerted by the ancient Sumerians upon Semitic
beliefs and practices. It has, of course, long been recognized that the
later Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia and Assyria drew most of their
culture from the Sumerians, whom they displaced and absorbed. Their system
of writing, the general structure of their temples, the ritual of their
worship, the majority of their religious compositions, and many of their
gods themselves are to be traced to a Sumerian origin, and much of the
information obtained from the cylinders of Gudea merely confirms or
illustrates the conclusions already deduced from other sources. As
instances we may mention the belief in spirits, which is illustrated by
the importance attached to the placating of the Anunnaki, or Spirits of
the Earth, to whom a special place and special offerings were assigned in
E-ninnû. The Sumerian origin of ceremonies of purification is confirmed by
Gudea’s purification of the city before beginning the building of the
temple, and again before the transference of the god from his old temple
to the new one. The consultation of omens, which was so marked a feature
of Babylonian and Assyrian life, is seen in actual operation under the
Sumerians; for, even after Gudea had received direct instructions from
Ningirsu to begin building his temple, he did not proceed to carry them
out until he had consulted the omens and found that they were favourable.
Moreover, the references to mythological beings, such as the seven heroes,
the dragon of the deep, and the god who slew the dragon, confirm the
opinion that the creation legends and other mythological compositions of
the Babylonians were derived by them from Sumerian sources. But there are
two incidents in the narrative which are on a rather different plane and
are more startling in their novelty. One is the story of Gudea’s dream,
and the other the sign which he sought from his god. The former is
distinctly apocalyptic in character, and both may be parallelled in what
is regarded as purely Semitic literature. That such conceptions existed
among the Sumerians is a most interesting fact, and although the theory of
independent origin is possible, their existence may well have influenced
later Semitic beliefs.
CHAPTER V—ELAM AND BABYLON,
THE COUNTRY OF THE SEA AND THE
KASSITES
Up to five years ago our knowledge of Elam and of the part she played in
the ancient world was derived, in the main, from a few allusions to the
country to be found in the records of Babylonian and Assyrian kings. It is
true that a few inscriptions of the native rulers had been found in
Persia, but they belonged to the late periods of her history, and the
majority consisted of short dedicatory formulae and did not supply us with
much historical information. But the excavations carried on since then by
M. de Morgan at Susa have revealed an entirely new chapter of ancient
Oriental history, and have thrown a flood of light upon the position
occupied by Elam among the early races of the East.
Lying to the north of the Persian Gulf and to the east of the Tigris, and
rising from the broad plains nearer the coast to the mountainous districts
within its borders on the east and north, Elam was one of the nearest
neighbours of Chaldæa. A few facts concerning her relations with Babylonia
during certain periods of her history have long been known, and her
struggles with the later kings of Assyria are known in some detail; but
for her history during the earliest periods we have had to trust mainly to
conjecture. That in the earlier as in the later periods she should have
been in constant antagonism with Babylonia might legitimately be
suspected, and it is not surprising that we should find an echo of her
early struggles with Chaldæa in the legends which were current in the
later periods of Babylonian history. In the fourth and fifth tablets, or
sections, of the great Babylonian epic which describes the exploits of the
Babylonian hero Gilgamesh, a story is told of an expedition undertaken by
Gilgamesh and his friend Ba-bani against an Elamite despot named
Khum-baba. It is related in the poem that Khumbaba was feared by all who
dwelt near him, for his roaring was like the storm, and any man perished
who was rash enough to enter the cedar-wood in which he dwelt. But
Gilgamesh, encouraged by a dream sent him by Sha-mash, the Sun-god,
pressed on with his friend, and, having entered the wood, succeeded in
slaying Khumbaba and in cutting off his head. This legend is doubtless
based on episodes in early Babylonian and Elamite history. Khumbaba may
not have been an actual historical ruler, but at least he represents or
personifies the power of Elam, and the success of Gilgamesh no doubt
reflects the aspirations with which many a Babylonian expedition set out
for the Elamite frontier.
Incidentally it may be noted that the legend possibly had a still closer
historical parallel, for the name of Khumbaba occurs as a component in a
proper name upon one of the Elamite contracts found recently by M. de
Morgan at Mai-Amir. The name in question is written Khumbaba-arad-ili,
“Khumbaba, the servant of God,” and it proves that at the date at which
the contract was written (about 1300-1000 B.C.) the name of Khumbaba was
still held in remembrance, possibly as that of an early historical ruler
of the country.
In her struggles with Chaldæa, Elam was not successful during the earliest
historical period of which we have obtained information; and, so far as we
can tell at present, her princes long continued to own allegiance to the
Semitic rulers whose influence was predominant from time to time in the
plains of Lower Mesopotamia. Tradition relates that two of the earliest
Semitic rulers whose names are known to us, Sargon and Narâm-Sin, kings of
Agade, held sway in Elam, for in the “Omens” which were current in a later
period concerning them, the former is credited with the conquest of the
whole country, while of the latter it is related that he conquered Apirak,
an Elamite district, and captured its king. Some doubts were formerly cast
upon these traditions inasmuch as they were found in a text containing
omens or forecasts, but these doubts were removed by the discovery of
contemporary documents by which the later traditions were confirmed.
Sargon’s conquest of Elam, for instance, was proved to be historical by a
reference to the event in a date-formula upon tablets belonging to his
reign. Moreover, the event has received further confirmation from an
unpublished tablet in the British Museum, containing a copy of the
original chronicle from which the historical extracts in the “Omens” were
derived. The portion of the composition inscribed upon this tablet does
not contain the lines referring to Sargon’s conquest of Elam, for these
occurred in an earlier section of the composition; but the recovery of the
tablet puts beyond a doubt the historical character of the traditions
preserved upon the omen-tablet as a whole, and the conquest of Elam is
thus confirmed by inference. The new text does recount the expedition
undertaken by Narâm-Sin, the son of Sargon, against Apirak, and so
furnishes a direct confirmation of this event.
Another early conqueror of Elam, who was probably of Semitic origin, was
Alu-usharshid, king of the city of Kish, for, from a number of his
inscriptions found near those of Sargon at Nippur in Babylonia, we learn
that he subdued Elam and Para’se, the district in which the city of Susa
was probably situated. From a small mace-head preserved in the British
Museum we know of another conquest of Elam by a Semitic ruler of this
early period. The mace-head was made and engraved by the orders of
Mutabil, an early governor of the city of Dûr-ilu, to commemorate his own
valour as the man “who smote the head of the hosts” of Elam. Mutabil was
not himself an independent ruler, and his conquest of Elam must have been
undertaken on behalf of the suzerain to whom he owed allegiance, and thus
his victory cannot be classed in the same category as those of his
predecessors. A similar remark applies to the success against the city of
Anshan in Elam, achieved by Grudea, the Sumerian ruler of Shirpurla,
inasmuch as he was a patesi, or viceroy, and not an independent king. Of
greater duration was the influence exercised over Elam by the kings of Ur,
for bricks and contract-tablets have been found at Susa proving that
Dungi, one of the most powerful kings of Ur, and Bur-Sin, Ine-Sin, and
Oamil-Sin, kings of the second dynasty in that city, all in turn included
Elam within the limits of their empire.
Such are the main facts which until recently had been ascertained with
regard to the influence of early Babylonian rulers in Elam. The
information is obtained mainly from Babylonian sources, and until recently
we have been unable to fill in any details of the picture from the Elamite
side. But this inability has now been removed by M. de Morgan’s
discoveries. From the inscribed bricks, cones, stelæ, and statues that
have been brought to light in the course of his excavations at Susa, we
have recovered the name of a succession of native Elamite rulers. All
those who are to be assigned to this early period, during which Elam owed
allegiance to the kings of Babylonia, ascribe to themselves the title of
patesi, or viceroy, of Susa, in acknowledgment of their dependence.
Their records consist principally of building inscriptions and foundation
memorials, and they commemorate the construction or repair of temples, the
cutting of canals, and the like. They do not, therefore, throw much light
upon the problems connected with the external history of Elam during this
early period, but we obtain from them a glimpse of the internal
administration of the country. We see a nation without ambition to extend
its boundaries, and content, at any rate for the time, to owe allegiance
to foreign rulers, while the energies of its native princes are devoted
exclusively to the cultivation of the worship of the gods and to the
amelioration of the conditions of the life of the people in their charge.
A difficult but interesting problem presents itself for solution at the
outset of our inquiry into the history of this people as revealed by their
lately recovered inscriptions,—the problem of their race and origin.
Found at Susa in Elam, and inscribed by princes bearing purely Elamite
names, we should expect these votive and memorial texts to be written
entirely in the Elamite language. But such is not the case, for many of
them are written in good Semitic Babylonian. While some are entirely
composed in the tongue which we term Elamite or Anzanite, others, so far
as their language and style is concerned, might have been written by any
early Semitic king ruling in Babylonia. Why did early princes of Susa make
this use of the Babylonian tongue?
At first sight it might seem possible to trace a parallel in the use of
the Babylonian language by kings and officials in Egypt and Syria during
the fifteenth century B.C., as revealed in the letters from Tell
el-Amarna. But a moment’s thought will show that the cases are not
similar. The Egyptian or Syrian scribe employed Babylonian as a medium for
his official foreign correspondence because Babylonian at that period was
the lingua franca of the East. But the object of the early Elamite
rulers was totally different. Their inscribed bricks and memorial stelæ
were not intended for the eyes of foreigners, but for those of their own
descendants. Built into the structure of a temple, or buried beneath the
edifice, one of their principal objects was to preserve the name and deeds
of the writer from oblivion. Like similar documents found on the sites of
Assyrian and Babylonian cities, they sometimes include curses upon any
impious man, who, on finding the inscription after the temple shall have
fallen into ruins, should in any way injure the inscription or deface the
writer’s name. It will be obvious that the writers of these inscriptions
intended that they should be intelligible to those who might come across
them in the future. If, therefore, they employed the Babylonian as well as
the Elamite language, it is clear that they expected that their future
readers might be either Babylonian or Elamite; and this belief can only be
explained on the supposition that their own subjects were of mixed race.
It is therefore certain that at this early period of Elamite history
Semitic Babylonians and Elamites dwelt side by side in Susa and retained
their separate languages. The problem therefore resolves itself into the
inquiry: which of these two peoples occupied the country first? Were the
Semites at first in sole possession, which was afterwards disputed by the
incursion of Elamite tribes from the north and east? Or were the Elamites
the original inhabitants of the land, into which the Semites subsequently
pressed from Babylonia?
A similar mixture of races is met with in Babylonia itself in the early
period of the history of that country. There the early Sumerian
inhabitants were gradually dispossessed by the invading Semite, who
adopted the civilization of the conquered race, and took over the system
of cuneiform writing, which he modified to suit his own language. In
Babylonia the Semites eventually predominated and the Sumerians as a race
disappeared, but during the process of absorption the two languages were
employed indiscriminately. The kings of the First Babylonian Dynasty wrote
their votive inscriptions sometimes in Sumerian, sometimes in Semitic
Babylonian; at other times they employed both languages for the same text,
writing the record first in Sumerian and afterwards appending a Semitic
translation by the side; and in the legal and commercial documents of the
period the old Sumerian legal forms and phrases were retained intact. In
Elam we may suppose that the use of the Sumerian and Semitic languages was
the same.
It may be surmised, however, that the first Semitic incursions into Elam
took place at a much later period than those into Babylonia, and under
very different conditions. When overrunning the plains and cities of the
Sumerians, the Semites were comparatively uncivilized, and, so far as we
know, without a system of writing of their own. The incursions into Elam
must have taken place under the great Semitic conquerors, such as Sar-gon
and Narâm-Sin and Alu-usharshid. At this period they had fully adopted and
modified the Sumerian characters to express their own Semitic tongue, and
on their invasion of Elam they brought their system of writing with them.
The native princes of Elam, whom they conquered, adopted it in turn for
many of their votive texts and inscribed monuments when they wished to
write them in the Babylonian language.
Such is the most probable explanation of the occurrence in Elam of
inscriptions in the Old Babylonian language, written by native princes
concerning purely domestic matters. But a further question now suggests
itself. Assuming that this was the order in which events took place, are
we to suppose that the first Semitic invaders of Elam found there a native
population in a totally undeveloped stage of civilization? Or did they
find a population enjoying a comparatively high state of culture,
different from their own, which they proceeded to modify and transform!
Luckily, we have not to fall back on conjecture for an answer to these
questions, for a recent discovery at Susa has furnished material from
which it is possible to reconstruct in outline the state of culture of
these early Elamites.
This interesting discovery consists of a number of clay tablets inscribed
in the proto-Elamite system of writing, a system which was probably the
only one in use in the country during the period before the Semitic
invasion. The documents in question are small, roughly formed tablets of
clay very similar to those employed in the early periods of Babylonian
history, but the signs and characters impressed upon them offer the
greatest contrast to the Sumerian and early Babylonian characters with
which we are familiar. Although they cannot be fully deciphered at
present, it is probable that they are tablets of accounts, the signs upon
them consisting of lists of figures and what are probably ideographs for
things. Some of the ideographs, such as that for “tablet,” with which many
of the texts begin, are very similar to the Sumerian or Babylonian signs
for the same objects; but the majority are entirely different and have
been formed and developed upon a system of their own.
The photograph is taken from M. de Morgan’s Délégation en
Perse, Mém., t. vi, pi. 23.
On these tablets, in fact, we have a new class of cuneiform writing in an
early stage of its development, when the hieroglyphic or pictorial
character of the ideographs was still prominent.
The photograph is reproduced from M. de Morgan’s Délégation
en Perse, Mém., t. vi, pi. 22.
Although the meaning of the majority of these ideographs has not yet been
identified, Père Scheil, who has edited the texts, has succeeded in making
out the system of numeration. He has identified the signs for unity, 10,
100, and 1,000, and for certain fractions, and the signs for these figures
are quite different from those employed by the Sumerians.
The system, too, is different, for it is a decimal, and not a sexagesimal,
system of numeration.
That in its origin this form of writing had some connection with that
employed and, so far as we know, invented by the ancient Sumerians is
possible.[1] But it shows small trace of Sumerian influence, and the
disparity in the two systems of numeration is a clear indication that, at
any rate, it broke off and was isolated from the latter at a very early
period. Having once been adopted by the early Elamites, it continued to be
used by them for long periods with but small change or modification.
Employed far from the centre of Sumerian civilization, its development was
slow, and it seems to have remained in its ideographic state, while the
system employed by the Sumerians, and adopted by the Semitic Babylonians,
was developed along syllabic lines.
[1]
It is, of course, also possible that the system of writing
had no connection in its origin with that of the Sumerians,
and was invented independently of the system employed in
Babylonia. In that case, the signs which resemble certain of
the Sumerian characters must have been adopted in a later
stage of its development. Though it would be rash to
dogmatize on the subject, the view that connects its origin
with the Sumerians appears on the whole to fit in best with
the evidence at present available.
It was without doubt this proto-Elamite system of writing which the
Semites from Babylonia found employed in Elam on their first incursions
into that country. They brought with them their own more convenient form
of writing, and, when the country had once been finally subdued, the
subject Elamite princes adopted the foreign system of writing and language
from their conquerors for memorial and monumental inscriptions. But the
ancient native writing was not entirely ousted, and continued to be
employed by the common people of Elam for the ordinary purposes of daily
life. That this was the case at least until the reign of
Karibu-sha-Shu-shinak, one of the early subject native rulers, is clear
from one of his inscriptions engraved upon a block of limestone to
commemorate the dedication of what were probably some temple furnishings
in honour of the god Shu-shinak.
The photograph is taken from M. de Morgan’s Délégation en
Perse, Mém., t. vi, pi. 2.
The main part of the inscription is written in Semitic Babylonian, and
below there is an addition to the text written in proto-Elamite
characters, probably enumerating the offerings which the
Karibu-sha-Shushinak decreed should be made for the future in honour of
the god.[2] In course of time this proto-Elamite system of writing by means
of ideographs seems to have died out, and a modified form of the
Babylonian system was adopted by the Elamites for writing their own
language phonetically. It is in this phonetic character that the so-called
“Anzanite” texts of the later Elamite princes were composed.
[2]
We have assumed that both inscriptions were the work of
Karibu-sha-Shushinak. But it is also possible that the
second one in proto-Elamite characters was added at a later
period. From its position on the stone it is clear that it
was written after and not before Karibu-sha-Shushinak’s
inscription in Semitic Babylonian. See the photographic
reproduction.
Karibu-sha-Shushinak, whose recently discovered bilingual inscription has
been referred to above, was one of the earlier of the subject princes of
Elam, and he probably reigned at Susa not later than B.C. 3000. He styles
himself “patesi of Susa, governor of the land of Elam,” but we do not know
at present to what contemporary king in Babylonia he owed allegiance. The
longest of his inscriptions that have been recovered is engraved upon a
stele of limestone and records the building of the Gate of Shushinak at
Susa and the cutting of a canal; it also recounts the offerings which
Karibu-sha-Shushinak dedicated on the completion of the work. It may here
be quoted as an example of the class of votive inscriptions from which the
names of these early Elamite rulers have been recovered. The inscription
runs as follows: “For the god Shushinak, his lord, Karibu-sha-Shushinak,
the son of Shimbi-ish-khuk, patesi of Susa, governor of the land of Elam,—when
he set the (door) of his Gate in place,… in the Gate of the god
Shushinak, his lord, and when he had opened the canal of Sidur, he set up
in face thereof his canopy, and he set planks of cedar-wood for its gate.
A sheep in the interior thereof, and sheep without, he appointed (for
sacrifice) to him each day. On days of festival he caused the people to
sing songs in the Gate of the god Shushinak. And twenty measures of fine
oil he dedicated to make his gate beautiful. Four magi of silver he
dedicated; a censer of silver and gold he dedicated for a sweet odour;
a,sword he dedicated; an axe with four blades he dedicated, and he
dedicated silver in addition for the mounting thereof…. A righteous
judgment he judged in the city! As for the man who shall transgress his
judgment or shall remove his gift, may the gods Shushinak and Shamash, Bel
and Ea, Ninni and Sin, Mnkharsag and Nati—may all the gods uproot
his foundation, and his seed may they destroy!”
It will be seen that Karibu-sha-Shushinak takes a delight in enumerating
the details of the offerings he has ordained in honour of his city-god
Shushinak, and this religious temper is peculiarly characteristic of the
princes of Elam throughout the whole course of their history. Another
interesting point to notice in the inscription is that, although the
writer invokes Shushinak, his own god, and puts his name at the head of
the list of deities whose vengeance he implores upon the impious, he also
calls upon the gods of the Babylonians. As he wrote the inscription itself
in Babylonian, in the belief that it might be recovered by some future
Semitic inhabitant of his country, so he included in his imprecations
those deities whose names he conceived would be most reverenced by such a
reader. In addition to Karibu-sha-Shushinak the names of a number of other
patesis, or viceroys, have recently been recovered, such as Khutran-tepti,
and Idadu I and his son Kal-Rukhu-ratir, and his grandson Idadu II. All
these probably ruled after Karibu-sha-Shushinak, and may be set in the
early period of Babylonian supremacy in Elam.
It has been stated above that the allegiance which these early Elamite
princes owed to their overlords in Babylonia was probably reflected in the
titles which they bear upon their inscriptions recently found at Susa.
These titles are “patesi of Susa, shakkannak of Elam,” which
may be rendered as “viceroy of Susa, governor of Elam.” But inscriptions
have been found on the same site belonging to another series of rulers, to
whom a different title is applied. Instead of referring to themselves as
viceroys of Susa and governors of Elam, they bear the title of sukkal
of Elam, of Siparki, and of Susa. Siparki, or Sipar, was probably the name
of an important section of Elamite territory, and the title sukkalu,
“ruler,” probably carries with it an idea of independence of foreign
control which is absent from the title of patesi. It is therefore
legitimate to trace this change of title to a corresponding change in the
political condition of Elam; and there is much to be said for the view
that the rulers of Elam who bore the title of sukkalu reigned at a
period when Elam herself was independent, and may possibly have exercised
a suzerainty over the neighbouring districts of Babylonia.
The worker of this change in the political condition of Elam and the
author of her independence was a king named Kutir-Nakhkhunte or
Kutir-Na’khunde, whose name and deeds have been preserved in later
Assyrian records, where he is termed Kudur-Nankhundi and Kudur-Nakhundu.[3]
This ruler, according to the Assyrian king Ashur-bani-pal, was not content
with throwing off the yoke under which his land had laboured for so long,
but carried war into the country of his suzerain and marched through
Babylonia devastating and despoiling the principal cities. This successful
Elamite campaign took place, according to the computation of the later
Assyrian scribes, about the year 2280 B. c, and it is probable that for
many years afterwards the authority of the King of Elam extended over the
plains of Babylonia. It has been suggested that Kutir-Nakh-khunte, after
including Babylonia within his empire, did not remain permanently in Elam,
but may have resided for a part of each year, at least, in Lower
Mesopotamia. His object, no doubt, would have been to superintend in
person the administration of his empire and to check any growing spirit of
independence among his local governors. He may thus have appointed in Susa
itself a local governor who would carry on the business of the country
during his absence, and, under the king himself, would wield supreme
authority. Such governors may have been the sukkali, who, unlike the
patesi, were independent of foreign control, but yet did not enjoy the
full title of “king.”
[3]
For references to the passages where the name occurs, see
King, Letters of Hammurabi, vol. i, p. Ivy.
It is possible that the sukkalu who ruled in Elam during the reign of
Kutir-Nakhkhunte was named Temti-agun, for a short inscription of this
ruler has been recovered, in which he records that he built and dedicated
a certain temple with the object of ensuring the preservation of the life
of Kutir-Na’khundi. If we may identify the Kutir-Va’khundi of this text
with the great Elamite conqueror, Kutir-Nakhkhunte, it follows that
Temti-agun, the sukkal of Susa, was his subordinate. The inscription
mentions other names which are possibly those of rulers of this period,
and reads as follows: “Temti-agun, sukkal of Susa, the son of the sister
of Sirukdu’, hath built a temple of bricks at Ishme-karab for the
preservation of the life of Kutir-Na’khundi, and for the preservation of
the life of Lila-irtash, and for the preservation of his own life, and for
the preservation of the life of Temti-khisha-khanesh and of
Pil-kishamma-khashduk.” As Lila-irtash is mentioned immediately after
Kutir-Na’khundi, he was possibly his son, and he may have succeeded him as
ruler of the empire of Elam and Babylonia, though no confirmation of this
view has yet been discovered. Temti-khisha-khanesh is mentioned
immediately after the reference to the preservation of the life of
Temti-agun himself, and it may be conjectured that the name was that of
Temti-agun’s son, or possibly that of his wife, in which event the last
two personages mentioned in the text may have been the sons of Temti-agun.
This short text affords a good example of one class of votive inscriptions
from which it is possible to recover the names of Elamite rulers of this
period, and it illustrates the uncertainty which at present attaches to
the identification of the names themselves and the order in which they are
to be arranged. Such uncertainty necessarily exists when only a few texts
have been recovered, and it will disappear with the discovery of
additional monuments by which the results already arrived at may be
checked. We need not here enumerate all the names of the later Elamite
rulers which have been found in the numerous votive inscriptions recovered
during the recent excavations at Susa. The order in which they should be
arranged is still a matter of considerable uncertainty, and the facts
recorded by them in such inscriptions as we possess mainly concern the
building and restoration of Elamite temples and the decoration of shrines,
and they are thus of no great historical interest. These votive texts are
well illustrated by a remarkable find of foundation deposits made last
year by M. de Morgan in the temple of Shushinak at Susa, consisting of
figures and jewelry of gold and silver, and objects of lead, bronze, iron,
stone, and ivory, cylinder-seals, mace-heads, vases, etc. This is the
richest foundation deposit that has been recovered on any ancient site,
and its archaeological interest in connection with the development of
Elamite art is great. But in no other way does the find affect our
conception of the history of the country, and we may therefore pass on to
a consideration of such recent discoveries as throw new light upon the
course of history in Western Asia.
With the advent of the First Dynasty in Babylon Elam found herself face to
face with a power prepared to dispute her claims to exercise a suzerainty
over the plains of Mesopotamia. It is held by many writers that the First
Dynasty of Babylon was of Arab origin, and there is much to be said for
this view. M. Pognon was the first to start the theory that its kings were
not purely Babylonian, but were of either Arab or Aramaean extraction, and
he based his theory on a study of the forms of the names which some of
them bore. The name of Samsu-imna, for instance, means “the sun is our
god,” but the form of the words of which the name is composed betray
foreign influence. Thus in Babylonian the name for “sun” or the Sun-god
would be Shamash or Shamshu, not Samsu; in the second
half of the name, while ilu (“god”) is good Babylonian, the ending
na, which is the pronominal suffix of the first person plural, is
not Babylonian, but Arabic. We need not here enter into a long
philological discussion, and the instance already cited may suffice to
show in what way many of the names met in the Babylonian inscriptions of
this period betray a foreign, and possibly an Arabic, origin. But whether
we assign the forms of these names to Arabic influence or not, it may be
regarded as certain that, the First Dynasty of Babylon had its origin in
the incursion into Babylonia of a new wave of Semitic immigration.
The invading Semites brought with them fresh blood and unexhausted energy,
and, finding many of their own race in scattered cities and settlements
throughout the country, they succeeded in establishing a purely Semitic
dynasty, with its capital at Babylon, and set about the task of freeing
the country from any vestiges of foreign control. Many centuries earlier
Semitic kings had ruled in Babylonian cities, and Semitic empires had been
formed there. Sargon and Narâm-Sin, having their capital at Agade, had
established their control over a considerable area of Western Asia and had
held Elam as a province. But so far as Elam was concerned Kutir-Nakhkhunte
had reversed the balance and had raised Elam to the position of the
predominant power.
Of the struggles and campaigns of the earlier kings of the First Dynasty
of Babylon we know little, for, although we possess a considerable number
of legal and commercial documents of the period, we have recovered no
strictly historical inscriptions. Our main source of information is the
dates upon these documents, which are not dated by the years of the
reigning king, but on a system adopted by the early Babylonian kings from
their Sumerian predecessors. In the later periods of Babylonian history
tablets were dated in the year of the king who was reigning at the time
the document was drawn up, but this simple system had not been adopted at
this early period. In place of this we find that each year was cited by
the event of greatest importance which occurred in that year. This event
might be the cutting of a canal, when the year in which this took place
might be referred to as “the year in which the canal named Ai-khegallu was
cut;” or it might be the building of a temple, as in the date-formula,
“the year in which the great temple of the Moon-god was built;” or it
might be “the conquest of a city, such as the year in which the city of
Kish was destroyed.” Now it will be obvious that this system of dating had
many disadvantages. An event might be of great importance for one city,
while it might never have been heard of in another district; thus it
sometimes happened that the same event was not adopted throughout the
whole country for designating a particular year, and the result was that
different systems of dating were employed in different parts of Babylonia.
Moreover, when a particular system had been in use for a considerable
time, it required a very good memory to retain the order and period of the
various events referred to in the date-formulae, so as to fix in a moment
the date of a document by its mention of one of them. In order to assist
themselves in their task of fixing dates in this manner, the scribes of
the First Dynasty of Babylon drew up lists of the titles of the years,
arranged in chronological order under the reigns of the kings to which
they referred. Some of these lists have been recovered, and they are of
the greatest assistance in fixing the chronology, while at the same time
they furnish us with considerable information concerning the history of
the period of which we should otherwise have been in ignorance.
From these lists of date-formulæ, and from the dates themselves which are
found upon the legal and commercial tablets of the period, we learn that
Kish, Ka-sallu, and Isin all gave trouble to the earlier kings of the
First Dynasty, and had in turn to be subdued. Elam did not watch the
diminution of her influence in Babylonia without a struggle to retain it.
Under Kudur-mabug, who was prince or governor of the districts lying along
the frontier of Elam, the Elamites struggled hard to maintain their
position in Babylonia, making the city of Ur the centre from which they
sought to check the growing power of Babylon. From bricks that have been
recovered from Mukayyer, the site of the city of Ur, we learn that
Kudur-mabug rebuilt the temple in that city dedicated to the Moon-god,
which is an indication of the firm hold he had obtained upon the city. It
was obvious to the new Semitic dynasty in Babylon that, until Ur and the
neighbouring city of Larsam had been captured, they could entertain no
hope of removing the Elamite yoke from Southern Babylonia. It is probable
that the earlier kings of the dynasty made many attempts to capture them,
with varying success. An echo of one of their struggles in which they
claimed the victory may be seen in the date-formula for the fourteenth
year of the reign of Sin-muballit, Hammurabi’s father and predecessor on
the throne of Babylon. This year was referred to in the documents of the
period as “the year in which the people of Ur were slain with the sword.”
It will be noted that the capture of the city is not commemorated, so that
we may infer that the slaughter of the Elamites which is recorded did not
materially reduce their influence, as they were left in possession of
their principal stronghold. In fact, Elam was not signally defeated in the
reign of Kudur-mabug, but in that of his son Rim-Sin. From the
date-formulæ of Hammurabi’s reign we learn that the struggle between Elam
and Babylon was brought to a climax in the thirtieth year of his reign,
when it is recorded in the formulas that he defeated the Elamite army and
overthrew Rim-Sin, while in the following year we gather that he added the
land of E’mutbal, that is, the western district of Elam, to his dominions.
An unpublished chronicle in the British Museum gives us further details of
Hammurabi’s victory over the Elamites, and at the same time makes it clear
that the defeat and overthrow of Rim-Sin was not so crushing as has
hitherto been supposed. This chronicle relates that Hammurabi attacked
Rim-Sin, and, after capturing the cities of Ur and Larsam, carried their
spoil to Babylon. Up to the present it has been supposed that Hammurabi’s
victory marked the end of Elamite influence in Babylonia, and that
thenceforward the supremacy of Babylon was established throughout the
whole of the country. But from the new chronicle we gather that Hammurabi
did not succeed in finally suppressing the attempts of Elam to regain her
former position. It is true that the cities of Ur and Larsam were finally
incorporated in the Babylonian empire, and the letters of Hammurabi to
Sin-idinnam, the governor whom he placed in authority over Larsam, afford
abundant evidence of the stringency of the administrative control which he
established over Southern Babylonia. But Rîm-Sin was only crippled for the
time, and, on being driven from Ur and Larsam, he retired beyond the
Elamite frontier and devoted his energies to the recuperation of his
forces against the time when he should feel himself strong enough again to
make a bid for victory in his struggle against the growing power of
Babylon. It is probable that he made no further attempt to renew the
contest during the life of Hammurabi, but after Samsu-iluna, the son of
Hammurabi, had succeeded to the Babylonian throne, he appeared in
Babylonia at the head of the forces he had collected, and attempted to
regain the cities and territory he had lost.
Inscribed in the reign of Hammurabi with a deed recording
the division of property. The actual tablet is on the right;
that which appears to be another and larger tablet on the
left is the hollow clay case in which the tablet on the
right was originally enclosed. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell
& Co.
The portion of the text of the chronicle relating to the war between
Rîm-Sin and Samsu-iluna is broken so that it is not possible to follow the
campaign in detail, but it appears that Samsu-iluna defeated Rim-Sin, and
possibly captured him or burnt him alive in a palace in which he had taken
refuge.
With the final defeat of Rîm-Sin by Samsu-iluna it is probable that Elam
ceased to be a thorn in the side of the kings of Babylon and that she made
no further attempts to extend her authority beyond her own frontiers. But
no sooner had Samsu-iluna freed his country from all danger from this
quarter than he found himself faced by a new foe, before whom the dynasty
eventually succumbed. This fact we learn from the unpublished chronicle to
which reference has already been made, and the name of this new foe, as
supplied by the chronicle, will render it necessary to revise all current
schemes of Babylonian chronology. Samsu-iluna’s new foe was no other than
Iluma-ilu, the first king of the Second Dynasty, and, so far from having
been regarded as Samsu-iluna’s contemporary, hitherto it has been imagined
that he ascended the throne of Babylon one hundred and eighteen years
after Samsu-iluna’s death. The new information supplied by the chronicle
thus proves two important facts: first, that the Second Dynasty, instead
of immediately succeeding the First Dynasty, was partly contemporary with
it; second, that during the period in which the two dynasties were
contemporary they were at war with one another, the Second Dynasty
gradually encroaching on the territory of the First Dynasty, until it
eventually succeeded in capturing Babylon and in getting the whole of the
country under its control. We also learn from the new chronicle that this
Second Dynasty at first established itself in “the Country of the Sea,”
that is to say, the districts in the extreme south of Babylonia bordering
on the Persian Gulf, and afterwards extended its borders northward until
it gradually absorbed the whole of Babylonia. Before discussing the other
facts supplied by the new chronicle, with regard to the rise and growth of
the Country of the Sea, whose kings formed the so-called “Second Dynasty,”
it will be well to refer briefly to the sources from which the information
on the period to be found in the current histories is derived.
All the schemes of Babylonian chronology that have been suggested during
the last twenty years have been based mainly on the great list of kings
which is preserved in the British Museum. This document was drawn up in
the Neo-Babylonian or Persian period, and when complete it gave a list of
the names of all the Babylonian kings from the First Dynasty of Babylon
down to the time in which it was written. The names of the kings are
arranged in dynasties, and details are given as to the length of their
reigns and the total number of years each dynasty lasted. The beginning of
the list which gave the names of the First Dynasty is wanting, but the
missing portion has been restored from a smaller document which gives a
list of the kings of the First and Second Dynasties only. In the great
list of kings the dynasties are arranged one after the other, and it was
obvious that its compiler imagined that they succeeded one another in the
order in which he arranged them. But when the total number of years the
dynasties lasted is learned, we obtain dates for the first dynasties in
the list which are too early to agree with other chronological information
supplied by the historical inscriptions. The majority of writers have
accepted the figures of the list of kings and have been content to ignore
the discrepancies; others have sought to reconcile the available data by
ingenious emendations of the figures given by the list and the historical
inscriptions, or have omitted the Second Dynasty entirely from their
calculations. The new chronicle, by showing that the First and Second
Dynasties were partly contemporaneous, explains the discrepancies that
have hitherto proved so puzzling.
It would be out of place here to enter into a detailed discussion of
Babylonian chronology, and therefore we will confine ourselves to a brief
description of the sequence of events as revealed by the new chronicle.
According to the list of kings, Iluma-ilu’s reign was a long one, lasting
for sixty years, and the new chronicle gives no indication as to the
period of his reign at which active hostilities with Babylon broke out. If
the war occurred in the latter portion of his reign, it would follow that
he had been for many years organizing the forces of the new state he had
founded in the south of Babylonia before making serious encroachments in
the north; and in that case the incessant campaigns carried on by Babylon
against Blam in the reigns of Hammurabi and Samsu-iluna would have
afforded him the opportunity of establishing a firm foothold in the
Country of the Sea without the risk of Babylonian interference. If, on the
other hand, it was in the earlier part of his reign that hostilities with
Babylon broke out, we may suppose that, while Samsu-iluna was devoting all
his energies to crush Bim-Sin, the Country of the Sea declared her
independence of Babylonian control. In this case we may imagine
Samsu-iluna hurrying south, on the conclusion of his Elamite campaign, to
crush the newly formed state before it had had time to organize its forces
for prolonged resistance.
Whichever of these alternatives eventually may prove to be correct, it is
certain that Samsu-iluna took the initiative in Babylon’s struggle with
the Country of the Sea, and that his action was due either to her
declaration of independence or to some daring act of aggression on the
part of this small state which had hitherto appeared too insignificant to
cause Babylon any serious trouble. The new chronicle tells us that
Samsu-iluna undertook two expeditions against the Country of the Sea, both
of which proved unsuccessful. In the first of these he penetrated to the
very shores of the Persian Gulf, where a battle took place in which
Samsu-iluna was defeated, and the bodies of many of the Babylonian
soldiers were washed away by the sea. In the second campaign Iluma-ilu did
not await Samsu-iluna’s attack, but advanced to meet him, and again
defeated the Babylonian army. In the reign of Abêshu’, Samsu-iluna’s son
and successor, Iluma-ilu appears to have undertaken fresh acts of
aggression against Babylon; and it was probably during one of his raids in
Babylonian territory that Abêshu’ attempted to crush the growing power of
the Country of the Sea by the capture of its daring leader, Iluma-ilu
himself. The new chronicle informs us that, with this object in view,
Abêshu’ dammed the river Tigris, hoping by this means to cut off Iluma-ilu
and his army, but his stratagem did not succeed, and Iluma-ilu got back to
his own territory in safety.
The new chronicle does not supply us with further details of the struggle
between Babylon and the Country of the Sea, but we may conclude that all
similar attempts on the part of the later kings of the First Dynasty to
crush or restrain the power of the new state were useless. It is probable
that from this time forward the kings of the First Dynasty accepted the
independence of the Country of the Sea upon their southern border as an
evil which they were powerless to prevent. They must have looked back with
regret to the good times the country had enjoyed under the powerful sway
of Hammurabi, whose victorious arms even their ancient foes, the Blamites,
had been unable to withstand. But, although the chronicle does not recount
the further successes achieved by the Country of the Sea, it records a
fact which undoubtedly contributed to hasten the fall of Babylon and bring
the First Dynasty to an end. It tells us that in the reign of
Samsu-ditana, the last king of the First Dynasty, the men of the land of
Khattu (the Hittites from Northern Syria) marched against him in order to
conquer the land of Akkad; in other words, they marched down the Euphrates
and invaded Northern Babylonia. The chronicle does not state how far the
invasion was successful, but the appearance of a new enemy from the
northwest must have divided the Babylonian forces and thus have reduced
their power of resisting pressure from the Country of the Sea.
Samsu-ditana may have succeeded in defeating the Hittites and in driving
them from his country; but the fact that he was the last king of the First
Dynasty proves that in his reign Babylon itself fell into the hands of the
king of the Country of the Sea.
The question now arises, To what race did the people of the Country of the
Sea belong? Did they represent an advance-guard of the Kassite tribes, who
eventually succeeded in establishing themselves as the Third Dynasty in
Babylon? Or were they the Elamites who, when driven from Ur and Larsam,
retreated southwards and maintained their independence on the shores of
the Persian Gulf? Or did they represent some fresh wave of Semitic
immigration’? That they were not Kassites is proved by the new chronicle
which relates how the Country of the Sea was conquered by the Kassites,
and how the dynasty founded by Iluma-ilu thus came to an end. There is
nothing to show that they were Elamites, and if the Country of the Sea had
been colonized by fresh Semitic tribes, so far from opposing their kindred
in Babylon, most probably they would have proved to them a source of
additional strength and support. In fact, there are indications that the
people of the Country of the Sea are to be referred to an older stock than
the Elamites, the Semites, or the Kassites. In the dynasty of the Country
of the Sea there is no doubt that we may trace the last successful
struggle of the ancient Sumerians to retain possession of the land which
they had held for so many centuries before the invading Semites had
disputed its possession with them.
Evidence of the Sumerian origin of the kings of the Country of the Sea may
be traced in the names which several of them bear. Ishkibal, Grulkishar,
Peshgal-daramash, A-dara-kalama, Akur-ul-ana, and Melam-kur-kura, the
names of some of them, are all good Sumerian names, and Shushshi, the
brother of Ishkibal, may also be taken as a Sumerian name. It is true that
the first three kings of the dynasty, Iluma-ilu, Itti-ili-nibi, and
Damki-ilishu, and the last king of the dynasty, Ea-gamil, bear Semitic
Babylonian names, but there is evidence that at least one of these is
merely a Semitic rendering of a Sumerian equivalent. Iluma-ilu, the
founder of the dynasty, has left inscriptions in which his name is written
in its correct Sumerian form as Dingir-a-an, and the fact that he and some
of his successors either bore Semitic names or appear in the late list of
kings with their Sumerian names translated into Babylonian form may be
easily explained by supposing that the population of the Country of the
Sea was mixed and that the Sumerian and Semitic tongues were to a great
extent employed indiscriminately. This supposition is not inconsistent
with the suggestion that the dynasty of the Country of the Sea was
Sumerian, and that under it the Sumerians once more became the predominant
race in Babylonia.
The new chronicle also relates how the dynasty of the Country of the Sea
succumbed in its turn before the incursions of the Kassites. We know that
already under the First Dynasty the Kassite tribes had begun to make
incursions into Babylonia, for the ninth year of Samsu-iluna was named in
the date-formulae after a Kassite invasion, which, as it was commemorated
in this manner by the Babylonians, was probably successfully repulsed.
Such invasions must have taken place from time to time during the period
of supremacy attained by the Country of the Sea, and it was undoubtedly
with a view to stopping such incursions—for the future that Ea-gamil—the
last king of the Second Dynasty, decided to invade Elam and conquer the
mountainous districts in which the Kassite tribes had built their
strongholds. This Elamite campaign of Ea-gamil is recorded by the new
chronicle, which relates how he was defeated and driven from the country
by Ulam-Buriash, the brother of Bitiliash the Kassite. Ulam-Buriash did
not rest content with repelling Ea-gamil’s invasion of his land, but
pursued him across the border and succeeded in conquering the Country of
the Sea and in establishing there his own administration. The gradual
conquest of the whole of Babylonia by the Kassites no doubt followed the
conquest of the Country of the Sea, for the chronicle relates how the
process of subjugation, begun by Ulam-Buriash, was continued by his nephew
Agum, and we know from the lists of kings that Ea-gamil was the last king
of the dynasty founded by Iluma-ilu. In this fashion the Second Dynasty
was brought to an end, and the Sumerian element in the mixed population of
Babylonia did not again succeed in gaining control of the government of
the country.
It will be noticed that the account of the earliest Kassite rulers of
Babylonia which is given by the new chronicle does not exactly tally with
the names of the kings of the Third Dynasty as found upon the list of
kings. On this document the first king of the dynasty is named Gandash,
with whom we may probably identify Ulam-Buriash, the Kassite conqueror of
the Country of the Sea; the second king is Agum, and the third is
Bitiliashi. According to the new chronicle Agum was the son of Bitiliashi,
and it would be improbable that he should have ruled in Babylonia before
his father. But this difficulty is removed by supposing that the two names
were transposed by some copyist. The different names assigned to the
founder of the Kassite dynasty may be due to the existence of variant
traditions, or Ulam-Buriash may have assumed another name on his conquest
of Babylonia, a practice which was usual with the later kings of Assyria
when they occupied the Babylonian throne.
The information supplied by the new chronicle with regard to the relations
of the first three dynasties to one another is of the greatest possible
interest to the student of early Babylonian history. We see that the
Semitic empire founded at Babylon by Sumu-abu, and consolidated by
Hammurabi, was not established on so firm a basis as has hitherto been
believed. The later kings of the dynasty, after Elam had been conquered,
had to defend their empire from encroachments on the south, and they
eventually succumbed before the onslaught of the Sumerian element, which
still remained in the population of Babylonia and had rallied in the
Country of the Sea. This dynasty in its turn succumbed before the invasion
of the Kassites from the mountains in the western districts of Elam, and,
although the city of Babylon retained her position as the capital of the
country throughout these changes of government, she was the capital of
rulers of different races, who successively fought for and obtained the
control of the fertile plains of Mesopotamia.
It is probable that the Kassite kings of the Third Dynasty exercised
authority not only over Babylonia but also over the greater part of Elam,
for a number of inscriptions of Kassite kings of Babylonia have been found
by M. de Morgan at Susa. These inscriptions consist of grants of land
written on roughly shaped stone stelæ, a class which the Babylonians
themselves called kudurru, while they have been frequently referred
to by modern writers as “boundary-stones.” This latter term is not very
happily chosen, for it suggests that the actual monuments themselves were
set up on the limits of a field or estate to mark its boundary. It is true
that the inscription on a kudurru enumerates the exact position and size
of the estate with which it is concerned, but the kudurru was never
actually used to mark the boundary. It was preserved as a title-deed, in
the house of the owner of the estate or possibly in the temple of his god,
and formed his charter or title-deed to which he could appeal in case of
any dispute arising as to his right of ownership. One of the kudurrus
found by M. de Morgan records the grant of a number of estates near
Babylon by Nazimaruttash, a king of the Third or Kassite Dynasty, to the
god Marduk, that is to say they were assigned by the king to the service
of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk at Babylon.
All the crops and produce from the land were granted for the supply of the
temple, which was to enjoy the property without the payment of any tax or
tribute. The text also records the gift of considerable tracts of land in
the same district to a private individual named Kashakti-Shugab, who was
to enjoy a similar freedom from taxation so far as the lands bestowed upon
him were concerned.
This freedom from taxation is specially enacted by the document in the
words: “Whensoever in the days that are to come the ruler of the country,
or one of the governors, or directors, or wardens of these districts,
shall make any claim with regard to these estates, or shall attempt to
impose the payment of a tithe or tax upon them, may all the great gods
whose names are commemorated, or whose arms are portrayed, or whose
dwelling-places are represented, on this stone, curse him with an evil
curse and blot out his name!”
Incidentally, this curse illustrates one of the most striking
characteristics of the kudurrus, or “boundary-stones,” viz. the carved
figures of gods and representations of their emblems, which all of them
bare in addition to the texts inscribed upon them. At one time it was
thought that these symbols were to be connected with the signs of the
zodiac and various constellations and stars, and it was suggested that
they might have been intended to represent the relative positions of the
heavenly bodies at the time the document was drawn up. But this text of
Nazimaruttash and other similar documents that have recently been
discovered prove that the presence of the figures and emblems of the gods
upon the stones is to be explained on another and far more simple theory.
They were placed there as guardians of the property to which the kudurru
referred, and it was believed that the carving of their figures or emblems
upon the stone would ensure their intervention in case of any attempted
infringement of the rights and privileges which it was the object of the
document to commemorate and preserve. A photographic reproduction of one
side of the kudurru of Nazi-maruttash is shown in the accompanying
illustration. There will be seen a representation of Gula or Bau, the
mother of the gods, who is portrayed as seated on her throne and wearing
the four-horned head-dress and a long robe that reaches to her feet. In
the field are emblems of the Sun-god, the Moon-god, Ishtar, and other
deities, and the representation of divine emblems and dwelling-places is
continued on another face of the stone round the corner towards which
Grula is looking. The other two faces of the document are taken up with
the inscription.
An interesting note is appended to the text inscribed upon the stone,
beginning under the throne and feet of Marduk and continuing under the
emblems of the gods upon the other side. This note relates the history of
the document in the following words: “In those days Kashakti-Shugab, the
son of Nusku-na’id, inscribed (this document) upon a memorial of clay, and
he set it before his god. But in the reign of Marduk-aplu-iddina, king of
hosts, the son of Melishikhu, King of Babylon, the wall fell upon this
memorial and crushed it. Shu-khuli-Shugab, the son of Nibishiku, wrote a
copy of the ancient text upon a new stone stele, and he set it (before the
god).” It will be seen, therefore, that this actual stone that has been
recovered was not the document drawn up in the reign of Nazimaruttash, but
a copy made under Marduk-aplu-iddina, a later king of the Third Dynasty.
The original deed was drawn up to preserve the rights of Kashakti-Shugab,
who shared the grant of land with the temple of Marduk. His share was less
than half that of the temple, but, as both were situated in the same
district, he was careful to enumerate and describe the temple’s share, to
prevent any encroachment on his rights by the Babylonian priests.
It is probable that such grants of land were made to private individuals
in return for special services which they had rendered to the king. Thus a
broken kudurru among M. de Morgan’s finds records the confirmation of a
man’s claims to certain property by Biti-liash II, the claims being based
on a grant made to the man’s ancestor by Kurigalzu for services rendered
to the king during his war with Assyria. One of the finest specimens of
this class of charters or title-deeds has been found at Susa, dating from
the reign of Melishikhu, a king of the Third Dynasty. The document in
question records a grant of certain property in the district of
Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû, near the cities Agade and Dûr-Kurigalzu, made by
Melishikhu to Marduk-aplu-iddina, his son, who succeeded him upon the
throne of Babylon. The text first gives details with regard to the size
and situation of the estates included in the grant of land, and it states
the names of the high officials who were entrusted with the duty of
measuring them. The remainder of the text defines and secures the
privileges granted to Marduk-aplu-iddina together with the land, and, as
it throws considerable light upon the system of land tenure at the period,
an extract from it may here be translated:
“To prevent the encroachment on his land,” the inscription runs, “thus
hath he (i.e. the king) established his (Marduk-aplu-iddina’s) charter. On
his land taxes and tithes shall they not impose; ditches, limits, and
boundaries shall they not displace; there shall be no plots, stratagems,
or claims (with regard to his possession); for forced labour or public
work for the prevention of floods, for the maintenance and repair of the
royal canal under the protection of the towns of Bit-Sikkamidu and
Damik-Adad, among the gangs levied in the towns of the district of
Ninâ-Agade, they shall not call out the people of his estate; they are not
liable to forced labour on the sluices of the royal canal, nor are they
liable for building dams, nor for closing the canal, nor for digging out
the bed thereof.”
“A cultivator of his lands, whether hired or belonging to the estate, and
the men who receive his instructions (i.e. his overseers) shall no
governor of Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû cause to leave his lands, whether by the
order of the king, or by the order of the governor, or by the order of
whosoever may be at Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû. On wood, grass, straw, corn, and
every other sort of crop, on his carts and yoke, on his ass and
man-servant, shall they make no levy. During the scarcity of water in the
canal running between the Bati-Anzanim canal and the canal of the royal
district, on the waters of his ditch for irrigation shall they make no
levy; from the ditch of his reservoir shall they not draw water, neither
shall they divert (his water for) irrigation, and other land shall they
not irrigate nor water therewith. The grass of his lands shall they not
mow; the beasts belonging to the king or to a governor, which may be
assigned to the district of Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû, shall they not drive
within his boundary, nor shall they pasture them on his grass. He shall
not be forced to build a road or a bridge, whether for the king, or for
the governor who may be appointed in the district of Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû,
neither shall he be liable for any new form of forced labour, which in the
days that are to come a king, or a governor appointed in the district of
Bît-Pir-Shadû-rabû, shall institute and exact, nor for forced labour long
fallen into disuse which may be revived anew. To prevent encroachment on
his land the king hath fixed the privileges of his domain, and that which
appertaineth unto it, and all that he hath granted unto him; and in the
presence of Shamash, and Marduk, and Anunitu, and the great gods of heaven
and earth, he hath inscribed them upon a stone, and he hath left it as an
everlasting memorial with regard to his estate.”
The whole of the text is too long to quote, and it will suffice to note
here that Melishikhu proceeds to appeal to future kings to respect the
land and privileges which he has granted to his son, Marduk-aplu-iddina,
even as he himself has respected similar grants made by his predecessors
on the throne; and the text ends with some very vivid curses against any
one, whatever his station, who should make any encroachments on the
privileges granted to Marduk-aplu-iddina, or should alter or do any harm
to the memorial-stone itself. The emblems of the gods whom Melishikhu
invokes to avenge any infringement of his grant are sculptured upon one
side of the stone, for, as has already been remarked, it was believed that
by carving them upon the memorial-stone their help in guarding the stone
itself and its enactments was assured.
From the portion of the text inscribed upon the stone which has just been
translated it is seen that the owner of land in Babylonia in the period of
the Kassite kings, unless he was granted special exemption, was liable to
furnish forced labour for public works to the state or to his district, to
furnish grazing and pasture for the flocks and herds of the king or
governor, and to pay various taxes and tithes on his land, his water for
irrigation, and his crops. From the numerous documents of the First
Dynasty of Babylon that have been recovered and published within the last
few years we know that similar customs were prevalent at that period, so
that it is clear that the successive conquests to which the country was
subjected, and the establishment of different dynasties of foreign kings
at Babylon, did not to any appreciable extent affect the life and customs
of the inhabitants of the country or even the general character of its
government and administration. Some documents of a commercial and legal
nature, inscribed upon clay tablets during the reigns of the Kassite kings
of Babylon, have been found at Nippur, but they have not yet been
published, and the information we possess concerning the life of the
people in this period is obtained indirectly from kudurrus or
boundary-stones, such as those of Nazimaruttash and Melishikhu which have
been already described. Of documents relating to the life of the people
under the rule of the kings of the Country of the Sea we have none, and,
with the exception of the unpublished chronicle which has been described
earlier in this chapter, our information for this period is confined to
one or two short votive inscriptions. But the case is very different with
regard to the reigns of the Semitic kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon.
Thousands of tablets relating to legal and commercial transactions during
this period have been recovered, and more recently a most valuable series
of royal letters, written by Hammurabi and other kings of his dynasty, has
been brought to light.
The stele is inscribed with his great code of laws. The Sun-
god is represented as seated on a throne in the form of a
temple façade, and his feet are resting upon the mountains.
Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
Moreover, the recently discovered code of laws drawn up by Hammurabi
contains information of the greatest interest with regard to the
conditions of life that were prevalent in Babylonia at that period. From
these three sources it is possible to draw up a comparatively full account
of early Babylonian life and customs.
CHAPTER VI—EARLY BABYLONIAN LIFE AND CUSTOMS
In tracing the ancient history of Mesopotamia and the surrounding
countries it is possible to construct a narrative which has the appearance
of being comparatively full and complete. With regard to Babylonia it may
be shown how dynasty succeeded dynasty, and for long periods together the
names of the kings have been recovered and the order of their succession
fixed with certainty. But the number and importance of the original
documents on which this connected narration is based vary enormously for
different periods. Gaps occur in our knowledge of the sequence of events,
which with some ingenuity may be bridged over by means of the native lists
of kings and the genealogies furnished by the historical inscriptions. On
the other hand, as if to make up for such parsimony, the excavations have
yielded a wealth of material for illustrating the conditions of early
Babylonian life which prevailed in such periods. The most fortunate of
these periods, so far as the recovery of its records is concerned, is
undoubtedly the period of the Semitic kings of the First Dynasty of
Babylon, and in particular the reign of its greatest ruler, Hammurabi.
When M. Maspero wrote his history, thousands of clay tablets, inscribed
with legal and commercial documents and dated in the reigns of these early
kings, had already been recovered, and the information they furnished was
duly summarized by him.[1] But since that time two other sources of
information have been made available which have largely increased our
knowledge of the constitution of the early Babylonian state, its system of
administration, and the conditions of life of the various classes of the
population.
[1]
Most of these tablets are preserved in the British Museum.
The principal?works in which they have been published are
Cuneiform Texts in the British Museum (1896, etc.),
Strassmaier’s Altbabylonischen Vertràge aus Warka, and
Meissner’s Beitràge zum altbabylonischen Privatrecht. A
number of similar tablets of this period, preserved in the
Pennsylvania Museum, will shortly be published by Dr. Ranke.
One of these new sources of information consists of a remarkable series of
royal letters, written by kings of the First Dynasty, which has been
recovered and is now preserved in the British Museum. The letters were
addressed to the governors and high officials of various great cities in
Babylonia, and they contain the king’s orders with regard to details of
the administration of the country which had been brought to his notice.
The range of subjects with which they deal is enormous, and there is
scarcely one of them which does not add to our knowledge of the period.[2]
The other new source of information is the great code of laws, drawn up by
Hammurabi for the guidance of his people and defining the duties and
privileges of all classes of his subjects, the discovery of which at Susa
has been described in a previous chapter. The laws are engraved on a great
stele of diorite in no less than forty-nine columns of writing, of which
forty-four are preserved,[3] and at the head of the stele is sculptured a
representation of the king receiving them from Shamash, the Sun-god.
[2]
See King, Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi, 3 vols.
(1898-1900).
[3]
See Scheil, Délégationen perse, Mémoires, tome iv (1902).
This code shows to what an extent the administration of law and justice
had been developed in Babylonia in the time of the First Dynasty. From the
contracts and letters of the period we already knew that regular judges
and duly appointed courts of law were in existence, and the code itself
was evidently intended by the king to give the royal sanction to a great
body of legal decisions and enactments which already possessed the
authority conferred by custom and tradition. The means by which such a
code could have come into existence are illustrated by the system of
procedure adopted in the courts at this period. After a case had been
heard and judgment had been given, a summary of the case and of the
evidence, together with the judgment, was drawn up and written out on
tablets in due legal form and phraseology. A list of the witnesses was
appended, and, after the tablet had been dated and sealed, it was stored
away among the legal archives of the court, where it was ready for
production in the event of any future appeal or case in which the recorded
decision was involved. This procedure represents an advanced stage in the
system of judicial administration, but the care which was taken for the
preservation of the judgments given was evidently traditional, and would
naturally give rise in course of time to the existence of a recognized
code of laws.
Moreover, when once a judgment had been given and had been duly recorded
it was irrevocable, and if any judge attempted to alter such a decision he
was severely punished. For not only was he expelled from his
judgment-seat, and debarred from exercising judicial functions in the
future, but, if his judgment had involved the infliction of a penalty, he
was obliged to pay twelve times the amount to the man he had condemned.
Such an enactment must have occasionally given rise to hardship or
injustice, but at least it must have had the effect of imbuing the judges
with a sense of their responsibility and of instilling a respect for their
decisions in the minds of the people. A further check upon injustice was
provided by the custom of the elders of the city, who sat with the judge
and assisted him in the carrying out of his duties; and it was always open
to a man, if he believed that he could not get justice enforced, to make
an appeal to the king. It is not our present purpose to give a technical
discussion of the legal contents of the code, but rather to examine it
with the object of ascertaining what light it throws upon ancient
Babylonian life and customs, and the conditions under which the people
lived.
The code gives a good deal of information with regard to the family life
of the Babylonians, and, above all, proves the sanctity with which the
marriage-tie was invested. The claims that were involved by marriage were
not lightly undertaken. Any marriage, to be legally binding, had to be
accompanied by a duly executed and attested marriage-contract. If a man
had taken a woman to wife without having carried out this necessary
preliminary, the woman was not regarded as his wife in the legal sense. On
the other hand, when once such a marriage-contract had been drawn up, its
inviolability was stringently secured. A case of proved adultery on the
part of a man’s wife was punished by the drowning of the guilty parties,
though the husband of the woman, if he wished to save his wife, could do
so by an appeal to the king. Similarly, death was the penalty for a man
who ravished another man’s betrothed wife while she was still living in
her father’s house, but in this case the girl’s innocence and inexperience
were taken into account, and no penalty was enforced against her and she
was allowed to go free. Where the adultery of a wife was not proved, and
only depended on the accusation of the husband, the woman could clear
herself by swearing her own innocence; if, however, the accusation was not
brought by the husband himself, but by others, the woman could clear
herself by submitting to the ordeal by water; that is to say, she would
plunge into the Euphrates; if the river carried her away and she were
drowned, it was regarded as proof that the accusation was well founded;
if, on the contrary, she survived and got safely to the bank, she was
considered innocent and was forthwith allowed to return to her household
completely vindicated.
It will have been seen that the duty of chastity on the part of a married
woman was strictly enforced, but the husband’s responsibility to properly
maintain his wife was also recognized, and in the event of his desertion
she could under certain circumstances become the wife of another man.
Thus, if he left his city and fled from it of his own free will and
deserted his wife, he could not reclaim her on his return, since he had
not been forced to leave the city, but had done so because he hated it.
This rule did not apply to the case of a man who was taken captive in
battle. In such circumstances the wife’s action was to be guided by the
condition of her husband’s affairs. If the captive husband possessed
sufficient property on which his wife could be maintained during his
captivity in a strange land, she had no reason nor excuse for seeking
another marriage. If under these circumstances she became another man’s
wife, she was to be prosecuted at law, and, her action being the
equivalent of adultery, she was to be drowned. But the case was regarded
as altered if the captive husband had not sufficient means for the
maintenance of his wife during his absence. The woman would then be thrown
on her own resources, and if she became the wife of another man she
incurred no blame. On the return of the captive he could reclaim his wife,
but the children of the second marriage would remain with their own
father. These regulations for the conduct of a woman, whose husband was
captured in battle, give an intimate picture of the manner in which the
constant wars of this early period affected the lives of those who took
part in them.
Under the Babylonians at the period of the First Dynasty divorce was
strictly regulated, though it was far easier for the man to obtain one
than for the woman. If we may regard the copies of Sumerian laws, which
have come down to us from the late Assyrian period, as parts of the code
in use under the early Sumerians, we must conclude that at this earlier
period the law was still more in favour of the husband, who could divorce
his wife whenever he so desired, merely paying her half a mana as
compensation. Under the Sumerians the wife could not obtain a divorce at
all, and the penalty for denying her husband was death. These regulations
were modified in favour of the woman in Hammurabi’s code; for under its
provisions, if a man divorced his wife or his concubine, he was obliged to
make proper provision for her maintenance. Whether she were barren or had
borne him children, he was obliged to return her marriage portion; and in
the latter case she had the custody of the children, for whose maintenance
and education he was obliged to furnish the necessary supplies. Moreover,
at the man’s death she and her children would inherit a share of his
property. When there had been no marriage portion, a sum was fixed which
the husband was obliged to pay to his divorced wife, according to his
status. In cases where the wife was proved to have wasted her household
and to have entirely failed in her duty, her husband could divorce her
without paying any compensation, or could make her a slave in his house,
and the extreme penalty for this offence was death. On the other hand, a
woman could not be divorced because she had contracted a permanent
disease; and, if she desired to divorce her husband and could prove that
her past life had been seemly, she could do so, returning to her father’s
house and taking her marriage portion with her.
It is not necessary here to go very minutely into the regulations given by
the code with regard to marriage portions, the rights of widows, the laws
of inheritance, and the laws regulating the adoption and maintenance of
children. The customs that already have been described with regard to
marriage and divorce may serve to indicate the spirit in which the code is
drawn up and the recognized status occupied by the wife in the Babylonian
household. The extremely independent position enjoyed by women in the
early Babylonian days is illustrated by the existence of a special class
of women, to which constant reference is made in the contracts and letters
of the period. When the existence of this class of women was first
recognized from the references to them in the contract-tablets inscribed
at the time of the First Dynasty, they were regarded as priestesses, but
the regulations concerning them which occur in the code of Hammurabi prove
that their duties were not strictly sacerdotal, but that they occupied the
position of votaries. The majority of those referred to in the
inscriptions of this period were vowed to the service of E-bab-bara, the
temple of the Sun-god at Sippara, and of E-sagila, the great temple of
Marduk at Babylon, but it is probable that all the great temples in the
country had classes of female votaries attached to them. From the evidence
at present available it may be concluded that the functions of these women
bore no resemblance to that of the sacred prostitutes devoted to the
service of the goddess Ishtar in the city of Erech. They seem to have
occupied a position of great influence and independence in the community,
and their duties and privileges were defined and safeguarded by special
legislation.
Generally they lived together in a special building, or convent, attached
to the temple, but they had considerable freedom and could leave the
convent and also contract marriage. Their vows, however, while securing
them special privileges, entailed corresponding responsibilities. Even
when married a votary was still obliged to remain a virgin, and, should
her husband desire to have children, she could not bear them herself, but
must provide him with a maid or concubine. Also she had to maintain a high
standard of moral conduct, for any breach of which severe penalties were
enforced. Thus, if a votary who was not living in the convent opened a
beer-shop, or should enter one for drink, she ran the risk of being put to
death. But the privileges she enjoyed were also considerable, for even
when unmarried she enjoyed the status of a married woman, and if any man
slandered her he incurred the penalty of branding on the forehead.
Moreover, a married votary, though she could not bear her husband
children, was secured in her position as the permanent head of his
household. The concubine she might give to her husband was always the
wife’s inferior, even after bearing him children, and should the former
attempt to put herself on a level of equality with the votary, the latter
might brand her as a slave and put her with the female slaves. If the
concubine proved barren she could be sold. The votary could also possess
property, and on taking her vows was provided with a portion by her father
exactly as though she were being given in marriage. Her portion was vested
in herself and did not become the property of the order of votaries, nor
of the temple to which she was attached. The proceeds of her property were
devoted to her own maintenance, and on her father’s death her brothers
looked after her interests, or she might farm the property out. Under
certain circumstances she could inherit property and was not obliged to
pay taxes on it, and such property she could bequeath at her own death;
but upon her death her portion returned to her own family unless her
father had assigned her the privilege of bequeathing it. That the social
position enjoyed by a votary was considerable is proved by the fact that
many women of good family, and even members of the royal house, took vows.
The existence of the order and its high repute indicate a very advanced
conception of the position of women among the early Babylonians.
From the code of Hammurabi we also gather considerable information with
regard to the various classes of which the community was composed and to
their relative social positions. For the purposes of legislation the
community was divided into three main classes or sections, which
corresponded to well-defined strata in the social system. The lowest of
these classes consisted of the slaves, who must have formed a considerable
portion of the population. The class next above them comprised the large
body of free men, who were possessed of a certain amount of property but
were poor and humble, as their name, muslikênu, implied. These we
may refer to as the middle class. The highest, or upper class, in the
Babylonian community embraced all the officers and ministers attached to
the court, the higher officials and servants of the state, and the owners
of considerable lands and estates. The differences which divided and
marked off from one another the two great classes of free men in the
population of Babylonia is well illustrated by the scale of payments as
compensation for injury which they were obliged to make or were entitled
to receive. Thus, if a member of the upper class were guilty of stealing
an ox, or a sheep, or an ass, or a pig, or a boat, from a temple or a
private house, he had to pay the owner thirty times its value as
compensation, whereas if the thief were a member of the middle class he
only had to pay ten times its price, but if he had no property and so
could not pay compensation he was put to death. The penalty for
manslaughter was less if the assailant was a man of the middle class, and
such a man could also divorce his wife more cheaply, and was privileged to
pay his doctor or surgeon a smaller fee for a successful operation.
But the privileges enjoyed by a man of the middle class were
counterbalanced by a corresponding diminution of the value at which his
life and limbs were assessed. Thus, if a doctor by carrying out an
operation unskilfully caused the death of a member of the upper class, or
inflicted a serious injury upon him, such as the loss of an eye, the
punishment was the amputation of both hands, but no such penalty seems to
have been exacted if the patient were a member of the middle class. If,
however, the patient were a slave of a member of the middle class, in the
event of death under the operation, the doctor had to give the owner
another slave, and in the event of the slave losing his eye, he had to pay
the owner half the slave’s value. Penalties for assault were also
regulated in accordance with the social position and standing of the
parties to the quarrel. Thus, if one member of the upper class knocked out
the eye or the tooth of one of his equals, his own eye or his own tooth
was knocked out as a punishment, and if he broke the limb of one of the
members of his own class, he had his corresponding limb broken; but if he
knocked out the eye of a member of the middle class, or broke his limb, he
suffered no punishment in his own person, but was fined one mana of
silver, and for knocking out the tooth of such a man he was fined
one-third of a mana. If two members of the same class were engaged in a
quarrel, and one of them made a peculiarly improper assault upon the
other, the assailant was only fined, the fine being larger if the quarrel
was between members of the upper class. But if such an assault was made by
one man upon another who was of higher rank than himself, the assailant
was punished by being publicly beaten in the presence of the assembly,
when he received sixty stripes from a scourge of ox-hide. These
regulations show the privileges and responsibilities which pertained to
the two classes of free men in the Babylonian community, and they indicate
the relative social positions which they enjoyed.
Both classes of free men could own slaves, though it is obvious that they
were more numerous in the households and on the estates of members of the
upper class. The slave was the absolute property of his master and could
be bought and sold and employed as a deposit for a debt, but, though
slaves as a class had few rights of their own, in certain circumstances
they could acquire them. Thus, if the owner of a female slave had begotten
children by her he could not use her as the payment for a debt, and in the
event of his having done so he was obliged to ransom her by paying the
original amount of the debt in money. It was also possible for a male
slave, whether owned by a member of the upper or of the middle class, to
marry a free woman, and if he did so, his children were free and did not
become the property of his master. Also, if the free woman whom the slave
married brought with her a marriage portion from her father’s house, this
remained her own property on the slave’s death, and supposing the couple
had acquired other property during the time they lived together as man and
wife, the owner of the slave could only claim half of such property, the
other half being retained by the free woman for her own use and for that
of her children.
Generally speaking, the lot of the slave was not a particularly hard one,
for he was a recognized member of his owner’s household, and, as a
valuable piece of property, it was obviously to his owner’s interest to
keep him healthy and in good condition. In fact, the value of the slave is
attested by the severity of the penalty imposed for abducting a male or
female slave from the owner’s house and removing him or her from the city;
for a man guilty of this offence was put to death. The same penalty was
imposed for harbouring and taking possession of a runaway slave, whereas a
fixed reward was paid by the owner to any one by whom a runaway slave was
captured and brought back. Special legislation was also devised with the
object of rendering the theft of slaves difficult and their detection
easy. Thus, if a brander put a mark upon a slave without the owner’s
consent, he was liable to have his hands cut off, and if he could prove
that he did so through being deceived by another man, that man was put to
death. For bad offences slaves were liable to severe punishments, such as
cutting off the ear, which was the penalty for denying his master, and
also for making an aggravated assault on a member of the upper class of
free men. But it is clear that on the whole the slave was well looked
after. He was also not condemned to remain perpetually a slave, for while
still in his master’s service it was possible for him, under certain
conditions, to acquire property of his own, and if he did so he was able
with his master’s consent to purchase his freedom. If a slave were
captured by the enemy and taken to a foreign land and sold, and were then
brought back by his new owner to his own country, he could claim his
liberty without having to pay any purchase-money to either of his masters.
The code of Hammurabi also contains detailed regulations concerning the
duties of debtors and creditors, and it throws an interesting light on the
commercial life of the Babylonians at this early period. For instance, it
reveals the method by which a wealthy man, or a merchant, extended his
business and obtained large profits by trading with other towns. This he
did by employing agents who were under certain fixed obligations to him,
but acted independently so far as their trading was concerned. From the
merchant these agents would receive money or grain or wool or oil or any
sort of goods wherewith to trade, and in return they paid a fixed share of
their profits, retaining the remainder as the recompense for their own
services. They were thus the earliest of commercial travellers. In order
to prevent fraud between the merchant and the agent special regulations
were framed for the dealings they had with one another. Thus, when the
agent received from the merchant the money or goods to trade with, it was
enacted that he should at the time of the transaction give a properly
executed receipt for the amount he had received. Similarly, if the agent
gave the merchant money in return for the goods he had received and in
token of his good faith, the merchant had to give a receipt to the agent,
and in reckoning their accounts after the agent’s return from his journey,
only such amounts as were specified in the receipts were to be regarded as
legal obligations. If the agent forgot to obtain his proper receipt he did
so at his own risk.
Dating from the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon.
Travelling at this period was attended with some risk, as it is in the
East at the present day, and the caravan with which an agent travelled was
liable to attack from brigands, or it might be captured by enemies of the
country from which it set out. It was right that loss from this cause
should not be borne by the agent, who by trading with the goods was
risking his own life, but should fall upon the merchant who had merely
advanced the goods and was safe in his own city. It is plain, however,
that disputes frequently arose in consequence of the loss of goods through
a caravan being attacked and robbed, for the code states clearly the
responsibility of the merchant in the matter. If in the course of his
journey an enemy had forced the agent to give up some of the goods he was
carrying, on his return the agent had to specify the amount on oath, and
he was then acquitted of all responsibility in the matter. If he attempted
to cheat his employer by misappropriating the money or goods advanced to
him, on being convicted of the offence before the elders of the city, he
was obliged to repay the merchant three times the amount he had taken. On
the other hand, if the merchant attempted to defraud his agent by denying
that the due amount had been returned to him, he was obliged on conviction
to pay the agent six times the amount as compensation. It will thus be
seen that the law sought to protect the agent from the risk of being
robbed by his more powerful employer.
The merchant sometimes furnished the agent with goods which he was to
dispose of in the best markets he could find in the cities and towns along
his route, and sometimes he would give the agent money with which to
purchase goods in foreign cities for sale on his return. If the venture
proved successful the merchant and his agent shared the profits between
them, but if the agent made bad bargains he had to refund to the merchant
the value of the goods he had received; if the merchant had not agreed to
risk losing any profit, the amount to be refunded to him was fixed at
double the value of the goods advanced.
This last enactment gives an indication of the immense profits which were
obtained by both the merchant and the agent from this system of foreign
trade, for it is clear that what was regarded fair profit for the merchant
was double the value of the goods disposed of. The profits of a successful
journey would also include a fair return to the agent for the trouble and
time involved in his undertaking. Many of the contract tablets of this
early period relate to such commercial journeys, which show that various
bargains were made between the different parties interested, and sometimes
such contracts, or partnerships, were entered into, not for a single
journey only, but for long periods. We may therefore conclude that at the
time of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and probably for long centuries
before that period, the great trade-routes of the East were crowded with
traffic. With the exception that donkeys and asses were employed for
beasts of burden and were not supplemented by horses and camels until a
much later period, a camping-ground in the desert on one of the great
trade-routes must have presented a scene similar to that of a caravan
camping in the desert at the present day.
The rough tracks beaten by the feet of men and beasts are the same to-day
as they were in that remote period. We can imagine a body of these early
travellers approaching a walled city at dusk and hastening their pace to
get there before the gates were shut. Such a picture as that of the
approach to the city of Samarra, with its mediaeval walls, may be taken as
having had its counterpart in many a city of the early Babylonians. The
caravan route leads through the desert to the city gate, and if we
substitute two massive temple towers for the domes of the mosques that
rise above the wall, little else in the picture need be changed.
A small caravan is here seen approaching the city at sunset
before the gates are shut. Samarra was only founded in A. D.
834, by the Khalif el-Motasim, the son of Harûn er-Rashîd,
but customs in the East do not change, and the photograph
may be used to illustrate the approach of an early
Babylonian caravan to a walled city of the period.
The houses, too, at this period must have resembled the structures of
unburnt brick of the present day, with their flat mud tops, on which the
inmates sleep at night during the hot season, supported on poles and
brushwood. The code furnishes evidence that at that time, also, the houses
were not particularly well built and were liable to fall, and, in the
event of their doing so, it very justly fixes the responsibility upon the
builder. It is clear from the penalties for bad workmanship enforced upon
the builder that considerable abuses had existed in the trade before the
time of Hammurabi, and it is not improbable that the enforcement of the
penalties succeeded in stamping them out. Thus, if a builder built a house
for a man, and his work was not sound and the house fell and crushed the
owner so that he died, it was enacted that the builder himself should be
put to death. If the fall of the house killed the owner’s son, the
builder’s own son was to be put to death.
If one or more of the owner’s slaves were killed, the builder had to
restore him slave for slave. Any damage which the owner’s goods might have
suffered from the fall of the house was to be made good by the builder. In
addition to these penalties the builder was obliged to rebuild the house,
or any portion of it that had fallen through not being properly secured,
at his own cost. On the other hand, due provisions were made for the
payment of the builder for sound work; and as the houses of the period
rarely, if ever, consisted of more than one story, the scale of payment
was fixed by the area of ground covered by the building.
Situated on the right bank of the Tigris opposite the mounds
which mark the site of the ancient city of Nineveh. The
flat-roof ednouses which may be distinguished in the
photograph are very similar in form and construction to
those employed by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians.
From the code of Hammurabi we also gain considerable information with
regard to agricultural pursuits in ancient Babylonia, for elaborate
regulations are given concerning the landowner’s duties and
responsibilities, and his relations to his tenants. The usual practice in
hiring land for cultivation was for the tenant to pay his rent in kind, by
assigning a certain proportion of the crop, generally a third or a half,
to the owner. If a tenant hired certain land for cultivation he was bound
to till it and raise a crop, and should he neglect to do so he had to pay
the owner what was reckoned as the average rent of the land, and he had
also to break up the land and plough it before handing it back. As the
rent of a field was usually reckoned at harvest, and its amount depended
on the size of the crop, it was only fair that damage to the crop from
flood or storm should not be made up by the tenant; thus it was enacted by
the code that any loss from such a cause should be shared equally by the
owner of the field and the farmer, though if the latter had already paid
his rent at the time the damage occurred he could not make a claim for
repayment.
Built on one of the mounds marking the site of the Assyrian
city of Nineveh. The mosque in the photograph is built over
the traditional site of the prophet Jonah’s tomb. The flat-
roofed houses of the modern dwellers on the mound can be
well seen in the picture.
It is clear from the enactments of the code that disputes were frequent,
not only between farmers and landowners, but also between farmers and
shepherds. It is certain that the latter, in the attempt to find pasture
for the flocks, often allowed their sheep to feed off the farmers’ fields
in the spring. This practice the code set itself to prevent by fixing a
scale of compensation to be paid by any shepherd who caused his sheep to
graze on cultivated land without the owner’s consent. If the offence was
committed in the early spring, when the crop was still small, the farmer
was to harvest the crop and receive a considerable price in kind as
compensation for the shepherd. But if it occurred later on in the spring,
when the sheep had been brought in from the meadows and turned into the
great common field at the city gate, the offence would less probably be
due to accident and the damage to the crop would be greater. In these
circumstances the shepherd had to take over the crop and pay the farmer
very heavily for his loss.
From a stone slab in the British Museum.
The planting of gardens and orchards was encouraged, and a man was allowed
to use a field for this purpose without paying a yearly rent. He might
plant it and tend it for four years, and in the fifth year of his tenancy
the original owner of the field took half of the garden in payment, while
the other half the planter of the garden kept for himself. If a bare patch
had been left in the garden it was to be reckoned in the planter’s half.
Regulations were framed to ensure the proper carrying out of the planting,
for if the tenant neglected to do this during the first four years, he was
still liable to plant the plot he had taken without receiving his half,
and he had to pay the owner compensation in addition, which varied in
amount according to the original condition of the land. If a man hired a
garden, the rent he paid to the owner was fixed at two-thirds of its
produce. Detailed regulations are also given in the code concerning the
hire of cattle and asses, and the compensation to be paid to the owner for
the loss or ill-treatment of his beasts. These are framed on the just
principle that the hirer was responsible only for damage or loss which he
could have reasonably prevented. Thus, if a lion killed a hired ox or ass
in the open country, or if an ox was killed by lightning, the loss fell
upon the owner and not on the man who hired the beast. But if the hirer
killed the ox through carelessness or by beating it unmercifully, or if
the beast broke its leg while in his charge, he had to restore another ox
to the owner in place of the one he had hired. For lesser damages to the
beast the hirer had to pay compensation on a fixed scale. Thus, if the ox
had its eye knocked out during the period of its hire, the man who hired
it had to pay to the owner half its value; while for a broken horn, the
loss of the tail, or a torn muzzle, he paid a quarter of the value of the
beast.
Fines were also levied for carelessness in looking after cattle, though in
cases of damage or injury, where carelessness could not be proved, the
owner of a beast was not held responsible. A bull might go wild at any
time and gore a man, however careful and conscientious the owner might be,
and in these circumstances the injured man could not bring an action
against the owner. But if a bull had already gored a man, and, although it
was known to be vicious, the owner had not blunted its horns or shut it
up, in the event of its goring and killing a free man, he had to pay half
a mana of silver. One-third of a mana was the price paid for a slave who
was killed. A landed proprietor who might hire farmers to cultivate his
fields inflicted severe fines for acts of dishonesty with regard to the
cattle, provender, or seed-corn committed to their charge. If a man stole
the provender for the cattle he had to make it good, and he was also
liable to the punishment of having his hands cut off. In the event of his
being convicted of letting out the oxen for hire, or stealing the
seed-corn so that he did not produce a crop, he had to pay very heavy
compensation, and, if he could not pay, he was liable to be torn to pieces
by the oxen in the field he should have cultivated.
In a dry land like Babylonia, where little rain falls and that in only one
season of the year, the irrigation of his fields forms one of the most
important duties of the agriculturist. The farmer leads the water to his
fields along small irrigation-canals or channels above the level of the
soil, their sides being formed of banks of earth. It is clear that similar
methods were employed by the early Babylonians. One such channel might
supply the fields of several farmers, and it was the duty of each man
through whose land the channel flowed to keep its banks on his land in
repair. If he omitted to strengthen his bank or dyke, and the water forced
a breach and flooded his neighbour’s field, he had to pay compensation in
kind for any crop that was ruined; while if he could not pay, he and his
goods were sold, and his neighbours, whose fields had been damaged through
his carelessness, shared the money.
The land of Babylonian farmers was prepared for irrigation before it was
sown by being divided into a number of small square or oblong tracts, each
separated from the others by a low bank of earth, the seed being
afterwards sown within the small squares or patches. Some of the banks
running lengthwise through the field were made into small channels, the
ends of which were carried up to the bank of the nearest main irrigation
canal. No system of gates or sluices was employed, and when the farmer
wished to water one of his fields he simply broke away the bank opposite
one of his small channels and let the water flow into it. He would let the
water run along this small channel until it reached the part of his land
he wished to water. He then blocked the channel with a little earth, at
the same time breaking down its bank so that the water flowed over one of
the small squares and thoroughly soaked it. When this square was finished
he filled up the bank and repeated the process for the next square, and so
on until he had watered the necessary portion of the field. When this was
finished he returned to the main channel and stopped the flow of the water
by blocking up the hole he had made in the dyke. The whole process was,
and to-day still is, extremely simple, but it needs care and vigilance,
especially in the case of extensive irrigation when water is being carried
into several parts of an estate at once. It will be obvious that any
carelessness on the part of the irrigator in not shutting off the water in
time may lead to extensive damage, not only to his own fields, but to
those of his neighbours. In the early Babylonian period, if a farmer left
the water running in his channel, and it flooded his neighbour’s field and
hurt his crop, he had to pay compensation according to the amount of
damage done.
It was stated above that the irrigation-canals and little channels were
made above the level of the soil so that the water could at any point be
tapped and allowed to flow over the surrounding land; and in a flat
country like Babylonia it will be obvious that some means had to be
employed for raising the water from its natural level to the higher level
of the land. As we should expect, reference is made in the Babylonian
inscriptions to irrigation-machines, and, although their exact form and
construction are not described, they must have been very similar to those
employed at the present day. The modern inhabitants of Mesopotamia employ
four sorts of contrivances for raising the water into their
irrigation-channels; three of these are quite primitive, and are those
most commonly employed. The method which gives the least trouble and which
is used wherever the conditions allow is a primitive form of water-wheel.
This can be used only in a river with a good current. The wheel is formed
of rough boughs and branches nailed together, with spokes joining the
outer rims to a roughly hewn axle. A row of rough earthenware cups or
bottles are tied round the outer rim for picking up the water, and a few
rough paddles are fixed so that they stick out beyond the rim. The wheel
is then fixed in place near the bank of the river, its axle resting in
pillars of rough masonry.
As the current turns the wheel, the bottles on the rim dip below the
surface and are raised up full. At the top of the wheel is fixed a trough
made by hollowing half the trunk of a date-palm, and into this the bottles
pour their water, which is conducted from the trough by means of a small
aqueduct into the irrigation-channel on the bank.
The convenience of the water-wheel will be obvious, for the water is
raised without the labour of man or beast, and a constant supply is
secured day and night so long as the current is strong enough to turn the
wheel. The water can be cut off by blocking the wheel or tying it up.
These wheels are most common on the Euphrates, and are usually set up
where there is a slight drop in the river bed and the water runs swiftly
over shallows. As the banks are very high, the wheels are necessarily huge
contrivances in order to reach the level of the fields, and their very
rough construction causes them to creak and groan as they turn with the
current. In a convenient place in the river several of these are sometimes
set up side by side, and the noise of their combined creakings can be
heard from a great distance. Some idea of what one of these machines looks
like can be obtained from the illustration. At Hit on the Euphrates a line
of gigantic water-wheels is built across the river, and the noise they
make is extraordinary.
Where there is no current to turn one of these wheels, or where the bank
is too high, the water must be raised by the labour of man or beast. The
commonest method, which is the one employed generally on the Tigris, is to
raise it in skins, which are drawn up by horses, donkeys, or cattle. A
recess with perpendicular sides is cut into the bank, and a wooden spindle
on wooden struts is supported horizontally over the recess. A rope running
over the spindle is fastened to the skin, while the funnel end of the skin
is held up by a second rope, running over a lower spindle, until its mouth
is opposite the trough into which the water is to be poured. The beasts
which are employed for raising the skin are fastened to the ends of the
ropes, and they get a good purchase for their pull by being driven down a
short cutting or inclined plane in the bank. To get a constant flow of
water, two skins are usually employed, and as one is drawn up full the
other is let down empty.
The third primitive method of raising water, which is commoner in Egypt
than in Mesopotamia at the present day, is the shadduf, and is
worked by hand. It consists of a beam supported in the centre, at one end
of which is tied a rope with a bucket or vessel for raising the water, and
at the other end is fixed a counterweight.[4] On an Assyrian bas-relief
found at Kuyunjik are representations of the shadduf in operation, two of
them being used, the one above the other, to raise the water to successive
levels. These were probably the contrivances usually employed by the early
Babylonians for raising the water to the level of their fields, and the
fact that they were light and easily removed must have made them tempting
objects to the dishonest farmer. Hammurabi therefore fixed a scale of
compensation to be paid to the owner by a detected thief, which varied
according to the class and value of the machine he stole. The rivers and
larger canals of Babylonia were used by the ancient inhabitants not only
for the irrigation of their fields, but also as waterways for the
transport of heavy materials. The recently published letters of Hammurabi
and Abêshu’ contain directions for the transportation of corn, dates,
sesame seed, and wood, which were ordered to be brought in ships to
Babylon, and the code of Hammurabi refers to the transportation by water
of wool and oil. It is therefore clear that at this period considerable
use was made of vessels of different size for conveying supplies in bulk
by water. The method by which the size of such ships and barges was
reckoned was based on the amount of grain they were capable of carrying,
and this was measured by the gur, the largest measure of capacity.
Thus mention is made in the inscriptions of vessels of five, ten, fifteen,
twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, and seventy-five gur capacity. A
boat-builder’s fee for building a vessel of sixty gur was fixed at two
shekels of silver, and it was proportionately less for boats of smaller
capacity. To ensure that the boat-builder should not scamp his work,
regulations were drawn up to fix on him the responsibility for unsound
work. Thus if a boat-builder were employed to build a vessel, and he put
faulty work into its construction so that it developed defects within a
year of its being launched, he was obliged to strengthen and rebuild it at
his own expense.
[4]
The fourth class of machine for raising water employed in
Mesopotamia at the present day consists of an endless chain
of iron buckets running over a wheel. This is geared by
means of rough wooden cogs to a horizontal wheel, the
spindle of which has long poles fixed to it, to which horses
or cattle are harnessed. The beasts go round in a circle and
so turn the machine. The contrivance is not so primitive as
the three described above, and the iron buckets are of
European importation.
The hire of a boatman was fixed at six gur of corn to be paid him yearly,
but it is clear that some of the larger vessels carried crews commanded by
a chief boatman, or captain, whose pay was probably on a larger scale. If
a man let his boat to a boatman, the latter was responsible for losing or
sinking it, and he had to replace it. A boatman was also responsible for
the safety of his vessel and of any goods, such as corn, wool, oil, or
dates, which he had been hired to transport, and if they were sunk through
his carelessness he had to make good the loss. If he succeeded in
refloating the boat after it had been sunk, he was only under obligation
to pay the owner half its value in compensation for the damage it had
sustained. In the case of a collision between two vessels, if one was at
anchor at the time, the owner of the other vessel had to pay compensation
for the boat that was sunk and its cargo, the owner of the latter
estimating on oath the value of what had been sunk. Boats were also
employed as ferries, and they must have resembled the primitive form of
ferry-boat in use at the present day, which is heavily built of huge
timbers, and employed for transporting beasts as well as men across a
river.
Employed for ferrying caravans across the river.
There is evidence that under the Assyrians rafts floated on inflated skins
were employed for the transport of heavy goods, and these have survived in
the keleks of the present day. They are specially adapted for the
transportation of heavy materials, for they are carried down by the
current, and are kept in the course by means of huge sweeps or oars. Being
formed only of logs of wood and skins, they are not costly, for wood is
plentiful in the upper reaches of the rivers. At the end of their journey,
after the goods are landed, they are broken up. The wood is sold at a
profit, and the skins, after being deflated, are packed on to donkeys to
return by caravan.
It is not improbable that such rafts were employed on the Tigris and the
Euphrates from the earliest periods of Chaldæan history, though boats
would have been used on the canals and more sluggish waterways.
In the preceding pages we have given a sketch of the more striking aspects
of early Babylonian life, on which light has been thrown by recently
discovered documents belonging to the period of the First Dynasty of
Babylon. We have seen that, in the code of laws drawn up by Hammurabi,
regulations were framed for settling disputes and fixing responsibilities
under almost every condition and circumstance which might arise among the
inhabitants of the country at that time; and the question naturally arises
as to how far the code of laws was in actual operation.
It is conceivable that the king may have held admirable convictions, but
have been possessed of little power to carry them out and to see that his
regulations were enforced. Luckily, we have not to depend on conjecture
for settling the question, for Hammurabi’s own letters which are now
preserved in the British Museum afford abundant evidence of the active
control which the king exercised over every department of his
administration and in every province of his empire. In the earlier periods
of history, when each city lived independently of its neighbours and had
its own system of government, the need for close and frequent
communication between them was not pressing, but this became apparent as
soon as they were welded together and formed parts of an extended empire.
Thus in the time of Sargon of Agade, about 3800 B.C., an extensive system
of royal convoys was established between the principal cities. At Telloh
the late M. de Sarzec came across numbers of lumps of clay bearing the
seal impressions of Sargon and of his son Narâm-Sin, which had been used
as seals and labels upon packages sent from Agade to Shirpurla. In the
time of Dungi, King of Ur, there was a constant interchange of officials
between the various cities of Babylonia and Elam, and during the more
recent diggings at Telloh there have been found vouchers for the supply of
food for their sustenance when stopping at Shirpurla in the course of
their journeys. In the case of Hammurabi we have recovered some of the
actual letters sent by the king himself to Sin-idinnam, his local governor
in the city of Larsam, and from them we gain considerable insight into the
principles which guided him in the administration of his empire.
The letters themselves, in their general characteristics, resembled the
contract tablets of the period which have been already described. They
were written on small clay tablets oblong in shape, and as they were only
three or four inches long they could easily be carried about the person of
the messenger into whose charge they were delivered. After the tablet was
written it was enclosed in a thin envelope of clay, having been first
powdered with dry clay to prevent its sticking to the envelope. The name
of the person for whom the letter was intended was written on the outside
of the envelope, and both it and the tablet were baked hard to ensure that
they should not be broken on their travels. The recipient of the letter,
on its being delivered to him, broke the outer envelope by tapping it
sharply, and it then fell away in pieces, leaving the letter and its
message exposed. The envelopes were very similar to those in which the
contract tablets of the period were enclosed, of which illustrations have
already been given, their only difference being that the text of the
tablet was not repeated on the envelope, as was the case with the former
class of documents.
The royal letters that have been recovered throw little light on military
affairs and the prosecution of campaigns, for, being addressed to
governors of cities and civil officials, most of them deal with matters
affecting the internal administration of the empire. One letter indeed
contains directions concerning the movements of two hundred and forty
soldiers of “the King’s Company” who had been stationed in Assyria, and
another letter mentions certain troops who were quartered in the city of
Ur. A third deals with the supply of clothing and oil for a section of the
Babylonian army, and troops are also mentioned as having formed the escort
for certain goddesses captured from the Elamites; while directions are
sent to others engaged in a campaign upon the Elamite frontier. The letter
which contains directions for the safe escort of the captured Elamite
goddesses, and the one ordering the return of these same goddesses to
their own shrines, show that foreign deities, even when captured from an
enemy, were treated by the Babylonians with the same respect and reverence
that was shown by them to their own gods and goddesses. Hammurabi gave
directions in the first letter for the conveyance of the goddesses to
Babylon with all due pomp and ceremony, sheep being supplied for sacrifice
upon the journey, and their usual rites being performed by their own
temple-women and priestesses. The king’s voluntary restoration of the
goddesses to their own country may have been due to the fact that, after
their transference to Babylon, the army of the Babylonians suffered defeat
in Elam. This misfortune would naturally have been ascribed by the king
and the priests to the anger of the Elamite goddesses at being detained in
a foreign land, and Hammurabi probably arrived at his decision that they
should be escorted back in the hope of once more securing victory for the
Babylonian arms.
The care which the king exercised for the due worship of his own gods and
the proper supply of their temples is well illustrated from the letters
that have been recovered, for he superintended the collection of the
temple revenues, and the herdsmen and shepherds attached to the service of
the gods sent their reports directly to him. He also took care that the
observances of religious rites and ceremonies were duly carried out, and
on one occasion he postponed the hearing of a lawsuit concerning the title
to certain property which was in dispute, as it would have interfered with
the proper observance of a festival in the city of Ur. The plaintiff in
the suit was the chief of the temple bakers, and it was his duty to
superintend the preparation of certain offerings for the occasion. In
order that he should not have to leave his duties, the king put off the
hearing of the case until after the festival had been duly celebrated. The
king also exercised a strict control over the priests themselves, and
received reports from the chief priests concerning their own subordinates,
and it is probable that the royal sanction was obtained for all the
principal appointments. The guild of soothsayers was an important
religious class at this time, and they also were under the king’s direct
control. A letter written by Ammiditana, one of the later kings of the
First Dynasty, to three high officials of the city of Sippar, contains
directions with regard to certain duties to be carried out by the
soothsayers attached to the service of the city, and indicates the nature
of their functions. Ammiditana wrote to the officials in question, stating
that there was a scarcity of corn in the city of Shagga, and he therefore
ordered them to send a supply thither. But before the corn was brought
into the city they were told to consult the soothsayers, who were to
divine the future and ascertain whether the omens were favourable. If they
proved to be so, the corn was to be brought in. We may conjecture that the
king took this precaution, as he feared the scarcity of corn in Shagga was
due to the anger of some local deity or spirit, and that, if this were the
case, the bringing in of the corn would only lead to fresh troubles. This
danger it was the duty of the soothsayers to prevent.
Another class of the priesthood, which we may infer was under the king’s
direct control, was the astrologers, whose duty it probably was to make
reports to the king of the conjunctions of the heavenly bodies, with a
view to ascertaining whether they portended good or evil to the state. No
astrological reports written in this early period have been recovered, but
at a later period under the Assyrian empire the astrologers reported
regularly to the king on such matters, and it is probable that the
practice was one long established. One of Hammurabi’s letters proves that
the king regulated the calendar, and it is legitimate to suppose that he
sought the advice of his astrologers as to the times when intercalary
months were to be inserted. The letter dealing with the calendar was
written to inform Sin-idinnam, the governor of Larsam, that an intercalary
month was to be inserted. “Since the year (i.e. the calendar) hath a
deficiency,” he writes, “let the month which is now beginning be
registered as a second Elul,” and the king adds that this insertion of an
extra month will not justify any postponement in the payment of the
regular tribute due from the city of Larsam, which had to be paid a month
earlier than usual to make up for the month that was inserted. The
intercalation of additional months was due to the fact that the Babylonian
months were lunar, so that the calendar had to be corrected at intervals
to make it correspond to the solar year.
From the description already given of the code of laws drawn up by
Hammurabi it will have been seen that the king attempted to incorporate
and arrange a set of regulations which should settle any dispute likely to
arise with regard to the duties and privileges of all classes of his
subjects. That this code was not a dead letter, but was actively
administered, is abundantly proved by many of the letters of Hammurabi
which have been recovered. From these we learn that the king took a very
active part in the administration of justice in the country, and that he
exercised a strict supervision, not only over the cases decided in the
capital, but also over those which were tried in the other great cities
and towns of Babylonia. Any private citizen was entitled to make a direct
appeal to the king for justice, if he thought he could not obtain it in
his local court, and it is clear from Hammurabi’s letters that he always
listened to such an appeal and gave it adequate consideration. The king
was anxious to stamp out all corruption on the part of those who were
invested with authority, and he had no mercy on any of his officers who
were convicted of taking bribes. On one occasion when he had been informed
of a case of bribery in the city of Dûr-gurgurri, he at once ordered the
governor of the district in which Dûr-gurgurri lay to investigate the
charge and send to Babylon those who were proved to be guilty, that they
might be punished. He also ordered that the bribe should be confiscated
and despatched to Babylon under seal, a wise provision which must have
tended to discourage those who were inclined to tamper with the course of
justice, while at the same time it enriched the state. It is probable that
the king tried all cases of appeal in person when it was possible to do
so. But if the litigants lived at a considerable distance from Babylon, he
gave directions to his local officials on the spot to try the case. When
he was convinced of the justice of any claim, he would decide the case
himself and send instructions to the local authorities to see that his
decision was duly carried out. It is certain that many disputes arose at
this period in consequence of the extortions of money-lenders. These men
frequently laid claim in a fraudulent manner to fields and estates which
they had received in pledge as security for seed-corn advanced by them. In
cases where fraud was proved Hammurabi had no mercy, and summoned the
money-lender to Babylon to receive punishment, however wealthy and
powerful he might be.
A subject frequently referred to in Hammurabi’s letters is the collection
of revenues, and it is clear that an elaborate system was in force
throughout the country for the levying and payment of tribute to the state
by the principal cities of Babylonia, as well as for the collection of
rent and revenue from the royal estates and from the lands which were set
apart for the supply of the great temples. Collectors of both secular and
religious tribute sent reports directly to the king, and if there was any
deficit in the supply which was expected from a collector he had to make
it up himself; but the king was always ready to listen to and investigate
a complaint and to enforce the payment of tribute or taxes so that the
loss should not fall upon the collector. Thus, in one of his letters
Hammurabi informs the governor of Larsam that a collector named Sheb-Sin
had reported to him, saying “Enubi-Marduk hath laid hands upon the money
for the temple of Bît-il-kittim (i.e. the great temple of the Sun-god at
Larsam) which is due from the city of Dûr-gurgurri and from the (region
round about the) Tigris, and he hath not rendered the full sum; and
Gimil-Marduk hath laid hands upon the money for the temple of
Bît-il-kittim which is due from the city.of Rakhabu and from the region
round about that city, and he hath not (paid) the full amount. But the
palace hath exacted the full sum from me.” It is probable that both
Enubi-Marduk and Gimil-Marduk were money-lenders, for we know from another
letter that the former had laid claim to certain property on which he had
held a mortgage, although the mortgage had been redeemed. In the present
case they had probably lent money or seed-corn to certain cultivators of
land near Dûr-gurgurri and Rakhabu and along the Tigris, and in settlement
of their claims they had seized the crops and had, moreover, refused to
pay to the king’s officer the proportion of the crops that was due to the
state as taxes upon the land. The governor of Larsam, the principal city
in the district, had rightly, as the representative of the palace (i.e.
the king), caused the tax-collector to make up the deficiency, but
Hammurabi, on receiving the subordinate officer’s complaint, referred the
matter back to the governor. The end of the letter is wanting, but we may
infer that Hammurabi condemned the defaulting money-lenders to pay the
taxes due, and fined them in addition, or ordered them to be sent to the
capital for punishment.
On another occasion Sheb-Sin himself and a second tax-collector named
Sin-mushtal appear to have been in fault and to have evaded coming to
Babylon when summoned thither by the king. It had been their duty to
collect large quantities of sesame seed as well as taxes paid in money.
When first summoned, they had made the excuse that it was the time of
harvest and they would come after the harvest was over. But as they did
not then make their appearance, Hammurabi wrote an urgent letter insisting
that they should be despatched with the full amount of the taxes due, in
the company of a trustworthy officer who would see that they duly arrived
at the capital.
Tribute on flocks and herds was also levied by the king, and collectors or
assessors of the revenue were stationed in each district, whose duty it
was to report any deficit in the revenue accounts. The owners of flocks
and herds were bound to bring the young cattle and lambs that were due as
tribute to the central city of the district in which they dwelt, and they
were then collected into large bodies and added to the royal flocks and
herds; but, if the owners attempted to hold back any that were due as
tribute, they were afterwards forced to incur the extra expense and
trouble of driving the beasts to Babylon. The flocks and herds owned by
the king and the great temples were probably enormous, and yielded a
considerable revenue in themselves apart from the tribute and taxes due
from private owners. Shepherds and herdsmen were placed in charge of them,
and they were divided into groups under chief shepherds, who arranged the
districts in which the herds and flocks were to be grazed, distributing
them when possible along the banks and in the neighbourhood of rivers and
canals which would afford good pasturage and a plentiful supply of water.
The king received reports from the chief shepherds and herdsmen, and it
was the duty of the governors of the chief cities and districts of
Babylonia to make tours of inspection and see that due care was taken of
the royal flocks and sheep. The sheep-shearing for all the flocks that
were pastured near the capital took place in Babylon, and the king used to
send out summonses to his chief shepherds to inform them of the day when
the shearing would take place; and it is probable that the governors of
the other great cities sent out similar orders to the shepherds of flocks
under their charge. Royal and priestly flocks were often under the same
chief officer, a fact which shows the very strict control the king
exercised over the temple revenues.
The interests of the agricultural population were strictly looked after by
the king, who secured a proper supply of water for purposes of irrigation
by seeing that the canals and waterways were kept in a proper state of
repair and cleaned out at regular intervals. There is also evidence that
nearly every king of the First Dynasty of Babylon cut new canals, and
extended the system of irrigation and transportation which had been handed
down to him from his fathers. The draining of the marshes and the proper
repair of the canals could only be carried out by careful and continuous
supervision, and it was the duty of the local governors to see that the
inhabitants of villages and owners of land situated on the banks of a
canal should keep it in proper order. When this duty had been neglected
complaints were often sent to the king, who gave orders to the local
governor to remedy the defect. Thus on one occasion it had been ordered
that a canal at Erech which had silted up should be deepened, but the
dredging had not been carried out thoroughly, so that the bed of the canal
soon silted up again and boats were prevented from entering the city. In
these circumstances Hammurabi gave pressing orders that the obstruction
was to be removed and the canal made navigable within three days.
Damage was often done to the banks of canals by floods which followed the
winter rains, and a letter of Abêshu’ gives an interesting account of a
sudden rise of the water in the Irnina canal so that it overflowed its
banks. The king was building a palace at the city of Kâr-Irnina, which was
supplied by the Irnina canal, and every year it was possible to put so
much work into the building. But one year, when little more than a third
of the year’s work was done, the building operations were stopped by
flood, the canal having overflowed its banks so that the water rose right
up to the wall of the town. In return for the duty of keeping the canals
in order, the villagers along the banks had the privilege of fishing in
its waters in the portion which was in their charge, and any poaching by
other villagers in this part of the stream was strictly forbidden. On one
occasion, in the reign of Samsu-iluna, Hammurabi’s son and successor, the
fishermen of the district of Rabim went down in their boats to the
district of Shakanim and caught fish there contrary to the law. So the
inhabitants of Shakanim complained of this poaching to the king, who sent
a palace official to the authorities of Sippar, near which city the
districts in question lay, with orders to inquire into the matter and take
steps to prevent all such poaching for the future.
The regulation of transportation on the canals was also under the royal
jurisdiction. The method of reckoning the size of ships has already been
described, and there is evidence that the king possessed numerous vessels
of all sizes for the carrying of grain, wool, and dates, as well as for
the wood and stone employed in his building operations. Each ship seems to
have had its own crew, under the command of a captain, and it is probable
that officials who regulated the transportation from the centres where
they were stationed were placed in charge of separate sections of the
rivers and of the canals.
It is obvious, from the account that has been given of the numerous
operations directly controlled and superintended by the king, that he had
need of a very large body of officials, by whose means he was enabled to
carry out successfully the administration of the country. In the course of
the account we have made mention of the judges and judicial officers, the
assessors and collectors of revenue, and the officials of the palace who
were under the king’s direct orders. It is also obvious that different
classes of officers were in charge of all the departments of the
administration. Two classes of officials, who were placed in charge of the
public works and looked after and controlled the public slaves, and
probably also had a good deal to do with the collection of the revenue,
had special privileges assigned to them, and special legislation was drawn
up to protect them in the enjoyment of the same. As payment for their
duties they were each granted land with a house and garden, they were
assigned the use of certain sheep and cattle with which to stock their
land, and in addition they received a regular salary. They were in a sense
personal retainers of the king and were liable to be sent at any moment on
a special mission to carry out the king’s commands. Disobedience was
severely punished; for, if such an officer, when detailed for a special
mission, did not go but hired a substitute, he was liable to be put to
death and the substitute he had hired could take his office. Sometimes an
officer was sent for long periods some distance from his home to take
charge of a garrison, and when this was done his home duties were
performed by another man, who temporarily occupied his house and land, but
gave it back to the officer on his return. If such an officer had a son
old enough to perform his duty in his father’s absence, he was allowed to
do so and to till his father’s lands; but if the son was too young, the
substitute who took the officer’s place had to pay one-third of the
produce of the land to the child’s mother for his education. Before
departing on his journey to the garrison it was the officer’s duty to
arrange for the proper cultivation of his land and the discharge of his
local duties during his absence. If he omitted to do so and left his land
and duties neglected for more than a year, and another had meanwhile taken
his place, on his return he could not reclaim his land and office. It will
be obvious, therefore, that his position was a specially favoured one and
much sought after, and these regulations ensured that the duties attaching
to the office were not neglected.
In the course of his garrison duty or when on special service, these
officers ran some risk of being captured by the enemy, and in that event
regulations were drawn up for their ransom. If the captured officer was
wealthy and could pay for his own ransom, he was bound to do so, but if he
had not the necessary means his ransom was to be paid out of the local
temple treasury, and, when the funds in the temple treasury did not
suffice, he was to be ransomed by the state. It was specially enacted that
his land and garden and house were in no case to be sold in order to pay
for his ransom. These were inalienably attached to the office which he
held, and he was not allowed to sell them or the sheep and cattle with
which they were stocked. Moreover, he was not allowed to bequeath any of
this property to his wife or daughter, so that his office would appear to
have been hereditary and the property attached to it to have been entailed
on his son if he succeeded him. Such succession would not, of course, have
taken place if the officer by his own neglect or disobedience had
forfeited his office and its privileges during his lifetime.
It has been suggested with considerable probability that these officials
were originally personal retainers and follows of Sumu-abu, the founder of
the First Dynasty of Babylon. They were probably assigned lands throughout
the country in return for their services to the king, and their special
duties were to preserve order and uphold the authority of their master. In
the course of time their duties were no doubt modified, but they retained
their privileges and they must have continued to be a very valuable body
of officers, on whose personal loyalty the king could always rely. In the
preceding chapter we have already seen how grants of considerable estates
were made by the Kassite kings of the Third Dynasty to followers who had
rendered conspicuous services, and at the same time they received the
privilege of holding such lands free of all liability to forced labour and
the payment of tithes and taxes. We may conclude that the class of royal
officers under the kings of the First Dynasty had a similar origin.
In the present chapter, from information recently made available, we have
given some account of the system of administration adopted by the early
kings of Babylon, and we have described in some detail the various classes
of the Babylonian population, their occupations, and the conditions under
which they lived. In the two preceding chapters we have dealt with the
political history of Western Asia from the very earliest period of the
Sumerian city-states down to the time of the Kassite kings. In the course
of this account we have seen how Mesopotamia in the dawn of history was in
the sole possession of the Sumerian race and how afterwards it fell in
turn under the dominion of the Semites and the kings of Elam. The
immigration of fresh Semitic tribes at the end of the third millennium
before Christ resulted in the establishment in Babylon of the Semitic
kings who are known as First Dynasty kings; and under the sway of
Hammurabi, the greatest of this group of kings, the empire thus
established in Western Asia had every appearance of permanence. Although
Elam no longer troubled Babylon, a great danger arose from a new and
unexpected quarter. In the Country of the Sea—which comprised the
districts in the extreme south of Babylonia on the shores of the Persian
Gulf—the Sumerians had rallied their forces, and they now declared
themselves independent of Babylonian control. A period of conflict
followed between the kings of the First Dynasty and the kings of the
Country of the Sea, in which the latter more than held their own; and,
when the Hittite tribes of Syria invaded Northern Babylonia in the reign
of Samsu-ditana, Babylon’s power of resistance was so far weakened that
she fell an easy prey to the rulers of the Country of the Sea. But the
reappearance of the Sumerians in the rôle of leading race in Western Asia
was destined not to last long, and was little more than the last flicker
of vitality exhibited by this ancient and exhausted race. Thus the Second
Dynasty fell in its turn before the onslaught of the Kassite tribes who
descended from the mountainous districts in the west of Elam, and, having
overrun the whole of Mesopotamia, established a new dynasty at Babylon,
and adopted Babylonian civilization.
With the advent of the Kassite kings a new chapter opens in the history of
Western Asia. Up to that time Egypt and Babylon, the two chief centres of
ancient civilization, had no doubt indirectly influenced one another, but
they had not come into actual contact. During the period of the Kassite
kings both Babylon and Assyria established direct relations with Egypt,
and from that time forward the influence they exerted upon one another was
continuous and unbroken. We have already traced the history of Babylon up
to this point in the light of recent discoveries, and a similar task
awaits us with regard to Assyria. Before we enter into a discussion of
Assyria’s origin and early history in the light of recent excavation and
research, it is necessary that we should return once more to Egypt, and
describe the course of her history from the period when Thebes succeeded
in displacing Memphis as the capital city.
CHAPTER VII—TEMPLES AND TOMBS OF THEBES
We have seen that it was in the Theban period that Egypt emerged from her
isolation, and for the first time came into contact with Western Asia.
This grand turning-point in Egyptian history seemed to be the appropriate
place at which to pause in the description of our latest knowledge of
Egyptian history, in order to make known the results of archaeological
discovery in Mesopotamia and Western Asia generally. The description has
been carried down past the point of convergence of the two originally
isolated paths of Egyptian and Babylonian civilization, and what new
information the latest discoveries have communicated to us on this subject
has been told in the preceding chapters. We now have to retrace our steps
to the point where we left Egyptian history and resume the thread of our
Egyptian narrative.
The Hyksos conquest and the rise of Thebes are practically
contemporaneous. The conquest took place perhaps three or four hundred
years after the first advancement of Thebes to the position of capital of
Egypt, but it must be remembered that this position was not retained
during the time of the XIIth Dynasty. The kings of that dynasty, though
they were Thebans, did not reign at Thebes. Their royal city was in the
North, in the neighbourhood of Lisht and Mêdûm, where their pyramids were
erected, and their chief care was for the lake province of the Fayyûm,
which was largely the creation of Amenemhat III, the Moeris of the Greeks.
It was not till Thebes became the focus of the national resistance to the
Hyksos that its period of greatness began. Henceforward it was the
undisputed capital of Egypt, enlarged and embellished by the care and
munificence of a hundred kings, enriched by the tribute of a hundred
conquered nations.
But were we to confine ourselves to the consideration only of the latest
discoveries of Theban greatness after the expulsion of the Hyksos, we
should be omitting much that is of interest and importance. For the
Egyptians the first grand climacteric in their history (after the
foundation of the monarchy) was the transference of the royal power from
Memphis and Herakleopolis to a Theban house. The second, which followed
soon after, was the Hyksos invasion. The two are closely connected in
Theban history; it is Thebes that defeated Herakleopolis and conquered
Memphis; it is Theban power that was overthrown by the Hyksos; it is
Thebes that expelled them and initiated the second great period of
Egyptian history. We therefore resume our narrative at a point before the
great increase of Theban power at the time of the expulsion of the Hyksos,
and will trace this power from its rise, which followed the defeat of
Herakleopolis and Memphis. It is upon this epoch—the beginning of
Theban power—that the latest discoveries at Thebes have thrown some
new light.
More than anywhere else in Egypt excavations have been carried on at
Thebes, on the site of the ancient capital of the country. And here, if
anywhere, it might have been supposed that there was nothing more to be
found, no new thing to be exhumed from the soil, no new fact to be added
to our knowledge of Egyptian history. Yet here, no less than at Abydos,
has the archaeological exploration of the last few years been especially
successful, and we have seen that the ancient city of Thebes has a great
deal more to tell us than we had expected.
The most ancient remains at Thebes were discovered by Mr. Newberry in the
shape of two tombs of the VIth Dynasty, cut upon the face of the
well-known hill of Shêkh Abd el-Kûrna, on the west bank of the Nile
opposite Luxor. Every winter traveller to Egypt knows, well the ride from
the sandy shore opposite the Luxor temple, along the narrow pathway
between the gardens and the canal, across the bridges and over the
cultivated land to the Ramesseum, behind which rises Shêkh Abd el-Kûrna,
with its countless tombs, ranged in serried rows along the scarred and
scarped face of the hill. This hill, which is geologically a fragment of
the plateau behind which some gigantic landslip was sent sliding in the
direction of the river, leaving the picturesque gorge and cliffs of Dêr
el-Bahari to mark the place from which it was riven, was evidently the
seat of the oldest Theban necropolis. Here were the tombs of the Theban
chiefs in the period of the Old Kingdom, two of which have been found by
Mr. Newberry. In later times, it would seem, these tombs were largely
occupied and remodelled by the great nobles of the XVIIIth Dynasty, so
that now nearly all the tombs extant on Shêkh Abd el-Kûrna belong to that
dynasty.
Of the Thebes of the IXth and Xth Dynasties, when the Herakleopolites
ruled, we have in the British Museum two very remarkable statues—one
of which is here illustrated—of the steward of the palace, Mera. The
tomb from which they came is not known. Both are very beautiful examples
of the Egyptian sculptor’s art, and are executed in a style eminently
characteristic of the transition period between the work of the Old and
Middle Kingdoms. As specimens of the art of the Hierakonpolite period, of
which we have hardly any examples, they are of the greatest interest. Mera
is represented wearing a different head-dress in each figure; in one he
has a short wig, in the other a skullcap.
When the Herakleopolite dominion was finally overthrown, in spite of the
valiant resistance of the princes of Asyût, and the Thebans assumed the
Pharaonic dignity, thus founding the XIth Dynasty, the Theban necropolis
was situated in the great bay in the cliffs, immediately north of Shêkh
Abd el-Kûrna, which is known as Dêr el-Bahari. In this picturesque part of
Western Thebes, in many respects perhaps the most picturesque place in
Egypt, the greatest king of the XIth Dynasty, Neb-hapet-Râ Mentuhetep,
excavated his tomb and built for the worship of his ghost a funerary
temple, which he called Akh-aset, “Glorious-is-its- Situation,” a
name fully justified by its surroundings. This temple is an entirely new
discovery, made by Prof. Naville and Mr. Hall in 1903. The results
obtained up to date have been of very great importance, especially with
regard to the history of Egyptian art and architecture, for our sources of
information were few and we were previously not very well informed as to
the condition of art in the time of the XIth Dynasty.
The new temple lies immediately to the south of the great XVIIIth Dynasty
temple at Dêr el-Bahari, which has always been known, and which was
excavated first by Mariette and later by Prof. Naville, for the Egypt
Exploration Fund. To the results of the later excavations we shall return.
When they were finally completed, in the year 1898, the great XVIIIth
Dynasty temple, which was built by Queen Hatshepsu, had been entirely
cleared of débris, and the colonnades had been partially restored (under
the care of Mr. Somers Clarke) in order to make a roof under which to
protect the sculptures on the walls. The whole mass of débris, consisting
largely of fallen talus from the cliffs above, which had almost
hidden the temple, was removed; but a large tract lying to the south of
the temple, which was also covered with similar mounds of débris, was not
touched, but remained to await further investigation. It was here, beneath
these heaps of débris, that the new temple was found when work was resumed
by the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1903. The actual tomb of the king has not
yet been revealed, although that of Neb-hetep Mentuhetep, who may have
been his immediate predecessor, was discovered by Mr. Carter in 1899. It
was known, however, and still uninjured in the reign of Ramses IX of the
XXth Dynasty. Then, as we learn from the report of the inspectors sent to
examine the royal tombs, which is preserved in the Abbott Papyrus, they
found the pyramid-tomb of King Xeb-hapet-Râ which is in Tjesret
(the ancient Egyptian name for Dêr el-Bahari); it was intact. We know,
therefore, that it was intact about 1000 B.C. The description of it as a
pyramid-tomb is interesting, for in the inscription of Tetu, the priest of
Akh-aset, who was buried at Abydos, Akh-aset is said to have been a
pyramid. That the newly discovered temple was called Akh-aset we know from
several inscriptions found in it. And the most remarkable thing about this
temple is that in its centre there was a pyramid. This must be the
pyramid-tomb which was found intact by the inspectors, so that the tomb
itself must be close by. But it does not seem to have been beneath the
pyramid, below which is only solid rock. It is perhaps a gallery cut in
the cliffs at the back of the temple.
The pyramid was then a dummy, made of rubble within a revetment of heavy
flint nodules, which was faced with fine limestone. It was erected on a
pyloni-form base with heavy cornice of the usual Egyptian pattern. This
central pyramid was surrounded by a roofed hall or ambulatory of small
octagonal pillars, the outside wall of which was decorated with coloured
reliefs, depicting various scenes connected with the sed-heb or
jubilee-festival of the king, processions of the warriors and magnates of
the realm, scenes of husbandry, boat-building, and so forth, all of which
were considered appropriate to the chapel of a royal tomb at that period.
Outside this wall was an open colonnade of square pillars. The whole of
this was built upon an artificially squared rectangular platform of
natural rock, about fifteen feet high. To north and south of this were
open courts. The southern is bounded by the hill; the northern is now
bounded by the Great Temple of Hat-shepsu, but, before this was built,
there was evidently a very large open court here. The face of the rock
platform is masked by a wall of large rectangular blocks of fine white
limestone, some of which measure six feet by three feet six inches. They
are beautifully squared and laid in bonded courses of alternate sizes, and
the walls generally may be said to be among the finest yet found in Egypt.
We have already remarked that the architects of the Middle Kingdom appear
to have been specially fond of fine masonry in white stone. The contrast
between these splendid XIth Dynasty walls, with their great base-stones of
sandstone, and the bad rough masonry of the XVIIIth Dynasty temple close
by, is striking. The XVIIIth Dynasty architects and masons had degenerated
considerably from the standard of the Middle Kingdom.
This rock platform was approached from the east in the centre by an
inclined plane or ramp, of which part of the original pavement of wooden
beams remains in situ.
Excavated by Mr. Hall, 1904, for the Egypt Exploration Fund.
To right and left of this ramp are colonnades, each of twenty-two square
pillars, all inscribed with the name and titles of Mentuhetep. The walls
masking the platform in these colonnades were sculptured with various
scenes, chiefly representing boat processions and campaigns against the
Aamu or nomads of the Sinaitic peninsula. The design of the colonnades is
the same as that of the Great Temple, and the whole plan of this part,
with its platform approached by a ramp flanked by colonnades, is so like
that of the Great Temple that we cannot but assume that the peculiar
design of the latter, with its tiers of platforms approached by ramps
flanked by colonnades, is not an original idea, but was directly copied by
the XVIIIth Dynasty architects from the older XIth Dynasty temple which
they found at Dêr el-Bahari when they began their work.
Excavated by M. Naville, 1896; repaired by Mr. Howard
Carter, 1904.
The supposed originality of Hatshepsu’s temple is then non-existent; it
was a copy of the older design, in fact, a magnificent piece of archaism.
But Hatshepsu’s architects copied this feature only; the actual
arrangements on the platforms in the two temples are as different
as they can possibly be. In the older we have a central pyramid with a
colonnade round it, in the newer may be found an open court in front of
rock-cave shrines.
Before the XIth Dynasty temple was set up a series of statues of King
Mentuhetep and of a later king, Amenhetep I, in the form of Osiris, like
those of Usertsen (Senusret) I at Lisht already mentioned. One of these
statues is in the British Museum. In the south court were discovered six
statues of King Usertsen (Senusret) III, depicting him at different
periods of his life. Pour of the heads are preserved, and, as the
expression of each differs from that of the other, it is quite evident
that some show him as a young, others as an old, man.
Of The XIth Dynasty Temple At Dêr El-Bahari. About 2500 B.C.
The face is of the well-known hard and lined type which is seen also in
the portraits of Amenemhat III, and was formerly considered to be that of
the Hyksos. Messrs. Newberry and Garstang, as we have seen, consider it to
be so, indirectly, as they regard the type as having been introduced into
the XIIth Dynasty by Queen Nefret, the mother of Usertsen (Sen-usret) III.
This queen, they think, was a Hittite princess, and the Hittites
were practically the same thing as the Hyksos. We have seen, however, that
there is very little foundation for this view, and it is more than
probable that this peculiar physiognomy is of a type purely Egyptian in
character.
On The Platform Of The XIth Dynasty Temple, Dêr El-Bahari,
1904.
On the platform, around the central pyramid, were buried in small
chamber-tombs a number of priestesses of the goddess Hathor, the mistress
of the desert and special deity of Dêr el-Bahari. They were all members of
the king’s harîm, and they bore the title of “King’s Favourite.” As told
in a previous chapter, all were buried at one time, before the final
completion of the temple, and it is by no means impossible that they were
strangled at the king’s death and buried round him in order that their
ghosts might accompany him in the next world, just as the slaves were
buried around the graves (or secondary graves) of the 1st Dynasty kings at
Aby-dos. They themselves, as also already related, took with them to the
next world little waxen figures which when called upon could by magic be
turned into ghostly slaves. These images were ushabtiu,
“answerers,” the predecessors of the little figures of wood, stone, and
pottery which are found buried with the dead in later times. The
priestesses themselves were, so to speak, human ushabtiu, for royal
use only, and accompanied the kings to their final resting-place.
With the priestesses was buried the usual funerary furniture
characteristic of the period. This consisted of little models of granaries
with the peasants bringing in the corn, models of bakers and brewers at
work, boats with their crews, etc., just as we find them in the XIth and
XIIth Dynasty tombs at el-Bersha and Beni Hasan. These models, too, were
supposed to be transformed by magic into actual workmen who would work for
the deceased, heap up grain for her, brew beer for her, ferry her over the
ghostly Nile into the tomb-world, or perform any other services required.
Some of the stone sarcophagi of the priestesses are very elaborately
decorated with carved and painted reliefs depicting each deceased
receiving offerings from priests, one of whom milks the holy cows of
Hathor to give her milk. The sarcophagi were let down into the tomb in
pieces and there joined together, and they have been removed in the same
way. The finest is a unique example of XIth Dynasty art, and it is now
preserved in the Museum of Cairo.
In memory of the priestesses there were erected on the platform behind the
pyramid a number of small shrines, which were decorated with the most
delicately coloured carvings in high relief, representing chiefly the same
subjects as those on the sarcophagi. The peculiar style of these reliefs
was previously unknown. In connection with them a most interesting
possibility presents itself.
We know the name of the chief artist of Mentuhetep’s reign. He was called
Mertisen, and he thus describes himself on his tombstone from Abydos, now
in the Louvre: “I was an artist skilled in my art. I knew my art, how to
represent the forms of going forth and returning, so that each limb may be
in its proper place. I knew how the figure of a man should walk and the
carriage of a woman, the poising of the arm to bring the hippopotamus low,
the going of the runner. I knew how to make amulets, which enable us to go
without fire burning us and without the flood washing us away. No man
could do this but I, and the eldest son of my body. Him has the god
decreed to excel in art, and I have seen the perfections of the work of
his hands in every kind of rare stone, in gold and silver, in ivory and
ebony.” Now since Mertisen and his son were the chief artists of their
day, it is more than probable that they were employed to decorate their
king’s funerary chapel. So that in all probability the XIth Dynasty
reliefs from Dêr el-Bahari are the work of Mertisen and his son, and in
them we see the actual “forms of going forth and returning, the poising of
the arm to bring the hippopotamus low, the going of the runner,” to which
he refers on his tombstone. This adds a note of personal interest to the
reliefs, an interest which is often sadly wanting in Egypt, where we
rarely know the names of the great artists whose works we admire so much.
We have recovered the names of the sculptor and painter of Seti I’s temple
at Abydos and that of the sculptor of some of the tombs at Tell el-Amarna,
but otherwise very few names of the artists are directly associated with
the temples and tombs which they decorated, and of the architects we know
little more. The great temple of Dêr el-Bahari was, however, we know,
designed by Senmut, the chief architect to Queen Hatshepsu.
It is noticeable that Mertisen’s art, if it is Mertisen’s, is of a
peculiar character. It is not quite so fully developed as that of the
succeeding XIIth Dynasty. The drawing of the figures is often peculiar,
strange lanky forms taking the place of the perfect proportions of the
IVth-VIth and the XIIth Dynasty styles. Great elaboration is bestowed upon
decoration, which is again of a type rather archaic in character when
compared with that of the XIIth Dynasty. We are often reminded of the rude
sculptures which used to be regarded as typical of the art of the XIth
Dynasty, while at the same time we find work which could not be surpassed
by the best XIIth Dynasty masters. In fact, the art of Neb-hapet-Râ’s
reign was the art of a transitional period. Under the decadent Memphites
of the VIIth and VIIIth Dynasties, Egyptian art rapidly fell from the high
estate which it had attained under the Vth Dynasty, and, though good work
was done under the Hierakonpolites, the chief characteristic of Egyptian
art at the time of the Xth and early XIth Dynasties is its curious
roughness and almost barbaric appearance. When, however, the kings of the
XIth Dynasty reunited the whole land under one sceptre, and the long reign
of Neb-hapet-Râ Mentuhetep enabled the reconsolidation of the realm to be
carried out by one hand, art began to revive, and, just as to Neb-hapet-Râ
must be attributed the renascence of the Egyptian state under the hegemony
of Thebes, so must the revival of art in his reign be attributed to his
great artists, Mertisen and his son. They carried out in the realm of art
what their king had carried out in the political realm, and to them must
be attributed the origin of the art of the Middle Kingdom which under the
XIIth Dynasty attained so high a pitch of excellence. The sculptures of
the king’s temple at Dêr el-Bahari, then, are monuments of the renascence
of Egyptian art, after the state of decadence into which it had fallen
during the long civil wars between South and North; it is a reviving art,
struggling out of barbarism to regain perfection, and therefore has much
about it that seems archaic, stiff, and curious when compared with later
work. To the XVIIIth Dynasty Egyptian it would no doubt have seemed
hopelessly old-fashioned and even semi-barbarous, and he had no qualms
about sweeping it aside whenever it appeared in the way of the work of his
own time; but to us this very strangeness gives additional charm and
interest, and we can only be thankful that Mertisen’s work has lasted (in
fragments only, it is true) to our own day, to tell us the story of a
little known chapter in the history of ancient Egyptian art.
From this description it will have been seen that the temple is an
important monument of the Egyptian art and architecture of the Middle
Kingdom. It is the only temple of that period of which considerable traces
have been found, and on that account the study of it will be of the
greatest interest. It is the best preserved of the older temples of Egypt,
and at Thebes it is by far the most ancient building recovered.
Historically it has given us a new king of the XIth Dynasty,
Sekhâhe-tep-Râ Mentuhetep, and the name of the queen of Neb-hapet-Râ
Mentuhetep, Aasheit, who seems to have been an Ethiopian, to judge from
her portrait, which has been discovered. It is interesting to note that
one of the priestesses was a negress.
The name Neb-hapet-Râ may be unfamiliar to those readers who are
acquainted with the lists of the Egyptian kings. It is a correction of the
former reading, “Neb-kheru-Râ,” which is now known from these excavations
to be erroneous. Neb-hapet-Râ (or, as he used to be called, Neb-kheru-Râ)
is Mentuhetep III of Prof. Petrie’s arrangement. Before him there seem to
have come the kings Mentuhetep Neb-hetep (who is also commemorated in this
temple) and Neb-taui-Râ; after him, Sekhâhetep-Râ Mentuhetep IV and
Seânkhkarâ Mentuhetep V, who were followed by an Antef, bearing the banner
or hawk-name Uah-ânkh. This king was followed by Amenemhat I, the first
king of the XIIth Dynasty. Antef Uah-ânkh may be numbered Antef I, as the
prince Antefa, who founded the XIth Dynasty, did not assume the title of
king.
Other kings of the name of Antef also ruled over Egypt, and they used to
be regarded as belonging to the XIth Dynasty; but Prof. Steindorff has now
proved that they really reigned after the XIIIth Dynasty, and immediately
before the Sekenenrâs, who were the fighters of the Hyksos and
predecessors of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The second names of Antef III
(Seshes-Râ-up-maat) and Antef IV (Seshes-Râ-her-her-maat) are exactly
similar to those of the XIIIth Dynasty kings and quite unlike those of the
Mentuheteps; also at Koptos a decree of Antef II (Nub-kheper-Râ) has been
found inscribed on a doorway of Usertsen (Senusret) I; so that he cannot
have preceded him. Prof. Petrie does not yet accept these conclusions, and
classes all the Antefs together with the Mentuheteps in the XIth Dynasty.
He considers that he has evidence from Herakleopolis that Antef
Xub-kheper-Râ (whom he numbers Antef V) preceded the XIIth Dynasty, and he
supposes that the decree of Nub-kheper-Râ at Koptos is a later copy of the
original and was inscribed during the XIIth Dynasty. But this is a
difficult saying. The probabilities are that Prof. Steindorff is right.
Antef Uah-ânkh must, however, have preceded the XIIth Dynasty, since an
official of that period refers to his father’s father as having lived in
Uah-ânkh ‘s time.
The necropolis of Dêr el-Bahari was no doubt used all through the period
of the XIth and XIIth Dynasties, and many tombs of that period have been
found there. A large number of these were obliterated by the building of
the great temple of Queen Hatshepsu, in the northern part of the
cliff-bay. We know of one queen’s tomb of that period which runs right
underneath this temple from the north, and there is another that is
entered at the south side which also runs down underneath it. Several
tombs were likewise found in the court between it and the XIth Dynasty
temple. We know that the XVIIIth Dynasty temple was largely built over
this court, and we can see now the XIth Dynasty mask-wall on the west of
the court running northwards underneath the mass of the XVIIIth Dynasty
temple. In all probability, then, when the temple of Hatshepsu was built,
the larger portion of the Middle Kingdom necropolis (of chamber-tombs
reached by pits), which had filled up the bay to the north of the
Mentuhetep temple, was covered up and obliterated, just as the older VIth
Dynasty gallery tombs of Shêkh Abd el-Kûrna had been appropriated and
altered at the same period.
The kings of the XIIth and XIIIth Dynasties were not buried at Thebes, as
we have seen, but in the North, at Dashûr, Lisht, and near the Fayymn,
with which their royal city at Itht-taui had brought them into contact.
But at the end of the XIIIth Dynasty the great invasion of the Hyksos
probably occurred, and all Northern Egypt fell under the Arab sway. The
native kings were driven south from the Fayymn to Abydos, Koptos, and
Thebes, and at Thebes they were buried, in a new necropolis to the north
of Dêr el-Bahari (probably then full), on the flank of a long spur of hill
which is now called Dra’ Abu-’l-Negga, “Abu-’l-Negga’s Arm.” Here the
Theban kings of the period between the XIIIth and XVIIth Dynasties,
Upuantemsaf, Antef Nub-kheper-Râ, and his descendants, Antefs III and IV,
were buried. In their time the pressure of foreign invasion seems to have
been felt, for, to judge from their coffins, which show progressive
degeneration of style and workmanship, poverty now afflicted Upper Egypt
and art had fallen sadly from the high standard which it had reached in
the days of the XIth and XIIth Dynasties. Probably the later Antefs and
Sebekemsafs were vassals of the Hyksos. Their descendants of the XVIIth
Dynasty were buried in the same necropolis of Dra’ Abu-’l-Negga, and so
were the first two kings of the XVIIIth Dynasty, Aahmes and Amenhetep I.
The tombs of the last two have not yet been found, but we know from the
Abbott Papyrus that Amenhetep’s was here, for, like that of Menttihetep
III, it was found intact by the inspectors. It was a gallery-tomb of very
great length, and will be a most interesting find when it is discovered,
as it no doubt eventually will be. Aahmes had a tomb at Abydos, which was
discovered by Mr. Currelly, working for the Egypt Exploration Fund. This,
however, like the Abydene tomb of Usert-sen (Senusret) III, was in all
likelihood a sham or secondary tomb, the king having most probably been
buried at Thebes, in the Dra’ Abu-’l-Negga. The Abydos tomb is of
interesting construction. The entrance is by a simple pit, from which a
gallery runs round in a curving direction to a great hall supported by
eighteen square pillars, beyond which is a further gallery which was never
finished. Nothing was found in the tomb. On the slope of the mountain, due
west of and in a line with the tomb, Mr. Currelly found a terrace-temple
analogous to those of Dêr el-Bahari, approached not by means of a ramp but
by stairways at the side. It was evidently the funerary temple of the
tomb.
Statue of Queen Teta-shera
Grandmother of Aahmes, the conqueror of the Hyksos and
founder of the XVIIIth Dynasty. About 1700 B. C. British
Museum. From the photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
The secondary tomb of Usertsen (Senusret) III at Abydos, which has already
been mentioned, was discovered in the preceding year by Mr. A. E. P.
Weigall, and excavated by Mr. Currelly in 1903. It lies north of the
Aahmes temple, between it and the main cemetery of Abydos. It is a great
bâb or gallery-tomb, like those of the later kings at Thebes, with
the usual apparatus of granite plugs, barriers, pits, etc., to defy
plunderers. The tomb had been plundered, nevertheless, though it is
probable that the robbers were vastly disappointed with what they found in
it. Mr. Currelly ascribes the absence of all remains to the plunderers,
but the fact is that there probably never was anything in it but an empty
sarcophagus. Near the tomb Mr. Weigall discovered some dummy mastabas, a
find of great interest. Just as the king had a secondary tomb, so
secondary mastabas, mere dummies of rubble like the XIth Dynasty pyramid
at Dêr el-Bahari, were erected beside it to look like the tombs of his
courtiers. Some curious sinuous brick walls which appear to act as
dividing lines form a remarkable feature of this sham cemetery. In a line
with the tomb, on the edge of the cultivation, is the funerary temple
belonging to it, which was found by Mr. Randall-Maclver in 1900. Nothing
remains but the bases of the fluted limestone columns and some brick
walls. A headless statue of Usertsen was found.
We have an interesting example of the custom of building a secondary tomb
for royalties in these two nécropoles of Dra’ Abu-’l-Negga and Abydos.
Queen Teta-shera, the grandmother of Aahmes, a beautiful statuette of whom
may be seen in the British Museum, had a small pyramid at Abydos, eastward
of and in a line with the temple and secondary tomb of Aahmes. In 1901 Mr.
Mace attempted to find the chamber, but could not. In the next year Mr.
Currelly found between it and the Aahmes tomb a small chapel, containing a
splendid stele, on which Aahmes commemorates his grandmother, who, he
says, was buried at Thebes and had a mer-âhât at Abydos, and he
records his determination to build her also a pyramid at Abydos, out of
his love and veneration for her memory. It thus appeared that the pyramid
to the east was simply a dummy, like Usertsen’s mastabas, or the
Mentuhetep pyramid at Dêr el-Bahari. Teta-shera was actually buried at
Dra’ Abu-’l-Negga. Her secondary pyramid, like that of Aahmes himself, was
in the “holy ground” at Abydos, though it was not an imitation bâb,
but a dummy pyramid of rubble. This well illustrates the whole custom of
the royal primary and secondary tombs, which, as we have seen, had
obtained in the case of royal personages from the time of the 1st Dynasty,
when Aha had two tombs, one at Nakâda and the other at Abydos. It is
probable that all the 1st Dynasty tombs at Abydos are secondary, the kings
being really buried elsewhere. After their time we know for certain that
Tjeser and Snefru had duplicate tombs, possibly also Unas, and certainly
Usertsen (Senusret) III, Amenemhat III, and Aahmes; while Mentuhetep III
and Queen Teta-shera had dummy pyramids as well as their tombs. Ramses III
also had two tombs, both at Thebes. The reasons for this custom were two:
first, the desire to elude plunderers, and second, the wish to give the
ghost a pied-à-terre on the sacred soil of Abydos or Sakkâra.
As the inscription of Aahmes which records the building of the dummy
pyramid of Teta-shera is of considerable interest, it may here be
translated. The text reads: “It came to pass that when his Majesty the
king, even the king of South and North, Neb-pehti-Râ, Son of the Sun,
Aahmes, Giver of Life, was taking his pleasure in the tjadu-hall,
the hereditary princess greatly favoured and greatly prized, the king’s
daughter, the king’s sister, the god’s wife and great wife of the king,
Nefret-ari-Aahmes, the living, was in the presence of his Majesty. And the
one spake unto the other, seeking to do honour to These There,[1] which
consisteth in the pouring of water, the offering upon the altar, the
painting of the stele at the beginning of each season, at the Festival of
the New Moon, at the feast of the month, the feast of the going-forth of
the Sem-priest, the Ceremonies of the Night, the Feasts of the
Fifth Day of the Month and of the Sixth, the Hak-festival, the Uag-festival,
the feast of Thoth, the beginning of every season of heaven and earth. And
his sister spake, answering him: ‘Why hath one remembered these matters,
and wherefore hath this word been said? Prithee, what hath come into thy
heart?’ The king spake, saying: ‘As for me, I have remembered the mother
of my mother, the mother of my father, the king’s great wife and king’s
mother Teta-shera, deceased, whose tomb-chamber and mer-ahât are at
this moment upon the soil of Thebes and Abydos. I have spoken thus unto
thee because my Majesty desireth to cause a pyramid and chapel to be made
for her in the Sacred Land, as a gift of a monument from my Majesty, and
that its lake should be dug, its trees planted, and its offerings
prescribed; that it should be provided with slaves, furnished with lands,
and endowed with cattle, with hen-ka priests and kher-heb
priests performing their duties, each man knowing what he hath to do.’
Behold! when his Majesty had thus spoken, these things were immediately
carried out. His Majesty did these things on account of the greatness of
the love which he bore her, which was greater than anything. Never had
ancestral kings done the like for their mothers. Behold! his Majesty
extended his arm and bent his hand, and made for her the king’s offering
to Geb, to the Ennead of Gods, to the lesser Ennead of Gods… [to Anubis]
in the God’s Shrine, thousands of offerings of bread, beer, oxen, geese,
cattle… to [the Queen Teta-shera].” This is one of the most interesting
inscriptions discovered in Egypt in recent years, for the picturesqueness
of its diction is unusual.
[1]
A polite periphrasis for the dead.
As has already been said, the king Amenhetep I was also buried in the Dra’
Abu-’l-Negga, but the tomb has not yet been found. Amenhetep I and his
mother, Queen Nefret-ari-Aahmes, who is mentioned in the inscription
translated above, were both venerated as tutelary demons of the Western
Necropolis of Thebes after their deaths, as also was Mentuhetep III. At
Dêr el-Bahari both kings seem to have been worshipped with Hathor, the
Mistress of the Waste. The worship of Amen-Râ in the XVIIIth Dynasty
temple of Dêr el-Bahari was a novelty introduced by the priests of Amen at
that time. But the worship of Hathor went on side by side with that of
Amen in a chapel with a rock-cut shrine at the side of the Great Temple.
Very possibly this was the original cave-shrine of Hathor, long before
Mentuhetep’s time, and was incorporated with the Great Temple and
beautified with the addition of a pillared hall before it, built over part
of the XIth Dynasty north court and wall, by Hatshepsu’s architects.
The Great Temple, the excavation of which for the Egypt Exploration Fund
was successfully brought to an end by Prof. Naville in 1898, was erected
by Queen Hatshepsu in honour of Amen-Râ, her father Thothmes I, and her
brother-husband Thothmes II, and received a few additions from Thothmes
III, her successor. He, however, did not complete it, and it fell into
disrepair, besides suffering from the iconoclastic zeal of the heretic
Akhunaten, who hammered out some of the beautifully painted scenes upon
its walls. These were badly restored by Ramses II, whose painting is
easily distinguished from the original work by the dulness and badness of
its colour.
The peculiar plan and other remarkable characteristics of this temple are
well known. Its great terraces, with the ramps leading up to them, flanked
by colonnades, which, as we have seen, were imitated from the design of
the old XIth Dynasty temple at its side, are familiar from a hundred
illustrations, and the marvellously preserved colouring of its delicate
reliefs is known to every winter visitor to Egypt, and can be realized by
those who have never been there through the medium of Mr. Howard Carter’s
wonderful coloured reproductions, published in Prof. Naville’s edition of
the temple by the Egypt Exploration Fund. The Great Temple stands to-day
clear of all the débris which used to cover it, a lasting monument to the
work of the greatest of the societies which busy themselves with the
unearthing of the relics of the ancient world.
The two temples of Dêr el-Bahari will soon stand side by side, as they
originally stood, and will always be associated with the name of the
society which rescued them from oblivion, and gave us the treasures of the
royal tombs at Abydos. The names of the two men whom the Egypt Exploration
Fund commissioned to excavate Dêr el-Bahari and Abydos, and for whose work
it exclusively supplied the funds, Profs. Naville and Petrie, will live
chiefly in connection with their work at Dêr el-Bahari and Abydos.
The Egyptians called the two temples Tjeserti, “the two holy
places,” the new building receiving the name of Tjeser-tjesru,
“Holy of Holies,” and the whole tract of Dêr el-Bahari the appellation Tjesret,
“the Holy.” The extraordinary beauty of the situation in which they are
placed, with its huge cliffs and rugged hillsides, may be appreciated from
the photograph which is taken from a steep path half-way up the cliff
above the Great Temple. In it we see the Great Temple in the foreground
with the modern roofs of two of its colonnades, devised in order to
protect the sculptures beneath them, the great trilithon gate leading to
the upper court, and the entrance to the cave-shrine of Amen-Râ, with the
niches of the kings on either side, immediately at the foot of the cliff.
In the middle distance is the duller form of the XIth Dynasty temple, with
its rectangular platform, the ramp leading up to it, and the pyramid in
the centre of it, surrounded by pillars, half-emerging from the great
heaps of sand and débris all around. The background of cliffs and hills,
as seen in the photograph, will serve to give some idea of the beauty of
the surroundings,—an arid beauty, it is true, for all is desert.
There is not a blade of vegetation near; all is salmon-red in colour
beneath a sky of ineffable blue, and against the red cliffs the white
temple stands out in vivid contrast.
The second illustration gives a nearer view of the great trilithon gate in
the upper court, at the head of the ramp. The long hill of Dra’
Abu-’l-Negga is seen bending away northward behind the gate.
Of The Xviiith Dynasty Temple At Dêk El-Bahari. About 1500
B.C.
This is the famous gate on which the jealous Thothmes III chiselled out
Hatshepsu’s name in the royal cartouches and inserted his own in its
place; but he forgot to alter the gender of the pronouns in the
accompanying inscription, which therefore reads “King Thothmes III, she
made this monument to her father Amen.”
Among Prof. Naville’s discoveries here one of the most important is that
of the altar in a small court to the north, which, as the inscription
says, was made in honour of the god Râ-Harmachis “of beautiful white stone
of Anu.” It is of the finest white limestone known. Here also were found
the carved ebony doors of a shrine, now in the Cairo Museum. One of the
most beautiful parts of the temple is the Shrine of Anubis, with its
splendidly preserved paintings and perfect columns and roof of white
limestone. The effect of the pure white stone and simplicity of
architecture is almost Hellenic.
The Shrine of Hathor has been known since the time of Mariette, but in
connection with it some interesting discoveries have been made during the
excavation of the XIth Dynasty temple. In the court between the two
temples were found a large number of small votive offerings, consisting of
scarabs, beads, little figures of cows and women, etc., of blue glazed faïence
and rough pottery, bronze and wood, and blue glazed ware ears, eyes, and
plaques with figures of the sacred cow, and other small objects of the
same nature. These are evidently the ex-votos of the XVIIIth Dynasty
fellahîn to the goddess Hathor in the rock-shrine above the court. When
the shrine was full or the little ex-votos broken, the sacristans threw
them over the wall into the court below, which thus became a kind of
dust-heap. Over this heap the sand and débris gradually collected, and
thus they were preserved. The objects found are of considerable interest
to anthropological science.
The Great Temple was built, as we have said, in honour of Thothmes I and
II, and the deities Amen-Râ and Hathor. More especially it was the
funerary chapel of Thothmes I. His tomb was excavated, not in the Dra’
Abu-l-Negga, which was doubtless now too near the capital city and not in
a sufficiently dignified position of aloofness from the common herd, but
at the end of the long valley of the Wadiyên, behind the cliff-hill above
Dêr el-Bahari. Hence the new temple was oriented in the direction of his
tomb. Immediately behind the temple, on the other side of the hill, is the
tomb which was discovered by Lepsius and cleared in 1904 for Mr. Theodore
N. Davis by Mr. Howard Carter, then chief inspector of antiquities at
Thebes. Its gallery is of very small dimensions, and it winds about in the
hill in corkscrew fashion like the tomb of Aahmes at Aby-dos. Owing to its
extraordinary length, the heat and foul air in the depths of the tomb were
almost insupportable and caused great difficulty to the excavators. When
the sarcophagus-chamber was at length reached, it was found to contain the
empty sarcophagi of Thothmes I and of Hatshepsu. The bodies had been
removed for safe-keeping in the time of the XXIst Dynasty, that of
Thothmes I having been found with those of Set! I and Ramses II in the
famous pit at Dêr el-Bahari, which was discovered by M. Maspero in 1881.
Thothmes I seems to have had another and more elaborate tomb (No. 38) in
the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, which was discovered by M. Loret in
1898. Its frescoes had been destroyed by the infiltration of water.
The fashion of royal burial in the great valley behind Dêr el-Bahari was
followed during the XVIIIth, XIXth, and XXth Dynasties. Here in the
eastern branch of the Wadiyên, now called the Bibân el-Mulûk, “the
Tombs of the Kings,” the greater number of the mightiest Theban Pharaohs
were buried. In the western valley rested two of the kings of the XVIIIth
Dynasty, who desired even more remote burial-places, Amenhetep III and Ai.
The former chose for his last home a most kingly site. Ancient kings had
raised great pyramids of artificial stone over their graves. Amenhetep,
perhaps the greatest and most powerful Pharaoh of them all, chose to have
a natural pyramid for his grave, a mountain for his tumulus. The
illustration shows us the tomb of this monarch, opening out of the side of
one of the most imposing hills in the Western Valley. No other king but
Amenhetep rested beneath this hill, which thus marks his grave and his
only.
It is in the Eastern Valley, the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings properly
speaking, that the tombs of Thothmes I and Hatshepsu lie, and here the
most recent discoveries have been made. It is a desolate spot. As we come
over the hill from Dêr el-Bahari we see below us in the glaring sunshine a
rocky canon, with sides sometimes sheer cliff, sometimes sloped by great
falls of rock in past ages. At the bottom of these slopes the square
openings of the many royal tombs can be descried. [See illustration.] Far
below we see the forms of tourists and the tomb-guards accompanying them,
moving in and out of the openings like ants going in and out of an ants’
nest. Nothing is heard but the occasional cry of a kite and the ceaseless
rhythmical throbbing of the exhaust-pipe of the electric light engine in
the unfinished tomb of Ramses XI. Above and around are the red desert
hills. The Egyptians called it “The Place of Eternity.”
In this valley some remarkable discoveries have been made during the last
few years. In 1898 M. Grébaut discovered the tomb of Amenhetep II, in
which was found the mummy of the king, intact, lying in its sarcophagus in
the depths of the tomb. The royal body now lies there for all to see. The
tomb is lighted with electricity, as are all the principal tombs of the
kings. At the head of the sarcophagus is a single lamp, and, when the
party of visitors is collected in silence around the place of death, all
the lights are turned out, and then the single light is switched on,
showing the royal head illuminated against the surrounding blackness. The
effect is indescribably weird and impressive. The body has only twice been
removed from the tomb since its burial, the second time when it was for a
brief space taken up into the sunlight to be photographed by Mr.. Carter,
in January, 1902. The temporary removal was carefully carried out, the
body of his Majesty being borne up through the passages of the tomb on the
shoulders of the Italian electric light workmen, preceded and followed by
impassive Arab candle-bearers. The workmen were most reverent in their
handling of the body of “ il gran ré,” as they called him.
In the tomb were found some very interesting objects, including a model
boat (afterwards stolen), across which lay the body of a woman. This body
now lies, with others found close by, in a side chamber of the tomb. One
may be that of Hatshepsu. The walls of the tomb-chamber are painted to
resemble papyrus, and on them are written chapters of the “Book of What Is
in the Underworld,” for the guidance of the royal ghost.
In 1902-3 Mr. Theodore Davis excavated the tomb of Thothmes IV. It yielded
a rich harvest of antiquities belonging to the funeral state of the king,
including a chariot with sides of embossed and gilded leather, decorated
with representations of the king’s warlike deeds, and much fine blue
pottery, all of which are now in the Cairo Museum. The tomb-gallery
returns upon itself, describing a curve. An interesting point with regard
to it is that it had evidently been violated even in the short time
between the reigns of its owner and Horem-heb, probably in the period of
anarchy which prevailed at Thebes during the reign of the heretic
Akhunaten; for in one of the chambers is a hieratic inscription recording
the repair of the tomb in the eighth year of Horemheb by Maya,
superintendent of works in the Tombs of the Kings. It reads as follows:
“In the eighth year, the third month of summer, under the Majesty of King
Tjeser-khepru-Râ Sotp-n-Râ, Son of the Sun, Horemheb Meriamen, his Majesty
(Life, health, and wealth unto him!) commanded that orders should be sent
unto the Fanbearer on the King’s Left Hand, the King’s Scribe and Overseer
of the Treasury, the Overseer of the Works in the Place of Eternity, the
Leader of the Festivals of Amen in Karnak, Maya, son of the judge Aui,
born of the Lady Ueret, that he should renew the burial of King
Men-khepru-Râ, deceased, in the August Habitation in Western Thebes.”
Men-khepru-Râ was the prenomen or throne-name of Thothmes IV. Tied round a
pillar in the tomb is still a length of the actual rope used by the
thieves for crossing the chasm, which, as in many of the tombs here, was
left open in the gallery to bar the way to plunderers. The mummy of the
king was found in the tomb of Amenhetep II, and is now at Cairo.
The discovery of the tomb of Thothmes I and Hat-shepsu has already been
described. In 1905 Mr. Davis made his latest find, the tomb of Iuaa and
Tuaa, the father and mother of Queen Tii, the famous consort of Amenhetep
III and mother of Akhunaten the heretic. Readers of Prof. Maspero’s
history will remember that Iuaa and Tuaa are mentioned on one of the large
memorial scarabs of Amenhetep III, which commemorates his marriage. The
tomb has yielded an almost incredible treasure of funerary furniture,
besides the actual mummies of Tii’s parents, including a chariot overlaid
with gold. Gold overlay of great thickness is found on everything, boxes,
chairs, etc. It was no wonder that Egypt seemed the land of gold to the
Asiatics, and that even the King of Babylon begs this very Pharaoh
Amenhetep to send him gold, in one of the letters found at Tell el-Amarna,
“for gold is as water in thy land.” It is probable that Egypt really
attained the height of her material wealth and prosperity in the reign of
Amenhetep III. Certainly her dominion reached its farthest limits in his
time, and his influence was felt from the Tigris to the Sudan. He hunted
lions for his pleasure in Northern Mesopotamia, and he built temples at
Jebel Barkal beyond Dongola. We see the evidence of lavish wealth in the
furniture of the tomb of Iuaa and Tuaa. Yet, fine as are many of these
gold-overlaid and overladen objects of the XVIIIth Dynasty, they have
neither the good taste nor the charm of the beautiful jewels from the
XIIth Dynasty tombs at Dashûr. It is mere vulgar wealth. There is too much
gold thrown about. “For gold is as water in thy land.” In three hundred
years’ time Egypt was to know what poverty meant, when the poor
priest-kings of the XXIst Dynasty could hardly keep body and soul together
and make a comparatively decent show as Pharaohs of Egypt. Then no doubt
the latter-day Thebans sighed for the good old times of the XVIIIth
Dynasty, when their city ruled a considerable part of Africa and Western
Asia and garnered their riches into her coffers. But the days of the XIIth
Dynasty had really been better still. Then there was not so much wealth,
but what there was (and there was as much gold then, too) was used
sparingly, tastefully, and simply. The XIIth Dynasty, not the XVIIIth, was
the real Golden Age of Egypt.
From the funeral panoply of a tomb like that of Iuaa and Tuaa we can
obtain some idea of the pomp and state of Amenhetep III. But the remains
of his Theban palace, which have been discovered and excavated by Mr. C.
Tytus and Mr. P. E. Newberry, do not bear out this idea of magnificence.
It is quite possible that the palace was merely a pleasure house, erected
very hastily and destined to fall to pieces when its owner tired of it or
died, like the many palaces of the late Khedive Ismail. It stood on the
border of an artificial lake, whereon the Pharaoh and his consort Tii
sailed to take their pleasure in golden barks. This is now the cultivated
rectangular space of land known as the Birket Habû, which is still
surrounded by the remains of the embankment built to retain its waters,
and becomes a lake during the inundation. On the western shore of this
lake Amenhetep erected the “stately pleasure dome,” the remains of which
still cover the sandy tract known as el-Malkata, “the Salt-pans,” south of
the great temple of Medînet Habû. These remains consist merely of the
foundations and lowest wall-courses of a complicated and rambling building
of many chambers, constructed of common unburnt brick and plastered with
white stucco on walls and floors, on which were painted beautiful frescoes
of fighting bulls, birds of the air, water-fowl, fish-ponds, etc., in much
the same style as the frescoes of Tell el-Amarna executed in the next
reign. There were small pillared halls, the columns of which were of wood,
mounted on bases of white limestone. The majority still remain in
position. In several chambers there are small daïses, and in one the
remains of a throne, built of brick and mud covered with plaster and
stucco, upon which the Pharaoh Amenhetep sat. This is the palace of him
whom the Greeks called Memnon, who ruled Egypt when Israel was in bondage
and when the dynasty of Minos reigned in Crete. Here by the side of his
pleasure-lake the most powerful of Egyptian Pharaohs whiled away his time
during the summer heats. Evidently the building was intended to be of the
lightest construction, and never meant to last; but to our ideas it seems
odd that an Egyptian Pharaoh should live in a mud palace. Such a building
is, however, quite suited to the climate of Egypt, as are the modern crude
brick dwellings of the fellahîn. In the ruins of the palace were found
several small objects of interest, and close by was an ancient glass
manufactory of Amenhetep III’s time, where much of the characteristic
beautifully coloured and variegated opaque glass of the period was made.
The tombs of the magnates of Amenhetep III’s reign and of the reigns of
his immediate predecessors were excavated, as has been said, on the
eastern slope of the hill of Shêkh ‘Abd el-Kûrna, where was the earliest
Theban necropolis. No doubt many of the early tombs of the time of the
VIth Dynasty were appropriated and remodelled by the XVIIIth Dynasty
magnates. We have an instance of time’s revenge in this matter, in the
case of the tomb of Imadua, a great priestly official of the time of the
XXth Dynasty. This tomb previously belonged to an XVIIIth Dynasty worthy,
but Imadua appropriated it three hundred years later and covered up all
its frescoes with the much begilt decoration fashionable in his period.
Perhaps the XVIIIth Dynasty owner had stolen it from an original owner of
the time of the VIth Dynasty. The tomb has lately been cleared out by Mr.
Newberry.
Much work of the same kind has been done here of late years by Messrs.
Newberry and R. L. Mond, in succession. To both we are indebted for the
excavation of many known tombs, as well as for the discovery of many
others previously unknown. Among the former was that of Sebekhetep,
cleared by Mr. Newberry. Se-bekhetep was an official of the time of
Thothmes III. From his tomb, and from others in the same hill, came many
years ago the fine frescoes shown in the illustration, which are among the
most valued treasures of the Egyptian department of the British Museum.
They are typical specimens of the wall-decoration of an XVIIIth Dynasty
tomb. On one may be seen a bald-headed peasant, with staff in hand,
pulling an ear of corn from the standing crop in order to see if it is
ripe. He is the “Chief Reaper,” and above him is a prayer that the “great
god in heaven” may increase the crop. To the right of him is a charioteer
standing beside a car and reining back a pair of horses, one black, the
other bay. Below is another charioteer with two white horses. He sits on
the floor of the car with his back to them, eating or resting, while they
nibble the branches of a tree close by. Another scene is that of a scribe
keeping tally of offerings brought to the tomb, while fellahm are bringing
flocks of geese and other fowl, some in crates. The inscription above is
apparently addressed by the goose-herd to the man with the crates. It
reads: “Hasten thy feet because of the geese! Hearken! thou knowest not
the next minute what has been said to thee!” Above, a reïs with a stick
bids other peasants squat on the ground before addressing the scribe, and
he is saying to them: “Sit ye down to talk.” The third scene is in another
style; on it may be seen Semites bringing offerings of vases of gold,
silver, and copper to the royal presence, bowing themselves to the ground
and kissing the dust before the throne. The fidelity and accuracy with
which the racial type of the tribute-bearers is given is most
extraordinary; every face seems a portrait, and each one might be seen any
day now in the Jewish quarters of Whitechapel.
The first two paintings are representative of a very common style of
fresco-pictures in these tombs. The care with which the animals are
depicted is remarkable. Possibly one of the finest Egyptian
representations of an animal is the fresco of a goat in the tomb of
Gen-Amen, discovered by Mr. Mond. There is even an attempt here at
chiaroscuro, which is unknown to Egyptian art generally, except at Tell
el-Amarna. Evidently the Egyptian painters reached the apogee of their art
towards the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The third, the representation of
tribute-bearers, is of a type also well known at this period. In all the
chief tombs we have processions of Egyptians, Westerners, Northerners,
Easterners, and Southerners, bringing tribute to the Pharaoh. The North is
represented by the Semites, the East by the Punites (when they occur), the
South by negroes, the West by the Keftiu or people of Crete and Cyprus.
The representations of the last-named people have become of the very
highest interest during the last few years, on account of the discoveries
in Crete, which have revealed to us the state and civilization of these
very Keftiu. Messrs. Evans and Halbherr have discovered at Knossos and
Phaistos the cities and palace-temples of the king who sent forth their
ambassadors to far-away Egypt with gifts for the mighty Pharaoh; these
ambassadors were painted in the tombs of their hosts as representative of
the quarter of the world from which they came.
The two chief Egyptian representations of these people, who since they
lived in Greece may be called Greeks, though their more proper title would
be “Pe-lasgians,” are to be found in the tombs of Rekhmarâ and Senmut, the
former a vizier under Thothmes III, the latter the architect of
Hatshepsu’s temple at Dêr el-Bahari. Senmut’s tomb is a new rediscovery.
It was known, as Rekhmarâ’s was, in the early days of Egyptological
science, and Prisse d’Avennes copied its paintings. It was afterwards lost
sight of until rediscovered by Mr. Newberry and Prof. Steindorff.
The tomb of Rekhmarâ (No. 35) is well known to every visitor to Thebes,
but it is difficult to get at that of Senmut (No. 110); it lies at the top
of the hill round to the left and overlooking Dêr el-Bahari, an
appropriate place for it, by the way. In some ways Senmut’s
representations are more interesting than Rekhmarâ’s. They are more easily
seen, since they are now in the open air, the fore hall of the tomb having
been ruined; and they are better preserved, since they have not been
subjected to a century of inspection with naked candles and pawing with
greasy hands, as have Rekhmarâ’s frescoes. Further, there is no
possibility of mistaking what they represent. From right to left, walking
in procession, we see the Minoan gift-bearers from Crete, carrying in
their hands and on their shoulders great cups of gold and silver, in shape
like the famous gold cups found at Vaphio in Lakonia, but much larger,
also a ewer of gold and silver exactly like one of bronze discovered by
Mr. Evans two years ago at Knossos, and a huge copper jug with four
ring-handles round the sides. All these vases are specifically and
definitely Mycenaean, or rather, following the new terminology, Minoan.
They are of Greek manufacture and are carried on the shoulders of
Pelasgian Greeks. The bearers wear the usual Mycenaean costume, high boots
and a gaily ornamented kilt, and little else, just as we see it depicted
in the fresco of the Cupbearer at Knossos and in other Greek
representations. The coiffure, possibly the most characteristic thing
about the Mycenaean Greeks, is faithfully represented by the Egyptians
both here and in Rekhmarâ’s tomb. The Mycenaean men allowed their hair to
grow to its full natural length, like women, and wore it partly hanging
down the back, partly tied up in a knot or plait (the kepas of the
dandy Paris in the Iliad) on the crown of the head. This was the universal
fashion, and the Keftiu are consistently depicted by the XVIIIth Dynasty
Egyptians as following it. The faces in the Senmut fresco are not so well
portrayed as those in the Rekhmarâ fresco. There it is evident that the
first three ambassadors are faithfully depicted, as the portraits are
marked. The procession advances from left to right. The first man, “the
Great Chief of the Kefti and the Isles of the Green Sea,” is young, and
has a remarkably small mouth with an amiable expression. His complexion is
fair rather than dark, but his hair is dark brown. His lieutenant, the
next in order, is of a different type,—elderly, with a most
forbidding visage, Roman nose, and nutcracker jaws. Most of the others are
very much alike,—young, dark in complexion, and with long black hair
hanging below their waists and twisted up into fantastic knots and curls
on the tops of their heads. One, carrying on his shoulder a great silver
vase with curving handles and in one hand a dagger of early European
Bronze Age type, is looking back to hear some remark of his next
companion. Any one of these gift-bearers might have sat for the portrait
of the Knossian Cupbearer, the fresco discovered by Mr. Evans in the
palace-temple of Minos; he has the same ruddy brown complexion, the same
long black hair dressed in the same fashion, the same parti-coloured kilt,
and he bears his vase in much the same way. We have only to allow for the
difference of Egyptian and Mycenaean ways of drawing. There is no doubt
whatever that these Keftiu of the Egyptians were Cretans of the Minoan
Age. They used to be considered Phoenicians, but this view was long ago
exploded. They are not Semites, and that is quite enough. Neither are they
Asiatics of any kind. They are purely and simply Mycenaean, or rather
Minoan, Greeks of the pre-Hellenic period—Pelasgi, that is to say.
Probably no discovery of more far-reaching importance to our knowledge of
the history of the world generally and of our own culture especially has
ever been made than the finding of Mycenæ by Schliemann, and the further
finds that have resulted therefrom, culminating in the discoveries of Mr.
Arthur Evans at Knossos. Naturally, these discoveries are of extraordinary
interest to us, for they have revealed the beginnings and first bloom of
the European civilization of to-day. For our culture-ancestors are neither
the Egyptians, nor the Assyrians, nor the Hebrews, but the Hellenes, and
they, the Aryan-Greeks, derived most of their civilization from the
pre-Hellenic people whom they found in the land before them, the Pelasgi
or “Mycenæan” Greeks, “Minoans,” as we now call them, the Keftiu of the
Egyptians. These are the ancient Greeks of the Heroic Age, to which the
legends of the Hellenes refer; in their day were fought the wars of Troy
and of the Seven against Thebes, in their day the tragedy of the Atridse
was played out to its end, in their day the wise Minos ruled Knossos and
the Ægean. And of all the events which are at the back of these
legends we know nothing. The hiéroglyphed tablets of the pre-Hellenic
Greeks lie before us, but we cannot read them; we can only see that the
Minoan writing in many ways resembled the Egyptian, thus again confirming
our impression of the original early connection of the two cultures.
In view of this connection, and the known close relations between Crete
and Egypt, from the end of the XIIth Dynasty to the end of the XVIIIth, we
might have hoped to recover at Knossos a bilingual inscription in Cretan
and Egyptian hieroglyphs which would give us the key to the Minoan script
and tell us what we so dearly wish to know. But this hope has not yet been
realized. Two Egyptian inscriptions have been found at Knossos, but no
bilingual one. A list of Keftian names is preserved in the British Museum
upon an Egyptian writing-board from Thebes with what is perhaps a copy of
a single Cretan hieroglyph, a vase; but again, nothing bilingual. A list
of “Keftian words” occurs at the head of a papyrus, also in the British
Museum, but they appear to be nonsense, a mere imitation of the sounds of
a strange tongue. Still we need not despair of finding the much desired
Cretan-Egyptian bilingual inscription yet. Perhaps the double text of a
treaty between Crete and Egypt, like that of Ramses II with the Hittites,
may come to light. Meanwhile we can only do our best with the means at our
hand to trace out the history of the relations of the oldest European
culture with the ancient civilization of Egypt. The tomb-paintings at
Thebes are very important material. Eor it is due to them that the voice
of the doubter has finally ceased to be heard, and that now no
archaeologist questions that the Egyptians were in direct communication
with the Cretan Mycenæans in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, some fifteen
hundred years before Christ, for no one doubts that the pictures of the
Keftiu are pictures of Mycenaeans.
As we have seen, we know that this connection was far older than the time
of the XVIIIth Dynasty, but it is during that time and the Hyksos period
that we have the clearest documentary proof of its existence, from the
statuette of Abnub and the alabastron lid of King Khian, found at Knossos,
down to the Mycenaean pottery fragments found at Tell el-Amarna, a site
which has been utterly abandoned since the time of the heretic Akhunaten
(B.C. 1430), so that there is no possibility of anything found there being
later than his time. That the connection existed as late as the time of
the XXth Dynasty we know from the representations of golden Bügelkannen
or false-necked vases of Mycenaean form in the tomb of Ramses III in the
Bibân el-Mulûk, and of golden cups of Vaphio type in the tomb of Imadua,
already mentioned. This brings the connection down to about 1050 B.C.
After that date we cannot hope to find any certain evidence of connection,
for by that time the Mycenaean civilization had probably come to an end.
In the days of the XIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties a great and splendid power
evidently existed in Crete, and sent its peaceful ambassadors, the Keftiu
who are represented in the Theban tombs, to Egypt. But with the XIXth
Dynasty the name of the Keftiu disappears from Egyptian records, and their
place is taken by a congeries of warring seafaring tribes, whose names as
given by the Egyptians seem to be forms of tribal and place names well
known to us in the Greece of later days. We find the Akaivasha (Axaifol,
Achaians), Shakalsha (Sagalassians of Pisidia), Tursha (Tylissians of
Crete?), and Shardana (Sardians) allied with the Libyans and Mashauash
(Maxyes) in a land attack upon Egypt in the days of Meneptah, the
successor of Ramses II—just as in the later days of the XXVIth
Dynasty the Northern pirates visited the African shore of the
Mediterranean, and in alliance with the predatory Libyans attacked Egypt.
Prof. Petrie has lately [History of Egypt, iii, pp. Ill, I12.] proffered
an alternative view, which would make all these tribes Tunisians and
Algerians, thus disposing of the identification of the Akaivasha with the
Achaians, and making them the ancient representatives of the town of
el-Aghwat (Roman Agbia) in Tunis. But several difficulties might be
pointed out which are in the way of an acceptance of this view, and it is
probable that the older identifications with Greek tribes must still be
retained, so that Meneptah’s Akaivasha are evidently the ancient
representatives of the Achai(v)ans, the Achivi of the Roman poets. The
terminations sha and na, which appear in these names, are
merely ethnic and locative affixes belonging to the Asianic language
system spoken by these tribes at that time, to which the language of the
Minoan Cretans (which is written in the Knossian hieroglyphs) belonged.
They existed in ancient Lycian in the forms azzi and nna,
and we find them enshrined in the Asia Minor place-names terminating in assos
and nda, as Halikarnassos, Sagalassos (Shakalasha in Meneptah’s
inscription), Oroanda, and Labraunda (which, as we have seen, is the same
as the [Greek word], a word of pre-Hellenic origin, both meaning “Place of
the Double Axe”) The identification of these sha and nal
terminations in the Egyptian transliterations of the foreign names, with
the Lycian affixes referred to, was made some five years ago,[2] and is now
generally accepted. We have, then, to find the equivalents of these names,
to strike off the final termination, as in the case of Akaiva-sha, where
Akaiva only is the real name, and this seems to be the Egyptian equivalent
of Axaifol, Achivi. It is strange to meet with this great name on
an Egyptian monument of the thirteenth century B.C. But yet not so
strange, when we recollect that it is precisely to that period that Greek
legend refers the war of Troy, which was an attack by Greek tribes from
all parts of the Ægean upon the Asianic city at Hissarlik in the Troad,
exactly parallel to the attacks of the Northerners on Egypt. And Homer
preserves many a reminiscence of early Greek visits, peaceful and the
reverse, to the coast of Egypt at this period. The reader will have
noticed that one no longer treats the siege of Troy as a myth. To do so
would be to exhibit a most uncritical mind; even the legends of King
Arthur have a historic foundation, and those of the Nibelungen are still
more probable.
[2]
See Hall, Oldest Civilization of Greece, p. 178 f.
In the eighth year of Ramses III the second Northern attack was made, by
the Pulesta (Pelishtim, Philistines), Tjakaray, Shakalasha
(Sagalassians), Vashasha, and Danauna or Daanau, in alliance with North
Syrian tribes. The Danauna are evidently the ancient representatives of
the Aavaoî, the Danaans who formed the bulk of the Greek army
against Troy under the leadership of the long-haired Achaians, [Greek
words] (like the Keftiu). The Vashasha have been identified by the writer
with the Axians, the [Greek word] of Crete. Prof. Petrie compares the name
of the Tjakaray with that of the (modern) place Zakro in Crete.
Identifications with modern place-names are of doubtful value; for
instance, we cannot but hold that Prof. Petrie errs greatly in identifying
the name of the Pidasa (another tribe mentioned in Ramses II’s time) with
that of the river Pidias in Cyprus. “Pidias” is a purely modern corruption
of the ancient Pediseus, which means the “plain-river” (because it flows
through the central plain of the island), from the Greek [Greek word]. If,
then, we make the Pidasa Cypriotes we assume that pure Greek was spoken in
Cyprus as early as 1100 b. c, which is highly improbable. The Pidasa were
probably Le-leges (Pedasians); the name of Pisidia may be the same, by
metathesis. Pedasos is a name always connected with the much wandering
tribe of the Leleges, where-ever they are found in Lakonia or in Asia
Minor. We believe them to have been known to the Egyptians as Pidasa. The
identification of the Tjakaray with Zakro is very tempting. The name was
formerly identified with that of the Teukrians, but the v in the word
Tewpot lias always been a stumbling-block in the way. Perhaps Zakro is
neither more nor less than the Tetkpoc-name, since the legendary Teucer,
the archer, was connected with the eastern or Eteokretan end of Crete,
where Zakro lies. In Mycenæan times Zakro was an important place, so that
the Tjakaray may be the Teukroi, after all, and Zakro may preserve the
name. At any rate, this identification is most alluring and, taken in
conjunction with the other cumulative identifications, is very probable;
but the identification of the Pidæa with the river Pediæus in Cyprus is
neither alluring nor probable.
In the time of Ramses II some of these Asia Minor tribes had marched
against Egypt as allies of the Hittites. We find among them the Luka or
Lycians, the Dardenui (Dardanians, who may possibly have been at that time
in the Troad, or elsewhere, for all these tribes were certainly
migratory), and the Masa (perhaps the Mysians). With the Cretans of Ramses
Ill’s time must be reckoned the Pulesta, who are certainly the
Philistines, then most probably in course of their traditional migration
from Crete to Palestine. In Philistia recent excavations by Mr. Welch have
disclosed the unmistakable presence of a late Mycenæan culture, and we can
only ascribe this to the Philistines, who were of Cretan origin.
Thus we see that all these Northern tribal names hold together with
remarkable persistence, and in fact refuse to be identified with any
tribes but those of Asia Minor and the Ægean. In them we see the broken
remnants of the old Minoan (Keftian) power, driven hither and thither
across the seas by intestinal feuds, and “winding the skein of grievous
wars till every man of them perished,” as Homer says of the heroes after
the siege of Troy. These were in fact the wanderings of the heroes, the
period of Sturm und Drang which succeeded the great civilized epoch
of Minos and his thalassocracy, of Knossos, Phaistos, and the Keftius. On
the walls of the temple of Medînet Habû, Ramses III depicted the portraits
of the conquered heroes who had fallen before the Egyptian onslaught, and
he called them heroes, tuher in Egyptian, fully recognizing their
Berserker gallantry. Above all in interest are the portraits of the
Philistines, those Greeks who at this very time seized part of Palestine
(which takes its name from them), and continued to exist there as a
separate people (like the Normans in France) for at least two centuries.
Goliath the giant was, then, a Greek; certainly he was of Cretan descent,
and so a Pelasgian.
Such are the conclusions to which modern discovery in Crete has impelled
us with regard to the pictures of the Keftiu at Shêkh ‘Abd el-Kûrna. It is
indeed a new chapter in the history of the relations of ancient Egypt with
the outside world that Dr. Arthur Evans has opened for us. And in this
connection some American work must not be overlooked. An expedition sent
out by the University of Pennsylvania, under Miss Harriet Boyd, has
discovered much of importance to Mycenæan study in the ruins of an ancient
town at Gournia in Crete, east of Knossos. Here, however, little has been
found that will bear directly on the question of relations between
Mycenaean Greece and Egypt.
The Theban nécropoles of the New Empire are by no means exhausted by a
description of the Tombs of the Kings and Shêkh ‘Abd el-Kûrna; but few new
discoveries have been made anywhere except in the picturesque valley of
the Tombs of the Queens, south of Shêkh ‘Abd el-Kûrna. Here the Italian
Egyptologist, Prof. Schiaparelli, has lately discovered and excavated some
very fine tombs of the XIXth and XXth Dynasties. The best is that of Queen
Nefertari, one of the wives of Ramses II. The colouring of the reliefs
upon these walls is extraordinarily bright, and the portraits of the
queen, who has a very beautiful face, with aquiline nose, are wonderfully
preserved. She was of the dark type, while another queen, Titi by name,
who was buried close by, was fair, and had a retroussé nose. Prof.
Schiaparelli also discovered here the tombs of some princes of the XXth
Dynasty, who died young. All the tombs are much alike, with a single short
gallery, on the walls of which are mythological scenes, figures of the
prince and of his father, the king, etc., painted in a crude style, which
shows a great degeneration from that of the XVIIIth Dynasty tombs.
We now leave the great necropolis and turn to the later temples of the
Western Bank at Thebes. These were of a funerary character, like those of
Dêr el-Bahari, already described. The most imposing of all in some
respects is the Ramesseum, where lies the huge granite colossus of Ramses
II, prostrate and broken, which Diodorus knew as the statue of Osymandyas.
This name is a late corruption of Ramses II’s throne-name, User-maat-Rà,
pronounced Ûsimare. The temple has been cleared by Mr. Howard Carter for
the Egyptian government, and the small town of priests’ houses, magazines,
and cellars, to the west of it, has been excavated by him. This is quite a
little Pompeii, with its small streets, its houses with the stucco still
clinging to the walls, its public altar, its market colonnade, and its
gallery of statues. The statues are only of brick like the walls, and
roughly shaped and plastered, but they were portraits, undoubtedly, of
celebrities of the time, though we do not know of whom. On either side are
the long magazines in which were kept the possessions of the priests of
the Ramesseum, the grain from the lands with which they were endowed, and
everything meet to be offered to the ghost of the king whom they served.
The plan of the place had evidently been altered after the time of Ramses
II, as remains of overbuilding were found here and there. The magazines
were first investigated in 1896 by Prof. Petrie, who also found in the
neighbourhood the remains of a number of small royal funerary temples of
the XVIIIth Dynasty, all looking in the direction of the hill, beyond
which lay the tombs of the kings.
In which Prof. Schiaparelli discovered the tomb of Ramses
II’s wife (1904).
We may now turn to Luxor, where immediately above the landing-place of the
steamers and dahabiyas rise the stately coloured colonnades of the Temple
of Luxor. Unfortunately, modern excavations have not been allowed to
pursue their course to completion here, as in the first great colonnaded
court, which was added by Ramses II to the original building of Amenhetep
III, Tutankhamen, and Horemheb, there still remains the Mohammedan Mosque
of Abu-’l-Haggâg, which may not be removed. Abu-’l-Haggâg, “the Father of
Pilgrims” (so called on account of the number of pilgrims to his shrine),
was a very holy shêkh, and his memory is held in the greatest reverence by
the Luksuris. It is unlucky that this mosque was built within the court of
the Great Temple, and it cannot be removed till Moslem religious
prejudices become at least partially ameliorated, and then the work of
completely excavating the Temple of Luxor may be carried out.
Between Luxor and Karnak lay the temple of the goddess Mut, consort of
Amen and protectress of Thebes. It stood in the part of the city known as
Asheru. This building was cleared in 1895 at the expense and under the
supervision of two English ladies, Miss Benson and Miss Gourlay.
With A Dahabîya And A Steamer Of The Anglo-American Nile
Company.
The temple had always been remarkable on account of the prodigious number
of seated figures of the lioness-headed goddess Sekhemet, or Pakhet, which
it contains, dedicated by Amenhetep III and Sheshenk I; most of those in
the British Museum were brought from this temple. The excavators found
many more of them, and also some very interesting portrait-statues of the
late period which had been dedicated there. The most important of these
was the head and shoulders of a statue of Mentuemhat, governor of Thebes
at the time of the sack of the city by Ashur-bani-pal of Assyria in 668
B.C. In Miss Benson’s interesting book, The Temple of Mut in Asher,
it is suggested, on the authority of Prof. Petrie, that his facial type is
Cypriote, but this speculation is a dangerous one, as is also the similar
speculation that the wonderful portrait-head of an old man found by Miss
Benson [* Plate vii of her book.] is of Philistine type. We have only to
look at the faces of elderly Egyptians to-day to see that the types
presented by Mentuemhat and Miss Benson’s “Philistine” need be nothing but
pure Egyptian. The whole work of the clearing was most efficiently carried
out, and the Cairo Museum obtained from it some valuable specimens of
Egyptian sculpture.
The Great Temple of Karnak is one of the chief cares of the Egyptian
Department of Antiquities. Its paramount importance, so to speak, as the
cathedral temple of Egypt, renders its preservation and exploration a work
of constant necessity, and its great extent makes this work one which is
always going on and which probably will be going on for many years to
come. The Temple of Karnak has cost the Egyptian government much money,
yet not a piastre of this can be grudged. For several years past the works
have been under the charge of M. Georges Legrain, the well-known engineer
and draughtsman who was associated with M. de Morgan in the work at
Dashûr. His task is to clear out the whole temple thoroughly, to discover
in it what previous investigators have left undiscovered, and to restore
to its original position what has fallen.
The left-hand obelisk is the highest in Egypt, and was
erected by Hatshepsu; the right-hand obelisk was put up by
Thothmes III.
No general work of restoration is contemplated, nor would this be in the
slightest degree desirable. Up to the present M. Legrain has certainly
carried out all three branches of his task with great success. An
unforeseen event has, however, considerably complicated and retarded the
work. In October, 1899, one of the columns of the side aisles of the great
Hypostyle Hall fell, bringing down with it several others. The whole place
was a chaotic ruin, and for a moment it seemed as though the whole of the
Great Hall, one of the wonders of the world, would collapse. The disaster
was due to the gradual infiltration of water from the Nile beneath the
structure, whose foundations, as is usual in Egypt, were of the flimsiest
description. Even the most imposing Egyptian temples have jerry-built
foundations; usually they are built on the top of the wall-stumps of
earlier buildings of different plan, filled in with a confused mass of
earlier slabs and weak rubbish of all kinds. Had the Egyptian buildings
been built on sure foundations, they would have been preserved to a much
greater extent even than they are. In such a climate as that of Egypt a
stone building well built should last for ever.
M. Legrain has for the last five years been busy repairing the damage. All
the fallen columns are now restored to the perpendicular, and the capitals
and architraves are in process of being hoisted into their original
positions. The process by which M. Legrain carries out this work has been
already described. He works in the old Egyptian fashion, building great
inclines or ramps of earth up which the pillar-drums, the capitals, and
the architrave-blocks are hauled by manual labour, and then swung into
position. This is the way in which the Egyptians built Karnak, and in this
way, too, M. Le-grain is rebuilding it. It is a slow process, but a sure
one, and now it will not be long before we shall see the hall, except its
roof, in much the same condition as it was when Seti built it. Lovers of
the picturesque will, however, miss the famous leaning column, hanging
poised across the hall, which has been a main feature in so many pictures
and photographs of Karnak. This fell in the catastrophe of 1899, and
naturally it has not been possible to restore it to its picturesque, but
dangerous, position.
The work at Karnak has been distinguished during the last two years by two
remarkable discoveries. Outside the main temple, to the north of the
Hypostyle Hall, M. Legrain found a series of private sanctuaries or
shrines, built of brick by personages of the XVIIIth Dynasty and later, in
order to testify their devotion to Amen. In these small cells were found
some remarkable statues, one of which is illustrated. It is one of the
most perfect of its kind. A great dignitary of the XVIIIth Dynasty is seen
seated with his wife, their daughter standing between them. Round his neck
are four chains of golden rings, with which he had been decorated by the
Pharaoh for his services. It is a remarkable group, interesting for its
style and workmanship as well as for its subject. As an example of the
formal hieratic type of portraiture it is very fine.
The other and more important discovery of the two was made by M. Legrain
on the south side of the Hypo-style Hall.
The left-hand obelisk is the highest in Egypt, and was erected by
Hatshepsu; the right-hand obelisk was put up by Thothmes III.
M. de Morgan in the work at Dashûr. His task is to clear out the whole
temple thoroughly, to discover in it what previous investigators have left
undiscovered, and to restore to its original position what has fallen.
Tentative excavations, begun in an unoccupied tract under the wall of the
hall, resulted in the discovery of parts of statues; the place was then
regularly excavated, and the result has been amazing. The ground was full
of statues, large and small, at some unknown period buried pell-mell, one
on the top of another. Some are broken, but the majority are perfect,
which is in itself unusual, and is due very much to the soft, muddy soil
in which they have lain. Statues found on dry desert land are often
terribly cracked, especially when they are of black granite, the crystals
of which seem to have a greater tendency to disintegration than have those
of the red syenite. The Karnak statues are figures of pious persons, who
had dedicated portraits of themselves in the temple of Amen, together with
those of great men whom the king had honoured by ordering their statues
placed in the temple during their lives.
Of this number was the great sage Amenhetep, son of Hapi, the founder of
the little desert temple of Dêr el-Medîna, near Dêr el-Bahari, who was a
sort of prime minister under Amenhetep III, and was venerated in later
days as a demigod. His statue was found with the others by M. Legrain.
Among them is a figure made entirely of green felspar, an unusual material
for so large a statuette. A fine portrait of Thothmes III was also found.
The illustration shows this wonderfully fruitful excavation in progress,
with the diggers at work in the black mud soil, in the foreground the
basket-boys carrying away the rubbish on their shoulders, and the massive
granite walls of the Great Hypostyle Hall of Seti in the background. The
huge size of the roof-blocks is noticeable. These are not the actual
uppermost roof-blocks, but only the architraves from pillar to pillar; the
original roof consisted of similar blocks laid across in the transverse
direction from architrave to architrave. An Egyptian granite temple was in
fact built upon the plan of a child’s box of bricks; it was but a modified
and beautified Stonehenge.
Of The Time Of The Xviiith Dynasty. Discovered by M. Legrain
at Karnak.
Other important discoveries have been made by M. Legrain in the course of
his work.
The Tomb of Pentu (No. 5) at Tell el-Amarna, inhabited by
Mr. de G. Davies during his work for the Archaeological
Survey of Egypt (Egypt Exploration Fund). About 1400 B.C.
Among them are statues of the late Middle Kingdom, including one of King
Usertsen (Senusret) IV of the XIIIth Dynasty. There are also reliefs of
the reign of Amenhetep I, which are remarkable for the delicacy of their
workmanship and the sureness of their technique.
We know that the temple was built as early as the time of TJsertsen, for
in it have been found one or two of his blocks; and no doubt the original
shrine, which was rebuilt in the time of Philip Arrhidseus, was of the
same period, but hitherto no remains of the centuries between his time and
that of Hatshepsu had been found. With M. Legrain’s work in the greatest
temple of Thebes we finish our account of the new discoveries in the chief
city of ancient Egypt, as we began it with the work of M. Naville in the
oldest temple there.
One of the most interesting questions connected with the archaeology of
Thebes is that which asks whether the heretical disk-worshipper Akhunaten
(Amenhetep IV) erected buildings there, and whether any trace of them has
ever been discovered. To those who are interested in Egyptian history and
religion the transitory episode of the disk-worship heresy is already
familiar. The precise character of the heretical dogma, which Amenhetep IV
proclaimed and desired his subjects to. accept, has lately been well
explained by Mr. de Garis Davies in his volumes, published by the
“Archaeological Survey of Egypt” branch of the Egypt Exploration Fund, on
the tombs of el-Amarna. He shows that the heretical doctrine was a
monotheism of a very high order. Amenhetep IV (or as he preferred to call
himself, Akhunaten, “Glory of the Disk”) did not, as has usually been
supposed, merely worship the Sun-disk itself as the giver of life, and
nothing more. He venerated the glowing disk merely as the visible
emanation of the deity behind it, who dispensed heat and life to all
living things through its medium. The disk was, so to speak, the window in
heaven through which the unknown God, the “Lord of the Disk,” shed a
portion of his radiance on the world. Now, given an ignorance of the true
astronomical character of the sun, we see how eminently rational a
religion this was. In effect, the sun is the source of all life upon this
earth, and so Akhunaten caused its rays to be depicted each with a hand
holding out the sign of life to the earth. The monotheistic worship of the
sun alone is certainly the highest form of pagan religion, but Akhunaten
saw further than this. His doctrine was that there was a deity behind the
sun, whose glory shone through it and gave us life. This deity was unnamed
and unnamable; he was “the Lord of the Disk.” We see in his heresy,
therefore, the highest attitude to which religious ideas had attained
before the days of the Hebrew prophets.
This religion seems to have been developed out of the philosophical
speculations of the priests of the Sun at Heliopolis. Akhunaten with
unwise iconoclastic zeal endeavoured to root out the worship of the
ancient gods of Egypt, and especially that of Amen-Bà, the ruler of the
Egyptian pantheon, whose primacy in the hearts of the people made him the
most redoubtable rival of the new doctrine. But the name of the old
Sun-god Bà-Harmaehis was spared, and it is evident that Akhunaten regarded
him as more or less identical with his god.
It has been supposed by Prof. Petrie that Queen Tii, the mother of
Akhunaten, was of Mitannian (Armenian) origin, and that she brought the
Aten religion to Egypt from her native land, and taught it to her son.
Certainly it seems as though the new doctrine had made some headway before
the death of Amenhetep III, but we have no reason to attribute it to Tii,
or to suppose that she brought it with her from abroad. There is no proof
whatever that she was not a native Egyptian, and the mummies of her
parents, Iuaa and Tuaa, are purely Egyptian in facial type. It seems
undoubted that the Aten cult was a development of pure Egyptian religious
thought.
At first Akhunaten tried to establish his religion at Thebes alongside
that of Amen and his attendant pantheon. He seems to have built a temple
to the Aten there, and we see that his courtiers began to make tombs for
themselves in the new realistic style of sculptural art, which the king,
heretical in art as in religion, had introduced. The tomb of Barnes at
Shêkh ‘Abd el-Kûrna has on one side of the door a representation of the
king in the old regular style, and on the other side one in the new
realistic style, which depicts him in all the native ugliness in which
this strange truth-loving man seems to have positively gloried. We find,
too, that he caused a temple to the Aten to be erected in far-away Napata,
the capital of Nubia, by Jebel Barkal in the Sudan. The facts as to the
Theban and Napata temples have been pointed out by Prof. Breasted, of
Chicago.
But the opposition of the Theban priesthood was too strong. Akhunaten
shook the dust of the capital off his feet and retired to the isolated
city of Akhet-aten, “the Glory of the Disk,” at the modern Tell el-Amarna,
where he could philosophize in peace, while his kingdom was left to take
care of itself. He and his wife Nefret-iti, who seems to have been a
faithful sharer of his views, reigned over a select court of
Aten-worship-ping nobles, priests, and artists. The artists had under
Akhunaten an unrivalled opportunity for development, of which they had
already begun to take considerable advantage before the end of his reign
and the restoration of the old order of ideas. Their style takes on itself
an almost bizarre freedom, which reminds us strongly of the similar
characteristic in Mycenaean art. There is a strange little relief in the
Berlin Museum of the king standing cross-legged, leaning on a staff, and
languidly smelling a flower, while the queen stands by with her garments
blown about by the wind. The artistic monarch’s graceful attitude is
probably a faithful transcript of a characteristic pose.
We see from this what an Egyptian artist could do when his shackles were
removed, but unluckily Egypt never produced another king who was at the
same time an original genius, an artist, and a thinker. When Akhunaten
died, the Egyptian artists’ shackles were riveted tighter than ever. The
reaction was strong. The kingdom had fallen into anarchy, and the foreign
empire which his predecessors had built up had practically been thrown to
the winds by Akhunaten. The whole is an example of the confusion and
disorganization which ensue when a philosopher rules. Not long after the
heretic’s death the old religion was fully restored, the cult of the disk
was blotted out, and the Egyptians returned joyfully to the worship of
their myriad deities. Akhunaten’s ideals were too high for them. The
débris of the foreign empire was, as usual in such cases, put together
again, and customary law and order restored by the conservative
reactionaries who succeeded him. Henceforth Egyptian civilization runs an
uninspired and undeveloping course till the days of the Saïtes and the
Ptolemies. This point in the history of Egypt, therefore, forms a
convenient stopping-place at which to pause, while we turn once more to
Western Asia, and ascertain to what extent recent excavations and research
have thrown new light upon the problems connected with the rise and
history of the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires.
CHAPTER VIII—THE ASSYRIAN AND NEO-BABYLONIAN EMPIRES IN THE LIGHT OF RECENT RESEARCH
The early history of Assyria has long been a subject on which historians
were obliged to trust largely to conjecture, in their attempts to
reconstruct the stages by which its early rulers obtained their
independence and laid the foundations of the mighty empire over which
their successors ruled. That the land was colonized from Babylonia and was
at first ruled as a dependency of the southern kingdom have long been
regarded as established facts, but until recently little was known of its
early rulers and governors, and still less of the condition of the country
and its capital during the early periods of their existence. Since the
excavations carried out by the British Museum at Kala Sherghat, on the
western bank of the Tigris, it has been known that the mounds at that spot
mark the site of the city of Ashur, the first capital of the Assyrians,
and the monuments and records recovered during those excavations have
hitherto formed our principal source of information for the early history
of the country.[1] Some of the oldest records found in the course of these
excavations were short votive texts inscribed by rulers who bore the title
of ishshakku, corresponding to the Sumerian and early Babylonian
title of patesi, and with some such meaning as “viceroy.” It was rightly
conjectured from the title which they bore that these early rulers owed
allegiance to the kings of Babylon and were their nominees, or at any rate
their tributaries. The names of a few of these early viceroys were
recovered from their votive inscriptions and from notices in later
historical texts, but it was obvious that our knowledge of early Assyrian
history would remain very fragmentary until systematic excavations in
Assyria were resumed. Three years ago (1902) the British Museum resumed
excavations at Kuyunjik, the site of Nineveh. The work was begun and
carried out under the direction of Mr. L. W. King, but since last summer
has been continued by Mr. R. C. Thompson. Last year, too, excavations were
reopened at Sherghat by the Deutsch-Orient Ge-sellschaft, at first under
the direction of Dr. Koldewey, and afterwards under that of Dr. Andrae, by
whom they are at present being carried on. This renewed activity on the
sites of the ancient cities of Assyria is already producing results of
considerable interest, and the veil which has so long concealed the
earlier periods in the history of that country is being lifted.
[1]
For the texts and translations of these documents, see
Budge and King, Annals of the Kings of Assyria, pp. iff.
Shortly before these excavations in Assyria were set on foot an indication
was obtained from an early Babylonian text that the history of Assyria as
a dependent state or province of Babylon must be pushed back to a far more
remote period than had hitherto been supposed. In one of Hammurabi’s
letters to Sin-idinnam, governor of the city of Larsam, to which reference
has already been made, directions are given for the despatch to the king
of “two hundred and forty men of ‘the King’s Company’ under the command of
Nannar-iddina… who have left the country of Ashur and the district of
Shitullum.” From this most interesting reference it followed that the
country to the north of Babylonia was known as Assyria at the time of the
kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and the fact that Babylonian troops
were stationed there by Hammurabi proved that the country formed an
integral part of the Babylonian empire.
These conclusions were soon after strikingly confirmed by two passages in
the introductory sections of Hammurabi’s code of laws which was discovered
at Susa. Here Hammurabi records that he “restored his (i.e. the god
Ashur’s) protecting image unto the city of Ashur,” and a few lines farther
on he describes himself as the king “who hath made the names of Ishtar
glorious in the city of Nineveh in the temple of E-mish-mish.” That Ashur
should be referred to at this period is what we might expect, inasmuch as
it was known to have been the earliest capital of Assyria; more striking
is the reference to Nineveh, proving as it does that it was a flourishing
city in Hammurabi’s time and that the temple of Ishtar there had already
been long established. It is true that Gudea, the Sumerian patesi of
Shirpurla, records that he rebuilt the temple of the goddess Ninni
(Ishtar) at a place called Nina. Now Nina may very probably be identified
with Nineveh, but many writers have taken it to be a place in Southern
Babylonia and possibly a district of Shirpurla itself. No such uncertainty
attaches to Hammurabi’s reference to Nineveh, which is undoubtedly the
Assyrian city of that name. Although no account has yet been published of
the recent excavations carried out at Nineveh by the British Museum, they
fully corroborate the inference drawn with regard to the great age of the
city. The series of trenches which were cut deep into the lower strata of
Kuyunjik revealed numerous traces of very early habitations on the mound.
Neither in Hammurabi’s letters, nor upon the stele inscribed with his code
of laws, is any reference made to the contemporary governor or ruler of
Assyria, but on a contract tablet preserved in the Pennsylvania Museum a
name has been recovered which will probably be identified with that of the
ruler of Assyria in Hammurabi’s reign. In legal and commercial documents
of the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon the contracting parties
frequently swore by the names of two gods (usually Shamash and Marduk) and
also that of the reigning king. Now it has been found by Dr. Banke that on
this document in the Pennsylvania Museum the contracting parties swear by
the name of Hammurabi and also by that of Shamshi-Adad. As only gods and
kings are mentioned in the oath formulas of this period, it follows that
Shamshi-Adad was a king, or at any rate a patesi or ishshakku. Now from
its form the name Shamshi-Adad must be that of an Assyrian, not that of a
Babylonian, and, since he is associated in the oath formula with
Hammurabi, it is legitimate to conclude that he governed Assyria in the
time of Hammurabi as a dependency of Babylon. An early Assyrian ishshakku
of this name, who was the son of Ishme-Dagan, is mentioned by
Tiglath-Pileser I, but he cannot be identified with the ruler of the time
of Hammurabi, since, according to Tiglath-Pileser, he ruled too late,
about 1800 B.C. A brick-inscription of another Shamshi-Adad, however, the
son of Igur-kapkapu, is preserved in the British Museum, and it is
probable that we may identify him with Hammurabi’s Assyrian viceroy.
Erishum and his son Ikunum, whose inscriptions are also preserved in the
British Museum, should certainly be assigned to an early period of
Assyrian history.
The recent excavations at Sherghat are already yielding the names of other
early Assyrian viceroys, and, although the texts of the inscriptions in
which their names occur have not yet been published, we may briefly
enumerate the more important of the discoveries that have been made. Last
year a small cone or cylinder was found which, though it bears only a few
lines of inscription, restores the names of no less than seven early
Assyrian viceroys whose existence was not previously known. The cone was
inscribed by Ashir-rîm-nishêshu, who gives his own genealogy and records
the restoration of the wall of the city of Ashur, which he states had been
rebuilt by certain of his predecessors on the throne. The principal
portion of the inscription reads as follows: “Ashir-rîm-nishêshu, the
viceroy of the god Ashir, the son of Ashir-nirari, the viceroy of the god
Ashir, the son of Ashir-rabi, the viceroy. The city wall which Kikia,
Ikunum, Shar-kenkate-Ashir, and Ashir-nirari, the son of Ishme-Dagan, my
forefathers, had built, was fallen, and for the preservation of my life…
I rebuilt it.” Perhaps no inscription has yet been recovered in either
Assyria or Babylonia which contained so much new information packed into
so small a space. Of the names of the early viceroys mentioned in it only
one was previously known, i.e. the name of Ikunum, the son of Erishum, is
found in a late copy of a votive text preserved in the British Museum.
Thus from these few lines the names of three rulers in direct succession
have been recovered, viz., Ashir-rabi, Ashir-nirari, and
Ashur-rîm-nishêshu, and also those of four earlier rulers, viz., Kikia,
Shar-kenkate-Ashir, Ishme-Dagan, and his son Ashir-nirari. Another
interesting point about the inscription is the spelling of the name of the
national god of the Assyrians. In the later periods it is always written
Ashur, but at this early time we see that the second vowel is
changed and that at first the name was written Ashir, a form that
was already known from the Cappadocian cuneiform inscriptions. The form
Ashir is a good participial construction and signifies “the Beneficent,”
“the Merciful One.”
Another interesting find, which was also made last year, consists of four
stone tablets, each engraved with the same building-inscription of
Shalmaneser I, a king who reigned over Assyria about 1300 B.C. In
recording his rebuilding of E-kharsag-kurkura, the temple of the god Ashur
in the city of Ashur, he gives a brief summary of the temple’s history
with details as to the length of time which elapsed between the different
periods during which it had been previously restored. The temple was
burned in Shalmaneser’s time, and, when recording this fact and the
putting out of the fire, he summarizes the temple’s history in a long
parenthesis, as will be seen from the following translation of the
extract: “When E-kharsag-kurkura, the temple of Ashur, my lord, which
Ushpia (variant Aushpia), the priest of Ashur, my forefather, had
built aforetime,—and it fell into decay and Erishu, my forefather,
the priest of Ashur, rebuilt it; 159 years passed by after the reign of
Erishu, and that temple fell into decay, and Shamshi-Adad, the priest of
Ashur, rebuilt it; (during) 580 years that temple which Shamshi-Adad, the
priest of Ashur, had built, grew hoary and old—(when) fire broke out
in the midst thereof…, at that time I drenched that temple (with water)
in (all) its circuit.”
From this extract it will be seen that Shalmaneser gives us, in Ushpia or
Aushpia, the name of a very early Assyrian viceroy, who in his belief was
the founder of the great temple of the god Ashur. He also tells us that
159 years separated Erishu from a viceroy named Shamshi-Adad, and that 580
years separated Shamshi-Adad from his own time. When these inscriptions
were first found they were hailed with considerable satisfaction by
historians, as they gave what seemed to be valuable information for
settling the chronology of the early patesis. But confidence in the
accuracy of Shalmaneser’s reckoning was somewhat shaken a few months
afterwards by the discovery of a prism of Esarhaddon, who gave in it a
history of the same temple, but ascribed totally different figures for the
periods separating the reigns of Erishu and Shamshi-Adad, and the temple’s
destruction by fire. Esarhaddon agrees with Shalmaneser in ascribing the
founding of the temple to Ushpia, but he states that only 126 years
(instead of 159 years) separated Erishu (whom he spells Irishu), the son
of Ilu-shumma, from Shamshi-Adad, the son of Bêl-kabi; and he adds that
434 years (instead of 580 years) elapsed between Shamshi-Adad’s
restoration of the temple and the time when it was burned down. As
Shalmaneser I lived over six hundred years earlier than Esarhaddon, he was
obviously in a better position to ascertain the periods at which the
events recorded took place, but the discrepancy between the figures he
gives and those of Esarhaddon is disconcerting. It shows that Assyrian
scribes could make bad mistakes in their reckoning, and it serves to cast
discredit on the absolute accuracy of the chronological notices contained
in other late Assyrian inscriptions. So far from helping to settle the
unsolved problems of Assyrian chronology, these two recent finds at
Sherghat have introduced fresh confusion, and Assyrian chronology for the
earlier periods is once more cast into the melting pot.
In addition to the recovery of the names of hitherto unknown early rulers
of Assyria, the recent excavations at Sherghat have enabled us to
ascertain the true reading of the name of Shalmaneser I’s grandfather, who
reigned a considerable time after Assyria had gained her independence. The
name of this king has hitherto been read as Pudi-ilu, but it is now shown
that the signs composing the first part of the name are not to be taken
phonetically, but as ideographs, the true reading of the name being
Arik-dên-ilu, the signification of which is “Long (i.e. far-reaching) is
the judgment of God.” Arik-dên-ilu was a great conqueror, as were his
immediate descendants, all of whom extended the territory of Assyria. By
strengthening the country and increasing her resources they enabled
Arik-dên-ilu ‘s great-grandson, Tukulti-Ninib I, to achieve the conquest
of Babylon itself. Concerning Tukulti-Ninib’s reign and achievements an
interesting inscription has recently been discovered. This is now
preserved in the British Museum, and before describing it we may briefly
refer to another phase of the excavations at Sherghat.
An early independent King of Assyria, who reigned about B.C.
1350. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
The mounds of Sherghat rise a considerable height above the level of the
plain, and are to a great extent of natural and not of artificial
formation. In fact, the existence of a group of high natural mounds at
this point on the bank of the Tigris must have led to its selection by the
early Assyrians as the site on which to build their first stronghold. The
mounds were already so high, from their natural formation, that there was
no need for the later Assyrian kings to increase their height artificially
(as they raised the chief palace-mound at Nineveh), and the remains of the
Assyrian buildings of the early period are thus only covered by a few feet
of débris and not by masses of unburnt brick and artificially piled up
soil. This fact has considerably facilitated the systematic uncovering of
the principal mound that is now being carried out by Dr. Andrae.
Work has hitherto been confined to the northwest corner of the mound
around the ziggurat, or temple tower, and already considerable traces of
Assyrian buildings have been laid bare in this portion of the site. The
city wall on the northern side has been uncovered, as well as quays with
steps leading down to the water along the river front. Part of the great
temple of the god Ashur has been excavated, though a considerable portion
of it must be still covered by the modern Turkish fort at the extreme
northern point of the mounds; also part of a palace erected by
Ashur-nasir-pal has been identified. In fact, the work at Sherghat
promises to add considerably to our knowledge of ancient Assyrian
architecture.
The inscription of Tukulti-Ninib I, which was referred to above as having
been recently acquired by the trustees of the British Museum, affords
valuable information for the reconstruction of the history of Assyria
during the first half of the thirteenth century B.C.[2] It is seen from the
facts summarized that for our knowledge of the earlier history of the
country we have to depend to a large extent on short brick-inscriptions
and votive texts supplemented by historical references in inscriptions of
the later period. The only historical inscription of any length belonging
to the early Assyrian period, which had been published up to a year ago,
was the famous memorial slab containing an inscription of Adad-nirari I,
which was acquired by the late Mr. George Smith some thirty years ago.
Although purchased in Mosul, the slab had been found by the natives in the
mounds at Sherghat, for the text engraved upon it in archaic Assyrian
characters records the restoration of a part of the temple of the god
Ashur in the ancient city of Ashur, the first capital of the Assyrians,
now marked by the mounds of Sherghat, which have already been described.
The object of Adad-nirari in causing the memorial slab to be inscribed was
to record the restoration of the portion of the temple which he had
rebuilt, but the most important part of the inscription was contained in
the introductory phrases with which the text opens. They recorded the
conquests achieved not only by Adad-nirari but by his father Arik-dên-ilu,
his grandfather Bél-nirari, and his great-grandfather Ashur-uballit. They
thus enabled the historian to trace the gradual extension and
consolidation of the Assyrian empire during a critical period in its early
history.
[2]
For the text and translation of the inscription, see King,
Studies it Eastern History, i (1904).
The recently recovered memorial slab of Tukulti-Ninib I is similar to that
of his grandfather Adad-nirari I, and ranks in importance with it for the
light it throws on the early struggles of Assyria. Tukulti-Ninib ‘s slab,
like that of Adad-nirari, was a foundation memorial intended to record
certain building operations carried out by order of the king. The building
so commemorated was not the restoration of a portion of a temple, but the
founding of a new city, in which the king erected no less than eight
temples dedicated to various deities, while he also records that he built
a palace therein for his own habitation, that he protected the city by a
strongly fortified wall, and that he cut a canal from the Tigris by which
he ensured a continuous supply of fresh water. These were the facts which
the memorial was primarily intended to record, but, like the text of
Adad-nirari I, the most interesting events for the historian are those
referred to in the introductory portions of the inscription. Before giving
details concerning the founding of the new city, named Kar-Tukulti-Mnib,
“the Fortress of Tukulti-Mnib,” the king supplies an account of the
military expeditions which he had conducted during the course of his reign
up to the time when the foundation memorial was inscribed. These
introductory paragraphs record how the king gradually conquered the
peoples to the north and northeast of Assyria, and how he finally
undertook a successful campaign against Babylon, during which he captured
the city and completely subjugated both Northern and Southern Babylonia.
Tukulti-Mnib’s reign thus marks an epoch in the history of his country.
We have already seen how, during the early ages of her history, Assyria
had been merely a subject province of the Babylonian empire. Her rulers
had been viceroys owing allegiance to their overlords in Babylon, under
whose orders they administered the country, while garrisons of Babylonian
soldiers, and troops commanded by Babylonian officers, served to keep the
country in a state of subjection. Gradually, however, the country began to
feel her feet and long for independence. The conquest of Babylon by the
kings of the Country of the Sea afforded her the opportunity of throwing
off the Babylonian yoke. In the fifteenth century the Assyrian kings were
powerful enough to have independent relations with the kings of Egypt,
and, during the two centuries which preceded Tukulti-Mnib’s reign.
Assyria’s relations with Babylon were the cause of constant friction due
to the northern kingdom’s growth in power and influence. The frontier
between the two countries was constantly in dispute, and, though sometimes
rectified by treaty, the claims of Assyria often led to war between the
two countries. The general result of these conflicts was that Assyria
gradually extended her authority farther southwards, and encroached upon
territory which had previously been Babylonian. The successes gained by
Ashur-uballit, Bêl-nirari, and Adad-nirari I against the contemporary
Babylonian kings had all resulted in the cession of fresh territory to
Assyria and in an increase of her international importance. Up to the time
of Tukulti-Mnib no Assyrian king had actually seated himself upon the
Babylonian throne. This feat was achieved by Tukulti-Mnib, and his reign
thus marks an important step in the gradual advance of Assyria to the
position which she later occupied as the predominant power in Western
Asia.
Before undertaking his campaign against Babylon, Tukulti-Mnib secured
himself against attack from other quarters, and his newly discovered
memorial inscription supplies considerable information concerning the
steps he took to achieve this object. In his inscription the king does not
number his military expeditions, and, with the exception of the first one,
he does not state the period of his reign in which they were undertaken.
The results of his campaigns are summarized in four paragraphs of the
text, and it is probable that they are not described in chronological
order, but are arranged rather according to the geographical position of
the districts which he invaded and subdued. Tukulti-Ninib records that his
first campaign took place at the beginning of his sovereignty, in the
first year of his reign, and it was directed against the tribes and
peoples inhabiting the territory on the east of Assyria. Of the tribes
which he overran and conquered on this occasion the most important was the
Kuti, who probably dwelt in the districts to the east of the Lower Zâb.
They were a turbulent race and they had already been conquered by
Arik-dên-ilu and Adad-nirari I, but on neither occasion had they been
completely subdued, and they had soon regained their independence. Their
subjugation by Tukulti-Ninib was a necessary preliminary to any conquest
in the south, and we can well understand why it was undertaken by the king
at the beginning of his reign. Other conquests which were also made in the
same region were the Ukumanî and the lands of Elkhu-nia, Sharnida, and
Mekhri, mountainous districts which probably lay to the north of the Lower
Zâb. The country of Mekhri took its name from the mekhru-tree, a kind of
pine or fir, which grew there in abundance upon the mountainsides, and was
highly esteemed by the Assyrian kings as affording excellent wood for
building purposes. At a later period Ashur-nasir-pal invaded the country
in the course of his campaigns and brought back beams of mekhru-wood,
which he used in the construction of the temple dedicated to the goddess
Ishtar in Nineveh.
The second group of tribes and districts enumerated by Tukulti-Ninib as
having been subdued in his early years, before his conquest of Babylon,
all lay probably to the northwest of Assyria. The most powerful among
these peoples were the Shubari, who, like the Kutî on the eastern border
of Assyria, had already been conquered by Adad-nirari I, but had regained
their independence and were once more threatening the border on this side.
The third group of his conquests consisted of the districts ruled over by
forty kings of the lands of Na’iri, which was a general term for the
mountainous districts to the north of Assyria, including territory to the
west of Lake Van and extending eastwards to the districts around Lake
Urmi. The forty kings in this region whom Tukulti-Ninib boasts of having
subdued were little more than chieftains of the mountain tribes, each one
possessing authority over a few villages scattered among the hills and
valleys. But the men of Na’iri were a warlike and hardy race, and, if left
long in undisturbed possession of their native fastnesses, they were
tempted to make raids into the fertile plains of Assyria. It was therefore
only politic for Tukulti-Ninib to traverse their country with fire and
sword, and, by exacting heavy tribute, to keep the fear of Assyrian power
before their eyes. From the king’s records we thus learn that he subdued
and crippled the semi-independent races living on his borders to the
north, to the northwest, and to the east. On the west was the desert, from
which region he need fear no organized attack when he concentrated his
army elsewhere, for his permanent garrisons were strong enough to repel
and punish any incursion of nomadic tribes. He was thus in a position to
try conclusions with his hereditary foe in the south, without any fear of
leaving his land open to invasion in his absence.
The campaign against Babylon was the most important one undertaken by
Tukulti-Ninib, and its successful issue was the crowning point of his
military career. The king relates that the great gods Ashur, Bel, and
Shamash, and the goddess Ishtar, the queen of heaven and earth, marched at
the head of his warriors when he set out upon the expedition. After
crossing the border and penetrating into Babylonian territory he seems to
have had some difficulty in forcing Bitiliashu, the Kassite king who then
occupied the throne of Babylon, to a decisive engagement. But by a skilful
disposition of his forces he succeeded in hemming him in, so that the
Babylonian army was compelled to engage in a pitched battle. The result of
the fighting was a complete victory for the Assyrian arms. Many of the
Babylonian warriors fell fighting, and Bitiliashu himself was captured by
the Assyrian soldiers in the midst of the battle. Tukulti-Ninib boasts
that he trampled his lordly neck beneath his feet, and on his return to
Assyria he carried his captive back in fetters to present him with the
spoils of the campaign before Ashur, the national god of the Assyrians.
Before returning to Assyria, however, Tukulti-Ninib marched with his army
throughout the length and breadth of Babylonia, and achieved the
subjugation of the whole of the Sumer and Akkad. He destroyed the
fortifications of Babylon to ensure that they should not again be used
against himself, and all the inhabitants who did not at once submit to his
decrees he put co the sword. He then appointed his own officers to rule
the country and established his own system of administration, adding to
his previous title of “King of Assyria,” those of “King of Karduniash (i.
e. Babylonia)” and “King of Sumer and Akkad.” It was probably from this
period that he also adopted the title of “King of the Poor Quarters of the
World.” As a mark of the complete subjugation of their ancient foe,
Tukulti-Ninib and his army carried back with them to Assyria not only the
captive Babylonian king, but also the statue of Marduk, the national god
of Babylon. This they removed from B-sagila, his sumptuous temple in
Babylon, and they looted the sacred treasures from the treasure-chambers,
and carried them off together with the spoil of the city.
Tukulti-Ninib no doubt left a sufficient proportion of his army in Babylon
to garrison the city and support the governors and officials into whose
charge he committed the administration of the land, but he himself
returned to Assyria with the rich spoil of the campaign, and it was
probably as a use for this large increase of wealth and material that he
decided to found another city which should bear his own name and
perpetuate it for future ages. The king records that he undertook this
task at the bidding of Bel (i.e. the god Ashur), who commanded that he
should found a new city and build a dwelling-place for him therein. In
accordance with the desire of Ashur and the gods, which was thus conveyed
to him, the king founded the city of Kar-Tukulti-Ninib, and he erected
therein temples dedicated not only to Ashur, but also to the gods Adad,
and Sha-mash, and Ninib, and Nusku, and Nergal, and Imina-bi, and the
goddess Ishtar. The spoils from Babylon and the temple treasures from
E-sagila were doubtless used for the decoration of these temples and the
adornment of their shrines, and the king endowed the temples and appointed
regular offerings, which he ordained should be their property for ever. He
also built a sumptuous palace for his own abode when he stayed in the
city, which he constructed on a mound or terrace of earth, faced with
brick, and piled high above the level of the city. Finally, he completed
its fortification by the erection of a massive wall around it, and the
completion of this wall was the occasion on which his memorial tablet was
inscribed.
The memorial tablet was buried and bricked up within the actual structure
of the wall, in order that in future ages it might be read by those who
found it, and so it might preserve his name and fame. After finishing the
account of his building operations in the new city and recording the
completion of the city wall from its foundation to its coping stone, the
king makes an appeal to any future ruler who should find it, in the
following words: “In the days that are to come, when this wall shall have
grown old and shall have fallen into ruins, may a future prince repair the
damaged parts thereof, and may he anoint my memorial tablet with oil, and
may he offer sacrifices and restore it unto its place, and then Ashur will
hearken unto his prayers. But whosoever shall destroy this wall, or shall
remove my memorial tablet or my name that is inscribed thereon, or shall
leave Kar-Tukulti-Ninib, the city of my dominion, desolate, or shall
destroy it, may the lord Ashur overthrow his kingdom, and may he break his
weapons, and may he cause his warriors to be defeated, and may he diminish
his boundaries, and may he ordain that his rule shall be cut off, and on
his days may he bring sorrow, and his years may he make evil, and may he
blot out his name and his seed from the land!”
By such blessings and curses Tukulti-Ninib hoped to ensure the
preservation of his name and the rebuilding of his city, should it at any
time be neglected and fall into decay. Curiously enough, it was in this
very city that Tukulti-Ninib met his own fate less than seven years after
he had founded it. At that time one of his own sons, who bore the name of
Ashur-nasir-pal, conspired against his father and stirred up the nobles to
revolt. The insurrection was arranged when Tukulti-Ninib was absent from
his capital and staying in Kar-Tukulti-Ninib, where he was probably
protected by only a small bodyguard, the bulk of his veteran warriors
remaining behind in garrison at Ashur. The insurgent nobles, headed by
Ashur-nasir-pal, fell upon the king without warning when he was passing
through the city without any suspicion of risk from a treacherous attack.
The king defended himself and sought refuge in a neighbouring house, but
the conspirators surrounded the building and, having forced an entrance,
slew him with the sword. Thus Tukulti-Ninib perished in the city he had
built and beautified with the spoils of his campaigns, where he had looked
forward to passing a peaceful and secure old age. Of the fate of the city
itself we know little except that its site is marked to-day by a few
mounds which rise slightly above the level of the surrounding desert. The
king’s memorial tablet only has survived. For some 3,200 years it rested
undisturbed in the foundations of the wall of unburnt brick, where it was
buried by Tukulti-Ninib on the completion of the city wall.
King of Assyria, about B. C. 1275.
Thence it was removed by the hands of modern Arabs, and it is now
preserved in the British Museum, where the characters of the inscription
may be seen to be as sharp and uninjured as on the day when the Assyrian
graver inscribed them by order of the king.
In the account of his first campaign, which is preserved upon the memorial
tablet, it is stated that the peoples conquered by Tukulti-Ninib brought
their yearly tribute to the city of Ashur. This fact is of considerable
interest, for it proves that Tukulti-Ninib restored the capital of Assyria
to the city of Ashur, removing it from Calah, whither it had been
transferred by his father Shalmaneser I. The city of Calah had been
founded and built by Shalmaneser I in the same way that his son
Tukulti-Ninib built the city of Kar-Tukulti-Ninib, and the building of
both cities is striking evidence of the rapid growth of Assyria and her
need of expansion around fresh centres prepared for administration and
defence. The shifting of the Assyrian capital to Calah by Shalmaneser I
was also due to the extension of Assyrian power in the north, in
consequence of which there was need of having the capital nearer the
centre of the country so enlarged. Ashur’s recovery of her old position
under Tukulti-Ninib I was only a temporary check to this movement
northwards, and, so long as Babylon remained a conquered province of the
Assyrian empire, obviously the need for a capital farther north than Ashur
would not have been pressing.
But with Tukulti-Ninib’s death Babylon regained her independence and freed
herself from Assyrian control, and the centre of the northern kingdom was
once more subject to the influences which eventually resulted in the
permanent transference of her capital to Nineveh. To the comparative
neglect into which Ashur and Calah consequently fell, we may probably
trace the extensive remains of buildings belonging to the earlier periods
of Assyrian history which have been recovered and still remain to be
found, in the mounds that mark their sites.
We have given some account of the results already achieved from the
excavations carried out during the last two years at Sherghat, the site of
the city of Ashur. That much remains to be done on the site of Calah, the
other early capital of Assyria, is evident from even a cursory examination
of the present condition of the mounds that mark the location of the city.
These mounds are now known by the name of Nimrûd and are situated on the
left or eastern bank of the Tigris, a short distance above the point at
which it is joined by the stream of the Upper Zâb, and the great mound
which still covers the remains of the ziggurat, or temple tower, can be
seen from a considerable distance across the plain. During the excavations
formerly carried out here for the British Museum, remains of palaces were
recovered which had been built or restored by Shal-maneser I,
Ashur-nasir-pal, Shalmaneser II, Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon, Esarhaddon,
and Ashur-etil-ilâni. After the conclusion of the diggings and the removal
of many of the sculptures to England, the site was covered again with
earth, in order to protect the remains of Assyrian buildings which were
left in place. Since that time the soil has sunk and been washed away by
the rains so that many of the larger sculptures are now protruding above
the soil, an example of which is seen in the two winged bulls in the
palace of Ashur-nasir-pal. It is improbable that the mounds of Nimrûd will
yield such rich results as Sherghat, but the site would probably well
repay prolonged and systematic excavation.
We have hitherto summarized and described the principal facts, with regard
to the early history of Babylonia and Assyria and the neighbouring
countries, which have been obtained from the excavations conducted
recently on the sites of ancient cities. From the actual remains of the
buildings that have been unearthed we have secured information with regard
to the temples and palaces of ancient rulers and the plans on which they
were designed. Erom the objects of daily life and of religious use which
have been recovered, such as weapons of bronze and iron, and vessels of
metal, stone, and clay, it is possible for the archaeologist to draw
conclusions with regard to the customs of these early peoples; while from
a study of their style and workmanship and of such examples of their
sculpture as have been brought to light, he may determine the stage of
artistic development at which they had arrived. The clay tablets and stone
monuments that have been recovered reveal the family life of the people,
their commercial undertakings, their system of legislation and land
tenure, their epistolary correspondence, and the administration under
which they lived, while the royal inscriptions and foundation-memorials
throw light on the religious and historical events of the period in which
they were inscribed. Information on all these points has been acquired as
the result of excavation, and is based on the discoveries in the ruins of
early cities which have remained buried beneath the soil for some
thousands of years. But for the history of Assyria and of the other
nations in the north there is still another source of information to which
reference must now be made.
The kings of Assyria were not content with recording their achievements on
the walls of their buildings, on stelae set up in their palaces and
temples, on their tablets of annals preserved in their archive-chambers,
and on their cylinders and foundation-memorials concealed within the
actual structure of the buildings themselves. They have also left records
graven in the living rock, and these have never been buried, but have been
exposed to wind and weather from the moment they were engraved. Records of
irrigation works and military operations successfully undertaken by
Assyrian kings remain to this day on the face of the mountains to the
north and east of Assyria. The kings of one great mountain race that had
its capital at Van borrowed from the Assyrians this method of recording
their achievements, and, adopting the Assyrian character, have left
numerous rock-inscriptions in their own language in the mountains of
Armenia and Kurdistan. In some instances the action of rain and frost has
nearly if not quite obliterated the record, and a few have been defaced by
the hand of man. But as the majority are engraved in panels cut on the
sheer face of the rock, and are inaccessible except by means of ropes and
tackle, they have escaped mutilation. The photograph reproduced will serve
to show the means that must be adopted for reaching such rock-inscriptions
in order to examine or copy them.
In The Gorge Of The River Gomel, Near Bavian.
The inscription shown in the photograph is one of those cut by Sennacherib
in the gorge near Bavian, through which the river Gomel flows, and can be
reached only by climbing down ropes fixed to the top of the cliff. The
choice of such positions by the kings who caused the inscriptions to be
engraved was dictated by the desire to render it difficult to destroy
them, but it has also had the effect of delaying to some extent their
copying and decipherment by modern workers.
Near Bavian In Assyria.
Considerable progress, however, has recently been made in identifying and
copying these texts, and we may here give a short account of what has been
done and of the information furnished by the inscriptions that have been
examined.
Recently considerable additions have been made to our knowledge of the
ancient empire of Van and of its relation to the later kings of Assyria by
the labours of Prof Lehmann and Dr. Belck on the inscriptions which the
kings of that period caused to be engraved upon the rocks among the
mountains of Armenia.
The flat roofs of the houses of the city of Van may be seen to the left of
the photograph nestling below the rock.
The centre and capital of this empire was the ancient city which stood on
the site of the modern town of Van at the southwest corner of the lake
which bears the same name. The city was built at the foot of a natural
rock which rises precipitously from the plain, and must have formed an
impregnable stronghold against the attack of the foe.
In this citadel at the present day remain the ancient galleries and
staircases and chambers which were cut in the living rock by the kings who
made it their fortress, and their inscriptions, engraved upon the face of
the rock on specially prepared and polished surfaces, enable us to
reconstruct in some degree the history of that ancient empire. From time
to time there have been found and copied other similar texts, which are
cut on the mountainsides or on the massive stones which formed part of the
construction of their buildings and fortifications. A complete collection
of these texts, together with translations, will shortly be published by
Prof. Lehmann. Meanwhile, this scholar has discussed and summarized the
results to be obtained from much of his material, and we are thus already
enabled to sketch the principal achievements of the rulers of this
mountain race, who were constantly at war with the later kings of Assyria,
and for two centuries at least disputed her claim to supremacy in this
portion of Western Asia.
The country occupied by this ancient people of Van was the great
table-land which now forms Armenia. The people themselves cannot be
connected with the Armenians, for their language presents no
characteristics of those of the Indo-European family, and it is equally
certain that they are not to be traced to a Semitic origin. It is true
that they employed the Assyrian method of writing their inscriptions, and
their art differs only in minor points from that of the Assyrians, but in
both instances this similarity of culture was directly borrowed at a time
when the less civilized race, having its centre at Van, came into direct
contact with the Assyrians.
The exact date at which this influence began to be exerted is not certain,
but we have records of immediate relations with Assyria in the second half
of the ninth century before Christ. The district inhabited by the Vannic
people was known to the Assyrians by the name of Urartu, and although the
inscriptions of the earlier Assyrian kings do not record expeditions
against that country, they frequently make mention of campaigns against
princes and petty rulers of the land of Na’iri. They must therefore for
long have exercised an indirect, if not a direct, influence on the peoples
and tribes which lay more to the north.
The earliest evidence of direct contact between the Assyrians and the land
of Urartu which we at present possess dates from the reign of
Ashur-nasir-pal, and in the reign of his son Shalmaneser II three
expeditions were undertaken against the people of Van. The name of the
king of Urartu at this time was Arame, and his capital city, Arzasku,
probably lay to the north of Lake Van. On all three occasions the
Assyrians were victorious, forcing Arame to abandon his capital and
capturing his cities as far as the sources of the Euphrates. Subsequently,
in the year 833 B.C., Shalmaneser II made another attack upon the country,
which at that time was under the sway of Sarduris I. Under this monarch
the citadel of Van became the great stronghold of the people of Urartu,
for he added to the natural strength of the position by the construction
of walls built between the rock of Van and the harbour. The massive blocks
of stone of which his fortifications were composed are standing at the
present day, and they bear eloquent testimony to the energy with which
this monarch devoted himself to the task of rendering his new citadel
impregnable. The fortification and strengthening of Van and its citadel
was carried on during the reigns of his direct successors and descendants,
Ispui-nis, Menuas, and Argistis I, so that when Tiglath-pile-ser III
brought fire and sword into the country and laid siege to Van in the reign
of Sarduris II, he could not capture the citadel.
It was not difficult for the Assyrian king to assault and capture the city
itself, which lay at the foot of the citadel as it does at the present
day, but the latter, within the fortifications of which Sarduris and his
garrison withdrew, proved itself able to withstand the Assyrian attack.
The expedition of Tiglath-pileser III did not succeed in crushing the
Vannic empire, for Rusas I, the son and successor of Sarduris II, allied
himself to the neighbouring mountain races and gave considerable trouble
to Sargon, the Assyrian king, who was obliged to undertake an expedition
to check their aggressions.
It was probably Rusas I who erected the buildings on Toprak Kala, the hill
to the east of Van, traces of which remain to the present day. He built a
palace and a temple, and around them he constructed a new city with a
reservoir to supply it with water, possibly because the slopes of Toprak
Kala rendered it easier of defence than the city in the plain (beneath the
rock and citadel) which had fallen an easy prey to Tiglath-pileser III.
The site of the temple on Toprak Kala has been excavated by the trustees
of the British Museum, and our knowledge of Vannic art is derived from the
shields and helmets of bronze and small bronze figures and fittings which
were recovered from this building. One of the shields brought to the
British Museum from the Toprak Kala, where it originally hung with others
on the temple walls, bears the name of Argistis II, who was the son and
successor of Rusas I, and who attempted to give trouble to the Assyrians
by stirring the inhabitants of the land of Kummukh (Kommagene) to revolt
against Sargon. His son, Rusas II, was the contemporary of Esarhaddon, and
from some recently discovered rock-inscriptions we learn that he extended
the limits of his kingdom on the west and secured victories against Mushki
(Meshech) to the southeast of the Halys and against the Hittites in
Northern Syria. Rusas III rebuilt the temple on Toprak Kala, as we know
from an inscription of his on one of the shields from that place in the
British Museum. Both he and Sarduris III were on friendly terms with the
Assyrians, for we know that they both sent embassies to Ashur-bani-pal.
By far the larger number of rock-inscriptions that have yet been found and
copied in the mountainous districts bordering on Assyria were engraved by
this ancient Vannic people, and Drs. Lehmann and Belck have done good
service by making careful copies and collations of all those which are at
present known. Work on other classes of rock-inscriptions has also been
carried on by other travellers. A new edition of the inscriptions of
Sennacherib in the gorge of the Gomel, near the village of Bavian, has
been made by Mr. King, who has also been fortunate enough to find a number
of hitherto unknown inscriptions in Kurdistan on the Judi Dagh and at the
sources of the Tigris. The inscriptions at the mouth of the Nahr el-Kelb,
“the Dog River,” in Syria, have been reexamined by Dr. Knudtzon, and the
long inscription which Nebuchadnezzar II cut on the rocks at Wadi Brissa
in the Lebanon, formerly published by M. Pognon, has been recopied by Dr.
Weissbach. Finally, the great trilingual inscription of Darius Hystaspes
on the rock at Bisutun in Persia, which was formerly copied by the late
Sir Henry Raw-linson and used by him for the successful decipherment of
the cuneiform inscriptions, was completely copied last year by Messrs.
King and Thompson.[3]
[3]
Messrs. King and Thompson are preparing a new edition of
this inscription.
The main facts of the history of Assyria under her later kings and of
Babylonia during the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods were many years
ago correctly ascertained, and recent excavation and research have done
little to add to our knowledge of the history of these periods. It was
hoped that the excavations conducted by Dr. Koldewey at Babylon would
result in the recovery of a wealth of inscriptions and records referring
to the later history of the country, but unfortunately comparatively few
tablets or inscriptions have been found, and those that have been
recovered consist mainly of building-inscriptions and votive texts. One
such building-inscription contains an interesting historical reference. It
occurs on a barrel-cylinder of clay inscribed with a text of Nabopolassar,
and it was found in the temple of Ninib and records the completion and
restoration of the temple by the king. In addition to recording the
building operations he had carried out in the temple, Nabopolassar boasts
of his opposition to the Assyrians. He says: “As for the Assyrians who had
ruled all peoples from distant days and had set the people of the land
under a heavy yoke, I, the weak and humble man who worshippeth the Lord of
Lords (i.e. the god Marduk), through the mighty power of Nabû and Marduk,
my lords, held back their feet from the land of Akkad and cast off their
yoke.”
It is not yet certain whether the Babylonians under Nabopolassar actively
assisted Cyaxares and the Medes in the siege and in the subsequent capture
of Nineveh in 606 B.C. but this newly discovered reference to the
Assyrians by Nabopolassar may possibly be taken to imply that the
Babylonians were passive and not active allies of Cyaxares. If the
cylinder were inscribed after the fall of Nineveh we should have expected
Nabopolassar, had he taken an active part in the capture of the city, to
have boasted in more definite terms of his achievement. On his stele which
is preserved at Constantinople, Nabonidus, the last king of the
Neo-Babylonian empire, who himself suffered defeat at the hands of Cyrus,
King of Persia, ascribed the fall of Nineveh to the anger of Marduk and
the other gods of Babylon because of the destruction of their city and the
spoliation of their temples by Sennacherib in 689 B.C. We see the irony of
fate in the fact that Cyrus also ascribed the defeat and deposition of
Nabonidus and the fall of Babylon to Marduk’s intervention, whose anger he
alleges was aroused by the attempt of Nabonidus to concentrate the worship
of the local city-gods in Babylon.
Thus it will be seen that recent excavation and research have not yet
supplied the data for filling in such gaps as still remain in our
knowledge of the later history of Assyria and Babylon. The closing years
of the Assyrian empire and the military achievements of the great
Neo-Babylonian rulers, Nabopolassar, Nerig-lissar, and Nebuchadnezzar II,
have not yet been found recorded in any published Assyrian or Babylonian
inscription, but it may be expected that at any moment some text will be
discovered that will throw light upon the problems connected with the
history of those periods which still await solution. Meanwhile, the
excavations at Babylon, although they have not added much to our knowledge
of the later history of the country, have been of immense service in
revealing the topography of the city during the Neo-Babylonian period, as
well as the positions, plans, and characters of the principal buildings
erected by the later Babylonian kings. The discovery of the palaces of
Nebuchadnezzar II on the mound of the Kasr, of the small but complete
temple E-makh, of the temple of the goddess Nin-makh to the northeast of
the palaces, and of the sacred road dividing them and passing through the
Great Gate of Ishtar (adorned with representations of lions, bulls, and
dragons in raised brick upon its walls) has enabled us to form some
conception of the splendour and magnificence of the city as it appeared
when rebuilt by its last native rulers. Moreover, the great temple
E-sagila, the famous shrine of the god Marduk, has been identified and
partly excavated beneath the huge mound of Tell Amran ibn-Ali, while a
smaller and less famous temple of Ninib has been discovered in the lower
mounds which lie to the eastward. Finally, the sacred way from E-sagila to
the palace mound has been traced and uncovered. We are thus enabled to
reconstitute the scene of the most solemn rite of the Babylonian festival
of the New Year, when the statue of the god Marduk was carried in solemn
procession along this road from the temple to the palace, and the
Babylonian king made his yearly obeisance to the national god, placing his
own hands within those of Marduk, in token of his submission to and
dependence on the divine will.
Though recent excavations have not led to any startling discoveries with
regard to the history of Western Asia during the last years of the
Babylonian empire, research among the tablets dating from the
Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods has lately added considerably to our
knowledge of Babylonian literature. These periods were marked by great
literary activity on the part of the priests at Babylon, Sippar, and
elsewhere, who, under the royal orders, scoured the country for all
remains of the early literature which was preserved in the ancient temples
and archives of the country, and made careful copies and collections of
all they found. Many of these tablets containing Neo-Babylonian copies of
earlier literary texts are preserved in the British Museum, and have been
recently published, and we have thus recovered some of the principal
grammatical, religious, and magical compositions of the earlier Babylonian
period.
Between The Mound Of The Kasr And Tell Amran Ibn-Ali,
Showing A Section Of The Paved Sacred Way.
Among the most interesting of such recent finds is a series of tablets
inscribed with the Babylonian legends concerning the creation of the world
and man, which present many new and striking parallels to the beliefs on
these subjects embodied in Hebrew literature. We have not space to treat
this subject at greater length in the present work, but we may here note
that discovery and research in its relation to the later empires that
ruled at Babylon have produced results of literary rather than of
historical importance. But we should exceed the space at our disposal if
we attempted even to skim this fascinating field of study in which so much
has recently been achieved. For it is time we turned once more to Egypt
and directed our inquiry towards ascertaining what recent research has to
tell us with regard to her inhabitants during the later periods of her
existence as a nation of the ancient world.
CHAPTER IX—THE LAST DAYS OF ANCIENT EGYPT
Before we turned from Egypt to summarize the information, afforded by
recent discoveries, upon the history of Western Asia under the kings of
the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods, we noted that the Asiatic empire
of Egypt was regained by the reactionary kings of the XIXth Dynasty, after
its temporary loss owing to the vagaries of Akhunaten. Palestine remained
Egyptian throughout the period of the judges until the foundation of the
kingdom of Judah. With the decline of military spirit in Egypt and the
increasing power of the priesthood, authority over Asia became less and
less a reality. Tribute was no longer paid, and the tribes wrangled
without a restraining hand, during the reigns of the successors of Ramses
III. By the time of the priest-kings of Thebes (the XXIst Dynasty) the
authority of the Pharaohs had ceased to be exercised in Syria. Egypt was
itself divided into two kingdoms, the one ruled by Northern descendants of
the Ramessids at Tanis, the other by the priestly monarchs at Thebes, who
reigned by right of inheritance as a result of the marriage of the
daughter of Ramses with the high priest Amenhetep, father of Herhor, the
first priest-king. The Thebans fortified Gebelên in the South and el-Hêbi
in the North against attack, and evidently their relations with the
Tanites were not always friendly.
In Syria nothing of the imperial power remained. The prestige of the god
Amen of Thebes, however, was still very great. We see this clearly from a
very interesting papyrus of the reign of Herhor, published in 1899 by Mr.
Golenischeff, which describes the adventures of Uenuamen, an envoy sent
(about 1050 B.C.) to Phoenicia to bring wood from the mountains of Lebanon
for the construction of a great festival bark of the god Amen at Thebes.
In the course of his mission he was very badly treated (We cannot well
imagine Thothmes III or Amenhetep III tolerating ill-treatment of their
envoy!) and eventually shipwrecked on the coast of the land of Alashiya or
Cyprus. He tells us in the papyrus, which seems to be the official report
of his mission, that, having been given letters of credence to the Prince
of Byblos from the King of Tanis, “to whom Amen had given charge of his
North-land,” he at length reached Phoenicia, and after much discussion and
argument was able to prevail upon the prince to have the wood which he
wanted brought down from Lebanon to the seashore.
Here, however, a difficulty presented itself,—the harbour was filled
with the piratical ships of the Cretan Tjakaray, who refused to allow
Uenuamen to return to Egypt. They said, ‘Seize him; let no ship of his go
unto the land of Egypt!’ “Then,” says Uenuamen in the papyrus, “I sat down
and wept. The scribe of the prince came out unto me; he said unto me,
‘What ail-eth thee?’ I replied, ‘Seest thou not the birds which fly, which
fly back unto Egypt? Look at them, they go unto the cool canal, and how
long do I remain abandoned here? Seest thou not those who would prevent my
return?’ He went away and spoke unto the prince, who began to weep at the
words which were told unto him and which were so sad. He sent his scribe
out unto me, who brought me two measures of wine and a deer. He sent me
Tentnuet, an Egyptian singing-girl who was with him, saying unto her,
‘Sing unto him, that he may not grieve!’ He sent word unto me, ‘Eat,
drink, and grieve not! To-morrow shalt thou hear all that I shall say.’ On
the morrow he had the people of his harbour summoned, and he stood in the
midst of them, and he said unto the Tjakaray, ‘What aileth you?’ They
answered him, ‘We will pursue the piratical ships which thou sendest unto
Egypt with our unhappy companions.’ He said unto them, ‘I cannot seize the
ambassador of Amen in my land. Let me send him away and then do ye pursue
after him to seize him!’ He sent me on board, and he sent me away… to
the haven of the sea. The wind drove me upon the land of Alashiya. The
people of the city came out in order to slay me. I was dragged by them to
the place where Hatiba, the queen of the city, was. I met her as she was
going out of one of her houses into the other. I greeted her and said unto
the people who stood by her, ‘Is there not one among you who understandeth
the speech of Egypt?’ One of them replied, ‘I understand it.’ I said unto
him, ‘Say unto thy mistress: even as far as the city in which Amen
dwelleth (i. e. Thebes) have I heard the proverb, “In all cities is
injustice done; only in Alashiya is justice to be found,” and now is
injustice done here every day!’ She said, ‘What is it that thou sayest?’ I
said unto her, ‘Since the sea raged and the wind drove me upon the land in
which thou livest, therefore thou wilt not allow them to seize my body and
to kill me, for verily I am an ambassador of Amen. Remember that I am one
who will be sought for always. And if these men of the Prince of Byblos
whom they seek to kill (are killed), verily if their chief finds ten men
of thine, will he not kill them also?’ She summoned the men, and they were
brought before her. She said unto me, ‘Lie down and sleep…’”
At this point the papyrus breaks off, and we do not know how Uenuamen
returned to Egypt with his wood. The description of his casting-away and
landing on Alashiya is quite Homeric, and gives a vivid picture of the
manners of the time. The natural impulse of the islanders is to kill the
strange castaway, and only the fear of revenge and of the wrath of a
distant foreign deity restrains them. Alashiya is probably Cyprus, which
also bore the name Yantinay from the time of Thothmes III until the
seventh century, when it is called Yatnan by the Assyrians. A king of
Alashiya corresponded with Amenhetep III in cuneiform on terms of perfect
equality, three hundred years before: “Brother,” he writes, “should the
small amount of the copper which I have sent thee be displeasing unto thy
heart, it is because in my land the hand of Nergal my lord slew all the
men of my land (i.e. they died of the plague), and there was no working of
copper; and this was, my brother, not pleasing unto thy heart. Thy
messenger with my messenger swiftly will I send, and whatsoever amount of
copper thou hast asked for, O my brother, I, even I, will send it unto
thee.” The mention by Herhor’s envoy of Nesibinebdad (Smendes), the King
of Tanis, a powerful ruler who in reality constantly threatened the
existence of the priestly monarchy at Thebes, as “him to whom Amen has
committed the wardship of his North-land,” is distinctly amusing. The hard
fact of the independence of Lower Egypt had to be glozed somehow.
The days of Theban power were coming to an end and only the prestige of
the god Amen remained strong for two hundred years more. But the alliance
of Amen and his priests with a band of predatory and destroying foreign
conquerors, the Ethiopians (whose rulers were the descendants of the
priest-kings, who retired to Napata on the succession of the powerful
Bubastite dynasty of Shishak to that of Tanis, abandoning Thebes to the
Northerners), did much to destroy the prestige of Amen and of everything
connected with him. An Ethiopian victory meant only an Assyrian
reconquest, and between them Ethiopians and Assyrians had well-nigh ruined
Egypt. In the Saïte period Thebes had declined greatly in power as well as
in influence, and all its traditions were anathema to the leading people
of the time, although not of course in Akhunaten’s sense.
With the Saïte period we seem almost to have retraced our steps and to
have reentered the age of the Pyramid Builders. All the pomp and glory of
Thothmes, Amenhetep, and Ramses were gone. The days of imperial Egypt were
over, and the minds of men, sickened of foreign war, turned for peace and
quietness to the simpler ideals of the IVth and Vth Dynasties. We have
already seen that an archaistic revival of the styles of the early
dynasties is characteristic of this late period, and that men were buried
at Sakkâra and at Thebes in tombs which recall in form and decoration
those of the courtiers of the Pyramid Builders. Everywhere we see this
fashion of archaism. A Theban noble of this period named Aba was buried at
Thebes. Long ago, nearly three thousand years before, under the VIth
Dynasty, there had lived a great noble of the same name, who was buried in
a rock-tomb at Dêr el-Gebrâwî, in Middle Egypt. This tomb was open and
known in the days of the second Aba, who caused to be copied and
reproduced in his tomb in the Asasîf at Thebes most of the scenes from the
bas-relief with which it had been decorated. The tomb of the VIth Dynasty
Aba has lately been copied for the Archaeological Survey of Egypt (Egypt
Exploration Fund) by Mr. de Garis Davies, who has found the reliefs of the
XXVIth Dynasty Aba of considerable use to him in reconstituting destroyed
portions of their ancient originals.
During late years important discoveries of objects of this era have been
few. One of the most noteworthy is that of a contemporary inscription
describing the battle of Momemphis, which is mentioned by Herodotus (ii,
163, 169). We now have the official account of this battle, and know that
it took place in the third year of the reign of Amasis—not before he
became king. This was the fight in which the unpatriotic king, Apries, who
had paid for his partiality for the Greeks of Nau-kratis with the loss of
his throne, was finally defeated. As we see from this inscription, he was
probably murdered by the country people during his flight.
The following are the most important passages of the inscription: “His
Majesty (Amasis) was in the Festival-Hall, discussing plans for his whole
land, when one came to say unto him, ‘Hââ-ab-Râ (Apries) is rowing up; he
hath gone on board the ships which have crossed over. Haunebu (Greeks),
one knows not their number, are traversing the North-land, which is as if
it had no master to rule it; he (Apries) hath summoned them, they are
coming round him. It is he who hath arranged their settlement in the
Peh-ân (the An-dropolite name); they infest the whole breadth of Egypt,
those who are on thy waters fly before them!’… His Majesty mounted his
chariot, having taken lance and bow in his hand… (the enemy) reached
Andropolis; the soldiers sang with joy on the roads… they did their duty
in destroying the enemy. His Majesty fought like a lion; he made victims
among them, one knows not how many. The ships and their warriors were
overturned, they saw the depths as do the fishes. Like a flame he
extended, making a feast of fighting. His heart rejoiced…. The third
year, the 8th Athyr, one came to tell Majesty: ‘Let their vile-ness be
ended! They throng the roads, there are thousands there ravaging the land;
they fill every road. Those who are in ships bear thy terror in their
hearts. But it is not yet finished.’ Said his Majesty unto his soldiers:
‘…Young men and old men, do this in the cities and nomes!’… Going upon
every road, let not a day pass without fighting their galleys!’… The
land was traversed as by the blast of a tempest, destroying their ships,
which were abandoned by the crews. The people accomplished their fate,
killing the prince (Apries) on his couch, when he had gone to repose in
his cabin. When he saw his friend overthrown… his Majesty himself buried
him (Apries), in order to establish him as a king possessing virtue, for
his Majesty decreed that the hatred of the gods should be removed from
him.”
This is the event to which we have already referred in a preceding
chapter, as proving the great amelioration of Egyptian ideas with regard
to the treatment of a conquered enemy, as compared with those of other
ancient nations. Amasis refers to the deposed monarch as his “friend,” and
buries him in a manner befitting a king at the charges of Amasis himself.
This act warded off from the spirit of Apries the just anger of the gods
at his partiality for the “foreign devils,” and ensured his reception by
Osiris as a king neb menkh, “possessing virtues.”
The town of Naukratis, where Apries established himself, had been granted
to the Greek traders by Psametik I a century or more before. Mr. D. G.
Hogarth’s recent exploration of the site has led to a considerable
modification of our first ideas of the place, which were obtained from
Prof. Petrie ‘s excavations. Prof. Petrie was the discoverer of Naukratis,
and his diggings told us what Naukratis was like in the first instance,
but Mr. Hogarth has shown that several of his identifications were
erroneous and that the map of the place must be redrawn. The chief error
was in the placing of the Hellenion (the great meeting-place of the
Greeks), which is now known to be in quite a different position from that
assigned to it by Prof. Petrie. The “Great Temenos” of Prof. Petrie has
now been shown to be non-existent. Mr. Hogarth has also pointed out that
an old Egyptian town existed at Nau-kratis long before the Greeks came
there. This town is mentioned on a very interesting stele of black basalt
(discovered at Tell Gaif, the site of Naukratis, and now in the Cairo
Museum), under the name of “Permerti, which is called Nukrate.” The first
is the old Egyptian name, the second the Greek name adapted to Egyptian
hieroglyphs. The stele was erected by Tekhtnebf, the last native king of
Egypt, to commemorate his gifts to the temples of Neïth on the occasion of
his accession at Sais. It is beautifully cut, and the inscription is
written in a curious manner, with alphabetic spellings instead of
ideographs, and ideographs instead of alphabetic spellings, which savours
fully of the affectation of the learned pedant who drafted it; for now, of
course, in the fourth century before Christ, nobody but a priestly
antiquarian could read hieroglyphics. Demotic was the only writing for
practical purposes.
We see this fact well illustrated in the inscriptions of the Ptolemaïc
temples. The accession of the Ptolemies marked a great increase in the
material wealth of Egypt, and foreign conquest again came in fashion.
Ptolemy Euergetes marched into Asia in the grand style of a Ramses and
brought back the images of gods which had been carried off by Esarhaddon
or Nebuchadnezzar II centuries before. He was received on his return to
Egypt with acclamations as a true successor of the Pharaohs. The imperial
spirit was again in vogue, and the archaistic simplicity and independence
of the Saïtes gave place to an archaistic imperialism, the first-fruits of
which were the repair and building of temples in the great Pharaonic
style. On these we see the Ptolemies masquerading as Pharaohs, and the
climax of absurdity is reached when Ptolemy Auletes (the Piper) is seen
striking down Asiatic enemies in the manner of Amen-hetep or Ramses! This
scene is directly copied from a Ramesside temple, and we find imitations
of reliefs of Ramses II so slavish that the name of the earlier king is
actually copied, as well as the relief, and appears above the figure of a
Ptolemy. The names of the nations who were conquered by Thothmes III are
repeated on Ptolemaic sculptures to do duty for the conquered of
Euergetes, with all sorts of mistakes in spelling, naturally, and also
with later interpolations. Such an inscription is that in the temple of
Kom Ombo, which Prof. Say ce has held to contain the names of “Caphtor and
Casluhim” and to prove the knowledge of the latter name in the fourteenth
century before Christ. The name of Caphtor is the old Egyptian Keftiu
(Crete); that of Casluhim is unknown in real Old Egyptian inscriptions,
and in this Ptolemaic list at Kom Ombo it may be quite a late
interpolation in the lists, perhaps no older than the Persian period,
since we find the names of Parsa (Persia) and Susa, which were certainly
unknown to Thothmes III, included in it. We see generally from the
Ptolemaic inscriptions that nobody could read them but a few priests, who
often made mistakes. One of the most serious was the identification of
Keftiu with Phoenicia in the Stele of Canopus. This misled modern
archaeologists down to the time of Dr. Evans’s discoveries at Knossos,
though how these utterly un-Semitic looking Keftiu could have been
Phoenicians was a puzzle to everybody. We now know, of course, that they
were Mycenaean or Minoan Cretans, and that the Ptolemaic antiquaries made
a mistake in identifying the land of Keftiu with Phoenicia.
We must not, however, say too much in dispraise of the Ptolemaic Egyptians
and their works. We have to be grateful to them indeed for the building of
the temples of Edfu and Dendera, which, owing to their later date, are
still in good preservation, while the best preserved of the old Pharaonic
fanes, such as Medinet Habû, have suffered considerably from the ravages
of time. Eor these temples show us to-day what an old Egyptian temple,
when perfect, really looked like. They are, so to speak, perfect mummies
of temples, while of the old buildings we have nothing but the disjointed
and damaged skeletons.
A good deal of repairing has been done to these buildings, especially to
that at Edfu, of late years. But the main archaeological interest of
Ptolemaic and Roman times has been found in the field of epigraphy and the
study of papyri, with which the names of Messrs. Kenyon, Grenfell, and
Hunt are chiefly connected. The treasures which have lately been obtained
by the British Museum in the shape of the manuscripts of Aristotle’s
“Constitution of Athens,” the lost poems of Bacchylides, and the Mimes of
Herondas, all of which have been published for the trustees of that
institution by Mr. Kenyon, are known to those who are interested in these
subjects. The long series of publications of Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt,
issued at the expense of the Egypt Exploration Fund (Graeco-Roman branch),
with the exception of the volume of discoveries at Teb-tunis, which was
issued by the University of California, is also well known.
The two places with which Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt’s work has been
chiefly connected are the Fayyûm and Behnesâ, the site of the ancient
Permje or Oxyr-rhynchus. The lake-province of the Fayyûm, which attained
such prominence in the days of the XIIth Dynasty, seems to have had little
or no history during the whole period of the New Empire, but in Ptolemaic
times it revived and again became one of the richest and most important
provinces of Egypt. The town of Arsinoë was founded at Crocodilopolis,
where are now the mounds of Kom el-Fâris (The Mound of the Horseman), near
Medinet el-Payyum, and became the capital of the province. At Illahûn,
just outside the entrance to the Fayyûm, was the great Nile harbour and
entrepôt of the lake-district, called Ptolemaïs Hormos.
The explorations of Messrs. Hogarth, Grenfell, and Hunt in the years of
1895-6 and 1898-9 resulted in the identification of the sites of the
ancient cities of Karanis (Kom Ushîm), Bacchias (Omm el-’Atl), Euhemeria
(Kasr el-Banât), Theadelphia (Harît), and Philoteris (Wadfa). The work for
the University of California in 18991900 at Umm el-Baragat showed that
this place was Tebtunis. Dime, on the northern coast of the Birket Karûn,
the modern representative of the ancient Lake Moeris, is now known to be
the ancient Sokno-paiou Nesos (the Isle of Soknopaios), a local form of
Sebek, the crocodile-god of the Fayyûm. At Karanis this god was worshipped
under the name of Petesuchos (“He whom Sebek has given”), in conjunction
with Osiris Pnepherôs (P-nefer-ho, “the beautiful of face”); at Tebtunis
he became Seknebtunis., i.e. Sebek-neb-Teb-tunis (Sebek, lord of
Tebtunis). This is a typical example of the portmanteau pronunciations of
the latter-day Egyptians.
Many very interesting discoveries were made during the course of the
excavations of these places (besides Mr. Hogarth’s find of the temple of
Petesuchos and Pnepherôs at Karanis), consisting of Roman pottery of
varied form and Roman agricultural implements, including a perfect
plough.[1] The main interest of all, however, lies, both here and at
Behnesâ, in the papyri. They consist of Greek and Latin documents of all
ages from the early Ptolemaic to the Christian. In fact, Messrs. Grenfell
and Hunt have been unearthing and sifting the contents of the waste-paper
baskets of the ancient Ptolemaic and Roman Egyptians, which had been
thrown out on to dust-heaps near the towns. Nothing perishes in,, the dry
climate and soil of Egypt, so the contents of the ancient dust-heaps have
been preserved intact until our own day, and have been found by Messrs.
Grenfell and Hunt, just as the contents of the houses of the ancient
Indian rulers of Chinese Turkestan, at Niya and Khotan, with their store
of Kha-roshthi documents, have been preserved intact in the dry Tibetan
desert climate and have been found by Dr. Stein.[2] There is much analogy
between the discoveries of Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt in Egypt and those of
Dr. Stein in Turkestan.
[1]
Illustrated on Plate IX of Fayûm Towns and Their Papyri.
[2]
See Dr. Stein’s Sand-buried Ruins of Khotan, London, 1903.
The Græco-Egyptian documents are of all kinds, consisting of letters,
lists, deeds, notices, tax-assessments, receipts, accounts, and business
records of every sort and kind, besides new fragments of classical authors
and the important “Sayings of Jesus,” discovered at Behnesâ, which have
been published in a special popular form by the Egypt Exploration Fund.[3]
[3]
* Aoyla ‘Itjffov, 1897, and New Sayings of Jesus, 1904.
These last fragments of the oldest Christian literature, which are of such
great importance and interest to all Christians, cannot be described or
discussed here. The other documents are no less important to the student
of ancient literature, the historian, and the sociologist. The classical
fragments include many texts of lost authors, including Menander. We will
give a few specimens of the private letters and documents, which will show
how extremely modern the ancient Egyptians were, and how little difference
there actually is between our civilization and theirs, except in
the-matter of mechanical invention. They had no locomotives and
telephones; otherwise they were the same. We resemble them much more than
we resemble our mediaeval ancestors or even the Elizabethans.
This is a boy’s letter to his father, who would not take him up to town
with him to see the sights: “Theon to his father Theon, greeting. It was a
fine thing of you not to take me with you to the city! If you won’t take
me with you to Alexandria, I won’t write you a letter, or speak to you, or
say good-bye to you; and if you go to Alexandria I won’t take your hand or
ever greet you again. That is what will happen if you won’t take me.
Mother said to Archelaus, ‘It quite upsets him to be left behind.’ It was
good of you to send me presents on the 12th, the day you sailed. Send me a
lyre, I implore you. If you don’t, I won’t eat, I won’t drink: there
now!’” Is not this more like the letter of a spoiled child of to-day than
are the solemnly dutiful epistles of even our grandfathers and
grandmothers when young? The touch about “Mother said to Archelaus, ‘It
quite upsets him to be left behind’” is delightfully like the modern small
boy, and the final request and threat are also eminently characteristic.
Here is a letter asking somebody to redeem the writer’s property from the
pawnshop: “Now please redeem my property from Sarapion. It is pledged for
two minas. I have paid the interest up to the month Epeiph, at the rate of
a stater per mina. There is a casket of incense-wood, and another of onyx,
a tunic, a white veil with a real purple border, a handkerchief, a tunic
with a Laconian stripe, a garment of purple linen, two armlets, a
necklace, a coverlet, a figure of Aphrodite, a cup, a big tin flask, and a
wine-jar. From Onetor get the two bracelets. They have been pledged since
the month Tybi of last year for eight… at the rate of a stater per mina.
If the cash is insufficient owing to the carelessness of Theagenis, if, I
say, it is insufficient, sell the bracelets and make up the money.” Here
is an affectionate letter of invitation: “Greeting, my dear Serenia, from
Petosiris. Be sure, dear, to come up on the 20th for the birthday festival
of the god, and let me know whether you are coming by boat or by donkey,
that we may send for you accordingly. Take care not to forget.”
Here is an advertisement of a gymnastic display:
“The assault-at-arms by the youths will take place to-morrow, the 24th.
Tradition, no less than the distinguished character of the festival,
requires that they should do their utmost in the gymnastic display. Two
performances.” Signed by Dioskourides, magistrate of Oxyrrhynchus.
Here is a report from a public physician to a magistrate: “To Claudianus,
the mayor, from Dionysos, public physician. I was to-day instructed by
you, through Herakleides your assistant, to inspect the body of a man who
had been found hanged, named Hierax, and to report to you my opinion of
it. I therefore inspected the body in the presence of the aforesaid
Herakleides at the house of Epagathus in the Broadway ward, and found it
hanged by a noose, which fact I accordingly report.” Dated in the twelfth
year of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 173).
The above translations are taken, slightly modified, from those in The
Oxyrrhynchus Papyri, vol. i. The next specimen, a quaint letter, is
translated from the text in Mr. Grenfell’s Greek Papyri (Oxford, 1896), p.
69: “To Noumen, police captain and mayor, from Pokas son of Onôs, unpaid
policeman. I have been maltreated by Peadius the priest of the temple of
Sebek in Crocodilopolis. On the first epagomenal day of the eleventh year,
after having abused me about… in the aforesaid temple, the person
complained against sprang upon me and in the presence of witnesses struck
me many blows with a stick which he had. And as part of my body was not
covered, he tore my shirt, and this fact I called upon the bystanders to
bear witness to. Wherefore I request that if it seems proper you will
write to Klearchos the headman to send him to you, in order that, if what
I have written is true, I may obtain justice at your hands.”
A will of Hadrian’s reign, taken from the Oxyrrhynchus Papyri (i, p. 173),
may also be of interest: “This is the last will and testament, made in the
street (i.e. at a street notary’s stand), of Pekysis, son of Hermes and
Didyme, an inhabitant of Oxyrrhynchus, being sane and in his right mind.
So long as I live, I am to have powers over my property, to alter my will
as I please. But if I die with this will unchanged, I devise my daughter
Ammonous whose mother is Ptolema, if she survive me, but if not then her
children, heir to my shares in the common house, court, and rooms situate
in the Cretan ward. All the furniture, movables, and household stock and
other property whatever that I shall leave, I bequeath to the mother of my
children and my wife Ptolema, the freedwoman of Demetrius, son of
Hermippus, with the condition that she shall have for her lifetime the
right of using, dwelling in, and building in the said house, court, and
rooms. If Ammonous should die without children and intestate, the share of
the fixtures shall belong to her half-brother on the mother’s side,
Anatas, if he survive, but if not, to… No one shall violate the terms of
this my will under pain of paying to my daughter and heir Ammonous a fine
of 1,000 drachmae and to the treasury an equal sum.” Here follow the
signatures of testator and witnesses, who are described, as in a passport,
one of them as follows: “I, Dionysios, son of Dionysios of the same city,
witness the will of Pekysis. I am forty-six years of age, have a curl over
my right temple, and this is my seal of Dionysoplaton.”
During the Roman period, which we have now reached in our survey, the
temple building of the Ptolemies was carried on with like energy. One of
the best-known temples of the Roman period is that at Philse, which is
known as the “Kiosk,” or “Pharaoh’s Bed.” Owing to the great
picturesqueness of its situation, this small temple, which was built in
the reign of Trajan, has been a favourite subject for the painters of the
last fifty years, and next to the Pyramids, the Sphinx, and Karnak, it is
probably the most widely known of all Egyptian buildings. Recently it has
come very much to the front for an additional reason. Like all the other
temples of Philse, it had been archæologically surveyed and cleared by
Col. H. Gr. Lyons and Dr. Borchardt, but further work of a far-reaching
character was rendered necessary by the building of the great Aswân dam,
below the island of Philse, one of the results of which has been the
partial submergence of the island and its temples, including the
picturesque Kiosk. The following account, taken from the new edition
(1906) of Murray’s Guide to Egypt and the Sudan, will suffice
better than any other description to explain what the dam is, how it has
affected Philse, and what work has been done to obviate the possibility of
serious damage to the Kiosk and other buildings.
“In 1898 the Egyptian government signed a contract with Messrs. John Aird
& Co. for the construction of the great reservoir and dam at Shellâl,
which serves for the storage of water at the time of the flood Nile. The
river is ‘held up’ here sixty-five feet above its old normal level. A
great masonry dyke, 150 feet high in places, has been carried across the
Bab el-Kebir of the First Cataract, and a canal and four locks, two
hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, allow for the passage of traffic
up and down the river.
Showing Water Rushing Through The Sluices
The dam is 2,185 yards long and over ninety feet thick at the base; in
places it rises one hundred feet above the bed of the river. It is built
of the local red granite, and at each end the granite dam is built into
the granite hillside. Seven hundred and eight thousand cubic yards of
masonry were used. The sluices are 180 in number, and are arranged at four
different levels. The sight of the great volume of water pouring through
them is a very fine one. The Nile begins to rise in July, and at the end
of November it is necessary to begin closing the sluice-gates to hold up
the water. By the end of February the reservoir is usually filled and
Philæ partially submerged, so that boats can sail in and out of the
colonnades and Pharaoh’s Bed. By the beginning of July the water has been
distributed, and it then falls to its normal level.
“It is of course regrettable that the engineers were unable to find
another site for the dam, as it seemed inevitable that some damage would
result to the temples of Philæ from their partial submergence. Korosko was
proposed as a site, but was rejected for cogent reasons, and apparently
Shellâl was the only possible place. Further, no serious person, who
places the greatest good of the greatest number above considerations of
the picturesque and the ‘interesting,’ will deny that if it is necessary
to sacrifice Philæ to the good of the people of Egypt, Philæ must go. ‘Let
the dead bury their dead.’ The concern of the rulers of Egypt must be with
the living people of Egypt rather than with the dead bones of the past;
and they would not be doing their duty did they for a moment allow
artistic and archaeological considerations to outweigh in their minds the
practical necessities of the country. This does not in the least imply
that they do not owe a lesser duty to the monuments of Egypt, which are
among the most precious relics of the past history of mankind. They do owe
this lesser duty, and with regard to Philæ it has been conscientiously
fulfilled. The whole temple, in order that its stability may be preserved
under the stress of submersion, has been braced up and underpinned, under
the superintendence of Mr. Ball, of the Survey Department, who has most
efficiently carried out this important work, at a cost of £22,000.
Steel girders have been fixed across the island from quay to quay, and
these have been surrounded by cement masonry, made water-tight by forcing
in cement grout. Pharaoh’s Bed and the colonnade have been firmly
underpinned in cement masonry, and there is little doubt that the actual
stability of Philæ is now more certain than that of any other temple in
Egypt. The only possible damage that can accrue to it is the partial
discolouration of the lower courses of the stonework of Pharaoh’s Bed,
etc., which already bear a distinct high-water mark. Some surface
disintegration from the formation of salt crystals is perhaps inevitable
here, but the effects of this can always be neutralized by careful
washing, which it should be an important charge of the Antiquities
Department to regularly carry out.”
This is entirely covered when the reservoir is full, and the
palm-trees are farther submerged.
The photographs accompanying the present chapter show the dam, the Kiosk
in process of conservation and underpinning (1902), and the shores of the
island as they now appear in the month of November, with the water nearly
up to the level of the quays. A view is also given of the island of
Konosso, with its inscriptions, as it is now. The island is simply a huge
granite boulder of the kind characteristic of the neighbourhood of Shellâl
(Phila?) and Aswân.
On the island of Elephantine, opposite Aswân, an interesting discovery has
lately been made by Mr. Howard Carter. This is a remarkable well, which
was supposed by the ancients to lie immediately on the tropic. It formed
the basis of Eratosthenes’ calculations of the measurement of the earth.
Important finds of documents written in Aramaic have also been made here;
they show that there was on the island in Ptolemaic times a regular colony
of Syrian merchants.
South of Aswân and Philse begins Nubia. The Nubian language, which is
quite different from Arabic, is spoken by everybody on the island of
Elephantine, and its various dialects are used as far south as Dongola,
where Arabic again is generally spoken till we reach the land of the
negroes, south of Khartum. In Ptolemaic and Roman days the Nubians were a
powerful people, and the whole of Nubia and the modern North Sudan formed
an independent kingdom, ruled by queens who bore the title or name of
Candace. It was the eunuch of a Candace who was converted to Christianity
as he was returning from a mission to Jerusalem to salute Jehovah. “Go and
join thyself unto his chariot” was the command to Philip, and when the
Ethiopian had heard the gospel from his lips he went on his way rejoicing.
The capital of this Candace was at Meroë, the modern Bagarawiya, near
Shendi. Here, and at Naga not far off, are the remains of the temples of
the Can-daces, great buildings of semi-barbaric Egyptian style. For the
civilization of the Nubians, such as it was, was of Egyptian origin. Ever
since Egyptian rule had been extended southwards to Jebel Barkal, beyond
Dongola, in the time of Amenhetep II, Egyptian culture had influenced the
Nubians. Amenhetep III built a temple to Amen at Napatà, the capital of
Nubia, which lay under the shadow of Mount Barkal; Akhunaten erected a
sanctuary of the Sun-Disk there; and Ramses II also built there.
The place in fact was a sort of appanage of the priests of Amen at Thebes,
and when the last priest-king evacuated Thebes, leaving it to the
Bubastites of the XXIId Dynasty, it was to distant Napata that he retired.
Here a priestly dynasty continued to reign until, two centuries later, the
troubles and misfortunes of Egypt seemed to afford an opportunity for the
reassertion of the exiled Theban power. Piankhi Mera-men returned to Egypt
in triumph as its rightful sovereign, but his successors, Shabak,
Shabatak, and Tirha-kah, had to contend constantly with the Assyrians.
Finally ITrdamaneh, Tirhakah’s successor, returned to Nubia, leaving
Egypt, in the decadence of the Assyrian might, free to lead a quiet
existence under Psametik I and the succeeding monarchs of the XXVIth
Dynasty. When Cambyses conquered Egypt he aspired to conquer Nubia also,
but his army was routed and destroyed by the Napatan king, who tells us in
an inscription how he defeated “the man Kambasauden,” who had attacked
him. At Napata the Nubian monarchs, one of the greatest of whom in
Ptolemaic times was Ergam-enes, a contemporary of Ptolemy Philopator,
continued to reign. But the first Roman governor of Egypt, Ælius Gallus,
destroyed Napata, and the Nubians removed their capital to Meroë, where
the Candaces reigned.
The monuments of this Nubian kingdom, the temples of Jebel Barkal, the
pyramids of Nure close by, the pyramids of Bagarawiya, the temples of Wadi
Ben Naga, Mesawwarat en-Naga, and Mesawwarat es-Sufra (“Mesawwarat”
proper), were originally investigated by Cailliaud and afterwards by
Lepsius. During the last few years they and the pyramids excavated by Dr.
E. A. Wallis-Budge, of the British Museum, for the Sudan government, have
been again explored. As the results of his work are not yet fully
published, it is possible at present only to quote the following
description from Cook’s Handbook for Egypt and the Sudan (by Dr.
Budge), p. 6, of work on the pyramids of Jebel Barkal: “the writer
excavated the shafts of one of the pyramids here in 1897, and at the depth
of about twenty-five cubits found a group of three chambers, in one of
which were a number of bones of the sheep which was sacrificed there about
two thousand years ago, and also portions of a broken amphora which had
held Rho-dian wine. A second shaft, which led to the mummy-chamber, was
partly emptied, but at a further depth of twenty cubits water was found.
The high-water mark of the reservoir when full is ———
and, as there were no visible means for pumping it out, the mummy-chamber
could not be entered.” With regard to the Bagarawîya pyramids, Dr. Budge
writes, on p. 700 of the same work, à propos of the story of the Italian
Ferlini that he found Roman jewelry in one of these pyramids: “In 1903 the
writer excavated a number of the pyramids of Meroë for the
Governor-General of the Sudan, Sir F. R. Wingate, and he is convinced that
the statements made by Ferlini are the result of misapprehension on his
part. The pyramids are solid throughout, and the bodies are buried under
them. When the details are complete the proofs for this will be
published.” Dr. Budge has also written upon the subject of the orientation
of the Jebel Barkal and Nure pyramids.
It is very curious to find the pyramids reappearing in Egyptian
tomb-architecture in the very latest period of Egyptian history. We find
them when Egyptian civilization was just entering upon its vigorous
manhood, then they gradually disappear, only to revive in its decadent and
exiled old age. The Ethiopian pyramids are all of much more elongated form
than the old Egyptian ones. It is possible that they may be a survival of
the archaistic movement of the XXVIth Dynasty, to which we have already
referred.
These are not the latest Egyptian monuments in the Sudan, nor are the
temples of Naga and Mesawwarat the most ancient, though they belong to the
Roman period and are decidedly barbarian as to their style and,
especially, as to their decoration. The southernmost as well as latest
relic of Egypt in the Sudan is the Christian church of Soba, on the Blue
Mie, a few miles above Khartum. In it was found a stone ram, an emblem of
Amen-Râ, which had formerly stood in the temple of Naga and had been
brought to Soba perhaps under the impression that it was the Christian
Lamb. It was removed to the garden of the governor-general’s palace at
Khartum, where it now stands.
The church at Soba is a relic of the Christian kingdom of Alua, which
succeeded the realm of the Candaces. One of its chief seats was at
Dongola, and all Nubia is covered with the ruins of its churches. It was,
of course, an offshoot of the Christianity of Egypt, but a late one, since
Isis was still worshipped at Philse in the sixth century, long after the
Edict of Theodosius had officially abolished paganism throughout the Roman
world, and the Nubians were at first zealous votaries of the goddess of
Philo. So also when Egypt fell beneath the sway of the Moslem in the
seventh century, Nubia remained an independent Christian state, and
continued so down to the twelfth century, when the soldiers of Islam
conquered the country.
Of late pagan and early Christian Egypt very much that is new has been
discovered during the last few years. The period of the Lower Empire has
yielded much to the explorers of Oxyrrhynchus, and many papyri of interest
belonging to this period have been published by Mr. Kenyon in his Catalogue
of the Greek Papyri in the British Museum, especially the letters of
Flavius Abinæus, a military officer of the fourth century. The papyri of
this period are full of the high-flown titles and affected phraseology
which was so beloved of Byzantine scribes. “Glorious Dukes of the
Thebaïd,” “most magnificent counts and lieutenants,” “all-praiseworthy
secretaries,” and the like strut across the pages of the letters and
documents which begin “In the name of Our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ,
the God and Saviour of us all, in the year x of the reign of the most
divine and praised, great, and beneficent Lord Flavius Heraclius (or
other) the eternal Augustus and Auto-krator, month x, year x of the In
diction.” It is an extraordinary period, this of the sixth and seventh
centuries, which we have now entered, with its bizarre combination of the
official titulary of the divine and eternal Cæsars Imperatores Augusti
with the initial invocation of Christ and the Trinity. It is the
transition from the ancient to the modern world, and as such has an
interest all its own.
In Egypt the struggle between the adherents of Chalcedon, the “Melkites”
or Imperialists of the orthodox Greek rite, and the Eutychians or
Mono-physites, the followers of the patriarch Dioskoros, who rejected
Chalcedon, was going on with unabated fury, and was hardly stopped even by
the invasion of the pagan Persians. The last effort of the party of
Constantinople to stamp out the Monophysite heresy was made when Cyril was
patriarch and governor of Egypt. According to an ingenious theory put
forward by Mr. Butler, in his Arab Conquest of Egypt, it is Cyril
the patriarch who was the mysterious Mukaukas, the [Greek word], or “Great
and Magnificent One,” who played so doubtful a part in the epoch-making
events of the Arab conquest by Amr in A.D. 639-41. Usually this Mukaukas
has been regarded as a “noble Copt,” and the Copts have generally been
credited with having assisted the Islamites against the power of
Constantinople. This was a very natural and probable conclusion, but Mr.
Butler will have it that the Copts resisted the Arabs valiantly, and that
the treacherous Mukaukas was none other than the Constantinopolitan
patriarch himself.
In the papyri it is interesting to note the gradual increase of Arab names
after the conquest, more especially in those of the Archduke Rainer ‘s
collection from the Fayyûm, which was so near the new capital city,
Fustât. In Upper Egypt the change was not noticeable for a long time, and
in the great collection of Coptic ostraka (inscriptions on slips of
limestone and sherds of pottery, used as a substitute for paper or
parchment), found in the ruins of the Coptic monastery established, on the
temple site of Dêr el-Bahari, we find no Arab names. These documents, part
of which have been published by Mr. W. E. Crum for the Egypt Exploration
Fund, while another part will shortly be issued for the trustees of the
British Museum by Mr. Hall, date to the seventh and eighth centuries.
Their contents resemble those of the earlier papyri from Oxyrrhynchus,
though they are not of so varied a nature and are generally written by
persons of less intelligence, i.e. the monks and peasants of the
monasteries and villages of Tjême, or Western Thebes. During the late
excavation of the XIth Dynasty temple of Dêr el-Bahari, more of these ostraka
were found, which will be published for the Egypt Exploration Fund by
Messrs. Naville and Hall. Of actual buildings of the Coptic period the
most important excavations have been those of the French School of Cairo
at Bâwît, north of Asyût. This work, which was carried on by M. Jean
Clédat, has resulted in the discovery of very important frescoes and
funerary inscriptions, belonging to the monastery of a famous martyr, St.
Apollo. With these new discoveries of Christian Egypt our work reaches its
fitting close. The frontier which divides the ancient from the modern
world has almost been crossed. We look back from the monastery of Bâwît
down a long vista of new discoveries until, four thousand years before, we
see again the Great Heads coming to the Tomb of Den, Narmer inspecting the
bodies of the dead Northerners, and, far away in Babylonia, Narâm-Sin
crossing the mountains of the East to conquer Elam, or leading his allies
against the prince of Sinai.
THE END.