I. The Sumerians

 

THE later culture of Semitic Babylonia and Assyria is based almost entirely upon foundations laid by a non-Semitic people, the Sumerians, as we call them, from the fact that the chief seat of their power was the land of Southern-Babylonia, which they called Sumer. To them was due the invention of the cuneiform script, the outward mark and inward bond of Mesopotamian (and so of all early Semitic) culture; and, our knowledge of this has shown us that the language which it was originally devised to express was not Semitic, but an agglutinative tongue.

There are, however, certain indications visible in the remains and representations of Sumerian culture that point to a pre-Sumerian and specifically Semitic element in it. Thus the Sumerian gods are always represented as Semites, with very full and long hair and beard, while the Sumerians were always clean-shaven, as to the face, and usually (though not always) also as to the head. The garment worn by the gods is also that assigned in later representation, to Semites, namely, a sort of woollen cloth plaid, while the Sumerians wore cloaks which look as if made of either rough wool or possibly skins, or even palm-leaves. There were probably inhabitants in Mesopotamia before the Sumerians arrived, and it is hardly probable that they can have been of other than Semitic race, so that this curious fact as regards the representation of their gods may be thus explained. On conquering the country the Sumerians adopted the Semitic deities of the soil, a proceeding not improbable of itself and entirely consonant with ancient religious ideas. Their own gods were at the same time altered in their appearance in order to agree with their new and predominant colleagues.

The Sumerian culture springs into our view ready-made, as it were, which is what we should expect if it was, as seems on other grounds probable, brought into Mesopotamia from abroad. We have no knowledge of the time when the Sumerians were savages: when we first meet with them in the fourth millennium BC, they are already a civilized, metal-using people living in great and populous cities, possessing a complicated system of writing, and living under the government of firmly established civil and religious dynasties and hierarchies. They had imposed their higher culture on the more primitive inhabitants of the river-valley in which they had settled, and had assimilated the civilization of the conquered, whatever it may have been, to their own. The earliest scenes of their own culture development had perhaps not been played upon the  Babylonian stage at all, but in a different country, away across the Persian mountains to the eastward. The land of Elam, the later Susiana, where till the end a non-Semitic nationality of Sumerian culture maintained itself in usual independence of the dominant Mesopotamian power, was no doubt a stage in their progress. There they left the abiding impress of their civilization, although the Elamites developed their art on a distinct line of their own. Whether the Elamites, whom they probably civilized, were racially related to them we do not know; the languages of both Elamite and Sumerian were agglutinative, but otherwise are not alike. The Elamite tongue may very well have been allied to the modern Georgian, and we may regard it as the southernmost member of a group of non-Aryan and non-Semitic tongues,to which has been given the name “Alarodian”, which in ancient times stretched from the Caucasus to the Persian Gulf along the line of the Zagros, but now is confined to the Caucasian region. Sumerian may also belong to this group, or may (and this seems more probable) have come from much farther afield. The ethnic type of the Sumerians, so strongly marked in their statues and reliefs, was as different from those of the races which surrounded them as was their language from those of the Semites, Aryans, or others; they were decidedly Indian in type. The face-type of the average Indian of today is no doubt much the same as that of his Dravidian race-ancestors thousands of years ago. Among the modern Indians, as amongst the modern Greeks or Italians, the ancient pre-Aryan type of the land has (as the primitive type of the land always does) survived, while that of the Aryan conqueror died out long ago. And it is to this Dravidian ethnic type of India that the ancient Sumerian bears most resemblance, so far as we can judge from his monuments. He was very like a Southern Hindu of the Dekkan (who still speaks Dravidian languages). And it is by no means improbable that the Sumerians were an Indian race which passed, certainly by land, perhaps also by sea, through Persia to the valley of the Two Rivers. It was in the Indian home (perhaps the Indus valley) that we suppose for them that their culture developed. There their writing may have been invented, and progressed from a purely pictorial to a simplified and abbreviated form, which afterwards in Babylonia took on its peculiar cuneiform appearance owing to its being written with a square-ended stilus on soft clay. On the way they left the seeds of their culture in Elam. This seems a plausible theory of Sumerian origins, and it must be clearly understood that it is offered by the present writer merely as a theory, which has little direct evidence to back it, but seems most in accordance with the probabilities of the case. There is little doubt that India must have been one of the earliest centres of human civilization, and it seems natural to suppose that the strange un-Semitic, un-Aryan people who came from the East to civilize the West were of Indian origin, especially when we see with our eyes how very Indian the Sumerians were in type.

We do not know whether the first foundation of the cities of Babylonia was due to the Sumerians or to their predecessors. At the beginning of history we find the cities of Southern Babylonia (Sumer) exclusively inhabited by them, while Northern Babylonia (Akkad) has also civilized Semitic inhabitants dwellers in cities, like the Sumerians. A common Semito-Sumerian civilization has already been evolved, chiefly, no doubt, on purely Sumerian bases. The Sumerian system of writing is already used to write Semitic. It seems probable that the art of city-building and the practice of town-dwelling was brought in by the more highly cultured Sumerians. The primitive Semite of the valley was probably half-nomadic.

Whether it is to the Sumerians that the first drainage and irrigation of the river-swamps is to be assigned is uncertain. Legends, which were put into the shape in which we have them after the unification of Sumer and Akkad under the headship of Babylon, assign to the Babylonian god Marduk the work of reducing the primeval chaos to order by the separation of land from water, and the first founding of the homes of men on the reclaimed earth. Marduk. having, according to another version, vanquished the demon of the primeval watery chaos, Tiamat, laid a reed upon the face of the waters and poured dust upon it, so that the first land was formed : then he made a dyke by the side of the sea to reclaim the land from it, and manufactured bricks; houses and cities followed, “then was Eridu made, and E-Sagil (the temple of Bel Marduk in Babylon) was built ... Nippur he made, E-kur he built; Erech he made, E-ana he built”. We evidently have here a very vivid recollection of the time when the whole of Southern Babylonia was a swamp : the primitive inhabitants were scattered about on various islands which emerged out of the fens, and on these islands towns arose, just as Ely and Peterborough arose in England under similar circumstances: dykes were heaped up and the shallows were gradually reclaimed, till the demon of the watery chaos, Tiamat, finally vanquished, retreated from the land; Marduk had created the earth and the two great rivers, and, in the words of the legend, “declared their names to be good”.

In this legend Marduk no doubt replaces an earlier local god, probably Enki or Ea of Eridu, which appears as the most ancient foundation of all. Ea, the Sumerian Enki, was primarily the God of the Waters. Whether Ea was originally a Sumerian or a Semitic god is uncertain; his Semitic name Ea seems primitive in form. It is not impossible that the first reclamation and settlements in the marshes were those of the pre-Sumerian Semites, who presumably inhabited Sumer as well as Akkad, and that the first foundation of the city settlements was due to the predecessors of the Sumerians. But we can well imagine that the Sumerian conquest brought about a great advance in civilized development, and that the characteristic importance of the cities in Babylonia was due to the apparent Sumerian instinct for concentration and organization. The Sumerians were the real conquerors of Tiamat, although they may not have begun Ea’s work.

The most ancient remains that we find in the city-mounds are Sumerian. The site of the ancient Shurippak, at Farah in Southern Babylonia, has lately been excavated. The culture revealed by this excavation is Sumerian, and metal-using, even at the lowest levels. The Sumerians apparently knew the use of copper at the beginning of their occupation of Babylonia, and no doubt brought this knowledge with them.

The most ancient names of Babylonian kings and chiefs known to us are Sumerian in form, and their inscriptions are written in Sumerian, though there is reason to suppose that the early kings of the city of Kish, in Akkad, were Semites. A Semitic revival, so to speak, was beginning; the Sumerized Semites of Northern Babylonia were preparing to gain the upper hand and to absorb their conquerors and civilizers. For we know only the latter end of the story of Sumerian rule in Babylonia. At the beginning of history the Sumerian power is already declining amid a chaos of civil war and Semitic revolt. We do not know whether the warring cities which we see at the dawn of history had ever been united in one compact Sumerian kingdom under a Sumerian dynasty, with its centre either at ancient Eridu or at Nippur, the primate city of primitive Babylonia and seat of Enlil, the chief god of the country. But it is not impossible that they had been so united.

Legend, at any rate, speaks of a very ancient kingdom of Babylon, with a long line of semi-divine rulers over the whole land, each of whom reigned for an enormous period of time, thus resembling the Egyptian “Ghosts” and “Followers of Horus”. Some of their names have been preserved for us in the extant fragments of the history of Berossos. He tells us of the first of the kings, who reigned for even longer periods, Aloros, who reigned 36,000 years, and his successors down to Xisuthros, in whose time the Deluge took place. Aloros came after the first civilizer of Babylonia, Oannes, a monster half-man and half-fish, who issued out of the Persian Gulf, and taught the use of writing and other arts to savage mankind. We possess no Babylonian text referring to Oannes, but there is no doubt that he was in some way connected, if not identical, with Ea, the god of the primeval waters, who was worshipped in the most ancient city of Babylonia, Eridu, which ages ago stood on a lake near the Persian Gulf, now over a hundred miles away. Neither have we as yet met with any legends of Aloros and his successors in the cuneiform texts, but there is no doubt that Berosus is entirely to be trusted in his compilation of the legends of his people. Xisuthros is evidently the same as Khasisadra or Atrakhasis, in whose time Sitnapishtim went into the Ark, to save himself from the Deluge. Berossos’ mention of the Deluge is not derived from Hebrew sources, as used, naturally, to be thought, but is a faithful record of the ancient tradition of his own people, on which the Hebrew legend was founded. After the Deluge, according to the traditions preserved by Berossos, eighty-six kings reigned during 34,080 years, two of them for 2400 and 2700 years respectively, but those at the end of the list for the ordinary span of human life only. It is no wonder that Cicero smiles at the vast antiquity that the Babylonians claimed for themselves.

Other legends, which we hear directly from cuneiform sources, know nothing of a primitive united kingdom. They refer, no doubt, to historical events in a distorted form. Thus there is a legend of an early king of the whole land who reigned in Kutha, which has come down to us in an autobiographical shape. The unknown king is made to say that in his days the land was attacked and overrun by a strange people who had the bodies of birds and the faces of ravens, who lived in the mountains to the north of Mesopotamia. Three long years the king contended with the invaders, and finally in the fourth year he routed them. Then we have the voluminous legends concerning a very early king who reigned in Erech, Gilgamesh, who was regarded as a semi-mythical hero, a sort of Herakles, by the Babylonians, and may very well be the original of the Biblical Nimrod. In his days Erech was besieged for three years and was brought to the uttermost straits:—

 

Men cry aloud like beasts,

And maidens mourn like doves;

The gods of strong-walled Erech

Are changed to flies, and buzz about the streets;

The spirits of strong-walled Erech

Are changed to mice, and glide into holes.

For three years the enemy besieged Erech,

And the doors were barred and the bolts were shot,

And Ishtar did not raise her head against the foe.

 

It is not certain whether Gilgamesh was the besieger or the saviour of Erech: at any rate, he is said to have afterwards ruled the town in a tyrannical fashion, so that the gods made a creature, half-animal, half-beast, named Ea-bani, who was intended to destroy him. Ea-bani was however captured by the wiles of a singing-woman of the temple of Ishtar at Erech, and was brought to Gilgamesh, whose devoted friend and ally he soon became. The two then performed many feats of valour in company, the most notable being an expedition against an Elamite ogre named Khumbaba, whose castle they took, and killed its owner.

It is probable that in the expedition against Khumbaba and the defence of Erech we have echoes of far-away historical events. In the stories both of Gilgamesh and of the king of Kutha the cities are independent of one another. And so we find them at the beginning of history.

Each was ruled by a hereditary governor, who was also high-priest of the local god and bore the title of patesi, which signified that its possessor was the earthly vicegerent of the gods. The Sumerian language possessed a word denoting the ruler of a higher political organization: this was lugal, king (literally “great man”). This word had no theocratic connotation, and whether it was a survival of a time when a stable and unified Sumerian kingdom had existed or not, in the period of confusion which is the earliest as yet known to us, it seems to have been assumed by any patesi who succeeded by force or fraud in uniting several cities under his government: in this case the patesis of the subdued cities, even if one or more of them had themselves previously aspired to be called lugal, reverted to the position of patesis, and the conqueror took the title of lugal, only in all probability to himself lose it in a few years to some patesi stronger than he.

One of the earliest rulers of whom we have any knowledge seems to be a certain Utug, of Kish, who dedicated in the great temple of the god Enlil at Nippur, the central navel of Sumer and Akkad, a vase which he had taken as spoil from “the land of Khamazi”. Thus we find the internecine war at the beginning of things, and also the position of Nippur as chief city of all Babylonia, which we may, if we please, trace back to an ancient unified Sumerian kingdom with its capital at Nippur.

Utug was probably a Sumerian, but later kings of Kish were Semites. Later on, the hegemony of Kish disappeared for a time, and Lagash appears as the chief city of Babylonia under the king UR-NINA, the founder of a dynasty, and a most pious servant of the gods, who dedicated countless vases, tablets, and statues in the temples of Ningirsu, Bau his wife, Dunshagga his son, and the goddesses Nina, Ninmakh, and Gatumdug, which were already the glory of Lagash. Urnina was also a great digger of canals, and a builder of granaries and storehouses for the grain-tribute paid to himself and to the gods.

Some of the most ancient relics of Sumerian art date from the time of Ur-Nina. They are relief-plaques, on which we see the king represented in somewhat primitive wise, seated in a chair and holding a cup, and standing with a basket on his head, in the guise of a labourer on his own building-operations, while around him stand in respectful attitudes his children, headed by his daughter Lidda, and his eldest son Akurgal, who succeeded him on the throne. Behind him is his cupbearer. The intention of the relief is the same as that of the early Egyptian relief palettes of Narmer from Hierakonpolis, but its execution is much inferior, and reminds us very much of the crude work of the early XIth Dynasty in Egypt. Another relief shows a meeting of chieftains and their followers.

The reign of AKURGAL, Ur-Nina’s successor, was undistinguished, but that of Eannatum, his son, was marked by a great war between Lagash and Umma. We know of this war from the inscriptions and reliefs of the famous Stele of the Vultures, the most splendid result of M. de Sarzec’s excavations at Telloh, and one of the chief glories of the Museum of the Louvre. On this monument we see Eannatum setting forth to war both on foot and in his ass-drawn chariot, at the head of his troops. The soldiers, who march in serried ranks behind, trampling on the bodies of the slain, wear waistcloths of skins round their loins and metal helmets of exactly the same shape as the mediaeval bassinet upon their heads; their hair, which was not shaven, appears from beneath the helmets behind. Eannatum wears the same helmet, behind which his long hair is bound up in a club. Both he and his men are clean-shaven as to the face. Farther on, we see the burial of the slain warriors of Lagash, but the fallen of Umma are represented as lying a prey to the vultures, which are seen carrying off the heads of the slain in their beaks. On another part of the stela we see the god Ningirsu, heavily bearded in Semitic fashion, holding in his hand the strange heraldic emblem of his city of Lagash, and clubbing with his mace the men of Umma who he has caught in a great net.

The style of this monument is remarkable. It is conspicuous for great vigour of composition and of execution, which accurately reflect the temper of the ruler who caused it to be sculptured. Eannatum was a most vigorous ruler, as we sec from the inscriptions of the Vulture-stele, in which he tells us of the genesis of the quarrel between his city and the neighbouring Umma, and of the way in which he brought the enemy to his knees, and finally secured the disputed territory Guedin to Lagash.

The loss of life on both sides seems to have been great, and we can well imagine that two armies battling in the formidable array of the Sumerian soldiery would inflict considerable damage upon one another. No shooting with the bow was used, the fighting being based on shock-tactics only, and the victory inclining to the heavier and more thrusting force. The soldiers, protected by efficient body-armour, fought in solid phalanges, six men in a row. The men of the front rank who were armed with battle-axes, carried huge rectangular bucklers which reached their feet, and formed an impenetrable board-wall behind which the men in rear, who carried no shields, could use their long spears with effect. So phalanx moved slowly against phalanx, the shock and thrusting came, and the better men won. Then the buckler-bearers of the victorious side threw away their cumbrous protection, and joined the pursuit with their axes. This was a highly developed military machine, which had clearly been evolved by long years of constant civil war. The loose order, comparatively feeble armour, and bow-and-arrow and hatchet fighting of the contemporary Egyptians was by no means so efficient. We do not know whether the chariots in which the Sumerian kings drove to war were ever actually used for charging and fighting in battle: most probably they were not, serving merely as conveyances to the field. They were drawn by asses, the horse being still unknown.

Elam also experienced the weight of Eannatum’s arm. “By Eannatum”, says the king of Lagash himself, “was Elam broken in the head : Elam was driven back to his own land”. Then, as ever afterwards, the hardy mountain-tribes of Elam were always ready for a descent upon the fruitful and wealthy Babylonian plain. In this case also, as after the defeat of Umma, Eannatum says that he “heaped up burial mounds”, thus indicating the slaughter he had made.

Whereas Eannatum had been primarily a soldier, and had devoted little time to the service of the gods, Entemena, his second successor, was not only a warrior but also a patron of religion and the arts. One of the finest relics of his reign is a magnificent votive vase of silver, found, mounted on its original copper stand, to which it has become united by oxydization, in the ruins of Telloh. On this beautiful object we see a row of representations of Imgig, the lion-headed eagle of Ningirsu, grasping either lions or antelopes by their tails, a representation which served as the heraldic cognizance of Lagash. We have already seen this remarkable emblem accompanying Ningirsu on the Stele of the Vultures.

Entemena was succeeded by four short-lived and undistinguished patesis, to whom succeeded the remarkable usurper and reformer Urukagina, the last king of Lagash. The prosperity of Lagash, due to the huge amount of taxes and tribute in corn, wood, and other things which she had exacted for years from the whole of Sumer and the greater part of Akkad, had demoralized the ruling officials and priests of Ningirsu’s state. They had divided the plunder of the other cities among themselves, and had combined to rob and oppress the common people.

The usurper Urukagina stood forth as a champion of reform, in the interests of the ordinary taxpayer. He cut down the perquisites of the priests and restrained the exactions of the lay officials of the palace, abolishing various extortionate fees and dues to which not only the vizier, but even the patesi or king himself had a right. He enacted new laws respecting divorce, and in his reign he says : “To the widow and the orphan the strong man did no harm”. He stands out as the anticipator and predecessor of the lawgiver Hammurabi, who obviously modelled himself upon his Sumerian predecessor.

But his reforms endeared him to none but the poor and the powerless. And the enemy at the gate, Umma, was again independent and strong. LUGALZAGGISI, son of Ukush, patesi of Umma, determined to take advantage of the weakness of the old foe of his city, and attacked her suddenly, with complete success, ending the reign of Urukagina and the dominion of Lagash at one blow. We know of this event only from a remarkable historical composition written by a priest in Lagash shortly afterwards, and discovered at Telloh: in it the writer recounts the sacrilege of the invaders and heaps curses on the name of Lugalzaggisi, the conqueror.

After overthrowing Lagash Lugalzaggisi became naturally the chief power in Babylonia. Leaving Umma, he established his capital at Erech, and took the title of king of that city, and of the land of Sumer. Then he carried his arms beyond Babylonia into Syria or Amurru, the Land of the West, which he subdued, reaching the Mediterranean at the end of his march. “When the god Enlil, king of the lands”, says the conqueror, “had bestowed upon Lugalzaggisi the kingdom of the land, and had granted him success in the eyes of the land, and when his might had cast the lands down, and he had 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, from Euphrates and Tigris, unto the Upper Sea. From the rising of the sun unto the setting of the same has Enlil granted him dominion”.

By this march to the Mediterranean the foundations were laid of the actual dominion over Syria exercised by the Semitic kings of Akkad some two centuries later.

We have very little knowledge of the state of Syria and Palestine at this period, when they first appear in history. It is possible that the influence of Sumerian civilization had been perceptible in the West at an even earlier period, but we have no direct proof of this. The recent excavations of the Palestine Exploration Fund at Gezer and of the Germans at Megiddo have shown that Palestine was originally inhabited by a neolithic population that lived in caves, and was probably related to the troglodytic people of the desert between the Nile and the Red Sea, who are mentioned by Strabo. We may identify them with the pre-Canaanite Horites or Avvim of Biblical tradition. They developed into or were succeeded by the Anakim or Rephaim, the Giants of tradition, who built the megalithic monuments, the dolmens and menhirs, of Moab and eastern Palestine. To them may be due the earliest stone walls of the Canaanite cities. Whether they were Semites or not we do not know. It is probable that in Palestine a pre-Semitic Mediterranean population existed, which mingled with the Semitic-speakers who came from Arabia (?). By Lugalzaggisi’s time the Palestinians had long been semitized, and the Rephaim and the sons of Anak had already given place to the civilized Canaanites, who were perhaps already adopting the script of Sumer for their writing and incorporating the deities of Babylon into their religion.

 

KING GUDEA

2. Sumerians and Semites

 

The inscriptions of Lugalzaggisi have been discovered at Nippur, in the shrine of Enlil, the chief god of the Babylonian pantheon, to whom the King of Erech ascribed his success. He was succeeded in his dominion by three kings of whom we know simply the names. War broke out with Kish, of old the ally of Umma, but now her enemy. Semitic kings now ruled Kish.

To Semitic rulers in Akkad the hegemony of Babylonia now passed, and they, like their predecessors, dedicated their gifts in the central shrine of Enlil at Nippur. Sharru-gi (or SHAR-RUKIN), the first Semitic king who has left monuments of any importance, was in later days confused with Shargani-sharri, King of Akkad, whom we shall presently discuss, and the two together formed a kind of “conflate” personage, the hero Sargon, who inaugurated Semitic rule in Babylonia. Sharrugi is known to us directly from a monolithic stone, sculptured in relief with battle-scenes, which was found by the French excavators at Susa, whither it had been carried by the Elamites ; and indirectly from other monuments. Manishtusu, who came after him, was a powerful monarch. Of him again we possess an important monument which was found at Susa, having been removed thither by the Elamites: this is a great obelisk inscribed in Semitic Babylonian with a list of his lands, in which the patesi of Lagash (Urukagina ii, son of Engilsa) and men from Umma appear as his humble vassals. Part of an alabaster portrait-statuette of Manishtusu was also found at Susa, which shows him fully-bearded in the Semitic style. The art is not so good as that of the work of Sharrugi, but the face is unmistakably a portrait.

Whether Mesalim, son of Manishtusu, succeeded him or not, we do not know. RIMUSH, or URUMUSH, who followed Manishtusu at no long interval, and preceded Shargani-sharri of Akkad, conquered Elam and evidently greatly increased the Babylonian power. He was said in a later tradition to have lost his life in a palace-revolution. At any rate, his successor is unknown, and it is highly probable that the helm of Babylonia was now taken by two other Semitic chiefs, SHARGANI-SHARRI and Naram-Sin of Akkad.

Few monarchs of the ancient world are so well known to us moderns as Sargon of Agade, and we may say that to the Babylonians he was their hero of heroes, their Menes, Charlemagne, or Alfred the Great. A foundling brought up by a water-carrier, according to tradition, he ended as ruler of all Western Asia. His doings were taken as an ensample of life for later kings, and if the omens had been such-and-such when Sargon went forth to battle, under similar omens the later King of Babylonia or Assyria would also march to victory. He, confused naturally enough with the earlier Sharrugi, typified the first triumphant establishment of the Semites as the dominant race in Babylonia.

Historically, Shargani-sharri was the son of a certain Dati-Enlil, probably the ruler of the town of Agade under the king of Kish. He lived, according to the evidence which has already been discussed, probably about 2750-2700 B.C. That Shargani extended his rule over the whole of Babylonia is clear. Lugal-ushumgal, patesi of Lagash, owed him allegiance; at Nippur he built the great temple of Enlil, E-kur; at Babylon he erected a palace; and he founded a new city, Dur-Shargani, “Sharganiburgh”, with inhabitants drawn from Kish and Babylon. In Agade itself he built the temple E-ulbar in honour of Anunitum, the Semitic goddess of the morning-star. As a conqueror beyond the bounds of Babylonia we know from his own contemporary record that he extended his dominions northward and eastward over the land of Guti, in the Zagros mountains, on the modern frontier of Persia and Turkey. Here, and in the neighbouring district of Lulubu, Semitic chiefs ruled, of whom Anu-banini of Guti and Lasirab of Lulubu are known to us in the age before Shargani-sharri, who reduced the Guti king of his day, Sharlak, to obedience.

Naram-Sin, whose position with regard to Shargani-sharri is uncertain, conquered Satuni of Lulubu, and commemorated the exploit on a magnificent monument which will shortly be described. He also carried his arms to the far north of Mesopotamia, where a relief-stele of himself, set up in an ancient town near the modern Diarbekr, commemorates his deeds. He brought stone from Magan (Eastern Arabia), a stone vase inscribed by him with the words “Vase from the booty of Magan” has been discovered, and at Susa has been found a statue with an inscription directly recording the conquest and submission of Mannudannu, King of Magan. He calls himself “King of the Four Quarters of the World”; he erected a temple at Sippar, where Nabonidus discovered his inscription, and ruled as king in Nippur: a cylinder of Nabonidus describes him also as “King of Babylon”, but this is probably an error of that blundering royal antiquarian.

Thus far we have derived our information as to these two great kings from their own contemporary monuments and from the archaeological researches of Nabonidus: we have now to turn to a further source of information regarding them, Babylonian legend.

On one of the omen-tablets (of the seventh century BC) discovered at Kuyunjik (Nineveh) we read respecting Sargon that “he traversed the Sea of the West, and for three years his hand prevailed in the West. He established his undisputed rule, and in the West his statues [he set up]: he caused the booty of the Sea-lands to be brought”. Another version substitutes “Sea of the East” (i.e. the Persian Gulf) for “Sea of the West”, and we also read that under certain omens the great king had carried his arms to the Persian Gulf, where the island of Dilmun came under his sway: he also is said, no doubt with truth, to have invaded Elam. An unsuccessful rebellion, in the course of which he was besieged in Agade, is also said to have taken place during his reign. With respect to Naram-Sin, the astrological tablets say that he attacked the city of Apirak, on the borders of Elam, killed its king, Rishramman, and led its people away into slavery. We are led to repose some confidence in the historical accuracy of these traditional accounts because they also mention Naram-Sin’s expedition against Magan, which, as we know from his own inscription, did actually take place. If Naram-Sin could go to Magan, so could his father, and the legends of the expedition to Dilmun and the “Sea of the East” state nothing incredible. The variant version which implies an expedition to the Mediterranean may also state a fact, since, if Lugalzaggisi speaks of his own dominion as reaching to the Upper Sea, it is in no way impossible that Sargon also actually waged war and ruled in Syria and Palestine for the space of three years, and set up his statues on the shores of the Mediterranean.

The greatness of these two reigns is worthily commemorated in the splendid stela found by M. de Morgan at Susa (whither it had been carried off, probably by the Elamite king, Shutruk-Nakhkhunte), which records the subjection of Satuni, King of Lulubu, in his mountain-fastness. This is one of the triumphs of ancient art: in it ancient Babylonian art reached its apogee. King Naram-Sin is shown in high relief, ascending the slopes of a great mountain, bow and arrow in hand. Before him falls Satuni, stricken by an arrow which he strives to pull out of his neck; behind, a retreating figure turns to beg for mercy. Behind and below, on the lower tree-clad slopes of the mountain, climb the king’s officers, bearing bows, spears, and standards with heraldic emblems; all in the same attitude of resolute advance, step by step, into the heart of the mountains. Above, shine the sun and stars. The king is bearded, and wears no body-armour, but has a conical horned helmet. His officers are shaven, but wear the helmet without horns. Satuni and his follower have beards and either long hair or hoods with long liripipes like those worn by the Scythians in later times. The use of archery by Naram-Sin and his men is significant: the bow, which was unknown to the Sumerians, had been introduced by the Semites, and was now acclimatized in Babylonia.

Naram-Sin evidently extended the empire bequeathed to him by his father, and assumed the resounding title of “King of the Four Quarters of the World”, which henceforth became a regular appellation of the Babylonian kings, often with little reason.

Of the immediate successors of Shargani and Naram-Sin we know little. A period of some two hundred years now elapses, during which an as yet impenetrated veil of obscurity lies over Babylonia, and when it is lifted we find that the sceptre has departed from Agade and has passed again to Lagash, where about 2500 B.C. a line of princes reigned who called themselves simply patesis, after the old custom of Lagash. Like their ancestors, they were Sumerians, not Semites.

The greatest of these later patesis of Lagash was GUDEA (c. 2450 BC), statues of whom are now in the Museum of the Louvre. This king conquered the district of Anshan in Elam, and, being commanded to do so in a dream, erected a great temple in honour of the goddess Nina, stone for which was brought from Syria, gold and precious stones from Arabia (?), great beams of cedar-wood from the forests of Mount Amanus and Lebanon, and asphalt from the Dead Sea region. With him the glory of his dynasty ended, however: his son, Ur-ningirsu, was compelled to submit to the power of a new dynasty, also Sumerian, which had arisen at Ur. dungi, the second king of this dynasty, who reigned for fifty-eight years (c. 2386-2328 BC.), adopted a new and unprecedented style in order to signify his dominion over the whole of Babylonia: besides King of Ur and King of the Four Quarters, he called himself King of Sumer and Akkad, which no king before him had done, and arrogated to himself the divine title. He also erected or restored temples,—at Ur, Erech, Lagash, and Kutha,—and even at Susa, the capital of Elam, which seems to have been completely subdued by his arms. Throughout his long reign he was constantly campaigning in Elam and along the Zagros, and it seems to have been his endeavour to outdo the Semite Naram-Sin.

The dynasty of Ur represents a very definite Sumerian reaction against the Semites. Dungi specially favours the ancient Sumerian city of Eridu, and reduces Babylon, sacking E-sagila, the holy shrine of Marduk, and carrying off the temple-treasures. So strong was the force of reaction against the empire of Sargon. Orthodox Babylonian scribes in later times could not forgive him for the insult offered to the shrine of Bel-Marduk, even though it were offered in the name of Enlil of Nippur, most revered deity of Babylonia. So the annalist who tells us of these events says: “Dungi, the son of Ur-Engur, cared greatly for the city of Eridu, which was on the shore of the sea. But he sought after evil, and the treasure of E-sagila and of Babylon he brought out as spoil. And Bel was [wroth?] and [smote?] his body and so made an end of him”. Certainly his dynasty did not last. As it had from Lagash, so after three more reigns, lasting forty-three years, the sceptre departed from Ur. The cause of the collapse was a disaster: Ibi-Sin, the third successor of Dungi, was carried off a captive to Elam. The Elamite conqueror who took Ur and carried away the High-King of Babylonia captive was probably Kudur-nankhundi, who, we are told in an inscription of Ashurbanipal of Assyria, had sacked Erech and taken away its goddess Nana to Susa, 1635 years before 650 BC, when Ashurbanipal took Susa and brought back the image of the goddess in triumph. This would place the end of the dynasty of Ur in 2285 BC, or thereabouts, as the Assyrian date is probably not literally correct.

The collapse of Dungi’s dynasty was followed by the accession to power of an undistinguished series of kings who form the dynasty of Isin, that city being the town of its founder, Ishbi-Ura. We know from a later chronicle the years of the reigns of these kings. With the fifth king, LIBIT-ISHTAR, the family of Ishbi-Ura ended (about 2180 BC), probably amid civil war and foreign invasion. At this time, or a little later, the family of Syrian conquerors which founded the dynasty of Hammurabi first established their authority at Babylon, and at the same time comparatively ephemeral dynasties were also set up at Erech and Larsa. The dynasty of Larsam later became Elamite. An Elamite lord named Kudur-mabug established himself as King of Ur (e. 1950 BC), and was succeeded by his sons, Arad-Sin and Rim-Sin, who made themselves kings of Larsam as well. Rim-Sin was a notable figure in the history of Babylonia, as the contemporary and rival of the great Hammurabi. He ended his days in the reign of the successor of Hammurabi, when the final unification of Sumer and Akkad under the leadership of Babylon was accomplished.

 

THE STELE OF NARAM-SIN

 

3. The First Dynasty of Babylon

 

The princes who accomplished this work were foreign Semites, South-Syrian Arabs or Palestinians from Amurru, “the West”, which had now for a thousand years been influenced by Babylonian civilization. These “Amorites” were then no strangers to the culture of the land which they were invading. Whether their first appearance in Babylonia is to be dated to the end of Libit-Ishtar’s reign (about 2200 BC.) or not is, as we have seen, uncertain, but we can be sure that the troubles of a century later were caused by their irruption with their tribesmen in force. The city of Babylon lay much exposed to attack from the Western Desert, and offered, probably, an easy prey. Hitherto, Babylon had been an insignificant factor in the history of Akkad, and its god, Marduk, had little renown or wealth. The energy of its new conquerors made it the chief city of Babylonia, and transfigured the humble Marduk into a king of gods, identifying him with Enlil or Bel of Nippur, the old chief deity of the land, much as in contemporary Egypt the new-fangled Amen of Thebes was identified with the ancient Ra.

Whether Sumu-abu (c. 2050 BC), the first king of the new Babylonian dynasty, was the actual conqueror or his son we do not know.

His successors in order until Hammurabi ascended the throne were SUMULA-ILU, ZABUMZ, IMMERUM (a short-lived usurper), APIL-SIN, and SIN-MUBALLIT, the latter being the father of Hammurabi. None of these kings seem ever to have acknowledged the overlordship of the kings of Isin or Larsa, and they seem to have themselves gradually increased their authority in an ever widening circle around Babylon. Sippar, Kutha, and Nippur were added to the dominion of Babylon by these kings, and also after the death of its last king, DAMIK-ILISHU, Isin, taken by Sin-Muballit in his seventeenth year (c. 1947 BC) from the King of Larsa, who had occupied it. When Hammurabi came to the throne, he found himself ruling over a prosperous state extending from Sippar in the north to Nippur in the south, i.e. the whole extent of the ancient Akkad. Southwards, Sumer was still in the state of confusion caused by the devastating inroads of the Elamite conquerors, Erech and Ur had both been destroyed, and the rightful king of Larsa, Siniddinam, was still contending for his throne with the Elamite usurper Rim-Sin. It seems that Hammurabi soon after his accession attacked Rim-Sin; in his fourth year (about 1940 BC) he seems to have carried his arms to the border of Elam, and in his seventh he took Erech and Isin from Rim-Sin. But after this year his annals are silent as to any successes against the Elamites, until his thirtieth year is reached. During this period he extended his rule over the greater part of Mesopotamia, and the ex-king of Larsa, Siniddinam, became not only his feudatory, but also took command of the Babylonian troops in the war against Rim-Sin. Further, he reduced to a state of willing obedience the country of Shitullum, to the north of Akkad, and also the still more northerly district of Ashur, on the Tigris, whose capital Ashur (Assur; the modern Kalaat Sherkat, more than two hundred miles north-west of Babylon), became in later times the seat of the monarchs who succeeded to the inheritance of Hammurabi and created the empire of Assyria. Ilu-shuma of Ashir (as the later Ashur or Assyria was then called) attacked Sumu-abu, the founder of the new Babylonian dynasty, and in Hammurabi’s time the King of Ashir or Ashur (Shamsi-Adad I, the sixth successor of Ilu-shuma) was tributary to the great King of Babylon. We cannot go much farther back than Ilu-shuma in the history of Assyria. Before him we hear (in an inscription of Esarhaddon’s) of an early king, Bel-ibni, son of Adasi, “the founder of the kingdom of Assyria”, and before him there are two dim figures of tradition, Ushpia and Kikia, of whom the former was a priest, and the founder of E-kharsag-kurkurra, the temple of Ashur in the city of Ashur, and so the holiest and most ancient sanctuary of Assyria. Ushpia is mentioned in an inscription of Shalmaneser I. His name is of the Northern and probably non-Semitic type which is associated with the mountain-tribes of Armenia, and it is not impossible that the inhabitants of Assyria were of this race, semitized.

Shamshi-Adad supported Hammurabi loyally in his wars against his great enemies, the Elamites of Larsa. While Hammurabi controlled an empire reaching to Armenia and Palestine, his capital was within easy attack from the forces of Arad-Sin and Rim-Sin, who ruled Southern Babylonia and the coast-lands north of the Persian Gulf. Rim-Sin was never able to jeopardize his enemy's position seriously, and eventually he was worn down to extinction by Hammurabi’s successor. For a time it would seem, judging from a most interesting Hebrew tradition, that the kings of Babylon and Larsa were subjected to the power of a great Elamite conqueror named Chedorlaomer, a name which is good Elamite, and would be, properly written, Kudur-Lagamar. The Hebrews’ account of the origin of their nation brings, in one legend, the ancestral hero Abraham into warlike contact with “Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, and Tidal king of the Goyyim”, who in alliance were engaged in subduing the revolted Arab tribes of Moab and the Hauran. The conjunction of these names makes it probable that Amraphel is Hammurabi, that Arioch of Ellasar represents the dynasty of Kudur-mabug at Larsa, and that Chedorlaomer represents the power of Elam, Tidal that of the Khatti or Hittites of Anatolia. The “Goyyim” of the Hebrews were the non-Semitic Gentile tribes, the nations which lived in the North, and Tidal is a Hittite name; a Hittite king five centuries later was called Dudhalia. The names are altered: Arioch cannot be identified, as it stands, with either Arad-Sin or Rim-Sin; and Tidal may owe its existence to a scribe of Dudhalia’s time who wrote down the best-known royal Hittite name of his day. But our modern knowledge shows that the tradition is based upon historical fact: Amraphel was a historical king of Shinar (Babylonia), in whose days a powerful king of Ellasar (Larsa) existed side by side with him, and in whose time Elamite conquerors with names of the type of Kudur-lagamar existed (such as Kudur-mabug and the earlier Kudur-nakhkhunte), who from time to time imposed their will on Babylonia, while at this time also the Hittite “Goyyim” of Anatolia were beginning to bestir themselves, and were shortly to overrun Babylonia. The collocation of names is impossible at a later period, and we must regard the tradition as, originally, a piece of contemporary history, adapted later to the Abrahamic legend, and possibly first written down by a Hebrew scribe some five or six centuries after the time of Hammurabi. In the account we see the Elamite Chedorlaomer taking the leading position among the kings: and it may be that a conqueror named Kudur-lagamar did at this time issue from Elam, impose his will upon the rival kings of Babylonia, and so enter into short-lived relations with even the outlying tribes of Hittites.

The tables were turned since the days of Dungi, or even Naram-Sin. In those days the native patesis of Susa, the first Elamite rulers of whom we have any knowledge, Basha-shushinak, Khutrun-tepti, Kal-Rukhurasir, and others, were the obedient vassals of the King of Sumer and Akkad, who even replaced them at will by Babylonian officials. Thus in Dungi’s reign the patesis and local governors are all either Babylonians or had adopted Babylonian names, both Semitic and Sumerian. Later on, we find native Elamite names again. These chiefs called themselves usually “patesi of Susa and shakkanakku (governor) of Elam”. Their inscriptions have been found by the French excavators of Susa, where Dungi built a temple of Shushinak, the chief Elamite deity. The lands of Anshan, Kimash, Umliash, and other Elamite districts seem to have been administered by them. Kudur-nankhundi, the conqueror of Ur, came from Anshan; Kudur-mabug from Emutbalim, a district nearer the sea. From the time of Kudur-nankhundi to the latter part of Hammurabi’s reign the Elamites were independent, and for a time even dominated Babylonia. As we have seen, Khammurabi warred with Larsa at the beginning of his reign; then there is a cessation of war and a silence which may mean a pax elamitica imposed upon both by Chedorlaomer; then comes war again. In his thirty-first year (about 1913 BC) the armies of Hammurabi, directed by the king from Babylon, and under the command of the veteran Siniddinam, who must by this time have been an old man, and a general named Inukhsamar, took Ur and Larsa, and invaded Emutbalim, the hereditary kingdom of Kudur-mabug and Rim-Sin. For two years the war was waged, and we have an interesting glimpse of the religious ideas of the time in connexion with it. Siniddinam had captured the chief city of Emutbalim and with them the images of the goddesses of the country: these he proposed to send as trophies to Babylon. In answer to his report, Hammurabi writes, ordering him to bring them in state. It seems, however, that sometime after this the royal troops experienced some severe check at the hands of the Elamites, and it was thought that this was due to the anger of the goddesses at being taken to Babylon, so, in a second letter, Hammurabi writes to Siniddinam to take them back to their own dwellings again.

Hammurabi did not penetrate farther into Elam itself, and was unable to effect the recapture of the goddesses of Erech who had been carried off to Susa by Kudur-nankhundi three centuries before: this restitution was not effected until 1635 years after their removal, by Ashurbanipal. As a more lasting trophy of his victories than the idols of Emutbalim, he retained Larsa, Ur, and Southern Sumer, the borderland of Ashnunak, and the adjoining district of Umliash. In peace he was even more conspicuous as an organizer of victory than in war. The testimony of those actual letters, rescripts, and despatches of his which can be seen any day in the galleries of the British Museum, show us that the later kings of Babylonia were by no means in error when they looked back to him as their exemplar of what a patriarchal ruler should be. In them, “we see the facts of history in the making”.

Of his laws, the discovery of which on a stele found at Susa has made the name of Hammurabi so familiar in these modern days, something will be said later. But it must be remembered that though no doubt there is in them an original element due to the king himself, yet in the main his code was but a reissue of ancient Sumerian laws, and he has little claim to be regarded as himself a great lawgiver. His own actual letters which we possess, are far more interesting evidence of the man’s personality. So far as we know, he was the first great organizer in history, and the kingdom of Babylonia, with its capital at Babylon, was the lasting result of his work. Babylon remained the capital of the Mesopotamian world henceforth throughout ancient history.

But he could not secure an undisputed empire to his successors. The Elamite danger had no sooner been removed than others even more formidable appeared. Babylonia was too rich and too vulnerable to go free from attack for long.

Hammurabi was succeeded, after a long reign of forty-three years (about BC 1944-1901) by his son, SAMSU-ILUNA, at the beginning of whose reign (second year) the indefatigable Rim-Sin again gave trouble. He had apparently taken Isin, which was recaptured by Samsu-iluna, who also subdued Kish, which had revolted. In Samsu-iluna’s tenth year Rim-Sin still lived (having reigned by that time certainly not less than fifty-seven years), but shortly afterwards he was finally defeated and slain. Samsu-iluna was then confronted with a new enemy. Iluma-ilu, a chief of the South, made himself master of the coast of the Persian Gulf, the “Land of the Sea”, and founded there (about 1875 BC) an independent dynasty which neither Samsu-iluna nor his successors were able to destroy. The “Dynasty of the Sea-Land” continued to rule on the sea-coast well on into the Kassite period. Elam, however, was recovered, and in the reign of AMMI-ZADUGA, the fourth successor of Hammurabi (c. B.C. 1798-1777), we find it once again tributary. Possibly Babylonia and Elam were drawn together by the necessity of common defence against the inroads of the Kashshu or Kassites, an Indo-European nation of the north­east, whose tribes were now pressing from Media through the Zagros towards the fertility and wealth of Babylonia. We hear of their attacks already in the reign of Samsu-iluna. They were, however, not strong enough to attack Babylon. Their work was done for them by another power, whose strokes were sudden, unexpected, and irresistible, the terrible “Goyyim” of Asia Minor. The reign of Samsu-ditana, the eleventh and last monarch of the Ist Dynasty of Babylon (c. BC 1777-1746), seems to have been brought to a bloody end by a conquering raid of the King of Khatti (his name is not preserved), in which Babylon was stormed and sacked by the fierce Anatolians (e. BC 1746). They retreated, probably, as soon as they came, leaving death and ruin behind them; and the Kassites seized their opportunity. Their leader, GANDASH, appropriated the city and vacant throne of Babylon (or Kar-Duniyash, as it was now called in the tongue of the conquerors), and founded the Kassite dynasty, which endured for six hundred years.

 

THE STELE OF HAMMURABI

 

4. The Kassites

 

The new lords of Babylonia did not for a long time interfere with the southern kingdom of the Sea-Land, which pursued its independent existence for nearly three centuries (c. 1875-1600 BC) under kings whose names are mostly Sumerian, a fact which seems to show that the Sumerian nationality, finally deposed from its position of equality with the Semites after the fall of the dynasty of Ur, was eking out the last remnants of its separate existence in the southernmost portions of the country. The kingdom of the Sea-Land was the last expression of the national consciousness of the ancient Sumerian race. When it fell, the Sumerians disappear, and their language becomes a dead speech, known only to priests and scribes, the Latin of Mesopotamia.

The end of the Sumerians came in the reign of EA-GAMIL, the tenth successor of Iluma-ilu, probably about 1580 BC. Ea-gamil attempted to invade Elam, but was defeated and driven back. A Kassite leader named Ulam-buriash, “son of Burnaburariash, the king”, then attacked him and overthrew his kingdom, reigning in the Sea-Land in his stead as a vassal of his father the King of Babylon. The final scene was reached a few years later, when the Kassite king of Babylon, Agum III (a nephew of Ulam-buriash), finally took Dur-Ea (Ea’s Burgh), the last fortified place of the Sea-Landers.

Of the Kassite kings we know very little. Gandash was succeeded by Agum I, who was followed by Kashtiliash I, Ushshi, Adumetash, Urshigurmash, and Agum II; the last waged war with the Hittite land of Khani, and triumphantly brought back to Babylon statues of the city-gods Marduk and Sarpanitum, which had no doubt been carried off by the Hittites in their great raid. Then there is a gap, followed by Burnaburariash, Kashtiliash II, and Agum III. Then comes a darkness of a century and a half till the veil is again lifted, after the Egyptian conquest of Syria, in the reign of Kara-indash, the contemporary of Thothmes iv. The continuous history of Babylonia begins again with him. The Kassite period thus appears as a very uneventful one. The kings, of whom our list is very imperfect, are mere names, and nothing in particular seems to have happened during their reigns. This impression may be due simply to our unusual lack of information with regard to this period. But it may well be that this lack of information reflects a real lack of incident. The conquest, too, by the Kassite barbarians may very well have caused a temporary retrogression in culture, when the arts of the scribe and historiographer were not so much in demand, in royal circles at any rate, as before. And it is the fact that we find very few records of temple-building or restoration at this period. The Kassite kings worshipped their own deities, and probably did not hasten to put themselves under the protection of the gods of Babylon. Obviously they cared very little for the religion and probably less for the literature and arts of their highly civilized subjects.

The racial difference between the new conquerors and their subjects was great. There is little doubt that the Kassites were Indo-Europeans, and spoke an Aryan tongue. Their chief god was Suryash, the sun, the Indian Surya and Greek Hylios; their word for god was bugash, the Slav bogu and Phrygian Bagaios. The termination -ash which regularly appears at the end of their names is a nominative, corresponding to the Greek -os. Such a name as Indabugash is clearly Aryan. They were evidently the advance-guard of the Indo-European southern movement which colonized Iran and pushed westward to the borders of Asia Minor. In the north the kingdom of Mitanni was about this time established between the Euphrates and Tigris by Aryans who must have been of the same stock as the Kassites who conquered Babylonia. The names of the kings of Mitanni which are known to us in later times are Aryan, and among the gods of Mitanni we find the Indian Varuna, Indra, and the Nasatya-twins (Açvins). It is possible that the mass of the population in Mitanni was of partly Semitic, partly Hittite blood, and that the Aryans there were merely a ruling caste: the language of Mitanni was of the Caucasic or Alarodian type. Their further westward progress was barred by the Hittites, who were firmly entrenched in the land of Khani (Coele-Syria) and had already swarmed across the Taurus into Northern Syria, founding outpost principalities on the Euphrates, of which Carchemish may already have existed as the most important. At first the Mitannians must have been checked at the Euphrates, but later on they seem to have crossed the river and have made themselves masters of both Semites and Hittites in Northern Syria, which probably remained tributary to them till the Egyptian conquest in the sixteenth century. The young state of Assyria, of which we know nothing at this period, is found tributary to Mitanni later on, and we cannot doubt that its allegiance was very soon forcibly transferred from the Kassite kings of Babylonia to the rulers of Mitanni.

Mesopotamian civilization was unaffected by the Mitannians and Kassites, who seem to have been entirely uncultured. They learnt civilization from the conquered. The process seems to have taken about two centuries: by the time of Kurigalzu and Burnaburiash the Kassite kings have adopted the Babylonian religion, at any rate for official purposes, and differ from their subjects only in the retention of their Kassite names, which they affected to the last, six hundred years after the time of Gandash. It would seem that the racial distinction between the Kassite settlers and the Babylonians was long preserved, in much the same way as in China the Manchu noble families who came with the late Manchu dynasty still keep separate from the Chinese. The tenacity of power by one dynasty for so many centuries points to a health and vigour in the ruling family and race which was unwonted in highly civilized Babylonia.

 

5. Babylonian Civilization

 

With the Kassite conquest we have then reached a pause in the current of Babylonian history which well marks the end of its first period. Looking back, the history of the period which has been sketched above is practically the history of the gradual semitizing of Babylonia, which was finally completed when Hammurabi unified the whole of the country into one-Semitic state, which remained one and remained Semitic even when ruled by a foreign dynasty.

The Babylonian culture of Hammurabi’s day was not very different from that of old-Sumerian times. Only the writing had developed, the bow had been introduced by the Semites and the horse from Media: and a unified state with its centre at Babylon had been created. We cannot suppose that the methods of irrigation in use under the first king of united Babylonia were more highly developed or more time- and labour-saving than those in vogue under the earlier patesis of Lagash. The usual conception of the Babylonian is an energetic tradesman, and a money-lender, with a turn for astronomy: this is, however, the man of a later age. The Babylonian of the earlier time was a merchant also, and a keen litigant as well, as hundreds of early tablets testify, and the astronomical tendencies of his later descendant were founded on the observations of remote forefathers, but first and foremost he was an agriculturist. We know how the corn-bearing capacity of Babylonia astounded Herodotus, and we can well imagine that his statements as to the phenomenal yield of the land, the breadth to which the blades of wheat and barley would grow, and the height of the millet and sesamum there would dispose many of his hearers to unbelief. Yet there is nothing improbable in what he says. Important as was Babylonian agriculture in his day, in the earlier period it was far more important, and in the letters and inscriptions of that the care of the land appears as even more important than the maintenance of the temples of the gods. Marduk himself was said to have inaugurated the irrigation-system of Babylonia, and from the earliest period every king of whom we possess more than fragmentary mention prides himself upon having either constructed or renewed canals to bring water from the two rivers to the broad lands lying between them.

A very good reason for a watchful eye being kept by the Government upon the proper repair of the canals was the fact .that upon properly regulated irrigation depended a good harvest, and upon a good harvest depended a good inflow of taxes into the treasuries of the king and the gods. Taxes were generally paid in kind, and chiefly in corn, though dates, oil, and wine, etc., also contributed to swell the total. Prices also might be reckoned in grain, dates, or oil, and though metal weights, the talent, the maneh, and the shekel, were all in use, no idea of a true currency had as yet arisen in Babylonia any more than in Egypt: in a purchase of land, for example, the purchase price was first settled in shekel-weights of silver, and the various items exchanged against the land (corn, slaves, weapons, or what not), were often separately valued on the same basis till the purchase price was made up. This was the transition stage between pure barter and a regular currency. Much of the land was owned by the great temples, and the royal domains were no doubt much mixed up with those of the gods: in some places, as in Egypt, the two would be identical, since the king, in his capacity of patesi, would often be a high-priest; but there was apparently, also, besides the class of free labourers, a large number of free-holding farmers. The free labourers were in all probability in some ways the worst off of the population, for their pay rarely amounted to more than their daily food, and they were not entitled to the protection which the slave received from his master. Even the slave was protected from his master by the law. The Babylonians had a most modern idea of “law and order”, and to this was no doubt due their commercial stability, which survived all wars and conquests unimpaired. The judges were named by the king, and were his deputies, and they seem to have gone on circuit: their decisions were irrevocable.

The laws which they administered were of Sumerian origin. Under Hammurabi the laws of his day, no doubt with im­provements initiated in the highest quarter, were specially codified, as they doubtless had been under previous kings of reforming ideas, like Urukagina. They were inscribed upon a magnificent stela of diorite, found by the French at Susa, whither it had been carried off like the stela of Naram-Sin, and now in the Louvre. Above the writing we see Hammurabi, in relief, receiving the code from the sun-god Shamash.

From this monument we have gained a complete knowledge of ancient Babylonian law, and have seen how very equitable I most of its enactments were. Those relating to agriculture, to the recovery of debt, and to the conditions of divorce are especially interesting. In the latter improvement had been S made since old-Sumerian times, when the wife had no rights of divorce whatever, these being reserved only to the man. In Hammurabi’s time, however, the law had been modified in favour of the woman, for if she was divorced her husband had to make proper provision for her maintenance and that of her children, of whom she had the custody, besides returning the marriage-portion. He could only evade these provisions by proving that his wife had been unfaithful or a careless house-holder; in the latter case he might enslave her. In the ancient Sumerian laws quoted above it will be noticed that the man is more important than the woman, the father than the mother, the husband than the wife. This is in striking contrast to Egypt, where the “Lady of the House” was usually a more important personage than the mere “Male”, as the husband was called, and where men often preferably traced their descent in the female line. In Egypt there were always strong traces of Mutterrecht, but none in Babylonia. Still, women were, generally speaking, quite as independent in Babylonia as in Egypt: they could own property, whether in houses or slaves, and could personally plead in the courts. Also, we find there a remarkable class of honoured women, votaresses who in some ways resembled the Roman Vestals, and possessed unusual rights and privileges. These are not to be confused with the religious prostitutes, mentioned by Herodotus, who were certainly a prominent feature of Babylonian religion. They were women who took vows of celibacy, though usually dwelling together in special convents, could nevertheless live in the world, and were often nominally married. If married (and to possess a votaress-wife was probably regarded as a distinction), a concubine was provided to bear children to the husband, but had no legal wifely rights, which belonged to the votaress.

The accessibility of the law made lawsuits easy, and the Babylonians were highly litigious in consequence; most of these lawsuits were in connexion with the sale or lease of land, houses, etc. Such sales and leases, as well as wills, had always to be drawn up in legal form to be valid, as was also the case in Egypt. For a document to be valid, it had to be attested by witnesses, and was usually impressed with the seals of the parties to it: when one of the parties had no seal he might impress the mark of his nail upon the soft clay of the tablet on which the deed was written. The absolute necessity of the seal as part of the array of a Babylonian is duly noted by Herodotus, whose description of the Babylonian dress of his day is entirely applicable to the early period also, for, though fashions in tiaras altered from time to time, the long robes never changed. Many of the cylinder-seals, used to roll over the clay tablets as a blotting-roller is used nowadays, may be seen in our museums. They are made of black haematite or deep red jasper or white chalcedony, sometimes of translucent crystal: on them was sometimes the name of the owner, always some mythological scene, such as Shamash the sun-god rising above the mountain of the world, Eabani and Gilgamesh contending with the bull of Ishtar, etc., and they are usually triumphs of the glyptic art, far superior to any work of the kind from Egypt.

Attempts have been made to distinguish between the religion of the Sumerians and that of the Semitic Babylonians, but without very great success. It is as difficult to say with certainty that this element in Babylonian religion is of Sumerian origin and that of Semitic as to say that this element in Hellenic religion is pre-Aryan or Pelasgic and that Aryan: one cannot disentangle the Sumerian strands from the rest. Not even can it be said with certainty that a particular deity is non-Semitic, because purely Semitic deities seem very often for the sake of uniformity to have been given Sumerian names by the Babylonian archaeologists. We do not know whether the oldest deities of Shumer, such as Ea (Sum. En-ki), Sin or Nannar (Sum. En-zu; the Moon), Ningirsu of Lagash and others, were really pre-Sumerian or not. En-lil (“Great Spirit”) of Nippur, who is probably purely Sumerian, was translated into Semitic as Bel (Baal, “Lord”); Utu the Sumerian sun-god was identified with a Semitic sun-god, Shamash. Marduk, the god of Babylon, was no doubt originally Sumerian: his name sounds like a Semitic garbling of a Sumerian name. Ramman or Adad, the thunder-god, seems Semitic; he has a purely Semitic name. When we find by the side of a god a goddess as his consort who is but a shadowy female edition of himself and often bears a feminine form of his name, as Belit by the side of Bel, we know that the goddess is of Semitic origin, and very often the god also, but not necessarily, for in later days the goddess Damkina was invented to stand by the side of the Sumerian Ea, who like others of the Sumerian gods, had no consort. So also Sarpanitum was invented for Marduk, Laz for Nergal, and so on. The deities, male or female, who stand alone, appear to be Sumerian, but here again, we find that the independent goddess Ishtar, who on this theory should be of Sumerian origin, bears an apparently Semitic name. It is by no means certain that she is originally the same as the Sumerian goddess Nina, whom she nearly resembles, and a form of her, Anunitum, the goddess of the morning-star, is purely Semitic, though derived from the Sumerian male deity Ana (Sem. Anu), the sky-god. Ishtar seems of Syrian or Canaanite origin, and there is a possibility, if not a probability, that she, like the Syrian war-goddess whom she so closely resembles, was at an early period modified by a confusion with the Anatolian mother-goddess: like her, she was served by eunuch-priests. Tammuz, her favourite (who does not bear the same relation to her as a Semitic double-god would), would then be, in spite of his occurrence in Sumerian religious texts, the Anatolian Attis, and came to Mesopotamia from beyond the Taurus. In Babylonia Ishtar-Nina was a star-goddess, in Syria Ashtoreth-Tanit was a moon-goddess also, and in Anatolia the Great Mother and Attis, in Syria Astarte and Tammuz, seem to be the female Moon attended by the less important male Sun. The Semitic name of the Sun, Skamask, seems to mean the “servant” or “follower” of Mistress Moon, whom the sun was regarded as attending in her wanderings. No doubt the human face of the moon, its changes, and the obvious means of counting time which could be derived from these changes, marked it out from the beginning as the superior of the brighter, but less changing, sun.

Our knowledge of Babylonian mythical and legendary literature is extensive: the stories of Gilgamesh and of the Deluge have already been mentioned: of other such tales one of the most remarkable is the legend of Etana and the Eagle. On one occasion Etana’s friend the Eagle carried him up to heaven mounted on his back, and he saw the thrones of the gods, but when they flew still higher to explore the dwelling of Ishtar, some accident happened, and they fell headlong to earth and were dashed to pieces. The parallel with the Greek story of Ikaros is obvious. Another hero, Adapa, son of Ea, was fishing from a boat in the Persian Gulf, when the South Wind suddenly blew and upset his boat. Adapa, furious at this attack, caught the South Wind by her wings, and broke them. Other legends refer to the great Tablets of Destiny, upon which the fate of gods and men were inscribed, and which constituted the title-deeds of the gods to rule the earth. These had originally been in the possession of the demon of chaos, Tiamat, but in the great conflict with her and her giant brood, Enlil or Marduk had won them from Kingu, the leader of her hosts. Afterwards they were stolen from Marduk by a demon named Zu, who aspired to rule the universe. The confusion caused among the gods by this audacious theft was great, a council was held, and Adad and two other gods were asked to rescue them, but they refused. Eventually, however, they were recovered by Shamash, the sun-god, who caught Zu in his net.

There is undoubtedly much in Babylonian religion and myth that can be paralleled in the religious literature of the Hebrews, though whether this resemblance is due to the ancient spread of Babylonian culture into Canaan and its continuous influence from the earliest days, to an actual migration of an Abrahamic clan into Canaan from Ur of the Chaldees by way of Harran, or simply to the influence of the Babylonian environment during the Captivity, cannot yet be determined with certainty. Perhaps all three causes combined to bring about the resemblance. But there are other features of Babylonian legend which can only be paralleled in the mythology of the Greeks, and so close are these parallels sometimes that we can hardly doubt that many Greek myths, especially those of a cosmogonic character, came originally to Greece from Babylonia, probably through the medium of Asia Minor.