CHAPTER II

BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA

THE LAND. THE PRESERVATION OF ANTIQUITIES. THE DISCOVERY OF ANTIQUITIES: By Benjamin of Tudela. By Rich. By Botta and Place. By Layard. By Loftus and Rawlinson. By Oppert and Rassam. By George Smith. By Sarzec. By Peters, Ward, and Haynes. By Koldeway. By Andrae. By de Morgan. By Harper and Banks. By Genouillac. THE DECIPHERMENT OF THE INSCRIPTIONS: By Niebuhr. By Grotefend, De Sacy, and Rawlinson. Babylonian column. Babylonian-Semitic. CHRONOLOGY. OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY: The prehistoric period. Sumerians. The Pre-Babylonian period. “Stele of the Vultures.” The early Babylonian period. Kassites. Pashe dynasty. The early Assyrian period. The second Assyrian period. The Neo-Babylonian period. The Persian period. The Greek and Parthian periods. DISCOVERIES WHICH ILLUMINE THE BIBLE.

=1. The Land.=--The Mesopotamian Valley, as the great region watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers is called, in many respects resembles Egypt, although in other respects it differs strikingly from Egypt. The country is like Egypt in that it is formed by rivers; it differs from Egypt in that it has two rivers instead of one. In late geologic time the Persian Gulf extended far up toward the Mediterranean. All of what was Babylonia has been formed by detritus (silt) brought down by the Tigris and the Euphrates. The process of forming land is still going on. At the head of the Persian Gulf about seventy feet a year is still formed in this way, or a mile in about seventy-five years.

Both the Tigris and the Euphrates rise in the mountainous regions of Armenia, on opposite sides of the same range of mountains. The melting of the snows on these mountains gives both rivers, like the Nile, a period of overflow. As the source of the Tigris is on the south side of the mountains, it begins to rise first. Its rise begins about the first of March, its overflow is at its height in May, and the water recedes in June or July. The Euphrates begins to rise about the middle of March, continues to rise until June, and does not recede to its ordinary level until September. The soil thus formed is of rich materials, and the retreating flood leaves it each year well watered and softened for agriculture. Here, as in Egypt, one of the earliest civilizations of the world developed. It was quite independent of that in Egypt, and consequently differed from the Egyptian in many respects. Unlike Egypt, Babylonia had a rainy season; nevertheless she was mainly dependent upon the overflow of the rivers for her irrigation and her fertility. As she possessed two rivers, her breadth was greater than that of Egypt, but she lacked the contiguity of protecting deserts, such as Egypt possessed. All through her history her fertile plains attracted the mountain dwellers of the East and the peoples of the West. Subject to frequent invasion by these, Babylonia had no long peaceful development such as Egypt enjoyed before the Hyksos invasion. From before the beginning of written history race mingled with race in this great valley, invasions were frequent, and the construction of permanent empires difficult.

[Illustration: MAP OF BIBLE LANDS]

The breadth of the Mesopotamian Valley affected also the building materials and the character of the art. Stone was much more difficult to obtain than in Egypt. Clay only was abundant. All buildings were consequently of brick. These structures were far less enduring than those in Egypt; their upper parts have disintegrated and buried the lower portions. Babylonian ruins are accordingly all under ground. The abundant clay was also used by the Babylonians as writing material. When baked, it proved far more enduring than the Egyptian papyrus. Thus, notwithstanding the general similarities which the Mesopotamian Valley presents to Egypt, its differences profoundly affected Babylonian history and Babylonian art.

=2. The Preservation of Antiquities.=--Babylonian cities were usually built on terraces of brick. The walls of the cities and their buildings were constructed of the same material. Refuse from the houses in these towns was always thrown out into the streets, so that, as the centuries passed, the streets were gradually elevated. The walls of the brick houses gradually became unstable in the lapse of time, and as the houses were repaired they were brought up to the level of the street. Consequently even in peaceful times the mounds on which the cities were built gradually grew higher. Most of these cities were at various times destroyed in warfare. Sometimes all the houses would be partially demolished and the site would be for a time practically uninhabited. When at length the place was repeopled, the top of the mound would be smoothed off and taken as the base of a new city. In this way through the many centuries of Babylonian history the sites of her cities have become great mounds. When these cities finally fell into ruin, the clay of the upper part of the walls gradually disintegrated in the weather and formed a coating of earth over the whole, which preserved the foundations of the walls both of cities and houses, as well as the inscribed clay, stone tablets, and the works of art buried underneath.

Connected with each Babylonian and Assyrian temple was a kind of staged tower, shaped in a general way like the stepped pyramid of Zoser at Sakkarah in Egypt. The Babylonians called these towers _Ziggurats_. As the bricks of these towers decayed, they formed in connection with the city mound a kind of hillock or peak, which varied in accordance with the height of the tower. The ruin of the _Ziggurat_ at Birs Nimrûd, the ancient Borsippa, is one of the most imposing to be seen in ancient Babylonia; it was long thought to be the original of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:9). It thus came about that no ancient temple of Babylonia, like some of those in Egypt, has remained above ground. Explorers have had to dig to discover antiquities; (see Fig. 22).

=3. The Discovery of Antiquities:= _By Benjamin of Tudela_.--The first man from western Europe who traveled through Babylonia and Assyria and noted their ruins was a Jew, Benjamin of Tudela, in the kingdom of Navarre. Leaving home about 1160 A. D., he traveled through Palestine, crossed the desert by way of Tadmor, visited Mosul opposite ancient Nineveh, and went southward to the site of Babylon. He also saw the ruin of Birs Nimrûd, and believed it to be the Tower of Babel. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries many other travelers visited the Mesopotamian Valley and described what they saw. Some of these, toward the close of the eighteenth century, described curious inscriptions which they had seen there on bricks. This information led the British East India Company in 1797 to instruct its resident at Bussorah, in southern Babylonia, to try to secure some of these inscriptions. This he did, and early in 1801 the first case of inscribed bricks arrived at the East India House in London, where they are still preserved.

_By Rich._--Early in the nineteenth century Claude James Rich became resident of the East India Company at Bagdad. In his travels through the region he visited the mounds of Hillah (Babylon), Kouyunjik (Nineveh), and others, where he made some slight excavations, and found many inscriptions. The smaller ones he added to his collection, but many of them were of too monumental a character to be removed. Through these efforts a wide-spread interest was aroused.

_By Botta and Place._--In 1842 the French government created a vice-consulate at Mosul, opposite the site of ancient Nineveh, and appointed to the position Paul Emil Botta, who had served as French consul at Alexandria in Egypt. Botta’s mission was made in part archæological. In December, 1842, Botta began digging in the mound of Kouyunjik, the site of ancient Nineveh. Here he worked for three months. As he found only a few inscribed bricks and the fragments of some bas-reliefs, he became discouraged, and changed the field of his operations to a mound called Khorsabad, situated about fourteen miles to the northeast of Kouyunjik. Here he discovered a palace filled with interesting inscribed bas-reliefs made of alabaster, as well as a city about a mile in circumference. Under the corners of the palace and under the city gates were many inscribed cylinders of clay. This proved to be the palace and city built by Sargon, King of Assyria (722-705 B. C.), as his new capital. He named it Dur-Sharrukin, or Sargonsburgh. His name had so entirely disappeared from ancient literature that only one reference to him has survived, that in Isaiah 20:1, but here was his palace arising from the dust together with abundant annals of his reign. (See Part II, p. 369, ff.)

Botta and his successor, Victor Place, excavated intermittently at Khorsabad for ten years, uncovering the palace and making a plan of it, excavating the city walls and gates, studying the drainage of the ancient town, and fully describing the whole. Although a part of the antiquities found were lost in the Tigris by the wreck of a raft on which they were being floated down the river, a large collection reached France, where they are preserved in the Louvre.

_By Layard._--The success of Botta fired the enthusiasm of Austen Henry Layard, a young Englishman of Huguenot descent, who began to excavate in 1845 at Nimrûd, a mound further down the Tigris than Mosul, and the site of the Biblical Calah (Gen. 10:11). His money was at first furnished by a few friends, but as he soon discovered a royal palace there similar to the one Botta had unearthed at Khorsabad, the trustees of the British Museum commissioned him to excavate for them. He thus continued the work intermittently until 1849. During this time he spent most of his energy upon the mound of Kouyunjik, where he discovered another royal palace. This palace proved to be the work of Sennacherib, the son of Sargon (named in 2 Kings 18:13; Isa. 36), who built the one at Khorsabad, while the palace at Calah was, in its final form, the work of Esarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib. (See 2 Kings 19:37.) The palace at Nineveh had in turn been repaired by Esarhaddon’s son, Assurbanipal.

_By Loftus and Rawlinson._--As these excavations progressed, others were stimulated to make minor explorations. Thus in 1850 William Kennett Loftus carried on small excavations at the mound of Warka, the site of the Biblical Erech (Gen. 10:10), in southern Babylonia, from which he recovered important antiquities. From 1851-1855 the oversight of English excavations was entrusted to Sir Henry C. Rawlinson, the British consul-general at Bagdad. Under his direction J. E. Taylor, British vice-consul at Bassorah, made an excavation at the mound of Mugheir, the site of Ur of the Chaldees, where he unearthed important inscriptions. At the same time Loftus was traveling about Babylonia collecting antiquities.

_By Oppert and Rassam._--In 1852 a French expedition under the direction of Jules Oppert reached Babylonia. Oppert made important excavations at Hillah, the site of the city of Babylon, and at Birs Nimrûd, the ancient Borsippa. In 1852 Hormuzd Rassam, who had been one of Layard’s helpers, continued under Rawlinson’s direction the excavation at Nineveh. This work continued until 1854; Rassam had the good fortune to find, in a part of the mound previously untouched, still another palace. This was the palace of Assurbanipal, the last of Assyria’s great kings, who ruled from 668 to 626 B. C., and who collected here a great library. This library Rassam discovered, and as it contained every variety of Babylonian and Assyrian literature, including dictionaries and grammatical exercises, it was one of the most important archæological discoveries ever made. During the last part of the time Rassam was succeeded by Loftus. Finally, in the autumn of 1854, Rawlinson himself undertook an excavation at Birs Nimrûd, and unearthed some important inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar II, King of Babylon, 604-562 B. C. (See 2 Kings 24, 25.)

After this the interest in excavation waned for a time, while scholars were busy reading the tablets already found.

_By George Smith._--In December, 1872, George Smith, an employee of the British Museum, announced that among the tablets from Nineveh he had found an account of the flood which closely resembled that in the Bible. This aroused so much interest that the proprietors of the London _Daily Telegraph_ contributed money to send George Smith to Assyria to explore further the mounds there. George Smith thus led two expeditions of exploration, one in 1873 and the other in 1874. He extended the trenches of his predecessors at Nineveh and discovered many more important inscriptions. In 1876 he was on his way to Mesopotamia for the third time, when he died of fever at Aleppo. The British Museum immediately secured the services of Rassam again, who during that year and 1877 extended the work at Kouyunjik (Nineveh) and also found a palace of Shalmaneser III, King of Assyria, 860-824 B. C., at a mound called Balawat, situated to the east of Kouyunjik.

_By Sarzec._--Meantime, the interest of France was again aroused, and in 1877 her consul at Bassorah, Ernest de Sarzec, began the excavation of Telloh, a mound in southern Babylonia, which turned out to be the site of Shirpurla or Lagash, one of the oldest and most important of the ancient cities of Babylonia. Work was carried on at intervals here by Sarzec until his death in 1901, and has since been continued by Gaston Cros. The results have not received the popular acclaim accorded to the discoveries of Botta and Layard, but scientifically they are far more important. Some of the oldest examples of Babylonian art have been discovered, as well as many thousands of tablets. One room alone contained an archive of business documents estimated at thirty thousand. Much of our knowledge of the history of early Babylonia is derived from material found at Telloh.

_By Peters, Ward, and Haynes._--In 1884 America began to take an interest in Babylonian exploration. This was due largely to the initiative of Dr. John P. Peters, then Professor of Hebrew in the University of Pennsylvania, now Rector of St. Michael’s Church, New York. Through his efforts Miss Catherine L. Wolfe, of New York, contributed the money to defray the expenses of an expedition to Babylonia for a preliminary survey. This expedition was led by Dr. William Hayes Ward, Editor of the New York _Independent_. It spent the winter of 1884-1885 in Mesopotamia, made many observations of the various mounds, and collected some archæological material. Dr. Peters continued his efforts, and as a result a fund was raised in Philadelphia to defray the expenses of an excavation in the interest of the University of Pennsylvania. This expedition set out in 1888 under the direction of Dr. Peters. The site chosen for the exploration was Nuffar, about sixty miles to the southeast of Babylon. The work was continued for two seasons under the direct control of Dr. Peters. After an interruption of three years the work was resumed under the general direction of Dr. Peters, with Dr. John H. Haynes as Field Director. Dr. Haynes, in the most self-sacrificing and heroic manner, continued the work both summer and winter until February, 1896, laying bare many of the features of the ancient city of Nippur, which had occupied the site, and discovering many inscribed tablets. While this work was in progress Prof. Herman V. Hilprecht became nominal head of the expedition on account of the removal of Dr. Peters to New York. A fourth expedition under the guidance of Dr. Haynes began work at Nuffar (Nippur) in February, 1899, and worked until March, 1900. During this work Dr. Haynes discovered a large archive of tablets, the exact number of which is variously estimated. The find was similar to that made by Sarzec at Telloh; (see Figs. 16 and 17).

Nuffar, the ancient Nippur, was one of the oldest centers of Babylonian civilization, and the work of the Americans there is, for our knowledge of the history of ancient Babylonia, next in importance to that done by the French at Telloh. A large number of the tablets discovered at Nippur are now in the University Museum in Philadelphia. Meantime, the Turkish government had undertaken on its own account an excavation at Abu Haba, the site of the ancient Sippar in northern Babylonia. The direction of the work was committed to the oversight of the French Assyriologist Père Scheil, and the work was carried on in the early part of the year 1894. Much interesting material was brought to light.

_By Koldewey._--Also during this decade a new Society, the _Orient-Gesellschaft_, had been formed in Berlin for the purpose of excavation. This Society began in 1899 the excavation of the great mound which covered the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon. The work was committed to the direction of Dr. Robert Koldewey, who has carried it steadily forward until the present time. Koldewey has laid bare at Babylon a number of the great works of King Nebuchadrezzar--the magnificent walls with which he surrounded Babylon, and the palace and temples with which he adorned it. As the work at Babylon has progressed, Koldewey has made a number of minor excavations in smaller mounds of Babylonia. During the season of 1912-1913 Dr. Julius Jordan undertook, under Dr. Koldewey’s general direction, an excavation at Warka, the Biblical Erech, where Loftus had dug sixty years before. A part of the great temple of Ishtar has been uncovered by Dr. Jordan, together with a portion of the city wall and many houses. Many tablets have also been found, some of them having been written as late as the Seleucid and Parthian periods, 312-50 B. C.; (see Fig. 18).

_By Andrae._--While the excavation at Babylon has been in progress, the _Orient-Gesellschaft_ has also conducted another at Kalah-Sherghat, on the Tigris, in ancient Assyria. This is the site of the city of Ashur, from which the country of Assyria took its name. (Cf. Gen. 10:10, 11.) The work has been under the direction of Dr. Andrae and has been in progress from 1902 to the present time. Temples and palaces have been uncovered, and inscriptions from every period of Assyrian history have been found. The latest reports of the work at Ashur tell of the discovery of objects which connect the founding of the city with immigrants from Lagash in southern Babylonia.

_By de Morgan._--In 1900 a French expedition began the excavation of Susa, in ancient Elam, the Shushan of the Bible. (See Neh. 1:1; Esther 1:2, etc., and Dan. 8:2.) This work was under the direction of J. de Morgan. While Susa is not in Babylonia, the excavations here added greatly to our knowledge of Babylonian history and life, for during the first two seasons of the excavation, two inscribed stone pillars were discovered, which the ancient Elamites had at some time taken as trophies of war from the Babylonians. One of these was an inscription of Manishtusu, King of Kish, who ruled about 2700 B. C., and the other the pillar which contained the laws of Hammurapi, the most important single document relating to Babylonian life that is known to us. (See Part II,