In 1869 the ca.n.a.l was finished, and its completion was celebrated by sumptuous festivities. The Empress of France, Emperor of Austria, Crown Prince of Prussia, Prince of Wales, and many other important members of royalty were present. Forty-eight ships were required to convey the guests thither; the celebration lasted one month--the entire cost defrayed by the viceroy, or the Egyptian government. It amounted to about $21,000,000. It was for this occasion that Verdi wrote his opera Ada, the great Egyptologist Mariette Bey studying ancient costumes and settings to give added interest and reality, while the Egyptian Museum supplied jewels for the gifted musicians brought from various parts of Europe to present the opera.
A few years later it was found that the debt of Egypt amounted to over $450,000,000. Securities for this vast amount were held by English, French and German subjects. Even the stipulated fifteen per cent of the ca.n.a.l profits had been used as security; the Nile valley suffered from insufficient water supply, and the inflated price of cotton, obtaining during the Civil War in the United States, fell. In the face of impending ruin, something had to be done. At the clamorous demands of Europe, the Sultan deposed Ismail, whose reckless policy, together with that of Sad, had brought this overwhelming trouble upon his country. The British government bought the stock held by the viceroy--177,662 shares--for $20,000,000, thus obtaining a controlling voice in the company. France and England established what was known as the "dual control" in Egypt, which continued until the revolt of 1882, at which time France refused to go to the extreme of bombarding Alexandria and withdrew--thus ending her control in Egyptian affairs.
Since 1882 English "occupation" has continued and bids fair to continue for an indefinite time. It is even now evident that if the ca.n.a.l reverts to the Egyptian government upon the expiration of ninety-nine years, this may be a very different government from that which gave the original concession.
From the standpoint of commercial history, few events have been more signal than the completion of the Suez Ca.n.a.l. Heretofore vessels have saved little except time by making use of it, for the tolls exacted have been equal to the expense of about three thousand miles ocean travel. One dollar and ninety cents per vessel tonnage and two dollars per pa.s.senger, crews excepted, have been required, thus making the cost of large vessels pa.s.sing through amount sometimes to $10,000; $400 has been charged for a small yacht. However, it is now contemplated to make the tolls for both Panama and Suez ca.n.a.ls uniform--one dollar and twenty cents per vessel tonnage and no charge for pa.s.sengers being the proposed change. The distance has been greatly reduced by means of the ca.n.a.l; from England to Bombay lessened from 10,860 to 4,620 miles; from New York to Bombay from 11,520 to 7,920 miles.
The Suez Ca.n.a.l is one hundred miles in length, four hundred twenty feet wide surface measure, and one hundred eight feet on the bottom; it was originally twenty-seven feet nine inches deep but has been since dredged to a depth of thirty-one feet, lakes making it deeper in some places. It takes about fifteen hours and forty minutes to pa.s.s through, electricity making night pa.s.sage possible.
The majority of ships pa.s.sing through fly under the English flag; next in number are those sailing under the French flag; fewer still belonging to Germany. Except for pa.s.senger vessels and men of war, few United States crafts have been seen in these waters. However, in view of the opening of Panama, the shipping of this country may be expected to rapidly increase.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _A "SHIP OF THE DESERT."_
Here one sees ladies of modern Cairo out taking the air--"smelling the air," as they call it. Since one of them has removed her veil, it is safe to conclude that they do not belong to the upper cla.s.s. Brides are usually transported in such a conveyance as this upon their wedding day, and the tinkling bells and smart trappings of the camel add to the pleasure of the occasion.]
BABYLONIA AND HER NEIGHBORS
PREFATORY CHAPTER
"_Aus den fruehesten Anfaengen erklaeren sich die spaetesten Erscheinungen."--Heine._
If the German poet was justified in writing the words just quoted much more are we in repeating them. The interpretation of the present is to be sought in the light of the past. _Ex oriente lux_ is an old and familiar saying. In the last century there flashed from this quarter a light that astonished the world, and like the wise men of old, it came from the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. The consequent increase in our knowledge has revolutionized much of the thought of the past, and so quietly has this been done that none but those who have been more particularly interested in the new discoveries are aware of the importance and extent of the changes made. Our views of ancient history, literature, life, religion have been greatly altered and enlarged.
Europe and America have been for almost two millennia under the potent spell and inspiration of a little people who lived at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Prophets and teachers arose among them who lifted the world off its hinges, set Greece, the home of intellect, to thinking anew, and uttered their messages through the successors of the Caesars.
A wonderful people, indeed! How are they to be explained? Most certainly we must seek for their explanation in the light of their antecedents and racial affinities. It was, and is, no more possible to understand them and correctly interpret their literary remains, the Bible, apart from a knowledge of the great family of which they formed numerically only an insignificant part than it would be to understand the spirit and thought of the people of the United States if the early relations to Great Britain were unknown or ignored. The Old Testament, in its late written traditions, records that the ancestors of the Hebrews emigrated from Ur of the Chaldees, an ancient city, even in the days of Abraham, of southern Babylonia and a princ.i.p.al seat of the worship of the moon-G.o.d, Sin. But of the great family of the Semites--the Arabians, Babylonians, a.s.syrians, Canaanites, Aramaeans, Syrians, etc., little was known a century ago. Practically all scholarly interest in this group until the middle of the nineteenth century was confined to the literature and civilization of the Arabs since the Mohammedan era.
No better evidence of the universal ignorance of this past, extending down to modern times, can be found than in Sir Isaac Newton"s "Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended," published in 1728. This foremost scholar of his day writes, page 268: "However we must allow that Nimrod founded a kingdom at Babylon, and perhaps extended it into a.s.syria; but this kingdom was but of small extent, if compared with the empires that rose up afterwards; being only within the fertile plains of Chaldea, Chalonitis, and a.s.syria, watered by the Tigris and Euphrates; and if it had been greater, yet it was but of short continuance, it being the custom in those early ages for every father to divide his territories amongst his sons. So Noah was king of all the world, and Cham was king of all Afric, and j.a.phet of all Europe and Asia Minor."
Nimrod, Noah, Ham and j.a.phet were all as truly historical persons to the great scientist Newton and his age as were David, Isaiah and the apostle Paul.
More than a century and a half have pa.s.sed since this famous son of a Lincolnshire farmer wrote his Chronology, but the limitations under which he wrote were destined to remain for succeeding historians until quite recently. Even trained historians have found it difficult within the last two or three decades to adjust themselves to the new discoveries. Not long ago serious writers contended that the world was created 4004 B.C., in six days of twenty-four hours each, and anathemas were in store for those that questioned it. Writing in 1855, Professor Lewis in his "Six Days of Creation," declares that the Biblical story of the Creation was given "by inspiration to the earliest times, and to the earliest men, and in the earliest language that was spoken on the globe."--Hebrew! Less than twenty-five years ago one of the present writers" colleagues in a theological seminary, was teaching his students that the use of the plural name for G.o.d in Hebrew, and the thrice repeated "Holy, holy, holy," furnished collateral evidence in support of the doctrine of The Trinity. He was quite unaware that the polytheistic a.s.syrians used the same thrice repeated _ashru, ashru, ashru_, in praise of their G.o.ds.
Today scholars are agreed that the first twelve chapters of Genesis are largely a _refacimento_ of mythical deposit found among the Semites and genetically closely related to the Babylonian cosmologies and epic stories. The Hebrew writers purged the old myths of their polytheism, breathed into them a new spirit, and made them the bearers of higher religious truth. But Adam and Eve are as genuinely semitic mythical creations as _Adapa_, or _Eabani_ and Ukhat, the spouse of the latter, who, like Adam, was created out of clay. When we read in the 10th chapter of Joshua the account of Joshua"s miraculous victory over the combined forces of the five Amoritic kings we can now parallel it with like marvels in a.s.syria: "And it came to pa.s.s as they fled before Israel ... that the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: there were more who died with the hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword."
In the same way, the enemies of Esarhaddon are to be slain by the G.o.ddess of war, Ishtar.
Owing to the political relations into which the people of Israel and Judah were brought to the empires of the Tigris and Euphrates valley, the compilers of the historical books of The O. T., and the prophets have given us incidental, valuable, but not always unprejudiced notices of their kinsmen to the East. The II. Book of Kings touches upon some noteworthy events from the time of Tiglathpileser II. including the fall of Israel and Judah. Characteristic of these notices is the complete omission of Sargon"s name except in Isaiah 20:1, where until the discovery of the inscriptions it was thought to be an official t.i.tle, although he was the one who completed the conquest of the northern kingdom, the "House of Omri," as he calls it, and deported its inhabitants. It is difficult indeed for an a.s.syriologist to imagine an a.s.syrian _rabshak_ speaking to the messengers of Hezekiah as that officer is reported to have done in II. Kings 18:25f.: "Am I now come up without the Lord against this place to destroy it? The Lord said unto me, Go up against this land and destroy it." This Yahwe (Lord) Isaiah declares the a.s.syrian blasphemed, an act, which, to say the least, was more in accord with his usual temper. Yahwe was no more in the estimation of Sennacherib than the G.o.ds of the petty princ.i.p.alities of Hamath and Arpad. The truth seems to be that the writer in the book of Kings makes the _rabshak_ speak as he is alleged to have spoken just as the babylonian priests declared that Cyrus had been called to the conquest of Babylon by the Babylonian G.o.d Marduk.
The books, especially of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Nahum and Ezekiel, contain some interesting material upon the cultus of Babylonia. It is, however, the darker features that the prophets delight to draw, and the picture they present to us does not in all points resemble the one we find in the palaces of the kings. The animus displayed toward the enemy is far removed from the precept which enjoins that he shall be loved. The fourteenth chapter of Isaiah is a standing witness to the correctness of this observation. It is a magnificent paean of prophetic feeling, but it is necessary to observe that the fate of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, was not so wretched as here described. When Cyrus conquered the city he made Nabonidus governor. It may, however, be that this perfervid and vengeful utterance of irrepressible joy related originally to Sargon II., king of a.s.syria, conqueror of Samaria, who, as his successor Sennacherib tells us "was not buried in his house," and that after the fall of Babylon the latter name was interpolated. At all events this king, unlike "the kings of the nations," did not "sleep in his own house" (vss. 18-19), and the introductory verses are obviously late.
Optimistic and pessimistic patriots who writhed under the domination of a foreign power, religious zealots conscious of their possession of a purer and practically religious faith, it is little wonder they portrayed only the harsher features of their spoilers and conquerors.
The apocalyptic book of Daniel, so long interpreted as a sober recital of historic events, is distinctly and admittedly at variance on some points with the monumental records of Nebuchadnezzar, Nabonidus, and Cyrus. It would, however, be an unjustifiable inference were any one to conclude from the foregoing that the records of the Old Testament had all, or in great measure, been relegated to the hazy region of myth and fiction by the revelations of the contemporary records of the monuments.
The historical presentation of events from the age of Saul onwards have on the whole received welcome corroboration. The inscriptions on stone and clay have confirmed the story of the parchment rolls, completing, amending, elucidating it and always enabling us to interpret it more accurately.
Sufficient has been said in the foregoing to suggest the far-reaching importance of Babylonian and a.s.syrian archaeology and literature for the understanding of the Old Testament. We are able now not only to bring new material in contemporary doc.u.ments to aid us in its study, we are able also to interpret the life and thought of its people in the light of the larger history, political, inst.i.tutional, social, moral, legal and religious, of the great family to which Israel belonged. The life of the various members of the ancient semitic stock has been illuminated by the discoveries which began with Botta and Layard. The conditions existing in Canaan prior to the conquest, for example, became clear only with the discovery of the Tell-Amarna tablets in 1887. They were found in the palace of Amenophis on the bank of the Nile about 180 miles south of Cairo and they cast an unexpected light upon the period of the Exodus. Israel, her history, her conquests, her captivities and her religion no longer stand as things apart in which the supernatural has been imminent and active in a manner nowhere else discoverable in the history of the race. A "Thus saith Jehovah," however spiritual the content, can no longer be interpreted as essentially different from a divine communication from the G.o.ds of Israel"s neighbors and kinsmen.
While the Old Testament gave us some information about Babylonia and a.s.syria prior to the discoveries of their own monuments, a brief account of which is given in the following pages, it must be admitted that it has gained by these discoveries incomparably more than it gave. But we have learned not only about Israel and the Bible, we have learned also much about the earlier Amoritic inhabitants of Palestine who had entered there and spread into Egypt and Babylonia as early as the second half of the third millennium B.C. Much has been won from these records about Egypt and Ethiopia, about the peoples of Arabia, the Hitt.i.tes, the Aramaeans, Armenians, Elamites, Medes and Persians as well as the early inhabitants of Babylonia, the Sumerians, the original inventors of the cuneiform writing, which was a later development of pictographic symbols. We have learned with astonishment of the advances made in Babylonia in early times in the arts and architecture. Deprived by the nature of their country, in which wood and stone were not to be found, we read of Gudea (Circa 3000 B.C.) bringing diorite from Magan, West Arabia, for his sculptures, some of which are now to be seen in the Louvre collection. The skill of the lapidarist in connection with the cunningly engraved cylinder seals is today the admiration of the best workers in the art of engraving, and the wounded lioness from the palace of Ashurbanipal in the seventh century B.C. is the best portrayal of animal life that has come to us from ancient times. As Professor Sayce has recently shown, the lamp in use in Greece in the historical age, and not before, and later borrowed by the Romans, and after the Greek conquest, by the Egyptians, was Babylonian in origin and a common utensil in Mesopotamia prior to the fourteenth century B.C. The composite symbols of Babylonia were adopted by the people of Western Asia. The eagle of the southern city-kingdom of Lagash (Telloh) was transported to the Hitt.i.tes. The eagle symbol, wherever found, double-headed or single, is a bird from the land of Paradise. The winged horse is found upon Hitt.i.te seals, and from Asia pa.s.sed over the h.e.l.lespont and became the Greek Pegasos. The native fetish deities of Asia Minor were replaced by G.o.ds in human form, and the idea of a trinity, or triad of deities, followed in the wake of Babylonian culture. In architecture the Babylonians invented the arch. This achievement had always been attributed to the Etruscans on the basis of the statements of the cla.s.sical writers. But it was used by the Babylonians, as we now know, three thousand years before there is any evidence of its use on cla.s.sical soil. Columnar construction dates back to the same period. Both the arch and the column were found in the buildings unearthed a few years ago at Nippur by the expeditions from the University of Pennsylvania. Owing to the dearth of wood and stone these pioneers in the arts of civilization were forced to have recourse to clay, the only material available. They therefore invented the pillar made of brick. Babylonia was the land _par excellence_ of brick buildings. Their land abounded in asphaltum and this they used instead of mortar, as the Hebrew writer tells us they did when they built the tower of Babel, "the temple with the lofty tower," in Babylon. "Their technical skill rested on scientific principles no less unattainable in modern architecture than the Grecian idea of beauty in the plastic art.
The buildings which they constructed with brick must have been built according to rules and laws unknown to modern architecture, which views many of these ancient works with the same astonishment as is evoked by the pyramids of Egypt." Babylonia can at least claim to have made early advances in astronomical observations. The movements of the heavenly bodies were carefully watched from the earliest times and records made of them. Even in the late Roman period the Chaldeans were still looked upon as the founders of astronomy. It is true that Egypt had also at a very early age successfully cultivated this science and had introduced a practical calendar which began the year on the day when Sirius was first observed on the eastern horizon at sunrise 4200 years before the Christian era. Some Egyptologists hold that this calendar was the precursor of the Julian, which in turn was modified by Pope Gregory in 1582, thus giving us the Gregorian calendar which was adopted in England by the Calendar Amendment Act of 1751. But it is more probable that we are indebted to the Babylonians for our calendrical system, Greece and Rome borrowing from them. The naming of the days of the week after the sun and moon G.o.ds and the five planets known to them seems beyond dispute. It was they who divided the circle into 360 degrees in connection with their s.e.xagesimal system of numerals, the day into 24 hours, and the hour into 60 minutes. The faces of our watches bear daily and hourly witness to our obligations to this old people of the land of Shinar. There are 24 hours in the day, but our time-pieces divide them into two periods of 12 hours each, just as the Babylonian day was reckoned as 12 _double_ hours. By what routes and means these transfers of scientific achievements were made from the mother-land of science to the peoples of Europe we are not yet able to decide. Further discoveries, however, will doubtless reveal still more clearly the historic connections of modern culture with the people of the Tigris and Euphrates valley who themselves speak of their cities as "ancient"
before the deluge.
All of this increase of knowledge hinted at in the preceding paragraphs, and all too briefly sketched in this work, is the acquisition of our own times. The Greeks, who in haughty disdain regarded all others as "barbarians," knew little of this ancient of days--nothing whatever of the great ruler Sargon I. or Hammurabi, imperialist and great law-giver fifteen hundred years before the enactment of the laws of Draco and Solon at Athens.
Among the Greek writers Herodotus is the only one that can be considered as a direct source. He may have visited Babylon about the middle of the fifth century B.C. Much of what he has written, however, is clearly a matter of hearsay or romancing. The judgment pa.s.sed on him by his contemporaries and successors was certainly not without foundation. His critics accused him, as the Arabian historians did Ibn Ishaq, the biographer of Mohammed, of direct falsification, and even a superficial study of his writings is sufficient to prove that the accusation was not without apparent warrant. One seeks in vain, for example, in the Babylonian literature for evidence of the custom, which he describes as one of the most beautiful and wisest of the Babylonians, of putting the marriageable girls once a year upon the market to be sold to the highest bidders! Naively he adds that this was an earlier custom that was no longer practised in his time. Of the history of Babylon he knew little--of its latest rulers and even of the great Nebuchadnezzar he had not an inkling as Tiele, the Dutch historian, has said. Ctesias, the Carian physician who lived for seventeen years at the Persian court of Artaxerxes Mnemon in the fourth century, did not know that Babylon had an independent existence. Those who followed were for the most part merely excerptors from those who preceded them. In view of the paucity and unreliability of the sources an impenetrable veil was drawn between us and the ancient orient. At last it has been lifted, and in the language of the old poets of Babylon, "brother again sees brother."
[Ill.u.s.tration: CLAY JARS OF CHALDEA.]
BABYLONIA AND a.s.sYRIA
CHAPTER I.
EARLY CIVILIZATION OF ASIA.
In studying the history of Babylonia and a.s.syria, our attention is drawn to one of the earliest inhabited portions of the globe--so far as is now known: to the valley of the Euphrates. Biblical tradition favored the view that this was the Cradle of the Human Race. Here the Yahvistic writer placed the fabled Garden of Eden, the best explanation he could devise for the origin of mankind. The valley was a regular thoroughfare for early tribes journeying to and from Arabia, and reaching out to the east, west, or north for new homes, often remaining for long succeeding generations in the fertile region itself. It was a land where men of various tongues and dialects met, only to again diverge. The effort of the Hebrew to explain how so many languages had come into being resulted in the story of the Tower of Babel. Before the beginnings of the Hebrew race as distinct from the general Semitic family, an old civilization had developed here in Chaldea. In connection with his worship, the Chaldean built high ziqqurats--temple-towers of from three to seven platforms, rising one above the other, each platform smaller than the one below. The story handed down from one generation of the Hebrews to another was that the Chaldeans had once tried to build a tower to reach the very heavens. Alarmed at their presumption, G.o.d confounded their speech so they could no longer understand one another. Thus was man punished and thus the various speeches originated.
In following the history of the mixed race known as the Babylonians, and of those who pressed north of the home-country to found the state of a.s.syria, we shall become acquainted with the only great nation of antiquity whose civilization may have been older than that of the Egyptians. We have up reliable record of the Chinese until late in the third millennium, and their civilization, if more ancient still, was isolated at least, and affected no other people. When Thutmose I.
penetrated to the valley of the Euphrates, some years after the expulsion of the Hyksos, he came upon a nation, of whose culture, script, and language, as the recently discovered Tell-el-Amarna tablets indicate, were already familiar to his own people.
The recorded life of Egypt reaches back more than 6,000 years; civilization in Mesopotamia may have been more ancient. Many monuments have been unearthed in the sites of ancient cities which throw light upon great antiquity. In Egypt visible monuments have borne witness through long succeeding centuries of early strength; in Babylonia and a.s.syria the very site of cities was forgotten, and men no longer remembered where these two influential powers of antiquity had developed. Though in the last century only anything like a complete history of Egypt has been possible, yet evidences of a nation long since extinct, were preserved in temples and tombs, and hieroglyphics covering walls and columns indicated that whoever should discover their meaning would learn of their mighty builders. Far different was the case of Babylonia and a.s.syria. They too had once been proud and wealthy nations, taking foremost rank; their cities filled the valleys of the Euphrates and Tigris, and their fertile fields yielded even more abundantly than the rich Nile valley. Their palaces rose to the glory of their kings, and their commerce penetrated to every corner of the ancient world. Then changes came upon the life of antiquity. New peoples pushed to the front; the tide of commerce shifted into other channels. These nations were conquered by their yet stronger neighbors, and their temples and palaces, built not of enduring stone but of perishable brick, fell into heaps of nameless mounds. When the waters of the mighty rivers were no longer guided through ca.n.a.ls to irrigate the land, the soil ceased to be productive. Desert sands spread over the desolate region and reclaimed wide areas which became the tenting ground for nomadic tribes.
The very words of the late writer in the Book of Isaiah concerning these nations rang true through the ages:
"And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees"
excellency, shall be as when G.o.d overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.
"Then shall the a.s.syrian fall with the sword, not of a mighty man; and the sword, not of a mean man, shall devour him; but he shall flee from the sword, and his young men shall be discomfited. And he shall pa.s.s over to his stronghold for fear, and his princes shall be afraid of the ensign."[1]
Nineveh, the capital of a.s.syria, disappeared suddenly. In Alexander"s day its site was unknown. Babylon, however, was not destroyed by Cyrus, but continued its importance until the rise of its rival Seleucia, and was still inhabited in the Middle Ages. But the two nations were forgotten in the west for hundreds of years. Then with the dawn of peace and order in Europe during the later Middle Ages, came the desire to know about the past. Monks who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, sometimes pressed farther east, and made mention of strange mounds seen in the valleys of these ancient rivers. Travelers told of curious inscriptions found among the ruins there. In rare cases, they even went to the length of copying one or two, with greater or less accuracy. It was left finally for the eighteenth century to locate the old sites of Babylonian cities, and for the nineteenth century to discover the hidden meaning of the wedge-shaped letters inscribed upon their ruins.
To the patient efforts of the men who persisted in their difficult and often disheartening task of unearthing ruins, and to the scholars who toiled year after year to read the forgotten language these ruins brought to light, we owe most that is now known regarding the early inhabitants of the Euphrates valley. These nations, so long destroyed, their cities, so long abandoned, we shall try to bring before us as they have been reconstructed by historians in more pretentious volumes.
Naturally, any account of the Babylonians and a.s.syrians will involve some consideration of their neighbors, whose civilizations developed by their side, and whose fortunes frequently mingled with theirs.
THE RECOVERY OF FORGOTTEN CITIES.
Were we to proceed at once to the development of the Babylonian and a.s.syrian states without first pausing to note what far-reaching efforts have been made to read their early civilization from their remains, entombed within the earth, we would deprive ourselves of one of the most interesting pages in modern historical research.