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Title: History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12)

Author: G. Maspero

Editor: A.H. Sayce

Translator: M.L. McClure

Release Date: December 16, 2005 [EBook #17324]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF EGYPT, CHALDAEA ***




Produced by David Widger





[Illustration: Spines]

[Illustration: Cover]

HISTORY OF EGYPT CHALDEA, SYRIA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA

By G. MASPERO, Honorable Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen's
College, Oxford; Member of the Institute and Professor at the College of
France

Edited by A. H. SAYCE, Professor of Assyriology, Oxford

Translated by M. L. McCLURE, Member of the Committee of the Egypt
Exploration Fund


CONTAINING OVER TWELVE HUNDRED COLORED PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Volume IV.


LONDON

THE GROLIER SOCIETY

PUBLISHERS

[Illustration: Frontispiece]

[Illustration: Titlepage]


_THE FIRST CHALDEAN EMPIRE AND THE HYKSOS IN EGYPT_

_SYRIA: THE PART PLAYED BY IT IN THE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD--
BABYLON AND THE FIRST CHALDAEAN EMPIRE--THE DOMINION OF THE HYKSOS:
AHMOSIS._

_Syria, owing to its geographical position, condemned to be subject to
neighbouring powers-Lebanon, Anti-Lebanon, the valley of the Orontes
and of the Litany, and surrounding regions: the northern table-land, the
country about Damascus, the Mediterranean coast, the Jordan and the Dead
Sea-Civilization and primitive inhabitants, Semites and Asiatics: the
almost entire absence of Egyptian influence, the predominance of that of
Chaldaea._

_Babylon, its ruins and its environs--It extends its rule over
Mesopotamia; its earliest dynasty and its struggle with Central
Chaldaea-Elam, its geographical position, its peoples; Kutur-Nakhunta
conquers Larsam-Bimsin (Eri-Aku); Khammurabi founds the first Babylonian
empire; Ids victories, his buildings, his canals--The Elamites in
Syria: Kudurlagamar--Syria recognizes the authority of Hammurabi and his
successors._

_The Hyksos conquer Egypt at the end of the XIVth dynasty; the founding
of Avaris--Uncertainty both of ancients and moderns with regard to the
origin of the Hyksos: probability of their being the Khati--Their kings
adopt the manners and civilization of the Egyptians: the monuments of
Khiani and of Apophis I. and II--The XVth dynasty._

_Semitic incursions following the Hyksos--The migration of the
Phoenicians and the Israelites into Syria: Terah, Abraham and his
sojourn in the land of Canaan--Isaac, Jacob, Joseph: the Israelites go
down into Egypt and settle in the land of Goshen._

_Thebes revolts against the Hyksos: popular traditions as to the origin
of the war, the romance of Apophis and Saquinri--The Theban princesses
and the last Icings of the XVIIth dynasty: Tiudqni Kamosis, Ahmosis
I.--The lords of El-Kab, and the part they played during the war of
independence--The taking of Avaris and the expulsion of the Ilylcsos._

_The reorganization of Egypt--Ahmosis I. and his Nubian wars, the
reopening of the quarries of Turah--Amenothes I. and his mother
Nofritari: the jewellery of Queen Ahhotpu--The wars of Amenothes I.,
the apotheosis of Nofritari--The accession of Thutmosis I. and the
re-generation of Egypt._




CHAPTER I--THE FIRST CHALDAEAN EMPIRE AND THE HYKSOS IN EGYPT


_Syria: the part played by it in the ancient world--Babylon and the
first Chaldaean empire--The dominion of the Hyksos: Ahmosis._


Some countries seem destined from their origin to become the
battle-fields of the contending nations which environ them. Into such
regions, and to their cost, neighbouring peoples come from century to
century to settle their quarrels and bring to an issue the questions of
supremacy which disturb their little corner of the world. The nations
around are eager for the possession of a country thus situated; it
is seized upon bit by bit, and in the strife dismembered and trodden
underfoot: at best the only course open to its inhabitants is to join
forces with one of its invaders, and while helping the intruder to
overcome the rest, to secure for themselves a position of permanent
servitude. Should some unlooked-for chance relieve them from the
presence of their foreign lord, they will probably be quite incapable of
profiting by the respite which fortune puts in their way, or of making
any effectual attempt to organize themselves in view of future attacks.
They tend to become split up into numerous rival communities, of which
even the pettiest will aim at autonomy, keeping up a perpetual frontier
war for the sake of becoming possessed of or of retaining a glorious
sovereignty over a few acres of corn in the plains, or some wooded
ravines in the mountains. Year after year there will be scenes of bloody
conflict, in which petty armies will fight petty battles on behalf of
petty interests, but so fiercely, and with such furious animosity, that
the country will suffer from the strife as much as, or even more than,
from an invasion. There will be no truce to their struggles until they
all fall under the sway of a foreign master, and, except in the interval
between two conquests, they will have no national existence, their
history being almost entirely merged in that of other nations.

From remote antiquity Syria was in the condition just described,
and thus destined to become subject to foreign rule. Chaldaea, Egypt,
Assyria, and Persia presided in turn over its destinies, while Macedonia
and the empires of the West were only waiting their opportunity to lay
hold of it. By its position it formed a kind of meeting-place where most
of the military nations of the ancient world were bound sooner or later
to come violently into collision. Confined between the sea and the
desert, Syria offers the only route of easy access to an army marching
northwards from Africa into Asia, and all conquerors, whether attracted
to Mesopotamia or to Egypt by the accumulated riches on the banks of the
Euphrates or the Nile, were obliged to pass through it in order to reach
the object of their cupidity. It might, perhaps, have escaped this fatal
consequence of its position, had the formation of the country permitted
its tribes to mass themselves together, and oppose a compact body to
the invading hosts; but the range of mountains which forms its backbone
subdivides it into isolated districts, and by thus restricting each
tribe to a narrow existence maintained among them a mutual antagonism.
The twin chains, the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, which divide the
country down the centre, are composed of the same kind of calcareous
rocks and sandstone, while the same sort of reddish clay has been
deposited on their slopes by the glaciers of the same geological
period.*

     * Drake remarked in the Lebanon several varieties of
     limestone, which have been carefully catalogued by Blanche
     and Lartet. Above these strata, which belong to the Jurassic
     formation, come reddish sandstone, then beds of very hard
     yellowish limestone, and finally marl. The name Lebanon, in
     Assyrian Libnana, would appear to signify "the white
     mountain;" the Amorites called the Anti-Lebanon Saniru,
     Shenir, according to the Assyrian texts and the Hebrew
     books.

Arid and bare on the northern side, they sent out towards the south
featureless monotonous ridges, furrowed here and there by short narrow
valleys, hollowed out in places into basins or funnel-shaped ravines,
which are widened year by year by the down-rush of torrents. These
ridges, as they proceed southwards, become clothed with verdure and
offer a more varied outline, the ravines being more thickly wooded, and
the summits less uniform in contour and colouring. Lebanon becomes white
and ice-crowned in winter, but none of its peaks rises to the altitude
of perpetual snows: the highest of them, Mount Timarun, reaches 10,526
feet, while only three others exceed 9000.* Anti-Lebanon is, speaking
generally, 1000 or 1300 feet lower than its neighbour: it becomes
higher, however, towards the south, where the triple peak of Mount
Hermon rises to a height of 9184 feet. The Orontes and the Litany drain
the intermediate space. The Orontes rising on the west side of the
Anti-Lebanon, near the ruins of Baalbek, rushes northwards in such a
violent manner, that the dwellers on its banks call it the rebel--Nahr
el-Asi.** About a third of the way towards its mouth it enters a
depression, which ancient dykes help to transform into a lake; it flows
thence, almost parallel to the sea-coast, as far as the 36th degree of
latitude. There it meets the last spurs of the Amanos, but, failing to
cut its way through them, it turns abruptly to the west, and then to the
south, falling into the Mediterranean after having received an increase
to its volume from the waters of the Afrin.

     * Bukton-Drake, Unexplored Syria, vol. i. p. 88, attributed
     to it an altitude of 9175 English feet; others estimate it
     at 10,539 feet. The mountains which exceed 3000 metres are
     Dahr el-Kozib, 3046 metres; Jebel-Mislriyah, 3080 metres;
     and Jebel-Makhmal or Makmal, 3040 metres. As a matter of
     fact, these heights are not yet determined with the accuracy
     desirable.

     ** The Egyptians knew it in early times by the name of
     Aunrati, or Araunti; it is mentioned in Assyrian
     inscriptions under the name of Arantu. All are agreed in
     acknowledging that this name is not Semitic, and an Aryan
     origin is attributed to it, but without convincing proof;
     according to Strabo (xvi. ii. Sec. 7, p. 750), it was
     originally called Typhon, and was only styled Orontes after
     a certain Orontes had built the first bridge across it. The
     name of Axios which it sometimes bears appears to have been
     given to it by Greek colonists, in memory of a river in
     Macedonia. This is probably the origin of the modern name of
     Asi, and the meaning, _rebellious river_, which Arab
     tradition attaches to the latter term, probably comes from a
     popular etymology which likened Axios to Asi, the
     identification was all the easier since it justifies the
     epithet by the violence of its current.

The Litany rises a short distance from the Orontes; it flows at first
through a wide and fertile plain, which soon contracts, however, and
forces it into a channel between the spurs of the Lebanon and the
Galilaean hills. The water thence makes its way between two cliffs of
perpendicular rock, the ravine being in several places so narrow that
the branches of the trees on the opposite sides interlace, and an active
man could readily leap across it. Near Yakhmur some detached rocks
appear to have been arrested in their fall, and, leaning like flying
buttresses against the mountain face, constitute a natural bridge over
the torrent. The basins of the two rivers lie in one valley, extending
eighty leagues in length, divided by an almost imperceptible watershed
into two beds of unequal slope. The central part of the valley is given
up to marshes. It is only towards the south that we find cornfields,
vineyards, plantations of mulberry and olive trees, spread out over the
plain, or disposed in terraces on the hillsides. Towards the north,
the alluvial deposits of, the Orontes have gradually formed a black
and fertile soil, upon which grow luxuriant crops of cereals and other
produce. Cole-Syria, after having generously nourished the Oriental
empires which had preyed upon her, became one of the granaries of the
Roman world, under the capable rule of the Caesars.

Syria is surrounded on all sides by countries of varying aspect and
soil. That to the north, flanked by the Amanos, is a gloomy mountainous
region, with its greatest elevation on the seaboard: it slopes gradually
towards the interior, spreading out into chalky table-lands, dotted over
with bare and rounded hills, and seamed with tortuous valleys which
open out to the Euphrates, the Orontes, or the desert. Vast, slightly
undulating plains succeed the table-lands: the soil is dry and stony,
the streams are few in number and contain but little water. The Sajur
flows into the Euphrates, the Afrin and the Karasu when united yield
their tribute to the Orontes, while the others for the most part pour
their waters into enclosed basins. The Khalus of the Greeks sluggishly
pursues its course southward, and after reluctantly leaving the gardens
of Aleppo, finally loses itself on the borders of the desert in a small
salt lake full of islets: about halfway between the Khalus and the
Euphrates a second salt lake receives the Nahr ed-Dahab, the "golden
river." The climate is mild, and the temperature tolerably uniform. The
sea-breeze which rises every afternoon tempers the summer heat: the
cold in winter is never piercing, except when the south wind blows which
comes from the mountains, and the snow rarely lies on the ground for
more than twenty-four hours. It seldom rains during the autumn and
winter months, but frequent showers fall in the early days of spring.
Vegetation then awakes again, and the soil lends itself to cultivation
in the hollows of the valleys and on the table-lands wherever
irrigation is possible. The ancients dotted these now all but desert
spaces with wells and cisterns; they intersected them with canals,
and covered them with farms and villages, with fortresses and populous
cities. Primaeval forests clothed the slopes of the Amanos, and pinewood
from this region was famous both at Babylon and in the towns of Lower
Chaldaea. The plains produced barley and wheat in enormous quantities,
the vine throve there, the gardens teemed with flowers and fruit, and
pistachio and olive trees grew on every slope. The desert was always
threatening to invade the plain, and gained rapidly upon it whenever
a prolonged war disturbed cultivation, or when the negligence of the
inhabitants slackened the work of defence: beyond the lakes and salt
marshes it had obtained a secure hold. At the present time the greater
part of the country between the Orontes and the Euphrates is nothing
but a rocky table-land, ridged with low hills and dotted over with some
impoverished oases, excepting at the foot of Anti-Lebanon, where two
rivers, fed by innumerable streams, have served to create a garden of
marvellous beauty. The Barada, dashing from cascade to cascade, flows
for some distance through gorges before emerging on the plain: scarcely
has it reached level ground than it widens out, divides, and forms
around Damascus a miniature delta, into which a thousand interlacing
channels carry refreshment and fertility. Below the town these streams
rejoin the river, which, after having flowed merrily along for a day's
journey, is swallowed up in a kind of elongated chasm from whence it
never again emerges. At the melting of the snows a regular lake is
formed here, whose blue waters are surrounded by wide grassy margins
"like a sapphire set in emeralds." This lake dries up almost completely
in summer, and is converted into swampy meadows, filled with gigantic
rushes, among which the birds build their nests, and multiply as
unmolested as in the marshes of Chaldaea. The Awaj, unfed by any
tributary, fills a second deeper though smaller basin, while to
the south two other lesser depressions receive the waters of the
Anti-Lebanon and the Hauran. Syria is protected from the encroachments
of the desert by a continuous barrier of pools and beds of reeds:
towards the east the space reclaimed resembles a verdant promontory
thrust boldly out into an ocean of sand. The extent of the cultivated
area is limited on the west by the narrow strip of rock and clay which
forms the littoral. From the mouth of the Litany to that of the Orontes,
the coast presents a rugged, precipitous, and inhospitable appearance.
There are no ports, and merely a few ill-protected harbours, or narrow
beaches lying under formidable headlands. One river, the Nahr el-Kebir,
which elsewhere would not attract the traveller's attention, is here
noticeable as being the only stream whose waters flow constantly and
with tolerable regularity; the others, the Leon, the Adonis,* and the
Nahr el-Kelb,* can scarcely even be called torrents, being precipitated
as it were in one leap from the Lebanon to the Mediterranean. Olives,
vines, and corn cover the maritime plain, while in ancient times the
heights were clothed with impenetrable forests of oak, pine, larch,
cypress, spruce, and cedar. The mountain range drops in altitude towards
the centre of the country and becomes merely a line of low hills,
connecting Gebel Ansarieh with the Lebanon proper; beyond the latter
it continues without interruption, till at length, above the narrow
Phoenician coast road, it rises in the form of an almost insurmountable
wall. Near to the termination of Coele-Syria, but separated from it
by a range of hills, there opens out on the western slopes of Hermon a
valley unlike any other in the world. At this point the surface of the
earth has been rent in prehistoric times by volcanic action, leaving a
chasm which has never since closed up. A river, unique in character--the
Jordan--flows down this gigantic crevasse, fertilizing the valley formed
by it from end to end.***

     * The Adonis of classical authors is now Nahr-Ibrahim. We
     have as yet no direct evidence as to the Phoenician name of
     this river; it was probably identical with that of the
     divinity worshipped on its banks. The fact of a river
     bearing the name of a god is not surprising: the Belos, in
     the neighbourhood of Acre, affords us a parallel case to the
     Adonis.

     ** The present Nahr el-Kelb is the Lykos of classical
     authors. The Due de Luynes thought he recognized a
     corruption of the Phoenician name in that of Alcobile, which
     is mentioned hereabouts in the Itinerary of the pilgrim of
     Bordeaux. The order of the Itinerary does not favour this
     identification, and Alcobile is probably Jebail: it is none
     the less probable that the original name of the Nahr el Kelb
     contained from earliest times the Phoenician equivalent of
     the Arab word _kelb_, "dog."

     *** The Jordan is mentioned in the Egyptian texts under the
     name of Yorduna: the name appears to mean _the descender,
     the down-flowing._

Its principal source is at Tell el-Qadi, where it rises out of a
basaltic mound whose summit is crowned by the ruins of Laish.*

     * This source is mentioned by Josephus as being that of the
     Little Jordan.

[Illustration: 014.jpg THE MOST NORTHERN SOURCE OF THE JORDAN, THE
NAIIR-EL-HASBANY]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by the Duc de Luynes.

The water collects in an oval rocky basin hidden by bushes, and flows
down among the brushwood to join the Nahr el-Hasbany, which brings the
waters of the upper torrents to swell its stream; a little lower down it
mingles with the Banias branch, and winds for some time amidst desolate
marshy meadows before disappearing in the thick beds of rushes bordering
Lake Huleh.*

     * Lake Huleh is called the Waters of Merom, Me-Merom, in the
     Book of Joshua, xi. 5, 7; and Lake Sammochonitis in
     Josephus. The name of Ulatha, which was given to the
     surrounding country, shows that the modern word Huleh is
     derived from an ancient form, of which unfortunately the
     original has not come down to us.

[Illustration 014b.jpg LAKE OF GENESARATH]

At this point the Jordan reaches the level of the Mediterranean, but
instead of maintaining it, the river makes a sudden drop on leaving the
lake, cutting for itself a deeply grooved channel. It has a fall of
some 300 feet before reaching the Lake of Grenesareth, where it is only
momentarily arrested, as if to gather fresh strength for its headlong
career southwards.

[Illustration: 017.jpg ONE OF THE REACHES OF THE JORDAN]

     Drawn by Boudier, from several photographs brought back by
     Lortet.

Here and there it makes furious assaults on its right and left banks,
as if to escape from its bed, but the rocky escarpments which hem it in
present an insurmountable barrier to it; from rapid to rapid it descends
with such capricious windings that it covers a course of more than 62
miles before reaching, the Dead Sea, nearly 1300 feet below the level of
the Mediterranean.*

     * The exact figures are: the Lake of Huleh 7 feet above the
     Mediterranean; the Lake of Genesareth 68245 feet, and the
     Dead Sea 1292 feet below the sea-level; to the south of
     the Dead Sea, towards the water-parting of the Akabah, the
     ground is over 720 feet higher than the level of the Red
     Sea.

[Illustration: 018.jpg THE DEAD SEA AND THE MOUNTAINS OF MOAB, SEEN FKOM
THE HEIGHTS OF ENGEDI]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by the Duc de Luynes.

Nothing could offer more striking contrasts than the country on either
bank. On the east, the ground rises abruptly to a height of about 3000
feet, resembling a natural rampart flanked with towers and bastions:
behind this extends an immense table-land, slightly undulating and
intersected in all directions by the affluents of the Jordan and the
Dead Sea--the Yarmuk,* the Jabbok,** and the Arnon.***

     * The Yarmuk does not occur in the Bible, but we meet with
     its name in the Talmud, and the Greeks adopted it under the
     form Hieromax.

     ** _Gen._ xxxii. 22; Numb, xxi. 24. The name has been
     Grecized under the forms lobacchos, labacchos, Iambykes. It
     is the present Nahr Zerqa.

     *** _Numb._ xxi. 13-26; Beut. ii. 24; the present Wady
     Mojib. [Shephelah = "low country," plain (Josh. xi. 16).
     With the article it means the plain along the Mediterranean
     from Joppa to Gaza.--Te.]

The whole of this district forms a little world in itself, whose
inhabitants, half shepherds, half bandits, live a life of isolation,
with no ambition to take part in general history. West of the Jordan, a
confused mass of hills rises into sight, their sparsely covered slopes
affording an impoverished soil for the cultivation of corn, vines, and
olives. One ridge--Mount Carmel--detached from the principal chain
near the southern end of the Lake of Genesareth, runs obliquely to
the north-west, and finally projects into the sea. North of this range
extends Galilee, abounding in refreshing streams and fertile fields;
while to the south, the country falls naturally into three parallel
zones--the littoral, composed alternately of dunes and marshes--an
expanse of plain, a "Shephelah," dotted about with woods and watered by
intermittent rivers,--and finally the mountains. The region of dunes
is not necessarily barren, and the towns situated in it--Gaza, Jaffa,
Ashdod, and Ascalon--are surrounded by flourishing orchards and gardens.
The plain yields plentiful harvests every year, the ground needing no
manure and very little labour. The higher ground and the hill-tops are
sometimes covered with verdure, but as they advance southwards, they
become denuded and burnt by the sun. The valleys, too, are watered only
by springs, which are dried up for the most part during the summer, and
the soil, parched by the continuous heat, can scarcely be distinguished
from the desert. In fact, till the Sinaitic Peninsula and the frontiers
of Egypt are reached, the eye merely encounters desolate and almost
uninhabited solitudes, devastated by winter torrents, and overshadowed
by the volcanic summits of Mount Seir. The spring rains, however,
cause an early crop of vegetation to spring up, which for a few weeks
furnishes the flocks of the nomad tribes with food.

We may summarise the physical characteristics of Syria by saying that
Nature has divided the country into five or six regions of unequal
area, isolated by rivers and mountains, each one of which, however, is
admirably suited to become the seat of a separate independent state.
In the north, we have the country of the two rivers--the
Naharaim--extending from the Orontes to the Euphrates and the Balikh, or
even as far as the Khabur:* in the centre, between the two ranges of
the Lebanon, lie Coele-Syria and its two unequal neighbours, Aram of
Damascus and Phoenicia; while to the south is the varied collection of
provinces bordering the valley of the Jordan.

     * The Naharaim of the Egyptians was first identified with
     Mesopotamia; it was located between the Orontes and the
     Balikh or the Euphrates by Maspero. This opinion is now
     adopted by the majority of Egyptologists, with slight
     differences in detail. Ed. Meyer has accurately compared the
     Egyptian Naharaim with the Parapotamia of the administration
     of the Seleucidae.

It is impossible at the present day to assert, with any approach to
accuracy, what peoples inhabited these different regions towards the
fourth millennium before our era. Wherever excavations are made, relics
are brought to light of a very ancient semi-civilization, in which we
find stone weapons and implements, besides pottery, often elegant in
contour, but for the most part coarse in texture and execution. These
remains, however, are not accompanied by any monument of definite
characteristics, and they yield no information with regard to the
origin or affinities of the tribes who fashioned them.* The study of the
geographical nomenclature in use about the XVIth century B.C. reveals
the existence, at all events at that period, of several peoples and
several languages. The mountains, rivers, towns, and fortresses in
Palestine and Coele-Syria are designated by words of Semitic origin: it
is easy to detect, even in the hieroglyphic disguise which they bear
on the Egyptian geographical lists, names familiar to us in Hebrew or
Assyrian.

     * Researches with regard to the primitive inhabitants of
     Syria and their remains have not as yet been prosecuted to
     any extent. The caves noticed by Hedenborg at Ant-Elias,
     near Tripoli, and by Botta at Nahr el-Kelb, and at Adlun by
     the Duc de Luynes, have been successively explored by
     Lartet, Tristram, Lortet, and Dawson. The grottoes of
     Palestine proper, at Bethzur, at Gilgal near Jericho, and at
     Tibneh, have been the subject of keen controversy ever since
     their discovery. The Abbe Richard desired to identify the
     flints of Gilgal and Tibneh with the stone knives used by
     Joshua for the circumcision of the Israelites after the
     passage of the Jordan (_Josh._ v- 2-9), some of which might
     have been buried in that hero's tomb.

But once across the Orontes, other forms present themselves which reveal
no affinities to these languages, but are apparently connected with one
or other of the dialects of Asia Minor.* The tenacity with which the
place-names, once given, cling to the soil, leads us to believe that a
certain number at least of those we know in Syria were in use there long
before they were noted down by the Egyptians, and that they must have
been heirlooms from very early peoples. As they take a Semitic or
non-Semitic form according to their geographical position, we may
conclude that the centre and south were colonized by Semites, and the
north by the immigrant tribes from beyond the Taurus. Facts are not
wanting to support this conclusion, and they prove that it is not so
entirely arbitrary as we might be inclined to believe. The Asiatic
visitors who, under a king of the XIIth dynasty, came to offer gifts to
Khnumhotpu, the Lord of Beni-Hasan, are completely Semitic in type,
and closely resemble the Bedouins of the present day. Their
chief--Abisha--bears a Semitic name,** as too does the Sheikh Ammianshi,
with whom Sinuhit took refuge.***

     * The non-Semitic origin of the names of a number of towns
     in Northern Syria preserved in the Egyptian lists, is
     admitted by the majority of scholars who have studied the
     question.

     ** His name has been shown to be cognate with the Hebrew
     Abishai (1 Sam. xxvi. 6-9; 2 Sam. ii. 18, 24; xxi. 17) and
     with the Chaldaeo-Assyrian Abeshukh.

     *** The name Ammianshi at once recalls those of Ammisatana,
     Ammiza-dugga, and perhaps Ammurabi, or Khammurabi, of one of
     the Babylonian dynasties; it contains, with the element
     Ammi, a final _anshi_. Chabas connects it with two Hebrew
     words _Am-nesh_, which he does not translate.

Ammianshi himself reigned over the province of Kadima, a word which in
Semitic denotes the East. Finally, the only one of their gods known to
us, Hadad, was a Semite deity, who presided over the atmosphere, and
whom we find later on ruling over the destinies of Damascus. Peoples
of Semitic speech and religion must, indeed, have already occupied the
greater part of that region on the shores of the Mediterranean which we
find still in their possession many centuries later, at the time of the
Egyptian conquest.

[Illustration: 028.jpg ASIATIC WOMEN FROM THE TOMB OF KHNUMHOTPU]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.


For a time Egypt preferred not to meddle in their affairs. When,
however, the "lords of the sands" grew too insolent, the Pharaoh sent a
column of light troops against them, and inflicted on them such a severe
punishment, that the remembrance of it kept them within bounds for
years. Offenders banished from Egypt sought refuge with the turbulent
kinglets, who were in a perpetual state of unrest between Sinai and
the Dead Sea. Egyptian sailors used to set out to traffic along the
seaboard, taking to piracy when hard pressed; Egyptian merchants were
accustomed to penetrate by easy stages into the interior. The accounts
they gave of their journeys were not reassuring. The traveller had first
to face the solitudes which confronted him before reaching the Isthmus,
and then to avoid as best he might the attacks of the pillaging tribes
who inhabited it.

[Illustration: 024.jpg TWO ASIATICS FKOM THE TOMB OF KHNUMHOPTU.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger

Should he escape these initial perils, the Amu--an agricultural and
settled people inhabiting the fertile region--would give the stranger
but a sorry reception: he would have to submit to their demands, and
the most exorbitant levies of toll did not always preserve caravans from
their attacks.* The country seems to have been but thinly populated;
tracts now denuded were then covered by large forests in which herds of
elephants still roamed,** and wild beasts, including lions and leopards,
rendered the route through them dangerous.

     * The merchant who sets out for foreign lands "leaves his
     possessions to his children--for fear of lions and
     Asiatics."

     ** Thutmosis III. went elephant-hunting near the Syrian town
     of Nii.

The notion that Syria was a sort of preserve for both big and small
game was so strongly implanted in the minds of the Egyptians, that their
popular literature was full of it: the hero of their romances betook
himself there for the chase, as a prelude to meeting with the princess
whom he was destined to marry,* or, as in the case of Kazarati, chief
of Assur, that he might encounter there a monstrous hyena with which to
engage in combat.

     * As, for instance, the hero in the _Story of the
     Predestined Prince_, exiled from Egypt with his dog, pursues
     his way hunting till he reaches the confines of Naharaim,
     where he is to marry the prince's daughter.

These merchants' adventures and explorations, as they were not followed
by any military expedition, left absolutely no mark on the industries or
manners of the primitive natives: those of them only who were close to
the frontiers of Egypt came under her subtle charm and felt the power
of her attraction, but this slight influence never penetrated beyond
the provinces lying nearest to the Dead Sea. The remaining populations
looked rather to Chaldaea, and received, though at a distance, the
continuous impress of the kingdoms of the Euphrates. The tradition which
attributes to Sargon of Agade, and to his son Istaramsin, the subjection
of the people of the Amanos and the Orontes, probably contains but a
slight element of truth; but if, while awaiting further information, we
hesitate to believe that the armies of these princes ever crossed the
Lebanon or landed in Cyprus, we must yet admit the very early advent
of their civilization in those western countries which are regarded as
having been under their rule. More than three thousand years before
our era, the Asiatics who figure on the tomb of Khnumhotpu clothed
themselves according to the fashions of Uru and Lagash, and affected
long robes of striped and spotted stuffs. We may well ask if they had
also borrowed the cuneiform syllabary for the purposes of their official
correspondence,* and if the professional scribe with his stylus and clay
tablet was to be found in their cities. The Babylonian courtiers were,
no doubt, more familiar visitors among them than the Memphite nobles,
while the Babylonian kings sent regularly to Syria for statuary stone,
precious metals, and the timber required in the building of
their monuments: Urbau and Gudea, as well as their successors and
contemporaries, received large convoys of materials from the Amanos, and
if the forests of Lebanon were more rarely utilised, it was not because
their existence was unknown, but because distance rendered their
approach more difficult and transport more costly. The Mediterranean
marches were, in their language, classed as a whole under one
denomination--Martu, Amurru,** the West--but there were distinctive
names for each of the provinces into which they were divided.

     * The most ancient cuneiform tablets of Syrian origin are
     not older than the XVIth century before our era; they
     contain the official, correspondence of the native princes
     with the Pharaohs Amenothes III. and IV. of the XVIIIth
     dynasty, as will be seen later on in this volume; they were
     discovered in the ruins of one of the palaces at Tel el-
     Amarna in Egypt.

     ** Formerly read Akharru. Martu would be the Sumerian and
     Akharru the Semitic form, Akharru meaning _that which is
     behind_. The discovery of the Tel el-Amarna tablets threw
     doubt on the reading of the name Akharru: some thought that
     it ought to be kept in any case; others, with more or less
     certainty, think that it should be replaced by Amuru,
     Amurru, the country of the Amorites. But the question has
     now been settled by Babylonian contract and law tablets of
     the period of Khaminurabi, in which the name is written _A-
     mu-ur-ri (ki)_. Hommel originated the idea that Martu might
     be an abbreviation of Amartu, that is, Amar with the
     feminine termination of nouns in the Canaanitish dialect:
     Martu would thus actually signify _the country of the
     Amorites_.

Probably even at that date they called the north Khati,* and Cole-Syria,
Amurru, the land of the Amorites. The scattered references in their
writings seem to indicate frequent intercourse with these countries, and
that, too, as a matter of course which excited no surprise among their
contemporaries: a journey from Lagash to the mountains of Tidanum and
to Gubin, or to the Lebanon and beyond it to Byblos,** meant to them
no voyage of discovery. Armies undoubtedly followed the routes already
frequented by caravans and flotillas of trading boats, and the time came
when kings desired to rule as sovereigns over nations with whom their
subjects had peaceably traded.

     * The name of the Khati, Khatti, is found in the _Book of
     Omens_, which is supposed to contain an extract from the
     annals of Sargon and Naramsin; as, however, the text which
     we possess of it is merely a copy of the time of
     Assurbanipal, it is possible that the word Khati is merely
     the translation of a more ancient term, perhaps Martu.
     Winckler thinks it to be included in Lesser Armenia and the
     Melitone of classical authors.

     ** Gubin is probably the Kupuna, Kupnu, of the Egyptians,
     the Byblos of Phoenicia. Amiaud had proposed a most unlikely
     identification with Koptos in Egypt. In the time of Ine-Sin,
     King of Ur, mention is found of Simurru, Zimyra.

It does not appear, however, that the ancient rulers of Lagash ever
extended their dominion so far. The governors of the northern cities, on
the other hand, showed themselves more energetic, and inaugurated
that march westwards which sooner or later brought the peoples of the
Euphrates into collision with the dwellers on the Nile: for the first
Babylonian empire without doubt comprised part if not the whole of
Syria.*

     * It is only since the discovery of the Tel el-Amarna
     tablets that the fact of the dominant influence of Chaldaea
     over Syria and of its conquest has been definitely realized.
     It is now clear that the state of things of which the
     tablets discovered in Egypt give us a picture, could only be
     explained by the hypothesis of a Babylonish supremacy of
     long duration over the peoples situated between the
     Euphrates and the Mediterranean.

Among the most celebrated names in ancient history, that of Babylon is
perhaps the only one which still suggests to our minds a sense of vague
magnificence and undefined dominion. Cities in other parts of the world,
it is true, have rivalled Babylon in magnificence and power: Egypt could
boast of more than one such city, and their ruins to this day present to
our gaze more monuments worthy of admiration than Babylon ever contained
in the days of her greatest prosperity. The pyramids of Memphis and the
colossal statues of Thebes still stand erect, while the ziggurats and
the palaces of Chaldaea are but mounds of clay crumbling into the plain;
but the Egyptian monuments are visible and tangible objects; we can
calculate to within a few inches the area they cover and the elevation
of their summits, and the very precision with which we can gauge their
enormous size tends to limit and lessen their effect upon us. How is it
possible to give free rein to the imagination when the subject of it is
strictly limited by exact and determined measurements? At Babylon, on
the contrary, there is nothing remaining to check the flight of fancy: a
single hillock, scoured by the rains of centuries, marks the spot where
the temple of Bel stood erect in its splendour; another represents the
hanging gardens, while the ridges running to the right and left were
once the ramparts.

[Illustration: 029.jpg THE RUINS OF BABYLON]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a drawing reproduced in Hofer. It
     shows the state of the ruins in the first half of our
     century, before the excavations carried out at European
     instigation.

The vestiges of a few buildings remain above the mounds of rubble,
and as soon as the pickaxe is applied to any spot, irregular layers of
bricks, enamelled tiles, and inscribed tablets are brought to light--in
fine, all those numberless objects which bear witness to the presence
of man and to his long sojourn on the spot. But these vestiges are so
mutilated and disfigured that the principal outlines of the buildings
cannot be determined with any certainty, and afford us no data for
guessing their dimensions. He who would attempt to restore the ancient
appearance of the place would find at his disposal nothing but vague
indications, from which he might draw almost any conclusion he pleased.

[Illustration: 030.jpg PLAN OF THE RUINS OF BABYLON]

     Prepared by Thuillier, from a plan reproduced in G.
     Rawlinson, _Herodotus_

Palaces and temples would take a shape in his imagination on a plan
which never entered the architect's mind; the sacred towers as they rose
would be disposed in more numerous stages than they actually possessed;
the enclosing walls would reach such an elevation that they must have
quickly fallen under their own weight if they had ever been carried
so high: the whole restoration, accomplished without any certain data,
embodies the concept of something vast and superhuman, well befitting
the city of blood and tears, cursed by the Hebrew prophets. Babylon was,
however, at the outset, but a poor town, situated on both banks of the
Euphrates, in a low-lying, flat district, intersected by canals and
liable at times to become marshy. The river at this point runs almost
directly north and south, between two banks of black mud, the base of
which it is perpetually undermining. As long as the city existed, the
vertical thrust of the public buildings and houses kept the river within
bounds, and even since it was finally abandoned, the masses of _debris_
have almost everywhere had the effect of resisting its encroachment;
towards the north, however, the line of its ancient quays has given
way and sunk beneath the waters, while the stream, turning its course
westwards, has transferred to the eastern bank the gardens and mounds
originally on the opposite side. E-sagilla, the temple of the lofty
summit, the sanctuary of Merodach, probably occupied the vacant space in
the depression between the Babil and the hill of the Kasr.*

     * The temple of Merodach, called by the Greeks the temple of
     Belos, has been placed on the site called Babil by the two
     Rawlinsons; and by Oppert; Hormuzd Rassam and Fr. Delitzsch
     locate it between the hill of Junjuma and the Kasr, and
     considers Babil to be a palace of Nebuchadrezzar.

In early times it must have presented much the same appearance as
the sanctuaries of Central Chaldaea: a mound of crude brick formed the
substructure of the dwellings of the priests and the household of the
god, of the shops for the offerings and for provisions, of the treasury,
and of the apartments for purification or for sacrifice, while the whole
was surmounted by a ziggurat. On other neighbouring platforms rose the
royal palace and the temples of lesser divinities,* elevated above the
crowd of private habitations.

     * As, for instance, the temple E-temenanki on the actual
     hill of Amran-ibn-Ali, the temple of Shamash, and others,
     which there will be occasion to mention later on in dealing
     with the second Chaldaean empire.

[Illustration: 032.jpg THE KASK SEEN FROM THE SOUTH]

     Drawn by Boudier, from the engraving by Thomas in Perrot-
     Chipiez.

The houses of the people were closely built around these stately piles,
on either side of narrow lanes. A massive wall surrounded the whole,
shutting out the view on all sides; it even ran along the bank of the
Euphrates, for fear of a surprise from that quarter, and excluded the
inhabitants from the sight of their own river. On the right bank rose
a suburb, which was promptly fortified and enlarged, so as to become a
second Babylon, almost equalling the first in extent and population.

[Illustration: 033.jpg THE TELL OF BORSIPPA, THE PRESENT BIRS-NIMRUD]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after the plate published in
     Ohesney.

Beyond this, on the outskirts, extended gardens and fields, finding at
length their limit at the territorial boundaries of two other towns,
Kutha and Borsippa, whose black outlines are visible to the east and
south-west respectively, standing isolated above the plain. Sippara on
the north, Nippur on the south, and the mysterious Agade, completed the
circle of sovereign states which so closely hemmed in the city of Bel.
We may surmise with all probability that the history of Babylon in early
times resembled in the main that of the Egyptian Thebes. It was a small
seigneury in the hands of petty princes ceaselessly at war with petty
neighbours: bloody struggles, with alternating successes and reverses,
were carried on for centuries with no decisive results, until the day
came when some more energetic or fortunate dynasty at length crushed its
rivals, and united under one rule first all the kingdoms of Northern and
finally those of Southern Chaldaea.

The lords of Babylon had, ordinarily, a twofold function, religious
and military, the priest at first taking precedence of the soldier, but
gradually yielding to the latter as the town increased in power.
They were merely the priestly representatives or administrators of
Babel--_shakannaku Babili_--and their authority was not considered
legitimate until officially confirmed by the god. Each ruler was obliged
to go in state to the temple of Bel Merodach within a year of his
accession: there he had to take the hands of the divine statue, just
as a vassal would do homage to his liege, and those only of the native
sovereigns or the foreign conquerors could legally call themselves Kings
of Babylon--_sharru Babili_--who had not only performed this rite, but
renewed it annually.*

     * The meaning of the ceremony in which the kings of Babylon
     "took the hands of Bel" has been given by Winckler; Tiele
     compares it very aptly with the rite performed by the
     Egyptian kings--at Heliopolis, for example, when they
     entered alone the sanctuary of Ra, and there contemplated
     the god face to face. The rite was probably repeated
     annually, at the time of the Zakmuku, that is, the New Year
     festival.

Sargon the Elder had lived in Babylon, and had built himself a palace
there: hence the tradition of later times attributed to this city the
glory of having been the capital of the great empire founded by the
Akkadian dynasties. The actual sway of Babylon, though arrested to the
south by the petty states of Lower Chaldaea, had not encountered to the
north or north-west any enemy to menace seriously its progress in that
semi-fabulous period of its history. The vast plain extending between
the Euphrates and the Tigris is as it were a continuation of the
Arabian desert, and is composed of a grey, or in parts a whitish, soil
impregnated with selenite and common salt, and irregularly superimposed
upon a bed of gypsum, from which asphalt oozes up here and there,
forming slimy pits. Frost is of rare occurrence in winter, and rain is
infrequent at any season; the sun soon burns up the scanty herbage
which the spring showers have encouraged, but fleshy plants successfully
resist its heat, such as the common salsola, the salsola soda, the
pallasia, a small mimosa, and a species of very fragrant wormwood,
forming together a vari-coloured vegetation which gives shelter to
the ostrich and the wild ass, and affords the flocks of the nomads a
grateful pasturage when the autumn has set in. The Euphrates bounds
these solitudes, but without watering them. The river flows, as far as
the eye can see, between two ranges of rock or bare hills, at the foot
of which a narrow strip of alluvial soil supports rows of date-palms
intermingled here and there with poplars, sumachs, and willows. Wherever
there is a break in the two cliffs, or where they recede from the river,
a series of shadufs takes possession of the bank, and every inch of the
soil is brought under cultivation. The aspect of the country remains
unchanged as far as the embouchure of the Khabur; but there a black
alluvial soil replaces the saliferous clay, and if only the water were
to remain on the land in sufficient quantity, the country would be
unrivalled in the world for the abundance and variety of its crops.

[Illustration: 036.jpg THE BANKS OF THE EUPHRATES AT ZULEIBEH]

     Drawn by Boudier, from the plate in Chesney.

The fields, which are regularly sown in the neighbourhood of the small
towns, yield magnificent harvests of wheat and barley: while in the
prairie-land beyond the cultivated ground the grass grows so high that
it comes up to the horses' girths. In some places the meadows are so
covered with varieties of flowers, growing in dense masses, that the
effect produced is that of a variegated carpet; dogs sent in among them
in search of game, emerge covered with red, blue, and yellow pollen.
This fragrant prairie-land is the delight of bees, which produce
excellent and abundant honey, while the vine and olive find there a
congenial soil. The population was unequally distributed in this region.
Some half-savage tribes were accustomed to wander over the plain,
dwelling in tents, and supporting life by the chase and by the rearing
of cattle; but the bulk of the inhabitants were concentrated around the
affluents of the Euphrates and Tigris, or at the foot of the northern
mountains wherever springs could be found, as in Assur, Singar, Nisibis,
Tilli,* Kharranu, and in all the small fortified towns and nameless
townlets whose ruins are scattered over the tract of country between the
Khabur and the Balikh. Kharranu, or Harran, stood, like an advance guard
of Chaldaean civilization, near the frontiers of Syria and Asia Minor.**
To the north it commanded the passes which opened on to the basins of
the Upper Euphrates and Tigris; it protected the roads leading to the
east and south-east in the direction of the table-land of Iran and the
Persian Gulf, and it was the key to the route by which the commerce of
Babylon reached the countries lying around the Mediterranean. We have no
means of knowing what affinities as regards origin or race connected
it with Uru, but the same moon-god presided over the destinies of both
towns, and the Sin of Harran enjoyed in very early times a renown nearly
equal to that of his namesake.

     * Tilli, the only one of these towns mentioned with any
     certainty in the inscriptions of the first Chaldaean empire,
     is the Tela of classical authors, and probably the present
     Weranshaher, near the sources of the Balikh.

     ** Kharranu was identified by the earlier Assyriologists
     with the Harran of the Hebrews (_Gen._ v. 12), the Carrhse
     of classical authors, and this identification is still
     generally accepted.

He was worshipped under the symbol of a conical stone, probably an
aerolite, surmounted by a gilded crescent, and the ground-plan of the
town roughly described a crescent-shaped curve in honour of its patron.
His cult, even down to late times, was connected with cruel practices;
generations after the advent to power of the Abbasside caliphs, his
faithful worshippers continued to sacrifice to him human victims, whose
heads, prepared according to the ancient rite, were accustomed to give
oracular responses.* The government of the surrounding country was
in the hands of princes who were merely vicegerents:** Chaldaean
civilization before the beginnings of history had more or less laid hold
of them, and made them willing subjects to the kings of Babylon.***

     * Without seeking to specify exactly which were the
     doctrines introduced into Harranian religion subsequently to
     the Christian era, we may yet affirm that the base of this
     system of faith was merely a very distorted form of the
     ancient Chaldaean worship practised in the town.

     ** Only one vicegerent of Mesopotamia is known at present,
     and he belongs to the Assyrian epoch. His seal is preserved
     in the British Museum.

     *** The importance of Harran in the development of the
     history of the first Chaldaean empire was pointed out by
     Winckler; but the theory according to which this town was
     the capital of the kingdom, called by the Chaldaean and
     Assyrian scribes "the kingdom of the world," is justly
     combated by Tiele.

These sovereigns were probably at the outset somewhat obscure
personages, without much prestige, being sometimes independent and
sometimes subject to the rulers of neighbouring states, among others to
those of Agade. In later times, when Babylon had attained to universal
power, and it was desired to furnish her kings with a continuous
history, the names of these earlier rulers were sought out, and added
to those of such foreign princes as had from time to time enjoyed the
sovereignty over them--thus forming an interminable list which for
materials and authenticity would well compare with that of the Thinite
Pharaohs. This list has come down to us incomplete, and its remains do
not permit of our determining the exact order of reigns, or the status
of the individuals who composed it. We find in it, in the period
immediately subsequent to the Deluge, mention of mythical heroes,
followed by names which are still semi-legendary, such as Sargon the
Elder; the princes of the series were, however, for the most part
real beings, whose memories had been preserved by tradition, or whose
monuments were still existing in certain localities. Towards the end of
the XXVth century before our era, however, a dynasty rose into power of
which all the members come within the range of history.*

     * This dynasty, which is known to us in its entirety by the
     two lists of G. Smith and by Pinches, was legitimately
     composed of only eleven kings, and was known as the
     Babylonian dynasty, although Sayce suspects it to be of
     Arabian origin. It is composed as follows:--

[Illustration: 039.jpg TABLE]

The dates of this dynasty are not fixed with entire certainty. The first
of them, Sumuabim, has left us some contracts bearing the dates of one
or other of the fifteen years of his reign, and documents of public or
private interest abound in proportion as we follow down the line of his
successors. Sumulailu, who reigned after him, was only distantly related
to his predecessor; but from Sumulailu to Sam-shusatana the kingly power
was transmitted from father to son without a break for nine generations,
if we may credit the testimony of the official lists.*

     * Simulailu, also written Samu-la-ilu, whom Mr. Pinches has
     found in a contract tablet associated with Pungunila as
     king, was not the son of Sumuabim, since the lists do not
     mention him as such; he must, however, have been connected
     with some sort of relationship, or by marriage, with his
     predecessor, since both are placed in the same dynasty. A
     few contracts of Sumulailu are given by Meissner. Samsuiluna
     calls him "my forefather (d-gula-mu), the fifth king before
     me."

     Hommel believes that the order of the dynasties has been
     reversed, and that the first upon the lists we possess was
     historically the second; he thus places the Babylonian
     dynasty between 2035 and 1731 B.C. His opinion has not been
     generally adopted, but every Assyriologist dealing with this
     period proposes a different date for the reigns in this
     dynasty; to take only one characteristic example, Khammurabi
     is placed by Oppert in the year 2394-2339, by Delitzsch-
     Murdter in 2287-2232, by Winckler in 2264-2210, and by
     Peiser in 2139-2084, and by Carl Niebuhr in 2081-2026.


Contemporary records, however, prove that the course of affairs did
not always run so smoothly. They betray the existence of at least
one usurper--Immeru--who, even if he did not assume the royal titles,
enjoyed the supreme power for several years between the reigns of Zabu
and Abilsin. The lives of these rulers closely resembled those of their
contemporaries of Southern Chaldaea. They dredged the ancient canals, or
constructed new ones; they restored the walls of their fortresses, or
built fresh strongholds on the frontier;* they religiously kept the
festivals of the divinities belonging to their terrestrial domain, to
whom they annually rendered solemn homage.

     * Sumulailu had built six such large strongholds of brick,
     which were repaired by Samsuiluna five generations later. A
     contract of Sinmuballit is dated the year in which he built
     the great wall of a strong place, the name of which is
     unfortunately illegible on the fragment which we possess.

They repaired the temples as a matter of course, and enriched them
according to their means; we even know that Zabu, the third in order
of the line of sovereigns, occupied himself in building the sanctuary
Eulbar of Anunit, in Sippara. There is evidence that they possessed the
small neighbouring kingdoms of Kishu, Sippara, and Kuta, and that they
had consolidated them into a single state, of which Babylon was the
capital. To the south their possessions touched upon those of the kings
of Uru, but the frontier was constantly shifting, so that at one time an
important city such as Nippur belonged to them, while at another it fell
under the dominion of the southern provinces. Perpetual war was waged
in the narrow borderland which separated the two rival states, resulting
apparently in the balance of power being kept tolerably equal between
them under the immediate successors of Sumuabim* --the obscure Sumulailu,
Zabum, the usurper Immeru, Abilsin and Sinmuballit--until the reign of
Khammurabi (the son of Sinmuballit), who finally made it incline to
his side.** The struggle in which he was engaged, and which, after many
vicissitudes, he brought to a successful issue, was the more decisive,
since he had to contend against a skilful and energetic adversary who
had considerable forces at his disposal. Birnsin*** was, in reality, of
Elamite race, and as he held the province of Yamutbal in appanage, he
was enabled to muster, in addition to his Chaldaean battalions, the army
of foreigners who had conquered the maritime regions at the mouth of the
Tigris and the Euphrates.

     * None of these facts are as yet historically proved: we
     may, however, conjecture with some probability what was the
     general state of things, when we remember that the first
     kings of Babylon were contemporaries of the last independent
     sovereigns of Southern Chaldaea.

     ** The name of this prince has been read in several ways--
     Hammurabi, Khammurabi, by the earlier Assyriologists,
     subsequently Hammuragash, Khammuragash, as being of Elamite
     or Cossoan extraction: the reading Khammurabi is at present
     the prevailing one. The bilingual list published by Pinches
     makes Khammurabi an equivalent of the Semitic names Kimta-
     rapashtum. Hence Halevy concluded that Khammurabi was a
     series of ideograms, and that Kimtarapashtum was the true
     reading of the name; his proposal, partially admitted by
     Hommel, furnishes us with a mixed reading of Khammurapaltu,
     Amraphel. [Hommel is now convinced of the identity of the
     Amraphel of _Gen._ xiv. I with Khammurabi.--Te.] Sayce,
     moreover, adopts the reading Khammurabi, and assigns to him
     an Arabian origin. The part played by this prince was
     pointed out at an early date by Menant. Recent discoveries
     have shown the important share which he had in developing
     the Chaldaean empire, and have, increased his reputation with
     Assyriologists.

     *** The name of this king has been the theme of heated
     discussions: it was at first pronounced Aradsin, Ardusin, or
     Zikarsin; it is now read in several different ways--Rimsin,
     or Eriaku, Riaku, Rimagu. Others have made a distinction
     between the two forms, and have made out of them the names
     of two different kings. They are all variants of the same
     name. I have adopted the form Rimsin, which is preferred by
     a few Assyriologists. [The tablets recently discovered by
     Mr. Pinches, referring to Kudur-lagamar and Tudkhula, which
     he has published in a Paper road before the Victoria
     Institute, Jan. 20, 1896, have shown that the true reading
     is Eri-Aku. The Elamite name Eri-Aku, "servant of the moon-
     god," was changed by some of his subjects into the
     Babylonian Rim-Sin, "Have mercy, O Moon-god!" just as
     Abesukh, the Hebrew Absihu'a ("the father of welfare") was
     transformed into the Babylonian Ebisum ("the actor").--Ed.]


It was not the first time that Elam had audaciously interfered in
the affairs of her neighbours. In fabulous times, one of her mythical
kings--Khumbaba the Ferocious--had oppressed. Uruk, and Gilgames with
all his valour was barely able to deliver the town. Sargon the Elder is
credited with having subdued Elam; the kings and vicegerents of Lagash,
as well as those of Uru and. Larsam, had measured forces with Anshan,
but with no decisive issue. From time to time they obtained an
advantage, and we find recorded in the annals victories gained by Gudea,
Ine-sin, or Bursin, but to be followed only by fresh reverses; at the
close of such campaigns, and in order to seal the ensuing peace, a
princess of Susa would be sent as a bride to one of the Chaldaean cities,
or a Chaldaean lady of royal birth would enter the harem of a king of
Anshan. Elam was protected along the course of the Tigris and on the
shores of the Nar-Marratum by a wide marshy region, impassable except
at a few fixed and easily defended places. The alluvial plain extending
behind the marshes was as rich and fertile as that of Chaldaea. Wheat and
barley ordinarily yielded an hundred and at times two hundredfold; the
towns were surrounded by a shadeless belt of palms; the almond, fig,
acacia, poplar, and willow extended in narrow belts along the rivers'
edge. The climate closely resembles that of Chaldaja: if the midday heat
in summer is more pitiless, it is at least tempered by more frequent
east winds. The ground, however, soon begins to rise, ascending
gradually towards the north-east. The distant and uniform line of
mountain-peaks grows loftier on the approach of the traveller, and the
hills begin to appear one behind another, clothed halfway up with thick
forests, but bare on their summits, or scantily covered with meagre
vegetation. They comprise, in fact, six or seven parallel ranges,
resembling natural ramparts piled up between the country of the Tigris
and the table-land of Iran. The intervening valleys were formerly lakes,
having had for the most part no communication with each other and no
outlet into the sea. In the course of centuries they had dried up,
leaving a thick deposit of mud in the hollows of their ancient beds,
from which sprang luxurious and abundant harvests. The rivers--the
Uknu,* the Ididi,** and the Ulai***--which water this region are, on
reaching more level ground, connected by canals, and are constantly
shifting their beds in the light soil of the Susian plain: they soon
attain a width equal to that of the Euphrates, but after a short time
lose half their volume in swamps, and empty themselves at the present
day into the Shatt-el-Arab. They flowed formerly into that part of the
Persian Gulf which extended as far as Kornah, and the sea thus formed
the southern frontier of the kingdom.

     * The Uknu is the Kerkhah of the present day, the Choaspes
     of the Greeks.

     ** The Ididi was at first identified with the ancient
     Pasitigris, which scholars then desired to distinguish from
     the Eulseos: it is now known to be the arm of the Karun
     which runs to Dizful, the Koprates of classical times, which
     has sometimes been confounded with the Eulaws.

     *** The Ulai, mentioned in the Hebrew texts (Ban. viii. 2,
     16), the Euloos of classical writers, also called
     Pasitigris. It is the Karun of the present day, until its
     confluence with the Shaur, and subsequently the Shaur
     itself, which waters the foot of the Susian hills.

From earliest times this country was inhabited by three distinct
peoples, whose descendants may still be distinguished at the present
day, and although they have dwindled in numbers and become mixed with
elements of more recent origin, the resemblance to their forefathers
is still very remarkable. There were, in the first place, the short
and robust people of well-knit figure, with brown skins, black hair and
eyes, who belonged to that negritic race which inhabited a considerable
part of Asia in prehistoric times.*

     * The connection of the negroid type of Susians with the
     negritic races of India and Oceania, has been proved, in the
     course of M. Dieulafoy's expedition to the Susian plains and
     the ancient provinces of Elam.

[Illustration: 045.jpg MAP OF CHALDAEA AND ELAM.]

[Illustration: 046.jpg AN ANCIENT SUSIAN OF NEGRETIC RACE]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief of Sargon II. in
     the Louvre.

These prevailed in the lowlands and the valleys, where the warm, damp
climate favoured their development; but they also spread into the
mountain region, and had pushed their outposts as far as the first
slopes of the Iranian table-land. They there contact with white-skinned
of medium height, who were probably allied to the nations of Northern
and Central Asia--to the Scythians,* for instance, if it is permissible
to use a vague term employed by the Ancients.

     * This last-mentioned people is, by some authors, for
     reasons which, so far, can hardly be considered conclusive,
     connected with the so-called Sumerian race, which we find
     settled in Chaldaea. They are said to have been the first to
     employ horses and chariots in warfare.

[Illustration: 047.jpg NATIVE OF MIXED NEGRITIC RACE FROM SUSIANA]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph furnished by
     Marcel Dieulafoy.


Semites of the same stock as those of Chaldaea pushed forward as far as
the east bank of the Tigris, and settling mainly among the marshes led a
precarious life by fishing and pillaging.* The country of the plain
was called Anzan, or Anshan,** and the mountain region Numma, or Ilamma,
"the high lands:" these two names were subsequently used to denote the
whole country, and Ilamma has survived in the Hebrew word Elam.*** Susa,
the most important and flourishing town in the kingdom, was situated
between the Ulai and the Ididi, some twenty-five or thirty miles from
the nearest of the mountain ranges.

     * From the earliest times we meet beyond the Tigris with
     names like that of Durilu, a fact which proves the existence
     of races speaking a Semitic dialect in the countries under
     the suzerainty of the King of Elam: in the last days of the
     Chaldaean empire they had assumed such importance that the
     Hebrews made out Elam to be one of the sons of Shem (_Gen._
     x. 22).

     ** Anzan, Anshan, and, by assimilation of the nasal with the
     sibilant, Ashshan. This name has already been mentioned in
     the inscriptions of the kings and vicegerents of Lagash and
     in the _Book of Prophecies_ of the ancient Chaldaean
     astronomers; it also occurs in the royal preamble of Cyrus
     and his ancestors, who like him were styled "kings of
     Anshan." It had been applied to the whole country of Elam,
     and afterwards to Persia. Some are of opinion that it was
     the name of a part of Elam, viz. that inhabited by the
     Turanian Medes who spoke the second language of the
     Achaemenian inscriptions, the eastern half, bounded by the
     Tigris and the Persian Gulf, consisting of a flat and swampy
     land. These differences of opinion gave rise to a heated
     controversy; it is now, however, pretty generally admitted
     that Anzan-Anshan was really the plain of Elam, from the
     mountains to the sea, and one set of authorities affirms
     that the word Anzan may have meant "plain" in the language
     of the country, while others hesitate as yet to pronounce
     definitely on this point.

     *** The meaning of "Nunima," "Ilamma," "Ilamtu," in the
     group of words used to indicate Elam, had been recognised
     even by the earliest Assyriologists; the name originally
     referred to the hilly country on the north and east of Susa.
     To the Hebrews, Elam was one of the sons of Shem (Gen. x.
     22). The Greek form of the name is Elymais, and some of the
     classical geographers were well enough acquainted with the
     meaning of the word to be able to distinguish the region to
     which it referred from Susiana proper.

[Illustration: 048.jpg THE TUMULUS OF SUSA, AS IT APPEARED TOWARDS THE
MIDDLE OF THE XIXth CENTURY]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, after a plate in Chesney.

Its fortress and palace were raised upon the slopes of a mound which
overlooked the surrounding country:* at its base, to the eastward,
stretched the town, with its houses of sun-dried bricks.**

     * Susa, in the language of the country, was called Shushun;
     this name was transliterated into Chaldaeo-Assyrian, by
     Shushan, Shushi.

     ** Strabo tells us, on the authority of Polycletus, that the
     town had no walls in the time of Alexander, and extended
     over a space two hundred stadia in length; in the
     VIII century B.C. it was enclosed by walls with bastions,
     which are shown on a bas-relief of Assurbanipal, but it was
     surrounded by unfortified suburbs.

Further up the course of the Uknu, lay the following cities: Madaktu,
the Badaca of classical authors,* rivalling Susa in strength and
importance; Naditu,** Til-Khumba,*** Dur-Undash,**** Khaidalu.^--all
large walled towns, most of which assumed the title of royal cities.
Elam in reality constituted a kind of feudal empire, composed of several
tribes--the Habardip, the Khushshi, the Umliyash, the people of Yamutbal
and of Yatbur^^--all independent of each other, but often united under
the authority of one sovereign, who as a rule chose Susa as the seat of
government.

     * Madaktu, Mataktu, the Badaka of Diodorus, situated on the
     Eulaaos, between Susa and Ecbatana, has been placed by
     Rawlinson near the bifurcation of the Kerkhah, either at
     Paipul or near Aiwan-i-Kherkah, where there are some rather
     important and ancient ruins; Billerbeck prefers to put it at
     the mouth of the valley of Zal-fer, on the site at present
     occupied by the citadel of Kala-i-Riza.

     ** Naditu is identified by Finzi with the village of
     Natanzah, near Ispahan; it ought rather to be looked for in
     the neighbourhood of Sarna.

     *** Til-Khumba, the Mound of Khumba, so named after one of
     the principal Elamite gods, was, perhaps, situated among the
     ruins of Budbar, towards the confluence of the Ab-i-Kirind
     and Kerkhah, or possibly higher up in the mountain, in the
     vicinity of Asmanabad.

     **** Dur-Undash, Dur-Undasi, has been identified, without
     absolutely conclusive reason, with the fortress of Kala-i-
     Dis on the Disful-Rud.

     ^ Khaidalu, Khidalu, is perhaps the present fortress of Dis-
     Malkan.

     ^^ The countries of Yatbur and Yamutbal extended into the
     plain between the marshes of the Tigris and the mountain;
     the town of Durilu was near the Yamutbal region, if not in
     that country itself. Umliyash lay between the Uknu and the
     Tigris.

[Illustration: 050.jpg Page Image]

The language is not represented by any idioms now spoken, and its
affinities with the Sumerian which some writers have attempted to
establish, are too uncertain to make it safe to base any theory upon
them.*

     * A great part of the Susian inscriptions have been
     collected by Fr. Lenormant. An attempt has been made to
     identify the language in which they are written with the
     Sumero-accadian, and authorities now generally agree in
     considering the Arcaemenian inscriptions of the second type
     as representative of its modern form. Hommel connects it
     with Georgian, and includes it in a great linguistic family,
     which comprises, besides these two idioms, the Hittite, the
     Cappadocian, the Armenian of the Van inscriptions, and the
     Cosstean. Oppert claims to have discovered on a tablet in
     the British Museum a list of words belonging to one of the
     idioms (probably Semitic) of Susiana, which differs alike
     from the Suso-Medic and the Assyrian.

The little that we know of Elamite religion reveals to us a mysterious
world, full of strange names and vague forms. Over their hierarchy
there presided a deity who was called Shushinak (the Susian), Dimesh or
Samesh, Dagbag, As-siga, Adaene, and possibly Khumba and AEmman, whom
the Chaldaens identified with their god Ninip; his statue was concealed
in a sanctuary inaccessible to the profane, but it was dragged from
thence by Assurbanipal of Nineveh in the VIIth century B.C.* This deity
was associated with six others of the first rank, who were divided into
two triads--Shumudu, Lagamaru, Partikira; Ammankasibar, Uduran, and
Sapak: of these names, the least repellent, Ammankasibar, may possibly
be the Memnon of the Greeks. The dwelling of these divinities was near
Susa, in the depths of a sacred forest to which the priests and kings
alone had access: their images were brought out on certain days to
receive solemn homage, and were afterwards carried back to their shrine
accompanied by a devout and reverent multitude. These deities received
a tenth of the spoil after any successful campaign--the offerings
comprising statues of the enemies' gods, valuable vases, ingots of
gold and silver, furniture, and stuffs. The Elamite armies were well
organized, and under a skilful general became irresistible. In other
respects the Elamites closely resembled the Chaldaeans, pursuing the same
industries and having the same agricultural and commercial instincts. In
the absence of any bas-reliefs and inscriptions peculiar to this people,
we may glean from the monuments of Lagash and Babylon a fair idea of the
extent of their civilization in its earliest stages.

     * _Shushinak_ is an adjective derived from the name of the
     town of Susa. The real name of the god was probably kept
     secret and rarely uttered. The names which appear by the
     side of Shushinak in the text published by H. Rawlinson, as
     equivalents of the Babylonian Ninip, perhaps represent
     different deities; we may well ask whether the deity may not
     be the Khumba, Umma, Umman, who recurs so frequently in the
     names of men and places, and who has hitherto never been met
     with alone in any formula or dedicatory tablet.

The cities of the Euphrates, therefore, could have been sensible of but
little change, when the chances of war transferred them from the rule of
their native princes to that of an Elamite. The struggle once over, and
the resulting evils repaired as far as practicable, the people of these
towns resumed their usual ways, hardly conscious of the presence of
their foreign ruler. The victors, for their part, became assimilated so
rapidly with the vanquished, that at the close of a generation or so
the conquering dynasty was regarded legitimate and national one, loyally
attached to the traditions and religion of its adopted country. In the
year 2285 B.C., towards the close of the reign of Nurramman, or in
the earlier part of that of Siniddinam, a King of Elam, by name
Kudur-nakhunta, triumphantly marched through Chaldaea from end to end,
devastating the country and sparing neither town nor temple: Uruk lost
its statue of Nana, which was carried off as a trophy and placed in the
sanctuary of Susa. The inhabitants long mourned the detention of their
goddess, and a hymn of lamentation, probably composed for the occasion
by one of their priests, kept the remembrance of the disaster fresh in
their memories. "Until when, oh lady, shall the impious enemy ravage the
country!--In thy queen-city, Uruk, the destruction is accomplished,--in
Eulbar, the temple of thy oracle, blood has flowed like water,--upon the
whole of thy lands has he poured out flame, and it is spread abroad like
smoke.--Oh, lady, verily it is hard for me to bend under the yoke of
misfortune!--? Oh, lady, thou hast wrapped me about, thou hast plunged
me, in sorrow!--The impious mighty one has broken me in pieces like a
reed,--and I know not what to resolve, I trust not in myself,--like a
bed of reeds I sigh day and night!--I, thy servant, I bow myself before
thee!" It would appear that the whole of Chaldaea, including Babylon
itself, was forced to acknowledge the supremacy of the invader;* a
Susian empire thus absorbed Chaldaea, reducing its states to feudal
provinces, and its princes to humble vassals. Kudur-nakhunta having
departed, the people of Larsa exerted themselves to the utmost to repair
the harm that he had done, and they succeeded but too well, since their
very prosperity was the cause only a short time after of the outburst
of another storm. Siniddinam, perhaps, desired to shake off the Elamite
yoke. Simtishilkhak, one of the successors of Kudur-nakhunta, had
conceded the principality of Yamutbal as a fief to Kudur-mabug, one
of his sons. Kudur-mabug appears to have been a conqueror of no mean
ability, for he claims, in his inscriptions, the possession of the whole
of Syria.**

     * The submission of Babylon is evident from the title Adda
     Martu, "sovereign of the West," assumed by several of the
     Elamite princes (of. p. 65 of the present work): in order to
     extend his authority beyond the Euphrates, it was necessary
     for the King of Elam to be first of all master of Babylon.
     In the early days of Assyriology it was supposed that this
     period of Elamite supremacy coincided with the Median
     dynasty of Berosus.

     ** His preamble contains the titles _adda Martu,_ "prince of
     Syria;" _adda lamutbal_, "prince of Yamutbal." The word
     _adda_ seems properly to mean "lather," and the literal
     translation of the full title would probably be "father of
     Syria," "_father_ of Yamutbal," whence the secondary
     meanings "master, lord, prince," which have been
     provisionally accepted by most Assyriologists. Tiele, and
     Winckler after him, have suggested that Martu is here
     equivalent to Yamutbal, and that it was merely used to
     indicate the western part of Elam; Winckler afterwards
     rejected this hypothesis, and has come round to the general
     opinion.

He obtained a victory over Siniddinam, and having dethroned him, placed
the administration of the kingdom in the hands of his own son Eimsin.
This prince, who was at first a feudatory, afterwards associated in the
government with his father, and finally sole monarch after the
latter's death, married a princess of Chaldaean blood, and by this means
legitimatized his usurpation in the eyes of his subjects. His domain,
which lay on both sides of the Tigris and of the Euphrates, comprised,
besides the principality of Yamutbal, all the towns dependent on Sumer
and Accad--Uru, Larsa, Uruk, and Nippur, He acquitted himself as a good
sovereign in the sight of gods and men: he repaired the brickwork in the
temple of Nannar at Uru; he embellished the temple of Shamash at Larsa,
and caused two statues of copper to be cast in honour of the god; he
also rebuilt Lagash and Grirsu. The city of Uruk had been left a heap of
ruins after the withdrawal of Kudur-nakhunta: he set about the work of
restoration, constructed a sanctuary to Papsukal, raised the ziggurat of
Nana, and consecrated to the goddess an entire set of temple furniture
to replace that carried off by the Elamites. He won the adhesion of the
priests by piously augmenting their revenues, and throughout his reign
displayed remarkable energy. Documents exist which attribute to him the
reduction of Durilu, on the borders of Elam and the Chaldaean states;
others contain discreet allusions to a perverse enemy who disturbed
his peace in the north, and whom he successfully repulsed. He drove
Sinmuballit out of Ishin, and this victory so forcibly impressed
his contemporaries, that they made it the starting-point of a new
semi-official era; twenty-eight years after the event, private contracts
still continued to be dated by reference to the taking of Ishin.
Sinmuballit's son, Khammurabi, was more fortunate. Eimsin vainly
appealed for help against him to his relative and suzerain
Kudur-lagamar, who had succeeded Simtishilkhak at Susa. Eimsin was
defeated, and disappeared from the scene of action, leaving no trace
behind him, though we may infer that he took refuge in his fief of
Yamutbal. The conquest by Khammurabi was by no means achieved at one
blow, the enemy offering an obstinate resistance. He was forced to
destroy several fortresses, the inhabitants of which had either risen
against him or had refused to do him homage, among them being those
of Meir* and Malgu. When the last revolt had been put down, all the
countries speaking the language of Chaldaea and sharing its civilization
were finally united into a single kingdom, of which Khammurabi
proclaimed himself the head. Other princes who had preceded him had
enjoyed the same opportunities, but their efforts had never been
successful in establishing an empire of any duration; the various
elements had been bound together for a moment, merely to be dispersed
again after a short interval. The work of Khammurabi, on the contrary,
was placed on a solid foundation, and remained unimpaired under his
successors. Not only did he hold sway without a rival in the south as
in the north, but the titles indicating the rights he had acquired over
Sumer and Accad were inserted in his Protocol after those denoting his
hereditary possessions,--the city of Bel and the four houses of the
world. Khammurabi's victory marks the close of those long centuries of
gradual evolution during which the peoples of the Lower Euphrates passed
from division to unity. Before his reign there had been as many states
as cities, and as many dynasties as there were states; after him there
was but one kingdom under one line of kings.

     * Mairu, Meir, has been identified with Shurippak; but it
     is, rather, the town of Mar, now Tell-Id. A and Lagamal, the
     Elamite Lagamar, were worshipped there. It was the seat of a
     linen manufacture, and possessed large shipping.

Khammurabi's long reign of fifty-five years has hitherto yielded us but
a small number of monuments--seals, heads of sceptres, alabaster vases,
and pompous inscriptions, scarcely any of them being of historical
interest. He was famous for the number of his campaigns, no details of
which, however, have come to light, but the dedication of one of his
statues celebrates his good fortune on the battlefield. "Bel has lent
thee sovereign majesty: thou, what awaitest thou?--Sin has lent thee
royalty: thou, what awaitest thou?--Ninip has lent thee his supreme
weapon: thou, what awaitest thou?--The goddess of light, Ishtar,
has lent thee the shock of arms and the fray: thou, what awaitest
thou?--Shamash and Bamman are thy varlets: thou, what awaitest thou?--It
is Khammurabi, the king, the powerful chieftain--who cuts the enemies
in pieces,--the whirlwind of battle--who overthrows the country of the
rebels--who stays combats, who crushes rebellions,--who destroys
the stubborn like images of clay,--who overcomes the obstacles of
inaccessible mountains." The majority of these expeditions were, no
doubt, consequent on the victory which destroyed the power of Kimsin.
It would not have sufficed merely to drive back the Elamites beyond the
Tigris; it was necessary to strike a blow within their own territory to
avoid a recurrence of hostilities, which might have endangered the still
recent work of conquest. Here, again, Khammurabi seems to have met with
his habitual success.

[Illustration: 057.jpg HEAD OF A SCEPTRE IN COPPER, BEARING THE NAME OF
KHAM-MURABI]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a rapid sketch made at the
     British Museum.

Ashnunak was a border district, and shared the fate of all the provinces
on the eastern bank of the Tigris, being held sometimes by Elam and
sometimes by Chaldaea; properly speaking, it was a country of Semitic
speech, and was governed by viceroys owning allegiance, now to Babylon,
now to Susa.* Khammurabi seized this province, and permanently secured
its frontier by building along the river a line of fortresses surrounded
by earthworks. Following the example of his predecessors, he set himself
to restore and enrich the temples.

     * Pognon discovered inscriptions of four of the vicegerents
     of Ashnunak, which he assigns, with some hesitation, to the
     time of Khammurabi, rather than to that of the kings of
     Telloh. Three of these names are Semitic, the fourth
     Sumerian; the language of the inscriptions bears a
     resemblance to the Semitic dialect of Chaldaea.

The house of Zamama and Ninni, at Kish, was out of repair, and the
ziggurat threatened to fall; he pulled it down and rebuilt it, carrying
it to such a height that its summit "reached the heavens." Merodach had
delegated to him the government of the faithful, and had raised him to
the rank of supreme ruler over the whole of Chaldaea. At Babylon, close
to the great lake which served as a reservoir for the overflow of the
Euphrates, the king restored the sanctuary of Esagilla, the dimensions
of which did not appear to him to be proportionate to the growing
importance of the city. "He completed this divine dwelling with great
joy and delight, he raised the summit to the firmament," and then
enthroned Merodach and his spouse, Zarpanit, within it, amid great
festivities. He provided for the ever-recurring requirements of the
national religion by frequent gifts; the tradition has come down to us
of the granary for wheat which he built at Babylon, the sight of which
alone rejoiced the heart of the god. While surrounding Sippar with a
great wall and a fosse, to protect its earthly inhabitants, he did
not forget Shamash and Malkatu, the celestial patrons of the town. He
enlarged in their honour the mysterious Ebarra, the sacred seat of their
worship, and that which no king from the earliest times had known how
to build for his divine master, that did he generously for Shamash
his master. He restored Ezida, the eternal dwelling of Merodach,
at Borsippa; Eturka-lamma, the temple of Anu, Ninni, and Nana, the
suzerains of Kish; and also Ezikalamma, the house of the goddess Ninna,
in the village of Zarilab. In the southern provinces, but recently added
to the crown,--at Larsa, Uruk, and Uru,--he displayed similar activity.

[Illustration: 059.jpg Page Image]

He had, doubtless, a political as well as a religious motive in all he
did; for if he succeeded in winning the allegiance of the priests by
the prodigality of his pious gifts, he could count on their gratitude in
securing for him the people's obedience, and thus prevent the outbreak
of a revolt. He had, indeed, before him a difficult task in attempting
to allay the ills which had been growing during centuries of civil
discord and foreign conquest. The irrigation of the country demanded
constant attention, and from earliest times its sovereigns had directed
the work with real solicitude; but owing to the breaking up of the
country into small states, their respective resources could not be
combined in such general operations as were needed for controlling the
inundations and effectually remedying the excess or the scarcity of
water. Khammurabi witnessed the damage done to the whole province of
Umliyash by one of those terrible floods which still sometimes ravage
the regions of the Lower Tigris,* and possibly it may have been to
prevent the recurrence of such a disaster that he undertook the work of
canalization.

     * Contracts dated the year of an inundation which laid waste
     Umliyash; cf. in our own time, the inundation of April 10,
     1831, which in a single night destroyed half the city of
     Bagdad, and in which fifteen thousand persons lost their
     lives either by drowning or by the collapse of their houses.

He was the first that we know of who attempted to organize and reduce
to a single system the complicated network of ditches and channels which
intersected the territory belonging to the great cities between Babylon
and the sea. Already, more than half a century previously, Siniddinam
had enlarged the canal on which Larsa was situated, while Bimsin had
provided an outlet for the "River of the Gods" into the Persian Gulf:*
by the junction of the two a navigable channel was formed between the
Euphrates and the marshes, and an outlet was thus made for the surplus
waters of the inundation. Khammurabi informs us how Anu and Bel, having
confided to him the government of Sumer and Accad, and having placed in
his hands the reins of power, he dug the Nar-Khammurabi, the source of
wealth to the people, which brings abundance of water to the country
of Sumir and Accad. "I turned both its banks into cultivated ground, I
heaped up mounds of grain and I furnished perpetual water for the people
of Sumir and Accad. The country of Sumer and Accad, I gathered together
its nations who were scattered, I gave them pasture and drink, I ruled
over them in riches and abundance, I caused them to inhabit a peaceful
dwelling-place. Then it was that Khammurabi, the powerful king, the
favourite of the great gods, I myself, according to the prodigious
strength with which Merodach had endued me, I constructed a high
fortress, upon mounds of earth; its summit rises to the height of the
mountains, at the head of the Nar-Khammurabi, the source of wealth to
the people. This fortress I called Dur-Sinmuballit-abim-ualidiya, the
Fortress of Sinmuballit, the father who begat me, so that the name of
Sinmuballit, the father who begat me, may endure in the habitations of
the world."

     * Contract dated "the year the Tigris, river of the gods,
     was canalized down to the sea"; i.e. as far as the point to
     which the sea then penetrated in the environs of Kornah.

This canal of Khammurabi ran from a little south of Babylon, joining
those of Siniddinam and Rimsin, and probably cutting the alluvial plain
in its entire length.* It drained the stagnant marshes on either side
along its course, and by its fertilising effects, the dwellers on its
banks were enabled to reap full harvests from the lands which previously
had been useless for purposes of cultivation. A ditch of minor
importance pierced the isthmus which separates the Tigris and the
Euphrates in the neighbourhood of Sippar.** Khammurabi did not rest
contented with these; a system of secondary canals doubtless completed
the whole scheme of irrigation which he had planned after the
achievement of his conquest, and his successors had merely to keep up
his work in order to ensure an unrivalled prosperity to the empire.

     * Delattre is of opinion that the canal dug by Khammurabi is
     the Arakhtu of later epochs which began at Babylon and
     extended as far as the Larsa canal. It must therefore be
     approximately identified with the Shatt-en-Nil of the
     present day, which joins Shatt-el-Kaher, the canal of
     Siniddinam.

     ** The canal which Khammurabi caused to be dug or dredged
     may be the Nar-Malka, or "royal canal," which ran from the
     Tigris to the Euphrates, passing Sippar on the way. The
     digging of this canal is mentioned in a contract.

Their efforts in this direction were not unsuccessful. Samsuiluna,
the son of Khammurabi, added to the existing system two or three
fresh canals, one at least of which still bore his name nearly fifteen
centuries later; it is mentioned in the documents of the second Assyrian
empire in the time of Assurbanipal, and it is possible that traces of
it may still be found at the present day. Abieshukh,* Ammisatana,**
Ammizadugga,*** and Samsusatana,**** all either continued to elaborate
the network planned by their ancestors, or applied themselves to the
better distribution of the overflow in those districts where cultivation
was still open to improvement.

     * Abishukh (the Hebrew Abishua) is the form of the name
     which we find in contemporary contracts. The official lists
     contain the variant Ebishu, Ebishum.

     ** Ammiditana is only a possible reading: others prefer
     Ammisatana. The Nar-Ammisatana is mentioned in a Sippar
     contract. Another contract is dated "the year in which
     Ammisatana, the king, repaired the canal of Samsuiluna."

     *** This was, at first, read Ammididugga. Ammizadugga is
     mentioned in the date of a contract as having executed
     certain works--of what nature it is not easy to say--on the
     banks of the Tigris; another contract is dated "the year in
     which Ammizadugga, the king, by supreme command of Sha-mash,
     his master, [dug] the Ndr-Ammizadugga-nulchus-nishi (canal
     of Ammizadugga), prosperity of men." In the Minaean
     inscriptions of Southern Arabia the name is found under the
     form of Ammi-Zaduq.

     **** Sometimes erroneously read Samdiusatana; but, as a
     matter of fact, we have contracts of that time, in which a
     royal name is plainly written as Samsusatana.

We should know nothing of these kings had not the scribes of those times
been in the habit of dating the contracts of private individuals by
reference to important national events. They appear to have chosen
by preference incidents in the religious life of the country; as, for
instance, the restoration of a temple, the annual enthronisation of one
of the great divinities, such as Shamash, Merodach, Ishtar, or Nana,
as the eponymous god of the current year, the celebration of a solemn
festival, or the consecration of a statue; while a few scattered
allusions to works of fortification show that meanwhile the defence of
the country was jealously watched over.* These sovereigns appear to have
enjoyed long reigns, the shortest extending over a period of five and
twenty years; and when at length the death of any king occurred, he was
immediately replaced by his son, the notaries' acts and the judicial
documents which have come down to us betraying no confusion or abnormal
delay in the course of affairs. We may, therefore, conclude that the
last century and a half of the dynasty was a period of peace and
of material prosperity. Chaldaea was thus enabled to fully reap the
advantage of being united under the rule of one individual. It is quite
possible that those cities--Uru, Larsa, Ishin, Uruk, and Nippur--which
had played so important a part in the preceding centuries, suffered from
the loss of their prestige, and from the blow dealt to their traditional
pretensions.

     * Samsuiluna repaired the five fortresses which his ancestor
     Sumulailu had built. Contract dated "the year in which
     Ammisatana, the king, built Dur-Ammisatana, near the Sin
     river," and "the year in which Ammisatana, the king, gave
     its name to Dur-Iskunsin, near the canal of
     Ammisatana." Contract dated "the year in which the King
     Ammisatana repaired Dur-Iskunsin." Contract dated "the year in
     which Samsuiluna caused 'the wall of Uru and Uruk' to be
     built."

Up to this time they had claimed the privilege of controlling the
history of their country, and they had bravely striven among themselves
for the supremacy over the southern states; but the revolutions which
had raised each in turn to the zenith of power, had never exalted any
one of them to such an eminence as to deprive its rivals of all hope of
supplanting it and of enjoying the highest place. The rise of Babylon
destroyed the last chance which any of them had of ever becoming the
capital; the new city was so favourably situated, and possessed so much
wealth and so many soldiers, while its kings displayed such tenacious
energy, that its neighbours were forced to bow before it and resign
themselves to the subordinate position of leading provincial towns. They
gave a loyal obedience to the officers sent them from the north, and
sank gradually into obscurity, the loss of their political supremacy
being somewhat compensated for by the religious respect in which they
were always held. Their ancient divinities--Nana, Sin, Anu, and Ra--were
adopted, if we may use the term, by the Babylonians, who claimed the
protection of these gods as fully as they did that of Merodach or of
Nebo, and prided themselves on amply supplying all their needs. As the
inhabitants of Babylon had considerable resources at their disposal,
their appeal to these deities might be regarded as productive of more
substantial results than the appeal of a merely local kinglet. The
increase of the national wealth and the concentration, under one head,
of armies hitherto owning several chiefs, enabled the rulers, not
of Babylon or Larsa alone, but of the whole of Chaldaea, to offer
an invincible resistance to foreign enemies, and to establish their
dominion in countries where their ancestors had enjoyed merely a
precarious sovereignty. Hostilities never completely ceased between
Elam and Babylon; if arrested for a time, they broke out again in
some frontier disturbance, at times speedily suppressed, but at others
entailing violent consequences and ending in a regular war. No document
furnishes us with any detailed account of these outbreaks, but it
would appear that the balance of power was maintained on the whole with
tolerable regularity, both kingdoms at the close of each generation
finding themselves in much the same position as they had occupied at its
commencement. The two empires were separated from south to north by
the sea and the Tigris, the frontier leaving the river near the present
village of Amara and running in the direction of the mountains. Durilu
probably fell ordinarily under Chaldaean jurisdiction. Umliyash was
included in the original domain of Kham-murabi, and there is no reason
to believe that it was evacuated by his descendants. There is every
probability that they possessed the plain east of the Tigris, comprising
Nineveh and Arbela, and that the majority of the civilized peoples
scattered over the lower slopes of the Kurdish mountains rendered them
homage. They kept the Mesopotamian table-land under their suzerainty,
and we may affirm, without exaggeration, that their power extended
northwards as far as Mount Masios, and westwards to the middle course of
the Euphrates.

At what period the Chaldaeans first crossed that river is as yet unknown.
Many of their rulers in their inscriptions claim the title of suzerains
over Syria, and we have no evidence for denying their pretensions.
Kudur-mabug proclaims himself "adda" of Martu, Lord of the countries of
the West, and we are in the possession of several facts which suggest
the idea of a great Blamite empire, with a dominion extending for some
period over Western Asia, the existence of which was vaguely hinted
at by the Greeks, who attributed its glory to the fabulous Memnon.*
Contemporary records are still wanting which might show whether
Kudur-mabug inherited these distant possessions from one of his
predecessors--such as Kudur-nakhunta, for instance--or whether he
won them himself at the point of the sword; but a fragment of an old
chronicle, inserted in the Hebrew Scriptures, speaks distinctly of
another Elamite, who made war in person almost up to the Egyptian
frontier.** This is the Kudur-lagamar (Chedorlaomer) who helped Eimsin
against Hammurabi, but was unable to prevent his overthrow.

     * We know that to Herodotus (v. 55) Susa was the city of
     Memnon, and that Strabo attributes its foundation to
     Tithonus, father of Memnon. According to Oppert, the word
     Memnon is the equivalent of the Susian Umman-anin, "the
     house of the king:" Weissbach declares that "anin" does not
     mean king, and contradicts Oppert's view, though he does not
     venture to suggest a new explanation of the name.

     ** _Gen._ xiv. Prom the outset Assyriologists have never
     doubted the historical accuracy of this chapter, and they
     have connected the facts which it contains with those which
     seem to be revealed by the Assyrian monuments. The two
     Rawlinsons intercalate Kudur-lagamar between Kudur-nakhunta
     and Kudur-mabug, and Oppert places him about the same
     period. Fr. Lenormant regards him as one of the successors
     of Kudur-mabug, possibly his immediate successor. G. Smith
     does not hesitate to declare positively that the Kudur-mabug
     and Kudur-nakhunta of the inscriptions are one and the same
     with the Kudur-lagamar (Chedor-laomer) of the Bible.
     Finally, Schrader, while he repudiates Smith's view, agrees
     in the main fact with the other Assyriologists. On the other
     hand, the majority of modern Biblical critics have
     absolutely refused to credit the story in Genesis. Sayce
     thinks that the Bible story rests on an historic basis, and
     his view is strongly confirmed by Pinches'discovery of a
     Chaldaean document which mentions Kudur-lagamar and two of
     his allies. The Hebrew historiographer reproduced an
     authentic fact from the chronicles of Babylon, and connected
     it with one of the events in the life of Abraham. The very
     late date generally assigned to Gen. xiv. in no way
     diminishes the intrinsic probability of the facts narrated
     by the Chaldaean document which is preserved to us in the
     pages of the Hebrew book.

In the thirteenth year of his reign over the East, the cities of the
Dead Sea--Sodom, Gomorrah, Adamah, Zeboim, and Bela--revolted against
him: he immediately convoked his great vassals, Amraphel of Chaldaea,
Arioch of Ellasar,* Tida'lo the Guti, and marched with them to the
confines of his dominions. Tradition has invested many of the tribes
then inhabiting Southern Syria with semi-mythical names and attributes.
They are represented as being giants--Rephalm; men of prodigious
strength--Zuzim; as having a buzzing and indistinct manner of
speech--Zamzummim; as formidable monsters**--Emim or Anakim, before
whom other nations appeared as grasshoppers;*** as the Horim who were
encamped on the confines of the Sinaitic desert, and as the Amalekites
who ranged over the mountains to the west of the Dead Sea. Kudur-lagamar
defeated them one after another--the Rephaim near to Ashtaroth-Karnaim,
the Zuzim near Ham,**** the Amim at Shaveh-Kiriathaim, and the Horim
on the spurs of Mount Seir as far as El-Paran; then retracing
his footsteps, he entered the country of the Amalekites by way of
En-mishpat, and pillaged the Amorites of Hazazon-Tamar.

     * Ellasar has been identified with Larsa since the
     researches of Rawlin-son and Norris; the Goim, over whom
     Tidal was king, with the Guti.

     ** Sayce considers Zuzim and Zamzummim to be two readings of
     the same word Zamzum, written in cuneiform characters on the
     original document. The sounds represented, in the Hebrew
     alphabet, by the letters m and w, are expressed in the
     Chaldaean syllabary by the same character, and a Hebrew or
     Babylonian scribe, who had no other means of telling the
     true pronunciation of a race-name mentioned in the story of
     this campaign, would have been quite as much at a loss as
     any modern scholar to say whether he ought to transcribe the
     word as Z-m-z-m or as Z-w-z-vo; some scribes read it
     _Zuzim,_ others preferred _Zamzummim._

     *** _Numb._ xiii. 33.

     **** In Deut. ii. 20 it is stated that the Zamzummim lived
     in the country of Ammon. Sayce points out that we often find
     the variant Am for the character usually read _Ham_ or
     _Kham_--the name Khammurabi, for instance, is often found
     written Ammurabi; the Ham in the narrative of Genesis would,
     therefore, be identical with the land of Ammon in
     Deuteronomy, and the difference between the spelling of the
     two would be due to the fact that the document reproduced in
     the XIVIIth chapter of Genesis had been originally copied from
     a cuneiform tablet in which the name of the place was
     expressed by the sign _Ham-Am._

In the mean time, the kings of the five towns had concentrated their
troops in the vale of Siddim, and were there resolutely awaiting
Kudur-lagamar. They were, however, completely routed, some of the
fugitives being swallowed up in the pits of bitumen with which the
soil abounded, while others with difficulty reached the mountains.
Kudur-lagamar sacked Sodom and Gomorrah, re-established his dominion on
all sides, and returned laden with booty, Hebrew tradition adding
that he was overtaken near the sources of the Jordan by the patriarch
Abraham.*

     * An attempt has been made to identify the three vassals of
     Kudur-lagamar with kings mentioned on the Chaldaean
     monuments. Tidcal, or, if we adopt the Septuagint variant,
     Thorgal, has been considered by some as the bearer of a
     Sumorian name, Turgal= "great chief," "great son," while
     others put him on one side as not having been a Babylonian;
     Pinches, Sayce, and Hommel identify him with Tudkhula, an
     ally of Kudur-lagamar against Khammurabi. Schrader was the
     first to suggest that Amraphel was really Khammurabi, and
     emended the Amraphel of the biblical text into Amraphi or
     Amrabi, in order to support this identification. Halevy,
     while on the whole accepting this theory, derives the name
     from the pronunciation Kimtarapashtum or Kimtarapaltum,
     which he attributes to the name generally read Khammurabi,
     and in this he is partly supported by Hommel, who reads
     "Khammurapaltu."

After his victory over Kudur-lagamar, Khammurabi assumed the title of
King of Martu,* which we find still borne by Ammisatana sixty years
later.** We see repeated here almost exactly what took place in Ethiopia
at the time of its conquest by Egypt: merchants had prepared the way for
military occupation, and the civilization of Babylon had taken hold
on the people long before its kings had become sufficiently powerful
to claim them as vassals. The empire may be said to have been virtually
established from the day when the states of the Middle and Lower
Euphrates formed but one kingdom in the hands of a single ruler. We must
not, however, imagine it to have been a compact territory, divided into
provinces under military occupation, ruled by a uniform code of laws
and statutes, and administered throughout by functionaries of various
grades, who received their orders from Babylon or Susa, according as
the chances of war favoured the ascendency of Chaldaea or Elam. It was
in reality a motley assemblage of tribes and principalities, whose sole
bond of union was subjection to a common yoke.

     * It is, indeed, the sole title which he attributes to
     himself on a stone tablet now in the British Museum.

     ** In an inscription by this prince, copied probably about
     the time of Nabonidus by the scribe Belushallim, he is
     called "king of the vast land of Martu."

They were under obligation to pay tribute, and furnish military
contingents and show other external marks of obedience, but their
particular constitution, customs, and religion were alike respected:
they had to purchase, at the cost of a periodical ransom, the right to
live in their own country after their own fashion, and the head of the
empire forbore all interference in their affairs, except in cases where
the internecine quarrels and dissensions threatened the security of his
suzerainty. Their subordination lasted as best it could, sometimes for a
year or for ten years, at the end of which period they would neglect
the obligations of their vassalage, or openly refuse to fulfil them:
a revolt would then break out at one point or another, and it was
necessary to suppress it without delay to prevent the bad example
from spreading far and wide. The empire was maintained by perpetual
re-conquests, and its extent varied with the energy shown by its chiefs,
or with the resources which were for the moment available.

Separated from the confines of the empire by only a narrow isthmus,
Egypt loomed on the horizon, and appeared to beckon to her rival. Her
natural fertility, the industry of her inhabitants, the stores of gold
and perfumes which she received from the heart of Ethiopia, were well
known by the passage to and fro of her caravans, and the recollection of
her treasures must have frequently provoked the envy of Asiatic courts.
Egypt had, however, strangely declined from her former greatness, and
the line of princes who governed her had little in common with the
Pharaohs who had rendered her name so formidable under the XIIth
dynasty. She was now under the rule of the Xoites, whose influence was
probably confined to the Delta, and extended merely in name over
the Said and Nubia. The feudal lords, ever ready to reassert their
independence as soon as the central power waned, shared between them the
possession of the Nile valley below Memphis: the princes of Thebes, who
were probably descendants of Usirtasen, owned the largest fiefdom, and
though some slight scruple may have prevented them from donning
the pschent or placing their names within a cartouche, they assumed
notwithstanding the plenitude of royal power. A favourable opportunity
was therefore offered to an invader, and the Chaldaeans might have
attacked with impunity a people thus divided among themselves.* They
stopped short, however, at the southern frontier of Syria, or if they
pushed further forward, it was without any important result: distance
from head-quarters, or possibly reiterated attacks of the Elamites,
prevented them from placing in the field an adequate force for such a
momentous undertaking. What they had not dared to venture, others more
audacious were to accomplish. At this juncture, so runs the Egyptian
record, "there came to us a king named Timaios. Under this king, then,
I know not wherefore, the god caused to blow upon us a baleful wind, and
in the face of all probability bands from the East, people of ignoble
race, came upon us unawares, attacked the country, and subdued it easily
and without fighting."

     * The theory that the divisions of Egypt, under the XIVth
     dynasty, and the discords between its feudatory princes,
     were one of the main causes of the success of the Shepherds,
     is now admitted to be correct.

It is possible that they owed this rapid victory to the presence
in their armies of a factor hitherto unknown to the African--the
war-chariot--and before the horse and his driver the Egyptians gave way
in a body.* The invaders appeared as a cloud of locusts on the banks of
the Nile. Towns and temples were alike pillaged, burnt, and ruined;
they massacred all they could of the male population, reduced to slavery
those of the women and children whose lives they spared, and then
proclaimed as king Salatis, one of their chiefs.** He established a
semblance of regular government, chose Memphis as his capital, and
imposed a tax upon the vanquished. Two perils, however, immediately
threatened the security of his triumph: in the south the Theban lords,
taking matters into their own hands after the downfall of the Xoites,
refused the oath of allegiance to Salatis, and organized an obstinate
resistance;*** in the north he had to take measures to protect
himself against an attack of the Chaldaeans or of the Elamites who were
oppressing Chaldaea.****

     * The horse was unknown, or at any rate had not been
     employed in. Egypt prior to the invasion; we find it,
     however, in general use immediately after the expulsion of
     the Shepherds, see the tomb of Pihiri. Moreover, all
     historians agree in admitting that it was introduced into
     the country under the rule of the Shepherds. The use of the
     war-chariot in Chaldaea at an epoch prior to the Hyksos
     invasion, is proved by a fragment of the Vulture Stele; it
     is therefore, natural to suppose that the Hyksos used the
     chariot in war, and that the rapidity of their conquest was
     due to it.

     ** The name Salatis (var. Saitos) seems to be derived from a
     Semitic word, Siialit = "the chief," "the governor;" this
     was the title which Joseph received when Pharaoh gave him
     authority over the whole of Egypt (Gen. xli. 43). Salatis
     may not, therefore, have been the real name of the first
     Hyksos king, but his title, which the Egyptians
     misunderstood, and from which they evolved a proper name:
     Uhlemann has, indeed, deduced from this that Manetho, being
     familiar with the passage referring to Joseph, had forged
     the name of Salatis. Ebers imagined that he could decipher
     the Egyptian form of this prince's name on the Colossus of
     Tell-Mokdam, where Naville has since read with certainty the
     name of a Pharaoh of the XIIIth and XIVth dynasties,
     Nahsiri.

     *** The text of Manetho speaks of taxes which he imposed on
     the high and low lands, which would seem to include the
     Thebaid in the kingdom; it is, however, stated in the next
     few pages that the successors of Salatis waged an incessant
     war against the Egyptians, which can only refer to
     hostilities against the Thebans. We are forced, therefore,
     to admit, either that Manetho took the title of lord of the
     high and low lands which belonged to Salatis, literally, or
     that the Thebans, after submitting at first, subsequently
     refused to pay tribute, thus provoking a war.

     **** Manetho here speaks of Assyrians; this is an error
     which is to be explained by the imperfect state of
     historical knowledge in Greece at the time of the Macedonian
     supremacy. We need not for this reason be led to cast doubt
     upon the historic value of the narrative: we must remember
     the suzerainty which the kings of Babylon exercised over
     Syria, and read _Chaldaeans_ where Manetho has written
     _Assyrians_. In Herodotus "Assyria" is the regular term for
     "Babylonia," and Babylonia is called "the land of the
     Assyrians."

From the natives of the Delta, who were temporarily paralysed by their
reverses, he had, for the moment, little to fear: restricting himself,
therefore, to establishing forts at the strategic points in the Nile
valley in order to keep the Thebans in check, he led the main body of
his troops to the frontier on the isthmus. Pacific immigrations had
already introduced Asiatic settlers into the Delta, and thus prepared
the way for securing the supremacy of the new rulers; in the midst of
these strangers, and on the ruins of the ancient town of Hawarit-Avaris,
in the Sethro'ifce nome--a place connected by tradition with the myth
of Osiris and Typhon--Salatis constructed an immense entrenched camp,
capable of sheltering two hundred and forty thousand men. He visited it
yearly to witness the military manoeuvres, to pay his soldiers, and
to preside over the distribution of rations. This permanent garrison
protected him from a Chaldaean invasion, a not unlikely event as long as
Syria remained under the supremacy of the Babylonian kings; it furnished
his successors also with an inexhaustible supply of trained soldiers,
thus enabling them to complete the conquest of Lower Egypt. Years
elapsed before the princes of the south would declare themselves
vanquished, and five kings--Anon, Apachnas, Apophis I., Iannas, and
Asses--passed their lifetime "in a perpetual warfare, desirous of
tearing up Egypt to the very root." These Theban kings, who were
continually under arms against the barbarians, were subsequently classed
in a dynasty by themselves, the XVth of Manetho, but they at last
succumbed to the invader, and Asses became master of the entire country.
His successors in their turn formed a dynasty, the XVIth, the few
remaining monuments of which are found scattered over the length and
breadth of the valley from the shores of the Mediterranean to the rocks
of the first cataract.

The Egyptians who witnessed the advent of this Asiatic people called
them by the general term Amuu, Asiatics, or Monatiu, the men of the
desert.* They had already given the Bedouin the opprobrious epithet of
Shausu--pillagers or robbers--which aptly described them;** and they
subsequently applied the same name to the intruders--Hiq Shausu--from
which the Greeks derived their word Hyksos, or Hykoussos, for this
people.***

     * The meaning of the term _Moniti_ was discovered by E. de
     Rouge, who translated it _Shepherd_, and applied it to the
     Hyksos; from thence it passed into the works of all the
     Egyptologists who concerned themselves with this question,
     but _Shepherd_ has not been universally accepted as the
     meaning of the word. It is generally agreed that it was a
     generic term, indicating the races with which their
     conquerors were supposed to be connected, and not the
     particular term of which Manetho's word _Hoiveves_ would be
     the literal translation.

     ** The name seems, in fact, to be derived from a word which
     meant "to rob," "to pillage." The name Shausu, Shosu, was
     not used by the Egyptians to indicate a particular race. It
     was used of all Bedouins, and in general of all the
     marauding tribes who infested the desert or the mountains.
     The Shausu most frequently referred to on the monuments are
     those from the desert between Egypt and Syria, but there is
     a reference, in the time of Ramses II., to those from the
     Lebanon and the valley of Orontes. Krall finds an allusion
     to them in a word (_Shosim_) in _Judges_ ii. 14, which is
     generally translated by a generic expression, "the
     spoilers."

     *** Manetho declares that the people were called Hyksos,
     from _Syk_, which means "king" in the sacred language, and
     _sos_, which means "shepherd" in the popular language. As a
     matter of fact, the word _Hyku_ means "prince "in the
     classical language of Egypt, or, as Manetho styles it, the
     _sacred language_, i.e. in the idiom of the old religious,
     historical, and literary texts, which in later ages the
     populace no longer understood. Shos, on the contrary,
     belongs to the spoken language of the later time, and does
     not occur in the ancient inscriptions, so that Manetho's
     explanation is valueless; there is but one material fact to
     be retained from his evidence, and that is the name _Hyk-
     Shos_ or _Hyku-Shos_ given by its inventors to the alien
     kings. Cham-pollion and Rosellini were the first to identify
     these Shos with the Shausu whom they found represented on
     the monuments, and their opinion, adopted by some, seems to
     me an extremely plausible one: the Egyptians, at a given
     moment, bestowed the generic name of Shausu on these
     strangers, just as they had given those of Amuu and Manatiu.
     The texts or writers from whom Manetho drew his information
     evidently mentioned certain kings _hyku_-Shausu; other
     passages, or, the same passages wrongly interpreted, were
     applied to the race, and were rendered _hyku_-Shausu = "the
     _prisoners_ taken from the Shausu," a substantive derived
     from the root _haka_ = "to take" being substituted for the
     noun _hyqu_ = "prince." Josephus declares, on the authority
     of Manetho, that some manuscripts actually suggested this
     derivation--a fact which is easily explained by the custom
     of the Egyptian record offices. I may mention, in passing,
     that Mariette recognised in the element "_Sos_" an Egyptian
     word _shos_ = "soldiers," and in the name of King Mirmashau,
     which he read Mirshosu, an equivalent of the title Hyq-
     Shosu.

But we are without any clue as to their real name, language, or origin.
The writers of classical times were unable to come to an agreement on
these questions: some confounded the Hyksos with the Phoenicians, others
regarded them as Arabs.* Modern scholars have put forward at least
a dozen contradictory hypotheses on the matter. The Hyksos have been
asserted to have been Canaanites, Elamites, Hittites, Accadians,
Scythians. The last opinion found great favour with the learned, as
long as they could believe that the sphinxes discovered by Mariette
represented Apophis or one of his predecessors. As a matter of fact,
these monuments present all the characteristics of the Mongoloid type
of countenance--the small and slightly oblique eyes, the arched but
somewhat flattened nose, the pronounced cheekbones and well-covered
jaw, the salient chin and full lips slightly depressed at the corners.**
These peculiarities are also observed in the three heads found at
Damanhur, in the colossal torso dug up at Mit-Fares in the Fayum, in
the twin figures of the Nile removed to the Bulaq Museum from Tanis, and
upon the remains of a statue in the collection at the Villa Ludovisi in
Rome. The same foreign type of face is also found to exist among the
present inhabitants of the villages scattered over the eastern part
of the Delta, particularly on the shores of Lake Menzaleh, and the
conclusion was drawn that these people were the direct descendants of
the Hyksos.

     * Manetho takes them to be Phoenicians, but he adds that
     certain writers thought them to be Arabs: Brugsch favours
     this latter view, but the Arab legend of a conquest of Egypt
     by Sheddad and the Adites is of recent origin, and was
     inspired by traditions in regard to the Hyksos current
     during the Byzantine epoch; we cannot, therefore, allow it
     to influence us. We must wait before expressing a definite
     opinion in regard to the facts which Glaser believes he has
     obtained from the Minoan inscriptions which date from the
     time of the Hyksos.

     ** Mariette, who was the first to describe these curious
     monuments, recognised in them all the incontestable
     characteristics of a Semitic type, and the correctness of
     his view was, at first, universally admitted. Later on Hamy
     imagined that he could distinguish traces of Mongolian
     influences, and Er. Lenormant, and then Mariette himself
     came round to this view; it has recently been supported in
     England by Flower, and in Germany by Virchow.

This theory was abandoned, however, when it was ascertained that the
sphinxes of San had been carved, many centuries before the invasion, for
Amenemhait III., a king of the XIIth dynasty. In spite of the facts we
possess, the problem therefore still remains unsolved, and the origin of
the Hyksos is as mysterious as ever. We gather, however, that the third
millennium before our era was repeatedly disturbed by considerable
migratory movements. The expeditions far afield of Elamite and Chaldaean
princes could not have taken place without seriously perturbing the
regions over which they passed. They must have encountered by the
way many nomadic or unsettled tribes whom a slight shock would easily
displace. An impulse once given, it needed but little to accelerate
or increase the movement: a collision with one horde reacted on its
neighbours, who either displaced or carried others with them, and the
whole multitude, gathering momentum as they went, were precipitated in
the direction first given.*

     * The Hyksos invasion has been regarded as a natural result
     of the Elamite conquest.

A tradition, picked up by Herodotus on his travels, relates that the
Phoenicians had originally peopled the eastern and southern shores of
the Persian Gulf;* it was also said that Indathyrses, a Scythian king,
had victoriously scoured the whole of Asia, and had penetrated as far as
Egypt.** Either of these invasions may have been the cause of the Syrian
migration. In. comparison with the meagre information which has come
down to us under the form of legends, it is provoking to think how much
actual fact has been lost, a tithe of which would explain the cause
of the movement and the mode of its execution. The least improbable
hypothesis is that which attributes the appearance of the Shepherds
about the XXIIIrd century B.C., to the arrival in Naharaim of those
Khati who subsequently fought so obstinately against the armies both of
the Pharaohs and the Ninevite kings. They descended from the mountain
region in which the Halys and the Euphrates take their rise, and if the
bulk of them proceeded no further than the valleys of the Taurus and the
Amanos, some at least must have pushed forward as far as the provinces
on the western shores of the Dead Sea. The most adventurous among them,
reinforced by the Canaanites and other tribes who had joined them on
their southward course, crossed the isthmus of Suez, and finding a
people weakened by discord, experienced no difficulty in replacing the
native dynasties by their own barbarian chiefs.***

     * It was to the exodus of this race, in the last analysis,
     that the invasion of the shepherds may be attributed

     ** A certain number of commentators are of opinion that the
     wars attributed to Indathyrses have been confounded with
     what Herodotus tells of the exploits of Madyes, and are
     nothing more than a distorted remembrance of the great
     Scythian invasion which took place in the latter half of the
     VIIth century B.C.

     *** At the present time, those scholars who admit the
     Turanian origin of the Hyksos are of opinion that only the
     nucleus of the race, the royal tribe, was composed of
     Mongols, while the main body consisted of elements of all
     kinds--Canaanitish, or, more generally, Semitic.

[Illustration: 079.jpg PALLATE OF HYKSOS SCRIBE]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by M. de Mertons.
     It is the palette of a scribe, now in the Berlin Museum, and
     given by King Apopi II Ausirri to a scribe named Atu.

Both their name and origin were doubtless well known to the Egyptians,
but the latter nevertheless disdained to apply to them any term but that
of "she-mau,"* strangers, and in referring to them used the same
vague appellations which they applied to the Bedouin of the Sinaitic
peninsula,--Monatiu, the shepherds, or Satiu, the archers. They
succeeded in hiding the original name of their conquerors so thoroughly,
that in the end they themselves forgot it, and kept the secret of it
from posterity.

The remembrance of the cruelties with which the invaders sullied their
conquest lived long after them; it still stirred the anger of Manetho
after a lapse of twenty centuries.** The victors were known as the
"Plagues" or "Pests," and every possible crime and impiety was attributed
to them.

     * The term _shamamil,_ variant of _sliemau,_ is applied to
     them by Queen Hatshopsitu: the same term is employed shortly
     afterward by Thutmosis III., to indicate the enemies whom he
     had defeated at Megiddo.

     ** He speaks of them in contemptuous terms as _men of
     ignoble race_. The epithet _Aiti, Iaiti, Iaditi_, was applied
     to the Nubians by the writer of the inscription of Ahmosi-
     si-Abina, and to the Shepherds of the Delta by the author of
     the _Sallier Papyrus_. Brugsch explained it as "the rebels,"
     or "disturbers," and Goodwin translated it "invaders";
     Chabas rendered it by "plague-stricken," an interpretation
     which was in closer conformity with its etymological
     meaning, and Groff pointed out that the malady called Ait,
     or Adit in Egyptian, is the malignant fever still frequently
     to be met with at the present day in the marshy cantons of
     the Delta, and furnished the proper rendering, which is "The
     Fever-stricken."

[Illustration: 080.jpg A HYKSOS PRISONER GUIDING THE PLOUGH, AT EL-KAB]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Insinger.

But the brutalities attending the invasion once past, the invaders
soon lost their barbarity and became rapidly civilized. Those of them
stationed in the encampment at Avaris retained the military qualities
and characteristic energy of their race; the remainder became
assimilated to their new compatriots, and were soon recognisable merely
by their long hair, thick beard, and marked features. Their sovereigns
seemed to have realised from the first that it was more to their
interest to exploit the country than to pillage it; as, however, none of
them was competent to understand the intricacies of the treasury, they
were forced to retain the services of the majority of the scribes, who
had managed the public accounts under the native kings.* Once schooled
to the new state of affairs, they readily adopted the refinements of
civilized life.

     * The same thing took place on every occasion when Egypt was
     conquered by an alien race: the Persian Achaemenians and
     Greeks made use of the native employes, as