History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 3 — 04 - Ch. 1: Ancient Chaldaea, pt. 4

The flora would not have been so abundant if the fauna had been sufficient for the supply of a large population.

A considerable proportion of the tribes on the Lower Euphrates lived for a long time on fish only.

They consumed them either fresh, salted, or smoked: they dried them in the sun, crushed them in a mortar, strained the pulp through linen, and worked it up into a kind of bread or into cakes.

The barbel and carp attained a great size in these sluggish waters, and if the Chalaeans, like the Arabs who have succeeded them in these regions, clearly preferred these fish above others, they did not despise at the same time such less delicate species as the eel, murena, silurus, and even that singular gurnard whose habits are an object of wonder to our naturalists.

This fish spends its existence usually in the water, but a life in the open air has no terrors for it: it leaps out on the bank, climbs trees without much difficulty, finds a congenial habitat on the banks of mud exposed by the falling tide, and basks there in the sun, prepared to vanish in the ooze in the twinkling of an eye if some approaching bird should catch sight of it.

Pelicans, herons, cranes, storks, cormorants, hundreds of varieties of seagulls, ducks, swans, wild geese, secure in the possession of an inexhaustible supply of food, sport and prosper among the reeds.

The ostrich, greater bustard, the common and red-legged partridge and quail, find their habitat on the borders of the desert; while the thrush, blackbird, ortolan, pigeon, and turtle-dove abound on every side, in spite of daily onslaughts from eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey.

[Illustration: 032. jpg A WINGED GENIUS HOLDING IN HIS HAND THE SPATHE OF THE MALE DATE-PALM.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Nimrud, in the British Museum.

[Illustration: 033. jpg THE HEAVILY MANED LION WOUNDED BY AN ARROW AND VOMITING BLOOD.

] Snakes are found here and there, but they are for the most part of innocuous species: three poisonous varieties only are known, and their bite does not produce such terrible consequences as that of the horned viper or Egyptian uraeus.

There are two kinds of lion--one without mane, and the other hooded, with a heavy mass of black and tangled hair: the proper signification of the old Chaldaean name was “the great ‘dog,” and they have, indeed, a greater resemblance to large dogs than to the red lions of Africa.

* They fly at the approach of man; they betake themselves in the daytime to retreats among the marshes or in the thickets which border the rivers, sallying forth at night, like the jackal, to scour the country.

Driven to bay, they turn upon the assailant and fight desperately.

The Chaldaean kings, like the Pharaohs, did not shrink from entering into a close conflict with them, and boasted of having rendered a service to their subjects by the destruction of many of these beasts.

* The Sumerian name of the lion is ur-malch “the great dog.

” The best description of the first-mentioned species is still that of Olivier, who saw in the house oL the Pasha of Bagdad five of them in captivity; cf.

Layard, Nineveh and Babylon, p. 487. Father Scheil tells me the lions have disappeared completely since the last twenty years.

[Illustration: 034. jpg THE URUS IN ACT OF CHARGING] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from Nimrud (Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, 1st series, pi.

11).

[Illustration: 035. jpg a herd of onagers pursued by dogs and wounded by arrows.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief in the British Museum.

The elephant seems to have roamed for some time over the steppes of the middle Euphrates;* there is no indication of its presence after the XIIIth century before our era, and from that time forward it was merely an object of curiosity brought at great expense from distant countries.

This is not the only instance of animals which have disappeared in the course of centuries; the rulers of Nineveh were so addicted to the pursuit of the urus that they ended by exterminating it.

Several sorts of panthers and smaller felidae had their lairs in the thickets of Mesopotamia.

The wild ass and onager roamed in small herds between the Balikh and the Tigris.

Attempts were made, it would seem, at a very early period to tame them and make use of them to draw chariots; but this attempt either did not succeed at all, or issued in such uncertain results, that it was given up as soon as other less refractory animals were made the subjects of successful experiment.

* The existence of the elephant in Mesopotamia and Northern Syria is well established by the Egyptian inscription of Amenemhabi in the XVth century before our era.

[Illustration: 036. jpg THE CHIEF DOMESTIC ANIMALS OP THE REGIONS OF THE EUPHRATES.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an Assyrian bas-relief from Kouyunjik.

The wild boar, and his relative, the domestic hog, inhabited the morasses.

Assyrian sculptors amused themselves sometimes by representing long gaunt sows making their way through the cane-brakes, followed by their interminable offspring.

The hog remained here, as in Egypt, in a semi-tamed condition, and the people were possessed of only a small number of domesticated animals besides the dog--namely, the ass, ox, goat, and sheep; the horse and camel were at first unknown, and were introduced at a later period.

* [Illustration: 037. jpg THE SOW AND HER LITTER MAKING THEIR WAY THROUGH A BED OF REEDS.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Kouyunjik.

* The horse is denoted in the Assyrian texts by a group of signs which mean “the ass of the East,” and the camel by other signs in which the character for “ass” also appears.

The methods of rendering these two names show that the subjects of them were unknown in the earliest times; the epoch of their introduction is uncertain.

A chariot drawn by horses appears on the “Stele of the Vultures.

” Camels are mentioned among the booty obtained from the Bedouin of the desert.

We know nothing of the efforts which the first inhabitants--Sumerians and Semites--had to make in order to control the waters and to bring the land under culture: the most ancient monuments exhibit them as already possessors of the soil, and in a forward state of civilization.

* Their chief cities were divided into two groups: one in the south, in the neighbourhood of the sea; the other in a northern direction, in the region where the Euphrates and Tigris are separated from each other by merely a narrow strip of land.

The southern group consisted of seven, of which Eridu lay nearest to the coast.

This town stood on the left bank of the Euphrates, at a point which is now called Abu-Shahrein.

A little to the west, on the opposite bank, but at some distance from the stream, the mound of Mugheir marks the site of Uru, the most important, if not the oldest, of the southern cities.

Lagash occupied the site of the modern Telloh to the north of Eridu, not far from the Shatt-el-Hai;

Nisin and Mar, Larsam and Uruk, occupied positions at short distances from each other on the marshy ground which extends between the Euphrates and the Shatt-en-Nil.

The inscriptions mention here and there other less important places, of which the ruins have not yet been discovered--Zirlab and Shurippak, places of embarkation at the mouth of the Euphrates for the passage of the Persian Gulf; and the island of Dilmun, situated some forty leagues to the south in the centre of the Salt Sea,--“Nar-Marratum.

” The northern group comprised Nipur, the “incomparable;” Barsip, on the branch which flows parallel to the Euphrates and falls into the Bahr-i-Nedjif; Babylon, the “gate of the god,” the “residence of life,” the only metropolis of the Euphrates region of which posterity never lost a reminiscence; Kishu, Kuta, Agade;** and lastly the two Sipparas, that of Shamash and that of Anunit.

The earliest Chaldaean civilization was confined almost entirely to the two banks of the Lower Euphrates: except at its northern boundary, it did not reach the Tigris, and did not cross this river.

Separated from the rest of the world--on the east by the marshes which border the river in its lower course, on the north by the badly watered and sparsely inhabited table-land of Mesopotamia, on the west by the Arabian desert--it was able to develop its civilization, as Egypt had done, in an isolated area, and to follow out its destiny in peace.

The only point from which it might anticipate serious danger was on the east, whence the Kashshi and the Elamites, organized into military states, incessantly harassed it year after year by their attacks.

The Kashshi were scarcely better than half-civilized mountain hordes, but the Elamites were advanced in civilization, and their capital, Susa, vied with the richest cities of the Euphrates, Uru and Babylon, in antiquity and magnificence.

* For an ideal picture of what may have been the beginnings of that civilization, see Delitzsch, Die Entstehung des altesten Schriflssystems, p. 214, et seq.

I will not enter into the question as to whether it did or did not come by sea to the mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris.

The legend of the fish-god Oannes (Berossus, frag.

1), which seems to conceal some indication on the subject, is merely a mythological tradition, from which it would be wrong to deduce historical conclusions.

** Agade, or Agane, has been identified with one of the two towns of which Sippara is made up, more especially with that which was called Anunit Sippara; the reading Agadi, Agacle, was especially assumed to lead to its identification with the Accad of _Genesis x. 10_, and with the Akkad of native tradition.

This opinion has been generally abandoned by Assyriologists, and Agane has not yet found a site.

Was it only a name for Babylon?

[Illustration: 040. jpg MAP OF CHALDAEA] There was nothing serious to fear from the Guti, on the branch of the Tigris to the north-east, or from the Shuti to the north of these; they were merely marauding tribes, and, however troublesome they might be to their neighbours in their devastating incursions, they could not compromise the existence of the country, or bring it into subjection.

It would appear that the Chaldseans had already begun to encroach upon these tribes and to establish colonies among them--El-Ashshur on the banks of the Tigris, Harran on the furthest point of the Mesopotamian plain, towards the sources of the Balikh.

Beyond these were vague and unknown regions--Tidanum, Martu, the sea of the setting sun, the vast territories of Milukhkha and Magan.

* Egypt, from the time they were acquainted with its existence, was a semi-fabulous country at the ends of the earth.

* The question concerning Milukhkha and Magan has exercised Assyriologists for twenty years.

The prevailing opinion appears to be that which identifies Magan with the Sinaitic Peninsula, and Milukhkha with the country to the north of Magan as far as the Wady Arish and the Mediterranean; others maintain, not the theory of Delitzsch, according to whom Magan and Milukhkha are synonyms for Shumir and Akkad, and consequently two of the great divisions of Babylonia, but an analogous hypothesis, in which they are regarded as districts to the west of the Euphrates, either in Chaldaean regions or on the margin of the desert, or even in the desert itself towards the Sinaitic Peninsula.

What we know of the texts induces me, in common with H. Rawlinson, to place these countries on the shores of the Persian Gulf, between the mouth of the Euphrates and the Bahrein islands;

possibly the Makse and the Melangitso of classical historians and geographers were the descendants of the people of Magan (Makan) and Milukhkha (Melugga), who had been driven towards the entrance to the Persian Gulf by some such event as the increase in these regions of the Kashdi (Chaldaeans).

The names, emigrated to the western parts of Arabia and to the Sinaitic Peninsula in after-times, as the name of India passed to America in the XVIth century of our era.

How long did it take to bring this people out of savagery, and to build up so many flourishing cities?

The learned did not readily resign themselves to a confession of ignorance on the subject.

As they had depicted the primordial chaos, the birth of the gods, and their struggles over the creation, so they related unhesitatingly everything which had happened since the creation of mankind, and they laid claim to being able to calculate the number of centuries which lay between their own day and the origin of things.

The tradition to which most credence was attached in the Greek period at Babylon, that which has been preserved for us in the histories of Berossue, asserts that there was a somewhat long interval between the manifestation of Oannes and the foundation of a dynasty.

The first king was Aloros of Babylon, a Chaldaean of whom nothing is related except that he was chosen by the divinity himself to be a shepherd of the people.

He reigned for ten sari, amounting in all to 36,000 years; for the saros is 3600 years, the ner 600 years, and the soss 60 years.

[Illustration: 041. jpg TWO FISH-LIKE DEITIES OF THE CHALDAEANS.

] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from an intaglio in the British Museum.

After the death of Aloros, his son Alaparos ruled for three sari, after which Amillaros, of the city of Pantibibla, reigned thirteen sari.

It was under him that there issued from the Bed Sea a second Annedotos, resembling Oannes in his semi-divine shape, half man and half fish.

After him Ammenon, also from Pantibibla, a Chaldaean, ruled for a term of twelve sari; under him, they say, the mysterious Oannes appeared.

Afterwards Amelagaros of Pantibibla governed for eighteen sari; then Davos, the shepherd from Pantibibla, reigned ten sari: under him there issued from the Red Sea a fourth Annedotos, who had a form similar to the others, being made up of man and fish.

After him Bvedoranchos of Pantibibla reigned for eighteen sari; in his time there issued yet another monster, named Anodaphos, from the sea.

These various monsters developed carefully and in detail that which Oannes had set forth in a brief way.

Then Amempsinos of Larancha, a Chalaean, reigned ten sari; and Obartes, also a Chaldaean, of Larancha, eight sari.

Finally, on the death of Obartes, his son Xisuthros held the sceptre for eighteen sari.

It was under him that the great deluge took place.

Thus ten kings are to be reckoned in all, and the duration of their combined reigns amounts to one hundred and twenty sari.

From the beginning of the world to the Deluge they reckoned 691,200 years, of which 259,200 had passed before the coming of Aloros, and the remaining 432,000 were generously distributed between this prince and his immediate successors: the Greek and Latin writers had certainly a fine occasion for amusement over these fabulous numbers of years which the Chaldaeans assigned to the lives and reigns of their first kings.