A History of Babylonia and Assyria, Book I: Prolegomena
Robert William Rogers author
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CHAPTER XI
THE PEOPLES OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA
THE civilization of Assyria and Babylonia and their great sweep of history were not made by one people. Men of several different stocks contributed to the result, and here, as often afterward in the world’s history, the history bears the stamp not of a unity but of a diversity of races. Even in modern times, with all the resources at our command, it is often difficult to distinguish the different strains of races and to trace their influence in the movements of history. We need, therefore, feel no surprise that there should be great difficulty in tracing out the racial affinities of the peoples who made history in Assyria and Babylonia. At the earliest period to which direct monumental records go back we find a people in possession of Babylonia who are called by us Babylonians. Their written records are found to be in part a Semitic language, a language closely related in forms and vocabulary to the northern branch of the Semitic family, of which Hebrew and Aramaic are well-known examples. But when these earliest records are all gathered together it appears that large numbers of them are bilingual; that is to say, side by side with the Semitic Babylonian is found another language. This other language appears in these inscriptions in the form of two dialects, one called "the language of the land of Accad "and the other .the language of the land of Sumer." As the latter contains the older forms it is now called the Sumerian language, and the other is regarded as a dialect of it. In this Sumerian language, written though it be in part at least by Semitic Babylonians, lies the proof of the existence of a Sumerian people. They belong distinctly, as yet, to the prehistoric period in Babylonian life. Of their racial connections we know only the single negative fact that they were not Semites. Their language is agglutinative, and they have been connected on linguistic grounds both with Indo-Europeans and especially with Turanians. But the evidence is slight in itself and of doubtful weight even if it were more extensive, for language is, after all, proof not of race but of social contact.256 But, though we are unable to say who these Sumerians were, we are in a position to aver some facts concerning their work in the world and their relations to the Semitic Babylonians. It was they who invented the cuneiform system of writing, a cumbrous and artificial system indeed, and yet a wonderful advance upon the still more cumbrous picture writing out of which it was developed. When the Semitic Babylonians conquered the Sumerians and possessed their lands they adopted at once this system of writing and took over with it the literature which it enshrined. This literature was especially devoted to the setting forth of forms of worship, of hymns of praise to gods, of prayers for forgiveness from sins, and of incantations for delivery from disease. It was natural that the Babylonians should desire to retain this religious material in its ancient tongue, as it was not to be expected that it would be so efficacious if translated into their own Semitic speech. There arose, therefore, a custom of providing these religious texts with interlinear translations into the Semitic speech. Sumerian had now come into the same position as did Latin in the religious life of the Middle Ages. It remained only that it should advance into a position similar to that held by Latin in general life in the same period. This also came about, for not only were religious texts so written, but also historical texts as well. Gradually this custom ceased and the Sumerian language was no longer mentioned or used; but the system of writing which the Sumerians had devised continued in full use to the fall of the Babylonian commonwealth, and even lived on in the bands of the Indo- Europeans who came after them.257 The Babylonians had indeed conquered the Sumerians, but in a higher sense they had been conquered by them, and their civilization in general and their religion in particular owed a deep debt to this strange, almost unknown people who stand on the very confines of human history. At about the beginning of the fourth millennium before Christ the Sumerian people, who had already attained a high civilization, found their land invaded by a vast horde of barbarians, for so these must have appeared to them. These were Semites, closely related in blood to the Arabs who once overran Spain and the Hebrews who once came pouring across the Jordan into Canaan. Whence these invaders came is not certain. It has been thought by some that they came from the northeast through the passes of the Kurdistan mountains, and that Babylonia was the land in which they had their first national development and from which they spread over western Asia to make great careers as Arabians, Canaanites, and Aramaeans.258 This view, once stated and supported with surpassing learning, is now almost abandoned, and but few great names may be cited among its modern adherents. A second view finds the original home of the Semites in Africa, either in the northeastern259 or northwestern part of the great continent.260 It were idle to deny that strong linguistic support for this view may be found in the recognized affinity between the Semitic languages and Egyptian, Coptic, Berber, and the Kushite (Bisharee, Galla, Somali, etc.) languages. But when all has been said in favor of this view there still remain more potent considerations in favor of a third view, that the original home of the Semites was in Arabia,261 out of which they came in successive waves of migration to find larger and more bountiful lands in Babylonia, Mesopotamia, and even in the far western land of Canaan. This latter view seems ever to win new adherents and may be said now to be generally accepted by modern scholars. The Babylonians conquered the Sumerians, drove some of them out, destroyed others, and assimilated the rest. During the long course of their history they remained as unchanged and unchangeable as the Egyptians. They were powerful in warfare at first, but gradually cast aside the warlike spirit and became so devoted to the arts of peace as to be unable to defend their country from invasion, which happened again and again during their long history. Yet so great was their vitality and so marked their racial individuality that they always triumphed in the end and absorbed their conquerors. Just as their type, the distinctive Semitic type, prevailed over the Sumerian, so also did it prevail over the Kassites, Elamites, and that long line of lesser peoples who conquered them in part or settled among them peaceably. The Babylonians were devoted chiefly to religion and to literature, as their remains would seem to indicate. It was they who erected the largest temples that the world has ever seen, and as the materials used were perishable, ever reerected and restored them. It was they who provided these temples with books, liturgies, hymns, and prayers, and heaped up thousands of tablets recording all these building operations and giving glory and honor to the gods who had inspired the work. Out of the Babylonian people sprang the Assyrians, for Assyria was colonized from Babylonia. Though of the same blood, the Assyrians gradually became a very different people. Less exposed to invasion during a large part of their history than the Babylonians, they remained of much purer Semitic blood. In religion, in language, and in literature they continued to the end ever dependent upon the southern people. Their climate belonged to the temperate rather than to the subtropical zone, and the inclemency of winters over at least part of their little kingdom served to toughen their fiber, while their early efforts at conquest gradually hardened them into the form which they bore during all their history. They became a military people on the one hand, and a commercial people on the other. Early accustomed to blood and fire, they became totally unlike the peace-loving Babylonians, and their history is filled with deeds of almost unparalleled savagery. Wherever their armies marched women were ravished, men were mutilated or flayed alive, houses and cities and fields of grain were given to the torch, and desolation and ruin were left behind. Yet out of this conquest they achieved empire, and sobered by its burdens, learned to govern as well as to destroy, and devised methods of subjection and of rule, which were afterward applied by a people who in certain respects much resembled them, the Romans. Along with this development in the arts of war and the practice of government there went a great growth in trade. The Assyrian traders invaded the whole East and took gain both from buying and from selling, from transport and from storage. They influenced the king to conquest in more than one instance that the field of their operations and the extent of their money getting might be increased. That they contributed to civilization by their barter and trade there is no doubt, and this result affords a bright contrast to the weary details of blood and fire which otherwise would fill the whole canvas. Yet, though thus given over in large measure to war and commerce, the Assyrians knew their lack and ever looked with envy to the superior civilization of Babylonia. Some of their kings imitated the Babylonians in the founding and storing of libraries with books of religion and literature and not merely with boastful narratives of bloody conquest. Others bore witness to the attractiveness of the Babylonian culture by conquering parts of that country that they might worship at its ancient shrines and add to their names royal titles, bestowed by all hereditary priesthood, which had come down from an immemorial past. Thus were mixed up in the Assyrian nature elements both of barbarism and of civilization, and now one and now the other is manifested in the work which they did in the world. But when the whole history is surveyed, as in a panorama, the barbarism must be admitted to prevail over the civilization and the total impression to be less favorable than that which the Babylonians make upon us. Long after the Babylonians and Assyrians had risen to power in the world the great valley came to know another people who called themselves Kaldu, and were known to the Hebrews as Kasdim, to the Greeks as Chaldaioi, from whom we have called them Chaldeans. They were undoubtedly Semites,262 for not only are their names purely Semitic, but their religion, manner of life, and adaptation to Semitic usages all bear the same stamp as those of the Semitic Babylonians. The origin of the Chaldeans is, like that of the Babylonians, lost in the past. They also probably came out of the heart of Arabia and settled first along the western shore of the Persian Gulf, pushing gradually northward until they held the country about the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates. From that district they begin the long series of incursions which finally won for them the control of Babylonia, and made them the heirs of the Babylonian people in civilization and in empire. In the beginning they were nomads and tillers of the soil, but became men of the city and formed little city kingdoms similar to those which had existed in the early days of Babylonian civilization. The lines of their development were, however, more similar to those of the Assyrians than to those of the Babylonians. They