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The New York Public Library
The Edmund G. Gress
Collection
1935
1
ANCIENT HISTORY
BY
PHILIP VAN NESS MYERS
PORMBRLY PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL BCONOMY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI, AUTHOR OF " M BDIJBVAL AND
MODERN HISTORY,^ **A GENERAL HISTORY/'
AND ** HISTORY AS PAST ETHICS ''
SECOND REVISED EDITION
>» ' J • - - • • 4 • J
GINN AND COMPANY
BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO
COPYRIGHT, 1904, 1916, BY PHILIP VAN NESS MYERS
ENTERED AT STATIONERS* HALL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
5Z&8
THE REW YORK I
PUBLIC LIBRARY
921786A '
ASTWI^ LENOX AND
TUJUfiN FOUNDATIONS
H 1937 L
' —
'S'.'
t- '
I • • • .• •
• • •
^« •••• •«■• * '••• •• •
• • • •
. * • • • • • • •
• • • • . • ••*•« •••
GINN AND COMPANY • PRO- PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A
PREFACE TO THE SECOND REVISED
EDITION
The first revision of this book, as stated in the preface to the edition of 1904, was issued sixteen years after its first publication as a textbook. After another interval, of twelve years, I now give out this second revised edition. The text has again been subjected in every part to a careful revision and the latest assured results of dis- covery and research have been incorporated. The additions include, besides many new sections, a wholly new chapter (under the title of ASgean Qvilization) on the Cretan and the Mycenaean period. The series of cuts has been augmented by the addition of many new illus- trations, including five plates in colors. Works of special importance •^ that have appeared since the issue of the first revised edition of the \j book have been added to the bibliographies, and books superseded >iN by later works omitted from the lists.
\ In the Topics for Class Reports the subjects suggested, it will be
V noted, bear largely on the private life, the manners, and the customs
*^ of the p>eriod under review ; that is, on matters which could not be
^ given detailed treatment in the text without leaving lank and meager
the narrative of events. That the citations for readings in the prepa-
\ ration of these reports might possess the maximum of usefulness for
^ schools whose expenditures for books must be carefully limited, these
selections have, in so far as possible, been restricted to just a few of
the best, yet inexpensive, books on the subjects named.
For assistance that I have received in the work of revision on this edition I am under special indebtedness to Dr. W. Max Miiller, of the University of Pennsylvania, who kindly read the manuscript of the
• •• lU
iv PREFACE
chapters on the Orient and favored me with many valuable sugges- tions. To Dr. Joseph Edward Harry, of the University of Cincinnati, I also owe thanks for aid in reading the proofsheets of the chapters on Greek history, and to Mr. Stillman Percy Roberts Chadwick, of The Phillips Exeter Academy, for a similar service in connection with the proofsheets of the diapters covering the histoiy of Rome.
P. V. N. M.
College Hill, Cincinnati
PREFACE TO THE FIRST REVISED
EDITION
I cannot p>erhaps better introduce what I have to say here than by quoting the following paragraph from the preface to the i888 edition of this work : " The following pages are a revision and ex- pansion of . . . my Outlines of Ancient History y which was published as a library book in 1882 by Messrs. Harper & Brothers. It is through the generous action of these publishers that I have had the ad- vantage of making this earlier work the basis of the present text-book."
After the lapse of sixteen more years I now give out the present revised edition. The Oriental portion of the work has been almost wholly rewritten ; the Greek part is based on my History of Greece (1895); the Roman portion on my Rome: Its Rise and Fall (1901).
Besides this brief statement of fact there are various other things relating to the scope and aim of the work that might properly enough be said in this place; but the book must speak for itself. I write these prefatory words solely to express my gratitude to those who have helped me, and in doing this to disclaim title to that which does not belong to me. It would not be right should I withhold the fact that during the years I have labored on the volume I have from time to time been assisted by several eminent historical scholars, and that, while the faults of the book are all my own, to these scholars should be ascribed in part whatever merits it may possess. To Professor Nathaniel Schmidt, of Cornell University, I am deeply indebted for aiding me in the revision of the proof sheets of the chapters of the Oriental part of the volume ; to Dr. Ruf us B. Richardson, for many years head of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, I owe special thanks for reading the proofs of the Greek portion; to. Dr. Eduard Meyer, of the University of Halle, and Professor Heniy F. Pelham, of the University of Oxford, I am indebted for
A.
readiug an the cfaapten (but in tfadr more cHeiMlcd form as tfaej appear in my Rowu: Ai Riu and Faff) ci the Roman pan ; vtnle to Piofessor George L. Burr, of Cornell UniversitT, I am mider like deep oUigation for gi\ing roe his scfaolaiiy aid in die revision <^ die sheets of those chapters of my MiddU Agts on which the continu- ation of the present wwk from the extinction of the Roman Empire in the West to its restoration by Charlemagne is based.
I wish further to make grateful acknowledgment of the assistance l^en me by Mrs. Mabel K Hodder, graduate student of Raddiffe College, Cambridge, in the revision and extension of the btbtiographies of the Greek and Roman chapters ; and of the aid I have received from my former pupil. Miss Lucy M. Blanchard, who has kindly given me the benefit of loi^ dass-room use of the earlier work by making various suggestions which I have found very hdpfuL
I would also tender mv thanks to the officers of the Ardiitectural library of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, of the Fogg Museum of Harvard University', of the Public Library of Boston, and of the Public Library of Cindimati for the use and loan of books, photographs, and other illustrative materiaL ... In this ocxi- nection it is fitting that mention should be made of the fact that the many fine pen drawings which embellish the bode are by the artist Mr. Homer W. Colby of BostorL
Lastly, to my publishers I feel prompted to express my appreci- ation of the generosity they have shown, exceedii^ even what I have dared to suggest, in enriching the volume with maps, cuts, aixl plates; and to make adcnowledgment of the courtesies and efficient aid I have received from the heads and members of the various departments of their house.
P. V. X. M.
College Hill, Ohio May 12, 1904
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. General Introduction: Prehistoric Times .... i
II. Races AND Groups OF Peoples 17
PART I. THE EASTERN PEOPLES
III. Ancient Egypt. (From earliest times to 30 b.c.) . . . . 23
I. Political History 23
II. The Civilization 34
IV. The Early City-kingdoms of Babylonia and the Old
Babylonian Empire. (From earliest times to 728 B.C.) . 48
I. Political History 48
II. Arts and General Culture 53
V. The Assyrian Empire. (From an unknown date to 606 b.c) 64
I. Political History 64
II. The Civilization 69
VI. The Chaldean Empire. (625-538 b.c.) 75
VII. The Hebrews 79
VIII. Phcenicians, Hittites, and Lydians 87
I. The Phoenicians 87
II. The Hittites 91
III. The Lydians 93
IX. The Persian Empire. (558-330 b.c.) 95
I. Political History 95
II. Government, Religion, and Arts 100
#
X. The East Asian Peoples 106
I. India 106
II. China no
« m
VII
viii CONTENTS
PART II. GREECE
CHA-PTEK PAGE
XI. The Land and the People 114
XII. Prehistoric Times according to Greek Accounts . 121
XIII. The JEgrah Civilization 128
XIV. The Heritage of the Historic Greeks 140
I. Political Institutions 140
II. Religious Ideas and Institutions 1 43
III. Language, Mythology, Literature, and Art 151
XV. Early Sparta and the Peloponnesian League . . 154
XVI. The Age of Colonization and of Tyrannies . . 162
I. The Age of Colonization. (About 750-600 B.C.) . . . 162
II. The Tyrannies. (About 650-500 B. c) s 171
XVII. The History of Athens up to the Persian Wars 177
XVIII. Hellas Overshadowed by the Rise of Persia :
Prelude to the Persian Wars 187
XIX. The Persian Wars. (500-479 b. c.) 191
XX. The Making of the Athenian Empire. (479-445 b.c.) 207
XXI. The Age of Pericles. (445-431 b.c.) 212
XXI I. The Peloponnesian War; the Spartan and the
. Theban Supremacy 226
I. The Peloponnesian War. (431-404 b.c.) 226
11. The Spartan and the Theban Supremacy 240
XXIII. The Greeks of Western Hellas. (413-336 b.c.) . . 248
XXIV. The Rise of Macedonia: Reign of Phiup II. (359-
336 B.C.) 251
XXV. Alexander the Great. (336-323 b.c.) 256
XXVI. The GRiCCO-ORiENTAL World from the Death of Alexander to the Conquest of Greece by the
Romans. (323-146 b.c.) 266
I. Hellenistic Culture 266
II. Macedonia 268
III. Continental Greece 269
IV. Rhodes ^ 273
V. Pergamum 274
yi. The Syrian Kingdom 276
VII. The Kingdom of the Ptolemies in Egypt ^ . . . . 278
CONTENTS ix
CHArrBK PAGE
XXVII. Greek Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting . 283
I. Architecture 284
II. Sculpture 290
III. Painting 298
XXVIII.- Greek Literature 302
h Introductory 302
II. The Period before 475 B.c 303
III. The Attic or Golden Age. (475-300 B.C.) .... 305
IV. The Alexandrian Age. (300-146 B.c.) 314
XXIX. Greek Philosophy and Science 317
XXX. Social Life of the Greeks 329
«
PART HI. ROME
First Period — Rome as a Kingdom
XXXI. Italy and its Early Inhabitants 337
XXXII. Rome as a Kingdom 342
I. The Beginnings of Rome 342
II. Society and Government 344
III. Religion 348
IV. Rome under the Kings. (Legendary Date 753-509 B.C.) 353 Legends of Early Rome 357
Second Period — Rome as a Republic. (509-31 b.c.)
XXXIII. The Early Republic; Plebeians Secure Equality
WITH the Patricians. (509-367 b. c.) . . . ... 360
XXXIV. The Conquest and Unification of Italy. (367-
264 B.C.) 373
XXXV. Expansion of Rome beyond the Peninsula . . 382
L The First Punic War, (264-241 B.C.) 382
II. Rome and Carthage between the First and the Second
Punic War. (241-218 B.C.) 388
lU. The Second Punic War. (218-201 B.C.) 392
IV. Events between the Second and the Third Punic War.
(201-146 B.C.) 397
V. The Third Punic "War. (149-146 B.C.) 403
XXXVI. The Last Century of the Republic: the Period
OF Revolution. (133-31 b.c.) 408
X CONTENTS
CHAPTER PACK
Third Period — Rome as an Empire. (31 B.C.-476 a.d.) / The Prindpate, (31 B.C.-284 a.d.)
XXXVII. The Establishment of the Empire and the Prin-
ciPATE OF Augustus CiESAR. (31 B.C.-14 a.d.) . 442
XXXVIII. From Tiberius to the Accession of Diocletian
(14-284 A.D.) 452
//. The Absolute Monarchy
XXXIX. The Reigns of Diocletian and Constantine the
Great 475
I. The Reign of Diocletian. (284-305 a.d.) .... 475
II. Reign of Constantine the Great (306-337 a.d.) . . 480
XL. The Break-up of the Empire in the West.
(376-476 A.D.) 486
XLI. Architecture, Literature, Law, and Social Life
AMONG THE ROMANS 503
I. Architecture and Engineering 503
II. Literature and Law 510
in. Social Life 518
PART IV. THE ROMANO-GERMAN OR TRANSITION AGE
(476-800 A.D.)
XLI I. The Barbarian Kingdoms 527
XLI 1 1. The Church and its Institutions 532
I. The Conversion of the Barbarians 532
II. The Rise of Monasticism 535
III. The Rise of the Papacy 538
XLIV. The Fusion of Latin and Teuton 543
XLV. The Roman Empire in the East 548
XLVI. The Rise of Islam 551
XLVII. Charlemagne and the Restoration of the
Empire in the West 558
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 563
INDEX AND PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY 573
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
(After photographs, and from cuts taken from Baumeister's DenkmaeUr des klassi- scktn AUertwnSt Oscar Jaeger's IVeligesckuhte^ Schreiber's Atlas of Classical Aniiquiiies^ and other reliable sources.)
FIGURE PAGE
1. Implements of the Old Stone Age 2
2. Engraving of a Mammoth on the Fragment of a Tusk 3
3. Engraving on a Reindeer Antler 3
4. Wall Painting from the Cavern of Font-de-Gaume, France .... 4
5. Implements of the New Stone Age 5
6. A Prehistoric Egyptian Tomb 6
7. Typical Megalithic or Huge Stone Monuments 7
8. A Restoration of Swiss Lake Dwellings of the Later Stone Age . . 8
9. Primitive Methods of making Fire 9
10. Indian Picture Writing 13
11. Stonehenge 15
12. Negro Captives 18
13. Ploughing and Sowing . .' 24
14. Reaping the Grain 24
15. Ivory Statuette of a King of the First Dynasty 26
16. Khufu, Builder of the Great Pyramid 27
17. The«Shcikh-el-beled" 28
18. The Scribe 29
19. Amenhotep IV and Family Bestowing Gifts 30
20. Detail of Relief Portraying Victory of Rameses II over the Kheta
at Kadesh, on the Orontes 31
21. Phalanx of the Hittites 32
22. Brick-Making in Ancient Egypt 33
23. Forms of Egyptian Writing 35
24. The Rosetta Stone 36
25. Two Royal Names in Hieroglyphics 37
26. Mummy of a Sacred Bull 38
27. Profile of Rameses II 40
28. Mummy Case with Mummy 41
29. Servant for the Underworld 42
30. The Judgment of the Dead 43
31. An Egyptian Obelisk 44
32. Tubular Drill Hole , 45
33. A Scarab Amulet 45
xi
xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PAGB
34. Ancient Babylonian Canal 49
35. Impression of a Seal of Sargon I 51
36. Door Socket of Sargon I 52
37. Excavation showing Pavements in a Court of the Temple of Bel
at Nippur 54
,8. Cuneiform Writing 55
9. Table showing the Development of the Cuneiform Writing .... 55
0. Babylonian Tablet 56
1. Contract Tablet 56
2. Diorite Seated Statue of Gudea, Ruler of Lagash (Shirpurla) ... 59
3. Writing-exercise Tablets of a Child 60
4. Hammurabi Receiving the Code from the Sun-god 61
5. Restoration of Sargon*s Palace at Khorsabad 66
6. Transport of a Winged Bull 67
7. An Assyrian Kelek 68
8. An Assyrian King and his Captives 69
9. Excavating an Assyrian Palace 70
;o« Emblem of Ashur, the Supreme Deity of Assyria 71
1. Restoration of a Court in Sargon's Palace at Khorsabad 72
2. Assyrians Flaying Prisoners Alive 73
3. Lion Hunt 73
4. Restoration of the Southern Citadel of Babylon 76
5. Babylonian Lion a 77
6. The Place of Wailing 83
7. The Later Temple at Jerusalem as Enlarged and Beautified by Herod 85
,8. Species of the Murex 87
9. Phoenician Galley 88
60. Table showing the Development of English Letters from the
Phoenician 90
61. The Hittite God of the Sky 91
62. Caravan Crossing the Taurus 92
63. Hittite Hieroglyphic Writing 92
64. Croesus on the Pyre 96
65. The Tomb of C>tus, at Pasargadae 97
66. Insurgent Captives brought before Darius 98
67. Traces of the Ro}*al Road of Darius 99
6S, The Behistun Rock 99
6q. Rock-cut Tomb of Darius I, near Persepolis 100
70. Ancient Persian Fire^ltars 102
71. The King in Combat with a Monster Symbolizing Ahriman .... 103
72. The Rxxins of Persepolis 104
73. Showing the Derivation of Modem Chinese Characters from
Earlier Pictorial Writing . . .• iii
74. Gallery in the South Wall at Tiryns . 1x5
75. The Plain of Ohnmpia 116
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii
FIG9RB rAGK
76. The Labyrinth . 122
77. Theseus and the Minotaur 123
78. The Lions' Gate at Mycenae 125
79. Battle at the Ships between the Greeks and Trojans 126
80. Hissarlik, the Probable Site of Ancient Troy 128
81. Grave Circle at Mycens 129
82. Inlaid Sword Blades Found at Mycens 130
83. Great Magazines, or Storerooms, of the Palace at Cnossus . . . . 131
84. Fresco of a Young Cup-hearer 132
85. A Cnossian Seal Impression 133
86. Theater and ^ Dancing-place " (?) Excavated at Cnossus by
Dr. Evans 134
87. Cretan Linear Tablet with Chariot and Horse 134
88. The So-called " Throne of Minos " 135
89. Group of Gods and Goddesses 144
9a The Carrying off of Persephone by Hades to the Underworld ; her
Leave-taking of her Mother Demeter 145
91. Apollo 146
92. Greek Runners 147
93. Racing with Four*horse Chariots 148
94. Battle between Greeks and Amazons 1 52
95. Sparta, with the Ranges of the Taygetus in the Background . . . 155
96. Ruined Temples at Psestum 168
97. Coin of Cyrene 170
98. Coin of Corinth 170
99. The Bema, or Orator's Stand, on the Pnyx Hill, Athens .... 178 100. The Athenian Tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogiton .... 183 loi. Ostrakon with Name of Themistocles 197
102. Hoplite, or Heavy-armed Greek Warrior 205
103. A Memorial of the Battle of Platsea 206
104. Pericles 213
105. The So-called Theseum at Athens 218
106. The Caryatid Porch of the Erechtheum 220
107. Alcibiades 233
108. Coin of Syracuse 249
109. Demosthenes .' 253
no. Alexander the Great 257
111. The So-called Sarcophagus of Alexander 264
112. The Dying Gaul 274
1x3. A Restoration of the Great Altar of Zeus Soter at Pergamum . . 275
114. Showing the Influence of the Master-form of the Pharos on the
Evolution of the Moslem Minaret and the Christian Church
Tower 280
115. Orders of Greek Architecture 284
116. The Parthenon 287
xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PAGE
1x7. The Theater of Dionysus at Athens 289
X 18. Stadium at Athens 290
119. The Wrestlers 291
120. Stele of Aristion 291
I2X. The Charioteer 292
122. Throwing the Discus, or Quoit 293
123. Athenian Youth in Procession 294
124. Athena Parthenos 295
125. Head of the Olympian Zeus by Phidias 295
126. Nike, or Victory, of Pzonius 296
127. Hermes with the Infant Dionysus 297
128. The Nike, or Victory, of Samothrace 298
129. Aphrodite of Milos 298
130. The Laocoon Group 299
13X. Portrait in Wax Paint 300
132. Homer 303
133. Hoeing and Ploughing 304
134. Bacchic Procession 306
135. Sophocles 308
136. Euripides 309
137. Herodotus 311
138. Thucydides 312
139. Socrates 321
140. Plato 322
14X. Aristotle 323
142. Pedagogue and Children 330
143. A Greek School 331
144. A Banquet Scene 333
145. An Etruscan Chariot 339
146. Wall Painting of an Etruscan Banquet 340
147. Head of Janus 350
148. Divining by Means of the Appearance of the Entrails of a Sacri-
ficial Victim 351
149. The Cloaca Maxima 354
150. Roman Soldier 355
151. Lictors with Fasces 361
152. The Appian Way 377
1 53. Grotto of Posilipo 380
1 54. Prow of a Roman Warship 384
155. The Triumphal Column of Duilius 385
1 56. Augur's Birds 387
157. Hannibal 391
1 58. Publius Cornelius Scipio ( Africanus) 396
159. Coin of the Italian Confederacy 416
160. Mithradates the Great 420
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv
FIGURE PAGE
6i. Marius (?) 421
62. Roman Trading Vessel 425
63. Pompcy the Great 427
64. Julius Csesar 434
65. Octavian (Octavius) as a Youth 437
66. Cicero 438
67. Augustus 443
68. Maecenas 447
69. Vespasian 456
70. ** Judaea Capta " 457
71. Triumphal Procession from the Arch of Titus 457
72. A Street in Pompeii 458
73. House of the Vetti at Pompeii 459
74. Trajan 460
75. Bridge over the Danube, Built by Trajan 461
76. Trajan's Column 462
77. The Hadrian Wall 464
78. Hadrian 465
79. Siege of a City 466
80. Roman Aqueduct and Bridge near Nimes, France 469
81. Commodus Represented as the Roman Hercules 470
82. Caracalla 471
83. Triumph of Sapor over Valerian 473
84. Christ as the Good Shepherd 479
85. The Labarum 480
86. Arch of Constantine at Rome, as it Appears To-day 481
87. Germans Crossing the Rhine 494
88. The Pantheon, at Rome 503
89. The Roman Forum in 1885 504
90. The Circus Maximus 505
91. The Colosseum 506
92. A Roman Milestone 507
93. Tlie Claudian Aqueduct 508
94. The Medicinal Spring of Umeri 509
95. Mausoleum of Hadrian, at Rome 510
96. Seneca 5x5
97. Gladiators 521
98. Semicircular Dining-couch 522
99. Tomb of Theodoric at Ravenna 528
200. Ruins of the Celebrated Monastry of lona 535
201. A Monk Copyist 537
202. Trial by Combat 546
203. The Kaaba at Mecca 552
LIST OF PLATES
PLATE PAGE
I. The Parthenon. (A restoration ; in colors) Frontispiece
II. Paintings on the Walls of Caverns, by the Hunter- Artists of the
Old Stone Age. (After Breuil\ in colors) 6
III. The Great Sphinx and the Pyramids of Gizeh. (From a photo-
g^ph) 26
IV. Ruins of the Great Hall of Columns at Kamak. (From a photo-
graph) 30
V. Fa9ade of Rock Temple at Ipsambul. (From a photograph) . . 34 VI. A Restoration of the Hall of Columns at Kamak. (From Liibke,
History 0/ Art \ in colors) 42
VII. "The Frieze of the Archers," from the Palace of Darius at Susa.
{Piit^T ^.'DxtvXiSoyy VAcropole de Suse; in colors) 102
VIII. The Vaphio Cups and their Scrolls. (From photographs and
drawings) 138
IX. The Acropolis of Athens. (From a photograph) 178
X. The Piraeus and the Long Walls of Athens. (A restoration) . . 210
XI. A Restoration of the Acropolis of Athens . .218
XII. The Mourning Athena. (From a photograph) 228
XIII. General View of Olympia. (A restoration) 286
XIV. A Rock-hewn Fa9ade at Petra, Arabia Petraeiu (From a photo^
graph) 466
XV. The Roman Forum. (A restoration) . 502
XVI. House of Livia, on the Palatine Hill (interior view). (From
Stobart, Tht Grandeur that was Rome-, in colors) 510
XVI
LIST OF MAPS
Colored Maps
(After Kiepert, Schrader, Droysen, Spruner-Sieglin, and Freeman. The Freeman charts have been so modified by omissions and additions that most of them as they here appear are virtually new mi^s.)
PAGB
The Ancient World, showing Areas occupied by Hamites, Semites, and
Indo-Europeans .• i8
Ancient Egypt 22
Assyrian Empire, about 660 B.c 66
Median and Babylonian Empires, about 600 b.c 78
The Division of Solomon's Kingdom, about 953 B.c 82
The Persian Empire at its Greatest Extent, about 500 b.c 98
General Reference Map of Ancient Greece 114
Greece and the Greek Colonies 162
The Greek World at the Beginning of the Peloponnesian War, 431 B.C. 226
Empire of Alexander the Great, about 323 B.c 258
Italy before the Growth of the Roman Power 338
The Mediterranean Lands at the beginning of the Second Punic War,
218 B.c 390
The Roman Dominions at the End of the Mithradatic War, 64 B.C. . . 426
The Roman Empire at the Death of Augustus, 14 a. d 446
The Roman Empire at its Greatest Extent (under Trajan, 98-1 17 a.d.) . 462
The Roman Empire Divided into Prefectures 478
Map showing Barbarian Inroads on the Fall of the Roman Empire
(movements shown down to 477 a.d.) 486
Europe in the Reign of Theodoric, about 500 a.d 526
Greatest Extent of the Saracen Dominions, about 750 A.I) 554
Europe in the time of Charles the Great, 814 A.D 558
Sketch Maps
The Tigris-Euphrates Valley 50
The World according to Homer 143
Magna Graecia and Sicily 167
Plan of the Battle of Marathon 194
xvii
xviii LIST OF MAPS
PAGE
Map lUustrating the Invasion of Greece by Xerxes 200
Athens and SaUunis 204
Athens and her Long Walls 210
Pylos 231
March of the Ten Thousand Greeks 241
Plan of the Battle of Leuctra, 371 B.c 244
The Mountain System of Italy 338
The Seven Hills of Rome , 343
The Roman Domain and the Latin Confederacy in the Time of the
Early Republic, about 450 B.c 364
The Route of Hannibal 392
The Roman Empire under Justinian 549
ANCIENT HISTORY
CHAPTER I
GEKERAL INTRODUCTION : PRSmSTORIC TIMES
1. The Prehistoric and the Historic Age. The immensely long periods of human life which lie back of the time when man began to keep written or graven records of events form what is called the Prehistoric Age. The comparatively few centuries of human experi- ence made known to us through such records comprise the Historic Age. In Egypt we find records which date from the fifth or fourth millennium B.C.; so for that land the historic period begins six or seven thousand years ago. For Babylonia it begins several centuries later than for Egypt For the Mediterranean r^ons of Europe it opens about looo B.a ; for the countries of central and northern Europe, speaking broadly, not until about the beginning of our era; and for the New World only a little over four hundred years ago.
2. How we Learn about Prehistoric Man. A knowledge of what manner of man prehistoric man was and what he did is indispensable to the historical student; for the dim prehistoric ages of human life- form the childhood of the race — and the man cannot be understood without at least some knowledge of the child.
But how, in the absence of written records, are we to find out an3rthing about prehistoric man ? In many ways we are able to learn much about him. First, by studying the life of present-day backward races; for what they now are, the great races of history, we have reason to believe, were in their prehistoric age.
Again, the men who lived before the dawn of history left behind them many things which witness as to what manner of men they were. In ancient gravel beds along the streams where they fished or hunted, in the caves which afforded them shelter, in the refuse heaps
I
^
PREHISTORIC TIMES
[§3
(kitchen middens) on the sites of their villages or camping places, or in the graves where they laid away their dead, we find great quan- tities of tools and weapons and other articles shaped by their hands.* From these various things we learn what skill these early men had acquired as tool makers, what degree of culture they had attained, and something of their conception of the life in the hereafter.
Fig. I. Implements of the Old Stone Age
No. r, the core of a flint nodule, was the earliest and the characteristic tool and weapon of Paleolithic man. It served a variety of purposes, and was used without a handle, being clutched with the hand (No. 9), and hence is called the hand-ax or flst-ax. No. a is a flint flake struck from a nodule. No. 8 (a harpoon-point) tells us that the man of this age was a fisher as well as a hunter. From No. 6 (a bone needle) we may infer that he made clothing of skins, for since he had not yet learned the art of weaving (the spindle- whorl does not appear till the next epoch ; see Fig. 5 and explanatory note), the material of which he made clothing could hardly have been anything else than the skins of -animals killed in the chase. That skins were carefully prepared is evidenced by the scraper (Nos. ^, //), an implement used in dressing hides. No. 7 (an engraving-tool) tells us that art had its beginnings in Paleolithic times
3. Divisions of Prehistoric Times. The long period of prehistoric times is divided into different ages, or stages of culture, which are named from the material which man used in the manufacture of his weapons and tools. The earliest epoch is known as the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age; the following one as the Neolithic or New Stone
1 Besides these material things that can be seen and handled, there are many immaterial things — as, for instance, language, which is as full of human memories as the rocks are of fossils — that light up for us die dim ages before histoiy (see sect. 10).
5 4] THE PALEOLITHIC OR OLD STONE AGE 3
Age ; and the later period as the Age of Metals. The division lines
between these ages are not sharply drawn. In most countries the
epochs run into and overlap one another, just as in modern times the
Age of Steam runs into and overlaps the Age of Electricity.
1. The Paleolitliic or Old Stone Age. In the Old Stone Age
man's chief implements were usually made of stone, and especially
of chipped flints, though
bones, homs, tusks, and
other material were also
used in their manufacture.
These rude implements and
weapons of Paleolithic man,
found mosdy in river gravel Fic 2. Engraving of a Mammoth on . , , . ,
-.,.- p,..^..,,..... «= T.,,..,! beds and m caves, are the
THE Fracubnt of a Tusk> '
(OLd Stone Age* very oldest things in ex-
istence which we know positively to have been shaped by human hands.
The man of the Old Stone Age in Europe saw the retreating ^aders of the great Ice Age, of which geology telb us. Among the animals which lived with him on that continent (we know most of early man there) were ihe woolly-haired mammoth, the bison, the wild ox, the cave bear, the rhinoceros, the wild horse, and the reindeer — species which are no longer found in the r^ons where primitive man hunted them. As the climate and the vege- tation changed, some of these
animals became extinct, while
(Old Stone Age)
others of the cold-loving species retreated up the mountains or migrated towards the north. What we know of Paleolithic man may be summed up as follows : he was a hunter and fi^er ; his habitation was often merely a cave or a rock shelter ; his implements were tn the main roughly shaped flints ;
^ Theic intf rcidcg ait efforts of Qum of which wi the oldest Egyptiui monui
4 PREHISTORIC TIMES [J 4
he had no domestic animals save possibly the dog ; he was ignorant of the arts of spinning and weaving, and practically also of the art of making potteiy.'
The length of the Old Stone Age no one knows ; we do not attempt to reckon its duration by centuries or by millenniums even, but only by geok^ic epochs. But we do know that the kmg slow epochs did not pass away without some prc^^ess having been made by prime- val man, which assures us that though so lowly a creature, he was endowed with the capacity for growth and improvements Before the end of the age he had acquired wonderful skill in the chipping of flint points and blades; he had learned the use of fire, as we kiK>w from the traces of fire found in the places where he made
-.,,,„ his abode ; and he had prob-
FiG. 4. Wall Patnti.sc from the ' "^
Cavem( of Font-d&Cawme, France ably invented the Ixiw and
(After Btruii) arrow, as we find this weapcm
in very general use at the
opening of the following epoch. This important invention gave man
what was to be one of his chief weapons in the chase and in war
for thousands of years — down to and even after the invention of
firearms late in the historic period.
But most prophetic of the great future of this savage or semisavage cave man of the Old Stone Age was the fine artistic talent that some tribes or races of the period possessed ; for, strange as it may seem, among the men of this epoch there were some amazingly good art- bts. Besides numerous specimens of his drawings and carvings of animals, chiefly .on bone and ivory, which have been found from time to time during the last half century and more, there have recently been discovered many large drawings and paintings on the walls of various grottoes in southern France and northern Spain.* These wonderful
1 The AiHCnliana ind New Zealanders vhen iini diicoveitd vrer« in the Pileolithk Mage of culture ; the Taimaniana had not yec reached it.
1 The fim of these nail punlingi were diicovered in 1S79, but lh« the; really were of the inuneoie age claimed for them waa not etlablisbed beyond bU doubt until
14]
THE PALEOLITHIC OR OLD STONE AGE
5
pictures are in the main representations of animals. The species most often represented are the bison, the horse, — one spedes being like the Celtic pony of to-day, — the wild ox, the reindeer, and the mammoth. This astonishing art of the European cave men shows that primitive man, probably because he is a hunter and lives so close to the wild life around him, often has a keener eye for animal forms and movements than the artists of more advanced races; for as a
FiG. 5- Ihplshents of the New Stone Age
Tbew tooli and weaponi mark a great advance over the chipped flinti of the OU Stone Age (Fig. i). They enibady the resulti of thouiandi (perh^s Icna of thousandi) of yenn of human experience laid invenlioti, and mark the first steps in human progrESs. Noa. i-j and j~io «how how after unmeasuied »ga man had learned to increase the effcctivcneBa of his tools and weapons by grinding them smooth and sharp, and by fitdng baadles to them. No.j record* the incoming of the art of making polleiy — one of the moat important industrial arts prior to the Age of Iron- No^ 6 (a spindle^vhorl of stone or of hardened clay used as a weight in twisting thread) Informs us that man had learned the civilising arta of spinning and wea*iDg
high authority asserts, " in some respects the art of these hunter painters has never been surpassed or even equaled." The history of art (sculpture, engraving, and painting) must hereafter begin with the works of these artist hunters of the Paleolithic time.'
1901 (see Cartailhac et Breuil, La Cavernt d'AUamira, 1906 : and Perany, La Cmirttf lie Pani-de-Gaiimt, 1910). The pictures are generally found in the depthi of caverns irbere not a ray of the light of day ever enters. They were made by the hght of lamps fed with the bt of animals. It ii almost certain that they had a magical purpoae, that ia, were made m the belief that by a speciei of magic Ihey would cauae an increase of Ibe game aoimalt reprcMnled, or would render them a sure prey in the chaae.
>SeeRciDach,,4/°^(>9<>°)<<^P''! also Art. "Painting," iiwye.Jny., nth ed.
PREHISTORIC TIMES
[IS
5. Tbe Vodithk or Hew Sttae Age. The Old Stoite Age was
foDowed by the New.' Chipped or hammered stone implements
stiS cootinued to be used, but what cfaaiacterises this period was
the use of grouDd or perished implements. Man had kamed the
art of grinding his tools and weapons to a sharp edge with sand
on a grinding stcme.* To hb ax be had
also learned to attach a handk, which
made it a vastly more effecti^'e implement
ITV- 5).
Besides these improvements in his toc^ and weapons, the man of the New Stone Age had made other great advances be- yond the man of the Old Stone Age. He had learned to tiD the soil ; be had learned to make fine pottery, to span, and to weave ; he had domesticated various w3d animals ; though like Faleolithic man be sranetimes lived in ca\-es, he built houses, often on piles on the margins of lakes and morasses (Fig. 8) ■, and he buried his dead in such a manner — with accompan)-ing gifts (F^. 6) — as to show that he had a firm bdief in a future life.*
The later period of this New Stone Age was marked by the beginnings of andiitec- ture. In many regions, particularly in west- em Europe, the men of this age began to construct rtide t(»nbs and other irKinumcnts of huge undressed stones — often of Wodts so immense that it must have required the
' Some iithmlogisti pun period. which iheyunir the Middle Stone .Age. between ibe Pileolhhk uid the Neolithic .\ge. itoa, howent. cooader this paiod madj a nixiiTuiofi of the 0\d Stone .\gc
' The Nonfa American ladiaii* «efe in thii lOge of cultiuv it dM lime of the dt>. eo*eiy of the New World. The Egj^ptians mkI B^loniBu neie jusi emciKiae bom it when tbcT fii9 appened n histocy.
* Recaa diicoireriei hnv nmled tnces of ihi* beKef ewn before the ■*« of the Plleolkhk period. Serenl taaa of tnrBl haie hem found with rkfa erne ovtfiu of li point nnmiiakxbly to i behef in ■life after dcalh.
Fig. 6. A Pbehistxirk ECTPTIA-N Tomb
(Aftcry.<£r,V»;n) turc Uf e led him to pbcc B the
/> s.
4^^-^^ ^
Pl^TE U. KHMARKAULE I'.MMIN.VS ON IILE WaLI.S OF (.AVEKSS. FIV THK
Huntek-Aktists of the Old Utoke Age. (After Brmil ; sec p. 4, n. 2}
56] THE AGE OF METALS 7
united strength of a thousand or more men to haul them and to set them up. The most common forms of these monuments are shown in the accompanying cut (Fig. 7).
The Neolithic stage of culture lasted several thousand years — the length of the period varying of course in the different lands — and was widespread. The relics of Neolithic man are found on all the continents. In Egypt, in Babylonia, ii) Greece, in Italy, and in other
Fig. 7. Typical Mecalithic ob Huge Stone Monuments
A iingle (tone (No. /) is called a mtrtiir, and a large stone resting on Bmaller one*
almost all parts of the world, but in especially gieat numbeii in weslem Europe and North Africa. The oldest of these monuments date from the later Stone Age. They doubtku served various purposes. Some were the tombs of great persona, Mitne were DiiUi't &nt temples, others nuirked aacred apou, and alili others were probably erected to preserve the memory of great events
lands the historic development grew directly out of this Stone Age culture. It thus formed the basis of the civilizations of all the great peoples of the ancient world.
6. The Ag« of Hetols. Finally the long ages of stone passed into the Age of Metals. This age falls into three subdivisions — the Age of Copper, the Age of Bronze, and the Age of Iron. Some peoples, like the African negroes, passed directly from the use of stone to the use of iron ; but in most of the countries of the Orient and of Europe the three metals came into use one after the other and in the order named. Speaking broadly, we may say that the Age of Metals began
8 PREHISTORIC TIMES [(6
for the more advanced peoples of the ancient world between 3000 and 4000 B.C.'
The history of metals has been declared to be the history of civili- zation. Indeed, it would be almost impossible to overestimate their importance to man. Man could do very little with stone implements
Fic. S. A Restoration op Swiss Lake Dwellings of the Later Stone
Age. (From Keller, Lake Dwellingi) Thia mode of building on piles in the shalkm water of lake*, begun (as a meana of
protection againit enemies) by the men of Neolithic timea, was Hintinued tar into
the Brooie Age, as pnved by the bronie objects found in the mud on the sites of
uidenl pile-villages in Switzerland and elscnhere
compared with what he could do with metal implements. It was a great labor for primitive man, even with the aid of fire, to fell a tree with a stone ax and to hollow out the trunk for a boat He was hampered
1 The limited use of copper seems to have begun a: some centuries before this dale — in Egypt about 3500
use as to put them out of service. But either by accident or through eipeiiment it was discovered Chat by mixing about nine pans of copper with one part of tin a new metal, called bronze, much harder than either tin 01 copper, could be made. So greatly superior were bronze implemenia to alone that their introduction cauied the use of stone for tools and weapons to be practically discontinued, and consequently the Age of Bronze constitutes a well-defined and important epoch in the hiatorji of culture.
I 7] THE DOMESTICATION OF FIRE 9
in aD his tasks by the rudeness of his tools. It was only as the bearer of metal implements and weapons that he began really to subdue the earth and to get dominion over nature. All the higher cultures of the ancient world with which history begins were based on the knowledge and use of metals.
7. The DomesticatlDn of Fire. In this and the immediately follow- ing sections we shall dwell briefly upon some of the special discoveries and achievements, several of which have already been mentioned, marking important steps in man's progress during the prehistoric ages.
Fic. 9. PaiMiTiVE MeTHODS op uaking Fire. (After Tylor)
Doubcles* ihe diicoveiy thai fire could be produced by friction came about through the operation of the primitive toohnaker. The proccKscs of ftmcxithingT poliahing, and grooving wftwood implement*, and of boring boles in them with pieces of harder wood, could hardly fail of revealing the secret. The character of the fire-malEing devices of present-day savages point Che way of the discovery
Prominent among the achievements of early man was the domesti- cation of fire. The origin of the use of fire is hidden in the obscur- ity of primeval times. That fire was known to Paleolithic man we leam, as already noted, from the traces of it discovered in the caves and rock shelters which were his abode. No people has ever been found so low in the scale of culture as to be without it
As to the way in which early man came into possession of fire, we have no knowledge. Possibly he kindled his first fire from a glowing lava stream or from some burning tree trunk set aflame by the light- ning.* However this may be, he had in the earliest times learned to produce the vital sparic by means of friction. The fire borer, accord- ing to Tylor, is among the oldest of human inventions. Since the
' Fires thus lighted are surpriiingly numerous. During the year 1914 there were over 2000 fire* staited by lightning in Ihe national foreau of the United States.
lO PREHISTORIC TIMES [§8
awakening of the spark was difficult, the fire once alight was carefully fed so that it should not go out The duty of watching the flame naturally fell to the old women or to the daughters of the community, to which custom may be traced the origin of such institutions as that among the Romans of the vestal virgins, the guardians of the sacred flame on the hearth of the goddess Vesta (sect 390).
Only gradually did primeval man learn the various properties of fire and discover the different uses to which it might be put, just as historic man has learned only gradually the possible uses of electricity. By some happy accident or discovery he learned that it would harden clay, and he became a potter ; that it would smelt ores, and he became a worker in metals ; and that it would aid him in a hundred other ways. " Fire," says Joly, " presided at the birth of nearly every art, or quickened its progress." The place it holds in the development of the family, of religion, and of the industrial arts is revealed by these three significant words — " the hearth, the altar, the forge." No other agent has contributed more to the progress of civilization. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive how without fire primitive man could ever have emerged from the Age of Stone.
8. The Domestication of Animals. ** When we visit a farm at the present day and observe the friendly nature of the life which goes on there, — the horse proudly and obediently bending his neck to his yoke; the cow offering her streaming udder to the milkmaid; the woolly flock going forth to the field, accompanied by their trusty pro- tector, the dog, who comes fawning to his master, — this familiar intercourse between man and beast seems so natural that it is scarcely conceivable that things may once have been different And yet in the picture we see only the final result of thousands and thousands of years of the work of civilization, the enormous impor- tance of which simply escapes our notice because it is by everyday wonders that our amazement is least excited." *
The most of this work of inducing the animals of the fields and woods to become, as it were, members or dependents of the human family, to enter into a league of friendship with man and to become his helpers, was done by prehistoric man. When man appears in
^ Schzader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples (1890), p. 259.
§ 9] THE DOMESTICATION OF PLANTS 1 1
history, he appears surrounded by almost all the domestic animals known to us to-day. The dog was already his faithful companion — and probably the first won from among the wild creatures; the sheep, the cow, and the goat shared his shelter with him.^
The domestication of animals had such a profound effect upon human life and occupation that it marks the opening of a new epoch in history. The hunter became a shepherd,^ and the hunting stage in culture gave place to the pastoral'
9. The Domestication of Plants. Long before the dawn of history those peoples of the Old World who were to play great parts in early historic times had advanced from the pastoral to the agricultural stage of culture. Just as the step from the hunting to the pastoral stage had been taken with the aid of a few of the most social sp)ecies of animals, so had this second upward step, from the pastora4 to the agricultural stage, been taken by means of the domestication of a few of the innumerable species of the seed grasses and plants growing wOd in field and wood.
Wheat and barley, two of the most important of the cereals, were probably first domesticated somewhere in Asia, and from there carried over Europe. These grains, together with oats and rice, have been, in the words of Tylor, " the mainstay of human life and the great moving power of civilization." They constituted the basis of the earliest great states and civilizations of Asia and Europe.
The domestication of plants and the art of tilling the soil effected a great revolution in prehistoric society. The wandering life of the hunter and the herder now gave way to a settled mode of existence. Cities were built, and within them began to be amassed those
^ The task, still unfinisbed, of the historic period has been not so much to increase the number as to improve the breed of the stock of domesticated animals bequeathed from the prehistoric time.
'In some regions favored in climate and soil the farmer preceded the shepherd, but agriculture upon a large scale could hardly be carried on until man had domesticated the ox and the ass and taught them to draw the plough.
' It is of interest to note that most of the wild stocks whence have come our domestic animals are of Old World origin. It is thought by some that one reason why the tribes of the New Worid at the time of its discovery were so far behind the peoples of the Old was that there were fewer tamable animals here — none of real importance save the Uama and the alpaca in the Andean uplands of South America and possibly the buffalo of North America.
12 PREHISTORIC TIMES [§10
treasures, material and inunaterial, which constitute the precious heirloom of humanity. This attachment to the soil of the hitherto roving clans and tribes meant also the beginning of political life. The cities were united into states and great kingdoms were formed, and the political history of man b^an, as in the valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates.
Early man seems to have realized how much he owed to the art of husbandry, for in the mythologies of many peoples some god or god- dess is represented as having taught men how to till the soil and to plant the seed. It seemed to man that for so great a boon he must be beholden to the beneficence of the gods.*
10. The Formation of Language. Another great task and achieve- ment of primitive man was the making of language. The earliest speech used by historic man, as Tylor observes, " teaches the inter- esting lesson that the main work of language-making was done in the ages before history."
The vastness of this work is indicated by the languages with which history begins, for language-making, particularly in its earliest stages, is a very slow process. Periods of time like geologic epochs must have been required for the formation out of the scanty speech of the first men, by the slow process of word-making, of the rich and polished languages already upon the lips of the great peoples of antiquity when they first appear in the light of history.
We need not dwell upon the inestimable value to man of the acquisition of language. Without it all his other acquisitions and discoveries would have remained comparatively fruitiess, all his ef- forts to lift himself to higher levels of culture have been unavailing.
1 So thorough was prehistoric man's search for whatever in the plant worid could be cultivated for food, that historic man has not been able during the last 2000 years from the tens of thousands of wild plants to discover any species comparable in value to any one of the staple food-plants selected and domesticated by primeval man (De Candolle, Origin of Cultivated Plants^ p. 451). It is interesting further to note that while early man exploited the organic kingdoms, that is to say, the animal and vegetable realms, he made few and slight requisitions upon the forces of the inorganic world. It was reserved for the men of the later historic age — for the ancient civilizations have to their credit no epoch-making achievements here — to domesticate, so to speak, the powerful agents steam and electricity and through their utiliation to efiFect revolutions in modem society like those effected in prehistoric times by the domestication of animals and plants.
§11] THE INVENTION OF WRITING 13
Without it, so far as we can see, he must have remained forever in an unprog^ressive and savage or semisavage state.
11. The Inyention of Writing. Still another achievement of pre- historic man, and after the making of language perhaps his greatest, certainly the most fruitful, was the invention of writing — the perfec- tion of which marks the opening of historic times.
The first form of writing used by primitive man was picture writ- ing, such as was and is still used by some of the Indian tribes of the New World. In this system of writing the characters are rude pictures of material objects, as, for instance, a picture of an eye ^3>- to indicate the organ of sight ; or they are symbols of ideas, as, for
Fig. 10. Indian Picture Writing. (After MalUry-Deniker)
Record of an Alaskan hunt. It reads tiius : I go, by boat (indicated by paddle) ; sleep one night (hand to side of head denotes sleep), on island with two huts ; I go to another island ; two sleeps there ; hunt with haxpoon, sea lion ; also with bow ; return by boat with companion (indicated by two paddles), to my lodge
illustration, a picture consisting of wavy lines beneath an arc represent- ing the sky ^^ to indicate rain. This way of representing ideas, which seems 1^^ natural to man, is known as ideographic writing, and the signs are called ideograms.
A great step in advance is taken when the picture writer uses his pictures or s)rmbols to represent not actual objects or ideas, but sounds of the human voice, that is, words. This step was taken in prehistoric times by different peoples — the Egyptians, the Baby- bnians, and the Chinese — independently. It seems to have been taken by means of the rebus, a mode of writing which children love to employ. What makes rebus writing possible is the existence in every language of words having 'the same sound but different mean- ings. Thus in English the pronoun / is sounded like the word eye, and the word reign^ to rule, like the word rain. Now the picture writer, wishing to express the idea / reign^ could do so by the use of the two pictures or ideograms given above, in this way, ^^:>. When so used, the ideogram becomes a phonogram, and the
14 PREHISTORIC TIMES [§11
writing is phonetic or sound writing. In this way the chasm between picture writing and sound writing is bridged, and the most difficult step taken in the development of a practical system of representing thought.
In the first stage of sound writing, each picture or symbol stands for a whole word. In such a system as this there must of course be as many characters or signs as there are words in the language represented. In working out their system of writing the Chinese stuck fast at this point (sect. 122).
Two additional steps beyond this stage are required in order to perfect the system. The first of these is taken when the characters are used to represent syllables instead of words. This reduces at once the number of signs needed from many thousands to a fevir hundreds, since the words of any given language are formed by the combination of a comparatively small number of syllables. With between four and five hundred symbols the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, who used this form of writing, were able to represent all the words of their respective languages (sect. 52). Characters or symbols used to represent syllables are called syllabic phonograms, and a collection of such signs is called a syllabary.
While a collection of syllabic signs is a great improvement over a collection of word signs, still it is a clumsy instrument for express- ing ideas, and the system requires still further simplification. This is done and the final step in developing a convenient system of writing is taken when the symbols are used to represent not syllables but elementary sounds of the human voice, of which there are only a few — a score or two — in any language. Then the symbols become true letters, a complete collection of which is called an alphabet, and the mode of writing alphabetic.
When and where this final step was taken we do not know. But soon after 900 B.C. we find several Semitic peoples of western Asia in possession of an alphabet. Through various agencies, particularly through the agency of trade and commerce, this alphabet was spread east and west and thus became the parent of all but one* of the alphabets employed by the peoples of the ancient world of history, and of every alphabet in use on the earth to-day (sect. 95).
1 See p. 56, n. 1.
512] THE GREAT BEQUEST Ij
12. Tbe Gnat Beqoeet. We of this twentieth centuiy esteem our- selves fortunate in beii^ the heirs of a noble heritage — the in- heritors of the precious accumulations of all the past centuries of history. We are not used to thinking of the men of the first genera- tion of historic times as also the heirs of a great l^^acy. But even the scanty review we have made of what was discovered, invented, and thought out by man during the unmeasured epochs before re- corded history opens cannot fail to have impressed us with the fact that a vast estate was transmitted by prehistoric to historic man.
Fig. II. Stonehenge. (From a photograph)
This imposing huge Mone monument on Salisbuiy Plain, England, probably datei from
about the end in weitem Europe of the New Stone Age or from the beginning of the
BrooK Age (between ijooand aooo B.C.). Some aTCh>:olDgisU rcKard the structure u
a sepukhial monunient ; other* suppose it to have been a shrine [or sun-votthip
If our hasty glance at those far-away times has done nothing more than to do this, then we shall never again regard history quite as may have been our wont. We shall see everything in a new light. We shall see the story of man to be more wonderful than we once thought, the path which he has followed to be longer and more toilsome than we before imagined.
But our interest in the traveler will have been deepened through our knowing something of his early hard and narrow life, and of his first painful steps in the path of civilization. We shall follow with deeper interest and sympathy this wonderful being, child of earth and child of heaven, this heir of all the ages, as he journeys on and upward with his face toward the light.
1 6 PREHISTORIC TIMES
References. Osborn,^ Men of the Old Stone Age (** The most important work on the evolution of our own species that has appeared since Darwin's * Descent of Man.' " — Theodore Roosevelt). Sollas, Ancient Hunters. Myre, The Dawn of History, Hoernes, Primitive Man. Elliot, Prehistoric Man and his Story, JoLY, Man before Metals. Keary, The Dawn of History. Starr, Some First Steps in Human Progress. Tylor, Anthropology^ chaps, iv, vii, "Language" and "Writing"; Primitive Culture^ 2 vols. Lubbock, Pre- historic Times, Mason, First Steps in Human Culture and The Origin of Inven- tion. Davenport, Domesticated Animals and Plants. Shaler, Domesticated Animals. Hoffmann, 731^ Beginnings of Writing. Clodd, The Story of the Alphabet. Taylor, The Alphabet, 2 vols. Fergusson, Rtide Stone Monuments. HoLBROOK, Cave, Mound, and Lake Dwellers (juvenile).
Topics for Class Reports, i . The relation of domesticated animals to man's advance in civilization: Shaler, Domesticated Animals, pp. 103-151; Daven- port, Domesticated Animals and Plants, chap. i. 2. The making and the use of fire : Mason, The Origin of Invention, chap, iii, and First Steps in Human Culture, chaps, i, ii ; Frobenius, The Childhood of Man, chap, xxvii. 3. The origin of writing: Hoffmann, The Beginnings of Writing; Mason, First Steps in Human Culture, chap, xxi; Tylor, Anthropology, chap, vii; Keary, The Dawn of History, chaps, xii, xiii. 4. The dawn of art: Reinach, Apollo^ pp. 1-9 ; Parkyn, Introduction to the Study of Prehistoric Art, chaps, iii, iv. 5. How the g^eat stones were moved : Frobenius, The Childhood of Man, pp. 428-429. 6. Marett, Anthropology, chap, ii, ** Antiquity of Man."
1 For full names of authora and further information concerning works cited, see list at end of book.
CHAPTER II
RACES AND GROUPS OF PBOPLBS
13. SabdlTisicmt of the Historic Age. We begin now our study of the Historic Age — a record of about six or seven thousand years. The story of these millenniums is usually divided into three parts — Andent, Mediaeval, and Modem History. Ancient History b^ins, as already indicated, with the earliest peoples of which we can gain any certain knowledge through written records, and extends to the break-up of the Roman Empire in the West, in the fifth century a. d. Mediaeval History embraces the period, the so-called Middle Ages, about one thousand years in length, lying between the fall of Rome and the discovery of the New World by Columbus, 1492 a,d. Modem History commences with the close of the mediaeval period and extends to the present time.^ It is Ancient History alone with which we shall be concerned in the present volume.
14. The Races of Mankind in the Historic Period. Distinctions mainly in bodily characteristics, such as form, color, and features, divide the human species into many types or races, of which the three chief are known as the Black or Ethiopian Race, the Yellow or Mongolian Race, and the White or Caucasian Race.' But we must not suppose each of these three types to be sharply marked off from the others; they shade into one another by insensible gra- dations. There is a great number of intermediate types or subraces.
1 It is thought preferable by some scholars to let the decisive beginning of the great Teutonic migiBtion (376 A.D.), or the restoration of the Empire by Charlemagne (800 A.D.), mark the end of the period of Ancient History, and to call all after that Modem History. Some also prefer to date the beginning of the modem period from the capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453 a.d.) ; while still others speak of it in a general way as commencing about the dose of the fifteenth century, at which time there were many inventions and discoveries, and great movements in the intellectual world.
s The classification given is simply a convenient and practical one (see table, p. 22) It disregards various minor groups of uncertain ethnic relationship,
17
I
1 8 RACES AND GROUPS OF PEOPLES [SIS
We assume the original unity of the human race. It is probable that the physical and mental differences of existing races arose through their ancesKirs having been subjected to different climatic influences and to different conditions of life through long periods of prehistoric time. There has been no perceptible change in the great types of mankind during the historic period. The paintings upon the oldest ^yptian monuments show us that at the dawn of history the principal races were as distinctly marited as now, each bearing its radal badge of color and physiognomy,
15. The Black R«e. Africa south of the Sahara is the true home of the typical folk (the negroes) of the Black Race, but we find them on all the other continents and on many of the islands of the seas, whither they have migrated or been car- ried as slaves by the stronger races; for Fig. II. Negro Captives since time immemorial they have been (From the^monument. of "hewers of wood and drawers of water"
for their more favored brethren. '""^SstSZT""' 1«- ■^ ™«. or ICnjolto !!.«.
Eastern and northern Asia is the central seat of the Mongolian Race. Many of the Mongolian tribes are pastoral nomads, who roam over the vast Asian plains north of the great ranges of the Himalayas; their leading part in histoiy has been to harass peoples of settled habits.
But the most important peoples of this type are the Japanese and the Chinese. The latter constitute probably a fiftii or more of the en- tire population of the earth. Already in times very remote this people had developed a civilization quite advanced on various lines, but hav- ing reached a certain stage in culture they did not continue to make so marked a progress. Not until recent times did either the Chinese or the Japanese become a factor of significance in world history.
17. The WUte or Caucasian Race and Its Three Oronpe. The so- called White or Caucasian Race embraces almost all of the historic nations. Its chief peoples fall into three groups — the Hamitic, the
' "-v.
''vr^
-•(
§17] THE WHITE OR CAUCASIAN RACE 19
Semitic, and the Indo-European or Aryan.* The members forming any one of these groups must not be looked upon as kindred in blood; the only certain bond uniting the peoples of each group is the bond of lang^uage.
The ancient Egyptians were the most remarkable people of the Hamitic branch. In the gray dawn of history we discover them ah-eady settled in the valley of the Nile, and there erecting great monuments so fauldess in construction as to render it certain that those who planned them had had long previous training in the art of building.
The Semitic family includes among its chief peoples the andent Babylonians and Assyrians, the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, the Aramaeans, the Arabians, and the Abyssinians. Most scholars re- gard Arabia as the original home of this family, and this peninsula certainly seems to have been the great distributing center.
It is interesting to note that three great monotheistic religions (that is, religions teaching the doctrine of one god) — the Hebrew, the Christian, and the Mohammedan — arose among peoples be- longing to the Semitic family.
The peoples of Indo-European speech form the most widely dis- persed group of the White Race. They include the ancient Greeks and Romans, all the peoples of modem Europe (save the Basques, the Finns and Lapps, the Magyars or Hungarians, and the Turks), together with the Persians, the Hindus, and some other Asian peoples.*
1 The application of the name Aryan is by some historians restricted to the Indo- Iranian branch (Hindus and Persians) of the Indo-European peoples. The term, however, has been long and generally used as the equivalent of Indo-European or Indo-Germanic (cf. Schrader, T^e PreMsioric Chnlmiiion of the Aryan Peoples \ Taylor, The OHgm of ike Aryans^ etc.), and is still very commonly used in the same sense by careful scholars of the highest authority. It should be carefully noted that where the term Imh-Euritpean is applied to a people it simply means that the people thus desig- nated use an Indo-European language, and that it does not mean that they are related by blood to any other people of Indo-European speech. Physical or racial relationships cannot be determined by the test of language. Think of the millions of English- speaking African negroes in the United States I For a masterly discussion of the question of the ethnic types or races making up the population of Europe, see Ripley, The Races of Europe,
2 The kinship in speech of all these peoples is most plainly shown by the similar form and meaning of certain words in their different languages, as, for example, the word father^ which occurs with but little change in several of the Aryan tongues (Sanscrit,/^; Persian, /a<^!ixr; Greek, «-ari)/> ; Latin, /a/^; German, Voter),
20 RACES AND GROUPS OF PEOPLES L§18
18. The Indo-Eoropeaii or Aryan Bxpanftion. Long before the dawn of history in Europe, the clans and tribes of the hitherto undivided Indo-European family began to break up and to push themselves among older and more civilized peoples. They came probably from the stepF>e lands of central Asia.^
Some of these tribes in the course of their wanderings found their way out upon the table-lands of Iran and into the great river plains of India. They subjugated the aborigines of these lands and communicated to them their language. These Aryan invaders and the natives, thus Aryanized in speech and probably somewhat changed in blood, became the progenitors of the Persians and the Hindus of history.*
Other tribes of the family, either through peaceful expansion, through social relations, or through conquest, had in times still pre- historic made Indo-European in speech, though probably very par- tially so in blood, the native pre-Aryan peoples of almost every part of Europe.'
1 Some scholars have sought the early home of the primitive Aryan community in southern Russia, others in the Baltic regions of Europe, and still others in central Asia in the region of the Oxus. The recent discovery (1907-1908) in East Turkestan of documents dating from about 500 a. d., and written in an Indo-Germanic language related to those of western Europe^ gives probability to the opinion that the cradle of the Indo-Germanic folk was the high grasslands of central Asia north of the gresit Asian mountain zone. See Eduard Meyer, Geschkhie des AUertums^ 1 9, 891, 3. Aufl.
3 It is very important to note that in every case where a people of non-Aryan speedi gave up their own language and adopted that of their Aryan (Indo-Germanic) con- querors, there must have taken place at the same time almost necessarily a mingling of the blood of the two races. ** Thus it will be correct to say that an Aryan strain per- meates all or most of the groups now speaking Aryan tongues." — Kbanb, Ethnology (Cambridge Geographical Series, 1896), p. 396.
* This prehistoric Indo-European expansion can best be made plain by the use of an historical parallel — the Roman expansion. From their cradle city on the Tiber, the ancient Romans — a folk Indo-European in speech if not in race — went out as con- querors and colonizers of the Mediterranean world. Wherever they went they carried their language and their civilization with them. Many of die peoples whom they sub- jected gave up their own speech, and along with the civilization of their conquerors adopted also their language. In this way a large part of the ancient world became Romanized in speech and culture. When the Roman Empire broke up, there ar(»e a number of Latin-speaking nations — among these, the French, Spaniards, and Portu- guese. During the modem age diese Romanized nations, through conquest and colo* nization, have spread their Latin speech and civilization over a great part of the New World. Thus it has come about that to-day the language of the ancient Romans, differ- entiated into many dialects, is spoken by peoples spread over the earth from Rumania
518] THE INDO-EUROPEAN EXPANSION 21
Although the Indo-European expansion movement began so long ago, probably in the third millennium b.c., still we should not think of it as something past and ended. The outward movement in modem times of the peoples of Europe, that is to say, the expan- sion of Europe into Greater Europe and the Europeanizing of the world, is merely the continuation in the light of history of the earlier Indo-European expansion which went on in the obscurity of the prehistoric ages.
Thus we see what leading parts, after what we may call the Semitic Age, peoples of Indo-European speech have borne in the great drama of history.
Seferences. Ripley, The Races of Europe. Keane, Ethnology and Man^ Past and Present, Deniker, The Races of Man, Sergi, The Mediterranean Race. Ratzel, T%e History of Mankind^ 2 vols. Keith, Ancient Types of Man. Brinton, Races and Peoples. Taylor, The Origin of the Aryans. Schrader, The Prehistoric Civilization of the Aryan Peoples.
in eastern Europe to Chile in South America. All diese peoples we call Latins, not because they are all descended from the ancient Romans, — in fact they belong to many different ethnic stocks, — but because they all speak languages derived from the old Roman speech. Just as we use die term Latin here, so do we use the term indo-Eurcpean in connection with the peoples of Indo-European speech.
22
RACES AND GROUPS OF PEOPLES
A WORKING CLASSIFICATION OF THE PRINCIPAL
RACES AND PEOPLES
The larger
Black Race (Ethiopian or Negro)
(faces) are hased oo physical chaiacteristics, the suhdivisioiis of the White Race are based on
{
Tribes and peoples southern Africa.
whose tme home is central and
Yellow Race (Mongolian)
White Race (Caucasian)
(i) The Chinese, Japanese, and kindred peoples of east- em Asia; (2) the nomads (Tartars, Mongols, etc.) of northern and central Asia and of eastern Russia; (3) the Turks, the Magyars or Hungarians, and the Finns and Lapps, in Europe.^ Some consider the Amer- ican Indians a branch of the Yellow Race; others consider them a distinct race — the Red Race.
Hamitcs | ^-gyP^^^
\ Libyans * (modem Berbers).
Babylonians,
Semites
Assyrians,
Phcenicians,
Hebrews,
Aramaeans,
Arabians,
Abyssinians.
Indo- Eu- ropeans or Ar- yans
Asiatics
Classical peoples
Hindus,
Medes,
Persians,
Armenians,
Scythians.
{Greeks, Romans.
Celts f Gauls.
\ Britons, etc. r Germans, Teutons .... J English,
1^ Scandinavians. Russians,
Slavs i Poles,
Serbians, etc.
1 In the case of many if not all of these peoples the Mongolian type has been modi- fied through fusion with other races. The Mongolian intrudeis in Europe through fusion with peoples of Caucasian blood have lost almost entirely the Mongolian features.
s The Egyptians and Libyans, together with the Iberians (in Spain), the Liguriana (in Italy), and the ** Pelasgians " (m Greece), are branches of the " Mediterranean Race " of Sergi.
PART I. THE EASTERN PEOPLES
CHAPTER III
ANCIENT EGYPT
(Prom «arllett times to 30B.C.)
I. POLITICAL HISTORY
19. Egypt And the Nile. The Egypt of history comprises the Delta of the Nile and the narrow valley of its lower course. These rich lands were formed in past geologic ages from the sediment brought down by the river in seasons of flood. The Delta was known to the ancients as Lower Egypt, while the valley proper, reaching from the head of the Delta to the First Cataract,' a distance of six hundred miles, was called Upper Egypt
Through the same means by which Egypt was originally created is the land each year still renewed and fertilized ; ' hence an old
1 Abont «even hundred mile* from the Mediterranean, low ledges of rocks itietching acTOH the Nile form the tint obumction to navigation in pasting up the river. The rapid* found here btb termed the Fint Cataract. At this point the divided river foitna the beautiful ulet of Philse, " The Pearl of Egypt," now submerged by the waters of the
*The rate of the fluviatile deposit is from three lo five inches in a century. The niface of the valley at Thebes, a shown by the accumulationa about the monuments, hu becD [sised about aeven feet during the last seventeen hundred yean.
24
ANCIENT EGYPT
[§20
Fig. 13. Ploughing and Sowing (From a papyrus)
Greek historian, in happy phrase, called the country " the gift of the Nile." Swollen by heavy tropical rains and the melting snows of the mountains about its sources, the Nile begins to rise in its lower parts late in June, and in two or three months, when the inundation has attained its greatest height, the country presents the appearance
of a turbid sea.
By the end of No- vember the river has returned to its bed, leaving the fields cov- ered with a film of rich earth. In a few weeks after the sowing, the entire land, so recently a flooded plain, is overspread with a sea of verdure, which forms a striking contrast to the desert sands and barren hills that rim the valley.
20. Climate and Products. In Lower Egypt, near the sea, the rain- fall in the winter is abundant ; but the climate of Upper Egypt is all but rainless, only a few slight showers, as a rule, falling throughout the year.* This dryness of the Egyptian air is what has preserved through so many thousand years, in such wonderful freshness of color and with such sharpness of outline, the numerous paintings and sculptures of the monuments of the country.
The southern line of Egypt only just touches the tropics; still the climate, in- fluenced by the wide and hot deserts that
hem the valley, is semitropical in character. The fruits of the tropics and the cereals of the temperate zone grow here luxuriantly. Thus favored in climate as well as in the matter of irrigation, Egypt be- came in early times the granary of the East To it less favored coun- tries, when stricken by famine, — a calamity so common in the East
Fig. 14. Reaping the Grain (From a papyrus)
1 At irregular intervals of a few years, however, there occurs a real cloud-burst, and the mud-built villages of the natives are literally half dissolved and washed into the river.
§21] THE PREHISTORIC OR PREDYNASTIC AGE 25
in regions dependent upon the rainfall, — looked for food, as did the families of Israel during drought and failure of crops in Palestine.
21. The Prehifttoric or Predynastic Age. The existence of man in Egypt long before the opening there of the historic period is evidenced by the stone implements, belonging to both the earlier and the later Stone Age, which are found in great numbers on the edges of the
'neighboring desert and in the numerous graves that in places fill the sands of the river valley. The flints lying on the surface of the desert are of the Old Stone Age type. Beyond what we may infer from these weathered stone implements, we know nothing of Paleolithic man in Egypt The contents of the graves, however, belong to the New Stone Age; and these burial outfits (cf. sect. 5), along with other evidences that we possess, tell us something of the culture and of the manner of life of the men of this epoch. By the opening of the historic era — that is, before the end of the fifth millennium B.C. — they had taken great steps towards civilization. They lived in villages, and probably had even created little city-kingdoms. They engaged in the tillage of the soil, and hunted the wild creatures which infested the forest and jungles which then covered much of the river valley.^ ITiey had knowledge of copper, but seem generally to have used stone implements, in the manufacture of which they had acquired wonderful skilL They possessed a system of writing, which, along with the other elements of their culture, they transmitted to the Egyptians of the historic period.
22. The Phaiaoh and the Dynasties. The rulers of historic Egypt bore the royal title or common name of Pharaoh, The Pharaohs that reigned in the country up to the conquest of Alexander the Great (332 B.C.) are grouped in thirty-one dynasties. Thirty of these we find in the lists of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived in the third century b.c., and who compiled in the Greek language a chronicle of the Pharaohs.* The history of these thirty-one dynasties covers more
1 Still earlier, possibly in the Old Stone Age, forests grew also on the now sterile plateaus bordering the valley. The petrified remains of these forests, like the fossilized forests of Arizona in our own country, now lie strewn in places over the desert. One of these mummified forests is easily visited from the modem city of Cairo.
* The first ten of these dynasties comprise what is usually called the Old Kingdom (the grouping here by Egyptologists is not uniform, some including in this group onfy
i
26 ANCIENT EGYPT [iZ3
than half of the entire period of authentic history. Almost three mil- lenniums of this history lie back of the beginnings of the historic period in Greece and Italy.
23. KaieaandtheFintDTiwMT (dAte not later than 3300 b.g.1). In the earliest prehistoric period Egypt seems to have been divided ' into numerous little kingdoms. In the course of time these came to form two states, one in the north and one in the south. Then these were united into a ^gle kingdom. Tradition makes Menes to have been the founder of the First Dynasty of the dual king- dom, and thus the first of the Pharaohs.
The essential fact respecting Egyptian culture under the First Dynasty is that most of the ele- ments of the later civilization are found here, not in genn, but in a surprisingly advanced stage of maturity. Sculpture had reached a stage far beyond primitive rude- ness, and the writing system had been already practically perfected. Copper was in use, though most
five dynmties and odiera «ix or mora) ( the eleventh mnd twelfth form what ii known ai the Middle Kingdom; the next five cover a period of diiorder and the rule of the Hykaot, Asiatic inliuden; and the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth conititute what ii commonly designated as the New Empire. The remaining dynaitiea repreaent ■period of decadence and revival, and the rule mainly ol foreigners and conqueton.
' EgyplologiBls are not yet in agreement aa to the dale of Men». Flinderi Petrie puts hii reign at about 55008, c. In the presenteditionwe have adopted the Berlin dating.
* Found by Flinders Petrie at Abydos in 1903. " Clad in his thick embroidered nbei. thia old king, wily yet feeble with the weight of year*, lUnda for diplomacy and Mate- ciaft ol ihe oldest civiliied kingdom that we know" (Petrie). "One of the greatest
Fig. 15. Ivory Statuette of a
King of the First Dynasty*
{From Petrie'* Abydos, Part II)
»M]
THE FOURTH DYNASTY
of the weapons and implements were still of stone, bone, and wood. Many of the stone utensils were of exquisite workmanship. There had been worked out a calendar which remained unchanged to the end of Egyptian history.^
24. The Fonrtb Dyiuflty (abont 29004730 B.C.) : tlie Pyramid Builden. The Egyptian architects at first used chiefly crude brick, and constructed tombs and other buildings of only small dimensions; the age of gigantic stone construction began with the Pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty, who reigned at Memphis and are called the pyramid builders, though there were pyramids constnicted both before and long after this, but none on such an immense scale as those erected at this period.
Khufu, the Cheops of the Greeks, was the greatest of the pyramid builders. He constructed the Great Pyra- mid, at Gizeh, — "the great- est mass of masonry that has ever been put together by mortal man." ■A recent fortunate discovery enables us now to look upon the face of this Khufu (Fig. 16), one of the earliest and most renowned person- ages of the ancient world.
To some king of thb same early family of pyramid builders is also ascribed, by some authorities, the wonderful sculpture of the
Fic. 16. Khufu, Builder of the Great
PVKAMID. (From P«rie-s .^ij'fl'ej, Part II) " Though only a miDutc figure in ivory, It ahowi
1 EgyptologUti place the introductioa of this calendar in â–¡oe thooiaad yean before Uene*.
' Thii pyninid liicB from â– bale covering thirteen aciei and fifty feet. According lo Hetodotut, Cheop> employed lai Caienly yean m it* ecectioD.
28
ANCIENT EGYPT
[J 25
gigantic human-headed Sphinx at the foot of the Great Pyramid — [he largest statue in the world.
These sepulchral monuments, for the pyramids were the tombs of
the Pharaohs who constructed them (sect 39), and the great Sphinx
are the most venerable memorials of the early world that have been
preserved to us. Although standing so far bade in the gray dawn of
the historic morning, they mark, in the
marvelous granite lining of their chambers
and the colonnades of their chapels, not
the beginning but in some respects the
perfection of Egyptian architecture. And
as with architecture so was it with portrait
sculpture, which during this period attained
a perfection that has hardly ever been
surpassed.^
25. The Twelfth Dynasty (abont 2000- ISOOB.C.). After the Sixth Dynasty, Egypt for several centuries is almost lost from view. When finally the valley emeT;ges from the obscurity of this period, the old city of Memphis, for long the residence of the Pharaohs, has receded into the background and the dty of Thebes has taken its place as the seat of the royal power.
The period of the Twelfth Dynasty, a line of Theban kings, b one of the bright- est in Egyptian history. It has been called Egypt's golden age. One of the most notable achievements of the period was the improvement made by one of the Pharaohs in the irrigation of the Fayum oasis in the desert west of Memphis. This district consists of a great depression, part of which, like the Imperial Valley of California, lies below the
1 Tbe portnut •culpcure of thi* age repreaenu the second great art of the early
woitd — the first being ihe amazing art (thousands of yean earlier) of the hunter^rtiats of the Old Stone Age in Europe (cf. sect. 4).
Fig. 17. Thz"Sheikh-el- BELED." (Gizeh Museum) Supposed portrait •tatue,carved in wood, of one of the overseers
mid. This is one of the master- pieces of Egyptian sculpture
4 26] PERIOD OF OBSCURITY 29
sea level It contains a lake fed by a branch of the Nile. By various engineering means the storage and distribution of the Hood waters of the season of inundation were regulated, and the area of cultivation was thus greatly extended.
26. Period of Obacurity and of the Rule of thx Hyksos (about IS00-I580 B.C.). Soon after the bright period of the Twelfth Dynasty, Egypt again underwent a great eclipse. Tribes of unknown race from Asia pressed across the frontier -
of Egypt and set up in the valley what was called the rule of the "Shepherd Kings." These in- truders soon adopted the manners and culture of the people they had subjected. After they had ruled in the valley probably up- wards of a century, an end was put to their dominion by the Theban kings, whom they had made vassals. It is thought hy some scholars thdt it was during
the supremacy of the Hyksos Fee. 18. The Scribe. (The Louvre) that the families of Israel found " With bi> hex) niied, hu hand holding toM rnd-pen, . . , he itill waits as he hai done for [five Ihousand years], for the
a refuge in Lower Egypt.
The rule of the Hyksos in the momew when hii Nile-land derives special impor- '" reiume his intemipted tance from the fact that these in-
truders introduced into Egypt from Asia the horse and the war chariot, which now appear for the first time on the monuments of the country. From this period forward the war chariot holds a place of first importance in the armaments of the Pharaohs.
27. The Eighteenth DTnasty (about isso-uso B.C.). The most eventful period of Egyptian history, covered by what is called the New Empire, now opens. The Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the first of thb epoch of imperialism, in order to free Egypt from the danger of another invasion frora_ Asia, endeavored to extend their authority over Syria. In the pursuit of this object they made
THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY
31
to do away with the worship of many divinities and to establish the worship of one God. The deity thus raised to single sovereignty was the old Egyptian sun-^od, whose suggestive new symbol — the old human and animal emblems were cast aside — was the sun's disk represented with streaming rays, each ending in a human hand extended as if in bless- ing (Fig. 19). So far as we know, this was the earliest attempt in the history of the world to establish monotheism.' The re- form, however, failed Amenhotep was too far in advance of his age. Upon his death the new capita] d^ which he had founded at Tell el-Amama, below Thebes, was destroyed, his mem- ory was consigned to eternal infamy, and Egypt resumed or rather continued — for the masses never in heart accepted the new creed — its worship of many gods. Monotheisra was not to go forth from Egypt, but from Judea.*
kmguige and icript ui< Pharaoh and the kingi
and the Egyptian govf
of tbb ducoveiy coDsiHi in the revelation il makes ol the deep hold that the civiliiati of Babylon had upon the Syrian landi cenCuiies before the Hebrew mvasion of Fileitii Thi* meani that the Hebrew development took place in an environment charged w dements of Babylonian culture,
1 See BTta*ttA,Dnnlafment 0/ RtSgioHandTiinighlin Attcittil E^fl I_iiii2),\ea.
* The interpretation of thii religioui movement which we have adopted in the ti il not, it (hould be aaid, accepted by all Egypcologiats. Some regard the refonner a onolaCriit rather than a pure monotheiaL
Relief Portraving Victory
It THE KHBTA at KADESH, ON
IE Orontes
half-dronned chieftain lead downward*
the coneapondence, not only between the reigning ind Babylonia, but also between the Egyptian couit isal kings of various Syrian towns. The significance
32
ANCIENT EGYPT
[S28
28. The NlneteeDtb Dynasty (about 1350-120SB.C.). The Pharaohs of the Nineteenth Dynasty rival those of the Eighteenth in their fame as conquerors and builders. It is largely their deeds and works, in connection with those of the great rulers of the preceding dynasty, that have given Egypt such a name and place in history. The great- est name of this dynasty is that of Rameses or Ramses II (about 1292-1225 B.C.), the Sesostris of the Greeks. Ancient writers accorded him the first place among all the Egyptian sovereigns, and told most exaggerated stories of his conquests and achievements, His long reign, em- bracing sixty-seven years, was, however, well occupied with the superintendence of great architectural works, of which there are more connected with his name than with that of any other oriental ruler. The chief of Rameses' wars were those against the Kheta, the Hittites of the Bible, who at this time were main- taining an extensive empire, embracing in the main the interior uplands of Asia Minor and northern Syria. We find Rameses at last concluding with them a celebrated treaty of peace and alliance, in which the chief of the Hittites is formally recognized as in every respect the equal of the Pharaoh of ^ypt. The meaning of this alliance was that the Pharaohs had met their peers in the princes of the Hittites, and that they could no longer hope to become masters of western Asia.
It is the opinion of some scholars that this Rameses II was the oppressor of the children of Israel, the Pharaoh who "made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field,'" and that what is known as the Exodus took place in the reign of his son Memeptah (about
1225-1215 B.C.).
Â¥ia. 21. Phalanx o
Hittites n the background, town protected
j 29] THE TWENTY-SIXTH DYNASTY 33
M. The Twenty-sixth Dynuty («3-«S B.C.). We pass without
comment a long period of several centuries, marked indeed by great vicissitudes in the fortunes of the Egyptian monarchs, yet characterized on the whole by a sure and rapid decline in the power and splendor of their empire.' During the latter part of this period Egypt was tribu- tary to Ethiopia * or to Assyria ; but a native prince, Psammetichus by name, with the aid of Greek mercenaries, "bronze men who came up from the sea," drove out the foreign garrisons. Psammetichus thus became the founder of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (663 B.C.).
Owing his throne chiefly to the swords of Greek soldiers, Psam- metichus was led to open the country even more completely than
Fig. 12. Bbick-Makini: in Ancient Egypt. {From Thebes)
the earlier Pharaohs had done to the settlement of Greek colonists. The creation of these closer relations with Greece at just this time when the Greeks were coming prominently forward to play their great part in history was a most significant event From this time on, Greek philosophers are represented as becoming pupils of the Egyptian priests ; and without question the learning and philosophy of the old Egyptians exercised a profound influence upon the open,
1 The mini imporOnl episode in the history of thia period was an attempted invasion ol Egx^t by «ea raideis whom the Egyptian records called the " Peoples of the Sea." They sere met and defeated somewhere along the Syrian coast by Rameses III <ahout 1100 B.C.). These sea folk are believed to have been j^gean peoples — Cretans, Lycians, etc. The Greeks il seems weie at this time pressing inio the Greek peninsula from the north, and were subjecting ot driving out the native inhabitants of the j^gean shore- lands and islands (sect, i Ji). A pan of the raiders settled on the coast plain of Pales- tine and became the fonnidable enemies of the Israelites — the Philistines of the Bible ■Titers [sect. 80),
ian. This is the soleinslance of theappearance
34 ANCIENT EGYPT [§30
receptive mind of the Grdbk race, that was, in its turn, to become the teacher of the world.
With the name of Necho II (610-594 B.C.), the son of Psammeti' chus, is connected an adventurous undertaking — the circumnaviga- tion of Africa.^ For this exploring expedition Necho is said to have engaged Phoenician sailors. The feat of sailing around the continent, there is reason to believe, was actually accomplished ; for the historian Herodotus, in his accoimt of the enterprise, says that the voyagers upon their return reported that when they were rounding the Cape the sun was on their right hand (to the north). This feature of the report, which led Herodotus to disbelieve it, is to us fairly good evidence that the voyage was really performed.
30. The Last of the Pharaohs. Before the end of Necho's reign Egypt lost to Babylon *its possessions in Asia, and a litde later (525 B.C.) bowed beneath the Persian yoke. Only for a litde space did she ever again regain her independence. From about the middle of the fourth century b.c. to the present day no native prince has sat upon the throne of the Pharaohs.*
Upon the extension of the power of the Macedonians and the Greeks over the East through the conquests of Alexander the Great (Chapter XXV), Egypt willingly accepted them as masters ; and for three centuries the valley was the seat of the renowned Graeco- Egypdan empire of the Ptolemies. The Romans finally annexed the region to their all-absorbing empire (30 e.g.).
" The mission of Egypt among the nations was fulfilled ; it had lit the torch of civilization in ages inconceivably remote, and had passed it on to other peoples of the West"
II. THE CIVILIZATION
31. The Goyemment. From first to last the government of ancient Egypt bore a sacred character. The Pharaoh was r^^rded as divine, as the son and representative of the sun-god. Three thousand years and more after Menes, Alexander the Great, after his conquest of the
1 See Herodotus, iv, 42.
< See Ezek. zxz, 13 : " There shall be do more a prince out of the land of Egypt."
§32] THE EGYPTIAN SYSTEM OF WRITING 35
country, thought to strengthen his position by causing himself to be proclaimed the son of the highest of the Egyptian gods (sect 283).
The authority of the divine Pharaoh was in theory absolute, but in practice was limited by a nobility and a powerful priesthood.^ The nation seemed almost to exist for the god-king. The construction of his pyramid tomb, or his vast rock sepulcher and its attached temple, laid under heavy tribute the labor and resources of the nation.
Taxes were paid in kind, that is, in the products of field and workshop, for the ancient Egyptians did not, until late in their history, use coined money. All the salaries of officials and the wages of workmen were paid in the provisions or articles received by the government in pa)nmait of tribute or taxes. This system necessitated
Fig. 23. Forms of Egyptian Writing The top line ^ hieroglyphic script ; the bottom line is the same text in hieratic
the erection of immense storehouses, granaries, and stables for the storing of the grain, wine, and cattle received by the tax collectors. The building of these warehouses was, as we learn from the Bible narrative, one of the tasks required of the Israelites: "Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they buflt for Pharaoh treasure-cities, Pithom and Raamses."* 32. The Egyptian System of Writing. One of the greatest achievements of the ancient Egyptians was the working out of a system of writing. By the middle of the fourth millennium B.C. this system had passed through all the stages which we have already indicated as marking the usual development of a written language (sect 11). But the curious thing about the system was this: when
1 The sacerdotal order was at certain periods a dominant force in the state. They enjoyed freedom from taxation, and met the expenses of the temple service mainly from the income of the sacred lands, which are said to have embraced, at one period, one third of the soil of the country. s Exod. i, 1 1.
$6 ANCIENT EGYPT [!33
an improved method of writing had been worked out the old method was not discarded. Hence the Egyptian writing was partly picture writing and partly alphabetic writing, and exhibited besides all the intermediate forms. The Egyptians, aS has been said, had developed an alphabet without knowing it.
Just as we have two forms of tetters, one for printing and another for writing, so the Egyptians employed three forms of script: the hieroglyphic, in which the pictures and symbols were carefully drawn — a form generally employed in monumental inscriptions; the hieratic, a simplified foim of the hieroglyphic, adapted to writing, and forming the gre^Uer part of the papyrus manu- scripts; and later a still simpler form developed from the hieratic, and called by the Greeks demotic, that is, the ordi- nary writing (from demos, " the people "), 33. The Soaetu Stone and the Key to Egyptian Writing. The key to the Egyptian writing was discovered by means of the Rosetta Stone, which was found by the French wheh they invaded Egypt under Napoleon in 1798. This precious relic, a heavy block of black basalt, is now in the British Museum. It holds an inscription in the Egyptian and the Greek language, which is written in three different forms of script — in the Egyptian hieroglyphic and demotic, and in Greek characters. The chief credit of deciphering the Egyp- tian script and of opening up the long-sealed libraries of Egyptian teaming belongs to the French scholar Champollion.
34. Egyptian Literature. The literature opened up to us by the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics is varied and instructive, revealing as it does the life and thought and scientific attainments of Old Egypt at a time when the Greek world was yet young,' Ther« is the ancient £ook of the Dead, containing instructions for the use
1 The chief writing material used by the ancienl Ei^tiani ml the noted papymi paper, manufactured from a reed which grew in the manhe* and along the natet channel! of the Nile. From the Greek names of thi* Egyptian plant, ijiitii and papyrus, come our words B^Ie and paper.
§35]
THE EGYPTIAN GODS
37
and guidance of the soul in its perilous journey to the realms of the blessed in the nether world ; there are novels or romances, and fairy tales, among these a parallel to " Cinderella and the Glass Slipper " ; religious inscriptions, public and private letters, fables, and epics; treatises on medicine and various other scientific subjects ; and books on ancient history — in prose and in verse — which fully justify the declaration of Egyptian priests to the Greek philosopher Solon: " You Greeks are mere chil-
c
If]^
n
>
y
(L\f\°\
dren; you know nothing at all of the past." ^
35. Tbe Egyptian Gods. It has been said of man that he is "incurably religious." This could certainly be said of the ancient Egyptians — that is, if we may regard the possession of many gods and anxious concern respecting the life in the hereafter as constituting religion.
Chief of the great Egyptian deities was the sun-god Ra (or R^), from whom the Pharaohs claimed descent. He was imagined as sail- ing across the heavens in a sacred bark on a celestial river, and at night returning to the east through subterranean water passages — an adventurous and danger-beset voyage.
Osiris at first was probably the spirit or god of vegetation,' but later he came to be invested with the attributes of the sun-god Ra.
1 See note at end of Chapter XIII.
* The twelve hieroglyphics used in writing these names have the following values :
Fig. 25. Two Royal Names in Hieroglyphics
It was the first of these names which gave the clue to the interpretation of the hieroglyphic script. Through a comparison of the two the values of several symbols were definitely
determined >
AK,
R,
M,
/]|]l(AI),pS,
DP.
^-'
or
T,
With tiiese the reader will easily decipher the names. It should be noted that the last two signs in the kmger word are used merely to indicate that the word is a divine, i. e. royal, feminine proper name, and that for the sake of symmetry one symbol is sometimes placed beneath another. The upper sign should be taken first • C£. Fraser, jidonis, Attisy Osiris (ad ed.), pp. 267 flf.
38 ANCIENT EGYPT [S36
In his primitive character as the spirit of plants and trees, which die and come to life again each year, he came naturally to be conceived as the god of human resurrection and immortalitjr,' and judge and ruler in the realms of the dead.
The god Seth, called Typhon by the Greek writers, was the Satan of later Egyptian mythology. He was the personification of the evil in the world, just as Osiris was the personification of the good.
Besides the great gods* there was a multitude of lesser deities, each nome or district and village having its local god or gods.
36. Animal Worship. The Egyptians believed some animals to be incarnations of a god descended from heaven. Thus a god was thought to animate the body of some particular bull, which might be known from certain spots or markings. Upon the death of the sacred bull, or Apis, as he was called, a great search, accompanied with loud lamentaticHi, was made through- out the land for his successor ; for the moment the god de- FiG. i6. MuuHY or a Sacred Bull parted from the dying bull it (From a phot<^raph) entered a calf that moment
bom. The body of the de- ceased Apis was carefully embalmed, and, amid funeral ceremonies of great expense and magnificence, laid away in a huge granite sarcophagus in the tomb of his predecessors.*
Not only were individual animals held sacred and worshiped, but sometimes whole species, for example, the cat, were regarded as sacred. To kin one of these animals was adjudged the greatest 1 See Fig. 97 (p. 14;) and descriptive nole.
* These gieac divinities were often grouped in triads. First in importance unong these groups was thai of Osiris, Isis (his wife and sister), and Honu their son. The â– nembera of this triad were worshiped throughout Egypt.
«In 1851 Mariette discovered this sepulchral chamber of the sacred bulls (the Serapeum). It is a narrow gallery two thousand feet in length cut in the limestone cliffs jtiit opposite the site of ancient Memphis. A large number of immense gianita coffins and several mummified bulls were found.
§37] EGYPTIAN DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE 39
impiety. Persons so unfortunate as to kill one through accident were sometimes murdered by the infuriated p)eople.
Many explanations have been given to account for the existence of such a primitive form of worship among so cultured a people as the ancient Egyptians. There can be little doubt that these low elements in their religion were nothing more nor less than the crude ideas and practices of the savage prehistoric tribes of the Nile valley. The Egyptians simply did in the domain of religion what they did in all other domains of their culture — kept the old alongside the new.
37. The Egyptian Doctrine of a Future Life. Among no other people of antiquity did the life after death seem so real and hold so laige a place in the thoughts of the living as among the people of Old Eg3rpt. It is difficult to give an account of this belief, for the reason that there were different forms of it held at different times and in different places. But the essential part of the belief was that man has a soul which, aided by magic words and rites, survives the death of the body.^ Its abode was sometimes thought to be in or near the tomb.; again its dwelling place was conceived to be the great western desert, the land of the setting svm, hence the term westerners applied to the dead; and still again its abode was imagined to be the starry heavens, or a vast realm beneath the earth.
This belief in a future life, taken in connection with certain ideas respecting the nature of the soul's existence in the other world and of its needs, reacted in a remarkable way upon the people of ancient Egypt It was the cause and motive of many of the things they did when they laid away their dead.^
1 ^ There is no ground for the complicated conception of a person in ancient Egypt as consisting, besides the body, of a ka, a ba (soul), a y'hw (spirit), a shadow, etc. Be- sides the body and the ba (soul), there was only the ka, the protecting genius, which was not an element of the personality . . .'' (Breasted, Development of Religion and Tliought m Ancient Egypt (191a), p. 56, n. 2). And so Steindorff: **In my opinion it [the ka] is not, as commonly supposed, a kind of ethereal facsimile or double of the man, but a guardian spirit or genius'' {The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians (1905), p. 122).
^ The ideas and beliefs which underlie such practices as are portrayed in the follow- ing sections are common to all primitive peoples. What is extraordinary in the case of the Egyptians is that they should have retained these customs so long after their emergence from barbarism. This is to be attributed to their extreme conservatism (cf. sect. 36).
40 ANCIENT EGYPT f|38
38. The First Need of the Soul : the OU Body. The first need of the soul was the possession of the old body, upon the preservation of which the existence or happiness of the soul was believed to de- pend. Hence the anxious care with which the Egyptians sought to preserve the body against decay by embahning it.
In the various processes of embalming, use was made of oils, resins, bitumen, and various aromatic gums. The bodies of the wealthy were preserved by being filled with cosdy aromatic and resinous substances, and swathed in bandages of linen. To a body thus treated is applied the tenn mummj'. As this method of em- balming was very cosdy, the bodies of the poorer classes were simply dipped into hot asphalt, or salted and dried, and wrapped in coarse mats preparatory to burial in the desert sands, or in common tombs cared for by the priests.
To this practice of the Egyp- tians of embalming their dead we Fig. ij. Profile of Rameses II ^^^ j^ that we can look upon the {From a photograph of the mommy) actual faces of many of the andent Pharaohs. Towards the dose of the last century (in iSSi) the mummies of Thothmes III, Sethos I, Rameses II, and those of about forty other kings, queens, princes, and priests, embradng nearly all the Pharaohs of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-first dynasties, were found in a secret rock chamber near Thebes. The faces of Sethos and Rameses, both strong faces, are so remarkably preserved that, in the words of Maspero, "were their subjects to return to the earth to-day they could not fail to recognize their old sovereigns."
Along with the mummy there were often placed in the tomb a number of wood, clay, or stone portrait statuettes of the deceased. The lid of the coffin was also carved in the form of a mummy. The idea here was that, if through any accident the body were destroyed,
!M] THE SECOND NEED OF THE SOUL 41
the soul might avail itself of these substitutes. It was the effort put forth by the artist to make these portrait images and carvings lifelike that contributed to bring early Egyptian sculpture to such a high d^ree of excellence.
39. The Second Need of the Soul : a Secnre Habitation. Another need of the soul was a safe habitation. Upon the temporary homes of the living the Egyptians bestowed little care, but upon the " eternal abodes " of the dead they lavished unstinted labor and cost
The tombs of the official class and of the rich were sometimes structures of brick or stone, and again they were chambers cut in the limestone cliffs that rim the Nile valley.
The bodies of the ear- lier Pharaohs were, as we have seen, hidden away in the heart of great moun- tains of stone — the pyra- mids. Many of the later ^^^ ^^ „^,„„^ Case with Mummy Pharaohs constructed for
themselves magnificent rock-cut tombs, some of which are perfect labyrinths of corridors, halls, and chambers. In the hills back of Thebes, in the so^alled Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, there are so many of these royal sepulchers that the place has been called the "Westminster Abbey of Egypt"
40. The Ttaiid Need of the Sonl : Food and Tblage Used In the EaitUy Life. But not all the wants of the soul were met by the mummy, the substitute portrait-images, and the secure tomb. It had need also of food and drink and implements — ■of everything, in a word, that the deceased had needed while on earth. Hence all these things were put into the tomb when the body was laid away, and thereafter, from time to time, fresh supplies of food were heaped upon a table placed to receive them. That there might be no failure of gifts, the tombs of the wealthy were often richly endowed, and the duty of renewing the supplies laid upon the priest of some neighboring temple. The very poor had scanty provision, often only a pair of wom-out shoes or pasteboard sandals.
42 ANCIENT EGYPT [|41
But as it was only the spirit or double of the things tints set out
which the soul could make use of, it came to be believed that a
picture or an inexpensive model in wood or clay of these objects
would serve just as well as the actual objects themselves. Thus the
pictures of different kinds of food and drink supplied the soul with
" an unsubstantial yet satisfying repast " ; and the model of a boat
made possible a pleasure sail on the celestial Nile. Among the
objects sometimes put in the tomb were models of slave women
without feet — presumably that they might not
run away when wanted ; and models of servants,
called respondents or " answerers," since their
duty was "to arise and answer in place of the
dead man when he was called upon to do work
in the underworld."
It was this belief — that pictures and models would take the place of the real things — which covered the walls of the Egyptian tombs with those -sculptures and paintings which have con- verted for us these chambers of the dead into picture galleries where the Egypt of die Pharaohs rises again into life before our eyes.
41. The Judgment of the Deed and the Negative Confession. But alongside these crude ideas and beliefs which made well-being and happiness in the hereafter dependent upon the preservation of the old body, a sumptuous tomb, a constant supply of food and other things, there developed a belief and conviction that the bt of the soul in the future is determined solely by the bfe, whether good or evil, lived on earth.
This belief found expression in the so-called Judgment of the Dead King and peasant alike must appear before the dread tribunal of Osiris, the judge of the underworld, and render an account of the deeSs done in the body. Here the soul sought justification in such declarations
I A ilBtuetle of a wDikman placed in the tomb along ivich Che mummy. It wu thought that the recital o( certain magical formulas imparted life to the image. A number of iheie fi(urea put in the lomb lupplied the deceased with >ecvanu in the other world.
ffiedemanit)
1 '
S41] THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD 43
as these, which form what is called the Negative Confession : " I have not blasphemed " ; "I have not stolen " ; "I have not slain any one treacherously " ; "1 have not slandered any one or made false accu- sation " ; "1 have not reviled the face of my father " ; "I have not eaten my heart through with envy," '
In other declarations of the soul we find a singularly dose approach to Christian morality, as for instance in this : " I have given bread to the htmgty and drink to him who was athirst; I have clothed the naked with garments."
The truth of what the soul thus asserted in its own behalf was tested by the balances of the gods. In one of the scales was placed
Fig. 30. The Judgment op the Dead. (Fiora a papyrus) Showing the weighing of the heart of the deceaied in the icalei of tnith
the heart of the deceased; in the other, a feather, the symbol of truth or r^hteousness. The soul stood by watching the weighing. If the heart were found not light, the soul was welcomed to the companionship of the good Osiris. The unjustified were sent to a place of torment or were thrown to a monster to be devoured:
This judgment scene in the nether world forms the most instmctive memorial of Old Egypt that has been preserved to us. We here learn what sort of a conscience the Egyptian had early developed ; for the coofesuon and the doctrine of a judgment date from a very remote
s the equivalent of lix of the Ten
44 ANCIENT EGYPT [S«
period of Egyptian dvilization. The moral teachers of Egypt here anticipated the moral teachers of Israel.'
42. Architecture, Sculpture, and Minor Arta. At a comparatively early period Egyptian civilization ceased to make further notable prog- ress. The past was taken as a model, just as it is in China to-day. So what b here said of the arts is, speaking broadly, as tnie of them in the third millennium before Christ as at any later period of Egyptian history.
In the building art the ancient Egyptians, in some respects, have never been surpassed. The Mera- phian pyramids built by the earlier, and the Theban temples raised by the later Pharaohs have excited the astonishment and the admiration alike of all the successive genera- tions that have looked upon them. " Thebes," says Lenormant, " in spite of all the ravages of time and of the barbarian still presents the grandest, the most prodigious as- semblf^e of buildings ever erected by the hand of man."
In the cutting and shaping of enormous blocks of the hardest
, _ _ stone, the Egyptians adiieved re-
ttG. 31. An Egvptian Obelisk ' "o-'r
suits which modem stonecutters can scarcely equal. " It is doubtful," says Rawlinson, " whether the steam-sawing of the present day could be trusted to produce in ten years from the quarries of Aberdeen a single obelisk such as those which the Pharaohs set up by dozens." '
I "... In thiB judgment the Egyptian introduced for the first time in the hutoiy of man the fully developed idea Chat the future destiny of the dead nniBt be dependent entirely upon the ethical quality of the eaithly life, the idea of future accountability." — Breasted, HisUry of Egypt (1911), p. 173
* Hillary of Ancieitt Egypt, vol. i, p. 49S. The Egyptian stonecutters did much of their vork with copper and bronze tools, to which they were able by aome process to
J«] ASTRONOMY, GEOMETRY, AND MEDICINE 45
As we have seen (sect, 24), Egyptian sculpture was at its best in the earliest period; that it became so imitative and the figures so conventional and rigid was due to the influence of religion. The artist, in the portrayal of the figures of the gods, was not allowed to change a single line of the sacred form. WQkinson says that Menes would have recognized the statue of O^ris in the temples of the last of the Pharaohs,
In many of the minor arts the Egyptians at- tained a surprisingly high degree of excellence. They were able in coloring glass to secure tints as brilliant and beautiful as any which modern art has been able to produce, In goldsmith's work they showed wonderful skill. The scarabaeus (beetle) was reproduced with lines of almost microscopic delicacy- It should be noted here that it was especially in the domain of art that the influence of ^ypt was exerted upon contemporary civilizations. Until the full development of Greek art, Egyptian art reigned over the world in somewhat the same way that Greek art has reigned since the Golden -Age of Greece. Its in- fluence can be traced in the architecture, the sculp- ture, and the decorative art of all the peoples of the Mediterranean lands.
43. The Sciencea: Aa- ttoDomy, Geometiy, and
Medidne. The cloudless Fic. 33. A Scarau Amule.
and brilliant skies of Egypt invited the inhabitants of the Nile valley to the study of the heavenly bodies. And another circumstance closely related to their very existence — the inundation of the Nile, following the changing cycles of the stars — could not but have incited them to the watching and recording of the movements of
give 1 very hard edge, la the veiy earliest timci they had invented the tububr drill, which they ict with hard cutting pointi. With this instrument they did work which engineen of to-d^ lay could not be luipassed with the modem dbmond drill. £ee Flinden Petrie, Ten Vrari' Diggirs i" Egyf'^ PP' '^- '?â–
46 ANCIENT EGYPT [§44
the heavenly bodies. Their observations led them to discover the length, very nearly, of the solar year, which they divided into twelve months of thirty days each, with a festival period of five days at the end of the year.* This was the calendar that, with minor changes, Julius Caesar introduced into the Roman Empire, and which, slightly reformed by Pope Gregory XIII, in 1582, has been the system employed by almost all the civilized world up to the present day (sect. 487).
The Greeks accounted for the early rise of the science of geometry among the Egyptians by the necessity they were under of reestab- lishing each year the boundaries of their fields — the inundation obliterating old landmarks and divisions. The science thus forced upon their attention was cultivated with zeal and success. A single papyrus has been discovered that holds twelve geometrical theorems. The work of the Greek scholars in this field was based on that done by the Egyptians.
The Egyptian physicians relied largely on magic, for every ailment was supposed to be caused by a demon that must be expelled by means of magical rites and incantations. But th^ also used drugs of various kinds; the ciphers or characters employed by modem apothecaries to designate grains and drams are believed to be of Egyptian invention.
44. Bgypt'8 Contribution to Civilization. Egypt, we thus see, made valuable gifts to civilization. From the Nile came the germs of much found in the later cultures of the peoples of western Asia and of the Greeks and Romans, and through their mediation in that of the modern world. " We are the heirs of the civilized past," says Sayce, " and a goodly portion of that civilized past was the creation of ancient Egypt."
How varied and helpful Egypt's contributions were to the growing cultures of the Mediterranean area will appear as we proceed in following chapters to rehearse briefly the story of the other historic peoples of antiquity.
1 The Egyptian scholars knew that 365 days was a period i of a day short of a year, but the conservatism of the people prevented the use of a calendar that provided for the addition of one day to evexy fourth year.
REFERENCES 47
S«lMtlOIW from tha SoOtCU. Raordi ef Ike Ftisl (New Series, edited by Sayce}, vol. iii, "The Precepts of Ptah-Hotep," Petrie's Jigyftian Taiii (Second Series), "Anpu and Bata." Maspcro's Popular Storiu of Ancient E^fl, " The LamenUtions oE the Fellah," pp. 42~6y ; and " The Shipwrecked Sailor," pp. 98-107. Hebodoti;s, ii, 1-14. The student should bear in mind that the part) of Herodotus' work devoted to the Orient have a very different historical value from that possessed by those portions of the history which deal primarily with Greek affairs. "The net result of Oriental research," says Professor Sayce, "in its bearing upon Herodotus is to show that the greater part of what he professes to tell us of the history of Egypt, Babylonia, and Penia is really a collection of 'mirchen,' or popular stories, current among (he Greek loungers and half-caste dragomen on the skirts of the Persian empire. . . . After all, ... it may be questioned whether they are not of higher value for the history of the human mind than the most accurate descriptions of kings and generals, of wars and treaties and revolutions."
B«fBleiicea (Modsm). Breasted, A lliiloty of H^pt, A Hisloiy of tit AHcitnt Egyfliam, axiA Z>nrt!efmcnl of Religion and TTiought in Ancient Egypt. Maspero, Tie Dawn 0/ Civili*ati(m, cb»pa, i-v\ ; TTie Stru^ie of Ike Nations, chaps, i-v; and Manual of Egyptian Arckaolagy. Rawlinson, History of Ancient ^ypt, 2 vols., and Stoty ef Ancient Egypt. Newberry and Garstanc, A Skort Hiitery of Ancient Egypt. Z\\K.i£, Tke Story of tke Pharaeki. Hall, Ancient History of (ke Near East (consult table of contents), WIEDEMANN. Religion 0/ Ike Ancient Egyptians. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of tke Ancient Egyptians (should be used with caution — portions are antiquated). ErhaN, Life in Ancient Egypt- BuDGE, Egyptian Religion and Egyptian Ideas of tke Ettture Life. Steinuorff, 7'he Religion of tke Ancient Egyptians. Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Ancient Egypt.
Topka for Class Reports, i. Characteristics of Egyptian art: Reinach. Apella, pp. 17-22. 2. Industrial ans : Maspero, E^plian Arckaelogy, chap. v. 3. Dwellings of the poor and of the rich : Maspero, E^ptian Arckaolagy^ pp. Z-z8. 4. The market and the shops: Maapero, Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria, chap. ii. 5. The Tell el-Amama letters : Breasted, History of ^gyP'. PP- 33^-337. 38^-389. 393 i Light from tke East. pp. 86-94.
CHAPTER IV
THE EARLT CITT-EIHGDOHS OF BABYLONIA AND THE OLD BABYLONIAN EMPIRE
(From «uliast timos to 728 B.C)
I. POLITICAL HISTORY
45. The Tigfris and Eu^rates Valley ; the Upper and the Lower Conotry. We must now trace the upspringing of civilization in Babylonia, " the Asian Egypt."
As in the case of E^pt, so in that of the Tigris and Euphrates valley,' the physical features of the country exerted a great influence upon the history of its ancient peoples. Differences in geological structure divide this region into an upper and a lower district ; and this twofold division in natural features is reflected, as we shall see, throughout its political history.
The northern part of the valley, the portion that comprised ancient Assyria, consists of undulating plains, broken in places by mountain
• The ancient Greeks gave to the land embraced by the Tigris and the Euphnnet the name of Mcmfalamia, which means hteially " the land benr«n or amidn the riven." The name ii often loosely applied lo the whole Tigiis-Euph rales valley.
Note. The picture at [he head of this page shons the Cabil Mound, at Bdiyton, u It appeared in iSii.
<»
S«]
THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES VALLEY
49
ridges. This region nourished a hardy and wariike race, and became the seat of a great military empire.
The southern part of the valley, the part known as Babylonia, is, like the Delta region of Egypt, an alluvial deposit The making of new land by the rivers has gone on steadily during historic times. The ruins of one of the ancient seaports of the country (Eridu) lie over a hundred miles inland from the present head of the Persian Gulf. In ancient rimes much of the land was protected against the
Fig. 34- Ahciknt Babylonian Canal
inundations of the rivers, and watered in seasons of drought, by a stupendous system of dikes and canals, which at the present day, In a ruined and sand-choked condition, cover like a network the face of the country,
The productions of Babylonia are very like those of the Nile valley. The luxuriant growth of grain upon these alluvial flats excited the wonder of the Greek travelers who visited the East. Herodotus will not tell the whole truth for fear his veracity may be doubted. It is not strange that tradition should have located here Paradise, that primeval garden "out of the ground of which God made to grow cveiy tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." This
so
EARLY CITY-KINGDOMS OF BABYLONIA [§46
favored plain in a remote period of antiquity became the seat of an agricultural, industrial, and commercial population among which the arts of civilized life found a development which possibly was as old as that of Eg}'pt, and which ran parallel with it
46. The Babylonian a Mixed Cultate. In ancient times the part of Babylonia in the south near the gulf was called Sumer and the part in the north Akkad. The first inhabitants of Sumer, known from the name of the land as Sumerians, were of non-Semitic race. They
Map of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley
had already, when they appear in history, emerged from the Stone Age and were using utensils of copper. They possessed a system of writing and other arts of a comparatively advanced culture. It was this people who laid in the main the basis of civilization in the Euphrates valley.
About the same time that the Sumerians were establishing them- selves in the south, there came into Akkad in the north — such appears to have been the course of events — Semitic immigrants from Arabia. These peoples were nomadic in habits, and altogether much less cultured than the Sumerians. Gradually gaining ascendancy, they took over the Sumerian culture and developed it. They retained,
i47] THE AGE OK CITV-KINGDOMS SI
however, their own language, which in the course of time superseded (he Sumerian speech. The union of the two races gave rise to the Babylonians of history, and their mixed culture formed what is known as the Babylonian civilization.
47. Tbe Age of City-Kingdoms (fourth and third millennitims B.C.). When the light of history first falls upon the Mesopotamian lands, in the later centuries of the fourth millennium b,c., it reveals the lower river plain filled with independent walled cities like those which we find later in Palestine, Greece, and Italy. Each city had its patron god, and was ruled by a prince bearing the title of king or lord.
From the tablets of the old Babylonian tem- ple archives (sect 53), patient scholars are slowly deciphering the ^°- 35- I«psession of a Seal of Sargon I
: ,, ,, (Date about 2800 B.C.)
wonderful story of these
— , ,, "Muit be ranked Rmone the nuulerpiecu of Oriental
anoentaties. Thepolit- engâ„¢v4."-Ha.pcâ„¢
ical side of their history
may, for our present purpose, be summarized by saying that for a period of two thousand years and more their records, so far as they have become known to us, are annals of wars waged for supremacy by one dty and its gods against other cities and their gods.
Of all the kings whose names have been recovered from the monu- ments we shall here mention only one — ^Sargon I (about 2775 B.C.'), the "Menes of Chaldea," a Semitic king of Akkad, whose reign forms a great landmark in early Babylonian annals. He built up a powerful state in Babylonia and carried his arms to "the land of the setting sim " (Syria). It is possible that he even extended his authority to the island of Cyprus. An eminent historian of the East calls his kingdom " the first world-kingdom known to history."
'The earlier date for this king, which wai formerly accepted on the evidence of the KKalled Nabonidui Cylinder, has been discredited by recent discoveries, which ibow that several wf the early dynasties once supposed to be consecutive were really
52 EARLY CITY-KINGDOMS OF BABYLONIA [S4S
48. The Rise of Babylon : Hammurabi and tlie Old Babyhmlu Emfdre. From the remotest times the city-states of Babylonia had for enemies the kings of Elam, a country bordering Babylonia on the east, and of which Susa was the capital. For centuries at a time the Elamite kings held the cities of the plain m a state of more or less complete vassalage. Their dominion was finally broken by a king of Babylon, a city which had been gradually rising into prominence, and which was to give to the whole country the name by which
it is best known — Babylonia. The name of this king was Hammurabi (about z i oo 8. c). He united under his rule all the cities of Babylonia, and thus became the tt\ic maker of what is known as the OH Babylonian Empire.
Hammurabi has been called
the Babylonian Moses, for the
reason that he promulgated a
KiG. 36. Door Socket of Saroon I code of laws which in some
respects is remarkably like the
Mosaic code of the Hebrews. Concerning this oldest system of laws
in the world we shall say something a little farther on (sect 60),
49. Tbe Old Babylonian Empire Eclipsed by the Rising Aaayiian Empire. For more than fifteen hundred years after Hammurabi, Babylon contirued to be the political and commercial center of an empire of varying fortunes, of changing dyiusties, and of shifting frontiers. This long history, still only very imperfectly known to us, we pass without notice.
Meanwhile a Semitic power had been slowly developing in the north. This was the Assyrian Empire, thus called from Assur- (Ashur), its early royal dty. Later, the city of Nineveh grew to be its populous center and capital. The earlier rulers of Assyria were vassals of the kings of Babylonia ; but late in the eighth century B.C. Babylonia was conquered by an Assyrian king, and from that time on to 625 B.C. the country was for the most part under Assyrian control
j50] REMAINS OF THE BABYLONIAN CITIES 53
II. ARTS AND GENERAL CULTURE
50. Remains of the Babylonian Cities and Public Buildings. The Babylonian plains are dotted with enormous mounds, generally in- closed by vast ramparts of earth. These heaps are the remains of the great walled cities, the palaces and shrines of the ancient Babylonians. The peculiar nature of these ruins arises from the character of the ancient Babylonian edifices and the kind of material used in their construction.
In the first place, in order to secure for their temples and palaces a firm foundation on the water-soaked land, as well as to lend to them a certain dignity and to render them more easily defended, the Babylonian kings raised their public buildings on enormous plat- forms of earth or adobe. These substructures were often many acres in extent and were raised generally to a height of forty or more feet above the level of the plain.
Upon these immense platforms were built the temples of the gods and the palaces of the king. The country affording neither timber nor stone, recourse was usually had to sun-dried bricks as the chief building material, burnt brick being used, in the main, only for the outer casing of the walls. The buildings were one-storied, with thick and heavy walls. Often the lower portion of the walls of the chief courts and chambers were paneled with glazed bricks.
In their decay these edifices have sunk down into great heaps of earth which the storms of centuries have furrowed with deep ravines, giving many of them the appearance of natural ruin-crowned hills — for which, in truth, some of the earlier visitors to Babylonia mistook them.
51. Excavations and Discoveries. About the middle of the nine- teenth century some mounds of the upper country, near and on the site of ancient Nineveh, were excavated, and the world was astonished to see rising as from the tomb the palaces of the great Assyrian kings (sect 68). This was the beginning of excavations and discoveries in the Mesopotamian lands which during the past half century have re- stored the history of long-forgotten empires, reconstructed the history of the Orient, and given us a new beginning for universal history.
54 EARLY CITY-KINGDOMS OF BABYLONIA [iS2
Some of the most important finds in Babylonia were made during the closing years of the nineteenth century by the expedition of the University of Pennsylvania, on the site of the ancient Nippur. The excavation here of the ruins of the great temple of Bel brought to light memorials which prove that this dty was one of the religious centers of the old Babylonian world for more than three thousand
Fic, 37. Excavation showing Pavements in a Court of the Tehfle OF Bel at Nippur. (Mtex Hilprtckt)
The lower pavement, marked " i," was pul down by Sargon I and Naram-Sin (about
2S00 n.c), «nd the upper one, marked " 5," by the Auyrian king Ashur-bani-pal (668-
616 1 B.C.). The pavements are thui leparaied by a period of over looo yean
years — a period a thousand years longer than that during which Rome has been the religious center of Catholic Christendom,
52. Cuneifonn Writing. The most valuable things that have been unearthed in Babylonia are the old libraries and temple archives. But to appreciate the import of this a word is here necessary con- cerning the Babylonian system of writing and its decipherment
From the earliest period known to us, the Babylonians were in possession of a system of phonetic writing. To this system the
§52]
CUNEIFORM WRITING
55
term cuneiform (from cuntus^ a " wedge ") has been given on account of its wedge-shaped characters. The signs assumed this peculiar
Fig. 38. Cuneiform Writing Tnmslation : ** Five thousand mighty cedars I spread for its roof "
form from being impressed upon soft clay tablets with an angular writing instrument (stylus).
This system of writing had been developed out of an earlier system of picture writing, as is plainly shown by a comparison of
|
MEANING |
OUTUNE B.C. 3600 |
ARCHAIC CUNEIFORM, B.G. 2500 |
ARSYRtAR, R.C. 700 |
UTE RABYUNIAN. R.C. 600 |
|
|
I. |
The sun |
<> |
x> |
^ |
■«r |
|
2. |
God, heaven |
â– ^ |
•^ |
►»^ |
^ |
|
3- |
Mountain |
i< |
^< |
V |
^ |
|
4- |
Man |
/MTK |
p^Imf^ |
* " 1 1 |
^ |
|
5- |
Ox |
^ |
^ |
^ |
^ |
|
6. |
FUh |
^ |
4 |
ff< |
fK |
Fig. 39. Table showing the Development of the Cuneiform Writing
(After King)
the earlier with the later forms of the characters (Fig. 39). The "faibylonians never developed the system beyond the syllabic stage
56 EARLY CITY-KINGDOMS OF BABYLONIA [|S3
(sect. It). They employed a syOabaiy of between four and five
hundred signs.' This mode of writing was in use among the peoples of western
Asia from before 3000 b.c down to the first century of our era. Thus for three thousand years it was just such an important factor in the earlier civili- zations of the ancient world as the Phceni- dan alphabet in its various forms has been during the last three thousand years in the civilizations of all the peoples of culture, save those of eastern Asia.
53. Books utd Anhirea. The writing material of the Babylonians was usually clay tablets of various sizes. Those holding contracts of special importance, after hav- ing been once written upon and baked, were covered with a thin coating of clay, and then the matter was written in dupli- cate and the tablets again baked. If the outer writing were defaced by accident or
altered by design, the removal of the outer coating would at once
show the true text.
The tablets were carefully preserved in
great pubUc archives, which sometimes formed
an adjunct of the temple of some specially
revered deity. The tem^de archives found at
Telloh contained over thirty thousand tablets. 54. The Decipherment of the Condfonn
Writing ; the Contenta of the TaUets. Just
as the key to the Egyptian writing was found
by means of bilingual inscriptions, so was the key to the cuneiform
script discovered by means of trilingual inscriptions, among which
was a very celebrated one cut by a Persian king on the socalled
Behistun Rock (sect 104). Credit for the decipherment of the
broken to show (he in
155] THE RELIGION 57
difficult writing, and thereby the opening up to us of the records of a long buried civilization, is divided among several scholars.^
The tablets cover the greatest variety of subjects. There are mythological tablets, which hold the myths and tales of the Baby- lonian gods; religious tablets, filled with prayers and hymns; legal tablets, containing laws, contracts, wills, and various other matters of a commercial nature ; and astronomical, historical, and mathematical tablets — all revealing a very highly developed society. We will say just a word of what the tablets reveal respecting the religion and mythology of the Babylonians, and of the state of the sciences among them.
55. The Religion. The tablets hold a large religious literature, which forms one of the earliest and most instructive chapters in the religious history of mankind. At the earliest period made known to us by the native records, we find the pantheon, like the Egyptian, to embrace many powerful nature gods and local deities — the patron gods of the different cities. Besides the great gods there was a vast multitude of lesser gods.
The most prominent feature from first to last of the popular religion was a belief in spirits, particularly in wicked spirits, and the practice of magic rites and incantations to avert the malign influence of these demons.
A second most important feature of the religion was what is known as astrology, or the foretelling of events by the aspects of the stars. This side of the religious system was, in the later Chaldean period, most elaborately and ingeniously developed until the fame of the Chaldean astrologers was spread throughout the ancient world.
Alongside these low beliefs and superstitious practices there existed, however, higher and purer elements. This is best illustrated by the
^Copies of trilingual inscriptions — written in Persian, Susian, and Babylonian — were brought from Persepolis to Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. The chie to the decipherment of the Persian text was found by Grotefend in 1802. He identified the names of Darius, Hystaspes, and Xerxes, the word for king, and nine of the thirty-nine signs. In 1835 ^^^ Henry C. Rawlinson copied a longer inscription in these same languages made by Darius on the rock at Behistun. Independently he arrived at the same conclusions as Grotefend.
58 EARLY CITY-KINGDOMS OF BABYLONIA [§56
so-called penitential psalms, dating, some of them, from the second millennium B.C., which breathe a spirit like that which pervades the penitential psalms of the Old Testament^
The most instructive fact for us to note respecting this old Baby- lonian religion is the influence which it had upon the culture of later ages. For the most part this influence was of a baneful character, for it was chiefly the lower elements of the system — magic, sorcery, and astrology — which were absorbed by the borrowing nations of the West Thus astrology among the later Romans and the popular beliefs of the Middle Ages in regard to evil spirits, exorcisms, charms, witches, and the devil were in large part an inheritanoe from old Babylonia. Much of this wretched heritage was trans- mitted from the East to the Western world at the same time that Christianity came in from Judea.
66. Ideas of the Futaie Life. The beliefs of the Babylonians respecting the other world were in strange contrast to those of the Egyptians. In truth, they gave but little thought to the after life; and it is no wonder that they did not like to keep the subject in mind, for in general they imagined the life after death to be most sad and doleful. The abode of the dead (Aralu), the *Mark land," the "land of no return," was a dusky r^on beneath the earth. Bats flitted about in the dim light; dust was upon the lintels of the barred doors ; the souls drowsed in their places ; their food was dust and mud.
There was no judgment of the dead as among the Eg3^tians. There was no distinction, in the case of the great multitude,* between the good and the bad ; the same lot awaited all who went down to death.
^ A few lines of such a psalm follow :
O my god who art angxy with me, accept my prayer.
May my sins be forgiven, my transgressions be wiped out.
[May] flowing waters of the stream wash me clean. Let me be pure like the sheen of gold.
Jastrow, Tht ReligWH of Baiylcma and Atsyriat p. 3x3
s There was a sort of Elysium, like that of the Greeks, for men of great deeds and great piety.
*S7]
THE TEMPLE AND THE PEOPLE
59
S7. The Place of the Temple in the Ufe of the People. Religion among the Babylonians, as among all the peoples of antiquity, was largely an affair of the state. A chief care and duty of the king was the erection and repair of the temples and shrines of the gods.'
The temples were much more than abodes of the gods and places of worship. Besides the chambers for the priest, storerooms for the prod- ucts of the temple lands, and stables for the animals for the sacrifices, there were attached to many of the temples schools, which were in charge of the priests and scribes. The courts of the temples were also places for the transaction of all manner of business. All kinds of contracts were drawn up by the temple scribes and copies of the same deposited for safe-keeping in the temple archives. An immense number of these contract tablets have been found, so that we now have probably a better knowledge of the commercial aflairs of the old Babylo- nians than of those of any other peojde of antiquity.
Many of the temples, like the churches and monasteries of medi- aeval Europe, were richly endowed with lands and other property. In- deed, the gods were the largest landowners in the state. The god Bel at Nippur seems to have owned a great part of the city and its lands.
Fig. 42. DioRiTE Seated Statue or Gudea, Ruler or Lagash (Shirpurla). (Museum
of the Louvre) Gudca icigned about 2450 B.C. He wu > greu builder, and hi* inscrip-
fying of ihe old city-temples
' A pectiliar architectural feature of the Uter temple was an immense tiggtmil, 0 tower, which orduuiily coniistcd of a number of sCb^ps or placfoimi raised one upoi •aother in the form of a great step pyiainid,
5o EARLY CITY-KINGDOMS OF BABYLONIA [S58
68. The Epic of Creation or the BabylosUn Oeneaie. A great part of Babylonian literature was of Sumerian origin and dates from the third millennium b.c In what is called the Creation £4>ic, which has been recovered in a fragmentary state from the cuneiform tablets, we have the Babylonian version of the creation of the heavens and the earth by the great god Marduk.
This story of the creation is told with many variations in the litera* ture of the Babylonians and Assyrians. These tales present certain resemblances to the account of the creation given in the Sacred Scriptures of the Hebrews. But there are striking differences which it is bstructive to notice. The Bible account, in con- trast with the Babylonian tales, is divested of all poly- theistic elements, and is moralized, that is, so told
Fig. 43. Writikg-mkrcise Tablets of a
Child. (Found at Nippur; afict//i:^£:4/)
as to cause it to become a means of moral instruction.
59. The Epic of GUgameah. Besides the Creation Epic the Baby- lonians had a large number of other heroic and nature myths. The most noted of these form what is known as the Epic of Gilgamesh,* the Babylonian Heracles. This is doubtiess the oldest epic of the race. It held some such place in Babylonian literature and art as the cycle of legends making up the epic of the Trojan War held in the literature and art of the Greeks. Echoes of it reached the j^gean lands and helped to mold the Greek stoiy of Heracles (sect 138).
60. Legislation: the Code of Hammnnibl. In 1901-1902 the French excavators at Susa, in the ancient Elam, discovered a block of stone upon which was inscribed the code of laws set up by
> The epic is made up of a great variety of mateiial. One of the itories of grealot inlccest ii that of the Deluge, of which there are several veisions in Babylonian Ijleia. ture. The oldest of these was discovered recently (in 1913) by Dt. Amo Poebel among the Nippur tablets in the Museum of AreliBCology of the Uniweraity of Penniyh'inu. The tablet holding this version is believed to date from iSjo or 1900B.C. See Jaatnm, Hiimr and BaiylfiaaH Tra£tieiu (1914), p. 335.
S60] LEGISLATION: THE CODE OF HAMMURABI 6r
Hammurabi, king of Babylon, just at the close of the third miJ- lemiium rc. (sect 48), 'ITiis is the oldest system of laws known to us. It is evidently, in large part at least, merely a collection of earlier laws and ancient customs.
The code casts a strong side light upon the Babylonian life of the period when it was compiled, and thus constitutes one of the most valuable monuments spared to us from the old Semitic world. It defined the rights and duties of husband and wife, master and slave, of merchants, gar- deners, tenants, shepherds — of all the classes which made up the population of the Baby- lonian Empire. As in the case of the later Hebrew code, the prindple of retaliation deter- mined the penalty for injury done another; it was an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a limb for a limb.
The owner of a vicious ox which had pushed or gored a >■■'«■44- Hammurabi Receiving the man was required to pay a heavy fine, provided he knew the disposition of the creature and had not blunted its horns
y „ , . , source 01 mc lawa/ — laairon
(see Exod. xxi, 28^32).
The law fixed prices and wages, the hire for boats and wagons and of oxen for threshing, the fee of the surgeon, the wages of the brickmaker, of the tailor, of the carpenter, and of other artisans.
There were also provisions forbidding under severe penalties the harboring of runaway slaves — provisions which read strangely like our own fugitive-slave laws of a half century and more ago.
For more than two thousand years after its compilation this code of laws was in force in the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, and
imunibi places as the headpiece of the It conuining the laws of the countiy in efligy oF himaelf in an attitude of odontion before Shamaih, ' The Judge,' at the uhimale
62 EARLY CITY-KINGDOMS OF BABYLONIA [§61
even after this lapse of time it was used as a textbook in the schools of the Mesopotamian lands. Probably no other code save the Mosaic or the Justinian (sect. 565) has exerted a greater influence upon human society. " As the oldest body of laws in existence," says an eminent Assyrian scholar, ** it marks a great epoch in the world's history, and must henceforth form the starting point for the systematic study of historic jurisprudence."
61. Sciences: Astronomy, the Calendar, and Mathematics. In astronomy the Babylonians made greater advance than the Egyptians. Their knowledge of the heavens came about from their interest as astrologers in the stars. They divided the zodiac into twelve signs and named the zodiacal constellations, a memorial of their astronomi- cal attainments which will remain forever inscribed upon the great circle of the heavens ; they foretold eclipses of the sun and moon ; they invented the sundial ; they divided the year into twelve months, the day and night into hours, and the hours into minutes, and devised a week of seven days.^
In the mathematical sciences, also, the Babylonians made consider- able advance. A tablet has been found which contains the squares and cubes of the numbers from one to sixty. The duodecimal system in numbers was the invention of the Babylonians, and it is from them that the system has come to us.
The Babylonians invented measures of length, weight, and capacity. It was from them that all the peoples of antiquity derived their systems of weight and measure. Aside from letters, these are perhaps the most indispensable agents in the life of a people after they have risen above the lowest levels of barbarism.
Selections from the Sources. Jastrow*s Tlie Civiligation of Babylonia and Assyria^ pp. 453-461. Harper's Assyrian and Babylonian Literature (selected translations), pp. 40S-413, " Ishtar*s Descent to Hades*' (this is one of the choicest pieces of Babylonian literature). Sayce's Early Israel and the Sur- rounding- A^at ions, pp. 313-319. "The Babylonian Account of the Deluge" (this can be found also in Smith's TAe Chaldean Account of Genesis, chap, xvi, and in Jastrow's The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 443-452). T^e
1 This week of seven days was a subdivision of the moon-month, baaed on the phases of the moon, namely, new moon, first quarter, full moon, and last quarter.
REFERENCES 63
Code of Hammurabi, in either the Johns or the Harper translation ('* The Code of Hammurabi is one of the most important monuments of the human race." — Johns).
References (Modem). Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization^ chaps, vii-ix, and The Struggle of the Nations, chap. i. King, History of Akkad and Sumer and A History of Babylon. ROGERS, History of Babylonia and Assyria, vol. i. HoMMEL, 754^ Civilisation of the East. Goodspeed, A History of the Baby- lonians and Assyrians, pts. i, ii. PETERS, Nippur, 2 vols. J astro w, The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria and Hebrew and Babylonian Traditions. King, Babylonian Religion and Mythology. Sayce, Social Life among the Assyrians and Babylonians. Perrot and Chipiez, A History of Art in Ckaldaa and Assyria, 2 vols. Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, chap. v.
Topics for Class Reports, i. French excavations at Tello: Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, pp. 216-260. 2. American excavations at Nippur: Peters, Nippur, vol. ii, chaps, ii-x; Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, pp. 289-568. 3. The temple archives : Jastrow, The Civilization of Baby- lonia and Assyria, pp. 316-318. 4. Moral maxims and penitential psalms: Jastrow, 751^ Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 464-465, 469-474.
CHAPTER V THE ASSTSIAN EMPIRE
(From an uoknown date to 606 B.C.) I. POLITICAL HISTORY
62. Introduction. In the preceding chapter we traced the begin- nings of civilization among the early settlers of the lowlands of the Euphrates. Meanwhile, as has already been noticed, farther to the north, upon the banks of the Tigris, were growing into strength and prominence a rival Semitic people — the Assyrians. Of the place in world history of the empire represented by this people we must now try to form some sort of idea.
The story of Assyria is in the main a story of the Assyrian kings. And it is a story of ruthless war, which made the Assyrian kings the scourge of antiquity. To relate this story with any measure of detail would involve endless repedtion of the royal records of pillag- ing raids and punitive campaigns in all the countries of western Asia. We shall therefore speak of only two or three of the great kings of the later empire whose energy as conquerors or ability as organizers, or whose munificence as builders and patrons of arts and letters, has caused their names to live among the renowned personages of the ancient world.
64
63] TIGLATH-PILESER IV ^ 65
63. TigrlAth-Pileser IV ^ (745-727 B.C.). One of the greatest of the later kings was Tiglath-Pileser IV. He was a man of great energy and of undoubted military talent. The empire which had been built up by earlier kings having fallen into disorder, he restored the Assyrian power and. extended the limits of the empire even beyond its former boundaries.
But what renders the reign of this king a landmark not only in Assyrian, but, we may almost say, in universal history, is the fact that he was not a mere conqueror like his predecessors, but a political organizer of great capacity.
Hitherto the empires that had arisen in western Asia consisted simply of tributary or vassal cities and states, each of which, having its own king, was ready at the first favorable moment to revolt against its suzerain, who, like a mediaeval feudal king, was simply a great overlord, a **king of kings."
Now Tiglath-Pileser, though not the first to introduce, was the first to put into practice in a large way, the plan of reducing conquered states to provinces; that is, instead of allowing conquered princes to rule as his vassals, he put in their places Assyrian magistrates, or viceroys, upon whose loyalty he could depend.
This system gave a more compact and permanent character to his conquests. It is true he was not able to carry out his system per- fectly; but in realizing the plan to the extent that he did, he laid the basis of the power and glory of the great kings who followed him upon the Assyrian throne, and made the later Assyrian Empire, to a certain d^ree, the prototype of the succeeding world empires of Darius, Alexander, and Caesar.
64. Sargon U (722-705 B.C.). Sargon II was a great conqueror and buikler. In 722 b.c. he captured Samaria, the siege of which had been commenced by his predecessor, and carried away the most influ- ential classes of the " Ten Tribes" of Israel into captivity ' (sect. 84). The greater portion of the captives were scattered among the towns
^ Fonnerly Tiglath-Pileser III. Since the first revised edition of this work evidence bag come to light which proves this Tiglath-Pileser to have been the fourth instead of, u hitherto supposed, the third to bear this name.
2 2 Kings zvii, 6,
66 THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE [*«
of Media and Mesopotamia, and probably became, for the most part, merged with the populadon of those regions.
This transplanting of a conquered people was a r^ular govern- mental device of the Assyrian kings. It was done not only in order that conspiracy and revolt should be rendered virtually impossible, but also in order that, with the old ties of country and home thus severed, the rising generation might the more easily forget past wroi^s and old traditioris and customs, and become blended with the
,_ , .. ^ _.„ peoples about them.
— - Sargon was a fa-
mous builder. Near the foot of the hills rimming the Tigris valley on the north- east he founded a r' large city, which he named for himself ; and there he erected Fig. 45. Restoration of Sarcon's Palace at a royal re^ence, Khorsabad. (From F]ace, JVinivt tt rAjsyrie) described in the in-
Thc royal reaidroce conaisted of a complei of halls and scripdons aS " a pal-
chainbera surrounding H numberofcourti.large and small. . ,, . , ,_
The.«ppedpyraS.idi.a«is«™<,orUmVt"" ^ ""^ mCOmpaiable
magnificence," the site of which is now marked by the mounds of Khorsabad (sect 68).
6S. Sennacherib (705-681 B.C.). Sargon was followed by his son Sennacherib, whose name, connected as it is with the history of Jerusalem and with many of the most wonderful discoveries among the ruined palaces of Nineveh, has become as familiar, as that of Nebuchadnezzar in the story of Babyloa
The fullness of the royal inscriptions of this rdgn enables us' to permit Sennacherib to tell us in his own words of his great worics and military expeditions. Respecting the decoration of Nineveh, of which he was the chief builder, he writes : " I raised again all the edifices of Nineveh, my royal dty ; I reconstructed all its old streets, and widened those that were too narrow. I made the whole town a aty shining like the sua."
7
r /
•■/
^j.
• ..
S65] SENNACHERIB 67
Concerning an expedition against Hezekiah, king of Judah, he says : " I took forty-six of his strong fenced cities ; and of the smaller towns which were scattered about I took and plundered a countless number. And from these places I captured and carried off as spoil 200,150 people, old and young, male and female, together with horses and mares, asses and camels, oxen and sheep, a count- less multitude. And Hezekiah himself 1 shut up in Jerusalem, his capital city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the dt)' to
â– (GED Bull. (From Layard's r 0/ A'ina/^A)
Whiit hundreds pull on the rapes, othera ptace tollers benealh ihe sled, and still otheis aid with a great levci behind
bem him in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so as to prevent escape."*
In this recital Sennacherib conceals the fact that his siege of the strong d^ of Jerusalem remained fruitless ; according to the Hebrew account' the Assyrian host was smitten by "the angel of the Lord,"* and the king returned with a shattered army and without glory to his capital Nineveh.
Sennacherib laid a heavy hand upon Babylon, which at this time was the leading dty of the lower country. That city having revolted,
' From the so<aned Taylor Cylinder ; ttanslation by Sir H. Rawlinson (Rawlinson, 'Ifciaii Mmaniiei, vo\.u,p, i6i). A translation by Professor Rogers can be found in Raurd, u/tkt Past (New Scries), vol. vi, p. 90. a 2 Kings xii, 35-37,
'This eipiession is a Hebtaism, meaning often any physical cause o( destruction, H a plague or a storm. In the present case the destroying agency was probably a
68 THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE [S«
Sennacherib captured the place, and, as his inscription declares, destroyed it " root and branch," casting the rubbish into the " River of Babylon." *
66. Asbur-bani-pal (66S-626 B.C.). This king, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, is distinguished for his magnificent patronage of art and letters (sect. 70). His reign was also marked by important nulitaiy operations. Egypt having revolted,' he brought it again into subjec- tion to Assyria. Elam, in punishment for its hostility, was made an awful example of his vengeance; its cities
" were leveled, and the whole country was laid waste. All the scenes of his si^es KiG, 47. An Assvbian Kelek. (After Zaj-an/) and battles he caused to be sculptured on the walls of his palace at Nineveh, These pictured panels are now in the British Museum. They are a perfect Iliad in stone.
67. The Fall of Niaereh (coe B.C.). A ruler named by the Greek writers Saracus was the last of the long line of Assyrian kings. For nearly or quite six centuries the Ninevite kings had now lonled it over the East. There was scarcely a state in all western Asia that during this time had not, in the language of the royal inscriptions, " home the heavy yoke of their lordship " ; scarcely a people that had not suffered their cruel punishments or tasted the bitterness of enforced exile.
But now swift misfortunes were bearing do\vn from every quarter upon the oppressor. First, wild Scythians from the north ravaged
I The city was rebuilt by Sennacherib's son and successor Esaihaddon I (680-66S B.C.). * Egypt had been conquered and brought under Assyrian TXile by Sennacherib's son Esarhaddon. Northern Arabia had also been added to the empire by him.
|
A kind of raft (dep |
cicd on- |
the Assyrian |
roonumen |
|
used by the ancient |
for floating |
grain, sto |
|
|
elc^ down ihe Meso |
rivers. It cc |
||
|
framework of poles s |
upported |
umber of |
|
|
flated goat-skms. On |
IS destination |
the raft w |
|
|
taken to pieces, the w |
o^'sold |
and the skms |
|
|
on asses. Eiactly the same system of transportation |
|||
|
employed on the Tig |
â– is to^y |
The swimm |
|
|
ture Is |
stride an |
inflated skin |
S68] ASSYRIAN EXCAVATION'S AND DISCOVERIES 69
the Assyrian lands far and wide. After this weakening of the state, Egypt revolted and tore Syria away from the empire. In the south- ern lowlands the Babylonians also rose in revolt, while from the mountain defiles on the east issued the armies of the recent-grown empire of the Aryan Medes, led by the re- nowned Cyaxares, and laid close si^e to Nineveh.
The city was finally taken and sacked, and dominion passed away forever from the proud capital (606 B.t'.). Two hun- dred years later, when Xenophon with his Ten Thousand Greeks, in his memorable retreat (sect. 265), passed the spot, the once great city was a crumbling mass of ruins and its name had been forgotten.
II. THE CIVILIZATION
68. ABayriui EzcarationB and Dis- corerlM. In Assyria there are many mounds like those in Babylonia. These mark the sites of the old Assyrian cities; for though stone in this upper country is abundant, the .\ssyTians, ^^^ g under the influence of Babylonia, used ^i
mainly sun-dried bricks in the construe- 71,^ cap, tion of their buildings.' Hence in their *>"'"< •" decay the Assyrian edifices have left ("^^ofth just such earth-mounds as those which iiiusiraiic
form the tombs of the old Babylonian PfP*"''
. . , , ■' pill my 1 — , ,
aties and temples. bridle in thy lipa."—
' Slonr, whm employed, was used iniinly for decoiaiive purposes foundation of mlli. Becauae of the freer use of stone by the Assyrian •culptor (sect. 69), the Assyrian ruins have yielded (ar more monume BabylODiao.
|
AM |
Assyrian King |
|
> Hi: |
s Captives |
|
ei are held by hook and |
|
|
nd lips. The Kulp- |
|
|
lepicl |
|
|
Asiy |
rian kings is a vivid |
|
of these words of the |
|
|
aiah: |
"Therefore will I |
/ / /
J2 THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE [| 71
the old temple libraries of the lower country were ransacked by the agents of Ashur-bani-pal, and copies of " the old masters " made for the new palace collection at Nineveh. In this way was preserved in duplicate a considerable portion of the early Babylonian literature, besides historical records, and astronomical, medicinal, and other scientific works. The literary treasures secured from the Ninevite library are of much greater interest and value to us than those yielded by any other Assyrian- Babylonian collection thus far unearthed.
Fig. 51. Restoration of a Court in Sargon's Palace at Kkorsabad
{MKI FergusiOH)
7L. Cruelty of the Assyrians. The Assyrians have been called the "Romans of Asia." They were a proud, warlike, and criiel race. The Assyrian kings seem to have surpassed all others in the cruelty which characterizes the warfare of the whole ancient Orient The sculptured marbles of their palaces exhibit the hideously cruel tortures inflicted by them upon prisoners (Fig. 52). A royal inscription which is a fair specimen of many others runs as follows ; " The nobles, as many as had revolted, I flayed; with their skins I covered the pyramid. . , . Three thousand of their captives I burned with fire.
i71] CRUELTY OF THE ASSYRIANS 73
I left not one alive among them to become a hostage. ... I cut off ihe hands [and] feet of some ; I cut off the noses, the ears [and] the fingers of others ; the eyes of the numerous soldiers I put out . . . Their young men [and] their maidens I burned as a holocaust'"
I'lG. 52. AsiiVHiANS Flaying Frisonbks Alive. (From a bas-relief )
llie significant thing here is that the king exults in having done these things and thinks to immortalize himself by portraying them upon imperishable stone. The careful way in which to^^ay all refers ence to atrocities of this character, when in the fury of battle they
Kio. 53. LlOH Hunt. (From Nineveh)
are inflicted upon an enemy, are suppressed by those responsible for them, and the indignant condemnation of them by the public opinion of the civilized world, measures the moral progress humanity has made even along those lines on which progress has been so pain- fully slow and halting.
1 Stinrds ofiht Pail (New Series), vol. ii, pp. Miff.
74 THE ASSYRIAN EMPIRE [§ 72
72. Royal Sports. The Assyrian king gloried in being, like the great Nimrod, " a mighty hunter before the Lord." In his inscrip- tions the wild beasts he has slain are as carefully enumerated as the cities he has captured. The monuments are covered with sculptures that represent the king engaged in this favorite royal sport of the Orient We see him slaying lions, bulls, and boars, as well as less dangerous animals of the chase, with which the uncultivated tracts of the country appear to have abounded.
73. Services Rendered Civilization by Assyria. Assyria did a woric like that done by Rome at a later time. Just as Rome welded all the peoples of the Mediterranean world into a great empire, and then throughout her vast domains scattered the seeds of the civi- lization which she had borrowed from vanquished Greece, so did Assyria weld into a great empire the innumerable petty warring states and tribes of western Asia, and then throughout her extended dominions spread the civilization which she had in the main bor- rowed from the conquered Babylonians.
Selections from the Sources. Records of the Past (New Series), vol. v, pp. 120-128, "The Nimnid Inscription of Tiglath-Pileser III," on military and building operations. Ibid. vol. iv, pp. 38-52, " Inscription on the Obelisk of Shalmaneser II," shows the harshness and cruelty of Assyrian warfare. This inscription, along with many other selected translations, can also be found in Harper's Assyrian and Babylonian Literature. The Old Testament, Nahum iii, 18, 19; Zeph. ii, 13-15.
References (Modem). Maspero, 7:ke Struggle of the Nations, chap, vi, and The Passing of the Empires, chaps, i-v. Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, vol. i (last part). Goodspeed, A History of the Babylonians and Assyrians, pt. iii. Layard, Nineveh and its Remains, Perrot and Chipiez, A History of Art in Chaldaa and Assyria, 2 vols. Rogers, A History of Babylonia and Assyria, vol. ii, pp. 1-295, Ragozin, The Story of Assyria. WiNCKLER, The History of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 167-310. Hall, The Ancient History of the Near East, chap. x.
Topics for Class Reports, i. Layard^s excavations and discoveries: see his Nineveh and its Remains. 2. Sargon*s palace at Khorsabad : Hilprecht, Explorations in Bible Lands, pp. 84-^7. 3. Assyrian art: Reinach, Apollo, pp. 23-27. 4. Industrial and social life: Goodspeed, A History of the Baby- lonians and Assyrians, pp. 71-76. 5. A royal hunting adventure: Maspero^ Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria, chap. xiv.
CHAPTER VI THE CHALDEAN EMPEUC
(625-538 B.C.)
74. Babylon becomes again a World Power. Nabopolassar (625- 605 B.c) was the founder of what is known as the Chaldean Em- pire.^ At first a vassal king, when troubles and misfortunes began to thicken about the Assyrian court, he revolted and became ^de- pendent Later he entered into an alliance with the Median king against his former suzerain (sect. 67). Tlirough the overthrow of Nineveh and the break-up of the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian state received laige accessions of territory. For a short time there- after Babylon filled a great place in history.
75. Hebuchadnezzar n (605-561 b.c.). Nabopolassar was followed by his renowned son Nebuchadnezzar, whose gigantic architectural works rendered Babylon the wonder of the ancient world.
Jerusalem, having repeatedly revolted, was finally taken and sacked (sect. 85). The temple was stripped of its sacred vessels of silver and gold, which were carried away to Babylon, and the temple itself was given to the flames; a part of the people were also carried away into the "Great Captivity" (586 b.c.).
With Jerusalem subdued, Nebuchadnezzar pushed with all his forces the si^;e of the Phoenician dty of Tyre, whose investment had been commenced several years before. In striking language the prophet Ezekiel (xxix, 18) describes the length and hardness of the si^e : " Every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled." After thirteen years Nebuchadnezzar was apparently forced to raise the si^e.
1 Called also the New Babylonian Empire. Nabopolassar represented the Chaldeans (Kalda), a people whose home was on the Persian Gulf, and who made themselves giaduaUy masters of Babylon.
75
76 THE CH-UJ)EAX EMPIRE [S7S
Xebuchadoezzar sought to rh-al even tbe Pharaohs in die esecu- tion of immense works req.aring a \-ast ezpendituic erf human labor. Amoi^ his works were tbe Great Palace in tbe rm~a] quarter of
FlC. 54. RXSTOKATION OP THB SOITHEKM CiTADEL OF BaBVLON. <FTOm
Koldewey's Eicixvaii^nt at Ba^ltn) The citadel of Babylon wu an artificial mouad sonooDilcd witb *tiipeuloiiB walk aad CTcnni«d oith ibe rojal RsideiKx and other buildings. The upper lefthmd portioo ol llw cui thowi tbe rettomi palace of Nebuchadnear iriih in duEc prat coom. Near ilie cenier of the piciure it seen tbe famoui Iibtar Gate — a doable towetcAgUewaj.
â– boms <he eiamtci loweis. Pasing tbrough ihe Ishtir Gate was tbe great Pnxtaaoa
Sucet (lee note uoder Fig. 55). In the lowei left-hand comer o( die palace indomrt
will be noted a i-aulted aructnre. This ia coojecturally nninected by Dr. Koldewey irhb
the famoiu Hanging Gardens 1
Babylon, the celebrated Hanging Gardens/ the quays along the Euphrates, and the dty waDs, The gardens and the wafls were reckoned among the seven wonders of the ancient world,
I The HiOging Gardens, according to a Greek traditSDo, were caostntcted by Ncbuchadneoar 10 pleaae hii wife Amytis, who, tired of the monolcwj of the Baby- lonian phini, kinged for the motmtaia sceoeiy of hei native Uedii, Dr. Koldew^, tbe
S76] THE FALL OF BABYLON 77
Especially zealous was Nebuchadnezzar in the erection and resto- ration of the shrines of Che gods. " Like dear life," runs one of his inscriptions, " love- 1 the building of their lodging places." He dwells with fondness on all the detaib of the work, and tells how he orna- mented with precious stones the panelings of the shrines, roofed them with huge beams of cedar overlaid with gold and silver, and decorated the gates with plates of bronze, making the sacred abodes as "brilliant as the sun" and "bright as the stars of heaven."'
Fiti. 55- Babvloman Lion, (From Koldewey, Excavaliani at Babylon) A chaiacwristie feature of Bibylonian art was the decoration of walla with figure* fonned of colored enameled bricki. The figure here shown is a icsloiation from ei- cxrated fragmenu. Over a hundred such figures formed the magnificent frieies of the valla lining the great Proceaakm Street (Fig. j^), made by Nebuchadneizai, and leading to the fatnoua tetnple of Marduk
76. The FaU of Babylon (538 B.C.). The glory of the New Baby- lonian Empire passed away with Nebuchadnezzar. Among the moun- tains and on the uplands to the east of the Tigris- Euphrates valley there had been growing up an Aryan kingdom. At the time which we have now reached, this state, through the destruction of the Assyrian Empire (sect, 67) and the absorption of its provinces, had
diiector trf the Gennan excaratjons at Babylon, unearthed massive rains which he thinks may have fonned the vaulted substrucCure of Che gardens. ^' The reason," he says, '^ why the Hanging Gardeos were ranked among Che leven wonders of the world was that Chey were laid out on the roof at an occupied building" {Exiacatism at Baiylm, p. joo).
I See the inacription of Nebuchadaenar, Rtcwda ef iht Past (New Series), vol. iii, pp. 102 ff.
78 THE CHALDEAN EMPIRE [5 76
grown into a great imperial power — the \(edo-PcTsan. At the head of this new empire was Cjtus, a strong, eneigetic, and ambitious sover^n (sect loz). Coining into ooUison with the Babylonian king Xabonidus he defeated his anny in the opai fidd, and the gates of the strongly fortified capital Bab%-ioa ware without furtbn' resistance thrown open to the Parians,'
With the fall of Babylon the scepter of dominion, borne so kmg by Semitic princes, was given into the hands of the Aryan peoples, who were destined from this time forward to shape the main course of events and control the affairs of d^-ilization.*
SeleCtiOIW from the Sootcm. Harper's Asixrijm and Baijrltitiait LUrmturt, pp. 134-143, "The East India House Inschpbon of NebucbadneczaT II" {a record of (he king's greal building operabonsl ; and pp. 171-174, "The Cylin- der of Cytus " (an account of the taking of Babylon).
Keferenoes (Modeni). H aspeko. 71/ I^iimg <•/ Ikt Empim, chap, v, and Lift in AncuHl E^fl and Aayria. chaps, xi-xx. ROGERS, A Hiitary of Baby- Ionia and Aiirna. vol. ii, pp. 197-381. GiXidspbed, A Hi'lory of tkt Baby- leniami and Asirriam, pt. iv. Savce, Tkt Kt/igioms of Antimt Egyfl and Babylonra, pL iL WiJiCKLER, Tie Hislory of BabyUnia and Assyria, pp. 313- 318. KOLDEWEV, Tkt ExtavatioHX at Babylon,
Topics for CUm Keports. 1. The outer walls of Babylon : Koldewey. Tki Excavations at Babylon, pp. 1-6. 2. The Ishtar Gate and its will dccoratioiu : Koldewey, TJu Extavationi at Babyitn, pp. 3S-49.
■The device of turning the Euphntei, which HemlaCai make* an inddent of the •iege, wai not reurted to by Cynis; but it icans thai a Ihtte kter (jii-519 B.C.). the dly, banng rerolted, wai actoatlr taken in tlii* way hy the Fenian king Daiiui. Hemdonu anfuseil tlie two eventL
> For the temponiy revival of Semitic power thioii|^K)at the Otient by the Ante, ice Chaptci XLVI.
CHAPTER VII
THE HEBREWS
77. The Patriarchal Age. The history of the Hebrews, as nar- rated in their sacred books, begins with the departure of the patriarch Abraham out of " Ur of the Chaldees." The •stories of Abraham and his nephew Lot, of Isaac and his sons Jacob and Elsau, of the sojourn and the oppression of the descendants of Jacob in Egypt, of the Exodus under the leadership of the great lawgiver Moses, of the conquest of Canaan by his successor Joshua, and the apportionment of the land among the twelve tribes of Israel — all these wonderful stories are told in the old Hebrew Scriptures with a charm and simplicity that have made them the familiar possession of childhood.
78. The Israelites and the Canaanites. It was probably shortly after the end of the rule of the Hyksos (sect. 26) that the Hebrew refugees from the Nile-land, bearing the stain of their desert and nomadk: life, drifted into Palestine from the "wilderness" beyond the Jordan. The country was at this time in possession of Amorite or Canaanite tribes, dose kin of the newcomers. Their cities were strongly walled, and the desert warriors were not able to drive out the inhabitants. So the two peoples dwelt together in the land, the Canaanites holding in the main the hill districts and the Israelites the plains. The Hebrew nation arose from the intermingling and final imion of the invaders and the native city inhabitants. This dual ancestry explains much in the religious and the moral life of the Hebrew people.
79. The Age of the *' Judges" (ending about 1050 B.C.). The in- trusion into Canaan of the Israelite tribes was followed by a long period of petty wars, brigandage, and anarchy. During this time there arose a line of national heroes, such as Gideon, Jephthah, and
79
8o THE HEBREWS [§80
Samson, whose deeds of valor and daring, and the timely deliverance they wrought for the tribes of Israel from their foes, caused their names to be handed down with grateful remembrance to following ages. These popular leaders, most of whom were local rulers, are called '* Judges " by the Bible writers.
80. Founding of the Hebrew Monarchy (about loso b.c.). During the time of the "Judges" there was, as the history of the period shows, no effective union among the tribes of Israel. But the com- mon danger to which they were exposed from enemies — especially from the warlike Philistines, who had come into Palestine from the ^gean region about 1200 b.c.* and the example of the nations about them, led the people finally to begin to think of the advantages of a more perfect union and of a strong central government
The situation of things at just this time favored the rise of a Hebrew kingdom. All the great states of the Orient — Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and the Hittite Empire — exhausted by their struggles with one another for supremacy or undermined by other causes, were suffering a temporary decline, and the way was clear for the advance into the arena of world politics of another competitor for imperial dominion. The hitherto loose confederation was changed into a kingdom, and Saul of the tribe of Benjamin was made king of the new monarchy (about 1050 b.c.).
81. The Reign of David (about 1025-993 B.a). Upon the death of Saul, David, son of Jesse, of the tribe of Judah, assumed the scepter. After reducing to obedience all the tribes, David set about enlarging his dominions. He built up a real empire and waged wars against the troublesome tribes of Moab, Ammon, and Edom.
David was a poet as well as a warrior. His lament over Saul and Jonathan^ is regarded as one of the noblest specimens of elegiac poetry that has come down from Hebrew antiquity. Such was his fame that the authorship of a large number of hymns written in a later age was ascribed to him.
82. The Reign of Solomon (about 993-953 B.C.). David was followed by his son Solomon. The son did not possess the father's talent for military affairs, but was a liberal patron of art, commerce, and learning.
1 See above, p. 33, n. 1. 2 2 Sam. i, 17-27.
§83] THE DIVISION OF THE KINGDOM 8 1
He erected with the utmost magnificence of adornment the temple at Jerusalem planned by his father David. The dedication cere- monies upon the completion of the building were most impressive.^ Thenceforth this temple was the center of the Hebrew worship and of the national life.
For the purpose of extending his commerce Solomon equipped fleets upon the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.' Remote regions of Africa were visited by his ships, and their rich and wonderful products made to contribute to the wealth and glory of his kingdom. The reputed author of famous proverbs, he has lived in tradition as the wisest king of the East. He maintained a court of oriental magnificence. When the queen of Sheba, made curious by reports of his gloiy, came from South Arabia to visit him, she exclaimed, "The half was not told me."
83. The Division of the Kingdom (about 953 B.C.). The reign of Solomon was brilliant, yet disastrous in the end to the Hebrew monarchy. In order to carry on his vast undertakings he had laid oppressive taxes upon his people. When Rehoboam, his son, succeeded to his father's place, the people entreated him to lighten the taxes that were making their very lives a burden. He replied to their reasonable petition with haste and insolence : " My father," said he, ** chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions."
Immediately aU the tribes, save Judah and Benjamin, rose in revolt, and succeeded in setting up to the north of Jerusalem a rival kingdom, with Jeroboam as its first king. This northern state, of which Samaria afterwards became the capital, was known as the Kingdom of Israel; the southern, of which Jerusalem remained the capital, was called the Kingdom of Judah.
Thus was torn in twain the empire of David and Solomon. United, the tribes might have maintained an empire capable of offering successful resistance to the encroachments of the power- ful and ambitious monarchs about them. But now the land became an easy prey to the spoiler. It was henceforth the pathway of the conquering armies of the Nile and the Euphrates. Between the
1 See I Kings v-viii ^ i Kings ix, 26-28 ; x, 22.
82 THE HEBREWS [SS4
powerful roofundiks of these r^;ioDs, as bclwecn an upper and a nether millstone, the lictie kingdoms were destined, one after the other, to be gromid to pieoesw
84. Tlie Sagdon d Und (953?-722 blc). The kingdom of the Ten Tribes maintained its existence for about two hundred years^ Many passages of its histoiy are recitals of the struggles between the worship of the national god Yahwefa (Jehovah) and the klolatrous service of the gods of the surrounding nations. The cause of Yahweh was bokOy e^)oused by a line of remarkable pn^ihets, among whom Elijah and Elisha in the ninth century, and Amos and Hosea in the eighth, stand preemment.
The little kingdom was at last overwhelmed by the Assyrian power. This happened 722 &c., when Samaria, as we have already nar- rated in the history of Assyria (sect. 64), was captured by Sargon, king of Ninevdi, and 27,290 oi the inhabitants, the flower of the peof^e, were carried away into captivity beyond the Mesopotamian rivers.
85. Tlie Kingdom cf Jndah (953?-586 blc). This little kingdom, often on the verge of r\iin from Egyptian or Assyrian armies, main- tained a semi-independent existence for over three centuries. Then upon the extension of the power of Babylon to the west, Jerusalem was forced to aduiowledge the suzerainty of the Babylonian kings.
The kingdom at last shared the fate of its northern rivaL Nebu- diadnezzar, the powerful king of Babylon, in revenge for an uprising of the Jews, besi^ed and captured Jerusalem and earned away a large part of the people into captivity at Babylon (sect 75). This event virtually ended the separate political life of die Hebrew race (586 ac). Henceforth Judea constituted simpty a province of the empires — Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, and Roman — which successively held sway over die r^ons of western Asia, with, how- ever, one important period of national life under the Maccabees, during a part of die two centuries just preceding the birth of Christ (sect 309).
It only remains to mention those succeeding events which belong rather to the story of the Jews as a people than as a nation. Upon the capture of Babylon by the Persian king Cyrus (sect 76), that monarch permitted the exiles to return to Jerusalem and restore their
S86] HEBREW LITERATURE 83
temple. Jemsalem thus became again the center of the old Hebrew vorshtp, and, although shorn of national glory, continued to be the sacred center of the ancient faith till the second generation after Christ. Then, in chastisement for repeated revolts, the city was kid in ruins by the Romans ; while vast numbers of the inhabitants were sl^, or perished by famine, and the remnant were driven into exile to different lands (sect 5 1 1).
Thus by a series of unparalleled calamides were the descendants of Abraham " sifted among all nations " ; but to this day they cling with a marked devotion and loyalty to the faith of thdr fathers.
86. Hebrew Utei«- ture. The literature of the Hebrews is a reli- gious one; for litera- ture with them was in the main merely a means of inculcating re- ligious truth or awaken- ing devotional feeling. -^. ■: _ ■-.-.... - _ -
This unique Utera- ^ - . - J â– Fig. 56. The Place of Wailing
ture IS contained m ^
I I i„ I A well-prraerved portion of thr subniuclion walb of the
sacred books known T™plT«J<:ru«.fe^h=rr Jew.a«mb1eeachFriday as the OIJ or Hebrew ta b«nail the deuilation of Zion
Testament. In these
ancient writings patriarchal traditions, histories, dramas, poems, proph- ecies, and personal narratives blend in a wonderful mosaic, which pictures with vivid and grand effect the migrations, the deliverances, the calamities^ all the events and religious experiences making up the checkered life of the people of Israel.
Out of the Old Testament arose the Nat>, which we should think of as a part of Hebrew literature ; for although written in the Greek language and long after the close of the political life of the Jewish nation, still it is essentially Hebrew in thought and doctrine, and is the supplement and crown of the Hebrew Scriptures.
84 THE HEBREWS [§87
vBesides the Sacred Scriptures, called collectively, by way of pre- eminence, the Bible (the Book), it remains to mention especially the Apocrypha, which embraces a number of books composed after the decline of the prophetic spirit and showing traces of the influence of Persian and of Greek thought. Whether these books possess divine inspiration is among Protestants still a disputed question, but by the Roman Catholic Church they are in the main regarded as possessing equal authority with the other books of the Bible.
Neither must we fail to mention the Talmud, a collection of Hebrew customs and traditions with the comments thereupon of the rabbis, a work held by most Jews next in sacredness to the Holy Book; the writings of Philo, an illustrious Alexandrian philosopher (bom about 25 B.C.) ; and the Antiquities of the Jews and the Jewish War by the historian Josephus, who lived and wrote at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus (sect 506), that is, during the latter part of the first century after Christ
87. Hebrew Religion and Morality. The ancient Hebrews made little or no contribution to science. They produced no new order of architecture. In sculpture they did nothing; their religion forbade their making " graven images." Their mission was to make known the idea of God as a being holy and just and loving — as the Uni-
,versal Father whose care is over not one people alone but over all peoples and races — and to teach men that what God requires of them is that they shall do justice and practice righteousness.
This history-making idea of God and his character, which has pro- foundly influenced the religious and moral development of the race, was the most fruitful element in the bequest which the ancient Hebrews made to the younger world of Europe, and is largely what entitles them to the preeminent place they hold in the history of humanity.
88. An Ideal of XTniversal Peace. Another element of great his- torical significance in the bequest of Israel to civilization was an ideal of universal peace. The great prophets Isaiah and Micah, writing in the war-troubled times of the eighth century B.C., persuaded of the ultimate triumph of justice and righteousness in the world, foretold the coming of a time when the nations of the earth, with enmities
S89] IDEAS OF THE FUTURE LIFE 85
taid aside, should dwell together in unity and peace : " Out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem ; , , . and they [the nations] shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks ; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they leam war any more.'"
This is the first distinct expression in Hebrew literature, or in the literature of any race, of the brotheriiood of man and a federated
by Schick)
world. The lofty ideal has lived on through the ages, inspiring many vi^ns of world unity and peace, and in our own day has found concrete embodiment in the noble Peace Palace at the Hague — but has not yet found realization in the conduct of the nations.
89. Ideu of the Future Life. Speaking of the Hebrew conception of the after life, George Rawlinson says : " How it happened that in Egyptian thought the future life occupied so large a space, and was felt to be so real and so substantial, while among the Hebrews and the other Semites it remained, even after contact with Egypt, so vague and shadowy, is a mystery which it is impossible to penetrate."
86 THE HEBREWS [§89
The Hebrew conception of the future life was like that of the Babylonians. Sheol was the Babylonian **land of no return" (sect 56), a vague and shadowy region beneath the earth, a sad and dismal place. " The small and the great were there." There was no distinction even between the good and the bad ; the same lot awaited all who went down into the ** pit" The good man was thought to receive his reward in long life and prosperity here on earth. But with the moral and religious development of the nation, under the leader- ship and inspir^^tion of their great prophets and teachers, the Hebrews attained a wholly different conception of life beyond the tomb, so that it was finally by them that the doctrine of immortality and of a coming judgment was spread abroad in the Western world.
Selection from the Sources. The Old Testament^ 2 Sam. i, 17-27, David*s lament over Saul and Jonathan (see Nathaniel Schmidt's 71k^ Afessage of the Poets ^ pp. 364-367) ; I Kings v-viii, the building and the dedication by Solomon of the Temple at Jerusalem.
References (Modem). Sayce, Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations. Kent, A History of the Hebrew People^ 2 vols. Renan, History of the People of Israel, 4 vols. Corn ILL, History of the People of Israel. Hilprecht, Recent Research in Bible Lands and Explorations in Bible Lands in the Nineteenth Century (consult tables of contents). MoNTEFiORE, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Hebrezos. Ball, Light from the East. Budde, Religion of Israel to the Exile. Cheynb, fewish Religious Life after the Exile. MouLTON, The Literary Study of the Bible. Peters, The Religion of the Hebrews. The special student will of course consult McCuRDY, History, Prophecy, and the Monuments.
Topics for Class Reports, i. Israel in Egypt: Petrie, Egypt and Israel^ chap. ii. 2. The Song of Deborah (Judges v) : Nathaniel Schmidt, The Message of the Poets, pp. 354-362. 3. Some Hebrew laws concerning the poor and the bondsman: Exod. xxii, 25-27 ; xxiii, 10; Deut. xv, 7-15; xxiv, 6, 10-13.
CHAPTER VIII
PHCBKICIANS, HITTITES, AND LTBIANS
90. Introduction. Three peoples served as intermediaries between the culture lands of the Orient and the early Centers of civilization in the West Along the land and sea routes of trade and travel which they controlled, many of the elements of the civilizations of Egypt and Babylonia were carried to the Western lands. In the present chapter we shall relate some facts pertaining to these peoples which will indicate the place they hold in the cultural history of the ancient world.
I. THE PHCENICIANS
91. The Land and the People. Ancient Phoenicia embraced a little strip of broken seacoast lying between the Mediterranean Sea and the ranges of Mount Lebanon.* One of the most noted productions of the country was the fine fir timber cut from the forests that crowned the lofty ranges of the Lebanon Mountains. The "cedars of Lebanon" hold a prominent place both in the history and in the poetry of the East.
Another celebrated product of the country was a purple dye, which was obtained from several varieties of the murex, a species of shellfish, secured at first along the Phoenician coast, but later sought in distant waters, especially in the Grecian seas.
The Phoenicians were of Semitic race. Long before the advent of the Israelites in Canaan, these earlier comers had built great port cities along the Mediterranean and developed an extensive sea trade.
^ In the study of this chapter the maps which will be found at pages 83 and i6a ihould be used.
87
Fig. 58. Species of the Murex. (After Maspero)
The mollusks which secrete
the famous purple dye of the
ancient Tyrians
88 PHCENICIANS, HITTITES, AND LYDIANS [S9Z
92. Tyre and Sldon. The various Phoenician cities never coalesced to form a true nation. They constituted merely a sort of league or confederacy, the petty states of which generally acknowledged the leadership of Tyre or of Sidon, the two chief cities. The place of supremacy in the confederation was at first held by Sidon, but later by Tyre.
From about the eleventh to the fourth century b.c. Tyre con- trolled, almost without dispute on the part of Sidon, the affairs of Phcenicia. During this time the maritime enterprise and energy of her merchants spread throughout the Mediterranean world the fame of the little island capital. Alexander the Great, after a memora- ble siege, captured the city and reduced it to ruins (sect. aSi). Tyre recovered in a measure from this blow, but never regained the
_ n ,. ,., place she had previously
Fig. 59. Ph(ENICIam Gali.ev. {trom an '^ f 1
Assyrian sculpture) held in the world. The
larger part of the site of the once great city is now "bare as the top of a rock" — a place where the fishermen that still frequent the spot spread their nets to dry.
93. PbsnicUn Commerce. It was natural that the people of the Phoenician coast should have been led to a seafaring life. The lofty mountains that back the little strip of shore seemed to shut them out from a career of conquest and to prohibit an extension of their land domains. At the same time, the Mediterranean in front invited them to maritime enterprise, while the forests of Lebanon in the rear offered timber in abundance for their ships. They were skillful navi- gators, and pushing boldly out from the shore, made voyages out of sight of land. It is believed that they were the first to steer their ships at night by the polar star, since the Greeks called this the Phcenician Star. We have already seen how b the service of an
§94] PHCENICIAN COLONIES 89
Egyptian king they circumnavigated Africa (sect. 29), thus anticipating by more than two thousand years the achievement of the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama.
One of the earliest centers of activity of the Phoenician traders was the -^2gean Sea. Here they exchanged wares with the natives, bought or kidnapped slaves, searched the seas for the purple-yielding moUusks, and mined the hills for gold. Herodotus avers that a whole mountain on one of the islands was turned upside down by them in their search for ores.
Towards the close of the tenth or the ninth century b.c. the jealousy of the Greek city-states, now growing into maritime power, dosed the ^gean against the Phoenician adventurers. They then pushed out into the western Mediterranean. One chief object of their quest here was tin, which was in great demand on account of its use in the manufacture of bronze. The tin was first sup- plied by the mines opened in the Iberian (Spanish) peninsula. Later the bold Phoenician sailors passed the Pillars of Hercules, braved the dangers of the Atlantic, and brought back from those stormy seas the product of the tin-produdng districts^ of western Europe.
94. Phoenician Colonies. Along the different routes pursued by thdr ships, and upon the coasts visited by them, the Phoenicians established naval stations and trading posts. The sites chosen were generally islands or promontories easily defended, and visible from afar to approaching ships.
Settlements were planted in Cyprus, in Rhodes, and on other islands of the -^gean Sea, and probably even in Greece itself. The shores of the islands of Sicily and Sardinia were fringed with Phoenician colonies; while the coast of North Africa was dotted with such great dties as Utica, Hippo, and Carthage. Colonies were even planted beyond the Pillars of Hercules, upon the Atlantic seaboard. The Phoenician settlement of Gades, upon the western coast of Spain, is still preserved in the modem Cadiz. Its prosperity
^ Probably one or all of the following regions : northwest Spain, southwest Britain (Cornwall), and the neighboring Scilly Islands — possibly the ancient Cassiterides. The subject has been and is a matter of controversy.
90
PHCENICIANS, HITTITES, AND LYDIANS [§95
rested on the salt-fish trade of the Adantic, as well as on the mineral products and agricultural riches of Spain.^
95. Arts Disseminated by the Phflenidana; the Alphabet. Com- merce has been called the pathbreaker of civilizadon. Certainly it was such in antiquity when the Phoenician traders carried in their ships to every Mediterranean land the wares of the workshops of Tyre and Sidon, and along with these material products carried also
the seeds of culture from the ancient lands of Egypt and Babylonia. In trudi, we can scarcely over- rate the influence of Phoenician maritime enterprise upon the distribution of the arts and the spread of culture among the early peoples of the Mediterranean area. " Egypt and Assyria," as has been tersely said, ** were the birthplace of material civilization ; the Phoenicians were its missionaries."
Most fruitful of all the arts w^hich the Phoenicians introduced among the peoples with whom they traded was the art of alpha- betic writing. As early at least as the ninth century b.c. they were in possession of an alphabet (sect. 1 1). Now wherever the Phoenician
|
PMonnciAN |
AHCIMXT GREEK |
I^mt GREEK |
ENGLISH |
|
>^J^ |
A ^/\A. |
AA |
A |
|
^ |
A ^ |
B |
B |
|
4,1 |
A^>AC |
r |
C |
|
A. A |
/^AVP |
A |
D |
|
^ |
^^J^^^ |
E e |
E |
|
1 |
A /^ |
F |
|
|
Z |
^ Z JT |
z |
Z |
Fig. 6o. Table showing the Development of English Letters from the Phcenician
1 From the mother city Tyre and from all her important colonies and trading posts radiated long routes of land travel by which articles were conveyed from the interior of the continents to the Mediterranean seaboard. Thus amber was brought from the Baltic, through the forests of Germany, to the mouth of the river Padus (Po), in Italy; while the tin of western Europe was, at first, brought across Gaul to the outlets of the Rhone, and there loaded upon the Phcenician ships. The trade with India was carried on by way of the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, great caravans bearmg the burdens from the ports at the heads of these seas across the Arabian and Syrian deserts to the warehouses of Tyre. Other routes led from Phoenicia across the Mesopotamian plains to Armenia, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, and thence on into the heart of central Asa.
196]
THE EMPIRE OF THE HITTITES
91
traders went they carried this alphabet as " one of their exports." It was through them that the Greeks received it ; the Greeks passed it on to the Romans, and the Romans gave it to the Gennan peoples. In tiiis way our alphabet came to us from the ancient East,' It would be difficuit to exaggerate the importance of this gift of the alphabet to the peoples of Europe. Without it thor civilization could never have become so rich and progressive as it did.
Among the other elements of culture which the Phcenidans carried to the peoples of the Mediterranean lands, the most important, after alphabetic writing, were systems of weights and measures. These are indispen- sable agents of civilization, and hold some such relation to the development of trade and commerce as letters hold to the devek)p- ment of the inteDectual life.
I!. THE HITTITES 96. The Empire of the Hlttltes. Our growing knowledge of the peoples and states of Asia Minor has revealed the fact that the dements of Egyptian and Mesopotamian cul- ture were carried westward over the im- memorial land routes through this peninsula as well as by the waterways of the Medi- terraneaa Chief in importance, before the Persian period, of the peoples controlling these land routes were, first, the Hittites, and then at a much later time the Lydians. our attention drawn to the empire of the Hittites (sect 28), whose cajntal city Hatti was situated on the uplands of Asia Minor, east of the Halys River. From about 1600 B.C. on for several centuries this
cept ihe Chireie and (hose derived from it,
vated by Dr.
â– ai at Babylon, whither it probably had been carried as H war trophy from northern Syria. The figure holds in one hand Ihe light- ning and in the other an ax, a primitive aymbol of power and sovereignly
We have already had
92 PHCENICIANS, HITTITES, AND LYDIANS [S97
Hittite state was one of ihe great powers of the Orient, and divided with Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria the control of western Asia. The empire finally fell to pieces, and the very memory of it was lost
Fin. 62. Caravan Ckossinc the Taurus. (Krom a photograph) Scene on the ancient trade route — a branch of Ihe great Royal Road (sect. 104) — which
chief artetjF of the trade of western Asb and the pathway of armies for more than four thousand ycara. lu long "lory of peace and war will end with the completion of the
97. Relation to the Hlitory of CivUlMtion. The importance of the Hittite princes for the history of culture arises from the circum- stance, as already intimated, that the great overland trade routes
The key to this difficult script has not yet been discovered
between the E^st and the West ran through their dontinions. They held, in a word, the same relation to the land traffic of the times that the Phoenicians held to the sea traffic. They themselves absorbed
§98] THE LAND AND THE PEOPLE 93
various elements of Egyptian and Babylonian-Assyrian culture. They developed an art which bore the deep impress of Assyrian influence, and worked out a system of hieroglyphic writing, probably under the influence of B^ypt This is a very difficult script and has not yet been deciphered. In their foreign diplomatic correspondence they used the Babylonian cuneiform script, and many clay tablets like those of the Mesopotamian countries have been found on the site of the ancient capital.^
III. THE LYDIANS
98. The Land and the People. The third people that played the role of intermediaries in the ancient world were the Lydians. Lydia was a country in the western part of Asia Minor. It was a land highly favored by nature. It embraced two rich river valleys — the plains of the Hermus and the Cayster — which from the mountains inland sloped gently to the island-dotted ^gean. The Pactolus, and other tributaries of the streams we have named, rolled down " golden sands," while the mountains were rich in the precious metals. The coast region did not at first belong to Lydia; it was held by the Greeks, who had fringed it with cities. Later, these cities, with the exception of Miletus, were subjugated by the Lydian kings. The capital of the country was Sardis. It seems probable that the Lydian state was a fragment of the great Hittite Empire.
99. Lydia a Connecting Link between the East and the West. As we have said, the Lydians hold an important place in the history of ancient culture because they played a part like that of the Phoenicians and the Hittites. The cities of the coast lands were the last stations towards the west of the great overland trade routes. They were the gateways through which various elements of the culture of the Orient passed into Europe.
The best gift of Lydia to the Western world was the art of coinage, for the Lydian kings were the first to coin gold and silver; that is, to impress a stamp upon pieces of these metals and thus testify to their purity and weight.* Before this invention gold and silver were
1 The modem Boghaz-Keui.
2 Holm, History of Greece (1899), vol. i, p. 214.
94 PHCENICIANS, HITTITES, AND LYDIANS [§99
taken by weight;* which had to be determined anew by balances each time the metal changed hands. The invention, quickly adopted by the Greek cities, gave a g^at impulse to their expanding trade and commerce. From Greece the art was introduced into Italy. Thus Lydia gave to civilization one of its most important and indispensable agencies.
Selections from the Sources. Tlie Bible, Ezek. xxvii (a striking portrayal by the prophet of the commerce, the trade relations, and the wealth of Tyre). The Voyage of Hanno, a record of a Phoenician exploring expedition down the western coast of Africa (a translation of this celebrated record will be found in Rawlinson's History of Phcnticia^ pp. 389-392).
References (Modem). Rawlinson, History of Phoenicia and The Story of Phoenicia, Kenrick, Phoenicia, Old (1855), ^^^ ^^H valuable. Lenormant and Chevallier, Ancient History of the East, vol. ii (consult table of contents). Sayce, The Ancient Empires of the East, chaps, iii, iv. DuNCKER, History of Antiquity, vol. ii, bk. iii, chaps, xi, xii. Keller, Coloninationy pp. 26-39' Garstang, The Land of the Hittites.
Topics for Class Reports, i. Phoenician commerce and its influence upon the progress of civilization: Keller, Colonization, pp. 28-30, 38-39. 2. The Tyrian purple dye : Rawlinson, The Story- of Phoenicia, pp. 5, 6, 275-282. 3. A Phoenician adventure — the circumnavigation of Africa : Rawlinson, The Story of Phoenicia, chap. xii. 4. Croesus and Solon : Herodotus, i, 29-33 i retold in Church, Herodotus, pp. 3-10).
1 Sec Gen. xxiii, 7-16.
CHAPTER IX
THE PERSIAN EMPIRE (558-330 B.a)
I. POLITICAL HISTORY
100. Kinship of the Medea and Peraiana. It was in remote times, probably before 1500 b.c., that some Aryan tribes, separating them- selves from kindred dans, the ancestors of the Indian Aryans, with whom they had lived for a time as a single community, sought new abodes on the plateau of western Iran. The immigrants that settled in the south, near the Persian Gulf, became known as the Persians ; while those that took possession of the mountain regions of the northwest were called Medes. The names of the two peoples were always very dosely associated, as in the familiar legend, " The law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not"
101. The Medea at flrat the Leading Race. Although the Persians were destined to become the dominant tribe of all the Iranian Aryans, still the Medes were at first the leading people. Cyaxares (625-585 B.C.) was their first prominent leader and king. We have already seen how he overthrew the last king of Nineveh, and destroyed that capital (sect 67). The destruction of the Assyrian p)ower resulted in the speedy extension of the frontiers of the new Median empire to the river Halys in Asia Minor.
102. C3rnia the Great (558-529 b.c.) Foonda a Great World Empire. The leadership of the Median chieftains was of short duration. A certain Cyrus, king of Anshan, in Elam, overthrew their power, and assumed the headship of both Medes and Persians. Through his energy and soldierly genius Cyrus soon built up an empire more extended than any over which the scepter had yet been swayed by oriental monarch, or indeed, so far as we know, by any ruler before his time.
95
96 THE PERSIAN EMPIRE [5102
After the conquest of Media and the acquisition of the provim^es formerly ruled by the Median princes, Cyrus rounded out his empire by the conquest of Lydia and liabylonia.
The Lydian throne was at this time held by Crcesus (500-546 B.C.), the last and most renowned of his race. The tribute Crossus collected from the Greek cities, and the revenues he derived from his gold miiies, rendered him the richest monarch of his times, so tliat his name has passed into the proverb " rich as Crcesus."
Now the fall of Media, which had been a friendly and allied power, and the extension thereby of the domains of the conqueror C)'rus lo the eastern frontiers of Lydia, naturally filled Cro=sus with alarm. He at once formed an alliance with Nabonidus, king of Babylon, and with Amasis, king of Egypt, both of whom, like Croesus, had fears for the safety of their own kingdoms. Furthermore, Crasus formed an alliance with the Greek city of Sparta, which was now rising into prominence.
\\'ithout waiting for his allies
to join him, Crcesus crossed the
Jii,. {ij. Lkciau.s ON int. 1 YKE river Halys and threw down the
gage of battle to Cynjs. But he
had misjudged the strength and activity of his enemy. Cyrus defeated
the Lydians in the open field, and after a short siege captured Sardis.
Lydia now became a part of the Pc-rsi<m Empire (546 B.C.).
This war between Crcesus and Cyrus derives