François Lenormant & Elizabeth Chevallier, A Manual of The Ancient History of The East

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A MANUAL
ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST,

TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE MEDIAN WARS.
;
THE
'.nt's Manual of Oriental Histo?y.
A MANUAL
ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST

TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE MEDIAN WARS
FRANCOIS LENORMANT,
Sub-Librarian of the Jinfierinl Institute of P'rciuir
E. chp:vallier,
Metitber of the Royal Asiatic Society.
VOL. I.
COMPRISING THE HISTORY OF THK ISKAELITKS, EGYPTIANS,

ASSYRIANS, AND BABYLONIANS.
PHILADELPHIA :
J. B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO.

LONDON : ASHER AND CO.
MDCCCLXIX.
ELEaRONIC VERSJOM
AVAILABLE ^
———
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
Preface ix
Author's Preface to the English Edition xvii
BOOK I.—PRIMITIVE TIMES.

Chap. I. The Bible Narrative.
Section I. The Human Race befoiê the Deluge i
,, II. The Deluge 5

„ III. The Confusion of Tongues 7
Chap. II. Traditions parallel to the Bible Story.

Section I. The Creation. The Fall and the Antediluvian
Patriarchs 8
,, II. The Deluge 13
,, III. The Cradl^ of Postdiluvian Humanity ig
,, IV. The Tower of Babel 22
Chap. III. Material Vestiges of Primitive Humanity.

Section I. Remains of the Archreolithic Epoch 24
,, II. Remains of the Neolithic Epoch 30
,, III. Chronology of these two Epochs 35
,, IV. Prehistoric Archaeology of the Bible 39
Chap. IV. Human Races and their Languages.

Section I. The Unity of the Human Race and its Varie-
ties 48
,, II. The Four Great Races of Mankind 54
>> III. The Descendants of Noah according to llie
Book of Genesis 57
,, IV. The Principal Families of Languages 65
,, V. The Semitic Languages 70
,, VI. The Indo-European Languages 73
BOOK II.—THE ISRAELITES.

Chap. I. The Patriarchs—The Israelites in Egypt
— Moses.
Section I. Abraham 79
„ II. Isaac and Jacob 85
,, III. Joseph in iEgypt ... 89
,, IV. The Israelites in Egypt and the Exodus 91
,, V. The Israelites at Sinai 96
,, VI. The Law of Moses 98
„ VII. The Tabernacle 103
,, VIII. Sojourn in the Desert 105
,, IX. Conquest of the Country East of the Jordan... 108
b
— —
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS.
PAGE
ClIAl\ TT. — KSTAHMSHMENT OK THE ISRAELITES IN THE
—
I'ROMisEo Land The J u hoes.
Saliou Conquest of llie Land of Canaan— Josluia
I. IIO'
,, —
IL Period of Repose l"'irst Serviliulc Com- —
mencement of the Judges 114
,, in. Ehud, Shamgar, Deboiali, Gideon, Barak ... 1 19
,, IV. Eli and Sanniel 123
Chap. III.— Kingdom of Israel — Saul, David, Solo-

mon.
Section I. Establishment of Royalty — Saul 130
,, II. David 136
,, III. Solomon 142
Chap. IV.— Separation of the Ten Tribes — Kingdoms

OF Israel andJudah — Fall of Samaria
and Jeru.salem.
Section I. Rchoboam and Jeroboam — Separation of the
Ten Tribes 147
,, II. Disorders and Reverses in the Kingdom of
Israel 153
,, III.Ahab, Jehoshaphat and their Sons 156
,, IV. The Kingdoms of Judah and Israel from the
reign of Athaliah to the death of Azariah... 165
,, V. Intervention of the Assyrians in Palestine
Decline of the Kingdom of Israel and Fall
of Samaria 171
,, VI. The Kingdom of Judah from the Capture of
Samaria to the Battle of Megiddo 176
5> VII. Last Days of the Kingdom of Judah Nebu- —
—
chadnezzar Capture of Jerusalem 185
BOOK III.— THE EGYPTIANS.

Chap. L— Egypt — The Nile and its Inundations —
The Kings of the Old Empire.
Section I. —
Physical Geography of Egypt The Nile, its
Inundations 193
,, II. Principal Sources of the History of Egypt ... 195
,, III. Foundation of the Monarchy —
First Dynasties 201
,, —
IV. Fourth and Fifth Dynasties Age of the Great
Pyramids 205
„ V. From the Sixth to the Eleventh Dynasty
Temporary Decline of Egyptian Civilisa-
tion 210
Chap. II. The Middle Empire.

Section I. —
Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties The Laby-
rinth and Lake Moeris 213
,, II. Thirteenth and Fourteenth Dynasties 217
,, III. Invasion and Dominion of the Shepherds 219
,, IV. Expulsion of the Shepherds 223
——— —
TABLE OF CONTENTS. vii
PAGE
CiiAr. III. The Great Conquerors of the New Em-
pire— Foreign Influence of Egyi'T.
Section I. Eighteenth Dynasty — First Successors of
Ahmes — Seventeentli Century n.c 226
,, II. Continuation of tlic Eighteenth Dynasty
Thothmes III 229
,, III.Last Kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty Re- —
hgious Troubles 236
,, IV. Commencement of the Nineteenth Dynasty
.Seti I. —
Fifteenth Century B.C 240
,, V. Ramses II. (Sesostris) 245
,, VI. End of the Nineteenth Dynasty Foreign —
—
Invasions The Exodus 259
,, VII. Commencement of the Twentietli Dynasty
Ramses III 264
Chap. IV. Decline and Fall of the Egyptian Empire.

Section I. End —
of the Twentieth Dynasty Twenty-first
Royal Family 269
,, II. Twenty- second, Twenty-third and Twenty-
fourth rjynasties 273
,, III. Ethiopian Dynasty 277
,, IV. The Dodecarchy —The Saite Kings 281
Chap. V. Civilisation, Manners and Monuments of

Egypt.
Section I. Social Constitution 289
,, II. Political Organisation and Administration ... 294
,, III. Laws 299
,, IV. Manners and Customs 301
,
, V. Writing 302
,, VI. Literature and Science 307
,, VII. Religion 317
,,VIII. Arts 327
,
, IX. Principal Monuments 330
BOOK IV.— TPIE ASSYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS.

Chap. L— The Primitive Chaldean Empire.
Section I. The Tigro-Euphrates Basin 339
,, II. The Primitive Population of Chaldaâ 341
III. Origin of the States of Assyria and Chaldaea
,,
— —
Nimrod The First Cushite Empire ... 347
,, IV. Dynasties of the Chalda;an Empire according
to Berosus 351
,, V. Royal Names supplied by the Inscriptions ... 353
,, VI. Monuments of the Primitive Chaldean Empire 357
,, VII. Period of Egyptian Preponderance and of the
Arab Kings 360
——
— —
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PACE
Chap. II. The First Assyrian Empire.
Section Foundation of the First Assyrian Empire
I.
Fabulous Stories about that Empire
Ninus and Somiramis 364
,, II. First Assyrian Dynasty 370
,, III. First Kings of the UjTiasty of Belelaras
Asshurnazirjial 376
,, IV. From IV. to Binlikhish and
Sliahiianeser
Samniuramat (Semiramis) 379
>> —
V. Asshur-hk-liish or Sardanapalus Fall of the
First Assyrian Empire 384
Chap. III. The Second Assyrian Empire.

Section I. Reign of Phul — Re-establishment of the As-
syrian Empire 387
„ II. Sargon 392
,, III. .Sennacherib 398
, IV. Esarhaddon and Asshur-bani-pal 404
—Final
,
,, V. End of the Second Assyrian Empire

Fall of Nineveh 415
f Chap. IV. Civilisation,

Assyria.
Manners and Monuments of
Section 1. Politicaland Social Organisation 417

IManners and Customs 426
,,
—
1
III.
II.
Writing 431
IV. Literature and Science /
i/|/|
»5 V. Religion 452
VI. Arts 456
Chap. V.— The New Chaldean Empire.
Section I. Survey of the History of Babylon under the
Supremacy of the Assyrians 468
,, Nabopolassar
II. 472
,, III. Nebuchadnezzar 476
J5
V. The Successors of Nebuchadnezzar —Fall of
the Babylonian Empire 4S7
Chap. VI. Manners and Religion of Babylon.

Section I. Manners 492
,, 11. The Caste of the Chaldceans 493
,, III. Commerce of Babylon 495
,, IV. Religion 497
,, V. Cosmogony 500
„ VL Arts 505
Index 509
List of Scripture Texts Quoted 533
List OF Passages from Herodotus Quoted 535
PREFACE.
The one great fact of the last fifty years in the scientific world has
certainly been the revival of historical studies, and especially that con-
quest which has been achieved of the ancient past of the East by
modem criticism, which has been alile to throw light into the darkest
recesses of annals long buried in obscurity.

But a short half century ago, little was known of the ancient world
beyond the Greeks and Romans. Accustomed to look on these two
great nations as the representatives of ancient civilisation, it was easy to
ignore all that had taken place beyond the regions of Greece and Italy.
It was almost agreed that one entered the domain of positive history,
only in setting foot on the soil of Europe.It was known, however,
immense tract
that in this of country, lying between the Nile and the
Indus, there had once been great centres of civilisation —monarchies
embracing vast territories and innumerable tribes; capitals more exten-
sive than our modern western sumptuous as those
capitals; palaces as
of our own kings, on which, as some vague traditions said, their proud
builders had inscribed the pompous history of their deeds. It was also
known had left behind them mighty

that these ancient nations of Asia
Heaps of ruins in the desert, and
traces of their passage o'er the earth.
on the river banks, temples, pyramids, monuments of every kind,
covered with inscriptions in strange and unknown characters, and the
tales of travellers in these countries — all bore witness to a really great de-
velopment of social culture. But this greatness was to be found only in
ruins, in fragmentary stories of Grecian historians, and in some passages
in the Bible. And as everything belonging to the primitive eastern world

assumes colossal proportions, it was but natural to infer tliat fiction
occupied a large place in Biblical story, and in the pages of Herodotus.

To-day everything is quite changed. In all its branches the science of
antiquities has soared to a height previously unknown, and its disco-
veries have changed the page of history. From the great works of the
learned men of the Renaissance, the civilisation of Greece and Rome
was supposed to be known to its very base and yet on that very
;
civilisation Archseology has been found to throw an unexpected light.
The study and correct understanding of the ornamented remains, the

history of art, dates, so to speak, but from yesterday. Winckelman
closes the eighteenth, and Visconti inaugurates the present, century. The
PREFACE.
innvimerable painted vases, and nioiuimcnts of every description which •
have been and siill are furnished by the burial places of Etruria, of
Greece, of C'yrcnc, ami of the Crimea, constitute an immense field of
research unknown lifty years atjo, and whicli has prodigiously extended
the horizon of science.
But these advances in the domain of the classical world are nothing
when compared with the new worlds suddenly revealed to our eyes;
with Egypt, openeil up to us first by the French, and which has sup-
plied remains to fdl the museums of Europe, and initiate us into the
minutest details of the oldest civilisation of the world ; with Assyria,
whose monuments, discovered also by a frenchman, have been disin-
terred from the grave where they have lain for more than 2,000 years,
and open to our view an art and culture of which but the faintest
indication is to be found in historical literature.
Nor is this all. Phoenician art, intermediate between that of Egypt

and Assyria, has been revealed to us, and invaluable treasures have
been recovered from the catacombs. Aramaaan Syria has given
us its ancient inscriptions and memorials. Bold explorers, too, have
made us acquainted with the traces of all the various nations so closely
packed in the narrow territory of Asia Minor. Cyprus with its strange
writing and the sculptures of its temples ; Lycia with its peculiar
language, its inscriptions, coins, sepulchral grottoes; Phrygia with its
great rock, sculptured bas-reliefs, and the tombs of the kings of the
family of Midas ; Arabia contributes to science ancient monuments of
times anterior to Islamism, texts engraven by pilgi-ims on the rocks of
Sinai, and the numerous inscriptions which abound in Yemen. Nor
let Persia be forgotten with the remains of Achaemenian and
its kings,
Sassanian. Nor India, where our knowledge has been entirely renewed
by the study of the Vedas. But it is not only the length of the coui'se
that has been increased, the progress of science has been so great that
its domain is now also widely extended. Everywhere, by new routes,
enterprising and successful pioneers have pushed their researches, and
thrown light into the darkest recesses. Europe in our age takes definite
possession of the world. What is true of the events of tlie day, is also
true in the region of learning ; science regains possession of the ancient
world, and of ages long forgotten.
This resuscitation of the earliest epochs of civilisation commenced
with Eg)'pt. The hand of Champollion has torn down the veil
which concealed mysterious Egypt from our eyes, and has added
lustre to the name of France by the greatest discovery of our age.
Thanks to him, we have at last the key to the enigma of the Hiero-
glyphs. And henceforth we may tread boldly on solid and well-known
PREFACE. xi
ground, where those who preceded us wandered among swamps and

pitfalls. Champollion's discovery has been the starting point for those
learned and ingenious researches to which we owe the restoration ol
Egyptian History. Through the whole extent of the Nile Valley the
monuments have been examined, and in reply they have told us all the
deeds of the kings who governed Egypt from the most ancient times.
Science has penetrated the dark catacombs where sleep the Pharaohs,
and has restoi-ed to us many dynasties whose only traces were to be
found in some mutilated remains of the old historian Manetho. At the
commencement of the present century, we knew little beyond the names
of a few sovereigns, whose reigns were far apart and connected with but
a small number of events, distorted by the statements of credulous Greek
travellers, or magnified by national vanity. We now know neai'ly the
whole monarchs who reigned over Egypt during more than
series of
4,000 years. The art of the Pharaohs has been appi'eciated in all its
diverse forms, architecture, sculpture, painting; and the law which
governed the inspiration of Egyptian genius has been discovered. Their
religion, under its double character, sacerdotal and popular, has been
studied, and it has been proved that under the strange and confused
symbolism which ordained the worship of animals, was hidden a pro-
found theology, which inits conceptions embraced the entire universe,
and was based on the grand idea of the unity of God, the vague and
faint echo of a primitive revelation. We can also form an estimate of
the state of science in this famous nation. The most important frag-
ments of its literature have been translated into modern languages, and
in style closely resemble the Bible. In a word, Egypt has completely
resumed its place in positive history, and we can now relate its annals
on the authority of original and contemporary documents exactly as we
relate the history of any modem nation.
The resurrection of Assyria has been, if possible, yet more extra-
ordinary. Nineveh and Babylon have not, like Thebes, left gigantic
ruins above the surface of the ground. Shapeless masses of rubbish,
now crumbled into mounds, are all that remain for travellers to see.
One might then readily have believed that the last vestiges of the great
Mesopotamian civilisation had for ever perished, Mr. when the spades of
Botta's excavators, and subsequently those of Mr. Layard and Mr.
Loftus, opened to the light those majestic sculptures which we admire at
the Louvre and the BritishMuseum guarantees of discoveries still more
;
brilliantand extensive, when explorations can be pushed on into all

parts of Assyria and Chaldcea. So now those pious kings, who led
entire nations into captivity, live again, as it were, before our very eyes,
on the bas-reliefs of their palaces. These are the figures which seem so
xii PREFACE.
terrible in the burning words of the Hebrew seers. We have found
again the gates wlicre, to quote the prophet's expression, people passed
like the waters of tlie river. These arc tlic beautifully wrought idols
which corniplod the jieople of Israel, and caused them so soon to forget
Jehovah. There, reproduced in a thousand diflerent phases, is the daily
life of the Assyinaiis ; their religious ceremonies, domestic habits; llieir
splendid furniture, and rich vases. There are their battles, the be-
leaguered cities, the war machines that shook the ramparts.
Innumerable inscriptions cover tlie walls of the Assyrian edifices
that have been laid bare by excavations. They are written in those
strange cuneiform characters so complicated as to seem likely to baffle
But there is no philological mystery that
the sagacity of interpreters.
can defy the methods of modern science. The sacred wiiting of
Nineveh and Babylon has been, like that of Egypt, compelled to give
up its secrets. The learned labours of Sir Henry Rawlinson, Dr.
Hincks, and, above all, of M. Oppcrt, have given us the key to the
graphic system in use on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris. We
read now —following an established principle —the annals of the kings
of Assyria and Babylon, engraved on alabaster or impressed on clay,
for the instruction of posterity. We read the accounts they themselves
have given of their wars, their conquests, their craellies. We there
decipher the official Assyrian version of events of which the Bible, in
the Books of Kings, gives us the Jewish version; and the comparison of
the two, places in the clearest light the incomparable veracity of the
Sacred Volume.
These discoveries in Assyrian antiquity have thrown invaluable and
most unexpected light on the origin and progress of civilisation. It was
impossible that such brilliant culture shoidd remain imprisoned in the
narrow limits of Assyria. And so we find, in fact, that the influence of
Assyrian art and civilisation followed everywhere the conquering Nine-
vite amis. To the east and north she made her influence felt in Media
and Persia, where, combining with the subtle and delicate genius of the
Persians under the Achssmenians, she gave birth to the marvellous
creations of Persepolis. The origin of Grecian art, vainly sought in
Egypt, is found at Nineveh. Assyrian influence penetrated into Syria,
Asia Minor and the Islands of the MediteiTanean ; through the C^'-'êk
cities of the coast it found its way into the heart of the Hellenic tribes.
The early Greek sculptors thus received the inspirations and precepts of
sculptors of the Assyrian school, who approached them step by step,
and selected Asiatic works for their models. From Asia Minor this in-
fluence passed with the Lydian colonists into Italy, where it formed the
base of the development of the Etruscan civilisation, while this, in its tum,
PREFACE. xiii
furnished to that of Rome the elements of its primitive giMndeur. Thus

are explained the monuments, the luxury, and the riches of the cities of
Etraria, which for so long a time excited the fierce desires of the rude sons
of Romulus. Thus the history of the oldest empires in the world, of those
birth-places of civilisation, is rendered henceforward accessible to Europe,
under conditions now admitted to be the only guarantees for real historical
study — that is, with the assistance and guidance of original documents.
We can now ajipreciate at their true value the ideas — crude and con-
used in even the best of them —which the writers of classical antiquity
have left us of nations whose languages they did not know, and of an
historical tradition probably already falsified when they gathered the
few fragments which they have preserved. Nevertheless, we both may
and ought still to speak with respect of tJTC accuracy with which
Herodotus has related what was told him by the Egyptians and Persians,
and with sympathy for the zeal which Diodorus Siculus has shown for
learned researches. We are also bound to accept those traces of
manners and customs which they have collected. But to reproduce as
a whole the facts which they ixlate, and to give them as an account of
the chain of principal events in Egyptian or in Assyrian History, is not
to give a summary of that history suitable for young people, for it
would convey an absolutely untrue idea.

The stories of Herodotus and Diodorus about Egypt and Assyria are
no more a real histoiy than one of our own country would be which
suppressed the invasion of the barbarians, the feudal period, the
renaissance which made Philip Augustus the predecessor of Charle-
magne, and Napoleon, the son of Louis XIV., and which explained
the financial difficulties of Philippe le Bel by the disaster of the battle
of Pavia. Nevertheless, suclr, with some corrections borrowed from
Josephus, is the character of the majority of the standard works.
Doubtless there are some who, to a certain extent, have advanced with
the progress of science, and have eliminated gross errors. But at the
point to which knowledge has advanced —when the history of Oriental

nations can be related in a connected and precise manner, and furnishes
lights which can be no longer passed by, on the origin of our arts and
civilisation,it is not sufficient to suppress a few incongruities. There is
no longer any reason to leave great gaps, to ignore facts of the highest
interest, and to preserve, by the side of important rectifications, errors
which falsify the general result. It is therefore indispensable to intro-

duce amongst us, and into standard works, a complete reform in all
that relates to the first period of ancient histoiy, to the annals of the
ancient empires of the East, to the first dawn of civilisation.
The immense conquests of science must be made common property.
xiv PREFACE.
their j^riiicipal resvills must ho made part of thai sum t)f knowlcdiie
wliicli no one can be permitted to iynorc, and wliich is the foundation
of education.
all real At ilie present day, one cannot, without unpar-
donal'le ii^noranco, adhere to sucli a history as has l)een written l)y good
old Rollin, and all the tribe of his followers. \Vhal would l)e said of any
professor, or man of the world, who would now s])cak of four elements,
or of the three quarters of the habitable globe — who would with

Ptolemy, make the sun move round the world ? And yet it is much in
this style that the great majority of our historical works speak even now
on the subject of Egypt and Assyria. The absolute necessity of the
reform of which we speak must, therefore, be olivious to every one.
There is no one master of science but has loudly proclaimed it, and the
opinion is becoming general. But the historical' archaeological sciences
now require popular works, manuals such as have been produced in great
quantities for the physical sciences, and have carried ideas into every
grade of society.
Tlie results of the wonderful progress in antiquities and Oriental
philology during the last fifty years have not been sufllcienlly commu-
nicated to the general public. They have to be sought out in special,
voluminous, and costly works, written in a style so learned as to make

them available for only a small number. How often have we not heard
in the world, and from the cleverest men of education, "Yes, we know
that primitive Oriental History, that history whicli is the starting-point
for every other, has been completely reconstructed, has assumed an
entirely new aspect in the last half-century ; but where shall we find,
brought together and clearly expressed, all the facts which science is
now able to establish?" This is we have attempted to fill in

the gap
the Manual now put forth. Doubtless, we are not the first to make
the attempt ; besides M. Henry de Riancy, who, in his " Histoire du
Monde," has embodied some of the results of modem researches, two
distinguished members of the University, M. Guillemin, rector of the
Academy of Nancy, and M. Robiou, professor of history, have at-
tempted to introduce into public instruction the true histoiy of the
ancient empires of the East.
These books have paved the way for ns, and on more than one point
we have followed their lead. Bat in spite of all their merit, they do
not seem to us to fulfil all requirements. They still present serious de-
ficiencies, and useful and ample as they are for students of public schools,
they are not so for men of the world and professors, to whom they do
not supply sufficient means for rectifying previous impressions. It is but
too easily perceived that the authors have but partly studied the sciences,
—the results of which they profess to give — that their knowledge on some
PREFACE. XV
points is second-hand, and not always from the best sources. More-
over, these books have been published several years ; science has
advanced in the meanwhile, and they are now out of date.
We hope we may state confidently tliat the reader will find in the
present Manual a complete rhwne of the state of knowledge at the pre-
sent time —
saving only those imperfections which no man and ourselves —
less than any other, can hope to avoid. The science whose resvalts I
have set forth is one in which an illustrious fatlier, wliose labours I
attempt to continue, has educated me, and which forms the aim and
occupation of my life. There is no one branch comprised in the pre-
sent publication to which I have not devoted direct and profound study.
In the history of every nation, we have taken as guides those
authorities who command the greatest respect, those whose opinions
give law to the learned world. For that of the Israelites during the
periods of the Judges and of the Kings, in all cases where the interpreta-
tion of Egyptian and Assyrian inscriptions has not given new and
unexpected light, our guides have been iM. Munl'C, removed far too early
from those Biblical studies in which he was an acknowledged master in
our country, and M. Ewald, in whose writings so many brilliant flashes
of genius and profound poetic sentiment shine out among ideas
often rash and capricious. For Egypt, we have followed the traces
of the disciples of Champollion, of De Ronge and Mariette, in France ;
Lepsius and Brugsch, in Germany and Birch, in England.
; But
chiefly we have used the great Histoire d'Egypt of M. Brugsch, and
still more the excellent abridgment composed by M. Mariette, for the
schools of Egypt, a real masterpiece of historic sense, clear explana-

tion, prudent method, and substantial conciseness. We have borrowed
entire pages from this last book, particularly in relation to tlie dynasties
of the ancient and middle empires, for we have nothing to add to what
the learned director of excavations to the Egyptian government has
said, and we could not possibly say it better. The writings of Sir H.
Rawlinson, Dr. Ilincks, and, above all, of M. Oppert, have furnished us
with the elements necessary for the re-construction of the annals of
Assyria and Babylonia, of which M. Oppert has commenced a com-
parative statement, unfortunately still incomplete. The translations
of the historical inscriptions of the kings of Nineveh, which we have
inserted in the text, are borrowed from the works of that eminent
Orientalist whom France has brought froni Germany, to make him our
fellow countryman ; but we have ourselves compared the whole with the
origînal monuments, and in offering them to our readers, we do not
hesitate "jurare in verba magistri."'
Our own immortal Eugene Burnouf, M. Spiegel, the Gemran com-
a
xvi PREFACE.
mentator of the Zend Avesta, Wcstergaard, and, finally, M. Oppert, are
llic authorities to whom we have had recourse on the subject of the
antiquities, doctrines, and institutions of Persia. Lastly, as to Phoe-
nicia, the admirable studies of Morris have been, naturally, our starting-
point ; but we have amiilificd or modified his results with the assistance
of the writings of tiie Dukede
Luynes, M. Munk, M. de Saulcy, Dr. A.
Levy of Breslau, and theCount de Vogue. The summary, then, of
the works of the mastere of science, of the conquests of European learn-
ing during the last fifty years in the field of Oriental literature, forms
the founilation of our book, and constitutes its chief value ; but, in
these studies, which are peculiarly our own, it has been impossible to
confine ourselves to the mere part of a copyist. Li this Manual will be
found a large mass of personal researches, and also some assertions for
which we must be held personally responsible. But we have at least
always taken care to indicate our own hypotheses and individual
opinions. One last word on the principles and ideas which are reflected
on every page of this book.
I am a Christian, and proclaim it loudly ; but my faith fears none of
the discoveries of criticism when they are true. A son of the Church,
submissive in all things necessary, I for that very reason claim from
her with even greater ardour the rights of scientific liberty. And it is
just because I am a Christian that I regard myself as being more in

accord with the true meaning and spirit of science than are those who
have the misfortune to be without faith. In history, I am of the school
of Bossuet. I see in the annals of humanity the development of a
providential plan running through all ages and all vicissitudes of
society. In it I recognise the designs of God, permitting the liberty of
man, and infallibly doing His work by their free hands, almost always
without their knowledge, very often against their will. For me, as for
every Christian, all ancient history is the preparation for, —modem
history the consequence of, — the Divine sacrifice of Calvary.
Thus that, faithful to the traditions of my father, I have a passion

it is
for libertyand for the dignity of man. Thus it is that I have a horror
of despotism and oppression, that I have no admiration for those great
scourges of humanity, called conquerors — those men whom the materialist
historian elevates to the honours of an apotheosis —be they called
Sesostris, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Caesar, Louis XIV., or
Napoleon. Thus, above all, it is that I am almost invincibly attached
to the doctrine of the constant and unlimited progress of humanity —
doctrine unknown to paganism, a doctrine born of Christianity, and
whose whole law is found in the words of the evangelist, "Be ye
Perfect. "
;
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.
This Manual, as originally published last year in Paris, found greater

favour with the public than I had ventured to anticipate. Two editions
sold in a few months; and a version, published in Germany, proved to
me that the Work supplied what had been long and generally required.
I am also especially proud and thankful to acknowledge the kind recep-
tion the Manual met with from men of the higliest authority on the
—
subject of historical study the encouragement which such men as Guizot,
Mignet, Vitet, and Guigniaut have given to my attempt to introduce to
the general public, and for educational purposes, the results of those
discoveries in Oriental Archccology which have in the last fifty years
entirely remodelled Ancient History.
The Work, too, has been honoured by the award of the prize of the
Academic Franâise, and is thus stamped with the approval of the
highest possible authority.
In England the Work was most favourably received, and in some
reviews the publication of an English translation was recommended.
Such encouragement imposed on me the duty of leaving nothing un-
done that may render my Book as deserving as possible of the approval
it had met with; to revise it carefully, and to correct and complete it as
far as possible.
This I have endeavoured to do in the present Edition, which has been
entirely revised, in many parts re-written, and so extended as to be
much larger than the original work, from which it differs considerably
in some respects, to which it is desirable I should refer.
In the first place, I have deferred to the opinion expressed by many
persons, that the absence of references to authorities was a serious defect
as the reader was unable to refer to original works, and to verify the
statements made in the Book. It was, however, found impossible in
every case to refer to authorities in notes, as the size of the book would
have been enormously increased; I have therefore confined myself,
xviii AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO TITE EXGLISH EDITION.
except for very inijiortant facts, to prefixing to eacli chapter a list of
every book from which information has been drawn.
The chief fault, liowcvcr, found witli tlie " Manuel d'Histoire
Ancicnno dc TOricnt " in its original fomi was, tlial il had no distinctly
defined cliaracter; that it was neither a book entirely suited to pupils,
nor perfectly fitted for teachers. Some parts, the first chapter for
instance, were too elementary, and others too much in detail and too
scientific, to be comprehended by children. This fault I have endeavoured
to repair. As now puljlished, the Manual is intended for teachers, for

senior pupils, and for men of education who desire to keep pace with
the advance of Oriental historical studies.
The Fii-st Book is entirely new •
in this, as a preface to the others, I
have endeavoured to collect the small number of facts at present ascer-
tained as to the condition of the primitive races of men. As required

both by the principles of sound criticism, and by my own conviction, I
have given the first jilace to the Biblical narration, and liave appended to
this the parallel traditions preserved among other ancient nations. I
have next given a rapid sketch of the discoveries of prehistoric archaeo-
logy, bearing on facts totally apart from those contained in the Bible,
and giving us an insight into the daily conditions of the life of the first
men. And this book closes with an enumeration of the facts relating
generally to the races of mankind, and to the principal families of
languages — a necessaiy introduction to the historical narrative.
In the Second Book, on the history of the Israelites, little change has
been made ; it has been slightly expanded, and advantage has been
taken of the admirable work in which M. Oppert has definitely fixed
the chronology of the kings of Israel and Judah, by means of solar
and lunar eclipses, mentioned in the Assyrian inscriptions.
In the history of the Israelites twô things run side by side : one, the
constant, direct, and supernatural interference of the Almighty with the
destiny of that nation to whom He had entrusted the sublime mission of
preserving religious truth, and from which the Redeemer was to come ;
the other, events arising from ordinary and natural causes apart from this
supernatural interference. In writing Sacred History, it would be
natural to give prominence to this Divine government of Israel ; but
in introducing the Israelites into a picture of the whole civilisation of
Ancient Asia, it was necessary to look more at the merely human aspect
of their history, without, however, for a moment losing sight of the
entii-ely exceptional character of that history.
The Third Book, on Egypt, has been only slightly modified. Some
few additions have been made, amongst others, a short analysis of the
Funereal Ritual, or Book of the Dead ; and a few errors have been
corrected.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION, xix
The Fourth Book, however, on the History of the Assyrians and

Babylonians, has been doubled in size, and has been entirely re-written.
In the past year science has continued to advance, and I have been
compelled to keep pace with its progress. I have, moreover, especially
devoted myself to the study of Assyrian texts, and have therefore been
able to bring a largeramount of knowledge to bear on Assyrian history,
and add translations of some hitherto unpublished documents. As
to
the greater part of these translations are from tal;lets in the British
Museum, I have been careful to insert their distinctive marks, in order
that Assyriologists ro.ay compare my versions with the originals.
The two following Books treat, the one of the Annals of the Medes
and Persians to the time of the first disagreement between the Greeks
and Darius, son of Hystaspes ; the other, of the History of the Phoeni-
cians to the period of the first rise of the Carthaginian power. No
essential change has been made in this portion of the work, but it has
been carefully revised, and has received numerous additions and correc-
tions.
The Seventh and Eighth Books are entirely new, the nations of whom
they treat were not mentioned in the original editions. The Seventh
Book contains the History of Ancient Arabia, considered chiefly with
reference to its intermediate position between the civilisations of India
and of Western Asia; it is founded on the admirable work of M.
Caussin de Percival, on the History of the Arabs previous to the rise of
Islamism, and on the newly ascertained facts from the monumental
texts of Egypt and Assyria, as well as from the ancient inscriptions of
Yemen,
The absence of any history of India in my original work was uni-
versally regarded as an omission, as leaving a vacant space requiring to
be filled. India no doubt had no political relations with Western Asia,
but was, nevertheless, not entirely isolated from the nations bordering
on the Mediterranean. From the time of Darius that country was
brought into relations with Persia, and from the time of Alexander
with Greece; moreover, Arian India exercised too great an influence on
the progress of the human mind in periods of remote antiquity to permit
us to omit her entirely in a general view of the great ancient civilisa-
tions of Asia.
I could not but acknowledge the justice of this criticism; and the
History of India forms the Eighth Book of this Manual —a book a
little longer than the others on account of the importance of the subject,
and founded on the successive labours of Sir W. Jones, Colebrooke,
Schlegel, Eugene Burnouf, Lassen, Max Mliller, and Weber.
With India I have ended. I was urged to add a chapter on the early
XX AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.
Annals of Cliina ; hut in the first place I have not considered myself
competent to deal with the subject; and in the second, it appeared to
me thatChina has always been so completely isolated from the rest of
the world that it could claim no place in a book on the subject of
civilisations that have influenced, even indirectly, our own.

This English edition has had the advantage of my latest revisions,
and in one or two instances includes discoveries made too late for inser-
tion in the Frcncli work.
—
THE
S>tudenfs Manual of Oriental History.
BOOK I.
PRIMITIVE TIMES,
CHAPTER I.
THE BIBLE NARRATIVE.

Authority, — Genesis Chapters —XL I.
Section I. The Human Race before the Deluge.

I. We have no precise and consecutive history of the first men, or of the
origin of our species, but that of Holy Scripture. This saci-ed story,
even without the assured and solemn authority which it derives from
the inspired character of the book in which it is found, would always
form in sound criticism the base of all history for, merely considered ;
from a human point of view, it contams the most ancient tradition

as to the first days of the human race, the only one which has not
been disfigured by the introduction of fantastic myths of disordered
imagination run wild. The chief features of that tradition, which
was originally common to all mankind, and which the special care of
Providence has preserved in greater purity among the chosen people
than among other races, are preserved, though changed, in countries
far distant from each other, and whose inhabitants have had no com-
munication for thousands of years. And the only clue which can guide
us through the labyrinth of these scattered fragments of tradition, is the
Bible Story. This it is to which the historian must first turn, recognising
its distinctive character ; whilst for the Christian it has a dogmatic
value, permitting him, indeed, to interpret it in conformity with the light
furnished by the progress of science, but at the same time giving him a
fixed point round which to group the results of human investigation.
The historical interpretation of this narrative presents, however,
serious difficulties. The most able and orthodox theologians have
repeatedly discussed the degree of latitude which may be allowed for
B
2 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
exegesis. In veiy many places it is impossil)le to know absolutely how
far that allegorical style of language, which is so largely employed in the
Bible, has been used in these passages. We may remark also, that
gaps which appear in the Bible story, leave open a veiy large field for
speculation.
scientific Our high respect for the authority of the sacred
books must prevent us from seeking in them what they were not
intended to contain, what never entered the minds of those who wrote
under the divine inspiration. Moses has never pretended to write
a complete histoiy of primitive man, and certainly not of the origin and
progi-ess of material civilisation. He has confined himself to recording
a few of the essential and principal features of that history, in a form
suitable to the people whom he addressed. His object has been to
elucidate the descent of the Patriarchs who were chosen by God to
presene, from age to age, the primitive revelations, and above all, to
show, in opposition to the monstrous cosmogonies of the nations who
surrounded the Hebrews, those great tniths which idolatiy had obscured,
the creation of the world from nothing by the mere will of an Almighty
being, the unity of the human race spnmg from one couple, the fall of
that race, the origin of evil in the world, the promise of a Redeemer,
and, finally, the constant interference of Providence in the affairs of
the world.
2. The and its agreement with the discoveries
story of creation itself,
of the natural sciences, are things beyond the scope of our work. It is
only from the moment when God, having created the world and all the
beings which inhabit it, put the seal to his work by creating man, that
we shall take up the stoiy of the first book of the Bible, " Genesis," so
called in Europe, from a Greek word, which signifies "beginning,"
because this book commences with the history of the creation of the
Universe. " God said, Let us make man in our image, after our like-
ness and: let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created
man in his own image, in the image of God created he him ; male and
female created he them." " And the Lord God formed man of the dust
of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and
man became a living soul."
The story of the fall of the first human pair immediately succeeds
that of their creation. The father of all mankind, Adam (whose
name in the Semitic languages means "Man" /ar excellence), created
by God in a state of absolute innocence and happiness, disobeyed
the Lord by his presumption in the delicious gardens of Eden where
he had at first been placed, and this disobedience condemned him
and his race to pain, grief, and death. God had created him for work,
as the inspired book expressly says, but it was in expiation of his
BEFORE THE DELUGE. 3
fall that his work became painful and difficult. "In the sweat of thy
face shalt thou eat bread," said the Lord to him, and this condemnation
stillrests upon all men.
This is how the book of Genesis recounts the temptation and fall,
the consequences of which have fallen on all the descendants of our
first parents : —
" Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast
of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the
woman. Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the
garden. And the woman said unto the serpent. We may eat of the
frmt of the trees of the garden : but of the fruit of the tree which is in
the midst of the garden (the tree of the knowledge of good and
e\il) God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it,
lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman. Ye shall not surely
die : for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your
eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw was good

and that it
that the tree for food,
was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise,
she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her hus-
band with her ; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were
opened, and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig ;
leaves together and made themselves aprons."

"Prodigious, ovenvhelming truth," says Chateaubriand, "man
dying, poisoned with the fruit of the tree of
life. Man lost, for having
tasted of the tree ofknowledge for having dared too well to know
;
both good and e\Tl. Should we suppose a prohibition from God,

relative to any other desire of the soul, how could the wisdom, the
depth of the pro^-idence of the Most High be ^-indicated. It would
then be only a caprice unworthy of the Deity, and no moral lesson
would restdt from Adam's disobedience. As it is, aU the history of
the world is the consequence of the law imposed on our first parents.
The secret of the moral and political existence of nations, the pro-
foundest mysteries of the human heart, are contained in the tradition
of that wonderful, that fatal tree."
3. The Bible assigns no precise date to the origin of the human
species, it gives no positive time for that event. It has in reality no
chronology for the early epochs of man's existence, neither for that
which extends from the creation to the deluge, nor for that which
reaches from the deluge to the call of Abraham The dates which
commentators have attempted to fix are purely arbitrary, and have
no dogmatic authority. They belong to the domain of historical
hypothesis, and one might mention a hundred attempts to make the
calculation, each with a different result. What alone the sacred books
state, in which science is in complete agreement with them, is that the
appearance of man on the earth (however remote the date may be) is
B 2
recent, when contrasted witli llic innncnsc (himtion of llic geological
periods of creation ; and that llic anli([iiity of many thousands of years,
which some peojile, as for instance the J'^gyptians, Chaldaans, Indians
and Chinese, have self-complacently claimed in their mythological
traditions, is entirely fabulous.
Equally useless, equally devoid of solid foundation, as are these calcu-
lations regardingthe date of man's creation, would be the attempt to deter-
mine from the Bible the exact place of the cradle of our species, or of the
garden of Eden. The sacred story furnishes no precise indications on
that point. The most learned and orthodox commentators of the holy
books have left the question undecided. Everything bids us imitate their
reserve and hold the common opinion which places in Asia the origin of
the first human family, and the source of all civilisation.
4. Adam and Eve (Chavah) the first human couple who came from
the hands of God, had two sons, Cain and Abel (Habel).*
They led, the one an agricultural, the other a pastoral life, the origin
of which modes of life the Bible thus places at the very first footstep of
humanity. Cain killed his brother Abel, being jealous of the blessings
with which the Lord had recompensed his piety, but became an exile
in the despair of his remorse, and retired with his family to the east of
Eden, where he built the first city, which after the name of his first-
born he called "Enoch." God had created man with gifts of mind
and body fitted to enable him to accomplish the object of his existence,
and consequently to form regular and civilised societies. The book of
Genesis attributes to the family of Cain the first invention of the indus-
trial arts. To Enoch, son of Cain, was born, it is said, in the fourth
generation, Lamech, who in his turn had many sons. Jabal, "the father,
of such as dwell in tents and of such as have cattle ;" Jubal the in-
ventor of music, Tubalcain the discoverer of the art of casting and
working in metals, and lastly a daughter Naamah, inventor of that of
spinning the wool of the flocks, and weaving the thread into cloth.
(This last tradition is not found in the Bible, but is mentioned in the
Jerusalem Talmud as a very ancient Jewish legend.)
* These names have meanings in the Semitic languages, as have all

those names applied in the Bible narrative to the first ancestors of our
race ; they are in reality descriptive epithets which express the part
played, and the position assumed, by each person in the original family.
Adam, as we have already said, means "Man," Eve "Life," "because
she was the mother of all living," says the sacred text. Cain signifies
"Creature," "Shoot." Habel is the word which in the most ancient
Semitic idioms expressed the idea of " Son," and is preserved in the
Assyrian and lastly, Seth, as the Bible expressly says, is " Substitute,"
;
whom God had given to his parents in place of the much loved son
they had lost.
—
THE DELUGE. 5
The Bible ascribes to I.amech the origin of those sangiiinary customs

of revenge which played so great a part in the life of ancient nations ;
"Lamech said to his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice ye '
;
wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech 1 : would slay a man in my

wound, and a young man in my hurt if Cain
: shall be avenged seven- _
"*
fold, trulyLamech seventy and sevenfold.'
5. Adam had a third son named Seth, and God
afterwards gave him
a great many more children. Seth lived 912 years and had a numerous
family, who, whilst all other men gave themselves up to idolatry and
vice of every kind, preserved faithfully, down to the time of the deluge,
those religious traditions of the primitive revelation, which after that
event passed into the race of Shem.
The descendants of Seth were Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared,
Enoch, who walked with God 365 years, and "was not, for God took
him," Methuselah who of all men lived the longest life, 969 years,
Lamech, and lastly Noah, who was the father of Shem, Ham and
Japhet. Each of these three was the head of a numerous family.
Section IE—The Deluge.
I. In the meanwhile the corruption of mankind went on increasing and

passed all bounds. Their iniquities were such that the Lord was angered
and determined to exterminate their race. The just Noah, descendant of
" (Gen. vi. 8). God
Seth, alone "found grace in the eyes of the Lord
caused him to build an ark into which He shut him, and his family
and seven couples of every kind of animal clean and unclean, and then
the deluge commenced. " The fountains of the great deep were broken
up, and the windows of heaven opened, and rain was upon the earth
forty days and forty nights And the waters increased and bare
. . .
up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth and the waters pre-
; . .
vailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the high hills that were
under the whole heaven were covered fifteen cubits

;
upward did the
waters prevail, and the mountains .were covered. And all flesh died
that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast,
and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every
man. All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in
the dry land died Noah only remained alive, and
. . .
they that were
* Genesis iv. 23, 24, marginal reading. The author's rendering of

this passage m which the learned De Sacy concurs is, " Ecoutez ma
voix, femmes de Lamech, soyez attentives a mes paroles J'ai tue un ;
homme parce qu'il m'avait blesse, un jeune homme parce qu'il m'avait
fait une plaie. Cain sera venge soixante et dix fois et Lamech septante
fois sept fois." Tr.
with him in tlic ark. And the waters prevailed upon tlie earlli an
hunilrcd and fifty ilays " (Gen. vii. il, 12, 17, 19—24).
There are some observations which it is in the liighesl degree important
to make on this narrative. The distinction between clean and uticlcan
animals proves that the species taken into the ark were only those useful to
man, and capable of domestication, for to these only, does the division
into two such classes, apply among the Hebrews. The manner in which
the deluge was brought about, an idea quite distinct from the fact itself,
is related in accordance with the crude notions on physical science
which were current with the contemporaries of Moses ; and here the
wise words of one of the most eminent catholic theologians of Germany,
Dr. Reusch, are particularly applicable, "God gave to the writers of
the Bible a supernatural inspiration, but the object for which this
supernatural inspiration was given was, as in all revelation, the teaching
of religious truth, not of secular science; and we may, without trenching
on the respect due to these sacred writers, without weakening the truth
of divine inspiration, freely admit that in secular, and consequently in
physical science, these writers were not above the level of their contem-
poraries ; and of their
that they were liable to the errors of their time
nation . Moses was not raised by revelation above the intellectual
. .
level of his time and further, nothing proves to us that it was possible
;
for him to raise himself above that level by study or thought."*

Finally, the expressions used by the author of the book of Genesis, if
interpreted by comparison with other similar expressions, will not
necessarily lead us to suppose that he intended to mean that the deluge
was and in the literal sense of the word, universal. The words,
really,
"all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered,"
and "all flesh died that moved upon the earth," are not stronger than
the words of the same author, And the famine was over all the
'
'
"
face of the earth ;" "and all countries came to Egypt for to buy corn
(Gen. xli. 56, 57). "This day will I begin to put the dread of thee
and the fear of thee upon the nations that are under the whole heaven "
(Deut. ii. 25).
It is quite clear that the expressions in these last three passages are
not to be understood literally, that Moses did not intend to convey the
idea that Joseph's famine extended to China, or that the red men of
America were to be in fear of the Jews. And we may without violence
to the sacred text extend the same limited interpretation to the account
of the deluge. We" shall see as we proceed whether the limitation
should be carried even farther.
2. "And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the
La Bible et la NatiiTe, French Translation, p. 27.

—
THE CONFUSION OF TONGUES. 7
cattle that was with him in the ark, and God made a wind to pass over
the earth, and the waters assuaged. The fountains also of the deep and
the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was
restrained and the waters returned from off the earth continually and
; :
after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.
And the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat
. . . And it . . .
came to pass at the end of forty days that Noah opened the window
of the ark which he had made and he sent forth a raven, which went
:
forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth. Also
he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters were abated from oft
the face of the ground but the dove found no rest for the sole of her
;
foot, and she returned unto him into the ark, for the waters were on the
face of the whole earth then he put forth his hand, and took her, and
:
pulled her in unto him into the ark. And he stayed yet other seven
days ; and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark and the dove ;
came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive ler.f
pluckt off. So Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the
earth " (Gen. viii. i — 4, 10).*
On quitting the ark with his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japhet, and
their wives, Noah sacrificed to the Lord, who made a covenant with
him and his race, and commenced to cultivate the earth. His posterity
was very numerous, for he lived three hundred and fifty years after the
deluge, and died at the age of nine hundred and fifty years.
Section HI. The Confusion of Tongues.

1. The family of Noah multiplied rapidly ; but from this time the life
of man was much shortened, and as a rule did not exceed our present
average. Shem, nevertheless, (and probably also his brothers) lived on
during many centuries ; and according to the testimony of Holy Scrip-
ture, the family whence Abraham sprung (thanks no doubt to the tem-
perate habits of patriarchal life) enjoyed up to his time far more than
the ordinary length of human life.
2. All men being of one family still used the same language. Some
generations after the deluge the mass of the descendants of Noah, who
had become very numerous, had fixed their dwellings on the immense
plains watered by the Tigris and Euphrates, in the countiy originally
called Shinar, that is in the Semitic idiom, "the land of the two
rivers." Proud of their numbers and strength, they believed themselves
all powerful, and their insolent audacity led them to defy God himself.
* On the Bible narrative of the Deluge and its relations with the
facts of science, see the recent essay of the Abbe Lambert, Le Deluge
Mosaiq2u\ Hiistoire, et la geologic. Paris, 1868.
—
S ANCIENT HISTORY OI' riir: EAST.
"They said one to anotlici-, 'Go to, let us build us a city and a tower
whose lop may reach unto heaven,'" (Gen. xi. 4). But (lod puuislied
their |irideby confusint^ tlieir laiiiûage. No longer al)Ie to understand
one another, they were conipelleil to dis]ierse, each family or group of
families, carrying with it the new language, from that time to become
its own, and whence the itiioms, science now attempts to classify accord-
ing to their analogies, are descended. Thus were formed the three great
raceswho have peopled the world —the children of Ham in parts of Asia
and in Africa, of Shem in Asia, and of Japhet in Europe. Tlic Tower
remained unfinished, and was called Babel, that is, "confusion," on
*
account of the confusion of languages which took place there.
The confusion of tongues and general dispersion of mankind are
3.
tobe placed, according to the natural sense of a passage in Scripture
which has afforded much exercise to the sagacity of commentators, in
the time of Peleg the fifth from Shem, and about the time of his birth,
because that name, which means division, was given him in commemo-
ration of that event. Nothing, however, in the Bible forbids us to
suppose that some families had already separated themselves from the
mass of the descendants of Noah, and had gone to a distance and formed
colonies apart from the common centre, while the giêater number of
the families destined to repeople the earth still remained vmited.
CHAPTER II.
TRADITIONS PARALLEL TO THE BIBLE STOR Y.

Chief atitJiorities. — Ph.
Buttmann, Alythologie oder gesainvielte Abhaitd-
lungeti iiber dieSagen des Altert/mms, vol. i. De Beauvoir Priaulx. —
Qitastiones Mosaica; or, the Book of Genesis compared with the re-
mai7is of ancient religions. —
London, 1842. Cantu, Histoire Univer-
selle, vol. i. —
L'Abbe Darras, Histoire de VEglise, vol. i. Luken, —
Traditions de Vhitmanitetraduit far Vander Hcegen, Bruxelles, 1862.
— De Rougemont, Le Peiiple primitif vol. i.
Section I. The Creation— The Fall— and the

Antediluvian Patriarchs.
The Bible narrative, which we now resume, is not one isolated
I.
taleunconnected with the traditions of other nations, and proceeding

only from the pen of Moses. It is on the contrary', as we have already
said, the most complete and authentic fomi of a grand primitive tradi-
* See page 23.

TRADITIONS OF VARIOUS NATIONS. 9
tion, which can be traced back and

to the earhest ages of humanity,
has originally been common to all races and been
all people, and
carried all over the world, by the dispersion of these races on the
surface of the earth. In his narrative of this history the Hebrew legis-
lator has faithfully reproduced the ancient memories preserved from age
to age among the Patriarchs, and, Ijy a special dispensation of Provi-
dence, favoured by the isolated and nomadic life led by the family of
Abraham, less corrupted among them than among the sun-ounding
nations. He has, assisted by the light of inspiration, restored their true
character to facts elsewhere frequently obscured by polytheism and
idolatry ; but, as St. Augustine has said, without attempting to make
the Hebrews a nation of scholars, either in ancient histoiy, or in physics
and geology. Let us now seek in various parts of the world, among
people spread over the most distant latitudes, the scattered fragments ot
this primitive tradition, which the Mosaic narrative has taught us how
to piece together.
We shall find in one place or another all its essential features, even
those parts of the tradition that are difficult to understand literally,
and where we may be allowed to suppose allegorical and figurative

expressions. But the search presents difficulties, and must necessarily
be restricted by the severest rules of criticism. Otherwise we may be
in danger of receiving, like some indiscreetly zealous defenders of Holy
Scripture, legends arising from more or less direct communication, from
a sort of infiltration of the Mosaic narrative, in place of those ancient
and genuine traditions which coincide in a most striking manner with
the sacred story. It is necessary then before all, and for our greater
security, to leave out everything that comes to us from nations on

whose traditions, Jewish, Christian, or even Moslem writings, may be
suspected of having exercised an influence. It is necessaiy to select
traditions of proved antiquity founded on ancient written monuments ;
and when savage nations are in question, who have no books, to admit
only such as have been collected by witnesses worthy of entire belief,
and prior to the arrival of any missionary.
2. And first, among many people, we find the idea that man was
formed of the dust of the earth. The Greeks in their legends repre-
sented Prometheus as playing the part of a demiurgus or secondary
Creator, who moulded from clay the first individuals of our species, and
gave them life by means of the fire which he stole from heaven. In
the cosmogony of Peru the first man created by the Divine power was
called Alpa Camasca " animated earth." Among the tribes of North
America, the Mandans believed that the Great Spirit fonned two
figures of clay, which he dried and animated by the breath of his
mouth, the one received the name of the " first man," the other that of
"companion." The great God of Otaheite " Toeroa " made man of
lo ANCIENT HISTORY OF TIIK EAST.
red c.-wth; nud llie Dyacks of Borneo, stubhornly opposed to nil Moslem
iiilhiLMices, repeated from jêneration lo generation, that man had lieen
formed of earth.
The religion of Zoroaster is the only one among the elaborate re-
whieh admits the creation of man by
ligious sy.slems of the ancient worUI
the exercise of the almighty power of a iicrsonal tlod, distinct from
primordial matter. Tiie fundamental ideas of the pantheistic and
emanative theories which were the l)asis of all religion in Chakhva and
in Egypt, as well as in India, left everything uncertain as to the creation
of mankind.
Men, as well as all other created beings, were supposed to have
issued from the very substance of the Deity —a substance hardly dis-
—
tinguished from the matter of the world and they came into being
spontaneously, as successive emanations were developed, not by a free
and predetennined action of creative will and those who held this
;
faith gave themselves little trouble to define, except under a symbolical

and mythological form, the why and wherefore of the emanation.
3. Zoroastrian Mazdeism alone, among the nations of the ancient
world, preserved the idea of the original sin and of the fall of the human
race. The sacred book called Bundehesh contains a story of the temp-
tation of the first human pair, almost exactly like that of the Bilile, in
which all the essential features are found, even to that of the tempter
having assumed the form of a serpent and nevertheless it is no more
;
possible that the Bundehesh has borrowed from the Bible, than the
Bible from Zoroastrian religion. We shall give this story further on in
that chapter of our manual in which we explain the system of the

religious legislator of the Persians.
We should seek in vain for the same belief am.ong the Egyptian,
Chaldean, or Indian priests. Doubtless as Pascal has so eloquently
said, "The problem of our existence is complicated in this dark abyss,
and it is as impossible to imagine man without this mystery, as for man
himself to understand it ;" but the doctrine of the fall and of original
sin is one of those against which human pride has constantly revolted,
and from which it has first tried to escape. And so, everywhere, the
primitive tradition as to the first step of humanity has been the first to
be obliterated. As soon as men have felt the sentiment of pride arise,
which their progress in civilisation, their conquests in the material
world, inspired, they cast off that All religious philosophy
tradition.
which has arisen beyond the limits of the revelation preserved among
the chosen people, has rejected the doctrine of the fall. And, indeed,
how was it possible for such a doctrine to agree with the dreams of
pantheism and of emanation. And thus the tradition of the fall of our
first parents has not been preserved beyond the Zoroastrians and the
Mosaic narrative, except among some savage nations whose miserable
TRADITIONS OF VARIOUS NATIONS. ii
condition hail made them still feel all the consequences of the fall.
Thus the inhabitants of the Caroline Islands, in the legends which the
first European navigators collected from them, said, " In the beginning
there was no death, but a certain Erigiregers, who was one of the evil
spirits, one of the Elus Melabut, and who was aggrieved by the happi-
ness of mankind, contrived to get for them a sort of death from which
they should wake no more."*
The Hottentots also said that "their first parents had committed so
great a fault, and so grievously offended the supreme God, that he had
cursed both them and their posterity, "t
3. But if the doctrine of original sin and of the fall is, of all the facts
in the Mosaic narrative, the one least found among the traditions of
other nations — if this is the point where the Christian should recognise
most marks of divine inspiration as bearing most directly on
clearly the
the instruction which Holy Scripture is designed to give us, as to our
origin, our destiny, and our duties —
the circumstances with which Moses
relates the fault which brought about that fall, are nevertheless found
divested indeed of all meaning, without moral signification, and inter-
mixed with entirely material ideas, in the most ancient legends of many
people. It is in fact impossible not to recognise a close connection in
their origin, between the forms though not between the ideas, of the
biblical tradition of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and a
series of ancient myths common to all the branches of the Arian race,
to which a learned German, Adalbert Kuhn, has devoted a book of the
highest interest. J
Wespeak of those containing the idea of the discovery of the use
of and of the water of life they are found in their most ancient
fire, ;
state in the Vedas they have passed, more or less modified by the
;
lapse of time, to the Greeks, Romans, Slavonians, Iranians, and

Indians. The fundamental fact of these myths, which are complete
only in their most ancient forms, represents the Universe as an immense
tree, whose roots embrace the earth, and whose branches form the
vault of heaven. The fruit of the tree is fire, indispensable to the life
of man, and also the material symbol of intelligence ; from its leaves
distils the water of life. The gods have reserved for themselves the
possession of fire ; it falls sometimes to the earth as lightning, but
man cannot produce it for himself. He, who like the Greek Pro-
metheus, discovers the means of producing fire artificially and gives
* Histoire Generale des Voyages, vol. xvii.

+ KoLBE, Description du Cap de Bonne Esperance, vol. i.
% Die Berabkuuft des Fetters tind des Goftertraitks. Berlin, 1859.

See also some important articles by M. F. Baudry in the Revtie Ger-
maniqtie, 1861.
it to other men, is an impious being who lias robbed the sacred tree of
its forbidden fruit ; he is accursed, and llie wrath of the gods pursues
him and his race.
The analogy between the form of these myths, and that of the Bible
story, is very close. It is in fact the same tradition, but perverted to
another meaning to symbolise the introduction of material progress,
instead of applying to a fundamental principle of moral government,
and further disfigiu-ed by that monstrous conception, too common in
Paganism, which represents the Deity as a formidable power, and a
jealous enemy of human happiness and progress. The spirit of eiTor
had altered among the Gentiles the mysterious remembrance of the
event which decided the lot of humanity Moses reproduced it in the
;
form evidently preserved among the Hebrews, the same form as among
the Arian nations, —
in spite of the alteration in sense but he restored —
to it its true meaning, and caused it to reassume its solemnly instructive
character.
4. we have been advancing on uncertain ground and in con-
So far
stant danger of falling into error. The lights of the primitive traditions
which we have been able to catch from right and left, have been so few
and far between, that it would ha%e been wiser not to tread that road,
had we not been sure of soon entering on a plainer path. But we have
now In place of a few isolated tales, scattered
reached solid ground.
links of a chain is likely to be contested, we now come
whose unity
suddenly on a multitude of concordant proofs, which, coming from the
four winds of heaven, arrange themselves so as to put beyond doubt
that these stories were identical in the early ages of the world.
In the number given by the Bible for the antediluvian patriarchs, we
have the first instanceof a striking agreement with the traditions of various
nations. Ten are mentioned in the Book of Genesis, and a remarkable
concidence gives the same number, ten, in the legends of a great number
of people, for those primitive ancestors whose history is lost in a mist of
fable. To whatever epoch they carry back these ancestors, whether
before or after the deluge, whether the mythical or historical character
number ten,
prevails in the picture, they are constant to this sacred
which some have vainly attempted to connect with the speculations of
later religious philosophers, on the mystical value of numbers. In
Chaldsea, Berosus enumerates ten antediluvian kings, of whom we shall
speak in the chapter on the history of Babylon, and whose fabulous

reign extended to thousands of ordinary years, forming ten cosmic days.
The legends of the Iranian race commence with the reign of ten
Peisdadien kings, "men of the ancient law," who lived on "pure
Homa (water of life), and who preserved their sanctity." In India we
meet with the nine Brahmadikas, who with Brahmah, their founder,
make ten, and who are called the Ten Petris or Fathers. The Chinese
—
TRADITIONS OF THE DELUGE. 13
count ten emperors, partakers of the divine nature, before the dawn of
historical times. And finally, not to multiply instances, the Germans
and Scandinavians believed in the ten ancestors of Odin, and the Arabs
in the ten mythical kings of the Adites, the primordial people of their
peninsula. Such an agreement cannot be accidental, and must lead us
back to a common origin for all these traditions.
Section II. The Deluge.

I. The one tradition which is really universal, among those bearing on
the history of primitive man, is that of the Deluge. It would, perhaps,
be too much to say that it is found among all people but it occurs;
among all the great races of the human species, with one important
exception, the black race, among whom no trace of the tradition has
been found, either among the African tribes or the populations of
Polynesia. This absolute silence of a whole race as to the memory of
an event so important, in the face of the unanimous voice of all others,
is a fact which science should carefully note, for it may involve most
important consequences.
Faithful to the plan which we have laid down, we shall pass in
review the chief traditions of the deluge, collected from the various
branches of humanity. Their agreement with the Bible narrative, will
clearly prove their original unity, and we shall see that the tradition is
one of those which date from before the confusion of tongues; that it
goes back to the earliest ages of the world, and can be nothing but
an account of a real and well-authenticated fact.
But we must first eliminate some legends which have been erroneously
connected with the Biblical Deluge, whose essential features however
compel sound criticism to reject them. They refer to merely local pheno-
mena, of an historical date, relatively very near our own. Doubtless
the tradition of a great primitive cataclysm may have been confused with
these stories, and have led to the exaggeration of their importance ; but
the characteristic features of the recital given by Moses are not found in
them, and this fact clearly shows, even under the legendary form of the
traditions, and local character. To class traditions of
their restricted
with those which really refer to the deluge, would be to
this nature
weaken rather than strengthen the argument to be drawn from the
concurrence of the latter.
Such is the character of the great inundation placed by the historical

records of China, under the reign of Yao. It has no real connection
with, and not even any resemblance to, the Biblical deluge ; it was
an event purely local, and its date even can be determined as long
subsequent to the commencement of historical times in Egypt and
Babylon. The Chinese scribes mention Yii, a minister ami engineer
engaged in re-estabHshing tlio water courses, elevating the banks,
digging canals, and regulating the taxes of all the provinces in China.
A learned Sinologue, Ivlouard Biol, has proved, in a memoir on the
changes in tlie lower course of the Hoang Ho, that this catastrophe
arose from frecjucnt inundations of this river. The primitive Chinese
settlements on its banks had suffered much from these overflows. The
works which Yu carried out were only the commencement of the
embankments necessary for restraining tlic water, and which were
continued in after ages.
Not less clear is the local character of the legend of Bochica related
bj the Muyscas, ancient inhabitants of the province of Cundinamarca,
in Sout'h America, though the fabulous element is here in greater pro-
portion to the historical foundation. Huythaca, wife of the divine man
Bochica, gave herself up to abominable sorceries, to cause the river
Funzha to leave its bed. All the plain of Bogota was inundated, men
and animals perished in this catastrophe, a few only escaped by reaching
the high mountains. The tradition adds that Bochica broke open the
rocks which form the valley of Canoas and Tequendama, to allow of the
escape of the waters afterwards he re-assembled the dispersed people
;
of the Muyscas tribe, taught them the worship of the sun, and died.
2. Of all the true traditions relative to the great deluge, by far the
most curious is that of the Chaldreans, made known to the Greeks

by the historian Berosus, and which will be found at length in the
chapter on the Babylonians. It is a story more exactly parallel to that
of the Bible than any other, omitting no characteristic particular in the

detail, even to the birds sent out of the ark. It must be evident to
anyone who compares the two narratives, that they were one up to the
time when Abraham went out from among the Chaldseans, to journey to
Palestine. But in the Chaldcean cosmogony, the tradition embodies no
moral lesson, as does the Bible narrative. The deluge is but an acci-
dental event, a sort of fatal accident in the history of the world, in
place of being a punishment sent for the sins of mankind. The man
chosen by heaven to escape the deluge is called by Berosus, Xisuthrus, a
name the original fomi of which we do not know, and therefore cannot
guess its meaning. The Chaldaean legend adds one be incident, not to
found in the Bible: — Xisuthrus, warned
by the gods of the approaching
deluge, buried at Sippara, the city of the Sun, tables, on which were
engraven the revelation of the mysteries of the origin of the world, and
of religious ordinances. His children dug them up after the deluge,
and they became the basis of the sacerdotal institutions of Chaldaâ.
On the other hand, the original monuments and texts of Egypt, amidst
all their speculations on the cosmogony, do not contain one single, even
distant, allusion, to the recollection of a deluge. It is true that the
religious theories of the Egyptians said much more on the origin of the
Universe, and of celestial bodies, than of the creation, and the early days
of the human race. According to a passage in Manetho, open however to
much suspicion as interpolated, Thoth or Hermes Trismegistus, had
himself inscribed on tablets, before the deluge, in hieroglyphics and in
the sacred tongue, the elements of all knowledge. After the deluge, the
second Thoth translated the contents of these tablets into the vulgar
tongue. This is the only allusion to the deluge which can be iM<xluced
from an Egyptian source. Manetho has no mention of it in his
Dynasties, the only authentic part of his work we now possess. The
absence of this tradition from among the myths of the Pharaonic reli-
gion, rendersit probable that this was only a recent foreign introduction,
and, without doubt, of Asiatic and Chaldsean origin. So the Siriadic
land where, according to the passage in question, the columns of hiero-
glyphics were placed, may no other than Chaldsea.
well have been
This tradition, though not found was current as a popular
in the Bible,
tale among the Jews at the commencement of the Christian era— a cir-
cumstance which confirms our supposition, as the Hebrew people may
have received it during the Babylonian capti\aty. Josephus tells us
that the patriarch Seth, unwilling that the wisdom and astronomical
discoveries of the ancients should perish in the double destruction of the
world, by fire and by water, which Adam had predicted, set up two
pillars, one of brick the other of stone, on which were engraven records
of this wisdom, and which still remained in the land of " Siriad."*
Thetradition of the deluge, in less exact confonnity indeed with the
Mosaic record than that of Chald?ea, but still preserving all essential
points, and clearly characteristic, exists in the most ancient recollec-
tions of all the branches of the Arian or Japhetic race, without excep-
tion. We
shall give the versions peculiar to the Indians, Iranians, to
the Celts and Slavonians in the chapter on the primitive Arians, on
their organisation and religious ideas. The importance of the tradition
of the deluge among all the Arian people, is the greater when we re-
member that the name of "Noah," unlike those of the other primitive
patriarchs, bears no appropriate meaning in any of the Semitic idioms,
and appears to derive its origin from some one of the languages of the Arian
stock. Its fundamental root is Na, to which, in all the languages of
the latter race, is attached the meaning of water— vaav, to flow, vafia
water, vtjxav, to swim ; Nympha, Neptunus, water deities. Nix,
Nick, the Undine of the northern races. It seems then to have been
applied by tradition, precisely on account of the deluge, to tliat righteous
man who was spared by the Divine will, and may consequently be
Jos. An^., I, 2, 3.
—
i6 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.

compared to the name Ogyges, embodying a similar idea, which one of
the forms of the Greek legend connects with the deluge.
This observation on the probability of an Arian origin for the name
Noah, makes it easy to see why we find it, with the slight modification
of a reduplication of the first syllable, in that of the King Nannaclius,

*
under whom the Phrygian tradition placed the deluge.
The memory of this eventhad a great place in the legends of Phrygia;
the city of Apamea, drew from it its surname of " Kibotos " or "Ark,"
professing to be the place where the ark rested. Al.so the history of
Noah, with liis name, was inscribed on certain medals which issued
from the mint of Apamea in the third century of our era, when Christian
ideas had spread over all the Roman world, and began to infuse them-
selves into the minds of those even who remained attached to Paganism.
3. " It is a fact well worthy of remark," says M. Maury, "to meet
in America with traditions relative to the deluge, infinitely closer to
those of the Bible and the Chaldrean religion than those of any people
of the ancient world. We can hardly admit that the emigrations which
certainly took place from Asia into Northern America, by the Kurile
and Aleutian Islands, and which have taken place again in our own
days, could have carried such remembrances, for no trace of them has
been found among the Mongolian and Siberian populations,! who mixed
with the aborigines of the New World. .No doubt some American
.
nations, the Mexicans and Peruvians, had attained, at the time of the
Spanish conqviest, to a very advanced social state. But that civilisation
had its own peculiar and distinctive character, and seems to have
developed itself on the soil where it flourished. Many very simple
inventions, such as scales, for example, were unknown to these nations,
and this fact proves that they derived their knowledge neither from
India nor Japan. The attempts which have been made to discover in
Asia, among the Buddhists, the origin of Mexican civilisation, have not
as yet led to any satisfactory conclusion. Moreover, had Buddhism
penetrated into America, which seems at least doubtful, it could not
have carried with it a story not to be found in its books. The cause of
the likeness of the diluvian traditions of the people of the New World to
those of the Bible, remains stillan unexplained fact." This avowal,
from the pen of a man of immense learning, and who, in the very book
whence we borrow our quotation, attempts to destroy the authority of
the Mosaic narrative of the deluge, is doubly valuable. J
But to us this fact, inexplicable to M. Maury, is capable of a very
* SuiD. V. 'NavvaKog.
t The tradition of the Deluge is nevertheless found very distinctly
among the Calmucs Malte Brun, Precis de Geographic, vol. Ix.
;
X Art. 'Deluge,' EncyclopMie Moderne.

simple, and the only possible explanation. It clearly proves that the
tradition of the deluge is one of the oldest of humanity, a tradition so

old as to be anterior to the dispersion of the human families, and to
the first developments of material civilisation ; and that the red races,
the people of America, brought it with them from the common cradle of
our species, to their new abodes, at the same time that the Semites,
the Chaldaians, and the Arians carried it, each one, to its own new
settlement.
Among the American legends on the deluge, the most important
are those of Mexico, as they existed in a written and definite form,
previous to any contact with Europeans. Don Fernando d'Alva Ex-
tlilxochitl, in his history of the Chichimeques entirely founded on
native documents, says, that according to the traditions of that people,

the first age called Atonatiuh, that is, "The sun of the waters," was
terminated by a universal deluge. The Noah of the Mexican cataclysm
is Coxcox, called by some people Teo Cipactli, or Tezpi. He saved
himself with his wife Xochiquetzal in a bark, or according to other
traditions a raft of cypresswood. Pictures representing the deluge of
Coxcox have been found among the Aztecs, the Miztecs, the Zapotecs,
the Tlascalans and the Mechoacaneses. The tradition of the last-
named people in particular bears a yet more striking resemblance to
the Biblical narrative. It is said that Tezpi embarked in a spacious
vessel with his wife, his children, and many animals, and such seeds as
were necessary for the subsistence of mankind. When the Great Spirit
Tezcatlicopa ordered the waters to subside, Tezpi sent out of the ark a
vulture. That bird, which lived on dead bodies, did not come back, on
account of the great number of corpses scattered on the recently dried
earth. Tezpi sent other birds, among whom the humming bird alone
returned, holding in its mouth a branch with leaves. Then Tezpi

seeing that the soil was beginning to be covered with new verdure came
out of his ship on the mountain Colhuacan.* According to another
tradition, current among the Indians of Cholula (and related in a
manuscript now in the Vatican, by Pedro de los Rios, a Dominican
monk, who in 1566 copied in the counti7 all the hieroglyphic pictures
which he could procure),t before the great inundation which took place
4,800 years after the creation of the world, the country of Anahuac was
inhabited by giants ; all those who did not perish were transfoiTned
into fish with the exception of seven persons who took refuge in some
caverns.
The Peruvians, whose civilisation was not below that of the Mexicans
* Humboldt, Monuments des Peiiplcs indigenes de I'Americjue,

vol. ii., p. 77.
t Humboldt, vol. i., p. 144.

c
l8 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
also had a tradition of the dehige, and placed that event under King
Viracocho, first of the Incas of Cuzco.*
The traditions of those American tribes who remained in a savage
state must, from their very nature, be to a certain extent open to doubt.
As they did not exist in a written form tliey were not secure from
foreign influence ; they were collected only in later times, when the
tribes had long been in contact with Europeans, and when many an
adventurer who had lived among them might have introduced new
elements into their traditions. These tales, nevertheless, are worthy of
mention, but must be received with some reserve. In the songs of the
inhabitants of New California there is mentioned a far distant time
when the sea bed and covered the earth. All men and all
left its
animals perished in this deluge, sent by the supreme God Chinigchinig,

with the exception of a few persons who took refuge upon a high moun-
tain which the water could not reach, f
According to Father Charlevoix, the North America relatedtribes of
in their rude legends that all mankind had been destroyed by a deluge,
and that then God, to repeople the earth, had changed animals into men.
The traveller Henry repeats a tradition which he had heard from the
Indians of the lakes. Formerly the Father of the Indian tribes lived
towards the rising sun. Having been warned by a dream that a deluge
was coming to destroy the earth, he constructed a raft on which he
saved himself with his family, and all the animals. He floated thus
many months on the water. The animals, which then had the power
of speech, complained aloud and murmured against him. At last a
new earth appeared, and he stepped down on it with all the creatures,
who thenceforward lost the power of speech as a punishment for their
murmurs against their preserver. %
Mr. Catlin thinks he has found, in the great American tribe the Man-
dans, traditions entirely analogous to those of the Bible, especially a
remembrance of sending out the dove, and of the exit from the ark.
Resemblances of the same kind have been pointed out by other travellers,
but they are too vague to enable us to rely on the details with which
the narrators have suiTOunded them. In the Polynesian islands the
diluvian tradition is not found among the black or Australian race, but
among the Polynesians, originally an Asiatic people, it is met with,
mixed up with incidents borrowed from the ravages of high tides, which
are among the most constant plagues of those islands. The most
* Ulloa, Memoircs sttr la decmiverte de rAmerique. Villebrane,

vol. ii. p. 346 sq.
t DUFLOT DE MOFRAS, Exploration dn territoire de V Oregon,

vol. ii., p. 366 sq.
X Thatcher, Indian Traits, vol. ii. p. 108, et sq.

—
MANKIND AFTER THE DELUGE. 19
striking of these Polynesian tales is from Otaheite, which some features

connect positively with the great traditions of primitive times. But
the diluvian stories from this part of the world are all of that childish
character pervading all the legends of canoe-using races.
This long review, which we now conclude, enables us to state posi-
tively, as we have already said, that the narrative of the deluge is a
universal tradilion, pervading all branches of the human family, always
excepting the black race. A remembrance so precise, and everywhere
in such perfect agreement, cannot possibly be a myth, invented for a
purpose. It must of necessity be the recollection of a real, of a terrible
event, so strongly impressed on the imagination of our first ancestors, as
never to be forgotten by their descendants.
Section 3. The Cradle of Post-Diluvian Humanity.

As to traditions ott this subject, see chiefly "EcV-rXem, ^^Dequelque Legendes
Brahfniniques qui se rapportent an berceau de PEspece humaine,"
Paris, 1856. Renan, " Z?6' Vorigine dti langage," 2nd edit., pp.
—
218 233. Obry, " Le Berceau de Vesplce humaine selon les Iiidiens,
les Ferses et les Hebreux," Amiens, 1838.
I. The place where the Bible narrative states that the ark rested after
the deluge, the starting point for the sons of Noah, is mount Ararat.
From a remote time this name has been moun-
applied to the highest
tain in the Armenian range, which in the course of the various migra-
tions of which that country has been the scene has received the name
of Ararat, after having been called Mount Masis by the indigenous
inhabitants. The greater number of the interpreters of Scripture have
taken this view, but others in the early days of the Christian era pre-
ferred to follow the Chaldeean tradition, after Berosus, who placed the
descent of Xisuthrus in another part of the same range, at the Gordinean
(Kurdish) Mountains.
Nevertheless, if we attentively examine the sacred text, it is impossible
to admit that Moses thought that the Ararat of the deluge was situated
in —
Armenia in fact a few verses further on it is distinctly said that it
was " as they journed from the east" that the descendants of Noah
arrived at the plains of Shinar. This compels us, in searching for the
high land on which the ark rested, to seek it in the chain of the Hindoo
Koosh, or perhaps rather in the mountains where we find the sources of
the Indus. This, too, is exactly the point to which the traditions of
the Indians and Persians converge —the traditions of those two great
ancient nations who have preserved the clearest and most circumstantial
recollections of the primitive ages.
2. In all the legends of India, the oriijin of mankind is placed at
Mount Merou — the abode of the Gods —the pillar that nnites heaven
with earth. Merou is situated north, even with reference to the
primitive location of the Indian Arian tribes in the Punjaub and on
the Upper Indus. This is not a fabulous mountain, unknown to
terrestrial geot^rajihy. Baron Eckstein has proved that it actually
exists, and is situated near the "Serica" of the ancients or the south- —
west of Thibet.
But the indications of the Iranians are still more precise, still more in
agreement with those of the Bible, because as these people have not
migrated so far as others, the tradition of the primitive cradle has not
assumed for them so misty a fonn. The invaluable enumeration ot
the successive halting places of this race, which is contained in the
most ancient chapters of the books attributed to Zoroaster, characterises
"Aryanem Vaedjo,"* the original "starting point " of mankind, and
particularly of the Iranians as a northern region cold and mountainous
whence the Persian race descended southward towards Sogdiana.
There is the centre of the world, the Holy Mountain Berezat of the
Zend Avesta, the Alboraj of the modem Persians, from whose side
flows the not less sacred river, Arvand, whose waters gave drink to the
first men. The illustrious Eugene Burnouf has shown in a perfectly
convincing manner that the Berezat is the Bolor or Belourtagh, and
that the Arvand is the Jaxartes.f
names Berezat and Arvand have been attached in
It is true that the
later times to we find them applied
mountains and rivers far from Bactria,
successively to mountains and rivers in Persia, Media, Mesopotamia,
Syria, and Asia Minor, and with no little surprise we recognise them in
"
the classical names of the " Orontes " of Syria, and the " Berecynthus
of Phrygia. But this is the efifect of the displacement all the
localities of legendary geography underwent in the early ages.
Races
carried with them in their migrations those ancient names to which
their ancient traditions were attached, and bestowed them anew on
the mountains and rivers they found in the countries where they
settled. This happened to the name of Ararat. M. Obry has shown
that the mountain which the Japhetic tribes regarded as the sacred
cradle of humanity originally bore in their traditions the name of
Aryaratha, the origin of that of Ararat, and that it was only in later
times that the Armenians in their migration transported the name to
* RlTTER Erdkunde, vol. viii., 1st part, pp. 29 31, 50 69. — —

" Ilaiig der erste Kapitel des Vendidad in the last vol. of Bunsen's
"Egypt." KlEPERT in the Bidletiii de T Academic de Berlin, Decem-
ber, 1855. Spiegel Avesta, vol. i., p. 4, sq.
t Conimentairc sur le Vacua, vol. i., p. 239 .f;/.
SITUATION OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 21
Mount Masius. Thus the Biblical statement of an Ararat situated east

of the land of Shinar, coincides exactly with the traditions of the Arian
race.
We find, then, the sacred tradition and the most reliable of the
popular traditions are agreed that the mountain mass of Little Bokhara
and Western Thibet was the place whence the human race issued.
There the largest rivers of Asia, the Indus, the Oxus, and the Jaxartes,
take their rise ; the culminating points are the Belourtagh, and the vast
plateau of Pamir, so fitted for sustaining the primitive populations while
still in a pastoral condition, and whose name in its primitive form was
Upa Merou, the land of the summit of Merou. To this locality, too,
point some Greek traditions, particularly the

jxspoiTiqexpression
dv9pu)TTot, which can only mean the " men sprung from Merou." The
legends of other people also, as to the original country of their ancestors,
tend in the same direction, though without reaching the central point,
being partly obscured by the distance they have travelled. The Mon-
golian tribes attach their most ancient legends to the Thian Chan and
to the Altai, the Finnish tribes to the Oural, because these two
chains hide more distant mountains from their view. But if we prolong
the two lines of migration indicated by this tradition, we shall find that
they meet in Little Bokhara.

3. These localities, having been the cradle of post-diluvian humanity,
nations who had preserved the remembrance were naturally led to
place there also the cradle of antediluvian man. Among the Indians,
men it, descended from Mount Merou.
before the deluge like those after
There is found the Outtara Kourou, the true terrestrial paradise. There
also we are led by the Greek paradisiacal myth of the Meropes, the
people of Merou. The Persians described the " Aryanem Vaedjo,"
situated on Mount Berezat, as a paradise exactly resembling that of the
book of Genesis, until the day when the fall of our first parents and the
wickedness of Ahriman the spirit of evil, transformed it into an abode
of insupportable cold. The name also of Eden has been applied at one
time to this region, for it is clearly found in the name of the kingdom of
Oudyana, or " the garden," near Cashmere, watered by four rivers pre-
cisely as was the Mosaic Eden.
It is certain that two of the rivers of Paradise, in the Bible narrative,
are two which take their rise in the mountain mass
of the largest rivers
of Belourtagh and Pamir, the one to the north, the other to the south.
Gihon is the Oxus, still called Djihoun by the people on its banks.
In Pison we must recognise the Upper Indus, and the land of
Havilah, rich in gold and precious stones, which it "compassed,"
seems to be the country of Darada, near Cashmere, so celebrated for its
riches. But must we conclude with some scholars the absolute identity
of the Biblical Eden with the Outtara Kourou and the Aryanem
—

Vaedjo ? Need we suppose, with these critics, that the occurrence of
the names of the Tigris and Euplirates, as the other rivers of Paradise,
are the result of subsequent confusion ? We think not ; it seems to us,
as to M. Bunsen, that in the mind of Moses Eden had a far greater
extent than the Paradise of the Indians and Iranians. If we take
Hterally the indications of the Bible as to the four rivers which went out
of Eden, they clearly mark out a vast region stretching from the
mountains, where to the east rise the Oxus and the Indus, to those
mountains whence on the west flow the Tigiis and Euphrates —
a fertile and temperate land — a really delicious abode, situated between
regions burned up by heat, or wasted by cold. It is there that the
inspired Hebrew legislator most probably thought that our species first
saw the light.
Section 4. The Tower of Babel.
1. The agreement with the Bible which we have hitherto

traditions in
examined have a universal character, and are found among
really
people of various races, and in far distant countries. This is not the
case with the tradition of the confusion of tongues at the Tower of
Babel. The Bible narrative places the scene of this event in the plains
of Shinar or Chaldaea, and the legend is peculiar to the inhabitants of
that country, and to nations who are known to have emigrated from
thence. The story of the Tower of the Tongues " was among the
'
'
most ancient recollections of the Chaldasans, and was one of the national
traditions of the Armenians, who had received it from the civilised
nations inhabiting the Tigro-Euphrates basin. Berosus gives the stoiy
in a form almost identical with that of the Bible, which will be found
further on in the chapter on the Baljylonians.
2. As far as the Chaldseans are concerned, though the tradition itself
remained immutable, its locality was not always the same. A very
valuable gloss, introduced by the LXX. into the text of the Prophet
Isaiah,* leads us to suppose that one version of the story placed the
* Isaiah x. 9. In the LXX. version the expression is used" Calneh,

where the tower was built." The names mentioned are Babylon,
Calneh, Arabia, Damascus, and Samaria.
In the Hebrew the names are Calno, Carchemish, Hamath, Arpad,
Samaria, and Damascus.
The name Carchemish is not found in the LXX., and as that word,
according to Fuerst's Lexicon, means " The Tower of Chemosh," is it
not possible that the reference in the Greek to the "Tower" may
have arisen from a translation, instead of a transcription of the word ?
— Tr.
—
THE TOWER OF TONGUES. 23
"Tower of Tongues" in the city of Calneh, now Nipur, one of the

most ancient cities of southern Chaldcea. down from
This was handed
the most remote ages, when the civilisation of the Tigro-Euphrates
basin had its chief seat in the provinces bordering on the Persian Gulf
But the tradition most generally current among the Chaldseans, in
agreement with the Bible, placed that famous Tower in the immediate
vicinity of Babylon. It is found in the great pyramid of the seven
stages at Borsippa. Some years since an inscription of King Nebu-

chadnezzar was recovered and translated, in which he boasts of having
repaired and completed the tower in honour of one of his gods. * He
calls it "The Tower Seven Stages, the Eternal House, the
of the
Temple of the Seven Iûminaries of the Earth (the seven planets) to
which is attached the most ancient legend of Borsippa, which the first
king built, but without being able to finish the work."
Nebuchadnezzar adds, " Men had abandoned it since the days of the
deluge, speaking their words in disorder. The earthquake and light-
ning had shaken the crude brickwork and split the burnt brickwork of
the revetment, the crude brick of the upper stories had crumbled down
into mere piles." The discovery of this inscription points out to us,
among the ruins still lifting their heads around the site of ancient
Babylon, the still gigantic remains of a monument which, in the days of
Nebuchadnezzar, was believed to be the Tower of Babel. It is this
that the inhabitants of the country still call " Birs Nimrod," "the
* In the translation of this inscription, the author, whose version is

supported by the high authority of M. Oppert, differs from Sir H. C.
Rawlinson, who renders it as follows:
—
"Behold now the building
named 'The Stages of the Seven Spheres,' which was the wonder of
Borsippa, had been built by a former king. He had completed 42
ammas (of the height) but he did not finish its head. From the lapse
of time it had become ruined, they had not taken care of the exits of
the waters, so the rain and wet had penetrated into the brickwork,
the casing of burnt brick had bulged out, and the tenaces of crude
brick lay scattered in heaps ; (then) Merodach, my great lord, inclined
my heart to repair the building. I did not change its site, nor did I
destroy the foundation platform, but in a fortunate month, and on an
auspicious day, I undertook the rebuilding of the crude brick terraces
and the burnt brick casing (of the temple). I strengthened its founda-
tion, and I placed a titular record in the part that I had rebuilt. I set
my hand to build it up, and to finish its summit. As it had been in

former times, so I built up its structure. As it had been in former
days, thus I exalted its head," etc. Raw. Her. ii. 485. It will be seen
that, in Sir H. C. Rawlinson's version, the dainaged state of the temple
is ascribed to defective drainage, instead of, as in the author's and M.
Oppert's translation, to the effects of the deluge. It is necessary to add
that the author is about to devote a special work to the defence of his
opinion. Tr.
tower of Nimrod," and, in the midst of the plains, it still looks
like a mountain. The description given by Nebuchadnezzar of the
state in which he found it, when he undertook the repairs, suits exactly
the state in which it now no more than a prodigious, shapeless
is. It is
mass of sun-dried bricks which have crumbled away into niinous heaps.
2. The decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions has given us an
etymology for the name of Babel different from that which seems to
follow from the Bible text that is —
Bab-ilu, "The gate of the god Ilu."
The derivation Babylon, "confusion," is the result of an alliteration
.inspired by the legend told of the place. But, on the other hand, our
knowledge of the Assyrian tongue has revealed that the name " Bor-
sippa" meant, in that idiom, "the tower of tongues." Babylon is
often designated in the cuneiform texts by a symbolical name, ideo-
graphically written, meaning "the town of the root of languages."
Borsippa by another meaning "the town of the dispersion of tribes."
These names seem almost like medals struck to commemorate the
ancient tradition of the plains of Shinar.
CHAPTER III.
MA TERIAL VESTIGES OF PRIMITIVE HUMANITY.
Section i. — Remains of the Archôlithic Epoch.
Thus far we have been listening to the great voice of humanity, re-
lating, in both sacred and profane tradition, the memories it has
retained of its early ages. We must now address ourselves to an
enquiry of an entirely different nature, in order to gather all possible
information as to the actual conditions of man's primitive existence.
The stones are now about to speak. We shall ask the successive
layers which compose our soil to give up the secrets which lie hid in
them. We shall carefully examine the material traces left by the passage
of races long anterior to history, and thus place by the side of general
facts transmitted by tradition, numerous details of the life of the first
men, as well as of the successive phases of their material progress.
We avail ourselves of an entirely new science which as yet has not
existed twenty years, called "prehistoric archseology. " It is, like
all sciences which are still in their infancy, presumptuous, and claims,
at any rate in the case of some of its adepts, to overturn tradition, to
abolish all and to be the only exponent of the problem of our
authority,
origin. These are bold pretensions which will never be realised.
ARCH.EOLITHIC EPOCH. 25
Without aiming so high, the new science, within the limits of the pos-
sible, has a part to play sufficiently great and brilliant to satisfy its
ambition. To fill up with enormous gaps in tradition, to

certainty, the
give to doubtful statements the authority of facts proved by science this —
is what it will one day accomplish, and has already partly achieved.
Prehistoric archaeology, moreover, is as yet but in its infancy, it still
leaves great gaps, and many problems without solution. There is too
often a desire to establish a system, and many scholars hasten to build
theories on an insufficient amount of observations, finally, all the
facts of this science are not yet established with perfect certainty.
But in spite of these imperfections, inevitable in a study so recently com-
menced, the science of the archaeological vestiges of primitive humanity
has taken rank among the positive sciences. It has already brought
together a great number of absolutely certain facts, and has commenced

to synthetise them. Its researches have already brought to light the
scenes of the rude and savage life of the first men, and from its suc-
cesses up to the present time, we may infer its future achievements.
Henceforth it will be impossible to write a book such as we have under-
taken, and to embody in it the actual state of knowledge, without
giving a place to the results of this study. It is necessary that none but
facts satisfactorily proved should be admitted to such a manual as this,

and therefore we have taken the greatest care to distinguish between
facts proved, and things which still remain doubtful. Unfortunately
the researches of prehistoric archaeology have not yet been prosecuted in
all parts of the globe. In fact at present only in Western Europe, and
more particularly in France and England. This is far from the place
where the human race first appeared, or where our first parents lived.
Here the science presents a most lamentable gap, which no doubt will
be one day filled up. But, as we shall see, the facts proved in Europe,
although they cannot be regarded as absolutely primordial, possess so
high an amount of interest as to prevent our passing them over in
silence.
2. To
find the most ancient vestiges of the existence and industry of
man Western Europe, we must go back to that period which
in
geologists call quaternary, the period immediately preceding the com-
mencement of the present geological epoch. The form of our con-
tinents was then very nearly the same as at present. America has not
changed. In Africa the ocean entirely covered the vast plains which
now form the desert of Sahara, and which everything proves to be the
—
bed of a recently dried sea recently being of course understood in the
sense of the geologists, for whom, in comparison with the periods
employed in the formation of the earth, facts long anterior to history,
are quite modern. The mountain range of Morocco, Algeria, and
Tunis, formed a long peninsula stretching from east to west, connected
with Spain, and tlie Straits of Gibraltar did not tlien exist. A con-
tinent submerged at the same time that tlie Sahara tract was raised,
and of which tlie legend of Atlantis preserves a vague recollection,
has left as its last relics, and as indications of its extent, the Canary
and Azores islands. Sicily was attached to the extremity of Italy, the
British isles to the north of France. In the north of Asia a vast
Mediterranean Sea, which subsequent elevations of the soil have
removed, occupied the whole basin of the Caspian and Sea of Aral,
covered great part of the Steppes situated between the Oural mountains
and the Volga, as well as the country of the Kalmuks, and reached
southward to the base of the Caucasus. Its eastern limits are uncertain,
but according to the observations of travellers, and indications drawn
from the annals of China, it seems to have occupied all the desert of
Gobi to the north of Thibet.
The conditions of climate, and consequently of the Fauna and Flora,
were then entirely different from what they have been during any part
of historical times. After having experienced a degree of heat much
greater than we at present have, our continents about this time
suffered a considerable abatement of temperature, which led to the
"glacial period " of the geologists. The change must have been sudden,
and we need not here seek for its causes, which are very imperfectly
explained. Southern Europe, as far as the latitude of Sicily, had then
much the same appearance as Siberia has now. Immense glaciers
covered the whole of Ireland, Scotland, and Scandinavia. Those of
the Alps advanced into the plains of Piedmont and Lombardy, part of
which was still under water. The glaciers of the Rhone touched the
Jura. All the valleys of the Carpathian, the Balkan, Pyrenees, Apen-
nines,were filled with ice. These conditions of climate were the same
for thewhole northern hemisphere, a great part of which was emerging
from the waters, in consequence of an alteration of level which sub-
merged great tracts of land in the southern hemisphere. Indications
have been found in America of the passage of glaciers not smaller than
those of Europe. Asia shows traces of them, almost as far south as
tropical latitudes, for we see clearly that a great glacier occupied the
place of the upper waters of the Tigris and Euphrates, and moved
towards Assyria.
It was not until a little later, when the effect of the return to a
less rigorous climate had been felt, that vegetation became sufficiently
abundant to nourish the numerous animals characterising the close
of this period of excessive cold. Then the earth, partly cleared
of snow and was occupied by mammoths or maned elephants, and
ice,
the rhinoceros (Tichorinus), whose thick fur enabled them to live in a

very rigorous climate, and who wandered south as far as Spain and
Greece ; aurochs, wild bulls, stags, all larger than those of our days,
CONDITION OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 27
associated with gigantic cave bears, hyenas, and enormous carnivora of

the feline race, larger and stronger than any tiger or lion. At this time
the hippopotamus and beaver inhabited our rivers. Marmots, wild
goats, and chamois, now confined to the summit of the Alps or Pyrenees,
inhabited the lower plains of the Mediterranean. The musk ox, not
now found south of the 60th parallel in North America, wandered in
the plains of Perigord. The reindeer, more arctic still, abounded in
the same latitude. What especially marked this particular epoch,
immediately after the glacial period, was the extraordinary moisture of
the climate, due, no doubt, to the melting of the great glaciers and the
almost unimaginable abundance of water, spread over the northern
hemisphere. Nearly all the elevated valleys were occupied by lakes,
which gradually burst and emptied themselves into
their natural barriers
the valleys. The were enormous, and occupied the entire breadth
rivers
of the valleys through which their successors now run, these valleys being
for the most part only the ancient river beds deeply eroded by the
passage of such masses of water. To imagine the Somme, the Rhine,
and the Rhone of that age, it is necessary to raise the level of the water
of the first, 100 metres, of the second 60, and at least 50 for the last.
3. Such was the aspect of our countries, such were the rigorous con-
ditions which the climate and the monstrous animals still remaining
imposed on the existence of man on his first appearance. The bones of
the animals we have mentioned are found associated with chipped
flints, and other stone implements, evidencing the rudest workmanship,
and the most rudimentary social state, in the sand and fluviatile gravels
of the counties of Suffolk and Bedford, and in the transported beds of the
valleys of the Somme and Oise, and in the sand of the Champ de Mars
at Paris. Of this age also seem to be the bone caverns of the Pyrenees,
which are from 150 to 250 metres above the present level of the valleys,
and some grottoes in Perigord, that of Moustier for example, where the
worked flints resemble those found at Saint Acheul and Abbeville.
The arms and utensils of this primitive age are for the most part pointed
axes of flint, formed by breaking off large splinters. We can easily see
that these flints, whose white coating proves their great antiquity,
were intended to cut, to cleave, and to pierce. When the points
are sharpened it has been by striking off smaller chips. Some of these
stones are scrapers, which were used, no doubt, to clean the inside of
the skins which the savages of the first stone age used as a defence
against the cold.
We may even form a pretty correct idea of their mode of life. The
cultivation of the soil and domestication of animals were unknown ;
they wandered in the forest, and inhabited natural caverns in the
mountains. Those who dwelt by the sea shore lived on fish, which
they harpooned among the rocks, and on shell fish the inland people
;
subsistedon tlio flesh of animals killed by stone weapons. This is
proved by the accumulation of animal bones in the caves, some
of which still bear marks of the instrument used to cut off the flesh.
But the men of this epoch did not confine themselves to eating the flesh
of ruminant, hoofed, pachydermatous, or even carnivorous animals ;
they were very fond of the marrow, as the long bones are almost con-
stantly found to be cracked. This is a taste which has been noticed
among most savages. The men, therefore, whose traces are found in
the quaternary deposits, were savages little above the level of those
now inhabiting the Andaman Islands, or New Caledonia. Their life
was profoundly miserable, but still they were men even in their abject ;
state the divine spark was still in them. Already man was in posses-
sion of fire, that primordial and wonderful discovery which places a
gulf between him and even the most sagacious animal. Let us not
forget also that even the most rudimentary inventions require the
exercise of the greatest intelligence, as being the first, without precedent
or pattern. In the earliest days of mankind it required a greater exer-
cise of genius to contrive the cutting out of a rude stone hatchet, such
as we find in the sand of the fluviatile alluvium, than
it does in our days
to construct the most complicated and ingenious machine. Moreover,

if we look at the same time in our museums at the only arms of
primitive man, and at the skeletons of the formidable animals among

whom he had to live, we must see that, so feeble and so ill-armed, he
needed all the resources of the intelligence with which his Creator had
gifted him, to escape rapid annihilation under such conditions. Imagi-
nation may almost exactly depict the terrible combats of the first men
against the monsters who then lived, but have since disappeared.
Every moment it was necessary to defend their caverns against carnivora,
larger and stronger than those of our age, bears, tigers, and hyenas.
Often surprised by these terrible beasts, they became their prey. By
force of cunning and tact they contrived, however, to conquer carnivora
before whom they were so weak and feeble, and by slow degrees drove
them back before mankind. The savages of the quaternary period dug
pits as traps for the elephant and rhinoceros, and the flesh of these
giants of the animal kingdom formed an important part of their food.
4. A second stage in the development of humanity is marked by an
improvement in the workmanship of the stone implements, but its
zoological character has not varied. The remains of this epoch are
found more particularly in caverns, in those at the foot of the Pyrenees,
and in those of Perigord, where excavations have supplied many
thousand vestiges of men, stillsavage, but more advanced than those
who lived at the date of the formation of the deposits of the valleys of
theSomme and Oise. During this age the great carnivora seem to
have disappeared, thus accounting for the enormous increase of herbi-
PRIMITIVE ART. 29
vora. The mammoth and rhinoceros still existed, but were gradually
becoming extinct. The reindeer abounded in the South of France in
vast herds, which roamed in the pastures of the forests. The men of
this second epoch used bones and the horns of animals, as well as stone,
and their utensils were better formed. All the objects dug up in the
grottoes of Perigord and Angoumoise proved that our species had made
great progress in the manufacture of tools and utensils. Their arrows
are barbed. Some flints are notched, so as to form a sort of saw. Orna-
ments nxerely for show are found made many
of teeth and flints. In
grottoes have been found phalangal bones of ruminant animals hollowed
and pierced with a hole evidently intended to serve -as whistles, for
which purpose they can even now be used. But the men who in these
caves led the life of Troglodytes, not only managed to cut with facility,
they succeeded also with stone tools in carving and engraving ivory and
reindeer's horn, as is proved by numerous specimens. Finally, it is
most remarkable that they had already the instinct of design, and drew
with the point of flint on slate, ivory, or horn, the pictures of the
animals which surrounded them.

The species most frequently delineated in these essays of prehistoric,
one might almost say antediluvian, art are the wild goal and the
reindeer, either singly or in groups. One tablet of slate gives us
an excellent picture of the cave bear. But unquestionably the most
remarkable of all these designs is one on a slab of fossil ivory which
has been discovered in the grotto of the Madelein (commune of Turzac
in the arrondissement of Sarlat). On it is drawn, by a very inex-
perienced hand, and evidently after many failures, a figure, clearly
that of a mammoth, with the long mane which distinguished it
from every living species of elephant. The greater part of rhe re-
presentations thus drawn by men who were contemporary with the
enormous spread of reindeer in our countries are extremely rade.
But there are some which are really works of art. We could never
have expected to find in these works of mere savages such firm designs,
so bold an outline, such truth to living nature, such fidelity in giving to
each animal its own appropriate attributes. Thus art preceded the
earliest development of material civilisation. In that primitive age,
though man had not yet risen above a savage state, he already showed
artistic spirit and a love of the beautiful. This subUme faculty, which
God had given him when He "made man after His image," was
aroused, even before he felt the desire to ameliorate the hard conditions
of his life. Man' had then also a religious belief, for the sitting position
of the skeletons in the sepulchral grottoes of these primitive times, such
as that of Aurignac, incontestably denotes some funeral rites, the origin
of which is necessarily connected with some idea of a future life. From
the first days of his appearance on earth man has borne his head erect
—
and looked up to heaven. " Os homini sublime dedit ccrlumque
tueri."
5. We have as yet spoken only of facts relating to France, for there
only has the study of the remains of mankind previous to the present
geological period, been completely carried out, there alone have the obser-
vations been sufficiently numerous, and properly tested.
In more than
departments of France settlements of the " reindeer age " have
thirty
been found. They have been discovered also in Belgium, Germany,
England, Sjiain, Italy, and Greece, number indeed, but
in smaller
sufficient to prove that in these countries, man appeared
about the same
time as in France, and that he lived at first under the same conditions.
Europe, too, is not the only part of the world where discoveries have
been made to prove the extreme antiquity of the presence of man, his
co-existence with the extinct mammalia, and his original ignorance of
the use of metals. M. Louis Lartet has found in the Lebanon, near
Beyrout, caves, where chipped flints are mixed with the remains
of bones of ruminant animals. In India quaternary deposits at the
foot of the Himalayas furnish axes of the same type as those of the
valley of the Somme. They have also been found in America. A
French naturalist, M. Marcou, has discovered in the States of Missis-
sippi, Missouri, and Kentucky, human bones, stone arrowheads and
axes, in beds below those which contain the remains of the mastodon,
megatheidum, megalonyx, hipparion, and other animals, which have
disappeared from the present fauna. Thus we see that the human
species was already spread over the greater part of the surface of the
globe, during the quarternary geological period. We therefore bring
together under our general head and into one group the two successive
ages of the great carnivora, and of the reindeer, which both belong to
that geological period, and are both characterised by the co-existence
of man with species of animals now extinct under conditions of climate
quite different from the present, and give to these two united ages the
name of the " Archseolithic epoch," an expression taken from the Greek,
and distinguishing the epoch thus named as the most ancient of those
in which man, still ignorant of the art of working metals, exclusively
employed chipped flints for his arms and utensils.
Section 2. Remains of the Neolithic Epoch.
I. The third age in the gradual progress of manmarked by the

is
appearance of polished stone, for it must be noted that, however great

working stone and bone in the preceding
are the evidences of skill in
epoch, no one specimen of any weapon or utensil has been found bear-
NEOLITHIC EPOCH. 31
ing traces of polish. The quaternary- alhivium and the caverns of that
age do not supply polished stone a.xes of flint, serpentine, nephrite, and
obsidian these are found in the peat pits, and in mounds, doubtless of
:
great antiquity, but which are raised above the level of the soil ; in
sepulchres very ancient, but later than the commencement of our geolo-
gical period, and in some entrenched camps, at a later time occupied
by the Romans. They have been found by thousands nearly all over
France, in Belgium, Switzerland, England, in Italy, Greece, Spain,
Germany and Scandinavia.
We must not suppose, however, that an abrupt and sudden change
separated the "reindeer age" from the "polished stone age." They
passed from one to the other by successive gradations, which proves
that the new period of the development of human industry was the
result of slow and continued progress. Modem geology has noticed
an exactly parallel fact, that the transition from the quaternary to
the present geological period was not sudden and violent, but gradual.
It was the result of successive and local phenomena, which gave our
continents their present form, and changed though by slow degrees the
climate so as to lead to the extinction or drive to northern latitudes some
species of animals.
2. The axes of the polished stone period differ in fomi from those
of the Archasolithic epoch, which are sharpened almost to a point,
whereas those of the later age have a broad cutting edge. Some of
the axes of this period had handles of stag's horn, or of wood, whilst
others seem to have been held in the hand itself, and to have been used
as knives or saws, for bone, hom, or wood. With that exception the
nature of the weapons and utensils is the same in both ages, the only
difference being in the skill and perfection of the workmanship, for

there are axes, knives, barbed arrowheads, scrapers, awls, sling stones,
disks, rude pottei7, necklace beads of shells or earth, which belong to
the preceding epoch. Although the name "polished stone age" is
given to the third phase of the prehistoric period, it must not be
imagined that everything belonging to it, is polished, the finish, the
perfection of execution of unpolished weapons and utensils, often show
that they belong to the new period. It will therefore be better to use
the expression "Neolithic" epoch, as sufficient to denote the relatively
recent character of this new age of the stone period.
In different parts of Europe unmistakable remains have been observed
of workshops where the stone implements of this epoch were made, their
being shown by numerous unfinished pieces found side by side with
site
weapons of the same material completely finished. The flints seem

generally to have been chipped to shape in the quarry, and then carried
elsewhere to be polished. There were, therefore, in that age centres
of industry, special manufactories, and as a consequence there must have
been commerce. The people who manufactured arms and utensils on so
large a scale could not have lived in a complete state of isolation, or they
could not have disposed of the fruits of their labour. They must have
carried them to people who were not in possession of materials so
suitable for tlie purpose, and exchanged them for some produce of the
soil. Thus it is man's requirements established step by step the
that
various relations of sociallife. Axes have been found in Brittany, of
fibrolite, a material which in France is only found in Auvergne and
the neighbourhood of Lyons. In the Isle of Elba a great number of

implements of stone have been foimd, the use of which was certainly
anterior to the opening of the iron mines by the Etruscans, the greater
part of these weapons are made of flint, which is not found on the
island, and must therefore have been brought by sea.
The remains of the animals found with works of human art belonging
to the Neolithic age, agree with other indications in showing that they do
not belong to the quaternary, but to our own geological epoch, and we
are thus on the threshold of historical times. The great camivora, and
pachydermata, such as the elephant and rhinoceros no longer existed.
The Urns {bos primigenius), which was still living at the commence-
ment of history, is the only animal of that age belonging no longer
to our contemporary fauna. The bones found with the polished
stone utensils are those of the horse, stag, sheep, goat, chamois, wild
boar, wolf, dog, fox, badger and hare. The reindeer no longer inhabits
our countries. On the other hand, we begin to find domestic animals,
which were absolutely wanting in the caves of Perigord. It is evident
that the climate of our countries had become what it now is.
3. Every one must have seen in France or in England one of those
strange monuments of enormous rough stones known as Dolmens and
Cromlechs, and which have been long regarded as Druidical altars
or sanctuaries. A careful examination of these monuments has shown
them to be tombs, originally almost always covered by a tumulus, under
which the construction of rough stones was buried. The greater part
of them have been plundered ages ago ; but in the small number laid
bare by the excavations of our days, there has been an entire absence of
any kind of metal. Nothing has been found with the bones and ashes
of the dead, except weapons of flint, quartz, jade, serpentine, and some
earthenware. There are however some few in which articles of
bronze have been found, and this shows that the use of these monuments
was continued down to the period when the use of metals was known.
All indications concur in proving that the Dolmens and Cromlechs of
France were the sepulchres of a race distinct from the Celts who
at a later time inhabited Gaul, and that the Celts aimihilated,
or rather subjugated and amalgamated with themselves, this earlier
race. Many conjectures have been made as to the branch of the
NEOLITHIC EPOCH. 33
human family to which these people belonged, but they are at present
premature, and without solid foundation.
It is not only in France and in England that monuments of this kind
have been found. They have been observed in Syria, in Algeria, and
even in Hindustan. Axes and knives of flint, obsidian, and compact
quartz, which have been taken from the tombs of Attica, Boeotia, Achaia,
and of the Cyclades, are identical with similar weapons found on the soil
of France those which have been found in the various provinces of Russia
;
are exactly of the same type. Scandinavia has its Dolmens, its funeral
mounds, which present a complete analogy to those of France. The bodies
have been buried in the tomb without being burned bronze is found even
;
less frequently in them than in the French Dolmens. The objects in

stone and in bone in these tombs have great variety of fonn, and are of
peculiar delicacy of execution. But a notable portion of the Danish
collections come not from Dolmens, but from peat pits, where the
objects are found in the lowest beds, with trunks of partly decomposed
pine trees, a fact of the highest importance for establishing the antiquity
of the Neolithic age, for this tree has for ages disappeared from the
forests of Denmark, and has been replaced by the oak and beech. Two
circumstances will explain the peculiar degree of perfection attained in
the Scandinavian stone work, —
first, the period of the exclusive use of
stone tools was more prolonged there than in any other part of Europe,
so that human industry had more time to perfect the work ; secondly, the
flint found there is of superior quality, and fractures more readily than
that of other countries.
4. Again, Scandinavia has opened to the study of science other
most curious deposits of the same phase in the histoiy of man. On the
coasts of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, in various places, considerable
quantities of shells of oysters and of other eatable mollusca are found.
These deposits have not been brought together by the waves they are ;
manifestly remains of feasts, whence the name Kjcckken imxddbiger,

kitchen middens, under which they are known in the countiy, they are
often hundreds of yards in extent, and nearly ten feet thick. No metallic
object has ever been met with, but quantities of chipped flints, fragment s
of worked bone and horn, and rude hand-made potteiy the rudeness of
;
the workmanship of these objects resembles the cavern period, the

second age of the Archseolithic epoch. But the style of the weapons
and utensils should not be the only criterion by which to arrive at the
date of deposits of this nature. Above all, the fauna which they disclose
must be taken into serious consideration. Now in the kitchen middens
we meet with no remains of species of a former geological age except-
ing the lynx and urus, both of which have disappeared only since
historical times. No bones of animals which have ceased to inhabit
those countries have been discovered, but indications have even been
D
found of the pig and dog in a domesticated state. Tiic kitchen middens
then must be placed with the most ancient of the Dohnens. If art
nas so nidimentaiy, it is only because the tribes, who have left on the
borders of the Nortli Sea the relics of their rude feasts, were behind
their neighbours, who, more favourably situated, had already begun to
advance on the road to civilisation.
Deposits analogous to the kitchen middens have lately been dis-
covered in other countries. They have been found in Cornwall, on
.the north coast of Scotland, in theOrkney islands, and very far from
these, on the coasts of Provence. The " terramarre " of the banks
of the Po, a mass composed of cinders, burnt wood, worked flints and
bone, —
bones of animals whose flesh seems to have been eaten, frag- —
ments of pottery, and other vestiges of the life of the early ages, show
great analogy with the deposits of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and
seem evidently to have belonged to the same period in the development
of humanity.
5. But the most interesting remains of the Neolithic age, those which
evidence the most advanced state of society and mark the last phase of
the progi-ess of the people of Western Europe before the introduction of
the use of metal, are the lake villages.
In 1853 the unusually low level of the I>ake of Zurich brought to
light the remains of dwellings on piles which seemed of very high anti-
quity. Dr. F. Keller having called attention to this discovery, the
exploration of other lakes was commenced to see if they contained any
similar remains. The investigations, conducted by M. Troyon, were
crowned with complete success. Not only were these lake villages
found in a great number of Swiss lakes, but in those of Savoy,
Dauphiny, of Northern Italy, and even of Greece. The dwellings of
these lake villages were near the banks, constructed on a vast platform
formed by layers of tmnks of trees and poles, bound together by inter-
laced branches, and made solid with clay, the whole supported by piles
driven down in the water. Herodotus exactly describes habitations of
this kind which existed in his time in the lakes of Macedonia.* Modern
travellers have found entire villages constructed in the same way in
New Guinea.
The custom of building dwellings on piles in the midst of the water
was continued in Helvetia and the neighbouring countries for many
centuries, for the objects which have been recovered from these lake
villages belong to veiy different ages. Whilst from the most recent,
utensils —
have been recovered of bronze and iron metals the use of
which determines a new period in the progress of human inventions — in
the others, and by far the greater number, weapons and utensils of
* Herodotus, Book V., chap. 16.

— —
CHRONOLOGY OF THE STONE AGE. 35
polished stone and bone only have been found. In form and workman-
ship, these much resemble the objects furnished by the Dolmens and
peat pits of France, Great Britain, Belgium and Scandinavia, only they
are in greater variety. The animals whose bones have been dredged up
from under the lake villages are the same as still inhabit Switzerland
brown bears, badgers, aurochs, pole-cats, otters, wolves, dogs, foxes, wild
cats, beavers, wild boars, pigs, goats, sheep. The elk, the urus, the auroch
only are wanting among the present fauna of the country, but we know
from written testimony that they were found there at the commencement
of the Christian Thus the lake villages clearly characterise in Western
era.
Europe the close of the Neolithic age, and the people who had built
them continued stiU to live there up to the time when they first
learned the use of metals from more advanced nations. The collection
of objects which the Swiss savants have obtained from their sites prove
also in many ways that even in most ancient times there was a real
civilisation. Pottery was still hand-made, but attained to a great
variety of forms, and exhibited some taste in ornament. The largest
vases served for storing grain forwinter— and wheat, barley, oats, peas,
and lentiles, have been recovered in them. The inhabitants of the
lake villages were therefore given to agriculture, an art absolutely
unknown to the men whose remains are preserved in the caves of
Perigord. They domesticated animals, and they knew the use of the
miU. Finally, in the lake villages of the earliest age shreds of stuffs
have been met with, which prove that, no longer content with skins as
clothing, men even then knew how to spin and weave the threads of
flax.
Section III. Chronology of these Two Epochs.
I. The chronological succession of the different periods of the ex-

clusively stone-using age is thus now positively and precisely estab-
lished. We find there the three first steps of the human race in the
march of civilisation, which the use of metal marked a new
after
advance, and one of the highest importance. Not but what it is quite
possible to exaggerate the state of advancement to which the first use of
metals corresponds. The ancients tell us that the Massagetje,* who
were barbarous in the highest degree, were in possession of metallic
implements, and among the tribes of Ugrian race, the working of mines
certainly commenced a social state but very little advanced.
in In the
Oural and Altai mountains traces have been found of ancient excavations
sometimes more than thirty metres deep. Some negro people, also.
Herodotus, Book I., chap. 201, 215, 216.

know liow to work metals, and even to manufacture steel, and that
without being really civilised. Nevertheless it is incontestable that
the art of working metals has been one of the most powerful agents of
progress, and it is among people whose civilisation is oldest
precisely
that we find this invention known at the earliest date.
Except in the Bible where the individual is specified who first practised
this art, the history of the discovery of metals is among all ancient nations
surrounded by fables. The invention appeared so marvellous and bene-
ficial, that the popular imagination saw in it a gift from the gods. Thus
almost always the pretended inventor who is named is only the mytholo-
gical personification of fire, which is the natural agent of the work. Such
is the Twachtri of the Vedas, the Hephajstus of the Greeks, and the
Vulcan of the Romans. The first metal employed for weapons and
utensils was copper, the ore of wliich is most easily reduced to a
metallic state, and which men soon learned how to harden by an
alloy of tin, so as to form bnjnze. The employment of iron, which is
more difficult to work, marked a new progress in this invention.
2. Every branch of the human race, without exception, has passed
through the three stages of the age of stone, and its traces have every-
where been found. But, though each people and each country present
to the observer the same succession of three ages, corresponding to
three periods of social development, we should greatly err were we to
suppose that these different people passed through these stages at the
same time. There is no necessary synchronism between these three
stages in different parts of the world the stone age is not an epoch
;
which can be chronologically determined, but a state of human pro-

gress which, in different countries, varied enormously in date. Entire
populations have been discovered who, at the close of the last centuiy,
and even in our own days, had not passed out of the stone age. Such
was the case with the greater number of the Polynesian tribes, when
discovered by Captain Cook in the Pacific. A French traveller in
1854 found on the banks of the river Colorado, in California, an Indian
tribe who used weapons and utensils of stone and wood only. The
races of the north of Europe had no civilisation till long after those of
Greece and Italy. The lake villages of Switzerland certainly continued
to exist, after Marseilles and other Greek cities had been founded on the
shores of Provence. All appearances seem to indicate that when in
Europe the Dolmens of the age of stone were first constructed, the
people of Asia had for centuries been in possession of bronze, iron, and
all the secrets of a very advanced material civilisation. In fact, the use
of metals in Egypt, Chaldtea, and China can be traced back to a very
remote antiquity.
As we have already seen, the Biblical tradition mentions a son
of the patriarch Lamech, Tubalcain, as the first who worked in copper
FIRST USE OF METALS. 37
and iron, a statement which carries back the use of metals amont,'
some races for more than one thousand years before the deluge.
The knowledge of the art no doubt spread at first slowly, and for
a long time remained an exclusive monopoly in the hands of some

nations, whose progress was from various causes in advance of that of
others. The Chalybes were already renowned for weapons of iron and
bronze, which they fabricated in their mountains, whilst at the same
time there were nomadic tribes in Central Asia who still remained con-
tented with stone. Moreover positive proofs have been discovered that
the invention of working in metals did not at once cause the disappear-
ance of stone weapons. Metal articles were very valuable, and before
their use became completely general, many people continued for
economy's sake to use for some time the old utensils to which they were
accustomed. Among most half-savage tribes who know the art of
working metals, as do the negroes, the process even in the tribe itself is
a sort of secret, preserved in certain families, transmitted traditionally

from father to son, and never communicated to those who surround
them and buy their manufactures. Everything leads us to suppose that
this was the case during a long succession of generations in the primi-
tive world, and consequently it might, and must, have happened that
some of the swarms of emigrants, who threw themselves first into the
forests of the still desert world, although they started from centres
where some families had already learned to work in metals, knew
themselves only how to make stone implements, and carried with them
no remembrance of the arts of their original and far distant establish-
ments. There is therefore no necessary contradiction to the Bible
narrative, which dates the first discovery of metallurgic art before the
deluge in the fact that the red race of America, which certainly did not
;
separate from the birthplace of humanity on the plateau of Pamir till

after the deluge —
the recollection of which event they preserved—
an-ived a: its last settlement, still using utensils of stone, and that it
invented for itself the art of working in metals, as is proved by the
originality of the character of the work, so totally distinct from that of
the Old World, And this could not only have been the case among the
people of the New World, for whoever studies the ancient method of
working metals must find indications of three distinct centres of inven-
tion, whence the art spread into different countries; —
one, most ancient of
all, that of which the Bible speaks, situated in Asia, —
the second in
Africa, among the black race, where the use of bronze seems never to
have prevailed, and where the nature of the minerals of the country
permitted them to arrive at once at the production of iron, —
the third in
America, among the red races.
There has even occurred in certain cases, and under exceptional
circumstances, a return to the use of stone by people who, at the time
of their emigration, were aware of the use of metals, but had not
entirelyabandoned the usages of a previous state of civilisation. This
seems have been the case with the Polynesian race. These people,
to
as has been proved by the valuable researches of M. de Quatrefages,
were originally Malays, and so far as we can approximately dctennine
the date of their first emigration, it occurred in comparatively modem
times, when we know from positive proof that the fabrication and use
of metals were generally known among the Malay Islands, but without
having entirely superseded the employment of stone utensils. But the
islands where the ancestors of the Polynesians first established them-
selves, in the neighbourhood of Otaheite, and v/here they multiplied
for many ages before spreading over the rest of the Australasian Archi-
pelago, contained no metallic veins in their soil. The secret of metal-
lurgy, even supposing that some of the emigrants possessed it, was in a
few generations lost for want of use, and no recollection was preserved
but of the stone which they had occasion to use every day. So the
swarms of the Polynesian race remained in the " stone age," even when
they came to establish themselves, as in New Caledonia, in countries
abounding in metals.
3. These remarks on the impossibility of considering the "stone
age " as an historical epoch, at a fixed time, the same for all countries,
are applicable to the present geological period, particularly to the
Neolithic or " polished stone " age, certainly very short, and which
perhaps did not occur at all among people who learned early to
work metals ; whilst, on the contrary, among other races it has lasted
thousands of years. But they do not apply to the Archseolithic age,
corresponding to the quaternary period. The changes in the climate of
the globe, and in the elevation of the continents, mark positive and
synchronous epochs in time with determinable limits, although it is not
possible to estimate their duration either in years or in ages.
The glacial period Western Europe, in Asia, and
was simultaneous in
in America. Those conditions of climate and of the superabundance of
water which immediately succeeded it, and in the midst of which we find
the most ancient vestiges of mankind, were common to the whole northern
—
hemisphere, and had ceased to exist ^hadbeen replaced by the present
—
conditions in the most ancient times to which we can follow back
the civilisation of Egypt or Chaldasa. Geological remains do not
—
permit us to suppose and this simple argument is a sufficient one
— that our countries can have been still in that condition of climate
peculiar to the age of the great pachyderms and of the reindeei", when
Asia had arrived at the state in which it now is. The quaternary
period was simultaneous on the whole surface of the globe. But we
i-epeat, the change of climate and of the fauna is anterior to all re-
mains of the most ancient oriental civilisation, to all real history. It

— —
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 39
follows that the remains of human industry which are found in tile
quaternary beds and in caverns of the same epoch, whether in France
or in the Himalayas, certainly belong to primitive humanity, to the
most ancient ages of the existence of man on the earth. They throw
direct light on the mode of life of primitive man, whilst it is only by
analogy that we can draw from the remains of the Neolithic epoch infor-
mation as to ages really primordial, just as we may do from the study
of the life of nations who are still leading a savage life.
Section IV. Prehistoric Arch.ôlooy of the Bible.
1. Do the statements of the Biblical tradition, corroborated by the

universal recollections of mankind, agree with, or contradict, the positive
facts relative only to the material life of the first men, inscribed on the
quaternary beds of the crust of the earth we
take the facts them-
? If
selves in their simplicity, apart from the rash conclusions which some
scholars have drawn from them to suit a preconceived theory, that
—
by no means follows necessarily from them if we examine at the same
time the Bible story with that breadth of historical exegesis which is
admitted by the most severe orthodoxy, and is refused only by those
who would at any price destroy the authority of the Sacred Books no —
contradiction can be found. But as the attempt to prove such a con-
tradiction has been made with marked persistency in a gi-eat number
of books recently devoted to the discoveries of the new science of pre-
historic archaeology, it becomes the duty of the historian to pause and
carefully examine the three questions on which it is possible that gi-ave
difficulties may exist, and where a certain school has pretended to find
that the Bible is contradicted by the discoveries of the remains of fossil

man. These three questions are the antiquity of man, the savage
; —
and miseralale state of the first men of whom traces have been found,
and finally, the absence of geological traces of the Deluge.
2. —
The Antiquity of Man. Undoubtedly positive facts prove that
the antiquity of man on the earth is much greater than has been
inferred from an inexact and too narrow interpretation of the Biblical
narrative. But even if the historical interpretation, always susceptible
of modification, and on which the Church pronounces no doctrinal
opinion, must not be such as is now generally admitted, will the
authority of the narrative itself be in the least shaken ? Will it be con-
tradicted on any one point? Assuredly not, for the Bible gives no fixed
date for the creation of man.
One of the most learned men of our age in oriental literature, and
who was at the same time an eminent Christian, Silvester de Sacy, was
"

in the habit of saying, "There is no Biblical clironology." The wise
and venerable ecclesiastic, who was the oracle of sacred exegesis in
France, M. I'Abbe Le Hir, says also, " Biblical chronology is iniccrtain;
it is left to human science to fix the date of the creation of our species.
The which have been attempted on Biblical chronology rest
calculations
in fact solely on the genealogy of the Patriarchs from Adam to
Abraham, and on the statements as to the duration of their lives. But
first the primaiy element in a real and scientific chronology is absolutely
wanting. We have no means of determining the measure of time by

which the length of each Patriarch's life is computed, and nothing in
the world is more vague than the word "year," when it has no precise
explanation. Moreover, between the different versions of the Bible,
between the text of the Hebrew and Septuagint (whose authority in
chronology is equal), there are, in the generations from Noah to
Abraham, and in the years of life, differences so great that interpreters
may arrive at calculations which differ by more than 2,000 years,
according to the version which they select as their guide. In the text,
as it has come down to us, the numbers are anything but certain they ;
have been subjected to alterations which have rendered them discordant;

alterations the extent of which we cannot estimate alterations whicli,
;
however, need not trouble the mind of any Christian, for the more or
less exact transcription of a number must not be confounded with the
question of the Divine inspiration, which has given Holy Scripture to
teach man his origin, his way, his duty, and his end. Moreover,
besides the want of certainty as to the original reading of the numbers
given in the Bible for the existence of each of the Patriarchs from
Noah to Abraliam, the genealogy of these Patriarchs can be considered
by a good critic only as having the same character as the genealogies
habitually preserved among Semitic people — among the Arabs for
instance —which establish direct affiliation by the enumeration of the
most remarkable personages, omitting many intermediate steps.
These decisive arguments prove that there is no real Biblical chrono-
logy, and therefore no contradiction between that chronology and the
discoveries of science. However distant may be the date to which
researches on fossil man may one day carry back the existence of the
human race (as well as the Egyptian monuments, even now incompatible
with the number of 4,000 years hitherto generally accepted), the narrative
of the sacred books will be neither shaken nor contradicted, for it assigns
no positive date, either for tlie creation of man or for the deluge. All
that the Bible expressly says is, that man was the last creature whom
God placed on the earth, and this the discoveries of science, far from
denying, confirm in the clearest manner.
But while we admit that religion need not limit the freedom of
scientific speculations as to the antiquity of man, we are bound to
CONDITION OF PRIMITIVE MAN. 4I
state that science to, however far it may

can as yet assign no date
carry back, this antiquity. We
have no standard by which to deter-
mine, even approximately, the number of ages which have elapsed
since the time of the first men whose remains have been found in
the quaternary deposits. We are in fact treating of geological forma-
tions, whose rate of deposit may be accelerated or retarded by widely
different causes which we have no means of estimating. Nothing,
even in the present day, is so variable as the rate of deposit of
fluviatile alluvium, like that of the quaternary epoch. And moreover,
the occurrences of that period cannot be compared with those of the
present time, as causes were then in operation on a scale which no
longer exists. So that the hundreds of thousands of years, which some
authors with too lively imaginations have reckoned, from the first traces
of fossil man to our o-\vn times, are really baseless hypotheses, and mere
guesses. The date of the appearance of the human .species, according
to the geological iêcord, is still unknown, and will probably i-emain so
for ever.
3. The miserable Condition of Primitive 2lan. Here again no con-—

tradiction is found between the Mosaic record and prehistoric Archae-
ology. The writers who have attempted to prove a contradiction have

but little studied Christian doctrines, and have lost sight of one
important fact ; the doctrine of the fall. They have believed that the
miserable state of the life of the savages of the quaternary epoch was a
contradiction of the happy and cloudless life of Eden, of the state of
absolute perfection in which the first man issued from the hands of his
Creator. Thus they ignored the great gidf between the Eden life of our
first ancestors, and that of these human races, however ancient they
may be, fixed by disobedience, that original fault which changed the
condition of man and condemned him to painful toil, to sorrow, and
death.
Nothing, however, can be more instructive for the Christian who
sees them by the light of sacred tradition, than the facts brought to
light by geological discoveries among the quaternary deposits. The
condemnation pronounced by the Divine anger is imprinted in a striking
manner on the hard and toilsome life which it is evident that the tribes
scattered on the surface of the earth then led, under the conditions of
climate of that epoch, and in the midst of formidable animals against
whom it was necessary every moment to defend their lives. It seems
that the weight of that sentence fell then, immediately after the fall,
more heavily upon our race than it has since done. Antl when science
shows us the first men who came to our countries, living in the midst of
ice, under conditions of climate analogous to those under which the
Esquimaux now live, —
conditions which up till then had not been pro-
duced in the temperate zone, and which have not since appeared there,
—we are naturally led to recall the ancient Persian tradition, in complete
agreement with the statements of the Bilile, on the subject of the fall
of mankind through the fault of their first ancestor, which places in tlie
first rank among the punishments wliich followed that fault, as well as
death and sickness, the appearance of intense and permanent cold

which man could hardly bear, and which rendered the earth almost
uninhabitable.*
. Wemust not, however, exaggerate this picture. If geological dis-
coveries reveal the hard and miserable conditions of the life of abo-
riginal man, they do not show him at all in an abject state. Far from
this, man in the quaternary age was in full possession of those faculties
which are the sublime heritage of our species. He had high aspirations,
noble instincts, in entire contrast with merely savage life. He believed
in a future state. He was already a thinking, an inventive being ; and
that impassable gidf which the possession of a soul has fixed between
him and those animals who most nearly approach him in organisation,
was then as wide as it ever was to be. Finally, we must not forget that
we have as yet found traces only of thinly scattered tribes who had
launched out into the midst of forests and deserts, who lived by hunting
and fishing, at an enormous distance from the cradle of humanity,
round which were still concentrated the chief settlements of the children
of Adam. Thus though these first adventurous explorers of the " wide,
wide world " were ignorant of agriculture, and had no domesticated
animals, we must not absolutely conclude that the agricultural and
pastoral modes of life did not exist in the more compactly grouped
settlements, naturally more advanced, which had not left their original
habitations. There exists, then, nothing to contradict the Bible state-
ment, which mentions Cain and Abel, the one a cultivator of the soil,
the other a shepherd, in the neighbourhood of Eden, in the second

generation of mankind. To assert that such a contradiction follows
from the discoveries in France or in America, would be to fall into a
mistake, similar to that of confounding the trappers of the backwoods
of Canada, with the agricultural population round Quebec and Montreal.
But besides this, was not the life of those men whose remains have
been preserved in the quaternary deposits exactly in all its details what
the Bible narrative tells us of the first generation of men after leaving
Paradise ? For protection against the cold they had but the skins of
the animals they contrived to kill and this is what the book of Genesis
;
expressly says of Adam and Eve. For arms and utensils they had only
rudely cut stones; and the Bible names the first worker in metal six
generations after Adam, and we know how many centuries these ante-
diluvian generations represent in the Bible narrative. The facts col-
lected by prehistoric Archasology prove that the progi'ess of material
* Vendidad Sadi, chap. i.

UNIVERSALITY OF THE DELUGE. 43
civilisation is the special work of man, and the result of successive in-
ventions. Our Pagan cosmogonies,
sacred tradition does not, like the
assert that the arts of civilisation mankind
were supernaturally taught to
by special revelation from heaven it represents them
; as purely human
inventions, and names their authors shows the gradual
;
progress of our
species to be the work of the free hand of man, fulfilling, most often
unconsciously, the plans of Divine Providence.
4. Tke Deluge. —
This point is the only one on which there is, we
must acknowledge, a serious difficulty. There is however no radical and
irreconcilable contradiction between the Bible narrative and geological
facts but there is a problem, the key to which has not yet been found,
;
—
and on this we can but speculate, the place of the Mosaic Deluge,
among the phenomena which our earth witnessed during the quaternaiy
period.
It now been proved, in a manner rendering discussion impossible,
has
that no one of the three chief deposits constituting the quaternary
strata have, as a merely superficial observation had led geologists
to suppose, been produced by a great universal cataclysm, such as
the deluge must have been, if we understand the expressions of
the Bible literally. These different deposits are the results of partial
and local deluges,produced by similar conditions of climate suc-
cessively m all parts of the earth, but which have not affected the
whole surface, their effects never being visible more than 300 metres
above the actual level of the sea. It is true that if the interpretation
now generally received, which makes the flood universal, as to man
and the regions which he inhabited, not as to the whole surface of the
globe, be admitted, these statements of science will not raise any insur-
mountable difficulties for exegesis, because any one of the partial
deluges, so frequent during the quaternary period, would fulfil the con-
ditions of the delugewhich chastised the iniquities of the human race.
But this is how the difficult problem arises. On one hand we have the
Bible narrative, supported by the universal tradition of all races of
mankind, with one exception, proclaiming the giêat fact of the deluge.
On the other, geological discoveries show man already spread over
nearly the whole surface of the earth in the time of the great camivora
and pachydermata of extinct species ; since which no trace can be
found of a cataclysm so universal as to destroy all mankind. Moreover,
no violent interruption is found since this epoch in the course of the
progress of humanity, which advances step by step towards perfection ;
and the species of animals, then living but now extinct, disappeared
gradually and by slow degrees. Neither of these propositions can be
disproved, and it is therefore necessary to attempt to reconcile them.
But we must repeat that the definite solution has not yet been found,
we can but suggest hypotheses. Three seem possible. We shall
explain them carefully, without pronouncing in favour of either, and
without attributing to them a certainty which they cannot claim.
Tlie fust coiisists in throwing back the probaljle date of tlie deluge, and
regarding it as anterior to the quaternary epoch. The absence of precise
chronology between the deluge and the time of Abraham
in the Bible
renders this possible. This hypothesis rests on the vestiges of tlie exist-
ence of man, which scholars of great merit, M. Desnoyers and the Abbe
.Bourgeois, think they have found in the uppe'- beds of the tertiary strata,
but which, though probable, nevertheless require farther confirmation.
If man had already appeared in our countries at the close of the tertiary
geological period, a sudden, entire, and prolonged interruption separates
these primeval men from those of the quaternary epoch. The Mosaic
deluge may then be identified with that immense irruption of waters
over great part of Europe and Asia which closed the tertiary period,
and produced what geologists know as the northern erratic block phe-
nomena, when floating icebergs carried over all parts of England, the
plains of Germany, and Russia, enormous boulders brought from the
neighbourhood of the Pole.
The second hypothesis is that which has been recently supported by
the Abbe Lambert.^ It consists in regarding the universality of the
deluge as to the men spread on the face of the earth, as comprising

successive events, and in including all the partial diluvian phenomena
of the quaternary period.
And finally, the third limits the universality of the deluge, both with
regard to man and
the extent of terrestrial surface, and would consider
this great fact,which has left such lively remembrances in the mind ot
mankind, as having extended only to the principal centre of humanity,
to those who had remained near its primitive cradle, without reaching the
scattered tribes who had already spread themselves far away in almost
desert regions. It thus explains the absence of all tradition of the
deluge among the black race, whilst all other people are agreed as to
tire event itself. It is certain that the Bible narrative commences by
relating facts common to the whole human species, confining itself sub-
sequently to the annals of the race peculiarly chosen by the designs of
Providence. Tire theory of which we speak, only makes this narrowing
of the story commence at an earlier period than has been usual. The
hypothesis is a very bold one, and discards some universally received
ideas. But we find it sustained by scholars of the greatest merit, and
who are well known as sincere Christians, M. SchcEbelt and M.
d'Omaliusd'Halloy.t
* Le Deluge JMosdiqiie, r/iisioire, et la geologie, Paris, 1868.

+ De du Deluge, Paris, 1858.
I' uitiversalite
X Discours prononcS a la classe des Sciences de V Academic de Belgiqtie,

BriLxelles, 1866.
—
UNIVERSALITY OF THE DELUGE. 45
This theory is supported by one of the most eminent autliorities on

anthropology, as well as by Cuvier, who has
M. de Quatrefages,
expressly taught famous discourse on the " Revolutions du
it in his
(j-lobe," an attempt to prove the agreement between sacred tradition
and geology. An eminent naturalist of the order of Jesuits, the R. P.
Bellynck, without going so far as to adopt it, finally admits that it has
nothing expressly opposed to orthodoxy. This hypothesis is best
received by anthropologists, that is, students of the natural history of
man, because it leaves them gi'cater latitude to explain the immense
changes which have taken place in certain races of mankind, by dating
back the separation of these races from the main stem of the descen-
dants of Adam, and placing it in a period when climatic and atmo-
spheric influences were much more powerful in their action than at
present, because phenomena both teiTCstrial and atmospheric had then
much greater intensity. It is not opposed to the sense which the
poetical expressions in many parts of the Bible permit us to place on
the story of the deluge, many passages in the sacred books can be
brought together, in which the words "all men," "all the earth," are
used, and where it is impossible to understand them literally. An attentive
examination of the first chapters of Genesis, a carefiil weighing of the
words, furnishes indications from which it may be presumed that Moses
did not intend to describe the deluge as absolutely universal, but on the
contrary admitted that some portions of the human race had been pre-
served. " The author of the book of Genesis," says M. Schcebel, " in
speaking of the men who were swallowed up by the deluge, always
describes them as Haadam,' 'Adamite humanity.' Does not this
'
show that he speaks of one single family, not yet divided into different
nations, Goim ?
'
But this division was already known to the human
'
race."
" The author, in the 4th chapter of Genesis, has shown the race of
Cain, living and multiplying, separated from the race of Seth both by
distance and by religion and manners. This family was not then in
the Adamite unity, it was really a people distinct from the race of Seth.
Why, if this distinct people were comprised m the punishment of the
deluge, did not the author say so ? Why did he not in any way imply
it ? The crime which brought the deluge on mankind, as the author tells
us,was an excess of corruption, of depravity, in Ihe sons of "Jehovah,"*
his worshippers. Thus those who knew Jehovah, who invoked his
name, were the cause of the deluge. The descendants of Cain did
not know Jehovah, they never called on His name, for " Cain went out
* It will be well to bear in mind, with regard to this quotation from

M. Schcebel, that the expression is Sons of God (Elohuii) the name
Jehovah does not occur in the passage Gen. vi. 4. Tr.
—

from the presence of Jehovah." What is still more significant is that
when Moses, speaking of Jabal, son of Lamech, says that he was " the
father of such as dwell in tents," the construction of the Hebrew phrase
impMes the praefit, " those who dwell," at the time when the author was
writing.
Moreover the question whether, according to the Bible itself, some
who were not in the ark with Noah may not have escaped the
'deluge, has in ancient times been discussed among Jews as well as
Christians, and the Church has not pronounced formally on the subject.
According to the text of the LXX., Methuselah must have lived six
years after the deluge, whereas the Hebrew text places his death in the
same year as that event. * The statements of the Greek text have been
followed by many Hebrew teachers. Some Christian writers of the
early ages have also adopted it, amongst others chronologers such as
Eusebius. St. Jerome, in his " Questions upon Genesis, " tells us that
in his time this famous difficulty was the subject of many contro-
versies.
5. To resume —Biblical tradition, and the discoveries made by the

researches of modem science on the most ancient remains of man, have
thrown light on the history of the primitive ages of our species, from
two opposite points of view. The Bible has chiefly enunciated the facts
which have some moral bearing, whence religious teaching may be
extracted. Prehistoric archseolog)', from the nature of its only sources of
information, is exclusively confined to material facts. The two domains
of religion and of science here, as everywhere else, adjoin without
* The date of the death of Methuselah, as compared with that of the

deluge, according to the received chronology' of the three principal
versions of Scripture, is as shown in the following calculation :
— : —
THE UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE. 47
encroaching on each other's ground; hut in their points of contact, as we

have shown, sacred tradition and science nowhere contracUct each
other. The dehige is a problem not yet indeed definitely solved, but
there is nothing in the naiTative in-econcilable with science. We
cannot better conclude this difficult chapter than in the words of the
Abbe Lambert :
— " Science has no right to ask from the inspired
writer reasons for all it may discover, for all it may suppose it has
discovered, in the material universe which it studies. All that can
reasonably be asked is that facts proved by science should not be con-
tradicted by Scripture. It is not therefore necessary to prove the
ag7-eement of scientific facts with the sacred text ; it is enough to prove
that there is no incompatibility, no contradiction ; that nothing in the
sacred narrative is contraiy to scientific truth or reason, and that the
discoveries of science may without danger be employed to fill the
vacant spaces in the Mosaic narrative."
CHAPTER IV.
HUMAN RACES AND THEIR LANGUAGES.
Chief authorities for General Ethnography —

Memoirs of the Ethnologiral
Societies of Paris and Neiu York. —
Publications of the .Socicte Ethno-
logique de Paris. —
Pritchard, Researches into the Natural History of
Manki7id. —Pickering, The Races of Man and their Geographical
Distribution, London, 1851. —
Latham, The Natural History of the
Varieties of Man, London, 1850. —
Edwards, Des characteres physiolo-
giques des Races hwnaines, Paris, 1829. —
Nott and Gliddon, Types of
—
Mankind, Boston, 1854. D'Omalius i^WîAoy, Des Races Imniaines,
Paris, 1845. —
Hollard, De rhomme et des Races huniaines, Paris,
1853. ^- De Gobineau, Essai sur Pinegalite des Races huniaines,
Paris, 1855. —
Knox, The Races of Men, London, 1850. Bonstetten, —
Hhoinme du Midi et Phomnie du Nôrd, chap. 5» Geneva, 1824.
Foissac, De r influence des climats sur rhomme, Paris, 1837. Hotz, —
The moral and intellectual diversity of Races, Philadelphia, 1856.
Camper, Dissei-tation sur les varietes tiaturelles qui characterisent la
physionomie des hommes, 17QI. —
A. Maury, La Terre et Phomme,
Paris, 1857. —
De Quatrefages, Rapport sur les progres de Panihro-
pologie, Paris, 1868.
—
For Linguistic Science: Michaelis, De P influence des opinions stir Ic Ian-
gage, Bremen, 1762. —
Adelung, Mithridates, Berlin, 1806-1817.
Bopp, Grammaire comparee des langues Indo-Etovpecnncs, (Breal's
translation), Paris, 1865-67. —
Balbi, Atlas cthnographique du Globe,
Paris, 1826. — Kapp, Versuch einer Physiologic der Sprache, Stuttgard,
1836. — Pott, Etymologische Forschungen, Lemgo, 1833-6. Neve, —
— —

Introduction h Phistoire ghiSrale des litteraturcs Onentales, Louvain,
1845. —]\Iarcel, Language as a means of Mental Cnltnrc, London,
1853. —Oliry, Etude Itistoriqtie et philologique sur le partkipe passe et les
verbes auxiliaires, Paris, 1852. —
Egger, Notions ctemcntaircs de grani-
—
maire coniparee, Paris, 1854. Renan, Histoirc generate des langues
simitiques, Paris, 1855. De Torigine du langage, Paris, 1858. Pott, —
Die tJngleichheit Menschlicher Rassen, Lemgo, 1856. A. Maury, La —
Terre et Phovime, Paris, 1857. —
Max Miiller, Lessons on the Science of
Lang7iage. —F. Baudry, Granimaire comparee des la7igues classiques,
Paris, 1868. — Zt" fournal de pliilologie comparee, Berlin, edited by
M. Adalbert Kuhn.
Section I. The Unity of the Human Race and its

Varieties.
I. Sacred tradition teaches us that the whole human race and all its
varieties descend from one single original pair. Divine inspiration
alone could pronounce in a definite and precise manner on a point of
such primary importance in a religious, as well as in a philosophical,
point of view ; for in this is involved the fundamental doctrine of Chris-
tianity, —redemption. Human knowledge cannot venture on positive
assertions in a matter such as this, which is too deep for research. It
is only by induction that reason can trace the human race back to an
original couple ; the only result its investigations have attained is to
demonstrate the fact, that all the varieties of mankind belong to one
single species, which almost necessarily supposes one single couple for
its original authors.
There are now two schools of naturalists devoted to the study of the
physical organisation of man ; the one admits, in conformity with
sacred tradition, the unity of the human race ; the other supposes
that many species of men appeaiêd, and in different places, but the
authorities of the latter persuasion are not agreed as to the number
of these species, which are variously stated from two to sixteen.
The two theories are called Monogenistic and Polygenistic. The
professors of the latter opinion follow as a rule preconceived philo-
sophical ideas, and are really less naturalists, than enemies to Bible
doctrines. All scholars who have approached the subject without
opinions formed beforehand, and investigated it apart from other con-
siderations, according to the laws of scientific method and with the
assistance of observation, have decidedly pronounced, as the result of
their studies, for the Monogenistic theory. The proofs which permit
science to affirm and demonstrate the unity of the human species have
been recently admirably collected by M. de Qua'trefages, the most
eminent anthropologist of France, and having profited by recent dis-
;
ORIGIN OF RACES. 49
coveries, he has presented these proofs in a more satisfactory form than

they have ever before assumed. From him we bon-o\v the materials
for a rapid resume of these proofs, which though they belong rather to
physiology, must not be neglected by history ; for the question whetlier
all men are brothers, or whether differences of species create between

them impassable barriers, must exercise a most serious influence on the
facts and interpretation of history. Moreover, our origin is necessarily
the first chapter in our history.
Mankind, considered from the naturalist's point of view, is subject
2.
to the same laws as all other organic beings. When man therefore
exhibits phenomena which cannot be solved by considering him alone,
we must question animals and even vegetables, and argue up from them
to him. By this method we may manner the
establish in a scientific
unity of our species. But first, it is necessary to define what is meant
by " species." " A species is an assemblage of individuals more or less
like each other, who are descended, or may be considered as descended,
from one single by an uninterrupted succession of
primitive pair
families." Individuals who differ in a marked manner fi-om the general
type are "varieties." A "race" is a variety which has been propa-
gated by parentage. The characters peculiar to each of the human
races must not be considered as characters of " species;" for the varia-
tionswhich we observe in one species among animals, especially among
domestic animals, and which even affect the most essential parts of
the skeleton, are much more considerable than those separating the
white man from the negro, the two most widely differing types of
humanity. Moreover, it is not possible to establish a well defined
separation between the different races of men, which graduate insensibly
one into the other. Now when we look at species of animals, however
near they may be to each other, we may fix on one or more characteristics
absent in one, present in the other, and clearly distinguishing them ;
and this is never the case with races. These characteristics so assimilate,
that even when they are numerous we can hardly say which one is really
the distinguishing trait. If we study " crosses," they reveal in their
turn the fundamental difference between a species and a race. A cross
between two species is very rare in nature. When it is brought about by

the interference of man, an immense majority of cases, unfertile.
it is, in
A cross between races is always Now unions between the most

fertile.
widely differing types of humanity constantly present the latter character

it even sometimes happens that the fertility of races thus united, is in-
creased.
A race, as we have said, is a variety \\hich is propagated. The
action of the conditions of existence in the midst of which an animal
is developed, is chief among the causes tending to produce in a
species, varieties, and originate a race. These influences of climate,
soil, and mode of life, are very evidently those which have given rise
to the different races of mankind. It is true that we no longer see the
same causes bring about the same effects on the Europeans who
emigrate in our times. But this is because civilised man knows so well
how to defend himself against the effects of the climate in which he
resides. This is his constant care, even in the native country of his
race; as an emigrant his precautions are redoubled. The inhabitant of
the temperate zone who goes to Siberia takes every care to keep himself
warm. In India or Senegal he uses every means to escape the heat,
and succeeds to a very great extent. Everywhere he canies with him
manners, customs, and practices, that become part of the atmosphere in
which he lives, and tend to diminish the effect of the change. Never-
theless these precautions are in some degree useless. Man in spite of
all is, to some e.xtent, affected by the new climate and new country
where he fixes his abode. A European, when he ceases to resist these

influences, will soon become so changed as not to be recognisable by
his former countrymen. The English race, which more than any other
carries with it the means of protection against exterior influences, is
affected after the first generation in Australia, where nevertheless it
prospers wonderfully. In the United States it has been so transformed
as to be considered almost a new race.
If it is thus in our days, when man is provided with all the means of
defence the most refined civilisation furnishes, what effect must these
influences, which he can never completely resist, have had on the primi-
tive families who spread themselves in a savage state over the world ? In
the conditions of that age of humanity, climatic influences must have had
the same effect on man as on animals; and changes as great as any differ-
ences separating the races of humanity, have taken place in many species
of animals when transported to new climates. Moreover, a complete
change in the mode of life of a people, even under the same climate,
has been found to produce facts analogous to those thus brought about
in the early days of the human species, and which have given rise to
its races. We have a striking example in Ireland, at the end of the
war of the seventeenth century. Entire populations, driven into the wild
lands of the island and exposed for generations to misery, hunger, and
ignorance, have, we may almost say, returned to a savage state, and
their physical characteristics, completely altered or modified, have made
of them a race perfectly distinct from the people from whom they
sprung, and who are to be found in their original condition in the
neighbouring counties.
3. Besides, nothing more manifestly proves the unity of the human
species, its descent from one stock, and that its varieties have been
caused by climatic influences, than the consideration of the geographical
distribution of different branches of mankind over the surface of the
DEGENERATION OF THE HUMAN RACE. 51
globe, and the comparison of their types, with the physical and social con-
ditions by which each is surrounded. " All traditions concur in placing
the formation of the white race, thatis of the race most elevated in the
which possesses in the highest degree beauty,

intellectual scale, that
proportion, perfect balance of forces, and of physical organisation, in
the northern part of the ancient world, situated, so to speal:, at equal
distances from its two extremities. The study of the migrations of races,
the comparison of languages, and historical testimony, concur in making
the white race radiate from the country situated at the foot of the
Caucasus, comprised between the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the
Indian Ocean, the steppes of Central Asia, and the Himalaya mountains.
The farther we remove from that cradle of our race, the more the
characteristics of that noble race are altered or effaced. In Europe it
best maintains itself Nevertheless we no longer find, even among

European people, that perfect regularity of feature, that noble sym-
metry, which strikes us so nrach in the faces of Eastern people, among
the Armenians, Persians, or the women of Georgia, or Circassia.
Among Europeans there is more animation, more mobility, more ex-
pression ; their beauty, in a word, is less physical tlian moral.
" In Africa we meet with alterations of another kind. Already the
Arab inhabiting the neighbourhood of the Isthmus of Suez, peopling
both shores of the Red Sea, and advancing towards the banks of the
Mediterranean, has less intelligent and regular features. His brow is
more receding and his head more elongated his face has neither the ;
beauty of complexion, the rounded contour of the Persian or Armenian,

nor the freshness of the European his skin is yellowish and sometimes
;
brown. Advancing to the soutli towards the Tropic of Cancer, colour

takes a still darker tint, the hair becomes crisp, the lips thick. Such is
the physiognomy of the Gallas and Abyssinians.
"Further south, on the Eastern coast of Africa, the type becomes
uglier still. There we find the Caffre with woolley hair, thicli lips, and
prominent jaws. And, finally, at the very extremity, at the farthest
point in that part of the world which the human race can reach, moral
and physical characteristics have arrived at their extremest point of
degradation. The Hottentot presents the ugliest and least intelligent
type of humanity.
" On the opposite coast of Africa, at distances still gi-eater from the
cradle of the white race, degeneration proceeds even more rapidly. The
Berber races of the Sahara, are certainly descended from a wliite stock,
but amongst them we find the first commencement of the change that
has taken place in Soudan. Tiic head is elongated, the mouth forms a
salient projection, the limbs are thin and ill-proportioned, and the colour
of the skin is darkened. The Fellatah of the Soudan is already a
negro, but a negro whose face denotes intelligence. This remnant of
nobility in the features disappears among the blacks of Senegambia,
and is replaced by an increase of ugliness. The negro of Congo gives
us the pure type of his race — forehead low and receding, lower jaw
prominent, lips thick, nose flat, hair woolly, occiput large, intel-
ligence limited, and almost entirely confined to manual dexterity.

Lastly, at the extremity of this Western coast of Africa, the Bushman or
Bosjcsman, presents features more offensive, if possible, than the
Hottentot.
"This gi-adual degeneration of the human type which may, so to
_
speak, be stated in degrees of latitude, from the borders of the Caspian
Sea Cape of Good Hope, is not less decided if we travel east or
to the
south-east from thesame original centre. If we penetrate the steppes
of Central Asia, we meet with the Mongolians, with prominent cheek
bones, small sunken eyes obliquely cut, triangular faces, square and
thickset figures. All harmony in the outline has disappeared. The
Dravidian race were driven by the white man, from the greater part of
Hindustan, and took refuge in the mountains of their ancient country.
The Malays, their advance guard, who have spread from the Peninsula
beyond the Ganges into the islands, from the Moluccas to Madagascar,
present features even more savage than the Mongolians, and are a
darker coloured race. Among the most barbarous of them the skin
is almost black, and the limbs already show that meagreness, that
shrivelled type, which in Africa announces nearness to the negro. The
Alfourou varies from light to dark brown, and his hair grows in enor-
mous tufts, as among the most brutalised of the Malay people.
Finally, beyond the Alfourou race, expelled by them, and spread here
and there in the interior of the islands from the Andamans to the
Philippines, — the Australians and the Negritos, whose country extends
as far as Van Dieman's Land, exhibit the last degree of rudeness, de-
formity, stupidity, and degradation.
we advance beyond the Mongo-
"If, instead of travelling south-east,
lians to the north and north-east, we find an alteration of another kind
indeed, but not less marked. As less extent of ground was open for
the migration of nations, so that our species could not pass so far from
the place where it attained its highest degree of development, there has
not been so large a field open for the process of degeneration. The
Ugro-finnish, who whole north of the globe, from
are spread over the
Lapland to the country of the Esquimaux, still resemble the Mongolian
race but their eyes are generally less oblique, their skin is not so
;
decided a yellow, their hair is more abundant, their forehead lower,

their face denoting less intelligence.
"America, if we exclude the northern part inhabited by the Arctic
race, comprises another people, whose mode of distribution is not
always in complete correspondence with the law we are attempting to
THE FOUR GREAT RACES OF MANKIND. 53
prove. In North America, man has a peculiarly energetic character in

his features. The outline of his face is angular, the forehead extra-
ordinarily receding, without however being depressed like that of the

negro ; the skin is red, he has little or no beard, the eyes are slightly
projecting, the cheek bones prominent. This type reaches its culmi-
nating point of beauty and intelligence in the tropical regions of Mexico
and Peru. Beyond these countries, as we descend southward, the skin
darkens, or rather embrowns, the features become ugly, the outline
loses its curve and regularity, the limbs their handsome shape. Such is
the character of the Guaranas, of the Botocondos, of the Aymaras.
When we arrive at the southern extremity of America, we find only
most deformed, most miserable creatures, the brutalised and stupid
people of Terra del Fuego.
This new and apparently anomalous distribution of the races of the
'
'
New World, far from being an exception to the law which shows us
the human race most perfect where the climatic conditions are most
favourable, does in fact only confirm it. America has its temperate
regions situated farther south than Europe, because the continent is
colder ; the mountain chain, traversing it like a backbone, forms a
succession of elevated plateaus. It is in fact in Mexico and Peru, that
is, in the countries which, on account of their elevation, possess those
conditions most favourable for life, that the indigenous civilisation of

America attained to its highest degree of development. " A. Maury. —
4. The distribution of mankind in all parts of the world, and in all
climates, that we have just sketched, is another of the facts in which
the science of anthropology, guided by the analogies shown by most
recent observations on the geographical distribution of animals, finds a
decisive proof of the unity of our species, in the fact that, however
widely it has spread, it must have come from that one single spot where
man first appeared. Animals, like plants, are not distributed hap-
hazard over the globe. Observation teaches us that each region has
its species, its genera, its peculiar types. Experience proves that some
species may be transported from one region to another, where they will
live and prosper. But there is no one species which is naturally cosmo-
politan. So that, as far as animals and plants are concerned, we must
give up the idea of one single centre, and accept that of very many
centres of creation.
The partisans of the Polygenistic theory are obliged, from the moment
that they divide man into more than one species, to admit for him
these many centres of creation. But there again they are in oppo-
sition to the laws which science demonstrates to have presided over
the distribution of organised beings. In fact, thougli they have
a
more extended area than the species, the genera do not the less
present analogous facts of localisation ; for, as M. de Candolle has so
. — —

well said, " The same causes have affected both species and genera."
The more perfect the organisation of a vegetable, or of an animal
becomes, the more restricted is its area. With regard to mammalia
particularly, we ân trace step by step the contraction of the area
coincident with the improvement in organisation. When we arrive at
the great anthropomorphic apes, which are nearest to man in a physical
point of view, we
that nearly every genus is represented by one
find
single species, thatno one of these genera is common to both Asia and
Africa, no one has spread over the whole of that part of the world
which it inhabits, and finally, that the habitat of each one is remarkably
limited. If then we suppose that the human race can be divided into
—
many species, each of distinct origin, if we admit that this type, the most
perfect of all, even in a merely organic point of view, can have arisen
in more than one centre of creation, and that it is not characteristic of any
one in particular, we should make man the sole exception to the laws
of nature. Thus direct observation and the science of physiology,
whilst they enable us to state, in accordance with the ingenious expres-
sion of M. de Quatrefages, that "everything is as if the whole of man-
kind had commenced with one original and single pair," teach us
nothing with regard to the existence of this original and single pair.
Divine revelation alone can instruct us on that subject.
Section II. The Four great Races of Mankind.
1 The
numerous varieties of the human species whose geographical
distribution we have described, divide into four principal races, four
great types, which comprise secondary and mixed races, each of them
including a certain number, first of families, and then of nations. These
four races are :
The White, also but erroneously called Caucasian, by some authors.

We have already pointed out its original centre, whence it has spread,
into India, Arabia, Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt.
The Red, exclusively inhabiting America.
The Yellow, which has existed in China, from very remote antiquity,
and has spread into all the countries inhabited by Mongolian populations,
as well as into the Malacca Peninsula, and the Malay Islands.
Lastly, the Black, which belongs to Central and Western Africa, and
is distributed over the tropics from the east coast of Africa to Australia.
2. The negroes of the most characteristic type have the skull elon-
gated and narrow, especially at the temples. The upper jaw bone
projects forward, after the fashion called by naturalists prognathism, and
gives rise to the most striking traits of the black face, the slightly pro-
jecting nose, broad at the base of the nostrils, and the exaggerated
'
PRIMITIVE TYPE OF MANKIND. 55
development of lip. l^he hair is black, short, and woolly, and is in
general very scanty, as is the case also with the various mammalia of the
Negro country. With some peculiarities in the form of the body, and a
perceptible curve of the legs, these are the essential and distinctive
characteristics of the black race, much more so than colour, as there
are some people of white race, such as the Abyssinians, to whom
long residence in equatorial Africa has given an equally dark coloured
skin.
The skull of the yellow race isrounded in form, the oval of the head is
larger than with Europeans. The cheek bones are very projecting, the
cheeks rise towards the temples, so that the outer corners of the eyes are
elevated, the eyelids seem half closed. The forehead is flat above the
eyes. The bridge of the nose flat, the chin short, the ears dispro-
portionately large, and projecting from the head. The colour of the
skin is generally yellow, and in some branches turns to brown. ••
There
is little hair on the body, beard is rare, the hair of the head is coarse and,
like the eyes, almost always black.
We have already mentioned the principal features which distinguish
the red man's face in skeleton he is very like the white.
; He is dis-
tinguished by his colour, always reddish brown, or approaching to
copper, more or less deep in tone, and by the scarcity of hair, for all
American races have scanty and short hair, and are beardless.
As for our white race, it is, above all, characterised by the beauty of the
oval which forms the head. The eyes are horizontal, with more or less
widely opened lids ; the nose rather projects than is large, the mouth
small or moderately pierced, the lips thin : the beard is ample, the
hair long, smooth, or curled, and its colour variable. The skin is of a
rosy white, with more or less transparency, according to the climate,
habits, or temperament. Morally and intellectually the M'hite race has
a marked superiority over all others. In the nations of this race, we
find, from remote antiquity, the greatest development of civilisation and
the most progressive tendencies.
3. It would be most interesting if we could determine, among these
four types of humanity, —and, in the most ancient times to which history
and the monuments of civilisation go back, they are found as distinct as
they are to-day ; —
which is the most ancient, and whether either of
them can claim to represent, with any certainty, the primitive man.
Unfortunately a question science is unable positively to answer.
tliis is
There are no certain elements for determining the primitive type of

our species. It appears veiy probable that this type no longer exists
in the world, and that no actual race entirely resembles it. The
conditions of climate under which man first appeared on the earth, have
now entirely changed, for they belonged to another geological period.
How is it possible that these great changes can have left unchanged the
primitive type of humanity ? Some anthropologists have wished to
seek the type of primitive man in the lowest ranks of the human species,
among the Hottentots or the Aborigines of Australia ; but such an opinion
is not scientifically admissible ; these tribes show, in their physical cha-
racteristics, such a state of degradation as to prove that they were once
in a more elevated condition, from which they have gradually declined.
On the other hand, it is almost impossible not to admit that the advance
of the wliite race towards perfection is in a great measure due to the
exceptionally favourable conditions of climate in which it has lived, as
well as to the long continued influence of civilisation, when we see, as
occasionally we do see, how much this race degenerates, how near
it approaches to a savage state, when these favouring circumstances are
removed.
We see among all numerous varieties,
species of animals, presenting
phenomena which have designated by the name " Atavism."
naturalists
This is the sporadic appearance m all varieties of individuals who
reproduce the type, not of their direct ancestors, but of the original
species, before the fomiation of varieties. Certain facts occurring from
time to time among the different races of humanity, seem entitled to
be considered as instances of Atavism. Tlie most able Anthropo-
logists, such as M. de Quatrefages, and Dr. Pruner Bey, consider
that they throw light on the primitive ancestry of our species. Two
points at any rate seem to be proved that the faces of the first men
;
were to some extent prognathic, and their colour was not black. The
anatomical trait of prognathism, especially of the upper jaw, exists in
all the families of the black race, and is not less apparent among part of
the yellow race. A decided tendency in that direction is seen in the
Ugro-finnish races. It frequently appears in isolated individuals of the
purest branches of the white race. Those remains of human heads
which have, been recovered from caverns of the close of the
at present,
quatemai-y period, are decidedly prognatliic. " Eveiy thing seems to
indicate," says M. de Quatrefages, "that this characteristic must have
existed in the first We are enabled to be more
ancestors of mankind."
positive on the next point, that the fii-st ancestors of our species were
not black the darkened colour of the skin, the excessive development
;
of the black matter or pigmc7it which forms under the epidermis, is

unquestionably an effect of a burning climate and of the sun's power,
produced only in tropical regions which were certainly not the primitive
cradle of humanity. Moreover, we often see individuals, white or
yellow, appear from the result of "Atavism" among negro nations;
while no negro was ever bom from white or yellow people. M. de
Quatrefages is also of opinion that we might go still farther, and con-
jecture, from some other facts of the same nature, that the original type
of humanity approached that of the yellow races, whose languages also
THE FAMILY OF HAM. 57
are still But we do not venture

preserved in the most primitive state.
to follow him on ground still so insecure ; and prefer to confine ourselves
to the two points —

one probable, the other certain— which we have just
explained.
Section IK.— The Descendants of Noah, according to the

Book of Genesis.
A ul/iori^/es .-—Bochart, Phaleg, vol. i. of his complete works, Leyden,

1 7 12. — Ch. Lenormant, Introduction a P Histoire de VAsie Occidcntalc,
Paris, 1838.— Knobel, Die Vulkcrtafd der Genesis, Giessen, 185 1.
1. Noah, as already said, had three sons, Shem, Ham, and

we have
Japhet. In the loth chapter of the book of Genesis, Moses gives us a
table of the nations known in his time, as affiliated to these three great
chiefs of the new race of postdiluvian humanity. This is the most ancient,
the most precious, the most complete document which we possess on
the distribution of the ancient nations of the world. We may even
consider it as anterior to Moses, for it represents nations in positions
which the Egyptian monuments show us to have been much changed in
several important points, before the time of the Exodus. Moreover,
the enumeration is made there in regidar geographical order, from
Babylon and Chaktea as a centre, not from Egypt or Palestine. It
seems therefore probable that this table of nations and their origin was
part of the tradition brought by the family of Abraham from Chaldsea,
and that it represents the distribution of nations known to the civilised
world at the time when the Patriarch left the banks of the Euphrates,
that is about 2,000 years before the Christian Era.
This document furnishes an inestimably valuable basis for the researches

of ethnogi-aphy, that is the science which investigates the relationships
of nations vvdth each other, and their origin. The attentive study of
comparison of languages, and the examination
historical tradition, the
of the physiological characteristics of different nations, lead to results
in complete accordance with the inspired volume. are about to We
explain, as briefly as possible, the facts resulting from the ethnographic
teachings of the book of Genesis, and those which modem science
has supplied, to complete or supplement them.
2. Family of HanL. —
Ham, whose name signifies the "Sun-burned,"
was the father of the great family from whom the people of Phoenicia,
of Egypt, and Ethiopia, were primarily descended. These nations are
now represented by the Fellalis of Eg)'pt, the Nubians, the Abyssinians,
and the Tuaricks, and possess all the characteristics of the white race,
but are distinguished by their dark colour, passing from light brown
to bronze, and almost into black ; by their short stature, receding cliiu.
S'8 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
thick, though not prominent lips, scanty beard, and very curly though
never quite woolly hair. The classifications of anthropology, founded
entirely on physical characteristics, place them exactly as does the
sacred text.
According to the book of Genesis, Ham had four sons, Cush, Miz-
raim, Phut, and Canaan. The identity of the race of Cush with the
Ethiopians is certain. The hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt always
designate the people of the Upper Nile, south of Nubia, by the
name of Cush. In Scripture, Mizraim is the name constantly applied
to Eg\'pt, and in our own times the Arabs still use the name Mizr,
both for the capital of Egypt and for the country itself. The identity
of the descendants of Phut with the people who inhabited the northern
coasts of Africa, has not been established in quite so certain a manner.
The most competent critics are however of opinion that this name, in
its most extended signification, applies to the primitive Libyans,

amongst whom some Japhetic tribes subsequently settled. Under the
name of Canaan are comprised the Phoenicians and all the tribes in
their vicinity, who, before the establishment of the Hebrews, inhabited
the country called Canaan, from Sidon and Gaza to Sodom and
Gomorrah, that is, the territory lying between the Mediterranean and
the Dead Sea, which in later times was called the " Holy Land."
It seems certain that the Hamitic race inhabited at first a great part
of Western and .Southern Asia, before the arrival of the children of
Shem, who drove them out from thence. Nimrod, a descendant of
Cush, reigned in Babylon, built Erech and Calneh, in the land of
Shinar, and established there the first of all empires. The Hamites
were the first inliabitants of the country bordered by the Oxus, extend-
ing towards the upper course of the Indus, whence is derived the
name Hindoo Koosh, always given to the mountain chain of this region.
All scholars are now agreed that the banks of the Tigris, Southern
Persia, and part of India itself (where the tribes of this race were called
Kausikas) were peopled by the Cushite family, before being occupied
by the descendants of Shem, and by the Arians of the race of Japhet.
There are also good reasons for believing that the Carians, the original
inhabitants of great part of Asia Minor, were of the race of Ham. And
lastly, the same race exercised in early times an uncontested sovereignty
on the coasts of Carmania and Gedrosia, along the Indian Ocean, and
overall the south of the Arabian Peninsula.
We see that, of the three great races who separated after the con-
fusion of tongues, the Hamites were the first to leave the common
centre of the human race, and that they spread themselves over a vast
extent of territory, and founded the earliest monarchies. Amongst
them material civilisation made at first the most rapid progress. But
Noah had laid a curse on his son Ham for having been wanting in
THE RACE OF SHEM. 59
filial respect, and for having exposed him to derision during a fit of
drunkenness. "A servant of servants shall he be to his brethren " had
been the sentence, and the curse has been fulfilled in all its complete-
ness. The Empires founded by the Hamites soon came in contact
with the two other races, who, in the contest which ensued, were
victorious, and dispossessed the original inhabitants of the coun-
tries they had occupied. The Semites replaced them in Chaldsea,
Assyria, Palestine, and Arabia the Arian race in India and Persia.
;
The descendants of the cursed son maintained their power only in

Africa, particulady in Egypt, where the most flourishing of their
colonies spnmg up. The descendants of Ham were the first after the
deluge to make progress in material civilisation, which they carried to a
high degree of development. But beneath it all their nature was un-
changed ; their race always retained the trace of the grossness and
depravity which had drawn down on Ham his father's curse. The
Hamitic people were always deeply cornipt. Their religion never
advanced beyond the most absolute materialism, shamelessly expressed
by most revolting myths, and by symbols of inconceivable obscenity.
Thus it was that the triumph of the races of Shem and Japhet always
resulted in the substitution of a higher and purer civilisation for that
of the Hamites, the introduction of greater moral purity, and of a
religion more even when tainted with the errors of idolatiy.
spiritual,
3. Race of She?n.—T\\e descendants of Shem were the next to dis-

perse them^selves over the world, leaving the country where man had
originally dwelt after the deluge. They occupied the countries ex-
tending from Upper Mesopotamia to the southern extremities of Arabia,
and from the borders of the Mediterranean Sea to the country beyond
the Tigris. The first-bom of Shem, according to the book of Genesis,
was Elam, representing the Elamites of Susiana. The first settlement
of a mixed Hamitic and Turanian population in that country was in
fact replaced by inhabitants of Semitic race but these last were not
;
able to maintain themselves there, and at a later period were conquered

by the Arians, descendants of Japhet. Susiana, between Persia pro-
perly so called and the Tigris, always had these elements in its popu-
lation, which seems to have been an essentially mixed race. Asshur,
the second son of Shem, was the founder of that powerful nation who,
under the name of Assyrians, played so great a part in the history
of Western Asia. "Asshur," says the Bible, "builded Nineveh and
Calah and Resen." At Babylon and throughout Chaklasa the language,
as we know now by the monuments, was the same as at Nineveh the ;
preponderating influence also was that of the race of Asshur, but the
mass of the population seems to have remained Hamitic, of the Cushite
branch, which had fonned the primitive empire of Nimrod, itself also
containing a mixture of other elements.
6o ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
The book of Genesis next mentions Arphaxad, whose name means
"border of the Chaldoeans," or rather "neighbourhood of the Chal-
daeans." This name, like the greater number of those given to the
grandsons of Noah, is rather the geographical designation of the
country where he founded a settlement, than the proper name of the
individual. It determines the localities which were inhabited in
the first age after the deluge, by those nearly related families, who, in
later times, became the parent stock of the Hebrews and Arabs. In
fact, among the descendants of Arphaxad we find Eber, the direct
ancestor of Abraham and the Hebrew nation, and also Joktan,

who was the progenitor of the most ancient Arab tribes, of those
with whom in later times the children of Ishmael amalgamated,
and over whom they obtained supremacy. Moreover, we shall see
presently that at the moment of his call Abraham was still living in
the midst of the Chaldceans. Lud was the fourth son of Shem. He
personifies the ancient inhabitants of Lydia. According to all appear-
ances this people originally dwelt in the neighbourhood of Assyria and
Mesopotamia, whence in later times they migrated to the western
extremity of Asia Minor. The most recent investigations of the little
we know of the Lydian language, and of their traditions, goes far to
prove their Semitic blood. The last of the children of this Patriarch,
according to the Bible enumeration, was Aram. He was the parent of
the Syrian race, which occupied all the country between the Mediter-
ranean and the Euphrates. There were also Aramreans in the western
part of Mesopotamia. The Hebrews therefore divided the country
of Aram into several regions ; 1st. Aram Naharaim, or " Aiam of the
two rivers," that is, the "Mesopotamia" of the Greeks, between the
Euphrates and the Tigris ; 2nd. Aram properly so called, that is,
Syria,whose most ancient and important city was Damascus and 3rd. ;
Aram Zobah, or the region in which in later times was formed the
kingdom of Palmyra.
The group of Semitic nations, whose chief representatives in our
days are the Arabs and the Jews, present a purer and handsomer
type of the white race than any of the Hamitic nations ; the beard is
fuller, the complexion clearer though still dark, the stature loftier,
with a spare habit of body. The face is generally long and thin,
the forehead rather low, the nose aquiline, the mouth and chin receding,
so as to give a rounded rather than a straight profile, the eyes sunken,
black and bright.
—
Race of\ Japhet. The name of this youngest born of the sons of
4.
Noah, signifies " extension," because that his posterity was to occupy
an immense extent of country. His family remained longest united, and
was the last to leave the neighbourhood of the place where Noah had
fixed his residence after the deluge. The book of Genesis gives the
THE RACE OF JAPHET. 6i
names of his seven sons as Gomer, Magog, Madai, Tubal, ]V[eshecli,
Tiras, and Javan. Gomer personifies the families originally established
on the northern coast of the Euxine, and north of Greece. From these
were in due course of time to spring a people well known to the Greek
and Roman historians, as Cimmerians, Cimbri, or Kymry, who were
for ages the terror of Asia and Europe, and who even made Rome
tremble at the summit of her power. Three sons of Gomer are
mentioned: Ashkenaz, whose name seems composed of the Gothic roots
As chunis, "the race of Ases," and which represents the Germanic
and Scandinavian nations not yet separated, and inhabiting a limited
district to the north-cast of the Black Sea ; Riphath, that is, the group
of Celts or Gauls, then established in their first European settlement on
—
the Riphaean mountains the present Carpathians, before entering on
their last migration towards the France of our days ; and lastly,
Togarmah, in whom tradition has always recognised the Ai'inenians.
That Madai is synonymous with the Medes is certain. He represents
the great Iranian family which holds so important a place among the
Japhetic and Arian populations. The identity of Tubal and the Tiba-
reni is equally well established; these people as late as the classical ages
inhabited the momitains bordering on Colchis; from them are descended

the isolated races who still live in the valleys of the Caucasus. Meshech
seems to con-espond with the Moschi of Herodotus, who occupied the
territory between the country of the Tibareni and Phrygia. To the
same race would seem to belong the neighbouring nations of the north
of Asia Mmor, Paphlagonians, and Meriandynians, inhabitants of
Pontus. Tiras can only be the ancestor of the Thracians. The Greek
historians also have informed us that the Thracians came originally from
Asia Mmor, and that having left Bithpiia at some unknown epoch,
they came across the Hellespont to seek a settlement in the countries
to the north of Macedonia.
Javan, or loun, was the father of the lonians and Greeks ; leaving
the southern parts of Asia Minor, the sons of Javan spread themselves
over the coasts and islands of the /Egaan Sea. From these primitive
lonians came Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. Elishah is
Hellas, that is, Greece. Dodanim personifies the Pelasgic race of the
Epirotes, whose most important religious centre was at Dodona.

Kittim represents the inhabitants of the islands of the Archipelago, and
Cypms, where this people had founded the town of Citium. Finally,
Tarshish ought probably to be the Tyrrhenian Pelasgians, a branch of
whom were established in Greece, and who formed the primitive popu-
lation of a great part of Italy.
Moses in enumerating the sons of Japhet, naturally only mentioned
those whose descendants were likely to be known to the Hebrews of his
time. But the science of our days, guided by physiological and
linguistic affinities, is enabled to complete the testimony of the book of
Genesis on this point, and to assign a still larger number of nations to
the Japhetic stock. It is universally agreed to recognise as descendants
of Japhet in Europe, the Greeks and Romans, the Germans, the Celts,
Scandinavians, and Slavonians in Asia, the Persians, the Medes, the
;
Bactrians, and the higher castes of India. These last nations, known
by the collective name ol "Arians," remained for a long time con-
centrated in the countries watered by the Oxus and Jaxartes, tliat is in
Bactria and Sogdiana, the region which was the original dwelling of
the whole race. Thence one branch directed its course to the south,
crossed the Hindoo Koosh, and penetrated into India, destroying or
subjugating the earlier Hamitic population. The other established
itself in the country which lies between the Caspian Sea and the Tigris,
and in the mountains of Media and Persia. We see that in very

ancient times they mixed with the Assyrians, and that they even ruled
over them for several centuries.
The race of Japhet is then that which is also designated, to indicate
the extent of its domain, the Indo-European race. {Yo this race we
ourselves belong. It is a race noble beyond all others, the race to
which Providence has assigned the mission of carrying to a degi-ee of
perfection, unknown to other races, arts, sciences, philosophy. " God,"
said Noah, according to the Bible, " shall enlarge Japhet, and he shall
dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant." That
blessing and prophecy are accomplished, for the race of Japhet has not
only become the most numerous and the most widely spread, but it is
also the dominant race of the world which day by day advances toward
universal sovereignty.
5. There is one of the sons of Japhet of whom we have not yet
spoken, for the subject requires rather more detailed explanation. He

represents a group of nations more extensive than the others, and of
very peculiar physiognomy —-we speak of Magog. This name in sacred
Scripture is almost always associated with Gog. The very frequent
allusions in the Hebrew prophets and ravages of the
to the incursions
sons of Gog and Magog, induce us to recognise them as the nomadic
tribes of the north-east, near the Caspian Sea. Their name has been
compared to that of the MassagetEe. The historian Josephus, the
recorder of the traditions of the Jewish 'nation, calls them Scythians.
Everything seems then to prove that the inspired writer of the book of
Genesis, under the name of Magog, intended to represent the numerous
tribes composing the secondary race now designated by science, " Tura-
nian." This race, one of the largest, both numerically, and with regard
to the extent of territory which it occupies, is divided into two giêat
branches, the Ugro-finnish and the Dravidian. The first must be
again subdivided into the Turkish, including the populations of
YELLOW, BLACK, AND RED RACES OF MEN. 63
Turkestan, and of the Steppes of Central Asia, as well as the Hun-

garians, who have been for a long time settled in Europe ; and the
Uralo-finnish group, comprising the Finns, the Esthonians, the Tchoudes,
and in general, nearly all the tribes of the north of Europe and Asia.
The country of the Dravidian branch is, on the contrary, to the south.
This branch is composed of the indigenous people of the Penin-
in fact
sula of Hindustan, Tamuls, Telingas, Carnates, who were subjugated
by the Arian race, and who appear to have originally driven before
them the negroes of the Australian group, the original inhabitants of
the soil, who are now represented by the almost savage tribe of the
Khonds.
The Turanian race is one of the oldest in the world, and appears
to have migrated at the same time as the Hamitic ; it might even
be possible to restore the chief features of an epoch, when the sons
of Turan and of Cush alone occupied the gi-eater part of Europe and
Asia, whilst the Semites and the Arians had not yet left the regions
which were the cradle of our species. The skulls discovered in France,
England and Belgium, in caves of the close of the quaternary epoch,
appear, from their characteristics, to belong to a Turanian race, to the
Uralo-finnish gi'oup, and particularly resemble those of the Esthonians.
Wherever the Japhetic or pure Indo-European race extended, it seems
to have encountered a Turanian population which it conquered and
finally amalgamated with itself. This was the course of events in
Western Europe, where the Basques, the descendants of the ancient
Iberians, are possibly the last remains of this original population ; in
Hindustan ; in the interior of Persia, and in Carmania, where the

southern coast was occupied by Cushites. In Media and Susiana the
Turanian element struggled more successfully and managed to maintain
itself almost on a footing of equality with the Arian. shall see as We
we proceed that it composed a considerable portion of the original popu-
lation of Chaldcea and Babylonia, and that it appears to have furnished
the dominant and especially the sacerdotal class.
Both ethnography and linguistic science attest the fundamental unity
of the Turanian race, which, in spite of its e.\tent, presents itself to us as a
mixed race, intermediate between the white and yellow, passing gradually
from one to the other. At each extremity of the scale, we find types which
coincide almost completely with those of the other races. The Uzbecs,
the Osmanli Turks, and the Hungarians, are not to be distinguished in
appearance from the most perfect branches of the white race. On the
other hand the Tchoudes almost exactly resemble the Tongouses, who
belong to the yellow race. The intermediary physiognomy of the
Turanians may arise from two causes. Either they spring from a
mixture of white and yellow elements, or, if the conjecture of M. de
Quatrefages, as to the original characteristics of some of the features
'

peculiar to the yellow race be correct, the Turanian race results from a
stoppage of development during the progress from the primitive human
type to the complete perfection of the civilised white man. In any
case, the presence of this race among the descendants of Japhet, in the
loth chapter of Genesis, is justified by its close approach, at any rate on
one side, to the white race, particularly to the Japhetic family, as has
been proved by scholars who have so successfully employed themselves
in fixing the place of the Turanian languages in comparative philology,
— M. Pott in Germany, M. Max Muller in England, and M. Oppert in
France. All appearances would lead us to regard the Turanian race as
the first branch of the family of Japhet, which went forth into the world,
and by that premature separation, by an isolated and antagonistic
existence, took, or rather preserved, a completely distinct physiognomy.
We are especially led to consider the Turanian as a type of the white
race, imperfectly developed, rather than the result of a cross between
the two races, by the marked disposition to prognathism existing
in all its branches and which, as we have already said, appears to be a
very primitive peculiarity, gradually effaced by favourable conditions of
life, and by civilisation.
6. The descendants of Shem, Ham and Japhet, so admirably cata-

logued by Moses, include then, as we have seen, one only of the races
of humanity, the white race, whose three chief divisions he gives us as
now recognised by anthropologists. The other three races, yellow,
black and red, have no place in the Bible list of the nations sprung
from Noah. We need not be surprised at this, in the case of the first
and third. The book of Genesis could only
inspired author of the
speak to the men of his time of nations whom
they knew. Now, in the
days of Moses, no one in Egypt, or among the Israelites, had any idea
of the existence of the Chinese, or of the red American race. The
negroes, ho-\\'ever, were perfectly well known. Moses especially, educated
in Egypt, must have seen very many of them, for the Pharaohs of his
day made wars on them, and led thousands away captive into the
Egyptian cities. It was not then from ignorance or omission that he
did not mention them in his enumeration of the descendants of the
three sons of Noah it was voluntarily, and doubtless wdth some express
;
intention, though we may not be able to explain it. Those who sup-
pose that the inspired author believed that the deluge was not universal
as to all the then formed branches of the human species, that there were
tribes, besides the family of Noah, who escaped the flood, find in this
fact one of their most specious arginrients. The text of the Bible, how-
ever, has nothing expressly opposed to the supposition that Noah might
have had, after the deluge, other sons besides Shem, Ham and Japhet,
from whom might have sprung the races which do not appear in the
genealogy of these three personages. It does not, as we have already
—
FORMATION OF LANGUAGES. 65
any way oppose the hypothesis that some families sprung from
said, in
the three Noachian patriarchs may have left the common centre of
humanity before the building of the Tower of Babel, and the confusion
of tongues, and may have given birth to those great races who, becoming
developed in absolute isolation, have assumed a perfectly distinct phy-
siognomy and have remained shut out from the history of the rest of
mankind. In the table of affihation in the loth chapter of Genesis,
Moses has professed only to include those nations who after having
lived together, speaking the same language, were in the land of Shinar,
dispersed in consequence of the disaster of Babel. And these were the

nations who composed the white race, the superior and dominant race,
to whom, over all others, pre-eminence must be conceded and the glory
of representing humanity in its noblest aspect.
Section IV. The Principal Families of Languages.

I. We cannot, in a book of this kind, discuss that most difficult
philosophical problem —the origin of language. It forms no part of our

plan, and is not practically useful for historical purposes. Whatever
opinion we may hold on this subject, it is certain that the gradual
development of language, rendering it for every age the perfect expression
of thought, and its adaptability to the manners and state of civilisation
of each people, are purely human results produced by those especial
and sublime faculties with which the Creator has endowed our species.
To study and compare the infinitely varied languages which are spoken
by mankind, to discover their general laws, to group them in families,
to seek out their relationships and affinities, are the objects of compa-
rative philology, as yet quite a new science, but one holding a foremost
j^lace among the acquirements of our age in the domain of learning. It
takes for the object of its investigations, languages as they now exist,
and does not attempt to trace back their origin beyond the region of
positive fact.
The questions of primary origin, by revelation, by voluntary agree-
ment among mankind, or by the necessary and spontaneous effect of
their organisation, so much debated among philosophers, do not belong
to this science ; if at any time it does approach this problem, it is merely
as a corollai-y to its observations. We have not, unfortunately, space to
give to this subject aU the development it deserves. We cannot even
attempt a complete sketch, however rapid, but can only indicate the
chief points of interest. We
must confine ourselves to enumerating in
few words the principal families of the idioms spoken on the earth, and
afterwards adding some details as to the most perfect languages, those
most advanced in their development, those also which have had most
effect on civilisation —
for in no others is there any literature worthy of
F
tlie name —that is tlie inflected languages of the Semitic, and of the
Japhetic, or Indo-European nations.
2, Ever since man began to speak, that is, ever since he began to
exist, the languages of various races have passed through innumerable
modifications, caused by the progress of knowledge among those by
whom they were spoken, by intercommunication, and by the reciprocal
influence of one idiom on another. It is therefore as impossible to trace
back to a primitive language, as we have found it impossible to trace

back to a primitive race. Too many changes have been in operation
since man left the birth-place of his race. The utmost we can do is to
recover from some ancient languages a few traces of the original idiom,
in other words, to find a certain number of the processes by which the
eaidiest men made known their thoughts. "The earliest feature in
these primitive languages," says M. Maury,
agreement with all in
philologers, "was doubtless the predominance of outward impression

in the fomiation of signs, and the pre-eminently concrete form in which
thought was embodied. Just as the human mind clothes its first per-
ceptions, not in the abstract and general form that can only be
obtained by elimination and analysis, but in the particular form, in
one sense more synthetic, including and confounding mere acces-
sories with absolute truth ; so primitive language almost entirely ignored
metaphysical abstraction. No doubt, pure reason is reflected in this, as
in all other results of human faculties. The most humble exercise of

intelligence implies most elevated notions. Speech, even its most simple
state, pre-supposes absolute and eminently pure models, but all was
expressed in a concrete and tangible form."
In designating objects, imitation, or "onomatopoeia," seems to have
been the ordinary method employed. The human voice, being at once
both sign and sound, it was natural to take the sounds of the voice to
designate the sounds of nature. Moreover, as the choice of appellations
was not arbitrary, and as man has never chosen sounds at haphazard as
signs of his thoughts, we may be sure that of all words actually in use there
is not one for which there is not a sufficient reason, either as a primitive
fact, or as a remnant of a more ancient language. Now, the primitive
must have determined the choice of words is, without doubt, the
fact that
attempt to imitate the object wished to be expi-essed, especially if we
consider the perceptive instincts that must have governed the first
steps of the human mind. The comparative study of various languages
and the traces of their elementary forms, may also give a certain idea
of the language of the first men. This study has enabled a celebrated
philologist, Jacob Grimm,* to trace the following sketch of what primi-
* Memoire sur Porigine dii langage in the Mcmoircs dc V academic

de Berliit, 1852.
TURANIAN LANGUAGES. 67
tive language must have been. " Language on its first appearance was
simple, without artificial processes, full of life and the energy of youth.
All the words were short, monosyllabic, generally formed of short
vowels and simple consonants. Words were joined and agglomerated in
speech, like blades of grass in turf All its conceptions resiUted from
perception, from clear intuition, forming one thought, and becoming in
its turn the starting point for a host of other equally simple ideas. The
connections between the words and the ideas were simple, but were
frequently disfigured by the addition of unnecessary words. At each
progressive step, spoken language assumed more fulness and flexi-
bility, but was still wanting in rhythm and harmony. Thought had
not as yet become fixed, and therefore primitive speech could leave no
monument of its existence." The languages that emerged from this
primitive idiom underwent modifications in accordance with fixed
laws, in the same way as all other natural phenomena. Comparative
philology has been enabled to discover the most essential of these laws,
and tlie varying effects in the different languages, tlie development of
which they have governed.
" Three distinct epochs maik the history of language the mono- :
syllabic, the agglutinative, and the inflected. Not that all languages
have necessarily passed through these three phases, but because the
idioms belonging to the last epoch, that of inflexion, bear the marks
of a more developed organisation than those of the intermediate epoch
corresponding to that of agglutination ; these latter languages being
themselves better organised than the monosyllabic tongues. Among
all languages, ancient and modern, some have passed through the three
phases, others have been arrested in their development. Thus agglu-
tination includes the monosyllabic state, and inflection includes both
the agglutinative and the monosyllabic states. Exactly as among species
of animals, some remain as elementary organisms, whilst othere progress
during the period of gestation from that organism, to a higher and more
—
developed organisation." A. AL\ury.
3. JNIonosyllabic languages consist only of simple words, expressed
by one single emission of the voice. These words are both substantives
and verbs ; they express the notion, the idea, independently of the
employment, namely, the way in which the word is put into relation
with other words, indicating its categorical sense in the phrase.
The majority of the languages of the yellow race have stopped at
this stage of development. The ancient Chinese perhaps the best
is
and purest example. The modern Chinese is also in themonosyllabic

state, but tendencies to agglutination begin to appear. This is also the
case in Annamese, .Siamese, Burmese, and in general in all the Indo-
Chinese idioms ; in the Thibetan, as well as in the languages of some
primitive tribes of the north of India, who have been driven by Arian
conquest into the valleys of the Himalayas.
From the dialects we have just named we pass, by an almost in-
sensible transition, to the agglutinated languages. These, in the Old

World— for we leave out the indigenous languages of America, and their
peculiar process of agglutination — constitute a vast group, embracing
the idioms spoken by all the Turanian nations, which have received
from Professor Max MUller and Mr. Logan the name of " Turanian
group of languages." The fundamental character of this gi'oup,
and of the state of language it represents, is the use of monosyllabic
particles, indicating all the modifications of language, all the ideas of
relation possible between the different words in a phrase. These par-
ticles or " post positions " are " glued " to the root, which remains
invariable, defining its meaning, lengthening it out almost indefinitely,
without any fusion or contraction, either with each other, or with the
root or primitive word. The Turanian or agglutinated languages of the
Old "World are generally very harmonious in their vocalisation, and
exhibit a marked tendency to avoid the junction of many consonants,
always teiTninating the fundamental word or root with a vowel. The
grammatical laws, the characteristic method of formation, are the same
for all, and clearly prove the essential unity of this group. But the
vocabularies vary almost infinitely between one and the other, a circum-
stance, moreover, to be obsei-ved in all the languages of uncivilised
people who, from their mode of life, are completely isolated from one
another, even when near neighbours.
The Turanian languages may be divided into families, corresponding
exactly to the divisions of the Turanian nations. The two principal
are the Tartaro-finnish and Dravidian. The first is composed of three
branches, each subdivided into a great number of small gi-oups
and idioms first,
; the Turkish, which, as its name indicates, is
formed of the languages of all the tribes of Turkestan, and of those
who, like the Osmanlis, have descended from them. Next the Uralo-
finnish branch, represented in Europe by the Finlandish, the Magyar,
the Esthonian, and the Lapponese in Asia, by the dialects spoken in
;
the regions of the Oural and Altai, such as the Ostiak and the Samoiede.
Finally, the Tartar branch, properly so called, spoken
by the northern
people of the yellow race, Mongols and Tongouses. We might add a
fourth branch, formed by the Japanese and Corean, which have also
sprung from the same source. The Dravidian family is composed of
the languages of the southern part of Hindustan, the principal being
the Tamil, the Telinga, and the Canarese.
The Tartaro-finnish presents a state of language slightly more advanced
than that of the Dravidian family. The roots are generally of two
syllables, accented on the first ; but in this dissyllable we find the unmis-
takable trace of the primitive monosyllable that still exists in the
roots of the Dravidian family. These last languages are more harmo-
—
TURANIAN LANGUAGES. 69
nious, and, compared with them, tlie Tartaro-finnish tongues are hard
and roughened, so to speak, by the cold of the countries where they
are spoken, alDOve all the Magyar. The Finnish only is an exception ;
it equals in softness and harmony the most musical of the languages of
Hindustan.
4. Inflected languages are peculiar to the white race, and are those
which have attained to the highest degree of development. They result
from the most complete progress of thought and civilisation :
" In these languages the root undergoes a phonetic alteration,

destined to express the modifications resulting from the differences of the
relations binding the root to the other words. The elements, which
still possess a character so rigid and immutable in the agglutinated lan-
guages, become in the inflected more simple, more organic. An
inflected language represents the liighest degi-ee of gi-ammatical structure,
and is best adapted to the expression and development of ideas.
Nothing can better show the difference that separates the agglutinated
from the inflected languages than the contrast between the respective
declensions and conjugations of these two classes of idioms. In
declension the agglutinated languages have but the slightest separation
between the case and its post position; number is simply expressed by a
tergiination and there is as yet no blending of these words with the
;
principal word or root. The genders are hardly distinguished. But in

the inflected languages, all the circumstances of tlie word, gender,
number, and case, are expressed by modifications affecting the substantive
itself, and constantly changing its sound, form, and accent. In the verb
the transformation of the root is still more complete. We no longer
find, as in the agglutinated languages, a central syllable to which others
are * glued ;' but the whole body of the word is modified in accordance
with the several moods and tenses, preserving, however, some of the
sound of the root, serving to recall the original sense modified by its
relations with other words. " —A. Maury.
"The mode of indicating persons and numbers,"* writes M. Schlei-
cher, "differs entirely in the inflected languages from the method of the
agglutinated idioms. Among these last languages, the persons are
indicated by a pronominal and the plural is often
suffix, slightly altered,
marked by the cannot be otherwise,

plural sign of the substantive. It
since the difference between the substantive and the pronoun had only
just commenced. In the inflected languages, the personal terminations
of the verb have no doubt a visible connection with the pronoun, but
the forms of the inflected verljs are fundamentally distinguished from all
others. In this case an energetic force has formed that indissoluble
thing which we call '
a word, and in this we cannot mistake the respec-
'
Les langues dc r Europe modcrne, French translation, p. 153.

— —

tive character of the substantive and verb. Just because the unity of
the word is so rigorously maintained during inflection we cannot express
many relations by one single word. Whilst the changes, the almost
immeasurable elongations, which verbs and substantives undergo in the
agglutinated tongues, can only take place at the expense of the unity
of the word. The inflected verb then marks fewer relations than the
agglutinated verb. Thence also arises the great difficulty of decom-
posing the inflected forms into their simple elements. The elements
expressing relation undergo very considerable changes in inflected
idioms, simply to preserve the unity of the word."
The inflected languages are divided into two great families, the
Semitic, and the Indo-European or Arian. To these two families
belong the languages of the great ancient civilisations v/hose history we
have undertaken to relate. They are so important, that we must devote
to each a special paragraph.
Section V. The Se.mitic Languages.

I. The principal languages of the Semitic family are eight in num-
ber :
1st. The Hebrew, spoken by the Israelites, by the Phoenicians, and

probably also by other tribes of Canaan.
2nd. The Aramcean, formerly used in Syria ; of this there were
many dialects. The Biblical Aramjean, in which, in the sixth century
before our era, some of the books of the Bible were composed, as for
instance, part of the book of Daniel. The Aramaean of the Targum,
found in the "Targums" or paraphrases of the Bible, dating from the
commencement of our era. The Syro-Chaldee, the vulgar tongue
formed among the Jews by alterations in the Hebrew, spoken in Pales-
tine in the time of Christ, and used in the great Rabbinical work called
the Talmud. The Nabathean, the dialect of the ancient inhabitants of
Arabia Petrsea ; and finally, the Samaritan, a dialect formed in the old
territory of the tribe of Ephraim, after the Assyrian conquest, which is
preserved literally among the descendants of these dissenters from the

Jewish worship.
3rd. The Sabaean, still used in the southern part of the basin of the
Euphrates, among the Mendaites, a peculiar sect, a remnant of the
ancient Assyro-persic paganism.
4th. The Syriac, the language used in \vriting in the countries of
Edessa and Nisibis, the development and literaiy existence of which
extended from the second to the sixth century of the Christian era.
5th. The Assyrian, a language common to Babylon and Nineveh, in
which the cuneifonn inscriptions of those two fl\mous cities are com-
posed.
SEMITIC LANGUAGES. 71
6tli. The Ilimyarite, or ancient idiom of Southern Arabia ; oT this

we ]X)ssess nothing but a few inscriptions.
7th. The Ghez, the ancient language of Abyssinia. Its development
and literary existence are subsequent to the establishment of Christianity
m that countiy, tliat is, to the third century of our era.
8th. Finally, the Arabic, tlê only one of the Semitic tongues still
a living language. It has but a small number of dialects, slightly

differing from each other. Through the influence of the Koran, this
idiom, originally peculiar to the Ishmaelite tribe, has spread from
Babylonia to the extremity of Morocco, from Syria to Yemen.
2. These languages form a perfectly homogeneous group, and are not
divided into so many branches as otlier hnguistic families. The roots

are all of two syllables, and the original monosyllable
found only, with is
great difficulty, in the inflexible fomi which the elements of the vocabu-
laiy have now assumed. The idioms temied Semitic are essentially
analytical instead of rendering the complex element of speech in its
;
unity, they prefer to dissect it and give it term by term. There is a

marked disjxjsition to accumulate the expression of the relations round
the root. This is particularly to be observed in Hebrew. These lan-
guages, then, are still partly in the agglutinated state, although they are
veiy The subject, the case of the pronoun, the
clearly also inflected.
conjunctions, the article, form only one word with the idea itself. The
principal idea is, as it were, encircled with particles which modify its
relations and then form accessories. The vocabulary sho\\s the closest
resemblance between the different languages of the Semitic family.
What has much contributed to maintain the close homogeneity in
tliis family is, that its idioms never had that power of giowth that
the Indo-European or Arian languages have, so as to be unceasingly
modified by contmual development. They have always remained the
same ; and, to quote the expression of M. Renan, they have less lived
than lasted. This impress of immutability distinguishes the Semitic
languages in the highest degree, they have had a great conservative
power, that has preserved the fixed form of the pronunciation of the
consonants, and prevented alterations resulting from the softening of
articulation and other changes which easUy take place. It really seems
as if a special dispensation of Providence had endowed them with that
faculty of immutable preservation, to facilitate the discharge of the duty
—
imposed on one of them of preserving without alteration, from age to
age, the in.spired Book in which the principles of religious truth were
emL)odied.
3. The name "Semitic," however, conferred by Eichhorn on this
family of languages, and since universally adopted, is very imjjroper,
and even likely to lead to serious enor. They were not really restricted
to nations descended from Shcm, a large part, if not the majority, of
a

the Hamitic nations spoke the so-called Semitic languages. Hebrew-
was originally only the language of the Canaanites, a people exclu-
sively Hamitic, both in its disposition and physiognomy ; the family of
Abraham, living for many generations in the midst of these people,
adopted their language in place of that previously spoken by them, —
language probably more like Arabic, because of the original parentage
of the races of Heber and Joktan. The Ghez is spoken by a popula-
tion inwhich the Hamitic character largely predominates. The Semitic
element that came from Yemen, and has been so infused as to become
dominant, would, if the language cdlne from there, have brought the
Himyaritic, as they did bring the writing of Southern Arabia.
The monuments of Babylon and Chaldaja enable us to state that the
language called Assyrian was originally that of the Cushites of the lower
Euphrates, and that the Assyrians carried it with them when they
formed their settlement in the north. The Himyaritic itself is the idiom
of a country where the Cushite race preceded the descendants of
Joktan, and at all times fomied a considerable element in the popula-
tion. If the Joktanites of Southern Arabia had at the time of their
civilisation a language different from same stock who were
tribes of the
established in the remainder of the Peninsula, may

it not have been
owing to the influence of the race who preceded and mixed with them ?
We may, moreover, from a purely linguistic point of view, form, among
t|ie Semitic family, a group of languages composed of the Assyrian,
Himyaritic, and Ghez, which we may call the Cushite group, marked
by certain features peculiar to these three idioms, and unknown to the
remainder of the family.

4. The other nations descended from Ham spoke languages closely
related each other and fonning a special family, called Nilotic,
to
the greater part of the languages, and especially the most important,
having had the valley of the Nile as their birth-place. There
is first the Egyptian, the most ancient language in which we possess
written monuments. Although somewhat altered in the course of time, it
remained under the name of Coptic, up to the seventeenth century

in use,
of our era, the period when it finally gave way to the Arabic, and was
no longer used except in the liturgy of the native Egyptian Christians.
Next come the idioms of tlie Gallas and of Abyssinia, and the whole
series of dialects that must be grouped with them, spoken in the dis-
trict between the White Nile and the Red Sea. The Malagasy, or
language of Madagascar, seems to attach itself to them on one side, but
is very much mixed with elements of Malay origin. The languages of
Nubia and Kordofan form, in their tum, a peculiar group in the family ;
they are numerous each colony has its own dialect ; and it would be
;
impossible to enumerate them here. We shall only mention that one of

them, the Bischari, seems to be the last remains of the idiom in which
—
INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. 73
hieroglyphic inscriptions of the Ethiopians of Meroe are composed. A

last division of the same family is represented by the Berber, sprung
from the ancient Libyan, and spoken by a great part of the people who
are spread over the north and north-west of Africa. To this group
belong the Kabyle-Algerian, and the Tuarick. A language nearly
related to the Berber was spoken by the Guanches, ancient inhabitants
of the Canary Isles.
All the idioms, the chief of whicli we have enumerated, composing
the Nilotic family, present a very close original relationship with the
family called Semitic. The grammatical stracture is essentially the
same some of the most important parts of speech, such as the pro-
;
nouns, are in both of them exactly similar. The organisation only is

less complete and less perfect. In the vocabulary a large part at least
of the roots are common to the two families. But the Nilotic languages
have them in a more ancient form, the fonn which belonged to them
before they underwent the modification that in the Semitic languages
invariably put them into dissyllables. The remainder of the roots are
derived from languages in reality African, spoken by various negro
races.
It is difficult then not to admit with Charles Lenormant, M. Bunsen,
and Mr. Stuart Poole, that the Nilotic langviages spring from the same
stock as the Semitic, and form with them one single class divided into
two families. One language was originally common to the sons of
Shem and of Ham. But the Egyptian and its allied idioms were first
separated from the main stem, and in a less perfect state of develop-
ment. In this separate state of existence they became, as it were,
stereotyped by the fixed standard of the monuments of Egj^pt, whilst the
Cushite languages of Asia, of the Canaanites, and Semitic people, con-
tinued to progress, arrived at a state of greater perfection, and assumed
the character of a distinct family.
Section VI. The Indo-European Languages.

I. The great family of Indo-European, Arian, or Japhetic languages,
belongs exclusively to nations sprung from Japhet, who all speak, or
have spoken its idioms. These languages are very numerous, for they
have an inherent vitality that forces them into development, progiêss,
and incessant change, in space and in time.
In them the mechanism of inflection is most perfect, most developed,
and they retain no apparent trace of the original stage of agglutination.
The organisation common to these languages is revealed by a systematic
comparison of the idioms representing the most ancient and complete
branches of the family. All the Indo-European idioms have more or
less resemblance to the Sanscrit, the richest of all, and most like the
primitive form. The further we travel east, the greater resemblance
we between the languages of this numerous and noble family,

find
the nearer we get to that which may he considered its typical form.
Thus the Celtic tongues, the most western of all the family, are least
like the Sanscrit. The birth-place of these idioms is the country
between the Caspian Sea and the Hindoo Koosh. There, before the
"dispersion of the various tribes of the sons of Japhet, was spoken the
primitive language, the origin of all the others. Modem science calls
this the Ariac, and can even partly reconstruct its most essential
characteristics.
From the earliest times known to history the Arian languages have
been essentially synthetic ; the words are placed in a sentence accord-
ing to the system of construction, for which the Latin is our type.
Our Neo-Latin and English idioms have in modern times sprung
from this consequence of the necessity for
family of languages, in
finding new forms of speech to express new forms of thought. In

the most primitive state, in the little even that we know of the
Ariac, the genius of the family has a complex character essentially
distinguishing from the Semitic, with which language its vocabu-
it
lary has but a small number of words in common and moreover this —
small common base may result from the identity of the method em.-
ployed by both languages in their origin, that is, the onomatopoetic.
It would nevertheless be exaggeration to assume it as impossible that
these two linguistic families were originally sisters. Philologers of
high authority have pronounced that the Arian tongues were produced
by the modifying influence of the Semitic on the Turanian languages.
Without prejudging anything as to the reciprocal affiliation, more or
less direct, of the Indo-European idioms, an affiliation which pre-
sents serious difficulties, we may divide them into six gi-oups ist. : —
the Indian ; 2nd. Iranian ;
3rd. Pelasgic or Greco-Latin ;
4th. Sla-
vonian ;
5th. Germanic ; and 6th. Celtic.
2. The Sanscrit forms the base of the Indian group ; it is the sacred
and scientific language of the Brahmins. Spoken for more than twenty
centuries, it still lives as language, and
it must, from so long
a literary
an existence, have become the most perfect type of an inflected
language, as the meaning of the name which the Indians have given it
signifies, Sansciita, that is, "that which is complete in itself." This
sonorous language, so rich in articulations, rendered so flexible by im-
provised poetry, is called by those who write it, " the language of the
gods," and its alphabet "writing of the gods" deva nugciri. The
language that we may consider the eldest daughter of the Sanscrit,
is the Pali, once spoken on the east of Hindustan, and now become the
learned and religious language of the Buddhists of Ceylon, of Madura
IXDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. 75
in the Burman empire, and of tlie Indo-Cliinese provinces. The Pracrit
dialects are of the second generation ; this name Pracrita signifies
"inferior," "imperfect," and has been given to idioms which were

the vulgar tongues of India in the ages immediately anterior to the
Christian era. These dialects are especially preserved in the Indian
dramas, where they are put into the mouths of inferior personages.
Next come languages of later birth, and restricted to certain provinces,
whence they take names. These are still in use.
their The Hindui
—
with its seven dialects the Hindustani, the language of the upper
classes of all Central India, from Calcutta to Bombay ; the Cashmerian,
the Bengali, the Guzerati, the Mahratta, the Nepalese. To these we
must add the Zingari, the idiom of that strange race, originally Indian,
who wander all over Europe, and are called according to the country,
Zigeuner, Zingari, Gitanos, Bohemians, or Gipsies.
3. The most ancient type of the idioms of the Iranian group is found
in the Zend, and the Persian of the cuneiform inscriptions of the Achse-
menian kings. The Zend is originally from Bactria ; it is the language
of the books of Zoroaster. Like the Sanscrit, it had ceased to be a
spoken language before the Christian era, and its use was confined
entirely to literature. The scale of articulations is less varied in these
languages than in the Sanscrit, as they have only three vowels, a, i, u.
About the time of the Sassanians the Persian language had already
undergone great alterations, and still further modifications followed the
Moslem invasion. The Parsee was then formed, the connecting
link between the idiom of the Achsemenians and the modem Persian.
This coming from the province of Ears, has been handed down by
last,
many generations of eminent poets, under the independent dynasties of

Persia in the middle ages, but mixed in its phraseology with Turkish
and Arabic words and forms of speech. Alterations of another kind in
the Zend have given birth to the Gheber, spoken by the descendants of
those obstinate dissenters from Zoroastrianism who took refuge in
India.
To the Iranian group also are attached, among other still living
idioms, the Affghan or Pushtoo, the Belochee, the Kurdish, the Arme-
nian with its rich literature, which has flourished for fourteen centuries,
and its many existing vulgar dialects, and finally the Ossitinian, spoken
by a small nation dwelling in the centre of the chain of the Caucasus.
The Pehlvi has been produced by a mixture of Semitic and Iranian
elements ; the grammar is Arama;an, the vocabulary Persic. It was
used at the court of the Sassanian kings and one of the books
first ;
attributed to Zoroaster, the Bundehesh, exists only in that language.

4. "The Greco-Latin group comprehends the greater part of the
languages of Southern Europe. The epithet '
Pelasgic ' sufficiently
characterises it, for Greece and Italy were first peopled by one common
—
race, the Pelasgi, whose idiom seems to have been tlie source of both
Greek and Latin. The first of these languages is not in reality the mother
of the otlier, as lias been believed they are two sisters, and if we must
;
assign a different age to them, the Latin has a right to be considered

the elder. This language, in fact, presents a more archaic character
than classical The most ancient dialect of the Hellenic idiom,
Greek.
.the ôlian, resembles Latin much more than more recent Greek dialects.
The Latin has in no respect the character of a language formed from

the decomposition of one more ancient, or by its mixture with others.
It bears in a high degree the synthetic character of ancient idioms. The
elements of grammar have not yet resolved themselves into so many
different words, and the phraseology as well as the conjugation of the
verb, and the most ancient of its declensions, present a striking likeness
to the Sanscrit. Its vocabulary contains a host of words, the archaic
form of which is The Latin belongs to a group of
entirely Ariac.
languages now lost, and which
seems to have gradually absorbed
it
the Sabine, which originally furnished many Latin words, the Um-
brian, the Oscan spoken in Campania, the Messapian, and lapygian.
The Etruscan, we know only from a small number of words, and it
seems to have been a separate branch of the Pelasgic stem. The pre-
sent language of the Albanians, although now very much mixed with
Greek and Slavonic M'ords, seems to be one of the least altered of
those derived from the Pelasgic. In many of its forms it seems to point
to a grammatical system nearer the Sanscrit than even the Greek."
A. Maury.
The decomposition of the Latin during the middle ages, gave birth
to the present languages of Southern Europe, grouped together
under the common name of " Neo-Latin." The Italian, French, Pro-
vencal, Spanish, Portugiiese, the language of the Grisons, and the
Rouman of the Danubian Principalities.
5. The group of Lettic and Slavonic languages resembles very
closely the Indian and Iranian languages. The genius of the primitive
Ariac is remarkably conspicious in them this group is divided into ;
two branches, the Lettic and Slavonian properly so called. The first
belongs to a period less advanced than the second. The Lithuanian
substantive has, for example, only two genders, whilst the Slavonic has
three. The Slavonic conjugation is also superior to the Lithuanian,
in which the third person of the singular, dual and plural are not dis-
tinguished. The branch comprises first the Lithuanian, of
Lettic
all the spoken languages of Europe approaching nearest to the Sanscrit;
next the Borussian or ancient Prussian, which has been displaced

by the German and finally the Lettic or Livonian.
; The Slavonic
branch is by far the most extended; we may even say that of all the
groups of languages in Europe, this is the one spoken by the giêatest
INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES. 77
number of persons. Its name Slave is derived from a word implying

the idea of "glory," a term which all nations speaking its idioms apply
to themselves. With the exception of the Bulgarian, which has under-
gone great alterations, the Slavonic idioms preserve a greater likeness to
each other than, for example, the Gennanic languages. A traveller
who knows one of its dialects perfectly can make himself understood in
the whole extent of territory where they are spoken from Montenegro —
to Kamchatka.
The Slavonic languages m.ust be divided into two great branches
— the Eastern and Western. The most ancient known form of the
first is the Slavonic, the liturgical language of the Russian church,
which has ceased to be spoken since the end of the middle ages. By
its side we must place the Bulgarian, also representing a very ancient
state of langiiage, and which has been earned from the neighbourhood
of the Oural to the banks of the Danube, where it is gradually disap-
pearing. Tbe Russian, whose domain has been so prodigiously
extended by conquest, and which is supplanting by degrees the Uralo-
finnish and Tartar idioms ; and finally the Servian, spoken between the
Adriatic Sea and the Danube.
The Western Slavonic idioms are the Polish, the Tschekh or Bohe-
mian, the Sorabian or Wendish, of Lower Lusatia, to which we must
add some languages rooted out many ages ago by the German, such as
the Cachoub of Lauenburg, the Polab and the Obotrite of the banks of
the Elbe. Generally speaking, these idioms are harsher, less harmonious,
and more fiill of consonants than those of the eastern branch, parti-
cularly the Tschekh.
6. " The vast family of Gennanic languages, which has by degrees
supplanted the Slavonic, embraces at present a great number of idioms,
successors of others of the same family, now entirely lost. All these
languages are distinguished by common characteristics springing from
the Ariac gi-ammar by regular and graduated alterations. One of
the most celebrated of German Philologists —whose labours have made
him ahnost a legislator in the comparative grammar of the German
languages —Jacob Grimm—has distinguished four fundamental charac-
teristics in this family. First, the tendency of the vowel to soften in
pronunciation, to indicate a modification in the meaning or employ-
ment of a word. Secondly, the transformation of one consonant into
another of the same class, softer, stronger, or aspirated. Thirdly, the
existence of strong and weak conjugations, that is, conjugations in which
the radical vowel changes according to certain rules, and of conjugations
whereit remains invariable." A. Maury.—
The Germanic languages form two branches, Gothic and Gcnnan.
We know the ancient Gothic only by a small number of written remains,
among which we must place in the first rank the fragments of the
;

version of the Bible, by Bishop Ulphilas in the fourth century. To the
same branch belong, — ist, the Norse idiom of the old Scandinavians,
preserved almost unaltered in Iceland, and which by gradual alterations
has formed the Danish and Swedish. 2nd. The Anglo-Saxon, which
by its mixture with the old French, and in consequence of special
modifications due particularly to Celtic influences, has produced the
English. The Low German, itself comprising many dialects ;
3rd.
the Frison, the Dutch and the Flemish. These last languages are the
remains of the Saxon, which was spoken, with slight differences, from
state to state in the whole north-west of Gennany, from the Elbe and
Weser to the Rhine and the Scheldt. As for the German branch, properly
so called, it comprises four dialects, —
the High German, since Luther's
time the language of letters and society in all Germany, the Swabian,
the Austrian, and the Franconian.
7. The Celtic tongues, now restricted to a small number of provinces
in France and the British Isles, are, of all the Indo-European languages,
the furthest westward from the primitive settlements of man, and are
also the most altered. These idioms doubtless do recall the Sanscrit
grammar, but have no general resemblance to that language. Follow-
ing the laws of the permutation of consonants, that we mentioned when
speaking of the German languages, we may carry back the Celtic
vocabularies to the Sanscrit and Ariac but the grammatical forms have
;
been so altered that it is often difficult to attach them, at any rate directly,
to the ordinary types of the Indo-European family. The Gaulish has
disappeared, supplanted by the Latin ; there only remain a few inscrip-
tions still imperfectly explained. The Celtic idioms which are still
living, are classed in two groups, Cymric or Breton, and Gallic or
Gselic. The first embraces the Cymric properly so called, or the
Welsh, the language still used in a great part of Wales, and the Cornish,
which up to the last century remained in use in the county of Cornwall
finally, the Armorican or Breton, in general use in France in the Depart-
ments of the Cotes du Nord, Finistere, Morbihan and part of Loire
Inferieure. To the second belong the Irish, the Gffilic properly so
called, or Erse, spoken in the Highlands of Scotland, and lastly, the
Manx or dialect of the Isle of Man.
The hasty view we have taken of the races of mankind and the
various families of languages, has led us insensibly far from the primitive
days of humanity to our own times. And thus M'e find ourselves led
away from the history of ancient Oriental civilisation, to which these
enquiries were nevertheless a necessary introduction. We now return
to our proper subject, not again to deviate from it.
END OF BOOK I.
: — ——
79
BOOK 11.
THE ISRAELITES.
CHAPTER I,
THE PATRIARCHS— THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT-

MOSES.
Chief Authorities — The Bible, Books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus,
Ahcnibers, —
ami Deuteronomy. ^Josephus, Antiqicities of the Jews.
—
Books I., II. The dissertations attached to the Pentateuch in
Dr. Cahn's and M. Cahen's Bible. —
Munk, La Palestine, Paris,
1845. — Ewald, Volkes Israel, Gottingen, 1851-64.
Geschichte des
Wallon, La Sainte Bible, Paris, 1854.—J. Salvador, Ilistoire des
institutions de Moise, Third Edition, Paris, 1862.
Section I. Abraham.
I. By degrees the various nations of the human race forgot the great
traditions of their primitive history, or rather, they preserved the recol-
lection only of some detached facts which, as time went on, became mixed
up with purely imaginative stoi"ies. The idea of the existence of God
was gradually obscured in their minds, and idolatry established itself
all over the world.
"Man and passion," says Bossuet, " had neverthe-
drovATied in lust
less preserved a vague idea of the Divine power, which maintained itself
by its own inherent force, but which, eclipsed by objects apparent to
the senses, led him to worship all objects displaying activity and power.
Thus the sun and the stars, that made their influence felt from such a
distance, fire, and the elements whose effects were so universal, were the
earliest objects of public worship."
To arrest the progress of so great an evil and to prevent its final
triumph, which would have eliminated from the world the true concep-
tion of the Divinity, God in His great power and infinite mercy chose
one family out of that race of Shem on whom the second father of the
human race, Noah, had invoked special blessings and, calling it to a ;
sublime vocation, imposed on it the duty of preserving the ancient faith

no less as to the creation of the world, than as to that special Providence
—
which governs all human affairs, and made it the dejjository of the pre-
cepts delivered and promises made to the human race.
—
2. Terah, of tlie race of Arphaxad, lived in the district bearing
the name of his ancestor, that is, in the south of Chaldsea his resi-;
dence was in the city of Ur, called also Calneh, the Mugheir of our
time, the ruins of wliich have been explored by the English traveller
Loftus.* He had three sons, Abram, Nahor, and Haran. The last
died in his father's lifetime, whilst the family still dwelt in their original
habitation, and left a son named Lot. The sterility of the country
where they lived rendering it unsuited to a race entirely given to
pastoral life, induced Terah to change his residence and to migrate
with all his family to the northern countries. He came to the town of
Haran in the north of Mesopotamia, settled there, and died at the age
of 205 years.
Then God revealed His mission to Abram, the destiny by which he
was to become the " father of the faithful." He was then 65 years
old, and his father did not die till 60 years later. " Get thee out of
thy countiy, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house," said
the Lord to him, "unto a land that I will show thee and I will make of ;
thee a great nation, and and thou shalt be a blessing.

I will bless thee,
And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and
in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed " (Gen. xii. i 3). The —
popular traditions of the Jews and Arabs, which appear here to rest on
an ancient foundation, add that this emigration was rendered necessary
in consequence of the dangers which threatened the pious Abram in the
midst of idolatrous populations, and even in the house of his father, a
zealous worshipper of false gods.t The historian Josephus, the echo of
the legends of the Synagogue, says that the inhabitants of the region of
Haran took up arms against him, and wished to punish him for the
contempt with which he had treated their divinities. We may also
connect this event with the Elamite conquest that occurred about this
time, and as we shall show in the fourth book, affected the whole basin
of the Euphrates and Tigris.
3. Abram obeyed the commands of the Lord. Leaving in Haran
* In identifying the ruins now called " Mugheir," with both Ur and
Calneh, the author differs from Sir H. Rawlinson and other English
authorities, who believe Mugheir to represent Ur, and Calneh to be found
at Nipur. (See Professor Rawlinson's Five Great Monarchies, vol. i. 20.)
The reasons which have led the author to this conclusion are, that Ur
must have been one of the cities of the primitive Chalda;an tetrapolis
(Gen. X. 10), and that no other name in the list but Calneh can stand
for Ur. Also, that the ideographic name of Ur in the cuneiform inscrip-
tions means " dwelling of Oannes ;" and that the name Calneh is a
corruption of " Hekal Anu," with the same meaning. Tr.
t Jo.s. Ant. I., vii. 2; Koran, ch. xxi. "The Prophets;" xxix.
" The Spider ;" vi. "Cattle."
ABRAM IN EGYPT. 8i
his fixther, and Nahor his brother, he departed, directing his course to
the south with Sarai his wife, Lot, his brother's son, and all that were
his ; he thus passed over the Euphrates, traversed Syria, and arrived at
last in the country of Canaan (in after times Judsca), which name signi-
fied " the low countiy," in opposition to Aram, or the elevated dis-
trict. It was then entirely occupied by Canaanitish tribes of the race
of Ham, who had built cities, and lived in settled habitations, allowing
the nomadic tribes of the Shemites to wander about, feeding their flocks
in the pastures adjacent to the cities, just as in the present day the
Bedouin tribes wander even up to the gates of tlie cities of Syria and
Palestine. Arrived in the land of Canaan, Abram (Gen. xii. 6, 7), in
the district of Sichem, had a vision in wliicli God announced to liim that
the whole of that land should one day belong to his seed. He then built
an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him, and also another between
Bethel and Hai, in the place where he had pitched his tents, in the rich
pastures of the lower Jordan, and after having called there upon the
name of the Lord, he pursued his course towards the south.
A famine obliged him to go to Egypt and sojourn there some time
(Gen. xii. 10, seq.) Fearing lest his wife Sarai, who was very beautiful,
should be taken from him, and that he himself should be subjected to
violence, he asked her to pass herself off for a sister, whose natural
protector he would be. The king, whom the Bible designates (as it
does all Egyptian kings mentioned in the books of Genesis and Exodus),
only by his title Pharaoh (in Egyptian Pir aa), having heard of the
beauty of Sarai, sent for her to the palace ; he treated Abram with
great distinction, and made him handsome presents of slaves and cattle.
But, stopped in his project by a Divine chastisement, and having
learned that Sarai was the wife of Abram, he restored her to her husband,
and sent them out of the country with all that they had.
4. Abram returned, still accompanied by Lot, his brother's son, to
the place of his former encampment between Bethel and Hai. Abram
and Lot led a life similar in every respect to that of the Arab Sheikh of
our days. A crowd of hereditary servants wandered as they now do,
going from one pasture ground to another as soon as the first was
exhausted, with the flocks and herds of their masters, or rather of their
lords, for each patriarchal family formed a small nomadic state in which,
in all probability, the shepherds were bound to the chief of the tribe by
ties of relationship more or less distant (Gen. xiii. i, seq.]. The great
number of the and herds of the uncle and nephew rendered it
flocks
difficult to feed them together, their servants began to quarrel on the
subject, and a separation became necessary. Abram allowed Lot

to choose the region in which he would dwell. He decided on the
fertile banks of the Lower Jordan and the basin of the Dead Sea,
which, at its southern extremity, offered a country of magnificent pasture

G
land in the plain now called Ghor Safieh, which the Bedouin tribes of
that part of Syria still regard as a real terrestrial paradise (Gen. xiii.
lo, seq.) This plain was in the immediate vicinity of Sodom, the chief
of the five confederate cities, built round the inland sea; the four others
were Gomorrah, Admah, Zeboim, and Segor, or Zoar. Their inhabitants
seem to have been of Canaanitish blood but they were horribly corrupt,
;
given over to impiety, to iniquity of every kind, and to the most

infamous vices, which drew down on them the Divine vengeance. In
spite of that, Lot fixed his dwelling within the city of Sodom itself,
leaving his flocks and herds in the Ghor (Gen. xiii. 14). After the
departure of his nephew, Abram had another vision, in which God
renewed to him the promise of an innumerable posterity, to whom the
whole surrounding country should belong. He then came and dwelt in
the grove of Mamre, near Hebron, a city then occupied by the Hittites,
a Canaanitish race. He there built another altar to Jehovah.
5. In the meanwhile, Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, that is of Susiana,
had conquered the valley of the Jordan, and brought into subjection to
his sceptre the five towns of the borders of the Dead Sea, that is, the
country where Lot had settled (Gen. xiv. i, seq.). Twelve years he
remained their master; but in the thirteenth year, the petty kings of that
region, seeing that Chedorlaomer was occupied by wars in the north
of Arabia, thought they could thro\^' off the yoke. But the Elamite
king came against them with his vassals, Amraphel, king of Shinar,
Arioch, king of Ellasar, and Thargal, king of nations, or of the nomadic
*
tribes.
The battle took place in the vale of Siddim, on the borders of the
Dead Sea, where were many wells of bitumen. The people of the
country were routed. Sodom, Gomorrah, and the three other cities
were pillaged, and Lot was led away captive. Of this Abram was in-
formed by a fugitive. He was at the time living at Mamre, and was
in alliance with the Canaanitish prince of the country. With his ally
and the two brothers of that prince, and all his own servants, he com-
menced the pursuit of the enemy, who had begun to retreat. He over-
took them northern extremity of Palestine, at the place where, in
at the
later times, was built the city of Dan. Attacking them by night, he
gained the victory. The four kings were pursued to the neighbourhood
of Damascus. Lot was rescued, and all the booty retaken. It was on
this occasion that Abram received the blessing of Melchizedek, king of
Salem, priest of the most high God, whose tribe, no doubt of Semitic
origin, was one of the very few who in their pastoral life had been able
* We Book IV., the reason why we have

shall explain further on, in
preferred, for the name
of this prince, the reading Thargal, from the
Septuagint, to the Tidal of the Hebrew text.
—
THE COVENANT WITH ABRAHAM. 83
to preserve intact the primitive belief in the unity of God.* Aljram

generously refused to receive for himself the smallest portion of the
booty which the king of Sodom and accepted only a share
offered him,
for his allies. Abram, overpowered with gratitude for the success which
by God's help he had obtained, had again at this time one of those
visions which signalised every important event of his life, con-
firmed him in his faith, and inspired him with all confidence for the
future. "I am thy shield " (Gen. xv. I, seq.), said the Lord to him,
" and thy exceeding great reward." " Lord God what wilt thou give
me," said Abram, " seeing I go childless and one born in my
. . .
house is mine heir." "Look now towards heaven," was the reply,
" and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them and he said unto
:
him. So shall thy seed be .... I am Jehovah, that brought thee

out of Ur of the Chaldees to give thee this land to inherit it. " Abram,
then, by the command of God, performed the symboUcal ceremony which
sealed his covenant with the Eternal ; he sacrificed a number of animals,
and cut them in pieces; and, in a vision, he saw God himself, under the
form of a flame of fire, pass between these pieces. This was the form
by which, among the Orientals, solemn treaties were concluded and ;
St. Ephrsem, the Syrian, in his commentary on Genesis, speaks of this

practice as in use among the Chaldseans in his time. He who swore to
the alliance by passing thus between the severed limbs of the victims,
intimated that he consented to be thus treated if he violated his promise.
From similar practices the Greek phrase opKia rkfxvdv, and the Latin
fcedus feri7-e, are derived.
6. After a ten years' sojourn in the land of Canaan, Sarai, despairing
of ever giving a son to Abram, wished him to take to wife her servant,
the Egyptian woman
Hagar. She, lifted up by pride, began to despise
her mistress, who complained to Abram. The servant, given over to
the bad treatment of a jealous mistress, took to flight. She was seated
by a fountain in the desert when she was visited by an angel, who
announced that the son she bore in her bosom should one day be-
come powerful, and should have a numerous posterity, and ordered
her to return and submit herself to her mistress. Returning to
the dwelling of Abram, she bore him a son, who was called Ishmael
(God shall hear). Abram was then eighty-six years old. Thirteen
years after this event, God renewed His covenant with Abram. This
name, which signifies " Exalted Father," was changed by God himself to
Abraham, Father of a great Multitude, " signifying the immense posterity
'
'
* The commonly received opinion among the Jews, according to

Jerome, and also among the Samaritans, according to Epiphanius, was
that Melchizedek was the Patriarch Shem, who according to the com-
monly received chronology must have been alive at this time. Tr.
which should spring from the patriarch and circumcision was instituted
;
as the symbol of this renewed covenant, and as the distinctive sign of

the sons of Abraham. Sarai received the name of Sarah (mistress,
princess), and God promised to Abraham another son by her in whom
the Divine covenant should be perpetuated. As for Ishmael, the Lord
announced that twelve princes should spring from him, and that his
posterity should be very numerous.
7. By this time Abraham had arrived at the age of ninety-nine years,
and Sarah ninety years. Without doubt, as we have already said, the
life of men who led the active and frugal life of the patriarchs was still
much longer than that of their contemporaries but it was much more ;
brief than life had been before the Deluge and at the age to which
;
Abraham and his wife had arrived, all natural appearances were against
their having children. One day three strangers presented themselves
before the tent of Abraham, who entreated them to enter, and hastened
to fulfil towards them the duties of hospitality. They revealed them-
selves then to him as angels of God, and repeated the promise that
next year Sarah should have a son. The aged woman, who from inside
the tent heard this prediction, could not help laughing, but was blamed
by the angels for doubting the Divine power which could perform in her
a miracle (Gen. xx. i, seq.).
8. At that time occurred the catastrophe of Sodom and the other

border cities of the Dead Sea. Their iniquities and corruption had
increased to such a degree, that God determined to make their punish-
ment an example to the world. Abraham in vain interceded for the
doomed cities ; the ten righteous men, Mdiose presence would have
sufficed, according to God's word, to turn away the anger of the Lord,
were not found in Sodom. Warned by the angels. Lot and his two
daughters, whose betrothed husbands made light of the matter, and
refused to follow, fled in all haste to Zoar. Then Sodom, Gomorrah,
Admah, and Zeboim were reduced to ashes, without the escape of one
inhabitant, by a fearful convulsion of nature, poetically termed in the
Bible a rain of fire and brimstone, but which appears to have been in
reality a prodigious volcanic eruption from a great number of craters at
once, and of which the surrounding country shows traces to this day.
Lot, fearing to remain at Zoar, where he did not consider himself free
from danger, retired with his two daughters to a cave in the desert to
the east of the Dead Sea. There the book of Genesis records the
incestuous birth of Moab and Ammon, ancestors of the nations whom
Moses and Joshua found established on the eastern banks of the Jordan
and of the Dead Sea.
9. Continuing to lead the wandering life of a nomad shepherd,
Abraham settled for a time in the country of Gerar, near Gaza, on the
frontier between Egypt and Palestine. He made a treaty with the
—
DEATH OF SARAH. 85
king of that country, named Abimelech, beside a well which was called,
in memory of the circumstance, Beersheba (the Well of the Oath). It
was in that country that, in accordance with the promise of the messen-
Sarah brought into the world a son, \\lio received the name of
gers,
Hebrew word " Yitschak " (laughing), for, said Sarah,
Isaac, from the
"God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear me will laugh with
me." At a feast wliicli Abraham made on the occasion of the weaning
of Isaac, Sarah saw a mocking smile on the face of Ishmael, son of
Hagar, and again she demanded the banishment of the servant and of
her son. Hagar and Ishmael wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba,
and they were on the point of dying with thirst, when a voice from
heaven consoled and encouraged them. A fountain appeared before
their eyes, and they slaked their thirst.
Ishmael gi-ew up in exile and became a practised archer, and his
mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt. He became the
head of the second race of Nomadic Arabs, who mixed with the first
tribes sprung from Joktan, over whom in course of time they gained
the supremacy. The most illustrious of all tlie Arab tribes directly
descended from Ishmael was that of the Koreish, who inhabited Mecca,
and possessed there the famous sanctuary of the Caabah, traditionally
said to have been built by Ishmael and Abraham. From this tribe
spi"uug Mahomet.
10. Abraham returned towards the north, and remained many years
settled at Mamre. Therewas tliat his faitli was put to its most
it
severe test God commanded him to offer up his son Isaac in sacrifice.
;
Though his heart was torn with grief, he, nevertheless, did not hesitate
to obey and when he was aheady on the point of consummating
;
this cruel sacrifice, he was stayed by a voice from on high, telling him
that God was satisfied with this proof of his obedience. At the
same moment he saw behind him a ram, which he took and offered up
in the stead of his son (Gen. xxii. i, set/.). A short time afterwards
Sarah died, at the age of one hundred and twenty-seven years. Abraham
bought from the Hittites of Hebron, then called Kirjath Arba, a
sepulchral cave near tliat city, to make it his family tomb, and there
buried the body of Sarah.
Section II Isaac and Jacob.
I. "When Abraham found himself old, and perceived that his end
approached, he wished to get a wife for his son Isaac, that he might
become the progenitor of the chosen jjcoplc. Unwilling to form an
alliance with the daughters of the Canaanites, he sent his steward
Ehezer to Mesopotamia, to choose for Isaac a wife from his own
;

people. Arrived at the gates of the city of Haran, where one branch
of the family of Terah had remained after the departure of Abraham,
Eliezer stayed by a well, and saw a very beautiful young woman who
came there to draw water. When she was about to return, having
filledher vessel, Eliezer asked her to give him to drink. She inclined
the vessel towai'ds him, and offering to draw also for his camels, she
went for more water, which she gave them. In this mark of courteous
and ingenuous manners, Eliezer recognised the sign which he had asked
of the Lord, to point out to him the woman destined to inherit the
Divine promises he learned also that the damsel, whose name was
;
Rebecca (Ribkah, fat heifer), was the daughter of Bethuel, son of

Nahor, Abraham's brother, and consequently his master's niece. He
accepted the hospitality which was offered him by Bethuel, imparted
to him his mission, and Rebecca went off Math him \\'ith the blessines
of her family. Although Abraham was one hundred and forty years
he took after his son's marriage another wife, named Keturah, by
old,
whom he had six sons. One was Midian, the father of the Midianites,
who lived between the Dead Sea and the Elanitic gulf of the Red Sea,
to the east of the Nabatheans. Abraham gave rich gifts to these sons,
but sent them out of Palestine that his inlieritance there might pass
entire to Isaac. He, who was forty years old at the time of his
marriage, remained twenty years without children. At last God heard
his prayers,and Rebecca bore him twins. The first-bom was called
Esau, and also Edom (the red), on account of his colour ; the second
received the name of Jacob (the supplanter). Abraham lived long
enough to .see the Divine promise accomplished in the posterity of
Isaac. He died fifteen years after the birth of the two brothers, at the
age of one hundred and seventy-five years, and was buried by Isaac and
Ishmael in the tomb of his family, by the side of Sarah. This tomb, it
is said, pointed out by constant and unbroken tradition, still exists
under the great Mosque at Hebron but Christians are rigorously
:
excluded by the Mahometans fi-om the building.*

2. The life of Isaac presents no very noticeable event. Adopting
his father's nomadic mode of life, the second patriarch passed all his
existence partly in the pastures of Mamre and partly in those of Gerar
sometimes in strict friendship with the king of that country, M'ho, like
his predecessor in the time of Abraham, was called Abimelech ; at
others, exposed to the ill-will and jealousy of the inhabitants, who,
like all people of settled and agricultural occupations, were ill enough
* The first European who entered this jNIosque, which had been for
centuries closed against all Christians, was H. R. H. the Prince of
Wales. A
most interesting account of the visit is given by Dean
Stanley in his Lectures ojt the Jewish Church. Tr. —
— ;
JACOB IN HARAN. 87
disposed toward nomadic shepherds. The book of Genesis ascribes to

Isaac, during one of his visits to Gerar, the like adventure as befell
Abraham in This seems to be merely a double tradition,
Egypt.
founded on one occurrence. Esau was the eldest son of Isaac, but
Jacob was the particular favourite of his mother Rebecca. He one day
bought the birthright from his elder brother, and afterwards, with his
mother's assistance, contrived by stratagem to receive, in place of Esau,
the blessing which should render him the heir of the promises of God
to the race of Abraham. From that time he found himself exposed to
the furious hatred of his brother and to escape the consequences, was
;
compelled to fly to Mesopotamia, to Laban, Rebecca's brother ; and

this, by the advice of his mother, and by order of his father, who, after
the example of Abraham, was not willing that the heir of his race
should marry a Canaanitish woman. During his flight, Jacob had at
Luz that famous vision in which he saw a ladder, above it stood
Jehovah, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it
(Genesis xxviii. 10). In memory of this event, he named the place
Bethel (House of God,) which name was continued by his descendants.
3. Having crossed the Euphrates, Jacob met the shepherds of Haran,
who showed him Rachel (the sheep), one of the daughters of Laban,
who herself fed her father's flocks. Jacob made himself known, and
was received in a most friendly manner by Laban but he would not
;
give him his daughter Rachel until he had served him fourteen years,
and had married Leah, Rachel's elder sister. Jacob had twelve sons,
Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtaii,Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebu-
Ion, Joseph, and Benjamin, who were the ancestors of the twelve tribes of
Israel, and one daughter named Dinah. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah,
Issachar, Zebulon and Dinah were born of Leah ; Dan and Naphtali, of
Bilhah, the handmaid of Rachel; Gad and Asher, of Zilpah, the handmaid
of Leah ; and at the last, the youngest, Joseph and Benjamin, of Rachel
herself, who had been barren for many years. After a long sojourn
with Laban, Jacob determined at last to return to his father, who was
still alive ;he became reconciled with Esau, who abandoned to him the
possession and exclusive enjoyment of the pastures of the land of
Canaan, and retired with his own people to Mount Seir, now Esh Sherah*
to the north of the Elanitic gulf, where he became the founder of the
Idumean or Edomite nation. One circumstance in the Bible narrative,
as to this return of Jacob, shows us that idolatry existed in the house of
Iâban, as we have before seen was the case in that of his ancestor
Terah. It is also during this journey that the Book of Genesis places
* The northern part is now called Jebal ; the southern, Esh Sherah
the latter name means merely "district," and has no comiection with
the Hebrew word Seir, " the hairy." Tk.
the mysterious wrestling of Jacob with the angel, whence he obtained
the name of Israel (one who has fought with God), a name borne only
by his heirs, who called themselves children of Israel, or Israelites.
4. Very severe trials awaited Jacob after his return to the land of
. Canaan. Shechem, son of Hamor, prince of the Shechemites, carried off
and outraged his daughter Dinah. He afterwards asked her in marriage,
but the sons of Jacob conspired to take a terril^le vengeance on all the
Shechemites. They appeared to consent to the marriage, under con-
ditionswhich facilitated a treacherous attack which Simeon and Levi
made on the city, when they killed all the men ; the other sons of Jacob
then pillaged the city, and carried off the women and children, and
flocks and herds. Jacob was much grieved at this event, and re-
proached them severely for their atrocious conduct and perfidy. The
whole family left the district of Shechem, where they no longer
believed themselves safe. At Ephrath, in later times called Bethle-
hem, Jacob had the misfortime to lose Rachel, who died in giving birth
to a second son, Benjamin. Her tomb is still sliowoi in the neighbour-
hood of Bethlehem. Jacob then repaired to Mamre, where his father
Isaac still lived, and continued to live, to the age of one hundred and
eighty years. He therefore must have been a witness of the incident
which we have now to relate, and of the grief of his son Jacob.
5. Joseph, Rachel's eldest son, was regarded with peculiar affection
by his father, who showed him frequent marks of tenderness, and
seemed disposed to transfer to him the privileges which, by right of
birth, belonged to the sons of Leah. Moreover, the three elder sons of
Jacob had, by serious misconduct, incurred their father's anger. Joseph,
beloved by his father, but regarded almost as an enemy by his brothers,
brought accounts to Jacob of all the evil doings of his elder brothers.
Attaching in his childhood great importance to dreams, in which he
seemed to read the future, Joseph did not hesitate to relate to his
brothers some of his nightly visions which seemed to presage for him a
brilliant career. His brothers conceived mortal hatred for him, and
conspired to bring about his ruin. One day Jacob sent Joseph to see
his brethren, who were feeding their flocks in the neighbourhood of
Shechem. Seeing him alone, they formed the plan of killing him ;
nevertheless, Reuben, the eldest, upon whom the chief weight of respon-
sibility would have fallen, tried to save Joseph, and managed to persuade
his brothers to put the lad into a dry well, whence he himself intended
afterwards to release him. But, in his temporary absence, a caravan of
Midianitish merchants passed on their way to Egypt. Judah persuaded
his brothers to sell Joseph to these men, who in their turn sold him to
Potiphar, or Petephra (belonging to the sun), an officer of the army of a
king of Egypt, whom Holy Scripture designates only by his title of
Pharaoh. The elder sons of Jacob made then- fatlier beUeve that some
wild beast had devoured Joseph.
— —
JOSEPH IN EGYPT. 89
Section III. ^Joseph in Egypt.
1. Joseph good graces of his master,

in slavery quickly acquired the
who him the superintendence of his house. But, on a false
entrasted to
accusation by the wife of Potiphar, he was put in prison, where God
revealed to him the hidden meaning of the mysterious dreams of his
two companions in captivity. One of the two, chief butler of the king,
was soon restored to the favour of his master, as Joseph had foretold ;
but he did not, as he had promised, remember Joseph. Two years
later, however, the king, in his turn, having seen in a dream seven lean
kine, and seven withered ears of corn, which eat up seven fat kine, and
seven full ears of com, was much disturbed, and desired that the vision
should be interpreted to him. The chief butler then remembered the
Hebrew slave who had so truly predicted his own and his companion's
fate. Joseph was brought out of prison and presented to the king, and
informed him that seven years of famine should succeed seven years
of plenty. Let us here remark, in passing, that the number of years
—
seven must not be taken literally. The number seven was used by
the Egyptians as an indeterminate number the vision of seven fat and
;
seven lean kine would the more naturally present itself to the mind of
the king, because the "seven cows belonging to the divine bull " were
among the most important symbols of Egyptian Paganism.* And also
in an Egyptian inscription, dating from the twelfth dynasty (we shall
explain this expression in our Third Book), and, consequently, many
centuries older than Joseph, the governor of a province boasts of having
provided granaries to meet the wants of seven years ; that is, granaries
capable of supplying many successive years of scarcity.
2. Egypt, at the time when Joseph was taken there, was divided into
two kingdoms, in consequence of events which we shall relate in our
Third Book, in the history of that country. had its own native-bom
It
princes only in the Thebaid. Lower Egypt had been occupied for
many centuries by invaders of Canaanitish race, known by the name of
Shepherds, who had at last adopted Egyptian manners, and had estab-
lished a dynasty of princes of their own blood. It was before one of
these kings, named Apophis, or Apepi, that Joseph was brought. He

had not, and was not likely to have, the same repugnance as an Egyp-
tian for the sei'vices of a stranger, for he himself was likewise of foreigii
origin. Struck with the counsel of Joseph, and with his wisdom, the
king judged that no one could be found better able to meet the predicted
scourge than a man so favoured by heaven. He put a ring on his finger,
a golden collar on his neck (a mark of honour frequently mentioned in
* Egyptian "Funeral Ritual," chap, cxlix.

themonuments of Egypt), clothed him with a robe of fine linen, and
made him ride in a chariot, accompanied by a herald, who proclaimed
to all the people to bow the knee before him, for that he was chosen
governor of all the land of Egypt. The king conferred on Joseph an
•
Egyptian name, which signifies " sustainer of the world " {Zaph-n-to);
that is, nourisher of the country, Egyptian language, the
for, in the
country [the country Egypt), and the world were expressed by the same
word [to). The new minister married the daughter of a priest of
Heliopolis, named Petephra, the same as his old master her name was, ;
as the Bible tells us, Asenath, that is, " the precious Neith." Neith
was an Egyptian goddess. By this marriage Joseph had two sons,
Manasseh and Ephraim.
Joseph collected, in public granaries constructed for the purpose,
3.
a part of the superabundant harvest of the years of plenty, and dis-

tributed it on the king's part among the Egyptians in the years of
famine. In return for this provision, and the assistance which had saved
them, the son of Jacob required that the inhabitants of Egypt should
surrender to the king what lawyers would call the
" fee simple " of tlieir
lands, paying a quit rent of one-fifth of the produce for the right of
tenancy. The priests were exempt, because they were entitled to main-
tenance from the public granaries.
provision created by the foresight of Joseph was so considerable,
The
that he could not only feed the entire people of Lower Egypt during the
whole time of the famine, but was able to sell corn to the inhabitants of
the neighbouring countries where the famine made itself felt. It was
then that his brothers came, sent by Jacob into Egypt to buy food. At
their second visit, he made himself known to them, forgave them, and
invited all his family to reside in Egypt. In this he only put in
practice the common policy of the Pharaohs, which had always been to
attract the tribes of Palestine and Syria as colonists, into the land of
Delta, in order that a scientific system of agiiculture might gradually
and laboriously reclaim the marsh land. And this policy, which had
been that of the indigenous sovereigns, was to a still greater degree that
of the Shepherd Kings, whose gi'eatest interest was to establish in their
states a non-Egyptian element, to assure themselves of support against
a national reaction.
4. Jacob, with all that were his, accepted the invitation of Joseph.
He was then 130 years old. Pharaoh received them with favour, and
established them in the land of Goshen, which we believe to have been
the territory around the present city of Belbeis, on the frontier line of
the Delta and the desert, N.N.E. of Memphis, and of the modern city of
Cairo. There Jacob died, seventeen years after his settlement. On his
death-bed he blessed his sons, and declared that the inheritance of the
Divine promises to the race of Abraham, and the position of head of the
—
OPPRESSION OF THE ISRAELITES. 91
family should Judah, to the exclusion of his three elder brothers,

fall to
Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, who had proved themselves unworthy of it

by their crimes. His body, embalmed in the Egyptian mamier, was
conveyed to the toml) of Abraham, at Hebron. Joseph hved on for
half a century, and always remained the active protector of the Israelite
colony. He, at last, in his turn, died at the age of no
years, and
before his death, took an oath of such of his brethren as sui-\-ived him,
that his embalmed body should be carried up into the land of Canaan
when the children of Israel left Egypt.
Section IV. The Israelites in Egypt, and the Exodus.

I. The Hebrews
remained 430 years in the fertile land of Goshen,
and there multiphed exceedingly. They fonned a small nation, separated
from the Egyptians by their manners, their religious worship, their
language, and their patriarchal government. The Bible is silent on
the period, following immediately on the death of Joseph and his
brethren, butit is certain that the Hebrews remained isolated from the
Egyptians. Their business as shepherds, their nomadic habits, held in

scorn by the native-bom Egyptian population, had fixed between the
two peoples an insunnountable barrier. The patriarchal worship was not,
in truth, preserved in its primitive purity, but the idolatrous worship of

the Egyptians was too much opposed to the traditions of the Israelites
to permit its among
spread the latter people. The children of Israel
preserved a remembrance of the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of
Jacob, though they had but a very confused idea of that God. Subject
to the kings of Egypt, they were nevertheless governed by their own
proper chiefs. The tribes were divided into families, each of which had
its "Zaken" (Exodus iii. 18), or Sheikh; and these heads of famihes were
under the orders of the superior chiefs of their respective tribes, called
in Egyptian "Hak." With these were also other officers bearing the
title of " Shoterim" (Exodus v. 14), or Scribes, who, although chosen from
the race of Israel, represented among them the authority of the Egyp-
tian government, and were personally responsible for the collection of
the imposts laid on the Hebrew colony.
2. Nevertheless, the life of the Israelites in Egypt was far from being
at all times as as it had been at first. Great revolutions had taken
happy
place in the country, which we shall relate in detail when we come to
treat of Egypt. The stranger kings had been driven out of Lower Egj^pt;
the unity of the country and its full independence had been re-esta-
blished a native dynasty, a glorious dynasty, warlike and victorious,
;
had mounted the throne. These kings appear to have left tlie IIel)rews
in peace, and even to have favoured them. It even seems that the
children of Israel were concerned on several occasions in the early
Asiatic campaigns of that dynasty, and had taken advantage of that
circumstance to attempt to make settlements in the land promised to
their race —attempts which failed. Thus mention is made of an expedi-
tion of the sons of Ephraim against the people of Oath, whose cattle
they tried to drive off, but who slew them (i Chron. vii. 21). A
daughter of Ephraim built several cities in the land of -Canaan (i Chron.
vii. 24). Lastly, it is mentioned, that the family of Shelah, son of
Judah, had made conquests on the territoiy of Moab (i Chron. iv.
21, 22).
But some time afterwards, in consequence of disturbances, which,
as we shall see further on, were not quite free from
it is possible
Israelitish influence,* another new dynasty, that which counts in
Egyptian history as the Nineteenth, came into power. Another '
'
king," says Scripture, " arose, who knew not Joseph." The services he
had rendered were forgotten the sons of Jacob, regarded as dangerous
;
because of their number and their origin, were exposed to the most
unjust and cruel persecutions. The Pharaoh, who commenced to per-
secute them with the view of reducing their power, was called Ramses,
as we know from documents of Egyptian origin. He was a warlike
prince, and at the same time an implacable despot and tyrant. He
overburdened the Israelites with work, and employed them under task-
masters in all the rough operations of the building of cities. It was the
custom of the kings of Egypt to employ prisoners of war in forced labour

of this kind ; paintings in many Egyptian tombs represent scenes where
prisoners of Semitic race are seen making bricks and building walls,
under the eye of the Egyptian superintendents, armed with long whips
— scenes which may serve to illustrate the story of the Bible as to the
servitude of the Israelites. A hieroglyphic inscription, dated in the
reign of Ramses, enumerates the populations thus employed on public
works, and mentions amongst them the Aberiou, or Hebrews. They
built in their servitude two cities to the east of the Delta, Pithom and
Raamses, the last so-called after the name of the king, cities which are
both frequently mentioned in the Egyptian monuments. Pharaoh had
hoped to crush the Israelites by force of bad treatment. Seeing, on the
contrary, that their number went on always increasing, he ordered all
the male infants that were born to be thrown into the Nile.
3. It was at this time that Moses came into the world ; he was the son
of Amram and Jochebed, both of the tribe of Levi, who had already had
two children, a son named Aaron and a daughter named Miriam. His
mother hid him three months. At last, no longer able to conceal his
existence, she exposed him on the bank of the river in an ark, covered
* See Book III., ch. iii., sec. 2-5.

MOSES IN ARABIA. 93
with bitumen and pitch. The daughter of Pharaoh, whom the historian
Josephus calls Thermouthis (in Egyptian T-ouer-maut, " the great
mjther "), going down to bathe, saw the ark and rescued the child, for
whom Jochebed offered herself as nurse. She gave him the name of
Moses, which means "drawn Afterwards, when
out of the water."
the child was grown, the mother brought him back to the princess, who
caused him to be educated at court. Holy Scripture says nothing about
the youth of Moses and his education but we may, with a certain
;
amount of confidence, receive the Jewish tradition related by Josephus

(Jos. Ant. II., i.\. 5). According to that tradition, the princess caused
the child, she had saved from the Nile, to be educated by the
whom
priests in all the science of the Egyptians, and she was also compelled to
protect him from the plots of the sacerdotal caste, and from the diviners
who predicted to the king that Egypt would have reason to dread that
child. He was, also, according to the same authority, taught warlike
arts, and held an important command in an expedition to Ethiopia.
4. The favour he enjoyed at court did not prevent Moses, on
reaching manhood, from feeling sensibly the oppression of his country-
men he often went among them to console them. One day, in his
;
indignation, he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew.

Threatened with the consequence of this deed, he fled into Arabia
Petrffia. Whilst he was there, wandering as a fugitive, he once, finding
himself in the \dcinity of a Midianitish tribe, had occasion to defend the

seven daughters of Jethro, chief and priest of the tribe, who had come
to water their father's flocks, from the violence of the shepherds who
wished to drive them away from the well. Jethro having learned from
his daughters the generous conduct of Moses, invited him to his home,
and offered him hospitality. Moses consented to live with Jethro, who
gave him as a wdfe his daughter Zipporah. Moses passed many years
among the Midianites, leading the life of a shepherd. During that
time no change had occurred in the situation of his brethren in Egypt.
Another king, who the monuments tell us was named Merenphtah,

had mounted the throne, but he continued, with regard to the Hebrews,
the iniquitous system of his predecessor. In solitude by his flocks and
herds Moses could meditate on the lot of the Israelites ; patriarchal
traditions filled his mind, and the thought of Jehovah, the God of his
fathers,was ever present with him.
5. day, when he had wandered near Mount Horeb, he saw a
One
bush which was on fire, and was not consumed. Not being able to
account for this wonder, he turned aside to examine it more closely, but
he heard a voice from the midst of the bush which told him that he
stood on ground sanctified by the presence of God himself. We con-
sider the facts of Sacred History here only in a purely and exclusively
historical aspect ; and, therefore, do not insert the sublime dialogue
9+ ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
which the Bible gives between Moses and the Lord. All the senti-
ments of the future liberator, his faith in God, his distrust of his
own abilities, his hesitation, are depicted in this dialogue in which God,
to use the expression of Bossuet, " made himself more fully known to
man than he ever had before to any human being." God
this great
commanded Moses to return to Egypt, and revealed to him that he
had been chosen to deliver his people from slavery, and to make them
know the God of their fathers anew as the Absolute Being " I AM —
THAT I AM," such is the name under which God was pleased to cause
Himself to be announced to His people, in making Himself known as
the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob.
6. Moses then rejoined his brother Aaron, whose assistance he had
been promised by the Divine voice in the burning bush, and who, more
eloquent than himself, was to be the interpreter of inspirations from on
high, to the Hebrews and to the king of Egypt. They returned at once
to Egj'pt, and after having assembled the chiefs of the tribes of Israel,
to encourage them and ensure their obedience, they presented them-
selves before Pharaoh. Although they had only demanded for their
countrymen leave to go and sacrifice in the desert, their request was
contemptuously refused, and far from permitting the least relaxation to
the people of Israel, the labours imposed on them were increased.
Then God, by the ministry of Moses and Aaron, inflicted on the country
the various scourges so well known by the name of the plagues of
Egypt. The evils which then were sent to afflict the valley of the Nile
and terrify the Egyptians are thus enumerated in the Bible : —
1st. The
waters of the Nile became red like blood, and the river stank, so that
the Egyptians digged round about the river for water to drink. 2nd.
Frogs multiplied so as to cover all the land, and to become an insupport-
able nuisance to the people. 3rd. Clouds of lice tormented both men
and beasts. 4th. .Swarms of noxious insects infested the houses and
fields, and damaged the harvests. 5th. An epizootic disease carried
off the greater part of the cattle. 6th. Boils broke out on the bodies
both of man and beast. 7th. A terrible hailstorm, accompanied by
lightning and thunder, ravaged the country. 8th. Clouds of locusts

came up and devoured all that the hail had left. 9th. Thick darkness,
produced possibly by clouds of sand which the wind brought from the
desert, covered the whole of Egypt. loth. A sudden epidemic carried
off the first-born of each family. These plagues, it must be remarked,
are such as from time to time occur in the climate of Egypt. What
made them miraculous was their extraordinary violence, and that they
followed each other with such rapidity at the call of Moses.More than
once the king, touched with repentance or fear, entreated the two
brothers to obtain from God the cessation of these disasters ; but no
sooner had the plague ceased, than the hardness of his heart returned.
THE EXODUS. 95
At last, tlie death of the first-bom throughout his kingdom, and of his
own son, broke his resolution, and he allowed Israel to go. On the
night of their departure, Moses instituted, in memory of that event, the
feast of the Hebrews amounted then to 600,000 adult
Passover ; the
men, without counting women and children. They all set out under
the leadership of Moses.
7. Their march was necessarily very slow, they were three days in
gaining the banks of the Red Sea, by a route and by stations which are
ditlficult now to determine precisely. Pharaoh, changing his mind, and
regretting the permission which he had given them to depart, pursued
after them with 600 war chariots, and a great mass of infantiy. He
overtook them on the sea shore. The Hebrews had before them on the
east the sea, to the right and left inaccessible mountains, and behind
them they saw the Egj'ptian army. Without miraculous assistance
they w-ere lost. Already they had abandoned themselves to despair,
when Moses promised them, on behalf of the Almighty, a wonderful
deliverance. When night came on, Moses stretched out his hand over
the sea, a \-iolent tempest from the east began to blow, separated the
waters of the gulf at the place where the Israelites were encamped, and
opened a passage in the midst of the waters, which were rolled back on
each side. The Hebrews at once entered the road thus miraculously
opened, and the whole night was occupied in the passage, which took
place probably in the neighbourhood of Mount Attaka. The exact
spot it is now impossible to identify, but as the Red Sea at this period
probably extended many miles north of the present head of the Gulf of
Suez (the tongue of the Egyptian Sea (Is. xi. 15), which has been dried
up), and was much narrower to the north than to the south of Suez,
the balance of probability seems in favour of Israel having crossed the
sea at this narrower part.
The Egyptians ventured to follow the fugitives into the bed of the
gulf, with their chariots and horses, but the chariot wheels could not
roll, and the advance was very difficult. When morning appeared,
Moses again extended his hand over the sea. At once the east wind
ceased to blow, and the "sea returned to his strength," and cut off the
retreat of the Egyptian army, which was swallowed up by the waves.
It generally added that Pharaoh perished in the waters with his
is
army, but this is one of those interpretations, one of those develop-

ments, which are too often added to the Bible storJ^ The Sacred
Volume says nothing of the kind nor do any of its;
expressions justify,
or give any ground for, such an assertion. The army, no^ the king, was
engulfed and, in fact, we shall see in the chapter on the History of
;
Egypt that the Pharaoh Merenphtah survived this disaster, and died in
his bed.
—
Section V. The Israelites at Sinai.
1. It was not without deep consideration and mature reflection that

Moses had conducted the Israelites towards the Red Sea and the Penin-
sula of Sinai. The shortest and easiest route from Egypt to the land of
Canaan was northward along the coast of the Mediterranean, and past
Rhinocorura (El Arish) to Gaza. But this road was throughout its
whole extent guarded by strong fortresses, gairisoned by Egyptian
troops, who could have opposed the passage of the Hebrews (Ex. xiii.
17). The army of Pharaoh, accustomed to use that road on its expe-
ditions into Asia, would easily have overtaken them, and as undoubtedly
have cut them to pieces. Moreover, it would have been imprudent in
the highest degree to bring the people of Israel, debased by long con-
tinued slavery, and with no practice in the use of arms, directly into
collision with the warlike Canaanitish nations, who, if the war had
been prolonged, could have called for the powerful assistance of the
King of Egypt, at that time their sovereign. Moreover, before entering
into possession of the Promised Land, and fonning an independent
state, it was absolutely necessary for the Hebrews to serve an apprentice-
ship, and to be regenerated in solitude. To become worthy of its high
destinies, it was irecessary for the nation to be kept separate for some
time in the desert, far away from the Pagan populations, in the midst
of whom it had so long lived and, above all, from the vices of cities.
;
In this way only could faith in the God of their fathers, so long forgotten
in this slavery, be re-awakened among them. It was only in this way that
it was possible for Moses to form a new people, obedient to the Divine
will, to give them laws, to subject them to discipline, and to put them in
a condition, not only to conquer the land which the Lord had promised
them, but to establish themselves there, so as to be able to fulfil the
sublime destiny to which Providence had called them. Such were the
reasons which decided Moses, guided by Divine inspiration, to lead the
children of Israel into the desert of Sinai; to avoid, as much as possible,
any rencontre with hostile nations keep them there as long as was
; to
necessary for the establishment of the law and the complete organisa-
tion of the nation ; and, finally, them to the south-eastern
to lead
frontier of Palestine, which was not covered by Egyptian fortresses.
2. The enterprise offered, moreover, enoimous difficulties and the
;
constant and direct aid of Providence could alone ensure its success.
We have already stated what was the number of the Hebrews at the
time of the Exodus. But they were not alone the Bible tells us that
;
a mixed multitude of people had followed them. These were, to all

appearance, people of tribes foreign to the Egyptian race, who also
THE ISRAELITES IN THE DESERT. 97
being oppressed, had seized this opportunity to free themselves from

servitude. We cannot therefore estimate below three millions the
number of individuals who followed Moses. This immense multitude
found itself, with numerous flocks and herds, in a desert which barely
afforded a scanty pasturage and little water to the few Arab tribes
who wandered there. From the very first, God began to provide for the
subsistence of His people,by causing Moses to sweeten tlie bitter water
of Marah, a station which seems to correspond to the situation of
Howara, a short distance south of the place where the Israelites passed-
the sea —a place wliere the water to tliis very day is unfit to drinl<
on account of its bitterness. Afterwards, when they had left the

fountains of Elim to cross the desert of Sin, in the neighbourhood of
Rephidim, near Mount Horeb, God sent a flight of quails, of which
the people ate too greedily; and he made water to come out of a rock
in the valley, now called Wady Mokatteb, a miracle which, at a later
time, was repeated to save the people from certain death.
It was then also that God began to shower down manna, which fur-
nished the Hebrews with food during the forty years they were detained
in the desert as a punishment for their want of faith. Manna fell every
morning in the camp. Every one collected quickly (for it melted with
the first rays of the sun) the quantity required for the day's consump-
tion, but not more, for by the ne.xt day it became putrid. Neverthe-
less, on the eve of the Sabbath, enough for two days might be gathered
without fear of its spoiling, m order that they might scrupulously
observe the day consecrated to the Lord. The country in which we
must seek for the desert of Sin has even now many tamarisk shrubs,
from the branches of which a resinous substance exudes when jjunclurcd
by an insect. This the Arabs of the country eat, instead of honey, with
bread; and modern writers have named this "manna." Several
travellers have also found a species of manna which seems to fall from
the sky, and attaches itself to stones, bushes, and shrubs this is the ;
vegetable mamia carried about by the wind. May we suppose this to

be the substance which fed the Hebrews ? In any case, the natural
facts observed by travellers are insufficient to explain the Bible narra-
tive ; for this manna is only fomid in the Sinaitic peninsula, and only
during the montiis of June and July ; whilst, according to the liible,
the Hebrews gathered what was their principal article of food every
day for forty years, and over the whole of their route, as far as Edrei
and Gilgal. Moreover, the quantity is very far short of what would
suffice to feed so great a multitude of men.
The Hebrews were still at Rephidim when they were attacked
by the Amalekites, one of the most ancient and powerful tribes of
Arabia Proper, wiio were descended from Aram, and who have been
mentioned in the story of the conquests of Chedorlaomer. God gave
11
—
the victory to the Israelites, who were led to battle by Joshua, the
future conqueror of the Promised Land.
Havin£T left Rephidim, the children of Israel arrived, the third
month after their departure from Egypt, at Mount Sinai, where God
gave them the Law, announced by the roar of thunder, by lightning,
and clouds and smoke which covered the mountain. He promulgated
first the fundamental duties of man towards God, his neighbour, and
himself; that which Ave call the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments.

To these were added very many precepts more in detail, and the people
promised to obey the Law of the Lord.
But when Moses had returned to Sinai, where he was lost to sight
enveloped in a cloud, and where he remained forty days and forty
nights, receiving the commands which God gave him for the celebra-
tion of His worship, the ignorant and fickle people of Israel had not
patience to submit to this first and easy proof of their fidelity to the
supreme law which was alôut to be their national institution, the fun-
damental princi])le of their constitution. During the short absence
of the prophet they forgot both the majesty of God, who had deli-
vered them from slavery, and their own covenant. They said to
Aaron, "Make us gods, which shall go before us." Aaron made
them a golden calf, in imitation of the Egyptian worship of Apis ;
and the Israelites, when they saw it, said, "These be thy gods, O
Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." Aaron
built an altar, and offered victims to this abominable idol. Moses
interceded with the Lord, that this impious and faithless people should
not be annihilated but, in the transport of his indignation, he threw
;
down and broke on the ground the tables of stone on which God himself
had written the Law. He cast the idol into the fire, and sent the tribe
of Levi to fall on those rel:>els against the Divine Law— the law of the
nation itself, that God had miraculously freed, and almost, as it were,
created. A great number fell by the sword. Other tables of stone
were made by Moses, by the Lord's command, and the Ten Command-
ments were written on them afresh.
Section VI. The Law of Moses.*

I. We cannot here explain in all its details the legislation dictated
to Moses at various times by the Divine Word, and destined to teach
the Hebrew people the essential principles of faith, laws and morality,
the forms of worship, political and civil institutions, which were to make
them a separate people among the nations of the ancient world. But
it is at least necessary to explain here, as briefly as possible, its funda-
mental principles and most essential provisions.
* See MiCHAELis "Mosaisches Recht," Frankfort, 1775.

THE MOSAIC LAW. 99
The Mosaic Law presents the spectacle, unique in the history of the
world, of a legislation which was complete from the origin of a nation,
and subsisted for long ages. In spite of frequent infractions, it
was always restored, even although in its very sublimity it was in
direct opposition to the coarse inclinations of the people whom it
governed. He alone could impose it on the Israelites who could say,

"I am the Lord thy God," and confirm the words by forty years of
miracles. Doubtless, there are in this code some things which do not
bear the direct imprint of the Divine perfection we find sanction ;
given there to customs imperfect, or even to be regretted, which had

formerly existed among a people who had come out from the midst of
idolaters. These the law partly tolerated (compare Matt. xix. 8 ;
Mark x. 4), confining itself to prescribing rules for restraining abuses.
But however far it may be from that evangelical perfection, reserved
foran epoch when the example of the Saviour and the institution of
sacraments might give to the human race a moral power previously
unknown, the Law of Moses yet surpasses, by the distance of heaven
from earth, the institutions of all ancient nations, without excepting
those who surpassed the Hebrews in quickness of intellect or elevation
of character.
2. The fundamental principle of tliis legislation is the supreme au-
thority of God over the people of Israel (i Sam. viii. 7, xii. 12).
He was in the literal sense of the word their Sovereign ; and all
other authority, both in political and was subordinate to the

civil affairs,
continual acknowledgment of His own. The other powers weie instituted

by God to administer affairs in accordance with His laws, but were
not ordinarily chosen among the priests, descendants of Aaron, nor
from the tribe of Levi, consecrated to the various functions of public
worship. Each tribe {Kx. xviii. 21 —27) had its civil authorities,
although certain causes were reserved for the supreme central tri-
bunal but the unity of the nation was, above all, founded on unity
;
in faith and worship — on the mighty recollections recalled each year by

the the Passover, or Feast of Unleavened Bread
solemn feasts :
(commemorating the Exodus from Egypt), Pentecost (the Promulgation

of the Law), and the P'east of Tabernacles, or Tents (the Sojourn in the
Desert). The one tabernacle, where the solemn sacrifices were offered,
and where was deposited the Ark, the symbol of the covenant made
between God and His peoi)le, was equally the political and religious
centre of the nation.
.V The
penal laws promulgated by Moses allowed neither extraordi-
nary punishments nor torture, by which (miserable heritage of Roman
law) modern nations, even as late as a century ago, endeavoured to force
confession from an accused person l>y the infliction of pain. The
punishment of death could not be inflicted on the testimony of a single
H 2
loo ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
witness (Numb. xxxv. 30 Deut. xvii. 6) ; and (contrary to the political
;
custom of Asia), the pmiishment of a father did not entail that of the
children (Deut. xxiv. 16). But idolatiy, whicli in these countries, as
in every or nearly every other, was indissolubly connected with
frightful debauchery —
idolatry, which was both an affront to the
Divinity itself and also a formal attack on the con.stitution of the
nation and on the essential condition of its unity, was punished with
death (Deut. xiii. 9 xvii. 2—5). The same punishment was also decreed
;
for divination (Lev. xx. 7), another form of idolatry, for incest and
•unnatural crimes, for rebellion of a son against his father (Deut. xxi.
18, sea.), for stealing and selling as a slave a free man (Ex. xxi. 16;
Deut. xxiv. 7), and for infidelity in a betrothed or married
woman.
Moreover, the influence of the almost barbarous manners and customs
of the Israelites are veiy apparent in some of the penal laws.
By the side of most equitable regulations as to theft and loss, there
are others of most implacable severity —such as the law of retaliation
applied to malicious or accidental wounding — " eye for eye, tooth for
tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot " (Ex. xxi. 24 ; Lev. xxiv. 20).
A terrible law, but one which possibly in its administration may have
been commuted for a pecuniary fine. The murderer, on the same
principle, was punished with death but here the ancient rule admitted
;
of no composition ; even in the case of involuntary manslaughter ;
however accidental was the cause of death, it must be revenged by a

death. The relations of the victim were obliged, as a point of honour,
to require this sanguinary expiation (Numb. xxxv. 10—24). Moses,
unable to abolish this custom entirely, strove to find means of ren-
dering it practically inoperative. He established cities of refuge.
Six cities were named after the conquest of the Promised Land,
three on either bank of the Jordan, to receive those who fled to escape
these terrible reprisals and ; the situations of the towns, the facilities of
approach to them, directions placed at the cross roads, all contributed
to facilitate the escape of the fugitive. On his arrival within the gate
of the protecting city, he was required to submit to the judgment of its
elders as to the death he had caused. If declared guilty of murder, he

was given up to the members of the family of the deceased, who, in
satisfying their vengeance, were only ministers of justice. If pro-
nounced innocent he was admitted to the city, a dwelling was assigned

him, and land to cultivate for his subsistence. If he left the precinct, he
was exposed to the revenge of the relations of the dead man, but within
the precinct they could not strike him without being themselves guilty
of murder. And not only did the legislator impose these limits of
place on family feuds, he also limited them as to time. At the death
of the high priest, the refugees could return home without fear of
future molestation.
THE MOSAIC LAW. loi
4. Imid was subject to conditions, restrictions whicli, in

Property in
their beneficent wisdom, must have often recalled to the Israelite the
direct and special gift which God had given him, in employing his
nation to chastise the corruption of the Canaanites, and giving him
possession of their territories. Not only was the tenth part of the
—
produce (Lev. xxvii. 26 34; Numb, xviii. 21), a sort of tax levied in
the name of God himself as Sovereign of the Hebrew people, set
apart for the support of the Levites, who were excluded by law from
all share in the possession of the land, and had only certain cities set
apart for them with town lands, but every seventh or
a small extent of
Sabbatical year and the natural produce without
the land rested,
cultivation was shared with servants and strangers (Lev. xxv. i 7). —
The year of Jubilee too, that is the fiftieth year, or more correctl)', the
seventh Sabbatical }'ear (representing the fiftieth, including the year
from M'hich the calculation started, according to the usage of most
ancient people), was to put each family again in possession of the
inheritance that had been assigned to it at the time of the conquest
(Lev. xxv. 8 — 17). Thus the sale of landed property could only be
an assignment for the number of years which had to run to the next
year of Jubilee ; so that improvidence, prodigality, or the bad conduct
of a father, could only temporarily injure the prospects of his family.
At the end of a fixed term they recovered their former competence,
and this without injury to the rights of anyone. Neither could the
father exercise the power of life and death over his children, as among
the Romans (Deut. xxi. 18—21).
5. But the Sabbatical years and years of Jubilee had yet another
intent and still higher aim —
they restored liberty to all Hebrew slaves
(Lev. xxv. 40). The
among the Israelites was not in the
lot of a slave
least like was among the most polished of ancient European
what it
nations. The Law of Moses punished with death the master v/ho mur-
dered his slave (Ex. xxi. 20), and freed, without any indemnity, the
slave wounded by his master (Ex. xxi. 26). The rest of the Sabbath,
and of the feasts, belonged to him as much as to the free man. " That
thy man-servant and thy maid-servant," said the law, "may rest as
well as thou ;" and it added this touching reason, " Remember that
thou wast a .servant in the land of Egypt" (Deut. v. 14, 15; xv. 15;
xvi. 12 ; xxiv. 18, 22). But this servitude, thus lightened, and which
could only arise from punishment for a crime, or for payment of a debt
by the labour of a family otherwise insolvent this servitude could not —
in any case exist longer than six years, because on the seventh year, by
which, it seems, we must understand the vSabbatical year (Deut. xv.
12 —
18), the Israelite slave recovered his liberty, unless he refused it
himself, in which case the servitude was prolonged to the next Jubilee.
It is true that foreign slaves were excluded from this beneficent
—

arrangement, the Hebrews applying to them the laws whieh were in
force among tlieir own nations (Ex. xii. 44 ; Lev. xxv. 44, 46). But
by declaring himself a proselyte —by opening his eyes to the light and
embracing the Divine Law of Sinai, every stranger was admitted to an
equality with the children of Israel. The slave of foreign birth, there-
fore, found himself, by the mere fact of his conversion, entitled to the
benefit of all provisions made in favour of those Hebrews who had
fallen to the condition of slaves.
6. A loan by an Israelite to a foreigner might bear interest (Deut.
xxiii. 20), the rate of which was not limited by law ; the matter was,
in fact, considered as a commercial transaction. But loans between
Israelites were to be made without interest (Ex. xxii. 25 ; Lev. xxv.
—
35 37), as people leading an agricultural life, each with his own little
property would not borrow for speculation, but from necessity. Now
to wish capital to produce interest when, far from being productive in
the hands of the borrower, it was itself consumed for the wants of his
family, would be to desire to make a living out of the property of the
unfortunate, to traffic in his misfortune. In such a case, interest, how-
ever small its amount, is detestable usuiy. The pledge was the object
of delicate and affecting regulations (Deut. xxiv. 10 — 13, 17)
— " When
thou dost lend thy brother anything, thou shalt not go into his house to
fetch his pledge. Thou shalt stand abroad, and the man to whom thou
dost lend shall bring out the pledge abroad to thee. And if the man
be poor, thou shalt not sleep with his pledge. In any case, thou shalt
deliver him the pledge again when the sun goeth down, that he may
sleep in his own raiment and bless thee ; and it shaM be righteousness
rmto thee before the Lord thy God Thou, shalt not take a widow's
raiment to pledge."
7. "The most perfect charity was also prescribed to the Israelites
towards strangers, contraiy to the customs of all other ancient people.
'
The stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born
among you,' said the law, 'and thou shalt love him as thyself; for
ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.' They had a share of the
tithes, and, equally with the widow and orphan, had the right of glean-
ing ; a right formally established by law. Jewish legislation was
essentially partial to the poor ; it forbade usury, commanded alms-
giving, prescribed kindness even towards animals, and admitted the
stranger to the Temple and Whatever was abased and
sacrifices.
trodden down by the ancient world, was elevated by the Mosaic Law.
In the society it founded, the foreigner was no longer an enemy the ;
slave was still a man and woman, seated honourably by the side of
;
the head of the family, was there treated with equal consideration. "
ROBIOU.
—
CONSTRUCTION OF THE TABERNACLE. loi
Section VII. The Tabernacle.

1. The law once promulgated, Moses occupied himself in organising
the external and visible worship of Jehovah, which it wa.s necessary to
institute as quickly as possible, in order to retain in the faith a people
fond of outward pomps, and the more inclined, from that very love of
ceremonies, to relapse into idolatry. He communicated his Divine
inspirations on this subject, first to Aaron and the chiefs of the tribes,
then to the whole nation he explained to them the plan of a portable

;
Temple, in which worsliip might for the future be performed for the
whole nation.
Aaron and his four sons were designated as the priests of tliis worship ;
and the duty of assisting them in their functions was assigned to the
entire tribe of Levi, as a recompense for the devotion they had
manifested for the cause of Divine unity. On an appeal which Moses
made to the generosity of the nation, materials metals, and other —
valuables— necessary for the construction of the Tabernacle (for so it is
customary to call this portable Temple), the altars, sacred vessels, etc.,
were contributed in abundance. Numerous artificers undertook the

task, under the direction of two artists, Bezaleel, of the tribe of Judah,
and Aholiab, of that of Dan. The work advanced rapidly, and on
the first day of the second year the Tabernacle was erected and con-
secrated.
2. It resembled the veiy handsome tent of a nomadic chief, but the
hangings were backed by a frame- work of planks to make them firmer.
The edifice was oblong, its longer sides running east and west, and was
composed of the Sanctuary proper, called Mishcan (habitation), and
of a large court surrounding it on all sides. In this court, in the
open air, was the altar of sacrifices, of wood covered with bronze, on
which the slain victims were burned, and the great basin of bronze,
mounted on a pedestal of the same metal, in which the priests washed
their hands and feet before approaching the altar or entering the
sanctuary.
The Sanctuary proper was divided by an embroidered veil of mag-
nificent stuffs into two parts — the Holy Wace, and the Holy of Holies.
The Holy Place contained the sacred utensils the table of shew-bread,
;
made of wood and covered with gold, on which were placed, every
sabbath day, twelve loaves of unleavened bread offered by the twelve
tribes; the famous golden candlestick with seven branches; and, finally,
the small portable altar of wood covered witli golden plates, on which
incense was burned. I'he table of shew-bread and the seven-branched
candlestick are represented on the arch of Titus at Rome, among the
trophies brought from Jerusalem after the capture of that city by the
•I04 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
Romans. There is also, in several Egyptian monuments, a represen-
tation of a talkie of offerings, from whicli it appears that the talile of
shew-bread was copied.
The Holy of Holies, into which the High Priest and Moses had
alone the right to enter, and that only on certain fixed days, contained
nothing but the " Ark of the Covenant " —
the symbol of the covenant
made between God and His chosen people. It was of very durable
wood covered with plates of gold. The description given in the Book
of Exodus is very obscure and incomplete, but everything seems to
"show that the Ark was made on the model of the Naos, or portable
wooden chapels, which the sanctuary of every Egyptian Temple con-
tained,and which their bas-reliefs often represent.
In the Naos, or Egyptian Arks, whose doors were always shut, was
enclosed the image, hidden from profane eyes, of the Deity, to whom
each was conseciated, and who was supposed to reside there. In the
Ark of the Mosaic Tabernacle there was no image of that kind, for the
Law, to avoid the clanger of idolatry, forbade the representation of God
under any visible and material figure whatever. Moses had placed
there the two stone tables of the Decalogue, as if they were the deed of
the compact between God and the Israelites. The two emblematical
figures which covered the Ark with their extended wings, and which the
Bible calls Chentbim, must have been, from their name, which means
bulls, and from some passages which attribute to them a human face
and wings, related to those winged human-headed bulls whose gigantic
images have been found at the doors of all the palaces of Assyria. An
additional proof of this fact is found in the employment of the word
Kinib, in veiy many Assyrian texts, to designate these winged bulls,
and, in an extended sense, the gateways which they ornamented.
One is often astonished at the magnificence of the Tabernacle,
as it is described in the Book of Exodus; and, above all, at the
amount of work in metal which had been executed for it. Such
works cannot be produced by a nation of nomadic shepherds, wander-
ing about in tents. They require perfect apparatus and fixed and
extensive establishments. Anti-religious criticism has been quick
to draw occasion from this difficulty to tax the Sacred Volume with
exaggeration and even with falsehood, and to say that the works of the
Tabernacle should be consigned to the domain of fable. But now these
specious objections fall before the progress of knowledge, and the tnith-
fulness of the Divine Book is as clearly apparent in this as in all its
other statements.
The most recent explorers of Arabia Petroea, the Count de Labord,
M. Lepsius, and M. Lottin de Laval, have found in the mountain
range of Sinai, near the place where the Hebrews sojourned under the
leading of Moses during the two yeaiis which were employed in the
— — ;
THE SPIES SENT INTO CANAAN. 105
Avork on Tabernacle, in a place now called Wady Mogharah,

tlie
important copper mines worked by the Egyptians from the time of their
oldest dynasties ; and the ruins are still perfectly recognisable of vast
metallurgic factories w hich they had established there. Inscriptions
abound in these ruins.
It seems, then, quite clear, that the Israelites when at Sinai, and
wishing to manufacture the vessels required in their worship, took
possession of the workshops of Wady Mogharah, and very probably
made the Egyptian workmenunder the direction of the two
assist,
overseers named in tlie there, no doubt, that Aaron

Bible. It was
made the golden calf, and that with the furnaces established by order
of the Pharaohs, and the utensils belonging to them, Bezaleel and
Aholiab cast the numerous golden and bronze articles for the furnish-
inir of the Tabernacle.
Section VIII. Sojourn in the Desert.

1. When
the Tabernacle was dedicated, a few days after the second
Paschal anniversary of the Exodus from Egypt, Moses broke up the
camp and recommenced the journey. He had chosen for his guide, in
tl:e part of the desert which remained to be traversed, and which he
did not know personally, his brother-in-law Hobab the Midianite, who
had rejoined him at Sinai, and had brought to him his wife and
children.
The route taken was to the North, towards the Desert of Paran and
the southern frontier of Palestine. But at the commencement of the
journey murmurs re-commenced. was about the end
The heat (for it
of May) made a number of victims in that crowded mass of people

soon the lowest of the people complained of want of nourishment, and
began to regret the abundance they had enjoyed in Egypt. Numerous
flocks of quails again arrived in the camp; the Hebrews fell on them
with such avidity that they soon paid the penalty of their greediness
with their lives. They arrived at last at Kadesh Bamea, near the
southern extremity of the Dead Sea, in the Deserts of Paran."'
2.Thence Moses sent twelve men, one from each tribe, to explore
the land of Canaan, and to make a report on its inhabitants, on
the cities they occupied and on the general aspect of the country.
Returning after forty days, they praised the fertility of the land of
Canaan, but represented the conquest of it as an impossibility, on
* true situation of Kadesh Bamea has not yet been definitely

The
settled. The most interesting supposition is that of Dean Stanley, who
conjecturally identifies it with Petra. Kadesh Barnea was probably
the En Mishpat, sniitten by Chedorlaomer (Gen. xiv. 7). Tr.
;
io6 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.

account of the strength of its inhabitants, men of gigantic stature, and
established in well fortified towns. At this report discnuragement
seized on the people. In vain Joshua and Caleli,
wh(j had been
among the explorers, attempted to calm the exasperation of the mob,
and to overcome their fears by mqre favourable accounts.
A general revolt threatened
to overturn completely the plans of
Moses, and the people even spoke of electing another leader, to return
to Egypt. Moses then perceived the impossibility of carrying out his
.work with that generation so inured to slavery and incapable of heroic
self-devotion. He severely reproached the people for their mistrust of
God, who had manifested Himself to them by so many miracles, and
announced to them the Divine decree, which condemned all the men
above twenty years old, except Caleb and Joshua, to die in the wilder-
ness, and reserved the conquest of Canaan for the new generation. At
the words of Moses, the Hebrews perceived the criminality of their con-
duct, and wished at once to march against the Canaanites, but the
decree had been irrevocably pronounced. In spite of being forbidden
by Moses, who refused to leave the camp, they attempted an attack
the Israelites were repulsed with loss by the Canaanites and Amalekites
who combined against them, and were compelled to resign themselves
to a continuance of their nomadic life in the desert.
The postponement for forty years of the entry into the Land of Pro-
mise was a Divine punishment for the want of faith of the Hebrews, and
was so ordered by the wise disposal of Providence, as greatly to facili-
tate, from a merely human point of view, the conquest of the land of
Canaan. Not only did it bring to the fight with the warlike people of
Canaan a generation hardy, trained to war, and born in the enjoyment
of liberty, in place of that which had been born and grown up in
slavery, but it ensured the invasion taking place at the exact historical
time most favourable to success. If the Hebrews had entered the land
of Canaan two years after the Exodus, they would have had to deal,
not with the Canaanites alone, but with the whole force of the Egyptian
empire, at that time very strong, and master of all Palestine.
Forty years later, however, circumstances had changed. Egypt was
subject to kings who did not trouble themselves about warlike matters,
and who allowed the Israelites and the Canaanites to fight as they
would in Palestine, confining themselves to claiming a purely nominal
suzerainty over the country, which neither the one nor the other cared
to contest.
3. During thirty-eight years, the Hebrews— sadly resigned to their
—
nomadic life traversed the Desert to which the Arabs have given the
name of El Tyh, or Tyh Beni Israel (wanderings of the children of
Israel), going from north to south as far as Eziongeber, on the Elanitic
Gulf, and returning thence northward to Kadesh Barnea. Thev do not
DEATH OF AARON. 107
appear to liave been troul>led there by attacks of any kind. This long
space of time passed away without any incidents sufhcienlly remaikable
to deserve being handed down to posterity. At least the historical docu-
ments of the Tentateuch only relate one event of this period of any
importance —the revolt e.xcited by the Levite Korah, the cause of
which is attributed to the privileges of the priesthood given to Aaron
and his family. We know what was the Divine punishment that
fell on Korah and his principal accomplices. The people having
thought this chastisement too severe, God punished their murmurs by a
pestilence which carried off very many victims.
4- At the commencement of the fortieth year after the Exodus,
Aaron, the brother of Moses, died at Masera, in Mount Hor. He was
then 123 years old, and the high priesthood was transmitted to his son
Eleazar. The entry to the Promised Land was refused to him, as well
as to Moses, by a Divine decree, because they had wavered in their faith
when God had commanded them to speak to the rock in Kadesh to
give water to His people. Mount Hor is on the frontier of the country
then occupied by the Edomites, descendants of Esau, from whom Moses
requested a free passage, appealing to the memory of their common
origin, and to the visible marks of the Divine protection with which
God had favoured the Israelites. The legislator, in fact, feeling his
end approaching, wished to secure the completion of the work of his
life, by himself conducting the people to the left bank of the Jordan,
where the borders of Canaan were defended only by that river, which
was fordable in many places.
In asking a passage across Idumsca, Moses had promised that the
Hebrews should not stray from the highway, and that the people
should pay even for the water that they drank. The Edomites refused;
and thus the Hebrews, who were forbidden by God to fight against their
brethren, were obliged to turn away to the south-east, as far as the head
of the Elanitic Gulf, and then again to turn to the north. Attacked
on their march by the Canaanites of Arad, they were at first van-
quished, but afterwards gained a brilliant victory. The Edomites
permitted them to defile past their territories without disturbing them.
God also forbade the Hebrews to attack the Moabites and Ammon-
ites, descendants of Lot. They followed the skirt of the desert as far
as the torrent of Zared (now Wady Karak), and then came to that of
Amon, which formed the frontier of the Moabites, and ot the Amorites,
a Canaanitish nation. The brook Amon runs into the Dead Sea,
towards the middle of the eastern bank of that sea ; and the brook
Zared also on the same side, more to the south.
— —
loS ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST
Sfxtion IX. Conquest of the Country East of the Jordan.
1. A PEACEFUL embassy was then addressed by Moses to Sihon, king

of the Amorites, to request a passage through the country, again promis-
ing not to stray from the road, and to do no damage. Sihon was a vic-
torious adventurer who, a short time before, putting himself at the head of
the Canaanitish tribes which up to that time had been Hving about Engadi
on the west bank of the Dead Sea, had passed the Jordan, and fonned,
at the expense of the Ammonites and Moabites between Arnon and
Jabbok, a kingdom, with Heshbon for its capital. He had ravaged the
whole countiy of Moab, and had even taken its capital by assault. A
great bas-relief on lava —
in imitation of Egyptian work, but ruder in
execution, which was discovered by M. De Saulcy in the ruins of a
triumphal monument of this prince near Arnon, in a place to which the
Arabs still give the veiy significant name of Tell Schihan, Hill of Sihon
has recently been brought to France by the Duke de Luynes, who has
generously presented it to the Museum of the Louvre it represents the ;
conqueror piercing a prostrate enemy with his lance. Puffed up be-

yond measure by his former successes, Sihon refused the request of the
Israelites, assembled his troops, and advanced to the desert to fight
with the people led by Moses. Completely conquered, the Amorites
had all their cities taken, and their territory became the prize of the
Hebrews.
After this first Moses, without losing a moment, directed the
victory,
forces of Israel against the kingdom of Bashan, which took up arms to
avenge Sihon. This kingdom, whose capitals were Ashteroth Kar- —
naim, and Edrei, had also been founded at the expense of the Am-
monites, who had been thrown back further east, towards Rabbath
Ammon (in later times Philadelphia), and of the southern provinces of
the AraniKan state of Damascus, by Amorite tribes under the leader-
ship of an adventurer of enormous size and prodigious strength, named
Og. He was descended from the people of the Rephaim, who had
occupied part of Palestine before the arrival of the Canaanites, and
whom tradition represents as giants. Og having set himself up as the
adversary of Israel, shared the fate of Sihon he was conquered and
;
killed. By his defeat the Hebrews found themselves masters of the

left bank of the Jordan, from the Dead Sea to Mount Hermon, where
that river has its source —that is, of all the country called by the
Greeks in later times Peraea (the countiy beyond the river).
2. victoi-ies, the people of Israel encamped on the

After these two
had been taken by Sihon from the Moabites, opposite Jericho.
tract that
Balak, king of Moab, was terrified at their presence, and allied himself
— —
WAR WITH THE ^HDIANITES. 109
for defence against them with the chiefs of the JMidianites. Behoving
themselves, however, too weak to attack the Hebrews, the alhes called
in from the countiy of the Ammonites a famous diviner, named Balaam,
to lay a curse on these redoubtable enemies, and devote them to an evil
end. This scheme having failed of success, they invited the Hebrews
to the sacrifices of Baal Peor their god.
The immoral and voluptuous worship of that idol seduced a great
munber of Israelites. Zimri, the chief of a family of the tribe of
Simeon, dared to pass before Moses with the daughter of a Midianitish
prince. They were both slain on the spot by Phinehas, son of Eleazar
the high priest. Moses was obliged to show the most terrible severity; he
ordered the judges to punish all the guilty with death. A war of ex-
termination was at once commenced against the Midianites. Moses
entrusted the command to Phinehas, who with 12,000 men attacked
the enemy, and made great slaughter.* Phinehas did not take posses-
sion of the Miclianite territory, he contented himself with devastating
the country, and returned to the camp with an immense booty.
They then took a census of the families of Israel ; the result showed
601,730 men fit to bear arms. New precepts were added to the law of
the Hebrews, and Joshua was designated by God as the successor of
Moses ; but with the command to consult the high priest Eleazar as
to the designs he might wish to adopt.
3.The moment for crossing the river approached. The tribes of
Reuben and Gad, rich and herds, and charmed with the
in flocks
abundance of pasture which the country they had just conquered
afforded, begged Moses to allow them to settle there. Moses re-
proached them, for thus sowing discouragement among the people ;
but these two tribes having promised to take part in the battles for the
conquest of Canaan, without claiming any other part of the territory,
the legislator gave his consent. The two tribes then established them-
* There may be a doubt whether Phinehas was in command. He

was sent " with the holy instruments, and [even] the trumpets to blow
in his hand " (Numb. xxxi. 6).
"Critics are not agreed what these holy vessels or instruments were
which Phinehas carried w-ith him to the war. Spencer contends that the
Urim and Thummin are meant, while Geddes conjectures that the Ark
and its appurtenances may be thus called. Le Clerk thinks the trumpets
only are meant, and that we should render the '««(/' even.'' I ^
deem most probable opinion." Boothroyd, B/'b. Ilcb.

this the
It would seem, also, that if Phinehas had been in command, Moses
would have been wroth with him (Numb. xxxi. I4), and not with the
officers of the host.
Phinehas possibly went, as Hophni and Phinehas did (i Sam. iv. 4),
only in charge of the sacred utensils, which none but a priest might
touch. Tr.
—
no ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.

selvesbetween Anion nnd Jabbok, Reuben to the soulli and Gad to tlie
north. One-half of the tribe of Manasseh, sprung from Joseph, ob-
tained the same ]irivilege, and received for its share the territory of
Bashan.
4. Finally, Moses fixed the limits of the territory whicli was to be
conquered ; he charged Joshua, Eleazar, and the chiefs of the ten
tribes, to watch over the partition of the lands which were to be
assigned by lot. He directed that forty-eight cities in various districts
should be assigned to the Levites, of which six should, at the same
time, serve as an asylum for those who had accidently slain a man.
After having thus regidated in advance the work of the conquest, he
felt the necessity of recalling to the new generation the miraculous
preservation of the Hebrews all that he himself had
in the desert, and
done to lay the foundation for the well-being of his people in ages to
come. He addressed to the Israelites a series of discourses, in which
he recalled the principal points of his legislation, with some modifica-
tions and alterations which time had rendered necessary. He exhorted
the Hebrews to piety and virtue, foretelling to them the misfortunes
vvliicli neglect of the Divine Law would entail on them. The document
containing the law was consigned to the Priests, with directions
to read it to the people every seventh year at the feast of Taber-
nacles (Deut. xxxi. 10).
After having given his warnings afresh in a sublime song, which the
Hebrews were to learn by heart, Moses installed Joshua in power. He
then gave his benediction to the tribes of Israel, and retired to Mount
Nebo, whence he cast his eyes over the country which his people were
to conquer. He died on that mountain, at the age of 120 years ; and
"no man," says Scripture, "knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day."
CHAPTER 11.
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ISRAELITES IN THE

PROMISED LAND.— THE JUDGES.
Chief Authorities : —
The Bible, Books of Joshua and Judges, I. Book
—
of Samuel (called in the Septuagint and Vulgate /. Book of Ki>igs).
josephus, Antiqtiities, Books V. and VI.
The tiioderti writers mentioned at the beginning of Chapter I.
Section I. Conquest of the Land of Cana.\n —Joshua.

1. When the thirty days of mourning, by which the Israelites showed
their sorrow for the death of Moses, had expired — precisely forty years
after their going out of Egypt —Joshua at tlie head of the twelve
—
THE PASSAGE OF THE JORDAN. iii
tribes crossed the Jordan, whose waters opened of their own accord for
their passage, and attacked Jericho, the walls of which, to follow the
expressions of the Bible, fell down at the sound of the trumpets of
Israel. The inhabitants of Ai (a city situated to the eastward, and
near Bethel), drawn into an ambuscade, soon succumbed in their turn.
Immediately after this double success, which gave them the keys of
Canaan and proved their moral superiority, the Hebrews advanced to
the heart of the country, to Shechem, which they seem to have carried
without a blow. Joshua built on Mount Ebal, as a monument of the
conquest, a great altar, on which was engraven a summary of the law
of Moses.*
In the meanwhile, the kings of the different Canaanite tribes began
to recover from the stupor into which they had at first been thrown l)y
the invasion. A general coalition was formed against the Heljrews.
The Hittites of the south (for there were others much more powerful in
the valley of the Orontes and at the foot of Mount Amanus, who re-
mained indifferent to the events in Palestine), the Jebusites, the Amor-
ites of this side Jordan, who inhabited the mountains, the Canaan-
ites properly so called, who lived on the plains bordering the sea and
the river, combined together to give them battle.
2. The Hivites of Cibeon having made a separate peace on veiy ad-
vantageous terms with the Israelites, Adonizedek, king of Jebus

(which was afterwards Jerusalem), called to him the people of
Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon and these five nations, the
;
* The strategy displayed in the invasion of Canaan by the Israelites

under Joshua — —
considering it only as an ordinary historical event is
worth notice. Had Israel advanced on Palestine from the south, how-
ever victorious they might have been, they would only have driven
before them an ever-increasing mass of enemies, who after each repulse
would gain reinforcements, and could fall back on new fortifications and
an untouched country, more and more difficult at each step. The
Canaanites, if defeated on the heights of Hebron, would have held in
succession those of JeiTJsalem and of Mount Ephraim; and it is unlikely
that the invaders would ever have reached the district of Gilboa and
Tabor, or the Sea of Tiberias. In all probability Israel would have
—
been compelled to turn off to the low country the land of the Philis-
tines — and with tlie Canaanites on the vantage ground of the mountains
of Judah and Ephraim, the nation would in its infancy have been
trodden down by the march of the Egyptian and Assyrian armies,
whose military road this was.
By crossing Jordan, destroying Jericho, occupying the heights by a
night march, and delivering the crushing lilow of the battle of Beth-
horon, Joshua executed the favourite mamruvre of the greatest cajitains
liy sea and land, down to the days of Nelson and Napoleon ; he broke
through and defeated the centre of the enemy's line, and then stood in
a position to strike with his whole force successively right and left. Tk.
—
strongest in the southern part of tlie country, attacked the Gilieonite?;,
who appealed for help to Joshua. He
pushed on and gained a brilliant
victory, in ^^'hich he annihilated the enemy's army. It is on the occasion
of this victory that the Bible, quoting as it distinctly says a song from
a collection of ancient poetry, the Book of Jasher, uses the poetical
expression of the sun standing still to give Israel time to destroy the
Canaanites.* '
The five kings made prisoners at the battle of Beth-

horon were hanged. Immediately after the battle, the Hebrews took
by storm the cities of Makkedah, Libnah, Lachish, Eglon, Hebron,
and Deliir, whose inhabitants they exterminated and thus the south of ;
Palestine was subjected to their power.

3. But a second and still more formidable coalition was formed, com-
prising the Canaanites of the east and west, and all the tribes of the
North, Hittites, and Hivites,
Perizzites, from the foot of Mount
Hermon. It was under the direction of the most powerful prince of
that part of the country, Jabin, King of Hazor. But God had resolved
to punish the crimes of the Canaanite nation. Joshua was once again
victorious in a battle delivered on the banks of the Lake Samochonitis
(Merom), and pursued the enemy to the neighbourhood of Sidon, then
the chief of the Phoenician cities of the coast. The King of Hazor fell
into the hands of the Israelites, and was put to death, and a great
number of the cities of the north were taken. An attack directed
against the Anakim of the southern extremity of the Promised Land
was attended Avith equal success. At last, after six or seven years
of fierce battles, in which thirty-one of. the principal Canaanite cities
were destroyed, Palestine was almost completely in the power of the

Hebrews, from Baal Gad, at the foot of Hermon, to the mountains
which join those of Seir, that is, to the Land of Edom.
* The miracles which accompanied the entry of the Israelites into

Palestine seem such as might have been produced by volcanic agency.
The bed of the Jordan was left dry for more than thirty miles.
" The waters stood and rose up upon an heap very far from the city
. . .
Adam, that is beside Zaretan " (Josh. iii. 16). " The expression that '
is beside Zaretan,'" says Dr. Lightfoot,

" is to be understood of the
waters, not of Adam." That city is said to have been twelve miles
from Zaretan.
The fall of the walls of Jericho may most obviously have been caused
by an earthquake.
The stones which fell on the defeated Amorites, were volcanic not
ordinary hailstones ; and the Talmudists believed that they were still
to be seen. The passages are quoted at length in Dr. Lightfoot's
HorcE Hehraica:, etc. London, 1584.
If it be admitted that these events were brought about by agencies in
the ordinary course of nature, they are not in any way less miraculous, as
they occurred at the exact time when required, to help the chosen people,
and even, in two instances, were promised to them beforehand. Tr.
—
PARTITION OF THE LAND. 113
Nevertheless the Caiiaanites were able to maintain themselves in

4.
very many places, and particularly in a great number of fortified towns.
Joshua, already very aged, was convinced that the work of the conquest
could not be at once accomplished, and that he might consider his
mission as terminated. Instead of making fresh attempts which would
have required great efforts, he preferred to consolidate his conquests
and organise the internal affairs of the Hebrews, leaving to each
tribe the task of reducing the remaining cities which were to belong
to them.
was then that the two tribes who had obtained lands in Persa,
It
returned to occupy. them, and that the soil conquered on this side
Jordan was parted among the others by twenty-one commissioners. In
the south-east there remained independent, Gaza, Gath, Ashdod,
Ascalon, and Ekron that
; is, the five cities which soon after came into
the possession of the Philistines,* but which were at first, even at the
time of the conquest, a refuge for the Anakim, driven from their
mountains. The Jebusites retained Jerusalem in the territory which
the tribe of Judah received, from the desert of Paran and the frontiers of
Edom, the Dead Sea and the mouth of the Jordan, to the Mediterranean
near Ekron. large number still remained in the
Of the Canaanites a
domains of Ephraim, and in lands which the half-tribes of Manasseh
obtained on this side Jordan.
The country which was thus given to the descendants of Joseph was
from the Jordan near Jericho, to the sea near Gaza. The land of Ephraim
extended northwards, but was south of the portion of Manasseh. Higher
up was Asher to the east, Issachar, in whose territory were some
;
plots given to Manasseh, amongst others, Megiddo. Zebulon was

established to the north of Issachar, between the part occupied by the
tribe of Asher and the more to the
territory of Naphtali, but a little
eastward, Naphtali followed the Jordan from its source to the Lake of
Gennesaret, and occupied the eastern bank of the lake itself. Simeon
obtained some cities at first destined for Judah, and occupied the
extreme south-east of the Israelite territory on the frontier of the Philis-
The Philistines are mentioned in Gen. xxi. 32, in Abraham's time

* ;
in Gen. xxvi., in Isaac's time at the time of the Exodus, Ex. xiii. 17,
;
and in Joshua xiii. 5.

The Author regards the mention in these texts rather as geographical
expressions, defining the territory by what afterwards became its best
known name, and considers that the statement in the text is proved by
the fact, that when Moses (Deut. vii. i) and Joshua (Josh. iii. 10)
spoke to the Hebrews of the nations whom they were to fight against,
the Philistines were not mentioned and that the first arrival of the
;
Philistines on the coast of Palestine is conclusively proved to have

occurred in the reign of the Egyptian king, Ramses HI. Tr.
I
—
tines, and had on the north the tribe of Dan. As we have already said,
the tribe of Levi had no share of tlie territory, but only certain isolated
cities in the midst of various other tribes. The Tabernacle and the Ark
of the Covenant, the central point of religious worship and of the nation
itself, were established at Shiloh, a town of the territory assigned to
Ephraini, to which tribe Joshua belonged.
5. Believing himself near death, Joshua assembled the people at
Shechem, and, in a discourse which the Bible has preserved, recalled to
them all the benefits which Jehovah had conferred on the Hebrews.
He exhorted the Israelites to the faithful observance of the laws of
Moses, and to the continuance of war with the Canaanites, predicting
great misfortunes for them, if they abandoned the worship of the true
God, and if they mixed themselves with the heathen, who were still
very numerous in the country. The Hebrews promised to obey, and
again renewed their covenant with Jehovah. Joshua prepared a record
of it, which was written in the book of Moses moreover, he set up in
;
the place of the assembly a monumental stone, to serve as a witness

against the people, if they renounced their God.
Soon after Joshua died at the age of 1 10 years, 65 years after leaving
Egypt. He was buried in the inheritance at Timnath Serah, which the
people had assigned to him in recognition of his services, where a
French traveller, M. Victor Guerin, has recently discovered his tomb,
a vast excavation in the rock. He had been for twenty-five years the
supreme chief of the people of Israel. The High Priest, Eleazar,
followed him quickly to the tomb, and was buried on a hill which
belonged to his son Phinehas, in the mountains of Ephraim. This was
in the latter part of the fourteenth century before the Christian era,
which is all that can be said in the absence of precise chronological
statements. All the very positive dates whichup to this time have been
attempted to be established for the Exodus, the passage of the Jordan,
and the death of Joshua, are purely hypothetical and destitute of any
real value, to which no wise historian will commit himself without some
fixed and solid basis for chronological calculation.
Section II. Period of Repose — First Servitude —

Commencement of the Judges.
I While the elders lived, who had been contemporaries of Joshua,
.
and who had assisted in the conquest, the Hebrews maintained their
respect for the law and for the worship of Jehovah. In conformity
with the last injunctions of Joshua, some of the tribes recommenced
hostilities, either to make new conquests, or to re-conquer cities cap-
tured at the first invasion, but which the Canaanites had been able
;
THE JUDGES. 115
again to occupy. Thus some

the tribes of Judah and Simeon attacked
Canaanite colonies near Bezek, a whose precise
city position is unknown,
but which must be between Jerusalem and the Jordan. Ten thousand
Canaanites were defeated near that city, whose king, Adonibezek, had
his thumbs and great toes cut off, a punishment which by his own
account he had inflicted on seventy kings.
Jerusalem, it is true, they could not take from the Jebusites, but all
the rest of the mountains of Judah were cleared of enemies, and they
even possessed themselves for a time of the cities of Gaza, Ascalon, and
Ekron. Bethel fell by treason into the hands of the Ephraimites.
Nevertheless, the tribes wanted either the strength or the energy to
expel completely or to exterminate the Canaanites, as Moses had com-
manded. Joshua had committed a great fault in not naming his
successor ;want of a head, the absence of union and concert in their
the
operations, paralysed the forces of the Hebrews. It was especially the
northern tribes, those of Dan, Manasseh, Ephraim, Asher, Zebulon,

and Naphtali, that could not take all the cities which had been assigned
to them, or were obliged to content themselves with imposing tribute
on the Canaanites, permitting them still to live in the midst of Israel.
In general the coast cities successfully repulsed the efforts of the
Israelites, and remained in the hands of their ancient possessors. This
is the reason why the campaigns of the last great warrior king of Egypt,
Ramses III., campaigns which took place at this time and touched only
the sea coast of Palestine, have no place in the history of the Hebrews.
In the Egyptian inscriptions which give accounts of these wars, there
is no reference to the children of Israel, and at the same time the Book
of Judges makes no mention of the passage of the Egyptian armies.
2. A messenger of the Divine will came to announce to the Hebrews
the fatal consequences of their weakness (Judg. ii. l). The people
admitted the truth of all that was said by the man of God, but they
could only answer the appeal by their tears. The Canaanites became
more and more dangerous by their material force, which was not yet
broken, still more by their religious worship so seductive to the senses,
and also by their corrupt manners. The old men who had surrounded
Joshua died off one by one; from the good old days of warlike spirit and
religious enthusiasm there only survived the High Priest, Phinehas,
whose aged arm could no longer avenge, as once it did, insults to
the laws and name of Jehovah, and who was not capable of maintaining
the political and religious unity of the tribes, and of preserving them
from anarchy.
Idolatry and the corruption of manners increased from day to day
with no head and no common centre, the tribes became estranged from
one another, and their mutual indifference threatened to grow into
hostility. Two events recounted in the Book of Judges, and which we
;
Il6 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.

must the epoch following the death of Joshua and his com-
refer to
panions, show how far, after so short a time, the sanguine anticipa-
tions of Moses and his successor had failed of realisation. The one is
that of the Levite, whom the people of the tribe of Dan took with them
when they captured from the Canaanites the city of Laish, and called it
Dan, and who, representing Jehovah by an idol, in defiance of the first
•and most essential of the precepts of the decalogue, instituted in that
city a religious worship to rival that of the Tabernacle at Shiloh. The
other is the massacre of the tribe of Benjamin by the other confederate
tribes, to avenge the outrage committed on the wife of a Levite of
Mount Ephraim ; the details of this last event present a miserable
picture of the barbarous manners of the period. The infamous conduct
of the inhabitants of Gibeah ; the corpse of the Levite's wife cut in
pieces, and provoke them to the war ; the
sent to all the tribes to
slaughter of the Benjamites, wherein the innocent were confounded with
the guilty and, finally, the expedition against Jabesh Gilead, and the
;
massacre of its inhabitants, who had remained quiet during these events,
in order to give their daughters to the survivors of the tribe of Benjamin,
and thus enable the tribe torecover itself— these all are actions unworthy
of an organised community living under a regular government and
civilised laws.
"In Book of Judges (xxi. 25), after having
those days," says the
'
related two horrible incidents,
these there was no king in Israel
'
every man did that which was right in his own eyes ;" all united politi-
cal life had in fact ceased with the life of Joshua no central authority ;
any longer existed. The Israelites had no other government than the
separate tribal authorities. The tribe was divided into houses, the
house into families, each comprising many individuals ; each one of
these divisions had its own chiefs, princes of tribes, of houses, of
families. would have been vain to seek for any national insti-
But it
tution besides the sacerdotal body, and this had no real and political
power. Under such a system the bonds of nationality must soon
have relaxed, and the tribes become estranged from each other. Two
things only could and would have pi-eserved the unity of the people ;
first, the unity of belief and worship, which brought all the tribes round
the Tabernacle of Shiloh ; secondly, the danger of division when sur-
rounded on all sides by hostile nations. But these purely moral bonds
were not sufficiently strong for a people like the Hebrews, and we shall
soon see how slight was the power they preserved.
3. Enjoying the sweets of peace, the Hebrews allied themselves with
the Canaanites, and neglected more and more the national sanctuary
at Shiloh, and soon they did not fear even to give themselves over
to the worship of Baal, Ashtaroth, and all the Phoenician divinities.
That patriotic feeling, which should always have been strengthened by
—
THE JUDGES. 117
and the solemn assemblies of the Mosaic feasts, became

religious unity
weaker every day, and soon the tribes, isolated and without a head,
were attacked either by neighbouring nations, or by the enemies whom
they had the impmdence to tolerate in the interior of the country, and
who began to recover themselves and to gain strength. From time to
time, it is true, an energetic man put himself at the head of certain
tribes, or even of the entire nation, to revive the national spirit and
throw off the foreign yoke but he had not always the power nor
;
even the will to revive religious feeling and the love of the Mosaic
institutions, and after his death the people fell back again into anarchy.
During many centuries there were continual vicissitudes of reverses
and prosperity, of anarchy and absolute government but the institu- ;
tions given to Israel at Sinai were no longer thought of. This period
is usually termed that of the "Judges," a word intended as a translation
of the Hebrew title given to those temporary liberators who became
by their exploits the first magistrates of the nation, or more frequently
of a part only of the nation. But the word is very ill chosen, for it in
no way gives an exact idea of the functions and powers of the men to
whom it is applied. It would be much better to employ here the Hebrew
word itself, and to name the so-called judges (whose authority was in
no way judicial), the Suffetes of Israel ; for this name, Suffete, is set
apart in Roman history as the designation of the first magistrates of the
Carthaginian Republic, whose was the same- and their powers similar
title
to those of these magistrates of Israel. For our part this is the desig-
nation to which we shall give the preference.
4. It was in the lifetime of the very generation which followed the
conquest that we must place the first servitude of Israel, a punishment

inflicted on them on account of the adoption by the majority of the
people of the worship of the Canaanitish divinities. A king of Western
Mesopotamia, named Chushan Rishathaim,* at that time extended his
dominions from tlie west of the Euphrates to the frontiers of the land
of Canaan. In the state in which the Hebrews then were they could
not defend their independence, and became tributary to Chushan, who
oppressed them for eight years. Moved by their prayers, the Lord
raised up as a deliverer, Othniel, nephew of Caleb, who, by the defeat
of the stranger-s, gave his countrymen liberty, which they enjoyed forty
years.
This was the commencement of the alternations of servitude and
* Sir H. Rawlinson is disposed to conjecture that Cushan-rish-athaim

—a name which has been a complete puzzle to etymologists is a —
corrupt reading of the name of an Assyrian king, which Sir H. Rawlin-
son reads Asshur-ris-ilim (.Vsshur is the head of the gods), and M.
Lenormant, Asshur-rish-ishi (Asshur lifts up his head). Tr.
Ii8 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
deliverance which answered, during the whole period of the Judges, or
Suffetes, to the alternations of infidelity and return towards God. But
we should fall and into inextricable diffi-
into a great historical error,
culties, if we were to believe that the years of servitude and independence
extended always to all the people of Israel. That is a point long since
cleared up ; and if there are still difficulties left for science, it is only
when she attempts to determine exactly the geographical limits of each
of these invasions and their relative dates. As for that of Chushan, I
see no motive to limit it, as some critics do, to the countries east ot
Jordan, to which this king would first have come. Besides that, it will
not in any way embarrass the chronology to enter these eight years of
servitude and forty of repose in the general history of the Jews ; it is
not likely that a people, whose mission was to punish the adhesion of
the tribes of Israel to Phcenician rites, would have failed to invade
"Western Palestine, whence no doubt this worship spread to the
eastern tribes.
5. It is, however, impossible to give a complete historical and, above
all, chronological description of the epoch of the Judges, or Suffetes.
The Book of Judges, whichour only authority for this period, is not
is
properly an historical book. Everything in it is told in a discursive

style, and the events are not placed in their proper order of succession';
ihe author was far from being tied to an invariable order of time. It
is, in fact, a collection of detached traditions of the republican period,

collected, probably, from ancient poems and popular legends, which
celebrated the glory of the heroes of the age. This collection, which
dates from the first days of the kingdom, appears to have been intended
above all to encourage the new government to finish the work com-
menced by Joshua, and to exhibit to the people the advantages of an
hereditary monarchy. For this purpose it was sufficient to show by a
series of examples how great had been the disorders from which the
Hebrews suffered before the foundation of the kingdom ; what a series
of misfortunes had been occasioned by the forbearance of the Israelites
towards the Canaanites, and how even the temporary power of one
person had invariably rescued them from total ruin.
There was, no intention to state in exact chronological
therefore,
order the events and the period of the supremacy of each Suffete.
Scholars who have attempted this, have given themselves infinite
trouble without adequate result. Not only do the First Book of Samuel,
and the First Book of Kings give two absolutely different computations
for the duration of the period of the Judges, but the historian Josephus,
the faithful reporter of the traditions of the Synagogue, has as many as
three different ways of reckoning the same interval of time.
And now that the progress of knowledge in the domain of history
allows us to cherish the hope of being able soon to determine with
—
DEBORAH AND BARAK. 119
certainty, by synchronism with the annals of Egypt, the precise date ot

the Exodus, we are compelled to recognise the necessity of reducing
the time which elapsed from the going out of Egypt to the establish-
ment of the monarchy in Israel very much more than do any of the
calculations hitherto proposed.
Section III. Ehud, Shamgar, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah.

I. Forty years after the first servitude, the invasion of Eglon, king
of the Moabites, took place, who, united with the Ammonites and
Amalekites, imposed his yoke on the unfaithful Israelites. It is evident
that this great coalition did not confine itself to invading the territory
of the eastern tribes, neighbours of the Ammonites. The country of
Moab was to the south-east of the Dead Sea, andit was from the south
that the Amalekites could most easily reach the Promised Land. These
nations must, consequently, have attacked the tribe of Judah ; and,
moreover, the circumstances of the insurrection show that the enemy
was established even in the heart of the country. In fact, Ehud, son
of Gera, of the tribe of Benjamin, having, while presenting the tribute
of his district, killed Eglon, called the people to arms, occupied the
fords of Jordan, which formed the most direct road of communica-
tionbetween Central Palestine and the territory of Moab, and killed
10,000 Moabite soldiers who attempted to regain their country. But
we must not apply to the whole of Palestine the twenty-four years of
repose which were obtained by this exploit.
2. In fact, it is after this success of the Israelites that Scripture
mentions the resistance opposed to the Philistines in the south by
Shamgar, son of Anath, at the head of a body of labourers, armed only
with agricultural implements. About the same time, too, it tells us of
a new servitude, which also must apply to a portion only of the country.
The Canaanites of the north, formerly conquered by Joshua, had again
become very strong, and had retaken the greater part of the country
conquered by the Hebrews. As in the time of Joshua, they had at
their head a king, named Jabin, who resided at Hazor, their principal
city, the gigantic ramparts of which were some years since discovered
by M. de Saulcy.* With 900 war-chariots and a numerous army,

he oppressed the northern tribes, on whom he imposed his yoke for
twenty years. His troops were commanded by Sisera, v.'ho liatl his
head-quarters in a city, called Harosheth of the Gentiles.
Barak, son of Abinoam, was called to arms by the Prophetess De-
borah, who then administered justice and taught the precepts of the law
to the people of her neighbourhood under a palm-grove, between Ramah
* Voyage autonr de la Mer Morte et dans les TerresBibliqties, vol. ii.

I20 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
and Bethel, in Mount Ephraim. He marched against the enemy,
accompanied by the Prophetess, and completely defeated Sisera, who
was assassinated during his flight by Jael, wife of a descendant of the
brother-in-law of Moses. The famous song of Deborah and Barak,
which the Bible has preserved, was composed in celebration of this
victory. The Hebrews then took the city of Harosheth, and next
that of Hazor, and killed Jabin, the king. The Bible says distinctly
that it was only with the forces of Naphtali and Zebulon, with but
10,000 combatants, that Barak took the initiative in the war, and
gained the battle of the River Kishon.
It follows, from the famous song of Deborah, that the Hebrew
general received afterwards the help of Benjamin, of the tribe of
Issachar, and of Ephraim. Reuben was divided ;one part of its chiefs
refusing to take part in the war.The tribes of Judah and Simeon, far
away to the south, were quite beyond these events. The land of Gilead,
beyond Jordan, remained unmoved, and the maritime tribes of Dan and
Asher, quite close to the theatre of war, did not leave their peaceful
occupations. This is one of the most striking examples of the divisions
and of the timidity and apathy among the tribes, which, resulting from
the relaxation of the common faith, were more than once fatal to the
Hebrews. God often makes use of our vices themselves as instmments
of punishment.
3. Forty years of peace followed this struggle, but only for the tribes
who had been in the fight ; for the sins of the rest of Israel brought on
them another scourge, and they were given over for seven years to the
tyranny of the Midianites. The Amalekites and Bedouin tribes of the
East joined these people to make continual incursions into Palestine,

overrunning the country from east to west, even to the neighbourhood
of Gaza they encamped there with their cattle and their numer-
;
ous camels ; they carried off the beasts of the Hebrews ; and, like
clouds of locusts, they ravaged the country, destroyed the crops, and
caused famine. The Israelites were obliged to put their cattle and
the produce of their lands, for safety, into caves of the earth and into
fortified cities. The people then were humbled, and implored the
assistance of God and God, by the voice of an angel, appealed to the
;
faith and courage of Gideon, son of Joash, of the tribe of Manasseh.

He gave the signal of insurrection against the invaders, by overturning
the altar which had been erected to Baal in his village. At the first
news of this movement, the Midianites and their allies took the field.
Gideon, calling to him the tribes of Manasseh, Asher, Zebulon, and
Naphtali, who had felt the devastation less than the others, and who,
consequently, were more in a state to make war, prepared for the fight.
But God did not will that His people should attribute the victory
to the number of combatants. By His command, Gideon put aside 300
GIDEON. 121
men only ; the rest were kept in the rear as an army of reser\'e. The
300 chosen men, divitled into three bodies, surprised by night the camp
of the Midianites they were armed with trumpets, and with torches
;
enclosed in pitchers wliich they brol<e, crying out, " The sword of the
Lord and of Gideon." The enemy, seized with panic, and seeing an
Israelite in everyone they met, turned their swords against each other.
The men of Naphtali, Asher, and Manasseh pursued them the ;
Ephraimites occupied the bank of Jordan Gideon pursued to the river

;
those who had escaped, and the hostile amiy was exterminated. This
was undoubtedly one of the most complete and decisive victories
which the Hebrews ever gained for, from this day forward, history
;
makes no more mention of the Midianites. Excesses, showing how

barbarous the manners of the Israelites still were, sullied this success.
Gideon, with his own hand, killed the two captive chiefs of the enemy.
He also put to death by torture the elders of the two towns of Succoth
and Penuel, who, fearing the vengeance of the Midianites, had refused
provisions to his troops.
4. Gideon refused the i-oyalty which a part of the Israelites offered
him, but he ruled for a long time over the tribes who had followed him
to war. The Book of Judges says forty years ; but this expression,
which is found on every page, must not be taken literally, and has been
proved merely to indicate an indeterminate space of time, corresponding

approximately to the duration of a generation. Fidelity to the Divine
law, already much shaken under the government of Gideon, who thought
to honour Jehovah by setting up an idol* to Him in his native place, dis-
appeared altogether after his death, and Baal was worshipped by the
people of God. One of the sons of the conqueror of the Midianites,
Abimelech, supported by the inhabitants of Shechem, recruited a band
of outlaws, with whom he killed nearly all his brothers, and formed for
himself a small kingdom in the country of Shechem, which he retained
three years, and then perished in civil war while besieging the city of
Thebez. A piece of a millstone, thrown by a woman's hand, struck
him on the head and killed him. Tola, his cousin, was recognised
Suffete of Israel during twenty-three years, and after him, Jair, the
Gileadite, during twenty-two years. We know no particulars of their
government but Scripture tells us that Israel, having given themselves
;
over to the worship of the idols of Sidon, of Moab, of Amnion, and of

the Philistines, God again gave them into the hand of their enemies.
5. The Ammonites invaded the territory of the tribes of Pera:a, and
kept them under their authority for eighteen years. Thence, crossing
the Jordan, they made occasional incursions into the land of Judah,
Benjamin, and Ephraim. The supplications of the sufferers were at
* See Gesenius Thesaurus, p. 135.

—
last heard by the Lord, who was wilHng to help His people, and the war
commenced. The inhabitants of Gilead, which was the capital of Pera;a,
having no man among them capable of conducting warlike opera-
tions, addressed themselves to the chief of a band in the neighbourhood,
named Jephthah. The position of a highway robber was not then
more degrading in the eyes of the Hebrews than it is now-a-days in the
opinion of the Arabs. He was recognised as general, and the negotia-
tions which he attempted to open having failed, he gained great
advantages over the Ammonites, and delivered the country. It was
then that Jephthah, in fulfilment of his culpable and rash vow, sacrificed
his own daughter. He had sworn to offer as a burnt offering, if he
returned as conqueror, the first living being which he should meet
at the door of his house. It was his only daughter who came to meet
him with "timbrels and dances." Jephthah felt himself bound by his
vow, and his daughter made no resistance. This was an impious
sacrifice, and distinctly opposed to the law of Moses, which permitted
the sacrifice only of certain animals, and utterly interdicted human sacri-
fices.* But such horrible immolations were common among the pagan
populations who surrounded the Israelites, and the precepts of the law
had fallen into complete oblivion.
The Ephraimites, who had not taken part in the war, ashamed
of their conduct, laid the blame on Jephthah they reproached him
;
with not having called them to the battle. The quarrel became serious ;
they came to blows about it with the inhabitants of Gilead, who made
great slaughter among them. The Gileadites, having occupied the
Fords of Jordan during several days, slew all the Ephraimites who
attempted to cross in order to regain their own countiy, and whom they
recognised by certain peculiarities in pronunciation. After six years of
a stormy administration, Jephthah died, and was succeeded by Ibzan
of Bethlehem, Elon of the tribe of Zebulon and lastly, Abdon of
;
Pirathon, in Ephraim, whose governments embraced a space of about

twenty-five years. But not one of these Suffetes extended his authority
beyond the tribes of the north and of Perrea. Whilst they were govern-
ing those, other events, much more serious and more important, were
passing among the tribes of the south and west.
* That Jephthah really offered up his daughter as a burnt offering

has been doubted, and from the tenor of the narrative itself, Jephthah's
vow may be read as in the margin of our Bible, " Whatsoever cometh
forth ... to meet me shall surely be the Lord's, or I will offer it
. . .
up for a burnt offering " (Judg. xi. 31).

The opinion of the Author that the sacrifice was consummated, is
that of Josephus, of the Chaldee Paraphrast, who adds that if Jephthah
had consulted the High Priest, his daughter might have been redeemed
for a sum of money, and also of most of the fathers, some of whom
even praise him for fulfilling his vow. Tr.
—
THE PHILISTINES. 123
• Section IV. Eli and Samuel.

I. We must now look at fierce contest which commenced
a long and
in the south of Palestine, — a contest
which was to bring on the Hebrews
more extensive disasters than had been known in any previous epoch,
but which in the end had the effect of reuniting all the tribes of Israel,
and of reviving, together with the worship of Jehovah, the spirit of
nationality and the love of their ancient institutions. At this epoch of
their history, the Israelites found themselves suddenly brought into the
presence of a new enemy, whom neither Moses nor Joshua appears to
have foreseen, and wliom they do not mention in the enumeration of the
dangers against which the people were to guard, but who entered on
the scene with almost irresistible power, and threatened to annihilate
the whole independence and the whole national life of the Hebrews.
The Canaanites from this moment disappear almost entirely from the
history of Palestine ; they no more menace Israel with oppression ;
they have ceased to be a danger ; everything shows that their power
was completely and finally broken, not so much by the last victory of
Deborah and Barak, but by an external cause.
The Philistines, this new enemy, first appeared in the south. In the
whole Pentateuch, Moses never once named them among the popula-
'
tion, whom the Hebrews should expel from the Promised Land ; they
were not spoken of under Joshua, nor when, just after his death, the
tribe of Judah possessed itself temporarily of the cities of Gaza, Askelon
and Ekron, then held by the Anakim. The first mention of the
Philistines which the Bible contains is on the occasion of the exploit
of Shamgar but they do not seem at that time to have been very
;
formidable nothing then indicated the great ascendancy which they

;
were to attain in that period of the Hebrew annals, at the threshold of

which we now are. It is chiefly in recent times, and l^y the aid of
the Egyptian hieroglyphical documents, that the origin, the race,
and early history of the Philistines have been definitely cleared up.
But the achievements of science have been so considerable as to enable
us now to speak positively on these different subjects. The Philistines
had no connection in their origin with the other nations of Syria. They
were neither of the race of Ham, like the Canaanites, nor of that of
Shem, like the Israelites, but in reality of Japhetic origin. Closely
related to the primitive colonies of Greece and the Archipelago, they
also belonged to that great Pelasgic race which ruled for a time the
whole basin of the Mediterranean, and their name, Philistin or Pilistin,
contains the same essential elements as that of the Pelasgi.*
* The Pelasgic character of the Philistines was first established by
HiTZiG, Urgeschichte imd Mythologie dcr Philister, Leipzig, 1845.

Stark, Forsclmngen ziir Geschkhte und AlUrthiimskande der Helle-
nistischen Orients. Jena, 1852.
A great number of evidences, both in sacred literature and in profane
authors, concur in ])ointing out the island of Crete as having been their
original habitation, or at least their earliest known settlement.*
It was thence that they came by sea to attack and occupy the country
which from them received the name of Palestine. We shall see, in the
Book of this Manual which treats of the history of Egypt, that the
grand historical bas-reliefs of the palace of Medinet Habou at Thebes
relate with precision all the vicissitudes of the furious and terrible war
in which the Pharaoh Ramses III., some years after the conquest of
Canaan by Joshua, strove to repel their invasion. The Philistines were
then vanquished, but not completely ; and, in exchange for their sub-
mission to his sceptre, the King of Egypt was obliged to agree to give
them a territory on the coast where they had landed. This was the
nucleus -of their settlements and of their power. They began humbly,
still weak, and subject to the government of Egypt and such must ;
have been their situation at the time of their attempt on the southern-
most tribes of Israel, which Shamgar does not seem to have had much
difficulty in repulsing with some bands of peasants, assembled in haste,
and imperfectly armed.

But the rapid decay of the Egyptian power soon permitted the
Philistines to free themselves from all subjection. New immigrations
from Crete strengthened them. They became masters of the five strong
cities of Gaza, Ashdod, Askelon, Gath, and Ekron, which formed the
capitals of five principalities, united in a confederation. Whilst the

Israelites and Canaanites were exhausting themselves in continual wars,
this new power silently grew. A day came when they felt themselves
sufficiently strong to aspire to dominion over the whole of the ancient
land of Canaan. They had a considerable fleet, and employed it in
the shameful practice of pii-acy. By sea they assailed the cities of the
Phoenician coast, where all and national power of the Canaanites
the life
had concentrated itself, when their strength in the interior had been
broken by Joshua. Such small Canaanitish principalities in the interior
of the country as still remained were sustained only by the support of

those maritime cities, which commerce had raised to unequalled opulence.
In the year 1209 B.C., the Philistines took and reduced to ashes Sidon,
the principal of the Phoenician cities, which was then supreme over all
the others. + The disaster was so complete, that Phoenicia disappeared
* Tacitus expressly says that they came from Crete {Hist. v. 2). The
Philistines are called Cherethites, that is, Cretans, in i Sam. xxx. 14,
Ezekiel xxv. 16, and Zephaniah ii. 5. The geographer Stephen, of
Byzantium, attributes the foundation of Gaza to the mythical Minos,
the personification of the Cretan power and, lastly, the great god of
;
that city, Marnas, has always been identified with the Cretan Jupiter.
+ Justin, xviii. 3.
SAMSON. 125
from histoiy for half a century, till the time when Tyre had become
sufficiently strong to reclaim the heritage of Sidon. It was about the
same time, after having annihilated in this way the Phoenician power,
that the Philistines attempted to subjugate the people of Israel.
2. When the Ammonites invaded Persea, and there established that
dominion -which was destroyed by Jephthah, they were allied with the
Philistines, who simultaneously entered the territory of the southern
tribes,and imposed on them their yoke, the heavier because the tyranny
of this people was exercised with order and method, in conformity with
wise and regular administiâtive laws. When the northern and eastern
tribes delivered themselves from the Ammonites, and enjoyed a mo-
mentary repose under the government of the three Suffetes, successors
of Jephthah, the Philistines continued to oppress the southern provinces,
and every day their power there became consolidated and extended, in
spite of the resistance of the Israelitish population.
It is this popular resistance which the Book of Judges personifies in
the exploits of Samson, who, as the learned historian of the Philistines,
M. Stark,* has well said, always played in the south of Palestine the
part of the people's defender, offering to the Israelites of these districts
a centre for national resistance, and of unity in a particular locality, but
without succeeding in forming any real political establishment. The
particulars which are told Book of Judges as to his marriage with
in the
the Philistine woman Timnath,

at the irregularities of his life, and,
lastly, the manner in which he perished, a victim to the treachery of a
woman, are too precisely detailed to be open to suspicion. But the
story of his exploits, as it is given in that book, is, in its character,
entirely unlike the merely human histories of the other Judges. In it
are combined all the legendary mythological tales which had long been
current among the people of Palestine and Syria. The narrative is
entirely allegorical and emblematic, with no real and positive character.
It represents the form which such exploits had taken in the popular
memory, in which Samson was made the impersonation of all the heroes
of whom so many tales were told. lie, therefore, can find no place in
a purely historical work such as ours.

3. Whilst these things were passing in the south, great efforts had
been made in the north of the land of Israel to re-establish purity of
religion, and that national unity of wliich it was the safeguard. A
priest of the line of Ithamar, youngest son of Aaron, named Eli, had
usurped the high priesthood from the line of Plleazar, to whom that
function legitimately belonged by the choice of Moses, t Mis usurpation
* Forschungen, p. 156 160. —

t There were only three high priests of the line of Eleazar between
Phinehas and Eli. This furnishes abundant proof of the necessity of
might be pardoned, as he had restored the Tabernacle of Shiloh,
abandoned for many generations, and which had fallen into the most
deplorable state of dilapidation. By force of zeal and care he brought
back the concoui-se of faithful worshippers to that only legal sanctuary
for the worship of the true God, instituted by Moses as the real centre
6f the national life of the chosen people.
Abdon now dead, Eli was elected Judge, or Suffete, by the tribes of
the north and east, who alone remained independent. Those of the
south and west, crushed under the weight of Philistine domination,
looked up to him, and considered him their legitimate chief, though
deprived of his authority by foreign tyranny. This combination of civil
and sacerdotal power in the person of Eli— this return of the Israelite
people to the faith of their fathers, and to the ideas of unity— should
have had most fortunate results. But Eli was not a man capable of at
once saving religion and the state— of re-uniting all Israel, and con-
ducting them to victory. He had none of the genius necessary for so
magnificent a mission. Above all, towards the close of his life, the
deplorable weakness of the high priest for his two sons, Hophni and
Phinehas, undid all the good which he had been able to accomplish,
and much aggravated the evils of the situation of the country. The
sons of Eli profaned the sacred place, perverted the offerings made to
the Lord, and caused all the people to murmur. The high priest
contented himself with addressing to them mild remonstrances. In
vain a prophet announced to Eli that he should be punished for his
weakness, that his family should lose the power which he had not
known how to exercise, and that his two sons should perish. A child,
inspired by God, repeated many times, but without effect, to the unfor-
tunate father the evils hanging over him. This was the young Samuel,
of the tribe of Levi, son of a woman of Ramah, who had been given
in answer to the prayers of his mother, after long-continued barrenness,
and had been brought up in the Tabernacle, where he assisted the high
priest at the sacrificial altar. He it was whom Providence had chosen
to fulfil, at a later date, the mission of liberator.
4. The accomplishment of the oft-repeated prediction of Samuel was

not long delayed. The Philistines, always ambitious, and resolved to
get possession of the whole country, threatened the northern tribes.
reducing the usual calculation as to the length of the period of the

Judges, or Suffetes. The most moderate of these calculations places
three centuries between the death of Joshua and the accession of Eli
to the high priesthood. It is impossible that such an interval could be
filled by only three pontiffs, and the succession of high priests is the
only element of positive and regular chronology which we have for this
period of the history of Israel.
SAMUEL. 127
They assemljlecl an army to attack them at Aphek, in the plain of

Esdraelon, where the Hebrews were defeated, with the loss of 4,000
men. Then, as had not been done since the capture of Jericho, the
Ark of the Covenant was brought into the camp of Israel, borne by
Hophni and Phinehas, to give courage to the warriors in the battle
which was to decide the national independence. But a fresh and yet
more severe trial awaited the Hebrews. They were routed, with the
loss of 30,000 men, on the field of battle ;the two sons of Eli perished
in defending the sacred Ark, which fell into the hands of the Philistines.
Eli, at this last news, seized with despair and stupor, fell from his seat,
broke his neck, and died.
In llie meanwhile the hand of God fell heavily on the Philistines,
who had deposited the Ark as a trophy at Ashdod, in the temple of
their god Dagon. An epidemic ravaged their towns, which they knew
to be the punishment of this profanation and, after some hesitation,
:
they decided on restoring to the Israelites the Ark, which was deposited
first at Bethshemesh, one of the Levitical towns, and afterwards at
Kirjath-jearim. But they did not, for all that, give up the power
which their victory had given them over the conquered people. The
battle fought near Aphek had thrown into their hands the entire terri-
tory of the northern tribes, which till then had been secure from them.
The whole of Israel was subdued, deprived of independence, and
grievously oppressed. But this very oppression prepared the way for
their first deliverance, by making all Israel at last comprehend to what
a condition the abandonment of the worship of the true God and of
the precepts of the law had brought them, and by showing them that
no safety was possible but in ranging themselves resolutely on the side
of Jehovah.
5. The servitude lasted twenty years, which Samuel passed in solitude,
preparing himself for the mission to which God called him, and medi-
tating on the means of accomplishing it. When at last he thought
that the time had come, he left his retreat to put himself at the head of
his countrymen, and encourage them to re-conc]uer their independence.
He first exhorted them to abandon idolatry of every kind, to adore only
the God of Abraham and of Moses, who alone was able to deliver them
from the yoke of the Philistines. Seeing the Hebrews sincerely dis-
posed to submit to his guidance, and to fonn themselves into a compact
body round the symbols of the only God, he convoked a general assembly
at Mizpeh, on the territory of Gad, where they were not directly under
the eyes of the Philistines.
Then the representatives of the different tribes confessed aloud that
Israel had sinned
in straying away from the worship of their God, and
as amark of penitence a fast-day was appointed. Then the assembly
solemnly proclaimed Samuel as Suffete of Israel. The Philistines were
—
enraged at this act of independence on the part of a nation whom they
beheved to be and took the field to chastise the
finally subjugated,
rebels. But God terrified them by a storm, and the Israelites, attacking
them at Mizpeh, overthrew them and put them to flight, killing a very
great number. Profiting immediately by this success, the Hebrews, by
Samuel's advice, themselves took the offensive against the Philistines,
beat them in every encounter, and forced them to restore the towns
which they had taken, and to make a peace veiy advantageous for
Israel, whose independence they were compelled to acknowledge, after
having oppressed them during forty years. The treaty, nevertheless,
left to the Philistines the right of maintaining an armed post at Gibeah,
and another clause provided that the Hebrews of the districts bordering
on the Philistine frontier should be disarmed, so as not to be in a
position to make an attack.
6.While Samuel governed, to use the Bible expression, " the
Philistines came no more into the coasts of Israel, and the hand of the
Lord was against the Philistines." The Canaanitish colonies who
livedamong the tribes of the north, and whom the defeat of the Philis-
tineshad delivered from servitude equally with the Hebrews, lived in
peace among them, and maintained with them friendly and neighbourly
relations. Everything tended then to favour the projects of Samuel,
who could, from that time, work in tranquillity at the restoration of the
essentially spiritual Mosaic law, and the re-establishment of unity, both

in government and religion. He fixed his residence at Ramah, his
native town but made year by year a round of visits to Bethel, to
;
Gilgal near Jericho, and to Mizpeh, where he held assemblies of the

people, and presided over councils on public affairs.
The most important and the most fruitful of the institutions of Samuel,
whose position was very similar to that of Moses, as he was both the
spiritual and temporal chief of the people, though not invested with the
High Priesthood,* was the institution of the " Schools of the Prophets."
This requires some explanation. The word prophet (in Hebrew, Nqbi)
has in the Bible two entirely distinct meanings. It is applied some-
times, and in its most general sense (adopted in our ecclesiastical
language), to those men inspired by God, before whose eyes Divine
grace unfolded the future, that they might exhort the people to penitence,
and announce to the world the coming of the Redeemer, who was to
take away the sins of the world. In this sense, prophet is synonymous
with seer (in Hebrew, Roeh). But more commonly in the Bible,
especially in ancient times, this word members of
is the title of the
religious corporations, who, among the Israelites, played the same
part as the preaching orders in the Roman Catholic Church corpora- —
* Samuel, like Moses, was not a Priest. Tr.
—
THE SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHETS. 129
tions from among whom almost always the Seers came. Such were the
by Samuel.
institutions established
" The experience of what had passed since the death of Joshua did
not permit him to deceive himself as to the force and stability of a
written law with no other guarantee than the consent of the people,
obtained by the force of circumstances, and without having at the
head of the people men who could make the laws respected. He per-
ceived, also, that the law of Moses needed to be developed and modi-
fied with the progress of the nation, notwithstanding that on the other
hand would be very dangerous
it to touch the letter of the law, pro-
tected by its sacred character. Men, therefore, were needed to
interpret this law, to In-eathe life and soul into the dead letter men ;
who could enter into its true sense, and who could participate, so to
speak, in the inspiration of the legislator; men, finally, who should
devote themselves to constant preaching, who should reproach the
people fearlessly for their shortcomings, and constantly set before them
their duty towards God. This was the aim of Samuel in the organisa-
tion of the Schools of the Prophets.

" Far from the din of arms and the warrior's trumpet, the young
prophets sang the praises of Jehovah to the sweet sounds of the lute,
the flute, and harp, or 'kinnor,' in a peaceful retreat; they prepared
their eloquent discourses in meditation on God, and on the true sense of
tire law. They occupied them in several cities,
quarters set apart for
generally those where the 'public assemblies were held, and which
Samuel habitually visited. We find them at Ramah, where they occu-
pied a quarter called Naioth (habitations) (i Sam. xix. 18) there their
;
assembly was presided over by Samuel himself, and also at Bethel,

Jericho, and Gilgal. These Schools of the Prophets were destined to
exercise, as long as the Hebrew people remained independent, a great
influence, and to rank among the powers of the State, representing
the law in its true and peculiarly spiritual aspect, as opposed to the
Priests, who were frequently either too much attached to the rites of
material worship, or permitted themselves to fall into remissness, and,

above all, as opposed to the royal authority, whose encroachments it
was their dutv to withstand." Munk.
K
—
ISO ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
CHAPTER III.
KINGDOM OF ISRAEL—SAUL, DAVID, SOLOMON.

—
Chief Attthoritics : The Bible, /. and II. Books ofSarituci, I. Book of
—
Kings, I. and II. Books of Chronicles. ^Tosephus, Antiqicities, Books
, VII. and VIII.
The modern writers quoted at the commencement of Chapter I.
Section I. Establishment of Royalty — Saul.

(1097— 1058, B.C.)
r. Samuel having become old, and feeling himself too feeble to
support alone the entire weight of the administration, wished to share

his functions as supreme magistrate with his two sons, Joel and Abiah,
whom he installed as Suffetes at Beersheba, at the southern extremity ot
Palestine. But walk in the ways of their father, and
his sons did not
serious complaintswere made against their administration, for they
allowed themselves to be guided by their persorfal interest and their
cupidity, instead of exhibiting the integrity of Samuel, and nothing
was found with them but corruption and injustice. The Elders of
Israel, fearful for the future, met, and came to Samuel at Ramah, to
ask him to give them a king.
In vain the Lord expressed, by the mouth of His prophet, the anger
which He felt at His people rejecting a constitution of which God
himself was the author, a constitution which recognised God alone as
the Sovereign of Israel. In vain He represented to the Hebrews, by
Samuel, the abasement to which oriental nations are reduced under the
dominion of an absolute master, who recognises neither personal liberty
nor the rights of property. " He will take," said He, " your sons, and
appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen ; and
some shall ran before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains
over thousands, and captains over fifties ; and will set them to ear his
ground, and to reap his han'est, and to make his instruments of war
and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be
confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take
your fields, and your vineyards, and' your oliveyards, even the best of
them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth
of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his and to his
officers,
servants. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants,
DEFEAT OF THE AMMONITES. 131
ami yourjôodliest young men, and your and put them to his
asses,
worlc. He will take and ye shall be his
the tenth of your sheep :
servants "(I Sam. viii. n—

17). The people would hear nothing. They
required a king, like other nations, to rule them and lead them to war.
God then chastised them, as He often does in His providence, by grant-
ing thfeir imprudent wish. Saul, son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin,
still quite a young man, and celebrated for his beauty, courage, and
strength, was pointed out by Him, anointed by Samuel, and acknow-

ledged by part of the Hebrews.
2. There had been, however, a numerous opposition to the establish-
ment of royalty, so that it was considered prudent to defer for some

time the solemn installation of Saul. But soon after this, Nahash,
king of the Ammonites, threatened the city of Jabesh Gilead. When
the news came to Saul, who still lived in his house at Gibeah, and was
at that time driving a pair of oxen at their work, he killed those
animals, cut them in pieces, and sent messengers to all Israel to say to
the people, " Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel,
so shall it be done unto his oxen." The whole people followed him.
300,000 Israelites passed in review 30,000 men were furnished by the
;
tribe of Judah, for, in very short campaigns, a Icvec en masse was quite
practicable. The enemy, attacked at break of day, was cut to pieces
and entirely destroyed.
Israel, carried away by enthusiasm, would have put to death those
who at first refused to recognise Saul. But he, with a moderation
which did not always distinguish him, would not consent to stain his
victory with such excesses. " There shall not a man," said he, " be put
to death this day for to-day the Lord hath wrought salvation in Israel."
:
His reign was then solemnly inaugurated at Gilgal by Samuel and the
people.
3. In resigning the power with which he had been hitherto invested,
Samuel by no means renounced all political influence he intended, on
;
the contrary, to watch over the new sovereign, and to withdraw his pro-
tection the moment the king ceased to be a faithful vassal to Jehovah
and to his law. According to the ideas of Samuel, royalty was but a
permanent and hereditary chieftainship, an especially military authority ;
and all institutions were, in spite of this change, to remain as they had
been before. For a time the new chief of the government continued sub-
missive to the influence of the sanctuary, and Samuel continued to
direct him in his administration. The prophet himselfhad dictated the
new constitution, the conditions of which were reduced to writing, and
deposited in the Tabernacle. In conformity with the spirit of the law,
itwas only permitted to take up arms in the name of the Lord, whose
Ark of the Covenant was in the midst of the camp. The king himself
would be no more than a captain always under arms, without court or
—
fixed residence —always at the orders of Jeliovali, wliose mouthpiece
Samuel remained.
But Saul did not very long remain submissive to Samuel's orders he ;
wished to be free from a tutelage which he began to feel irlcsome, and,

above all, desired to usurp the functions of the priesthood which were
united to the royal jjower in all the monarchies surrounding him in the
neighbouring Pagan nations. After his solemn installation, Saul
had sent the Israelites to their homes, keeping under arms only 3,000
men of the pennanent militia, of whom he had 2,000 with himself, the
other 1,000 being in the southeni provinces, with his son Jonathan.
The latter being very brave, and animated with the most ardent and
patriotic zeal, found the presence of the military post of the Philistines
at Gibeah, in the land of Benjamin, almost insupportable. One day
he surprised and took it.
The Philistines, torevenge this insult, put an immense army into the
field. Saul called the people to Gilgal for a levy which would enable
him Samuel was to join him there to saciifice
to repulse this invasion.
to the Lord before commencing the campaign. After waiting seven days,
as he had not yet come, Saul, who saw that the people began to get im-
patient, thought the moment favourable for consummating his contem-
plated usurpation of the sacerdotal power. He himself offered sacrifice,
instead of waiting with confidence for the help of the Lord, who had
so offen saved Israel. Soon Samuel arrived. Indignant at the
after
act of the king, all the significance of which he saw, for it aimed at
establishing the monarchy of Israel on the same basis as heathen
kingdoms, and placing the spiritual at the mercy of the caprice of the
political chief, by giving the latter power in the affairs of the sanctuary,
the prophet reproached_ Saul severely for his contempt of the precepts of
the law.* Speaking in the name of the Lord, he announced to him that
Divine help was withdrawn from him, that his dynasty should not last,
and another royal house should be substituted for his. Saul nevertheless
marched against his enemies, encamped at Michmash but he had not ;
taken time to bring with him the northern tribes, and on his arrival
among those of the south he found himself in a position of great em-
barrassment.
By an arrangement subsisting together with Samuel's treaty, the
Philistineshad for a long time forbidden among these tribes the trades
of armourer and smith, so that the people were disarmed, or at least had
only agricultural implements to fight with, and even for the repair of
these they had to resort to the Philistines. So completely dispirited were
* See Numb. xvi. 40, bearing in mind that Samuel himself was only
a Levite, not of the seed of Aaron. Tr.
ATTACK ON THE AMALEKITES. 133
they, that they furnished only 600 men to the king for his bold march.
Nevertheless, Jonathan, accompanied only by his armour-bearer, scaled
a post of the Philistines between Michmash and Gibeah. Panic-struck
at this exploit, they, as once did the Midianites, turned their arms
against each other. The Hebrews, great numbers of whom had been
compelled by force to serve with the enemy, abandoned them to rejoin
their countrymen, and those who were concealed in the mountains of
Ephraim sallied out from their retreats. Saul soon found himself at the
head of 10,000 men, and the enemy was pursued as far as Beth-aven.
4. The Philistines having re-entered their own country, Saul, during
the following years, continued his part as a military chieftain, repulsing
with equal success the aggressions of other neighbouring nations, sucli
as the Ammonites, Moabites, Idumeans, and the Syrians of Zobah.

The tribes of the east of Jordan, also, in his reign conquered the Ha-
gareens, a tribe of nomadic Arabs, and spread themselves through the
desert towards the Euphrates. Saul still expected long and hard contests
with the Philistines, and tried to surround himself with all the men
among Israel who were brave and skilled in war he took measures to ;
have experienced troops and armies easily assembled in case of necessity,

and he gave the general command of his military forces to Abner,
son of Ner, his own cousin-german. He is the only great dignitary
whom we find about Saul. In general he had hitherto preserved his
simplicity of manners, he had no court, and his household comprised
only members of his own family.
One day, Samuel, now very near his end, came to Saul, and, remind-
ing the king that he owed his crown to him, ordered him in the name
of Jehovah to take up arms against the Amalekites, the earliest and
most inveterate of the enemies of the Hebrews, and to wage against
them a war of extermination. Saul obeyed, and his expedition was
crowned with success but in place of destroying all, as the prophet
;
had ordered him, he carried off as booty the best of the cattle and
other valuables. Agag, king of Amalek, was made prisoner but the ;
Amalekites were not entirely destroyed, as Moses himself had com-

manded, and there still might be some fear of fresh attacks from them ;
and the more so that Saul, tempted by the prospect of getting money,
had entered into negotiations as to the ransom of Agag. Indignant at
this disobedience to the commands of God, and at the cupidity which
endanger the future of the people and their
for a bribe could seriously
security, Samuel went meet Saul at Gilgal, and laid a curse on him
to
in the name of the Lord, telling him that God rejected him from that
time, and announcing prophetically an evil end for him and for his race.
At the same time, to render impossiljle the scheme for setting free the
king of the Amalekites on ransom, Samuel with his own hand killed
Agag.
5. I'^roni tliis moment tlie rupture was final and comi)Icte between
Saul on one side, and Samuel, backed by the party who were
all
sincerely attached to the law, on the other. The Divine protection

abantloned the king of Israel. By God's command Samuel went to
Bethlehem, and secretly anointed as heir to the throne, to the exclusion
of the son of Saul, the youngest of the sons of Jesse, David, who
had already proved his courage by defending his flock against lions and
bears. This newly chosen one of God belonged to the tribe of Judah,
and was directly descended from Nahshon, who had been the chief of
the tribe in the desert. His grandmother was that Ruth whose touch-
ing story is related in the Bible, in the Book that bears her name.
From the moment of the prophet's curse, Saul became subject to fits
of dark melancholy, from which he recovered only to give himself up

to the committal of acts of cruelty. David alone, whom the secret
influence of Samuel had introduced into the palace, could, by the
melody which he drew from his harp, drive away his dark hallucinations.
Thus the young shepherd, whose secret election was not yet known,
soon became necessary to the king, who loaded him with favours and
made him his armour-bearer.
6. A circumstance now occurred to bring out his valour. The war with
the Philistines had been re-kindled. While the two armies were face to
face, a warrior of gigantic stature, named Goliath, a native of the town
of Gath, and sprung from the old race of the Anakim, carne out each
day from the camp of the Philistines to defy Israel. No one was found
who dared to confront this redoubtable warrior. David, armed only
with his sling, had the courage to measure himself with him the first ;
stone slung killed the giant, and David, throwing himself on him, cut
off his head. The Philistines, terrified at the death of their champion,
fled away precipitately, and the Israelites pursued them as far as the
gates of Ekron and Gath, making a great slaughter among their
troops.
After this triumph, and some other exploits not less glorious against
the same enemies, Saul gave David the hand of his daughter, and
Jonathan conceived for him an affection to which he was always true.
But jealousy entered the soul of the king when he heard the Israelites
celebrate the victories of David by singing, " Saul has slain his thousands,
and David his ten thousands." From that day he hated him deeply,
and sought out every means to destroy him. Saved on many occasions
by Michal his wife, by Jonathan, and by the high priest Ahimelech,
David, warned by Jonathan, was obliged to flee to the king of Gath,
when he feigned madness to escape the vengeance of the Philistines.
But he did not long remain there ; having assembled a band of some
hundreds of desperadoes, and lived some time in the land of Moab,
he returned to the land of Judah, without, however, stirring up civil
—
DAVID'S WANDERING LIFE. 135
war. Tlie forest of Hareth was his place of refuge. Samuel died at
Ramah, mourned by ail Israel, and at a very great age.
From that time Saul put no restraint on the sanguinary passions
which took possession of him. He began to persecute without inter-
mission and without pity, as friends and partisans of David, the priests,
the Levites, the scliools of the prophets — in a word, all that represented
power of the law.
the authority of religion, and the
He may almost be said in his folly to have declared war against
Jehovah. Having arrested the high priest Ahimelech and the eighty-
five priests who lived with him in the city of Nob, he caused them
to be slain before his own eyes and afterwards, as if maddened with

;
slaughter, he put to the sword the whole population of Nob, men,

women and children. One only of the sons of Ahimelech, named
Abiathar, the heir to the high priesthood, escaped from the massacre,
and took refuge with David.
Wandering from place to place to save his life, more than once be-
trayed in his misfortunes, betrayed too by the men of Keilah, whom he
had saved by help of his men \\hen attacked by the enemy, the son of
Jesse nevertheless spared the life of the king which twice was in his
power — once in the desert of Ziph, and once again near Engadi. In
the course, however, of this wandering he found time to marry two
life
new wives, the widow of the rich Nabal, Abigail, who had afforded
him most generous assistance, and Ahinoam of Jezreel ;* whilst Saul,
in contempt of both law and morality, gave his first wife, Michal, to
another husband. At last he was obliged again to retire to Gath, whose
king, Achish, received him favourably, and gave him the city of Ziklag.
There David passed many years, making many incursions against the
Amalekites, and thus, even in his exile, serving the cause of Israel.
7. After some time, the war recommenced between Saul and the
Philistines. Achish, king of Gath, opened the campaign, and com-

pelled David, whom he had in his power, to march with him. But
happily the mistrust of the Philistme chiefs, by compelling Achish to
dismiss from his camp the Israelitish hero, relieved him from the
cruel alternative of either betraying his benefactor, or fighting against
his counti'y. The had advanced to Shunem, in Northern
Philistines
Palestine. Saul, at the head of his army, had taken up a position on
the heights of Gilboa, within view of his enemies there was fought a
;
battle in which the Israelites w-ere cut to pieces, and the forebodings of
Samuel were fulfilled. Saul having lost Jonathan and two other of his
sons, fell on his sword, so that he might not die by the hand of the
* This, of course, was the Jezreel in the south of Judah (mentioned

Josh. XV. 56), not the more famous city of the same name the plain of m
Esdraelou. Tr.
——

Philistines. The enemy cut off his head and deposited his arms as
trophies at Ascalon, in the temple of the goddess Ashtaroth, the Asiatic
Venus. He had reigned forty years.
Section II. Daa'id (1058 — 1019).

. I. David,at the news of the death of Saul, broke out into the most
lively and sincere expressions of grief, the persecutions which he had
suffered from that king had not caused him to forget the benefits
he had at first received from him. Above all he lamented his friend
Jonathan, and poured out his grief in the beautiful elegy preserved in
the Second Book of Samuel :
The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places :
How are the mighty fallen !
Tell it not in Gath,

Publish it not in the streets of Ask el on ;
Lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice,
Lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.
Ye mountains of Gilboa let there be no dew,
Neither let there be rain upon you, nor fields of offerings :
For there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away.

The shield of Saul, as though he had not been anointed with oil.
From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty.
The bow of Jonathan turned not back,
The sword of Saul returneth not empty.
Saul and Jonathan
Were lovely and pleasant in their lives,
And death they were not divided
in their ;
They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.
Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul,
Who clothed you in scarlet, with other delights.
Who put ornaments of gold on your apparel.
How are the mighty fallen in the midst of battle !
Jonathan, thou art slain on thine high places.

1 am distressed for thee, my brother
Jonathan Very pleasant hast thou been to me
! :
Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.

How are the mighty fallen.
And the weapons of war perished !
But, in spite of his regrets, he hastened to profit by an event which

put him in a position to claim the rights resulting from the anointing
with holy oil which he had received from Samuel. He returned to his
country, and was proclaimed king at Hebron by his own tribe of
Judah but the other tribes recognised Ishbosheth, son of Saul, whom
;
Abner had hastened to proclaim at Mahanaim. A very sanguinary civil

war followed, lasting seven years, and in which David and his cap-
JERUSALEM THE CAPITAL. 137
tains found Abner a foiTnidable antagonist. Irritated, however, by the

conduct of Ishboshctli towards him, Saul's old general resolved to make
advances to David, and to gain favour, brought with him to Hebron
David's wife, Michal. Joab, the first of the lieutenants of David, fear-
ing to find in Abner a rival in the king's favour, assassinated him at
the gate of the city, and David, though exasperated by this crime, never--
theless did not dare to ]Hmish this man who was one of the firmest
supporters of his crown.
A short time after, Ishboshethwas assassinated by two traitors, who
came with his head to David, hoping for a reward.
David indignantly
refused all complicity with the crime, and had them executed on the
spot. Ishbosheth, however, left only one son, lame and incapable of
reigning, named Mephibosheth his death i-e-established the unity of
;
the Hebrew nation, for all the tribes who had supported him now
hastened to recognise David.
The Philistines seem to have shown themselves be at first inclined to
favourable to David during the time of the Themselves em-
civil war.
barrassed by wars against the Syrians, Phoenicians, and other peoples,
they had seen with pleasure divisions lireak out among the Hebrews,
and perhaps believed that David, in remembrance of his exile, and the
hospitality of Achish, intended to make his own people subordinate to
them. But was no longer the same when they saw him unanimously
it
received by the Hebrews. They at once attacked him, and twice

showed themselves in the valley of Rephaim near Jerusalem, but on
both occasions they were routed.
2. The reign of David was the most glorious epoch in the history
of the Israelites. The interior administration of the monarchy was

organised, and the supremacy of the tribe of Judah over the other tribes
was established. Beyond the limits of Palestine its preponderance
was felt fi-om the shores of the Mediterranean to the banks of the
Euphrates. To establish definitively the national unity, and to be able to
extend its limits, it was above all things necessary to obviate all risk of
danger in the heart of the country, and to crush the few Canaanitish
colonies which still lived isolated among the tribes. Thus, when David,
at the age of thirty-seven, was left without a competitor for the throne,
he commenced his actual reign. From the Jebusites, who were the most
warlike of those colonies, he took their citadel Jebus, in the territory of
the tribe of Benjamin, and changed its name to Jerusalem. On the hill
of Sion was built " the City of David," and this he made the seat of his
power, which had hitherto been at Hebron.
The great number of heroes who surrounded David at the beginning
of his reign,and who for the most part had accompanied him in his
wanderings, augured well for the success of his warlike enterprises.
History has preserved us the names of thirty of these famous men,
some of whom had performed prodigies of valour. The most celebrated
was Joab, a man of ferocious character but of proved courage, and
endowed with those quahties wliich make a leader. The court of
David was also remarkable from its commencement for a certain amount
of luxury in strong contrast with the simplicity of Saul's. David, when
he became master of Jerusalem, liuilt there a magnificent palace, for
which Hiram, king of Tyre, with whom he had contracted an intimate
alliance, sent him cedar-wood from Lebanon, as well as the necessary
workmen and artificers. With regard to his domestic relations, he
imitated the customs of other Oriental sovereigns. At Hebron, the
number of his legitimate wives, without counting Michal, long sepa-
rated from him, amounted to six, one of whom was the daughter of
Talmai, king of Geshur, in Syria. Each of them had borne him a son.
Michal alone had never any children.
Established at Jerusalem, David increased the number of his wives,
and established a harem. This was the first infraction of the law
of Moses (Deut. xvii. 17), but we shall see that in later times his love
for women led the king to commit crimes much more serious. Apart
from this weakness, against which the Mosaic law had not raised
barriers sufficiently strong, David showed himself disposed to be a faith-
ful vassal of Jehovah, in the sense in which Samuel, an interpreter of
the trae spirit of the law, had understood the position of royalty. Two
prophets, disciples of Samuel, were his friends and intimate councillors ;
one was Gad, the other Nathan. These two men, inspired by God,
were distinguished by their noble character, and by the frankness with
which they reproached the king on every occasion with the faults of
his private or public life, and the king always heard them with
deference.
3- The reign of David was essentially a warlike one. New successes
against the Philistines put an end to the tribute which some districts
of the southern tribes were still Gath even, and the towns of
paying.
its territory were conquered and re-united to the Israelitish kingdom.
It was then that David removed the Ark of the Covenant from the
house of Abinadab at Kirjath-jearim, where it had been deposited
ever since the disasters of the time of Eli, and brought it to Jeru-
salem (after a short stay in the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite),
in solemn procession, depositing it in the Tabernacle which was set
up in the Acropolis of Sion. He intended there to build a magnificent
Temple, worthy of Jehovah, but Nathan dissuaded him, revealing to
him that the duty of constructing the Temple was reserved by Provi-
dence for his successor, and that he, David, should devote himself
entirely to warlike affairs, so as to establish firmly the power of Israel.
He then turned his anns successively against the neighbouring nations.
The Moabites were crushed, and became tributaries. The Syrians of
—
EXTENT OF DAVID'S EMPIRE. 139
Zobah. under their king Hadadezer, were in their turn conquered ; those
of Damascus who wished to assist them, were reduced to pay tribute,
and the king of Ilamath, named Toi, the enemy of the prince of Zobah,
sent his own son to congratulate David on his victory. At the other
extremity of the kingdom the power of the Amalekites and IduniKans
was totally broken.
x\n insult offered to David's ambassadors by Hanun, king of the
Ammonites, led to a serious war. Hanun obtained mercenaries from
Syria to reinforce his army. Joab and Abishai his brother, David's
generals, gave them Joab, opposed to the Syrians, gained the
battle.
first success, and the Ammonites, seeing their allies routed, took to
flightinto their town. But this defeat provoked a great coalition,
embracing all the people between the Jordan and the Euphrates. David,
however, fearlessly marched against them at the head of his army ;
he vanquished all his enemies, and made himself master of the small
Aram£ean kingdoms of Damascus, Zobah, and Hamath, and subjugated
the Eastern Idumâns, who met their final defeat in the Valley of
Salt. By these victories, he extended his dominions as far as the
Euphrates. At the same time, towards the south, he took from the
Eastern Idumteans the ports of Eziongeber and Elath (the Êlana of the
classical geographies,) at the extremity of the Elanitic Gulf, establishing
a communication, by the Red Sea, with the remotest countries of Asia
and Africa. Having obtained these results, David again attacked the
Ammonites Rabbath, their capital, was besieged, and fell after a long
;
defence. This success was chiefly due to Joab but it seems from his
;
character and antecedents, that we ought also to attribute to him the

atrocious executions which followed. Not only in the capital which
was taken by assault, but in all the Ammonite cities, the conqueror,
to exterminate the upper and warlike classes of the people, is said to
have " put them under saws and under harrows of iron, and under axes
of iron, and made them to pass through the brick-kiln."
4. In the midst of so many labours and conquests, David, led astray
by his passions, fell suddenly into a double crime. He was in his
palace during the siege of Rabbath-Ammon, when one day he saw
Bathsheba, wife of Uriah the Hittite, one of his most valiant and
devoted captains, who was He seduced and carried
then at the siege.
her and then Joab, by his orders, treacherously caused the death of
off,
Uriah in an encounter with the Ammonite.s. David then publicly

married Bathsheba. For this odious conduct, for this first crime
aggravated by a second, he was severely reproached by the prophet
Nathan. David expressed a sincere and deep repentance, to which
many of his Psalms bear testimony. But God did not permit so cruel
an abuse of power to pass unpunished. David, who had so basely
violated sacred family rights, saw himself punished by his own children,
—
I40 ' ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
Bathsheha's first son died. After tlie birth of another son, named Solc-
mon, the whole royal family was troubled by the disorders and crimes
of its members. Amnon, eldest son of David, did violence to his sister
Tamar, and was soon afterwards assassinated by her brother Absalom.
Absalom himself revolted against his father, induced by the advice of
Ahitophel, one of David's chief councillors, and led ten of the tribes
after him into rebellion. David was compelled to leave Jerusalem on
foot in the middle of the night and in this precipitate flight had to
;
submit also to the insults of Shimei, a relative of Saul, who cast stones
at him, and overwhelmed him with curses. Nevertheless, all who
remained faithful to David gathered around him, and the king was able
with 20,000 men to offer battle to the rebels in the Forest Ephraim.*
Absalom was defeated and killed by Joab, though David had expressly
directed that the life of his guilty son should be spared.
5. But internal peace was not yet completely secured by this event.
The jealousy of the tribes of Israel against the men of Judah, whom
they accused of wishing to usurp the good gi-aces of the king, and the
animosity of the latter, brought about anew revolt. Sheba, of the tribe
of Benjamin, raised an insurrection among
but Joabthe Israelites ;
marched against him and besieged him in Abel, whose inhabitants

threw him the head of the rebel. The civil war was then stifled, and,
except some campaigns against the Philistines, the remainder of the
reign of David was peaceable. The population increased very con-
siderably but it
; appears that peace had enervated and corrupted it, for
the Lord judged his people deserving of chastisement, and so per-
mitted David to draw down on himself and his subjects a teiTible
scourge, t Pride, or perhaps the wish to increase his treasure by im-
posing new taxes and to ensure the means of recruiting a numerous per-
manent army, induced the king to order a general census. 1,100,000
adult men, without counting women and were found in Israel,
children,
470,000 in Judah, and still Levi and Benjamin were not numbered. A
terrible pestilence then came on the land of Israel but it had scarcely ;
lasted three days when God, pitying the misery of his people and the
grief of their king, who humbled himself before Him, stayed the
avenging angel.
6. Another attempt at revolt was made about this time by Adonijah,
one of the king's sons. But David, who intended his crovm to pass to
* Evidently no part of Mount Ephraim, properly so called, but in

"
the land of O'ilead beyond Jordan. The name "Wood of Ephraim
is conjectured by Dean Stanley to have been derived from the slaughter
of the Ephraimites by Jephthah, in that neighbourhood (Judges xii. 6).
—Tr.
t Compare Ex. xxx. 12, scq. It does not seem that David paid, or
intended to pay, this ransom for his people. Tr.
CHARACTERISTICS OF DAVID'S EMPIRE. 141
Solomon, caused the latter to be anointed and recognised by the people.

Adonijah, abandoned by his partisans, submitted, and obtained pardon.
But the aged king did not long survive this new trial. He died at the
age of seventy years, thirty-three years after having established the seat
of his power at Jerusalem. On his death-bed he gave wise counsels to
his son Solomon, and left him the plans by which to build the Temple
of the true God.
7. David had not only founded the political and material power of
the Hebrew state, he had also firmly established its institutions.
" Saul," says the learned Heeren, "had only been the general of an army,
carrying out the orders of Jehovah as transmitted by Samuel, without a
court, without a fixed residence. The nation was as yet only an agri-
cultural and pastoral race, without riches, without luxury, but which be-
came by insensible degrees a warlike people. Under David, were effected
a total reform of the nation and change of the motle of government; the
establishment of a fixed residence at Jerusalem, where was also the seat
of the sanctuary; a rigorous observance of the worship of Jehovah as
the exclusively national religion; a considerable increase to the state by
conquest; a gradual development of despotism and of a palace govern-
ment, whose political results manifested themselves towards the end of
his reign, by the revolt of his sons." And in fact from the time when
the government of David was completely constituted, an organised
army; chiefs, who took their turn of service one month in each year,
with 24,000 native soldiers; a foreign body-guard for the sovereign com-
posed of Cretan and Philistine archers governors of the tribes; a
;
financial system, organised in all the towns and villages; ministers

charged with the supervision of each branch of agriculture, both for
the collection of taxes and the care of the i-oyal domains councillors ;
of state; a general —
commanding the troops; all these carry us far away
from the time when .Saul, already proclaimed king by one part of Israel,
himself drove his own oxen to the field.
But David was not only the author of a political organisation and a
successful general, he was also —and it is his greatest glory — a prophet-
king. He saw and described, with incomparable
far off into the future,
magnificence of style, the splendours of that New Jerusalem one day

to rise on the ruins of that which he was Iniilding. He \\ as the author
of the greater part of those Psalms in which repentance finds its most
touching, and most sorrowful accents, prayer its most perfect and sub-
—
lime form beautiful sacred poems which furnish consolation for all ages,
and support for every pious mind.
— "
Section III. Solomon (1019 — 978).

1. Although nominated by and anointed before the death of his
father, Solomon did not enter on full possession of the throne without
sqme difficulty. Adonijah put forth new pretensions, and Solomon, to
free himself from this dangerous competitor, was compelled to put him
to death. Joab was put to death as his accomplice, even though he had
taken refuge at the altar, and Solomon also for the same reason deposed
the high priest Abiathar. The reign of Solomon was, on the whole,
peaceful. He preserved the regular habits of administration and the
governmental system of his father, as we may see by a passage in the
First Book of Kings (iv. I —
8), which mentions the king's scribes, the
secretary of state, the commander-in-chief of the anny or minister of

war, the president of the council of state, the chief of the chamber-
lains, the king's " friend " (a name which we shall see further on was
used in Asia and Egypt as a title or an office at court), the steward of
the royal household, the minister of the public revenue, and finally
twelve officers, who served in regular turn each for one month, to supply
provisions for the king and his household.
Hardly was he in possession of royalty, when Solomon strengthened
himself by foreign alliances with Tyre and with Egypt. Moreover,
desirous of inaugurating his reign rather by religious acts than by war,
he went to (jibeon, and there offered 1,000 burnt offerings to the Lord.
Peaceably installed master of the countries conquered by his father, he
saw his government recognised from the Eluphrates to the Mediterranean,
and to the river of Egypt. An unwarlike king, he lived in peace with
the neighljuuring nations; and Scripture has expressed the profound
peace which Israel enjoyed in his reign, by the words " Judah and
Israel dwelt safely, every man under his own vine and under his own
fig-tree, from Dan to Beersheba (that is from the north to the south of
the kingdom) all the days of Solomon.

2. Favoured by this peace, Solomon resolved to put into execution the
great project of his father, and to build the temple of Jehovah at

Jerusalem. Hiram, king of Tyre, the firm ally of Solomon, as he had
been of David, furnished him, in exchange for oil and grain, abundant
in the land of Israel, with the requisite timber cut in the cedar forests
of Lebanon, of which there remain now only a few trees many
centuries old. Solomon brought Tyre and from Gebal or
also from
Byblos workmen skilled in the art of stone cutting and working in
wood, work in which the Israelites were then but little practised, but
for which the Phoenicians were famous. There was also a Tyrian, born
of a Jewish mother, and named like his king, Hiram, whom Solomon
THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON. 143
brought to Jerusalem to execute the works of bronze, iron, tjold,

silver, and marble, for the service of the Temple, as well as to direct
the dyeing of the precious stuffs, purple, and blue and crimson (2 Chron.
ii. 14). Seven years and a half were occupied in the building of this
famous edifice, which was commenced in the fourth year of the reign
of Solomon, and on which the king lavished every sort of oriental
gorgeousness. In the eighth year the dedication was held in the
midst of an immense concourse of people; the Ark of the Covenant
was then placed in the Holy of Holies, the inaccessible place, symbol —
of the impenetrable majesty of God. 22,000 oxen and 120,000
sheep served for a feast to the entire nation convoked to this grand
solemnity. In conformity with the strict spirit of the Mosaic law, it
was forbidden to sacrifice elsewhere " the unity
; of God," says Bossuet,
"was symbolised in the unity of His temple."
The description of the Temple, of its furniture and of its splendours,
fills many chapters of the Book of Kings. From this description M.
de Saulcy and the Count de Vogiic have lately attempted, in very
interesting works, a complete and full description of it. Its foundations,
constructed of gigantic stones, still exist over nearly the whole area of its
site on Mount Moriah. The Temple has contributed
building of the
to the celebrity of the Solomon not less than the marvellous
name of
wisdom God gave him, and which was proved by all his actions,
and all his words, especially in his administration of justice, a wisdom
which the Queen of Sheba, in Southern Arabia, came from a far
country to test and admire, and which the Arabs, in their fertile imagi-
nation, have transformed into a magic power that gave to Solomon
the command of all the Genies.
3. Solomon married an Egyptian princess whom he permitted to
exercise her own religious worship in a small chapel expressly built in
the style of the religious edifices on the banks of the Nile, a chapel
which a happy accident has preserved intact down to our own days in
the village of Siloam, near the gates of Jerusalem. He built for himself
and for her, in the Acropolis of Sion, a very magnificent palace, which
the Bible describes in much detail. He enclosed Jerusalem with strong
walls. He built or enlarged Megiddo, Gezer, and Baalath ; and lastly,
he founded in the desert which extends from Anti-Lebanon to the

Euphrates, the great city of Tadmor, afterwards Palmyra, intended as
a halting-place for the caravans on the road between Damascus and
Babylon.
More powerful than his father, by the mere
Solomon was aljle,
renown of his name, to keep in submission those who

remained in still
the interior of the country of the Canaanitish colonics once conquered

by Joshua— the Amorite.s, Hittites, Perrizitesand Hivites. He employed
them, after the manner of the Egyptians, in the great works with which
he enriched his kingdom, whilst he iêserved the Israelites for the army
and the administration.
4. But the principal enterprise of the reign of Solomon was that
which opened to the Hebrews the navigation and commerce of the
Southern Sea. Commerce with India dates back to the most remote
antiquity. From the very earliest ages the refined civilisation of Egypt
and Syria sought with avidity the spices, the aromatics, the metals, the
—
precious and scented woods, the gems, the ivory in a word, a.11 the
valuable merchandise which the rich soil of India supplies in abundance.
But if commerce with India thus dates back to almost the earliest
epochs of Egyptian civilisation, never before the time of Solomon had
this commerce taken a direct route. The awkward and ill- constructed
Indian shijis availed themselves of the monsoon to cross the ocean, and
bring the riches of their country to the ports of Yemen or Arabia Felix.
Thence the merchandise of India was conveyed by caravans across Arabia
to Babylon, or carried by sea to Egypt. The Egyptian vessels, which
for a very long time alone ploughed the Red Sea, and had there uncon-
tested dominion, shipped at the ports of Yemen and carried home these
commodities.
Solomon was the first to conceive the happy idea of relieving this
rich and important commerce from the shackles of a forced depot in
vSouthern Arabia, by making his ships double the southern point of the
Arabian Peninsula, and steer straight to the Indian ports. He took ad-
vantage of the excellent harbours which his father's conquest of Idumsea
had given him on the Red Sea, and of that weakening of the Egyptian
power, hitherto irresistibly preponderant, which had been going on for
many generations, and now permitted the creation of a new naval
power on that sea. But Solomon was not able alone to carry out the
plan which he had conceived ; the Hebrews had no experience in mari-
time affaire, nor had they those instincts which make seamen.* He
engaged then with his ally Hiram, king of Tyre, to undertake at their
common expense voyages to India. A fleet was built with timljer from
Judaea at Elath and Eziongeber it was manned by Phoenician sailors,
;
the most skilful, hardy and famous of all ancient navigators. A first
* Dean Stanley (5'/;?^/ ajid Palestine, p. 261) observes, "To have

planted the centres of national and religious life on the sea-shore was a
thought which never seems to have entered even into the imperial mind
of Solomon.
Far away at Eziongeber, on the Gulf of Akaba, was the chief
emporium of his trade. Even Jaffa only received the rafts which
floated down the coast from Tyre. To describe the capital as a place
"where shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass
by " (Is. xxxiii. 21) is not, as according to Western notions it would be,
an expression of weakness and danger, but of prosperity and security."
—
SOLOMON'S IDOLATRY. 145
expedition was conducted to Ophir, a country which the historian of

ancient India, M. Lassen,* has conclusively demonstrated to be the
country of Abhira, near the present province of Guzerat.t It was a
great success, and many treasures were brought back, which the two
kings divided.
From this time, as long as Solomon lived, the fleet sailed every three
years for same country, and returned thence, laden with spices,
the
aromatics, gold, silver and ivory. In return for the share he had
received of these Indian expeditions, Hiram made Solomon his partner
in the long voyages which the Tyrian fleets regularly made every year
as far as the southern coast of Spain, then called Tarshish (a name
applied in earlier times to Italy), in search of tin, lead, cinnabar, and
many other sorts of valuable merchandise. So the Bible says, "The
king made silver to be in Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to
be as sycamore trees that are in the vale for abundance" (i Kings
X. 27).
5. brilliant prosperity, that power, and those incalculable

But that
riches,depraved the heart of the king, who allowed himself to be seduced
by the love of pleasure, and forgot the God of his fathers. Led away
by the love of women, he opened his harem, already scandalously full,
to a crowd of strange women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites,
Zidonians, and Hittites. "Of the nations," says the Bible, " concern-
ing which the Lord said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall notgo
in unto them, nor they to you. for surely they will turn away your
heart after their gods " (i Kings xi. 2 ; Ex. xxxiv. 16 ; Deut. vii. 3, 4).
In fact, we see that Solomon, giving way to the solicitations of his
strange wives and concubines, so far forgot the majesty of the Creator
as to serve Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, Moloch, " the
abomination of the Ammonites," and to build a temple to Chemosh
" the abomination of the Moabites." Alliance with neighbouring
nations, and toleration of the worship of strange gods, were things
utterly at variance with the calling of Israel and the law of Moses.
The conduct Solomon began very soon to cause great irritation to
of
Advice and threalenings were not wanting,
a large part of the people.
but he turned a deaf ear to them all. When his fall was complete,
when he had publicly shown himself unfaithful to the Divine precepts,
the punishment of God began to fall on the head of this king, till then
so fortunate and before the tomb
;
closed on him he saw that the
threats he had despised were already on their way to accomplishment.
* Indische Alterthumskimde, vol. ii p. 5S4 592!

, —
favour of
t Sir E. Tennent, in his work on Ceylon, argues in
Ophir having been in that island. Sir H. Rawlinson seems to
accept the fact as proved (see Raw. Her. i. 243, note). Tk.
His empire did not stand untouched, and he lived to see the first sigiis
of its dismemberment. The IduniKan Hadad, assisted by the king of
Egypt, took from him some of the provinces round the Red Sea. The
Syrian Resin made himself independent at Damascus, and then assumed
the crown. Jeroboam, in exciting the tribes of Israel to revolt, pre-
pared the way for the division of the Hebrew people, and commenced
its "ruin. This last was the son of Nebat, of the tribe of Ephraim.
His had attracted the attention of Solomon, who had
intelligence
given him an important administrative appointment. But the king,
having learned by the voice of the prophet Ahijah that his protegee
should come to reign over ten of the tribes, and receiving from
another quarter the news that he was preparing an insurrection in
the North, would have put him to death. Jeroboam fled to Sheshonk,
king of Egypt (called Shishak in the Bible), and there lived till the
death of Solomon, which took place after a reign of forty years, that is
about the year 978 B.C.
The reign of Solomon is of the highest importance in the history of
the Hebrews, and serves as 'the pivot of its whole chronology. The
first preciseand positive date which is met with in all that history' is,
in fact, that of the solemn dedication of the Temple. It is only after
that event that we can possibly fix with certainty, by means of the facts
furnished by the Books of Samuel and of Kings, the other dates of the
reigns of Solomon, of David, and of Saul.
6. Solomon's wisdom. Scripture tells us, excelled the wisdom of
all the children of the East country, and all the wisdom of Egypt.
" For he vfas wiser (before his fall, be it clearly understood,) than all
men ; . . And his fame was in all nations round about. And
.
he spake 3,000 proverbs and his songs were a thousand and five. And
;
he spake of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the
hyssop that springeth out of the wall he spake also of beasts, and of
:
fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes " (i Kings iv. 30, set^.). All
these works are lost there remain only the " Proverbs," or a collec-
;
tion of maxims which bear internal evidence of his authorship, and the
Book called Ecclesiastes, in which all the circumstances, all the plea-
sures of human life are appreciated at their true value, and stamped
with the motto, " All is vanity." This last work is assigned to the king
of Israel with less certainty. The Song of Songs is also attributed to
Solomon, a mystical poem, in which, under the forms of impassioned
love, is figured the longing of the soul after God, an example copied in
later times among the Arabs by some mystic sects of Islam.
— :
SEPARATION OF JUUAH AND ISRAEL. 147
CHAPTER IV.
SEPARATION OF THE TEN TRIBES.— KINGDOMS OF

ISRAEL AND JUDAH.—FALL OF SAMARIA AND
JERUSALEM.
Chief Authorities —The Bible, Books of Kings and Chronicles; The
Prophets, particularly Isaiah, feretniah and Ezekicl. —^Josephus, An-
tiquities, Books VIII. and X.
The modern writers mentioned at the beginning of Chapter I.
Section I. Rehoboam and Jkroboam. — Separation of the

Ten Tribes (978-957).
I. The reigns of David and Solomon represent the highest degree

of glory and political power to which the Hebrews have ever attained.
But this very prosperity, and the corruption that it introduced at the
court, the development of commercial relations with foreign powers,
could not but react on the interior state of the kingdom of Israel, and
exercise an evil on the manners and faith of the people.
influence
Religion, the only tie which bound the Hebrews together, was weakened
by the prevalence of idolatry under Solomon. Royalty, powerful and
respected as it was under David and his successor, was yet not firm
enough to form the foundation of the unity of the nation, and to estab-
lish permanently the preponderance of Judah over the other tribes. Even
at the close of the reign of David we have seen that an insurrection was
attempted, from jealousy of the importance and prerogatives of the tribe
from which the king had sprung.
The symptoms of revolt liecame again apparent, and in a much more
menacing form, in the last years of Solomon. The prophet Ahijah had
clearly announced to that monarch the division of his kingdom. The
enormous expenses which the great works of his reign had entailed tended
to alienate the Northern tribes from those of the South, and to excite a
rupture. Solomon's successor was his son Rehoboam, who was forty-one
years of age. The deputies of the tribes of Israel who came to do homage
to the new king, wishing at the same time to dictate some conditions to
him, and to require a diminution of the burdens of the people, thought
L 2
it better not to present themselves at Jerusalem, and they assembled at
Shechem, the capital of the powerful tribe of Ephraim. They recalled
Jeroboam from Egypt, and put him at their head. Rehoboam was invited
to Shechem, to be proclaimed king, and not in the least suspecting
the trap which was laid for him, he presented himself before the
assembly. Jeroboam spoke in the name of the deputies: "Thy
father," said he to the king, "made our yoke grievous; now, there-
fore, make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke
which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee." Rehoboam
surprised, asked a delay of three days. The old state councillors of
Solomon were unanimous in advising him to give way, but the king
preferred to their counsels the pernicious advice of his young courtiers,
who, playing on his self-love, urged him to resistance.
When, on the third day, Jeroboam and the deputies presented themselves
before him, he haughtily replied, "My father made your yoke heavy, and I
will add to your yoke. My father chastised you with whips, but I will chas-
tise you with scorpions. " Then the people broke out into rebellion, crying
out, " What portion have we in David ... to your tents, O Israel :
see now to thine own house, David " i Kings xii. 2 Chron. x. ). Adoram,
( ,
"who was over the tribute," sent by Rehoboam to calm the popular
tumult, was stoned to death. Rehoboam had barely time to get into
his chariot and fly in all haste to Jerusalem. The tribes of Judah and
Benjamin alone remained faithful to the dynasty of David, whilst the
others proclaimed Jeroboam king. The tribe of Benjamin, which had
peculiar grievances against the house of David, would probably have
joined with the tribes of Israel if its territorial position had not com-
pelled it to hold to Judah. The city of Jerusalem was in fact partly
in the land of Benjamin. Rehoboam attempted to resist ; he assembled
an army of 180,000 men to subdue the seceded tribes, but God caused
him to be told by the prophet Shemaiah that this event was brought
about in the order of His providence, and that the soldiers were not to
fight against their brethren. The army was disbanded, and the separa-
tion was thus consummated.
2. The Bible gives us no detail as to the respective limits of the two
kingdoms formed by this separation. It merely says that the ten tribes
—
declared for Jeroboam that is, Ephraim, which was at the head of
the movement, Simeon, Dan, Manasseh, Issachar, Asshur, Zebulon,
Naphtali, Reuben, and Gad. The new state, embracing the greater part
of the nation, took by preference the name of Kingdom of Israel, which
had already served in former times to designate the kingdom of Ish-
bosheth. The land of Israel included, then, all Persea with the tribu-
tary countries as far as the Euphrates and the greater part of Palestine
on this side the Jordan. The kingdom of Rehoboam, called the kingdom
of Judah, embraced only Southern Palestine, between Bethel and Beer-
—
LIMITS OF JUDAH AND ISRAEL. 149
sheba. The king of Judah had, besides, the suzerainty of Idumea and
the land of tlie Philistines, but the whole of the provinces subject to
his sceptre were in extent hardly a fourth part of the kingdom of
Solomon.
The boundaries were not very exactly defined and some frontier;
towns belonging to the tribes of one of the two kingdoms were in fact,
either from the wish of the inhabitants, or the force of circumstances,
found in the power of the other kingdom. Thus, for example, the
towns of Bethel and Rama, although situated in the territory of Benja-
min, belonged to the kingdom of Israel ; but, in return, the southern
cities of Dan, such as Ajalon, formed part of the kingdom of Judah.
As for the towns which in the time of Joshua had been given to the
tribe of Simeon, they all, from their geographical position, fell to the
state of Judah. So then, in reality, as Simeon was one of the ten
tribes who declared for Jeroboam, we must suppose that at any rate a
part of the tribe had emigrated to the north. A passage in the Book of
Chronicles appears in fact to indicate that the Simeonites, after the reign
of David, no longer possessed the towns which had been given them by
Joshua (l Chron. iv. 31). Some remnants of that tribe, who had re-
mained in the land of Judah, emigrated in later times, under Hezekiah,
to the number of 500 families,* towards Mount Seir. A learned Dutch
Orientalist, M. Dozy, has recently devoted a very learned and ingenious
work to proving that they must have gone very far into Arabia, and
have been the founders of the city of Mecca, t
3. The two kingdoms of Israel and Judah remained separate until
the capture of Samaria by the Assyrians and the annihilation of the
Israelitish state. It does not seem that, during the whole of this long
space of time, any one conceived the idea of the re-establishment of

national unity under one sceptre. The chronology of the two parallel
kingdoms presents serious difficulties which St. Jerome has pronounced
insuperable. They have been minutely considered by students, who
have proposed numerous systems for their solution. We do not intend
here to enter into a critical examination of the problem and the discus-
sion of its elements; these are questions of detail which cannot be
brought within the compass of the present work. Let us, then, confine
ourselves to saying that the system most generally adopted by critics,
and which seems preferable, arranges in the following manner the royal
lists of the two monarchies formed from the ruins of that of David and
Solomon:
* I Chron. iv. 42. The reading is " men " but there is no doubt
;
that the emigration of ôo men would entail the removal of their families.
— Tr.
t Die Israeliten zu Alekhah, Leyden, 1865.
Kingdom ok Judah. Kingdom of Israel.
CoDimeiicoiient of the reign of— Coinniencciiiciil of the reign of —
B.C. B.C.
Rehoboam 978. Jeroboam 978.
A hijam 961.
Asa . . 958.
Nadab
Baasha 953-
Elah .
932.
Zimri . 9.SI-
Omri .
930.
Ahab . 919.
Jehoshaphat 916.
Ahaziah, or Azaria 899.
Jehoram, or Joram 898.
Jehoram . 891.
Ahaziah . 887.
Athaliah . . . 886. Jehu 886.
Joash or Jehoash 879.
Jehoahaz . . . 858.
Jehoash . . . S42.
Amaziah . 839-
Jeroboam II. . . 827.
Azariah . 810.
InteiTegnum 784 to 773.
Zachariah 773-
Shalhim . • 772.
Manahem .• 772.
Pekahiah . . 761.
Pekah . . .
759-
Jotham 758-
Ahaz . 742. Manahem II. • 742.
Pekah (restored) • 7.i3-
Hoshea . • 730.
Hezekiah 727.
Fall of the Kingdom of Israel 721.
It is necessary to place this comparative table of the succession 01

the princes of the two kingdoms before the eye of the reader, in order
to avoid the confusion which might easily result from relating simul-
taneously, as we Judah and of Israel,
are obliged to do, the annals of
which appear at times to be extremely entangled. We now again take
up the thread of events.
4. Jeroboam was hardly proclaimed king when he hastened to guard
against any possible attack from the kingdom of Judah, by fortifying
Shechem, his new capital, and some frontier cities. But he did not
know how to make a proper use of the position in which he found
himself. Instead of conducting himself as a prince chosen by God,
instead of strengthening the state which he founded under Divine per-
IDOLATROUS WORSHIP AT BETHEL. 151
mission, he permitted himself to be led astray by a narrow-minded and

base feeling of distrustful policy, and became an apostate. Fearing lest
the Israelites, if in conformity with the precepts of tlie law, they went
to sacrihce'in the Temple at Jerusalem, might again return to the
autliority of Rehoboam, ajid thus shake his throne, he resolved to
interrupt all the relations of his subjects with the religious centre of the
nation; and that lie might better succeed in this project by calling to his
aid the bad pa-ssions and gross tendencies of the people, he gave full
sanction to a revolting system of idolatry. At the two extremities of
his kingdom, at Dan and at Bethel, he built two Temples in which
Jehovali was worshipped under the ignoble image of a golden calf, and
thus renewed the crime of which the Hebrews had been guilty in the
desert
The people allowed themselves to be led into the seducing and entirely
materialistic worship of these dumb gods ; their altars were erected on
all the 'high places, and new priests, strangers to the tribe of Levi,
were consecrated for tliis new religion. The legitimate priests and
Levites, driven Jeroboam, abandoned their possessions and
out by
sought refuge in the kingdom of Judah, followed by the few men, who,
of tlie tribes of Israel, wished to remain faithful to the law, and pre-
ferred expatriation to apostasy. Divine warnings were not, however,
wanting to induce Jeroboam to leave the criminal path he had entered ;
but he heeded them not. Thus, one day, a zealous prophet fi-om the
kingdom of Judah ventured to present himself in the Temple at Bethel,
and to curse the altar at the moment when the king was offering incense
on it. Abijah, son of the king, having become seriously ill, Jeroboam
conceived the idea of sending his wife, disguised, to ask advice of the
prophet Ahijah, who had predicted his accession to the throne,
and in whom the king of Israel hoped to find a protector favoured by
heaven. But Ahijah, far from showing a favourable disposition, re-,
proached the queen in the most severe terms with the idolatry of Jero-
boam, and predicted to her the coming end of his dynasty as well as the
ruin of the kingdom of Israel, whose people were to be canied captive
beyond the Euphrates, "and," added he, " when thy feet enter into the
city the child shall die " (i Kings xiv. 12).
The most ordinary political intelligence would have taught

5.
Rehoboam, with such conduct on part of his rival, to show great zeal
for the orthodox Mosaic worship, which alone, even from a human
point of view, could be to him the means of safety. He acted thus for
three years. His however, but too soon, and gave place to
zeal abated,
a culpable by the gradual mtroduction of
indifference, quickly followed
Phoenician idolatry, together with all the abominable debaucheries
which always accompanied it. At the same time, the schismatical
worship of the high places spread in ail parts of the kingdom, even
among those who remained faithful to the doctrine of the unity of God.
Doubtless this worship was addressed to Jehovah ; but the multiplication
of sanctuaries itself was a violation of the precepts of the Law, and
turned away worshipjiers from the one Temple, where alone sacrifice
was permitted to be offered.
The indifference to the national sanctuary and to the Holy City
became so great that, in spite of the fortresses guarding his southern
frontier, Rehoboam could make no resistance to the Egyptian troops,
who, in the fifth year of his reign (970 B.C.), invaded the kingdom of
Judah, probably through the intrigues of Jeroboam, and penetrated
to Jerusalem. Rehoboam trembled in his palace, and the prophet
Shemaiah took advantage of the occasion to reproach the king, before
all his court, for his infidelity towards Jehovah, the cause of this mis-
fortune. The king and all his nobles who surrounded him showed
sincere repentance, and said, "The Lord is righteous." Shemaiah
then reassured them, by telling them thpt this was but a passing storm,
and that they must accept with resignation the chastisement of Heaven
(i Chron. xii. 6). Shishak, king of Eg)'pt, at the head of a numerous
army, entered the capital without striking a blow, and plundered the
treasures of the Temple. But as Shemaiah had announced, he had no
other intent than to humble, and to extort money from the king of
Judah and his army retired when satisfied with their plunder. Re-
;
hoboam reigned twelve years after the Egyptian invasion. No memo-

rable event marked that space of time. Constant hostilities went on
between Rehoboam and Jeroboam ; but they confined themselves to
mutual small incuisions and it does not appear that there ever was any
;
engagement of importance between the two kings.

6. After the death of Rehoboam, and the accession of his son
Abijam, Jeroboam thought a time when the kingdom was passing from
one hand to another favourable for attempting the conquest of the land
of Judah. From two quarters he prepared to deliver decisive blows,
and he had recourse to a levee en masse of the people. By this means
Jeroboam put under arms 800,000 men, and Abijam 400,000. The
two armies met on the mountains of Ephraim, near the heights of
Samaria. In spite of an ambuscade which Jeroboam set behind the
troops of Judah, they succeeded in possessing themselves of Bethel and
some other Israelitish cities. Abijam, as little zealous as his father for
religion, was guilty of the fault of not profiting by this event to abolish
at Bethel the worship of the golden calf, and the town soon again fell
into the power of Israel. Abijam died after a reign of three years.
His son and successor, Asa, showed from his earliest years great zeal
for the worship of Jehovah. Though still very young, he displayed
great hatred for idolatry he did not even spare his grandmother,
;
Maacha, widow of Rehoboam, who favoured the Phoenician worship.

INVASION AND DEFEAT OF ZERAH. 153
and attempted domineer over him. Asa deprived her of all influence
to
government. The statue of Ashtaroth, which she
in the affairs of the
had dared to set up at Jerusalem, was burned in the valley of Kidron.
Everywhere the altars of the Canaanitish deities were destroyed, and
the persons consecrated to that shameful worship were expelled from
the land. The only reproach that Scripture addresses to Asa is, that
he allowed the schismatical altars on the high places to remain, in order
to give occupation and means of subsistence to the numerous priests
whom the apostasy of the ten tribeshad induced to return to Judah.
Section II. — Disorders and Reverses in the KingdoiM of

Israel (957 — 919 b.c).
1. Jerobo.am had reigned twenty-two years. After his death the
prediction of the prophet Ahijah against his family was almost imme-
diately accomplished. At the close of only two years of power his
son, Nadab, was assassinated by one of his principal officers, named
Baasha, of the tribe of Issachar, whilst besieging Gibbethon, a city of
the tribe of Dan, which had fallen into the power of the Philistines.
Baasha seized upon the crown, and to remove all danger of any possible
competition, put to death all the near relatives of Jeroboam.
2. Whilst these events were occurring in the kingdom of Israel, Asa
re-established in the land of Judah the worshij) of the true God and ;
reigning with wisdom and glory, promoted in every shape the national
prosperity. One of his principal cares was the army, which he laboured
to place on an improved footing. Events were soon to show how
prudent and full of foresight his conduct had been. In the fifteenth
year of the reign of Asa (943 B.C.), a formidable invasion menaced the
southern frontiers of Palestine. Zerah, king of Ethiopia,* at the head
of a numerous arniy, recruited amongst the barbarous people of the
Upper Nile, had overrun Egypt. After having subjugated it for the
moment, and carried devastation from south to north throughout its
whole extent, he crossed the river Rhinocorura, and assailed the
kingdom of Judah, hoping to pillage it also, as well as all Syria. Asa
led his army to meet the Ethiopians, and gave them battle in the valley
of Zephathah, near Mareshah. Zerah was vanquished and obliged to
fly, leaving an immense booty to the Jewish soldiers.
* Some historians have erroneously confounded this prince with

Tirhakah, king both of Ethiopia and Egypt, who lived nearly two
centuries later. Others have supposed him to be Uaserkcn, king of
Egypt, and not of Ethiopia, whose name could never be so transcribed
mto Hebrew. The Zerah of the Bible was the king Azerch-Amen,
whose name is read on several Ethiopian monuments. This important
correction in history is due to Dr. Brugsch.
The defeat of the king of Ethiopia was so complete that he could
not even maintain himself in Egypt, but was obliged to retire in all
haste into his own kingdom, above the Cataracts of the Nile. On the
return of the victorious Asa to his capital, the prophet Azariah pre-
sented himself before the king, and in an address to him and to his
army showed how their recent success was the recompense of their
return to religious truth, just as the disasters of Rehoboam had been
the just punishment of his infidelity. Asa continued to show great
severity to idolatry ; he executed also important repairs in the Temple,
and offered there splendid sacrifices in recognition of his victory over
Zerah. Very many of the inhabitants of the land of Israelwho still
remained, in spite of the official schism, faithful to the God of their
fathers, seeing the success of the pious Asa, came up to be present at
that feast,and established themselves in the land of Judah.
3. Baasha, the usurper of the crown of Israel, could not without
disquiet see the constantly increasing power of Asa and his kingdom.
He commenced hostilities against him by fortifying the town of Ramah,
and placing a garrison there, to prevent the people of Israel from com-
municating with the kingdom of Judah and going up to the Temple.
Asa could not permit the establishment of this threatening fortress at a
distance of only two leagues from Jerusalem. He emptied the royal
treasury, and that of the Temple, to purchase the alliance of Ben-
hidri,* king of Syria, who resided at Damascus, and had formed a
considerable state of the Aramaean provinces, formerly sul^ject to David
and Solomon. His offers having been accepted, Ben-hidri invaded the
north of Palestine, penetrating to the neighbourhood of the lake of
Gennesaret, and possessed himself of many important to\\-ns. Asa at
the same time marched on Ramah, took it, and having demolished the
fortifications, already far advanced, employed the materials in con-
structing at Geba and Mizpeh two fortresses, to serve as the bulwarks
of his state against the kingdom of Israel.
But the prophets were by no means pleased to see an alliance con-
cluded with a pagan against the king of Israel, and at the expense of
the sacred treasure.A prophet, named Hanani, bitterly reproached
Asa with leaning on Syria, instead of trusting entirely to the help of
Jehovah, who could have subdued both the Syrians and the Israelites.
* This name, borne successively by many kings of Syria, is written

Ben-hadad in the Hebrew text of the Bible, and Ben-ader in the
Septuagint (vioc "ASip). The reading we have adopted, Ben-hidri,
that given by the Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions contemporary with
these princes, is sufficiently near that which the LXX. followed. [Many
Hebrew manuscripts give this name with a final R, as does also the
Samaritan. The two letters R and D in Hebrew are not easily dis-
tinguishable.]
DISORDERS IN THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL. 155
The words of the inspired speaker were not without influence on the
people, and led to some trouliles. Asa thought fit to use severity, and
ventured even to cause Hanani to be arrested as a disturber of the
public peace. From this moment to the end of his reign he found
himself exposed to the ill-will of the whole order of prophets, who
looked on him as a tyrant. Nevertheless, in spite of his rupture with
this body, who represented the living and zealous element in the Mosaic
religion, he did not swerve from religious truth, and was always a
Jehovah.
faithful servant of His orthodo.xy, and vigilance in repressing
every attempt to introduce the worship of strange gods, procured him a
long succession of years of peaceable reign, and he did not die till
916 B.C., after forty-one years of prosperity, leaving in his son Jeho-
shaphat a worthy successor.
4. During this lime disorder and crime, the just punishment of schism
and apostasy, were raging in the kingdom of Israel. Baasha reigned

for ten years after the invasion of the Syrians, but without ever recovering
from that humiliation. The Bible mentions no more collisions between
him and Asa, but the two kings remained in a permanent state of hos-
tility. Baasha, it may be seen by what we have related of his life, was
animated by a spirit of the greatest impiety; he had taken up the
position of a declared enemy of Mosaic orthodoxy, in which he saw a
danger to his own crown, and a source of strength to the king of
Judah.
The prophet Jehu, son of the prophet Hanani who had braved the
anger of Asa when condemning his alliance with the Syrians, ventured
to present himself before Baasha, to reproach him with having imitated
the sins of Jeroboam, after being exalted from the dust, to overturn his
dynasty he announced to him the divine decree by which, as a punish-
;
ment he and his race should be cut off " I will make
for this impiety,
—
thy house," said he, speaking in the name of the Lord, "like the
house of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat " (i Kings xvi. 2). Asa lived to
witness the accomplishment of this prophecy, and to see a third dynasty
mount the throne established by Jeroboam; for events followed each
other quicl<ly in the land of Israel. Baasha, nevertheless, trans-
mitted the crown to his son Elah, dying, after having reigned nearly
twenty-three years. But Elah succumbed in the second year of
his reign, struck down, like the son of Jeroboam, by the hantl of a
conspirator.
Whilst the troops, commanded by the general-in-chicf (Jniri, were
occupied by a second siege of the town of (iibbethon, then held by the
rhilistines, Zimri, one of the two captains of the war chariots, assassi-
nated King Elah, "as he was drinking himself drunk in the house of
Arza, steward of his house " (i Kings xvi. 9), at Tirzah, then the capital
of Israel. The murderer having seized on the throne, massacred all the
—
members of the royal family and the prediction of the prophet Jehu
;
was thus accompUshed to the letter.

When the news of Zimri's crime arrived in the camp at Gibbethon,
the troops, indignant, proclaimed their general Omri king of Israel.
Omri at once abandoned the siege to march on Tirzah, and the usurper,
seeing himself forced to surrender the city, set fire to the palace and
burned himself alive there, after having reigned but seven days. Never-
theless, Omri, the elect of the army, found a rival in a certain Tibni,
son of Ginath, on whom the people of the capital bestowed the crown.
War broke out between the two pretenders, and as the party of Omri
was the strongest, the death of Tibni left his competitor to be recog-
nised by The text of Scripture leaves us to infer that the
all Israel.
civil war between Omri and Tibni lasted four years, for it makes the
reign of Omri commence only in the thirty-first year of the reign of

Asa (927 B c), although it gives for the conspiracy of Zimri and his
death the twenty-seventh year of that prince (931 B.C.), in which year
Omri was proclaimed king by the army.
In the seventh year of his reign, two years after the death of Tibni,
Omri, desirous of creating a new capital, doubtless because he distrusted
the disorderly spirit and revolutionary tendencies of the inhabitants of
Tirzah, bought, from an individual named Shemer, a hill, situated in a
very strong position in the midst of the territory of Ephraim, and not
far from Shechem he paid for the site two talents of silver, and built
;
there a city called Samaria. There, ever after, down to the time of the
destruction of the kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, the residence of
its sovereigns was fixed. The foundation of Samaria is the only fact
worthy of remark which is recorded of the reign of Omri, with the
exception of an unfortunate war against the Syrians, in which he lost
many towns. He governed in the same spirit as his predecessors,
maintaining the schismatical worship established by Jeroboam. He
died at last in the twelfth year of his reign, leaving the throne to his
son Ahab.
Section HI. Ahab, Jehoshaphat, and their Sons

{919—886 B.C.).
I. Jehoshaphat, son of Asa, ascended the throne of Jerusalem at
the age of thirty-five years. Inheriting the virtues of his father, he
manifested even a greater zeal for the national worship, and removed
the last traces of idolatry. To inspire the people with stronger religious
sentiments, he sent, in the third year of his reign, five of the principal
persons of his court, accompanied by two priests and nine Levites,
with the Book of the Law, to make the tour of the whole countiy, and
instruct the inhabitants. At the same time Jehoshaphat built new forti-
"
ELIJAH AND AHAB. 157
fications, and filled he also care-

the arsenals with munitions of all kinds ;
fully re-organised the administration and the army. was to be

This last
henceforth composed of two very strong divisions one of Judah, the—

other of Benjamin. The peace then reigning in the land of Judah, to
which many neighbouring people paid tribute, much favoured the
reforms of Jehoshaphat, which, as we shall see, were to be still further
developed.
2. The court of Samaria exhibited then a complete contrast to that
of Jerusalem. Whilst Jehoshaphat made unceasing efforts to re-esta-
blish the worship ofJehovah in all its purity, Ahab, who surpassed in
impiety all the kings of Israel, not content with the worship of the
golden calves, and influenced by his Phcenician wife Jezebel, daughter
of Eth-baal, king of Tyre, had introduced the worship of Baal and of
Ashtaroth, to whom she erected temples and altars, even in the town of
Samaria. This irruption of Phoenician paganism brought trouble and
disorder on the whole kingdom of Israel, and gave rise to sanguinary
collisions between the worshippers of Baal and the small number of
zealous partisans who still adhered to the true faith. The former party
had become the strongest Baal had no less than 450 priests or prophets
;
in his service, and Ashtaroth 400, all maintained at the expense of

Jezebel. Sustained by the energy of a fanatical and cruel queen, they
persecuted with the" utmost fury the prophets of Jehovah, whom they
attempted to exterminate. These latter were still tolerably numerous ;
and in the persecution of which they were the objects, some of them exhi-
bited such zeal and courage as had never previously been seen among
them, and when occasion offered, they made sanguinary reprisals on
their adversaries. Their chief was the celebrated prophet Elijah, and
at court they had a secret protector in Obadiah, the governor of the
kmg's house. But the mass of the people, undecided or indifferent,
did not give a hearty support to either of the two parties, for which
reason Elijah rc]:)roached them with "halting between two opinions,
and declaring neither for Jehovah nor for Baal. The king Ahab
himself, a man with no energy and no convictions, may be placed in
the front rank of these waverers. At one time he bowed before Baal,
and gave himself up to all the abominations of Canaanitish worship ;
at words of the prophet, he rent his clothes

another, terrified by the
and hunililed himself before Jehovah. One day he permitted Jezebel
to order the massacre of the jirophcts of Jehovah, and on another he
gave up the prophets of Baal to the vengeance of ICIijah.
The kingdom of Israel could not rise from this miserable position but
by a violent revolution it required an energetic man, inspired from on
;
high, full of courage and devotion, to bring over the waverers, to

ensure the triumph of the holy cause of Jehovah and of Hebrew
nationality, against the tyrannical fury of the Phoenician princess. In
—
iSS ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
this calamitous time Israel saw a saviour who undertook alone, if
arise,
not to accomplish, at any rate to prepare the way for, a revolution, and
to overturn the impious dynasty, which sought to sweep away the very
last traces of the worship of the true God. This man was the prophet
Elijah, the hero of the epoch. Full of fierce enthusiasm, excited by
almost continual Uivine inspiration, he braved, by his constancy and
coui-age, the fury of Jezebel, and frequently made King Ahab tremble,
who, though he detested, could not help respecting him. Like Samuel,
he was inflexible in his purpose, and feared not to show himself stern,
and even cniel, to accomplish what he found to be necessary. Unfor-
tunately, Israel had fallen too low for a complete regeneration to be
possible. Even Elijah never raised his voice against the image worship
ot Bethel and Dan, but directed all his efforts to ensure the triumph ot
the name of Jehovah over the odious Phoenician worship and when at ;
the end of his days he was compelled to leave his work still unfinished,
he chose a successor to continue and complete it.
3. Nevertheless, the throne of Ahab seemed to be strengthened by
some brilliant victories. Ben-hidri, king of Syria, son of the one who
had made war on Baasha and Omri, came, followed by thirty-nine
princes, his vassals or allies, to besiege Samaria, which had become, as
we have said, the capital of the kingdom. The king of Israel humbled
himself before him, and offered to declare himself his vassal ; but
Ben-hidri replied with such insolence, that, by the counsel of the
elders, Ahab resolved on resistance. God told him by a prophet
" Thus saith the Lord, Hast thou seen all this great multitude? behold,
I will deliver it into thine hand this day, that thou mayest know that I
am the Lord." Feeling his faith re-animated in this danger, he ordered
a sally of 7,000 men, who surprising the enemy's camp when they were
in the midst of an orgy, routed them completely.
But the courtiers of the king of Syria, as a salve to their own pride
and that of their master, said to Ben-hidri, "Their gods are gods of
the hills, therefore they are stronger than we ; but let us fight against
them in the plain, be stronger than they."* The
and surely we shall
king permitted himself to be persuaded to replace exactly the men,
* It may be noticed that the Hebrews were essentially Highlanders

in all their instincts of fight ; their first impulse in making war was to
occupy the heights of some mountain. Joshua made his night-march
for this purpose before the battle of Beth-horon. When resistance to
Jabin, king of Hazor, was contemplated, the first command of the
prophetess to Barak was, "Draw toward Mount Tabor." Gideon
"went down " from the hill to his great victory over Midian. It added
to David's grief for the loss of his friend Jonathan, that the defeat had
been sustained " in thme high places." The same feeling seems to have
influenced the Hebrews also in later times ; the first Maccabrean victory
and the last success against Rome were both in " the going down " to
— —
AHAB AND NABOTH. 159
horses, and war chariots which he had lost, and commenced the cam-
paign the next year witli troops incomjiaraljiy superior in niunbcr to
those of Ahab. But God showed that lie could confound the blas-
phemies of the enemies of Israel. 100,000 Syrians were cut to pieces
under the walls of Aphek, in the plain of Esdraelon, and Ben-hidri
was forced to implore the clemency of the enemy whom he had so in-
solently defied.
Ahab, who could have made the king of Syria a prisoner, did not
even confine himself to setting him Under
the guarantee of
at liberty.
an article, which gave him the right of keeping a garrison in Damascus,

he concluded a treaty of intimate alliance, which insured Ben-hidri the
assistance of Israelitish troops in his wars. A most valuable inscription
of Shalmanezer IV.,* king of Assyria, discovered near the source of
the Tigris and now presei-ved in the British Museum, in relating a
defeat which that prince inflicted the next year on Ben-hidri, near the
city of Karkar, mentions among the troops who fought on the side of
the latter 10,000 men of Ahab of Israel. A prophet severely rejiroached
Ahab for this alliance with an infidel whom God had delivered into
his hands, and threatened him with the Divine wrath; but he was not
heeded.
4. A horrible crime, into which he was led by the queen Jezebel,
brought on Ahab a still more dreadful prophecy from Elijah. A man
named Naboth at Jezreel possessed a vineyard near to the palace of the
king in that Ahab, desirous of joining that vineyard to his
city.
garden, asked Naboth to sell it to him in perpetuity. This was to

introduce into the civil law a principle formally opposed to the Mosaic
lav/, which did not permit the property of the soil to go for ever out of
the hands of the family to whom it had lieen assigned at the conquest,
but directed its return at the year of Jubilee.
Naboth, faithful to the spirit of the law, refused to sell the inheritance
of his fathers: at this the king showed himself much aggrieved. Jezebel
having learned the cause of his grief, consoled him by promising to give
him the vineyard of Naboth. She sent orders in the king's name to the
Beth-horon, and even to the very last day of Jewish independence, when
their"hold," Masada, fell before the Romans.
We find, too, that though the Hebrews frequently assembled large
bodies of infantiy, they were never strong in cavalry or war chariots a ;
fact well known, and alluded to by the Rabshakeh, whom Sennacherib

sent to Hezekiah
—
"I will deliver thee," said he, "2,000 horses, if
thou be able on thy ])art to set riders upon them."
This whole subject is treated at length by Dean Stanley, Siiiai and
Palestine, ch. ix. Tr.
* This is the king who appears in Sir II. Rawlinson's list as Shal-
manezer II. The cause of the difference between that high authority
and the author will appear in the Book on the Assyrians. Tr.
"
l6o ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.

authorities of liis city to accuse Naboth of high treason. They brouglit
false witnesses, who swore that Nabotli had blasphemed God and the
king; he was condemned and stoned to death. Jezebel told her husband
of the death of Naboth and persuaded him to confiscate the property
of the condemned, in defiance of the precepts of the law. Ahab
having gone to the vineyard of Naboth to take possession of it, the
prophet Elijah met him. " Hast thou and also taken possession,
Icilled
said he to the king. "Thus saith the Lord, In the place where dogs
licked the l:)lood of Naboth, they shall lick thy blood, even thine."
" Hast thou found me, O mine enemy," said the king. " I have found
thee," replied the prophet, "because thou hast sold thyself to do evil in
the sight of the Lord. Behold, I will bring evil upon thee, and will
make thy house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like
the house of Baasha son of Ahijah, and the dogs shall eat Jezebel by the
wall of Jezreel " (i Kings xxi. 19),
5. The accomplishment of the first part of this prophecy was not long
delayed. Ben-hidri during the three years that had elapsed, since the
treaty of peace had been concluded, after the battle at Aphek, had not
executed its conventions. Ramoth, one of the most important cities of
the land of Gilead or Persea, still remained in the hands of the Syrians.
Ahab showed his intention of recommencing war against the king of
Syria, and taking from him by force the city, he was not willing to sur-
render. At this time Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, who since his acces-
sion to the throne had profited Ijy the blessings of peace to continue his
reforms in religious worship, and in the administration, had visited the
king of Israel, with whom he had allied himself by marriage, his son Jeho-
ram having married Athaliah, the daughter of Ahab and Jezebel. This
was the first time since the separation of the two kingdoms that a king
of Judah showed himself as a friend and ally on the territory of Israel;
and we may well be surprised to find peace between the kingdoms, and
family ties between the courts, of the pious Jehoshaphat and the impious
Ahab.
It is possible that Jehoshaphat hoped to work on the facile character
of Ahab, and lead him to better sentiments. At the moment of march-
ing against the Syrians, Ahab expressed a wish that the king of Judah
should take part in the expedition. Jehoshaphat consented, and promised
the assistance of his troops, on the condition that the king of Israel
should at once consult the prophets. Ahab brought together 400 of
them at the gate of Samaria; they all with one voice declared that he
ought to go to the war, and that the king of Israel should return a
conqueror. But Jehoshaphat distrusted these 400 unajiimous voices; it
did not seem possible that, after so many persecutions, the call of Ahab
could assemble so many true prophets of Jehovah, to speak with sincerity
and independence. At his request Micaiah was sent for, who had not
JEHOSHAPHAT'S REFORMS. i6i
previously been called, and who announced a terrible disaster, and the
death of Ahab. He nevertheless persisted in marching onRamoth, and
Jehoshaphat accompanied him there. The king of Israel, having learned
that the Syrian officers had received orders to single him out personally
for attack, disguised himself and mixed with the soldiers, whilst Jeho-
shaphat wore his royal robes. The Syrians, taking the latter for the king
of Israel, directed their attack on him, and surrounded him. Jehosha-
phat called for help, but the officers of Ben-hidri discovering their mistake
at once retired. At the same time Ahab was mortally wounded by an
arrow which a soldier had " shot at a venture"; he died at sunset, and
the Israelite army at once retreated. The body of the king was carried
to Samaria, where it was buried. His blood-stained chariot was washed
in the pool at Samaria, and the words of Elijah were accomplished,
that the dogs should lick the blood of Ahab. His son Ahaziah suc-
ceeded him.
6. Jehoshaphat returned to Jerusalem, when the prophet Jehu, son ot
Hanani, blamed him mildly for having lent his help to the impious
Ahab, which he said would have drawn on the king the wrath of Je-
hovah if he had not deserved the mercy of God, by exterminating
idolatry in his kingdom. Jehoshaphat continued to rule over his people
in the same spirit of piety, and to introduce notable improvements in the
administration; he reformed the tribunals in the principal cities of the
kingdom, directing them to observe the greatest impartiality, and he
established at Jerusalem a supreme court of appeal,composed of Priests,
Levites, and heads of families, as the last resort for difficult cases.
After the example of Solomon, Jehoshaphat constructed vessels at
Eziongeber, to recommence commercial expeditions to India, and
especially to the land of Ophir, but he no longer had Phoenicians to
man them, and the vessels being shipwrecked in the very gulf, quite close
to Eziongeber, Jehoshaphat gave up the enterprise, in spite of the
persuasions of Ahaziah, king of Israel, who wished to become his
partner.
7. During the short reign of Ahaziah, which lasted hardly a year,
Mesha, king of Moab, who, like his predecessors, had recognised the
suzerainty of the king of Israel, refused to pay his tribute. He had
formerly paid 100,000 lambs and roo,ooo rams, with their wool for the
;
land of Moab had been at all times rich in flocks and herds, and is so to
this day. A severe fall which Ahaziah had through the railing of the
platform of the palace of Samaria, prevented him from taking measures
for subjecting the Moabites. Brought up in the worship of Baal and
in the superstitions of idolatry, Ahaziah sent messengers to Ekron, in
the land of the Philistines, to enquire of the celebrated oracle of Baal-
zebub what would be the result of his illness. The prophet Elijah,
indignant at this insult to the God of Israel, stopped the messengers of
M
Ahaziah on their way. " Is it not because there is not a God in Israel,"
said the prophet to them, " that ye go to enquire of Baal-zebub the
God of Ekron ? Now, therefore, thus saith the Lord, Thou shalt not
come down from the bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely
die " (2 Kings This in fact soon happened, and as Ahaziah had
i. 3).
no son, his brother Jehoram succeeded him, 898 B.C.

8. The new king of Israel confirmed the alliance his father had
concluded with Jehoshaphat, and overthrew the worship of Baal, which

histwo predecessors had observed, but without, nevertheless, becoming
law of God. Jehoram having requested help from
really faithful to the
Jehoshaphat against the Moabitish rebels, the king of Judah replied,
" I am as thou art, my people as thy people, my horses as thy horses."
Assisted also by the king of the Idum£eans,a vassal of Jehoshaphat, the two
allies gained a brilliant victory over the Moabites, whose king was obliged
to throw himself into a fortress. The king of Moab, in conformity with
the frightful superstition of many oriental people, to propitiate the gods,
sacrificed his own son on the wall, in the sight of the besiegers, who,
struck with horror, raised the siege. Elisha, the successor of Elijah,
showed himself for the first time in the camp on the occasion of this
war, and there promised success to the combined arms of Israel and
Judah.
Some months after this, the Moabites, having found allies in the
Ammonites, and having succeeded in enlisting the Idumcean tribes of
Mount Seir, desirous of revenging themselves on Jehoshaphat who had
assisted their enemy, suddenly invaded the land of Judah and pene-
trated as far as Engedi. But a dispute having arisen as to the division
of the booty among the undisciplined hordes of invaders, was easy for
it
the Jewish troops to put them to flight, and to drive them all, in four
days, across the frontier. After this event Jehoshaphat still reigned five
or six years in peace, blessed by his subjects and respected by the neigh-
bouring people ; in the last years of his reign his eldest son Jehoram,
brother-in-law to Jehoram king of Israel (for the two Hebrew kingdoms
had then at head princes of the same name), took part in the
their
affairs Jehoshaphat died at the age of sixty years
of state as co-regent.
(891 B.C.), his people whom he had led back to the true principles of
religion, and whom he had endowed with useful institutions, placed on
his seven sons their fairest hopes for the future, which but too soon proved
false.
Jehoram, king of Judah, forgetful of the lessons of his father, aiid

g.
led by his wife, Athaliah, into the wicked ways of Ahab and Jezebel,
commenced by the murder of his six brothers and of very many great
personages, who probably did not share in his leaning towards Phoeni-
cian idolatry. As weak as he was cruel, he soon became an object of
contempt to his subjects, and did not know how to make his authority
ELISHA AND HAZAEL. 163
respected abroad. The Idumaans revolted, and set up an independent

king, after having assassinated the Jewish vassal king. Jehoram then
marched against the rebels, and obtained a success on the frontiers, but
had not sufficient strength to reconquer Iduma-a, which remained inde-
pendent. At the same time, the sacerdotal city Libnah, in the low
country of Judcea, refused to obey the impious king.
Hordes of Arabs from the south invaded the unfortunate land of
Judah assisted by the Philistmes, they ravaged the country and pil-
;
laged the domains of the king, whose sons, with the exception of
one named Jehoahaz, or Ahaziah, perished in the conflict. During this
time serious dangers threatened the capital of the kingdom of Israel.
War had been re-kindled between that kingdom and Damascus. Ben-
hidri laid siege to Samaria; and the city, closely blockaded by the
enemy, was reduced to such a fearful state of famine, that a mother
killed and ate her own child.* Nevertheless, God was willing still to
save the people of Israel and give them a great occasion to call to
mind His wondrous works to themselves as well as to their fathers.
In conformity with a prediction of Elisha, the besieging army, having
heard a miraculous noise, was seized with ]mnic; it fled away in the
darkness of night, and the pillage of the camp by the Israelites at once
restored plenty to Samaria.
10. Elijah, before his disappearance, had announced that the crown
of Israel was to be transferred to Jehu, one of the generals of Ahab
and Jehoram and that of Damascus to Hazael, the chief councillor of
;
Ben-hidri. The momentfor the accomplishment of this double pro-

phecy had come. Elisha went to Damascus, at a time when Ben-hidri
was seriously ill. Informed of the arrival of the prophet, whose repu-
tation was immense, he sent Hazael to him, to ask the issue of his
illness (2 Kings viii. 10). "Go and say to him," replied Elisha,
'
Thou mayest certainly recover howbeit the Lord hath showed me
' ;
that he shall surely die. " And after having pronounced these words,
the prophet fixed for a long time his eyes on Hazael, with a look full
of sorrow, and his eyes filled with tears. And Hazael said, " Why
weepeth my lord ?" And he answered, "Because I know the evil that
thou wilt do unto the children of Israel their strongholds wilt thou set
;
on fire, and their young men thou wilt slay with the sword, and wilt
dash their children." And Hazael said, "But what, is thy servant a
dog, that he should do this thing?" And Elisha answered, "The
Eord hath showed me that thou shalt be king over Syria."
The next day Hazael, impatient to realise the prophecy, suffocated
Ben-hidri in his bed, by covering his face with a wet cloth. Having
then mounted the throne of Damascus, he continued hostilities against
* See Deut. xxviii. 50—53, and Josephus, JVars, vi., 3, 4.

M 2
the kingdom of Samaria. At the same time Jehoram, king of Judah,
died at the age of forty years, after horrible suffering from a disease
which had lasted two His death excited no regret his body
years. ;
was buried out of the sepulchre of the royal family, and refused the
honours due to kings. His son Ahaziah, aged twenty-two years, suc-
ceeded him. Completely controlled by his mother, Athaliah, and by the
advice of his relations of the family of Ahab, he persisted in the impious
course of Jehoram, his father. His maternal uncle, Jehoram, king of Israel,
persuaded him to take part in the new expedition he was about to make
Ramoth-
against the king of Syria, again to attempt the re-conquest of
Gilead. Jehoram and Ahaziah went personally to the siege of that
. city. They managed to get possession of Ramoth but king Jehoram
;
was seriously wounded, and obliged to retire to Jezreel.

II. The prophet Elisha judged that the time had arrived for the
revolution predicted by Elijah, since become even more necessaiy from
the intimate alliance between the two kings of the Hebrew people, and
their common tendency to Phcenician idolatry, which threatened to root
out the worship of Jehovah. Elisha sent one of his disciples secretly to
anoint Jehu as king of Israel. The disciple repaired to Ramoth, where
Jehu was, with other captains of the army of Jehoram. No sooner had
these officers, companions and friends of Jehu, learned the mission ol
the prophet, than they solemnly proclaimed him who had been anointed
king with sound of the trumpets, and caused him to be recognised by
the whole army. Jehu marched at once on Jezreel, where Jehoram
was lying sick of his wounds, and where Ahaziah had gone to visit him.
Jehoram got into his chariot, and went out of the city to meet the
approaching squadron, accompanied by Ahaziah.
The two kings met Jehu near the field which had belonged to Naboth.
" Is it peace ?" asked Jehoram of his former general. " What peace ?"
replied Jehu, " so long as whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and
the
her witchcrafts are so many." Then Jehoram turned his horses and
fled, exclaiming, " There is treachery, O Ahaziah." But at the same
instant an arrow, shot by Jehu, pierced him between the shoulders, and
stretched him dead in his chariot. Jehu ordered one of his followers to
cast the body of Jehoram into the field of Naboth, to avenge the in-
nocent blood shed by Ahab and Jezebel. Ahaziah had taken to flight.
Jehu ordered him to be pursued. He was overtaken near Ibleam,
mortally W'Ounded, and was carried to Megiddo, where he died. His
body was taken to Jerusalem, and buried in the city of David. Jehu,
pursuing his work of extermination, entered Jezreel. Lifting his eyes
to the windows of the palace, he saw Jezebel, painted and adorned
with her best ornaments, looking out. He caused her to be thrown
from the window, and she was trodden under the feet of his horses. When
a little afterwards he ordered her to be buried, they found only the
—
ATHALIAH. 165
head, hands, and feet ; the rest of her body had been devoured by
dogs, according to the prophecy of EUjah.
Seventy sons of Ahab remained at Samaria ; they were massacred by
the people, and their heads sent to Jezreel. All that remained of
the house of Ahab, all and the
the nobles of his court, his friends,
priests of Baal, perished. The statue of that deity was burnt, and his
temple demolished and " made a draft house." But in spite of his zeal
for Jehovah, Jehu did not even attempt to re-establish His worship in
all its purity he allowed Jeroboam's golden calves to remain.
; The
prophets, satisfied with their victory, and with the chastisement of the
impiety of the royal race, promised continuance to his dynasty; but
they were unable to preserve the kingdom of Israel from the attacks
which menaced it from without, or to preserve for it that power which
it had latterly been on many occasions able to employ, thanks to the
close alliance existing between the two courts of Samaria and Jeni-
salem.
at the same time in the
Events, not less sanguinary, had taken place
kingdom of Judah. Ahaziah died at the age of twenty-three years.
As all the sons he left behind hnn were under age, Athaliah, his
mother, found herself legally invested with the government, as their
guardian, with the title of regent. But .she conceived the project of
assuring the perpetuity of her power, and the final triumph of the
worship of Baal at Jerusalem, by the extinction of the house of
David. She did not shrink even from a frightful crime to attain that
object, and caused all her grandsons, children of Ahaziah, to be slain
before her own eyes. .She reigned for six years after that odious act,
and Baal replaced Jehovah in the worship of the city of David.
Section IV. The Kingdom.s of Judah and Israel, from the

Reign of Athaliah to the Death of Azariah (886 758). —
I. Nevertheless, a sister of Ahaziah, Jehosheba, wife of the high
priest Jehoiada, had saved one of these victims devoted to death by the
ambition of Athaliah, Jelioash, only one year old. The child remained
for six years concealed in the Temple, unknown to all except Jehoiada.
But in the seventh year, the high priest assemliled in the Temple the
Levites and the chiefs of the army, he told them that there still re-
mained a son of Ahaziah, showed him to them, and made them swear
to recognise and defend him. At this news, and at the sound of the
acclamations of the people, who saluted Jehoash, Athaliah ran in, but
was at once seized by the orders of the high priest, and put to death ;
her body, like that of Jezebel, was trodden under the feet of the horses.
At the same time the people entered the temple of Baal, overturned his
altars, broke in pieces his images, and put Mattan, the high priest of
Baal, to death before the altar.
Jehoash governed during his minority under the advice of the high
who found him a docile pupil, giving good hopes of
priest Jehoiada,
the firm establishment of the national worship. When the king was of
proper age, Jehoiada married him to two wives, by whom he had many
children of both sexes. One of the first cares of the young prince was
the restoration of the Temple of Jerusalem, which had been exposed to
every sort of desecration under the preceding reigns. Jehoash directed
the priests to employ for that purpose the money arising from redemp-
tions and voluntary and that they should also make special col-
gifts,
lections for the repairs of the Temple.

2. During this time the kingdom of Israel grew weaker under the
dominion of Jehu. The bravery of that king, and the support he

received from the order of prophets, could not protect the country
from the invasion of the Syrians, who, led by their king Hazael, oc-
cupied all the provinces situated east of the Jordan, and -there exercised
cruelties which were long remembered.
It evidently was to obtain
support against these redoubtable enemies that Jehu humbly solicited

the favour of Shalmanezer IV., king of Assyria. In the cuneiform
inscriptions on the "black obelisk," now preserved in the British
Museum, "I received tribute from Jehu, son of
this last prince says,
Omri— silver, gold, plates of gold, cups of gold, vases of various kinds
;
hand of the king " and one of the
in gold, sceptres for the bas-reliefs
of the same monument shows Jehu prostrating himself, with his face to
the earth, before the Assyrian monarch, as if acknowledging himself a
vassal. Jehu died twenty-eighth year of his reign (858), leaving
in the
the throne to his son Jehoahaz.*
Hazael continued his attacks on the kingdom of Israel, under its new
prince, mIio was far from showing his father Jehu's zeal for the worship
of Jehovah images of Ashtoreth were again seen even in Samaria.
;
The army of Jehoahaz, decimated by continual battles, was reduced to

10,000 infantry, fifty horsemen, and ten war chariots. Nevertheless,
with this feeble remnant, encouraged probably by the prophets, whose
favour Jehoahaz managed to gain by his repentance, he contrived to
hold the Syrian troops in check, and to re-establish tranquillity for a
time. Jehoahaz died in the seventeenth year of his reign. His son
Jehoash succeeded to the throne and so, for the second time, the two
;
Hebrew kingdoms were under tiie government of princes of the same

name.
* The celebrity of Omri, the founder of Samaria, was such that the
Assyrians believed that all the kings of Israel, as well as Jehu, were
descended from him.
APOSTACY AND DEATH OF JEHOASTT. 167
3. Jehoash, king of Judah, persevered in religious orthodoxy, in

fidelity to the precepts of the law, and docility to the councils of the
sanctuary, so long as the high priest Jehoiada survived, who lived, it is
said, to the age of 130 years. The respect which Jehoiada had inspired
was so great, that he was buried in the royal sepulchre. But after the
death of the venerable high priest, the favourers of the Phoenician
worship ventured again to hold up their heads, and Jehoash had the
weakness to show them culpable toleration. It was in vain that the
prophets lifted up their voices ; the high priest Zachariah, son of

Jehoiada, having dared one day, in the court of the Temple, to reproach
the people with this defection, and to menace them with Divine chas-
tisement, was stoned by order of the ungrateful king, and expired,
crying out, " The Lord look upon it and require it" (2 Chron. xxiv. 22).
The chastisement of Jehovah was not, in fact, long delayed. In the
year following, Hazael having penetrated with his army as far as Gath,
which he conquered, threatened to besiege Jerusalem; and the weak
Jehoash could only escape from his enemies by paying to the king of
Syria a disgraceful tribute, for which he employed the treasures of the
Temple. This event caused a conspiracy to bi-eak out, contrived, it
may be, by the priests, who wished to avenge the death of Zachariah.
Jehoash was assassinated by two of his servants, after an inglorious
reign, which had lasted forty years (839). He v\as refused burial in the
royal sepulchre.
Amaziah, son of Jehoash, reigned next, for twenty-nine years he ;
made himself, no doubt, agreeable to the priests and prophets, by

dealing severely with the partisans of the Phoenician worship, for the
only accusation brought against him is, that he allowed the irregular
sanctuaries of the high places still to exist. As soon as he was firm on
his he punished with death the murderers of his father; but he
tlu-one,
is praised for the pardon which, in conformity with the Mosaic law, he
extended to the children of the guilty (2 Chron. xxv. 4). An expedi-

tion, he undertook against the Idumaâns, was crowned with Ijrilliant
success; after having vanquished them in battle, he possessed himself
of their capital, Sela, which, in later times, was called by tlie Greeks
Petm.
4. Aljout the same epoch Jehoash, king of Israel, gained equally
signal advantages over the Syrians. Hazael had died at a very advanced
age, and his son Ben-hidri, the third of thename who is mentioned in
the Bible, had succeeded him. Jehoash, encouraged by the last dying
words of the prophet Elisha, atUcked and defeated Ben-hidri, and took
from him all the cities which Hazael had taken from Jehoahaz. But he
was arrestedin the midst of these successes by the incursions of some
Moabitish bands, which caused him much disquiet; afterwards war
broke out between him and Amaziah, king of Judah. The troops of
tlic latter were and put to flight, and Amaziah fell alive
totally defeated
into the hands of his enemies. Jehoash marched at once on Jerusalem,
and entered it through a breach in the wall ; he carried off the treasures
that remained in the Temple and in the king's palace, and returned
to Samaria, taking with him numerous hostages, probably in exchange
for Amazlali, whom he released. Scripture represents this misfortune of
Amaziah as the just punishment of his infidelity to Jehovali, for it
accuses him of having woi-shipped the deities of the Idumajans, after
the victory which he had gained over that people, and of threatening
the projihet who ventured to reprimand him.
Jehoash, king of Israel, died in the sixteenth year of his reign (827),
leaving as successor his son Jeroboam II. Some years after this (8io),
Amaziah, was assassinated at Lachish, where he had
like his father,
taken refuge from conspirators; his body was brought to Jerusalem,
and buried in the sepulchre of the kings.
51 Uzziah, otherwise called Azariah, his son and successor, whose
accession was hailed with joy by all the people, calmed the disorders of
parties, and promised Judali a time of good fortune and power. The
young king displayed much attachment to the worship of Jehovah, and
it appears that a prophet, named Zechariah, exercised a most happy
influence over him. In the early years of his reign he secured the
submission of the Idumseans, by retaking and fortifying the city of
Elath, on the Elanitic Gulf. He also made conquests over the Philis-
tines, retook Gath, and even possessed himself of Ashdod, which he
fortified. He subdued lastly the Ammonites, whom he made to pay
tribute, as well as the Arabs of Gurbaal.
In spite of his warlike character, Uzziah did not the less favour the
arts of peace whilst he renewed and augmented the defences of all the
;
cities of his kingdom, he actively encouraged the progress of agriculture,
and had a number of agricultural labourers and vine

in his service
dressers. His flocks covered the plains ; in those parts of the deserts
suitable for pasture he had many cisterns dug, and liuilt towers to
protect the shepherds. His reign, which lasted nearly fifty-two years,
was one of the most glorious in the history of the Hebrews. But
towards the close of his reign, Uzziah, puffed up by his military suc-
cesses and his prosperity, attempted the same usurpation as Saul. He
wished, in contempt of the law, and in spite of the protests of the
priests, to assume sacerdotal functions. He was suddenly stmck with
leprosy, at the moment when he was himself offering incense at the
altar of incense. He was obliged, king though he was, to shut himself
up, in confonnity with the Mosaic ordinances ; and this prince was
condemned to end his days in the most complete isolation. His son
Jotham became regent.
6. The kingdom of Israel had again become very powerful under
PROSPERITY OF THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL. 169
Jeroboam who, following up the success obtained by his father over

II.,
the Syrians, attacked them on their own territory, and made conquests
in the neighbourhood of Damascus and Hamath. It appears even from
a passage in the Book of Kings (2 Kings xiv. 28) that the Israelites occu-
pied these two cities for some time. All the country east of the Jordan,
from Hamath to the Dead Sea, was again brought under the dominion
of the king of Samaria. The prophet Jonah, son of Amittai, of the
tribe of Zebulon, had encouraged king Jeroboam to this war, and pre-
dicted its complete success. This sudden good fortune of the kingdom
of Israel introduced into it riches and luxury, and all the evils of corrupt
society were soon to be seen there. The prophet Amos, a simple
shepherd of Tekoa, in the land of Judah, presented himself at Bethel,
and in language full of energy, boldness, and ardent zeal for truth and
justice, reproached Israel for the worship of the images at Bethel and
Dan, their effeminacy and licentious luxury, and the injustice and oppres-
sion to which they subjected the poor he threatened Jeroboam and the
;
nobles of Samaria with the anger of heaven, and in the midst of their
careless security he unfolded to them the distant prospect of exile and
death. Already the Assyrian power was menacing, and all Western Asia
trembled at the news of its rapid progress. Amaziah, high priest of
Bethel, desired Jeroboam to put Amos to death ; but the king confined
himself to expelling the prophet from his territories.
.
7. From this time, especially, the noblest development of prophecy
commences. Protesting against idolatry, and even against too strong

an attachment to the purely exterior forms of the worship of Jehovah,
against the corruption of morals, the faults or tyranny of kings; the
prophets were at once preachers and political orators. Inspired by the
Spirit of God, who unveiled to them thebegan to predict
future, they
the splendors of the new announce in the most
Jerusalem, and to
precise terms the advent of the Saviour promised to Israel and to all
nations.
Together with Amos there was the prophet Joel, the son of Pethuel,
whose predictions have come downi to us. And at the same time,
Isaiah began to prophesy, whose writings were deposited in the Temple
at Jerusalem, and preserved with religious care. The words of this
great prophet point above all to the promised and expected Messiah:
"Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul
delighteth I have put my spirit upon him he shall bring forth judg-
; :
ment to the Gentiles" (xlii. i). " He shall see of the travail of his
soul and be satisfied by his knowledge shall my righteous servant
:
justify many; he shall bear their iniquities'' (liii. 11). "Arise,

for
shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon
thee. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness
the people : but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be
—
I70 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to iliy lit^lit, and kinjjs to
the brightness of thy rising " (Ix. 1—3).
8. Jeroboam 11. died in the forty-first year of his reign (784), and tlie
dates of tlie Book of Kings leave us to infer that liis son Zachariah did
not ascend the throne till eleven or twelve years after (773). It is pro-
bable that death of Jeroboam the kingdom of Israel was divided
at the
by factions; either Zachariah was too young to reign, or he was too

weak to put down the seditious, who disputed the throne with him, or
wished to annihilate royalty. The words of the prophet Hosea, who
partly belongs to this epoch, confirm these suppositions. The prophet
says, "Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty; he shall
break down their altars, he shall spoil their images. For now they
shall say, We
have no king, because we feared not the Lord what then ;
should a king do to us? They have spoken words, swearing falsely in

making a covenant thus judgment springeth up as hemlock in the
:
furrows of the field" (Hos. x. 2).

Zachariah at last established himself on the throne of his father, in
the thirty-eighth year of the reign of Uzziah, king of Judah, but he
reigned only six months. A
rebel, named Shallum, son of Jabesh,
assassinated him presence of the people, probably during a riot,
in the
and possessed himself of the throne. Thus ended in its turn the dynasty
of Jehu; for none of those families, who successively raised themselves
to the throne of Israel, could ever for more than a few genera-
keep it
tions. Shallum only maintained himself for a month. Menahem, son

of Gadi, who commanded the army, and was then at Tirzah, marched
against him, and, having taken Samaria, slew the assassin of the king,
ascended the throne, and sat there for ten years. A town named
Tiphsah, situated, according to all appearances, near Tirzah, which had
not recognised Menahem as king, was taken by storm, and punished by
the new king with the most implacable cruelty.
9. king of Chaldsea and Assyria, then invaded Syria and
Pul,
threatened the kingdom of Israel. Menahem, unable to fight against
so powerful an enemy, extorted from the country 1,000 talents, or three
millions of shekels of and thus ransomed his army
silvei-, to give to Pul,
at the price of fifty shekels of silver a head, which
shows that it
numbered 60,000 men.* In return for this humiliation, which recalls to
us that of Jehu before Shalmaneser, Pul consented to withdraw his
troops, and to give his powerful assistance to Menahem, against those
internal enemies who contested his possession of the usurped throne.
But such conduct could onlv augment the hatred of the nation to
* It seems, however, doubtful whether the sum of fifty shekels was

not the amount extorted from each individual rather than the ransom
given for each soldier. Tr.
—
THE ASSYRIANS IN PALESTINE. 171
Menahem and his His son Pekaliiah succeeded him in the

family.
fiftieth year of the reign of Uzziah, king of Judah (761). After two
years one of his officers, Pekah, son of RemaUah, with fifty men of
Gilead, formed a conspiracy against and assassinated him in the palace
of Samaria (759). After this crime, Pekah ascended the throne. The
prophet llosea unfolds to our eyes a dark picture of this period of
anarchy and crime. "The Lord," says he, " liath a controversy with
the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor
knowledge of God in the land. By swearing, and lying, and killing,
and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood
toucheth blood. Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that
dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with
the fowls of heaven yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken
;
away" (Hos. iv. I 4). — "They all are hot as an oven, and have
devoured their judges all their
; kings are fallen there is none among
:
them that calleth upon me" (vii. 7). "They have set up kings, but
not by me : they have made princes, and I knew it not : of their
silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut
off" (viii. 4). Towards the end of the second year of Pekah (758),
Uzziah, king of Judah, died in the hospital at Jerusalem, to which he had
been compelled to retire, at the age of sixty-eight, and after a reign of
fifty-two years. His son jotham, the regent, succeeded him.
Section V. Intervention of the Assyrians in Palestine.

Decline of the Kingdom of Israel and Fall of Samaria.
(758-721)=
I. Jotham, who at the age of twenty- five years succeeded his father
on the throne of Judah, distinguished himself by his energy and piety,
and his reign was one of the happiest in the annals of Judah. The
Bible nevertheless blames him for having allowed the high places still to
exist, and permitting the people to offer sacrifices there. To the fortifi-
cations erected by his father, he added others as a preparation for the
dangers threatening the land. He restored the Temple, and erected some
important works at Jerusalem. He fought with success against the
Ammonites, and compelled them during three years to pay a considerable
tribute. During this time internal disorders, occasioned by the conflict-
ing claims of many competitors for the throne, continued as violent as
ever in the kingdom of Israel. The Book of Kings assigns eight years
less for the reign of Pekah than the period which elapsed between his
first accession to the throne and his death. But this strange circumstance
—
is explained by tlic Assyrian inscriptions,* the historical bearing of
which was first pointed out by M. Oppert. It is found that the reign
of Pekah was interrupted for more than seven years; that about 742
he was deposed by a second Menahem, probably a son of Pekahiah,
who was placed on the throne by Tiglath-pileser II., king of Assyria,
to whom he paid tribute as a vassal. In 733 a new revolution de-
throned him and restored Pekah. The latter, openly hostile to the
Assyrians, whose vassal he had dethroned, made an alliance with Resin,

king of Damascus. These two princes, even in the time of Pekah's first
reign, had formed the project of overturning the throne of the house of
David and installing as king in Jerusalem a certain Ben Tabeal, a
creature of their own,f in order, probably, to oppose a more compact
force to the Assyrians; but the wise measures of Jotham did not permit
them to carry their project into execution. Unfortunately, however,
Jotham died, after a reign of sixteen years, when he was hardly forty-
two years old (742).
2. His son and successor, Ahaz, a young man about twenty years of
age, possessed none of his father's good qualities.

' He, by his own
example, encouraged Phoenician idolatry; he erected statues of Baal,
and went so far as even to take part in the abominable worship of
Moloch, by making his son pass through the fire in the valley of
Hinnom. Weak and timid, he could not compel the respect of his
powerful neighbours; in the very beginning of his reign, Pekah and
Resin invaded the land of Judah, and Jerusalem was threatened with a
siege. Ahaz resolved to throw himself into the arms of the king of
Assyria, and to purchase his help by a disgraceful tribute. The prophet
Isaiah in vain attempted to deter him by advice and threats.
The danger passed away from Jerusalem itself, but Pekah inflicted
serious losses on the troops of Ahaz. Carrying out, then, his unpatriotic
project, the king of Judah called in to his assistance Tiglath-pileser,
whose protection he purchased with the treasures of the Temple and of
the palace. The Assyrian monarch, always anxious for new conquests,
and desirous of adopting that policy of his predecessors of which
Palestine had been the oljject, did not make him wait long. Pie in-
vaded the kingdom of Damascus, took the capital, killed Resin, and
united the states that prince had governed to his own vast empire. A
great part of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Damascus were trans-
* Layard, Cuneiform Inscriptions, plate 50. Cuneiform Inscriptions

of Western Asia, vol. ii., plate 67.
+ This project seems to have been conceived and even attempted in

the time of Jotham, but more fully carried out after the accession of
Ahaz. Compare 2 Kings xv. 37, and Isaiah vii. i 6. Tr, —
— —
AHAZ AND HEZEKIAH. 173
ported into Armenia, to tlie banks of tlic river Cyrus* From Syria
Tiglatli-pileser penetrated into the land of Israel, and occupied the
whole of Galilee and Perrea, whence he transported the principal inha-
bitants to Assyria (732). This was the commencement of the captivity
of the ten tribes, and the kingdom of Israel was henceforth confined to
the limits of the small tract around Samaria. Pekah, the king, was
shortly after assassinated, the victim of a conspiracy, at the head of
which was Hoshea, son of lilah, who wished to place himself on the
throne.
Ahaz visited the king of Assyria at Damascus, to pay homage as a
vassal. On this occasion, having seen the great altar at Damascus, he
sent the pattern of it to the high priest Urijah at Jerusalem, ordering
him to set up a similar one in the court of the Temple. f The new
charged with idolatrous symbols, replaced that which Solomon
altar,
had constructed. Not content with this profanation, Ahaz, on his
return to Jerusalem, set up altars everywhere to .Syrian deities, and
ended by entirely closing the sanctuary of the true God. He had,
however, no cause to congratulate himself on the Assyrian alliance,
which he had so dearly purchased, and he soon found how galling
were the bonds of vassalage he had voluntarily assumed. The
Idumreans made incursions into the territory of Judah, for the purpose
of pillage. At the same time the Philistines, profiting by the weakness
of Ahaz, took some important cities. Ahaz died in the sixteenth year
of his reign (727) though still yoimg, he was not regretted, and was
;
refused even the honours of royal sepulture. He left, in his son

Hezekiah, a successor who afforded the brightest hopes to the king-
dom. In his earliest years, the prophet Isaiah had announced him as a
saviour to Judah, who should re-establish the renown of the house of
David.
3. Hezekiah exhibited in every respect the most complete contrast to
his father he manifested the most ardent zeal for religion, from the
;
moment of his accession to the throne; he re-opened the Temple,

which had been closed by Ahaz. Everywhere the statues of Phoenician
divinities were broken in pieces, and he even suppressed the high
places, where worship, although addressed to Jehovah, was in illegal
rivalry with the central sanctuary, and contrary to the prescriptions of
the Mosaic law. Wishing to destroy all that could give occasion for
* Now the Kur, between the Caspian and Black Seas. full de- A
scription of this river and district is given in Sir R. Ker Porter's
Travels, vol. i., 107 113. Tr. —
t The majority of Assyrian altars, however, seem to have been free
from emblems of any kind. Some of them were square, ornamented with
gradines ; others triangular, with circular tops. One of the latter de-
scription, discovered by Mr. Layard, is in the British Museum. Tr.
—
17+ ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
idolatry, Ilezekiah broke in pieces the brazen serpent wliich Moses had
made to setup in the desert, and which had become the object of
superstitious worship to the people. The first Passover after tlie acces-
sion of Hezekiah was celelirated with extraordinary solemnity; the
king sent messengers to Samaria, and to all that reniaineil of the
kingdom of Judah, to invite the attendance of all who were still
faithful to the law of the Lord. A. small number did come to Jeru-
salem, but the majority of the population insulted and maltreated
Hezekiali's messengers. Completing his reforms, the pious king re-
organised the body of priests and Levites, under the auspices of the
high priest Azariah.
4. During this hour of the kingdom of Samaria was
time the last
fast approaching. "For so it (2 Kings xvii. 7),
was," says Scripture
"that the children of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God,
which had brought them out of the land of Egypt." Ver. 16, 17
"And they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, and
made them molten images, even two calves, and made a grove, and
worshipped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And they caused
their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, and used divi-
nation and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of
the Lord, to provoke him to anger." In vain had the prophets multi-
plied their warnings, Israel had remained deaf to all threats and even ;
the invasion of the king of Assyria, carrying into captivity a part of the
people, had not led the rest of them to repentance.
The day of Divine chastisement, therefore, had at last arrived.
Hoshea, the assassin of Pekah, had succeeded in mounting the throne,
three years before the accession of Hezekiah (730) he was a vassal of ;
the king of Assyria, and paid tribute to Shalmaneser VII.,* successor

of Tiglath-pileser. We know from the writings of the prophets of
this epoch, that in the kingdom of Israel, as well as in that of Judah,
there were always advocates of an alliance with Egypt, then governed
by the warlike Shebek, the So of the Bible, who alone seemed able
to oppose the invasions of Assyria, and who himself was interested in
keeping at a distance from his frontiers a power whose thirst for foreign
conquest seemed unable to confine itself to Asia. The prophets dis-
trusted such an alliance, and expressed their disapprobation with energy.
King Hoshea, nevertheless, expected to find in it a means of safety.
He signed a treaty with So, and immediately refused his tribute to the
king of Assyria. Shalmaneser, at this news, burst like a thunderbolt
on the land of Israel, seized Hoshea and threw him into prison, occu-
pied the whole country, and laid siege to Samaria, the capital, where
* Shalmaneser IV., according to Sir H. Rawlinson. See Tabular

List of Assyrian Kings at the end of Book IV.
FALL OF SAMARIA. 175
the turbulent and warlike Ephraimite aristocracy had fortified them-

selves (723). Samaria made an obstinate resistance to the enemy's
attacks, nnd the siege operations were at length relaxed on the part of
the Assyrians, and turned into a blockade. Important events had in fact
occurred at Nineveh ; Shalmaneser was dead, and Sargon had usurped
power. At last, in the third year of the siege, the new king came
himself to Samaria; he renewed the operations with vigor, and the
last bulwark of Israelitish independence was swept away (721). Ac-
cording to the practice constantly adopted by the Assyrian conquerors
of that epoch, all who could give any cause
the principal inhabitants
for apprehension, especially the and warlike, were compelled to
rich
emigrate, and the conquered country was re-peopled successively under
Sargon and his successors, by different races of the vast Assyrian
empire, chiefly from Chaldgea.
At the moment when the kingdom of Israel thus fell a victim to
internal strife, to military revolutions,and to false policy, the kingdom
of Judah was reanimated with new life under king Hezekiah. There,
in spite of the failings of verj' many kings, and of a portion of the
people, the central sanctuary and the dynasty of David had always
withstood the inaiption of the irreligion, and of the political passions
which had proved so disastrous to Israel. The prophets were more
listened to, the priests exercised a greater influence, and both the State
and David's dynasty had owed to them their safety in the perilous days
of Athaliah. Israel had but a few days of greatness and happiness
under king Jeroboam XL, whilst Judah enjoyed long years of glory
and prosperity under the happy reigns of Asa, Jehoshaphat and
Uzziah. Besides, the geographical position of Judah was much more
advantageous, and Jerusalem above all occupied a very defensible
position.*
Sargon did not attempt to subdue the kingdom of Judah Samaria ;
taken, he marched with all speed to the land of the Philistines, there
to meet Shebek, king of Egypt, who, not having been able to come
soon enough to save Israel, entered Palestine at that moment. After
having vanquished him at Raphia, and compelled the Philistine cities
to obedience, the Assyrian conqueror, retracing his steps, penetrated
into Phoenicia, where he took all the cities with the exception of Tyre.
But, occupied by these conquests, he left Hezekiah and the kingdom of
Judah in tranquillity.
* See Bernhardi. Ccnuiientatio de caiisis qiiibus effectum sit ut

Re'^mini jfiuice diiUiiis permaiuret quain Regiiiim Israel. Louvain,
1825.
— —
Section VI. The Kingdom of Judah, from the Capture of

Samaria to the Battle of Megiddo (721—610).
1. The historical books of tlie Bil)le tell us nothing of what passed

in the kingdom of Judah during the twenty years of profound peace
which Hezekiah enjoyed after tlie terror the conquest of Samaria by
Sargon and the establishment of Assyrian garrisons on the very frontiers
of his state must have caused him. But the writings of the jirophet
Isaiah give us a lively picture of the moral and political condition of
the people of Judah at this period of their history. Happy in its king,
and trusting surely in the valour of its soldiers, Judaea was nevertheless
troubled by the intrigues of a party who, instead of seeking safety in
piety and faith in Jehovah, breathed only war, and counted on the
chariots and horses of Egypt, which the prophet pronounced useless,
and even dangerous, to Judah. This party, numbering in its ranks im-
portant personages, and even priests and prophets, misconceived the
true spiritual sense of the religious precepts of the law, and attached
itself almost entirely to outward observances. It abandoned itself to
the indulgence of its passions, violated right, and oppressed the people.
The land, said Isaiah, can never enjoy real happiness till God has
punished these impious people with exemplary chastisement.
2. In spite of the influence which Isaiah exercised over king Heze-
kiah, the party for war at any price, and for an Egyptian alliance,
prevailed at the court of Jerusalem, when in 704 Sargon died, leaving
Babylon separated from his kingdom by a most serious revolt. All the
nations of Palestine thought to find in this change of masters a favour-
able opportunity for throwing off the Assyrian yoke. A general coali-
tion of their princes was organised under the auspices and with the
concurrence of the Ethiopian Shabatok, the Sethos of Herodotus, who
then reigned over Egypt. The petty sovereigns of the cities of Pho;-
nicia, and of the Philistine towns, the kings of Ammon, Moab, and
Edom, all at the same time refused tribute, and allied themselves with.
Hezekiah who opened hostilities by taking Migron,* a town of the

tribe of Benjamin, on the frontier of the former kingdom of Israel,
which Sargon had detached from the kingdom of Judah, and where he
had installed one of his own creatures with the title of king.
But the new king who was about to mount the throne of Assyria
was the terrible Sennacherib. He allowed more than three years to
elapse before he came to chastise the audacity of the princes of Pales-
tine, being occupied in putting down the insurrections of the Chaldsean
* It must be mentioned that Sir H. Rawlinson reads this name

Ekron. See note to Book iv., chap, iii., sec. 3, 2. Tk.
INVASION OF SENNACHERIB. 177
Merodach Baladan, and Babylon to obedience, and after-

in reducing
wards had been manifested in the
in repressing the desire for revolt that
turbulent provinces situated to the north and east of Assyria. But as
soon as he was thus well secured against all chance of insurrections,
which, breaking out in his rear, might compel him to retrace his steps
after reaching the territory of Palestine, he marched on that country
at the head of all the forces of his empire. He threw himself first on
Phoenicia, defeated Luliya (Eululjeus) king of Tyre, who had then the
suzerainty over the other Phoenician cities. All submitted to him, and
the terrified kings of Amnion, Moab and Edom hastened — to use a
—
modern Oriental expression to beg A maun without having attempted
to fight. Sennacherib, advancing by the sea coast, entered the countiy
of the Philistines, whom he crushed; defeated in their territory an
Egyptian army advancing to help them, and finally arrived at Migron,
where he re-established the prince, his creature, whom Hezekiah had
dethroned.
3. Hezekiah was left alone after the defeat of his allies. From this
time it is that the Bible narrative commences, for it is silent as to the
events which led to the invasion of the kingdom of Judah by Senna-
cherib, and it is only from the inscriptions of the Assyrian king that we
have been able to relate them.* Sennacherib, according to the Book
of Kings, which here completely agrees with the inscribed monuments of
Assyria, invaded the territory of Judah, possessed himself successively
of all its away a considerable part of its people into
fortresses, led
captivity, and came in person to Jerusalem. Hezekiah, to
at last
save his capital and the Temple from the profanation with which
they were menaced by Sennacherib's army, humbled himself before
the king of Assyria, who imposed on him a tribute of 30 talents
of gold and 300 talents of silver. To pay this, Hezekiah cut oft
even the gold which covered the doors of the Temple, probaljly with
the'wish of making the Assyrians believe that his treasury was not
sufficient to pay so considerable a sum, and that nothing more was
possible, for, less than a year after, he was found making a parade of
his treasures before the Babylonian ambassadors. Sennacherib left,
after having received this tribute, to press the siege of the very strong
fortress of Lachish, in the plain country of Judah, which was soon
forced to surrender. At the same time his outpostswere advanced as
far as Pelusium, on the frontiers of Egypt, for he intended to invade that
country after having completed the subjugation of Judaea.
But while encamped before Lachish, Sennacherib conceived the idea
that it would be imprudent, just when he was about to march into Egypt,
to leave behind him a city so important as Jerusalem without securing it
* See Oppert, Les Inscriptions des Sargonides, p. 44, seq.

N
I7S ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
by a gan-ison. He
therefore sent a strong body of troops to reduce the
capital of Judah. Hezekiah decided on resistance by the advice of
Isaiah, who had regained his legitimate ascendancy over him, and
neglected nothing to jnit Jerusalem into a defensible state. He covered
up the springs might furnish the assailants with water, repaired the
that
walls wherever there were breaches, demolished the houses likely to
interfere with the defence, and diverted the water of the fountain of
Siloam into the city.
Very soon the general-in-chief of the Assyrian army (Tartan), the
grand cupbearer of the king (Rab-shakeh), and the chief of the
eunuchs (Rab Saris),* presented themselves before the walls, bearing the
summons of Sennacherib. Hezekiah sent three officers to confer with
them. The grand cupbearer spoke, and in haughty language ridiculed
the plans for defence, and the bravery which the king of Judah boasted
of, and called Egypt, whence Hezekiah expected aid, a bruised reed,
which could only wound the hand that should lean on it. " But if ye
say unto me," he added, "We trust in the Lord our God, is it not he
whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah hath taken away, and hath
said to Judah and to Jeresalem, Ye shall worship before this altar in
Jerusalem. Now therefore give pledges to my lord, the king of
Assyria, and I will deliver to thee 2,000 horses if thou be able on thy
part to set riders on them. * * Am
I now come up without the
Lord againrit this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, Go up
against this land and destroy it." The servants of Hezekiah asked him
to speak in Syriac, so as not to be understood by the people who were
on the wall, but the Assyrian replied that it was precisely to those men
who were in danger of dying of hunger and thirst that his words were
addressed then raising his voice he spoke to the soldiers of Hezekiah
;
in the Hebrew tongue, saying that their king was deceiving them, and
that he had no power to save them ; that the king of Assyria, on the
other hand, offered them good fortune and tranquillity, and would lead
them away to a land more fertile than their own, and moreover that
Jehovah would no more save them than other gods had saved their own
countries. This speech was listened to in profound silence, Hezekiah
having forbidden any reply.
Hezekiah and the people went into the Temple, with their clothes
rent, to prostrate themselves before Jehovah, and implore His compas-
sion. Isaiah encouraged them, promising them in the name of God a
speedy deliverance. Nevertheless Sennacherib, having taken Lachish,
had encamped at Libnah on his way to Jerusalem. He there learned
* Most histories consider these as three personages, whom they call

Tartan, Rab-shakeh and Rabsaris, taking their titles for proper names.
—
DESTRUCTION OF THE ASSYRIAN ARMY. 179
the approach of Tirhakah, prince royal of Ethiopia and Egypt, entrusted

with the command of the army by Sabatok, the king, who, at the head
of a nimierous body of troops, recruited chiefly on the borders of the
Upper Nile, advanced along the Delta, and was preparing to enter
Palestine, there to engage the Assyrians. The position of Sennacherib
might have become very perilous if Tirhakah had attacked him before
he had completely subdued the kingdom of Judah. In this position of
affairs he resolved to hasten the attack on Jerusalem, and sent to Heze-
kiah a new summons still more imperative than the fomier, and which
left him hardly a few days for consideration. The king read the letter,
and went to the Temple and addressed a fervent prayer to the Lord,
asking Him to avenge the outrage done to His name. Then Isaiah,
filled with Divine inspiration, announced to the king and people that
Jehovah had heard his prayer, and that very soon Sion and Jerusalem
would regard with scorn the humbled pride of Sennacherib, and that he
should not even attempt to besiege Jerusalem. In fact, in the following
night " the angel of the Lord went out, and smote in the camp of the
Assyrians an hundred and four score and five thousand " (2 Kings xix.
35), killed by the plague, which suddenly broke out in the midst of the
army.* With troops thus thinned by disease, Sennacherib could no
longer think of taking Jerusalem, nor of making head against the
numerous and fresh army Tirhakah was bringing up he hastily gave
;
orders to retreat, and during the remainder of his reign did not again
appear in Palestine. Hezekiah again took possession of his devas-
tated territoiy, and even of a number of the cities of Ephraim formerly
belonging to the kingdom of Israel; and which, throwing off the
Assyrian yoke, gave themselves up to him. As for the Egyptians,
content with being no longer threatened, they do not appear to have
pursued Sennacherib in his retreat, and they allowed him to retain
possession of the land of the Philistines as far as Gaza.
When Herodotus visited Egypt the priests related to him this
miraculous event, which had saved that country as well as the kingdom
of Judah from an Assyrian invasion, only, as was natural, they attributed
the prodigy to the power of their own gods (Her. ii. 141).
4. Judah was delivered from the Assyrians but the army of Seima-
;
cherib in its retreat had left the plague, as a last scourge, behind it.
Hezekiah was attacked, and his life was despaired of. The pious king
implored the Lord with tears, begging to live long enough to have an
heir who might ensure to the house of David the succession to the
crown. God heard his prayer, and Isaiah was commissioned to announce
* It has been suggested that the number recorded as slain in the

Assyrian camp may be read as 100 -f So -|- 5,000 =
5,180, instead of
185,000 as usually understood. Tr.
iSo ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
to the king his speedy recovery, in spite of the progixistications of his
physicians.
Tlie clieck which .Sennacherib had sustained had spread throughout
all Asia the renown of the kingdom of Judali, the only one to escape
the redoubtable conqueror before whom all trembled. So that before
long ambassadors arrived at Jerusalem from Merodach-Baladan, who had
revolted at Babylon against the Assyrian yoke, and expected an imme-
diate attack from Sennacherib. They came under the pretext of con-
gratulating Hezekiah on his recoveiy, but in reality to propose an
alliance against the common enemy. Hezekiah, flattered by this pro-
ceeding, with most imprudent vanity exhibited to the envoys of the
Babylonian prince his treasures, magazines and arsenals. Isaiah, the
constant counsellor of the king, knew the fresh dangers to which an
alliance with the Babylonian insurgents might expose the kingdom, and
enlightened by prophetic foresight said to the king, " Behold the days
come that all that is and that which thy fathers have laid
in thy house,
up in store unto this day, shall be carried into Babylon nothing shall be :
left, saith the Lord. And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which
thou shall beget, they shall take away ; and they shall be eunuchs in the
palace of the king of Babylon." The decisive defeat of Merodach-.
Baladan, only a few months later, did not, moreover, permit Hezekiah
to can-y out the desire which he seems to have had to listen to these
proposals.
5. Hezekiah passed the rest of his life in profound peace and in
endeavouring to repair the numberless evils which the amiy of Senna-
cherib had left behind it. He amassed, as provision for the future,
great treasures, levied numerous troops, established magazines and
arsenals, and Three years after
rebuilt the fortifications of his cities.
the Assyrian invasion his wife gave he named
him a son, whom
Manasseh, and who appears to have been associated with him on the
throne from the time of his birth, for the Book of Kings counts the
years of his reign from that time (697).
Under the reign of Hezekiah, Hebrew literature, which had declined
since the epoch of Solomon, received a fresh impulse, and this became
the golden age of prophetic poetry. By the side of Isaiah we find, at
the court of the king, the prophet Micah, of Moresheth, near Gath.
Itmost probably was towards the end of the reign of Hezekiah that
Nahum pronounced the sublime prophecy, in which, at the very
moment of the most brilliant prosperity of Nineveh, he announced its
approaching ruin. A passage in the Book of Proverbs (Prov. xxv. i),
gives us to understand that Hezekiah established a sort of academy,
charged with collecting and arranging ancient literary remains, and
especially the proverbs attributed to Solomon. The beautiful poem
composed by Hezekiah after his sickness, entitles the king to be reckoned
MANASSEH'S IDOLATRY. l8i
among the best poets of the period. Hezckiah died at theage of fifty-
four years, in the forty-first year of his reign (685).* His funeral was
celebrated with great pomp, and amidst the universal regrets of his
people.
6. Manasseh was but twelve years old when he ascended the throne
of his father Hezekiah, 685. The prophet Isaiah was now too old to
exercise a serious influence over the affairs of the country and the
destinies of the young prince. The anti-religious party, who found a
strong support in the evil passions of the masses, and whom Hezekiah
had been able to put down for a time, but not to subdue permanently,
again lifted its head, succeeded in influencing the young king, and gave
the more assiduously that it had to revenge on the
itself up to disorders all
priests and prophets the severe restrictions from which it had suffered,
and wished now to end for ever. It was under the influence of this
party that Manasseh was educated, for in no other way can be explained
the terrible reaction which took place under the son of the pious
Hezekiah. Manasseh combined in himself the impiety of Ahab and
the cruelty of Jezebel. He re-established the worship of Baal and of
Ashtaroth, and even in the courts of the Temple he erected altars
dedicated to the worship of the stars. At the entry of the Temple
were horses and chariots, emblems of the god Baal, considered as the
sun; and the sanctuary was profaned by the abominable mysteries of
Ashtaroth, celebrated by debauchery. Manasseh made his son pass
through the fire in honour of Moloch, and gave himself up to all sorts
of evil and superstitious practices, such as divination and necromancy.
Many prophets ventured to raise their voices against these abominations,
and to predict for Jerusalem and for Manasseh the fate of Samaria
and of the house of Ahab but they were not heeded, and death was
;
the reward of their devotion; for Manasseh, says Scripture, "shed

innocent blood very mucli, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to
another."
A tradition of the sjTiagogue, adopted by the early fathers, says that
Isaiah was among the nmiiber of the martyrs of this epoch. Manasseh,
* This date is entirely different from that which we find in all his-
tories up
to this time (697). But the whole chronology of this epoch
needs now to be re-cast, taking as a starting point the date of the
expedition of Sennacherib, definitely fixed by the monuments for the
year 700 B.C. Evidently, when the Book of Kings gives but twenty-
nine years for the reign of Hezekiah, it stops its calculation at the birth
of Manasseh, and his association on his father's throne in 697. It
reckons, also, the years of Manasseh's reign from the same date,
although he did not reign alone, and in reality till 685, when he
was twelve years old, that is fifteen years after the invasion of the
Assyrians, as the Bible expressly says.
iS2 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
wearied l>y his reproaches, caused him to bo sawn asunder l)ct\veon two
planks.
Conduct so wicked, of necessity drew down on tlie king of Judah the
punishments which Divine Providence keeps always in reserve for gi'eat
criminals. Esarhaddon, kinjj of Assyria, one of the last of the great
Assyrian conquerors, set on foot an expedition to reduce to obedience'
the revolted Phcenician cities. After having taken and bunit Sidon,
and receiveti the submission of the other cities, he marched on the
kingdom of Judah, defeated the army, took Jerusalem, made Manasseh
prisoner, and confined him at Babylon; there the latter repented of his
conduct, and prayed to God, who heard him. Restored to Jerusalem
after a captivity of some length, by order of Esarhaddon, and re-esta-
blished on the throne, on the condition of recognising the suzerainty of
the Assyrian monarch and paying Jiim tribute, he overthrew the idols,
and re-established the altar of Jehovah. But his repentance was not of
long duration; after a time he recommenced the wicked ways which
had and Jeremiah attests that the end of the
led to his misfortunes,
reign of Manasseh was as full of the same impiety and the same crimes
as the commencement. Manasseh died in 642, at the age of fifty- five
years. His corpse was refused royal sepulture.
7- His son Anion, who succeeded him at the age of twenty-two
years, followed his example in favouring idolati-y. Some officers of his

court conspired against Amon, and killed him in his palace; he had
hardly reigned two years (640). Burial in the royal sepulchre was
refused to him as well as to his father. The people killed the assassins
of Amon, and placed on the throne his son Josiah, who was but eight
years old.
8. The reign of Josiah was the last brilliant epoch of the kingdom of
Judah, so soon to be swallowed up in the great revolutions of which

Asia became the theatre. The young king was no doubt educated by
the priests and prophets, for we see that, while still very young, he
manifested great zeal for the re- establishment of the orthodox worship,
and that he made his ancestor David his model. He married early,
and was hardly fourteen years old when his first wife Zebuda gave him
a son, who received the name of Eliakim. Two years after, another
wife, Hamutal, gave him a second son, called Jehoahaz, and about
thirteen years later he had by the same wife a last son, named
Mattaniah.
According to the Book of Chronicles, Josiah commenced in the
twelfth year of his reign his religious reforms by severe measures
against idolaters; and although the Book of Kings reports no act of
Josiah previous to the eighteenth year of his reign, the repair of the
Temple, which was ordered in that same year, presupposes the sup-
pression of idolatry. Jeremiah, son of Hilkiah, a priest of the town
JOSIAH'S REFORMATION. 183
of Anathoth, who commenced preaching as a prophet in the thirteenth

year of the reign of Josiah, probably exercised by his discourses some
influence on the mind of the king, for being ])ersecuted in his native
city,and even threatened witli death, he repaired to Jerusalem. The
prophet Zephaniah also lived under Josiali, and very probal)ly during
the early part of liis reign.
9. Tlie eighteenth year of Josiah was signalised hy an important
event, which contributed to render the zeal of the king for the re-esta-
blishment of the Mosaic worship still more ardent. The high priest
Hilkiah, in superintending the repairs of the Temple, found hidden the
Book Law, probably an ancient and valuable copy of the
of the
writings of Moses, hidden away from the fury of the king during the
reign of Manasseh, and which was believed to have been lost. The
book was carried to the king, who, but little acquainted with the Law,
caused it to Hearing all its precepts, so ill observed
be read to him.
up and the menaces of the Divme chastisement awaiting
to that time,
transgressors, Josiah was struck with terror, and rent his clothes. He
then convoked the elders of his council, and repaired with them to the
courts of the Temple the priests, the Levites, the prophets, and people
;
of all came together in a crowd. Josiah read with a loud voice

ranks,
the Book of the Law, and made the people renew the oath of the
covenant with Jehovah. He then ordered the total destruction of all
the monuments pagan worship, and of all

of might recall the that
idolatry of former times. A great number of idols were burned, and
their ashes cast into the brook Kedron. The high places on the south
of the Mount of Olives, originally dedicated by Solomon to the various
divinities of Asiatic paganism, were desecrated by human bones vidiich
were placed there. The high places and separate altars destined to the
worship of the true God were treated in the same way, for the king, in
conformity with the strict precepts of the Mosaic laws, woidd no longer
tolerate any altar but that of the central sanctuary of the nation. The
reforms of Josiah extended even to part of the ancient kingdom of
Israel, reunited to Judah after the retreat of Sennacherib. Josiah went
in person to Bethel, destroyed the temple of the golden calf established
by Jeroboam, killed the priests, and defiled the altar. On his return to
Jerusalem, he celebrated the Passover with a solemnity which had not
been seen in that ceremony even under Hezekiah. The city of David
again became the centre of religious worship, both for the inhabitants
of the land of Judah and for the remains of the ten tribes, who were
still left on the ancient territory of Israel. Jeremiah preached in the
public places on the subject of this new covenant, and j^ronounced a
curse on those who should attempt to violate it.
10. The and energy of Josiah, united

piety to the courageous devo-
tion of Jeremiah, would perhaps have been sufficient to re-establish
—
l84 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.

religious unity in a durable manner, and to establish the state firmly on
the basis of the Mosaic law ; but political movements in Asia, into which
the land of Judah was drawn in spite of itself, hastened the ruin of the
littlekingdom, already weakened by so many struggles. Judah had
escaped from the invasion of the Scythians, who, in 625 and 624, had
traversed Palestine and threatened Egypt, and who, stopped in their
progress by the entreaties and presents of Pharaoh, had in their retreat
pillaged the Temple of Atergatis at Ascalon. No doubt the mountains
of Judaea were found inaccessible by the Scythian horsemen, who could
only act on the plains. The weakening of the Assyrian empire, fallen
into decay in the weak and effeminate hands of Saracus, and whose
capital had been once on the eve of falling into the hands of the Medes,
had given the Hebrews some respite during the thirty years of
Jbsiah's reign. —
But in the Chaldsean king of Babylon Nabopolassar
who was beginning to form an empire for himself out of the ruins of
that of Nineveh, and who already threatened the country on this side
the Euphrates, Egypt saw the rise of a new and formidable enemy.
Necho, son and successor of Psammeticus I., wishing to arrest the pro-
gress of the Chaldjeans, and also to seize his share of the spoils of the
Assyrian monarchy, marched on the Euphrates after the example of the
Pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, to possess himself
of the fortress of Carchemish, or Circesium, and thus make himself
master of the point where for ages armies had most easily and most
frequently crossed the Euphrates. Necho had no hostile intentions
towards the kingdom of Judah, which he did not even cross in his
march. He traversed the land of the Philistines, in great part subject
to him, for Psammeticus had, after a siege of twenty-nine years, possessed
himself of the town of Ashdod, and he himself had taken Gaza. The
Egyptian army passed to the north of the kingdom of Judah over the
ancient territory of Israel, intending to cross the plain of Esdraelon, but
was stopped in its march by Josiah, who advanced to attack it near
Megiddo, urged on by the foolish suggestions of the military party, who
desired at any price an opportunity for a victory, which might again
raise the fortunes of Judah. Necho told Josiah that he did not wish to
meddle with his states; that he was marching in hot haste against his
enemies, and that Josiah could not fight him unless he were determined
to provoke a struggle Avhich could but prove fatal to him. In spite of
these warnings Josiah persisted in fighting the Egyptians, but his troops
were beaten and himself mortally wounded by the arrow of an Egyptian
archer. His body was conveyed to Jerusalem (610). The death of the
pious king spread everywhere grief and consternation ; in him the last
support of religion went down to the sepulchres of Sion, and from that
moment the kingdom of Judah, which might have had hopes of religious
and political regeneration, advanced with rapid steps to total ruin.
— —
INVASION OF THE EGYPTIANS. 185
Jeremiah and all the poets of the epoch composed lamentations on the
death of king Josiah, which for a long time afterwards were recited on
each anniversaiy of the fatal day of Megiddo.
Section VII. Last days of the Kingdom of Judah Nebu- —

chadnezzar—Capture OF Jerusalem— (610 — 588).
I. Jehoahaz, or Shallum, the second son of Josiah, succeeded his
father at the age of twenty-three years, chosen by the people instead of
his elder brother, Eliakim, the latter having possibly shown himself dis-
posed to negotiate with the king of Eg>'pt, whom they yet hoped to resist.
During this time Necho had continued his march to the north, and had
taken Kadesh on the Orontes, the Cadytis of Herodotus.* He had for
the moment given up the capture of Carchemish, wishing first to conquer
Syria and Palestine. He
stopped at Riblah, a Syrian city on the terri-
tory of Hamath, and thence sent troops to occupy Jerusalem. The
king Jehoalaaz was carried to Riblah, and Necho sent him prisoner to
Egypt, where he remained till his death. He had reigned but three
months. Necho raised to the throne in his place Eliakim, the eldest
son of Josiah, whose name he changed to Jehoiakim at the same time
;
he imposed on the land of Judah a tribute of one hundred talents of

silver and one talent of gold.
2. Jehoialcim was not more fitted than his brother to raise the hopes
of the priests and prophets; on the contrary, his tyranny and the pro-
tection which he extended to idolatry drew down on him the execration
of all well-minded men. Not content with the tax which he was com-
pelled to lay on the people to pay the tribute to Egypt, he further
oppressed his people and made them submit to forced labour for the
* Her. ii. Cadytis has been identified both with

159 ; iii. 5.
Jenisalem (named Kadesh or Kadiisha, "the holy," the modern El
Kuds), and also with Gaza. The identification with Jerusalem is
accepted by the learned Lightfoot {Horce Hebraiae, London, 1584) as a
"thing beyond controversy;" but Herodotus seems to have reached it
travelling along the sea coast, and there are many indications which
render it impossible to consider Cadytis as Jerusalem.
A more generally received opinion has made Cadytis Gaza (see
Jer. xlvii. i ), to which there is only one (but that seems a fatal) objec-
tion —that Necho took Cadytis after defeating Josiah at Megiddo, and,
as it would appear, on his way to Carchemish.
All the arguments in favour of Gaza will tell also in favour of the
identification in the text; «;/(/ Kadesh also was directly in Pharaoh's way
from Megiddo to Carchemish, and a city of such importance that he
would be unlikely to leave it in his rear untaken. Tr.
purpose of erecting sumptuous edifices, in spite of the miseral)le state of
the ])eople. Those wlio dared to resist the ahominajjle tyranny of the
king were in danger of death, and much innocent blood was shed in
Jerusalem. Jehoialîm pursued the prophet Urijah even to Egypt, with
the intention of putting him to death (Jer. xxvi. 21). Jeremiah would
have shared the same he had not been protected by some im-
fate if
portant personages, but the danger he was in did not daunt him he ;
ceased not to stigmatise in the most energetic terms the tyranny of Je-
hoiakim, the depravity of his courtiers, among whom were to be seen
even men of priestly class, and some who even preached as prophets.
3. In the fourth year of the reign of Jehoiakim, Necho, after having
subjected by degrees the people on this side the Euphrates, thought
himself in a position to undertake the siege of Carchemish. But at this
moment Nebuchadnezzar (Nabukudurussur), Prince Royal of Babylon,
advanced against him at the head of a strong army, whilst his father,
Nabopolassar, was engaged in the capture and destruction of Nineveh,
in alliance with Cyaxares, king of the Medes. A great battle was fought
before Carchemish, and Necho, being defeated, was obliged to retire-
hastily into Egypt, abandoning all his recent conquests. At this time
Habakkuk pronounced his prophecy on the redoubtable power of the
Chaldceans, which threatened to swallow up Judah, and which was to
fall in its turn, after having served as the instrument of the wrath of
heaven.
In the year following the battle of Carchemish, the Chaldreans ad-
vanced as far as the frontiers of Egypt, and brought all Syria into sub-
jection, without however touching the kingdom of Judah; for they
appeared before Pelusium in two columns, one of which had marched
through the land of the Philistines and the other through Perrea, the
land of the Ammonites and Moabites. The Egyptians no longer dared to
advance beyond their own frontier. In the month of December of that
year, 605, a public fast was proclaimed at Jerusalem to implore the help
of God against the Chaldseans. Jeremiah took advantage of this
occasion to make his secretary, Baruch, read publicly in the court of the
Temple the book of Jehoiakim having heard of it sent
his prophecies.
for, and after having read the roll, burnt it; at the same time he
ordered Jeremiah and Baruch to be arrested and put to death. But they
succeeded in concealing themselves in a safe retreat, which they did not
leave until after the death of Jehoiakim, and where Jeremiah dictated
afresh the words of the book that had been burned, and added to it a
prophecy full of menace to the king.
Jehoiakim nevertheless escaped the danger for the time; Nebuchad-
nezzar having received the news of the death of his father (604), took the
road across the desert to return with all possible haste to Babylon, to be
there proclaimed king, postponing to another time the subjection of
CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM. 187
Jehoiakim, and of other allies of Egypt. He did not return to Syria

tilltwo years later, but he then penetrated into the heart of the kingdom
of Judah, and made it tributary, took Jerusalem, and forced Jehoiakim
to recognise him as suzerain (602). At that time Nebuchadnezzar look,
for :he first time, some of the sacred vessels of the Temple to Babylon,
and carried off many young men of noble families such as Daniel, —
Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah— as hostages for the fidelity of Jehoia-
kim, whom he at first intended to imprison, but finally decided on
allowing to occupy the throne at Jerusalem. Three years later (599)
Jehoiakim, seduced by the false policy of certain orators or false
prophets, and reckoning on the assistance of Psammeticus II., king of
Egypt, ventured to rebel against the king of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar

prepared a new expedition into Judaea, and whilst his preparations were
going on, ravaged the country by bands of Chaldasan, Arab, Syrian and
Ammonite cavalry. Jehoiakihi died whilst these preliminary incursions
were going on, at the age of thirty-six years, leaving his son Jehoiachin
to bear all the weight of the consequences of his rebellion.
4. Jehoiachin, called also Jeconiah, then, at the age of eighteen
years, mounted a throne surrounded by the most formidable dangers.
The Chaldrean army did not long delay its appearance before Jerusalem,
to which it laid siege; king Nebuchadnezzar soon followed. Jehoiachin
was not in a state to sustain a long siege, and as the help he ex-
pected did not arrive from Egj-pt, he surrendered, and descended from
the throne which he had occupied but three months and ten days (599).
The Babylonians then entered the city, and seized upon all the treasures
of the Temple and of the royal palace, and carried off all the utensils ot
gold which had been in the sanctuary ever since the time of Solomon.
Ten thousand of the principal inhabitants, nobles and artisans, par-
ticularly smiths and armourers, were removed to Babylon. This was
the commencement of the seventy years captivity of Judah. Amongst
those carried off was Ezekiel, then twenty-five years old, who five years
later began to preach and prophesy among his brother exiles at Babylon,
and in Chaldeea. The king Jehoiachin, who had surrendered at dis-
cretion, was shut up in close prison at Babylon, where he remained more
than thirty-six years, until Evil Merodach, son and successor of Nebu-
chadnezzar, released him, and permitted him to pass his last years at
liberty. Mattanaiah, youngest son of Josiah, and uncle of the unfortu-
nate Jehoiachin, was then made king of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar, \\ho
changed his name to Zedekiah, thus proving his own suzerainty, as
Necho had done by Eliakim.
5. Zedekiah, last of the successors of David, was in reality nothing
more than a Babylonian satrap. A young man \\ithout exjxjrience,
devoid of judgment and of energy, he became the sport of the intriguers
of the court, who by their evil counsels hastened his fall and the final
iSS ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
ruin of J"<l^li. By had sworn to the Babylonian
keepinjj the faith he
monarch, Zeilokiah might, have enjoyed a time of
to a certain extent,
tranquiUity, during wliich the forces of his little kingdom might have
recruited themselves. Jeremiah and some clear-sighted men showed
that this was the only course to take in order to avoid the greatest
misfortunes but the aristocratic party was far from approving that
;
prudent policy, and used all its influence with Zedekiah to induce him
to throw off the Chaldaean yoke, by contracting alliances with the
neighbouring nations and with Egypt. This advice was supported by
the rash counsels which the exiles in Babylon gave in all their letters to
Jerusalem, the effect of which on the minds of the priests and people
Jeremiah took all possible pains to counteract.
In the fourth year of the reign of Zedekiah (595), ambassadors from
the kings of Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon, came to Jerusalem,
to attempt to organise a general revolt against the common oppressor.
Jeremiah, fearful of the and preaching
consequences of these conspiracies,
by act as well as by word, sent to each of the ambassadors a yoke of
wood, emblematical of the Babylonian servitude, to signify to them
that all the neighbouring peoples ought patiently to bear that yoke until
the destined hour, not long to be delayed, should arrive to break the
Babylonian power. He showed himself in the courts of the Temple,
bearing the yoke on his shoulders. These speeches of Jeremiah di-
verted Zedekiah for a time from those imprudent projects and the king ;
himself repaired in person to Babylon, to do homage to his suzerain,

and to dispel any suspicion which might have arisen as to his fidelity.
6. But Zedekiah did not long retain the peaceful dispositions with
which the prophet had succeeded in inspiring him. Led away by the
false policy of his councillors, which all the prophets since Isaiah had
combated, he entered into negotiations with Egypt, where Uahprahet
— the Hophra of the Bible, the Apries of the Greeks then reigned. —
Having received the promise of help from him, Zedekiah thought
himself strong enough to throw off the Babylonian yoke, which he had
borne for eight years, and therefore refused his tribute. The Chaldseans
again invaded the kingdom of Judah in 590 B.C., and occupied the
whole country, with the exception of the strong cities of Lachish and
Jerusalem, which, reckoning on the speedy arrival of the Egyptian
troops, prepared for resistance. The siege of Jerusalem commenced in
the days of January, 589. Jeremiah, questioned by order of the
first
king by Zephaniah the priest, delivered a threatening prophecy. Fore-

seeing that the city would be forced to surrender sooner or later, he
again insisted that the king should repair his fault towards Nebuchad-
nezzar by a voluntary submission, giving him to hope that in that case
he might die in peace, and rest in the sepulchre of his fathers ; but he
was not heeded. To increase the number of combatants, and to regain
SECOND SIEGE OF JERUSALEM. 189
the affections of the people, who were discontented at seeing the king
subject to the exchisive influence of the aristocracy, Zedekiali betliought
himself of the provisions of the Mosaic law, so little observed during
the period of the monarchy, which did not permit a Hebrew to be
detained in slavery for more than six years ; he ordered these regulations
and released all Israelitish slaves.
to be at once put in force,
7. At this time the Egyptian troops entered Judaea to attack the
Chaldiâns, who raised the siege of Jerusalem in order to meet them.

Then the king and his nobles, believing themselves freed from all
danger, revoked their decision relative to the slaves, and wished to
reduce again to slavery those who had already been released. The
indignation of Jeremiah at this sight knew no bounds. " Thus saith
the Lord," said he, " Ye have not hearkened unto me in proclaiming
liberty, every one to his brother, and every one to his neighl)our:
behold, I will proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword,
to the pestilence, and to the famine and I will make you to be removed
;
into all the kingdoms of the earth. * * * And Zedekiah, king ot

Judah, and his princes, will I give into the hand of their enemies, and
into the hand of the king of Babylon's army, which are gone up from
you. Behold, I will commaml, saith the Lord, and will cause them to
return to this city; and they sliall fight against it, and take it, and burn
it with fire: and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation without an
inhabitant." (Jer. xxxiv. 17, s,y.)

Veiy soon, in conformity with the predictions of Jeremiah, the
Egyptians retreated almost without fighting, and the Chaldasans re-
commenced the siege of Jerusalem, and pressed it with greater vigour
than before. Jeremiah and said openly
reiterated his prophecies of evil,
that none should save their lives who did not give themselves up to the
Babylonians, which irritated the officers of Zedekiah to the highest
degree, as it induced many to desert, and so thinned the ranks of the
defenders. They obtained an order from the king to throw the prophet
into prison, where the military party wished to have hun put to death.
Zedekiah went to visit him there, and Jeremiah repeated to him his
counsels of submission, which the king well knew to be wise counsels,
but dared not adopt, for fear of the vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar.
8. Whilst provisions remained in the city, the inhabitants heroically
resisted the Chaldaian army. The tenth year of the reign of Zedekiah
passed away before the besiegers could make a breach. Many houses
were demolished to fortify the walls against the war machines of the
enemy, the approaches of which became more formidaljle every day.
But at last the defenders of Jerusalem, whose courage had not yet for
an instant failed, succumbed to hunger and fatigue. In July, 588 B.C.,
provisions were entirely exhausted in the city, and resistance was no
longer possible. One night, profiting by the fatigue of the defenders,
igo ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
the Chal(la\ins, without mucli difficulty, penetrated into the city on the
north side. Zedekiah fled away with the remains of his troops by a
postern gâte giving access to the royal gardens. The fugitives made
towards the Jordan, but the Babylonians pursued and overtook tliem in
the Plains of Jericho. Zedekiah's little troop disbanded, and the unfor-
tunate king was made prisoner, and conducted to Nebuchadnezzar's
head-quarters at Riblah, on the territory of Hamath. Fearful treat-
ment awaited him his young sons, as well as the nobles of Judah who
;
had encouraged him were killed before his eyes, and he

to revolt,
himself, with his eyes put out,was loaded with chains and carried to
Babylon, where he remained in a dungeon till his death.
The fate of Jerusalem and of its inhabitants was next decided and ;
on enquiry it was found that every personage of importance had entered

into the plot against the authority of the Babylonian monarch. A
month after the conquest, Nebuzaradan, captain of Nebuchadnezzar's
guards, entered Jerusalem. By his orders the Temple, the king's
palace, and all the principal buildings of the capital of Judah were
set on fire. In a few days the magnificent city was changed into a heap
of ruins. The high priest Seraiah, and Zephaniah, the "second priest,"
were arrested with many of the great nobles and sixty of the principal
inhabitants, and conducted to Riblah, where they were put to death.
The majority of the citizens and of the soldiers had taken refuge in the
country and in the neighbouring lands. The chief of those who re-
mained were led captive to Babylon, but their number amounted to
only 832 persons.
9. This frightful catastrophe, however, was not the last act of the
sad tragedy of the fall of the kingdom of Judah. Nebuchadnezzar had
confined himself to punishing Jerusalem, and had left the greater part
of the inhabitants of the country unmolested. He had installed, as
chief or satrap (under the surveillance of his general, Nebuzaradan,
charged with maintaining for a time the military occupation of the
country), not a Chaldsean or a Syrian, but a Hebrew, named Gedaliah,
a pious man, a good patriot, beloved and esteemed by the people. He
had fixed his residence at Mizpeh, where Jeremiah, who had been taken
prisoner and afterwards released, joined him, and composed his sublime
Lamentations on the destruction of Jerusalem. The installation of
Gedaliah as governor, by re-assuring people as to Nebuchadnezzar's
intentions, had caused the fugitives to re-assemble, and amongst them
the chief captains who had directed the defence of the holy city. Order
was re-established, agricultural labours again commenced, and a pro-
visional worship organised in the ruins of the Temple. But a traitor soon
destroyed the hopes of the last remnant of Judah. At the instigation
of Baalis, king of the Ammonites, whose traditional hatred could not
bear to see a compact nucleus of Hebrew nationality still subsisting, a
MURDER OF GEDALIAH. 191
personage named Ishmacl, of the race of David, assassinated Gedaliah;

and as, after this useless crime, he could hope neither to succeed to his
victim, nor to maintain himself against the Chaldaeans, he fled to the
land of the Ammonites.

A general panic followed the murder of Gedaliah. All the principal
people who still remained in the land, fearing the vengeance of the
Babylonians, emigrated to Eg)'pt, taking with them by force Jeremiali,
who did not wish to leave the land of Judah. The emigrants esta-
blished themselves at Tahpanhes, in the eastern part of the Delta; and
some years after, adding a new crime to those which had been the ruin
of the Hebrews, they there stoned to death the prophet Jeremiah, who
attempted to stem the progress of Egyptian idolatry among them.
Nebuzaradan, as a punishment for the murder of Gedaliah, transported
to Babylon 745 more of the chief inhabitants, and installed numerous
foreign colonies in the land of Judah. From this moment till the
return of Zerubbabel, under Cyrus, Judsea ceased to have the least
vestige of national life, and obeyed Chaldcean governors sent from
Babylon.
END OF BOOK II.

— : — —— — : —
: — —
192
BOOK III.
THE EGYPTIANS.
CHAPTER I.
EGYPT— THE NILE AND ITS INUNDATIONS— THE

KINGS OF THE OLD EMPIRE.
Chief Authorities for the Four
Chapters on the History of Egypt. —
Classical IFriters — The
fragments of the Dynasties of Manetho,
inserted in Vol. I. oi Fragmenta Historicorum Gracorum. Didot.
Herodotus, Book H. —
Diodorus Siculus, Book I. The Canon of —
Eratosthenes, preserved by George SynceUus, the Byzantine Chrono-
loger. —
^Josephus, Against Apion. Book I.
Collectionsof original Egyptian Texts —
Young, Hieroglyphics, Lon-
don, 1823. —
Burton, Excerpta Hieroglyphica, Cairo, 1828. Cliam- —
pollion, Monuments de V Egypte et de la Ntibie, Paris, 1S33— 45.
Sharpe, Egyptian Inscriptions from the British Alttseitm, London,
1837. —
Leemans, Monuments Egyptiens du Miisee d''Anti(]iiitt's
des Pays Bas d Leyde, Leyden, 1839 67. Lepsius, Aiiswahl — —
der wichstigsten Urkiinden des Ai,gyptischen Alterthictns, Leipzig,
1842. — Ungarelli, Interpretatio Urhis, Rome, 1842.
Obeliscorum
Champolhon, Notices 1844. —
Prisse d'Avennes,
descriptives, Paris,
Monuments Egyptiens, Paris, 1847. Select Papyri of the British
—
Museum, London, 1844. Lepsius, Denkmaler aiis Aigyptcn itnd
Aithiopien, Berhn, 1850 1858. — —
Brugsch, Rec7ieil de Mo>iuments
Egypiiens,L,eipzig, 1862. Materiajix pourservir a la reconstruction du
Calendrier Egyptien, Leipzig, 1864. Diimichen, —
Geop-aphische
InscJniften Altcvgyptischcr Denkniiiler, Leipzig, 1S64. Kalender-
inschriften, Leipzig, 1866. Historische Inschriften, Leipzig, 1867.
Tempilinschriften, Leipzig, 1867. —
De Rouge, Album photographique
de la Mission dEgypte, Paris, 1865. —
Mariette, Le Serapeum de
Memphis (In course of publication).
Modern Works on Egyptology — ChampoUion, VEgypte sous les Pha-
raons, Paris, Lettres <i M. le due de Blacas, Paris, 1824.
1814.
Aperpi des rcsultats historiques de la decojiverte de Palphabet hiero-
glvphique, Paris, 1827. Lettres ecrites dEgypte, Paris, 1833 {1 edit.
1868). —
Champolhon Figeac, E
Egypte ancienne, Paris, 184O.
Ch. Lenormant, Eclaircissements sur le Cerc7ieil du roi Mycerinus,
Paris, 1837. Musee
Antiquites Egyptiennes, Paris, 1841.
des
Barucchi, Discorsi sopra la cronologia Egizia, Turin, 1844.
critici
Bunsen, Aigyptens Sfelle in der Weltsgeschiclite, Gottingen, 1845
1857. The English translation of this work enriched with the large
additions due to the learned researches of Dr. Birch, London, 1867,
1868. —
Brunei de Presle, Examen critique de la succession des dynasties
— — — ——————— —
— — ——— —
GEOGRAPHY OF EGYPT. 193
E^ypticnnes, Paris, 1850. —

Lepsius, Chronologie der ALgyptei; Berlin,
1849. Bricfc aus ^'Egypleii iind ^'Hthicipien, Berlin, 1852. Uehcr die —
12'" ^gvptische Ko)ugsdyiiasiie, Berlin, 1853. K
tiiigsbiich der Alien
Aigypler, Berlin, 1858. The numerous and admirable Articles by
Dr. 13irch in the Archaologia, and Transactions of tlie Royal Society of
Literature. —
De Rouge, Exatnen critique de Vouvrage de M. Bunsen,
Paris, 1847. Memoire sur V inscription du iombeau d'Ahmes, Paris,
1 85 Memoire sur la Statuette iVaopkore du Vatican, Paris, 1851.
1.
Le Po'eme de Pentaour, Paris, 1856. Etudes sur une stele de la Biblio-

theque impiriale, Paris, 1858. Notice de quelqiies textes publits par
M. Greene., Paris, 1856. Etude sur divers Alonunients du rcgne de
Toutmis III., Paris, 186 1. Mhnoires sur les Moninnents des six
premieres dynasties, Paris, 1866. Notice des Moftuments Egyptiens du
—
Musee du Louvre. Biot, Recherches de quelques dates absolues sur les
Moninnents Egyptiens, Paris, 1853 Sur un calendrier astronomiquc,
Paris, 1852. —
Brusch, Geografhiscke Inschriftcn Altcegyptischer Denk-
mdler, Leipzig, 1S57 1860. —
Histoire dEgypte, Leipzig, 1859.
DLimichen, Bau-Urkunde der Tempelanlagen von Detidera, Leipzig,
1865. —
Marriette, Renseignmcnts sur les soixante quatre Apis trouvcs
auSerapeum, Paris, 1855. Notice du Musee de Boiilac, Cairo, 1862.
— Abrege de l'histoi>e dEgypte, Paris, 1867. Description du pare
egvptien a P Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1867. C\iaha.s, Inscription
historique du rcgne de Seti \", Paris, 1856. Melanges Egyptologiques,
Chalons-sur-Saone, 1863. Les Papyrus hieratiques de BerltJi, Cha-
lons-sur-Saone, 1863. Les Inscriptions des Mines d'' Or, Chalons-sur-
Saone, 1862. —
Voyage d'un Egvptien en Syrie, Phenicie, Palestine,
Chalons-sur-Saone, 1867. —
Th. Deveria, Le Papyrus yudiciaire de
Turin, Paris, 1866. —
F. Lenorniant, UAntiquite a P Exposition
Universelle. LEgypte, Paris, 1867. —A
large number of Articles on
Egyptian Antiquities published in the Revue ArcMologique by M. de
Rouge, Dr. Birch, M. Mariette, and M. Deveria. The Journal de
linguistique et d'Archeologie Egyptiennes, edited at Berlin by Dr.
Brugsch and M. Lepsius.
Section I.— Physical Geography of Egypt —The Nile —

Its Inundations.
I. Egypt is a long narrow tract of country, stretching from south to
north, occupying the north-east angle of Africa, or, as the ancients
called Lybia, where it is joined to Asia by the Isthmus of Suez.
it,
Egypt bounded on the north by the Mediterranean, on the east by the

is
Isthmus and by the Red Sea, on the south by Nubia, which country the
Nile traverses before it enters Egypt at the Cataracts of Syene, and
lastly, on the west, by deserts containing a few scattered oases, or habit-
able spots, fertilised by fountains. The desert extends almost to the
sea on the north-east of Egypt, as well as along the shores of the
Red Sea.
But, moreover, much of the interior of Egypt itself is desert. Every
part not watered by the annual inundations of the Nile is uninhabitable,
and produces neither corn, nor vegetables, nor trees, nor even grass : no
o
water is found there ; the very utmost beint; here and there a well, more
or less likely to be found dry, under a constantly burning atmosphere.
In Upper, or Southern, Egypt rain is a phenomenon extremely rare, and
the wliole soil is sand or rock, except in the valley of the Nile, a valley
which, as far as the place —
where the river bifurcates that is, for three-
fourths of the whole length of —
Egypt has not a larger mean width than
four or five leagues,and in some places far less.
Herodotus was then quite right in saying, " All Egypt is the gift of tlie
Nile" (Her. ii. 5). If the course of the Nile were diverted, nothing
would break the arid uniformity of the desert. If the Upper Nile were
intercepted, Egypt would be annihilated. This idea did occur to an
emperor of Abyssinia who lived in the thirteenth centuiy, and in later
times also to the Portuguese Albuquerque. In fact, the Nile throughout
the whole of its lower course has the remarkable peculiarity of receiving
no affluent, and, unlike all other rivers, of diminishing instead of
increasing as it advances, for the water is employed in feeding canals,
and there is nothing to restore what it thus loses.
2. Nearly the whole of the Nile valley is confined between two
mountain chains, called on the east, Arabian, on the west, Lybian.

These mountains, especially towards the south, approach each other so
as almost to form actual defiles. The province called Fayoum, how-
ever, to the west of the Nile in Central Egypt, a short distance from
the site of Memphis, is fertilised by canals and by a lake. Here
Egypt, which north of the cataracts is a mere valley, widens very
considerably. A little below the city of Cairo, the present capital
of Egypt, situated not far from the niins of Memphis, the Nile divides
into two branches —
one, that of Rosetta, runs north-west, and the other,
that of Damietta, north and north-east. These were in fonner times
called the " Bolbitine " and " Phatnitic," or " Bucolic," mouths. But
the ancients mention also five others that have since been filled up, or at
any rate have become useless for navigation. They were ist, the —
Canopic, west of the Bolbitine, of which it was a branch Herodotus ;
thought that it was the ancient bed of a canal, and that the Bolbitine
mouth was artificial 2nd, the Sebennytic, running west of the
;
Phatnitic; 3rd, the Mendesian 4th, the Tanitic, which detached

;
itself eastward from the same branch; and finally, the Pelusiac, the
most eastern of all, and which during part of its course is the same as
the Tanitic. These five channels were named from cities situated near
their mouths. A great number of small canals intersected the interior
of Lower Egypt, but the ground there being anything but solid, and much
disturbed by the inundations, the natural or artificial watercourses have
much changed in the lapse of ages, and are still frequently changing.
3. Near the sea, the Nile forms many great lagoons, enclosed by
tongues of earth or sand, and communicating with the Mediterranean
—
INUNDATION OF THE NILE. 195
by breaches in the banks. The chief are Lake Menzaleh to the east,
which does not seem very ancient, at the mouth of the Tanitic and
Mendesian branches Lake Boorlos, containing tlie ancient Lake Bonto,
;
and opening to the sea by the remains of the

in tlie centre of the coast,
Sebennytic branch and finally to the west, near the famous city of
;
Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great, in a place already

inhabited and called Racotis, the Lake Mareotis of the ancients. The
space contained between the most distant branches of the river is called
the Delta, on account of its almost triangular shape resembling that of
the Greek letter Delta.
Each year in the summer solstice, that is, towards the end of June,
4.
the Nile commences to rise; its waters soon arrive at the height of, and
overflow, its banks, and then spread suddenly over the whole valley which
is in most parts lower than the river banks. An artificial system of irriga-
tion has also been contrived to extend the benefits of the inundation to the
soil beyond its natural limits. By the end of September the waters
attain their greatest height, at which they remain only a few days, and
then commence and by the month of December have returned
falling,
to their original level. Sowing commences, and continues as the waters
fall, that is from the the beginning of October in Upper Egypt, and
fifteen days later in the Delta; the fall as well as the rise of the water is
later the lower we go down the course of the river. Harvest time is in
March ; operations are easy in a land so fertile and well
all agricultural
prepared. During the overflow of the river, the inhabitants, shut up in

their towns and villages built on natural or artificial elevations, and con-
verted into islands in the midst of a vast lake, await with anxiety the
moment when they can estimate the height of the year's inundation, for
on that depends the abundance of the harvest.
This wonderful river, that leaves its bed at fixed periods to fertilise
the ground, much excited the astonishment of the ancients, who did
not know that all rivers rising in or flowing through the torrid zone
present similar phenomena. They had recourse to a thousand absurd
speculations to account for this periodical rise, which may be found in
Herodotus and Diodorus -Siculus. The true cause of the inundation, as
some ancient geographers, such as Eratosthenes and Agatharcides,
suspected, is the periodical rainy season inundating Upper Abyssinia,
where the Nile takes its rise.
Section II. Principal Sources of the History ok Egypt.

I. For a very long time, to write the history of Egypt was but to
Greek authors, as no one had penetrated the deep
rei)eat the talcs of
mystery of the writing of the ancient Egyjitians. And the accounts
these Greeks have given of the land of the Pharaohs, and of its annals,
in no way agree with each other. In the midst of their contradictions,
it has seemed that we ought in preference to give credit to the facts
stated by Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus. The position of the his-
torian has now, however, been completely changed by the invaluable
discovery of Champollion, who has enabled us to read with certainty
hieroglyphics that had for centuries been an insoluble problem. We
turn now to the writings of the Egyptians themselves to their monu- —
mental inscriptions, to their papyri-ând ask them to reveal to us the
annals of this ancient land. Since history has possessed the original
documents of the banks of the Nile, the authority of these tv/o classical
writers, once almost exclusively followed as guides, has been entirely
destroyed. Herodotus was a traveller of great truthfulness, who re-
•
counts with charming simplicity and also rare intelligence all thathe
himself saw. With respect to the description of the manners and
customs of the Egyptians which he saw with his own eyes, his book is
exceedingly valuable, and every day monuments are brought to light to
confirm his testimony. But in all that is historical, knowing nothing of
the language of Egypt, he could not refer directly to authorities, and
was obliged to content himself with the stories of his guides, and of the
priests of the temples that he visited. So he does not really attempt,
and this he is himself the first to admit, even a complete and full essay
on the history of the Pharaonic dynasties, but simply a series of
" guide-book " stories relating to a few of those kings. These anecdotes,
too, do not follow each other in real chronological order; it is easy to
see that the ingenious Halicarnessian traveller has disaiTanged his sheets
of notes taken at Memphis on the subject, and has, as a result, inverted
epochs in a way otherwise inexplicable. As for the work of Diodorus
Siculus, most valuable on the subject of manners and customs which
he saw for himself, it is, as history, merely a compilation of facts gathered
on all sides, and arranged without regard to order. His stories on the
annals of Egypt have really no value and it is with difficulty that we
;
find among his anecdotes a few only of really Egyptian origin, such as
we find in greater number in Herodotus, Of all the Greek writers who
have treated of the history of the Pharaohs, there is only one whose
testimony has, since the deciphering of the hieroglyphics, preserved
any great value— a value which increases the more it is compared with
the original monuments we speak of Manetho. Once he was treated
;
with contempt his veracity was disputed ; the long series of dynasties
;
he unfolds to our view was regarded as fabulous. Now, all that remains
of his work is the first of all authorities for the reconstruction of the
ancient history of Egypt.
2. Manetho, a priest of the town of Sebennytus, in the Delta, wrote
n Greek, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, a history of Eg)'pt,

founded on the official archives preserved in the temples. Like many
DYNASTIES OF MANETHO. 197
other books of antiquity, this history has been lost; we possess now a
few fragments only, with the list of all the kings placed by Manctho at
the end of his work —
a list happily preserved in the writings of some
chronologers of the Christian epoch. This list divides into dynasties,
or royal families, all the kings who reigned successively in Egypt down
to the time of For the greater number of dynasties
Alexander.
Manetho records the names of tlje kings, the length of each reign, and
the duration of the dynasty for the others, and the fewer number, he
;
contents himself with a brief notice of the origin of the royal family,
the number of its kings, and the years during which the family reigned.
We cannot here give the complete lists, in which, moreover, the
names of the kings have frequently been by Greek copyists,
so altered
entirely ignorant of the Egyptian language, that they can be restored
only by the direct study of Egyptian monuments. But we give an abstract
of its chief features in the following table :
—
19S ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
3. "Everyone must be struck witli the ciionnous lulal of years to
which the duration of the dynasties of Manetho amounts. The lists of

the Ei^yptian priest, in fact, carry us back to times wliicli are mythical
amony; all other peojile, but which are in Egypt certainly already
historical.
"Embarrassed by this fact, and, moreover, unable in any way to cast
a doubt on the authenticity and veracity of Manetho, some modern
authors have supposed that Egypt had been at some periods of its
history divided into more than one kingdom, and that Manetho had
represented, as successive, dynasties which were really contempora}ieous.
According to them, the fifth dynasty, for example, was reigning at
Elephantine at the same time that the sixth was enthroned at Memphis.
The convenience of this system, for certain combinations fixed at leisure
and in view of preconceived ideas, need not be pointed out. By recon-
ciling some dates and
correcting others, we may, by an ingenious and
even arrangement of dynasties, contract almost as we wish
scientific
the length of the lists of Manetho. It is thus that, where we in the
pi-eceding table place the foundation of the Egyptianmonarchy in the
year 5004 before our era, other authors, such as Baron Bunsen, place
the same event only as far back as the year 3623.
"On which side lies the truth? The larger the amount of study
given to the subject, the greater is the difficulty of answering. The
gi'eatest of all the obstacles in the way of establishing a regular Egyptian
chronology is the fact that the Egyptians themselves never had any
chronology at all. The was unknown, and it has not
use of a fixed era
yet been proved that they had any other reckoning than the years of the
reigning monarch. Now these years themselves had no fixed starting
point, for sometimes they began from the commencement of the year in
which the preceding king died, and sometimes from the day of the coro-
nation of the king. However precise these calculations may appear to
be, modem science must always fail in its attempts to restore what the
Egyptians never possessed. In the midst of these doubts, the course
which seems the most prudent and be a
scientific, the least likely to
departure from truth, is Manetho.
to accept as they stand the lists of
It would certainly be contrary to established facts to pretend that from
the days of Menes to the Greek conquest Egypt always formed one
united kingdom; and it is possible that unexpected discoveries may one
day prove that throughout nearly the whole duration of this vast empire
there were even more collateral dynasties than the partisans of that
system now contend for. But everything shows us that the Avork of
elimination has been already performed on the lists of Manetho, in the
state in which they have reached us. If in fact these lists contained the
collateral dynasties we should find in them, either before or after the
twenty-first, the dynasty of high priests who reigned at Thebes whilst
—
HISTORICAL MONUMENTS. 199
the twenty-first occupied Tanis: in the same way we should have to

count, eitlier before or after the twenty-third, the seven or eight inde-
pendent kings who were contemporary with it, and who, if Manetho had
not rejected them, would have added as many successive royal families
to the lists of the Egyptian priestthe dodecarchy would have counted
;
for one at leastbetween the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth dynasties, and

finally the Theban kings, rivals of the shepherds, would have taken rank
before or after the seventeenth.
" There were, therefore, incontestably contemporaneous dynasties in
Egypt; but Manetho has thrown them out and admitted those only
whom he regarded as legitimate, and his lists contain no others. If it
were not so, it would not be thirty-one dynasties that we should have to
reckon, in the list of royal families previous to Alexander, but probably
nearer sixty.
" The scholars who have attempted to compress the dates given by
Manetho have never yet been able to produce one single monument to
prove that two dynasties named in his lists as successive were contem-
porary. On the contrary, there are superabundant monumental proofs,
collected by very many Egyptologers, to convince us that all the royal
races enumerated by the Sebennytic priest occupied the throne in
succession. " Mariette.
4. There no country the history of which can be written on
is in fact
the testimony of so many
original documents as that of Egypt. Egyp-
tian monuments are found not only in Egypt itself, but in Nubia, in
Soudan, and even in Syria. To this series, already very numerous, we
may add the large number of antiquities that for the last fifty years have
been placed in the Museums of all large capitals, and among which the
Museum of Cairo holds one of the first places, thanks to the energetic
researches of M. Mariette. The historical monuments of Egypt may
be divided into two classes, those belonging to history generally, and
those peculiar to one particular dynasty, the histoiy of which they tell,
and serve as proofs of its existence.
We shall now say a few words on the most important monuments
that throw light on the general history of ancient Egypt.
5.
" The first is a papyrus preserved in the Turin Museum, purchased
from M. Drovetti, consul-general of France. If this papyrus were entire,
the science of Egyptian antiquities could not possess a more valuable
document. It contains a list of all the mythical or historical personages
who were believed to have reigned in Egypt, from fabulous times down
to a period we cannot ascertain, because the end of the papyrus is
wanting. Compiled under Ramses II. (nineteenth dynasty), that is, in
the most flourishing epoch of the history of Egypt, this list has all the
characteristics of an official document, and gives us the more valuable
assistance, as the name of each king is followed by the duration of his
20O ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
reis^,and each dynasty by Uic total number of years during which it
governed Egypt. Unfortunately this inestimable treasure exists only in
very small pieces (164 in number), which it is often im])ossible to join
correctly.
6. " A most valuable monument has been brought from the Temple of
Karnak and deposited in the Imperial Libraiy at Paris. This is a small

chamber on the walls of which Thothnics III. (eighteenth dynasty) is
represented making offerings before the images of sixty-one of his pre-
decessors; it is called the 'Hall of the Ancestors.'* Here we have no
longer to deal with a regular and uninteiTuptcd series; Thothmes III.
has made a choice among his predecessors, and to those of his choice
alone he makes his offerings. At first sight, then, the Hall of the '
Ancestors '
cannot be treated as an extract from the royal lists of Egypt.
The compiler, actuated by motives of which we are ignorant, has
taken here and there the names of some kings, sometimes accepting an
entire dynasty, sometimes passing over long periods. It must be ob-
served also that the artist charged with the execution of the Hall con-
ceived the plan from a decorative point of view, without concerning
himself to give everywhere a strictly chronological order to the figures
he introduced. Lastly, unfortunate mutilations (twelve royal names are
missing) have taken from the record preserved at Paris a part of its
importance. It follows, then, that the Hall of Ancestors has not
'
'
afforded to science all the help that might have been expected from it.
It has, however, assisted to define more precisely than any other list the
names borne by the kings of the thirteenth dynasty.
7.
" There is another choice of the same kind, made also under the
nspiration of motives beyond our knowledge, offered us by the Tablet '
of Abydos,' found in the ruins of that celebrated city, and preserved in

the British Museum. In this case it is Ramses II. who pays homage
to his ancestors. There were originally fifty names, but only thirty,
more or less complete, now remain. This deplorably mutilated state
deprived the '
Tablet of Abydos '
of nearly all its real historical value,
till M. Mnriette discovered quite recently, in another temple of the same
city, another copy much more perfect, and which supplies nearly all the
vacancies in the first, dated in the reign of Seti I., father and prede-
cessor of Ramses II. This '
Second Tablet of Abydos ' furnishes a
list of the kings of the first six dynasties almost as complete as

Manetho's which it entirely corroborates. It also shows that the
list,
royal names found on the mutilated monument preserved in London,

hitherto defying classification, must henceforth serve to bridge
over part of the monumental gulf between the sixth and eleventh
dynasties.
* Frequently called also the "Tablet of Tuthmosis."

—
HISTORICAL MONUMENTS. 201
8. " The testimony of the

'
Second Tablet of Abydos,' as regards the
primitive dynasties, confinned by the 'Tablet of Sakkarah,' (dis-
is
covered also by M. Mariette, and now deposited in the Museum of

Cairo. ) This monument is not, like the others, of royal origin. It was
found in the tomb of a simple priest who lived under Ramses II.,
and was called Tunar-i according to the faith of the Egyptians, one of
;
the good things reserved for the dead who had merited eternal life was
to be admitted to the society of kings. Tunar-i is represented as
entering the august assembly fifty-eight kings are there present, those
;
no douijl whose memories were most honoured at Memphis. The

selection is similar to that of the Tablet of Abydos. There are, never-
theless, some interesting differences. Once or twice a king omitted in
one list is registered in the other, even sometimes of two princes, whose
reigns were incontestably simultaneous, one figures at Sakkarah and the
other at Abydos. Thus, in the time of the nineteenth dynasty, among
the competitors who are represented in the Eg)'ptian annals, we cannot
positively pronounce as to which were at the time considered legitimate
sovereigns, and the list varies according to the locality, and no doubt to
the limits within which they exercised authority."— Mariette.
9. As for documents relating only to the history of one
dynasty or one
reign, they are so immensely numerous that it is easy to see how im-
possible it is for us to attempt even their enumeration. Moreover, we
shall naturally be led to mention the most important in the course of our
narrative. They are of two sorts, manuscripts on papyrus, poems on
the exploits of the kings, literary compositions, correspondence or
registers of accounts of the public administration, and monumental
inscriptions. These last must be again divided into two principal heads,
pul)lic and private monuments. The official inscriptions engraved on de-
tached steles or on the Temple walls, often accompanied by great coloured
bas-reliefs, relate especially striking events and military exploits ; there
are somereally long poems, relating quite in Biblical style the events of
several campaigns even to their smallest detads. The private inscrip-
tions open to us the internal life of Egyptian society, and initiate us into
all the machinery of its organisation they furnish also the most solid
:
and valuable basis for chronology, as it is not uncommon to find epitaphs
relating that a personwas bom on a certain day of one month in some

particular year of some other person's life, and that he lived so many
years, months and days.
Section III. Foundation of the Monarciiy — First

Dynasties.
I. As we have already said in the First Book of our Manual, in speak-
ing of the ethnographical table of the Book of Genesis, the Egyptians
were a branch of tlie race of Ham. They came from Asia through Lhe
desert of Syria to settle in the valley of the Nile. This is a fact clearly
established by science, and entirely confirms the statements of the Book
of Genesis. As for the opinion once generally admitted, that the
Egyptians belonged to an African race whose first centre of civilisation
was at Meroe, and who had gradually descended the banks of the Nile
to the Sea, it cannot now be sustained. We know, in fact, from the
monuments, that the most ancient centre of Egyptian civilisation was in
the neighbourhood of Memphis, in Lower and Central Egypt, before even
the foundation of Thebes; and we can follow the gradual march of
culture, ascending the Nile towards Ethiopia, in a way exactly the
reverse of what has hitherto been supposed.
All remembrance of the early days of the residence of the sons of
Mizraim, in the land where they settled, is lost in the mist of mythical
traditions. This epoch Manetho fills with the fabulous dynasties of
*'
Gods, Heroes and Manes," and the hieroglyphic inscriptions frequently
call it the times of Hor Shesu —
that is, "Servants of Ilorus," the
national deity and special guardian of the Egyptian people. Did they
arrive in this land with a civilisation already developed during their stay
in Asia, and closely resembling that of the early Cushites of Babylonia,
of the empire of Nimrod? Or, having emigrated in a state of barbarism,
was that civilisation developedby their own exertions, uninfluenced by
other nations? These are questions science will probably never be able
to answer, and which will always remain an open field for speculation.
What alone seems evident is, that the population of Eg}'pt was at
first composed of distinct tribes, who, although of the same origin, had
each a separate existence. The tenth chapter of Genesis mentions four

of them, each represented by a son of Mizraim. These are first the
" Ludim," the true and dominant Egyptian race, called in their language
Rut or Lut — that is, "men"/ffr excellence. Next the Pathrusim, or
people of the southern country — that is, of the Thebaid, in Egyptian
P-to-res. The Naphtuhim, or people of Memphis, the sacerdotal
name of which was Na Phtah, the " Part of Phtah," and lastly the
Annamim, the Anu of the Egyptian monuments, who seem originally to
have been dispersed throughout the whple Nile valley, and who have
left traces of their name in the cities of Heliopolis (in Egyptian An),
Tentyris or Denderah (also sometimes called An), and Hermonthis

(An-res, southern An); a branch of this race maintained for a long time
a separate existence in a part of the Sinaitic peninsula. But Egyptian
history only really begins from the time when these different peoples
were welded into one under a single sceptre, when a purely political
hereditary power, strongly marked by military character, replaced the
theocratic authority, by which till then the various tribes had been
governed.
FIRST DYNASTY. MENES. 203
2. The author of this revolution belonged originally to the city of

This (in Egyptian Teni), called in later times Abydos, in Central Egypt.
Herodotus says (Her. ii. 99), " The Priests said that Menes was the
first king of Egypt, and that it was he who raised the dyke which pro-
tects Memphis from the inundations of the Nile. Before his time tlic
river flowed entirely along the sandy range of hills which skirts Egypt
on the side of Lybia. He, however, by banking up the river at the
bend which it forms about a hundred furlongs south of Memphis, laid
the ancient channel dry, while he dug a new course for the stream half-
* * Having thus, by turning the
way between the two lines of hills.
river, made the tract where it used to nm dry land, he proceeded in the
first place to build the city now called Memphis,
* * he also built
the temple of Vulcan (Phtah) which stands within the city, a vast
edifice,very worthy of mention." All classical authors who have
written about Egypt mention the name of Menes, and the monuments
confirm their testimony by also mentioning him as the founder of the
empire. The dyke he constructed still exists under the name of Dyke
of Kosheish, and regulates the course of the water in that region.*
The city built by Menes was called Men-nefer, "the pleasant residence,"
which name the Greeks corrupted into " Memphis."
The direct descendants of Menes form the first dynasty, which,
according to Manetho, reigned 253 years. No monument contemporary
with these princes has come down to us. The immediate successor of
Menes, Teta (the Athothis of Manetho), is mentioned as having built a
palace at Memphis, and as having written books on surgery. The name

of the fifth king of the dynasty Hespu, or Hesep-ti (Usaphaidos, M.)t
is frequently mentioned in the
" Funeral Ritual " as the author of sacred
writings. Lastly, the fragments of Manetho record under the reign of
the seventh king, Semempses, a terrible plague. A comparison of
the lists of Manetho with the second Tablet of Abydos and the Tablet
of Sakkarah proves that the empire founded by Menes was not extended
to the whole of Egypt at once, and without a struggle, but that, on the
contrary, a great part of the time of the first dynasty was passed in
conflicts between princes who reigned — some at Memphis and others at
Abydos.
3. The second dynasty, to which Manetho assigns nine kings, lasted
302 years. It was also originally from This, and probably related to
the first, for no distinction is made between them in the Turin papyrus.
* The remains of the Dyke of Menes were discovered by M.

Mariette,and its existence is mentioned by Dr. Brugsch in his
"Histoired'Egypt."
t The forms of the names in the lists of Manetho will be indicated
in this way (M).
— ;

Tt seems very prolialile tlint tlie threat Pyramid, l)uilt in stc|")S al Sak-
karah. was intended for llic scjiulchre of the second kintj of tliis dynasty,
Kekeu (Cechous, M.), was estal)lished, it is said, the
l)v wlioni also
worship of some sacred animals, amongst others the hull Ajîs, who was
considered to be a living manifestation of the god I'htah, and was wor-
shipped at Memphis. This Pyramid, therefore, is the oldest monument
in Egypt, and with the exception of the ruins of the Tower of Pahel,
the most ancient in the world. The low and narrow door, with a lintel
of white limestone covered with hieroglyphics, the jambs decorated in a
manner unknown elsewhere, with alternate small pieces of limestone and
cubes of green enamelled earth, which formed the entrance to the sepul-
chral chamber of this Pyramid, was, in 1845, carried by M. Lepsius to
the Museum at Berlin. It is highly characteristic of an art still in its
infancy and attempting its first steps but it shows that the ingenious
;
system of Egyptian writing was even then fully established.

To the third king of this second dynasty, Ba-neter-en (Binothris,
M.), is attriliuted a law declaring females capable of ascending the
throne of Egypt this law, in fact, was often re-enacted in the course of
;
history. Legendary prodigies are related of the reign of the seventh

king, Neferkera (Nepherkeres, M.).* Lastly, it is said that the eighth
king, Sesocris, was a giant. We possess some remains of sculpture,
which we may venture, perhaps, to refer to the last reigns of this
dynasty first, the tomb of a high functionary called Thoth-hotep,
:
discovered by the excavations of M. Mariette in the Necropolis of

Sakkarah, where the dead of the great city of Memphis were buried
also three standing statues of limestone, representing Sepa, another
functionary, and two of his sons, with which the Museum of the Louvre
is enriched. In studying them we remark a rudeness and indecision of
style, showing that at the end of the second dynasty Egyptian art was
still feeling its way, and was still imperfectly formed.
4. When this family had become extinct, a dynasty, originally

from Memphis, seized the throne, forming the third, and to it a
duration of 214 years is attributed. The second of its kings, Tses-
hor-tsa (Tosorthrus, M.), is said to have occupied himself specially
with medical science, writing, and the art of stone cutting. In this
royal family we meet with the first of the many conquerors who went
out from the land of the Pharaohs Manetho says that the head of this
;
family, Seker-nefer-ke (Necherophes, M.), subdued a part of the

Lybians, who were terrified by an eclipse, t On the rocks of Sinai a
* The Nile flowed for eleven days with a mixture of honey and
water. Tr.
1* "The Lybians revolted from the Egyptians and submitted through
fear, on a sudden increase of the moon." Manetho (Syncdliis). Tr. —
FOURTH AND FIFTH DYNASTIES. 205
bas-relief has been found, which represents Snefru (Sephouris, M.),

last king but one of the dynasty, subduing the nomadic tribes of llie
Anu of Arabia Petrrea.
The tomb of one of the great officers of this king, named Amten,
has been discovered at Sakkarah, and transported to the Museum of
Berlin. Art has advanced since the last reign, but is still far from per-
fection. The pictures on this tomb, which is of an antiquity so great
as to surpass imagination, assist us in penetrating the interior life of the
epoch when was constructed. It shows us Egyptian civilisation as
it
completely organised as it was at the time of the Persian or Macedonian

conquest, with all the marks of individuality and of a long previous
existence. The inhabitants of the Nile valley had already domesticated
nearly all kinds of animals which are useful to man, and even some
that we know only in a wild state. The ox, the dog, aquatic birds,
had long since been brought into use, and the skill of breeders had been
able to produce numerous varieties of each species. The only beast of
burden is the ass neither the horse nor the camel seem to have been as
;
yet known in Egypt. The Egyptian language was completely formed,

with its peculiar characteristics, distinct from other allied idioms.
Hieroglyphic writing is found on the monuments of the first dynasties,
distinguished by all the complexity that it preserved to the last day of
its existence.
Section IV.— Fourth and Fifth Dynasties— Age of the

Great Pyramids.
I. With the fourth dynasty, Memphite, like the third, and wliich
reigned 284 years, history and monuments more
becomes clearer,
numerous. This was the age of the three Great Pyramids, built by
the three kings, Khufu (the Cheops of Herodotus), Shafra (Chefren),
and Menkara (;\Iycerinus). Khufu was a warlike king the bas-reliefs ;
of Sinai celebrate his victories over the Anu, who harassed the colonies
of Egyptian workmen established on the peninsula for working the
copper mines.* But it is to the Pyramid that he owes the immortality
of his name, which will be remembered as long as man exists. Herodotus
gives us (Her. ii. 124) some details of the construction of this gigantic
monument, mixed up, however, with puerile anecdotes that seem to
belong to an exact and authentic tradition. 100,000 men, who were
Brugsch, in a little work, IVanderunq nach dot TurJus-Minen

* Dr.
und der Sinai Halbinsel, contends that the mines chiefly worked in the
Sinaitic Peninsula by the Egyptians were the Turquoise Mines, recently
rediscovered and worked by our countryman, the late Major Macdonald.
— Tr.
;
2o6 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.

relieved every three moiilhs, were, he says,employed for thirty years
in building this artificial
mountain; the king, in his pride, intended it
for his tomb, and it has remained, at any rate as regards bulk, the
greatest of all the works of man. The whole of the people of the
country were successively forced to the work and the labour was the
;
harder, in that the Egyptians had no machinery but ropes and rollers,
and were compelled to drag the stones by main force on causeways, on
an inclined plane, to the required height. The causeway which served
to bring the stone from the quarries of Toora, on the other bank of the
Nile, to thesummit of the Pyramid plateau, still remains, and has been
preserved as in itself alone worthy of the admiration of future genera-
tions. Little less must have been the work of building the Pyramids of
Shafra and Menkera. The science in construction which these monu-
ments exhibit is wonderful, and has never been surpassed. With all
the progress of knowledge, it would be, even in our days, a prol)lem
the Egyptian architects of the fourth
difficult to solve, to construct, as
dynasty have done, in such a mass as that of the Pyramid, chambers

and passages, which, in spite of the millions of tons pressing on them,
have for sixty centuries preserved their original shape without crack or
flaw.*
The Pyramids are not, however, the only great architectural
works
that these kings have left us. The Sphinx at Gizeh, in the
great
neighbourhood of the three great Pyramids, an immense rock, sculp-
tured and built into this form, seems to have been finished in the reign
of Schafra. Close by it M. Mariette has discovered, buried in the
sand of the desert, a vast temple, which seems from sure indications
to belong to the same reign. It is entirely constructed of enormous
blocks of black or rose-coloured granite, and of oriental alabaster,

without any sculpture or even ornament of any kind. Straight lines
alone, in the severest purity, are used in its decoration.
2. The mark the culminating point
early reigns of the fourth dynasty
in the primitive history of Egypt. The splendour and riches of the
country seem to have been very great under these princes, as is suffi-
ciently proved by the immense buildings erected during the period.

The boundaries of the monarchy then extended as far as the cataracts
the capital was Memphis, and the whole vitality of the empire was
concentrated in that neighbourhood.
But the enoiTnous works of the Pyramids could only have been
accomplished at the cost of frightful oppression. Forced labour laid
an insupportable burden on the people. Manetho, Herodotus, and
Diodorus Siculus repeat traditions proving that these princes, who
* On work of Colonel Howard Vyse,

the Pyramids, see the splendid
The Pyramids of Ghizeh. —
London, iSoo 1812.
;
THE PYRAMID BUILDERS. 207
had laid such heavy burdens on were remembered with

their people,
hatred even after the lapse of ages. According to these traditions,
Khufu not only oppressed the people in taking them from the occu-
pations of their daily life, but even shut up the temples and stopped
the sacrifices he afterwards, however, repented, and became the author
;
of a much esteemed religious book. Shafra is said to have followed

the example of the tyranny and impiety of his predecessor, and by the
popular verdict, the bodies of both kings were excluded from the splendid
tombs they had prepared. Menkera did the same at the commence-
ment of his reign, but after\vards amended his ways, re-opened the
temples, and conducted public worship with a great degree of splendour
this last fact agrees statement that one of the most important
with tlie
mystical chapters of the " Funereal Ritual" is said to have been dis-
covered, in an ancient manuscript, during the reign of Menkera, and to
have been published by that king. There is no doubt that these stories
arc only popular and fabulous legends for example, the closing of the
;
temples by Khufu and Shafra is expressly denied by inscriptions dated

in their reigns. But the legend is not, however, entirely without his-
torical foundation. Everything seems to show that the end of the
fourth dynasty, immediately after the reigns of the Pyramid-building
kings, was a time of revolution and trouble, caused by preceding op-
pressions. A comparison of the lists of Manetho with the monuments
of the Necropolis of Sakkarah, shows that there were violent com-
petitions for the throne during this period. The splendid statues of
Shafra in diorite, rose-coloured granite, alabaster, and basalt, which
decorated the temple near the Sphinx, have been found in pieces in a
well, into which they liad been thrown during a revolutionary move-
ment evidently not long after his reign.
3. The fifth dynasty came originally from Elephantine, at the
southern extremity of Upper Egypt, and there possibly the kings
generally resided, though at the same time Memphis was not deprived
of its importance. This dynasty numbered nine kings, whose names are
all found on the monuments, and who occupied the throne for 248
years. Their reigns seem to have been prosperous and peaceable, but we
cannot refer to anyone in particular as distinguished by any remarkable
event.
The private monuments of the time of this dynasty are, like those of
the fourth, very numerous. Near Memphis, particularly at Gizeh and
Sakkarah, excavations have brought to light the tombs of a great
number of personages of high rank at the courts of one or other of the
kings of these dynasties.
4. By the aid of the inscriptions on these tombs science is able
to reconstruct the "Peerage" of Egypt under Khufu, Shafra or
Menkera, as well as under the kings of the Elephantine dynasty. In
those ancient times l*"yy])tinn society was formed (jii an entirely aristo-
cratic basis. It seems that Menes, in estabHshingroyaUy, had been the
chief of a revohition, similar to those in ancient India, which frequently
subjected the Brahmins to the absolute supremacy of the Kchatryas or
warriors. The monuments of the primitive Egyptian dynasties show
us power concentrated in the hands of a small military caste, of an
all
aristocracy to a certain extent apparently composed of conquerors, and

to whom the people quietly submitted. Were not these the Ludim of
Genesis, who, by establishing their supremacy over the Palhrusim, the
Naphtuhim, and the Anamim, first made Egypt one united country ?
The were but few in number, and all more

families of this aristocracy
or less related to the royal family, owing to the number of children
brought up in the royal harems. The members of these families, like
the great feudatories of Europe, succeeded to all the higher military and
political offices, and transmitted from father to son the government of
provinces. Like all ancient pagan aristocracies, they even possessed
themselves of and monopolised all priestly functions.
We constantly find representations of scenes from domestic or agri-
cultural life on the walls of Memphite tombs of the fourth and fifth
dynasties. These pictures help us to investigate all the secrets of the
patriarchal feudal life of the nobles of Egypt sixty centuries ago. We
seem to visit the large and flourishing farms scattered over their estates ;
we may know the numbers of their tlocks, and the heads of cattle
counted by thousands their parks where antelopes, storks, geese of
;
every species were domesticated and kept. We may even see them in
their elegant villas, surrounded by respectful and obedient vassals, or
rather serfs. We can know the flowers cultivated in their gardens ; see
the troops of dancers and singers maintained in their mansions to supply
amusement. The minutest on
details of their field sports are depicted
these tombs. We were passionately fond both of hunting
see that they
and fishing and for both of these amusements they found as many
;
opportunities as they could desire on the numerous canals by which the

country was everywhere intersected. For the service also of these great
personages of the aristocracy, the large square-sailed barks, frequently
depicted on the tombs, floated on the Nile, to be employed in a
commerce which everything proves to have been most extensive.
5. In these monuments of the fourth and fifth dynasty, art attains to
the most remarkable degree of perfection. It is entirely realistic, it
strives above all for no attempt at the ideal. The

truth to nature, with
figures of men are somewhat more thickset and rude than in the works
of later schools, the relative proportions of different parts of the body
are less exactly preserved, the muscles of the legs and arms are ex-
aggerated. But in these sculptures of the primitive Memphite tombs
there is nevertheless an elegance of composition, a simplicity and reality
ART UNDER THE OLD EMPIRE. 209
of movement, a the figures, which the immutable laws of the

life in all
priestly "Canon of Proportions" destroyed in later times, however

mucli in other respects art may have improved. In this first and free de-
velopment of Egyptian art, imperfect though it was, there were the germs
of more than Egypt ever possessed, even in its most brilliant period.
Art then had a life, afterwards destroyed by sacerdotal restrictions. If
the Pharaonic artists could have preserved this secret, when acquiring
that incomparable harmony of proportion and majesty which they
possessed in a greater degree than any other artists in the world, they
would have equalled the Greeks, and two thousand years before them
would have attained to absolute perfection in art. But this phase of
genius was never allowed full scope and thus their style remained im-
;
perfect, and the glory of reaching that point which can never be sur-
passed was reserved for others.
6. In the decoration of the subterranean tombs of which we speak,
and of the sarcophagi sometimes found in them, there is a peculiar archi-

tectural style, different from that of more recent monuments— a style
characteristic of the Pyramid period. In this system of architecture,
all the decoration consists of an arrangement of narrow vertical and
horizontal bands \vith a convex surface. This is in imitation of build-

ings constructed of light timber, such as sycamore and palm, the two
most common trees whose trunks were not even squared
of Egypt,
before being used. Also very often in tombs the sepulchral chamber is
roofed by beams of stone, rounded so as to represent the trunks of palm
trees. The Egyptians therefore had not commenced, as was long be-
lieved, by leading the life of troglodytes, or cavern-dwellers. Their
most ancient edifices were constructed of wood, built in the midst of the
Kile valley; and in the first subterranean tombs in the flanks of the
Arabian and Lybian mountains, they copied the style and arrangement
of these slight buildings, and this type always remained in use for their
dwellings.
7. But we have not only monumental inscriptions of ages, when we
might be inclined to believe that the whole human race must have been
still a state of complete barbarism, for, favoured by the climate of
in
Egypt, so miraculously preservative, even sheets of fragile papyrus have

and come down to us almost entire. The Imperial
lasted fifty centuries,
Library of Erance possesses a book dated in the reign of Assa-Tatkera
(Tatkeres, M.), last king but one of the fifth dynasty, written by an old
man of the royal family, named Phtah-hotep. It is a sort of handbook
of good manners for young people, a treatise on practical morality,
teaching them how to pass through the world with propriety and
success; does not belong to a higher moral sphere than the books of
it
the Chinese Confucius. We

find in it the rales to be observed in a com-
munity, and rules for making one's way in the world, without restraining
P
— —

any of the passions, or, as the jargon of a false philosophy now says, any
of the instincts of nature. The basis of all morality and good order in the
book of Phtah-hotep is filial obedience, obedience also to the established
government, supposed to be invested with a truly paternal authority.
" The son who obeys the word of his father," it says, " will therefore
live to a good old age." " The obedience of a son to his father is a
joyful thing He
dear to his father, and his fame shall be known
is
to all men on earth." " The disobedient sees knowledge in ignorance,

virtue in vice; every day he without fear commits every kind of wicked-
ness, and thus is dead w hile he lives. His daily life is what the wise
man knows to be death, and curses follow him as he walks in his \\ays."
The reward of him who observes these precepts follows, long life and —
the king's favour. " The obedient son shall be happy in his obedience;
he shall grow old and shall obtain favour." The author cites himself
as an example, " Thus I have become an old man on earth; I have lived
no years in favour with the king, and with the approval of the elders:
I have done my duty to the king, and stood in the place of his favour."
A second treatise contained in the same manuscript, but of which

only a few pages remain, was a collection of proverbs similar to those
of king Solomon. Some of the maxims are as follows " Happiness :
—
finds every place alike good, but a little misfortune will abase a very
great man." " A good word shines more than an emerald in the hand
of a slave who finds it in the mire." " The wise man is satisfied with
his knowledge : good is the place of his heart; sweet are his lips."
Section V. From the Sixth to the Eleventh Dynasty —

Temporary Decline of Egyptian Civilisation.
I. On the death of the last king of the fifth dynasty, a new family,
of Memphitic origin according to Manetho, came to the throne. The
first king Ati (Othoes, M), was, it is said, after a reign of thirty years
assassinated by his guards. A great portion of his reign was no doubt

occupied by internal dissensions, for the monuments name two com-
petitors for the throne, Teta,* and Userkera, who were proljably
descendants of the former dynasty. But his son and successor, Pepi
Merira (Phios, M.), was one of the most glorious and powerful kings.
The whole countiy was suiiject to his sceptre, for his monuments have
been found in all parts of Egypt, from Syene to Tanis. Like Khufu,
* In illustration of the remarks of M. Mariette, quoted in sees. 2,

3,
it may be mentioned that Teta seems to have been accepted as the
legitimate king by the compilers of the Tablet of Sakkarah and of the

second Tablet of Abydos. Tr.
PERIOD OF CIVIL WARS. 211
Pepi I. was a warlike kint^ : at this epoch, the cataracts of the Nile,
particularly the secoiul, at Wady Haifa, did not, as they now do, pre-
sent an insurmountable obstacle to navigation, and towards the south
the frontier of E<^ypt was open to the incursions of the Wa-Wa, a
migratory negro people. Pepi reduced these enemies to obedience.
An unknown tribe of southern Bedouins (possibly the present Bis-
charis), were also subdued by the Egyptian arms. Finally, to the
north, the hostile nomadic tribes received from Pepi the chastisement
they had drawn on themselves by their aggressions on Egyptian work-
men engaged in the copper mines, in the Sinaitic Peninsula. We may
remark, in the inscriptions relative to the campaigns of Pepi Merira, a
fact of great importance in the history of the migrations of races : the
negroes are there represented as immediately adjoining the Egyptian
frontier, and we find no trace of the Cushite Ethiopians, whom subse-
quent evidence shows us to have occupied just that part of the Nile
valley, after having driven the negroes southward. When the sixth
dynasty ruled Eg\'pt, the Hamitic race of Cush had not established
itself in Africa, to which country it came no doubt by the Straits of
Bab-el-Mandeb, but still remained in Asia, where it had founded a
powerful empire at Babylon. Pepi Merira was not, moreover, a mere
Avarrior king, he occupied himself in public works. It is proved from
one of his monuments that he opened the route across the desert from
Gheneh in Upper Egypt, to the port of Kosseir on the Red Sea, estab-
lished stations, and dug wells for the benefit of caravans. A second
Pepi, surnamed Nefer-kera (Phiops, M.) is remarkable as having (a
fact unique in histor)') reigned one whole century of the events of this
;
long reign we, however, know next to nothing.

But immediately after this long reign, and probably even in its later
years, troubles and civil discord broke out, more serious and more
violent than had ever before been seen in Egypt. Mentemsaf (Men-
thesuphis, M.), the successor of Pepi-Neferkera was assassinated after
a reign of only one year. His sister Neit-aker (whose name signifies
"victorious Neit," or Minerva), the Nitocris of the Greeks, then seized
the reins of government. Manetho calls her " the red-cheeked lieauty,"
and agrees with Herodotus in praising, according to the sacerdotal
traditions, her wisdom as well as her beauty. She struggled energeti-
cally against the revolutionary spirit which tended to divide the
countr}', and had even reached the capital. At the same time, during
a reign of twelve troubled years, Neit-aker repaired, or rather com-
pleted, the third pyramid of Gizeh, intending, it is supposed, to make it
her own sepulchre, without, however, disturbing the sepulchral cham-

ber of Menkera. She seems
have been obliged, during part of her
to
reign, to temporise with the murderers of her brother, but without
resigning the intention of revenging his death. .She one day invited
P 2
them to a subterranean gallery, and wIiHc tlicy were enjoying a feast,
the waters of the Nile, let in throutjli a secret culvert, drowned them
all. She was herself obliged commit suicide to escape the
to reprisals
of their partisans. Neit-aker was the last of her dynasty.
2. History, though so very fragmentary during the following epoch,
gives us reason at any rate to think that Egypt then entered on a long
period of convulsion, dismemberment, and political weakness. The
seventh dynasty numbered in one version of the story, five kings in less
than three months, and in another and still more expressive tradition,
seventy kings in seventy days. Primitive art attained its highest point
under the sixth dynasty. In the tombs of this period are found those
beautiful and graceful statues with rounded smiling face, thin nose,
btoad shoulders, and muscular legs, of which the museum of the
Louvre possesses a remarkable specimen in the sitting figure of a scribe,
now in the centre of one of the rooms on the ground floor. But from
the time of the civil commotions in which Neit-aker perished, Egyptian
civilisation underwent a sudden and unaccountable eclipse. From the
end of the sixth dynasty to the commencement of the eleventh Mane-
tho reckons 436 years, and for this whole period the monuments are
Egypt seems then to have disappeared from the
absolutely silent.
rank of nations ; and when this long slumber ended, civilisation com-
menced a new career, entirely independent of the past. Did the
empire of the Pharaohs during this interval of absolute darkness suffer
from some invasion unknown to history ? and do the lists of Manetho
contain only the indigenous and legitimate dynasties who remained
shut up in their capital ? Doubtless, in treating of Egypt, the idea of
invasion naturally occurs to us. Its geographical position and tiie
inexhaustible resources of rendered this country peculiarly liable

its soil
to the attacks of its neighbours. It is also to be observed, that by
comparing the skeletons of mummies from the tombs anterior to the

sixth with those subsequent to the eleventh dynasty, we may observe,
in the shape of the skulls, differences sufficient to lead us to the con-
clusion that the type of the population had been much modified in the
intervalby the introduction of a new element.
But as monumental proofs are absolutely wanting, it would be rash
to affirm that this sudden echpse of Egyptian civilisation, unaccountable
after the sixth dynasty, was not due to one of those almost inexplicable
seasons of weakness occurring sometimes in the life of nations, as well
as of men. That a period of absolute decadence did then occur is
certain, and the primitive civilisation of Egypt tlied with the sixth
dynasty, to be resuscitated in later days.
3. Thus ends that period of nineteen centuries, which modem
scholars know as the " Old Empire." "The spectacle then presented
by Egypt," says M. Mariette, in his excellent history of that countiy.
—
THE MIDDLE EMPIRE. 213
"is worthy of close attention. At a time when all the rest of the
world was plunged in barbaric darkness, when nations who in later
times were to play so considerable a part in the world's history were
in a savage state, the banks of the Nile were peopled by a wise
still
and polished race, and a powerful monarchy, supported by a formidable

organisation of functionaries and employes, already governed the
destinies of the nation. From the very earliest times, we see that
Egyptian civilisation was complete, and future ages, however numerous
they might be, could do but little to improve it. In some respects,
Egypt, on the contrary, retrogrades, for no other period has been able
to produce monuments like the Pyramids."
The Egyptian priests then were right in saying to Solon, when he
visited their sanctuaries, "You Greeks are but children."
CHAPTER II.
THE MIDDLE EMPIRE.
Section Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties —

I.
The Labyrinth and Lake Moeris.

I. Thebes did not exist in the days of the glory of the Old Empire.
The holy city of Amen seems have been founded during the period
to
of anarchy and obscurity, succeeding, as we have said, to the sixth
dynasty. Here was the birthplace of that renewed civilisation, that
new monarchy, we are accustomed to call the Middle Empire, the
—
middle age in fact of ancient Egypt a middle age anterior to the
earliest ages of all other history. From Thebes came the six kings of
the eleventh dynasty, called alternately Entef and Muntuhotep, who
struggled energetically with the separatists of the Delta, represented
by the ninth and tenth dynasties of Manetho, perhaps even against
foreign conquerors, and in the end subjected all Egypt to their sceptre.
One of these Princes is constantly designated by the epithet "great "
(Aa), and was doubtless the one who achieved this result. Here we
again quote the excellent remarks of M. Mariette " When with the
:
eleventh dynasty, we see Egypt awake from her long slumber, all old
traditions appear to be forgotten, the proper names used in ancient
families, the titles of functionaries, the style of writing, and even the
religion all seem new. This, Elephantine, and Memphis, are no longer
the favourite capitals. Thebes for the first time l)ecomes the seat of
sovereign power. Egypt, moreover, has lost a considerable portion of
her territory, and the authority of her legitimate kings hardly extends
214 ANCIENT HISTORY OF 11 IK KAST.
beyoiul the liiuilctl distiicl of liic Tlicl);vul. Tlie study of the inonu-
mcnts cuiifinns tliese general views; tlicy are rude, primitive, somotinies
coarse and when we look at them we may well believe that I'^gypt,
;
under the eleventh dynasty, again passed through a period of infancy,

as she had already done under the third dynasty."
2. A dynasty, probably related to, and originally from, the same place
as these first Theban ])rinces, succeeded them. Manetho designates

this as the twelfth. All the nionarclis are called Osortasen, or Amen-
emhe, except the last, a (juecn named Ra-sebek-nefru (Skemio])hris, M.).
Tills twelfth dynasty reigned for 213 years, and its epoch was one of
prosperity, of peace at home and glorious achievements abroad. In
the time of the second king, Osortasen I., not only had Egypt regained
its natural frontiers, but had reconquered Arabia Petrrea, lost to her
during the time of the civil discords. Nubia also was subjected to the
authority of the Pharaohs. Osortasen I. engraved on a stele at Wady
Haifa, in the south of Nubia, and on the rocks of Sinai, a record of his
exploits.
The Pharaohs of the twelfth dynasty commenced the attempt to
carry out that great political scheme, persisted in for more than thirty
centuries, that led them to claim as their right every country watered by
the Nile. At this time a slate was established between the first
cataract and the south of Abyssinia, which was to ancient, what Soudan
is to modern, Egypt. This was " the land of Gush," or Ethiopia.
With no precisely defined boundaries, with no unity of organisation or
territory, Ethiopia was inhabited by numeroufe peoples differing m
origi)! and race, but the bulk of the nation was composed of Cushites
of the race of Ham, w'ho had established themselves there since the
time of the sixth Egyptian dynasty. These Cushites seem to have been,
under the twelfth dynasty, formidable enemies to Egypt ; towards
Ethiopia the forces of the empire at that time marched to oppose the ;
Cushites, were built the fortresses of Kumneh and Semmeh on either

bank of the Nile, beyond the second cataract, marking the southern
limit of the em]5ire of the Pharaohs. Whatever at this period may
have been the political state of other parts of the world, the Egyptian
forces under the twelfth dyn;vsty never left the banks of their sacred
river.
Amenemhe II. continued the southern wars of Osortasen
I., with
whom he had been associated but the

in power
real conqueror
; of
Ethiopia, the great military prince of the dynasty, was Osortasen III.,
the founder of the fortress of Semneh. The Temple erected there
many centuries later in his honour, a temple where two other gods
served as his subordinates, testifies to the reality of his power, and to
the profound impression the grandeur of his reign had left in the
country. The very steles placed by him at Semneh to mark the frontier
CONSTRUCTION OF LAKE iMOERIS. 215
of Egypt have also been found. On them is an inscription for-

bidding negroes to enter the land except to trade in cattle. This prince
was buried in the brick pyramid of Dashur ; his religious name was
Ra-sha-keu, and he may be identified with the ancient and wise legis-
lator,Asychis, of whom Herodotus speaks as having regulated the law
of mortgages.* Two inscriptions of the reign of his successor Amen-
emhe III.speak of a great victory he gained over the negroes, and
state that the Asiatic copper mines always belonged to him.
3. During these wars, which have conferred a never-fading lustre on
thenames of the Osortasens and Amenemhes, Egypt was strengthened
mtemally by the vigour then apparent in all branches of civilisation.
Works as marvellous as those of the fourth dynasty, but, in part at any
rate, more useful — the Labyrinth and Lake Moeris, were then executed.
We shall speak of the Labyrinth when we enumerate the
(ch. v. sec. 9. 2,)
principal monuments of Egypt. As for Lake Moeris, it was, in the
estimation of those of the ancients who saw it, one of the wonders of
the Pharaonic ages, and nothing could better prove the high state
attained by engineering skill under the twelfth dynasty, than this work,
of which a Frenchman, M. Linant, was the first to find the remains.
We have already spoken of the importance of the Nile to Egypt.
"If its periodical rise is insufficient, a portion of the land is not inun-
dated, and consequently remains uncultivated ; if, however, the river
leaves its bed with too much violence, it carries away the dykes, sub -
merges the villages, and injures the land it ought to fertilise. Egypt
thus perpetually oscillates between two equally dreaded scourges. Im-
pressed with a sense of these dangers, Amenemhe III. conceived and
executed a gigantic project. On the west of Egypt there is an oasis
of cultivable land, the Fayum, buried in the midst of the desert, and
attached by a sort of isthmus to the country watered by the Nile. In
the centre of this oasis is a large plateau about the same level as the
valley of the Nile ; to the west, however, a considerable depression of
the land produces a valley occupied by a natural lake more than ten
leagues in length, the '
Birket Kerun.' In the centre of this
plateau Amenemhe undertook the formation of an artificial lake with
an area of ten millions of square metres. If the rise of the Nile was
insufficient, the water was led into the lake and stored up for use, not
only in the Fayum, but over the whole of the left bank of the Nile as
far as the sea. If loo large an inundation threatened the dykes, the
vast reservoir of the artificial lake remained open, and when the lake
itself overflowed, the surplus waters were led by a canal into the Birket
Kerun.
"The two names given in Egypt to this admirable work of
Her., Book II., ch. 136.

—
2i6 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.

Amenemlie III. desei-ve to be recorded. Of one, Meri, that is
'
the Lake par excellence, the Greeks have made Moeris, a name
'
erroneously npphed by them to a kinj^; whilst the other, P-iom, 'the

Sea,' has become, in the mouth of the Arabs, the name of the entire
province, Fayum, gifted by the genius of one of the kings of the
twelfth dynasty with this precious element of fertility." Mariette.
4. The time is thus, as we see, one of the
of the twelfth dynasty
most splendid periods Egyptian history; it marks, perhaps, the
in
highest point attained by, and the most flourishing epoch of, Pharaonic
civilisation. The invasion of the Shepherds occurred some time after-
wards ; and their ravages, principally directed to all that recalled the
princes of this dynasty, have left none of their great edifices standing.
Of Amenemhes, nothing
the public buildings of the Osortasens and
remains beyond two obelisks at Heliopolis and the Fayum, and some
beautiful colossal statues, discovered in the excavations of M. Mariette
at Tanis and Abydos. We have, however, magnificent specimens of
the art of this period in the numerous private fimereal steles now pre-
served in our museums, and also in the celebrated tombs of Beni
Hassan, where the fa5ades show the first and original type of the Doric
order, subsequently adoptedby the Greeks. We may judge from these
tombs that the architecture of the twelfth dynasty had no relation to
that of the primitive ages. It is an entirely new art, and we shall
see that its mles were again followed, when, after a second eclipse,
Egyptian art once more revived at the dawn of that historical period
called the " New Empire."
What we know most of in the art of the twelfth d3'nasty is its sculp-
ture, which, favoured by a period of peace, arrived at a degree of
perfection hardly sui-passed by the best woi"ks of the eighteenth and
nineteenth dynasties. The predominant feature in scnlpture of this age is
delicacy, elegance, and harmony of proportion. The reality and life
of the primitive school no longer exist. Art has no longer the same
liberty; it is subject to the fetters of priestly rule. The hieratic "canon
of proportion" has already been established in the form we shall meet
with after the expulsion of the Shepherds ; no vestige remains of the
primitive art but the energy and boldness with which the muscles of the
arms and legs are rendered. The hardest, the least promising materials,
are worked with sucli delicacy and finish of execution as, even in
colossal works, to resemble a cameo. But if the sculptiue of the
twelfth dpiasty surpasses in delicacy the most perfect monuments of
the eighteenth dynasty, it has not the monumental grandeur of the
productions of the latter epoch.
5. The curious subteiTanean tombs of Beni-hassan, already men-
tioned, are those of great personages, high functionaries of state, and
governors of provinces, who led a life similar to that of the great lords
— " .
THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH DYNASTIES. 217
of the old empire, and who probably also constituted an hereditary

aristocracy. Perhaps the most interesting is that of Ameni, where the
Egypt of the twelfth dynasty is, so to speak, photographed. On one
side we see the beasts they are fattening the land is being cultivated
;
with ploughs constructed like those now in use by the Fellahs of modern
Egypt ; corn is being harvested and trodden out by cattle, who tread
the sheaves under their feet. On another side we see the navigation of
the Nile; large ships being built or loaded ; elegant furniture being made
of precious woods, and garments being prepared. In a long inscription
Ameni himself speaks, and relates the story of his life. As a general
he had made a campaign in Ethiopia, and had been charged with the
protection of the caravans bringing to Coptos across the desert the
gold from the mines. As governor of the province he thus sums up
his administration:
—
"The whole land was sown from north to south.
Thanks were given me by the king's household for the tribute of large
cattle. Nothing was stolen from my stores. I myself laboured, and
all the province was in full activity. No little child was ever ill-treated,
nor widow oppressed by me. I have never troubled the fisherman,
nor disturbed the shepherd. No scarcity took place in my time, and a

bad harvest brought no famine. I gave equally to the widow and
married woman, and in my judgments I did not favour the great at the
expense of the poor.
Section II. Thirteenth and Fourteenth Dynasties.

1. Although is clear and well
the history of the twelfth dynasty
known, illustrated by numerous monuments, there is, nevertheless, no
period in the annals of Egypt more obscure than the one closing with
the thirteenth dynasty. It is one long series of revolutions, troubles,
and internal dissensions, closed by a terrible catastrophe, the greatest

and most lasting recorded in Egyptian history, which a second time
interrupted the march of civilisation on the banks of the Nile, and
for a while struck Egypt from the list of nations. The dynasties of this
epoch are represented in the extracts from Manetho merely by the total
duration of the government of each and, moreover, the different
;
versions we possess of these extracts do not agree as to the number

of kings and the length of their reigns, or even sometimes of their
origin.
2. The thirteenth dynasty was of Theban origin, like the two pre-
ceding. Manetho assigns to it sixteen kings, and a duration of 453
years. The names of the kings have for the most part been found on
the monuments, nearly all being either Sevek-hotep or Nofre-hotep. No
building of this dynasty has been preserved ; but we may judge by the
steles and statues of this time, discovered in the excavations at Tanis
and Abydos, as well as by some fraiînents of admirable sculpture ])re-
served in the museums of Europe, that Eyjypt, at any rate durint; the
early ages of the dominion of this new royal family, had lost nothing of
its ancient prosperity, that she still remained mistress of her whole
territory, and was internally as prosperous as under the twelfth dynasty.

The silence of the monuments does not permit us to form even a con-
jecture on the subject of the wars of these kings. We may conclude,
however, from the presence of a colossus of the thirteenth dynasty in
the island of Argo, near Dongolah, that Egypt had at this time ex-
tended her frontier towards the south. Moreover, a fragment of a
colossus in rose-coloured granite, which was in later times appropriated
by King Amun-hotep HI., of the eighteenth, would seem, from its
"style, to belong to the time of the thirteenth dynasty. This fragment
is now in the Museum of the Louvre, and bears on its base a long list
of subjugated negro nations. An inscription of the same date, engraven

on a rock at El Hammamat, a station on the route to the port ot
Kosseir on the Red Sea, speaks of the extensive commerce then
carried on in precious stones with Southern Arabia, and shows that
Egyptian influence wâs then undisputed in the latter country.
3. A curious peculiarity belonging to this epoch deserves notice, and
throws new light on the physical history of the valley of the Nile.
There are at Semneh lofty rocks near the river, bearing, at a height of
seven metres above the present water level, hieroglyphic inscriptions.
Now the translation of these inscriptions proves that the Nile, which
under the eighteenth dynasty was at its present level in the time of the
inundation, under the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties rose seven metres
higher. This enormous change must be attributed to the gradual
wearing away of the granite rock, the natural dam that formerly kept
the upper part of the river at a much higher level, and at one of the
cataracts of the Nile, probably at Semneh, produced falls like those of
Niagara, or of the Rhine near Schaffhausen. At that time the Nile, form-
ing a deep and wide sheet of water above Semneh, must have watered vast
regions, now partly desert, such as Dongolah, Fazoql, Southern Nubia,
and the Isle of Meroe. But the river, by the long continued action of
its waters, wore away piece by piece the natural barrier of rocks opposed
to it, the remains of which even now obstruct the current. In the
same way the Amazon has cut through the living rock the celebrated
defile of Manzeriche; the Danube has, one after the other, drained
its five basins or primitive lakes ; the Rhine has worn a passage
between the Black Forest and the Vosges and lastly, the Niagara,
;
ceaselessly wearing away the rock over which it falls, recedes insensibly,
at a rate that may be calculated within a few hundred years, towards
Lake Erie, and when it has reached this point, the lake as well as the
famous cataract will cease to exist. The study of the alluvium of the
INVASION OF THE SHEPHERDS. 219
Nile has revealed the existence of three successive levels. The learned
Sir Gardner Wilkinson, from his geological observations, has fixed the
date of the chief of these changes at from fifteen to seventeen cen-
turies before our era. But as positive monumental statements prove
that the change had already taken place before the expulsion of the
Shepherds, we must ante-date the rupture of the natural barriers of the
Upper Nile three or four centuries, and place it in the interval between
the thirteenth and eighteenth dynasties.
4. All the monuments of the
thirteenth dynasty that we have men-
tioned, proving that dominion extended over the ^^Jlole territory of
its
Egypt, are those of its earlier kings. We have no contemporary

monuments of the princes who continued this line; their names are
only known from royal lists"Hall of Ancestors" at
like that of the
Karnak, or the fragments of papyrus of Turin. Nothing, therefore,
expressly forbids our adopting the opinion proposed by many modem
scholars, and in itself probable enough, that towards the close of the
thirteenth (Theban) dynasty, the fourteenth (the Xoite of Manetho)
established itself as a rival in the Delta. The division of Egypt into
two and hostile kingdoms, as well as the weakness necessarily
rival
resulting from the contest, may have been among the chief causes that
facilitated the success of the Shepherd invasion. We know nothing
of the history of this Xoite dynasty. The extracts from Manetho
mention seventy kings, a statement evidently exaggerated the number ;
of years assigned for its duration differs, the most probable is 184 years.
The thirteenth Theban dynasty, admitting that it was thus partly con-
temporary, would have reigned only 269 years over all Egypt, and the
rest of thetime over the southern provinces alone, and in antagonism
with the rebels of the Delta.
Section III — Invasion and Dominion ok the Shepherds.

I. Manetho, in a fragment preserved by the historian, Josephus,
says (Against Ap., i. 15), "There was a king of ours whose name was
Amintimaos" (an evident corruption of the Greek copyists). " Under
him it came to pass, I know not how, that God was averse to us and ;
there came, after a surprising manner, men of ignoble birth out of the
eastern parts, and had boldness enough to make an expedition into our
country, and with ease subdued it by force, yet without our hazarding a
battle with them. So when they had gotten those that governed us
under their power, they afterwards burned down our cities and demo-
lished the temples of the gods, and used all the inhabitants after a most
barbarous manner nay, some they slew, and led their children and wives
;
into slavery. " He adds also, " This whole nation was called Hyksos, that
is, 'shepherd kings'; for in the sacred language Hyk signifies Khig,
and Sos, in llie ordinary dialect, Shepherds." The two words here
given have been found in the hieroglyphic inscriptions the first under
:
the form Ilak, as tlie name the second

of the chiefs of Semitic trilics ;
under the form Shasou, as the designation of Bedouins. Nevertheless,

all Egyptian monuments known up to this time describe the invaders,
called in the fragment of Manetho Hyksos, by the name of "Mena,"

Shepherds.
The study of the monuments proves the reality of the frightful de-
vastations consequent on the invasion. With one single exception, all
the temples built prior to that event have disappeared, and nothing
can be found of them but scattered ruins, bearing traces of a violent
destruction. Very soon, however, after the first subjugation of the
whole land by the invaders, the native kingdom of the Thebaid was
re-constituted, and afforded refuge to all the patriots who had at first
fled to Ethiopia ; Lower and Central Egypt alone remained under the
direct tyranny of the strangers. During four centuries the princes of
the Thebaid, who formed two successive dynasties, the fifteenth and
sixteenth, had for neighbours, and probably for masters, these barbarous
invaders. It wpuld be impossible to estimate the extent of the rain
which fell on Egypt during these 400 years. The only certain fact we
can mention is, that no one monument remains to teach us what
became of the ancient splendour of Egypt under the Hyksos. We
see, therefore, under the fifteenth and sixteenth dynasties Egyptian
civilisation was again interrupted. Vigorous as it was, the impetus
given by the Osortasens was suddenly arrested, the series of monuments
broken, and this silence even tells the calamities Egypt underwent.
2. Who were the Shepherds ? We may say that their history, long
obscure from the absence of any contemporary document, is partly
elucidated by the recent discoveries of M. Mariette. They were a col-
lection of all the nomadic hordes of Arabia and Syria ; but the chief
part of them, as also the extracts from Manetho say, were Canaanites.
—
Those who held the first rank the tribe directing the movement— were
the Khitas of the Pharaonic monuments, the Hittites of the Bible,
whom Abraham had found already established in the land of Canaan.
We shall see in the Book
of this Manual treating of the Phoenicians,
that the invasion of Egypt was the last episode in the great migration
that, some generations earlier, had led the Canaanitish race from the
shores of the Persian Gulf, their original seat, into Palestine. When
Abraham arrived, the Canaanites had been but a short time in the land.
And, in fact, a papyrus in the Berlin Museum contains the report of an
Egyptian explorer sent into Palestine under the twelfth dynasty, who
found there none but nomadic Semitic tribes, and his narrative does
not once mention the Canaanites.
3. "At length," says Manetho, in the continuation of the fragment
DOMINION OF THE SHEPHERDS. 221
already quoted, " they made one name was

of themselves king, whose
Saites (in some other he also lived at Memphis, and
versions, Salatis) ;
made both the upper and lower regions pay tribute, and left garrisons
in the places most proper for them. He chiefly aimed at securing the
eastern parts, fearing that the Assyrians, then stronger than himself"
(and this, in fact, as we shall see, was precisely at the time of the first
great Chaldean Empire), " would be desirous of that kingdom and
invade it. And as he found in the Tanitic province" (the manuscripts
have, in error, " Saitic ") "a city veiy proper for his purpose, called
Avaris, after an old religious tradition, he rebuilt it, and made it very
strong by the walls which he built about and by a garrison of it,
240,000 armed men. Thither he came in the summer, partly to gather

his corn and pay his soldiers tlieir wages, and partly to exercise his
soldiers and thereljy terrify foreigners." Some details are added as to
the successors of Saites ; the list is preserved in the extracts made by
who says that they reigned 284 years,
the chronologer, Julius Africanus,
names them Anon (otherwise Bnon), Pachnan (or Apachnas), Staan,
Archies, and Apophis. The same extracts mention the existence of a
contemporary native dynasty, the seventeenth, in the Thebaid.
We see by the monuments that, after a long time of absolute bar-
barism and savage devastations, the Shepherds in Lower Egypt, like
the Tartars in China, allowed themselves to be conquered by the
superior civilisation of the people they had subdued, and formed them-
selves into a regular dynasty, adopting Egyptian manners and names.
The first king of the dynasty — the Saites of Manetho, who was really
called Set-aa-peh-i-Nubti — is mentioned in a stele of Ramses II.
(nineteenth dynasty), discovered at Tanis, identical with Avaris, as
having, 400 years before the time of the latter prince, rebuilt the city,
and founded there the temple of the god Set, or Sutekh, the national
god of the Hittites. The name of Anon in Manetho's lists is found as
Annoub in the fragments of the papyrus of Turin, followed by the
commencement of another name, Ap . . ., which must be Apachnas.
Lastly, the real form of the name of the last king of the dynasty,
Apepi (in Greek, Apophis), has been found on many monuments. In
the reign (which lasted sixty-one years) of this Apepi, according to
the express testimony of the extracts from Manetho, Joseph came into
Egypt, and was made '
' governor over all the land of Egypt. " We
see by the narrative of the Book of Genesis that the court of this
king was entirely Egyptian.
As for thecontemporary Theban kings, we know the names of only
the last two, Tiaaken, and Kames. A most important coincidence in
relation to Biblical history is connected with this last king. In a royal
proclamation we read the title "Sustainer of the World " written pre-
cisely in the same form (Tsaf-en-to, transcribed into Hebrew Zaphnath)
222 ANCIENT TITSTORV OF TlIK EAST.
recorded in Book of Genesis as
the the surname Joseph received at
the same period,when he had saved the people of Lower Egypt from
famine. Afay we not conchide that the economic reforms of Joseph,
and his wise precautions against dearth, liad lieen imilalcd by the
national sovereign ofUpper Egypt ?
4. The moment when Egyptian civilisation, at first almost anniliilated
by the invasion, thus revived in the Thebaid under a completely
national form, and in the Delta under the government of rulers of
foreign origin, is on the monuments.
fully represented " The renais-
sance which is seen at Thebes," says M. Mariette, on whose great ex-
perience we are always glad to rely, "offers a singular analogy to
commencement of the nineteenth dynasty. The
that attributable to the
same same arms, the same furniture is found in the tombs."
vases, the
The type of the sarcophagus became again what it had been under the
eleventh dynasty —a type entirely peculiar, and found only at these
two epochs. In allusion to the myth of the goddess Isis protecting the
body of her brother Osiris (with whom the dead person is identified)
by stretching over him her winged arms, the coffin is covered with a
system of wings, painted with varied and brilliant colours. Moreover,
at the time of this new Theban renaissance, ending in the national
deliverance, individuals had, as under the eleventh dynasty, the names
Entef, Ameni, Ahmes, and Aahhotep, so that we can hardly now dis-
tinguish between monuments separated by many centuries and a long
period of foreign rule.
The discovery of the monuments of the kings of the Shepherd
dynasty, is one of the most valuable results of the excavations of M.
Mariette. They were found at Tanis, in the city where the Shepherds
had fixed the capital of their monarchy, and which they strove to
embellish more than any other. The style of art and the
is better,
workmanship more finished than in the monuments of the contem-
porary Theban dynasty. And, in fact, at this time the states governed
by the kings of the invading race were more wealthy and peaceful
than the states of the South, who were struggling hard to throw off the
foreign yoke. These monuments show us to what extent the Shepherds
had become real Pharaohs, adopting as their own the titles of the old
dynasties. They had embraced the religion of Egypt, compelling only'
the admission of their own god Set, cr Sutekh, into the pantheon,
who, in the end remained there definitely, losing, however, the first
rank which they had given him. Their manners and those of their
subjects were Egyptian, with a small number of distinguishing customs
brought from Asia.
We have, finally, of the age of the Shepherds, only the remains of
sculpture, but not one single architectural work ; the principal frag-
ments, all in the museum at Cairo, are, first, a group in gianite of most
—
EXPULSION OF THE SHEPHERDS. 223
perfect execution, representing two personages in Egyptian costume,

but with a large beard, and long hair, absolutely unknown to the true
Mizraitc blood, holding in their outstretched hands a table of offerings
of fish, lotus flowers, and aquatic birds, in a word, of the various
natural productions of the lakes of the Delta. Also four large Sphinxes
(human-headed lions) in diorite, bearing the name of Apepi, the king
whom Joseph served. These, in place of the ordinary head-dress of
the Egyptian Sphinxes, have the head covered with a thick lion's
mane, giving them a very peculiar appearance. The sculptures of the
Shepherd period represent, moreover, a race of radically different type
to that of the Egyptians, a race evidently Semitic, with angular and
sharply cut features. The excavations at Tanis have also resulted in
proving the fact that the last Shepherd kings had restored in the temples
reconstructed by them, the statues of former ages belonging to the
religious edifices overturned in the first period of the invasion, engraving
on them their own names alone, as a new consecration.
Section IV. Expulsion of the Shepherds — Ahmes.

I. This position of affairs could not, however, last long, a great
crisiswas impending. As the power of the native and legitimate kings
of the Thebaid increased, they attempted to throw off the yoke imposed
on them by tlie strangers, to attack them in their fortresses in the Delta,
and to free the sacred soil of Egypt from the presence of the barbarians.
An invaluable papyrus in the Britisli Museum, apparently a fragment of
a detailed chronicle of the national deliverance, relates the commence-
ment of the struggle. It begins thus—" It happened that the land of
Eijypt fell into the hands of enemies, and there was no longer any
king (of the whole country) at the time when this happened. And so
the king Tiaaken was only Hak (vassal king) of Upper Egypt. These
enemies were in Heliopolis, and their chief in Avaris The . . .
king Apepi chose the god Sutekh as his Lord, and did not sei-\'e any
other god in the whole land. He built him a well constructed temple
to last for ever." The chronicle next relates that the Shepherd, Apepi,
learned that the Theban prince, Tiaaken, refused to acknowledge and
worship his god Sutekh, which was equivalent to a formal rejection of
the supremacy previously admitted. Apepi was indignant, and sum-
moned his rebellious vassal. Tiaaken replied to him with contempt.
Armaments were made on both sides, and the war commenced.
2. It was long and sanguinary, and doubtless marked by vicissitudes
unknown to us. It occupied the remainder of the reign of Tiaaken,

the entire reign of Kames, which seems, however, to have been very
short, and great part of that of his son, Ahmes, the Amosis of Manetho,
and terminated under this last prince. The struggle had its alternations
of successes and reverses; but the Egyptians, step by step, gained on
the territory occupied liy tlie invaders. " At last," says Manelho, in a
fragment which Josephus also (Against Apion, i. 14) has preserved,
" the Shepherds, subdued, were driven out of tlie rest of ICgypt, and
shut up in a place that contained 10,000 aroura (a superficial measure),
called Avaris. The Shepherds had built round all this place a high
and strong wall, in order to keep in safety all their possessions and
plunder. The son of the king attempted to take this place Ijy force,
and besieged it with 480,000 men; but, despairing of success, he made a

treaty on these conditions: That the enemy should leave Egypt, and go
in safety wherever they wished. They then went away, carrying with
them all their property their number amounted to 240,000, and they
;
•took the road for Syria through the desert. But fearing the power of
the Assyrians, who were then masters of Asia, they built a city in that
country, which is now called Jud?ea, and that large enough to contain
this great number of men, and called it Jerusalem."
Here again the authority of Manetho is confirmed, not in all the
details, it is true, but in the general facts, by the testimony of the
monuments, and by the funeral inscrijjtion of a superior
particularly
Egyptian officer, the seamen, who took part in
Ahmes, chief of
the war of liberation. This inscription, of immense historical value,
relates the whole life of this personage, and has been deeply
studied by that eminent Egyptologist, M. de Rouge. "When I
was born in the fortress of Ilithyia " (in Upper Egypt), says the
deceased Ahmes, in his epitaph, "my father was the lieutenant
of the late king, Tiaaken. ...
I was lieutenant in turn with
him in the ship named 'The Calf,' in the time of the late king
Ahmes. ... went to the fleet to the north to fight I had the
I ;
duty of accompanying the king when he mounted his chariot. And

when the fortress of Tanis (Avaris), was besieged, I fought on foot
before his majesty. This is what happened on board the ship called
'
The Enthronisation of Memphis.' A naval battle took place on the
water, called the Water of Tanis (Lake Menzaleh). Tlie praises . . .
of the king were bestowed on me, and I received a golden collar for
bravery. . The battle was south of the fortress.
. . The . . .
fortress of Tanis was taken, and I carried off a man and two women,
three in all, whom his majesty assigned to me as slaves." The capital
of the Shepherds once taken, the body of the nation passed the isthmus,
and took refuge in Asia, where it rejoined its fellow countrymen, the
Canaanites of Palestine. Some of them, Ahmes permitted to retain
and cultivate a portion of the land of which their ancestors had taken
possession. They formed a foreign colony in the east of Lower Egypt, I
tolerated in the same way as the Israelites. Only they had no Exodus,
and, by a singular coincidence, we find the same people, in those
AHMES EXPELS THE SHEPHERDS. 225
strangers with robust limbs, grave and elongated faces, who still inhabit
the banks of Lake Menzaleh.
3. Ahmes, seeking for support during this contest against the Asiatic in-
vaders, had turned to the south, and had married an Ethiopian princess,
named Nofre-t-ari, whom the monuments always represent with regular
features and straight nose, but black in colour. This marriage gave rise to
the pretensions of his successors to the sovereignty of Ethiopia. Ahmes,

moreover, ruled over Nubia, as did the Theban princes of the seventeenth
dynasty. But the Nubians had profited by the vicissitudes and em-
barrassments of the Northern war to revolt. No sooner was Tanis
taken, than Ahmes returned towards Nubia and, as we know from the;
epitaph of Ahmes, chief of the who

also took part in this expe-
sailors,
few battles completely subdued the rebels.
dition, in a
The end of this reign was occupied in works of peace, in rebuilding
the ruins and healing the woimds inflicted on the country by foreign
dominion. An inscription at Mount Mokattam, near Cairo, tells us
that Ahmes re-opened the quarries there in the twenty-second year of
his reign, in order to restore the Temples of Memphis and Thebes.
The deliverance of the country and the total destruction of the foreign
power were the an immediate and remarkable expansion of
signal for
the long-fettered national life and civilisation. In a few years Egypt
regained the five centuries lost through the Shepherd invasion. From
the Mediterranean to the cataracts both banks of the Nile were
covered with edifices. New roads were opened for commerce; and trade,
agriculture and the arts received a fresh and vigorous impetus. The
incomparable jewels discovered by M. Mariette on the mummy of the
Queen Aah-Hotep, widow of Kames, and mother of Ahmes, jewels
now the pride of the Museum of Cairo, and which were to be seen at
the Great Exhibition at Paris, in 1867, prove the high degree of excel-
lence art and workmanship had attained to in Egypt a few years only
after the end of the Shepherd invasion. It is difficult to believe that
this long gold chain, this breast-plate of open work, this diadem
with two golden sphynxes, this dagger chased with ornaments in
damascened gold, and the various articles composing this treasure,
could have come from the workshop of a Theban jeweller at a time
when the country had hardly emerged from the disasters of so many
centuries.
4. The chronology as well as the history of this period becomes
clearer at this time ; the list preserved by Josephus, and containing the
duration of the reigns from Thothmes I. to Ramses II., may, in spite
of some errors, in general easily rectified in the present state of know-
ledge, conduct us nearly to the reign of Ramses III., fixed by an
astronomical observation as contemporary with the end of the fourteenth
century before our era. It results, therefore, that the eighteenth
Q
—

dynasty must have commenced nearly with the seventeenth century,
antl tliis is the date we must assign to the expulsion of the Shepherds.
CHAPTER III.
THE GREAT CONQUERORS OF THE NEW EMPIRE.

FOREIGN INFLUENCE OF EGYPT.
Section I. The Eighteenth Dynasty. —First Successors of

Ahmes. — [Seventeenth Century B.C.)
1. The entire deliverance of the land inaugurates the reign of the

great and glorious dynasty, reckoned as the eighteenth.
Ahmes, though
descended from the former Theban kings, owes it to his own glorious
exploits that he is counted the founder of a new dynasty. He also
—
opens the third historical period, known as the New Empire.
From this time for many centuries, the power of Egypt was extensively
felt in the world. The monarchy of the Pharaohs henceforth devoted its
chief efforts to the conquest of Asia. It was known, by the sad experience
of five centuries, that danger to Egypt was always to be apprehended
from Asia. So, to prevent a new Shepherd invasion, policy led her to
seek on their own territory all possible enemies and invaders, to fight
them to the uttermost and subdue them to her own sceptre. But she
nevertheless did not abandon the traditional policy inaugurated by the
kings of the twelfth dynasty, of claiming the whole valley of the Upper
Nile as an inheritance belonging legitimately to Egypt. Warlike
expeditions therefore were constantly made either to the south or to the
north-east, and were continued duiing the whole period of the eighteenth
dynasty.
2. Almost immediately after the capture of Tanis, or Avaris, from the
Shepherds, we find Ahmes following them into the land of Canaan,
where they had commenced to reorganise themselves, conquering them
again, dispersing them, and taking from them some fortified towns,
amongst others the town of Sharuhen, belonging in later times to the
tribe of Simeon (Jos.xix.6). His successors followed the same road,
and advanced with rapid steps. Before long they had subdued all
Western Asia. But before relating their wars and conquests according
to the testimony of the monuments —
very numerous for this period we —
think it necessary to explain briefly the position in which the Egyptians
of the eighteenth dynasty found these Asiatic countries and nations, and
to give a short sketch of the geography of these historical inscriptions.
THE NATIONS AROUND EGYPT. 227
We shall then be able to judge what were tlie facilities and what the
obstacles found by the Pharaohs in the way of their enterprises.

Immediately on the north-east frontier of Egj'pt, the desert between
it and Syria was occupied by Bedouin tribes, whom the hieroglyphic
inscriptions always call Shasu. The most important of these, and the
nearest to Egypt, were the Amalekites of the Bible, the Amalika of the
Arabian historians, though this name applied equally to the Edomites,
or Idumseans, and Midianites who are sometimes mentioned among the
Shasu, and even generally to all the nomadic tribes of the desert.
Palestine was entirely in the hands of the Canaanites, who, after the
defeat of the Shepherds, were unable to form a powerful monarchy, but
were in the divided state in which Joshua found them when, a little
later, he conducted the Hebrews into that country. They formed an
almost infinite number of petty principalities; every city had its own
king, often in rivalry with, or hostile to, his neighbours. This state of
division and local isolation made the Canaanites of Palestine an easy
prey to every conqueror, for it hardly permitted them to unite against a
common enemy. But at the same time it rendered a complete and
perfect conquest of the country difficult, for it was necessarily favourable
to partial insurrections, incessantly liable to break out.
The Syrian populations, who, to the north of the Canaanites, occupied
the provinces called in the Bible by the general name of Aram, as far
as the River Euphrates, belonged to the confederation of the Rotennu,
or Retennu, extending beyond the river and embracing all Mesopotamia
(Naharaina). What we have already said of the Cushites may be ap-
plied to this confederation. The Rotennu had no well-defined territory,
nor even a decided unity of race. They already possessed powerful
cities, such as Nineveh and Babylon, but there were still many nomadic
tribes within the ill-defined limits of the confederacy. Their name was
taken from the city of Resen, apparently the most ancient, and originally
the most important, city of Assyria. The germ of the Rotennu con-
federation was formed by the Semitic Assyro-Clialdtean people, who
were not yet welded into a compact monarchy, but were an aggregation
of petty states, each having its own sovereign, and united by ties of a
nature unknown to us. The first great Chaldtean empire, founded many
centuries earlier, and which had exercised authority over the whole
Tigro- Euphrates basin, was in fact at this moment so crippled in power
that the last descendants of its early kings, reduced to the possession of
Babylon, and perhaps even to Erech, the first seat of their power, were
nothing more than mere members of the Rotennu confederacy. With
the Assyro-Chalda;ans, who were at its head, were joinetl in this con-
federation, theAramaeans on both sides of the Euphrates, whom history
shows to have been always friendly to, and in strict alliance with, Assyria.
The mountains to the north of Mesopotamia were inhabited by the
Q2
Remenen or Armenians, of Japlietic race.
Finally, west of the Rotennu,
in tlie valley of the Orontes, and the vast space contained between the
left bank of the Fu[ilnates, the Taurus and the sea, that Canaanitish
tribe, apparently always the strongest and most powerful, the Khilas or
Hittites (a small branch of whom remained in Palestine, near Hebron),

had founded a warlike and formidable emjiire, a strongly centralised
monarchy. These latter were still living in Palestine in the time of
Solomon, who contracted an alliance with them, and married their king's
daughter. But the power of the Hittite kingdom does not seem under
the eighteenth dynasty to have been sufficiently great to be dreaded by
the Egyptians, and it is not until the time of the following dynasty that
we see them playing a considerable part in the affairs of Western Asia.
3. The first successor of Ahmes was Amen-hotep (Peace of Amen),
called Amenophis by the Greeks. Under his reign the Shasu of the
desert were subdued, at any rate as far as that is possible with Bedouin,
for nearly all the other kings, even the most powerful, were obliged from
time to time to send out expeditions to repress their plundering pro-
pensities. The conquest of the land of Canaan made great progress
during this reign, and Egyptian troops were almost constantly engaged
in reducing the little forts of the petty kings of Palestine. The Pharaohs
did not, however, change the organisation of the country, nor did they
even suppress these small principalities, but confined themselves to
exacting an acknowledgment of supremacy, the payment of tribute and
military service. The inscription on the tomb of Ahmes, chief of the
sailors, already more than once quoted, relates anotherwar of Amen-
hotep I., "I conducted," says he,
directed this time to the south.
"the vessel of king Amen-hotep when he made an expedition towards
Ethiopia to extend the frontiers of Egypt. His majesty took captive
the chief of the mountaineers in the midst of his warriors."
4. Thothmes I. Tuthmosis by the Greek copyists of Manetho)
(called
then ascended the throne. He followed up the successes of his prede-
cessor in Ethiopia; and we may judge how much he enlarged the
boundaries of the Egyptian empire by an inscription of- the second year
of his reign, engraven on the rocks opposite the island of Tombos,
nearly as high up the course of the Nile as that of Argo. But the
greatest enterprise, and the one which rendered the name of Thothmes
illustrious, was to the north. Having reduced the Canaanites of Pales-
tine to submission, he pushed on, and in the neighbourhood of Damascus
encountered the Rotennu, who had assembled a large force to repel an
enemy whose rapid increase of power they must have seen with terror.
The Rotennu were conquered; but king Thothmes, who had felt their
strength, judged that Egyptian dominion in Syria could never be
established on a solid basis unless he reduced them still by
further
seeking them out on their own territory, and compelling the provinces
— — ;
EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY. 229
of Mesopotamia to submit to his sceptre. Crossing the desert, he

marched upon the Euphrates, and passed the river at Carchemish, the Cir-
cesium of classical geography. Assyria, like Ethiopia, then felt the weight
of the Egyptian arms; and, as on the Upper Nile so on the Euphrates,
Thothmes placed inscriptions to record his passage. His reign thus
marks another step in advance; he inaugurated the era of great Asiatic
expeditions, of distant conquests. It was also in this war of Thothmes I.
in Mesopotamia that the Egyptians first became acquainted with horses,
then first appearing in their sculptures, and till then probably unknown
to them. The king established studs in the pastures of Lower Egypt
this animal, one of the most valuable results of the conquest, prospered
there, and in a short time the valley of the Nile became celebrated for
its breed of horses. As well as horses, the Egyptians borrowed from
the Asiatics the use of war-chariots, so important an element in after
days in the armies of the Pharaohs.
Thothmes I. reigned twenty-one years, and at his death left the
throne to his son, Thothmes II. We now find that Ethiopia was
definitely subdued, and remained so for centuries. We begin to
many
find on the rocks of Syene the names of the " Princes governors of the
South," a title then given to functionaries, generally chosen from the
royal family, who represented the authority of the Pharaohs beyond
the cataracts. It does not seem that Thothmes II., whose reign was
very short, was a warlike prince. His successor was his brother,
Thothmes HI.
Section II. Continuation of the Eighteenth Dynasty. —

Thothmes HI. Greatest" Military Power of Egypt.
(About 1600. JReign of about half a centuty.)
I. On his accession to the throne, Thothmes HI. was still a child.

His elder sister, Hatasu, who had already played a part in public
affairs under the former king, became the guardian of the young prince.
But her regency was really a usurpation during the seventeen years that
her government lasted. Hatasu assumed all the prerogatives of the
royal power. Her reign was, however, brilliant. Egyptian history
knows no monarch who, when aggrandised by conquest and political
influence, has not left behind proofs of taste for the arts and mag-
nificent monuments. Hatasu was of this number. Among the prin-
cipal works due to queen are the two gigantic obelisks, one of
this
which still stands among the ruins at Karnak. The inscriptions inform
us that the cjueen erected these two obelisks to the memory of her
father, Thothmes I. The legends on their bases mention some pecu-
liarities worthy of notice. We see, for example, that the summit of
the obelisk was originally formed by a pyramid made of gold taken
from tlic enemy. In another jxissacjc the inscription relates that the
erection of the entire monument, from tlie lime it was cut in tlie
qnarries of Syene, only occupied seven months. We may judge by these

details of the efforts necessary to transport and set up in so short a
time a mass thirty metres high, and weighing 374,000 kilogrammes
(368 tons). The temple of Deir el Bahri is also a monument of the
magnificence of Hatasu. The warlike exploits of the queen are the
subject of the representations on the walls of that edifice. Great bas-
reliefs, engraved with an astonishing boldness and freedom, tell us all
the incidents of the conquest of the land of Pun, that is, of Yemen,
or Arabia Felix, a country fertile and rich in itself, and which, being
the depot of Indian commerce, was the object of the desires of the
Egyptian monarchy, as the possession of it was necessarily an almost
inexhaustible source of wealth. A copy of these interesting repre-
sentations was to be seen at the Exhibition in Paris of 1867. In
conclusion, Hatasu was a sister worthy of the Thothmes, and oc-
cupies not the lowest place in the series of illustrious sovereigns of
who have left such mighty traces on the soil of
the eighteenth dynasty,
Egypt. For seventeen years, as we have seen, she assumed all the
royal power; but even when her brother, Thothmes III., attained his
majority, she did not retire. As under Thothmes II., she con-
tinued for many years to take part in the government. At length
she died, leaving him whose power she had usurped sole master of
Egypt.
2. Of all the Pharaohs of this age, and perhaps of all Egyptian
history, Thothmes III. is unquestionably the greatest. Under him
Egypt attained to the summit of her power.
In internal affairs, a wise
foresight in administration ensured everywhere order and progress.
Abroad, Egypt became by her victories the arbitress of thj whole
civilised world and according to a poetical expression of the time,
;
" She placed her frontier where it pleased herself." Her empire ex-
tended over the countries now called Abyssinia, Soudan, Nubia, Syria,
Mesopotamia, Arabia, Kurdistan, and Armenia.
Thothmes III. himself relates in the annals of his reign inscribed
on the walls of the sanctuary of Karnak, that he made his first expe-
dition for conquest in the twenty-second year of his reign, including his
minority. It is undoubtedly difficult, and sometimes impossible, in
spite of the learned labours of Dr. Birch, Dr. Brugsch, and M. de
Rouge, who have specially applied themselves to this long text, to
recognise in our geography the exact equivalent of all the names of
towns and peoples successively enumerated in the history of the wars of

Thothmes. But we know sufficient to be enabled to give a satisfac-
tory general idea. We borrow from the works of the authorities
whom we have just named an analysis of the facts stated on the
THOTHMES INVADES SYRIA. 231
monument, usually designated "The Annals of Thothmes III.,"

or the "Wall Catalogue of Karnak," because of the lists giving
the number of taken and amount of booty carried off.
prisoners
These definite and unexaggerated accounts are an invaluable guarantee
of the truth of the relation, which may be called official and statis-
tical, and which bear no traces of the inflated style so common to
oriental monarchs.
3. The Rotennu refused their tribute, supposing, no doubt, that the
young king, deprived of the experienced councils of his sister Hatasu,

would be unable to reduce them to obedience. Moreover, a formidable
insurrection, fomented and supported by them, broke out among the
Canaanites of Palestine, whose petty kings united in an effort to thi'ow
off the yoke of the Pharaohs, and so successfully, that only a few
strongholds, such as Gaza, were left in the possession of the Egyptians.
The whole of the twenty-second year of the reign of Thothmes was
occupied in preparations for the war, and in the siege of a few places
of strength in the south of Palestine, in later times belonging to the
tribe ofSimeon j and having captured them, the king re-opened his
communications by land with Gaza. This last-named place was
selected as the base of the operations of the following year.
In the spring of his twenty-third year, on the 3rd or 4th of the
month " Pachons,"* the king arrived at Gaza, and took command of
his troops in person. On the 5th a neighbouring fortress surrendered,
and Thothmes then advanced. On the i6th he learned that the Syrian
and Canaanile princes, who were confederated against him under the
king of Kadesh, had commenced their march, and were concentrating
their forces at Megiddo, in the plain of Esdraelon, the field where
many a battle has decided the fate of Syria. Rejecting the advice of
his officers to circle round the base of the mountains separating him
from the enemy, and thus to avoid the risk of attacking them in front,
Pharaoh marched straight at the confederates, and encamped, on the
19th, on the first rise of the mountains at the entrance of a difficult
ravine, which the enemy had not taken the precaution to occupy with
a sufficient force. He burst through, in spite of all difficulties, and on
the 20th appeared with his troops on the bank of the brook Kanah, in
later times the boundary between the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh
(Jos. xvi. 8; xvii. 9), and flowing across the plam of Esdraelon to the
south of Megiddo. The Annals of Karnak contain here a short pro-
* The 1st Pachons, properly and theoretically, should correspond

with the summer solstice, whicJi really was the case in the years 1785
and 280 B.C. But as the Egyptian year consisted of 365 days without
bissextile years, at the end of 400 years there would be an error of
97 days, and under Thothmes III. the 1st Pachons must have fallen
about the middle of May. See note at the end of this Chapter.
claninlion, addressed by Pharaoh to his Iroops on ihe eve of battle.
On the 2 1st Pachons, at break of day, he arranged his army for the
attack ; wing rested on the Kanah, and his left was extended
his right
to the north-west of Megiddo. Tholhmcs himself commanded the
centre. The enumeration of the contingents the enemy opposed to
him comprises the names of all the important cities of Palestine and of
the Aramcean provinces between the Anti-Lebanon and the Euphrates.
At the veiy first shock of battle the Asiatics were overthrown, and
fled towards Megiddo ; but the gamson of the place was terrified, and
shut the gates, and the chiefs M'ere obliged to be drawn with cords up
the ramparts, to escape the pursuit of the Egyptians.
The very moderate numbers, as given in the text, of enemies killed and
taken prisoners in the battle, show a spirit of truth which much en-
hances our interest in the narrative. Eighty-three kille<l and 340
prisoners only are reckoned for the battle of Megiddo. The pursuit
was nevertheless hot, for the text says, that at the time when the chiefs
of the enemy gained the fortress " the king's warriors paid no attention
to the booty, and let it fall." The small number of killed may be ex-
plained by the vicinity of the mountains, where the vanquished found
refuge from the pursuit of the Egyptians; in ancient times, in conse-
quence of the use of defensive armour, and of the manner in which
they fought, a pursuit was productive of much more slaughter than a
battle. But the capture of 2,132 horses and of 924 war-chariots, as
well as long lists of booty, attest the entire dispersion of the Asiatic
army. Some days afterwards the city of Megiddo, blockaded and
reduced to famine, was obliged to surrender without a struggle; and as
all the princes had found refuge there, its fall decided the
allied
campaign. Thothmes encountered no further serious resistance; the
remainder of his march through Palestine as far as Lebanon, and
through the Syrian provinces to the Euphrates, was merely a triumphal
procession. The chiefs who had not been at Megiddo hastened to
make their submission; and to protest their fidelity, most of the for-
tresses opened their gates,and the few that attempted resistance were
quickly taken. Even before the end of the campaign, Thothmes had
incorporated with his own army large bodies of soldiei^s, taken
from the enemy, who eagerly asked permission to enlist. Having
garrisoned the three chief cities of the Rotennu on this side ot the
Euphrates, he returned to Egj-pt with thousands of prisoners and
hostages. But in the following spring he passed the Euphrates at
Carchemish at the head of his troops, and built, to s(;cure at all times
the easy passage of the river, a powerful fortress, the ruins of which
still exist. This time he had no need to fight ; the Rotennu beyond
the Euphrates, that is, the Assp-o-Chaldseans, submitted without an
attempt at resistance, and Thothmes received tribute from their princes,
THOTHMES INVADES ASSYRIA. 233
amongst whom are named the king of Nineveh and the king of Asshur,
or Ellasar, now Kilch Sherghat.
4. Four years of perfect peace succeeded these victorious campaigns.
But the Annals of the Temple of Kamak make the wars recommence in
the twenty-ninth year of the reign of Tiiothmes. Until then, the
Egyptian conquerors, desirous of reaching the Euphrates as quickly as
possible, so as to strike at the heart of the power of the Rotennu,
had passed without turning aside to the mountain mass of the two
parallel chains of Lebanon and Anti- Lebanon, containing between them
the fertile plain called by the Egyptians Tsahi, and by classical geo-
graphies Ccele- Syria, or Hollow Syria. Thothmes III. penetrated into
and subdued that country as well as the Phoenician coast to his
sceptre. Wine (doubtless the famous golden wine of Lebanon), wheat,
cattle, honey, and iron, are mentioned among the tribute that he
exacted. Tunep, a city in the Anti-Lebanon, not far from Damascus,

and Aradus in the southern extremity of Phcenicia, are enumerated
among the cities then taken.
The following year, a new sixth of his reign, was
expedition, the
directed against the land of the Ratennu, where some insurrections had
taken place. Aradus had revolled, and was again compelled to sub-
mit. Kadesh, a strong city, noted in later times in the wars- of the
kings of the nmeteenth dvmasty, the ruins of which have been found oii
the Orontes, not far from Emessa, was taken by assault. At the news'
of this success, the Assyrian princes beyond the Euphrates hastened to
renew their submission; the terms used in relating this event in the
great Kamak inscription, show power exercised by
us the nature of the
the Pharaohs over the Asiatic countries they had conquered. " Here
they are bringing the sons and brothers of the chiefs to put them in the
power of the king, and to be led into Egypt. If any one of the chiefs
should die, his majesty. will set^free his successor to occupy the place."
As we see, this was exactly the organisation of the subject kingdoms of
the Roman. Empire. Each country preserved a national gxjvernment
and king, but recognised the supremacy of Pharaoh, paid him tribute,
and furnished to his army a contingent of auxiliary forces. The young
princes were retained as hostages at the court of Thebes, where they
received, doubtless, an entirely Egyptian education, and amongst them
Pharaoh chose, and invested with power, the successors of vassal kings
who died.
In the. thirty-first year of his reign, Thothmes went into Mesopo-
tamia to receive personally the tribute and homage of the Assyro-Chal-
daean kings. On his return to Egypt, he received also tribute from
several African people — ivory, gold dust, ebony, lions' and panthers'
skins. In the following years Thothmes returned again to Mesopo-
taniia, took some prisoners, and set up an inscription to commemorate
— ; ;

liishaving "enlarged ihe frontiers of Egypt." Nineveh, Singar, and
Babylon then formed parts of his empire, and in Syria, the cities
beyond Jordan, Heshbon, and Rab1)alh Amnion, were for the first time
forced to pay tribute. Some partial revolts in Mesopotamia and in
the north of Syria were victoriously repressed. Finally, a great
expedition was made into the mountainous district, north of Me.sopo-
tamia, in which the king does not seem to have been present, against
the Romcnen or Armenians, who submitted and became tributaries
during the last years of his reign.
5. Such are the by the Annals, engraven on the walls of
facts related
the sanctuary at Karnak. But they only comprise the events of the
Asiatic wars. Whilst Thothmes with his legions pushed on to Babylon,
and even to Armenia, he was also the first of the sovereigns of Egypt
to create a considerable fleet on the Mediterranean, and had acquired
absolute supremacy on its waters. This fleet was undoubtedly manned
by Phoenicians, for the Egyptians have never at any time been skilful
sailors and moreover we find from the monuments, that from the date
;
of their submission to Thothmes III., the Phoenician cities to which no

doubt the Egyptian monarch had granted very favourable conditions,
preserved for many centuries towards that kingdom an unshaken
fidelity, in complete contrast with the conduct of other Canaanitish
people. The results of the naval campaign of Thothmes, and his con-
quests in the basin of the Mediterranean, are chiefly known from an
inscribed monumental stele discovered at Karnak by M. Mariette.
The inscription, which is in poetry, and very biblical in style, has been
translated by M. de Rouge. We quote here a few verses as specimens
of the grand lyrical Egyptian style. Amen, the Supreme god of Thebes,
is speaking:
" Iam come —to thee haveI given to strike do^vn Syrian princes
Under thy they lie throughout the breadth of their country.
feet
Like to the Eord of Light, I made them see thy glory.
Blinding their eyes with light, the earthly image of Amen.
" I am come— tothee have I given to strike down Asian people

Captive now thouhast led the proud Assyrian chieftains ;
Decked in royal robes, I made them see thy glory;
All in glittering arms and fighting, high in thy war-car.
" I am come —
to thee have I given to strike down western nations ;
Cyprus both and the Ases have heard thy name with terror.
Like a strong-horned bull, I made them see thy glory ;
Strong with piercing horns, so that none can stand before him.
" I am come —
to thee have I given to strike down men of the sea-
board.
All the land of the Maten is trembling now before thee !
;
EXTENT OF THE KINGDOM OF THOTHMES. 235
Fierce as the huge crocodile, I made them see thy glory

Terrible Lord of the waters, none dare even approach him.
" I —
am come to thee have I given to strike down island races ;
Tliose in the midst of the sea have heard the voice of thy roaring.
Like an avenger of blood, I made them see thy glory,
When by his victim he stands prepared to strike with his falchion.
*' I —
am come to thee have I given to strike down Lybian archers,
All the isles of the Greeks submit to the force of thy spirit.
Like a lion in prey, I made them see thy glory,
Couched by the corpse he has made down in the rocky valley.
" I am come — tothee have I given to strike down the ends of the
ocean.
In the grasp of thy hand is the circling zone of waters ;
Like the soaring eagle, I made them see thy glory.
Whose far-seeing eye there is none can hope to escape from."
We see by the inscription on this Theban stele that the fleets of the
great Pharaoh had conquered, first Cyprus and Crete, and had subjected
the southern islands of the Archipelago, a large part of the coasts of
Greece and Asia Minor, and possibly even the south of Italy. It seems
that we ought to infer from the same monument, that the ships of
Thothmes III. were often in the Black Sea, where Herodotus tells us
that the Egyptians had founded a colony at Colchis to work the mines.*
It is probable that the ancestors of the German Ases, who then lived
by the banks of the Masotic Gulf— the descendants of the Askenaz of the
tenth chapter of Genesis— may be recognised in the list of northern
people who paid tribute to the fleet of Thothmes. In another direction
the same fleets had established the sovereignty of Pharaoh over the
whole Lybian coast Monuments of the reign of Thothmes have been
found at Cherchel, in Algeria, and it is far from impossible that they
marked the limit of Egyptian rule on the northern coast of Africa.
6. Other facts show that the supremacy of Thothmes was peaceably
admitted in the whole of Cush, or Ethiopia. A cave at Ibrim, in Lower

Nubia, shows us the "Governor of the South " presenting to Pharaoh
and the grain of the country. Thothmes III.
tributes of gold, silver,
built and dedicated Sun the Temple of Amada. At Semneh, he
to the
restored the Temple where Osortasen III. of the twelfth dynasty was
worshipped. Kumneh, opposite Semneh, Mount Doshe and the Isle
of Sai, a little below that of Tombos, and also, nearer Egypt itself,
Korte, Pselchis, Talmis, have preser\'ed his memory. Beyond the limits
of Ethiopia Proper, in the country of the negroes, frequent and victorious
expeditions were made under the same king. In a bas-relief at Kai-nak
* Her. II. 103, 104.

—
236 ANCIKXT HISTORY OF THE EAST.

we see 150 African prisoners defiling before Pharaoh, eacli one bearing
the name of a subject tribe. As far as we can judtê — for tlic identifica-
tion of thenames of African nations is more diflicult than tliat of names
in Asia and Europe —
tlie hst on this monument emljraces the greater
part of what is now Abyssinia, and extends far to tlie west in Soudan.
7. A reign so glorious and prosperous must necessarily have left in
Egypt many magnificent monuments. Those of Thothmes HI. are in

fact very common from the Delta to the Cataracts, all in admirable stylci
tasteful in design,and admirably finished. At Heliopolis, Memphis,
Ombos, Elephantine, and, above all, at Thebes, we still find most im-
portant remains of the great buildings erected by this king.
Section III. Last Kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty —

Religious Troubles. {Sixteenth Centiny B.C.)—
1. Amen-hotep (or Amenophis) II. was the successor of Thothmes
III. He repressed an attempt of the Mesopotamians to shake off the
Egyptian yoke, and received the submission of Nineveh. An inscrip-
tion in theTemple of Amada, in Nubia, relates that he fought with his
enemies in the land of Asshur; that seven kings fell before him, and were
brought [their embalmed bodies it is to be supposed] to the banks of the
Nile, where six were hung against the walls of Thebes, and the seventh
at Napata, the capital of Ethiopia, "that the negroes might see the
victories of the ever-living king over all lands and all people upon earth,
since he had possessed the people of the south and chastised the people
of the north." In a grotto at Ibrim there is a statue of the king, seated
as an equal among the gods of the land, and also an inscription enumera-
ting the tributes paid by "the Prince Governor of the land of the
South." But everything shows that the reign of Amen-hotep was short.
The extracts from Manetho do not name him, and he is known only
from the inscriptions. The reign of Thothmes IV., who succeeded him,
was not much longer. The lists of Manetho assign him nine years, and
no inscription is known later than his seventh year; the latest mentions
this prince as the conqueror of the black people. On another monu-
ment he is receiving tribute from Mesopotamia. The limits of the
empire were maintained.
2. The epoch of great wars was renewed with Amen-hotep III. A
date of his thirty-sixth year is known, and a long list might be made of
the Asiatic and African countries which, by policy or force, were sub-
jected to him; his empire, says one inscription, extended from north to
south, from Mesopotamia to Karo in Abyssinia. But it must be con-
fessed that the expeditions of his troops do not seem to have always
been very chivalrous, and appear sometimes to have had for theh' object
END OF THE EIGHTEENTH DYNASTY. 237
merely a chase after slaves (especially in expeditions to Soudan), if we

may judge from an Semneh, where mention is made of
inscription at
740 negro prisoners, of whom half were women and children. Amen-
hotep HI. throughout his long reign was especially a builder. He
covered the banks of the Nile with monuments remarkable for their
grandeur, and for the perfection of the sculptures with which they are
adorned. The Temple at Djebel Barkal, the ancient Napata, capital ot
Egyptian Ethiopia, is the work of this reign, as well as that of Soleb,
near the third cataract. At Syene, Elephantine, Silsilis, Eileithya, in
the Serapeum of Memphis, and in the Sinaitic Peninsula works of
Amen-hotep III. are found. He made considerable additions to the
Temple at Karnak, and built that part of the Temple of Luxor, now
covered by the houses of the village of that name. The dedicatory
inscription which he placed on it deserves to be inserted as a
specimen of the customary style and title of Egyptian .sovereigns. " He
is Horus, the strong bull, who rules by the sword and destroys all bar-
barians ; he is king of Upper and Lower Egypt, absolute master, Son of

the .Sun. He strikes down the chiefs of all lands, no country can
stand before his face. He marches, and victoi-y is gained, like Horus,
son of Isis, like the .Sun in heaven. He overturns even their fortresses.
He brings to Egypt by his valour tribute from many countries —he, the
lord of both worlds, Son of the Sun."
But it is not by his conquests, it is not even in his real name, that this
Pharaoh has attained his greatest celebrity. It is by the colossal statue
he erected at Thebes, and still to be seen there, the statue which, under
the name of Memnon, took such hold of the imaginations of the Greeks
and Romans in the two first centuries of the empire. They believed
that they saw or rather heard Memnon, the Ethiopian, one of the de-
fenders of Troy, each morning saluting his mother, Aurora. A learned
pamphlet by Letronne, founded on the physical observations of M. de
Rosiere, has completely explained this pretended prodigy, which the
emperor Hadrian himself witnessed. The mysterious noise was pro-
duced when the first rays of the sun fell on the granite stone of the
Colossus, covered before sunrise with dew which had penetrated into the
many fissures of the stone. Similar phenomena are by no means un-
common in natural history. It had not been produced in this Colossus
before the earthquake that, about the time of Tiberius, threw down the
upper part of the statue, and thus uncovered the most exposed to
fissures
the action of the dew; it ceased when the statue was repaired by Sep-
timus Severus and put into the state in which we now see it.
3. Amen-hotep HI. was succeeded on the throne by his son, Amen-
hotep IV. He, in his foreign policy, followed the example of his pre-
and some of his monuments show him standing in his chariot,
decessors,
and followed by his seven daughters, who fought with him, trampling
under his horses' feet the vanquished Asiatics. But in internal ad-
ministration, the reign facts, which
of this prince presents peculiar
render it one of the most extraordinary episodes in the Pharaonic
annals. His face has nothing of the Egyptian type; and his features
on all the monuments bear the marks of perfect imbecility, such
as must have suljjected him entirely to the influence of anyone who
desired to control him. He v/as probably the first since the founda-
tion of the Egyptian monarchy to touch the religion of the country,
and to attempt to reform, or rather destroy, it entirely, and substitute
another form of worship. In place of the religion, up to that time
unaltered, he wished to establish the worship of one single god,
represented by the Sun's disc, and named Aten, which word has been
•compared, not without some apparently good cause, with the Semitic
Adonai. A regular persecution broke out throughout the whole
empire. The temples of the ancient gods were closed, and their
images, as well as names, everywhere effaced from the monuments,
especially the image and name of Amen, the supreme god of Thebes.
The king himself changed his name, which was compounded of the
name of the proscribed deity, and in place of Amen-hotep called himself
—
Chu-en-Aten " Glory of the Solar disc." Wishing to make an end of
all the traditions of his ancestors, this reforming king abandoned Thebes,
and built another capital in Upper Egypt, in a place now called Tell-el-
Amama. The ruins of this city, abandoned after his death, have
preserved for us many monuments of his reign, displaying very ad-
vanced and where we see him presiding over the ceremonies of
art,
his new worship. It seems now to be proved that the mother of
Amen-hotep IV., Queen Taia, a woman more than usually strong-

minded, and who was all-powerful with her son, was the leader in
this religious movement. This queen was not an Egyptian ; the
monuments represented her with light hair, blue eyes and rosy cheeks,
women of northern climates. An inscription, preserved at the
like the
Cairo Museum, mentions her father and mother by names which are
not Egyptian, and not even belonging to any foreign royal family.
She was then the child of one of those families of foreigners who
then lived in the Delta, and was married for her beauty by Amen-
hotep HI. In dedicating altars to a god whom Egj'pt had not before
known, Chu-en-Aten was merely following the traditions of the
foreign race whose blood ran in his veins. He did for Aten or Adonai
what the Shepherds had done for Sutekh. He gave supremacy to a
foreign faction and this may perhaps explain why, in the bas-reliefs of
;
Tell-el-Amama, we find this king surrounded by oflicers whose phy-

siognomy is as foreign and as little like the Egyptians as his own.
Had not the Hebrews, whose number had enormously increased
during the ten generations of their residence in Egypt, some connection
RELIGIOUS TROUBLES IN EGYPT. 239
with this strange attempt, and the imperfect monotheism of Amen-

hotep IV. ? We have perhaps a right to suppose that they had. There
are curious resemblances between the external forms of Israelitish wor-
ship in the desert, and those revealed by the monuments of Tell-el-
Amarna. Some of the sacred furniture, such as the " Tabic of Shew-
bread," described in the book of Exodus as belonging to the Taber-
nacle, is seen in the representations of the worship of Aten, but not at
any other period. But what is stillmore significant is, that the com-
mencement of the persecution of the Hebrews coincides exactly with
the termination of the religious troubles excited by the attempts of the
son of Taia at reform, or rather absolute revolution in religious worship.
We have already seen, second chapter of our Manual, that during
in the
their sojourn in and previous to the mission of Moses, the
Egjqjt,
monotheism of the descendants of Jacob had become much corrupted.
In particular it was tainted with materialism. Surrounded Ijy idolaters,
the Hebrews with difficulty only retained the worship of Jehovah, even
under a visible and material form. And coiTupted in this way, their
religion was not much better than that which Amcn-hotep attempted to
establish.
4. After the death of this king, Egypt remained disorganised and a
prey to factions. The history of the empire of the Pharaohs for this
period is full of obscurities, which further discoveries alone can clear up.
We many personages, some of them great officers at the court
find that
of Amen-hotep Chu-en-Aten, and husbands of his daughters, succes-
sively seized on the supreme power, and followed each other at very
short intervals. The most important, the one whose authority seems
to have been best assured, is one Amen-tu-t-ankh, another son of
Amen-hotep whose mutilated monuments are found in Ethiopia,
III.,
at Thebes, and at Memphis, who was therefore in possession of all
Egypt, except perhaps the Delta. He made campaigns in Asia, and
received an ambassador from Assyria.
In the midst of these disorders, apparent even in the
lists of Manetho,
we mention of the last son of Amen-hotep III., Har-em-Hebi,

find
the Horus of Manetho, who in the end was recognised as the only
legitimate king of this period. The commencement of his reign was
brilliant. An inscription, dated in his second year, is at Silsilis attached
to a representation of his triumplial return from a victorious campaign
on the Upper Nile. One of the Egyptian chiefs is reproaching the
captives with having refused to hear those who told tliem "the lion
is approaching the land of Ethiopia." In another place, the inscription
says to the king, " The gracious god returns, borne by the chiefs of all
the land . . . the king, director of the worlds, favoured by the
Sun, Son of the Sun . . . The king's name is known in the land of
Cush ; he has chastised it as he had promised his father, Amen." After
this second year, history is quite silent, although Har-em-Hebi still
nominally reigneil, and, according to the statements of later lists, for

thirty-six or thirty-seven years. \Ve know only of a few monuments
erected by this prince. We find, also, traces of violent reactions against
the reforms of Amen-hotep IV., and all that belonged to him. The
names of the pretenders, his successors, are everywlicre defaced; and
the buildings erected by them are thrown to the ground, and the new
city, Tell-el-Amarna, purposely and systematically destroyed. Every-
thing shows us a time of trouble, of continual revolution, and of civil
discord. No
doubt part of the disturbances, of which the monuments
bear traces, must have been contemporary with Har-em-Hcbi, and
have lasted during the whole of his official reign. In that period, we
repeat, there are obscurities still impenetrable in the present state of
knowledge, and which new discoveries alone can dissipate. In the
midst of these obscurities, in the midst of the troubles we have men-
tioned, the eighteenth dynasty terminates with the reign of Har-em-
Hebi, having occupied the throne of Egypt for 241 years, and carried
the glory and power of Egypt to its highest point.
Section IV.— Commencement oe the Nineteenth Dynasty —

Seti l.—{Fifteenlh Century B.C.)
r. Under the nineteenth dynasty, which acquired the throne after

the death of Har-em-Hebi, the fortune of Egypt maintained to some
extent its ascendancy though the reigns of some warlike kings
; but,
throw a bright gleam on this epoch, the shade of approaching trouble
already darkens the horizon. Egypt, under the eighteenth dynasty, had
been a standing menace to all nations of the earth; she was hence-
forward doomed to be herself constantly endeavouring to ward off
threatened danger.
The king who commenced this series was Ramses I.; he seems to
have been grandson on the mother's side of Har-em-Hebi, and possibly

son of one of the pretenders who disputed the throne at the close of
the eighteenth dynasty, so that he is sometimes counted as the last king
of that dynasty. We have but a small nuzirber of monuments of his
reign. In the midst of the disorders which for nearly half a century
followed the death of Amen-hotep III., the Asiatic dominions of the
Egyptian monarchy were much disturbed. Revolts occurred in most
of the provinces ; the petty local princes almost entirely ceased to pay
tribute: the conquests of Thothmes III. needed in great part tobe
recommenced. Syria especially was threatened ; Egyptian supremacy
in that country was muclr more precarious than in the more distant
Mesopotamia. On the banks of the Orontes, in the whole of that vast
a
RAMSES I. AND SETI. 241
district comprised between the left bank of the Euphmtes, the

Taurus, and the sea, a region hitlierto untrodden by the Egyptian con-
querors, the country of the Khitas, or Hittites, of Canaanitish race, who
seem never to have given offence to the Thothmes or Amen-hoteps, liad
suddenly become very powerful, had taken the lead of other neighbour-
ing nations, had drawn round them other Canaanitish tribes, and even
extended their influence over the south of Asia Minor. Formed now
into one single monarchy, possessing a numerous and formidable army,
the Khitas, descendants of the Shepherds, openly aspired to rule all
Syria, and Ahmes, by crushing

to take their revenge for the exploits of
the foreign doming '
Egypt. Their pretensions were the more
dangerous because tne Canaanites of Palestine were induced by com-
munity of race to prefer them to the Egyptians as rulers.
Ramses I. made one campaign against the Khitas on their own
territory and an inscription at Karnak states that he was the first of
;
the Pharaohs who sought them out in the valley of the Orontes. The
war was concluded by a treaty between Ramses and Seplul, king ot
the Hittites. Very few passages of arms marked the reign of this
Pharaoh, which was very short. His successor was Seti I., the Sethos
of Greek tradition.
2. Although an inscription in the palace of Medinet Abu at
Thebes describes Seti as the .son of Ramses I., he seems to have
been only his adopted son, and son-in-law. In the Temple of Abydos,
recently uncovered by M. Mariette, it is said of his son, Ramses II.,
that he was "King in the womb of his mother before he was born";
also that Seti governed merely in the stead of his son Ramses, even
before his birth. From such strange and unusual expressions, it seems
certain that Seti I. was a general of repute — —
a soldier of fortune
stranger by birth to the royal family, who, by marriage with the heiress
to the crown, seated himself on the throne ; whilst, from the legitimist
point of view, he was regarded as a regent only, by whom the throne
was preserved for his son Ramses, in whose veins, through his mother,
ran the blood of the ancient kings of the eighteenth dynasty.
Not only was Seti I. a stranger to the royal family, but he seems not
even to have been of pure Egyptian race. Plis features, and those of
his son Ramses, are too handsome, and of a regularity too classical, for
the pure blood of Mizraim ; they denote an origin drawn from another
people. But what is more extraordinary still is, that some indications,
to which it is difticult to refuse belief, show that the strange race from
which descended Seti, and, consequently, all the kings of the nineteenth
dynasty, was that of the Shepherds, who still remained as colonists in the
Delta. Thus only can we explain the surprising conclusion which results
from an inscription discovered by M. Mariette at Tanis. This inscrip-
tion is relative to the re-establishment by Ramses II. of the worship
R
—

of Sutekh, tlie national deity of tlie Hyksos, in llicir ancient capital.
Now the son of Seti I. gives to King Set-aa-pehti, the founder of the
regulai- dynasty of the Shepherds, the title of "Father," or "An-
cestor," and dates an era from the reign of this prince,
3. Seti surnamed Merenphtah, was one of the greatest and most
I.,
warlike of the sovereigns of F^gypt. He was also distinguished as a

builder. He built the whole of the great Temple of Osiris at Abydos,
more than 560 feet long, one of the wonders of Egypt brought to light
by recent excavations. At Thebes he founded a magnificent palace,
that of Kurnah, so called from a modern village partly built in the
very court of that edifice. The subterranean tomb of the same king,
built on so bold a plan that we can hardly imagine how an architect
could have conceived it, must be classed among the most remarkable
works of Pharaonic art. But the most astonishing of the monumental
remains of .Seti is the famous " Hall of Columns " in the immense
palace of Karnak at Thebes, where so many successive generations
have laboured. Travellers of our days have exhausted the language of
admiration in their descriptions of this marvellous building, of which
we shall have occasion to speak in a future chapter.
The exploits of Seti himself are represented on the sculptured walls
of this" gigantic hall. All these sculptures have inscriptions. One
represents Seti. attacking the Arabs of the desert, the Shasu, whom
we already know others show the Remenen, or Armenians, whom the
;
king conquered, with their neighbours, the Assyrians, cutting down the
trees in their forests, as if to open a passage for him. The Assyrians
were cut to pieces, and submitted to pay tribute. Great battles were
fought with the Khitas of the north of Syria, and at last the king
returned to Egypt with numerous captives. He was received with
great ceremony at the frontier by the grandees of the empire, and
afterwards he presented his Asiatic prisoners to the god Amen, at
—
Thebes. The whole of this period of wars the complete " .Setiad "
is depicted in an immense series of sculptures on a most magnificent
scale.
Thus the most perfect work of art of this reign is at the same time
an Ifistorical monument of the highest importance, contributing largely
to our knowledge of Egyptian history. By comparing the facts re-

corded on these sculptures, and in their inscriptions, with the records of
inscriptions found elsewhere, we anive at a result which, unfortunately,
we can only present in a hasty sketch,
4, Before carrying his arms into Syria, Seti was previously compelled,
in the first year of his reign, to ensure the tranquillity of the frontier of
Egypt on the side of the Isthmus of Suez, by chastising the
itself,
Shasu, or Bedouins, whose

depredations had for some time been
exceedingly annoying, and who had the audacity even to attack ZaI,
WAR WITH THE HITTITES. 243
the chief town of the fourteenth nome, or province of Lower Egypt, the
Heliopolis of the Greeks, near the Bitter Lakes.' Pharaoh repulsed
them with ease, and drove them back into the desert; and pursuing
them there, compelled the tribes to submit. In the following year, Seti
repaired in person to Syria al the head of a large army. He seems to
have inet with no resistance in Palestine, where all the petty Canaanitish
princes hastened to pay their tribute and to furnish contingents of
troops. Desirous of first confronting the most menacing danger, instead
of passing on, like his predecessors, to the Euphrates, he marched
against the Khitas, and attacked the southern frontier of their country.
The war at this point was long and desperate; and it seems that the
Egyptians were unable to penetrate far into the enemy's territory.
However, Seti at length carried by assault the chief fortress of the

country of the Khitas, Kadesh, the key to the whole valley of the
Orontcs ; it was not occupied by the Hittites, but by another tribe of
Canaanitish race, vassals of the Hittite king, the Amorites, related to
the nation of the same name whom the Hebrews at a later date found
in Palestine. After this success a treaty of peace was made between
Seti and Mautnur, king of the Hittites, by which the latter nation
preserved their possessions entire. Even Kadesh was restored to
them ; but they engaged never again to attack the Egyptian provinces
or foment rebellion against the authority of Pharaoh, and to leave him
at liberty to attack and reduce to subjection the revolted nations who
had obeyed his predecessors, and whom he had always regarded as
subjects.
Secure in this quarter, Seti turned back to attack the Rotennu, who
no longer acknowledged Egyptian supremacy, and had discontinued
paying their tribute. Those between Lebanon and the Euphrates, that
is the Aramaeans, were easily subdued. The Rotennu beyond the
Euphrates gave more trouble to the Egyptian conqueror ; but some
great battles brought about the complete submission of Mesopotamia,
Assyria, and Chaldsea. Seti admitted to an interview the chiefs of
Nineveh, Babylon, and Singar. A last campaign in the mountains oi
Armenia, re-established the supremacy of Pharaoh in that country.
The whole of the conquests of Thothmes HI. were recovered, and the
Asiatic empire of Egypt was completely reconstructed. On the other
hand, Seti I. does not seem to have made any attempt to recover the
maritime conquests of Thothmes. We have no reason to suppose tliat
he had any considerable fleet on the Mediterranean, or that he endea-
voured to regain supremacy over the islands that had become inde-
pendent in the troublous times at the close of the eighteenth dynasty.
It is true that a formidable power had grown up, soon to be able to
measure itself —
with Egypt the navy of the Pelasgi, which it seems did
not exist in the days of Thothmes III.
R 2
244 ANCIENT HISTORY OP^ TIIK EAST.
5. In the south, religious and politiciil troubles had never sliaken the
peaceable possession of Ethiojiia liy the Pharaohs. Scti had therefore
no need to undertake any serious exjiedition in that quarter. He con-
fined himself to sending out from time to time, like iiis predecessors, a
few expeditions, more for slave hunting than war, against the semi-
barbarous populations bordering on Ethiopia, particularly against the
negroes. In the sculptures of a temple near ihe frontiers of Nubia, at
a place now called Radesieh, this king is represented holding a group of
negro prisoners by the hair —a representation intended to express that
the tribes were entirely at his mercy.
On the north-west frontier of Egypt, Scti repulsed the incursions of
the Lybians, and despatched some successful expeditions into their
country. Finally, he reconstructed the Egyptian fleet on the Red Sea
which cruised on the shores of the Pun, or Yemen, where he re-asserted
the supremacy of the Pharaohs, first established by Hatasu.
6. There is nothing to show that Seti I. had occasion to renew his
great expeditions into Asia. On the contrary, everything indicates that,

up to the time of his death, the supremacy he had re-established in
Syria and Mesopotamia remained undisputed. The terror inspired by
his name and by the superiority of his arms no doubt sufficed during his
life to keep the people in submission.
The Khitas faithfully obsei"ved the treaty, and, while silently preparing
for new and more formidable attacks on the Egyptian power, scrupulously
respected for the time the provinces subject to Egypt. We have no
monument of the reign of Seti subsequent to his thirtieth year, although,
according to the lists of Manetho, he appears to have reigned more than
fifty years. It seems, therefore, that no great events occurred during
the latter part of his reign, and that Egypt must have enjoyed that
happy repose during which people have no history. Unless, however,
and this perhaps is most probable, we ought to correct the lists of
Manetho and write thirty years only,instead of fifty,for the reign of Seti I.
In any case, it is certain that campaigns into Asia and the building of
sumptuous edifices were not the only occupations of the Egyptian
monarchy under this reign. Knowing that the gold mines in the desert
south of Egypt were difficult of access, and that it was almost impossible
to sustain life there because of the extreme dryness of the country,
Seti I. ordered, in the 9th year of his reign, an Artesian well to be
constructed (a most important fact as bearing on the skill of the Egyp-
tian engineers of the period), whence

abundance was obtained.
watei" in
Encouraged by this success, the king resolved to build a fortress and a
temple where he himself often went to adore his gods. Care had been
taken to place him among the divinities of the place. Such is the
account given in a long inscription.
" But however important may have been the creation of a habitable
—
SESOSTRIS. 245
place in the midst of the desert, a still more important fact is revealed
to us by a monument of another kind. The Hall of
bas-relief in the
Columns Karnak, representing Seti returning from his conquests and
at
re-entering Egypt, shows us the towns or castles east of the Delta, or
Isthmus of Suez, that he passed on his route. Now one of ihese, Zal
(Heroopolis), is represented on a canal containing crocodiles, and open-
ing into a great mass of water, probably a lake. Dr. Brugsch, the
highest authority on Pharaonic geography, in describing this curious
representation declares that, in his opinion, this is no other than the
famous canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, passing the lake still called
the Crocodile Lake (Thnsah). He reminds us, that in later times the
Greek tradition often confused the two reigns of Seti and of his son;
and we know that Sesostris has passed for the original author of tliat
magnificent enterprise, taken up again and completed in later times by
the Greek kings of Egypt, and, though destroyed by the barljarism of
another age, once more successfully carried out by the genius and
indomitable perseverance of a Frenchman." RoBioti. —
Section V. Ramses H. (Sesostris).
{Close of the Fifteenth andfirst half of the Fourteenth Century B.C.).
1. Ramses II., sumamed Meriamen, beloved of Amen, had been, as
we have said, associated on the throne with his father from his birth,
and even, we may say, before his birth. " Such thou hast been," say
the gods to him in an inscription, " from thy birth; no monument was
erected without thee, and no orderwas executed without thy consent."
Nevertheles he counted the years of his reign only from the death of
Seti and from the time when he became sole master, at the age of about
eighteen or twenty. His reign was one of the longest in the annals of
Egypt he governed alone
; for sixty-seven years.
Among the Pharaohs he is the builder J)ar excellence. It is almost
impossible to find in Egypt a ruin, or an ancient mound, without read-
ing his name.The two magnificent subterranean Temples at Ipâmboul,
in Nubia, the Ramesseum of Thebes, a large part of the temples of
Karnak and Lu.xor, the small temple at Abydos, are all his works he ;
where a magnificent Colossus bears

built also large edifices at ]\Iemphis,
his likeness, in the Fayum, and at Tanis. Ramses II. was enal)led to
complete these works, owing to the great length of his reign and to ;
his wars, vvliich gave him the large number of prisoners whom, accord-
ing to Egyptian usage, he employed on these edifices. To these causes
we may add the presence of numerous tribes of foreign races on the
brinks of the Nile, wliom the fertility of tlie soil, and tlie policy of former
kings, had attracted from the jilains of Asia into the Delta. These
foreigners repaid the hospitality Egypt had extended to them by the
workmen whom they furnished for the works on the temples, the con-
struction of cities and the cleansing of canals. In this way we find, in the
Bible story under this same Ramses II., the Israelites employed in the
east of the Delta in the construction of two cities, one called after the
king Ramses (Ex. i. 2).
2. Ramses II. was celebrated in Europe long before our era, long
before the monuments of Egypt were understood by us. Herodotus had

called him Sesostris, and the name had become famous; but the Greek
writer did not invent it. Ramses had received during his life, and for
some reason we are ignorant of, the popular surname of Sestesu, or
'Sesu, and with the addition of the word Ra (the Sun), a common
addition to the names of Egyptian kings, this must have produced a
sound, rendered agreeable in later times to Grecian ears, as Sesostris.
Round these popular surnames a legend gradually fonned in the
course of ages, attributing to one person all the exploits of the con-
querors and warlike princes of Egypt, both of Thothmes and Seti as
well as of the various Ramses, and magnifying these exploits by extend-
ing them to every known country, as legends always do. It is these
legendary traditions, these fabulous stories, cuiTent among the populace,
that the Greeks, the intelligent and coiTCct Herodotus as well as the
mere compiler Diodorus Siculus, greedily received from their guides in
Egypt, being incapable of referring directly to the true sources of
history. These are the stories from which from age to age the history
of Egypt was written ; a history as real and true up to the time of
Champollion's discovery, as would be one of Charlemagne drawn from
the Ballads of the middle age.
Sesostris, according to the legends collected and repeated by these
Greeks, was prepared in an extraordinary way by his education to play
the part of a conqueror. From had gathered
his infancy his father
round him all the boys born on the same day, and made him as well as
his companions serve an apprenticeship to war, by violent exercise, by
long journeys, and by constant conflicts with the wild animals and bar-
barous inhabitants of the desert. After his father's death, Sesostris
aspired to other exploits and greater conquests. Ethiopia was the first
coiintry he conquered. He imposed on it a tribute of gold, ebony, and

elephants' tusks. He next equipped a fleet of 400 long ships on the
Arabian Gulf, the first of their kind the Egyptians had seen. Whilst
this fleet subjugated the banks of the Red Sea, Sesostris at the head of
his army invaded Asia. He subdued Syria, Mesopotamia, Assyria,
Media, Persia, Bactria, and India, and penetrated even to the Ganges.
Returning then towards the north, he subjugated the Scythian tribes as
RAMSES 11. 247
far as Tanais, and established in the Isthmus, separating the Black Sea
from the Caspian, a colony, the origin of the state of Colchis; passed
into Asia Minor, where he left monuments of his victories;* lastly,
crossing the Bosphorus, he advanced into Thrace, where scarcity of food,
the rigor of the climate, and the difficulties of passage put an end to
his triumphs. At the end of nine years Sesostris returned to his
kingdom, followed by a host of captives, loaded with booty and covered
with glory.
Such is the legend. The reader will have already perceived that it
attributes to Sesostris the conquest of countries already long subject to

Egypt, such as Ethiopia; and the credit of deeds by preceding sove-
reigns, such as the creation of a navy and the reduction of the shores of
the Red Sea; but above all it makes this prince march triumphantly
over countries where Egyptian armies were never at any time seen,
such as India, Persia, and generally the Arian countries beyond the
Tigris, as well as the provinces to the north of Armenia. This is an
exact parallel to those middle age poems that always enhance the
exploits ofCharlemagne and magnify his victories, making him the
conqueror of Jerusalem and the deliverer of the Holy Sepulchre.
If we now investigate the real facts, from the testimony of the official
monuments of Ramses Sesostris, though they are very emphatic in their
language and often suspected of exaggeration, we see the whole fabric
of these prodigious conquests vanish away. Ramses II. was no doubt
a warlike prince, who passed the greater part of his reign in fighting,
but he was not a conqueror. He did not add one single province to
Egypt; in the south, north, and west, he was always compelled to stand
on the defensive, and exposed every instant to the revolts of the people
whom the Thothmes and Amen-hoteps had subdued. The only glory
of his reign was to have maintained, at the expense of enormous efforts,
the integrity of the empire. Far from having penetrated to the banks
of the Ganges, he never carried his arms in Asia further than Thoth-
mes III. and Seti, and nearly all his campaigns were confined to
Northern Syria. In a word, the great renown of Sesostris is entirely
fabulous ; it is one of the baseless tales of glory accepted so readily by
* Her. 106.
ii. One of these monuments attributed by the legend
to Sesostris,and which Herodotus says that he saw, still remains at
Ninfi, near Smyrna, and the author of this Manual having seen it, can
confidently pronounce that it has no appearance of a work of Egyptian
art.
Consult a dissertation by M. Perrot in the Rrviic Arcluvloifiqiie,

1867.
[See also description and plate in Rawlinson and Wilkinson's flcro-
dotus, vol. ii., p. 149. 2nd ed.]
the Greeks, ami wliieh disappear Ijcfore criticism aiid llie progress ot
knowledge as to the positive facts of history.
3. Let us see now what the reign of Ramses II. really was, according
to the monuments of the banks of the Nile. A change of reign is

always a critical time for vast empires established only by concjuest,
and extending over an immense extent of territory. The change
is generally followed by the revolt of the less completely subjugated
—
and more distant provinces of those that have suffered most from
oppression, and think themselves best able to procure their freedom by
force of arms. The accession of Ramses, on the death of his father
Seti, passed off quietly in Asia. The new prince was recognised peace-
ably as far as Mesopotamia, and an inscription of the second year of
his reign, says that his orders were then obeyed there with fidelity.
"But affaii-s were not in the same state on the banks of the Upper Nile.
The south of Ethiopia revolted, and witli this part of the Ethiopians
all the negro tribes who had been sul)ject to the sceptre of the Pharaohs.
It required a long, bloody, and furious war to reduce things to their
former order and subdue the rebels. The walls of the subterranean
temples of Ipsamboul and Beit Walli, in Nubia, are covered with great
sculptured and painted tablets, representing the victories gained by his
Ethiopian viceroys over his revolted subjects on the Upper Nile. On
some of them Ramses is personally represented, and, in fact, to en-
courage his axmy he must have been present with it in one campaign in
the south of Ethiopia in the second or third year of his reign.
4. The embarrassment caused by this revolt of the people of the
Upper Nile drew for some years the attention of the government and
the military forces of Egypt to the south, andj therefore, appeared to the
Khitas, or Hittites, who henceforth were to play the first part in the
affairs of Western Asia, to afford a favourable occasion for recommencing
war and provoking a general insurrection of those Asiatic provinces first
reduced to obedience by Seti. Armenia, Assyria, Mesopotamia,

Chaldsea, and Aramaean Syria all revolted at once, and drove out the
Egyptian garrisons.
The Khitas put themselves at the head of the movement, and a
numerous and formidable confederation gathered round them, composed
not only of the revolted nations, but also of the greater part of the
tribes of Asia Minor^ who dreaded the growth of the Pharaonic power,
and had already felt the weight of its arms by sea, under Thothmes III.
A great army was assembled in Northern Syria, menacing both Palestine,
where already partial revolts had broken out among the petty Canaan-
itish princes governing different cities, and also the frontier of Egypt
itself. The monuments of the reign of Ramses have preserved the
names of the twelve states whose united troops formed this army. They
were first the Khitas, or Hittites; the kingdom of Kadesh, or of the
RAMSES II. 249
northern Amorites; the Gergesenes of Perasa (inhabitants ot the

present Djerash), all of the Phanicians of
race of Canaan ; the
Aradus, the only ones of their nation unfaithful to the Egyptian
monarch, to whom those of Byblos and Sidon always remained at;
tached the Aramroan people were represented by the States of Helbon
;
(Aleppo); of Carchemish, where Thothmes III. had built his fortress

to gtiard the passage of the Euphrates; of Katti (also mentioned in
the Bible, but whose precise position is unknown); of Aloun (Elon,
Jos. xix. 43), a town afterwards belonging to the tribe of Dan; of
Gadara, in Coele Syria ; Rotennu on this
of Anaugas, chief city of the
side the Euphrates; and of Gazauatan, a place the site of which is
unknown. Alesopotamia, mentioned here as always by the name of
Naharaina, had furnished very numerous contingents. Finally, the
nations of Asia Minor, who had sent soldiers to the army commanded
by ]\Iautnur, king of the Hittites, were the Mysians, the Lycians,
the Pisidians, the Dardanians of Troy, and last, a people called
Mushanet in the Egyptian texts, who may, perhaps, be identified
with the Mosynoeci of classical geography.*
All this occurred towards the end of the fourth year of the reign ol
Ramses. The young king could not resign himself to the loss of the
greater part of his empire, and of its most valual)le provinces. In the
spring of the following year, having assembled his whole military force,
and gathered round him the experienced captains who had taken part
in his father's wars, he commenced a campaign to recover the Asiatic
possessions of his predecessors, and, above all, to humble the pride of
the Khitas, who were the life and soul of the Asiatic insurrection.
The army of Ramses traversed first the land of Canaan. There is
no inscription recording the first part of the campaign; but it is probable
that Pharaoh had to fight more than once, to rejiress several revolts in
this country, for centuries subject to the sovereigns of Egypt, as he
engraved triumphal steles on the rocks; these still remain at Adloun,
near Tyre, and at the passage of the Nahr El Kelb (Dog River), near
Beyrut. But he arrived in the neighbourhood of Kadesh and the valley
of the Orontes without meeting the grand army of his enemies. It was
there that the personal exploit of Ramses occurred which is constantly
commemorated on the monuments, where he was praised to satiety up
to the end of his reign, and by the sculptures on the walls of all the
—
temples built by this prince an exploit proving the pei'sonal courage
of the king rather than his possession of real military talent. This
episode in the history of the Sesostris of the Greeks was made the
subject of an epic poem, about as long as one book of the Iliad, com-
posed by a scribe named Pentaour. Its text, always unfortunately
Her. iii. 94; vii. 78.

much mutilated, is found in thi-ee places — engraven at length on the
wall of the Ramesseum at Thebes and on that of tlie Icmple of
Ipsamboul, and also written in the cursive style, called Hieratic, in a
pajiyrus in the British Museum. This valuable text was in 1856
translated by M. de Rouge. We think it well to give here an analysis,
with some quotations, that our readers may have some idea of an
Egyptian ]ioem, an epic written by one of the best literary men of the
period, and only two years after the event it records.
5. It was in the fifth year of the reign of Ramses, Pharaoh, seeking
his enemies, who retired slowly before him to make head only on their
own territory, had penetrated as far as Ccele Syria, not far from Kadesh,
and was encamped under the fortress of Shebetun (a place still un-
known), when two Bedouins (Shasu) presented themselves before him.
They said they were sent by their chiefs to join the Egyptian army, and
to bring certain intelligence as to the movements of the Khitas, who
had compelled the tribe to march with them.
They stated that the enemy, alarmed, had retreated towards Aleppo,
where they were concentrating. But this was treachery, false intelli-
gence contrived by the chiefs of the Khitas to cause Pharaoh to fall
into a trap. They, with their numerous allies, had placed themselves
in ambuscade a little to the north-east of Kadesh.
Deceived by the reports of these pretended fugitives, Ramses
marched on without suspicion, accompanied only by his body guard,
whilst the main portion of his army proceeded by the road on
Aleppo, hoping to find the enemy there, when two men, who had been
seized by the king's servants, were led into his presence. Compelled
by blows to speak, they confessed that, far from retreating, the Khitas,
confident in the numbers of their soldiers and allies, among whom were
the people of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, were close at hand, hoping
to surprise the king. The Egyptian generals, assembled by Ramses,
were much disconcerted at having allowed themselves to be deceived
by the first report, and thus having led the king into so dangerous a
position. Messengers were sent in all haste to recall the army to the
place where the enemy was posted. But before the arrival of the troops
the whole of the Khita forces sallied forth from their ambuscade, and
fell on the small body which accompanied Ramses, hoping to make a
prisoner of Pharaoh.
With the rash courage of youth, Ramses, who was then only twenty-
three years old, rejected with scorn the prudent councils of his officers,
who wished him and without waiting for the main

to retire to the rear,
body of his army, commenced the fight. "The footmen and horse-
men then," says the poet, "recoiled before the enemy, who were
masters of Kadesh, on the left bank of the Orontes. Then his
. . .
majesty, in the pride of his strength, rising up like the god Month, put
;
THE POEM OF PENTAOUR. 251
on his fighting dress, completely armed, he looked like Baal in the

hour of his might. Urging on his chariot, he pushed into the
. . .
army of the vile Khitas he was alone, no one was with him. ...He
;
was surrounded by 2, 500 chariots, and the swiftest of the warriors of the
vile Khitas, and of the numerous nations who accompanied them, threw
themselves in his way. Each chariot bore three men, and the king
. . .
had with him neither princes nor generals nor his captains of archers
or of chariots. " In the presence of such a danger the king was for an
instant troubled. He invoked Amen, the great god of Thebes, asking
help, and recalling the pomp with which he had surrounded his worship
and the magnificent temples he had built to him, just as Homer's heroes
reminded Zeus of all the hecatombs they had slain in his honour.
"My archers and horsemen have abandoned me! There is none of
them to fight by my side What, then, is the intention of my father.
!
Amen? Did I not march at thy word?* Has not tliy mouth
. . .
guided my expeditions, and have not thy councils directed me? Have
not I celebrated magnificent feasts in thy honour, and have not I filled
thy temple M-ith my

... I have slain for thee 30,000 bulls.
booty?
... I have temples of blocks of stone, and have erected
built for thee
for thee everlasting trees. I set up the obelisks of Elephantine
. . .
by me were the eternal stones set up.+ Thee I invoke, O my . . .
Father I am in the midst of a host of strangers, and no man is with

!
me. My archers and horsemen have abandoned me when I cried to ;
them, none of them has heard when I called for help. But I prefer
Amen thousands of millions of archers, to millions of horsemen, to
to
myriads of young heroes all assembled together. The designs of man
are nothing. Amen overrules them."
Here the deity inter\'enes in the midst of the strife, just as in the
Homeric combats ; Amen
has heard the prayer of Ramses, he raises
his sinking courage, gives him strength, and encourages him with these
words: "I am near thee, I am thy father, the Sun, my -hand is with
thee. I will be more to thee than millions of men assembled together.
I am the Lord of hosts, who loves courage ; I have found thy heart
firm, and my heart has rejoiced. My will shall be accomplished. I
will be to them like Baal in his might. The 2,500 chariots, when I
am in tlie midst of them, shall be crushed before thy horses. Their

hearts shall sink in their bosoms, and their limbs shall be weak. They
shall be able to shoot no more arrows, and shall have no strength to
hold the spear. I will make them leap into the water, as the crocodile
springs in ; they shall be thrown one on another, and kill each other
before thee."
* Doubtless on the faith of an oracle.

t Amongst others the one now at Paris, in the Place de la Concorde.
Strengthened and encouraged liy the divine word, llie king rushed
on tJie Khitas, who hailed, astonished at his Ixiklness. He made the
bravest of their warriors bite and opened for himself a blood-
tlie dust,
stained passage over their corpses. But the enemy, thougli terrified for
a moment, regained courage, seeing that the Egyptian army did not
come uji at tlie shouts of the king. Ramses was again surrounded by
the war-chariots of the bravest chiefs of the Hittite army. " When my
armour-bearer saw that I was surrounded by such a number of chariots,
he was afraid, his heart failed him, and his terror extended itself to all
his limbs. He said to his majesty, '
My good master, generous king,
sole protector of Egypt in the day of battle, we are alone in the midst
of the enemy, stay and "*
let us save the breath of our lives.'
But the king did not listen to these timid counsels, the greatness of
his danger raised his courage trusting in the protection of Amen, he
;
urged on his car. Six times he crossed the ranks of the enemy. Six
times he struck down all who opposed his passage. He then rejoined
his guards, and in severe terms reproached the generals and soldiers
who had abandoned him. He recalled to them all the favours which
he had bestowed upon them all the good he had conferred upon
;
Egypt from the height of his throne. " Every day," said he, "I sit
in judgment on every complaint made to me." Addressing particularly
the officers charged with the govemment of the province of Syria and
with watching the frontiers, he bitterly reproached them with their
negligence in not getting information as to the movements of the enemy.
Lastly, he reproached them all it with
with their cowardice, contrasting
the courage he himself had shown. "
have displayed my valour, and I
neither footmen nor horsemen went -with me. The whole world has
made way before the strength of my arm; I was alone, no one with me,
neither princes, nor generals, nor chiefs of archers, nor of cavalry. . . .
The warriors have stopped ; they have retreated on seeing my exploits,

their myriads have taken flight, and their feet can no more be stopped.
The shafts launched by my hand dispersed their warriors as soon as
they came near me."
The Egyptian soldiers praised the valour of their king by unanimous
acclamations, and contemplated with astonishment the victims slain by
his hand. But Ramses only replied by reproaches to the praises of his
generals, and contrasted with their inconsiderate and pusillanimous
conduct the constancy of the two faithful animals who had borne him
out of danger; he ordered them to be covered with honours, and like
Alexander who, after the defeat of Porus, founded a city and called it
* The Egyptian
poet, in accordance with the emphatic form very
common the texts of that language, changes the person, and now
in
puts the words into the king's mouth.
THE POEM OF PENTAOUR. 253
Bucephalus, after tlie horse that had carried him through the wliole
battle, and had several times extricated him from serious danger, These '
'
(my horses)," he said, " I found with me when I was alone in the midst
of the enemy. ... I will that they shall be fed with grain before the
god Ra (the Sun), every day when I am in my palace, because they
have been with me in the midst of the enemy's army."
During the night the main body of the army arrived. As soon as
day appeared, Ramses re-commenced the battle. It raged with fury,
for the Khitas wished to avenge their bravest officers, and the Egyptians
to wipe away the reproach of cowardice thrown on them by their king.
They burned to efface their shame of the previous day. Very soon the
Hittite army was overcome, the best of their soldiers fell under the blows
of the " Children of the Sun." Ramses again performed prodigies of
valour. " The great lion who marched by his horses fought with him,
rage swelling all his limbs, and whoever approached him was over-
thrown. The king mastered them and killed them, and none could
escape him. Cut to pieces before his horses, their corpses formed one
great bleeding heap."
The king of the Khitas, seeing the flower of his army destroyed, and
the rest flying on all sides, resigned himself to submission to the king
of Egypt, and asked, "Amaun. " He sent a herald, who addressed
Pharaoh, "Son of the Sun the Egyptians and the Khitas are
. . .
slaves beneath thy feet. Ra has given thee dominion over them.
. . Thou mayest massacre thy slaves, they are in thy power, none
.
of them can resist. Yesterday didst thou airive and kill an infinite
number of them; again to-day thou hast come; do not continue the
massacre. We are prostrate on the earth, ready to execute thy
. . .
orders ; O valiafit king ! flower of warriors, give us the breath of our

lives."
The king consulted his chief officers on the message from the king ol
the Khitas, and on the answer he should make. In accordance with
their unanimous advice, satisfied with the glory conferred on his arms
by the double victory he had gained, and not wishing to drive his war-
like enemies to despair, Ramses made peace, and, taking the road
southward, directed his march to Egypt with his companions in glory.
He entered his capital in triumph, and the god Amen welcomed him
to his sanctuary, saying to him, " Hail to thee my much-loved son
Ramses. We give thee years innumerable. Rest for ever on the
throne of thy father. Amen, and let the barbarians be crushed beneath
thy feet."
This piece of court poetry, attributing to the smgle arm of Ramses
exploits so fabulous, and impossiljle from their very greatness, must not
of course be taken literally. But it seems to show, that near Kadesh,
Ramses, having fallen into an ambuscade, was abandoned by a part of
the troops who accompanied him, and that with a weak escort he
received the first shock of the enemy, or prevented it l)y an impetuous
charge, thus giving his army time to come up and rescue him from
danger; it may undoubtedly be easy to exaggerate an event, especially
for a poet and a courtier, but it would be a difficult task to invent the
whole story.
6. But where the poet had decidedly overlooked facts in recording his
king's victory, was in announcing the complete and final submission of

the Khitas and their allies. The confederation was not yet broken.
Ramses had contented himself with the nominal submission of the
chiefs and with the request for " Amaun " after the battle of Kadesh,
and had at once returned to Egypt without going personally into the
provinces of Araraaa, or Mesopotamia, without rebuilding the fortresses
and garrisoning them, or levying tribute at the head of his army. So
the pretended peace concluded m his fifth year was in reality only a very
short truce. —
Two years afterwards that is, in the same year that Pen-
taour wrote his epic on the prowess of the son of Seti Mautnur, —
king of the Khitas, died, and was succeeded by his brother, Khitasar,
and war recommenced with more fury than ever. It lasted fourteen
whole years with no truce or interruption. Unfortunately we have very
few details of the successive events that distinguished it, but at least we
know that the vicissitudes of successes and reverses were great.
Thus, in the eleventh year of the reign of Ramses, the Egyptians
were driven back by the Asiatics almost to the valley of the Nile, the
greater part of Palestine was lost, and they were reduced to consider
the capture of Ascalon as a great success, worthy of being represented
on public monuments. Three years earlier they had besieged Salem,
the city of the Jebusites, of which Melchisedek had -been king in the
time of Abraham, identified by many commentators with Jerusalem,
and afterwards the siege of Debir at the foot of Mount Taboi-, a northern
Amorite city. These exploits are represented on the Pylon of ihe
Ramesseum of Kurnah, as well as the capture of Beth Anath, and
Kamon, two other cities of Canaan. Afterwards, it is true, fortune
smiled on the Egy]Dtian arms, and they drove the allied armies out of
Palestine, Phoenicia, and Coele Syria took Kadesh by assault, descended
:
the valley of the Orontes to its extremity, and thus penetrated into the
heart of the Khita country, pushing on even further in the direction of
Cilicia and Pisidia. Ramses, during this long war, several times per-
sonally took command of his army in Asia.
One of the historical tablets of the Ramesseum at Thebes shows him,

after a gi-eat battle against the Khitas and their allies, receiving from his
generals an account of the number of enemies slain, whose amputated
hands are piled at his feet. In another he is engaged in the fight, two
of his sons are pursuing the routed enemy, \\-ho fly towards a city under
PEACE WITH THE HITTITES. 255
whose ramparts are already two other sons of the king preparing to
make an assault.
7. At last, in the twenty-first year of the king's reign and fourteenth

of the war, a real and final treaty of peace was concluded between the
two belligerents, with conditions as favourable to the Hittites as to
Pharaoh. The text of this treaty, undoubtedly the oldest diplomatic
document extant, has been preserved in an inscription at Thebes,
and
translated by M. de Rouge. We there read that the king of Egypt
received, in the fortress he had built in Ccele Syria to prevent any new
invasion of Palestine, and had called by his own name, a visit from the
king of the Khitas, who came to propose conditions of peace. They
stipulated for perpetual peace and alliance between the two nations, in
such terms as showed that they treated on a footing of absolute equality.
The clauses prohibiting either direct or indirect hostility are identical on
both sides; the two kings reciprocally promise to give no asylum to
servants or subjects of the other who may have left their country.
Entire freedom of trade is established between the Egyptians and
Hittites. Such was the treaty terminating the war. After fourteen
years of uninterrupted fighting, confined within the bounds of Syria,
the famous Sesostris, far from having subjugated his enemies, recogirised
their independence and the integrity of their territory; a result very
different from the legends of Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus. As a
pledge of the alliance, Ramses receives among his wives a daughter of
king Khitasar, who received an Egyptian name, meaning " Gift of the
great Sun of Justice." To show his good will to the Hittites, he re-
established at Tanis the worship of Sutekh, the national deity of these
people as well as of the Shepherds, and built in his honour one of the
largestand most magnificent temples of Egypt ; whilst Khitasar seems
to have done nothing similar in his country in honour of the gods of
Egypt.
In making this treaty with Ramses, the king of the Hittites had
.separated himself from his allies; he had made no stipulation with
regard to them, and, contented with favourable conditions for himself,
had left them to manage for themselves. The people of Asia Minor,
Pisidians, Lycians, Mysians, Dardanians, retreated peaceably to their
own and were under no apprehension, for the Hittite country
countries,
was between them and Egypt. The people of Mesopotamia and of the
countries between Lebanon and the Euphrates, however, -were in no
position to continue the war, and hastened to submit to the king of
Egypt, before he invaded their country. One of the tablets of the
Ramesseum represents Ramses giving investiture to the chiefs of the
Rotennu —that is, of the Aramseans, Assyrians, and Chaldaâns — who
recognised his suzerainty.
The Asiatic conquests of Thothmes and Seti were thus recovered
without the king being obHgecl to cross the Euphrates ; Mesopotamia
again paid tribute, and Egyptian residents were sent to the courts of all
the native princes to exercise supervision over them. Garrisons of

Pharaoh's soldiers were reinstated in some of the most important places,
amongst others at Carchemish, but the bonds of subjection in which
these countries were held were much lighter than they had been under
Thothmes III.; and the Egyptian king prudently contented himself
with gratified self-love as a substitute for real power.
From this time to the end of the reign of Ramses— that is, for nearly
half a century —
peace was preserved in Western Asia, once the scene of
such long and sanguinary wars. Hostilities did not again break out
between the Egyptians and Khitas, and the good understanding between
these rival empires seems to have been uninterrupted. We find no
trace on the monuments of any further revolts in Mesopotamia or Syria;
these countries remained in a state of partial subjection just as they
were at the end of the Hittite war. A papyrus in the British Museum
contains a letter from an Egyptian officer who at this time was sent on
a mission into Phoenicia ; he describes the towns he passed through that
were subject to the sceptre of his master in that country, Gebal, or
Byblos, " the city of mysteries," Berytus, Sidon, Sarepta, and Tyre, at
that time merely a fishing village. Another papyrus in the same collec-
tion contains orders relative to preparations for the march of a body of
troops in the south of Palestine. Segor, or Zoar, the only city that had
survived the destruction of the five doomed cities of the plain of Sodom,
is mentioned in this document.
Having thus reduced the famous conquests of Sesostns to their
8.
true proportions, we must now speak of his internal government. The

legends contain stories equally fabulous respecting this also. The more
intimately we come to know the history of Ramses II., the less he
seems to deserve the title of Great, conferred on him by the first
decipherers of Egyptian inscriptions on the faith of Greek tradition. We
now know enough to pronounce him a man of very ordinary capacity,
intoxicated with the possession of absolute power, a licentious despot,
ambitious and ostentatious to the extreme, a man so vain as actually to
efface, wherever he could do so, the names of his predecessors from their
monuments in order to substitute his own.
This Sun-king of Egypt increased the royal harem to an unprece-
dented extent. During the sixty-seven years of his reign, he had
1 70 children, fifty-nine of
them sons. Considering himself superior to
all moi-al laws, he even went so far as to marry one of his own daughters,
the princess Bent-Anat. •
The Book of Exodus represents Ramses as a tyrant because of his

persecution of the Hebrews. He it was who attempted to crush them
finally and completely by the labours he imposed, and by the cruel
REVOLT OF THE PRISONERS. 257
edict dooming all their male children to death. The Hebrews, more-
over, were not the only sufferers under his reign, and the calm judgment
of history confirms the stigma fixed on him by the Bible.
We cannot, without horror, think of the numbers of captives who
must have died under the taskmaster's stick, or fallen victims to exces-
sive fatigue and privations of every kind, while employed as slaves on
the gigantic works erected to minister to the insatiable pride of the
Egyptian king. In all the monuments of Ramses, there is hardly a
stone, so to speak, that has not cost a human life. When, however,
the Asiatic wars were ended, captives were wanting for the works.
Then man-hunting expeditions among the unfortunate negroes 01
Soudan were organised on a monstrous scale, unknown in former
periods. There was no longer any intention, as under the Thothmes
and Amen-hoteps, of extending the frontier of the Egyptian empire so
as to include the ivory and gold producing countries. The chief and
in fact only aim was to procure slaves. Nearly every year grand
razzias were made into Ethiopia, returning with thousands of captives
of every age, and of both sexes, loaded with chains.
The principal incidents of these negro-hunting expeditions were
actually sculptured as glorious exploits on the walls of the temples !
Ramses was also the first Egypt to practise the system,

of the kings of
adopted in later times by the kings of Assyria and Babylon, of trans-
porting conquered people from their own land so as to obviate the
danger of rebeUion. He carried into Asia entire tribes of negroes,
and "sent to Nubia the Asiatics whose lands he had given to the negroes.
This barbarous system was not without its dangers. Diodorus Siculus
heard in Egypt a story, apparently authentic, although naturally it has
found no place in the official inscriptions of Ramses, being hy no means
glorious to the name of Pharaoh. According to this story, a large
body of Assyrian and Chaldsean prisoners, who were working in the
quarries near Memphis, revolted, being unable to support the excessive
labour imposed on them. They possessed themselves of a strong place
in that neighbourhood, whence they made incursions into the adjacent
country. After having in vain attempted to reduce them by force, the
proud Sesostris was obliged to make an agreement with them. He
accorded them a general amnesty, and left them in possession of the
fortress they had seized, named by them in remembrance of their
fatherland, " Babylon." It is now called Old Cairo.
All the foreign tribes of Semitic race, attracted by the policy of the
predecessors of Ramses into the Delta to colonise the land reclaimed
from the water, were subjected to the same oppression, to the same
routine of forced labour as the Hebrews. Even the indigenous rural
population, Egyptian by birth, did not escape. The reign of a warlike
despot, who is also possessed with a mania for building, is always a
s
deplorable calamity for this class. Egypt under Ramses II. was no
exception to this general rule. A papyrus in the British Museum has
preserved the correspondence between the chief librarian of Ramses,
Ameneman, and his pupil and friend, Pentaour, the author of the epic
poem wc have already given extracts from. One of the letters describes
as follows the state of the country, and the life of its agricultural
people: — " Have you ever conceived what sort of life the peasant leads
who cultivates the soil ? Even before it is ripe, insects destroy part of
his harvest. . . . Multitudes of rats are in the fields ; next come
invasions of locusts, cattle ravage his harvest, sparrows alight in flocks
on his sheaves. If he delays to get in his harvest, robbers come to
carry it off from him; his horse dies of fatigue in drawing the plough;
the tax collector arrives in the district, and has with him men armed
with sticks, negroes with palm branches. All say, Give us of your '
corn,' and he has no means of escaping their exactions. Next the

unfortunate wretch is seized, bound, and carried off by force to work on
the canals; his wife is bound, his children are stripped. And at the
same time have each of them his own trouble."

his neighbours
9. In every nation, and at all times, it has been found that art has
been unable to resist the degrading influence of a certain amount of
despotism. The monuments of Ramses II. exhibit a serious falling off
in Egyptian sculpture, increasing with incredible rapidity as this long
reign advances. It commenced with some works worthy of all admira-
tion as the lie plus ultra of Egyptian art — such are the Colossi of Mem-
phis and Ipsambul, but soon the universal oppression which weighed
like a yoke of iron on the whole country dried up the source of the
great art inspiration. All the inventive genius of the country seems to
have been exhausted in gigantic constructions, conceived by boundless
pride. No new generation of artists grew up to replace those who had
been formed under earlier kings. At the end of this reign, the degra-
dation was complete, and in the last days of Ramses, as under his son
Merenphtah, we meet with really barbarous works, and sculptures of
extraordinary coarseness.
10. The and pretentious reign of Ramses-Sesostris
close of this long
was, moreover, a period of decadence in every respect, a time of disasters
but imperfectly known to us, resembling in some respects the end of
the reign of Louis XIV., but without a battle of Denain to gild its last
moments with glory.
The country, enervated by sixty years of unrestrained despotism, and
governed by the feeble hand of an octogenarian king, was in no con-
dition to resist its enemies. But on this occasion the danger did not
come from Asia the invasion was from Northern Africa, and from the
;
Mediterranean Sea. New adversaries were about to enter the lists
with the Egyptian power.

INVASION OF THE LYBIANS. 259
Since the time of Thothmes III., who had possessed the whole coast
of Lybia and the Archipelago, a great change had occurred in the
population of these countries. A fleet, manned by light-haired, Ijlue-
eyed barbarians belonging to the Japhetic or Indo-European race,
had arrived on the African coast, and, driving the old inhabitants of the
Hamite race of Phut into the interior of the country, had fixed their
own residence there. These were the ancestors of the light-haired
people whom the French soldiers found still remaining in the moun-
tains of the Kabyles, the Lybians, properly so called, the Lebu of the
hieroglyphic inscriptions, and the Mashuash, the Maxyans of Hero-
dotus. The Egyptians designated them by the two generic names of
Tamahu, "Northern men," and Tahennu, "men of the mist;" they
were closely allied with, and undoubtedly related to, the Pelasgic
nations, who had just created a naval power, and were dominant in
the Mediterranean, and also to the inhabitants of some of the islands,
such as Sardinia, Sicily, and Crete.
The fleets of these northern invaders constantly advancing, soon
coasted along Lybia, and towards the end of the reign of Seti began to
threaten Lower Egypt from the west. The fertile plains of the Delta
were the object of their desires. During the first part of the reign of
Ramses, the Egyptian troops succeeded, although with difficulty, in
keeping them back. During his wars in Asia, the king had several
bodies of soldiers recruited among the prisoners of these nations. But
when Ramses had become old, he was no longer able to arrest the
progress of these Japhetic Lybians. The frontiers of the land of
Mizraim were and continual incursions laid waste all Lower
violated,
Egypt. The mass of the nation then seized on the fertile lands laid
open to their depredations, and driving back the Eg)'ptian popula-
tion, occupied the whole western part of the Delta. Thus the proud
Sesostris died, leaving a considerable part of the possessions of his
fathers, the very heart of the kingdom, in the hands of barbarians.
Section VI.— End of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Foreign —

—
Invasions The Exodus. (^Fourteenth Century B.C.)
I. Ramses II. was succeeded by his thirteenth son, named Meren-
phtah (beloved by Phtah). His monuments and inscriptions are

generally found at Memphis, a city famous for the worship of the god
Phtah, where he seems to have moved his residence. His reign was
one of the most unfortunate in the histoiy of Egypt it presents one ;
long succession of disorders, invasions, and miseries of every kind, the

necessary consequences of tlie tyranny of his father.
The first with whom Merenphtah had to deal were the Lybians and
their allies, the Pelasgians. His war against them is related in a long
s 2
"

inscription on the Temple of Karnak, translated by M. de Roug^. We
will give extracts to convey the chief features of the stoiy.
The northern people of Lybia and of the Archipelago, who had
already for some time been masters of part of the Delta, saw in this
change of government a favourable opportunity for invading and sub-
jugating all Egypt. A formidaljle army was organised under the com-
mand of Maurmuiu, son of Batta,* king of the Lybians. The Lybians
and Mashuash formed the bulk of the invaders, with the Pelasgian
Tyrrhenians from Italy, ancestors of the Etruscans but with them ;
they had numerous bands of Sardinians, Sicilians, Achieans of the

Peloponnesus, and Laconians. The Egyptian narrative gives us the
the Tyrrhenians had commenced the war,
'
valuable information that '
and that each warrior had brought his wife and children," thus clearly
showing their intention of making a new settlement. A speech placed
by the composer of the inscription in the mouth of Pharaoh himself,
describes the evils brought by these invaders upon Egypt These '
: '
barbarians are plundering the frontiers; every day these evil men are
violating them; they are robbing. They plunder the ports, they invade
the fields of Egypt, coming by the river they are establishing them-
;
selves; the days and months pass away and still they remain." The
sufferings of the country are described as even greater than during the
invasion of the Shepherds. " Nothing like this has been seen, even in
the times of the kings of Lower Egypt, when the land of Egypt was in
their power, and misfortune continued, and when the kings of Upper
Egypt had not strength to drive out the strangers.
The barbarians advanced without meeting any serious resistance.
Already Memphis and Heliopolis were reached, and the invading army
had arrived at the city of Paari, in Central Egypt. It was necessary to
stop them at once, if Egypt was to be saved. Merenphtah, who had
taken refuge at Thebes, assembled an army in Upper Egypt. But he
did not venture to expose his person to the consequences of a defeat, by
putting himself at the head of his soldiers. He sent one army under
the command of the surviving generals of his father, whilst he
despatched a second body through the desert into Lybia, to create a
diversion in the rear of the enemy. A great battle took place near
Paari. It lasted six hours, and ended in the complete defeat of the
Lybians and their allies.
The official narrative gives the particulars of the loss of the foreign
invaders ; the very moderation of the numbers proves their correctness,
as is almost always the case with Egyptian computations. The Lybians
had 6,359 killed; the Mashuash, 6,300; the Kehak, another Japhetic
tribe from Northern Africa, 2,362; the Tyrrhenians, 790; the Sicilians,
* This is the name "Battus," borne in later times by some of the

Greek kings of Cyrene.
THE EXODUS. 261
250; the numbers ol the losses of the Sardinians, Achneans, and La-
conians have been unfortunately destroyed. 9,376 prisoners were made,
and a large booty was found in the enemy's camp, amongst other
things 1,307 head of fat cattle, as well as a large quantity of bronze
arms, found on the field of battle, abandoned by the fugitives, who
were pursued even beyond the frontier, where the fortresses were
restored and the garrisons replaced. Maurmuiu, king of the Lybians,
had disappeared in the battle, \yithout any one being able to say what
had become of him, and the nation elected a new chief, who hastened
to treat with Pharaoh.
Thus was repulsed this formidable invasion, which had covered great
part of Egypt witli ruins. The victory, however, was not so complete
but that Merenphtah was obliged to adopt the expedient of the later
Roman emperors, who, unable to drive the barbarians entirely away,
assigned them lands in the provinces of the empire, after having con-
quered them in battle. The foreign tribes, belonging chiefly to the
Mashuash, who for some time had been settled in the Delta, and had
formed colonies there, were not driven out; they were allowed to
remain in the country on recognising the authority of the Egyptian
king, and they were even permitted to furnish a special body of troops,
who always formed part of the body guard of Pharaoh.
2. A short time after this invasion of the Lybians and Pelasgians we
must place the Exodus of the Israelites. This again was a disastrous
event for Egypt, depriving the country of three million souls, of a hard-
working and useful people, besides the injury caused by the plagues
brought the land by the obstinacy of Pharaoh in resisting the
down on
Divine orders communicated by Moses, and by the destruction of the
flower of his army in the Red Sea. We
shall not here repeat the
story, as it has been given in the Second Book of this Manual. The
official monuments on this subject, as they are on all disasters
are silent
that were not retrieved by subsequent successes. But the Bible nar-
rative bears unmistakable marks of absolute historical truth, and agrees
perfectly with the state of things in Egypt at this period. Thus the
continual coming and going of Moses and Aaron to the presence of
Pharaoh from the land of Goshen, necessarily supposes the residence of
the king at Memphis. Now Merenphtah is precisely the only king of
the nineteenth dynasty who made this second capital of Egypt his
constant residence. We
have already remarked that the Bible does not
in any way say or imply, as has often been supposed, that Pharaoh
perished with his army in the Red Sea. We have shown that the
reverse clearly follows from its language, and, in fact, Merenphtah long
survived the calamities of the Exodus. He reigned thirty years, and
his tomb is to be seen among the royal sepulchres at Thebes.
3. Towards the end of the reign of Merenphtah, another event, very
unfortunate for Egypt, occurred — a new foreign invasion. We know of
it only from Manetho. The narrative has been preserved by Josephus* ;
but, unfortunately, the Jewish historian, with the bad faith so common
with controversialists, has evidently made considerable alterations, in
order to bring in the name of Moses, and to transform this into a story
of tile Exodus of the Israelites, with which the event has no real con-
nection. Nevertheless, in spite of the interpolations of Josephus,
we may distinguish the original features of the story. The king,
Amenophthis (Merenphtah), having brought together into one part of
Egypt all the lepers and unclean persons, to employ them in forced
labour at the quarries, they, to the number of 80,000, revolted, under
the conduct of a priest of Heliopolis, named Osarsiph. Searching
. everywhere for allies, they called to their aid the descendants of the
Shepherds who had retired to Asia, that is, evidently the Khitas, pos-
sessors of a "holy city," made by Josephus, as well as the Cadytis of
Herodotus, to stand for Jerusalem, whilst in reality it ought, as well as
the latter, to be the Kadesh (the holy) of the hieroglyphic inscriptions, the
famous fortress on the banks of the Orontes. The descendants of the
Shepherds answered their call with alacrity. To the number of 200,000
they came to the help of the unclean who had revolted, and threw
themselves into the valley of the Nile. "They practised towards the
inhabitants of Egypt the most cruel and sacrilegious tyranny. Not
only did they burn towns and villages, pillage temples and carry off
the statues of the gods, but they even used the sacred animals for food,
compelling their priests and prophets to kill them themselves, and then,
afterhaving stripped them, drove away the priests." The king did not
consider it possible to resist this invasion, and resolved to allow the
torrent to pass without opposition. He therefore retired into Upper
Egypt with army of 300,000 men, having sent his son and heir
his
Sethos (Seti), five years old, into Ethiopia, where he found a safe
asylum. Amenophthis (Merenphtah) died soon after, while the in-
vaders were still in the country.
4. If the Egyptian monuments remaining to us do not mention this

invasion, they bear numerous traces of the troubles it caused. Me-
renphtah having died, leaving the country full of foreigners, and his
legitimate successor hidden in the provinces of the Upper Nile, a prince
of the royal family, named Amenmeses, whose exact place in the royal
genealogy is not known, assumed the crown in the city of Chev, the
Aphroditopolis of the Greeks, near the Fayum. He seems to have
succeeded at the end of a few years in recovering the greater part of
Egypt. His son, proclaimed after his death in the city of Chev, as
Merenphtah II. (Siphtah), succeeded him. To render his occupation
* Josephus, Cont. Ap., i. 28.

SETTLEMENT OF ISRAEL IN CANAAN. 263
of the throne legitimate, he married a daughter of Merenphtah I., the

princess Tauser, whose rights the great chancellor Bai caused to be
recognised by the whole country, though they were at first contested by
a large party. On all monuments the king gives precedence to his
wife, as if recognising the fact that slie had more right than himself to
the throne.
Prince Seti, the legitimate heir of Merenphtah, still in Ethiopia,
recognised the royalty of Merenphtah Siphtah, and received from him
the title of Viceroy of the Southern Provinces. But after some time,
thirteen years according to Manelho, he altered his resolution, and

insisted on his rights to the crown. Having assembled an army, he
descended the Nile, entered Thebes and Memphis in triumph, and
possessed himself of the throne. The two kings, who had been suc-
cessively proclaimed at Chev, were then treated as usurpers, and their
names erased from the monuments. But, on the other hand, Amen-
meses and Tauser stand in the lists of Manetho as legitimate sovereigns,
the final judgment of posterity having thus evidently recognised them as
such. The reign of Seti II. must have been long, but we know no
particulars of it, and possess hardly any monuments. This king died
without children, and with him ended the nineteenth dynasty, which
had lasted 1 74 years.
5. The entry of the and the conquest of the
Hebrews into Palestine
Promised Land by Joshua were events contemporary with the reign
of Seti II. The Egyptians opposed no obstacle, and do not seem to
have been at all disquieted. They considered themselves, nevertheless,
as sovereigns of the land of and the more distant provinces of
Canaan ;
Syria and Mesopotamia continued to pay them tribute. But we have

already noticed the system of the Egyptian kings with regard to the
government of their Asiatic provinces. They allowed the native
princes to govern their own states under the inspection of an Egyptian
resident. Like the Assyrians and Persians in later times, and the
Turkish government in our own day, so long as the suzerainty of

Pharaoh was recognised, the tribute punctually paid, and the required
military contingents furnished, they gave themselves no trouble about
the internal wars of the different tribes ; and rather encouraged, as a
guarantee for the maintenance of their own supremacy, the disputes of
petty local chiefs and the wars that employed their forces.
The Israelites in establishing themselves in the Promised Land
must have accepted the conditions of Egyptian suzerainty. The Book
of Joshua certainly does not say so, but it contains nothing expressly to
the contrary. The king of Egypt asked nothing more. Occupied
with his own troubles, it would have been difficult and highly im-
prudent to attempt to oppose the Israelitish force, excited and rendered
almost irresistible by religious enthusiasm. Moreover, on the eve of a
—

new invasion of Canaanitish Kliitas, the Egyptian king would with
Canaan (who from community of race were
pleasure see the nations of
always disposed to take part with his enemies) cut to jiieces. One
thing alone would have, doubtless, brought about a direct intervention
of the Egyptians in the affairs of the land of Canaan, and led them
to oppose the Israelites, namely, any interference with the military
road along the shore of the Mediterranean, the route between Egypt
and the Syrian and Mesopotamian provinces. There the Egyptians
exercised a more direct authority ; there they had fortresses and garri-
sons; there they could not tolerate any conflicts. But Joshua did not
feel sufficiently strong to attack the coast cities, and they therefore
remained in their previous condition. And as their military road was
luitouched, unthreatened, the Egyptians remained quiet spectators of
the conflicts between Israel and the Canaanites.
Section VII. Commencement of the Twêntieth Dynasty —

Ramses III.
(
Close of the Foitrteetith Century B. C. )
1. Seti having died without heirs, a new dynasty, designated by

it.
Manetho as Theban, mounted the throne. We do not know what was

its relationship to the preceding dynasty, or by what title it succeeded
to power. Its founder was called Nekht-Set, and had only a short
reign, undistinguished by any important event.
2. But this insignificant reign was followed by that of a glorious
king, who shed a last radiance on the arms of Egypt on the eve of its
entire decline. Ramses III., son of Nekht-Set, seems, from one of the
titles in his royal ring, to have exercised during the lifetime of his father
a sort of vice-royalty over Lower Egypt, with Heliopolis as his capital.

He was very young when he mounted the throne, and had before him
a very difficult task. The troubles and reverses of the preceding epoch
had seriously compromised the preponderance of Egypt in Asia, the
frontiers of the empire were attacked, and it was necessary to fight
again for a great part of the conquests of former dynasties. Ramses III.
was an able and campaigns were entirely de-
valiant warrior, but his
fensive. Like Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, and Septimus Sevenis, his
efforts were confined to making head against the constantly increasing
stream of barbarians, who from all quarters rushed on the frontiers of
the empire, and foreshadowed its approaching ruin. His struggles,
however, were successful, and he succeeded in preserving entire the great
empire constructed by Thothmes HI. and Seti. The palace at Medinet
Abu at Thebes is the Pantheon erected to the glory of this gi-eat
Pharaoh. Every pylon, every gate, every chamber, gives us an account
WAR WITH THE KHITAS. 265
of his exploits, and great sculptured compositions illustrate his principal

battles.
3. The first war took place in the fifth year of the reign of Ramses III.
The Lybians of the white race joined with the Takkaro, a people from
the islands or northern shores of the Mediterranean, whose country is
not yet ascertained (possibly Thracians), and who, like the Tyrrhenians,
had a considerable fleet, attacked by land the western frontier of Egypt.
They were repulsed with loss. Unfortunately, the details of the straggle
are unknowai. Three of the immense bas-reliefs at Medinet Abu give
us the chief features, but the inscription accompanying them is so short
that it tells us little or nothing.
4. A very long inscription, however, has been preserved, and, in spite
of deplorable mutilations, contains all the essential points of a narrative
of another war, the most important of the reign of Ramses, which took
place in his ninth year, in Asia. In spite of the successive defeats they
had sustained, the Pelasgic nations of the Mediterranean had not given
up the project of making a settlement in some of the fertile countries
belonging to Egypt. But two disasters, one after the other, had taught
them that there was little hope of success if they disembarked in Lybia
and attacked the western part of the Delta. They resolved therefore to
try a new road, and throw themselves into Syria, where they might find
some support among the determined enemies of Egypt in that country.
An alliance was made between the Khitas on one side, the Pelasgians
and the Lybians, their allies, on the other. It was agreed that the
Khitas should attack the Aramsean provinces, and attempt to get posses-
sion of them, whilst the people from the Mediterranean, arriving by sea,
would land on the coast. Among these last, the Philistines, then settled
in Crete, and the Takkaro seem to have taken the initiative in the
projected expedition, as the Tyrrhenians had done in the time of Meren-
phtah for they furnished the great body of invaders, coming with their
;
wives and children as though in search of new homes ; the other nations
furnished only aiixiliaiy detachments.
Ramses, warned of the attack of the Khitas, and of the disembarkation
of the first detachment of the invaders from the sea, saw clearly that his
only safety was in rapidity of movement, and that he had no chance of

success but in fighting the enemy successively, in detail, before they
could unite their forces. He made the utmost possible haste. One of
the great bas-reliefs of Medinet Abu represents his departure from
Thebes. " The king," says the inscription, "is leaving for Coele Syria,
like the image of the god Month, to trample under foot the people who
have violated the frontier. His soldiers are like hawks in the midst of
little birds." A second tablet shows us the king marching with his
army against the enemy across a mountainous country wooded and
haunted by lions, no doubt one of the spurs of the Lebanon. He
arrived thus in Ccele Syria, the land of Tsahi, where the Khita army
had penetrated. These Hittites had for allies the people of Aradus, of
Carchemish, and the Katti the nations of Asia Minor took no part in
:
this struggle, as under Ramses II.; and it does not appear that there was
any insurrection in Mesopotamia, for its people are not mentioned
among those then coml:)ined agamsl Egypt. The battle with the Khitas
and their confederates is represented on a bas-relief. It took place in the
country of the Amorites in the valley of the Orontes, probalily before
Kadesh. Victory declared for the Egyptians. Ramses haughtily says
in the long inscription containing the stor}' of the whole campaign, " I
have made these people and their country, as though they had never
existed at all."
.The Khitas beaten and driven back into their own country, Ramses
hastened towards the coast, where the detachment of the northern
first
nations had disembarked some time before, and was slowly journeying
southward. It was chiefly composed of Philistines, accompanied and
supported by the Mashuash or Maxyans of Africa in great numbers.
The sculptures of Medinet Abu relative to this part of the war show
us that the Philistines were accompanied by their wives and children
riding in rough cars drawn by oxen. It is thus that the Latin writers
describe the march of the Cimbri and Teutones. Attacked by the dis-
ciplined and practised troops of Egypt, this disorganised mass was easily
routed; 12,500 men were killed, the camp was surrounded and carried
by assault, and the whole mass of Philistine invaders had no alternative
but to surrender at discretion.
On the site of this victory, which was the place where the second
detachment of northern invaders were to land, Ramses hastened to build
a fortress, called "The Tower of Ramses." His fleet joined him at that
place. It was numerous, and the inscription says that it "looked like
a strong wall on the waters." Everything was ready to receive the
ships bringing the new army of invaders. These soon arrived with the
Takkaro, who formed the bulk of the second army of invaders, but with
them were a greater number of Sardinians, Lybians, Sicilians, Tyrrhe-
nians, and people from the Peloponnesus, whom the inscriptions at
Medinet Abu no longer call Achocans, but Dardanians, the dynasty of
Danaus having supplanted the Achsean dynasty of Inachus on the
throne of Argos, in the interval between the reign of Merenphtah and
of Ramses III. A gigantic bas-relief shows us the naval battle before
the Tower of Ramses, and the defeat of the allied fleet. The
Egyptian ships manoeuvre both with sail and oar, and the prow of
each ship is decorated with a lion's head. One Takkaro ship is already
sunk, and their fleet is driven between the Egyptian ships and the
shore, whence king Ramses and his infantry shoot a cloud of darts
against the enemy's vessels.
INVASION OF THE PHILISTINES. 267
The recital of the great inscription exactly agrees with this picture,
unique among Egyptian monuments. " The vessels were manned from
stem to stern with brave and well-armed warriors. On the shore, the
infantry, the chosen men of the Egyptian army, stood like young Hons
roaring on the mountains. The horsemen eagerly ranged themselves by
the side of their brave captains. The very horses seemed to collect all
their strength to trample down the barbarians. '

As for me," says the
whose mouth the narrative is placed, I was as brave as the
king, in '
god Month; I remained at tlieir head, and they saw the exploits of my
arm. I, king Ramses, bore myself like a hero conscious of his strength,
who stretches out his arm to defend men in the day of slaughter. Those
who approached my frontiers will reap no more in this world, the time
"
of tlieir souls is reckoned in eternity.'
In consequence, however, of this victory over the Philistines, Ramses

found an entire nation prisoners in his hands. This was a serious em-
barrassment ; he could not kill them, old and young together, and was
compelled to assign them lands in his dominions, thus realising the
object of their emigration. Ramses settled the Philistines in the land
of Canaan, near the cities of Gaza, Ashdod, and Ascalon, where he

thought the Egyptian garrisons could keep them in order. There it
was that, strengthened by new immigrations from Crete, they, in the
decline of the Egyptian monarchy, founded a state so formidable for

some time to the Israelites and Phoenicians.
Other bas-reliefs at Medinet Abu represent more battles of the
5.
Egyptians with the Asiatics, the assault of one of the Khita fortresses,
and Ramses marching out to a new war with them. Several engage-
ments in the eleventh and twelfth years of his reign are represented on
the monuments as victories gained over both Asiatics and Lybians.
One inscription states that the southern chiefs can-led their tribute into
Egypt. "I grant," says the god Harmachu to the king, in this text,
" that people who know not Egypt shall come to thee laden with gold,
and every precious stone." In the east, Ramses III.,
silver, lapis lazuli,
having re-established his fleet on the Red Sea, sent it to the coasts of
Yemen, or the land of Pun, and again subjected that country to tribute.
Lastly, the revolts of the tribes of the Upper Nile, of Soudan and
Abyssinia were vigorously repressed.
These military successes were, however, balanced by internal troubles.
The Museum at Turin and the Imperial Library at Paris possess part of
a judicial process relative to a serious conspiracy set on foot in the reign
of Ramses III. The political aim of the plot is not clearly stated in
the documents, but we see that the royal harem took a large part in it.
A great number of the king's concubines, and the eunuchs who guarded
them, were involved in this plot. Magical incantations, "an abomina-
nation to all the gods and all the goddesses," held a prominent place in
— — ;

tlie charges against the conspirators. They were judged by a special
commission and treated in tlie most severe manner. Ramses, finding the
sentence pronounced by the first judges too lenient, altered it by his
supreme authority to death, and ordered the judges themselves to be
decapitated, as an example how magistrates should perform their
duty. We owe the translation of these valuable documents to M. T.
Deveria.
The fact of a violent opposition breaking out in political plots in the
reign of Ramses III., no doubt explains a curious papyrus in the
British Museum. This is an album of caricatures in which the principal
has reliefs on the walls of the palace of Medinet Abu are parodied by
figures of animals. The war pictures become between
fights cats and
ratg.* Scenes in the harem are represented by a lion and gazelles.
These pictures are licentious in the extreme.
We at present know
of no monument of Ramses III. dated later
than his twelfth year. His tomb, a vast excavation, made after the
custom of the kings of Egypt, in his lifetime, is one of the most splendid
in the valley of Biban-el-Moluk, at Thebes.
6. From the date of the reign of Ramses III., Egyptian chronology
for the first time finds a sure and fixed starting point, the result of an
astronomical date furnished by the monuments of Medinet Abu. On
the walls of that palace Ramses caused to be engraved a great calendar
of religious festivals. Now the day on which the feast of the Heliacal
rising of the star Sothisf is marked indicates that it was engraven in
* The Egyptians are the rats and the Asiatics the cats.
t The whole chronology of Egypt was regulated by the " Sothic
Cycle," or the periods when the star Sothis, or Sirius the Dog-star —
rose with the sun. Herodotus says (ii. 4), "The Egyptians were the
first to discover the solar year, and to portion out its course into twelve
parts. They obtained this knowledge from the stars. To my mind,
they contrive their year much more cleverly than the Greeks, for these
last intercalate a whole month every other year [Sia rpirov trovg, but
compare Her. i. 32]; but the Eg)'ptians, dividing the year into twelve
months of thirty days each, add every year a space of five days, whereby
the circuit of the seasons is made to return with uniformity."- Raw-
linson's Translation.
It is evident that this year of 365 days would not in the lapse of time
bring back the seasons with uniformity, as the year would be wrong by
one day every four years, and the error would in time entirely reverse
the seasons.
The Egyptians had found by experiment that the Heliacal rising of
"
Sothis recurred at the end of 1461 years of 365 days, or " vague
years, and that these 1461 years were, in fact, equal to 1460 true, or
Sothic years.
From this cycle the Sothic, or true year of 365^ days, was obtained
and as the vague year is indicated in hieroglyphics by the symbol of the
—
TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST DYNASTIES. 269
commemoration of the twelfth year of Ramses III., being one of the

years occurring only at intervals separated by long ages, and serving as
the point of departure for the great astronomical period of the Egyp-
tians ; at these periods only their vague year of 365 days coincided with
the solar year. The calculations of the celebrated Biot have proved
that this rare coincidence occurred in the year 1300 B.C. Consequently,
we can with mathematical and absolute certainty fix the accession of
Ramses in the year 131 1 B.C.
CHAPTER IV.
DECLINE AND FALL OF THE EGYPTIAN EMPIRE.

Section I. — End of Twentieth Dyxasty — Twenty-first
Royal Family.
[F?'0/?i Thirteenth to the coinniouenient of Tenth Century B.C.)
I. After the warlike king, to whom we owe the palace at Medinet
Abu, fourteen, and possibly more, kings named Ramses continued the
twentieth dynasty for more Uian a century and a half. But they did
not all form a continuous series the lists of Manetho only admit eight
;
among the number of legitimate kings. In the midst of the obscurities

surrounding this historical period, of which we have so few monumental
records, we may
discern troubles and competitions for the throne, and
especially, on several occasions, amicable partitions of Egypt between
several princes. This, for example, is what occurred among the younger
sons of Ramses III. after the death of his first heir, Ramses IV., who
appears to have governed the whole country, and to have died childless.
palm branch and sun's disc, so this Sothic or square year {annus
quadratiis) is marked by the palm branch and a square.
The Egyptians also used a lunar year, which agreed with the civil
solar year at each " Apis period " of twenty- five years. They had also
calculated a great Siderial year of 36,525 solar years, or the number of
days in 1 00 Sothic years.
Herodotus says above, that the Egyptian month consisted of thirty
days but from the fact that the month is represented in hieroglyphics
;
l)y the symbol of the moon, we may infer that in early times they used
a lunar month.
It is remarkable that Moses, in his account of the Deluge, uses this
Egj'ptian month of thirty days, as he makes five months to eciual 150
days (Gen. vii. 11,24; îii. 3, 4), although the Jews used the lunar
month. Tr.
None of these numerous kings added any lustre to the name of Ramses.
The timid successors of the hero of Medinet Abu knew not how to
preserve entire the glorious heritage of his traditions. It was in vain
that Ramses III. had by his victories arrested for a moment the
decline of Egypt, for now the full time had come.
Although the monarchy of the Pharaohs still governed Syria, the
subordination of that country became more and more merely nominal.
From prolonged contact with Asiatics, Egypt had, moreover, lost
its
that unity essential toits power. Semitic words had been admitted
into the language foreign gods had invaded the sanctuaries previously
;
inaccessible. During this period of general decline another cause of

weakness appeared. The high priests of Amen at Thebes, with whom
that dignity was hereditary, attempted to play the part taken in later
times by the mayors of the palace under the Merovingian kings of
France; they possessed themselves successively of all the supreme
functions, civil and military, gradually undermined the royal authority,
and aspired to dethrone the legitimate king. Egypt thus paid the
penalty of the ambition of the conquerors of the eighteenth and nine-
teenth dynasties.
Depressed now in direct proportion to her former exaltation, she was
to see her territory again trodden down by foreigners; and after having
ruled over the Cushites, Lybians, and Asiatics, to be compelled to serve
the kings of those nations. As M. Mariette so well says, "It was
because she would not remain on the territory really her own, the Nile
valley, as far south as it extends-^-it was because she endeavoured to
impose her authority (in Asia) where a thousand questions of race and
climate tended to compromise it, that her too vast empire was dismem-
bered." Here ends the most brilliant period of the history of Egypt.
Powerless to face so many dangers, the empire of Menes after
Ramses HI., entered on the miserable road to ruin. In the north as in
the south, her conquests were one by one torn from her; and at the
time when, under the last king of the twentieth dynasty, the high
priests assumed the crown of the Pharaohs, we see Egypt reduced to
the smallest possible frontier, and surrounded by enemies henceforth
more powerful than herself.
2. The nominal submission of Western Asia and the payment of
tribute by Mesopotamia were continued, however, till late in the time

of the twentieth dynasty. Not only under Ramses IV. do we find the
Assyrians paying homage to Pharaoh, but nearly a century and a half
later, under Ramses XII., about 1150 B.C., we know positively that
Mesopotamia still recognised the suzerainty of Egypt, and paid tribute.

This is proved by a stele discovered at Thebes, and preserved in the
Imperial Library at Paris ; its long inscription has been studied both by
Dr, Birch and M. de Rouge. The subject matter of the inscription is
THE ARK OF CIIONS IN ASSYRIA. 271
so curious that it desen'es mention. Ramses XII. had gone to make

the tour of Mesopotamia, and receive triljute, wlien he met with the
daughter of one of the chiefs, and mai'ried her. Some years later, when
Ramses was Thebes, he was informed that a messenger had come
at
from his father-in-law, requesting the king to send a skilful physician to
the queen's sister, who was sick of an unknown malady. An Egyptian
physician was accordingly sent back with the messenger. The young
princess was suffering from a nervous attack, and according to the usual
belief of the period, itwas supposed that she was possessed by an evil
spirit. In vain the physician employed all the resources of his art; the
spirit refused to was obliged to return to
obey, and the physician
Thebes without curing the queen's sister. This occurred in the fifteenth
year of Ramses. Eleven years later, in the twenty-sixth year, another
ambassador presented himself. This time it was not a physician that
the queen's father required in his opinion it was the direct intervention
;
of one of the gods of Thebes that alone could cure the princess. As
on the first occasion, Ramses consented to the request, and the sacred
ark of one of the gods of Thebes, named Chons, was sent to perform
the miracle requested. The journey was long ; it lasted a year and six
months. At last the Theban god arrived in Mesopotamia, the evil
spirit was conquered, and compelled to leave the body of the young
princess, who immediately recovered her health.
But the story engraven on the stele does not end with this cure. A
god whose mere presence brought such miraculous cures was inex-
pressibly valuable ; and at the risk of a rupture with his powerful ally,
the father of the young princess resolved to keep the ark in his palace.
For three years and nine months the ark of Chons was kept in Meso-
potamia. But at the end of that time this treacherous chief had a
dream. He seemed to see the captive deity fly away towards Egypt
under the form of a golden sparrowhawk, and at the same time he
was suddenly taken ill. The father-in-law of Ramses accepted this
dream as a warning from heaven. He immediately gave orders for
sending back the ark of the god, who in the thirty-third year of the reign
of Ramses returnedto his temple at Thebes.
Whatadds much to the interest of this curious story, related by a
contemporary monument, is, that the event took place but a few years
at most after the adventures of the Ark of the Covenant among the
Philistines, recounted in the Book of Samuel (i Sam. iv., v., vi.). The
two narratives have striking points of contact that can hardly escape
the reader. Ramses XII., as we see by the commencement of this stele,
in the Imperial Library, still in the twelfth century B.C., considered
himself as the legitimate master of Mesopotamia, performed acts of
suzerainty there, and received tribute. But beyond this mark of vassal-
age, the authority of the kings of Egypt over the Asiatic provinces was
from that time merely nominal.
Beyond the Euphrates, they were unable to prevent the formation of
the empire of tlie Assyrians, wliose power, coinmenciny; in tlie ])cginninu
of the fourteenth century, gradually progressed and increased. Even
nearer to their frontier they had allowed the Philistines to jôssess them-
selves of Gaza, Ashdod, Ascalon, Gath, and Ekron, and thus render
themselves masters of ilie military road, hitherto so carefully guarded,
by which Egypt communicated with Syria and Mesopotamia. They
had not intervened in the quarrels of the Philistines with the Israelites
and Phoenicians, even when the former took and destroyed Sidon; nor
had they interfered when a king of Aramaean Mesopotamia, Cushan-
Kishathaim conquered, for the time, Northern Syria and all Palestine.
A short time only after Ramses XII., the high priest of Amen, Her-
Hor exercised the supreme power; and during that period we find the
last trace of the power of the Pharaohs in Asia.
3. About the same time (in the second half of the twelfth century
B.C.) the power of the Assyrian empire suddenly increased; the kings of
Nineveh began their career as great conquerors, and before long no
authority but theirs was recognised between the Tigris and the Euphrates.
In the interior of Egypt Her-Hor (Horus, the supreme), having united
to his sacerdotal titles those of superintendent of public works and of
generalissimo of the troops, ended by usurping on the monuments the
title and marks of royalty, all the while retaining the high priesthood.
He was the first who renounced all pretension to the sovereignty

of Asia, and abandoned the traditional policy of every Pharaoh since
Thothmes I. Adopting an entirely different course, he allied himself
closely with the kings of Nineveh, hoping thereby to obtain support in
his usurpation. This intimate alliance is marked by the Assyrian names
he gave to most of his children. After the death of Her-Hor, the line
of the legitimate descendants of Ramses III., who were still in existence,
seems for a short time to have regained the ascendancy, as the title of
high priest only is given to the son of that personage, named Piankh.
But soon after, with Pinetsem I., the royal titles reappear in that family,
to continue for many generations. The race of Ramses is finally de-
throned; and in order to legitimatise themselves, the usurping priestly
family allied themselves by marriage with a descendant of one of the
competitors of Seti II., the princess Isi-em-Chev. This family preserved,
moreover, the politic alliance with the Asiatics, inaugurated by its
founder. A cuneiform inscription in the British Museum tells us of an

ambassador whom Pinetsem, or one of his successors, sent to Tiglath
Pileser I., king of Assyria, who had become master of the Phoenician
cities. Amongst the presents borne by this ambassador is mentioned a

crocodile, an animal probably new to the inhabitants of the banks of the
Euphrates or Tigris.
4. In the meanwhile a rival dynasty arose in Lower Egypt, at Tanis,
—
TWENTY-SECOND DYNASTY. 273
according to the of Manetho, where also are found the few monu-
lists
ments it has left. It seems now proved that it assumed the crown in
that city whilst the last of the Ramses reigned nominally, and the High
Priests of Amen in reality, at Thebes. It was during competitions
between this dynasty and the family of tlie priest, Her-Hor, that David
reigned over Israel, and succeeded in creating for a time a great terri-
torial power, then rendered possible by the weakening of Egypt, and by

the fact that the Assyrian empire, still but imperfectly developed, was
not at that time strong enough to cross the Euphrates with its armies.
The Tanite kings succeeded, after a prolonged struggle, in triumphing
over their adversaries and in establishing their dominion over all Egypt.
It was these whom later historians, such as Manetho, considered as con-
tinuing the series of legitimate kings. One of them, Psiu-en-san, a con-
temporary of Solomon, gave him his daughter in marriage an evident —
proof that this dynasty had renounced all hope of re-asserting its
ancient power in Asia. It did not reign, however, much more than a
century, and was succeeded by another family, also of Lower Egypt,

from Bubastis.
When the Tanite dynasty finally triumphed in Egypt, the descendants
of Her-Hor, who continued to unite the titles of the high priesthood
with those of royalty, retired to Etliiopia, where they fonned and care-
fully fortified an independent and rival state to Egypt, though with the
same language and civilisation. The town of Napata (now Djebel
Barkal) was chosen for their capital, and there they founded a sanctuary
of Amen, with an oracle in rivalry with that of Thebes, and pretended
to have transferred there the rights of the legitimate priesthood.
Section II. Twenty-second, Twenty-third, and Twenty-

fourth Dynasties.
( Tenth, N'inth, and Eighth Centuries B. C.)
I. A MOST important fact to be remarked with regard to the twenty-
second dynasty, called by Manetho Bubastic, is, that in the series of its
kings and in the paternal ancestors of its founder, who are known from
some monuments, nearly all the names are incontestably Asiatic in form,
and especially Assyrian— Nimrod, Tiglath, Uaserken, Nabonasi, Sha-
pheth— and therefore a decisive indication of its origin. Moreover,
from the time of the defeat of the priestly sovereigns of the family of
Her-Hor, the preponderance of Thebes finally ceased. All subsequent
dynasties sprang from Lower Egypt and resided there. Plenceforth the
kings are real Mamelukes, such as those who governed Moslem Egypt
in the Middle Ages; all sprang from bodies of foreign soldiers, whom we
T
find from this time exclusive!}' employed as body-guards to the sove-
reigns who reigned on the banks of the Nile.
The manner in which the foreign family of the twenty-second dynasty
succeeded to the throne, we know from the monuments. A certain
Uaserken, of Semitic origin, a superior officer in the army, whose family
had previously been connected by marriage with the Theban usurpers
descended from Her-Hor, married the daughter of a king who seems to
have been the last of the Tanitic dynasty. The child born from this
union, Sheshonk, adopted by his maternal grandfather, first governed as
regent of the empire, and finally as king. He was the head of the new
dynasty.
2. Sheshonk, called in the Bible Shishak, gave an asylum at his
court to the fugitive Jeroboam towards the end of the reign of Solomon;
and afterwards, when that personage had put himself at the head of the
ten tribes, Sheshonk, following the same policy and in alliance with
him, invaded the kingdom of Judah. Thus, as we have already seen,
•
in the fifth year of Rehoboam (973) he entered the land of Judah with
1,200 chariots, 60,000 horsemen, and an immense body of infantry,
Egyptians, Lybians, Ethiopians, and Troglodytes; he penetrated to
Jerusalem and carried off the treasures of the temple, as well as those
of the king. These conquests are recorded on a great bas-relief at
Karnak, dated in the reign of Sheshonk himself, on which are inscribed
the names of 133 cities of the kingdom of Judah taken by the Egyptian
army. The greater part of the names are mentioned in Scripture,
amongst others Ralibith (Jos. xix. 20), Taanach (xii. 21, xvii 11),
Shunem (xix. 18), Rehob (.\ix. 28), Haphraim (.xix. 19), Adoraim
(2 Chron. xi. 9), Mahanaim (Jos. xxi. 38), Gibeon (ix, 3), Bethhoron
(x. 10), Kedemoth (xiii. 18), Ajalon (x. 12), and Megiddo (xii. 21).
The capital is not mentioned on the monument by its ordinary name

Jerusalem, but is recognised under the title Jehudah Malek " Royalty —
of Judah."
3. The exact duration of the reign of Sheshonk I. is not known with
certainty, but we know at any rate that it lasted twenty-one years. The
history of Uaserken I., or Osorchon, as the Greeks wrote the name, is
still full of obscurity. We have only reason to think that it was in his
Azerch-Amen, king of Ethiopia,
reign, or in that of his successor, that
starting from Napata, invaded Egypt and traversed its whole length to
the mouth of tlie Nile, subjected it for the time to his sceptre, and
penetrated into Palestine at the head of an army of Ethiopians and
Lybians. We have already related [Book II.] how he was conquered
on the territory of the kingdom of Judah by Asa, grandson of Reho-
boam.
The defeat of the king of Ethiopia was so complete that he does not
seem even to have attempted to maintain his position in Egypt, but to
REVOLUTIONS IN EGYPT. 275
have retired at own states. However, the road opened by

once to his
his invasion was soon
be followed by other Ethiopian conquerors.
to
4. We shall not stop to enquire into the genealogy and chronology of
the Bubastic dynasty, although completely cleared up by the dis-
coveries ofM. Mariette at the Serapeum of Memphis; for none of the
Sheshonks, Uaserkens, or Tiglaths, who continued it, have made any
mark in history by any notable deed. We shall merely state that the
twenty-second dynasty lasted for more than a century after Uaserken I.,
and that the kings were generally so associated in the government, that
their reigns occupied in reality a much less time than the addition of
their several durations would amount to.
5. The
twenty-third dynasty, Tanitic, Hke the twenty-second, consists
of only four kings in Manetho's lists. The names of three are found
on known monuments, one of whom, called Uaserken, like one of the
preceding family, brings us down to the eighth century B.C.; and there
is reason to think that the same system of associating the heir-ap-
parent on the throne during the life of his father, prevailed during this as
well as during the twenty-second dynasty. But the lists of Manetho give
only a very incorrect idea of the history of Egypt at this epoch. At this
period, as in all times of trouble, the Sebennyte priest has only registered
the dynasty considered by him and the authorities he followed to be legiti-
mate; he makes no mention and takes no account of its rivals and com-
petitors. But in reality the age of the twenty-third dynasty was a time
of contention and revolution; the land was divided between rival families,
and full of civil discord. The monuments furnish a certain number of
royal names, necessarily belonging to this epoch, and give us some infor-
mation as to the kings proclaimed in various parts of Egypt in antago-
nism with the sovereigns of Tanis. The existence of several families
who disputed the throne, each possessed of a portion of territory, is,
moreover, clearly alluded to in a passage in the Book of the prophet

Isaiah, who then lived and predicted that this anarchy would soon bring
Eg)'pt under a foreign rule. " And the Egyptians against the
I will set
Egyptians : and they shall fight every one against his brother, and every
one against his neighbour : city against city, and kingdom against king-
dom And tlie Egyptians will I give over into the hand of a
cruel lord ; and a fierceking .shall rule over them The
princes of Zoan [Tanis] arebecome fools, the princes of Noph [Memphis]
are deceived ; they have also seduced Egypt" (Isaiah xix. 2, 4, 13).
The state of complete disorder and anarchy in which Egypt, torn by
conflicting factions, then was, may easily be proved from the long
inscriptionon a stele, discovered by M. Mariette in the ruins of Napata,
erected to commemorate the submission of the whole of Egypt to a
king, named Piankhi, who made the Thebaid a simple province depen-
dant on Ethiopia, and imposed a tribute on Lower Egypt. The
T 2
—

inscription, translated by M. de Rouge, relates all the details of that
event, the battles with the chiefs of the Delta, and the final assumption
of the throne at Thebes by the Ethiopian king, who was favouralsly
received there by the people. seems that the family of the high
It
priests of Amen, even after its retirement into Ethiopia, had retained
many partisans in the priestly city, and during the whole period of
Egyptian history we are now considering, Thebes showed itself better
disposed towards the Ethiopian kings and their pretensions, than
towards the princes who reigned in the Delta. The situation of Lower
Egypt at the moment when Piankhi peaceably entered Thebes, and
took Memphis by force, is known from the stele at Napata. The two
contemporary dynasties alluded to by Isaiah, that of Tanis, registered
by Manetho as legitimate, and that of Memphis, three kings of which
have become known in consequence of the excavations at the Serapeum,
were not the only ones who strove for power. Lower and Middle
Egypt, and especially the Delta, were divided into thirteen petty rival
states, with princes at their head who, for the most part, had come
—
from the ranks of the Lybian Mashuash guard Janissaries in fact
who by slow degrees had ascended the steps of the throne under the
obscure and inglorious kings of the close of the twenty-second dynasty.
Five only among them bore the title of king. The most powerful at
the time of the invasion of Piankhi were Uaserken of the Tanitic line,
considered legitimate by Manetho, Tafnekht of Sais, the Tnephactus of
Diodonis Siculus, and Pefaabast, who reigned at Heracleopolis in
Middle Egypt. Such a state of anarchy must naturally have made
Egypt an easy prey to the attack of every foreign invader. Thus it
was that Piankhi was enabled without serious obstacles to subject for
the time the whole country, and to hold the southern part and that the
;
national existence was for some time interrupted by a new invader from
the banks of the Upper Nile.
6. The twenty-fourth Saite dynasty comprised but one king, Boken-
ranf, the Bocchoris of the Greeks, son of Tafnekht, contemporary with

the invasion of Piankhi, who reigned only six years. Whether this
king succeeded in expelling the Ethiopians from Upper Egypt, or
whether he was only one of the petty kings of the north who united
Lower Egypt under one sceptre, we cannot tell. We know as yet
—
nothing positive about his reign the monuments contain no record on
this subject. A new Ethiopian invasion placed the crown of Egypt for
a long time on the heads of the kings of Napata,and soon swept away
the power of Bokenranf, together with the independence of Egypt.
—
INVASION OF THE ETHIOPIANS. 277
Section III. Ethioi'ian Dynasty (725 to 665 B.C.).

1. Wehave now long passed the period of the great battles of the
Osortasens and Thothmes, of those tributes imposed by the Pharaohs,
conquerors of the "vile race of Cush," of those victories reducing the
whole Nile valley as far as Abyssinia to the state of an Egyptian pro-
vince. Cush now treats Egj'pt as a conquered country, and comes to
reign in those palaces of Thebes, full of the glories of Thothmes,
Amenhotep, and Ramses.
Bokenranf had occupied the throne but a few years when Sliabaka,
king of Ethiopia, the Sabacon of the Greeks, the So (Sua) of the
Bible,* descended from the neighbourhood of the cataracts at the head
of a formidable army of Ethiopians and negroes, and conquered all
Egypt even to the shores of the Mediterranean. Having taken the
unfortunate Bokenranf prisoner, he had him burned alive, in order pro-
bably, by this terrible example, to discourage all resistance. But even
in this barbarous act the natives were not sufficiently terrified to prevent
them from making efforts to disquiet the Ethiopian government. Then,
as in the time of the Shepherds, a national royalty continued to exist
and struggle against the conquest in some districts of the kingdom.
The family who afterwards founded the twenty-sixth dynasty (called
Saite), exercised authority, to all appearance, in the western part of the
Delta, a district easily defended in a partisan war. Herodotust here
gives us a clue to the truth by telling us of a king who took refuge in
the marshes during the Ethiopian government. We know also, not
from Egyptian monuments, but from Assyrian inscriptions, that the
petty local dynasties of the cities of the Delta recovered their authorkj
towards the end of the Ethiopian dominion.
2. Nevertheless, this partial resistance did not prevent the Ethio[)ian
dynasty from obtaining great consideration abroad. Shabaka was
called onby Hoshea, king of Israel, for assistance against the Assyrians.
The appeal was in vain as far as Hoshea was concerned, but it seems
that Pharaoh made an expedition when it was too late to save Samaria,
for an inscription at Karnak flatters him by naming Syria as a
tributary. But soon after Sargon, king of Assyria, inflicted a crushing
* The syllable ka, terminating the names of all the kings of the
Ethiopian dynasty, was the article in the Cushite language. It may
therefore either be added or omitted. The Egyptian monuments and
the lists of Manetho give, as the name of the conqueror and founder of
the dynasty, Shabaka, or Sabacon, with the article; the Bible trans-
literates from Shaba, or Shava, without the article; in both cases the
name is the same in its essential elements.
t Her. ii. 137.

defeat on him at Raphia. The third king of the dynasty, Tahraka,
whilst yet only ]-)iince royal, but no doubt sent liy his father, king
Shabaloka (the Sabacon IT. of some Greek writers, the Sethos of Hero-
dotus),* marched against iênnacherib, when that king of Nineveh
invaded the kingdom of Judah. We have related in the book on the
histor}' of the Hebrews, the miracle which then destroyed the army
of Sennacherib, and delivered Egypt as well as Palestine from a
formidable danger. The same Tahraka, when a little later he became
king, during the twenty-six years that he occupied the throne, under-
took considerable wars in Lybia. He is reported to have carried his
arms even to the straits of Gibraltar, to the north-west extremity of the
continent of Africa. A bas-relief at Medinet Abu represents him
holding a number of conquered chiefs together by the hair of their
heads, whilst threatening them with his mace.
But the end of the reign of Tahraka, so fortunate in its commence-
ment, was full of troubles and disasters. His own official inscriptions,
as we might suppose, do not tell us so; we learn this from Nineveh.
In 671 B.C., Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib, adopting his father's
policy, entered Egypt at the head of a numerous army, and in alliance
with one of the petty kings of the Delta. He conquered before Mem-
phis the troops of the king of Ethiopia, and possessed himself of all
Egypt, as far as the first cataract.

Esarhaddon reorganised the country on the principle generally ap-
plied by Assyrian kings to conquered provinces. He divided it into
twenty small kingdoms, tributary to the king of Nineveh twelve were ;
comprised in the Delta, among them we remark Tanis, Athribis, Hero-

opolis, Sebennytus, Mendes, and Busiris. Upper Egypt formed eight
others, one of the names given in the Assyrian inscription has not as yet
been identified; the seven others are Aphroditopolis, Heracleopolis,
Hermopolis, Lycopolis, Chemmis, This and Thebes. The kings of
the Delta were the vassal dynasties of Tahraka continued in power,
those installed in Upper Egypt were in part natives, and in part
Assyrians; the king of Thebes was called Month-Mei-Ankhi. Necho,
prince of Sais, whose family had always energetically opposed the
Ethiopians, and who had displayed great courage in his assertion of the
national independence, was made superior to the others, and received
possession of Memphis.
In conforhiity with the usual custom of the Ninevite kings in con-
quered lands, Esarhaddon gave Assyrian names to some of the chief
cities of Egypt. Sais was named Dur-Bilmati (the Fortress of the Lord
of the Land), Athribis, Limur-patis-Asshur (Dwelling of the Vicegerent
* Herodotus has followed the form Shabato or Shavato without the

article, the final ka.
INVASION OF THE ASSYRIANS. 279
of Asshur), Mempliis, Dur-Asshurakhiddin (Fortress of Esarhaddon),

and Tanis, Dur-Banit. He then returned to Nineveh, and on his way
caused to be engraved on the rocks at Nahr el Kelb near Beyrut, a
stele, still remaining there to commemorate his conquest of Egypt.
3. The country remained two years in the hands of the Assyrians,
and Esarhaddon entitled himself in official documents, "king of
Egypt and Ethiopia." But in 669 u.c, when he was attacked by the
illness that proved fatal to him, Tahraka profited by the circumstance
to reconquer the whole Nile valley. Thebes welcomed him with
enthusiasm as the defender of the cause of Amen, and the priests, very
hostile to the Assyrians, opened to him the gates of Memphis. Pursuing
his course of success, he attacked the kings of the Delta, beat them in
several encounters, drove most of them from their cities, and com-
pelled them with their partisans to take refuge in the country near
Sais, intersected with canals, where they with difficulty maintamed their
position.
In the meantime, Asshur-bani-pal succeeded his father on the throne
of Nineveh. He assembled a numerous army, and marched to Egypt
to restore the position of affairs. The Assyrians took possession of the
city of Tanis, or Dur-Banit, without striking a blow. Tahraka was
then at Memphishe dispatched his army northward, and a great
;
battle was fought before Tanis. The Ethiopians were defeated with
enormous loss. When Tahraka received intelligence of the defeat of
his troops, he gave up all idea of holding Memphis, and fled in haste
to Thebes, where he hoped to find a firmer support in the attachment
of the people.
The kings who had retired towards Sais, came to meet Asshur-bani-
pal, and pay their homage. Fle made with them a triumphal entry into
Memphis, and then marched without loss of time into Upper Egypt.
In forty days he arrived at Thebes, where, however, Tahraka did not
venture to await him. The Ethiopian king retreated beyond the
cataracts, and all Egypt was again in the possession of the Assyrians.
Asshur-bani-pal, having re-estahilished the organisation created by
Esarhaddon, and left fresh garrisons in the fortresses, returned to
Assyria.
But he had hardly left the country, when the princes of the Delta,
who had not found any real advantage in exchanging an Ethiopian for
an Assyrian sovereign, conspired to recall Tahraka under the condition
that he should continue them in power. The chiefs were Neclio,
prince of Sais and Memphis, Saretikdairi, prince of Tanis, and
Pakrur, prince of the Arabian nome. The plot was discovered, and
they were arrested, loaded with chains, and conveyed to Nineveh.
There they protested their repentance, and Asshur-bani-pal, no doubt
from policy, forgave them.
During this time a great insurrection had broken out in the Delta.
The Assyrian generals succeeded in quelling it, but only after having
taken by assault Sais, Mendes, Tanis, and Heroopolis. Tahraka had
re-entered Egypt, having again subdued all and
the upper region,
Thebes.
fixed his capital at Marching towards Lower Egypt, he had
blockaded Memphis, and pushed his troops into the Delta, the greater
part of which they occupied, and the Assyrians were almost driven out
of the country.
Asshur-bani-pal now sent Neclio into Egypt with an Assyrian army.
The Saite prince recovered the Delta from the Ethiopians, and installed
S.S local king in Athribis, his son Psammetik, who had then adopted
the Assyrian name Nal:io-sezib-anni. Memphis was then relieved, and
Tahraka reduced to the possession of Upper Egypt, where he soon
after died.
4. Rot- Amen, son-in-law of Tahraka, succeeded him on the thrones
of Thebes and Napata. With all the ardour of youth, he undertook
the expulsion of the Assyrians. He succeeded at first in winning a
Memphis, making the Assyrian garrison prisoners,
great battle, in taking
and even in rendering himself master of the Delta. Necho, taken
prisoner in Memphis, was put to death by Rot-Amen.
But Asshur-bani-pal, having been informed of the misfortunes of his
army in Egypt, undertook a new expedition to that country, as the
Assyrians attached the highest value to its possession, for it appeared
to thein the only guarantee for their supremacy in Syria. The king of
the Arabs, as vassal, furnished the Assyrian army with camels to carry
a supply of water across the desert. The troops of Rot-Amen were
beaten near Pelusium, and the Ethiopian prince then abandoned
Memphis, and Asshur-bani-pal entered that city without strikmg a
blow. The petty kings of the Delta hastened to make their submission
to him.
Asshur-bani-pal then marched on Thebes, and Rot-Amen abandoned
it, although he had hastily erected fortifications for its protection. The
city of Amen was given up to be pillaged by the Assyrians, and the

devastation was so great that it never recovered the blow. Asshur-
bani-pal carried off as trophies, and sent to Nineveh, the two obelisks
erected before one of the principal temples. But this success did not
lead to any lasting result, for he was soon compelled to see the impossi-
bility of maintainmg himself in Egypt, and decided on evacuating the
country.*
* On the .subject of these events, see Mr. George Smith, in the

Journal (TArclu'olcgie Egyptienne de Berlin, September and October,
1868.
—
THE DODECARCHY. 281
5. The records of this epoch, however, do not all relate exclusively

to wars. Herodotus attributes to Sabacon the abolition of the punish-
ment of death, and the substitution of hard labour. Diodorus Siculus
speaks of the numerous canals, and Herodotus* of the embankments
intended to raise the mounds on which towns were built to keep them
above the level of the inundation, works all due to the Ethiopian
dynasty. It has been objected that this legislation and these works do
not correspond with the violent and fierce character of the murderer ot
Bokenranf, and that they must be assigned to one of his successors but, ;
leaving out the question whether Bokenranf had not drawn on himself
this terrible punishment, possibly by ordering some cruelties to be
inflicted on Ethiopian prisoners, or whether he was treated by Shabaka
as a rebel vassal, it must be remarked that the works connected with
the inundation of the Nile were works of necessity, and requiring prompt
execution in order to remedy the damage consequent on the conquest.
We see, at Luxor, Shabaka making offerings to the gods of Thebes, in
the same way as a native sovereign, and he and his successors adopted
Egyptian prenomens.
The Greek historians relatet that in the twenty-sixth year of his reign
Tahraka suddenly evacuated Egypt and retired to Ethiopia. This
voluntary retreat of the Ethiopians seems to be a fact, but not as
relating to Tahraka, who died king of Upper Egypt. It must be
ascribed to his son-in-law, Rot-Amen. Herodotus asserts that it was

in consequence of a dream. No doubt some superstitious motive con-
tributed to this unexpected resolution, but it is probable that the special
reason was a powerful insurrection in Lower Egypt.
Section IV. The Dodecarchy — The Saite Kings —

(665—527 B.C).
I. After having related the end of the Ethiopian dynasty, Diodorus
Siculus says, " There was then in Egypt an anarchy lasting two years,
during which the people gave themselves up to disorder and intestine
wars. At last twelve of the principal chiefs laid a plot. They met at
Memphis, and, having entered into reciprocal treaties, proclaimed
themselves kings. But at the end of fifteen years the whole power
fell into the hands of one of them."
The two years of complete anarchy following on
chief event of the
the retreat of the Ethiopians is related by an inscription on a stele, dis-
covered by M. Mariette at Napata. The son-in-law of Tahraka having
* Her. ii. 137. t Her. ii. 139.

(lied without direct heirs after a a very short reign, a personage named
Amen-meri-Nut, who must have been more or less distantly related to
him, caused himself to be proclaimed in his place. A prophetic dream
had announced this elevation to him, and also that he sliould re- unite
the crown of Eg\'pt to that of Ethiopia. Consequently, profiting by the
fact that Egypt had no supreme king, he entered the country at the
head of a numerous army in order to claim the sovereignty. Thebes
received him joyfully ; but at Memphis matters assumed a different
aspect. The chiefs of the Delta, composing their differences, formed a
coalition against the Ethiopian invader, disputed his entry into the
sacred city of Ptah, and it required a bloody battle to open its gates to
him. After having remained there some time, Amen-meri-Nut pursued
his enemies as
far as the marshes of the Delta Init he could not take
;
their cities,and the inundation soon forced him to retire to Memphis.

Whilst he was preparing a new expedition, the chiefs, who had success-
fully resisted him, hoping that he would retire when his avarice was
satiated, sent him a considerable tribute. Contented with this result the
Ethiopian king, who seems only to have wished in reality to make into
Egypt one of those great razzias of which war in the east so often
consists, took the road for his own states, leaving the greater part of
the country, that is, the Delta and Lower Egypt, to itself.
2. The
invasion of Amen-meri-Nut, by showing the danger of an-
archy,had been one of the chief means of bringing about a state of
comparative order, as well as the regular establishment of the Dodec-
archy. The twelve chiefs or kings who then amicably divided Lower
Egypt, and who were for the most part identical with those of the time
of Tahraka, belonged probably to the Masliuash soldiery, Lybian by
origin, who had been established in the Delta since the reign of
Merenphtah (nineteenth dynasty), and had become the chief military
strength of the country. The fact appears the more certain in the case
of Psammetik, the one of the chiefs who ended by reigning alone ; his
name is not at all Egyptian, and its form is, on the contrary, entirely
Lybian. But though of foreign origin, his family had identified itself
with the interests and patriotic passions of the people. His father and
grandfather, in the country of Sais, had continued to resist during the
greater part of the Ethiopian invasion. His father, too, Necho, as we
have seen, fell a victim to the national cause. As for himself, he had,
under an Assyrian name, been made king of the city of Athribis, by
Asshur-bani-pal.
Whilst the Dodecarchy thus governed Lower Egypt, the Thebaid
continued to belong to the Ethiopian kings. It was in the hands of
Piankhi II., successor of Amen-meri-Nut, who seems to have occupied
the throne but for a very short time. This king, whom everything
proves to have been merely a parvenu, shared the power with his wife,
J
REIGN OF PSAMMETIK. 283
Araen-iritis, sister of Sliabaka, whom lie had married to legithnate his

pretensions in the absence of direct lieirs of Tahral<:a. Amen-iritis,
moreover, was a woman of rare intelHgence and superior merit ; she
had on many occasions l)een charged witli tlie regency of Egypt under
the three sovereigns of the Etliiopian dynasty, and had made herself
very popular in Thebes and its neighbourhood.
3. The good understanding between the twelve confederate kings
lasted fifteen years. Herodotus says an oracle had predicted that all
Egypt should belong to him iM'ho should first make libations to Ptah
from a vessel of bronze. One day, when the twelve princes were
offering a sacrifice, the high priest brought them the golden cups they
were in the habit of using; but he had mistaken the number, and
brought only eleven for the twelve kings.* Then Psammetik, who
possibly had prepared the scene beforehand, in order to appear to be
the man intended by the oracle, finding that he alone was without a
cup, took his bronze helmet and used it for his libation. Exile in
the marshes was the consequence of this action, noticed by the other
kings.
Psammetik resolved to resent this outrage, and sent to consult the
oracle for himself. The answer he received was that he should be
avenged by brazen men issuing from the sea. A short time afterwards
some Greeks, who had been shipwrecked on the coast, came on shore,
clothed in armour. An Egyptian ran to bring the news to Psammetik,
still in the marshes, and, having never seen men armed in that way, said
that brazen men had issued from the sea and were plundering the
country. The king, understanding from this that the oracle was accom-
plished, made an alliance with the Greeks, and engaged them by large
promises to take his part. Afterwards, with these auxiliaries and the
Egyptians who had remained faithful to him, Psammetik commenced the
campaign, gained a decisive battle at Mo-Memphis, dethroned the eleven
kings his colleagues, expelled the Ethiopians from the Thebaid, and
restored to Egypt its ancient territory, from the Mediterranean to the
first cataract.
To conciliate the numerous partisans whom the Ethiopians, as we
have already said, had in Upper Egypt, he married the princess
Shap-en-ap, daughter and heiress of Piankhi II. and Amen-iritis. The
suzerainty of Assyria had been recognised by the kings of the Dodec-
archy. By dethroning them, Psammetik put an end to this vassalage,
and re-established the complete independence of Egypt. Gyges, king
of Lydia, assistedhim in this enterprise.
4. Psammetik I., the Psammetichus of the Greeks, when once in pos-
session of supreme power, ignored ail that occurred since the death of
* Her. ii. 151.

"

Tahraka, independently of himself, during the two years of anarchy
and fifteen years of the Dodecarchy, and dated his monuments from
the seventeenth year of his reign. Owing his elevation to the assistance
of foreigners, he continued to invite numbers of them to come to Egypt.
He brought mercenaries from Arabia, Caria, and Ionia, gave them
handsome pay, and assigned them lands between the Pelusiac mouth of
the Nile and the city of Bubastis, in one of the Nomes where the
military class was already established. At last he entrusted to foreigners
some of the highest dignities of the country. In an expedition into
Syria he went so far as to give the auxiliary troops all the posts ol
hcmour, and ])laced them on the right of the army. The military Paste,
wounded in its honour and injured in its interests, emigrated in a'body,
and formed an establishment in Ethiopia. This desertion of 200,000
men, who represented nearly the whole military strength of the country,
must naturally have seriously weakened Egypt. In vain Psammetik
humbled his pride sufficiently to invite their return : they preferred to
remain in Ethiopia. Psammetik then allied himself still more closely with
foreigners,and to ensure the good-will, at any rate, of the sacerdotal
class, he was prodigal in his gifts to the temples of the gods. He
built at Memphis a pylon before the temple of Ptah, and built, or
rather added to, the sacred edifice in which Apis was kept when he ma-
nifested himself. Owing to these works, Egyptian art had one final
renaissance, lasting during the time of the Saite dynasty. It did not
attain to the truthand grandeur of the ancient schools, but, neverthe-
less, produced a great number of beautiful works remarkable for their
exquisite finish. It seems also that at this time a portion of the sacred
books, particularly the famous Funereal Ritual, were revised.

This founder of the real power of the twenty-sixth dynasty also occu-
pied himself actively in the administration of the State, augmented the
revenue by encouraging foreign commerce, facilitated intercourse with
Greece and Phoenicia, and thus brought Egypt out of the mysterious
isolation which the policy of many centuries had maintained. " Psam-
metichus," says Diodorus Siculus, "received with hospitality strangers
who came to visit Egypt. He was so fond of Greece that he had his
children taught the language of that country. Lastly, he was the
first Egyptian king to open to other nations the centres of commerce,
and give security to traders; for his predecessors had made Egypt
inaccessible to foreigners, killing some and condemning others to
slavery.
Desirous of strengthening his dynasty by military glory, Psammetik
wished to imitate the policy of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties
in Asiatic countries,and to conquer Syria; for the rich Phoenician
cities, where commerce had for ages accumulated the treasures of the
world, excited his cupidity. But he was arrested at the first step,
—
CIRCUMNAVIGATION OF AFRICA. 285
nearly on the frontier of Egypt, by tlie city of Ashdod, which cost a

twenty-nine years' siege before he succeeded in taking it.
5. Necho, his son, continued the war, and at first made more rapid
progress. Near Megiddo, on the ancient battle-field of Thothmes III.,
he conquered the Syrians and Jews commanded by Josiah, king of
Judah, who wished to oppose his progress (609 B.C.), and for the
moment possessed himself of all Syria. But at this time, between the
Tigris and Euphrates, a redoubtable empire had arisen, and had attained
under Nebuchadnezzar I. the highest degree of power. This was the
Chald?eo-Bab) Ionian monarchy. A contest between these two powers,
both claiming supremacy in Asia, was inevitable. The kings of Egypt
and Babylon met on the banks of the Euphrates, near Circesium, or
Carchemish. Necho was overcome and put to flight one single battle
;
stripped him of all his conquests, and compelled him to retire to Egypt
(604 B.C.).
Foreign wars were not the only occupation of this king. Like his
father, he had devoted himself to the peaceful work of the extension of
Egyptian commerce. Intercourse with foreigners, now become more
common, and rendered more easy by the institution of a new body of
interpreters, had enlarged the king's ideas and inspired him with the
most noble projects, amongst others tliat of re-opening the canal of
Seti I., from the Red Sea to the Nile, obstructed for ages by the sands
of the desert, through the carelessness of the worthless kings of the
twentieth dynasty. The work had thus become as difficult as if under-
taken anew, and Herodotus states* that 120,000 men perished whilst
engaged on it, from epidemics breaking out among the crowds of work-
men but it was never finished. Necho after a few years suddenly
;
suspended the work, on account of an oracle that warned him that he

was working for the barbarian.
Although tlie canal was abandoned, the expeditions by sea were con-
tinued. Wishing to extend the commercial relations of Egypt, Necho
undertook the circumnavigation of Africa. He directed some Phceni-
cians to make the circuit of the Afi'ican continent, over seas then
unknown to the whole world, sailing down
Arabian Gulf and
the
returning through the Straits of Hercules. The voyage lasted three
years, and the history of it is accompanied by circumstances that the
Phoenicians cannot have invented, thus proving that it really was
accomplished. t But it produced no results, and the knowledge ac-
quired by this adventurous voyage was soon forgotten.
* Hkr. ii. 158.

t "That in sailing round Lylîa they had the sun on their right
hand"; words, that the sun at noon was to the north instead
or, in other
of to the south. A fact recorded by Herodotus (iv. 42), though he
admitted that he considered it incredible. Tr.
6. Psammetik II., the Psammis of the Greeks, who succeeded his
father, Necho, reigned only six years, and died on his retum from an
expedition against the Ethiopians. He put forward pretensions to the
crown of Ethiopia; and, in riglit to it by allying
order to create a
himself to their royal he married his own aunt, the princess
line,
Net-aker, daughter of the queen, Shap-en-ap, and grand-daughter of

Amen-iritis.
His expedition against Ethiopia has left some curious monuments in
the Greek and Carian inscriptions, engraved by the mercenaries of his
army on the legs of one of the famous colossi, ornamenting the fa9ade
of the Temple of Ipsambul, in Nubia.
7. After him, his son, Uahprahet (the sun enlarges his heart), called by
the Greeks Apries, mounted the throne, and reigned twenty-five years.
He and with a numerous
recurred to the old policy of Asiatic wars ;
fleet, an unsuccessful attack on the island of Cyprus, assailed

after
Phoenicia, took the city of Sidon by assault, and spread terror through
all the Phoenician cities. This is the king named Hophra in the Bible,
who catne to the help of Zedekiah, king of Judah, when threatened by
Nebuchadnezzar. But his interference was useless, and only drew down
a Babylonian invasion on the eastern provinces of the Delta.
Some time after this Uahprahet, having sent an army against Gyrene,
and the expedition ending unfortunately, the army revolted. He sent
a certain Ahmes, the Amasis of the Greeks, to appease the tumult.
He went to the insurgents but while he was haranguing them, an
;
Egyptian, who was behind him, placed a helmet on his head, exclaiming
that he had crowned him king. Ahmes made no objection, and
marched against Uahprahet, who put himself at the head of his mer-
cenaries. The two armies met at Mo-Memphis and commenced battle.
The mercenaries fought with courage, but, outnumbered, they were
defeated. Uahprahet, made prisoner, was conducted to Sais, and con-
fined in the magnificent palace he had inhabited as king. He was at
first treated with generosity ; but the Egyptians, whom the unfortunate
prince had much wounded in their national pride by his preference for
foreigners, required Ahmes to give him up to them. They no sooner
had him in their power than they strangled him.
8. Ahmes, or Amasis, in imitation of the policy of his predecessors,
married the heiress to the rights of the Saite dynasty, the princess
Ankhs-en Ranofrehet, daughter of Psammetik II. At the commence-
ment of his reign the Egyptians, as we learn from Herodotus,* had
but little consideration for him, as he was of obscure parentage; but
he raised himself in their opinion by his prudence and ability: he
compared himself, speaking to a large assembly, to a golden vase,
* Her. ii. 172.

PROSPERITY AND WEALTH OF EGYPT. 287
employed at first for common

purposes, but afterwards worked up into
the statue of a god, when
becomes an object of adoration to all.
it
This king was a clever man, and knew perfectly how to combine
pleasure with a due regard to affairs of state. He said to his friends,*
"Bowmen bend their bows when they wish to shoot, and unbrace them
when shooting is over. Were they always kept strung they would
break, and fail the archer in the time of need. So it is with men. If
they give themselves constantly to serious work, and never indulge
awhile in pastime or sport, they lose their senses and become mad or
moody." According to the testimony of Herodotus, t "the reign of
Amasis was the most prosperous time that Egypt ever saw the river ;
was more liberal to the land, and the land brought forth more abun-
dantly for the service of man than had ever been known before, while
the number of inhabited cities was not less than 20,000." This
numl;er, furnished by the priests, comprised, no doubt, even villages
and hamlets; for under the Persian rule, they were desirous of exag-
gerating the splendour of Egypt before the conquest.
The extensive commerce then carried on by the land of the Pharaohs
with foreigners, and above all with Greece, was one of the principal
causes of the prosperity of the country in the last days of its inde-
pendence. Amasis extended his special protection to the industrious
and active Greek people, and not only permitted them to make a
settlement at Naucratis, but authorised the free exercise of their
religion, and gave them of temples and altars to
sites for the erection
their divinities. The and most celebrated of these temples was
largest
called the Hellenium. It was built by the Greek cities of Asia Minor;
of the lonians, Chios, Teos, Phociea, Clazomenae of the Dorians, ;
Rhodes, Cnidus, Halicamessus, Phaselis; and of the Cohans, My-

telene.J The ^-Eginetans had also built a temple to Jupiter, the Samians
to Juno, and the Milesians to Apollo. Amasis even contributed a sum
of a thousand talents of alum§ for the reconstruction of the temple at
Delphi, which had been destroyed by fire. At the same time he allied
himself to the Greeks of Cyrene by marrying Laodice, a daughter of
one of their princes, and sent to the city of Cyrene a gilt statue of
Minerva, together with his own portrait. He, moreover, gave to dif-
ferent Grecian temples many statues and some very valuable works of
art, as Herodotus, who had seen them, testifies. The Greek historian||
also tells us that the island of Cyprus was conquered and re-united to
Egypt by Amasis.
This magnificent prince was not likely to forget in his liberality the
gods of his own country. The temple of Isis, in the city of Memphis,
* Hkr. 173. t Ibid. Ibid. 178.

ii. ii. 177. J ii.
§ Ibid. ii. 180. Ii

Ibid. ii. 182.
mentioned by Herodotus* as most admirable; that of Neith at Sais,
tlie porticoes of which surpassed, it is said, any worl< of the kind, both
in elevation and in the size of the columns; and lastly, the monolithic
chamber which he had made at Elephantine all prove that in his —
reign art had not retrograded since the times of the Psammetiks.
Egyjit, then, in the time of Amasis seems to have been as flourishing
as atany period of her history, though this prosperity but thinly veiled
the decline of public spirit and of national institutions. The Saite
kings hoped to breathe new life into Egypt, to infuse new blood into
the veins of the old monarchy of Menes, by allowing free current to the
liberal ideas already propagated by the Greeks. Unconsciously they
had in this way introduced new elements of decay into the empire of
the banks of the Nile. The basis and safeguard of Egyptian civilisation
was its immutability. Its very foundation consisted in preserving its
traditions intact in spite of the lapse of ages, and thus only could it
last. From the moment that it came in contact with the spirit of
progress, personified in the Greek race and civilisation, it was doomed
to destruction. It could neither enter on a new road contrary to the
letter and spirit of its laws, nor yet continue immovable.
Thus when Greek make itself felt, Egyptian civi-
influence began to
lisation atonce began to decline, and collapsed into a state of death-like
decrepitude. The military caste having almost entirely emigrated, the
nation was disarmed. Foreigners, disliked by the people, were charged
with its defence, and had even been employed in foreign wars and
conquests ending in disaster. The public indignation culminated in
revolt, A bold adventurer had possessed himself of the throne, and
had found the country so committed to these new ways, that he himself
favoured the foreigners, thus contributing to the riches of Egypt, but
also exciting the cupidity of conquerors. When these arrived, Egypt
could oppose to them only a people who had lost all aptitude for arms.
So the son of Amasis, Psammetik
Psammenitus of the Greeks,
III., the
mounted the throne to see, almost immediately on his accession, the
independence of Egypt succumb finally to the attack of the Persians
under Cambyses.
* Her. ii. 175.

— : — —
289
CHAPTER V.
CIVILISATION, MANNERS, AND MONUMENTS OF
EGYPT.
Chief Aictkorities.
For Manners and Organisation:
Social Herodotus, Book II. —
Diodonis Siculus, Book I. —
Caillaud, Rechcrclus sur les Arts el
Metiers de lancienne Egypte, Paris, 1829. Rosellini, Monumejili —
delP Egillo e della Nubia; Monumenti civili, Florence, 1833.
Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, London,
1847. —The great works of Champollion and Lepsius.
For Language and Writing: —
Champollion, Precis du Syslhne Hiero-
glyphiqiie, i?>2'6.— Gram ma ire Egyptienne,
Paris, Paris, 1836.
Dictionnaire Eg)ptien, Paris, 1841. —
Lepsius, Lettre a M. Rosel-
lini Systeme Hieroglyphique, Rome, 1837.
sur le Grammar, Di^- —
iioitary, and Chrestomathy, by Dr. Birch, in the 5th vol. (2nd ed.)
Bunsen's ''Egypt's Place,'' etc., London, 1868. Briigsch, Scriptura —
A^gyptiornm Demotica, Berlin, 1848. —
Grammaire Demoliipie, Berlin,
1856. Hieroglyphisch Dcmotisches ôrterbuch, Leipzig, i868.
De Rouge, Lettre a M. de Saulcy sur PEcriture Demotique, Paris,
1849. Grammaire Egyptienne, 1st part, Paris, 1867. 7he Journal —
of Egyptian Philology and Archeology of Berlin.
For —
Religion : Champollion, Pantheon Egyptien, Paris, 4°. Birch, —
Gallery of Egyptian Antiquities from the British Museum, London,
1844. —
De Rouge, Notice dcs Monuments Egyptiens die Alusee du
Louvre. —
Memoire sur la Statuette Naophore du Vatican, Paris, 185 1.
— Mariette, Mhnoire sur la mere d' Apis, Paris, 1856. Chabas, —
—
Hymned Osiris, Paris, 1857. Lepsius, Das Todtenbuch der ^gypter,
Leipzig, 1842. —
De Rouge, Etudes sur le Rituel Eunerairc, Paris,
i860. —
F. Lenormant, Les Livres chez les Egyptie?is, Paris, 1857.
For the Monuments —The volumes on Antiquities, the great French
in
work, "Description de P Egypte." — Champollion, Lettres ecrites
d'Egypte, Paris, 1833 ; 2nd ed. 1868.— Nestor, L'llote, Lettres d' Egypte,
Paris. Lepsius, Brufe aus ALgypten und ALthiopicn, Berlin, 1852.
The two first volumes of Denkmdler aus Aigypten tend ALthiopien. —
Ampere, Voyage en Egypte, Paris, 1868. Ch. Lenormant, Beaux —
Arts et Voyages, vol. ii.
Section I. Socl\l Constitution.

I. The was the foundation of the
division of the people into classes
which royalty formed the summit. The
social constitution of Eg)^)!, of
number of these classes varies in the accounts of Herodotus and
Diodonis Siculus. The first* mentions seven, priests, warriors, cow- —
* Her. ii. 164.
U
herds, swine-herds, tradesmen, interpreters, and boatmen; the second*
divides the people into only five classes, — husbandmen,
priests, vs'arriors,
shepherds, artizans. This difference between two historians, who had
both seen and travelled in Egypt, shows that the information they have
transmitted to us on this point was incompletely and carelessly col-
lected. Moreover, many of the occupations we Ihid mentioned on the
monuments cannot be easily included in any of the classes enumerated
by the two Greek writers.
It has long been supposed, on the faith of testimony imperfectly
understood, that the Egyptian people was divided distinctly into castes.
A modern scholar, J. J. Ampere, has completely disproved this idea.t
Caste, in fact, only exists when three conditions are imposed on its
—
members to abstain from certain forbidden occupations, to contract no
alliance beyond the limits of the caste, and to continue to practise the
profession of their fathers. Now to speak only of the sacerdotal and
military classes, in which, according to Herodotus and Diodorus,
occupations were handed down from father to son, we learn from the
monuments, first, that the sacerdotal and militai-y functions, far from
being exclusive, were often joined one to the other, and either or both ol
them with civil positions, as the same person is known to have had a
sacerdotal, a military, and a civil title; secondly, that a personage
invested with a military title could marry the daughter of a sacerdotal
dignitary ; thirdly, that the members of one family, father and sons,
might fill, some military, others civil positions, and the offices did not
necessarily pass to their children.
There was then no sacerdotal caste, in the true meaning of the word,
might also be generals, governors of provinces, architects, or
for priests
judges. It was the same with the military class ; one man might be
both commander of archers and governor of Southern Ethiopia, super-
intendent of the royal buildings and also commander of foreign merce-
naries. Hereditary transmission was not the general law of Egyptian
society. Doubtless, the son often did inherit the office of the father,
and more often and military classes than in the others;
in the sacerdotal
but this occurs in very many other nations, and is far from proving abso-
lute and exclusive inheritance. There was formerly in France a class,
the nobles, exclusively devoted to war, and another to the magistracy,
and in these classes offices were nearly always transmitted from father
to son but we should not conclude from this that the people of France
;
was ever divided into castes. It would therefore be better, as Ampere

has done, to translate by " corporation," the Greek word usually ren-
dered caste.
* DiOD. Sic. i. 74.

t In an essay re-published at the end of his Voyage en Egypte.
:
PRIESTLY AND MILITARY CLASSES. 291
2. Of
all the classes of Egyptian society tliose of the warriors and
priestswere esteemed most honourable. The priests, especially under

the later dynasties, formed a sort of privileged nobility in the state.
They filled the highest offices, and possessed the largest and best part
of the land. To render this property inalienable, they represented it
as the gift of the goddess who, when she was on earth, assigned to
Isis,
them a third part of the kingdom. These estates were free from every
tax (Gen. xlvii. 22) they were generally let for a rent, which was paid
;
into the treasury of the temple to which the land belonged, and was
employed in the expenses of the worship and on the support of the
priests and their numerous subordinates. These, the classical writers
say, spent nothing of their own property, each of them received a
portion of the sacred food given them ready cooked ; they even had
every day a large quantity of beef and goose flesh ; wine also was given
them, but they were not permitted to eat fish.*
The priests were obliged
to be scrupulously clean in their persons and
clothes. "They
shave the whole body every other day." says Hero-
dotus, and his account quite agrees with the monuments. "Their
dress is entirely of linen, and their shoes of the papyrus plant ; and it
is not lawful for them to wear either dress or shoes of any other material.
They bathe twice every day in cold water, and twice each night,
besides which they observe, so to speak, thousands of ceremonies."
3. After the sacerdotal class, in order of importance came the nrili-
tary. This also enjoyed great privileges. According to Herodotus,
the waiTior class was divided into two bodies, the Calasirians and Her-
motybians. They were distributed in the different nomes of Egypt in
llie following mannerf ; —
The nomes of the Hermotybians were Busiris,
Sais, Chemmis, Papremis, the island called Prosopitis, and half of
Natho: these nomes furnished 160,000 men. The Calasirians occupied
the nomes of Thebes, Bubastis, Aphthis, Tanis, Mendes, Sebennytus,
Pharbsethus, Thmuis, Onuphis, Anysis, Myecphoris, and Athribis
these nomes could, when fully peopled, furnish 250,000 men.
We see, by the designation of the different nomes occupied by the
warrior class, that the facts collected by Herodotus relate to an epoch
when the whole military power of
posterior to the twenty-first dynasty,
Egypt was concentrated in Lower Egypt. In the interior of the Delta
four and a half nomes were then occupied by the Hermotybians, and
twelve others by the Calasirians, and they had each of them only one
in Upper and Central Egypt, that is Chemmis and Thebes. The corps
of foreign origin, who had been settled for many generations in the
Delta, such as the Mashuash, were probably enrolled in one or other of
these lists.
Her. ii. 37. f Ibid. ii. 165, 166.

U 2
The warrior class, like that of the priests, was richly endowed, and
possessed nearly a third of the soil; each of them, as Herodotus states,*
had twelve arurse of land (about nine acres) exempt from all taxes.
Every year i,ooo men from the Calasirians, and the same number from
the Hermotybians, served as the king's guards, and to each of them was
given daily five minas of bread (about 6^ lbs.), and two minse of beef
(about 2^ lbs.), and four measures (about one quart) of wine.
Such was the organisation of the Egyptian army under the last
dynasties of the monarchy of the Pliaraohs. For many ages the Egyp-
tians employed chiefly native troops, and among them military service
was considered as a privilege and distinction. The foreign auxiliaries
then held a very inferior position to the native troops, and it was only
after hereditary service for many generations had made them at last
(like the Matoi under the Middle Empire and the Mashuash under the
New) really Egyptian citizens, that their position was assimilated to that
of Egyptian troops. Psammetik disorganised the whole constitution of
the army by giving his hired Greek mercenaries precedence over the
native troops. The soldiers of Egyptian birth saw in this a flagrant
violation of their privileges, and 200,000 warriors deserted the garrison,
where the king had designedly placed them, to go off and form a colony
beyond the cataracts.
From that time the sinews of the Egyptian military power were
broken. The Greek and Carian mercenaries, who composed the
majority of the Egyptian armies, became rather the instruments of the
king than the defenders of the nation. A feeling of rivalry sprang up
between them and the rest of the soldiery, and Egypt was given over to
intestine strife and anarchy. Wlien the Persian invasion took place, the
country was defenceless, and one single battle sufficed to render Cam-
byses master of the whole Nile valley.
4. All the free population, belonging neither to the military nor
sacerdotal class, formed in Egypt a sort of third order subdivided into
many smaller classes not well defined by ancient writers.
In this respect lies the chief discrepancy between Herodotus and
Diodorus Siculus. The former divides the people into five classes,
—
the latter only into three shepherds, husbandmen and artisans. On
some points it is easy enough to make these conflicting statements agree.
Thus the artisans, tradesmen and interpreters, of whom Herodotus
makes three distinct bodies, belonged apparently all to one class, and
—
were only subdivisions the cow-herds, and swine-herds, mentioned by
the same author, also belong to one class the shepherds. — But there
always remains this important difference between Herodotus and
* Her. ii. 168.

HUSBANDMEN, SHEPHERDS, AND SAILORS. 293
Diodorus, that the latter admits one special class of husbandmen whom
the former excludes. Heeren believes that they are included by Hero-
dotus under the name KaTrrjXoi (tradesmen), and that we must class the
husbandmen among the artisans. The nature of the tenure of landed
property in Egypt authorises this explanation. In fact, as Diodorus
tells us, and the monuments confirm the statement, the whole soil of
Egypt was in the hands of the king, the priests, and the warriors, and the
husbandmen were only serfs attached to the land, who cultivated, paying
a rent, the estates of the privileged classes. They were sold with the
ground, and could not leave the where they lived without the
district
permission of government. The works pressed
forced labour for public
on them with all its weight. Their position was very like that of the
modern /l//a /is who have no property of their own, and cultivate the
land of Egypt for their sovereign.
The class of shepherds naturally included all who made the care of
cattle their principal occupation. Those who lived in villages and
tended large herds of cattle in the interior of the country must not be
confounded with the nomad shepherds who wandered near the frontiers.
These were generally hated by the Egyptians, Moses and Herodotus
as
both state. This antipathy, as old as the monarchy,
earliest times of the
and always existing in the east between the inhabitants of cities and
the Nomads or Bedouins, extended also to the foreign settlers in the
marshes of the Delta, most of whom were descended from the
Shepherds of Avaris. These tribes had completely adopted Egyp-
tian manners and customs but as they remained barbarians at
;
heart, they were addicted to brigandage, and by their depredations

kept alive the old hatred felt towards them by all other people of the
country.
The swine-herds, whom Herodotus particularly distinguishes from
cow-herds, were looked down upon and regarded as unclean. They
were not only forbidden to have access to the temples, but even to mix
with other classes. The pig was in Egyptian, as in Jewish eyes, an
unclean animal. Nevertheless, according to ancient custom, an animal
of that species was sacrificed on one of the feasts of Osiris.
The class of sailors, or pilots, must have been composed of men
employed m the navigation of the Nile. The inundation, periodically
transforming Egypt into a vast lake, rendered their services indispensable.
Moreover, there were on the Nile, and on the numerous canals inter-
secting the country, a great number of vessels of all kinds, as all
merchandise and building materials were transported by water. The

river was the great, almost the only, road for internal commerce. The
Egyptians regarded the sea as unclean, and had a great disinclination to
venture onit, so that it is very doubtful whether they ever had real sea-
men among them, and whether, when the Pharaohs maintained con-
—

siderable fleets on the Meditenanean aiul Red Seas, the ships were ever
manned by any but Phoenicians.
The interpreters, of whom
Herodotus speaks, were another separate
class, commerce but they seem to
indispensable to the necessities of ;
have been first organised into a body under the Saite kings, when inter-
course with foreigners had assumed a development and an activity un-
known to earlier ages.
Section II. Political Organisation and Administration.
I. The
political constitution of Egypt never varied during the whole
of the enonnous period of the duration of the empire of the Pharaohs.
The countiy always remained one united monarchy, the most absolute
probably that has ever existed in the world. Neither changes of
dynasties, nor the struggles of rival competitors for the throne, ever
effected any change. " The Egyptians," says Diodorus Siculus, " respect
and adore their kings as the equals of the gods. The sovereign authority
with which Providence has invested kings, together with the will and the
power to confer benefits, seems to them a manifestation of the deity."
This passage of the Greek historian is in complete accordance with
the facts resulting from the study of themonuments. From the time of
the vei-y oldest dynasties, we find that such an unbounded respect for
royalty existed, that it was transformed into religious worship, and
Pharaoh became the visible god of his subjects. The Egyptian monarchs
were more than sovereign pontiffs, they wexê real deities. The sacer-
dotal class depended absolutely upon them. The epithet " Son of the
Sun-God " is as a matter of course attached to the name of each
Pharaoh. They " the great God, the good God ";
also styled themselves
they identified themselves with the great deity Horus; for, as one
inscription says, "The king is the image of Ra (the Sun-God) among
the living." A prince in mounting the throne was, so to speak, trans-
figured in the eyes of his subjects. During his lifetime he attained a
complete apotheosis. And this is why he assumed a symbolical and
mysterious name at the time of his coronation. This name is found,
from the earliest epochs, inscribed among the royal titles on a banner
surmounted by a crowned hawk. The king was also called " The Sun,
Lord of Justice, " because from him was believed to emanate all regula-
tions for moral and material order he controlled everything, as the star
;
of the day was believed to preside over cosmic phenomena.

The divinity of the king, thus commencing on earth, was, in a
manner, completed and perpetuated in another life. All the Pharaohs
when dead became gods; so, after each reign, the Egyptian pantheon
DEIFICATION OF THE KING. 295
was enriched by a new god. The series of Pharaohs thus constilutcd

a series of gods, to whom monarch addressed homage and
the reigning
invocations. This gave rise to the monuments where we see Pharaoh
addressing prayers to his preiiecessors. The list was so long that, in
the inscriptions commemorative of their piety, the kings are obliged to
make a selection among the names of these deified princes. This
worship of the Pharaohs was so lasting and so devoutly believed in by
the people, that we find the adoration of the kings of the primitive age
extends even into the time of the Ptolemies. These kings had their par-
ticular priests, sometimes attached to the altars of two or more monarchs
at once. But this was not all. Pharaoh was equally man and god; he,
in the opinion of the Egyptians, so completely united the two natures,
that he himself addressed worship to himself. Several monuments repre-
sent the prince making, in his own name, offerings to his own image.
We may imagine what prestige such an exaltation of royalty gave in
Egypt to the sovereign That power, so great even among the
power.
neighbouring Asiatic nations, became in this country a real idolatry.
The Egyptians, in the eyes of the king, were but trembling slaves, com-
pelled, even from religious motives, to execute his orders blindly; the
highest and most powerful functionaries were only the humble servants
of Pharaoh. His most trifling favours are mentioned in their epitaphs
as their most brilliant titles of glory. One, for instance, was permitted
to touch the knees of the king instead of the usual prostration to the
earth before him. Another had obtained the privilege of wearing his
sandals in the king's palace. To accommodate themselves to such a
regime, to consent to sink so completely their individuality, and to be
only the docile instraments of their master's glory, the Egyptians, like
almost all oriental people, must have been entirely devoid of that
feeling of independence and of personal dignity, constituting the
strength and nobility of modern nations, that appeared in the
first
Greeks and Romans. But that this regime could have lasted so many
ages, with no sensible modification, proves also that the Egyptians were
thoroughly imbued with the idea that their government was an emana-
tion from the Divine will. A lively religious faith, perverted in this de-
grading way, could alone have reconciled them to such a servile condition.
2. Around this divine king eticjuette must indeed have been rigorous.
Not only were all the public acts of the kings regulated by invariable
rules, but also those of their private daily lives. On awaking in the
morning, the king first received and read dispatches from all parts of
the country, so as to know all that was going on in his empire. Next,
after having bathed and assumed his insignia of royalty, he offered
sacrifice to the gods. The victims were led to the altar, the high priest
stood near the king as his assistant, and in the presence of the people
he prayed with a loud voice to the gods for the health and well-being of
—

the king. At the same time he enumerated his virtues, spoke of his
piety towards the gods and his goodness to men. He spoke of him as
temperate, magnanimous, tnithful, benevolent in a word, every virtue
;
and all good qualities were attributed to him, and nowhere more than
in Egypt was it an established principle that "the king can do no
wrong."
The popular assemblies to sit in judgment on the deceased king,
spoken of by some Greek authors, are all pure fictions. The king when
dead was as much a god as when living. If in the series of Egyptian
annals we find some kings deprived of burial, and whose names have been
effaced from the monuments, it has not been from any popular judg-
ment, but by order of another king who wished to treat a rival as a
usurper.
3. The administration of Egypt, from the most ancient times to that
of the Persian conquest, was in the hands of a powerful and numerous
official body wisely constituted, with a hierarchy unsurpassed in the most
bureaucratic countries in the modern world, who constituted the very
large class of scribes. This administration was full of routine, and
its records were kept in the most precise and methodical way. Among
the papyri we now possess are a large number of administrative reports,
and of fragments of registers of public accounts.
The departments administered by the most numerous and well-
organised staff were those of public works, war and of the superintendence
of the revenue of the state. Coined money was unknown, and all
taxes were levied in kind. The land was divided under three heads
according to the nature of its contribution to the state. The canals
(mau) paid tithe in fish; the arable land (uu) in grain; and the
marshes (pehu) in cattle. Statistical records, carefully adapted to all
the changes that took place, contained a list for each district of all tlie
various .sorts names of the proprietors.
of property with the
4. The territory of Egypt Proper was divided, for administrative
purposes, into a certain number of districts, called by the Greeks, Names.
The chief place of each nome was the sanctuary of some divinity; and
each principal temple formed, with the territory belonging to it, a par-
ticular nome, distinguished from the others by its worship and cere-
monies. what Herodotus tells us, and the monuments confirm
This is
his statement. Under the rule of the Greek Ptolemies, the number of
nomes or cantons was thirty-six in Upper Egypt, sixteen in Central and
ten in Lower Egypt. In the time of the Pharaohs, only two regions
were distinguished. Upper and Lower, and each comprised twenty-two
nomes, in all forty-four. Lists have been found on the walls of some
temples, from which we have constructed the following table of the
nomes and of their tutelary deities :
NOMES OF EGYPT. 297
No.
At the hend of each nome was a governor, whom tlie Greeks called
"Nomarch. " The whole administration depended on this officer.
Under the Nomarchs were other magistrates, subordinate to them,
called by the Greeks " Toparchs," who governed smaller districts. A
marked spirit of local jealousy prevailed in these nomes ; they had
frequent quarrels with one another, both political and religious, often
giving rise to revolts and sanguinary struggles.
5. The judicial organisation was almost independent of the royal
power ; the kings themselves only judged cases as a last appeal, but
very rarely, and, as a rule, only in such cases as had some political
bearing. The common and regular administration of justice belonged
to the ordinary tribunals, which were bound strictly to observe the
laws. The sacerdotal class furnished the Egyptian magistracy. The
great cities of Memphis, Heliopolis, and Thebes, where the most
flourishing sacerdotal colleges were situated, supplied most of the judges;
ten came from each. The thirty judges chose from amongst them a
president, and the place he vacated was filled by another judge from
the same city. These magistrates were maintained at the expense
of the royal treasury, and the president enjoyed a large income. All
business was transacted in writing, never viva voce, in order, it was
said, that nothing might excite the feelings of the judge, and thus
prejudice his impartiality. The plaintiff in civil processes, the prosecutor
in criminal cases (for there was no public prosecutor), presented his
complaint in writing, and stated the amount of damage he required, or
the extent of punishment he desired to be inflicted on the accused.
The defendant, or accused, was informed of the demand, or accusation
of the opposite party, and was obliged to make a written defence to
each of its heads. The plaintiff might make one rejoinder, and the
defendant another reply, and the tribunal was then obliged to pro-
nounce judgment in writing, sealed with the seal of the president. This
officer had a gold chain round his neck, from which hung an image of
the goddess Ma (Truth and Justice), distinguished by the attribute of
the ostrich feather on her head. It was necessary for the president to
put on this chain before the sitting could commence. When judgment
was pronounced, the president placed this image of truth on one of the
parties brought into his presence, and the case was concluded. We
possess the proceedings in two Egyptian criminal cases ; the first,
tried by a commission specially appointed by the king, is that of the
conspirators in the reign of Ramses III. the second, tried by the
;
ordinary tribunals, is that of a band of robbers, who, under Ramses IV.,

had been organised to plunder the tombs at Thebes. The report of
the enquiry into this last case is preserved in a papyrus in the British
Museum. Unfortunately, among the papyri as yet found and trans-
lated, there is no original and authentic document with regard to a
LAWS OF EGYPT. 299
civil trial. A special tribunal took cognisance of all cases relating

to religion, such as the practice of magic.
Section III. — Laws.

1. The Egyptian laws were too remarkable to be passed over in
silence. " Egypt," says Bossuet, " was the source of all good govern-
ment." In fact, however imperfect may be the information we possess
on this head, it is easy to see from ancient writers that Egyptian legis-
lation respected all the best feelings of the human mind, and answered
the highest wants of social order. We are about to review some of these
laws according to the account given by Diodorus Siculus, who was
thoroughly well informed on this sulyect.
2. In the first place perjury was punished with death, because it
comprises the two greatest crimes that can be committed, one against
the gods and the other against men. He who saw in the road anyone
struggling with an assassin, or subjected to any violence, and did not
do that he could to help him, was punished with death.
all If he had
reallybeen unable to help, he was obliged to denounce the criminals
and accuse them before the tribunals. If he did not do this, he was
condemned to receive a given number of blows from a stick, and to be
kept without food for three days. Those who made false accusations
were condemned, when discovered, to undergo the punishment of
calumniators. It was directed that every Egyptian should deposit with
the magistrate an account in writing of his means of subsistence he ;
who made a false declaration, or who gained his livelihood by unlawful

means, was condemned to death.* The wilful murderer, whether a
freeman or a slave, was punished with death for the object of the law ;
was to punish according to the crime and intention of the offender, not
according to his station in life at the same time, the aiTangements
;
with regards to slaves was such as to prevent their being guilty of an

offence towards a freeman. A woman condemned to death while
enceinte, was not executed until her child was born as it was thought
;
the height of injustice to make the innocent participate in the punish-

ment of the guilty, and to visit the crime of one person upon two. The
judges who put to death an innocent person, were held as guilty as
if they had acquitted a murderer.
Among the laws regarding soldiers, —he who had deserted his ranks,
or had not obeyed the orders of his officers, was punished, not with
death, but with infamy. If afterwards he wiped away his shame by
* See IIer. ii. 177.

;

any glorious he was reinstated in his rank. Thus the law made
action,
dishonour a punishment more dreadful than death, in order to accustom
the soldiers to regard infamy as the greatest of all evils and at the ;
same time those who had been punished in this way were incited
to attempt great actions to recover their former position, whilst if they
had been put have been of no more use to the
to deatli, they could
state. A spy, who had betrayed secret plans to the enemy, was con-
demned to have his tongue cut out. Coiners, makers of false weights
and measures, those who made false scales, those who forged docu-
ments or falsified public records, were condemned to have both hands
cut off. The laws with regard to women were very severe. Whoever
was convicted of "offering violence to a free woman was condemned
to mutilation — for crime included three great evils, insult, corrup-
tliis
tion of inanners, and confusion in families. Adultery without violence

was punished, in a man by i,ooo blows with a stick, and in a woman
by the loss of her nose. The law desired to deprive of her attractions
one who only employed them in seduction.
3. Some of the civil laws were not less remarkable. Many regu-
lations as to commercial transactions are attributed to King Bokenranf
(Bocchoris). Thus a debt was null if the debtor affirmed on oath that
he did not owe anything to a creditor who was unprovided with a bond.
The interest also was not allowed to amount to more than the principal.
The property of a debtor could be seized for a debt, but not his person
the law considered that the person of a citizen belonged to the
state, which might at any moment claim his services, either in war or
peace. Imprisonment for debt, therefore, was in no case allowed.
Herodotus mentions also a very singular law, attributed to Osor-
tasen III.* (Rashakeu-Asychis), permitting an Egyptian to borrow
money on the security of the mummy of his father. The lender at the
same time entered on possession of the tomb of the borrower. Who-
ever had not paid his debts was deprived of the honour of burial in the
family tomb, and so also were those of his children who died during
the continuance of the arrangement.
Numerous contracts for the sale or hire of lands and houses, written
on papyrus, have been preserved in the cave -tombs among the family
papers of the deceased. They show us with what guarantees, with
what a number of protective formalities, the rights of property were
surrounded in ancient Egypt.
* Her. ii. 136.

— —
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF EGYPT. 301
Section IV. Manners and Custo.ms.

1. It would require a lengthened description to explain all that the
monuments have recorded of the customs and private life of the Egyp-
tians. The people were at once commercial, afrricultural, and warlike.
The fertile soil of the Nile valley was at all times highly cultivated by
its numerous population and if machinery, properly so called, was at
;
all times unknown in Egypt, if the manufacture of articles of daily and
general consumption seems to have been conducted by processes as

simple as those of their agriculture, objects of luxury— luxury both
—
elegant and expensive were largely produced in Egypt. The museums
of Europe contain proofs of this fact, too numerous and decisive to leave
any doubt on the subject. A great number of workmen were employed
in weaving and dyeing rich stuffs. The arts of working in metals, of
making porcelain and glass, and of preparing enamel and mastic for
mosaics, had, on the banks of the Nile, attained to a high degree of
perfection ; lastly, the productions of Egyptian industry were exported
by land and sea to the most distant countries. The nation, however,
did not know the use of coined money;
carried on all commerce was
by exchange, or rather by employing ingots of metal, estimating value
by weight.
Herodotus* remarks two peculiarities in the industrial and commercial
customs of the Egyptians, exactly the reverse of those of the Greeks
the men worked at the loom and carried on their trades, while the
women frequently transacted business.
2. In general, the character of the Egyptians was mild, their manners
polished, and such as might be expected from a people naturally
obedient, profoundly religious, and early civilised. "There is another
custom," says Herodotus,t "in which the Egyptians resemble a par-
ticular Greek people, namely, the Lacedemonians; their young men,
when they meet their elders in the street, give way to them and step
aside and if an elder come in where young men are present, these
;
latter rise from their seats. In a third point, they differ entirely from
all the nations of Greece. Instead of speaking to each other when
they part in the streets, they make an obeisance, dropping the hand to
the knee."
The same author also says, and the study of the monuments com-
pletely confirms his testimony, "The Egyptians are, I believe, next to
the Lybians, the healthiest people in the world. . . . They are
persuaded that every disease to which men are liable is caused by the
substances whereon they feed. They live on bread made of
. . .
spelt. . . . Their drink is beer made from barley. Many . . .
* Her. ii. 135. t Ibid. ii. 80.

— ;

kinds of fish they eat raw, either salted or dried in the sun. Quails,
also, ducks, and small birds tliey eat uncooked, merely first salting
them. All other biixls and fishes, excepting those which are set apart
as sacred, are eaten either roasted or boiled."*
"They wear a linen tunic fringed about the legs, and called calash'is
over this they have a white woollen garment, thrown on afterwards.
Nothing of woollen, however, is taken into their temples, or buried
with them, as their religion forbids it."t
3. "In social meetings among the rich," Herodotus also states, J
"when the banquet is ended, a servant carries round to the several
guests a coffin, in which there is a wooden image of a corpse, carved
and painted to resemble nature as nearly as possible, about a cubit or
two cubits in length. As he shows it to each guest in turn, the servant
says, Gaze here, and drink and be merry for when you die, such you
' ;
"
will be.'
"Medicine is practised among them on a plan of separation; each
physician treats a single disorder, and no more: thus the country swarms
with medical practitioners, some undertaking to cure diseases of the eye,
others of the head, others again of the teeth, others of the intestines,
and some those which are not local. "§
Care for the body, the desire to guard it after death from all chance
of destruction, was again a subject of serious consideration among the
Egyptians. Thence arose the custom of embalming, growing out of
their religious ideas of the destiny of the soul after death. It was
necessary that the body should be preserved from all injury, from all
corruption, so that the soul might find it uninjured on the day of resur-
rection. Hence the infinite precautions for the preservation of the
corpses — hence the enormous quantity of mummies now in our museums,
and found in all parts of Egypt. The curious description of the _pro-
cesses employed in embalming, differing according to the rank and
fortune of the deceased, maybe read in Herodotus, Book II. 86, 87, 88.
Section V. Writing.
I. The Greeks gave the name of Hieroglyphics, that is, "Sacred
Sculpture," to the national writing of the Egyptians, composed entirely
of pictures of natural objects. Although very inapplicable, this name
has been adopted by modern writers, and has been so completely ac-
cepted and used, that it cannot now be replaced by a more appropriate
appellation. Neither the Greeks nor the Romans, whilst masters of
Egypt, attempted in any way to learn the method of reading this
* Her. ii. 77. t Ibid. ii. 81. J Ibid. ii. 78. § Ibid. ii. 84.
HIEROGLYPHIC WRITING. 303
writing. It appeared to them an unattainable secret, althougli the

natives under their authority still continued to use it. For a long series
of ages the decipherment of the hieroglyphics, for which the classical
no assistance, remained a hopeless mystery. The acute
writers furnish
genius of aFrenchman at last succeeded, not fifty years since, in lifting
the veil. By a prodigious effort of induction, and almost divination,
Jean Francois Champollion, who was bom at Figeac (Lot), on the
23rd of December, 1790, and died at Paris on the 4th of March, 1832,
made the greatest discovery of the nineteenth century in the domain of
histoi-ical science, and succeeded in fixing on a solid basis the prin-
ciple of reading hieroglyphics. Numerous scholars have followed the
path opened by him; the chief of them
are, in France, C. Lenor-
maut. Ampere, de Rouge, Mariette, and Chabas ; in Germany, Dr.
Lepsius and Dr. Brugsch in England, Dr. Birch.
; By their profound
and persevering studies the discovery of Champollion has been com-
pleted and perfected, and its results have been extended. It can now
no longer be doubted by any one that the hieroglyphics of ancient
Egypt may be translated with almost as much certainty as the works of
any classic author.
2. In our present state of knowledge it cannot now be maintained
that, as for a long time was believed, the hieroglyphics were a mys-
terious system of writing, reserved exclusively for the priests, who alone
were in possession of the key. Hieroglyphic writing is found every-
where, on the public monuments and on articles of domestic use, in
historical narratives and in the praises of the kings, intended for the
greatest publicity and destined to last to remotest posterity, as well as
in the explanations of the most subtle doctrines of the Egyptian religion.
It would also be very far from the truth to regard hieroglyphics as
always, or even generally, symbolical. No doubt there are symbolical
characters among them, generally easy to understand as also there are,
;
and in very gi-eat number, figurative characters directly representing the

object to be designated; but the majority of the signs found in every
hieroglyphic text are characters purely phonetic, that is, representing
either syllables (and these are so varied as to offer sometimes serious
difficulties) or the letters of an only moderately complicated alphabet.
These letters are also pictures of objects, but of objects or animals
whose Egyptian name commenced with the letter in question, while also
the syllabic characters (true rebusses) represented objects designated by
that syllable.It is in this way that Champollion succeeded in recon-
whole system of the Egyptian writing and language, from

structing the
the moment that the comparison of the royal names (pointed out by a
frame, carlouch, or ring) in texts with a Greek translation, like the
famous Rosetta inscription, permitted him to take the first step towards
deciphering the alphabet, assisted afterwards by the Coptic, a language
—
derived from, and .still very imich resembling, the ancient Egyptian,
and which has continued to our days to be the liturgical language of
the Egyptian Christians.
3. The following table contains a selection of the most commonly
used alphabetical characters from hieroglyphic texts :
Phonetic
Power or
Sound.
—
IDEOGRAPHIC SIGNS. 305
written alphabetically. Such are our Algebraic signs, + plus,

— minus; such especially are our numerical figures, conveying the
same idea to all European nations, quite independently of the pronun-
ciation, for each nation calls the symbol by a different name.
Thus, as we have already said, these ideographic signs are of two
sorts, figurative and symbolical. The first are pictures of the object
itself desired to be expressed, and have no other meaning when so em-
ployed, as may be seen in the following examples :
'"^^ Moon.
—
IV. By enigma, hy employing the picture of some physical object
having only a very obscure, very distant, and often entirely conven-
tional connection with the idea to be expressed. By this inevitably very
vague method an ostricli feather signified justice, because the feathers
of that bird were supposed to be all of equal length a palm branch ;
represented \\\q. was supposed that the jialm every year

year, because it
put forth twelve branches, one in each month; a basket woven from
reeds conveyed the ideas of Lord and all, and the urteus serpent was
equally royalty and divijiity.
Lord, All.
To build. Son.
Month.
h God, Kine.
i Fire.
^K ^^ To
To
see.
write.
I Justice, Tnith. T Night,
ness.
Dark-
Mother. Year. God.

•f 1
There is a third and very important class of hieroglyphics, called
"Determinatives," as they determine the nature of the idea conveyed
by a word written in phonetic characters, and occasionally the pronun-
ciation of the word,
In the ancient Egyptian language, as in most others, there were many
words of the same sound, but with very different meanings; and to
these words the determinative sign is added to distinguish the sense in
which the word is used; for instance, the word af may mea.n food, end,
or viper; and so, whenever the word is employed, the proper deter-
minative is added to define the meaning. Names of objects of wood
and metal are distinguished by determinatives; names of places in
Egypt are marked by a sign, usually called a " cake," but which would
appear to be a "cross-staff," or surveying instrument, peculiarly cha-
racteristic of Egypt, where re-surveys of property were needed after
each inundation. It is remarkable that a determinative sign, evidently
originally the same figure, was employed in cuneiform writing to dis-
tinguish names of towns and districts in Assyria, Babylonia, Chaldsea,
and Susiania, exclusively. Names of foreign places also are distin-
guished by a representation of "hills," the peculiar feature of foreign
lands, as compared with the dead level of the Nile valley.
These signs may be divided into two classes :
a. Special determinatives, the figure of the object, or the symbol of

one particular idea.
;
DETERMINATIVE SIGNS. 307
b. Generic determinatives, applying to a large number of words, or a

large class of ideas.
The first class it would seem difficult to separate from ideographics
the principle of the classification of these signs is, that every deter-
minative is applicable to more than one word or idea ; the ideographic
to one only.
In some cases, also, the pronimciation of a word or part of a word
is fixedby adding to it the representation of an object in ordinary use,
and with a well-known name; and in these cases the signs are always
used in such a way as to prevent their being understood to refer to the
meaning in place of the sound. The most apposite instance is perhaps
in the name of the foreign god Set (introduced by the Shepherds into
the Egyptian pantheon) ; the name is spelt with the phonetic signs for
ST, and the figure of a block of stone (in Egyptian Set) is added to fix
the pronunciation.
Names of Foreign Coun-

tries. Names of Animals.
® Names of Places in Eg)-pt.

Evil or hurtful actions.
I
il Encloses Royal Names.
Names of Enemies.
fO
Articles of Clothing.
Articles of Metal.
YYY Disaster, storm, confusion.
^J"^ Objects in Wood. TTr
5.Besides hieroglyphics, properly so called, the nature of which we
have been endeavouring to explain, the Egyptians used a cursive cha-
racter, called by the Greeks, though inappropriately, the Hieratic.
The characters are abbreviated, and more or less altered hieroglyphics.
In books on papyrus that we now possess
this character nearly all the
are written, as well as the records of accounts and contracts of the
eighteenth and nineteenth dynasty. Lastly, in the seventh century B.C.
(at any rate we do not know an earlier example), a still more abridged
style came into use, named by the Greeks Demotic. Although no
trace whatever of the primitive pictures can be recognised, this system
of writing still contains the same mixture of phonetic and ideographic
characters as the hieroglyphics.
Section VL — Literature and Science.

I. The productions of Egyptian literature were both numerous and
celebrated ; often speak of the books of Egypt.
classical authors In
the Ramesseum Karnak, the hall of the library has been found, placed
at
under the protection of Thoth, the god of science, and of the goddess
X 2
Saf, patroness of literature. Unfortunately we now possess but little
of that rich literature, considered worthy of consultation by some of

the ijreatest geniuses of the ancient Greel^s but from what we have as ;
yet been able to discoverand read of manuscripts on papyrus, we may

form some idea of the variety of the sul)jects treated of in the Egyptian
books.
2. The first rank belongs to religious books, and especially to the one
of which we possess most copies — to that great sacred book, containing
the complete explanation of the belief of the Egyptians as to the destiny
of the soul after death, called by modem scholars the "Funereal
Ritual," but in reality bearing the title of "The Book of the Mani-
festation to Light." A more or less complete according
copy of this,
to the fortune of the deceased, was deposited in the case of every

mummy. The book was revised under the twenty-sixth dynasty, and
then assumed its final definite form. But many parts of it are of the
highest antiquity. Some chapters are spoken of as composed luider
King Hesepti, of the first dynasty, and others as dating from the reign
of Menkera (fourth dynasty), and very many chapters of the Ritual are
found on monuments long anterior to the invasion of the Shepherds.
The whole series of pilgrimages wliich the soul, separated from the
body, was believed to accomplish in the various divisions of the lower
regions, are related in this book ; it also contains the hymns, prayers,
and fonnula for all ceremonies relative to funerals and to the worship
of the dead. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul forms the
basis of it, although the idea of its personality, as distinct from the
body, is not clearly defined.
The reader will no doubt be interested by a short analysis of a book
holding so important a place in the literature of Egypt, and containing
the principal philosophical opinions and religious doctrines of the
Pharaonic civilisation.
3. The Funereal Ritual opens by a grand dialogue taking place at

the very moment of death, when the soul separates from the body
(Ch. i. ). The deceased, addressing the deity of Hades, enumerates all
his titles to his favour, and asks for admittance into his dominions.
The chorus of glorified souls interposes, as in the Greek tragedy, and
supports the prayer of the deceased. The priest on earth in his turn
speaks, and implores also the divine clemency. Finally Osiris, the god
of the lower regions, answers the deceased, " Fear nothing in making
thy prayer to me for the immortality of thy soul, and that I may give
permission for thee to pass the threshold. " Reassured by the divine
word, the soul of the deceased enters Kar-Neter, the land of the dead,
and recommences his invocations.
After this grand commencement, \\hich we have epitomised, come
many short chapters (Ch. ii. — xiv.), much less important, relative also
—
THE FUNEREAL RITUAL. 309
to the dead and to the prehminary ceremonies of his funeral. When at

last the soul of the deceased has passed the gates of Kar-Neter (Ch. xv.),
he penetrates into that subterranean region, and at his entry is dazzled
by the glory of tlie sun, which he now for the first time sees in this lower
hemisphere. He sings a hymn to tlie sun under the foiTn of mixed
litaniesand invocations. After tliis hymn, a great vignette, representing
the adoration and glorification of the sun in the heavens, on earth, and
in hades, marks the end of the first part of the Ritual, serving as a sort
of introduction. The second part traces the journeys and migrations of
the soul in the lower region. "The Egyptians, " says Horapollo, in
" Hieroglyphics," "call knowledge "
his sbo^ that is, '
food in plenty.'
This passage certainly contains an allusion to the religious ideas as to
the destiny of the dead. Knowledge and food are, in fact, identified
on every page of the Ritual. The knowledge of religious truths is the
mysterious nourishment the soul must carry with it to sustain it in its
journeys and trials. A soul not possessing tliis knowledge could never
reach the end of its journey, and would be rejected at the tribunal of
Osiris. was therefore necessary, before commencing the journey, to

It
be furnished with a stock of this divine provision. To this end is

destined the long chapter at the commencement of the second part
(Ch. xvii., "The Egyptian Faith"). It is accompanied by a large
vignette, representing a series of the most sacred symbols of the

Egyptian religion. The text contains a description of these symbols,
with their mystical explanation. At the beginning of the chapter, tlie
descriptions and explanations are sufficiently clear, but as it advances

we get into a higher and more obscure region
end of the chapter
; at the
we happens in such cases,
lose the clue almost entirely, and, as often
the explanation ends by being more obscure than the symbols and ex-
pressions explained.* Next come a series of prayers to be pronounced
* There is a remarkable peculiarity in this chapter, first pointed out

by Baron Bunsen. The original text is, after every sentence, followed
by a commentar)', explanation, or gloss, prefaced in every case by a
group of characters in red, meaning " The explanation is this," or
" Let him explain it." From this necessarily arises, first, that the text
had by a certain time become so unintelligible as to require an explana-
tion ;second, that the explanation itself had in its turn become unin-
telligible; and finally, that the text and gloss, equally obscure, had
been jumbled together and written out as one continuous document.
The enormous len^jth of time indicated by these several steps can hardly
be estimated, and we know that they had all occurred before the time
of the eleventh dynasty, as the text of this seventeenth chapter is found
on a coffin of that period exactly in the same state as in the Turin
papyrus. See Bunsen's Egypt, 2nd ed., English translation, vol. v.,
pp. 89, 90; and Dr. Birch's Translation of the Ritual, in the same
book. Tk.
3IO ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
during the process of embalming, whilst the body was being rolled in
its wrappers. These invocations are addressed to Thoth, the Egyptian
Hennes, who, as among the Greeks, played the part of Psychopompe,
or conductor of souls. They are of the highest interest, for in each
allusion is made myth of Osiris and his contest with
to the grand
Typhon, of which Plutarch and Synesius have given us the most recent
versions. The deceased, addressing the god, asks him to render to him
again the service he once rendered on that solemn occasion to Osiris
and his son Horus, "avenger of his father."
•
The body once wrapped in its coverings, and the soul well provided
with a store of necessaiy knowledge, the deceased commences his
journey. But he is still unable to move ; he has not yet the use of his
limbs ; it is necessary to address the gods, who successively restore all
the faculties he had during his life, so that he can stand upright, walk,
speak, eat, and fight (Ch. xxi. to xxix.
— " The reconstruction of the
deceased "). Thus prepared, he starts ; he holds his scarabcEUS over his
heart as a passport, and thus passes the portal of Hades (Ch. xxx.).
From the first step, terrible obstacles present themselves in his way.
Frightful monsters, servants of Typhon, crocodiles on land and in the
water, serpents of all kinds, tortoises and other reptiles, assail the
deceased and attempt to devour him. Then commences a series of
combats (Ch. xxxi. to xli.). The deceased and the animals against
which he contends, mutually address insulting speeches to each other,
after the fashion of Homer's heroes. Finally, the " Osiris " (the name
applied to all the deceased, as we shall explain in the succeeding para-
graph) has conquered he has subdued the Typhonic
all his enemies ;
monsters and forced a passage, and, elated by his victory, sings on the
spot a song of triumph (Ch. xlii.), likening himself to all the gods,
whose members are made those of his own body. " My hair is like
that of Nu (the firmament) ; my face is like that of Ra (the sun) ; my
eyes like those of Athor (the Egyptian Venus) ;" and so on for eveiy
part of his body. He has even the strength of Set, that is, of Typhon,
for the strife between the good and evil principle is but in appearance ;
in reality they are one and the same, and equally receive the adorations
of the initiated.
After such labours the deceased needs rest ; he stays for a time to
recruit his strength and to satisfy his hunger (Ch. xliii. to Ivi.). He
has escaped great dangers, and has not gone astray in the desert, where
he would have died of hunger and thirst (Ch. li. — liii.). From the
tree of life, the goddess Nu gives him refreshing waters, Avhich in-
vigorate him and enable him to recommence his journey in order to
reach the first gate of heaven (Ch. lix.).
Then commences a dialogue between the deceased and the personifi-

cation of the divine Light, who instructs him (Ch. Ixiv.). This
dialogue presents most remarkable resemblances to the dialogue, pre-

fixed to the books given by the Alexandrian Greeks as translations
of the ancient religious %vritings of Egypt, between Thoth and tlie
Light, the latter explaining to Thoth the most sublime mysteries of

Nature. This portion is certainly one of the best and grandest of the
Ritual, and may almost be classed with the invocations to the sun
at the close of the first part.
The deceased, having passed the gate, continues to advance, guided
by this new Light, to whom he addresses his invocations (Ch. Ixv. to
Ixxv. ). He then enters on a series of transfomiations, more and more

elevated, assuming the form of and identifying himself with the noblest
divine symbols. He
changed successively into a hawk (Ch. Ixxvii.,
is
Ixxviii.), an angel or divine messenger (Ch. Ixxix., Ixxx. ); into a lotus
(Ch. Ixxxi.); into the god Ptah (Ch. Ixxxii. ); into a heron (Ch. Ixxxiii.);
into a crane (Ch. Ixxxiv.); into a human-headed bird (Ch. Ixxxv.), the
usual emblem of the soul; into a swallow (Ch. Ixxxvi.); into a serpent
(Ch. Ixxxvii.); and into a crocodile (Ch. Ixxxviii.).
Up to this time the soul of the deceased has been making its
journeys alone ; it has been merely a sort of hSujXop {eidoloii), if we
may be permitted to employ this untranslatable Greek phrase that is, ;
an image, a shade, with the appearance of that body now stretched

on the bier. After these transformations the soul becomes re-united to
its body, which is needed for the rest of the journey. It was on this
account that careful embalming was so important ; it was necessary

that the soul should find the body perfect and well preserved. " Oh,"
cries the body, "that in the dwelling of the master of life I may
be re-united to my glorified soul, do not order the guardians of
heaven to destroy me, so as to send away my soul from my corpse, and
"
hinder the eye of Horus, who is with thee, from preparing my way
(Ch. Ixxxix.).
The deceased traverses the dwelling of Thoth, who gives him a book
containing instructions for the rest of his way, and fresh lessons of the
knowledge he is soon to require (Ch. xc). He arrives on the banks of
the subterranean river separating him from the Elysian Fields, but
there a new danger awaits him. A
false boatman, the envoy of the
Typhonic powers, lays wait for him on his way, and endeavours by
deceitful words to get him into his boat, so as to mislead him and take
him to the east instead of to the west (Ch. xciii.), his true destination,
and where he ought and
rejoin the sun of the lower world.
to land The
deceased again escapes this new danger he unmasks the perfidy of the
;
false boatman, and drives him away, overwhelming him with reproaches.
He at last meets the right boat to conduct him to his destination (Ch.
xcvii., xcviii.). But Ijefore getting into it, it is necessary to ascertain if
he is really capable of making the voyage, if he possesses a sufficient

amount of the knowledge necessary to his safety. The divine boatman
therefore makes him undergo an examination, a preliminary initiation,
seemingly corresponding to the lesser Eleusinian mysteries. The
deceased passes the examination, each part of the boat then seems
successively to become animated, and tohim its name, and
demand of
the mystical meaning of the name. IVw for anchoring
stake the boat.
Tell me my name "
"The Lord of the earth in thy case is thy name.
!
The rudder. Tell me my name "The enemy of Apis " is thy name.
!
The rope. Tell me my name "The hair with which Anubis binds
!
uf) the folds of the wrappers " is thy name ; and so on for twenty-three
questions and answers (Ch. xcix.).
After having thus victoriously passed through this trial, the deceased
embarks, traverses the subterranean river, and lands on the other bank,
when he soon arrives at the Elysian Fields in the valley of Aoura or
Balot (Aahlu or Bat), the position of which the ritual gives in these
terms, " The valley of Balot (abundance), at the east of heaven, is 370
cubits long and 140 cubits broad. There is a crocodile lord of Balot in
the east of that valley in his divine dwelling above the enclosure
(Ch. There is a serpent at the head of that valley thirty cubits
cviii. ).
long, his body six cubits round. In the south is the lake of sacred
principles (Sham) the north is formed by the lake of Primordial
;
Matter (Rubu) (Ch. cix.). A large picture here shows us this valley
(Ch. ex.), a real subterranean Egypt, intersected by canals, where we
see the " Osiris " occupied in all the operations of agriculture ; pre-
paring the ground, sowing and reaping in the divine an ample
fields
provision of that bread of knowledge he is now to find more necessary
than ever. He has, in fact, arrived at the end of his journey ; he has
before him only but also the most
the last, terrible of all his trials.
Conducted by Anubis (Ch. cxiii. to cxxi.), he traverses the labyrinth,
and by the aid of the clue, guiding them through its windings, at last
penetrates to the judgment-hall where Osiris awaits him seated on his
throne, and assisted by forty-two terrible assessors. There the decisive
sentence is to be pronounced, either admitting the deceased to happi-
ness, or excluding him for ever (Ch. cxxv. ). Then commences a new
interrogatory much more solemn than the former. The deceased is
obliged to give proof of his knowledge he must show that it is great
;
enough to give him the right to be admitted to share the lot of glorified
spirits. Each of the forty-two judges, bearing a mystical name,
questions him in turn he is obliged to tell each one his name, and
;
what it means. Nor is this all he is obliged to give an account of his

;
whole life. This is certainly one of the most curious parts of the
Funereal Ritual; Champollion called it the "Negative Confession ;"
it would perhaps be better described by the word "Apology." The
deceased addresses successively each of his judges, and declares for his
;;
justificationthat he has not committed such and such a crime. We

have therefore here all the laws of the Egyptian conscience.
" I have not blasphemed," says the deceased ; "I have not stolen ;
I have not smitten men have not treated any person with
])rivily ; I
craelty 1 have not stirred up trouble

; I have not been idle I have
; ;
not been intoxicated I have not made unjust commandments

;
I have ;
shown no improper curiosity I have not allowed my mouth to tell

;
secrets ; I have not wounded anyone ; I have not put anyone in fear ;
I have not slandered anyone ; I have not let envy gnaw my heart
I have spoken evil, neither of the king, nor my father I have not ;
falsely accused anyone I have not withheld milk from the mouths ol
;
sucklings I have not practised any shameful crime

; I have not ;
calumniated a slave to his master."

The deceased does not confine himself to denying any ill conduct
he speaks of the good he has done in his lifetime. "I have made
to the gods the offerings that were their due. / have given food to the
hungry, drink to the thirsty, and clothes to the naked. " We may well be
astounded on reading these passages, at this high morality, superior to
that of all other ancient people, had been able
that the Egyptians
to build up on such a foundation as that of their religion. Without
doubt it was this clear insight into truth, this tenderness of conscience,
which obtained for the Egyptians the reputation for wisdom, echoed even
by Holy Scripture (i Kings iv. 30 Acts vii. 27). ;
Besides these general precepts, the apology acquaints us with some

police regulations for public order, raised by common interest in Egypt
to the rank of conscientious duties. Thus the deceased denies ever
having intercepted the irrigating canals, or having prevented the dis-
tribution of the waters of the river over the country he declares that ;
he has never damaged the stones for mooring vessels on the river.
Crimes against rehgion also are mentioned some seem very strange to ;
us, especially when we find them classed with really moral faults. The
deceased has never altered the prayers, nor interpolated them. He
has never touched any of the sacred property, such as flocks and herds,
or fished for the sacred fish in the lakes of the temples ; he has not
stolen offerings from the altar, nor defiled the sacred waters of the Nile.
The Osiris is now fully justified ; his heart has been weighed in the
balance with "truth," and not been found wanting; the forty-two
assessors have pronounced that he possesses the necessary knowledge.
The great Osiris pronounces his sentence, and Thoth, as recorder to the
triljunal, having inscribed it in his book, the deceased at last enters
into bliss.
Here commences the third part of the Ritual, more mystical and
obscure than the others. We see the Osiris, henceforth identified with
the sun, traversing with him, and as him, the various houses of heaven
—

and the lake of fire, the somxe of all light. Afterwards the Ritual rises
to a higher poetical flight, even contemplating the identiiication of the

deceased with a symbolical figure comprising all the attributes of the
Egyptian pantheon. This representation ends the work.*
deities of the
4. Precisely the same doctrine, as in the Funereal Ritual, though in
a much more abridged form, is found in the " Book of Transmigra-
tions," a very short work sometimes deposited in sepulchres of not very
remote antiquity.t We possess also some copies of a book consisting
almost entirely of pictures with but little text, on the course of the sun
in the lower world, and numerous fragments of collections of hymns,
sometimes in the highest style of poetry.
All this knowledge of men and of the world, all these ideas of another
life, had been communicated to the Egyptians, as the priests said, by
* In this translation the numbers of the chapters are given for con-
'
venience of reference from Dr. Birch's translation in Bunsen's Egypt," '
Second Edition, vol. v.

It need hardly be pointed out that the origin of the belief in the
doctrine of Metempsychosis is probably to be found in the chapters of
the Ritual on the transformations of the soul (Ch. Ixxvi. to Ixxxviii.).
This seems very clear (as M. Lenormant has pointed out) from the re-
presentation of the soul of the glutton changed into a pig, to be found
in many vignettes. —
See also " The Alabaster Sarcophagus of Oimenep-
thah (Seti), king of Egypt, drawn by Joseph Bonomi, and described by
Samuel Sharpe." London, 1864.
Some passages in the " Ritual " also furnish a probable explanation
of a passage in Herodotus, which has puzzled most commentators. In
the rubric to Chapter i., it is said, "Let this book be known on earth ;
it is made in writing on the coffin. It is the Chapter by which he
comes out every day as he wishes, and he goes to his house. He is not
turned back. Then are given to him food and drink, slices of flesh off
the altar of the sun," etc. (Dr. Birch's translation), and this is repeated
with a slight variation in the rubric to Chap. Ixxii. Herodotus (Book
iii. 17, 18) says that Cambyses sent spies into Ethiopia charged especi-
ally to observe whether there was really in Ethiopia what was called
the "table of the sun;" and this he describes (according to the
accounts given to him) as " a meadow in the skirts of the city full of the
boiled flesh of all manner of beasts, which the magistrates are careful to
store with meat every night, and where, whoever likes, may come and
eat during the day. The people of the land say that the earth itself
brings forth the food." The same story is repeated by other classical
writers, and many attempts have been made to explain it. Heeren
(" African Nations," Chap, i., p. 333) supposes it to be a I'eference to
the dumb trading very common on the African coast ; but it seems very
probable that the tale, as related by Herodotus, is derived from this
altar of the sun, from which the "Osiris" was supplied with food
in Hades. Tr.
t Translated by Dr. Brugsch, Sai an Sinsi7i, sive liber Metempsy-
chosis." Berlin, 1831.
— ;
LITERARY REMAINS. 315
Thoth, the first Hermes Trismegistus, or " thrice greatest," who wrote
all these books by the order of the supreme God. The first Thoth was
the celestial Hermes, or the personification of the divine intelligence.
The second Hermes, who was only an imitation of the first, passed for
the author of all the social institutions of Egypt. He it was who had
organised the Egyptian nation, established religion, regulated the cere-
monies of public worship, and taught men the sciences of astronomy,
numbers, geometry, the use of weights and measures, language and
writing, the fine arts, and, in short, all the arts of civilisation. This
knowledge had been included in the sacred books to the number of
forty- two, and the Egyptian priests, w-ho had the custody of them, were
obliged to know their contents wholly, or m part, according to the
nature of their functions, and their rank in the hierarchy. It seems
most probable that the Funereal Ritual was one of these Hermetic
books. As Osiris was the prototype of kings, so Thoth, or Hermes,
was the type of the priests, the minister of science and religion. He
personified all discoveries made by the members of the sacerdotal class,
of which he was at once the founder and the representative. Thoth, in
fact, was the learned class itself ; that is, according to Egyptian ideas,
the personification of science.
5. We have already given an analysis of the epic poem of Pentaour,
on the exploit of Ramses II. against the Khitas, and quoted a fragment
of a chronicle of the expulsion of the Shepherds. We have also men-
tioned the existence at Turin of a papyrus, containing a complete list of
the kings, with the duration of their reigns. History — sometimes in
the form of a poem, sometimes in that of a chronicle, or chronological
abstract —formed a great part of the literature of ancient Egypt. Un-
we have but very few examples.
fortunately,
The Museum of Turin possesses a fragment of a geographical chart
of the time of Seti I., containing the region of the Nubian gold mines.
Other papyri, chiefly in the British Museum, contain collections of the
letters of celebrated writers, preserved asmodels of style, and in more
than one place interesting to the historian. We have also collections
of literary exercises, analogous to the orations of the Greek or Latin
rhetoricians. As a specimen of this style we quote a fragment on the
fatigues of the profession of arms, written in the time of the gi'eat wars
of the nineteenth dynasty, and arranged in parallel lines in Biblical
style:
" When you receive the verses I have written, may you find the work
of the scribe agreeable.
I wish to depict to you the numberless troubles of an unfortunate officer
of infantiy.
While still quite a youth he is entirely shut up in a barrack,
A tight suit of armour encases his body, the peak of his helmet comes
over his eyes
;

The visor is over his eyebrows; so tliat his head is protected from
wounds.
He is wrapped up hke a papyrus roll, and can hardly move his liml)s
in fight.
Shall I tell you of his expeditions into Syria, his marches in far distant
lands?
He is obliged to carry water on his shoulder, as an ass bears its burden
His back is bent like that of a beast of burden, his back bone is bowed.
When he has quenched his thirst with a drink of bad water, he is
obliged to mount guard for the night.
If 'he meets the enemy he is like a bird in a net, his limbs have no
strength left.
When he returns to Egypt, he is like a piece of worm-eaten wood.
If he is too ill to stand, they put him on the back of an ass;
His baggage is plundered by robbers, and his servant deserts him."
What we should least expect to find among the literature of grave

and solemn Egypt are works of pure imagination, romances. There
are, however, some, and M. de Rouge has translated the more important
of those as yet discovered by us. These romances are, however, all of
an essentially religious character, for Pagan religions have invariably
chosen to teach their doctrines in the form of stories or fables. We
might quote many and very curious examples in the stories preserved
by popular tradition down
to our days, commencing with that of
Cinderella, so admirably modernised by the pen of Perrault, and in its
old form preserved by Lucian, one of the myths of Asiatic religions.
6. Scientific literature, if we may judge by what classical writers
have said, was largely developed in Egypt. We have a few specimens.

Two on medicine, one of which is preserved in the museum
treatises
at Berlin,* give an idea of the very low state of this science in the
Pharaonic civilisation. It consisted entirely in the employment of
purely empirical prescriptions, often the strangest that can be imagined.

There are, however, traces of a somewhat extensive acquaintance
with symptoms, and a certain amount of knowledge of the anatomy
of the human body; but the theories show most fantastic ideas on
physiology.
A papyrus, recently acquired by the British Museum, contains a
dozen theorems of a treatise on practical geometry, extending beyond
the essential and elementary problems of plane trigonometry. The
Egyptians had a really scientific knowledge of astronomy ; from the
remotest antiquity they used a year of 365 days, and in later times
invented a very ingenious astronomical period, to make this vague year
accord from time to time with the real fixed year of 365I: days.t But
* See Brugsch, Etudes sur ztn Papyrus Medical de Berlin, Leipzig,

1853. Chabas, Melanges Egyptologiqiies, vol. i.
t See note to page 268.
—
RELIGION OF EGYPT. 317
they had not advanced beyond what a patient and attentive observation
with the naked eye alone could achieve, insufficient even under the clearest
sky to permit the precise moment of the occurrence of every phenomenon
to be noted. Instruments they had none. Moreover, their method
of designating the constellations was different from ours. It was only
in the latter days of their history that they borrowed the zodiac from
the Greeks ; thus the interpretation of the astronomical monuments
belonging to Pharaonic ages becomes exceedingly difficult, and only in
a very few cases have the names of stars been identified with those
known by us. Dr. Brugsch, however, has translated a catalogue of
planetary observations, the precise date of which is unknown.
The Egyptians believed in astrology, and reckoned this fallacious
superstition among the sciences. A papyrus in the British Museum has
been found to contain fragments of an astrological calendar, compiled
under the nineteenth dynasty, and containing for each day a list of
things not to be done, because of the adverse influence of the stars.
Section VII. Religion,

I. HERODOTtJs,* when he visited Egypt, was struck with the ex-
treme devotion of the people, and represents them as the most religious
of mankind, and surpassing all other people in the reverence they pay
the gods. Without speaking of those pompous sacred ceremonies,
producing such an effect on strangers—of those magnificent fetes where
the naos, or ark of the deity, was carried in procession with their conse-
crated vessels, fetes without number, a calendar of which was often
inscribed on the porch of the temple — without recalling the vast sanc-
tuaries, where and decorations covered the walls
bas-reliefs, paintings,
in profusion —
everywhere on the banks of the Nile one was in the
immediate presence of a religious sentiment. All Egypt bore the
impress of religion its writing was full of sacred symbols and of allu-
;
sions to sacred myths, so that its use beyond the influence of Egyptian
religion became, as it were, impossible. Literature and science were
but branches of theology. The fine arts were only employed with a
view to religion and the glorification of the gods or deified kings.
The prescriptions of religion were so multiplied, so constantly re-
peated, that it was not possible to exercise a profession to provide for
one's subsistence, or to satisfy one's commonest wants without being
constantly reminded of the laws laid down by the priests. Each
province had its special gods, its peculiar rites, its sacred animals. It
seems that the priestly element had presided even over the distribution
* Her. ii. 37.

3l8 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
of the country into nomes, and that these had originally been eccle-
siastical districts.
2. The Christian religion has not feared to reveal itself to all, and in
'spite of the profundity of its doctrines, it is open to great and small,

ignorant and learned ; because, being eternal truth, it is addressed to
the whole human was not the case with the false
race. But this
religions of antiquity. Whatever in them was most elevated and most
philosophical, always remained hidden in the sanctuary, for the honour
and profit of the priests and of a small number of initiated. In Egypt,
as in all pngan countries, there were in reality two religions one held ;
by the people in general, consisting only of the outer form of the

esoteric doctrine, and presenting an assemblage of the giôssest super-
stitions the other known only to those who had sounded the depths
;
of religious science, containing some of the more elevated doctrines,

and forming a sort of learned theology, having for its basis the great
idea of the unity of God. Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians of
Thebes recognised one only God, who had had no beginning, and woidd
have no end. This statement of the father of history is confirmed by
the reading of the sacred texts of ancient Egypt, where it is said of that
God that He is the sole generator in heaven and on earth, and that
'
'
He has not been begotten That He is the only living and true
. . .
God, who was begotten by Himself He who has existed from . . .
the beginnmg who has made all things, and was not Himself
. . .
made."
This sublime idea, the echo of a primitive revelation, has possibly
been tlie secret of the constmction of some of the most curious temples
of Egypt. Thus at least might we be able to explain those great
religious edifices of the primitive ages, without sculptured images',
without idols, such as M. Mariette has discovered near the Pyramids.
Unfortunately the idea was very early obscured and disfigured by the
conceptions of the priests, as well as by the ignorance of the multitude.
The personal idea of God was by degrees confounded with the various
manifestations of His power His attributes and qualities were personi-
;
fied in a host of secondary agents, distributed in a regular hierarchy, in

agreement with the general organisation of the world, and the preser-
vation of its inhabitants. Thus originated that polytheism which,
in its varied and strange symbolism, finally embraced the entire
creation.
3. The mind of the Egyptians was especially directed to speculations
on the destiny of man in another life. Of this fiiture state they fancied
they saw symbols and images in a thousand natural phenomena, but it
seemed to them especially represented by the daily course of the sun.
The sun seemed to them, in the course he each day accomplished, to
prefigure the transformations reserved for the human soul. For a
I
RELIGION OF EGYPT. 319
people ignorant of the tnie nature of the celestial bodies, such an idea
was by no means strange. The sun, or as the Egyptians called it, Ra,
passed alternately from his stay in darkness, or with the dead, to an
existence in light, or with the living. His life-giving warmth pro-
duced and supported all existence. The sun, then, in the universe was
the general progenitor and father he was the cause of life, but had re-
;
ceived his life from no one; self-existent, and therefore his own
creator. This symbolism, once admitted, became by degrees more and
more developed, and the imagination of the Egyptians sought in the
succession of solar phenomena, an indication of the several phases
of human existence. Each change in the course of the planet was
regarded as corresponding with a different stage in that existence. Ra,
moreover, was not considered solely as the celestial type of man, who
was born, lived, and died to be born and live again : pagan
like other
nations the Egyptians considered him a supreme deity,
deity, the
because he was the greatest of all the heavenly bodies, and the source
of all light and life. The theological ideas of the Egyptians did not
stop at this; they subdivided him, so to speak, into several deities.
Considered in his different positions, and under his different aspects, he
became in each a different god with distinct name, attributes, and
worship ; in this feature the Egyptian agrees with almost every other
mythology. Thus the sun during the night is Atum ; when shining at
midday, he is Ra ; in his character of the producer and sustainer of
life, he is Kheper. These were the three principal forms of the solar
divinity, but they also imagined many others. As the night precedes
the day, Atum was considered as bom before Ra, and as having at
first alone proceeded from the abyss, or chaos. These three manifes-
tations of solar power were united into a divine triad, the prototype of
a host of other triads composed of deities who personified the various
relations of the sun with nature, and his different influences on cosmic
phenomena.
4. Anthropomorphism, that is, the conception of gods under a
human shape, obtained a place among these early Sabean ideas, and the
Egyptians supposed that the generation of gods was produced in the
same way as the generation of men. This is why they introduced into
their theogony ideas on the respective parts of the sexes in this
mysterious act of nature. Diodorus Siculus says that, in the opinion of
the Egyptians, the father is the sole parent of the child, the mother
merely supplies nourishment. This is the part assigned by their theogony
Thebes by the goddess Maut ; at
to the female principle, personified at
Sais by the goddess Neith, mother of the sun. This principle
—
represented only purely inert matter the lifeless mass in which genera-
tion took place.
Thus, to borrow the mystical language of the Egyptian priests, the
——

mother of the gods was a creation of the god Num, or Chnuphis,
a personification of the divine breath- animating matter, symbolised by
the rain; for what happened to the sun was considered, in a more
general and abstract sense, to have happened to the deity. Each of his
acts was personified by a separate god, a new divine personage.
Chnuphis is divinity, animating matter and giving it life ; he is the first
of the demiurgi, or secondary creators. We may see by this, that, in
Egyptian doctrine, inert matter, the receptacle of life, identified with
the female principle, was not co-eternal with the god, but created by
his breath, as was Chaos in the narrative of Genesis, and the patriarchal
tradition, ofwhich we find here a distorted remembrance. The assimi-
lation of the course of the sun with generation was thus complicated by
a new symbolism. The lower hemisphere, where he descends on
setting, was personified by the goddess Hathor. She was consequently
considered as the mother of Ra, as having borne in her bosom the
father of all beings, and her symbol was the cov/. In later times the
Greeks imagined that they had discovered in her their own Aphrodite.
Worshipped as issuing ft-om the divine cow, the sun took the name of
Horus, and was represented as a child lifted above the waters on a
lotus flower. At his entry into the world, he was received by the same
cow, then deified under the name of Nub.
5. As in Egypt, navigation was the ordinary mode of locomotion
the Nile, as we have said, being the great artery of communication
it was in a boat that the sun was represented in his course, whether as
the solar triad, or in the lower hemisphere, as the emblem of another
life. This subterranean sun specially took the name of Osiris. There
were given him as companions, and assessors, the twelve hours of the
night, personified by so many gods, at the head of whom was placed
Horus, that is, the rising sun himself and the story went that this
;
god had pierced with his dart the serpent Apophis, or Apap, the
personification of the morning mists pierced and dispersed by the first
rays of the sun. This contest of Osiris, or of Horus his son, with
darkness, was very naturally connected with that of good with evil, a
symbol found in all mythologies.
Th-:nce arose a fable, very popular in Egypt, and alluded to by a
great number of monuments evil was personified by one particular
;
god. Set, or Sutekh, called also sometimes Baal, who was the
supreme god of neighbouring Asiatic nations, and in later times, that
of the Shepherds. The Greek confounded him with their Typhon, and
it was said that Osiris had fallen beneath his blows. Resuscitated by
the prayers and invocations of Isis, his wife, who reunites the features
of Maut, of Neith, and Hathor, this good god found an avenger in his
son Horus. The death of Osiris, the grief of Isis, and the final defeat
of Set, furnish an inexhaustible theme for legendary creations, re-
i
BELIEF IN THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 321
sembliug those of various Eastern religions, and specially the stories of

Cybele and Atys, and Venus and Adonis.
6. When once the course of the sun was regarded as the type of
existence in the lower world, the doctrine of another life needed only
a reproduction of the same symbolism in order to establish it among
the Egyptians. Man descends to the tomb only to rise again. After
his resurrection he enters on a new life, in company with, or in the
sun. The soul is immortal, like Ra, and accomplishes the same
pilgrimages. Thus we see sometimes on a sarcophagus the soul figured
by a human-headed hawk, holding in its claws the two ring-symbols of
eternity, and Ijeneath, as an emblem of the new life reserved for the
deceased, the rising sun, assisted in his course by the goddesses Isis
and Nephthys.
This explains why the solar period, symbolised by the bird boitnc
(the lapwing), called by the Greeks phoenix, represented the cycle of
human life ; the mysterious bird was supposed to accompany the soul
during its course in the lower world. The deceased was to be resusci-
tated after this subterranean pilgi-image the soul was to re-enter the
;
body again, to give it movement and life, or, to use the language of
the Egyptian mythology, the deceased was to arrive finally at the boat
—
of the sun, to be received there by Ra the Scarabseus god and to —
shine with a brightness borrowed from him. The tombs and mummy
cases abound with pictures showing the various scenes of this invisible
life. One of the vignettes of the Funereal Ritual represents the
mummy on its bier, the soul or human-headed hawk flying towards it,
bearing the Crux Ansata, the emblem of life (Ch. Ixxxix.).

This doctrine was perhaps imported from Asia into Egypt, and can
be traced back to the most remote antiquity. It necessarily conduced to
inspire great respect for the remains of the dead, as they were one day
to be recalled to life, and was the origin of the custom of embalming.
The Egyptians desired to preserve entire, and to protect from destruc-
tion, the body, since it was destined to enjoy a new and more perfect
existence. They also imagined that the mummies, even when enclosed
in wrappers, were not entirely deprived of life ; and the Ritual
(Ch. clxiii.) shows us that the deceased was supposed still to avail
himself of his organs and members ; but to ensure the preservation of
vital heat, they had recourse to mystical formulas pronounced at the
time of the funeral, and to certain amulets wliich were placed on the
mummy (Ch. clvi. — clxi. ). In general, the greater part of the funereal
ceremonies, the various wrappers of the mummies, the subjects painted
on the interior or exterior of the coffins, have reference to the different
phases of the resurrection, such as the cessation of the corpse-like
rigidity, the reviving of the organs, the return of the soul.
7. Belief in the immortality of the soul is never separated fiôm the
Y
idea of a future recompense for deeds done in the liody, and this is
particularly to be observed in ancient Egj^t. Although all bodies

were to descend into the lower world, Kar-Neter, as it was called, they
were not, however, all assured of resurrection. To obtain this it was
necessary never to have committed any great sin, either in act or in
thought, as is proved by the scene of the Psychostasy, or weighing of
the soul, figured in the Funereal Ritual, and on many mummy coffins.
TJie deceased was, as we have seen, to be judged by Osiris and his

forty-two assessors ; his heart was put into one of the scales of the
balance held by Horus and Anubis, and weighed against the image of
Justice ; Thoth registered the result.
the god On this judgment,
delivered in the" Hall of Double Justice," depended the irrevocable lot
of the soul. If the deceased was convicted of inexcusable faults, he
became the prey of a temble monster with a hippopotamus's head he ;
was decapitated by Honis, or by Smu, one of the forms of Set, on the

nefftnia, or block, of Hades.
Annihilation was believed by the Egj'ptians to be the punishment
reserved for the wicked. As for the righteous, purified from venial
faults by means of a fire guarded by four genii vdth apes' faces, he
entered " Pleroma," or perfect happiness, and as the companion of
Osiris, the good being par excellence (Ounnofre), was fed by him with
delicious food. In all cases the justified, because in his human nature
he must necessarily have been a sinner, could not arrive at final beati-
tude without passing through many trials. The deceased, in descending
into Kar-Neter, found himself compelled to pass fifteen gateways or
porticos, guarded by genii, armed with swords (Ch. cxlvii. ), whom he
could pass only by proving his good deeds and his knowledge of divine
things, that is his initiation. He was subjected to the severe trials we
have recounted in our analysis of the Ritual ; he had to sustain terrible
combats with monsters and fantastic animals, and only triumphed by
being furnished with sacramental formula and exorcisms, filling twelve
chapters of the Ritual (Ch. xxxi. — xlii.). One of these creatures de-
feated by the soul at the gate was a real demon, the great serpent
Refrof, or Apap, the enemy of the sun.
Amongst other singular means resorted to by the deceased to conjure
these diabolical phantoms, was that of likening every one of his members
to those of various gods, and thus, as it were, to invest his person with
a sort of divinity (Ch. xlii.). The wicked, in his turn, before being
annihilated, was compelled to undergo every sort of torture, and under
the form of an evil spirit he returned to the world, to mislead men and
lure them to ruin ; he inhabited the bodies of unclean animals.

The sun, personified by Osiris, was, as we see, the foundation of the
Egyptian Metempsychosis. From agod who gave and preserved life,
he had become a retributive and saving god. They even came to con-
THE EGYPTIAN TRIADS. 323
sider Osiris as accompanying the deceased in his pilgrimage in Hades,

as receiving the soul on its entrance into Kar-Neter, and guiding it to
the eternal light. Himself the first raised from the dead, he assisted
to raise those who were justified, after having aided them to overcome
all their trials. The deceased, in the end, was even completely identified
with Osiris, and so absorbed into his substance as to lose all indi-
viduality his trials became those of the god himself, and thus from the
;
moment of his death the deceased was called " The Osiris."
8. In this hasty sketch of the essential and fundamental doctrines of
ancient Egypt we have noticed only the most prominent features, only
the principal personages of the pantheon formed by the sub-division of
the unity of the first principle —
an idea always preserved in the sanc-
tuaries, where combinations more or less ingenious were invented to
reconcile this fact with polytheism. We cannot here enumerate the
secondary personages of the Pharaonic pantheon, as from their number
the list would be too long. In fact, these gods, who weve originally
only attributes and qualities of one sole absolute and eternal being,
and who by degrees were invested with an individual and personal
existence, might be indefinitely multiplied, and undoubtedly popular
superstition did its best to do so. Oftenmany of these personages
proceeded from one single conception, and may be traced back to the
same original. Frequently, when they are studied closely, their ap-
parent differences disappear, and may be identified one with
they
another; and we may soon arrive at the conclusion that Egyptian
mythology and all the tribe of its gods may be reduced to a very small
number of elements, infinitely diversified in outward expression.
But in the popular and visible religion —in that presented by the out-
ward ceremonies in the temples to the eyes of the people — all these
divine beings were considered as absolutely distinct, and the people
believed them to be so; the priests only and those whom they had
instructed in the secrets of religion knew the true foundation of reli-
gious faith. Thus the Egyptian religion, although originally based on

a distinct acknowledgment of the divine unity, a last relic of the
primitive revelation, assumed the foiTn of an unlimited polytheism, with
strange, often monstrous, deities; and to the people, to the uninitiated,
it was nothing else.
9. In the external and public worship the indefinitely multiplied

deities were grouped into triads, or series of three, who represented to
the people an image of the mystery of divine generation, a family
comprising, like a human family, a father, mother, and son. These
groups, these divine families, reproduced in a material and tangible
form a mysterious and primitive doctrine, and were supposed to have
given birth successively the one to the other, thus forming a continuous
chain of emanations from the supreme deity, each link approaching
Y 2
"

nearer the earth, and descending at last almost to the level of
humanity.
Here policy had intervened, and verj' cleverly too, in the organisa-
tion of public worship. Each triad was worshipped in the sanctuary of
one of the capital cities of the nomes, and no two cities worshipped the
same triad. Now the rank held by the triad enshrmed in the sanctuary
in the scale of the divine emanations, was in direct relation with the
and administrative importance of the city. We can scarcely
political
findeven two or three exceptions to the i-ule, that when cities of gi'eat
importance in very ancient times, and where a worship had been
officially constituted, lost their old importance, the gods who were there
worshipped lost also their rank in the divine hierarchy.

The supreme triad was that of Thebes, composed of Amai-Ra (Amen
the Sun), who became officially the greatest god of Egypt, from the
time that the twelfth dynasty established its native city as the capital of
the country Maut, the divine mother par excellence; and Chons, son
;
of Amen, who was also a form of Amen himself, for in these groups of
divinities the son is always identified with his father. Amen is, how-
ever, the most elevated, the most spiritual form of the deity presented
by the Egyptian priests for the adoration of the crowds in the temples.
He is the invisible and incomprehensible god, his name means "the
hidden"; he is, in fact, the mysterious power who created, preserved,
"and governed the world. An invaluable passage in the Ritual dis-
tinctly represents him as the original and only first principle, the other
divine personages being merely his attributes or emanations. " Amen-
Ra," it is there said (Ch. xvii.), "is the creator of his members; they
become the other gods who are associated with him.
The parent god in the triad of Memphis was Phtah, the second
demiurgus, the personification of creative energy (but inferior in the
scale of emanations to Chnuphis), lord of justice, and regulator of the
worlds, believed in as the author of the visible universe ; his attributes,
however, show entire confiision between the creator and the created,
between the author of order in the world and chaos. His wife was
Pasht, the great goddess of Bubastis, sometimes with a lion's and
sometimes a cat's head, considered to be the avenger of crimes, and
also one of the forms of Maut. The sun was considered her son in
the sanctuary of the old capital of the primitive dynasties.
Month, with the hawk's head, was the terrible and hostile form of
the sun, when his rays strike like arrows and are sometimes fatal. He
was specially worshipped at Hermonthis, with the goddess Ritho his
wife, and Harphre (Horus, the sun), another example of the
their son
identity of the divine father and son.
But of all these triads, the one most closely related to humanity in
external form and worship, although the conception, as we have ;een,
;
WORSHIP OF SACRED ANIMALS. 325
was one of the most exalted, was that of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, who
were the object of universal worship in all parts of Egypt. They were
said to be the issue of the god Set, the personification of the earth, and
of the goddess Nut, the vault of heaven. Osiris, said the tradition,
had manifested himself to men and had reigned in Egypt. The whole
of the legend of his death from the violence of Set, of his resurrection,
and of the vengeance taken by his son Horus on his enemies, was said
to have taken place on earth ; and every city on the banks of the Nile
professed to have been the scene of one of the episodes of this great
drama.
10. Symbolism was the very essence of the genius of the Egyptian
nation, and of their religion. The abuse of that tendency produced
the grossest and most monstrous perversion of the external and popular
worship in the land of Mizraim. To symbolise the attributes, the
qualities,and nature of the various deities of their Pantheon, the
Egyptian priests had recourse to animals. The bull, the cow, the ram,
the cat, the ape, crocodile, hippopotamus, hawk, ibis, scaraba;us, and
others, were each emblems of a divine personage. The god was repre-
sented under the figure of that animal, or more often by the strange
conjunction peculiar to Egypt, of the head of the animal with a human
body. But the inhabitants of the banks of the Nile, instinctively averse
to the idolatry of other pagan nations, preferred to pay their worship
to living representatives of their gods rather than to lifeless images of
stone or metal, and they found these representatives in the animals
chosen as emblems of the idea expressed by the conception of each
god.
Hence arose that worship of sacred which appeared .so
animals,
strange and ridiculous to Romans. Each of these
the Greeks and
animals was carefully tended during its life in the temple of the god to
whom it was sacred, and after death its body was embalmed. Certain
cities were pecidiarly set apart for each species, for it must not be sup-
posed that every animal of each sacred species was considered sacred.
A kw only were maintained at the expense of the state, and under the
care of the greatest personages. Thus the sacred cats, after having
been embalmed, were carried to Bubastis, the hawks to Buto, the ibis
to Hermojiolis. The same animals, moreover, were not held sacred in
all provinces. The hippopotamus was only worshipped in the Papremis
nome. The inhabitants of Thebes held crocodiles in great veneration
in other places they were hunted.
We repeat that in the original conception, and for those who under-
stood the basis of their religion, these sacred animals were only the
living representatives of the deities, but popular superstition made them
into real gods ; and the worship of these animals was, perhaps, that
part of their religion to which the people were most invincibly attached.
;

"When," Herodotus,* "a man has killed one of the sacred
says
animals, he did it with malice prepense, he is punished with death
if
if unwittingly, he has to pay such a fine as the priests choose to impose.
When, however, an ibis or a hawk is killed, whether it was done by

accident or on purpose, the man must needs die." A Roman soldier
under the Ptolemies, who had accidentally killed a sacred cat, was put
to death by the enraged mob, and the
in spite of the king's interference
terror of the name of Rome. Cambyses, when
It is he invaded
said that
Egypt, caused a number of sacred animals to be ranged before his
army, and that the Egyptians allowed themselves to be put to flight
without resistance, for fear of injuring them.
There were, however, three of these sacred animals more vene-
1 1 .
more celebrated than any others, which, from the very com-
rated and
mencement of their worship, v.-ere considered, by a most degrading con-
ception, not merely as representatives but as incarnations of the deity. The
worship of these had been established, it Mâs said, by the King Kekeu,
—
of the second dynasty the bull Mnevis, worshipped at Heliopolis ; the
goat of Mendes, the incarnation of the god Khem, or Min, in whom
was personified in the most brutish manner the reproductive power, and
who then received the special name of Ba-n-ded, "the spirit of the
region of stability," of which the Greeks have made Mendes; and
lastly,the bull Apis, the incarnation of Phtah, whose worship held the
firstrank in the religion of Memphis. Apis was bom of a cow, mys-
teriously impregnated by lightning descending from heaven. He was
to be black, with a white triangle on his forehead, a mark like a half
moon on the back, and a sort of lump or thickening of the skin, in the
form of a scarabseus, under the tongue. Wlien this god died, all Egypt
was in mourning, and solemn lamentations were everywhere made. As
soon as he was manifested anew, the Egyptians put on their richest
clothes, and gave themselves up to the greatest rejoicings.t But the
divine bull was not allowed to live more than a detenmined number of
years, and at the end of that time, if he did not die a natural death, he
was killed ; still, however, they mourned for him.
The dead Apis was embalmed and deposited in the magnificent caves
of the temple, called by the Greeks "the Serapeum," discovered by
M. Mariette. He then became the object of a new worship. By the
very fact of his death, he had become assimilated with Osiris, the god
of the lower world, and received the name of Osir Hapi, converted by
the Greeks into Serapis. Of only secondary importance under the
Pharaohs, the worship of Apis, or Serapis, took a sudden development,
and became of primary importance imder the Ptolemies. Changing
completely its nature and features, it became a mixed worship, made by
* Her. ii. 65. t Ibid. iii. 27, 28, 29.

—
EGYPTIAN ART. 327
the policy of the Lagides, the point of contact between the two nations,
Greek and Egj'ptian.
12. Such, then, was in reality the religion of the Egyptian people, a
strange and almost inextricably confused mixture of sublime truths
(vestiges more or less obliterated of a primitive revelation) witli meta-
physical or cosmological ideas, often confused, always grandiose ; a
refined morality, an abject form of worship, and popular superstitions,
coarse to the last degree. " If you enter a temple," says Clement of
Alexandria, " a priest advances with a solemn air, singing a hymn in
the Egyptian language ; he raises the veil a little to let you see the
god ; and what then do you see ? A cat, a crocodile, a snake, or
some other noxious animal. The god of the Egyptians appears ! . . .
It is but a wild beast, wallowing on a purple carpet."
Section VIII. Arts.

1. The Egyptians were, even before the time of the Greeks, that
nation of antiquity who had carried the plastic arts to the highest
degree of perfection and grandeur. The Giêeks alone have been able
to surpass them. The genius of the Egyptian people is completely
depicted in the general character of their architecture. The sons of
Mizraim, as we have just seen, firmly believed in the immortality ot
the soul, and attempted to ensure the immortality of matter, with the
idea that the soul would one day re-enter the body. They regarded
life in this world as only a prelude to a Thus, while they
be.tter life.
took little living, they displayed extreme

pains with the houses of the
magnificence in the resting-places of the dead. A people thus con-
vinced of a future life, a people who preserved corpses for 4,000 years,
had therefore adopted in their architecture such dimensions as would
ensure solidity, and almost endless duration. The immense size of the
base was the distinguishing feature of their monuments. Walls, pillars,
columns, everything, in fact, is short and thick in Egyptian buildings.
And add to the appearance of this indestructible solidit)', the size of
to
the base is augmented still more by a sloping method of construction,
giving to all buildings a pyramidal tendency. The Pyramids them-

selves, those of Memphis, the largest of which is the loftiest building
in the world, stand on an enormously large base ; their height is much
less striking than their breadth. Thus making their height, as well
as that of all the Egyptian structures, even the most elevated, less
striking in this respect than for the greatness of their breadth.
2. In relating in the preceding chapters the annals of Egypt, we have
mentioned the chief epochs of its and its essentially character-
sculpture,
istic features ; the first phase of development under the primitive dynas-
ties, entirely free, and attempting always an exact imitation of nature,
the introduction of the hieratic and invariable canon of proportion
about the time of the twelfth dynasty ; the culminating point of the
grand under the eighteenth and the beginning of the
religious style,
nineteenth the absolute decadence commencing with the close of the
;
reign of Ramses II. ; and finally the last "renaissance" under the
Saite kings.
Considered as a whole, and without reference to the differences
between various epochs, Eg}'ptian sculpture exhibits a peculiarly
symbolical character, always recalling its original intention —to embody
religious ideas and to be their visible representative. Its birth-place
was the Temple. There it is at first found in the condition of merely

outline drawing. Next, the drawing is cut into the wall, or stands out
in relief. Afterwards it is almost, but not quite, detached from the
wall, and when finally the statue is completely isolated, though this —
is very seldom the case, for it almost always has a pilaster at its back,
— it bears unmistakable traces of its original architectural origin, and
the symbolical puqjose for which it was made. If we look at an

Egyptian statue its lines are invariably marked by conciseness or
brevity, not without finish, but without detail. The lines are straight
and broad ; the attitude is stiff, imposing, and fixed ; the legs are
generally parallel and joined ; the feet touch, or rather stand one
before the other in the same direction, and are also exactly parallel ;
the arms hang down by the sides, or are crossed over the breast,
unless they are detach£d sufficiently to hold some attribute, a sceptre,
crux ansata, or a lotus flower : but in this solemn and cabalistic panto-
mime, the figure makes signs rather than gestures ; it is in position
rather than in action; for whatever movement the statue seems about
to make will and followed by no other.
be its last,
Egyptian art seems in some respects to have remained in perpetual

infancy it is an art
; essentially grand, majestic, governed by the
severest rules. It is majestic and grand from the very absence of
detail ; an absence voluntary and predetermined. Whether in bas-re-

lief or in the round, the Egj'ptian statues are modelled, not rudely, but
concisely ; they are not cut out merely as a rough draught, but, on the
contrary, admirably designed %vith studied simplicity in their lines and
design, an elegant delicacy in their fomi, or rather, mathematical formula.
Two things are evident and plainly intentional, the sacrifice of the
small parts to the large, and the non-imitation of real life. The nude
figure is seen as through a veil ; the drapery of clothed figures sticks to
them like a second skin, so that the naked figure can be seen when the
statue is clothed, and seems clothed even when nude. The muscles,
and contractions of the skin are not rendered, not even the
veins, folds
bony fi-amework. The variety that distinguishes living beings, the
SYMBOLICAL FIGURES. 329
essence of nature is replaced by a religious and sacerdotal symmetry,
replete with skilland majesty.

All groups of more than one figure are arranged on a parallelism
of double members, and seem to obey a certain mysterious rhythm re-
,
gulated by the sanctuary. The surest mode of expression in Egyptian
art was, in fact, repetition. However natural and graceful a move-
ment may becomes formal when repeated intentionally and in an
be, it
identical manner, as we see so often in the sculptures of ancient Egypt.

This persistent repetition, making every walk a procession, every
movement a religious symbol, every gesture a sacred cadence, becomes
sublime.
The Egyptian style is therefore monumental in conciseness of expres-
sion, the austerity of its lines, and their resemblance to the vertical and
horizontal lines of architecture. It is imposing, because it is a pure
creation of the mind; it is colossal even in the smallest examples,
because it is supernatural and superhuman. always presents the
It
same recognisable character, because it represents an invariable faith.
Lastly, Egyptian style is the result of a principle quite apart from imita-
tion, it has voluntarily discarded all attempt at imitative truth ; for the
was as strong among the Egyptians
faculty of copying nature faithfully
as among the Greeks, as is proved by the faithfuhiess of some of their
copies of animals compared with their conventional and artificial ex-
pressions of the human figure, as well as by contrasting the works of
the primitive schools of art, with productions after the reign of the
twelfth dynasty and the establishment of the priestly canon of the pro-
portions of the human body.
In modelling thehuman head, the Egyptian sculptor was more faithful
in his imitation than in the human body, and showed how strong would
have been his power of imitation, if art had remained free. With
what power is the physiognomy of the various races expressed whom
the artists wished to represent ! No other people have in their works of
art so closely adhered to ethnographical truth.
Is there any further need to insist on the tendency to symbolism pre-
vailing in all Egyptian sculpture to such an extent that we find figures
with the monstrous combination of human bodies and the heads of
animals? "In exhibiting to us," Raoul Rochette has well said, "a
man's body with a lion's, a crocodile's or jackal's head, the Egyptians
certainly never intended us to believe in the existence of such a being;
it was the embodiment of an idea they wished to exhibit rather than
a representation of any real thing. The mixture of the two natures
was employed to make it plain that this human body supporting an
animal's head was a written thought, a personified idea, but never
intended to pass for any real being."
Thus, we may say, that Egyptian sculpture was one form of their
—
writing, an essentially symbolical art, and this was one reason why it
could not progress. Symbolism was for this great school of art,what
the aromatic spices were to the embalmed dead; it made it a mummy,
but in so doing rendered it everlasting.
3. Painting was hardly ever used by the Egyptians except for decora-
tion, toaccompany and set off architecture and sculpture; all buildings
and statues were coloured. Nevertheless some small wooden steles
have been found on which the subjects are merely painted, often with
great delicacy and in admirable style and even some tombs, where the
;
nature of the rock did not admit of the execution of finished sculpture,
have had the internal walls covered with plaster and painted. This
painting, however, is entirely sculptural in its character, and executed
quite in the style of a bas-relief. The papyrus manuscripts of the
Funereal Ritual frequently present vignettes designed with the pen with
wonderful freedom, firmness and boldness, and sometimes with a purity
of outline recalling the decorations of Greek vases.
Section IX. Principal Monuments.

I. The Pyramids.The most imposing monuments of Egypt, from
and the most curious from their antiquity, are undoubtedly the
their size,
pyramids of Gizeh. We have already mentioned the enormous amount
of labour required for their construction; butwe may be able perhaps
to form a more precise idea when we know that the largest the pyramid —
of Khufu (Cheops) —
is formed of more than 200 steps or layers of
enormous blocks. When entire it was 480 feet high, nearly double the
elevation of the towers of the cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris; its
base measured 756 feet, and it was composed of the truly astonishing
mass of more than ten millions of cubic yards of stone material,
sufficient to build a wall six feet high, a foot thick,
and nearly 3,000
miles long. To enormous weight that the chamber intended
relieve the
for the royal sarcophagus had to support, open spaces have been left in
the mass of the monument above it, forming five small chambers. A
second sepulchral chamber is situated almost exactly below the first,
and a third at a great depth below, excavated in the rock and forming
no part of the building. The orientation of this gigantic monument is
perfect, its four sides exactly facing the four cardinal points.
The arrangement of the other two
pyramids is similar, with the
exception that their masonry isand the chambers they cover are
solid,
cut in the rock. The second is not so high as the first, and the
difference is rendered more apparent from the height of the rocky plat-
form on which the first stands; its construction is also far from equalling
in beauty that of the first. It was built to receive the body of Shafra
GREAT PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX. 331
(Chefren), and is the only one still retaining a part of its original outer
casing. The third pyramid is not more than a third of the height of
the first, was found the wooden
but was more highly ornamented ; in it
coffin of the king Menkera (Mycerinus), by whom it was built. The

chamber where it was found, was entirely faced with granite. Now, to
find that stone, it is necessary to go up the Nile as far as the first cata-
ract, and thence it must have been brought in boats. This pyramid
had also an exterior casing of granite from Syene, but less ancient, it
seems, than the pyramid itself^ and added by the queen Net-aker
(Nitocris) of the sixth dynasty.
The colossal Sphinx at the foot of the Great P>Tamids, to which it is
subsidiary, is a monument completed if not commenced under the reign

of Shafra. It is nearly ninety feet in length and about seventy-four feet
high. The face measures twenty-six feet from the chin to the top. It
is carved out of the rock it rests on ; the stratification of the rock has
divided the face into horizontal bands. Advantage has been taken of
one of these divisions to form the mouth. The great Sphinx was the
image of the god Har-ma-chu, the setting sun, a deity of an essentially
funereal character between its two front paws was placed a small
;
sanctuai-y, consecrated to that deity, reconstructed by Thothmes III.

"This huge, mutilated figure," says Ampere, "has an astonishing
effect it seems like an eternal spectre.
; The stone phantom seems
attentive one would say that it hears and sees. Its great ear appears to
;
collect the sounds of the past; its eyes, directed to the east, gaze as it
were into the future ; its aspect has a depth, a truth of expression,
irresistibly fascinating to the spectator. In this figure, half statue, half
mountain, we see a wonderful majesty, a grand serenity, and even a
sort of sweetness of expression."
Besides Gizeh, many other localities, at various distances from Mem-
phis, possess pyramids, though smaller. Altogether sixty-seven have
been found, and, in fact, sepulchres of this kind were in use until the
time of the twelfth dynasty. At Gizeh there are nine in all. We find
important groups of them at Zauiet-el-Arrian, and at Abousir, S.S.E. of
Gizeh one in the latter place bears the names of three kings of the
;
fifth dynasty, who were buried there. At Sakkarah there are also
several pyramids, the largest, built in stages, is, as we have already said,
the oldest monument in Egypt, for it appears to have been the tomb ot
king Kekeu of the second dynasty; another had apparently a very large
platform on the summit, and was the tomb of king Unas, of the fifth
dynasty ; its ruins are nowby the Arabs, Mastabat-el-Earaoun.
called
Lastly, the village of five of these monuments, the largest
Dashur has
326 feet high ; one of these pyramids is of sun-dried brick, and was the
tomb of Osortasen III. (thirteenth dynasty); it has in front of it a small

temple, where the worship of the deceased king was conducted.
2. The Labyrinth. The Labyrinth, founded, as Manetho tells us,
by a king of the twelfth dynasty, Amen-emhe III., but possibly com-
pleted or repaired after the departure of the Ethiopians, had, if we
believe the testimony of Herodotus, attracted the attention and excited
the surprise of Greek travellers almost as much as the Pyramids. Hero-
dotus (ii. 148) even considers it superior, and describes it as formed
of " twelve courts, all of them roofed, with gates exactly opposite one
another, six looking to the north, and six to the south. A single wall
surrounded the entire building. There are two different sorts of
chambers throughout, half under ground, half above ground, the latter
built up on the former; the whole number of these chambers is 3,000,
1,500 of each kind. He adds that he has seen only the first, as the
priests \\ere unwilling to take him into the subterranean chambers con-
taining, as they said, the sepulchres of the kings who built the labyrinth,
'
and those of the sacred crocodiles, the passages through the houses
'
and the varied windings of the paths across the courts, " says he again,
"excited in me infinite admiration, as I passed from the courts into
chambers, and from the chambers into colonnades, and from the colon-
nades into fresh houses, and again from these into courts unseen before.
The roof was throughout of stone, like the walls, and the walls were
car\'ed all over with figures. Every court was surrounded with a
colonnade, which was built of white stones exquisitely fitted together.
At the comer of the Labyrinth stands a pyramid forty fathoms high,
with large hieroglyphics engraven on it, entered by a subterranean
passage."
Twenty-three centuries after Herodotus, on the 25th June, 1843,
M. Lepsius wrote from the ruins of the same monument* — "These
lines are written from the distinctly recognised Labyrinth of Moeris and
of the Dodecarchy, not from the doubtful spot whose identity is still
contested, of which myself was unable to form any conception

I
rom the hitherto more than deficient descriptions even of those w^ho
have removed the laljyrinth hither. An immense cluster of chambers
still remains, and in the centre lies the great square, where the courts
once stood, covered with the remains of large monolithic granite

columns, and of others of hard white limestone, shining almost like
marble. ... At the first superficial survey of the ground a number of
complicated spaces, of trae labyrinthine forms, immediately presented
themselves, both above and below ground. . We literally find at
. .
once hundreds of them, as well next to as above one another, small,

often diminutive ones, besides greater ones; and large ones, supported
by small columns, with thresholds and niches in the walls, with remains
of columns and single casing stones, connected by corridors, without
* Letters from Egypt (Eng. Trans., Bohn), pp. 89, 90.

EGYPTIAN TOMBS. 333
any regularity in ihe entrances and exits, so that the descriptions of
Herodotus and Strabo in this respect are fully justified. The whole
. . .
is so aiTanged that three immense masses of buildings, 300 feet broad,
enclose a rectangular place, which is 600 feet long and 500 feet wide. The
fourth side, one of the narrow ones, is bounded by the pyramid, which
lies behind it; it is 300 feet square. . But the chambers lying on
. .
the farther side, especially their southern pomt, where the walls rise
nearly ten feet above the rubbish, and about twenty feet above the base
of the ruins, are to be seen very well, even from this, the eastern side ;
and viewed from the summit of the pyramid, the regular plan of the
whole design lies before one as on a map." The learned traveller found
the name of the builder, Amen-emhe III., inscribed in several places
on the monument,
3. Funereal Grottoes.—" The Egyptians," says Diodorus Sicu-
lus, "called the dwellings of the living, lodgings, because they were
only occupied for a short time ; the tombs, on the contrary, they called
'eternal houses,' because their occupants never left them. This is why
they took so little pains to decorate their houses, whilst they neglected
nothing that could enhance the splendour of their tombs." cannot We
here enumerate and describe the innumerable private rock-tombs, all
decorated with sculpture, to be met with throughout the entire length
of the Nile valley. The most remarkable are those of the neighbour-
hood of Memphis (Gizeh and Sakkarah), those of Beni Hassan in
Central Egypt, and those of Gurnah, the principal necropolis of
Tliebes. But we must at least give a short account of the celebrated
royal tombs of Thebes, described by every antiquarian traveller who
has visited Egypt. These subterranean constructions are almost as
astonishing as the magnificent edifices near them. The most ancient of
the Theban tombs belong to the eleventh dynasty; they are those of
the Entefs, discovered near the village of Drah abu'l Neygah.
At the period these tombs were constructed, the sarcophagus alone
was ornamented. The kings of the twelfth dynasty, although Theban
by origin, appear to have been buried at Fayum, and in the neigh-
bourhood of Memphis, under the Pyramids. The period of decline,
and even disaster, following this has left no great monuments. We
know no sepulchres, either of the Sevek-hoteps nor yet of any of the
Theban princes, who contended with the Shepherds. At Drah abu'l
Neygah has been discovered that of Queen Aah-hotep, mother of
Ahmes. The sepulchres of the valley of Assassif belong to the
eighteenth dynasty, where Amen-hotep III. and Ai, one of the
usurpers towards the close of this period, were buried. It is not, however,
to the time of the eighteenth dynasty, but to the age of the Ramses of
the nineteenth and twentieth, that the most magnificent of the royal
sepulchres of Thebes belong, those of Biban-el-Moluk, called by the
Greeks the Syringes, find reckoned by them among the wonders of
Egypt.
The tomb of Ramses V. is most remarkable, for the long series of
sculptures or paintings adorning a succession of halls or galleries, ex-
cavated in the side of the mountain, and forming the approach to the
Sarcophagus Hall. They are mythological and astronomical scenes,
representing the sun's course, and the rewards or punishments to be
awarded to the soul in a future life. The Sarcophagus Hall, described
in great detail in the letters of Champollion, shows us the course of
the Sun, and the walls are covered with thousands of hieroglyphics.
Among the sixteen tombs of the valley of Biban-el-Moluk, a part only
have their decorations completed throughout their whole extent, and
these belong to princes who had a long reign, for the constraction of
the royal sepulchre was begun at the commencement of the reign, and,
more or less, was accomplished according to the length of time that
the king occupied the throne. When once the corpse was deposited in
the sepulchre, the door was closed, to be re-opened no more.
Among the best furnished and most curious sepulchres we may reckon
those of Seti I. and Ramses III. In the first are represented the
various human races according to Egyptian ideas the sculptures of the
;
second represent (as do those of the primitive ages) incidents in

private life but there is also a symbolical picture of the Egyptian year,
;
represented by six figures of the Nile and six of Eg}'pt personified,

each bearing productions peculiar to the division of the year they were
intended to represent. We know that the waters of the Nile deter-
mined in Egypt the succession of the agricultural seasons.
4. —
Temples and Palaces. The division of the French army com-
manded by General Desaix, hastening into Upper Egypt in pursuit of
—
Mourad Bey and his Mamelukes in want of everything, without food,
fainting with the heat —
no sooner got the first sight of the ruins of
Thebes than they forgot at once their fatigue, their sufferings, and the
proximity of the enemy, and seized with enthusiasm, unanimously began
to clap their hands. Thebes, in spite of all the disasters which have
successively for so many ages fallen on this sacred city of Amen in —
spite of all the ravages of time and of the barbarians —
still presents the
grandest, the most prodigious assemblage of buildings ever erected by

the hand of man.
At Kamak, first, in the north-east part of the ancient city, and on
the right bank of the Nile, is found a series of buildings erected by the
labours of nearly all the dynasties from Osortasen I. to Ptolemy, father
of the famous Cleopatra. The description of this immense assemblage
of buildings would alone require an entire volume. To give an idea of
its extent, it is enough to say that the sacred enclosure at Kamak is
1,170 feet long, without measuring the avenues of sphinxes, extending

;
TEMPLES AND PALACES. 335
in front of the outer portico, or the second temple, built in the same
direction by Ramses II., but behind the back wall of the first, so that
the total length is about 2000 feet. There is found that Hall of
Columns of Seti I., of which no words can convey a just concep-
tion.
"Imagination," says Champollion, " that, in Europe, may well con-

ceive something superior to our porticoes, sinks abashed before the 140
columns of the Hall of Karnak. ... I shall be careful to de-
scribe nothing, for my expressions cannot convey the thousandth part
of what ought to be said in speaking of such objects, or rather, were I
to attempt a feeble sketch, far from highly colored, I should pass for an
enthusiast, and perhaps for a fool." " Imagine," says also Ampere, "a
forest of towers; represent to yourself I40 columns as large as that of
the Place Vendome, the highest seventy feet high (as tall as the obelisk
of the Place de la Concorde), and eleven feet in diameter, covered with
bas-reliefsand hieroglyphics, the capitals sixty-five feet in circumference ;
—
a hall 319 feet long and 150 wide this hall entirely roofed over, and
one of the windows it was lighted by still to be seen." "It is im-
possible," writes also M. Lepsius, "to describe the overwhelming
impression experienced upon entering for the first time this forest
of columns, and wandering from one range to the other, between the
lofty figures of gods and kings on every side represented on them, pro-
jecting sometimes entirely, sometimes only, in part. Every surface is
covered with various sculptures, now in relief, now sunk, which, however,
were only completed by the successors of the builder (Seti), most of
them, indeed, by his son, Ramses Miamun." *
A series of colonnades of colossal rams of giânite, forming avenues,
and of paved roads, connect the buildings of Karnak with those of
Luxor. Here again we meet with an assemblage of monuments of
various dates, to which each generation has contributed a stone. The
most ancient part, the principal temple, is the work of Amen-hotep III.
to the north of this principal temple a gallery of columns leads to
another built by Ramses II., and still covering an area of 4,000 yards.
It is in front of the court before this temple thatRamses set up two
obelisks; one of them now ornaments the Place de la Concorde at
Paris.
On the left bank of the Nile, not far from the village of Gurnah, is
found a building every part of which recalls Ramses II. and his family;
and therefore called by Champollion "the Ramesseum." It is quite clear
that it was the palace of that prince. It is composed of a suite of
courts surrounded by, or filled with, columns, covered with hieroglyphic
inscriptions, recounting the exploits of the king. A granite colossus,
* Letters from Egypt (English translation, Bohn), p. 249.

fifty-five feet high, represents Ramses seated on his throne. Tliis is the
largest ruin of a statue that has ever been known ; the foot alone is
more than thirteen feet long.

Of the Palace of Amenhotep III., very near this, nothing remains
but shapeless masses of ruins, and the famous colossal statues, called by
the Greeks " Memnon." At Gurnah itself are the ruins of another
important edifice, commenced during the minority of Thothmes III.,
and continued by Seti and his son. Lastly, a little further south we
meet with the immense and magnificent palace of Medinet Abu. We
have already had occasion to speak of this building, when referring to
the historical tablets found there, relating the chief events of the reign of
Ramses III.
The Thebes are the most extensive and majestic in the whole
ruins of
of Egypt. We havetherefore spoken of them at some length. But we
must not imagine they are the only ones existing on the banks of the
Nile. —
Numerous other localities Philae, Ombos, Edfu, Esneh, Her-
—
monthis, Denderah possess splendid temples some remain in their ;
original condition, but the greater number were reconstructed under the
Ptolemies in conformity with the traditions of the Pharaonic age. At
Abydos the excavations of M. Mariette have brought to light one of
the largest and most beautiful temples of the best period of Egyptian
art, a temple dating from the reign of Seti I. ; it measures 486 feet in
length. The work of
ruins of the sanctuary of Sutekh, at Tanis, the
Ramses II., of Merenphtah, and of Seti II., have been discovered by
the same learned explorer and eleven obelisks, numerous monolithic
;
granite columns, and colossal steles taken from the ruins, prove that this
building may be ranked almost with the erections of the same epoch at
Thebes.
No monument of Memphis still exists standing : any remains there
may be are hidden under ground. One only of the temples of
this great city has been disinterred — the Serapeum, discovered by
M. Mariette. It contains in its enclosure the sepulchres of the Bulls
Apis, from the time of the nineteenth dynasty to that of the Roman
supremacy.
Before closing this chapter, we must lastly notice in a few words the
numerous buildings of the Pharaonic age to be found on the banks of
the Nile in Nubia, between the first and second cataracts, and especially
the prodigious subterranean temple of Ipsambul, with historical and
religious sculptures covering its walls, and its fa9ade ornamented by four
colossal statues of Ramses II., seated, each sixty-five feet high, and
carved out of the rock. "These more than gigantic masses," says
Charles Lenormant, " are treated in a manner rather grand than
finished, with the exception of the heads, and nothing can be seen for
truth, life and modelling, more perfect than these. Winckelman has
—
COLOSSAL STATUES. 337
laid down no other rules for that cahn beauty regarded by him as the
highest aim of art. The Ludovisi Juno, one-fourth of tlieir size, does
not excel them in the expression of the whole, or in tlie harmony of
combination of so many parts. Give !)ut movement to these rocks, and
Greek art would be suruassed."
Additional Note to Page 239.

With reference to the possible connection of the Hebrews \y\{\\ the
religious revolution under Amenhotej) IV. or Chu-en-Aten, it may be
observed that there is mention in i Chron. iv. 18 of " Bithiah, the
daughter of Pharaoh, which Mered took "; and this name, Bithiah,
seems to be particularly contrasted with Jehudijah (the Jewess), Mered's
other wife.
The passage seems to have excited the attention of some Rabl)inical
and early Christian writers, and various speculations have been made as
to who both Mered and Bithiah were, the general opinion being that
Bithiah (daughter of Jehovah) must have been a proselyte.
The genealogy in i Chron. iv. is so fragmentary and confused that it
is difficult to determine the exact date of Mered; it seems, however,
that he must have lived before the Exodus.

The question will naturally occur. Under what circumstances could
a Hebrew, even a Prince of the House of Judah, before the Exodus,
have married a daughter of Pharaoh?
Is it not possible that this circumstance may point to the connection
of the Hebrews with the reforms of Chu-en-Aten. May not Mered
(Rebel) have taken a leading part in the revolution and been the
husband of one of that king's many daughters ?
It may be observed that as " Aten," or " Aten-ra " (the sun's disc)
was. at this period, used as the symbol of one supreme deity, the title
Su-t-ra or Su-t-aten, a name not unlikely to have been given to one of
the daughters of Chu-en-Aten, might very naturally have been tran-
scribed into Hebrew as Bithiah.
It is possible that future researches may throw some light on this
point, which is not without interest as belonging to a very obscure
period of the history of the Hebrews. Tr.
End of Book III.
z
— : : —
338
BOOK IV.
THE ASSYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS.
CHAPTER I.
THE PRIMITIVE CHALDAlAN EMPIRE.

Chief Authorities.
Classical Writers: —
The fragments oi Berosits, in Vol. II. oi Fragmenta
Historicorii7n GrcBcoriiin. Didot. —
Herodotus, Book I. — Diodorus
Siculus, Book II. — Eusebius, Chronicles, Book I., Chap, xiv., xv.
The Canon of the Kings of Babylon of Ptolemy.
Collections of Assyrian Monnments —
Botta, Monuments de Ninive,
Paris, five Vols. —
Layard, Monuments of Nineveh, London, 1851 ;
Moniiiitcnts of Nineveh, 2nd Series, London, 1853; Nineveh and its

Remains, London, 1851; Discoveries in the Ruins of Ninez'eh and
Babylon,with Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Desert, London,
185.^. —Loftus, Travels in Chaldcra and Susiana, London, 1856.
Victor Place, Ninive et TAssyrie, Paris (in course of publication).
Collections of Cuneiform Texts —
Botta, Inscriptions de Khorsabad, Paris,
1848. 'Lay ?ixd, Inscriptions in the Ctineiform Character from Assyrian
Monuments, London, 1851. — Rawlinson and Norris, Cuneiform In-
scriptions of Western Asia, London, 1861 and 1866.
Works of Moderfi Scholars on the Deciphennent of the Writing and the
—
language: Botta, Memoire sur lEcriture Cu7ieifoi'me Assyriennc,
Paris, 1849. — ^^ Saulcy, Recherches sur I' Ecriture Cunciforme Assyri-
eitne, Paris, 1849. —
Hincks, On the Khorsabad I/iscriptions, Dublin,
1850 ; On the Assyro-Balylonian Phonetic Characters, Dul)lin, 1852 ;
0)1 the Personal Pronouns of the Assyrian and other Langiu7ges,'D\\h\m,
1854 ;
" On
the Assyrian Verb" in the "jfournal of Sacred literature,
July, 1855 as well as a large number of dissertations published in
:
the Monoirs of the Royal Irish Academy, in the Transactions of the

Royal Society of Literature, and in the Jouriial of the Royal Asiatic
Society. —
Rawlinson, On the Inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia,
London, 185 1 ; Babylonian Translation of the Great Persian Inscription
at Behistjui, London, 1 851. —
Oppert, Ettides Assyricftnes, Inscription
de Borsippa, Paris, 1857; Expedition en Mesopotamie, vol. ii. ; Ele-
ments de la Grammaire Assyrienne, Paris, i860; Commentaire de la
Grande Inscription du Palais de Khorsabad, Paris, 1865. Menant, —
Les Ecritures Cuneifoniies, 2nd ed., Paris, 1864; Expose des Elements de
la Grammaire Assyrienne, Paris, 1868. —
Norris, Assyrian Dictionaty,
London (in course of publication).
Works of Modern Scholars on History: — De
Saulcy. Memoire sur la
Chronologic des Empires de Ninive, de Bahylone, et dÊcbatane, Paris,
— -
THE TIGRO-EUPHRATES BASIN. 339
1849. — Guigniaut, Article " Chaldee" in the Emydopf.die Moderne. —

Heeren, Politique Commerce dcs Peuples de r Aiitiqiiite, French
et
trans., vol. ii. — George Rawlinson, The Five great Monarchies of the
— —
Ancient Eastern World, London, 1862 1868. Sir H. Rawlinson,
Aôte on the Early History of Babylonia, London, 1856; On the
Orthography of some of the late Royal Names of Assyrian and Baby
lo7tian His I ory, hon&on, 1856; and numerous Articles in the Athenaum
and in the Joiiriial of the Royal Asiatic Society. "Inscription of
Tiglath rileser I., king of Assyria," as translated by Sir H. Raw-
linson, Fox Talbot, Esq., Dr. Hincks, and Dr. Oppert, London,
1857. —Oppert, Rapport au Ministre de P Instriiction Piddique, Paris,
1857; Expedition en Mhopoiamie, vol. i. ; Les Itiscriptions des Sar-
g07tides, Paris, 1862; Histoire des Empires de Chaldee et d'Assyrie,
d'apres les A/onuments, Paris, 1865; Articles " Babylone'' and " Baby-
loniens" in the 2nd edit, of ihe Encyclopedie du X/Xe Siecle ; La
Chivnologie Bibliqne fixee par les Eclipses des Inscriptions Cnneiformes,
Paris, 1868.
— — Oppert and Menant, Les Pastes de Sargon, Paris, 1865.
^\f:w3.vA, Les Briqiies de Babylone, Caen, 1859; Inscriptions de Ham-
—
mourabi Roi de Babylo)ie, Paris, 1863. Brandis, Ueber den Histori-
scheti Gewinn aus der Entzifferung der Assyrischen Inschriften, Berlin,
1856. —F. Lenormant, Essai sur un Momunoit Mathcmatiqiie Chal-
dien, et sur le Systeme Mctrique de Babylone, Paris, 1 868.
Section I. The Tigro-Euphrates Basin.
I. The immense deserts extending from west to east across the entire
eastern hemisphere of the globe, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Yellow
Sea, intersected on the frontier of Asia and Africa, by the valley
first,
of the Nile, are again broken near their centre by a second oasis, larger
and not less fertile than that of Egypt, in the exact place where the
desert changes its geological character, and from a low plain becomes
an elevated plateau. To the west of this fortunate spot, the solitudes of
Asia and Africa are mere seas of sand, scarcely above, even where not
below, the level of the ocean. To the east, on the contrary, in Persia,
Kirman, Seistan, Chinese Tartary, and Mongolia, the desert consists of
a series of terraced plateaux, from 3,000 to 10,000 feet above the sea
level. The two great rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, form and surround
with their waters this great oasis, called by the ancient Semites
Naharaim, and by the Greeks Mesopotamia; and in the most ancient
narrative of the Bible Shinar. These two rivers, about equal in
volume, take their rise near each other on the sides of the ancient
Mount Niphates (the modern Keleshin); in Armenia they run at first
in exactly opposite directions, and enter the plain at the two extremities
of the chain of Mount Masius (now Karadjeh Dagli), the Tigris to the
east, the Euphrates to the west. From this point they gradually aj)-
proach each other until, in the thirty-fourth degree of latitude, they
z 2
run parallel for thirty leagues, and afterwards unite into one stream, now
called Shat-el-Arab, and flow into the Persian Gulf.
2. By the geological formation of the soil, as well as by the aspect of
the country and its fertility, Mesopotamia is divided into two very dis-
tinct parts, the north and the south, the boundary being where the
rivers begin to run parallel at Hit, on the Euphrates, and Samarah, on
the Tigris. The northern part is divided in two by the river Cha-
boras (the modern Khabur), taking its rise in Mount Masius, running
from north to south, and flowing into the Euphrates at Carchemish,
•separating Assyria on the east from Aramaean Mesopotamia, the
Osrhoene of the Greeks on the west. All the northern part, as we
have said, is one great plain of secondary formation, fertile only where
springs and watercourses are abundant, as in Osrhoene and the neigh-
bourhood of Mount Sinjar; but in the rest of its extent resembling the
neighbouring deserts, and like them, must always have been sterile and
unfit for cultivation. The southern
on the contrary, comprising
portion,
Babylonia and Chaldsea, is a still lower plain entirely formed of the
modern alluvium (in the geological sense of the word) of the two
rivers. The distance from one to the other is not more than a day's
journey; and the country has the appearance of an immense prairie,
only needing water to produce enormous harvests. The summer heat
in this region is excessive, even for the east, but the winter is temperate
and pleasant.
The waters of the Euphrates and Tigris rise every year and inundate
the low land, though they do not, like the Nile, deposit fertilising mud;
nevertheless, this natural irrigation, if was
directed and controlled as it
in ancient times, would again make Chaldaea the garden of Asia. Rice
and barley at one time returned an increase of 200 for one but now-a- ;
days that the canals are neglected, the produce is but a tenth of what it
once was. The country has no trees but the date-palm ; this, however,
forms entire forests, sometimes of enormous extent.
3. From this hasty sketch we may see the resemblance of the
natural features of the Tigro-Euphrates Basin to the land of Egypt,
especially as regards Chaldsea, its southern part.* This countiy also
is the gift of the river, a land of incomparable fertility, yielding its fruits
almost without labour, and is an oasis in the midst of the deserts.

Nature herself has prepared these two countries for the theatre where
the two earliest human societies might form themselves and enter on
the road of civilisation. Thus it is that in the plains watered by the
two great rivers of Western Asia all the races of the ancient world have
successively encountered each other, and from the days of Nimrod to
those of the successors of Mahomet, have disputed the Empire of Asia.
* See page 194.

—
PRIMITIVE POPULATION OF CHALDÂ. 341
Egypt and Mesopotamia have been the two great centres of civilisation,
the one almost as ancient as the other, although priority belongs to

Babylon rather than to Memphis they have been the two rivals, in
;
whose hands has alternately been placed the dominion of Western Asia.
The Euphrates and the Nile have an easy communication with each
other by roads fit for the passage of great armies. Whenever Egypt
has been governed by an energetic ruler, she has endeavoured to sub-
jugate Mesopotamia, as though an inevitable law forbade the existence
of two rival empires, possessed of equal resources and placed in
analogous circumstances. A Thothmes or a Seti at Thebes, like
a Saladm at Cairo, or a Mehemet Ali at Alexandria, have never pursued
any other object so steadily as to march their troops on the Euphrates,
and attempt the conquest of Mesopotamia. In the same way, when-
ever a strong power has arisen on the banks of the Tigris or the
Euphrates, whether at Bagdad, Babylon, or Nineveh, it has menaced
Egypt and attempted its conquest. The history of Ancient no less
than that of Modern Asia, more than one continuous record of
is little
political struggles between Egypt and Mesopotamia, ending only when

the military power of Western Europe, with its great moral superiority,
entered the lists, as in the days of Alexander the Great and in the
times of the Crusades.
Section II. Primitive Population of Chaldâ.
1. The Bible places the commencement of the history of mankind

in the Tigro-Euphrates basin. " And it came to pass," says tlie Book
of Genesis, "that as they journeyed from the east, they found a plain
in the land of Shinar and they dwelt there." There Scripture places
;
the building of Babel, the first great city founded after the Deluge, and
there occurred the confusion of tongues and the dispersion of races.

We have already shown that this story was preserved in the Babylonian
tradition, as well as in the Mosaic narrative.*

After the dispersion of the sons of Noah, who originally were all
living together m
the plains of Shinar, there remained in the country a
considerable body of people of various and mixed races. This follows
from the Bible narrative, and is by the Babylonian tra-
also attested
ditions carefully collected in the time of the Seleucidce by the historian

Berosus, a Chaldtean priest, who translated the annals of his country
into Greek. " There were at first," says he, " at Babylon, a great
number of men of different nations who had colonised Chaldcea."
2. To the earliest date that the monuments carry us back, we can
* See page 23.

distinguish in this very mixed population of Babylonia and Chald^â
two principal elements, two great nations, the Shumir and the Accad,
who lived to the north and to the south of the country. As soon as a
monarchical government was introduced there, the first title of the
sovereigns was " King of the Shumir and Accad," a title preserved in
official documents by the Assyrian and Babylonian kings to the last
days of their empire, though it had then no real meaning. The Accad
occupied the southern districts, and had as their capital a city called
after them, Accad, to be identified apparently with Nipur, the modern
Niffer. The position of the Shumir was more northern they had ;
also a city of their name, Sumere, mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus*

as situated on the Tigris, and not far from Ctesiphon.
Of these two giêat nations who constituted the mass of the population
of Chaldoea, one was of the race of Ham. and of the Cushite branch.
The presence of Cushites in Chaldoea and Babylonia is attested by the
Bible, by Berosus, and by the universal testimony of antiquity. To
them, as we have already said,+ properly belonged that language ot
the family called Semitic, to which scholars have given the name
Assyrian. This language was common to both Babylon and
Nineveh, and it is found in use in Chaldaea as far back as the monu-
ments enable us to go. We

have proved that the greater part of
the Hamitic people, particularly those of the Cushite branch and the
Canaanites, spoke languages analogous to each other. Lastly, it is in
vain to seek in the primitive annals of Babylon or the neighbouring

countries for an event of sufficient importance to have suddenly given
the Semites a preponderance so great as to enable them to impose
theirlanguage on the other races.
The other principal element in the original population of the lower
course of the Tigris and Euphrates belonged to the Turanian race. It
spoke a language of the Uralo-finnish family, made use of, as we find,

in some of the most ancient inscriptions of the Chaldxan monarchs,
and, as is proved by the monuments, spoken as late as the time of

Nebuchadnezzar.
3. The fact of the existence of an ancient Turanian civilisation, and
the presence of people of that race in Chaldaea, is one of the newest
and least expected results of the decipherment of the cuneiform inscrip-
tions, and of the study of the original monuments of the Assyro-
Chaldsean world. It is, nevertheless,
incontestaljfe, and throws
valuable light on most ancient history of Asia.
the We have
already seen X that the Turanians were one of the first races to spread
out into the world, before the time of the great Semitic and Arian
XXV. 6. t See page 72. J See page 58.

TURANIAN RACES. 343
misTations, and that they covered a great extent of territory Ijoth in

Asia and Europe. They then occupied
that district between the
all
Tigris and Indus, afterwards conquered by the Iranians, and they also
held the greater part of India. When the Semites on the one hand,
and the Arians on the other, had finished their migrations, and were
finally established, there always remained between them a separating
belt of Turanian people, penetrating like a wedge as far as the Persian
Gulf, and occupying the mountains between Persia and the Tigro-
Euphrates basin.
Media was not, as is often represented, peopled entirely by the
Indo-European race. On the contrary, the greater number of its
people belonged, then as now, to the Turanian race. Even the name
"Media" is a purely Turanian word, Mata signifying "land, country."
This alone would prove, even if other positive indications had not been
found to demonstrate it, that the basis of the population of that country
has always been, dowTi to our days, of the Tartaro-finnish race,
although from an early period the dominant aristocratic class has
been Arian. And it was long before this Turanian Media ceased to
struggle with varying success against the dualism of the religion of
Zoroaster.
More to the south, the Turanians formed a notable portion of the
population of Susiana, on the left bank of the Tigris in its lower
course, and for a long time their language was predominant there.
This remarkable country, situated on the common boundary of all the
various races of Western Asia, had these several people inextricably
mixed up together on its soil. There were at the same time Elamites
of Semitic race, Susianans proper, and Arphasaeans of the Turanian
family, Uxians, a branch of the Arians, and Cossseans, descendants of
Ham of the Cushite branch, each preserving their distinct nationality,
and living side by side with each other, as do now the various races of
Hungary.
The Turanians of Chaldasa formed the last link of the chain, and
were connected with those of Susiana.
The whence all the Turanian people had spread
primitive centre,
into the world, was towards the east of Lake Aral. There, from very
remote antiquity, they had possessed a peculiar civilisation characterised
by gross Sabeism, peculiarly materialistic tendencies, and complete
want of moral elevation but at the same time an extraordinary deve-
;
lopment in some branches of knowledge, great progress in material

culture in some respects, whilst in others they remained in an entirely
rudimentary state. This strange and incomplete civilisation exercised
over great part of Asia an absolute preponderance, lasting, according
to the historian Justin, 1 500 years. * All the Turanians of Asia carried
* ii- 3-
344 ANCIENT IITSTORY OF THE EAST.
with them into the countries they colonised those ot
this civilisation ;
Europe, any rate the branch now represented by the Esthonians

at
seem to have separated from the main stock before making any ad-
vances in civilisation. This peculiar culture was introduced Ijy the
Shumir on the banks of the Tigris, and by the Dravidians into India.
This also it was that the hundred families carried into the midst of the
Miao-Tseu, and other indigenous people of the Celestial Empire, and
thus it became the starting point for the development of the civilisation
of China, so different from that of all other nations of the world.

Moreover, the Turanian nations, who, as we have said, maintained
themselves between the Arian and Semitic races in Media, Susiana, and
Chaldrea, did not all belong to the same branch of the Turanian race.
We have proof of this in the difference of their idioms. The Median
language has left numerous remains its essential characteristics have
;
been established by the researches of Westergaard, de Saulcy, and

Norris, and it is decidedly a Turkish language. That of the
Turanian tribes of Chaldsea, the key to which has been furnished by
the labours of M. Oppert, and elsewhere designated by us as " Chal-
daean," presents, on the contrary, the closest analogies with the idioms
of the Uralo-finnish group. Many of the words, and the greater part
of grammatical forms, particularly resemble the Finlandish. As for
its
the Susianian, although very imperfectly known, the little we do know

seems to bear a likeness to both the Uralo-finnish and the Dravidian
group. We may be allowed to suppose that it will one day furnish the
connecting link, so long sought by scholars, between these two groups
of languages, the original parentage of which is certain. It is in perfect
agreement with the geographical situation of the Susianans, for they
must originally have been Dravidians, and appear to have extended
over Ariana and Persia, and were in later times driven out by the
Arians of these countries, as they were from the basins of the Indus and
Ganges, ending by being pushed into the peninsula of Hindostan, far
from any other Turanian people.
4. Among the Shumir and Accad it is easy to distinguish between the
Turanians and Cushites. Their respective geographical position alone
is enough The Accad were the most southern ; they
to determine this.
bordered on the sea, and continued the chain of Cushite peoples, who
extended from the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb to Malabar, occupying the
whole shore of the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. They were the
first to attempt navigation on these waters in the dawn of the historical
period. The Shumir, on the contrary, were from their northern position
connected with the Turanians, and occupied a continuation of their
territory. But though these two nations were the most important in
Chaldsea and Babylonia, and formed the greatest part of the population
there, they were not the only ones; other races mixed with them by
SEMITIC RACES. 345
slow degrees almost everywhere, without havhig a distinct and well-

defined locality.
In that country there were large numbers of Semites, both nomadic
and settled. There were first the Assyrians, the great bulk of whom
went out of the land of Shinar, as recorded by the author of the Book
of Genesis, leaving some of their number, however, who mixed with
the Shumir and Accad. There were also the Tarechites, or descendants
of Heber and Terali, who lived in the neighbourhood of the city of Ur,
and did not (juil it to make an establishment in Haran (where the call
of Abraham took place) until after the birth of that patriarch; and lastly,
a large number of families of the race of Aram, who inhabited the north-
west of Mesopotamia between the Chaboras and Euphrates, and had
firmly established themselves at an early period at Babylon and the dis-
trict dependent on that city ; language became the vulgar tongue

their
there in common with the Assyrians, from the ninth or tenth century
before the Christian Era. Some expressions in the most ancient royal
titles admit of the explanation that the population of Chaldjea
seem to
contained four elements of different origin, like those whom we have
shown have existed in Susiana. We must therefore allow that,
to
at any rate at one period, some Arian tribes were there, although we
are unable to fix the exact limits of their habitation. We shall, more-
over, see that at one time the Arians had a military predominance in
the primitive history of Babylonia.
5. This mixture of the genius and peculiar institutions of these
differing people, united on one territory, gave rise to the great Baby-
lonian and Chaldcean civilisation, which played so considerable a part
in Western Asia, and extended its influence over the whole of that
country. The two elements, Cushite and Turanian, had the pre-
ponderance, but it is very difficult to decide, in this mixed race, already
completely formed when we first became acquainted with it, what
belongs to the Shumir, and what to the Accad. There are reasons,
however, to believe that religion, astronomy, and industrial culture
were brought by the Cushites. This is indicated by the Babylonian
tradition, placing the origin of its religious faith on the banks of the
Persian Gulf, whence the Fish-god, Oannes, issued to teach men the
precepts of religion.
As to the Turanians, they brought to Babylon and Assyria that
singular system of writing called cuneiform, each character being
formed of a number of marks having the form of a wedge or nail. The
valuable researches of M. Oppert have incontestably established this fact.
It is only within the last few years that cuneiform writing has been de-
ciphered, and we shall in a future chapter explain its principles in
detail. The characters represent ideas either ideographically or syllabi-
cally, and very often, according to the position in which they are placed
they are even cajjablc of being employed in both ways. Originally
—
they presented a rude picture or symbolical image subsequently much
modified —
of the object or of the abstract idea expressed by or con-
tained in the syllable constituting their phonetic value, not in the
Assyrian language, but in the idiom of the Turanians of Chaldrea.
Thus the word for " God " in the Assyrian language is ////, l)ut the
character rc]iresenting it ideographically had originally the form of
a and was pronounced an when employed as a syllabic sign,
star,
because, in the Chaldrean language the word for God was Aiinap,
Again, the character employed for " ear" is found in other cases with
the pronunciation//, because the Turanians of Chaldsea expressed that
idea by the word Pil (Magyar Fill). The same sign represents " fish,"
and also the syllable ha, because fish was called hal (Finlandish Hal).
Another combined the meaning of "two" and the sound o{ kas,
because in Turanian /-aj meant "two" (Magyar A>/). A third was
employed both to mean " nose," and for the sound ar, because, always
in the same idiom, "nose" was called ar (Magyar Orr). These
examples will suffice, but they might be indefinitely multiplied.
Cuneiform writing is then originally Turanian, and was the principal
contribution of the Shumir to the Babylonian civilisation. Thus this
people are often designated ideographically by a group composed of
two characters, meaning " language " and " arrow," evidently
designating them as the people whose language was written in arrow-
headed or cuneiform characters. Did the Shumir or Chaldoean
Turanians invent this system of writing on the banks of the lower
Tigris, or was it already formed before their final immigration ? I
would be rash perhaps to attempt in the present state of knowledge to
give a decidedly affirmative answer to this question. But whoever
studies the symbols forming the cuneiform writing, and attempts to
trace them back to the objects they originally represented, will find that
the nature of these objects apparently points, as the place where that
system of writing was invented, to a region very different from Chaldasa,
a more northern region, whose fauna and flora were markedly different,
where, for example, neither the lion nor any other large feline
camivora were known, and where there were no palm trees.
6. Are we to suppose that a branch of the Shumir, or Turanians of
the north of Chaldsea, was the dominant tribe there from the beginning,
or that the Chaldteans proper were another Turanian nation, whose
establishment is still surrounded by the greatest obscurity? What is
certain is, that the Chaldasans imposed themselves equally on the two
great constitutional elements of the population of the country, no doubt
by conquest, and that they remained there as a superior and learned
caste, having both sacerdotal and military supremacy. They belonged
neither to the race of Shem, like the Assyrians, nor to the race of
—
THE CHALDEANS. 347
Ham, like the Accad, or Cushites of the Lower Euphrates but they ;
were ah-eady estahUshed in the midst of the Accad in the time of

Abraham, when the great city of Ur was already called " Ur of tiie
Chaldees," and even earlier, when the Semitic trilie, whence the
Hebrews sprung, was designated by the name Arphaxad, which, as we
have already said,* signifies " border of the Chaldseans." Their original
country seems to have l:ieen the mountains north-east of Mesojiotamia,
where the classical geographers place nations of the name of Chaldsei,
Carduchi, Gordisei, and where the Kurdish tribes still live.
The Chaldueans succeeded government

in establishing their political
and moral ascendancy in so decided a manner as to outlast all the revo-
lutions the country was to undergo. They had the talent of assimilating
themselves with the populations at the head of whom they had placed
themselves, and maintained their position as a dominant aristocracy.
They adopted its language and civilisation, amalgamating it with their
own, and thus preserved their own superior position. But while
adopting, for ordinary use and in their intercourse with the rest of the
population, the Semitic idiom of Nineveh and Babylon, they did not,
even down to the last days of Babylonian independence, give up the
use amongst themselves of their own peculiar language of the Uralo-
finnish family that Chaldsean language we have already mentioned as
;
apparently that of the original inventors of cuneiform writing, the

language of the Shumir. The laws regulating Babylonian society were
compiled in that language. There are in the British Museum some
fragments relative to the organisation of families in a double text,
Turanian-Chaldsean and Semitic- Assyrian. The comparative study of
thesetwo versions proves that the Turanian is the original and primitive
text, and that the Assyrian is a later translation, in which it is easy to
detect several solecisms.
Section IH.— Origin of the States of As.syria and

—
Chald/Ea NiMROD First Cushite Empire.
I. The various populations residing together on the soil of Baby-
lonia and must at first have lived in separation from each
ChaldiTca
other. There was certainly a primitive epoch of tribal existence, of
petty local kingdoms and some records of this state of existence have
;
been preserved in Babylonian traditions, as for instance that of

Sharyukin, king of the city of Agani, who appears in some texts as a
legendary hero and almost a demi-god. But true history in the Tigro-
Euphrates Basin commences only, as also does that of Egypt, with the
formation in Chaldsea and Babylonia of one united empire, including
* See page 60.

all its tribes —
under one sceptre an empire dating from such high an-
tiquity, that it seemed almost legendary to the author of the Book of
Genesis. In this state, the first regularly organised government in the

world, the preponderance and dominion among the various tribes Ije-
longed at first to the Ilamites of Cushite race. "And Cush," says the
Book "begat Nimrod; he began to
of Genesis, be a mighty one in the
earth. He was Lord wherefore it is said,
a mighty hunter before the ;
Even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the be-
ginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calnch,
in the land of Shinar. Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded
Nineveh and the streets of the city (margin), and Calah, and Resen,
between Nineveh and Calah; the same is a great city."
This invaluable passage in the inspired book furnishes us with facts
of the highest importance in the primitive history of Mesopotamia. We
see there, first, Asshur remained there a
that the Semites of the race of
long time mixed with the Cushites of Chaldaea, and did not leave it
until after the commencement of historical times, when they emigrated
to the north, undoubtedly to escape the Cushite dominion, formed a
new state distinct from the first, and founded the Assyrian cities. This
lengthened sojourn together explains why the Assyrians and Babylonians
had the same language and civilisation, in spite of the difference of
their origin.
The Book of Genesis also reveals to us the existence of a Tetrapolis,
or confederation of four cities, who ruled over the rest of the land that
had been the empire of Nimrod. These four cities were, ist, Babylon ;
— 2nd, Erech, the Orchoe of the classical geographers, the Warka of

our days, situated on the left bank of the Euphrates, forty leagues south
of Babylon; its religious name was "the city of the moon"; 3rd, —
Accad, the ancient centre of the Accad tribes, called also Nipur and
"the city of the Lord of the world "; its site was exactly in the centre
of Chaldêa proper, on the banks of the famous Royal Canal; —4th,
Calneh, "the dwelling of Oannes," also called Ur,* a Chaldsean name,
meaning "the city" far exce/kn re, and also designated by the religious
names of "the city of the God who watches over the moon," and
" the city of the house of the world " its ruins are now called Mugheir,
;
and are near the first confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, at some
distance from the river and on its right bank. They all four seem
to have simultaneously held the rank of capitals during the entire time
of the existence of the first Chaldean Empire, and the kings resided
alternately in each. This Tetrapolis, moreover, had a sacred as well as
a political character ; the four cities were, according to Chaldsean ideas,
a representation on earth of the four regions of heaven, or the four
* See note, page 80.

NIMROD. 349
cardinal points, just as in Egypt its two divisions, Upper and Lower,
represented the two hemispheres of the world. Thence arose the term,
"king of the four regions," an essential part of the royal title of the
ancient kings of Chaldrea, and only in later times abandoned by the
Assyrian kings. Instead of four regions, four languages are sometimes
understood ; seems to indicate that there was also a connection
and this
between the number of cities of the Tetrapolis and the constituent
elements of the population of the country.
2. The foundation of the Cushite state of the lower Euphrates was
almost coincident with that of the other branch of the sons of Ham in
Egypt, and with the appearance of the first signs of civilisation on the
banks of the Nile. The fragments of Berosus mention this first
dynasty, said to have consisted of eighty-six kings (and, therefore,
to have existed about fifteen centuries), and the founder is called
Evechous. In the last syllable of this name it seems that we may
recognise that of Cush. Possibly this name, preserved by Berosus, may
be a traditional surname of the chief of the Hamite dynasty, and may
have meant something like son of Cush* just as the name given in the
Book of Genesis to that personage, Nimrod, is a Semitic word, meaning
" Rebel." Evechous, according to Berosus, had for his successor
Chomasbelus the original form of this name Shamash bel, " servant
;
of Bel," seems to admit of easy restoration.

3. We know nothing from literary sources, either sacred or profane,
of the history of the kings who succeeded Nimrod, or of the early times
of Assyria. We may perhaps dimly perceive through the medium of
the more or less fabulous traditions preserved by Berosus, that
Chaldsea and Assyria had at first a separate existence. The Semitic
Assyrians occupied the sterile plains extending south of the mountains
of Armenia, between the Chaboras and the Tigris, as far as Media.
In this district, on the left bank of the river, they founded Nineveh.
Material civilisation with all its refinements seems to have been more
slowly developed among them than in Chaldasa ; inhabiting a country
and a climate less enervating, they remained always less
less fertile,
polished, but at the same time more manly and warlike than their
southern neighbours. All appearances seem to indicate that the
Assyrians did not at first form one united empire, a great monarchy,
but merely a confederation of tribes with essentially military chiefs.
Their principal cities —Nineveh, Resen, Calah, Asshur or Ellasar,+ and
* May not Evechous be the Assyrian Avil Kush, " man of Kush "?
t Sir H. Rawlinson has identified the ruins of Senkereh in Southern
Chaldaea, called in the cuneiform inscriptions Larrak or Larsa, with the
Biblical Ellasar (Gen xiv. i). The author's reason for the identification
in the text is, that the name of the city is written in the inscriptions
with ideographic characters, meaning "City of Asshur," and the
— ;

Singar, for the most part on the east of the Tigris, certainly had each
of them, in primitive times, a separate king.
The Ilamites of T>abylon, on the other hand, spread themselves over
the plains of Chalda;a as far as the Persian Gulf
fertile Their
supremacy was marked by progress in industrial arts and in science,
united with those superstitions and mythological ideas and traditions
to be met with wherever the Cushites have established themselves ;
their contribution to the history of the development of humanity :
by agriculture, mining of both common and precious metals, and com-

merce by land and sea. The population increased rapidly on that fertile
soil cities were multiplied, arts and sciences began to be developed
;
astronomy took its rise under that clear sky while at the same time on
;
the ruins of the ancient primitive faith, revealed to the ancestors of

the human race, arose a system of worship of the sun and other
heavenly bodies, the foundation of the religion of those lands. The
Assyrians had carried with them some part of this civilisation in their
emigration to the north. They continued to live under the direct and
almost exclusive influence of the Babylonians, who had preceded them
in the march of civilisation, and were their instructors in everything
that belonged to it.
Thus at a very early date, and undoubtedly long before the time
when the Chaldtean monarchs conquered Assyria by force of arms,
there was, in spite of the diversity of origin, but one nation of mixed
character, the Chaldseo-Assyrians, in the whole extent of the plains
watered by the Tigris and the Euphrates. From this time, however,
this great and numerous nation appears to us as already sometimes
divided into two empires. Nineveh and Babylon were not universally
subject to one sceptre. But an irresistible tendency to union always
appears from time amongst them, and most frequently the two are
this
united under the authority of one monarch. The chief changes in

operation during the long series of Chaldsea-Assyrian kings may be
referred to fluctuations in the seat of their power, which oscillated
between Babylonia and Assyrian. Transferred sometimes from the
south, where it had first arisen, to the north, and again from the
character meaning " city" certainly had the sound of ^/, and the group
must therefore have been pronounced Al AssJinr.
The identification of Ellasar with the northern city may perhaps be
supported by the text above quoted. The ruins at Senkereh were
certainly within the land of Shinar, and therefore would probably be
within the dominions of the king of Shinar. The northern Asshur
was far beyond the limits of that kingdom, and the centre of a dis-
trict, and head of a people, whose king was equal in rank and power
to the kings of Shinar and Elam, and to the great chief of the Nomad
tribes. Tr.
CHALDEAN DYNASTIES. 351
north to the south, the Mesopotamian empire was called according

to its position at the time, the Chaldaean, or the Assyrian empire.
But the religion, the customs, the language, and the boundaries of
these two alternately preponderating kingdoms remained always the
same in all essential points.
Section IV. Dynasties of the Chaldean Empire according

TO Berosus.
1. After a duration that we have no means of estimating, the
first Cushite, or Accad dynasty of Babylon was overturned by a foreign
invasion rather more than 2,500 years before our era. The invaders
were Arians of Japhetic race ; and this event appears to have coincided
with the great migration, when the Iranian people, sprung from Japhet,
leaving their original country on the banks of the 0.\us, directed
their course to the west, to seek new habitations in Media or Persia,
whilst another branch of the same great race made a descent on
India.
Berosus names the people who came thus into Mesopotamia, Medes,
that is, Iranians. After having destroyed the Cushite kings they
reigned in Babylon for 224 years. With this conquest he connects a
name, veiy celebrated in Eastern tradition, that of Zoroaster, chief of
the Bactrians, who was both conqueror and
legislator, and whose
doctrine, propagated by war, left so deep an impress in the countries
bordering on the Euphrates and Tigris, and particularly in Persia and
Media. That Zoroaster was ever at Babylon seems very improbable,
and doubtless the appearance of his name at that time in the
Chaldaean historical traditions merely proves that the Arian invaders
already possessed the dualistic form of religion that we shall speak of
in another book. However, although the ancient Persian tradition
informs us that Zoroaster himself taught his religion in Bactria, where
was the centre of that faith previous to the migration of the Iranians
towards Persia, it tells us nothing positive either as to the original
country of Zoroaster himself, nor especially as to the precise period
when he lived.
But the domination of the Arians at Babylon and in Mesopotamia
2.
was soon to be brought to a close their supremacy could never be esta-

;
blished otherwise than temporarily in Asia on this side Mount Zagros

it was brought to a final close in Chaldfea, and suspended for some
centuries in Media, by the defeat of the Arians, over whom the

Turanians, antagonistic from time immemorial, regained the upper
hand.
After the Median or Arian, Berosus records a new dynasty as having
supplanted it. Unfortunately such fragments as have come down to us
mention neither tlie duration nor the origin of this royal family of
eleven kings. Scholars, as for example Sir H. Rawlinson and M.
Oppert, are agreed in admitting that it must have reigned rather more
than two centuries, and have occupied the throne from about the year
2300 to the year 2100 before the Christian era. As to the native
country of these kings, the proofs of their decisive valour show that
they were Elamite or Susianian, and had gained the country by
conquest. It is at this period that we find from the Bible that Che-
dorlaomer, king of Elam, was master of the whole Tigro-Euphrates
basin. He had as vassals Amraphel, king of Shinar, or Chaldcea,
Arioch, king of Ellasar, the chief of the Assyrian cities of that time,
and Thargal, king of nations, " and with them made an expedition
'
'
towards the west, temporarily subjected the whole of Syria, even as far
as the frontier of Egypt, plundered the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah,
led Lot away captive, and was at last defeated by Abraham.
The name of Chedorlaomer unquestionably belongs to the language
of the Susianian Turanians, and is composed of elements found in
names of a later period in the native inscriptions of the country. With
regard to the name "king o. nations," the Hebrew text has it written
Tidal, and the Greek version of the LXX., Thargal; this last form
seems undoubtedly preferable, as it agi'ees with the form Turgal,
meaning in one of the oldest Turanian idioms found in the cuneiform
inscriptions (the Chaldeean) "great chief" The "nations" over
whom this personage ruled were probably nomadic tribes of Scythians,
or Turanians.
Such are the arguments which have hitherto sufficed to prove that
the third dynasty of Berosus was Elamite or Susianian. But the fact
is now proved by the direct testimony of cuneiform texts, con-
clearly
taining the name of the founder of this dynasty and the approximate
date of his reign. Asshur-bani-pal, the last of the Assyrian conquerors,
mentions, in two inscriptions, that he took Susa 1635 years after
Kedornakhunta, king of Elam, had conquered Babylonia. He found
in that city the statues of the gods taken from Erech by Kedornakhunta,
and replaced them in their original position. It was in the year 660 B.C.
that Asshur-bani-pal took Susa. The date, therefore, of the conquest
of Babylon by Kedornakhunta, and the establishment of the Elamite
dynasty in Chaldoea, must have been 2295 B.C.
3. A new dynasty follows this in the lists of Berosus. The dates of
this historian, apparently reliable, and based upon a regular and correct
chronology, place its accession in the year 2017 B.C. This dynasty is
specified as Chaldsean, and Berosus says thatreigned 458 years, and

it
consisted of forty-nine kings; it governed down to the time of the

conquest of Mesopotamia by the Pharaohs of the eighteenth dynasty.
—
NAMES IN THE INSCRIPTIONS. 353
The fratênts preserved by the Byzantine chronologers do not, how-

ever, contain one single name of the kings registered by the historian
Berosus in this part of his canon.
Section V. Royal Names supplied by the Inscriptions.

1. The ruins of Chaldsea have as yet been but very imperfectly
explored. It has not been practicable to carry out continuous excava-
tions on a large scale ; but the results of the labours of Mr. Loftus and
Colonel Taylor lead us to the conclusion that, when a complete and
careful investigation of the ruins of the ancient cities on the Lower
Euphrates can be made, they will yield treasures as valuable as those of
Egypt. The ruins undoubtedly contain an immense number of remains,
some of enormous size, and some belonging perhaps to the age of the
primitive Chaldsean Empire.
The inscriptions known in Europe, generally stamped on bricks,
have at present supplied us with about fifty names of the kings of that
empire. These do not form a continuous series, but seem to be dis-
persed over a very long series of ages. The Palseographical variations

observed in the mode of writing in these inscriptions lead us to attribute
them to several different periods, separated by very long intervals of
time. In general, the names we know may be arranged in groups of

two or three, leaving between them enormously long intervals, reserved
for future discoverers to fill up.
In this position of things it is impossible to classify the royal names
recovered from the ruins of Ur, Erech, Larsam (now Senkereh), the
Larancha of Berosus, of Nipur (now Niffer), and of Sippara, the
Heliopolis of the Greek geographers (now Sufeira), or to assign them
their true place in the four dynasties mentioned by Berosus. We are,
however, even now in a position to determine to some extent the relative
antiquity of these kings, and to establish some landmarks in monu-
mental history concordant with the facts collected by the Chaldasan
priest for the information of the Greeks of the Seleucidan era.
2. The most ancient monarch of Chaldsea mentioned in the inscrip-
tions we possessUr-Hammu, whose name signifies "light of the

is
sun." He was known to classical antiquity, and considered so com-

pletely legendary, that Ovid related the mythological story of Clytie
and Leucothea as having occurred in his family.* He was said to be
the seventh king of the empire. His inscriptions present the most
* " Rexit Achacmenias urbes pater Orchamus isque,

Septimus a prisci numeratur origine Beli."
Metaph. iv. 212, 213.
A A
ancient type of cunciroiin writing at present known, tlie types most
nearly approaching the original hieroglyphical figures. His monuments
have all the characteristics of very remote antiquity, an antiquity un-
surpassed by the monuments of the third or fourth Egyjjtian dynasty.
He was the builder of the great pyramid at Ur, or Calneh,* where, as
we have seen, as well as at Borsippa, was laid the scene of the events
connected with the " Tower of Tongues. "t some of his buildings
Lastly,
had already fallen into ruin by the time of the Elamite dynasty, and
one of its kings, Burnaburyash I., restored those that he hatl Ijuilt in
honour of the sun at Larsam. These facts enable us with little doubt
to place Ur-Hammu at the very commencement of the empire in the —
Cushite, or Accad dynasty of Nimrod, and rather towards its commence-
ment than its end.
Recent discoveries withdraw this king from the realms of fable, and
place him in the full light of historical truth. He was the great builder
among all the kings of the old Chaldcean empire; he built at Ur, in
addition to the great pyramidical temple dedicated to Sin, the Moon-god,
the fortified walls of the city; in Nipur, a temple to the Air-goddess,
and another to Bilit-Taauth, mother of the gods in Erech, a second
;
temple to Rilit and lastly, at Sippara and at Larsam, monumental

;
sanctuaries in honour of the sun. His name, stamped on building-

bricks, has been found in the ruins of all the cities of Lower Chaldasa;
but there is no trace of his reign to the north of Babylon. Ilgi, son of
Ur-Hammu, completed the temple of Sin at Ur.

At a short interval after these kings must be placed Shagaraktiyash,
who was considered a very ancient monarch by the Elamite king
Kurigalzu I. He it was who built at Sippara the largest temple of
that sacred city, described at length by Berosus, on the site where it was
said that the mythical King Xisuthrus had, at the time of the deluge,
buried the tables containing the story of the early days of mankind,
and the revelation of the mysteries of the cosmogony. An alabaster
vase bearing the name of his son, Naram-Sin (he who exalts Sin, the
Moon-god), presents a type of writing almost as archaic as that of the
inscriptions of Ur-Hammu. A king who may dispute the palm of
antiquity with Naram-Sin and his father is Sin-Said (Sin is his lord),
vifho executed considerable works at Erech. The close analogy in the
formation of their names seems to indicate that a large group of princes,
evidently, however, many generations later, belonged to the same royal
family. These all, as the chief element in their names, have the name
of the god Sin, the great god of the city of Ur, whose worship seems
to have been peculiar to the Cushite race, for they carried the observ-
ance with them wherever they went, whilst Sin played only a secondary
* See note, p. 80. + See page 22.

MEDIAN INVASION. 355
part in the Pantheon of later times in Chaldsea.These were Irshu-

Sin, Rim-Sin, Amar-vSin, Sin-Inun, Sin-baladan, who have all left
monumental remains at Ur.
We may remark that all the names we have mentioned, with the ex-
ception of that of Shatâraktiyash, are derived from the Assyrian
language, and in that tongue are easily translated. The royal names
we meet with in the later days of the existence of the empire have an
entirely different character. Now we have already attempted to show
that this idiom, of the family improperly called Semitic, was the national
language of the Cushites of the monarchy of Nimrod.
Under the primitive kings whom we have named, the birthplace of
the political life of the empire, its focus and centre, appears to have
been in the south of Chaldsea, near the Persian Gulf, in the very heart
of the exclusively Cushite, or Accad country. The great city, the
political capitalwhere the sovereigns usually resided, and which each of
them endeavoured to embellish with new buildings, was Ur. Babylon
was therefore evidently under the supremacy of Ur in matters of go-
vernment, but it was nevertheless the sacred city, the learned city, the
religious metropolis. Just as the four cities of the Tetrapolis we have
already mentioned, took the lead of all others in the country, so Ur was
supreme over the other three cities of the Tetrapolis.
2. The invasion of the Arian Medes has left but few monuments;
like the Canaanitish Shepherds in Egypt, they were mere barbarians

compared with the civilised Chaldeans. The period of their rule will
therefore probably always remain a gap in the monumental series. At
any rate in the inscriptions as yet discovered, no one royal name is
mentioned of an Arian character, such as those ot the princes of the
Median dynasty must have been. But this is not the case with the
Elamite or Susianian dynasty that overthrew them.
We have no inscription of Chedorlaomer, nor of Kedoniakhunta,
but we have some
of a king, proved by the analogy of his name derived
from the Susianian language to have belonged to the same family,
Kedormabug. Pie calls himself, in an inscription at Ur, " Conqueror
of the West "; and in another text his son says of him, "My father en-
larged the empire of the city of Ur." He was therefore a conqueror
like Chedorlaomer, whose warlike example he followed. Kedormabug
had a son who succeeded him on the throne, and who bore the purely
Assyrian name of Zikar-Sin (servant of Sin) as the dynasty had
;
become nationalised and had adopted the language of the country.

Two kings with Susianian names, Burnaburyash I. and his son,
Kurigalzu I., both of them great builders, must undoubtedly be assigned
to the same royal family. But they seem to have been more ancient
still; anterior even to Chedorlaomer, and to the establishment of the
sovereignty of the Elamite dynasty in Assyria. In fact, Kurigalzu,
3S6 ANCIENT IITSTORY OF TIIF. EAST.
wishing to cover the northern frontier of Chaklrea on the side of the
Assyrians, built tliere an important fortress which, fifteen ccntiuics after,
under Sargon (Sliaryukin), was considered tlie key of tlie country; it
was calkd Dur-Kurigalzu, "The Castle of Kurigalzu," and its large
ruins still exist at Akkerkuf, west of Bagdad.
3. We now come to kings whose date we are able to fix. Ishmi-
Dagan (Dagon hears him) and his sons Gungun and Shamshi-Bin, who
succeeded him on the throne. Under these princes the Chalda;an
empire included all Assyria, and the limits of the extended empire of the
Elamite dynasty were maintained.
Their inscriptions have been found at Ur, where the royal residence
was still fixed, but at the same time the temples of Oannes at EUasar
(now Kileh Sherghat), on the Upper Tigris in Assyria, had been built
by Ishmi-Dagan, who thus proved himself sovereign of that country.
Tiglath Pileser I. (Tuklat Pal-ashar) gives us this information in the
official records of his reign, stating that he rebuilt this temple 701 years
after its first foundation. Tiglath Pileser I., as we shall see, reigned in
the year lioo B.C.; the chronological fact furnished by this inscription
therefore clearly indicated about the year 1800 B.C. for the reign of
Ishmi-Dagan. This king may therefore with certainty be assigned to
the dynasty called by Berosus Chaldsean. During his reign the ancient
empire attained the height of its greatness, in consequence of the union
of Assyria to Chaldtea; and this is the very time when Manetho records
that Set-aa-pehti-Noubti, the first king of the regular Shepherd dynasty,
was under apprehensions of danger from the increase of the Chaldsean
empire, and fortified Avaris to avert a possible attack from the nations
on the banks of the Euphrates.
At this time both the power and the prosperity of the first Chaldsean
empire, then including all Mesopotamia, reached their culminating
point. At least five reigns after Ishmi-Dagan must be placed Hammu-
rabi, who, of all the kings of this ancient empire, is the best known
from the labour bestowed on his inscriptions by a French Assyriologist,
M. Menant. Hammurabi was a powerful king who erected numerous
buildings in various parts of the country, especially in Chaldaja and in
Irak. He appears to have resided more often at Babylon than at Ur.
The chief work of his reign, at once the greatest and the most bene-
ficial, was the famous Royal Canal of Babylon, the principal artery and
centre of the system of irrigation of Upper Chaldcea, repaired by

Nebuchadnezzar in later times, and considered by Herodotus as one of
the wonders of Babylon. This canal was at first known by the name of
its constructor. "I have caused," says this king in an inscription, "to
be dug the Nahar-Hammurabi (canal of Hammurabi), a benediction for
the men of Babylonia. ... I have directed the waters of its branches
over the desert plains; I have caused them to run in the dry channels
—
EARLY CHALDyEAN KINGS. 357
and thus given unfailing waters to the people. ... 1 have dis-
tributed the inhabitants of the land of the Shumir and Accad among
distant cities. I have changed desert plains into well-watered lands.
I have given them fertility and abundance, and made them the abode of
happiness." The inscription from which we quote these passages is the
most ancient text in our possession, and written phonetically in the
Assyrian language, like all the later inscriptions of the kings of Assyria
and Babylon.
The monumental inscriptions of more ancient kings, and even part
of those of Hammurabi himself, are exclusively written in ideographic
characters, and the few grammatical forms written phonetically that are
found in them prove that they were intended to be read in the Tura-
nian Chaldsean, as the others were in the Semitic Assyrian; this
difference of style distinguishing them from texts of later date renders
the ancient inscriptions very difficult to interpret.
Hammurabi had succeeded to a queen, the only female sovereign

known among the various empires of the Euphrates Basin. This fact is
ascertained from a fragment of the royal list in cuneiform writing inscribed

on a tablet of baked now in the British Museum. It records after
clay,
Hammurabi names of kings, of whose history we know nothing;
thirteen
they were all Chaldrean in the most restricted sense of the word — that
is, Turanians — thus confirming the statements of Berosus as to the
origin of the dynasty; some of the names much resemble those of a
later date found in the inscriptions of Susiana; a fact that need not
excite surprise, as the Chaldasans, properly so called, and the dominant
race in Susiana, were equally of Turanian origin. The tablet contains a
translation of these names into the Assyrian language. Unfortunately
it is very much mutilated. The series of kings, successors to Hammu-
by this " London list " must bring us down to nearly the
rabi, furnished
close of the Chaldsean dynasty, ending according to Berosus about
1559 B.C.
Section VI. Monuments of the Primitive Chaldean

Empire.
I. The first Chaldeean empire has left very many monumental
remains of very large size in the most southern part of the Tigro-
Euphrates Basin. The
ruins of Ur, Erech, Sippara, Nipur, and
Larsam belong most part to this remote period. The kings of
for the
the later Babylonian empire, Nebuchadnezzar [Nabu-kudur-ussur] and
his successors have merely repaired the temples and the walls of these
cities, and were not the original builders.
Stone is entirely wanting in the alluvial plains of Chaldica; it could

3S8 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
only he obtained fi\)m a great distance, and at a great expense. Tlius
all tiie buildings of the kings of the first empire, like the Tower of
Babel, and like those of Babylon in all ages, M'ere constructed exclu-
sively of bricks. On each of these bricks is stamped the name of the
king who erected the building, and the greater part of the inscriptions
of the early Chakhiean kings in our possession are of this kind. In
is of merely sun-dried bricks, with
general the interior of these edifices
here and there layers of reed matting cemented with bitumen, to give
greater cohesion; this mode of construction is described by Herodotus*
in speaking of the walls of Babylon. Sometimes also courses of baked
bricks are alternated, to give greater .stability to the work. The body
of masonry, composed of sun-dried bricks, is almost invariably cased
with burnt brick, to protect it from the action of rain and to prevent
disintegration.
2. The sacred edifices of tliis period are all of the same type; a
pyramid Ijuilt in stages, a series of square teiTaces one above the other,
each terrace smaller than the one beneath it, so that while the base of a
building occupied a large upper story was very small.
site, its
This is ho\V the Tower of Babel had Ijeen built; and also the most
ancient of the Pyramids of Egypt, that of Sakkarah for instance. This
mode of construction for sacred edifices was connected with the
essentially astronomical character of the original form of the religion of
the Chaldasans. They thus thought to approach nearer to the heavenly
bodies, the objects of public worship and the temples were really ob-
;
servatories for watching their motions. On the upper platform was

built a small chapel or square chamber, richly ornamented, containing
the image of the deity of the temple. The casing of each terrace was
of bricks, differing in dimensions and colour from the rest. Sometimes,
as in the great temple at Ur, the lower stage that supported the weight
of all the others, and therefore required great solidity, was strengthened
by buttresses built of burnt bricks and arranged in a very scientific
manner.
Constnicted of such materials, so liable to disintegration, the palaces
and houses of the primitive epoch in Chaldsea have left nothing on their
sites but shapeless masses of ruins, where we are unable to make out
the original plan of the building. The results of the excavations of
Colonel Taylor enable us, however, to state that the halls were long and
narrow, little better than mere passages, for it was impossible to put any
great weight on vaults built of earth or sun-dried bricks. The inside of
the walls was plastered with a thick coat of mortar; and in this were
fixed cones of coloured terra-cotta, with the base outwards, arranged so
as to produce patterns of lozenges, chevrons, or squares. At short
* Her. i. 170.
CHALD^.AN MANUFACTURES. 359
distances were semicircular projections in the walls, like half-detached

pillars, but without bases, and probably also without capitals.
Tombs of the same age have been found in great number at Ur, each
consisting of a small chamber 7 feet long, 35 feet wide and 5 feet high,
built of burnt bricks. In these there has been observed an attempt at
a pointed arch, formed by courses of bricks overlapping each other, a
system of construction that has been met with in Egypt and in the
Pelasgic buildings in Greece.
3. The pottery discovered in these tombs is in general rude, and for
the most part hand-made, without the assistance of a wheel. This
useful implement was, however, then already known, for some vases of
better workmanship have been found bearing traces of its use.
The utensils found in the tombs prove that the Chaldasans from the
time of their earliest kings knew the art of working metals, gold,
bronze, lead, and even iron and this knowledge they owed to the
;
Cushile element of the population. But metals, though known and

easily worked, were nevertheless too scarce to be in general use, and
implements of chipped and polished flint, knives, arrow heads, axes,
and hammers were still employed. The most common metal was
bronze, and all metal implements and utensils were made of it. Iron
was still so rare as to be regarded as one of the precious metals, and
was used not for tools, but for making bracelets and other rude orna-
ments.
4. With regard to the plastic arts, properly so called, having for
their object the imitation of living nature, and particularly of the
human figure, we have no sculpture and no painting either Babylonian
or Chaklrean of early date, excepting a small bronze figure of a goddess
bearing the legend of Kedormabug, now in the Museum of the Louvre,
and a fragment of a statuette of alabaster in the British Museum,
representing the god Nebo. But a number of those small engraved
cylinders of hard stone that were used as seals, cylinders of Babylonian
manufacture, with archaic inscriptions in cuneiform characters, must
belong to the time of the Chald?ean empire. This fact is certain, at
any rate with regard to two the first, one that was in the possession of
:
Sir R. Ker Porter, and is engraved in his "Travels,"* (this was the
seal of King Ur-Hammu) ; the second, the cylinder of his son Ilgi, now
one of the most valued treasures of the British Museum. In these, art
is the same as in the engraved Babylonian stones of much later days,
down to the time of Nebuchadnezzar and the Persian dominion, and is

at least as far advanced.
5. We have already said that Astronomy had risen to the rank of a
real science among the people of Chaldâ from the most remote times,
* Vol. ii. pi. 79.

—

and llial its liisl ailvancc dated hack to the almost legendary epoch of
Nimrod. In the most ancient times that the monuments pennit us to
investigate, astronomy was more advanced in Babylon and Chaldrea
than ever was in Egypt.
it The utmost progress that it was possible to
make in this science with the naked eye, unaided by optical instruments,
was made by the Chalda;ans. They had even discovered the annual
displacement of the equinoctial point on the ecliptic, a discovery usually
attributed to the Greek astronomer, Hipparcus. But for want of correct
instruments there was an error in their calculation, as, moreover, there
was in that of Hipparcus. They had assigned it an annual precession
of thirty seconds, whilst in reality it is fifty. On this basis they cal-
culated their great astronomical period of 43,200 solar years, repre-
senting, according to their calculation, the total period of the precession
of the ecpiinoxes (the tiûe period being 26,000 years); and the divisions
of this period, called Sar, 3,600, Ner, 600, and Soss, 60, were the
foundation of all their chronological computations.
The science of Arithmetic, indispensable to all real astronomy, was
also very faradvanced among this people. We might have inferred this
from the establishment of these periods, but we have further and
positive proof in a clay tablet discovered in the ruins of Lar.sam, and
now preserved in the British Museum, bearing a list of the squares of
fractional numbers, calculated with perfect correctness from g'p to gg.
Section VII. Period of Egyptian Preponderance and of

THE Arab Kings.
I. We have already shown from about the twenty-second to
that,
the eighteenth centuiy before the Christian era, Ur was the capital of
the Chalds;an empire, then embracing the whole of Mesopotamia, and
comprising the Assyrians among its subjects. This widely- extended
power did not last more than three or four centuries, and Assyria
escaped from the dominion of Chaldaea to return to its former state of
independence. For the 400 succeeding years the history of Mesopo-
tamia is written on the monuments of Egypt.
When, in the second half of the seventeenth century, Thothmes I.,
the conqueror of Syria, crossed the Euphrates at Carchemish, and, first
of all the Pharaohs, poured his legions into Mesopotamia, there no longer
existed one great empire embracing the whole basin of the two great
Asiatic rivers. Assyria, in the records of the Egyptian campaigns, is
represented as having a political existence of its own apart from that of
Babylon, and does not even form a kingdom, in the proper sense of the
word, as the Rotennu (the Egyptian name for the Assyrians) were then
merely a confederation of petty states, governed by princes on an
EGYPTIAN INVASION. 361
equality with each other, none of whom exercised suzerainty over the
others and this confederation extended its influence over Osrhoene, or
;
Aramaean Mesopotamia, as well as over the plains extending from the

Euphrates to Anti-Lebanon. The Syrian princes of these last coun-
tries made part of the league, and held in it the same rank as the
Assyrian chiefs. The successors, therefore, of powerful monarchs, such
as Ishmi-Dagan and Hammurabi, were no more than simple "kings of
Babel," and equals of the kings of Nineveh, Asshur (Ellasar), and
Singar.
2. Thothmes I. had made only a flying expedition across the
Euphrates, and had not attempted in earnest to establish his supremacy
there. Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, during the course
of the great wars, the history of which we have related as given in the
hieroglyphic inscriptions, Thothmes III. subjected all Mesopotamia,
from Nineveh to Babylon, and placed garrisons in all the places of
strength to ensure the submission of the country. We have already
explained in what manner he organised the internal administration
of the Asiatic countries subbdued by his arms.* The Pharaohs did
not reduce them to the position of provinces governed directly by
Egyptian rulers ; they everywhere protected the petty local sovereigns,
but reduced them to the position of vassals, compelling them to pay
tribute and to furnish contingents of troops ; these local princes were
obliged to receive their investiture from the king of Egypt and to send
their sons to the court of Thebes, to receive there an Egyptian educa-
tion, and to remain as hostages until the time arrived for their being
installed on the throne. Of course, Pharaoh, as suzerain, reserved to
himself the right of dethroning, and replacing by another, any vassal
prince who revolted or gave cause for suspecting his fidelity. This
was exactly the method employed in later times by the Romans in
dealing with allied kingdoms.
3. It is evident that the campaigns of
Thothmes III. were the
means of overturning the dominion of the Chaldaean dynasty. The
year 1559 B.C., the date assigned by Berosus for the end of this dynasty,
agrees exactly with his reign. We may even regard the year 1559 as
identical with the thirty-first year ofThothmes, the time, as we know
from the inscription on the walls of Karnak, when that king took
Babylon. Berosus says that the Chaldaean prinCes were succeeded by
nine Arab kings, who reigned 245 years; that is, from 1559 to 1314.
Many scholars have attempted to identify these Arab kings with the
Khitas of the Egyptian monuments but, however great may be the
;
authority of those who propound this, we are unable to admit the identi-
fication. In 1559 B.C. there was no mention of the Khitas, or Hittites,
See page 233.

362 ANCIENT TITSTORY OY THE EAST,
who had no weight in the affairs of Western Asia until more than a
century later. Moreover, the territory of the Khitas and the limits of
their power are perfectly defined by the Egyptian historical texts ;
thej'sometimes advanced a long way southward on the western bank of
the Euphrates, but they did not cross that river the Khitas are never
;
mentioned in Mesopotamia, the people there are always called Rotcnnu.

We consider the Arabian kings of Berosus merely as Semitic princes
installed at Babylon by the kings of Egypt, to represent them there in
the place of the Chaldfean dynasty. Their reign commenced, as we
have seen, simultaneously with the first establishment of Egyptian
supremacy at Babylon, and they remained in power as long as the sub-
stantial authority of Egypt extended east of the Euphrates during the
latter part of the eighteenth and the whole of the nineteenth dynasty;
and, finally, their power ended in 1314 B.C., that is, just when the
annals of Egypt record a general revolt of the Asiatic provinces, coin-
cident with the accession of the twentieth dynasty, a revolt that the
last Egyptian conqueror, Ramses III., successfully repressed in Syria
and northern Mesopotamia, but does not seem to have ventured to
follow up his success as far as Babylon.
We must remark, however, that the most recent Assyriological dis-
coveries do not permit us to suppose with Berosus that the Arabian
kings occupied the throne during the whole period of Egyptian supre-
—
macy the whole interval between 1559 and 13 14. Towards the
close of that period, and previous to 13 14 B.C., as we shall show
in the proper place, the Assyrian inscriptions mention some kings of
Babylon, whose names belong to the Chaldseo-Turanian language.
We must then admit that in the fifteenth century B.C., possibly in con-
sequence of the troubles in Egypt about the close of the eighteenth
dynasty, a Chaldjean royal family supplanted the Arabian dynasty on
the throne of Babylon, still, however, recognising Egyptian supremacy.
4. We have some doubts as to the correctness of the designation
"Arabian" for these kings, as that word had in classical antiquity
a very vague and extended meaning, and was not unfrequently applied
to all Semitic tribes. It seems more probable that the princes who
were put at the head of the Babylonian government by the Pharaohs
were of Canaanitish origin; and the book on " Nabathsean Agricul-
ture," written in Arabic in the tenth century, and containing, amongst a
great deal of utterly worthless matter, some valuable extracts from native
traditions, or rather from works written under the successors of
Alexander, and now lost, mentions at this very period of Babylonian
history, a dynasty of Canaanitish kings who, "after long combats, "had
overturned and supplanted the Chaldgean sovereigns.
The Byzantine chronologer, George Syncellus, mentions, we do not
know on what authority, the names of six kings attributed to this so-
ARABIAN DYNASTY. 363
called Arabian dynasty, and tlie purely Babylonian forms of these names
give rise to serious doubts as to the correctness of the statement. We
may remark that one of them Nabu (the Nabius of
nevertheless
Syncellus) has been found stamped on bricks at Erech and Babylon,
which seem to the learned M. Oppert to belong certainly to the time of
the Arabian kings of Berosus. The British Museum possesses a muti-
lated statue, in black basalt, of king Nabu, and the Louvre has several
inscriptions of the same prince. These monuments certainly belong to
a very ancient period, but the titles of the king differ completely from
those of the monarchs of the primitive epoch; their modesty seems to
indicate a prince who was not an independent sovereign, but merely
the vassal of a more powerful suzerain.
5. To this period also must be attributed a most valuable head in
limestone, bearing traces of having been coloured, which was discovered
at Babylon, and is now in the museum of the Louvre. This head, rudely
worked, but vigorously treated, and very lifelike in type, clearly repre-
sents an Egyptian. There is an evident intention of imitating the style
of Eg\'ptian works, and, moreover, the Pharaonic art at this period of
Eg}-ptian supremacy has left monuments in many parts of the Euphrates
Basin. The Theban conquerors, as their inscriptions tell us, had
erected steles to commemorate their victories, and undoubtedly the pro-

gress of explorations may bring some of these to light.
The by Thothmes IIL at Carchemish, to

ruins of the fortress built
secure the passage of the Euphrates, have been discovered, and a great
number of small objects of Egyptian manufacture bearing hieroglyphic
inscriptions have been found there. Some also have been found in
other places, and even at Babylon itself
It is certain that at this period, Egyptian art exercised a powerful and
dominant influence on Assyro-Chalda;an art, then in a state of infancy,

almost of barbarism. In later times Assyrian art emancipated itself
entirely from this influence, and assumed a distinct originality under
the influence of principles diametrically opposed to those that governed
the Egyptian sculptor. But the example of the Egyptians who had
so many centuries before the Assyrians and Babylonians begun to
cultivate true art, was followed for some time after their domination
over the country had ceased. This is proved by many monuments, and
especially by those remarkable dishes of chased bronze, now in the
British Museum, discovered by Mr. Layard at Calah, in the palace of
king Asshur-nazir-pal they are certainly older than that king, and
;
may be attributed to the eleventh or twelfth century B.C. The work-

manship of these dishes shows us a peculiar style decidedly not
Egyptian; but the ornamentation is entirely so, both as to the figures
and the .symbols drawn on them ; it is Egyptian art transformed and
imitated by Assyrian hands.
—
364
CHAPTER II.
THE FIRS7 ASSYRIAN EMPIRE.
Section I. Foundation of the First Assyrian Empire —

Fabulous Stories about that Emi-irk Ninus and —
Semiramis.
1. We have now arrived at the period v/here we must place the origin
of the Assyrian Empire. The Greek writers at this epoch introduce
into history the fabulous names of Ninus and Semiramis. Diodoms
Sicuhis, following Ctesias, has left us a brilliant picture of the reign of
these two personages. The progress of knowledge, the direct study of
the Assyrian monuments and inscriptions, enable us now to assert
positively that neither Semiramis nor her husband Ninus ever existed,
that their history is —
a fable with no real founda-
entirely mythical
tion — and must therefore henceforth be erased from the annals of Asia.
But it has obtained credit for so many centuries it is so often alluded
;
to in classical literature, that we cannot pass over it in silence and with

the contempt it deserves ; we find it necessary to tell the stoiy even
while declaring it entirely apocryphal.
2. According to the legend first related to the Greeks by Ctesias,
Babylonia had been dismembered by an invasion of the Arabians, when

Ninus, chief of the Assyrians, undertook to free the country from the
barbarians. Before attacking Babylonia, he organised a large body of
picked young men and prepared them by all sorts of exercises for the
fatigues and dangers of war. He
made an alliance with an Arab
next
chieftain, power of Babylon, and with a
like himself, jealous of the
strong army then attacked the Babylonians. "Their country," the
story taken from Ctesias goes on to say, "contained many well-peopled
cities ; but the inhabitants, mexperienced in the art of war, were easily
subdued and compelled to pay tribute." Ninus took the king and his
children prisoners, and put them to death. Thence he marched on
Armenia, and terrified the natives by the sack of some towns. Barzanes,
the king of that country, finding that he was unable to resist, sent pre-
sents to the enemy and offered his submission. Ninus treated him gene-
rously, allowed him to retain his kingdom, and only required him to fur-
nish a contingent of auxiliary troops. The king of Media, next attacked,
attempted to resist but, abandoned by his troops, was made prisoner
;
and crucified. In seventeen years Ninus thus made himself master of

all the countries between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indus.
LEGEND OF SEMIRAMIS. 365
" On from these conquests, to give his dominions a capital

his return
worthy of himself, he built Nineveh, and called it after his own name.
This city was in the form of a parallelogram, the longest sides were
150 stades, and the shortest ninety; so that the whole circuit of the
walls was 480 stades (about fifty-five miles)! The towers built to defend
this wall were 15,000 in number, and were each nearly eighty yards
high! Besides the Assyrians, who formed the richest and most power-
ful part of the population, Ninus admitted into his capital a great
number of strangers, and Nineveh soon became the largest and most
flourishing city in the world.
"These works of peace did not destroy the taste of Ninus for war-
like enterprises he undertook the conquest of Bactria, which he had
;
already once attempted in vain. In the course of this war we first en-
counter Semiramis, whose name was soon to attain to such great celebrity.
She was the daughter of Derceto, or Atergatis, the goddess of repro-
ductive nature, the chief seat of whose worship was at Ascalon.
Derceto had exposed her child, the fruit of a clandestine amour with a
young mortal, and a shepherd named Simas had found and brought up
Semiramis. Oannes, governor of Syria, had married her for her
beauty, and she had followed him to the royal army in the Bactrian
war. An act of bravery raised her to the rank of queen. Ninus, after
having vanquished the Bactrians in the field, besieged their capital with-
out success, when Semiramis, disguised as a soldier, found means to
scale the wall, and by a signal announced her success to the troops of
Ninus, who then stormed the place. Ninus, astonished at her braveiy,
took her from Oannes and made her his wife ; a short time afterwards
he died, and left her sole mistress of the empire.
" Semiramis, once in possession of supreme power, indulged her
naturally enterprising genius. Desirous of surpassing the glory of all
her predecessors, she conceived the idea of building a city in Chaldasa.
Stnick with the advantages of the situation of Babylon, she wished to
make one of the capitals of the Assyrian empire.
it
city was protected," still quoting Ctesias as reported by

"The
Diodorus Siculus, "by a wall 360 stades long (more than forty miles),
flanked by many towers ; the Euphrates passed through the middle.
Such was the magnificence of the work, that the width of the walls
permitted six chariots to drive abreast." The height, according to
Ctesias, was one hundred yards; but, according to other Greek writers,
thirty yards only, and the width sufficient for only two chariots.
The same authors estimate the circumference at 365 stades, because

Semiramis wished it to correspond with the number of days in the
year. These walls were built of sun-dried bricks cemented with
asphalt. The towers, of proportionate height and size, were only 250
in number.
" \Vhen the first partof tlie Wf)rk was finished, Semiramis fixed on the
place where the Euphrates was narrowest, and threw across it a bridge
five stades long. She contrived to build i*i the bed of the stream
pillars twelve feet apart, the stones of which were joined with strong
iron cramps fixed into the mortises with melted lead. The side of these
pillars towards the run of the stream was built at an angle, so as to
divide the water, cause it to run smoothly past and lessen the pressure
against the massive pillars. On these pillars were laid beams of cedar
and cypress, with large trunks of palm trees, so as to form a platform
thirty feet wide. The queen then built at great cost on either bank of
the river a quay with a wall as broad as that of the city, and i6o stades
long (nearly twenty miles). In front of each end of the bridge she
built a castle flanked by towers, and surrounded by triple walls. Before
the bricks used in these buildings were baked she modelled on them
figures of animals of every kind, coloured to represent living nature.
Semiramis then constructed another prodigious work; she had a huge
basin, or square reservoir, dug in some low ground. When it was
finished, the river was diverted into it, and she at once commenced
building in the dry bed of the river a covered way leading from one
castle to the other. This work was completed in seven days, and the
river then was allowed to return to its bed, and Semiramis could then
pass dry shod under water from one of her castles to the other. She
placed at the two ends of the tunnel gates of bronze, said by Ctesias to
be still in existence in the time of the Persians. Lastly, she built in the
midst of the city the temple of the god Bel.
" Semiramis, after having completed these works in Babylonia, made
an expedition against the Medes, who had revolted. She subjected the
country afresh, and left there an everlasting monument of her presence.
At the foot of Mount Bagistan she built a palace. One of the faces of
the mountain formed of perpendicular rocks of enormous height on
is ;
this rock she caused to be sculptured her own likeness, surrounded by

those of a hundred of her guards, with an inscription recounting her
achievements." Diodorus attributes to her also the foundation of Ecba-
tana, where the kings of Assyria were, he says, in after times in the
habit of passing every spring. As the city required water, and there
was no sufficient spring in the neighbourhood, she conducted, at great
cost and by enormous works, a plentiful supply of pure water into all
parts of it. For this purpose she tunnelled through Mount Orontes,
and dug a canal, ten feet wide and forty feet deep, communicating with
a lake on the other side of the mountain.
From Media, Semiramis passed on to Persia, and visited all her pos-
sessions in Asia. In Armenia she built, near Lake Van, a city with an
immense palace. Wherever she went, says Ctesias, she pierced moun-
tains, levelled rocks, and constructed large and good roads. In the
—
plains she constructed artificial hills for the tombs of the generals who
died during the expedition, or for the foundation of her new cities.
According same author, she also subdued Egypt and the

to the
greater part of Ethiopia. She also undertook an expedition against
India, attracted by the riches of that country. Stratobatis, the king of
the Indians, having heard of the extensive preparations of the Baby-
lonian queen, assembled a considerable force, and then defied Semiramis
by a which he reproached her with the immorality of her
letter, in
private and threatened, if he were victorious, to crucify her.

life,
Semiramis did not, however, abandon her intention of attacking the

Indian king. But his war elephants secured the victory to Stratobatis,
the army of Semiramis was put to flight,, and two-thirds of it destroyed.
After this defeat she retired to her own kingdom, and did not again
quit it. She devoted herself to the completion of her great works and ;
such were the enterprise and renown of this queen that, after her
time, according to Strabo, every great work in Asia was popularly attri-
buted to her. Alexander found her name, it is said, inscribed on the
frontiers of Scythia, then considered the extreme verge of the habitable
world. The pretended text of this inscription has been preserved by
Polyoenus. Semiramis herself speaks, and thus expresses herself
"Nature gave me a woman's body, but my deeds have equalled those
of the most valiant men. I ruled the empire of Ninus, which reaches
eastward to the river Hinaman (the Indus); southward, to the land

of incense and myrrh (Arabia Felix); northward, to the Saces and
Sogdians. Before me no Assyrians had seen a sea;
I have seen four,
that no one had approached, so far were they distant. I compelled the
rivers to run where I wished, and directed them to the places where
they were required. I made barren land fertile, by watering it with my
rivers. I built impregnable fortresses. With iron tools I made roads

across impassable rocks; I opened roads for my chariots, where the
very wild beasts had been unable to pass. In the midst of these occu-
pations I have found time and love."
for pleasure
Having learned Ninyas was plotting against her, she
that her son
formed the resolution of abdicating. Far from punishing the con-
spirator, she left the government of the empire to him, directed all the
governors to obey the new sovereign, and disappeared, changed into a
dove. She was worshipped as a goddess.
3. Such is the legend that Ctesias first related to the Greeks. We
repeat that there is not one word of truth in it ; the Assyrian monu-
ments contradict it on all points. Such personages as Ninus and
Semiramis belong in no way to real history ; they never existed in
fact. Ninus, as the name clearly indicates, is only a personification of
the whole history of the city of Nineveh, and of all its power; under
this name, popular stories grouped together all the exploits and conquests
—
368 ANCIENT TTTSTORV OF THE EAST.

of all Assyrian kings, and even (for these legends always have a ten-
dency no Ninevite king ever made. Just as
to magnify) conquests that
the wliole of the military exploits of the Assyrians have lieen grouped
round the name of Ninus, although also attributed to Semiramis, so all
the useful or gigantic works, whatever their origin, executed at different
periods by various Asiatic sovereigns, have contriljuted to the glory of
the name of Semiramis. To her have been attributed all the buildings
of Babylon, from the Tower of Babel, identical with the Temple of
Bel, to those of the age of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors, even lire
works of king Deioces at Ecbatana, and the great sculptures at Mount
Bagistan (Behistun), in Media.*
The name of Semiramis has been borrowed from a really historical
queen, who lived five centuries after the period where the legend places
the fabulous Semiramis, Sammuramat, wife of Bin-lik-his III., a queen
who had some important works executed at Babylon, but who in no
other respect resembles the portrait drawn by Ctesias. In point of fact,
with all modern scholars, we mu.st recognise in the famous Semiramis
one of the mythological personages of the religion of the Euphrates
valley. The story itself speaks of her as a goddess, for it makes her
the daughter of Derceto, and mentions her final metamorphosis and
the worship subsequently addressed to her. All the fundamental features
of her character, and of the adventures attributed to her, agree in
showing that she was only the personification of the heroic form of the
great goddess of the Babylonian religion, uniting in herself the most
apparently opposite attributes, a patroness both of pleasure and of war,
and who had for one of her principal symbols a dove. With her
husband, Ninus the warrior, and her son Ninyas, the effeminate prince
shut up in his harem, Semiramis represented on earth exactly the
supreme triad of Babylonian worship. This idea, too, was not origin-
ally Assyro-Chaldrean; it was borrowed, as was also the greater part
of their religion, from the Cushites ; the same group of mythical per-
sonages being placed by popular tradition at the head of all primitive
dynasties, wherever the first steps in civilisation are due to the Cushites,
in India as well as in Mesopotamia.
4. Moreover, the legend of Ninus and Semiramis is by no means

of early origin. It is neither Assyrian nor Babylonian, but Persian.
Berosus, who compiled from the official archives of Assyria and
Chaldrea, was ignorant of it, as also was Herodotus, in general so well
* The sculptures at Behistun, here referred to, are probably those

described by Sir R. Ker Porter {Travels, vol. ii. p. 151, seq.) as still
exis'ing, though veiy much timewom and barely distinguishable, on the
same rock surface as the famous sculpture and inscriptions of Darius,
but in a lower position. Tr.
acquainted with traditions, and who had been at Babylon and heard
from the Chaldeans the history of their country. It was at the Persian
court that Ctesias, physician to the king Artaxerxes Mnemon, had
heard by him with implicit faith, and hastened to
this story, received
make it known to his countrymen, as preferable to the statements of
Herodotus. It must be admitted that he was unfortunate in receiving
his information from the Persians, for these people have always been,
and still are (like their neighbours the Indians), incapable of recording
true history. The historical instinct is entirely wanting in the famous
annals engraven on the rocks at Behistun, where Darius records the
days and months of the chief events of his reign, but has forgotten to
mention theyc-ars. The same defect is apparent among the modern
Persians, the only people who have no historian but the poet, and who
have no record of their past history but a "Book of Kings," of an
historical value about equal to that of our middle-age ballads. This
has frequently struck the author when in conversation with Persians
who passed for men of letters in their own country, but who had the
strangest possible ideas as to the history of modern Asia. What could
be the value of statements as to their conquered enemies furnished by a
people who, in their own history, had soon forgotten the great Cyrus,
the founder of their empire, and who represented, as closely related, per-
sonages separated by a distance of seventeen centuries.
5. The legend believed at the court of Persia as to Ninus and
Semiramis, and generally as to the history of the Assyrian empire,

probably partly originated from motives easy to penetrate, and wliich
will become apparent in the course of this history.
Ninyas, it is said, succeeded his mother. He had none of the war-
like character of his predecessors occupied
; solely with his pleasures,
he led a peaceful and obscure life buried in his palace ; he confined
himself to ensuring the security of his empire, and maintaining his sub-
jects in obedience,by keeping on foot a numerous army annually levied
in the several provinces. He assembled the troops near Nineveh,
gave to each nation a governor devoted to himself, and at the end of
each year dismissed these soldiers and replaced them by an equal
number of fresh men. This constant renewal of the army prevented
the formation of too intimate relations between the soldiers and their
commanders, and precluded any plot against the sovereign. Moreover,
by rendering himself invisible, he hid from all eyes the voluptuous life
he led ; and, as though he had been a god, no one dared to speak evil of
him. His successors, down to Sardanapalus, adopted the same line of
conduct, and thus these kings were enveloped in the most complete
obscurity. For thirteen centuries one peaceably succeeded the other,
their power was never disiûted, and the extent of their dominions was
never diminished.
B B
—

The policy of the Persian mrmarclis was directly interested in thus
attributing to the highest antiquity the origin of a system of Asiatic
goveniment, where obedience was ensured by the respect due to the
mere name of the king, even when he was occupied entirely witli his
pleasures, and secluded from sight in his palace; a government main-
tained also by the suspicious policy that did not allow its various foreign
subjects to acquire perfect experience as soldiers, or to become accus-
tomed to camp but sent to each province representatives of its ov,n[i
life,
absolute power. As these Persians pretended to have inherited the

. rights of the Assyrian empire, by attributing such a character to that
empire, they gave to their own authority, established by force of arms,
the sanction of a tradition many centuries old, and a character really
legitimate. Tliis intention will become still more manifest if we re-
member the extent attributed by the legend of Ctesias to the dominions
and to the duration of the Assyrian empire. The conquests of Ninus
and Semiramis very far exceed those of any, even the most powerful,
Assyrian monarch, but they coincide exactly wth the extent of the
Achgemenian empire after the time of Darius Hystaspes. As to the
question of duration, the reader will be able to judge, from what has
been said, how absurd, how contrary to historj', is this tradition of an
empire dating back to thirteen centuries before the revolution that
—
overthrew Sardanapalus of a dymasty whose twentieth generation was
contemporary with the Trojan war, and had suffered from no dismem-
berment, nor even revolt of its subjects, and had never had occasion to
appear in arms before them. But this number of centuries represents
almost exactly the total period of the duration of the various dynasties
that succeeded each other, from the time of the establishment of the
Chaldsean dynasty, properly so called, to the destruction of Nineveh in
the time of Sardanapalus by the Medes or Babylonians. Thus the
whole history of Mesopotamia was represented by the Persian kings for
the instruction of their subjects, as the history of one and the same
empire, whose unity had been unbroken and authority uncontested, and
whose heirs and successors they themselves were. In this way among
many nations official history has been wTitten for political purposes.
Section II. First Assyrian Dynasty.

{Fifteenth to Eleventh Centuries B. C. )
I. We have been compelled to speak of the legendary stories of
Ctesias, in order to prove their fabulous character. But we have said
quite enough on the subject, and it is time to return to real history, as
we learn it from the study of the original monuments of the Assyrian
kings.
;
FIRST ASSYRIAN DYNASTY. 371
Modem scholars, who have devoted themselves to the study of

Assyrian history, generally place (according to the statements of Be-
rosus, confirmed by a passage in Herodotus) the foundation of the
Ninevite empire in the year 1314 B.C.; but the facts stated by Berosus
apply to Babylon, and not to Assyria itself. The date 1314 is, then,
that of the time when the kings of Assyria became masters of Baby-
lonia, not of the time when they established themselves at Nineveh.
The positive evidence of themonuments proves beyond doubt the fact
that the Assyrian monarchy commenced in the fifteenth century before
our era, whilst Egypt was supreme over the whole Tigro-Euphrates
Basin.
Its beginnings, like those of all other things in the world, were but
small. At the commencement of the dynasty it must have been simply
the little kingdom of Nineveh, such as we find it in the confederation
of the Rotennu. Far from commencing by conquests, such as those
attributed to Ninus, it grew great by slow degrees, absorbed gradually
other small neighbouring states of the same race, and thus united the
whole Assyrian nation under one sceptre; and then, still gaining
ground, extended its frontier on the Chaldsean side, and strove to unite
all Mesopotamia in one united monarchy. The Armenian historian,

Moses of Chorene, has preserved a most valuable document on this
subject, that must have come from an ancient and authentic source
this is a list of names that he has taken for those of the first kings of
—
Assyria Ninus, Chalaos, Arbelus, Ancbos, and Babios. In spite of
some alterations, we recognise at a glance these names as being, not
those of men, but of important and well-known cities, enumerated in
the order in which they were incorporated with the states of the As-
syrian monarchs —
Nineveh, Calah, Arbela, Nipur, and Babylon. Thus
this invaluable fragment, preserved by a historian who did not under-
stand its true meaning, assists us in ascertaining the progress of the
Assyrian empire and the successive extensions of its limits.
2. The history of the early period of the Ninevite kingdom, and of
its connection with Babylon, is related in an invaluable tablet in the

British Museum, a fragment of a historical manual for the use of
Assyrian students ;
part of this only has been published, and none of it
as yet translated ; the author has, however, carefully studied the original
in London, and we now proceed to give an account of the principal
facts.
The record unhappily does not commence with the monarchy, and we
therefore do not know its founder ; but the first prince of whom it speaks,
reigned about 1450 B.C., a date not far from that of the establishment of
Assyrian royalty. He was called Asshur-bel-Nishishu, and made a
treaty with Karatadash, king of Babylon. This treaty was confirmed
between his successor, Bushur-Asshur, and Burnaburyash, king of
B B 2
Babylon. tliv tlirone of Nineveh came Asshurubalat, who
Next on
ai>iieais have reigned about 1400 B.C.
to He gave his daughter in
marriage to Ihirnaburyash, and his gi'andson, Karaliardasli, ascended
the throne at Babylon while still quite young. But he was soon assassi-
nated by a certain Nazibugash, wlio usurjêd tlie throne. Then the
Assyrians made an expedition into Baljyloiiia under the guidance of
Asshurubalat, put Nazibugash to death, and installed Kurigalzu II.,
son of Burnaburyash, on the throne. These two names seem to be

entirely Elamite, and we have already met with them among the
successors of Kedornakhunta, but the common Turanian origin of the
Chaldoeans of Babylonia, and of the Susianians, explains the occurrence
of similar names among the people.
There is here a short space of one or two reigns at most, of which
we know nothing, and then we find the names of four kings on various
monuments, of the incidents of whose reigns we know nothing, Bellik-
hish [or Belnirari], Budiel, Binlikhish I. [or Binnirari], and Shalmaneser I.
[Shalmanuashir]. The son of this last king was Tuklat-Samdau I.,
who, as many Assyrian texts tell us, was the conqueror of Babylonia
and Chaldsea. Sennacherib [Sinakherib], in one of his inscriptions,
says that this king reigned 600 years before him, thus bringing the date
up to about 1300 B.C. and fully coinciding with the date 1314 given by
Berosus for the establishment of the authority of the Assyrian princes
at Babylon.
3. The metropolis of Chaldsea was then, from the time of Tuklat-
Samdan, reduced dependency of the Assyrians. But
to the position of a
neither then, nor at any time under the kings of Assyria, was this city
treated as a simple provincial town subject to a governor appointed by
the king. Babylon retained its own native princes who succeeded each
other by hereditary right, and were vassals only of the king of Nineveh.
It was the constant policy of the Assyrian monarchs in the government
of conquered countries to maintain the native princes on the throne, but
to reduce them to the position of vassals, thus constituting them, as we
may say, hereditary satraps. This system was carried even further, and
one of its principles (adopted in later times by the Persians) was to foster
the regular hereditary transmission of power and of legitimate right to
the throne amongst the royal families of conquered countries. When
a vassal king revolted, his Assyrian suzerain treated him personally
with the most extreme severity —not unfrequently he was impaled, or
flayed alive —but his son and legitimate heir was always installed in
the vacant throne. Under such a system, when immediately after
making such example of a revolted prince, the suzerain could
a terrible
place the government in the hands of his son, without taking into
account the hatred and desire for revenge that might be excited in his
mind, revolts must have been frequent, and the unity of the empire
SUBJUGATION OF BABYLON. 373
must, more or less, have depended on the firmness of the hand that held
the reins of supreme power ; the reconquest of some province or other
must constantly have been in hand, for they periodically attempted to
free themselves, the least sign of weakness in the sovereign state giving
the signal for rebellion. Thus, to confine ourselves to the affairs of
Babylonia and Chaldaja — if that great city was so early subjected to the
suzerainty of Nineveh, its submission was at all times imperfect and
precarious. Again and again, in the annals of Assyria, we find tlie
Babylonian princes in revolt, attempting to reconquer their independence,
constantly defeated, and, after each failure, again making preparations
for a new attempt.
There was, moreover, between these vassals and their suzerains a
curious dispute abouttitles, as we see by the monuments. The Ninevite
kings styled themselves " Vicegerents of the Gods " at Babylon, and
they did not wish to permit the princes who reigned in that city to call
themselves sovereigns. These, on their own monuments, always called
themselves "Kings of Babylon"; but at Nineveh they were officially
called only Kings of Kar-Dunyash, or Lower Chaldaea.
But if Tuklat-Samdan, after taking Babylon, permitted a native king
still to occupy the throne, it is evident that he changed the royal family.
For, from this date, their names, instead of being Chaldjeo-Turanian

like those we have previously mentioned, have a purely Semitic charac-
ter, and are borrowed from the so-called Assyrian language.
4. Tuklat-Samdan was succeeded by his son, Belkudurussur. Babylon
revolted under this king, and the Chaldjean king, Binbaliddin, after
having driven the foreigners from his dominions, invaded Assyria.
Belkudurussur was killed in the contest, and the Babylonians carried off
mnnerous trophies, amongst others the royal signet of Tuklat-Samdan.
Binbaliddin is known from many inscriptions to have constructed the
fortifications of Nipur, and made it one of the outworks of Babylon.
A king then mounted the throne named Adarpalashir (Adar, the
Assyrian Hercules, protects his son), of whom it is said in an inscription
that " he organised the country of Asshur, and that he first established
the armies of Assyria." Binbaliddin having attempted again to invade
Assyria at the commencement of the reign of Adarpalashir, was defeated
in a great battle under the walls of Ellasar. This king, like his prede-
cessors, must still have been partially under the yoke of the Egyptians,
as even after the termination of the great Pharaonic campaigns, they
continued to claim a supremacy over Assyria, that, day by day, became
less real.
We have seen already, by a distinct statement in an inscription, that
under Ramses XIL, about 1150, the king of Egypt still continued to
receive, with more or less regularity, tribute from Mesopotamia but we ;
have also seen that almost immediately after this date, all supremacy and
even all pretensions to it ceased in consequence of the usurpation of the
high priest, Hcr-Ilor.* The king of Assyria, in whose time tiiis event
occurred, must have been Asshurdayan, son and successor of Adar-
palashir; it is in fact, to the termination of the last vestiges of foreign
dominion, that we must naturally attribute the expressions ajjplied to
him in the inscription where all these kings are mentioned. " He bore
the supreme sceptre, he ennobled the nation of Bel ... he outshone all
who had preceded him." We know, moreover, that this king invaded
Babylonia in order to take revenge for the defeat of his grandfather, and
caused his supreme authority to be recognised in the whole of that
country, whence he brought back immense booty.
His son Mutakkil-Nabu (trusting in Nebo), succeeded him; next
came Asshur-rishishi (Asshur lifts his head) " a powerful king,"
;
says the inscription, '

' who attacked revolted countries, and annexed
the lands of the whole world." We know also that he repressed the
revolt of a Babylonian prince, named Nebuchadnezzar [Nabukudur-
ussur], who on two occasions attempted to invade Assyria : Ijut the
expressions we have quoted, prove that he aggrandised the empire by
new conquests. His son, Tiglath-pileser I. [Tuklat-palashar], was also
a conqueror, who rendered himself illustrious during his tenure of
power. A long inscription on a cylinder of baked clay, of which four
copies were found in the foundations of a temple at Ellasar (Kileh
Sherghat), relates the campaigns of the first part of his reign. This
inscription has become celebrated because
it was by the Royal selected
Asiatic Society as a test of the value of the method employed in the
translation of Assyrian inscriptions by the most eminent Assyriologists.
Copies of the inscription (then unpublished) were in 1857 supplied to
Genera! Sir H. C. Rawlinson, Mr. Fox Talbot, Dr. Hincks, and M.
Oppert, and the translations made by each of them separately were
found substantially to agree.
The story in this inscription is very far from agreeing, either with
themode of life attributed by Ctesias to the successors of the fabulous
Ninyas, or with the political geography of the period, such as it appears
in his tale.
We find from the inscription that Tiglath-pileser commenced, in the
very year of his accession to the throne, by conquering the Moschi in
the neighbourhood of the Black Sea, who had come, with their five
kings at their head, to the assistance of the people of Commagene who
had revolted against Assyrian nde, and that he subjugated the latter
country afresh. He next turned his arms against the districts of
Armenia, situated above the sources of the Tigris ; the same year
See page 272.

TIGLATH-PILESER I. 375
leading his troops in another direction, he crossed the Lower Zab,

penetrated into the mountains, and subdued some tribes of Chalonitis
and Western Media.
His next mihtary were directed to the north-east ; he relates
efforts
his battles with a great number of absolutely unknowoi tribes, who
appear to have occupied the neighbourhood of Lake Urumiyeh, and
the firontier between Armenia and Media, and at the close of these
battles to have penetrated as far as the " Upper," the Caspian, Sea.
Finally, in the fourth year of his reign, Tiglath-pileser undertook the
conquest '
of the land of Aram where they did not worship Asshur
'
my Lord." The first of his race, he crossed the Euphrates, possessed

himself of Carchemish, imposed tribute on the Khatti, the Khita of the
Egj'ptian inscriptions, the northern Hittites of the Bible, and advanced
as far as the mountain chain of Amanus (Kumani). In the midst of
these great wars he did not neglect the arts of peace ; by his orders the
temples of the city of Ellasar, where was his usual residence, were
rebuilt in magnificent style, amongst others the great temple of Oannes,
originally constructed by Ishmi-dagan, and which king Asshurdayan
had taken down in order to rebuild; but the work had been stopped for
seventy years.
The cylinder ends \vith the fourth year of his reign; but an inscrip-
tion, still partly unpublished, on a ft-agment of an obelisk, also in the
BritishMuseum, shows us Tiglath-pileser some years later, advancing
with his army to Lebanon, and becoming master of Aradus. He
entered a vessel of that city to fish in the sea, as no Assyrian king before
him had ever done, and he records as one of his most brilliant exploits
that he killed a dolphin wdth his owm hand. At the news of his suc-
cesses, the princes of Tanis, who also had made an alliance with
Solomon, sent an embassy to request his friendship. The king of
'
'
Egypt," says the inscription, "sent him as an extraordinary present a

crocodile from his river and whales from the great sea."
To these distant wars succeeded serious troubles in Babylonia, also
mentioned in the tablet on the relations between the two countries, now
in the British Museum. Mardukidinakhe, king of Babylon, revolted,
and proclaimed his independence ; Tiglath-pileser attempted to reduce
him to obedience by invading Chaldsca, but was repulsed, and Marduk-
idinakhe, after gaining the first battles, entered Assyria, and took by
assault the city of Hekali. The great Sennacherib boasts, in an
inscription, of having brought back to Nineveh, after defeating the
Babylonians, the statues of the gods taken from Hekali by !Marduk-
idinakhe 418 years before, that is. about iioo B.C.
Tiglath-pileser, after his defeat, did not assume the offensive for
several years, but did so at last with great success, as he took successively
Dur-Kurigalzu, Sippara, and Babylon. His eldest son, Asshur-bel-
—

knla, omlcd llie \\ar l>y a treaty of peace, by wliicli Na1)iisliapil<zir,
successor of Manlukidiiiaklie, recognised the political su]iremacy of
Nineveh over Bal)ylon. This Assliur-lielkala was the author of a
dedicatory inscription on a niutihitcd statue of a goddess found at
Nineveh, and now in the ISritisli Museum.
5. He was succeeded by his younger brotlicr, Sliamslii-Bin H., of
whom we know only that he repaired one of the principal temples of
Nineveh. Next comes Asshura-bamar, an unfortunate king, who al)Out
1080 or 1070 was conquered in a decisive battle by the king of the
Hittitcs, and lost all the conquests of Tiglath-pileser I. beyond the
Euphrates. It was this event that facilitated, a short time afterwards, the
formation of the empire of David and Solomon. But the dynasty to
which Asshura-bamar belonged never recovered from the effects of this
disaster. At the end of a short time, the superintendent of the royal
gardens, Belkatirassu (Bel has strengthened my hand,)* the Belitaras
of the Greek authore, put himself at the head of a conspiracy, de-
throned his master, and became the head of a new line of kings.
Section III. First Kings of the Dynasty of Belitaras —

ASSHUR-NAZIRPAL. IO7O 905 B.C. —
I. Belkatirassu, or Beletaras, is called "the origin of royalty"
in an inscription of one of his descendants, from which we learn the
head of the dynasty. Shalmaneser
series of the early successors of this
II. [Shalmanuashir] reigned immediately after him, and was the original
founder of the magnificent palace in the city of Calah (now Nimrud),
rebuilt afterwards by Asshur-nazirpal.
His successor was called Irib-Bin next came Asshur-idinakhe
;
(Asshur has given brothers), and then a third Shalmaneser [Shal-

manuashir], and a king named Asshur-edililani (Asshur is the arbiter
of the gods). Of these kings we know no certain fact nor date. We
may conjecture with confidence, that some of them were the princes
who possessed themselves of Media, and reunited it to the Assyrian
empire. It is certain that this country had not been conquered in the
time of Tiglath-pileser I., and we find it, under all kings subsequent to
this period, enumerated among the dependencies of the empire.
With Binlikhish II. [or Binnirari], chronology becomes certain the ;
Assyrians had a special magistrate who gave his name to the year, as
did the archons at Athens, and the consuls at Rome ; and we possess
* By rendering the ideographic character for "hand" by a less

frequently used synonym, we may read this name Belidiarassu a —
form even nearer to the Beletaras of the Greek writers.
"
ASSHUR-NAZIRPAL. 377
a nearly complete list of these Eponyms, with the names of the kings
with whose reigns they correspond, commencing with Binlikhish II., a
list in cuneifoiTn characters on tablets of baked clay forming part of the
British Museum collection. Binlikhish reigned twenty years, from
956 to 936; his son, Tuklat-Samdan 11., six years, from 935 to 930.
The annals of this last king have not been found, but he is referred to
by his successors as a great wamor
he made one campaign amongst
;
others towards the sources of the Tigris, in the mountains, and there
set up a stele commemorative of his passage.
2. Although we have no documents of the reign of this king, those
of his son, Asshur-nazirpal (Asshur protects his son), have been found
in abundance. The great palace of Calah (Nimrud), with its magni-
ficent halls decorated with sculptures, the great pyramid, used for astro-
nomical observations, and the consecrated sanctuaiy at the top, explored
by Mr. Layard, was rebuilt by this king; and relics of him have every-
where been found in the monument that was, as he himself said, "the
glory of his name." In all the museums of Europe his bas-reliefs are
to be seen, generally disfigured by a belt of inscription, containing in
all cases the same text running across the figures of the sculpture.
Gigantic human-headed bulls, and not less colossal lions, bear his texts
engraved across their limbs. A stele, now in London, contains the
narrative of his campaigns; the same story, but at greater length, is
found on an immense stone forming the threshold of the temple of
Adar-Samdan, the Assyrian Hercules, at Calah this is the longest :
known Assyrian inscription.

Asshur-nazirpal is the only one of the Assyrian monarchs who has
left us his statue, now in the British Museum. It is standing ; in one
hand he holds a sickle, in the otlier a mace. The inscription is written
across his chest.
"Asshur-nazirpal, the great king, the powerful king, the king of the
legions, king of Assyria, son of Tuklat-Samdan, great king, king of
the legions, king of Assyria, son of Binlikhish, great king, powerful
king, king of Assyria.
"He possessed the countries from the banks of the Tigris even to
Lebanon ; he subjected to his power the great seas ajid all lands, from
the rising even to the going down of the sun.
3. This son of Tuklat-Samdan II. ascended the throne on the
2nd July, 930, a day marked by a partial eclipse of the sun, visible at
Nineveh, a fact more than once mentioned on his monuments, and
regarded as a very favourable augury for the new reign. He remained
on the throne for twenty-five years, from 930 to 905. His reign secured
the success of the Assyrians of the new dynasty, and gratified their
desire for dominion over Asia, and especially the western countries.
The official narrative of the wars of this king up to the twentieth
year of his reign, engraved on the monolith at Calah, gives us a clear
idea of his warlike and ferocious character. He invarial)ly caused his
rebellious vassals to be flayed alive; and in an inscription on a stele set
up over the ruins of a city he had destroyed, he said, *' Over these ruins
my image broods, in wreaking my vengeance I liave found satisfaction.
Not one single year of his reign passed unmarked by a military expe-
dition. The greater number were into the mountains of Armenia, to
Commagene and Pontus, where the Moschi were then supreme, and
finally into Media, and probably also part of Western Persia. But the
names of the tribes and districts apparently belonging to these latter
countries cannot as yet be identified with the names as given by other
authorities; and therefore it is impossible, in the present state of know-
ledge, to determine how far eastward he carried his arms. Other
campaigns took place on the banks of the Euphrates, and he subdued
all the right bank, the Irak Arabi of our days, then divided into several
flourishing kingdoms. Asshur-nazirpal was also called on to repress,
especially during the first years of his reign, numerous revolts in the
north of Assyria and in Lower Chaldtea, and he punished the rebels
with implacable severity.
In 925 he conquered Nabubaliddin, king of Babylon, his brother
Zabdan, and his general, Belbaliddin, who had had the temerity to
rebel, and to send help to the people of Sukhi; on the eastern bank of
the Euphrates. The chastisement inflicted in consequence of this rash
attempt was so gi'eat that the Babylonians remained quiet for the re-
mainder of his reign.
Crossing the Euphrates, Asshur-nazirpal reduced to obedience all
Northern Syria, the land of the Khatti, or Hittites, the chains of
Amanus (Kumani), and the basin of the Orontes (Aranta). Although
he calls himself " Master of Lebanon," and states that in the year cor-
responding to 916, having himself visited Phoenicia, he advanced to
the coast of the Mediterranean, to receive tribute from the cities of
Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, and Aradus, he does not seem to have actually
subjugated the Phoenician cities, but merely to have made a passing
descent on the counti-y. In this direction he did not dare to venture
too far the kingdoms of Judah and Israel were still too powerful, and
;
by forming a coalition they might have opposed a very formidable

resistance, as Jehoshaphat and Ahab, his contemporaries, had both
been able successfully to carry on war against the Aramseans of the
kingdom of Damascus, whom also Asshur-nazirpal did not attack.
—
SHALMANESER IV. 379
Section IV.— From Shalmaneser IV. to Binlikhish and

Sammuramat (Semiramis).
905—828 B.C.
I. The were surpassed by those of his

exploits of Asshur-nazirpal
son, Shalmaneser (Shalmanuashir) IV.,who reigned from 905 to 865.
From the commencement of the reign of this king Assyria begins to
be closely and constantly connected with Bible history, and to bear
invalualDle testimony to its minute accuracy. Shalmaneser was the
builder of the great central palace at Calah (now Ninrrud), excavated
by Mr. Layard. There have been found the inscriptions relating his
annals the most important is on an obelisk of black basalt, now in the
;
British Museum, containing a summary of all the campaigns undertaken

by him, or by his orders. He fortified, to guard Assyria proper, on the
frontier of Chaldsea, always restless and disposed to rebel, the city of
Asshur, or Ellasar (now Kileh Sherghat), as is proved by the inscriptions
with his name on the bricks of the walls, and by the legend on the
pedestal of an unfortunately mutilated statue.
The greater part of the expeditions of Shalmaneser IV. succeeding ,
each other year after year, were directed, like those of his father, some-
times to the north, into Armenia and Pontus sometimes to the cast,
;
into Media, never completely subdued; sometimes to the south, into

Chaldcea, where revolts were of constant occurrence and finally west- ;
ward, towards Syria and the region of Amanus. In this direction he

advanced further than his predecessors, and came into contact with
some personages mentioned in Bible history. The part of his annals
relating to the campaigns that brought him into collision with the kings
of Damascus and Israel possesses peculiar interest for us, much greater
than that attaching to the narrative of any other wars. Therefore,
though we have simply mentioned the latter, we will quote what
Shalmaneser, in his official records, himself says about his campaigns
in Southern Syria :
" In my sixth campaign (900) I advanced towards the cities of the

banks of the Balikh (the Bellas of the classical geographers, rising in
the neighbourhood of Edessa, and flowing into the Euphrates above
Thapsacus). I slew Giammu, the chief of their city. I passed the
Euphrates in a ferry-boat, and received tribute from the kings of
Syria."
"At this time Benhidri of Damascus, Sakhulina of Hamath, the
kings of Syria, and those of the sea coast, trusting to the rapidity of
their movements, advanced to give me
With the help of
battle.
Asshur, the great master, my lord, I fought against them I conquered ;
them. I took from them their chariots, their cavalry, their arms, and
I destroyed 20,500 of their soldiers."
"

It is in this battle, fought at Karkar, that the stele discovered near the
sources of the Tigris, enumerating the confederate forces, mentions the
presence of " 10,000 men of Ahab of Israel," an invahiablc record of
the temporary alliance of Ahab and Benhidri mentioned in the Bible
narrati\e (i Kings xx. 34, and xxii. 1). Among the ])rinces leagued
against the Assyrians we also find the names of Matan-baal, king of
Arvad, Adoni-baal, king of Sidon, Baasa, son of Rehob, king of
Ammon, and consequently vassal of Ahab, and lastly an Arab sheik,
named Djcndib.
" In my tenth campaign " (896), says another inscription, " I crossed
the Euphrates for the eighth time. I destroyed the cities of Sangar and
Carchemish; I demolished them and burnt them with fire Benhidri . . .
of Damascus, Sakhulina of Hamath, and twelve kings of the sea coast,

puttmg trust in their they advanced towards me to give battle.
. . . I
fought with them and conquered them I captured their chariots, their ;
arms. They took to flight to save their lives."

"In my eleventh campaign (895) I marched out of Nineveh; I
crossed for the ninth time the Euphrates in a ferry-boat ... I advanced
towards Mount Amanus ; I attacked the land of Irak ; I descended
towards Hamath; I occupied Astamaku and eighty-nine other towns;
I made a great slaughter there, and led away the inhabitants captive.
At that time Benhidri ofDamascus, Sakhulina of Hamath, and the
twelve kings of the coast had confidence in their they advanced . . .
towards me to give battle. I put them to flight 10,000 soldiers fell ;
before my arms I captured their chariots, their cavalry, and their

;
munitions of war."
" In my fourteenth year" (892), says the king, in another place, " I
made enumeration of my vast and numberless territories ; I crossed the
Euphrates by a ford with 120,000 men. Then Benhidri of Damascus,
Sakhulina of Hamath, and the twelve kings of the Upper and Lower
Coast, who had assembled their innumerable armies, advanced to meet
me. I fought them and put them to flight ; I captured their chariots,
their cavalry ; I took their .arms. They fled to save their lives.
These Syrian wars had been interrupted 898 and 897, by a disin
turbance in Babylon. The and of all
local sovereign of that great city
Chaldiea, Mardukinaddinshu, had been dethroned by his illegitimate
brother, Mardukbelusati. Shalmaneser marched towards the Lower
Euphrates to re-instate Mardukinaddinshu. The war lasted two years,
and the decisive operation was the siege of a town called Gananat, not
at present identified. It was not till the second year of the siege that
Shalmaneser entered Babylon, and dethroned the usurper.
The campaign of Shalmaneser IV. (890) commenced a new
sixteenth
series of wars the king crossed the Zab, or Zabat, to make wai on the
;
mountain people of Upper Media, and afterwards on the Scythian tribes

SHALMANESER AND JEHU. 381
around the Caspian Sea. He did not, however, abandon the western
countries,where he soon found himself opposed by the new king whom
the revohition, arising from the influence of Elisha the prophet, had
placed on the throne of Damascus in the room of Benhidri.
" In my eighteenth campaign " (886), we read on the Nimrud obelisk,
" I crossed the Euphrates for the sixteenth time. Hazael, king of
Damascus, came towards me to give battle. I took from him 1121
chariots and 470 horsemen, with his camp."

" In my nineteenth campaign (885), I crossed the Euphrates for the
eighteenth time. I marched towards Mount Amanus, and there cut
beams of cedar."
" In my twenty-first campaign (883), I crossed the Euphrates for the
twenty-second time. I marched to the cities of Hazael of Damascus.
I received tribute from Tyre, Sidon, and Byblus."
It evidently was at the end of this campaign that Jehu, king of Israel,
whose territory Hazael had ravaged, appealed to Shalmaneser for help
against his powerful enemy. The inscription on the obelisk says that
the Assyrian king received tribute from Jehu, whom it names " son of
Omri," for the great renown of the founder of Samaria had made the
Assyrians consider all the kings of Israel as his descendants. One of
the bas-reliefs of the same monument represents Jehu prostrating himself
before Shalmaneser, as acknowledging himself a vassal.
if
The annals of Shalmaneser sayno more after this, either of the king
of Damascus or of Israel. They record, as his twenty-seventh cam-
paign, a great war in Armenia that brought about the submission of all
the districts of that country that still resisted the Assyrian monarch. In
the thirty-first campaign (873), the last mentioned on the obelisk, the
king sent the general-in-chief of his armies, Tartan, again into Armenia
where he gave up to pillage fifty cities, among them Van and during ;
this time he himself went into Media, subjected part of the northern
districts of that country which were in a state of rebellion, chastised the
people in the neighbourhood of Mount Elwand, where in after times
Ecbatana was built, and finally made war on the Scythians of the
Caspian Sea.
2. The official chronology of the Assyrians dates the termination of
the reign of Shalmaneser IV. in 870, the period of his death. But
during the last two years his power was entirely lost, and he was reduced
to the possession of two cities, Nineveh and Calah. His second son,
Asshurdaninpal, in consequence of circumstances unknown to us, raised
the standard of revolt against his father, assumed the royal title, and
was supported by twenty-seven of the most important cities in the
empire. One of the monuments has preserved a list of these cities,
and amongst them we find-Arrapkha, capital of the province of Arra-

pachitis, Amida (now Diarbekr), Arbela, Ellasar, and all the towns of
the hanks of tlie Tigris. War l)roke out hetween the father and his
rehelHous son, the army embraced the cause of the latter; he was
recognised by all the provinces, and kept Shalmancser until his death
shut up and closely blockaded in his capital.
3. Shalmaneserdied in 870 B.C.; his son, Shamash-Bin, continued the
legitimate line. He succeeded in repressing the revolt of his brother,
Asshurdaninpal, and in depriving him of the authority he had usurped.

The monument recording the exploits of his first years gives no details,
however, of the civil war; it merely records, after enumerating the cities
that had joined the revolt of Asshurdaninpal, "With the aid of the great
gods, my masters, I subjected them to my sceptre."
The usurpation of the second son of Shalmaneser, and a civil war of
five years, had introduced many disorders and shaken
into the empire
the fidelity of many provinces. The early years of Shamash-Bin were
occupied in reducing the whole to order. In the narrative which has
been preserved, extending only to his fourth year, we find that the king
overran and chastised with terrible severity Osrhoene or Aramaean
Mesopotamia, where the people had been in rebellion, and reduced to
obedience the mountainous districts, where are the sources of the Tigris
and Euphrates, and finally Armenia proper. In his fourth year he
marched against Mardukbalatirib, king of Babylon, who had taken
advantage of the disorders in Assyria to assert his independence, and
who was supported by the Susianians or Elamites. He completely
defeated him, and compelled him to fly to the desert, killed very many
of his army in the battle, took 200 war-chariots, and made 7)000
prisoners, of whom 5,000 were put to death on the field of battle as an
example. Unfortunately our information ceases at that period, and we
know absolutely nothing of the greater part of the reign of Shamash-
Bin, or of the expeditions to the west of Asia, Syria, and Palestine, that
must have been made after the termination of the campaigns by which
the royal authority was re-established in all the ancient provinces of the
empire. This king remained on the throne until 857. In 859 and 858
he had to repress a great revolt in Babylon and Chaldsea.
4. Binlikhish [or Binnirari] HI., the next king, reigned twenty-nine
years, from 857 to 828. An inscription of his, engi-aved in the first
years of his reign, describing the extent of the empire, says that he
governed on one side From the land of Siluna, toward the rising sun,
'
'
the countries of Elam, Albania (at the foot of Caucasus), Kharkhar,

Araziash, Misu, Media, Giratbunda (a portion of Atropatene, fre-
quently mentioned in the cuneiform inscriptions), the lands of Munna,
Parsua (Parthia), Allabria (Hyrcania), Abdadana (Hecatompyla),
Namri (the Caspian Scythians), even to all the tribes of the .\ndiu (a
Turanian or Scythian people), whose country is far off, the whole of
the mountainous country as far as the sea of the rising sun (the Caspian
"
BINLIKIIISH AND SAMMURAMAT. 383

Sea) ; on the other side from the Euphrates, Syria, all Phoenicia, the
land of Tyre, of Sidon, the land of Omri (Samaria), Edom, the Philis-
tines, as far as the sea of the setting sun (the Mediterranean) ;" on all
these countries he says that "he imposed tribute."
"I marched," he says again, "against the land of Syria, and I took
Marih, king of Syria, in Damascus, the city of his kingdom. The
great dread of Asshur, my master, persuaded him; he embraced my
knees and made submission.
Binlikhish III. was a warlike prince; every year of his reign was
marked by an expedition. We
have a summary of these in a chrono-
logical tablet, in the British Museum, containing a fragment (from the
end of the reign of Shamash-Bin to that of Tiglath-pileser II.) of a
canon of eponyms mentioning the principal events year by year. They
neariyall occurred in Southern Armenia, and in the land of Van, where
obedience was only maintained by incessant military demonstrations,

and subsequently in the countries to the north of Media, as far as the
Caspian Sea. Other expeditions were also made as far as Parthia,
towards Ariana, and the various countries that, to the Assyrians, were
the extreme east. We do not, however, know what that region was
called by them, as it is always designated by a group of ideogi-aphic
characters of unknown By the defeat of Marih, king
pronunciation.
of Damascus, the submission of the western provinces was secured for
the remainder of this reign, for there is no record of any other cam-
paign there.
Theyear 849 was marked by a great plague in Assyria ; 834 by a
which unfortunately no particulars are known; and,
religious festival, of
lastly, 833 by the solemn inauguration of a new temple to the god
Nebo, in the capital.

5. But the most interesting monument of the reign of Binlikhish III,
isthe statue of Nebo, one of the great gods of Babylon, discovered by
Mr. Loftus, and now in the British Museum the inscription on the
;
base of the statue mentions the wife of the king, and calls her, the
'
'
queen Sammuramat ;" this is the only historical Semiramis, the one
mentioned by Herodotus. He places her correctly about a century
and a half before Nitocris, the wife of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon.
" Semiramis," says the father of history, "raised magnificent embank-
ments to restrain the river (Euphrates), which till then used to over*
flow and flood the whole country round Babylon."* But why did
Herodotus, and the Babylonian tradition he has so faithfully reported^
attribute these useful works to the queen, and not to her husband,
Binlikhish ? It was once supposed, as a solution of this problem, that
Sammuramat had governed alone for some time, as queen regnant,
* Her. i. 184.
—

after the deatli of licr husl)ainl. But this conjecture is absolutely con-
tradicted by tlie table of eponynis in the British Museum, where
it can
be seen that Sammuramat never reigned alone. In our opinion the

only possible explanation will be found in regarding Binlikhish and
Sammuramat as the Ferdinand and Isabella of Mesopotamia. The
restless desire of Babylonia and Chaldosa to form a state sepai-ate from
Assyria grew more decided as time went on ; in the time of Binlikhish
it had already gained great strength, and the day was not far distant
when the separation was definitely to take place, and to occasion the
utter ruin of Nineveh. In this position of affairs it was natural for a
king of Assyria to seek to strengthen his authority in Chalda;a by a
marriage with a daughter of the royal line of that country, who were
his vassals, and thus, in the opinion of the people of Babylon, acquire
a legitimate right to the possession of the country by means of his wife,
as well as the advantages to be derived from the attachment of the
people to their own legitimate sovereign. We shall therefore consider
Sammuramat as a Babylonian princess married by Binlikhish, and as
reigning nominally at Babylon, wiiilst her husband occupied the throne
at Nineveh, and as being the only sovereign registered by the Babylo-
nians in their national annals. In fact, her position must have been a
peculiar one, she must have been considered the rightful queen in one
part of the empire, to have been named as queen, and in the same rank
as the king, in such an official document as the inscription on^he statue
of the god Nebo. She is the only princess mentioned in any of the
Assyrian texts, as we might naturally suppose for unless under such
;
very exceptional circumstances as we imagine in the case of Sammu-

ramat, there can have been no queens, but only favourite concubines,
under the organisation of harem life, such as it was under the Assyrian
kings, and as it still is in our days.
Section V. Asshurlikhish [Asshurnirari] or Sardanapalus,

— Fall of the First Assyrian Empire, 828 789. —
I. The exaggerated development of the Assyrian empire was quite
unnatural ; the kings of Nineveh had never succeeded in welding into
one nation the numerous tribes whom they subdued by force of arms,
or in checking in them the spirit of independence ; they had not even
attempted to do so. The empire was absolutely without cohesion the ;
administrative system was so imperfect, the bond attaching the various

provinces to each other, and to the centre of the monarchy, so weak,
that at the commencement of almost every reign a revolt broke out,
sometimes at one point, sometimes at another. It was therefore easy
to foresee that, so soon as the reins of government were no longer in a

REVOLUTION IN ASSYRIA. 385
really strong hand — so soon as the king of Assyria should cease to be an

active and warlike king, always in the field, always at the head of his
troops —the great edifice laboriously built up by his predecessors of the
tenth and ninth centuries would collapse, and the iminense fabric of
empire would vanish like smoke with such rapidity as to astonish the
world. And this is exactly what occurred after the death of Bin-
Jikhish III.
2. The tablet in the British Museum we have just mentioned allows
us to follow year by year the events and the progress of the dissolution
of the empire. Under Shalmaneser V., who reigned from 828 to 818,
some foreign expeditions were made, as for instance to Damascus
still
in 819 ; but the forces of the empire were specially engaged during
many following years, in attempting to hold countries already subdued,
such as Armenia, then in a chronic state of revolt ; the wars in one and
the same province were constant, and occupied some six successive
campaigns (the Armenian war was from S27 to 822), proving that no
decisive results were obtained.
Under Asshur-edil-ilani II., who reigned from 818 to 800, we do not
see any new conquests ; insurrections constantly broke out, and were
no longer confined to the extremities of the emjîre, they encroached on
the heart of the country, and gradually approached nearer to Nineveh.
The revolutionary spirit increased in the provinces, a great insurrection
became imminent, and was ready to break out on the slightest excuse.
At this period, 804, it is that the British Museum tablet registers, as a
memorable fact in the column of events, "peace in the land." Two
great plagues are also mentioned under this reign, in 811 and 805, and
on the 13th of June, 809 (30 Sivan in the cponomy of Bur-el-salkhi), an
almost total eclipse of the sun visible at Nineveh.
The revolution was not long in coming. Asshurlikhish ascended the
throne in 800, and fixed his residence at Nineveh, instead of Ellasar,
where his predecessor had lived after quitting Nineveh ; he is the Sardan-
apalus of the Greeks, the ever-famous prototype of the voluptuous and
effeminate prince. The tablet in the British Museum only mentions two
expeditions in his reign, both of small importance, in 795 and 794; to
all the other years the only notice is "in the country" proving that
nothing was done, and that all thought of war was abandoned. Sardan-
apalus had entirely given himself up to the orgies of his harem, and
never left his palace walls, entirely renouncing all manly and warlike
habits of life. He had reigned thus for seven years, and discontent
continued to increase ; the desire for independence was spreading in the
subject provinces; the bond of
their obedience each year relaxed still
more, and was nearer breaking, when Arbaces, who commanded the
Median contingent of the army and was himself a Mcdc, chanced to
see in the palace at Nineveh the king, in a female dress, spindle in
c c
hand, hiilii\c; in the retirement of the harem his slothful cowardice and
voluptuous life. He considered that it would be easy to deal with a
prince so degraded, who would be unable to renew the valorous tradi-
tions of his ancestors. The time seemed to him
to have come when the
provinces, held only by might finally throw off tlie
force of arms,
weighty Assyrian yoke. Arbaces communicated his ideas and projects
to the ]irince then entrusted with the government of Bal)ylon, the
Chalchran Phul [Palia?], surnamed Balazu (the terril)le), a name the
Greeks have made into Belesis; he entered into the plot with the willing-
ness to be expected from a Babylonian, one of a nation so frequently
rising in revolt. Arbaces and Balazu consulted with other chiefs, who
commanded contingents of foreign troops, and with the vassal kings of
those countries that aspired to independence; and they all formed the
resolution of overthrowing Sardanapalus. Arbaces engaged to iâise
the Medes and Persians, whilst Balazu set on foot the insurrection in
Babylon and Chald?ca. At the end of a year the chiefs assembled their
soldiers, to the number of 40,000, in Assyria, under the pretext of
relieving, according to custom, the troops who had served the former
year. When once there, the soldiers broke into open rebellion. The
tablet in the British Museum tells us that the insurrection commenced
at Calah in 792. Immediately after this the confusion became so great
that from this year there was no nomination of an eponym.
3. .Sardanapalus, rudely interrupted in his del:)aucheries by a danger
he had not been able to foresee, showed himself suddenly inspired with
activity and courage he put himself at the head of the native Assyrian
;
troops who remained faithful to him, met the rebels and gained three
complete victories over them. The confederates already began to
despair of success, when Phul, calling in the aid of superstition to a cause
that seemed lost, declared to them that if they would hold together for
five days more, the gods, whose will he had ascertained by consulting
the stars, would imdoubtedly give them the victory.
In fact, some days afterwards a largebody of troops whom the king
had summoned to his assistance from the provinces near the Caspian
Sea, went over, on their arrival, to the side of the insurgents, and gained
them a victory. Sardanapalus then shut himself up in Nineveh, and
determined to defend himself to the last. The siege continued two years,
for the walls of the city were too strong for the battering machines of
the enemy, who -were compelled to trust to reducing it by famine.
Sardanapalus was under no apprehension, confiding in an oracle declaring
that Nineveh should never be taken until the river became its enemy.
But in the third year rain fell in such abundance that the waters of the
Tigris inundated part of the city and overturned one of its walls for a
distance of twenty stades. Then the king, convinced that the oracle
was accomplished and despairingof any means of escape, to avoid falling
—
FIRST DESTRUCTION OF NINEVEH. 387
alive into his enemy's hands, constructed in his palace an immense

funeral pile, placed onit his gold, and silver, and his royal roljes, and
then, shutting himself up with his wives and eunuchs in a chamber

formed in the midst of the pile, disappeared in the flames.
Nineveh opened its gates to the besiegers, but this tardy submission
did not save the proud city. It was pillaged and burnt, and then rased
to theground so completely as to evidence the implacable hatred en-

kindled in the minds of subject nations, by the fierce and cruel Assyrian
government. The Medes and Babylonians did not leave one stone upon
another in the ramparts, palaces, temples, or houses of the city that for
two centuries had been dominant over all Western Asia. So complete
was the destruction, that the excavations of modern explorers on the
site of Nineveh have not yet found one single wall slab earlier than the
capture of the city by Arbaces and Balazu. All we possess of the first
Nineveh is one broken statue. History has no other example of so

complete a destruction. The Assyrian empire was, like the capital,
overthrown, and the people who had taken part in the revolt formed
independent states — the Medes under Arbaces, the Babylonians under
Phul, or Balazu, and the Susianians under Shutruk-Nakhunta. Assyria,
reduced to the enslaved state which she had so long held other
in
countries, remained for some time a dependency of Babylon.
This great event occurred in the year 789 B.C.*
CHAPTER HI.
THE SECOND ASSYRIAN EMPIRE.
Section I. Reign of Phul [Palia?]— Re-establishment

OF THE Assyrian Empire. 789—721.
I. After the destruction Medes, content with
of Nineveh, the
having regained their independence, retired into their mountains
without concerning themselves further with the fate of Mesopotamia;
and the Chaldsean Phul Balazu, otherwise called Belesis, possessed
* It must be mentioned that the opinions of many high authorities

are opposed to the views expressed in the Text, and that the first
destruction of Nineveh is believed not to be historical by Sir H. Raw-
linson and Professor Rawlinson. See Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i.
—
Essay 7, and Five Great Monarchies, vol. ii.pp. 385 395. The author
is, however, in agreement with M. Oppert and the late Dr. Hincks.
3SS ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
himself of Assyria, and made it for a lime a dependency of Babylon;
he also seized on the western jjrovinces of the Assyrian monarchy, that
is of the Arama-an ct)untries on both sides of the Euphrates.
No inscription of this king has as yet licen found, and the classical
historians do not mention him after the capture of Nineveh. All there-
fore that we know of his reign is the record in the Bible of his invasion
of the kingdom of Israel in 770. Alenahem had ascended the throne
after murdering his predecessor, but tliere was a factious and strong
opposition still existing. Incapable, in the midst of these domestic

discords, of repulsing a foreign invasion, he could only avert the dangers
that threatened him by submitting be tributary to Phul, to whom he
to
paid 1,000 talents of silver (2 Kings xv. 19), and by this humiliation
obtained the support of the Assyrian monarch in retaining his usurped
throne.
2. But the supremacy of the Chaldajans over Assyria did not last
longer than the reign of Phul, who died in 747. The Assyrians were
by far the most warlike of the nations of Mesopotamia; they were an
essentially manly and military people, and in the eighth century B.C. the
spirit of the great wars of the two preceding centuries was not yet
extinct, in spite of the disaster of Sardanapalus. Assyria had been
crushed only by a coalition of Medes, Susianians, and Babylonians,
attacking the capital with the ardour inspired by deep-seated and un-
bounded hatred. But when the Medes and Susianians had retired to
their own countries, where they remained quiet, satisfied with having
destroyed the proud city that had so long oppressed them, when the
Assyrians were only opposed by the Babylonians, who, though they
had momentarily gained the upper hand, were too enervated, too little
endowed with strength of character and warlike energy, as compared
with their northern neighbours, to be able to presei-ve their supremacy
long, the spirit of independence quickly awakened in the populous
Assyrian cities, even if it had ever been lost, and forty-five years after
the destruction of Nineveh a general insurrection drove the Babylonians
out of Assyria. The royal race of the descendants of Belkatirassu had
not become extinct with Asshurlikhish, when he ascended his funeral
pile. There still remained some princes of this race concealed in
different parts of the countiy. One of these, Tiglath-pileser II.
[Tuklat-pal-ashar],was placed by the Assyrian insurgents at their head.
The revolt evidently must have commenced immediately after the death
of Phul, in 747. But it was not at once successful, the Babylonians
would not abandon their conquests « ithout iêsistance. There was a
struggle prolonged for several years, and it was not till the 13th of the
month of Air (May), in the year 744, that Tiglath-pileser, having
surmounted all opposition, could date his accession to the throne. In
this year the exclusively Assyrian custom of eponyms was re-established;
TIGLATH-PILESER IN SYRIA. 389
for during the time of Phul dates were reckoned in the Babylonian
fashion,by the years of his reign.
3. Osrhoene and the north of Syria had been so completely crashed
by the Assyrian conquerors of the tenth and ninth centuries, that they
no longer had any distinct nationality or desire for independence. Mere
dependencies of Nineveh, they changed masters with each revolution in
Assyria, and obeyed whoever reigned there. After the fall of Asshur-
likhish, or Sardanapalus, they were transferred to the rule of Phul; when
the kingdom of Assyria was re-established, they quietly transferred their
allegiance to Tiglath-pileser. The London chronological table informs
very year of his accession this king travelled as far as
us, that in the
the Euphrates to re-establish his authority in the western provinces.
Two years after his accession in 742, Tiglath-pileser, having reduced
to obedience both Babylonia and the country of the Scythian Caspians,
made an expedition into Syria, as his authority had not been recognised
in the south of that country. Eniel, king of Hamath, Rezin, son of Ben-
hidri, king of Damascus, and Pekah, king of Israel, formed a con-
federation against him with Ashariah, son of Tabeal,*whom these princes
had put forward as a pretender to the throne of Judah, in opposition
first to Jotham, and subsequently to Ahaz. The confederates were
defeated, the kingdoms of Hamath and Damascus ravaged, Pekah
was dethroned, and his place filled by Menahem II. Tiglath-pileser
carried everything before him. The city of Arpad alone resisted, and
sustained a siege of three years ; this the king of Assyria left to the
direction of his generals.Before leaving Syria, in 742, he received
from Hystaspes [Gustaspi], king of Commagene, Rezin, king of
tribute
Damascus, Menahem, king of Israel, Hiram, king of Tyre, Sibitbaal, king
of Gebal, Urikki, king of Kui (a city in some part of Syria, but not yet
identified), Pisiris, king of Carchemish, and Eniel, king of Hamath.
After his return to Assyria, Tiglath-pileser, to assist in the re-organi-
sation of the administration of the empire, took a census of the popula-
tion. In the same year he conquered the Armenians who had, at the
same time as the Medes, thrown off the burden of Ninevite supremacy,
and his victory is termed a massacre in the tablet in the British Museum.
In 734 Pekah, taking advantage of the war in Armenia, then occupy-
ing the king of Assyria, again possessed himself of the throne, declared
himself independent, and allied himself with Rezin, king of Damascus,
in order to resist the power of Assyria.
Ahaz, king of Judah, threatened by Pekah and Rezin, begged for
help from Tiglath-pileser (2 Kings xvi. 7, 9), who gladly availed him-
self of this pretext to chastise the two kings whom he regarded as rebels.
* In the Bible this personage is called merely the son of Tabeal, we

learn his name only from the Assyrian inscriptions. See p. 172.
He advanced at the head of a numerous army into Syria, determined to
take advantage of tiicsc occurrences in order to bring the nations of
He commenced by destroying tlie
Palestine dcfniitely into subjection.
kingdom Damascus and putting Rezin to dcalli. Marcliing next
of
against the Philistines, he took Gaza ; its king at first took refuge in
Egypt, but afterwards returned and made his submission. Mitenti,
king of Ashdod, also at first took to flight, and v/as provisionally
replaced by his son, Rukiptu he, moreover, at last returned and
;
made his submission to Tiglatli-pilescr. The Assyrian king made also

a great expedition against the Arabs of Dumah, took their city, and
imposed on them a considerable tribute.
Towards the end of the year 731 Tiglath-pileser, before returning to
Nineveli, held a grand court at Damascus. Twenty-three vassal kings
came there to do him homage, and pay their tribute. These were, in
the order in which the conqueror himself enumerates them, Hystaspes
of Commagene, Urikki of Kui, Sibitbaal of Gcbal, Pisiris of Carche-
mish, Eniel of Hamath, Pennamu of Samala in Armenia, Tarhula of
Gamgum in the same country, Sulumal of Melitene, Dadil of Colchis,
Wassami of the Tibareni, Uskhilti of Tuna, Tuham of Istunda, Urim
of Hubisna (the four last are names of cities in the neighbourhood of
the Caucasus and their precise situation is not yet determined), Mathan-
baal of Aradus, Sanib of Ammon, Solomon of Moab, Pekah of Israel,
Shamsie, queen of the Arabs, Mitenti, king of Ascalon, Ahaz of Judah,
Kadu-malka of Edom, Hanun of Gaza.
The king of Tyre does not appear in this list. We do not know whether
Hiram was still on the throne, or whether his son, Muthon, was king. But
in the following year we have distinct mention of Muthon as sovereign.
Tiglath-pileser took from Pekah half of his territory, and also reduced
him to the most abject vassalage, imposing on him a very considerable
tribute.In this war, lasting three years (from 733 to 731), we meet
with the first instance of the barbarous system of transplanting the
whole people of a conquered country to places far distant from their

native land — a system seemingly unknown to the kings of the first, but
constantly practised by those of the second, Assyrian empire, and after
them by the Babylonians, no doubt as being likely to prevent revolts.
The principal inhabitants of the kingdom of Damascus were transported
to Armenia, to the banks of the river Cyrus the Israelitish tribes of
;
Reuben, Gad and Manasseh were carried captive to Assyria. Military

colonies of Assyrians and Chaldaeans replaced them in their own
countries (2 Chron. xxviii. 20). Ahaz, king of Judah, paid dearly for
the services the king of Assyria had rendered him in delivering him
from his enemies, he was obliged to acknowledge himself a vassal of
the king, to go to Damascus to pay him homage, and to engage to pay
a tribute, continued till his death, and the accession of Hezekiah.
SHALMANESER VI. 391
In the interval between the two campaigns in Syria, in 736, Tiglath-

pileser, not venturing to attack Media proper, took Atropatene, of which
he had become master in his preceding wars, for his base of operations,
and made a great expedition into those countries considered by the As-
syrians as the extreme east, that is what classical geographers call Ariana.
He advanced farther than any of his predecessors, and reached the fron-
tiers of India. In an inscription towards the end of his reign he names
among the countries that paid tribute to him, after the small Scythian
states on the borders of the Caspian Sea, Parsuash (Parthia), Zikruti
(Cai-umanian Sagartia), Nissha (the Nisai of the Zend Avesta, the Nisaâ
of the classical geographers), Ariarva (Aria), and Arakuttu (Arachosia).
mistake the identification of these countries.
It is impossible to
Towards the end of 730, Muthon, king of Tyre, made an alliance with
Pekah, king of Israel, and they both refused their tribute to the Assy-
rians. Tiglath-pileser did not consider this revolt of sufficient import-
ance to require his own presence. He contented himself with sending
an army into Palestine. On the approach of this force a conspiracy
was formed in Samaria, headed by Hoshea, who, after killing Pekah,
possessed himself of the crown. The Assyrian king confirmed him in
this position, and Muthon, finding himself without an ally, attempted
no resistance,and quietly submitted to pay his tribute.*
4. Shalmaneser [Shalmanuashir] VI. succeeded Tiglath-pileser in 727.
We have no monuments of his reign except some bronze weights now in
the British Museum ;and we know its precise length only from the
table of eponyms in the same collection. The only events that we
know of this period are those related in the Bible. Hoshea, who had
seized the throne after murdering Pekah in 730, had in the commence-
ment of his reign paid the same tribute as his predecessor. But at the
end of some years, having made an offensive and defensive alliance with
the Ethiopian king, Shabaka, who in 725 became master of Egypt, he
thought himself strong enough to revolt. Shalmaneser, desirous of
putting an end to this rebellion before the Ethiopian conqueror could
have time to fulfil his promises to Hoshea, hastily assembled an army,
and marched on the kingdom of Israel. He captured and imprisoned
Hoshea, and without difficulty, made himself master of the small terri-
tory left by his predecessors to the Israelites, and in December 724
laid siege to Samaria, the capital. This city, the last bulwark of Israelitish
nationality, was defended with desperate energy. Shalmaneser, unable
to take it by storm, resolved to reduce it by blockade, but he did not
live to witness the fall of Samaria. In little more than a year after
*The details of these campaigns of Tiglath-pileser have been eluci-

dated by Mr. George Smith and M. Oppert. The former is well known
to Assyrian scholars as the discoverer of many importajit facts, and for
his accomplishments as a decipherer of Assyrian inscriptions.
—

the commencement of the siege, in 722, lie died ; we do not know
whether lie luul first returned to Assyria, leaving his generals before
the place, or wlielhcr his death look place in tlie land of Israel.
Section II. Sauc.on [Sharyukin].

1. SiiAL.MANESER [Shalmanuashir] left only one son, who was under
age. The Tartan, or general-in-chief of his troops, named Sargon
[Sharyukin], and who was descended also from the royal family by
another branch, then seized on the throne. But his accession was not
unattended with difficulties; there were other competitors, and six
months passed after the death of Shalmaneser before his reign com-
menced. A celestial prodigy, the famous eclipse of the moon on the 19th
March, 721 (the same that plays so important a part in the construction
of the astronomical tables of the Greek Ptolemy), exercised on the
election of Sargon an influence the exact nature of which we cannot
understand. In his inscriptions there is frequent mention of the princes
who before Haran interpreted the eclipse in his favour, and gave in
their adhesion in the midst of sacrifices offered to Oannes, and Dagon.
For the first three years he ruled only as the guardian and co-regent of
the young Samdan-malik (Samdan —
the Assyrian Hercules is king), —
son of Shalmaneser. The table of eponyms in the British Museum
informs us, that it was only from 718 that Sargon reigned alone, but
the years of his reign were reckoned from 721.
This usurper was a great king, a redoubtable conqueror, who restored
to Assyria all its ancient glory, all the extent of territory it had possessed
before the disaster of Asshurlikhish, and even added new domains, never
previously subject to Nineveh. The long inscriptions found by M.
Botta in the palace of Khorsabad, make us even better acquainted with
the details of his reign, than with those of more than one of the Roman
emperors.
2. "This is what I have done," says Sargon, in the longest of the
inscriptions, in which he relates his annals, "from the commencement
of my reign to my fifteenth campaign.
" I defeated in the plains of Kalu, Humbanigash, king of Elam.
"I besieged, took, and occupied the city of Samaria, and carried
into captivity 27,280 of its inhabitants. I changed the former govern-
ment of the country, and placed over it lieutenants of my own."
The fall of Samaria and the destruction of the kingdom of Israel
took place, as we have already said, in July 721. The inhabitants of
the capital, as well as the chief families of the Ephraimites, were
removed to Calah (which, Nineveh, had become the
after the ruin of
usual residence of the kings), to the banks of the Chaboras, and to
some of the recently reconquered Median cities. In their place Sargon
—
CAMPAIGNS OF SARGON. 393
established in the land of Israel colonies of captives from provinces of

the lower Tigris, who had fallen into his power durmg the war against
the king of Elam. The Bible, in complete agreement with the inscrip-
tion, tells us that the land of Israel was not reconstituted as a tributary
kingdom, but as a simple province, occupied by a military force, and
governed by an Assyrian officer.
" Hanun, king of Gaza, and Sebeh (Shabak), " Sultan "* of Egypt
came to Raphia to fight against me, they met me, and I routed them.
Sebeh fled .... I took prisoner Hanun, king of Gaza.
" I imposed tribute on Pharaoh of Egypt, on Shamsie, queen of Arabia,
and on Yathaamir the Sabcean, of gold, spices, horses and camels."
We omit the account given in the inscription of the conquest of
countries that seem to belong to the interior of Asia Minor, but as yet
have not been identified with the names known in classical geogi-aphy,
such as Sinukhta and Khulli. Sargon had given Cilicia to the king
of this latter country, but as he subsequently revolted, he was kept
prisoner in Assyria with all the grandees of his court.
"Yaubid [or Ilubid] of Hamath was not the legitimate king ....
He persuaded the cities of Arpad, Simyra, Damascus, and Samaria to
revolt against me, and prepared for battle. I led out all the forces of
the god Asshur. I besieged him and his warriors in the city of Karkar,
that had taken his part. I took Karkar and burnt it to ashes. I took
him prisoner, and caused him to be flayed alive. I killed the chiefs of
the rebels in each city, and destroyed the cities.
" Whilst Iranzu of Van lived, he was submissive and devoted to my
empire, but he died. His subjects placed his son, Aza, on the throne.
Urzaha the Armenian set on foot intrigues with the people of Mount
Mildish (the Niphates of the Greeks), of Zikarta (Median Sagartia), of
Misiandi (the Matieni of classical geography), and with the great men
of Van, and persuaded them to revolt. They abandoned the body of
their master, Aza, on the tops of the mountains. Ullushun of Van, his
brother, whom they put on the throne, made an alliance with Urzaha,
and gave him twenty-two strong places with their garrisons. In the
wrath of my heart I counted all the armies of the god Asshur, and
advanced to attack that country. Ullushun of Van, finding that I was
approaching, came with his troops and occupied a strong position in the
* This unusual title "Silthan," or Sultan, of Egypt, is evidently

contrasted in the inscription with the usual title of the Egyptian
monarch Pharoah, or Pir'u, in the succeeding paragraph. Sir PI.
Rawlinson reads the word as Tardanu, " the high in rank," and con-
siders the title as implying a position subordinate to the reigning
monarch. The author, in accordance with M. Oppert, regards it as
the title indicating the suzerainty of the Ethiopian, to whom the legiti-
mate Pharaoh was a vassal. Tk.
ravines of the high mountains. I occupied Izirti, iiis royal city, tlie
cities of Isibia and Armit, his strong fortresses. I reduced them to

ashes. I icilled all that belonged to Urzaha the Armenian. I took
members of his
captive 250 family; I occupied fifty-five walled cities
.... and reduced them to ashes. The twenty-two strong cities of
Ullushun, of which Urzaha had become master, I annexed to Assyria."
Sargon next relates how he ravaged in Armenia the states of Mitatti,
king of Zikarta, or Sagartia, and sacked twenty-three of his cities; how
he took prisoner Sagadatti, king of Mount Mildish, and had him flayed
alive there is a representation of this on the lâs-reliefs of the palace
:
at Khorsabad. These are followed by a narration of other campaigns

in Armenia, where king Urzaha for many years remained his irreconcil-
able enemy, constantly exciting fresh insurrections among the vassal
kings, until at last he was compelled to commit suicide to avoid falling
into the hands of Sargon ; in Media also, where many districts were
again brought under the Assyrian yoke then in Parthia, where the
;
great city of Surgadia was taken by assault in Albania ; in the Cau-

;
casus ; in the mountains of Cilicia and Pisidia, where the inhabitants of

one city, Papha, were transported to Damascus. This system of trans-
portation of the inhabitants of conquered countries was continued
throughout all the wars of Sargon.
" Azuri, king of Ashdod, obstinately refused to pay his tribute; he
sent to the neighbouring kings messages hostile to the king of Assyria.
As a punishment I replaced him by another. I placed on the throne
his brother, Akhimit. But the people, bent on revolt, rejected the
authority of Akhimit, and placed Yaman, who was not legitimate,
master on the throne. In my wrath ... I marched against Ashdod
with my warriors, who followed close on my footsteps.
"Yaman learned from far the news of my approach, and fled into
Egypt to Milukhi,*and no trace of him was ever found. I besieged
and took Ashdod ... I carried off captive his gods, his wife, his
sons, his daughters, and his treasures, all the contents of his palace, and
the inhabitants of his land. I rebuilt again his cities, and placed there
the people whom I had conquered in the lands of the rising sun. I
gave them an officer of mine as governor, and treated them like As-
syrians. " The date of this war against Ashdod is fixed by another inscrip-
tion as the year 710. It is also mentioned in the Bible (Isaiah xx. i).
" The king of Milukhi dwells in a desert land." He must not be
* The author had originally identified, as had M. Oppert, Milukhi

with Meroe. He has, however, found proof in the Cylinder of Asshur-
banipal that Milukhi was north of Memphis, and that it was the name
given to the western portion of the Delta (Merekh in the Hieroglyphic
texts), where at this time a small independent kingdom existed. The
discovery was unfortunately made too late to appear in the French
edition of this work.
"
CAMPAIGNS OF SARGON, 395
confounded with the Ethiopian Shabak, whose capital was at Napata.

This prince, as we learn from other documents of Sargon, had given an
asylum to Yaman, thus explaining the sudden appearance of his name
in the inscription. It seems that the king of Assyria made prepara-
tions for war against the king of Milukhi, who wished to avert the
danger. " From the most distant ages his fathers had never sent
ambassadors to the kings, my ancestors,
to ask for peace and friendship,
and to acknowledge the power of Merodach. But the great terror
inspired by my majesty decided him, and fear caused him to act
differently. He recognised the greatness of the god Adar, directed his
steps to Assyria, and prostrated himself before me.
We next find the story of a revolt in Commagene, repressed with
great severity, and of a civil war in Albania, about the succession to the
crown ; in this Sargon intervened, and placed one of the competitors on
the throne.
"Merodach Baladan (Mardukbaliddin), son of Yakin (undoubtedly
the Kinzirus of the canon of the kings of Babylon, preserved by the Greek
astronomer, Ptolemy), king of ChaklKa, no longer respected the memory
of the gods ... he evaded their precepts and neglected their worship.
He had allied himself for assistance with Humbanigash, king of Elam.

He had excited to revolt the nomad tribes (of Irak Arabi). He prepared
for a battle and was advancing." Sargon continues the narrative by
telling how he assembled all his forces to fight with Merodach Baladan.
He, becoming alarmed, evacuated Babylon, and retreated into Lower
Chaldsea to the neighbourhood of a fortress built by his father, and
called Dur- Yakin. There a sanguinary battle took place, and the in-
scription gives all its details; ending in the defeat of the Chaldean
king and his allies, who hastened to make their submission the very
same evening.
" Merodach Baladan," continues Sargon, "abandoned in his caiiip
his royal insignia, his golden tiara, his golden throne, his golden parasol,
his golden sceptre, his silver chair ... he escaped in disguise. I
besieged and took his city of Dur-Yakin. I took as prisoners himself,

his wife, his sons, his daughters. I took gold, silver, all his possessions.
I punished for their faults all the families, and all the men who had
revolted from my government. I reduced the cities to ashes. I undei'-
mined and destroyed the walls."

This war took place in winter, and Sargon re-entered Babylon in
triumph in February. This battle at Dur-Yakin avenged the destruc-
tion of Nineveh, and again brought Babylon under the Assyrian yoke,
from which Phul had freed her. It occurred in 709, according to the
chronological canon of Ptolemy. Sargon after having dethroned
Merodach Baladan did not again place a vassal king on the throne of
Babylon, as other monarchs of Assyria had done, but merely a satrap
—
39<5 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.

of liis own appoinlniLMit, named Nabupakidilani. Tlie prisoners pre-
viously made in Commagene were settled in Lower Chald;ea and
Susiana or Elam; and, on the other hand, those taken in Chaldaja were
sent to join the colonies established some years earlier in the kingdom
of Israel.
" The seven kings of the land of latnan (Island of Cypnis), who had
established themselves at a distance of seven days' sail in the sea of the
setting sun,and whose name none among the kings my fathers in Assyria
and Chaldnea had ever heard, having learned the great deeds I had done
in Syria and in Chaldn?a, and my gloiy that had spread far off even into
the midst of the sea, humbled their pride and bowed themselves before
me ; they presented themselves before me at Balaylon, bearing metals,
gold, silver, vases, ebony, and the manufactures of their country ; they
bowed themselves before me." This submission of the Isle of Cyprus
to the Assyrian king is referred by anotlier inscription to the year
708. Some years ago there was discovered in this island, at Lamica,
the ancient Citium, a large stele of granite with a cuneiform inscription
and a representation of king Sargon.
3. The long inscription whence we have borrowed these quotations,
known by the name of "The Acts of Sargon," mentions only the

victories of the king, and is entirely silent on the serious check he
received in the midst of his prosperity before Tyre. Another inscrip-
tion converts this repulse into a victory, lût only devotes one line to it,
as not wishing to bring up a recollection so painful to the king's pride.
After the story of the battle of Raphia, it proceeds, " Master of battles,
I crossed the Sea of Jamnia in ships, like a fish. I annexed Kui and
Tyre." Now tlie annals of Tyre, as quoted by the Jewish historia.n
Josephus —and here we must in preference believe them —contain the
following account :
" Elulaeus reigned thirty-six years; this king, upon the revolt of the
people of Citium, sailed to them, and reduced them to obedience.
Soon after the king of Assyria, at the head of his army, overran all
Phoenicia, but retired when they made their submission. Sidon, Acco,
Paljetyrus, and many other cities revolted from Tyre, and gave them-
selves up to the king of Assyria. When would not submit
the Tyrians
to him, the king returned and made war upon them again, having
received from the other Phoenicians sixty large ships with 800 rowers.
The Tyrians, with only twelve ships, dispersed the enemy's fleet, and
—
took from them 500 prisoners a very high honour for the Tyrians.
Then the king returned and blockaded tlieir city by land, and inter-
cepted the aqueducts that brought water into it, hoping thus to secure
their sulimission. But the Tyrians, having dug wells inside their city,
resisted five years " (Joseph. Ant., IX. xiv. 2). At the end of this long
and fruitless siege, the Assyrians were compelled to retreat.
BUILDINGS OF SARGON. 397
4. In 711, in the midst of his military successes, Sargon, "to replace

Nineveh," not yet risen from its ruins, undertook the building of a
new and large city, at a distance of fifteen miles from the site of the
ancient capital, called Dur Sharyukin (the castle of Sargon). This place
is now called Khorsabad; and here the first discoveries of works of
Assyrian art were made, and the magnificent palace, entirely the work
of Sargon, uncovered by the labours successively of M. Botta and
M. Victor Place. The best of the sculptures from this place now orna-
ment the Museum of the Louvre. We shall have occasion to mention,
in another part of this work, the ruins of this city and ])alace, completed
in 706. At present we sliall simply quote what Sargon says in his
"Acts." He there gives some details of the construction of some
parts of an Assyrian palace that are of great value.
" At the foot of the Musri, to replace Nineveh, I have built, ac-
cording to the will of the gods and the desire of my heart, a city, called
Dur Sharyukin. Nisroch, Sin, Shamash, Nebo, Ao, Adar, and their
divine wives, who reign eternally in Mesopotamia, have blessed the
mai-vellous splendours, the superb streets, of the city of Dur Sharyukin.
.... I built in the city a palace covered with seal skin, with wood-
work of sandal, ebony, fir, cedar, Cyprus, and pistachio —a palace of
incomparable magnificence for the seat of my royalty. There I . . .
wrote up the glory of the gods. The upper part I built of cedar wood,
I cased the beams with bronze. ... I made a spiral staircase, lil<e that
of the great temple in Syria, called Bethilanni. I sculptuiêd with
works of art stonesfrom the mountain. To decorate the gates, I made
ornaments on the and jambs, and placed above them cross pieces
lintels
of gypsum. . My palace contains gold, silver; vases of these two
. .
metals, colours, iron, the produce of various mines, stuffs dyed with
saffron, blue and purple, ambergris, seal skins, pearls, sandal and
ebony wood, horses from Egypt, apes, mules, camels, booty of all
kinds."
5. In 706 the works at Dur Sharj'ukin were finished, and on the
22nd of the month Tasrit {in October), the solenm ceremony was held
of the consecration of the new city, of its palace and temples. Two
years afterwards, in 704, on the 1 2th of the month Ab (in August),
Sargon was assassinated it is not known by whom, but possibly by
;
Chaldrean conspirators ; for soon after his murder an insurrection took

place in Babylon under a certain Agises. He was in turn put to death
by a second Merodach-baladan, probably a son of the one who lost the
battle of Dur Yakin, who took command of the Babylonians. During
this time, in Assyria, Sennacherib [Sinakherib], son of Sargon, suc-
ceeded his father.
—
Section III. Sennachkrih [Sinakiikkik].

704—681.
I. Sennacherib, more exactly Sinakherib (Sin the moon-god
or —
— has muhi]ilied brothers), is the most cclel)ratcd of the Assyrian con-
querors, owing to the concurrent mention of him in Herodotus and the

Bible. We possess the official narrative of his wars up to 684 in an
inscription of 480 lines of veiy close writing on the six faces of a
cylinder of baked earth, now in the British Museum, without reckoning
an immense number of other texts of great historical importance. We
shall, as with the " Acts of Sargon," quote the most important pas-
sages they will show us what was the reign of this king who made
;
I have brought under my power every one who

'
the proud boast, '
carried his head high."

"In my first campaign I conquered Merodach-baladan, king of
Chaldcea, and the armies of Elam, in the neighbourhood of Kish. In
the midst of the battle he stole away quietly. The chariots, the
. . .
horses that were engaged, turned against him; he escaped alone, and
fled to his palace at Babylon. But I opened his treasure-house, I seized
gold, silver, his furniture, his robes, his wife, his men, his courtiers, his
male and female slaves, his domestics of the palace, his soldiers I ;
brought them out and sold them for slaves. With the aid of Asshur,
my lord, I besieged seventy-nine large strongholds in Chaldgea, and
820 small towns in the neighbourhood. The tribes of Urbi, Aram,
. . .
and Khaldu, who were in the cities of Erech, Nipur, Kish, of Calneh
and Cutha, I brought out and sold for slaves."
The chronological canon of Ptolemy informs us that after this victory
Sennacherib no longer allowed Babylon to be ruled, as his father had
done, by a simple satrap, but placed there a vassal king, named Belibus,
a young Ninevite, who had been brought up in the royal palace.
In his second campaign Sennacherib turned his arms against the
warlike tribes of the north and east, in Armenia, Media, and Albania,
among the Parthians, and in Commagene, and gained signal victories
over them.
2. " In my third campaign I marched towards Syria; Eluli was king
of the .Sidonians. The great renown of my majesty affrighted him,
and he fled to the isles in the midst of the sea and abandoned his
country. The cities of Great Sidon and Lesser Sidon, Betzitti, Sarepta,
Ecdippa, AccQ, the great cities, the citadels, the places of pilgrimage
and devotion, the temples, all had been affrighted by the glory of
Asshur, my master, and gave themselves up to me. I established Eth-
baal on the throne. I imposed on him tribute and the tenth part of his
royal rents.
"Ethbaal of Sidon, Abdilit of Aradus, Mitenti of Ashdod, Peduil
SENNACHERIB AND HEZEKIAH. 399
of Amnion, Kamoshnadab of Moab, Molochram of Edom, and the

kings of the whole of Phoenicia, brought with them into my presence
numerous tributes, and bowed themselves before me.
"But Sidka of Ascalon did not submit to me. I carried off his
gods from the house of his fathers ; I led captive himself, his wife, his
sons, his daughters, his brothers, the scions of his race, and carried
them into Assyria. The nders, dignitaries, and inhabitants of
. . .
Migron had betrayed the king, Padi, who was inspired by friendship
*
and zeal for Assyria, and had given him up bound in chains of iron
to Hezekiah of Judah. . . .
"But they were afraid of the kings of Egypt; for the archers,
chariots, and horses of the king of Ethiopia, innumerable in multitude,
assembled and marched against me. Their chiefs formed them in order
of battle, in view of the city of Eltheca [Eltekon, Jos. xv. 59], and in-
spected their men. Adoring Asshur, my master, I fought against
them, and put them to flight. The drivers of the chariots of the king
of Meroe were taken alive by my hand in the midst of the battle. I
besieged and took the cities of Eltheca and Thamna, and carried off
their inhabitants captive.
"Then I returned towards Migi-on ; I deposed the nders and the
dignitaries who had revolted, and killed them ; I hung their bodies on
crosses on the walls of the city. I sold for slaves all the men of the
city who had committed violence and crimes. As for those who had
not committed crimes or faults, and had not despised their masters, I
pardoned them. I brought Padi, their king, out of Jerusalem, and
restored him to the throne of his royalty. I imposed on him the
tribute paid as acknowledgment of my suzerainty.

"But Hezekiah, king of Judah, did not submit. There were forty-
four walled towns, and an infinite number of villages that I fought

against, humbling their pride, and braving their anger. By means of
fire, massacre, battles, and siege operations, I took them ; I occupied
them; I brought out 200, 150 persons, great and small, men and women,
horses, apes, mules, camels, oxen and sheep without numl)er, and
carried them off as booty. As for himself, I shut him up in Jerusalem,
the city of his power, like a bird in its cage. I invested and blockaded
the fortresses round it ; those who came out of the great gate of the city
* The name given in the text as " Migron " is read by Sir H. Raw-
linson as "Ekron." The word in the Assyrian text is read by the
author as Aingamin, and he regards it impossible to admit the identi-
fication of the name with Ekron. On the one hand may lie urged the
apparently very small importance of Migron, a town barely mentioned
in Scripture, and the certainty that there was a king of Ekron ; on the
other hand, Migron is specially mentioned in the magnificent description
of the advance of the Assyrian army in the loth chapter of Isaiah.
were seized, and made prisoners. I separated the cities I liad ])lundcrcd
from his country, and gave tliom to Mitenti, king of Ashdod, to I'adi,
king of Migron, to Ishmabaal, king of Gaza.
"Then tlie fear of my majesty tenificd this Hezelciah of Jmlali; lie
sent away the \vatclimen and guards a\ horn lie had assemliled for the
defence of Jerusalem. He sent messengers to me at Nineveh, the

seat of my sovereignty, with thirty talents of gold and 400 talents of
silver, metals, rubies, pearls, great carbuncles, seats covered with skins,
thrones ornamented with leather, amber, seal skins, sandal wood, and
ebony, the contents of his treasury, as well as his daughters, the women
of his palace, his male and female slaves. He sent an ambassador to
present this tribute, and to make his submission."
These himself agree, as we see, in a
inscriptions of Sennacherib
most striking manner with the Bible narrative as to the ransom Heze-
kiali was compelled to pay in order to save Jerusalem, where the
Assyrian conqueror had once appeared. But Sennacherib has not told
us all his annals are silent as to the disaster that befell his army on
;
his second attempt on the capital of Judah. He has so completely

passed over this episode, that he does not even mention the siege of
Lachish, where he was when he sent to .summon Hezekiah to surrender
the city the submission of Lachish is nevertheless represented on a
;
great bas-relief in the palace at Nineveh, now in the British Museum.

3. Desirous of retrieving the reputation of his arms, temporarily
compromised by the check received before Jerusalem, Sennacherib in
the following year (699) marched against Babylon, where important
events had occurred during his absence. Belibus had been driven
away by an insurrection under Merodach Baladan, who had escaped
from prison. This indomitable champion of Babylonian independence
at once put himself into a state of defence against the Assyrian king,
from whom he anticipated war to tlie knife. The Bible informs us
that he solicited the alliance of Hezekiah, after the disaster of Senna-
cherib before Jerusalem. Unfortunately the portion of the inscription
referring to the campaign against Merodacli Baladan is much mutilated.
We only learn from it that Sennacherib pursued the Chaldsean prince
into the marshes of Lower Chaldtea, where he defeated him in a great
battle ; Merodach Baladan then fled into Elymais, where he soon died.
" On my return," says Sennacherib, " I placed on the throne of royalty
(at Babylon) Asshur-nadin, my eldest son, the child of my blessings."
This is confirmed by Berosus, and by the canon of Ptolemy.
At the end of this war Sennacherib entered ujjon another, rendered
very troublesome by the nature of the countiy, in the eastern mountains
towards the frontiers of Media and Susiana. He there captured a great
number of cities, "perched up on high like birds' nests "; but it is im-
possible as yet to identify these places with the modern localities.
"
PALACE OF SENNACHERIB. 401
Pressing his advantage still farther into countries that liad not yet felt
the weight of the Assyrian arms, Sennacherib^ attacked the land of
Dayi, in which we recognise with Sir II. Rawlinson the territory of the
Dahi, mentioned by Herodotus * as one of the Persian tribes. Their
king is called Maniya, a name clearly of Iranian character. " I carried
off," says the king, "the men, the beasts of burden, the cattle, the
sheep ; I destroyed the cities, I demolished them, I reduced them to
ashes.
4. Some years of peace succeeded these devastating wars, and Sen-
nacherib profited by them to put into execution the project he had con-
ceived of rebuilding Nineveh, and re-establishing it as the capital, after
the example of the great kings of the tenth and ninth centuries. This
famous city had already begun to rise from its ruins, the inhabitants had
returned to settle on its site, but it had not yet recovered its former
prosperity, the ancient capital had become a simple country town.
Sennacherib made it again the Queen of Asiatic cities ; magnificent
enough to rival the splendors of Babylon. " I rebuilt," he says, in an
inscription, "all the edifices of Nineveh, my royal city; I rebuilt the
ancient, I widened the narrower streets ; I made the entire city splendid
as the sun." Dur Sharyukin, by
built his father, lost its importance,
and a large part of its population came to settle at Nineveh. Never-
theless it continued to exist for three centuries later; Xenophon mentions
itunder the name of Mespila, In the midst of his renovated capital,
Sennacherib rebuilt the royal palace " with alabaster and cedar" with
extreme magnificence. The remains of this palace are called by the
present inhabitants of the country Koyundjik. It has been excavated
by Mr. Layard, and the greater part of the sculptures brought to the
British Museum. In building it Sennacherib anticipated a long dura-
tion for his dynasty, and he addressed to his successors, in an inscription,
words which the second destruction of Nineveh, not long after, sup-
to
plied a bitterly ironical commentary:
—
"This palace will in course of
time grow old and fall to ruins ; I will that my successors rebuild the
ruins, renew the inscriptions containing my name, restore the paintings,
and cleanse and replace the bas-reliefs. Then may Asshur and Ishtar
hear their prayers. But should anyone erase my writing and my name,
may Asshur, the great god, the father of the gods, treat him as a rebel,
take from him sceptre and throne, and break his sword."
5. But before long it was again necessary to attack Babylon, always
conquered, but always so rebellious that the repression of insurrections

there formed great part of the business of every Assyrian king. Asshur-
nadin, eldest son of Sennacherib, whom he had installed as prince in
that city, died in 693. He was succeeded by a certain Irigibel, who
* PIer. i. 125. These people are referred to as Dinaites in Ezra iv. 9.

D D
—"

end of a year, ami was replaced by a personage called
also died at the
Mesisimordach, the fe^'m of whose name reveals a Babylonian origin.
In the beginning of the year 688 an insurrection broke out in the
country of Kar-Uunyash, the Characene of the classical geographers
that is, the part of Chaldsea nearest the sea ; the great city of Bet-
Yakin was the focus of the revolt. Sennacherib marched rapidly with
his army to stifle the rebellion in its commencement. Not venturing to
await his arrival behind their walls, the inhabitants of Bet-Yakin emi-
gi-ated in a body to Susiana, where the king, Kedornakhunta, had
promised them assistance. The Assyrian king pursued them; fearing
to risk his troops in the almost impassable marshes to the east of the
canal of Gambul, the Shat-el-Arab of our days, he coasted by sea
along the shores of Susiana adjoining Chalda'a, and carried devastation
with him.
But during this time Babylon revolted in concert with the king of
Elam, in the rear of Sennacherib. A certain Suzub, son of Gatul, was
proclaimed king there. When the Assyrian king, returning victorious
from his expedition, w'ason his way to Nineveh, he found his passage
disputed by Suzub; a battle then took place. " I conquered Suzub,"
says Sennacherib, " and took him alive. I spared him as a hostage and
proof of the assistance of the god Ninip. I brought him to Assyria.

The Babylonian rebel was shut up, well guarded, in the city of Lakhir.
In the following spring Sennacherib marched again to Susiana, as the
king of that country had been in concert with the rebels. He devastated
all the southern part of the countiy,the plain through which the Choaspes,
the Euljeus, and the Pasitigris flow before falling into the Tigris.
Thirty-four cities in this district were taken and burnt. "Imade,
says the conqueror, "the smoke of these burning cities rise up to heaven
like one vast sacrifice. Then Kedornakhunta, king of Elam, learned the
capture of his cities and was affrighted. He caused the rest of his men
to enter the lofty citadels to make resistance. He himself abandoned
his capital, Madaktu (the Badaca of classical geographers, on the
Eulaeus), and retired towards Khailda, in the mountains. I ordered an
expedition against Madaktu." But at the moment when this decisive
enterprise was to be attempted, Sennacherib retreated, as the augmies
were unfavourable. Three months afterwards Kedornakhunta died, and
was succeeded by his brother, Ummanmimanu.
6. In 685, Suzub contrived to escape from his prison. He remained
at first for some months in Susiana, and being promised help by the
new king of that country, returned to Babylon.
"The Babylonians," says Sennacherib, "conferred on him the
sovereignty of the Shumir and Accad. He opened the treasure of the
pyramid, the gold and silver of the temples of Bel and Zarpanit ; he
plundered them to give to Ummanmimanu, king of Elam. He said to
WAR IN SUSIANA. 403
him, Prepare your army and organise your forces, march towards
'
Babylon, and come to our help.' The Susian, whom in a former ex-
pedition I had attacked, and whose towns
had destroyed, gladly
I
accepted the invitation. lie levied an army, and
taxed his cities,
increased his power with chariots and horses. They came to . . .
commit crimes, like a cloud of locusts when it alights on the fields to

destroy them. . With a heart full of wrath, I hastily mounted my
. .
highest war chariot, that sweeps my enemies before it. I took in my

hands the strong bow given me by the god Asshur. ... I I'ushed like
the devouring flame on all these rebel armies, like the god Bin, the
overwhelming. By the gi-ace of Asshur, my master, I marched towards
them, to destroy them as my prey ; like a devastating tempest, I ter-
rified my adversaries. Through the protection of Asshur, and by the
storm of battle, I shook the force of their resistance, and I made their
confidence tremble. The army of the rebels, thrown into confusion by
my terrible attacks, retreated, and their chiefs deliberated, reduced to
despair."
Sennacherib then relates hoM' he bribed the chief of the staff of the
army of the king of Elam, named Humba-undasha, who, betraying the
the plans of his master, enabled the Assyrian king to gain an easy
victory over the combined anny of Susians and Chaldrean rebels, num-
bering 150,000 men. "On the wet earth, armour and arms, taken in
my attacks, floated in the blood of enemies as in a river ; for the war
chariots that struck down men and beasts, had, in their course, crushed
the bleeding bodies and their limbs. I piled up the corpses of these
soldiers like trophies, and hands and feet. I mutilated
I cut off their
those who were taken alive like straws, and as a puni.shment cut off
their hands." Among the prisoners was found Nabubalarishkun, son of
Merodach Baladan, who had joined the army. Ummanmimanu and
Suzub both escaped with great difficulty from the conqueror, and took
refuge in Susiana.
7. In 684, Sennacherib solemnly dedicated his new palace at Nineveh,
the largest in all Assyria. He then thought himself freed from all
anxiety with respect to Babylon ; but in the following year Suzub re-
turned once more to that where he was received with enthusiasm.
city,
As in the two preceding king of Elam had supplied him

revolts, the
with troops to assist him. Another great battle took place, which
finally ruined the cause of Suzub, and gave Babylon into the power of
the Ninevite king. Exasperated by these persistent and continued
revolts, Sennacherib chastised Babylon with tlie most terrible severity.
In spite of its sacred character, res])ected by the Assyrians almost as
much as by the Chaldceans, the city was given up to be plundered, and
in great part destroyed by fire. The most venerable religious monu-
ments suffered from the fury of the Assyrian soldiers. Sennacherib
D D 2
—

returned in triumph to Nineveh, carrying with him as the most precious
trophies of his expedition the statues of the gods taken by Marduk-

idinakhe from the city of liekali 418 years before, when he conquered
Tiglath-pileser I., as well as the royal signet of Shalmaneser I., a trophy
of the wars of Binbaliddin. But when his first burst of anger was
over, he dared not carry to extremity his vengeance on the city that
was, in an especial sense, "the city of the gods," and take from it its
ancient privilege of having a nominal king of its own, although de-
pendent on the king of Nineveh. He therefore installed, in the half-
ruined Babylon in 682, as king, his own fourth son, Esarhaddon
[Asshurakhiddin] (Asshur has given brothers).
About this time, at the close of his reign, the troops of Sennacherib,
according to the story of Berosus, came into serious collision in Cilicia,
with the Greeks, who were then attempting to form colonies ; the As-
syrians were victorious,
and set up a stele to commemorate the event.
Berosus adds that the city of Tarsus, on the coast of Cilicia, was then
founded by Sennacherib, though other authors attribute its building to
Sardanapalus.
After a reign of twenty- three years, Sennacherib was, in 681, assas-
sinated in the temple of his god Nisroch by his two sons, Adarmalik
and Asshursarossor.
Section IV. Esarhaddon [Asshurakhiddin] and

ASSHURBANIPAL. 681 — 647.
I. The
two assassins of Sennacherib derived no advantage from
their crime. Esarhaddon [Asshurakhiddin] hastened from Babylon to
Nineveh, compelled them to fly into Armenia, to escape the public
indignation, and himself ascended the throne.
Esarhaddon (681 to 667), like his father, was a warlike king, who
carried the victorious Assyrian arms into distant lands. We know in
detail all the mihtary exploits of the earlier years of his reign up to 672
(eponomy of Atarel, governor of Lakhir), the date of a cylinder of
baked clay in the British Museum, on which these events are enumerated
in their chronological order, but unfortunately without specifying the
year of each occurrence.
The first campaign was towards Phoenicia, where the obedience of
the people, as in Babylonia, was always doubtful. "I attacked the
city of Sidon, standing in the midst of the sea," says the king, in the
cylinder just mentioned. "I put to death all its great men I destroyed;
its walls and houses; I cast them into the sea. I destroyed the place
of its altars. Abdimilkut, king of the city, had fled from my power
even into the midst of the sea. Like a fish I traversed the waves, and
humbled his pride. I carried away all that I could of his treasures :
ESARHADDON IN SYRIA. 405
wood and ebony,

gold, silver, precious stones, amber, seal skins, sandal
stuffsdyed purple and blue, all that his house contained. I transported
into Assyria an immense number of men and women, oxen, sheep, and
beasts of burden. I settled the inhabitants of Syria, and of the sea-
shore in strange lands. I built in Syria a fortress called Dur-asshur-
akhiddin, and there established men whom my bow had subdued in the
mountains, and towards the sea of the rising sun (the Caspian)."
It was at the close of this Phoenician campaign that Esarhaddon
attacked the kingdom of Judah. King Manasseh attempted to resist,
but was conquered, made prisoner, and confined some time in Babylon,
But the Assyrian monarch soon restored him, and replaced him on the
throne as a vassal king; his inscriptions register Manasseh as one of his
tributaries. Esarhaddon about the same time completed his colonisa-
tion of the Israelitish territory, establishing there large numbers of
people from Lower Chalda;a and from Elam, reduced to captivity by
his wars.
2. In fact, after two campaigns, briefly related, one in the land of
Van and the other in the neighljourhood of the Black Sea, which
brought about the submission of the Tibareni (Tabal), Mosyna;ci
(Mashnaki), and of the Cimmerians (Gimirrai), who had already crossed
the Caucasus, and commenced their invasions in Asia Minor, Esar-
haddon was obliged to turn his arms against the part of Chald«a bor-
—
dering on the Persian Gulf in later times called Characene where —
Nabuzirshimtat, second son of Merodach Baladan, had succeeded in
forming a small independent kingdom. The Assyrian king conquered
and dethroned him, and placed his younger brother, Nahid-marduk, in
his place, with the title of vassal king.
But during this time a new revolt occurred in Babylon, under a
certain Shamash-ibni. Not feeling himself strong enough to attempt
to hold that great city, as its fortifications had remained without repairs
since its last capture by Sennacherib, he shut himself up in the neigh-

bouring city of Bet-Dakkurri, carrying with him the astrological
tablets from the temples of Babylon and Borsippa. Esarhaddon says,
"Out of respect to my sublime master, and to Nebo, I restored these
and entrusted them to the men of Babylon and Borsippa. I

tablets,
placed on the throne Nabushallim, son of Balazu, who respected the
laws."
" The city of Ad-I)umu, the city of the power of the Arabians, that
had been taken by Sennacherib, king of Assyria, the father who begot
me, I again attacked, and led away the inhabitants captive into Assyria.
. The ambassador of the queen of the Arabs came to Nineveh
. .
with many presents, and bowed himself before me. He implored me

to restore their gods ; I listened to his prayer. I restored the images
of those gods that had been injured. I caused the praises of Asshur
"

and the glory of my name to be engraved on those images. I brought
them and gave them back to him. I nominated to the sovereignty of
the Arabs, Tabuya, a woman from my harem. As tlie price of the gods
I had restored to that land, I increased the tribute my father had laid
on them by sixty-five camels which I imposed on them over and above.

In the Book on the History of the Arabs we shall refer to the system of
government of this country by queens invested also with tlie priesthood.
Here we shall simply say that the ca]Mtal, Ad-Dumu, is the Dumah of
the Bible, the Daumat-el-djandal of the Arabian geographers of the
Middle Ages.
At the end of this campaign, Esarhaddon also arranged the affairs of
the Arabian kingdom of Hedjaz. The capital of this country, as we
know by the inscriptions of Asshurbanipal, was Yathrib, now Medina.
The king, named Ha5an, having died, his son, Yala, was placed on the
throne, and had to pay a considerable tribute.
Next comes the history of another much more distant expedition,
into the Arabian peninsula. This marks the extreme point to which,
in this direction, the Assyrian armies penetrated, and where, moreover,
they appeared but once. The object of this expedition was a district
called Bazu, situated in the south, beyond 140 schoenes (about 1,000
males) of desert, and a mountain chain requiring forty hours for its
passage. It must, from these facts as to the distance, necessarily be a
district in the interior ofHadramaut, or of the Mahrah country.
On his return from campaign, Esarhaddon was called on
this distant
to put down a rebellion of the petty king of the district of Gambul,
whose subjects lived like fishes in the midst of waters and marshes "
'
'
on the eastern bank of the Shat-el-Arab. He afterwards subdued,

after a long and arduous war, part of Southern Media, and penetrated
even into Western Persia, where he made prisoners the governors of
two cities, who were named Sitraphernes and Hyphernes.
3. Although he had built at Nineveh a new palace, "a house of
booty," where, in the foundations, was discovered the British Museum
cylinder, Esarhaddon usually lived at Babylon. He exhibited a marked
preference for that city, where he had lived as viceroy before the
death of his father.Thus also he ensured the continued submission of
Babylon, whilst he was always secure of the fidelity of Nineveh and
Assyria. He it was who undertook to make Babylon the greatest and
most beautiful city in the world. He commenced there the gigantic
walls, and decided on the plan of those great works, resumed in after
times by Nabopolassar and Nebuchadnezzar, which contributed ,0 much
to the glory of Babylon.
In the cylinder in the British Museum we find a list of the kings in
the western countries who were paying tribute in the year 672. These
were — Manasseh, king of Judah, the Phoenician princes (to whom we
ABDICATION OF ESARHADDON. 407
shall have occasion to refer again in our Book on the History of

Phoenicia), the ten kings of the Island of Cyprus, the greater part of
them with names easily recognised as Greek, a fact proving that the
Hellenic element was then dominant in Cyprus, and that it submitted
with a good grace to Ninevite suzerainty. The names are /Egistus, —

king of Idalium ; Pythagoras, king of Citium; Cius (?) king of Salamis;
Ithodagon, king of Paphos; Ariel, king of Soli Damas, king of ;
Curium; Romis, king of Tamassus Damus, king of Amathus Ona-

; ;
erges, king of Limenium and Baali, king of Upri.

;
Esarhaddon increased his empire on this side m 672 by a new and

important conquest. He again adopted the policy of his father with
regard to Egypt, taking advantage of the ill-feeling of the princes who
then governed each of the cities of the Delta towards their suzerain,
the Ethiopian king, Tahraka. The forces of the latter were defeated in
a decisive battle, and Esarhaddon possessed himself of the whole of
Egypt as far as the cataracts of Syene. From that time he styled
himself, on the monuments, " King of Egypt and Ethiopia," as well as
"King of Assyria," and "Vicegerent of the Gods at Babylon."
Assyrian garrisons were stationed in the chief cities of Egypt, and new
Assyrian names given to some of them. The country was divided into
twenty petty principalities, under the supremacy of the Saite prince,
Necho, to whom was assigned the town of Memphis.
This position of affairs continued until 668. Esarhaddon, being then
seriously ill of the sickness of which he ultimately died, and finding
himself unable to administer the affairs of so great an empire, decided
on abdicating in favour of his eldest son, Asshurbanipal. In a procla-
mation, a copy of which has been discovered, bearing date the 12th Air,
in the eponomy of Marlarmi (May 668), he announced his resolution to
his subjects, and gave up to Asshurbanipal the government of Nineveh
and of his whole empire, reserving to himself only his beloved Babylon,
where he continued to reign. In the British Museum there is a frag-
ment of a letter, written at this time by Asshurbanipal to his father,
where he gives to Esarhaddon the title of king of Babylon, and entitles
himself king of Assyria-
But the following year Esarhaddon died. His second son, Shamul-
shamugin (the Saosduchin of the canon of Ptolemy), succeeded him
as king of Babylon and Chalckea, separated from, but subordinate to,
Nineveh. In 668, Tahraka, taking advantage of the illness and abdica-
tion of Esarhaddon, as well as of the feeling of insecurity produced by
a change in the government, reconquered Egypt from tiie Assyrians.
4. Asshurbanipal (667 —
647) was a worthy son of his warlike father,
and under him the Assyrian armies fully maintained their reputation.
He commenced by directing his efforts towards Egypt, and even before
the death of his father inaugurated his reign by three successive cam-
paigns on hanks of the Nile, advancing victoriously in eacii of them
tlie
as far as Thebes. In the second he installed Necho on the throne of

the city of Amen; in the third he came to avenge that prince, who had
been put to death by Rot-Amen, son-in-law and successor of Tahraka.
He then arranged the administration of Egypt on an entirely Assyrian
basis but after his departure Iris officers were unable to maintain them-
;
selves there, and his third campaign was thus nothing more than a razzia
on an enormous scale. Nevertheless Assyrian supremacy was para-
mount for some time in Lower Egypt, and the kings of the Dodecarchy,
in the Delta paid tribute to Nineveh, whilst the Ethiopians of Piankhi
ruled Upper Egypt.
We have already spoken of the details of this war in our Book on the
History of Egypt. It is the only one of the campaigns of Asshurbanipal
that has as yet been studied by Assyrian scholars a large number of
;
historical texts of this king, now in the British Museum, have not been
even published ; and we are therefore compelled to mention very briefly
monuments in London, and
the results of a hasty view of the original
of the more profound study of some portions made by M. Oppert.
Phoenicia had revolted at the same time that Rot-Amen invaded
Eg}'pt. After his third campaign on the banks of the Nile, in 666,
Asshurbanipal, on his return to Assyria, chastised his rebellious vassals
who governed the Canaanitish cities.
He first took Accho, next Tyre, admitting to mercy its king, named
Baal. Aradus made a more stubborn resistance, the siege was difficult
and cost many lives; but finally the city was taken, and its king, named
Vakindu, killed himself to avoid falling alive into the conqueror's
hands. Asshurbanipal made prisoners of the eight sons of Yakindu, a
list of whom
he gives; but he allowed Azbaal only, the eldest, to live,
whom he installed as king of Aradus. The other seven were put to
death. Phoenicia thus forcibly brought to obedience, Asshurbanipal
marched on Cilicia, where also a revolt had broken out. A short cam-
paign sufficed to quell the revolt, and the king of the country, as a
mark of submission, gave up his daughter for the harem of the Ninevite
monarch. It is during this war that a widely-spread tradition places the
foundation of the city of Tarsus.
The following year (665), Asshurbanipal was at Nineveh, where he
received an ambassador from Gyges, king of the Lydians, whose
kingdom was invaded by the Cimmerians, and who, not being able to
repulse them unaided, declared himself a vassal of the king of Assyria
to obtain assistance against these formidable enemies. An auxiliary
Assyrian force was sent to him, and by the aid of these troops Gyges
gained a victory, and sent the two principal chiefs of the Cimmerians
prisoners to Nineveh. The supremacy of the Assyrian empire was thus
established over the whole of Asia Minor, as far as the ^gean Sea.
;
GREAT REBELLION. 409
5. But during this time the most formidable storm that had threatened
the Assyrian empire since tlie disaster of Asshurhlihish was impending.
The younger brother of Asshurbanipal, Shamulshamugin, governed, as

we have ah-eady said, Babylon and Chaldasa. He conspired to over-
throw his elder brother and to seat himself on the throne of Nineveh.
To accomplish this he conspired with the king of Susiana and the
majority of the tributaiy princes of the southern states of the monarchy.
In 663 he lifted the standard of revolt. To bring his ambitious projects
into accordance with the feelings of nationality among the Chaldaâns,
he summoned Nabubelshum, grandson of the great Merodach
to his side
Baladan, the indomitable champion of Babylonian independence, and
as king of Assyria invested him with the royalty of Babylon. Teumman,
king of Elam, declared in his favour and marched into Babylonia to
his assistance \vith a numerous army. Mathan, king of the Nabatheans,
and Ywaite, king of the Arabs of Hedjaz, also joined in the revolt
and the latter sent troops to assist Shamulshamugin, under the command
of a Sheikh, named Aym, son of Their. Psammetik, the Saite king,
took advantage of this occasion to overthrow his colleagues of the
Dodecarchy, and to re-establish the complete independence of Egypt.
Gyges, forgetting the duties of the vassalage he had voluntarily assumed
two years before, assisted Psammetik, and a force of Lydians contributed
their assistance to drive out the Assyrian garrisons still remaining in the
Delta.
This was a terrible position of affairs the revolt broke out simul-
:
taneously ivl most at all points, in a way that proved a concerted plan;
and imless its progress could be at once arrested before it extended to the
northern provinces, the empire was lost. Asshurbanipal confronted the
danger with energy and coolness, accepting the past as irrevocable he ;
gave up all fresh attempts on Egypt, and regarded the accession of

Psammetik as an accomplished fact. In Lydia, not being able to go
himself to punish the treason of Gyges, and also requiring to concentrate
all the forces of Assyria in another quarter so as to crush the rebellion
in its centre,he summoned the Cimmerians to invade that country
again. They whole of
willingly responded to his call, devastated the
Lydia, and captured the city, but not the citadel, of Sardis. Gyges was
killed in this invasion his son, Ardys, who succeeded him, hastened to
;
make his submission to Asshurbanipal, who then persuaded the Cim-

merians to retreat.
Thus freed from all danger of a diversion on the side of Lydia,
Asshurbanipal marched against his brother, with a view of crushing
the revolt at its fountain head. The campaign seems to have been
short and decisive. Asshurljanipal, in several encounters, decisively
defeated the army of the Chalda-ans and their allies, Teumman, king
of Elam, and Aym, son of Their, forcing the one to retire on Susiana,
and the other on Arabia. He then made his triumphal entry into
Babylon. Shamulshamugin, terrified, fell unable to continue the
struggle ; he made his submission, and implored the clemency of his
brother. Generally the kings of Assyria showed themselves pitiless in
such cases it was an established state rule to put conquered rebels to
;
death. But Asshurbanipal remembered that he who had thrown,

himself at his feet was his brother he pardoned him, and re])laced him
;
on the throne of the gi-eat Babylonian city, where Shamulshamugin

remained for the rest of his life faithful to his Ninevite suzerain. No
doubt the fraternal clemency of Asshurbanipal must be attributed to
the entreaties and advice of his sister, Seruya-Edirat, who seems to
have exercised great influence over him, and who is mentioned on
several monuments with her two brothers.
6. But though the king of Babylon, the first author of this revolt,
made his submission thus early, it was quite otherwise with his allies,
who appeared resolved to carry on the war, and whom it was necessary
that the king of Assyria should conquer, if he desired to ensure the
tranquillity of his empire. Wishing to encounter the most serious
danger first, Asshurbanipal advanced towards Susiana. Teumman,
with four of his relations, Ummanibi, Tamaritu, Indabibi, and Um-
manaldash, who commanded the four great divisions of the country,
hastily assembled fresh troops, and prepared to invade Chaldsea. He
had afforded refuge in his kingdom to Nabubelshum and his followers,
who had promised him, as soon as his army had passed the frontier, to
raise all the provinces of the Lower Euphrates in insurrection. Asshur-
banipal anticipated his movements, and entered Susiana. After several
engagements of minor importance, a great battle was fought on the
banks of the Ulai (Eulasus) it ended in the defeat of the Susianians.
;
Teumman and his son, a mere lad, were made prisoners. Asshurbanipal
appeared before Susa, which opened its gates to him, and there installed
on the throne, as an Assyrian vassal, Ummanaldash, who had been
taken prisoner in one of the earlier battles of the campaign, and had
entered the service of the Assyrian king.
Immense sculptured pictures, similar to those that decorate the pylons
of the temples of Egypt, and, like them, containing hundreds of figures,
give us all the details of thi^ successful war; they were brought from
the palace of Koyundjik, and are now in the British Museum. They
contain a complete drama, with the story worked out in the most
complete manner. We
first see the battle that decided the fata of the
country, a short distance in front of Susa. The Elamite warriors, in

spite of their brave resistance, are cut to pieces and driven into the
Eulseus, where numbers are swallowed up by the waves. In the next
representation, Asshurbanipal, profiting by his victory, is marching on
Susa. We next see the city (marked with its name), with its crenelated
WAR IN SUSIANA. 411
ramparts and its flat-roofed houses, in the midst of a forest of palm-

trees. The Assyrian king has stopped his cliariot at a short distance
from the gate, and two of his officers present Ummanaldasli to the
people, as the king whom his sovereign will gives them, in place of the
king who has dared to fight against him. Then, whilst the bodies of
the last defenders of the national independence are still floating past
the walls down the Eulteus, the people of the capital, terrified out of
all reason, and hoping to appease the angry conqueror by the depth of
tlieir abasement, issue in a body, men, women and children, with harps,
flutes and tambourines, and welcome with song and dance the new
king installed by the foreign invader. During this time, and a short
distance only from the scene of the rejoicings, the leaders of the van-
quished army are expiating in tortures the crime of having dared to
defend their king and country ; one is flayed alive, the others have their
ears cut off, their eyes put out, their beards and nails torn off. These
scenes, comprising an immense number of figures, and executed with
wonderful finish, have no more perspective than the Egyptian historical
sculptures nevei-theless, we cannot but admire the life and movement
;
exhibited by all the groups, the truth to nature, and the admirable sim-
plicity of the attitudes.
Teumman was decapitated; an inscription, now in the British Mu-
seum, records the event. The war was not, however, concluded, but
raged with gi-eat fury in the mountains of Susiana till the year 661.
Ummanibi, Tamaritu, and Indabibi successively assumed the crown,
and maintained the struggle in the most inaccessible parts of the country;
whilst, under the Assyrian protection, Ummanaldash reigned at Susa.
But all these three chiefs fell in succession on the field of battle there ;
was no longer anyone to head the national resistance, and the authority
of Ummanaldash was recognised throughout the land. Asshurbanipal
retired with his forces into Assyria, considering the war as concluded.
7. Nevertheless, the Assyrian army had hardly re-entered its owii
country when Ummanaldash, who had hitherto played the part of an

obedient vassal of Assyria, suddenly changed his line of conduct.
Throwing off the mask he had worn for two years, incited doubtless by
the national spirit of the Elamites, who detested the rule of foreigners
and had given up the struggle only for want of a chief to head them, he
threw off his allegiance to the Ninevite monarch, and made great mili-
tary preparations. Nabubelshum and the Chaldasan patriots who .were
concealed in the mountains were summoned to court, and entered into
active correspondence with their partisans in the south of Babylonia.
In the spring of 660, Asshurbanipal found himself obliged to undertake
a new war in Susiana. Instead of entering the country l)y the way of
Chalda;a, as in the preceding campaigns, he marched from the north-
west directly from Assyria.
412 ANCltNT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
He took the city of Rashi. capital of the district of Rash,
first
situated the northern part of Susiana, between the mountains of

in
Mesobatene and the Tigris; next tlie city of Hamanu, in the same
district, but further south. Ummanaldash was with his troops at
Madaktu, the Badaca of the geographers; on learning the
classical
victorious advance of the Assyrians, he became alarmed and took refuge
in Susa. The Assyrian army passed the river Itite, the Choaspes of
the Greeks, without striking a blow, occupied Madaktu, and also Un-
dashi, another city on the same
Thence Asshurbanipal marched
river.
on Susa. Ummanaldash did not venture to await him there, and
retired towards the mountains with the bulk of his army, leaving only
a garrison in the capital. Asshurbanipal took Susa by storm, and
then pushed on in pursuit of Ummanaldash, who retreated before him.
He took the towns of Din, Pidilma, and Bubilu, the exact situation of
which cannot be determined in the present imperfect state of our
knowledge of the ancient geography of Susiana. The Elamite king
then retreated to the mountains of Banun. The Assyrians overtook
him and carried the town of Banun by assault; but he managed
there,
to escape them, together with Nabubelshum, who had not left him.
Then Asshurbanipal, tired of this fruitless pursuit, adopted other
measures to compel the submission of the country and its king. He
returned to Susa, and gave up the city to be pillaged by his troops.
The royal treasures and archives were carried off to Nineveh. The
temples were opened and systematically profaned the statues of the ;
gods, "that no eye had ever seen," as the cylinder in the British
Museum says, were brought out to be sent to Assyria ; and this seems
to show that in the Susianian temples the images of the gods were
placed in a sort of "holy of holies," inaccessible to the mass of wor-
shippers. Asshurbanipal here gives a list of the gods whose statues he
carried off, a list we think it well to repeat, as this is the only ancient
document extant relative to the national Elamite gods. They were . —
Shumud, Bagamar, Parlikira, Amman-kashibar, Ansapata, Ragiba,
Shimgam, Karsha, Kirshamash, Shudami, Aipaksina, Dilala, Panin-
dimri, .Shilagara, Napshu, and Kindakurbu. These strangely-named
gods seem to have presented a great analogy with the gods of Chaldaea
and Assyria, but under totally different names.
When he had thus pillaged and devastated Susa, and destroyed the
temple, where was the oracle consulted by all the Elamite people with
the greatest reverence, Asshurbanipal began to scour the countiy, car-
rying fire and sword on all sides, burning towns and villages and
all the houses, destroying the crops, cutting doM^n the plantations,
slaughtering the flocks and herds, and reducing the populace to slavery.
These frightful devastations went on uninterruptedly for a month and
twenty-five days, and were spread over a great extent of territory. The
CONQUESTS OF ASSHURBANIPAL, 413
terrifiedpeople from all quarters begged for peace. The soldiers who
were with Ummanaldash deserted, in order to make their submission.
He himself entered into negotiations with the Assyrian monarch.
Nabubelshum of Chaldaâ, in despair, fearing that he should be given
up, made his armour-bearer kill him. Ummanaldash cut off the head
of the dead man and sent it to the king of Assyria, imploring pardon
for himself. Asshurbanipal received him witli kindness, and having
taken guarantees for his future fidelity, confirmed him in the kingdom
with the title of vassal king.
A small bas-relief from Koyundjik, now in the British Museum,
represents Asshurbanipal banqueting with his queen in the gardens of
the harem at Nineveh. The head of Nabubelshum, salted and dried, is
suspended from one of the trees of the garden facing the king, so that,
during the feast, he might enhance his satisfaction by the view of this
trophy.
8. The Elamite wars were now ended. The ai-ms of Asshurbanipal
had triumphed in this quarter, and he had come victorious out of a
struggle that had all but overwhelmed the Assyrian empire. But the
revolt still continued in Arabia and Nabathea. The king of Assyria
resolved to reduce these countries to obedience, and to punish the
conduct of the kings. Ywaite, son of Nuray, king of the Arabs, had
taken advantage of the events of the last few years of the rebellion
in Chalda;a and of the war in Susiana to increase enormously the
extent of his states without opposition from the Assyrians ; his two
generals, Aym and Abyate, botli sons of Their, had accomplished this
by their conduct of the war, for we have no indication that the king
himself was present in any one battle ; he had acquired a vast empire,
comprising not only Hedjaz, his hereditary kingdom, but also the greater
part of the Arabian peninsula, the various parts of the Nedjed, Djebel
Shammar, Djof, the desert of Syria, and even the whole western bank of
the lower part of the Euphrates, that which is now called Irak Arabi.
The war commenced in 659, and lasted three years. The first cam-
paign was occupied in the reconquest of Irak Arabi, and in the recapture
of towns one after tlie other. The most important was Hirata, on
its
the where was afterwards Hira, so celebrated in the Arabian

site
histories of the first centuries of the Christian era. In the second cam-
paign, 658, the Assyrian army commenced by crossing the Syrian desert,
and advancing to tlie central plateau of Arabia; the whole of this jjlateau
was overrun, and we shall follow the itinerary of the army in our Book
on the History of the Arabians. A great number of fortified places
were taken in tliese districts, and at last tlic Assyrians penetrated into
Nedjed, to a city called Corassid, where the army awaited the opening
of the third campaign. In this year, 657, Nedjed being completely
subdued, Asshurbanipal attacked Hedjaz, thus striking at the heart of
—

the power of Ywaite. Froin Corassid he advanccfl to the shore of the
Red Sea, where he successively besieged and took Djisda (Djeddah) and
Yanbo; and lastly croMTied his successes by the capture of the great city
of Yathrib (now Medina). Ywaite, in despair, implored Aman, which
was granted him his two generals, Aym and Abyate, were given up to
;
Asshurbanipal, and flayed alive by the order of that king. Some bas-
reliefs from Koyundjik, now in the British Museum, represent episodes
of this Arabian war, the defeat of a tribe mounted on camels, and the
surprise of an encampment where the warriors are being killed in their
tents.
Asshurbanipal returned from Hedjaz into Syria, and on his way chas-
tised the Nabatheans their country was devastated, and their capital
;
taken by the army that had conquered the Arabs. The king, Mathan,
threw himself at the feet of the Ninevite king, and obtained pardon.
This final act in the great drama, opened by the revolt of Shamulsha-
mugin, was short, and occupied only the latter months of the year 657.
In 655, Asshurbanipal was obliged once more to march his army into
the land of Elam, to repress a revolt against Ummanaldash, who, since
his submission, had remained a faithful vassal to Assyria. We have at
present no information as to the last eight years of his reign.
9. His connection with Lydia, and hissupremacy over the island of
Cyprus, made Asshurbanipal known to the Greeks We have every
reason to believe that he was the warlike and conquering Sardanapalus,
of whom many classical writers speak, carefully distinguishing him from
the voluptuous and effeminate king of the same name, under whom the
first Ninevite empire came to an end.
With regard to this prince, the Greek historians of the Alexandrian

period have fallen into two errors, sufficiently curious to be made the
subject of remark, and plainly caused by a mistaken reading of Assyrian
inscriptions; thus proving that there were among the Greeks some
scholars who studied cuneiform writing and the monuments, though
none of them attempted to read the Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Clitarchus* relates that in an inscription existing at Tarsus, where we
may admit that this king might have been in the course of his expedi-
tions, and have left a monument of his passage, that Sardanapnlus calls
himself "Son of Anakyndaraxes. " But this supposed patronymic is
nothing more than the common title almost always added to the name
of Assyrian kings, " I, the great king of Assyria " Anakunadasharrii-
asshiw, from which an incompetent reader has made Anakyndaraxes,
and taken it for the name of a man. Other writers say that Sardan-
apalus was surnamed Conosconcoleros; here again we find a common
*Clitarchus ap. Arrian, Anab. conf. Strab. 672;

ii. 5; xiv. p.
Athen. viii., p. 335; xii. p. 529.
—
INVASION OF THE MEDES. 415
royal title mistaken for a proper name. The kings of Assyria were in
the habit of styling themselves " I, the king, vicegerent of the god
Asshur," and this title is almost always written ideographically by signs
which, mistaken for phonetics, and read phonetically, would give the
if
pronunciation Kumisskunkilasshiir ; whence arose the supposed Conos-

concoleros. Very many of the en-ors of the Greek historians, especially
those of the Alexandrian age, as to the history of the Assyrian kings,
may be traced to erroneous readings of this kind.
Asshurbanipal completed the magnificent palace at Nineveh, com-
menced by Sennacherib, the sculptures of the part he built are the
finestand best executed specimens of Assyrian art at present known.
He had established there a well furnished library ; its remains, discovered
by Mr. I>ayard, are now in the British Museum, and have rendered
invaluable assistance to the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions.
Section V. End of the Second Assyrian Empire— Final

Fall of Nineveh, 647—606 b.c.
I. Asshuredililani III. (647 —

625), son and successor of Asshurbani-
pal, reunited the crown of Babylon to that of Nineveh, probably de-
throning Shamulshamugin, for he is found to have been master of the
great Clialdsean city a few months after his accession, and it is very un-
likely that both the sons of Esarhaddon died in the same year. In
the reign of this king, the Cinneladanus of the Greek authors, Assyria
gained her last military success. A single united kingdom had succeeded
in Media, to the loose confederation of chiefs, that had afforded to
Sargon and his son such facilities for their conquests. Phraortes
ascended the throne in 657, and expelled the Assyrians from the
positions they still held in the country, conquered Persia and all the
Iranian lands on this side the Hindoo Koosh and the deserts of Car-
mania. Having thus erected the Median monarchy into a vast military
empire, he thought himself able to undertake again the work of Arbaces,
and to destroy the power of Nineveh. He therefore descended into
Assyria, but Asshuredililani met him with a large army. A great battle
took place at the foot of the mountains Phraortes was killed, and the
;
Median army dispei^sed.

Nevertheless the Assyrian empire approached its end, its military
power fell were exhausted, whilst the neighbour-
into decay, its treasures
ing nations increased in power. In 625 Cyaxares, king of the Medes,
and successor of Phraortes, who had subdued Asia Minor as far as the
river Halys, taking advantage of the death of Asshuredililani and of
the consequent disturbances in Assyria, laid siege to Nineveh, whilst the
Chaldaan Nabopolassar raised an insurrection in Babylon where he
proclaimed himself king, and restored independence to that country.
Nineveh was in danger of falling, when it was saved for a time by the
invasion of the Scythians, who, like a devastating torrent, overran the
land of the Medes, and held the people in subjection for nineteen
years.
2. Saruc or Assaracus, possibly another Esarhaddon [Asshurakhiddin],
of whom we have no monuments, then ascended the throne, 625 to
606, and as the Scythian invasion had given a respite to Nineveh,
governed during this time in tranquillity, but he ruled an empire
weakened, debased and dismembered, without strength or vitality, and
from this degraded state he did not even attempt to raise it. "When
Cyaxares had succeeded in clearing his kingdom of the hordes of
Turanian invaders, he again appeared under the walls of Nineveh, more
than ever resolved to complete the work of Arbaces, and to annihilate
the city whose yoke had fallen so heavily on all Asia. Nabopolassar
and his Babylonians advanced to his assistance, with all the good-will
that Phul had brought to the help of Arbaces. After a long and close
siege. Nineveh fell ; and Assaracus, like his predecessor, Asshurlikhish,
killed himself. The conquerors destroyed the
city, burned its temples
and and of the splendid Nineveh of Sennacherib, the glory of
palaces,
Asia, there remained only a heap of ruins (606). This great disaster
that changed the face of Asia, is not recorded on any known monument,
and is nowhere mentioned by any of the ancient classical writers
(except Berosus), who have confused this capture and destruction of
Nineveh with the ruin of the first Assyrian empire in 788. The
Hebrew people alone, by the voice of their prophets, have handed down
to us the memory of this great destruction in it, lively faith and the
;
remembrance of their own misfortunes made them see the terrible

effects of Divine vengeance. The prophet Nahum says " (The burden
of Nineveh). The Lord is a jealous God, and a revenger (/iiarg.). The
Lord revengeth and is furious. He that dasheth in pieces is come
. . .
up before thy face keep the munition, watch the way, make thy loins
;
strong, fortify thy power mightily. For the Lord hath turned away the
excellency of Jacob, as the excellency of Israel: for the emptiers have
emptied them out, and marred their vine branches. The shield of his
mighty men is made red, the valiant men are in scarlet the chariots :
shall be with flaming torches in the day of his preparation, and the fir-
trees shall be terribly shaken. The chariots shall rage in the streets,
they shall justle one against another in the broad ways : they shall
seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings. He shall recount
his worthies : they shall stumble in their walk ; they shall make haste
to the wall thereof, and the defence shall be prepared. The gates of
the rivers shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved. But . . .
Nineveh is of old like a pool of water : yet they shall flee away. Stand,
—
FINAL DESTRUCTION OF NINEVEH. 417
stand, shall they cry ; but none shall look back. Take ye the spoil of
silver, take the spoil of gold none end of the store and
: for there is
glory out of all the pleasant furniture. She is empty, and void, and
waste and the heart melteth, and the knees smite together, and much
:
pain is in all loins, and the faces of them all gather blackness. . . .
The lion did tear in pieces enough for his whelps, and strangled for his
lionesses, and filled his holes with prey, and his dens with ravin.
Behold, I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts, and I will burn her
chariots in the smoke, and the sword shall devour thy young lions and :
I will cut off thy prey from the earth, and the voice of thy messengers
shall no more be heard. . . . And it shall come to pass, that all they
that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, Nineveh is laid waste:
who will bemoan her ? whence shall I seek comforters for thee ? . . .
Thy shepherds slumber, O kmg of Assyria : thy nobles shall dwell /;/
the dust: thy people is upon the mountains, and no man

scattered
gathereth them. There no healing of thy bruise thy wound is
is ;
grievous ; all that hear the bruit of thee shall clap the hands over thee:
for upon whom hath not thy wickedness passed continually ? '•
(Nahum
i. 2; ii. I— 13; iii. 7, i^^, I9)-
This prophecy was literally accomplished : only two centuries after

the terrible catastrophe, Xenophon, who with ihe Ten Thousand passed
its site, does not even mention the name of Nineveh, nor do the historians
of the age of Alexander. A colony was established on the ruins by the

Romans, under the name of Ninus, and destroyed by the Sassanians.
From that time every remembrance of Nineveh was entirely lost, even
in the place where the city had stood. A town was built in the Middle
Ages on the right bank of the Tigris, opposite the site of the royal city
of Sennacherib, called by the Arabs Mosul. It is only in our own times
that the ruins of the capital of Assyria have been discovered, buried
imder the soil that has covered them for 2, 500 years.
CHAPTER IV.
CIVILISATION, MANNERS, AND MONUMENTS OF
ASSYRIA.
Section I. Politic.vl and Social Organisation.

I. TiiK Assyrian monarchy presented, undoubtedly, like the first
Hamite empire of Babylon, whence it borrowed so much of its civilisa-
tion, a type of all later Asiatic monarchies, those of the Moslem caliphs,
E E
—

as well as those of the Achcemenian and Sassanian Persians — a type we
may still see in the Ottoman empire at Constantinople, and also in
Russia, as opposing, even in our own days and in Europe, insurmountable
obstacles to the progress of and civilisation an unbounded,
all liberty ;
unrestrained despotism, interrupted from time to time only by revolutions

plotted in the palace.
In Assyria, however, the king was not, as in Egypt, worshipped as a
god; the monuments of Nineveh and of the neighbouring cities bear
no trace of such religious worship as the Egyptian monuments prove to
have been offered to the Pharaohs we do not even find anything to
;
lead us to suppose that the king was honoured by an Apotheosis.

The king was always considered as a mere man, and when in the
inscriptions he addressed the gods, his language, in complete contrast
with the common custom of pagan lands, is remarkable for exhibiting a
strong feeling of the weakness of humanity in the presence of deity^
that the king was as much a sinner as other men. An example of this
is found in a beautiful prayer of king Asshurbanipal, on an unpublished
tablet in the British Museum.*
"May the look of pity that shines in thine eternal face dispel my griefs.
" May I never feel the anger and wrath of the God.
" May my omissions and my sins be wiped out.
" May I find reconciliation with him, for I am the servant of his
power, the adorer of the great gods.
" May thy powerful face come to my help : may it shine like heaven,
and bless me with happiness and abundance of riches.
" May it bring forth in abundance, like the earth, happiness and every
sort of good."
But man, who was so humble in the presence of the gods, held
this
men, the double power, .spiritual and
in his hands, with regard to other
temporal he was
; both a sovereign pontiff and an autocrat he was ;
called "the Vicegerent of the Gods on earth"; and his authority, thus
emanating from a divine source, was as absolute over the soul as the
body.
The monuments give us an insight into the daily life of the court of
Nineveh; pictures of this nature alternate with scenes in the wars that
raged unceasingly during the whole duration of the monarchy. In his
palace, which was also a citadel, the king was surrounded by a numerous
court, where the chief positions were filled by eunuch.s. Their chief
(Rab-saris), exercised a general supervision over the whole court, and,
like the Kizlar Aga, or chief of the black eunuchs at Constantinople in
our own days, was, next to the sovereign, the first dignitary of the
empire. He followed the king to war, as also did the chief priest and
* Marked K, —
163. The name of the god to whom this prayer was
addressed is unfortunately wanting.
;
GOVERNMENT OF THE PROVINCES. 419
the whole court, including the king's wives, who were carried in carefully-
closed arabas in rear of the army. Among the great ofticers of the
royal household are found also the controller of the palace (Mil-hekal),
the grand cupbearer (Rab-sake), the captain of the guards, who also
discharged the duties of provost-marshal, and of chief of the execu-
tioners. These officers of the palace, employed about the person of the
king and in duties specially connected with him, were also at the same
time the principal officers of state, the heads of the government. With
the minister of state(Milik), the commander-in-chief of the army
(Tartan), and the " governor of the land," a minister of the interior, or
home secretary, they formed a sort of cabinet, to direct the affairs of
the empire under the supreme authority of the king, who was frequently
immersed in the pleasures of his harem, and indifferent to business.
But they did not succeed to their offices by any hereditary title, as in a
feudal monarchy ; they were nominated and removed at the pleasure of
the sovereign, whose caprice frequently led him to seek in the lowest
ranks of the people for persons to fill the highest positions, and then
to humble to the dust in a moment those whom he had exalted to
honour.
2. The numerous provinces of the vast Assyrian empire were divided
into two classes, those under governors directly appointed by the king,
and those that were merely in a state of vassalage. We have already
spoken of the organisation of these last, comprising the greater part
of the conquered countries. The vassal states preserved, as the Assy-
rian inscriptions expressly say, their traditional organisation and their
own peculiar laws, only occasionally modified by the suzerain ; their
own royal families remained on the throne, obliged only to recognise
as master the king of kings, to pay him annually a considerable tribute,
and to furnish a large contingent to his armies. We have already
spoken of the extraordinary respect that the kings of Assyria, especially
those of the old empire, showed for the legitimate hereditary succession
to the crown in conquered countries, a feeling that constantly led them
to reinstate on the throne the son and legitimate heir of a vassal king
whose rebellion had been punished with death in its most terrible form.
It was only after a long-continued series of rebellions, after repeated
acts of high treason, that the king of Assyria deprived a tributary pro-
vince of its privileges, and, according to the regular official fornuda,
"treated it like the —
Assyrians" that is, made it a province under the
nile of a governor sent from Nineveh, as Sargon did to the kingdom ot
Israel and attempted to do in Babylon.
The provinces thus governed comprised Assyria itself and some
conquered countries which it was necessary to hold in very close subjec-
tion. They were governed by satraps, or governors, appointed and
recalled by the king, and selected from among the officers of his court
E E 2
420 ANCIENT II1ST(>RV OF THE EAST.
tlieir rank varied according to the ini]K)rtance of the province or city
where each governed the four Iiii^diest in station seem to iiave been tlie
:
governors of Nineveh, Calah, Ellasar, and Arbil. After thcni were

reckoned in tiie first class, if we may use such an expression, the
governors of Nisibis, Arabkha, Resen, Lakhir, Kirrur, Gozan, Rezepii,
Mazaniua, and Carchemish.
One of the principal duties of the satra])s, or governors, was to receive
the tribute either in money or in kind, and from it they made a deduc-
tion for themselves. Like the satraps of the Persian empire in later
times, and the Turkish pachas of our own days, they had the command
of the military garrisons of their provinces, and levied and organised the
annual contingent for the army. They were assisted by a supreme
jutige and by a superintendent of the revenue; after whom came a large
number of judges and subordinate functionaries, distributed over all the
divisions and subdivisions of the provinces. The lowest class of officer
in each town was a local magistrate, who was unable to act without the
consent of a sort of municipal council, over which he presided.
3. For the business of the central administration, the government of
the provinces and the quasi-diplomatic relations between the sovereign

and his principal vassals, Assyria had a body of scribes, as numerous as
that of Egypt, and an office system as complicated and carefully
organised. Ruling over so many diverse races, the Assyrian monarchs
could neither use one single official language, nor translate their official
orders into all the languages of conquered provinces; it was necessary
therefore to make a selection. Three languages were chosen for official
use, and three separate "chanceries" for the business of the three
great ethnographic divisions of the empire. This is a system necessarily
adopted in all empires embracing a number of different races, instead of
ruling over one single and distinct people, the system adopted now-a-days
in Austria.
In the Assyrian empire the three chanceries, as is proved by numerous
texts and monuments, were —
the Chaldaso- Assyrian, the Turanian, and
the Aramaean. The first managed the business of the central provinces,
those of the Tigro-Euphrates Basin, Assyria and Babylonia. The second
administered the affairs of the country to the north and north-east,
where especially the Turanian, mixed it is true with some other and very
diverse elements, was very numerous, and where, as the Assyrian kings
found it most docile, submissive, less desirous of independence than
either the Arian or Japhetic element, they always desired to give it the
preponderance. The Aramaean chancery took charge of all the western
provinces, Phoenicia, the kingdom of Israel, and the Arab tribes, who
spoke dialects differing from the Syriac, but received the decrees of the
king of kings in that language. The Syrian or Aramaean races, in fact,
after having at first energetically resisted the Ninexite conquest in
— —
ADMINISTRATION OF THE EMPIRE. 421
Osrhoene and the north of Syria, had in the end identified themselves
completely with the great Mesopotamian empire; and in later days
gave to the Babylonians, and also to the Persians, the same support as
they liad done to the Assyrians. The Aramieans thus became the
constant and devoted su]iporters of the great empire in the whole
western part of the Semitic world ; and in these countries an extension
of the effective and military power of Assyria was always accompanied
by an extension of tlie influence of the Aramaean language. When the
kingdoms of Israel and Judah had fallen before the power, the one of
Sargon. the other of Nebuchadnezzar, it required only a few generations
under the yoke of the great empire to make these people forget the
use of the Hebrew, and adopt a Syriac dialect.
4. In the hall of the archives in the palace of Koyundjik a number
of petitions have been found, addressed to the king, and inscribed on
tablets of baked clay. In spite of the servility of the form of address,
these documents prove that the Assyrians, properly so called —the pri-
vileged population of the empire — assumed a certain amount of liberty
in addressing their kings, and telling them the truth plainly. We. give
as an example a translation of a still unpublished tablet * in the British
Museum, in which is denounced some peculation on the part of the

controller of the palace and of the minister of state, dated apparently
in the reign of Asshurbanipal :
"Salutation to the king, my lord, from his humble petitioner, Zikar

Nebo.
"To the king, my lord. May Asshur, Shamash, Bel, Zarpanit,
Nebo, Ta.shmit, Ishtar of Nineveh, Ishtar of Arbela, the great gods,
protectors of royalty, give a hundred years of life to the king, my lord,
and slaves and wives in great number to the king, my lord.
"The gold that in the month Tashrit the minister of state and the
controller of the palace should have given me —three talents of pure
gold and four talents of alloyed gold, to make an image of the king
and of the mother of the king — has yet not been given (to the workmen).
" May my lord, the king, give orders to the minister of state and to
the controller of the palace, to give the gold, to give it from this time
to the month of * * * to the army, and do it exactly."
Wê have also some petitions, addressed to superior officers of the
court, hardly less humble in style than those to the king himself An
unpublished ta1>!et in the British Museum contains one from a woman
whose name seems to be Israelitish. It begins thus:
"To my lord the controller of the palace, his humble slave, .Sarah.
May Bilit of Telit and Bilit of Babylon, Nebo, Tashmit, Ishtar of

Nineveh, and Ishtar of Arbela, look favourably on him for many days,
may happiness and worldly prosperity be the portion of my lord."
* Marked K, 538.
5. An institution peculiar to the Assyrian empire, and unknown in
Chalil;va, was that of epouyms — an office precisely analogous to that of
the consuls under the Roman emperors. Each year the king nominated
a magistrate, who had no other duty than to give his name to the
year in the chronological records. The eponym was always selected
from the number of the superior officers of state. The highest officers
of the crown had a right to this honour in regular rotation during the
early years of a reign. Tlie king reserved to himself the first eponymy,
at the first commencement of a new year after his accession. The fol-
lowing year the commander-in-chief of the army was eponym; next the
chief eunuch; after him the minister of stale, and lastly the "governor
of .the country ": this order of rotation evidently gives us the order of
precedence among the superior officers of the Assyrian court. Wlicn
once this series of eponyms by was exhausted, the king made his
right
choice among the governors of the class. Such at any rate was
first
the state of things in the first Assyrian empire. Under the second there
was not perhaps so much regularity; the king chose the first year one
from among the officers entitled to hold the eponomy, without even
invariably reserving his own year.
The institution of eponyms, adopted by some countries, like the
kingdom of Saba, in Yemen, in imitation of the Ninevite monarchy,
must have been, like the consulship under the Roman emperors, a last
traditional vestige of a time when the tribes of Assyria had a republican
government, with magistrates elected annually.
6. We have no sufficient data for reconstructing the complete organi-
sation and hierarchy of the sacerdotal and judicial professions. In the

anny the king was the supreme commander, and frequently directed
but there was also a generalissimo, called
military operations in person ;
in Assyrian Tartan, who seems to have been a sort of minister of war.

The —
was composed of two elements the native Assyrian troops,
aiTTiy
who formed a nucleus of faithful and reliable soldiery, and the con-
tingents of the vassal principalities. The Assyrians were an essentially
military race, and also the dominant people of the empire, and appear
to have been all, without exception, liable to military service for a
certain number of years; but, unless they entered some permanent corps,
such as the royal guard, they do not seem to have been retained under
arms for any length of time. Each year a new call was made on a
number of men, greater or less, according to circumstances and the
wants of the empire, and distributed over the different provinces in
such a way as not to put a stop to agricultural operations. The numbers
only of the contingents furnished by the vassal kingdoms were fixed
by the central government and the king of each country was re-
;
quired to march them in by a certain date, getting the men where he

would or could. Each of these contingents was commanded by officers
MILITARY OPERATIONS. 423
of its own In war time the king usually gave the command of
nation.
each corps of army to one of the great officers of his court and
his ;
military exploits were, among a warlil<e people, and under princes

almost always occupied in conquests, the readiest means of rising in
political rank, and attaining to positions about the person of the king.
Military art had, moreover, made among the Assyrians,
great progress
especially in the engineering branch. What we know of their fortifi-
cations, both from the ruins still remaining of them and from the
sculptures in the palaces, shows a large amount of science, great skill
in placing the flanking towers and in arranging works to command
various positions. They had on forti-
also carried out the art of attack
fications and the construction of war machines with great success. In
the bas-reliefs representing sieges of fortresses by Assyrian kings, we
see them using the battering-ram, protected by a " tortoise " on rollers,
and covered with hides kept constantly wet, as a protection against
incendiaiy arrows; large moving wooden towers are also employed,
filled with archers and slingers, and elevated above the crest of the
enemy's rampart; the tortoises and towers are moved up an inclined

plane, so as to get to the foot of the walls of the town; miners, in
galleries, are sapping the ramparts, while others pull down the masonry
of the counterscarp of the ditch, so as to fill it up with rubbish skilful ;
archers, each protected by a soldier holding a sort of mantelet, or large

shield of wicker-work covered with leather, and as tall as a man, ad-
vance to the edge of the ditch, and aim at the loopholes to drive away
the defenders, or shoot fire-tipped arrows over the walls to set fire to
the houses ; finally, the infantry fit them

together jointed ladders, raise
up against the walls,and prepare to make the assault under cover ol
the archers and moving towers.
7. In Assyria there were no castes, nor even rigorously defined classes,
no hereditary or established aristocracy. There was complete social

equality, such equality as despotism desires and establishes as most
favourable to its own existence — an equality with a common level
created by the yoke that bears equally on where there is no su-
all,
periority but that of offices established by the will, often by the caprice,
of an absolute master. In this empire there was not even an invariable
and well-defined distinction between the Assyrians and the conquered
nations. Men of these nations were often appointed by the royal will
to the most eminent offices; and those high positions at court, that
gave a potential voice in the affairs of the empire, were not always
filled by Assyrians. In this way we find, in later times, the prophet
Daniel, at Babylon, one of the ministers of Nebuchadnezzar, after
having received the Babylonish name of Belteshazzar; and the three
young Israelites, Hananaiah, Misael, and Azariah, after a similar change
of name, were made superintendents of the buildings of the royal city.
;
424 ANCIKNT HISTORY OF THE EAST.

The organisation of the Iriiilc clianccry naturally conduced to tliis
result, by attracting to the central seat of government, by the promise

of ]iosts of some importance in the administration, natives of subject
countries, who thus found an opportunity of displaying tlieir talents on
a conspicuous stage.
8. The classical writers do not give us such detailed ]iarticulars on
the subject of the Assyrian laws as they have done with regard to those
of Egypt. In criminal cases we know only that the procedure was
summary, the law draconian, andpunishments excessively severe
tlie
torture was applied to wring a confession from the accused, and the
punishment of dealii was almost always inflicted with refinements in
cruelty unknown, for example, in Egypt. Simple decapitation was a
penalty unusually mild; in some cases the victims were crucified, in
•
others impaled, in others flayed alive. Corpses of criminals were
denied burial, and exposed to be devoured by wild beasts. Eor crimes
less heinous than those deserving death, mutilation of one or more
members, or loss of the eyes, was a common punishment.
We know rather more of their civil laws, as many contracts have
been found for the sale or hire of landed property and slaves ; these
contracts are stamped on tablets of clay, and baked to preserve them.
The oldest of these date from the earliest times of the primitive
Chaldaean empire, in the reign of Sin Said ; the most recent are of the
Greek period, and the names of kings, Seleucus Philopator, Antiochus
Epiphanes, and Demetrius Nicator, may be read on them. Some have
been found relating to all periods during the whole of the long
duration of the Chaldseo-Assyrian civilisation. We learn from them
wi,th how many civil and religious guarantees the possession of landed
property was surrounded in Assyria. It could not be transferred except
by solemn and sacred formula, as well as Ijy a deed registered by a
public oiTlcer, and bearing the signature of a certain number of witnesses.
Wiien it was necessary to deposit a sum of money as security for the
performance of the contract, the deposit was made in the treasury of a
temple, and the priests were present at the execution of the deed. A
carefully-prepared register, in which every change was entered, served
as a state record of the titles to estates, and also as a basis for the
imposition of taxes. Irrigating canals, veiy numerous throughout the
'^ countiy, and the principal source of its agricultural prosperity, entailed
a great number of reciprocal duties and obligations among the land-
holders ; and infringements of these arrangements gave rise to the
majority of civil actions brought before the tribunals of Assyria.
As amongst all ancient nations, not only the goods but the person
of the debtor were answerable for the debt to the creditor. He who
was declared insolvent became the slave of his creditor, who could
either sell him, or use his services; and this slavery was perpetual, for
CIVIL LAWS. 425
among the Assyrians there was no law, as among the Hebrews, limiting
to any given number of years the slavery of one who fell into the
power of a pitiless creditor. A portion, therefore, of the slaves in
Assyria was composed of native Assyrians, reduced to that condition
by the inability to pay their debts. The remainder were foreign
prisoners captured in war, and sold by auction, or else brought from
a distance by the slave merchants who flocked to Nineveh and the
large cities. The people of the Caucasus, at that remote epoch, as
now, were in the habit of selling their sons and daughters, who were
specially educated for the purpose. The sale of slaves in Assyria was
surrounded with the same formalities as the sale of landed property; a
formal deed was required and the presence of witnesses. One of these
deeds has been translated and published by M. Oppert.
9. Polygamy was allowed in all ranks of society, but the wealthy
alone could afford to indulge in the practice. The royal harem ranked
as an institution of the state, and was enormously large. The inscrip-
tions found in the interior of the harem of .Sargon, in the palace of
Khorsabad, relating to the dedication of that building, contain the
most extraordinary details, details so strange that it would be impos-
sible to introduce them here. Marriages were placed under the special
protection of the god Nisroch. The wife brought to her husband some
real estate, given her as dowry by her father.
The celebrated Babylonian stone in the Imperial Library at Paris,
known by the name of Cailloux Michaux, contains a deed of gift of
one of these dowry estates, and the proprietorship is placed under the
protection of the most terrible imprecations against all who should
attempt to interfere with it.
A tablet in the British Museum contains a fragment of the civil law,

in a double text, Turaiiian-Chaldaaan and Semitic-Assyrian, on the
subject of the rights and reciprocal duties of husbands and wives,
fathers and children. From this we find that the Assyrian family was
constituted on the basis of the most absolute and uncontrolled power of
the husband and the father. No protection whatever is given to the
weaker sex. The husband who wished to repudiate his wife, was
obliged only to give her two mince of silver the wife who deceived
;
her husband, or who wished to separate from liim, was to be thrown

into the river. The master was not compelled to do anything for a
wounded or sick slave but the steward through whose fault a slave
;
died, or became temporarily unfit for work, had to pay compensation

for the damage he had done to his master's property.
—
Section II. Manners and Customs.
1. The Assyrians, who have been very happily termed " the Romans
of Ancient Asia," were a people essentially fierce and warlike. Their
own monuments exhibit them to us as .short in stature, but thickset
and strong, with every appearance of great muscular power the nose ;
prominent and curved, the eyes large, and the face of the most marked
Semitic type.
In character, they may be regarded, both in their virtues and vices,
. as the complete type of the conquering races of Asia. Brave in battle,
but cruel to the last degree ; fond of slaughter and plunder ;
pi-ofoundly
attached and implicitly obedient to their kings haughty, and be- ;
lieving themselves immeasurably superior to all other people patient ;
under privations, inclined to falsehood and treachery, eminently en-

dowed with the instincts of command, active and persevering they ;
formed one of the nations that Providence seems to raise up for the
purpose of holding for a time other nations in subjection, and of serving
as the instruments for inflicting divine chastisement. The strength
and energy of their nature were such that they were for ages enabled to
resist the enervating influence of the luxury, that, after so many con-
quests,pervaded their cities, where all the wealth of the world was
accumulated and such
; that, after the disaster of Sardanapalus, a half
century sufficed themrecover from its effects, and again, more
to
on the road to conquest. No other Asiatic
terrible than ever, to enter
people has ever been able so long to preserve military supremacy, and
for so many centuries to escape the enervating influences of its own
success,meeting with such persistent resistance from the nations it con-
quered, and surrounded by such powerful neighbours.
The Assyrians were naturally a highly religious people, and the
worship of their gods held an important place in their daily life.
Without being such absolute devotees as the Egyptians, everything
proves that a feeling of piety existed among them, which, if it had
been conjoined with any other religion than their degrading poly-
theism, would have proved the source of exalted virtues. They were,
moreover, an intelligent as well as a warlike race, and exhibited an
aptitude for varied occupations, and a superiority in widely diff"erent
pursuits.
2. The soil of Assyria was and still is extremely fertile wherever it
can be well watered. The Assyrians learned agriculture from their

neighbours, the Babylonians, who were originally their masters; and
INDUSTRIAL ARTS. 427
this art had been carried to the highest degree of perfection from the
earliest times in the whole of Mesopotamia, as well in Assyria as in
Chaldsea. They had all the best methods of cultivation in full use,
founded both on the customs of remote ages, and on an ingenious and
well-considered theory. No other ancient people made such advances
in the art of agriculture and on many points modern nations have, as
;
it were, reinvented, but not improved on, the practice of the Babylonians
and Ninevites. A system of irrigation extended over the whole

country, absolutely necessary, seldom or never rains there;
since it
this was the foundation of and was carried

their system of agriculture,
to the highest point of perfection. It was first applied to the low and
easily- watered plains of Chaldaea, but was afterwards extended to the

whole of Assyria, where great difficulties had to be encountered in
carrying it out, requiring much science, and a large amount of labour.
All the rivers of the country contributed to it and it may be said that
;
the Assyrians did not allow one drop of that precious element to be
lost— the main secret in all oriental countries of the fertility of the
soil.
3. The industrial arts were not less well developed in Assyria, than
was agriculture. Here again, at any rate in some manufactures, the
Assyrians had been preceded by the Babylonians and had learned from
them. The Assyrian woven stuffs, dyed in brilliant colours, were
celebrated through the whole of the ancient world, especially for the
beautiful embroideries of human or symbolical figures, processions of
animals, divine symbols or flowers w'hich covered them.
In the Assyrian sculptures all the important personages, the king,
and the gods above all, have their garments .decorated with these
famous embroideries and we may from this form an opinion of their
;
beauty. These embroideries, distributed by commerce, served as models

for decoration of the most ancient Grecian painted vases.
Metal work was carried to great perfection in Assyria. Furniture
covered or cased with bronze was a conspicuous object in every palace.
There is in the British Museum a very beautiful throne of bronze,
found in the palace at Calah, in a hall where the bas-reliefs represent
king Asshur-nazir-pal on a similar seat. In the decoration of halls,
long friezes of sheets of bronze were used, worked in relief, and repre-
senting figures of animals or fantastic monsters the projecting beams
;
of the ceilings were also cased with sheets of bronze of the same kind.
Vases of bronze were made in great numbers, as well as of gold and
of silver, carefully chased and covered with figures these specimens of
;
Assyrian goldsmith's work were carried to great distances by commerce.

A passage in the letters of Themistocles shows us that they were in great
request at Athens, at the period of the Median wars, and they have
even been found in Etruscan tombs.
42S ANCIENT IllsroUV OF THE EAST.
The Assyrians liad tdols of iron and slcc-l, hnl Ihcy do not seem to
have manufactured tluin fm iliemselves. They undoubtedly obtained
t]ieni from the neii^libourinij provinces of
tlie Caucasus, where the
manufacture of by the Chalybes, had been known from the most

steel,
primitive ages. And these were not the only manufactures in common
use among them that were obtained by foreign commerce. Textile
fabrics, dyed purple or blue, came to them from Phaonicia, as well as
some of their glass transparent muslin from Egypt. All the carved
;
ivory that has been found at present in the ruins of Assyrian palaces,
where it was largely employed in the decoration of furniture, seems to
be of Phtenician work. Assyria, however, exported to the countries
with which she had commercial relations, manufactured produce to the
full value of her imports. If articles evidently of Egyptian manufac-
ture have been found at Nineveh, the sepulchres on the l)anks of the
Nile have equally furnished their explorers with works of Assyrian
manufacture, especially small articles of precious wood, and of enamelled
jiottery.
The Assyrian enamelled pottery, produced by a totally different

process from that of Egypt —by means of a silico-alkaline glaze apjtlied
sandy paste — and susceptible of being
to ordinary clay, instead of to a
applied to a variety of uses, was in fact one of the most flourishing
and best developed manufactures of Mesopotamia, and in the time ot
the eighteenth dynasty, part of the tribute to Pharaoh was paid in
articles of this kind. The manufacture had been invented by the
Babylonians, but in the end became as prevalent in Assyria, as in
Chaldrea. The walls were encased with enamelled bricks, arranged so
as to produce pictures ; scenes of war or the chase, figures of deities,
processions of animals, were among the chief means of decoration
employed in Chaldceo-Assyrian architecture.
Ctesias describes these decorations in the palace at Babylon, and
their remains have been found in the ruins of such Assyrian buildings
as have been excavated, particidnrly at Khorsabad. The practice
has been handed down traditionally from antiquity in this part of
Asia, for enamelled tiles are at the present time the principal orna-
ment of the palaces and mosques of Persia, and during the middle
ages the productions of Ispahan in this art were marvellously
beautiful.
The Assyrians also manufactured painted earthenware vessels and
glass ware ; there is in the British Museum a beautiful vase of the latter
material, bearing the name of Sargon in cuneiform characters.
4. The costume of the Assyrians consisted of a robe open at the side,
often with a border of fringe and decorated with rich embroidery,
hanging down to the feet, and confined in the middle by a broad girdle,
COSTUME OF ASSYRIANS. 429
precisely resembling the djubeh of the eastern people in the present day.
The common people and soldiers used a shorter tunic, reaching only to
the knees, so as to allow them to walk freely. The king, in his robes
of ceremony, wore over all a sort of long mantle or chasuble, worn ob-
liquely over one shoulder and splendidly ornamented and this is also
;
seen on the monuments on the hgures of the gods; a high conical

tiara surmounted his head, and in his hand he held a long sceptre or
staff, nearly the height of a man. The insignia of his rank, when he
appeared in public, were tlie same as those of Asiatic monarchs in the
present day, the parasol and large feathered fly flaps carried behind him
by slaves.
The Assyrians wore their hair long and curled at the end, the beard
square, and with rows of curls. They were fond of wearing great
quantities of jewelry, large earrings, rings, and bracelets. Some of the
soldiers wore a cuirass of small pieces of metal protecting the body,
and allowing the tunic to appear beneath it these were probably light
;
infantry. Others wore long coats of mail reaching to the feet, with a
conical helmet to which was attached a sort of veil of chain mail, falling
down on the neck and brought round to protect the chin, such as are .
now worn by the Circassians.

We can say nothing as to the costume of the Assyrian women, as we
are almost entirely ignorant on the subject; the classical writers give us
no information, and women are not represented in the sculptures of the
palace, except among vanquished and captive people. This absence of
the representations of women in the works of Assyrian art was a natural
and almost inevitable consequence of the custom of shutting up women
in the interior of the harem. We know of only one exception. A
small bas-relief from the interior apartments of Asshurbanipal at
Koyundjik, representing the king feasting in the harem garden ; and in
this case the queen wears a long-sleeved gown reaching to the feet; over
it a fringed tunic or frock reaching below the knees ; and over her
shoulders a light cape or cloak, all richly decorated ; on her head is a

remarkable turreted diadem, very like that represented by the Greeks in
the figures of their goddess Cybele, with earrings and bracelets of
elaborate workmanship.
5. Among the customs still existing in Asiatic courts, and of which
the earliest examples are found in Assyria, must not be forgotten the
great hunting expeditions, where the Ninevite monarchs delighted to
drive numbers of wild beasts together and pierce them with their arrows.
In the immense plains of Assyria, however highly cultivated the land in
general was, there were vast waste places, almost boundless steppes,
where, as irrigation was impossible, there was no cultivation, and con-
sequently no inhabitants. There lions, wild asses, wild bulls, and
ostriches increascil ami nuilliplicil. Xciioplion, wlio prisscil tluoiiL;li the
country with tiie Ten Tiiousand, lolls us this, and the monuments add their
testimony to liis. These animals the king went out to hunt in very
magnificent style, surrounded with all the pomp of a military expedition,
as the Shahs of Persia still do, and as the descendants of the great
Mogul did in the last century in India. Travellers who have been
present at these gigantic chases, as were Tavcrner and Chardin, for
instance, report them as regular butcheries, where animals are killed by
hundreds, but where the king is not exposed to any danger. A large
body of troops, spread as beaters over the plain, ilrive, by their shouts
and all the noise they can possibly make, animals, both savage and
inoffensive, into an enclosure prepared beforehand, and where they are
crowded in enormous numbers. There the prince, safe in ambush and
protected by strong palisades from the efforts of the lions and tigers,
selected at leisure the animals he wished to kill, without being in any
danger from them. It is probable that mailers were arranged in this
way in Assyria. But the flattery of the artists who drew the hunting
scenes with which the monarchs were so fond of decorating the walls of
their palaces, has represented the kings in a much more heroic position.
They are traversing forests and plains in the chariots, with lions roaming
all around them, and they fight face to face with the most formidable
animals, exposing themselves to innumerable risks from monstrous beasts,

and giving proofs of their courage as well as of their dexterity. All
and poetical but there is great reason to doubt that
this is noble, grand, ;
these scenes represent facts.

It is true that the secretof the comedy is revealed by several bas-
reliefs of Asshurbanipal.This king was one of those who showed
himself most addicted to hunting exploits. In all parts of his palace
there are representations of his combats with lions, accompanied by
inscriptions explanatory of the circumstances. On a bas-relief in the
Louvre he says, " In one of my hunts a lion approached me; I seized
him by the mane above his ears. Invoking Asshur, and Ishtar the lord
of fights, I pierced his body with my lance, the word of my hand." On
a bas-relief in the British Museum he says, " In one of my royal excur-
sions I seized a lion by the tail, and, with the aid of Nergal and Adar,
beat out his brains with my mace." There is scarcely any reason to
doubt that the incident represented by the side of these inscriptions did
really occur. But there is one part of some of these bas-reliefs that
diminishes the value of these royal exploits. Slaves are shown, allowing
the lion with which the king is about to fight to escape from a cage.
He did not therefore attack these formidable animals when they were
at liberty, but had them brought to his hunting ground, and they
were most likely prepared beforehand so as to diminish the king's
—
danger lions whose claws had been cut and their teeth filed, or that
—
CUNEIFORM WRITING. 431
had been stupefied by some beverage, so as to render them compara-

tively harmless.
In all cases when llic khigs of Assyria caused their official annals to
be compiled in order to be sculptured on the walls of temples or palaces,
they were as careful to mention the number of lions, wild bulls, and
even wild boars, that they had killed with their own hands, as to
enumerate their campaigns and the cities they had taken. This was one
way of likening themselves to the gods who had been the destroyers of
monsters.
The most curious inscription of this kind is that of the obelisk of
Tiglath-pileser I. in the British Museum. We quote some passages
from it:— "Adar and Nergal have increased his strength and have
given him the glory of bravery. Embarked in the ships of Aradus, he
killed a dolphin in the great sea. He killed wild boars, wild buffaloes,
in the city of Arazik, opposite Syria, at the foot of Lebanon. He took
the young of the wild boar alive he dispersed a herd of them he
; ;
killed wild boars with his bow; he took wild boars alive and trans-
ported them to the city of Ellasar. He shut up 120 lions in the hunting
enclosure; with his great courage he mounted his chariot and stretched
them dead at his feet with his lance. He caught lions in traps. . . .
He fished in the western sea, and in the sea of the rising sun, with
harpoons of iron. In the countries of Ebech, Urashi, Azamari, An-
karna, Pizitu, Kashiyara, the mountains of Assyria and Khana, on the
flanks of the land of Lulumi, and in the mountains where are the
sources of the two rivers (Euphrates and Tigris), he caught wild goals,
chamois, and wild asses."
The king who performed such famous hunting feats was a worthy
successor of Nimrod, of him whose glory it was to be "a mighty
hunter before the Lord."
Section III. Writing.

I. We have already said a few words on the cuneiform writing of the
Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions, and have attributed its origin
to the Shumir, Turanian portion of the primitive population ot
the
Chaldaea. The system is perhaps the most complicated ever employed
by man for depicting his thoughts. There were enormous difficulties in
deciphering it, but this has now been accomplished ; the interpretation
restshenceforward on a secure and certain basis, and the result must
be considered among the most magnificent and important discoveries
of this age in the domain of historical science.
43:: ANCIENT HISTORY OF Till' EAST.
This achicvcnicnt, lidwcvcr, is not like llial of iIk' inlorprclaliofi of
Es^yplian liicrogIy|>liics, due to tlic intellect of one ninn. 'I'lie gloi'y of
tlic first decipliei inenl of cuneiform writing must be shared among many
scholars; and instead of being the result of a sudtlen inspiration of
genius, followed from a long series of repeated and patient efforts.
I'lven liefore the commencement of the excavations that revealed to the
light of day the palaces buried under the soil of Assyria — even when
but a very small number of specimens of this strange writing were
known, Grotefend, one of the most ingenious of the men of science of
modern Ciermany, had already established some points that have
remained undisturbed by subsequent |in)t;ress; by an effort almost of
divination he succeeded in reading on some of the Babylonian bricks the
name of Nebuchadnezzar. Soon afterwards, the successful researches of
M. Botta and Mr. Layard brought to light the palaces of Khorsabad,
Nimrud, and Koyundjik, and supplied an immense mass of documents
for study. M. de Longperier and M. dc Saulcy, the first to follow
them U]i, contributed very important results; and if they did not finally
complete the discovery of the method of interpretation, wonderfully
smoothed the way for their successors. M. de Saulcy made the greatest
advance; he determined the simple values of a large number of signs,
first detected the syllabic character of the writings, and established the
Semitic character of the language. Doubtless, had he not abandoned
these studies so soon, he would have maintained the advantage he at
first obtained over his fellow students.
Champollion found the key to the reading of the Egyptian hiero-
glyphics in the famous Rosetta stone, containing a part of a decree by
the priests of Egypt under the Ptolemies, written in hieroglyphics, in
the Demotic, and in Greek. Assistance of this kind was absolutely
necessary, m order to arrive at any definite result in the readmg of
the cuneiform inscriptions. This was furnished by the inscription at
Behistun, that lengthy text, in which Darius Hystaspes has related the
events of his whole life, engraved on a rock in Media, in the language
and writing of the Persians, of the Medes, and of the Assyrians. From
the commencement of the present century the cuneiform inscription in
the Persian language was read with tolerable certainty, and the portion
of the Behistun monument engraved in that language gave the same
assistance towards the analysis and decipherment of the Median and
Assyrian inscription, as the Greek version in the Rosetta inscription.
So from the date of the publication of the Behistun inscription by Sir H.
Rawlinson, who had surmounted immense difficulties to make the copy,
the study of cuneiform writing entered on a new phase of development,
and advanced with great rapidity.
Three scholars of the highest attainments. General Sir H. Rawlinson
—
in England, the lale Dr. Ilincks in Ireland, and M. Jules Oppert in

France, pursued the study simultaneously, with noble emulation and
equal success. In very many of the most essential points,it happened
more than once that they simultaneously and independently arrived at

and published the same results, so that priority of discovery could be
awarded to neither; and as a result, in a few years the science of
Assyriology has been established, and the decipherment of the ancient
system of writing belonging to Nineveh and Babylon is an accomplished
fact. To M. Oppert must be assigned the honour, after these discursive
and perhaps confused attempts, of having reduced the discoveries to a
system, of having separated the essential facts, and the laws to be
deduced from them, and finally of having, before any one else, esta-
blished the grammar of the writing and language of the Assyrians.
These great and meritorious labours were acknowledged by the Imperial
Institute of France in 1863, by awarding to him the prize that every
tenth year is given for the most important discovery in the branches ot
science pursued in each of its academies.
2. name of Anarian to the Ninevite and
Scholars have given the
Babylonian system of cuneiform writing, as opposed to the Arian, or
cuneiform writing of the Persians. It was necessary to choose a name
equally general and vague, as the writing it designates is not only that
of the idiom of the Chaldieo- Assyrians, but of at least five languages
belonging to very different families : namely
1st. The Assyrian, of the Semitic family, spoken both at Babylon
and Nineveh.
2nd. The Armenian, an Arian or Indo-European language, used by
the Armenian people from the ninth to the tenth century before our
era ; in this are written the numerous cuneiform inscriptions in the
neighbourhood of Van.
3rd. The Susianian, or language of all the inscriptions of Susiana and
Elam, belonging to the Turanian family.
4th. The Median, a Turanian idiom of the Turkish group, spoken in
Media all the official inscriptions of the Achsemenian Persians are
;
composed in Persian, in Median, and in Assyrian.

5th. The Chaldasan, another Turanian idiom, of the Uralo-finnish
group, the primitive national language of the Chaldeans before their
establishment as the dominant caste in Babylon, where they continued
to use it among themselves down to the last days of their supremacy,
as we have already said.
There may have been, and probably were, other languages for which
the Anarian system of cuneiform writing was used ; but at present no
others have been found on the monuments.
3. The Anarian cuneiform writing, as science has now proved, was
F F
ori^cînally liieroglyplia-, that is, composed of iiicluiesof matciial objects,
and tliese forms can in some cases be reconstructed. An inscription

cntiicly wriltcn in tlicse hieroglyphics exists at Susa, as is jiositivcly
known ; but il has not yet been copied, and is therefore unf(.)itunately not
available for study. In the course of time, l)y a very natural ])rocess,
the pictured representation underwent a Iransforniation in common use,
in exact accordance with the process by which the Egyptian hieratic
writing was formed from the hieroglyphic, and the present Chinese
characters from the pictures originally used. The desire for simplicity
contrilnited to replace the picture by some few lines which, without
exactly copying its form, might serve to recall at any rate its most
peculiar characteristics. The most ancient monumental remains of
Babylonia and Chaldasa are inscribed with this form of writing, pre-
vious to its having assumed the cuneiform character, and this is called
by scholars Hieratic.
From this was formed the true cuneiform writing, distinguished by
the peculiarity of having its letters, whatever may have been their
original shape, composed of a combination of marks like a nail, or
wedge, Y or ]- . The form of this constant element in all the
signs of cuneiform writing was used among the Assyrians as one of the
sacred symbols of divine intelligence, but took its origin from their
method of writing. The Assyrians and Babylonians did not write with
pen and ink or pencil on papyrus, prepared skins, or rolls of linen,
nor with a hard point on boards, palm leaves or bark. For want of
other available means they wrote on tablets of soft clay, afterwards
baked when they wanted to preserve them.
Now the special distinguishing element, producing the very singular
appearance of cuneiform writing, the nail, is nothing more than the
mark made in the clay by the triangular stylus used for the purpose ;
many specimens have been found in the ruins of Nineveh. The nail
would also be formed by two blows of the chisel, and was a more easy
and expeditious method of engraving an inscription on stone, than by
sculpturing the entire figure. The original Hieroglyphic writing thus
transformed became simplified by degrees; the picture, the prototype of
each character, was forgotten ; the number of cuneiform marks com-
posing each character was lessened, so that in the end they became
purely conventional combinations.
Thus from the Hieroglyphic picture arose, first the Hieratic writing,
and from this the first form of the cuneiform writing, termed the Archaic.
This, however, itself was very complicated, but became simplified into a
—
fourth type, the most commonly used of all, in which the greater part
of the Assyrian inscriptions are written, called by scholars the Modern.
Finally even this last, in its daily use, was still more abridged into a
form capable of being written with greater rapidity, called the Cursive
form.
The monumental remains of the primitive Chaldean empire have no
writing except in the Archaic form, apparently the only one then in
use. In the time of the Assyrian kings, however, the period of the
greater number of the monuments that have been preserved, that is,
from the tenth to the seventh century B.C., the Cursive type was used
for the writings on clay, the manuscripts of Chaldtea and Assyria;
and in the monumental inscriptions, either the Archaic or Modem cha-
racter was employed, at the choice of the sculptor ;
just as, among our-
selves, inscriptions are cut sometimes in Gothic, sometimes in Roman,
letters.
The Archaic type is the same in all countries where the Anarian
cuneiform \\-riting was in use; the Modern type, on the other hand, pre-
sents very apparent differences in Nineveh, Babylon, and Media.
4. In common with all hieroglyphic writing, the Anarian cuneiform
commenced Ijy a large employment of ideographics, of which very
many vestiges remained to the end of its existence. The signs for
ideas in this writing, like those of the Egyptian system, were doubtless
originally while still hieroglyphics, some figurative, others symbolical.
But there are only a very small number of these signs in the cuneiform
writing which it has been possible to trace back to the ancient figura-
tive representation, such for example as
Sun. Shovel.
Fish.
The great majority, in the state in which we find them on the monu-
ments, are merely conventional groups, and their meaning can be found
only in an empirical manner.
5. With these ideographics are joined and mixed up, as in the Egj'p-
tian hieroglyphics, phonetic elements representing sounds and composing
the majority of the texts of the Assyrian age, and a minority of those
of the age of the primitive Chaldcean empire. But these phonetics are
not alphabetic, as among the Egyptians; they are syllabic, for none of
the nations who used the Anarian cuneiform writing had attained
philosophical analysis of language sufficient to enable them to decom-
pose the syllable, and to distinguish the mute consonant from the vowel
—

that gave it sound. The following table gives the usual syllabarium of
the Anarian cuneiform writing — tliat is, the signs in most common use
representing simple s\llables, syllables formed of a single consonant and
a single vowel ; these form the chief part of every Assyrian inscription.
The compound syllables witli a vowel between two consonants arc some-
times expressed liy special signs, but more oftenby the juxtaposition of
two simple syllables, one with a final and one with an initial vowel,
thus,Mat was written Ma-at, Bir — Bi-ir, etc. The table is divided into
three columns, giving the form of the same character in the three most
commonly used varieties of the Modern form of writing, the type
most common on the monuments : as under
Number of the
character in
Norris's
Dictionary.
CUNEIFORM SYLLABARIUM. 437
Number of the
character in
Norris's
Media.
Dictionary.
lo ,(rt
-IM
II £7<
Y
T>. Ills
15 (/a
-IT
di
(in
38 ha
26
ff ff
76
EÎII
T^
Y' -^
33 kha
34 khi
35 khu
-\v
36 akh -{
22 ikh
— ukh
39 i^"'- TTE=T
Number of the
character in
N orris's Nineveh. Media.
Dictionar}'.
42 ka
in
^•'
43
44 kn
tei^ L
12 ak
13 ik Hi
14 ilk
^T
^T
45 ^«
46 li
•<-<> \< ^- fer
48 ///
50 a/
51 //
53 îl
54 ma Ll
56 »//
c:
55 ''"?
F
57 mu -4<
Number of the
character in
Norris's
Nineveh. Media.
Dictionary.
58 atn
59
^^\ r ÎI!
60 II m
61 --<î
62
lie
63
65 ail
—I
66 in
68
ff
69 sa
»> T TTT -T-^m^
70 si
JI
91 S£
I su
JI
as
TT
31 IS
A
Number of thi;
character in
N orris's Niiicvcli Media.
Dictionary.
32 us
::-M ::-ni
73 pa tt tt l!=
pi
74
î-
75 pu
5 ap
:I
7 ip
til Mil
8 up
78
79
qa
qi
^
isn
80 qn
81 ra
Bif
82 ri
-Til -III^
83
til -III
85 ar
86
-WT- -TTT
87 er HI
I
Number of the
character in
Nineveh. Media.
Norns's
Dictionary.
88 !VT IM
89
-M :J
TT
90 ska
Y
93 shi
^T-
95 shu
92 she
96 shu T
k I
ash
97
—I %
99 ish
1 00 itsh
>-5p-
lOI ta
»-w-<
:i
10^
-i^
104 la
<<> —
at
19 //
20 lit
î
—
442 ANCIENT TTT^^TORY OF TTTE EAST.
NoTK. — English readers will naturally wish to compare this Sylla-
barium that given in the excellent dictionary jjy Mr. Norris
willi
(Assyrian Dictionary, by Edwin Norris, Ph. D., Honorary Secretary of
the Jôyal Asiatic Society, London, 1868) ; and as some differences
will lie founil, the author desires to offer a few remarks on the suljject.
The greater number of these differences are merely variations in the
form of the character, such as are found on very many of the monu-
ments themselves. Only two founts of movable Assyrian type have as
yet been cast in Europe, one used by the Royal Asiatic Society, the
other in the Imprimerie Imperiale at Paris. In the first, the form of
the characters is copied from the Behistun inscrijjtion in the second ;
from the inscriptions at Khorsabad. The author has preferred to use

the second, even in this English edition of his work, as he considers the
model on which the characters have been formed as better and, if such
a term may be used in speaking of Assyria, more classical. Moreover,
particularly desiring to show the fundamental identity of the Median
system of writing with the Assyrian, he has selected among the
varieties of the latter those forms which most clearly show that identity,
as, for instance, in the characters ak and //, numbered 12 and 51, in
Mr. Norris's list.
As no attempt has been made to introduce an Assyrian Grammar,
and was not considered desirable to make the syllabarium too exten-
it
sive, the author has omitted some simple syllabic characters which are
rarely used, or seem to be interchangeable with others. Thus the
characters numbered in Mr. Norris's list 27,28, zi 29, Z2i; 47, le ;
;
52, t'/; 6-j,cii; 84,7'//; <ji,s/ia; ()^,ask; 102,

105, /«. /t ;
49 seems to the author a simple variant of 48, and 94 also of 93, and
found only on doubtful copies.
The author has not introduced any diphthongs, and has therefore
omitted No. 25, regarding it not as a simple ;/ but as an. The character
4i.jl'fl, seems also to him a combination of /, (40) and a, (i).
These variations, as will be seen, involve no differences in reading,
and require no explanation ta an experienced Assyriologist. The only
real points of disagreement between the author and Mr. Norris, very
few in number, are as follows :
In No. 36, but the value, akh, still seems doubtful.

In No. 64, read by the author as ni/7n, or itiiv, not nic.
No. 106 seems identical with 8, and to have the two sounds, up and
(7r, but not //.
These points are of course merely mentioned and cannot be discussed

here.
It may be remarked, that syllables in which the consonant is
also
represented in our list by z, include both of the Semitic articulations
T and V. That in syllables in which the Jti occurs, that letter may be
replaced by v. That in the characters representing syllables with an
initial consonant and final vowel, one single character is used for all the
articulations of the same class thus, ap and a!> are expressed by the
;
same sign, as well as ak, ag, aq and at, ad and ath, etc.
6. With but very few exceptions, the ideographic and phonetic values
of the written signs are the same, whether the language employed is
Assyrian, Armenian, Susianian, or Median. But most frequently the

IDEOGRAPHIC CHARACTERS. 443
characters are capable, according to their position, of being used eitlier

as ideograpliics or phonetics ; and in all the languages employing this
system of writing, except the Turanian Chaldasan, the sound of the sign
when used phonetically had no resemblance to the pronunciation of the
word it represented ideographically. For example, in an Assyrian text,
the character »~-J conveys, as an ideograjDh, the idea of "God,"
and was then pronounced " Ilu "; as a phonetic it represents the syllable
"an." The character ^ÛlT also, ideographically means father,
and is read "abu," but it also stands for the syllable " at."
The explanation of this peculiarity is the foreign origin of this system
of writing. We have already said that science has proved that the
Anarian system of cuneiform writing was invented and introduced into
Mesopotamia by a people of Turanian or Ugro-finnish race, the Shumir,
who were the first inhabitants of a part of Chaldaea. Among these
people the phonetic and ideographic values of the signs were identical;
the one sprung from the other; the pronunciation of each character as a
phonetic was the initial syllable of the word represented by the sign as
an ideograph ; >->—T represented an, because the word for God
was An;w/; ^ ^— \ the syllable af, because the word for father
was Alta. When the system of writing passed from its Turanian
inventors to other nations, Chaldceo-Assyrians, Armenians, Susianians,
and others, they borrowed both the sound and the meaning ; and as in
the languages of the latter people the ideas were expressed by entirely
different words, the concord between sound and meaning was at an end.
7. But the complications of the Anarian cuneiform writing did not
end here. To these difficulties, already sufficiently embarrassing, ot
finding the same character with two directly opposed meanings, at one
time phonetic and at another ideographic, and with no apparent con-
nection between the double employment, must be added the peculiarity
of polypJiony —a fruitful source of difficulty. It consists in the existence
of two or three different phonetic values for the same character. Thus,
» T meaning as an ideographic to anoint, corresponding with the
Assyrian word nasak, represents as a phonetic sometimes the simple

syllable /«, and at others the compound syllable khat. This fact is so
strange, that announcement was received with incredulity in the
its first
scientific world, has been established by such positive proofs, that

but it
it is now admitted as incontrovertible; an analogous fact has also been
noticed in some Egyptian hieroglyphics. This has arisen from the fact
that the ideographic characters, like the words of the spoken language.
—
sometimes received now tliough cognate meanings, one meaning, for
instance concrete, another abstract— one meaning as a siil)stantive,
anotlier as a verb now these varied meanings frequently corresponded
;
in the spoken language to words of totally different sound, and thence

arose the various phonetic values.
We must not dwell longer on we have said enough
this subject, but
to show how complicated, how full of obscurities, how liable to error
in the reading, was this system of Anarian cuneiform writing used in
Assyria and Babylonia from a period more than thirty centuries before
our era down to the time of the Seleucidas. Of course, the Assyrians
were better able than we are to disentangle this almost inextricable
confusion; but even for them the difficulties were great. We find a
proof of this in the number of fragments of lists of syllables and of

.grammatical vocabularies stamped on clay tablets, intended to teach the
pupils of the Hiero-grammatists of Asshurbanipal the mysteries of the
national system of writing that have been found in such abundance in
the ruins of Nineveh. A large proportion of the remains of Anarian
cuneiform writing are composed of school books, which assist us to
decipher the remainder, and afford us the same assistance that they
did 2,500 years ago to the students of the ancient land of Asshur. But
though the remains of these lists of syllables, drawn up by the Assyrians
themselves for their own assistance in reading their own writing, afford
valuable help to modern students in deciphering the cuneiform system,
thev prove that it has always been complicated and obscure, and that to
understand and employ it, at the time when it was in common and
even
extensive use, the very people, whose exclusive and national writing it
was, were compelled to have recourse to help of the same kind.
Section IV. Literature and Science.
I. Berosus tells us that the Babylonians and Assyrians had eight

sacred books, and that they attributed the authorship of them to the god
Oannes, the mythical founder of the first civilisation of Lower Chaldaea.
From these books he drew the information he has given us on the
cosmogony believed in Babylon ; from the same source also, but
indirectly, are derived the very correct ideas on the Chaldseo- Assyrian
religion preservedby the Greek philosopher, Damascius.
No original fragment of thebooks of Oannes has been preserved,
nor any portion of the chronicles relating the whole history of Nineveh
and Babylon. But from their extraordinary length, some of the in-
scriptions of the Assyrian kings may almost be termed books, as they
— —
ASSYRIAN LITERATURE. 445
relate in detail the annals of their reigns, giving us an idea of the

historical and literary style of the Assyrians. Even when translated, as
the reader may have observed from the fragments we have quoted,
these documents have a forcible and stately character. The style is
magniloquent, the diction strong and vigorous, the metaphors bold and
striking, the turn of thought poetic, a sort of epic air distinguishes
the story told to gratify the pride of the monarchs of the Great
Empire.
2. All the remains known to us of books, properly so called, of
ancient Assyria, were found during Mr. I.ayard's excavations, and come
from the library estaljlished by King Asshurbanipal in one of the halls
of his palace at Nineveh. A curious library, consisting entirely of flat
square tablets of baked clay, having on each side a page of very small
and closely written cuneiform cursive letters, impressed on the clay
while still moist ; each was numbered, and formed a page of a book
composed of a number of such tablets, probably piled one on another
in the library.
The great majority of the tablets still preserved of the library of
Asshurbanipal, and now Museum, contain
the remains of
in the British
an immense grammatical encyclopcedia, treating of the difficulties of
the writing as well as of the language. We find from them that
grammar had become among the Assyrians a very advanced science,
and received much attention from them, the natural and almost inevitable
consequence of the complication of their system of writing, requiring
long and profound study. We find also from a notice appended to one
of the treatises of the Grammatical Encyclopaedia, that the library of the
Ninevite palace was intended by its founder to be a public library
"Palace of Asshurbanipal, king of the world, king of Assyria, to
whom the god Nebo and the goddess Tashmit (the goddess of wisdom)
have given ears to hear, and eyes to see what is the foundation of
government. They have revealed to the kings, my predecessors, this
cuneiform writing, the manifestation of the god Nebo, the god of
supreme intelligence. I have written it upon tablets, I have signed
it, I have placed it in my palace for the instruction of my sub-
jects."
The Grammatical Encycloprcdia, compiled by the orders of Asshur-
banipal, was divided into several treatises; we have fragments of
seven :
1st. A lexicon of the Chaldseo-Turanian language, with the meaning

of the words in Assyrian. This was used to interpret some treatises on
religion and science, compiled by Chaldaean priests in their own lan-
guage, to render them unintelligible to the common people. We have
already mentioned that the original text of the fundamental civil laws
of the empire was in the Chaldccan tongue.
446 ANXIENT HISTORY OF TUK 1':AST,
2iul. A dictionary of synonyms in llic Assyrian lanjûaijc.

3rd. A grammar of the same tongue, with paradigms of the conjuga-
tions of verbs.
4th. A dictionary of the signs of the Anarian cuneiform writing, with
their ideograjihic meanings and phonetic values.
5th. Another dictionary of the same signs, arranged according to the
primitive hieroglyphics whence they are derived.
6th. A lexicon of particular expressions, generally ideographic, em-
ployed in the inscriptions of the primitive Chaldcean empire. This
e.xhibits a turn for archaeology, and shows us that the Ninevite and
Babylonian kings of later times must have made a careful search in the
temples they repaired for the inscriptions of their original builders.
•
Thus we have on a cylinder of Nabonahid, now in the British Museum,
the translation of an inscription of Shagaraktiash, discovered in the
foundations of the great temple at .Sipparah.
7th. Tables of expressions illustrative of grammatical construction,
and of the various methods of expression in ideographs and phonetics.
A.11 these treatises, the fragments of which are of inestimable value
to us, are not remarkable for the excellence of their method.

3. Nor do the riches of the library of the Ninevite palace end here.
The fragments of the grammatical treatises, published many years ago

by the authorities of the British Museum, have acquired the greatest
celebrity, and have been chiefly used by scholars, as they furnish most
invaluable assistance in deciphering cuneiform inscriptions. But the clay
tablets discovered by Mr. Layard also contain parts of very many other
books.
Fragments have been found, as we have said, relative to the laws.
This subject is also represented by a number of contracts between
private individuals that would hardly be found there unless intended
to serve as "formul3e juris privati," and portions, still more numerous,
of records of judicial proceedings, for the library was used also as a
depositary for the archives of the palace. The remains of the table of
the eponyms, embracing almost without interval a space of nearly
three centuries, prove that there were also books on chronology.
These are of four sepaiâte kinds, the two first containing only the list
of the personages who gave their names to the years, divided by reigns;
the two others, infinitely more valuable, and from which we have made
many quotations, where this list was accompanied by a summary of the
principal events of each year. One broken tablet is all that remains of
a manual of the history of Nineveh and Babylon, arranged in parallel
columns it was especially an abstract of the political and diplomatic
;
relations at different epochs. From this fragment we have quoted our

statements as to the most ancient Ninevite kings, and their relations
with the Babylonian kings.
LIBRARY AT NINEVEH. 447
Fragments have also been found on mythology, not yet translated,

though some of them have been published in the "British Museum
Inscriptions." They contain lists of the various epithets applied to the
same god, and of his functions and attributes tables of the localities ;
in which were his principal temples; and, finally, highly important

documents as to foreign gods. With them were found also the remains
of collections of hymns, in a style sometimes recalling the Psalms of
David. Wefind next the remains of a sort of encycloptedia, or
geographical dictionary, enumerating the countries, towns, mountains,
and rivers known to the Assyrians also of a list of proper names in
;
use in the country; and, documents of the greatest

lastly, statistical
interest on the hierarchy of the functionaries of the government, and on

the different provinces of the monarchy, their productions and revenues.
Several tablets contain remains of the lists of the tributary cities of
Osrhoene, Taurus, Syria, Palestine, Arabia, and Eg)'pt, with statements
of the sums they paid, or the supplies they furnished in kind, particu-
larly in grain. We
have also a catalogue of the important buildings of
Babylonia and Chaldsea, classified according to their kind, temples,
pyramids, and fortified citadels.
4. Natural history also is represented in the remains of the library of
the Ninevite palace. Lists of known plants and minerals have been
found; of the timber trees employed in building or furnishing; of
metals of stones fit for architecture or sculpture.
; But perhaps the
most interesting of all is a list of every species of animal known to the
Assyrians, classified in families and genera. No

doubt the gi-eat
divisions of this classification are those of a very rudimentary science,
but we may well be astonished to find that the Assyrians had already
invented a scientific nomenclature similar in principle to that of
Linnaeus. Opposite the common name of the animal is placed a
scientific and ideographic name, composed of one invariable sign, and
of a characteristic epithet, varying with each species.
On the other hand, no trace has been found of a scientific and
methodical system of medicine. This had in reality no existence in
art
the Chaldceo- Assyrian civilisation. Herodotus mentions* as one of the

most remarkable peculiarities of the customs of the Babylonians, the
absence of any physician. People meeting in the street accosted each
other, to ask mutually for advice as to the complaints they suffered
from. Sick people were carried into the puljlic ways, and there con-
sultations were held as to the treatment suitable for their maladies. The
medical moreover, was confounded with that of magic, so much in
art,
vogue among the Chaldjeo- Assyrians and it appears that very often no
;
other remedies were employed than conjurations and incantations, for
* Her. i. 197.
;
448 ANCIENT HISTORY OK THE EAST.

sickness was considercil to l)c tlic result of ihe action of evil spirits,
who injured the body.* One tablet contains a series of incantatioiis of

this kind, to avert the maladies likely to attack a woman before child-
birth, or when nursing, and they arc written in two languages, Turanian
Clialdxan and Semitic Assyrian. Other formula against various evils,
or against power of magic charms, are to be found on tablets or on

tlie
amulets. We are astonished to find amongst them exclamations that

were used by magicians of the middle ages, and weê then quite in-
comprehensible, such as the famous Jlilka, Iiilka, besha, bcsha; these
are simple Assyrian words, meaning Go away, go away, evil one, evil one.
They came to the west with the Chaldaean magicians at the time of the
decline of the Roman power, and adepts in the occult sciences trans-
mitted tlieni from generation to generation as mysterious words of
sovereign efficacy against the spirits of darkness.
5. But the sciences, next to grammar, most frequently met with on
these fragments, a small part only as yet having been published, are
mathematics and astronomy. The lil)rary of Asshurbonipal contained
many treatises on arithmetic, and the remains give us reason to think
that Pythagoras borrowed the plan of his famous multiplication table
from the Mesopotamian civilisation. It also contained catalogues of
observations, both of fixed stars and planets, the remains of which
have been found; amongst others, tables of the risings of Venus,
Jupiter, and Mars; also of the phases of the moon from day to day
during the month. We have, in the preceding chapter, spoken of the
early progress of astronomical science at Babylon. The Assyrians
were in this the pupils of the Babylonians, and their science was the
same. The astronomers of ancient Mesopotamia had even determined
the mean daily movement of the moon, as they had adopted the course
of that planet as their measurement for time, and had succeeded, by
their knowledge of the period of 223 lunations, in predicting eclipses.
The most ancient calculation of this kind, that for the eclipse of
loth March, 721 B.C., was made by them, and differs from ours
by a few minutes only. Eclipses of the sun, much more difficult
to calculate, they did not, says Diodorus Siculus, venture to predict
they contented themselves with making and registering solar obser-
vations. Thus, as we have already seen, two solar eclipses, those of
2nd July, 930, and of 13th June, 809 B.C., are mentioned on the
monuments.
We derive much that is still in use among astronomers from the civi-
lisation and science of the Chaldoeo-Assyrians, to which all writers of
antiquity bear testimony. Thus the division of the ecliptic into twelve
equal parts, forming the Zodiac, and even the figures of the constella-
* See page 271.

MEASURES OF TIME. 449
tions, seem to have originated with them. The division of the circle
into 360 degrees, and the division of a chord of the circle, equal to the
radius, into sixty equal parts, called degrees ;* the division of those
degrees into sixty minutes, of the minute into sixty seconds, and of the
second into sixty thirds, as well as the invention of the mode of notation
marking these divisions of the degree, are due to the Chaldseo-Assyrians.
To them also is to be attributed the week of seven
institution of the
days, dedicated to the seven planetary bodies worshipped by them as
divine beings, and the order assigned by them to the days has not
changed from time immemorial. Having invented the gnomon, they
were the to divide the day into twenty-four hours, the hour into
first
sixty minutes, and the minute into sixty seconds. Their great periods
of time were calculated on this scale. The great cycle of 43,200
years, regarded by them as the period of the precession of the
equinoxes, was considered as one day in the life of the universe. It
was divided into twelve "sars," or cosmic hours, each of 3,600 years,
and each subdivided into six ners, of 600 years; the ner again into ten
sosses, or cosmic minutes, of sixty years; and thus the ordinary year
was a second of the great chronological period.
This was all founded on the peculiar method employed by the
Chaldseo- Assyrians in indicating fractions. They invariably divided
unity into sixty equal parts, each such part again divided into sixty,
* See Delambre, Astronomic Aiicienne, tom. II., livre iii., chap. 2,

" Construction de la Table des Cord es, " where is explained the manner
in which the Greeks expressed the subdivision of the arcs and chords
of circles.
The curvilinear length of the circumference of a circle was divided
into 360 equal parts, called degrees, and, consequently, the arc, which
is the sixth part of that circumference, contained sixty degrees. Now
the chord of that arc, as is well known, is equal to the radius of the
circle; and the rectilinear length of the radius was, in like manner,
divided into sixty equal rectilinear parts, which were also called
degrees, but must be carefully distinguished from the degrees of the
circumference.
For the subdivision of degrees of each of these kinds the sexagesimal
system of notation was employed, each degree being divided into sixty
minutes, each minute into sixty seconds, each second into sixty thirds,
and so on.
And tables having been constructed, by which multiplication, division,
and other numerical operations could he facilitated (Delambre, tom. ii.,
p. 32), and a system of trigonometry, both plane and spherical,
having been invented and adapted to this notation (Delambre,
tom. ii., chap. iii. iv.), complicated questions of arithmetic and
trigonometry became capable of solution. Delambre gives several
examples completely worked out. —
Communicated by the Rev. Temple
Chevallier.
G G
—
450 ANCIENT IILSIOKV OF THE EAST,

ami this sexagesimal division was continued to infinity. This it is very
evident was the result of a wise combination of a very practical cha-
racter, intended to combine the advantages of the two systems of
dividing unity that have been in dispute at all times and among all
nations — the decimal and the duodecimal. The number sixty, in fact,
is divisible by all the divisors of ten and of twelve, and is among all
the numbers tliat could be chosen as an invariable denominator for

fractions, theone possessing the greatest number of divisors. Sexa-
gesimal numeration regulated the scale of the divisions and of the
multiples in the metrical system of I'jabylon and Nineveh, the wisest
and best organised in the ancient world.
This is the only system, previous to the introduction of the French
metrical system, where all proportions were scientifically concordant
and founded on the fundamental plan of all unities of superficies, ca-
pacity and weight being derived from one primitive and typical linear
measurement, an idea adopted also by the French republican com-
mission on weights and measures. The cubit of 525 millimetres
(=20"67 ins.) was the basis of the whole system. This was divided
into 60 parts, corresponding to the 60 minutes of the degree. Multi-
plied by 360, the number of the degrees of the circle, it produced the
stade of 189 metres (nearly 207 yds.), the unit of measures of distance.
The foot of 315 millimetres (12-4 ins.) was to the cubit as 3 to 5, and
was therefore 36 lines. The square of this foot (= I53'8 sq. ins.)
became the lowest and fundamental unit, on which were founded all
land and superficial measures. The cube of this foot was the metreta,
or medimnus of 30J- litres (= 1,922-3 ins.), the standard of all mea-
sures of capacity and the weight of the cube foot filled with water
;
gave the talent of 30 kil. 650 grs. (=67-57 ozs.), the fundamental unit
of weight; and the sexagesimal division of this produced the mina of
510-83 grs. (= 1-13 ozs.), and the drachma of 8-513 grs. (= -019 ozs.).
The greater part of these measures passed from the Tigro-Euphrates
basin to the various neighbouring^ countries of Asia, and even to the
Greeks, preserving often their names, for both fiva and ofioXbg are
Hellenised Assyrian words, losing, however, more or less in the transit
their original character and scientific proportion.
6. Tlie Chaldseo-Assyrians were acquainted with the solar year of
365J days, and made use of it in their astronomical calculations. But

and religious year was a lunar year, composed of
their ordinary civil
twelve months, alternately of twenty-nine and thirty days. This year
was borrowed by the Hebrews previous to the time of Moses, probably
from the time of Abraham. The Jewish names for the months are the
same as the Assyrian, as we may see by the following table, where the
two calendars are arranged in parallel columns :
ASSYRIAN MONTHS AND YEAR. 45i
—
Section V. Religion.
1. Till", skilful explorations of the last twenty-five years in the
countries bordering on the Tigi'is and Euphrates have given us mueh
more correct ideas on the subject of the Assyro-Babylonian mythology
than had been handed "down by the Greeks. Nevertheless many ])oints
still remain in great obscurity as to the religion common with a few
exceptions to the two great Semitic cities of Mesopotamia.

The religion of Assyria and Babylonia was, in its essential principles
and in the general s]:)irit of its conceptions, of the same character as the
religion of Egypt, and in general as all pagan religions. When we
penetrate beneath the surface of gross polytheism it had acquired from
popular superstition, and revert to the original and higher conceptions,
we shall find the whole based on the idea of the unity of the Deity, the
last relic of the primitive revelation, disfigured by and lost in the
monstrous ideas of Pantheism, confounding the creature with the
Creator, and transforming the Deity into a god-world, whose manifesta-
tions are to be found in all the jihcnomcna of nature. Beneath this
supreme and sole God, this great All, in whom all things are lost and
absorbed, are ranked in an order of emanation, corresponding to their
importance, a whole race of secondary deities, emanations from his very
substance, who are merely personifications of His attributes and mani-
festations. The differences between the various pagan religions — the
same in principle — is chiefly marked by the differences between these
secondaiy divine personages and their reciprocal nature.
Thus, as we have already seen, the imagination of the Egyptians had
been especially struck by the various stages of the daily and yearly
course of the sun in this they saw the most imposing manifestation of
;
the Deity —
that which best revealed the laws of the government of the
world — and in this they sought their divine personifications. The
Chaldreo-Assyrians, especially devoted to astronomy, saw in the Astral,
and especially in the planetary system, a manifestation of the divine
being. They considered the stars as his true external manifestation,
and in their religious system made them the visible evidence of the
subordinate divine emanations from the substance of the infinite being,
whom they identified with the world, his work.
2. The supreme god, the first and sole principle from whom all other
deities were derived, was Ilu, whose name signifies God par excellence.
Their idea of him was too comprehensive, too vast, to have any deter-
mined external form, or consequently to receive in general the adoration of
the people and from this point of view there is a certain analogy between
;
Ilu and the Chronos of the Greeks, with whom he was compared by the
latter. In Chaldsea it does not seem that any temple was ever specially
dedicated to him ; but at Nineveh and generally throughout Assyria

— —
GODS OF ASSYRIA. 453
he received the peculiarly national name of Asshur (whence was

derived the name of the country, Mat Asshur), and this itself seems
derived from the Arian name of the deity, Asura. With this title he
was the great god of the land, the especial protector of the Assyrians,
he who gave victory to their arms. The inscriptions designate him as
" Master or Chief of the Gods." He it is who is to be recognised in
the figure, occasionally found on the Assyrian monuments, but adopted
in later times by the Persians to represent their Ormuzd, of a human
bust wearing the royal tiara in the middle of a circle borne by two large
eagle wings, and with an eagle's tail.*
3. Below Ilu, the universal and mysterious source of all, was placed
a triad, composed of his three first external and visible manifestations,

and occupying the summit of the hierarchy of gods in popular worship
Anu, the Oannes of the Greek writers, the primordial chaos, the first
material emanation of the divine being ; Bel, the demiurgus, the
organiser of the world Ac, called also Bin
; — that is, the divine " Son "
* There are many examples of this winged figure of Asshur in the

British Museum, both on the sculptured monuments and on the signet
cylinders. Eleven may be counted on the sculptures in the " Assyrian
Gallery." It may be observed that in all examples the eagle's wings
and tail are attached, not to the human bust, but to the circle ; in some
the figure is placed in the ring, in others merely imposed on it ; in one,
at the entrance of the Gallery, the figure is placed in what seems
evidently intended for the sun's disc; in all others the ring is as dis-
tinctly formed as the tire of a wheel. There are also several examples,
some very roughly executed, in which the human bust does not appear,
but merely the winged ring.
In the war-scenes the figure of Asshur hovers over the king's chariot,
and exhibits the same action as the king. If the king is shooting his
arrow, the god does the same, using a three-pointed arrow (see the
vignette to this volume); if the king holds out his right hand to promise
pardon, so also does the god.
The translator had an opportunity (through the kindness of Dr. Birch)
of inspecting the signet cylinders in the Museum, in search of this
emblem. There are thirty-one examples, more or less complete and
psrfect, from the inexpressibly beautiful and perfect cylinder, labelled
as that of Muses-Ninip, 800 B.C. [Mushishi-Adar], where the whole
details of the wings and figure are rendered as perfectly as on any of the
monuments, down to some on which the emblem is barely legible ; of
these there are eighteen without the human bust. Among the cylin-
ders isthe one usually termed the "Assyrian Trinity," as, besides the
figure in the ring, there is a human head on each of the wings; there
is also, on another cylinder, what appears to be a very rude attempt to

produce the same figure.
The common occurrence of this emblem on some of the monuments
and its entire absence on others may perhaps be explained by supposing
that it was used only by kings or by private persons whose names were
compounded of the name of the god. Tr.
par excellence —the divine light, the intelligence penetrating, directing,
and vivifying the universe. These three divine personilitalions, equal
in power and con-substantial, were not placed in tlie same degree of
emanation, i)ut were regarded as having, on the contrary, issued the one
from the other, Ao from Oannes and Bel from Ao. Oannes, the
" Lord of the Lower World, the Lord of Darkness," was represented on
the monuments under the strange figure of a man with an eagle's tail,
and for his liead-dress an enormous fish, whose open mouth rises over
his head, while the body covers his shoulders. It is under this form that
Berosus tells us, according to Babylonian traditions, he floated on the

surface of the waters of Chaos. Bel, the "Father of the Gods," was
usually represented under an entirely human form, attired as a king,
wearing a tiara with bull's horns, the symbol of power. But this god
took many other secondary forms, the most important being Bel Dagon,
a human bust springing from the body of a fish. We do not know
exactly the typical figure of Ao or Bin, "the intelligent guide, the
Lord of the visible world, the Lord of knowledge, glory, and life;" the
serpent seems to have been his principal symbol.
Each god of this triad had a corresponding female deity — his repro-
duction in the passive form — to use the expression of many of the
inscriptions, "his reflection." Anat, the Anaitis of the Greek writers,
the passive reproductive matter, accompanied Oannes ; Bilit, whose
name was rendered by the Greeks as Mylitta, the mother of the gods,
belonged to Bel and lastly, Taauth, " the great lady,''
; often confounded
with Mylitta, was the female reproduction of Ao.
4. The first triad represented, as we have seen, the production of the
material world, an emanation from the substance of the divine being;
first the primordial chaos, uncreated matter, sprung from the funda-
mental and sole first cause of all things; secondly, intelligence we may —
—
almost say "the Word" animating and fertilising all; and lastly, the
demiurgus, who ordains and brings into regulated order the universe,
with which he himself is inextricably mixed up. The series of emana-
tions then continued, and a second triad is produced with personages
is
no longer vague and indeterminate in character, like those of the first,

but with a clearly defined sidereal aspect, each representing a known
celestial body — those
which the Chaldseo- Assyrians saw the most
in
striking external manifestations of the deity: these were Shamash, the
Sun; Sin, the Moon god; and a new form of Ao or Bin, inferior to the
first, and representing him as god of the atmosphere or firmament.
5. Below this second triad in the divine hierarchy, and in the order of
emanations, are found the gods of the five planets —Adar (Saturn),
Merodach Nergal (Mars), Ishtar (Venus), and Nebo (Mercury).
(Jupiter),
The worship of Merodach, though not much cultivated at Nineveh, was
of primary importance at Babylon, where he was regarded as one of the
GODS OF ASSYRIA. 455
principal gods. He was a secondary form, another manifestation of

Bel, in an inferior rank in the hierarchy;he was called "the ancient
one of the gods, the supreme judge, the master of the horoscope"; he
was represented as a man erect and walking, and with a naked sword in
his hand. Adar,* "the fire," called also Samdan, "the powerful,"
although his planet had been called Saturn by the Greeks, was in
reality the Assyrian Hercules; his appellations are — "the terrible, the
lord of warriors, the strong one, the destroyer of his enemies, he who
reduces the disobedient, the exterminator of rebels," and in other cases,
"the son of the Zodiac." On some monuments he is represented in
company with Merodach, and in the same manner. He is represented
in the magnificent colossal figines in the Museum of the Louvre, and of the
British Museum where he is seen as a god of terrible aspect, strangling in
his arms a lion that appears quite small in comparison with him. With the
surname of Malik, " king," Adar Malik, the Bible mentions him with
" Oannes, the king," Aim Malik (2 Kings xvii. 31), as the principal god
of Sippara, where the inhabitants " burnt their children in the fire" in
their honor. In general these planetary gods are only forms, secondary
manifestations, of the higher order. Such is the connection between
Nebo and Ao; Nebo also is distinguished as the "supreme intelli-
gence "; he is the god of prophetic inspiration, and of eloquence, and
also the special guardian of royal prerogative, the protector of kings,
and the prototype whom they reproduce on earth. Like Bel, he has on
the monuments an entirely human form, with the tiara and the dress of
a king; three pairs of horns, I'anged one above the other, decorate his
tiara, and four large wings are often attached to his shoulders; the
sceptre also is one of his common attributes. Ishtar reproduces among
the planetary gods Anat and Bilit, the great goddess of nature, the
mother of all the gods and of all beings she is their active and martial
;
form, for she is called " the Goddess of Battles, the Queen of Victories,
.she who leads armies to the fight and is the judge of warlike exploits ";
but she has a double form, uniting two characters— one fierce and
—
sanguinaiy, the other voluptuous for under the names of Zarpanit and
Nana she presides over the reproduction of beings, and over sensual
pleasures; sheis in this last character always represented naked, always
and with the two hands on the chest. Moreover two Ishtars
full face,
were always distinguished, that of Arbela (called also Arbail) and that
of Nineveh, who presided over the two fortnights of the montii.t The
* This is the divinity whose name has hitherto been read as Ninip.
We shall give elsewhere the reasons and proofs of this new reading,
Adar.
t Hence the common ideographic designation, "The goddess
fifteen." just as .Sin, who presides over the month, is called the "God
thirty."
—
plural name of {]\U doulile Islitar, Islitarolh, was the f)ii_q;in of the
I'luvnician Ashtaroth. Nergal, whose image is very uncommon, stands
on the legs of a cock, and carries a sword in his hand. The application
of the name of Mars to his star was quite natural, for the titles he
receives in the inscriptions are "the great hero, the king of fight, the
master of battles, champion of the gods," and also "god of the
chase."
7. Such were the great gods of Nineveh and Babylon. Below them
popular superstition believed in an immense number of personifications
of inferior order, of lesser gods, or rather êm, whom it would be
waste of time to enumerate. We must, however, mention some per-
sonages who are found on the monuments occupying an important
position in the Chaldseo-Assyrian pantheon, and who were evidently
other forms of the gods already named, but whose position has not as
yet been precisely determined. Such is Nisroch, called also Shalman,
the "king of fluids," he who "presides over the course of human
destiny," and who is also the protector of marriages; this is the god
with an eagle's head and large wings, whose image is so common on
the sculptures of the Assyrian palaces. As we have already seen, it
was in the temple of this god at Nineveh that Sennacherib was assas-
sinated by his sons. Possibly we ought to consider this god as another
form of Oannes.
The great gods are often all invoked one after the other at the be-
ginning of the solemn inscriptions of the kings of Assyria. Sargon has
given the names of eight of them on the gates of the city he founded.
" Shamash has conferred on me all I possess," says he, in an inscription,
"Bin gave me good fortune; I have named the great eastern gates after
Shamash and Bin. Bel Dagon laid the foundation of my city, Bilit
Taauth grinds like paint the elements of the world I have named the ;
gi-eat southern gates after Bel Dagon and Bilit Taauth. Oannes
prospers the work of my hand, Ishtar leads armies to battle I have ;
called the great western gates after Oannes and Ishtar. Nisroch
Shalman presides over marriages, the mistress of the gods presides
over births; I have dedicated the great northern gates to Nisroch and
Bilit."
Section VI. Arts.
I. Until very lately it was necessary to rely entirely on the state-
ments of authors such as Ctesias as to the great development of art

among the Assyrians, and the splendour of the edifices of Nineveh and
Babylon. It was only in 1844 that M. Botta, French consul at Mosul,
made the first discovery of an Assyrian palace, on the site of a little
village ^named Khorsabad, near that city. This discovery soon led to
ASSYRIAN BUILDINGS. 457
others ; and now a school of art, the very existence and greatness of
which, a short time ago, rested only on the testimony of ancient
authors, is known to every one. It is possible now, with the aid of
the specimens that are to be found in all the large museums of Europe,
and especially in the Louvre and British Museum of the splendid —
works on the subject of Assyrian explorations, published in France and
in England by M. Botta, M. Place, and Mr. Layard, and especially ot
the admirable essays of a P'rench architect, M. Thomas, in M. Place's
work — to sketch the essential characteristics of Assyrian ai'chitecture,
sculpture, and painting.
2. The Assyrians were generally in the habit of piling up large
mounds, or artificial on which to erect temples,
hills, as platforms
palaces, or cities. Nineveh was almost entirely built on artificial
elevations, extending over an immense surface. Its walls were 360
stades in circumference, according to the testimony of one of Senna-
cherib's inscriptions the outer casing was built of bricks, the interior
;
was composed of earth; and this explains how, when the casing was
removed, the mass of earth crumbled down and mixed with the soil.
The enormous enceinte of the capital of Assyria was quadrilateral in
shape, and may still be recognised, marked by a series of mounds in a
regular line scattered over the plain.
These artificial hills, serving as the base of great edifices, and where
the ruins are still met with in various parts of Assyria, to
buried, are
thenumber of several hundred. Three only have as yet been excavated,
and these contained the palaces of Khorsabad (Dur Sharyukin), Nimnid
(Calah), and Koyundjik (Nineveh).
These palaces, standing on artificial hills, were, from their mode of
construction, in reality each a second artificial hill, erected above the
with rooms excavated in their sides — an arrangement that seems
first,
tohave originated from the nature of their building materials, and also
from the necessity for placing dwellings in an airy situation in such a
hot climate. The soil of Assyria supplied an abundance of stone fit
for building, and also a coarse grey alabaster, very easily sculptured,
but too soft to be used for the walls of gigantic edifices. The Baby-
lonians, the original colonisers of Assyria, had been compelled by the
nature of their soil, entirely composed of alluvial clay, to build all their
edifices of bricks, some burned, others merely sun-dried.

The Assyrians never rose above the traditions of their original in-
structors, notwithstanding the difference in the nature of their soil; but
they preferred to the dried or burnt brick a peculiar description of
" pise" whicli they seem to have invented, composed of bricks used while
still soft, so as to adhere closely to one another without cement, so that
each wall or vault, when dry, formed one single compact mass. This
is the only material used in any Assyrian edifice that has as yet been
45S ANCIENT HISTORY OV TIIK EAST.
excavated; stone is found only as a casing, arranged in large thin
sculptured slabs along the panels of halls, luxuriously decorated, and
in paving arranged on the external facings of terraces. The nature of
the materials employed must necessanly exercise great influence, and
impose unalterable laws on the arrangements of any system of archi-
tecture. Building entirely with this "pise," the Assyrians were com-
pelled to give an enormous thickness to the walls, to construct the halls
very narrow and very low as comiâred with their length, for a vault
constructed of "pise" could never be very strong; never to ])ui](l
edifices more than one story high and lastly, to load the roof with a
;
very thick mass of earth, so that the rain slu)uid not. penetrate, and the
heat of llie sun should not cause it to crack throughout all its thickness.
From these circumstances arose the essential characteristics and general
aspect of Assyrian architecture, in which the base of a building bore a
greater proportion toits height than even in Egypt.
3. Some of the Assyrian occupy an enormous extent of

palaces
ground. That of SennacheribKoyundjik covers a space almost
at
equalling that of the great Temple of Karnak, in Egypt. The plan,
however, is always the same they are composed of a succession of
;
immense square more or less numerous, according to the extent

courts,
of the building; around them are arranged halls or chambers, opening
one into the other, with no other means of entry. Other courts, or
esplanades, are placed between the building itself and the terraced wall
bordering the artificial hill it stands on. The halls are never more than
forty feet broad, but their length is frequently very great, so as to give
them the appearance of mere galleries. The largest of those in the
palace at Khorsabad is 116 feet long; in the palace of Asshurnazirpal,
at Nimrud, one has been found 140 feet long; and finally, the length
of the principal hall in the palace at Koyundjik is 180 feet These
long galleries were used for halls of ceremony, and were among the
most characteristic pecuHarities of Assyrian architecture. The internal
walls of these great halls were, as we have already upsaid, decorated
to a certain height by a panelling of sculptured slabs of stone, and
above that by enamelled bricks. Other halls were ornamented entirely
in the latter way. The chambers, or halls for common use, had the
-walls plastered with coloured stucco, sometimes painted in fresco. We
also learn from the inscriptions that there were many rooms entirely
panelled with wood, and that the most precious odorous kinds were
employed for the purpose the species enumerated as being used for
;
panelling are the sea-pine, the fir, the cypress, the cedar, the wild
pistachio, ebony, and sandal-wood. No remains of the panelling have
as yet been found, for all the palaces that have been excavated were
destroyed by fire during the disasters that occurred at the end of the
Assyrian empire.
WINGED BULLS. 459
For assemblies too numerous for the great interior halls, the courts,
ornamented all round by gigantic sculptures, were used ; and on such
occasions they were converted into halls by a velum stretched over them.
Slender columns, sometimes of stone, more often of wood covered with
metal, supported jjorticoes of wood painted in brilliant colours, ex-
tending across these courts. These were sometimes made to imitate
palm or other trees, but more often crowned by voluted capitals, the
origin of the Ionic order; sometimes, again, they were surmounted by
metal figures of real or imaginary animals.
All the great gates opening into these courts, and the esplanades
giving access to the principal parts of the building, were ornamented
by colossal statues of winged, human-headed bulls; the faces of these
symbolical figures always look outwards, and the bodies are attached to
the side wall of the gateway. The size of these bulls, always colossal,
vaies according and importance of the gateway where they
to the size
stand. Some scholars have wished to identify these fantastic figures
with the representation of the god Ninip, or Bel Merodach, placed as a
protector at the entrance of the palace. We, however, believe these
Ninevite bulls to be the prototypes of the cherubim of the Ark of the
Covenant, representing no one particular divinity, but being the visible
2mbodiment of an idea analogous to that expressed by the Egyptian
iphinx; symbolising generally a divine protecting and guardian power,
combining both physical force and intelligence, just as tlie symbolical
figure combines the body of the strongest animal with a human head.
These bulls are called Alapi and Kirubi, and the last name, Kirub, is
applied, in an extended sense, to the gateway itself.
Sometimes lions are found in place of bulls, also with wings and
human heads, the prototypes of the Grecian sphinx, a variety of the
same symbol ; these latter are called Nirgalli, in the inscriptions de-
scribing the works of the palace. Lastly, at the gate of one of the
edifices of Nimrud, these emblematical figures are replaced by simple
colossal lions, erect, and in the attitude of fierce and vigilant guardians.
Above these bulls, or the figures which, as we have seen, sometimes
replace them, the great gateways were built with an arched vault, with
architrave outside decorated with enamelled bricks. One of these
arched gateways was discovered entire, with all its decorations, in the
excavations of M. Place at Khorsabad. It would have been brought
to Paris, but by a most lamentable accident it was lost on the Tigris,

with all the antiquities collected by the French expedition into Meso-
potamia.
The roofs of Assyrian edifices were flat and terraced, surrounded by
a crenelated battlement cut into gradines, and this plan was preserved
in Arab architecture of the middle ages for the top of the external walls
of buildings, as may be seen by the beautiful mosques at Cairo. This
46o ANCIENT IITSTORV OF THE EAST.
characteristic peculiarity is clearly indicated in all the pictures on the
bas-reliefs ; and thus M. Thomas was decidedly right in introducing it
into his restorations. Nor is this the only thing that Arabian and
Persian architecture borrowed from Assyrian art, for on looking at the
plates where the accomplished who accompanied M. Place has
artist
restored the exterior of the palace at Khorsabad, we may almost fancy
that they are drawn from modern Arab buildings. The common use of
enamelled pottery for panelling walls in the Persian buildings of the
middle ages originated in Assyria. The employment of cupolas in
Arab and Persian architecture is due to the same source. Positive
proofs were found in the excavations of M. Place that some of the
moderate size were roofed by hemispherical cupolas,
scpiare halls of
formed of "pise," and made in one piece, rising above the level of
the terraces. Several bas-reliefs, moreover, represent these Assyrian
cu]5olas.
The other halls had either a vaulted, or more probably a flat, roof,
and the inscriptions inform us that the was formed of
ceiling solid
beams, sustaining the weight of the earthen roof. The timber was
generally of resinous wood, as was considered more durable than any
it
other, such as sea-pine, fir, cypress, or cedar. This last wood was
brought at great expense from the forests of Lebanon and Amanus, and
military expeditions were sometimes made merely for the purpose of
cutting cedars. The projecting beams, as we learn also from, the monu-
ments, were covered with sheets of bronze, no doubt stamped with
figures and ornaments.
The halls must have been lighted by openings in the ceiling, as they
still are in the houses in Annenia, for no trace has yet been found of a
window; moreover, there are halls in the palaces that are surrounded
on all sides by other halls, and therefore could be lighted only from the
roof. But the power of the sun in summer, and the violence of the
rain in winter, precluded the possibility of leaving these skylights en-
tirely open to the air.
believe that I have discovered in the inscrip-
I
by which they were covered, and that is by seal skins

tions the metho<i
made into parchment, and thus made semitransparent and as translucent
as unpolished glass. At the present day, the Danes of Greenland
employ in a similar manner the skin of the nor-whale as a substitute
for glass in theirwindows.
We must add one last fact of great importance in the history of the
art of building namely, that the Assyrians, from the time of Asshur-
;
nazirpal, were acquainted with the true arch, built with a key-stone, of
a circular and also of an ogival form. A drain, built in this manner of
burnt brick, has been found leading under the most ancient part of the
palaces of Nimrud.
The courts and halls of Assyrian buildings were paved with larg
;
PALACES OF ASSYRIA. 461
furnace-baked bricks, the door-sills with stone, sculptured so as to

represent a richly designed mat. The walls rested on a bed of sand,
mixed, according to a superstitious custom mentioned in many inscrip-
tions, with various amulets, chiefly necklaces of large cornelian beads.
Under the door-sill were hidden clay idols, placed there to prevent any
evil influence from entering.
4. One only of the Assyrian palaces has as yet been completely and
in all parts uncovered, that at Khorsabad (Dur Sharyukin), and this is
of great interest from its complete unity of plan, having been built in a
few years, in one reign, and with no departure from the original con-
ception. It therefore may be taken as an excellent type of the usual
Assyrian plan and arrangement of a palace. It is composed of three

great buildings entirely distinct, of different dimensions, connected with
each other and forming one single royal dwelling, placed on the summit
of an enormous artificial mound. These buildings correspond exactly
to the three divisions still found in the houses of the wealthy and
luxurious at Bagdad and Bassorah. The seraglio, or palace properly so
called, inhabited by the men, and where the halls for ceremonial recep-
tion, the selamlik, were; the harem;
and the khan, or servants'
apartments, what may be called the common hall. The resemblance
is so exact that, as we do not know the Assyrian names of each, it is
impossible not to apply to the divisions of these Assyrian palaces the

names now in use in the country to designate the great divisions of the
dwellings.
The different buildings of the palace of Khorsabad were built on two
platforms of different heights, arranged in the form of the letter T.
One, the highest, was square, with its corners adjusted exactly to the
four cardinal points; the other, very much less elevated, is in the form
of an elongated rectangle, standing at the S.E. face of the square ter-
race, and lower than it at its two extremities. On the loftier terrace
stood the palace, properly so called, with its entrance to the N.E.,
facing the open country, and opening on to the ramparts of the city
wall. This entrance, however, was not in the middle of the facade,
for no people were ever less particular than the Assyrians as to regu-
larity and parallelism in their architecture thus all the courts of their
;
palaces have four great gates in their four sides, but none of them is
placed exactly opposite the one to which it ought to correspond.
The general mass of the buildings of the seraglio, or palace, forms a
square, with some few irregularities, very trifling for an Assyrian
building. The principal gateway an
to the north-east gives access to
immense and surrounded on all sides by
court, rectangular in shape,
buildings. Those on three of the faces seem to have been slight, and
to have been lodgings for slaves and for the body-guard of the king
those on the fourth side were the main buildings of the palace. What
is very umisual, lliorc was a jierfectly regular fa9acle, with a gateway,
the most liighly ornaiiieiUcd in all the building, placed exactly in the
centre.
In the interior arrangements of this building, the largest of all the
edifices of Khorsabad, there was neither regularity nor symmetry.
Two-thirds to the north-west part of the building was occupied by the
grand reception hall, or selamlik, and its large and sumptuous galleries,
with walls cased with bas-reliefs; one-third to the south-east by the
inhabited apartments, with smaller and less decorated rooms. Passages
opened into two of the sides of the large court ; one on the north-west
led to a square esplanade, or court, occupying the northern angle of the
artificial mound of the palace, in front of a building touching the
north-west face of the seraglio, with which it had no internal commu-

nication. This building was most lavishly ornamented ; it comprised
six immense halls decorated with sculpture, and some other smaller
rooms. It was, we may almost say, a second palace grafted on to the
first— a second selamlik, rivalling in splendour that of the seraglio.
What could have been It would be rash to make any
its purpose?
assertion on the subject, but we may conjecture that it might have
been the palace of the heir apparent ; for Sennacherib was a great
personage, even during the lifetime of his father Sargon, and must
have had his own palace among the buildings of the royal dwelling.
The passage opening into the south-east side of the reception-hall
of the seraglio led to the lower platform, and to the great court of the
offices.
The lower platform of the artificial hill built up for the foundation
of the palace of Sargon, was occupied by the khan and by the harem.
This portion of the edifice looked towards the city, and communicated
directly with it. In the midst was the khan properly so called, that
is,an immense square court, surrounded on all its sides by buildings,
grooms, and for the gi-eater nun^Jjer of slaves. It
stables, lodgings for
was approached from the city by two enormous flights of steps, in the
middle of the south-east face of the terrace. An elaborately decorated
passage led, as we have said, from this court of the khan into the
reception-hall of the seraglio
; two small doors also gave direct com-
munication with the inhabited rooms of the palace. To the right of
the immense court we have just mentioned, the khan, was a building of
some extent, with many courts and numerous chambers, forming part
of the offices, or common rooms of the palace.
To continue the use of the names still applied in modem oriental
palaces, so similar to those of Assyria, we must distinguish this from
the khan, and call it the khazneh, or treasury; for there, as the exca-
vations of M. Place have proved, were the stores of provisions and
utensils for the use of the royal household, as well as places of custody
ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORIES. 463
for all the valuables that Sargon, in his dedicatoiy inscription, tells us
he had acquired by force of arms and stored in his palace.
The harem was adjoining the khazneh. It was a building of moderate
extent, containing three courts —
the walls of one of them was covered
with the richest decoration in enamelled bricks ; many long galleries,
intended no doubt for feasts or festivals and lastly, a large number of
;
rooms for habitation. This harem was shut in as closely as possible; all
communication with the outer world was intercepted, and the women
must have found themselves in a real prison. One single vestibule,
guarded by eunuchs, gave access to it; this had two issues, one com-
municating with the great court of the offices, and was the entry by
which people came in from outside; the other opening on a long narrow
court leading to the inhabited apartments of the seraglio through this
;
the king had access to his harem without being seen by the puljlic.
Behind the harem was an enormous tower, or pyramid in seven
stages, nearly fifty yards high. Remains of similar constructions have
been found at Nimrud (Calah), and Kileh Sherghat (Elassar) and ;
there seems nq doubt that they were attached to every Assyrian palace,
for the inscriptions frequently mention the one belonging to the palace
at Nineveh. The seven stages, equal in height, and each one smaller
in area than the one beneath were covered with stucco of different
it,
colours, and thus presented to view the colours consecrated to the seven
heavenly bodies, the least important being at the base: white (Venus),
black (Saturn), purple (Jupiter), blue (Mercury), vermilion (Mars),
silver (the moon), and gold (the sun). This was the ancient staged
pyramid of the first Semitic Chaldrean empire, adopted and but slightly
modified by the Assyrians, by giving a rather smaller base and less
difference between the relative sizes of the stages, so as to make it
resemble rather a tower than a pyramid. But buildings of this kind,
called Zikurat, and so frequently mentioned by the kings in their annals
as having been erected by them, were not used in Assyria for temples,
as they had been in Chaldasa under the first empire, and as they con-
tinued to be used in Babylon down to the destraction of the city. The
sanctuary crowning the summit of the Chaldtean pyramids had disap-
peared. The Assyrian Zikurat was simply an observatory, and on its
summit the priestly astrologers, pupils of the Chaldtcans, attempted to
read the future in the stars. Astronomy had, in fact, quickly degenerated
into astrology in Chaldoea ; the belief in the direct infhitnce of the stars
on was one of the most deeply rooted articles of faith
terrestrial affairs
in Babylon, and had passed into Assyria. The Ninevite kings, like
those of Babylon, undertook no enterprise without first consulting the
presages of the stars, and for this purpose they always had within reach,
in their palaces, astrologers and an observatory. We have already seen
that Sennacherib himself says that he gave up an expedition, undertaken
—
with cvoiy chance of success, and declined a decisive battle when
everything seemed to promise him a victory, because the stars did not
seem favourable. We
have also stated the influence that, according to
tlie monuments, two eclipses exercised, the one on the accession of
Asshurbanipal, the other on that of Sargon.
The royal astrologers kept a constant watch from the height of the
Zikurat on the state of the heavens and the movements of the stars, so as
to interpret them by the aid of the astrological tables so often mentioned
in the inscriptions. They furnished the king with an account of their
"observations ; and some tablets bearing reports of this kind were found
in the archives of the palace of Koyundjik. As an example, one of
them records the observation of the exact day of the spring equinox:
" On the 6th of the month Sivan the day and the night were equal, six
double hours for the day, and six double hours for the night. May
Nebo and Merodach protect my lord the king."
Another on a tablet in the British Museum still unpublished
—
(marked K., 86) "To the founder of buildings, my lord the king, his
humble servant, Naboiddin, chief astrologer of Nineveli^ May Nebo
and Merodach be propitious to the founder of buildings, my lord the
king. On the 15th of the month we have observed the entry of the
moon into the lunar node and the result. The moon was eclipsed."
Another, in the same collection (marked K., 78), runs thus:
— "To
the king, my lord, his humble servant Ishtar .... chief astrologer of
Arbela peace to my lord the king. May Nebo, Merodach, and Ishtar
:
of Arbela be propitious to my lord the king. On the 29th of the

month Sivan we observed the lunar node, but we have not seen the
moon. The 2nd of the month Duz, in the year of Belsun, governor of
the city of Hirmirdan." It follows from this last inscription that the
Assyro-Chaldaean astrologers, not yet able to calculate eclipses of the

sun, watched attentively at each new moon to see whether one would
occur.
5. The Zikurat in Assyria was not therefore a sanctuary for
religious
worship, like those in Chaldsa, as some scholars have supposed. But

the Assyrians had their temples built in a style much resembling their
palaces. None of the large sacred edifices of Assyria have as yet been
excavated, and their splendour may no doubt in some respects have
rivalled those of Egypt. But explorers have found at Nimrud, at
Khorsabad, and Koyundjik, some temples, small indeed, but most
at
beautifully decorated, forming part of the palaces and these, doubtless,
;
were copies of the larger structures. That at Khorsabad was

at the
western angle of the upper platform, behind the seraglio those at ;
Nimrud (for there were two in that palace) were adjoining the Zikurat.
The principal part of these temples, the sanctuary proper, is always a
large hall of great length ; at one of its extremities is a square recess of
;
ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE. 465
considerable dimensions, to contain the statue of the god. Sometimes

a smaller hall — a vestibule, ox pronaos — stands in front of the sanctuary,
and then the entrance is at the end, opposite the recess for the statue
in some cases there no vestibule, and then the entry is at the side of
is
the sanctuary, or cella, so that the statue of the god could not be seen
from outside. Some small chambers, for use in the temple service, or
for custody of the sacred utensils, were arranged around the sanctuary,
or cella. Bas-reliefs, representing only religious subjects, decorated the
walls of the latter; on each side of the gateway were lions or bulls,
just as in the palaces. The external walls of the temples were cased
with enamelled bricks.
6. Sculpture had made more progress than any other art in Assyria,
and had developed a distinctive originality of its own. We do not
know what was its state at the commencement of the monarchy, but
four centuries afterwards, under Asshurnazirpal, it still bore unquestion-
able marks of complete archaism —
a rude and barbaric grandeur.
Under Sargon and Sennacherib it had acquired more finish in detail
and facility in execution, but still preserved its grand rough outline its ;
greatest excellence was in the execution of colossal figures. Finally,

under Asshui^banipal, at the close of the monarchy, it attained its
highest degree of elegance, finish, life, and perfection in the imitation
of nature, losing, however, the grandeur of the more ancient works.
Assyrian sculpture is one of tlie greatest of ancient arts its teachings, ;
received and transmitted by the peoples of Asia Minor, presided over

the first steps of Grecian sculpture. Between the works of Ninevite
artists and the early works of the Greeks, even to the ^ginetans, we
may observe an astonishing connection the celebrated primitive bas-

;
relief of Athens, known by the common name of the

'
Warrior of '
Marathon," seems as if detached from the walls of Khorsabad or

Koyundjik. Like all primitive art, Assyrian as Well as Egyptian
sculptm-e presents a very imperfect imitation of nature, an awkward,
almost architectural, stiffness in the design of the figures, and many
parts represented conventionally, much in the style that children of all
countries first attempt to draw. In the bas-reliefs, for example, all
figures are in profile, even when the composition of the group is

injured, because it is easier to design in relief a profile than a full face.
But Assyrian art springs from a totally different principle to that of
Egypt; it has not the solemn and monumental gravity of the latter. In
place of dealing with great masses, and deducing, so to speak, alge-
braical formula from the forms of nature, simplifying the design and
the lines through reducing the model by a systematic and intelligent
selection of its characteristic and essential elements, as the Egyptians
attempted to do, Assyrian art sought to give with the utmost care
every minute detail ; nothing was omitted ; no embroidery of a garment,
H H
—
no curl of the liair or Ix'ard, no muscle of arm or leg; and thus in
Assyria, though by a directly opposite road, art travelled as far from
reality as in Egypt. Secondary things were exaggerated into matters
of primaiy importance, to the destruction of the effect of the whole
work; the muscles of the members were so developed as to become
monstrous, the proportions of the different parts of the body were not
correct, and from this point of view Assyrian sculpture always remained
in a lower rank than the Egyptian. It never attained that ideality,
that height of inspiration, that calm, religious grandeur; but, on the
other hand, it possessed an energy, a life, a movement, that Egyptian
art never knew. The substance on which the Assyrian sculptures are
executed adds still more to this appearance of energy the Assyrians ;
did not use the chisel with facility, and succeeded only when using the
gypseous alabaster, soft enough for slabs for panelling the palaces.
When they attempted to work hard stone, such as basalt, which the
Egyptian artists worked with the finish of a cameo, their work was
exceedingly coarse, as may be seen in the Nimrud obelisk. But this
awkwardness was redeemed by a surprising energy, by a strength full
of grandeur and fire; sometimes they dashed at the stone, and struck out
bold lines; lifelike forms flashed out into light, cut in as with a lion's
paw.
Assyrian sculpture excelled more in the representation of animals
than in the human figure. Here, too, its pnnciple was the opposite of
that of the Pharaonic art. The Egyptians, unable
compete with to
nature, who possessed the secret of life, above by
raised themselves
epitomising her. The distinctive features of the animal were put to-
gether and thus exaggerated; the minor details were omitted; and in
this way was produced a sort of very expressive symbol. The whole
family of lions was represented by one single lion, always the same ;
the model was always powerful, the image very grand. In place of
this formidable, laconic, and solemn art, that dealing with great masses
on a grand scale, modelling concisely the distinctive features, the As-
syrians, in the representation of animals, attempted to produce more of
a lifelike picture, sharply cut and shaded, reproducing eveiy possible
detail of nature. Far from giving one single conventional type for each
species, they attempted to give individuality to each figure, depicting
truthfully every action, and, if one may say so, the feeling of the moment.
In this they attained to the highest perfection about the time of Asshur-
banipal ; and in the sculptures of the palace of Koyundjik we may see
inhunting scenes figures of animals such as no other art, not even that
of the Greeks, can sui-pass for expression. We may especially mention
one work, incomparably lifelike —we might almost say touching
true both to the individual and to the type, in a great bas-relief re-
presenting a lion hunt, now in the British Museum, and especially
;
ASSYRIAN SCULPTURE. '
467
one figure of a lioness, who has been wounded in the spine by arrows,
and having already lost the use of her hind legs, raises herself painfully
on her forepaws to roar at the hunters, and threaten them with her
open jaws.
7. Assyrian sculpture is seen to least advantage in statuary; its
highest achievements are in bas-reliefs. The few Assyrian statues we

possess display a remarkable want of skill ; absolutely flat, they can only
be seen from the front. The Ninevite artists, therefore, avoided making
them as much as possible, whilst they almost infinitely multiplied bas-
reliefs, the best means they had for the display of art.
The three chief epochs we have already mentioned in the develop-
ment of Assyrian art, so far as it is at present known, correspond to
the three most marked systems of composition in bas-reliefs. Under
Asshumazirpal the figures are few, simply grouped, and very confused,
if an attempt is made to introduce any considerable number of them,
as in some representations of sieges ; there is a complete absence of all

perception of the laws of perspective; the movement of the figures is
generally slow and slight, but full of truth and propriety. Under
Sargon and Sennacherib artists were more ambitious they attempted to
;
represent large scenes and numerous personages, who are more clearly
distinguished, but with no better perspective than in the older sculp-
tures. In all hunting scenes the field of the landscape was very rudely
represented, and they were compelled to indicate the nature of the
country by its characteristic trees and animals, but with the strangest
mistakes in their relative proportions. We see, for instance, in the
water fishes as large as the ships; and in the woods birds half as tall as
the soldiers. The action of the figures is more vigorous and marked
than in the earlier period, and not less true to nature. Lastly, in the
time of Asshurbanipal the bas-relief becomes more conformed to
reality and to the sound principles of art, and the artists renounce all
pretensions to represent scenes on a different level in the landscape
the nature of the place where the scenes of war or hunting occur is
simply indicated by a few trees, drawn with striking truth to nature, or
by some buildings, faithfully sketched, so that there is but little occasion
for mistakes in perspective. There is also an improvement to be
remarked on the preceding period in the life and movement of the
figures, as well as in the grouping and balancing of the different
elements in the composition.
8. All the Assyrian sculptures were brilliantly painted, and the
remains of the colours may still be observed on the bas-reliefs in the
Museums. Besides this, painting, properly so-called, formed an im-

portant part of the decoration of Assyrian edifices, whether in the form
of casings of enamelled bricks or of frescoes. No large composition
of this kind has been preserved ; but there are nevertheless fragments
H H 2
enoiigli to prove lliat the Assyrian paintings resembled tlie bas-reliefs.
The figures standing out on a ground of uniform colour were not shaded,
but formed by flat colours, surrounded by a broad black or white band,
defniing the and serving exactly the purpose of the lead
outline,
surrounding figures in the painted glass of the thirteenth century.
9. An art much cultivated among the Assyrians, and carried to a high
degree of perfection, was engraving on hard stone. It was principally
applied to the manufacture of cylinders for signets, the impression being
taken by rolling them over a soft surface. The subjects engraved on
them were in general of a religious character, assemblages of sacred
symbols, or of images of deities, with one or more persons in the act of
adoration. Some of them represent hunting scenes. The great
majority of these cylinders are evidently ordinary trade goods of very
careless workmanship.
But there are also some carefully executed and
finely engraved dimensions, may be advan-
that, in spite of their small
tageously compared, for beauty of art, to the best specimens of bas-
reliefs from Khorsabad and Koyundjik.
CHAPTER V.
TJI£ NEW CHALDEAN EMPIRE.
Section I.— Su-rvey of the History of Babylon under the

SUPREMACY OF THE ASSYRIANS. I314 625 B.C. —
I. Chaldâ was the seat of the most ancient empire of Mesopo-
tamia. Its focus and centre was to the south of Babylon ; and although
that great city, the most ancient in the Tigro-Euphrates Basin, was
always of considerable importance — although even it was the religious,
yet it never became the political, capital of this empire. We have already
seen that the Egyptians under Thothmes III. had overturned the
Chaldtean dynasty, and installed at Babylon princes designated as
Arabs by Berosus, who reigned there for two and a half centuries.
When the Assyrian empire, profiting by the declining power of Egypt,
established itself towards the end of the fourteenth century before the
Christian era, Babylon, as we have shown, was governed by a dynasty
of princes whose names prove them to have been of Chaldaeo-Turanian,
or rather of Elamite, origin. We have already related the sanguinary
struggles between Karatadash, Burnaburyash, Karahardash, and Nazi-
bugash, kings of Babylon, and the first Ninevite monarchs, Asshur-
bel-Nishishu, Bushur-Asshur, and Asshurubalat struggles occupying —
the greater part of the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C.
EARLY HISTORY OF BABYLON. 469
111 13 14, Tiiklat-Samdan I. conquered the countries of the Lower

Euphrates, and made Babylon a dependency of Nineveh, settling there
a new line of princes of Chaldaeo-Assyrian origin, and with purely
Semitic names. Thus, even after this conquest, tlie city of Nimrod had
kings of its own, although but vassals of the king of Assyria. Even
when its glory was almost entirely eclipsed, it could vie
at this period,
with Nineveh both as to importance and population, and was in con-
sequence a possession that gave its conquerors much trouble to keep.
Essentially a rebellious city, Babylon longed for independence, and at
each opportunity rose in revolt ; during the six centuries of the Assyrian
empire we constantly find its princes warring against their suzerains.
Even under Belkudurussur, the successor of Tuklat-Samdan, we have
seen that Binbaliddin, prince of Babylon, not only revolted, but even
invaded Assyria. It was this Binbaliddin who enclosed the city of
Nipur with a wall called " Nivit Marduk " "the dwelling of Mero- —
dach." Towards the close of the twelfth century he was defeated, and
again reduced to obedience by Adarpalashir, king of Nineveh. His
successor, Nebuchadnezzar [Nabuchudurussur], also revolted against the
Assyrian monarch, Asshurrishishi. Still more important was- the revolt
of Mardukidinakhe (about the eleventh century B.C.) against Tiglath-
pileser I. [Tuklat-pal-ashar]. Having first defeated his suzerain, the
Babylonian prince entered Assyria and sacked the town of Hekali.
Some years after, he in his turn sustained a defeat, and Tiglath-pil«ser
carried Babylon by storm.
The monuments here fail us, and we therefore know northing of whiat
passed in Babylon after the disasters of the Assyrian king, Asshur-
rabamar. It is probable that for a time the city threw off the Ninevite
yoke, and that the first princes of the dynasty of Belkatirassu [or
Bilpasqu], perhaps even its founder, made it their first occupation to
reconquer Baliylonia. We have no documents on the subject of the
wars that brought about this result : all we know is, that the success of
the Assyrians was complete, and the great Chaldosan city was so severely
punished that, for more than a centuiy, it did not again attempt to revolt.
Its princes during this period were in reality only hereditary satraps of
the Ninevite monarch. We
know but one of these satraps, Irib Marduk,
whose name is found on some weights now in the British Museum. But,
in following the history of Assyria, we have seen that Nabubaliddin,
king of Babylon, attempted a revolt, repressed almost before it broke
out, against Asshumazirpal, and that disturbances in Babylon and
Chaldsea broke out afre.sh with such violence under Shalmaneser IV.
(Shalmanuashir), that he found himself compelled to fortify strongly the
frontier town of Ellasar, and to station a formidable garrison there, in
order to keep the country in check. During the revolt of Asshur-
daninpal and the civil war that ensued, Chaldaea escaped from its
northern masters and proclaimed its independence, placing a certain
Mardiikbalatirib on the throne; and Shamash-Bin, on his accession,
found himself obliged to reconquer his rebellious vassal. Binlikhish III.,
his successor, in order to assure himself the possession of Babylon, and

at the same time to gratify the desire of its inhaliitants for independence,
married a princess of the native royal family, .Sammuramat, who was
the nominal sovereign of Babylon whilst her husband reigned at
Nineveh. At this period great works were undertaken in the Chaldoean
city, especially the construction of the embankments of the Euphrates.
2. Thirty-four years later Phul-Balazu, the Belesis of the Greeks, a
prince of Babylon, joined, as we have before said, the insurrection of the
Mede Arbaces and of the Susian Shutruknakhunta against Asshur-
likhish, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks, and took part in the total
destruction of Nineveh (B.C. 788). He had been, of all the confederates,
the most determined, the one most obstinately bent on the ruin of the
Assyrian power. On the fall of Nineveh, the Medes and Susians were
content with having merely reconquered their independence. Phul, on
the contrary, took possession of Assyria and of the western provinces of
the empire, and made them for a time subject to Babylon. It was at
this time that he made an expedition into the kingdom of Israel. About
747, doubtless immediately on the death of Phul-Balazu, Assyria threw
off the yoke of her temporary conquerors; Tiglath-pileser II., a de-
scendant of the old royal family, was proclaimed king, drove out the
Chaldeans, and re-established the authority of Nineveh over the western
provinces, Osrhoene and Syria. But the complete independence of the
kingdom of Babylon, the work of Phul, lasted some time longer before
the Assyrians ventured to attack it.
Nabonassar, who succeeded Phul, in order to efface every trace of foreign

dominion, burnt all the historical documents of those kings of Nineveh
who had reigned over Babylon, and wished to commence a new era, to be
called by his own name. TheNabonassar
era of commences from his
accession in 747 B. c. and from this date the Greek astronomer, Ptolemy,
,
has preserved a canon of the kings of Babylon, and his statements are
fully confirmed by the monuments.
Nevertheless, after Nabonassar, the kingdom of Babylon fell rapidly
into decay; it was a prey to disorders of which we have but an imperfect
knowledge. The canon of Ptolemy registers at this time four kings in
twelve years, a sufficient indication of a time of troubles and revolutions.
The kings of Assyria, who had become more powerful than ever,
profited by all this to claim again their ancient rights of suzerainty. In
709 B.C. Sargon [Sharyukin], after the bloody battle of Dur-Yakin,
reconquered Babylon and Chaldaea.
From this date the history of the Babylonian state is known only
from its relations, almost always unfortunate, with the Assyrian empire,
— ;
NABOPOLASSAR. 471
and by its incessant and fruitless revolts. The true national hero of
thisepoch, the indomitable champion of the independence of Babylon,
was Merodach Baladan [Mardukbaliddin], dethroned once by Sargon,
then again on many occasions, in contest M'ith him and with his son,
Semiacherib [Sinakherib], unfailing in his hatred to the Assyrian yoke,
always conquered and always retrieving his disasters, imprisoned by the
kings of Assyria, and always escaping to put himself at the head of the
Babylonians, laying down his arms at last only with his life. Suzub,
son of Gatul, was equally intrepid and persevering. Esarhaddon
[Asshurakhiddin], the fourth son of Sennacherib, was viceroy of
Babylon under his father when he succeeded to the throne of Nineveh
he habitually resided at Babylon, as we have already said, and it was to
that city he carried prisoner Manasseh, king of Judah. Esarhaddon
occupied himself in repairing the more important monuments of
Babylon, much defaced and destroyed during the later wars, especially
during the sack of the city, by order of Sennacherib in 683. He also
designed the plan, and commenced the construction, of the two immense
enclosures, the completion of which was the glory of the reign of
Nebuchadnezzar. After his abdication of the throne of Nineveh in
favour of his son, Asshurbanipal, Esarhaddon still remained for a short
time king of Babylon. At his death, his second son, Shamulshamugin,
succeeded him in that city, but as vassal to Asshurbanipal. We have
already given the details of his revolt, in which he was joined by
Nabubelshum, the grandson of the great Merodach Baladan. But the
two states were afterwards again united, and there was no king of
Babylon, when, about 626, the Chaldrean Nabopolassar was made by
Asshuredililani III., the last king but one of Assyria, governor of
Chaldaea and Babylon, in order to preserve the country from the
barbarians who threatened it.
Section II. Nabopolassar [Nabupalussur]. 625 — 604 b.c.

I. The power was Nabo-
true founder of the Chaldseo-Babylonian
polassar. Babylon under his obscure predecessors had been subject to
Nineveh. Now emerging at last from that state of dependence, she arrived
at the highest point of power and grandeur. "For, lo," had said,
some years before, the prophets in the name of Jehovah, menacing with
divine judgments both Nineveh and the kingdom of Judah, " I raise up
the Chaldaeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through
the breadth of the land, to possess the dwelling-places that are not
theirs. They are terrible and dreadful their judgment and their
:
dignity shall proceed of themselves. Their horses also are swifter than
leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves: and their horse-
men shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from far;
they shall fly as an eagle that hasteth to eat " (Ilab. i. 6 — 8).
Sent to Babylon as satrap or prefect — had for
for Asshuredililani
twenty-two years deprived that proud city of the right of having a
prince of its own, and had made it directly dependent on the throne of
—
Nineveh Nabopolassar, who without doubt had played his part as
courtier to the Assyrian monarch to obtain this favour, conceived at
once the project of substituting himself for his master, and of freeing
for ever his native country. lie sent an embassy to the king of the
Medes, who was beginning to establish a considerable empire and a
military power of the first rank, by the conquest of all those countries
that had for many centuries formed the northern provinces of the
Assyrian kingdom, penetrating even to Asia Minor. This king was
Cyaxares, as we are told by Herodotus. Eusebius and Syncellus call
him Astyages but this appellation seems to have been, among the
;
Medes, a title or surname rather than a proper name. Nabopolassar

concocted with him a plot for the overthrow of the Ninevite power; and
to seal the alliance, married his own son, Nebuchadnezzar, or more
correctly Nabukudurussur, as Berosus wrote it (Nebo protects my
crown), to the daughter of the Median king. Before long the death of
the king of Assyria furnished them the opportunity they were waited for,
to declare themselves independent. Cyaxares advanced to lay siege to
Nineveh, and Nabopolassar, proclaiming himself king, sent large bodies
of troops to assist him in the enterprise.
2. We
have already related how the Scythian invasion, pouring
suddenly on Media, achieved for the moment its subjection, and saved
for a time the capital of Assyria from destruction. Babylon and
Chaldaea remained safe from the ravages of the Scythians. Nabopolassar
was more fortunate than his ally, for though obliged to postpone his
scheme for the destruction of Nineveh, and to allow to what was now the
mere shadow of the Assyrian kingdom a prolonged existence for nineteen
years, he remained in peaceable possession of his dominions, and
still
profited by the delay to consolidate the independence he had achieved,

establishing on a solid basis the power of the Babylonian kingdom. Profit-
ing by the weakness and inaction of Assaracus, the last Ninevite king, he
conquered the western or Aramtean portion of Mesopotamia that is to —
say, Osrhoene— and reduced the descendant of Sargon and Sennacherib
to the possession only of Assyria, properly so called. But he did not
carry his arms beyond the Euphrates, avoiding, until the final fall of
Nineveh, a contest with Necho, king of Egypt, who at that time, having
vanquished Josiah, king of Judah, at Megiddo, had overrun the whole of
Syria and seized his share of the spoils of the Assyrian empire.
3. Whilst he thus extended his territory, and gradually substituted
the dominion of Babylon for that of Nineveh, Nabopolassar employed
NITOCRIS. 473
himself actively in restoring the ancient splendour of his capital, which

had suffered much in the late wars, and in reconstructing many of the
public edifices that had fallen to ruin, notwithstanding the repairs of
Esarhaddon. Nabopolassar had married a princess, whom Herodotus
and whose name, purely Egyptian (Neith-aker " Neith,
calls Nitocris, —
the Victorious "), seems to point her out as bom on the banks of the
Nile, and belonging to the royal family, originally of Sais, then reigning
over the land of the Pharaohs. Nitocris appears to have filled, in
conjunction with her husband, Nabopolassar, a position in the state
not less important than Sammuramat (the Semiramis of Herodotus) did
with regard to Binlikhish HI. It seems that she assumed the direction of
the gi-eat works then being executed at Babylon, for Herodotus, correctly
and well informed on all the history of the Chaldsean kingdom at that
period, attributes to her the credit of them, whilst Nebuchadnezzar in
his official inscriptions ascribes it to his father. "Nitocris," says
Herodotus,* "not only left behind her, as memorials of her occupancy
of the throne, the works which I shall presently describe, but also,
observing the great power and restless enterprise of the Medes, who had
taken so large a number of cities, and among them Nineveh, and
expecting to be attacked in her turn, made all possible exertions to
increase the defences of her empire. And first, whereas the river
Euphrates, which traverses the city, ran formerly with a straight course
to Babylon, .she, by certain excavations which she made at some distance
up the stream, rendered it so winding that it comes three several times

in sight of the same village, a village in Assyria, which is called
Ardericca and to this day they who would go from our sea to Babylon,
;
on descending to the river, touch three times, and on three different

days, at this very place. She also made an embankment along each
side of the Euphrates, wonderful both for breadth and height, and dug
way above Babylon, close alongside the stream,
a basin for a lake a great
which was sunk everywhere to the point where they came to the
water, and was of such breadth that the whole circuit measured 420
furlongs. The soil dug out of this basin was made use of in the
embankments along the waterside. When the excavation was finished
she had stones brought, and bordered the entire margin of the reservoir
with them. These two things were done —
the river made to wind
—
and the lake excavated that the stream might be slacker by reason of
the number of curves, and the voyage be rendered circuitous, and that,
at the end of the voyage, it might be necessary to skirt the lake and so to
make a long round. All these works were on that side of Babylon where
the passes lay, and where the roads into Media were the straightest;
and the aim of the queen in making them was to prevent the Medes
* Her. i. 185, 186.

"

from holding intercourse w itli tlie Babylonians, and so to keep them in
ignorance of her affairs.
"While the soil from the excavation was being thus used for the
defence of the city, Nitocris engaged also in another undertaking, a
mere by-work compared with those we have already mentioned. The

city, as I said, was divided by the river into two distinct portions.
Under the former kings, if a man wanted to pass from one of these
divisions to the other, he had to cross in a boat, which must, it seems
to me, have been very troublesome. Accordingly, while she was
digging the lake, Nitocris bethought herself of turning it to a use
which should at once remove this inconvenience, and enable her to
leave another monument of her reign over Babylon. She gave orders
for the hewing of immense blocks of stone, and when they were ready,
and the basin was excavated, she turned the entire stream of the
Euphrates into the cutting, and thus for a time, while the basin was
filling, the natural channel of the river was left dry. Forthwith she
set to work, and in the first place lined the banks of the stream within
the city with quays of burnt brick, and also bricked the landing-places
opposite the river gates, adopting throughout the same fashion of brick-
work which had been used in the town wall; after which, with the
materials which had been prepared, she built, as near the middle of the
town as possible, a stone bridge, the blocks whereof were bound
together with iron and lead. In the daytime square wooden platforms
were laid along from pier to pier, on which the inhabitants crossed the
stream but at night they were withdrawn, to prevent people passing
;
from side to side in the dark to commit robberiea When the river had
filled the cutting, and the bridge was finished, the Euphrates was turned
back again into its ancient bed and thus the basin, transformed sud-
;
denly into a lake, was seen to answer the purpose for which it was
made, and the inhabitants, by help of the basin, obtained the advantage
of a bridge.
4. In 607, Nabopolassar, feeling himself already old and enfeebled,
and seeing also that a serious contest with the Egyptian monarchy had
become imminent on account of the progress of Necho, who, master of
all Syria, already threatened the Euphrates, thought fit to associate
with himself on the throne a younger and more active prince. Nebu-
chadnezzar reigned conjointly with his father during the three succeeding
years, thus giving rise to a double method of computing the dates of
the new reign ; some reckoning from this association, others from the
death of Nabopolassar.
The year 606 was the great epoch in the histoiy of the Chaldaean
monarchy founded by Nabopolassar. From that year it became un-
questionably the sovereign power of Asia, and acquired that supremacy
in war and politics which had belonged first to Egypt, then to Assyria.
FALL OF NINEVEH. 475
This result was due to two great wars waged simultaneously by the
kingdom of Babylon in this year, both terminating in brilliant success.
The Medes having at last succeeded in freeing themselves from their
Scythian invaders, and in regaining their full independence and liberty
of action, Nabopolassar renewed his alliance with Cyaxares, and they
both again undertook the enterprise against Nineveh, which for nineteen
years they had been compelled to postpone. This had become still
more easy, for the Assyrian monarchy had been growing gradually
weaker from that time in the incapable and feeble hands of Assaracus,
and had successively lost every one of its provinces. Nevertheless, at
the last moment, when the united armies of the Babylonians and Medes
presented themselves under the ramparts of Nineveh, the ancient valour
of the Assyrians appeared to revive again. The city resisted with
vigour and obstinacy, a very long siege was required to reduce it, but at
last it was taken and completely destroyed with systematic ferocity.
The The Medes acquired
conquerors divided the territory of Assyria.
the mountainous districts to the north and east, that is to say, the
lesser part of the country. The king of Babylon joined to his
states all the immense plains of the southern region bordering his own
dominions, embracing at once the largest and most fertile parts of
Assyria.
Whilst he was himself occupied in the enterprise against Nineveh,
Nabopolassar confided to his son the more difficult task— the one re-
—
quiring the most courage and activity the task of arresting the progress
of Necho, who had already commenced the siege of Carchemish, with a
view of seizing the passage of the Euphrates, and re-commencing in
Mesopotamia the conquering expeditions of Thothmes, Seti, and
Ramses. Nebuchadnezzar, at the head of the picked troops of the
Chaldffian army, marched against the Egyptians, and inflicted on
them a crushing defeat under the walls of Carchemish. '
' And the
king of Egypt," says the Bible, "came not again any more out of
his land, for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt
unto the river Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt"
(2 Kings xxiv. 7).
Nebuchadnezzar pursued his adversary closely, as far as the frontier
of Egypt; but having learned, whilst before Pelusium, that his father
was dead (604), he retraced his steps, to take possession of a throne
that, so recently established, might be shaken by a change of kings.
Under these circumstances, says Berosus, the Babylonian historian, he
put the affairs of Egypt, Syria, and the adjacent countries in order;
and leaving in charge of his trusted generals the numerous prisoners he
had taken, as well as the command of the garrisons left in the con-
quered provinces, he departed with a small escort, crossed the desert by

forced marches, and thus arrived speedily at Babylon, where the chief of
the caste of the Chaldoeans resigned into his liamls ihc government he
liad athninistcred since the death of Nabopolassar.
Section IIL — Nebuchadnezzar [Nabukudurussur].

6oi — 561 B.C.
I. The defeat of the king of Egypt had prepared the way for the
ruin of the kingdom of Judah, the only part of Palestine that had not
yet submitted to tlie power of the Chaldsean monarchy, and had escaped
the consequences of the battle of Carchemish. Two years after the
death of his father had left him in full possession of power (602),
Nebuchadnezzar, once more in Syria, attacked Jehoiakim, king of
Judah, imposed on him a tribute, and carried to Babylon numerous
hostages, with a part of the sacred vessels of the Temple of Jerusalem.
Three years, however,had not passed before the Hebrew prince again
revolted, counting on the support of the king of Egypt (who in reality
did nothing to assist him), and almost immediately died, leaving all the
consequences of his rebellion to fall on the head of his son, Jehoiachin.
Jehoiachin reigned but three months. Nebuchadnezzar sent an army
against him, and soon himself arrived in Judrea ; and the young king of
Judah was compelled to put himself and all his house into the
hands of his enemy (599). Nebuchadnezzar did not content himself
with these royal captives he entered Jerusalem, despoiled the Temple
;
and palace of all their treasures, and made prisoners of the bravest
men of the army to the number of 10,000, with a portion of the
artisans, amongst others the smiths and armourers (a precaution dic-
tated by prudence, in order that the country should not be able again
.
to put itself into an effective state of defence) ; he left, in short, in the
city only the poorest of the people. He carried also Jehoiachin, with
his mother, his wives and his eunuchs, to Babylon, and there shut up
the unfortunate king of Judah closely in prison. Then, affecting to
leave the nation a shadow of independence, he placed on the throne of
Jerusalem, Zedekiah, uncle to the young prince.
The new king, no less infatuated than his predecessors, remained
deaf to the warnings of Jeremiah, who recommended to him a policy
of prudence and submission to the king of Babylon. Having contrived
to arrange a coalition with the king of Egypt and the Phoenician cities,
he believed himself in a position to throw off the yoke, and broke into
open rebellion, by refusing his tribute as a vassal {590). Nebuchad-
nezzar, enraged, marched again on Jerusalem but he was obliged
;
almost immediately to raise the siege, in order to offer battle to

Pharaoh Uahprahet, who advanced to the relief of Zedekiah.
The king of Egypt having retired without striking a blow, the
DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM, 477
Chaldtcans returned into Juda;a, took the cities of Lachish and Azekah,
and again appeared before Jerusalem. During eighteen months the
Hebrews in their capital repulsed all attacks, but famine triumphed
over their endurance. The Chaldaâns penetrated through a breach
into the city, whence the king attempted to escape with some of
his .servants towards the Jordan; but he was taken in the plain of
Jericho and carried to the king of Babylon, who put his sons to death
in his presence, put out his eyes, and led him, loaded with chains,
to Babylon (588). A
month afterwards Nebuzaradan, captain of the
guards of the Babylonian king, entered the city, and at once the work
of destruction commenced. The Temple of the Lord and the royal

palace were burned, the high priest was killed, with sixty of the prin-
cipal inhabitants, and all the families of the upper class who had not
fled to the desertwere led into captivity.
Nebuchadnezzar had appointed a Hebrew, Gedaliah, governor of the
territory of Judah but he, after the lapse of a few months, was assas-
;
sinated by one of the royal family, named Ishmael. The chief men of
the Jews who still remained in the country, fearing the vengeance of
Nebuchadnezzar, retired to Egypt, where they hoped to find some
security; but Uahprahet, by giving them an asylum, drew down on his
own country the wrath of the Babylonian king. The eastern part of
the Delta was invaded, and given over to the ravages of the Chaldsean
army.
2. The haughty king was not yet satisfied he aspired to
of Babylon ;
the conquest of Phoenicia, coveting its immense riches. For a long

time, too, the grand utterances of the prophets had announced to the
people of Tyre, now in the sixth century of their supremacy over the
other cities, the misfortunes impending over them. "Behold," said
Ezekiel, " I will bring on Tyrus Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, a
king of kings, from the north, with horses, and with chariots, with
horsemen, and companies, and much people. He shall slay with the
sword thy daughters in the field and he shall make a fort against thee,
:
and cast a mount against thee, and lift up the buckler against thee.
And he shall set engines of war against thy walls, and with his axes he
shall break down thy towers " (Ezekiel xxvi. 7 9). —
The Tyrians resisted for a long time, with the constancy and obstinacy
they had already shown against Sargon, and the siege of their city
lasted thirteen years. But at last Tyre was carried by assault, by the
king of Babylon in person (574), who treated the Tyrians as he had the
Jews, and carried into Chaldaâ the most distinguished families of the
country. The colonies Tyre then possessed on the northern coast of
Africa and in Spain, such as Carthage, not yet independent, and Gades
(now Cadiz), recognised the suzerainty of the conqueror of their mother
country. From this originated the fabulous stories that obtained
credence at a later time, that Nelnicliadnezzar marched at the head of
his legions as far as the columns of Hercules, and that attributed to him
the glory of subjecting to his arms the Iberians of Spain.* Tyre once
taken, Nabuchadnezzar, before returning to Babylon, attacked the
people of Idumca, Moab, and Amnion, who had associated themselves
with the last Jewish attempt at revolt, and compelled them to sub-
mission. He made also a campaign in Arabia, passed victoriously
through Hedjaz and Nedjid, and penetratetl as far as the Sabean
kingdom of Yemen. These wars, predicted by the prophets, terminated
•
the series of Chaldcean conquests in Western Asia.
3. Once more in his own states, Nebuchadnezzar rendered himself no
lessfamous by his internal administration than by his foreign conquests.
The fortune of war had placed at his disposal immense riches and in-
numerable captives he employed both in the great works of embel-
;
lishment and of public which made Babylon the most celebrated

utility,
city in the world. "The on a broad plain,"says Herodotus,+

city stands
who visited it in the fifth century before the Christian era, "and is an
exact square, a hundred and twenty furlongs in length each way, so
that the entire circuit is four hundred and eighty furlongs. While such
is its size, in magnificence there is no other city that approaches to it.
It is surrounded, in the first place, by a broad and deep moat, full of

water, behind which rises a wall fifty royal cubits in width, and two
hundred in height. (The royal cubit is longer by three fingers' breadth
than the common cubit.)
" And here I may not omit to tell the use to which the mould dug
out of the great moat was turned, nor the manner wherein the wall was
wrought. As fast as they dug the moat the soil which they got firom
the cutting was made into bricks, and when a sufficient number were
completed they baked the bricks in kilns. Then they set to building,
and began with bricking the borders of the moat ; after which they
proceeded to construct the wall itself, using throughout for their cement
hot bitumen, and interposing a layer of wattled reeds at every thirtieth
course of the bricks. On the top, along the edges of the wall, they
constructed buildings of a single chamber, facing one another, leaving
between them room for a four-horse chariot to turn. In the circuit of
the wall are a hundred gates, all of brass, with brazen lintels and side-
posts. The bitumen used in the work was brought to Babylon from the
Is, a small stream which flows into the Euphrates at the point where
the city of the same name stands, eight days' journey from Babylon.
Lumps of bitumen are found in great abundance in this river.
* Strabo, XV. p. 687; Joseph., Ant. x. 11, i; Euseb., Prcepar.
Evang. ix. p. 456. The authority for all these passages is the historian
Megasthenes.
t Her. i. 178, 179, 180, 181.
—
WALLS OF BABYLON. 479

" The city is divided into two portions by the river, which runs through
the midst of it. This river is the Euphrates, a broad, deep, swift
stream which rises in Armenia and empties itself into the Erythraean
sea. The brought down on both sides to the edge of the
city wall is
stream: thence from the corners of the wall there is carried along each
bank of the river a fence of burnt bricks. The houses are mostly three
and four stories high ; the streets all run in straight lines, not only those
parallel to the river, but also the cross streets which lead down to the
water-side. At the river end of these cross streets are low gates in the
fence that skirts the stream, which are, like the great gates in the outer
wall, of brass, and open on the water.
" The outer wall is the main defence of the city. There is, however, a
second inner wall, of less thickness than the first, but very little inferior
to it in strength. The centre of each division of the town was occupied

by a fortress. In the one stood the palace of the kings, sun-ounded by
a wall of great strength and size : in the other was the sacred precinct
of Jupiter Belus, a square enclosure, two furlongs each Avay, with gates
of solid brass, which was also remaining in my time."
The great wall of Babylon, following the measures of M. Oppert who
has completely elucidated the questions relative to the topography of
the great Chaldfean city, enclosed a space of 5 1 3 square kilometres
that is a territory as large as the department of the Seine, fifteen times
the extent of Paris in 1859, seven times of Paris at present. The inner
and smaller wall enclosed a space of 290 square kilometres —much larger
than the city of London.
But these walls v/ere less the ramparts of a city, properly so called,
than an immense entrenched camp. The territory enclosed by the
inner, and. much more the outer, wall was far from being entirely
inhabited. Quintus Curtius mentions ninety stades as the extent of
ground covered with houses: the remainder was under cultivation and
was sufficient to supply the defenders for a long time with the means of
avoiding famine, while at the same time the immense extent of the
outer wall precluded the possibility of an investment. Aristotle,
wishing to give an idea of a city such as he imagined it, says, " It is
not by walls alone that a city is made; if would only have to
so one
enclose the Peloponnesus with a wall. That would be the same as
Babylon, or any other place whose circuit encloses rather a nation than
a city."
4. We have previously noticed the large works carried out at Babylon
under Binlikhish III. and Sammuramat, and later under Nabopolassar
and Nitocris. Nebuchadnezzar surpassed all the works of his prede-
cessors under his reign Babylon became the first city in the world. He
;
almost entirely rebuilt the " royal city," situated on the eastern bank of
the Euphrates, where had been the first germ of Babylon in the time of
4So ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
the Cushitc kings. A new palace was constructed there by his orders,
conceived in the most gigantic proportions, and far more magnificent
than the old one ; we tumuhis called
recognise its position in tlie
"Kasr," one of the most considerable on the site of Babylon. ruins

He says of it, in the great inscription preserved in London, " Nabo-
polassar, king of ISabylon, my father, had commenced the building of
the palace with bricks, and had ereclcfl an altar in the centre. He had
sunk its foundations deep in the waters. I laid the sub-structure with
brick. I laid on it the foundation stone. T built as high as the level of
the waters, and there I firmly fixed the foundation of the palace. I
constructed it of bitumen and bricks. For its timber work I employed

great beams, cedar wood, cased with iron. I employed in it enamelled
bricks, forming inscriptions and pictures, and enamelled brick also
framed the doors. I collected there gold, silver, metals, precious stones
of every kind and value, a collection of valuable objects and immense
treasures. I established there a valiant cohort, a royal garrison." In
the vast enclosure of this palace, and on the very border of the river,
Nebuchadnezzar caused to be raised and planted the famous " Hanging
gardens," a sort of artificial mountain, to recall to the mind of his queen,
Amytis —a Median by birth — the picturesque aspect of her own country.
A succession of terraces rose in stages one above the other, like those of
Isola Bella on Lake Maggiore. An enormous sub-structure supported
the whole, and vast subterranean chambers were made under each
cultivated terrace. The site of this construction, universally admired
by the ancients, has been recognised by M. Oppert in the tumulus, called
" Amram." In the royal city there was the building designated by the
inscriptions themselves as the most ancient of the city, properly called
Babylon, the pyramid in stages, called " the temple of the foundations of
the earth, " or rather " Val Saggatu," in Chaldoeo-Turanian "Temple
of the lofty head." The Chaldsean priests pretended to show the tomb
of the god Bel Merodach, who had there his famous oracle. This
pyramid, the work of the Cushite dynasty, had fallen into ruin from old
age ; Nebuchadnezzar repaired and partly reconstructed it. " Val
Saggatu," says he, in an inscription, " is the great temple of heaven and
earth, the dwelling of Merodach, the master of the gods. I have
restored its sanctuary, the place of repose of the deity, plating it with
pure gold." The pyramid of Babylon contained at its base a sanctuary
of Nebo; half way up was the sepulchral chamber of Bel Merodach,
where they consulted his oracle; lastly, at the top was another sanctuary,
called
'
' the mystic sanctuary of Merodach. " The distinction of these three
parts is indispensable to the right understanding of the circumstantial
detailswhich Nebuchadnezzar gives in his "standard inscription," of the
—
"I undertook in Val Saggatu the restoration
restoration of the pyramid:
of the chamber of Merodach. I gave to the cupola the form of a lily.
;
BUILDINGS AT BABYLON. 481
and I covered it with chased gold, so that it shone as the day. On the
high hill, where fates were foretold outside the town, was erected the
Altar of Destinies. It was erected in Val Saggatu during the feasts of
the new year. This altar — altar of the sovereignty of Merodach, the
sublime master of the gods — had been made
by a former king in silver
I covered it with pure gold of immense weight.
employed for the I
woodwork of the chamber of oracles the largest of the trees I had

caused to be transported from the summit of Lebanon. I covered with
pure gold the enormous beams of cypress, employed for the woodwork
of the chamber of oracles ; the lower portion of the woodwork I
incrusted with gold, silver, other metals and gems. I had the vault of
the mystic sanctuary of Merodach incrusted with glass and gems, so as

to represent the firmament with the stars. The wonder of Babylon, I
rebuilt and restored it it is this temple of the base of heaven and
:
earth whose summit I raised of bricks, and covered it externally with a

cornice of copper."
5. Whilst these works were being executed in the royal city, the part
of Babylon, called Hillat, or "the profane city," whose site is occupied by

the present town of Hillah, was more than doubled in size by the
numerous colonies of captives, whom the conquering monarch had
brought from all the countries subdued by his arms. It is there that
ihe Hebrews from Jerusalem and the neighbouring district were

established. They had the privilege, in common no doubt with other
communities of exiles, of having their own national judges; thus proving
that in the system of government of the kingdom of Babylon, as in
that of Merovingian Gaul, and of Turkey at present, the law was
personal not territorial. They enjoyed there also complete liberty of
religious worship, for Ezekiel was able to discharge among them,
without hindrance, his prophetic mission, though he publicly announced
the short duration of the Chaldaean power. It was at Babylon that
certain of the Psalms were written for use in religious worship, such as
that beautiful one, " By the rivers of Babylon " (Ps. cxxxvii.), in which
Divine vengeance was invoked for the chastisement of the oppressors of
Israel. Some of the Jews were advanced to very elevated posts in the
administration, and that without ceasing to profess their own faith, as
in the case of Daniel, who was one of the king's ministers. It was
necessary only, on entering on public functions, to take a Babylonian
name as the mark of a sort of naturalisation.
The walls of the enceinte of Babylon, commenced by Esarhaddon,
were completed by Nebuchadnezzar, and commemorative inscriptions
have been recently found, engraven in order to transmit to posterity the
remembrance of that gigantic work. The exact agreement of the state-
ments they furnish with the descriptions of Herodotus, which we have
already quoted, is remarkable.
I I
" Imgur-bel and Nivit-bel, the great walls of Babylon, T built them
square ... I repaired, with bitumen and bricks, the sides of the
ditches that had been dug. I caused to be put in order the double doors
of bronze, and the railings, and gratings in the great gateways. I enlarged
the streets of Babylon so as to make them wonderful. I applied myself
to the protection of Babylon and Val Saggatu (the pyramid), and on
the most elevated lands, close to the great gate of Ishtar, I constructed
strong fortresses of bitumen and bricks, from the bank of the Euphrates
down to the great gate, the whole extent of the streets. I established
'
their foundations below the level of the waters. I fortified these walls
with caused Imgur-bel, the great wall of Babylon, the impregnable,
art. I
such as no king before me had made, to be measured, 4,000 mahargagar

;
that is the extent of Babylon." This measurement corresponds exactly

with the 480 stades given by Herodotus as the circuit.
6. The
construction of these walls had the effect of reuniting to the
city of Babylon, properly so called, in one enclosure, the original Babel,
anterior even to Nimrod, the city that had seen the confusion of tongues,
and to which the tradition of that event was still attached Borsippa— —
situated at some distance on the eastern bank of the Euphrates, and up
to that time a separate city. It was there that he restored the Tower
of Babel— existing from time immemorial as a —
mass of rubbish and
established the great temple of Bel, called by the Babylonians " Val-
zida," a Chaldaso-Turanian word, with a meaning as yet unknown to
us, and " the Tower of the seven celestial spheres."
Wehave given in our First Book the most striking passages of the
inscription found in the ruins of the edifice, in which Nebuchadnezzar
describes this restoration and quotes, for the origin of the monument,
a tradition exactly agreeing with that of the Bible. Herodotus, who saw
the Temple of Bel in the state in which it was left by the great Chaldaean
conqueror, describes it in these words:—" It was a square enclosure, two
stades each way. In the middle of the precinct there was a tower of
solid masonry, a stade in length and breadth, upon which was raised a
second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight." The base-
ment was 75 feet high, and each of the stages 25, so that the whole
structure was 250 feet in height. Excavations made by Sir H. Rawlin-
son enable us to state that the seven stages crowned by the sanctuary of
the god had, like those of the Zikurat of the Assyrian palace at Khorsa-
bad, facings of the colours of the seven planets, but differently arranged,
thatis to say, beginning from the bottom, black (Saturn), white (Venus),
purple (Jupiter), blue (Mercury), vermilion (Mars), silver (the Moon),

and gold (the Sun). Reckoning from the top, this is the order of the
days of the week. " On the topmost tower there is a spacious temple,
and inside the temple stands a couch of unusual size, richly adorned,
with a golden table by its side. There is no statue of any kmd set up
TEMPLE AT BORSIPPA. 483
in the place, nor is the chamber occupied at night by anyone but a

single native woman, who, Chaldeans, the priests of this god,
as the
affirm, is chosen for himself by the deity out of all the women of the
land . . . Below, in the same precinct, there is a second temple, in
which is a sitting figure of Jupiter, all of gold. Before the figure stands
a large golden table, and the throne whereon it sits, and the base on
which the throne is placed, are likewise of gold. The Chaldseans told
me that all the gold together was eight hundred talents' weight. Outside
the temple are two altars, one of solid gold, on which it is only lawful to
offer sucklings; the other a common altar, but of great size, on which
the full-grown animals are sacrificed. It is also on the great altar that
the Chaldasans burn the frankincense, which is offered to the amount of
a thousand talents' weight every year at the festival of the god."*
All these particulars are confirmed by the Apocryphal Book ot
Daniel ("Bel and the Dragon," vv. 3 and 23, scq.), containing more
interesting details of the worship of Bel in that sanctuary, of which the
ancient Tower of Babel, the most venerable monument in the world,
had furnished the nucleus. According to the sacred writer, seventy
priests were attached to the service of the temple, and each day they
offered to the god twelve large measures of the purest wheat-flour, forty
sheep and six large vessels of wine ; there was also in this temple,
probably in the lower sanctuary, a great serpent, adored by the Baby-
lonians as the living image of Bel, and said to have been killed by
Daniel before the eyes of the king.
" Borsippa," says the London inscription, " is the town of those who
exalt the god. I ornamented it. In the centre I caused to be con-
structed Val-zida, the eternal house; I completed its magnificence with
gold, silver, other metals, stones, enamelled bricks, timber work of sea-
pine and cedar. I covered with gold the woodwork of the place of
repose of the god Nebo. The cross pieces of the door of oracles have
been plated with silver. The uprights, the sill and the lintel, of the
place of repose I encrusted with ivory. I encrusted with silver the
uprights in cedar of the door of the women's chamber. I built the
entrance to the place of repose and the square portico of the temple
magnificently with bricks of various colours. I constructed the temple
solidly. To astonish mankind, I reconstructed and renewed the wonder
of Borsippa, the temple of the seven spheres of the world, I raised
the top of bricks, and covered it with copper. I inlaid the sanctuary
of the god with bands of marble and other stones.
alternate . . .
At Borsippa, in the body of masonry forming the base of Val-zida, I

made a temple in the form of a cavern, in honour of Sin, who sustains
my authority, the sanctuary of Cannes."
In the inscription found amongst the ruins of the tower there are
* Her. i. 181, 182.
I I 2
some details of the construction agreeing witli tliosc quotecl, and also
some fresh ones.
" I did not change the site or alter the foundations. In a fortunate
month, on an auspicious day, I pierced through with vaults the crude
brick of the body of masonry, and the baked brick of the casing. I
adjusted the circular inclines. I inscribed my name on the frieze of the
terraces. I set my hand to reconstruct Val-zida, and to raise its head as
it was in ancient times. I reconstructed and rebuilt it as it was in
former times. I raised its summit."
Lastly, another inscription repeats the same information, but adds

this detail, not found elsewhere, that the goddess Nana was supposed
to be residing with the god upper sanctuary of the tower.
in tlie
The cuneiform inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar also give us valuable

details of the interior administration of this sovereign, of the spoils torn
from conquered peoples, and employed in the construction of all those
edifices, the pride of the Chaldaean city. They enumerate the ancient
temples he restored and the new ones he built, not only at Babylon and
Borsippa, but at Cutha and numerous other towns of Chaldsea; for they
had all suffered enormously under the later Assyrian kings, who had
severely repressed their attempts at independence, and they all rose from
their ruins at the same time as the capital under Nebuchadnezzar.
We will first relate the details given on this subject by the London
inscription.
"I built at Babylon, in honour of the sublime sovereign (Bilit
Zarpanit), the mother who

bore me, the temple of the goddess oj the
which is the heart of Babylon."
siim7nit of the iiunuitaiiis,
Considerable ruins of this temple are found at a place called El
Kolaiah, near Hillah. Amongst them has been found a dedicatory
inscription bearing the name of Nebuchadnezzar.
" I caused to be built in Babylon, of bitumen and bricks, according
to the rules of art, a temple in honour of the god Nebo, the supreme
regent who bestows the sceptre of justice to govern the legions of men.
The temple of him who confers the sceptre."
" I built in Babylon, to the god Sin, who inspires me with judgment,
the temple of the great light, his house."
"I bitumen and bricks, a temple in honour of
built in Babylon, of
the god Shamash, who inspires my body with the sentiment of justice,
the temple of the Judge of the 'world.'" This edifice occupied the site, in
the town of Hillah, now filled by a mosque, still called "Mosque of
the Sun."
" I built, in the form of a square, a temple at Babylon, of bitumen
and bricks, in honour of the god Bin, who showers down abundance on
my country, the te7nple of the dispenser of storms.''''
"I built at Babylon temples of bitumen and bricks, a vast body of
TEMPLES BUILT BY NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 485
masonry, in honour of the great goddess (Nana), who rejoices and

sustains my soul. The tetnple of the depths and the temple of the high
tnountainsy
" I built at the entrance of the wall of Babylon a temple in the form
of a square, in honour of the sovereign of the house of heaven, the
queen who has pity on me, the temple of Kikupan.^''
" I built at Borsippa a temple to the god Adar Samdan, who breaks
the arms of my enemies."
" I built at Borsippa, in honour of the great goddess (Nana), who
accepts my song, the great temple, the teinple of life, and the temple of
the living soul, its three wonders." These three temples, alluding to
the lunar attributes of the goddess Nana, and to the phases of the
— —
planet new, full, and waning moon were all one body of masonry.
The ruins form what is now called the Tel Ibrahim el Khalil, near
Nimrud.
" I constructed at Borsippa, in masomy, the temple of the god Bin,
who causes the prophetic thunder to sound in my country."
The details in this inscription refer also to other sacred edifices.
" The 8th of the month Ulul I consecrated the portico of the god
Nergal and of the god Nibkhaz, the gods of the temple Valpitlam at
Cutha. I accomplished the oracle of the great god I added a new ;
portico to that of the fa9ade." Cutha to the north of Babylon had,

like Borsippa, been included in the immense circuit of the exterior wall.
The special god of this town was Nergal, and we learn from some
mythological details given in the tablets of the library'of Asshurbanipal,
that hewas worshipped there under the form of a lion.
"founded and constructed the temple of the day
I at Sippara, in
honour of Shamash and Sin, my lords."
" I founded and constructed at ^3irs3.m. the temple of the day, in honour
of Shamash and Sin, my lords."
" I founded and built the temple . . . at Ur, in honour of the god
Sin, the master who exalts my royalty."
" I founded and built the temple Ikul Ann at Nipur, in honour of
the god Oannes, my master."
" I founded and constructed in the town of Ras the temple of eternal
adoration, in honour of the god Bel Zarbi, my lord."
At Babylon itself this prince, as we learn from his inscriptions, com-
pleted the quays of the Euphrates, commenced by his father, Nabo-
polassar,and his mother, Nitocris. Not content with ornamenting and
embellishing " the city of his royalty," as he calls it in his monuments,
and the other he was solicitous also for the
cities suliject to his sceptre,
fertility of Babylonia and the extension of its commerce. He repaired

and put into working order the famous royal canal, or Naharmalcha,
constructed 1,300 years before by the king, Hammurabi, but from lapse
of time so much obstructed tliat these repairs were consideretl by the
historians as, in truth, a newHe caused an immense lake
construction.
to be dug below Sippara, to serve as a reservoir for watering the plain,
and finally he secured the navigation of the Persian gulf Ijy establishing
a large port at the mouth of the river at Teredon, called by the Baby-
lonians in their own language Kar Dunyash.
8. Nebuchadnezzar was then, in truth, a great king ; but pride was his
niin, and led him to madness, as it has done other men of great genius,
ecjually infatuated with their own success. Already, in the inscription
commemorative of the restoration of the tower of Babel, he had said
'
Merodach, the great lord, has begotten me himself. " A little later,
'
when all his great works were accomplished, he thought himself a god,
and willed that everyone should fall prostrate before a statue of himself,
which he caused to be made of gold. Three Hebrews resisted him,
and witnessing the miracle by which God preserved them from the
flames, the king of Babylon, says the Bible, rendered homage to the
God of Israel. But his pride was not abated, and one day while he
walked in his palace, the king spake and said, "Is not this great
Babylon, that I house of the kingdom by the might
have built for the
of my power, and for the honour of my majesty ? Then a voice from
heaven said to him, O Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken ; The
kingdom is departed from thee. And they shall drive thee from men,
and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field and they shall :
make thee to eat grass as oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee,
until thou knowthat the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and
giveth it to whomsoever he will " (Dan. iv. 30, secj.). This decree was at
once accomplished ;Nebuchadnezzar, struck with the most abject
madness, fled from the society of men, and, imitating the beasts, tried,
like them, to eat grass ; his person, deprived of all care, and exposed to
the inclemencies of weather, exhibited all the effects of this neglect. A
personage, named Bellabarisruk, of whose origin we know nothing,
and whose son was son-in-law to the king in all probability the Archi-—
Magus, or chief of the Chaldsean caste possessed himself of power,—
possibly as regent of the empire during the incapacity of the sovereign.
An inscription shows, however, that he took the title of king, and thus
consummated a real and complete usurpation. It was not until after
the lapse of seven months that Nebuchadnezzar became himself again,
and was able to reassume the exercise of power. A short time after
this he died, having reigned forty-three years, predicting, says Berosus,
the ruin of the Babylonian empire.
—
Note. The Jewish historian, Josephus, has misinterpreted the words
of the Bible, and enormously exaggerated the time of Nebuchadnezzar's
madness, prolonging it to seven years. Ani. X. 6.
SUCCESSORS OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR. 487
Section IV. —The Successors of Nebuchadnezzar— Fall of

THE Babylonian Empire. 561 — 533 b.c.
1. It did not rec[uire a supernatural gift of prophecy to foresee that
the Babylonian empire, arrived at such a high degree of splendour,
was very near its fall, and that its power would take no longer time to
crumble away than had been required to build it up: for this no more
was requisite than a clear and prescient mind. This empire had, in
truth, in itself no one real element of duration. The colossus, as in
the vision explained by Daniel, had feet of clay. The Babylonian
nation was not sufficiently energetic, or sufficiently military in character,
to be able to maintain, as the Assyrians had done during many cen-
turies, its dominion over a hundred different races. Its whole warlike
force consisted of hordes of cavalry from the tribes of Irak Arabi and
the people of Lower Chaldaea —
hordes admirably fitted to overrun, with
the impetuosity of a torrent that has burst its banks, a large extent of
country in a very short time, but not to preserve their conquests and
found a lasting dominion.
It may generally be observed in history that those people whose
military strength consists entirely of cavalry are capable indeed of great
and rapid conquests, but are never able to preserve them for any length
of time.
From the very moment of the death of Nebuchadnezzar, disquieting
rumours began to prevail at Babylon. It was said that anew dominant
power had appeared in the world. Already the kingdom of the Medes
had fallen before this people, but lately its subjects; the Persians, for
so were these new conquerors called, had sallied from their rugged
mountains under the guidance of a young chief, whom the events of the
war had already raised to the rank of a great captain. The prophets of
Israel, too, announced with startling voice that proud Babylon must ere
long herself feel the miseries she had inflicted on Jerusalem. "Come
down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the
ground there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldceans for thou
: :
shalt be no more called tender and delicate. Take the millstones, and
grind meal :uncover thy locks, make bare the leg, uncover the thigh,
pass over the rivers. Thy nakedness shall be uncovered, yea, thy
shame shall be seen" (Isa. .\lvii. i — 3).
2. Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by his son, Evil-Merodach this ;
prince is distinguished in sacred history by an act of humanity (2 Kings
XXV. 27). At the commencement of his reign he " lifted up the head "
of Jehoiakin, king of Judah, and brought him forth out of prison,
where for thirty-seven years he had been left in fetters; gave him a rank
above the other captive kings who were at the capital; admitted him to
his table, and assigned him a pension. But the rest of his reign did
—
488 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST,

not fulfil tlic promise of so honourable an action. Berosus represents
him as having trami)le(l under foot every law and all propriety. A plot
was laid against him, and he was assassinated by his brother-in law,
the son-in-law of Nebuchadnezzar, and the son of the Bellabarisruk
who had usurped power during the madness of the great Chaldsean
,
conqueror (559), who was named Aêrgalsarussur (Nergal protects the
king), a name altered in the fragments of Berosus to Neriglissar. Evil-
Merodach had reigned but two years. This domestic tragedy gave to
Neriglissar a sceptre that he held without dignity, and did not long retain.
The son-in-law of the conqueror of Jerusalem built himself a new
palace outside the royal city, on the western bank of the Euphrates,
and placed statues of massive silver in the various sanctuaries of the
pyramid of the tomb of Bel. He reigned only four years, and lost his
a great battle against the Persians under Cyrus, the conquerors of
life in
Media, of which country, formerly subject to the kings of Assyria, he

desired to dispute their possession (555).
3. The son and successor of this prince is called Laborosoarchod in
the fragments of Berosus ; it is probable that he was in reality called
Bellabarisruk, after his grandfather. He was a child, and occupied the
throne only a few months. The chiefs of the Chaldsean caste dethroned
him, indignant at the vicious and cruel instincts he displayed, young as
he was. They then proclaimed one of their number, named Nabonahid
(Nebo is majestic), the Labynetus of Herodotus, son of a certain
Nabobalatirrib (555). He reigned during the last seventeen years of
the Babylonian empire. At Babylon itself he repaired the quays of the
royal city. A curious inscription of the last year of his reign, dis-
covered Ur by the English traveller, Loftus, shows him to us, saying
at
his "meaculpa" for having neglected the worship of the gods, and
undertaking to repair the temple of Sin, in order to obtain the protec-
tion of that god. The terms employed are sufficiently curious to
warrant our repeating them here :
"Although I myself, Nabonahid, king of Babylon, have long sinned

against the great divinity, yet save me, grant me a long existence,
reaching even to the most advanced age that man can attain to. And
since I have Belsharussur, the scion of my heart, my eldest son, propa-
gate on his account the worship of thy great divinity. May his life be
preserved from harm, so long as the destinies permit."
Everything points out this work of a prince
inscription as the
threatened with a great and pressing danger. so it was for in And ;
the year of the date of the Ur monument (538), Cyrus, who had
already made himself master of all the rest of Asia, advanced against
him at the head of the Medes and Persians, with the declared resolution
of adding Chaldasa to his dominions.
Nabonahid advanced to meet Cyrus, but sustained a complete defeat;
CYRUS TAKES BABYLON. 489
and, followed by a small number of soldiers, threw himself into Bor-

sippa, whilst Cyrus laid siege to Babylon. We gather from this fact,
reported by Berosus, that the last Chaldasan monarch did not feel
himself able to defend effectively the immense extent of the first great
wall erected by Nebuchadnezzar, including both Babylon proper and
Borsippa, and that he allowed it to be forced by the Persian army
without opposition. Babylon, protected by the second wall, and by
the impregnable citadel forming the royal city, was not to be reduced
easily ;
provided with food for many years' consumption, its inhabit-
ants disdained a besieger not so well supplied as themselves. But the
time fixed by Providence for the chastisement of the Chaldaean city had
arrived. Cyrus, who very recently had, by digging canals, exhausted
the Gyndes, an affluent of the Tigris, resolved to adopt the same
measures, and to enter Babylon by the bed of the Euphrates; he
opened the sluices serving to divert the waters of the river into the
artificial lake, dug by Nitocris, and his troops, going down into the
Euphrates, with water to their knees only, entered the city, or rather
between two parts. The inhabitants might then have taken them
its
as in a net,by shutting on them the bronze gates of the quays, and

have crushed them from the height of their walls. But they were then
engaged in celebrating a feast, and, drowned in revelry and carelessness,
they permitted the enemy to obtain full occupation of the centre of the
city before the more were even informed of the attack.
distant quarters
Thus were fulfilled the prophecies announcing the drying up of the river
of Babylon the orgies of the warriors and priests ending in the sleep
;
of death; its gates set open before the ministers of divine justice; and
Cyrus (named by Isaiah, Ilezekiah's contemporary) taking possession of
that proud city, whose capture Jeremiah had described at the period of
its highest power.
Nabonahid, when he retired to Borsippa, had left in Babylon his

son Belsharussur (Bel protects the king), the Belshazzar of the Book of
Daniel,* who had been associated with himself in the government.
* In the Books of Baruch and of Daniel, Belshazzar is called "son

of Nebuchadnezzar" (Baruch i. 1 1 ; Daniel v. 18), and this, until his
name was found in the inscriptions, gave much trouble to all com-
mentators. Here, however, the word "son " is used in its general and
poetical sense of successor, just as we have seen on the Nimrud obelisk
Jehu called the " son of Omri." It must, however, be borne in mind,
in considering the historical facts contained in tlie ]3ook of Daniel, that
admitting the book to be perfectly authentic, and unquestionably
written at Babylon, we no longer possess the whole of the original text,
but merely the results of the re-arrangement and partial re-writing in
Syro-Chaldee about the third century li.c. and this by transcribers;
ignorant of history, who have fallen into several manifest errors as to

the names of Babylonian kings.
;

It isoa that festal night, when the Persians surprised Babylon, that we
must place the scene of Belshazzar's feast, related in such thrilling
terms in the Book of Daniel. The son of Nahonahid has profaned in
his orgie the sacred vessels of the Temple of Jerusalem ; a terrible
sign — fingers writing on the wall the three famous words,
Mene, Tekel,
—
Peres announces to him the destined chastisement of Providence and ;
so that very niglit he was killed by Darius the Mede, one of the
generals of Cyrus, who having been charged by that prince with the
nocturnal expedition, was rewarded for his success by the government
of Babylon.*
Nabonahid escaped the unfortunate end of liis son ; he did not await
have lasted long, and
in Borsippa a siege, that in all probability would not
surrendered to Cyrus, who sent him into Carmania, where he ended his
days. From tliat time the kingdom of Babylon ceased to exist, though
the ruin of the city was slowly and gradually accomplished.
Babylon continued, under the Persian kings, to be one of the capitals
of their empire. Many times the proud city attempted again to raise
its head, for it did not resign itself easily to the loss of independence
but their revolts served only to draw down on the inhabitants the ven-
geance of the conquerors. During the troubles following the death of
Cambyses (522), a certain Nidintabcl proclaimed himself king there,
giving himself out as Nebuchadnezzar, son of Nabonahid. A Greek
cameo in the Museum at Berlin, of archaic workmanship, carried to
Babylon in the course of commerce, was dedicated by this Nebuchad-
nezzar to one of his gods, as is proved by the cuneiform inscription
engraved round it. Four years later (518), Darius, son of Hystaspes,
could only take Babylon after a siege of twenty months, and by help of
the treason of Zopyrus. The following year saw a new insurrection,
soon put down, by a man called Arakhu, who also passed himself off
as son of Nabonahid. The Babylonians did not take the trouble to
examine into the pretensions of these impostors it was enough that
;
they proclaimed independence, and called the people to arms against

the Persians. In 508, a new insurrection was more successful than the
* The name of Darius the Mede

has been, like that of Belshazzar,
a veritable crux interprcUim. There
is no possible theory that has not
been started on this subject, because we read in the Bible that he

became king on the death of Belshazzar. "And Darius the Mede
'
took the kingdom, " a phrase that may be equally well applied to the
'
investiture of a satrap as to the accession of a king. At any rate, if

we must absolutely maintain the sense this phrase has hitherto received,
Darius the Mede can have been no other than Darius, son of Hystaspes,
whose name the author of the re-arrangement has substituted for that
of Cyrus, as the former was much better known in the third cen-
tury B.C.
;
RUIN OF BABYLON. 491
preceding; it freed Babylon and all Chald;T;a for twenty years from the
Persian yoke. No Persian monuments
are found there in that long
interval. But Darius subdued it at last in 488; and to render any
future revolt of Babylon impossible, he overturned its towers, its walls,
and its immense fortifications. Xerxes, some years after, continued the
work of his father, and regularly pillaged the city, carrying off the
golden statue of Nebo and the treasures of the tomb of Bel Merodach.
Alexander, the conqueror of the Persians, adopted another policy.
Struck with the beauty and the advantages of the situation of Babylon,
he wished to make it rise from its ruins ; but that great man died before
he was able to carry out his plans.
The Seleucidse vv'ished to have a capital built by themselves, and
bearing their name; the)' founded Seleucia on the banks of the Tigris,
and the privileges given to those who came to settle there led to a
general desertion of Babylon. The new capital numbered 600,000
inhabitants. This state of prosperity diil not outlast the time of these
new masters of the East. When the Parthians had seized the empire
of Asia, they did to Seleucia what Seleucus Nicator had done to
Babylon, they founded a new city, Ctesiphon; this in its turn was
superseded by the Arab city of Bagdad, the capital of the Caliphs, still
existing. Bagdad, the would equal her elder

youngest, in sisters
grandeur, in spite of Hulagu and Tamerlane, if the commerce of the

world had not found out other channels.
In the time of Pliny Babylon was already a desert. At the present day
there remains of the immense city nothingbut huge masses of rubbish and
an inexhaustible magazine of materials, whence the inhabitants of the
neighbourhood constantly take what they require above all, excellent ;
and perfectly moulded burnt bricks, slabs of marble, and glazed tiles.
The hills of rubbish, marking the sites of the principal edifices, palaces,
hanging gardens, the Pyramid of Bel, the Tower of Tongues, furnish
dens for the wild beasts of the desert. Thus is accomplished to the
letter the prophecy of Isaiah : —
" Behold, I will stir up the Medes
against them, which shall not regard silver and as for gold, they shall
;
not delight in Their bows also shall dash the young men to pieces
it.
and they shall have no pity on the fruit of the womb their eye shall not ;
spare children. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of

the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and
Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in
from generation to generation neither shall the Arabian pitch tent
:
there neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

; But the wild
beasts of the deserts shall lie there ; and their houses shall be full of
doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance
there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate
houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces" (Isa. xiii. 17—22).
—
CHAPTER VI.
MANNERS AND RELIGION OF BABYLON.
Section I. Manners.
1. The Nineveh and of Bal)ylon wêre one and the
civilisation of
same. Between Assyria and Chaldaâ there was complete confcjrmity in
all things fundamental and essential. What we have already said in
the preceding chapter, on the manners, customs, and religion of the
Assyrians, will be equally applicable here and we may confine our-
;
selves to some short remarks on a few points where the geniusand

civifisation of the two great Mesopotamian people separated, and took
each its own peculiar aspect.
The clothing of the
Babylonians, according to the testimony of
Herodotus,* and the representations on the cylinders, was a linen tunic
reaching to the feet over this they wore another tunic of wool, and
;
over that again a short white cloak. They wore the hair carefully
curled, and on the head high-pointed tiaras. The soldiers wore conical
helmets, like those of the Assyrians, breastplates of quilted linen, and
used wooden bucklers. Their offensive arms were wooden maces
studded with iron, lances, and short swords.
Each Babylonian had, as his personal emblem, a walking-stick with
some figure carved on the top, serving as his symbol, or, as we might
say, armorial bearing. Every one had also a seal, usually in shape
of a cylinder. An immense number of these cylinders have been
discovered they bear some mythological symbols, and usually the name
;
of the owner, of his father, and of the deity under whose protection he
had placed himself These cylinders were kept ready made in shops,
only requiring the name to be filled in, and some have been found
where the name-space is vacant.
2. Herodotus sayst that the Babylonians buried their dead in honey,
a statement rather difficult to understand. Some facts seem to indicate
that they also used oil for this purpose.
Marriages were made once a year at a public festival,! where the
maidens of age to marry were put up to public auction. The beautiful
girls sold for large sums, and this money was employed as a dowry for
the ugly ones. No one could marry his daughter except in this way.
This marriage festival was celebrated in the month Sabat, and the
principal day was the last of the month. They gave to each damsel
* Her. i. 195. t Ibid. i. 198. % Ibid. i. 196.

" —
THE CHALDEAN CASTE. 493
they sold for marriage a model of an olive in baked clay, pierced with
a hole so as to be worn round the neck; on this was inscribed her
name, the name of her husband, and the date of the ceremony. Some of
these olives have been found, and as specimens we give the inscriptions
on three now in the Museum of the Louvre. I. " Manutamat, whom
Bakit-Alsi has taken the day of the feast of Sabat, the ninth year of
Merodach Baladan, king of Babylon." 2. " Binit Nisukin, whom
Ha...kan has taken, in the month Sabat, the tenth year of Merodach
Baladan, king of Babylon." 3. " Halalat, whom Marnarih has taken,
in the month Sabat, the eleventh year of Merodach Baladan, king of
Babylon.
The Greek writers* mention, among the peculiarities of the manners
and customs of the Babylonians, one festival in summer, called Sacees,
resembling the Saturnalia at Rome. The slaves for five days took
command of their masters, and one of them, clothed in a royal robe,
received the honours of a sovereign. This, no doubt, is the great festival
mentioned twice by Sargon [Sharyukin], and Esarhaddon [Asshur-
akhiddin], in their inscriptions as peculiar to Babylon, and called
9ak-muku, a name at present unintelligible, and probably borrowed
from the Chaldaô-Turanian language. It is mentioned as falling in
the month Nisan.
Section II. The Caste of the Chald^âns.

I. The population in Babylonia and Chaldreawas not, as in Assyria,
one single unmixed race. On the contrary, it was essentially mixed,
and contained, as we have already said, Cushite, Turanian, and Semitic
elements, imposed as were one over the other.
it Thence arose, as in
all such cases, the distinctions of castes, unequal and devoted in rank,
to certain defined occupations. The merchants, artisans, and husband-
men formed each a caste. The fishermen of the marshes bordering on
the Persian Gulf also formed a separate caste, and were at the bottom
of the social scale. Herodotus t tells us that they lived entirely on
dried fish, pounded and made into a species of cake. Assyrian bas-
reliefs depict these people in the campaigning scenes of Sennacherib
and Asshurbanipal as living in islands in the midst of the reeds, or

rather, with their families, inhabiting rafts covered with earth, forming
floating islands, such as may still be seen in some parts of China and
on the lakes of Mexico.
The superior and dominant caste, entirely exclusive, was composed
of the Chaldoeans, properly so called, who, as we have already at-
tempted to show, were strangers, and conquerors of the Turanian race.
* Athen. xix. p. 369. t Her. i. 200.

They had obtained exclusive possession of all priestly functions, and
used them so as to govern tlie state. Classical writers give us some
details on tlieir organisation, functions, and power.
2. "Tlie Clialdx'ans," says Uiodorus Siculus, following Ctesias, who
had seen tliem at Babylon, " are the most ancient of the Babylonians;
they formed in the state a body resembling the priests in Egypt. Set
apart for following up the worship of the gods, they passed their whole
life in meditation on philosophical subjects, and had acquired a great
reputation in astrology; they especially devoted themselves to the

science of divination and to predictions of the future ; they attempted
to avert evil and procure good fortune, either by purifications, or by
sacrifices, or by enchantments. They are accomplished in the art of
predicting the future by observing the flight of birds; they explained
dreams and prodigies. Skilled in the art of inspecting the entrails of
\'ictims,they were accounted capable of giving the true interpretation.
But these branches of knowledge were not taught as among the Greeks.
The learning of the Chaldasans was a family tradition; the son who
inherited this from his father was exempt from all taxes. Having their
relations for instructors, they had the double advantage of being taught
everything without reserve, and that by masters in whose statements
they could put implicit faith. Accustomed to work from infancy, they
made great progress in the study of astrology, partly because learning
is easy at an early age, and partly because they received a long course of
instruction. . . . The Chaldaeans always remained at the same point in
science, maintaining their traditions without alteration ; the Greeks, on
the contrar)', thinking of nothing but profit, were constantly forming
new schools, disputing among themselves as to the truth of the most
important doctrines, confusing the minds of their disciples, who, tossed
about in continual doubt, ended in believing nothing at all."
We by the Book of Daniel (Dan. i. 4; ii. 2; v. 7) what were the
see
functions of the Chaldteans they composed many distinct classes, of
;
more or less elevated rank, in the hierarchy. Some of them were the
sacred scribes, decipherers of writings; others the constructors of horo-
scopes, or interpreters of the stars, magicians who pronounced magical
formulae, conjurors who had power to avert malign influences. Their
power of divination assured them great influence, as it made them, so
to speak, masters of every one's destiny. They usually foretold in
almanacks, a custom that seems to have lasted to our own limes, all
that our common almanacks now predict, —fluctuations in the tempera-
ture, physical phenomena, and The Chaldseans were
historical events.
not confined to Babylon, but were spread over all Babylonia. They
had schools in various places, more or less flourishing: according to
Strabo, that at Borsippa was the most celebrated. That at Orchoe, or
Erech, was also well known, and maintained its reputation down to the
—
COMMERCE OF BABYLON. 495
times 01 the Romans. In the period of the Seleucidse, the doctrine of

the unity of God was distinctly taught there as we know from tablets
:
with cuneiform inscriptions, dated in the reign of several Greek kings,

found at Warkah, and now in the British Museum. The only name of
a Deity found in them, and this is many times repeated, is " God
One."
3. But the Chaldceans did not confine themselves to the duties and
positions of priests and astrologers, and to the unbounded influence
derived from this position both over the state and over individuals.
They became the absolute governing class in politics. Members of this
caste commanded armies, and held all the chief offices of the state.
From them came all the royal families who ruled Babylon, whether
vassals of Assyria, or, after the time of Phul, completely independent.
At the head of the hierarchy and caste was an Archi- Magus, whose
national and proper title we do not yet know ; he was, next to the king,
the chief personage of the empire; he accompanied the sovereign every-
where, even in war, to direct all his actions according to priestly rule
and presage. When the king died and the legitimate successor could
not immediately assume the reins of power, this personage administered
the government in the interim, as in the instance which occurred between
the death of Nabopolassar and the arrival of Nebuchadnezzar.
Section III. Commerce of Babyi.on.

I. Babylon, from its geographical situation, naturally enjoyed great
commercial prosperity. Placed at the junction of Upper and Lower
Asia, within reach of the two great rivers communicating vidth the
Persian Gulf and the Indian Sea, the city necessarily became the depot
for the caravans, both of the east and west, and at the same time the
port for ships arriving from and India. Everything
Africa, Arabia,
proves that this great city was, from remotest antiquity, one of the chief
commercial centres of the east.
Babylon received the productions of the various Asiatic countries,
and in return distributed to them the products of her own peculiar
industry. Among the articles manufactured in great quantity by the
Babylonians, woollen and linen fabrics were the most important. Robes
and tapestry were nowiiere made so fine or so brightly coloured, as in
Babylon. These celebrated manufactures were produced not only in
the capital, but also in the other cities and towns of Baljylonia. Ac-
cording to Diodorus Siculus, there were, on the banks of the Euphrates
and Tigris, a great number of depots for storing both the manufactures
of the country and imported goods. In the time of Strabo, the chief
manufacture of linen was at Borsippa, at that time distinct from Babylon.
Besides robes and tapestry, the Babylonians made with great taste and
skill articles of luxury, such as chased weapons, furniture, jewelry,
amulets, and engraved cylinders of stone for seals. In exchange for
these, Babylon received from the various countries of Asia everytliing
required for llie wants and luxuries of such a great capital. Armenia
sent its wines down the Euplirates, and Herodotus* gives us a most
• interesting account of tlie voyage. India supplied precious stones and
large dogs,and so great was the passion for the latter,that Tritantsechmes,
satrap of Babylon under the Acha'menians, had set apart four cities or
large villages, exempted from all other taxes, on condition of maintain-
ing his dogs.t From the same country, as well as from Persia, were
imported valuable woollen fabrics. From Arabia and Ethiopia came
perfumes, spices, gold, ivory, and ebony.
2. Babylon was in communication with the different countries that
furnished their merchandise by many roads, all meeting at the great
city. One of these routes, starting from Babylon, went northward,
passed Ecbatana, the capital of Media, then turning eastward, passed
Rhagse, traversed the famous defile of the Caspian gates, whence it
descended into Hyrcania and passed by Hecatompylos, as far as the
city called, in later times, Alexandria of Aria. There it divided into two
—
branches one of them tended northward to Bactria, the other turned
southward towards India by way of Drangiana and Arachosia, passing
the cities of Prophthasia, Arachosia, and Ortospana. At the latter
place the road again divided in three, called by the ancient geographers
ihe trivium of Bactria. The first, running directly east, entered India
by way of the cities of Peucela (Pushkalavati), and Taxila (Taksha9ila).
From Taxila the road turned south, crossed the Hydaspes (Vitasta),
the Hyphasis (Vipa9a), and thence went on to the confluence of the
Ganges and lomanes (Yamuna) at Palibothra (Pataliputra). The
second road leaving Ortospana arrived at the same termination, passing
through Arachosia the third, turning to the north, entered Bactria
;
and went on through Marachanda, as far as the laxartes.

Another road connected Babylon with the border countries of the
Mediterranean, passing due north through Mesopotamia to the
Euphrates at Anthemusia, and thence turning westward to the sea.
Again another road led first to Susa, turned north, and passed through
Assyria towards Armenia, crossed the northern part of that country,
passed the Euphrates, traversed Cilicia and through the " Cilician
gates " entered Cappadocia. Thence it traversed Phrygia and ended
at Sardis, in Lydia. "Royal houses," says Herodotus,^ who had
travelled over great part of this road, "exist along its whole length
and excellent stations." These were the caravanserais of the present
* Her. i. 194. t Ibid. i. 192. t Ibid. v. 52.

RELIGION OF BABYLON. 497
day. One hundred and eleven such stations were reckoned, lierodotus
adds, between Sardis and Susa. This road is still employed by the
caravans between Smyiira and Ispahan.
3. The Euphrates was the natural road for commerce between
Babylon and Armenia and the countries of the Caucasus. Merchandise
was transported, as Herodotus relates,* on round rafts supported by
still used in navigating the Tigris.
inflated skins, like the kclcks These
raftswere abandoned to the current when they arrived at Babylon and
;
the merchandise had been sold, the skins were emptied of air, and
carried back by land, as well as the wood of the raft.
Great works had been undertaken to facilitate the navigation of the
river; the banks had been raised to keep in the water and prevent it
from overflowing the land canals traversed the country, spreading
;
fertility in every direction, as well as afibrding means of communication

with all parts of Mesopotamia. Some of these canals, as for instance
the Royal Canal, or Naliar UTahlia, were so large and deep as to
afford passage for largemerchant ships. These numerous drains on the
riverhad rendered the current slower and less impetuous. This canal
system had also another object; it assisted in the defence of the country
against hostile neighbours.
The capital of the empire had also in the days of its prosperity a
powerful navy; its ships crossed the Persian Gulf in search of the
precious commodities of the south, the productions of Arabia and
India. If we may credit Strabo, the Babylonians had factories and
colonies in those countries; and Gerrha, one of the richest markets in
the world, was once, according to this celebrated geographer, a Chal-
dsean colony. The valuable and abundant pearls of the Persian Gulf,
and the magnificent plantations of the Isle of Tylos, must have attracted
their merchants. From this island they procured the light and strong
canes so much esteemed all over Assyria. Thus the merchandise and
productions of all Asia and Africa, flowed into Babylon, whence they
were distributed to all parts of the empire.
Section IV.— Religion.

I. The Babylon was in all essential points the same as
religion of
that of Assyria; it had followed the course of the Tigris, and its primi-
tive seat had evidently been Chaldaea in the early days of the first
empire of Nimrod. But although all the fundamental doctrines of the
religious system, and all its divine personages, were the same among the
Assyrians as among the Babylonians, there were differences of race and
genius between the two peoples that gave rise to some differences in their
religion.
* Herod, i , 194,
K K
Tluis the Chaldceans had liccn led in the earliest times from As-
tronomy to Astrology; and tliis pretended science had received a greater
development among them than ever at any time among other people.
"According to them," says Diodorus Siculus, "the stars exercised an
absolute and decisive influence on the birth of men, and determined
their good or evil destiny. Changes in the heavens were thus so many
signs of good or evil fortune for countries and nations, as M'ell as for
kings or individuals. The stars thus became the interpreters of the
divine will, or rather of the decrees of destiny." With such precon-
ceived ideas, their religious opinions necessarily took an astronomical
and astrological form, even more markedly than at Nineveh. The
Chalda;ans supposed the divine hierarchy to be almost exclusively in
relation to the sidereal world. —
Below the two superior triads one of
—
them essentially creative, the other cosmical and below the deities of
the five planets, they placed twelve councillors of the gods, each of whom
presided over one of the months of the year, and over one of the signs
of the zodiac. To these chief deities were also attached other powers,
and forming essential
distributed in both a scientific and religious order,
elements in the Chaldcean worship. This sidereal pantheism was not
only widely spread in Chaldoea, but had gained ground step by step among
the neighbouring nations, and had become intimately mixed in their
national faith. Thus, according to the testimony of the Book of Kings
(2 Kings xxiii. 5, li), the Israelites, who were frequently brought into
contact with the Babylonians, offered incense to the Sun, the Moon,
the twelve zodiacal signs, and all the host of heaven. We know also
that several of the kings of Judah had dedicated horses to the sun, in
imitation of the Babylonians.
2. Such a system was too learned, too complicated, to satisfy the
gross desires and sensual passions of the multitude. But the forms that
these refined and scientific ideas assumed in the popular worship, indi-
cate to what an extent the primitive Hamitic depravity still tainted the
people of Babylon; whilst on the contrary in Assyria, the Semitic genius
of the people had mvested the same ideas with the most spiritual and
elevated character that they were capable of assuming. Everything
proves that the most unbounded and shameless naturalism played a
great part in the worship of the Babylonians. The stories of profane
historians, the writings of the Hebrew prophets, the national monu-
ments, such as cylinders and engraved stones of various kinds, testify to
the number and variety of the idols they adored.

One of the chief features of the external and public organisation of
the national worship in Chaldcea was the localisation of the worship of
each divine personage in some particular city, where he was regarded as
the first and greatest of the gods, whatever might be the place he filled
elsewhere in the hierarchy of the Babylonian Pantheon. This privilege,
RELIGION OF BABYLON. 499
by which each divine personage, even if holding only secondary rank,

might become, in the place wliere he was specially adored, the first of
the gods, is however common to all pantheistic religions.* In the
spirit of these religions, the one sole deity, the first being, is incom-
prehensible, invisible, and manifested only in his varied attributes, each
personified, each deified, and reflected in a variety of symbols. These
symbols, found in nature, man observes and imitates. Immense bodies,
such as the sun, the moon, the earth — impressive phenomena, such as
thunder, volcanic eniptions, deluges, are more extended expressions for
the deity; but these expressions are never complete, man is unable,
either in his mind or by his eye, to appreciate the idea of the divine
unity; the infinite inseparable from that unity, permitted him to see at
one time as it were only one side of the divine character. Thus every
symbol, every figure, name, manifestation, or emanation, bears a double
character; — isolated they express only one of the qualities of the divine
being, combined they express both the unity and the variety.
The deity who was the principal object of worship at Babylon and at
Borsippa was Bel Merodach, with his wife, Bilit or Mylitta, the great
nature-goddess, who assumed the two opposite forms of Taauth and
—
Zarpanit the one austere, the other voluptuous, like the two forms ot
the Venus of classical mythology. Bilit had a magnificent temple in
the centre of Babylon, where an infamous custom compelled every
woman once in her lifetime to give herself up to a stranger. At Ur,
the god of the city, from the remote times of Ur-Hammu, was Sin, the
Moon-god. At Sippara and Larsam, Shamash, the Sun. At Erech
and Nipur, Bilit-Taauth, "Goddess of the firmament." At Cutha,
Nana or Zarpanit was worshipped under the name of Succoth Benoth,
a name referring to the prostitutions in honour of that goddess (see
2 Kings xvii. 29 —31).
3. The materialistic and profoundly immoral worship at Babylon,
naturally excited extreme horror in the worshippers of Jehovah, and

provoked their vehement invectives against the idols of Chaldsea. We
quote the eloquent words that portray so vividly an always materialistic,
often obscene, worship that was in fact no more than a constant employ-
ment of popular superstition for the profit of the priests.
"Now ye shall see in Babylon gods of silver, and of gold, and 01
wood, borne upon shoulders, which cause the nations to fear. And . . .
taking gold, as it were, for a virgin that loveth to go gay, they make
crowns for the heads of tlieir gods. Sometimes also the priests convey
from their gods gold and silver, and bestow it upon themselves. Yea,
they will give thereof to the common harlots, and deck them as men
with garments, being gods of silver, and gods of gold and wood. . . .
* See page 324.

K K 2
—

And he that cannot death one that ofTendeth him holdcth a
jiut to
sceptre (Nebo), as though he were a judge of the country. He (Bel
Merodach) hath also in his right hand a dagger and an axe, but cannot
deliver himself from war and thieves. They liglit them candles,. . .
yea, more than for themselves, whereof they cannot see one. They are
as one of the beams of the temple, yet they say their hearts are gnawed
upon by things creeping out of the earth and when they eat them and ;
their clothes, they feel it not. ... As for the things that are sacrificed
unto them, their priests sell and abuse ; in like manner their wives lay
up part thereof in salt ; but unto the poor and impotent they give
nothing of it. . . . The priests also take ofif their garments and clothe
their wives and children. . . . The women also with cords about them
sitting in the ways burn bran for perfume."*
Section V. Cosmogony.
I. The Chaldceans, like all other people, had deeply considered the
problem of the origin of the world, and they had constructed a learned
cosmogony, explained in the books of Oannes. The chief points have
been preserved in the extracts from Berosus given by the Byzantine
chronologers.
We have already seen, in the preceding chapter, that three successive
divine emanations constituted the most exalted triad in the Chaldceo-
Assyrian religion — Oannes, Ao, and Bel — representing the origin of the
material world as an emanation from the substance of the divine being;
first the primordial chaos, uncreated matter, sprung from the sole funda-
mental principle and cause of all tilings; next intelligence, or the word,
that animates and renders it fertile; and lastly the demiurgus, who
arranges and completes the organised universe, mixing himself up with
this universe. We shall see now how the last act of this trilogy, the
birth of the organised universe, its passage from the state of mdetei-mi-
nate existence, or of non-existence zuitk the power of existing (to use the
phrases of that philosophy of Hegel that, in our days, has had recourse
to the conceptions of ancient pagan pantheists t), to the state of deter-
7ninate existence ; its creation, in a word, was symbolically related in the
sacred books, and represented in paintings in the temple of Bel at
Borsippa. The actors in this mythic cosmogony are Bel and his wife,
the personages in the third divine emanation. We shall quote the text of
some fragments of Berosus.
* Baruch VI. Epistle of Jeremiah.

t Compare the Vedic Hymn on this subject, translated in Max
Midler's Sanscrit Literature, pp. 560 564. —
BABYLONIAN TRADITIONS. 501
"There was a time in which there existed nothing but darkness, and
an abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous beings, which were
produced of a twofold principle. There appeared men, some of whom
were furnished with two wings, others with four and with two faces.
They had one body but two heads— the one that of a man, the other of
a woman— and likewise in their several organs both male and female.
Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of goats :
some had horses' feet while others united the hind quarters of a horse
:
with the body of a man resembling in shape the hippocentaurs. Bulls

likewise were bred there with the heads of men ; and dogs with fourfold
bodies, terminated in their extremities with the tails of fishes. In short
there were creatures in which were combined the limbs of every species
of animals. In addition to these, fishes, reptiles, serpents, with other
monstrous animals, which assumed each others' shapes and countenances,
of all of which were preserved delineations in the temple of Belus at
Babylon. The person who presided over them was a woman named
Omorca, which, in the Chaldsean language,is Taauth;* in Greek Thalassa,
the sea, but which might equally be interpreted the Moon. All things
being in this situation, Belus came and cut the woman asunder and of;
one-half of her he formed the earth, and of the other half the heavens ;
and at the same time destroyed the animals within her. All this (he
says) was an allegorical description of nature. For the whole universe
consisting of moisture, and animals being continually generated therein,
the deity above mentioned took off his own head upon which the other
;
gods mixed the blood, as it gushed out, with the earth ; and from thence
were formed men. On this account it is that they are rational, and
partake of the divine knowledge. This Belus, by whom they signify
Jupiter, divided the darkness, and separated the heavens from the earth,
and reduced the universe to order. But the animals, not being able to
bear the prevalence of light, died. Belus upon this, seeing a vast space
unoccupied, though by nature fruitful, commanded one of the gods to
take off his head and to mix the blood with the earth; and thence
to form other men and animals, which should be capable of bearing the
air. Belus formed also the stars and the sun and the moon and the
five planets." t
* The Greek a name not found in the cunei-

text has Thalatth,
form inscriptions. But now that we begin to know what were the
original names of the Chalda:o-Assyrian deities, it is evident that
the fragment of Berosus must be corrected by reading OavdrO in
place of Ba\ar9, for reference is intended here to the goddess —
mentioned also by the philosopher, Damascius, undoubtedly following
—
Berosus Bilit or Mylitta, Taauth, the wife of Bel, mother of the
gods and of all beings, the great nature-goddess of Babylon, the passive
and reproductive matter, organised by the demiurgus, and the source
whence he drew the universe*
t Cory, Ancient Fragments, p. 22.
S02 ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
2. The narrative of Berosus, borrowed from the books of Oannes,
goes on to relate the primitive history of the human race down to the
dispersion of races. In the Babylonian tradition we find, among a host
of purely mythical tales, some that present a very striking resemblance
to the patriarchal revelation preserved in the Book of Genesis. The
number of antediluvian patriarchs, the tradition of the deluge, that of
the building of the Tower of Babel, and of the confusion of tongues,
are almost identical in each.
"At Babylon there was, (in these times), a great resort of people of
various nations, who inhabited Chaldaea, and lived in a lawless manner
like the beasts of the field.
" In the first year there appeared, from that part of the Erythraean
Sea which borders upon Babylonia, an animal endowed with leason by
name Oannes, whose whole body (according to the account of Apollo-
dorus) was that of a fish ; that under the fish's head he had another
head, with feet also below, similar to those of a man, subjoined to the
fish's tail. His voice too and language was articulate and human, and
a representation of him is preserved even to this day. This being was
accu?rtomed to pass the day among men, but took no food at that
season, and he gave them an insight into letters and arts of every kind.
He taught them to constract cities, to found temples, to compile laws,
and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He
made them showed them how to
distinguish the seeds of the earth, and
collect the fruits ; in short, he instnicted them in everything which
could tend to soften manners and humanize their laws. From that
time nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his
instructions. And when the sun had set this being, Oannes, retired
again into the sea, and passed the night in the deep for he was am- ;
phibious. After this there appeared other animals like Oannes, oi

which Berosus proposes an account when he comes to the history
to give
of the kings. Moreover, Oannes wrote concerning the generation of
*
mankind and of their civil polity."
The Chalda:an historian next gives the history of the ten first ante-
diluvian kings of Babylon — Alor
(Ram of Light), Alapar (Bull of
Light), Almelon of Sippara (the name of this town meaning " the city of
books," seems to be here rendered by its Greek equivalent, Pantibibla,
as it appears in the fragments of Berosus), Ammenon, Amelagar of
Sippara, Daon of Sippara, Aedorach of Sippara, Amempsin of Larsam,
Otiarte of Larsam, and lastly Xisuthrus. The legend of the cosmogomy
assigns them collectively 432,000 years of and places in their days
life,
four new manifestations of Oannes, and one of Bel Dagon, each of whom
had left to mankind a book explaining and completing that of the first
Oannes.
* Cory, Ancient Fragments, p. 22.

;
BABYLONIAN TRADITIONS. 503
"In the time of Xisuthrus happened a great deluge, the history of

which is thus described. The deity Chronus (the Greeks thus trans-
lated the ChaldcEo-Assyrian name Ilu), appeared to him in a vision, and
warned him that upon the 15th day of the month Dassius (Sivan) there
would be a flood, by which mankind would be destroyed. He therefore
enjoined him to write a history of the beginning, procedure, and con-
clusion of all things, and to bury it in the city of the sun at Sippara
and to build a vessel, and take with him into it his friends and
relations, and to convey on board everything necessary to sustain life,
together with all the different animals, both birds and quadrupeds, and
to trust himself fearlessly to the deep. Having asked the deity whither
he was to sail, he was answered, To the gods,' upon which he offered
'
up a prayer for the good of mankind. He then obeyed the divine

admonition, and built a vessel five stadia in length and two in breadth.
Into this he put everything which he had prepared, and last of all
conveyed into it his wife, his children, and his friends. After the flood
had been upon the eailh, and was in time abated, Xisuthrus sent out
birds from the vessel, which, not finding any food, nor any place where-
upon they might rest their feet, returned to him again. After an interval
of some days he sent them forth a second time, and they now returned
with their feet tinged with mud. He made a trial a third time with
these birds, but they returned no more, from w hence he judged that the
surface of the earth had appeared above the waters. He therefore
made an opening in the vessel, and upon looking out found that it was
stranded upon the side of some mountain, upon which he immediately
quitted it, with his wife, his daughter, and the pilot. Xisuthrus then
paid his adorations to the earth ; and having constioictcd an altar,
offered sacrifices to the gods, and with those who had come out of the
vessel with him disappeared.
"They who remained within, finding that their companions did not
return, quitted the vessel with many lamentations, and called continually
on the name of Xisuthrus. Him they saw no more, but they could
distinguish his voice in the air, and could hear him admonish them to
pay due regard to religion, and likewise informed them that it was upon
account of this that he was translated to live with the gods that his ;
wife and daughter and the pilot had obtained the same honour. To
this he added that they should return to Babylonia, and, as it was
ordained, search for the writings at Sippara, which they were to make
known to all mankind moreover, that the place wherein they then
;
were was the land of Armenia. The rest having heard these words
offered sacrifices to the gods, and taking a circuit journeyed towards
Babylonia. The vessel being thus stranded, some part of it yet remains
in the Gordyaan mountain of Armenia ; and the people scrape off the
bitumen with which it had been coated, and make use of it by way of
— ;

an alexipharmic and amulet. And when they returned to Babylon, and
'had found tlie writings at Sippara, they built cities and erected temples
and Babylon was thus inhabited again." *
4. We owe the preservation of the continuation of the narrative of

Berosus, not to the Greek chronologers, but to the Armenian historian,
Moses of Chorene.
" Before the Tower, and the multiplication of languages among man-
kind, after that Xisuthrus sailed to Armenia, Zervan, Titan and Japhetos
were the lords of the earth. Scarcely had they dix-ided the world among
them, when Zervan made himself lord over his two fellows. Titan and
Japhetos opposed themselves to him, and made war on him, for Zervan
wished to make his children reign over them all. In the conflict Titan
acquired possession of a part of the heritage of Zervan ; but their sister
Astlik interposed, and made peace between them.t Japhetos neces-
sarily recalls the
Japhet of the Bible; another fragment, also preserved
by Moses of Chorene, identifies Zervan with Shem. The name of Titan
seems a Greek translation of "Nimrod," "the rebel," the name given
by the Semites to the originator of the primitive preponderance of the
Hamite race at Babylon, clearly indicated in the narrative of Berosus
by the conquest of a part of the inheritance of Zervan by Titan.
5. The story of primitive and fabulous times, the preface to early
history, terminates in the work of the Chaldaean priest, who had trans-
lated into Greek the annals of his country, with the story of the Tower
of Babel and of the confusion of tongues. We have already quoted, J
in the first book of our Manual, the mention, apparently made in an
inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, of the restoration of a building to which
this tradition was attached. Berosus records this event as follows, in
complete agreement with the Bible, and with the words of Nebu-
chadnezzar :
"They say that the first inhabitants of the earth, glorying in their
own strength and and despising the gods, undertook to raise a
size,
tower whose top should reach the sky, in the place in which Babylon
now stands but when it approached the heaven, the winds assisted the
;
gods and overthrew the work upon its contrivers, and its ruins are said
to be still at Babylon ; and the gods introduced a diversity of tongues
among men, who till that time had all spoken the same language ; and
a war arose between Chronus and Titan. The place in which they built
the tower is now called Babylon, on account of the confusion of tongues,
for confusion is by the Hebrews called Babel." §
* Cory, Ancient Fragments, p. 26.

t MoiSE DE Khorene. Ilisioire d'Arminie. Texte Ai-menien, et
Traduction Franâise. Venise, 1841.
X Page 23. § Cory, Ancient Fragments, p. 34.
—
BABYLONIAN ART. 505
A story exactly similar is told by Moses of Chorene, not from Berosus,

but from another Greek work of Chaldaean origin, which he quoted
from a Syriac version.
Section VI. Arts.

1. All writers of antiquity concur in stating that Babylon was
always very superior to Nineveh in all that pertains to literary culture
and the sciences. All the notions of the Assyrians on science, all the
standard works of their literature, the best of their religious books,
came them from Chaldaea. But in all the plastic arts the Baby-
to
lonianshad not at any period the genius of their Ninevite neighbours,
and were always far behind them. Assyria was the birthplace of the
great school of ancient art, an art exercising deep and decisive influence
on the opening period of the Grecian school. Babylon and Chaldoea
had nothing to compare with this.
Undoubtedly Babylon, from the earliest days of its existence, from
the time of the Tower of Babel, its first example, had her own peculiar
architecture, imposing and grand in style from the very size of its con-
ceptions, but with no variety; for temples, palaces, and hanging gardens,
were all constructed as pyramids, in steps or terraces, one above the
other, and the upper smaller than the lower. This had been, as we have
already shown, the general type of the buildings of the first Chaldjean
empire, some of them still existing in our times. This, with no modifi-
cation at all, a thousand years later, when the Babylonian kingdom
regained its ancient glory and became preponderant
Western Asia,
in
was the invariable type of the buildings of Nebuchadnezzar. This
architecture, employing no materials but crude or burnt brick, exercised,
as we have shown, an absolute influence on that of Assyria, where it
was copied even to the materials employed, though better materials
were within easy reach. It seems, however, that the Assyrians intro-
duced a little more variety in the exterior forms of their buildings than
the Babylonians.
2. But if the Assyrians imitated the Babylonian architecture, their
sculpture, in which they excelled, was peculiar to themselves. They
represented human figures, and generally all living nature, with wonder-
ful correctness. The Babylonians could not do this and from the ;
remote period when the cylinder of king Urchammu was engraved,

down to the days of Nebuchadnezzar, the plastic arts seem to have
made no real progress. An eminent scholar, Etienne Quatremere, many
years ago remarked on the proportions of the colossal golden statue of
Nebuchadnezzar, that, as given in the Book of Daniel, they "prove
complete ignorance, entire forgetfulncss of the proportions between the
various parts of the human body," as the height was ten times the
breadth. Ami these are exactly the proportions to be found in llic
small number of remains of Babylonian art still preserved. No doubt

the relative proportions of the various parts of the human body are not
so accurately calculated or exactly observed in the works of Assyrian
sculptors as in those of the Egyptians, but tiie errors found in them are
nothing as compared to the really monstrous misproportions tiial seem
to have been the rule at Babylon. Babylonian and Assyrian art are,
moreover, so perfectly independent of each other that they each seem
to have taken the type of their own race as their model for the human
figure. In the Assyrian sculptures the figures are usually short, in
Babylonian works they are generally tall and thin.
All that we at present possess of monuments of Babylonian art con-
.sists of cylinders and other engraved stones, and a few enamelled bricks
with symbolical and religious subjects. Not only are the figures much
too tall, but their gestures are awkward and untrue to nature, the com-
position is rudimentary, everything is stiff, and lifeless, showing art
not yet advanced beyond a state of infancy. The execution of the
Babylonian cylinders is much less finished than that of the Assyrian.
3. Painting, either in the form of frescoes or of casings of enamelled
bricks, was the chief element in the decoration of Babylonian buildings.
Ctesias gives a long description of the ornamentation of the great royal
palace, attributed by him to Semiramis, but in reality dating from the
reign of Nebuchadnezzar. These represented the same hunting and
war scenes as the sculptures of the Assyrian palaces, and no doubt the
capture of Jerusalem was depicted there. Berosus, in a fragment we
have quoted,* gives some information as to the religious and cosmo-
graphical paintings in the temple of Bel, no doubt in the sanctuary.
Many pictures on enamelled bricks covered the exterior walls of build-
ings, with long inscriptions in painted cuneiform characters, a practice
that never seems to have prevailed in Assyria.
Coloured sculpture was also employed in the decoration of some
Babylonian edifices, such as the royal palace, and many such remains
have been found there. But this sculpture was not, as in Assyrian
palaces, executed in stone, but in enamelled bricks. A slab of clay
was taken sufficiently large to contain the whole subject intended to be
represented. On this slab a bas-relief was modelled, and it was then
cut into rectangles about 3 ins. X 5 ins., each forming one brick. The
pieces, respectively marked with their position in the picture, were
coloured separately with suitable pigments, and baked in a furnace.
They were then put together with mortar according to the marks pre-
viously made. These were the first rude essays in those Mosaics which,
in after times, the Greeks and Romans executed with such skill.
Stone of various sorts, usually of volcanic origin, such as basalt, was
* Page 501.
LIST OF THE KINGS OF ASSYRIA. 507
A colossal group
used in Baliylonian monuments, but only for statues.
has been found in the ruins of the palace at Babylon, in the Kasr,
representing a lion devouring a man. This, the only piece of Baby-
lonian sculpture that has been preserved, and apparently occupying a
place of honour in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar, is executed in a
wonderfully rude manner.
List of Assyrian Royal Names as given by-
M. Lenormant,
Manual of Oriental
History.
5oS ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST.
M. Lonormnnt,
;
INDEX TO VOL. I.
Aa-hotep, tomb of, and jewels, 225, 333 Addumu, Arab city, taken by Tiglath-
pilcser II., 390; by Esarhaddon, 408
Aaron meets with Moses, 94; makes
golden calf, 98 appointed High Priest,
;
Adloun (near Tyre), inscription of Ramses
II., 249
103 death, 107
;
Abdadana, part of empire of BinUkhish Admah, 82

III., 382 Adonai, see Aten
Abdillit, king of Aradus pays tribute to Adoni-Baal, king of Sidon, 380
Sennacherib, 398 Adonibezek, defeated by Hebrews, 115
Abdimilkut, king of Sidon escapes from Adonijah, son of David, revolts, 141 put ;
Esarhaddon, 404 to death by Solomon, 142

Abdon, Suffete or Judge of Hebrews, 122 Adonizedek, king of Jerusalem, in; de- i
Abijam succeeds Rehoboam war with ; featand death, 112

Israel ; death, 15-2 Adoraim, city in Judah, taken by Shishak,
Abimelech iking of Gerar), 85, 86 274
Abimelech (son of Gideon), 121 Aedorach, antediluvian king of Sipparah,
Abner, commander of Saul's army, 133; 502
proclaims Ishbosheth, 136 murdered by ; Aegistus, king of Idalium, tributary to
Joab, 137 Esarhaddon, 407
Abraham intercedes for Sodom resides at ; Africa, alteration of white race in, 51 tn-
Gerar, 84 returns to Mamre
;
com- ; bute from to Thothmes III., 233; cir-
manded to offer up Ibaac sends Eleazar ; cumnavigation of, 285
to Mesopotamia, 85 second marriage, ; Affiliation of nations, table of, 57
death, and burial, 86 Agglutinated languages, 68
Abram, call of, 80 leaves Haran, goes to;
Agises, heads rebellion at Babylon, 397
Egypt, returns to Bethel, separates from
Lot, 81 defeats Chedorlaomer
;
cove- ; Ahab succeeds Omri as king of Israel, 156;
nant, 82 takes Hagar
;
name changed ; Jezebel his wife's idolatry, 157; victories
to Abraham, 83 over Benhidri II., 158; treaty with
Syrians, 159; assists Syrians with 10,000
Absalom, son of David, revolts, defeat,
men against AssjTians, 159, 380: Naboth,
and death, 140
159; Jehoshaphat, 160; expedition to
Abyate, Arab general, 413; flayed alive,
Ramoth, 160; death, 161 extinction of ;
414 family, 165

Abydos, tablet 200; temple, 242, 336;
of,
Ahaz succeeds Jotham as king of Judah ;
buildings of ii. Ramses

245 ,
war with Ashariah, son of
Israel ;
Abyssinia, subdued by ThothmesIII., 230; Tabeal, 172, 389 treats with Assyrians,
;
revolt repressed by Ramses III., 267. 172, 389; attends court of Tiglath-
Accad, race, 342, 344; city, 348; supre- Pileser at Damascus, 173, 390 Assyrian j
macy of, altar death, 173

355 ;
Accho, submits to Sennacherib, 39S; taken Ahaziah succeeds Jehoram as king of

by Asshurbanipal, 40S Judah ; at Ramoth his death, 164
;
Achseans, invade Egypt and are defeated, Ahaziah succeeds Ahab as king of Israel
260 fall and illness, 161 death, 162 ;
Adam, descendants of, 4; city, 112 Ahijah, predicts separation of

prophet,
Adar [Saturn], 454 Samdan, 455 ; ;
[Ninip, Israel and Judah, 146; reproaches
455, n.] temple of, 485 Jeroboam with idolatry, 151
Adar-pal-ashir, king of Assyria, 373 Ahmes (king of Egypt), 223 expels Shep- ;
herds, 224 Nubian alliance ; restoration

Adar-samdan, inscription in temple of, 377
;
Sio INDEX.
of temples, 225 ; follows Slicplierds to Amcn-hotop I. subdues Shasu, Palestine,

Palestine, 226 and Ethiopia, 228
Ahmes (general), record of his wars with Amen-hotep IT., campaigns in Mesopo-
Shepherds, 224 ; with Ethiopia, 228 tamia ; inscriptions, 236
Ahmes Kgypt [Amasis]), dethrones
(king of Amen-hotcp III., conquests in Asia and
Uahprahtt, 286 his sayings, commerce;
; Africa, 236; slave hunts ; buildings; in-
builds temples, 288 scriptions; known as Memnon, 237;
Aholiab, directs work on tabernacle, 103, tomb. 333
105 Amen-hotep IV., wars, 237; religious in-
Ai, capture of, iii. novations, 238, 337 change of name, ;
Aipaksina, Susianian god, 412 238

Ajalon, taken by Shishak, 274 Amen-i, tomb of,217
Akhimit, made king of Ashdod by Sargon, Amen-iritis, .sister of Shabaka, wife of
Piankhi II., 238
394
Akkerkuf, ruins at, 356 Amen-meri-nut, king of Ethiopia, invades
Egypt and retires, 282
Alabaster, use of in Assyrian buildings,
457 Amenmeses usurps throne of Egypt, 262
Alapar, antediluvian king of Babylon, 502 Amen-tu-tankh, king of Egypt, 239
Albania, part of empire of Binlikhish III., Anierica, source of population, 16 ; tradi-
382; wars of Sargon in, 394; wars of tions of deluge, 17 ; physiognomy of red
Sennacherib in, 398 men, 52 ; languages, 67
Albordj, mount, 20 Amida rebels against Shalmaneser IV.,
Alexander attemps 381
to re-build Babylon,
SOI Ammankashibar, Susianian god, 412
Alexandria, foundation of, 195 Ammelagar, antediluvian king of Sippara,
Alfourou, race ; physical characteristics of,
502
52 Ammenon, antediluvian king of Sippara,
Algeria, Egyptian remains in,
502
235
Allabria, part of empire of Binlikhish III.,
Ammonites, origin, 84 oppress Hebrews, ;
121: allied with Philistines, 126; de-

382
feated by Saul, 131 defeated by David,
Almelon, antediluvian kmg of Sippara, 502
;
139; subdued by Uzziah, 168 by Jo- ;
Alor, antediluvian king of Babylon, 502 tham, 171 pay tribute to Sennacherib,
:
Altar, Assyrian, 175 398 revolt from Chaldaians, 188 ; in-

;
Alun, see Elon vaded by Nebuchadnezzar, 478

Amada, temple at, 235, 236 Amnon, son of David death, 140 ;
Amalekites attack Hebrews in desert, 97 ;

Amon succeeds Manasseh as king of
defeated by Saul, 133 inhabiting the ;
Judah ; death, 182
border of Egypt, 227 Amorites occupy Kedesh ; defeated by
Amanus, Tiglath-pileser I. at, 375; As.shur- Seti I., 243 ; revolt against Ramses II.,
nazirpal at, 378 ; Shalmaneser IV. at, 249 make war on Hebrews,
; iii
380 Amos, the prophet, 169
Amarsin, king of Chaldasa, 355 Amram, mound at Babylon, 480
Amasis, see Ahmes Amiaphel, king of Shinar, 82, 352
Amathus, king of, a tributary of Esar- Amten, tomb of, 205
haddon, 407 Amytis, queen of Nebuchadnezzar, 480
Amaziah succeeds Jehoash as king of Anarian, or Ninevite, cuneiform writing,
Judah war with Idumaea takes Petra
: ; ;
war with Israel, 167; taken prisoner; 433

death at Lachish, 168 Anat, or Anaitis, female form of god Anu,
Amempsin, antediluvian king of Larsam, 454
502 Andiu, subject to Binlikhish III., 382
Amen, supreme god of Thebes, 324 ; high Anebos mentioned as king of Assyria by
priests of usurp government, 270 retire ;
Moses of Chorene, 371
to Ethiopia, 273; invade Egypt, 276 Animals, domestic, remains of, 33, 34, 35 ;
Ameneman, papyrus describing

his the worship of in Egypt, 325
miseries of the Egyptians, 258 Anks-en-ranofrehet, daughter of Psamme-
Amen-em-he III., builder of labyrinth, tik II., wife of Ahmes, 286
215, 333 name

; common in fourteenth Annamim, or Anu, 202 ; subdued by Snefru
d)masty, 214 and Khufu, 205
INDEX. 5"
Anon, or Bnon, Shepherd king, 221 Archies, Shepherd king, 221
Ansapata, Susianian god, 412 Ardys succeeds Gyges as king of Lydia,
Anthropology, 52, 53 409
Anthropomorphism of Egyptian religion, Argo, colossus in Isle of, 218
319 Aria, subject to Tiglath-pileser II., 391
Antiquity of the human race, 3 Arians, traditions of, 15 language, 73 ; ;
Anu, see Annamim migrations, 343 supremacy at Babylon, ;
351, 355
Anu, see Cannes
' Ariel,king of Soli tributary to Esarhaddon,
Anugas, city of Rotennu, 249
407
Ao, or Bin, Assyrian deity, 453 Arioch, king of Ellasar, 82, 252
Apamea, legend about the Ark, 16 Aiistocratic government of Egypt, 208,
Apap, see Apophis 296
Apepi, Shepherd king, the Pharaoh of Ark of Noah, 16 of Xisuthrus, 503 :
Joseph, 8g, 221, 223 Ark of the Covenant, 99, 104 at Shiloh, ;
Aphek, defeat of Hebrews by Philistines 114; taken by the Philistines, 127, 271 ;
at, 127 at Kirjath-jearim, 127 at Jerusalem, ;
Apis, Bull, golden calf imitation of, 98 ;

138
worship of, 32S Ark of Chons, in Mesopotamia, 271
Apology, or negative confession in ritual, Armenia, inhabitants Remenen, 228 ; sub-
312 dued by Thothmes III., 230, 234; sub-
Apophis, serpent, enemy of Horns, 320, dued by Seti I., 242, 243 revolt under ;
322 Ramses 248 expeditions of Asshur-

II., ;
nazirpal, 378 of Salmaneser IV., 379,

:
Apophis, king, see Apepi

381 of Shamash-bin, 382
; of Shalman- ;
Apries, see Uahprahet eser v., 385 of Tiglath-pileser II., 389;

;
Arabs, tradition as to primitive kings, 13; Syrians transported there, 173, 390; Sar-
physical characteristics, 51 language, ; gon's campaign, 394; Sennacherib's wars,
71 subdued by Osortasen I., 214 by
; ; 398 cuneiform writing, 433
;
Thothmes III., 230 by Uzziah, 168 : ; Armit, city taken by Sargon, 394
expedition of Tiglath-pileser II., 390; of
Army, Hebrew,
158; Egyptian, 291;
Esarhaddon, 405, 406 rebellion of ;
Assyrian, 422 Babylonian, 487 ;
Ywaite, 409 defeat of Arabs, 413, 414

; :
king assists Asshurbanipal in invasion of Arnon, Hebrews at, 107

Egypt, 280 employed as mercenaries by
; Arpad, besieged three years by Tiglath-
Psammetik, 284 expedition of Nebu-
; pileser II., 389 revolt, 393 ;
chadnezzar, 478 Arphaxad, son of Shem ancestor of

Arachosia, see Arakuttu Hebrews, 60
Aradus taken by Thothmes III., 233 re- ;
Arrapkha, rebels against Shalmaneser IV.,
volts from Ramses 249; taken by
II., 381
Tiglath-pileser I., 375 pays tribute to ; Arrakhu, revolt at Babylon under, 490
Asshurnazirpal, 378 to Sennacherib,
;
primitive, 29 ;
Art, original inventors, 4 ;
398 taken by Asshurbanipal, 408

;
Egyptian, 209, 327 early Chaldaean, ;
Arakuttu, subject to Tiglath-pileser 11., 363 ; Assyrian, 456 ; Babylonian, 505

391 Arvand, river, 20
Aral, lake, primitive centre of Turanians,
Aryanam Vacdjo, 20, 21
343
Asa, succeeds Abijam king of Judah, 152 ;
Aram, son of Shcm, 60 language ; of destroys idols: defeats Zcrah, 153; bribes
people, 70, 227
king of Syria to invade Lsrael takes ;
Aram, high land of Pale.stine, 8i Ramah, 154 imprisons prophet death,

; ;
Ararat, mount, situation of, 19 155

Arbaces the i\Icde, revolt
470 of, 385, ;
Ascalon, taken by Egyptians from Khitas,
retires after capture of Nineveh, 387 254 Philistines allowed to settle near,
;
Arbela revolts from Shalmaneser IV., 381 267; untaken by Hebrews, 113 taken ;
by Philistines, 124, 272 trophies of Saul ;
Arbehis named as kmg of Assyria, by deposited there, 136; captured by Sen-

Moses of Chorene, 371 nacherib, 399 plundered by Scythians,;
Arch, Assyrian, 460 184

Archaeolithic epoch, 24 Asenath, Joseph's wife, 90
Archaic cuneiform writing, 434 Ashariah, son of Tabeal, 172, 389
Architecture, Egj'ptian, 209, 216 Assyrian, ; A.shdod, untaken by Hebrews, 113; Ram-
457 ; Babylonian, 505 ses III. allows Philistines to settle
;; ; ;; ;;
512 INDEX.
there, 367; taken by Philistines, 124, 377; conquest of Babylon, Syria, etc.,
272 ; of Covenant there, 127
Ark taken : 378; bronze dishes, 363; palace at Calah,
by Uzziah, 168 by 'I'iglath-pileser II.,
; 377 statue, 377
;
390 by Sargon, 394 tribute to Sen-

; ; Asshur-rish-ishi, king of Assyria, 117 n.,
nacherib, 398 taken by Psammeticus,
;
374 puts down revolt in Babylon, 374,
;
184, 285 ^ ., . 469

Asher, son of Jacob, 87 territory of tribe, ;
Asshur-u-balat, kingof As.syria ;
expedition
"3 to Babylon, 372, 408
Ashtaroth, worship of, by Solomon, 145 ;
A.ssyria, power dreaded by Shepherd kings,

byAhab,i57; by lManasseh,i8i. 6VfIshtar
22I : first empire; legend of Ninus and
Ashteroth-karnaim, 108 Semiramis, 364, 370; subordinate to
Ashkenaz, son of Shem; ancestor of Ger- Chaldaja, 356 ; invaded by Thothmes I.,
manic races, 61, 235 228, 360; by Thothmes III., 233, 361;
Asia Minor, coasts subjugated by Thoth- by Amenhotep II., 236; subject to Seti
mes III., 235; people assist Khitas I., 242, 243; revolt against Ramses II.,
against Ramses II., 249 campaigns of ; 248; subject to Ramses II., 266,362 I ;
Asshurnazirpal, 378 of Sargon, 393 ; rise of power Asshur-bel-nishishu ;
of Sennacherib, 404 of Asshurbanipal, ; Bushur-asshur, 371, 468 Asshur-u-balat :
invades Babyltm Bellikhish Budiel ;

408 ;
Assaracus, last king of Assyria kills him- ; Binlikhish; Shalmaneser I.; Tuklat-
self at capture of Nineveh, 416, 472 samdan I.: provinces, 372, 469; revolt of
Belkudurussur, 469; Adarpalashir and
As.sa-tat-kera, king of Egypt, 209
Ramses XII., 373; Mutakkil-Nabu ;
Asshur, son of Shem, 59. Asshur-rish-ishi; foreign conquest Tig- ;
A,s.shur, or Ellasar [Kileh-Sherghat], identi- lath-pileser I.; expedition; alliance with

fication of, 349 n. king pays tribute to ;
Her Hor, 272, 374 defeat by Baby- ;
Thothmes III.; defeat of Binbaliddm at, lonians, 375; Asshur-bel-kala; Shamshi-

373 fortified
; by Shalmaneser IV.,
379, bin; Belkatirassu Beletaras) Shalman- i
:
469; rebellion, 381 eser II.; Irib-bin Asshur-idinakhe; ;
Asshur, supreme god of Assyria, 453 Asshuredililani conquest of Media; ;
winged figure, 453 n. Binlikhish, 376; Tuklat-.samdan II.;

Asshur-nazir-pal palace statue; inscrip- :
Asshur-a-bamar, king of Assyria, 376 ;
tion, 377 conquest of Babylon and

;
As.shurbanipal, king of Assyria, succeeds Northern Syria, 37S, 469; Shalmaneser

Esarhaddon; marches to Egypt, 279, IV.; expeditions; Benhidri, 379; power
407, 471; conquest and
evacuation of
feared in Western Asia, 166 e.>ipeditions, ;
country, 280 second and third campaign

159, 380; Hazael and Jehu;
;
revolt, 166,
in Phoenicia and Ciiicia, embassy from
381; Shamash-bin revolt suppressed;
Lydia, 408 great rebellion, 409 war in
;
;
Binlikhish III., 382, 470; expeditions;
Babylonia and Susiana, 410, 411, 412 ;
his wife Sammuramat, 384 Shalmaneser ;
war in Arabia and Syria, 413 his record ;

V. at Damascus and Armenia Asshur- ;
of invasion of Kedor-nakhunta, 352 insurrection eclipse of sun

edililani : ; ;
Greek names, 414 palace, 415 prayer,

; ;
Asshur-likhish, 385 Arbaces and Phul ; ;
418 sculptures, 430

;
siege of Nineveh, 386, 470 fall and de- ;
Asshur-bel-kala, king of Assyria, 376 struction of city, 3S7 Phul and Mena- ;
Asshur-bel-nishi-shu, first king of Assyria ; hem, 170, 172 Tiglath-pileser II. ex- ; ;
treaty with Babylon, 371, 468 peditions to Babylonia Syria Census, ; ;
Asshur-daninpal, second son of Shalman- 389 Damascus and Philistine cities

;
taken court of kings at Damascus

eser IV., revolts, 381, 469; subdued by
;
Shamash-bin, 382 transportation of Lsrael, 172, 173, 390

campaigns in Aria and Syria ;
Shalman-
Asshur-dayan, king of Assyria; throws eser VI. revolt of Israel, 391 Sargon
;
; ;
off Egyptian yoke, 374 defeat of Susianians Samaria

eclipse ;
;
Asshur-edililani I., king of Assyria, 376 taken battle of Raphia, 175, 278, 392
;
;
Asshur-edililani II., king of Assyria^ 3S5 Gaza taken from Arabia and ; tribute
Egj'pt war in Asia Minor, Karkar, and
Asshur-edililani III., king of Assyria and ;
Babylon defeats Medes, 415, 471 Van, 393 in Armenia capture of Ash- ; ;
dod, 394; tribute from Milukhi war in

;
Asshur-idinakhe, king of Asyria, 376 Cornmagene, Albania, and Babylonia ;
Asshur-likhish [Asshur-tanagbal], king of Dur-Vakin taken, 395, 47° tribute :
Assyria, 385, 470 rebellion of Arbaces ;

from Cyprus J yre attacked, 396 Dur ; ;
and Phul, 385 defeat of Assyrians, 386 ;

;
Sharyukin built murder of Sargon ; ;
fall and destruction of Nineveh, 387 Sennacherib wars in Chalda;a, Armenia, ;
Asshur-nadin, son of Sennacherib, king of Media, and Syria, 398 battle with ;
Babylon, 400 death, 401 ;

Egyptians; Hezekiah, 177, 178, 399;
siege of Jerusalem disaster to army,
Asshur-nazirpal, son of Tuklat-samdan II.,
;
179, 278, 400; Asshur-nadin

viceroy of
king of Assyria campaigns eclipse, ; ;
; ;
INDEX. 513
Babylon, 400 ; wars : Nineveh rebuilt, Azuri, king of Ashdod, dethroned by

401 ;
of Baby'on,
rebellion, 402 ; s-ack Sargon, 394
403, 471 Esarhaddon in Phoenicia, 404
; ;
Araziash, part of empire of Binlikhish III.,
Alanasseh wars round Black Sea, in
;
382
Babylonia, and Arabia, 403, 406 Cyprus ;
and Egypt, 182, 278, 279, 407 Asshur- ;
banipal, 407 in Egj^pt, Phoenicia, and ; B.

at Tyre embassy from l^ydia, 408
; ;
great rebellion, 409, 471 Susa taken, ; Baal, worship of by Ahab and Jezebel,
410, 411, 412 war in Arabia, 413 Greek ; ;
157 Ahaziah consults oracle, 161 Atha-
; ;
names, 414 inscription, 352 Asshur- ; ; liah establishes worship at Jerusalem,

edililani Medes defeated, 415 Assa-
; ;
165 overthrown by Jehoiada, 165 re-
: ;
racus Babylonians and Medes combine,

; established by iManasseh, 181
416 fall of jNineveh, 416, 475 organi-
; ;
Baal, king of Tyre, submits to Asshur-
sation of empire, 417 titles of kings, ;
banipal, 408
348, 373. 418 palaces, 418, 419, 458 ; ;
Baalath built by Solomon, 143

government, 419 chanceries, 420 peti- ; ;
tions, 421 eponyms and military ad-

;
Baali, king of Upri, tributary to Esar-
ministration, 377, 422 classes, 423 ; ; haddon, 407
laws, 424 domestic life, 425 ;
manners, ; Baasa, king of Ammon, 380
religion, arts, 426-430; language, 70, Baasha assassinates Nadab, and becomes
342 writing, 431 syllabaiium, 436 ;
; ;
king of Israel,
literature and science books, 444 ;
medicine and magic, 447 Babel, towerof, 7, 22, 341, 482, 504
library, 445 ; ;
astronomy, mensuration, notation, 449, Babios mentioned as king of Assyria, by

450 j'ear, 450;
months, 451 religion, ; ; Moses of Chorene, 371
452 arts, 457 ;
winged bulls, 450 ob- ; :
Babylon, name of, 24 empire, 211 city ; ;
servatories, 463 sculpture, 465 paint- ; ;

of Rotennu, 227 subject to Thothmes ;
ing, 467 list of kings, 507.

; See also III., 234, 361; submits to Seti I., 243;
Chaldasa, Babylon, Nineveh one of the cities of Chaldsean Tetrapolis,
Astamaku taken by Shalmaneser IV., 380 348 early civilisation, 350
; Cushite ;
Babylonian, 494, dynasty, 351 Medes, or Iranians, 351 ;

Astrology, Assyrian, 463 ;
;
subordinate to Ur, 355 Karatadash ; ;

498 Burnaburyash, 371 Karahardash Na- ; ;
Astronomy, EgjTJtian, 316 Chaldasan, ;

zibugash Kurigalzu, 372, 46S taken by ;
359 Assyrian, 448, 463

;
Tuklat-samdan I. ; revolt and success,
Astj'ages, a name given to Cyaxares, 472 373, 469 ; taken by Tiglath-pile.ser I.,
Atavism, 56 375, by Asshurnazirpal, 378
469 ; by ;
Shalmaneser IV., 380 by Shamash-bin, ;
Aten, or Adonai, worship of, 238

Sammuramat queen, 3S4 revolt
382 ; ;
Athaliah, daughter of Jezebel, 160 leads ; under Phul, 3S6 Nabonassar, 470 sub- ; ;
Jehoram to idolatry, 163 murders her ; jugated by Tiglath-pileser II., 389; by

grandchildren usurps kingdom death, ; ; Sargon, 395 Agises, 397 Merodach ; ;
165 Baladan Belibus. 398 revolt Asshur-

; ; ;
Athribisreceives Assyrian name, 278 ; nadin, 400 revolt against Sennacherib,

;
Psammetik king, 280 401 Irigibel

; Mesisimordach Suzub ; ; ;
defeat of rebels, 402 second defeat of

Ati, king of Egypt, 210 ;
Suzub sack of Babylon, 403

; Esar- ;
Atum, personification of sun at night, 319 revolt of Shaniash-ibni,

haddon, 404 ;
Avaris, city of Shepherds, 221, 356 405 works of Esarhaddon, 406 Sha-
; ;
Aurignac, sepulchral grottoes at, 29 mulshamugin, 407 revolt Nabubel- ; ;
shum defeat of ChaKaeans, 409 sub-

; ;
Australia, aboriginal traditions, 18

mission of Shamulshamugin, 410 who is ;
Aym, Arab general, 409 ; flayed alive by dethroned by Asshur-edililani Nabopo- ;
Asshurbanipal, 414 lassar, 184, 415, 471 Nitocris works ; ;
Aza, king of Van, murdered by his sub- erected by, 473 Nebuchadnezzar fall ; ;
jects, 393 of Nineveh, 416, 473 campaign in ;
Azariah, prophet, encourages Asa, 154 Syria Jerusalem, 187, 476 capture and
; ;
destruction of that city Phccnicia, 190, ;
Azariah, companion of Daniel in captivity,

477 campaign in Idumea and Arabia,
:
187 Evil-Mcrodach, 487 Nergalsarus-

478 ; ;
Azariah, king, see U;:ziah sur Laborosoarchod

; Nabonahid, 488 ; ;
Azbaal made king of Aradus by Asshur- defeat by Cyrus capture of Babylon, ;
banipal, 408 489 revolt of Nidintabel city taken by

: ;
Azerch-amen (Zerah\ king of Ethiopia, Darius, 490 insurrection Xer.xes ; ;
invades Egypt and Palestine ; defeated Alexander Seleucida; complete ruin of ; ;
by Asa, 153, 274 Babylon, 491

L L
514 INDEX,
Babylon, cuneiform writing, 433 syllaba- ; Beni-hassan, tombs at, 2t6, 233
rium, 436 sacred books, 444 medicine,
; ;
Benhidri bribed by Asa to invade Israel,
447 buildings, 478
; palaces, gardens,
;
154
temples, 365, 478, 482, 4S4 Hiliat, outer ;
Benhidri defeated by Shalmaneser IV.,

city, 481 : manners and religion, 492,
Chalda;an caste, 493 commerce, 379, 380; murdered by liazacl, 163, 381
497 ; ;
roads, 496 rivers, canals, ships, Benjamin, son of Jacob, 87 ; defeat and
495 ; ;
slaughter of tribe, 116

497 licentiousness, 498, 490 cosmogony,
; ;
500 Cannes and antedduvian kings,

; Ben Tabeal, see Ashariah
502 art and architecture, 505 sculp-
; ;
Bent-anat, daughter of Ramses II., 256
ture and painting, 506
Berber, race, 51
Babylon in Egypt, 257
Berezat, Mount, 20
Bactrians, Japhetic race, 61
Bet-dakkurri, Shama-sh-ibni besieged in,
Badaca, see Madaktu
Beth-anath taken by Egyptians,
Bagamar, Susianian god, 412
Bagistan, see Behistun
Bethel, name
of, 87 taken by Ephraim- ;
ites, golden calf set up, 151 taken

IIS ; ;
Bagota, inundation in, 14 by Abijam, 152

Balaam, 109 Beth-horon, battle of, in, 112 taken by
;
Balak, king of Moab, 108 defeat of, 109 ; Shishak, 274

Balazu, see Phul Bethlehem, Rachel dies at, 88
Balikh, river, Shalmaneser IV. at, 379 Bet Yakin, revolt at migration of inhabit-
;
Baneteren, king of Egypt, 204 ants, 402
Ba-n-ded, name of Mendes, 326 Bet Zitti submits to Sennacherib, 398
Banun, Susianian city, taken by Asshur- Beyrut, bone caves near, 30 inscription ;
banipal, 412 of Ramses II., 249 ; Egyptian officer at,

Barak defeats Sisera, 119, 120 256
Bashan, conquest of, 108 Bezaleel directs work on Tabernacle, 103,
105
Bas-reliefs, Egyptian, 328 ; Assyrian, 465
Bezek, defeat of Canaanites at, 115
Bazri, expedition of Esarhaddon to, 406
Biban-el-moluk, see Thebes
Beersheba, Hagar at, 85
Bible chronology, 39, 46 ; science, 46
Behistun, sculptures ascribed to Semiramis,
Bilit, or Mj'litta, female form of Bel, 454
368, 369 great inscript'on of Darius,
;
;
temple, 4S4 worship, 499
;
432
Beit Walli, inscriptions of Ramses II., 248 Bilit Taauth, 354, 499
Bel, Assyrian deity, 453 temple, 482, 485. Bin, or Ao, Assyrian deity, 453 ; temple,
;
See Bel-Merodach 484, 485

Belbaliddin, Babylonian general, 378 Bin-baliddin, king of Babylon, defeats
and king of Assyria
kills defeated at ;
Belbitinic, mouth of the Nile, 194 Ellasar, 373, 404, 469
Bel-Dagon, books of, 502 Binlikhish I. (Bintanagbal), king of As-
Belesis, see Phul syria, 372, 470 name, 507 n.
;
Beletaras, see Belkatirassu Binlikhish II. first appointed eponyms, 376

Bellas, see Balikh Binlikhish III., extent of empire, 382;
Belibus made governor of Babylon by Sen- wars Syria and Media ; statue
in his ;
nacherib, 398 wife Sammuramat, 383

Belkatirassu murders Asshurabamar, and Birs Nimrud, 23
usurps throne of Assyria, 376 Bithaiah, "daughter of Pharaoh which
Belkudurussur, king of Assyria, defeated Mered took," 337
and killed by Babylonians, 373, 469 Black races, habitat of, 54 physiognomy, ;
Bellabarisruk, regent of Babylon, 486 55 not mentioned by Moses, 64

;
Bellabarisruk, king of Babylon, 488 Black Sea, Egyptian fleet on, 235 Esar- ;
Bel-likhish (Beltanagbal), king of Assyria, haddon's campaign, 405

372 Bnon, see Anon
Bel-Merodach, temple, 480 ; v/orship of, Boat, sacred, 312, 320
499 Bokenranf (Bocchoris), king of Egypt,
Belsharussur left in command of Babylon, 276, 277
489 killed, 490
;
Book of the Dead, see Funereal Ritual
Belshazzar, see above
Books, Assyrian, on clay tablets, 445
Benhadad, see Benhidri and note, p. 154 grammars, etc., 446, 447
;
INDEX. 515
Boorlos, Lake, 195 some remain, 113 coast cities uu-

still ;
Borneo, traditions of creation, 9 take 115

n, non-intervention of Egyp-
;
tians) 264 final subjugation by Solomon,

Borsippa, 24 enclosed in wall of Babylon,
;
;
143. See also Syria

482 Nabonahid retires there, 489 sur-
; ;
renders to Cyrus, 490 worship of Bel- ; Red Sea, 245

Canal, from Nile to ; recom-
Mcrodach, 499 menced by Necho, 285
Boulders, erratic, 44 Canal, Assyrian, 427 Babylonian, ; 485,
Brick buildings in Chaldsea, 358 Assyria, ;
497
457 Babylonia, 506
; Canopic mouth of Nile, 194
Brittany, fibrolite axes found in, 32 Carchemish, name of, 22 Thothmes I. at, ;
Bronze, implements in lake dwellings, 34 ; 229; revolts against Ramses II., 249;
Assyrian work in, 427 Thothmes III. fortifies, 232, 363: de-
stroyed by .Shalmaneser IV., 380 tri-
Bubastis, twenty-second dynasty from, 273 ;
;
Asiatic names, 273 sacred cats buried

;
bute to Tiglath-pileser II., 389 ; Necho
at, 325
marches on, 184, 285 defeat of ; Necho
at, 1S6, 285
Bubilu, Susianian city, taken by Asshur-
banipal, 412 Carians, Hamitic people, 58
Bucolic mouth of Nile, 194 Carnivora, period of great, 28

Budiel, king of Assyria, 372 Caroline Islands, traditions of, 11
Bulls,winged Assyrian, 459 Carthage, government by Suffetes (judges),

Bundehesh, sacred book of Zoroastrians, 117 submits to Nebuchadnezzar, 477
;
10, 75 Carving by primitive men, 29

Bur-el-salki, eponym, eclipse, 3S5 Caspian Sea, Tiglath-pileser I. at, 375 ;
Burial of dead, in Egj-pt, 300, 321 ; in Shalmaneser IV. at, 381 Tiglath-pileser :
Babylon, 492 II. at, 389, 391
Burnaburyash, king of Chalda;a, 354, 355, Caste, in Egypt, 289 ; the various classes,
371. 372. 468 290
Bushmen, physiognomy of, 52 Caste, in Assyria, 423 ; in Babylonia, 493
Bushur Asshur, king of Assyria, 371, 468 Catlin, Mandan traditions, 18
Byblos, Phoenician city, faithful to Ramses Cats, sacred, 325 ; killed by Roman sol-
II., 249 Egyptian officer at, 256 tribute
; ;
dier, 326
to Asshurnazirpal, 378 to Shalmaneser ;
Caucasus, wars of Sargon, 394 ; slaves
IV., 381 ; Sibitbaal king, 389
from, 425
Celts, Japhetic race, 61
Chalaos, mentioned as king of Assyria by
Cadiz, see Gades Moses of Chorene, 371
Cadytis (Kadesh), taken by Necho, 185 n.,
Chaldaea, traditions, 12, 14, 341, 502 fer- ;
262
tility, 340 inliabitants, 341, 342
; early ;
Caffres, physiognomy of, 51 history, 227, 347, 349 civilisation, 350 ;

;
Calah, insurrection of Phul, 386 one of ; Median dynasty, 351 Ch.aldsean dy- ;
the cities of Tetrapolis, 348, 349 bronze ; nasty, 352, 468 ancient kings, 354 ; ;
dishes from, 363 palace of Shalmaneser

; Susianian dynasty, 355, 468 royal canal, ;
II. temple of Adar Samdan, 377 pa-

; ; 356; queen, 357; subdued by Seti I.,
lace of Shalmaneser IV. bronze throne ;
243 revolt against Ram.ses II., 248
; ise ;
from, 427 of power, 285 Egyptian and Arab dy-

;
Calasyrians, warrior class in Egypt, 291 nasties, 361, 4G8 independence of A.s- ;
syria, 360 monuments, 353, 357 build-

;
Caleb, one of the spies, 106 ;
ings, 358 tombs, 359 astronomy, 360

; ;
Calf, golden, made by Aaron, 9S ; set up caste, 493 art, 363

; writing, 433. See ;
at Dan and Bethel, 151 Babylon, Mesopotamia

Calneh, same as Ur, 80, 348 ; taken by
Chalybes, 37 supply AssjTia with
; steel,
Sennacherib, 398
427
Cambyses, invasion of EgyTSt, 326 Chanceries, Assyrian, 420
Camel, unknown in Egj'pt, 205 Characene, see Kar Dunyash
Canaan, son of Ham, 58 Chedorlaomer, expedition to Palestine, 82,
Canaan, land of invasion by Ahmes, 226
; ;
10s, 352, 355
condition of the country, 227 invasion ;
Chefren, see Shafra
of Amenhotep, 228 of Thothmes I., ;
229; of Thothmes III., 231 of Ramses :

Chemosh, tower of, 22 ; worship of by
I., 241 of Seti I 243 of Ramses II.,
; , ;
Solomon, 145
249 ; people make war on Hebrews, iii ;
Cheops, see Kufu
L L 2
:
5i6 INDEX.
Cherethites, or Cretans, a name given to Cretans [see Cherethites], subdued by

the Philistines, 124 Thothmcs III., 235; by Pelasgl, 259
Cherub, 104, 459 (Kiriib) Crocodile, sent by Pinetsem to Tiglath-
pilcscr I., 272, 375 ; worship of, 325
Chev, city, Amcnnieses assumes the crown,
262 Cromlechs, 32
Chinese traditions, 13 Ctesiphon, building of, 491
Chnuphis, or Num, 320 Cuneiform writing, 345, 431; varieties, 433;
originally hieroglyphic, 434 hieratic ; ;
Chbaspes, src Itite
cursive, 434 phonetic, 435 syllabarium,
; ;
Chomasbelus, king of Chaldaea, 349 43f'

Chons, son of Amen, 324 adventures of ;
Curium, king of; tributary to Esarhaddon,
ark of, 271
407
Chord of Circle, Assyrian divisions of, 449 Cursive cuneiform writing, 435
Chronology of Bible, 40, 41, 114 Cush, son of Ham
Ethiopians, 57;
Chu-en Aten (Amenhotep IV.), religious Cutha, taken by Sennacherib, 398 temples ;
revolution, 238, 337 at, 484, 485 worship of Nona or Zar-

;
Chushan-rishathaim, 117 n., 272 panit, 499

Cilicians, Eg^fptians attack, 254 wars of ;
Cyaxares, succeeds Phraortes besieges :
Sargon, 394 campaign of Asshurbanipal,

; Nineveh, 415, 472
408 of Sennacherib, 404
;
Cylinders, engraved seal, 359, 468, 492,
Cimmerians submit to Esarhaddon, 405 ;
506 ;Tuklat-samdan's captured, 373
invade Lydia defeated by Lydians and ; Shalmaneser's re-captured by Sennache-
Assyrians, 408 summoned by Asshur- ;
rib, 404
banipal to invade Lydia, 409 Cyprus, subdued by Thothmes III., 235 ;
Circle, Assyrian divisions of, 449 n. submission to Sargon, 396 to Esar- ;
Citium, king of, tributary to Esarhaddon, haddon, 407

407 inscription, 396
; Cyrus, king defeats and kills Neriglissar,
Civilisation, human origin of, 43 Egyptian, ; 4S8 ; defeats Nabonahidand takes Baby-
289 Chaldtean, 357
;
Assyrian, 417, ;
lon, 489
Babylonian, 492 Cyrus, river, see Kur
Clay tablets, Assyrian writing on, 434 ;
books of, 445

Climate, in Quaternary period, 26 influ- ;
D.
ence on races, 50 of Tigro-Euphrates ;
Dadil, king of Colchis at Damascus, 390 ;

basin, 340
Egyptian colony, 235
Dagon, ark in temple of, 127
Colchis,
Dahi, see Dayi
Commagene, expedition of Tiglath-pile-
ser 374; of Asshur-nazir-pal, 378 of
I,, ;
Damas, king of Curium, tributary to Esar-
Sargon, 395 of Sennacherib, 398 ;
haddon, 407
Commerce, of Neolithic period, 32 of ;
Damascus, Elamites pursued to, 82 taken ;
Egypt, 287 of Babylon, 495 ;

by David, 139: revolution at, 163; taken
by Jeroboam II., 169 Shalmaneser V., ;
Confession, negative in Ritual, 312

Tiglath-pileser II., 172, 389; Ahaz
;
385 ;
Congo, negroes 52 of, at, 173, 390; rebels against Sargon, 393
Conosconcoleros, name given by Greeks to Damietta, branch of Nile, 194
Asshurbanipal, 414
Damns, king of Amathus, tributary to
Continents, form of in Quaternary period, Esarhaddon, 407
25 Dan, city defeat of Chedorlaomer there,
:
Contracts, Assyrian, 424 82; sanctuary, 116; golden calf, 151

Copper, first metal used, 36 Dan, son of Jacob, 87 territory of tribe, ;
Corassid, Arab city taken by Asshurbani- 114

pal, 413 Daniel, the prophet, 187, 423, 4S1 book ;
Cossseans in Chaldaea, 343 of, 489 n.
Costume, Egyptian, 302 Assyrian, 428 ; ; Darius, the Mede, 490

Babylonian, 492 Darius, son of Hystaspes takes Babylon,
Covenant, of Abram, symbolism of, 83 490 destroys fortifications, 491
;
Cows, seven divine, 89 Dardanians, at Argos in place of Achsans

in time of Ramses III., 266
Coxcox, the Mexican Noah, 17
Mosaic narrative, Dardanians, of Troy, assist Khitas against
Creation, 2 date of, 3 ; ;
Egyptian ideas on, 320 Chaldaean Ramses II., 249

9 ; ;
traditions, 500 Dashur, pyramid at, 215

:;;;
INDEX. 517
David, secretly anointed by Samuel, 134 ;

Dur Asshurakhiddin, name given by Esar-
plays harp to Saul, 134 kills Goliath, ; haddon to Memphis, 279
134 ;flies to forest of Hareth, 135 ; Dur Asshurakhiddin, built in Syria by
lament over Saul, 136: proclaimed king Esarhaddon, 405
at Hebron, 136 king over all Israel
;
alliance with
;
Dur Bilmati, see Sais
takes Jerusalem, 137 ;
Tyre takes Gath, 138 removes Ark,

; ;
Dur Kurigalzu, 356 taken by Tiglath- ;
pileser I., 375

138; foreign wars and conquests, 139;
Bathsheba, 139 revolt and death of
; Dur Sharyukin [Khorsabad], building of,
Absalom, of Sheba, 140 numbers the ;
397 decline of, 401
; inscriptions from ;
people, 141 death review of reign,

; ; 392> 394. 425 palace, 457, 458, 461
;
141 ;contemporary with Her Hor and Dur Yakin, taken by Sargon, 395, 470
Shamshi-bin, 273, 370; extent of empire,
Dyke of Menes, 203
142, 376
Dynasties of Manetho, list of, 197
Dayi, people; subdued by Sennacherib, 401
Dead, book of the, see Funeral Ritual E.
Dead Sea, fertility of plain, 81 ; destruction Ecdippa, submits to Sennacherib, 398
of cities, 84 Eclipse of sun, 377, 448 of moon, 392, ;
Debir, taken by Egyptians, 254 ; by 448, 464

Hebrews, 112 Eden, garden of, 21
Deborah, the prophetess, 119, 120 Edfu, temples at, 336
Debtors, treatment of by Hebrews, 102 ;
Edomites refuse Hebrews passage, 107
by Egyptians, 300 by Assyrians, 424 ;
tributary to Binlikhish III., 383 to Sen- ;
nacherib, 399; revolt from Chaldaeans, 188

Deification of king by Egj'ptians, 214, 294,
331 ; the contrary in Assyria, 418 Edrei, 108
Lybian settlement, Eglon, city of; people attack Hebrews,

Delta of Nile, 195
259
;
thirteen kingdoms, 276 petty kings

; ;
III ; capture, n2
established by Assyrians, 278 driven ;
Eglon, king of Moab, oppresses Hebrews,
out by Tahraka, 279 kingdom of ; 119
Milukhi, 394 Egj'pt, description of country, 193 Nile, ;
Deluge, human race before, i Biblical ; 194, 195 ; historians, 196 ; dynasties ot
narrative, 5 antiquity of, 16, 43, 44
: ;
Manetho, 197 chronology, 198 monu- ; ;
limitation of extent, 6 theories, 43 ; ;

ments, 199 people Hamitic, 202
; first ;
traditions, 13 seq., 503; traces of, 43 and second dynasties, 203 ; third dynasty,
Denderah, temples at, 336 204 domestic animals and art, 205
;
fourth dynasty great pyramids, 205 ; ;

Denmark, forests of, 33
troubles, 207 fifth dynasty, 207 aristo-
; ;
Desert belt of Asia and Africa, inter- cratic government, 208 architecture and ;
ruptions in, 339 literature, 209; sixth dynasty, 210; civil

Determinatives, Egyptian hieroglyphic, discord, 211 art and civilisation of old
;
306, 307 empire; end of old empire, 212, 213;

Dictionaries, Assyrian, 445, 446
middle empire eleventh dynasty, 213 ; ;
twelfth dynasty conquest of Arabia, ;
Dilala, Susianian god, 412

214: lake Moeris, 215; art, 216; thir-
Din, Susianian city taken by Asshurbani- teenth dynasty, 217; extension of frontier;
pal, 412 level of the Nile, 218 Abraham, 81 ;
Dinaites, see Dayi fourteenth dynasty. Shepherds, 219

Joseph, 8g, 221 Jacob, 90 Hebrews, :
Dion, antediluvian king of Sippara, 502 ;
91 ;Theban art Shepherd monuments, ;
Divorce in Assyria, 425 222 expulsion of Shepherds, 224 Ahmes;

; ;
Djebel Barkal, see Napata restoration of temples art, 225 eigh- ; ;
Djendib, Sheik of Arabs, 380 teenth dynasty; new empire, 226 nations ;
around Egypt, 227 Amenhotep I. in ;
Djisda (Djeddah), taken by Asshur-

Palestine Thothmes I. defeats Rotennu,
;
banipal, 414
228,360: Thothmes II.; ThothmcsIII.
Dodanim, son of Javan ; Epirotes, 61 and Hatasu, 229 annals at Karnak, :>3o; ;
Dog-river, inscription of Ramses II., 249 war with Rotennu Gaza battle at ; ;
Dolmens, 32 Megiddo, 231 defeat of Rotennu, 232, ;
361 Lebanon, Syria, Mesopotamia and

;
Domestic animals of Neolithic period, 32 Africa, 233 ; fleet, 234 ; Ethiopia, 235 ;
Dosche, mount, 235 monuments, 236; Amenhotep II. m
Dravidian race driven from Hindustan, 52 ;
Mesopotamia; Thothmes IV.; Amen-
Turanian, 63 ; languages, 68 ; religion, hotep III.,236; Memnon, 237 Amen- ;
344 hotep IV. 237; religious revolution;

Diunah, see Ad-dumu Hebrews ; Amentutankh ; Har-em-hebi,
;; ;;
5i8 INDEX.
239; nineteenth dynasty, Ramses I., 240; Elah, king of Israel, succeeds Baasha : is
war with Khitas ; Seti I., 241; Set! assassinated by Zimri, 155
Merenphtah. wars with Remencn, 242 ; Elam, son of Shem, 59. See Susianians
war with Khitas, Amorites, Rotennu ;
Elath taken by David, 139 Solomon's ;
fleet,243 gold mines wells buildings,

; ; :
fleets at, 144 ; re-taken and fortified by
244; canal Ramses II. [Sesostris], 245;
;
Uzziah, 168
oppresses Hebrews legend 246 facts, ; ; ;
Elba, flint axes from Isle of, 32

247 rebellions, 248 first campaign, 249
; ; ;
poem, 250 peace, 252 long war, 254

; ; ;
Eleazar, son of Aaron, made high priest,
peace 255 ^lesopotamia subject, 256
; 107 death and burial, 114
;
revolt of prisoners, 257 oppression, 258 ; ; Elephantine, 207 monuments of Thothmes

;
Lybian invasion Merenphtah, 259 war ; ; III., 236 of Amenhotep III., 237
;
and defeat of Lydians, 260 Exodus, 94, ;

Eli usurps high priesthood, 125 made ;
95, 261 revolt under Osarsiph

;
Meren- ;
suflete, 125 his sons, 126; death, 127
;
phtah in Ethiopia Amenmeses Meren- ; ;
phtah Siphtah, 262; Seti II.; end of Eliakim (Jehoiakim) made king of Judah
nineteenth dynasty, 263 entry of ;
by Necho, 185 submits to Nebuchad-
;
nezzar, 187 death, 187, 476

Hebrews into Palestine, 113, 263; ;
twentieth dynasty Nekht-set Ram- ; ; Eliezer sent to choose wife for Isaac, 85
ses III., 264; Lybian s Takkaro ; Elijah, the prophet, 157 predicts death of ;
Philistines, 265 war with Khitas Philis- ; ; Ahab and Jezebel, 160 stops messengers ;
tines naval battle, 266

;
settlement of ; of Ahaziah to Ekron, 161 predicts suc- ;
Philistines conspiracy, 267 chronology,

; ; cession of Jehu and Hazael, 163
268; Ramses IV., 269; usurpation of EHm, 97
high priests of Amen; Ramses XII.
Elisha, son of Javan, Hellas, 6r
270, 373 adventures of Ark of Chons,
;
271 ; Her Hor in alliance with Ass>Tia, Elisha, the prophet, brings about revolution
272, 373 twenty-second dynasty, 273
; ; in Syria, 163, 381 ; anoints Jehu as king,
Jeroboam flies to Shishak, 146 Shishak ; 163
invades Judea, 152, 274; Azerch Amen EUasar, see Asshur
invades Egypt and Palestine defeated ;
Elon, judge, 122
by Asa, 153, 274 twenty-third dynasty ; ;
invasion of Piankhi Elon, town, revolts against Ramses II., 249

disorders, 275 ; ;
twenty-fourth dynasty, 276 Ethiopian ; Eltheca (Eltekon), battle at ; taken by Sen-

dynasty; Shabaka iShebek, So; invades nacherib, 399
Syria, 174, 277 defeated at Raphia, 175, ; Eluli,king of Sidon, escapes from Senna-
277, 393 destruction of Assyrian army,
; cherib, 398
179, 278, 399 invasion of Esarhaddon, :
Embalming the dead in Eg>-pt, 321
278, 407 Tahraka retreats to Ethiopia,
;
Embroiderj', Assyrian, 427

279 Necho
;
invasion of Asshurbanipal,
;
280, 408; anarchy, 281; Amen-meri-nut Engineering operations, Assyrian, 423

Dodecarchy, 282; Psammetik, 283; English, race in America and Australia, 50
mercenaries, 284 Necho defeats Josiah, ;
Eniel, king of Hamath, subdued by Tig-
184, 285 defeated at Carchemish, 186,
;
lath-pileser II., 389; at Damascus, 390
285, 457 Nile canal : circumnavigation ;
Entef, name of many kings of eleventh

of Africa, 285; Psammetik II., Napra-
hitand Ahmes, 286; art ; Psammetik III. dynasty, 213
Persian invasion, 288 Ephraim, son of Joseph, go inheritance ;
Egypt, castes, 289 deification of the king, ; of tribe, 113; defeated by Jephthah, 122
295 organisation, 296
;
Nomes, 297 ; ;
Ephraim, forest of, 140 n.
Judges, 29S laws, 299 manners and ; ;
Ephrath, or Bethlehem, Rachel dies at, 88
customs, 301 hieroglypics, 302 alpha-; ;
bet, 304 ideographics, 30s determina-

; ;
Eponyms, in Assyria, 376, 386, 422, 446 :
literature and science, in Yemen, 422

tors, 306, 307 ;
307; funeral ritual, 308 papyri, 315; ;

Equinox, period of precession, 360
division of time, 317 religion, 317, 452 ; ;
Erech;Warka\ 227 one of the cities of the;
resurrection of the body and immortality Chalda;an Tetrapolis, 348 restoration of ;
of the soul, 321 triads, 324 animal ; ;

statues, 352 ruins at, 353 temple, 354
; ; ;
worship, 325 temples, 327, 334 sculp-; ;

taken by Sennacherib, 398 worship of ;
ture, 328 pyramids, 330 sphinx, 331

;
: :
Bilit-Taauth, 499
labyrinth, 332 tombs, 333 exports to
Esau, son of Isaac, 86 at Mount Seir, 87
; ;
;
Assyria, 428. See Ethiopia

Ehud delivers Hebrews, 119 Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib, made
Eileithya, monuments of Amenhotep III., king of Babylon, 404, 471 hastens to ;
237 Nineveh, and compels murderers of Sen-

Ekron, remains untaken by Hebrews, 113 ;
nacherib to take flight, 404 campaign ;
taken by Philistines, 124, 272 oracle at, ;

in Phoenicia, Sidon, 404 in Syria, Ma- ;
161 Ekron, or Migron, 176, 399

;
nasseh, 182, 405 ; revolt, 405 : campaign
;
INDEX. 519
in Arabia, Media, and Persia palace at ; Gallas and Abyssinians, physiognomy of,
Nineveh works at Babylon, 406 Cy-
; ; 51
prus expeditions to Egypt, 278, 407
; ; Gambul, Esarhaddon's war, 406
Assyrians driven out, 278 abdicates in ;
Gananat, town taken by Shalmaneser IV.,
favour of Asshurbanipal death, 407 ;
380
Esneh, temples at, 336 Gardens, hanging, at Babylon, 480
Ethbaal made king of Sidon by Senna-
Gath, remains untaken by Hebrews, 113;
cherib, 39S
taken by Philistines, 124, 172 by Syrians, ;
Ethiopia, relations with twelfth Egyptian 167 ; by Uzziah, 168

dynasty, 214 campaigns of Ameni, 217 untaken by
; ;
Gaza, Thothmes III. at, 231 ;
of Amenhotep I., 228 subject to

allowed to
;
Hebrews, 113; Philistines
Thothmes III., 235 to Amenhotep III., ;
settle near, 267 taken by Philistines,
;
236 Har-em-hebi, 229 peace with Seti

; ;
124, 272 by Tiglath-pileser II., 3S9
:
I., 244 rebellion against Ramses II.

; ;
long wars, 248 slave hunting, 257 ; ;

Gazauatan, people revolt against Ramses
Merenphtah retires to, 262: Seti II. in- II., 249
vades Egypt from, 263 invasion of ;
Geba fortified by Asa, 154
Egypt by Azerch-Amen ; defeat, 153, Gebal, see Byblos
274 high priests of Amen take refuge
;
Gedaliah made governor of Judasa, 190

273 invasion of Egypt by Piankhi,
;
in, ;
276 Ethiopian dynasty in Egypt, 277

; :
murdered, 191, 477
defeat at Raphia Ethiopians driven out : Genealogy of patriarchs, 40
of Egypt, 278 invade Egypt, 279 Rot- ; :
Genesis, table of affiliation, 57
Amen, 2S0, 281 Amen-meri-nut, 2S2 ; ;
Gerah, 84, 85, 86
Ethiopians e.xpelled by Psammetik, 283 ;
Psammetik II. ; inscriptions, 286. See Gergesenes join in revolt against Ramses
II., 249
EgjTit
Eulaeus, battle at, 410 Germans, Japhetic race, 62 ; legends, 13
language, 77, 78
Euphrates, course of inundations of, 340
Gerrha, Babylonian trade to, 407
Europe, alterations of white race in, 50
Gezer, built by Solomon, 143
Evechous, founder of Chaldaean monarchy,
Gheneh, road from, to Kos.seir, 211
349
Evil Merodach, king of Babylon, succeeds Giammu, chief killed by Shalmaneser IV.,
Nebuchadnezzar releases Jehoiakin, ; 379
187, 487 assassinated, 48S ;
Gibeah, destruction of Benjamites, 116 ;
Philistines at, 128 Saul there, 131 gar-

E.xodus, 95, 96, 261 ; ;
rison destroyed by Jonathan, 132

Ezekiel, the prophet, 481
Gibeon, city, makes peace with Hebrews,
Ezion Geber, Hebrews at, 106 taken by- ;
III taken by Shishak, 274
;
David, 139 Solomon's fleets at, 144 ; ;
Gibraltar, Tahraka's reported conquests,

Jehoshaphat's, 161
278
F. Gideon, victory over Midian lapses to ;
man, 2, 3, 10, 11, 12

Fall of idolatry, 121
Fauna and Flora of Quaternary period, Gihon, river, 21

26 of lake dwellings, 34
; Gilead, inhabitants defeat Ephraimites, 122
Fayoum, 194; origin of name, 216; monu- Giratbunda, part of empire of Binlikhish
ments of Ramses II., 245 III., 382
Fire, discovery of use of, 11 Glaciers of Quaternary period, 27
Fleet, Egyptian, 234, 243, 259, 266, 267 ; Gods of Egypt, 317; of Assyria, 452; of
Hebrew, 144, 161 ; Babylonian, 497 Susiania, 412
Flint, see Stone Golden image, 483, 486
Fractions, Assyrian, 449 Gold.smiths' work, Egyptian, 225 ; Assy-
Funereal Ritual, 89, 203, 207 ; revision of, rian, 427
284 analysis, 308

; Gomer, son of Japhet ; Cimmerians, 61
Gomorrha, 82
G.
tribe settle east of
Gordyaian mountains, 19
Gad, son of Jacob, 87 ;
Jordan, 109 Goshen, go

Gad, the prophet, David's adviser, 138 Governors of provinces, Assyrian, 419
Gadara, people revolt against Ramses II., Greek, race Japhetic, 61 legend.s, 9 lan- ; ;
249 guage, 75 coasts subdued by Thothmes

;
III., 235; mercenaries, 283; temples in

Gades (Cadiz) submits to Nebuchadnezzar,
Egypt, 287
477
; ;
520 INDEX.
Gungmi, king of Chaldsea, 356 in Egypt, 92, 246 Exodus, 95, 261 ; :
Gurbaal, Arabs of subdued by Uzziah, 168 route through Desert, 96 numbers, 97 ; ;
quails and manna, 97, 105; spies, 106;

Guriiah, tombs 333 at,
attack on Canaanites, 106 conquest of ;
Gustaspi, sec Hystaspes land east of Jordan, 108 census, log ; ;
Gyges, king of Lydia, sends embassy to cross Jordan, iii, 263; take Jericho and
Asshurbanipal, 408 assists rebellion of ;
Ai monument at Ebal, iii
; battle of ;
Psammetik, 2S3, 409 invaded by Cim- ;

Bethhoron, 112 division of land coast ; :
merians and killed, 409 cities untaken, 115; idolatry, 98, 115,
116, 121 judges or suffetes, 117 ;
;
Othniel, 117; Deborah; Barak Gideon, ;
H. 120; Tola; Jair, 121 Jepthah Ibzan ;

: ;
Elon Abdon, 122 ; Samson Eli, 125 : ; ;
Habakkuk, the prophet, 186 Samuel, 127 ; oppression by Mesopo-

Hagan, king of Yathrib, 406 tamians, 117: Moabites, 119; Philistines,
Hadad, the Idumaean, revolts from Solo- 119, 124, 125; Jabin, 119; Midianites,
mon, 146 120 ; Ammonites, 121 defeated at ;
Aphek, 127 victory at Mizpeh, 127 ;

Hadramaut, expedition of Esarhaddon to, ;
require aking, 130; Saul, 131. J>V(? Judah,

406
Israel
Hagar flees from Sarah, 82 ; birth of
Ishmael, 83 Hebron, cave purchased by Abraham, 84,
8s Jacob, 91
; people attack Hebrews, ;
Hail-stones at battle of Bethhoron, 112 n. HI capture, 112 David king, 136
; ;
Hall of ancestors, from Karnak, 200 Hedjaz, expedition of Esarhaddon, 406 ;
Ham, family of, 57 driven out by Shem ; of Nebuchadnezzar, 478

and Japhet, 58 first to leave original;
Hekali, city, taken by king of Babylon,
centre, 58 corruption fate of empires,
; ;
375, 404. 469

59 Helbon (Aleppo), people of revolt against
Hamanu, in Susiana, taken by Asshur- Ramses II., 249
banipal, 412
Heliopolis, monuments at, 236; taken by
Hamath, taken by David, 139 by Jero- :
Pelasgi, 260 worship of IVInevis, 326 ;
boam II., 169 Shalmaneser IV. at, 380;

;
taken by Tiglath-pileser II., 389 by Hellenium in Egypt, 287

;
Sargon, 393 Hermonthi.s, temples at, 336

Hammamat El, inscriptions at, 218 Hermotybians, division of warrior class in
Hammurabi, king of Chaldaea ; his canal,

Egypt, 291
356, 48s Her-hor, high-priest of Amen usurps crown,
Hanani, the prophet, 154 272 alliance with Assyria, 272, 374
;
Hananiah carried to Babylon, 187 Heroopolis, see Zal
Hanun, king of Gaza, at Damasctjs, 390 He.shbon, tributary to Thothmes III., 324 ;
revolt, defeat, and death, 393 capital of Sihon, 108
Haphraim, city taken by Shishak, 274 Hespu or Hesep-ti, king of Egypt, 203
Haran, Terah's migration, 80 Rebecca, ;

Hezekiah, kingof Judah; succeeds Ahaz ;
86 Jacob, 87 puts down idolatry, 173; destroys brazen

;
serpent: passover, 174; prosperity, 175;

Har-em-hebi, king of Egypt, 239 rebels against Assyria, 176, 399 submits ;
Hareth, David in forest of, 135 to Sennacherib, 177, 399: illness,

179;
Hatasu, sister of Thothmes II., guardian Babylonian ambassadors ; literary work,
of Thothmes III., 229; conquests in 180 ; death, 181
Arabia, 230 Hieratic characters ; Egyptian, 307 ; Assy-
Harosheth, 119 rian,
434
Hathor, Egyptian goddess, 320 Hieroglyphics, Egyptian, 302, 303; phon-
etics, 304 ideographics, 305 ; deter-
Havilah, land of, 21 ;
minative.s, 306, 307 Assyrian, 434 ;
Hawk, sacred, 326

Susianian, 434
Hazael murders Benhidri and becomes
Hilkiah, high priest, 183
king, 163 conquers country east of
;
Jordan, 166 captures Gath, 167

; de- ;
Hillat (Hillah), outer city at Babylon, 481
feated by Shalmaneser IV., 167, 381 Hindustan, Turanian population driven
Hazor, Jabin king south, 63languages of, 68, 74
of, 112, 119, 120; ruins ;
of, iig Hippopotamus, worship of, 325

Hebrews, sojourn in Goshen, gi tribal ; Hiram, king of Tyre, an ally of David
government, 91, 99, ii5 condition while ; 138 an ally of Solomon
;
assists in ;
in Egypt, 239. 337 the king who knew ; building the temple, 142 mans Solomon's :
not Joseph, 92 ; papyri, 92 ; oppression fleets, 144 ; sends fleets to Tarshish, 145
;;
INDEX. 521
Hiram, pays tribute to Tiglath-pileser II., Indabibi, Susianian general, 410 ; made
389 king, 411
Hiram the architect, 142 India, early trade with, 144 Solomon's ;
Hirata (Hira), taken by Asshurbanipal, fleets, 145 ; Babylonian trade with, 496
413 Indians, traditions of, 12; higher castes

Hittites, see Khita Japhetic, 62 ; religion, 344
Hobab, guide to the Hebrews, 105 Indo-European race, 62 ; languages, 73
Hophra, see Uahprahet Inflected languages, 66, 69
Hor, mount dealli of Aaron

; at, 107 Interpreters, established by Necho, 285,
Horeb, mount Moses at, 93 ;

294
Ipsambul, temples of Ramses II., 245,
Horses, unknown in Egj'pt, 205 first ;
introduction, 229 want of in armies of ;

336 inscriptions, 248 Uahprahet, 286
; ;
Israel, 158 n. Irak, attacked by Salmaneser, IV., 380
Horus, Eg)T)tian god, 320 Iranians, traditions of, 12, 20; subdued by
Turanians, 343, 504
Hosea, the prophet, 170
Iranzu, king of Van, 393
Hoshea, king of Israel, kills Pekah, 173,
391 revolts
; imprisoned by Shalman-
;
Ireland, degeneration of population, 50
eser VI., 174, 391 Irib-bin, king of Assyria, 376
Hostages, treatment of by Egj'ptians, 223 Irib-marduk, governor of Babylon, 469
Hottentots, tradition as to fall of man, Irigibel, viceroy of Babylon, 402
II Iron, use of by Negroes, 37
Humbanigash, king of Elam, defeated by
irshu-sin, king of Chaldaea, 354
Sargon, 392 allied with Merodach
;
Baladan, 395 Isaac, birth, 85 ; resides at Mamre and

Hunting expeditions of kings of Assyria, Gerar, 87
429 Isaiah, the propbet, 169, 176, 180, 181, 275
Husbandmen, class of in Egypt, 293 IshbosTieth, son of Saul, proclaimed king,
Hyksos, see Shepherd kings 136 ; death, 137
Hystaspes, king of Commagene, pays Ishmabaal, king of Gaza, cities from Judah
tribute to Tiglath-piJeser 1 1., at given him, 400
389;
Damascus, 390 Ishmael, son of Abraham, 85
Ishmael, son of Nethaniah, murders
Gedaliah, 191, 477
Ishmidagan, king of Chaldsa, 356
latnan, see CypRis
Ishtar {Venusi, 454 ; called also Zarpanit,
Ibis, sacred, 326
and Nana, 455 ; sanctuary, 484, 485, 499.
Ibrim, inscription at, 233, 236 See Ashtaroth
Ibzan, judge, 122 Isibia, city, taken by Sargon, 394
Idalium, king of, tributary' to E^rhaddon, Isi-em-chev, princess, 272
407
Isis, Eg^'ptian goddess, 320, 321
Ideographic characters, Egyptian, 305 ;
Israel, kingdom of; Saul king, 131 ; con-
Assyrian, 435
stitution, 132 death of Saul, r36;
; David
Idolatry in household of Jacob, 87 among ;
and Ishbosheth, 136 ; David alone
Hebrews, 98, 115, 116, 120, 121; Solo- Jerusalem taken, 137 Solomon, 142 ;
mon's, 145 Jeroboam's, 151

;
Reho- :
pro.sperity, 145 death of Solomon, 146 ;
;
boham's, 151 Baasha's, 155 Omri's,

; ;
Rehoboam, 147 revolt under Jeroboam, ;
156; of Ahab and Jezebel, i^T of \

148 list of kings, 150 war with Judah
; ; ;
Jehoram of Judah, 163 of Ahaziah, :
defeat, 152 Nadab ; a-ssa.ssinated ;
161; ofAthaliah, 165; of Jehoram, 162 Baasha, 153; war with Judah invasion ;
Iduma:ans, descended from Esau, 87 ; of Benhidri, 154; Elah, 155; Zimri ;
defeated by David, 139; revolt from Omri building of Samaria, 156 Ahab,
; ;
Jehoram, 163 ; subdued by Amaziali, 157; Jezebel and Elijah; victory over
167; by Uzziah, i68 ; by Nebuchad- Syrians, 158 treaty, 159
; expedition to ;
nezzar, 468 Ramoth, 160; death of Ahab, 161;

Ikal-anu, temple of, 485 Ahaziah, 161 Jehoram, 162;
Ramoth ;
taken, 164; Jehu, 164; suppression of

Ilgi, son of Ur-Hammu, 354 ; his signet,
idolatry, 165; Syrian inx-asion Assyrians, ;
359
166, 381 Jehoahaz Jehoa,sh
;
victory ; ;
Ilu, supreme god of Chaldxa ; Asshur in

over Syrians; war with Judah, 167;
Assyria, 452
Jerusalem taken; Jeroboam II., i68
Ilubid, see Yaubid conquest of Hamath and Damascus
Imgur-bel, wall of Babylon, 469 169; interregnum; Zachariah ; Shallum'.
;
522 INDEX.
Menahem, 170; Pckahiah Pckah, 171: ;

Jehu, the prophet, 161
deposed by Mciiahcni II. and restored, Jehu, king of Israel ; named as king by
172, 389; alliance with Resin, 172; Elijah, 163 ; kills Jehoram and Ahaziah,
Assyrians carrj' captive tribes beyond 163 abolishes worship of Fjaal, 164
;
Jordan, 173, 390; Hoshea, 173; Egyp- defeated by Syrians vassal to Shalman- ;
tian alliance, 174; invasion of Assyrians, eser IV., 166, 381 death, 167 ;
174, 391 ;fall of Samaria end of kwig- ;

Jephthah, defeats Ammonites; his daughter,
dom of Israel, 175, 392- Sec Hebrews, 121 n,
Judah Jeremiah, the prophet, 182, 183, 185, 186,
Israel, name given to Jacob, 88 188
Issachar, son of Jacob, 87; territory of Jeroboam, promoted by Solomon flies to ;
tribe, 113 Egypt, 146 made king of Israel at

;
Ithodagon, king of Paphos, tributary to Shechem, 149 Idolatry, 151 death, 153 ; ;
Esarhaddon, 407 Jerusalem, said to have been founded by

Shepherds, 224; taken by David,^ 137;
Ilite, river; passage of Assyrians, 412
temple built, 143 taken by Shishak, ;
Izirti, city ; taken by Sargon, 394 named on monuments, 274 threat-

152 ;
;
ened by Hazael, 167 taken by Jehoash, ;
J. 168 besieged by Sennacherib, 177, 399

;
;
occupied by Necho, 185 identified with

Jabesh Gilead, expedition against, 116
;
Cadytis, 185 n. twice taken by Nebu- ;
Jabin, king of Hazor, 112, 119, 120 chadnezzar, 187, 476 revolt and siege, ;
Jacob, son of Isaac, 86 obtains birthright, ;

188, 189, 477 destruction, 190, 477 ;
87; Leah and Rachel, 87; name changed, Jezebel, wife of Ahab, 157 murders ;
Na-
88 goes to Egypt, 90 death and burial
;
;
both, 160 killed by Jehu, 164
;
at Hebron, 91
Jezreel, Jehoram and Ahaziah killed there
Jair, judge, 121
by Jehu, 164
Jamnia, Sargon crosses sea of, 396 Joab, David's captain, kills Abner, 137 ;
Jarmuth, people attack Hebrews, iii put to death by Solomon, 142

Japhet, race of, 60, 61, 62 Joash, see Jehoash
Japhetos, son of Xlsuthrus, 504 Joel, the prophet, 169
Javan, son of Japhet, 61 Joktanian Arabs, 85
Jebusites attack Hebrews, in; remain m Jonah, the prophet, 169
Jerusalem, 113 conquered by David, 137 ;
Jonathan, son of Saul, defeats Philistines
Jeconiah, see Jehoiachin at Gibeah, 132 death, 13s ;
Jehoahaz, king of Judah succeeds Josiah ; :

Jordan, Hebrews cross, in slaughter of ;
made prisoner by Necho, 185 Ephraimites at, 122

Jehoahaz, king of Israel succeeds Jehu ; ;
Joseph, son of Jacob, 87, 88 dreams, 89 ; ;
defeated by Syrians, 166 promoted by Apepi, 89 Egyptian name, ;
Jehoash, king of Judah saved and made ; go, 221 policy, 90 death, 91
;
;
king by Jehoiada, 165 repairs temple, ;

Josiah, king of Judah, succeeds Amon,
166 lapses to idolatry and murders
;
182 restores temple, 183
;
death at ;
Zachariah; death, 167 Megiddo, 184

Jehoash, king of Israel succeeds Jehoahaz, ;
Joshua, victory over Amalek, 98 sent as ;
166 defeats Syrians, 167

;
war with ;
a spy, 106; succeeds Moses as leader,
Judah, 167 takes Jerusalem death,
; ;
109 strategy, in n.
;
death; tomb, 114 ;
168
Jotham, regent during illness of Uzziah,
Jehoiachin, king of Judah succeeds ;
168 king restores temple, 171
;
;
war ;
Jehoiakim beseiged and taken by

;
with Israel death, 172 ;
Nebuchadnezzar, 187, 476

Jubilee, year of, loi
Jehoiada, high priest, kills Athaliah and Judah, son of Jacob, 87 inheritance of ;
proclaims Jehoash, 165

tribe, 113
Jehoiakim, see Eliakim
Judah, kingdom of; Rehoboam, 148; list
Jehoram, son of Jehoshaphat married to invasion of Shishak, 152

;
of kings, 150 ;
;
Athaliah, 160; succeeds Jehoshaphat, 162; Abijam war with Israel, 152 Asa puts
;
idolatry and reverses, 163 death, 164 ;

down idolatry victory over Zerah, 153 ; ;
Jehoram, king of Israel succeeds Ahaziah, ; war with Israel, 154 Jehoshaphat, 155 ; ;
takes Ramoth, 164 killed by alliance with Israel, 160 attack on

162 ;
;
;
Jehu, 164 Moab Jehoram, 162 revolt of Libnah ;.

;
;
Arab invasion, 163 Ahaziah killed by

Jehoshaphat, king of Judah; succeeds
; ;
alliance Jehu, 164 Athaliah Jehoash, 165 ; ;
Asa, 155 administration, 156 ;

;
;
repair of temple, 166 murder of Ze.

with Ahab expedition to Ramoth, 160;
;
chariah Amaziah defeat of Iduma;ans

;
;
fleet at Ezion Geber, 161
; ;
; 1 ;
INDEX. 523
war with Israel, 167 ;

Jerusalem taken, Kedor-nakhunta, king of Elam, 402
168 ; Jotham regent, 168 Jo-
Uzziah ; ; Kehak people invade Egypt, 260
tham king, 171 war with Israel Ahaz,
; ;
Kekeu, kmg
of Egypt, 204 ; introduces
172 meets Tiglath-pileser at Damascus,
;
worship of Mnevis, 326 tomb, 331 ;
173, 389, 390 Hezekiah, 173 Passover,

; ;
174 revolt from Assyria, 176 ; invasion

;
Kentucky, remains in, 30
of Assyrians, 177, 399; plague, 179; Keturah, Abraham's wife, 86
Babylonian alliance, 180, 400 Manasseh, ;
Kharkhar, part of dominion of Binlikhish
181 captivity of Manasseh, 182, 405
; ;
III., 282
Amon :
Passover, 183 Scythians,
Josiah ; ;
battle of Me-
Khatti, see Khita
184 Egyptian invasion
; ;
giddo, 1S4, 285, 472 Jehoahaz Eliakim, ; ;

Khem, Egyptian god, incarnate in goat of
185 Chaldsean invasion, 186 Jerusalem
; ;
Mendes, 326
taken, 187, 476 Jehoiakim capture of
; ; Kheper, personification of sun, 319
Jerusalem ; Zedekiah, 187, 477 revolt :
siege capture of city

; captivity of ;
Khita (Hittites), habitation of,
220, 228 ;
people, 190, 477, 481 remains of people 241 ; war with Ramses 241 war with I., ;
;
Seti I., 242; treaty of peace, 243, 244;
fly to Egypt, 191 ; Chaldaeans and
revolt against Ramses II,, 248; war,
Elamites settled in country-, 405
250 ;peace, 253 ; renewed war, 254
Judgment, last, Egyptian belief in, 322 peace, 255 assist rebels under Osarsiph,
;
Judges of Israel, 117; in Egypt, 298; in 262; wars with Hebrews, iii; invade
Assyria, 422 Syria with Lybians,255 defeated before ;
Judges, Book of, 118 ; chronology, 119 Kadesh, 266 tributary to Tiglath-pileser
;
I-) 375; subdued by Asshurnazirpal, 378
K. Khitasar, king of Khitas war : with

Kadesh ;Cadytis), king of, in alliance with Ramses II.,254 peace, 255
;
Rotennu, 231 ; taken, 233 ; occupied by Khorsabad, see Dur Sharj'ukin

Seti I., 243; revolt against Ramses II.,
Khitas from assist Khulli, people in Asia Minor, subject to
248, 249, 253, 254 ;
Osarsiph, 262 ; battle before, 266 ; taken Sargon, 393

by Necho, 185 Kikupan, temple, 485
Kadesh Earnea, 105 n., 106 Kileh Sherghat, see Asshur
Kadu IMalcha, king of Edom, at Damas- Kinda kirbu, Susianian god, 412
cus, 390 Kings, Assyrian, list of, 507
Kamosh-nadab, king of Moab ; tributary Kirshamash, Susianian god, 412
to Sennacherib, 399
Kirub, name of Assyrian winged bulls,
Kames, king of Egypt, 221, 223 104, 459
Kamon taken by the Egyptians, 254. Kish, city in Chaldsea, taken by Senna-
Kanah, river, battle between Egyptians cherib, 398
and Rotennu, 231 Kishon, battle at river, 120
Karahardash, king of Babylon, 372, 468 Kitchen Middens, 33
Karatadash, king of Babylon, 371, 469 Kittim, son of Javan, Cyprus, 61
Kardunyash, rebellion in, 402 ; Esarhad- Kolaiah, El, temple at, 484
don's campaign, 405
Korah, revolt of, 107
Kardunyash, port of, 486
Korte, 235
Karkar, battle at, 380; taken by Sargon,
Kosseir, road to, 21
393
Koyundjik, see Nineveh
Karnak, "hall of ancestors" from, 200;
obelisk of Hatasu, 229 annals of Thoth- ;
Kufu, king of Egypt great pyramid built ;
mes III., 230, 233 poem, 234 buildings ; ;

by, 205
of Amenhotep III., 237; Ramses I., Kui, city tributary to Tiglath-pileser II.,
241; of Seti I., 241, 245; of Ramses II., 389
245 of Sheshfmk, 274 library, 307
: ; Kumani, see Amanus
Karneter, Egyptian Hades, 308, 322 Kumneh, fortress of, 214, 235
Karo, Abyssinia, limit of empire of
in Kur, river, Syrians transported to ; situa-
Amenhotep III., 236 tion of, 173, 390
Karsha, Susianian god, 412 Kurdistan, subdued by Thothmes III.,
Katti, revolt against 249 Ramses II., 230
Kedemoth, in Judah, taken by Shishak, 274 Kurigalzu I., king of Chaldaia, 355
Kedor-mabug, king of Chald;ca, 355 Kurigalzu II., installed as king by Asshur-
u-ba!at, 372
Kedornakhunta, Elamite king of Baby-
lon, 352, 3S5 Kurnah, inscriptions at, 254
; ; ;
524 INDEX.
Larsam, sec Senkereh

Laborosoarchod, see Bcllabarisruk Law, of Moses, 98 ; of Egypt, 299 ; ot
Labynetus, see Nabonahid Assyria, 424, 446

Iâbyrinth, 215, 332 Lebanon, flint remains in, 30 ; campaign of
Lachish, people attack Hebrews, iii ; cap- Thothmes III., 283
ture, 112; Amaziah assassinated there, Lebanon, trees from in Babylonian temples,
168 Sennacherib at, 177, 178, 400
;
481
Laconians invade Egypt, 261 Levi, son of Jacob, 87, 88 Levitical cities, ;
116 114
Laish, capture of,
Libnah, capture of, 112 revolts from ;
Lake dwellings, 34, 36

Jehoram, 163
Lakhir, Suzub imprisoned there, 402
Library at Karnak, 307 ; of Asshurbanipal,
Lamech, 5
445
Languages, families of, 65 origin of, 66 Esar-
; ;
Limenium, king of, tributary to
primitive state, 67 original identity of,
;
haddon, 407
73 Limur-patis-Asshur, see Athribis
Languages, Abyssinian, 72 ; Afifghan, 75 ;
Algerian, Anglo- Lions, winged Assyrians, 459

Albanian, 76 73 ; ;
Saxon, 78 Annamese, 67 Arabic, 71

; ; ; Loans, among Hebrews, 102 ; in Egypt,
Aramaean, 70 Ariac, 74 Arian, 74 ; ; 300 in Assyria, 424
;
Armenian, 75 Assyrian, 70, 72, 3.i2, 346, ; Lot, emigrates with Abram, 81 ; taken
431, 445 P5eloochee, 75
;
Bengali, 75 ; ;
prisoner, 84
Berber, 73 Bischari, 72 Borussian, 76
Lud, son of Shem, 60
; ; ;
Breton, 78 Bulgarian, 77 ; Burmese,

;
Cachub, 77 Canarese, 68 Cash- Ludim, 202, 278

67 ; ; ;
merian, 75 Celtic, 74, 78 ;

Chaldsean, ;
Luxor, see Karnak
344, 357, 433, 445 Chinese, 67 Corean, ; ; Lybian, mountains, 194 ; coast subject to
68 ; Cornish, 78 Cymric, 78 Danish, ; ; Thothmes III., 235 invasion repulsed ;
78 Dravidian, 68, 344

;
Dutch, 78 ; ;
by Seti I., 244 invasion under Ramses
;
Egyptian, 72, 302 English, 78 Erse, ; ; II., 259; defeat by Merenphtah, 260
78 Esthonian, 68 Etruscan, 76 Fin-
; ; ; attack on Egypt, 265; Tahrakah, victories,
landish, 68, 344 Flemish, 78 Franco- ; ;
278 family of Psammetik
;
nian, 78 ; French, 76 Frison, 78 Gaelic, ; ;

Lycians assists Khitas against Ramses XL,
78 Galla, 72
;
Gaulish, 78 German, ; ;
249
77 Gheber, 75 Ghez, 71, 72 Gothic,
; ; ;
Lydians, Gyges sends embassy to Asshur-

77; Greek, 76; Grison, 76; Guanchi, banipal, 408 assists Psammetik, 283 ;
;
73 Guzerati, 75
; Himyariti, 71, 72 ; ;
Hindustani, 75 Indian, invasion of Cimmerians, 409

Hindui, 75 ; ;
74 Indo-European, 73
;
Iranian, 74 ; ;
Irish, 78; Italian, 76; Japanese, 68; M.

Japygian, 76 Kordofan, 72 Kurdish, ; ;
Madai, son of Japhet, 61
75 Lapponese, 68 Latin, 76 Lettic, ; ;
Madaktu, city, the king of Elam abandons,

;
76 Lithuanian, 76
; Mahratta, 75 Ma- ; :
Manx, 78 Magyar, 68 402 ; Ummanaldash retreats from, 412

lagasy, 72 ; ; ;
Median, 344, 433 Messapian, 76 Na- ; ; Madelein, remains in grotto at, 29

bathean, 70 Neo-Latin,74, 76 Nepalese, ; ; Magic, use of in conspiracy against Ram-
75 Norse, 78 Nubian, 72 Obotrite, 77
; ; ; ; ses III., 267 ; in Assyria, 448 ; in Baby-
Oscan, 76 Ostiac, 68 Pali, 74 Parsee,
; ; :
lonia, 494
75 Pehlevi, 75 Pelasgic, 74, 75, 76 of Japhet Scythians Massa-
; ; ;
Magog, son ; ;
Persian, 75, 433 Polab, 77 Polish, 77 ; ; ;

Turanians, 62
getae ;
Portuguese, 76 Pracrit, 74 Proven9al, ;

Judah, taken by Shishak,
;
Rouman, 76 Russian, 77 Sabaean, Mahanaim, in

76 ; ; ;
70 Sabine, 76
; Samaritan, 70 Samoi- ; ;
274
ede, 68 Sanscrit, ; 74 Semitic, 70 ;
Mahomet, descended from Ishmael, 85
Servian, 77 Siamese, ,67 Slavonian,
; ; Makkedah, 112
Slavonic, 76, 77 Sorabian, 77
74 ; ; ;
Malays, physiognomy of, 52
Spanish, 76 Susianian, 433 Swabian, ; ;
Swedish, 78 Syriac, 70 Syro- Mammalia, distribution of species, 53

78 : ; ;
Chaldee, 70 Tamil, 63 Tartar, 68, 77 ; ; ;

Mamre, Abraham and Isaac reside under
Tartaro-finnish, 68 Telinga, 68 Thi- ; ;
grove, 82
betan, 67 Tschekh, 77 Tuarick, 73
; ; ; Manasseh, son of Joseph, 90 ; half tribe
Turanian, 68, 344 Turkish, 68 Ura- ; ; Jordan, 109
settle east of
brian, 76 Uralo-finnish, 68, 77, 344
; ;
Manasseh, king of Judah, 180 ; succeeds
Welsh, 78 ; Zend, 75 Zingari, 75 ;
Hezekiah ; idolatry, 181 ; captivity and
Languages in official use in Assyria, 420 restoration, 182, 404 ; tributary to Esar-
Larnica, see Citiura haddon, 406, 471
;
INDEX. 525
Mandans, traditions of, 9, 18 Medicine, among Egyptians, 302, 316

Assyrians and Babylonians, 447
Manetho, Egj-ptian Historian ; no mention
of dynasties, 196, Medinet Abu, see Thebes
of Deluge, 15 ; his list
197, 206, 210 Shepherds, 219; Mediterranean, Egyptian fleet on, 234;
Maniya, king of the Dahi, 401 conquest of coasts, 235 navy of Pelasgi, ;
243
Manna, 97
Megiddo, battle betu-een Egyptians and
Manners and customs of Egi^pt'^ns, 301 ;
Rotennu, 231 capture of city, 232
; ;
of Assyrians, 426 of Babylonians, 492
;
built by Solomon, 143 death of Ahaziah ;
Manufacturers, Egyptian, 301 ; Assyrian, there, 164 battle, and death of Josiah,
;
427 Babylonian, 495

; 184, 285, 472 taken by Shishak, 274
;
Map, EgjTjtian, 315 Melchizedek and Abram, 82 tradition, ;
Marah, 97 83 n.
Marduk-balatirib, king of Babylon, 382, 470 Memnon, statue so called, 237

Marduk-baliddin, see Merodach-baladan Memphis, foundation of, 203 third ;
dynasty, 204 fourth dynasty, 205

Marduk-belusati, usurps throne at Baby- ; ;
lon, 380
capital under fourth dynasty, 206 monu- ;
ments of Thothmes III., 236; of Ramses

Marduk-inaddinshu, king of Babylon, 380 II., 245 taken by Lybians and Pelasgi,
;
Marduk-idin-akhe, king of Babylon, revolts 260 residence of Merenphtah, 261

; ;
from Tiglath-pileser I. takes Hekali, ;

taken by Seti II., 263 discoveries in ;
375, 469 statues of gods taken and

; Serapeum, 275 taken by Esarhaddon
; ;
restored, 375, 404 Necho made king, 278 receives name ;
Marih, king of SjTia, conquered by Binlik- of Dur-Asshurakhiddin, 279 taken by :
hish III., 383 Tahraka, 279 temples of Ahmes, 287

; ;
Mashnaki, iee Mosynoeci tombs, 333 ruins, 336 ;
Mashuash (Maxyans), invade Egypt, 259 ;

Mena, name applied to Shepherds, 220
defeated, 260 settle in Delta mer- ; ; Menahem, first king of Israel takes Sama-
cenaries, 261 ; accompany Philistine ria and Tiphsah treaty with Phul, 170 ;
;
invasion, 266 furnish kings to Egypt,

; death, 171
276 Psammetik, 282 incorporated with
; ;
Menahem II. deposes Pekah, 172, 389
warrior class, 291
Mendes, goat of, 326
Masis, mount, 19 Menes, founder of Egyptian monarchy,
Matan-baal, king of Arvad, 380 203
Mathan, king of Nabathcans, joins rebellion Menkara, king of Egj-pt, 205 ; revises
of Nabubelshum, 409; defeated, 413; ritual, 207
pardoned, 414 Mentemsaf, king of Egypt, 211
Mathan-baal, king of Aradus, at Damascus, Menzaleh, lake, 195
390 Mercenaries, in Egy'pt, 283, 284, 292
Mattaniah, see Zedekiah
Mered, of tribe of Judah marries daughter
Maurmuiu, king of the Lybians, 260, 261 of Pharaoh, 337
Maut, Egyptian goddess, 319, 324 Merekh, see Milukhi
Mautnur, king of the Khitas, 249, 254 Merenphtah, one of the names of Seti I. ,242
Maxyans, see Mashuash Merenphtah, succeeds Ramses II.; war
Mazdeism, traditions of, 10 with Pelasgi and Lybians, 259 Exodus ;
Measures, Assyrian, 449 of Hebrews, 95, 261 revolt of Osarsiph, ;
262
Mecca, foundation of, 149
Merenphtah Siphtah succeeds Amen-
Medes, 61 partly Turanian, 343: language,
;
dethroned by Seti II., 263

;
mescs, 262
344; Median dynasty at Babylon, 351,
;
355 conquest by Assyrians

; 376 sub- ; ; Merodach (Jupiter), 454, 481
dued by Asshurnazirpal, 378 invaded ;
Merodach-baladan I. revolts against Sar-
by Shalmaneser IV., 379, 380, 381 ;
gon defeat at Dur-Yakin, 395, 470
;
Shamashbin rules over, 382 revolt under ;
Merodach-baladan II. puts Agises to death,

Arbaces, 386; Tiglath-pileser II. makes
397 sends ambassadors to Hczekiah,
;
war on, 391 wars of Sargon, 394 of ; ;
dethroned by Sennacherib,
i8o, 400
of Esarhaddon,
;
Sennacherib, 398, 400 ;
Phraortes invades Assyria Cy- 180, 39S, 400

406 ; :
a.xares and Nabopolassar Asia Minor ; Merom, battle at, 112

subdued, 415 Medes invade As- ;
Merou, mount, 20, 21
syria Nineveh taken and destroyed,
;
Moschi, 61
Medes Meshech, son of Japhet ;
416 Cuneiform writing, 433

; ;
subjugated by Persians, 487 Mesisl-mordach, king of Babylon, 402

526 INDEX.
Mesopotamia, nations of 227 subdued by :

Molochram, king of Edom, tributary to
Thothmes III., no, 232; by Amen- Sennacherib, 399

hotep II., 236 by Amen-hotep III., 236;
;
Mongolians, physiognomy of, 52
tinder Ramses I., 240 subdued by Seti 1.,
;
Monogenistic theory, 48
subject to Ramses II., 248 revolt,
243 ;
;
Monosyllabic languages, 67
248, 249 nominally subject, 270 Ram-
;
;
physi- Monotheism in Egypt, 238

ses XII. and Ark of Chons, 270 ;
cal features, 339 geolog>', 340 constant

;
; Month, Egyptian god, 324
struggle with Egypt for supremacy, 341 ;
Months, Eg>'ptian, 231, 268 ; Hebrew and
early government, 350. See Chalda;a ;
Assyrian, 451
Assyria Babylon
;
Moschi, subdued by Asshuma2irpal, 378
Metals, art of working, 35, 36; use forgotten Moses, birth of, 93 flies to Midian, 93
;
;
by Polynesians, 37 Assyrian work 111,

;
called t.) lead Hebrews, 94 law of, 98 ; ;
427 fixes limits of territory, 1 10 _

;
recapitu-
Metempsychosis, doctrine of Funeral lates law death and burial,
;
no
Ritual, 314 Mugheir, ruins at, 80 n., 348
Methuselah, date of his death, 46 n.
Municipal government of Assyrian cities,
Mexicans, civilisation of, 16 traditions, 17 ;

420
Micah, the prophet, 180 Munna, part of empire of Binlikhish III.,
Micaiah, the prophet, 160 predicts death ; 382
of Ahab, 161 Muntuhotep, name of kings of eleventh
Midian, son of Abraham, 86 defeat of by ; dynasty, 213
Gideon, 121 Mushanet (Mosynoeci) assist Khitas against
Migron, king of, made prisoner by Heze- Ramses II., 249 submit to Esarhaddon,
;
kiah, 176, 399. See Ekron 405

Mildish, Mount (Nipbates), revolt among Mutakkil Nabu, king of Assyria, 374
inhabitants, 393 subjugation, 394
; Muthon, king of Tyre, 390 revolts with ;
Milhekal, controller of Assyrian palace, 419 Pekah ; submits, 391
Milik, Assyrian minister of state, 419 Mylitta, see Bilit

Military operations of Assyrians, 423 Mysians, assist Khitas against Ramses II.,
Milukhi, kingdom in of Egypt Delta ;

249
king of Ashdod takes refuge there, 3g4 ; Mysteries, Eleusinian, 312
tributary to Sargon, 395
Mines, copper, 205, 211, 215 gold, 244 ; N.
Miracles, at entry of Hebrews into Pales-
Nabathea, revolt in, 409, 413, 4^4
tine, 112 n.
Misael, carried to Babylon, 187
Nabonahid, king of Babylon his prayer, ;
488 defeated by Cyms

;
retreats to ;
Mishcan (in Tabernacle), 103 Borsippa, 4S9 surrenders, 490

;
Mishpat, En, 105 Nabonassar, king of Babylon, 470

Misiandi (Matieni), rebel against Sargon, Nabopolassar, king of Babylon, revolts
393 against Assyria, 184, 415, 47^ ^^^^^ '
Misu, part of empire of Binlikhish III., Nineveh, 416, 475 works at

Babylon ;
;
382 Nitocris, 473

Mitatti, king of Sagartia, 394 Naboth, murdered by Jezebel, 159
Mitenti, king of Ashdod, his submission Nabu, king, inscriptions and statue of, 363
to Tiglath-pileser II. at Damascus, 390 ; ;
Nabubalarishkun, son of Merodach-bala-
tributary to Sennacherib, 398 dan, captured by Sennacherib, 403
Mizpeh, fortified by Asa, 154 Nabubalidin, king of Babylon, defeated
Mizraim, son of Ham, 58 by Asshurnazirpal, 378, 469
Mnevis, bull, 326 Nabubelshum rebels against Assyria ;
made king of Babylon; defeated by

Moab, son of Lot, 84 people not attacked ;
Asshurbampal, 409, 471 ^ Susiana,
by Hebrews, 107 defeated by David,
=
exhibited,
411; kills himself; his head
;
138; invaded and conquered; invade

Juda;a, 162 tribute to Sennacherib, 399
;
;
413
invasion of Nebuchadnezzar, 188, 478 Nabupakidilani made viceroy of Babylon
Modern cuneiform writing, 435 by Sargon, 396
Nabushapikzir, king of Babylon, 375
Moeris, lake, 215
Nabuzirshimtat erects kingdom in Lower
Mokattam, mount, quarries at, 225
Chaldsa subdued by Esarhaddon, 405
;
Moloch, worship of by Solomon, 145 ; by

Nadab, son of Jeroboam, assassinated, 153
Manasseh, 181
INDEX. 527
Naharaina, Naharaim, sec Mesopotamia Nergal (Mars), 454, 485

Nahar Malka, or Nahar Hammurabi Nergal-sar-uzur, see Neriglissar
canal, 356, 485, 497 Neriglissar succeeds Evil-Merodach ; his
Nahid Marduk made king in Chalda;a, 405 palace defeated by Persian.s, 488
;
Nahor, brother of Abram, 81 Nibkhaz, temple, 483

Nahum, the prophet, 180 Nidintabel, revolt of, 490
Names, meaning of, 4 n. Nile, Eg>-pt the gift of; mouths of, 194 ;
Namri, under dominion of Binllkhish III., inundation, 195 ; boats on, 208 cata- ;
racts, 211 level of, 218 ; canal from to

382 ;
Red Sea, 245

Nana, see Ishtar
Nimrod, 58, 348
Napata [Djebel Barkal), body of Assyrian
chief hung there, 236 temple, 237 ; ;
Nimrud (Calah), obelisk, 379 ; excavations,
A2erch-Amen, 274 inscriptions, 275,
;
457 ; palace of Asshurnazirpal, 458
281 ; invasion from, 276 Nineveh, building of, 348, 349, 365 called ;
Naphtali, son of Jacob, 87 ; territory of

Ninus by Moses of Chorene, 371 city ;
tribe, 113
of Rotennu, 227 ; king pays tribute to
Thothmes III., 233, 234; to Amenhotep
Naphtuhim, 202 II., 236 ; to Seti I. ; alliance with
Napshu, Susianian god, 412 Hei-hor; residence of Asshurlikhish,
Naramsin, king of Chaldsea, 355 385 siege, 386
; fall and destruction, ;
Nathan, the prophet, prevents David from 387 rebuilt by Sennacherib his palace,
; ;
building the Temple, 138 reproaches 401 palace of Esarhaddon, 406

; of ;
;
Asshurbanipal, 415 obelisks from
David for his crime, 139 ;
Thebes, 280 siege by Medes and Baby-;
Naucratis, Greek colony at, 287 lonians, 415 destruction, 416 name
; ;
Nazibugash assassinates Karahardash, and lost ruins discovered, 417

; slave market, ;
usurps throne of Babylon killed by ; 425 outer wall, 457

;
Asshur-u-balat, 372, 468 Ninip, see Adar

Nebo, mount, Moses dies on, no Ninus, Roman colony on site of Nineveh,
Nebo, Babylonian god, 359, 383, 484 417
Nebuchadnezzar I. invades Assyria and is Ninus and Semiramis, legend of, 364
defeated, 374, 469 Ninus named as king of Assyria by Moses
Nebuchadnezzar II. defeats Necho at Car- of Chorene, 371
chemish invades Syria, 186, 285, 475
; ;
Ninyas, son of Semiramis, 369
re-enters Syria takes Jerusalem second
; ;
Nipur (Niffer), capital of Accad, 342, 348,
siege and capture, 187, 476 retreats, ;
temples at, 354, 485
353 ; fortified by ;
188, 477 last siege, capture, and de-

;
Binbaliddin, 373, 469 taken by Senna- ;
struction of Jerusalem, 189, 190, 477 ;

cherib, 398 wqrship of Bilit Taauth,
;
campaign in Phoenicia, Iduma;a, and
499
Arabia, 477, 478 buildings, walls, 479,
;
Nisroch, 456 protector of marriages, 425

481 palaces, gardens, and temples, 22,
;
;
23, 480, 482 ; madness and death, 486 Nissha (Nissa), subject to Tiglath-pileser
II., 391
Nebuzaradan destroys Jerusalem, 190, 477
Nitocri.s, wife of Nabopolassar, 473
Necho, prince of Sais, vassal king of
Memphis, 278, 407 sent to Egypt by ;
Nitocris, sec Neitaker
Asshurbanipal, 408 son Psammetik ; Nivit-bcl, wall of Babylon, 482
made king of Athribis made prisoner ;
Noah, 6, 15 family of, 56 ;
and put to death, 280, 408

Nofrehotep, name of kings of thirteenth
Necho, son of Psammetik, king of Egypt, dynasty, 217
invades Syria battle at Megiddo de-
; ;
queen of Egypt, 225
Nofre-t-ari,
feat of Josiah, 184, 285, 472 ; siege of
Carchemish ; defeat by Nebuchadnezzar, Nomes, Egyptian, 297
186, 285, 475 Notation, sexagesimal ; Assyrian, 449
Nedjid, campaign of Nebuchadnezzar in, Nub, Egyptian god, 320
47S Nubia, inscription of Osortasen I. at, 214 ;
Neferkera, king of Egypt, 204, 211 alliance of subject to Ahmcs, 225 ;
Neitaker, queen of Egypt, 211 Thothmes III., 230; inscriptions at

Ibrim, 235 inscriptions at Amada, 236 ;
;
Neith, P2g>'ptian goddess, 319
inscriptions of Seti I., 244; of Ramses
Nekht-set, king of Egypt, 264 II., 245 Asiatic people transported to,
;
Neolithic period, 30, 34 2S7

Ner, Chaldajan period of 600 years, 360; Num, Egyptian god, 320
Assyrian measure, 449 Nut, Egyptian goddess, 325
528 INDEX.
Paran, desert of, 105

sacred books of, 444, 502 Parlikira, Susianian god, 412
Cannes, 34s ; ;
head of first Assyrian Triad, 453 temple ; Parthia, subdued by Binlikhish III., 382 ;
of, 483, 485 by Tiglath-pileser II., 391; Sargon's

Obelisk, Nimnid, 379 campaign, 394 Sennacherib, 398 ;
Og, king of Bashan, 108 Parsua, see Parthia

Ombos, monuments at, 236, 336 Pasht, goddess of Bubastis, 324
Omri, general, at siege of Gibbethon, 155 ;

Passover, institution of, 95, 99 ; celebrated
kills Zimriand becomes king, 156 builds ;
by Hezekiah, 174
Samaria war witli Syria, 156
; Pastoral life, origin of, 42
Onaerges, king of Limenium, tributary to Pathrusim, 202
Esarhaddon, 407 Patriarchs, longevity of, 7 ; number, 12 ;
Onomatopoeia, 66 genealogy, 40
Ophir, Solomon's fleets at, 145 Peat pits, remains in, 33
Orchoe, see Erech Peduil, king of Ammon, pays tribute to
Orontes, bank of inhabited by Khitas, 240 ;
Sennacherib, 398
Ramses II. at, 254 Asshurnazirpal at, ; Pefaabast, king of Egypt, 276
378_ Pekah, king of Israel, kills Pekahiah, 171 ;
Osarsiph, revolt of, 262 Syrian alliance and war with Judah, 172 ;
Osiris, Egyptian god presides over last ;

deposed and reinstated, 172, 3S9 at ;
judgment, 313, 322; personification of Damascus, 390 ; death, 173, 391

sun, 320, 322 his death, 320 a type of
; ; Pekahiah, king of Israel, succeeds Mena-
the king, 315 his name given to the ; hem ; is killed by Pekah, 171
dead person, 310 the dead Apis assimi- ;
Pelasgi,navy of, 243 ; rise of power, 259 ;
lated with, 326 invade Egypt, 260
Osortasen, name of kings in twelfth dy- Pelusiac, mouth of the Nile, 194
nasty :—
I. conquers Arabia and Nubia,
Pelusium, battle at defeat of Rot-Amen
214 ; —
III. tomb of, 331
by Asshurbanipal, 280
;
Osrhoene, invaded by Shamash Bin, 382

Pennamu, king of Samala, in Armenia at ;
Otaheite, traditions of, g, 18 ; want of Damascus, 390

metals in, 38
Pentaour, Egyptian poet, 250, 315 his ;
Othniel, judge, 117 correspondence with Ameneman, 258

Otiarte, antediluvian king of Larsam, 502 Pentecost, 99
Oudyana, 21 Penuel, destroyed by Gideon, 121
Pepi-meri-ra, king of Egypt, 210 ; conquers
Negroes; roads, 211
Persians, traditions of, 10, 4T ; of Japhetic
Paari, battle at defeat of Lybians and
;
race, want of historical accuracy,
62 ;
Pelasgi, 260
369 subdued by Asshurnazirpal, 378
; ;
Pachnan or Apachnas, Shepherd king, revolt under Arbaces, 386 wars of Esar- ;
221 haddon, 406 supremacy over Medes,

;
Padi, king of Migron or of Ekron ; made 487 ;Cyrus defeats Neriglissar, 488 ;
prisoner by Hezekiah, 176, 399 ; cities defeats Nabonahid and takes Babylon,
of Judah given him, 400 489 ; Darius puts down revolt in Babylon,
Painting, Egyptian, 330 ; Assyrian, 467 490 ; Xerxes plunders city, 491 Seleucia ;
;
Babylonian, 506 built ; Parthians, 491
Palaces, Egyptian, 334 Assyrian, Peruvian traditions, 9, 17

; 418,
458, 461 Babylonian, 480
;
Petitions to king and nobles of Assyria,
Palmyra or Tadmor, built by Solomon, 143 421
Petra, perhapsKadesh Barnea, J05 ; taken
Pamir, plateau of, 21 by Amaziah, 167
Panindimri, Susianian god, 412 Pharoah, name of, 81 ; deification of, 214
Papha, city taken by Sargon, 394
;
Phatnitic, mouth of the Nile, 194
Paphos, king of, tributary to Esarhaddon, Phite, temples at, 336
407
Philistines, period of arrival in Palestine,
Papyrus, the Turin, 199 of Phtah-hotep, ;
113, 123, 124 invade Palestine from
;
209 of Berlin, 220

; Travels of the ;
Crete, 123, 124, 265 defeated by Egyp- ;
Egi'ptian officer, 256 poem of Pentaour, ;

tians, 266 are permitted to settle, 267
; ;
250 of Ameneman, 258

; caricature, ;
take possession of coast cities and attack
268 ; variety of, 308, 315, 316 Phoenicia, 124, 272 oppress Hebrews, ;
Paradise, Mosaic, situation of, 21 119 ;allied with Ammonites, 125 defeat ;
;
INDEX. 529
Hebrews at Aphek and capture Ark, Pontus, expeditions of Asshurnazirpal, 378;

127 are defeated at Mizpeh, 128 defeat
: ;
of Shalmaneser IV., 379
Saul at Gilboa, 135 defeated by David,
;
Potiphar, 88
137 pay tribute to Binlikhish III.,
;
Pottery, early Chald»an, 359 ; Assyrian,
383; invaded by Tiglath-pileser II.,
429. 459
390 invade JudaJi, 173
;
Prayer of Asshurbanipal, 418 ; of Nabona-

Phinehas, the priest, goes with the army hid, 488
against Midian, 109
Priesthood in family of Aaron, 103 Egyp- ;
Phoenicians of Aradus join revolt against tian, 208, 290, 291 Assyrian, 422
;
Ramses II., 249; of Tyre assist in

Primitive man, 41, 55
building Solomon's temple, 142 Tiglath- ;
pileser I. at Aradus, 375 invaded by ;

Prisoners among Hebrews, loi ; Egyptians,
Asshurnazirpal, 378 subject to Binlik-
;
92 ;Assyrians, 423
hish III., 383; pay tribute to Senna- Prognathism, 54
cherib, 399 Esarhaddon's expedition,
;
Prometheus, legend of, 11
404, 406 revolt against Asshurbanipal,
;
Prophets, schools of the, 128, 129
408 circumnavigation of Africa, 285
; ;
invasion of Uahprahet, 286 subjugated ;

Provinces, government of by Egyptians,
by Nebuchadnezzar, 477 ; exportations 233 by Assyrians, 419
;
to Assyria, 429 Psammetik I. made king of Athribis, 280 ;
Phcenix, origin of belief in, 321 Dodecarchy, 282, 283, 409 mercenary ;
troops, siege of Ashdod, 187, 284, 409

Phonetic characters, Egyptian, 304 ;
Assyrian, 435 Psammetik 11., expedition to Ethiopia ;
inscription, 286
Phraortes, king of Media, invades Assyria ;
defeat and death, 415

P.sammetik III., 2S8
Phtah, Pselchis, 235
Egyptian god ; worship of at
Memphis, 324 Psiu-en-san, king of Egypt, father of
Phtah-hotep, his book on good manners, Solomon's wife, 273
209 Pul, see Phul
Phul, king of Assyria, 386, 388 takes ; Punishments in law of Moses, 100 ; in
Nineveh, 387,470; treaty with Menahem, Egypt, 299 ; in Assyria, 424
170, 38S Pyramid, at Sakkarah, 204, 330, 358
Phut, son of 58 Ham, great, 205, 211, 330; of Dashur, 215,
Physiognomy of various races, 51, 52, 53 331 ; at Zaniet-el-arrian and Abousir,
Piankh, high priest of Amen, son of Her- 330 ; Assyrian in seven stages, 463
hor, 272 Pythagoras, king of Citium, tributary to
Piankhi I. imposes tribute on Egypt, 275
Esarhaddon, 407
;
takes Thebes and Memphis, 276, 408

Piankhi II. marries sister of Shabaka ;
driven out of Egypt, 283

Quails in the desert, 105
Pidilma, Susianian city, taken by Asshur-
Quaternary period, 25, 38 ; skulls in caves,
banipal, 412
Turanian, 63
Pinetsem, his embassy to Tiglath-pileser I.,
272, 375
R.
Pise, use of in Assyrian buildings, 457
Pi.sidians, assist Khitas against Ramses Raamses, built by Hebrews in Egypt, 92
II., 249 ; Egyptian invasion, 254 ; wars Rabbath-Ammon, tributary to Thothmes
of Sargon with, 394 III., 234 taken by David, 139
,
Pisiris,king of Carchemi.sh pays tribute to Rabbilh Judah, taken by Shishak, 274

in
Tiglath-pileser 11., 389; at Damascus, Rabsaris, name, 178 duties of, 418
;
390 Rabshakeh, name, 178 duties, 419 ;
Pison, river, 21
Race, definition of, 48
Pithom, built by the Hebrews, 92 Rachel, wife of Jacob, dies near
87 ;
Plagues, of Egypt, 94, 261 in Assyria, ; Bethlehem, 88

383 Radesich in.scriptlons of Seti I. at, 244
Poems, Egyptian, 234, 250, 315 Rafts, Babylonian, 497
Polished stone period, 31 Ragiba, Susianian god, 412
Polygamy among Hebrews, 138 ; in Ramah, Samuel's residence at. 128, 135 ;
Assyria, 425 fortified by Baasha taken and dis- ;
Polygenistic theory, 48, 53 mantled by Asa, 154

PoliTihony, of cuneiform characters, 443 Ramesseum, see Thebes
M M
;
53° INDEX.
Reuben, son of Jacob, 87 territory of

Ramoth, in Gilead, battle with Syrians, ;
by Jchoram, tribe, 109

tleath of Ahab, i6o ; taiceii
164 Riblah, Necho at, 185 Nebuchadnezzar ;
Ramses I., king of Egypt, 240 ; campaign and the Jewish prisoners at, 190
against Khilas, 241 Rim-Sin, king of Chalda;a, 355
Ramses II., the king who "knew not Riphath. son of Comer, 61
Joseph," 92 his papyrus, 199 ; surnamed
;
Ritho, Egyptian goddess, 324
Meriamen, 245 ; Sesostris legends of, ;
supposed monument at Rivers, level of in Quaternary period, 27 ;
246 facts, 247 ;
level of Nile, 218

;
of Eden, 21
Ninfi, 247 n. revolt, 248 first campaign,
;
; ;
249 poem on exploits, 230 ; alternate

;
Road, military, from Egypt to Assyria, 264 ;
war and peace, 254, 255 Babylonian, 496

Ramses III., docs not mention Hebrews, Robes of king of Assyria, 428
115 wars and buildings, 264 war with
;
;
Romans, of Japhetic race, 62
Lybians and Philistines, 265 victories, ;
Romis, king of Tamassus, tributary to
266 inscriptions conspiracy, 267 date,
; ; ;
Esarhaddon, 407
269 tomb, 334
;
Roofs of Assyrian buildings, 459
Ramses IV., 270
Rosetta branch of Nile, 194
Ramses V., tomb at Bibanel Moluk, 334
Rosetta stone, 303
Ramses XII., adventures of Ark of Chons,
271
Rot Amen succeeds Tahraka wars with ;
Assyrians, 2S0, 408 evacuates Egypt, ;
Raphia, defeat of Egyptians, 175, 278, 475 281 ; death, 282

Ras, temple at, 4S5 Rotennu, confederation of, 227 conquered ;
Ra-sebek-nefru, queen of Egypt, 214 by Thothmes I., 228, 360 refuse tribute ;
Rashi, capital of Rash in Susiana taken by to Thothmes III. ; defeated by Egyp-

Asshurbanipal, 412 tians, 231, 232, 233 defeated by Seti I.,
;
Rebecca, wife of Isaac, 86 243 ; submit to Ramses II., 255

Red man, physiognomy of, 53 ;
habitat, 54; Rupiktu made king of Ashdod, 390
origin, 64 S.
Red Sea, passage of Hebrews physical ;
Sabbatical year, loi
changes, 93 fleets on, 244, 267 ; canal
;
literature, 308
from Nile to, 245, 285 Saf, goddess, patroness of
Refrof, great serpent in Egyptian Hades, Sagadatti, king of Mount Mildish, taken
prisoner by Sargon, 394
322
Refuge, cities of, 100 Sagartia, rebellion against Sargon, 393
Rehob,in Judah, taken by Shishak, 274 Sai, inscriptions at isle of, 235
Rehoboam, son of Solomon, succeeds to Sailors, or Pilots, class of in Egypt, 293
the throne, 147 revolt of the ten tribes,
;
Sais, receives Assyrian name,
276, 277 ;
148 invasion of Shishak, 152, 274

; Dur Bilmati, 278 temple of Ahmes, 288
;
death, 152 Saites, or Salatis (Set-aa-pehti-nubti),

Reindeer age, 30 Shtpherd king, 356
Religion of primitive men, 29 of He- ;
— Sakhulina, king of Hamath, defeated by
brews, 98 :— of Egypt, 317 belief in ;
bhalmaneser IV., 379, 380
unity of God, 318, 323 symbolism of, ;
Sakkarah, tablet of, 201 pjTamid, 204 ;
;
319 future rewards and punishments,

;
tombs, 204, 205, 207
322 Triads, 324 worship of animals,
Salem, Melchizedek king of, 82 taken by
; ;
;
revolu-
325 solar character, 319, 452
;
;
Egyptians, 254
tion of Amenhotep IV., 238, 337 ;— of
besieged
Assyria polytheism, 425, 452
;
astral ; Samaria, founded by Omri, 156 ;
Bin-
character, 452 ;— of Babylon resemble. ;
1
by Benhidri, 158, 163; subject to
likhish III., 383; besieged by
Shal-
that of Assyria, 497 Triads, 498 ;— uf ;
Turanians, 343, 344 maneser VI. taken by Sargon, 175, 39',

;
Remenen, see Armenians 302 foreign colonies in, 393

;
Samdan, see Adar

Rephidim, 97 II.
Samdan-malik, son of Tiglath-pileser ;
Resen, 348, 349

supplanted by Sargon, 392
Resin, the Syrian, revolts from Solomon, wife of Einlikhish III., 368,
Sammuramat,
146
383, 470
Resin, king of Syria, in alliance with
Pekah; killed by Tiglath-pileser II., Samson, 125
172, 389 Samuel, birth and character, 126 judge, ;
127 defeats Philistines at

Mizpeh, 128 :
Resurrection of the body, Egyptian belief

;
schools of prophets, 128 ;

dissuades
in, 311, 321, 322
INDEX. 531
Hebrews from asking a king, 130 ;

Senkereh (Larsam), 353, 354 table of ;
anoints Saul, 131 disagreement with ; squares found at, 360 worship of Sha- ;
Saul, 132, 133 kills Agag, 133 anoints

; ; mash, 499
David, 134 dies at Ramah, 135 ; Sennacherib, king of Assyria, succeeds
Sanib, king of Amnion, at Damascus, 390 Sargon, 176, 398 conquers Babylonians, ;
Sar, Chalda;an and Assyrian measure, 360,

Armenians, and Medians campaign in :
Syria, 398, 471 attacks Hezekiah, 177, ;
449 campaign in
178, 179, 39S, 399, 400 ;
Sarah, wife of Abraham, 84, 85 in Media and Susiana,

Chalda;a, 400 ;
Sarah, Hebrew woman petition to As- ; 401 in Cha!da;a and Elam, 402
; in- ;
syrian officer, 421 scriptions, 372, 398 rebuilds Nineveh ; ;
Sarcophagus, peculiarities under Shepherd palace, 401, 403 rebellion in Babylon, ;
kings, 222 401, 403 victory over Greeks in Cllicia

; ;
Sardinia, conquest of by Pelasgi, 259 in- ;

is assassinated, 404
vade Egypt, 260 Sepa, statue of, 204
Saidanapalus, see Asshurlikhish Scplul, king of Khitas, makes treaty with
Sarepta, Egyptian officer at, 256 submits ;
Ramses I., 241
to Sennacherib, 398 Septuagint version of Isaiah, 22 ; chro-
Sargon usurps throne, 392 eclipse of ;
nology of, 39, 46
moon defeat of Elamites, 392
; takes ; Serapeum, 326
Samaria defeats Egyptians at Ra-
;
Serica, Mount Merou in, 20
phia, 175, 277, 392 removes Israelites, ;
i75> 392 wars in Armenia and with

;
Serpent, form of tempter, 10 brazen de- ;
Philistines, 394 in Commageue and ;

stroyed by Hezekiah, 174
Babylonia, 395, 470 submission of ; Seruya-edirat, sister of Asshurbanipal, 410
Cyprus siege of Tyre, 396 building
; ;
Sesocris, king of Egypt, 204
of Dur Sharyukin is assassinated, 397 ; ;
Sesostris (Ramses II.), origin of name,
his invocation of the gods, 456
246
Saruc, see Assaracus
Set, see Sutekh
Saul, anointed king of Israel, 131 delivers ;
Seth, pillars of, 15
Jabesh Gilead, 131 victory over Philis- ;
tines and Amalekites, 133 final rupture ;

Seti I., king of Egj'pt, 241 ; sumamed
with Samuel animosity to David, 134
; ;
Merenphtah, 242 wars with Khitas, ;
slaughter of priests, 135 defeat and ;

Rotennu, and Armenians, 243 repulses ;
death on Mount Gilboa, 135, 136; com- Lydians fleet on Red Sea
; artesian ;
parison of government of Saul and well, 244 ; canal, 245 ; tomb, 334
David, 141 Seti II. carried by his father to Ethiopia,
Scales, unknown to aborigines of America, 262 ; invades Egypt long reign, 263 ; ;
16 death, 264
Scandinavians, of Japhetic race, 62 Sevek-hotep, name of kings of thirteenth
dynasty, 217
Scarabaeus, used as passport in Hades, 310
Shabaka, see Shebek
Science and the Bible, 47 Egj'ptian, 317 ; ;
C'halda;an, 360 Assyrian, 448 ;

Shafra, king of Egypt, 205 statues thrown ;
Sculpture, EgjTJtian, 208, 213, 222, 223, down, 207

328, 465 Chaldaean, 359 Assyrian, 465
; ; ;
Shagaraktiyash, king of Chaldsea, 354 ;
Greek, 465 his inscription, 446

Scythians, war with Shalmaneser IV., 381 ;
Shallum, king of Israel, murdersZachariah ;
invade Media, 416, 472 Palestine, 184 ; is killed by Menahem, 170
Sebennytic mouth of Nile, 194 Shalmaneser I., king of Assyria, 372, 404
Segor, see Zoar Shalmaneser II., king of Assyria, 376
Seir, mount, 87 n. Shalmaneser III., king of Assyria, 376
Seker-nefer-ke, king of Egypt ; record of Shalmaneser IV., king of Assyria, 379 ;
eclipse, 204 palace at Calah black obelisk, 166, 379 : ;
Seleucia, foundation of, 491 Ahab and Benhidri, 159, 380; war m
Babylonia, 469 in Media, 3S0 defeats ; ;
Scmempses, king of Egypt, 203 Hazael Jehu, 166, 381 war in Armenia ;
;
Semiramis, legend of, 364. See Sammu- and with Scythians revolt of Asshur- ;
ramat daninpal, 381 ; death, 382

Semitic people, migrations of, 343 ; lan- Shalmaneser V., expedition to Damascus
guages, 70, 342 and Armenia, 385
Semneh, fortress of, 214 cataracts, 218 ; ; Shalmaneser VI. succeeds Tiglath-pileser
temples, 214, 235 ; inscriptions, 237 II. Ho.shea revolts from, 174, 391
; ;
Scnegambia, people of, 51 siege of Samaria, 175, 391 death, 392 ;

; ;
Jj- TNOKX.
Shamasli, Assyrian sun-god, 454 temples, ; Sidilim, battle in Vale of, 82

484, 485, 499 Sidka, king of Ascalon, taken prisoner by
Shaniash-bin, king of Assyria, succeeds Sennacherib, 399
Shalmaneser IV. wars in Osrhoene,
;
Sidon remains faithful to Ramses II., 249;
Armenia, and Bahylonia, 382, 470 Egyptian officer at, 256 taken by Phi- ;
Shamash-ibni excites rebellion in Babylon, listines, 124, 272 pays tribute to Asshur- ;
405 nazirpal, 378 to Shalmaneser IV., 381;

;
Shamgar, judge, 119 to Binlikhish III., 383 to Sennacheiib, ;
Shamshi-bin, king of Assyria, 376 398 taken by Esarhaddon, 404 revolts

;
;
from Clialda;ans, 188

Shamshi-bin, king of Chalda;a, 356
Signet, sec Cylinder
Shamsie, queen of Aiabs, at Damascus,
Sihon, king of the Amorites remains of
390 tribute, 393
;
;
his capital defeated by Hebrew.s, 108

;
Shamulshamugin, son of Esarbaddon, made

king of Babylon, 407 rebellion, 409
Silsilis, mimuments of Amen-hotep III.,
;
237 of Har-em-hebi, 239

submission, 410; dethroned, 415, 471 ;
Siluna, subject to Shamash-bin, 382

Sliap-en-ap, daughter of Piankhi II. ; wife
of Psammetik, 283 Simeon, son of Jacob, 87, 88 territory of ;
tribe, 113; migration of, 149

Sharulien, taken by Ahmes, 226
Simyra rebels against Sargon, 393
Sharyukin, king of Agani, 347
Sin (moon god), 354, 454, 483, 484, 485,
Sharyukin, king of Assyria, see Sargon
499
Shasu, Arab tribes, 227 subdued by ;
Sinai, Hebrews at, 96 law given, 98 ;
Amen-hotep I., 228 by Seti I., 242 ;
apostasy of people, 98
;
Egyptian in- ;
Sheba, revolt of, 140 scriptions, 205 copper mines and work- ;
Sheba, queen of, visits Solomon, 143 shops, 105, 205, 211
Shebek (So), Hoshea's alliance with, 174, Sin-baladan, king of Chaldaja, 355
277> ,391 defeated by Assyrians at Singar, tributary to Thothmes III.,
;
234 ;
Raphia, 175, 277, 393 dethrones Bo- ;
to Seti I., 243 ; to Shalmaneser IV., 380
kenrauf, 277 name, 277 n. ; character, ;
281 title, "Sultan," 393

Sin-inun, king of Chaldsea, 355
;
Shebetun, Ramses II. encamped at, 250 Sin-said, king of Chaldsea, 354
Shechem, city taken by sons of Jacob, 88 Sinukta, in Asia Minor, subjugated by

;
Abimelech king of, 121 Sargon, 393

deputies of ;
tribes meet Rehoboam there, 148 ; forti- Sippara, 353, 354 taken by Tiglath-pileser ;
fied by Jeroboam, 150 I., 375 temples, 485, 499

;
Shem, race of, 59 physical characteristics

;
Sitraphernes, the Persian, taken prisoner
of, 60 languages, 70
;
by Esarhaddon, 406
Shemaiah, the prophet, 152 Slaves among Hebrews, loi Egyptian ;
Shepherd kings of Egypt, 89, 219, 220, expeditions for, 237, 257 among As- ;
221 syrians, 424

expulsion of, 224
; some remain, ;
224 Seti I. descended from, 242

; are ;
Slavonians, of Japhetic race, 62
afraid of Chaldaean power, 221, 236 Snefru, king of Egj'pt, 205
Shepherd class, in Egypt, 292, 293 So, see Shebek
Sheshonk, see Shishak Soldiers, Hebrew, 158 n. Egyptian, 291,
;
Shilagara, Susianian god, 412 292 ; Assyrian, 429 : Babylonian, 492

Shiloh, Tabernacle and Ark there, 114 Sodom, Lot resides there, 82 ; destruction
neglect of, 116 of, 84
Shimgam, Susianian god, 412 Soleb, temple at, 237
Shishak, son of Uaserken, invades Judsea, Soli, king of, tributary to Esarhaddon, 407
274 takes Jerusalem, 152
; Solomon, birth of, 140 succeeds David, ;
Shudami, Susianian god, 412 141 administration alliance with Egypt

; ;
Shumir, people of Chaldsea, 342, 344 and Tyre temple, 142 Egyptian wife,
: ;
143, 273 commerce with India, 144 to

; ;
Shumud, Susianian god, 412 Ophir lapse to idolatry, 145

; revolts ;
Shunem, taken by Shishak, 274 against, 146 death, 146 writings, 146
; ; ;
Shutruknakhunta, king of Susiana, 387, collected and arranged by Hezekiah, 180

470 Solomon, king of Moab, at Damascus, 390
Sibit-baal, kingof Gebal, tributary to Tig- Solon, 213
ath-pileser II., 389 at Damascus, 390; Soss, Chalda;an and Assyrian measure,
Sichem, Abram's vision there, 81 360, 449
Sicily, conquest by Pelasgi, 259 Sothic period, 268 n.
INDEX. 533
sup- Samaria, 163 defeated by Jehoash, 167 ;
Soudan, Fellatah in, 51 revolt in ;

;
pressed by Ramses III., 267 subdued by Asshurnazirpal, 378 tribute ;
to Shalmaneser IV., 379; to Binhkhish

Soul, belief in the immortality of, 321
III., 3S3; Tiglath-pileser II., 172. 3S9 ;
Species, definition of, 48 revolt, 389; Sennacherib's campaign,

Sphinx, 206, 331 form of under Shepherds,
; 398 campaigns of Esarhaddon, 405
;
;
223 invasion of Psammetik, 284 of Nebu- ;
chadnezzar, 476. See Israel, Judah,

Spies sent into Canaan, 105
Phcenicia
Squares, Chaldaean tables of, 360
Suitues, Egyptian, 208, 328, 336 ; Assyrian,
467 Babylonian, 505
;
Steel used by the Assyrians, 427 Taanach, in Judah, taken by Shishak, 274
Stick usually carried by Babylonians, 492 Taauth, female form of god Ao, 454, 499.
Stone implements, 27 ; in Chalda;a, 359 ; 501
still in use, 36 Tabeal, son of, see Ashariah
Stone age, all races passed through, 35 ;
Tabernacle, 99, 103, 239 at Shiloh, 114 ;
no date for, 37 Tabernacles, feast of, 99

Strangers, treatment of by Hebrews, 102
Table of shew-bread, 103, 104, 239
Succoth, destroyed by Gideon, 121 Table of stone, 98
Succoth-benoth, 499 Tablet of Tuthmosis, 200: of Abydos, 200 ;
Sufeira, see Sippara second, 200 of Sakkarah, 201

;
Suffetes, or Judges of Hebrews, 117 Tadmor, or Palmyra, built by Solomon,

Sulumal, king of Melitene, at Damascus, 143
390 Tafnekht, king of Eg^T'. 27^'
Sumere, city of Shumir, 342 Tahennu invade Egj^pt, 259
Sun, table of, 314 ;
phases of personified in Tahpanhes, Jewish refugees there, 191
Egyptian religion, 319, 321, 322 Chal-
Tahraka is sent against Sennacherib, 179,
;
da:an temple of, 354 Assyrian worship

J
278 becomes king of Egypt wars m
;
;
of, 454
Lybia, 278 attacked and defeated by
;
Surgadia, city in Parthia, taken by Sargon, Esarhaddon, 278, 407 attacked by ;
Asshurbanipal retieats to Ethiopia,

394 ;
by Asshurbanipal, 410 hiero- insurrection in Delta Nccho

Susa, taken 279, 408
:
; ;
gl>-phics at, 434 defeats Tahraka, 280

Susiana, or Elam, population of, 59, 343 ;
Taia, queen, mother of Amenhotep IV.,
dominant in Chalda;a, 352, 355 conquest ;
238
subject to Bin-
of Palestine, 82, 352 ;
Takkaro, allied with Lybians ;
iuv.ade
likhish III., 382 form independent state ;
Syria with Philistines, 265
after destruction of Nineveh, 387 sub- ;
Talmis, 235
jugated by Sargon, 392 by Sennacherib, ;
400, 402, 409 Susa taken, 410, 411 de-

; ;
Talmud, of Jerusalem, 4
vastation of the country, 412 submission, ; Taraahu invade Egypt, 259
413 cuneiform writing, 433
; Tamaritu, Susianlan general, 410; king,
Sutekh, or Set, supreme god of the Shep- 411
herds, 221 worship of by Ramses 11.,
;
Tamassus, king of, tributary to Esarhaddon,
242 name of, 307 same as Baal and ;
;
407
Typhon, 320 temple at Tanis, 336 ;
Tanis or Avaris, 221 inscription at, 241 ; ;
Suzub made king of Babylon defeated by ;

buildings of Ramses II., 245: rival dy-
Sennacherib; escapes and returns to nasty to Her H or, 273; twenty-second
Babylon, 402 defeated escapes to Su- ; ;
dynasty, 275 receives Assyrian name of
;
siana again defeated

;
Babylon plun- :
Dur Banit, 279 temple at, 336 ;
Tarhula, king of Gamgum, in Armenia

dered, 403, 471 ;
Syene, inscriptions 237 at,

at Dama.scus, 390
Syllabarium, Assyrian, Babylonian, and Tarshish, son of Javan,6i
Median, 436
Tarshish, Phosnician voyages to, 145
Syrians, position 227; conquered by of,
again independent, Tarsus, foundation of, 404, 408
Thothmes III., 230 ;
240; revolt against Ramses II., 24°; Tartan, name, 178 duties, 419 :
invasion of Philistines at-

wars, 254 ;
;
Taxes in Egypt, 296
tack of Khitas, 265 conquered by monu-
;
Tel-el-Amarna, building of, 23S ;
David, 139; invasion of Tiglath-pilescr ments at, 239 destruction of, 240
;
I., 375; invade Israel, 154; defeated,

siege of Tel-Ibrahim, temple at 485
158 battle at Ramoth, 161
:
;
; :
534 INDEX.
Temple of Solomon, 142 dedication, 143; ; Tibni, pretender to throne of Israel, 156
plundered by Shishak, 152 by Jehoasli, ;
Tidal, sl'c Thargal
16S ; restored hyjolham, 171 treasures ;
removed by He/ekiah, 177 profaned by Tiglathpileser I., emba.ssy to from Pinet-

:
Maiiasseh, 181 restored l)y Josiah, 183 :

.sem with crocodile, 272, 375 inscription, ;
;
plundered by Nebuchadnezzar, 187, 490 ;

356, 374 wars with Babylon, 375, 404,
;
destroyed, 190 469 hunting wild beasts, 431

;
Temple, Egj'ptian, by Pyramids, 206, 318 ;

Tiglathpileser II., heads in.surrection in
at Semnch, 214, 235 of Shepherd kings ; Assyria made king, 388
; reduces ;
at Amana, 236 at Napata and Soleb, ; Babylonia, 470 invades .Syria, 389
;
;
237 at Abydos, 242, 245 inscriptions of

; ; revolt, 389 again invades Syria
: court :
Ramses II., 257 at Ipsambul, 245, 250, ; at Damascus, 172, 173, 390; takes captive
286 at Thebes, 245, 250
; Greek, in ;
Israelites east of Jordan, 173, 390 ;
Kgypt, 2S7 worship in, 327 importance

; : invades Scythia and Syria, 391
in art, 328 to Osortasen III., 331;
— Tigris, course of 339 inundation, ;
340 ;
334 destroys wall of Nineveh, 386

Temple, Assyrian, 464, 465
Tigro-Euphrates basin, 339
Temple, Babylonian, 4S0, 482, 484
Time, Assyrian divisions of, 449
Terah, 80 descendants in Chaldaea, 345
;
Tirhakah, see Tahraka

Teta, king of Egypt, 203, 210
Tetrapolis, Chalda;an, 348
Tirza, murder of Elah at, 155; taken by
Omri, T56
Teumraan, king of Susiana, joins revolt of Titan, son of Xisuthrus, 504
Shamulshamugin, 409 defeated, 410 ;
put Tithes, institution

of, loi
to death, 411
Tezpi, American Noah, 17 Titus, arch of, 103
Thamna, taken by Sennacherib, 399 Togarmah, son of Gomer, 61

Thargal, name of, 82, 352 Tola, judge of Hebrew.s, 121
Thebes, foundation of, 213 twelfth dy- ;
Tombs, Egyptians, 201, 204, 207, 216, 242,
nasty, 214; thirteenth dynasty, 217; 333
buildings of Thothmes III., 236 bodies ;
Tombs, Chaldaean, 359
of Assyrian chiefs hung there, 236 ; Tongues, confusion of, 7, 8, 23, 504
palace of Seti L, 242; of Ramses II.,
Tower, see Babel
245, ^54 Merenphtah there, 260 taken
; ;
by Seti II., 263 inscriptions, 266, 267, :

Tower, of Ramses, 266
268, 271, 278 king IVlonth-mei-Ankhi, ; Trade of Neolithic epoch, 31
278 Rot-Amen
; city pillaged by ;
Tran.sformations of dead in Hades, 311
Asshurbanipal obelisks taken to Nine- ;
veh, 2S0 Tree of life, 11

Ethiopians, 2S2 Psammetik,
; ;
283 tombs, 333

: temples and palaces, ;
Triads, Egyptian, 323 Assyrian, 368, 453, ;
334. 335 454 Babylonian, 498

;
Thermuthis, daughter of Pharaoh, saves Troy, people of assist Khitas against

Moses, 93 Ramses II., 249
Thoth buries inscribed tablets, 15 ; god Tsahi, subdued by Thothmes III., 233
of science, 307 conductor of the soul ; Tses-hortsa, king of Egypt, 204
in Hades, 310; the first Hermes, 315;
Tubal, son of Japhet, 61
type of priests, 315 registers last judg- ;
ment, 322 Tubalcain first worker in metal, 4

Thoth-hotep, tomb of, 204 Tuham, king of Istunda, at Damascus,
Thothmes king of Egj'pt, wars with
I.,
390
Rotennu, 228 crosses Euphrates, 229, :
Tuklat-samdan I., king of Assyria, 372 :
361 takes Babylon, 373, 469 signet taken ;
Thothmes by Babylonians, 373

II., short reign, 229
Tuklat-samdan II., 377
Thothmes Hall of Ancestor.s, 200
III., his ;
under guardianship of Hatasu, 229 Tunar-i, tomb of, 201

annals of Karnak, 230 battle at Me- ;
Tunep, taken by Thothmes III., 233
giddo, 231 march to Euphrates, 232,
;
Turanian race, 63 language, 64, 68, 344
; ;
361 tribute to, 233

;
in Chaldaea, 342 writing, 345
;
Thothmes IV., short reign, 236 Turin papyrus, 199

Throne, Assyrian, in British Museum, Turquoise mines at Sinai, 205 n.
427
Tyh, desert of El, 106
Tiaaken, king of Egypt, 221, 223
Tylos, isle of; Babylonian commerce with,
Tibareni submit to Esarhaddon, 405
497
INDEX. 535
Ramses Van, pillaged by Assyrians, 381 Sargon's

Tyre, inscription of II., 249; ;
Kgvptian officertribute to at, 256 ;

campaign, 393 wars of E.sarhaddon,
;
Asshurnazirpal, 378 to Shalmancser IV., ; 405

381 to Binlikhish 111., 383
;
to 'I'iglath- ;
Vedas, traditions in, 11, 36
pileser II., 389 repulse of Sargon, 396
: ;
taken by Asshurbanipal, 408 revolts ;
from Chalda;ans, 188 taken by Nebu- ;

W.
chadnezzar, 477
Wady-halfa, cataracts, 211 ; inscriptions of
Tyrrhenians invade Egj'pt, 260
Osortasen 1., 214
Wady Mogharah, factories at, 103
U.
Wady Mokattib, 97
Uahprahet, kingof Egi'pt(Hophra, Apries), Warfare, Hebrew mode of, 158 n.
excites Zedekiah to revolt, 188 retreats, ; Warriors, class of in Egypt, 290

189, 286, 477 attacks C^fpnis takes
; ;
Water of life, 11
Sidon dethroned by Ahmes, 2S6 by Pepi
Wa-Wa, people, conquered
;
Uaserken, general, father of Sheshonk, Merira, 211

274 Weaving and spinning, origin of, 4 in ;
Uaserken, king of Egypt, 276 lake villages, 35

Ugro-finnish, race physiognomy of, 52, 62
;
Week, introduced by Assyrians, 449
Ullushun, made king of Van, 393 defeated ;
Well, artesian, constructed by SeU I., 244
by Sargon, 394 White race, original habitat, 51, 54 : alter-
Ummanaldash, Susianian general, made ations of in Europe and Africa, 51
king, 410 rebels, 411 submits, 413
treatment of by Hebrews, 105
;
;
Women,
Ummanibi, Susianian general, 410 king, ;
Words, primitive choice of, 65 formation ;
411
of, 69
Ummanmimanu, king of Elam, 402 ;
Workshops of Neolithic period, 31

defeated by Sennacherib, 403
Writing, Eg>'ptian, 302 cuneiform, 345,
Undashi, Susianian city, taken by Asshur- ;
banipal, 413 431

Unity of the human race, 48, 50
Upri, king of, tributary to Esarhaddon,
407
Ur(Calneh), 80, 348, 353 great pyramid : Xerxes, plunders Babylon, 491
at, 354, 358 early supremacy over
;
Xisuthrus, e.scapes deluge, 14, 503 buries :
Babylon, 355 inscriptions, 356 temple,

; ;
tablets at Sippara, 354 king, 502 ;
485. 499
Ur-Hammu (Orchamus), 353
Uriah the Hittite, 139
Urijah the prophet, 186
to Tiglath-
Yakindu, king of Aradus, kills himself, 40S
Urikki, king of Kui, tribute
pile.ser II., 389; at Damascus, 390 Yala, king of Hedjaz, 406
Urim, king of Hubisna, at Damascus, 390 Vaman, usurps throne of Ashdod ; flies to
Nulukhi, 394
Urumiyeh, lake, expedition of Tiglath-
Vanbo, city in Arabia taken by As.shur-
pileser I. to, 375
com- banipal, 414
Urzaha, excites revolt in Van, 393 ;
mits suicide, 394 Yataamir the Saba;an pays tribute to Sar-

gon, 393
U.serkera, king of Egypt, 210
Yathrib (Medina), 406 ; taken by Asshur-
Uskhiiti, king of Tuna, at Damascus, 390
banipal
Utensils of Tabernacle, 103, 239
Yaubid, of Hamath, rebels .against Sargon,
Uxians, in Chaldsea, 343 393
Uzziah, king of Judah, succeeds Amaziah ;
Year, Egyptian, 231 n., 268 n. Assyrian,
fortifies Klath takes Gath and Ashdod ; ;
45°
subdues Ammonites, 168 ; leprosy and
Yellow race, habitat of, 54 origin, 63 ; ;
death, 171 languages, 67

Yemen, campaign of Nebuchadnezzar in,
478
Valpitlam, temple, 485 Ywaitc, king of Arabs, joins revolt of
Valsaggatu, temple, 480. 481, 482 Nabubelshum, 409 defeated, 410; in-
;
v.aded, 413 submits, 414

Valzida, temple, 482, 484 ;
536 INDEX.
Zedekiah (Mattanaiah), king of Judah,

Zabdan, brother or king of Babylon, 378 succeeds Jchoiachin, 187 at Babylon
. ;
revolt, 188, 286 besieged, taken and

:
Zachanah, king of Israel, succeeds Jero-
put to death, 190, 477
boam 11., 170
Zerah, see Azerch-Amen
Zal (Heroopolis), attacked by Shasu, 242,
Zervan, son of Xisuthrus, 504
243. 245
Zarpanit, see Ishtar Zikar Sin, king of Chaldsa, 355
Zared, brook, Hebrews Zikarta, see Sagartia
at, 107
Zaretan, city, 112 Zimri, death of, log
Zebpim, 82 Zoar, 82 ; Egyptian
officer at, 256
Zebulon, son of Jacob, 87 ; territory of the Zobah, Syrians of defeated by David, 139
tribe of, 113 Zodiac, Assyrian, 448
Zechariah, the prophet, 168 Zoroastrian, religion, 10, 343, 351
END OF INDEX.
LIST OF SCRIPTURE TEXTS QUOTED.
PAGE PAGE
Deut. 25 6
Gen. iv. 23, 24 5 ii.
V. 15 lOI
vi. 4 45 14,
8 5 vii. I 113
vii. II,24 6, 269« 3> 4 145
viii. I— 4 269« xiii. 9 100
7.
10 7 XV. 12 — 18 lOI
X. 8, 9, 10 348 xvi. 12 •.. lOI
xi. 4 8 xvii. 2—5 100
xii. 1—3 80 17 138
10 .
81 xxi. 18—21 100, loi
xiii. I 81 xxiii. 20 102
10, 14 82 xxiv. 7, 16 100
xiv. I 82 10 — 13, 17, 18, 22 loi
7 105 xxviii. 50—53 163

XV. I 83
XX. I 84 Jos. iii. 10 113
xxi. 32 113 16 112
xxii. I 85 ix. 3 274
xxvi. — 113 x. 10, 12 274
xxviii. 10 87 xii. 21 274
xli. 56, 57 6 xiii. 5 113
xlvii. 22 291 18 274
XV. 56 135
Ex. i. 2 246 59 399
iii. 18 91 xvi. 8 231
V. 14 91 xvii. 9 231
xii. 44 102 II 274
xiii. 17 113 xix. 6 226
xviii. 21 — 27 99 10, 18, 19,28 274
xxi. 16, 24, 26 100 249
43
20 loi x.xi. 38 274
xxii. 25 102
XXX. 12 140
Jiul. ii. I 115
xxxiv. 16 145
xi. 31 122
100 xii. 6 140
Lev. XX. 7
xxi. 25 116
xxiv. 20 100
xxvi. 1 — 7,8—17,40 loi
35—37. 44, 46 • 102 iSam.iv.v. vi 271
iv. 4 109
Num.xvi. 40 132 viii. 7 99
xviii. 21 loi II — 17 131
xxxi. 6, 14 109 xii. 12 99
XXXV. 10 — 24,30 100 XXX. 14 124
538 LIST OF SCRIPTURE TEXTS QUOTED.
PAGE PAGE
1 Kings iv. 30 146, 313 Is. XX. I 394
-^•27 145 xxxiii. 21 144
>î- 2 14s xlii. I 169
xii.
xiv. 12
148
151
xlvii.
II
I
—3 487
liv. 169
xvi. 2, 9 155 Ix. 1—3 170
XX. 34 380
xxi. 30 160 Jer. xxvi. 21 186
xxii. I 380 xxxiv. 17 189
xlvii. I 185
2 Kings i. 3 162
viii. ID 163 Ezek. XXV. 16 124
xiv. 28 169 xxvi. 7—9 477
XV. 19 388
37 I72« Dan. i. 4 494
xvi. 9 389 2
7, ii.
494
xvii. 7, 16, 17 174 iv. 30 486
29, 31 455, 499 V. 7 494
XIX. 35 179 18 489
xxiii. 5 — II 498
xxiv. 7 475 Apocryphal Bel & Dragon
XXV. 27 4S7 3&23 483
1 Chron. iv. 2 1 , 22 92 Banich i. 11 489

31,42 149 vi. — 500
vii. 21, 24 92
xii. 6 152 Hos. iv. I—4 171
vii. 7 171
2 Chron. ii. 14 143 viii. 4 171
X. — 148 X. 2 170
xi. 9 274
xxiv. 22 167 Nahum i. i 416
XXV. 4 167 ii. I — 13 416
xxviii. 20 390 iii. 7, 18, 19 416
Ps. cxxxvii 481 Hab. i. 6, 8 472
Prov. XXV. I 180 Zeph. ii. 5 124
Is. vii. I —
6 172, 389 Matt. xix. 8 99
X. 9 22
28 seq 399 Mark. x. 4 99
xi; 15 95
xiii. 17 — 22 491 Acts vii. 27 313
xix. 2, 4, 13 275
REFERENCES TO HERODOTUS.
The Quotations from and References to Herodotus are so numerous

and important, that it has been considered advisable to add a List of
Passages, quoted anil the pages where these will be found.
[All quotations are from the translation of the Rev. Professor

Rawlinson. 2nd Ed.].
PAGE
Book I. Chap. 32 268 Book II. Chap. 104. 235
,, 178 478 106. 247
i79--358> 478 135- 301
180 478 136. 21 :>' 300
,, 181... 47S, 483 137- 277, 281
,. 182 483 139- 281
„ 184 383 141. 179
„ 185 473 151- 283
„ 186 473 158. 285
192... 496, 497 159- 185
194. 496 164. 289
195- 492 165. 291
196. 492 166. 291
197. 447 168. 292
198. 492 172. 286
200. 493 173- 288
201. 35 177- 28 /) 299
215- 35 178. 2S7
216. 35 182. 28 7
Book II. Chap. 4 268 Bool. III. Chap. 5- 185

5 194 17. 314
37... 291, 317 18., 314
77- 302 94- 249
78. 302
80. 301 Book V. Chap. 16. 34
81. 302 52- 496
84. 302
99- 203 Book VII. Chap. 78 249
103. 23s
WEUTHEIMEK, LEA AND CO., PKI.NTERS, FINSBURV ClKtUS.

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
LIBRARY
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>-<^<p

ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST,

'.nt's Manual of Oriental Histo?y.

ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE EAST

COMPRISING THE HISTORY OF THK ISKAELITKS, EGYPTIANS,

J. B. LIPPINCOTT AND CO.

Author's Preface to the English Edition xvii

BOOK I.—PRIMITIVE TIMES.

,, II. The Deluge 5

Chap. II. Traditions parallel to the Bible Story.

Chap. III. Material Vestiges of Primitive Humanity.

Chap. IV. Human Races and their Languages.

BOOK II.—THE ISRAELITES.

Chap. III.— Kingdom of Israel — Saul, David, Solo-

Chap. IV.— Separation of the Ten Tribes — Kingdoms

BOOK III.— THE EGYPTIANS.

Chap. II. The Middle Empire.

Chap. IV. Decline and Fall of the Egyptian Empire.

Chap. V. Civilisation, Manners and Monuments of

BOOK IV.— TPIE ASSYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS.

viii TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Chap. III. The Second Assyrian Empire.

,, V. End of the Second Assyrian Empire

f Chap. IV. Civilisation,

Section 1. Politicaland Social Organisation 417

Chap. VI. Manners and Religion of Babylon.

recesses of annals long buried in obscurity.

known had left behind them mighty

in the Bible. And as everything belonging to the primitive eastern world

occupied a large place in Biblical story, and in the pages of Herodotus.

civilisation Archseology has been found to throw an unexpected light.

The study and correct understanding of the ornamented remains, the

indication is to be found in historical literature.

Nor is this all. Phoenician art, intermediate between that of Egypt

ground, where those who preceded us wandered among swamps and

brilliantand extensive, when explorations can be pushed on into all

furnished to that of Rome the elements of its primitive giMndeur. Thus

would convey an absolutely untrue idea.

point to which knowledge has advanced —when the history of Oriental

which falsify the general result. It is therefore indispensable to intro-

or of the three quarters of the habitable globe — who would with

voluminous, and costly works, written in a style so learned as to make

now able to establish?" This is we have attempted to fill in

schools of Egypt, a real masterpiece of historic sense, clear explana-

just because I am a Christian that I regard myself as being more in

Thus that, faithful to the traditions of my father, I have a passion

This Manual, as originally published last year in Paris, found greater

to repair. As now puljlished, the Manual is intended for teachers, for

have endeavoured to collect the small number of facts at present ascer-

tained as to the condition of the primitive races of men. As required

The Fourth Book, however, on the History of the Assyrians and

civilisations that have influenced, even indirectly, our own.

THE BIBLE NARRATIVE.

Section I. The Human Race before the Deluge.

from a human point of view, it contams the most ancient tradition

And when the woman saw was good

leaves together and made themselves aprons."

both good and e\Tl. Should we suppose a prohibition from God,

* These names have meanings in the Semitic languages, as have all