History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery Part 6

Another great change which differentiates the Middle Kingdom (XIth-XIIIth Dynasties) from the Old Kingdom was caused by Egypt's coming into contact with other outside nations at this period. During the whole history of the Old Kingdom, Egyptian relations with the outer world had been nil. We have some inkling of occasional connection with the Mediterranean peoples, the _Ha-nebu_ or Northerners; we have accounts of wars with the people of Sinai and other Bedawin and negroes; and expeditions were also sent to the land of Punt (Somaliland) by way of the Upper Nile. But we have not the slightest hint of any connection with, or even knowledge of, the great nations of the Euphrates valley or the peoples of Palestine. The Babylonian king Naram-Sin invaded the Sinaitic peninsula (the land of Magan) as early as 3750 b. c, about the time of the IIId Egyptian Dynasty. The great King Tjeser, of that dynasty, also invaded Sinai, and so did Snefru, the last king of the dynasty. But we have no hint of any collision between Babylonians and Egyptians at that time, nor do either of them betray the slightest knowledge of one another's existence. It can hardly be that the two civilized peoples of the world in those days were really absolutely ignorant of each other, but we have no trace of any connection between them, other than the possible one before the founding of the Egyptian monarchy.

This early connection, however, is very problematical. We have seen that there seems to be in early Egyptian civilization an element ultimately of Babylonian origin, and that there are two theories as to how it reached Egypt. One supposes that it was brought by a Semitic people of Arab affinities (represented by the modern Grallas), who crossed the Straits of Bab el-Man-deb and reached Egypt either by way of the Wadi Hammamat or by the Upper Nile. The other would bring it across the Isthmus of Suez to the Delta, where, at Heliopolis, there certainly seems to have been a settlement of a Semitic type of very ancient culture. In both cases we should have Semites bringing Babylonian culture to Egypt. This, as we may remind the reader, was not itself of Semitic origin, but was a development due to a non-Semitic people, the Sumerians as they are called, who, so far as we know, were the aboriginal inhabitants of Babylonia. The Sumerian language was of agglutinative type, radically distinct both from the pure Semitic idioms and from Egyptian. The Babylonian elements of culture which the early Semitic invaders brought with them to Egypt were, then, ultimately of Sumerian origin. Sumerian civilization had profoundly influenced the Semitic tribes for centuries before the Semitic conquest of Babylonia, and when the Sumerians became more and more a conquered race, finally amalgamating with their conquerors and losing their racial and linguistic individuality, they were conquered by an alien race but not by an alien culture. For the culture of the Semites was Sumerian, the Semitic races owing their civilization to the Sumerians. That is as much as to say that a great deal of what we call Semitic culture is fundamentally non-Semitic.

In the earliest days, then, Egypt received elements of Sumerian culture through a Semitic medium, which introduced Semitic elements into the language of the people, and a Semitic racial strain. It is possible.

that both theories as to the routes of these primeval conquerors are true, and that two waves of Semites entered the Nile valley towards the close of the Neolithic period, one by way of the Upper Nile or Wadi Hammamat, the other by way of Heliopolis.

After the reconsolidation of the Egyptian people, with perhaps an autocratic cla.s.s of Semitic origin and a populace of indigenous Nilotic race, we have no trace of further connection with the far-away centre of Semitic culture in Babylonia till the time of the Theban hegemony.

Under the XIIth Dynasty we see Egyptians in friendly relations with the Bedawin of Idumsea and Southern Palestine. Thus Sanehat, the younger son of Amenemhat I, when the death of his royal father was announced, fled from the new king Usertsen (Senusret) into Palestine, and there married the daughter of the chief Ammuans.h.i.+ and became a Syrian chief himself, only finally returning to Egypt as an old man on the a.s.surance of the royal pardon and favour. We have in the reign of Usertsen (Senusret) II the famous visit of the Arab chief Abisha (Abeshu') with his following to the court of Khnumhetep, the prince of the Oryx nome in Middle Egypt, as we see it depicted on the walls of Khnumhetep's tomb at Beni Hasan.

We see Usertsen (Senusret) III invading Palestine to chastise the land of Sekmem and the vile Syrians.*

* We know of this campaign from the interesting historical stele of the general Sebek-khu (who took part in it), which was found during Mr. Garstang's excavations at Abydos, not previously referred to above. They were carried out in 1900, and resulted in the complete clearance of a part of the great cemetery which had been created during the XIIth Dynasty. The group of objects from the tombs of this cemetery, and those of XVIIIth Dynasty tombs also found, is especially valuable as showing the styles of objects in use at these two periods (see Garstang, el-Ardbah, 1901).

The arm of Egypt was growing longer, and its weight was being felt in regions where it had previously been entirely unknown. Eventually the collision came. Egypt collided with an Asiatic power, and got the worst of the encounter. So much the worse that the Theban monarchy of the Middle Kingdom was overthrown, and Northern Egypt was actually conquered by the Asiatic foreigners and ruled by a foreign house for several centuries. Who these conquering Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, were no recent discovery has told us. An old idea was that they were Mongols. It was supposed that the remarkable faces of the sphinxes of Tanis, now in the Cairo Museum, which bore the names of Hyksos kings, were of Mongolian type, as also those of two colossal royal heads discovered by M. Naville at Bubastis. But M. Golenischeff has now shown that these heads are really those of XIIth Dynasty kings, and not of Hyksos at all.

Messrs. Newberry and Garstang have lately endeavoured to show that this type was foreign, and probably connected with that of the Kheta, or Hitt.i.tes, of Northern Syria, who came into prominence as enemies of Egypt at a later period. They think that the type was introduced into the Egyptian royal family by Nefret, the queen of Usertsen (Senusret) II, whom they suppose to have been a Hitt.i.te princess. At the same time they think it probable that the type was also that of the Hyksos, whom they consider to have been practically Hitt.i.tes. They therefore revive the theory of de Cara, which connects the Hyksos with the Hitt.i.tes and these with the Pelasgi and Tyrseni.

This is a very interesting theory, which, when carried out to its logical conclusion, would connect the Hyksos and Hitt.i.tes racially with the pre-h.e.l.lenic "Minoan" Mycenseans of Greece, as well as with the Etruscans of Italy. But there is little of certainty in it. It is by no means impossible that we may eventually come to know that the Hitt.i.tes (_Kheta_, the _Khatte_ of the a.s.syrians) and other tribes of Asia Minor were racially akin to the "Minoans" of Greece, but the connection between the Hyksos and the Hitt.i.tes is to seek. The countenances of the Kheta on the Egyptian monuments of Ramses II's time have an angular cast, and so have those of the Tanis sphinxes, of Queen Nefret, of the Bubastis statues, and the statues of Usertsen (Senusret) III and Amenemhat III. We might then suppose, with Messrs. Newberry and Garstang, that Nefret was a Kheta princess, who gave her peculiar racial traits to her son Usertsen (Senusret) III and his son Amenem-hat, were it not far more probable that the resemblance between this peculiar XIIth Dynasty type and the Kheta face is purely fortuitous.

There is really no reason to suppose that the type of face presented by Nefret, Usertsen, and Amenemhat is not purely Egyptian. It may be seen in many a modern fellah, and the truth probably is that the sculptors have in the case of these rulers very faithfully and carefully depicted their portraits, and that their faces happen to have been of a rather hard and forbidding type. But, if we grant the contention of Messrs.

Newberry and Garstang for the moment, where is the connection between these XIIth Dynasty kings and the Hyksos? All the Tanite monuments with this peculiar facial type which would be considered Hyksos are certainly of the XIIth Dynasty. The only statue of a Hyksos king, which was undoubtedly originally made for him and is not one of the XIIth Dynasty usurped, is the small one of Khian at Cairo, discovered by M. Naville at Bubastis, and this has no head. So that we have not the slightest idea of what a Hyksos looked like. Moreover, the evidence of the Hyksos names which are known to us points in quite a different direction. The Kheta, or Hitt.i.tes, were certainly not Semites, yet the Hyksos names are definitely Semitic. In fact it is most probable that the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, were, as the cla.s.sical authorities say they were, and as their name (_hiku-semut_ or _hihu-shasu_,) "princes of the deserts" or ("princes of the Bedawin") also testifies, purely and simply Arabs.

Now it is not a little curious that almost at the same time that a nomad Arab race conquered Lower Egypt and settled in it as rulers (just as 'Amr and the followers of Islam did over two thousand years later), another Arab race may have imposed its rule upon Babylonia. Yet this may have been the case; for the First Dynasty of Babylon, to which the famous Hammurabi belonged, was very probably of Arab origin, to judge by the forms of some of the royal names. It is by no means impossible that there was some connection between these two conquests, and that both Babylonia and Egypt fell, in the period before the year 2000 B.C. before some great migratory movement from Arabia, which overran Babylonia, Palestine, and even the Egyptian Delta.

In this manner Egypt and Babylonia may have been brought together in common subjection to the Arab. We do not know whether any regular communication between Egypt, under Semitic rule, and Babylonia was now established; but we do know that during the Hyksos period there were considerable relations between Egypt and over-sea Crete, and relations with Mesopotamia may possibly have been established. At any rate, when the war of liberation, which was directed by the princes of Thebes, was finally brought to a successful conclusion and the Arabs were expelled, we find the Egyptians a much changed nation. They had adopted for war the use of horse and chariot, which they learnt from their Semitic conquerors, whose victory was in all probability largely gained by their use, and, generally speaking, they had become much more like the Western Asiatic nations. Egypt was no longer isolated, for she had been forcibly brought into contact with the foreign world, and had learned much.

She was no longer self-contained within her own borders. If the Semites could conquer her, so could she conquer the Semites. Armed with horse and chariot, the Egyptians went forth to battle, and their revenge was complete. All Palestine and Syria were Egyptian domains for five hundred years after the conquest by Thothmes I and III, and Ashur and Babel sent tribute to the Pharaoh of Egypt.

The reaction came, and Egypt was thrown prostrate beneath the feet of a.s.syria; but her claim to dominion over the Western Asiatics was never abandoned, and was revived in all its pomp by Ptolemy Euergetes, who brought back in triumph to Egypt the images of the G.o.ds which had been removed by a.s.syrians and Babylonians centuries before. This claim was never allowed by the Asiatics, it is true, and their kings wrote to the proudest Pharaoh as to an absolute equal. Even the King of Cyprus calls the King of Egypt his brother. But Palestine was admitted to be an Egyptian possession, and the Phoenicians were always energetic supporters of the Egyptian regime against the lawless Bedawin tribes, who were constantly intriguing with the Kheta or Hitt.i.te power to the north against Egypt.

The existence of this extra-Egyptian imperial possession meant that the eyes of the Egyptians were now permanently turned in the direction of Western Asia, with which they were henceforth in constant and intimate communication. The first Theban period and the Hyksos invasion, therefore, mark a turning-point in Egyptian history, at which we may fitly leave it for a time in order to turn our attention to those peoples of Western Asia with whom the Egyptians had now come into permanent contact.

Just as new discoveries have been made in Egypt, which have modified our previous conception of her history, so also have the excavators of the ancient sites in the Mesopotamian valley made, during the last few years, far-reaching discoveries, which have enabled us to add to and revise much of our knowledge of the history of Babylonia and a.s.syria. In Palestine and the Sinaitic peninsula also the spade has been used with effect, but a detailed account of work in Sinai and Palestine falls within the limits of a description of Biblical discoveries rather than of this book. The following chapters will therefore deal chiefly with modern discoveries which have told us new facts with regard to the history of the ancient Sumerians themselves, and of the Babylonians, Elamites, Ka.s.sites, and a.s.syrians, the inheritors of the ancient Sumerian civilization, which was older than that of Egypt, and which, as we have seen, probably contributed somewhat to its formation. These were the two primal civilizations of the ancient world. For two thousand years each marched upon a solitary road, without meeting the other.

Eventually the two roads converged. We have hitherto dealt with the road of the Egyptians; we now describe that of the Mesopotamians, up to the point of convergence.

CHAPTER IV--RECENT EXCAVATIONS IN WESTERN ASIA AND THE DAWN OF CHALDaeAN HISTORY

In the preceding pages it has been shown how recent excavations in Egypt have revealed an entirely new chapter in the history of that country, and how, in consequence, our theories with regard to the origin of Egyptian civilization have been entirely remodelled. Excavations have been and are being carried out in Mesopotamia and the adjacent countries with no less enthusiasm and energy than in Egypt itself, and, although it cannot be said that they have resulted in any sweeping modification of our conceptions with regard to the origin and kins.h.i.+p of the early races of Western Asia, yet they have lately added considerably to our knowledge of the ancient history of the countries in that region of the world. This is particularly the case in respect of the Sumerians, who, so far as we know at present, were the earliest inhabitants of the fertile plains of Mesopotamia. The beginnings of this ancient people stretch back into the remote past, and their origin is still shrouded in the mists of antiquity. When first we come across them they have already attained a high level of civilization. They have built temples and palaces and houses of burnt and unburnt brick, and they have reduced their system of agriculture to a science, intersecting their country with ca.n.a.ls for purposes of irrigation and to ensure a good supply of water to their cities. Their sculpture and pottery furnish abundant evidence that they have already attained a comparatively high level in the practice of the arts, and finally they have evolved a complicated system of writing which originally had its origin in picture-characters, but afterwards had been developed along phonetic lines. To have attained to this pitch of culture argues long periods of previous development, and we must conclude that they had been settled in Southern Babylonia many centuries before the period to which we must a.s.sign the earliest of their remains at present discovered.

That this people were not indigenous to Babylonia is highly probable, but we have little data by which to determine the region from which they originally came. Prom the fact that they built their ziggurats, or temple towers, of huge ma.s.ses of unburnt brick which rose high above the surrounding plain, and that their ideal was to make each "like a mountain," it has been argued that they were a mountain race, and the home from which they sprang has been sought in Central Asia. Other scholars have detected signs of their origin in their language and system of writing, and, from the fact that they spoke an agglutinative tongue and at the earliest period arranged the characters of their script in vertical lines like the Chinese, it has been urged that they were of Mongol extraction. Though a case may be made out for this hypothesis, it would be rash to dogmatize for or against it, and it is wiser to await the discovery of further material on which a more certain decision may be based. But whatever their origin, it is certain that the Sumerians exercised an extraordinary influence on all races with which, either directly or indirectly, they came in contact. The ancient inhabitants of Elam at a very early period adopted in principle their method of writing, and afterwards, living in isolation in the mountainous districts of Persia, developed it on lines of their own. [*

See Chap. V, and note.] On their invasion of Babylonia the Semites fell absolutely under Sumerian influence, and, although they eventually conquered and absorbed the Sumerians, their civilization remained Sumerian to the core. Moreover, by means of the Semitic inhabitants of Babylonia Sumerian culture continued to exert its influence on other and more distant races. We have already seen how a Babylonian element probably enters into Egyptian civilization through Semitic infiltration across the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb or by way of the Isthmus of Suez, and it was Sumerian culture which these Semites brought with them.

In like manner, through the Semitic Babylonians, the a.s.syrians, the Ka.s.sites, and the inhabitants of Palestine and Syria, and of some parts of Asia Minor, Armenia, and Kurdistan, all in turn experienced indirectly the influence of Sumerian civilization and continued in a greater or less degree to reproduce elements of this early culture.

It will be seen that the influence of the Sumerians furnishes us with a key to much that would otherwise prove puzzling in the history of the early races of Western Asia. It is therefore all the more striking to recall the fact that but a few years ago the very existence of this ancient people was called in question. At that time the excavations in Mesopotamia had not revealed many traces of the race itself, and its previous existence had been mainly inferred from a number of Sumerian compositions inscribed upon a.s.syrian tablets found in the library of Ashur-bani-pal at Nineveh. These compositions were furnished with a.s.syrian translations upon the tablets on which they were inscribed, and it was correctly argued by the late Sir Henry Rawlinson, the late M.

Oppert, Prof. Schrader, Prof. Sayce, and other scholars that they were written in the language of the earlier inhabitants of the country whom the Semitic Babylonians had displaced. But M. Halevy started a theory to the effect that Sumerian was not a language at all, in the proper sense of the term, but was a cabalistic method of writing invented by the Semitic Babylonian priests.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 147.jpg LIST OF ARCHAIC CUNEIFORM SIGNS.

Drawn up by an a.s.syrian scribe to a.s.sist him in his studies of early texts. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.

The argument on which the upholders of this theory mainly relied was that many of the phonetic values of the Sumerian signs were obviously derived from Semitic equivalents, and they hastily jumped to the conclusion that the whole language was similarly derived from Semitic Babylonian, and was, in fact, a purely arbitrary invention of the Babylonian priests. This theory ignored all questions of inherent probability, and did not attempt to explain why the Babylonian priests should have troubled themselves to make such an invention and afterwards have stultified themselves by carefully appending a.s.syrian translations to the majority of the Sumerian compositions which they copied out.

Moreover, the nature of these compositions is not such as we should expect to find recorded in a cabalistic method of writing. They contain no secret lore of the Babylonian priests, but are merely hymns and prayers and religious compositions similar to those employed by the Babylonians and a.s.syrians themselves.

But in spite of its inherent improbabilities, M. Halevy succeeded in making many converts to his theory, including Prof. Friedrich Delitzsch and a number of the younger school of German a.s.syriologists. More conservative scholars, such as Sir Henry Rawlinson, M. Oppert, and Prof.

Schrader, stoutly opposed the theory, maintaining that Sumerian was a real language and had been spoken by an earlier race whom the Semitic Babylonians had conquered; and they explained the resemblance of some of the Sumerian values to Semitic roots by supposing that Sumerian had not been suddenly superseded by the language of the Semitic invaders of Babylonia, but that the two tongues had been spoken for long periods side by side and that each had been strongly influenced by the other.

This very probable and sane explanation has been fully corroborated by subsequent excavations, particularly those that were carried out at Telloh in Southern Babylonia by the late M. de Sarzec. In these mounds, which mark the site of the ancient Sumerian city of s.h.i.+rpurla, were found thousands of clay tablets inscribed in archaic characters and in the Sumerian language, proving that it had actually been the language of the early inhabitants of Babylonia; while the examples of their art and the representations of their form and features, which were also afforded by the diggings at Telloh, proved once for all that the Sumerians were a race of strongly marked characteristics and could not be ascribed to a Semitic stock.

The system of writing invented by the ancient Sumerians was adopted by the Semitic Babylonians, who modified it to suit their own language.

Moreover, the archaic forms of the characters, many of which under the Sumerians still retained resemblances to the pictures of objects from which they were descended, were considerably changed. The lines, of which they were originally composed, gave way to wedges, and the number of the wedges of which each sign consisted was gradually diminished, so that in the time of the a.s.syrians and the later Babylonians many of the characters bore small resemblance to the ancient Sumerian forms from which they had been derived. The reading of Sumerian and early Babylonian inscriptions by the late a.s.syrian scribes was therefore an accomplishment only to be acquired as the result of long study, and it is interesting to note that as an a.s.sistance to the reading of these early texts the scribes compiled lists of archaic signs. Sometimes opposite each archaic character they drew a picture of the object from which they imagined it was derived. This fact is significant as proving that the a.s.syrian scribes recognized the pictorial origin of cuneiform writing, but the pictures they drew opposite the signs are rather fanciful, and it cannot be said that their guesses were very successful.

That we are able to criticize the theories of the a.s.syrians as to the origin and forms of the early characters is in the main due to M. de Sarzec's labours, from whose excavations many thousands of inscriptions of the Sumerians have been recovered.

The main results of M. de Sarzec's diggings at Telloh have already been described by M. Maspero in his history, and therefore we need not go over them again, but will here confine ourselves to the results which have been obtained from recent excavations at Telloh and at other sites in Western Asia. With the death of M. de Sarzec, which occurred in his sixty-fifth year, on May 31, 1901, the wonderfully successful series of excavations which he had carried out at Telloh was brought to an end. In consequence it was feared at the time that the French diggings on this site might be interrupted for a considerable period. Such an event would have been regretted by all those who are interested in the early history of the East, for, in spite of the treasures found by M. de Sarzec in the course of his various campaigns, it was obvious that the site was far from being exhausted, and that the tells as yet unexplored contained inscriptions and antiquities extending back to the very earliest periods of Sumerian history.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 150.jpg FRAGMENT OF A LIST OF ARCHAIC CUNEIFORM SIGNS.]

Opposite each the scribe has drawn a picture of the object from which he imagined it was derived. Photograph by Messrs.

Mansell & Co.

The announcement which was made in 1902, that the French government had appointed Capt. Gaston Cros as the late M. de Sarzec's successor, was therefore received with general satisfaction. The fact that Capt. Cros had already successfully carried out several difficult topographical missions in the region of the Sahara was a sufficient guarantee that the new diggings would be conducted on a systematic and exhaustive scale.

The new director of the French mission in Chaldaea arrived at Telloh in January, 1903, and one of his first acts was to s.h.i.+ft the site of the mission's settlement from the bank of the Shatt el-Hai, where it had always been established in the time of M. de Sarzec, to the mounds where the actual digging took place. The Shatt el-Hai had been previously chosen as the site of the settlement to ensure a constant supply of water, and as it was more easily protected against attack by night.

But the fact that it was an hour's ride from the diggings caused an unnecessary loss of time, and rendered the strict supervision of the diggers a matter of considerable difficulty. During the first season's work rough huts of reeds, surrounded by a wall of earth and a ditch, served the new expedition for its encampment among the mounds of Telloh, but last year these makes.h.i.+ft arrangements were superseded by a regular house built out of the burnt bricks which are found in abundance on the site. A reservoir has also been built, and caravans of a.s.ses bring water in skins from the Shatt el-Hai to keep it filled with a constant supply of water, while the excellent relations which Capt. Cros has established with the Karagul Arabs, who occupy Telloh and its neighbourhood, have proved to be the best kind of protection for the mission engaged in scientific work upon the site.

The group of mounds and hillocks, known as Telloh, which marks the site of the ancient Sumerian city of s.h.i.+rpurla, is easily distinguished from the flat surrounding desert. The mounds extend in a rough oval formation running north and south, about two and a half miles long and one and a quarter broad. In the early spring, when the desert is covered with a light green verdure, the ruins are clearly marked out as a yellow spot in the surrounding green, for vegetation does not grow upon them. In the centre of this oval, which approximately marks the limits of the ancient city and its suburbs, are four large tells or mounds running, roughly, north and south, their sides descending steeply on the east, but with their western slopes rising by easier undulations from the plain. These four princ.i.p.al tells are known as the "Palace Tell," the "Tell of the Fruit-house," the "Tell of the Tablets," and the "Great Tell," and, rising as they do in the centre of the site, they mark the position of the temples and the other princ.i.p.al buildings of the city.

An indication of the richness of the site in antiquities was afforded to the new mission before it had started regular excavation and while it was yet engaged in levelling its encampment and surrounding it with a wall and ditch. The spot selected for the camp was a small mound to the south of the site of Telloh, and here, in the course of preparing the site for the encampment and digging the ditch, objects were found at a depth of less than a foot beneath the surface of the soil. These included daggers, copper vases, seal-cylinders, rings of lapis and cornelian, and pottery. M. de Sarzec had carried out his latest diggings in the Tell of the Tablets, and here Capt. Cros continued the excavations and came upon the remains of buildings and recovered numerous objects, dating princ.i.p.ally from the period of Gudea and the kings of Ur. The finds included small terra-cotta figures, a boundary-stone of Gamil-Sin, and a new statue of Gudea, to which we will refer again presently.

In the Tell of the Fruit-house M. de Sarzec had already discovered numbers of monuments dating from the earlier periods of Sumerian history before the conquest and consolidation of Babylonia under Sargon of Agade, and had excavated a primitive terrace built by the early king Ur-Nina. Both on and around this large mound Capt. Cros cut an extensive series of trenches, and in digging to the north of the mound he found a number of objects, including an alabaster tablet of Ente-mena which had been blackened by fire. At the foot of the tell he found a copper helmet like those represented on the famous Stele of Vultures discovered by M. de Sarzec, and among the tablets here recovered was one with an inscription of the time of Urukagina, which records the complete destruction of the city of s.h.i.+rpurla during his reign, and will be described in greater detail later on in this chapter. On the mound itself a considerable area was uncovered with remains of buildings still in place, the use of which appears to have been of an industrial character. They included flights of steps, ca.n.a.ls with raised banks, and basins for storing water. Not far off are the previously discovered wells of Bannadu, so that it is legitimate to suppose that Capt. Cros has here come upon part of the works which were erected at a very early period of Sumerian history for the distribution of water to this portion of the city.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 154.jpg Obelisk of Manishtusu.]

An early Semitic king of the city of Kish in Babylonia. The photograph is taken from M. de Morgan's Delegation en Perse, M'em., t. i, pi. ix.

In the Palace Tell Capt. Cros has sunk a series of deep shafts to determine precisely the relations which the buildings of Ur-Bau and Gudea, found already on this part of the site, bear to each other, and to the building of Adad-nadin-akhe, which had been erected there at a much later period. Prom this slight sketch of the work carried out during the last two years at Telloh it will have been seen that the Prench mission in Chaldaea is at present engaged in excavations of a most important character, which are being conducted in a regular and scientific manner. As the area of the excavations marks the site of the chief city of the Sumerians, the diggings there have yielded and are yielding material of the greatest interest and value for the reconstruction of the early history of Chaldaea. After briefly describing the character and results of other recent excavations in Mesopotamia and the neighbouring lands, we will return to the discoveries at Telloh and sketch the new information they supply on the history of the earliest inhabitants of the country.

Another French mission that is carrying out work of the very greatest interest to the student of early Babylonian history is that which is excavating at Susa in Persia, under the direction of M. J. de Morgan, whose work on the prehistoric and early dynastic sites in Egypt has already been described. M. de Morgan's first season's digging at Susa was carried out in the years 1897-8, and the success with which he met from the very first, when cutting trenches in the mound which marks the acropolis of the ancient city, has led him to concentrate his main efforts in this part of the ruins ever since. Provisional trenches cut in the part of the ruins called "the Royal City," and in others of the mounds at Susa, indicate that many remains may eventually be found there dating from the period of the Achaemenian Kings of Persia. But it is in the mound of the acropolis at Susa that M. de Morgan has found monuments of the greatest historical interest and value, not only in the history of ancient Elam, but also in that of the earliest rulers of Chaldaea.

In the diggings carried out during the first season's work on the site, an obelisk was found inscribed on four sides with a long text of some sixty-nine columns, written in Semitic Babylonian by the orders of Manishtusu, a very early Semitic king of the city of Kish in Babylonia.[* See ill.u.s.tration.] The text records the purchase by the King of Kish of immense tracts of land situated at Kish and in its neighbourhood, and its length is explained by the fact that it enumerates full details of the size and position of each estate, and the numbers and some of the names of the dwellers on the estates who were engaged in their cultivation. After details have been given of a number of estates situated in the same neighbourhood, a summary is appended referring to the whole neighbourhood, and the fact is recorded that the district dealt with in the preceding catalogue and summary had been duly acquired by purchase by Manishtusu, King of Kish. The long text upon the obelisk is entirely taken up with details of the purchase of the territory, and therefore its subject has not any great historical value.

Mention is made in it of two personages, one of whom may possibly be identified with a Babylonian ruler whose name is known from other sources. If the proposed identification t should prove to be correct, it would enable us to a.s.sign a more precise date to Manishtusu than has. .h.i.therto been possible. One of the personages in question was a certain Urukagina, the son of Engilsa, patesi of s.h.i.+rpurla, and it has been suggested that he is the same Urukagina who is known to have occupied the throne of s.h.i.+rpurla, though this identification would bring Manishtusu down somewhat later than is probable from the general character of his inscriptions. The other personage mentioned in the text is the son of Manishtusu, named Mesalim, and there is more to be said for the identification of this prince with Mesilim, the early King of Kish, who reigned at a period anterior to that of Eannadu, patesi of s.h.i.+rpurla.

The mere fact of so large and important an obelisk, inscribed with a Semitic text by an early Babylonian king, being found at Susa was an indication that other monuments of even greater interest might be forthcoming from the same spot; and this impression was intensified when a stele of victory was found bearing an inscription of Naram-Sin, the early Semitic King of Agade, who reigned about 3750 B.C. One face of this stele is sculptured with a representation of the king conquering his enemies in a mountainous country. [* See ill.u.s.tration.] The king himself wears a helmet adorned with the horns of a bull, and he carries his battle-axe and his bow and an arrow. He is nearly at the summit of a high mountain, and up its steep sides, along paths through the trees which clothe the mountain, climb his allies and warriors bearing standards and weapons. The king's enemies are represented suing for mercy as they turn to fly before him. One grasps a broken spear, while another, crouching before the king, has been smitten in the throat by an arrow from the king's bow. On the plain surface of the stele above the king's head may be seen traces of an inscription of Naram-Sin engraved in three columns in the archaic characters of his period. From the few signs of the text that remain, we gather that Naram-Sin had conducted a campaign with the a.s.sistance of certain allied princes, including the Princes of Sidur, Saluni, and Lulubi, and it is not improbable that they are to be identified with the warriors represented on the stele as climbing the mountain behind Naram-Sin.

In reference to this most interesting stele of Naram-Sin we may here mention another inscription of this king, found quite recently at Susa and published only this year, which throws additional light on Naram-Sin's allies and on the empire which he and his father Sargon founded. The new inscription was engraved on the base of a diorite statue, which had been broken to pieces so that only the base with a portion of the text remained. From this inscription we learn that Naram-Sin was the head of a confederation of nine chief allies, or va.s.sal princes, and waged war on his enemies with their a.s.sistance.

Among these nine allies of course the Princes of Sidur, Saluni, and Lulubi are to be included. The new text further records that Naram-Sin made an expedition against Magan (the Sinaitic peninsula), and defeated Manium, the lord of that region, and that he cut blocks of stone in the mountains there and transported them to his city of Agade, where from one of them he made the statue on the base of which the text was inscribed. It was already known from the so-called "Omens of Sargon and Naram-Sin" (a text inscribed on a clay tablet from Ashur-bani-pal's library at Nineveh which a.s.sociates the deeds of these two early rulers with certain augural phenomena) that Naram-Sin had made an expedition to Sinai in the course of his reign and had conquered the king of the country. The new text gives contemporary confirmation of this a.s.sertion and furnishes us with additional information with regard to the name of the conquered ruler of Sinai and other details of the campaign.

That monuments of such great interest to the early history of Chaldaea should have been found at Susa in Persia was sufficiently startling, but an easy explanation was at first forthcoming from the fact that Naram-Sin's stele of victory had been used by the later Elamite king, Shutruk-Nakhkhunte, for an inscription of his own; this he had engraved in seven long lines along the great cone in front of Naram-Sin, which is probably intended to represent the peak of the mountain. From the fact that it had been used in this way by Shutruk-Nakhkhunte, it seemed permissible to infer that it had been captured in the course of a campaign and brought to Susa as a trophy of war. But we shall see later on that the existence of early Babylonian inscriptions and monuments in the mound of the acropolis at Susa is not to be explained in this way, but was due to the wide extension of both Sumerian and Semitic influence throughout Western Asia from the very earliest periods. This subject will be treated more fully in the chapter dealing with the early history of Blam.