The World's Progress Part 42

[6] Mount at the gate of h.e.l.l whence demons rush forth.

[7] h.e.l.l.

ANCIENT HYMN FROM THE AVESTA.

"I am the Keeper; I am the Creator and the Maintainer; I am the Discerner; I am the most beneficent Spirit.

My name is the bestower of health; my name is the best bestower of health.

My name is the Holy; my name is the most Holy.

My name is the Glorious; my name is the most Glorious.

My name is the far-seeing; my name is the Farthest-seeing.

My name is Holiness; my name is the Great one; my name is the good Sovereign; my name is the best of Sovereigns.

My name is the Wise One; my name is the Wisest of the Wise; my name is He who does good for a long time.

These are my names.

And he who in this material world, O Zoroaster! shall recite and p.r.o.nounce these names of mine either by day or by night;

He who shall p.r.o.nounce them when he rises up or when he lays him down; when he lays him down or when he rises up; when he binds on the sacred girdle, or when he unbinds the sacred girdle; when he goes out of his dwelling-place, or when he goes out of his town, or when he goes out of his country and comes into another country;

_That_ man, neither in that day nor in that night shall be wounded by the weapons of the foe...; not the knife, not the cross-bow, not the arrow, not the sword, not the club, not the sling-stone shall reach him and wound him.

But these names shall come in to keep him from behind and to keep him in front ... from the evil ones, bent on mischief, and from that fiend which is all death--Angra Mainyu.

It will be as if there were a thousand men watching over one man."

--_Trans. Zend-Avesta: Sacred Books of the East.

Max Muller, ed. V._ 4, 23, 31.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PART OF ARCHER'S FRIEZE IN AN ANCIENT PERSIAN PALACE.]

CHAPTER XXI.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF BABYLONIA, a.s.sYRIA AND PERSIA TO MODERN CIVILIZATION.

It is often difficult to correctly estimate the power exerted by a statesman upon his country. The movements he has espoused, the reforms he may have championed, the inst.i.tutions he helped to call into being, all stand as monuments to his memory. But the subtle effects of his influence, his personality and character upon his own generation and others still to come, are seldom understood or adequately judged. In the case of a nation the task becomes still more complicated, and we cannot today know how many of our ideas, inventions, and attainments have been shaped by nations whose light went out long centuries ago. Nevertheless, our inability to estimate these various inheritances aright need not deter us from an attempt to cla.s.sify such bequeathments as are universally acknowledged, and we may be sure that the present world owes much to the earliest nations of Western Asia. Their contributions, however, have not come down to us directly, but have been pa.s.sed along, like legends, from one people to another, until their present form scarcely suggests their origins.

Let us consider first our indebtedness to Babylonia. In recent years discoveries in the Euphrates valley and the mastery of the cuneiform style of writing have given us ma.s.ses of material wherefrom to reconstruct the past. Not only has light thus been thrown upon the early history of Babylonia and a.s.syria, but aid has been rendered biblical study. The tribal life of the Hebrews, and the civilization of other contemporary peoples has been better understood because of these revelations. However, acquisitions of the last century have had no part in molding modern civilization, and we pa.s.s on to matters of earlier significance.

No people could have worked as diligently in the field of science as the Babylonians did and failed to leave important results of their investigations. "In _Geometry_ the Chaldeans made about the same progress as the Egyptians; in _Arithmetic_ more. Their notation combined the decimal and duodecimal systems. Sixty was a favorite unit, used as the hundred is by us. Scientific _Medicine_ was hindered by the belief in charms and amulets; and even _Astronomy_ was studied chiefly as a means of fortune-telling by the stars,--so that in Europe through the Middle Ages an astrologer was known as a Chaldean. However, the level plains and clear skies, as in Egypt, invited to an early study of the constellations, and some important progress was made. As we get from the Egyptians our year and months, so from the Chaldeans we get the week, with its 'day of rest for the heart,' as they called the seventh day, and the division of day and night into twelve hours each, with the subdivisions into minutes. They also invented the water clock and the sundial. They foretold eclipses, made star maps, and marked out on the heavens the apparent yearly path of the sun. The zodiacal 'signs' of our almanacs commemorate these early astronomers. Every great city had its lofty observatory and its royal astronomer; and in Babylon, in 331 B.C., Alexander the Great found a continuous series of observations running back nineteen hundred and three years.

"To a degree peculiar among the ancients, the men of the Euphrates made practical use of their science. They understood the lever and pulley, and used the arch in vaulted drains and aqueducts. They invented the potter's wheel, and an excellent system of weights and measures. Their treatises on agriculture pa.s.sed on their knowledge in that subject to the later Greeks and Arabs. They had surpa.s.sing skill in cutting gems, and in enameling and inlaying; and their looms produced the finest of muslins and of fleecy woolens, to which the dyer gave the most brilliant colors. In many such industries little advance has been made since, so far as results are concerned."[1]

Certain unfortunate bequests were left by them. Babylonian belief in demons was handed down through the Hebrews, and in the Middle Ages took the form of the devil, with horns and a cloven foot. Their faith in magic and incantations also descended to Mediaeval times, and as scientific interest superseded religious fervor, inspired men to search for the "philosopher's stone."

The intensely practical turn of mind in Mesopotamia revealed itself in the literature, which was bare of imagery. Material beauty--artistic carpets, tapestries, and rugs, was developed, but for beauty of conceptions, we must turn to the Greeks.

What did the war-loving, blood-thirsting a.s.syrians leave for future ages? At first the question seems not to be easily answered. One calls to mind their ravaging raids and unparalleled carnage, and remembering that their palaces and stores of inscribed tablets were recovered only within the last fifty years, their contributions are not so apparent.

Yet, having studied the government enforced by Darius upon his empire, we are compelled to admit that he but improved upon the system evolved by the a.s.syrian kings, unknown before their time in Asia. Again, the very conquests themselves were helpful, in spite of their cruelty, for they brought the best civilization of their day to half-barbarous tribes who otherwise might have pa.s.sed century after century before reaching the degree of progress so rudely thrust upon them. These conquests opened up routes of commerce, and trade has always exceeded all other factors as a civilizing force.

To science the a.s.syrians appear to have made no contributions whatever.

Coming to ancient Persia, we find a wholly different culture. The people of this country lacked the practical turn of mind so characteristic of the Babylonian, and his mercenary point of view was quite unknown to them. Persian literature, while scanty, embodied poetical conceptions, and several of the ancient poems possess much art. "The Persians had fancy and imagination, a relish for poetry and art, and they were not without a certain power of political combination. Yet we cannot justly ascribe to them any high degree of intellectual excellence. If the great work of Firdausi represents to us, as it probably does, the true spirit of their ancient poetry, their efforts were but of moderate merit. A tone of exaggeration, an imagination exuberant and unrestrained, a preference for glitter over solid excellence, a love of far-fetched conceits, characterize the Shahnameh; and, though we may ascribe something of this to the individuality of the poet, still the conviction presses upon us that there was a childish and grotesque character in the ma.s.s of old Persian poetry, which marked it as the creation of moderate rather than of high intellectual power, and prevents us from regarding it with the respect with which we view the labors of the Greeks and Romans, or again, of the Hebrews, in this department. A want of seriousness, a want of reality, and, again, a want of depth, characterize the poetry of Iran, whose bards do not touch the chords which rouse what is n.o.blest and highest in our nature. They give us sparkle, prettiness, quaint and ingenious fancies, grotesque marvels, an inflated kind of human heroism; but they have none of the higher excellences of the poetic art, none of the divine fire which renders the true poet, and the true prophet, one."[2]

The Persian religion was both n.o.ble and sublime, and its teaching concerning the two opposing forces of good and evil, affected the philosophy of the Greeks, and indirectly, the thought of the later Christian world.

By carrying the plan of a.s.syrian conquest further, the Persians opened districts remote from social centers and helped the course of civilization. Their systematic government improved upon the one developed by a.s.syria in this particular: each governor was made supreme in his province under a.s.syrian administration, none other being accountable to the king for conditions in his territory. An opportunity thus offered for the governor to seize any favorable moment to shake off allegiance to the state and attempt to establish his own supremacy.

Darius, on the other hand, posted troops in each satrapy, and both the commander of these troops and the governor were required to submit reports, and to act jointly in certain matters. In this way, one served as a check upon the other.

Fine roads were built to allow rapid communication between the capital and distant provinces; these naturally facilitated commerce, and made travel safe--as one has graphically expressed it, "helped set the world a-mixing."

A new day was dawning for humanity, and an age coming when one might look back to the infancy of the world, likening its progress to that of a man who has gained some perceptions, some ideas and experiences in childhood days which unconsciously but surely, influence his later life, illuminated by wider experiences and deeper truths.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] West: Ancient History.

[2] Rawlinson: Persia.

THE BOOK-STAMP OF SARDANAPALUS.

a.s.surbanipal, or, as the Greeks called him, Sardanapalus, is supposed to have stored in his palace at Nineveh not less than 30,000 tablets. Upon every work in his library his owners.h.i.+p was stamped as follows:

THE PALACE OF a.s.sURBANIPAL, KING OF REGIONS, KING OF MULt.i.tUDES, KING OF a.s.sYRIA, TO WHOM THE G.o.d NEBO AND THE G.o.dDESS TASMETI HAVE GRANTED ATTENTIVE EARS AND OPEN EYES TO DISCOVER THE WRITINGS OF THE SCRIBES OF MY KINGDOM, WHOM THE KINGS MY PREDECESSORS HAVE EMPLOYED. IN MY RESPECT FOR NEBO, THE G.o.d OF INTELLIGENCE, I HAVE COLLECTED THESE TABLETS; I HAVE HAD THEM COPIED; I HAVE MARKED THEM WITH MY NAME; AND I HAVE DEPOSITED THEM IN MY PALACE.

THE CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF THE DELUGE.

This account was first translated by George Smith from the eleventh of a series of tablets describing the adventures of the mythical hero, Izdubar (or Gilgamish), supposed to be the same as Nimrod. The whole series of tablets relates his early life and exploits in hunting, his friends.h.i.+p with the faun Iabani, his victory over the tyrant Humbaba, the love of the G.o.ddess Ishtar, his illness, the death of Iabani, his wanderings to find his ancestor, Hasisadra (or Pir-napishtim), who for his piety had been translated to the fellows.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds. This ancestor relates to Gilgamish the story of a great flood resembling in general outline the narrative in Genesis, but stamped with the impress of the Chaldean religion. Shamas was the Sun-G.o.d.

The early literature of many nations contains stories of a universal flood, from which a favored family or individual alone escapes. None is more striking than the one deciphered from the clay tablets of Chaldea, or more nearly parallel to that of the Hebrew Scriptures.

TABLET XI. OF THE GILGAMISH EPIC.

The following translation is from Professor Craig: