George Rawlinson

“ No edifices in the world —not even the Pyramids—are more deficient in external ornament. The buttresses and the air-holes, which alone break the flat uniformity of the walls, are intended simply for utility, and can scarcely be said to be much embellishment. If any efforts were made to delight by the ordinary resources of ornamental art, it seems clear that such efforts did not extend to the whole edifice, but were confined to the shrine itself—the actual abode of the god—the chamber which crowned the whole, and was alone, strictly speaking, “the temple.” ”

“ At a time when the kings of Egypt had never ventured beyond their borders, unless it were for a foray in Ethiopia, and when in Asia no monarch had held dominion over more than a few petty tribes, and a few hundred miles of territory, he conceived the magnificent notion of binding into one the manifold nations inhabiting the vast tract which lies between the Zagros mountain-range and the Mediterranean. ”

“ The Flood appears as a circumstance in the history of Babylonia; and the priestly traditionists, who have put the legend into shape, are chiefly anxious to make the event redound to the glory of their sacred books, which they boast to have been the special objects of divine care, and represent as a legacy from the antediluvian ages. The general interests of mankind are nothing to the Chaldaean priests, who see in the story of the Tower simply a local etymology, and in the Deluge an event which made the Babylonians the sole possessors of primeval wisdom. ”

“ Many classical traditions, we must remember, identified Hercules with Saturn; and it seems certain that in the East at any rate this identification was common. So Nin, in the inscriptions, is the god of strength and courage. He is “the lord of the brave,” “the champion,” “the warrior who subdues foes,” “he who strengthens the heart of his followers;” and again, “the destroyer of enemies,” “the reducer of the disobedient,” “the exterminator of rebels,” “he whose sword is good.” In many respects he bears a close resemblance to Nergal or Mars. ”

“ The fertility of Chaldaea in ancient times was proverbial.
“Of all countries that we know,” says Herodotus, “there is none that is so fruitful in grain. It makes no pretension, indeed, of growing the fig, the olive, the vine, or any other tree of the kind; but in grain it is so fruitful as to yield commonly two hundred-fold, and when the production is at the greatest, even three hundred-fold. The blade of the wheat-plant and of the barley-plant is often four fingers in breadth. As for the millet and the sesame, I shall not say to what height they grow, though within my own knowledge ”

“ For the last 3000 years the world has been mainly indebted for its advancement to the Semitic and Indo-European races; but it was otherwise in the first ages. Egypt and Babylon—Mizraim and Nimrod—both descendants of Ham—led the way, and acted as the pioneers of mankind in the various untrodden fields of art, literature, and science. Alphabetic writing, astronomy, history, chronology, architecture, plastic art, sculpture, navigation, agriculture, textile industry, seem, all of them, to have had their origin in one or other of these two countries. ”

“ At the same time Nebo has, like so many of the Chaldaean gods, a number of general titles, implying divine power, which, if they had belonged to him only, would have seemed to prove him the supreme deity. He is “the Lord of lords, who has no equal in power,” “the supreme chief,” “the sustainer,” “the supporter,” “the ever ready,” “the guardian over the heavens and the earth,” “the lord of the constellations,” “the holder of the sceptre of power,” “he who grants to kings the sceptre of royalty for the governance of their people.” ”

“ Belus, upon this, seeing that the earth was desolate, yet teeming with productive power, commanded one of the gods to cut off his head, and to mix the blood which flowed forth with earth, and form men therewith, and beasts that could bear the light. So man was made, and was intelligent, being a partaker of the divine wisdom. Likewise Belus made the stars, and the sun and moon, and the five planets. ”

“ Large tracts are covered by unwholesome marshes, producing nothing but enormous reeds; others lie waste and bare, parched up by the fierce heat of the sun, and utterly destitute of water; in some places, as has been already mentioned, sand-drifts accumulate, and threaten to make the whole region a mere portion of the desert.
The great cause of this difference between ancient and modern Chaldaea is the neglect of the water-courses. Left to themselves, the rivers tend to desert some portions of the alluvium wholly, which then become utterly unproductive ”

“ The names Evechous and Chomasbelus seem mythic rather than real; they represent personages in the Babylonian Pantheon, and can scarcely have been borne by men. It is likely that the entire series of names partook of the same character, and that, if we possessed them, their bearing would be found to be, not historic, but mythological. We may parallel this dynasty of Berosus, where he reckons king’s reigns by the cyclical periods of sosses and ners, with Manetho’s dynasties of Gods and Demigods in Egypt, where the sum of the years is nearly as great. ”

“ The earth was still of one language, when the primitive men, who were proud of their strength and stature, and despised the gods as their inferiors, erected a tower of vast height, in order than they might mount to heaven. ”

“ Like the classical Apollo and Diana, Mars and Venus, they are real persons, with a life and a history, a power and an influence, which no ingenuity can translate into a metaphorical representation of phenomena attaching to the air and to the heavenly bodies. It is doubtful, indeed, whether the gods of this class are really of astronomical origin, and not rather primitive deities, whose character and attributes were, to a great extent, fixed and settled before the notion arose of connecting them with certain parts of nature. ”

“ The traditions of the Armenians are in accordance with those of the Greeks. The Armenian Geography applies the name of Cush, or Ethiopia, to the four great regions, Media, Persia, Susiana or Elymais, and Aria, or to the whole territory between the Indus and the Tigris. Moses of Chorene, the great Armenian historian, identifies Belus, King of Babylon, with Nimrod; while at the same time he adopts for him a genealogy only slightly different from that in our present copies of Genesis, making Nimrod the grandson of Cush, and the son of Mizraim. ”

“ The Arabs tremble at his approach, and willingly surrender to him the choicest of their flocks and herds. Unless urged by hunger, he seldom attacks man, but contents himself with the destruction of buffaloes, camels, dogs, and sheep. When taken young, he is easily tamed, and then manifests considerable attachment to his master. In his wild state he haunts the marshes and the banks of the various streams and canals, concealing himself during the day, and at night wandering abroad in search of his prey, to obtain which he will approach with boldness to the very skirts of an Arab encampment. ”

“ The history of Antiquity requires from time to time to be rewritten. Historical knowledge continually extends, in part from the advance of critical science, which teaches us little by little the true value of ancient authors, but also, and more especially, from the new discoveries which the enterprise of travellers and the patient toil of students are continually bringing to light, whereby the stock of our information as to the condition of the ancient world receives constant augmentation. ”

“ The strata of air, unequally heated, and therefore differing in rarity, refract the rays of light, fantastically enlarging and distorting the objects seen through them, which frequently appear raised from the ground and hanging in mid-air, or else, by a repetition of their image, which is reflected in a lower stratum, give the impression that they stand up out of a lake. Hence the delusion which has so often driven the traveller to desperation—the “image of a cool, rippling, watery mirror,” which flies before him as he advances, and at once provokes and mocks his thirst. ”

“ If we are called upon to fix more accurately its boundaries, which, like those of most countries without strong natural frontiers, suffered many fluctuations, we are perhaps entitled to say that the Persian Gulf on the south, the Tigris on the east, the Arabian desert on the west, and the limit between Upper and Lower Mesopotamia on the north, formed the natural bounds, which were never greatly exceeded and never much infringed upon. ”

“ In Chaldaea, Ismi-dagon was succeeded by a son, whose name is read, somewhat doubtfully, as Gunguna or Gurguna. This prince is known to us especially as the builder of the great public cemeteries which now form the most conspicuous objects among the ruins of Mugheir, and the construction of which is so remarkable. Ismi-dagon and his son must have occupied the Chaldaean throne during most of the latter half of the nineteenth century before our era-from about B.C. 1850 to B.C. 1800. ”

“ Fish are abundant in the rivers and marshes, principally barbel and carp, which latter grow to a great size in the Euphrates. Barbel form an important element in the food of the Arabs inhabiting the Affej marshes, who take them commonly by means of a fish-spear. In the Shat-el-Arab, which is wholly within the influence of the tides, there is a species of goby, which is amphibious. This fish lies in myriads on the mud-banks left uncovered by the ebb of the tide, and moves with great agility on the approach of birds. Nature seems to have made the goby in one of her most freakish moods. ”

“ This is a sound judgment; and it will be well that we should bear it in mind during the review, on which we are about to enter, of the language, writing, useful and ornamental art, science, and literature of the Chaldaeans. “The child is father of the man,” both in the individual and the species; and the human race at the present day lies under infinite obligations to the genius and industry of early ages. ”

“ Bel-Merodach is, beyond all doubt, the planet Jupiter, which is still called Bel by the Mendaeans. The name Merodach is of uncertain etymology and meaning. It has been compared with the Persian Mardak, the diminutive of mard, “a man,” and with the Arabic Mirrich, which is the name of the planet Mars. But, as there is every reason to believe that the term belongs to the Hamitic Babylonian, it is in vain to have recourse to Arian or Semitic tongues for its derivation. ”

“ Writers of Roman history have been too much in the habit of representing the later Republic and early Empire as, practically, a Universal Monarchy, a Power unchecked, unbalanced, having no other limits than those of the civilized world, engrossing consequently the whole attention of all thinking men, and free to act exactly as it pleased without any regard to opinion beyond its own borders. ”

“ Earth and sky are alike concealed by the dusty storm, through which no object can be distinguished that is removed many yards; a lurid gleam surrounds the traveller, and seems to accompany him as he moves: every landmark is hid from view ”

“ Bel-Merodach was worshipped in the early Chaldaean kingdom, as appears from the Tel-Sifr tablets. He was probably from a very remote time the tutelary god of the city of Babylon; and hence, as that city grew into importance, the worship of Merodach became more prominent. The Assyrian monarchs always especially associate Babylon with this god; and in the later Babylonian empire he becomes by far the chief object of worship. It is his temple which Herodotus describes so elaborately, and his image, which, according to the Apocryphal Daniel, the Babylonians worshipped with so much devotion. ”

“ Towards the south, the importance of the rivers is still greater; for of Lower Mesopotamia it may be said, with more truth than of Egypt, that it is “an acquired land,” the actual “gift” of the two streams which wash it on either side; being, as it is, entirely a recent formation—a deposit which the streams have made in the shallow waters of a gulf into which they have flowed for many ages.
The division, which has here forced itself upon our notice, between the Upper and the Lower Mesopotamian country, is one very necessary to engage our attention in connection with the ancient Chaldaea. ”

“ Some of the primitive graves at Senkareh yielded tablets of baked clay, on which were represented, in low relief, sometimes single figures of men, sometimes groups, sometimes men in combination with animals. A scene in which a lion is disturbed in its feast off a bullock, by a man armed with a club and a mace or hatchet, possesses remarkable spirit, and, were it not for the strange drawing of the lion’s unlifted leg, might be regarded as a very creditable performance. In another, a lion is represented devouring a prostrate human being ”

“ The frail materials of which human apparel is composed can only under peculiar circumstances resist the destructive power of thirty or forty centuries; and consequently we have but few traces of the actual fabrics in use among the primitive people. Pieces of linen are said to have been found attaching to some of the skeletons in the tombs; and the sun-dried brick which supports the head is sometimes covered with the remains of a “tasselled cushion of tapestry;” but otherwise we are without direct evidence either as to the material in use, or as to the character of the fabric. ”