Assyriology

“ Gutschmid, which appeared in 1876, awakened special interest. [3] To this Eberhard Schrader published a reply in 1818. [4] Since that time, notwithstanding the multiplication of cuneiform documents, Assyriology has attained a well-deserved recognition through the arduous labors of scholars. ”

“ If the study of Egyptology and Assyriology possesses an especial interest to us through its connection with our ideas of religion, philosophy, and art filtered through Palestine, Greece, and Rome, surely it has as well a more general value, which American Archæeology shares with it, in showing the evolution of human intelligence. ”

“ From the time of Schrader, who has been called the father of early Assyriology, to the splendid achievements of his illustrious countryman, Friedrich Delitzsch, who is known as the father of contemporary Assyriology, progress in the new science has been as rapid as the activity of its countless votaries has been enthusiastic. This is evidenced by the large number of cuneiform monuments which are now found in the museums of Europe and America and by the ever-increasing number of scholars who are devoting all their time to the study of Assyrian science, religion, and literature. ”

“ The approximate number of the inscribed baked clay tablets and fragments that have come from Kuyûnjik and are now in the British Museum is 25,073. It is impossible to over-estimate their importance and value from religious, historical and literary points of view; besides this, they have supplied the material for the decipherment of cuneiform inscriptions in the Assyrian, Babylonian and Sumerian languages, and form the foundation of the science of Assyriology which has been built up with such conspicuous success during the last 70 years. ”

“ We must listen to him on questions of grammar and vocabulary; on questions of archæology his opinions are worth no more than those of the ordinary man.
I have insisted on this point because it is a very important one in a study like Assyriology. The public naturally thinks that in all Assyriological matters the opinion of one Assyriologist is as good as that of another. We might just as well suppose that in all matters which come under the head of astronomy the opinions of every class of astronomer are equally authoritative. ”

“ We may now turn to departments of research specially connected with the Old Testament. We may begin with Egyptology and Assyriology, it being understood that the latter is even more concerned with the literature, history, and religion of Babylon than with that of Assyria. During the middle of the nineteenth century the excavations in the East have restored its buried empires to the light of history; they have enabled us to study the Sacred story in connection with the great international system of Egypt and Western Asia ”

“ The Semitic dialects of Babylonia and Assyria differed very slightly from one another, and they are therefore called by the common name of Assyrian. We can trace the history of Assyrian by means of contemporaneous monuments for nearly 4,000 years, beginning with the records of Sargon of Accad (b.c. 3800) and ending with documents of the Parthian epoch. Assyrian belongs to the northern group of Semitic languages, being more closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic than it is to Arabic or Ethiopic. ”

“ The Assyrians were a nation of warriors, the Babylonians of traders, agriculturists, and scribes. Assur is accordingly 'a man of war'; it was in reliance upon him that the Assyrian armies marched into foreign lands, and compelled their inhabitants to acknowledge him. Not to believe in Assur was a crime, since Assur represented Assyria. ”

“ Pietro della Valle, Le Brun, Niebuhr, Ker Porter, Rich, and Ouseley, have given us descriptions of the ancient remains in Persia and Assyria, particularly those at Persepolis, Pasargadæ, and Babylon. These consist of views of the monuments and sculptures, together with copies of the inscriptions in the cuneiform, or arrow-head character. The object of the edifices, the subject of the sculptures, and the meaning of the inscriptions, were wholly matters of conjecture ”

“ In Assyria the results of the recent discoveries, so well known through many learned and popular works, strikingly confirm the Hebrew chronology. They indicate no slow emergence [Pg 277] from barbarism, but show that in Assyria as in Egypt implements of stone and metal were used together by a primitive people, already far advanced in civilization; and the oldest historical names only carry us back to cities and sovereigns of the Abrahamic age, while the story of the primitive empire of Nimrod and the traditions of the deluge seem to have survived in more or less mythical legends. ”

“ Unlike Egypt, who has left so many records of her greatness, of her knowledge of the arts, and of her advancement in civilization, in the numerous and wonderful monumental remains in the valley of the Nile, the Assyrians were supposed to have left nothing, no existing monuments as evidences that they ever had an existence, save in the vast and misshapen heaps along the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, believed to wash the spots where the great cities of Nineveh and Babylon once stood. ”

“ The Assyrian writing is made up of ideograms, phonograms, and determinatives.
When by the victory of Alexander at Arbe’la (331 B.C.) the great Persian Empire fell, cuneiform writing ceased to be practised, and cuneiform literature was buried in the mounds of Assyria and Babylonia for two thousand years. During the present century it has been disinterred by inquisitive scholars, whose labors have resulted in the restoration of a forgotten history, through the wonderful literature of a people long known only in name. ”

“ In no instance is this better seen than in the case of Assyria, where almost all that we know of that great and wonderful people is derived from the cuneiform inscriptions scratched on tablets of baked clay. Or, again, we may cite the stone and bronze implements of the primitive peoples of Europe as another instance where “the weak and base things of the world and the things that are despised” have thrown floods of light on the condition of things in a period about which we should have been completely in the dark so long as we looked only to literary records for our information. ”

“ For generations the great oppressing city had slept buried beneath the fragments of its own ruins, its history lost, its very site forgotten. Its name had passed into the region of myth even in the age of the classical writers of Greece and Rome; Ninos or Nineveh had become a hero-king about whom strange legends were told, and whose conquests were fabled to have extended from the Mediterranean to India. Little was known of the history of the mighty Assyrian Empire beyond what might be learnt from the Old Testament, and that little was involved in doubt and obscurity. ”

“ In a religious point of view, there is no doubt that much important information may be expected from a careful investigation of the monuments of Assyria. During my labors, without being able to devote much thought or attention to the subject, I have been continually struck with the curious illustrations of little understood passages in the Bible which these records afford. In an historical and archæological point of view, I know nothing more interesting and more promising than the examination of the ruins of Assyria. ”

“ The Assyrian kings retained for a long time their dominion over fairly distant tracts, and made themselves greatly feared by all the nations around. As is well known, they had made great advances in the art of sculpture, so much so that visitors to the British Museum, on seeing the wonderful hunting-scenes in the Assyrian side-gallery, have been heard to express the opinion that Greek artists must either have originated them, or influenced their production. ”

“ The compound ideogram expressing the deity signifies 'house of the fish.' The word 'house' in Semitic parlance is figuratively extended to convey the idea of 'possessing or harboring.' Applied to a settlement, the ideogram would be the equivalent of our 'Fishtown.' It is with this same ideogram that the famous capitol of Assyria, Nineveh, is written in the cuneiform texts, and since the phonetic reading for the city, Ni-na-a, also occurs, it is only legitimate to conclude that the latter is the correct reading for the deity as well. ”

“ His son Esar-Haddon succeeded him, a warlike monarch, who fought the Egyptians, and colonized Samaria with Babylonian settlers. He also built the palace of Nimrod, and cultivated art.
Assyrian civilisation. The civilization of the Assyrians shows a laborious and patient people. Its chief glory was in architecture. Sculpture was imitated from nature, but had neither the grace nor the ideality of the Greeks. War was the grand business of kings, and hunting their pleasure. The people were ground down by the double tyranny of [pg 085] kings and priests. ”

“ The priests listened in terror. Herhor was pale; the tablets fell from Pentuer’s fingers; Mefres held the amulet hanging on his breast, and prayed while his lips were parching.
“Be on your guard then against Assyria,” continued the Chaldean, “for her hour is the present. The Assyrians are a dreadful people! They despise labor, they live by war. They conquer, they impale on stakes or flay living people, they destroy captured cities and lead away their inhabitants to bondage. For them to kill savage beasts is repose; to pierce prisoners with arrows or scoop out their eyes is amusement. ”

“ Can the Assyrian kings have dared to confide their mortal remains to sepulchres in the midst of a people who had shown themselves so hostile to their domination? Must they not have trembled for the security of tombs surrounded by a rebellious and angry populace? And the furious conflicts that we find narrated in the Assyrian inscriptions, must they not often have interrupted the transport of bodies and compelled them to wait without sepulture for months and even years?
Further explorations and the decipherment of the texts will one day solve the problem. ”

“ RELIGION AND ART.—It has been stated that the Assyrian culture was transplanted from Babylon. The religion was substantially the same, except that Asshur, the tutelary deity of the country, was made supreme. The Assyrians from the start were devoted to war, pillage, and conquest. Their unsparing cruelty and brutal treatment of their enemies are abundantly witnessed by their own monuments. They lacked the productive power in literature and art which belonged to the Babylonians. Although they might have built their edifices of stone, they generally made use of brick. ”

“ The most splendid archæological discovery of our age is the disinterment of the various palaces and other monuments of the Assyrian Empire. The labours of Mr Layard and M. Botta have made ancient Assyria rise before our eyes in all its grandeur and in all its atrocity. In visiting the British Museum we seem to live again in ancient Nineveh. We behold the sculptured slabs of its palaces, on which the history of the nation is both represented and written; we wonder at its 28strange compound divinities, its obelisks, its elegant productions in metal, in ivory, and in terra cotta. ”

“ Have in thy head reason as broad and rich as the forecourt of the temple, a soul as pure as the chamber of “apparition” and of “offering,” and in thy heart have God, O Egyptian!’ But the Assyrian buildings say to that people: ‘Tower above nations, O Assyrian; rear thy head beyond every other! Thou wilt do nothing great here on earth, but at least thou wilt leave many ruins.’
“Wouldst thou, then, O sovereign, venture to rear in our land Assyrian edifices and imitate a people which Egypt contemns and despises?” ”

“ The kings of Assyria were not content with recording their achievements on the walls of their buildings, on stelae set up in their palaces and temples, on their tablets of annals preserved in their archive-chambers, and on their cylinders and foundation-memorials concealed within the actual structure of the buildings themselves. They have also left records graven in the living rock, and these have never been buried, but have been exposed to wind and weather from the moment they were engraved. ”

“ The monuments of Egypt, of Babylonia, and of Assyria have been rescued from their hiding-places, and the writing upon them has been made to speak once more in living words. A dead world has been called again to life by the spade of the excavator and the patient labour of the decipherer. We find ourselves, as it were, face to face with Sennacherib, with Nebuchadnezzar, and with Cyrus, with those whose names have been familiar to us from childhood, but who have hitherto been to us mere names, mere shadowy occupants of an unreal world. ”

“ The far more realistic and historical sense of the Assyrians is stamped in their monuments and inscriptions. As they allow us to see, year by year, the activity, the untiring perseverance, and warlike skill of the Assyrian nation and its princes, even though they magnify their successes—so too the reverse side of these qualities is brought into prominence; the fierce cruelty, the bloody savagery which the conquered had to undergo. The kings constantly boast of the punishments they have inflicted, and appear more than once to exaggerate them. ”

“ Drunkenness and licentiousness are always twin-sisters of superstition and bigotry. These arrangements recall the same custom of dividing subjects in antithetical groups observed in Assyria, where we find on the slabs hunts in the upper compartments, and joyous festivities in the row below. The subjects chosen with the Assyrians were undoubtedly much healthier. Hard work first, and joy and happiness afterwards. The Etruskans kept to the old Egyptian customs, reminding man continually of the short duration of his life. ”