Babylonian culture

“ We have, indeed, no written records which go back to so distant a past; it belongs, perhaps, to an epoch when the art of writing had not as yet been invented. But there was already civilization in Babylonia, and the elements of its future social life were already in existence. Babylonian culture is immeasurably old. ”

“ Culture was really a by-product of temple activities; it flowed forth like pure gold from furnaces of thought which were walled up by the crude ores of magic and immemorial tradition.
No doubt in ancient Babylonia, as in Europe during the Middle Ages, the men of refinement and intellect among the upper classes were attracted to the temples, while the more robust types preferred the outdoor life, and especially the life of the soldier. [302] The permanent triumphs of Babylonian civilization were achieved either by the priests, or in consequence of the influence they exercised. ”

“ The rise of Sumerian culture on the shores of the Persian Gulf is in accordance with Babylonian tradition. Babylonian myths told how Oannes or Ea, the god of culture, had risen each morning out of his palace in “the deep,” bringing with him the elements of civilization which he communicated to mankind. Letters, science and art had all been his gifts. He had instructed the wild tribes of the coast to build houses and erect temples; he had compiled for them the first law-book, and had instructed them in the mysteries of agriculture. Babylonian civilization was sea-born. ”

“ The new-comers probably owed their speedy success in Babylonia in great part to the fact that many of the immigrant tribes had already acquired the elements of Babylonian culture. During their previous residence within the sphere of settled civilization they had adopted a way of life and a social organization which differed but little from that of the country into which they came. That they should have immigrated at all in a south-easterly direction, in preference to remaining within their own borders, was doubtless due to racial pressure to which they themselves had been subjected. ”

“ All this traffic was in the hands of Babylonian traders, who fearlessly ventured into the borders of distant countries, and must have carried with them thither the knowledge of the civilization and wealth of their own home, for only thus can the widespread influence of Babylonian culture in the earliest periods be explained. ”

“ Their own culture was inferior, and Babylonia was their teacher in the arts and comforts of life. The wild Bedâwin, who tended the flocks of their Babylonian masters, the Amorite merchants from Canaan, who formed trading settlements in the Babylonian cities, even the South Arabian princes who headed the national revolt against Elamite supremacy and made Babylon the capital of their kingdom, were all alike absorbed into the Babylonian race. They became the children of Babylonian civilisation, and, along with the culture, they adopted the language of the Babylonian people. ”

“ It may thus appear a paradox to assert that the civilization, with which the name of Babylon is associated, was not Babylonian. But it is a fact that for more than a thousand years before the appearance of that city as a great centre of culture, the civilization it handed on to others had acquired in all essentials its later type. In artistic excellence, indeed, a standard had been already reached, which, so far from being surpassed, was never afterwards attained in Mesopotamia. ”

“ At every point we come across evidence of this composite character of Babylonian culture, and the question as to the origin of the latter may, after all, resolve itself into the proposition that the contact of different races gave the intellectual impetus which is the first condition of a forward movement in civilization ”

“ The entrance of the Semitic element into Babylonia is at present one of the most obscure of problems. All we can be sure of are certain main facts. First of all, as we have seen, the early culture of Babylonia, including so integral a part of it as the script, was of Sumerian origin. So, too, were the great cities and sanctuaries of the country, as well as the system of irrigation engineering which first made it habitable. Sumerian long continued to be the language of theology and law; indeed a large part of the Babylonian pantheon of later days was frankly non-Semitic. ”

“ The probabilities, however, are in favor of assuming a movement of population, as of culture, from the south to the north. At all events, the history of Babylonia and Assyria begins with the former, and as a consequence we are justified also in beginning with that phase of the religion for which we have the earliest records—the Babylonian. ”

“ The religious architecture of Babylonia and Assyria is of interest chiefly as an expression of the religious earnestness of rulers and people, and only in a minor degree as a manifestation of artistic instincts. The lack of a picturesque building material in the Euphrates Valley was sufficient to check the development of such instincts. Important as the adaptation of the clay soil of Babylonia for simple construction was for the growth of Babylonian culture, the limitations to the employment of bricks as a building material are no less significant. ”

“ The Babylonian was thus a compound of Sumerian, Semitic, and Kassite elements. They all went to form the culture which we term Babylonian, and which left such enduring traces on Western Asia and the world. Mixed races are invariably the best, and the Babylonians were no exception to the rule. We have only to compare them with their neighbors, the more purely blooded Semitic Assyrians, to assure ourselves of the fact. ”

“ It was under the Neo-Babylonian kings that the Hebrew race first came into close contact with her culture, and there can be no doubt that the Jews, in the time of their captivity, renewed their interest in her mythology when they found it presented some parallels to their own. But in the course of this history it has been shown that, during far earlier periods, the civilization of Babylon had penetrated throughout a great part of Western Asia. ”

“ Finally, coming down to the sixth century, we find the Achæmenian kings inventing a cuneiform sign-list to express the Old Persian language, in order that their own speech might be represented in royal proclamations and memorials beside those of their subject provinces of Babylon and Susiania.
These illustrations of Babylonian influence on foreign races are confined to one department of culture only, the language and the system of writing. But they have a very much wider implication. For when a foreign language is used and written, a certain knowledge of its literature must be presupposed. ”

“ "And to think of this great country in danger of being dominated by people ignorant enough to take a few ancient Babylonian legends as the canons of modern culture. Our scientific men are paying for their failure to speak out earlier. There is no use now talking evolution to these people. Their ears are stuffed with Genesis." ”

“ The bulk of our new material is furnished by some early texts, written towards the close of the third millennium B.C. They incorporate traditions which extend in unbroken outline from their own period into the remote ages of the past, and claim to trace the history of man back to his creation. They represent the early national traditions of the Sumerian people, who preceded the Semites as the ruling race in Babylonia; and incidentally they necessitate a revision of current views with regard to the cradle of Babylonian civilization. ”

“ Although Babylonia was not so great a world power under the Kassites as it had been during the Hammurabi Dynasty, it prospered greatly as an industrial, agricultural, and trading country. The Babylonian language was used throughout western Asia as the language of diplomacy and commerce, and the city of Babylon was the most important commercial metropolis of the ancient world. ”

“ As a consequence, the gods he worships conform to the social conditions under which he lives. In the desert the sacred stone becomes “the temple of the god”; in the organized monarchy of Babylonia each deity takes his appointed [96] place in an imperial court. Under the one supreme ruler there are princes and sub-princes, vice-regents and generals, while angel-messengers carry the commands of Bel to his subjects on earth, like the messengers who carried the letters of the Babylonian king along the high-roads of the empire. ”

“ Not many years ago the impression appeared to be well founded that the Semites were poor in the production of myths and legends as compared, for example, to the Hindus or Greeks. The religious literature of the Babylonians, originating undoubtedly with the Semitic inhabitants of the Euphrates Valley, reverses the impression. The 'creation' and 'Gilgamesh' epics suffice, not merely for what they contain, but for what they imply, to accord to Babylonian mythology a high rank ”

“ Babylonia is still a holy land to the people of Western Asia. The old feeling in regard to it still survives, and the bodies of the dead are still carried, sometimes for hundreds of miles, to be buried in its sacred soil. Mohammedan saints have taken the place of the old gods, and a Moslem chapel represents the temple of the past, but it is still to Babylonia that the corpse is borne, often covered by costly rugs which find their way in time to an American or European drawing-room. “The old order changes, giving place to new,” but the influence of Chaldean culture and religion is not yet past. ”

“ Since, however, the material upon which any age works is not of its own making, but is furnished by a preceding one, it follows that much of the intellectual activity of an age manifests itself in a transformation of its literary or speculative heritage. This process was constantly going on in Babylonia, and had we more material—and older material—at our disposal, we would be able to trace more clearly than we can at present, the various stages that led to the system of theology, as embodied in the best productions of the ancient Babylonian schoolmen. ”

“ We shall see that the problems we have to face concern the possible influence of Babylon, rather than of Egypt, upon Hebrew tradition. And one last example, drawn from the later period, will serve to demonstrate how Babylonian influence penetrated the ancient world and has even left some trace upon modern civilization. It is a fact, though one perhaps not generally realized, that the twelve divisions on the dials of our clocks and watches have a Babylonian, and ultimately a Sumerian, ancestry. For why is it we divide the day into twenty-four hours? ”

“ In Babylonian history there are but two figures of moment—the soldier and the priest. We are dealing with a race austere and stern, a race of rigorous religious devotees and conquerors, the Romans of the East—but not an unimaginative race, for the Babylonians and Assyrians came of that stock which gave to the world its greatest religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism, a race not without the sense of mystery and science, for Babylon was the mother of astrology and magic, and established the beginnings of the study of the stars ”

“ But all pioneering work is necessarily imperfect, and for many a day to come the history of Babylonian religion must be left to the pioneer. Year by year, indeed, the materials are increasing, and it may be that a discovery will yet be made, like that of the Pyramid texts in Egypt, which will reveal to us the inner religious thought and belief of Babylonia in those distant ages, when Nippur and Eridu, and not as yet Babylon, were the theological centres of the land. ”

“ Thanks to Babylon's misfortunes at this time, we have recovered some of her finest memorials, including the famous Stele of Narâm-Sin, Hammurabi's Code of Laws, and an important series of the Kassite kudurrus, or boundary-stones, which, as we have seen, throw considerable light upon the economic condition of the country. These doubtless represent but a small proportion of the booty secured by Elam at this period, but they suffice to show the manner in which the great Babylonian cities were denuded of their treasures. ”

“ To begin with, the character of Babylonian myth was a great deal purer than that of Hellenic or Scandinavian myth. The gods of Babylonia appear to be more dignified than those of the Greeks or Norsemen, for example. They do not descend to the same puerilities, and their record is immeasurably cleaner. ”

“ The goddesses of Babylonia, with few exceptions, become mere shadowy reflections of the gods, with but little independent power, and in some cases none at all. They owe what popularity they enjoyed to their association with their male companions. In consequence of this inferior rôle played by the female deities, the tendency becomes more pronounced, as we pass from the first to the second period of Babylonian history, to reduce by assimilation the small number that have independent attributes, until we reach a condition in which we have practically only one goddess, appearing under many forms. ”

“ Of one thing we may rest assured—that Babylonia was in a comparatively high state of civilisation about six thousand years before the Christian era. For at about this date from the East came Babylonian settlers, who found their way towards the setting sun and, finally halting to the North-West of the Red Sea, colonised the region on either side of the Nile. Here, then, they arrived from Babylonia, not a barbarian wild tribe, but, as we know from the most learned Egyptologists, a highly civilised people, possessing great ability in certain arts and of definite intellectual development. ”