Euphrates

“ The Euphrates and its branches do not at all times succeed in reaching the sea: they are lost for the most part in vast lagoons to which the tide comes up, and in its ebb bears their waters away with it. ”

“ From the point, on which we stood, to the base of the Mujelibé, large masses of ancient foundations spread on our right, more resembling natural hills in appearance, than mounds covering the remains of former great and splendid edifices. The whole view was particularly solemn. The majestic stream of the Euphrates wandering in solitude, like a pilgrim monarch through the silent ruins of his devastated kingdom, still appeared a noble river, even under all the disadvantages of its desert-tracked course. ”

“ At the present time the greater part of the country between the Orontes and the Euphrates is nothing but a rocky table-land, ridged with low hills and dotted over with some impoverished oases, excepting at the foot of Anti-Lebanon, where two rivers, fed by innumerable streams, have served to create a garden of marvellous beauty. ”

“ Perhaps in those violent gales, which every now and again sweep across Mesopotamia, the waters from the Euphrates are driven into the marsh lands, and, instead of flowing slowly and almost imperceptibly across them, filtering through them, as it were, they rush and sweep through every channel, heaping islands of mud here and there where there happen to be eddies, and carrying on vast accumulations of ooze and slime to other quarters. ”

“ But on a nearer approach to the Euphrates, the dissolution of every social tie becomes more striking. We find ourselves amid the independent tribes—the cruel Lendes; among the Tezdis—a people who adore the spirit of Erib. Towards the north we fall in with the Lazzi, and all those fierce natives who are entrenched like vultures amid the fastnesses of the Caucasus. Again, in the South we discover the wandering Arabs, the pirates of the desert, and the mountaineers of Lebanon, who live in a state of perpetual discord. ”

“ Perhaps the Bible is right in saying that the first seat of civilized man was in Eden, and that the Euphrates was the chief river of Paradise. Or was it from Arabia, the immemorial home of the Semitic tribes, that land of sand and mountain and fertile valley, land of changeless culture and tradition, so near the centres of civilization, and yet still the most inaccessible, the least known portion of the inhabited earth,--was it from Arabia that the wiser, stronger multitude came that first overran the valleys of both the Nile and the Euphrates, bringing to Egypt and Chaldea arts and letters? ”

“ This hymn brought comfort with it, and as she gazed on the young light, the rays of which were not yet strong enough to dazzle her, she thought of her childhood, and the tears gathered in her eyes. Then she looked down over the broad plain. There was the Euphrates with his yellow waves looking so like the Nile; the many villages, just as in her own home, peeping out from among luxuriant cornfields and plantations of fig-trees. To the west lay the royal hunting-park; she could see its tall cypresses and nut-trees miles away in the distance. ”

“ The connection between a fish god and a corn god is not necessarily remote when we consider that in Babylonia and Egypt the harvest was the gift of the rivers.
The Euphrates, indeed, was hailed as a creator of all that grew on its banks.
O thou River who didst create all things,
When the great gods dug thee out,
They set prosperity upon thy banks,
Within thee Ea, the King of the Deep, created his dwelling...
Thou judgest the cause of mankind! ”

“ The Euphrates flows at a distance of about a mile from the city enclosure, but in all probability its course was once immediately under the wall, and the bed has made the same change here as it has done immediately above Circesium. The modern Buseirah must be the site of the ancient city, and I conclude that in Diocletian’s time the Euphrates flowed under the mound and that this was the side which was not fortified until Justinian’s day.
In the Arab village, which has sprung up near the south-west corner of the ruins, there are portions of a large building which the natives call the church. ”

“ Between the embouchures of the Khabur and the Balîkh, the Euphrates winds across a vast table-land, ridged with marly hills; the left bank is dry and sterile, shaded at rare intervals by sparse woods of poplars or groups of palms. The right bank, on the contrary, is seamed with fertile valleys, sufficiently well watered to permit the growth of cereals and the raising of cattle. The river-bed is almost everywhere wide, but strewn with dangerous rocks and sandbanks which render navigation perilous. ”

“ In contemplating the state of degradation and impotency into which have fallen Syria, and that vast Peninsula which extends westward of the Euphrates, after having occupied so proud a place in the page of history, from the earliest traditionary periods down to the time when the Turkish Sultans abandoned Broussa for Adrianople, we naturally inquire what has become of the intellectual inheritance which the ancient inhabitants of these countries left behind them? ”

“ We discover syllables at length; and if on the banks of the Nile, we found a full grown adult, but impotent and out of the way, we meet, on the banks of the Euphrates, with a vigorous child, yet imperfect certainly, but actually advancing, and in the right path. Leaving the cumbrous and astute paraphernalia of pictorial and symbolic characters, the speaking signs passed from the arrow-points of Assyria into the flexile and immortal worth of the Phœnician alphabet. ”

“ The two following years were spent in harrying the people of Paqarakhbuni, on the right bank of the Euphrates, in the dependencies of the ancient kingdom of Adini (848 B.C.) , and in plundering the inhabitants of Ishtaratê in the country of Iaîti, near the sources of the Tigris (847 B.C.) , till in 846 they returned to try their fortune again in Syria. They transported 120,000 men across the Euphrates, hoping perhaps, by the mere mass of such a force, to crush their enemy in a single battle ”

“ The Euphrates passes along a course of more than 1,780 miles from the head-waters of the Mourad Chai3 and for about 700 miles it passes through a nearly level country on the east of the great Syrian desert. It varies in depth from eight to twenty feet to its junction with the Tigris; after its union with the Tigris its depth increases. It is navigable for about 700 miles or more from the Persian Gulf. ”

“ The nation had no reason to complain of oppression, for he dealt justly to the extent of his ability. By destroying the power of the Philistines, who had so long held the neighbouring tribes in subjection, and by conquering the nations inhabiting the banks of the Euphrates, he had not only established internal prosperity, but had also founded a great empire which could vie in power with Egypt, and had cast into the shade the Chaldæan and Assyrian kingdoms on the Euphrates and the Tigris. ”

“ Divided by a desert or by high mountains from the valley of the Tigris, and attached by means of its streams to that of the Euphrates, it almost necessarily falls to that power which holds the Euphrates under its dominion. The tract is one of considerable extent and importance. Bounded on the north by the range of hills which Strabo calls Mons Masius, and on the east by the waterless upland which lies directly west of the middle Tigris, it comprises within it all the numerous affluents of the Khabour and Bilik, and is thus better supplied with water than almost any country in these regions. ”

“ The Assyrians, under the leadership of ambitious kings, had in their turn carried their arms over the countries of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, but, like those of the Egyptians before them, their expeditions resembled rather the destructive raids of a horde in search of booty than the gradual and orderly advance of a civilised people aiming at establishing a permanent empire. ”

“ The time is near when the long drama that has been played between Arabs and Turks will end in the establishment of a vast Arabic empire, extending from the Tigris and the Euphrates valley to the Mediterranean and from the Indian Ocean to Jerusalem, with Cairo as its Capital, the Khedive as its Caliph, and England as its lord and protector. ”

“ From what has been said, it will be clear that the Euphrates is, par excellence, the river of Southern Mesopotamia or Babylonia, while the Tigris may be regarded as the river of Assyria. It was the Euphrates that made possible the high degree of culture, that was reached in the south. Through the very intense heat of the dry season, the soil developed a fertility that reduced human labor to a minimum. ”

“ A single god who could not be seen, and the universal worship of idols spoken so openly against as a vile and divinely forbidden practice? The very idea!
But Emperor Euphrates would not be placated. He was very much afraid of the words of this prophet and his one Invisible God, this Patriarch called Noah.
Finally, Emperor Euphrates signaled straw-thin Ampho, the Royal Crier, who stuck his beaked nose into the air and closed his eyes as he sounded out, considerably less loudly than in open court, "All keep silence before the great Emperor Euphrates!" ”

“ In the plain of Erzerúm its water is very sweet and palatable, well worth being recorded in the Korán by the verse:—“And we gave you to drink of the water of the Euphrates.” Besides the Euphrates no less than seventy-two rivers descend from the mountains of Erzerúm and Diárbekr. Makrisí says, that the Tigris and Euphrates were dug out by Daniel with the assistance of Angels. The Tigris is the Shatt, which rises east of Diárbekr, between Torjíl and Miafarekein, receives an infinite number of springs, and goes to Hossní Kaifa and Mossul. ”

“ This hope would have been successful, had not the Euphrates burst its banks, and running between the enemy and Hormisdas, obstructed the march of his men. Being compelled by this cause to defer the journey, the following day they discovered the ambuscade of Surenas and his troops, with whom they engaged. Having killed many, and put to flight others, they admitted the remainder of them into their own army. They proceeded from thence to a branch of the Euphrates, which reaches as far as Assyria, and joins the Tigris. ”

“ Every city had naturally its own version, in which its own protecting deities, its heroes and princes, played the most important parts. That of Babylon threw all the rest into the shade; not that it was superior to them, but because this city had speedily become strong enough to assert its political supremacy over the whole region of the Euphrates. ”

“ In a case, therefore, where counsel still goes before action, and where, after taking the best advice, that advice is followed by so active an army, what wonder is it that Euphrates on the east, the ocean on the west, the most fertile regions of Libya on the south, and the Danube and the Rhine on the north, are the limits of this empire? One might well say that the Roman possessions are not inferior to the Romans themselves. ”

“ So the ancient tyrannies bear sway even in the open wilderness.
Three-quarters of an hour from Khmeiḍah we passed another mound strewn with potsherds, and thirty-five minutes further down we came upon the ruins of Abu ’Atîḳ. They lie upon high rocky ground that drops steeply into an old bed of the Euphrates from which the river has retreated into a new bed a few hundred yards away. ”

“ But even at that time the trade-routes had been open to the west, and before the rise of Babylon both soldier and merchant had passed from the lower Euphrates into Syria. With the expansion of the Western Semites the two regions were drawn into more intimate relationship, and the political control of the middle Euphrates, first established in the age of Hammurabi, was followed by an increased commercial traffic, which continued with few interruptions into the Neo-Babylonian and later periods. ”

“ A hero on the banks of the Euphrates, a slave in the palace of Constantinople, he accepted, with reluctance, the painful task of supporting his own reputation, and retrieving the faults of his successors. The sea was open to the Romans; the ships and soldiers were assembled at Salona, near the palace of Diocletian; he refreshed and reviewed his troops at Pola in Istria, coasted round the head of the Adriatic, entered the port of Ravenna, and despatched orders rather than supplies to the subordinate cities. Not a man was tempted to desert the standard of the Gothic king. ”

“ Also the Lord at that redemption will dry up Nilus, and Euphrates, and will divide it into seven streames (answerable to his drying up the red Sea when they came out of Ægypt) perhaps that the seven Tribes, which are in those parts, may goe over it; as they passe into their Country, as Isaiah saith in ch. 27.12, 13. And it shall be in that day, and he shall shake off from the bank of the river, (some understand Euphrates) unto the river of Egypt (Nilus) and ye, O children of Israel, shall be gathered one by one. Which was never done in the captivity of Babylon. ”

“ In early times the Euphrates was important as a boundary. It was the theoretical eastern limit of the Jewish kingdom; for a long time it separated Assyria from the Khita or Hittites; it divided the eastern from the western satrapies of Persia (Ezra iv. 17; Neh. ii. 7) ; and it was at several periods the boundary of the Roman empire. Until the advent of the nomads from central Asia, and the devastation of Mesopotamia and the opposite Syrian shore of the river, there were many flourishing cities along its course, the ruins of which, representing all periods, still dot its banks. ”