chronology—berosus—his dates mythical—dates in genesis—synchronisms with egypt and assyria—monuments—cuneiform inscriptions—how deciphered—behistan inscription—grotefend and rawlinson—layard—library of koyunjik—how preserved—accadian translations and grammars—historical dates—elamite conquest—commencement of modern history—ur-ea and dungi—nabonidus—sargon i., 3800 b.c.—ur of the chaldees—sharrukin's cylinder—his library—his son naram-sin—semites and accadians—accadians and chinese—period before sargon i.—patesi—de sarzec's find at sirgalla—gud-ea, 4000 to 4500 b.c.—advance of delta—astronomical records—chald?a and egypt give similar results—historic period 6000 or 7000 years—and no trace of a beginning.
chald?an chronology has within the last few years been brought into the domain of history, and carried back to a date almost, if not quite, as remote as that of egypt. and this has been effected by a process identical in the two cases, the decipherment of an unknown language in inscriptions on ancient monuments. until this discovery the little that was known of the early history of chald?a was derived almost entirely from two sources: the bible, and the fragments quoted by later writers from the lost work of berosus. berosus was a learned priest of babylon, who lived about 300 b.c., shortly after the conquest of alexander, and wrote in greek a history of the country from the most ancient times, compiled from the annals preserved in the 43 temples, and from the oldest traditions. he began with a cosmogony, fragments of which only are preserved, from which little could be inferred, except that it bore some general resemblance to that of genesis, until the complete chald?an cosmogony was deciphered by mr. george smith from tablets in the british museum. then followed a mythical period of the reigns of ten gods or demi-gods, reigning for 432,000 years, in the middle of which period the divine fish-man, ea-han or oannes, was said to have come up out of the persian gulf, and taught mankind letters, sciences, laws, and all the arts of civilization; 259,000 years after oannes, under xisuthros (the greek translation of hasisastra), the last of the ten kings, a deluge is said to have occurred; which is described in terms so similar to the narrative of noah's deluge in genesis, as to leave no doubt that they are different versions of the same legend.
prior to the appearance of oannes, berosus relates, "that chald?a had been colonized by a mixed multitude of men of foreign race, who lived without order like animals," thus carrying back the existence of mankind in large numbers, to some date anterior to 259,000 years before the deluge. there is also a legend resembling that of the tower of babel and the confusion of languages, recorded in another fragment of berosus. these accounts are all so obviously mythical that no historical value can be attached to them, and they have only been preserved because early christian writers saw in them some sort of distorted confirmation of the corresponding narratives in the old testament.
for anything like historical dates therefore the bible remained the principal authority, until the recent 44 discoveries made from the monuments of chald?a and assyria. this authority does not carry us very far back. the first event which can advance any claim to be considered as historical, is that of the migration of terah from ur of the chaldees to haran, and the further migration of his son abraham from haran to palestine. this is said to have taken place in the ninth generation after noah, about 290 years after the deluge, and it presupposes the existence of a dense population and a number of large cities both in upper and lower mesopotamia. it mentions also an event, apparently historical, as occurring in abraham's time, viz. a campaign by chedorlaomer, king of elam, with four allies, one of whom is a king of shinar, against five petty kings in southern syria. chedorlaomer has been identified from inscriptions with khuder-lagomer, one of the kings of the elamite dynasty, who conquered chald?a about 2300 b.c., and were expelled before 2000 b.c.
a long interval then occurs during which the scattered notices in the bible relate mainly to the intercourse of the hebrews with egypt, with the races of canaan, with the philistines, with the ph?nicians of tyre, and with the syrians of damascus. mesopotamia first appears after the rise of the assyrian empire had united nearly the whole of western asia under the warlike kings who reigned at nineveh, and when palestine had become the battle-field between them and the declining power of egypt, which under the eighteenth and nineteenth egyptian dynasties had extended to the euphrates. the capture of jerusalem in the reign of rehoboam by shishak, the first king of the twenty-second egyptian dynasty, affords the first certain synchronism between sacred and profane history. the 45 date may be fixed within a few years at 970 b.c. assyria first appears on the scene two hundred years later in the reign of menahem king of israel, when pul, better known as tiglath-pileser ii., came against the land, and exacted a large ransom from menahem, whom he confirmed as a tributary vassal.
from this time forward the succession of assyrian kings is recorded more or less accurately in the bible. tiglath-pileser accepted vassalage and a large tribute from ahaz to come to his assistance against rezin king of syria, and pekah king of israel, who were besieging jerusalem, and tiglath-pileser came to his aid and captured and sacked damascus. shalmaneser came up against hoshea king of judah, who submitted, but was deposed for intriguing with egypt, and shalmaneser then took samaria and carried the ten tribes of israel away into assyria, placing them in the cities of the medes. sennacherib, in the fourteenth year of hezekiah, took all the fenced cities of judah, and his general, rab-shakeh, besieged jerusalem, which was saved by the repulse of the main army under the king when marching to invade egypt. the murder of sennacherib by his two sons and the succession of esarhaddon are next mentioned.
nineveh then disappears from the scene, and the great babylonian conqueror, nebuchadnezzar, puts an end to the kingdom of jud?a, by taking jerusalem and carrying the people captive to babylon. this historical retrospect carries us back a very short distance, and little can be gathered in the way of accurate chronology from the few vague references prior to this date. so stood the question until the date of chald?an history and civilization was unexpectedly 46 carried back at least 3000 years by the discovery of its monuments.
when the first assyrian sculptures were found by botta and layard not fifty years ago in the mounds of rubbish which covered the ruins of nineveh, and brought home to europe, it was seen that they were covered with inscriptions in an unknown character. it was called the cuneiform, because it was made up of combinations of a single sign, resembling a thin wedge or arrow-head. this sign was made in three fundamental ways, i.e. either horizontal [symbol], vertical[symbol], or angular [symbol], and all the characters were made up of combinations of these primary forms, which were obviously produced by impressing a style with a triangular head on moist clay. they resembled, in fact, very much the strokes and dashes used in spelling out the words conveyed by the electric telegraph, in which letters are formed by oscillations of the needle.
this mode of writing had apparently been developed from picture-writing, for several, of the groups of characters bore an unmistakable resemblance to natural objects. in the very oldest inscriptions which have been discovered the writing, is hardly yet cuneiform, and the primitive pictorial character of the signs is apparent.
but the bulk of the cuneiform inscriptions not being pictorial, there could be little doubt that they were phonetic, or represented sounds. the question was, what sounds these characters signified, and when translated into sounds, what words and what language did the groups of signs represent?
the first clue to these questions was, as in the parallel case of egypt, afforded by a trilingual inscription. 47 the kings of the persian empire reigned over subjects of various races and languages. the three principal were the persians, an aryan race who spoke an inflectional language which has been preserved in old persian and zend; semites, who spoke aramaic, a language closely allied to hebrew; and descendants of the older accadian races, whose language was turanian, or agglutinative.
it is almost the same at the present day in the same region, where edicts or inscriptions, to be readily intelligible to all classes of subjects, would require to be made in persian, arabic, and turkish.
accordingly, the pompous inscriptions and royal edicts of these ancient monarchs were frequently made in the three languages, and specimens of these were brought to europe. the difficulty of deciphering them was, however, great, for the inscriptions were all written, though in different languages, in the same cuneiform characters, so that the aid afforded in the case of the rosetta stone by a greek translation of the hieroglyphic inscription was not forthcoming.
the ingenuity of a german scholar, grotefend, furnished the first clue by discovering that certain groups of signs represented the names of known persian kings, and thus identifying the component signs in the persian inscription as letters of an alphabet.
a few years later sir henry rawlinson copied, and succeeded in deciphering, a famous inscription engraved by the great persian monarch, darius the first, high up in the face of a precipice forming the wall of a narrow defile at behistan, and giving an historical record of the exploits of his reign. the clue thus afforded was rapidly followed up by a host of scholars, among whom 48 the names of rawlinson, burnouf, lassen, and oppert were most conspicuous, and before long the text of inscriptions in persian and semitic could be read with great certainty. the task was one which required a vast amount of patience and ingenuity, for the cuneiform writing turned out to be one of great complexity, though phonetic in the main, the characters did not always represent the simple elements of sounds, or letters of an alphabet, but frequently syllables containing one or more consonants united by vowels, and a considerable number were ideographic or conventional representations of ideas, like our numerals 1, 2, 3, which have no relation to spoken sounds.
thus the simple vertical wedge [symbol] represented "man," and was prefixed to proper names of kings so as to show that the signs which followed denoted the name of a man; the sign [symbol] denoted country, and so on. the difficulties were, however, surmounted, and inscriptions in the two known languages could be read with considerable certainty.
the third language, however, remained unknown until the finishing stroke to its decipherment was given by the discovery by layard under the great mound of koyunjik near mosul on the tigris, the site of the ancient nineveh, of the royal palace of asshurbanipal, or sardanapalus, the grandson of sennacherib, and one of the greatest assyrian monarchs, who lived about 650 b.c. this palace contained a royal library like that of alexandria or the british museum, the contents of which had been carefully collected from the oldest records of previous libraries and temples, and almost miraculously preserved. the secret of the preservation of these assyrian and chald?an remains, is that the 49 district contains no stone, and all the great buildings were constructed mainly of sun-dried bricks, and built on mounds or platforms of the same material to raise them above the alluvial plain. these, when the cities were deserted, crumbled rapidly under the action of the air and rains, which are torrential at certain seasons, into shapeless rubbish heaps of fine dry dust and sand, under which everything of more durable material was securely buried.
so rapid was the process, that when xenophon on the famous retreat of the ten thousand traversed the site of nineveh only two hundred years after its destruction, he found nothing but the ruins of a deserted city, the very name and memory of which had been lost.
as regards the contents of the library the explanation of their perfect preservation is equally simple. the books were written, not on perishable paper or parchment, but on cylinders of clay. it is evident that the cuneiform characters were exceedingly well adapted for this description of writing, and probably originated from the nature of the material. a fine tenacious clay cost nothing, was readily moulded into cylinders, and when slightly moist was easily engraved by a tool or style stamping on it those wedge-like characters, so that when hardened by a slow fire the book was practically indestructible. so much so, indeed, that though the palace, including the library with its shelves and upper stories, had all fallen to the ground, and the book-cylinders lay scattered on the floor, they were mostly in a state of perfect preservation. other similar finds have been made since, notably one of another great library of the priestly college at erech, founded or enlarged as far back as 2000 b.c. by sargon ii. among the books 50 thus preserved there are fortunately translations of old accadian works into the more modern aramaic or assyrian, either interlined or in parallel columns, and, also grammars and dictionaries of the old language to assist in its study. it appears that as far back as 2000 years b.c. this old language had already become obsolete, and was preserved as latin or vedic sanscrit are at the present day, as the venerable language for religious uses, in which the earliest sacred books, historical annals, and astrological and magical formulas had been written. with these aids this ancient accadian language can now be read with almost as much certainty as egyptian hieroglyphics, and the records written in it are accumulating rapidly with every fresh exploration. some idea of the wealth of the materials already found may be formed from the fact that the number of tablets in the different museums of europe from the nineveh library alone exceeds 10,000. they present to us a most interesting picture of the religion, literature, laws, and social life of a period long antecedent to that commonly assigned for the destruction of the world by noah's deluge, or even to that of the creation of adam. to some of these we shall have occasion subsequently to refer, but for the present i confine myself to the immediate object in view, that of verifying the earliest historical dates.
the first certain date is fixed by the annals of the assyrian king asshurbanipal, grandson of sennacherib, who conquered elam and destroyed its capital, susa, in the year 645 b.c. the king says that he took away all the statues from the great temple of susa, and among others, one of the chald?an goddess nana, which had been carried away from her own temple in the city of 51 erech, by a king of elam who conquered the land of accad 1635 years before. this conquest, and the accession of an elamite dynasty which lasted for nearly 300 years, is confirmed from a variety of other sources, and its date is thus fixed, beyond the possibility of a doubt, at 2280 b.c. a king of this dynasty, khudur-lagamar, synchronizes with abraham, assuming abraham and the narrative in the old testament respecting his defeat of that monarch to be historical.
this elamite conquest of chald?a is a memorable historical era, for it inaugurates the period of great wars and of the rise and fall of empires, which play such a conspicuous part in the subsequent annals of nations. elam was a small province between the kurdish mountains and the tigris, extending to the persian gulf, and its capital, susa, was an ancient and famous city; which afterwards became one of the principal seats of the persian monarchs. the elamites were originally a turanian race like the accads, and spoke a language which was a dialect of accadian, but, as in chald?a and assyria, the kings and aristocracy appear to have been semites from an early period. it was apparently an organized and civilized state, and the conquest was not a passing irruption of barbarians, but the result of a campaign by regular troops, who founded a dynasty which lasted for more than 200 years. it evidently disturbed the equilibrium of western asia, and led to a succession of wars. the invasion of egypt by the hyksos followed closely on it. then came the reaction which drove the elamites from chald?a and the hyksos from egypt. then the great wars of the eighteenth egyptian dynasty, which carried the arms of ahmes and thotmes to the euphrates and black sea, and 52 established for a time the supremacy of egypt over western asia. then the rise of the hittite empire, which extended over asia minor, and contended on equal terms with ramses ii. in syria. then the rise of the assyrian empire, which crushed the hittites and all surrounding nations, and twice conquered and overran egypt. finally, the rise of the medes, the fall of nineveh, the short supremacy of babylon, and the establishment of the great persian empire. from the persian we pass to the greek, and then to the roman empire, and find ourselves in full modern history. it may be fairly said, therefore, that modern history, with its series of great wars and revolutions, commences with this record of the elamite conquest of chald?a in 2280 b.c.
the next tolerably certain date is that of ur-ea, and his son dungi, two kings of the old accadian race, who reigned at ur over the united kingdoms of sumir and accad. they were great builders and restorers of temples, and have left numerous traces of their existence in the monuments both at ur, and at larsam, sirgalla, erech, and other ancient cities. among other relics of these kings there is in the british museum the signet-cylinder of ur-ea himself, on which is engraved the moon-god, the patron deity of ur, with the king and priests worshipping him. the date of ur-ea is ascertained as follows—nabonidus, the last king of babylon, 550 b.c., was a great restorer of the old temples, and, as professor sayce says, "a zealous antiquarian who busied himself much with the disinterment of the memorial cylinders which their founders and restorers had buried beneath their foundations." the results of his discoveries he recorded on special 53 cylinders for the information of posterity, which have fortunately been preserved. among others he restored the sun-temple at larsam, in which he found intact in its chamber under the corner-stone, a cylinder of king hummurabi or khammuragas, stating that the temple was commenced by ur-ea and finished by his son dungi, 700 years before his time. hummurabi was a well-known historical king who expelled the elamites, and made babylon for the first time the capital of chald?a, about 2000 b.c. the date of ur-ea cannot therefore be far from 2700 b.c.
the same fortunate circumstance of the habit, by kings who built or restored famous temples, of laying the foundation-stone, such as our royal personages often do at the present day, and depositing under it, in a secure chamber, a cylinder recording the fact, has given us a still more ancient date, that of sharrukin or sargon i. of agade. the same nabonidus repaired the great sun-temple of sippar, and he says "that having dug deep in its foundations for the cylinders of the founder, the sun-god suffered him to behold the foundation cylinder of naram-sin, son of sharrukin or (sargon i.), which for three thousand and two hundred years none of the kings who lived before him had seen." this gives 3750 b.c. as the date of naram-sin, or, allowing for the long reign of sargon i., about 3800 b.c. as the date of that monarch. this discovery revolutionized the accepted ideas of chald?an chronology, and carried it back at one stroke 1000 years before the date of ur-ea, making it contemporary with the fourth egyptian dynasty who built the great pyramids. the evidence is not so conclusive as in the case of egypt, where the lists of manetho give us the whole series of successive kings 54 and dynasties, a great majority of which are confirmed by contemporary records and monuments. the date of sargon i. rests mainly on the authority of nabonidus, who lived more than 3000 years later, and may have been mistaken, but he was in the best position to consult the oldest records, and had apparently no motive to make a wilful mis-statement. moreover, other documents have been found in different places confirming the statement on the cylinder of nabonidus, and the opinion of the best and latest authorities has come round to accept the date of about 3800 b.c. as authentic. professor sayce, in his hibbert lecture in 1888, gives a detailed account of the evidence which had overcome his original scepticism, and forced him to admit the accuracy of this very distant date. since the discovery of the cylinder of nabonidus, several tablets have been found and deciphered, containing lists of kings and dynasties of the same character as the egyptian lists of manetho. one tablet of the kings who reigned at babylon takes us back, reign by reign, to about 2400 b.c. other tablets, though incomplete, give the names of at least sixty kings which are not found in this record of the babylonian era, and who presumedly reigned during the interval of about 1400 years between khammuragas and sargon i. the names are mostly accadian, and if they did not reign during this interval they must have preceded the foundation of a semite dynasty by sargon i., and thus extend the date of chald?an history still further back. the probability of such a remote date is enhanced by the certainty that a high civilization existed in egypt as long ago as 5000 b.c., and there is no apparent reason why it should not have existed in the valleys of the tigris and euphrates as soon as in that of the nile.
55 boscawen, in a paper read at the victoria institute in 1886, says that inscriptions found at larsa, a neighbouring city to ur of the chaldees, show that from as early a period as 3750 b.c. a semitic population existed in the latter city, speaking a language akin to hebrew, carrying on trade and commerce, and with a religion which, although not monotheist, had at the head of its pantheon a supreme god, ilu or el, from whose name that of elohim and allah has been inherited as the name of god by the hebrews and arabs. the latest discoveries all point to the earliest dates, and some authorities think that genuine traces of the earliest accadian civilization can be found as far back as 6000 b.c. there can be no doubt, moreover, that this sharrukin or sargon i. is a perfect historical personage. a statue of him has been found at agade or accad, and also his cylinder with an inscription on it giving his name and exploits. it begins, "sharrukin the mighty king am i," and goes on to say, "that he knew not his father, but his mother was a royal princess, who to conceal his birth placed him in a basket of rushes closed with bitumen, and cast him into the river, from which he was saved by akki the water-carrier, who brought him up as his own child." it is singular how the same or a very similar story is told of moses, cyrus, and other heroes of antiquity. it is probable from this that he was a military adventurer who rose to the throne; but there can be no doubt that he was a great monarch, who united the two provinces of shumir and accad, or of lower and upper mesopotamia, into one kingdom, as menes did the upper and lower egypts, and extended his rule over some of the adjoining countries. he says "that he had reigned for forty-five 56 years, and governed the black-headed (accadian) race. in multitudes of bronze chariots i rode over rugged lands. i governed the upper countries. three times to the coast of the sea i advanced." if there is any truth in this inscription it would be very interesting as showing the existence in western asia of nations to be conquered in great campaigns, with a force of horse-chariots, at this remote period, 2000 years earlier than the campaigns of ahmes and thotmes recorded in the egyptian monuments of the eighteenth dynasty.
cylinder seal of sargon i., from agade. (hommel, "gesch. babyloniens u. assyriens.")
the reality of these campaigns is moreover confirmed by inscriptions and images of this sargon having been found in cyprus and on the opposite coast of syria, and by a babylonian cylinder of his son naram-sin, found by cesnola in the cyprian temple of kurion. in another direction he and his son carried their arms into the peninsula of sinai, attracted doubtless by the copper and turquoise mines of wady maghera, which were worked by the egyptians under the third dynasty. sargon i. is also known to have been a great patron of literature, and to have founded the library of agade, 57 which was long one of the most famous in babylonia. a work on astronomy and astrology, in seventy-two books, which was so well known in the time of berosus as to be translated by him into greek, was also compiled for him.
another king of the same name, known as sargon ii., who reigned about 2000 b.c., either founded or enlarged the library of the priestly college at erech, which was one of the oldest and most famous cities of lower chald?a, and known as the "city of books." it was also considered to be a sacred city, and its necropolis extends over a great part of the adjoining desert, and contains innumerable tombs and graves ranging over all periods of chald?an and assyrian history, up to an unknown antiquity.
the exact historical date of sargon i. may be a little uncertain; but whatever its antiquity may be, it is evident that it is already far removed from the beginnings of chald?an civilization. sargon ii. is perfectly historical, and his library and the state of the arts and literature in his reign prove this conclusively. he states in his tablets that 350 kings had reigned before him, and in such a literary age he could hardly have made such a statement without some foundation. if anything like this number of kings had reigned before 2000 b.c., the date of sargon ii.'s chald?an chronology would have to be extended to a date preceding that of egypt. moreover, sargon was a semite, who founded a powerful monarchy over a mixed population, consisting mainly of a primitive accadian race, who had already built large cities and famous temples, written sacred books, and made considerable progress in literature, science, agriculture, and industrial arts. this primitive race was 58 neither semitic nor aryan, but turanian. they spoke an agglutinative language, and resembled the chinese very much both in physical type and in character. they were a short, thick-set people, with yellow skins, coarse black hair, and, judging from the ancient statues recently discovered, of decidedly tartar or mongolian features. they were, like the chinese, a peaceable, patient, and industrious people, addicted to agriculture, and specially skilled in irrigation. they were educated and literary, but very superstitious in regard to ghosts, omens, and evil spirits. this resemblance to the chinese has been remarkably confirmed by the discovery made within the last few years, that the accadian and chinese languages are closely allied, and that a great many words are identical. the early prehistoric and astronomical legends were almost similar, and in some instances, as in the division of the year, the names and order of the planets, and the number and duration of the fabulous reigns of gods, so identical as to leave no doubt of their having had a common origin. but as the chinese annals do not extend farther back than about 2700 b.c., the priority of invention must be assigned to the accadians.
this turanian population had been long settled in mesopotamia before the accession of sargon i., and before the supremacy of the semitic races began to assert itself. though called accadian, which is said to mean "highlanders," their principal seat was in shumir or lower mesopotamia, in the alluvial delta formed in the course of ages by the euphrates, tigris, and other rivers which flow into the persian gulf; and their traditions point to their civilization having come from the shores of this gulf, and having gradually spread northwards. their 59 most ancient cities and temples were in the lower province of shumir, and the bulk of the population continued for ages to be turanian, while in accad or upper mesopotamia, where the land rises from the alluvial plain up to the mountains of kurdistan and armenia, the semitic element preponderated from an early period, though the civilization and religion long remained those of shumir or chald?a proper.
when the semite sargon i. founded the united monarchy, the capital of which was agade in the upper province, he made no change in the established state of things, maintained the old temples, and built new ones to the same gods. before his reign we have, as in the parallel case of egypt before menes, little definite information from monuments or historical records. we only know that the country was divided into a number of small states, each grouped about a city with a temple dedicated to some god; as eridhu, the sanctuary of ea, one of the trinity of supreme gods; larsam, with its temple of the sun; ur, the city of the moon-god; sirgalla, with another famous temple. these small states were ruled by patesi, or priest-kings, a term corresponding to the horsheshu of egypt; and a fortunate discovery by m. de sarzec in 1881 at tell-loh, the site of the ancient sirgalla, has given us valuable information respecting its patesi. to the surprise of the scientific world, with whom it had been a settled belief that no statues were ever found in assyrian art, m. de sarzec discovered and brought home nine large statues of diorite, a very hard black basalt of the same material as that of the statue of chephren, the builder of the second pyramid, and in the same sitting attitude. the heads had been broken off, but one head was discovered which was of 60 unmistakably turanian type, beardless, shaved, and with a turban for head-dress. with these statues a number of small works of art were found, representing men and animals of a highly artistic design and exquisite finish, and also several cylinders. both these and the backs of the statues are covered with cuneiform inscriptions in the old accadian characters, which furnish valuable historical information. the name of one of the patesi whose statues were found was gud-ea, and his date is computed by some of the best authorities at from 4000 to 4500 b.c., probably earlier, and certainly not later than 4000 b.c. this makes the patesi of sirgalla contemporary with the earliest egyptian kings, or even earlier, and it shows a state of the arts and civilization then prevailing in chald?a very similar to those of the fourth dynasty in egypt, and in both cases as advanced as those of 2000 or 3000 years later date.
head of ancient chald?an. from tell-loh (sirgalla). sarzec collection.
(perrot and chipiez.)
before such a temple as that of sirgalla could have been built and such statues and works of art made, there must have been older and smaller temples and ruder 61 works, just as in egypt the brick pyramids of sakkarah and the oldest temples of heliopolis and denderah preceded the great pyramids of gizeh, the temple of pthah at memphis, and the diorite statues, wooden statuettes, and other finished works of art of the fourth dynasty.
statue of gud-ea, with inscription; from tell-loh (sirburla or sirgalla) sarzec collection. (hommel.)
it is important to remark that in those earliest monuments both the language and art are primitive accadian, with no trace of semitic influences, which must have long prevailed before sargon i. could have established a semitic dynasty over an united population 62 of accads and semites living together on friendly terms. the normal semites must have settled gradually in chald?a, and adopted to a great extent the higher civilization of the accadians, much as the tartars in later times did that of the chinese. it is remarkable also that this pre-semitic accadian people must have had extensive intercourse with foreign regions, for the diorite of which the statues of sirgalla are formed is exactly similar to that of the statue of the egyptian chephren, and in both cases is only found in the peninsula of sinai. in fact, an inscription on one of the statues tells us that the stone was brought from the land of magan, which was the accadian name for that peninsula. this implies a trade by sea, between eridhu, the sea-port of chald?a in early times, and the red sea, as such blocks of diorite could hardly have been transported such a distance over such mountains and deserts by land; and this is confirmed by references in old geographical tablets to magan as the land of bronze from the copper mines of wady-maghera, and to "ships of magan" trading from eridhu.
in any case, it is certain that a very long period of purely accadian civilization must have existed prior to the introduction of semitic influences, and long before the foundation of a semitic dynasty by sargon i. with these facts it will no longer seem surprising that some high authorities assign as early a date as 6000 b.c. for the dawn of chald?an civilization, and consider that it may be quite as old or even older than that of egypt.
the great antiquity assigned to these dates from books and monuments is confirmed by other deductions. the city of eridhu, which was generally considered to 63 be the oldest in chald?a, and was the sanctuary of the principal god, ea, appears to have been a sea-port in those early days, situated where the euphrates flowed into the persian gulf. the ruins now stand far inland, and sayce computes that about 6000 years must have elapsed since the sea reached up to them.
astronomy affords a still more definite confirmation. the earliest records and traditions show that before the commencement of any historic period the year had been divided into twelve months, the course of the sun mapped out among the stars, and a zodiac established of the twelve constellations, which has continued in use to the present day. the year began with the vernal equinox, and the first month was named after the "propitious bull," whose figure constantly appears on the monuments as opening the year. the sun, therefore, was in taurus at the vernal equinox when this calendar was formed, which could only be after long centuries of astronomical observation; but it has been in aries since about 2500 b.c., and first entered in taurus about 4700 b.c.
records of eclipses were also kept in the time of sargon i., which imply a long preceding period of accurate observation; and the ziggurat, or temple observatory, built up in successive stages above the alluvial plain, which gave rise to the legend of the tower of babel, is found in connection with the earliest temples. the diorite statues also and engraved gems found at sirgalla testify to a thorough knowledge of the arts of metallurgy at this remote period, and to a commercial intercourse with foreign countries from which the copper and tin must have been derived for making bronze tools capable of cutting such hard materials.
64 the existence of such a commercial intercourse in remote times is confirmed by the example of egypt, where bronze implements must have been in use long before the date of menes; and although copper might have been obtained from sinai or cyprus, tin or bronze must have been imported from distant foreign countries alike in egypt and in chald?a.
chald?an chronology therefore leads to almost exactly the same results as that of egypt. in each case we have a standard or measuring-rod of authentic historical record, of certainly not less than 6000, and more probably 7000 years from the present time; and in each case we find ourselves at this remote date, in presence, not of rude beginnings, but of a civilization already ancient and far advanced. we have populous cities, celebrated temples, an organized priesthood, an advanced state of agriculture and of the industrial and fine arts; writing and books so long known that their origin is lost in myth; religions in which advanced philosophical and moral ideas are already developed; astronomical systems which imply a long course of accurate observations. how long this prehistoric age may have lasted, and how many centuries it may have taken to develop such a civilization, from the primitive beginnings of neolithic and pal?olithic origins, is a matter of conjecture. bunsen thinks it may have taken 10,000 years, but there are no dates from which we can infer the time that may be required for civilization to grow up by spontaneous evolution, among nations where it is not aided by contact with more advanced civilizations from without. all we can infer is, that it must have required an immense time, probably much longer than that embraced by the subsequent period of historical record. and 65 we can say with certainty that during the whole of this historical period of 6000 or 7000 years there has been no change in the established order of nature. the earth has revolved round its axis and round the sun, the moon and planets have pursued their courses, the duration of human life has not varied, and there have been no destructions and renovations of life or other traces of miraculous interference. and more than this, we can affirm with absolute certainty that 6000 years have not been enough to alter in any perceptible degree the existing physical types of the different races of men and animals, or the primary linguistic types of their forms of speech. the negro, the turanian, the semite, and the aryan, all stand out as clearly distinguished in the paintings on egyptian monuments as they do at the present day; and the agglutinative languages are as distinct from the inflectional, and the semite from the aryan forms of inflections, in the old chald?an cylinders as they are in the nineteenth century.
