Our Oriental Heritage
Page 141
* Such ziggurats have helped American architects to mould a new form for buildings forced by law to set back their upper stories lest they impede their neighbor’s light. History suddenly contracts into a brief coup d’œil when we contemplate in one glance the brick ziggurats of Sumeria 5000 years old, and the brick ziggurats of contemporary New York.
* The original is in the Iraq Museum at Baghdad.
* A great scholar, Elliot Smith, has tried to offset these considerations by pointing out that although barley, millet and wheat are not known in their natural state in Egypt, it is there that we find the oldest signs of their cultivation; and he believes that it was from Egypt that agriculture and civilization came to Sumeria.82 The greatest of American Egyptologists, Professor Breasted, is similarly unconvinced of the priority of Sumeria. Dr. Breasted believes that the wheel is at least as old in Egypt as in Sumeria, and rejects the hypothesis of Schweinfurth on the ground that cereals have been found in their native state in the highlands of Abyssinia.
* All dates are B.C., and are approximate before 663 B.C. In the case of rulers the dates are of their reigns, not of their lives.
* Even the ancient geographers (e.g., Strabo1) believed that Egypt had once been under the waters of the Mediterranean, and that its deserts had been the bottom of the sea.
* Plural form of the Arabic fellah, peasant; from felaha, to plough.
* Diodorus Siculus, who must always be read sceptically, writes: “An inscription on the larger pyramid . . . sets forth that on vegetables and purgatives for the workmen there were paid out over 1600 talents”—i.e., $16,000,000.5
* A model of this can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
* On October 3, 1899, eleven columns at Karnak, loosened by the water, fell to the ground.
* Now in the British Museum.
† The Swedish diplomat Akerblad in 1802, and the versatile English physicist Thomas Young in 1814, had helped by partly deciphering the Rosetta Stone.12
* So called by the Greeks from their word for law (nomos).
* The “Cheops” of Herodotus, r. 3098-75 B.C.
* The “Chephren” of Herodotus, r. 3067-11 B.C.
† The word pyramid is apparently derived from the Egyptian word pi-re-mus, altitude, rather than from the Greek pyr, fire.
* A silicate of sodium and aluminum: Na2Al2Si3O102H2O.
† The “Mycerinus” of Herodotus, r. 3011-2988 B.C.
‡ Cf. the statues of Menkaure and his consort in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
* Historians have helped themselves by further grouping the dynasties into periods: (1) The Old Kingdom, Dynasties I-VI (3500-2631 B.C.), followed by an interlude of chaos; (2) The Middle Kingdom, Dynasties XI-XIV (2375-1800 B.C.), followed by another chaotic interlude; (3) The Empire, Dynasties XVIII-XX (1580-1100 B.C.), followed by a period of divided rule from rival capitals; and (4) The Saïte Age, Dynasty XXVI, 663-525. All these dates except the last are approximate, and Egyptologists amuse themselves by moving the earlier ones up and down by centuries.
* Allenby took twice as long to accomplish a similar result; Napoleon, attempting it at Acre, failed.
* The population of Egypt in the fourth century before Christ is estimated at some 7,000,000 souls.48
* “If any artisan,” adds Diodorus, “takes part in public affairs he is severely beaten.”65
† This word, when used in reference to rulers, must always be understood as a euphemism.
* Sir Charles Marston believes, from his recent researches in Palestine, that the alphabet was a Semitic invention, and credits it, on highly imaginative grounds, to Abraham himself.”141a
* A later group of funerary inscriptions, written in ink upon the inner sides of the wooden coffins used to inter certain nobles and magnates of the Middle Kingdom, have been gathered together by Breasted and others under the name of “Coffin Texts.”144
* So we are assured by Iamblichus (ca. 300 A.D.). Manetho, the Egyptian historian (ca. 300 B.C.), would have considered this estimate unjust to the god; the proper number of Thoth’s works, in his reckoning, was 36,000. The Greeks celebrated Thoth under the name of Hermes Trismegistus—Hermes (Mercury) the Thrice-Great.162
* The clepsydra, or water-clock, was so old with the Egyptians that they attributed its invention to their handy god-of-all-trades, Thoth. The oldest clock in existence dates from Thutmose III, and is now in the Berlin Museum. It consists of a bar of wood, divided into six parts or hours, upon which a crosspiece was so placed that its shadow on the bar would indicate the time of the morning or the afternoon.173
† Since the heliacal rising of Sirius occurred one day later, every four years, than the Egyptian calendar demanded, the error amounted to 365 days in 1460 years; on the completion of this “Sothic cycle” (as the Egyptians called it) the paper calendar and the celestial calendar again agreed. Since we know from the Latin author Censorius that the heliacal rising of Sirius coincided in 139 A.D. with the beginning of the Egyptian calendar year, we may presume that a similar coincidence occurred every 1460 years previously—i.e., in 1321 B.C., 2781 B.C., 4241 B.C., etc. And since the Egyptian calendar was apparently established in a year when the heliacal rising of Sirius took place on the first day of the first month, we conclude that that calendar came into operation in a year that opened a Sothic cycle. The earliest mention of the Egyptian calendar is in the religious texts inscribed in the pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty. Since this dynasty is unquestionably earlier than 1321 B.C., the calendar must have been established in 2781 B.C., or 4241 B.C., or still earlier. The older date, once acclaimed as the first definite date in history, has been disputed by Professor Scharff, and it is possible that we shall have to accept 2781 B.C. as the approximate birth-year of the Egyptian calendar. This would require a foreshortening, by three or four hundred years, of the dates assigned above for the early dynasties and the great Pyramids. As the matter is very much in dispute, the chronology of the Cambridge Ancient History has been adopted in these pages.
* Excavations reveal arrangements for the collection of rain-water and the disposal of sewage by a system of copper pipes.184
† Even the earliest tombs give evidence of this practice.186
‡ So old is the modern saw that we live on one-fourth of what we eat, and the doctors live on the rest.
* For the architecture of the Old Kingdom cf. sections I, 1 and 3 of this chapter.
* A clerestory is that portion of a building which, being above the roof of the surrounding parts, admits light to the edifice by a series of openings. An architrave is the lowest part of an entablature—which is a superstructure supported by a colonnade.
* Cf. p. 161 above. Other scribes adorn the Cairo Museum, and the State Museum at Berlin.
* There are important exceptions to this—e.g., the Sheik-el-Beled and the Scribe; obviously the convention was not due to incapacity or ignorance.
* One is reminded here of the remark of an Egyptian statesman, after visiting the galleries of Europe: “Que vous avez volé mon pays!—How you have raped my country!”198
* Though the word sculpture includes all carved forms, we shall use it as meaning especially sculpture in the round; and shall segregate under the term bas-relief the partial carving of forms upon a background.
* A cast of this relief may be seen in the Twelfth Egyptian Room of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York.
† Painting in which the pigments are mixed or tempered with egg-yolk, size (diluted glue), or egg-white.
* The lute was made by stretching a few strings along a narrow sounding-board; the sistrum was a group of small discs shaken on wires.
† Senmut was so honored by his sovereigns that he said of himself: “I was the greatest of the great in the whole land.”220 This is an opinion very commonly held, but not always so clearly expressed.
* “Civil war,” says Ipuwer, “pays no revenues.”229
* The curious reader will find again a similar custom in India
; cf. Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, Oxford, 1928, p. 595.
* A modern title given by Lepsius to some two thousand papyrus rolls found in various tombs, and distinguished by containing formulas to guide the dead. The Egyptian title is Coming Forth (from death) by Day. They date from the Pyramids, but some are even older. The Egyptians believed that these texts had been composed by the god of wisdom, Thoth; chapter lxiv announced that the book had been found at Heliopolis, and was “in the very handwriting of the god.”250 Josiah made a similar discovery among the Jews; cf. Chap, XII, § v below.
* Under Amenhotep III the architects Suti and Hor had inscribed a monotheistic hymn to the sun upon a stele now in the British Museum.261 It had long been the custom in Egypt to address the sun-god, Amon-Ra, as the greatest god,262 but only as the god of Egypt.
* The obvious similarity of this hymn to Psalm CIV leaves little doubt of Egyptian influence upon the Hebrew poet.264
* In 1893 Sir William Flinders Petrie discovered at Tell-el-Amarna over three hundred and fifty cuneiform letter-tablets, most of which were appeals for aid addressed to Ikhnaton by the East.
* The history of classical Egyptian civilization under the Ptolemies and the Caesars belongs to a later volume.
* Thebes was finally destroyed by an earthquake in 27 B.C.
* The Euphrates is one of the four rivers which, according to Genesis (ii, 14), flowed through Paradise.
† It is now in the Louvre.
* The “Mosaic Code” apparently borrows from it, or derives with it from a common original. The habit of stamping a legal contract with an official seal goes back to Hammurabi.7
* “In all essentials Babylonia, in the time of Hammurabi, and even earlier, had reached a pitch of material civilization which has never since been surpassed in Asia.”—Christopher Dawson, Enquiries into Religion and Culture, New York, 1933, p. 107. Perhaps we should except the ages of Xerxes I in Persia, Ming Huang in China, and Akbar in India.
* The Amarna letters are dreary reading, full of adulation, argument, entreaty and complaint. Hear, e.g., Burraburiash II, King of Karduniash (in Mesopotamia), writing to Amenhotep III about an exchange of royal gifts in which Burraburiash seems to have been worsted: “Ever since my mother and thy father sustained friendly relations with one another, they exchanged valuable presents; and the choicest desire, each of the other, they did not refuse. Now my brother (Amenhotep) has sent me as a present (only) two manehs of gold. But send me as much gold as thy father; and if it be less, let it be half of what thy father would send. Why didst thou send me only two manehs of gold?”12
† Marduk-shapik-zeri, Ninurta-nadin-sham, Enlil-nadin-apli, Itti-Marduk-balatu, Marduk-shapik-zer-mati, etc. Doubtless our own full names, linked with such hyphens, would make a like cacophony to alien ears.
* Probably this included not only the city proper but a large agricultural hinterland within the walls, designed to provide the teeming metropolis with sustenance in time of siege.
† If we may trust Diodorus Siculus, a tunnel fifteen feet wide and twelve feet high connected the two banks.20
* Babel, however, does not mean confusion or babble, as the legend supposes; as used in the word Babylon it meant the Gate of God.23
† A reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate can be seen in the Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin.
* The Babylonian story of creation consists of seven tablets (one for each day of creation) found in the ruins of Ashurbanipal’s library at Kuyunjik (Nineveh) in 1854; they are a copy of a legend that came down to Babylonia and Assyria from Sumeria.78
* Therefore Tammuz was called “The Anointed.”92
* “Assyrians” meant for the Greeks both Assyrians and Babylonians. “Mylitta” was one of the forms of Ishtar
* The snake was worshiped by many early peoples as a symbol of immortality, because of its apparent power to escape death by moulting its skin.
* To the Babylonians a planet was distinguished from the “fixed” stars by its observable motion or “wandering.” In modern astronomy a planet is defined as a heavenly body regularly revolving about the sun.
* From charting the skies the Babylonians turned to mapping the earth. The oldest maps of which we have any knowledge were those which the priests prepared of the roads and cities of Nebuchadrezzar’s empire.155 A clay tablet found in the ruins of Gasur (two hundred miles north of Babylon), and dated back to 1600 B.C., contains, in a space hardly an inch square, a map of the province of Shat-Azalla; it represents mountains by rounded lines, water by tilting lines, rivers by parallel lines; the names of various towns are inscribed, and the direction of north and south is indicated in the margin.156
* Parenthetical passages are guesses.
* It is probable that this composition, prototypes of which are found in Sumeria, influenced the author of the Book of Job.164
* Cf. Ecclesiastes, ix, 7-9: “Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest, all the days of the life of thy vanity.”
* A tablet recently found in the ruins of Sargon II’s library at Khorsabad contains an unbroken list of Assyrian kings from the twenty-third century B.C. to Ashurnirari (753-46 B.C.) .4a
* Egyptian tradition attributed the escape of Egypt to discriminating field mice who ate up the quivers, bow-strings and shield-straps of the Assyrians encamped before Pelusium, so that the Egyptians were enabled to defeat the invaders easily the next day.12
* The oldest extant Assyrian laws are ninety articles contained on three tablets found at Ashur and dating ca. 1300 B.C.31
* Other products of Assyrian cultivation were olives, grapes, garlic, onions, lettuce, cress, beets, turnips, radishes, cucumbers, alfalfa, and licorice. Meat was rarely eaten by any but the aristocracy;34 except for fish this war-like nation was largely vegetarian.
† A tablet of Sennacherib, ca. 700 B.C., contains the oldest known reference to cotton: “The tree that bore wool they clipped and shredded for cotton.”35a It was probably imported from India.
‡ By the Iraq Expedition of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
* The god of wisdom, corresponding to Thoth, Hermes and Mercury.
* Diodorus—how reliably we cannot say—pictures the King as rioting away his years in feminine comforts and genderless immorality, and credits him with composing his own reckless epitaph:
Knowing full well that thou wert mortal born,
Thy heart lift up, take thy delight in feasts;
When dead no pleasure more is thine. Thus I,
Who once o’er mighty Ninus ruled, am naught
But dust. Yet these are mine which gave me joy
In life—the food I ate, my wantonness,
And love’s delights. But all those other things
Men deem felicities are left behind.78
Perhaps there is no inconsistency between this mood and that pictured in the text; the one may have been the medical preliminary to the other.
* The word Aryan first appears in the Harri, one of the tribes of Mitanni. In general it was the self-given appellation of peoples living near, or coming from, the shores of the Caspian Sea. The term is properly applied today chiefly to the Mitannians, Hittites, Medes, Persians, and Vedic Hindus—i.e., only to the eastern branch of the Indo-European peoples, whose western branch populated Europe.2
† East of the Halys River. Nearby, across the river, is Angora, capital of Turkey, and lineal descendant of Ancyra, the ancient metropolis of Phrygia. We may be helped to a cultural perspective by realizing that the Turks, whom we call “terrible,” note with pride the antiquity of their capital, and mourn the domination of Europe by barbaric infidels. Every point is the center of the world.