CHAPTER XXX

NO ROD, ALTHOUGH CLOSE INTERCOURSE WITH EGYPT

There is no delineation or suggestion of the Rod, or of Angling on any sculpture or any seal, Sumerian, Babylonian, or Assyrian.[889]

The omission does not preclude the existence or use of the Rod. If it did exist, and were used, we are surprised that there should not survive amongst the thousands of things mentioned and the many pursuits represented a single indication of it. Our wonder, indeed, grows stronger when we call to mind that the Assyrians:

(_a_) Were a people much given to sport of all kinds:

(_b_) Were keenly addicted to the eating of fish, which was not, as in Israel or Egypt, half-banned by a prophet, or whole-barred to a priesthood by custom, totemistic or other:

(_c_) Did attach very real importance to the maintenance of an ample supply of fish. Their dams and _vivaria_, the adjuncts of every important temple or every self-respecting township, and their enforcement of Fish Regulations, attest the economic value:

(_d_) Do mention and do represent other kinds of fishing, _e.g._ with the hand-line and the net. The latter, for both fowling and fishing, often finds place in their, and Israelitish, metaphors. Examples occur in the story of the defeat of Marduk and Tiāmat, “They (the enemies) were cast into the net,” and in the prayer of Eannatum to the god Enki that, if the citizens of Umma in future break the recent treaty, he will destroy them in his net. But in the legend of the taking of Zu, the stealer of the destiny-tablets, the net of the Sun-god is certainly a fowling one:

(_e_) Did possess near at hand, and had not to import (as the Romans from Africa) ample material for the Rod in reeds, which were abundant near Babylon and were utilised in the construction of furniture, light boats, and fences. In the lists of private property these reeds—employed for household not angling purposes—figure not infrequently:

(_f_) Were for hundreds of years closely associated in intercourse and trade with the Egyptians, whose use of the Rod can be carried back to about the XIIth Dynasty, _c._ 2000, or, according to Petrie’s chronology, _c._ 3500 B.C.

Before discussing the date of the first contact or connection between the two countries, it is advisable shortly to distinguish between the three peoples whom I group under the term Assyrians, and roughly apportion the periods of the four thousand odd years of Assyrian history during which each was predominant.

The first, the Sumerians, occupied before—perhaps long before—the close of the fourth millennium the land on the lower plain of the Tigris and Euphrates and on the sea coast, as it then was.[890] They possessed an advanced civilisation, with an organised government, many large cities, and considerable agricultural and industrial development.

Whence their emigration, to what family, Mongol or other, they belong, is not clear. It is settled they were _not_ Semites, like the Babylonians and Assyrians. Their language (preserved in liturgies, etc.,[891] down even to the time of the Persian conquest) and their writing, adopted by the Babylonians and Assyrians, which runs, unlike the Hebrew, from left to right,[892] disprove Sumerian descent from Shem.

It is impossible at present to fix a definite period for their immigration. The dates assigned vary from 7000 to 4000 B.C. The statement, however, that “Aryans, Turanians, Semites were all in a nomadic condition, when the early Sumerian settlers in Lower Babylonia betook themselves to agriculture, builded great cities, and established a stable government,” seems hardly exaggerated, even though it postulates a very ancient era.

The second, the Semitic Babylonians, starting possibly from South Arabia by way of the Syrian coast, reached the lower part of the Tigris and Euphrates about 3800 B.C.[893] It was not, however, until some thousand years afterwards, that they effected a conquest of the Sumerians.

Like other defeated peoples, such as the Canaanites with the Jews, the Irish with the English, “Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores,” they grafted their policy on that of their victors, and perpetuated many of their racial characteristics and customs, as well as their religion. “The Semitic invaders seem to have been completely converted. In fact Babylonian religion has scarcely anything characteristically Semitic in it.”[894]

The third, the Assyrians proper, an offshoot from Babylonia, are found (before 2300 B.C.) pushing their way north along the Tigris, on whose western bank they founded their first city and earliest capital—Asur. Wars between them and Babylonia mark the history of centuries. Their definite suzerainty over that country was only established by Tiglath-Pileser III., _c._ 730 B.C.

Passing now to the dates of the connection between this Empire and Egypt, the first assigned is:

(_a_) Early dynastic, say about 4400 B.C., which would probably correspond to the early Sumerian periods. Some authorities indeed hold that Egypt was invaded by Babylonians, or was culturally permeated by the “proto-Babylonians,” or Sumerians. Of invasion we possess no proof, or even strong suggestion; of cultural permeation, to which Hommel, in especial, attributes the whole primeval culture of Egypt, some elements and some signs are possibly noticeable, but even these are Semitic, not Sumerian,[895] while their total compares insignificantly with those of native origin.[896]

Of these signs, the use by the Egyptians of the cylinder seal, of which the Royal tombs of the first Dynasty afford examples, stands out as the most important. As this characterised Sumer and Babylonia at all times, while it fell into disuse in the country of the Pharaohs, the seal was inferred to be an original product of Sumer, whence it reached Egypt in late pre-dynastic or early dynastic times.

But (as King[897] continues) “Recent research—such as Naville’s at Abydos, and Reisner’s at Naga-ed-Dêr—leaves small room for the theory that early Egyptian culture was subjected to any strong foreign influence in early dynastic times; thus the theory of the invasion by Semitic tribes must be given up.” Maspero maintains that as far back as the IVth or Vth Dynasties there were overland relations between Egypt and Chaldea.[898]

(_b_) Petrie[899] places the beginning of the invasion of Egypt by the Semites about 3400 B.C. When referring to a painting of one of these Princes of the Desert named Absha coming into Egypt, he writes that “though 1000 years before Abram” (whom he himself dates about 2100 B.C.) “he was one of the same race: it is therefore invaluable as an historical type of the great Semitic invasion.” Evidence from Egyptian sources seems to show that before and after the conquest by the Hyksos, Semitic invasions occurred after the VIth Dynasty and again _c._ 2250 B.C.

Petrie, on the strength of the cylinder of Khendy and the tablet of Khenzerm—two Babylonians “who rose to the throne of Egypt”—concludes that an invasion from Syro-Mesopotamia took place in the XIVth Dynasty, say 2800 B.C.

(_c_) It is not, however, till the XVIIIth Dynasty, _c._ 1400 B.C., that we reach firm ground for fixing the first point of _direct_ historical contact between Babylonia and Egypt.

Authority for this dating is found in the famous tablets brought to light in 1887 at Tel-el-Amarna, which include letters from the rulers of Babylonia and Assyria to Amenhotep III. and his son Akhenaton. Apart from the historical value of their presumptive indication of an earlier intercourse, the discovery discloses three points of great interest.

First, the fact that these were written in Babylonian shows that this language had already become the _lingua franca_ of the civilised world. Second, a more human personal note, the probability from the red dots (still visible) made by some Egyptian with a reed for the purpose of marking the divisions of the foreign words, that the acquisition of this _lingua franca_ was advisable, perhaps necessary, to qualification for a clerkship or an embassy. Third, that Babylonian _literature_ had found its way among the nations which used its language.

Of this we have conclusive evidence in two documents. The first concerns the goddess Ereshkigal, the other transmits the legend of Adapa.[900]

From the Bekten _stele_ we deduce a close intercourse between the two countries about the XIXth Dynasty, for we read of Rameses II.[901] being in Mesopotamia “according to his wont, year by year,” and receiving tributes and presents from the chiefs of the countries round about.

The connection between Assyria (proper) and Egypt rests on ample evidence. Fish, or “beasts of the sea,” passed as presents, perhaps as trade. On the Broken Column of Tiglath-Pileser I. (Cylinder IV. 29-30) we read, “And a great beast of the River, a great beast of the Sea, the king of Musrê” (probably Egypt) “sent (unto him).”

The _Select Papyri_ (pl. 75, 1, 7) tell of certain fish being brought, perhaps as a staple of trade, from the Puharuta or Euphrates to Egypt, and (in pl. 96, 1, 7) of another fish or fishy substance called _Rura_, being imported from the land of the great waters, Mesopotamia.[902]

From Assyrian Sculptures in Brit. Mus., No. 430.

See n. 1, p. 355.]

FOOTNOTES:

[888] The term Assyrian in this chapter usually includes the Sumerians and Babylonians.

[889] Lest Forlong’s sentence (_Rivers of Life_ (London, 1883), II. 89), “A beautiful Assyrian cylinder exhibits the worship of the Fish God; there we see the mitred Man-God with Rod and basket,” etc., be quoted in opposition, I would point out that this so-called Rod is merely a cut sapling, like the one in the hands of Heracles, but without a sign of any line, which in the Greek vase in the British Museum is obviously attached. Cf. _Élite des monuments Céramographiques_, vol. III., Plate I.

[890] From the find (made during the war by a Sikh regiment on the Tigris above Samara) of an alabaster vase (now in the Ashmolean Museum), which from archæological reasons must be placed among the very earliest remnants of Sumerian civilisation, it is evident that—given the discovery was _in situ_—the frontiers of the Sumerian Empire must have extended much farther north than has been hitherto generally supposed. Owing to the deposits of the two rivers, the sea has receded some hundred and twenty miles.

[891] The Sumerians made extensive use of music, especially in their religious ceremonies; they were the founders, according to Langdon, of liturgical music, which unfortunately it is impossible to reconstruct, as the notes themselves have not survived.

[892] The Sumerian language was not well adapted to express peculiarly Semitic sounds.

[893] Petrie (_Egypt and Israel_ (London, 1911), p. 15): “The Turanian race akin to the modern Mongols, known as Sumerians, had civilised the Euphrates valley for some thousands of years and produced a strong commercial and mathematical culture. The wandering Semite had at last been drawn into this settled system of life.”

[894] S. Langdon, _Babylonian Magic_, Bologna, 1914.

[895] The carved ivory handle of a flint knife in the Louvre proves (according to Petrie) that the art of slate-palettes in Egypt originated from Elamite civilisation, which flourished before its rise. It must be of prehistoric age, yet shows a well-developed art with Mesopotamian or Elamite affinities earlier than the sculptured slate-palettes and maceheads. M. G. Bénédite (_Monuments Pict._) holds that in this knife-handle we have the most tangible evidence yet found of a connection in _very early_ times between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations. King (_Jour. Egypt. Archæology_, vol. IV., p. 64) suggests that there was a connection with Babylonian-Elamite seals from Susa.

[896] Thus the general conception of pictographic writing might perhaps be borrowed from the Euphrates valley, but not a single sign taken from the Babylonian script can be found (W. Max Müller, _Encly. Bibl._, p. 1233). Dr. Alan Gardiner, on the origin of the Semitic and Greek alphabets, concludes that the evidence does point to the alphabet being Semitic in origin and based upon acrophonic picture signs (_Journal of Egyptian Archæology_, vol. III., p. 1).

[897] _History of Sumer and Akkad_ (London, 1910), p. 322.

[898] _Egyptian Archæology_ (1902), p. 366.

[899] _Historical Studies_ (London, 1910), II. p. 22. Others would make the invasion about 2466.

[900] The Babylonian legend of Adapa is thus known to have circulated in Palestine and Egypt before the Hebrew Exodus. The story of Adapa is thought by some to have influenced the Hebrew version of the story of Adam and Eve and the loss of Paradise. See the excellent discussion in T. Skinner, _Genesis_ (in the _International Critical Commentary_ (1912), p. 91 ff), and Langdon, _The Sumerian Epic of Paradise_ (University of Pennsylvania, Publications of the Babylonia Section, 1915), vol. X., pp. 38-49.

[901] Rameses II. was held in high esteem as a rain-maker—perhaps rain-god—as is evidenced by the sacrifices offered by the Hittites that their princess should on her journey to Egypt to marry Rameses enjoy fair weather, despite that it was the season of the winter storms. In consequence of this power over the elements, the Hittite chiefs strongly advocated friendship with Egypt, as otherwise Rameses II. would probably stop rain and cause a famine in their country (Breasted, _Ancient Records_, III. 423, 426).

[902] Layard, _Nineveh_ (London, 1849), vol. II. p. 438.

[903] “Fishing, fishing everywhere” is the key-note of the picture; the crab in the top left-hand corner is also well into his fish. The picture facing p. 349 comes from the Assyrian sculptures in British Museum: in Mansell’s collection, No. 430.