Part 34

If we limit our attention to any given month of winter, we find the same mixture of cold and dry with wet and open weather as we are familiar with at present. Take, for instance, the month usually the most wintry of all, viz., January. Passing over the years already considered, we have January, 1776, dark and frosty with much snow till the 26th (at this time the Thames was frozen over), then foggy with hoar frost; January, 1777, frosty till the 10th, then foggy and showery; 1778, frosty till the 13th, then rainy to the 24th, then hard frost; 1779, frost and showers throughout January; 1780, frost throughout; 1781, frost and snow to the 25th, then rain and snow; 1782, open and mild; 1783, rainy with heavy winds; 1784, hard frost; 1785, a thaw on the 2nd, then rainy weather to the 28th, the rest of the month frosty; 1786, frost and snow till January 7, then a week mild with much rain, the next week heavy snow, and the rest mild with frequent rain; 1787, first twenty-four days dark moist mild weather, then four days frost, the rest mild and showery; 1788, thirteen days mild and wet, five days of frost, and from January 18 to the end of the month dry windy weather; 1789, thirteen days hard frost, the rest of the month mild with showers; 1790, sixteen days of mild foggy weather with occasional rain, to the 21st frost, to the 28th dark with driving rains, and the rest mild dry weather; 1791, the whole of January mild with heavy rains; and lastly 1792, “some hard frost in January, but mostly wet and mild.”

There is nothing certainly in this record to suggest that any material change has taken place in our January weather during the last eight years. And if we had given the record of the entire winter for each of the years above dealt with the result would have been the same.

We have, in fact, very striking evidence in Gilbert White’s account of the cold weather of December, 1784, which he specially describes as “very extraordinary,” to show that neither our severe nor our average winter weather can differ materially from that which people experienced in the eighteenth century. “In the evening of December 9,” he says, “the air began to be so very sharp that we thought it would be curious to attend to the motions of a thermometer; we therefore hung out two, one made by Martin and one by Dolland” (_sic_, presumably Dollond), “which soon began to show us what we were to expect; for by ten o’clock they fell to twenty-one, and at eleven to four, when we went to bed. On the 10th, in the morning the quicksilver in Dolland’s glass was down to half a degree below zero, and that of Martin’s, which was absurdly graduated only to four degrees above zero, sank quite into the brass guard of the ball, so that when the weather became most interesting this was useless. On the 10th, at eleven at night, though the air was perfectly still, Dolland’s glass went down to one degree below zero!” The note of exclamation is White’s. He goes on to speak of “this strange severity of the weather,” which was not exceeded that winter, or at any time during the twenty-four years of White’s observations. Within the last quarter of a century, the thermometer, on more than one occasion, has shown two or three degrees below zero. Certainly the winters cannot be supposed to have been ordinarily severer than ours in the latter half of the last century, when we find that thermometers, by well-known instrument makers, were so constructed as to indicate no lower temperature than four degrees above zero.

Let us return, after this somewhat long digression, to the levelling action of rain and rivers.

If we consider this action alone, we cannot but recognize in it a cause sufficient to effect the removal of all the higher parts of the land to low levels, and eventually of all the low-lying land to the sea, in the course of such periods as geology makes us acquainted with. The mud-banks at the mouths of rivers show only a part of what rain and river action is doing, yet consider how enormous is the mass which is thus carried into the sea. It has been calculated that in a single week the Ganges alone carries away from the soil of India and delivers into the sea twice as much solid substance as is contained in the great pyramid of Egypt. “The Irrawaddy,” says Sir J. Herschel, “sweeps off from Burmah 62 cubit feet of earth in every second of time on an average, and there are 86,400 seconds in every day, and 365 days in every year; and so on for other rivers. Nor is there any reason to fear or hope that the rains will cease, and this destructive process come to an end. For though the quantity of water on the surface of the earth is probably undergoing a slow process of diminution, small portions of it year by year taking their place as waters under the earth,[44] yet these processes are far too slow to appreciably affect the supply of water till a far longer period has elapsed than that during which (in all probability) life can continue upon the earth.

When we consider the force really represented by the downfall of rain, we need not greatly wonder that the levelling power of rain is so effective. The sun’s heat is the true agent in thus levelling the earth, and if we regard, as we justly may, the action of water, whether in the form of rain or river, or of sea-wave raised by wind or tide, as the chief levelling and therefore destructive force at work upon the earth, and the action of the earth’s vulcanian energies as the chief restorative agent, then we may fairly consider the contest as lying between the sun’s heat and the earth’s internal heat. There can be little question as to what would be the ultimate issue of the contest if land and sea and air all endured or were only so far modified as they were affected by these causes. Sun-heat would inevitably prevail in the long run over earth-heat. But we see from the condition of our moon how the withdrawal of water and air from the scene must diminish the sun’s power of levelling the irregularities of the earth’s surface. We say advisedly _diminish_, not _destroy_; for there can be no question that the solar heat alternating with the cold of the long lunar night is still at work levelling, however slowly, the moon’s surface; and the same will be the case with our earth when her oceans and atmosphere have disappeared by slow processes of absorption.

The power actually at work at present in producing rain, and so, indirectly, in levelling the earth’s surface, is enormous. I have shown that the amount of heat required to evaporate a quantity of water which would cover an area of 100 square miles to a depth of one inch would be equal to the heat which would be produced by the combustion of half a million tons of coals, and that the amount of force of which this consumption of heat would be the equivalent corresponds to that which would be required to raise a weight of upwards of one thousand millions of tons to a height of one mile.[45] When we remember that the land surface of the earth amounts to about fifty millions of square miles, we perceive how enormous must be the force-equivalent of the annual rainfall of our earth. We are apt to overlook when contemplating the silent and seemingly quiet processes of nature—such as the formation of the rain-cloud or the precipitation of rain—the tremendous energy of the forces really causing these processes. “I have seen,” says Professor Tyndall, “the wild stone-avalanches of the Alps, which smoke and thunder down the declivities with a vehemence almost sufficient to stun the observer. I have also seen snow-flakes descending so softly as not to hurt the fragile spangles of which they were composed; yet to produce from aqueous vapour a quantity which a child could carry of that tender material demands an exertion of energy competent to gather up the shattered blocks of the largest stone-avalanche I have ever seen, and pitch them to twice the height from which they fell.”

_ANCIENT BABYLONIAN ASTROGONY._

It is singular to consider how short a time elapsed, after writings in the arrow-headed or cuneiform letters (the Keilschriften of the Germans) were discovered, before, first, the power of interpreting them was obtained, and, secondly, the range of the cuneiform literature (so to speak) was recognized. Not more than ninety years have passed since the first specimens of arrow-headed inscriptions reached Europe. They had been known for a considerable time before this. Indeed, it has been supposed that the Assyrian letters referred to by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Pliny, were in this character. Della Valle and Figueroa, early in the seventeenth century, described inscriptions in arrow-headed letters, and hazarded the idea that they are to be read from left to right. But no very satisfactory evidence was advanced to show whether the inscriptions were to be so read, or from right to left, or, as Chardin suggested, in vertical lines. The celebrated Olaus Gerhard Tychsen, of Rostock, and other German philologists, endeavoured to decipher the specimens which reached Europe towards the end of the last century; but their efforts, though ingenious and zealous, were not rewarded with success. In 1801 Dr. Hager advanced the suggestion that the combinations formed by the arrow-heads did not represent letters but words, if not entire sentences. Lichtenstein, on the other hand, maintained that the letters belonged to an old form of the Arabic or Coptic character; and he succeeded to his own satisfaction in finding various passages from the Koran in the cuneiform inscriptions. Dr. Grotefend was the first to achieve any real success in this line of research. It is said that he was led to take up the subject by a slight dispute with one of his friends, which led to a wager that he would decipher one of the cuneiform inscriptions. The results of his investigations were that cuneiform inscriptions are alphabetical, not hieroglyphical; that the language employed is the basis of most of the Eastern languages; and that it is written from right to left. Since his time, through the labours of Rich, Botta, Rawlinson, Hincks, De Saulcy, Layard, Sayce, George Smith, and others, the collection and interpretation of the arrow-headed inscriptions have been carried out with great success. We find reason to believe that, though the original literature of Babylon was lost, the tablet libraries of Assyria contained copies of most of the writings of the more ancient nation. Amongst these have been found the now celebrated descriptions of the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, and other matters found in an abridged and expurgated form in the book of Genesis. It is to that portion of the Babylonian account which relates to the creation of the sun and moon and stars that I wish here to call attention. It is not only curious in itself, but throws light, in my opinion, on questions of considerable interest connected with the views of ancient Eastern nations respecting the heavenly bodies.

It may be well, before considering the passage in question, to consider briefly—though we may not be able definitely to determine—the real antiquity of the Babylonian account.

In Smith’s interesting work on the Chaldæan account of Genesis, the question whether the Babylonian account preceded the writing of the book of Genesis, or _vice versâ_, is not definitely dealt with. Probably this part of his subject was included among the “important comparisons and conclusions with respect to Genesis” which he preferred to avoid, as his “desire was first to obtain the recognition of the evidence without prejudice.” It might certainly have interfered to some degree with the unprejudiced recognition of the evidence of the tablets if it had been maintained by him, and still more if he had demonstrated, that the Babylonian is the earlier version. For the account in the book of Genesis, coming thus to be regarded as merely an expurgated version of a narrative originally containing much fabulous matter, and not a little that is monstrous and preposterous, would certainly not have been presented to us in quite that aspect in which it had long been regarded by theologians.

But although Mr. Smith states that he placed the various dates as low as he fairly could, considering the evidence,—nay, that he “aimed to do this rather than to establish any system of chronology,”—there can be no mistake about the relative antiquity which he in reality assigns to the Babylonian inscriptions. He states, indeed, that every copy of the Genesis legends belongs to the reign of Assurbanipal, who reigned over Assyria B.C. 670. But it is “acknowledged on all hands that the tablets are not the originals, but are only copies from earlier texts.” The Assyrians acknowledge themselves that this literature was borrowed from Babylonian sources, and of course it is to Babylonia we have to look to ascertain the approximate dates of the original documents. “The difficulty,” he proceeds, “is increased by the following considerations: it appears that at an early period in Babylonian history a great literary development took place, and numerous works were produced which embodied the prevailing myths, religion, and science of that day. Written, many of them, in a noble style of poetry on one side, or registering the highest efforts of their science on the other, these texts became the standards for Babylonian literature, and later generations were content to copy these writings instead of making new works for themselves. Clay, the material on which they were written, was everywhere abundant, copies were multiplied, and by the veneration in which they were held these texts fixed and stereotyped the style of Babylonian literature, and the language in which they were written remained the classical style in the country down to the Persian conquest. Thus it happens that texts of Rim-agu, Sargon, and Hammurabi, who were 1000 years before Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus, show the same language as the texts of these later kings, there being no sensible difference in style to match the long interval between them,”—precisely as a certain devotional style of writing of our own day closely resembles the style of the sixteenth century.

We cannot, then, from the style, determine the age of the original writings from which the Assyrian tablets were copied. But there are certain facts which enable us to form an opinion on this point. Babylonia was conquered about B.C. 1300, by Tugultininip, king of Assyria. For 250 years before that date a foreign race (called by Berosus, Arabs) had ruled in Babylonia. There is no evidence of any of the original Babylonian Genesis tablets being written after the date of Hammurabi, under whom it is supposed that this race obtained dominion in Babylonia. Many scholars, indeed, regard Hammurabi as much more ancient; but none set him later than 1550 B.C.

Now, before the time of Hammurabi several races of kings reigned, their reigns ranging over a period of 500 years. They were called chiefly Kings of Sumir and Akkad—that is, Kings of Upper and Lower Babylonia. It is believed that before this period,—ranging, say, from about 2000 B.C. to 1550 B.C. (at least not later, though possibly, and according to many scholars, probably, far earlier),—the two divisions of Babylonia were separate monarchies. Thus, evidence whether any literature was written before or after B.C. 2000, may be found in the presence or absence of mention, or traces, of this division of the Babylonian kingdom. Mr. Smith considers, for example, that two works,—the great Chaldæan work on astrology, and a legend which he calls “The Exploits of Lubara,”—certainly belong to the period preceding B.C. 2000. In the former work, the subject of which specially connects it, as will presently be seen, with the tablet relating to the creation of the heavenly bodies, Akkad is always referred to as a separate state.

Now Mr. Smith finds that the story of the Creation and Fall belongs to the upper or Akkad division of the country. The Izdubar legends, containing the story of the Flood, and what Mr. Smith regards as probably the history of Nimrod, seem to belong to Sumir, the southern division of Babylonia. He considers the Izdubar legends to have been written at least as early as B.C. 2000. The story of the Creation “may not have been committed to writing so early;” but it also is of great antiquity. And these legends “were traditions before they were committed to writing, and were common, in some form, to all the country.” Remembering Mr. Smith’s expressed intention of setting all dates as late as possible, his endeavour to do this rather than to establish any system of chronology, we cannot misunderstand the real drift of his arguments, or the real significance of his conclusion that the period when the Genesis tablets were originally written extended from B.C. 2000 to B.C. 1550, or roughly synchronized with the period from Abraham to Moses, according to the ordinary chronology of our Bibles. “During this period it appears that traditions of the creation of the universe, and human history down to the time of Nimrod, existed parallel to, and in some points identical with, those given in the book of Genesis.”

Thus viewing the matter, we recognize the interest of that passage in the Babylonian Genesis tablets which corresponds with the account in the book of Genesis respecting the creation of the heavenly bodies. We find in it the earliest existent record of the origin of astrological superstitions. It does not express merely the vague belief, which might be variously interpreted, that the sun and moon and stars were specially created (after light had been created, after the firmament had been formed separating the waters above from the waters below, and after the land had been separated from the water) to be for signs and for seasons for the inhabitants of the world—that is, of our earth. It definitely states that those other suns, the stars, were set into constellation figures for man’s benefit; the planets and the moon next formed for his use; and the sun set thereafter in the heavens as the chief among the celestial bodies.

It runs thus, so far as the fragments have yet been gathered together:—

FIFTH TABLET OF CREATION LEGEND.

1. It was delightful all that was fixed by the great gods.

2. Stars, their appearance [in figures] of animals he arranged,

3. To fix the year through the observation of their constellations,

4. Twelve months (or signs) of stars in three rows he arranged,

5. From the day when the year commences unto the close.

6. He marked the positions of the wandering stars (planets) to shine in their courses,

7. That they may not do injury, and may not trouble any one.

8. The positions of the gods Bel and Hea he fixed with him.

9. And he opened the great gates in the darkness shrouded,

10. The fastenings were strong on the left and right.

11. In its mass (_i.e._ the lower chaos) he made a boiling.

12. The god Uru (the moon) he caused to rise out, the night he over shadowed,

13. To fix it also for the light of the night until the shining of the day,

14. That the month might not be broken, and in its amount be regular.

15. At the beginning of the month, at the rising of the night,

16. His horns are breaking through to shine on the heaven.

17. On the seventh day to a circle he begins to swell,

18. And stretches towards the dawn further.

19. When the god Shamas (the sun) in the horizon of heaven, in the east,

20. . . . formed beautifully and . . .

21. . . . . . . to the orbit Shamas was perfected

22. . . . . . . . . . the dawn Shamas should change

23. . . . . . . . . . . . . going on its path

24. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . giving judgment

25. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . to tame

26. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a second time

27. . . .

Of this tablet Smith remarks that it is a typical specimen of the style of the series, and shows a marked stage in the Creation, the appointment of the heavenly orbs running parallel to the biblical account of the fourth day of Creation. It is important to notice its significance in this respect. We can understand now the meaning underlying the words, “God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens, to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.” The order, indeed, in which the bodies are formed according to the biblical account is inverted. The greater light—the sun—is made first, to rule the day: then the lesser light—the moon—to rule the night. These are the heavenly bodies which in this description rule the day of 24 hours. The sun may be regarded also as ruling (according to the ancient view, as according to nature) the seasons and the year. The stars remain as set in the heaven for signs. “He made the stars also.” “And God set them”—that is, the sun, moon, and stars—“in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night,” and so forth.

No one can doubt, I conceive, that the biblical account is superior to the other, both in a scientific and in a literary sense. It states much less as actually known, and what it does state accords better with the facts known in the writer’s day. Then, the Babylonian narrative, though impressive in certain passages, is overloaded with detail. In both accounts we find the heavenly bodies set in the firmament by a special creative act, and specially designed for the benefit of man. And in passing I would observe that the discovery of these Babylonian inscriptions, however they may be interpreted, and whether they be regarded as somewhat earlier or somewhat later than the Bible narrative, appears to dispose finally of the fantastic interpretation assigned by Hugh Miller and others to the biblical cosmogony, as corresponding to a series of visions in which the varying aspects of the world were presented. It has long seemed to me an utterly untenable proposition that a narrative seemingly intended to describe definitely a certain series of events should, after being for ages so interpreted, require now for its correct interpretation to be regarded as an account of a series of visions. If the explanation were reconcilable in any way with the words of Genesis, there yet seems something of profanity in imagining that men’s minds had thus been played with by a narrative purporting to be of one sort yet in reality of quite a different character. But whatever possibility there may be (and it can be but the barest possibility) that the Genesis narrative admits of the vision interpretation, no one can reasonably attempt to extend that interpretation to the Babylonian account. So that either a narrative from which the Genesis account was presumably derived was certainly intended to describe a series of events, or else a narrative very nearly as early as the Genesis account, and presumably derived from it at a time when its true meaning must have been known, presents the sun, moon, and stars as objects expressly created and set in the sky after the earth had been formed, and for the special benefit of man as yet uncreated.

I am not concerned, however, either to dwell upon this point, or to insist on any of its consequences. Let us return to the consideration of the Babylonian narrative as it stands.